The Existence and Attributes of God, Volumes 1 and 2Charnock, Stephen
Religion
The Existence and Attributes of God, Volumes 1 and 2
Charnock, Stephen
God (Christianity) -- Attributes; Providence and government of God -- Christianity
who ever heard of a soul wearied with being active? who ever heard of
a weary angel? In the purest simplicity, there is the greatest power,
the most efficacious goodness, the most reaching justice to affect
the spirit, that can insinuate itself everywhere {a202} to punish
wickedness without weariness, as well as to comfort goodness. God
is active, because he is spirit; and if we be like to God, the more
spiritual we are, the more active we shall be.
_Inference 3._ God being a Spirit, is immortal. His being immortal,
and being invisible, are joined together.[408] Spirits are in their
nature incorruptible; they can only perish by that hand that framed
them. Every compounded thing is subject to mutation; but God, being
a pure and simple Spirit, is without corruption, without any shadow
of change.[409] Where there is composition, there is some kind
of repugnancy of one part against the other; and where there is
repugnancy, there is a capability of dissolution. God, in regard of
his infinite spirituality, hath nothing in his own nature contrary
to it; can have nothing in himself which is not himself. The world
perishes; friends change and are dissolved; bodies moulder, because
they are mutable. God is a Spirit in the highest excellency and glory
of spirits; nothing is beyond him; nothing above him; no contrariety
within him. This is our comfort, if we devote ourselves to him;
this God is our God; this Spirit is our Spirit; this is our all,
our immutable, our incorruptible support; a Spirit that cannot die
and leave us.
_Inference 4._ If God be a Spirit, we see how we can only converse
with him by our spirits. Bodies and spirits are not suitable to one
another: we can only see, know, embrace a spirit with our spirits. He
judges not of us by our corporeal actions, nor our external devotions
by our masks and disguises: he fixes his eye upon the frame of the
heart, bends his ear to the groans of our spirits. He is not pleased
with outward pomp. He is not a body; therefore the beauty of temples,
delicacy of sacrifices, fumes of incense, are not grateful to him;
by those, or any external action, we have no communion with him.
A spirit, when broken, is his delightful sacrifice;[410] we must
therefore, have our spirits fitted for him, “be renewed in the spirit
of our minds,”[411] that we may be in a posture to live with him, and
have an intercourse with him. We can never be united to God but in
our spirits: bodies unite with bodies, spirits with spirits. The more
spiritual anything is, the more closely doth it unite. Air hath the
closest union; nothing meets together sooner than that, when the parts
are divided by the interposition of a body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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