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
_Prop. II._ This spiritual worship of God is manifest by the light of
nature, to be due to him. In reference to this, consider,
1. The outward means or matter of that worship which would be
acceptable to God, was not known by the light of nature. The law for a
worship, and for a spiritual worship by the faculties of our souls was
natural, and part of the law of creation; though the determination of
the particular acts, whereby God would have this homage testified, was
of positive institution, and depended not upon the law of creation.
Though Adam in innocence knew God was to be worshipped, yet by nature
he did not know by what outward acts he was to pay this respect, or at
what time he was more solemnly to be exercised in it than at another:
this depended upon the directions God, as the sovereign Governor
and Lawgiver, should prescribe. You therefore find the positive
institutions of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and the
determination of the time of worship (Gen. ii. 3, 17). Had there been
any such notion in Adam naturally, as strong as that other, that a
worship was due to God, there would have been found some relics of
these modes universally consented to by mankind, as well as of the
other. But though all nations have by an universal consent concurred
in the acknowledgment of the being of God, and his right to adoration,
and the obligation of the creature to it; and that there ought to be
some public rule and polity in matters of religion (for no nation hath
been in the world without a worship, and without external acts and
certain ceremonies to signify that worship); yet their modes and rites
have been as various as their climates, unless in that common notion
of sacrifices, not descending to them by nature, but tradition from
Adam; and the various ways of worship have been more provoking than
pleasing. Every nation suited the kind of worship to their particular
ends and polities they designed to rule by. How God was to be
worshipped is more difficult to be discerned by nature with its eyes
out than with its eyes clear.[423] The pillars upon which the worship
of God stands cannot be discerned without revelation, no more than
blind Samson could tell where the pillars of the Philistines’ theatre
stood, without one to conduct him. What Adam could not see with his
sound eyes, we cannot with our dim eyes; he must be told from heaven
what worship was fit for the God of heaven. It is not by nature that
we can have such a full prospect of God as may content and quiet us;
this is the noble effect of Divine revelation; He only knows himself,
and can only make himself known to us. It could not be supposed that
an infinite God should have no perfections but what were visible
in the works of his hands; and that these perfections should not
be infinitely greater, than as they were sensible in their present
effects: this had been to apprehend God a limited Being, meaner than
he is.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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