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
recourse to an infinite and intelligent being; nothing can be rendered
capable of the direction of those things but a God.
This regularity in plants and animals is in all nations. The heavens
have the same motion in all parts of the world; all men have the same
law of nature in their mind; all creatures are stamped {a57} with the
same law of creation. In all parts the same creatures serve for the
same use; and though there be different creatures in India and Europe,
yet they have the same subordination, the same subserviency to one
another, and ultimately to man; which shows that there is a God, and
but one God, who tunes all those different strings to the same notes
in all places. Is it nature merely conducts these natural causes in
due measure to their proper effects, without interfering with one
another? Can mere nature be the cause of those musical proportions of
time? You may as well conceive a lute to sound its own strings without
the hand of an artist; a city well governed without a governor; an
army keep its stations without a general, as imagine so exact an order
without an orderer. Would any man, when he hears a clock strike, by
fit intervals, the hour of the day, imagine this regularity in it
without the direction of one that had understanding to manage it?
He would not only regard the motion of the clock, but commend the
diligence of the clock‑keeper.
(5.) This order and subserviency is constant. Children change the
customs and manners of their fathers; magistrates change the laws
they have received from their ancestors, and enact new ones in their
room: but in the world all things consist as they were created at the
beginning; the law of nature in the creatures hath met with no change.
Who can behold the sun rising in the morning, the moon shining in
the night, increasing and decreasing in its due spaces, the stars in
their regular motions night after night, for all ages, and yet deny a
President over them?[82] And this motion of the heavenly bodies, being
contrary to the nature of other creatures, who move in order to rest,
must be from some higher cause. But those, ever since the settling in
their places, have been perpetually rounding the world. What nature,
but one powerful and intelligent, could give that perpetual motion
to the sun,[83] which being bigger than the earth a hundred sixty‑six
times, runs many thousand miles with a mighty swiftness in the space
of an hour, with an unwearied diligence performing its daily task, and,
as a strong man, rejoicing to run its race, for above five thousand
years together, without intermission, but in the time of Joshua?[84]
It is not nature’s sun, but God’s sun, which he “makes to rise upon
the just and unjust.”[85] So a plant receives its nourishment from
the earth, sends forth the juice to every branch, forms a bud which
spreads it into a blossom and flower; the leaves of this drop off,
and leave a fruit of the same color and taste, every year, which,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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