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
First, Take a prospect of the body. The Psalmist counts it a matter
of praise and admiration (Psalm cxxxix. 15, 16): “I will praise thee,
for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. When I was made in secret,
and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth, in thy book
all my members were written.” The scheme of man and every member was
drawn in his book. All the sinews, veins, arteries, bones, like a
piece of embroidery or tapestry, were wrought by God, as it were, with
deliberation; like an artificer, that draws out the model of what he
is to do in writing, and sets it before him when he begins his work.
And, indeed, the fabric of man’s body, as well as his soul, is an
argument for a Divinity. The artificial structure of it, the elegancy
of every part, the proper situation of them, their proportion one to
another, the fitness for their several functions, drew from Galen[102]
(a heathen, and one that had no raised sentiments of a Deity) a
confession of the admirable wisdom and power of the Creator, and that
none but God could frame it.
1. In the order, fitness, and usefulness of every part. The whole
model of the body is grounded upon reason. Every member hath its
exact proportion, distinct office, regular motion. Every part hath a
particular comeliness, and convenient temperament bestowed upon it,
according to its place in the body. The heart is hot, to enliven the
whole; the eye clear, to take in objects to present them to the soul.
Every member is presented for its peculiar service and action. Some
are for sense, some for motion, some for preparing, and others for
dispensing nourishment to the several parts: they mutually depend
upon and serve one another. What small strings fasten the particular
members together, “as the earth, that hangs {a65} upon nothing!”[103]
Take but one part away, and you either destroy the whole, or stamp
upon it some mark of deformity. All are knit together by an admirable
symmetry; all orderly perform their functions, as acting by a settled
law; none swerving from their rule, but in case of some predominant
humor. And none of them, in so great a multitude of parts, stifled
in so little a room, or jostling against one another, to hinder their
mutual actions; none can be better disposed. And the greatest wisdom
of man could not imagine it, till his eyes present them with the sight
and connection of one part and member with another.
(1.) The heart.[104] How strongly it is guarded with ribs like a
wall, that it might not be easily hurt! It draws blood from the liver,
through a channel made for that purpose; rarefies it, and makes it
fit to pass through the arteries and veins, and to carry heat and
life to every part of the body: and by a perpetual motion, it sucks
in the blood, and spouts it out again; which motion depends not upon
the command of the soul, but is pure natural.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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