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
2. In the admirable difference of the features of men; which is a
great argument that the world was made by a wise Being. This could
not be wrought by chance, or be the work of mere nature, since we find
never, or very rarely, two persons exactly alike. This distinction
is a part of infinite wisdom; otherwise what confusion would be
introduced into the world? Without this, parents could not know their
children, nor children their parents, nor a brother his sister, nor
a subject his magistrate. Without it there had been no comfort of
relations, no government, no commerce. Debtors {a67} would not have
been known from strangers, nor good men from bad. Propriety could
not have been preserved, nor justice executed; the innocent might
have been apprehended for the nocent; wickedness could not have been
stopped by any law. The faces of men are the same for parts, not for
features, a dissimilitude in a likeness. Man, like to all the rest in
the world, yet unlike to any, and differenced by some mark from all,
which is not to be observed in any other species of creatures. This
speaks some wise agent which framed man; since, for the preservation
of human society and order in the world, this distinction was
necessary.
Secondly, As man’s own nature witnesseth a God to him in the structure
of his body, so also “in the nature of his soul.”[107] We know that we
have an understanding in us; a substance we cannot see, but we know it
by its operations; as thinking, reasoning, willing, remembering, and
as operating about things that are invisible and remote from sense.
This must needs be distinct from the body; for that being but dust and
earth in its original, hath not the power of reasoning and thinking;
for then it would have that power, when the soul were absent, as well
as when it is present. Besides, if it had that power of thinking, it
could think only of those things which are sensible, and made up of
matter, as itself is. This soul hath a greater excellency; it can know
itself, rejoice in itself, which other creatures in this world are not
capable of. The soul is the greatest glory of this lower world; and,
as one saith, “There seems to be no more difference between the soul
and an angel, than between a sword in the scabbard and when it is out
of the scabbard.”[108]
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