Saturday, May 20, 2006
from The existance and attributes of God by Stephen Charnock
Practical atheism is natural to man in his depraved state, and very frequent in the hearts and lives of men.
'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God'. He regards him as little as if he had no being. He said in his heart, not with his tongue, nor in his head: he never firmly thought it, nor openly asserted it. Shame put the bar to the first, and natural reason the second; yet, perhaps, he had sometimes some doubts whether there were a God or no. He wished there were not any, and sometimes hoped there were none at all. He could not raze out the notion of a Deity in his mind, but he neglected the fixing in the sense of God in his heart, and made it too much his business to deface and blot out those characters of God in his soul, which had been left under the ruins of original nature. Men may have atheistical hearts without atheistical heads. Their reasons may defend the notion of a Deity, while their hearts are empty of affection to the Deity. Job's children may cure God in their hearts not with their lips. p 89
Stephen Charnock wrote the classic book on the existance and attributes of God.
'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God'. He regards him as little as if he had no being. He said in his heart, not with his tongue, nor in his head: he never firmly thought it, nor openly asserted it. Shame put the bar to the first, and natural reason the second; yet, perhaps, he had sometimes some doubts whether there were a God or no. He wished there were not any, and sometimes hoped there were none at all. He could not raze out the notion of a Deity in his mind, but he neglected the fixing in the sense of God in his heart, and made it too much his business to deface and blot out those characters of God in his soul, which had been left under the ruins of original nature. Men may have atheistical hearts without atheistical heads. Their reasons may defend the notion of a Deity, while their hearts are empty of affection to the Deity. Job's children may cure God in their hearts not with their lips. p 89
Stephen Charnock wrote the classic book on the existance and attributes of God.
