Sola gratia, by grace alone, Sola fide, by faith alone , Sola scriptura, by Scripture alone, Solus Christus, Christ alone , Soli Deo gloria, Glory to God alone

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

"The existence and attributes of God" by Stephen Charnock

"No desire for the remembrance of him. How delightful are other things in our minds! How burdensome the memorials of God, from which we have our being! With what pleasure do we contemplate the nature of creatures, even of flies and toads, while our minds tire in the search of him, who hath bestowed upon us our knowing and meditating faculties! Though God shows himself to us in every creature, in the meanest weed as well as the highest heavens, and is more apparent in them to our reasons than themselves can be to our sense; yet though we see them, we will not behold God in them: we will view them to please our sense, to improve our reason in their natural perfections; but pass by the consideration of God's perfections so visibly beaming from them. Thus we play the beasts and atheists in the very exercise of reason, and neglect our Creator to gratify our sense, as though the pleasure of that were more desirable than the knowledge of God. The desire of our souls is not towards his name and the rembrance of him, when we set not ourselves in a posture to feast our souls with deep and serious meditations of him; have a thought of him, only by the bye and away, as if we were afraid of too intimate acquaintance with him. Are not the thoughts of God rather our invaders than our guests; seldom invited to reside and take up our homes in our hearts? Have we not, when they have broke in upon us, bid them depart from us, and warned them to come no more upon our ground; sent them packing as soon as we could, and were glad when they were gone? And when they have departed, have we not often been afraid they should return again upon us, and therefore looked about for other inmates, things, not good, or if good, infinitely below God, to possess the room of our hearts before any thoughts of him should appear again? Have we not often been glad of excuses to shake off present thoughts of him, ane when we have wanted real ones, found our pretences to keep God and our hearts at a distance? Is not this a part of atheism, to be so unwilling to employ our faculties about the giver of them, to refuse to exercise them in a way of grateful remembrance of him; as though God that truly gave them had no right to them, and he that thinks on us every day in a way of providence, were not worthy to be thought on by us in a way of special rembrance? Do not the best, that love the remembrance of him, and abhor this natural averseness, find that when they would think of God, many things tempt them and turn them to think eleswhere? Do they not find their apprehensions too feeble, their motions too dull, and their impressions too slight? This natural atheism is spread over human nature." p. 159-160

I think Charnock would be surprised at how atheism has grown since his days. A lot of the big thinkers would be considered atheist. Man does not want to think about God. For to do so we show how far we have gone from Him.

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