A09977:65
Life eternalLife eternall
Life eternal or, A treatise of the knowledge of the divine essence and attributes Delivered in XVIII. sermons. By the late faithful and worthy minister of Jesus Christ, John Preston, D. in Divinity, chaplain in ordinary to his Majesty, master of Emmanuel College in Cambridge, and sometimes preacher of Lincolns Inn.Life eternall or, A treatise of the knowledge of the divine essence and attributes Delivered in XVIII. sermons. By the late faithfull and worthy minister of Iesus Christ, Iohn Preston, D. in Divinity, chaplaine in ordinary to his Majestie, master of Emmanuel Colledge in Cambridge, and sometimes preacher of Lincolns Inne.
London: printed by Richard, 1631
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
The father that begets, knows not the making of him; the mother that conceives, knows it not; neither doth the formative virtue, (as we call it) that is, that vigour that is in the materials, that shapes, and fashions, and articulates the body in the womb, that knows not what it doth. Now is is certain; that he that makes any thing, must needs know it perfectly, and all the parts of it, though the stander by may be ignorant of it. As for example; he that makes a statue, knows how ⟨p. 7⟩every particle is made; he that makes a Watch, or any ordinary work of art, he knows all the junctures, all the wheels, and commissures of it, or else it is impossible that he should make it: now all these that have a hand in making of man, know not the making of him, not the father, nor the mother, nor that which we call the formative virtue, that is, that vigour which is in the materials, which works and fashions the body, as the work-man doth a statue, and gives several limbs to it, all these know it not: therefore he must needs be made by God, and not by man: and therefore see how the Wise-man reasons, Psal. 94.9.1 He that made the eye, shall he not see? he that made the ear, shall not he hear? &c. that is, he that is the maker of the engines, or organs, or senses, or limbs of the body, or he that is maker of the soul, and faculties of it, it is certain that he must know, though others do not, the making of the body and soul, the turnings of the will, and the windings of the understanding; all those other are but as pencils in the hand of him that doth all; the pencil knows not what it doth, though it draws all, it is guided by the hand of a skilful Painter, else it could do nothing; the Painter only knoweth what he doth; so that formative virtue, that vigour that forms the body of a man, that knows no more what it doth, than the pencil doth, but he in whose hand it is, who sets it on work, it is he that gives vigour and virtue to that seed in the womb, from whence the body is raised, it is he that knows it, for it is he ⟨p. 8⟩that makes it. And this is the first particular by which we prove that things were made, and had not their original from themselves. The second is: