For my part, I would choose rather to be an Atheist, than to believe there is such a God as this in the world. But I am sure the holy One of Israel cannot do so, not through any defect, but through infinite plenitude, and redundance of all perfection. Ex. Gr. There is an eternal fitness and comeliness that a reasonable creature should love, and ⟨p. 91⟩honour and obey it's Creator, and contrarily an eternal horridness, and indecency, that an immortal soul should, forget, contemn, and affront the Father of spirits. Now to affirm that God can dispense with the former, nay make our fear of him, or delight in him to be a sin, and punish it with everlasting torments; and to affirm that God can wink at, or allow the latter, much less command Atheism, Blasphemy, Pride, Unthankfulness, &c. or make Hypocrisy, Covetousness, Revenge, Sensuality, to become duties and graces, and reward them with everlasting happiness, this were to utter the most hellish blasphemy, and the most impossible contradictions in the world. The heathen Plato (in those divine discourses of his, his Eutyphro, and Theaetetus, and otherwhere) may well rebuke the madness of such Christians, as this bold and vain speculator. The sum of this Rule then is, deeply possess and dye thy soul all over with the representation, of that everlasting beauty and amiableness that is in holiness, and of that horror and ugliness, and deformity that eternally dwells on the forehead of all iniquity. Be under the awe and majesty of such clear convictions all day long, and thou shalt not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. For the mind of man, is wont to conceive, before it's own apprehensions and Ideas of good and evil, as Jacobs sheep did before the Rods in the Gutter. If thy notions of good and evil, be right and clear, thy lustings and desires, will be from evil, towards good, all the conceptions of thy soul, and their births will be fair, and unspotted. But if thy apprehensions be speckled, confused, and ring straked (like his Rods) the conceptions of thy mind, thy lustings, will be so too, so great a truth is that [Greek or Hebrew], that dark ignorance, and folly lies at the bottom, as the root and foundation of all wickedness,* every immoral man is a fool, even when he commits a known sin, yet then he may be said, not to know what he doth, Luk. 23.34.
For my part, I would choose rather to be an Atheist, than to believe there is such a God as this in the world. But I am sure the holy One of Israel cannot do so, not through any defect, but through infinite plenitude, and redundance of all perfection. Ex. Gr. There is an eternall fitnesse and comeliness that a reasonable creature should love, and ⟨p. 91⟩honour and obey it's Creator, and contrarily an eternal horridness, and indecencie, that an immortal soul should, forget, contemn, and affront the Father of spirits. Now to affirm that God can dispence with the former, nay make our fear of him, or delight in him to be a sin, and punish it with everlasting torments; and to affirm that God can wink at, or allow the latter, much less command Atheism, Blasphemy, Pride, Unthankfulness, &c. or make Hypocrisie, Covetousness, Revenge, Sensuality, to become duties and graces, and reward them with everlasting happiness, this were to utter the most hellish blasphemy, and the most impossible contradictions in the world. The heathen Plato (in those divine discourses of his, his Eutyphro, and Theaetetus, and otherwhere) may well rebuke the madness of such Christians, as this bold and vain speculator. The sum of this Rule then is, deeply possess and dye thy soul all over with the representation, of that eve•lasting beauty and amiableness that is in holiness, and of that horror and ugliness, and deformity that eternally dwells on the forehead of all iniquity. Be under the awe and majesty of such clear convictions all day long, and thou shalt not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. For the mind of man, is wont to conceive, before it's own apprehensions and Ideas of good and evil, as Jacobs sheep did before the Rods in the Gutter. If thy notions of good and evil, be right and clear, thy lustings and desires, will be from evil, towards good, all the conceptions of thy soul, and their births will be fair, and unspotted. But if thy apprehensions be speckled, confused, and ring straked (like his Rods) the conceptions of thy mind, thy lustings, will be so too, so great a truth is that 〈non-Latin alphabet〉, that dark ignorance, and folly lies at the bottom, as the root and foundation of all wickedness,* every immoral man is a fool, even when he commits a known sin, yet then he may be said, not to know what he doth, Luk. 23.34.
- *[Greek or Hebrew], &c. Plato in Theateto.〈non-Latin alphabet〉, &c. Plato in Theateto.
