A26879:141
The catechizing of families a teacher of householders how to teach their householdsThe catechizing of families a teacher of housholders how to teach their housholds
The catechizing of families a teacher of householders how to teach their households : useful also to school-masters and tutors of youth : for those that are past the common small catechisms [sic], and would grow to a more rooted faith, and to the fuller understanding of all that is commonly needful to a safe, holy comfortable and profitable life / written by Richard Baxter ...The catechizing of families a teacher of housholders how to teach their housholds : useful also to school-masters and tutors of youth : for those that are past the common small chatechisms [sic], and would grow to a more rooted faith, and to the fuller understanding of all that is commonly needful to a safe, holy comfortable and profitable life / written by Richard Baxter ...
London: printed for T. Parkhurst, 1683
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.
A. The word Immediate sometime signifieth, A cause that hath no other cause under it: So the Sun is the immediate cause of the emanation of its beams of Light. And so God is not always an Immediate Cause; that is, He hath other causes under him: But sometime, Immediate signifieth that which is next a thing, having nothing between them. And so God doth all things Immediately: For he is, and he acteth as near us as we to our selves, and nothing is between him and us: He is as near the person and the Effect, when he useth Second Causes as when he useth none.
A. The word Immediate sometime signifieth, A cause that hath no other cause under it: So the Sun is the immediate cause of the emanation of its beams of Light. And so God is not alwaies an Immediate Cause; that is, He hath other causes under him: But sometime, Immediate signifieth that which is next a thing, having nothing between them. And so God doth all things Immediately: For he is, and he acteth as near us as we to our selves, and nothing is between him and us: He is as near the person and the Effect, when he useth Second Causes as when he useth none.
Q. 6. But is it not a debasing GOD to make his Providence the cause of every motion of a Worm, a Bird, a Fly, and to mind and move such contemptible things: and so to mind the thoughts of man?
A. It is a debasing God to think that he is like a finite Creature, absent, or insufficient for any of his Creatures. That there is not the least thing or motion so small, as to be done without him, is most certain to him that will consider, 1. That Gods very Essence is every where: And wherever he is, he is himself, that is, most Powerful, Wise and Good: And if such a God be as near to every Action as the most immediate Actor is, so that ⟨p. 17⟩