The crucifying of the world

5. Moreover the world must be Crucified to us, as far as it is presented to us as an independent or separated Good, without its due relations unto God. It is God only who is the Absolute, Necessary▪ Independent Being; and all creatures are but secondary, ⟨p. 16⟩contingent, dependant Beings, (whether Univocally or Equivocally, or Analogically so called, with God, let the Schools debate.) To look on the creature as a separated or simple Being or Good, is to look upon it as God. And here came in the first Idolatry of the world. When Adam had all his felicity in God, and had the creature only as a stream and means, and when all his affections should have been centred in God, and he should not have viewed one line in the volume of nature, without the joint observance of the Centre where it was terminated; Contrarily he withdraws his eye from God, and fixeth it on the creature as a separated Good; and desiring to know Good in this separated sense, he made it an Evil to him, and knew it to his sorrow: And so forsaking the true and Al-sufficient Good, he turned to a Good which indeed as conceived of by him was no Good, and knew it by a knowledge, which as to the Truth of it was not Knowing, but Erring. And in this course which our first progenitors have led us into, the carnal world proceedeth to this day. The creature is near them, but God is far off: A little they know of the creature, but they are utter strangers to God: And therefore think on the creature as an independent separated Good. And you must carefully note, that the dependence of the creature on God, is not to be fully manifest by the dependence of any creature upon another. The line is locally distant from the Centre; and the streams are locally distant from the spring, though they are contiguous, and have the dependency of an effect: But God is not local, and so not locally distant from us. The nearest similitude is that of the bodies dependence upon the soul (which yet doth fall exceeding short.) In God both we and every creature do live, and move, and have our being. As no man of reason will talk to a corpse, nor dwell and converse with any man merely as corporeal, without respect to the soul that doth animate him, nor will he fall in love with a corpse;

5. Moreover the world must be Crucified to us, as far as it is presented to us as an independant or separated Good, without its due relations unto God. It is God only who is the Absolute, Necessary▪ Independant Being; and all creatures are but secondary,