A26919:140
The divine life in three treatises
The divine life in three treatises ... by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for Francis Tyton, 1664
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
If you ask me, How then you should conceive of God, if not in any Bodily shape? I answer, Get all these Attributes, and Relations of God to make their proper Impress upon thy soul, as now I am teaching you, and then you will have the true Conceiving of God: This Question therefore is to be answered at the end of this Discourse, when you have seen all the Attributes of God together, and heard what impression they must make upon you.
2. This must teach us, to think most highly of the things that are Invisible, and meanlier of these visible things. Let it be the property of a Beast and not of a man, to know nothing but what he seeth or hath seen: Let it be the mark of the brutish Infidels, and not of Christians to doubt of the invisible things because they are invisible; or to think that things visible are more excellent or sure. As the senses are more ignoble then the Intellect▪ (a beast having as perfect senses as a man, and yet no reasonable understanding) so the objects of sense must proportionably be below the Objects of the understanding, ⟨p. 48⟩as such. The grossest and most palpable objects are the basest. It is the subtle part that's called the Spirits, which being drawn out of plants or other vegetables is most powerful and excellent, and valued, when the earthly dregs are cast away as little worth. It is that subtle part in our blood that's called the Spirits, that hath more of the virtue of life, and doth more of the works then the feculent gross and earthly part. The air and wind have as true a Being as the Earth, and a more excellent nature, though it be more gross, and they invisible. The Body is not so excellent as the invisible soul. Invisible things are as real as visible, and as suitable to our more noble invisible part, as visible things to our fleshly baser part.
2. This must teach us, to think most highly of the things that are Invisible, and meanlier of these visible things. Let it be the property of a Beast and not of a man, to know nothing but what he seeth or hath seen: Let it be the mark of the bruitish Insidels, and not of Christians to doubt of the invisible things because they are invisible; or to think that things visible are more excellent or sure. As the senses are more ignoble then the Intellect (a beast having as perfect senses as a man, and yet no reasonable understanding) so the objects of sense must proportionably be below the Objects of the understanding,