A26919:504
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.
Object. 2. But how can God be fit for mortals to converse with, when they see him not, and are infinitely below him?
Answ. I hope you will not say that you have nothing to do at home, with your own souls: and yet you never saw your souls. And it is the souls, the Reason and the will of men that you daily converse with here in the world, more then their bodies, and yet you never saw their souls, their Reason or their ⟨p. 210⟩wills. If you have no higher light to discern by then your eyesight, you are not men but beasts. If you are men, you have Reason, and if you are Christians you have faith, by which you know things that you never saw. You have more dependence on the things that are unseen, then on those which you see, and have much more to do with them.
Answ. I hope you will not say that you have nothing to do at home, with your own souls: and yet you never saw your souls. And it is the souls, the Reason and the will of men that you daily converse with here in the world, more then their bodies, and yet you never saw their souls, their Reason or their ⟨p. 210⟩wills. If you have no higher light to discern by then your eyesight, you are not men but beasts. If you are men, you have Reason, and if you are Christians you have faith, by which you know things that you never saw. You have more dependance on the things that are unseen, then on those which you see, and have much more to do with them.
And though God be infinitely above us, yet he condescendeth to communicate to us according to our capacities: As the Sun is far from us, and yet doth not disdain to enlighten, and warm, and quicken a worm or fly here below. If any be yet so much an Atheist as to think that Religious converse with God is but a fancy, let him well answer me these few questions.