A26923:31
An end of doctrinal controversies which have lately troubled the churches
An end of doctrinal controversies which have lately troubled the churches by reconciling explication without much disputing. Written by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for John Salusbury, 1691
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.
CHAP. 1. How we may and must conceive of GOD.
§. 1. A True Knowledge of God is necessary to the Being of Religion, and to Holiness and Glory. No man can love, obey, trust, or hope beyond his knowledge: Nothing is so certainly known as God, and yet nothing so defectively known: Like our Knowledge of the Sun, of which no man doubteth, Whether it be a glorious igneous Substance, endowed with the Power of Motion, Light and Heats: And yet what is less comprehended? And no man hath an adequate knowledge of it, or of the least part of it.
§. 2. There are three things that must concur to our Conceivings of God: 1. Our General Conceptions. 2. Our Metaphorical Conceptions by way of Similitude. 3. Our Negative Conceptions; what God is not.
§. 2. There are three things that must concurr to our Conceivings of God: 1. Our General Conceptions. 2. Our Metaphorical Conceptions by way of Similitude. 3. Our Negative Conceptions; what God is not.
§. 3. I have opened this as distinctly as I am able in my Methodus Theologiae, Cap. 4. in the Table called Ontologia, the beginning to which I must refer the Reader that would be accurate and clear. I. We must conceive of God as a Substance, lest we think him to be nothing: And as a spiritual transcendent Substance, not univocally the same with created Substance, nor such as Man can reach to any sensible, or immediate or formal Conception of: But by the Similitude of created Substance our Conceptions may get some help.