A27004:1281
The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural…
The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural evidence the being of God ... : the second part, of Christianity, proving by evidence supernatural and natural, the certain truth of the Christian belief ... / by Richard Baxter ... ; also an appendix defending the soul's immortality against the Somatists or Epicureans and other pseudo-philosophers.
London: printed by R. White for Fran. Titon, 1667
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. VI. Of the WITNESS of JESUS CHRIST, or the demonstrative Evidence of his Verity and Authority.
CHAP. VI. Of the WITNESS of JESƲS CHRIST, or the demonstrative Evidence of his Verity and Authority.
1Though all that is said may be a reasonable preparative to faith, it is more cogent evidence which is necessary to ⟨p. 259⟩convince us, that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world. That a man appearing like one of us, is the Eternal Word of God incarnate, is a thing which no man is bound to believe, without very sound evidence to prove it. God hath made Reason essential to our Nature: it is not our weakness, but our natural excellency, and his Image on our nature. Therefore he never called us to renounce it, and to lay it by: for we have no way to know Principles, but by an Intellectual discerning them in their proper Evidence: and no way to know conclusions by, but by a rational discerning their necessary connection to those principles. If God would have us know without reason, he would not have made us reasonable creatures: man hath no way of mental discerning or knowledge, but by understanding things in their proper evidence: to know without this, were to know without knowledge. Faith is an act or species of knowledge, it is so far from being contrary to reason, that it is but an act of cleared elevated reason: it is not an act of immediate intuition of God or Jesus Christ himself; but a knowledge of the truth by the divine evidence of its certainty: they that wrangle against us, for giving reason for our Religion, seem to tell us, that they have none for their own; or else reprehend us for being men. If they had to do with them, who make God to be but the Prime Reason, would they say that Faith is something above Reason, and therefore something above God? I believe that our Reason or Intellection is far from being univocally the same thing with God's: but I believe that God is Intellection, Reason or Wisdom eminenter, though not formaliter: and that though the name be first used, to signify the lower derivative Reason of many, yet we have no higher to express the Wisdom of God by, nor better notion to apprehend it by, than this which is its Image. I conclude therefore, that