A27004:146
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
Part 1 › Chapter 4: Of Man, and other things, as produced by their first Cause.
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.
Moreover Nature teacheth all men to seek felicity, and fear infelicity and calamity: which they need not do, nor could not do, if they were all parts of God: God cannot be miserable, but Man can, as to his Soul as well as his Body, and the misery of his Body is little to that of the Soul even in this life. God cannot be evil, but the Soul may be vitiated and evil, as experience teacheth. God may not be punished or afflicted, but a wicked man may be punished and afflicted, even in his mind or Soul; and a Magistrate will not think, when he hangeth a thief, that he either punished bare flesh, or that he punished God.
Moreover God can wrong no man, but one man may wrong another. God need not fear doing any thing amiss, but the Soul of man must fear it. No part of God can be so unhappy as to choose to be a Toad, or a wicked or miserable man. God hath no Body, but so have these Souls; else when men eat a plant, or bird, or any flesh, they eat part of the Body of God.
Moreover I find, that it is Bodies only that are Quantitative or Extensive, and so divisible into parts: many parts of one Body may be animated by one Soul, but not by many parts of that one Soul, (except the Soul be material it self.)