A27004:210
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 5: What this Cause is, in it self. That it is God.
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.
1. He that hath given so much wisdom to such a Worm as Man, must have more than all the men in the World! Whatever knowledge is in the whole Creation, being given by Him, doth prove that formally or eminently he hath more. Were it all contracted into one Intelligence, it must be less than His that caused it. He hath not given more wisdom than he had to give: nor so much as he had (or is) himself. For if he should make any thing equal to Himself, there would be two Infinites, and there would be a perfect self-sufficient being, which yet had lately no sufficiency or being, and there would be a being independent in facto esse, which was dependent in fieri: which are Contradictions.
2. The effects in the admirable frame and nature, and motions of the Creation, declare that the Creator is infinitely wise. The smallest insect is so curiously made, and so admirably fitted and instructed to its proper end and uses; The smallest Plants in wonderful variety of shapes and colours, and smells and qualities, uses and operations, and beautiful flowers, so marvellously constituted and animated, by an unseen form, and propagated by unsearchable seminal virtue; The smallest Birds and Beasts and creeping things so adorned in their kinds, and so admirably furnished for their proper ends, especially the propagation of their species, in love, and sagacity, and diligence to their young, by instinct equalling in those particulars the reasonable creature; The admirable composure of all the parts of the body of Man, and of the vilest Beast and Vermin; The quality and operation of all the Organs, humours and spirits: The operations of the Mind of man; and the constitution of Societies, and over-ruling all the matters of the World; with innumerable instances in the creature; do all concur to proclaim that man as mad as madness can possibly make him (in that particular) who thinketh that any lower cause than incomprehensible wisdom did principally produce all this; And that by any brutish or natural motion, or confluence of Atoms, or any other matter, it could be thus ordered, continued and maintained, without the infinite wisdom and power of a first ⟨p. 23⟩