A27004:232
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.
§. 27. Whether the whole world be animated, or inanimate: Whether the whole have one constitutive Soul or not: Whether each Orb have its particular Soul or not, are things unrevealed, and beyond the Certain knowledge of the natural mind. But it is certain that the first Being is not the proper constitutive Form or Soul of the world▪ but yet that he is much more to it than such a Form or Soul, even the total, perfect first Cause of all that it is, and hath, and doth.
He is not the constitutive Form or Soul of the Universe, (as it seems Cicero with the Academics and Stoics thought) because then the Creator and the Creature should be the same: ⟨p. 29⟩or else the Creature should be nothing but dead, passive matter: and then Man himself, who knoweth that he hath a Soul, would either be God, (which his experience and the conscience of his frailty forbiddeth him to imagine) or else he should be a Creature more noble than the Universe, of which he is so small a part, (which his reason forbiddeth him also to believe.)
He is not the constitutive Form or Soul of the Universe, (as it seems Cicero with the Academicks and Stoicks thought) because then the Creator and the Creature should be the same: ⟨p. 29⟩or else the Creature should be nothing but dead, passive matter: and then Man himself, who knoweth that he hath a Soul, would either be God, (which his experience and the conscience of his frailty forbiddeth him to imagin) or else he should be a Creature more noble than the Universe, of which he is so small a part, (which his reason forbiddeth him also to believe.)