A27004:233
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.
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.)
But yet that God is much more to the world than a constitutive Soul, is undeniable; because he is the creating Cause, 1which is more than a constitutive Cause: and his continued causation in its preservation, is as a continued creation: As in Man, the Soul is a dependent cause, which can give nothing to the Body but what it hath received, nor act but as it is acted or empowered by the first efficient. And therefore though we call not God the Soul of Man, because we would not so dishonour him, nor confound the Creator and the creature; yet we all know that he is to us much more than the Soul of Souls, for in him we live, and move, and have our being. So also it is as to God's causation of the Being, Motion and Order of all the world. God is incomparably more to it than its Form, as being the total first Cause of Form and Matter. To be the Creator is more than to be the Soul.