A27004:296
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.
3. From the common infirmity and badness of all the world. The wise are so few, and the ignorant so many, that if all the ignorant were left ungoverned to do what they list, they would be like an Army of blind men in a fight,1 or like a world of men bewildered in the dark. What a confused loathsome spectacle would the world be? and the rather because men are bad as well as foolish. Would all the sensual vicious persons in the world be ordered like men, without any Government, by such as are wiser than themselves?
3. From the common infirmity and badness of all the world. The wise are so few, and the ignorant so many, that if all the ignorant were left ungoverned to do what they list, they would be like an Army of blind men in a fight,1 or like a world of men bewildred in the dark. What a confused loathsome spectacle would the world be? and the rather because men are bad as well as foolish. Would all the sensual vitious persons in the world be ordered like men, without any Government, by such as are wiser than themselves?
- 1Modesliam quandam cognitio re: n• coelest▪ u•n assert is, qui videant quanta sit etiam apud Deos moderatio, quantas ordo; & magnitudinem animi, Deorum opera & facta cementibu•. Justitiam etiam, cum cognitum habeas, quid sit fummi RECTORIS & DOMINI numen, •uod consilium, quae voluntas, cujus ad naturam apta ratio vera illa & summa Lex à Philosophis dicitur. Cicer. de Finib. l. 4 p. 156.
4. From the power of sensitive objects: The baits of sense are so numerous, so near and so powerful, that they would bear down reason in the most, without the help of Laws: nay, Laws themselves, even of God and Man, do so little with the most, as tell us what they would be without them.