A27004:408
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.
It is the gross ignorance of the Divine perfections, which ever made any one question the particular Providence of God as extending to the smallest things and actions. 1. It is proved by his Immensity (conceived of as without corporeal extension of parts as before said): He that made and upholdeth all the World, did never make that which is greater than himself, and excludeth his presence. Though being a Spirit he hath not Corporeal quantity, yet analogically and in a way of eminency and transcendency, we must say that he is Greater and Immense: And it is his perfection which denieth extension and dimensions; and therefore in a nobler kind he is every where present. And if he be here as certainly as I am, and in a more excellent manner, he cannot but observe all things and actions which are here.
It is the gross ignorance of the Divine perfections, which ever made any one question the particular Providence of God as extending to the smallest things and actions. 1. It is proved by his Immensity (conceived of as without corporeal extension of parts as before said): He that made and upholdeth all the World, did never make that which is greater than himself, and excludeth his presence. Though being a Spirit he hath not Corporeal quantity, yet analogically and in a way of eminency and transcendency, we must say that he is Greater and Immense: And it is his perfection which denyeth extension and dimensions; and therefore in a nobler kinde he is every where present. And if he be here as certainly as I am, and in a more excellent manner, he cannot but observe all things and actions which are here.
2. He is Omnipotent and All sufficient, and therefore as Able to observe and govern every the smallest Thing and ⟨p. 62⟩action, as if he had but that one to look after in the world. And I think, if God had but one man at all to mind and govern in all the world, the Adversary himself, that now denieth his particular providence, would confess, that God doth observe and regard that one individual. It is mens Atheistical or Blasphemous diminutive thoughts of God, who conceive of him as finite, though they call him infinite, which is the cause of all such kind of errors.