The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural…

3. If all that is in the Objection had been proved, it would not at all shake the main design of my present discourse, which is to prove that God is our Grand Benefactor and Chief Good! and that he is mans ultimate end. For if the World were his Body, and he both its Efficient and its Soul, he would be the cause of all its Good; and the Cause would be more excellent than the Effect: And if our Souls that never made the matter of our Bodies, are yet the noblest part of us, and far more excellent than the Body; much more would God that made or caused all the Matter and Order in the World, be more excellent than that World which he effected: And as the Soul is not for the Body as its ultimate end, (though it be the Life of the Body, and its great Benefactor,) but the Body is finally more for the Soul, though the Soul need not the Body, so much as the Body needeth the Soul; and as the Horse is finally for the Rider, and not the Rider for the Horse; though the Horse needeth his Master more than the Master doth the Horse; (for the Horses life is preserved by the Master, when the Master is but accommodated in his Journey by his Horse;) Even so, though the World need God, and he needeth not the World, and God giveth being and life to the World, which can give nothing at all to him, yet the World is finally for God, and not God for the World. The noblest and first Being is still the End.

And the generated part of the World, which is not formally eternal, but doth oriri & interire, is it that our dispute doth most concern which the Objection doth no whit invalidate.

§. 5. The same Will of God which was the free efficient, ¹is the End of all his Works ad extra.

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