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

I answer you, 1. They were not made Gods, but Creatures, and therefore were not to be perfect. 2. It is the corrupt and blinded sensual mind which crieth out for want of sensible pleasure, and can see no goodness in any thing but this: but true reason telleth any man that hath it, that our sensible pleasure is a thing too low to be the highest excellency of the creature, and to be the ultimate end of God: and that the glory of the whole world, even the inanimate parts as well as the animate, showing the glory of the Infinite Creator is the excellency of the world. What if the Sun, and Stars, and Earth, and Sea, the Fire and Air have no feeling; have they therefore no goodness but what is a Means to the sensible delights of lower things? Hath a Worm more goodness than the Sun, if it have more feeling? These are the madnesses of sensual men. May not an excellent Limner, Watch-maker, or other Artificer, make a Picture, a Watch, or Musical Instrument, merely for his own delight? and may he not delight in the excellency of it, though you imagine him to have no need of it, or of the delight? And what is the excellency of such a Picture, but to be the full demonstration of the Author's skill, in the most full representation of the thing resembled? Will you say that he hath done no good, because he made not his Picture sensible, and made not ⟨p. 99⟩its pleasure his ultimate end? Those things which in particulars we call Bad, are Good as they are parts of the Universal frame; as many darknings and shadowings in a Picture may conduce to make it beautiful. The eye is a more excellent part of the body than a finger or a tooth; and yet it maketh to the perfection of the whole that there be fingers and teeth, as well as eyes: So it doth to the perfection of the world, that there be Men, and Beasts, and Plants, as well as Angels; and poor men as well as rich, and sick man as well as sound, and pain as well as pleasure. Our narrow sight that looketh but on a spot or parcel of God's work at once, doth judge according to the particular interest of that parcel, (and so we would have no variety in the world, but every thing of that species which we think best); But God seeth all his works at once, uno intuitu, and therefore seeth what is best in reference to the glory of the Universe;

I answer you, 1. They were not made Gods, but Creatures, and therefore were not to be perfect. 2. It is the corrupt and blinded sensual mind which crieth out for want of sensible pleasure, and can see no goodness in any thing but this: but true reason telleth any man that hath it, that our sensible pleasure is a thing too low to be the highest excellency of the creature, and to be the ultimate end of God: and that the glory of the whole world, even the inanimate parts as well as the animate, shewing the glory of the Infinite Creator is the excellency of the world. What if the Sun, and Stars, and Earth, and Sea, the Fire and Air have no feeling; have they therefore no goodness but what is a Means to the sensible delights of lower things? Hath a Worm more goodness than the Sun, if it have more feeling? These are the madnesses of sensual men. May not an excellent Limner, Watch-maker, or other Artificer, make a Picture, a Watch, or Musical Instrument, meerly for his own delight? and may he not delight in the excellency of it, though you imagine him to have no need of it, or of the delight? And what is the excellency of such a Picture, but to be the full demonstration of the Author's skill, in the most full representation of the thing resembled? Will you say that he hath done no good, because he made not his Picture sensible, and made not