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

§. 31. Yet must self-love, and sense it self, and the sensible sweetness and experience of Mercies be improved to our easier taste of God's essential Goodness, and we must rise up from the lower to the higher object: and this is our chief use of sensible benefits.¹

1. 1Nihil homini metuendum, nisi ne faelicitatem excludat. Solon in Laert. p. 31. Summo Bono constituto in Philosophia, constituta sunt omnia: nam caeteris in rebus sive praetermissum, sive ignoratum est quippiam, non plus incommodi, quam quanti quaeque earum rerum est, in quibus neglectum est aliquid. Summum autem bonum si ignoretur, vivendi rationem ignorari necesse est: ex quo rantus error consequitur, ut quem in portum see recipiant, scire non possunt. Cognitis autem rerum firiibus (bonorum & malorum) inventa vitae via est conformatioque omnium officiorum. Piso in Cic. de finib. lib. 5. pag. 182. Decrescere summum bonum non potest. Mortalia eminent, cadunt, deteruntur, crescunt, exhauriuntur, implentur. Divinorum una natura est. Senec. Epist. 66. p. 644, 645.Nihil homini metuendum, nisi ne faelicitatem excludat. Solon in Laert. p. 31. Summo Bono constituto in Philosophia, constituta sunt omnia: nam caeteris in rebus sive praetermissum, sive ignoratum est quippiam, non plus incommodi, quam quanti quaeque earum rerum est, in quibus neglectum est aliquid. Summum autem bonum si ignoretur, vivendi rationem ignorari necesse est: ex quo rantus error consequitur, ut quem in portum se recipiant, scire non possunt. Cognitis autem rerum firiibus (bonorum & malorum) inventa vitae via est conformatioque omnium officiorum. Piso in Cic. de finib. lib. 5. pag. 182. Decrescere summum bonum non potest. Mortalia eminent, cadunt, deteruntur, crescunt, exhauriuntur, implentur. Divinorum una natura est. Senec. Epist. 66. p. 644, 645.

Doubtless as the Soul, while it dwelleth with flesh doth receive its objects by the mediation of sense, so God hath purposely put such variety of sensible delicacies into the creatures, that by every sight, and smell, and hearing, and touch, and taste, our souls might receive a report of the sweetness of God, whose goodness all proceed from. And therefore this is the life which we should labour in continually, to see God's goodness in every lovely sight, and to taste God's goodness in every pleasant taste, and to smell it in every pleasant Odour, and to hear it in every lovely word or sound; that the motion may pass on clearly without stop, from the senses to the mind and will, and we may never be so blockish as to gaze on the glass, and not see the Image in it; or to gaze on the Image, and never consider whose it is: or to read the Book of the Creation, and mark nothing but the words and letters, and never mind the sense and meaning. A Philosopher, and yet an Atheist or ungodly, is a monster; one that most readeth the Book of Nature, and least understandeth or feeleth the meaning of it.