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

1. We feel in our natures a capacity of knowing all that of God which I have before laid down, and that it is improvable by further light to know much more: We feel that our hearts are capable of loving him, and of delighting in the contemplation of the glory of his perfections: And we find all other things so far below the tendency of our faculties, and the contentment of our minds, that we know that this is it that we were made for, and this is the proper use that our Understandings and Wills were given us for. 2. And we find that we attain not any such perfection in this life as we are capable of and do desire; but that our increase of virtue and holiness is an increase of our desires after more; and the better any man is, the more he still desireth to be better; and the more he knoweth, and loveth, and delighteth in God, the more he desireth it in a far higher degree. And even of our knowledge of nature we find, that the more we know, the more we would know; and that he that knoweth the effect, would naturally fain know the cause; and that when he knoweth the nearer cause, he would know the cause of that, ¹and so know the first cause, God himself. And the little that we here attain to of Knowledge, Love and Delight, is far short of the perfection in the same kind which our faculties incline unto.

1. We feel in our natures a capacity of knowing all that of God which I have before laid down, and that it is improvable by further light to know much more: We feel that our hearts are capable of loving him, and of delighting in the contemplation of the glory of his perfections: And we find all other things so far below the tendancy of our faculties, and the contentment of our minds, that we know that this is it that we were made for, and this is the proper use that our Ʋnderstandings and Wills were given us for. 2. And we find that we attain not any such perfection in this life as we are capable of and do desire; but that our encrease of virtue and holiness is an encrease of our desires after more; and the better any man is, the more he still desireth to be better; and the more he knoweth, and loveth, and delighteth in God, the more he desireth it in a far higher degree. And even of our knowledge of nature we find, that the more we know, the more we would know; and that he that knoweth the effect, would naturally fain know the cause; and that when he knoweth the nearer cause, he would know the cause of that, ¹