Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

2. But God accommodates himself in the Scripture to our weak capacity. God hath no more of a proper repentance, than he hath of a real body; tho he in accommodation to our weakness ascribes to himself the members of our bodies to set out to our understanding the greatness of his perfections, we must not conclude him a body like us; so because he is said to have anger and repentance, we must not conclude him to have passions like us: When we cannot fully comprehend him as he is, he cloths himself with our nature in his expressions that we may apprehend him as we are able, and by an inspection into our selves, learn something of the nature of God; yet those human ways of speaking ought to be understood in a manner agreeable to the infinite excellency and Majesty of God; and are only designed to mark out something in God which hath a resemblance with something in us: As we cannot speak to God as Gods, but as men; so we cannot understand him speaking to us as a God, unless he condescend to speak to us like a man. God therefore frames his language to our dullness, not to his own state; and informs us by our own phrases, what he would have us learn of his nature; as Nurses talk broken language to young Children. In all such expressions, therefore we must ascribe the perfection we conceive in them to God, and lay the imperfection at the door of the Creature.

2. But God accommodates himself in the Scripture to our weak capacity. God hath no more of a proper repentance, than he hath of a real body; tho he in accommodation to our weakness ascribes to himself the members of our bodies to set out to our understanding the greatness of his perfections, we must not conclude him a body like us; so because he is said to have anger and repentance, we must not conclude him to have passions like us: When we cannot fully comprehend him as he is, he cloths himself with our nature in his expressions that we may apprehend him as we are able, and by an inspection into our selves, learn something of the nature of God; yet those human wayes of speaking ought to be understood in a manner agreeable to the infinite excellency and Majesty of God; and are only designed to mark out something in God which hath a resemblance with something in us: As we cannot speak to God as Gods, but as men; so we cannot understand him speaking to us as a God, unless he condescend to speak to us like a man. God therefore frames his language to our dulness, not to his own state; and informs us by our own phrases, what he would have us learn of his nature; as Nurses talk broken language to young Children. In all such expressions, therefore we must ascribe the perfection we conceive in them to God, and lay the imperfection at the door of the Creature.