A32723:266
Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God
Several discourses upon the existence and attributes of God by that late eminent minister in Christ, Mr. Stephen Charnocke ...
London: printed for D. Newman, 1682
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
A DISCOURSE UPON PRACTICAL ATHEISM.
Doct. 2. PRACTICAL Atheism is natural to Man in his depraved state, and very frequent in the hearts and lives of Men.
The Fool hath said in his heart there is no God. He regards him as little as if he had no being: He said in his heart, not with his tongue, nor in his head: He never firmly thought it, nor openly asserted it: Shame put a Bar to the first, and natural reason to the second. Yet perhaps he had sometimes some doubts whether there were a God or no: He wished there were not any, and sometimes hoped there were none at all: He could not raze out the Notion of a Deity in his mind, but he neglected the fixing the sense of God in his heart, and made it too much his business to deface and blot out those Characters of God in his Soul, which had been left under the ruins of original nature.
The Fool hath said in his heart there is no God. He regards him as little as if he had no being: He said in his heart, not with his tongue, nor in his head: He never firmly thought it, nor openly asserted it: Shame put a Bar to the first, and natural reason to the second. Yet perhaps he had sometimes some doubts whether there were a God or no: He wished there were not any, and sometimes hoped there were none at all: He could not rase out the Notion of a Deity in his mind, but he neglected the fixing the sence of God in his heart, and made it too much his business to deface and blot out those Characters of God in his Soul, which had been left under the ruines of original nature.