Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

Well then let us Consider.

Is not this very common, are we not naturally more willing to displease God than displease our selves, when it comes to a point that we must do one or other? Is not our own Counsel of more value with us than Conformity to the will of the Creator? Do not our Judgments often run Counter to the Judgment of God? Have his Laws a greater respect from us, than our own humours. Do we scruple the staining his honour when it comes in competition with our own? Are not the Lives of most men a pleasing themselves, without a repentance that ever they displeased God? Is not this to undeify God, to deify our selves, and disown the propriety he hath in us by the right of Creation and Beneficence? We order our own ways by our own humours, as though we were the Authors of our own being, and had given our selves life and understanding. This is to destroy the order that God hath placed between our wills and his own, and a lifting up of the foot above the head; 'tis the deformity of the Creature: The honour of every rational Creature consists in the service of the first cause of his being; as the welfare of every Creature consists in the orders and proportionable motion of its members, according to the Law of it's Creation.

Is not this very common, are we not naturally more willing to displease God than displease our selves, when it comes to a point that we must do one or other? Is not our own Counsel of more value with us than Conformity to the will of the Creator? Do not our Judgments often run Counter to the Judgment of God? Have his Laws a greater respect from us, than our own humours. Do we scruple the staining his honour when it comes in competition with our own? Are not the Lives of most men a pleasing themselves, without a repentance that ever they displeased God? Is not this to undeifie God, to deifie our selves, and disown the propriety he hath in us by the right of Creation and Beneficence? We order our own ways by our own humours, as though we were the Authors of our own being, and had given our selves life and understanding. This is to destroy the order that God hath placed between our wills and his own, and a lifting up of the foot above the head; 'tis the deformity of the Creature: The honor of every rational Creature consists in the service of the first cause of his being; as the welfare of every Creature consists in the orders and proportionable motion of its members, according to the Law of it's Creation.