A35583:921
Mount Pisgah, or, A prospect of heaven being an exposition on the fourth chapter…Movnt Pisgah, or, A prospect of heaven being an exposition on the fourth chapter…
Mount Pisgah, or, A prospect of heaven being an exposition on the fourth chapter of the first epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, from the 13th verse, to the end of the chapter, divided into three parts / by Tho. Case ...Movnt Pisgah, or, A prospect of heaven being an exposition on the fourth chapter of the first epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, from the 13th verse, to the end of the chapter, divided into three parts / by Tho. Case ...
London: printed by Thomas Milbourn for Dorman Newman, 1670
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.
First, By denying, we come to know God in this life, by removing all imperfections, and defects, and limitations, by taking away all things which are inconsistent with a Deity: conceive a spiritual being, and pare off whatsoever is imperfect or defective, and that which remains is God; we can go in our conceptions, or descriptions of God, very little farther. Or,
Secondly, We come to know (or rather to guess) what God is by comparing God with the Creature; take in all that is amiable, or formidable in the Creature; go over all imaginable perfections and excellencies in the Creatures, Men, Heavens, Sun, Moon, Stars, Angels, and ascribe them all to God, and there you lay a foundation of knowing God, but infinitely short and narrow of what he is; therefore we must ascend.
Secondly, We come to know (or rather to ghess) what God is by comparing God with the Creature; take in all that is amiable, or formidable in the Creature; go over all imaginable perfections and excellencies in the Creatues, Men, Heavens, Sun, Moon, Stars, Angels, and ascribe them all to God, and there you lay a foundation of knowing God, but infinitely short and narrow of what he is; therefore we must ascend.
For when we have gone through all the ranks and gradations of perfections in the subordinations of created beings, when we have searched out the utmost excellency of each classis, we may say, this is in God, and more; whether Man or Angels go higher and higher till we come to the ⟨p. 33⟩top of Jacobs Ladder, still all this is in God and infinitely more. The Creature must be winnowed from all imperfection, and the finest of them must be taken to give some weak resemblance of a Deity.