A discourse of an unconverted man's enmity, against God Preached to a country congregation

But now the voluntariness of this ignorance of God, and the enmity that is, consequently, in it, appears evidently in two sorts of persons.

1. In many that are of the more knowing and inquisitive sort, who do all they can to make themselves notional Atheists; to blot, or raze the notion of God out of their minds. Of them I shall say little here. They do their utmost, but in vain. It will stick as close to them as their thinking Power. But their attempt shows their enmity. For they are content to admit the grossest Absurdities into their minds, rather than permit that notion to remain unmolested there. Rather imagine such a curious frame of things, as this World is, to have come by chance, than that it had a wise, just, holy, as well as powerful, Maker. They would count it an absurdity, even unto madness, to think the exquisite picture of a Man, or a Tree, to have happened by chance; and can ⟨p. 14⟩allow themselves to be so absurd, as to think a Man himself, or a Tree, to be causal Productions. Is not this the height of enmity!

1. In many that are of the more knowing and inquisitive sort, who do all they can to make themselves notional Atheists; to blot, or rase the notion of God out of their minds. Of them I shall say little here. They do their utmost, but in vain. It will stick as close to them as their thinking Power. But their attempt shews their enmity. For they are content to admit the grossest Absurdities into their minds, rather than permit that notion to remain unmolested there. Rather imagine such a curious frame of things, as this World is, to have come by chance, than that it had a wise, just, holy, as well as powerful, Maker. They would count it an absurdity, even unto madness, to think the exquisite picture of a Man, or a Tree, to have happened by chance; and can ⟨p. 14⟩allow themselves to be so absurd, as to think a Man himself, or a Tree, to be causal Productions. Is not this the height of enmity!