A44697:86
A treatise of delighting in God from Psal. xxxvij. 4. Delight thy self also…
A treatise of delighting in God from Psal. xxxvij. 4. Delight thy self also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. In two parts. By John Howe, M.A. sometime fellow of Magdalen College, Oxon.
London: printed by A. Maxwell for Sa. Gellibrand, 1674
A TREATISE OF Delighting in GOD: From PSAL. 37. 4. Delight thy self… › Part 1
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.
But now before that new birth take place in the spirit of man, it wants but knows not what; craves indeterminately (who will show us any good?) not fixing upon any particular one that is sufficient and finite, and labouring at once, under an ignorance of the infinite; together with a disaffection thereunto. Its wants and cravings are beyond the measure, of all finite good; for suppose it to have never so large a share, nay could it grasp and engross the whole of it, an unsatisfiedness and desire of more would still remain. But that more is somewhat indeterminate, and merely imaginary. An infinite nothing. An idol of fancy. A God of its own making. God it must have, but what a one he is it misapprehends, ⟨p. 17⟩and wherein it rightly apprehends him likes and loves him not; will by no means choose, desire, or take complacency in him. So that an unregenerate soul is, while it is such, necessarily doomed to be miserable. It cannot be happy in any inferior good, and in the Supreme, it will not.
But now before that new birth take place in the spirit of man, it wants but knows not what; craves indeterminately (who will shew us any good?) not fixing upon any particular one that is sufficient and finite, and laboring at once, under an ignorance of the infinite; together with a disaffection thereunto. Its wants and cravings are beyond the measure, of all finite good; for suppose it to have never so large a share, nay could it grasp and ingross the whole of it, an unsatisfiedness and desire of more would still remain. But that more is somewhat indeterminate, and meerly imaginary. An infinite nothing. An idol of fancy. A God of its own making. God it must have, but what a one he is it misapprehends, ⟨p. 17⟩and wherein it rightly apprehends him likes and loves him not; will by no means choose, desire, or take complacency in him. So that an unregenerate soul is, while it is such, necessarily doom'd to be miserable. It cannot be happy in any inferior good, and in the Supream, it will not.