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Two dissertations, I. Concerning the end for which God created the world. II. The…
Two dissertations, I. Concerning the end for which God created the world. II. The nature of true virtue. / by the late Reverend, learned and pious Jonathan Edwards, A.M. president of the College in New-Jersey.
Boston: printed by S. Kneeland, 1765
Concerning the END for which GOD created the WORLD. › Chapter 2 › Sect 7
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.
LET the most perfect union with God, be represented by something at an infinite height above us; and the eternally increasing union of the saints with God, by something that is ascending constantly towards that infinite height, moving upwards with a given velocity; and that is to continue thus to move to all eternity. God who views the whole of this eternally increasing height, views it as an infinite height. And if he has respect to it, and makes it his end, as in the whole of it, he has respect to it as an infinite height, tho' the time will never come when it can be said it has already arrived at this infinite height.
GOD aims at that which the motion or progression which he causes, aims at, or tends to. If there be many things supposed to be so made and appointed, that by a constant and eternal motion, they all tend to a certain centre; then it appears that he who made them and is the cause of their motion, aimed at that centre, that term of their motion, to which they eternally tend, and are eternally, as it were, striving after. And if God be this centre; then God aimed at himself. And herein it appears, that as he is the first author of their being and motion, so he is the ⟨p. 114⟩last end, the final term, to which is their ultimate tendency and aim.
GOD aims at that which the motion or progression which he causes, aims at, or tends to. If there be many things supposed to be so made and appointed, that by a constant and eternal motion, they all tend to a certain center; then it appears that he who made them and is the cause of their motion, aimed at that center, that term of their motion, to which they eternally tend, and are eternally, as it were, striving after. And if God be this center; then God aimed at himself. And herein it appears, that as he is the first author of their being and motion, so he is the ⟨p. 114⟩last end, the final term, to which is their ultimate tendency and aim.