N07809:91
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 1 › Sect 3
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 God's love may be taken more strictly, for this general disposition to communicate good, as directed to particular objects: Love in the most strict and proper sense, presupposes the existence of the object beloved, at least in idea and expectation, and represented to the mind as future. God did not love angels in the strictest sense, but in consequence of his intending to create them, and so having an idea of future existing angels. Therefore his love to them was not properly what excited him to intend to create them. Love or benevolence strictly taken, presupposes an existing object, as much as pity, a miserable suffering object.
THIS propensity in God to diffuse himself, may be considered as a propensity to himself diffused; or to his own glory existing in its emanation. A respect to himself, or an infinite propensity to, and delight in his own glory, is that which causes him to incline to its being abundantly diffused, and to delight in the emanation of it. Thus that nature in a tree, by which it puts forth buds, shoots out branches, and brings forth leaves and fruit, is a disposition that terminates in its own complete self. And so the disposition in the sun to shine, or abundantly to diffuse its fullness, warmth and brightness, is only a tendency to its own most glorious and complete state. So God looks on the communication of himself, and the emanation of the infinite glory and good that are in himself to belong to the fullness and completeness of himself; as tho' he were not in his most complete and glorious state without it. Thus the church of Christ (toward whom, and in whom are the emanations of his glory and communications of his fullness) is called the fullness of Christ: As tho' he were not in his complete state ⟨p. 28⟩without her; as Adam was in a defective state without Eve. And the church is called the glory of Christ, as the woman is the glory of the man, I Cor. xi. 7.—Isai. xlvi. 13. I will place salvation in Zion, for Israel my glory.