[1] Men who seek God by reason and natural strength (though we
do not deny common notions and general impressions of a
sovereign power) are like mariners who voyaged before the
invention of the compass, who were but coasters, and
unwillingly left the sight of the land. Such are they who
would arrive at God by this world, and contemplate Him only
in His creatures and seeming demonstration. Certainly every
creature shows God, as a glass; but glimmeringly and
transitorily, by the frailty both of the receiver and
beholder; ourselves have His image, as medals, permanently
and preciously delivered. But by these meditations we get
no further than to know what He doth, not what He
is.--_Donne,_ 1573-1631.
None but the true God can discover [make known] what the
true worship of God is. As that glorious eye of heaven is
not to be seen but by its own proper light,--a million of
torches cannot show us the sun: so it is not all the
natural reason in the world that can either discover what
God is, or what worship He expects, without Divine and
supernatural revelation from Himself.--_Arrowsmith,_
1602-1659.
[2] Reason sees that man is ignorant, guilty, mortal,
miserable, transported with vain passions, tormented with
accusations of conscience, but it could not redress those
evils. Corrupt nature is like an imperfect building that
lies in rubbish: the imperfection is visible but not the
way to finish it; for through ignorance of the first design
every one follows his own fancy, whereas, when the
Architect comes to finish His own project, it appears
regular and beautiful. Thus the various directions of
philosophers to recover fallen man out of his ruins, and to
raise him to his first state, were vain. Some glimmerings
they had that the happiness of a reasonable nature
consisted in its union with God, but in order to this they
propounded such means as were not only ineffectual, but
opposite. Such is the pride and folly of carnal wisdom,
that to bring God and man together, it advances man, but
depresses God.--_Bates,_ 1625-1699.
All the days of sinful nature are dark night, in which
there is no right discerning of spiritual things: some
light there is, of reason, to direct natural and civil
actions, but no daylight. Till the sun rise it is night
still, for all the stars, and the moon to help
them.--_Leighton,_ 1611-1684.
[3] It is a peculiar advantage of piety, that it furnisheth
employment fit for us, worthy of us, hugely grateful, and
highly beneficial to us. Man is a very busy and active
creature, which cannot live and do nothing, whose thoughts
are in restless motion, whose desires are ever stretching
at somewhat, who perpetually will be working either good or
evil to himself: wherefore greatly profitable must that
thing be which determineth him to act well, to spend his
care and pain on that which is truly advantageous to him;
and that is religion only. It alone fasteneth our thoughts,
affections, and endeavours upon occupations worthy the
dignity of our nature, suiting the excellence of our
natural capacities and endowments, tending to the
perfection and advancement of our reason, to the enriching
and ennobling of our souls. Secluding that, we have nothing
in the world to study, to affect, to pursue, not very mean
and below us, not very base and unbecoming us, as men of
reason and judgment. What have we to do but to eat and
drink, like horses or like swine; but to sport and play,
like children or apes; but to bicker and scuffle about
trifles and impertinencies, like idiots? What but to scrape
or scramble for useless pelf, to hunt after empty shows and
shadows of honour, or the vain fancies or dreams of men?
What but to wallow or bask in sordid pleasures, the which
soon degenerate into remorse and bitterness? To which sort
of employments were a man confined, what a pitiful thing he
would be, and how inconsiderable would be his life! Were a
man designed only, like a fly, to buzz about here for a
time, sucking in the air and licking the dew, then soon to
vanish back into nothing, or to be transformed into worms,
how sorry and despicable a thing were he! And such without
religion we should be. But it supplieth us with business of
a most worthy nature and lofty importance; it setteth us
upon doing things great and noble as can be; it engageth us
to free our minds from all fond conceits, and cleans our
hearts from all corrupt affections,--to conform the
dispositions of our soul and the actions of our life to the
eternal laws of righteousness and goodness: it putteth us
upon the imitation of God, upon obtaining a friendship and
maintaining a correspondence with the High and Holy One,
upon filling our minds for conversation and society with
the wisest and purest spirits above, upon providing for our
immortal state, upon the acquist of joy and glory
everlasting. It employeth us in the divinest
actions--promoting virtue, performing beneficence, serving
the public, and doing good to all: the being exercised in
which things doth indeed render a man highly considerable
and his life excellently valuable.--_Barrow,_ 1630-1677.