Selected quad for the lemma: glory_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
glory_n	eternal_a	exceed_a	weight_n	6,870	5	9.1543	5	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27428	The folly and unreasonableness of atheism demonstrated from the advantage and pleasure of a religious life, the faculties of humane souls, the structure of animate bodies, & the origin and frame of the world : in eight sermons preached at the lecture founded by ... Robert BOyle, Esquire, in the first year MDCXCII / by Richard Bentley ...	Bentley, Richard, 1662-1742.	1699 (1699)	Wing B1931; ESTC R21357	132,610	286

things without him nay all consciousness and sense of his own Person and Being If I say upon a certain belief of this indication the man should appear overjoyed at the News and be mightily transported with the discovery and expectation would not all that saw him be astonished at such behaviour Would they not be forward to conclude that the Distemper had seized him already and even then the miserable Creature was become a meer Fool and an Idiot Now the Carriage of our Atheists or Deists is infinitely more amazing than this no dotage so infatuate no phrensie so extravagant as theirs They have been educated in a Religion that instructed them in the knowledge of a Supreme Being a Spirit most excellently Glorious superlatively Powerfull and Wise and Good Creator of all things out of nothing That hath endued the Sons of Men his peculiar Favorites with a Rational Spirit and hath placed them as Spectators in this noble Theatre of the World to view and applaud these glorious Scenes of Earth and Heaven the workmanship of his hands That hath furnished them in general with a sufficient store of all things either necessary or convenient for life and particularly to such as fear and obey him hath promised a supply of all wants a deliverance and protection from all dangers That they that seek him shall want no manner of thing that is good Who besides his munificence to them in this life hath so loved the World That he sent his Onely-begotten Son the express Image of his Substance and Partaker of his eternal Nature and Glory to bring Life and Immortality to light and to tender them to Mankind upon fair and gracious Terms That if they submit to his easie yoke and light burthen and observe his Commandments which are not grievous he then gives them the promise of eternal Salvation he hath reserved for them in Heaven an Inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away he hath prepared for them an unspeakable unconceivable Perfection of Joy and Bliss things that eye hath not seen nor ear heard neither have entred into the heart of man What a delightfull and ravishing Hypothesis of Religion is this And in this Religion they have had their Education Now let us suppose some great Professor in Atheism to suggest to some of these men That all this is meer dream and imposture that there is no such excellent Being as they suppose that created and preserves them that all about them is dark senseless Matter driven on by the blind impulses of Fatality and Fortune that Men first sprung up like Mushroms out of the mud and slime of the Earth and that all their Thoughts and the whole of what they call Soul are only various Action and Repercussion of small particles of Matter kept a while a moving by some Mechanism and Clock-work which finally must cease and perish by death If it be true then as we daily find it is that men listen with complacency to these horrid Suggestions if they let go their hope of Everlasting Life with willingness and joy if they entertain the thoughts of final Perdition with exultation and triumph ought they not to be esteem'd most notorious Fools even destitute of common sense and abandon'd to a callousness and numness of Soul What then is Heaven it self with its pleasures for evermore to be parted with so unconcernedly Is a Crown of Righteousness a Crown of Life to be surrendred with laughter is an exceeding and eternal weight of Glory too light in the balance against the hopeless death of the Atheist and utter extinction 'T was a noble saying of the Emperor Marcus That he would not endure to live one day in the World if he did not believe it to be under the government of Providence Let us but imagin that excellent Person confuted and satisfied by some Epicurean of his time that All was but Atoms and Vacuum and Necessity and Chance Would He have been so pleased and delighted with the conviction would he have so triumph'd in being overcome or rather as he hath told us would he not have gone down with sorrow and despair to the Grave Did I but once see an Atheist lament and bewail himself That upon a strict and impartial examination he had found to his cost that all was a mistake that the Prerogative of Humane Nature was vanished and gone those glorious hopes of Immortality and Bliss nothing but cheating Joys and pleasant Delusions that he had undone himself by losing the comfortable Error and would give all the World to have better arguments for Religion there would be great hopes of prevailing upon such an Atheist as this But alas there are none of them of this temper of mind there are none that understand and seek after God they have no knowledge nor any desire of it they thrust the Word of God from them and judge themselves unworthy of everlasting life they willingly prefer Darkness before Light and obstinately choose to perish for ever in the Grave rather than be ●●irs of Salvation in the Resurrection of the Just. These certainly are the Fools in the Text indocil intractable Fools whose stolidity can baffle all Arguments and be proof against Demonstration it self whose end as the words of St. Paul do truly describe them whose end and very Hope is destruction an eternal Deprivation of Being whose God is their belly the gratification of sensual Lusts whose Glory is in their shame in the debasing of Mankind to the condition of Beasts who mind earthly things who if like that great Apostle they were caught up to the third Heaven would as the Spyes did of Canaan bring down an evil report of those Regions of Bliss And I fear unless it please God by extraordinary methods to help their unbelief and enlighten the eyes of their understanding they will carry their Atheism with them to the Pit and the flames of Hell only must convince them of their Error This supine and inconsiderate behaviour of the Atheists is so extremely absurd that it would be deem'd incredible if it did not occurr to our daily Observation it proclaims aloud that they are not led astray by their Reasoning but led captive by their Lusts to the denial of God When the very pleasures of Paradise are contemn'd and trampled on like Pearls cast before Swine there 's small hope of reclaiming them by arguments of Reason But however as Solomon adviseth we will answer these Fools not according to their Folly lest we also be like unto them It is expedient that we put to silence the ignorance of these foolish men that Believers may be the more confirmed and more resolute in the Faith Did Religion bestow Heaven without any terms or conditions indifferently upon all if the Crown of Life was hereditary and free to Good and Bad and not settled by Covenant upon the Elect of God only such as live

will never be able to prove that therefore Men would be so vivacious as they would have us believe Nay perhaps the contrary may be inferr'd if we may argue from present experience For the Inhabitants of the Torrid Zone who suffer the least and shortest recesses of the Sun and are within one step and degree of a Perpetual Aequinox are not only shorter lived generally speaking than other Nations nearer the Poles but inferior to them in Strength and Stature and Courage and in all the capacities of the Mind It appears therefore that the gradual Vicissitudes of Heat and Cold are so far from shortning the thread of man's Life or impairing his intellectual Faculties that very probably they both prolong the one in some measure and exalt and advance the other So that still we do profess to adore the Divine Wisdom and Goodness for this variety of Seasons for Seed-time and harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter VIII Come we now to consider the Atmosphere and the exterior Frame and Face of the Globe if we may find any tracks and footsteps of Wisdom in the Constitution of Them I need not now inform you that the Air is a thin fluid Body endued with Elasticity or Springiness and capable of Condensation and Rarefaction and should it be much more expanded or condensed than it naturally is no Animals could live and breath it is probable also that the Vapours could not be duly raised and supported in it which at once would deprive the Earth of all its ornament and glory of all its living Inhabitants and Vegetables too But 't is certainly known and demonstrated that the Condensation and Expansion of any portion of the Air is always proportional to the weight and pressure incumbent upon it so that if the Atmosphere had been either much greater or less than it is as it might easily have been it would have had in its lowest region on the Surface of the Earth a much greater density or tenuity of texture and consequently have been unserviceable for Vegetation and Life It must needs therefore be an Intelligent Being that could so justly adapt it to those excellent purposes 'T is concluded by Astronomers that the Atmosphere of the Moon hath no Clouds nor Rains but a perpetual and uniform serenity because nothing discoverable in the Lunar Surface is ever covered and absconded from us by the interposition of any clouds or mists but such as rise from our own Globe Now if the Atmosphere of Our Earth had been of such a Constitution there could nothing that now grows or breaths in it have been formed or preserved Humane Nature must have been quite obliterated out of the Works of Creation If our Air had not been a springy elastical Body no Animal could have exercised the very function of Respiration and yet the ends and uses of Respiration are not served by that Springiness but by some other unknown and singular Quality For the Air that in exhausted Receivers of Air-pumps is exhaled from Minerals and Flesh and Fruits and Liquors is as true and genuine as to Elasticity and Density or Rarefaction as that we respire in and yet this factitious Air is so far from being fit to be breathed in that it kills Animals in a moment even sooner than the very absence of all Air than a Vacuum it self All which do inferr the most admirable Providence of the Author of Nature who foreknew the necessity of Rains and Dews to the present structure of Plants and the uses of Respiration to Animals and therefore created those correspondent properties in the Atmosphere of the Earth IX In the next place let us consider the ample provision of Waters those inexhausted Treasures of the Ocean and though some have grudged the great share that it takes of the Surface of the Earth yet we shall propose this too as a conspicuous mark and character of the Wisdom of God For that we may not now say that the vast Atlantick Ocean is really greater Riches and of more worth to the World than if it was changed into a fifth Continent and that the Dry Land is as yet much too big for its Inhabitants and that before they shall want Room by increasing and multiplying there may be new Heavens and a new Earth We dare venture to affirm that these copious Stores of Waters are no more than necessary for the present constitution of our Globe For is not the whole Substance of all Vegetables mere modified Water and consequently of all Animals too all which either feed upon Vegetables or prey upon one another Is not an immense quantity of it continually exhaled by the Sun to fill the Atmosphere with Vapors and Clouds and feed the Plants of the Earth with the balm of Dews and the fatness of Showrs It seems incredible at first hearing that all the Blood in our Bodies should circulate in a trice in a very few minutes but I believe it would be more surprizing if we knew the short and swift periods of the great Circulation of Water that vital Blood of the Earth which composeth and nourisheth all things If we could but compute that prodigious Mass of it that is daily thrown into the channel of the Sea from all the Rivers of the World we should then know and admire how much is perpetually evaporated and cast again upon the Continents to supply those innumerable Streams And indeed hence we may discover not only the Use and Necessity but the Cause too of the vastness of the Ocean I never yet heard of any Nation that complained they had too broad or too deep or too many Rivers or wished they were either smaller or fewer they understand better than so how to value and esteem those inestimable gifts of Nature Now supposing that the multitude and largeness of Rivers ought to continue as great as now we can easily prove that the extent of the Ocean could be no less than it is For it 's evident and necessary if we follow the most fair and probable Hypothesis that the Origin of Fountains is from Vapors and Rain that the Receptacle of Waters into which the mouths of all those Rivers must empty themselves ought to have so spacious a Surface that as much Water may be continually brushed off by the Winds and exhaled by the Sun as besides what falls again in Showers upon its own Surface is brought into it by all the Rivers Now the Surface of the Ocean is just so wide and no wider for if more was evaporated than returns into it again the Sea would become less if less was evaporated it would grow bigger So that because since the memory of all ages it hath continu'd at a stand without considerable variation and if it hath gain'd ground upon one Country hath lost as much in another it must consequently be exactly proportioned to the present constitution of Rivers How rash therefore and vain are those busie Projectors in Speculation

be composed by the Casual Combinations of Letters Now to pursue this Comparison as it is utterly impossible to be believed that such a Poem may have been eternal transcribed from Copy to Copy without any first Author and Original so it is equally incredible and impossible that the Fabrick of Humane Bodies which hath such excellent and Divine Artifice and if I may so say such good Sense and true Syntax and harmonious Measures in its Constitution should be propagated and transcribed from Father to Son without a first Parent and Creator of it An eternal usefulness of Things an eternal Good Sense cannot possibly be conceived without an eternal Wisdom and Understanding But that can be no other than that eternal and omnipotent God that by Wisdom hath founded the Earth and by Understanding hath established the Heavens To whom be all Honour and Glory and Praise and Adoration from henceforth and for evermore AMEN FINIS THE CONTENTS SERMON I. THE Folly of Atheism and what is now called Deism even with Respect to the Present Life Psalm XIV v. 1. The Fool hath said in his Heart There is no God they are corrupt they have done abominable works there is none that doth good Pag. 1 SERMON II. Matter and Motion cannot think Or a Confutation of Atheism from the Faculties of he Soul Acts XVII 27. That they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him and find him though he be not far from every one of us for in him we Live and Move and have our Being p. 36 SERMONS III IV V. A Confutation of Atheism from the Structure and Origin of Humane Bodies Acts XVII 27. That they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him and find him though he be not far from every one of us for in him we Live and Move and have our Being p. 68 99 132 SERMONS VI VII VIII A Confutation of Atheism from the Origin and Frame of the World Acts XIV 15 c. That ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God who made Heaven and Earth and the Sea and all things that are therein Who in times past suffer'd all Nations to walk in their own ways Nevertheless he left not himself without witness in that he did good and gave us Rain from Heaven and fruitfull Seasons filling our hearts with Food and Gladness p. 165 199 238 ADVERTISEMENT THere are now in the Press Five Dissertations about Phalaris's Epistles Aesop's Fables c. With an Answer to the Objections of the Honourable Charles Boyle Esquire Dan. 5. 5. Posidon apud Ciceron Plutarch c. Mr. De Cartes Psal. 34. 9. Joh. 3. 16. 2 Tim 1. 10. Matt. 11. 30. 1 Joh. 5. 3. Heb. 5. 9. 1 Pet. 1. 4. 1 Cor. 2. 9. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Max. Tyr. Diss. 1. 2 Tim. 4. 8. Jam. 1. 12. 2 Cor. 4. 17. v 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Psalm 〈◊〉 13. 46. Phil. 3. 19. 2 Cor. 12. 2. Num. 13. 32. Mar. 9. 24. Eph. 1. 19. Prov. 26. 4. Tit. 2. 12. Mark 8. 34. Prov. 3. 17. Rom. 2. 4. 1 Tim. 4. 10. 1 Joh. 5. 14. 1 Tim. 1. 15. Rom. 5. 6 10. Phil. 2. 12. Matt. 10. 28. Heb. 10. 31. Heb. 10 27. Cic. Plutarch c. * Vide Pocockii Notas ad Portam Mosis p. 158 c. Plutarch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. p. 1104 1105. Ed. Ruald Mar. 14. 2 Phil. 4. 13. Lib. 3. * Mecaenas apud Senec Ep. 101. Debilem facito Manu debilem pede coxa c Rom. 12. 1. Julianus apud Cyrillum p. 134. Matt. 5. 44. ver 28. Plato de Legib. lib. 10. p. 886. Ed. Steph. Luke 19. 22. * Hobbes de Cive Leviathan † 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Laert. De sanctitate de pietate adversus Deos. Cic. De Laert. p. 34 47 50. Voyage du Sieur de Champlain p. 28. 93. Plutarch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lucret c. Plutarch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cicero Athenaeus Ae●ian c. Josephus de Bello Iudaico l. 2. ● 12. * Si sibi ipse consentiat non interdum naturae bonitate vincatur Cic. de Offic. 1. 2. Acts 17. 18. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 † Arriani Epictet l. 1. C. 12. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Seneca Ep. 53. Est aliquid qu● sapiens antecedat Deum ille naturae beneficio non suo sapiens est v. 19. v. 20. Lucianus in Philopat Philostrat de vita Apol. l. 6. c. 2. Pausan in Eliacis V. 25. * Lucret. 2. Ipsa suis pollens opibus nihil i●●●ga no●●●● Tertul. Apolog. cap. 46. Quis enim Philosophum sacrificare compellit Quinimmo deos vestros palam destruunt superstitiones vestras commentariis quoque accusant V. 26. * Isocrates in Paneg. Demosth. in Epitaph Cic Or. pro Flacco Euripides c. Diog. Laert in Praef. Thucyd. lib. 6. Herodot c. v. 27 28. Plutarch de Aud. Poet contra Colot Laert. in vita Epicuri v. 29. v. 30 31. Act. 14. 16. v. 33. v. 28. Arati Phoen. v. 5. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 * Hom. Il. w. 551. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Aesch. Eumen. 655. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soph. Electra 136. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Acts 25. 19. Luke 24. 11. John 6. 53. v. 60. v. 66. Seneca Ep. 113. Plutarch de Contrad Stoic * Vide Zenobium Suidam in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Scholiastem Eurip Hecubae V. 838. Epicurus apud Laert. Lucret. l. 5. Cicero de Fin. l. 1. Acad l. 2. Lucret l. 2. Cic de Fato l. 1. de Nat. Deorum Plutarch c. Psal. 139. 16. Plautus Virgil. Livius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eph. 4. 14. Rom. 9. 20. Lucret. l 3. Vide Observations upon the Bills of Mortality So Diodorus Siculus lib. 1. c 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Vitruvius lib. 9. c. 4. Lucret lib. 5. Ut Babylonica Chaldaeam doctrina c. Apuleius de Deo Socratis Seu illa Luua proprio perpeti fulgore ut Chaldaei arbitrantur parte luminis compos parte altera cas●a fulgeris Maimonides More Nevochim De Zabiis Chaldais Plato in Cratylo Diodorus lib. 1 c. 2. Eusebius Demonst. Evangel lib. 1. c. 6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Concil Laod. Can. 36 Conc. 6. in Trullo Can 61. Cod Just. lib. 9. tit 18. Cod. Theodos. l. 9. tit 16. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lib. 60. tit 39. Job 26. 7. Plutarch de Plac. Phi. lib. 5. c. 19. Sympos l. 8. c 8. Censorinus de die Natali cap. 4. Plutarch de Plac. Phil. 5. 19. Censorin ibidem Censorinus ibid. Lucret. lib. 5. Diodorus Siculus lib. 1. c. 2. 2 K. 5. 6. Archimedes de Insiden●ibus humido lib. 1. Stevin des Elements Hydrostatiques Cartesius de Formatione Faetûs Swammerdam Histor. Insect p. 3. See the Former Sermon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nicander Redi De generatione insectorum Malpighius de Gallis Swammerdam de gen Insect Lewenhoeck Epistol Act 12 23. Continuat Epistol