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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A60950 A sermon preached before the covrt at Christchurch Chappel in Oxford by Robert South ... South, Robert, 1634-1716. 1665 (1665) Wing S4741; ESTC R38265 15,843 44

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framed by God to receive all and more then Nature can afford it and so to be its own motive to seek forsomething above Nature Now this is that part of man to which the Pleasures of Religion properly belong and that in a double respect 1. In reference to Speculation as it susteins the name of Understanding 2. In reference to Practice as it susteins the name of Conscience 1. And first for Speculation the pleasures of which have been sometimes so great so intense so ingrossing of all the Powers of the Soul that there has been no room left for any other Pleasure It has so called together all the Spirits to that one Work that there has bin no supply to carry on the Inferior operations of Nature Contemplation feels no Hunger nor is sensible of any Thirst but of that after knowledge How frequent and exalted a Pleasure did David find from his Meditation in the Divine Law all the day long it was the Theam of his Thoughts The affairs of State the government of his Kingdom might indeed employ but it was this only that refresh'd his mind How short of this are the delights of the Epicure how vastly disproportionate are the Pleasures of the Eating and of the Thinking man indeed as different as the silence of an Archimedes in the study of a Problem and the stillness of a Sow at her wash Nothing is comparable to the pleasure of an Active and a prevailing thought a thought prevailing over the difficulty and obscurity of the Object and refreshing the Soul with new discoveries and images of things and thereby extending the Bounds of Apprehension and as it were enlarging the Territories of Reason Now this pleasure of the Speculation of Divine things is advanced upon a double Account 1. The Greatness 2. The newness of the Object 1. And first for the greatness of it It is no less then the great God himself and that both in his Nature and his Works For the Eye of Reason like that of the Eagle directs it self chiefly to the Sun to a glory that neither admits of a Superior nor an Equal Religion carries the Soul to the study of every Divi●e Attribute It poses it with the amazing thoughts of Omnipotence of a Power able to fetch up such a Glorious Fabrick as this of the world out of the Abyss of Vanity and Nothing and able to through it back into the same Origiral Nothing again It drowns us in the speculation of the Divine Omniscience that can maintain a steady infallible comprehension of all Events in themselves Contingent and Accidental and certainly know that which does not certainly exist It confounds the greatest subtilties of Speculation with the Riddles of Gods Omnipresence that can spread a single Individual substance through all spaces and yet without any commensuration of parts to any or circumscription within any though totally in every one And then for his Eternity which non-plusses the Strongest and the Clearest Conception to comprehend how one single Act of Duration should measure all Periods and Portions of time without any of the distinguishing parts of Succession Likewise for his Justice which shall prey upon the sinner for ever satisfying it self by a perpetual Miracle rendring the Creature immortal in the midst of the flames alwayes consuming but never consumed With the like wonders we may entertain our Speculations from his Mercy his Beloved his Triumphant Attribute an Attribute if it were possible something more then Infinite for even his Justice is so and his Mercy transcends that Lastly we may contemplate upon his supernatural astonishing wo●ks particularly in the Resurrection and reparation of the same numerical Body by a reunion of all the scattered Parts to be at length disposed of into an estate of Eternal woe or Bliss as also the greatness strangeness of the Beatifick Vision how a created Eye should be so fortifyed as to bear all those Gloryes that stream from the fountain of uncreated Light the meanest expression of which Light is that it is unexpressible Now what great and high Objects are these for a Rational Contemplation to busy it self upon Heights that scorn the reach of our Prospect and Depths in which the tallest Reason will never touch the Bottom yet surely the pleasure arising from thence is Great and Noble for as much as they afford perpetual matter and imployment to the inquisitiveness of Humane Reason and so are large enough for it to take its full scope and range in Which when it has suck'd and dreined the utmost of any Object naturally layes it aside and neglects it as a dry and an Empty thing 2. As the things belonging to Religion entertain our Speculation with great Objects so they entertain it also with new And novelty we know is the great parent of pleasure upon which account it is that men are so much pleased with Variety and Variety is nothing else but a continued Novelty The Athenians who were the profest and most diligent Improvers of their Reason made it their whole b●siness to hear or to tell some new thing For the truth is Newness especially in great matters was a worthy entertainment for a searching mind it was as I may so say an High Tast fitt for the relish of an Athenian Reason And thereupon the meer unheard of strangeness of Jesus and the Resurrection made them desirous to hear it discoursed of to them again 17. Acts 23. But how would it have employed their searching Faculties had the Mystery of the Trinity and the Incarnation of the Sonn of God and the whole Oeconomy of mans Redemption been explained to them For how could it ever enter into the tho●ghts of Reason that a satisfaction could be paid to an Infinite Justice Or that two Natures so unconceivably different as the Humane and Divine could unite into one person The knowledge of these things could derive from nothing else but pure Revelation and consequently must be purely New to the highest discourses of meer Nature Now that the Newness of an Object so exceedingly pleases and strikes the mind appears from this one consideration that every thing pleases more in expectation then fruition and expectation supposes a thing as yet new the hoped for discovery of which is the Pl●asure that entertains the expecting and enquiring mind Whereas Actual discovery as it were rifles and deflours the Newness and Freshness of the object and so for the most part makes it Cheap Familiar and Contemptible It is cleer therefore that if there be any pleasure to the mind from speculation and if this pleasure of speculation be advanced by the greatness and newness of the things contemplated upon all this is to be found in the wayes of Religion 2. In the next place Religion is a pleasure to the mind as it respects Practice and so susteins ●he Name of Conscience And Conscience undoubtedly is the great Repository and Magazine of all those pleasures that can afford any solid refreshment to the Soul For