The Natural Truth of Christianity (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SELECTIONS. chapter{Section 4Natural Truth of Christianity. The True Method Of Attaining Divine Knowledge. I.?Of Divinity. II7 ERE I to define divinity, I should rather call it a divine life, than a divine science; it being something rather to be understood by a spiritual sensation, than by any verbal description, as all things of sense and life are best known by sentient and vital faculties; as the Greek Philosopher hath well observed?every thing is best known by that which bears a just resemblance and analogy with it: and therefore the Scripture is wont to set forth a good life as the prolepsis and fundamental principle of divine science; "Wisdom hath builded her house, and hewn out her seven pillars;" but " the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom "?the foundation of the whole fabric. 2.?Of Religion and Divinity. ''THEY are not always the best skilled in divinity, that are the most studied in those pandects, into which it is sometimes digested, or that have erected the greatest monopolies of art and science. He that ismo.stj)racticaljn chapter{Section 5divine things, hath the purest and sincerest knowledge of them, and not he that is most dogmatical. Divinity in- deedis a trueefflux from the eternal light, which, like thesunbeams, does not only j:nlighten. but heat and enliven.; and therefore our jiaviour hattuin His beatitudes, conneteutyjgfjieart-withjthe beatifical vision. And as the eye cannot behold the sun, unless it be sunlike, and hath the form and resemblance of the sun drawn in it; so neither can the soul of man behold God, unless it be Godlike, hath God formed in it, and be made partaker of the divine nature. And the apostle St. Paul, when he would lay open the right way of attaining to divine truth, saith, that " knowledge puffeth up," bu...