The Necessary Existence of God

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A. & C. Black, 1843 - God - 391 pages
 

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Page 172 - If we consider him in his omnipresence, his being passes through, actuates, and supports, the whole frame of nature. His creation, and every part of it, is full of him. There is nothing he has made that is either so distant, so little, or so inconsiderable, which he does not essentially inhabit.
Page 173 - Boundless the deep, because I Am who fill Infinitude, nor vacuous the space. Though I uncircumscribed myself retire, And put not forth my goodness, which is free To act, or not, necessity and chance Approach not me, and what I will is fate.
Page 172 - His substance is within the substance of every being, whether material or immaterial, and as intimately present to it as that being is to itself.
Page 10 - Thus from the consideration of ourselves, and what we infallibly find in our own constitutions, our reason leads us to the knowledge of this certain and evident truth, that there is an eternal, most powerful, and most knowing being ; which whether any one will please to call God, it matters not.
Page 24 - I say that we are carefully to distinguish between the idea of the infinity of space, and the idea of a space infinite: the first is nothing but a supposed endless progression of the mind, over what repeated ideas of space it pleases ; but to have actually in the mind the idea of a space infinite...
Page 13 - For it is as impossible to conceive, -that ever bare incogitative matter should produce a thinking intelligent being, as that nothing should of itself produce matter. Let us suppose any parcel of matter eternal, great or small, we shall find it, in itself, able to produce nothing. For example, let us suppose the matter of the next pebble we meet with eternal, closely united, and the parts firmly at rest together, if there...
Page 17 - Since, therefore, whatsoever is the first eternal being must necessarily be cogitative; and] whatsoever is first of all things must necessarily contain in it, and actually have, at least, all the perfections that can ever after exist; nor can it ever give to another any perfection that it hath not, either actually in itself or at least in a higher degree; [it necessarily follows that the first eternal being cannot be matter.] 1 1 . Therefore there has been an eternal wisdom.
Page 10 - It being as impossible, that things wholly void of knowledge, and operating blindly, and without any perception, should produce a knowing being, as it is impossible, that a triangle should make itself three angles bigger than two right ones.
Page 169 - They who first ran into the notion of accidents, as a sort of real beings that needed something to inhere in, were forced to find out the word substance to support them.
Page 33 - Happy, created intellectual and moral, or, to employ a most comprehensive term, sentient, substances or beings. a §3. Therefore, the only motive, or, at least, one of the motives, to create, must have been, a desire to produce creaturely happiness. The...

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