The Two Commissions: The Apostolical and the Evangelical (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

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Excerpt from The Two Commissions: The Apostolical and the Evangelical

God created man a social being; and that, both in regard to things natural and temporal; and in regard to things spiritual and eternal. Society, there fore, is an ordinance of God, by a direct creating act: and government, which is the agency established in society to manage its general interests, is a divine Institution. Many things, indeed, as to the minor details of business, both in civil and in religious society, so to speak, are left to human prudence and discretion: but the principles Of law and order are all prescribed by divine authority. It is God's preroga tive; and not man's, to create moral Obligation. The laws of our intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature, are no more the product Of human genius, than are the laws of mere physical nature. These last exist in the material world by the direct exercise of ore ating power. To search them out and avail our selves of them, is our duty and our high privilege.

Newton's laws, Kepler's laws, are God's laws; exist ing in his Works, before these distinguished philoso phers were born: the honor Of discovery, not of invention, is all that we can concede to human genius. It only acquires the knowledge of methods in the divine administration - the mode in which the first cause acts. But even the more important of these were not bodied forth at first only in the crea tion, and left for man to seek out by tedious and slow processes of investigation. Man's ingenuity did not discover the laws of vegetation, and then apply them for the production of food and garden fruits: God planted the garden, and taught him the use of it: thus putting him in possession of the laws of nature, and the modes of their application necessary for his Well being; and thus, by a practical govern ment, forefending him against the destruction which must have ensued, had he been left without a know ledge Of these laws, until he discovered them by his own researches and experiments.

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