6 Minutes
What is the present state of things now in the world, with regard to the people of Christ, and the success of his purchase? God in his providence now seems to be acting over again the same part which he did a little before Christ came. When Christ came into the world, learning greatly prevailed, and yet wickedness never prevailed more than then. God was pleased to suffer human learning to come to such a height before he sent forth the gospel into the world, that the world might see the insufficiency of all their own wisdom for the obtaining the knowledge of God, without the gospel of Christ, and the teaching of his Spirit. And when the gospel came to prevail first without the help of man’s wisdom, then God was pleased to make use of learning as a handmaid. So now, learning is at a great height in the world, far beyond what it was in the age when Christ appeared; and now the world, by their learning and wisdom, do not know God and they seem to wander in darkness, are miserably deluded, stumble and fall in matters of religion, as in midnight darkness. Trusting to their learning, they grope in the daytime as in the night.
Learned men are exceedingly divided in their opinions concerning the matters of religion, running into all manner of corrupt opinions, pernicious and foolish errors. Though there are many whom a principle of the fear and love of God does move, yet there are not a few, whom after-discoveries have made manifest, who are acted to that thing by carnal wisdom and policy, for attaining their own base and corrupt ends, such as riches, places of preferment, and livelihood, and ease; and hence mainly hath issued that sin which follows a curse instead of a blessing. They refuse to submit their reason to divine revelation, to believe any thing that is above their comprehension; and so being wise in their own eyes, they become fools, and even vain in their imaginations; they turn the truth of God into a lie, and their foolish hearts are darkened. But yet when God has sufficiently shown men the insufficiency of human wisdom and learning for the purposes of religion, and when the appointed time comes for that glorious outpouring of the Spirit of God, when he will himself by his own immediate influence enlighten men’s minds, then may we hope that God will make use of the increase of learning as a means of the glorious advancement of the kingdom of his Son. Then shall human learning be subservient to the understanding of the Scriptures, and to a clear explanation and a glorious defense of the doctrines of faith. And there is no doubt, that God in his providence has of late given the world such a great increase of learning, to prepare for what he designs to accomplish for his people in the approaching days. None will have grounds to plead ignorance of God’s will and intentions. God's purpose, in this final cause, is not only aimed to improve and make holy, but to destroy and eternally judge.
God's purposes are the final causes of all that He creates. And all of God’s causes are crucial. God’s causes may be events, they may be substances, but they all have effect. When we consider the causes of God we must always keep in connection with the principles of His doctrine. God’s people use reason and thought as an explanation to a cause. No one answer may suffice to illuminate the considerations. The attention, the respect, the understanding is not to be notioned as suggestions but rather as counsel. God has a cause out of which a thing comes-to-be and which persists – the sanctuary, the cross. God has a cause that is a patterned essence – His love, His mercy. God has a cause as the primary starting point from which change or rest originates – the teaching of His word, the counsel of a friend. God has a cause in the sense of an end – life lived. The final cause is to explain the why of what is. Example: why do we breathe...to live? Remember, no one answer. Why do we eat...to live? Why is there a tree...to provide wood, to provide food? Why do we obey...to be saved or because we love? Can a cause be external as well as internal? The final cause lies in “intention”. The final cause is the purpose that God has in mind. We breathe to give glory to God. We eat in health to give glory to God. There is a tree created to show the glory of God. We obey, we love, to be patterns of God’s Son. There is no chance, no randomness to God’s ways. Why is this our cause for God? Because God is Divine and God does not need anything and nothing is necessary to Him. God creates but does not need creation and God is self- sufficient without it. This is the necessary truth and possibilities of why His love is so awesomely eternal...we are His choice as He grasps His own divine Being. God knows Himself. God knows His own nature of love and whose Being is grace. His willing us comes from the nature of that Being as love. God’s self-knowledge and what He causes is grounds for knowing everything.
True to form is His final cause to ultimately achieve. The final cause is actuality. God is the only entity embodying pure actuality and pure being, and God is thus the only pure formal cause. The cause is what we understand to indicate something that has an effect. The final cause is the goal or purpose toward which a thing is oriented. And all things are to be oriented to Christ. We are, and what we are to be, because of all the events that have preceded us. Our life, our living is in the final outcome stage. And so, the final cause is the first cause. And in this we are to affirm Jesus Christ. The self-existant Being to which every sequence of causes must ultimately go back. And the Lord having declared so much from heaven against the whole land, it concerns us and all others impartially to search into, and to discover the causes thereof, so far as He is pleased to convince and give light therein; and we do in charity, and not without ground, presume the matter of fact to plainly and clearly to declare the interest of the cause of God. And Jesus Christ is the proceeding from that cause where lies the remedy to every prevailing darkness.
Horrible looseness and profanity of conversation in all sorts, against the commandments, both of the first and second table, have so abounded and increased, that many ignorant and scandalous persons, and many willfully ignorant, and openly and continuedly profane, have been kept in the fellowship of barren and fruitless religion. The final cause is to be the dissolution of the whole of creation and the cosmic manifestations of all designed to be the deliverance into the unity of every perfection of God. Jesus is the center and the reason for all things that God loves. The final cause and the love of God are His “Beloved”. God through and in Christ, and the Spirit, in us. This is our consideration of the whole purpose of God. It is in the context of faith that we observe, believe in and uphold a final cause of everything that moves to a glorious conclusion rather than a future futility. It is the specific revelation of God in Jesus Christ that points to a transcendent purpose and direction. This faith is based on the revelation of the resurrection of the Jesus, as Son and Word of God, our substance of things hoped for, our evidence of things not yet seen. It is a faith that says all that is beautiful and good is held in the divine presence.
The final cause is derived from the essence of what things are. If something is something, there is a truth associated with it being and doing what it does. These are known by Him because He has willed them into existence. God as God knows the origin of that nature and thus understands and knows the truths of the cause of all things. Along with the necessary truths about things, there are related possibilities that stem from what those things are in their nature. God knows things because He has caused them and given them potential existence. All possibilities and truths about things come from God’s own self-knowledge and His essence as love. He knows the arrangements and changes that will follow. God knows the individuality of things and what belongs to that individuality more than simply as an assembly of components. God knows what He has caused. That is the wonder of His love. God has determined the final cause of all things and He has given us the free will in all His causes. God is involved in every event as intervening to touching on things to bring forth a purpose.
Something of our consciousness shall survive being changed and embodied in a new way and united with God for whom it was destined from the first. If we know these things we must live and take actions according to such hopes.
There is nothing held in reserve in the final cause. The way for our return to God and heaven has no barriers. The manifestation of God's love for His people will prevail to draw many to Himself. As finite, we are to presuppose the lnfinite as the cause from which the finite is derived, and from which it has been finited. The final cause will be the effect of the relationship between the two. The end is realized in man as the last term of the finite series, for in man there is the capacity to acknowledge the Infinite, see the end, effect its realization. The realization is the revelation of the likeness of the Son of man. This is the commencement, the final cause indeed, the glory of God and of Jesus Christ, and life everlasting.
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