Shepherd the Flock

I am currently reading the classic puritan work, The Marrow of Theology, and will be posting little excerpts from it here over the next few weeks. Part 1 can be found here. Feel free to ask for further clarification if needed, for the argumentation in this treatise is all based upon a long, interlinked line of reasoning.

“An idea is man, who attains knowledge by analysis, is brought in from things themselves. Things exist first in themselves and then come into the senses of men and finally to the understanding, where they can form an idea to direct a subsequent operation. But God knows all things by genesis and does not require knowledge through analysis of things; therefore all things are first in His mind before they are in themselves.” -i,vii,15

“In us the things themselves are the pattern and our knowledge is the image of them. But in God the divine knowledge is the pattern and the things themselves are the image or express likeness of it.” -i,vii,16

“An idea in man is first impressed upon him and afterwards expressed in things, but in God it is only expressed, not impressed, because it does not come from anywhere else.” -i,vii,17

“From this one foundation all errors of merit and forseen faith can be sufficiently refuted. For if a particular decree of God depended upon any foresight then an idea of God would have come to Him from somewhere else, which hardly agrees with His nature.” -i,vii,18

“A Middle Knowledge by which God is imagined by some to know by hypothesis before the decree of His will that certain things will be, if such and such free causes meet such and such conditions –knowledge of this kind cannot stand with the absolute perfection of God. For it both supposes that events will happen independently of the will of God and also makes some knowledge of God depend on the object.” -i,vii,28

“Therefore the opinion which holds that God will something antecedent to the acts of a creature and consequent to the acts…is not to be allowed. This makes the will of God mutable and dependent upon the act of the creature, so that as often as the act of the creature is changed God’s will itself is changed.” -i,vii,43

“According to the same opinion, that form of speech prescribed in the word of God whereby we commit ourselves and all of ours to God –I will do this or that, if God wills– is not always to be used: it should be turned around to state that God will do this or that, if man wills.” -i,vii,44

{Here is a brief synopsis of this book for those interested}