work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
3568,As it Were,Past Masters,2003-10-07 00:00:00 UTC,"And it must not be objected at this point that while it is indeed necessary for me to suppose God exists, once I have made the supposition that he has all perfections (since existence is one of the perfections), nevertheless the original supposition was not necessary. Similarly, the objection would run, it is not necessary for me to think that all quadrilaterals can be inscribed in a circle; but given this supposition, it will be necessary for me to admit that a rhombus can be inscribed in a circle - which is patently false. Now admittedly, it is not necessary that I ever light upon any thought of God; but whenever I do choose to think of the first and supreme being, and bring forth the idea of God from the treasure house of my mind as it were, it is necessary that I attribute all perfections to him, even if I do not at that time enumerate them or attend to them individually. And this necessity plainly guarantees that, when I later realize that existence is a perfection, I am correct in inferring that the first and supreme being exists. In the same way, it is not necessary for me ever to imagine a triangle; but whenever I do wish to consider a rectilinear figure having just three angles, it is necessary that I attribute to it the properties which license the inference that its three angles equal no more than two right angles, even if I do not notice this at the time. By contrast, when I examine what figures can be inscribed in a circle, it is in no way necessary for me to think that this class includes all quadrilaterals. Indeed, I cannot even imagine this, so long as I an willing to admit only what I clearly and distinctly understand. So there is a great difference between this kind of false supposition and the true ideas which are innate in me, of which the first and most important is the idea of God. There are many ways in which I understand that this idea is not something fictitious which is dependent on my thought, but is an image of a true and immutable nature. First of all, there is the fact that, apart from God, there is nothing else of which I am capable of thinking such that existence belongs †1 to its essence. Second, I cannot understand how there could be two or more Gods of this kind; and after supposing that one God exists, I plainly see that it is necessary that he has existed from eternity and will abide for eternity. And finally, I perceive many other attributes of God, none of which I can remove or alter.
(Fifth Meditation, p. 46-7)",2011-06-14,9239,"•Notice the ""as it were""","""Now admittedly, it is not necessary that I ever light upon any thought of God; but whenever I do choose to think of the first and supreme being, and bring forth the idea of God from the treasure house of my mind as it were, it is necessary that I attribute all perfections to him, even if I do not at that time enumerate them or attend to them individually.""",Coinage,2013-06-11 19:42:31 UTC,Fifth Meditation
3617,"",Reading,2010-01-11 22:35:03 UTC,"GOD governs the World by several attributes and emanations from himself. The Nature of things is supported by his Power, the events of things are ordered by his Providence, and the actions of reasonable Creatures are governed by Laws, and these Laws are put into a Man's soul or mind as into a
Treasury or Repository: some in his very nature, some by
after-actions, by education and positive sanction, by learning
and custome; so that it was well said of St. Bernard, Conscientia candor est lucis aeterne, & speculum sine macula Dei Majestatis, & imago bonitatis illius. Conscience is the brightness and splendor of the eternal light, a spotless mirror of the Divine Majesty, and the Image of the goodness of God. It is higher which Tatianus said of conscience, [GREEK], Conscience is God unto uswhich saying he had from Menander,
[Greek]
and it had in it this truth, that God, who is every where in several manners, hath the appellative of his own attributes and effects in the several manners of his presence.
Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris
(I.i.1, p. 1)",,17639,"","""The Nature of things is supported by his Power, the events of things are ordered by his Providence, and the actions of reasonable Creatures are governed by Laws, and these Laws are put into a Man's soul or mind as into a Treasury or Repository: some in his very nature, some by after-actions, by education and positive sanction, by learning and custome.""","",2011-06-14 04:13:37 UTC,"Book I, Chapter I, Rule I."
3617,"",Reading,2010-01-12 18:31:17 UTC,"10. Now there are two ways by which God reigns in the mind of a man, 1. Faith, and, 2. Conscience. Faith contains all the treasures of Divine knowledge and speculation. Conscience is the treasury of Divine commandments and rules in practical things. Faith tells us why; Conscience tells us what we are to do. Faith is the measure of our perswasions; Conscience is the measure of our Actions. And as faith is a gift of God, so is Conscience; that is, as the understanding of a man is taught by the Spirit of God in Scripture, what to believe, how to distinguish truth from errors; so is the Conscience instructed to distinguish good and evil, how to please God, how to do justice and charity to our neighbour, and how to treat our selves; so that when the revelations of Christ and the Commandments of God are fully recorded in our minds, then we are perfectly instructed to every good work.
(I.i, p. 4)",2011-06-14,17662,"","""Conscience is the treasury of Divine commandments and rules in practical things.""","",2011-06-14 04:11:10 UTC,"Book I, Chapter I"
6918,Negated Metaphor,Reading,2011-06-04 19:42:57 UTC,"Yet, first, this we may lay down as an undoubted maxim, that so far, or in what sense his body itself is made spiritual (as it is called, 1 Cor. xv. 44), so far, and in that sense, all such affections as thus working in his body are made spiritual, and that in an opposition to that fleshly and frail way of their working here. But then, as his body is made spiritual, not spirit (spiritual in respect of power, and likeness to a spirit, not in respect of substance or nature), so these affections of pity and compassion do work not only in his spirit or soul, but in his body too, as their seat and instrument, though in a more spiritual way of working, and more like to that of spirits, than those in a fleshly frail body are. They are not wholly spiritual in this sense, that the soul is the sole subject of them, and that it draws up all such workings into itself, so that that should be the difference between his affections now and in the days of his flesh. Men are not to conceive as if his body were turned into such a substance as the sun is of, for the soul, as through a case of glass, to shine gloriously in only; but further it is united to the soul, to be acted by it, though immediately, for the soul to produce operations in it. And it is called spiritual, not that it remains not a body, but because it remains not such a body, but is so framed to the soul that both itself and all the operations of all the powers in it are immediately and entirely at the arbitrary imperium and dominion of the soul; and that as the soul is pleased to use it, and to sway it and move it, even as immediately and as nimbly, and without any clog or impediment, as an angel moves itself, or as the soul acteth itself. So that this may perhaps be one difference, that these affections, so far as in the body of Christ, do not affect his soul, as here they did, though as then under the command of grace and reason, to keep their motions from being inordinate or sinful; but further, the soul being now too strong for them, doth at its own arbitrement raise them, and as entirely and immediately stir them as it doth itself.
(Part III, pp. 144-5)",,18599,"","""Men are not to conceive as if his body were turned into such a substance as the sun is of, for the soul, as through a case of glass, to shine gloriously in only; but further it is united to the soul, to be acted by it, though immediately, for the soul to produce operations in it.""","",2011-06-04 19:43:10 UTC,""
7855,"","Reading Perry Miller's The New England Mind (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1954), 58.",2014-03-14 17:26:47 UTC,"Secondly, when you have made the heart thus affected with sinne, then take heed that the heart doth not flie off and shake off the yoke. Imagine meditation brings all those sins, and miseries, and vilenesse, all are brought home to the heart, and the soule is made sensible by this meanes: Hold the heart there then, labour to keepe the heart in the same temper, that it is brought into, by the consideration of sinne, for this is our nature, when the strooke is troublesome that lieth upon us, and the sinnes are hainous that lie upon us, and are committed by us, these sinnes, these sorrowes, these judgements, when the heart feeles this, it is weary, and would secretly have the wound healed quickly, and the sorrow removed, and the trouble calmed: Take heede of this, and labour to maintaine that heat of heart, which you finde in your selves by vertue of meditation, this is the pitch of the point: as there must bee subjection unto meditation, the heart must be so affected with sinne, as it conceived it to be, so there must be attention; that is, the soule must hold it selfe to that frame and disposition so wrought as it should be. Looke as it is with a Gold smith that melteth the metall that he is to make a vessell of, if after the melting thereof, there follow a cooling, it had beene as good it had never beene melted, it is as hard, haply harder, as unfit, haply unfitter, then it was before to make vessell of; but after he hath melted it, he must keep it in that frame till he come to the moulding and fashoning of it: So meditation is like fire, the heart is like a vessell, the heart is made for God, and it may be made a vessell of grace here, and of glory hereafter: Now meditation, it is that melts the soule, the drosse must be taken away from the soule, and sinne must bee loosened from the heart: Now meditation doth this, it melts the soule, and affects the soule with the weight of sinne: now when you have your heart in some measure melted, keepe it there, doe not let it grow loose againe, and carelesse againe; for then you had as good never have beene melted: And that is the reason why many a poore sinner that hath sometime beene in a good way, and the Lord hath come kindly and wrought powerfully on the heart, and yet at last it hath grown cold & dumpish, & as hard as ever he was againe, and the worke is to beginne again. And take notice of it; looke as it is with the cure of the body, if a man have an old wound, and a deepe one; two things are observable; it is not enough to launce the wound, and draw out the corruptions, but it must be tented also, for if the wound be deepe, it must not be healed presently, but it must be kept open with a tent, that it may be healed soundly, and thoroughly: so it is here; meditation when it is set on, doth launce the soule, it launceth the heart of a man, and it will goe downe to the bottome of the belly: When a man seeth his sinne, and weigheth his sinne it will goe downe to the bottom sometime, and when your heart is thus affected, do not heale it too soone, but hold the soule in that blessed frame & disposition: For as meditation doth launce the soule, so attention doth tent the soule; keepe the soule therfore so troublesome and sorrowfull that so you may be healed soundly, thorowly, and comfortably.
(pp. 112-4)",,23703,"","""Looke as it is with a Gold smith that melteth the metall that he is to make a vessell of, if after the melting thereof, there follow a cooling, it had beene as good it had never beene melted, it is as hard, haply harder, as unfit, haply unfitter, then it was before to make vessell of; but after he hath melted it, he must keep it in that frame till he come to the moulding and fashoning of it: So meditation is like fire, the heart is like a vessell, the heart is made for God, and it may be made a vessell of grace here, and of glory hereafter: Now meditation, it is that melts the soule, the drosse must be taken away from the soule, and sinne must bee loosened from the heart: Now meditation doth this, it melts the soule, and affects the soule with the weight of sinne: now when you have your heart in some measure melted, keepe it there, doe not let it grow loose againe, and carelesse againe; for then you had as good never have beene melted: And that is the reason why many a poore sinner that hath sometime beene in a good way, and the Lord hath come kindly and wrought powerfully on the heart, and yet at last it hath grown cold & dumpish, & as hard as ever he was againe, and the worke is to beginne againe.""",Metal,2014-03-14 17:27:28 UTC,""