Readings from Samuel Shaw’s “Immanuel” #1

by R.A. Miller
Published November 25, 2024.

“For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.”
- Acts 17:28

There is more of the glory, beauty, and brightness of God in a soul, than there is in the sun itself. The Apostle allows it as a proper speech spoken in common of all men, “for we are also his offspring.” God hath transferred more lively prints of himself, and his divine essence, upon a rational soul, than he hath upon the whole creation: so that the soul of man, even as to its constitution, doth declare and discover more of the nature of God, than all the other things that he hath made, whereof the Apostle speaks.

The nature and essence of God is nigh thee, even in thine own soul, excellently displayed in the constitution and frame, powers and faculties thereof: God hath not made any creatures so capable of receiving and reflecting his image and glory, as angels and men: which hath made me often to say, “That the vilest soul of man is much more beautiful and honourable than the most excellent body, than the very body of the sun at noon-day.” And, by the way, this may render sin odious and loathsome; because it hath defiled the fairest piece of God's workmanship in the world, and hath blurred the clearest copy which he had drawn of himself in the whole creation.

But though all rational souls be the children of God, yet all of them do not imitate their father though their constitution do express much of the essence of God, yet their disposition doth express the image of the devil. But pious souls, who are followers of God, are indeed his dear children. Holy souls, who are endowed with a divine and God-like disposition, and do work the works of God, these are most truly and properly his offspring. And in this respect God's children are his “workmanship created unto good works.”