16 December 2010

A Vigorous and Masculine Delight

John Smith, 17th century Cambridge theologian, commenting on Proverbs 3:17:
Religion [= authentic Christianity] is no sullen stoicism or oppressing melancholy, it is no inthralling tyranny exercised over those noble and vivacious affections of love and delight, as those men that were never acquainted with the life of it may imagine; but is full of a vigorous and masculine delight and joy, and such as advanceth and ennobleth the soul, and does not weaken or dispirit the life and power of it, as sensual and earthly joy so, when the soul, unacquainted with religion, is enforced to give entertainment to these gross and earthly things, for the want of enjoyment of some better good.
--Select Discourses (London, 1821; originally published 1660), 448

HT: Wilson Kimnach

No comments: