Tuesday has been Theology Proper day here, and having finished Knowing God, I’ve been considering what to start next. Perusing my bookshelves, I was met with the accusing countenance of Stephen Charnock’s (1628–1680) The Existence and Attributes of God scowling at me from beneath a thin layer of dust. I bought it a couple of years ago on a ridiculous sale (because I had to have it), set all 1150 pages of it impressively on my shelf, and have hardly looked at it since. So now I am going to give it a shot.
Whenever I pick up one of these old-timers, it seems I am always impressed with how well their comments on their age apply to ours. Their really is “nothing new under the sun,” and reading old books is one good way of seeing that truism proven.
Expounding Psalm 14:1, Charnock demonstrates that the existence of God is obvious for all to see, so that only fools deny it, and they not entirely sincerely. It would seem, then, that apologetics defending the existence of God would be unnecessary. Yet Charnock gives several reasons for the necessity of speaking apologetically of the existence of God. The following paragraph seems to speak directly to our age.
But, 1. Doth not the growth of atheism among us render this [teaching the existence of God] necessary? may it not justly be suspected, that the swarms of atheists are more numerous in our times, than history records to have been in any age, when men will not only say it in their hearts, but publish it with their lips, and boast that they have shaken off the shackles which bind other men’s consciences? Doth not the bare-faced debauchery of men evidence such a settled sentiment, or least a careless belief of the truth, which lies at the root, and sprouts up in such venomous branches in the world? Can men’s hearts be free from that principle wherewith their practices are so openly depraved? It is true, the light of nature shines too vigorously for the power of man totally to put it out; yet loathsome actions impair and weaken the actual thoughts and considerations of a Deity, and are like mists that darken the light of the sun, though they cannot extinguish it: their consciences, as a candlestick, must hold it, though their unrighteousness obscure it, (Rom. i. 18.) “Who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” The engraved characters of the law of nature remain, though they daub them with their muddy lusts to make them illegible: so that since the inconsideration of a Deity is the cause of all the wickedness and extravagances of men; and as Austin saith, the proposition is always true, the fool hath said in his heart, &c. and more evidently true in this age than any, it will not be unnecessary to discourse of the demonstrations of this first principle. The apostles spent little time in urging this truth; it was taken for granted all over the world, and they were generally devout in the worship of those idols they thought to be gods: that age run from one God to many, and our age is running from one God to none at all.
—Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, 1:26
If the Apostles, who spoke to a very deistic culture (and under the inspiration of The Holy Spirit), found it necessary to defend God’s existence, how much more necessary it is in an age in which denial of God is becoming more fashionable every day.
As Charnock continues, we see that this is so because of “that secret atheism which is in the heart of every man by nature.” That secret atheism does not entirely and sincerely deny God, as much as it simply wishes that there were no God.
4. It is necessary to depress that secret atheism which is in the heart of every man by nature. Though every visible object which offers itself to our sense, presents a deity to our minds, and exhorts to subscribe to the truth of it; yet there is a root of atheism springing up sometimes in wavering thoughts and foolish imaginations, inordinate actions, and secret wishes. Certain it is, that every man that doth not love God, denies God; now can he that disaffects him, and hath a slavish fear of him, wish his existence, and say to his own heart with any cheerfulness, there is a God, and make it his chief care to persuade himself of it? he would persuade himself there is no God, and stifle the seeds of it in his reason and conscience, that he might have the greatest liberty to entertain the allurements of the flesh. It is necessary to excite men to daily and actual considerations of God and his nature, which would be a bar to much of that wickedness which overflows in the lives of men.
—Ibid., 27
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