John Howe on God as a most pure being

[Reformed Covenanter]

That necessary Being is most unmixed or purest Being. Without allay. That is pure which is full of it self. Purity is not here meant in a corporeal sense (which few will think) nor in the moral; but as with Metaphysicians it signifies simplicity of essence. And in its present use is more especially intended to signify that simplicity which is opposed to the composition of act, and possibility. We say then that necessary Being imports purest actuality. Which is the ultimate and highest perfection of Being. For it signifies no remaining possibility, yet unreplete, or not filled up, and consequently the fullest exuberancy and entire confluence of all Being, as in its fountain and original source. We need not here look further to evince this than the native import of the very terms themselves; necessity and possibility; the latter whereof is not so fitly said to be excluded the former (as contingency is) but to be swallowed up of it; as fulness takes up all the space which were otherwise nothing but vacuity or emptiness. It is plain then that necessary Being, engrosses all possible Being, both that is, and (for the same reason) that ever was so. For nothing can be or ever was in possibility to come into Being, but what either must spring, or hath sprung, from the necessary self-subsisting Being. ...

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John Howe on God as a most pure being

That necessary Being is most unmixed or purest Being. Without allay. That is pure which is full of it self. Purity is not here meant in a corporeal sense (which few will think) nor in the moral; bu…

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