92. END OF THE CREATION.

How then can it be said that God has made all things for himself, if it is certain that the highest end of the creation was the communication of happiness? I answer, that which is done for the gratifying of a natural inclination of God, may very properly be said to be done for God. God takes complacence in communicating felicity, and he made all things for this complacence. His complacence in this, in making happy, was the end of the creation Revelation 4:11, “For thy pleasure they are and were created.”

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 13, The “Miscellanies:” Entry Nos. a–z, aa–zz, 1–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 256.

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miscellany mondays, the miscellanies