greenbaggins
Puritan Board Doctor
All things exist not for themselves, but for something and someone else. Charnock explains:
All things are so ordered that they are not propter se (for the sake of itself, LK), but proper aliud (for the sake of another, LK). What advantage accrues to the sun by its unwearied rolling about the world? (From this question and also from page 156, it becomes evident that Charnock believed the sun moved around the earth. His point could just as easily be made from millions of other examples, however, LK) Doth it increase the perfection of its nature by all its circuits? No, but it serves the inferior world, it impregnates things by its heat. Not the most abject thing, but hath its end and use. There is a straight connection: the earth could not bring forth fruit without the heavens, the heavens could not water the earth without vapours from it. All this subserviency of creatures centres in man. Other creatures are served by those things as well as ourselves, and they are provided for their nourishment and refreshment as well as ours; yet both they and all creatures meet in man, as lines in their centres (Works of Charnock, Vol. 1, p. 154).
We can add a point that Charnock does not make in this context, but would whole-heartedly agree with, and that is that all things, including man, exist not for themselves, but for the glory of God, and that, ironically, we cannot achieve true purpose in life and fulfillment unless we start from this point: that we do not exist for ourselves, but for Another.
