'As an heir of John Locke, Edwards put a twist on the way that people in the eighteenth century ordinarily spoke of knowing God in comparison to how they knew the world around them. Most were accustomed to distinguishing between their knowledge of the physical world (by sensation) and their knowledge of an ethereal, non-sensory God (by faith and reason). Edwards argued, however, that God in the mystery of God's own being is far more "sensuous" - more full of infinite delights, more prone to endless expansion of relationships, more astonishingly beautiful - than anything that you can imagine in this stunningly sensuous world around us. In effect, he said, if you think this world is sensuous and beautiful you haven't seen anything yet!All this is but a dim, quasi-sensual reflection of God's still greater glory, overflowing spontaneously from the mystery of God's inner-Trinitarian life. That's when all desire and all connectedness find their birth.'
Belden C Lane, Ravished by Beauty, p.179.
