Merely Relative

The being of man is merely relative, dependent, borrowed: he has neither being nor goodness originally from himself; but all he has is from his God, as the first cause and spring of all perfection, natural or moral: dependence is woven into his very nature: so that if God were totally to withdraw from him, he would dwindle into a mere nothing.

 

Thomas Boston, The Whole Works of Thomas Boston: Human Nature in Its Fourfold State and a View of the Covenant of Grace, ed. Samuel M'Millan, vol. 8 (Aberdeen: George and Robert King, 1850), 79.