The Common Principles of the Christian Religion, Sermon 17
Heb. 11. 3. Through Faith we understand that the worlds were made, &c. with Gen. 1.
WE are come down from the Lords purposes & decrees to the execution of them, which is partly in the works of Creation, and partly on the works of Providence. The Lord having resolved upon it to manifest his own glory, did, in that due and predeterminate time, apply his own power to this businesse: Having in great wisdome conceived a frame of the world in his mind from all eternity, he at length brings it forth, and makes it visible. We shal not insist upon the particular story of it, as it is set down in generall, but only point at some things for our instruction.
First, ye see who is the maker of all things, of whom all things visible and invisible are, it is God. And by this he useth to distinguish himself from idols, and the vanities of the Nations, that he is that self-being, who gave all things a being, who made the heavens & the earth. This is even the most glorious manifestation of an invisible and eternall being: These things that are made shew him forth. If a man were travelling into a far Country, and wandred into a wildernesse where he could see no inhabitants, but only houses, villages, and cities built, he would straight way conceive, there hath been some work-man at this, this hath not been done casually, but by the Art of some reasonable creatures, how much more may we conceive when we look on the Fabrick of this world, how the heavens are streatched out for a Tent to cover them that dwel on the earth, and the earth settled and established as a firm foundation for men & living creatures to abide on, how all are done in wisdome & discretion, we cannot but straight way imagine that there must be some curious and wise contriver, and mighty Creator of these things. It is here said, that by Faith we understand that the worlds were made: Indeed faith only in the word of God gives true and distinct understanding of it, Innumerable have been the wandrings and mistakes of the wise of the world about this matter, wanting this lamp & light of the Word of God, which alone gives a true and perfect account of this thing, many strange dotages and fancies have they fallen into; yet certain it is that there is so much of the glory of God engraven without on the creature, and so much reason imprinted on the souls of men within, that (if it were not for that judiciall plague of the Lords darkning their understandings, who do not glorifie him in as far as they know him) no man could seriously & soberly consider on the visible world, but he would be constrained to conceive an invisible God. Would not every one think within himself, all these things, so excellent as they are, cannot be out of chance, neither could they make themselves, so that of necessity they must owe what they are to something beside themselves: and of this it is certain, that it cannot have its originall from any other thing, else there should be no end: therefore it must be some supream beeing, that is from no other, and of which are all things.
But next consider, when these things were made: in the beginning; and what beginning is that? certainly the beginning of the creation, & of time, to exclude Eternity, what ever may be said of that subtility that, God might have created the world from all Eternity for it appears even in created things, that there is no necessity of the precedent existence of the cause, since in the same instant that many things are into being, in the same do they bring forth their effects, as the Sun in the first instant of its creation did illuminate; yet certainly we believe from the word of the Lord, that the world is actually but of a few thousand years standing, six are not yet out run since the first creating word was spoken, & since the spirit of the Lord moved upon the waters: & this we know also, that if it had pleased his Majesty, he might have created the world many thousand years before that, So that it might have been at this day of ten hundred times ten thousand years standing, and he might have given it as many years as there are numbers of men & Angels, Beasts, yea & pickles of sand upon the sea-coast: But it was his good pleasure, that that very point of time in which it was created should be the beginning of time, and from that he gives us a History of the World, upon which the Church of God may rest, and so seek no other God but the God that made these heavens and earth.
This will not satisfie the ungodly curiosity and vanity of mens spirits, who will reproach the Maker for not applying sooner to his work, and sitting idle such an unmeasurable space of Eternity: Men wonder what he could be doing all that time, (if we may call it time which hath no beginning) and how he was imployed: I beseech you restrain such thoughts in you with the fear of his glorious & incomprehensible Majesty, who gives no account of his matters: It is enough that this is his good pleasure to begin then; & he conceals his reasons, to prove the sobriety of our faith, that all men may learn an absolute and simple stouping to his Majesties pleasure. Remember that which a godly man answered some wanton curious wit, who in scorn demanded the same of him, He was preparing hell for curious and proud fools, said he: Let us then keep our hearts as with a bridle, and represse their boundless wanderings within bounds, lest we by looking upward, before the beginning of the world, to see what God was doing, fall head-long into the eternall pit of destruction, & into the hands of the living God. God hath shewed himself marvelously these six thousand years in the upholding this world: if we did consider these continued & repeated testimonies of his glory, we would be overwhelmed with what we find, though we search no further; and suppose we would please our selves to imagine, that it had been created many years before, yet that doth not silence & stop the insolence of mens minds, for it alwaies might be enquired, what the Lord was doing before that time? For Eternity is as immensurable before those multiplied thousands of years as before naked six: Let our imagination sit down to substract from Eternity as many thousands as it can multiply by all the varieties and numbers in the world, yet there is nothing abated from Eternity, it is as infinit in extent before that, as before the present six thousand, and yet we may conceive that the Lord hath purposed in the beginning of the world to declare more manifestly to our understanding his Eternity, his self-sufficiency & liberty; His Eternity, that when we hear of how short standing the creature is, we may go upward to God himself, & his everlasting being before the foundation of it were laid, may shine forth more brightly to our admiration, when we can strecth our conceptions so immensurably as far beyond the beginning of the world, and yet God is still beyond the outmost teach of our imagination (for who can find out the beginning of that which hath not a beginning to be found out) and our most extended apprehensions fall it finitly short of the dayes of the Ancient of dayes; O how glorious then must his being be, & how boundlesse? His self-sufficiency & perfection doth herein appear, that from such an inconceiveable space he was as perfect and blessed in himself as now, the Creatures add nothing to his perfection, or satisfaction; he was as well pleased with his own al-comprehending-beeing & with the very thought and purpose of making this world, as now he is when it is made; the Idea of it in his mind gave him as great contentment as the work it self when it is done: O to conceive this a right, it would fill a soul with astonishing & ravishing thoughts of his blindnesse: Poor men weary if they be not one way or other imployed without; so indigent are all Creatures at home that they would weary if they went not abroad without themselves; but to think how absolutely God is well pleased with himself and how all imaginable perfections can add nothing to his eternall self complacency and delight in his own beeing. It would certainly ravish a soul to delight in God also: And as his self-sufficiency doth herein appear, so his liberty and freedom is likewise manifested in it. If the world had been eternall, who would have thought that it was free for his Majesty to make it or not? But that it had flowed from his glorious beeing with as natural and necessary a resultance, as light from the body of the Sun? But now it appears to all men, that for his pleasure they are made and we are created; that it was simply the free and absolute motion of his Will that gave a being to all things, which he could withhold at his pleasure, or so long as he pleased.
Thirdly we have it to consider in what condition he made all these things, very good, and that to declare his goodnesse & wisdome: the creature may well be called a large volume extended and spread out before the eyes of all men to be seen & read of all. It is certain if these things, all of them in their orders and harmonies, or any of them in their beeings & qualities, were considered in relation to Gods Majesty, they would teach and instruct the fool & the wise man both, in the knowledge of God. How many impressions hath he made in the creatures which reflect upon any seeing eye the very Image of God: to cōsider of what a vaste & hudge frame the Heavens and the earth are and yet but one Throne to his Majesty, the footstool whereof is this Earth, wherein vain men erect many Palaces: To consider what a multitude of creatures, what variety of Fowls in the heaven, and what multiplicity of Beasts upon the earth, what Armies (as Moses speaks, Gen. 2. 1.) and yet that none of them are all uselesse, but all of them have some special ends & purposes they serve for: so, that there is no discord nor disorder, no superfluity nor want in all this monarchy of the world: all of them conspire together in such a discord, or disagreeing harmony, to one great purpose; to declare the wisedom of him who made every thing beautyfull in its time, and every thing most fit and opposite for the use it was created for: so, that the whole earth is full of his goodness, he makes every creature good one to another, to supply one anothers necessity; and then notwithstanding of so many different natures & dispositions between Elements, and things composed of them, yet all these contrarieties have such a commixion, and are so moderated by his suppream Art, that they make up joyntly one Excellent and sweet Harmony, or beautifull proportion in the World: O, how wise must he be who alone contrived it all? We can do nothing except we have some pattern & coppy before us; but now upon this ground which God hath laid, Man may fancy many superstructures, but when he stretched out the heaven, and laid the foundation of the earth, Who being his Counsellour taught him? At whom did his Spirit take Counsel? Certainy, none of all these things would have entered into the heart of man to consider or contrive. Isa. 40. 12, 13. Some ruder Spirits do gaze upon the hudge and prodigious pieces of creation, as Whales and Elephants, &c. But a wise Solomon will go to the School of the Ant to learn the wisedom of God, and choose out such a simple and mean creatur for the object of his admiration; certainly there are wonders in the smallest and most inconsiderable creatures which Faith can contemplat: O the curious ingeny and draught of the finger of God, in the composition of Flees, of Bees, flowers &c. men ordinarly admire more, some extraordinary things; but the truth is, the whole course of nature is one continued wonder, and that greater than any of the Lords works without the Line: The straight and regular line of the wisdome of God (who in one constant course and tenour hath ordained the actions of all his creatures) comprehends more wonders and mysteries, as the course of the Sunne, the motion of the Sea, the hanging of the Earth in the empty place upon nothing, these we say, are the wonders indeed, and comprehend something in them which all the wonders of Egypt and the Wildernesse cannot parallel. But it is the stupid security of men, that are only awakened by some new and unusual passages of Gods works, beyond that straight Line of Nature,
Then fourthly, look upon the power of God in making all of nothing, which is expressed here in Heb. 11. There is no Artificer but he must have matter, or his Art will fail him, and he can do nothing: The Mason must have timber and stones laid to his hand, or he cannot build a house; the Gold-smith must have gold or silver ere he can make a Cup or a Ring; take the most curious & quick inventer of them all, they must have some matter to work upon, or their knowledge is no bettter than ignorance; all that they can do is, to give some shape or form, or to fashion that in some new model which had a beeing before; so that what ever men have done in the world, their work; are all made up of these things which appear, and Art & skill to form & fashion that excellently, which before was in another mould and fashion, but he needs not sit idle for want of materials; and therefore, in the beginning he made Heaven and Earth, not as they now are, but he made first the matter and substance of this Universe, but it was as yet a rude and confused Chaos or Masse, all in one lump without difference, but then his Majesty shews his Wisdom and Art, his excellent invention, in the following dayes of the creation, in ordering and beautifying, & forming the world as it is, and that his power might be the more known: For, how easie is it for him to do all this? There needs no more for it but a word, let it be, & it is, He spake, and it was done, He commanded, and it stood fast. Not, a word pronounced, and audibly composed of Letters and Syllables, mistake it not so, but a word inwardly formed, as it were in his infinite Spirit, even the inclination and beck of his will suffices for his great works: Ye see what labour and pains we have in our businesse, how we toil & sweat about it, what wrestlings & strivings in all things we do, but behold what a great work is done without any pain and travel! It is a laborious thing to travell through a parcel of this earth, which is yet but as the point of the Universe: It is troublesome to lift or carry a little piece of stone or clay, its a toil even to look upward and number the stars of Heaven, but it was no toil, no difficult thing to his Majesty to stretch out these Heavens in such an infinite compasse, for as large as the Circumference of them is, yet it is as easie to him to compasse them, as it is to us to span a finger-length or two: It is no difficulty to him to take up hills and mountains as the dust of the ballance in his hand, & weigh them in scales: Hath he not chain'd the vast & huge Masse of the wighty earth and Sea in the midst of the empty place without a supporter, without foundations or pillars? He hangeth it on nothing, What is it, I pray you that supports the Clouds? who is it that binds up their waters in such a way that the clouds are not rent under them, even though there be more abundance of water in them than is in all the Rivers & waters round about us? Iob. 26. 7, 8. Who is it that restrains & sets bounds to the Sea, that the waters thereof thogh they roar, yet do not overflow the land? But this Almighty Jehovah, whose Decree & commandement is the very compasse, the bulwark over which they cannot flow, & all this he doth with more facility than men can speak; If there were a creature that could do all things by speaking, that were a strange power: but yet that creature might be wearied with speaking much; but he speaks and it is done, his word is a creating word of power, which makes things that are not to be, and there is no wearying of him besides, for he is Almighty, and cannot saint: but, why then did he take six dayes for his work? might he not with one word of his power have commanded this world to issue out of his omnipotent vertue thus perfect as it is? What needed all this compasse? Why took he six dayes who in a moment could have done it all with as much facility? Indeed, herein the Lord would have us to adore his wisdome as well as his power; he proceeds from more imperfect things to more perfect, from a confused Chaos to a beautifull World from motion to rest, to teach man to walk through this wildernesse and valley of Tears, this shapelesse World, into a more beautiful habitation, through the tossings of time, into an everlasting Sabbath of rest, whether their works shal follow them, & they shal rest from their labours: He would teach us to take a stedfast look of his work, and that wee should be busied all the dayes of our pilgrimage and sojourning, in the consideration of the glorious characters of God upon the work of his hands; wee see that it is but passing looks and glances of Gods glory we take in the creatures, but the Lord would have us to make it our work and businesse all the week throgh, as it was his to make them: He would in this teach us his loving care of men, who would not create Man till he had made for him so glorious an house, replenished with all good things: It had been a darksome & irksome life to have lived in the first Chaos, without light, but he hath stretched over him the Heavens as his Tent; and set lights in them to distinguish times and seasons, and ordained the VVaters their proper bounds and peculiar Channels, and then maketh the Earth to bring forth all manner of fruits; & when all is thus disposed, then he c…eats man, To this God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, be glory and praise.