The Freedom of the Will, Part 1 · Subpart 1 · Argument 1
1. Argument.
The first Argument, from the Divine Nature, is the Being of God. God is Being it self in its simplicity and absoluteness, the first, the supreme, the universal Being. This is his Name by which he makes Himself known to Moses, I A M; Being it self in its absoluteness, undivided, unrestrained, unconfined, unallayed by any differences of mixtures; Being it self at the utmost heighth of all Eminencies and Transcendencies; Being it self in its fulness, in its greatest Amplitude and Majesty; Being it self in its Truth, in its substance; the only true Being, the universal Being, comprehending the excellencies of all Beings, heighthned to a transcendency above all Being and all Excellency, all Being in one, all Being complete in one complete Person, which is a perfect number of Persons, Three Persons in One; that it may entertain and enjoy it self in a perfect immortal Circle of all Being and blessedness. This is God, this is his Name, I A M.
His Name Jah imports the same sense, Being it self: His Name Jehovah expresseth the same thing, the universal Being; All Beings past, present, and to come, with all their distinctions and differences, in one.
Every thing that I S beareth written upon it this Name of God, I A M. All things that be declare a Being: While all things agree in this, That they be, they demonstrate an universal Being. Being, as it is divided and restrained by particular Differences (in all things particular and different one from another) by being lessened, contracted, and obscured, is imperfect. Nothing that is imperfect can subsist, exist of it self, or by it self; for so far as it is imperfect it is not. Imperfection is so far a privation or negation of Being. Before then that which is imperfect, is that which is perfect, from which and by which that which is imperfect existeth. Thus Socrates in Plato, from the beauties of sense scattered and divided among divers beautiful Subjects or Persons, leads us to all the beauties of sense united in one Person compleatly beautiful. From this perfection of beauty, where it is an accident seated in a subject of dark matter, ever changing, he raiseth us to the innumerable forms of beauty, the unchangeable essences and immortal substances of beauty, where beauty is the whole substance, pure, and immaterial. These manifold forms of immaterial and essential beauties, awakened into the intellectual Spirit, he maketh as golden wings, by which we fly upward into the bosome of that first Beauty, where all beauties meet in an entire and transcendent Unity.
Thus all particular and imperfect Beings carry us up to the perfect and universal Being, abstracted from them all, set on his Throne high and listed up above them all, from which, as their proper Head, they flow, by and in which, as in their proper Root, they subsist, being the beams of this glorious Sun, and Rivers from this full Sea. This is God in his high and holy place of Eternity. This universal Being, where all Beings meet in one, is Eternity. This is the holy place of Eternity. Being it self in its most exalted Purity abstracted and separated from all differences, mixtures, allayes, from every thing forreign. This is the high place of Eternity. Being it self in its first and supreme Unity, comprehending all Beings, all perfections of Being, heighthned to a perfection so far above themselves, that no Being, the most perfect, is able to look up to it.
Can now any thing, any where, any Essence, Power, Act, any Will, or motion of the Will, be, and not be originally contained in this first Being, and not be subject, subordinate to this supreme Being, and not lie within the compass, be full of, be universally filled with this universal Being?
In Metaphysicks we are taught, That God, as He is Being it self in its simplicity, is the proper, immediate, and formal Cause of all Being, every where; and that the modifications only of each Being proceed from it by the mediation of second Causes. Is it not clear then, that these modifications themselves, so far as they be, or have any Being in them, are the immediate and formal effects of the first and universal Being?
If now the motion, the modification, the determination of the Will in its Acts be not, it is no more the subject of any dispute, discourse, or thought, it hath no more any place or effect in the nature of things, to bring forth any Consequences, or to make any Differences. If it be, if it have any Being at all, Can it have any place without the comprehension and embraces of the universal Being? Shall it not yield the Power, the Preheminence, the Soveraignty to Him, whose Name alone is I AM, and I AM that which I AM? Shall it not confess to him, and say, Thou only art the only true Being, the universal Being; I am a shadow, and empty figure. Thou art the truth, the substance of my Being. Thou fillest all in all of me. Thou art that which thou art. I am a shadow of my self only; I am only That, which I am in Thee, That which Thou art in me: I am my true self only, so far as I am in Thee, the Original truth of all Being; only so far as thou art in me, the Substantial truth of all Being.
Object. Do we make the Creature nothing? Do we make God All? Do we confound God and the Creature?
Answ. Far be it. VVe speak the Language of the general stream of Divines, Philosophers, Poets, Heathen and Sacred, through all Ages. VVe speak their Language with their sense, and upon their grounds: But we chiefly build upon the foundation of the holy Scriptures, in which we read such characters of men, of the world, of all things in it, that they are a scheam or figure, that they are not, lighter than vanity, less than nothing, a vapour, a vain shew, a tale that is told, a dream in sleep. All that we converse with, is stiled by Plato, foreign, that which is not, and distinguished from foreign, that which truly is. Aristotle stiles God, foreign, the Being of Beings. We learn of him that, that is True which terminates and gives rest to the Understanding, and that to understand things, is to know them by their causes; which plainly infers, that God alone is the Truth of every Creature and in every Creature, that He alone terminates and gives rest to our Understandings, in as much as He is the first Cause.
Our design and desire is to establish most firmely and clearly the immutable and everlasting bounds between God and the Creature. The Creature truly really is in the proper rank and order of its own Being; but all that it is, in the presence of the Divine Being, in comparison with it, is like a dream, when one awakes, less than nothing. Every Creature at its best estate is vanity, an obscure, empty shadow of its Divine Original in God. The Creature is nothing of it self, or by it self, but a momentany emanation from God, sent forth from him, sustained by Him, comprehended by him, and filled with him. God is not the Creature, yet is he in the Creature, not Circumscriptivè, nor Definitivè, confined to the Creature, or defined by the Creature; but Repletivè, filling all in all, in every Creature.
St. Paul saith of him, That he is above all, in all, and through all: Above all, as incomprehensibly transcending all, as the eternal universal Head of all: In all, as the truth, the fulness of all, by each Idea in each Creature (like the Seal in the Impression): Through all, as the perfection and end of all: