The Freedom of the Will, Part 1 · Subpart 1 · Argument 6
6. Argument.
The sixth Argument drawn from this Head, is the infiniteness of God. This is a Negative expression, representing to us a Positive Perfection, which surmounts all Assimilations, all Similitudes or Images, which the highest understanding of men or Angels is capable of taking in, or the whole Creation united in its most abstracted and heightned Excellencies of bringing forth. We figure it to our selves only by a Negation, or removal of all figures, of all terms or bounds. We seem to touch it with the Top point, and simplest Unity of Spirits, by a silence and cessation of all created powers or faculties in us. We seem to apprehend it only by being comprehended of it, and lost in it. If we knew and tasted the unexpressible Sweetnesses, the high Raptures, with the Divinest Pleasures, in the contemplation of the Divine Infiniteness, how far should we be from streightning or darkening its Glories by limiting, and in limiting, dividing them? If God be God, that is, before all things, and above them, he is absolutely unchangeable: As He is unchangeable, He is every where, every way the same, equal and entirely perfect, equally and endlesly removed from all bound and limit. If God be God, that is, the first of all things, He hath the Fountain of Life in himself. Thus he is ever fresh and new, ever springing into fresh and new Glories, ever equally, endlesly removed from any conclusion or confinement in his Births and Beauties.
The Divinity and Poetry of the Heathen from their most ancient, most sacred mysteries, teach us, that Love is the Eldest and Youngest of all the gods▪ Our God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, is the God of Love in the truest, the sweetest and the best sense. He alone is Love it self, in an abstracted eternal Divine Essence and Substance, pure Love, altogether unmixt, having nothing in it self different, or divers from it self; thus is an infinite Love, a sweet and clear Sea, which swalloweth up all bounds, all shores and bottoms, into it self. This Love, as it is every way the same, is the ancient of Dayes, the eldest of all the Gods. This Love, as it ever flourisheth with a perpetual Spring and Youth of all Beauties, of all beautiful Delights, is the youngest of all the Gods. Thus is this most high and holy Love, the God of Gods, the First and the Last, containing all things within its own blissful bosome, as the bound of all, but being it self every way beyond all bounds, without all bounds, infinite.
How infinite are the joys and blessedness of this Infiniteness! How is this infinite God, our God, the only true God, a Paradise of Love, infinitely heightned in all the beauties and sweetnesses of Love, infinitely diffused through all things, beyond all things? How is He at once the Paradise of Love, with its infinite heightnings, with its infinite amplitudes in every part, in every point of things, entirely perfect? How is it every where the same, every where new, to the satisfaction, to the swallowing up of all the most fixt, most various, most vast desires, into an Aybss or Ocean of Delights equally unconfined and undivided! Shall we then limit the holy One of Israel? If we do not, we must ascribe this greatness to Him, that He contains all things in Himself. In Him all things live, move, and have their Being. We must attribute this immenseness, or immensurableness to Him, to fill all in all, as the only distinct, exact measure of all things; himself still transcending all, and being measured by nothing. It is said of Christ, That the Church is the fulness of him, who filleth all in all. The Humane Soul, or Intellectual Spirit, is a rude imperfect shadow of the Divine Infiniteness. Our thoughts are living Images in various postures and motions. They are in a manner the Creation, the Creatures of our Souls. They live, move, and have their being in our Souls. Our Souls alone fill all in them all. How far greater is the distance between God and his Creatures, than between the Soul and its Creation? How much more less, even less than nothing are all the Creatures to God? How much more truly, more entirely are they all that they are in Him? how much more absolutely is he their fulness, silling them all in all? All things then, all Essences, all Lives, all Vital Powers and Faculties in each Essence, all Motions of life, all Acts or Operations of every power and faculty, are in God. He alone filleth all in every Essence, Life, Power, Faculty, Motion, Act. All are in Him, have all their distinct forms, degrees, modes of being in Him, to the least degree, or shadow of Being.
Thus Angels and Men, the Understanding and Will of each Man, of each Angel, every act, motion, determination of each Understanding, of each Will, are comprehended in God. God entirely filleth all, every Person or Spirit, every Understanding and Will, every Determination and Motion. Where we exclude him out of any Spirit, Essence, Power, or Operation, there we set a bound to the eternal Spirit, there we limit the holy One, that pure Essence and Act, there we say to Him, Thus far shalt thou go, no farther.
If God be acknowledged for Being it self in its purest simplicity, it is Being alone which can bound him. All without him, where he ceaseth and terminateth, is not Being. But who understands not this, that that which hath no Being can be no bounds?