now, God knows contingent futures, yea, and that certainly and infallibly; and the reason is, because the most contingent being, when and while it actually exists, is, in its being, necessary: Omne quod est, quando est, necessario est. But all things are present to God; they are looked upon by him as under an actual existence; from whence we may collect, that he has a certain and necessary knowledge of them.

3dly, The third sort of things, known only to God, are the thoughts of men: it belongs to the sovereignty of God's omniscience alone to judge and know these: Psalm cxxxix. 2, Thou understandest my thoughts afar off. This is attributed to God by way of eminence; and every such thing is not only proper, but also peculiar to him; so as to be communicated to nothing else for that cannot be ascribed to God by way of distinction, which is also common to the creature. Angels indeed do exactly know our constitutions, and so can read the general inclination of our thoughts in them, but not the particular determination of them, quoad hic et nunc, in respect of particular objects and circumstances; and also, when the thoughts move and stir the passions, and the passions work some change on the body: for, as natural philosophy teaches, every passion (which is a motion of the sensitive appetite) fit cum aliqua mutatione corporis non naturali. I say, in this respect, the angels may know the thoughts, as they betray themselves in some outward, corporeal sign; but by any immediate inspection of the thoughts themselves, so they are not able to discern them. It is a privilege that God has given to our nature, to be able to con

able to communicate them: Jerem. xvii. 9, The heart is deceitful above all things; who can know it? None can read the thoughts, none can behold the intentions and desires, but that God, who vouchsafes an influence to the production of every thought, and every desire: 1 Cor. ii. 11, Who knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man that is within him? It is well known, that these interrogations imply strong denials. Who can know the things of man? that is, none can know them: they are not subject to the inspection of any being, but God. For notwithstanding this universal negation, we must of necessity except him, because the scripture elsewhere makes a peculiar exception of God, even there, where it affirms that the heart cannot be known, Jerem. xvii. 10, I, the Lord, search the heart, I try the reins. From hence therefore appears the transcendent excellency of God's knowledge beyond all created, that it is able to pierce into men's thoughts.

I proceed to make some application; and to see what uses may be deduced from the consideration of God's omniscience: it may serve as an argument to press several duties upon us.

1st, It must be a strong motive to bring us to a free confession of all our sins to God. God's omniscience, or infinite knowledge, should indeed make us ashamed to commit sin; but it should embolden us to confess it. We can commit and tell our secrets to a friend that does not know them; how much more should we do it to him that knows them already! God's knowledge outruns our confessions, and anticipates what we have to say. As our Saviour speaks concerning prayer, Your heavenly Fa

ther knows what you have need of, before you ask, Matt. vi. 8, so I may say of confession, your heavenly Father knows what secret sins you have committed, before you confess. But still he commands this duty of us; and that not to know our sins, but to see our ingenuity. Adam, when he hid himself, to the impiety of his sin added the absurdity of a concealment. Our declaring of our sins to God, who knows them without being beholden to our relation; it is like opening a window to receive the light, which would shine in through it howsoever. Every man has fenestratum pectus, a casement in his bosom, through which God looks in upon him every day. When a master sees his servant commit a fault in secret, and thereupon urges him to a confession, he does it not so much to know the fault, as to try the man. Now there is no duty by which we give God the glory of his omniscience so much as by a free confession of our secret iniquities. Joshua vii. 19, Joshua says to Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto him. Here we see, had he not confessed his theft, he had been guilty of a greater, to wit, the robbing God of his glory. Thus the widow of Tekoah, by confessing her design and project to David, gave him the glory of his wisdom and knowledge. Hereupon having confessed it, she says, in 2 Sam. xiv. 20, My lord the king is wise, according to the wisdom of an angel of God, to know all things that are done in the earth. God seems to compound with us, and, in lieu of satisfaction, only to require our confession; Jerem. iii. 12, 13, I am merciful, saith the Lord, and will not keep anger for ever: only acknowledge thy iniqui

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thy God. Nay, God commands us to confess our sins, not so much that he may know them, as that we may know them ourselves. For while sin sits close in the heart, we cannot see it till we cast it forth by confession; as a man cannot see the corruption that is in his stomach, till he spits it out. howsoever, the impossibility of concealing our sins from God's omniscience, is the great reason why we should confess them; for as we cannot rescue them from his justice, so neither can we hide them from his knowledge. God's omniscience, together with his justice, represents him to a secret sinner like a flaming fire; which by its heat consumes, and by its light discovers. Wherefore, to confess our sins, since we are not able to conceal them, what is it, but in a spiritual sense to make a virtue of necessity?

2dly, The consideration of God's omniscience may enforce us to an humble submission to all God's commands and directions, and that both in respect of belief and of practice.

1st, And first, concerning things to be believed. There is such a depth in these, and such a seeming contradiction to reason, that our natural understandings are apt to quarrel, and find absurdities in them, and to dispute against that which we cannot comprehend. Hence, in Eph. iii. 19, the apostle prays, that we may know the love of Christ, that passeth knowledge. Here we should captivate the vain reasonings of our blind understandings, and answer the defect of our knowledge, by the infiniteness of God's; who knows a reason of whatsoever he commands, and of whatsoever we ought to believe. When we hear the mystery of the Trinity, that three subsistencies are contracted into one essence, and one essence enlarged

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into three subsistencies; when we hear of two natures conjoined in the same person, the creator and the creature, united in Jesus Christ; our reason is nonplused and amazed, and cannot satisfy itself from any of its own principles. When we hear of the resurrection, that, after our bodies are destroyed, and by continual transmutation brought to be clean another thing, then for the same numerical bodies to be restored, and all the scattered parts to be renewed, and return to their proper places; so that with Job we should be enabled to see our Redeemer with these very eyes, and no other, Job xix. 26, 27. when we hear of the mysterious, hidden works of the Spirit in our regeneration, and the begetting of new principles within us, so as to change and alter our nature; that he, which by his constitution is intemperate and furious, should be made temperate and meek; that he, which by his education is profane and worldly, should, by the secret, forcible operation of the Spirit, become holy and spirituallyminded: I say, this startles and confounds us; and we are apt to say with Nicodemus, How can these things be? We cannot, from any topic of reason or philosophy, give a rational account of them. But here we should know, that although these things are not intelligible by men, yet they are to the all-knowing God. And although our reason cannot discern or comprehend these things, yet God is greater than our reason, and knoweth all things.

2dly, The consideration of God's infinite knowledge ought to make us comply with God's commands in things concerning our practice, and that even in those duties, that to our natural judgments may seem

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