was therefore convenient to add it, as a matter of faith clearly and fully (as we did fhew) attested unto by divine revelation. So much may fuffice to remove fuch a fcruple. I proceed. Maker of Heaven and Earth. This claufe is one of thofe which was of later times inferted into this Creed, none of the more ancient expofitors thereof (Auguftin, Ruffin, Maximus Taurinenfis, Chryfologus, &c.) taking any notice thereof. But Irenæus, Tertullian, and other moft ancient writers, in their rules of faith exhibit the fense thereof; and the confeffions of all general councils (the Nicene, and those after it) exprefs it. And there is great reafon for it, not only thereby to difavow and defcry thofe prodigious errors of Marcion and Manichæus, and other fuch heretics, which did then afcribe the creation of the world (or of fome parts thereof, feeming to their fancy lefs good and perfect) to another God, (or principle,) inferior in worth and goodness to that God which is revealed in the Gofpel; or did opinionate two principles, (not diftinct only, but contrary to each other,) from one whereof good things did proceed, from the other bad things. But also for that the creation of the world is that peculiar, august, and admirable work of God, by which we learn that he is, and what he is; by which, I fay, his existence is most strongly proved, and in which his divine perfections are most confpicuously difplayed; which is the prime foundation of his authority over the world, and confequently is the chief ground of natural religion; of our fubjection and duty and devotion toward him. This title also most especially characterizing and distinguishing that God whom we believe and adore from all falfe and fictitious deities: for, as the Pfalmift fings, All the gods of the nations are idols, but the Pf. xcvi. 5. Lord made the heavens: and the prophet Jeremiah; The Jer. x. 11. gods that have not made the heavens, and the earth, they shall Vid.2Kings perish from the earth, and from under these heavens: And Acts xiv. we preach unto you, faid St. Paul to the ignorant Lycao- 15. xvii. 24, nians, that ye fhould turn from thofe vanities unto the liv xix. 15. Gen. i. 1. 11. 2 Kings xix. 15. Jer. xxiii. 24. ing God, which made heaven and earth. There was reafon therefore more than fufficient that the Creed fhould be enlarged and enriched with this fo material infertion; that we should be obliged explicitly to acknowledge a point of fo grand confideration and ufe. For the explication whereof and the terms wherein it is conceived, we may obferve, first, that the ancient Hebrews having (as it feems) in their language no one word properly fignifying the world, (or universal system of things created $,) did use inftead thereof a collection of its chief parts, (chief either abfolutely in themselves, or in respect to us,) the heaven and the earth; adding fometimes the fea, (yea sometimes, for Pf. Ixix. 34. fuller explication, fubjoining to heaven its hoft, to earth its Neh. ix. 60. fulness, to the fea its contents;) but most frequently heaven Exod. xx. and earth are put to defign the whole; In fix days, faith Mofes, the Lord made heaven and earth: Do not I fill heaven and earth? faith the Lord: It is eafer for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail: God, faith St. Paul, that made the world, and all things therein, feeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth: where the world, and all things therein, doth fignify the same with heaven and earth, God's dominion being coextended with his creation, as being grounded thereon. By heaven and earth therefore, I fay, we are to understand those two regions, fuperior and inferior, into which the whole frame of things is divided, together with all the beings that do refide in, belong unto, are comprehended by them; as Acts iv. 24. we see fometimes fully expreffed; O Lord, thou art the God that haft made the heavens, the earth, the fea, and all things being in them, pray the Apostles in the Acts; and Rev. x. 6. with utmost distinction the angel in the Apocalypfe fwears by him that liveth for ever, who created the heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth with the things that therein are, and the fea with the things therein. Luke xvi. 17. Acts xvii. 24. xlii. 5. By heaven is then understood all the fuperior region encompaffing the earth, and from it on all fides extended • Σύστημα ἐξ οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς, καὶ τῶν ἐν τούτοις περιεχομένων φύσεων : it is Arttotle's definition of the word. De Mund. 2. proper ha Heb. i. 14. Rev. v. 11. to a diftance unconceiveably vast and spacious, with all its parts, furniture, and inhabitants; not only those that are vifible and material, but also thofe that are immaterial and invifible. By him, faith St. Paul, were created all things Col. i. 16. which are in heaven, and which are in earth, both those that are visible and those that are invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, all things were created by him: that is, not only the material and fenfible parts, (those bright and beautiful lamps of light exposed to our fight,) but thofe beings of a more pure and refined fubftance, indifcernible therefore to our sense, how eminent foever in nature, mighty in power, exalted in dignity, whose ordinary refidence is in thofe fu- "dov oixnτήριον, (as perior regions, (as being God's courtiers and domeftic St. Jude 6. officers, attending upon and miniftering unto him; ben- hath it,) circling his throne, as it is in the Apocalypfe, and always bitation. beholding his face, as our Saviour teaches us, Matt. xviii. Dan. vii. 10.) even these all were made by God: for they are in- 10. cluded in the universal term all: if God made all things Matt. xviii. in heaven, (as we heard it told us by the mouth of an 10. angel in St. John's revelation,) then certainly the angels, ra Igévov. (the most confiderable things therein.) And they are exprefsly called the fons of God, (as deriving their being Job ii. 1. from him;) and they are subject to God's government and jurisdiction, (which argues their proceeding from 6. xxix. 1. him and dependance upon him :) and St. Jude tells us, Jude 6. they did not retain τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἀρχὴν, their beginning or primitive state: wherefore they had a beginning; and whence that but from God, who alone (originally, intrinfecally, and neceffarily) hath immortality, and confequently (as Ariftotle proveth by feveral reasons against De Cælo, i. cap. ult. Plato) alone hath éternity: and the Pfalmift calls them God's works; Blefs the Lord, faith he, ye his angels, that Pfal. ciii. excel in firength, that do his commandments, hearkening 20, 21, 22. unto the voice of his word: bless the Lord, all his hofts ; ye minifters of his, that do his pleafure: then concluding and recapitulating, he adds, Blefs the Lord, all his works in all places of his dominion: and again, in the 148th Pfalm, Pf. cxlviii. fummoning all the creation to a confort of doxology, he Ο Κυκλόθεν xxxviii.. 7. Pf. lxxxix. 1 Tim. vi. 16. begins with the heavens, and then proceeds to the earth, making a very particular recitation of the chief parts, inhabitants belonging to each: and in the first place reckoning the angels, then the stars, then the heaven of heavens, he fubjoins the reason, why they ought all to praise God; Let them, faith he, praise the name of the Lord: for he commanded, and they were created; he hath alfo ftablished them for ever and ever; he hath made a decree (concerning them) which shall not pafs. Thus doth the Scripture teach us concerning the existence and original of thofe fublime beings, to the knowledge of whom (that they are, what they are, whence they are) natural light could not reach; although from primitive tradition even the heathens themselves did in a manner acknowledge this truth, calling all the inferior and fecondary gods the children of the first and fupreme God, as we did formerly touch, θεοὶ θεῶν ὧν ἐγὼ δημιουργὸς πατήρτε: 10 God fpeaks to them in Plato's Timæus. And for all other things, both in heaven and earth, the material frame of the world, with all its parts, (compacted together in so fair, so fit, so fast an order,) we have before fufVid. Com- ficiently discoursed, that they speak themselves (even to natural understanding) to have been produced by a moft wife, most powerful, moft beneficent author; that is, by God; which is confirmed by teftimonies of holy writ innumerable, and which need not to be repeated. ment. in Ant. pag. 145. And thus much (as we did alfo formerly fhew) the generality of mankind hath always confented unto; as also the most and best reputed philofophers did (in general terms) avow it. There is only one particular, wherein they seem to have disagreed (fome or most of them) from what Christian piety obliges us to acknowledge; which concerns the matter of corporeal things: for even Plato himself (who so pofitively and exprefsly doth affert the world to have been framed by God) is yet conceived to fuppofe the matter of things to have been eternal and uncreated; afcribing only to God the forming and difpofing it into a good order, agreeable to fome patterns preexiftent in his wife understanding; even as a good artist doth out of tull. adv. ii. fect. 37. Quis hoc dixit un quam? i. 3. Metaph. i. an unshapen lump of matter frame a handfome piece of Vid. Terwork, conformable to fome idea preconceived in his mind. Valent.cap. (Socrates and Plato, faith Plutarch, did suppose three 15. et adv. Hermog. i. principles of things, τὸν θεὸν, τὴν ὕλην, τὴν ἰδέαν, God, Mat - Cic. de Div. ter, Idea: God is the mind, Matter the firft fubject of ge-ii. neration and corruption, Idea an incorporeal fubfiftence in phyficus the conceptions of God. Anaxagoras also (the fame author tells us, and Aristotle confirms it in his Metaphyfics, De Placitis, commending his opinion) did affirm two principles, one Anton. iv. paffive, matter, (confifting of an infinite number of fmall feet. 4. particles like to one another in shape,) the other active, 3, 4. understanding; and to the fame effect he reduces Pythagoras's conceits, though with much obfcurity expreffedt.) And Ariftotle tells us, that generally all natural philofophers before him did conceive and affume it for a principle, (it was κοινὴ δόξα τῶν φυσικῶν, ὡς οὐ γινομένου οὐδενὸς ἐκ TOŨ μǹ ovтos,) u that nothing was made out of nothing, or that every thing made had neceffarily fome preexiftent matter, out of which it was made; [which principle Ariftotle himself not only admits, in his fenfe, but extends farther, affirming it impoffible, that any thing fhould be produced out of matter not predisposed to admit the form to be introduced, Οὐδὲ γίνεται ὁτιοῦν ἐξ ὅτου οὖν: Every thing is not made of every thing; but out of some subject fitted Thales's conceit was alfo in a manner the fame; who (as Tully tells us, De Nat. Deor. i.) Aquam dixit effe initium rerum, Deum autem eam mentem, quæ ex aqua cuncta fingeret. The Stoics also had this opinion; as Lipfius by many teftimonies proves in his Physiologia Stoica. * Δοκεῖ δὲ αὐτοῖς ἀρχὰς εἶναι τῶν ὅλων δύο· τὸ ποιοῦν καὶ τὸ πάσχον· τὸ μὲν οὖν πάσχον εἶναι τὴν ἄποιον ὕλην· τὸ δὲ ποιοῦν, τὸν ἐν αὐτῇ λόγον τὸν Θεόν. Laert. in Zen. Vid. Sen. Epift. 65. Ἐκ μὴ ὄντων γίγνεται ἀδύνατον περὶ τὰς ταύτης ὁμογνωμονοῦσι τῆς δόξης ἅπαντες Vide locum luculentum. Metaph. i. 3. ̓Αεὶ ἐστὶ τι ὁ ὑπόκειται, ἐξ οὗ γίγνεται τὸ γιγνόμενον, οἷον τὰ φυτὰ καὶ τὰ ζῶα ἐκ σπέρματος. i. 8. Cic. de Div. ii. -Erit aliquid quod aut ex nihilo oriatur, aut in nihilum fubito occidat : quis hoc phyficus dixit unquam? Vid. Anton. iv. fe&t. 4. |