One man knows but little of another; and, though the wisest of men hath but a small share either of wisdom or power, yet some men have attained to, or struck out, such degrees of knowledge, as must be for ever utterly mysterious and unfathomable to others.

A man knows so little of himself, that he hath reason to cry out, with David, ' I am fearfully and wonderfully made;' he knows not how his thoughts arise within, how his heart beats, how his food nourishes him, how his body grows, how his eye rolls, or his finger moves.

Now, if brutes know so little of us, and even we of ourselves, when the object is so distinct and near, how shall we be able to comprehend the divine nature, which is so infinitely above us? May not this infinite Being be present every-where? And may there not be room in such a boundless nature for mercy and justice, infinite each, in respect to its own proper object? May there not be three persons in the incomprehensible unity of God, for aught we know to the contrary? How can it be proved that there are not? If that proof pretends to come from reason, it is plainly contradicted by another from the same reason, much better known, and more certain; namely, that it is as impossible for us to comprehend the divine nature, as it is for the smallest circle to comprehend the greatest; so that, if reason contradicts itself, it can prove nothing.

But right reason never contradicts itself, nor presumes to pronounce about what is so infinitely above the faculties by which it works. When it seems to do otherwise, it is in minds where the pride and vanity of more knowledge, than comes to the share of others, have transported it beyond, or rather put it beside, itself; so that, being puffed up with their own conceit, they think their capacities of sufficient extent to comprehend him, whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain.' Although they know little or nothing of God's works, yet they will presume to dispute and pronounce about God himself, with as much familiarity and assurance, as if they had only an herb or insect under consideration, and are perfectly curious in their observations on him.

But, it is to be presumed, they rather speak of that little fantastic idol they have set up in their own imaginations to

represent him, than of the true God; of whom, if they only had as exalted notions as other wise and good men, they would, like them, keep silence before him; and, instead of attempting so awful a subject, adore him at that infinite distance that nature hath put between him and them. For he who hath the highest knowledge of God, is the most sensible of his own incapacity to comprehend the infinite greatness of the Divine Being; in the contemplation of which, reason, and imagination, and judgment, and all our faculties, are swallowed up and lost.

Simonides, who was a great philosopher and poet, at the request of Hiero, like a modern libertine, immediately undertook to define the Deity; and, as if it had been an easy task, required only a few days to prepare an answer to this question, What is God? but, upon considering the subject'a little more at leisure, he found it necessary to demand more time; and the difficulty still increasing with his application, he was obliged to go on doubling his demands of time; till he found the Divine nature incomprehensible, and his own sinking under an utter impossibility of ever accomplishing his rash undertaking.

And so it is, even with those who are assisted by Divine revelation. They can, from thence, learn so much of God's nature, as to know what obligations they lie under to him, and what duties they owe him. But if, through a vain presumption or curiosity, they inquire farther, the subject grows too unsearchable for their penetration, too big for their comprehension. It rises infinitely above their highest thoughts; and their imaginations, on the utmost stretch, and with the most exalted flights, lose sight of it in a mo

ment.

As well might we attempt to fathom the ocean with an inch of line, or encompass the heavens, and infinite space, with a ring that is only large enough for our finger, as think of comprehending the infinite nature with our narrow minds. What measure have we for him, who meteth out the heavens?' Or how shall we weigh his nature, who putteth the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance, and before whom all the nations of the earth,' and among the rest the mighty libertine, are but as the drop of a bucket,' that hangs on the outside, and adds nothing to its weight; and

are accounted as the small dust of the balance,' too light to turn the scales! With God there is terrible majesty; touching the Almighty we cannot find him out.' How shall we behold him,' who hath clouds and darknesss round about him, who maketh darkness his secret place, whose pavilion round about him are dark waters, and thick clouds of the sky! How shall we trace him, whose way is in the sea, and his path in the great waters, and whose footsteps therefore are not known.'

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Canst thou, by searching, find out God?' says Zophar to Job: canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? This knowledge is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? It is deeper than hell, what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.'

We may put these questions to our libertines, when they presume so to speak of the Divine nature, as if a Trinity of persons were inconsistent with it, and as if they knew so much of God, as to be perfectly sensible of that inconsistency.

But if the libertine is so expert at removing mysteries, let him clear up this, and, in return, I promise to account, for the Trinity. How comes it to pass, that a God of infinite justice, wisdom, and power, should suffer that man to live, who makes it the business of his life to corrupt himself, and to debauch the principles and morals of others; who is. become the apostle of sin, an enemy to God, and a snare to the souls of men? This, we are all convinced, is consistent with the attributes of God: but can the libertine demonstrate to us, that consistency? Can he clear up this great. mystery, and give us a satisfactory reason, why himself is. not yet overtaken by Divine vengeance?

Pride was the sin of angels; and a vicious thirst of knowledge the first crime of man. Our libertines have united both in themselves, and have met with the double punishment due to those crimes, ignorance, and, it is to be feared, an irretriveable fall from God and happiness. To mortify their pride, they are degraded from a rational to a brutal nature; and, instead of more than common, or indeed possible, knowledge, they are plunged in utter darkness. Their ignorance hinders them from being sensible of their own insufficiency, which would humble them, and so foments their pride; and their pride renders them unteachable, and,

They

by that means, keeps them in perpetual ignorance. are,' as St. Paul says, ' proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, and perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of truth.'

Thus pride makes proselytes to infidelity, while worldlymindedness is as active to the same end. By worldly mindedness I do not only mean a love for this world, and the things of it, but also such prejudices, and wrong principles of thinking, as the understanding and heart of men are too apt to contract, in a close conversation with the world.

Those, who are enslaved to the love of this world, the great business of whose lives it is to pursue, and whose chief good it is to enjoy, the riches, the pleasures, the power, and splendor, here below, bear with great impatience the restraints of revealed religion. Our religion bids us renounce and hate the world, and the lusts of the flesh, as enemies to God and our souls. Now is it to be expected that men, who have no other desire but for them, no other pleasure but in them, should digest such a spiritual, such a self-denying religion?

A weak person, who is enslaved to his palate, though labouring under a dangerous disorder, hates the bitter medicine that is necessary to his cure; but when he refuses to take it, he does not say, it is because it is bitter, or that he prefers his palate to his health; but he either insists that he is well enough, and that he is in no need of medicines, or that the medicine is unsound, or the physician who prescribes it unskilful. So it is exactly with the worldlyminded in respect to religion. Although his whole mind is disordered, and torn with outrageous passions, and although nothing else can cure him but religion, yet, as all the passions and appetites vote against it, he cannot away with it. However he is ashamed to give this reason for rejecting it; and therefore either labours to prove himself free from all corruption and irregularity, or to shew that religion hath no truth in it, and is inapplicable to his case. To this end he falls upon mysteries, insisting that his reason forbids him to receive them, and that, if he did, they could be of no use to him, inasmuch as they have no moral tendency to correct the irregularities of human nature.

Hence it comes, that men of this stamp will admit no notion of God into their minds, but such a one as is agree

able to their prejudices, and represents him as pleased with what pleases themselves. Now the Scriptural notion of God is of quite a different nature, and represents him both as an incomprehensible Being, and as infinitely averse to those corruptions and pollutions they delight in. In order therefore to get rid of it, they set themselves first to expose what they cannot comprehend, that they may afterward, with the better grace, reject what they do not relish in it.

This kind of worldly-mindedness makes more unbelievers indeed, but they are not so sincerely infidel as those, who are led to conceive amiss, and pronounce presumptuously of God, by a wrong bias of thought, contracted in conversing too intimately with the sensible things of this world. They borrow all their rules of thinking from what they observe about them; and when they come to think of God, which is but seldom, they regulate their notions of him by those rules.

From hence it came that a plurality of gods overswarmed the world; for every one conceiving of God, according to his conceptions of things about him, fell at last into the absurdity of worshipping God under the representation of his own favourite man, or river, or brute, or plant.

And, even among persons more enlightened, this is too often the case. In the gloomy mind, God is nothing but wrath and terror, armed with thunder, and intent on vengeance. In a mind amused by gaiety and pleasure, he is all indulgence to the desires and enjoyments of his creatures. The mathematician says he is number, and the musician calls him harmony. These are gods of mens own making, and bear no resemblance to the living and incomprehensible God.

Men are too inclinable to form their notions of God by their notions of human nature; which, nevertheless, they are much in the dark about. Although men are so formed in the image of God, that their faculties bear some resemblance to his attributes, their reason to his wisdom, their probity to his justice, their compassion to his mercy; yet, if they hope by this way to form a perfect notion of God, they will succeed no better than they, who attempted to raise that building to heaven, which they had formed on earth; their endeavours will perish in the same confusion. Now,