This is what they, who feared the Lord, have never dared to attempt; or if they did, they soon came out of it, with shame and sorrow. How vain is it, to set about any curious searching into the being of God; to speak of his nature with a resemblance to our own. We know that clouds and darkness, are round about him. Ps. xcvii. 2. Job is accused of pressing too deep with these inquiries; though he seems to examine no farther, than into the windings of Providence. He said nothing so gross about the perfections of the deity, as all our scheme-makers have done. But it is plain, he took a length of imagination that did not become him. I ground this not only on the complaint of his friends, but chiefly on his own confession. God has charged him with darkening council, by words without knowledge; and he charges himself with uttering things that he knew not; things too wonderful for him that he understood not. Job xxxviii. 2. xlii. 3. He comes out of his free thinking, with the blushes and pains of a penitent. Behold I am vile, what shall I answer thee? I will lay my hand upon my mouth. Once have I spoken, but I will not answer, yea twice, but I will proceed no farther. He ascribes it to God as a prerogative, I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no counsel can be withholden from thee. Job xl. 4, 5, & xlii. 2. The psalmist wanted to have clear ideas of the divine conduct; and, no doubt of it, during the operation of his fancy, he thought himself wise and humble. But afterwards he calls it all folly and ignorance, and says he was no better than a beast. He attempted to know it, but it was too painful for him. Ps. lxxii. 22. He gets more by one hour in the sanctuary, than by all his speculations in the closet. Ps. lxxii. 16, 17. Agur speaks with indignation at himself; surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man. I neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the holy. Prov. xxx. 2, 3, 4. By the particular invisible things of God that he mentions afterwards, we may suppose what subjects he had been dabbling with. Who has ascended into heaven or descended? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has bound the waters in a garment? Who has established the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his Son's name, if thou canst tell? : Solomon said he would be wise, but it was far from him that which is exceeding deep, who can find it out? The apostle Paul, when he was caught up to the third heaven, heard things there, which he never heard upon earth; but they were both unlawful and impossible, to be uttered in any other place. 2 Cor. xii. 4. Touching the Almighty we cannot find him out. Job xxxvii. 23. Let us bring this observation to the great doctrine of baptism, the profession of faith that we made, when our bodies were washed with pure water. The form of words then used, was of our Lord's appointing. We have no authority, to make them more or less. The sense of them is so easy and unincumbered, that he thought them sufficient, to tell both Jews and Greeks, into what faith we are baptized. If there was never another sentence in the bible, that declared who the Christian's God is, every one that hears his confession will understand it, though the whole world of infidels will condemn it. By this form we learn, that the Lord is one, and his name one, in all the earth. We are baptized into no more than a single name. It is also plainly said, that there are three ; neither more nor fewer, that are known by this name, and adored in this ordinance. These three, by their personal titles of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are personally distinct. They are not spoken of as attributes, powers, or properties; and yet, They are equal in the revelation made to us, and the surrender made by us. This is the account, that the great God has been pleased to give us of himself. And all that we have to do, is to examine whether he has done so or no. If he has given us an explication, let us have it; if he has not, let us wave it. He has told us, as much of his nature as he designed we should know ; and will, by no means, suffer us to become so vain in our imaginations with the bible, as the heathen have been without it. People that talk of" the divine nature's being "communicated from one person to another, "in some unknown moment of eternity," are stretching themselves, beyond the measure of the line. The perfections of God are peculiar to himself; not one of them being given to any other. There is none holy as the Lord, for there is none beside thee, neither is there any rock like unto our God. 1 Sam. ii. 2. See now, says he, that I, even I, AM, and there is no God with me. Deut. xxxii. 39. Is. xl. 18. To whom will ye liken God, and what likeness will ye compare to him! Matt. xix. 17. There is none good but one, and that is God. He only has immortality. 1 Tim. vi. 16. It is easy to show, that the old musty schemes which are revived in this projecting age, are only, so many high thoughts and carnal imaginations, so many guesses in the dark, at things that we never heard. If this is wisdom it is being wise, above what is written. The Arians tell us, that though the Son, is both above and before the creation, yet there was a time when he was not; that he was not in the beginning, but after the beginning; that the Father produced him by a voluntary act. And to show, how much their foolish heart is darkened, they keep rambling on, and say that the Father and Son together, made the Spirit, though of his original the scripture has not said a word; so that their scheme may be cal led the book of the generation of the Son and Spirit. Heathen authors can give us the genealogy of their Gods, but after the glorious gospel of Christ is committed to us, I thought we should never have taken up, the very names of derived and originated deities, into our lips. The Gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens. Jer. x. 1. The other scheme, that condemns the Arian for talking of any time, when the Son was not, yet dares, with the same confidence, to make a partition of the Deity. They are bounding, what the Scripture has called infinite. They allow him to be eternal, and yet derived; to have received a beginning, and yet always to have had it; to have proper deity without independance; divine perfections, and yet not absolute sovereignty; that he has divinity in some of its distinctions, and yet not with all its essentials; that is, they will pretend to adjust the rights of empire between Father and Son. But where has the most High called them thus, to divide the inheritance of unsearchable glory? May it not be said, vain man would be wise? Though no man can teach the Spirit of the Lord what he shall do, yet here is a generation that venture to tell him, what he shall have. They will rush into the light wherein he dwells, a light to which none can approach. We know no farther what he is, than as he himself has told us. And shall we presume to tell him the period, bounds, and extent of his nature? And indeed the very language of all these schemes, lets us see that the authors are not employed, in declaring what God has said of himself, but in guessing out a Deity; making Gods to themselves, which by their own description are no Gods; setting up in their heads, the likeness of things in heaven above. I will give you the words of one among ourselves, who professes that " he cannot al * * Dr. Watts. |