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God's Nature
38. Harmony of God’s
Attributes. The redemption by Christ is particularly wonderful upon this
account, inasmuch as the justice of God is not only appeased to those
who have an interest in him, but stands up for them, is not only not an
enemy but a friend, every whit as much as mercy. Justice demands
adoption and glorification and importunes as much for it as ever it did
before for misery, in every respect that it is against the wicked it is
as much for the godly. Yea, it is abundantly more so than it would have
been for Adam: for him it would be only because he graciously promised,
but it is obliged to believers on the account of the absolute merit of
the Son of God and upon the account of an eternal agreement between God
and his Son.
88. Name of the Lord. The
children of Israel used to speak of the Name of the Lord in a manner to
us very unintelligible. They used to attribute those things to it of
which a name merely is not capable, but only Persons or Distinct Beings.
Thus they spoke of it as what they trusted in, as what delivered them
and defended them. They seem frequently to have meant, by the Name of
the Lord, the sensible manifestations of his presence. Though they spoke
of the Name of God as if it had been God himself, they yet also spoke of
it as if it had been another Person, and made a distinction between the
Lord and the Name of the Lord. The Name of the Lord was he who most
immediately appeared in the Temple and is the only Redeemer of God’s
Israel, and who manifested and declared God the Father all along from
the beginning: who was the Shechinah, in whom they trusted, and for
whose sake they desired that their prayers might be answered.
89. Justice. It appears
plain enough that an omnipotent and omniscient being can have no desire
of having us seek his own ends, because he can as easily bring about all
his ends without it. And this appears of every and all objects. And if
we consider the case of excellency (which is being’s consent to entity,
and we have shown that this must necessarily be consistent and agreeable
to existing being, and on the contrary, contradiction, dissent to
entity, must necessarily be disagreeable to it), from hence it follows
that all excellency, when perceived, will be agreeable to perceiving
being, and all evil, disagreeable. But God being omnipotent must
necessarily perfectly perceive all excellency and fully know what is
contrary to it, and therefore all excellency is perfectly agreeable to
his will, and all evil perfectly disagreeable. Therefore, he cannot will
to do anything but what is excellent, but justice is all excellency.
135. Deity. Many have
wrong conceptions of the difference between the nature of the deity and
created spirits. The difference is no contrariety, but what naturally
results from his greatness and nothing else, such as [i.e., which]
created spirits come nearer to or more imitate, the greater they are in
their powers and faculties. So that, if we should suppose the faculties
of a created spirit to be enlarged infinitely, there would be the deity
to all intents and purposes, the same simplicity, immutability, etc.
194. God. That is a gross
and an unprofitable idea we have of God, as being something large and
great as bodies are, and infinitely extended throughout the immense
space. For God is neither little nor great with that sort of greatness,
even as the soul of man — it is not at all extended, no more than an
idea, and is not present anywhere as bodies are present, as we have
shown elsewhere. [See The Mind, No. 2] So it is with respect to the
uncreated spirit. The greatness of a soul consists not in any extension,
but its comprehensiveness of idea and extendedness of operation. So the
infiniteness of God consists in his perfect comprehension of all things
and the extendedness of his operation equally to all places. God is
present nowhere any otherwise than the soul is in the body or brain, and
he is present everywhere, as the soul is in the body. We ought to
conceive of God as being omnipotence, perfect knowledge, and perfect
love, and not extended any otherwise than as power, knowledge, and love
are extended, and not as if it were a sort of unknown thing that we call
substance, that is extended.
453. Free Grace. The
righteousness of a judge consists in his judging according to law, or to
the rule of judgment which has been fixed by rightful legislators,
especially if the law and rule of judgment fixed be good, whatever good
principles influenced the legislators in making such laws, whether
justice or goodness and mercy. But God, in the blessings he adjudges to
his people, judges according to the fixed rule of judgment which is his
covenant. God shows his holiness by fulfilling his promises to his
people. God’s faithfulness is part of his holiness, and this is what is
meant by righteousness.
1077. God’s Holiness.
God’s holiness is his having a due, meet, and proper regard to
everything, and therefore consists mainly and preeminently in his
infinite regard or love to himself — he being infinitely the greatest
and most excellent being — and therefore a meet and proper regard to
himself is infinitely greater than to all other beings. Now as he is, as
it were, the sum of all being, and all other positive existence is but a
communication from him, hence it will follow that a proper regard to
himself is the sum of his regard.
1196. God’s Moral
Government. So much evidence of the most perfect exactness of
proportion, harmony, equity, and beauty in the mechanical laws of nature
and other methods of providence, which belong to the course of nature,
by which God shows his regard to harmony and fitness and beauty in what
he does as the governor of the natural world, may strongly argue that he
will maintain the most strict and perfect justice in proportion and
fitness in what he does as the governor of the moral world.
1263. Arbitrary Divine
Operation. God’s immediate and arbitrary operation, in all instances of
it at least in this lower world, whether through all ages on men’s minds
by his spirit, or at some particular season extraordinarily requiring it
in what is called miracles, is that which there is a strong and strange
disposition in many to object against and disbelieve. But for what
reason, unless it be something in the disposition of the heart, is hard
to imagine. (See concerning such prejudices, McLaurin’s Discourses, p.
314, 315, etc.) If there be a God who is truly an intelligent,
voluntary, active being, what is there in reason to incline us to think
that he should not act, and that he should not act upon his creatures,
which, being his creatures, must have their very being from his actions,
and must be perfectly and most absolutely subject to and dependent on
his action? And if he acted once, why must he needs be still forever
after and act no more? What is there in nature to disincline us to
suppose he may not continue to act towards the world he made? And if
under his government, and if he continues to act at all towards his
creatures, then there must be some of his creatures he continues to act
upon immediately. It is nonsense to say he acts upon all mediately,
because in so doing we go back in infinitum from one thing acting on
another without ever coming to a primary, present agent, and yet at the
same time suppose God to be such a present agent.
There are many who allow a
present, continuing, immediate operation of God on the creation (and
indeed such are the late discoveries and advances which have been made
in natural philosophy, that all men of sense, who are also men of
learning, are content to allow it), but yet, because so many of the
constant changes and events in their continued form in the external
world come to pass in a certain exact method, according to certain
fixed, invariable laws, are averse to allow that God acts any otherwise
than as limiting himself by such invariable laws, fixed from the
beginning of the creation (when he precisely marked out and determined
the rules and paths of all his future operations), and that he ever
departs since that from those paths. So that, though they allow an
immediate divine operation in those days, yet they suppose it is now
limited by what we call laws of nature, and seem averse to allow an
arbitrary operation to be continued or even to be needed in these days.
But I desire it may be
well considered whether there be any reason for this. For of the two
kinds of divine operation, viz., that which is arbitrary and that which
is limited by fixed laws, the former, viz., arbitrary, is the first and
foundation of the other and that which all divine operation must finally
be resolved into, and which all events and divine effects whatsoever
primarily depend upon. Even the fixing of the method and rules of the
other kind of operation is an instance of arbitrary operation. When I
speak of arbitrary operation, I do not mean arbitrary in opposition to
an operation directed by wisdom, but only in opposition to an operation
confined to, and limited by, those fixed establishments and laws
commonly called the laws of nature. The one of these I shall therefore,
for want of better phrases, call ‘a natural operation,’ the other ‘an
arbitrary operation.’ The latter of these, as I observed, is first and
supreme, and to which the other is wholly subject and also wholly
dependent, and without which there could be no divine operation at all,
and no effect ever produced, and nothing besides God could ever exist.
Arbitrary operation is that to which is owing the existence of the
subjects of natural operation — the manner, measure, and all the
circumstances of their existence. It is arbitrary operation that fixes,
determines, and limits the laws of natural operation.
Therefore arbitrary operation, being every way the highest, is that
wherein God is most glorified. It is the glory of God that he is an
arbitrary being — that originally he, in all things, acts as being
limited and directed in nothing but his own wisdom, tied to no other
rules and laws but the directions of his own infinite understanding. So
in those that are the highest order of God’s creatures, viz.,
intelligent creatures, that are distinguished from other creatures in
their being made in God’s image, it is one thing wherein consists their
highest natural dignity, that they have an image of this. They have a
secondary and dependent arbitrariness. They are not limited in their
operation to the laws of matter and motion, but that they can do what
they please. The members of men’s bodies obey the act of their wills
without being directed merely by the impulse and attraction of other
bodies in all their motions.
These things being
observed, I would now take notice that the higher we ascend in the scale
of created existence and the nearer we come to the Creator, the more and
more arbitrary we should find the divine operations in the creature, or
those communications and influences in which he maintains an intercourse
with the creature. And it appears beautiful and every way fit and
suitable that it should be so, See B. 1, M tt.
But before I proceed particularly to show this, I would observe how any
divine operation may be said to be more or less arbitrary, or to come
nearer to that which is absolutely arbitrary, in the sense I have spoken
of it, in opposition to a being limited by that general rule called laws
of nature. An operation is absolutely arbitrary when no use is made of
any law of nature, and no respect had to any one such fixed rule or
method.
There are these ways that
the operations which are not absolutely and perfectly arbitrary may
approach near to it:
1. One is, by arbitrary
operations being mixed with those that are natural, i.e., when there is
something in the operation that is arbitrary and tied to no fixed rule
or law, and something else in the operation wherein the laws of nature
are made use of, and without which the designed effect could not take
place. Instances will be given of this afterwards.
2. Another way is when,
though some law or rule is observed, the rule is not general or very
extensive, but some particular rule makes an exception to general laws
of nature, and is a law that extends to comparatively few instances.
This approaches to an arbitrary operation, for the less extensive the
limitation of the operation or the smaller the number of instances or
cases by which it is limited, it is manifest, the nearer the operation
is to unlimited, or limited to no number of cases at all.
Thus supposing there were
an exception to the general law of gravitation towards the center of the
earth, and there were one kind of bodies that, on the contrary, had an
inclination to fly from the center, and that in proportion to the
quantity of matter, but that sort of bodies nowhere to be found but in
some one certain island, and very rarely to be found there. This kind of
operation would be nearer to arbitrary and miraculous than other divine
operations — than those that are limited by the general laws of nature
that obtain everywhere through the world.
3. Another way wherein a
manner of operation approaches to arbitrary is when the limitation to a
method is not absolute, even in the continued course of that sort of
operations, so that the law fails of the nature of a fixed law — as all
that are called laws of nature are. God generally keeps to that method
but ties not himself to it, sometimes departs from it according to his
sovereign pleasure.
Having mentioned these
things, I now proceed particularly to observe how, the higher we ascend
in the scale or series of created existences and the nearer, in thus
ascending, we come to the Creator, the more the manner of divine
operation with respect to the creature approaches to arbitrary in these
respects or in one or the other of them. Thus, in the first place, if we
ascend with respect to time, and go back in the series of existences or
events in the order of their succession to the beginning of the
creation, and so till we come to the Creator, that after we have
ascended beyond the limits and rise of the laws of nature, we shall come
to arbitrary operation. The creation of the matter of the material world
out of nothing, the creation even of every individual atom or primary
particle, was by an operation perfectly arbitrary. And here, by the way,
I would observe that creation out of nothing seems to be the only divine
operation that is absolutely arbitrary, without any kind of use made of
any antecedently fixed method of proceeding, such as is called a law of
nature.
After the creation of the
matter of the world out of nothing, the gradual bringing of the matter
of the world into order was by an arbitrary operation. It was by
arbitrary act divine that the primary particles of matter were put into
motion, and had the direction and degree of their motion determined, and
were brought into so beautiful and useful a situation, one with respect
to another. But yet the operation by which these things were done was
not so absolutely, purely, and unmixedly arbitrary as the first creation
out of nothing. For in these secondary operations, or the works of what
may be called secondary, some use was made of laws of nature before
established, such, at least, as the laws of resistance and attraction or
adhesion and vis inertiae, that are essential to the very being of
matter, for the very solidity of the particles of matter itself consists
in them; but the putting those particles into motion supposes them to
exist in the moving, inert, resisting, and adhering matter. There is use
made of the laws of resistance and adhesion. They are presupposed as the
basis of this secondary operation of God in causing this resistance, vis
inertiae, and adhesion to change place, and in causing the consequent
impulses and mutual influences which is the end of those motions and
dispositions of the situation of particles. So that the creation of
particular natural bodies — as the creation of light, the creation of
the sun, moon, and stars, of earth, air, and seas, flowers, rocks and
minerals, the bodies of plants and animals — was by a mixed operation
partly arbitrary and partly by stated laws. And thus it is as we descend
from the first creation out of nothing through the rest of the
operations of the six days.
But it may be proper here
to remark these following things: 1. Immediate creation seems not
entirely to have ceased with this first work by which the world in
general was brought out of nothing. But after that there was an
immediate creation in making of the souls of Adam and Eve, and also with
respect to the greater part of the body of Eve. 2. The mixing of
arbitrary with natural operations was not only in arbitrarily making use
of laws already established, as in putting material things in motion,
variously compounding them, and the like, but also in establishing new,
more particular laws of nature, with respect to particular creatures as
they were made — as the laws of magnetism, many laws observable in
plants, the laws of instinct in animals, and the law of the operation of
the minds of men. 3. Most things in the visible world were brought into
their present state so as to be of such a particular kind, or to
complete their species of creatures by a secondary creation, which is a
mixed operation, excepting the creation of the highest order of
creatures, viz., intelligent minds, which were wholly created, complete
in their kind, by an absolutely arbitrary operation. What may be said
hereafter may lead us to the reason of this.
And if we proceed in the
succession of existences till we come to the supreme being the other
way, viz., to the end of the world (for though proceeding thus from
preceding to future be, according to a more common way of speaking,
descending, yet it is as truly ascending towards God as proceeding the
other way, for God is the first and the last, the beginning and the
end), now I say, if we ascend up to God this way, proceeding in the
succession of events till we come to the end of time, this way of
proceeding will again bring us to a disposition of the world by a divine
arbitrary operation through the universe. For God will not leave the
world to a gradual decay, languishing through millions of ages under a
miserable decay till it be quite perished and utterly ruined according
to a course of things, according to the laws of nature. But he will
himself destroy the world, will roll the heavens together as a scroll,
will change it as a man puts off an old garment and wears it not till it
gradually drops to pieces, and will take it down as a machine is taken
down when it has answered the workman’s end. And this he will do by an
arrest in the laws of nature everywhere, in all parts of the visible
universe, and by an entire new disposition and mighty change of all
things at once. For though all the laws of nature will not be abolished
— those laws before mentioned in which is the being of the primary
particles of matter will be continued — yet the arbitrary interposition,
entirely beside and above those laws and in some respects contrary to
them and interrupting their influence, may be said to be universal, as
it will be in all parts of the material creation; and very many of the
laws of nature will be utterly abolished, particularly many of the laws
peculiarly respecting plants and animals and human bodies and man’s
animal life.
If we ascend towards God
in the scale of existence according to the degrees of excellency and
perfection, the nearer we come to God the nearer we shall come to
arbitrary influence of the Most High on the creature, till at length,
when we come to the highest rank, we shall come to an intercourse that
is, in many respects, quite above those rules which we call the laws of
nature. The lowest rank of material things are almost wholly under the
government of the general laws of matter and motion. If we ascend from
them to plants, which in many things are governed by more particular
laws, distinct from the laws common to all material things, the laws of
vegetation are doubtless, many of them, distinct from the general laws
of matter and motion and therefore, by what was observed before, nearer
akin to an arbitrary influence. If we ascend from the most imperfect to
the most perfect kind of plants, we shall come to more particular laws
still. And if from thence we rise to animals, we shall come to laws
still more singular, and when we rise to the most perfect of them, we
shall find particular laws or instincts yet nearer akin to an arbitrary
influence. If we rise to mankind, and particularly the mind of man, by
which especially he is above the inferior creatures, and consider the
laws of the common operations of the mind, they are so high above such a
kind of general laws of matter and are so singular that they are
altogether untraceable. (The more particular laws are the harder to be
investigated and traced.) And if we go from the common operations of the
faculties of the mind and rise up to those that are spiritual (which are
infinitely of the highest kind and are those by which the minds are most
conversant with the Creator and have their very next union with him),
though these are not altogether without use made of means and some
connection with antecedents (the connection, after the manner of the
immutable laws of nature, never erring from the degree and exact
measure, time, and precise state of the antecedent) and what we call,
though improperly in this case, second causes, yet the operation may
properly be said to be arbitrary and sovereign. And if we ascend from
saints on earth to angels in heaven, who always behold the face of the
Father which is in heaven, and constantly receive his command on every
occasion, the will of God not being much known to them by any such
methods as the laws of nature but immediately given on all emergencies,
we shall come to greater degrees of an arbitrary intercourse. And if we
rise to the highest step of all next to the supreme being himself, even
the mind of the man Christ Jesus who is united personally to the
Godhead, doubtless there is a constant intercourse, as it were,
infinitely above the laws of nature. N.B. When we come to the highest
ranks of creatures, we come to them who themselves have the greatest
image of God’s arbitrary operation, who it is, therefore, most fit
should be the subjects of such operations.
And if we ascend towards God conjunctly, proceeding in our ascent both
according to the order of degrees and that order [i.e., of time], we
shall find the rule hold still — the more arbitrary shall we find the
divine influence and intercourse, and to a higher degree than by
ascending in one way solely.
Thus if we ascend up to
intelligent creatures, men and angels who are next to the Creator, and
then go back to the beginning of the world, even to their creation, we
shall find more of an arbitrary operation in their creation, and being
brought to perfection in their kind, than in the creation of any other
particular species of creatures. Thus it was not in the creation of
angels as it was in the formation of sun, moon, and stars, minerals,
plants, and animals — who were formed out of preexistent principles by a
secondary creation, as it is called, presupposing, making use of, and
operating upon these principles or subsisting by certain general laws of
nature already established. But the angels were immediately created and
made perfect in their kind at once, by a primary creation, an operation
absolutely arbitrary, as perfectly so as the creation of the primary
particles of matter themselves. And so with respect to the creation of
the soul of man.
And after these intelligent beings were created, at first the divine
intercourse with them must be much more arbitrary than it is now. They
could not be left to themselves and to the laws of nature to acquire
that knowledge and exercise of their faculties by contracted habits and
gradual association of ideas, as we do now, gradually rising from our
first infancy. If man had been thus left, he must needs have soon
perished. But we must suppose that there was an extraordinary influence
and intercourse God had with man far above the law of nature, immediate
instincts enlightening and conducting him, and arbitrarily fixing those
habits in his mind which now are gradually established through a great
length of time. So afterwards for some time, God continued a miraculous
intercourse with our first parents; and we see that, for many of the
first ages of the world, there was an arbitrary intercourse of God with
mankind, not only some particular prophets of one nation or posterity
but with eminent saints of all families. I say, such an arbitrary
intercourse was much more common in those first ages than afterwards.
And if we proceed in the
order of time the other way to the end of the world and till we come to
him who is the end as well as the beginning, it is true we shall find
that an arbitrary influence will then be exerted everywhere throughout
the creation, but more especially and many more ways towards intelligent
being — for instance, towards mankind, in bringing souls departed from
the other world, in raising the dead to life, in miraculously changing
the living, in taking up the saints to meet the Lord, in gathering all,
both good and bad, before the judgment seat, and in all the process of
that day. The laws of nature must be in innumerable ways departed from,
and an extraordinary operation found in the manifesting of the judge and
in the manifestation of the judged one to another, in manifesting and
declaring the actions of particular persons, and the secrets of their
hearts, and the grounds of the sentence, and in all the process of that
day. If the law of nature were not in numberless ways to be departed
from, in these things, the day of judgment would take up more time by
far than the world has stood. And in the execution of the sentence on
both the righteous and the wicked, the glorious powers of God will be
wonderfully and most extraordinarily manifested, in many respects, above
all that ever was before in the arbitrary exertions of it. And if we
look to the beginning and end, the birth and death of each individual
person of mankind, we shall find the same rule hold, as concerning the
beginning and end of the race of mankind in general. The soul of every
man in his generation or birth must be immediately created and infused.
Or if we say that it is according to a fixed law of nature that the
Creator forms and introduces the soul, it being determined by a law of
nature what the precise state of the proper body shall be when the soul
shall begin to exist in it, yet it must be a law of nature that is most
peculiar and widely differing from all other laws of nature, and
independent of them. And so, again, the Creator immediately and
arbitrarily interposes when a man comes to die, in disposing of that
soul that he infused in his birth.
So if we consider the
beginning or creation and end of each individual saint or member: thus
in their beginning or creation (I mean their beginning as saints or
their conversion), commonly at the time of that, God’s sovereign
arbitrary interposition and influence on their hearts is much more
visible and remarkable than ordinarily they are the subjects of in the
course of their lives. And when they come to die, the positive effects
of God’s arbitrary influence are immensely greater in the souls of the
saints in their glorification than in the souls of the wicked in their
damnation.
Thus let us proceed which way we will in the series of things in the
creation, still the higher we ascend and the nearer we come to God in
the gradation or succession of created things, the nearer it comes to
this, that there is no other law than only the law of the infinite
wisdom of the omniscient first cause and supreme disposer of all things,
who in one simple, unchangeable, perpetual action comprehends all
existence in its utmost compass and extent and infinite series.
It is fit that it should
be so, as we proceed and go from step to step among the several parts
and distinct existences and events of the universe, that which way
soever we go, the nearer we come to God the less and less we should find
that things are governed by general laws, and that the arbitrariness of
the supreme cause and governor should be more and more seen. For he is
not seen to be the sovereign ruler of the universe, or God over all, any
otherwise than he is seen to be arbitrary. He is not seen to be active
in the government of the world any other way than it is seen he is
arbitrary. It is not seen but that he himself, in common with his
creatures, is subject in his acting to the same laws with inferior
beings, any other way than it is seen that his arbitrary operation is
every way and everywhere at the head of the universe and is the
foundation and first spring of all.
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