* Vide Ainsworth and D. Rivetus on the place. The Hebrew words in this Exod. iii. and their several significations do well agree with the name Jehovah, which implieth, that God here sending Moses, is eternal in his being, faithful in hig promisefi, and almighty in the performance thereof.
30 AN ARK FOR ALL GOD'S NOAHS. [LaM. III. 24.
it is utterly impossible for him to be better, or other than he is. If God should in the least be alterable or mutable, he would pre.sently cease to be God. God is a God of that transcendent excellency, that there can be nothing added to him, nor nothing subtracted from him. If you add anything to him, you deny him to be God ; and if you take anything from him, you destroy his being, James i. 17 ; Ps. xc. 2, ' From everlasting to everlasting thou art God.' * And Mary hath chosen the better part, which shall never be taken from her,' Luke x. 42. God is eternal, as neither being capable of a beginning nor ending ; and there- fore the Egyptians used to signify God by a circle, and the Persians thought that they honoured God most, when, going up to the top of the highest tower, they called him the circle of heaven. Now you know a circle hath no end. And it was a custom among the Turks to go up every morning to a high tower, and to cry out, God always was, and always will be, and so salute their Mahomet. Some things have a be- ginning, but no ending, as angels and the souls of men ; and some things have no beginning, and yet have an end, as the decrees of God in their final accomplishment ; and some things have both a beginning and an ending, as all sublunary things ; but God hath neither beginning nor ending. All creatures have a lasting, angels have an outlasting, but God hath an everlasting being: 1 Tim. i. 17, 'Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory, for ever and ever. Amen.' God is without beginning and end, first and last, past and to come : Ps. cii. 25-27, *0f old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth ; and the heavens are the works of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure ; yea, all of them shall wax old like a gar- ment : as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed : but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.' Were there no other scripture to prove the eternity and immutability of God, this were enough.' Whatever changes may pass upon the heavens and the earth, yet God will always remain unchangeable and unalterable. By what hath been said, it is most evident that God is an everlasting portion, that he is a never-failing portion.
But now all earthly portions are very uncertain ; now they are, and anon they are not: Prov. xxiii. 5, 'Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle towards heaven.' Though the foolish world call riches substance, yet they have no solid subsistence. All earthly portions are as transitory as a shadow, a ship, a bubble, a bird, a dream, an arrow, a post that passeth swiftly away. Riches were never true to any that have trustee! in them. In this text, riches are said not to be, because they do not continue to be ; they will not abide by a man, they will not long continue with a man, and therefore they are as if they were not.2 All earthly things are vain and transitory, they are rather shows and shadows than real things themselves: 1 Cor. vii. 31, ' For the fashion of this world passeth away.' The Greek word eyjiiia signifies a mathe- matical figure, which is a mere notion, and nothing in substance. All
' He that made heaven and eartli must needs be before them, and therefore eternal; but this God did, ergo.
- Crassus was so ricli that he maintained an army with his own revenues; yet he, his great army, with liis son and heir, fell together, and so his great estate fell to others. [Jioo index under Crassus for other references to this. — G.]
Lam. III. 24.] an ark for all god's noahs. 37
the glory of this world is rather a matter of fashion than of substance, it is a body without a soul, it is a golden shell without a kernel, it is a show without a substance. There is no firmness, there is no solidness, there is no consistency, there is no constancy in any of the creatures. All the pomp, and state, and glory of the world is but a mere piece of pageantry, a mask, a comedy, a fantasy : Acts xxv. 23, ' And on the mor- row, when Agrippa was come, and Bernice, with great pomp.' The original words, /ierd mXKrig <pavTa<fiot.i, signifies great fantasy, or vain show. The greatest glory and pomp of this world, in the eye of God, in the account of God, is but as a fantasy or a shadow. It was a custom in Home, that when the emperor went by upon some great day in all his imperial pomp, there was an officer appointed to burn fla.K before him, and to cry out, Sic transit gloria mundi, so the glory of this world passeth away ;* and this was purposely done to put him in mind that all his honour, pomp, glory, and grandeur should soon pass and vanish away, as the flax did that he saw burnt before his eyes. That great conqueror of the world, Alexander, caused a sword in the compass of a wheel to be painted upon a table, to shew that what h.e had gotten by the sword was subject to be turned about by the wheel of fortune f and many great conquerors, besides him, have found it so, and many now alive have seen it so.