VeR. 55.] SERMONS UPON I'SAOI CXIX. 83
out of the hands of their enemies on every side.' It is a base ingrati- tude not to remember, prize, and esteem God for all this,
[3.] Ordinances. Ministry was instituted to put you in remem- brance, and give you still new and fresh occasions to thinlc of God : 2 Peter i. 12, ' I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance.' Our business is not always to inform you of what you know not, but to inculcate and revive known truths, there being much forgetfulness, stupidness, and senselessness upon our spirits : 2 Peter iii. 1, ' That I may stir up your minds by way of remembrance.' The impressions oi God on our minds are soon defaced ; we need to quicken and awaken your affections and resolutions to choose and cleave to God : 1 Tim. iv, 6, ' If thou put the bVethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ.' So sacraments are instituted to bring God to remembrance : 1 Cor. xi. 24, ' This do in remembrance of me ; ' that we may remember his love and our covenanted duty. The sabbath was instituted for a remembrance and memorial of his creating, redeeming goodness.
[4.] The great office and work of the Spirit is to bring to remem- brance : John xiv. 26, ' He shall bring all things to your remem- brance.' We are apt to forget God, and instructions, and rebukes in their season : the Holy Ghost is our monitor.
3. God will not forget them that remember him. He will remem- ber them at every turn : Mai. iii. 16, ' Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard it ; and a book of remembrance was written before him, for them that feared the Lord, and thought upon his name.' If he do not openly re- ward you with temporal deliverances, yet he taketh notice of every thought and every word you speak for him, and taketh pleasure in you. It is upon record ; if you have not the comfort of it now, you shall have it in a little time. Because they thought of him they spake of him, and owned him in an evil time; and therefore God is represen- ted as hearing and booking : and the books shall one day be opened, and then you shall have your public reward.
Doct. 2. God is best remembered when his name is studied.
First, When is his name studied ? In the general, when we look upon him as he hath manifested himself in his word and works. More particularly, God is discovered sometimes by the name of his essence, sometimes by his attributes.
1. By the name of his essence. When Moses was very inquisitive to know his name — and God can best tell his own name — let us see what answer was made him : Exod. iii. 12, 13, * When they shall say unto me, What is his name? and God said, I am that I am.' God was sending Moses upon a strange message ; he was giving him com- mission to go and speak to a king to dismiss and let go six hundred thousand of his subjects, to lead them to a place which God should sliow. Now Moses thought for such a message he had need have good authority, therefore desireth a significant name. ' I am that I am.' The form of the words showeth it was a wonderful incomprehensible name : ' Ask not my name, for it is Wonderful,' Judges xiii. 18. This is enough to satisfy sober inquiry, though not wanton curiosity, enough for faith to work upon : the great I AM hath sent me. It showeth
84 SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. [SeR. LXI.
liis unsearcliableness. It is our manner of speech when we would cover anything and not answer distinctly, we say, It is what it is ; I have said what I have said. Finite understandings cannot compre- hend him that is infinite, no more than you can empty the sea with a cockleshell. He is the great and only being, in comparison of whom all else is nothing : Isa. xl. 17, ' All nations before him are nothing, they are counted less than nothing and vanity.' You have not a true and full notion of God if you conceive him only as the most eminent of all beings : no being must appear as being in his sight and in comparison of him. As long as you only conceive God to be the best, you still attribute something to the creature, for all comparatives include the positive. The creature is nothing in com- parison with God ; all the glory, perfection, and excellency of the whole world do not amount to the value of a unit in regard of God's attributes: join never so many of them together, they cannot make up one number, they are nothing in his regard, and less than nothing. All created beings must utterly vanish out of sight when we think of God. As the sun doth not annihilate the stars, and make them nothing, yet it annihilates their appearance to our sight ; some arc of the first magnitude, some of the second, some of the third, but in the day-time all are alike, all are darkened by the sun's glory : so it is here ; there are degrees of perfection and excellency if we compare one creature with another, but let once the glorious brightness of God shine upon the soul, and in that light all their differences are unobserved. Angels, men, worms, they are all nothing, less than nothing to be set up against God : this magnificent title, I am, darkeneth all, as if nothing else were. God did not tell Moses that he was the best, the highest, and the most glorious, but ' I am, and there is none else be- sides me ;' nothing that hath its being of itself, nothing that can be properly called its own. Thus the incomprehensible self-existence of God puts man into his original nothing : none but God can say, I am, because all things else are but borrowed drops of this self-sufficient fountain ; other things are near to nothing. God most properly is, who never was nothing, never shall be nothing, who may always in all difference of time say, / am, and nothing else but God can say so. The heaven and earth six thousand years ago could not say, We are. Adam could once have said, I am, as to his existence in the compounded nature of man, but now he cannot say it. All the gene- rations past were but are not, and the present is but will not be ; and wnthin a little while who of us can say, I am ? No ; our ' place will know us no more ; ' but God eternally saith, ' I am ; ' not, I have been, or I shall be, but ' I am.' Look a little backward, and you shall find man's beginning ; step a little forward, and you shall overtake his dissolu- tion. But God is still I am ; he is one that is before all, after all, and in all. He beholdeth from the mount of eternity all the succes- sions and changes of the creature, and there is no succession or muta- tion in his knowledge. Well, then, hei-e is an answer for Pharaoh, and the Israelites, and all of you to study on, ' I am that I am.' I am the fountain of all being, that do unchangeably and eternally exist in myself, and from myself.