Docf. That as we are creatures, we are some way encouraged to ask of God the grace of the new creature.
I shall draw forth 'the sense of the text and the doctrine in these propositions.
1. That man was made by God, or is GxkI's immediate workman- ship. We have the first notice of it, Gen. i. 26, ' Let us make man after our own image and likeness.' God put more respect upon him than upon the rest of the work of his hands. His creation is ex- pressed in other terms than were used before : ' He said, Let there be light, and it was light ; ' ' Let there be dry land,' titc. But here Go<l speaketh as if he had called a consultation about it, ' Let us make man ; ' not as if there were more difficulty, or as if creating power were at a nonplus, but to show what special notice he taketh of us, and to point out the excellency which he did stamp upon man in his crea- tion beyond the rest of the creatures. There was no creature but had some impress of God upon it, for everything which hath jxissed his hand carrieth God's signature and mark ; it showeth that it came from a being of infinite power and wisdom and goodness. But man hath his image and hkeness stamped upon him : there you may discern God s
272 SERMONS UPON PSALM cxix. [Ser. LXXXI.
track and footprint, but here his very face. In his first moulding of him he would plainly and visibly discover himself. So again, when this making of man is explained, Gen. ii. 7, ' And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul.' Before we read that man was created, here we see in what sort : his body was framed with great art, though of base materials ; a handful of dust did God enliven and form into a beautiful frame. But for the frame within, he had a more excellent and perfect soul than God gave to any other creature ; by the union of both these, man became a living soul. Heaven and earth were married in his person ; the dust of the earth and an immortal spirit, which is called the breath of God, were sweetly linked and joined together, with a disposition and inclination to one another, the soul to the body, and the body to the soul. When he had raised the walls of the flesh, and built the house of the body with all its rooms, then he puts in a noble and divine guest to dwell in it, and both make up one man.
2. The making of man now is the work of God, as well as the making of the first man was. God's bands did not only make and fashion Adam, but David. He saith, ' Thy hands have made me and fashioned me.' The body of man is of God's framing : Ps. cxxxix. 15, 16, ' My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curi- ously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth : thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect ; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.' Our bodies, you see there, though the matter were propagated by our parents, yet his hands made them and fashioned them. God is more our father than our natural parents are. Our parents know not whether the child will be male oi female, beautiful or deformed \ cannot tell the number of the bones, muscles, veins, arteries : this God appointeth and frameth with curious artifice ; so that of all visible creatures, there is none in any sort equalleth man in the curious composition of the body, whether we look upon the beauty and majesty of his person, or take notice of the variety, nature, and use of his several parts, witli their composition and framing them together, with a wonderful order and correspondence one to another, as if they had been described by a model and platform set down in a book : so secretly and curiously was the matter framed in passing through all the changes in the womb till it came to a perfect forma- tion. Then for the soul, God infuseth that: Eccles. xii. 7, 'Then shall our dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit to God that gave it.' God gave the body too, but especially the spirit, because there he worketh singly and immediately ; therefore he is called ' tho Father of spirits.' They do not run in the channel of carnal genera- tion or fleshly descent, Heb. xii. 9. So Zedekiah swore by ' the God that made his soul,' Jer. xxxviii. 16. So Zech. xii. 1, ' He formed the spirit of man within him.^ The parent doth instrumentally produce man in respect of his body, yet the soul is from God, and immediately created and infused into the body by him, and being put into that dead lump of clay, doth animate and quicken it for the most excellent employment.