[4.j When your hearts faint in regard of outward su[)plies and temporal provision, survey the creatures. Who is it that feeds the beasts of the earth, and makes some of the fowl fattest in winter when provisions are scarcest ? At whose charge are all the fish of the sea and the beasts of the forest maintained ? Who spreads a table for all creatures ? The woild is but God's great common ; he is landlord, he looks after all his creatures, that they be all supplied : Mat. vi. 25, * Take no thought what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, nor yet for your body what you shall put on ; is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment ? ' As if he had said, God that gave you life out of nothing, certainly he will give you food ; and he that gave you a body, he will provide for you raiment. And Christ sends us to the creation, ver. 26, ' Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them ; are ye not much better than they?' So David, Ps. cxlv. 16, 'Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.'
400 «EUMOXS UPON IIEBIIEWS XL [SeI!. \ LIL
[5] Greaten the privileges of your covenant interest. Now if yoii would know wlint it is to liave God for your God in covenant, consider the creation, the work of his hand ; the mighty power of that God tliat made tlie workl is made over to you in the covenant of grace. See Jon^dl i. 9, ' I am an Hebrew, and 1 fear the Lord, the God of heaven, whicli made the sea, and tlie dry land.' You have the creator to pro- vide for you : 1 Cor. iii. 22, 23, ' All things are yours, for you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.' Thou hast God himself, and he hath all creatures at his command and beck, and by possessing God, wlio is all ill all, we possess all things. This will help us to enlarge our thoughts according to the extent of the covenant.
3. There are proper objects for God's several and special excellences. Because one creature could not represent the infinite perfection of God, therefore he hath multii)lied tJiem, and given to every one some special })roperty, whereljy he may be known and discovered. For instance, if you would meditate of God's purity and holiness among the creatures YOU must single out the light, which of all qualities is most pure ; though it pass through the most impure places, it is not tainted ; it is some resemblance of the holiness of God : 1 John i. 5, ' God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.' Look u])on the sun, by that means YOU may the better consider the purity and holiness of God ; the sun is but as the black and sutty bottom of a caldron in regard of God. So for God's immensity and greatness, pitch upon the vastness of the firmament, or the sea, or upon any other immense or great body. Of the vast magnitude and huge extension of the firmament, how many millions of miles do the stars take up in their tract and course ? Astronomers reckon two hundred thirty-nine thousand miles ; what is this to God ? 1 Kings viii. 27, ' The heaven of heavens cannot contain him.' Isa. xl. 12, ' He hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with a span,' &c. The sun is reck- oned to be a hundred and sixty-six times bigger than the earth ; what is this to God ? The psalmist speaks of the ' great and wide sea,' Ps. civ, 2.5. Man cannot think of such a vast body as the sea without some religious horror and dread of God : it represents to us the infiniteness of God. So for the power of God, think of his upholding the earth ; there is the great instance of God's power, that so vast a weight as the body of the earth and waters is together should hang in the thin air, which of itself will not so much as sustain a tennis bailor feather, yet this is the only supporter of the earth and the watei-s ; the immovable dwelling-place of all the living creatures is hung upon nothing but upon the air. Sometimes it is said that the earth is founded upon the waters, as Ps. xxiv. 2, ' He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods;' at other times, as Job xxvi. 7, ' He hangeth the earth upon nothing.' This great weight, it hangs merely upon the power of God, and therefore this discovers the greatness of the creator. So in bridling the sea, Job xxxvii. 10, ' The breadth of the waters is straitened.' God handles it as a nurse her babe, who turns and sways the child by the fire ; so doth God with the sea: Job xxxviii. 8, 9, 'Who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth as if it had issued out of the womb ? When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it.'