h
SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 67
my glory pass before thee, and thou shalt see my back parts:" Exod. xxxiii. 18-23, &c. This is all that God would graut, viz., such external representations of himself, in the proclamation of his name, and created appearances of his glory, as we have of a man whose back parts only we behold as he passeth by us. But as to the being of God, and his subsistence in the Trinity of persons, we have no direct intuition into them, much less comprehension of them.
S. It is evident, therefore, that our conceptions of God, and of the glorious properties of his nature, are both ingenerated in us and regulated, under the conduct of divine revelation, by reflections of his glory on other things, and representations of his divine excellen- cies in the effects of them. So the invisible things of God, even his eternal power and Godhead, are clearly seen, being manifested and understood by the things that are made : Rom. i. 20. Yet must it be granted, that no mere creature, not the angels above, not the heaven of heavens, are meet or able to receive upon them such characters of the divine excellencies, as to be a complete, satisfactory representation of the being and properties of God unto us. They are all finite and limited, and so cannot properly represent that which is infinite and immense. And this is the true reason why all worship or religious adoration of them is idolatry. Yet are there such effects of God's glory in them, such impressions of divine excellencies upon them, as we cannot comprehend nor search out unto perfection. How little do we conceive of the nature, glory, and power of angels ! So remote are we from an immediate com- prehension of the uncreated glory of God, as that we cannot fully apprehend, nor conceive aright, the reflection of it on creatures in themselves finite and limited. Hence, they thought of old, when they had seen an angel, that so much of the divine perfections had been manifested unto them that thereon they must die : Judges xiii. 21, 22. Howbeit, they [the angels] come infinitely short of making any complete representation of God; nor is it otherwise with any creature whatever.
4. Mankind seem to have always had a common apprehension tliat there was need of a nearer and more full representation of God unto them, than was made in any of the works of creation or provi- dence. The heavens, indeed, declared his glory, and the firmament always showed his handy-work — the invisible things of his eternal power and Godhead were continually made known by the things that are made ; but men generally miscarried and missed it in the contemplation of them, as the apostle declares, Rom. i. For still they were influenced by a common presumption, that there must be a nearer and more evident manifestation of God — that made by the works of creation and providence being not sufficient to guide
68 THE PERSON OF CHETST.
them unto him. But in the pursuit hereof they utterly mined themselves ; they would do what God had not done. By common consent they framed representations of God unto themselves ; and were so besotted therein, that they utterly lost the benefit which they might have received by the manifestation of him in the works of the creation, and took up with most foolish imaginations. For whereas they might have learned from thence the being of God, his infinite wisdom, power, and goodness — viz., in the impressions and characters of them on the things that were made — in their own representations of him, they " changed the glory of the invisible God into an image made like unto corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things : " Rom. i. 23. Wherefore this common presumption — that there was no way to attain a due sense of the Divine Being but by some representation of it — though true in itself, yet, by the craft of Satan, and foolish superstitions of the minds of men, became the occasion of all idolatry and flagitious wickedness in the world. Hence were all those im(pd,viiai, or supposed "illustrious appearances" of their gods, which Satan deluded the Gentiles by ; and hence were all the ways which they devised to bring God into human nature, or the likeness of it. Wherefore, in all the revelations that ever God made of himself, his mind and will, he always laid this practice of making representations of him under the most severe interdict and prohibition. And this he did evidently for these two reasons : —
(1.) Because it was a bold and foolish intrenching upon his pro- visional wisdom in the case. He had taken care that there should be a glorious image and representation of himself, infinitely above what any created wisdom could find out. But as, when Moses went into the mount, the Israelites would not wait for his return, but made a calf in his stead ; so mankind — refusing to wait for the actual exhibition of that glorious image of himself which God had provided — broke in upon his wisdom and sovereignty, to make some of their own. For this cause was God so provoked, that he gave them up to such stupid blindness, that in those things wherein they thought to show themselves wise, and to bring God nearer unto them, they became contemptibly foolish — abased their nature, and all the noble faculties of their minds unto hell, and departed unto the utmost distance from God, whom they sought to bring near unto them.