How improperly, and with what little reason, these places are in- terpreted of a corporeal similitude or shape, hath been showed. Wherein the image of God consists the apostle shows, as was de- clared, determining it to be in the intellectual part, not in the bodily,^ Col. iii. 10, 'Ei/fiuCa/iefo/ tIv viov {avOpwTtov^) rov dvaKccivoii/j^ivov sig sT/'y- i/wc/v, xaT iixfjvu rou xrtaavrog ahrov. The word here used, dxuiv,
' Plato said the same thing expi'essly, apud Stoboeum, Eclogas Ethicae, lib. ii. cap. iii. p. 1C3.
OF THE SHAPE AND BODILY FIGURE OF GOD. 108
is of a grosser signification than J5o?, which hath its original from the intellectual operation of the mind; yet this the apostle determines to relate to the mind and spiritual excellencies, so that it cannot, from the places he hath mentioned, Avith the least colour of reason, he concluded that God hath a corporeal similitude, likeness, person, or shape.^
What hath already been delivered concerning the nature of God^ and is yet necessarily to be added, will not permit that much be pe- culiarly spoken to this head, for the removal of those imperfections from him which necessarily attend that assignation of a bodily shape to him which is here aimed at. That the Ancient of Days is not really one in the shape of an old man, sitting in heaven on a throne, glistering with a corporeal glory, his hair being white and his rai- ment beautiful, is sufficiently evinced from every property and per- fection which in the Scripture is assigned to him.
The Holy Ghost, speaking in the Scripture concerning God, doth not without indignation suppose any thing to be likened or com- pared to him. Maimonides hath observed that these words, Aph, Ira, etc., are never attributed to God but in the case of idolatry; that never any idolater was so silly as to think that an idol of wood, stone, or metal, was a god that made the heavens and earth ; but that through them all idolaters intend to worship God.^ Now, to fancy a corporeity in God, or that he is like a creature, is greater and more iiTational dishonour to him than idolatry. " To whom will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?" Isa. xl. 1 8. " Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he that sitteth," etc. " To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One," verses 21-23, 25. Because the Scripture speaks of the eyes and ears, nostrils and arms of the Lord, and of man being made after his likeness, if any one shall conclude that he sees, hears, smells, and hath the shape of a man, he must, upon the same reason, conclude that he hath the shape of a lion, of an eagle, and is like a drunken man, because in Scripture he is compared to them, and so of necessity make a monster of him, and worship a chimera.*
Nay, the Scripture plainly interprets itself as to these attributions
' Si'o; iirri -x-vivfia voifiv, o'ux ?;t;ov ^o;(p)5v. — Fosidonius apud StobiBum; Eclogoe Phy- sicse, lib. i. cap. i. p. 2. I confess Epicurus said, ' Avffeo-^roiihu; t7:ai Tohg Qtovs — Stobieus ibidem, cap. iii. p. 5. And possibly Mr B. miglit borrow liis missiiapen divinity from him and the Anthropomorphitcs; and then we have the pedigree of his wild positions. But the more sober philosophers (as Stobseus there tells us) held otherwise : esaw oLx'
aVToy ol/oi ofttTov, elVi fti'rpftToy, ouhi Oiaffrarov, duoi u/^Xm tivi ffcuficcri ofi':iov, CtC. ; Wluch
Guil. Canterus renders thus, " Quod nee tangi, nee cerni potest Deus, neque sub men- suram, vel terminura cadit aut alicui est corpori simile."
■ Videsis Rab. M. Maimouid. de Idolat. sect. 2, 3, etc.; et Notas Dionysii Vossii ibidem.
^ " Quoede Dcodicuntur in sacro codice Mp&i'ro'TKf'us, interpretanda sunt Siar^trw,-."
104 VINDICI^ EVANGELIC^,
unto God. His arm is not an arm of flesh, 2 Chron. xxxii. 8. Neither are his eyes of flesh, neither seeth he as man seeth, Job X. 4. Nay, the highest we can pretend to (which is our way of un- derstanding), though it hath some resemblance of him, yet falls it infinitely short of a likeness or equality with him. And the Holy Ghost himself gives a plain interpretation of his own intendment in such expressions: for whereas, Luke xi. 20, our Saviour says that he "with the finger of God cast out devils;" Matt. xii. 28, he affirms that he did it " by the Spirit of God," intending the same thing. It neither is nor can righteously be required that we should produce any place of Scripture expressly affirming that God hath no shape, nor hands, nor eyes, as we have, no more than it is that he is no lion or eagle. It is enough that there is that delivered of him abundantly which is altogether inconsistent with any such shape as by Mr B. is fancied, and that so eminent a difference as that now mentioned is put between his arms and eyes and ours, as manifests them to agree in some analogy of the thing signified by them, and not in an answerableness in the same kind. Wherefore I say, that the Scripture speaking of God, though it condescends to the na- ture and capacities of men, and speaks for the most part to the imagination (farther than which few among the sons of men were ever able to raise their cogitations), yet hath it clearly delivered to us such attributes of God as will not consist with that gross notion which this man would put upon the Godhead. The infinity and im- mutability of God do manifestly overthrow the conceit of a shape and form of God.^ Were it not a contradiction that a body should be actually infinite, yet such a body could not have a shape, such a one as he imagines. The shape of any thing is the figuration of it ; the figuration is the determination of its extension towards several parts, consisting in a determined proportion of them to each other ; that determination is a bounding and limiting of them : so that if it have a shape, that will be limited which was supposed to be infinite, which is a manifest contradiction. But the Scripture doth plainly show that God is infinite and immense, not in magnitude (that were a contradiction, as will appear anon) but in essence. Speaking to our fancy, it saith that " he is higher than heaven, deeper than hell," Job xi. 8 ; that " he fills heaven and earth," Jer. xxiii. 24 ; that " the heaven of heavens cannot contain him," 1 Kings viii. 27; and it hath many [such] expressions to shadow out the immensity of God, as was manifest in our consideration of the last query. But not content to have yielded thus to our infirmity, it delivers likewise, in plain and literal terms, the infiuiteness of God: "His understanding is infinite," Ps. cxlvii. 5 ; and therefore his essence is necessarily so. This is a consequence that none can deny who will consider it till he under- ' Vid. D. Bax'nes in 1 . partem Aquinatis, quaest. 3, art. 1, et Scholasticos passim.