Part 19
It were worth consideration,} whether this describing God by the members of an human body were so much figuratively to be understood, as with respect to the incarnation of our Saviour, who was to assume the human nature and all the members of a human body.
Asaph, speaking in the person of God : Ps. Ixxviii. 2, ' I will open my mouth in parables.' In regard of God it is to be understood figuratively, but in regard of Christ literally, to whom it is applied, Mat. xiii. 34, 35. And that apparition, Isa. vi., which was the appearance of Jehovah, is applied to Christ, John xii. 40, 41.
After the report of the creation, and the forming of man, we read of God's speaking to him, but not of God's appearing to him in any visible shape. J A voice might be formed in the air to give man notice of his duty ; some way of information he must have what positive laws he was to observe, besides that law which was engraven in his nature, which we call the law of nature ; and without a voice the knowledge of the divine will could not be so conveniently communicated to man. Though God was heard in a voice, he was not seen in a shape ; but after the fall we several times read of his appearing in such a form. Though we read of his speak
ing before man's committing of sin, yet not of his walking, which is more corporeal, till afterwards, Gen. iii. 8. Though God would not have man believe him to be corporeal, yet he judged it expedient to give some pre-notices of that divine incarnation which he had promised. §
5. Therefore we must not conceive of the visible Deity, according to the letter of such expressions, but the true intent of them. Though the Scrip ture speaks of his eyes and arms, yet it denies them to be arms of flesh, Job x. 4, 2 Chron. xxxii. 8. We must not conceive of God according to the letter, but the design of the metaphor. When we hear things described by metaphorical expressions, for the clearing them up to our fancy, we conceive not of them under that garb, but remove the veil by an act of our reason. When Christ is called a sun, a vine, bread, is any so stupid as to conceive him to be a vine with material branches and clusters, or be of the same nature with a loaf ? But the things designed by such metaphors are obvious to the conception of a mean understanding. If we would conceive God to have a body like a man, because he describes himself so, we may conceit him to be like a bird, because he is mentioned with wings, Ps. xxxvi. 7, or like
* Episcop, Instltu. 1. 4, sect. 3, cap. 3. t It is Zanchy's observation, torn. 2, de natura Dei, lib. i. cap. 4, tlies. 9. | Amyrald. Moral, torn. i. p. 293, 294. \ Amyrald.
JOHN IV. 24.] GOD is A SPIRIT. 271
a lion or leopard, because he likens himself to them in the acts of his strength and fury, Hosea xiii. 7, 8. He is called a rock, a horn, fire, to note his strength and wrath. If any be so stupid as to think God to be really such, they would make him not only a man, but worse than a monster.
Onkelos,* the Chaldee paraphrast, upon parts of the Scripture, was so tender of expressing the notion of any corporiety in God, that, when he meets with any expressions of that nature, he translates them according to the true
intent of them, as when God is said to ' descend,' Gen. xi. 5, which implies a local motion, a motion from one place to another, he translates it ' and God revealed himself.1 We should conceive of God according to the design of the expressions. When we read of his eyes, we should conceive his omni science; of his hand, his power; of his sitting, his immutability; of his throne, his majesty ; and conceive of him as surmounting not only the grossness of bodies, but the spiritual excellency of the most dignified creatures, something
so perfect, great, spiritual, as nothing can be conceived higher and purer.
Christ, saith one,f is truly Deus figuratus, and for his sake was it more easily permitted to the Jews to think of God in the shape of a man.
Use. If God be a pure spiritual being, then, 1. Man is not the image of God, according to his external bodily form and figure. The image of God in man consisted not in what is seen, but in what is not seen ; not in the conformation of the members, but rather in the
spiritual faculties of the soul, or, most of all, in the holy endowments of those faculties : Eph. iv. 24, < That ye put on the new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness,' Col. iii. 10. The image, which is restored by redeeming grace, was the image of God by original nature. The image of God cannot be in that part which is common to us with beasts, but rather in that wherein we excel all living creatures, in reason, understanding, and an immortal spirit. God expressly saith, that
none * saw a similitude ' of him, Deut. iv. 15, 16, which had not been true if man in regard of his body had been the image and similitude of God, for then a figure of God had been seen every day, as often as we saw a man or
beheld ourselves ; nor would the apostle's argument stand good : Acts xvii. 29, that * the Godhead is not like to stone graven by art ' if we were not the offspring of God, and bore the stamp of his nature in our spirits rather than our bodies.! It was a fancy of Eugubinus that, when God set upon the actual creation of man, he took a bodily form for an exemplar of that which he would express in his work, and, therefore, that the words of Moses, Gen. i. 26, are to be understood of the body of man, because there was in
man such a shape which God had then assumed. To let alone God's form ing himself a body for that work as a groundless fancy, man can in no wise be said to be the image of God in regard of the substance of his body, but beasts may as well be said to be made in the image of God, whose bodies have the same members as the body of man for the most part, and excel men in the acuteness of the senses and swiftness of their motion, agility of body, greatness of strength, and in some kind of ingenuities also wherein man hath been a scholar to the brutes and beholden to their skill. The soul comes nearest the nature of God as being a spiritual substance, yet, considered singly in regard of its spiritual substance, cannot well be said to be the image of God. A beast, because of its corporiety, may as well be called the image of a man, for there is a greater similitude between man and a brute in the rank of bodies than there can be between God and the highest angels in the rank of spirits. If it doth not consist in the substance of the soul, much less can
* Maimon. More Nevoc. part i .cap. 27. t More's Conjectura Cabalisti-ea, p. 127. J Petav. TheoL Dog. torn. i. lib. ii. cap. i. p. 104.
272 CHARNOCK'S WORKS. [JOHN IY. 24.
it in any similitude of the body. This image consisted partly in the state of man as he had dominion over the creatures, partly in the nature of man as he was an intelligent being, and thereby was capable of having a grant of that dominion, but principally in the conformity of the soul with God in the frame of his spirit and the holiness of his actions ; not at all in the figure and form of his body physically, though morally there might be, as there was a rectitude in the body, as an instrument to conform to the holy motions of the soul, as the holiness of the soul sparkled in the actions and members of the body. If man were like God because he hath a body, whatsoever hath a body hath some resemblance to God, and may be said to be in part his image ; but the truth is, the essence of all creatures cannot be an image of the immense essence of God.
2. If God be a pure Spirit, it is unreasonable to frame any image or picture of God.* Some heathens have been wiser in this than some Christians. Pythagoras forbade his scholars to engrave any shape of him upon a ring, because he was not to be comprehended by sense, but conceived only in our minds ; our hands are as unable to fashion him as our own eyes to see him.t The ancient Komans worshipped their gods one hundred and seventy years before any material representations of them,J and the ancient idolatrous Germans thought it a wicked thing to represent God in a human shape ; yet some, and those no Romanists, labour to defend the making images of God in the resemblance of man ; because he is so represented in Scripture, he may be,§ saith one, conceived so in our minds and figured so to our sense. If this were a good reason, why may he not be pictured as a lion, horn, eagle, rock, since he is under such metaphors shadowed to us ? The same ground there is for the one as for the other. What though man be a nobler creature, God hath no more the body 0f a man than that of an eagle, and some per fections in other creatures represent some excellencies in his nature and actions which cannot be figured by a human shape, as strength by the lion, swiftness and readiness by the wings of the bird. But God hath absolutely prohibited the making any image whatsoever of him, and that with terrible threatenings : Exod. xx. 5, * I the Lord am a jealous God, visiting the ini quities of the fathers upon their children,' and Deut. v. 8, 9. After God had given the Israelites the commandment wherein he forbade them to have any God before him, he forbids all figuring of him by the hand of man ; not only images, but any likeness of him either by things in heaven, in the earth, or in the water. How often doth he discover his indignation by the prophets, against them that offer to mould him in a creature form ! This law was not to serve a particular dispensation, or to endure a particular time, but it was a declaration of his will, invariable in all places and all times, being founded upon the immutable nature of his being, and therefore agreeable to the law of nature ; otherwise, not chargeable upon the heathens. And, therefore, when God had declared his nature and his works in a stately and majestic eloquence, he demands of them, to whom they would liken him, or what likeness they would compare unto him, Isa. xl. 18 ; where they could find anything that would be a lively image and resemblance of his infinite excellency ? Founding it upon the infiniteness of his nature, which neces sarily implies the spirituality of it. God is infinitely above any statue, and those that think to draw God by a stroke of a pencil, or form him by the engravings of art, are more stupid than the statues themselves.
To shew the unreasonableness of it, consider,
* Jamblyc. protrept, cap. 21, symb. 24. t Austin de Civitat. Dei. lib. iv. cap. 31, out of Varro. J Tacitus. I Gerhard Loc. Commun. vol. iv. ; Exegesis de natura Dei, cap. 8, sect. 1.
JOHN IV. 24.] GOD is A SPIRIT. 273
(1.) It is impossible to fashion any image of God. If our more capacious souls cannot grasp his nature, our weaker sense cannot frame his image ; it is more possible of the two, to comprehend him in our minds, than to frame him in an image to our sense. He inhabits inaccessible light ; as it is impossible for the eye of man to see him, it is impossible for the art of man to paint him upon walls, and carve him out of wood. None knows him but
himself, none can describe him but himself.* Can we draw a figure of our own souls, and express that part of ourselves wherein we are most like to God ? Can we extend this to any bodily figure, and divide it into parts ? How can we deal so with the original copy, whence the first draught of our souls was taken, and which is infinitely more spiritual than men or angels ? No corporeal thing can represent a spiritual substance ; there is no propor tion in nature between them ; God is a simple, infinite, immense, eternal, invisible, incorruptible being. A statue is a compound, finite, limited, temporal, visible, and corruptible body. God is a living Spirit ; but a statue nor sees, nor hears, nor perceives anything. But suppose God had a body, it is impossible to mould an image of it in the true glory of that body. Can the statue of an excellent monarch represent the majesty and air of his countenance, though made by the skilfullest workman in the world ? If God had a body in some measure suited to his excellency, were it possible for man to make an exact image of him, who cannot picture the light, heat, motion, magnitude, and dazzling property of the sun ? The excellency of any corporeal nature of the least creature, the temper, instinct, artifice, are beyond the power of a carving tool, much more is God.
(2.) To make any corporeal representation of God is unworthy of God, It is a disgrace to his nature. Whosoever thinks a carnal corruptible image to be fit for a representation of God, renders God no better than a carnal
and corporeal being. It is a kind of debasing an angel, who is a spiritual nature, to represent him in a bodily shape, who is as far removed from any fleshliness as heaven from earth ; much more to degrade the glory of the divine nature to the lineaments of a man. The whole stock of images is
but a lie of God : Jer. x. 8, 14, 4 A doctrine of vanities and falsehood.' It represents him in a false garb to the world, and sinks his glory into that of a corruptible creature, Rom. i. 23, 25. It impairs the reverence of God
in the minds of men, and by degrees may debase men's apprehensions of God, and be a means to make them believe he is such a one as themselves, and that not being free from the figure, he is not also free from the imper fections of their bodies. Corporeal images of God were the fruits of base imaginations of him ; and as they sprung from them, so they contribute to a greater corruption of the notions of the divine nature. The heathens began their first representations of him by the image of a corruptible man, then of birds, till they descended, not only to four-footed beasts, but creeping thingseven serpents, as the apostle seems to intimate in his enumeration, Rom. i. 23. It had been more honourable to have continued in human representation of him, than have sunk so low as beasts and serpents, the baser images, though the first had been infinitely unworthy of him, he being more above a man, though the noblest creature, than man is above a worm, a toad, or the most despicable creeping thing upon the earth. To think we can make an image of God of a piece of marble, or an ingot of gold, is a greater debasing of him than it would be of a great prince, if you should represent him in the statue
of a frog. When the Israelites represented God by a calf, it is said, * They sinned a great sin,' Exod. xxxii. 81. And the sin of Jeroboam, who intended only a representation of God by the calves at Dan and Bethel, is
* Cocceius, Sura. Theol., cap. 9, p. 47, sec. 35. VOL. I. S
274 CHARNOCK'S WORKS. [JOHN IV. 24.
called more emphatically, Hosea x. 15, DDf&n J1$?"J, * the -wickedness of your wickedness,' the very scum and dregs of wickedness. As men debased God by this, so God debased men for this ; he degraded the Israelites into captivity under the worst of their enemies, and punished the heathens with spiritual judgments, as uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts, Kom. i. 24, which is repeated again in other expressions, ver. 26, 27, as a meet recompence for their disgracing the spiritual nature of God. Had God been like to man, they had not offended in it ; but I mention this to shew a probable reason of those base lusts which are in the midst of us, that have scarce been exceeded by any nation, viz., the unworthy and unspiritual conceits of God, which are as much a debasing of him as material images were when they were more rife in the world, and may be as well the cause of those spiritual judgments upon men as the worshipping molten and carved images were the cause of the same upon the heathen.
(3.) Yet this is natural to man. Wherein we may see the contrariety of man to God. Though God be a Spirit, yet there is nothing man is more prone to than to represent him under a corporeal form. The most famous guides of the heathen world have fashioned him, not only according to the more honourable images of men, but bestialised him in the form of a brute. The Egyptians, whose country was the school of learning to Greece, were notoriously guilty of this brutishness, in worshipping an ox for an image of their god ; and the Philistines their Dagon, in a figure composed of the image of a woman and a fish.* Such representations were ancient in the oriental parts. The gods of Laban, that he accuseth Jacob of stealing from him, are supposed to be little figures of men, Gen. xxxi. 30, 34. Such was
the Israelites' golden calf; their worship was not terminated on the image, but they worshipped the true God under that representation. They could not be so brutish to call a calf their deliverer, and give to him a great title, — ' These be thy gods, 0 Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt,' Exod. xxxii. 4, — or that which they knew belonged to the true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They knew the calf to be formed of their earrings, but they had consecrated it to God as a representation of him. Though they chose the form of the Egyptian idol, yet they knew that Apis, Osiris, and Isis, the gods the Egyptians adored in that figure, had not wrought their redemption from bondage, but would have used their force, had they been possessed of any, to have kept them under the yoke, rather than have freed them from it. The feast also which they celebrated before
that image is called by Aaron the feast of the Lord : ver. 5, * A feast to Jehovah,' the incommunicable name of the Creator of the world. It is therefore evident, that both the priest and the people pretended to serve the true God, not any false divinity of Egypt ; that God who had rescued them from Egypt with a mighty hand, divided the Eed Sea before them, destroyed their enemies, conducted them, fed them by miracle, spoken to them from mount Sinai, and amazed them by his thunderings and lightnings when he instructed them by his law, a God they could not so soon forget. And with this representing God by that image, they are charged by the psalmist :
Ps. cvi. 19, 20, ' They made a calf in Horeb, and changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass.' They changed their glory ; that is, God the glory of Israel ; so that they took this figure for the image of the true God of Israel, their own God, not the God of any other nation in the world. Jeroboam intended no other by his calves, but symbols of the presence of the true God, instead of the ark and the propitiatory which remained among the Jews. We see the inclinations of our natures in the
* Daille, super, Cor. i. 10, Ser. 3.
JOHN IV. 24.] GOD A is SPIEIT. £75
practice of the Israelites, a people chosen out the whole world to bear up
God's name, and preserve his glory ; and in that the images of God were so soon set up in the Christian church, and to this day the picture of God in the shape of an old man is visible in the temples of the Romanists. It is prone to the nature of man.
(4.) To represent God by a corporeal image, and to worship him in and by that image, is idolatry. Though the Israelites did not acknowledge the calf to be God, nor intended a worship to any of the Egyptian deities by it, but worshipped that God in it who had so lately and miraculously delivered them from a cruel servitude, and could not in natural reason judge him to be clothed with a bodily shape, much less to be like an ox that eateth grass, yet the apostle brings no less a charge against them than that of idolatry,
1 Cor. x. 7. He calls them idolaters, who before that calf kept a feast to Jehovah, citing Exod. xxxii. 5. Suppose we could make such an image of God as might perfectly represent him, yet since God hath prohibited it, shall we be wiser than God ? He hath sufficiently manifested himself in his works without images ; he is seen in the creatures, more particularly in the heavens, which declare his glory. His works are more excellent repre sentations of him, as being the works of his own hands, than anything that is the product of the art of man. His glory sparkles in the heavens, sun, moon, and stars, as being magnificent pieces of his wisdom and power, yet the kissing the hand to the sun or the heavens, as representative of the excel lency and majesty of God, is idolatry in Scripture account, and a denial ot
God, Jobxxxi. 26-28, a prostituting the glory of God to a creature. Either the worship is terminated on the image itself,* and then it is confessed byall to be idolatry, because it is a giving that worship to a creature which is the sole right of God ; or not terminated in the image, but in the object represented by it ; it is then a foolish thing ; we may as well terminate our worship on the true object, without as with an image. An erected statue is no
sign or symbol of God's special presence, as the ark, tabernacle, temple were. It is no part of divine institution, has no authority of a command to sup port it, no cordial of a promise to encourage it ; and the image being infinitely distant from, and below the majesty and spirituality of God, cannot con stitute one object of worship with him. To put a religious character upon any image formed by the corrupt imagination of man, as a representation of the invisible and spiritual Deity, is to think the Godhead to be like silver and
gold, or stone graven by art and man's device, Acts xvii. 29.
3. This doctrine will direct us in our conceptions of God as a pure, perfect spirit, than which nothing can be imagined more perfect, more pure, more spiritual.
(1.) We cannot have an adequate or suitable conception of God. He dwells in inaccessible light ; inaccessible to the acuteness of our fancy, as well as the weakness of our sense. If we could have thoughts of him as high and excellent as his nature, our conceptions must be as infinite as his nature. All our imaginations of him cannot represent him, because every created species is finite ; it cannot, therefore, represent to us a full and substantial notion of an infinite being. We cannot speak or think worthily enough of him who is greater than our words, vaster than our understandings. Whatsoever we speak or think of God is handed first to'us by the notice we have of some perfection in the creature, and explains to us some particular excellency of God, rather than the fulness of his essence. No creature, nor all creatures together, can furnish us with such a magnificent notion of God as can give us a clear view of him. Yet God in his word is pleased to
* Lawson, Body of Divin., p. 161.
276 CHAENOCK'S WOKKS. [JOHN IY. 24.
step below his own excellency, and point us to those excellencies in his works, whereby we may ascend to the knowledge of those excellencies which
are in his nature. But the creatures, whence we draw our lessons, being finite, and our understandings being finite, it is utterly impossible to have a notion of God commensurate to the immensity and spirituality of his being.
* God is not like to visible creatures, nor is there any proportion between him and the most spiritual.'* We cannot have a full notion of a spiritual nature, much less can we have of God, who is a Spirit above spirits. No spirit can clearly represent him. The angels, that are great spirits, are bounded in their extent, finite in their being, and of a mutable nature.
Yet though we cannot have a suitable conception of God, we must not content ourselves without any conception of him. It is our sin not to endeavour after a true notion of him ; it is our sin to rest in a mean and low notion of him, when our reason tells us we are capable of having higher ; but if we ascend as high as we can, though we shall then come short of a suitable notion of him, this is not our sin, but our weakness. God is infinitely superior to the choicest conceptions, not only of a sinner, but of a creature. If all conceptions of God below the true nature of God were sin, there is not a holy angel in heaven free from sin, because though they are the most capacious creatures, yet they cannot have such a notion of an infinite being as is fully suitable to his nature, unless they were infinite as he himself is.
(2.) But, however, we must by no means conceive of God under a human or corporeal shape. Since we cannot have conceptions honourable enough for his nature, we must take heed we entertain not any which may debase his nature. Though we cannot comprehend him as he is, we must be care ful not to fancy him to be what he is not. It is a vain thing to conceive him with human lineaments. We must think higher of him than to ascribe to him so mean a shape. We deny his spirituality when we fancy him under such a form. He is spiritual, and between that which is spiritual and that which is corporeal there is no resemblance. f Indeed, Daniel saw God in a human form : Dan. vii. 9, * The Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hairs of his head like pure wool : ' he is described as coming to judgment. It is not meant of Christ probably ; because Christ, ver. 13, is called the Son of man coming near to the Ancient of days. This is not the proper shape of God, for no man hath seen his shape. It was a vision wherein such representations were made, as were accommodated to the inward sense of Daniel. Daniel saw him in a rapture or ecstasy, wherein outward senses are of no use. God is described, not as he is in himself, of a human form, but in regard of his fitness to judge. White denotes the purity and simplicity of the divine nature ; Ancient of days, in regard of his eternity ; white hair, in regard of his prudence and wisdom, which is more eminent in age than youth, and more fit to discern causes and to distinguish between right and wrong. Visions are riddles, and must not be understood in a literal sense. We are to watch against such determinate conceptions of God. Vain imaginations do easily infest us ; tinder will not sooner take fire, than our natures kindle into wrong notions of the divine majesty. We are very apt to fashion a god like ourselves. We must therefore look upon such representations of God as accommodated to our weakness, and no more think them to be literal descriptions of God, as he is in himself, than we will think the image of the sun in the water to be the true sun in the heavens. We may indeed conceive of Christ as man, who hath in heaven the vestment of our nature, and is Deus figuratus, though we cannot conceive the Godhead under a human shape.
* Amyrald, Moral., torn. i. p. 289. f Episc. Institut., lib. iv. sec 2, c. 17.
JOHN IV. 24.] GOD is A SPIKIT. 277
[1.] To have such a fancy is to disparage and wrong God. A corporeal fancy of God is as ridiculous in itself, and as injurious to God, as a wooden statue. The capricioes of our imagination are often more monstrous than
the images which are the works of art. It is as irreligious to measure God's essence by our line, his perfections by our imperfections, as to measure his thoughts and actings by the weakness and unworthiness of our own. This is to limit an infinite essence, and pull him down to our scanty measures, and render that which is unconceivably above us equal with us. It is impossible we can conceive God after the manner of a body, but we must bring him down to the proportion of a body, which is to diminish his glory, and stoop him below the dignity of his nature. God is a pure Spirit ; he hath nothing of the nature and tincture of a body. Whosoever, therefore, conceives of him as having a bodily form, though he fancy the most beautiful and comely body, instead of owning his dignity, detracts from the supereminent excellency of his nature and blessedness. When men fancy God like themselves in their corporeal nature, they will soon make a progress, and ascribe to him their corrupt nature ; and while they clothe him with their bodies, invest him also in the infirmities of them. God is a jealous God, very sensible of any disgrace, and will be as much incensed against an inward idolatry, as an outward. That command, Exod. xx. 4, which forbade corporeal images, would not indulge carnal imaginations, since the nature of God is as much wronged by unworthy images erected in the fancy, as by statues carved out of stone or metals. One, as well as the other, is a desert ing of our true spouse and committing adultery, one with a material image, and the other with a carnal notion of God. Since God humbles himself to
our apprehensions, we should not debase him in thinking him to be that in his nature, which he makes only a resemblance of himself to us.
[2.] To have such fancies of God, will obstruct and pollute our worship of him. How is it possible to give him a right worship, of whom we have so debasing a notion ? We shall never think a corporeal deity worthy of a
dedication of our spirits. The hating instruction, and casting God's word behind the back, is charged upon the imagination they had, that God was
1 such a one as themselves,' Ps. 1. 17, 21. Many of the wiser heathens did not judge their statues to be their gods, or their gods to be like their statues, but suited them to their politic designs, and judged them a good invention to keep people within the bounds of obedience and devotion by such visible figures of them, which might imprint a reverence and fear of those gods upon them. But these were false measures. A despised and undervalued god is not an object of petition or affection. Who would address seriously to a god he has low apprehensions of ? The more raised thoughts we have of him, the viler sense we shall have of ourselves. They would make us humble and self-abhorrent in our supplications to him : Job xlii. 6, « Wherefore I abhor myself,' &c.
(3.) Though we must not conceive of God, as of a human or corporeal shape, yet we cannot think of God without some reflection upon our own being. We cannot conceive him to be an intelligent being, but we must make some comparison between him and our own understanding nature, to come to a knowledge of him. Since we are enclosed in bodies, we apprehend nothing but what comes in by sense, and what we in some sort measure by sensible objects. And in the consideration of those things which we desire to abstract from sense, we are fain to make use of the assistances of sense and visible things. And therefore, when we frame the highest notion, there will be some similitude of some corporeal thing in our fancy ; and though we would spiritualise our thoughts, and aim at a more abstracted and raised
278 CHAENOCK S WORKS. [JOHN IV. 24.
understanding, yet there will be some dregs of matter sticking to our con ceptions ; yet we still judge, by argument and reasoning, what the thing is we think of under those material images. A corporeal image will follow us, as the shadow doth the body.* While we are in the body and surrounded with fleshly matter, we cannot think of things without some help from cor poreal representations. Something of sense will interpose itself in our purest conceptions of spiritual things, for the faculties which serve for contemplation are either corporeal, as the sense and fancy, or so allied to them, that nothing passes into them but by the organs of the body, f so that there is a natural inclination to figure nothing but under a corporeal notion, till by an attentive application of the mind and reason to the object thought upon, we separate that which is bodily from that which is spiritual, and by degrees ascend to that true notion of that we think upon, and would have a due conception of in our mind. Therefore God tempers the declaration of himself to our weak ness, and the condition of our natures. He condescends to our littleness and narrowness, when he declares himself by the similitude of bodily mem bers ; as the light of the sun is tempered, and diffuseth itself to our sense through the air and vapours, that our weak eyes may not bo too much dazzled with it. Without it we could not know or judge of the sun, because we could have no use of our sense, which we must have before we can judge of it in our understanding; so we are not able to conceive of spiritual beings in the purity of their own nature, without such a temperament, and such shadows to usher them into our minds. And therefore we find the Spirit of God accommodates himself to our contracted and tethered capacities, and uses such expressions of God as are suited to us, in this state of flesh wherein we are ; and therefore, because we cannot apprehend God in the simplicity of his own being and his undivided essence, he draws the representations of himself from several creatures, and several actions of those creatures : as sometimes he is said to be angry, to walk, to sit, to fly. Not that we should rest in such conceptions of him, but take our rise from this foundation, and
such perfections in the creatures, to mount up to a knowledge of God's nature by those several steps, and conceive of him by those divided excellen cies, because we cannot conceive of him in the purity of his own essence. I We cannot possibly think or speak of God, unless we transfer the names of created perfections to him ; yet we are to conceive of them in a higher manner when we apply them to the divine nature, than when we consider them in the several creatures formally, exceeding those perfections and excel lencies which are in the creature, and in a more excellent manner. As one§
saith : * Though we cannot comprehend God without the help of such resem blances, yet we may, without making an image of him ; so that inability of ours excuseth those apprehensions of him from any way offending against his divine nature.' These are not notions so much suited to the nature of God as the weakness of man. They are helps to our meditations, but ought not to be formal conceptions of him. We may assist ourselves in our appre hensions of him, by considering the subtilty and spirituality of air, and con sidering the members of a body, without thinking him to be air or to have any corporeal member. Our reason tells us that whatsoever is a body is limited and bounded, and the notion of infiniteness and bodiliness cannot agree and consist together ; and therefore, what is offered by our fancy should be purified by our reason.
(4.) Therefore we are to elevate and refine all our notions of God, and spiritualise our conceptions of him. Every man is to have a conception of
* Nazianzen. J Lessius. t Amyrald, Moral, torn. i. p. 180, &c. § Towerson on the Commandments, p 112.
JOHN IV. 24.] GOD is A SPIRIT. 279
God, therefore he ought to have one of the highest elevation. Since we cannot have a full notion of him, we should endeavour to make it as high and as pure as we can. Though we cannot conceive of God, but some corporeal representations or images in our minds will be conversant with us, as motes in the air when we look upon the heavens, yet our conception may and must rise higher. As when we see the draught of the heavens and earth in a globe, or a kingdom in a map, it helps our conceptions, but doth not ter minate them ; we conceive them to be of a vast extent, far beyond that short description of them ; so we should endeavour to refine every representation of God, to rise higher and higher, and have our apprehensions still more purified ; separating the perfect from the imperfect, casting away the one and greatening the other ; conceive him to be a Spirit diffused through all, containing all, perceiving all. All the perfections of God are infinitely elevated above the excellencies of the creatures, above whatsoever can be conceived by the clearest and most piercing understanding. The nature of God, as a Spirit, is infinitely superior to whatsoever we can conceive perfect in the notion of a created spirit. Whatsoever God is, he is infinitely so. He is infinite wisdom, infinite goodness, infinite knowledge, infinite power, infinite spirit, infinitely distant from the weakness of creatures, infinitely mounted above the excellencies of creatures. As easy to be known that he is, as im possible to be comprehended what he is.
Conceive of him as excellent, without any imperfection. A Spirit with out parts ; great without quantity ; perfect without quality ; everywhere without place ; powerful without members ; understanding without igno rance ; wise without reasoning ; light without darkness ; infinitely more excelling the beauty of all creatures, than the light in the sun pure and unviolated exceeds the splendour of the sun dispersed and divided through a cloudy and misty air. And when you have risen to the highest, conceive him yet infinitely above all you can conceive of spirit, and acknowledge the infirmity of your own minds. And whatsoever conception comes into your minds, say, This is not God, God is more than this. If I could conceive him, he were not God, for God is incomprehensibly above whatsoever I can say, whatsoever I can think and conceive of him.
Inference 4. If God be a Spirit, no corporeal thing can defile him. Some bring an argument against the omnipresence of God, that it is a dis paragement to the divine essence to be everywhere, in nasty cottages as well as beautiful palaces and garnished temples. What place can defile a spirit ? Is light, which approaches to the nature of spirit, polluted by shining upon a dunghill, or a sunbeam tainted by darting upon a quag mire ? Doth an angel contract any soil, by stepping into a nasty prison to deliver Peter ? What can steam from the most noisome body, to pollute
the spiritual nature of God ? As he is ' of purer eyes than to behold ini
quity,' Hab. i. 13, so he is of a more spiritual substance than to contract any physical pollution from the places where he doth diffuse himself. Did our Saviour, who had a true body, derive any taint from the lepers he touched, the diseases he cured, or the devils he expelled ? God is a pure Spirit, plungeth himself into no filth, is dashed with no spot by being present with all bodies. Bodies only receive defilement from bodies.
Inference 5. If God be a Spirit, he is active and communicative. He is not clogged with heavy and sluggish matter, which is cause of dulness and inactivity. The more subtle, thin, and approaching nearer the nature of a spirit anything is, the more diffusive it is. Air is a gliding substance, spreads itself through all religions,* pierceth into all bodies ; it fills the
* Qu. ' regions ' ?— ED.
280 CHARNOCK'S WORKS. [JOHN IV. 24.
space between heaven and earth, there is nothing but partakes of the virtue of it. Light, which is an emblem of spirit, insinuates itself into all places, refresheth all things. As spirits are fuller, so they are more overflowing,
more piercing, more operative than bodies. TheJ Egyptians' horses were weak things, because they were flesh and not spirit, Isa. xxxi. 3. The soul being a spirit, conveys more to the body than the body can to it. What cannot so great a Spirit do for us ! What cannot so great a Spirit work in us ! God being a Spirit above all spirits, can pierce into the centre of all spirits ; make his way into the most secret recesses ; stamp what he pleases. It is no more to him to turn our spirits, than to make a wilderness become waters, and speak a chaos into a beautiful frame of heaven and earth. He can act our souls with infinite more ease than our souls can act our bodies ; he can fix in us what motions, frames, inclinations he pleases ; he can come and settle in our hearts with all his treasures. It is an encouragement to confide in him, when we petition him for spiritual blessings. As he is a Spirit, he is possessed with spiritual blessings, Eph. i. 3. A spirit delights to bestow things suitable to its nature, as bodies do to communicate what is agreeable to theirs. As he is a Father of spirits, we may go to him for the welfare of our spirits ; he being a Spirit, is as able to repair our spirits, as he was to create them.
As he is a Spirit, he is indefatigable in acting. The members of the body tire and flag ; but who ever heard of a soul wearied with being active ! Who ever heard of a weary angel ! In the purest simplicity, there is the greatest power, the most efficacious goodness, the most reaching justice to affect the spirit, that can insinuate itself everywhere to punish wickedness
•without weariness, as well as to comfort goodness. God is active, because he is Spirit ; and if we be like to God, the more spiritual we are, the more active we shall be.
Inference 6. God being a Spirit, is immortal. His being immortal and being invisible are joined together, 1 Tim. i. 17. Spirits are in their nature incorruptible ; they can only perish by that hand that framed them. Every compounded thing is subject to mutation ; but God being a pure and simple
Spirit, is without corruption, without any shadow of change, James i. 17. Where there is composition, there is some kind of repugnancy of one part against the other ; and where there is repugnancy, there is a capability of dissolution. God, in regard of his infinite spirituality, hath nothing in his own nature contrary to it ; can have nothing in himself which is not him self. The world perishes, friends change and are dissolved, bodies moulder, because they are mutable. God is a Spirit in the highest excellency and glory of spirits ; nothing is beyond him, nothing above him, no contrariety within him. This is our comfort, if we devote ourselves to him ; this God is our God ; this Spirit is our Spirit ; this is our all, our immutable, our incorruptible support ; a Spirit that cannot die and leave us.
Inference 7. If God be a Spirit, we see how we can only converse with him ; by our spirits. Bodies and spirits are not suitable to one another; we can only see, know, embrace a spirit with our spirits. He judges not of us by our corporeal actions, nor our external devotions, by our masks and dis guises, he fixes his eye upon the frame of the heart, bends his ear to the groans of our spirits. He is not pleased with outward pomp, he is not a body; therefore the beauty of temples, delicacy of sacrifices, fumes of incense, are not grateful to him ; by those or any external action we have no communion with him. A spirit, when broken, is his delightful sacrifice,
Ps. li. 17; we must therefore have our spirits fitted for him, be 'renewed
in the spirit of our mind,' Eph. iv. 23, that we may be in a posture to live
JOHN IV. 24.] GOD is A SPIRIT. 281
with him, and have an intercourse with him. We can never be united to God but in our spirits ; bodies unite with bodies, spirits with spirits. The more spiritual anything is, the more closely doth it unite. Air hath the closest union, nothing meets together sooner than that when the parts are divided by the interposition of a body.
Inference 8. If God be a Spirit, he can only be the true satisfaction of our spirits. Spirit can only be filled with a spirit. Content flows from likeness and suitableness ; as we have a resemblance to God in regard of the spiritual nature of our soul, so we can have no satisfaction but in him.
Spirit can no more be really satisfied with that which is corporeal, than a beast can delight in the company of an angel; corporeal things can no more fill a hungry spirit than pure spirit can feed an hungry body ; God, the highest Spirit, can only reach out a full content to our spirits. Man is lord of the creation ; nothing below him can be fit for his converse, nothing above him offers itself to his converse but God. We have no correspond ence with angels. The influence they have upon us, the protection they afford us, is secret and undiscerned ; but God, the highest Spirit, offers himself to us in his Son, in his ordinances, is visible in every creature, presents himself to us in every providence ; to him we must seek, in him we must rest. God had no rest from the creation till he had made man, and man can have no rest in the creation till he rests in God. God only
is ' our dwelling-place,' Ps. xc. 1 ; our souls should only long for him, Ps. Ixiii. 1 ; our souls should only wait upon him. The spirit of man never riseth to its original glory, till it be carried up on the wings of faith and love to its original copy. The face of the soul looks most beautiful when it is turned to the face of God, the Father of spirits ; when the derived spirit is
fixed "upon the original Spirit, drawing from it life and glory. Spirit is only the receptacle of spirit. God as Spirit is our principle, we must therefore live upon him. God as Spirit hath some resemblance to us as his image, we must therefore only satisfy ourselves in him.
Inference 9. If God be a Spirit, we should take most care of that wherein we are like to God. Spirit is nobler than body, we must therefore value our spirits above our bodies ; the soul as spirit partakes more of the divine nature, and deserves more of our choicest cares. If we have any love to this Spirit, we should have a real affection to our own spirit, as bearing a stamp of the spiritual divinity, the chiefest of all the works of God; as it is said of Behemoth, Job xl. 19. That which is most the image of this immense Spirit should be our darling; so David calls his soul, Ps. xxxv. 17. Shall we take care of that wherein we partake not of God, and not delight in the jewel which hath his own signature upon it ? God was not only the framer of spirits, and the end of spirits, but the copy and exemplar of spirits. God partakes of no corporiety, he is pure Spirit. But how do we act, as if we were only matter and body ! We have but little kindness for this great Spirit as well as our own, if we take no care of his immediate offspring, since he is not only Spirit, but the Father of spirits, Heb. xii. 9.
Inference 10. If God be a Spirit, let us take heed of those sins which are spiritual. Paul distinguished between the filth of the flesh and that of the spirit, 2 Cor. vii. 1 ; by the one we defile the body, by the other we defile the spirit, which in regard of its nature is of kin to the Creator. To wrong one who is near of kin to a prince is worse than to injure an inferior sub ject. When we make our spirits, which are most like to God in their
nature, and framed according to his image, a stage to act vain imaginations, wicked desires, and unclean affections, we wrong God in the excellency of
282 CHAJRNOCK'S WOKKS. [JOHN IV. 24.
his work, and reflect upon the nobleness of the pattern ; we wrong him in that part where he hath stamped the most signal character of his own spiritual nature, we defile that whereby we have only converse with him as a Spirit, which he hath ordered more immediately to represent him in this nature, than all corporeal things in the world can, and make that Spirit
with whom we desire to be joined unfit for such a knot. God's spirituality is the root of his other perfections. We have already heard he could not be infinite, omnipresent, immutable without it. Spiritual sins are the greatest root of bitterness within us ; as grace in our spirits renders us more like to a spiritual God, so spiritual sins bring us into a conformity to a degraded devil, Eph. ii. 2, 8. Carnal sins change us from men to brutes, and spiritual sins divest us of the image of God for the image of. Satan. We should by no means make our spirits a dunghill, which bear upon them the character of the spiritual nature of God, and were made for his residence. Let us therefore behave ourselves towards God in all those ways which the spiritual nature of God requires us.
A DISCOURSE UPON SPIRITUAL WORSHIP.
God is a Spirit : and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in
truth. — JOHN IV. 24.
HAVING thus despatched the first proposition, ' God is a Spirit,' it "will not be amiss to handle the inference our Saviour makes from that proposition, which is the second observation propounded.
Doct. That the worship due from us to God ought to be spiritual, and spiritually performed.
Spirit and truth are understood variously. Either we are to worship God, 1. Not by legal ceremonies ; the evangelical administration bsing called
spirit in opposition to the legal ordinances as carnal, and truth in opposito them as typical. As the whole Judaical service is called flesh, go the whole evangelical service is called spirit. Or spirit may be opposed to the worship at Jerusalem, as it was carnal; truth, to the worship on the mount Gerizim, because it was false. They had not the true object of worship, nor the true medium of worship as those at Jerusalem had. Their worship should cease, because it was false, and the Jewish worship should cease, because it was carnal.
There is no need of a candle when the sun spreads its beams in the air ; no need of those ceremonies when the Sun of righteousness appeared ; they only served for a candle to instruct and direct men till the time of his coming. The shadows are chased away by the displaying the substance, so that they can be of no more use in the worship of God, since the end for which they were instituted is expired, and that is discovered to us in the gospel, which the Jews sought for in vain among the baggage and stuff of their ceremonies.
2. With a spiritual and sincere frame. ' In spirit,' i. e. with spirit ; with the inward operations of all the faculties of our souls, and the cream and flower of them ; and the reason is, because there ought to be a worship suitable to the nature of God. And as the worship was to be spiritual, so the exercise of that worship ought to be in a spiritual manner.* It shall be a worship in truth, because the true God shall be adored without those vain imaginations, and fantastic resemblances of him, which were common among the blind Gentiles, and contrary to the glorious nature of God, and unworthy ingredients in religious services. It shall be a worship in spirit, without those carnal rites the degenerated Jews rested on. Such a posture
* Lingend, torn. ii. p. 777. Taylor's Exemplar, Preface, sec. 30.
284 CHARNOCK'S WORKS. [JOHN IV. 24.
of soul, which is the life and ornament of every service, God looks for at your hands. There must be some proportion between the object adored, and the manner in which we adore it. It must not be a mere corporeal worship, because God is not a body; but it must rise from the centre of our soul, because God is a Spirit. If he were a body, a bodily worship might suit him, images might be fit to represent him ; but being a Spirit, our bodily services enter us not into communion with him. Being a Spirit, we must banish from our minds all carnal imaginations of him, and separate from our wills all cold and dissembled affections to him. We must not only have a loud voice, but an elevated soul ; not only a bended knee, but a broken heart ; not only a supplicating tone, but a groaning spirit ; not only a ready ear for the word, but a receiving heart ; and this shall be of greater value with him than the most costly outward services offered at Gerizim or Jerusalem.
Our Saviour certainly meant not, by worshipping in spirit, only the matter of the evangelical service as opposed to the legal administration, without the manner wherein it was to be performed. It is true, God always sought a worship in spirit ; he expected the heart of the worshipper should join with his instituted rights of adoration in every exercise of them ; but he expects such a carriage more under the gospel administration, because of the clearer discoveries of his nature made in it, and the greater assistances con veyed by it.
I shall therefore, I. Lay down some general propositions. II. Shew what this spiritual worship is. III. Why we must offer to God a spiritual service. IV. The use.
i I. Some general propositions.
Prop. 1. First, The right exercise of worship is founded upon and riseth from the spirituality of God.* The first ground of the worship we render to God is the infinite excellency of his nature, which is not only one attribute, but results from all ; for God as God is the object of worship, and the notion of God consists not in thinking him wise, good, just, but all those infinitely beyond any conception. And hence it follows that God is an object infinitely to be loved and honoured. His goodness is sometimes spoken of in Scripture as a motive of our homage : Ps. cxxx. 4, ' There is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared.' Fear, in the Scripture dialect, signifies the whole worship of God : Acts x. 35, * But in every nation he that fears him is accepted of him ;' so 2 Kings xvii. 32, 33. If God should act towards men according to the rigours of his justice due to them for the least of their crimes, there could be no exercise of any affection but that of despair, which could not engender a worship of God, which ought to be joined with love, not with hatred. The beneficence and patience of
God, and his readiness to pardon men, is the reason of the honour they return to him. And this is so evident a motive, that generally the idolatrous world ranked those creatures in the number of their gods, which they perceived useful and beneficial to mankind, as the sun and moon, the Egyptians the ox, &c. And the more beneficial anything appeared to mankind, the higher station men gave it in the rank of their deities, and bestowed a more peculiar and solemn worship upon it. Men worshipped God to procure or continue his favour, which would not have been acted by them, had they not con ceived it a pleasing thing to him to be merciful and gracious.
* Ames Medul. lib. ii. cap. 4, sec. 20.
JOHN IV. 24.] SPIEITUAL WORSHIP. 285
Sometimes his justice is proposed to us as a motive of worship : Heb. xii. 28, 29, ' Serve God with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a con suming fire ;' which includes his holiness, whereby he doth hate sin, as well as his wrath, whereby he doth punish it. Who but a mad and totally brutish person, or one that was resolved to make war against heaven, could
behold the effects of God's anger in the world, consider him in his justice as a consuming fire, and despise him, and rather be drawn out by that con sideration to blasphemy and despair, than to seek all ways to appease him ? Now though the infinite power of God, his unspeakable wisdom, his incom prehensible goodness, the holiness of his nature, the vigilance of his provi dence, the bounty of his hand signify to man that he should love and honour him, and are the motive of worship, yet the spirituality of his nature is the rule of worship, and directs us to render our duty to him with all the powers of our soul. As his goodness beams out upon us, worship is due in justice to him ; and as he is the most excellent nature, veneration is due to
him in the highest manner with the choicest affections.
So that indeed the spirituality of God comes chiefly into consideration in matter of worship. All his perfections are grounded upon this. He could
not be infinite, immutable, omniscient, if he were a corporeal being.* We cannot give him a worship unless we judge him worthy, excellent, and de serving a worship at our hands ; and we cannot judge him worthy of a wor ship unless we have some apprehensions and admirations of his infinite virtues ; and we cannot apprehend and admire those perfections, but as we see them as causes shining in their effects. When we see, therefore, the frame of the world to be the work of his power, the order of the world to be the fruit of his wisdom, and the usefulness of the world to be the pro duct of his goodness, we find the motives and reasons of worship ; and weighing that this power, wisdom, goodness, infinitely transcend any cor poreal nature, we find a rule of worship, that it ought to be offered by us in a manner suitable to such a nature as is infinitely above any bodily being. His being a Spirit declares what he is, his other perfections declare what
kind of Spirit he is. All God's perfections suppose him a Spirit ; all centre in this. His wisdom doth not suppose him merciful, or his mercy suppose him omniscient. There may be distinct notions of those, but all suppose him to be of a spiritual nature. How cold and frozen will our devotions be if we consider not his omniscience, whereby he discerns our hearts !f How carnal will our services be if we consider him not as a pure spirit ! In our offers to, and transactions with men, we deal not with them as mere animals, but as rational creatures ; and we debase their natures if we treat
them otherwise. And if we have not raised apprehensions of God's spiritual nature in our treating with him, but allow him only such frames as we think fit enough for men, we debase his spirituality to the littleness of our own being. We must therefore possess our souls with this, we shall else render him no better than a fleshly service. We do not much concern ourselves in those things of which we are either utterly ignorant, or have but slight apprehensions of.
That is the first proposition ; the right exercise of worship is grounded upon the spirituality of God.
Prop. 2. This spiritual worship of God is manifest by the light of nature to be due to him. In reference to this, consider,
1. The outward means or matter of that worship which would be accept able to God was not known by the light of nature. The law for a worship, and for a spiritual worship by the faculties of our souls, was natural, and
* Amyrald, Dissert. 6, disp. 1, p. 12. t Amirant de Kelig.
286 CHABNOCK'S WORKS. f JOHN IV. 24.
part of the law of creation, though the determination of the particular acts whereby God would have this homage testified was of positive institution, and depended not upon the law of creation. Though Adam in innocence . knew God was to be worshipped, yet by nature he did not know by what
outward acts he was to pay this respect, or at what time he was more solemnly to be exercised in it than at another. This depended upon the directions God, as the sovereign governor and lawgiver, should prescribe. You therefore find the positive institutions of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the determination of the time of worship, Gen. ii. 3, 17. Had there been any such notion in Adam naturally, as strong as that other, that a worship was due to God, there would have been found some relics of these modes universally consented to by mankind, as well as of the other. But though all nations have by an universal consent concurred in the acknowledgment of the being of God, and his right to adoration, and the obligation of the creature to it, and that there ought to be some public rule and polity in matters of religion (for no nation hath been in the world with out a worship, and without external acts and certain ceremonies to signify that worship), yet their modes and rites have been as various as their climates, unless in that common notion of sacrifices, not descending to them by nature, but tradition, from Adam ; and the various ways of worship have been more provoking than pleasing. Every nation suited the kind of wor ship to their particular ends and polities they designed to rule by. How God was to be worshipped is more difficult to be discerned by nature with its eyes out than with its eyes clear. The pillars upon which the worship of God stands cannot be discerned without revelation,* no more than blind Samson could tell where the pillars of the Philistines' theatre stood, without one to conduct him. What Adam could not see with his sound eyes, we cannot with our dim eyes ; he must be told from heaven what worship was fit for the God of heaven. It is not by nature that we can have such a full prospect of God as may content and quiet us. This is the noble effect of divine revelation, he only knows himself, and can only make himself known to us. It could not be supposed that an infinite God should have no per fections but what were visible in the works of his hands, and that these perfections should not be infinitely greater than as they were sensible in their present effects. This had been to apprehend God a limited being, meaner than he is. Now it is impossible to honour God as we ought, unless we know him as he is ; and we could not know him as he is without divine revelation from himself; for none but God can acquaint us with his own nature. And therefore the nations void of this conduct heap up modes of worship from their own imaginations, unworthy of the majesty of God, and below the nature of man. A rational man would scarce have owned such for signs of honour, as the Scripture mentions in the services of Baal and Dagon, much less an infinitely wise and glorious God. And when God had signified his mind to his own people, how unwilling were they to rest
satisfied with God's determination, but would be warping to their own inven tions, and make gods, and ways of worship to themselves, Amos v. 26, as in the matter of the golden calf, as was lately spoken of.
2. Though the outward manner of worship acceptable to God could not be known without revelation, and those revelations might be various, yet the inward manner of worship with our spirits was manifest by nature. And not only manifest by nature to Adam in innocence, but after his fall, and the scales he had brought upon his understanding by that fall. When God gave him his positive institutions before the fall, or whatsoever additions God should
* King on Jonah, p, 63.
JOHN IV. 24.] SPIRITUAL WORSHIP. 287
have made had he persisted in that state, or when he appointed him after his fall to testify his acknowledgment of him by sacrifices, there needed no command to him to make those acknowledgments by those outward ways prescribed to him with the intention and prime affection of his spirit. This nature would instruct him in without revelation. For he could not possibly have any semblance of reason to think that the offering of beasts, or the presenting the first-fruits of the increase of the ground as an acknowledg ment of God's sovereignty over him, and his bounty to him, was sufficient, without devoting to him that part wherein the image of his Creator did con sist. He could not but discern by a reflection upon his own being, that he was made for God as well as by God ; for it is a natural principle, of which
the apostle speaks Rom. xi. 36, ' For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things,' &c., that the whole whereof he did consist was due to God; and that his body, the dreggy and dusty part of his nature, was not fit to be brought alone before God, without that nobler principle which he had by creation linked with it. Nothing in the whole law of nature, as it is in formed of religion, was clearer, next to the being of God, than this manner of worshipping God with the mind and spirit. And as the Gentiles never sunk so low into the mud of idolatry as to think the images they worshipped were really their gods, but the representations or habitations of their gods, so they never deserted this principle in the notion of it, that God was to be honoured with the best they were, and the best they had. As they never denied the being of a God in the notion, though they did in the practice, so they never rejected this principle in notion, though they did, and now most men do, in the inward observation of it. It was a maxim among them that God was mens, animus, mind and spirit, and therefore was to be honoured with the mind and spirit. That religion did not consist in the ceremonies
of the body, but the work of the soul ; whence the speech of one of them,*
1 Sacrifice to the gods not so much clothed with purple garments as a pure heart.' And of another,! « God regards not the multitude of the sacrifices, but the disposition of the sacrificer.' It is not fit we should deny God the cream and flower, and give him the slotten part and the stalks. And with what reverence and intention of mind they thought their worship was to be
performed is evident by the priests' crying out often, hoc age, mind this, let your spirits be intent upon it.
This could not but result,
(1.) From the knowledge of ourselves. It is a natural principle, ' God hath made us, and not we ourselves,' Ps. c. 1, 2. Man knows himself to be a rational creature. As a creature, he was to serve his Creator ; and as a rational creature, with the best part of that rational nature he derived from him. By the same act of reason that he knows himself to be a creature, he knows himself to have a Creator. That this Creator is more excellent than himself, and that an honour is due from him to the Creator for framing of him ; and therefore this honour was to be offered to him by the most excel lent part which was framed by him. Man cannot consider himself as a thinking, understanding being, but he must know that he must give God the honour of his thoughts, and worship him with those faculties whereby he thinks, wills, and acts.J He must know his faculties were given him to act, and to act for the glory of that God who gave him his soul and the faculties of it ; and he could not in reason think they must be only active in his own service, and the service of the creature, and idle and unprofitable in the ser vice of his Creator. With the same powers of our soul whereby we con-