SERMON I.

ERRORS IN INQUIRING INTO THE NATURE OF THE

DEITY.

JOB Xi. 7, 8.

Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?

THE Scriptures have doubtless revealed to us many very sublime views of the Divine perfections, which natural reason, however carefully and successfully cultivated, would never have been able to discover. And yet even the Scriptural accounts of the Deity are extremely imperfect; both because, with our present faculties, we could never have understood the Almighty to perfection, supposing it even possible, which it is not, that He could have been adequately described to us in human language; and more especially because, as the sole object of Divine revelation is to

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influence human practice, the sacred writers only intended to disclose to us those parts of the Divine character, which would have some beneficial relation to human life and morals. As, therefore, we know nothing more of the Deity than what Scripture has told us, (for the truths of natural religion are all comprehended in those of revelation,) we know nothing concerning Him which can be regarded as matter of pure speculation-nothing but what, in some degree or other, either directly or indirectly, will mix itself with our practical principles. And hence arises the danger of instituting rash inquiries on this mysterious and awful theme: the subject is so much above us, that in pursuing it we are apt to run into error before we are aware; and our inquiries frequently terminate in doubts and difficulties, which perplex and obscure the simple truths, whereby we ought to regulate our lives.

It may be no unprofitable employment, if (after noticing some of the principal causes which are likely to lead us to false conclusions in our attempts, by searching, to find out God,) we shall consider some of the intricacies in which the doctrines of religion have been really involved by these means. Some of these difficulties may possibly vanish in the very act of tracing them to their source; and, with respect to others, which do not admit of such an easy remedy, (perhaps,

indeed, of none that is effectual,) it may yet be shown that they ought not to operate as practical difficulties.

Among the causes of error, intimately connected with minute researches into the Divine nature, the following may be looked upon as some of the most important.

First, the mode in which we form our ideas of the Divine attributes, though not incorrect, is yet extremely imperfect. We begin by conceiving an abstract notion of some moral quality, as it exists in ourselves; we then divest it of all imaginable imperfection, and in that state ascribe it to the Deity, as one of His essential attributes. Now this intellectual process is altogether right, as far as it goes; but then it does not go far enough: the utmost degree of ideal perfection, to which we can by these means exalt the mind, must, after all, fall infinitely short of that absoluteness of perfection, in which the quality concerned must exist in the Divine nature; nor can we argue any thing as to the extent of the effects of that attribute, when existing in its full strength and magnitude, from the vague, and low, and distant conceptions of it, of which alone our finite understandings are capable.

In the next place, supposing we could form an adequate idea of the different Divine perfections, considered singly and separately, it would be im

possible to conjecture the manner of their union, as combined to make up the Divine character; or the influence which each must exert on all the rest, when acting as they must do in reality, not individually and interruptedly, but conjointly and continually. Here we can do nothing more than raise some indefinite hypothesis on the knowledge we possess of the constitution of the human soul; but, in applying any such fanciful scheme to explain the motions of the Divine mind, we are liable to mistakes on various accounts; for, first, we are very ignorant of ourselves; and, farther, if we were acquainted ever so intimately with our own moral and intellectual powers, and the mutual relation and subserviency of each of them to the others, still we should have no sufficient reason, on which to ground any analogy between the mutually corresponding actions of our own faculties and those of the Supreme Intelligence. deed, we know of a truth that God seeth not as man seeth; and that His thoughts are not as our thoughts; but that both His perceptions and volitions (if we may so speak,) take place in some inconceivable manner, infinitely more perfect, and without the intervention of those circuitous steps, by which we must be content to connect the links of a chain of reasoning, or to establish a communication between motives and volitions. And, again, the immense superiority of the Creator above His

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rational creatures, arises in part from His possessing other and different faculties from any to which we are accustomed, and to which, consequently, we must be utter strangers; and it is impossible to say how such additional powers may influence and modify even those of the Divine perfections, of which we may acquire some superficial knowledge, because with a portion of them God has been pleased to dignify the human mind.

And, as we are entirely ignorant of the manner in which the Divine attributes affect each other, so neither have we any means of determining how they operate upon external objects. It is an impenetrable mystery to the philosopher how spirit acts even upon matter, and that, too, even in the most simple instance of the exertion of human power; that is, in a case where we seem to be amply provided with all the requisite materials for information, in a knowledge of the mechanical structure of our own bodies, and daily experience of the affections of our minds. But how spirit should act upon spirit, without any sensible medium of intercourse between them, so as to revive impressions previously made upon the mind, and to impart others which are entirely new, is a matter so utterly incomprehensible, that no one even in the plenitude of philosophical presumption will venture to hazard a random guess upon the subject; and yet it is in this dark inscrutable