The more perfect anything is in the rank of creatures, the more
spiritual and simple it is, as gold is the more pure and perfect that
hath least mixture of other metals. If God were not a Spirit, {a188}
there would be creatures of a more excellent nature than God, as
angels and souls, which the Scripture call spirits, in opposition to
bodies. There is more of perfection in the first notion of a spirit
than in the notion of a body. God cannot be less perfect than his
creatures, and contribute an excellency of being to them which he
wants himself. If angels and souls possess such an excellency, and
God want that excellency, he would be less than his creatures, and
the excellency of the effect would exceed the excellency of the cause.
But every creature, even the highest creature, is infinitely short of
the perfection of God; for whatsoever excellency they have is finite
and limited; it is but a spark from the sun――a drop from the ocean;
but God is unboundedly perfect, in the highest manner, without any
limitation; and therefore above spirits, angels, the highest creatures
that were made by him: an infinite sublimity, a pure act, to which
nothing can be added, from which nothing can be taken. “In him there
is light and no darkness,”[363] spirituality without any matter,
perfection without any shadow or taint of imperfection. Light pierceth
into all things, preserves its own purity, and admits of no mixture of
anything else with it.
_Question._ It may be said, If God be a Spirit, and it is impossible
he can be otherwise than a Spirit, how comes God so often to have such
members as we have in our bodies ascribed to him, not only a soul, but
particular bodily parts, as heart, arms, hands, eyes, ears, face, and
back parts? And how is it that he is never called a Spirit in plain
words, but in this text by our Saviour?
_Answer._ It is true, many parts of the body, and natural affections
of the human nature, are reported of God in Scripture. Head,[364] eyes,
and eye‑lids,[365] apple of the eye, mouth, &c.; our affections also,
grief, joy, anger, &c. But it is to be considered,
1. That this is in condescension to our weakness. God being desirous
to make himself known to man, whom he created for his glory, humbles,
as it were, his own nature to such representations as may suit and
assist the capacity of the creature; since by the condition of our
nature nothing erects a notion of itself in our understanding, but
as it is conducted in by our sense.[366] God hath served himself of
those things which are most exposed to our sense, most obvious to
our understandings, to give us some acquaintance with his own nature,
and those things which otherwise we were not capable of having any
notion of. As our souls are linked with our bodies, so our knowledge
is linked with our sense; that we can scarce imagine anything, at
first, but under a corporeal form and figure, till we come, by great
attention to the object, to make, by the help of reason, a separation
of the spiritual substance from the corporeal fancy, and consider it
in its own nature. We are not able to conceive a spirit, without some
kind of resemblance to something below it, nor understand the actions
of a spirit, without considering the operations of a human body in
its several members. As the glories of another life are signified
to us by the pleasures of this; so the nature of God, by a gracious
condescension to our capacities, is {a189} signified to us by a
likeness to our own. The more familiar the things are to us which
God uses to this purpose, the more proper they are to teach us what
he intends by them.
2. All such representations are to signify the acts of God, as they
bear some likeness to those which we perform by those members he
ascribes to himself. So that those members ascribed to him rather note
his visible operations to us, than his invisible nature; and signify
that God doth some works like to those which men do by the assistance
of those organs of their bodies. So the wisdom of God is called
his eye, because he knows that with his mind which we see with our
eyes.[367] The efficiency of God is called his hand and arm; because
as we act with our hands, so doth God with his power. The divine
efficacies are signified:――by his eyes and ears, we understand his
omniscience; by his face, the manifestation of his favor; by his
mouth, the revelation of his will; by his nostrils, the acceptation
of our prayers; by his bowels, the tenderness of his compassion; by
his heart, the sincerity of his affections; by his hand, the strength
of his power; by his feet, the ubiquity of his presence. And in this,
he intends instruction and comfort: by his eyes, he signifies his
watchfulness over us; by his ears, his readiness to hear the cries
of the oppressed;[368] by his arm, his power――an arm to destroy
his enemies, and an arm to relieve his people.[369] All those are
attributed to God to signify divine actions, which he doth without
bodily organs as we do with them.
3. Consider also, that only those members which are the instruments
of the noblest actions, and under that consideration, are used
by him to represent a notion of him to our minds. Whatsoever is
perfect and excellent is ascribed to him, but nothing that savors
of imperfection.[370] The heart is ascribed to him, it being the
principle of vital actions, to signify the life that he hath in
himself; watchful and discerning eyes, not sleepy and lazy ones; a
mouth to reveal his will, not to take in food. To eat and sleep are
never ascribed to him, nor those parts that belong to the preparing or
transmitting nourishment to the several parts of the body, as stomach,
liver, reins, nor bowels under that consideration, but as they are
significant of compassion; but only those parts are ascribed to him
whereby we acquire knowledge, as eyes and ears, the organs of learning
and wisdom; or to communicate it to others, as the mouth, lips, tongue,
as they are instruments of speaking, not of tasting; or those parts
which signify strength and power, or whereby we perform the actions of
charity for the relief of others; taste and touch, senses that extend
no farther than to corporeal things, and are the grossest of all the
senses, are never ascribed to him.
4. It were worth consideration, “whether this describing God by the
members of a 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?”[371] Asaph,
speaking in the person of God (Psalm lxxviii. 1), {a190} “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
(Matt. 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.[372] 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 speaking before man’s committing of sin, yet not of
his walking, which is more corporeal, till afterwards.[373] “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.”[374]
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 Scripture speaks of his eyes and arm, yet it denies them to be
“arms of flesh.”[375] 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;[376] or like a lion, or leopard,
because he likens himself to them in the acts of his strength and
fury.[377] 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 corporeity 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.”[378] We should conceive of
God according to the design of the expressions; when we read of his
eyes, we should conceive his omniscience; 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 {a191} of the most dignified creatures;
something so perfect, great, spiritual, as nothing can be conceived
higher and purer. “Christ,” saith one, “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.”[379]
_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.”[380] 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.[381] 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[382] 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 forming 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 corporeity,
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 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 {a192} 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.”[383] 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 eyes to see him.[384] The ancient Romans worshipped their gods
one hundred and seventy years before any material representations
of them;[385] and the ancient idolatrous Germans thought it a wicked
thing to represent God in a human shape; yet some, and those no
Romanists, labor to defend the making images of God in the resemblance
of man, because he is so represented in Scripture: “He may be,” saith
one,[386] “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 of a man than that
of an eagle; and some perfections 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 iniquities 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
other gods before him, be forbids all figuring of him by the hand of
man;[387] 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);
{a193} 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 necessarily 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 show the
unreasonableness of it, consider,
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.[388]
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 proportion
in nature between them. God is a simple, infinite, immense, eternal,
invisible, incorruptible being; a statue is a compounded, 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 representations 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 a 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); 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.[389]
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 imperfections
of the bodies.[390] Corporeal images of God were the fruits of base
imaginations of him; and as they sprung from them, so {a194} they
contribute to a greater corruption of the notions of the divine nature:
the heathens begun 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 things, even serpents, as the apostle
seems to intimate in his enumeration (Rom. i. 23): it had been more
honorable to have continued in human representations 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. 31):
and the sin of Jeroboam, who intended only a representation of God by
the calves at Dan and Bethel, is called more emphatically,[391] “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 (Rom. i. 24); which is repeated again
in other expressions (ver. 26, 27), as a meet recompense 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 show 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 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 honorable images of men, but bestialized 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:[392]
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.[393] 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 as to
call a calf their deliverer, and give him so great a title (“These be
thy gods, O 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, {a195} and Jacob.”[394] They knew the calf
to be formed of their ear‑rings, 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 of 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 (Exod. xxxii. 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 Red
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
whom they could not so soon forget. And with this representing God
by that image, they are charged by the Psalmist (Psalm cvi. 19, 20),
“they made a calf in Horeb, and changed their glory into a 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 inclination of our natures
in the practice of the Israelites; a people chosen out of 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
temple of the Romanists. It is prone to the nature of man,