near conjunction with him. When our spirits begin to flag, and a cold
aguish temper is drawing upon us, let us go to him who can only fix
our hearts, and furnish us with a ballast to render them steadfast.
As he is only immutable in his nature, so he is the only principle
of immutability, as well as being in the creature. Without his grace,
we shall be as changeable in our appearances as the chameleon, and in
our turnings as the wind. When Peter trusted in himself, he changed to
the worse; it was his Master’s recourse to God for him that preserved
in him a reducing principle, which changed him again for the better,
and fixed him in it (Luke xxii. 32). It will be our interest to be in
conjunction with him, that moves not about with the heavens, nor is
turned by the force of nature, nor {a362} changed by the accidents in
the world; but sits in the heavens, moving all things by his powerful
arm, according to his infinite skill. While we have him for our God,
we have his immutability as well as any other perfection of his nature
for our advantage; the nearer we come to him, the more stability we
shall have in ourselves; the further from him, the more liable to
change. The line that is nearest to the place where it is first fixed,
is least subject to motion; the further it is stretched from it, the
weaker it is, and more liable to be shaken. Let us also affect those
things which are nearest to him in this perfection; the righteousness
of Christ that shall never wear out, and the graces of the Spirit that
shall never burn out; by this means, what God is infinitely by nature,
we shall come to be finitely immutable by grace, as much as the
capacity of a creature can contain.
{a363} DISCOURSE VII.
ON GOD’S OMNIPRESENCE.
JEREMIAH xxiii. 24.――Can any hide himself in secret places, that
I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and
earth? saith the Lord.
THE occasion of this discourse begins ver. 16, where God admonisheth
the people, not to hearken to the words of the false prophets which
spake a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the
Lord. They made the people vain by their insinuations of peace, when
God had proclaimed war and calamity; and uttered the dreams of their
fancies, and not the visions of the Lord; and so turned the people
from the expectation of the evil day which God had threatened (ver.
17): “They say still unto them that despise me, The Lord hath said,
Ye shall have peace: and they say unto every one that walks after the
imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you.” And they
invalidate the prophecies of those whom God had sent, ver. 18: “Who
hath stood in the counsel of the Lord, and hath perceived and heard
his word? who hath marked his word, and heard it?” Who hath stood in
the counsel of the Lord? Are they acquainted with the secrets of God
more than we? Who have the word of the Lord, if we have not? Or, it
may be a continuation of God’s admonition: believe not those prophets;
for who of them have been acquainted with the secrets of God? or by
what means should they learn his counsel? No; assure yourselves “a
whirlwind of the Lord is gone forth in fury, even a grievous whirlwind;
it shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked” (ver. 19). A
whirlwind shall come from Babylon; it is just at the door, and shall
not be blown over; it shall fall with a witness upon the wicked people
and the deceiving prophets, and sweep them together into captivity.
For (ver. 20), “The anger of the Lord shall not return, until he
have executed, and till he have performed the thoughts of his heart.”
My fury shall not be a childish fury, that quickly languisheth, but
shall accomplish whatsoever I threaten; and burn so hot, as not to be
cool, till I have satisfied my vengeance; “in the latter days ye shall
consider it perfectly” (ver. 20), when the storm shall beat upon you,
you shall then know that the calamities shall answer the words you
have heard. When the conqueror shall waste your grounds, demolish your
houses, and manacle your hands, then shall you consider it, and have
the wishes of fools, that you had had your eyes in your heads before;
you shall then know the falseness of your guides, and the {a364} truth
of my prophets, and discern who stood in the counsel of the Lord, and
subscribe to the messages I have sent you.
Some understand this not only of the Babylonish captivity, but
refer it to the time of Christ, and the false doctrine of men’s own
righteousness in opposition to the righteousness of God; understanding
this verse to be partly a threatening of wrath, which shall end in
an advantage to the Jews, who shall in the latter time consider the
falseness of their notions about a legal righteousness, and so make
it a promise; they shall then know the intent of the Scripture, and in
the latter days, the latter end of the world, when time shall be near
the rolling up, they shall reflect upon themselves; they shall “look
upon Him whom they have pierced;” and till these latter days, they
shall be hardened, and believe nothing of evangelical truths. Now
God denieth that he sent those prophets (ver. 21): “I have not sent
these prophets, yet they ran; I have not spoken to them, yet they
prophesied.” They have intruded themselves without a commission from
me, whatsoever their brags are. The reason to prove it is (ver. 22),
“If they had stood in my counsel,” if they had been instructed, and
inspired by me, “they would have caused my people to hear my words;”
they would have regulated themselves according to my word, “and have
turned them from their evil way;” _i. e._ endeavored to shake down
their false confidences of peace, and make them sensible of their
false notions of me, and my ways. Now because those false prophets
could not be so impudent as to boast that they prophesied in the name
of God, when they had not commission from him, unless they had some
secret sentiment, that they and their intentions were hid from the
knowledge and eye of God; he adds (ver. 33), “Am I a God at hand,
and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places, that
I shall not see him?” Have I not the power of seeing and knowing what
they do, what they design, what they think? Why should I not have
such a power, since I fill heaven and earth by my essence? “Am I a
God at hand, and not a God afar off?” He excludes here the doctrine
of those that excluded the providence of God from extending itself to
the inferior things of the earth; which error was ancient, as ancient
as the time of Job, as appears by their opinion, that God’s eyes were
hood‑winked and muffled by the thickness of the clouds, and could not
pierce through their dark and dense body (Job xxii. 14): “Thick clouds
are a covering to him, that he seeth not.”
Some refer it to time.[633] Do you imagine me a God new framed like
your idols, beginning a little time ago, and not existing before the
foundation of the world; yea, from eternity? a God afar off, further
than your acutest understandings can reach? I am of a longer standing,
and you ought to know my majesty. But it rather refers to place
than time. Do you think I do not behold everything in the earth, as
well as in heaven? Am I locked up within the walls of my palace, and
cannot peep out to behold the things done in the world? or that am I
so linked to pleasure in the place of my glory, as earthly kings are
in their courts, that I have no mind or leisure {a365} to take notice
of the carriages of men upon earth? God doth not say, He was afar off,
but only gives an account of the inward thoughts of their minds, or
at least of the language expressed by their actions. The interrogation
carries in it a strong affirmation, and assures us more of God’s care,
and the folly of men in not considering it. “Am I a God at hand, and
not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places?” (Heb.) In
hiddenesses, in the deepest cells. What! are you besotted by your base
lusts, that you think me a God careless, ignorant, blind, that I can
see nothing, but as a purblind man, what is very near my eye? Are
you so out of your wits, that you imagine you can deceive me? Do
not all your behaviors speak such a sentiment to lie secret in your
heart, though not formed into a full conception, yet testified by
your actions? No, you are much mistaken; it is impossible but that
I should see and know all things, since I am present with all things,
and am not at a greater distance from the things on earth than from
the things in heaven; for I fill all that vast fabric which is divided
into those two parts of heaven and earth; and he that hath such an
infinite essence, cannot be distant, cannot be ignorant; nothing
can be far from his eyes, since everything is so near to his essence.
So that it is an elegant expression of the omniscience of God, and
a strong argument for it. He asserts, first, the universality of his
knowledge; but lest they should mistake, and confine his presence only
to heaven, he adds, That he “fills heaven and earth.” I do not see
things so, as if I were in one place, and the things seen in another,
as it is with man; but whatsoever I see, I see not without myself,
because every corner of heaven and earth is filled by me. He that
fills all, must needs see and know all. And indeed, men that question
the knowledge of God, would be more convinced by the doctrine of his
immediate presence with them. And this seems to be the design and
manner of arguing in this place. Nothing is remote from my knowledge,
because nothing is distant from my presence.
_I fill heaven and earth_: he doth not say, “I am in heaven and earth,
” but I _fill_ heaven and earth; _i. e._ say some, with my knowledge,
others, with my authority or my power.[634] But,
1. The word _filling_ cannot properly be referred to the act of
understanding and will. A presence by knowledge is to be granted, but
to say such a presence fills a place is an improper speech: knowledge
is not enough to constitute a presence. A man at London knows there is
such a city as Paris, and knows many things in it; can he be concluded,
therefore, to be present in Paris, or fill any place there, or be
present with the things he knows there? If I know anything to be
distant from me, how can it be present with me? For by knowing it to
be distant, I know it not to be present. Besides, filling heaven and
earth is distinguished here from knowing or seeing: his presence is
rendered as an argument to prove his knowledge. Now a proposition,
and the proof of that proposition, are distinct, and not the same. It
cannot be imagined that God should prove _idem per idem_, as we say;
for what would be the import of the speech then? I know all things,
I see all things, because {a366} I know and see all things.[635] The
Holy Ghost here accommodates himself to the capacity of men; because
we know that a man sees and knows that which is done, where he is
corporally present; so he proves that God knows all things that are
done in the most secret caverns of the heart, because he is everywhere
in heaven and earth, as light is everywhere in the air, and air
everywhere in the world. Hence the schools use the term _repletive_
for the presence of God.
2. Nor by filling of heaven and earth is meant his authority and
power. It would be improperly said of a king, that in regard of
the government of his kingdom, is everywhere by his authority, that
he fills all the cities and countries of his dominions. “I, do not
I fill?”[636] That “I” notes the essence of God, as distinguished
according to our capacity, from the perfections pertaining to his
essence, and is in reason better referred to the substance of God,
than to those things we conceive as attributes in him. Besides, were
it meant only of his authority or power, the argument would not run
well. I see all things, because my authority and power fills heaven
and earth. Power doth not always rightly infer knowledge, no, not in
a rational agent. Many things in a kingdom are done by the authority
of the king, that never arrive to the knowledge of the king. Many
things in us are done by the power of our souls, which yet we have not
a distinct knowledge of in our understandings. There are many motions
in sleep, by the virtue of the soul informing the body, that we have
not so much as a simple knowledge of in our minds. Knowledge is not
rightly inferred from power, or power from knowledge. By filling
heaven and earth is meant, therefore, a filling it with his essence.
No place can be imagined that is deprived of the presence of God; and
therefore when the Scripture anywhere speaks of the presence of God,
it joins heaven and earth together: He so fills them, that there is no
place without him. We do not say a vessel is full so long as there is
any space to contain more. Not a part of heaven, nor a part of earth,
but the whole heaven, the whole earth, at one and the same time. If he
were only in one part of heaven, or one part of earth; nay, if there
were any part of heaven, or any part of earth void of him, he could
not be said to fill them. “I fill heaven and earth,” not a part of
me fills one place, and another part of me fills another, but I, God,
fill heaven and earth; I am whole God filling the heaven, and whole
God, filling the earth. I fill heaven, and yet fill earth; I fill
earth, and yet fill heaven, and fill heaven and earth at one and the
same time. “God fills his own works,” a heathen philosopher saith.[637]
I. Here is then a description of God’s presence. 1. By power,
“Am I not a God afar off?” a God in the extension of his arm. 2. By
knowledge, “Shall I not see them?” 3. By essence; as an undeniable
ground for inferring the two former: “I fill heaven and earth.”
_Doctrine._ God is essentially everywhere present in heaven and
earth. If God be, he must be somewhere; that which is nowhere, is
nothing. Since God is, he is in the world; not in one part of it;
for {a367} then he were circumscribed by it: if in the world, and
only there, though it be a great space, he were also limited. Some
therefore said, “God was everywhere, and nowhere.”[638] Nowhere,
_i. e._ not bounded by any place, nor receiving from any place
anything for his preservation or sustainment. He is everywhere,
because no creature, either body or spirit, can exclude the presence
of his essence; for he is not only near, but in everything (Acts
xvii. 28): “In him we live, and move, and have our being.” Not absent
from anything, but so present with them, that they live and move in
him, and move more in God, than in the air or earth wherein they are;
nearer to us than our flesh to our bones, than the air to our breath;
he cannot be far from them that live, and have every motion in him.
The apostle doth not say, By him, but in him, to show the inwardness
of his presence. As eternity is the perfection whereby he hath neither
beginning nor end, immutability is the perfection whereby he hath
neither increase nor diminution, so immensity or omnipresence is that
whereby he hath neither bounds nor limitation. As he is in all time,
yet so as to be above time; so is he in all places, yet so as to be
above limitation by any place. It was a good expression of a heathen
to illustrate this, “That God is a sphere or circle, whose centre
is everywhere, and circumference nowhere.” His meaning was, that
the essence of God was indivisible; _i. e._ could not be divided. It
cannot be said, here and there the lines of it terminate; it is like
a line drawn out in infinite spaces, that no point can be conceived
where its length and breadth ends. The sea is a vast mass of waters;
yet to that it is said, “Hitherto shalt thou go, and no further.”
But it cannot be said of God’s essence, hitherto it reaches, and no
further; here it is, and there it is not. It is plain, that God is
thus immense, because he is infinite; we have reason and Scripture
to assent to it, though we cannot conceive it. We know that God is
eternal, though eternity is too great to be measured by the short line
of a created understanding. We cannot conceive the vastness and glory
of the heavens, much less that which is so great, as to fill heaven
and earth, yea (1 Kings viii. 27), “not to be contained in the heaven
of Heavens.” Things are said to be present, or in a place,
1. Circumscriptive, as circumscribed. This belongs to things that
have quantity, as bodies that are encompassed by that place wherein
they are; and a body fills but one particular space wherein it is, and
the space is commensurate to every part of it, and every member hath a
distinct place. The hand is not in the same particular space that the
foot or head is.
2. Definitive, which belongs to angels and spirits, which are said to
be in a point, yet so as that they cannot be said to be in another at
the same time.
3. _Repletive_, filling all places. This belongs only to God: as he
is not measured by time, so he is not limited by place. A body or
spirit, because finite, fills but one space; God, because infinite,
fills all, yet so as not to be contained in them, as wine and water
is in a vessel. He is from the height of the heavens to the bottom
of the deeps, in {a368} every point of the world, and in the whole
circle of it, yet not limited by it, but beyond it. Now this hath
been acknowledged by the wisest in the world. Some indeed had other
notions of God. The more ignorant sort of the Jews confined him to the
temple.[639] And God intimates, that they had such a thought when he
asserts his presence in heaven and earth, in opposition to the temple
they built as his house, and the place of his rest.[640] And the
idolaters among them, thought their gods might be at a distance from
them, which Elias intimates in the scoff he puts upon them (1 Kings
xviii. 17), “Cry aloud, for he is a god,” meaning Baal; “either he is
talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey;” and they followed
his advice, and cried louder (ver. 28), whereby it is evident, they
looked not on it as a mock, but as a truth. And the Syrians called the
God of Israel the God of the hills, as though his presence were fixed
there, and not in the valleys (1 Kings xx. 23); and their own gods in
the valleys, and not in the mountains; they fancied every god to have
a particular dominion and presence in one place and not in another,
and bounded the territories of their gods as they did those of their
princes.[641] And some thought him tied to and shut up in their
temples and groves wherein they worshipped him.[642] Some of them
thought God to be confined to heaven, and therefore sacrificed upon
the highest mountains, that the steam might ascend nearer heaven,
and their praises be heard better in those places which were nearest
to the habitation of God. But the wiser Jews acknowledged it, and
therefore called God place,[643] whereby they denoted his immensity;
he was not contained in any place; every part of the world subsists by
Him: he was a place to himself, greater than anything made by Him. And
the wiser heathens acknowledged it also. One calls God a mind passing
through the universal nature of things;[644] another, that He was an
infinite and immense air;[645] another, that it is as natural to think
God is everywhere, as to think that God is: hence they called God the
soul of the world; that as the soul is in every part of the body to
quicken it, so is God in every part of the world to support it. And
there are some resemblances of this in the world, though no creature
can fully resemble God in any one perfection; for then it would not
be a creature, but God. But air and light are some resemblances of it:
air is in all the spaces of the world, in the pores of all bodies, in
the bowels of the earth, and extends itself from the lowest earth to
the highest regions; and the heavens themselves are probably nothing
else but a refined kind of air; and light diffuseth itself through
the whole air, and every part of it is truly light, as every part of
the air is truly air; and though they seem to be mingled together,
yet they are distinct things, and not of the same essence; so is the
essence of God in the whole world, not by diffusion as air or light,
not mixed with any creature, but remaining distinct from the essence
of any created being. Now, when this hath been owned by men instructed
only in the school of nature, it is a greater {a369} shame to any
acquainted with the Scripture to deny. For the understanding of this,
there shall be some propositions premised in general.
_Prop. I._ This is negatively to be understood. Our knowledge
of God is most by withdrawing from him, or denying to him in our
conceptions any weaknesses or imperfections in the creature. As the
infiniteness of God is a denial of limitation of being, so immensity
or omnipresence is a denial of limitation of place: and when we say,
God is _totus_ in every place, we must understand it thus; that he is
not everywhere by parts, as bodies are, as air and light are; He is
everywhere, _i. e._ his nature hath no bounds; he is not tied to any
place, as the creature is, who, when he is present in one place, is
absent from another. As no place can be without God, so no place can
compass and contain him.
_Prop. II._ There is an influential omnipresence of God.
1. Universal with all creatures. He is present with all things by
his authority, because all things are subject to him: by his power,
because all things are sustained by him: by his knowledge, because all
things are naked before him. He is present in the world, as a king is
in all parts of his kingdom regally present: providentially present
with all, since his care extends to the meanest of his creatures. His
power reacheth all, and his knowledge pierceth all. As everything in
the world was created by God, so everything in the world is preserved
by God; and since preservation is not wholly distinct from creation,
it is necessary God should be present with everything while he
preserves it, as well as present with it when he created it. “Thou
preservest man and beast” (Ps. xxxvi. 6). “He upholds all things by
the word of his power” (Heb. i. 3). There is a virtue sustaining every
creature, that it may not fall back into that nothing from whence
it was elevated by the power of God. All those natural virtues we
call the principles of operation, are fountains springing from his
goodness and power; all things are acted and managed by him, as
well as preserved by him; and in this sense God is present with all
creatures; for whatsoever acts another, is present with that which
it acts, by sending forth some virtue and influence whereby it acts:
if free agents do not only live, but move in him and by him (Acts
xvii. 28), much more are the motions of other natural agents by
a virtue communicated to them, and upheld in them in the time of
their acting. This virtual presence of God is evident to our sense,
a presence we feel; his essential presence is evident in our reason.
This influential presence may be compared to that of the sun, which
though at so great a distance from the earth, is present in the air
and earth by its light, and within the earth by its influence in
concocting those metals which are in the bowels of it, without being
substantially either of them. God is thus so intimate with every
creature, that there is not the least particle of any creature, but
the marks of his power and goodness are seen in it, and his goodness
doth attend them, and is more swift in its effluxes than the breakings
out of light from the sun, which yet are more swift than can be
declared; but to say he is in the world only by his virtue, is to
acknowledge only the effects of his power and wisdom in the world,
{a370} that his eye sees all, his arm supports all, his goodness
nourisheth all, but himself and his essence at a distance from
them;[646] and so the soul of man according to its measure would have
in some kind a more excellent manner of presence in the body, than
God according to the infiniteness of his Being with his creatures;
for that doth not only communicate life to the body, but is actually
present with it, and spreads its whole essence through the body and
every member of it. All grant, that God is efficaciously in every
creek of the world; but some say he is only substantially in heaven.