in the giving being and endowments to all the creatures in the world
(Job xxxviii.)! All that is in heaven and earth is his, and shows the
greatness of his power, glory, victory, and majesty (1 Chron. xxix. 11).
The heaven being so magnificent a piece of work, is called emphatically,
“the firmament of his power” (Ps. cl. 1); his power being more
conspicuous and unavailed in that glorious arch of the world. Indeed,
“God exalts by his power” (Job xxxvi. 22), that is, exalts himself
by his power in all the works of his hands; in the smallest shrub,
as well as the most glorious sun. All his works of nature are truly
miracles, though we consider them not, being blinded with two frequent
and customary a sight of them; yet, in the neglect of all the rest, the
view {b36} of the heavens doth more affect us with astonishment at the
might of God’s arm: these declare his glory, and “the firmament showeth
his handy work” (Ps. xix. 1). And the Psalmist peculiarly calls them
his heavens, and the work of his fingers (Ps. viii. 3): these were
immediately created by God, whereas many other things in the world
were brought into being by the power of God, yet by the means of the
influence of the heavens.
1. His power is the first thing evident in the story of the creation.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. i. 1).
There is no appearance of anything in this declaratory preface, but of
power: the characters of wisdom march after in the distinct formation
of things, and animating them with suitable qualities for an universal
good. By heaven and earth, is meant the whole mass of the creatures:
by heaven, all the airy region, with all the host of it; by the earth,
is meant, all that which makes the entire inferior globe.[847] The Jews
observe, that in the first of Genesis, in the whole chapter, unto the
finishing the work in six days, God is called אלהים, which is a name
of Power, and that thirty‑two times in that chapter; but after the
finishing the six days’ work, he is called האלהים, which, according to
their notion, is a name of goodness and kindness: his power is first
visible in framing the world, before his goodness is visible in the
sustaining and preserving it. It was by this name of Power and Almighty
that he was known in the first ages of the world, not by his name,
Jehovah (Exod. vi. 3): “And I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
by the name of God Almighty; but by my name Jehovah was I not known
to them.” Not but that they were acquainted with the name, but did not
experience the intent of the name, which signified his truth in the
performance of his promises; they knew him by that name as promising,
but they knew him not by that name, as performing. He would be known
by his name Jehovah, true to his word, when he was about to effect
the deliverance from Egypt; a type of the eternal redemption, wherein
the truth of God, in performing of his first promise, is gloriously
magnified. And hence it is that God is called Almighty more in the
book of Job than in all the Scripture besides, I think about thirty‑two
times, and Jehovah but once, which is Job xii. 9, unless in Job xxxviii.
when God is introduced speaking himself; which is an argument of Job’s
living before the deliverance from Egypt, when God was known more by
his works of creation than by the performance of his promises, before
the name Jehovah was formally published. Indeed, this attribute of his
eternal power, is the first thing visible and intelligible upon the
first glance of the eye upon the creatures (Rom. i. 20). Bring a man
out of the cave where he hath been nursed, without seeing anything out
of the confines of it, and let him lift up his eyes to the heavens,
and take a prospect of that glorious body, the sun, then cast them down
to the earth, and behold the surface of it, with its green clothing;
the first notion which will start up in his mind from that spring
of wonders, is that of power, which he will at first adore with a
religious astonishment. The wisdom of God in them is not so presently
apparent, till after a more {b37} exquisite consideration of his works
and knowledge of the properties of their natures, the conveniency of
their situations, and the usefulness of their functions, and the order
wherein they are linked together for the good of the universe.
2. By this creative power God is often distinguished from all the idols
and false gods in the world. And by this title he sets forth himself
when he would act any great and wonderful work in the world (Ps. cxxxv.
5, 6): “He is great above all gods,” for “he hath done whatsoever he
pleased in heaven and in earth.” Upon this is founded all the worship
he challengeth in the world, as his peculiar, glory (Rev. iv. 11):
“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, honor, and power, for thou
hast created all things.” And (Rev. x. 6) “I have made the earth, and
created man upon it.” “I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens,
and all their host have I commanded” (Isa. xlv. 12). What is the issue
(ver. 16)? “They shall be ashamed and confounded, all of them, that are
makers of idols.” And the weakness of idols is expressed by this title.
“The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth” (Jer. x. 11).
“The portion of Jacob is not like them, for he is the former of all
things” (ver. 16). What is not that God able to do, that hath created
so great a world? How doth the power of God appear in creation?
1st. In making the world of nothing. When we say, the world was made
of nothing, we mean, that there was no matter existent for God to work
upon, but what he raised himself in the first act of creation. In this
regard, the power of God in creation surmounts his power in providence.
Creation supposeth nothing, providence supposeth something in being.
Creation intimates a creature making, providence speaks a thing already
made, and capable of government, and in government. God uses second
causes to bring about his purposes.
1. The world was made of nothing. The earth which is described as the
first matter, without any form or ornament, without any distinction or
figures, was of God’s forming in the bulk, before he did adorn it with
his pencil (Gen. i. 1, 2). God, in the beginning, creating the heaven
and the earth, includes two things: First. That those were created
in the beginning of time, and before all other things. Secondly. That
God begun the creation of the world from those things.[848] Therefore
before the heavens and the earth there was nothing absolutely created,
and therefore no matter in being before an act of creation passed upon
it. It could not be eternal, because nothing can be eternal but God;
it must therefore have a beginning. If it had a beginning from itself,
then it was before it was. If it acted in the making itself before it
was made, then it had a being before it had a being; for that which
is nothing, can act nothing: the action of anything supposeth the
existence of the thing which acts. It being made, it was not before
it was made; for to be made is to be brought into being. It was made,
then, by another, and that Maker is God. It is necessary that the First
Original of things was from nothing: when we see one thing to arise
from another, we must suppose an original of the first of each kind; as,
when we see {b38} a tree spring up from a seed, we know that seed came
out of the bowels of another tree; it had a parent, it had a master; we
must come to some first, or else we run into an endless maze: we must
come to some first tree, some first seed that had no cause of the same
kind, no matter of it, but was mere nothing. Creation doth suppose a
production from nothing; because, if you suppose a thing without any
real or actual existence, it is not capable of any other production
than from nothing: nothing must be supposed before the world, or we
must suppose it eternal, and that is to deny it to be a creature, and
make it God.[849] The creation of spiritual substances, such as angels
and souls, evince this; those things that are purely spiritual, and
consist not of matter, cannot pretend to any original from matter, and
therefore they rose up from nothing. If spiritual things arose from
nothing, much more may corporeal, because they are of a lower nature
than spiritual; and he that can create a higher nature of nothing,
can create an inferior nature of nothing. As bodily things are more
imperfect than spiritual, so their creation may be supposed easier than
that of spiritual. There was as little need of any matter to be wrought
to his hands, to contrive into this visible fabric, as there was to
erect such an excellent order as the glorious cherubims.
2. This creation of things from nothing speaks an infinite power.
The distance between nothing and being hath been alway counted so
great, that nothing but an Infinite Power can make such distances meet
together, either for nothing to pass into being, or being to return to
nothing. To have a thing arise from nothing, was so difficult a text
to those that were ignorant of the Scripture, that they knew not how
to fathom it, and therefore laid it down as a certain rule, that of
nothing, nothing is made; which is true of a created power, but not of
an uncreated and Almighty Power. A greater distance cannot be imagined
than that which is between nothing and something; that which hath no
being, and that which hath; and a greater power cannot be imagined than
that which brings something out of nothing. We know not how to conceive
a nothing, and afterwards a being from that nothing; but we must
remain swallowed up in admiration of the Cause that gives it being, and
acknowledge it to be without any bounds and measures of greatness and
power.[850] The further anything is from being, the more immense must
that power be which brings it into being: it is not conceivable that
the power of all the angels in one can give being to the smallest spire
of grass. To imagine, therefore, so small a thing as a bee, a fly,
a grain of corn, or an atom of dust, to be made of nothing, would
stupefy any creature in the consideration of it, much more to behold
the heavens, with all the troop of stars; the earth, with all its
embroidery; and the sea, with all her inhabitants of fish; and man, the
noblest creature of all, to arise out of the womb of mere emptiness.
Indeed, God had not acted as an almighty Creator, if he had stood in
need of any materials but of his own framing: it had been as much as
his Deity was worth, if he had not had all within the compass of his
own power that was necessary to operation; if he must have been {b39}
beholden to something without himself, and above himself, for matter to
work upon: had there been such a necessity, we could not have imagined
him to be omnipotent, and, consequently, not God.
3. In this the power of God exceeds the power of all natural and
rational agents. Nature, or the order of second causes, hath a vast
power; the sun generates flies and other insects, but of some matter,
the slime of the earth or a dunghill; the sun and the earth bring
forth harvests of corn, but from seed first sown in the earth; fruits
are brought forth, but from the sap of the plant; were there no seed
or plants in the earth, the power of the earth would be idle, and
the influence of the sun insignificant; whatsoever strength either
of them had in their nature, must be useless without matter to work
upon. All the united strength of nature cannot produce the least thing
out of nothing; it may multiply and increase things, by the powerful
blessing God gave it at the first erecting of the world, but it cannot
create. The word which signifies _creation_, used in Gen. i. 1, is not
ascribed to any second cause, but only to God; a word, in that sense,
as incommunicable to anything else as the action it signifies. Rational
creatures can produce admirable pieces of art from small things, yet
still out of matter created to their hands. Excellent garments may
be woven, but from the entrails of a small silkworm. Delightful and
medicinal spirits and essences may be extracted, by ingenious chemists,
but out of the bodies of plants and minerals. No picture can be drawn
without colors; no statue engraven without stone; no building erected
without timber, stones, and other materials: nor can any man raise
a thought without some matter framed to his hands, or cast into him.
Matter is, by nature, formed to the hands of all artificers; they
bestow a new figure upon it, by the help of instruments, and the
product of their own wit and skill, but they create not the least
particle of matter; when they want it, they must be supplied or else
stand still, as well as nature, for none of them, or all together, can
make the least mite or atom: and when they have wrought all that they
can, they will not want some to find a flaw and defect in their work.
God, as a Creator, hath the only prerogative to draw what he pleases
from nothing, without any defect, without any imperfection: he can
raise what matter he please; ennoble it with what form he pleases. Of
nothing, nothing can be made, by any created agent: but the omnipotent
Architect of the world is not under the same necessity, nor is limited
to the same rule, and tied by so short a tedder as created nature, or
an ingenious, yet feeble artificer.
2d. It appears, in raising such variety of creatures from this
barren womb of nothing, or from the matter which he first commanded to
appear out of nothing. Had there been any pre‑existent matter, yet the
bringing forth such varieties and diversities of excellent creatures,
some with life, some with sense, and others with reason superadded
to the rest, and those out of indisposed and undigested matter, would
argue an infinite power resident in the first Author of this variegated
fabric. From this matter he formed that glorious sun, which every day
displays its glory, scatters its beams, clears the air, ripens our
fruits, and maintains the propagation of creatures in {b40} the world.
From this matter he lighted those torches which he set in the heaven to
qualify the darkness of the night: from this he compacted those bodies
of light, which, though they seem to us as little sparks, as if they
were the glow‑worms of heaven, yet some of them exceed in greatness
this globe of the earth on which we live: and the highest of them hath
so quick a motion, that some tell us they run, in the space of every
hour, 42,000,000 of leagues. From the same matter he drew the earth
on which we walk; from thence he extracted the flowers to adorn it,
the hills to secure the valleys, and the rocks to fortify it against
the inundations of the sea; and on this dull and sluggish element he
bestowed so great a fruitfulness, to maintain, feed, and multiply so
many seeds of different kinds, and conferred upon those little bodies
of seeds a power to multiply their kinds, in conjunction with the
fruitfulness of the earth, to many thousands. From this rude matter,
the slime or dust of the earth, he kneaded the body of man, and wrought
so curious a fabric, fit to entertain a soul of a heavenly extraction,
formed by the breath of God (Gen. ii. 7). He brought light out of thick
darkness, and living creatures, fish and fowl, out of inanimate waters
(Gen. i. 20), and gave a power of spontaneous motion to things arising
from that matter which had no living motion. To convert one thing into
another, is an evidence of infinite power, as well as creating things
of nothing; for the distance between life and not life is next to
that which is between being and not being. God first forms matter
out of nothing, and then draws upon, and from this indisposed chaos,
many excellent portraitures. Neither earth nor sea were capable of
producing living creatures without an infinite power working upon it,
and bringing into it such variety and multitude of forms; and this is
called, by some, mediate creation, as the producing the chaos, which
was without form and void, is called immediate creation. Is not the
power of the potter admirable in forming, out of tempered clay, such
varieties of neat and curious vessels, that, after they are fashioned
and past the furnace, look as if they were not of any kin to the matter
they are formed of? and is it not the same with the glass‑maker, that,
from a little melted jelly of sand and ashes, or the dust of flint, can
blow up so pure a body as glass, and in such varieties of shapes? and
is not the power of God more admirable, because infinite in speaking
out so beautiful a world out of nothing, and such varieties of living
creatures from matter utterly indisposed, in its own nature, for such
forms?
3d. And this conducts to a third thing, wherein the power of God
appears, in that he did all this with the greatest ease and facility.
1. Without instruments. As God made the world without the advice, so
without the assistance, of any other: “He stretched forth the heavens
alone, and spread abroad the earth by himself” (Isa. xliv. 24). He had
no engine, but his word; no pattern or model, but himself. What need
can he have of instruments, that is able to create what instruments
he pleases? Where there is no resistance in the object, where no
need of preparation or instrumental advantage in the agent; there the
actual determination of the will is sufficient to a production. What
instrument need {b41} we to the thinking of a thought, or an act of
our will? Men, indeed, cannot act anything without tools; the best
artificer must be beholden to something else for his noblest works
of art. The carpenter cannot work without his rule, and axe, and saw,
and other instruments; the watch‑maker cannot act without his file
and pliers; but in creation, there is nothing necessary to God’s
bringing forth a world, but a simple act of his will, which is both
the principal cause, and instrumental. He had no scaffolds to rear it,
no engines to polish it, no hammers or mattocks to clod and work it
together. It is a miserable error to measure the actions of an Infinite
Cause by the imperfect model of a finite, since, by his own “power and
out‑stretched arm, he made the heaven and the earth” (Jer. xxxii. 17).
What excellency would God have in his work above others, if he needed
instruments, as feeble men do?[851] Every artificer is counted more
admirable, that can frame curious works with the less matter, fewer
tools, and assistances. God uses instruments in his works of providence,
not for necessity, but for the display of his wisdom in the management
of them; yet those instruments were originally framed by him without
instruments. Indeed, some of the Jews thought the angels were the
instruments of God in creating man, and that those words, “Let us
make man in our own image” (Gen. i. 26), were spoken to angels. But
certainly the Scripture, which denies God any counsellor in the model
of creation (Isa. xl. 12‒14), doth not join any instrument with him in
the operation, which is everywhere ascribed to himself “without created
assistance” (Isa. xlv. 18). It was not to angels God spake in that
affair; if so, man was made after the image of angels, if they were
companions with God in that work; but it is everywhere said, that “Man
was made after the image of God” (Gen. i. 27). Again, the image wherein
man was created, was that of dominion over the lower creatures, as
appears ver. 26, which we find not conferred upon angels; and it is not
likely that Moses should introduce the angels, as God’s privy counsel,
of whose creation he had not mentioned one syllable. “Let us make man,”
rather signifies the Trinity, and not spoken in a royal style, as some
think. Which of the Jewish kings wrote in the style, _We_? That was
the custom of later times; and we must not measure the language of
Scripture by the style of Europe, of a far later date than the penning
the history of the creation. If angels were his counsellors in the
creation of the material world, what instrument had he in the creation
of angels? If his own wisdom were the director, and his own will the
producer of the one; why should we not think, that he acted by his sole
power in the other? It is concluded by most, that the power of creation
cannot be derived to any creature, it being a work of omnipotency;
the drawing something out from nothing, cannot be communicated without
a communication of the Deity itself. The educing things from nothing
exceeds the capacity of any creature, and the creature is of too feeble
a nature to be elevated to so high a degree. It is very unreasonable
to think, that God needed any such aid. If an instrument were necessary
for God to create the world, then he could {b42} not do it without
that instrument: if he could not, he were not then all‑sufficient
in himself, if he depended upon anything without himself, for the
production or consummation of his works. And it might be inquired, how
that instrument came into being; if it begun to be, and there was a
time when it was not, it must have its being from the power of God; and
then, why could not God as well create all things without an instrument,
as create that instrument without an instrument? For there was no more
power necessary to a producing the whole without instruments, than to
produce one creature without an instrument. No creature can, in its own
nature, be an instrument of creation. If any such instrument were used
by God, it must be elevated in a miraculous and supernatural way; and
what is so an instrument, is, in effect, no instrument; for it works
nothing by its own nature, but from an elevation by a superior nature,
and beyond its own nature. All that power in the instrument is truly
the power of God, and not the power of the instrument; and, therefore,
what God doth by an instrument, he could do as well without. If you
should see one apply straw to iron, for the cutting of it, and effect
it, you would not call the straw an instrument in that action, because
there was nothing in the nature of the straw to do it. It was done
wholly by some other force, which might have done it as well without
the straw as with it. The narrative of the creation in Genesis, removes
any instrument from God. The plants which are preserved and propagated
by the influence of the sun, were created the day before the sun, viz.
on the “third day,” whereas, the light was collected into the body of
the sun on the “fourth day” (Gen. i. 11, 16); to show, that though the
plants do instrumentally owe their yearly beauty and preservation to
the sun, yet they did not in any manner owe their creation to the
instrumental heat and vigor of it.