is incapable of changing his resolves, because of his infinite wisdom,
so he is incapable of being forced to any change, because of his
infinite power. Being almighty, he can be no more changed from power to
weakness; than, being all‑wise, he can be changed from wisdom to folly;
or, being omniscient, from knowledge to ignorance. He cannot be altered
in his purposes, because of his wisdom; nor in the manner and method of
his actions, because of his infinite strength. Men, indeed, when their
designs are laid deepest, and their purposes stand firmest, yet are
forced to stand still, or change the manner of the execution of their
resolves, by reason of some outward accidents that obstruct them in
their course; for, having not wisdom to foresee future hindrances, they
have not power to prevent them, or strength to remove them, when they
unexpectedly interpose themselves between their desire and performance;
but no created power has strength enough to be a bar against God. By
the same act of his will that he resolves a thing, he can puff away any
impediments that seem to rise up against him. He that wants no means
to effect his purposes, cannot be checked by anything that riseth up to
stand in his way; heaven, earth, sea, the deepest places, are too weak
to resist his will (Ps. cxxxv. 6). The purity of the angels will not,
and the devil’s malice cannot, frustrate his will; the one voluntarily
obeys the beck of his hand, and the other is vanquished by the power
of it. What can make him change his purposes; who (if he please) can
dash the earth against the heavens in the twinkling of an eye, untying
the world from its centre, clap the stars and elements together into
one mass, and blow the whole creation of men and devils into nothing?
Because he is almighty, therefore he is immutable.
_Instruct. 5._ Hence is inferred the providence of God, and his
government of the world. His power, as well as his wisdom, gives him
a right to govern: nothing can equal him, therefore nothing can share
the command with him; since all things are his works, it is fittest
they should be under his order: he that frames a work, is fittest to
guide and govern it. God hath the most right to govern, because he hath
knowledge to direct his power, and power to execute the results of his
wisdom: he knows what is convenient to order, {b88} and hath strength
to effect what he orders. As his power would be oppressive without
goodness and wisdom, so his goodness and wisdom would be fruitless
without power. An artificer that hath lost his hands may direct, but
cannot make an engine: a pilot that hath lost his arms may advise the
way of steerage, but cannot hold the helm; something is wanting in
him to be a complete governor: but since both counsel and power are
infinite in God, hence results an infinite right to govern, and an
infinite fitness, because his will cannot be resisted, his power cannot
be enfeebled or diminished; he can quicken and increase the strength of
all means as he pleases. He can hold all things in the world together,
and preserve them in those functions wherein he settled them, and
conduct them to those ends for which he designed them. Every artificer,
the more excellent he is, and the more excellency of power appears in
his work, is the more careful to maintain and cherish it. Those that
deny Providence, do not only ravish from him the bowels of his goodness,
but strip him of a main exercise of his power, and engender in men a
suspicion of weariness and feebleness in him; as though his strength
had been spent in making them, that none is left to guide them. They
would make him headless in regard of his wisdom, and bowelless in
regard of his goodness, and armless in regard of his strength. If he
did not, or were not able to preserve and provide for his creatures,
his power in making them would be, in a great part, an invisible power;
if he did not preserve what he made, and govern what he preserves, it
would be a kind of strange and rude power, to make, and suffer it to be
dashed in pieces at the pleasure of others. If the power of God should
relinquish the world, the life of things would be extinguished, the
fabric would be confounded, and fall into a deplorable chaos. That
which is composed of so many various pieces, could not maintain its
union, if there were not a secret virtue binding them together and
maintaining those varieties of links. Well, then, since God is not only
so good, that he cannot will anything but what is good; so wise, that
he cannot err or mistake; but also so able, that he cannot be defeated
or mated; he hath every way a full ability to govern the world: where
those three are infinite, the right and fitness resulting from thence
is unquestionable: and, indeed, to deny God this active part of his
power, is to render him weak, foolish, cruel, or all.
_Instruct. 6._ Here is a ground for the worship of God. Wisdom and
power are the grounds of the respect we give to men; they being both
infinite in God, are the foundation of a solemn honor to be returned
to him by his creatures. If a man makes a curious engine, we honor him
for his skill; if another vanquish a vigorous enemy, we admire him for
his strength: and shall not the efficacy of God’s power in creation,
government, redemption, enflame us with a sense of the honor of his
name and perfections? We admire those princes that have vast empires,
numerous armies, that have a power to conquer their enemies, and
preserve their own people in peace. How much more ground have we to pay
a mighty reverence to God, who, without trouble and weariness, made and
manages this vast empire of the world by a word and beck! What sensible
{b89} thoughts have we of the noise of thunder, the power of the sun,
the storms of the sea! These things that have no understanding have
struck men with such a reverence, that many have adored them as gods.
What reverence and adoration doth this mighty power, joined with an
infinite wisdom in God, demand at our hands! All religion and worship
stands especially upon two pillars, goodness, and power in God; if
either of these were defective, all religion would faint away. We can
expect no entertainment with him without goodness, nor any benefit
from him without power. This God prefaceth to the command to worship
him, the benefit his goodness had conferred upon them, and the
powerful manner of conveyance of it to them (2 Kings xvii. 36): “The
Lord brought you up from the land of Egypt with great power, and an
out‑stretched arm; him shall you fear, and him shall you worship,
and to him shall you do sacrifice.” Because this attribute is a main
foundation of prayer, the Lord’s Prayer is concluded with a doxology of
it, “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory.” As he is rich,
possessing all blessings; so he is powerful, to confer all blessings
on us, and make them efficacious to us. The Jews repeat many times
in their prayers, some say an hundred times, מלך העולם, “The King of
the world;” it is both an awe and an encouragement.[882] We could not,
without consideration of it, pray in faith of success; nay, we could
not pray at all, if his power were defective to help us, and his
mercy too weak to relieve us. Who would solicit a lifeless, or lie
a prostrate suppliant, to a feeble arm? Upon this ability of God, our
Saviour built his petitions (Heb. v. 7): “He offered up strong cries
unto Him that was able to save him from death.” Abraham’s faith hung
upon the same string (Rom. iv. 21), and the captived church supplicates
God to act according to the greatness of his power (Ps. lxxix. 11).
In all our addresses this is to be eyed and considered; God is able to
help, to relieve, to ease me, let my misery be never so great, and my
strength never so weak (Matt. viii. 2): “If thou wilt, thou canst make
me clean,” was the consideration the leper had when he came to worship
Christ; he was clear in his power, and therefore worshipped him, though
he was not equally clear in his will. All worship is shot wrong that
is not directed to, and conducted by, the thoughts of this attribute,
whose assistance we need. When we beg the pardon of our sins, we should
eye mercy and power; when we beg his righting us in any case where
we are unjustly oppressed, we do not eye righteousness without power;
when we plead the performance of his promise, we do not regard his
faithfulness only without the prop of his power. As power ushers in all
the attributes of God in their exercise and manifestation in the world,
so should it be the butt our eyes should be fixed upon in all our
acts of worship: as without his power his other attributes would be
useless, so without due apprehensions of his power our prayers will be
faithless and comfortless. The title in the Lord’s prayer directs us
to a prospect both of his goodness and power; his goodness in the word
Father, his greatness, excellency, and power, in the word Heaven. The
heedless consideration of the infiniteness of this perfection {b90}
roots up piety in the midst of us, and makes us so careless in worship.
Did we more think of that Power that raised the world out of nothing,
that orders all creatures by an act of his will, that performed so
great an exploit as that of our redemption, when masterless sin had
triumphed over the world, we should give God the honor and adoration
which so great an excellency challengeth and deserves at our hands,
though we ourselves had not been the work of his hands, or the
monuments of his strength; how could any creature engross to itself
that reverence from us which is due to the powerful Creator, of whom
it comes infinitely short in strength as well as wisdom?
_Instruct. 7._ From this we have a ground for the belief of the
resurrection. God aims at the glory of his power, as well as the glory
of any other attribute. Moses else would not have culled out this as
the main argument, in his pleading with God, for the sheathing the
sword which he began to draw out against them in the wilderness (Numb.
xiv. 16): “The nations will say, Because the Lord was not able to bring
these people into the land which he sware to them,” &c. As the finding
out the particulars of the dust of our bodies discovers the vastness
of his knowledge, so to raise them will manifest the glory of his power
as much as creation; bodies that have mouldered away into multitudes
of atoms, been resolved into the elements, passed through varieties
of changes, been sometimes the matter to lodge the form of a plant, or
been turned into the substance of a fish or fowl, or vapored up into a
cloud, and been part of that matter which hath compacted a thunder‑bolt,
disposed of in places far distant, scattered by the winds, swallowed
and concocted by beasts; for these to be called out from their
different places of abode, to meet in one body, and be restored to
their former consistency, in a marriage union, in the “twinkling of an
eye” (1 Cor. xv. 22), it is a consideration that may justly amaze us,
and our shallow understandings are too feeble to comprehend it. But
is it not credible, since all the disputes against it may be silenced
by reflections on Infinite Power, which nothing can oppose, for which
nothing can be esteemed too difficult to effect, which doth not imply
a contradiction in itself? It was no less amazing to the blessed virgin
to hear a message that she should conceive a Son without knowing a
man; but she is quickly answered, by the angel, with a “Nothing is
impossible to God” (Luke i. 34, 37). The distinct parts off our bodies
cannot be hid from his all‑seeing eye, wherever they are lodged,
and in all the changes they pass through, as was discoursed when the
Omniscience of God was handled; shall, then, the collection of them
together be too hard for his invincible power and strength, and the
uniting all those parts into a body, with new dispositions to receive
their several souls, be too big and bulky for that Power which never
yet was acquainted with any bar? Was not the miracle of our Saviour’s
multiplying the loaves, suppose it had not been by a new creation, but
a collection of grain from several parts, very near as stupendous as
this? Had any one of us been the only creatures made just before the
matter of the world, and beheld that inform chaos covered with a thick
darkness, mentioned Gen. i. 2, would not {b91} the report, that from
this dark deep, next to nothing, should be raised such a multitude of
comely creatures, with such innumerable varieties of members, voices,
colors, motions, and such numbers of shining stars, a bright sun, one
uniform body of light from this darkness, that should, like a giant,
rejoice to run a race, for many thousands of years together, without
stop or weariness; would not all these have seemed as incredible as the
collection of scattered dust? What was it that erected the innumerable
host of heaven, the glorious angels, and glittering stars, for aught
we know more numerous than the bodies of men, but an act of the Divine
will? and shall the power that wrought this sink under the charge of
gathering some dispersed atoms, and compacting them into a human body?
Can you tell how the dust of the ground was kneaded by God into the
body of man, and changed into flesh, skin, hair, bones, sinews, veins,
arteries, and blood, and fitted for so many several activities, when a
human soul was breathed into it?[883] Can you imagine how a rib, taken
from Adam’s side, a lifeless bone, was formed into head, hands, feet,
eyes? Why may not the matter of men, which have been, be restored, as
well as that which was not, be first erected? Is it harder to repair
those things which were, than to create those things which were not? Is
there not the same Artificer? Hath any disease or sickliness abated his
power? Is the Ancient of Days grown feeble? or shall the elements, and
other creatures, that alway yet obeyed his command, ruffle against his
raising voice, and refuse to disgorge those remains of human bodies
they have swallowed up in their several bowels? Did the whole world,
and all the parts of it, rise at his word? and shall not some parts of
the world, the dust of the dead, stand up out of the graves at a word
of the same mighty efficacy? Do we not annually see those marks of
power which may stun our incredulity in this concern? Do you see in
a small acorn, or little seed, any such sights, as a tree with body,
bark, branches, leaves, flowers, fruit――where can you find them? Do you
know the invisible corners where they lurk in that little body? And yet
these you afterwards view rising up from this little body, when sown
in the ground, that you could not possibly have any prospect of when
you rolled it in your hand, or opened its bowels. And why may not all
the particulars of our bodies, however disposed as to their distinct
natures invisibly to us, remain distinct, as well as if you mingle a
thousand seeds together? they will come up in their distinct kinds, and
preserve their distinct virtues. Again, is not the making heaven and
earth, the union of the Divine and human nature, eternity and infirmity,
to make a virgin conceive a Son, bear the Creator, and bring forth the
Redeemer, to form the blood of God of the flesh of a virgin, a greater
work than the calling together and uniting the scattered parts of our
bodies, which are all of one nature and matter? And since the power of
God is manifested in pardoning innumerable sins, is not the scattering
our transgressions, as far as the east is from the west, as the
expression is, Ps. ciii. 12, and casting such numbers into the depths
of the sea, which is God’s power over himself, a greater argument of
{b92} might than the recalling and repairing the atoms of our bodies
from their various receptacles? It is not hard for them to believe this
of the resurrection, that have been sensible of the weight and force
of their sins, and the power of God in pardoning and vanquishing that
mighty resistance which was made in their hearts against the power of
his renewing and sanctifying grace. The consideration of the infinite
power of God is a good ground of the belief of the resurrection.
_Instruct. 8._ Since the power of God is so great and incomprehensible,
how strange is it that it should be contemned and abused by the
creatures as it is! The power of God is beaten down by some, outraged
by others, blasphemed by many, under their sufferings. The stripping
God of the honor of his creation, and the glory of his preservation of
the world, falls under this charge: thus do they that deny his framing
the world alone, or thought the first matter was not of God’s creation,
and such as fancied an evil principle, the author of all evil, as God
is the author of all good, and so exempt from the power of God, that
it could not be vanquished by him. These things have formerly found
defenders in the world; but they are, in themselves, ridiculous and
vain, and have no footing in common reason, and are not worthy of
debate in a christian auditory.
In general, all idolatry in the world did arise from the want of
a due notion of this Infinite Power. The heathen thought one God was
not sufficient for the managing all things in the world, and therefore
they feigned several gods, that had several charges; as Ceres presided
over the fruits of the earth; Esculapius over the cure of distempers;
Mercury for merchandise and trade; Mars for war and battles; Apollo and
Minerva for learning and ingenious arts; and Fortune for casual things.
Whence doth the other sort of idolatry, the adoring our bags and gold,
our dependencies on, and trusting in, creatures for help arise, but
from ignorance of God’s power, or mean and slender apprehensions of it?
First, there is a contempt of it. Secondly, An abuse of it.
1. It is contemned in every sin, especially in obstinacy in sin. All
sin whatsoever is built upon some false notion or monstrous conception
of one or other of God’s perfections, and in particular of this. It
includes a secret and lurking imagination, that we are able to grapple
with Omnipotence, and enter the lists with Almightiness; what else can
be judged of the apostle’s expression (1 Cor. x. 22), “Do we provoke
the Lord to jealousy; are we stronger than he?” Do we think we have
an arm too powerful for that justice we provoke, and can repel that
vengeance we exasperate? Do we think we are an even match for God, and
are able to despoil him of his Divinity? To despise his will, violate
his order, practise what he forbids with a severe threatening, and
pawns his power to make it good, is to pretend to have an arm like God,
and be able to thunder with a voice equal or superior to him, as the
expression is (Job xl. 9). All security in sin is of this strain; when
men are not concerned at Divine threatenings, nor staggered in their
sinful race, they intimate, that the declarations of Divine Power are
but vain‑glorious boastings; that God is not so strong and able as he
{b93} reports himself to be; and therefore they will venture it, and
dare him to try, whether the strength of his arm be as forcible as
the words of his mouth are terrible in his threats; this is to believe
themselves Creators, not creatures. We magnify God’s power in our wants,
and debase it in our rebellions; as though Omnipotence were only able
to supply our necessities, and unable to revenge the injuries we offer
him.
2. This power is contemned in distrust of God. All distrust is founded
in a doubting of his truth, as if he would not be as good as his word;
or of his omniscience, as if he had not a memory to retain his word;
or of his power, as if he could not be as great as his word. We measure
the infinite power of God by the short line of our understandings,
as if infinite strength were bounded within the narrow compass of our
finite reason; as if he could do no more than we were able to do. How
soon did those Israelites lose the remembrance of God’s outstretched
arm, when they uttered that atheistical speech (Ps. lxxviii. 19), “Can
God furnish a table in the wilderness?” As if he that turned the dust
of Egypt into lice, for the punishment of their oppressors, could not
turn the dust of the wilderness into corn, for the support of their
bodies! As if he that had miraculously rebuked the Red Sea, for their
safety, could not provide bread, for their nourishment! Though they had
seen the Egyptians with lost lives in the morning, in the same place
where their lives had been miraculously preserved in the evening, yet
they disgrace that experimental power, by opposing to it the stature
of the Anakims, the strength of their cities, and the height of their
walls (Numb. xiii. 32). And (Numb. xiv. 3). “Wherefore hath the Lord
brought us into this land to fall by the sword?” As though the giants
of Canaan were too strong for Him, for whom they had seen the armies of
Egypt too weak. How did they contract the almightiness of God into the
littleness of a little man, as if he must needs sink under the sword
of a Canaanite? This distrust must arise either from a flat atheism, a
denial of the being of God, or his government of the world; or unworthy
conceits of a weakness in him, that he had made creatures too hard for
himself; that he were not strong enough to grapple with those mighty
Anakims, and give them the possession of Canaan against so great a
force. Distrust of him implies either that he was always destitute of
power, or that his power is exhausted by his former works, or that it
is limited, and near a period: it is to deny him to be the Creator that
moulded heaven and earth. Why should we, by distrust, put a slight upon
that power which he hath so often expressed, and which, in the minutest
works of his hands, surmount the force of the sharpest understanding?
3. It is contemned in too great a fear of man, which ariseth from a
distrust of Divine power. Fear of man is a crediting the might of man
with a disrepute of the arm of God, it takes away the glory of his
might, and renders the creature stronger than God; and God more feeble
than a mortal; as if the arm of man were a rod of iron, and the arm
of God a brittle reed. How often do men tremble at the threatenings
and hectorings of ruffians, yet will stand as stakes {b94} against
the precepts and threatenings of God, as though he had less power to
preserve us, than enemies had to destroy? With what disdain doth God
speak to men infected with this humor (Isa. li. 12, 13)? “Who art
thou, that art afraid of a man that shall die, and the Son of man that
shall be made as grass; and forgettest the Lord thy Maker, that hath
stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundation of the earth;
and hast feared continually every day, because of the fury of the
oppressor?” To fear man that is as grass, that cannot think a thought
without a Divine concourse, that cannot breathe, but by a Divine power,
nor touch a hair without license first granted from heaven; this is
forgetfulness, and consequently a slight of that Infinite Power, which
hath been manifested in founding the earth and garnishing the heavens.
All fear of man, in the way of our duty, doth in some sort thrust out
the remembrance, and discredit the great actions of the Creator. Would
not a mighty prince think it a disparagement to him, if his servant
should decline his command for fear of one of his subjects? and hath
not the great God just cause to think himself disgraced by us, when
we deny him obedience for fear of a creature: as though he had but
an infant ability too feeble to bear us out in duty, and incapable to
balance the strength of an arm of flesh?