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pleasure, do any thing that contradicts the nature of God, and the essential perfections of the Deity; or to imagine that the pleasure and will of the holy, and juft, and good God, is not always regulated and determined by the essential and indispenfable laws of goodness, and holiness, and righteoufnefs.

Secondly, Positively; we may infer from the sovereignty and dominion of God,

1. That we ought to own and acknowlege God for our Lord and Sovereign, who by creating us, and giving us all that we have, did create to himself a right

in us.

2. That we owe to him the utmost possibility of our love, to love him with all our hearts, and souls, and strength; because the fouls that we have, he gave us; and that we are in a capacity to love him, is his gift; and when we render these to him, we do but give him of his own.

3. We owe to him all imaginable subjection, and observance, and obedience; and are with all diligence, to the utmost of our endeavours, to conform our selves to his will, and to those laws which he hath imposed upon us.

4. In case of offence and disobedience, we are, without murmuring, to submit to what he shall inflict upon us, to accept of the punishment of our iniquity, and patiently to bear the indignation of the Lord, because we have finned against him, who is our Lord and Sovereign.

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SERMON CXXXVII.

The wisdom of God in the creation of the world.

PSAL. civ. 24.

O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all.

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Am treating of the attributes and properties of God, particularly those which relate to the divine understanding, which I told you are his knowledge and wisdom. I have finished the first, the knowledge of God. The last day I spake concerning the wisdom of God in general; but there are three eminent arguments and famous instances of God's wisdom, which I have reserved for a more large and particular handling. The wisdom of God shines forth in the creation of the world, in the government of it, and in the redemption of mankind by Jesus Christ. Of these three I shall speak severally.

I begin with the first, the argument of God's wifdom, which the creation doth furnish us withal. In this visible frame of the world, which we behold with our eyes, which way foever we look, we are encountered with ocular demonstrations of the wifdom of God. What the Apostle faith of the power of God is likewise true of his wisdom, Rom. i. 20. The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead: So the eternal wisdom of God is understood by the things which are made. Now the creation is an argument of the wisdom of God, as it is an effect of admirable counsel and wisdom. As any curious work, or rare engine doth argue the wit of the artificer; so the variety, and order, and regularity, and fitness of the works of God, argue the infinite wisdom of him who made them; a work so beautiful and magnificent, fuch a stately pile as heaven and earth is, fo curious in the several pieces of it, fo harmonious in all its parts, every part fo fitted to the fervice of the whole, and each part for the service of another; is not this a plain argument that there was infinite wifdom in the contrivance of this frame ?

Now I shall endeavour to prove to you, that this frame of things which we fee with our eyes, which we call the world or the creation, is contrived after the best manner, and hath upon it evident impreffions of counsel and wisdom. I grant the wisdom of God is infinite, and that many of the ends and designs of his wisdom are unsearchable, and past finding out, both in the works of creation and providence: and that though a wise man seek to find out the work of God from the beginning to the end, he Shall not be able to do it; and we shall never be able to exhaust all the various wisdom and contrivance which is in the works of God; though the oftner, and the nearer we meditate upon them, the more we shall see to admire in them; the more we study this book of the creation, the more we shall be astonished at the wisdom of the author : but this doth not hinder, but that we may discover something of the wisdom of God, though it be infinite. As the effects of infinite power may fall under our senses, so the designs of infinite wisdom may fall under our reafon and understanding; and when things appear to our best reason plainly to be ordered for the best, and the greatest advantages of the world and mankind, so far as we are able to judge; and if they had been otherwise, as they might have been a hundred thousand ways, they would not have been so well; we ought to conclude, that things are thus, and not otherwise, is the result of wisdom.

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Now the wisdom of God in the creation will appear by confidering the works of God. Those who have studied nature, can discourse these things more exactly and particularly. It would require perfect skill in aftronomy, to declare the motions and order of heavenly bodies; and in anatomy, to read lectures of the rare contrivance of the bodies of living creatures. But this, as it is beyond my ability, fo it would probably be above most of your capacities; therefore I shall content myself with some general and more obvious instances of the divine wisdom, which shine forth so clear in his works, that he that runs may read it.

1. I shall take a short survey of the several parts of the world. 2. Single out man, the master-piece of the visible creation.

1. If we survey the world, and travel over the several parts of it in our thoughts, we shall find that all things in it are made with the greatest exactness, ranged in the most beautiful order, and serve the wisest and best ends.

If we look up to heaven, and take notice only there of what is most visible, the fun, you see, how by the wife order and constancy of its course it makes day and night, winter and summer. This the Pfalmist takes notice of, Pfal. xix. 1, 2. The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handy work. Day unto day uttereth Speech; and night unto night sheweth knowledge. It may eafily be imagined many ways, how the fun might have had another course in reference to the earth; but no man can devise any other, that should not be very much to the prejudice of the world; so that this being the best, it is an argument that wisdom had the ordering and disposing of it.

If we look down to the earth, we shall fee gods afcending and descending; I mean clear representations of divine wisdom in the treasures that are hid in the bowels of it, and those fruits that grow upon the furface of it. What vast heaps, and what variety of useful materials and minerals are scattered up and down in the earth as one would think with a careless hand, but yet so wifely dispersed, as is most

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proper for the necessities and uses of several countries! Look upon the furface of the earth, and you shall find it cloathed and adorned with plants of various and admirable frame, and beauty, and usefulness. Look upon the vast ocean, and there you may fee the wisdom of God in bridling and restraining that unruly element, I mean, in sinking it below the earth; whereas the water might have been above and covered the earth, and then the earth had been in a great measure useless, and incapable of those inhabitants which now poffsess it.

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Look again upon the earth, and in the air, and sea, and you shall find all these inhabited and furnished with great store of living creatures of several kinds, wonderfully made in the frame of their bodies, endued with strong inclinations to increase their kinds, and with a natural affection and care towards their young ones and every kind of these creatures armed either with strength or wit to oppose their enemy, or swiftness to fly from him, or strong holds to secure themselves. But the creation is a vast field, in which we may easily lose ourselves. I shall therefore call home our wandering thoughts, for we need not go out of ourselves for a proof of divine wisdom. I shall therefore,

2. Select the choicest piece of it, man, who is the top and perfection of this visible world. What is faid of the elephant, or behemoth, Job xl. 19. in re spect of the vast bigness and strength of his body, is only absolutely true of man, that he is divini opificii caput, the chief of the works of God, and upon earth there is none like him. Man is mundi utriusque nexus, the bond of both worlds, as Scaliger calls him, in whom the world of bodies, and the world of spirits do meet, and unite; for in respect of his body, he is related to this visible world, and is of the earth; but in respect of his soul, he is allied to heaven, and defcended from above. We have looked above us, and beneath us, and about us, upon the several representations of God's wis. dom, and the several parts of the creation; but

we have not yet confidered the best piece of the VOL. VI. visible

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