predestination doth. Surely for men to silence it, were to stop up those wells which the prophets and apostles, especially Paul, have digged in their writings for the refreshing of thirsty souls; yea to endeavour the cancelling of that first and great charter of our salvation, EXERCITATION IV. Creature Creation what? Pythagoras and Trismegist. Hebrews xi. 3. opened, Scripture Philosophy. Ex nihilo nihil fit, how true. what? God's goodness in works of creation, particularly in the framing of Adam. The consultation upon which, pattern after which, parts of which he was framed. Two histories, one of a Priest, the other of a Monk. The ori ginal of body and soul improved. § 1. THE word creation hath divers acceptations! It is taken either largely, for the production of ány thing remarkably good or evil; so magistrates in a Common-wealth, and graduates in a university are said to be created, God is said to "create a clean heart,"* and we are called" his workmanship" created in Christ unto good works; and for evil, Moses in Numbers speaking of the remarkable judgment inflicted on Korah and his accomplices, useth this expression, Si creationem creaverit Deus, if God created a creature: the † Ephesians ii. 10. Psalm li. 10. radix is and that either strictly, for the generation of living creatures in a natural way, or limitedly, with some restraint; so in Horace, For tes creantur fortibus et bonis, and in Virgil, ·Sulmone creatos quatuor hic juvenes. (Whence also, procreare,) or more strictly, for the making of a thing out of some pre-existent matter, but such as is naturally indisposed and unapt for that production, whereas in generation there is always materia habilis et disposita ;) as when God creat ed man of the dust of the earth, and woman of man's rib, or more strictly, for the production of a thing without any pre-existent matter at all, out of mere nothing; we are to speak of it in the two latter senses, for so it belongeth to God alone, "Thus saith the Lord thy Redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things, that stretcheth forth the heavens alone, that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself."* Yea, so necessary was the confession of this truth with the utmost hazard to distinguish God from Idols, that to the end the Jews, who were then captives in Babylon, might not be wholly to seek for a profession of their faith, they had this verse in the Hebrew Bible written then, and so still in Chaldee letters, Thus shall ye say unto them, "The Gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under Isaiah xliv. 24. · these heavens."* Not unsuitable whereunto is that of Pythagoras long since cited by Justin Martyr, "Whosoever would from henceforth challenge any deity to himself, must be able to shew such a world as this, and to say in truth, this is of my making." And that of Trismegist (a heathen too) in one of his books; "There are mainly three to be considered; God, the world, and man: the world made for man, and man for God." § 2. But we have a more sure word of prophecy, and to that let us take heed: It will shew us, First, How we Christians " by faith understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." Well might a late writer conclude his discourse of creation with this epiphonema, Quantum est quod nescimus! The truth is, it is but little that we can learn from philosophers, even concerning creation itself, (the only article of the creed which they speak fully too) unacquainted with Scripture. Which made Maximilian the first say, that the heathens were to be heard not as singing nightingales, but as croaking frogs ;"|| And two † Ει τές έρει Θεός ζησαι είπειν εμος έτος, * Jeremiah x. 11. ειμι πάρεξ ένος, έτος ὄφελλει κόσμιν ἔξο ἐσον 787.00 Just Mart. de Monartia Dei. Πρωτον Θέος, δεύτερον ὁ κόσμος, τρίτον ὁ ἀνθρώπος. ὁ κόσμος, διὰ τον ἄνθρωπον, ὁ άνθρωπος διὰ τὸν Θεόν. Trismegistus. quam Hebrews xi. 3. S Gilb. Voetius Disput. Theol. part 1. page 881. || Audiendi sunt Ethnici, non tanquam Philomelæ, sed tan Ranæ. great physicians betake themselves to the study of Scripture for understanding the secrets of nature.* One Sennertus, who findeth much fault with those who perverted the text of Moses, and interpreted him out of heathen writers, ausu infelici (saith he) et non tolerando by an unhappy and intolerable undertaking. The other Vallesius, who in the preface to his Sacra Philosophia, telleth us, whereas he had in the former part of his life commented upon all Aristotle's Acromatics, and many pieces both of Hippocrates and Galen, he was resolved to devote the remainder of his days to the study of the holy Scriptures, and to seek his philosophy out of them for time to come.+ By faith we understand. A Christian firmly believes those truths concerning the time and manner of the world's creation, because he hath Scripture testimony for them. That the worlds were framed, speaking after the Jewish mode, (though there is indeed but one world,) in the plural number; for the Hebrews then were wont to mention a threefold, viz. an inferior, a middle, and a superior world, as Camero telleth us. "Framed by the word of God," saith this place. When Solomon was to build a magnificent temple, he needed many workmen, and they many tools. Not so God, who did all without any co-adjutor, any instrument, * Apud Voetium ibid. page 680. + Huic lectioni consecrari senectutem.-statui in his philosophari, &c. Vallesius. Cameron, Myrothec. page 288. by the sole word of his command. By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth."* "Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded, and they were created."+ Art can work, if nature first afford it some complete matter let an artificer have a stone, he can make a statue, otherwise not. Nature can work if there be a principle to work upon, though incomplete; let there be seed, it can produce a plant, let there be spawn, a fish. But to work without pre-existent matter, so as to bring forth the first plant without seed, the first fish without a spawn,‡ yea the first principles of these, and all things else out of nothing, by his sole word, is proper to God. "So that things which are seen (as it followeth here) were not made of things which do appear." That rule, ex nihilo nihil sit, holds in natura constituta, now that God hath set nature in a course of working by secondary causes enabled to produce effects like themselves; but in natura constituenda, it was otherwise, when God wrought by his word of command, and is therefore called Elohim by Moses two and thirty times in his history of creation, as Mercer observeth. と The Schoolmen for the most part express that which is here called, "Things that do not appear," by the term nothing, either simply nothing, or no such thing, as it appeared to be at *Psalm xxxiii. 6. + Psalm cxlviii. 5. Dr Jackson's Commentary on the Creed, part 2d, chap. 6. § 4. page 64. |