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| Chapter XVII.
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Chapter
XVII.
The object of our worship is the One God,101
He who by His commanding word, His arranging
wisdom, His mighty power, brought forth from nothing this entire mass
of our world, with all its array of elements, bodies, spirits, for the
glory of His majesty; whence also the Greeks have bestowed on it the
name of Κόσμος. The eye cannot see
Him, though He is (spiritually) visible. He is incomprehensible, though in grace He is
manifested. He is beyond our utmost thought, though our human faculties
conceive of Him. He is therefore equally real and great. But that
which, in the ordinary sense, can be seen and handled and conceived, is
inferior to the eyes by which it is taken in, and the hands by which it
is tainted, and the faculties by which it is discovered; but that which
is infinite is known only to itself. This it is which gives some notion
of God, while yet beyond all our conceptions—our very incapacity
of fully grasping Him affords us the idea of what He really is.
He is presented to our minds in His transcendent greatness, as at once
known and unknown. And this is the crowning guilt of men, that they
will not recognize One, of whom they cannot possibly be ignorant. Would
you have the proof from the works of His hands, so numerous and so
great, which both contain you and sustain you, which minister at once
to your enjoyment, and strike you with awe; or would you rather have it
from the testimony of the soul itself? Though under the oppressive
bondage of the body, though led astray by depraving customs, though
enervated by lusts and passions, though in slavery to false gods; yet,
whenever the soul comes to itself, as out of a surfeit, or a sleep, or
a sickness, and attains something of its natural soundness, it speaks
of God; using no other word, because this is the peculiar name of the
true God. “God is great and good”—“Which
may God give,” are the words on every lip. It bears witness, too,
that God is judge, exclaiming, “God sees,” and, “I
commend myself to God,” and, “God will repay me.” O
noble testimony of the soul by nature102
| 102 [Though we are not by
nature good, in our present estate; this is elsewhere demonstrated by
Tertullian, as see cap. xviii.] | Christian! Then,
too, in using such words as these, it looks not to the Capitol, but to
the heavens. It knows that there is the throne of the living God, as
from Him and from thence itself came down.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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