LECTURE VI.

CREED.

Article I. I believe in God the Father, &c.

THE foundation of all religion is faith in God; the persuasion, that there doth, ever did, and ever will exist, one Being of unbounded power and knowledge, perfect justice, truth and goodness, the creator and preserver of all things. With this article, therefore, our Creed begins.

And as all the rest are built upon it, so the truth and certainty of it is plain to every man, when duly proposed to his consideration, how unlikely soever some men would have been to discover it of themselves.

We know, beyond possibility of doubt, that we now are; and yet the oldest of us, but a few years ago, was not. How then came we to be? Whence had we our beginning? From our parents, perhaps, we may think. But did our parents know, or do we know in the least, how to form such a mind as that of man, with all its faculties; or such a body as that of man, with all its parts and members; or even the very smallest of them? No more than a tree knows how to make the seed that grows into a like tree; no more than any common instrument knows how to do the work, which is done by its means. Our parents were only instruments in the hands of some higher pow er and to speak properly, "That it is which "made us, and not we ourselves," or one another. And the same is the case of every animal and every plant upon the face of the earth.

(1) Psalm c. 2.

But could our parents be the cause of our be ing? Yet still the first human pair must have had some different cause of theirs. Will it then be said, that there was no first? But we cannot conceive this to be possible. And it certainly is not true. For we have undoubted accounts, in ancient histories, of the time when men were but few in the world, and inhabited but a small part of it; and therefore were near their beginning: accounts of the times, when almost all arts and sciences were invented: which mankind would not have been long in being, much less from eternity, without finding out. And upon the whole there is strong evidence, that the present frame of things is not more than about six thousand years old: and that none of us here present is one hundred and fifty generations distant from our first parent.

If it be said, that universal deluges may, perhaps, have destroyed all the race of men, and so made that seem a new beginning, which was not; we answer, that one such deluge we own; but that no such can possibly happen according to the common course of nature, as learned persons have abundantly shown. And consequently this proves a higher power, instead of destroying the proof of it.

But without having recourse to history, it is evident from the very form and appearance of the earth, that it cannot have been from eternity. If it had, to mention nothing else, the hills must all have been washed down by showers, innumerable ages ago, to a level with the plains. And, indeed, they who have thought of these matters, well

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(2) This argument is produced from Theophrastus, in Philo, περὶ ἀφθαρσίας κόσμε, p. 510; and two answers to it attempted, p. 513: that mountains may lose parts and gain them again, as trees do their leaves; or are supported by the internal fire, which threw them up. The first is an absurd assertion-the latter a groundless and false one.

know and confess, that the present constitution of the heavens and earth, both must have had a beginning, and must of itself come to an end.

To say, therefore, that things are by nature what they are, is to say a plain falsehood, if we mean that they are so by any necessity in their own natures. For, then, they must always have been such as we see them; and not the least part of any thing could possibly have been at all different from what it is; which is the wildest imagination in the world. The only nature, therefore, which we and the whole universe have, was freely given us by a superior Being. And the regularity in which things go on, is no more a proof that they were, of themselves, from everlasting, or shall continue as they are to everlasting, than the regular motion of a clock is a proof that no artist made it, or keeps it in order, or shall take it to pieces. On the contrary, the more complete this regularity is, and the longer it lasts, the more fully it shows the power of its author; and not only that, but his understanding and wisdom also.

Indeed, what hath no understanding, hath, in strictness of speech, no power-cannot act, but only be acted upon, as all mere matter is which never moves but as it is moved. But, were this doubtful, look around you, and see what marks of understanding and wisdom appear. Turn your eyes upon yourselves, how "fearfully and won. derfully are we made!" of what an incredible number and variety of parts (a vastly greater than perhaps any of us suspect) are our bodies composed! How were these formed and put together at first? What hath caused, and what hath limited their growth since? How hath proper and suitable nourishment been distributed to them all?

(3) Psal. cxxxix. 14.

How hath the perpetual motion of our blood, and of our breath, sleeping and waking, both of them so necessary to life, been carried on? How is it that we move every joint belonging to us instantly, and with such exactness, without knowing even which way we go about it? Our speech, our hearing, our sight, every one of our senses, what amazing contrivance is there in them; and the more amazing, the more strictly we examine them! In the works of men it is often mere ignorance that occasions our admiration; but in these, the minuter our inspection, and the deeper our search is, the greater abundance we always find of accurate adjustments, and unimaginable precautions.

very

How

But, then, besides ourselves, the earth is replenished with numberless other animals. Those of which we commonly take notice, are an extremely small part of the whole. Different countries produce different sorts. still more many, different, the great waters conceal from us, we cannot even guess. Multitudes remain, so little, as almost to escape our sight, with the best assistance that we are able to give it; and, probably, multitudes more which escape it entirely. all that we can observe, we find, down to the very least, contrived with the same inconceivable art, strangely diversified, yet uniform at the same time, and perfectly fitted by most surprising instincts for their several ways of living, entirely different each

from the other.

But

What wisdom and power must it be then, which hath peopled the world in this manner, and made such provision for the support of all its inhabitants, chiefly by the means of innumerable kinds of herbs and vegetables, just as wonderful in their make as the animals themselves; that hath intermixed the dry land so fitly with springs, and rivers, and lakes; and the ocean, to supply

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every thing with necessary moisture, and make the communication of the most distant parts easy; that hath surrounded the earth with air for us to breathe in, to convey our voices to each other, and to support clouds for rain; that hath caused this air to be moved by winds, which preserve it healthful, and "bring those who go down to the sea in ships, unto the haven where they would "be:" that hath placed the sun at so exact a distance from us, that we are neither burnt up by heat, nor frozen by cold; and hath kept bodies of such incredible bulk, as the heavenly ones, rolling on, for thousands of years together, with so orderly and exact a motion, that the return of day and night, and of the various annual seasons, are precisely foreknown, and perfectly suitable for labour and rest, and bringing the fruits of the earth to maturity; whereas, were almost any one of these things considerably altered, we must all of necessity perish.

But, then, how small a part of the universe our habitation may be; and how many, perhaps greater, wonders the rest may contain, we cannot so much as conjecture. The millions of miles that are between us and the nearest of the celes tial globes, would be astonishing, if mentioned to you. Yet their distance is as nothing, if compared with the furthest, which we see; and very possibly the furthest, which we see, may be as nothing to many others; every one of which, we have no reason to doubt, is as full of regularity, and beauty, and use, as our own abode. from what origin can the whole of this proceed, but that which the Psalmist rapturously expresses: "O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wis"dom hast thou made them all."5

And

To speak of chance as the cause of them, is

(4) Psalm cvi. 23, 30.

(5) Psalm civ. 24.