And that is the way, having lost ourselves, to find ourselves again, by loving him above ourselves. "If any man love his life," (that is, supremely,) "he shall lose it; but if he will lose his life for my sake, he shall find it." We find life, and all, in God through Christ, when we are lovers so as to make him the supreme Object of our love, as in that, John 12. 25. No man can really be a loser by so abandoning himself, as to place that love which he unjustly placed upon himself before, (that is, his supreme love,) now upon God, and upon Christ. No man can be a loser, but he finds himself again in this case. He had lost himself before; but now he is restored to himself and to his God both at once. Then,

9. We may further learn, hence, how reasonable a thing it is, that man should be under government: Is he a creature? then he ought to be a governed thing. The most reasonable thing in all the world it is, that he that hath given us being, should give us law. Hath he been the Author of being to us? and shall he not rule his own creature? Shall that be allowed to have a will against his will? To have been raised up out of the dust, but the other day, out of nothing, and now to dispute whose will shall be superior, mine or his that made me, what an insolency is it! We may again learn,

10. How foolish a thing is self-designing, when men lay their designs apart from God; forming their projects, as the apostle James speaks, chap. 4. 15, 16. "I will go to such a city, and buy and sell and get gain. And I will reside there for such a time." This all proceeds from our forgetting that we are creatures, made things. God hath made us; so that our breath is in his hands. How great an absurdity is it, as well as an injury, that I should talk of forming projects, and laying designs, when I am but a made thing, and there is an arbitrary hand underneath me, which sustains me; but that may let me drop and sink, in the next moment, if it be withdrawn. We ought to say, "If God will, we will do so and so." If your being depend upon his will, certainly your actions and affairs depend upon his will too. But for men to design so and so, without consulting God, or referring themselves to God, is to take upon them as if they were not creatures. And,

11. We may hence learn, further, (as that which is fundamental to all the rest,) how indispensable an obligation there lies upon us to preserve a continual, awful remembrance of God upon our minds and hearts, from time to time, all the day long. "Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth." I pray, let us but use our own understanding in considering this. When it is said, "Remember thy Creator in the days of thy

youth." (Eccles. 12. 1.) Is the meaning of it, that we are only when we are young to remember him, and forget him all our days afterwards? No, the meaning is, that those days of our youth are not to be exempted, we are not at liberty to forget him even then, but that he claims an early and first interest in our time and thoughts, and in the truth and vigour of our spirits, and that we are to begin then, when we are young, as we are to continue all our days afterwards. And how is he to be remembered? Why under the very notion of Creator: that suggests to us the very reason why we are to remember him; because he is our Creator, and our breath is continually in his hands. What do we think a man can subsist without God, any better when he is grown up, or when he is grown old, than he could when he was young? No, the reason upon which the obligation rests, is still the same upon us all our days; that, therefore, it is a most monstrous thing, to consider how men come to dispense with themselves in this fundamental duty, that virtually comprehends all the rest. All is lost and gone, if we do not so much as remember God. How can we dispense with ourselves to rise up in the morning, without a serious thought of God, and run after our common affairs all the day long, and still forget him? And lie down at night (it may be) without any serious remembrance of him? and yet lie down with the apprehension that we are innocent in all this; we have passed over this day well if we have succeeded in our business, if there hath been no disaster that hath befallen us, all hath been well; though there hath been no serious thought of God; no minding of God at all; that is to live in a downright rebellion against God, through a whole day; and also from day to day, through a whole life's time hitherto: for it must be entire and universal rebellion, inasmuch as all duty towards him depends upon remembering him: we can do nothing besides if we do not do that Therefore, is that given us as the character and diagnostic of wicked men, of men that are designed for hell, and allotted to hell for their final and eternal inheritance and residence. "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the people that forget God." Psalm 9. 17. And they, accordingly, are characterised as such, who more peculiarly belong to God, and as those whom he owns for his own, and counts his jewels; "In the day that I make up my jewels, saith God, they shall be mine:" Who? why "They that feared the Lord, and thought upon his name." Mal. 3. 16, 17. “And the desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee." This is the profession of his holy ones. Isa. 26. 8. And, again we may add,

12. Since God made man, you see how easy it is for him to prevent all the evil designs of ill men, if he see good: for they are all his creatures: and hath he made a creature that he cannot govern? If then we see wicked men, at any time, bring their wicked devices to pass, it is not because God cannot rule them; but because he hath deeper designs that they understand not, and we understand not. And therefore, their insolency, and good men's despondency, upon that account, are equally unreasonable. They triumph; and good men are dejected; their hearts sink, and they hang down their heads; and why? because wicked men prevail, and prosper in their way, many times, ages together; and, it may be, in many parts of the world. But,

(1.) Their confidence, on the one hand, is so unreasonable as to be even ridiculous. "He that sitteth in the heavens, laughs, the Most High hath them in derision." "A company of bubbles of being, that I can let drop into nothing in a moment, if I please and yet they please themselves in the hopes and imaginations of succeeding in such and such designs as they have laid.' "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh" at them. He knows how soon he can let such bubbles drop into nothing; and he sees that their day is coming. And,

(2.) Good men's despondency is, upon this account, equally unreasonable. "Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding." Isai. 40. 28. Thou dost not know the counsels of God, what that all-comprehending mind and understanding of his doth design, in letting creatures awhile run such a course. But we are to be assured, he hath his own creatures in his own hand and power, both men and devils, and can govern them as he pleaseth. He hath a hook in their nostrils, that they themselves are unapprehensible of. He knows their coming in, and their going out, (as he said of that proud Assyrian,) and even all the rage which they have against him. But, I say, he hath a hook in their nostrils, and can turn them as he pleaseth, and when he will: we shall have done a great thing towards the whole business of our religion if we can but get this truth impressed upon, and deeply wrought into our souls; So God made man; if we will but learn to look upon ourselves as made things, and look upon all men as made things, continually in the hands, and at the command of their great Creator.

LECTURE XIX,

Gen. 1. 27.

So God created Man in his own Image.

WE have treated of the first thing, to wit, this creation itself.

And now,

So God made, or created man. II. We come to speak of the norma or pattern of this work of his; or the estate wherein man was created; in his own image; which is mentioned with a reduplication; "in the image of God created he him ;" and this we shall speak to briefly, by way of explication and application.

1. In the explication, our great business must be, to inquire, and shew, wherein stood this image of God, wherein man was created. Theirs was a strange and absurd dream, (that of the anthropomophites,) that is, they who did ascribe to God a corporeal shape, and supposed man to be made like to God in that respect. We know, indeed, that in tract of time, our Lord Jesus Christ did assume a human body; but that gives no pretence at all to this imagination: for therein he was made like unto us, man being the pre-existent pattern, and not we like to him, man being made long before. And to ascribe to Deity itself a corporeal shape, must needs speak very mean and base thoughts of God, founded in gross ignorance, and rising up into a mental blasphemy; and indeed, very vile thoughts even of

* Preached January 20, 1694.

ourselves, as if we were but to imitate God in somewhat corporeal.

;

Some of the more refined pagans have disclaimed, and declaimed against such gross thoughts of God, warning us to take heed of ascribing any thing corporeal to him; as one, inquiring how we are to conceive of God, according to the doctrine of Plato, (I mean Maximus Tyrius,) he tells us, "we must be very shy, and it ought to be most remote from us, to ascribe any thing at all corporeal to him, neither shape, nor colour, nor magnitude, nor any kind of figure whatsoever: but somewhat of that high excellency as neither to be seen with eyes, nor felt with hands, nor expressed by any words." In some such things we are to understand the excellency of the Divine Nature and Being to consist. And accordingly, the apostle, discoursing to those Athenian philosophers, (Acts 17.) supposeth them very capable of understanding so much as this he quotes one of their own poets for it, that "we are God's offspring." "And forasmuch," saith he, "as we are the offspring of God, we cannot conceive the Godhead to be like any corporeal thing of never so great excellency;" as silver or gold, of which some corporeal shape or resemblance may be made, or stands never so curiously graven by the art or device of man : we must understand our resemblance to him, as we are his offspring, to lie in some higher, more noble, and more excellent thing, of which there can be no figure; as, who can tell how to give the figure or image of a thought, or the mind or thinking power? This image therefore, must principally lie in some mental thing, and is to be only mentally understood: that is, it must have its seat and subject in the soul and spirit of man itself and so we must know this image of God in man, wherein he was made, to be twofold; natural and moral.

(1.) Natural, standing in such things as wherein the very nature and essence of man's soul and spirit doth consist and lie. As,

[1.] In spirituality: the soul of man is a spirit, as God himself is a spirit. He, the paternal Spirit, (as a heathen very aptly speaks of,) the fatherly Mind; and agreeably to that, we are his offspring, he being the Father of spirits.

[2.] And in life; essential life. We have bodies that live a borrowed life. Our spirits are, themselves, living things in their own nature and essence; so that life is inseparable from them, as it is not inseparable from our bodies; for our bodies can die; but our souls cannot. If it be, it lives: being and life are the self-same thing. As the blessed God is so frequently spoken of in Scripture, "the living God," the original well-spring of