expression that he is " in a certain place in the heavens," I ask why he dwells in one part of the heavens rather than another?' or whether he ever removes or takes a journey, as Elijah speaks of Baal, 1 Kings xviii, 27, or is eternally, as limited in, so confined unto, the certain place wherein he is? Again; how doth he work out those effects of almighty power which are at so great a distance from him as the earth is from the heavens, which cannot be effected by the intervenience of any created power, as the resurrection of the dead, etc. The power of God doubtless follows his essence, and what this extends not to that cannot reach. But of that which might be spoken to vindicate the infinitely glorious being of God from the reproach which his own word is wrested to cast upon him, this that hath been spoken is somewhat that to my present thoughts doth occur. I suppose that Mr B. knows that in this his circumscription of God to a certain place, he transgresses against the common consent of mankind; if not, a few instances of several sorts may, I hope, suffice for his conviction. I shall promiscuously propose them, as they lie at hand or occur to my remembrance. For the Jews, Philo gives their judgment. "Hear," saith he, "of the wise God that which is most true, that God is in no place, for he is not contained, but containeth all. That which is made is in a place, for it must be contained and not contain." And it is the observation of another of them, that so often as Dip, a place, is said of God, the exaltation of his immense and incomparable essence (as to its manifestation) is to be understood." And the learned Buxtorf tells us that when that word is used of God, it is by an antiphrasis, to signify that he is infinite, illocal, received in no place, giving place to all. That known saying of Empedocles passed among the heathen, "Deus est circulus, cujus centrum ubique, circumferentia nusquam;" and of Seneca, "Turn which way thou wilt, thou shalt see God meeting thee. Nothing is empty of him: he fills his own work." "All things are full of God," says the poet; and another of them: "Estque Dei sedes nisi terræ, et pontus, et aer, Est cœlum, et versus superos, quid quærimus ultra : Of this presence of God, I say, with and unto all things, of the infinity of his essence, the very heathens themselves, by the light of "Si spatium vacat super caput Creatoris, et si Deus ipse in loco est, erit jam locus ille major et Deo et mundo; nihil enim non majus est id quod capit, illo quod capitur." -Tertul. ad Max. lib. i. cap. xv. 2 *Ακουσον παρὰ τοῦ ἐπισταμένου Θεοῦ ῥῆσιν ἀληθεστάτην, ὅτι ὁ Θεὸς οὐχί που· οὐ γὰρ περιέ χεται, ἀλλὰ περιέχει τὸ πᾶν. Τὸ δὲ γενόμενον ἐν τόπῳ· περιέχεσθαι γὰρ αὐτὸ, ἀλλὰ οὐ περιέχειν avaynalov. Philo, lib. ii. Alleg. Leg. 3 Maimon. Mor. Nevoch. p. 1, cap. viii. ♦ Buxtorf in Lexic.: verbo ip?. : "Quocumque te flexeris, ibi illum (Deum) videbis occurrentem tibi. Nihil ab illo vacat opus suum ipse implet."-Senec, de Benef. lib. iv. cap. viii. "Jovis omnia plena."-Virg. Ecl. iii. 60. Lucan, lib. iii. VOL. XII. 7 nature (which Mr B. herein opposes), had a knowledge. Hence did some of them term him xogμoods vous, "a mind framing the uniκοσμοποιὸς νοῦς, verse," and affirmed him to be infinite. "Primus omnium rerum descriptionem et modum, mentis infinitæ vi et ratione designari, et confici voluit," says Cicero of Anaxagoras, Tull. de Nat. Deor. lib. i. 11; "All things are disposed of by the virtue of one infinite mind." And Plutarch, expressing the same thing, says he is vous xatapos, καὶ ἄκρατος ἐμμεμιγμένος πᾶσι,-“ a pure and sincere mind, mixing itself, and mixed" (so they expressed the presence of the infinite mind) "with all things." So Virgil, "Jovis omnia plena,"—" All things are full of God," (for God they intended by that name, Acts xvii. 25, 28, 29; and says Lactantius, "Convicti de uno Deo, cum id negare non possunt, ipsum se colere, affirmant, verum hoc sibi placere, ut Jupiter nominetur," lib. i. cap. ii.); which, as Servius on the place observes, he had taken from Aratus, whose words are:Εκ διὸς ἀρχώμεσθα, τὸν οὐδέ ποτ' ἄνδρες ἐῶμεν *Αῤῥητον· μεσταὶ δὲ διὸς πᾶσαι μὲν ἁγνιαὶ, Πᾶσαι δ ̓ ἀνθρώπων ἀγοραὶ, μεστὴ δὲ θάλασσα, Καὶ λιμένες, πάντη δὲ διὸς κεχρήμεθα πάντες, -giving a full description, in his way, of the omnipresence and ubiquity of God. The same Virgil, from the Platonics, tells us in another place: "Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem."-En. vi. 726. And much more of this kind might easily be added. The learned know where to find more for their satisfaction; and for those that are otherwise, the clear texts of Scripture cited before may suffice. Of those, on the other hand, who have, no less grossly and carnally than he of whom we speak, imagined a diffusion of the substance of God through the whole creation, and a mixture of it with the creatures, so as to animate and enliven them in their several forms, making God an essential part of each creature, or dream of an assumption of creatures into an unity of essence with God, I am not now to speak. CHAPTER III. Of the shape and bodily visible figure of God. MR BIDDLE'S question:— Is God in the Scripture said to have any likeness, similitude, person, shape? The proposition which he would have to be the conclusion of the answers to these questions is this, That, according to the doctrine of 1 Vide Beza, Ep. ad Philip Marnix. Vide Virg. Æn. lib. vi. 724: "Principio cælum," etc., ex. Platonicis. the Scriptures, God is a person shaped like a man;-a conclusion so grossly absurd that it is refused as ridiculous by Tully, a heathen, in the person of Cotta (De Nat. Deor. lib. i. 6), against Velleius the Epicurean, the Epicureans only amongst the philosophers being so sottish as to admit that conceit. And Mr B., charging that upon the Scripture which hath been renounced by all the heathens who set themselves studiously to follow the light of nature, and, by a strict inquiry, to search out the nature and attributes of God, principally attending to that safe rule of ascribing nothing to him that eminently included imperfection,1 hath manifested his pretext of mere Christianity to be little better than a cover for downright atheism, or at best of most vile and unworthy thoughts of the Divine Being. And here also doth Mr B. forsake his masters. Some of them have had more reverence of the Deity, and express themselves accordingly, in express opposition to this gross figment. According to the method I proceeded in, in consideration of the precedent questions, shall I deal with this, and first consider briefly the scriptures produced to make good this monstrous, horrid assertion. The places urged and insisted on of old by the Anthropomorphites3 were such as partly ascribed a shape in general to God, partly such as mention the parts and members of God in that shape, his eyes, his arms, his hands, etc.; from all which they looked on him as an old man sitting in heaven on a throne,-a conception that Mr B. is no stranger to. The places of the first sort are here only insisted on by Mr B., and the attribution of a "likeness, image, similitude, person, and shape" unto God, is his warrant to conclude that he hath a visible, corporeal image and shape like that of a man; which is the plain intendment of his question. Now, if the image, likeness, or similitude, attributed to God as above, do no way, neither in the sum of the words themselves nor by the intendment of the places where they are used, in the least ascribe or intimate that there is any such corporeal, visible shape in God as he would insinuate, but are properly expressive of some other thing that properly belongs to him, I suppose it will not be questioned but that a little matter will prevail with a person desiring to emerge in the world by novelties, and on that account casting off that reverence of God which the first and most common notions of mankind would instruct him into, to 1 "Sine corpore ullo Deum vult esse, ut Græci dicunt dowμarov.”—Tull. de Nat. Deor. lib. i. 12, de Platone. "Mens soluta quædam et libera, segregata ab omni concretione mortali."-Id., Tusc. Quaest. lib. i. 27. "Ex his autem intelligitur, membra humani corporis, quæ Deo in sacris literis ascribuntur, uti et partes quædam aliarum animantium, quales sunt alæ, non nisi impropriè Deo tribui; siquidem a spiritus natura prorsus abhorrent. Tribuuntur autem Deo per metaphoram cum metonymia conjunctam. Nempe quia facultates vel actiones Deo conveniunt, illarum similes, quæ membris illis, aut insunt, aut per ea exercentur." -Crell. de Deo, sive de Vera Relig. lib. i. cap. xv. p. 107. 3 Epiph. tom. i, lib. iii. Hæres. lxx.; Theod., lib. iv. cap. x. make bold with God and the Scripture for his own ends and pur poses. 1. I say then, first, in general, if the Scripture may be allowed to expound itself, it gives us a fair and clear account of its own intendment in mentioning the image and shape of God, which man was created in, and owns it to be his righteousness and holiness; in a state whereof, agreeable to the condition of such a creature, man being created is said to be created in the image and likeness of God,— in a kind of resemblance unto that holiness and righteousness which are in him, Eph. iv. 23, 24, etc. What can hence be concluded for a corporeal image or shape to be ascribed unto God is too easily discernible. From a likeness in some virtue or property to conclude to a likeness in a bodily shape, may well befit a man that cares not what he says, so he may speak to the derogation of the glory of God. 2. For the particular places by Mr B. insisted on, and the words used in them, which he lays the stress of this proposition upon the first two words are and ; both of which are used in Gen. i. 26. The word is used Gen. v. 1, and D, Gen. ix. 6; but neither of these words doth, in its genuine signification, imply any corporeity or figure. The most learned of all the rabbins, and most critically skilful in their language, hath observed and proved that the proper Hebrew word for that kind of outward form or similitude is ; and if these be ever so used, it is in a metaphorical and borrowed sense, or at least there is an amphiboly in the words, the Scripture sometimes using them in such subjects where this gross, corporeal sense cannot possibly be admitted: ?," Like the poison of a serpent," Ps. lviii. 4. There is, indeed, some imaginable, or rather rational, resemblance in the properties there mentioned, but no corporeal similitude. Vide Ezek. i. 28, and xxiii. 14 (to which may be added many more places), where if л shall be interpreted of a bodily similitude, it will afford no tolerable sense. The same likewise may be said of D. It is used in the Hebrew for the essential form rather than the figure or shape; and being spoken of men, signifies rather their souls than bodies. So it is used, Ps. lxxiii. 20; which is better translated, "Thou shalt despise their soul," than their "image." So where it is said, Ps. xxxix. 6, "Every man walketh in a vain show" (the same word again), however it ought to be interpreted, it cannot be understood of a corporeal similitude. So that these testimonies are not at all to his purpose. What, indeed, is the image of God, or that likeness to him wherein man was made, I have partly mentioned already, and shall farther manifest, chap. vi. ; and if this be not a bodily shape, it will be confessed that nothing can here be concluded for the attribution of a shape to God; and hereof an account will be given in its proper place. The sum of Mr B.'s reasoning from these places is: "God, in the creation of the lower world and the inhabitancy thereof, making man, enduing him with a mind and soul capable of knowing him, serving him, yielding him voluntary and rational obedience; creating him in a condition of holiness and righteousness, in a resemblance to those blessed perfections in himself, requiring still of him to be holy as he is holy, to continue and abide in that likeness of his; giving him in that estate dominion over the rest of his works here below, is said to create him in his own image and likeness, he being the sovereign lord over all his creatures, infinitely wise, knowing, just, and holy: therefore he hath a bodily shape and image, and is therein like unto a man." "Quod erat demonstrandum." His next quotation is from Num. xii. 7, 8, where it is said of Moses that he shall behold the "similitude of the LORD." The word is ; which, as it is sometimes taken for a corporeal similitude, so it is at other times for that idea whereby things are intellectually represented. In the former sense is it frequently denied of God; as Deut. iv. 15, "Ye saw no manner of similitude," etc. But it is frequently taken, in the other sense, for that object, or rather impression, whereby our intellectual apprehension is made; as in Job iv. 16, "An image was before mine eyes," namely, in his dream; which is not any corporeal shape, but that idea or objective representation whereby the mind of man understands its object,—that which is in the schools commonly called phantasm, or else an intellectual species, about the notion of which it is here improper to contend. It is manifest that, in the place here alleged, it is put to signify the clear manifestation of God's presence to Moses, with some such glorious appearance thereof as he was pleased to represent unto him; therefore, doubtless, God hath a bodily shape. His next quotation is taken from James iii. 9, "Made after the similitude of God,”—Τοὺς καθ ̓ ὁμοίωσιν Θεοῦ γεγονότας. Certainly Mr B. cannot be so ignorant as to think the word ouoíwors to include in its signification a corporeal similitude. The word is of as large an extent as "similitude" in Latin, and takes in as well those abstracted analogies which the understanding of man finds out, in comparing several objects together, as those other outward conformities of figure and shape which are the objects of our carnal eyes. It is the word by which the LXX. use to render the word ; of which we have spoken before. And the examples are innumerable in the Septuagint translation, and in authors of all sorts written in the Greek language, where that word is taken at large, and cannot signify a corporeal similitude; so that it is vain to insist upon particulars. And this also belongs to the same head of inquiry with the former, —namely, what likeness of God it was that man was created in, whether of eyes, ears, nose, etc., or of holiness, etc. His next allegation is from Job xiii. 7, 8, "Will ye accept his |