fo infinitely above all the powers that we can have any notion of. For preventing what was thought a very plausible notion, that creating was no more but reducing the confused heap of matter into that beautiful order in which we now find it, he tells us, that after his creating the heavens and the earth, the matter remained still in the greatest confusion, until it was, by degrees, which none but the creator himself could deferibe, reduced to regularity and order. And, which made the wonderful work yet more wonderful, all was performed without either instruments of means, but purely by an authoritative word, or a mere act of his will.

This must ftand an invincible argument, That the creation of all things depends purely on the credit of divine testimony, unless a fatisfying account can be given how fuch a history of it could be made by man. And the more attempts are made this way, the more I am fatisfied will the evidence of it appear. By the cir cumstances we have recorded of the creator's familiar intercourfe with the first man, we have reafon to believe, he was very thoroughly inftructed in all he was caVOL. II. pable

C

pable of knowing about it. But, in the courfe of time, it came to be fo much either forgotten or neglected, and the blindnefs and folly of man become fo rampant, that not only the works of God, the powers of the heavens, but their own imaginations and fancies were fet up to rival the creator in his Deity and worship: A monstrous wickednefs in them; but from which mankind reaped very great advantages, as it gave occafion to thofe exertions of divine power,

numerous

whereby God confounded the idolaters, and instructed his being the creator of heaven and earth, and thereby his deity and abfolute power, or, as the Apostle expreffes it," his eternal power and godhead." It would be of great ufe to observe, what would take up too much room here, how the conteft was carried on with the apostate world in general, and particularly with the Ifraelitish nation down to the captivity, with the strongest means of conviction on one fide, and the most aftonishing perverfenefs on the other.

It was never difputed, that the creator of all things, if there was any fuch, was the true God; and himself

puts it on this

:

iffue: The gods who have not created "the heavens and the earth, fhall perish "from the earth." There is another pofition laid down as indifputable, That he who has in his own hand all the power that is in the universe, must be the creator, and the true God and that all power in heaven and earth are thus in the hand of God, he has instructed by the most palpable and most convincing evidence, doing what none but the poffeffor of almighty power could do, and fhewing fuch perfect knowledge of all things, as none but he who made all things could poffibly attain.

Thus he has fhown, in a manner that might be perceived even by the most stupid obfervers, that all the powers of what is called nature, are fo abfolutely in his poffeffion, that he can controul them at pleasure, fufpend, and even invert them, for anfwering any purposes for which he fees fit to employ them, We may not ftand particularly to obferve how effec tually this was done in the deftruction and restoration of the earth at the general deluge; the destruction of Sodom, and the other cities of that plain, which was

like the garden of God; the astonishing plagues of Egypt; the opening a paffage for the Ifraelites through the Red fea; the pillar of fire and cloud; giving them manna for food, and water out of the rock; with all the wonders at Sinai; stopping the courfe of the fun; or, what argues an equal, if not a fuperior exertion of power, the course of the light, as in the cafe of Joshua, Hezekiah, and others; Elijah's conteft with the priests of Baal; and the more ordinary fire from heaven confuming the accepted facrifices. Τα

which must be added, all the miracles recorded in the Old and New Testaments, which ftand as fo many fenfible documents of creating power. ›

But the Ifraelitish nation itself was the greatest miracle of all. From their first feparation from the nations in their father Abraham, down to the captivity; and, we may add, down to this very day; they were, and are, ftanding monuments of the creator's power; and that not only over inanimate matter, but over nations and kingdoms, the counfels, purposes, and powers of men, even in those which are allowed to be their freest and most deli

berate

berate actions; turning them and employing them so as to answer his purposes and intentions; raifing up and cafting down at pleasure unto all the ends of the earth. The profperity and adverfity of that nation exactly conform to the promises and threatenings of their law; the strengthening the hands of their enemies, and de-, stroying them at pleasure; and the numberless instances of his determining the hearts of men to ferve his purposes, are all of them inftances of the furprising power of the great creator; and prove, that "the earth is the Lord's, and the ful"nefs thereof:" for he giveth it, and all the kingdoms of it, to whomfoever he will. And that none may imagine that these things come to pass by what is called chance, or the common course of things, he beforehand tells what he is to do, and thus fecures the honour of it entirely to himself; not to say that in most of these events the hand of God is fo vifible, that it cannot be mistaken.

There is yet another point which we find the creator himself appealing to as decifive in this cafe it is his perfect knowledge, not only of the present state

of