able Impreffions or Senfations from material Objects, or what we call bodily Pollution.

Having endeavoured to explain what we are to understand by the divine Immenfity and Omnipresence, and confidered the Evidences of it both from Scripture and Rea-. fon, we should now proceed to make fome Reflections on this important Subproper ject; but these must be referved to another Opportunity.

On

On the Omniprefence of God.

DISCOURSE VII.

PSAL. CXXXIX. 7, 8, 9, 10.

Whit her fhall I go from thy Spirit? or whither fhall I flee from thy Prefence? If I afcend up into Heaven, thou art there: if I make my Bed in Hell, behold, thou art there: if I take the Wings of the Morning, and dwell in the uttermoft Parts of the Sea; even there Jhall thy Hand lead me, and thy right Hand fhall hold me.

N difcourfing on thefe Words I pro

IN

I pofed,

First, To offer fomething for explaining what we are to understand by God's Immensity and Omnipresence.

Secondly, To prove that this is a Perfection effentially belonging to the Supreme

Both

Both these have been confidered; and I come now to make fome proper Reflections on this important Subject.

And Ift, Is God immenfe and every where prefent? then how glorious and adorable fhould this render him in our Efteem, and how mean and inconfiderable are all the Creatures compared with him! There is none of God's Attributes that hath a greater Tendency to excite in us the moft high and admiring Thoughts of his divine Majefty than this. The better to affect our own Souls, let us contemplate the Extent of the Universe about us. Let us look firft on the Globe which we inhabit, the Earth and Ocean. It is a huge Body, of great Compafs and Magnitude. What is Man or all the Millions of Men on the Face of the Earth compared with the Earth itself? And yet this Earth is but a diminutive Spot compared to the furrounding Heavens. Let us next confider those innumerable fixed Stars that look like little glittering Spangles difperfed in the vaft Expanfe: Let us confider them, I fay, as Bodies of prodigious Magnitude as well as Splendor, and probably, according to the Judgment of the ableft Aftronomers, fo many Suns; each of them for ought we know like our Sun, the Centre of a particular Syftem, with Planets in different

Orbits performing their Revolutions round them and all of them removed at fuch an amazing Distance from one another and from us, as exceedeth all human Computation. Let us confider farther, that befides the Stars which are beheld, whether with the naked Eye or by the Help of Te lescopes, there may be many other Stars or Worlds, no lefs grand and wonderful, which yet the too great Distance hath rendered abfolutely invisible to us. And then

when we have put Thought to the utmost Stretch in ranging to the farthest Bounds of the Creation, and our Imagination is loft and swallowed up in the wide Tracts of the unmeasureable Space; let us recover ourselves from the Aftonishment into which this hath caft us, and reflect that God filleth and poffeffeth every Part of this vaft Universe; and that there cannot be the leaft Thing fuppofed in all this prodigious Extent and Compafs of Nature, but he is most intimately present with it. He at once sustaineth and governeth, by his moft wife and mighty Influence, all these innumerable Regions, with all the Orders of Beings contained in them. Yea, let

us again, when we have as it were arrived to the utmoft Bounds of this material World, though this, as hath been already obferved, is what human Imagination is fcarce

scarce able to reach; yet let us fuppofe ourselves got to the extremeft Limits of it, and thence take a Flight into the vacant boundless Space, and there fpring forward to Infinity; ftill we are in the Reach of God, and furrounded with the divine all-comprehending Effence, ftill in him we live, and move, and have our Being.

Oh amazing Thought! Who can comprehend the Greatness and Majefty of the immenfe Jehovah? How can fuch Beings as we are, circumfcribed within certain Bounds, and existing within a determinate Space, form a clear and adequate Idea of abfolute Immenfity, or of a Being that exifteth every where at once, and is without all Bounds? In this as well as other Refpects it may be justly faid, that his Greatness is unfearchable. Pfal. cxlv. 3. This World, let us fuppofe it never fo large, is but finite; and what Proportion is there between finite and infinite? God is reprefented in the noble Expreffions of the Prophet, as having measured the Waters (the Waters of the vaft Ocean) in the Hollow of his Hand, and as having comprehended the Duft of the Earth in a Meafure, and weighed the Mountains in Scales, and the Hills in a Balance; yea, which is still more wonderful, he is reprefented as having meted out Heaven (all the vast unimaginable and next to in