BLAISE PASCAL. must, in the compass of a few years (perhaps of a few days), put us into the eternal condition of happiness, or misery, or nothing. Between us and these three great periods, or states, no barrier is interposed but life, the most brittle thing in all nature; and the happiness of heaven being certainly not designed for those who doubt whether they have an immortal part to enjoy it, such persons have nothing left but the miserable chance of annihilation, or of hell. There is not any reflection which can have more reality than this, as there is none which has greater terror. Let us set the bravest face on our condition, and play the heroes as artfully as we can; yet see here the issue which attends the goodliest life upon earth. It is in vain for men to turn aside their thoughts from this eternity which awaits them, as if they were able to destroy it by denying it a place in their imagination: it subsists in spite of them; it advanceth unobserved; and death, which is to draw the curtain from it, will in a short time infallibly reduce them to the dreadful necessity of being forever nothing, or forever miserable. We have here a doubt of the most affrighting consequence, and which, therefore, to entertain, may be well esteemed the most grievous of misfortunes: but, at the same time, it is our indispensable duty not to lie under it without struggling for deliverance. He then who doubts, and yet seeks not to be resolved, is equally unhappy and unjust: but if withal he appears easy and composed, if he freely declares his indifference, nay, if he takes a vanity of professing it, and seems to make this most deplorable condition the subject of his pleasure and joy, I have not words to fix a name on so extravagant a creature. Where is the very possibility of entering into these thoughts and resolutions? What delight is there in expecting misery without end? What vanity in finding one's self encompassed with impenetrable darkness? Or what consolation in despairing forever of a comforter? To sit down with some sort of acquiescence under so fatal an ignorance is a thing unaccountable beyond all expression; and they who live with such a disposition ought to be made sensible of its absurdity and stupidity, by having their inward reflections laid open to them, that they may grow wise by the prospect of their own folly. For behold how men are wont to reason while they obstinately remain thus ignorant of what they are, and refuse all methods of instruction and illumination: "Who has sent me into the world I know not; what the world is I know not, nor what 85 I am myself. I am under an astonishing and terrifying ignorance of all things. know not what my body is, what my senses, or my soul: this very part of me which thinks what I speak, which reflects upon everything else, and even upon itself, yet is as mere a stranger to its own nature as the dullest thing I carry about me. I behold these frightful spaces of the universe with which I am encompassed, and I find myself chained to one little corner of the vast extent, without understanding why I am placed in this seat rather than in any other; or why this moment of time given me to live was assigned rather at such a point than at any other of the whole eternity which was before me, or of all that which is to come after me. I see nothing but infinities on all sides, which devour and swallow me up like an atom, or like a shadow, which endures but a single instant, and is never to return. The sum of my knowledge is that I must shortly die; but that which I am most ignorant of is this very death, which I feel unable to decline. "As I know not whence I came, so I know not whither I go; only this I know, that at my departure out of the world I must either fall forever into nothing, or into the hands of an incensed God, without being capable of deciding which of these two conditions shall eternally be my portion. Such is my state, full of weakness, obscurity, and wretchedness. And from all this I conclude that I ought, therefore, to pass all the days of my life without considering what is hereafter to befall me; and that I have nothing to do but to follow my inclinations without reflection or disquiet, in doing all that which, if what men say of a miserable eternity prove true, will infallibly plunge me into it. It is possible I might find some light to clear up my doubts; but I shall not take a minute's pains, nor stir one foot in the search of it. On the contrary, I am resolved to treat those with scorn and derision who labour in this inquiry and care; and so to run without fear or foresight upon the trial of the grand event; permitting myself to be led softly on to death, utterly uncertain as to the eternal issue of my future condition." In earnest, it is a glory to religion to have so unreasonable men for its professed enemies; and their opposition is of so little danger, that it serves to illustrate the principal truths which our religion teaches. For the main scope of Christian faith is to establish those two principles, the corruption of nature and the redemption by Jesus Christ. And these opposers, if they are of no use towards demonstrating the truth of the redemption by the sanctity of their lives, yet Perspicuity and depth; metaphysical sublimity and evangelical simplicity; immense learning, but irrefragable reasoning, conspire to render this performance one of the most inestimable productions that ever did honour to the sanctified judgment and genius of a human being."-TOPLADY. "Mr. Charnock with his masculine style and inexhaustible vein of thought."-HERVEY. OF GOD'S KNOWLEDGE, of men; there would not have been any practice of his laws, no bar to the worst of crimes. If men had thought they had to deal with an ignorant Deity, there could be no practice of religion. Who would lift up his eyes, or spread his hands towards heaven, if he imagined his devotion were directed to a God as blind as the heathens imagined fortune? To what boot would it be for them to make heaven and earth resound with their cries. if they had not thought God had an eye to see them, and an ear to hear them? And indeed the very notion of a God at the first blush, speaks him a Being endued with understanding; no man can imagine a Creator void of one of the noblest perfections belonging to those creatures that are the flower and cream of his works. 2. Therefore all nations acknowledge this, as well as the existence and being of God. No nation but had their temples, particular ceremonies of worship, and presented their God hath an infinite knowledge and un- sacrifices, which they could not have been derstanding. All knowledge. Omnipres- so vain as to do without an acknowledgment ence, which before we spake of, respects his of this attribute. This notion of God's essence; omniscience respects his under- knowledge owed not its rise to tradition, standing, according to our manner of con- but to natural implantation; it was born ception. This is clear in Scripture; hence and grew up with every rational creature. God is called a God of knowledge (1 Sam. Though the several nations and men of the ii. 3), "the Lord is a God of knowledge,' world agreed not in one kind of deity, or in Heb. knowledges, in the plural number, of their sentiments of his nature or other perall kind of knowledge; it is spoken there to fections, some judging him clothed with a quell man's pride in his own reason and fine and pure body, others judging him an parts; what is the knowledge of man but a uncompounded spirit, some fixing him to a spark to the whole element of fire, a grain seat in the heavens, others owning his uniof dust, and worse than nothing, in compari-versal presence in all parts of the world; son of the knowledge of God, as his essence is in comparison of the essence of God? All kind of knowledge. He knows what angels know, what man knows, and infinitely more; he knows himself, his own operations, all his creatures, the notions and thoughts of them; he is understanding above understanding, mind above mind, the mind of minds, the light of lights; this the Greek word, eos, signifies in the etymology of it, of dai, to see, to contemplate and Cayor of Law, scio. The names of God signify a nature, viewing and piercing all things; and the attribution of our senses to God in Scripture, as hearing and secing, which are the senses whereby knowledge enters into us, signifies God's knowledge. 1. The notion of God's knowledge of all things lies above the ruins of nature; it was not obliterated by the fall of man. It was necessary offending man was to know that he had a Creator whom he had injured, that he had a Judge to try and punish him; since God thought fit to keep up the world, it had been kept up to no purpose had not this notion been continued alive in the minds yet they all agreed in the universality of his knowledge, and their own consciences reflecting their crimes, unknown to any but themselves, would keep this notion in some vigour, whether they would or no. Now this being implanted in the minds of all men by nature, cannot be false, for nature imprints not in the minds of all men an assent to a falsity. Nature would not pervert the reason and minds of men. Universal notions of God are from original not lapsed nature, and preserved in mankind in order to a restoration from a lapsed state. The heathens did acknowledge this: in all the solemn covenants, solemnized with oaths and the invocation of the name of God, this attribute was supposed. They confessed knowledge to be peculiar to the Deity; scientia deorum vita, saith Cicero. Some called Novs, mens, mind, pure understanding, without any note Enóng, the inspector of all. As they called him life, because he was the author of life, so they called him intellectus, because he was the author of all knowledge and understanding in his creatures; and one being asked, whether any man could be hid from God? No, saith he, STEPHEN CHARNOCK. not so much as thinking. Some call him the eye of the world; and the Egyptians represented God by an eye on the top of a sceptre, because God is all eye, and can be ignorant of nothing. And the same nation made eyes and ears of the most excellent metals, consecrating them to God, and hanging them up in the midst of their temples, in signification of God's seeing and hearing all things; hence they called God Light, as well as the Scrip*ure, because all things are visible to him. Discourse upon the Existence and Attributes of God. ON THE WISDOM OF GOD. 87 law was condemned in the flesh of the Re deemer, and the righteousness of the law was fulfilled in his person: and both these acts of obedience, being counted as one righteousness, and imputed to the believing sinner, render him a subject to the law, both in its preceptive and minatory part. By Adam's sinful acting we were made sinners, and by Christ's righteous acting we are made righteous (Rom. v. 19): "As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." The law was obeyed by him that the righteousness of it might be fulfilled in us (Rom. viii. 4). It is not fulfilled in us, or in our actions, by inherency, but fulfilled in us by imputation of that another. As he died for us, and rose again righteousness which was exactly fulfilled by for us, so he lived for us. The commands of the law were as well observed for us as the threatenings of the law were endured for us. This justification of a sinner, with the preservation of the holiness of the law in truth, in the inward parts, in sincerity of intention, as well as conformity in action, is the wisdom of God, the gospel wisdom which David desires to know (Ps. li. 6): The wisdom of God is seen in this way of redemption, in vindicating the honour and righteousness of the law, both in precept and penalty. The first and irreversible design of the law was obedience. The penalty of the law had only entrance upon transgression. Obedience was the design, and the penalty was added to enforce the observance of the precept (Gen. ii. 17): "Thou shalt not eat; there is the precept: "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt die ;""Thou desirest truth in the inward parts, there is the penalty. Obedience was our debt to the law, as creatures; punishment was due from the law to us, as sinners: we were bound to endure the penalty for our first transgression, but the penalty did not cancel the bond of future obedience: the penalty had not been incurred without transgressing the precept; yet the precept was not abrogated by enduring the penalty. Since man so soon revolted, and by his revolt fell under the threatening, the justice of the law had been honoured by man's sufferings, but the holiness and equity of the law had been honoured by man's obedience. The wisdom of God finds out a medium to satisfy both the justice of the law is preserved in the execution of the penalty; and the holiness of the law is honoured in the observance of the precept. The life of our Saviour is a conformity to the precept, and his death is a conformity to the penalty; the precepts are exactly performed, and the curse punctually executed, by a voluntary observing the one, and a voluntary undergoing the other. It is obeyed as if it had not been transgressed, and executed as if it had not been obeyed. It became the wisdom, justice, and holiness of God, as the Rector of the world, to exact it (Heb. ii. 10), and it became the holiness of the Mediator to fulfil all the righteousness of the law" (Rom. viii. 3; Matt. iii. 15). And thus the honour of the law was vindicated in all the parts of it. The transgression of the and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to ON THE POWER OF GOD. Though God hath a power to furnish every creature with greater and nobler perfections than he hath bestowed upon it, yet he hath framed all things in the perfectest manner, and most convenient to that end for which he intended them. Every thing is endowed with the best nature and quality suitable to God's end in creation, though not in the best manner for itself. In regard of the universal end, there cannot be a better; for God himself is the end of all things, who is the Supreme Goodness. Nothing can be better than God, who could not be God if he were not superlatively best, or optimus; and he hath ordered all things for the declaration of his goodness or justice, according to the behaviour of his creatures. Man doth not consider what strength or power he can put forth in the means he useth to attain such an end, but the suitableness of them to his main design, and so fits and marshals them to his grand purpose. Had God only created things that are most excellent, created only angels and men; how, then, would his wisdom have been conspicuous in other works in the subordination and subserviency of them to one another? God therefore determined his power by his wisdom: and though his absolute power could have made every creature better, yet his ordinate power, which in every step was regulated by his wisdom, made every thing best for his designed intention. A musician hath a power to wind up a string on a lute to a higher and more perfect note in itself, but in wisdom he will not do it, because the intended melody would be disturbed thereby if it were not suited to the other strings on the instrument; a discord would mar and taint the harmony which the lutinist designed. God, in creation, observed the proportions of nature he can make a spider as strong as a lion; but according to the order of nature which he hath settled, it is not convenient that a creature of so small a compass should be as strong as one of a greater bulk. The absolute power of God could have prepared a body for Christ as glorious as that he had after his resurrection; but that had not been agreeable to the end designed in his humiliation: and therefore God acted most perfectly by his ordinate power, in giving him a body that wore the livery of our infirmities. God's power is always regulated by his wisdom and will; and though it produceth not what is most perfect in itself, yet what is most perfect and decent in relation to the end he fixed. And so in his providence, though he could rack the whole frame of nature to bring about his end in a more miraculous way and astonishment to mortals, yet his power is usually and ordinarily confined by his will to act in concurrence with the nature of the creatures, and direct them according to the laws of their being, to such ends which he aims at in their conduct, without violencing their nature. Ibid. HON. ROBERT BOYLE, seventh son of the "Great Earl of Cork," was born in Munster, Ireland, 1627, and died in London, 1691. He was the author of many treatises narrating the results of his investigations and experiments in pneumatics, chemistry, medicine, and kindred subjects; published some theological works, and founded the Boyle Lecture, "designed to prove the truth of the Christian Religion among Infidels." "To Boyle the world is indebted, besides some very acute remarks and many fine illustrations of his own upon metaphysical questions of the in defence of religion, which have added so much highest moment, for the philosophical arguments lustre to the names of Derham and Bentley; and, far above both, to that of Clarke. . . . I do not recollect to have seen it anywhere noticed, that some of the most striking and beautiful instances of design in the order of the material world, which occur in the sermons preached at Boyle's Lecture, are borrowed from the works of the founder." DUGALD STEWART: Dissert., First Encyc. Brit. THE STUDY OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY FA VOURABLE TO RELIGION. The first advantage that our experimental philosopher, as such, hath towards being a Christian, is, that his course of studies conduceth much to settle in his mind a firm belief of the existence, and divers of the chief attributes of God; which belief is, in the order of things, the first principle of that natural religion which itself is prerequired to revealed religion in general, and consequently to that in particular which is embraced by Christians. That the consideration of the vastness, beauty, and regular motions of the heavenly bodies, the excellent structure of animals and plants, besides a multitude of other phenomena of nature, and the subserviency of most of these to man, may justly induce him, as a rational creature, to conclude that this vast, beautiful, orderly, and (in a word) many ways admirable system of things, that we call the world, was framed by an author supremely powerful, wise, and good, can scarce be denied by an intelligent and unprejudiced considerer. And this is strongly confirmed by experience, which witnesseth that in almost all ages and countries the generality of philosophers and contemplative men were persuaded of the existence of a Deity by the consideration of the phenomena of the universe, whose fabrie and conduct, they rationally concluded, could not be deservedly ascribed either to blind chance, or to any other cause than a divine Being. But though it be true that God hath not giving men injurious and irreverent thoughts left himself without witness, even to perfunctory considerers, by stamping upon divers of the more obvious parts of his workmanship such conspicuous impressions of his attributes, that a moderate degree of understanding and attention may suffice to make men acknowledge his being, yet I scruple not to think that assent very much inferior to the belief that the same objects are fitted to produce in a heedful and intelligent contemplator of them. For the works of God are so worthy of their author, that besides the impresses of his wisdom and goodness that were left, as it were, upon their surfaces, there are a great many more curious and excellent tokens and effects of divine artifice in the hidden and innermost recesses of them; and these are not to be discovered by the perfunctory looks of oscitant and unskilful beholders; but require, as well as deserve, the most attentive and And, in the first place, it should be conprying inspection of inquisitive and well-sidered that those cavillers at the style of the instructed considerers. And sometimes in Scripture, that you and I have hitherto met one creature there may be I know not how with, do (for want of skill in the original, espemany admirable things that escape a vulgar cially in the Hebrew) judge of it by the transeye, and yet may be clearly discerned by lations, wherein alone they read it. Now, that of a true naturalist, who brings with scarce any but a linguist will imagine how him, besides a more than common curiosity much a book may lose of its elegancy by and attention, a competent knowledge of being read in another tongue than that it was anatomy, optics, cosmography, mechanics, written in, especially if the languages from and chemistry. But treating elsewhere pur- which and into which the version is made posely of this subject, it may here suffice to be so very differing as are those of the say, that God has couched so many things eastern and these western parts of the in his visible works, that the clearer light a world. But of this I foresee an occasion of man has the more he may discover of their saying something hereafter; yet at present unobvious exquisiteness, and the more I must observe to you that the style of the clearly and distinctly he may discern those Scripture is much more disadvantaged than qualities that lie more obvious. And the that of other books, by being judged of by more wonderful things he discovers in the translations; for the religious and just works of nature, the more auxiliary proofs veneration that the interpreters of the Bible he meets with to establish and enforce the have had for that sacred book has made argument, drawn from the universe and its them, in most places, render the Hebrew parts, to evince that there is a God; which and Greek passages so scrupulously word is a proposition of that vast weight and im- for word, that, for fear of not keeping close portance, that it ought to endear everything enough to the sense, they usually care not to us that is able to confirm it, and afford us how much they lose of the eloquence of the new motives to acknowledge and adore the passages they translate. So that, whereas divine Author of things. in those versions of other books that are made by good linguists the interpreters are SOME CONSIDERATIONS TOUCHING THE STYLE wont to take the liberty to recede from the OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. These things, dear Theophilus, being thus despatched, I suppose we may now seasonably proceed to consider the style of the Scripture a subject that will as well require as deserve some time and much attention, in regard that divers witty men, who freely acknowledge the authority of the Scripture, take exceptions at its style, and by those, and their own reputation divert many from studying, or so much as perusing, those sacred writings, thereby at once author's words, and also substitute other phrases instead of his that they may express his meaning without injuring his reputation, in translating the Old Testament interpreters have not put Hebrew phrases into Latin or English phrases, but only into Latin or English words, and have too often, besides, by not sufficiently understanding, or at least considering, the various significations of words, particles, and senses in the holy tongue, made many things appear less coherent, or less rational, or less considerable, which, by a more free and skilful rendering |