s, they are His servants, not His senators; He holds no counsel,
but that mystical one of the Trinity, wherein though there be three
persons, there is but one mind that decrees without contradiction: nor
needs He any; His actions are not begot with deliberation, His wisdom
naturally knows what is best; His intellect stands ready fraught with the
superlative and purest ideas of goodness; consultation and election,
which are two motions in us, make but one in Him; His action springing
from His power, at the first touch of His will. These are contemplations
metaphysical: my humble speculations have another method, and are content
to trace and discover those expressions he hath left in His creatures,
and the obvious effects of nature; there is no danger to profound these
mysteries, no _sanctum sanctorum_ in philosophy: the world was made to be
inhabited by beasts; but studied and contemplated by man: it is the debt
of our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for not being
beasts; without this, the world is still as though it had not been, or as
it was before the sixth day, when as yet there was not a creature that
could conceive, or say there was a world. The wisdom of God receives
small honour from those vulgar heads that rudely stare about, and with a
gross rusticity admire His works; those highly magnify Him, whose
judicious inquiry into His acts, and deliberate research into His
creatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admiration. Therefore

Search where thou wilt, and let thy reason go
To ransom truth even to th' abyss below;
Rally the scattered causes: and that line
Which nature twists, be able to untwine;
It is thy Maker's will, for unto none,
But unto reason can He e'er be known.

ON THE SPIRIT OF GOD

However, I am sure there is a common spirit that plays within us, yet
makes no part in us; and that is the Spirit of God, the fire and
scintillation of that noble and mighty essence, which is the life and
radical heat of spirits, and those essences that know not the virtue of
the sun, a fire quite contrary to the fire of hell. This is that gentle
heat that brooded on the waters, and in six days hatched the world; this
is that irradiation that dispels the mists of hell, the clouds of horror,
fear, sorrow, despair; and preserves the region of the mind in serenity.
Whatsoever feels not the warm gale and gentle ventilation of this spirit
(though I feel his pulse), I dare n