ts withal, it remains unmixed and untainted, and
preserves its own nature entire. Now you may perceive, that there is
nothing visible that is fitter to resemble the invisible God, than this
glorious, beautiful, pure, and universally communicable creature, light.

Hereby you may have shadowed out unto you the nature of God, that he is an
all knowing, intelligent Being. As light is the first and principal
visible thing yea, that which gives visibility to all things, and so is in
its own nature a manifestation of all things material and bodily, so God
is the first object of the understanding--_primum intelligibile, et primum
intelligens_. Nothing so fit an emblem of knowledge as light, and truly
in that respect God is the original light, a pure intellectual light that
hath in himself the perfect idea and comprehension of all things. He hath
anticipated in himself the knowledge of all, because all things were
formed in his infinite understanding, and lay, as it were, first hid in
the bowels of his infinite power. Therefore he is a globe or mass of light
and knowledge, like the sun, from whom nothing is hid. Hell and
destruction are not covered to him. There is no opacity, no darkness or
thickness in the creation, that can terminate or bound this light, or
hinder his understanding to pierce into it. Now as all things, by the
irradiation of the light, become visible so the participation of this
glorious Sun of righteousness, and the shining of his beams into the souls
of men, makes them to partake of that heavenly intellectual nature, and
reflects a wonderful beauty upon them, which is not in the rest of the
world.

Besides, here is represented to us the absolute purity and perfection of
God's nature,--"God is light, and in him is no darkness." Besides the
purity of the light of knowledge, there is a purity of the beauty of
holiness. The glorious light of God's virtue, and power, and wisdom, is
communicated to all the creatures. There is an universal extent of his
influence towards the good and bad, as the sun shines on both and yet
there is no spot nor stain upon his holiness or righteousness, from all
his intermingling with the creatures, the worst and basest creatures. All
his works are holy and righteous, even his works in unholy and unrighteous
men. He draws no defilement from the basest of the creatures, nor yet
from the sinfulness of it. He can be intimately present and conjoined in
working, in virtue and pow