e the beginning of the world, to
see what God was doing, fall headlong into the eternal pit of destruction,
and into the hands of the living God. God hath shown himself marvellously
these six thousand years in the upholding this world. If we did consider
these continued and repeated testimonies of his glory, we should be
overwhelmed with what we find, though we search no farther. And suppose we
would please ourselves to imagine that it had been created many years
before, yet that doth not silence and stop the insolence of men's minds,
for it always might be inquired, what the Lord was doing before that time.
For eternity is as immensurable before those multiplied thousands of years
as before naked six. Let our imagination sit down to subtract from
eternity as many thousands as it can multiply by all the varieties and
numbers in the world, yet there is nothing abated from eternity.(150) It
is as infinite in extent before that, as before the present six thousand,
and yet we may conceive that the Lord hath purposed in the beginning of
the world to declare more manifestly to our understanding his eternity,
his self sufficiency, and liberty,--his eternity, that when we hear of how
short standing the creature is, we may go upward to God himself, and his
everlasting being, before the foundations of it were laid, may shine forth
more brightly to our admiration, when we can stretch our conceptions so
immensurably as far beyond the beginning of the world; and yet God is
still beyond the utmost reach of our imagination,--for who can find out the
beginning of that which hath not a beginning to be found out,--and our most
extended apprehensions fall infinitely short of the days of the Ancient of
days. O how glorious, then, must his being be, and how boundless! His
self-sufficiency and perfection doth herein appear, that from such an
inconceivable space he was as perfect and blessed in himself as now. The
creatures add nothing to his perfection or satisfaction. He was as
well-pleased with his own all-comprehending being, and with the very
thought and purpose of making this world, as now he is when it is made.
The idea of it in his mind gave him as great contentment as the work
itself when it is done! O, to conceive this aright,--it would fill a soul
with astonishing and ravishing thoughts of his blessedness! Poor men weary
if they be not one way or other employed without; so indigent are all
creatures at home, that they would weary if t