The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning. Hugh Binning
message. He was giving him commission to go and speak to a king to dismiss and let go six hundred thousand of his subjects, and to speak to a numerous nation to depart from their own dwellings and come out whither the lord should lead them. Might not Moses then say within himself, “ ‘Who am I, to speak such a thing to a King? Who am I, to lead out such a mighty people? Who will believe that thou hast sent me? Will not all men call me a deceiver, an enthusiastical fellow, that take upon me such a thing?’ Well then, saith Moses to the Lord—‘Lord, when I shall say, that the God of their fathers sent me unto them, they will not believe me, they have now forgotten thy majesty, and think that thou art but even like the vanities of the nations, they cannot know their own portion from other nations vain idols which they have given the same name unto, and call gods as well as thou art called. Now therefore,’ says he, ‘when they ask me what thy proper name is by which thou art distinguished from all idols, and all the works of thine own hands, and of men's hands, what shall I say unto them? Here is the question.’ But why askest thou my name? saith the Lord to Jacob,” Gen. xxxii. 29. Importing, that it is high presumption and bold curiosity to search such wonder. Ask not my name, saith the angel to Manoah, for “it is secret or wonderful.” Judges xiii. 18. It is a mystery, a hidden mystery, not for want of light, but for too much light. It is a secret, it is wonderful, out of the reach of all created capacity. Thou shalt call his name “Wonderful,” Isa. ix. 6. What name can express that incomprehensible Majesty? The mind is more comprehensive than words, but the mind and soul is too narrow to conceive him. O then! how short a garment must all words, the most significant and comprehensive and superlative words be? Solomon's soul and heart was enlarged as the sand of the sea, but O it is not large enough for the Creator of it! “What is his name, and what is his Son's name, if thou canst tell?” Prov. xxx. 4. The Lord himself expresses it to our capacity, because we are not capable of what he can express, much less of what he is. If he should speak to us of himself as he is, O, it should be “dark sayings,” hid from the understandings of all living! We could reach no more of it, but that it is a wonder, a secret. Here is the highest attainment of our knowledge, to know there is some mystery in it, but not what that mystery is. Christ hath a name above all names, how then can we know that name? It was well said by some of old, Deus est πολυωονμος and yet ανωνυμος multorum nominum, et tamen nullius nominis, he hath all names, and yet he hath no name. quia est omnia, et tamen nihil omnium, because he is all in all, and yet none of all, Deus est quod vides, et quod non vides. You may call him by all the works of his hands, for these are beams of his uncreated light, and streams of his inexhaustible sea of goodness, so that whatever perfection is in them, all that is eminently, yea, infinitely in him. Therefore saith Christ, “There is one good, even God and he calls himself ‘the light of life,’ ” and therefore you have so many names of God in Scripture. There is no quality, no property, or virtue, that hath the least shadow of goodness, but he is that essentially, really, eternally, and principally, so that the creature deserves not such names but as they participate of his fulness. He is the true light, the true life, the sun is not that [pg 038] true light though it give light to the moon and to men, for it borrows its light and shining from him. All creatures are and shine but by reflection, therefore these names do agree to them but by a metaphor so to speak, the propriety and truth of them is in him. As it is but a borrowed kind of speech to call a picture or image a man—only because of the representation and likeness to him it communicates in one name with him—even so, in some manner, the creatures are but some shadows, pictures, or resemblances, and equivocal shapes of God, and whatever name they have of good, wise, strong, beautiful, true, or such like, it is borrowed speech from God whose image they have. And yet poor vain man would be wise—thought wise really, intrinsically in himself, and properly—calls himself so; which is as great an abuse of language as if the picture should call itself a true and living man. But then, as you may call him all things, because he is eminently and gloriously all that is in all, the fountain and end of all, yet we must again deny that he is any of these things. Unus omnia, et nihil omnium. We can find no name to him; or what can you call him, when you have said, “He is light?” You can form no other notion of him but from the resemblance of this created light. But alas! that he is not, he as infinitely transcends that, and is distant from it, as if he had never made it according to his likeness. His name is above all these names, but what it is himself knows, and knows only.
If ye ask what he is, we may glance at some notions and expressions to hold him out. In relation to the creatures, we may call him Creator, Redeemer, Light, Life, Omnipotent, Good, Merciful, Just, and such like; but if you ask, what is his proper name in relation to himself, ipse novit, himself knows that, we must be silent, and silence in such a subject is the rarest eloquence. But let us hear what the Lord himself speaks, in answer to this question. If any can tell, sure he himself knows his own name best. “I am (saith he) what I am.” Sum qui sum. “Go tell them that I AM hath sent thee.” A strange answer, but an answer only pertinent for such a question. What should Moses make of this? What is he the wiser of his asking? Indeed he might be the wiser, it might teach him more by silence than all human eloquence could instruct him by speaking. His question was curious, and behold an answer short and dark, to confound vain and presumptuous mortality—“I am what I am,” an answer that does not satisfy curiosity, for it leaves room for the first question, and What art thou? But abundant to silence faith and sobriety, that it shall ask no more, but sit down and wonder.
There are three things I conceive imported in this name: God's unsearchableness, God's unchangeableness, and God's absoluteness. His ineffability, his eternity, and his sovereignty and independent subsistence, upon whom all other things depend. I say,
1. His unsearchableness. You know it is our manner of speech when we would cover any thing from any, and not answer any thing distinctly to them, we say, “It is what it is, I have said what I have said, I will not make you wiser of it.” Here then is the fittest notion you can take up God into, to find him unsearchable beyond all understanding, beyond all speaking. The more ye speak or think, to find him always beyond what ye speak or think, whatever you discover of him, to conceive that infiniteness is beyond that, ad finem cujus pertransire non potest, the end of which you cannot reach, that he is an unmeasurable depth, a boundless ocean of perfection, that you can neither sound the bottom of it, nor find the breadth of it! Can a child wade the sea, or take it up in the hollow of its hand? Whenever any thing of God is seen, he is seen a wonder, “Wonderful is the name he is known by”. All our knowledge reacheth no further than admiration. “Who is like unto thee?” Exod. xv. 11, Psalm lxxxix. 6, 7, and admiration speaks ignorance. The greatest attainment of knowledge reacheth but to such a question as this, Who is like to thee? to know only that he is not like any other thing that we know, but not to know what he is. And the different degrees of knowledge are but in more admiration or less at his unconceivableness, and in more or less affection expressed in such pathetic interrogations, O who is like the Lord? How excellent is his name? Here is the greatest degree of saints knowledge here away, to ask with admiration and affection such a question that no answer can be given to or none that we can conceive or understand so as to satisfy wondering but such as still more increaseth it. There is no other subject but you may exceed it in apprehensions and in expressions. O how often are [pg 039] men's songs and thoughts and discourses above the matter! But here is a subject that there is no excess into; nay, there is no access unto it, let be excess in it. Imagination that can transcend the created heavens and earth, and fancy to itself millions of new worlds, every one exceeding another, and all of them exceeding this in perfection, yet it can do nothing here. That which at one instant can pass from the one end of heaven to the other, walk about the circumference of the heavens, and travel over the breadth of the sea, yet it can do nothing here. “Canst thou by searching find out God?” Job xi. 7. Imagination cannot travel in these bounds, for his centre is everywhere, and his circumference nowhere, as an old philosopher speaks of God Deus est, cujus centrum est ubique, circumferentia nusquam. How shall it then find him out? There is nothing sure here, but to lose ourselves in a mystery, and to follow his majesty till we be swallowed up with an—O altitudo! O the depth and height and length and breadth of God! O the depth of his wisdom! O the height of his power! O the breadth of his love! And O the length of his eternity! It is not reason and disputation, saith Bernard, will comprehend these, but holiness, and that by stretching out the arms of fear and love, reverence and affection. What more dreadful than power that cannot be resisted, and wisdom that none can be hid