The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning. Hugh Binning
were well pondered till they did sink into the bottom of our spirits, they would make us indeed Christians, not in the letter, but in the spirit. That is presupposed to all Christian worship and walking, to know what God is, it is indeed the primo cognitum of Christianity, the first principle of true religion, the very root out of which springs and grows up walking suitably with, and worshipping answerably of, a known God. I fear much of our religion is like the Athenians, they built an altar to the unknown God, and like the Samaritans, who worshipped they knew not what. Such a worship, I know not what it is, when the God worshipped is not known. The two parents of true religion are the knowledge of God and of ourselves. This, indeed, is the beginning of the fear of God, which the wise preacher calls “the beginning of true wisdom.” And these two, as they beget true religion, so they cannot truly be one without the other. It is not many notions and speculations about the divine nature—it is not high and strained conceptions of God—that comprise the true knowledge of him. Many think they know something when they can speak of those mysteries in some singular way, and in some terms [pg 054] removed from common understandings, while neither themselves nor others know what they mean. And thus they are presumptuous, self conceited, knowing nothing as they ought to know. There is a knowledge that puffs up and there is a knowledge that casts down, a knowledge in many that doth but swell them, not grow them. It is but a rumour full of wind, a vain and empty, frothy knowledge that is neither good for edifying other, nor saving a man's self, a knowledge that a man knows and reflects upon so as to ascend upon the height of it, and measure himself by the degrees of it. This is not the true knowledge of God, which knows not itself, looks not back upon itself, but straight towards God, his holiness and glory and our baseness and misery, and therefore it constrains the soul to be ashamed of itself in such a glorious presence, and to make haste to worship, as Moses, Job, and Isaiah did.
This definition of God—if we did truly understand it, we could not but worship him in another manner. “God is a Spirit.” Many ignorant people form in their own mind some likeness and image of God, who is invisible. Ye know how ye fancy to yourselves some bodily shape. When you conceive of him, you think he is some reverend and majestic person sitting on a throne in heaven. But, I beseech you, correct your mistakes of him. There is outward idolatry and there is inward, there is idolatry in action, when men paint or engrave some similitude of God, and there is idolatry in imagination, when the fancy and apprehension run upon some image or likeness of God. The first is among Papists, but I fear the latter is too common among us, and it is indeed all one, to form such a similitude in our mind and to engrave or paint it without. So that the God whom many of us worship is not the living and true God, but a painted or graven idol. When God appeared most visible to the world, as at the giving out of the law, yet no man did see any likeness at all. He did not come under the perception of the most subtle sense, he could not be perceived but by the refined understanding going aside from all things visible. And therefore you do but fancy an idol to yourselves, instead of God, when you apprehend him under the likeness of any visible or sensible thing, and so whatever love or fear or reverence you have, it is all but misspent superstition, the love and fear of an idol.
I. Know then, “that God is a Spirit,” and therefore he is like none of all those things you see, or hear, or smell, or taste, or touch. The heavens are glorious indeed, the light is full of glory, but he is not like that. If all your senses should make an inquiry, and search for him throughout the world, you should not find him. Though he be near at hand to every one of us yet our eyes and ears and all our senses, might travel the length of the earth and breadth of the sea, and should not find him even as you might search all the corners of heaven ere you could hear or see an angel. If you would saw a man asunder and resolve him into atoms of dust, yet you could not perceive a soul within him. Why? Because these are spirits, and so without the reach of your senses.
II. If God be a Spirit, then he is invisible, and dwells in light inaccessible, “which no man hath seen or can see.” Then our poor narrow minds, that are drowned, as it were, and immersed in bodies of clay, and in this state of mortality, receive all knowledge by the senses, cannot frame any notion of his spiritual and abstracted nature. We cannot conceive what our own soul is, but by some sensible operation flowing from it, and the height that our knowledge of that noble part of ourselves amounts to, is but this dark and confused conception that the soul is some inward principle of life and sense and reason. How then is it possible for us to conceive aright of the divine nature, as it is in itself, but only in a dark and general way? We guess at his majesty, by the glorious emanations of his power and wisdom, and the ways thereof, which he displays abroad in all the work of his hands, and from all these concurring testimonies, and evidences of his majesty, we gather this confused notion of him, that he is the fountain, self independent Being, the original of these things, and more absolute in the world than the soul is in the body, the true Anima mundi, the very life and the light of men, and the soul that quickens, moves, and forms all this visible world, that makes all things visible, and himself is invisible. Therefore it is that the Lord speaks to us in Scripture of himself, according to our capacities—of his face, his right hand, and arm, his throne, his sceptre, his back [pg 055] parts his anger, his fury, his repentance, his grief, and sorrow—none of which are properly in his spiritual, immortal, and unchangeable nature. But because our dulness and slowness is such in apprehending things spiritual, it being almost without the sphere and comprehension of the soul while in the body, which is almost addicted unto the senses in the body, therefore the Lord accommodates himself unto our terms and notions, balbutit nobiscum—he, like a kind father, stammers with his stammering children, speaks to them in their own dialect, but withal, would have us conceive he is not really such an one, but infinitely removed in his own being from all these imperfections. So when you hear of these terms in scripture, O beware of conceiving God to be such a one as yourselves! But, in these expressions not beseeming his Majesty, because below him, learn your own ignorance of his glorious Majesty, your dulness and incapacity to be such as the holy One must come down as it were in some bodily appearance, ere you can understand any thing of him.
III. If God be a Spirit, then he is most perfect and most powerful. All imperfection, all infirmity, and weakness in the creature, is founded in the gross and material part of it. You see the more matter and bodily substance is in any thing, it is the more lumpish, heavy, and void of all action. It is the more spiritual, pure, and refined part of the creation that hath most activity in it, and is the principle of all motions and actions. You see a little fly hath more action in it than a great mountain, because there are spirits in it which move it. The bottom of the world contains the dregs of the creation, as it were—a mass and lump of heavy earth, but the higher and more distant bodies be from that, the more pure and subtile they are, and the more pure and subtile they be, the more action, virtue, and efficacy they have. The earth stands like a dead lump but the sea moves, and the air being thinner and purer than both, moves more easily and swiftly. But go up higher and still the motion is swifter, and the virtue and influence is the more powerful. What is a dead body when the soul and spirit is out of it? It hath no more virtue and efficacy than so much clay, although by the presence of the spirit of it, it was active, agile, swift, strong and nimble. So much then as any thing hath of spirit in it, so much the more perfect and powerful it is. Then I beseech you consider what a One the God of the spirits of all flesh must be—the very Fountain spirit—the Self being spirit—αυτο πνευμα. When the soul of a man, or the spirit of a horse, hath so much virtue, to stir up a lump of earth, and to quicken it to so many diverse operations, even though that soul and spirit did not, nay could not make that piece of earth they dwell in, then, what must his power and virtue be that made all those things? Who gave power and virtue even to the spirits of all flesh? “Their horses” saith God, are “flesh and not spirit,” (Isa. xxxi. 3) because, in comparison of his majesty, the very spirits in them are but like a dead lump of flesh. If he should draw in his breath, as it were, they would have no more virtue to save the Israelites, than so many lumps of flesh or clay. For he is the Spirit of all spirits, that quickens, actuates and moves them to their several operations and influences. Anima mundi, et Anima animarum mundi. An angel hath more power than all men united in one body. Satan is called the prince of the air, and the god of this world, for he hath more efficacy and virtue to commove the air, and raise tempests than all the swarms of multiplied mankind, though gathered into one army. If the Lord did not restrain and limit his power, he were able to destroy whole nations at once. An angel killed many thousands of Sennacherib's