XXI. God the Incommunicable Perfection

1. Almighty God, Thou art the One Infinite Fulness. From eternity Thou art the One and only absolute and most all-sufficient seat and proper abode of all conceivable best attributes, and of all, which are many more, which cannot be conceived. I hold this as a matter of reason, though my imagination starts from it. I hold it firmly and absolutely, though it is the most difficult of all mysteries. I hold it from the actual experience of Thy blessings and mercies towards me, the evidences of Thy awful Being and attributes, brought home continually to my reason, beyond the power of doubting or disputing. I hold it from that long and intimate familiarity with it, so that it is part of my rational nature to hold it; because I am so constituted and made up upon the idea of it, as a keystone, that not to hold it would be to break my mind to pieces. I hold it from that intimate perception of it in my conscience, as a fact present to me, that I feel it as easy to deny my own personality as the personality of God, and have lost my grounds for believing that I exist myself, if I deny existence to Him. I hold it because I could not bear to be without Thee, O my Lord and Life, because I look for blessings beyond thought by being with Thee. I hold it from the terror of being left in this wild world without stay or protection. I hold it from humble love to Thee, from delight in Thy glory and exaltation, from my desire that Thou shouldst be great and the only great one. I hold it for Thy sake, and because I love to think of Thee as so glorious, perfect, and beautiful. There is one God, and none other but He.

2. Since, O Eternal God, Thou art so incommunicably great, so one, so perfect in that oneness, surely one would say, Thou ever must be most distant from Thy creatures, didst Thou create any;—separated from them by Thy eternal ancientness on their beginning to be, and separated by Thy transcendency of excellence and Thy absolute contrariety to them. What couldst Thou give them out of Thyself, which would suit their nature, so different from Thine? What good of Thine could be their good, or do them good, except in some poor external way? If Thou couldst be the happiness of man, then might man in turn, or some gift from him, be the happiness of the bird of prey or the wild beast, the cattle of his pasture, or the myriads of minute creatures which we can scarcely see. Man is not so far above them, as Thou above him. For what is every creature in Thy sight, O Lord, but a vanity and a breath, a smoke which stays not, but flits by and passes away, a poor thing which only vanishes so much the sooner, because Thou lookest on it, and it is set in the illumination of Thy countenance? Is not this, O Lord, the perplexity of reason? From the Perfect comes the Perfect; yet Thou canst not make a second God, from the nature of the case; and therefore either canst not create at all, or of necessity must create what is infinitely unlike, and therefore, in a sense, unworthy of the Creator.

3. What communion then can there be between Thee and me? O my God! what am I but a parcel of dead bones, a feeble, tottering, miserable being, compared with Thee. I am Thy work, and Thou didst create me pure from sin, but how canst Thou look upon me in my best estate of nature, with complacency? how canst Thou see in me any image of Thyself, the Creator? How is this, my Lord? Thou didst pronounce Thy work very good, and didst make man in Thy image. Yet there is an infinite gulf between Thee and me, O my God.