ON GOD


In my solitary and retired imagination, I remember I am not alone, and
therefore forget not to contemplate Him and His attributes who is ever
with me, especially those two mighty ones, His wisdom and eternity; with
the one I recreate, with the other I confound my understanding: for who
can speak of eternity without a solecism, or think thereof without an
ecstasy? Time we may comprehend. It is but five days older than
ourselves, and hath the same horoscope with the world; but to retire so
far back as to apprehend a beginning, to give such an infinite start
forwards as to conceive an end in an essence that we affirm hath neither
the one nor the other, it puts my reason to St. Paul's sanctuary. My
philosophy dares not say the angels can do it; God hath not made a
creature that can comprehend Him; it is a privilege of His own nature. 'I
am that I am,' was His own definition unto Moses; and it was a short one,
to confound mortality, that durst question God, or ask Him what He was;
indeed He only is; all others have been and shall be. But in eternity
there is no distinction of tenses; and therefore that terrible term,
predestination, which hath troubled so many weak heads to conceive, and
the wisest to explain, is in respect to God no prescious determination of
our estates to come, but a definitive blast of His will already
fulfilled, and at the instant that He first decreed it; for to His
eternity which is indivisible, and altogether, the last trump is already
sounded, the reprobates in the flame, and the blessed in Abraham's bosom.

That other attribute wherewith I recreate my devotion is His wisdom, in
which I am happy; and for the contemplation of this only, do not repent
me that I was bred in the way of study: the advantage I have of the