epresentation 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 absolutene