ss. 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 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 o