s that to his majesty? He speaks otherwise of himself, Isa. xl. 17.
"All nations before him are as nothing, and they are counted to him less
than nothing." Then, certainly, you have not taken up the true notion of
God when you have conceived him the most eminent of all beings, as long
as any being appears as a being in his sight before whom all beings
conjoined are as nothing. While you conceive God to be the best, you still
attribute something to the creature; for all comparatives include the
positive in both extremes: so then, you take up only some different
degrees between them who differ so infinitely, so incomprehensibly. The
distance betwixt heaven and earth is but a poor similitude to express the
distance between God and creatures. What is the distance betwixt a being
and nothing? Can you measure it? Can you imagine it? Suppose you take the
most high, and the most low, and measure the distance betwixt them, you do
but consider the difference betwixt two beings, but you do not express how
far nothing is distant from any of them. Now, if any thing could be
imagined less than nothing, could you at all guess at the vast distance
between it and a being? so it is here. Thus saith the Lord, "all nations,"
their glory, perfection, and number, all of them, and all their
excellencies united,--do not amount to the value of an unit in regard of my
Majesty; all of them like ciphers, join never so many of them together,
they can never make up a number, they are nothing in this regard, and less
than nothing. So then, we ought thus to conceive of God, and thus to
attribute a being and life to him, as in his sight and in the
consideration of it all created beings might evanish out of our sight;
even as the glorious light of the sun, though it do not annihilate the
stars, and make them nothing, yet it annihilates their appearance to our
senses, and makes them disappear as if they were not. Although there be a
great difference and inequality of the stars in the night,--some lighter,
some darker, some of the first magnitude, and some of the second and
third, &c. some of greater glory, and some of less,--but in the day-time
all are alike, all are darkened by the sun's glory, even so it is
here,--though we may compare one creature with another, and find different
degrees of perfection and excellency, while we are only comparing them
among themselves; but let once the glorious brightness of God shine upon
the soul, and in that light all