these lights shall be obscured, all their
differences unobserved. An angel and a man, a man and a worm, differ much
in glory and perfection of being: but oh! in his presence there is no such
reckoning. Upon this account all things are alike, God infinitely distant
from all, and so not more or less. Infiniteness is not capable of such
terms of comparison. This is the reason why Christ says, "There is none
good but one, even God." Why, because in respect of his goodness, nothing
deserves that name. Lesser light, in the view of the greater, is a
darkness, as less good in comparison of a greater appears evil; how much
more then shall created light and created goodness lose that name and
notion, in the presence of that "uncreated Light, and self-sufficient
Goodness." And therefore it is, that the Lord calls himself after this
manner, "I am as if nothing else were. I will not say," saith he, "that I
am the highest, the best and most glorious that is--that supposeth other
things to have some being, and some glory that is worthy the accounting
of--but I am, and there is none else; I am alone; I lift up my hand to
heaven, and swear I live for ever." There is nothing else can say, I am, I
live, and there is nothing else; for there is nothing hath it of itself.
Can any boast of that which they have borrowed, and is not their own? As
if the bird that had stolen from other birds its fair feathers should come
forth and contend with them about beauty; would not they presently every
one pluck out their own, and leave her naked, to be an object of mockery
to all! Even so, since our breath and being is in our nostrils, and that
depends upon his Majesty's breathing upon us, if he should but keep in his
breath, as it were, we should vanish into nothing; he looketh upon man and
he is not, Job vii. 8. That is a strange look, that looks man not only out
of countenance, but out of life and being. He looks him into his first
nothing; and then can he say, "I live, I am"? No, he must always say of
himself in respect of God, as Paul of himself in respect of Christ, "I
live, yet not I, but Christ in me." I am, yet not I, but God in me. I
live, I am, yet not I, but in God, in whom I live and have my being. So
that there is no other thing, besides God, can say, "I am;" because all
things are but borrowed drops of this self-sufficient fountain, and
sparkles of this primitive light. Let any thing intervene between the
stream and the fountain, and it is c