ut off and dried up; let any thing be
interposed between the sun and the beam, and it evanishes. Therefore, this
fountain-being, this original light, this self-being, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}, as Plato
called him, deserves only the name of being; other things that we call
after that name are nearer nothing than God, and so, in regard of his
majesty, may more fitly be called nothing than something. You see then how
profound a mystery of God's absolute self-sufficient perfection, is
infolded in these three letters, I AM, or in these four, _Jehovah_. If you
ask what is God? There is nothing occurs better than this, "I am," or, he
that is. If I should say he is the almighty, the only wise, the most
perfect, the most glorious, it is all contained in that word, "I am that I
am," _Nempe hoc est ei esse, haec omnia esse_; for that is to be, indeed,
to be all those perfections simply, absolutely, and, as it were, solely.
If I say all that, and should reckon out all the scripture-epithets, I add
nothing; if I say no more, I diminish nothing.

As this holds out God's absolute perfection, so we told you that it
imports his eternity and unchangeableness. You know Pilate's speech, "What
I have written I have written;" wherein he meant that he would not change
it; it should stand so. So this properly belongs to God's eternity,
"Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the
earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God,"
Psal. xc. 2. Now this is properly to be; and this only deserves the name
of being, which never was nothing, and never shall be nothing; which may
always say, "I am." You know it is so with nothing else but God. The
heavens and earth, with the things therein, could not say, six thousand
years ago, "I am." Adam could once have said, "I am," but now he cannot
say it; for that self-being and fountain-being hath said to him, return to
dust. And so it is with all the generations past; where are they now? They
were, but they are not. And we then were not, and now are; for we are come
in their place, but within a little time, Who of us can say, "I am." No,
"we flee away; and are like a dream, as when one awaketh!" We "are like a
tale that is told," that makes a present noise, and it is past. Within few
years this generation will pass, an