him, "who sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants
thereof are as grasshoppers before him?" and he spreadeth out the heavens
"as a tent to dwell in!" Isa. xl. 22. He made all the pins and stakes of
this tabernacle, and he fastened them below but upon nothing, and
stretches this curtain about them and above them; and it was not so much
difficulty to him, as to you to draw the curtain about your bed; for "he
spake, and it was done, he commanded, and it stood fast." Canst thou by
searching find him out? And yet thou must search him; not so much out of
curiosity to know what he is, for he dwelleth in "the light which no man
can approach unto," which no man hath seen, and no man can see, 1 Tim. vi.
16; not so much to find him, as to be found of him, or to find what we
cannot know when we have found. _Hic est qui nunquam quaeri frusta potes,
cum tamen inveniri non potest._ You may seek him, but though you never
find him, yet ye shall not seek him in vain, for ye shall find blessedness
in him. Though you find him, yet can you search him out unto perfection?
Then what you have found were not God. How is it possible for such narrow
hearts to frame an apprehension, or receive an impression of such an
immense greatness, and eternal goodness? Will not a soul lose its power of
thinking and speaking, because there is so much to be thought and spoken;
and it so transcends all that it can think or speak? Silence then must be
the best rhetoric; and the sweetest eloquence, when eloquence itself must
become dumb and silent. It is the abundance and excess of that
inaccessible light, that hath no proportion to our understandings, that
strikes us as blind as, in the darkness, the wont of light. All that we
can say of God is, that whatsoever we can think or conceive, he is not
that, because he hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive, and
that he is not like any of those things which we know, unto which if he be
not like, we cannot frame any similitude or likeness of him in our
knowledge. What then shall we do? Seek him and search him indeed: but, if
we cannot know him, to reverence and fear and adore what we know. So much
of him may be known as may teach us our duty and show unto us our
blessedness. Let then all our inquiries of him have a special relation to
this end, that, we may out of love and fear of such a glorious and good
God, worship and serve him, and compose ourselves according to his will
and wholly to his