s the ever-dawning morning of the ever new-created
day. And He beholds Eternal Nature continually rising up before Him, and
He pronounces it very good. The Creator so transcends the creation, and,
especially, that late and remote creation of which we are a part, that,
as the Creator's first step out of Himself, and as a step towards our
creation, is His creation, generation, or other production of a nature or
universe that shall be capable of receiving immediately into itself all
that of the Creator that He has purposed to reveal and to communicate to
creatures,--a nature or universe which shall at the same time be itself
the beginning of creation, and the source, spring, and quarry out of
which all that shall afterwards come can be constructed. Eternal Nature
is thus the great storehouse and workshop in which all the created
essences, elements, principles, and potentialities of all possible worlds
are laid up. Here is the great treasury and laboratory into which the
Filial Word enters, when by Him GOD creates, sustains, and perfects the
worlds, universe after universe. Here, says Behmen, is the great and
universal treasury of that heavenly clay of which all things, even to
angels and men, are made; and here is the eternal turning-wheel with
which they are all framed and fashioned. Eternal Nature is an invisible
essence, and it is the essential ground out of which all the visible and
invisible worlds are made. For the things which are seen were not made
of things which do appear. In that radiant original universe also all
the thoughts of GOD which were to usward from everlasting, all the Divine
ideas, patterns, and plans of things, are laid open, displayed, copied
out and sealed up for future worlds to see carried out. 'Through this
Kingdom of Heaven, or Eternal Nature,' says William Law, in his _Appeal
to all that Doubt_, 'is the invisible GOD eternally breaking forth and
manifesting Himself in a boundless height and depth of blissful wonders,
opening and displaying Himself to all His heavenly creatures in an
infinite variety and an endless multiplicity of His powers, beauties,
joys, and glories. So that all the inhabitants of heaven are for ever
knowing, seeing, hearing, feeling, and variously enjoying all that is
great, amiable, infinite, and gracious in the Divine Nature.' And again,
in his _Way to Divine Knowledge_: 'Out of this transcendent Eternal
Nature, which is as universal and immense as the Godhead i