The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural…

§. 30. Those who think God doth nothing to all the rest of the world, but by those noblest creatures which are next him, and that he hath committed the government of all the rest of the world to the Intelligences of the first Order; cannot without blindness and contradiction deny, that he is still Himself no less the actual Mover and Governor of all, than if he used no Officer or Instrument at all.

§. 30. Those who think God doth nothing to all the rest of the world, but by those noblest creatures which are next him, and that he hath committed the government of all the rest of the world to the Intelligences of the first Order; cannot without blindness and contradiction deny, that he is still Himself no less the actual Mover and Governour of all, than if he used no Officer or Instrument at all.

For 1. God ceased not himself to be Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent, or most Benign, when he gave that supposed Power to those Instruments. 2. He made them and ordered them under Him, through plenitude of Goodness, delighting to communicate Power and Dignity as well as Being to his Creatures, and not through impotency or insufficiency, to supply any defect in his own Government, and to help him: He useth them to honour them, and not to dishonour himself. He gave away from himself no degree of Perfection, nor deprived himself of the smallest part of Honour, which he communicateth to them; but honoureth himself in the appearance of his Perfections by the said Communications. As God can do that by himself without the Creature, which he causeth the Creature to do; (as to move, illuminate and beat the lower parts without the Sun as well as with it, or any thing which importeth not impotency or contradiction) for he ceased not to be omnipotent; so that which he doth by any Creature is as truly and fully done by Himself, as if there were no created instrument or cause in it. For that Creature which is nothing of it self, and hath not any Being but in full dependence on its Maker, can have no action of it self, but in full dependence upon him; what ever it doth, it doth by him: though as to the specifying comparison, why this rather than that, God hath given men a power with liberty, yet the Action as an Action, being from the Power which was totally from him, is so it self: There can be no less of God's agency in any action, because he doth it by a Creature, than if he did it without; though there be more of the Creatures, there is no less of his: His communication of Power is not by discerption, or division and diminution of his own. He that knoweth what a Creator and total first Cause is, needs no other proof of this. Men indeed communicate power to their Officers, through their own insufficiency,