Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

3. Repletivè, filling all places; this belongs only to God: As he is not measured by time, to he is not limited by place. A Body or Spirit, because finite, fills but one space; God, because infinite, fills all, yet so as not to be contained in them, as Wine and Water is in a Vessel. He is from the height of the Heavens to the bottom of the Deeps, in every point of the World, and in the whole Circle of it, yet not limited by it, but beyond it.

Now this hath been acknowledged by the wisest in the world.

Some indeed had other Notions of God. The more ignorant sort of the Jews confined him to the Temple^*. And God intimates, that they had such a thought when he asserts his presence in Heaven and Earth, in opposition to the Temple they built as his House, and the place of his Rest^*. And the Idolaters among them, thought their Gods might be at a distance from them, which Elijah intimates in the scoff he puts upon them^*, Cry aloud, for he is a God, meaning Baal; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey; and they follow his advice, and cried louder, v. 28. whereby it is evident, they looked not on it as a mock, but as a truth. And the Syrians called the God of Israel the God of the hills, as though his presence were fixed there, and not in the valleys^*; and their own Gods in the Valleys, and not in the Mountains; they fancied every God to have a particular Dominion, and presence in one place, and not in another; and bounded the Territories of their Gods, as they did those of their Princes.