Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

If it be not a substance, it can much less be able to produce such excellent Operations, as the preserving all the kinds of things in the World, and ordering them to perform such excellent ends; this Virtue is therefore God himself, the infinite Power and Wisdom of God; and therefore wheresoever the effects of these are seen in the World, God is essentially present; some Creatures indeed act at a distance by a virtue diffused; but such a manner of acting comes from a limitedness of nature, that such a nature cannot be every where present, and extend its substance to all parts; To act by a virtue, speaks the Subject finite, and it is a part of indigence: Kings act in their Kingdoms by Ministers and Messengers, because they cannot act otherwise; but God being infinitely perfect, works all things in all immediately¹; Illumination, Sanctification, Grace, &c. are the immediate Works of God in the heart, and immediate Agents are present with what they do; 'tis an Argument of the greater Perfection of a Being, to know things immediately, which are done in several places, than to know them at the second hand by Instruments: 'tis no less a ⟨p. 255⟩Perfection to be every where, rather than to be tied to one place of action; and to act in other places by Instruments, for want of a Power to act immediately it self: God indeed acts by means and second causes in his Providential Dispensations in the World, but this is not out of any Defect of Power to Work all immediately himself; but he thereby accommodates his way of acting to the nature of the Creature, and the Order of Things which he hath settled in the World; And when he Works by means, he acts with those means, in those means, sustains their faculties and virtues in them, concurs with them by his Power; so that Gods acting by means, doth rather strengthen his Essential Presence than weaken it; since there is a necessary dependence of the Creatures upon the Creator in their Being and Acting; and what they are, they are by the Power of God; what they act, they act in the Power of God, concurring with them; they have their Motion in him as well as their Being; and where the Power of God is, his Essence is, because they are inseparable; and so this Omnipresence ariseth from the simplicity of the Nature of God; the more vast any thing is, the less confined.

If it be not a substance, it can much less be able to produce such excellent Operations, as the preserving all the kinds of things in the World, and ordering them to perform such excellent ends; this Vertue is therefore God himself, the infinite Power and Wisdom of God; and therefore wheresoever the effects of these are seen in the World, God is essentially present; some Creatures indeed act at a distance by a vertue diffus'd; but such a manner of acting comes from a limitedness of nature, that such a nature cannot be every where present, and extend its substance to all parts; To act by a vertue, speaks the Subject finite, and it is a part of indigence: Kings act in their Kingdoms by Ministers and Messengers, because they cannot act otherwise; but God being infinitely perfect, works all things in all immediately