A41670:1288
A learned and very useful commentary on the whole epistle to the Hebrews wherein…
A learned and very useful commentary on the whole epistle to the Hebrews wherein every word and particle in the original is explained ... : being the substance of thirty years Wednesdays lectures at Black-fryers, London / by that holy and learned divine William Gouge ... : before which is prefixed a narrative of his life and death : whereunto is added two alphabetical tables ...A learned and very useful commentary on the whole epistle to the Hebrews wherein every word and particle in the original is explained ... : being the substance of thirty years Wednesdayes lectures at Black-fryers, London / by that holy and learned divine Wiliam Gouge ... : before which is prefixed a narrative of his life and death : whereunto is added two alphabeticall tables ...
London: printed by A.M. for Joshua Kirton, 1655
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
§. 134. Of the Reasons why the Heavens are said to be the works of Gods hands.
THE Heavens are here and in other Scriptures expressly said to be the works of Gods hands, In that,
THE Heavens are here and in other Scriptures expresly said to be the works of Gods hands, In that,
1. They were made as well as the earth. There be that grant that the earth and the things here below had a beginning; but imagine that the heavens and the things therein were eternal without beginning: The very first verse of the Bible expressly disproves this error, for there it is expressly said, that the Heaven was created: So also in sundry other places. 2. God himself made the Heavens, They were the work of his own hands, made1 by his own power, n• by Angels, as the Menandrians, Saturnirians, Cerinthians, Merinthians, and other heretics thought. Nor were they made by the casual concurrence of certain motes, which they call Atomi, as Democritus Leucippus and other Epicurean Philosophers dreamed. They imagined their Atomi to be small, indivisible bodies, such as appear in the Sun-beams when the Sun shineth through an hole: They say that by the conjunction of these all things at first were made; and that into these all things at last shall be dissolved. 3. The heavens were made without instruments; even with Gods hands and nothing else; It is one of the Epicurean Philosophers Arguments against the making of the Heavens, that there could not be sufficient instruments for effecting so great a work: What iron tools, saith he, what levers, or crows, what Ministers could be had to help on so vast a fabric? O blind and stupid Philosopher, that can no better discern between divine and humane works! Betwixt the first creating of things by God, and the after-making of things by man: God had no need of any help at all. 4. The Heavens are as a canopy to cover all the earth; For the use of hands, especially when both hands are used, is to stretch a thing and to spread it abroad; The Lord in express terms saith My hands have stretched out the heavens,