N00431:176
The wonderful works of God commemorated. Praises bespoke for the God in heaven in…
The wonderful works of God commemorated. Praises bespoke for the God in heaven in a thanksgiving sermon; delivered on Decemb. 19. 1689. Containing just reflections upon the excellent things done by the great God, more generally in creation and redemption, and in the government of the world; but more particularly in the remarkable revolutions of providence which are every where the matter of present observation. With a postscript giving an account of some very stupendous accidents, which have lately happened in France. / By Cotton Mather. ; To which is added a sermon preached unto the convention of the Massachuset-Colony in New-England, with a short narrative of several prodigies, which New-England hath of late had the alarms of heaven in.
Boston: printed by S. Green & sold by Joseph Browning, 1690
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.
It is the Interest, and should be the Desire, of Every people to have the God of Heaven With them. But we are to enquire,
What is implied in that presence of GOD, which we are to be solicitous about?
For Answer to this; There is a Threefold Presence of God, mentioned in the Scripture of Truth.
First, God is Naturally present with all Creatures. He is an Immense Being, and no Creature can be without him. The Apostle thus argued in the Court at Athens, in Act, 17.27. God is not far from every one of us. No, He is near us all, He is with us all. And Paul could have had the Gentiles themselves confessing it; for besides what their Seneca did own, One of their own Poets had said, Jovis omnia plena. It is the Speech of our God, in Jer. 23. 24. Do not I fill Heaven and Earth, saith the Lord? Yea, That He do's. The Jews call God by the Name of Makom, or of Place, because all things are in Him; this is His Name in the Book of Esther, if I mistake it not. Whether we may count it proper and physical to speak of an Imaginary, Infinite space, beyond the utmost Selvige of the world, replenished with our God alone; yet we are sure that the Heaven of Heavens gives no limits unto His Being; and the Ancients were not mistaken when they said, Deus Ipse Sibi, et Mundus et Locus et Omnia. We cannot so well say, That God is in the World, as we may say, The whole World is in God; & we may say with the Psalmist, in