goodness and bounty of Almighty God, who thus deals with us human creatures, condefcends unto our natures and capacities, complies with our common fenfe and reafon, giving us evidences of all forts to convince and perfuade us to the entertainment and belief of those things that are our happiness and felicity to believe, and omits not any topic that may affure us: applies to every avenue of our fouls and hearts for the admiffion and reception of thofe truths, in the belief whereof confifts our everlasting bleffedness.

CON

CONCERNING

THE

WORKS OF GOD.

HAVING confidered the Divine attributes, we come to confider the Works of God, or those acts of Almighty God, which are terminated in something without himfelf. And these are of two kinds.

1. The internal, or immanent works of God, which, though they are within himfelf, yet I call them works, because they are terminated in fomething without him. And thofe are of two kinds, viz. his knowledge, or foreknowledge, which relates to God, as we reprefent him to ourselves, under the notion of an intellectual being: and the counsel or determination of his will, as we reprefent him to ourselves, as a free agent, or one who works secundum intentionem 1.

2. The external or tranfient works of Almighty God: and thefe are of two kinds, viz. the work of creation, and the work of providence, or gubernation.

The work of the creation is again of two kinds; viz. creatio prima, the production of fomething, or fimple creation;' and creatio secunda, the production of fomething out of what pre-exifted;' but yet fuch a production as exceeded the activity or power of any natural caufe; as the production of the heavenly and elementary bodies, the first production of manners.

The work of his providence is of two kinds, viz. First, the general providence that concerns the univerfe, and the particular beings therein, as they are exertions of the Divine Providence, viz.

1. The common influx, whereby every thing is pre

' according to intention,

ferved in genere entis; and in the particular nature of ens tale.

2. The gubernation, or regiment of every thing. The fpecial work of Divine Providence is that which relates to intellectual natures, viz. angels or men.

And that part of the Divine fpecial providence, re lating to men, is of two kinds, viz. that which relates to him, in reference to his temporal fubfiftence, civil or political or that part of the Divine fpecial providence that concerns man in reference to his everlasting state or condition, which lets in the whole divine œconomy, in relation to religion and religious con

cernments.

To begin with the first of these kind of works, the Divine knowledge and fore-knowledge of things.

We must premife, as we have done formerly, that we are not able to have a right and due conception either of the knowledge, or of the counfel of Almighty God; only thus much we are certain, that it is quite another thing than any thing we can imagine concerning it, and the reafon is, because we have no other measure to frame in ourfelves a conception of knowledge, but only the idea or image of that knowledge which we have in ourselves, which is utterly unfuitable and difanalogical to that knowledge which is in God, or the manner or nature of it. It is much more possible, that a child of a fpan long; nay, that a worm, or a fly, might have a juft and adequate conception of the knowledge of the wifeft man in the world, and the manner of it, than it is poffible for the wifeft and moit knowing man to have a right measure or estimate of the knowledge of God, or of the manner or nature of it. And the reason is apparent; for the knowledge of a child and a man differ only in degrees; the knowledge of a worm and a man, though they differ not only in degrees, but in kind and nature, and therefore cannot form to itself the conception or image of the knowledge of a man for it; but yet they agree in this, that even the knowledge of a man is quid finitum: but the knowledge