DISCOURSE I.*

THE CREATION OF MAN IN GOD'S IMAGE.

GENESIS i. 27.

So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him.

How hard it is for natural reason to discover a creation before revealed, or being revealed, to believe it, the strange opinions of the old philosophers and the infidelity of modern atheists, is too sad a demonstration. To run the world back to its first original and infancy, and, as it were, to view nature in its cradle, and trace the out-goings of the Ancient of Days, in the first instance and specimen of his creative power, is a research too great for any mortal inquiry; and we might continue our scrutiny to the end of the world, before natural reason would be able to find out when it began.

[*« This,” says the Eclectic Review, "is one of the purest of South's productions; and he has here traced the character of man in his first estate,-in his understanding-will-affections-with so admirable a skill, with discrimination so exquisite, and in language so rich, yet so beautifully simple, as to excite the highest admiration of the author's powers, and the deepest regret at their frequent misapplication."-The Epistle Dedicatory contains a very singular notice: "The ensuing discourse (lest I chance to be traduced for a plagiary by him who has played the thief), I think fit to tell the world by the way, was one of those that by a worthy hand were stolen from me in the King's Chapel, and are still detained."-EDITOR.]

Epicurus's discourse concerning the original of the world is so fabulous and ridiculously merry, that we may well judge the design of his philosophy to have been pleasure, and not instruction.

Aristotle held, that it streamed by connatural result and emanation from God, the infinite and eternal Mind, as the light issues from the sun; so that there was no instant of duration assignable of God's eternal existence, in which the world did not also co-exist.

Others held a fortuitous concourse of atoms; but all seem jointly to explode a creation; still beating upon this ground, that the producing something out of nothing is impossible and incomprehensible; incomprehensible indeed, I grant, but not therefore impossible. There is not the least transaction of sense and motion in the whole man, but philosophers are at a loss to comprehend, I am sure they are to explain it. Wherefore it is not always rational to measure the truth of an assertion by the standard of our apprehension.

But to bring things even to the bare perceptions of reason, I appeal to any one, who shall impartially reflect upon the ideas and conceptions of his own mind, whether he doth not find it as easy and suitable to his natural notions, to conceive that an infinite, almighty Power might produce a thing out of nothing, and make that to exist de novo, which did not exist before, as to conceive the world to have had no beginning, but to have existed from eternity; which, were it so proper for this place and exercise, I could easily demonstrate to be attended with no small train of absurdities. But then, besides that the acknowledging of a creation is safe, and the denial of it dangerous and irreligious, and yet not more, perhaps much less, demonstrable, than the affirmative; so, over and above, it gives me this advantage, that, let it seem never so strange, uncouth, and incomprehensible, the nonplus of my reason will yield a fairer opportunity to my faith.

In this chapter, we have God surveying the works of the creation, and leaving this general impress or character upon them, that they were exceeding good. What an Omnipotence wrought, we have an Omniscience to approve. But as it is reasonable to imagine that there is more of design, and consequently more of perfection, in the last work, we have God here giving his last stroke, and summing up all into man, the whole into a part, the universe into an individual; so that, whereas in other creatures we have but the trace of his footsteps, in man we have the draught of his hand. In him were united all the scattered perfections of the creature, all the graces and ornaments; all the airs and features of being were abridged into this small, yet full system of nature and divinity; as we might well imagine that the great Artificer would be more than ordinarily exact in drawing his own picture.

The work that I shall undertake from these words, shall be to show what this image of God in man is, and wherein it doth consist; which I shall do these two ways: 1. Negatively, by showing wherein it doth not consist; 2. Positively, by showing wherein it does.

For the first of these, we are to remove the erroneous opinion of the Socinians. They deny that the image of God consisted in any habitual perfections that adorned the soul of Adam; but as to his understanding bring him in void of all notion, a rude unwritten blank; making him to be created as much an infant as others are born; sent into the world only to read and to spell out a God in the works of creation, to learn by degrees, till at length his understanding grew up to the stature of his body; also without any inherent habits of virtue in his will; thus divesting him of all, and stripping him to his bare essence; so that all the perfection they allowed his understanding was aptness and docility; and all that they attributed to his will was a possibility to be virtuous.

But wherein then, according to their opinion, did this image of God consist? Why, in that power and dominion that God gave Adam over the creatures; in that he was vouched his immediate deputy upon earth, the viceroy of the creation, and lord-lieutenant of the world. But that this power and dominion is not adequately and formally the image of God, but only a part of it, is clear from hence; because then he that had most of this, would have most of God's image; and consequently Nimrod had more of it than Noah, Saul than Samuel, the persecutors than the martyrs, and Cæsar than Christ himself, which to assert is a blasphemous paradox. And if the image of God is only grandeur, power, and sovereignty, certainly we have been hitherto much mistaken in our duty, and hereafter are by all means to beware of making ourselves unlike God, by too much self-denial and humility. I am not ignorant that some may distinguish between govoía and dúvauis, between a lawful authority and actual power, and affirm, that God's image consists only in the former, which wicked princes, such as Saul and Nimrod, have not, though they possess the latter. But to this I answer,

1. That the Scripture neither makes nor owns such a distinction; nor any where asserts, that when princes begin to be wicked, they cease of right to be governors. Add to this, that when God renewed this charter of man's sovereignty over the creatures to Noah and his family, we find no exception at all, but that Cham stood as fully invested with this right as any of his brethren.

2. But secondly; this savours of something ranker than Socinianism, even the tenets of the fifth monarchy, and of sovereignty founded only upon saintship; and therefore fitter to be answered by the judge, than by the divine; and to receive its confutation at the bar of justice, than from the pulpit.

Having now made our way through this false opin