6 NATURAL RELIGION, irs USES AND DEFECTS. [SEAM. Y. He can make a clock indeed, an.elegant engine to mea- sure time ; but he must have brass and iron given him, for he cannot create these materials, though- he give them a new form but God's huge and astonishing en- gine ofthe heavens, wherebyhours and days, seasons and ages are made and measured out, were all formed by hirn without any materials : He made all the materials him- self, and gave all the wheels of natureand time their very being, as well as their shapes and their motions, and they continue to observe his orders. A Creator must be Almighty, he must be God. Again, Let us thinkwithin ourselves, what a powerful Being must that be, who can make a soul, a spirit, a thinking being to exist, so nearly like himself, with such a.faculty of understanding, as to be capable of taking in so many millions of ideas, and forming the figures of the skies and the seas, and the thousands of plants and animals, which are found upon this earth, each in their proper propor- tion ? An understanding capable of knowing the works of God, and of knowing God himself?' How powerful is thedivine will, which could make a creature with a free, will, to determine its own choice, a will which can move all this frame of flesh and blood, and by these limbs can give motion to ten thousand other bodies round about us ? What a glorious power must that be, who could create such an imageof himself as ahuman spirit is, and which bears such a near resemblance of his own perfec- tions, both in his understanding and his will, in his know ledge and his power. We are his image, we are his off- spring. Thus sung Aratus the heathen poet, in Acts xvii., 28, 29. and spoke like a Christian. And thus it appears beyond all controversy, that the light of nature finds there is a God, and that this God is An all -wise and Almighty Spirit. If we were in doubt about his existence or being, these reasonings would assure us of it; and if we seek after his nature and his perfections, these his works discover them. 3. Another thing which we learn by the light of nature, is his supreme and absolute dominion over all things, that God is the sovereign Lord and Possegsor of heaven and earth, so Gen. xiv. 19. and consequently that he bath a right to dispose of all things as he pleases ; Rom. ix. 10. " .Who therefore shall say unto him, What dost thgu ? Shall the thing formedsay to him that hath formed
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