16 / 652
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
of
the heavens, whereby
hours 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 nature
and 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
think
within 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
the
divine
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 image
of
himself
as
a
human 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 formed
say to him
that hath
formed