INSTRUMENT OF OMNIPOTENCE. 859 



Fathers of the Church, who maintained that the 

 Deity is an eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, 

 omniscient, and inconceivably subtil light or fiery 

 spirit, as we are informed by Brucker, Mosheim, 

 and others. 



Should it be objected that I am treading on 

 forbidden ground, I answer, that when God 

 created man in his own image,* with the divine 

 gift of reason, it was not that he should be con- 

 founded with metaphysical subtleties, which are 

 nowhere to be found in Revelation ; and which 

 have involved the first principles of all knowledge 

 in profound obscurity ; while they have pre- 

 vented philosophers from inquiring with unre- 



* It is maintained by the author of the Whole Duty of Man, 

 that *' it was in reference to his soul, that he was made in the 

 image of God, who is a pure spirit, and the cause of all motion 

 and life." In accordance with this rational view of the subject, it 

 was also maintained by Dr. Cudworth, Dr. Baxter, Samuel Clark, 

 Dr. Dvvight, and many other distinguished modern Divines, in- 

 cluding the present Bishop of London, and Mr. Whewell, that 

 God is the immediate cause of all the mechanical, chemical, and 

 vital operations of nature, a doctrine which is wholly irrecon- 

 cilable with the metaphysical notion of an immaterial and super- 

 essential First Cause. In defending it, Baxter, Clark, and 

 Dwight, reason very much in the same way as did Thales, Pytha- 

 goras, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, and other Greek philosophers, 

 who regarded God as the universal cause which organizes all 

 beings out of passive matter. For example, Dr. Baxter says, that 

 as matter is of itself passive, all those effects commonly ascribed 

 to certain properties or natural powers inherent in matter, are 

 immediately produced by an immaterial and self active principle. 

 (Nature of the Human Soul.) 



