OF THE DEITY. 
247 
of authority, (for all depends upon that,) they afford aeon 
descension to the state of our faculties, of which, they who 
have most reflected upon the subject, will be the first to 
acknowledge the want and the value. 
Nevertheless, if we be careful to imitate the documents 
of our religion, by confining our explanations to what con¬ 
cerns ourselves, and do not affect more precision in our 
ideas than the subject allows of, the .several terms which 
are employed to denote the attributes of the Deity, may be 
made, even in natural religion, to bear a sense consistent 
with truth and reason, and not surpassing our compre¬ 
hension. 
These terms are, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipres¬ 
ence, eternity, self-existence, necessary existence, spiritu¬ 
ality. 
“Omnipotence,” “omniscience,” “infinite” power, 
“ infinite” knowledge, ar e superlatives; expressing our con¬ 
ception of these attributes in the strongest and most elevated 
terms which language supplies. We ascribe power to the 
Deity under the name of “ omnipotence,” the strict and cor¬ 
rect conclusion being, that a power which could create such 
a world as this is, must be, beyond all comparison, greater 
than any which we experience in ourselves, than any which 
we observe in other visible agents; greater also than any 
which we can want, for our individual protection and pres¬ 
ervation, in the Being upon whom we depend. It is a 
power, likewise, to which we are not authorised, by our 
observation or knowledge, to assign any limits of space 
or duration. 
Very much of the same sort of remark is applicable to 
the term, “omniscience,” infinite knowledge, or infinite 
wisdom. In strictness of language, there is a difference 
between knowledge and wisdom; wisdom always suppos¬ 
ing action, and action directed by it. With respect to the 
first, viz. knowledge, the Creator must know, intimately, 
the constitution and properties of the things which he cre¬ 
ated; which seems also to imply a foreknowledge of their 
action upon one another, and of their changes; at least, so 
far as the same result from trains of physical and necessary 
causes. His omniscience also, as far as respects things 
present, is deducible from his nature, as an intelligent be¬ 
ing, joined with the extent, or rather the universality, of 
his operations. Where he acts, he is; and where he is, 
he perceives. The wisdom of the Deity, as testified in the 
works of creation, surpasses all idea we have of wisdom, 
drawn from the highest intellectual operations of the highest 
