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NATURE

AND CREATURE

ATURE itself is a birth from God; it is the first manifesta- God, Nature, tion of the hidden inconceivable God, and it is so far from being out of nothing that it is the manifestation of all that in God which was before unmanifest. As nature is the first birth or manifestation of God or discovery of the Divine Powers, so all creatures are the manifestation of the powers of nature brought into a variety of births by the Will of God out of nature. The first creatures that are the nearest to the Deity are out of the highest powers of nature, God willing that nature should be manifested in the rise and birth of creatures out of it. Nature, directed and governed by the Wisdom of God, goes on in the birth of one thing out of another.-[The Spirit of Prayer, Part 11. p. 56.]

Α'

LL beings that are purely of this world have their existence in, and dependence upon, temporal Nature. God is no Maker, Creator, or Governor of any being or creature of this world, immediately or by Himself, but He creates, upholds, and governs all things of this world, by, and through, and with temporal Nature. As temporal Nature is nothing else but Eternal Nature separated, divided, compacted, made visible, and changeable for a time, so heaven is nothing else but the beatific visibility, the majestic presence of the Abyssal, Unsearchable, Triune God. It is that light with which, as the Scripture saith, God is decked, as with a garment, and by which He is manifested and made visible to heavenly eyes and beings; for Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as they are the Triune God, deeper than the Kingdom of Heaven or

Eternal Nature, are invisible to all created eyes. But that beatific visibility and outward glory which is called the Kingdom of Heaven is the Manifestation of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in, and by, and through the glorious Union of eternal Fire, and Light, and Spirit.-[An Appeal, etc., p. 147.]

BEFO

В

EFORE or without Nature the Deity is an entirely hidden, shut up, unknown, and unknowable Abyss. For nature is the only ground or beginning of something; there is neither this nor that, no ground for conception, no possibility of distinction or difference; there cannot be a creature to think, nor anything to be thought upon, till nature is in existence. For all the properties of sensibility and sensible life, every mode and manner of existence, all seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling, all inclinations, passions, and sensations of joy, sorrow, pain, pleasure, are not in God, but in nature. And, therefore, God is not knowable, not a thought can begin about Him, till He manifests Himself in, and through, and by the existence of nature; that is, till there is something that can be seen, understood, distinguished, felt. And this is Eternal Nature, or the Out-birth of the Deity called the Kingdom of Heaven, viz., an infinity or boundless opening of the Properties, Powers, Wonders, and Glories of the hidden Deity, and this not once done, but ever doing, ever standing in the same Birth, for ever and ever breaking forth and springing up in new forms and openings of the abyssal Deity in the powers of nature. And out of this ocean of manifested powers of nature the Will of the Deity created hosts of heavenly beings, full of the heavenly wonders introduced into a participation of the Infinity of God, to live in an eternal succession of heavenly sensations, to see and feel, to taste and find new forms of delight in an inexhaustible source of ever-changing and never-ceasing wonders of the Divine Glory.

Oh Theogenes! What an eternity is this, out of which and for which thy eternal soul was created! What little crawling things

are all that an earthly ambition can set before thee! Bear with patience for a while the rags of thy earthly nature, the veil and darkness of flesh and blood, as the lot of thy inheritance from father Adam, but think nothing worth a thought but that which will bring thee back to thy first glory and land thee safe in the region of eternity.-[The Spirit of Love, Part 11. p. 62.]

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RELIGION that is not founded in nature is all fiction and TRUE RELIGION

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falsity and as mere a nothing as an idol. For as no creature can be or have anything it has but what it is and has from the nature of things, nor have anything done to it, good or harm, but according to the unalterable workings of nature, so no religion can be of any service but that which works with and according to the demands of nature. Nor can any fallen creature be raised out of its fallen state even by the Omnipotence of God, but according to the nature of things, or the unchangeable powers of nature; for nature is the opening and manifestation of the Divine Omnipotence; it is God's Power-World; and therefore all that God does, is and must be done in and by the powers of nature. . . . Right and wrong, good and evil, true and false, happiness and misery, are as unchangeable in nature as time and space. And every state and quality that is creaturely, or that can belong to any creature, has its own nature as unchangeably as time and space have theirs. Nothing therefore can be done to any creature supernaturally, or in a way that is without or contrary to the powers of nature; but every thing or creature that is to be helped, that is to have any good done to it, or any evil taken out of it, can only have it done so far as the powers of nature are able and rightly directed to effect it. And this is the true ground of all Divine revelation, and of all that help which the supernatural Deity vouchsafes to the fallen state of man. It is not to appoint an arbitrary system of religious homage to God, but solely to point out, and provide for man, blinded by his fallen state, that one only religion, that according to

NATURAL

the nature of things can possibly restore to him his lost perfection. This is the truth, the goodness, and the necessity of the Christian religion it is true, and good, and necessary, because it is as much the one only natural and possible way of overcoming all the evil of fallen man as light is the only natural possible thing that can expel darkness.

And therefore it is that all the mysteries of the gospel, however high, are yet true and necessary parts of the one religion of nature, because they are no higher, nor otherwise, than the natural state of fallen man absolutely stands in need of. His nature cannot be helped or raised out of the evils of its present state by anything less than these mysteries, and therefore they are in the same truth and justness to be called his natural religion as that remedy which alone has full power to remove all the evil of a disease may be justly called its natural remedy. For a religion is not to be deemed natural because it has nothing to do with revelation, but then is it the one true religion of nature when it has everything in it that our natural state stands in need of, everything that can help us out of our present evil and raise and exalt us to all the happiness which our nature is capable of having. Supposing therefore the Christian scheme of redemption to be all that and nothing else in itself but that which the nature of things absolutely require it to be, it must, for that very reason, have its mysteries. -[The Spirit of Love, Part II. p. 135.]

THE BREATH OF GOD

It has been an opinion tor mature or seven, tre that God created

T has been an opinion commonly received, though without any THE SOUL OF

this whole visible world and all things in it out of nothing; nay, that the souls of men and the highest orders of beings were created in the same manner. The Scripture is very decisive against this origin of the souls of men. For Moses saith that God breathed into man the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Here the notion of a soul created out of nothing is in the plainest, strongest manner rejected by the first written word of God, and no Jew or Christian can have the least excuse for falling into such Here the highest and most divine original is not darkly, but openly, absolutely, and in the strongest form of expression ascribed to the soul. It came forth as a breath of life out from the mouth of God, and therefore did not come out of the womb of nothing, but is what it is, and has what it has in itself, from and out of the first and highest of all beings.-[An Appeal, etc., p. 1.]

an error.

WE

E are all of us by birth the offspring of God, more nearly related to Him than we are to one another; for in Him we live, and move, and have our being. The first man that was brought forth from God had the Breath and Spirit of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost breathed into him, and so he became a living soul. Thus was our first father born of God, descended from Him, and stood in paradise in the image and likeness of God. He was the image and likeness of God, not with any regard to his outward shape or form, for no shape has any likeness to God; but he was in the

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MAN THE
BREATH OF GOD

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