SECTION III
The third general instrument of Holy Living; or the
Practice of the Presence of God.
That God is present in all places, that he sees every action,
hears all discourses and understands every thought, is no strange thing to a Christian
ear who hath been taught this doctrine, not only by right reason and the consent
of all the wise men in the world, but also by God himself in holy Scripture. ‘Am
I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in
secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and
earth?’ ‘Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight; but all
things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.’2424Jer. xxiii. 23, 24.
“For in him we live and move and have our being.’2525Heb. iv. 13.
God is wholly in every place; included in no place; not bound with cords, except
those of love; not divided into parts, nor changeable into several shapes; filling
heaven and earth with his present power and with his never absent nature. So St.
Augustine2626Acts xvii. 28. expresses this article. So that we
may imagine God to be as the air and the sea, and we all enclosed in his circle,
wrapped up in the lap of his infinite nature; or as infants in the wombs of their
pregnant mothers: and we can no more be removed from the presence of God than from
our own being.
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