|
|
The eternality of God juxtaposed against our finitude necessarily precludes us from gainsaying his decrees and designs. Stephen Charnock draws from the book of Job:
 How bold and foolish is it for a mortal creature to censure the counsels and actions of an eternal God, or be too curious in his inquisitions! It is by the consideration of the unreachable number of the years of God that Elihu checks two bold inquiries: “who hath enjoined him his way, or who can say, thou hast wrought iniquity? Behold, God is great, and we know him not; neither can the number of his years be searched out.”[Job xxxvi. 26, compared with ver. 23.] Eternity sets God above our inquiries and censures. Infants of a day old are not able to understand the acts of the wise and gray heads: shall we, that are so short of being and understanding as yesterday, presume to measure the motions of eternity by our scanty intellects? We that cannot foresee an unexpected accident which falls in to blast a well-laid design, and run a ship many leagues back from the intended harbor; we cannot understand the reason of things we see done in time, the motions of the sea, the generation of rain, the nature of light, the sympathies and antipathies of the creatures; and shall we dare to censure the actions of and eternal God, so infinitely beyond our reach? The counsels of a boundless being are not to be scanned by the brain of a silly worm, that hath breathed but a few minutes in the world. Since eternity cannot be comprehended in time, it is not to be judged by a creature of time: “ Let us remember to magnify his works which we behold,” because he is eternal, which is the exhortation of Elihu backed by this doctrine of God’s eternity (Job xxxvi. 24), and not accuse any work of him who is the “ancient of days,” or presume to direct him of whose eternity we come infinitely short. Whenever, therefore, any unworthy notion of the counsels and works of God is suggested to us by Satan, or our own corrupt hearts, let us look backward to God’s eternal and our own short duration, and silence ourselves with the same question wherewith God put a stop to the reasoning of Job—“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job xxxvi. 4), and reprove ourselves for our curiosity, since we are of so short a standing, and were nothing when the eternal God laid the first stone of the world. —Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (Baker Books, 2005), 1:295
|
|
