make choice of appropriate means, and by their own counsel direct themselves to it, yet we cannot conceive that other natural agents, whose operations flow from a bare instinct, can be directed in their actions by any counsel of their own.

Q. Who then is their director?

A. He who gave them their being for those ends, the great Artificer, who works in them all.

Q. Besides this general consent, has God in any other way preserved the worship due to his

name?

A. Yes. 1. By miracles. 2. By a personal remembrancer of the Creator.

Q. How do you prove a miracle?

A. If an action be performed, which is not within the compass of the power of any natural agent; and this, by the intervention of a body which bears no proportion to it, or has no natural aptitude so to work, it must be ascribed to a cause transcending all natural causes.

Q. What is the personal remembrancer?

A. Conscience-the "thoughts" ever" accusing, or else excusing."

Q. How do you prove this?

A. There is a comfort in virtuous actions; and remorse for wicked ones.

Q. Since the truth of God's existence is so universally received, that all are more prone to idolatry than to atheism, does not our faith guard us against one as well as the other?

A. Yes. 1. We believe in God affirmatively, "that he is," which guards us against atheism. 2. In God exclusively-" not in Gods,"-against polytheism and idolatry.

Q. How does this unity of the godhead appear?

A. 1. From the nature of God, to which multiplication is repugnant. 2. From the government, as he is Lord, in which we must not admit confusion. Isa. xliv. 6; xlv. 5, 6. Deut. iv. 35; xxxii. 39. Ps. xviii. 31. John xvii. 3.

Q. What do you mean by God the Father?

A. That God is the Father of all things, especially of men and angels, so far as the mere act of creation may be styled generation; in a more peculiar manner he is the Father of all those whom he regenerates by his Spirit, adopts in his Son, as heirs and co-heirs with him, and crowns with the reward of an eternal inheritance in the heavens. In a more eminent sense, he is the Father of his beloved, his only-begotten Son-begotten by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost-sent as King of Israel-raised from the dead, and made heir of all things.

Q. State the necessity of this faith in God as our Father.

A. 1. As the ground of all our filial fear, honour, and obedience due unto him upon this relation: Honour thy father is the first commandment with promise," (Eph. vi. 2.) And if such be the obligation as to the fathers of our flesh,

how much more to him who is our heavenly and everlasting Father! 2. Because our salvation is propounded to us by an access to the Father, (Eph. ii. 18.)

Q. How is he Almighty?

A. In operation, as well as authority in dominion.

Q. How do the Greek interpreters use the word Almighty?

A. Sometimes for the title of God" the Lord of Hosts,"-sometimes for his name, Shaddai. Q. What does the first signify?

A. The rule and dominion which God hath over all.

Q. What the second?

A. The strength, force, or power, by which he is able to perform all things?

Q. State more fully the extent of God's omnipotency.

A. Omnipotency is an essential attribute of his deity; and this not only in respect of operative and active, but also of authoritative power. This dominion is absolute, infinite, and eternal.

Q. Show the necessity of a belief in this authoritative power, and absolute dominion of the Almighty.

A. 1. To establish in us an awful reverence of his majesty, and entire subjection to his will. 2. To build us up in equanimity and patience under sufferings, and prevent murmuring and re

pining at the actions of God. 3. To make us sensible of the benefits we receive from him.

Q. Was the term

"Maker of heaven and

earth" in the ancient creeds?

A. No: yet the sense was delivered in the first rules of faith, and at last, these particular words inserted, both in the Greek and Latin confessions.

Q. What do you comprehend under the terms "heaven and earth?”

A. All things.

Q. Why?

Q. Because the first rules of faith did so express it; and the most ancient creeds have either instead of these words, or together with them, Maker of all things visible and invisible.

Q. Name a creed containing these.

A. The Nicene.

Q. Where is the addition," heaven and earth," found?

A. In the Constantinopolitan Creed.

Q. Have you any further proof of this being the sense of the Creed?

A. Moses says, "In six days the Lord made heaven and earth," (Exod. xxxi. 17.) Again, "the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is," (Exod. xx. 4.) Again, "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth." Again, "Thus saith the Lord, the heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool," (Isa. lxvi. 1.) St. Paul

saith "God that made the world, and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth."

Q. How was the world made?

A. By creation, as excluding all concurrence of any material cause, and all dependence of any kind of subject; as pre-supposing no privation, as including no motion, as signifying a production out of nothing.

Q. Is this the commonly received sense of the word creation?

A. No; but its proper and peculiar sense.
Q. How do you gather this?

A. From the testimony of God the Creator, in his word; and of the world created, in our rea

son.

Q. You say there was no material cause; was there no real matter coeval with God?

A. No.

Q. Prove this.

A. If some real and material being must be pre-supposed by indispensable necessity, without which God could not cause any thing to be; then he is not independent in his actions, nor of infinite power, and absolute activity, which is contradictory to the divine perfections.

Q. When under the name of heaven and earth you comprehend all things contained in them, do you distinguish between things created?

A. Yes; into immediately and mediately.