But
the contemplation of God is gained in a variety of ways. For we not
only discover God by admiring His incomprehensible essence, a thing
which still lies hid in the hope of the promise, but we see Him through
the greatness of His creation, and the consideration of His justice, and
the aid of His daily providence: when with pure minds we contemplate
what He has done with His saints in every generation,
when with trembling heart we admire His power with which He governs,
directs, and rules all things, or the vastness of His knowledge, and
that eye of His from which no secrets of the heart can lie hid, when we
consider the sand of the sea, and the number of the waves measured by
Him and known to Him, when in our wonder we think that the drops of
rain, the days and hours of the ages, and all things past and future are
present to His knowledge; when we gaze in unbounded admiration on that
ineffable mercy of His, which with unwearied patience endures countless
sins which are every moment being committed under His very eyes, or the
call with which from no antecedent merits of ours, but by the free grace
of His pity He receives us; or again the numberless opportunities of
salvation which He grants to those whom He is going to adopt -- that He
made us be born in such a way as that from our very cradles His grace
and the knowledge of His law might be given to us, that He Himself,
overcoming our enemy in us simply for the pleasure of His good will,
rewards us with eternal bliss and everlasting rewards, when lastly He
undertook the dispensation of His Incarnation for our salvation, and
extended the marvels of His sacraments to all nations. But there are
numberless other considerations of this sort, which arise in our minds
according to the character of our life and the purity of our heart, by
which God is either seen by pure eyes or embraced: which considerations
certainly no one will preserve lastingly, if anything of carnal
affections still survives in him, because "thou canst not," saith the
Lord, "see My face: for no man shall see Me and live;" viz., to this
world and to earthly affections.'
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