Notes:
Sermon 118: On the Omnipresence of God
1This is yet another contemplative essay, reflecting Wesley’s constant and vivid sense of the sacred: his vision of the Christian life as an immersion in the encompassing, suffusing personal presence of God. His complaint, at the outset, about the paucity of a proper treatment of this great theme, is scarcely more than a familiar literary device to justify his contribution as some sort of theological pioneer: ‘what seems to be wanting still, for general use, is a plain discourse on the…ubiquity of God’ (proem, §3). All this can mean is that he judged that the classical treatments of ubiquity (Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, Taylor, Bérulle, Scougal) were not sufficiently ‘plain’ or quite suited ‘for general use’. And this, apparently, was also his judgment of the Boyle Lectures.
E.g., Samuel Clarke’s famous Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (1705), with its meagre Prop. V (pp. 86-88), and John Norris’s Reflections Upon the Conduct of Human Life (1690), which Wesley had already abridged as early as 1734 (see Bibliog, No. 3).
2That it is placed and dated at ‘Portsmouth, Aug. 12, 1788’ is almost accidental; not much of it was written there. The Journal tells us that he had come to Portsmouth on the 11th, after an all-night ride ‘in the mail-coach’ from London, and had then plunged into a busy round of sermons and class-meetings. The fortnight before had been spent largely in the Annual Conference, debating the unsinkable issue of ‘separation’.
JWJ, Aug. 4, 1788.
304:040It appeared in the Arminian Magazine
XII.454-60, 512-14.
Jeremiah 23:24
Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord.
11. How strongly and beautifully do these words express the omnipresence of God! And can there be in the whole compass of nature a more sublime subject? Can there be any more worthy the consideration of every rational creature? Is there any more necessary to be considered, and to be understood, so far as our poor faculties will admit? How many excellent purposes may it answer! What deep instruction may it convey to all the children of men! And more directly to the children of God.
22. How is it then that so little has been wrote on so sublime and useful a subject? It is true that some of our most eminent writers have occasionally touched upon it, and have several strong and beautiful reflections which were naturally suggested by it. But which of them has published a regular treatise, or so much as a sermon, upon the head? Perhaps many were conscious of their inability to do justice to so vast a subject. It is possible there may some such lie hid in the voluminous writings of the last century. But if they are hid even in their own country, if they are already buried in oblivion, it is the same, for any use they are of, as if they had never been wrote.
Wesley would have known that God’s ‘omnipresence’ was assumed by all Christian Platonists as included in the idea of ‘Infinite Spirit’ or ‘eternal Mind’ (notions which exclude ‘location’); cf. George Berkeley, Hylas and Philonous, ‘Third Dialogue’ (Works, I.325); and Siris, §358 (Works, III.504-5). But it is true that ‘omnipresence’ was rarely singled out for specific discussion, even by theologians (e.g., Samuel Clarke, Joseph Butler, Henry More, et al.) who took its truth for granted. What is more often at explicit issue in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British theology is God’s ‘omnipotence’.
304:0413. What seems to be wanting still, for general use, is a plain discourse on the omnipresence or ubiquity of God, first in some manner explaining and proving that glorious truth, God is in this, and every place, and then applying it to the conscience of all thinking men in a few practical inferences.
11I. 1. Accordingly I will endeavour, by the assistance of his Spirit, first
a little to explain the omnipresence of God: to show how we are to understand
this glorious truth, God is in this, and every place. The Psalmist, you may
remember, speaks strongly and beautifully upon it in the hundred and
thirty-ninth Psalm; observing in the most exact order, first, God is in this
place, and then, God is in everyplace. He observes, first, ‘Thou art about my
bed, and about my path, and spiest out all my ways.’
[Ps. 139,] ver. 2 [N.B. All
quotations in this section are from BCP]. Ver.
4. Ver.
5. Ver. 5-6
[i.e., 6-7].
Ps. 139:8-9 (BCP).
Cf. Wesley’s letter to his brother Samuel, Apr. 4, 1726; see also David Lewis, Miscellaneous Poems (1726), pp. 255-57; and Wesley’s Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1737), p. 4. See No. 26, ‘Sermon on the Mount, VI’, III.6 and n.
04:042In a word, there is no point of space, whether within or without the bounds of creation, where God is not.
22. Indeed this subject is far too vast to be comprehended by the narrow limits of human understanding. We can only say, ‘The great God, the eternal, the almighty Spirit, is as unbounded in his presence as in his duration and power.’ In condescension, indeed, to our weak understanding, he is said to ‘dwell in heaven’;
Cf. 1 Kgs. 8:30, etc.; Ps. 123:1.
Samuel Wesley, Jun., ‘Hymn to God the Father’, st. 1, Poems (1736), p. 1; also published as Hymn XI, in John Wesley, A Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1737), p. 11, and A Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744), III.179.
33. If we may dare attempt the illustrating this a little farther, what is the space occupied by a grain of sand, compared to that space which is occupied by the starry heavens? It is as a cipher; it is nothing; it vanishes away in the comparison. What is it then to the whole expanse of space, to which the whole creation is infinitely less than a grain of sand? And yet this space, to [which] the whole creation bears no proportion at all,
A note in Wesley’s personal copy of AM deletes ‘to all the whole creation’.
Cf. No. 54, ‘On Eternity’, §§2, 10 and n.
1II. 1. This seems to be the plain meaning of those solemn words which God speaks of himself, ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’
Jer. 23:24.
Cf. Augustine, Confessions, XI.iv, XII.vii; this was also the premise of Wesley’s occasional onsets of ontological anxiety, as in his letter to Charles, June 27, 1766.
For other references to liberty and will, see No. 60, ‘The General Deliverance’, I.4 and n.
Cf. Virgil, Aeneid, vi.726-27; see also No. 74, ‘Of the Church’, §13 and n.
A translation similar to this one appears in Vol. XXXII of Wesley’s Works (1774), ‘Latin Sentences Translated’, with reference to a similar usage in An Earnest Appeal, §19.
But they had no conception of his having a regard to the least things as well as the greatest; of his presiding over all that he has made, and governing atoms as well as worlds. This we could not have known unless it had pleased God to reveal it unto us himself. Had he not himself told us so, we should not have dared to think that ‘not a sparrow falleth to the ground’ without the ‘will of our Father which is in heaven’; and much less affirm that ‘even the very hairs of our head are all numbered’!
Cf. Matt. 10:29-30; 18:14.
22. This comfortable truth,
I.e., providing needed strength to the will rather than any sort of ‘indulgence’.
Ps. 139:7-9 (BCP); cf. n. 2 above. ‘Psalmist’, printed in the AM in the opening sentence, is altered in Wesley’s personal copy to ‘Psalm’.
Acts 17:28.
33. And where no creature is, still God is there. The presence or absence of any or all creatures makes no difference with regard to him. He is equally in all, or without all. Many have been the disputes among philosophers whether there be any such thing as 04:044empty space in the universe.
An echo of the famous debate between Leibnitz (who held a relational view of space and time) and Clarke and Newton, who regarded space and time as absolute (‘space as an infinite number of points’); cf. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, IV.301-7. Wesley here inclines to Leibnitz’s view that the notion of ‘empty space is fantastic and chimerical’.
Virgil, Eclogues, iii.60; see No. 23, ‘Sermon on the Mount, III’, I.6 and n.
See No. 15, The Great Assize, III.3 and n.
44. Just equivalent to this is the expression of the Apostle (not as some
have strangely supposed, concerning the church, but concerning the head of it),
‘The fullness of him that filleth all in all’
Eph. 1:23.
55. Indeed this very expression, ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ (the question being equal to the strongest affirmation), implies the clearest assertion of God’s being present everywhere, and filling all space. For it is well known the Hebrew phrase ‘heaven and earth’
את השמים ואת הארץ, as in Gen. 1:1.
66. Nay, and we cannot believe the omnipotence of God unless we believe his omnipresence. For seeing (as was observed before) nothing can act where it is not, if there were any space where God was not present he would not be able to do anything there. Therefore to deny the omnipresence of God implies likewise the denial of his omnipotence. To set bounds to the one is undoubtedly to set bounds to the other also.
77. Indeed, wherever we suppose him not to be, there we suppose all his attributes to be in vain. He cannot exercise there either his justice or mercy, either his power or wisdom. In that 04:045extramundane space (so to speak) where we suppose God not to be present, we must of course suppose him to have no duration; but as it is supposed to be beyond the bounds of the creation, so it is beyond the bounds of the Creator’s power. Such is the blasphemous absurdity which is implied in this supposition.
In one of his earliest sermons (No. 136, ‘On Mourning for the Dead’) Wesley had inveighed against the logical absurdity of any effort to conceive how omnipotence might be surpassed.
88. But to all that is or can be said of the omnipresence of God the world has one grand objection! They cannot see him. And this is really at the root of all their other objections. This our blessed Lord observed long ago: ‘Whom the world cannot receive, because they see him not.’
Cf. John 14:17.
Cf. No. 10, ‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’, I.12 and n.
Cf. 1 Tim. 6:16.
1III. 1. But allowing that God is here, as in every place, that he is ‘about our bed, and about our path’,
Ps. 139:2 (BCP).
Ps. 139:5.
Heb. 12:28.
See Jas. 2:19.
Milton, Paradise Lost, iii. 380-82 (with ‘thy skirts’); see also Nos. 123, ‘On Knowing Christ after the Flesh’, §12; and 124, ‘Human Life a Dream’, §12.
22. Secondly, if you believe that God is about your bed and about your path, and spieth out all your ways, then take care not to do the least thing, not to speak the least word, not to indulge the least thought, which you have reason to think would offend him.
Cf. BCP, Morning Prayer, Collect for Purity: ‘unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid’.
Isa. 57:15.
33. In particular. If there is not a word in your tongue, not a syllable you speak, but he ‘knoweth it altogether’,
Cf. Ps. 139:4.
Cf. Ps. 141:3.
Cf. Matt. 12:37.
Cf. Eph. 4:29.
44. Yea, if God sees our hearts as well as our hands, and in all places, if he understandeth our thoughts long before they are clothed with words; how earnestly should we urge that petition, ‘Search me, O Lord, and prove me; try out my reins and my heart.’
Cf. Ps. 26:2 (BCP).
Ps. 139:24 (BCP).
Cf. Prov. 4:23.
Cf. 2 Cor. 10:5 (see Notes).
55. On the other hand, if you are already listed under the great captain of your salvation,
See Heb. 2:10.
1 Tim. 6:12.
Cf. 2 Tim. 2:3.
1 Tim. 1:18.
Cf. Matt. 25:21, 23.
66. In order to attain these glorious ends, spare no pains to preserve always a deep, a continual, a lively, and a joyful sense of his gracious presence. Never forget his comprehensive word to the great father of the faithful, ‘I am the Almighty’ (rather, the All-sufficient) ‘God; walk before me, and be thou perfect!’
Gen. 17:1. Wesley’s parenthesis (‘rather, the All-sufficient’) echoes a long and complicated discussion of the meaning of El Shaddai. In his Explanatory Notes Upon the Old Testament he had followed Matthew Henry in his comment that ‘our old English translation [i.e., the Geneva Bible of 1560] reads [El Shaddai] here very significantly, “I am God All-sufficient.” [God] is self-sufficient.’ Rashi had paraphrased the text, ‘I am He who possesses sufficient in my Divinity for every creature.’ John Skinner in his Genesis (1910) in the International Critical Commentary speaks of ‘traditional Jewish etymology’ leaning toward ‘All-sufficient’ or ‘Self-sufficient’ instead of All-powerful. E. A. Speiser, Genesis, The Anchor Bible (1964), comments that ‘the traditional translation of El Shaddai as “Almighty” goes back to an early rabbinic etymology, “Self-sufficient”.’ Note, however, that Calvin in his Commentary on Genesis stresses the meaning ‘All-powerful’.
1 Pet. 5:10.
Cf. 1 Thess. 3:13.
Portsmouth, August 12, 1788
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Entry Title: Sermon 118: On the Omnipresence of God