Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

¹⁴ See, you have drawn the figure and lineaments of the members of God from a human body. And perhaps it has occurred to you to think, that it is according to the body that we were made after the Image of God. I will admit this idea for a time to be considered, and canvassed, and examined, and by disputation to be thoroughly sifted. Now then, if it please you, hear me; for I heard you in what you were pleased to say. God sits in heaven, and metes out the heaven with His palm.

What! Does the same heaven become broad when it is God's seat, and narrow, when He metes it out? Or is God when sitting, limited to the measure of His palm? If this be so, God did not make us after His likeness, for the palm of our hand is much narrower than that part of the body whereon we sit. But if He be as broad in His palm as in His sitting, He has made our members quite unlike His. There is no resemblance here. Let the Christian then blush to set up such an idol in his heart as this.

Wherefore take heaven for all saints. For the earth also is spoken of all who are in the earth, “Let all the earth worship You.” If we may properly say with regard to those who dwell on the earth, “Let all the earth worship You,” we may with the same propriety say also as to those who dwell in heaven, “Let all the heaven bear You.” For even the Saints who dwell on earth, though in their body they tread the earth, in heart dwell in heaven. For it is not in vain that they are reminded to “lift up their hearts,” and when they are so reminded, they answer, “that they lift them up:” nor in vain is it said, “If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God.

Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.” In so far therefore as they have their conversation there, they do bear God, and they are heaven; because they are the seat of God; and when they declare the words of God, “The heavens declare the glory of God.”