God giveth quite in another manner than man doth. It is our fault to measure infiniteness by our last, and to muse of God according as we use ourselves. The soul, in all her conclusions, is directed by principles and premises of sense and experience; and because we converse with limited natures and dispositions, therefore we do not form proper and worthy thoughts of God. It was the gross idolatry of the heathens to 'turn the glory of the incorruptible God into the image of a man.' Rom. i. 23; that is, to fancy God according to the shape and figure of our bodies. And so it is the spiritual idolatry of Christians to fancy God according to the model and size of their own minds and dispositions. I am persuaded there doth nothing disadvantage us so much in believing as this conceit that 'God is altogether like ourselves,' Ps. 1. 21. We, being of eager and revengeful spirits, cannot believe his patience and pardoning mercy; and that, I suppose, was the reason why the apostles (when Christ talked of forgiving our brother seven times in one day), cried out, Luke xvii. 5, 'Lord, increase our faith,' as not being able to believe so great a pardoning mercy either in themselves or God. And therefore, also, I suppose it is that God doth with such vehemency show everywhere that his heart hath other manner of dispositions than man's hath: Isa. Iv. 8, 9, 'My thoughts are not as your thoughts, nor my ways as your ways; as far as the heavens are above the earth, so are my thoughts above your thoughts:' I am not straitened in bowels, nor hardened, nor implacable, as men are; as there is a vast space and distance between the earth and the firmament, so between your drop and my ocean. So Hosea xi. 9, 'I am God, and not man; and therefore Ephraim shall not be destroyed;' that is, I have not such a narrow heart, such wrathful implacable dispositions as men have. Well, then, consider, when God giveth, he will give like himself. Do not measure him by the wretched straitness of your own hearts, and confine God within the circle of the creatures. It is said of Araunah that he gave as a king to David, 2 Sam. xxiv. 23. Whatever God doth, he will do as a God, above the rate and measure of the creatures, something befitting the infiniteness and eternity of his own essence.
—Thomas Manton
