I. We are to speak concerning the work of creation, and so to enquire what we are to understand by _creation_, and to consider it as a work peculiar to God.
II. That this work was not performed from eternity, but in the beginning of time.
III. How he is said to create all things by the word of his power.
IV. The end for which he made them, namely, for himself, or for his own glory.
VI. The quality or condition thereof, as all things are said to have been made very good.
I. As to the meaning of the word _creation_; it is the application thereof to the things made, or some circumstances attending this action, that determine the sense of it. The Hebrew and Greek words[1], by which it is expressed, are sometimes used to signify the natural production of things: Thus it is said, in Psal. cii. 18. _The people that shall be created_, speaking of the generation to come, _shall praise the Lord_; and elsewhere, in Ezek. xxi. 30. says God, _I will judge thee in the place where thou wast created_, that is, where thou wast born, in the land of thy nativity. And sometimes it is applied to signify the dispensations of providence, which, though they are the wonderful effects of divine power, yet are taken in a sense different from the first production of all things: thus it is said, in Isa. xlv. 7. _I form the light, and create darkness_; which metaphorical expressions are explained in the following words, _I make peace, and create evil_.
And, on the other hand, sometimes God’s creating is expressed by his _making all things_; which word, in its common acceptation, is taken for the natural production of things; though, in this instance, it is used for the production of things which are supernatural: thus it is said, in John i. 3. _All things were made by him_; and elsewhere, in Psal. xxxiii. 6. _By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all by the host of them by the breath of his mouth._ Therefore it is by the application of these words, to the things produced, that we are more especially to judge of the sense of them. Accordingly, when God is said to create, or make the heavens and earth, or to bring things into being, which before did not exist, this is the most proper sense of the word creation; and in this sense we take it, in the head we are entering upon. It is the production of all things out of nothing, by his almighty word; and this is generally called immediate creation, which was the first display of divine power, a work with which time began; so we are to understand those words, _In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth_, Gen. i. 1. that is, that first matter out of which all things were formed, which has been neither increased nor diminished ever since, nor can be, whatever alterations there may be made in things, without supposing an act of the divine will to annihilate any part thereof, which we have no ground to do.