DOCTRINE OF UBIQUITY.

Two opinions have principally been held upon this subject, and have divided metaphysical theologians, though without giving rise to any very great vehemence of controversy. The one class have maintained that the Deity is everywhere present in His person, substance, or essence; this is termed the doctrine of Essential Ubiquity, to distinguish it from that of Virtual Ubiquity, held by the other class, who have maintained that presence in place cannot be predicated of mind at all, still less of the infinite mind, which only acts everywhere by its power. A very obscure and imperfect notion has prevailed with some, chiefly of the ancient sects, as if universal matter or infinite space were constituted by the Deity's essence; but this would plainly make Him divisible, and indeed material. The ancient idea of His being the universal soul, the anima mundi, related to the world as the soul to the body, is equally unfounded, though approaching more to Essential Ubiquity.

The opinions of the ancients upon this great and difficult question were not, perhaps, materially different from the first of these doctrines. According to Cicero (De Nat. Deor, lib. i.), Pythagoras taught "Deum esse animum per naturam rerum omnium intentum et commeantem." And in his treatise De Legg. (lib. ii.) he says that Thales of Miletus first laid down the well-known position, " Deorum omnia esse plena." The passage in Seneca (De Benef. lib. iv.) is also worthy of notice, as containing the doctrine in terms: "Quocunque te flexeris ibi Deum videbis occurrentem tibi. Nihil ab illo vacat. Opus suum ipse implet." And again in Epist. 15, Ubique et omnibus preest."

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Among the moderns, the followers of Socinus are those who have most strenuously denied the essential ubiquity; and nothing can be more inconclusive than their reasonings against it. When they urge, for example, that this would degrade the nature of the Deity by supposing Him to inhabit vile and impure places, the answer of Dr. Hancock (Boyle Lecture, II. 222.) is decisive, that this supposes Him of an inferior and animal nature; and that indeed the whole argument savours of anthropomorphitism. They maintain that

He resides in heaven, but that by His power He is felt everywhere, or has a potential and virtual ubiquity only. But first, how have we any right to confine His being, as if He were a human or other finite existence, to one place, and not make the whole universe and all space, even as yet unfilled with any creature, His residence? Secondly, how can we conceive Him preserving and upholding and directing where He is not? It is inconceivable to our minds how power, or any other thing or influence, can act at a distance. It must further be observed that the Socinians, who hold the doctrine of a finite spirit, have quite as great a difficulty to contend with as that imputed by them to the Essential Ubiquity; for theirs is at the least as hard to conceive.

That St. Paul adopted the principle of Essential Ubiquity is evident from what he says both in Acts xvii. and in Heb. i. In the former passage he says, "In Him we live, and move, and have our being;" in the latter, "He upholds all things by the word of His power." So a passage from Jeremiah xxiii., referred to by Sir I. Newton, "Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Do not I fill heaven and earth?"

being supposed to maintain that there is any separation of the attributes from the essence, or that his knowledge and power act apart from his essence; nay, he holds that his essence has no more relation to space than those attributes have. He then quotes with commendation the remarks of Episcopius (Theolog. Inst.), that the idea of space without matter to fill it is "nihil omninò reale, sed pure pute imaginarium et prorsus nihilum;" and that the very idea of presence-of being in-implies some reality. And the bishop then goes on to maintain that the Deity knows and acts upon all parts of the universe, as we know from the effects; but that to speak of His acting in extra-mundane space is incomprehensible, and that it is no less so to speak of His actual presence in any part or parts of extension, except it be metaphorically, as eternal truths are said to be the same in all times and places, though they really have no relation to either. In like manner he disposes of the position, that nothing can act where it is not, as applied to divine power, by urging that this is still supposing spirit to exist somewhere or to be circumscribed by some parts of space, contrary, as he thinks, to the very nature of spirit as distinguished from matter.