And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Ver. 26. And God said, Let us make man.] Man is the masterpiece of God's handiwork. Sun, moon, and stars are but "the work of his fingers," Psa 8:3 but man the work of his hands. He is made of divine nature, cura divini ingenii made by counsel at first, "Let us make," &c.; and his body, which is but the soul's sheath a Dan 7:15 is still "curiously wrought in the lower parts of the earth," that is, in the womb; comp. Psa 139:15 Eph 4:9 as curious workmen, when they have some choice piece in hand, they perfect it in private, and then bring it forth to light for men to gaze at. "Thine hands have made me" (or took special pains about me), "and fashioned me," saith Job. Job 19:8 "Thou hast formed me by the book," saith David, Psa 139:16 yea, embroidered me with nerves, veins, and variety of limbs, Psa 139:15 miracles enough, saith one, beteen head and foot, to fill a volume. There are six hundred muscles, saith another out of Galen, in the body of man; and every one fitted for ten uses: so for bones, nerves, arteries, and veins, whosoever observeth their use, situation, and correspondency of them, cannot but fall into admiration of the wisdom of the Maker; who hath thus exactly framed all things at first out of nothing; and still out of the froth of the blood. Man, saith a heathen, is the bold attempt of daring nature; b the fair workmanship of a wise artificer,' c d saith another; the greatest of all miracles, e saith a third. And surely should a man be born into the world but once in a hundred years, all the world would run to see the wonder. Sed miracula assiduitate vilescunt. Galen, f that profane man, was forced, upon the description of man and the parts of his body only, to sing a hymn to the Creator, whom yet he knew not. I make here, saith he, a true hymn in the honour of our Maker; whose service, I believe verily, consisteth not in the sacrificing of hecatombs, or in burning great heaps of frankincense before him, but in acknowledging the greatness of his wisdom, power, and goodness; and in making the same known to others, &c. And, in another place, Who is he, saith Galen, which, looking but only upon the skin of a thing, wondereth not at the cunning of the Creator? Yet, notwithstanding, he dissembleth not that he had tried by all means to find some reason of the composing of living creatures; and that he would rather have fathered the doing thereof upon nature, than upon the very Author of nature. And in the end, g concludeth thus: I confess that I know not what the soul is, though I have sought very narrowly for it. Favorinus the philosopher was wont to say, The greatest thing in this world is man, and the greatest thing in man is his soul. h It is an abridgment of the invisible world, as the body is of the visible. Hence, man is called by the Hebrews, Gnolam hakkaton, and by the Greeks, microcosmus, a little world. And it was a witty essay of him, i who styled woman the second edition of the epitome of the whole world. The soul is set in the body of them both, as a little god in this little world, as Jehovah is a great God in the great world. Whence Proclus the philosopher could say, that the mind that is in us is an image of the first mind, that is, of God.
In our image, after our likeness,] that is, as like us as may be, to come as near us as is possible; for these two expressions signify but one and the same thing; and, therefore, Genesis 1:27 ; Genesis 5:1 ; Gen 9:6 one of them only is used: howbeit, Basil refers image to the reasonable soul in man, similitude to a conformity to God in holy actions. Some of the fathers had a conceit that Christ made man's body with his own hands according to the form and likeness of that body which himself would afterwards assume and suffer in. We deny not that man's body also is God's image, as it is a little world; and so the idea or example of the world, that was in God from all eternity, is, as it were, briefly and summarily expressed by God in man's body. But far be it from us to conceive of God as a bodily substance, to think him like unto us, as we are very apt to do. God made man in his own image; and men, of the other side, quasi ad hostimentum, would make God after their image. j It was seriously disputed by the monks of Egypt, A.D. 493, k and much ado there was about it, whether God were not a bodily substance, having bands, eyes, ears, and other parts, as we have. For so the simpler sort among them were clearly of opinion. And in the second Council of Nice under Irene, l John, one of the legates of the Eastern Churches, proved m the making of images lawful, because God had said in this text, "Let us make man after our own image." And it was there decreed that they should be reverenced and adored in as ample and pious manner as the glorious Trinity. But "God is a Spirit," Joh 4:24 saith our Saviour, who best knew, for he came out of his Father's bosom. And man's soul is a spirit likewise, invisible, immaterial, immortal, distinguished into. three powers, which ali make up one spirit. Spirit signifies breath; n which, indeed, is a body. But because it is the finest body, the most subtile and most invisible, therefore immaterial substances, which we are not able to conceive, are represented unto us under this name. Such is the soul of man, which, for the worth of it, the Stoics called the whole of man. o The body is but the sheath of the soul, said Daniel; the shell of it, said Zoroastes; the servant, p yea, the sepulchre q of it, say others. Compared to the soul, it is but as a clay wall that encompasseth a treasure; as a wooden box of a jeweller; as a coarse case to a rich instrument; or as a mask to a beautiful face. He that alone knew, and went to the worth of souls, hath told us, that a soul is more worth than all the world besides, because infused by God, aud stamped with, his image and superscription. Now, if we must give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, και τα του θεου τω θεω, three articles, for one in the former clause; Mat 22:21 Gaspar Ens says - why give we not our souls to God, since they are made in his image? Cur non etnos animam nostram, Dei imaginen, soli Deo consignemus?
Why "present we not our bodies" also to God, "a living sacrifice," since Rom 12:1 it is so curiously wrought, so neatly made up? Luther, upon the Fourth Commandment, tells of two cardinals, in the time of the Council of Constance, who, riding thither, saw a shepherd weeping bitterly; they pressed him to tell the cause. He said, "I, looking upon this toad, considered that I never praised God as I ought, for making me a comely and reasonable creature, and not a toad." See Trapp on " Gen 1:28 "
a Animae vaginae.
b τοληροτατης της φυσεως αγαλμα - Trismegls.
c Sοφου τεκτονος καλον ποικιλμα - Eurip.
d Tεχνημα σοφουντος δημιουργου και φιλοξωου - Xenoph.
e Miraculorum omnium maximum. - Stoici.
f Gal. l. iii. De usu partium. l. xi. and xvii.
g l. xv.
h Nihil in terra magnum praeter hominem, nihil in homine praeter mentem.
i Favorinus Gell.
j Molinaeus. De Cogn. Dei.
k Funcius. Chro. in Commentar.
l Heylin's Geog. [Cosmography], p. 533.
m Aeute obtusi.
n Omnis nominis Jehovae literae sunt spirituales, ut denotetur Deum esse spiritum. - Insted .
o Solam mentem dignam esse quae homo appelletur, Stoici statuunt. Sic Plato scripsit Oυκ εστιν ανθρωπος το ορωμενον
p Corpus sire corpor quasi cordispor, i.e. puer sire famulus. - Camerarius .
q σωμα quasi σημα. Dεμας, i.e. vinculum, sc. animae. Maerob. Som. Scip., l. i., c. 11.