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Title: The Existence and Attributes of God, Volumes 1 and 2
Author: Charnock, Stephen
Language: English
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{a1} THE EXISTENCE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD
STEPHEN CHARNOCK
WITH HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER
BY WILLIAM SYMINGTON
TWO VOLUMES IN ONE
Volume 1
Baker Books
A Division of Baker Book House Co
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49516
{a2} Reprinted 1996 by Baker Books
a division of Baker Book House Company
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516‒6287
_Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God_
by Robert Carter & Brothers, 1853
Third printing, January 2000
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 0‒8010‒1112‒4
For information about academic books, resources for
Christian leaders, and all new releases available from
Baker Book House, visit our web site:
http://www.bakerbooks.com
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{a3} CONTENTS OF VOL. I
PAGE
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF THE AUTHOR. a5
PREFACE. a19
DISCOURSE I.
ON THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
PSALM xiv. 1.――The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is
none that doeth good. a23
DISCOURSE II.
ON PRACTICAL ATHEISM.
PSALM xiv. 1.――The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is
none that doeth good. a89
DISCOURSE III.
ON GOD’S BEING A SPIRIT.
JOHN iv. 24.――God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth. a176
DISCOURSE IV.
ON SPIRITUAL WORSHIP.
JOHN iv. 24.――God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth. a205
DISCOURSE V.
ON THE ETERNITY OF GOD.
PSALM xc. 2.――Before the mountains were brought forth, or
ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from
everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. a276
{a4} DISCOURSE VI.
ON THE IMMUTABILITY OF GOD.
PSALM cii. 26, 27.――They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea,
all of them shall wax old as a garment; as a vesture shalt thou
change them, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same,
and thy years shall have no end. a310
DISCOURSE VII.
ON GOD’S OMNIPRESENCE.
JEREMIAH xxiii. 24.――Can any hide himself in secret places, that
I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and
earth? saith the Lord. a363
DISCOURSE VIII.
ON GOD’S KNOWLEDGE.
PSALM cxlvii. 5.――Great is our Lord, and of great power: his
understanding is infinite. a406
DISCOURSE IX.
ON THE WISDOM OF GOD.
ROMANS xvi. 27.――To God only wise be glory, through Jesus Christ
forever. Amen. a498
{a5} LIFE AND CHARACTER OF CHARNOCK,
BY WM. SYMINGTON, D.D.
STEPHEN CHARNOCK, B.D., was born in the year 1628, in the parish
of St. Katharine Cree, London. His father, Mr. Richard Charnock,
practised as a solicitor in the Court of Chancery, and was descended
from a family of some antiquity in Lancashire. Stephen, after a course
of preparatory study, entered himself, at an early period of life, a
student in Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he was placed under the
immediate tuition of the celebrated Dr. William Sancroft, who became
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Although there is too much reason
to fear that colleges seldom prove the spiritual birthplaces of the
youth that attend them, it was otherwise in this case. The Sovereign
Spirit, who worketh where and how he wills, had determined that
this young man, while prosecuting his early studies, should undergo
that essential change of heart which, besides yielding an amount of
personal comfort, could not fail to exert a salutary influence on all
his future inquiries, sanctify whatever learning he might hereafter
acquire, and fit him for being eminently useful to thousands of his
fellow‑creatures. To this all‑important event we may safely trace the
eminence to which, both as a Preacher and as a Divine, he afterwards
attained,――as he had thus a stimulus to exertion, a motive to vigorous
and unremitting application, which could not otherwise have existed.
On his leaving the University he spent some time in a private family,
either as a preceptor or for the purpose of qualifying himself the
better for discharging the solemn and arduous duties of public life,
on which he was about to enter. Soon after this, just as the Civil War
broke out in England, he commenced his official labors as a minister
of the gospel of peace, somewhere in Southwark. He does not appear
to have held this situation long; but short as was his {a6} ministry
there, it was not altogether without fruit. He who had made the
student himself, while yet young, the subject of saving operations,
was pleased also to give efficacy to the first efforts of the youthful
pastor to win souls to Christ. Several individuals in this his first
charge were led to own him as their spiritual father. Nor is this a
solitary instance of the early ministry of an individual receiving
that countenance from on high which has been withheld from the labors
of his riper years. A circumstance this, full of encouragement to
those who, in the days of youth, are entering with much fear and
trembling on service in the Lord’s vineyard. At the time when they
may feel impelled to exclaim with most vehemence, _Who is sufficient
for these things?_ God may cheer them with practical confirmations of
the truth, that their _sufficiency is of God_.
In 1649, Charnock removed from Southwark to Oxford, where, through
favor of the Parliamentary Visitors, he obtained a fellowship in New
College; and, not long afterwards, in consequence of his own merits,
was incorporated Master of Arts. His singular gifts, and unwearied
exertions, so attracted the notice and gained the approbation of
the learned and pious members of the University, that, in 1652, he
was elevated to the dignity of Senior Proctor,――an office which he
continued to hold till 1656, and the duties of which he discharged
in a way which brought equal honor to himself and benefit to the
community.
When the period of his proctorship expired, he went to Ireland, where
he resided in the family of Mr. Henry Cromwell, who had been appointed
by his father, the Protector, to the government of that country.
It is remarkable how many of the eminent divines, both of England
and Scotland, have spent some part of their time in Ireland, either
as chaplains to the army or as refugees from persecuting bigotry.
Charnock seems to have gone thither in the capacity of chaplain to the
Governor, an office which, in his case at least, proved no sinecure.
During his residence in Dublin, he appears to have exercised his
ministry with great regularity and zeal. He preached, we are told,
every Lord’s day, with much acceptance, to an audience composed of
persons of different religious denominations, and of opposite grades
in society. His talents and worth attracted the members of other
churches, and his connection with the family of the Governor secured
the attendance of persons of rank. By these his ministrations were
greatly esteemed and applauded; and it is hoped that to some of them
they were also blessed. But even many who had no respect for his
piety, and who reaped no saving benefits from his preaching, were
unable to withhold their admiration {a7} of his learning and his
gifts. Studying at once to be an “ensample to the flock,” and to “walk
within his house with a perfect heart,” his qualities, both public
and private, his appearances, whether in the pulpit or the domestic
circle, commanded the esteem of all who were privileged to form his
acquaintance. It is understood that the honorary degree of Bachelor
in Divinity, which he held, was the gift of Trinity College, Dublin,
conferred during his residence in that city.
The restoration of Charles, in 1660, put an end to Charnock’s
ministry in Ireland, and hindered his resuming it elsewhere for a
considerable time. That event, leading, as it could not but do, to
the re‑establishment of arbitrary power, was followed, as a natural
consequence, by the ejectment of many of the most godly ministers that
ever lived. Among these was the excellent individual of whom we are
now speaking. Accordingly, although on his return to England he took
up his residence in London, he was not permitted to hold any pastoral
charge there. Nevertheless, he continued to prosecute his studies
with ardor, and occasionally exercised his gifts in a private way for
fifteen years, during which time he paid some visits to the continent,
especially to France and Holland.
At length, in 1675, when the restrictions of the government were so
far relaxed, he accepted a call from a congregation in Crosby Square,
to become co‑pastor with the Rev. Thomas Watson, the ejected minister
of St. Stephen’s, Walbrook, who, soon after the Act of Uniformity,
had collected a church in that place. Mr. Watson was an eminent
Presbyterian divine, and the society which he was instrumental in
founding became afterwards, under the ministry of Dr. Grosvenor, one
of the most flourishing in the city, in respect both of numbers and of
wealth. It may not be uninteresting here to insert a few brief notices
respecting the place of worship which this congregation occupied,
being the scene of Charnock’s labors during a principal part of his
ministry, and that in connection with which he closed his official
career.
The place in which this humble Presbyterian congregation[1] assembled
was a large hall of Crosby House, an ancient mansion on the east side
of Bishopgate Street, erected by Sir John Crosby, Sheriff and Alderman
of London, in 1470. After passing through the hands of several
occupants, and, among others, those of Richard III., who thought
it not unfit for being a royal residence, it became, about the
{a8} year 1640, the property of Alderman Sir John Langham, a staunch
Presbyterian and Loyalist. A calamitous fire afterwards so injured
the building, as to render it unsuitable for a family residence;
but the hall, celebrated for its magnificent oaken ceiling, happily
escaped the conflagration, and was converted into a meeting‑house for
Mr. Watson’s congregation, of which the proprietor is supposed to have
been a member. The structure, though greatly dilapidated, still exists,
and is said to be regarded as one of the most perfect specimens of the
domestic architecture of the fifteenth century now remaining in the
metropolis. But, as an illustration of the vicissitudes such edifices
are destined to undergo, it may be stated that Crosby Hall, after
having witnessed the splendors of royalty, and been consecrated
to the solemnities of divine worship, was lately――perhaps it
is still――dedicated to the inferior, if not ignoble, uses of a
wool‑packer.
After saying so much about the building, a word or two respecting the
congregation which assembled for years under its vaulted roof, may
not be deemed inappropriate. It was formed, as we have already said,
by the Rev. Thomas Watson, the ejected minister of St. Stephen’s,
Walbrook. This took place in 1662, and Charnock was Mr. Watson’s
colleague for five years. Mr. Watson was succeeded by the son of an
ejected minister, the Rev. Samuel Slater, who discharged the pastoral
duties with great ability and faithfulness for twenty‑four years, and
closed his ministry and life with this solemn patriarchal sentence
addressed to his people:――“I charge you before God, that you prepare
to meet me at the day of judgment, as my crown of joy; and that
not one of you be wanting at the right hand of God.” Dr. Benjamin
Grosvenor succeeded Mr. Slater. His singular acumen, graceful
utterance, lively imagination, and fervid devotion, are said to have
secured for the congregation a greater degree of prosperity than it
had ever before enjoyed. A pleasing recollection has been preserved,
of perhaps one of the most touching discourses ever composed, having
been delivered by him in this Hall, on _The Temper of Christ_. In this
discourse the Saviour is introduced, by way of illustrating his own
command that “repentance and remission of sins should be preached
unto all nations, _beginning at Jerusalem_,” as giving the Apostles
directions how they are to proceed in carrying out this requirement.
Amongst other things, he is represented as saying to them:――“Go into
all nations and offer this salvation as you go; but lest the poor
house of Israel should think themselves abandoned to despair, the
seed of Abraham, mine ancient friend; as cruel and unkind as they have
been, go, make them the _first offer_ of grace; let them that struck
the rock, drink first of its refreshing streams; and {a9} they that
drew my blood, be welcome to its healing virtue. Tell them, that as I
was sent to the _lost sheep of the house of Israel_, so, if they will
be gathered, I will be their shepherd still. Though they despised my
_tears_ which I shed over them, and imprecated my _blood_ to be upon
them, tell them ’twas for their sakes I shed both; that by my tears
I might soften their hearts towards God, and by my blood I might
reconcile God to them.... Tell them, you have seen the prints of
the nails upon my hands and feet, and the wounds of the spear in my
side; and that those marks of their cruelty are so far from giving me
vindictive thoughts, that, if they will but repent, every wound they
have given me speaks in their behalf, pleads with the Father for the
remission of their sins, and enables me to bestow it.... Nay, if you
meet that poor wretch that thrust the spear into my side, tell him
there is another way, a better way, of coming at my heart. If he will
repent, and _look upon him whom he has pierced, and will mourn_, I
will cherish him in that very bosom he has wounded; he shall find the
blood he shed an ample atonement for the sin of shedding it. And tell
him from me, he will put me to more pain and displeasure by refusing
this offer of my blood, than when he first drew it forth.” In Dr.
Grosvenor’s old age, notwithstanding that he was assisted, from time
to time, by eminent divines, the congregation began to decline. After
his death, the pastoral charge was held by Dr. Hodge and Mr. Jones
successively, but, under the ministry of the latter, the church had
become so enfeebled, that, on the expiration of the lease in 1769, the
members agreed to dissolve, and were gradually absorbed in other
societies.
From this digression we return, only to record the last circumstance
necessary to complete this brief sketch. The death of Charnock took
place July 27, 1680, when he was in the fifty‑third year of his age.
The particulars that have come down to us of this event, like those
of the other parts of his history, are scanty, yet they warrant us
to remark that he died in a frame of mind every way worthy of his
excellent character and holy life. He was engaged, at the time, in
delivering to his people, at Crosby Hall, that series of Discourses
on the Existence and Attributes of God, on which his fame as a writer
chiefly rests. The intense interest which he was observed to take in
the subjects of which he treated, was regarded as an indication that
he was nearly approaching that state in which he was to be “filled
with all the fulness of God.” Not unfrequently was he heard to
give utterance to a longing desire for that region for which he
gave evidence of his being so well prepared. These circumstances
were, naturally enough, looked upon as proofs that his mighty {a10}
mind, though yet on earth, had begun to “put off its mortality,” and
was fast ripening for the paradise of God. From his death taking place
in the house of Mr. Richard Tymns, in the parish of Whitechapel,
London, it may be inferred that his departure was sudden. The body
was immediately after taken to the meeting‑house at Crosby Square,
which had been so often the scene of his prayers and preaching. From
thence, accompanied by a long train of mourners, it was conveyed to
St. Michael’s Church, Cornhill, where it was deposited hard by the
Tower under the belfrey. The funeral sermon was preached by his early
friend and fellow‑student at Cambridge, Mr. John Johnson, from these
apposite words:――“Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in
the kingdom of their Father.”
Such is an outline of the facts, as far as they are known, of the
life of this great man. There are none, it is true, of those striking
occurrences and marvellous incidents in the narrative, which attract
the notice of the multitude, and which are so gratifying to those who
are in quest of excitement more than of edification. But, let it not
be thought that, for this reason, the narrative must be destitute of
the materials of personal improvement. If the advantages to be derived
from a piece of biography are at all proportioned to the degree in
which the character and circumstances of the subject resemble those
of the reader, a greater number, at least, may be expected to obtain
benefit from a life, the incidents of which are more common, inasmuch
as there are but comparatively few, the events of whose history are of
an extraordinary and dazzling description. “When a character,” to use
the language of a profound judge of human nature,[2] “selected from
the ordinary ranks of life, is faithfully and minutely delineated,
no effort is requisite to enable us to place ourselves in the same
situation; we accompany the subject of the narrative, with an interest
undiminished by distance, unimpaired by dissimilarity of circumstances;
and, from the efforts by which he surmounted difficulties and
vanquished temptations, we derive the most useful practical lessons.
He who desires to strengthen his virtue and purify his principles,
will always prefer the solid to the specious; will be more disposed to
contemplate an example of the unostentatious piety and goodness which
all men may obtain, than of those extraordinary achievements to which
few can aspire; nor is it the mark of a superior, but rather a vulgar
and superficial taste, to consider nothing as great or excellent but
that which glitters with titles, or is elevated by rank.”
{a11} Let us endeavor to portray the character of Charnock.
The mental qualities by which he was most distinguished as a man,
were judgment and imagination. The reasoning faculty, naturally strong,
was improved by diligent training and habitual exercise. In tracing
the relations and tendencies of things, he greatly excelled; he could
compare and contrast with admirable ease and beautiful discrimination;
and his deductions, as was to be expected, were usually sound and
logical. Judgment was, indeed, the presiding faculty in his, as it
ought to be in all minds.
The more weighty qualities of intellect were in him united to a
brilliant fancy. By this means he was enabled to adorn the more solid
materials of thought with the attractive hues of inventive genius. His
fine and teeming imagination, ever under the strict control of reason
and virtue, was uniformly turned to the most important purposes.
This department of mental phenomena, from the abuses to which it is
liable, is apt to be undervalued; yet, were this the proper place, it
would not be difficult to show that imagination is one of the noblest
faculties with which man has been endowed――a faculty, indeed, the
sound and proper use of which is not only necessary to the existence
of sympathy and other social affections, but also intimately connected
with those higher exercises of soul, by which men are enabled
to realize the things that are not seen and eternal. Charnock’s
imagination was under the most cautious and skilful management――the
handmaid, not the mistress of his reason――and, doubtless, it
tended, in no small degree, to free his character from that cold
and contracted selfishness which is apt to predominate in those who
are deficient in this quality; to impart a generous warmth to his
intercourse with others; and to throw over his compositions as an
author an animating and delightful glow.
These qualities of mind were associated with habits of intense
application and persevering diligence, which alike tended to
invigorate his original powers, and enabled him to turn them all to
the best account. To the original vigor of his powers must be added
that which culture supplied. Charnock was a highly educated man. As
remarked by the first editors of his works, he was not only “a person
of excellent parts, strong reason, great judgment, and curious fancy,”
but “of high improvements and general learning, as having been all
his days a most diligent and methodical student.” An alumnus of both
the English universities, he may be said to have drawn nourishment
from each of these generous mothers. He had the reputation of being
a general scholar; his acquisitions being by no means limited to
the literature of his profession. Not only was his {a12} acquaintance
with the original languages of Scripture great, but he had made
considerable attainments in the study of medicine; and, indeed, there
was scarcely any branch of learning with which he was unacquainted.
All his mental powers were thus strengthened and refined by judicious
discipline, and, as we shall see presently, he knew well how to devote
his treasures, whether original or acquired, to the service of the
Redeemer; and to consecrate the richest stores of natural genius and
educational attainment, by laying them all at the foot of the Cross.
But that which gave the finish to Charnock’s intellectual character,
was not the predominance of any one quality so much as the harmonious
and nicely balanced union of all. Acute perception, sound judgment,
masculine sense, brilliant imagination, habits of reflection, and
a complete mastery over the succession of his thoughts, were all
combined in that comely order and that due proportion which go to
constitute a well‑regulated mind. There was, in his case, none of that
disproportionate development of any one particular faculty, which, in
some cases, serves, like an overpowering glare, to dim, if not almost
to quench the splendor of the rest. The various faculties of his soul,
to make use of a figure, rather shone forth like so many glittering
stars, from the calm and clear firmament of his mind, each supplying
its allotted tribute of light, and contributing to the serene and
solemn lustre of the whole. As has been said of another, so may it be
said of him――“If it be rare to meet with an individual whose mental
faculties are thus admirably balanced, in whom no tyrant faculty
usurps dominion over the rest, or erects a despotism on the ruins of
the intellectual republic; still more rare is it to meet with such a
mind in union with the far higher qualities of religious and moral
excellence.”
Nor were Charnock’s moral qualities less estimable than his
intellectual. He was a pre‑eminently holy man, distinguished at
once by personal purity, social equity, and habitual devotion. Early
the subject of saving grace, he was in his own person an excellent
example of the harmony of faith, with the philosophy of the moral
feelings. Strongly he felt that while “not without law to God,” he
was nevertheless “under law to Christ.” The motives from which he
acted in every department of moral duty were evangelical motives;
and so entirely was he imbued with the spirit, so completely
under the power of the gospel, that whatever he did, no matter how
humble in the scale of moral duty, he “served the Lord Christ.” The
regulating principle of his whole life is embodied in the apostolical
injunction:――“Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and
not {a13} unto men.” The various talents with which he was gifted
by the God of nature, were all presided over by an enlightened and
deep‑toned piety, for which he was indebted to the sovereign grace
of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. It was this that struck the key‑note
of the intellectual and moral harmony to which we have adverted as a
prominent feature in his character. This at once directed each faculty
to its proper object, and regulated the measure of its exercise.
Devotion was the very element in which he lived and breathed, and had
his being. Devout communion with Supreme Excellence, the contemplation
of celestial themes, and preparation for a higher state of being,
constituted the truest pleasures of his existence, elevated him far
above the control of merely sentient and animal nature, and secured
for him an undisturbed repose of mind, which was itself but an
antepast of what awaited him in the unclouded region of glory. Nor was
his devotion transient or occasional merely; it was habitual as it was
deep, extending its plastic and sanctifying influence to every feature
of character, and every event of life; dictating at once ceaseless
efforts for the welfare of man, and intensest desires for the
glory of God; and securing that rarest perhaps of all combinations,
close communion with the future and the eternal, and the busy and
conscientious discharge of the ordinary duties of everyday life.
His natural temper appears to have been reserved, and his manners
grave. Regarding the advantages to be derived from general society as
insufficient to compensate for the loss of those to be acquired by
retirement, he cultivated the acquaintance of few, and these few
the more intelligent and godly, with whom, however, putting aside
his natural backwardness, he was wont to be perfectly affable and
communicative. But his best and most highly cherished companions
were his books, of which he had contrived to secure a valuable
though select collection. With these he held frequent and familiar
intercourse. Great part of his time, indeed, was spent in his study;
and when the calls of unavoidable duty compelled him to leave it, so
bent was he on redeeming time, that, not content with appropriating
the hours usually devoted to sleep, he cultivated the habit of
thinking while walking along the streets. So successful was he in his
efforts of abstraction, that, amid the most crowded and attractive
scenes, he could withdraw his mind easily from the vanities which
solicited his attention, and give himself up to close thinking and
useful meditation. The productions of his pen, and the character of
his pulpit services, bore ample evidence that the hours of retirement
were given neither to frivolous vacuity nor to self‑indulgent {a14}
sloth, but to the industrious cultivation of his powers, and to
conscientious preparation for public duty. He was not content, like
many, with the mere reputation of being a _recluse_; on the contrary,
he was set on bringing forth the fruits of a _hard student_. There
was always one day in the week in which he made it to appear that
the others were not misspent. His Sabbath ministrations were not the
loose vapid effusions of a few hours’ careless preparation, but were
rather the substantial, well‑arranged, well‑compacted products of much
intense thought and deep cogitation. “Had he been less in his study,”
says his editors quaintly, “he would have been less liked in the
pulpit.”
To a person of these studious habits it may easily be conceived what
distress it must have occasioned to have his library swept away from
him. In that dreadful misfortune which befell the metropolis in 1666,
ever since known as “the fire of London,” the whole of Charnock’s
books were destroyed. The amount of calamity involved in such an
occurrence can be estimated aright only by those who know from
experience the strength and sacredness of that endearment with which
the real student regards those silent but instructive friends which
he has drawn around him by slow degrees; with which he has cultivated
a long and intimate acquaintance; which are ever at hand with their
valuable assistance, counsel and consolation, when these are needed;
which, unlike some less judicious companions, never intrude upon him
against his will; and with whose very looks and positions, as they
repose in their places around him, he has become so familiarized,
that it is no difficult thing for him to call up their appearance
when absent, or to go directly to them in the dark without the risk
of a mistake. Some may be disposed to smile at this love of books.
But where is the scholar who will do so? Where is the man of letters
who, for a single moment, would place the stately mansions and large
estates of the “sons of earth” in comparison with his own well‑loaded
shelves? Where the student who, on looking round upon the walls of
his study, is not conscious of a satisfaction greater and better far
than landed proprietor ever felt on surveying his fields and lawns――a
satisfaction which almost unconsciously seeks vent in the exclamation,
“My library! a dukedom large enough!” Such, and such only, can judge
what must have been Charnock’s feelings, when he found that his
much cherished volumes had become a heap of smouldering ashes. The
sympathetic regret is only rendered the more intense, when it is
thought that, in all probability, much valuable manuscript perished
in the conflagration.
{a15} Charnock excelled as a _Preacher_. This is an office which,
whether as regards its origin, nature, design, or effects, it
will be difficult to overrate. The relation in which it stands
to the salvation of immortal souls, invests it with an interest
overwhelmingly momentous. Our former remarks will serve to show how
well he of whom we now speak was qualified for acting in this highest
of all the capacities in which man is required to serve. His mental
and moral endowments, his educational acquirements, his habitual
seriousness, his sanctified imagination, and his vigorous faith,
pre‑eminently fitted him for discharging with ability and effect the
duties of a herald of the Cross. Of his style of preaching we may form
a pretty accurate idea from the writings he has left, which were all
of them transcribed from the notes of his sermons. We hence infer that
his discourses, while excelling in solid divinity and argumentative
power, were not by any means deficient in their practical bearing,
being addressed not more to the understandings than to the hearts
of his hearers. “Nothing,” it has been justly remarked, “can be
more nervous than his reasoning, nothing more affecting than his
applications.” While able to unravel with great acuteness and judgment
the intricacies of a nice question in polemics, he could with no less
dexterity and skill address himself to the business of the Christian
life, or to the casuistry of religious experience. Perspicuous
plainness, convincing cogency, great wisdom, fearless honesty, and
affectionate earnestness, are the chief characteristics of his sermons.
To this it must be added that his preaching was eminently evangelical.
So deeply imbued with gospel truth were his discourses, that, like the
Book of the Law of old, they might be said to be sprinkled with blood,
even the blood of atonement. The Cross was at once the basis on which
he rested his doctrinal statements, and the armory from which he drew
his most forcible and pointed appeals to the conscience. His aim seems
never once to have been to catch applause to himself by the enticing
words of man’s wisdom, by arraying his thoughts in the motley garb of
an affected and gorgeous style, or by having recourse to the tricks
of an inflated and meretricious oratory. His sole ambition appears to
have been to “turn sinners from the error of their ways;” and for this
end he wisely judged nothing to be so well adapted as “holding forth
the words of eternal life” in their native simplicity and power, and
in a spirit of sincere and ardent devotion. His object was to move his
hearers, not towards himself, but towards his Master; not to elicit
expressions of admiration for the messenger, but to make the message
bear on the salvation of those to whom it was delivered; not to please,
so {a16} much as to convert, his hearers; not to tickle their fancy,
but to save the soul from death, and thus to hide a multitude of sins.
The character of his preaching, it is true, was adapted to the higher
and more intelligent classes; yet was it not altogether unsuited to
those of humbler rank and pretensions. He could handle the mysteries
of the gospel with great perspicuity and plainness, using his profound
learning for the purpose, not of mystifying, but of making things
clear, so that persons even in the ordinary walks of life felt him to
be not beyond their capacity. The energy, gravity, and earnestness of
his manner, especially when young, contributed to render him a great
favorite with the public, and accordingly he drew after him large and
deeply interested audiences――a circumstance which, we can suppose,
was valued by him, not because of the incense which it ministered
to a spirit of vanity, but of the opportunity it afforded him of
winning souls to the Redeemer. When more advanced in life, this kind
of popularity, we are told, declined, in consequence of his being
compelled from an infirmity of memory to read his sermons, with the
additional disadvantage of requiring to supply defect of sight by the
use of a glass. But an increasing weight and importance in the matter,
fully compensated for any deficiency in the manner of his preaching.
If the more flighty of his hearers retired, others――among whom were
many of his brethren in the ministry――who knew how to prefer solidity
to show, crowded to supply their places. Reckoning it no ordinary
privilege to be permitted to sit devoutly at the feet of one so well
qualified to initiate them into the knowledge of the deep things of
God, they continued to listen to his instructions with as much
admiration and profit as ever.
It is as a _Writer_, however, that Charnock is best known, and this,
indeed, is the only character in which we can now come into contact
with him. His works are extensive, but, with a single exception,
posthumous. The only thing published by himself was the piece on “The
Sinfulness and Cure of Thoughts,” which appeared originally in the
Supplement to the Morning Exercise at Cripplegate. Yet such was the
quantity of manuscript left behind him at his death, that two large
folio volumes were soon transcribed, and published by his friends,
Mr. Adams and Mr. Veal, to whom he had committed his papers. The
Discourse on Providence was the first published; it appeared in 1680.
The Discourses on the Existence and Attributes of God came next, in
1682. There followed in succession the treatises on Regeneration,
Reconciliation, The Lord’s Supper, &c. A second edition of the
whole works, in two volumes, folio, came out in 1684, and a third
in 1702――no slight proof of the estimation in which they {a17} were
held. Several of the treatises have appeared from time to time in a
separate form, especially those on Divine Providence, on Man’s Enmity
to God, and on Mercy for the Chief of Sinners. The best edition of
Charnock’s works is that published in 1815, in nine volumes, royal
8vo; with a prefatory Dedication, and a Memoir of the Author, by the
Rev. Edward Parsons of Leeds.
All Charnock’s writings are distinguished for sound theology, profound
thinking, and lively imagination. They partake of that massive
divinity for which the Puritan Divines were in general remarkable, and
are of course orthodox in their doctrinal statements and reasonings.
Everywhere the reader meets with the evidences and fruits of deep
thought, of a mind, indeed, of unusual comprehension and energy
of grasp, that could penetrate with ease into the very core, and
fathom at pleasure the profoundest depths of the most abstruse and
obscure subjects; while, from the rich stores of an exuberant and
hallowed fancy, he was enabled to throw over his compositions the most
attractive ornaments, and to supply spontaneously such illustrations
as were necessary to render his meaning more clear, or his lessons
more impressive. In a word, for weight of matter, for energy of
thought, for copiousness of improving reflection, for grandeur
and force of illustration, and for accuracy and felicitousness of
expression, Charnock is equalled by few, and surpassed by none of
the writers of the age to which he belonged. The eulogy pronounced
by a competent judge on the Treatise on the Attributes, applies with
equal justice to all his other writings:――“Perspicuity and depth;
metaphysical subtlety and evangelical simplicity; immense learning,
and plain but irrefragable reasoning, conspire to render that work
one of the most inestimable productions that ever did honor to the
sanctified judgment and genius of a human being.”[3]
The correctness of the composition, in these works, is remarkable,
considering that they were not prepared for the press by the author
himself, and that they must have been originally written amid scenes
of distraction and turmoil, arising out of the events of the times.
The latter circumstance may account for the manly vigor by which they
are characterized, but it only renders their accuracy and polish the
more wonderful. Refinement of taste and extensive scholarship can
alone explain the chasteness, ease, and elegance of style, so free
from all verbosity and clumsiness, which mark these productions. There
were giants in literature in those days, and STEPHEN CHARNOCK was not
the least of the noble fraternity.
Charnock may not have all the brilliancy of Bunyan, nor all the {a18}
metaphysical acumen and subtle analysis of Howe, nor all the awful
earnestness of Baxter; but he is not less argumentative, while he
is more theological than any of them, and his theology, too, is more
sound than that of some. “He was not,” say the original editors of
his works, “for that modern divinity which is so much in vogue with
some, who would be counted the only sound divines; having tasted the
old, he did not desire the new, but said the old is better.” There is,
therefore, not one of all the Puritan Divines whose writings can with
more safety be recommended to the attention of students of divinity
and young ministers. It is one of the happy signs of the times in
which we live, that a taste for reading such works is beginning
to revive; and we can conceive no better wish for the interests of
mankind in general, and of our country in particular, than that the
minds of our young divines were thoroughly impregnated with the good
old theology to be found in such writings as those which we now take
the liberty to introduce and recommend. “If a preacher wishes to
recommend himself by the weight of his doctrines,” to use the language
of Mr. Parsons, “he will find in the writings of Charnock the great
truths of Scripture illustrated and explained in the most lucid and
masterly manner. If he wishes to be distinguished by the evangelical
strain of his discourses, and by the continual exhibition of Christ
and him crucified, he will here find the characters of Christ, and the
adaptation of the gospel to the circumstances and wants of man as a
fallen creature, invariably kept in view. If he wishes for usefulness
in the Church of God, here he has the brightest example of forcible
appeals to the conscience, and of the most impressive applications of
Scripture truth, to the various conditions of mankind. And, finally,
if he reads for his own advantage as a Christian, his mind will
be delighted with the inexhaustible variety here provided for the
employment of his enlightened faculties, and his improvement in every
divine attainment.”
Happy shall we be, if what we have written shall, by the blessing
of God, prove the means of producing or reviving a taste for reading
the works of our author, being fully convinced with a former editor,
that, “while talent is respected, or virtue revered――while holiness
of conversation, consistency of character, or elevation of mind,
are considered as worthy of imitation――while uniform and strenuous
exertion for the welfare of man is honored, and constant devotedness
to the glory of God admired, the memory of CHARNOCK shall be held in
grateful remembrance.”
ANNFIELD PLACE, Glasgow, June, 1846.
{a19} TO THE READER.
THIS long since promised and greatly expected volume of the reverend
author upon the Divine Attributes, being transcribed out of his own
manuscripts by the unwearied diligence of those worthy persons that
undertook it,[4] is now at last come to thy hands: doubt not but
thy reading will pay for thy waiting, and thy satisfaction make full
compensation for thy patience. In the epistle before his treatise on
Providence, it was intimated that his following discourses would not
be inferior to that; and we are persuaded that, ere thou hast perused
one half of this, thou wilt acknowledge that it was modestly spoken.
Enough, assure thyself, thou wilt find here for thy entertainment and
delight, as well as profit. The sublimeness, variety, and rareness of
the truths here handled, together with the elegancy of the composure,
neatness of the style, and whatever is wont to make any book desirable,
will all concur in the recommendation of this. What so high and
noble a subject, what so fit for his meditations or thine, as
the highest and noblest Being, and those transcendently glorious
perfections wherewith he is clothed! A mere contemplation of the
Divine excellencies may afford much pleasure to any man that loves
to exercise his reason, and is addicted to speculation: but what
incomparable sweetness, then, will holy souls find in viewing and
considering those perfections now, which they are more fully to behold
hereafter; and seeing what manner of God, how wise and powerful, how
great, and good, and holy is he, in whom the covenant interests them,
and in the enjoyment of whom their happiness consists! If rich men
delight to sum up their vast revenues, to read over their rentals,
look upon their hoards; if they bless themselves in their great wealth,
or, to use the prophet’s words (Jer. ix. 23), “glory in their riches,”
well may believers rejoice and glory in their “knowing the Lord”
(ver. 24), and please themselves in seeing how rich they are in having
an immensely full and all‑sufficient God for their inheritance. Alas!
how little do most men know of that Deity they profess to serve, and
own, not as their Sovereign only, but their Portion. To such this
author might say, as Paul to the Athenians, “Whom you ignorantly
worship, him declare I unto you” (Acts xvii. 23). These treatises,
reader, will inform thee who He is whom thou callest thine, {a20}
present thee with a view of thy chief good, and make thee value
thyself a thousand times more upon thy interest with God, than upon
all external accomplishments and worldly possessions. Who but delights
to hear well of one whom he loves! God is thy love, if thou be a
believer; and then it cannot but fill thee with delight and ravishment
to hear so much spoken in his praise. David desired to “dwell in the
house of the Lord,” that he might there behold his beauty: how much of
that beauty, if thou art but capable of seeing it, mayest thou behold
in this volume, which was our author’s main business, for about three
years before he died, to display before his hearers! True, indeed, the
Lord’s glory, as shining forth before his heavenly courtiers above,
is unapproachable by mortal men; but what of it is visible in his
works――creation, providence, redemption――falls under the cognizance of
his inferior subjects here. And this is, in a great measure, presented
to view in these discourses; and so much, we may well say, as may, by
the help of grace, be effectual to raise thy admiration, attract thy
love, provoke thy desires, and enable thee to make some guess at what
is yet unseen; and why not, likewise, to clear thy eyes, and prepare
them for future sight, as well as turn them away from the contemptible
vanities of this present life? Whatever is glorious in this world,
yet (as the apostle, in another case) “hath no glory, by reason of
the glory that excels” (2 Cor. iii. 10). This “excellent glory” is the
subject of this book, to which all created beauty is but mere shadow
and duskiness. If thy eyes be well fixed on this, they will not be
easily drawn to wander after other objects: if thy heart be taken with
God, it will be mortified to everything that is not God.
But thou hast in this book, not only an excellent subject in the
general, but great variety of matter for the employment of thy
understanding, as well as enlivening thy affections, and that, too,
such as thou wilt not find elsewhere: many excellent things which are
out of the road of ordinary preachers and writers, and which may be
grateful to the curious, no less than satisfactory to the wise and
judicious. It is not, therefore, a book to be played with or slept
over, but read with the most intent and serious mind; for though it
afford much pleasure for the fancy, yet much more work for the heart,
and hath, indeed, enough in it to busy all the faculties. The dress
is complete and decent, yet not garish nor theatrical; the rhetoric
masculine and vigorous, such as became a pulpit, and was never
borrowed from the stage; the expressions full, clear, apt, and such
as are best suited to the weightiness and spirituality of the truths
here delivered. It is plain he was no empty preacher, but was more for
sense than sound, filled up his words with matter, and chose rather to
inform his hearers’ minds than to claw any itching ears. Yet we will
not say but some little things, a word, or a phrase now and then he
may have, which, no doubt, had he lived to transcribe his own sermons,
he would have altered. If in some lesser matters he differ from thee,
it is but in such as godly and learned men do frequently, and may,
without breach of charity, differ in among themselves: in some things
he may differ from us too, and, it may be, we from {a21} each other;
and where are there any two persons who have in all, especially the
more disputable points of religion, exactly the same sentiments,――at
least, express themselves altogether in the same terms? But this
we must say, that though he treat of many of the most abstruse and
mysterious doctrines of Christianity, which are the subjects of great
debates and controversies in the world, yet we find no one material
thing in which he may justly be called heterodox (unless old heresies
be of late grown orthodox, and his differing from them must make him
faulty), but generally delivers, as in his former pieces,[5] what
is most consonant to the faith of this and other, the best reformed
churches. He was not, indeed, for that modern divinity which is so
much in vogue with some who would be counted the only sound divines;
having “tasted the old,” he did not desire “the new,” but said, “the
old is better.” Some errors, especially the Socinian, he sets himself
industriously against, and cuts the very sinews of them, yet sometimes
almost without naming them.
In the doctrinal part of several of his discourses thou wilt find
the depth of _polemical_ divinity, and in his inferences from thence,
the sweetness of _practical_; some things which may exercise the
profoundest scholar, and others which may instruct and edify the
weakest Christian. Nothing is more nervous than his reasonings, and
nothing more affecting than his applications. Though he make great use
of schoolmen, yet they are certainly more beholden to him than he to
them; he adopts their notions, but he refines them too, and improves
them and reforms them from the barbarousness in which they were
expressed, and dresseth them up in his own language (so far as the
nature of the matter will permit, and more clear terms are to be
found), and so makes them intelligible to vulgar capacities, which,
in their original rudeness, were obscure and strange even to learned
heads.
In a word, he handles the great truths of the gospel with that
perspicuity, gravity, and majesty, which best becomes the oracles of
God; and we have reason to believe, that no judicious and unbiassed
reader but will acknowledge this to be incomparably the best practical
treatise the world ever saw in English upon this subject. What Dr.
Jackson did, to whom our author gave all due respect, was more brief
and in another way. Dr. Preston did worthily upon the Attributes in
his day; but his discourses likewise, are more succinct, when this
author’s are more full and large. But whatever were the mind of God in
it, it was not his will that either of these two should live to finish
what he had begun, both being taken away when preaching upon this
subject. Happy souls! whose last breath was spent in so noble a work,
praising God while they had any being (Psal. cxlvi. 2).
His method is much the same in most of these discourses, both in the
doctrinal and practical part, which will make the whole more plain
and facile to ordinary readers. He rarely makes objections, and yet
frequently answers them, by implying them in those propositions he
lays down for the clearing up the truths he asserts. His dexterity
is admirable in the applicatory {a22} work, where he not only brings
down the highest doctrines to the lowest capacities, but collects
great variety of proper, pertinent, useful, and yet, many times,
unthought‑of inferences, and that from those truths, which however
they afford much matter for inquisition and speculation, yet might
seem, unless to the most intelligent and judicious Christians, to
have a more remote influence upon practice. He is not like some school
writers, who attenuate and rarefy the matter they discourse of to a
degree bordering upon annihilation, at least, beat it so thin, that a
puff of breath may blow it away; spin their thread so fine, that the
cloth, when made up, proves useless, solidity dwindles into niceties,
and what we thought we had got by their assertions, we lose by their
distinctions. But if our author have some subtilties and superfine
notions in his argumentations, yet he condenseth them again, and
consolidates them into substantial and profitable corollaries in his
applications; and in them his main business is, as to discipline a
profane world for its neglect of God, and contempt of him in his most
adorable and shining perfections, so likewise to show how the Divine
Attributes are not only infinitely excellent in themselves, but a
grand foundation for all true divine worship, and should be the great
motives to provoke men to the exercise of faith, and love, and fear,
and humility, and all that holy obedience they are called to by the
gospel; and this, without peradventure, is the great end of all those
rich discoveries God hath in his word made of himself to us. And,
reader, if these elaborate discourses of this holy man, through the
Lord’s blessing, become a means of promoting holiness in thee, and
stir thee up to love and live to the God of his praise (Ps. cix. 1),
we are well assured that his end in preaching them is answered, and
so is ours in publishing them.
Thine in the Lord,
EDW. VEEL.
RI. ADAMS.
{a23} DISCOURSE I.
ON THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
PSALM xiv. 1.――The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is
none that doeth good.
THIS psalm is a description of the deplorable corruption by nature
of every son of Adam, since the withering of that common root. Some
restrain it to the Gentiles, as a wilderness full of briers and
thorns, as not concerning the Jews, the garden of God, planted by his
grace, and watered by the dew of heaven. But the apostle, the best
interpreter, rectifies this in extending it by name to Jews, as well
as Gentiles, (Rom. iii. 9). “We have before proved both Jews and
Gentiles, that they are all under sin;” and (ver. 10‒12) cites part
of this psalm and other passages of scripture for the further evidence
of it, concluding by Jews and Gentiles, every person in the world
naturally in this state of corruption.
The psalmist first declares the corruption of the faculties of
the soul, _The fool hath said in his heart_; secondly, the streams
issuing from thence, _they are corrupt_, &c.: the first in atheistical
principles, the other in unworthy practice; and lays all the evil,
tyranny, lust, and persecutions by men, (as if the world were only
for their sake) upon the neglects of God, and the atheism cherished
in their hearts.
_The fool_, a term in scripture signifying a wicked man, used also
by the heathen philosophers to signify a vicious person, נבל as coming
from נבל signifies the extinction of life in men, animals, and plants;
so the word נבל is taken, a plant that hath lost all that juice
that made it lovely and useful.[6] So a fool is one that hath lost
his wisdom, and right notion of God and divine things which were
communicated to man by creation; one dead in sin, yet one not so
much void of rational faculties as of grace in those faculties, not
one that wants reason, but abuses his reason. In Scripture the word
signifies foolish.[7]
_Said in his heart_; that is, he thinks, or he doubts, or he wishes.
The thoughts of the heart are in the nature of words to God, though
not to men. It is used in the like case of the atheistical person,
(Ps. x. 11, 13), “He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten; he
hath said in his heart, Thou wilt not require it.” He doth not form
a syllogism, as Calvin speaks, that there is no God: he dares not
{a24} openly publish it, though he dares secretly think it. He cannot
raze out the thoughts of a Deity, though he endeavors to blot those
characters of God in his soul. He hath some doubts whether there be a
God or no: he wishes there were not any, and sometimes hopes there is
none at all. He could not so ascertain himself by convincing arguments
to produce to the world, but he tampered with his own heart to bring
it to that persuasion, and smothered in himself those notices of a
Deity; which is so plain against the light of nature, that such a man
may well be called a fool for it.
_There is no God_[8] לית שולטנא _non potestas Domini_, Chaldæ. It is not
Jehovah, which name signifies the essence of God, as the prime and
supreme being; but Eloahia, which name signifies the providence of
God, God as a rector and judge. Not that he denies the existence
of a Supreme Being, that created the world, but his regarding the
creatures, his government of the world, and consequently his reward
of the righteous or punishments of the wicked.
There is a threefold denial of God,[9] 1. _Quoad existentiam_; this
is absolute atheism. 2. _Quoad Providentiam_, or his inspection into,
or care of the things of the world, bounding him in the heavens.
3. _Quoad naturam_, in regard of one or other of the perfections due
to his nature.
Of the denial of the providence of God most understand this, not
excluding the absolute atheist, as Diagoras is reported to be, nor
the skeptical atheist, as Protagoras, who doubted whether there were a
God.[10] Those that deny the providence of God, do in effect deny the
being of God; for they strip him of that wisdom, goodness, tenderness,
mercy, justice, righteousness, which are the glory of the Deity. And
that principle, of a greedy desire to be uncontrolled in their lusts,
which induceth men to a denial of Providence, that thereby they might
stifle those seeds of fear which infect and embitter their sinful
pleasures, may as well lead them to deny that there is any such being
as a God. That at one blow, their fears may be dashed all in pieces
and dissolved by the removal of the foundation: as men who desire
liberty to commit works of darkness, would not have the lights in
the house dimmed, but extinguished. What men say against Providence,
because they would have no check in their lusts, they may say in their
hearts against the existence of God upon the same account; little
difference between the dissenting from the one and disowning the other.
_They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none
that doeth good._ He speaks of the atheist in the singular, “the fool;”
of the corruption issuing in the life in the plural; intimating that
though some few may choke in their hearts the sentiments of God and
his providence, and positively deny them, yet there is something of
a secret atheism in all, which is the fountain of the evil practices
in their lives, not an utter disowning of the being of a God, but a
denial or doubting of some of the rights of his nature. When men deny
the God of purity, they must needs be polluted in soul and body, and
grow brutish in their actions. When the sense of religion is {a25}
shaken off, all kinds of wickedness is eagerly rushed into, whereby
they become as loathsome to God as putrefied carcases are to men.[11]
Not one or two evil actions is the product of such a principle, but
the whole scene of a man’s life is corrupted and becomes execrable.
No man is exempted from some spice of atheism by the depravation of
his nature, which the psalmist intimates, “there is none that doeth
good:” though there are indelible convictions of the being of a God,
that they cannot absolutely deny it; yet there are some atheistical
bubblings in the hearts of men, which evidence themselves in their
actions. As the apostle, (Tit. i. 16), “They profess that they know
God, but in works they deny him.” Evil works are a dust stirred up by
an atheistical breath. He that habituates himself in some sordid lust,
can scarcely be said seriously and firmly to believe that there is
a God in being; and the apostle doth not say that they know God, but
they profess to know him: true knowledge and profession of knowledge
are distinct. It intimates also to us, the unreasonableness of atheism
in the consequence, when men shut their eyes against the beams of so
clear a sun, God revengeth himself upon them for their impiety, by
leaving them to their own wills, lets them fall into the deepest sink
and dregs of iniquity; and since they doubt of him in their hearts,
suffers them above others to deny him in their works, this the apostle
discourseth at large.[12] The text then is a description of man’s
corruption.
1. Of his mind. _The fool hath said in his heart._ No better title
than that of a fool is afforded to the atheist.
2. Of the other faculties, 1. In sins of commission, expressed by
the loathsomeness (_corrupt_, _abominable_), 2. In sins of omission
(_there is none that doeth good_) he lays down the corruption of the
mind as the cause, the corruption of the other faculties as the effect.
I. It is a great folly to deny or doubt of the existence or being of
God: or, an atheist is a great fool.
II. Practical atheism is natural to man in his corrupt state. It
is against nature as constituted by God, but natural, as nature is
depraved by man: the absolute disowning of the being of a God is not
natural to men, but the contrary is natural; but an inconsideration of
God, or misrepresentation of his nature, is natural to man as corrupt.
III. A secret atheism, or a partial atheism, is the spring of all the
wicked practices in the world: the disorders of the life spring from
the ill dispositions of the heart.
For the first, every atheist is a grand fool. If he were not a
fool, he would not imagine a thing so contrary to the stream of the
universal reason of the world, contrary to the rational dictates of
his own soul, and contrary to the testimony of every creature, and
link in the chain of creation: if he were not a fool, he would not
strip himself of humanity, and degrade himself lower than the most
despicable brute. It is a folly; for though God be so inaccessible
that we cannot know him perfectly, yet he is so much in the light,
that {a26} we cannot be totally ignorant of him; as he cannot be
comprehended in his essence, he cannot be unknown in his existence; it
is as easy by reason to understand that he is, as it is difficult to
know what he is. The demonstrations reason furnisheth us with for the
existence of God, will be evidences of the atheist’s folly. One would
think there were little need of spending time in evidencing this truth,
since in the principle of it, it seems to be so universally owned, and
at the first proposal and demand, gains the assent of most men.
But, 1. Doth not the growth of atheism among us render this necessary?
may it not justly be suspected, that the swarms of atheists are more
numerous in our times, than history records to have been in any age,
when men will not only say it in their hearts, but publish it with
their lips, and boast that they have shaken off those shackles which
bind other men’s consciences? Doth not the barefaced debauchery of
men evidence such a settled sentiment, or at least a careless belief
of the truth, which lies at the root, and sprouts up in such venomous
branches in the world? Can men’s hearts be free from that principle
wherewith their practices are so openly depraved? It is true, the
light of nature shines too vigorously for the power of man totally
to put it out; yet loathsome actions impair and weaken the actual
thoughts and considerations of a Deity, and are like mists that
darken the light of the sun, though they cannot extinguish it:
their consciences, as a candlestick, must hold it, though their
unrighteousness obscure it, (Rom. i. 18). “Who hold the truth in
unrighteousness.” The engraved characters of the law of nature remain,
though they daub them with their muddy lusts to make them illegible:
so that since the inconsideration of a Deity is the cause of all
the wickedness and extravagances of men; and as Austin saith, the
proposition is always true, the fool hath said in his heart, &c. and
more evidently true in this age than any, it will not be unnecessary
to discourse of the demonstrations of this first principle. The
apostles spent little time in urging this truth; it was taken for
granted all over the world, and they were generally devout in the
worship of those idols they thought to be gods: that age run from
one God to many, and our age is running from one God to none at all.
2. The existence of God is the foundation of all religion. The whole
building totters if the foundation be out of course: if we have not
deliberate and right notions of it, we shall perform no worship,
no service, yield no affection to him. If there be not a God, it is
impossible there can be one, for eternity is essential to the notion
of a God; so all religion would be vain, and unreasonable to pay
homage to that which is not in being, nor can ever be. We must first
believe that he is, and that he is what he declares himself to be,
before we can seek him, adore him, and devote our affections to
him.[13] We cannot pay God a due and regular homage, unless we
understand him in his perfections, what he is; and we can pay him
no homage at all, unless we believe that he is.
3. It is fit we should know why we believe, that our belief of a
God may appear to be upon undeniable evidence, and that we may give
a better reason for his existence, than that we have heard our {a27}
parents and teachers tell us so, and our acquaintance think so. It
is as much as to say there is no God, when we know not why we believe
there is, and would not consider the arguments for his existence.
4. It is necessary to depress that secret atheism which is in the
heart of every man by nature. Though every visible object which offers
itself to our sense, presents a deity to our minds, and exhorts us to
subscribe to the truth of it; yet there is a root of atheism springing
up sometimes in wavering thoughts and foolish imaginations, inordinate
actions, and secret wishes. Certain it is, that every man that doth
not love God, denies God; now can he that disaffects him, and hath
a slavish fear of him, wish his existence, and say to his own heart
with any cheerfulness, there is a God, and make it his chief care to
persuade himself of it? he would persuade himself there is no God,
and stifle the seeds of it in his reason and conscience, that he might
have the greatest liberty to entertain the allurements of the flesh.
It is necessary to excite men to daily and actual considerations of
God and his nature, which would be a bar to much of that wickedness
which overflows in the lives of men.
5. Nor is it unuseful to those who effectually believe and love
him;[14] for those who have had a converse with God, and felt his
powerful influences in the secrets of their hearts, to take a prospect
of those satisfactory accounts which reason gives of that God they
adore and love; to see every creature justify them in their owning
of him, and affections to him: indeed the evidences of a God striking
upon the conscience of those who resolve to cleave to sin as their
chiefest darling, will dash their pleasures with unwelcome mixtures.
I shall further premise this, That the folly of atheism is evidenced
by the light of reason. Men that will not listen to Scripture, as
having no counterpart of it in their souls, cannot easily deny natural
reason, which riseth up on all sides for the justification of this
truth. There is a natural as well as a revealed knowledge, and the
book of the creatures is legible in declaring the being of a God, as
well as the Scriptures are in declaring the nature of a God; there are
outward objects in the world, and common principles in the conscience,
whence it may be inferred.
For, 1. God in regard of his existence is not only the discovery of
faith, but of reason. God hath revealed not only his being, but some
sparks of his eternal power and godhead in his works, as well as in
his word. (Rom. i. 19, 20), “God hath showed it unto them,”――how?[15]
in his works; by the things that are made, it is a discovery to our
reason, as shining in the creatures; and an object of our faith as
breaking out upon us in the Scriptures: it is an article of our faith,
and an article of our reason. Faith supposeth natural knowledge,
as grace supposeth nature. Faith indeed is properly of things above
reason, purely depending upon revelation. What can be demonstrated
by natural light, is not so properly the object of faith; though in
regard of the addition of a certainty by revelation it is so. The
belief that God is, which the apostle speaks of,[16] is not so much
of the bare existence of God, as what God is in relation to them that
{a28} seek him, viz. a rewarder. The apostle speaks of the faith of
Abel, the faith of Enoch, such a faith that pleases God: but the faith
of Abel testified in his sacrifice, and the faith of Enoch testified
in his walking with God, was not simply a faith of the existence of
God. Cain in the time of Abel, other men in the world in the time
of Enoch, believed this as well as they: but it was a faith joined
with the worship of God, and desires to please him in the way of his
own appointment; so that they believed that God was such as he had
declared himself to be in his promise to Adam, such an one as would
be as good as his word, and bruise the serpent’s head. He that seeks
to God according to the mind of God, must believe that he is such a
God that will pardon sin, and justify a seeker of him; that he is a
God of that ability and will, to justify a sinner in that way he hath
appointed for the clearing the holiness of his nature, and vindicating
the honor of his law violated by man. No man can seek God or love
God, unless he believe him to be thus; and he cannot seek God without
a discovery of his own mind how he would be sought. For it is not a
seeking God in any way of man’s invention, that renders him capable
of this desired fruit of a reward. He that believes God as a rewarder,
must believe the promise of God concerning the Messiah. Men under the
conscience of sin, cannot tell without a divine discovery, whether God
will reward, or how he will reward the seekers of him; and therefore
cannot act towards him as an object of faith. Would any man seek God
merely because he is, or love him because he is, if he did not know
that he should be acceptable to him? The bare existence of a thing is
not the ground of affection to it, but those qualities of it and our
interest in it, which render it amiable and delightful. How can men,
whose consciences fly in their faces, seek God or love him, without
this knowledge that he is a rewarder? Nature doth not show any way to
a sinner, how to reconcile God’s provoked justice with his tenderness.
The faith the apostle speaks of here is a faith that eyes the reward
as an encouragement, and the will of God as the rule of its acting; he
doth not speak simply of the existence of God.
I have spoken the more of this place, because the Socinians[17] use
this to decry any natural knowledge of God, and that the existence of
God is only to be known by revelation, so that by that reason any one
that lived without the Scripture hath no ground to believe the being
of a God. The Scripture ascribes a knowledge of God to all nations
in the world (Rom. i. 19); not only a faculty of knowing, if they
had arguments and demonstrations, as an ignorant man in any art hath
a faculty to know; but it ascribes an actual knowledge (ver. 10)
“manifest in them;” (ver. 21) “They knew God;” not they might know him;
they knew him when they did not care for knowing him. The notices of
God are as intelligible to us by reason, as any object in the world is
visible; he is written in every letter.
2. We are often in the Scripture sent to take a prospect of the
creatures for a discovery of God. The apostles drew arguments from
the topics of nature, when they discoursed with those that owned
the Scripture (Rom. i. 19), as well as when they treated with those
{a29} that were ignorant of it, as Acts xiv. 16, 17. And among the
philosophers of Athens (Acts xvii. 27, 29), such arguments the Holy
Ghost in the apostles thought sufficient to convince men of the
existence, unity, spirituality, and patience of God. Such arguments
had not been used by them and the prophets from the visible things in
the world to silence the Gentiles with whom they dealt, had not this
truth, and much more about God, been demonstrable by natural reason:
they knew well enough that probable arguments would not satisfy
piercing and inquisitive minds.[18]
In Paul’s account, the testimony of the creatures was without
contradiction. God himself justifies this way of proceeding by his
own example, and remits Job to the consideration of the creatures,
to spell out something of his divine perfections.[19] And this is
so convincing an argument of the existence of God, that God never
vouchsafed any miracle, or put forth any act of omnipotency, besides
what was evident in the creatures, for the satisfaction of the
curiosity of any atheist, or the evincing of his being, as he hath
done for the evidencing those truths which were not written in
the book of nature, or for the restoring a decayed worship, or the
protection or deliverance of his people. Those miracles in publishing
the gospel, indeed, did demonstrate the existence of some supreme
power; but they were not seals designedly affixed for that, but for
the confirmation of that truth, which was above the ken of purblind
reason, and purely the birth of divine revelation. Yet what proves the
truth of any spiritual doctrine, proves also in that act the existence
of the Divine Author of it. The revelation always implies a revealer,
and that which manifests it to be a revelation, manifests also the
supreme Revealer of it. By the same light the sun manifests other
things to us, it also manifests itself. But what miracles could
rationally be supposed to work upon an atheist, who is not drawn
to a sense of the truth proclaimed aloud by so many wonders of the
creation? Let us now proceed to the demonstration of the atheist’s
folly.
It is a folly to deny or doubt of a Sovereign Being, incomprehensible
in his nature, infinite in his essence and perfections, independent
in his operations, who hath given being to the whole frame of sensible
and intelligible creatures, and governs them according to their
several natures, by an unconceivable wisdom; who fills the heavens
with the glory of his majesty, and the earth with the influences of
his goodness.
It is a folly inexcusable to renounce, in this case, all appeal to
universal consent, and the joint assurances of the creatures.
_Reason I._ ’Tis a folly to deny or doubt of that which hath been the
acknowledged sentiment of all nations, in all places and ages. There
is no nation but hath owned some kind of religion, and, therefore,
no nation but hath consented in the notion of a Supreme Creator and
Governor.
1. This hath been universal. 2. It hath been constant and
uninterrupted. 3. Natural and innate.
{a30} First, It hath been universally assented to by the judgments and
practices of all nations in the world.
1. No nation hath been exempt from it. All histories of former and
latter ages have not produced any one nation but fell under the force
of this truth. Though they have differed in their religions, they have
agreed in this truth; here both heathen, Turk, Jew, and Christian,
centre without any contention. No quarrel was ever commenced upon this
score; though about other opinions wars have been sharp, and enmities
irreconcilable. The notion of the existence of a Deity was the same
in all, Indians as well as Britons, Americans as well as Jews. It hath
not been an opinion peculiar to this or that people, to this or that
sect of philosophers; but hath been as universal as the reason whereby
men are differenced from other creatures, so that some have rather
defined man by _animal religiosum_, than _animal rationale_. ’Tis so
twisted with reason that a man cannot be accounted rational, unless
he own an object of religion; therefore he that understands not this,
renounceth his humanity when he renounceth a Divinity. No instance
can be given of any one people in the world that disclaimed it. It
hath been owned by the wise and ignorant, by the learned and stupid,
by those who had no other guide but the dimmest light of nature, as
well as those whose candles were snuffed by a more polite education,
and that without any solemn debate and contention. Though some
philosophers have been known to change their opinions in the concerns
of nature, yet none can be proved to have absolutely changed their
opinion concerning the being of a God. One died for asserting one God;
none, in the former ages upon record, hath died for asserting no God.
Go to the utmost bounds of America, you may find people without some
broken pieces of the law of nature, but not without this signature
and stamp upon them, though they wanted commerce with other nations,
except as savage as themselves, in whom the light of nature was as
it were sunk into the socket, who are but one remove from brutes,
who clothe not their bodies, cover not their shame, yet were they as
soon known to own a God, as they were known to be a people. They were
possessed with the notion of a Supreme Being, the author of the world;
had an object of religious adoration; put up prayers to the deity they
owned for the good things they wanted, and the diverting the evils
they feared. No people so untamed where absolute perfect atheism
had gained a footing. No one nation of the world known in the time
of the Romans that were without their ceremonies, whereby they
signified their devotion to a deity. They had their places of worship,
where they made their vows, presented their prayers, offered their
sacrifices, and implored the assistance of what they thought to be a
god; and in their distresses run immediately, without any deliberation,
to their gods: so that the notion of a deity was as inward and settled
in them as their own souls, and, indeed, runs in the blood of mankind.
The distempers of the understanding cannot utterly deface it; you
shall scarce find the most distracted bedlam, in his raving fits,
to deny a God, though he may blaspheme, and fancy himself one.
2. Nor doth the idolatry and multiplicity of gods in the world {a31}
weaken, but confirm this universal consent. Whatsoever unworthy
conceits men have had of God in all nations, or whatsoever degrading
representations they have made of him, yet they all concur in
this, that there is a Supreme Power to be adored. Though one people
worshipped the sun, others the fire,――and the Egyptians, gods out of
their rivers, gardens, and fields; yet the notion of a Deity existent,
who created and governed the world, and conferred daily benefits upon
them, was maintained by all, though applied to the stars, and in part
to those sordid creatures. All the Dagons of the world establish this
truth, and fall down before it. Had not the nations owned the being of
a God, they had never offered incense to an idol: had there not been
a deep impression of the existence of a Deity, they had never exalted
creatures below themselves to the honor of altars: men could not so
easily have been deceived by forged deities, if they had not had a
notion of a real one. Their fondness to set up others in the place of
God, evidenced a natural knowledge that there was One who had a right
to be worshipped. If there were not this sentiment of a Deity, no
man would ever have made an image of a piece of wood, worshipped it,
prayed to it, and said, “Deliver me, for thou art my God.”[20] They
applied a general notion to a particular image. The difference is in
the manner, and immediate object of worship, not in the formal ground
of worship. The worship sprung from a true principle, though it was
not applied to a right object: while they were rational creatures,
they could not deface the notion; yet while they were corrupt
creatures it was not difficult to apply themselves to a wrong object
from a true principle. A blind man knows he hath a way to go as well
as one of the clearest sight; but because of his blindness he may miss
the way and stumble into a ditch. No man would be imposed upon to take
a Bristol stone instead of a diamond, if he did not know that there
were such things as diamonds in the world: nor any man spread forth
his hands to an idol, if he were altogether without the sense of a
Deity. Whether it be a false or a true God men apply to, yet in both,
the natural sentiment of a God is evidenced; all their mistakes were
grafts inserted in this stock, since they would multiply gods rather
than deny a Deity.
How should such a general submission be entered into by all the
world, so as to adore things of a base alloy,[21] if the force of
religion were not such, that in any fashion a man would seek the
satisfaction of his natural instinct to some object of worship? This
great diversity confirms this consent to be a good argument, for it
evidenceth it not to be a cheat, combination or conspiracy to deceive,
or a mutual intelligence, but every one finds it in his climate, yea
in himself. People would never have given the title of a God to men or
brutes had there not been a pre‑existing and unquestioned persuasion,
that there was such a being;――how else should the notion of a God
come into their minds?――the notion that there is a God must be more
ancient.[22]
3. Whatsoever disputes there have been in the world, this of the {a32}
existence of God was never the subject of contention. All other things
have been questioned. What jarrings were there among philosophers
about natural things! into how many parties were they split! with what
animosities did they maintain their several judgments! but we hear of
no solemn controversies about the existence of a Supreme Being: this
never met with any considerable contradiction: no nation, that hath
put other things to question, would ever suffer this to be disparaged,
so much as by a public doubt. We find among the heathen contentions
about the nature of God and the number of gods, some asserted an
innumerable multitude of gods, some affirmed him to be subject to
birth and death, some affirmed the entire world was God; others
fancied him to be a circle of a bright fire; others that he was a
spirit diffused through the whole world:[23] yet they unanimously
concurred in this, as the judgment of universal reason, that there was
such a sovereign Being: and those that were skeptical in everything
else, and asserted that the greatest certainty was that there was
nothing certain, professed a certainty in this. The question was not
whether there was a First Cause, but what it was. It is much the same
thing, as the disputes about the nature and matter of the heavens,
the sun and planets, though there be great diversity of judgments, yet
all agree that there are heavens, sun, planets; so all the contentions
among men about the nature of God, weaken not, but rather confirm,
that there is a God, since there was never a public formal debate
about his existence.[24] Those that have been ready to pull out
one another’s eyes for their dissent from their judgments, sharply
censured one another’s sentiments, envied the births of one another’s
wits, always shook hands with an unanimous consent in this; never
censured one another for being of this persuasion, never called it
into question; as what was never controverted among men professing
Christianity, but acknowledged by all, though contending about other
things, has reason to be judged a certain truth belonging to the
christian religion; so what was never subjected to any controversy,
but acknowledged by the whole world, hath reason to be embraced as
a truth without any doubt.
4. This universal consent is not prejudiced by some few dissenters.
History doth not reckon twenty professed atheists in all ages in
the compass of the whole world: and we have not the name of any one
absolute atheist upon record in Scripture; yet it is questioned,
whether any of them, noted in history with that infamous name, were
downright deniers of the existence of God, but rather because they
disparaged the deities commonly worshipped by the nations where they
lived, as being of a clearer reason to discern that those qualities,
vulgarly attributed to their gods, as lust and luxury, wantonness and
quarrels, were unworthy of the nature of a god.[25] But suppose they
were really what they are termed to be, what are they to the multitude
of men that have sprung out of the loins of Adam? not so much as
one grain of ashes is to all that were ever turned into that form
by any fires in your chimneys. And many more were not sufficient to
weigh down the contrary consent of the whole world, and bear {a33}
down an universal impression. Should the laws of a country, agreed
universally to by the whole body of the people, be accounted vain,
because an hundred men of those millions disapprove of them, when
not their reason, but their folly and base interest, persuades them
to dislike them and dispute against them? What if some men be blind,
shall any conclude from thence that eyes are not natural to men? shall
we say that the notion of the existence of God is not natural to men,
because a very small number have been of a contrary opinion? shall a
man in a dungeon, that never saw the sun, deny that there is a sun,
because one or two blind men tell him there is none, when thousands
assure him there is.[26] Why should then the exceptions of a few, not
one to millions, discredit that which is voted certainly true by the
joint consent of the world? Add this, too, that if those that are
reported to be atheists had had any considerable reason to step aside
from the common persuasion of the whole world, it is a wonder it met
not with entertainment by great numbers of those, who, by reason of
their notorious wickedness and inward disquiets, might reasonably be
thought to wish in their hearts that there were no God. It is strange
if there were any reason on their side, that in so long a space of
time as hath run out from the creation of the world, there could not
be engaged a considerable number to frame a society for the profession
of it. It hath died with the person that started it, and vanished as
soon as it appeared.
To conclude this, is it not folly for any man to deny or doubt
of the being of a God, to dissent from all mankind, and stand in
contradiction to human nature? What is the general dictate of nature
is a certain truth. It is impossible that nature can naturally and
universally lie. And therefore those that ascribe all to nature, and
set it in the place of God, contradict themselves, if they give not
credit to it in that which it universally affirms. A general consent
of all nations is to be esteemed as a law of nature.[27] Nature cannot
plant in the minds of all men an assent to a falsity, for then the
laws of nature would be destructive to the reason and minds of men.
How is it possible, that a falsity should be a persuasion spread
through all nations, engraven upon the minds of all men, men of the
most towering, and men of the most creeping understanding; that they
should consent to it in all places, and in those places where the
nations have not had any known commerce with the rest of the known
world? a consent not settled by any law of man to constrain people to
a belief of it: and indeed it is impossible that any law of man can
constrain the belief of the mind. Would not he deservedly be accounted
a fool, that should deny that to be gold which hath been tried and
examined by a great number of knowing goldsmiths, and hath passed the
test of all their touch‑stones? What excess of folly would it be for
him to deny it to be true gold, if it had been tried by all that had
skill in that metal in all nations in the world!
Secondly, It hath been a constant and uninterrupted consent. It hath
been as ancient as the first age of the world; no man is able to
mention any time, from the beginning of the world, wherein this notion
hath not been universally owned; it is as old as mankind, {a34} and
hath run along with the course of the sun, nor can the date be fixed
lower than that.
1. In all the changes of the world, this hath been maintained. In
the overturnings of the government of states, the alteration of modes
of worship, this hath stood unshaken. The reasons upon which it was
founded were, in all revolutions of time, accounted satisfactory and
convincing, nor could absolute atheism in the changes of any laws
ever gain the favor of any one body of people to be established by
a law. When the honor of the heathen idols was laid in the dust, this
suffered no impair. The being of one God was more vigorously owned
when the unreasonableness of multiplicity of gods was manifest; and
grew taller by the detection of counterfeits. When other parts of the
law of nature have been violated by some nations, this hath maintained
its standing. The long series of ages hath been so far from blotting
it out, that it hath more strongly confirmed it, and maketh further
progress in the confirmation of it. Time, which hath eaten out the
strength of other things, and blasted mere inventions, hath not been
able to consume this. The discovery of all other impostures, never
made this by any society of men to be suspected as one. It will not be
easy to name any imposture that hath walked perpetually in the world
without being discovered, and whipped out by some nation or other.
Falsities have never been so universally and constantly owned without
public control and question. And since the world hath detected many
errors of the former age, and learning been increased, this hath been
so far from being dimmed, that it hath shone out clearer with the
increase of natural knowledge, and received fresh and more vigorous
confirmations.
2. The fears and anxieties in the consciences of men have given men
sufficient occasion to root it out, had it been possible for them to
do it. If the notion of the existence of God had been possible to have
been dashed out of the minds of men, they would have done it rather
than have suffered so many troubles in their souls upon the commission
of sin; since there did not want wickedness and wit in so many corrupt
ages to have attempted it and prospered in it, had it been possible.
How comes it therefore to pass, that such a multitude of profligate
persons that have been in the world since the fall of man, should not
have rooted out this principle, and dispossessed the minds of men of
that which gave birth to their tormenting fears? How is it possible
that all should agree together in a thing which created fear, and an
obligation against the interest of the flesh, if it had been free for
men to discharge themselves of it? No man, as far as corrupt nature
bears sway in him, is willing to live controlled.
The first man would rather be a god himself than under one:[28] why
should men continue this notion in them, which shackled them in their
vile inclinations, if it had been in their power utterly to deface
it? If it were an imposture, how comes it to pass, that all the wicked
ages of the world could never discover that to be a cheat, which
kept them in continual alarms? Men wanted not will to shake off such
apprehensions; as Adam, so all his posterity are desirous to hide
themselves from God upon the commission of sin,[29] and by the {a35}
same reason they would hide God from their souls. What is the reason
they could never attain their will and their wish by all their
endeavors? Could they possibly have satisfied themselves that there
were no God, they had discarded their fears, the disturbers of the
repose of their lives, and been unbridled in their pleasures. The
wickedness of the world would never have preserved that which was a
perpetual molestation to it, had it been possible to be razed out.
But since men under the turmoils and lashes of their own consciences
could never bring their hearts to a settled dissent from this truth,
it evidenceth, that as it took its birth at the beginning of the
world, it cannot expire, no not in the ashes of it, nor in anything
but the reduction of the soul to that nothing from whence it sprung.
This conception is so perpetual, that the nature of the soul must be
dissolved before it be rooted out, nor can it be extinct while the
soul endures.
3. Let it be considered also by us that own the Scripture, that the
devil deems it impossible to root out this sentiment. It seems to be
so perpetually fixed, that the devil did not think fit to tempt man to
the denial of the existence of a Deity, but persuaded him to believe
he might ascend to that dignity and become a god himself; Gen. iii. 1,
“Hath God said?” and he there owns him (ver. 5), “Ye shall become as
gods.” He owns God in the question he asks the woman, and persuades
our first parents to be gods themselves. And in all stories, both
ancient and modern, the devil was never able to tincture men’s minds
with a professed denial of the Deity, which would have opened a door
to a world of more wickedness than hath been acted, and took away
the bar to the breaking out of that evil, which is naturally in the
hearts of men, to the greater prejudice of human societies. He wanted
not malice to raze out all the notions of God, but power: he knew it
was impossible to effect it, and therefore in vain to attempt it. He
set up himself in several places of the ignorant world as a god, but
never was able to overthrow the opinion of the being of a God. The
impressions of a Deity were so strong as not to be struck out by the
malice and power of hell.
What a folly is it then in any to contradict or doubt of this truth,
which all the periods of time have not been able to wear out; which
all the wars and quarrels of men with their own consciences have not
been able to destroy; which ignorance and debauchery, its two greatest
enemies, cannot weaken; which all the falsehoods and errors which
have reigned in one or other part of the world, have not been able
to banish; which lives in the consents of men in spite of all their
wishes to the contrary, and hath grown stronger, and shone clearer,
by the improvements of natural reason!
Thirdly, Natural and innate; which pleads strongly for the perpetuity
of it. It is natural, though some think it not a principle writ in
the heart of man;[30] it is so natural that every man is born with
a restless instinct to be of some kind of religion or other, which
implies some object of religion. The impression of a Deity is as
common as reason, and of the same age with reason.[31] It is a
relic of knowledge after the fall of Adam, like fire under ashes,
which sparkles as soon {a36} as ever the heap of ashes is opened. A
notion sealed up in the soul of every man;[32] else how could those
people who were unknown to one another, separate by seas and mounts,
differing in various customs and manner of living, had no mutual
intelligence one with another, light upon this as a common sentiment,
if they had not been guided by one uniform reason in all their minds,
by one nature common to them all: though their climates be different,
their tempers and constitutions various, their imaginations in some
things as distant from one another as heaven is from earth, the
ceremonies of their religion not all of the same kind; yet wherever
you find human nature, you find this settled persuasion. So that the
notion of a God seems to be twisted with the nature of man, and is
the first natural branch of common reason, or upon either the first
inspection of a man into himself and his own state and constitution,
or upon the first sight of any external visible object. Nature within
man, and nature without man, agree upon the first meeting together to
form this sentiment, that there is a God. It is as natural as anything
we call a common principle. One thing which is called a common
principle and natural is, that the whole is greater than the parts. If
this be not born with us, yet the exercise of reason essential to man
settles it as a certain maxim; upon the dividing anything into several
parts, he finds every part less than when they were altogether. By
the same exercise of reason, we cannot cast our eyes upon anything in
the world, or exercise our understandings upon ourselves, but we must
presently imagine, there was some cause of those things, some cause
of myself and my own being; so that this truth is as natural to man
as anything he can call most natural or a common principle.
It must be confessed by all, that there is a law of nature writ upon
the hearts of men, which will direct them to commendable actions, if
they will attend to the writing in their own consciences. This law
cannot be considered without the notice of a Lawgiver. For it is but
a natural and obvious conclusion, that some superior hand engrafted
those principles in man, since he finds something in him twitching
him upon the pursuit of uncomely actions, though his heart be mightily
inclined to them; man knows he never planted this principle of
reluctancy in his own soul; he can never be the cause of that which
he cannot be friends with. If he were the cause of it, why doth he not
rid himself of it? No man would endure a thing that doth frequently
molest and disquiet him, if he could cashier it. It is therefore sown
in man by some hand more powerful than man, which riseth so high, and
is rooted so strong, that all the force that man can use cannot pull
it up. If therefore this principle be natural in man, and the law of
nature be natural, the notion of a Lawgiver must be as natural, as the
notion of a printer, or that there is a printer, is obvious upon the
sight of a stamp impressed. After this the multitude of effects in the
world step in to strengthen this beam of natural light, and the direct
conclusion from thence is, that that power which made those outward
objects, implanted this inward principle. This is sown in us, born
with us, and sprouts up with our growth, or as one saith; it is like
letters carved upon the bark of a {a37} young plant, which grows
up together with us, and the longer it grows the letters are more
legible.[33]
This is the ground of this universal consent, and why it may well be
termed natural. This will more evidently appear to be natural, because,
1. This consent could not be by mere tradition. 2. Nor by any mutual
intelligence of governors to keep people in awe, which are two things
the atheist pleads; the first hath no strong foundation, and that
other is as absurd and foolish as it is wicked and abominable. 3. Nor
was it fear first introduced it.
First, It could not be by mere tradition. Many things indeed are
entertained by posterity which their ancestors delivered to them, and
that out of a common reverence to their forefathers, and an opinion
that they had a better prospect of things than the increase of the
corruption of succeeding ages would permit them to have. But if this
be a tradition handed from our ancestors, they also must receive it
from theirs; we must then ascend to the first man, we cannot else
escape a confounding ourselves with running into infinite. Was it then
the only tradition he left to them? Is it not probable he acquainted
them with other things in conjunction with this, the nature of God,
the way to worship him, the manner of the world’s existence, his own
state? We may reasonably suppose him to have a good stock of knowledge;
what is become of it? It cannot be supposed, that the first man should
acquaint his posterity with an object of worship, and leave them
ignorant of a mode of worship and of the end of worship. We find in
Scripture his immediate posterity did the first in sacrifices, and
without doubt they were not ignorant of the other: how come men to be
so uncertain in all other things, and so confident of this, if it were
only a tradition? How did debates and irreconcilable questions start
up concerning other things, and this remain untouched, but by a small
number? Whatsoever tradition the first man left besides this, is lost,
and no way recoverable, but by the revelation God hath made in his
Word. How comes it to pass this of a God is longer lived than all the
rest which we may suppose man left to his immediate descendants? How
come men to retain the one and forget the other? What was the reason
this survived the ruin of the rest, and surmounted the uncertainties
into which the other sunk? Was it likely it should be handed down
alone without other attendants on it at first? Why did it not expire
among the Americans, who have lost the account of their own descent,
and the stock from whence they sprung, and cannot reckon above eight
hundred or a thousand years at most? Why was not the manner of the
worship of a God transmitted as well as that of his existence? How
came men to dissent in their opinions concerning his nature, whether
he was corporeal or incorporeal, finite or infinite, omnipresent
or limited? Why were not men as negligent to transmit this of his
existence as that of his nature? No reason can be rendered for
the security of this above the other, but that there is so clear a
tincture of a Deity upon the minds of men, such traces and shadows
of him in the creatures, such indelible {a38} instincts within, and
invincible arguments without to keep up this universal consent. The
characters are so deep that they cannot possibly be rased out, which
would have been one time or other, in one nation or other, had it
depended only upon tradition, since one age shakes off frequently the
sentiments of the former. I cannot think of above one which may be
called a tradition, which indeed was kept up among all nations, viz.
sacrifices, which could not be natural but instituted. What ground
could they have in nature, to imagine that the blood of beasts could
expiate and wash off the guilt and stains of a rational creature? Yet
they had in all places (but among the Jews, and some of them only)
lost the knowledge of the reason and end of the institution, which the
Scripture acquaints us was to typify and signify the redemption by the
Promised Seed. This tradition hath been superannuated and laid aside
in most parts of the world, while this notion of the existence of a
God hath stood firm. But suppose it were a tradition, was it likely
to be a mere intention and figment of the first man? Had there been no
reason for it, this posterity would soon have found out the weakness
of its foundation. What advantage had it been to him to transmit
so great a falsehood to kindle the fears or raise the hopes of his
posterity, if there were no God? It cannot be supposed he should
be so void of that natural affection men in all ages bear to their
descendants, as so grossly to deceive them, and be so contrary to the
simplicity and plainness which appears in all things nearest their
original.
Secondly, Neither was it by any mutual intelligence of governors
among themselves to keep people in subjection to them. If it were a
political design at first, it seems it met with the general nature of
mankind very ready to give it entertainment.
1. It is unaccountable how this should come to pass. It must be either
by a joint assembly of them, or a mutual correspondence. If by an
assembly, who were the persons? Let the name of any one be mentioned.
When was the time? Where was the place of this appearance? By what
authority did they meet together? Who made the first motion, and
first started this great principle of policy? By what means could
they assemble from such distant parts of the world? Human histories
are utterly silent in it, and the Scripture, the ancientest history,
gives an account of the attempt of Babel, but not a word of any design
of this nature. What mutual correspondence could such have, whose
interests are for the most part different, and their designs contrary
to one another? How could they, who were divided by such vast seas,
have this mutual converse? How could those who were different in their
customs and manners, agree so unanimously together in one thing to
gull the people? If there had been such a correspondence between the
governors of all nations, what is the reason some nations should be
unknown to the world till of late times? How could the business be so
secretly managed, as not to take vent, and issue in a discovery to the
world? Can reason suppose so many in a joint conspiracy, and no man’s
conscience in his life under sharp afflictions, or on his death‑bed,
when conscience is most awakened, constrain him to reveal openly the
cheat that beguiled the world? How came they to be so unanimous {a39}
in this notion, and to differ in their rites almost in every country?
why could they not agree in one mode of worship throughout all the
world, as well as in this universal notion? If there were not a
mutual intelligence, it cannot be conceived how in every nation such
a state‑engineer should rise up with the same trick to keep people in
awe. What is the reason we cannot find any law in any one nation to
constrain men to the belief of the existence of a God, since politic
stratagems have been often fortified by laws? Besides, such men make
use of principles received to effect their contrivances, and are
not so impolitic as to build designs upon principles that have no
foundation in nature. Some heathen lawgivers have pretended a converse
with their gods, to make their laws be received by the people with
a greater veneration, and fix with stronger obligation the observance
and perpetuity of them; but this was not the introducing a new
principle, but the supposition of an old received notion, that there
was a God, and an application of that principle to their present
design. The pretence had been vain had not the notion of a God been
ingrafted. Politicians are so little possessed with a reverence of God,
that the first mighty one in the Scripture (which may reasonably gain
with the atheist the credit of the ancientest history in the world),
is represented without any fear of God.[34] An invader and oppressor
of his neighbors, and reputed the introducer of a new worship, and
being the first that built cities after the flood (as Cain was the
first builder of them before the flood), built also idolatry with
them, and erected a new worship, and was so far from strengthening
that notion the people had of God, that he endeavored to corrupt it.
The first idolatry in common histories being noted to proceed from
that part of the world; the ancientest idol being at Babylon, and
supposed to be first invented by this person: whence, by the way,
perhaps Rome is in the Revelations called Babylon, with respect to
that similitude of their saint‑worship, to the idolatry first set up
in that place.[35] ’Tis evident politicians have often changed the
worship of a nation, but it is not upon record that the first thoughts
of an object of worship ever entered into the minds of people by any
trick of theirs.
But to return to the present argument, the being of a God is owned
by some nations that have scarce any form of policy among them. ’Tis
as wonderful how any wit should hit upon such an invention, as it is
absurd to ascribe it to any human device, if there were not prevailing
arguments to constrain the consent. Besides, how is it possible they
should deceive themselves? What is the reason the greatest politicians
have their fears of a Deity upon their unjust practices, as well as
other men they intend to befool? How many of them have had forlorn
consciences upon a death‑bed, upon the consideration of a God to
answer an account to in another world? Is it credible they should
be frighted by that wherewith they knew they beguiled others? No man
satisfying his pleasures would impose {a40} such a deceit upon himself
to render and make himself more miserable than the creatures he hath
dominion over.
2. It is unaccountable how it should endure so long a time; that this
policy should be so fortunate as to gain ground in the consciences of
men, and exercise an empire over them, and meet with such an universal
success. If the notion of a God were a state‑engine, and introduced
by some political grandees, for the ease of government, and preserving
people with more facility in order, how comes it to pass the first
broachers of it were never upon record? There is scarce a false
opinion vented in the world, but may, as a stream, be traced to the
first head and fountain. The inventors of particular forms of worship
are known; and the reasons why they prescribed them known; but what
grandee was the author of this? Who can pitch a time and person that
sprung up this notion? If any be so insolent as to impose a cheat,
he can hardly be supposed to be so successful as to deceive the whole
world for many ages: impostures pass not free through the whole world
without examination and discovery: falsities have not been universally
and constantly owned without control and question. If a cheat imposeth
upon some towns and countries, he will be found out by the more
piercing inquiries of other places; and it is not easy to name any
imposture that hath walked so long in its disguise in the world,
without being unmasked and whipped out by some nation or other. If
this had been a mere trick, there would have been as much craft in
some to discern it as there was in others to contrive it. No man can
be imagined so wise in a kingdom, but others may be found as wise as
himself: and it is not conceivable, that so many clear‑sighted men in
all ages should be ignorant of it, and not endeavour to free the world
from so great a falsity. It cannot be found that a trick of state
should always beguile men of the most piercing insights, as well as
the most credulous: that a few crafty men should befool all the wise
men in the world, and the world lie in a belief of it and never like
to be freed from it.[36] What is the reason the succeeding politicians
never knew this stratagem; since their maxims are usually handed to
their successors.[37]
This persuasion of the existence of God, owes not itself to any
imposture or subtility of men: if it had not been agreeable to common
nature and reason, it could not so long have borne sway. The imposed
yoke would have been cast off by multitudes; men would not have
charged themselves with that which was attended with consequences
displeasing to the flesh, and hindered them from a full swing of their
rebellious passions; such a shackle would have mouldered of itself,
or been broke by the extravagances human nature is inclined unto. The
wickedness of men, without question, hath prompted them to endeavour
to unmask it, if it were a cosenage, but could never yet be so
successful as to free the world from a persuasion, or their own
consciences from the tincture of the existence of a Deity. It must
be therefore of an ancienter date than the craft of statesmen, and
descend into the world with the first appearance of human nature.
{a41} Time, which hath rectified many errors, improves this notion,
makes it shock down its roots deeper and spread its branches larger.
It must be a natural truth that shines clear by the detection of those
errors that have befooled the world, and the wit of man is never able
to name any human author that first insinuated it into the beliefs of
men.
Thirdly, Nor was it fear first introduced it. Fear is the consequent
of wickedness. As man was not created with any inherent sin, so he
was not created with any terrifying fears; the one had been against
the holiness of the Creator, the other against his goodness: fear did
not make this opinion, but the opinion of the being of a Deity was
the cause of this fear, after his sense of angering the Deity by his
wickedness. The object of fear is before the act of fear; there could
not be an act of fear exercised about the Deity, till it was believed
to be existent, and not only so, but offended: for God as existent
only, is not the object of fear or love; it is not the existence of a
thing that excites any of those affections, but the relation a thing
bears to us in particular. God is good, and so the object of love, as
well as just, and thereby the object of fear. He was as much called
_Love_,[38] and _Mens_, or _Mind_, in regard of his goodness and
understanding, by the heathens, as much as by any other name. Neither
of those names were proper to insinuate fear; neither was fear the
first principle that made the heathens worship a God; they offered
sacrifices out of gratitude to some, as well as to other, out of fear;
the fear of evils in the world, and the hopes of relief and assistance
from their gods, and not a terrifying fear of God, was the principal
spring of their worship. When calamities from the hands of men, or
judgments by the influences of Heaven were upon them, they implored
that which they thought a deity; it was not their fear of him, but
a hope in his goodness, and persuasion of remedy from him, for the
averting those evils that rendered them adorers of a God: if they had
not had pre‑existing notions of his being and goodness, they would
never have made addresses to him, or so frequently sought to that they
only apprehended as a terrifying object.[39] When you hear men calling
upon God in a time of affrighting thunder, you cannot imagine that the
fear of thunder did first introduce the notion of a God, but implies,
that it was before apprehended by them, or stamped upon them, though
their fear doth at present actuate that belief, and engage them in a
present exercise of piety; and whereas the Scripture saith, “The fear
of God is the beginning of wisdom,”[40] or of all religion; it is not
understood of a distracted and terrifying fear, but a reverential fear
of him, because of his holiness; or a worship of him, a submission to
him, and sincere seeking of him.
Well, then, is it not a folly for an atheist to deny that which is the
reason and common sentiment of the whole world; to strip himself of
humanity, run counter to his own conscience, prefer a private before
an universal judgment, give the lie to his own nature and reason,
assert things impossible to be proved, nay, impossible to be acted,
forge irrationalities for the support of his fancy against the common
{a42} persuasion of the world, and against himself, and so much of God
as is manifest in him and every man?[41]
_Reason II._ It is a folly to deny that which all creatures or all
things in the world manifest.[42] Let us view this in Scripture,
since we acknowledge it, and after consider the arguments from natural
reason.
The apostle resolves it (Rom. i. 19, 20), “The invisible things of him
from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by
the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that
they are without excuse.” They know, or might know, by the things
that were made, the eternity and power of God; their sense might take
a circuit about every object, and their minds collect the being and
something of the perfections of the Deity. The first discourse of
the mind upon the sight of a delicate piece of workmanship, is the
conclusion of the being of an artificer, and the admiration of his
skill and industry. The apostle doth not say, the invisible things
of God are _believed_, or they have an opinion of them, but they are
_seen_, and _clearly seen_. They are like crystal glasses, which give
a clear representation of the existence of a Deity, like that mirror,
reported to be in a temple in Arcadia, which represented to the
spectator, not his own face, but the image of that deity which he
worshipped. The whole world is like a looking‑glass, which, whole
and entire, represents the image of God, and every broken piece of
it, every little shred of a creature doth the like; not only the
great ones, elephants and the leviathan, but ants, flies, worms, whose
bodies rather than names we know: the greater cattle and the creeping
things (Gen. i. 24); not naming there any intermediate creature, to
direct us to view him in the smaller letters, as well as the greater
characters of the world. His name is “glorious,” and his attributes
are excellent “in all the earth;”[43] in every creature, as the glory
of the sun is in every beam and smaller flash; he is seen in every
insect, in every spire of grass. The voice of the Creator is in
the most contemptible creature. The apostle adds, that they are so
clearly seen, that men are inexcusable if they have not some knowledge
of God by them; if they might not certainly know them, they might
have some excuse: so that his existence is not only probably, but
demonstratively proved from the things of the world.[44]
Especially the heavens declare him, which God “stretches out like
a curtain,”[45] or, as some render the word, a “skin,” whereby is
signified, that heaven is as an open book, which was anciently made
of the skins of beasts, that by the knowledge of them we may be taught
the knowledge of God. Where Scripture was not revealed, the world
served for a witness of a God; whatever arguments the Scripture uses
to prove it, are drawn from nature (though, indeed, it doth not so
much prove as suppose the existence of a God); but what arguments it
uses are from the creatures, and particularly the heavens, which are
the public preachers of this doctrine. The breath of God sounds to
all the world through those organ‑pipes. His being is visible in their
existence, his wisdom in their frame, his power in their {a43} motion,
his goodness in their usefulness. They have a voice, and their voice
is as intelligible as any common language.[46] And those are so
plain heralds of a Deity, that the heathen mistook them for deities,
and gave them a particular adoration, which was due to that God they
declared. The first idolatry seems to be of those heavenly bodies,
which began probably in the time of Nimrod. In Job’s time it is
certain they admired the glory of the sun, and the brightness of the
moon, not without kissing their hands, a sign of adoration.[47] It is
evident a man may as well doubt whether there be a sun, when he sees
his beams gilding the earth, as doubt whether there be a God, when he
sees his works spread in the world.
The things in the world declare the existence of a God. 1. In their
production. 2. Harmony. 3. Preservation. 4. Answering their several
ends.
First, In their production. The declaration of the existence of God
was the chief end for which they were created, that the notion of
a supreme and independent Eternal Being might easier incur into the
active understanding of man from the objects of sense, dispersed in
every corner of the world, that he might pay a homage and devotion
to the Lord of all (Isai. xl. 12, 13, 18, 19, &c.), “Have you not
understood from the foundation of the earth, it is he that sits upon
the circle of the heaven,” &c. How could this great heap be brought
into being, unless a God had framed it? Every plant, every atom, as
well as every star, at the first meeting, whispers this in our ears,
“I have a Creator; I am witness to a Deity.” Who ever saw statues or
pictures but presently thinks of a statuary and limner? Who beholds
garments, ships, or houses, but understands there was a weaver, a
carpenter, an architect?[48] Who can cast his eyes about the world,
but must think of that power that formed it, and that the goodness
which appears in the formation of it hath a perfect residence in some
being? “Those things that are good must flow from something perfectly
good: that which is chief in any kind is the cause of all of that
kind. Fire, which is most hot, is the cause of all things which are
hot. There is some being, therefore, which is the cause of all that
perfection which is in the creature; and this is God.” (_Aquin. 1
qu. 2. Artic. 3._) All things that are demonstrate something from
whence they are. All things have a contracted perfection, and what
they have is communicated to them. Perfections are parcelled out among
several creatures. Anything that is imperfect cannot exist of itself.
We are led, therefore, by them to consider a fountain which bubbles up
in all perfection; a hand which distributes those several degrees of
being and perfection to what we see. We see that which is imperfect;
our minds conclude something perfect to exist before it. Our eye sees
the streams, but our understanding riseth to the head; as the eye sees
the shadow, but the understanding informs us whether it be the shadow
of a man or of a beast.
God hath given us sense to behold the objects in the world, and
understanding to reason his existence from them. The understanding
cannot conceive a thing to have made itself; that is against all {a44}
reason. As they are made, they speak out a Maker,[49] and cannot be a
trick of chance, since they are made with such an immense wisdom, that
is too big for the grasp of all human understanding. Those that doubt
whether the existence of God be an implanted principle, yet agree that
the effects in the world lead to a supreme and universal cause; and
that if we have not the knowledge of it rooted in our natures, yet we
have it by discourse; since, by all masters of reason, a _processus
in infinitum_ must be accounted impossible in subordinate causes. This
will appear in several things.
I. The world and every creature had a beginning. The Scripture
ascertains this to us.[50] David, who was not the first man, gives
the praise to God of his being “curiously wrought,” &c. (Ps. cxxxix.
14, 15). God gave being to men, and plants, and beasts, before they
gave being to one another. He gives being to them now as the Fountain
of all being, though the several modes of being are from the several
natures of second causes.
It is true, indeed, we are ascertained that they were made by the true
God; that they were made by his word; that they were made of nothing;
and not only this lower world wherein we live, but, according to the
Jewish division, the world of men, the world of stars, and the world
of spirits and souls. We do not waver in it, or doubt of it, as the
heathen did in their disputes; we know they are the workmanship of
the true God, of that God we adore, not of false gods; “by his word,”
without any instrument or engine, as in earthly structures; “of
things which do not appear,” without any pre‑existent matter, as all
artificial works of men are framed. Yet the proof of the beginning of
the world is affirmed with good reason; and if it had a beginning, it
had also some higher cause than itself: every effect hath a cause.
The world was not eternal, or from eternity.[51] The matter of the
world cannot be eternal. Matter cannot subsist without form, nor put
on any form without the action of some cause. This cause must be in
being before it acted; that which is not cannot act. The cause of the
world must necessarily exist before any matter was endued with any
form; that, therefore, cannot be eternal before which another did
subsist; if it were from eternity, it would not be subject to mutation.
If the whole was from eternity, why not also the parts; what makes the
changes so visible, then, if eternity would exempt it from mutability?
1. Time cannot be infinite, and, therefore, the world not eternal.
All motion hath its beginning; if it were otherwise, we must say the
number of heavenly revolutions of days and nights, which are past to
this instant, is actually infinite, which cannot be in nature.[52] If
it were so, it must needs be granted that a part is equal to the whole;
because infinite being equal to infinite, the number of days past, in
all ages to the beginning of one year being infinite (as they would be,
supposing the world had no beginning) would by consequence be equal
to the number of days which shall pass to the end of the {a45} next;
whereas that number of days past is indeed but a part; and so a part
would be equal to the whole.
2. Generations of men, animals, and plants, could not be from
eternity. If any man say the world was from eternity, then there must
be propagations of living creatures in the same manner as are at this
day; for without this the world could not consist.[53] What we see
now done must have been perpetually done, if it be done by a necessity
of nature; but we see nothing now that doth arise but by a mutual
propagation from another. If the world were eternal, therefore, it
must be so in all eternity. Take any particular species. Suppose a man,
if men were from eternity; then there were perpetual generations――some
were born into the world, and some died. Now the natural condition of
generation is, that a man doth not generate a man, nor a sheep a lamb,
as soon as ever itself is brought into the world; but get strength and
vigor by degrees, and must arrive to a certain stated age before they
can produce the like; for whilst anything is little and below the due
age, it cannot increase its kind. Men, therefore, and other creatures,
did propagate their kind by the same law, not as soon as ever they
were born, but in the interval of some time; and children grew up
by degrees in the mother’s womb till they were fit to be brought
forth. If this be so, then there could not be an eternal succession
of propagating; for there is no eternal continuation of time. Time
is always to be conceived as having one part before another; but
that perpetuity of nativities is always after some time, wherein it
could not be for the weakness of age. If no man, then, can conceive
a propagation from eternity, there must be then a beginning of
generation in time, and, consequently, the creatures were made in time.
“If the world were eternal, it must have been in the same posture as
it is now, in a state of generation and corruption; and so corruption
must have been as eternal as generation, and then things that do
generate and corrupt must have eternally been and eternally not have
been: there must be some first way to set generation on work.”[54] We
must lose ourselves in our conceptions; we cannot conceive a father
before a child, as well as we cannot conceive a child before a father:
and reason is quite bewildered, and cannot return into a right way of
conception, till it conceive one first of every kind: one first man,
one first animal, one first plant, from whence others do proceed. The
argument is unanswerable, and the wisest atheist (if any atheist can
be called wise) cannot unloose the knot. We must come to something
that is first in every kind, and this first must have a cause, not of
the same kind, but infinite and independent; otherwise men run into
inconceivable labyrinths and contradictions.
Man, the noblest creature upon earth, hath a beginning. No man in
the world but was some years ago no man. If every man we see had a
beginning, then the first man had also a beginning, then the world
had a beginning: for the earth, which was made for the use of man, had
wanted that end for which it was made. We must pitch upon some one man
that was unborn; that first man must either be eternal; that cannot be,
for he that hath no beginning hath no end; or must {a46} spring out of
the earth as plants and trees do;[55] that cannot be; why should not
the earth produce men to this day, as it doth plants and trees? He was
therefore made; and whatsoever is made hath some cause that made it,
which is God. If the world were uncreated, it were then immutable,
but every creature upon the earth is in a continual flux, always
changing:[56] if things be mutable, they were created; if created,
they were made by some author: whatsoever hath a beginning must have
a maker; if the world hath a beginning, there was then a time when it
was not; it must have some cause to produce it. That which makes is
before that which is made, and this is God.
II. Which will appear further in this proposition, No creature can
make itself; the world could not make itself.
If every man had a beginning, every man then was once nothing; he
could not then make himself, because nothing cannot be the cause
of something; ‘The Lord he is God; he hath made us, and not we
ourselves.’ (Ps. c. 3.) Whatsoever begun in time was not; and when it
was nothing, it had nothing, and could do nothing; and therefore could
never give to itself, nor to any other, to be, or to be able to do:
for then it gave what it had not, and did what it could not. Since
reason must acknowledge a first of every kind, a first man, &c., it
must acknowledge him created and made, not by himself:[57] why have
not other men since risen up by themselves, not by chance? why hath
not chance produced the like in that long time the world hath stood?
If we never knew anything give being to itself, how can we imagine
anything ever could? If the chiefest part of this lower world cannot,
nor any part of it hath been known to give being to itself, then the
whole cannot be supposed to give any being to itself: man did not form
himself; his body is not from himself; it would then have the power
of moving itself, but that it is not able to live or act without the
presence of the soul. Whilst the soul is present, the body moves;
when that is absent, the body lies as a senseless log, not having
the least action or motion. His soul could not form itself. Can that
which cannot form the least mote, the least grain of dust, form itself
a nobler substance than any upon the earth? This will be evident to
every man’s reason, if we consider,
1. Nothing can act before it be. The first man was not, and therefore
could not make himself to be. For anything to produce itself is to act;
if it acted before it was, it was then something and nothing at the
same time; it then had a being before it had a being; it acted when it
brought itself into being. How could it act without a being, without
it was? So that if it were the cause of itself, it must be before
itself as well as after itself; it was before it was; it was as a
cause before it was as an effect. Action always supposeth a principle
from whence it flows; as nothing hath no existence, so it hath no
operation: there must be, therefore, something of real existence to
give a being to those things that are, and every cause must be an
effect of some other before it be a cause. To be and not to be at the
same time, is a manifest contradiction, which would be, if anything
made itself. That which makes is always before that {a47} which is
made. Who will say the house is before the carpenter, or the picture
before the limner? The world as a creator must be before itself as a
creature.
2. That which doth not understand itself and order itself could not
make itself. If the first man fully understood his own nature, the
excellency of his own soul, the manner of its operations, why was not
that understanding conveyed to his posterity? Are not many of them
found, who understand their own nature, almost as little as a beast
understands itself; or a rose understands its own sweetness; or a
tulip its own colors? The Scripture, indeed, gives us an account how
this came about, viz. by the deplorable rebellion of man, whereby
death was brought upon them (a spiritual death, which includes
ignorance, as well as an inability to spiritual action.[58]) Thus
he fell from his honor, and became like the beasts that perish, and
not retaining God in his knowledge, retained not himself in his own
knowledge.
But what reply can an atheist make to it, who acknowledges no higher
cause than nature? If the soul made itself, how comes it to be so
muddy, so wanting in its knowledge of itself, and of other things?
If the soul made its own understanding, whence did the defect arise?
If some first principle was settled by the first man in himself,
where was the stop that he did not implant all in his own mind, and,
consequently in the minds of all his descendants? Our souls know
little of themselves, little of the world, are every day upon new
inquiries, have little satisfaction in themselves, meet with many
an invincible rub in their way, and when they seem to come to some
resolution in some cases, stagger again, and, like a stone rolled up
to the top of the hill, quickly find themselves again at the foot.
How come they to be so purblind in truth? so short of that which they
judge true goodness? How comes it to pass they cannot order their
own rebellious affections, and suffer the reins they have to hold
over their affections to be taken out of their hands by the unruly
fancy and flesh? This no man that denies the being of a God, and the
revelation in Scripture, can give an account of. Blessed be God that
we have the Scripture, which gives us an account of those things, that
all the wit of men could never inform us of; and that when they are
discovered and known by revelation, they appear not contrary to reason!
3. If the first man made himself, how came he to limit himself? If he
gave himself being, why did he not give himself all the perfections
and ornaments of being? Nothing that made itself could sit down
contented with a little, but would have had as much power to give
itself that which is less, as to give itself being, when it was
nothing. The excellences it wanted had not been more difficult to gain
than the other which it possessed, as belonging to its nature. If the
first man had been independent upon another, and had his perfection
from himself, he might have acquired that perfection he wanted as well
as have bestowed upon himself that perfection he had; and then there
would have been no bounds set to him. He would have been omniscient
and immutable. He might have given {a48} himself what he would; if he
had had the setting his own bounds, he would have set none at all; for
what should restrain him? No man now wants ambition to be what he is
not; and if the first man had not been determined by another, but had
given himself being, he would not have remained in that determinate
being, no more than a toad would remain a toad, if it had power to
make itself a man, and that power it would have had, if it had given
itself a being. Whatsoever gives itself being, would give itself all
degrees of being, and so would have no imperfection, because every
imperfection is a want of some degree of being. He that could give
himself matter and life, might give himself everything.[59] The giving
of life is an act of omnipotence; and what is omnipotent in one thing
may be in all. Besides, if the first man had made himself, he would
have conveyed himself to all his posterity in the same manner;
every man would have had all the perfections of the first man, as
every creature hath the perfections of the same kind, from whence it
naturally issues; all are desirous to communicate what they can to
their posterity. Communicative goodness belongs to every nature. Every
plant propagates its kind in the same perfection it hath itself; and
the nearer anything comes to a rational nature, the greater affection
it hath to that which descends from it; therefore this affection
belongs to a rational nature much more. The first man, therefore,
if he had had power to give himself being, and, consequently, all
perfection, he would have had as much power to convey it down to his
posterity; no impediment could have stopped his way; then all souls
proceeding from that first man would have been equally intellectual.
What should hinder them from inheriting the same perfections?
Whence should they have divers qualifications and differences in
their understandings? No man then would have been subject to those
weaknesses, doubtings, and unsatisfied desires of knowledge and
perfection. But being all souls are not alike, it is certain they
depend upon some other cause for the communication of that excellency
they have. If the perfections of man be so contracted and kept within
certain bounds, it is certain that they were not in his own power,
and so were not from himself. Whatsoever hath a determinate being must
be limited by some superior cause. There is, therefore, some superior
power, that hath thus determined the creature by set bounds and
distinct measures, and hath assigned to every one its proper nature,
that it should not be greater or less than it is; who hath said of
every one as of the waves of the sea, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but
no further;”[60] and this is God. Man could not have reserved any
perfection from his posterity; for since he doth propagate not by
choice, but nature, he could no more have kept back any perfection
from them, than he could, as he pleased, have given any perfection
belonging to his nature to them.
4. That which hath power to give itself being, cannot want power to
preserve that being. Preservation is not more difficult than creation.
If the first man made himself, why did he not preserve himself? He
is not now among the living in the world. How came he {a49} to be so
feeble as to sink into the grave? Why did he not inspire himself with
new heat and moisture, and fill his languishing limbs and declining
body with new strength? Why did he not chase away diseases and death
at the first approach? What creature can find the dust of the first
man? All his posterity traverse the stage and retire again; in a short
space their age departs, and is removed from them ‘as a shepherd’s
tent,’ and is ‘cut off with pining sickness.’[61] ‘The life of man is
as a wind, and like a cloud that is consumed and vanishes away. The
eye that sees him shall see him no more; he returns not to his house,
neither doth his place know him any more.’[62] The Scripture gives us
the reason of this, and lays it upon the score of sin against his
Creator, which no man without revelation can give any satisfactory
account of. Had the first man made himself, he had been sufficient
for himself, able to support himself without the assistance of any
creature. He would not have needed animals and plants, and other helps
to nourish and refresh him, nor medicines to cure him. He could not be
beholden to other things for his support, which he is certain he never
made for himself. His own nature would have continued that vigor,
which once he had conferred upon himself. He would not have needed
the heat and light of the sun; he would have wanted nothing sufficient
for himself in himself; he needed not have sought without himself for
his own preservation and comfort. What depends upon another is not
of itself; and what depends upon things inferior to itself is less of
itself. Since nothing can subsist of itself, since we see those things
upon which man depends for his nourishment and subsistence, growing
and decaying, starting into the world and retiring from it, as well as
man himself; some preserving cause must be concluded, upon which all
depends.
5. If the first man did produce himself, why did he not produce
himself before?
It hath been already proved, that he had a beginning, and could not
be from eternity. Why then did he not make himself before? Not because
he would not. For having no being, he could have no will; he could
neither be willing nor not willing. If he could not then, how could
he afterwards? If it were in his own power, he could have done it,
he would have done it; if it were not in his own power, then it was
in the power of some other cause, and that is God. How came he by
that power to produce himself? If the power of producing himself were
communicated by another, then man could not be the cause of himself.
That is the cause of it which communicated that power to it. But
if the power of being was in and from himself and in no other, nor
communicated to him, man would always have been in act, and always
have existed; no hindrance can be conceived. For that which had the
power of being in itself was invincible by anything that should stand
in the way of its own being.
We may conclude from hence, the excellency of the Scripture; that
it is a word not to be refused credit. It gives us the most rational
account of things in the 1st and 2d of Genesis, which nothing in the
world else is able to do.
III. No creature could make the world. No creature can create {a50}
another. If it creates of nothing, it is then omnipotent and so not
a creature. If it makes something of matter unfit for that which is
produced out of it, then the inquiry will be, Who was the cause of the
matter? and so we must arrive to some uncreated being, the cause of
all. Whatsoever gives being to any other must be the highest being,
and must possess all the perfections of that which it gives being to.
What visible creature is there which possesses the perfections of the
whole world? If therefore an invisible creature made the world, the
same inquiries will return whence that creature had its being? for he
could not make himself. If any creature did create the world, he must
do it by the strength and virtue of another, which first gave him
being, and this is God. For whatsoever hath its existence and virtue
of acting from another, is not God. If it hath its virtue from another,
it is then a second cause, and so supposeth a first cause. It must
have some cause of itself, or be eternally existent. If eternally
existent, it is not a second cause, but God; if not eternally existent,
we must come to something at length which was the cause of it, or else
be bewildered without being able to give an account of anything. We
must come at last to an infinite, eternal, independent Being, that
was the first cause of this structure and fabric wherein we and all
creatures dwell. The Scripture proclaims this aloud, “I am the Lord
and there is none else: I form the light, and I create darkness.”[63]
Man, the noblest creature, cannot of himself make a man, the chiefest
part of the world. If our parents only, without a superior power, made
our bodies or souls, they would know the frame of them; as he that
makes a lock knows the wards of it; he that makes any curious piece
of arras, knows how he sets the various colors together, and how many
threads went to each division in the web; he that makes a watch,
having the idea of the whole work in his mind, knows the motions of
it, and the reason of those motions. But both parents and children
are equally ignorant of the nature of their souls and bodies, and
of the reason of their motions. God only, that had the supreme hand
in forming us, in whose “book all our members are written, which in
continuance were fashioned,”[64] knows what we all are ignorant of. If
man hath in an ordinary course of generation his being chiefly from a
higher cause than his parents, the world then certainly had its being
from some infinitely wise intelligent Being, which is God. If it
were, as some fancy, made by an assembly of atoms, there must be some
infinite intelligent cause that made them, some cause that separated
them, some cause that mingled them together for the piling up so
comely a structure as the world. It is the most absurd thing to think
they should meet together by hazard, and rank themselves in that order
we see, without a higher and a wise agent. So that no creature could
make the world. For supposing any creature was formed before this
visible world, and might have a hand in disposing things, yet he must
have a cause of himself, and must act by the virtue and strength of
another, and this is God.
IV. From hence it follows, that there is a first cause of things,
which we call God. There must be something supreme in the order {a51}
of nature, something which is greater than all, which hath nothing
beyond it or above it, otherwise we must run _in infinitum_. We see
not a river, but we conclude a fountain; a watch, but we conclude an
artificer. As all number begins from unity, so all the multitude of
things in the world begins from some unity, oneness as the principle
of it. It is natural to arise from a view of those things, to the
conception of a nature more perfect than any. As from heat mixed
with cold, and light mixed with darkness, men conceive and arise in
their understandings to an intense heat and a pure light; and from a
corporeal or bodily substance joined with an incorporeal, (as man is
an earthly body and a spiritual soul), we ascend to a conception of
a substance purely incorporeal and spiritual: so from a multitude of
things in the world, reason leads us to one choice being above all.
And since in all natures in the world, we still find a superior nature;
the nature of one beast, above the nature of another; the nature of
man above the nature of beasts; and some invisible nature, the worker
of strange effects in the air and earth, which cannot be ascribed to
any visible cause, we must suppose some nature above all those, of
unconceivable perfection.
Every skeptic, one that doubts whether there be anything real or no
in the world, that counts everything an appearance, must necessarily
own a first cause.[65] They cannot reasonably doubt, but that there
is some first cause which makes the things appear so to them. They
cannot be the cause of their own appearance. For as nothing can have
a being from itself, so nothing can appear by itself and its own force.
Nothing can be and not be at the same time. But that which is not and
yet seems to be; if it be the cause why it seems to be what it is not,
it may be said to be and not to be. But certainly such persons must
think themselves to exist. If they do not, they cannot think; and if
they do exist, they must have some cause of that existence. So that
which way soever we turn ourselves, we must in reason own a first
cause of the world. Well then might the Psalmist term an atheist
a fool, that disowns a God against his own reason. Without owning a
God as the first cause of the world, no man can give any tolerable or
satisfactory account of the world to his own reason. And this first
cause,
1. Must necessarily exist. It is necessary that He by whom all things
are, should be before all things, and nothing before him.[66] And if
nothing be before him, he comes not from any other; and then he always
was, and without beginning. He is from himself; not that he once was
not, but because he hath not his existence from another, and therefore
of necessity he did exist from all eternity. Nothing can make itself,
or bring itself into being; therefore there must be some being which
hath no cause, that depends upon no other, never was produced by any
other, but was what he is from eternity, and cannot be otherwise;
and is not what he is by will, but nature, necessarily existing, and
always existing without any capacity or possibility ever not to be.
2. Must be infinitely perfect. Since man knows he is an imperfect
being, he must suppose the perfections he wants are seated in some
{a52} other being which hath limited him, and upon which he depends.
Whatsoever we conceive of excellency or perfection, must be in God.
For we can conceive no perfection but what God hath given us a power
to conceive. And he that gave us a power to conceive a transcendent
perfection above whatever we saw or heard of, hath much more in
himself; else he could not give us such a conception.
Secondly, As the production of the world, so the harmony of all
the parts of it declare the being and wisdom of a God. Without the
acknowledging God, the atheist can give no account of those things.
The multitude, elegancy, variety, and beauty of all things are steps
whereby to ascend to one fountain and original of them. Is it not a
folly to deny the being of a wise agent, who sparkles in the beauty
and motions of the heavens, rides upon the wings of the wind, and is
writ upon the flowers and fruits of plants? As the cause is known by
the effects, so the wisdom of the cause is known by the elegancy of
the work, the proportion of the parts to one another. Who can imagine
the world could be rashly made, and without consultation, which, in
every part of it, is so artificially framed? No work of art springs up
of its own accord.[67] The world is framed by an excellent art, and,
therefore, made by some skilful artist. As we hear not a melodious
instrument, but we conclude there is a musician that touches it,
as well as some skilful hand that framed and disposed it for those
lessons; and no man that hears the pleasant sound of a lute but will
fix his thoughts, not upon the instrument itself, but upon the skill
of the artist that made it, and the art of the musician that strikes
it, though he should not see the first, when he saw the lute, nor see
the other, when he hears the harmony: so a rational creature confines
not his thoughts to his sense when he sees the sun in its glory, and
the moon walking in its brightness; but riseth up in a contemplation
and admiration of that Infinite Spirit that composed, and filled them
with such sweetness. This appears,
1. In the linking contrary qualities together. All things are
compounded of the elements. Those are endued with contrary qualities,
dryness and moisture, heat and cold. These would always be contending
with and infesting one another’s rights, till the contest ended in the
destruction of one or both. Where fire is predominant, it would suck
up the water; where water is prevalent, it would quench the fire.
The heat would wholly expel the cold, or the cold overpower the heat;
yet we see them chained and linked one within another in every body
upon the earth, and rendering mutual offices for the benefit of that
body wherein they are seated, and all conspiring together in their
particular quarrels for the public interest of the body. How could
those contraries, that of themselves observe no order, that are always
preying upon one another, jointly accord together of themselves, for
one common end, if they were not linked in a common band, and reduced
to that order by some incomprehensible wisdom and power, which keeps
a hand upon them, orders their motions and directs their events, and
makes them friendly pass into one another’s natures? Confusion had
been the result of the discord and diversity of their natures; no
composition could have been of {a53} those conflicting qualities for
the frame of any body, nor any harmony arose from so many jarring
strings, if they had not been reduced into concord by one that is
supreme Lord over them, and knows how to dispose their varieties and
enmities for the public good. If a man should see a large city or
country, consisting of great multitudes of men, of different tempers,
full of frauds, and factions, and animosities in their natures against
one another, yet living together in good order and peace, without
oppressing and invading one another, and joining together for the
public good, he would presently conclude there were some excellent
governor, who tempered them by his wisdom, and preserved the public
peace, though he had never yet beheld him with his eye.[68] It is
as necessary to conclude a God, who moderates the contrarieties in
the world, as to conclude a wise prince who overrules the contrary
dispositions in a state, making every one to keep his own bounds
and confines. Things that are contrary to one another subsist in an
admirable order.
2. In the subserviency of one thing to another. All the members of
living creatures are curiously fitted for the service of one another,
destined to a particular end, and endued with a virtue to attain that
end, and so distinctly placed, that one is no hindrance to the other
in its operations.[69] Is not this more admirable than to be the
work of chance, which is incapable to settle such an order, and fix
particular and general ends, causing an exact correspondency of all
the parts with one another, and every part to conspire together for
one common end? One thing is fitted for another. The eye is fitted
for the sun, and the sun fitted for the eye. Several sorts of food are
fitted for several creatures, and those creatures fitted with organs
for the partaking that food.
(1.) Subserviency of heavenly bodies. The sun, the heart of the world,
is not for itself, but for the good of the world, as the heart of man
is for the good of the body.[70] How conveniently is the sun placed,
at a distance from the earth, and the upper heavens, to enlighten the
stars above, and enliven the earth below! If it were either higher
or lower, one part would want its influences. It is not in the higher
parts of the heavens; the earth, then, which lives and fructifies
by its influence would have been exposed to a perpetual winter and
chillness, unable to have produced anything for the sustenance of man
or beast. If seated lower, the earth had been parched up, the world
made uninhabitable, and long since had been consumed to ashes by the
strength of its heat. Consider the motion, as well as the situation of
the sun. Had it stood still, one part of the world had been cherished
by its beams, and the other left in a desolate widowhood, in a
disconsolate darkness. Besides, the earth would have had no shelter
from its perpendicular beams striking perpetually, and without any
remission, upon it. The same incommodities would have followed upon
its fixedness as upon its too great nearness. By a constant day, the
beauty of the stars had been obscured, the knowledge of their motions
been prevented, and a considerable part of the glorious wisdom of
the Creator, in those choice “works of his {a54} fingers,”[71] had
been veiled from our eyes. It moves in a fixed line, visits all parts
of the earth, scatters in the day its refreshing blessings in every
creek of the earth, and removes the mask from the other beauties of
heaven in the night, which sparkle out to the glory of the Creator.
It spreads its light, warms the earth, cherisheth the seeds, excites
the spirit in the earth, and brings fruit to maturity. View also the
air, the vast extent between heaven and earth, which serves for a
water‑course, a cistern for water, to bedew the face of the sun‑burnt
earth, to satisfy the desolate ground, and to cause the “bud of the
tender herb to spring forth.”[72] Could chance appoint the clouds of
the air to interpose as fans between the scorching heat of the sun,
and the faint bodies of the creatures? Can that be the “father of the
rain, or beget the drops of dew?”[73] Could anything so blind settle
those ordinances of heaven for the preservation of creatures on the
earth? Can this either bring or stay the bottles of heaven, when the
“dust grows into hardness, and the clouds cleave fast together?”[74]
(2.) Subserviency of the lower world, the earth, and sea, which was
created to be inhabited, (Isa. xlv. 18). The sea affords water to the
rivers, the rivers, like so many veins, are spread through the whole
body of the earth, to refresh and enable it to bring forth fruit for
the sustenance of man and beast, (Ps. civ. 10, 11). “He sends the
springs into the valleys, which run among the hills; they give drink
to every beast of the field; the wild asses quench their thirst. He
causes the grass to grow for the cattle, and the herb for the service
of man, that he may bring forth food out of the earth.” (ver. 14.) The
trees are provided for shades against the extremity of heat, a refuge
for the panting beasts, an “habitation for birds,” wherein to make
their nests (ver. 17), and a basket for their provision. How are
the valleys and mountains of the earth disposed for the pleasure and
profit of man! Every year are the fields covered with harvests for
the nourishing the creatures; no part is barren, but beneficial to
man. The mountains that are not clothed with grass for his food, are
set with stones to make him an habitation; they have their peculiar
services of metals and minerals, for the conveniency and comfort, and
benefit of man. Things which are not fit for his food, are medicines
for his cure, under some painful sickness. Where the earth brings not
forth corn, it brings forth roots for the service of other creatures.
Wood abounds more in those countries where the cold is stronger than
in others. Can this be the result of chance, or not rather of an
Infinite Wisdom? Consider the usefulness of the sea, for the supply
of rivers to refresh the earth: “Which go up by the mountains and down
by the valleys into the place God hath founded for them” (Ps. civ. 8):
a store‑house for fish, for the nourishment of other creatures, a
shop of medicines for cure, and pearls for ornament: the band that
ties remote nations together, by giving opportunity of passage to, and
commerce with, one another. How should that natural inclination of the
sea to cover the earth, submit to this subserviency to the creatures?
Who hath pounded in this fluid mass of water in certain limits,
and confined it to its {a55} own channel, for the accommodation of
such creatures, who, by its common law, can only be upon the earth?
Naturally the earth was covered with the deep as with a garment; the
waters stood above the mountains. “Who set a bound that they might not
pass over,”[75] that they return not again to cover the earth? Was it
blind chance or an Infinite Power, that “shut up the sea with doors,
and made thick darkness a swaddling band for it, and said, Hitherto
shall thou come and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be
stayed?”[76] All things are so ordered, that they are not _propter
se_, but _propter aliud_. What advantage accrues to the sun by its
unwearied rolling about the world? Doth it increase the perfection of
its nature by all its circuits? No; but it serves the inferior world,
it impregnates things by its heat. Not the most abject thing but hath
its end and use. There is a straight connection: the earth could not
bring forth fruit without the heavens; the heavens could not water the
earth without vapors from it.
(3.) All this subserviency of creatures centres in man. Other
creatures are served by those things, as well as ourselves, and
they are provided for their nourishment and refreshment, as well as
ours;[77] yet, both they, and all creatures meet in man, as lines in
their centres. Things that have no life or sense, are made for those
that have both life and sense; and those that have life and sense,
are made for those that are endued with reason. When the Psalmist
admiringly considers the heavens, moon and stars, he intimates man to
be the end for which they were created (Ps. viii. 3, 4): “What is man,
that thou art mindful of him?” He expresseth more particularly the
dominion that man hath “over the beasts of the field, the fowl of the
air, and whatsoever passes through the paths of the sea” (ver. 6‒8);
and concludes from thence, the “excellency of God’s name in all
the earth.” All things in the world, one way or other, centre in an
usefulness for man; some to feed him, some to clothe him, some to
delight him, others to instruct him, some to exercise his wit, and
others his strength. Since man did not make them, he did not also
order them for his own use. If they conspire to serve him who never
made them, they direct man to acknowledge another, who is the joint
Creator both of the lord and the servants under his dominion; and,
therefore, as the inferior natures are ordered by an invisible hand
for the good of man, so the nature of man is, by the same hand,
ordered to acknowledge the existence and the glory of the Creator of
him. This visible order man knows he did not constitute; he did not
settle those creatures in subserviency to himself; they were placed
in that order before he had any acquaintance with them, or existence
of himself; which is a question God puts to Job, to consider of (Job
xxxviii. 4): “Where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the earth?
declare, if thou hast understanding.” All is ordered for man’s use;
the heavens answer to the earth, as a roof to a floor, both composing
a delightful habitation for man; vapors ascend from the earth, and
the heaven concocts them, and returns them back in welcome showers for
the supplying of the earth.[78] The light {a56} of the sun descends
to beautify the earth, and employs its heat to midwife its fruits,
and this for the good of the community, whereof man is the head;
and though all creatures have distinct natures, and must act for
particular ends, according to the law of their creation, yet there
is a joint combination for the good of the whole, as the common end;
just as all the rivers in the world, from what part soever they come,
whether north or south, fall into the sea, for the supply of that mass
of waters, which loudly proclaims some infinitely wise nature, who
made those things in so exact an harmony. “As in a clock, the hammer
which strikes the bell leads us to the next wheel, that to another,
the little wheel to a greater, whence it derives its motion, this
at last to the spring, which acquaints us that there was some artist
that framed them in this subordination to one another for this orderly
motion.”[79]
(4.) This order or subserviency is regular and uniform; everything is
determined to its particular nature.[80] The sun and moon make day and
night, months and years, determine the seasons, never are defective
in coming back to their station and place; they wander not from their
roads, shock not against one another, nor hinder one another in the
functions assigned them. From a small grain or seed, a tree springs,
with body, root, bark, leaves, fruit of the same shape, figure, smell,
taste; that there should be as many parts in one, as in all of the
same kind, and no more; and that in the womb of a sensitive creature
should be formed one of the same kind, with all the due members,
and no more; and the creature that produceth it knows not how it is
formed, or how it is perfected. If we say this is nature, this nature
is an intelligent being; if not, how can it direct all causes to
such uniform ends? if it be intelligent, this nature must be the same
we call God, “who ordered every herb to yield seed, and every fruit
tree to yield fruit after its kind, and also every beast, and every
creeping thing after its kind.” (Gen. i. 11, 12, 24.) And everything
is determined to its particular season; the sap riseth from the root
at its appointed time, enlivening and clothing the branches with a
new garment at such a time of the sun’s returning, not wholly hindered
by any accidental coldness of the weather, it being often colder at
its return, than it was at the sun’s departure. All things have their
seasons of flourishing, budding, blossoming, bringing forth fruit;
they ripen in their seasons, cast their leaves at the same time, throw
off their old clothes, and in the spring appear with new garments, but
still in the same fashion. The winds and the rain have their seasons,
and seem to be administered by laws for the profit of man.[81] No
satisfactory cause of those things can be ascribed to the earth,
the sea, or the air, or stars. “Can any understand the spreading
of his clouds, or the noise of his tabernacle?” (Job xxxviii. 29).
The natural reason of those things cannot be demonstrated, without
recourse to an infinite and intelligent being; nothing can be rendered
capable of the direction of those things but a God.
This regularity in plants and animals is in all nations. The heavens
have the same motion in all parts of the world; all men have the same
law of nature in their mind; all creatures are stamped {a57} with the
same law of creation. In all parts the same creatures serve for the
same use; and though there be different creatures in India and Europe,
yet they have the same subordination, the same subserviency to one
another, and ultimately to man; which shows that there is a God, and
but one God, who tunes all those different strings to the same notes
in all places. Is it nature merely conducts these natural causes in
due measure to their proper effects, without interfering with one
another? Can mere nature be the cause of those musical proportions of
time? You may as well conceive a lute to sound its own strings without
the hand of an artist; a city well governed without a governor; an
army keep its stations without a general, as imagine so exact an order
without an orderer. Would any man, when he hears a clock strike, by
fit intervals, the hour of the day, imagine this regularity in it
without the direction of one that had understanding to manage it?
He would not only regard the motion of the clock, but commend the
diligence of the clock‑keeper.
(5.) This order and subserviency is constant. Children change the
customs and manners of their fathers; magistrates change the laws
they have received from their ancestors, and enact new ones in their
room: but in the world all things consist as they were created at the
beginning; the law of nature in the creatures hath met with no change.
Who can behold the sun rising in the morning, the moon shining in
the night, increasing and decreasing in its due spaces, the stars in
their regular motions night after night, for all ages, and yet deny a
President over them?[82] And this motion of the heavenly bodies, being
contrary to the nature of other creatures, who move in order to rest,
must be from some higher cause. But those, ever since the settling in
their places, have been perpetually rounding the world. What nature,
but one powerful and intelligent, could give that perpetual motion
to the sun,[83] which being bigger than the earth a hundred sixty‑six
times, runs many thousand miles with a mighty swiftness in the space
of an hour, with an unwearied diligence performing its daily task, and,
as a strong man, rejoicing to run its race, for above five thousand
years together, without intermission, but in the time of Joshua?[84]
It is not nature’s sun, but God’s sun, which he “makes to rise upon
the just and unjust.”[85] So a plant receives its nourishment from
the earth, sends forth the juice to every branch, forms a bud which
spreads it into a blossom and flower; the leaves of this drop off,
and leave a fruit of the same color and taste, every year, which,
being ripened by the sun, leaves seeds behind it for the propagation
of its like, which contains in the nature of it the same kind of buds,
blossoms, fruit, which were before; and being nourished in the womb
of the earth, and quickened by the power of the sun, discovers itself
at length, in all the progresses and motions which its predecessor
did. Thus in all ages, in all places, every year it performs the same
task, spins out fruit of the same color, taste, virtue, to refresh
the several creatures for which they are provided. {a58} This settled
state of things comes from that God who laid the “foundations of
the earth,” that it should “not be removed” forever;[86] and set
“ordinances for them” to act by a stated law;[87] according to which
they move as if they understood themselves to have made a covenant
with their Creator.[88]
3. Add to this union of contrary qualities, and the subserviency of
one thing to another, the admirable variety and diversity of things
in the world. What variety of metals, living creatures, plants! what
variety and distinction in the shape of their leaves, flowers, smell,
resulting from them! Who can number up the several sorts of beasts
on the earth, birds in the air, fish in the sea? How various are
their motions! Some creep, some go, some fly, some swim; and in all
this variety each creature hath organs or members, fitted for their
peculiar motion. If you consider the multitude of stars, which shine
like jewels in the heavens, their different magnitudes, or the variety
of colors in the flowers and tapestry of the earth, you could no more
conclude they made themselves, or were made by chance, than you can
imagine a piece of arras, with a diversity of figures and colors,
either wove itself, or were knit together by hazard.
How delicious is the sap of the vine, when turned into wine, above
that of a crab! Both have the same womb of earth to conceive them,
both agree in the nature of wood and twigs, as channels to convey it
into fruit. What is that which makes the one so sweet, the other so
sour, or makes that sweet which was a few weeks before unpleasantly
sharp? Is it the earth? No: they both have the same soil; the branches
may touch each other; the strings of their roots may, under ground,
entwine about one another. Is it the sun? both have the same beams.
Why is not the taste and color of the one as gratifying as the other?
Is it the root? the taste of that is far different from that of
the fruit it bears. Why do they not, when they have the same soil,
the same sun, and stand near one another, borrow something from one
another’s natures? No reason can be rendered, but that there is a
God of infinite wisdom hath determined this variety, and bound up the
nature of each creature within itself. “Everything follows the law
of its creation; and it is worthy observation, that the Creator of
them hath not given that power to animals, which arise from different
species, to propagate the like to themselves; as mules, that arise
from different species. No reason can be rendered of this, but the
fixed determination of the Creator, that those species which were
created by him should not be lost in those mixtures which are contrary
to the law of the creation?”[89] This cannot possibly be ascribed to
that which is commonly called nature, but unto the God of nature, who
will not have his creatures exceed their bounds or come short of them.
Now since among those varieties there are some things better than
other, yet all are good in their kind, and partake of goodness,[90]
there must be something better and more excellent than all those, from
whom they derive that goodness, which inheres in their nature and is
communicated by them to others: and this excellent Being must {a59}
inherit, in an eminent way in his own nature, the goodness of all
those varieties, since they made not themselves, but were made by
another. All that goodness which is scattered in those varieties must
be infinitely concentered in that nature, which distributed those
various perfections to them (Ps. xciv. 9): “He that planted the ear,
shall not he hear; he that formed the eye, shall not he see; he that
teacheth man knowledge, shall not he know?” The Creator is greater
than the creature, and whatsoever is in his effects, is but an
impression of some excellency in himself: there is, therefore, some
chief fountain of goodness whence all those various goodnesses in the
world do flow.
From all this it follows, if there be an order, and harmony, there
must be an Orderer: one that “made the earth by his power, established
the world by his wisdom, and stretched out the heavens by his
discretion” (Jer. x. 12). Order being the effect, cannot be the cause
of itself: order is the disposition of things to an end, and is not
intelligent, but implies an intelligent Orderer; and, therefore, it
is as certain that there is a God, as it is certain there is order in
the world. Order is an effect of reason and counsel; this reason and
counsel must have its residence in some being before this order was
fixed: the things ordered are always distinct from that reason and
counsel whereby they are ordered, and also after it, as the effect
is after the cause. No man begins a piece of work but he hath the
model of it in his own mind: no man builds a house, or makes a watch,
but he hath the idea or copy of it in his own head. This beautiful
world bespeaks an idea of it, or a model: since there is such a
magnificent wisdom in the make of each creature, and the proportion
of one creature to another, this model must be before the world, as
the pattern is always before the thing that is wrought by it. This,
therefore, must be in some intelligent and wise agent, and this is God.
Since the reason of those things exceed the reason and all the art of
man, who can ascribe them to any inferior cause? Chance it could not
be; the motions of chance are not constant, and at set seasons, as
the motions of creatures are. That which is by chance is contingent,
this is necessary; uniformity can never be the birth of chance. Who
can imagine that all the parts of a watch can meet together and put
themselves in order and motion by chance? “Nor can it be nature only,
which indeed is a disposition of second causes. If nature hath not
an understanding, it cannot work such effects. If nature therefore
uses counsel to begin a thing, reason to dispose it, art to effect it,
virtue to complete it, and power to govern it, why should it be called
nature rather than God?”[91] Nothing so sure as that which hath an end
to which it tends, hath a cause by which it is ordered to that end.
Since therefore all things are ordered in subserviency to the good of
man, they are so ordered by Him that made both man and them; and man
must acknowledge the wisdom and goodness of his Creator, and act in
subserviency to his glory, as other creatures act in subserviency to
his good. Sensible objects were not made only to gratify the sense of
man, but to hand something to his mind as he is a rational creature:
to discover God to {a60} him as an object of love and desire to be
enjoyed. If this be not the effect of it, the order of the creature,
as to such an one, is in vain, and falls short of its true end.[92]
To conclude this: As when a man comes into a palace, built according
to the exactest rule of art, and with an unexceptionable conveniency
for the inhabitants, he would acknowledge both the being and skill
of the builder; so whosoever shall observe the disposition of all
the parts of the world, their connection, comeliness, the variety of
seasons, the swarms of different creatures, and the mutual offices
they render to one another, cannot conclude less, than that it was
contrived by an infinite skill, effected by infinite power, and
governed by infinite wisdom. None can imagine a ship to be orderly
conducted without a pilot; nor the parts of the world to perform their
several functions without a wise guide; considering the members of the
body cannot perform theirs, without the active presence of the soul.
The atheist, then, is a fool to deny that which every creature in his
constitution asserts, and thereby renders himself unable to give a
satisfactory account of that constant uniformity in the motions of
the creatures.
Thirdly, As the production and harmony, so particular creatures,
pursuing and attaining their ends, manifest that there is a God. All
particular creatures have natural instincts, which move them for some
end. The intending of an end is a property of a rational creature;
since the lower creatures cannot challenge that title, they must act
by the understanding and direction of another; and since man cannot
challenge the honor of inspiring the creatures with such instincts,
it must be ascribed to some nature infinitely above any creature in
understanding. No creature doth determine itself. Why do the fruits
and grain of the earth nourish us, when the earth which instrumentally
gives them that fitness, cannot nourish us, but because their several
ends are determined by one higher than the world?
1. Several creatures have several natures. How soon will all creatures,
as soon as they see the light, move to that whereby they must live,
and make use of the natural arms God hath given their kind, for their
defence, before they are grown to any maturity to afford them that
defence! The Scripture makes the appetite of infants to their milk a
foundation of the divine glory, (Ps. viii. 3), “Out of the mouths of
babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength;” that is, matter of
praise and acknowledgment of God, in the natural appetite they have
to their milk and their relish of it. All creatures have a natural
affection to their young ones; all young ones by a natural instinct,
move to, and receive the nourishment that is proper for them; some
are their own physicians, as well as their own caterers, and naturally
discern what preserves them in life, and what restores them when
sick. The swallow flies to its celandine, and the toad hastens to
its plantain. Can we behold the spider’s nets, or silkworm’s web,
the bee’s closets, or the ant’s granaries, without acknowledging a
higher being than a creature who hath planted that genius in them?
The consideration of the nature of several creatures God commended to
Job, (chap. xxxix., where he discourseth {a61} to Job of the natural
instincts of the goat, the ostrich, horse, and eagle, &c.) to persuade
him to the acknowledgment and admiration of God, and humiliation of
himself. The spider, as if it understood the art of weaving, fits its
web both for its own habitation, and a net to catch its prey. The bee
builds a cell which serves for chambers to reside in, and a repository
for its provision. Birds are observed to build their nests with a
clammy matter without, for the firmer duration of it, and with a soft
moss and down within, for the conveniency and warmth of their young.
“The stork knows his appointed time,” (Jer. viii. 7), and the swallows
observe the time of their coming; they go and return according to the
seasons of the year; this they gain not by consideration, it descends
to them with their nature; they neither gain nor increase it by
rational deductions. It is not in vain to speak of these. How little
do we improve by meditation those objects which daily offer themselves
to our view, full of instructions for us! And our Saviour sends his
disciples to spell God in the lilies.[93] It is observed also, that
the creatures offensive to man go single; if they went by troops, they
would bring destruction upon man and beast; this is the nature of them,
for the preservation of others.
2. They know not their end. They have a law in their natures, but
have no rational understanding, either of the end to which they are
appointed, or the means fit to attain it; they naturally do what they
do, and move by no counsel of their own, but by a law impressed by
some higher hand upon their natures. What plant knows why it strikes
its root into the earth? doth it understand what storms it is to
contest with? Or why it shoots up its branches towards heaven? doth it
know it needs the droppings of the clouds to preserve itself, and make
it fruitful? These are acts of understanding; the root is downward
to preserve its own standing, the branches upward to preserve other
creatures; this understanding is not in the creature itself, but
originally in another. Thunders and tempests know not why they are
sent; yet by the direction of a mighty hand, they are instruments of
justice upon a wicked world. Rational creatures that act for some end,
and know the end they aim at, yet know not the manner of the natural
motion of the members to it.[94] When we intend to look upon a thing,
we take no counsel about the natural motion of our eyes, we know
not all the principles of their operations, or how that dull matter
whereof our bodies are composed, is subject to the order of our minds.
We are not of counsel with our stomachs about the concoction of our
meat, or the distribution of the nourishing juice to the several parts
of the body.[95] Neither the mother nor the fœtus sit in council how
the formation should be made in the womb. We know no more than a plant
knows what stature it is of, and what medicinal virtue its fruit hath
for the good of man; yet all those natural operations are perfectly
directed to their proper end, by an higher wisdom than any human
understanding is able to conceive, since they exceed the ability
of an inanimate or fleshly nature, yea, and the wisdom of a man.
Do we not often {a62} see reasonable creatures acting for one end,
and perfecting a higher than what they aimed at or could suspect?
When Joseph’s brethren sold him for a slave, their end was to be
rid of an informer;[96] but the action issued in preparing him to
be the preserver of them and their families. Cyrus’s end was to be
a conqueror, but the action ended in being the Jews’ deliverer (Prov.
xvi. 9). “A man’s heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directs his
steps.”
3. Therefore there is some superior understanding and nature which so
acts them. That which acts for an end unknown to itself, depends upon
some overruling wisdom that knows that end. Who should direct them in
all those ends, but He that bestowed a being upon them for those ends;
who knows what is convenient for their life, security and propagation
of their natures?[97] An exact knowledge is necessary both of what is
agreeable to them, and the means whereby they must attain it, which,
since it is not inherent in them, is in that wise God, who puts those
instincts into them, and governs them in the exercise of them to such
ends. Any man that sees a dart flung, knows it cannot hit the mark
without the skill and strength of an archer; or he that sees the hand
of a dial pointing to the hours successively, knows that the dial
is ignorant of its own end, and is disposed and directed in that
motion by another. All creatures ignorant of their own natures, could
not universally in the whole kind, and in every climate and country,
without any difference in the whole world, tend to a certain end, if
some overruling wisdom did not preside over the world and guide them:
and if the creatures have a Conductor, they have a Creator; all things
are “turned round about by his counsel, that they may do whatsoever
he commands them, upon the face of the world in the earth.”[98] So
that in this respect the folly of atheism appears. Without the owning
a God, no account can be given of those actions of creatures, that
are an imitation of reason. To say the bees, &c. are rational, is
to equal them to man: nay, make them his superiors, since they do
more by nature than the wisest man can do by art: it is their own
counsel whereby they act, or another’s; if it be their own, they are
reasonable creatures; if by another’s, it is not mere nature that is
necessary; then other creatures would not be without the same skill,
there would be no difference among them. If nature be restrained by
another, it hath a superior; if not, it is a free agent; it is an
understanding Being that directs them; and then it is something
superior to all creatures in the world; and by this, therefore, we
may ascend to the acknowledgment of the necessity of a God.
Fourthly. Add to the production and order of the world and the
creatures acting for their end, the preservation of them. Nothing
can depend upon itself in its preservation, no more than it could
in its being. If the order of the world was not fixed by itself,
the preservation of that order cannot be continued by itself. Though
the matter of the world after creation cannot return to that nothing
whence it was fetched, without the power of God that made it, (because
the same power is as requisite to reduce a thing to nothing as to
raise a thing from nothing), yet without the actual exerting of a {a63}
power that made the creatures, they would fall into confusion. Those
contesting qualities which are in every part of it, could not have
preserved, but would have consumed, and extinguished one another, and
reduced the world to that confused chaos, wherein it was before the
Spirit moved upon the waters: as contrary parts could not have met
together in one form, unless there had been one that had conjoined
them; so they could not have kept together after their conjunction
unless the same hand had preserved them. Natural contrarieties cannot
be reconciled. It is as great power to keep discords knit, as at first
to link them. Who would doubt but that an army made up of several
nations and humors, would fall into a civil war and sheathe their
swords in one another’s bowels, if they were not under the management
of some wise general; or a ship dash against the rocks without the
skill of a pilot? As the body hath neither life nor motion without
the active presence of the soul, which distributes to every part
the virtue of acting, sets every one in the exercise of its proper
function, and resides in every part; so there is some powerful cause
which doth the like in the world, that rules and tempers it.[99] There
is need of the same power and action to preserve a thing, as there
was at first to make it. When we consider that we are preserved, and
know that we could not preserve ourselves, we must necessarily run to
some first cause which doth preserve us. All works of art depend upon
nature, and are preserved while they are kept by the force of nature,
as a statue depends upon the matter whereof it is made, whether stone
or brass; this nature, therefore, must have some superior by whose
influx it is preserved. Since, therefore, we see a stable order in
the things of the world, that they conspire together for the good and
beauty of the universe; that they depend upon one another; there must
be some principle upon which they do depend; something to which the
first link of the chain is fastened, which himself depends upon no
superior, but wholly rests in his own essence and being. It is the
title of God to be the “Preserver of man and beast.”[100] The Psalmist
elegantly describeth it, (Psalm civ. 24, &c.) “The earth is full of
his riches: all wait upon him, that he may give them their meat in
due season. When he opens his hand, he fills them with good; when
he hides his face they are troubled; if he take away their breath,
they die, and return to dust. He sends forth his Spirit, and they are
created, and renews the face of the earth. The glory of the Lord shall
endure forever; and the Lord shall rejoice in his works.” Upon the
consideration of all which, the Psalmist (ver. 34) takes a pleasure
in the meditation of God as the cause and manager of all those things;
which issues into a joy in God, and a praising of him. And why should
not the consideration of the power and wisdom of God in the creatures
produce the same effect in the hearts of us, if he be our God? Or, as
some render it, “My meditation shall be sweet,” or acceptable _to_ him,
whereby I find matter of praise in the things of the world, and offer
it to the Creator of it.
_Reason III._ It is a folly to deny that which a man’s own nature
witnesseth to him. The whole frame of bodies and souls bears the {a64}
impress of the infinite power and wisdom of the Creator: a body framed
with an admirable architecture, a soul endowed with understanding,
will, judgment, memory, imagination. Man is the epitome of the world,
contains in himself the substance of all natures, and the fulness of
the whole universe; not only in regard of the universalness of his
knowledge, whereby he comprehends the reasons of many things; but as
all the perfections of the several natures of the world are gathered
and united in man, for the perfection of his own, in a smaller volume.
In his soul he partakes of heaven; in his body of the earth. There is
the life of plants, the sense of beasts, and the intellectual nature
of angels. “The Lord breathed into his nostril the breath of life, and
man,”[101] &c.: חיים, _of lives_. Not one sort of _lives_, but several;
not only an _animal_, but a _rational_ life; a soul of a nobler
extract and nature, than what was given to other creatures. So that
we need not step out of doors, or cast our eyes any further than
ourselves, to behold a God. He shines in the capacity of our souls,
and the vigor of our members. We must fly from ourselves, and be
stripped of our own humanity, before we can put off the notion of a
Deity. He that is ignorant of the existence of God, must be possessed
of so much folly, as to be ignorant of his own make and frame.
1. In the parts whereof he doth consist, body and soul.
First, Take a prospect of the body. The Psalmist counts it a matter
of praise and admiration (Psalm cxxxix. 15, 16): “I will praise thee,
for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. When I was made in secret,
and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth, in thy book
all my members were written.” The scheme of man and every member was
drawn in his book. All the sinews, veins, arteries, bones, like a
piece of embroidery or tapestry, were wrought by God, as it were, with
deliberation; like an artificer, that draws out the model of what he
is to do in writing, and sets it before him when he begins his work.
And, indeed, the fabric of man’s body, as well as his soul, is an
argument for a Divinity. The artificial structure of it, the elegancy
of every part, the proper situation of them, their proportion one to
another, the fitness for their several functions, drew from Galen[102]
(a heathen, and one that had no raised sentiments of a Deity) a
confession of the admirable wisdom and power of the Creator, and that
none but God could frame it.
1. In the order, fitness, and usefulness of every part. The whole
model of the body is grounded upon reason. Every member hath its
exact proportion, distinct office, regular motion. Every part hath a
particular comeliness, and convenient temperament bestowed upon it,
according to its place in the body. The heart is hot, to enliven the
whole; the eye clear, to take in objects to present them to the soul.
Every member is presented for its peculiar service and action. Some
are for sense, some for motion, some for preparing, and others for
dispensing nourishment to the several parts: they mutually depend
upon and serve one another. What small strings fasten the particular
members together, “as the earth, that hangs {a65} upon nothing!”[103]
Take but one part away, and you either destroy the whole, or stamp
upon it some mark of deformity. All are knit together by an admirable
symmetry; all orderly perform their functions, as acting by a settled
law; none swerving from their rule, but in case of some predominant
humor. And none of them, in so great a multitude of parts, stifled
in so little a room, or jostling against one another, to hinder their
mutual actions; none can be better disposed. And the greatest wisdom
of man could not imagine it, till his eyes present them with the sight
and connection of one part and member with another.
(1.) The heart.[104] How strongly it is guarded with ribs like a
wall, that it might not be easily hurt! It draws blood from the liver,
through a channel made for that purpose; rarefies it, and makes it
fit to pass through the arteries and veins, and to carry heat and
life to every part of the body: and by a perpetual motion, it sucks
in the blood, and spouts it out again; which motion depends not upon
the command of the soul, but is pure natural.
(2.) The mouth takes in the meat, the teeth grind it for the stomach,
the stomach prepares it, nature strains it through the milky veins,
the liver refines it, and mints it into blood, separates the purer
from the drossy parts, which go to the heart, circuits through the
whole body, running through the veins, like rivers through so many
channels of the world, for the watering of the several parts; which
are framed of a thin skin for the straining the blood through, for the
supply of the members of the body, and framed with several valves or
doors, for the thrusting the blood forwards to perform its circular
motion.
(3.) The brain, fortified by a strong skull, to hinder outward
accidents, a tough membrane or skin, to hinder any oppression by the
skull; the seat of sense, that which coins the animal spirits, by
purifying and refining those which are sent to it, and seems like a
curious piece of needlework.
(4.) The ear, framed with windings and turnings, to keep any thing
from entering to offend the brain; so disposed as to admit sounds with
the greatest safety and delight; filled with an air within, by the
motion whereof the sound is transmitted to the brain:[105] as sounds
are made in the air by diffusing themselves, as you see circles made
in the water by the flinging in a stone. This is the gate of knowledge,
whereby we hear the oracles of God, and the instruction of men for
arts. It is by this they are exposed to the mind, and the mind of
another man framed in our understandings.
(5.) What a curious workmanship is that of the eye, which is in the
body, as the sun in the world; set in the head as in a watchtower,
having the softest nerves for the receiving the greater multitude
of spirits necessary for the act of vision! How is it provided with
defence, by the variety of coats to secure and accommodate the little
humor and part whereby the vision is made! Made of a round figure, and
convex, as most commodious to receive the species of objects; shaded
by the eyebrows and eyelids; secured by the eyelids, which are its
ornament and safety, which refresh it when it is {a66} too much dried
by heat, hinder too much light from insinuating itself into it to
offend it, cleanse it from impurities, by their quick motion preserve
it from any invasion, and by contraction confer to the more evident
discerning of things. Both the eyes seated in the hollow of the bone
for security, yet standing out, that things may be perceived more
easily on both sides. And this little member can behold the earth,
and in a moment view things as high as heaven.
(6.) The tongue for speech framed like a musical instrument; the
teeth serving for variety of sounds; the lungs serving for bellows to
blow the organs as it were, to cool the heart, by a continual motion
transmitting a pure air to the heart, expelling that which was smoky
and superfluous.[106] It is by the tongue that communication of truth
hath a passage among men; it opens the sense of the mind; there would
be no converse and commerce without it. Speech among all nations hath
an elegancy and attractive force, mastering the affections of men.
Not to speak of other parts, or of the multitude of spirits that act
every part; the quick flight of them where there is a necessity of
their presence. Solomon (Eccles. xii.) makes an elegant description
of them, in his speech of old age; and Job speaks of this formation of
the body (Job x. 9‒11), &c. Not the least part of the body is made in
vain. The hairs of the head have their use, as well as are an ornament.
The whole symmetry of the body is a ravishing object. Every member
hath a signature and mark of God and his wisdom. He is visible in the
formation of the members, the beauty of the parts, and the vigor of
the body. This structure could not be from the body; that only hath a
passive power, and cannot act in the absence of the soul. Nor can it
be from the soul. How comes it then to be so ignorant of the manner of
its formation? The soul knows not the internal parts of its own body,
but by information from others, or inspection into other bodies. It
knows less of the inward frame of the body than it doth of itself; but
he that makes the clock can tell the number and motions of the wheels
within, as well as what figures are without.
This short discourse is _useful_ to raise our admirations of the
wisdom of God, as well as to demonstrate that there is an infinite
wise Creator; and the consideration of ourselves every day, and
the wisdom of God in our frame, would maintain religion much in the
world; since all are so framed that no man can tell any error in the
constitution of him. If thus the body of man is fitted for the service
of his soul by an infinite God, the body ought to be ordered for the
service of this God, and in obedience to him.
2. In the admirable difference of the features of men; which is a
great argument that the world was made by a wise Being. This could
not be wrought by chance, or be the work of mere nature, since we find
never, or very rarely, two persons exactly alike. This distinction
is a part of infinite wisdom; otherwise what confusion would be
introduced into the world? Without this, parents could not know their
children, nor children their parents, nor a brother his sister, nor
a subject his magistrate. Without it there had been no comfort of
relations, no government, no commerce. Debtors {a67} would not have
been known from strangers, nor good men from bad. Propriety could
not have been preserved, nor justice executed; the innocent might
have been apprehended for the nocent; wickedness could not have been
stopped by any law. The faces of men are the same for parts, not for
features, a dissimilitude in a likeness. Man, like to all the rest in
the world, yet unlike to any, and differenced by some mark from all,
which is not to be observed in any other species of creatures. This
speaks some wise agent which framed man; since, for the preservation
of human society and order in the world, this distinction was
necessary.
Secondly, As man’s own nature witnesseth a God to him in the structure
of his body, so also “in the nature of his soul.”[107] We know that we
have an understanding in us; a substance we cannot see, but we know it
by its operations; as thinking, reasoning, willing, remembering, and
as operating about things that are invisible and remote from sense.
This must needs be distinct from the body; for that being but dust and
earth in its original, hath not the power of reasoning and thinking;
for then it would have that power, when the soul were absent, as well
as when it is present. Besides, if it had that power of thinking, it
could think only of those things which are sensible, and made up of
matter, as itself is. This soul hath a greater excellency; it can know
itself, rejoice in itself, which other creatures in this world are not
capable of. The soul is the greatest glory of this lower world; and,
as one saith, “There seems to be no more difference between the soul
and an angel, than between a sword in the scabbard and when it is out
of the scabbard.”[108]
1. Consider the vastness of its capacity. The understanding can
conceive the whole world, and paint in itself the invisible pictures
of all things. It is capable of apprehending and discoursing of things
superior to its own nature. “It is suited to all objects, as the
eye to all colors, or the ear to all sounds.”[109] How great is the
memory, to retain such varieties, such diversities! The will also can
accommodate other things to itself. It invents arts for the use of man:
prescribes rules for the government of states; ransacks the bowels of
nature; makes endless conclusions, and steps in reasoning from one
thing to another, for the knowledge of truth. It can contemplate and
form notions of things higher than the world.
2. The quickness of its motion. “Nothing is more quick in the whole
course of nature. The sun runs through the world in a day; this can
do it in a moment. It can, with one flight of fancy, ascend to the
battlements of heaven.”[110] The mists of the air, that hinder the
sight of the eye, cannot hinder the flights of the soul; it can pass
in a moment from one end of the world to the other, and think of
things a thousand miles distant. It can think of some mean thing in
the world; and presently, by one cast, in the twinkling of an eye,
mount up as high as heaven. As its desires are not bounded by sensual
objects, so neither are the motions of it restrained by them. It will
break forth with the greatest vigor, and conceive things infinitely
above it; though it be in the body, it acts as if it were ashamed
to be cloistered in it. This could not be the result of any {a68}
material cause. Whoever knew mere matter understand, think, will? and
what it hath not, it cannot give. That which is destitute of reason
and will, could never confer reason and will. It is not the effect
of the body; for the body is fitted with members to be subject to it.
It is in part ruled by the activity of the soul, and in part by the
counsel of the soul; it is used by the soul, and knows not how it is
used.[111] Nor could it be from the parents, since the souls of the
children often transcend those of the parents in vivacity, acuteness
and comprehensiveness. One man is stupid, and begets a son with
a capacious understanding; one is debauched and beastly in morals,
and begets a son who, from his infancy, testifies some virtuous
inclinations, which sprout forth in delightful fruit with the ripeness
of his age. Whence should this difference arise,――a fool begat the
wise man, and a debauched the virtuous man? The wisdom of the one
could not descend from the foolish soul of the other; nor the virtues
of the son, from the deformed and polluted soul of the parent.[112]
It lies not in the organs of the body: for if the folly of the parent
proceeded not from their souls, but the ill disposition of the organs
of their bodies, how comes it to pass that the bodies of the children
are better organized beyond the goodness of their immediate cause?
We must recur to some invisible hand, that makes the difference, who
bestows upon one at his pleasure richer qualities than upon another.
You can see nothing in the world endowed with some excellent quality,
but you must imagine some bountiful hand did enrich it with that dowry.
None can be so foolish as to think that a vessel ever enriched itself
with that sprightly liquor wherewith it is filled; or that anything
worse than the soul should endow it with that knowledge and activity
which sparkles in it. Nature could not produce it. That nature is
intelligent, or not; if it be not, then it produceth an effect more
excellent than itself, inasmuch as an understanding being surmounts
a being that hath no understanding. If the supreme cause of the soul
be intelligent, why do we not call it God as well as nature? We must
arise from hence to the notion of a God; a spiritual nature cannot
proceed but from a spirit higher than itself, and of a transcendent
perfection above itself. If we believe we have souls, and understand
the state of our own faculties, we must be assured that there was some
invisible hand which bestowed those faculties, and the riches of them
upon us. A man must be ignorant of himself before he can be ignorant
of the existence of God. By considering the nature of our souls, we
may as well be assured that there is a God, as that there is a sun, by
the shining of the beams in at our windows; and, indeed, the soul is
a statue and representation of God, as the landscape of a country or a
map represents all the parts of it, but in a far less proportion than
the country itself is. The soul fills the body, and God the world;
the soul sustains the body, and God the world; the soul sees, but is
not seen; God sees all things, but is himself invisible. How base are
they {a69} then that prostitute their souls, an image of God, to base
things unexpressibly below their own nature!
3. I might add, the union of soul and body. Man is a kind of compound
of angel and beast, of soul and body; if he were only a soul, he were
a kind of angel; if only a body, he were another kind of brute. Now
that a body as vile and dull as earth, and a soul that can mount up
to heaven, and rove about the world, with so quick a motion, should be
linked in so strait an acquaintance; that so noble a being as the soul
should be inhabitant in such a tabernacle of clay; must be owned to
some infinite power that hath so chained it.
Thirdly, Man witnesseth to a God in the operations and reflections of
conscience. (Rom. ii. 15), “Their thoughts are accusing or excusing.”
An inward comfort attends good actions, and an inward torment follows
bad ones; for there is in every man’s conscience fear of punishment
and hope of reward; there is, therefore, a sense of some superior
judge, which hath the power both of rewarding and punishing. If man
were his supreme rule, what need he fear punishment, since no man
would inflict any evil or torment on himself; nor can any man be
said to reward himself, for all rewards refer to another, to whom the
action is pleasing, and is a conferring some good a man had not before;
if an action be done by a subject or servant, with hopes of reward, it
cannot be imagined that he expects a reward from himself, but from the
prince or person whom he eyes in that action, and for whose sake he
doth it.
1. There is a law in the minds of men which is a rule of good and
evil. There is a notion of good and evil in the consciences of men,
which is evident by those laws which are common in all countries,
for the preserving human societies, the encouragement of virtue, and
discouragement of vice; what standard should they have for those laws
but a common reason? the design of those laws was to keep men within
the bounds of goodness for mutual commerce, whence the apostle calls
the heathen magistrate a “minister of God for good” (Rom. xiii. 4):
and “the Gentiles do by nature the things contained in the law”
(Rom. ii. 14).
Man in the first instant of the use of reason, finds natural
principles within himself; directing and choosing them, he finds a
distinction between good and evil; how could this be if there were not
some rule in him to try and distinguish good and evil? If there was
not such a law and rule in man, he could not sin; for where there is
no law there is no transgression. If man were a law to himself, and
his own will his law, there could be no such thing as evil; whatsoever
he willed, would be good and agreeable to the law, and no action could
be accounted sinful; the worst act would be as commendable as the
best. Everything at man’s appointment would be good or evil. If there
were no such law, how should men that are naturally inclined to evil
disapprove of that which is unlovely, and approve of that good which
they practise not? No man but inwardly thinks well of that which
is good, while he neglects it; and thinks ill of that which is evil,
while he commits it. Those that are vicious, do praise those that
practise the contrary virtues. Those that are evil would seem to be
good, and those that are blameworthy {a70} yet will rebuke evil in
others. This is really to distinguish between good and evil; whence
doth this arise, by what rule do we measure this, but by some innate
principle? And this is universal, the same in one man as in another,
the same in one nation as in another; they are born with every man,
and inseparable from his nature (Prov. xxvii. 19): as in water, face
answers to face, so the heart of man to man. Common reason supposeth
that there is some hand which hath fixed this distinction in man;
how could it else be universally impressed? No law can be without a
lawgiver: no sparks but must be kindled, by some other. Whence should
this law then derive its original? Not from man; he would fain blot
it out, and cannot alter it when he pleases. Natural generation never
intended it; it is settled therefore by some higher hand, which, as
it imprinted it, so it maintains it against the violence of men, who,
were it not for this law, would make the world more than it is, an
aceldama and field of blood; for had there not been some supreme good,
the measure of all other goodness in the world, we could not have
had such a thing as good. The Scripture gives us an account that this
good was distinguished from evil before man fell, they were _objecta
scibilia_; good was commanded and evil prohibited, and did not depend
upon man. From this a man may rationally be instructed that there is
a God; for he may thus argue: I find myself naturally obliged to do
this thing, and avoid that; I have, therefore, a superior that doth
oblige me; I find something within me that directs me to such actions,
contrary to my sensitive appetite; there must be something above
me, therefore, that puts this principle into man’s nature; if there
were no superior, I should be the supreme judge of good and evil;
were I the lord of that law which doth oblige me, I should find no
contradiction within myself, between reason and appetite.
2. From the transgression of this law of nature, fears do arise in
the consciences of men. Have we not known or heard of men struck by
so deep a dart, that could not be drawn out by the strength of men, or
appeased by the pleasure of the world; and men crying out with horror,
upon a death‑bed, of their past life, when “their fear hath come as a
desolation, and destruction as a whirlwind?” (Prov. i. 27): and often
in some sharp affliction, the dust hath been blown off from men’s
consciences, which for a while hath obscured the writing of the law.
If men stand in awe of punishment, there is then some superior to whom
they are accountable; if there were no God, there were no punishment
to fear. What reason of any fear, upon the dissolution of the knot
between the soul and body, if there were not a God to punish, and
the soul remained not in being to be punished? How suddenly will
conscience work upon the appearance of an affliction, rouse itself
from sleep like an armed man, and fly in a man’s face before he is
aware of it! It will “surprise the hypocrites” (Isa. xxxviii. 14):
it will bring to mind actions committed long ago, and set them in
order before the face, as God’s deputy, acting by his authority and
omniscience. As God hath not left himself without a witness among
the creatures (Acts xiv. 17), so he hath not left himself without
a witness in a man’s own breast.
(1.) This operation of conscience hath been universal. No nation {a71}
hath been any more exempt from it than from reason; not a man but hath
one time or other more or less smarted under the sting of it. All over
the world conscience hath shot its darts; it hath torn the hearts of
princes in the midst of their pleasures; it hath not flattered them
whom most men flatter; nor feared to disturb their rest, whom no man
dares to provoke. Judges have trembled on a tribunal, when innocents
have rejoiced in their condemnation. The iron bars upon Pharaoh’s
conscience, were at last broke up, and he acknowledged the justice
of God in all that he did, (Exod. ix. 27): “I have sinned, the Lord
is righteous, and I and my people are wicked.” Had they been like
childish frights at the apprehension of bugbears, why hath not reason
shaken them off? But, on the contrary, the stronger reason grows,
the smarter those lashes are; groundless fears had been short‑lived,
age and judgment would have worn them off, but they grow sharper with
the growth of persons. The Scripture informs us they have been of as
ancient a date as the revolt of the first man, (Gen. iii. 10): “I was
afraid,” saith Adam, “because I was naked;” which was an expectation
of the judgment of God. All his posterity inherit his fears, when God
expresseth himself in any tokens of his majesty and providence in the
world. Every man’s conscience testifies that he is unlike what he
ought to be, according to that law engraven upon his heart. In some,
indeed, conscience may be seared or dimmer; or suppose some men may
be devoid of conscience, shall it be denied to be a thing belonging
to the nature of man? Some men have not their eyes, yet the power of
seeing the light is natural to man, and belongs to the integrity of
the body. Who would argue that, because some men are mad, and have
lost their reason by a distemper of the brain, that therefore reason
hath no reality, but is an imaginary thing? But I think it is a
standing truth that every man hath been under the scourge of it, one
time or other, in a less or a greater degree; for, since every man is
an offender, it cannot be imagined, conscience, which is natural to
man, and an active faculty, should always lie idle, without doing this
part of its office. The apostle tells us of the thoughts accusing or
excusing one another, (or by turns), according as the actions were.
Nor is this truth weakened by the corruptions in the world, whereby
many have thought themselves bound in conscience to adhere to a false
and superstitious worship and idolatry, as much as any have thought
themselves bound to adhere to a worship commanded by God. This very
thing infers that all men have a reflecting principle in them; it is
no argument against the being of conscience, but only infers that it
may err in the application of what it naturally owns. We can no more
say, that because some men walk by a false rule, there is no such
thing as conscience, than we can say that because men have errors in
their minds, therefore they have no such faculty as an understanding;
or because men will that which is evil, they have no such faculty as a
will in them.
(2.) These operations of conscience are when the wickedness is most
secret. These tormenting fears of vengeance have been frequent in
men, who have had no reason to fear man, since their wickedness
being unknown to any but themselves, they could have no accuser
but themselves. They have been in many acts which their companions
{a72} have justified them in; persons above the stroke of human laws,
yea, such as the people have honored as gods, have been haunted by
them. Conscience hath not been frighted by the power of princes, or
bribed by the pleasures of courts. David was pursued by his horrors,
when he was, by reason of his dignity, above the punishment of the law,
or, at least, was not reached by the law; since, though the murder
of Uriah was intended by him, it was not acted by him. Such examples
are frequent in human records; when the crime hath been above any
punishment by man, they have had an accuser, judge, and executioner
in their own breasts. Can this be originally from a man’s self? He who
loves and cherishes himself, would fly from anything that disturbs him;
it is a greater power and majesty from whom man cannot hide himself,
that holds him in those fetters. What should affect their minds for
that which can never bring them shame or punishment in this world, if
there were not some supreme judge to whom they were to give an account,
whose instrument conscience is? Doth it do this of itself? hath it
received an authority from the man himself to sting him? It is some
supreme power that doth direct and commission it against our wills.
(3.) These operations of conscience cannot be totally shaken off by
man. If there be no God, why do not men silence the clamors of their
consciences, and scatter those fears that disturb their rest and
pleasures? How inquisitive are men after some remedy against those
convulsions! Sometimes they would render the charge insignificant,
and sing a rest to themselves, though they “walk in the wickedness
of their own hearts.”[113] How often do men attempt to drown it by
sensual pleasures, and perhaps overpower it for a time; but it revives,
reinforceth itself, and acts a revenge for its former stop. It holds
sin to a man’s view, and fixes his eyes upon it, whether he will or no.
“The wicked are like a troubled sea, and cannot rest,” (Isa. lvii. 20):
they would wallow in sin without control, but this inward principle
will not suffer it; nothing can shelter men from those blows. What
is the reason it could never be cried down? Man is an enemy to his
own disquiet; what man would continue upon the rack, if it were in
his power to deliver himself? Why have all human remedies been without
success, and not able to extinguish those operations, though all
the wickedness of the heart hath been ready to assist and second the
attempt? It hath pursued men notwithstanding all the violence used
against it; and renewed its scourges with more severity, as men deal
with their resisting slaves. Man can as little silence those thunders
in his soul, as he can the thunders in the heavens; he must strip
himself of his humanity, before he can be stripped of an accusing
and affrighting conscience; it sticks as close to him as his nature;
since man cannot throw out the process it makes against him, it is an
evidence that some higher power secures its throne and standing. Who
should put this scourge into the hand of conscience, which no man in
the world is able to wrest out?
(4.) We may add, the comfortable reflections of conscience. There are
excusing, as well as accusing reflections of conscience, when things
are done as works of the “law of nature,” (Rom. ii. 15): as it doth
{a73} not forbear to accuse and torture, when a wickedness, though
unknown to others, is committed; so when a man hath done well, though
he be attacked with all the calumnies the wit of man can forge, yet
his conscience justifies the action, and fills him with a singular
contentment. As there is torture in sinning, so there is peace and joy
in well‑doing. Neither of those it could do, if it did not understand
a Sovereign Judge, who punishes the rebels, and rewards the well‑doer.
Conscience is the foundation of all religion; and the two pillars
upon which it is built, are the being of God, and the bounty of God
to those that “diligently seek him.”[114] This proves the existence
of God. If there were no God, conscience were useless; the operations
of it would have no foundation, if there were not an eye to take
notice, and a hand to punish or reward the action. The accusations
of conscience evidence the omniscience and the holiness of God;
the terrors of conscience, the justice of God; the approbations of
conscience, the goodness of God. All the order in the world owes
itself, next to the providence of God, to conscience; without it the
world would be a Golgotha. As the creatures witness, there was a first
cause that produced them, so this principle in man evidenceth itself
to be set by the same hand, for the good of that which it had so
framed. There could be no conscience if there were no God, and man
could not be a rational creature, if there were no conscience. As
there is a rule in us, there must be a judge, whether our actions be
according to the rule. And since conscience in our corrupted state
is in some particular misled, there must be a power superior to
conscience, to judge how it hath behaved itself in its deputed office;
we must come to some supreme judge, who can judge conscience itself.
As a man can have no surer evidence that he is a being, than because
he thinks he is a thinking being; so there is no surer evidence
in nature that there is a God, than that every man hath a natural
principle in him, which continually cites him before God, and puts him
in mind of him, and makes him one way or other fear him, and reflects
upon him whether he will or no. A man hath less power over his
conscience, than over any other faculty; he may choose whether he will
exercise his understanding about, or move his will to such an object;
but he hath no such authority over his conscience: he cannot limit it,
or cause it to cease from acting and reflecting; and therefore, both
that, and the law about which it acts, are settled by some Supreme
Authority in the mind of man, and this is God.
Fourthly. The evidence of a God results from the vastness of desires
in man, and the real dissatisfaction he hath in everything below
himself. Man hath a boundless appetite after some sovereign good;
as his understanding is more capacious than anything below, so is his
appetite larger. This affection of desire exceeds all other affections.
Love is determined to something known; fear, to something apprehended:
but desires approach nearer to infiniteness, and pursue, not only what
we know, or what we have a glimpse of, but what we find wanting in
what we already enjoy. That which the desire of man is most naturally
carried after is _bonum_; some fully satisfying good. We desire
knowledge by the sole impulse of reason, {a74} but we desire good
before the excitement of reason; and the desire is always after
good, but not always after knowledge. Now the soul of man finds
an imperfection in everything here, and cannot scrape up a perfect
satisfaction and felicity. In the highest fruitions of worldly things
it is still pursuing something else, which speaks a defect in what it
already hath. The world may afford a felicity for our dust, the body,
but not for the inhabitant in it; it is too mean for that. Is there
any one soul among the sons of men, that can upon a due inquiry say
it was at rest and wanted no more, that hath not sometimes had desires
after an immaterial good? The soul “follows hard after” such a thing,
and hath frequent looks after it (Ps. lxiii. 8). Man desires a stable
good, but no sublunary thing is so; and he that doth not desire such
a good, wants the rational nature of a man. This is as natural as
understanding, will, and conscience. Whence should the soul of man
have those desires? how came it to understand that something is still
wanting to make its nature more perfect, if there were not in it
some notion of a more perfect being which can give it rest? Can such
a capacity be supposed to be in it without something in being able to
satisfy it? if so, the noblest creature in the world is miserablest,
and in a worse condition than any other. Other creatures obtain
their ultimate desires, “they are filled with good,” (Ps. civ. 28):
and shall man only have a vast desire without any possibility
of enjoyment? Nothing in man is in vain; he hath objects for his
affections, as well as affections for objects; every member of his
body hath its end, and doth attain it; every affection of his soul
hath an object, and that in this world; and shall there be none for
his desire, which comes nearest to infinite of any affection planted
in him? This boundless desire had not its original from man himself;
nothing would render itself restless; something above the bounds
of this world implanted those desires after a higher good, and made
him restless in everything else. And since the soul can only rest in
that which is infinite, there is something infinite for it to rest in;
since nothing in the world, though a man had the whole, can give it
a satisfaction, there is something above the world only capable to
do it, otherwise the soul would be always without it, and be more in
vain than any other creature. There is, therefore, some infinite being
that can only give a contentment to the soul, and this is God. And
that goodness which implanted such desires in the soul, would not
do it to no purpose, and mock it in giving it an infinite desire of
satisfaction, without intending it the pleasure of enjoyment, if it
doth not by its own folly deprive itself of it. The felicity of human
nature must needs exceed that which is allotted to other creatures.
_Reason IV._ As it is a folly to deny that which all nations in the
world have consented to, which the frame of the world evidenceth,
which man in his body, soul, operations of conscience, witnesseth to;
so it is a folly to deny the being of God, which is witnessed unto by
extraordinary occurrences in the world.
1. In extraordinary judgments. When a just revenge follows abominable
crimes, especially when the judgment is suited to the sin by a strange
concatenation and succession of providences, methodized {a75} to bring
such a particular punishment; when the sin of a nation or person is
made legible in the inflicted judgment, which testifies that it cannot
be a casual thing. The Scripture gives us an account of the necessity
of such judgments, to keep up the reverential thoughts of God in
the world (Ps. ix. 16): “The Lord is known by the judgment which
he executes; the wicked is snared in the work of his own hand:”
and jealousy is the name of God, (Exod. xxxiv. 14), “Whose name is
jealous.” He is distinguished from false gods by the judgments which
he sends, as men are by their names. Extraordinary prodigies in many
nations have been the heralds of extraordinary judgments, and presages
of the particular judgments which afterwards they have felt, of
which the Roman histories, and others, are full. That there are such
things is undeniable, and that the events have been answerable to
the threatening, unless we will throw away all human testimonies,
and count all the histories of the world forgeries. Such things are
evidences of some invisible power which orders those affairs. And if
there be invisible powers, there is also an efficacious cause which
moves them; a government certainly there is among them, as well as
in the world, and then we must come to some supreme governor which
presides over them. Judgments upon notorious offenders have been
evident in all ages; the Scripture gives many instances. I shall
only mention that of Herod Agrippa, which Josephus mentions.[115] He
receives the flattering applause of the people, and thought himself a
God; but by the sudden stroke upon him, was forced by his torture to
confess another. “I am God,” saith he, “in your account, but a higher
calls me away; the will of the heavenly Deity is to be endured.” The
angel of the Lord smote him. The judgment here was suited to the sin;
he that would be a god, is eaten up of worms, the vilest creatures.
Tully Hostilius, a Roman king, who counted it the most unroyal thing
to be religious, or own any other God but his sword, was consumed
himself, and his whole house, by lightning from heaven. Many things
are unaccountable unless we have recourse to God. The strange
revelations of murderers, that have most secretly committed their
crimes; the making good some dreadful imprecations, which some
wretches have used to confirm a lie, and immediately have been struck
with that judgment they wished; the raising often unexpected persons
to be instruments of vengeance on a sinful and perfidious nation; the
overturning the deepest and surest counsels of men, when they have had
a successful progress, and come to the very point of execution; the
whole design of men’s preservation hath been beaten in pieces by some
unforeseen circumstance, so that judgments have broken in upon them
without control, and all their subtleties been outwitted; the strange
crossing of some in their estates, though the most wise, industrious,
and frugal persons, and that by strange and unexpected ways; and it
is observable how often everything contributes to carry on a judgment
intended, as if they rationally designed it: all those loudly proclaim
a God in the world; if there were no God, there would be no sin; if no
sin, there would be no punishment.
{a76} 2. In miracles. The course of nature is uniform; and when it is
put out of its course, it must be by some superior power invisible to
the world; and by whatsoever invisible instruments they are wrought,
the efficacy of them must depend upon some first cause above nature.
(Psalm lxxii. 18): “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who only doeth
wondrous things,” by himself and his sole power. That which cannot
be the result of a natural cause, must be the result of something
supernatural: what is beyond the reach of nature, is the effect of a
power superior to nature; for it is quite against the order of nature,
and is the elevation of something to such a pitch, which all nature
could not advance it to. Nature cannot go beyond its own limits; if it
be determined by another, as hath been formerly proved, it cannot lift
itself above itself, without that power that so determined it. Natural
agents act necessarily; the sun doth necessarily shine, fire doth
necessarily burn: that cannot be the result of nature, which is above
the ability of nature; that cannot be the work of nature which is
against the order of nature; nature cannot do anything against itself,
or invert its own course. We must own that such things have been, or
we must accuse all the records of former ages to be a pack of lies;
which whosoever doth, destroys the greatest and best part of human
knowledge. The miracles mentioned in the Scripture, wrought by our
Saviour, are acknowledged by the heathen, by the Jews at this day,
though his greatest enemies. There is no dispute whether such things
were wrought, “the dead raised,” the “blind restored to sight.”
The heathens have acknowledged the miraculous eclipse of the sun
at the passion of Christ, quite against the rule of nature, the moon
being then in opposition to the sun; the propagation of Christianity
contrary to the methods whereby other religions have been propagated,
that in a few years the nations of the world should be sprinkled with
this doctrine, and give in a greater catalogue of martyrs courting the
devouring flames, than all the religions of the world. To this might
be added, the strange hand that was over the Jews, the only people in
the world professing the true God, that should so often be befriended
by their conquerors, so as to rebuild their temple, though they were
looked upon as a people apt to rebel. Dion and Seneca observe, that
wherever they were transplanted, they prospered, and gave laws to
the victors; so that this proves also the authority of the Scripture,
the truth of christian religion, as well as the being of a God, and
a superior power over the world. To this might be added, the bridling
the tumultuous passions of men for the preservation of human societies,
which else would run the world into unconceivable confusions, (Psalm
lxv. 7): “Which stilleth the noise of the sea, and the tumults of
the people;” as also the miraculous deliverance of a person or nation,
when upon the very brink of ruin; the sudden answer of prayer when God
hath been sought to, and the turning away a judgment, which in reason
could not be expected to be averted, and the raising a sunk people
from a ruin which seemed inevitable, by unexpected ways.
3. Accomplishments of prophecies. Those things which are purely
contingent, and cannot be known by natural signs and in their causes,
as eclipses and changes in nations, which may be discerned {a77}
by an observation of the signs of the times; such things that fall
not within this compass, if they be foretold and come to pass, are
solely from some higher hand, and above the cause of nature. This in
Scripture is asserted to be a notice of the true God (Isa. xli. 23):
“Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that you
are God,” and (Isa. xlvi. 10), “I am God declaring the end from the
beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done,
saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.” And
prophecy was consented to by all the philosophers to be from divine
illumination: that power which discovers things future, which all
the foresight of men cannot ken and conjecture, is above nature. And
to foretell them so certainly as if they did already exist, or had
existed long ago, must be the result of a mind infinitely intelligent;
because it is the highest way of knowing, and a higher cannot be
imagined: and he that knows things future in such a manner, must
needs know things present and past. Cyrus was prophesied of by Isaiah
(xliv. 28, and xlv. 1) long before he was born; his victories, spoils,
all that should happen in Babylon, his bounty to the Jews came to pass,
according to that prophecy; and the sight of that prophecy which the
Jews shewed him, as other historians report, was that which moved him
to be favorable to the Jews.
Alexander’s sight of Daniel’s prophecy concerning his victories
moved him to spare Jerusalem. And are not the four monarchies plainly
deciphered in that book, before the fourth rose up in the world?
That power which foretells things beyond the reach of the wit of man,
and orders all causes to bring about those predictions, must be an
infinite power, the same that made the world, sustains it and governs
all things in it according to his pleasure, and to bring about his own
ends; and this being is God.
_Use I._ If atheism be a folly, it is then pernicious to the world
and to the atheist himself. Wisdom is the band of human societies, the
glory of man. Folly is the disturber of families, cities, nations; the
disgrace of human nature.
First, It is pernicious to the world.
1. It would root out the foundations of government. It demolisheth all
order in nations. The being of a God is the guard of the world: the
sense of a God is the foundation of civil order: without this there
is no tie upon the consciences of men. What force would there be in
oaths for the decisions of controversies, what right could there be
in appeals made to one that had no being? A city of atheists would
be a heap of confusion; there could be no ground of any commerce,
when all the sacred bands of it in the consciences of men were snapt
asunder, which are torn to pieces and utterly destroyed by denying
the existence of God. What magistrate could be secure in his standing?
What private person could be secure in his right? Can that then be
a truth that is destructive of all public good? If the atheist’s
sentiment, that there were no God, were a truth, and the contrary that
there were a God, were a falsity, it would then follow, that falsity
made men good and serviceable to one another; that error were the
foundation of all the beauty, and order, and outward {a78} felicity of
the world, the fountain of all good to man.[116] If there were no God,
to believe there is one, would be an error; and to believe there is
none, would be the greatest wisdom, because it would be the greatest
truth. And then as it is the greatest wisdom to fear God, upon the
apprehension of his existence, so it would be the greatest error to
fear him if there were none.[117] It would unquestionably follow, that
error is the support of the world, the spring of all human advantages;
and that every part of the world were obliged to a falsity for being
a quiet habitation, which is the most absurd thing to imagine. It is a
thing impossible to be tolerated by any prince, without laying an axe
to the root of the government.
2. It would introduce all evil into the world. If you take away God,
you take away conscience, and thereby all measures and rules of good
and evil. And how could any laws be made when the measure and standard
of them were removed? All good laws are founded upon the dictates of
conscience and reason, upon common sentiments in human nature, which
spring from a sense of God; so that if the foundation be demolished,
the whole superstructure must tumble down: a man might be a thief, a
murderer, an adulterer, and could not in a strict sense be an offender.
The worst of actions could not be evil, if a man were a god to himself,
a law to himself. Nothing but evil deserves a censure, and nothing
would be evil if there were no God, the Rector of the world against
whom evil is properly committed. No man can make that morally evil
that is not so in itself: as where there is a faint sense of God,
the heart is more strongly inclined to wickedness; so where there is
no sense of God, the bars are removed, the flood‑gates set open for
all wickedness to rush in upon mankind. Religion pinions men from
abominable practices, and restrains them from being slaves to their
own passions: an atheist’s arms would be loose to do anything.[118]
Nothing so villanous and unjust but would be acted if the natural fear
of a Deity were extinguished. The first consequence issuing from the
apprehension of the existence of God, is his government of the world.
If there be no God, then the natural consequence is that there is
no supreme government of the world: such a notion would cashier all
sentiments of good, and be like a Trojan horse, whence all impurity,
tyranny, and all sorts of mischiefs would break out upon mankind:
corruption and abominable works in the text are the fruit of the
fool’s persuasion that there is no God. The perverting the ways of
men, oppression and extortion, owe their rise to a forgetfulness of
God (Jer. iii. 21): “They have perverted their way, and they have
forgotten the Lord their God.” (Ezek. xxii. 12): “Thou hast greedily
gained by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord.” The whole
earth would be filled with violence, all flesh would corrupt their
way, as it was before the deluge, when probably atheism did abound
more than idolatry; and if not a disowning the being, yet denying the
providence of God by the posterity of Cain: those of the family of
Seth only “calling upon the name of the Lord” (Gen. vi. 11, 12,
compared with Gen. iv. 26).
The greatest sense of a Deity in any, hath been attended with the
{a79} greatest innocence of life and usefulness to others; and a
weaker sense hath been attended with a baser impurity. If there were
no God, blasphemy would be praiseworthy; as the reproach of idols
is praiseworthy, because we testify that there is no divinity in
them.[119] What can be more contemptible than that which hath no
being? Sin would be only a false opinion of a violated law, and an
offended deity. If such apprehensions prevail, what a wide door is
opened to the worst of villanies! If there be no God, no respect is
due to him; all the religion in the world is a trifle, and error;
and thus the pillars of all human society, and that which hath made
commonwealths to flourish, are blown away.
Secondly, It is pernicious to the atheist himself. If he fear no
future punishment, he can never expect any future reward: all his
hopes must be confined to a swinish and despicable manner of life,
without any imaginations of so much as a drachm of reserved happiness.
He is in a worse condition than the silliest animal, which hath
something to please it in its life: whereas an atheist can have
nothing here to give him a full content, no more than any other man
in the world, and can have less satisfaction hereafter. He deposeth
the noble end of his own being, which was to serve a God and have a
satisfaction in him, to seek a God and be rewarded by him; and he that
departs from his end, recedes from his own nature. All the content
any creature finds, is in performing its end, moving according to its
natural instinct; as it is a joy to the sun to run its race.[120] In
the same manner it is a satisfaction to every other creature, and its
delight to observe the law of its creation. What content can any man
have that runs from his end, opposeth his own nature, denies a God by
whom and for whom he was created, whose image he bears, which is the
glory of his nature, and sinks into the very dregs of brutishness? How
elegantly it is described by Bildad,[121] “His own counsel shall cast
him down, terrors shall make him afraid on every side, destruction
shall be ready at his side, the first‑born of death shall devour
his strength, his confidence shall be rooted out, and it shall bring
him to the king of terrors. Brimstone shall be scattered upon his
habitation; he shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased
out of the world. They that come after him shall be astonished at his
day, as they that went before were affrighted. And this is the place
of him that knows not God.”[122] If there be a future reckoning (as
his own conscience cannot but sometimes inform him of), his condition
is desperate, and his misery dreadful and unavoidable. It is not
righteous a hell should entertain any else, if it refuse him.
_Use II._ How lamentable is it, that in our times this folly of
atheism should be so rife! That there should be found such monsters in
human nature, in the midst of the improvements of reason, and shinings
of the gospel, who not only make the Scripture the matter of their
jeers, but scoff at the judgments and providences of God in the world,
and envy their Creator a being, without whose goodness they had none
themselves; who contradict in their carriage what they assert to be
their sentiment, when they dreadfully imprecate {a80} damnation to
themselves! Whence should that damnation they so rashly wish be poured
forth upon them, if there were not a revenging God? Formerly atheism
was as rare as prodigious, scarce two or three known in an age; and
those that are reported to be so in former ages, are rather thought to
be counted so for mocking at the senseless deities the common people
adored, and laying open their impurities. A mere natural strength
would easily discover that those they adored for gods, could not
deserve that title, since their original was known, their uncleanness
manifest and acknowledged by their worshippers. And probably it was so;
since the Christians were termed ἄθεοι, because they acknowledged not
their vain idols.[123]
I question whether there ever was, or can be in the world, an
uninterrupted and internal denial of the being of God, or that men
(unless we can suppose conscience utterly dead) can arrive to such
a degree of impiety; for before they can stifle such sentiments in
them (whatsoever they may assert), they must be utter strangers to
the common conceptions of reason, and despoil themselves of their
own humanity. He that dares to deny a God with his lips, yet sets up
something or other as a God in his heart. Is it not lamentable that
this sacred truth, consented to by all nations, which is the band
of civil societies, the source of all order in the world, should
be denied with a bare face, and disputed against in companies, and
the glory of a wise Creator ascribed to an unintelligent nature, to
blind chance? Are not such worse than heathens? They worshipped many
gods, these none; they preserved a notion of God in the world under a
disguise of images, these would banish him both from earth and heaven,
and demolish the statutes of him in their own consciences; they
degraded him, these would destroy him; they coupled creatures with
him――(Rom. i. 25), “Who worshipped the creature with the Creator,” as
it may most properly be rendered――and these would make him worse than
the creature, a mere nothing. Earth is hereby become worse than hell.
Atheism is a persuasion which finds no footing anywhere else. Hell,
that receives such persons, in this point reforms them: they can never
deny or doubt of his being, while they feel his strokes. The devil,
that rejoices at their wickedness, knows them to be in an error; for
he “believes, and trembles at the belief.”[124] This is a forerunner
of judgment. Boldness in sin is a presage of vengeance, especially
when the honor of God is more particularly concerned therein; it
tends to the overturning human society, taking off the bridle from
the wicked inclinations of men: and God appears not in such visible
judgments against sin immediately committed against himself, as in
the case of those sins that are destructive to human society. Besides,
God, as Governor of the world, will uphold that, without which
all his ordinances in the world would be useless. Atheism is point
blank against all the glory of God in creation, and against all the
glory of God in redemption, and pronounceth at one breath, both the
Creator, and all acts of religion and divine institutions, useless and
insignificant. Since most have had, one time or other, some risings of
doubt, whether there be a God, though few do in expressions deny his
being, it may not be {a81} unnecessary to propose some things for the
further impressing this truth, and guarding themselves against such
temptations.
1. It is utterly impossible to demonstrate there is no God. He
can choose no medium, but will fall in as a proof for his existence,
and a manifestation of his excellency, rather than against it. The
pretences of the atheist are so ridiculous, that they are not worth
the mentioning. They never saw God, and therefore know not how to
believe such a being; they cannot comprehend him. He would not be a
God, if he could fall within the narrow model of a human understanding;
he would not be infinite, if he were comprehensible, or to be
terminated by our sight. How small a thing must that be which is
seen by a bodily eye, or grasped by a weak mind! If God were visible
or comprehensible, he would be limited. Shall it be a sufficient
demonstration from a blind man, that there is no fire in the room,
because he sees it not, though he feel the warmth of it? The knowledge
of the effect is sufficient to conclude the existence of the cause.
Who ever saw his own life? Is it sufficient to deny a man lives,
because he beholds not his life, and only knows it by his motion? He
never saw his own soul, but knows he hath one by his thinking power.
The air renders itself sensible to men in its operations, yet was
never seen by the eye. If God should render himself visible, they
might question as well as now, whether that which was so visible were
God, or some delusion. If he should appear glorious, we can as little
behold him in his majestic glory, as an owl can behold the sun in its
brightness: we should still but see him in his effects, as we do the
sun by his beams. If he should show a new miracle, we should still
see him but by his works; so we see him in his creatures, every one of
which would be as great a miracle as any can be wrought, to one that
had the first prospect of them. To require to see God, is to require
that which is impossible (1 Tim. vi. 16): “He dwells in the light
which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen, nor can see.”
It is visible that he is, “for he covers himself with light as with
a garment” (Psalm civ. 2); it is visible what he is, “for he makes
darkness his secret place” (Psalm xviii. 11). Nothing more clear to
the eye than light, and nothing more difficult to the understanding
than the nature of it: as light is the first object obvious to the eye,
so is God the first object obvious to the understanding. The arguments
from nature do, with greater strength, evince his existence, than any
pretences can manifest there is no God. No man can assure himself by
any good reason there is none; for as for the likeness of events to
him that is righteous, and him that is wicked; to him that sacrificeth,
and to him that sacrificeth not (Eccles. ix. 2): it is an argument for
a reserve of judgment in another state, which every man’s conscience
dictates to him, when the justice of God shall be glorified in another
world, as much as his patience is in this.
2. Whosoever doubts of it, makes himself a mark, against which all
the creatures fight. All the stars fought against Sisera for Israel:
all the stars in heaven, and the dust on earth, fight for God against
the atheist. He hath as many arguments against him as there are
creatures in the whole compass of heaven and earth. He is most {a82}
unreasonable, that denies or doubts of that whose image and shadow he
sees round about him; he may sooner deny the sun that warms him, the
moon that in night walks in her brightness, deny the fruits he enjoys
from the earth, yea, and deny that he doth exist. He must tear his own
conscience, fly from his own thoughts, be changed into the nature of
a stone, which hath neither reason nor sense, before he can disengage
himself from those arguments which evince the being of a God. He that
would make the natural religion professed in the world a mere romance,
must give the lie to the common sense of mankind; he must be at an
irreconcilable enmity with his own reason, resolve to hear nothing
that it speaks, if he will not hear what it speaks in this case, with
a greater evidence than it can ascertain anything else. God hath so
settled himself in the reason of man, that he must vilify the noblest
faculty God hath given him, and put off nature itself, before he can
blot out the notion of a God.
3. No question but those that have been so bold as to deny that there
was a God, have sometimes been much afraid they have been in an error,
and have at least suspected there was a God, when some sudden prodigy
hath presented itself to them, and roused their fears; and whatsoever
sentiments they might have in their blinding prosperity, they have
had other kind of motions in them in their stormy afflictions, and,
like Jonah’s mariners, have been ready to cry to him for help, whom
they disdained to own so much as in being, while they swam in their
pleasures. The thoughts of a Deity cannot be so extinguished, but they
will revive and rush upon a man, at least under some sharp affliction.
Amazing judgments will make them question their own apprehensions. God
sends some messengers to keep alive the apprehension of him as a Judge,
while men resolve not to own or reverence him as a Governor. A man
cannot but keep a scent of what was born with him; as a vessel that
hath been seasoned first with a strong juice will preserve the scent
of it, whatsoever liquors are afterwards put into it.
4. What is it for which such men rack their wits, to form notions
that there is no God? Is it not that they would indulge some vicious
habit, which hath gained the possession of their soul, which they know
“cannot be favored by that holy God,” whose notion they would raze
out?[125] Is it not for some brutish affection, as degenerative of
human nature, as derogatory to the glory of God; a lust as unmanly
as sinful? The terrors of God are the effects of guilt; and therefore
men would wear out the apprehensions of a Deity, that they might
be brutish without control. They would fain believe there were no
God, that they might not be men, but beasts. How great a folly is
it to take so much pains in vain, for a slavery and torment; to
cast off that which they call a yoke, for that which really is one!
There is more pains and toughness of soul requisite to shake off
the apprehensions of God, than to believe that he is, and cleave
constantly to him. What a madness is it in any to take so much pains
to be less than a man, by razing out the apprehensions of God, when,
with less pains, he may be more than an earthly man, by cherishing the
notions of God, and walking answerably thereunto?
{a83} 5. How unreasonable is it for any man to hazard himself at
this rate in the denial of a God! The atheist saith he knows not that
there is a God; but may he not reasonably think there may be one for
aught he knows? and if there be, what a desperate confusion will he
be in, when all his bravadoes shall prove false! What can they gain
by such an opinion? A freedom, say they, from the burdensome yoke
of conscience, a liberty to do what they list, that doth not subject
them to divine laws. It is a hard matter to persuade any that they can
gain this. They can gain but a sordid pleasure, unworthy the nature
of man. But it were well that such would argue thus with themselves:
If there be a God, and I fear and obey him, I gain a happy eternity;
but if there be no God, I lose nothing but my sordid lusts, by firmly
believing there is one. If I be deceived at last, and find a God,
can I think to be rewarded by him, for disowning him? Do not I run a
desperate hazard to lose his favor, his kingdom, and endless felicity
for an endless torment? By confessing a God I venture no loss; but
by denying him, I run the most desperate hazard, if there be one. He
is not a reasonable creature, that will not put himself upon such a
reasonable arguing. What a doleful meeting will there be between the
God who is denied, and the atheist that denies him, who shall meet
with reproaches on God’s part, and terrors on his own! All that he
gains is a liberty to defile himself here, and a certainty to be
despised hereafter, if he be in an error, as undoubtedly he is.
6. Can any such person say he hath done all that he can to inform
himself of the being of God, or of other things which he denies?
Or rather they would fain imagine there is none, that they may
sleep securely in their lusts, and be free (if they could) from
the thunder‑claps of conscience. Can such say they have used their
utmost endeavors to instruct themselves in this, and can meet with no
satisfaction? Were it an abstruse truth it might not be wondered at;
but not to meet with satisfaction in this which everything minds us of,
and helpeth, is the fruit of an extreme negligence, stupidity, and a
willingness to be unsatisfied, and a judicial process of God against
them. It is strange any man should be so dark in that upon which
depends the conduct of his life, and the expectation of happiness
hereafter. I do not know what some of you may think, but I believe
these things are not useless to be proposed for ourselves to answer
temptations; we know not what wicked temptation in a debauched and
skeptic age, meeting with a corrupt heart, may prompt men to; and
though there may not be any atheist here present, yet I know there is
more than one, who have accidentally met with such, who openly denied
a Deity; and if the like occasion happen, these considerations may
not be unuseful to apply to their consciences. But I must confess,
that since those that live in this sentiment, do not judge themselves
worthy of their own care, they are not worthy of the care of others;
and a man must have all the charity of the christian religion, which
they despise, not to contemn them, and leave them to their own folly.
As we are to pity madmen, who sink under an unavoidable distemper, we
are as much to abominate them, who wilfully hug this prodigious frenzy.
{a84} _Use III._ If it be the atheist’s folly to deny or doubt of
the being of God, it is our wisdom to be firmly settled in this truth,
that God is. We should never be without our arms in an age wherein
atheism appears barefaced without a disguise. You may meet with
suggestions to it, though the devil formerly never attempted to
demolish this notion in the world, but was willing to keep it up,
so the worship due to God might run in his own channel, and was
necessitated to preserve it, without which he could not have erected
that idolatry, which was his great design in opposition to God;
yet since the foundations of that are torn up, and never like to be
rebuilt, he may endeavor, as his last refuge, to banish the notion of
God out of the world, that he may reign as absolutely without it, as
he did before by the mistakes about the divine nature. But we must not
lay all upon Satan; the corruption of our own hearts ministers matter
to such sparks. It is not said Satan hath suggested to the fool, but
“the fool hath said in his heart,” there is no God. But let them come
from what principle soever, silence them quickly, give them their
dismiss; oppose the whole scheme of nature to fight against them,
as the stars did against Sisera. Stir up sentiments of conscience
to oppose sentiments of corruption. Resolve sooner to believe that
yourselves are not, than that God is not; and if you suppose they
at any time come from Satan, object to him that you know he believes
the contrary to what he suggests. Settle this principle firmly in you,
“let us behold Him that is invisible,” as Moses did;[126] let us have
the sentiments following upon the notion of a God, to be restrained
by a fear of him, excited by a love to him, not to violate his laws
and offend his goodness. He is not a God careless of our actions,
negligent to inflict punishment, and bestow rewards, “he forgets not
the labor of our love,”[127] nor the integrity of our ways; he were
not a God, if he were not a governor; and punishments and rewards are
as essential to government, as a foundation to a building. His being
and his government in rewarding, which implies punishment, (for the
neglects of him are linked together)[128] are not to be separated in
our thoughts of him.
1. Without this truth fixed in us, we can never give him the worship
due to his name. When the knowledge of anything is fluctuating and
uncertain, our actions about it are careless. We regard not that
which we think doth not much concern us. If we do not firmly believe
there is a God, we shall pay him no steady worship; and if we believe
not the excellency of his nature, we shall offer him but a slight
service.[129] The Jews call the knowledge of the being of God the
foundation and pillar of wisdom.[130] The whole frame of religion is
dissolved without this apprehension, and totters if this apprehension
be wavering. Religion in the heart is as water in a weather‑glass,
which riseth or falls according to the strength or weakness of this
belief. How can any man worship that which he believes not to be, or
doubts of? Could any man omit the paying a homage to one, whom he did
believe to be an omnipotent, wise being, possessing {a85} (infinitely
above our conceptions) the perfections of all creatures? He must
either think there is no such being, or that he is an easy, drowsy,
inobservant God, and not such an one as our natural notions of him,
if listened to, as well as the Scripture, represents him to be.
2. Without being rooted in this, we cannot order our lives. All
our baseness, stupidity, dulness, wanderings, vanity, spring from
a wavering and unsettledness in this principle. This gives ground
to brutish pleasures, not only to solicit, but conquer us. Abraham
expected violence in any place where God was not owned (Gen. xx. 11),
“Surely the fear of God is not in this place, and they will slay me
for my wife’s sake.” The natural knowledge of God firmly impressed,
would choke that which would stifle our reason and deface our souls.
The belief that God is, and what he is, would have a mighty influence
to persuade us to a real religion, and serious consideration, and
casting about how to be like to him and united with him.
3. Without it we cannot have any comfort of our lives. Who would
willingly live in a stormy world, void of a God? If we waver in this
principle, to whom should we make our complaints in our afflictions?
Where should we meet with supports? How could we satisfy ourselves
with the hopes of a future happiness? There is a sweetness in the
meditation of his existence, and that he is a Creator.[131] Thoughts
of other things have a bitterness mixed with them: houses, lands,
children, now are, shortly they will not be; but God is, that made the
world: his faithfulness as he is a Creator, is a ground to deposit our
souls and concerns in our innocent sufferings.[132] So far as we are
weak in the acknowledgment of God, we deprive ourselves of our content
in the view of his infinite perfections.
4. Without the rooting of this principle, we cannot have a firm belief
of Scripture. The Scripture will be a slight thing to one that hath
weak sentiments of God. The belief of a God must necessarily precede
the belief of any revelation; the latter cannot take place without
the former as a foundation. We must firmly believe the being of a God,
wherein our happiness doth consist, before we can believe any means
which conduct us to him. Moses begins with the Author of creation,
before he treats of the promise of redemption. Paul preached God as
a Creator to a university, before he preached Christ as Mediator.[133]
What influence can the testimony of God have in his revelation upon
one that doth not firmly assent to the truth of his being? All would
be in vain that is so often repeated, “Thus saith the Lord,” if we
do not believe there is a Lord that speaks it. There could be no
awe from his sovereignty in his commands, nor any comfortable taste
of his goodness in his promises. The more we are strengthened in
this principle, the more credit we shall be able to give to divine
revelation, to rest in his promise, and to reverence his precept; the
authority of all depends upon the being of the Revealer.
To this purpose, since we have handled this discourse by natural
arguments,
{a86} 1. Study God in the creatures as well as in the Scriptures. The
primary use of the creatures, is to acknowledge God in them; they were
made to be witnesses of himself in his goodness, and heralds of his
glory, which glory of God as Creator “shall endure forever” (Psalm
civ. 31): that whole psalm is a lecture of creation and providence.
The world is a sacred temple; man is introduced to contemplate it, and
behold with praise the glory of God in the pieces of his art. As grace
doth not destroy nature, so the book of redemption blots not out that
of creation. Had he not shown himself in his creatures, he could never
have shown himself in his Christ; the order of things required it.
God must be read wherever he is legible; the creatures are one book,
wherein he hath writ a part of the excellency of his name,[134] as
many artists do in their works and watches. God’s glory, like the
filings of gold, is too precious to be lost wherever it drops: nothing
so vile and base in the world, but carries in it an instruction for
man, and drives in further the notion of a God. As he said of his
cottage, Enter here, _Sunt hic etiam Dii_, God disdains not this place:
so the least creature speaks to man, every shrub in the field, every
fly in the air, every limb in a body; Consider me, God disdains not
to appear in me; he hath discovered in me his being and a part of his
skill, as well as in the highest. The creatures manifest the being of
God and part of his perfections. We have indeed a more excellent way,
a revelation setting him forth in a more excellent manner, a firmer
object of dependence, a brighter object of love, raising our hearts
from self‑confidence to a confidence in him. Though the appearance
of God in the one be clearer than in the other, yet neither is to
be neglected. The Scripture directs us to nature to view God; it had
been in vain else for the apostle to make use of natural arguments.
Nature is not contrary to Scripture, nor Scripture to nature; unless
we should think God contrary to himself who is the Author of both.
2. View God in your own experiences of him. There is a taste and
sight of his goodness, though no sight of his essence.[135] By the
taste of his goodness you may know the reality of the fountain, whence
it springs and from whence it flows; this surpasseth the greatest
capacity of a mere natural understanding. Experience of the sweetness
of the ways of Christianity is a mighty preservative against atheism.
Many a man knows not how to prove honey to be sweet by his reason, but
by his sense; and if all the reason in the world be brought against
it, he will not be reasoned out of what he tastes. Have not many found
the delightful illapses of God into their souls, often sprinkled with
his inward blessings upon their seeking of him; had secret warnings in
their approaches to him; and gentle rebukes in their consciences upon
their swervings from him? Have not many found sometimes an invisible
hand raising them up when they were dejected; some unexpected
providence stepping in for their relief; and easily perceived that
it could not be a work of chance, nor many times the intention of the
instruments he hath used in it? You have often found that {a87} he is,
by finding that he is a rewarder, and can set to your seals that he is
what he hath declared himself to be in his word (Isa. xliii. 12): “I
have declared, and have saved; therefore you are my witnesses, saith
the Lord, that I am God.” The secret touches of God upon the heart,
and inward converses with him, are a greater evidence of the existence
of a supreme and infinitely good Being, than all nature.
_Use IV._ Is it a folly to deny or doubt of the being of God? It is a
folly also not to worship God, when we acknowledge his existence; it
is our wisdom then to worship him. As it is not indifferent whether
we believe there is a God or no; so it is not indifferent whether we
will give honor to that God or no. A worship is his right as he is the
Author of our being, and fountain of our happiness. By this only we
acknowledge his Deity; though we may profess his being, yet we deny
that profession in neglects of worship. To deny him a worship is as
great a folly, as to deny his being. He that renounceth all homage to
his Creator, envies him the being which he cannot deprive him of. The
natural inclination to worship is as universal as the notion of a God;
idolatry else had never gained footing in the world. The existence of
God was never owned in any nation, but a worship of him was appointed.
And many people who have turned their backs upon some other parts
of the law of nature, have paid a continual homage to some superior
and invisible being. The Jews give a reason why man was created in
the evening of the Sabbath, because he should begin his being with
the worship of his Maker. As soon as ever he found himself to be
a creature, his first solemn act should be a particular respect to
his Creator. “To fear God and keep his commandment,” is the whole of
man,[136] or is whole man;[137] he is not a man but a beast, without
observance of God. Religion is as requisite as reason to complete
a man: he were not reasonable if he were not religious; because by
neglecting religion, he neglects the chiefest dictate of reason.
Either God framed the world with so much order, elegancy, and variety
to no purpose, or this was his end at least, that reasonable creatures
should admire him in it, and honor him for it. The notion of God
was not stamped upon men, the shadows of God did not appear in the
creatures, to be the subject of an idle contemplation, but the motive
of a due homage to God. He created the world for his glory, a people
for himself, that he might have the honor of his works; that since we
live and move in him, and by him, we should live and move to him and
for him. It was the condemnation of the heathen world, that when they
knew there was a God, they did not give him the glory due to him.[138]
He that denies his being, is an atheist to his essence: he that denies
his worship, is an atheist to his honor.
If it be a folly to deny the being of God, it will be our wisdom,
then, since we acknowledge his being, often to think of him. Thoughts
are the first issue of a creature as reasonable:[139] He that hath
given us the faculty whereby we are able to think, should be the
principal object about which the power of it should be exercised.
It is a justice to God, the author of our understandings, a justice
to {a88} the nature of our understandings, that the noblest faculty
should be employed about the most excellent object. Our minds are
a beam from God; and, therefore, as the beams of the sun, when they
touch the earth, should reflect back upon God. As we seem to deny the
being of God not to think of him; we seem also to unsoul our souls
in misemploying the activity of them any other way, like flies, to
be oftener on dunghills than flowers. It is made the black mark of
an ungodly man, or an atheist, that “God is not in all his thoughts”
(Psalm x. 4). What comfort can be had in the being of God without
thinking of him with reverence and delight? A God forgotten is as good
as no God to us.
{a89} DISCOURSE II.
ON PRACTICAL ATHEISM.
PSALM xiv. 1.――The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is
none that doeth good.
PRACTICAL atheism is natural to man in his depraved state, and very
frequent in the hearts and lives of men.
_The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God._ He regards him
as little as if he had no being. He said in his _heart_, not with
his tongue, nor in his head: he never firmly thought it, nor openly
asserted it. Shame put a bar to the first, and natural reason to the
second; yet, perhaps, he had sometimes some doubts whether there were
a God or no. He wished there were not any, and sometimes hoped there
were none at all. He could not raze out the notion of a Deity in his
mind, but he neglected the fixing the sense of God in his heart, and
made it too much his business to deface and blot out those characters
of God in his soul, which had been left under the ruins of original
nature. Men may have atheistical hearts without atheistical heads.
Their reasons may defend the notion of a Deity, while their hearts
are empty of affection to the Deity. Job’s children may curse God
_in their hearts_, though not with their lips.[140]
_There is no God._ Most understand it of a denial of the providence
of God, as I have said in opening the former doctrine. He denies some
essential attribute of God, or the exercise of that attribute in the
world.[141] He that denies any _essential_ attribute, may be said to
deny the being of God. Whosoever denies angels or men to have reason
and will, denies the human and angelical nature, because understanding
and will are essential to both those natures; there could neither
be angel nor man without them. No nature can subsist without the
perfections essential to that nature, nor God be conceived of without
his. The apostle tells us (Eph. ii. 12), that the Gentiles were
“without God in the world.” So, in some sense, all unbelievers may
be termed atheists; for rejecting the Mediator appointed by God, they
reject that God who appointed him. But this is beyond the intended
scope, natural atheism being the only subject; yet this is deducible
from it. That the title of ἄθεοι doth not only belong to those who
deny the existence of God, or to those who contemn all sense of a
Deity, and would root the conscience and reverence of God out {a90}
of their souls; but it belongs also to those who give not that worship
to God which is due to him, who worship many gods, or who worship
one God in a false and superstitious manner, when they have not right
conceptions of God, nor intend an adoration of him according to the
excellency of his nature. All those that are unconcerned for any
particular religion fall under this character: though they own a
God in general, yet are willing to acknowledge any God that shall be
coined by the powers under whom they live. The Gentiles were without
God in the world; without the true notion of God, not without a God of
their own framing. This general or practical atheism is natural to men.
1. Not natural by created, but by corrupted nature. It is against
nature, as nature came out of the hand of God; but universally
natural, as nature hath been sophisticated and infected by the
serpent’s breath. Inconsideration of God, or misrepresentation of his
nature, are as agreeable to corrupt nature, as the disowning the being
of a God is contrary to common reason. God is not denied, _naturâ, sed
vitiis_.[142]
2. It is universally natural: “The wicked are estranged from the womb
(Psalm lviii. 3). They go astray as soon as they be born: their poison
is like the poison of a serpent.” _The wicked_, (and who by his birth
hath a better title?) they go astray from the dictates of God and the
rule of their creation as soon as ever they be born. Their poison is
like the poison of a serpent, which is radically the same in all of
the same species. It is seminally and fundamentally in all men, though
there may be a stronger restraint by a divine hand upon some men than
upon others. This principle runs through the whole stream of nature.
The natural bent of every man’s heart is distant from God. When we
attempt anything pleasing to God, it is like the climbing up a hill,
against nature; when anything is displeasing to him, it is like
a current running down the channel in its natural course; when we
attempt anything that is an acknowledgment of the holiness of God,
we are fain to rush, with arms in our hands, through a multitude of
natural passions, and fight the way through the oppositions of our
own sensitive appetite. How softly do we naturally sink down into that
which sets us at a greater distance from God! There is no active,
potent, efficacious sense of a God by nature. “The heart of the sons
of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Eccl. viii. 11). _The heart_,
in the singular number, as if there were but one common heart beat in
all mankind, and bent, as with one pulse, with a joint consent and
force to wickedness, without a sense of the authority of God in the
earth, as if one heart acted every man in the world. The great apostle
cites the text to verify the charge he brought against all mankind.
[143] In his interpretation, the Jews, who owned one God, and were
dignified with special privileges, as well as the Gentiles that
maintained many gods, are within the compass of this character. The
apostle leaves out the first part of the text, “The fool hath said in
his heart,” but takes in the latter part, and the verses following. He
charges _all_, because all, every man of them, was under sin――“There
is none that seeks God;” and, {a91} ver. 19, he adds, “What the law
saith, it speaks to those that are under the law,” that none should
imagine he included only the Gentiles, and exempted the Jews from this
description. The leprosy of atheism had infected the whole mass of
human nature. No man, among Jews or Gentiles, did naturally seek God;
and, therefore, all were void of any spark of the practical sense of
the Deity. The effects of this atheism are not in all externally of
an equal size; yet, in the fundamentals and radicals of it, there
is not a hair’s difference between the best and the worst men
that ever traversed the world. The distinction is laid either in
common grace, bounding and suppressing it; or in special grace,
killing and crucifying it. It is in every one either triumphant or
militant, reigning or deposed. No man is any more born with sensible
acknowledgments of God, than he is born with a clear knowledge of
the nature of all the stars in the heavens, or plants upon the earth.
None seeks after God.[144] None seek God as his rule, as his end,
as his happiness, which is a debt the creature naturally owes to
God. He desires no communion with God; he places his happiness in
anything inferior to God; he prefers everything before him, glorifies
everything above him; he hath no delight to know him; he regards not
those paths which lead to him; he loves his own filth better than
God’s holiness; his actions are tinctured and dyed with self, and are
void of that respect which is due from him to God.
The noblest faculty of man, his understanding, wherein the remaining
lineaments of the image of God are visible; the highest operation of
that faculty, which is wisdom, is, in the judgment of the Spirit of
God, devilish, whilst it is earthly and sensual;[145] and the wisdom
of the best man is no better by nature; a legion of impure spirits
possess it; devilish, as the devil, who, though he believe there is
a God, yet acts as if there were none, and wishes he had no superior
to prescribe him a law, and inflict that punishment upon him which
his crimes have merited. Hence the poison of man by nature is said
to be like the poison of a serpent,[146] alluding to that serpentine
temptation which first infected mankind, and changed the nature of
man into the likeness of that of the devil; so that, notwithstanding
the harmony of the world, that presents men not only with the notice
of the being of a God, but darts into their minds some remarks of
his power and eternity; yet the thoughts and reasonings of man are
so corrupt, as may well be called diabolical, and as contrary to
the perfection of God, and the original law of their nature, as the
actings of the devil are; for since every natural man is a child of
the devil, and is acted by the diabolical spirit, he must needs have
that nature which his father hath, and the infusion of that venom
which the spirit that acts him is possessed with, though the full
discovery of it may be restrained by various circumstances (Eph.
ii. 2). To conclude: though no man, or at least very few, arrive to
a round and positive conclusion in their hearts that there is no God,
yet there is no man that naturally hath in his heart any reverence
of God. In general, before I come to a particular proof, take some
propositions.
{a92} _Prop. I._ Actions are a greater discovery of a principle than
words. The testimony of works is louder and clearer than that of words;
and the frame of men’s hearts must be measured rather by what they
do than by what they say. There may be a mighty distance between the
tongue and the heart, but a course of actions is as little guilty
of lying as interest is, according to our common saying. All outward
impieties are the branches of an atheism at the root of our nature, as
all pestilential sores are expressions of the contagion in the blood;
sin is therefore frequently called ungodliness in our English dialect.
Men’s practices are the best indexes of their principles: the current
of a man’s life is the counterpart of the frame of his heart. Who can
deny an error in the spring or wheels, when he perceives an error in
the hand of the dial? Who can deny an atheism in the heart, when so
much is visible in the life? The taste of the water discovers what
mineral it is strained through. A practical denial of God is worse
than a verbal, because deeds have usually more of deliberation than
words; words may be the fruit of a passion, but a set of evil actions
are the fruit and evidence of a predominant evil principle in the
heart. All slighting words of a prince do not argue an habitual
treason; but a succession of overt treasonable attempts signify a
settled treasonable disposition in the mind. Those, therefore, are
more deservedly termed atheists, who acknowledge a God, and walk as if
there were none, than those (if there can be any such) that deny a God,
and walk as if there were one. A sense of God in the heart would burst
out in the life; where there is no reverence of God in the life, it is
easily concluded there is less in the heart. What doth not influence
a man when it hath the addition of the eyes, and censures of outward
spectators, and the care of a reputation (so much the god of the
world) to strengthen it and restrain the action, must certainly
have less power over the heart when it is single, without any other
concurrence. The flames breaking out of a house discover the fire
to be much stronger and fiercer within. The apostle judgeth those
of the circumcision, who gave heed to Jewish fables, to be deniers
of God, though he doth not tax them with any notorious profaneness:
(Tit. i. 16), “They profess that they know God, but in works they
deny him.” He gives them epithets contrary to what they arrogated
to themselves.[147] They boasted themselves to be holy; the apostle
calls them abominable: they bragged that they fulfilled the law,
and observed the traditions of their fathers; the apostle calls them
disobedient, or unpersuadable: they boasted that they only had the
rule of righteousness, and a sound judgment concerning it; the apostle
said they had a reprobate sense, and unfit for any good work; and
judges against all their vain‑glorious brags, that they had not a
reverence of God in their hearts; there was more of the denial of God
in their works than there was acknowledgment of God in their words.
Those that have neither God in their thoughts, nor in their tongues,
nor in their works, cannot properly be said to acknowledge him. Where
the honor of God is not practically owned in the lives of men, the
being of God is not sensibly acknowledged in the hearts of men. The
{a93} principle must be of the same kind with the actions; if the
actions be atheistical, the principle of them can be no better.
_Prop. II._ All sin is founded in a secret atheism. Atheism is the
spirit of every sin; all the floods of impieties in the world break in
at the gate of a secret atheism, and though several sins may disagree
with one another, yet, like Herod and Pilate against Christ, they join
hand in hand against the interest of God. Though lusts and pleasures
be diverse, yet they are all united in disobedience to him.[148] All
the wicked inclinations in the heart, and struggling motions, secret
repinings, self‑applauding confidences in our own wisdom, strength,
&c., envy, ambition, revenge, are sparks from this latent fire; the
language of every one of these is, I would be a Lord to myself, and
would not have a God superior to me. The variety of sins against the
first and second table, the neglects of God, and violences against man,
are derived from this in the text; first, “The fool hath said in his
heart,” and then follows a legion of devils. As all virtuous actions
spring from an acknowledgment of God, so all vicious actions rise from
a lurking denial of him: all licentiousness goes glib down where there
is no sense of God. Abraham judged himself not secure from murder,
nor his wife from defilement in Gerar, if there were no fear of God
there.[149] He that makes no conscience of sin has no regard to the
honor, and, consequently, none to the being of God. “By the fear of
God men depart from evil” (Prov. xvi. 6); by the non‑regarding of God
men rush into evil. Pharaoh oppressed Israel because he “knew not the
Lord.” If he did not deny the being of a Deity, yet he had such an
unworthy notion of God as was inconsistent with the nature of a Deity;
he, a poor creature, thought himself a mate for the Creator. In sins
of omission we own not God, in neglecting to perform what he enjoins;
in sins of commission we set up some lust in the place of God, and
pay to that the homage which is due to our Maker. In both we disown
him; in the one by not doing what he commands, in the other by doing
what he forbids. We deny his sovereignty when we violate his laws;
we disgrace his holiness when we cast our filth before his face; we
disparage his wisdom when we set up another rule as the guide of our
actions than that law he hath fixed; we slight his sufficiency when
we prefer a satisfaction in sin before a happiness in him alone; and
his goodness, when we judge it not strong enough to attract us to him.
Every sin invades the rights of God, and strips him of one or other of
his perfections. It is such a vilifying of God as if he were not God;
as if he were not the supreme Creator and Benefactor of the world; as
if we had not our being from him; as if the air we breathed in, the
food we lived by, were our own by right of supremacy, not of donation.
For a subject to slight his sovereign, is to slight his royalty; or a
servant his master, is to deny his superiority.
_Prop. III._ Sin implies that God is unworthy of a being. Every sin is
a kind of cursing God in the heart;[150] an aim at the destruction of
the being of God; not actually, but virtually; not in the intention
of every sinner, but in the nature of every sin. That affection which
{a94} excites a man to break His law, would excite him to annihilate
his being if it were in his power. A man in every sin aims to set up
his own will as his rule, and his own glory as the end of his actions
against the will and glory of God; and could a sinner attain his end,
God would be destroyed. God cannot outlive his will and his glory;
God cannot have another rule but his own will, nor another end but his
own honor. Sin is called a turning the back upon God,[151] a kicking
against him,[152] as if he were a slighter person than the meanest
beggar. What greater contempt can be shown to the meanest, vilest
person, than to turn the back, lift up the heel, and thrust away with
indignation? all which actions, though they signify that such a one
hath a being, yet they testify also that he is unworthy of a being,
that he is an unuseful being in the world, and that it were well the
world were rid of him. All sin against knowledge is called a reproach
of God.[153] Reproach is a vilifying a man as unworthy to be admitted
into company. We naturally judge God unfit to be conversed with. God
is the term turned from by a sinner; sin is the term turned to, which
implies a greater excellency in the nature of sin than in the nature
of God; and as we naturally judge it more worthy to have a being in
our affections, so consequently more worthy to have a being in the
world, than that infinite nature from whom we derive our beings and
our all, and upon whom, with a kind of disdain, we turn our backs.
Whosoever thinks the notion of a Deity unfit to be cherished in his
mind by warm meditation, implies that he cares not whether he hath a
being in the world or no. Now though the light of a Deity shines so
clearly in man, and the stings of conscience are so smart, that he
cannot absolutely deny the being of a God, yet most men endeavor to
smother this knowledge, and make the notion of a God a sapless and
useless thing (Rom. i. 28): “They like not to retain God in their
knowledge.” It is said, “Cain went out from the presence of the Lord”
(Gen. iv. 16); that is, from the worship of God. Our refusing or
abhorring the presence of a man implies a carelessness whether he
continue in the world or no; it is a using him as if he had no being,
or as if we were not concerned in it. Hence all men in Adam, under
the emblem of the prodigal, are said to go into a far country; not
in respect of place, because of God’s omnipresence, but in respect
of acknowledgment and affection: they mind and love anything but God.
And the descriptions of the nations of the world, lying in the ruins
of Adam’s fall, and the dregs of that revolt, is that they know not
God. They forget God, as if there were no such being above them; and,
indeed, he that doth the works of the devil, owns the devil to be more
worthy of observance, and, consequently, of a being, than God, whose
nature he forgets, and whose presence he abhors.
_Prop. IV._ Every sin in its own nature would render God a foolish and
impure being. Many transgressors esteem their acts, which are contrary
to the law of God, both wise and good: if so, the law against which
they are committed, must be both foolish and impure. What a reflection
is there, then, upon the Lawgiver! The moral law is not properly a
mere act of God’s will considered in itself, or a tyrannical {a95}
edict, like those of whom it may well be said, _stat pro ratione
voluntas_: but it commands those things which are good in their own
nature, and prohibits those things which are in their own nature evil;
and therefore is an act of his wisdom and righteousness; the result
of his wise counsel, and an extract of his pure nature; as all the
laws of just lawgivers, are not only the acts of their will, but of
a will governed by reason and justice, and for the good of the public,
whereof they are conservators. If the moral commands of God were
only acts of his will, and had not an intrinsic necessity, reason
and goodness, God might have commanded the quite contrary, and made
a contrary law, whereby that which we now call vice, might have been
canonized for virtue: He might then have forbid any worship of him,
love to him, fear of his name: He might then have commanded murders,
thefts, adulteries. In the first he would have untied the link of
duty from the creature, and dissolved the obligations of creatures to
him, which is impossible to be conceived; for from the relation of a
creature to God, obligations to God, and duties upon those obligations,
do necessarily result. It had been against the rule of goodness and
justice to have commanded the creature not to love him, and fear and
obey him: this had been a command against righteousness, goodness,
and intrinsic obligations to gratitude. And should murder, adulteries,
rapines have been commanded instead of the contrary, God would have
destroyed his own creation; he would have acted against the rule
of goodness and order; he had been an unjust tyrannical governor of
the world: public society would have been cracked in pieces, and the
world become a shambles, a brothel‑house, a place below the common
sentiments of a mere man. All sin, therefore, being against the law of
God, the wisdom and holy rectitude of God’s nature is denied in every
act of disobedience. And what is the consequence of this, but that
God is both foolish and unrighteous in commanding that, which was
neither an act of wisdom, as a governor, nor an act of goodness, as
a benefactor to his creature? As was said before, presumptuous sins
are called reproaches of God (Numb. xv. 30): “The soul that doth aught
presumptuously reproacheth the Lord.” Reproaches of men are either
for natural, moral, or intellectual defects. All reproaches of God
must imply a charge, either of unrighteousness or ignorance: if of
unrighteousness, it is a denial of his holiness; if of ignorance, it
is a blemishing his wisdom. If God’s laws were not wise and holy, God
would not enjoin them: and if they are so, we deny infinite wisdom and
holiness in God by not complying with them. As when a man believes not
God when he promises, he makes him a liar (1 John v. 10); so he that
obeys not a wise and holy God commanding, makes him guilty either of
folly or unrighteousness. Now, suppose you knew an absolute atheist
who denied the being of a God, yet had a life free from any notorious
spot or defilement; would you in reason count him so bad as the other
that owns a God in being, yet lays, by his course of action, such a
black imputation of folly and impurity upon the God he professeth to
own――an imputation which renders any man a most despicable creature?
_Prop. V._ Sin in its own nature endeavors to render God the most
{a96} miserable being. It is nothing but an opposition to the will of
God: the will of no creature is so much contradicted as the will of
God is by devils and men; and there is nothing under the heavens that
the affections of human nature stand more point blank against, than
against God. There is a slight of him in all the faculties of man; our
souls are as unwilling to know him, as our wills are averse to follow
him (Rom. viii. 7): “The carnal mind is enmity against God, it is not
subject to the law of God, nor can be subject.” It is true, God’s will
cannot be hindered of its effect, for then God would not be supremely
blessed, but unhappy and miserable: all misery ariseth from a want
of that which a nature would have, and ought to have: besides, if
anything could frustrate God’s will, it would be superior to him: God
would not be omnipotent, and so would lose the perfection of the Deity,
and consequently the Deity itself; for that which did wholly defeat
God’s will, would be more powerful than he. But sin is a contradiction
to the will of God’s revelation, to the will of his precept: and
therein doth naturally tend to a superiority over God, and would
usurp his omnipotence, and deprive him of his blessedness. For if God
had not an infinite power to turn the designs of it to his own glory,
but the will of sin could prevail, God would be totally deprived
of his blessedness. Doth not sin endeavor to subject God to the
extravagant and contrary wills of men, and make him more a slave than
any creature can be? For the will of no creature, not the meanest and
most despicable creature, is so much crossed, as the will of God is by
sin (Isa. xliii. 24): “Thou hast made me to serve with thy sins:” thou
hast endeavored to make a mere slave of me by sin. Sin endeavors to
subject the blessed God to the humor and lust of every person in the
world.
_Prop. VI._ Men sometimes in some circumstances do wish the not being
of God. This some think to be the meaning of the text, “The fool hath
said in his heart, There is no God,” that is, he wishes there were no
God. Many tamper with their own hearts to bring them to a persuasion
that there is no God: and when they cannot do that, they conjure up
wishes that there were none. Men naturally have some conscience of
sin, and some notices of justice (Rom. i. 32): “They know the judgment
of God,” and they know the demerit of sin; “they know the judgment of
God, and that they which do such things are worthy of death.” What is
the consequent of this but fear of punishment; and what is the issue
of that fear, but a wishing the Judge either unwilling or unable
to vindicate the honor of his violated law? When God is the object
of such a wish, it is a virtual undeifying of him: not to be able
to punish, is to be impotent; not to be willing to punish, is to
be unjust: imperfections inconsistent with the Deity. God cannot
be supposed without an infinite power to act, and an infinite
righteousness as the rule of acting. Fear of God is natural to all
men; not a fear of offending him, but a fear of being punished by him:
the wishing the extinction of God has its degree in men, according
to the degree of their fears of his just vengeance: and though such a
wish be not in its meridian but in the damned in hell, yet it hath its
starts and motions in affrighted and awakened consciences on the earth:
under this rank of wishers, that there were no God, or that God were
destroyed, do fall.
{a97} 1. Terrified consciences, that are _Magor‑missabib_, see nothing
but matter of fear round about. As they have lived without the bounds
of the law, they are afraid to fall under the stroke of his justice:
fear wishes the destruction of that which it apprehends hurtful: it
considers him as a God to whom vengeance belongs, as the Judge of
all the earth.[154] The less hopes such an one hath of his pardon,
the more joy he would have to hear that his judge should be stripped
of his life: he would entertain with delight any reasons that might
support him in the conceit that there were no God: in his present
state such a doctrine would be his security from an account: he would
as much rejoice if there were no God to inflame an hell for him, as
any guilty malefactor would if there were no judge to order a gibbet
for him. Shame may bridle men’s words, but the heart will be casting
about for some arguments this way, to secure itself: such as are at
any time in Spira’s case, would be willing to cease to be creatures,
that God might cease to be Judge. “The fool hath said in his heart,
there is no Elohim, no Judge;” fancying God without any exercise of
his judicial authority. And there is not any wicked man under anguish
of spirit, but, were it within the reach of his power, would take
away the life of God, and rid himself of his fears by destroying his
Avenger.
2. Debauched persons are not without such wishes sometimes: an
obstinate servant wishes his master’s death, from whom he expects
correction for his debaucheries. As man stands in his corrupt nature,
it is impossible but one time or other most debauched persons at least
have some kind of velleities, or imperfect wishes. It is as natural
to men to abhor those things which are unsuitable and troublesome,
as it is to please themselves in things agreeable to their minds and
humors; and since man is so deeply in love with sin, as to count it
the most estimable good, he cannot but wish the abolition of that law
which checks it, and, consequently, the change of the Lawgiver which
enacted it; and in wishing a change in the holy nature of God, he
wishes a destruction of God, who could not be God if he ceased to
be immutably holy. They do as certainly wish that God had not a holy
will to command them, as despairing souls wish that God had not a
righteous will to punish them, and to wish conscience extinct for the
molestations they receive from it, is to wish the power conscience
represents out of the world also. Since the state of sinners is a
state of distance from God, and the language of sinners to God is,
“Depart from us;”[155] they desire as little the continuance of his
being, as they desire the knowledge of his ways; the same reason which
moves them to desire God’s distance from them, would move them to
desire God’s not being: since the greatest distance would be most
agreeable to them, the destruction of God must be so too; because
there is no greater distance from us, than in not being. Men would
rather have God not to be, than themselves under control, that
sensuality might range at pleasure; he is like a “heifer sliding from
the yoke” (Hosea iv. 16). The cursing of God in the heart, feared
by Job of his children, intimates a wishing God despoiled of his
authority, that their pleasure might not be damped by his law. Besides,
{a98} is there any natural man that sins against actuated knowledge,
but either thinks or wishes that God might not see him, that God might
not know his actions? And is not this to wish the destruction of God,
who could not be God unless he were immense and omniscient?
3. Under this rank fall those who perform external duties only
out of a principle of slavish fear. Many men perform those duties
that the law enjoins, with the same sentiments that slaves perform
their drudgery; and are constrained in their duties by no other
considerations but those of the whip and the cudgel. Since, therefore,
they do it with reluctancy, and secretly murmur while they seem to
obey, they would be willing that both the command were recalled, and
the master that commands them were in another world. The spirit of
adoption makes men act towards God as a father, a spirit of bondage
only eyes him as a judge. Those that look upon their superiors as
tyrannical, will not be much concerned in their welfare; and would be
more glad to have their nails pared, than be under perpetual fear of
them. Many men regard not the Infinite Goodness in the service of him,
but consider him as cruel, tyrannical, injurious to their liberty.
Adam’s posterity are not free from the sentiments of their common
father, till they are regenerate. You know what conceit was the hammer
whereby the hellish Jael struck the nail into our first parents, which
conveyed death, together with the same imagination to all their
posterity (Gen. iii. 5): “God knows that in the day you eat thereof,
your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and
evil.” Alas, poor souls! God knew what he did when he forbade you that
fruit; he was jealous you should be too happy; it was cruelty in him
to deprive you of a food so pleasant and delicious. The apprehension
of the severity of God’s commands riseth up no less in desires that
there were no God over us, than Adam’s apprehension of envy in God
for the restraint of one tree, moved him to attempt to be equal with
God: fear is as powerful to produce the one in his posterity, as
pride was to produce the other in the common root. When we apprehend
a thing hurtful to us, we desire so much evil to it, as may render it
incapable of doing us the hurt we fear. As we wish the preservation
of what we love or hope for, so we are naturally apt to wish the
not being of that whence we fear some hurt or trouble. We must not
understand this as if any man did formally wish the destruction of
God, as God. God in himself is an infinite mirror of goodness and
ravishing loveliness; he is infinitely good, and so universally good,
and nothing but good; and is therefore so agreeable to a creature,
as a creature, that it is impossible that the creature, while it
bears itself to God as a creature, should be guilty of this, but
thirst after him and cherish every motion to him. As no man wishes the
destruction of any creature, as a creature, but as it may conduce to
something which he counts may be beneficial to himself; so no man doth,
nor perhaps can wish the cessation of the being of God, as God; for
then he must wish his own being to cease also; but as he considers
him clothed with some perfections, which he apprehends as injurious
to him, as his holiness in forbidding sin, his justice in punishing
sin; and God being judged in those perfections, contrary {a99} to what
the revolted creature thinks convenient and good for himself, he may
wish God stripped of those perfections, that thereby he may be free
from all fear of trouble and grief from him in his fallen state. In
wishing God deprived of those, he wishes God deprived of his being;
because God cannot retain his deity without a love of righteousness,
and hatred of iniquity; and he could not testify his love to the
one, or his loathing of the other, without encouraging goodness, and
witnessing his anger against iniquity. Let us now appeal to ourselves,
and examine our own consciences. Did we never please ourselves
sometimes in the thoughts, how happy we should be, how free in our
vain pleasures, if there were no God? Have we not desired to be our
own lords, without control, subject to no law but our own, and be
guided by no will but that of the flesh? Did we never rage against
God under his afflicting hand? Did we never wish God stripped of his
holy will to command, and his righteous will to punish? &c.
Thus much for the general. For the proof of this, many considerations
will bring in evidence; most may be reduced to these two generals: Man
would set himself up, first, as his own rule; secondly, as his own end
and happiness.
I. Man would set himself up as his own rule instead of God. This will
be evidenced in this method.
1. Man naturally disowns the rule God sets him. 2. He owns any other
rule rather than that of God’s prescribing. 3. These he doth in order
to the setting himself up as his own rule. 4. He makes himself not
only his own rule, but he would make himself the rule of God, and give
laws to his Creator.
First, Man naturally disowns the rule God sets him. It is all one to
deny his royalty, and to deny his being. When we disown his authority,
we disown his Godhead. It is the right of God to be the sovereign of
his creatures, and it must be a very loose and trivial assent that
such men have to God’s superiority over them, (and consequently to
the excellency of his being, upon which that authority is founded)
who are scarce at ease in themselves, but when they are invading his
rights, breaking his bands, casting away his cords, and contradicting
his will. Every man naturally is a son of Belial, would be without a
yoke, and leap over God’s enclosures; and in breaking out against his
sovereignty, we disown his being, as God, for to be God and sovereign
are inseparable; he could not be God, if he were not supreme; nor
could he be a Creator without being a Lawgiver. To be God and yet
inferior to another, is a contradiction. To make rational creatures
without prescribing them a law, is to make them without holiness,
wisdom and goodness.
1. There is in man naturally an unwillingness to have any
acquaintance with the rule God sets him (Psalm xiv. 2): “None that
did understand and seek God.” The refusing instruction and casting
his Word behind the back is a part of atheism.[156] We are heavy in
hearing the instructions either of law or gospel,[157] and slow in
the apprehension of what we hear. The people that God had hedged in
from the wilderness of the world for his own garden, were foolish
{a100} and did not know God; were sottish and had no understanding of
him.[158] The law of God is accounted a strange thing;[159] a thing
of a different climate, and a far country from the heart of man;
wherewith the mind of man had no natural acquaintance, and had no
desire to have any; or they regarded it as a sordid thing: what God
accounts great and valuable, they account mean and despicable. Men
may show a civility to a stranger, but scarce contract an intimacy:
there can be no amicable agreement between the holy will of God and
the heart of a depraved creature: one is holy, the other unholy; one
is universally good, the other stark naught. The purity of the Divine
rule renders it nauseous to the impurity of a carnal heart. Water and
fire may as well friendly kiss each other and live together without
quarrelling and hissing, as the holy will of God and the unregenerate
heart of a fallen creature.
The nauseating a holy rule is an evidence of atheism in the heart, as
the nauseating wholesome food is of putrefied phlegm in the stomach.
It is found more or less in every Christian, in the remainders,
though not in a full empire. As there is a law in his mind whereby he
delights in the law of God, so there is a law in his members whereby
he wars against the law of God (Rom. vii. 22, 23, 25). How predominant
is this loathing of the law of God, when corrupt nature is in its full
strength, without any principle to control it! There is in the mind of
such a one a darkness, whereby it is ignorant of it, and in the will
a depravedness, whereby it is repugnant to it. If man were naturally
willing and able to have an intimate acquaintance with, and delight
in the law of God, it had not been such a signal favor for God to
promise to “write the law in the heart.” A man may sooner engrave
the chronicle of a whole nation, or all the records of God in the
Scripture upon the hardest marble with his bare finger, than write one
syllable of the law of God in a spiritual manner upon his heart. For,
(1.) Men are negligent in using the means for the knowledge of God’s
will. All natural men are fools, who know not how to use the price
God puts into their hands;[160] they put not a due estimate upon
opportunities and means of grace, and account that law folly which is
the birth of an infinite and holy wisdom. The knowledge of God which
they may glean from creatures, and is more pleasant to the natural
gust of men, is not improved to the glory of God, if we will believe
the indictment the apostle brings against the Gentiles.[161] And most
of those that have dived into the depths of nature, have been more
studious of the qualities of the creatures, than of the excellency of
the nature, or the discovery of the mind of God in them; who regard
only the rising and motions of the star, but follow not with the wise
men, its conduct to the King of the Jews. How often do we see men
filled with an eager thirst for all other kind of knowledge, that
cannot acquiesce in a twilight discovery, but are inquisitive into
the causes and reasons of effects, yet are contented with a weak and
languishing knowledge of God and his law, and are easily tired with
the proposals of them! He now that nauseates the means whereby he
may come to know and obey God, has no intention to make the {a101}
law of God his rule. There is no man that intends seriously an end,
but he intends means in order to that end: as when a man intends the
preservation or recovery of his health, he will intend means in order
to those ends, otherwise he cannot be said to intend his health; so
he that is not diligent in using means to know the mind of God, has
no sound intention to make the will and law of God his rule. Is not
the inquiry after the will of God made a work by the bye, and fain
to lacquey after other concerns of an inferior nature, if it hath
any place at all in the soul? which is a despising the being of God.
The notion of the sovereignty of God bears the same date with the
notion of his Godhead; and by the same way that he reveals himself, he
reveals his authority over us: whether it be by creatures without, or
conscience within. All authority over rational creatures consists in
commanding and directing: the duty of rational creatures in compliance
with that authority consists in obeying. Where there is therefore a
careless neglect of those means which convey the knowledge of God’s
will and our duty, there is an utter disowning of God as our Sovereign
and our rule.
(2.) When any part of the mind and will of God breaks in upon men,
they endeavor to shake it off: as a man would a sergeant that comes
to arrest him, “they like not to retain God in their knowledge”
(Rom. i. 28). “A natural man receives not the things of the Spirit
of God;” that is, into his affection; he pusheth them back as men do
troublesome and importunate beggars: they have no kindness to bestow
upon it: they thrust with both shoulders against the truth of God,
when it presseth in upon them; and dash as much contempt upon it as
the Pharisees did upon the doctrine our Saviour directed against their
covetousness. As men naturally delight to be without God in the world,
so they delight to be without any offspring of God in their thoughts.
Since the spiritual palate of man is depraved, divine truth is
unsavory and ungrateful to us, till our taste and relish is restored
by grace: hence men damp and quench the motions of the Spirit to
obedience and compliance with the dictates of God; strip them of their
life and vigor, and kill them in the womb. How unable are our memories
to retain the substance of spiritual truth; but like sand in a glass,
put in at one part and runs out at the other! Have not many a secret
wish, that the Scripture had never mentioned some truths, or that they
were blotted out of the Bible, because they face their consciences,
and discourage those boiling lusts they would with eagerness and
delight pursue? Methinks that interruption John gives our Saviour
when he was upon the reproof of their pride, looks little better than
a design to divert him from a discourse so much against the grain,
by telling him a story of their prohibiting one to cast out devils,
because he followed not them.[162] How glad are men when they can
raise a battery against a command of God, and raise some smart
objection whereby they may shelter themselves from the strictness
of it!
(3.) When men cannot shake off the notices of the will and mind of God,
they have no pleasure in the consideration of them; which could not
possibly be, if there were a real and fixed design to own {a102} the
mind and law of God as our rule. Subjects or servants that love to
obey their prince and master, will delight to read and execute their
orders. The devils understand the law of God in their minds, but they
loathe the impressions of it upon their wills: those miserable spirits
are bound in chains of darkness, evil habits in their wills, that they
have not a thought of obeying that law they know. It was an unclean
beast under the law that did not chew the cud: it is a corrupt heart
that doth not chew truth by meditation. A natural man is said not to
know God, or the things of God; he may know them nationally, but he
knows them not affectionately. A sensual soul can have no delight
in a spiritual law. To be sensual and not to have the Spirit are
inseparable (Jude 19). Natural men may indeed meditate upon the law
and truth of God, but without delight in it; if they take any pleasure
in it, it is only as it is knowledge, not as it is a rule; for we
delight in nothing that we desire, but upon the same account that
we desire it. Natural men desire to know God and some part of his
will and law, not out of a sense of their practical excellency, but
a natural thirst after knowledge: and if they have a delight, it is
in the act of knowing, not in the object known, not in the duties
that stream from that knowledge; they design the furnishing their
understandings, not the quickening their affections,――like idle
boys that strike fire, not to warm themselves by the heat, but sport
themselves with the sparks; whereas a gracious soul accounts not only
his meditation, or the operations of his soul about God and his will
to be sweet, but he hath a joy in the object of that meditation.[163]
Many have the knowledge of God, who have no delight in him or his will.
Owls have eyes to perceive that there is a sun, but by reason of the
weakness of their sight have no pleasure to look upon a beam of it:
so neither can a man by nature love, or delight in the will of God,
because of his natural corruption. That law that riseth up in men
for conviction and instruction, they keep down under the power of
corruption; making their souls not the sanctuary, but prison of truth
(Rom. i. 18). They will keep it down in their hearts, if they cannot
keep it out of their heads, and will not endeavor to know and taste
the spirit of it.
(4.) There is, further, a rising and swelling of the heart against
the will of God. 1st. Internal. God’s law cast against a hard
heart, is like a ball thrown against a stone wall, by reason of the
resistance rebounding the further from it; the meeting of a divine
truth and the heart of man, is like the meeting of two tides, the
weaker swells and foams. We have a natural antipathy against a divine
rule, and therefore when it is clapped close to our consciences,
there is a snuffing at it, high reasonings against it, corruption
breaks out more strongly: as water poured on lime sets it on fire
by an _antiperistasis_, and the more water is cast upon it, the more
furiously it burns; or as the sunbeams shining upon a dunghill make
the steams the thicker, and the stench the noisomer, neither being
the positive cause of the smoke in the lime, or the stench in the
dunghill, but by accident the causes of the eruption: (Rom. vii. 8),
“But sin taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner
of concupiscence, for {a103} without the law sin was dead.” Sin was
in a languishing posture, as if it were dead, like a lazy garrison
in a city, till, upon an alarm from the adversary, it takes arms, and
revives its courage; all the sin in the heart gathers together its
force to maintain its standing, like the vapors of the night, which
unite themselves more closely to resist the beams of the rising
sun. Deep conviction often provokes fierce opposition; sometimes
disputes against a divine rule end in blasphemies: (Acts xiii. 45),
“contradicting and blaspheming” are coupled together. Men naturally
desire things that are forbidden, and reject things commanded, from
the corruption of nature, which affects an unbounded liberty, and
is impatient of returning under that yoke it hath shaken off, and
therefore rageth against the bars of the law, as the waves roar
against the restraint of a bank. When the understanding is dark, and
the mind ignorant, sin lies as dead; “A man scarce knows he hath such
motions of concupiscence in him, he finds not the least breath of wind,
but a full calm in his soul; but when he is awakened by the law, then
the viciousness of nature being sensible of an invasion of its empire,
arms itself against the divine law, and the more the command is urged,
the more vigorously it bends its strength, and more insolently lifts
up itself against it;”[164] he perceives more and more atheistical
lusts than before; “all manner of concupiscence,” more leprous and
contagious than before. When there are any motions to turn to God, a
reluctancy is presently perceived; atheistical thoughts bluster in the
mind like the wind, they know not whence they come, nor whither they
go; so unapt is the heart to any acknowledgment of God as his ruler,
and any re‑union with him. Hence men are said to resist the Holy Ghost
(Acts vii. 51), to fall against it, as the word signifies, as a stone,
or any ponderous body falls against that which lies in its way: they
would dash to pieces, or grind to powder that very motion which is
made for their instruction, and the Spirit too which makes it, and
that not from a fit of passion, but an habitual repugnance; “Ye always
resist,” &c. 2d. External. It is a fruit of atheism in the fourth
verse of this psalm, “Who eat up my people as they eat bread.” How
do the revelations of the mind of God meet with opposition! and the
carnal world like dogs bark against the shining of the moon; so much
men hate the light, that they spurn at the lanthorns that bear it;
and because they cannot endure the treasure, often fling the earthen
vessels against the ground wherein it is held. If the entrance of
truth render the market worse for Diana’s shrines, the whole city will
be in an uproar.[165] When Socrates upon natural principles confuted
the heathen idolatry, and asserted the unity of God, the whole cry of
Athens, a learned university, is against him; and because he opposed
the public received religion, though with an undoubted truth, he must
end his life by violence. How hath every corner of the world steamed
with the blood of those that would maintain the authority of God in
the world! The devil’s children will follow the steps of their father,
and endeavor to bruise the heel of divine truth, that would endeavor
to break the head of corrupt lust.
{a104} (5.) Men often seem desirous to be acquainted with the will of
God, not out of any respect to his will, and to make it their rule,
but upon some other consideration. Truth is scarce received as truth.
There is more of hypocrisy than sincerity in the pale of the church,
and attendance on the mind of God. The outward dowry of a religious
profession, makes it often more desirable than the beauty. Judas was a
follower of Christ for the bag, not out of any affection to the divine
revelation. Men sometime pretend a desire to be acquainted with the
will of God, to satisfy their own passions, rather than to conform to
God’s will; the religion of such is not the judgment of the man, but
the passion of the brute. Many entertain a doctrine for the person’s
sake, rather than a person for the doctrine’s sake, and believe a
thing because it comes from a man they esteem, as if his lips were
more canonical than Scripture. The Apostle implies in the commendation
he gives the Thessalonians,[166] that some receive the word for human
interest, not as it is in truth the word and will of God to command
and govern their consciences by its sovereign authority; or else they
have the “truth of God” (as St. James speaks of the faith of Christ)
“with respect of persons;”[167] and receive it not for the sake of
the fountain, but of the channel; so that many times the same truth
delivered by another, is disregarded, which, when dropping from the
fancy and mouth of a man’s own idol, is cried up as an oracle. This
is to make not God, but man the rule; for though we entertain that
which materially is the truth of God, yet not formally as his truth,
but as conveyed by one we affect; and that we receive a truth and
not an error, we owe the obligation to the honesty of the instrument,
and not to the strength and clearness of our own judgment. Wrong
considerations may give admittance to an unclean, as well as a clean
beast into the ark of the soul. That which is contrary to the mind of
God, may be entertained, as well as that which is agreeable. It is all
one to such that have no respect to God, what they have, as it is all
one to a sponge to suck up the foulest water or the sweetest wine,
when either is applied to it.
(6.) Many that entertain the notions of the will and mind of God,
admit them with unsettled and wavering affections. There is a great
levity in the heart of man. The Jews that one day applaud our Saviour
with hosannahs as their king, vote his crucifixion the next, and use
him as a murderer. We begin in the Spirit, and end in the flesh. Our
hearts, like lute‑strings, are changed with every change of weather,
with every appearance of a temptation; scarce one motion of God in a
thousand prevails with us for a settled abode. It is a hard task to
make a signature of those truths upon our affections, which will with
ease pass current with our understandings; our affections will as soon
lose them, as our understandings embrace them. The heart of man is
“unstable as water.”[168] Some were willing to rejoice in John’s
light, which reflected a lustre on their minds; but not in his heat,
which would have conveyed a warmth to their hearts; and the light was
pleasing to them but for a season,[169] while their corruptions lay
as if they were dead, not when they were awakened. {a105} Truth may
be admitted one day, and the next day rejected; as Austin saith of
a wicked man, he loves the truth shining, but he hates the truth
reproving. This is not to make God, but our own humor, our rule and
measure.
(7.) Many desire an acquaintance with the law and truth of God, with
a design to improve some lust by it; to turn the word of God to be a
pander to the breach of his law. This is so far from making God’s will
our rule, that we make our own vile affections the rule of his law.
How many forced interpretations of Scripture have been coined to give
content to the lusts of men, and the divine rule forced to bend, and
be squared to men’s loose and carnal apprehensions! It is a part of
the instability or falseness of the heart, to “wrest the Scriptures to
their own destruction;”[170] which they could not do, if they did not
first wring them to countenance some detestable error or filthy crime.
In Paradise the first interpretation made of the first law of God,
was point blank against the mind of the Lawgiver, and venomous to the
whole race of mankind. Paul himself feared that some might put his
doctrine of grace to so ill a use, as to be an altar and sanctuary to
shelter their presumption (Rom. vi. 1, 15): “Shall we then continue
in sin, that grace may abound?” Poisonous consequences are often
drawn from the sweetest truths; as when God’s patience is made a topic
whence to argue against his providence,[171] or an encouragement to
commit evil more greedily; as though because he had not presently a
revenging hand, he had not an all‑seeing eye: or when the doctrine
of justification by faith is made use of to depress a holy life; or
God’s readiness to receive returning sinners, an encouragement to
defer repentance till a death‑bed. A liar will hunt for shelter
in the reward God gave the midwives that lied to Pharaoh for the
preservation of the males of Israel, and Rahab’s saving the spies by
false intelligence. God knows how to distinguish between grace and
corruption, that may lie close together; or between something of moral
goodness and moral evil, which may be mixed; we find their fidelity
rewarded, which was a moral good; but not their lie approved, which
was a moral evil. Nor will Christ’s conversing with sinners, be a
plea for any to thrust themselves into evil company. Christ conversed
with sinners, as a physician with diseased persons, to cure them, not
approve them; others with profligate persons, to receive infection
from them, not to communicate holiness to them. Satan’s children have
studied their father’s art, who wanted not perverted Scripture to
second his temptations against our Saviour.[172] How often do carnal
hearts turn divine revelation to carnal ends, as the sea fresh water
into salt! As men subject the precepts of God to carnal interests,
so they subject the truths of God to carnal fancies. When men
will allegorize the word, and make a humorous and crazy fancy the
interpreter of divine oracles, and not the Spirit speaking in the
word; this is to enthrone our own imaginations as the rule of God’s
law, and depose his law from being the rule of our reason; this is to
rifle truth of its true mind and intent. ’Tis more to rob a man of his
reason, the essential constitutive part of man, than of his estate;
this is to refuse an intimate acquaintance with his will. We shall
{a106} never tell what is the matter of a precept, or the matter of
a promise, if we impose a sense upon it contrary to the plain meaning
of it; thereby we shall make the law of God to have a distinct sense
according to the variety of men’s imaginations, and so make every
man’s fancy a law to himself. Now that this unwillingness to have a
spiritual acquaintance with divine truth is a disowning God as our
rule, and a setting up self in his stead, is evident; because this
unwillingness respects truth.
1st. As it is most spiritual and holy. A fleshly mind is most
contrary to a spiritual law, and particularly as it is a searching
and discovering law, that would dethrone all other rules in the soul.
As men love to be without a holy God in the world, so they love to
be without a holy law, the transcript and image of God’s holiness in
their hearts; and without holy men, the lights kindled by the Father
of lights. As the holiness of God, so the holiness of the law most
offends a carnal heart (Isa. xxx. 11): “Cause the Holy One of Israel
to cease from before us, prophesy to us right things.” They could not
endure God as a holy one. Herein God places their rebellion, rejecting
him as their rule (ver. 9), “Rebellious children, that will not hear
the law of the Lord.” The more pure and precious any discovery of God
is, the more it is disrelished by the world: as spiritual sins are
sweetest to a carnal heart, so spiritual truths are most distasteful.
The more of the brightness of the sun any beam conveys, the more
offensive it is to a distempered eye.
2d. As it doth most relate to, or lead to God. The devil directs his
fiercest batteries against those doctrines in the word, and those
graces in the heart, which most exalt God, debase man, and bring men
to the lowest subjection to their Creator; such is the doctrine and
grace of justifying faith. That men hate not knowledge as knowledge,
but as it directs them to choose the fear of the Lord, was the
determination of the Holy Ghost long ago (Prov. i. 29): “For that they
hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord.” Whatsoever
respects God, clears up guilt, witnesses man’s revolt to him, rouseth
up conscience, and moves to a return to God, a man naturally runs from,
as Adam did from God, and seeks a shelter in some weak bushes of error,
rather than appear before it. Not that men are unwilling to inquire
into and contemplate some divine truths which lie furthest from the
heart, and concern not themselves immediately with the rectifying
the soul: they may view them with such a pleasure as some might take
in beholding the miracles of our Saviour, who could not endure his
searching doctrine. The light of speculation may be pleasant, but the
light of conviction is grievous; that which galls their consciences,
and would affect them with a sense of their duty to God. Is it not
easy to perceive, that when a man begins to be serious in the concerns
of the honor of God and the duty of his soul, he feels a reluctancy
within him, even against the pleas of conscience; which evidenceth
that some unworthy principle has got footing in the hearts of men,
which fights against the declarations of God without, and the
impressions of the law of God within, at the same time when a man’s
own conscience takes part with it, which is the substance of the
apostle’s discourse, Rom. vii. 15, 16, {a107} &c. Close discourses
of the honor of God, and our duty to him, are irksome when men are
upon a merry pin: they are like a damp in a mine, that takes away
their breath; they shuffle them out as soon as they can, and are
as unwilling to retain the speech of them in their mouths, as the
knowledge of them in their hearts. Gracious speeches, instead of
bettering many men, distemper them, as sometimes sweet perfumes affect
a weak head with aches.
3d. As it is most contrary to self. Men are unwilling to acquaint
themselves with any truth that leads to God, because it leads from
self. Every part of the will of God is more or less displeasing, as it
sounds harsh against some carnal interest men would set above God, or
as a mate with him. Man cannot desire any intimacy with that law which
he regards as a bird of prey, to pick out his right eye or gnaw off
his right hand, his lust dearer than himself. The reason we have such
hard thoughts of God’s will is, because we have such high thoughts
of ourselves. It is a hard matter to believe or will that which hath
no affinity with some principle in the understanding, and no interest
in our will and passions: our unwillingness to be acquainted with
the will of God ariseth from the disproportion between that and our
corrupt hearts; “We are alienated from the life of God in our minds”
(Eph. iv. 18, 19). As we live not like God, so we neither think or
will as God; there is an antipathy in the heart of man against that
doctrine which teaches us to deny ourselves and be under the rule of
another; but whatsoever favors the ambition, lusts, and profits of
men, is easy entertainable. Many are fond of those sciences which may
enrich their understandings, and grate not upon their sensual delights.
Many have an admirable dexterity in finding out philosophical reasons,
mathematical demonstrations, or raising observations upon the records
of history; and spend much time and many serious and affectionate
thoughts in the study of them. In those they have not immediately
to do with God, their beloved pleasures are not impaired; it is a
satisfaction to self without the exercise of any hostility against it.
But had those sciences been against self, as much as the law and will
of God, they had long since been rooted out of the world. Why did the
young man turn his back upon the law of Christ? because of his worldly
self. Why did the Pharisees mock at the doctrine of our Saviour, and
not at their own traditions? because of covetous self. Why did the
Jews slight the person of our Saviour and put him to death, after the
reading so many credentials of his being sent from heaven? because
of ambitious self, that the Romans might not come and take away their
kingdom. If the law of God were fitted to the humors of self, it would
be readily and cordially observed by all men: self is the measure of a
world of seeming religious actions; while God seems to be the object,
and his law the motive, self is the rule and end (Zech. vii. 5): “Did
you fast unto me,” &c.
2. As men discover their disowning the will of God as a rule by
unwillingness to be acquainted with it, so they discover it, by
the contempt of it after they cannot avoid the notions and some
impressions of it. The rule of God is burthensome to a sinner; he
flies from it as from a frightful bugbear, and unpleasant yoke: sin
against {a108} the knowledge of the law is therefore called a going
back from the commandment of God’s lips (Job xxiii. 12): “A casting
God’s word behind them,”[173] as a contemptible thing, fitter to be
trodden in the dirt than lodged in the heart; nay it is a casting it
off as an abominable thing, for so the word זנח signifies, Hos. viii. 3.
“Israel hath cast off the thing that is good;” an utter refusal of
God (Jer. xliv. 16): “As for the word which thou hast spoken to us
in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken.” In the slight of his
precepts his essential perfections are slighted. In disowning his
will as a rule, we disown all those attributes which flow from his
will, as goodness, righteousness, and truth. As an act of the divine
understanding is supposed to precede the act of the divine will, so we
slight the infinite reason of God. Every law, though it proceeds from
the will of the lawgiver, and doth formally consist in an act of the
will, yet it doth pre‑suppose an act of the understanding. If the
commandment be holy, just, and good, as it is (Rom. vii. 12); if it
be the image of God’s holiness, a transcript of his righteousness,
and the efflux of his goodness; then in every breach of it, dirt is
cast upon those attributes which shine in it; and a slight of all
the regards he hath to his own honor, and all the provisions he makes
for his creature. This atheism, or contempt of God, is more taken
notice of by God than the matter of the sin itself; as a respect
to God in a weak and imperfect obedience is more than the matter of
the obedience itself, because it is an acknowledgment of God; so a
contempt of God in an act of disobedience, is more than the matter
of the disobedience. The creature stands in such an act not only in a
posture of distance from God, but defiance of him; it was not the bare
act of murder and adultery which Nathan charged upon David, but the
atheistical principle which spirited those evil acts. The despising
the commandment of the Lord was the venom of them.[174] It is possible
to break a law without contempt; but when men pretend to believe there
is a God, and that this is the law of God, it shows a contempt of his
majesty:[175] men naturally account God’s laws too strict, his yoke
too heavy, and his limits too strait; and he that liveth in a contempt
of this law, curseth God in his life. How can they believe there is
a God, who despise him as a ruler? How can they believe him to be a
guide, that disdain to follow him? To think we firmly believe a God
without living conformable to his law, is an idle and vain imagination.
The true and sensible notion of a God cannot subsist with disorder and
an affected unrighteousness. This contempt is seen,
1. In any presumptuous breach of any part of his law. Such sins are
frequently called in Scripture, rebellions, which are a denial of
the allegiance we owe to him. By a wilful refusal of his right in one
part, we root up the foundation of that rule he doth justly challenge
over us; his right is as extensive to command us in one thing, as in
another; and if it be disowned in one thing, it is virtually disowned
in all, and the whole statute book of God is contemned (James ii. 10,
11): “Whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point,
is guilty of all.” A willing breaking one part, though there be a
willing observance of all the other points of it, is a breach {a109}
of the whole; because the authority of God, which gives sanction to
the whole, is slighted: the obedience to the rest is dissembled: for
the love, which is the root of all obedience, is wanting; for “love
is the fulfilling the whole law.”[176] The rest are obeyed because
they cross not carnal desire so much as the other, and so it is an
observance of himself, not of God. Besides, the authority of God,
which is not prevalent to restrain us from the breach of one point,
would be of as little force with us to restrain us from the breach
of all the rest, did the allurements of the flesh give us as strong a
diversion from the one as from the other; and though the command that
is transgressed be the least in the whole law, yet the authority which
enjoins it is the same with that which enacts the greatest: and it is
not so much the matter of the command, as the authority commanding
which lays the obligation.
2. In the natural averseness to the declarations of God’s will and
mind, which way soever they tend. Since man affected to be as God,
he desires to be boundless; he would not have fetters, though they
be golden ones, and conduce to his happiness. Though the law of God
be a strength to them, yet they will not (Isa. xxx. 15): “In returning
shall be your strength, and you would not.” They would not have a
bridle to restrain them from running into the pit, nor be hedged in by
the law, though for their security; as if they thought it too slavish
and low‑spirited a thing to be guided by the will of another. Hence
man is compared to a wild ass, that loves to “snuff up the wind in
the wilderness at her pleasure,” rather than come under the guidance
of God;[177] from whatsoever quarter of the heavens you pursue her
she will run to the other. The Israelites “could not endure what was
commanded,”[178] though in regard of the moral part, agreeable to what
they found written in their own nature, and to the observance whereof
they had the highest obligations of any people under heaven, since
God had, by many prodigies, delivered them from a cruel slavery, the
memory of which prefaced the Decalogue (Exod. xx. 2), “I am the Lord
thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage.” They could not think of the rule of their duty, but
they must reflect upon the grand incentive of it in their redemption
from Egyptian thraldom; yet this people were cross to God, which way
soever he moved. When they were in the brick kilns, they cried for
deliverance; when they had heavenly manna, they longed for their
onions and garlic. In Num. xiv. 3, they repent of their deliverance
from Egypt, and talk of returning again to seek the remedy of their
evils in the hands of their cruellest enemies, and would rather put
themselves into the irons, whence God had delivered them, than believe
one word of the promise of God for giving them a fruitful land; but
when Moses tells them God’s order, that they should turn back by the
way of the Red Sea,[179] and that God had confirmed it by an oath,
that they should not see the land of Canaan,[180] they then run cross
to this command of God, and, instead of marching towards the Red
Sea, which they had wished for before, they will go up to Canaan,
as in spite of God and his threatening: “We will go to the place
{a110} which the Lord hath promised” (ver. 40), which Moses calls
a transgressing the commandment of the Lord (ver. 41). They would
presume to go up, notwithstanding Moses’ prohibition, and are smitten
by the Amalekites. When God gives them a precept, with a promise to
go up to Canaan, they long for Egypt; when God commands them to return
to the Red Sea, which was nearer to the place they longed for, they
will shift sides, and go up to Canaan;[181] and when they found they
were to traverse the solitudes of the desert, they took pet against
God, and, instead of thanking him for the late victory against the
Canaanites, they reproach him for his conduct from Egypt, and the
manna wherewith he nourished them in the wilderness. They would not
go to Canaan, the way God had chosen, nor preserve themselves by
the means God had ordained. They would not be at God’s disposal, but
complain of the badness of the way, and the lightness of manna, empty
of any necessary juice to sustain their nature. They murmuringly
solicit the will and power of God to change all that order which he
had resolved in his counsel, and take another, conformable to their
vain foolish desires; and they signified thereby that they would
invade his conduct, and that he should act according to their fancy,
which the psalmist calls a “tempting of God, and limiting the Holy One
of Israel” (Psalm lxxviii. 41). To what point soever the declarations
of God stand, the will of man turns the quite contrary way. Is not
the carriage of this nation the best then in the world? a discovery
of the depth of our natural corruption, how cross man is to God?
And that charge God brings against them, may be brought against all
men by nature, that they despise his judgments, and have a rooted
abhorrency of his statutes in their soul (Lev. xxvi. 43). No sooner
had they recovered from one rebellion, but they revolted to another;
so difficult a thing it is for man’s nature to be rendered capable of
conforming to the will of God. The carriage of this people is but a
copy of the nature of mankind, and is “written for our admonition”
(1 Cor. x. 11). From this temper men are said to make “void the law of
God;”[182] to make it of no obligation, an antiquated and moth‑eaten
record. And the Pharisees, by setting up their traditions against the
will of God, are said to make his law of “none effect;” to strip it of
all its authority, as the word signifies, (Matt. xv. 6), ἠκυρώσατε.
3. We have the greatest slight of that will of God which is most for
his honor and his greatest pleasure. It is the nature of man, ever
since Adam, to do so (Hos. vi. 6, 7). God desired mercy and not a
sacrifice; the knowledge of himself more than burnt offering; but they,
like men as Adam, have transgressed the covenant, invade God’s rights,
and not let him be Lord of one tree. We are more curious observers of
the fringes of the law than of the greater concerns of it. The Jews
were diligent in sacrifices and offerings, which God did not urge upon
them as principals, but as types of other things; but negligent of
the faith which was to be established by him. Holiness, mercy, pity,
which concerned the honor of God, as governor of the world, and were
imitations of the holiness and goodness of God, they were strangers
to. This is God’s complaint {a111} (Isa. i. 11, 12, xvi. 17). We shall
find our hearts most averse to the observation of those laws which are
eternal, and essential to righteousness; such that he could not but
command, as he is a righteous Governor; in the observation of which we
come nearest to him, and express his image more clearly; as those laws
for an inward and spiritual worship, a supreme affection to him. God,
in regard of his righteousness and holiness of his nature, and the
excellency of his being, could not command the contrary to these. But
this part of his will our hearts most swell against, our corruption
doth most snarl at; whereas those laws which are only positive, and
have no intrinsic righteousness in them, but depend purely upon the
will of the Lawgiver, and may be changed at his pleasure (which the
other, that have an intrinsic righteousness in them, cannot), we
better comply with, than that part of his will that doth express more
the righteousness of his nature;[183] such as the ceremonial part of
worship, and the ceremonial law among the Jews. We are more willing
to observe order in some outward attendances and glavering devotions,
than discard secret affections to evil, crucify inward lusts and
delightful thoughts. A “hanging down the head like a bullrush” is not
difficult; but the “breaking the heart,” like a potter’s vessel, to
shreds and dust (a sacrifice God delights in, whereby the excellency
of God and the vileness of the creature is owned), goes against the
grain; to cut off an outward branch is not so hard as to hack at the
root. What God most loathes, as most contrary to his will, we most
love: no sin did God so severely hate, and no sin were the Jews more
inclined unto, than that of idolatry. The heathen had not changed
their God, as the Jews had changed their glory (Jer. ii. 11); and all
men are naturally tainted with this sin, which is so contrary to the
holy and excellent nature of God. By how much the more defect there is
of purity in our respects to God, by so much the more respect there is
to some idol within or without us, to humor, custom, and interest, &c.
Never did any law of God meet with so much opposition as Christianity,
which was the design of God from the first promise to the exhibiting
the Redeemer, and from thence to the end of the world. All people
drew swords at first against it. The Romans prepared yokes for their
neighbors, but provided temples for the idols those people worshipped;
but Christianity, the choicest design and most delightful part of the
will of God, never met with a kind entertainment at first in any place;
Rome, that entertained all others, persecuted this with fire and sword,
though sealed by greater testimonies from heaven than their own
records could report in favor of their idols.
4. In running the greatest hazards, and exposing ourselves to more
trouble to cross the will of God, than is necessary to the observance
of it. It is a vain charge men bring against the divine precepts, that
they are rigorous, severe, difficult; when, besides the contradiction
to our Saviour, who tells us his “yoke is easy,” and his “burthen
light,” they thwart their own calm reason and judgment. Is there not
more difficulty to be vicious, covetous, violent, cruel, than to be
virtuous, charitable, kind? Doth the will of God enjoin that that
is {a112} not conformable to right reason, and secretly delightful
in the exercise and issue? And on the contrary, what doth Satan and
the world engage us in, that is not full of molestation and hazard?
Is it a sweet and comely thing to combat continually against our
own consciences, and resist our own light, and commence a perpetual
quarrel against ourselves, as we ordinarily do when we sin? They in
the Prophet (Micah vi. 6‒8) would be at the expense of “thousands of
rams, and ten thousand rivers of oil,” if they could compass them; yea,
would strip themselves of their natural affection to their first‑born
to expiate the “sin of their soul,” rather than to “do justice, love
mercy, and walk humbly with God;” things more conducible to the honor
of God, the welfare of the world, the security of their souls, and
of a more easy practice than the offerings they wished for. Do not
men then disown God when they will walk in ways hedged with thorns,
wherein they meet with the arrows of conscience, at every turn, in
their sides; and slide down to an everlasting punishment, sink under
an intolerable slavery, to contradict the will of God? when they will
prefer a sensual satisfaction, with a combustion in their consciences,
violation of their reasons, gnawing cares and weary travels before the
honor of God, the dignity of their natures, the happiness of peace and
health, which might be preserved at a cheaper rate, than they are at
to destroy them?
5. In the unwillingness and awkwardness of the heart, when it is
to pay God a service. Men “do evil with both hands earnestly,”[184]
but do good with one hand faintly; no life in the heart, nor any
diligence in the hand. What slight and loose thoughts of God doth
this unwillingness imply? It is a wrong to his providence, as though
we were not under his government, and had no need of his assistance;
a wrong to his excellency, as though there were no amiableness in him
to make his service desirable; an injury to his goodness and power,
as if he were not able or willing to reward the creatures’ obedience,
or careless not to take notice of it; it is a sign we receive little
satisfaction in him, and that there is a great unsuitableness between
him and us.
(1.) There is a kind of constraint in the first engagement. We are
rather pressed to it than enter ourselves volunteers. What we call
service to God is done naturally much against our wills; it is not a
delightful food, but a bitter potion; we are rather haled, than run
to it. There is a contradiction of sin within us against our service,
as there was a contradiction of sinners without our Saviour against
his doing the will of God. Our hearts are unwieldy to any spiritual
service of God; we are fain to use a violence with them sometimes:
Hezekiah, it is said, “walked before the Lord, with a perfect heart”
(2 Kings xx. 9); he walked, he made himself to walk: man naturally
cares not for a walk with God; if he hath any communion with him, it
is with such a dulness and heaviness of spirit as if he wished himself
out of his company. Man’s nature, being contrary to holiness, hath an
aversion to any act of homage to God, because holiness must at least
be pretended. In every duty wherein we have a communion with God,
holiness is requisite: now as men are against {a113} the truth of
holiness, because it is unsuitable to them, so they are not friends
to those duties which require it, and for some space divert them from
the thoughts of their beloved lusts. The word of the Lord is a yoke,
prayer a drudgery, obedience a strange element. We are like fish, that
“drink up iniquity like water,”[185] and come not to the bank without
the force of an angle; no more willing to do service for God, than
a fish is of itself to do service for man. It is a constrained act to
satisfy conscience, and such are servile, not son‑like performances,
and spring from bondage more than affection; if conscience, like a
task‑master, did not scourge them to duty, they would never perform
it. Let us appeal to ourselves, whether we are not more unwilling to
secret, closet, hearty duty to God, than to join with others in some
external service; as if those inward services were a going to the rack,
and rather our penance than privilege. How much service hath God in
the world from the same principle that vagrants perform their task in
Bridewell! How glad are many of evasions to back them in the neglect
of the commands of God, of corrupt reasonings from the flesh to waylay
an act of obedience, and a multitude of excuses to blunt the edge of
the precept! The very service of God shall be a pretence to deprive
him of the obedience due to him. Saul will not be ruled by God’s will
in the destroying the cattle of the Amalekites, but by his own; and
will impose upon the will and wisdom of God, judging God mistaken in
his command, and that the cattle God thought fittest to be meat to
the fowls, were fitter to be sacrifices on the altar.[186] If we do
perform any part of his will, is it not for our own ends, to have
some deliverance from trouble? (Isa. xxvi. 16): “In trouble have
they visited thee; they poured out a prayer when thy chastening was
upon them.” In affliction, he shall find them kneeling in homage and
devotion; in prosperity, he shall feel them kicking with contempt;
they can pour out a prayer in distress, and scarce drop one when they
are delivered.
(2.) There is a slightness in our service of God. We are loth to come
into his presence; and when we do come, we are loth to continue with
him. We pay not an homage to him heartily, as to our Lord and Governor;
we regard him not as our Master, whose work we ought to do, and whose
honor we ought to aim at. 1. In regard of the matter of service. When
the torn, the lame, and the sick is offered to God;[187] so thin and
lean a sacrifice, that you may have thrown it to the ground with a
puff; so some understand the meaning of “you have snuffed at it.”
Men have naturally such slight thoughts of the majesty and law of God,
that they think any service is good enough for him, and conformable
to his law. The dullest and deadest time we think fittest to pay God
a service in; when sleep is ready to close our eyes, and we are unfit
to serve ourselves, we think it a fit time to open our hearts to God.
How few morning sacrifices hath God from many persons and families!
Men leap out of their beds to their carnal pleasures or worldly
employments, without any thought of their Creator and Preserver, or
any reflection upon his will as the rule of our daily obedience. And
as many reserve the dregs of their lives, their old age, to offer up
their souls to {a114} God, so they reserve the dregs of the day, their
sleeping time, for the offering up their service to him. How many
grudge to spend their best time in the serving the will of God, and
reserve for him the sickly and rheumatic part of their lives; the
remainder of that which the devil and their own lusts have fed upon!
Would not any prince or governor judge a present half eaten up by
wild beasts, or that which died in a ditch, a contempt of his royalty?
A corrupt thing is too base and vile for so great a King as God is,
whose name is dreadful.[188] When by age men are weary of their own
bodies, they would present them to God; yet grudgingly, as if a tired
body were too good for him, snuffing at the command for service. God
calls for our best, and we give him the worst. 2. In respect of frame.
We think any frame will serve God’s turn, which speaks our slight
of God as a Ruler. Man naturally performs duty with an unholy heart,
whereby it becomes an abomination to God (Prov. xxviii. 9): “He that
turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayers shall be
an abomination to God.” The services which he commands, he hates for
their evil frames or corrupt ends (Amos v. 21): “I hate, I despise
your feast‑days, I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.” God
requires gracious services, and we give him corrupt ones. We do not
rouse up our hearts, as David called upon his lute and harp to awake
(Psalm lvii. 8). Our hearts are not given to him; we put him off with
bodily exercise. The heart is but ice to what it doth not affect.
[1.] There is not that natural vigor in the observance of God, which
we have in worldly business. When we see a liveliness in men in other
things, change the scene into a motion towards God, how suddenly doth
their vigor shrink and their hearts freeze into sluggishness! Many
times we serve God as languishingly as if we were afraid he should
accept us, and pray as coldly as if we were unwilling he should
hear us, and take away that lust by which we are governed, and which
conscience forces us to pray against; as if we were afraid God should
set up his own throne and government in our hearts. How fleeting are
we in divine meditation, how sleepy in spiritual exercises! but in
other exercises active. The soul doth not awaken itself, and excite
those animal and vital spirits, which it will in bodily recreations
and sports; much less the powers of the soul: whereby it is evident
we prefer the latter before any service to God. Since there is a
fulness of animal spirits, why might they not be excited in holy
duties as well as in other operations, but that there is a reluctancy
in the soul to exercise its supremacy in this case, and perform
anything becoming a creature in subjection to God as a Ruler?
[2.] It is evident also in the distractions we have in his service.
How loth are we to serve God fixedly one hour, nay a part of an hour,
notwithstanding all the thoughts of his majesty, and the eternity
of glory set before our eye! What man is there, since the fall of
Adam, that served God one hour without many wanderings and unsuitable
thoughts unfit for that service? How ready are our hearts to start
out and unite themselves with any worldly objects that please us!
[3.] Weariness in it evidenceth it. To be weary of our dulness
signifies a desire, {a115} to be weary of service signifies a
discontent, to be ruled by God. How tired are we in the performance
of spiritual duties, when in the vain triflings of time we have a
perpetual motion! How will many willingly revel whole nights, when
their hearts will flag at the threshold of a religious service! like
Dagon,[189] lose both our heads to think, and hands to act, when the
ark of God is present. Some in the Prophet wished the new moon and
the Sabbath over, that they might sell their corn, and be busied again
in their worldly affairs.[190] A slight and weariness of the Sabbath,
was a slight of the Lord of the Sabbath, and of that freedom from the
yoke and rule of sin, which was signified by it. The design of the
sacrifices in the new moon was to signify a rest from the tyranny of
sin, and a consecration to the spiritual service of God. Servants that
are quickly weary of their work, are weary of the authority of their
master that enjoins it. If our hearts had a value for God, it would
be with us as with the needle to the loadstone; there would be upon
his beck a speedy motion to him, and a fixed union with him. When the
judgments and affections of the saints shall be fully refined in glory,
they shall be willing to behold the face of God, and be under his
government to eternity, without any weariness: as the holy angels have
owned God as their sovereign near these six thousand years, without
being weary of running on his errands. But, alas, while the flesh
clogs us, there will be some relics of unwillingness to hear his
injunctions, and weariness in performing them; though men may excuse
those things by extrinsic causes, yet God’s unerring judgment calls it
a weariness of himself (Isaiah xliii. 22): “Thou hast not called upon
me, O Jacob, but thou hast been weary of me, O Israel.” Of this he
taxeth his own people, when he tells them he would have the beasts
of the field, the dragons and the owls――the Gentiles, that the Jews
counted no better than such――to honor him and acknowledge him their
rule in a way of duty (ver. 20, 21).
6. This contempt is seen in a deserting the rule of God, when our
expectations are not answered upon our service. When services are
performed from carnal principles, they are soon cast off when carnal
ends meet not with desired satisfaction. But when we own ourselves
God’s servants and God our Master, “our eyes will wait upon him till
he have mercy on us.”[191] It is one part of the duty we owe to God
as our Master in heaven to continue in prayer (Col. iv. 1, 2); and
by the same reason in all other service, and to watch in the same
with thanksgiving: to watch for occasions of praise, to watch with
cheerfulness for further manifestations of his will, strength to
perform it, success in the performance, that we may from all draw
matter of praise. As we are in a posture of obedience to his precepts,
so we should be in a posture of waiting for the blessing of it. But
naturally we reject the duty we owe to God, if he do not speed the
blessing we expect from him. How many do secretly mutter the same as
they in Job xxi. 15: “What is the Almighty that we should serve him,
and what profit shall we have if we pray to him?” They serve not God
out of conscience to his commands, but for some carnal profit; and if
God make them to wait for it, they will not {a116} stay his leisure,
but cease soliciting him any longer. Two things are expressed;――that
God was not worthy of any homage from them,――“What is the Almighty
that we should serve him?” and that the service of him would not bring
them in a good revenue or an advantage of that kind they expected.
Interest drives many men on to some kind of service, and when they do
not find an advance of that, they will acknowledge God no more; but
like some beggars, if you give them not upon their asking, and calling
you good master, from blessing they will turn to cursing. How often
do men do that secretly, practically, if not plainly, which Job’s wife
advised him to, curse God, and cast off that disguise of integrity
they had assumed! (Job ii. 9): “Dost thou still retain thy integrity?
curse God. ” What a stir, and pulling, and crying is here! Cast off
all thoughts of religious service, and be at daggers drawing with
that God, who for all thy service of him has made thee so wretched
a spectacle to men, and a banquet for worms. The like temper is
deciphered in the Jews (Mal. iii. 14), “It is in vain to serve God,
and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinances, that we have
walked mournfully before the Lord?” What profit is it that we have
regarded his statutes, and carried ourselves in a way of subjection
to God, as our Sovereign, when we inherit nothing but sorrow, and the
idolatrous neighbors swim in all kind of pleasures? as if it were the
most miserable thing to acknowledge God? If men have not the benefits
they expect, they think God unrighteous in himself, and injurious to
them, in not conferring the favor they imagine they have merited; and
if they have not that recompense, they will deny God that subjection
they owe to him as creatures. Grace moves to God upon a sense of duty;
corrupt nature upon a sense of interest. Sincerity is encouraged by
gracious returns, but is not melted away by God’s delay or refusal.
Corrupt nature would have God at its back, and steers a course of duty
by hope of some carnal profit, not by a sense of the sovereignty of
God.
7. This contempt is seen in breaking promises with God. “One while
the conscience of a man makes vows of new obedience, and perhaps
binds himself with many an oath; but they prove like Jonah’s gourd,
withering the next day after their birth. This was Pharaoh’s temper:
under a storm he would submit to God, and let Israel go; but when
the storm is ended, he will not be under God’s control, and Israel’s
slavery shall be increased. The fear of Divine wrath makes many
a sinner turn his back upon his sin, and the love of his ruling
lust makes him turn his back upon his true Lord. This is from the
prevalency of sin, that disputes with God for the sovereignty.”[192]
When God hath sent a sharp disease, as a messenger to bind men to
their beds, and make an interruption of their sinful pleasures, their
mouths are full of promises of a new life, in hope to escape the just
vengeance of God: the sense of hell, which strikes strongly upon them,
makes them full of such pretended resolutions when they howl upon
their beds. But if God be pleased in his patience to give them a
respite, to take off the chains wherewith he seemed to be binding
them for destruction, and recruit their strength, {a117} they are
more earnest in their sins than they were in their promises of a
reformation, as if they had got the mastery of God, and had outwitted
him. How often doth God charge them of not returning to him after a
succession of judgments![193] So hard it is, not only to allure, but
to scourge men, to an acknowledgment of God as their Ruler!
Consider then, are we not naturally inclined to disobey the known
will of God? Can we say, Lord, for thy sake we refrain the thing to
which our hearts incline? Do we not allow ourselves to be licentious,
earthly, vain, proud, revengeful, though we know it will offend him?
Have we not been peevishly cross to his declared will? run counter to
him and those laws which express most of the glory of his holiness?
Is not this to disown him as our rule? Did we never wish there were
no law to bind us, no precept to check our idols? What is this, but
to wish that God would depose himself from being our governor, and
leave us to our own conduct? or else to wish that he were as unholy
as ourselves, as careless of his own laws as we are; that is, that
he were no more a God than we, a God as sinful and unrighteous as
ourselves? He whose heart riseth against the law of God to unlaw it,
riseth against the Author of that law to undeify him. He that casts
contempt upon the dearest thing God hath in the world, that which is
the image of his holiness, the delight of his soul; that which he hath
given a special charge to maintain, and that because it is holy, just,
and good, would not stick to rejoice at the destruction of God himself.
If God’s holiness and righteousness in the beam be despised, much more
will an immense goodness and holiness in the fountain be rejected:
he that wisheth a beam far from his eyes, because it offends and
scorcheth him, can be no friend to the sun, from whence that beam
doth issue. How unworthy a creature is man, since he only, a rational
creature, is the sole being that withdraws itself from the rule of
God in this earth! And how miserable a creature is he also, since,
departing from the order of God’s goodness, he falls into the order
of his justice; and while he refuseth God to be the rule of his life,
he cannot avoid him being the Judge of his punishment! It is this is
the original of all sin, and the fountain of all our misery. This is
the first thing man disowns, the rule which God sets him.
Secondly, Man naturally owns any other rule rather than that of God’s
prescribing. The law of God orders one thing, the heart of man desires
another. There is not the basest thing in the world, but man would
sooner submit to be guided by it, rather than by the holiness of God;
and when anything that God commands crosses our own wills, we value
it no more than we would the advice of a poor despicable beggar. How
many are “lovers of pleasure, more than lovers of God!”[194] To make
something which contributes to the perfection of nature, as learning,
wisdom, moral virtues, our rule, would be more tolerable; but to pay
that homage to a swinish pleasure, which is the right of God, is an
inexcusable contempt of him. The greatest excellency in the world
is infinitely below God; much more a bestial delight, which is both
disgraceful and below the nature of {a118} man. If we made the vilest
creature on earth our idol, it is more excusable than to be the slave
of a brutish pleasure. The viler the thing is that doth possess the
throne in our heart, the greater contempt it is of him who can only
claim a right to it, and is worthy of it. Sin is the first object
of man’s election, as soon as the faculty whereby he chooses comes
to exercise its power; and it is so dear to man, that it is, in the
estimate of our Saviour, counted as the right hand, and the right eye,
dear, precious, and useful members.
1. The rule of Satan is owned before the rule of God. The natural
man would rather be under the guidance of Satan than the yoke of his
Creator. Adam chose him to be his governor in Paradise. No sooner had
Satan spoke of God in a way of derision (Gen. iii. 1, 5), “Yea, hath
God said,” but man follows his counsel and approves of the scoff; and
the greatest part of his posterity have not been wiser by his fall,
but would rather ramble in the devil’s wilderness, than to stay in
God’s fold. It is by the sin of man that the devil is become the god
of the world, as if men were the electors of him to the government;
sin is an election of him for a lord, and a putting the soul under his
government. Those that live according to the course of the world, and
are loth to displease it, are under the government of the prince of
it. The greatest part of the works done in the world is to enlarge
the kingdom of Satan. For how many ages were the laws whereby the
greatest part of the world was governed in the affairs of religion,
the fruits of his usurpation and policy? When temples were erected
to him, priests consecrated to his service; the rites used in most
of the worship of the world were either of his own coining, or the
misapplying the rites God had ordained to himself, under the notion
of a God: whence the apostle calls all idolatrous feasts the table
of devils, the cup of devils, sacrifice to devils, fellowship with
devils;[195] devils being the real object of the pagan worship, though
not formally intended by the worshipper; though in some parts of the
Indies, the direct and peculiar worship is to the devil, that he might
not hurt them. And though the intention of others was to offer to God,
and not the devil, yet since the action was contrary to the will of
God, he regards it as a sacrifice to devils. It was not the intention
of Jeroboam to establish priests to the devil, when he consecrated
them to the service of his calves, for Jehu afterwards calls them “the
servants of the Lord” (2 Kings x. 23), “See if there be here none of
the servants of the Lord,” to distinguish them from the servants of
Baal; signifying that the true God was worshipped under those images,
and not Baal, nor any of the gods of the heathens; yet the Scripture
couples the calves and devils together, and ascribes the worship given
to one to be given to the other: “He ordained him priests for the high
places, and for the devils, and for the calves which he had made;”[196]
so that they were sacrifices to devils, notwithstanding the intention
of Jeroboam and his subjects that had set them up and worshipped them,
because they were contrary to the mind of God, and agreeable to the
doctrine and mind of Satan, though the object of their worship in
their own intention were not the devil, but some deified man or some
canonized saint. {a119} The intention makes not a good action; if so,
when men kill the best servants of God with a design to do God service,
as our Saviour foretells,[197] the action would not be murder; yet
who can call it otherwise, since God is wronged in the persons of his
servants? Since most of the worship of the world, which men’s corrupt
natures incline them to, is false and different from the revealed will
of God, it is a practical acknowledgment of the devil, as the governor,
by acknowledging and practising those doctrines, which have not the
stamp of divine revelation upon them, but were minted by Satan to
depress the honor of God in the world. It doth concern men, then,
to take good heed, that in their acts of worship they have a divine
rule; otherwise it is an owning the devil as the rule: for there is no
medium; whatsoever is not from God, is from Satan. But to bring this
closer to us, and consider that which is more common among us: men
that are in a natural condition, and wedded to their lusts, are under
the paternal government of Satan (John viii. 44): “Ye are of your
father, the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do.” If we
divide sin into spiritual and carnal, which division comprehends all,
the devil’s authority is owned in both; in spiritual, we conform to
his example, because those he commits; in carnal, we obey his will,
because those he directs: he acts the one, and sets us a copy; he
tempts to the other, and gives us a kind of a precept. Thus man by
nature being a willing servant of sin, is more desirous to be bound
in the devil’s iron chain, than in God’s silken cords. What greater
atheism can there be, than to use God as if he were inferior to the
devil? to take the part of his greatest enemy, who drew all others
into the faction against him? to pleasure Satan by offending God, and
gratify our adversary with the injury of our Creator? For a subject
to take arms against his prince with the deadliest enemy both himself
and prince hath in the whole world, adds a greater blackness to the
rebellion.
2. The more visible rule preferred before God in the world, is man.
The opinion of the world is more our rule than the precept of God;
and many men’s abstinence from sin is not from a sense of the Divine
will, no, nor from a principle of reason, but from an affection to
some man on whom they depend, or fear of punishment from a superior;
the same principle with that in a ravenous beast, who abstains from
what he desires, for fear only of a stick or club. Men will walk with
the herds, go in fashion with the most, speak and act as the most
do. While we conform to the world, we cannot perform a reasonable
service to God, nor prove, nor approve practically what the good and
acceptable will of God is; the apostle puts them in opposition to one
another.[198] This appears,
1. In complying more with the dictates of men, than the will of God.
Men draw encouragement from God’s forbearance to sin more freely
against him; but the fear of punishment for breaking the will of man
lays a restraint upon them. The fear of man is a more powerful curb,
to restrain men in their duty, than the fear of God; so we may please
a friend, a master, a governor, we are regardless whether we please
God or no; men‑pleasers are more than God‑pleasers; {a120} man is
more advanced as a rule, than God, when we submit to human orders, and
stagger and dispute against divine. Would not a prince think himself
slighted in his authority, if any of his servants should decline his
commands, by the order of one of his subjects? And will not God make
the same account of us, when we deny or delay our obedience, for fear
of one of his creatures? In the fear of man, we as little acknowledge
God for our sovereign, as we do for our comforter (Isa. li. 12, 13):
“I, even I, am he that comforteth you; who art thou, that thou
shouldst be afraid of a man that shall die,” &c. “and forgettest
the Lord thy maker?” &c. We put a slight upon God, as if he were not
able to bear us out in our duty to him, and incapable to balance the
strength of an arm of flesh.
2. In observing that which is materially the will of God, not because
it is his will, but the injunctions of men. As the word of God may be
received, yet not as his word, so the will of God may be performed,
yet not as his will; it is materially done, but not formally obeyed.
An action, and obedience in that action, are two things; as when man
commands the ceasing from all works of the ordinary calling on the
Sabbath, it is the same that God enjoins: the cessation, or attendance
of his servants on the hearing of the word, are conformable in the
matter of it to the will of God; but it is only conformable in the
obediential part of the acts to the will of man, when it is done only
with respect to a human precept. As God hath a right to enact his
laws without consulting his creature in the way of his government, so
man is bound to obey those laws, without consulting whether they be
agreeable to men’s laws or no. If we act the will of God because the
will of our superiors concurs with it, we obey not God in that, but
man, a human will being the rule of our obedience, and not the divine;
this is to vilify God, and make him inferior to man in our esteem, and
a valuing the rule of man above that of our Creator. Since God is the
highest perfection and infinitely good, whatsoever rule he gives the
creature must be good, else it cannot proceed from God. A base thing
cannot be the product of an infinite excellency, and an unreasonable
thing cannot be the product of an infinite wisdom and goodness;
therefore, as the respecting God’s will before the will of man is
excellent and worthy of a creature, and is an acknowledging the
excellency, goodness, and wisdom of God, so the eying the will of man
before and above the will of God, is on the contrary, a denial of all
those in a lump, and a preferring the wisdom, goodness, and power of
man in his law, above all those perfections of God in his. Whatsoever
men do that looks like moral virtue or abstinence from vices, not
out of obedience to the rule God hath set, but because of custom,
necessity, example, or imitation, they may, in the doing of it, be
rather said to be apes than Christians.
3. In obeying the will of man when it is contrary to the will of
God; as the Israelites willingly “walked after the commandment,”[199]
not of God, but of Jeroboam in the case of the calves, and “made
the king’s heart glad with their lies.”[200] They cheered him with
their ready obedience to his command for idolatry (which was a lie
in itself, and a lie in them) against the commandment of God, and the
{a121} warnings of the prophets, rather than cheer the heart of God
with their obedience to his worship instituted by him; nay, and when
God offered them to cure them their wound, their iniquity breaks
out afresh; they would neither have him as a lord to rule them, nor
a physician to cure them (Hosea vii. 1): “When I would have healed
Israel, then the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered.” The whole
Persian nation shrunk at once from a duty due by the light of nature
to the Deity, upon a decree that “neither God or man should be
petitioned to for thirty days, but only their king;”[201] one only,
Daniel, excepted against it, who preferred his homage to God, above
obedience to his prince. An adulterous generation is many times made
the rule of men’s professions, as is implied in those words of our
Saviour (Mark viii. 38): “Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and my
words in this adulterous and sinful generation:” own him among his
disciples, and be ashamed of him among his enemies. Thus men are
said to deny God (Tit. i. 16), when they “attend to Jewish fables
and the precepts of men rather than the word of God;” when the
decrees or canons of fallible men are valued at a higher rate, and
preferred before the writings of the Holy Ghost by his apostles. As
man naturally disowns the rule God sets him, and owns any other rule
than that of God’s prescribing, so,
Thirdly, He doth this in order to the setting himself up as his own
rule; as though our own wills, and not God’s, were the true square and
measure of goodness. We make an idol of our own wills, and as much as
self is exalted, God is deposed; the more we esteem our own wills, the
more we endeavor to annihilate the will of God; account nothing of him,
the more we account of ourselves, and endeavor to render ourselves his
superiors, by exalting our own wills. No prince but would look upon
his authority as invaded, his royalty derided, if a subject should
resolve to be a law to himself, in opposition to his known will; true
piety is to hate ourselves, deny ourselves, and cleave solely to the
service of God. To make ourselves our own rule, and the object of
our chiefest love, is atheism. If self‑denial be the greatest part
of godliness, the great letter in the alphabet of religion; self‑love
is the great letter in the alphabet of practical atheism. Self is the
great antichrist and anti‑God in the world, that sets up itself above
all that is called God; self‑love is the captain of that black band
(2 Tim. iii. 2): it sits in the temple of God, and would be adored as
God. Self‑love begins; but denying the power of godliness, which is
the same with denying the ruling power of God, ends the list. It is so
far from bending to the righteous will of the Creator, that it would
have the eternal will of God stoop to the humor and unrighteous will
of a creature; and this is the ground of the contention between the
flesh and spirit in the heart of a renewed man; flesh wars for the
godhead of self, and spirit fights for the godhead of God; the one
would settle the throne of the Creator, and the other maintain a
law of covetousness, ambition, envy, lust, in the stead of God. The
evidence of this will appear in these propositions:
1. This is natural to man as he is corrupted. What was the venom
{a122} of the sin of Adam, is naturally derived with his nature to
all his posterity. It was not the eating a forbidden apple, or the
pleasing his palate that Adam aimed at, or was the chief object of
his desire, but to live independently on his Creator, and be a God
to himself (Gen. iii. 5): “You shall be as gods.” That which was the
matter of the devil’s temptation, was the incentive of man’s rebellion;
a likeness to God he aspired to in the judgment of God himself, an
infallible interpreter of man’s thoughts; “Behold, man is become
as one of us, to know good and evil,” in regard of self‑sufficiency
and being a rule to himself. The Jews understand the ambition of man
to reach no further than an equality with the angelical nature; but
Jehovah here understands it in another sense; God had ordered man by
this prohibition not to eat of the fruit of the “tree of knowledge
of good and evil;” not to attempt the knowledge of good and evil of
himself, but to wait upon the dictates of God; not to trust to his own
counsels, but to depend wholly upon him for direction and guidance.
Certainly he that would not hold off his hand from so small a thing
as an apple, when he had his choice of the fruit of the garden, would
not have denied himself anything his appetite had desired, when that
principle had prevailed upon him; he would not have stuck at a greater
matter to pleasure himself with the displeasing of God, when for so
small a thing he would incur the anger of his Creator. Thus would he
deify his own understanding against the wisdom of God, and his own
appetite against the will of God. This desire of equality with God,
a learned man[202] thinks the apostle intimates (Phil. ii. 6): “Who
being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God;”
the Son’s being in the form of God, and thinking it no robbery to be
equal with God, implies that the robbery of sacrilege committed by our
first parents, for which the Son of God humbled himself to the death
of the cross, was an attempt to be equal with God, and depend no more
upon God’s directions, but his own conduct; which could be no less
than an invasion of the throne of God, and endeavor to put himself
into a posture to be his mate. Other sins, adultery, theft, &c. could
not be committed by him at that time, but he immediately puts forth
his hand to usurp the power of his Maker; this treason is the old Adam
in every man. The first Adam contradicted the will of God to set up
himself; the second Adam humbled himself, and did nothing but by the
command and will of his Father. This principle wherein the venom of
the old Adam lies, must be crucified to make way for the throne of the
humble and obedient principle of the new Adam, or quickening Spirit;
indeed sin in its own nature is nothing else but “a willing according
to self, and contrary to the will of God;” lusts are therefore called
the wills of the flesh and of the mind.[203] As the precepts of God
are God’s will, so the violation of these precepts is man’s will; and
thus man usurps a godhead to himself, by giving that honor to his own
will which belongs to God, appropriating the right of rule to himself,
and denying it to his Creator. That servant that acts according to
his own will, with a neglect of his master’s, refuseth the duty of
a servant, and invades the right of his master. {a123} This self‑love
and desire of independency on God has been the root of all sin in the
world. The great controversy between God and man hath been, whether he
or they shall be God; whether his reason or theirs, his will or theirs,
shall be the guiding principle. As grace is the union of the will
of God and the will of the creature, so sin is the opposition of the
will of self to the will of God; “Leaning to our own understanding,”
is opposed as a natural evil to “trusting in the Lord,”[204] a
supernatural grace. Men commonly love what is their own, their
own inventions, their own fancies; therefore the ways of a wicked
man are called the “ways of his own heart.”[205] and the ways of a
superstitious man his own devices (Jer. xviii. 11): “We will walk
after our own devices;” we will be a law to ourselves; and what the
Psalmist saith of the tongue, Our tongues are our own, who shall
control us? is as truly the language of men’s hearts, Our wills are
our own, who shall check us?
2. This is evident in the dissatisfaction of men with their own
consciences when they contradict the desires of self. Conscience is
nothing but an actuated or reflex knowledge of a superior power and
an equitable law; a law impressed, and a power above it impressing
it. Conscience is not the lawgiver, but the remembrancer to mind
us of that law of nature imprinted upon our souls, and actuate the
considerations of the duty and penalty, to apply the rule to our
acts, and pass judgment upon matter of fact: it is to give the charge,
urge the rule, enjoin the practice of those notions of right, as part
of our duty and obedience. But man is as much displeased with the
directions of conscience, as he is out of love with the accusations
and condemning sentence of this officer of God: we cannot naturally
endure any quick and lively practical thoughts of God and his will,
and distaste our own consciences for putting us in mind of it: they
therefore “like not to retain God in their knowledge,”[206] that is,
God in their own consciences; they would blow it out, as it is the
candle of the Lord in them to direct them, and their acknowledgments
of God, to secure themselves against the practice of its principles:
they would stop all the avenues to any beam of light, and would not
suffer a sparkle of divine knowledge to flutter in their minds, in
order to set up another directing rule suited to the fleshly appetite:
and when they cannot stop the light of it from glaring in their faces,
they rebel against it, and cannot endure to abide in its paths.[207]
He speaks not of those which had the written word, or special
revelations; but only a natural light or traditional, handed from Adam:
hence are all the endeavors to still it when it begins to speak, by
some carnal pleasures, as Saul’s evil spirit with a fit of music; or
bribe it with some fits of a glavering devotion, when it holds the
law of God in its commanding authority before the mind: they would
wipe out all the impressions of it when it presses the advancement
of God above self, and entertain it with no better compliment than
Ahab did Elijah, “Hast thou found me, O my enemy?” If we are like
to God in anything of our natural fabric, it is in the superior and
more spiritual part of our souls. The resistance of that which is
most like to God, and instead of God in us, is a disowning of the
Sovereign represented by {a124} that officer. He that would be without
conscience, would be without God, whose vicegerent it is, and make
the sensitive part, which conscience opposes, his lawgiver. Thus a
man, out of respect to sinful self, quarrels with his natural self,
and cannot comport himself in a friendly behavior to his internal
implanted principles: he hates to come under the rebukes of them, as
much as Adam hated to come into the presence of God, after he turned
traitor against him: the bad entertainment God’s deputy hath in us,
reflects upon that God whose cause it pleads: it is upon no other
account that men loathe the upright language of their own reasons in
those matters, and wish the eternal silence of their own consciences,
but as they maintain the rights of God, and would hinder the idol of
self from usurping his godhead and prerogative. Though this power be
part of a man’s self, rooted in his nature, as essential to him and
inseparable from him as the best part of his being; yet he quarrels
with it, as it is God’s deputy, and stickling for the honor of God in
his soul, and quarrelling with that sinful self he would cherish above
God. We are not displeased with this faculty barely as it exerciseth a
self‑reflection; but as it is God’s vicegerent, and bears the mark of
his authority in it. In some cases this self‑reflecting act meets with
good entertainment, when it acts not in contradiction to self, but
suitable to natural affections. As suppose a man hath in his passion
struck his child, and caused thereby some great mischief to him, the
reflection of conscience will not be unwelcome to him; will work some
tenderness in him, because it takes the part of self and of natural
affection; but in the more spiritual concerns of God it will be rated
as a busy‑body.
3. Many, if not most actions, materially good in the world, are done
more because they are agreeable to self, than as they are honorable
to God. As the word of God may be heard not as his word,[208] but as
there may be pleasing notions in it, or discourses against an opinion
or party we disaffect; so the will of God may be performed, not as his
will, but as it may gratify some selfish consideration, when we will
please God so far as it may not displease ourselves, and serve him as
our Master, so far as his command may be a servant to our humor; when
we consider not who it is that commands, but how short it comes of
displeasing that sin which rules in our heart, pick and choose what is
least burdensome to the flesh, and distasteful to our lusts. He that
doth the will of God, not out of conscience of that will, but because
it is agreeable to himself, casts down the will of God, and sets his
own will in the place of it; takes the crown from the head of God,
and places it upon the head of self. If things are done, not because
they are commanded by God, but desirable to us, it is a disobedient
obedience; a conformity to God’s will in regard of the matter, a
conformity to our own will in regard of the motive; either as the
things done are agreeable to natural and moral self, or sinful self.
(1). As they are agreeable to natural or moral self. When men will
practise some points of religion, and walk in the track of some divine
precepts; not because they are divine, but because they are {a125}
agreeable to their humor or constitution of nature; from the sway
of a natural bravery, the bias of a secular interest, not from an
ingenuous sense of God’s authority, or a voluntary submission to his
will; as when a man will avoid excess in drinking, not because it is
dishonorable to God, but as it is a blemish to his own reputation,
or an impair of the health of his body: doth this deserve the name
of an observance of the divine injunction, or rather an obedience
to ourselves? Or when a man will be liberal in the distribution of
his charity, not with an eye to God’s precept, but in compliance
with his own natural compassion, or to pleasure the generosity of
his nature: the one is obedience to a man’s own preservation; the
other an obedience to the interest or impulse of a moral virtue. It
is not respect to the rule of God, but the authority of self, and, at
the best, is but the performance of the material part of the divine
rule, without any concurrence of a spiritual motive or a spiritual
manner. That only is a maintaining the rights of God, when we pay
an observance to his rule, without examining the agreeableness of
it to our secular interest, or consulting with the humor of flesh and
blood; when we will not decline his service, though we find it cross,
and hath no affinity with the pleasure of our own nature: such an
obedience as Abraham manifested in his readiness to sacrifice his
son; such an obedience as our Saviour demands in cutting off the right
hand. When we observe anything of divine order upon the account of its
suitableness to our natural sentiments, we shall readily divide from
him, when the interest of nature turns its point against the interest
of God’s honor; we shall fall off from him according to the change
we find in our own humors. And can that be valued as a setting up the
rule of God, which must be deposed upon the mutable interest of an
inconstant mind? Esau had no regard to God in delaying the execution
of his resolution to shorten his brother’s days, though he was awed by
the reverence of his father to delay it; he considered, perhaps, how
justly he might lie under the imputation of hastening crazy Isaac’s
death, by depriving him of a beloved son. But had the old man’s head
been laid, neither the contrary command of God, nor the nearness of a
fraternal relation, could have bound his hands from the act, no more
than they did his heart from the resolution (Gen. xxvii. 41): “Esau
hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him;
and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are
at hand, then will I slay my brother.” So many children, that expect
at the death of their parents great inheritances of portions, may be
observant of them, not in regard of the rule fixed by God, but to
their own hopes, which they would not frustrate by a disobligement.
Whence is it that many men abstain from gross sins, but in love to
their reputation? Wickedness may be acted privately, which a man’s
own credit puts a bar to the open commission of. The preserving his
own esteem may divert him from entering into a brothel house, to which
he hath set his mind before, against a known precept of his Creator.
As Pharaoh parted with the Israelites, so do some men with their
blemishing sins; not out of a sense of God’s rule, but the smart
of present judgments, or fear of a future wrath. Our security then,
{a126} and reputation, is set up in the place of God. This also may be,
and is in renewed men, who have the law written in their hearts, that
is, an habitual disposition to an agreement with the law of God; when
what is done is with a respect to this habitual inclination, without
eying the divine precept, which is appointed to be their rule. This
also is to set up a creature, as renewed self is, instead of the
Creator, and that law of his in his word, which ought to be the rule
of our actions. Thus it is when men choose a moral life, not so much
out of respect to the law of nature, as it is the law of God, but
as it is a law become one with their souls and constitutions. There
is more of self in this than consideration of God; for if it were
the latter, the revealed law of God would, upon the same reason, be
received as well as his natural law. From this principle of self,
morality comes by some to be advanced above evangelical dictates.
(2.) As they are agreeable to sinful self. Not that the commands of
God are suited to bolster up the corruptions of men, no more than
the law can be said to excite or revive sin:[209] but it is like a
scandal taken, not given; an occasion taken by the tumultuousness of
our depraved nature. The Pharisees were devout in long prayers, not
from a sense of duty, or a care of God’s honor; but to satisfy their
ambition, and rake together fuel for their covetousness,[210] that
they might have the greater esteem and richer offerings, to free by
their prayers the souls of deceased persons from purgatory; an opinion
that some think the Jewish synagogue had then entertained,[211]
since some of their doctors have defended such a notion. Men may
observe some precepts of God to have a better conveniency to break
others. Jehu was ordered to cut off the house of Ahab. The service
he undertook was in itself acceptable, but corrupt nature misacted
that which holiness and righteousness commanded. God appointed it to
magnify his justice, and check the idolatry that had been supported
by that family; Jehu acted it to satisfy his revenge and ambition:
he did it to fulfil his lust, not the will of God who enjoined him:
Jehu applauds it as zeal; and God abhors it as murder, and therefore
would avenge the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu (Hos. i. 4).
Such kind of services are not paid to God for his own sake, but to
ourselves for our lusts’ sake.
4. This is evident in neglecting to take God’s direction upon emergent
occasions. This follows the text, “None did seek God.” When we consult
not with him, but trust more to our own will and counsel, we make
ourselves our own governors and lords independent upon him; as though
we could be our own counsellors, and manage our concerns without
his leave and assistance; as though our works were in our own hands,
and not in the “hands of God;”[212] that we can by our own strength
and sagacity direct them to a successful end without him. If we must
“acquaint ourselves with God” before we decree a thing,[213] then
to decree a thing without acquainting God with it, is to prefer our
purblind wisdom before the infinite wisdom of God: to resolve without
consulting God, is to depose {a127} God and deify self, our own wit
and strength. We would rather, like Lot, follow our own humor and stay
in Sodom, than observe the angel’s order to go out of it.
5. As we account the actions of others to be good or evil, as they
suit with, or spurn against our fancies and humors. Virtue is a crime,
and vice a virtue, as it is contrary or concurrent with our humors.
Little reason have many men to blame the actions of others, but
because they are not agreeable to what they affect and desire; we
would have all men take directions from us, and move according to our
beck, hence that common speech in the world, Such an one is an honest
friend. Why? because he is of their humor, and lackeys according to
their wills. Thus we make self the measure and square of good and evil
in the rest of mankind, and judge of it by our own fancies, and not
by the will of God, the proper rule of judgment. Well then, let us
consider: Is not this very common? are we not naturally more willing
to displease God than displease ourselves, when it comes to a point
that we must do one or other? Is not our own counsel of more value
with us, than conformity to the will of the Creator? Do not our
judgments often run counter to the judgment of God? Have his laws
a greater respect from us, than our own humors? Do we scruple the
staining his honor when it comes in competition with our own? Are
not the lives of most men a pleasing themselves, without a repentance
that ever they displeased God? Is not this to undeify God, to deify
ourselves, and disown the propriety he hath in us by the right of
creation and beneficence? We order our own ways by our own humors, as
though we were the authors of our own being, and had given ourselves
life and understanding. This is to destroy the order that God hath
placed between our wills and his own, and a lifting up of the foot
above the head; it is the deformity of the creature. The honor of
every rational creature consists in the service of the First Cause
of his being; as the welfare of every creature consists in the orders
and proportionable motion of its members, according to the law of
its creation. He that moves and acts according to a law of his own,
offers a manifest wrong to God, the highest wisdom and chiefest good;
disturbs the order of the world; nulls the design of the righteousness
and holiness of God. The law of God is the rule of that order he
would have observed in the world; he that makes another law his rule,
thrusts out the order of the Creator, and establishes the disorder of
the creature. But this will yet be more evident, in the fourth thing.
Fourthly, Man would make himself the rule of God, and give laws to
his Creator. We are willing God should be our benefactor, but not our
ruler; we are content to admire his excellency and pay him a worship,
provided he will walk by our rule. “This commits a riot upon his
nature, To think him to be what we ourselve ‘would have him, and wish
him to be’ (Psalm l. 21), we would amplify his mercy and contract his
justice; we would have his power enlarged to supply our wants, and
straitened when it goes about to revenge our crimes; we would have
him wise to defeat our enemies, but not to disappoint our unworthy
projects; we would have him all eye to regard our indigence, and
blind not to discern our guilt; we would have him {a128} true to his
promises, regardless of his precepts, and false to his threatenings;
we would new mint the nature of God according to our models, and shape
a God according to our own fancies, as he made us at first according
to his own image;” instead of obeying him, we would have him obey
us; instead of owning and admiring his perfections, we would have him
strip himself of his infinite excellency, and clothe himself with a
nature agreeable to our own. This is not only to set up self as the
law of God, but to make our own imaginations the model of the nature
of God.[214] Corrupted man takes a pleasure to accuse or suspect the
actions of God: we would not have him act conveniently to his nature;
but act what doth gratify us, and abstain from what distastes us. Man
is never well but when he is impeaching one or other perfection of
God’s nature, and undermining his glory, as if all his attributes must
stand indicted at the bar of our purblind reason: this weed shoots up
in the exercise of grace. Peter intended the refusal of our Saviour’s
washing his feet, as an act of humility, but Christ understands it to
be a prescribing a law to himself, a correcting his love (John xiii.
8, 9). This is evidenced,
1. In the strivings against his law. How many men imply by their
lives, that they would have God deposed from his government, and some
unrighteous being step into his throne; as if God had or should change
his laws of holiness into laws of licentiousness: as if he should
abrogate his old eternal precepts, and enact contrary ones in their
stead? What is the language of such practices, but that they would be
God’s lawgivers and not his subjects? that he should deal with them
according to their own wills, and not according to his righteousness?
that they could make a more holy, wise, and righteous law than the
law of God? that their imaginations, and not God’s righteousness,
should be the rule of his doing good to them? (Jer. ix. 31): “They
have forsaken my law, and walked after the imaginations of their own
heart.” When an act is known to be a sin, and the law that forbids it
acknowledged to be the law of God, and after this we persist in that
which is contrary to it, we tax his wisdom as if he did not understand
what was convenient for us; “we would teach God knowledge;”[215] it is
an implicit wish that God had laid aside the holiness of his nature,
and framed a law to pleasure our lusts. When God calls for weeping
and mourning, and girding with sackcloth upon approaching judgments,
then the corrupt heart is for joy and gladness, eating of flesh and
drinking of wine, because to‑morrow they should die;[216] as if God
had mistaken himself when he ordered them so much sorrow, when their
lives were so near an end; and had lost his understanding when he
ordered such a precept: disobedience is therefore called contention
(Rom. ii. 8): “Contentious, and obey not the truth:” contention
against God, whose truth it is that they disobey; a dispute with him,
which hath more of wisdom in itself, and conveniency for them, his
truth of their imaginations. The more the love, goodness, and holiness
of God appears in any command, the more are we naturally averse from
it, and cast an imputation on him, as if he were foolish, unjust,
cruel, {a129} and that we could have advised and directed him better.
The goodness of God is eminent to us in appointing a day for his own
worship, wherein we might converse with him, and he with us, and our
souls be refreshed with spiritual communications from him; and we
rather use it for the ease of our bodies, than the advancement of
our souls, as if God were mistaken and injured his creature, when he
urged the spiritual part of duty. Every disobedience to the law is
an implicit giving law to him, and a charge against him that he might
have provided better for his creature.
2. In disapproving the methods of God’s government of the world.
If the counsels of Heaven roll not about according to their schemes,
instead of adoring the unsearchable depths of his judgments, they call
him to the bar, and accuse him, because they are not fitted to their
narrow vessels, as if a nut‑shell could contain an ocean. As corrupt
reason esteems the highest truths foolishness, so it counts the most
righteous ways unequal. Thus we commence a suit against God, as though
he had not acted righteously and wisely, but must give an account
of his proceedings at our tribunal. This is to make ourselves God’s
superiors, and presume to instruct him better in the government of the
world; as though God hindered himself and the world, in not making us
of his privy council, and not ordering his affairs according to the
contrivances of our dim understandings. Is not this manifest in our
immoderate complaints of God’s dealings with his church, as though
there were a coldness in God’s affections to his church, and a glowing
heat towards it only in us? Hence are those importunate desires for
things which are not established by any promise, as though we would
overrule and over persuade God to comply with our humor. We have an
ambition to be God’s tutors and direct him in his counsels: “Who hath
been his counsellor?” saith the apostle.[217] Who ought not to be his
counsellor? saith corrupt nature. Men will find fault with God in what
he suffers to be done according to their own minds, when they feel
the bitter fruit of it. When Cain had killed his brother, and his
conscience racked him, how saucily and discontentedly doth he answer
God! (Gen. iv. 9), “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Since thou dost own
thyself the rector of the world, thou shouldst have preserved his
person from my fury; since thou dost accept his sacrifice before my
offering, preservation was due as well as acceptance. If this temper
be found on earth, no wonder it is lodged in hell. That deplorable
person under the sensible stroke of God’s sovereign justice, would
oppose his nay to God’s will (Luke xvi. 30): “And he said, Nay, father
Abraham, but if one went to them from the dead they will repent.”
He would presume to prescribe more effectual means than Moses and
the prophets, to inform men of the danger they incurred by their
sensuality. David was displeased, it is said (2 Sam. vi. 8), when the
Lord had made a breach upon Uzzah, not with Uzzah, who was the object
of his pity, but with God, who was the inflicter of that punishment.
When any of our friends have been struck with a rod, against our
sentiments and wishes, have not our hearts been apt to swell in
complaints against God, as though he disregarded the goodness {a130}
of such a person, did not see with our eyes, and measure him by our
esteem of him? as if he should have asked our counsel, before he had
resolved, and managed himself according to our will, rather than his
own. If he be patient to the wicked, we are apt to tax his holiness,
and accuse him as an enemy to his own law. If he inflict severity upon
the righteous, we are ready to suspect his goodness, and charge him to
be an enemy to his affectionate creature. If he spare the Nimrods of
the world, we are ready to ask, “Where is the God of judgment?”[218]
If he afflict the pillars of the earth, we are ready to question,
where is the God of mercy? It is impossible, since the depraved nature
of man, and the various interests and passions in the world, that
infinite power and wisdom can act righteously for the good of the
universe, but he will shake some corrupt interest or other upon the
earth; so various are the inclinations of men, and such a weather‑cock
judgment hath every man in himself, that the divine method he applauds
this day, upon a change of his interest, he will cavil at the next.
It is impossible for the just orders of God to please the same person
many weeks, scarce many minutes together. God must cease to be God,
or to be holy, if he should manage the concerns of the world according
to the fancies of men. How unreasonable is it thus to impose laws upon
God! Must God revoke his own orders? govern according to the dictates
of his creature? Must God, who hath only power and wisdom to sway the
sceptre, become the obedient subject of every man’s humor, and manage
everything to serve the design of a simple creature? This is not to
be God, but to set the creature in his throne: though this be not
formally done, yet that it is interpretatively and practically done,
is every hour’s experience.
3. In impatience in our particular concerns. It is ordinary with man
to charge God in his complaints in the time of affliction. Therefore
it is the commendation the Holy Ghost gives to Job (ch. i. 22), that
in all this, that is, in those many waves that rolled over him, he did
not charge God foolishly, he never spake nor thought anything unworthy
of the majesty and righteousness of God; yet afterwards we find
him warping; he nicknames the affliction to be God’s oppression of
him, and no act of his goodness (x. 3): “Is it good for thee, that
thou shouldst oppress?” He seems to charge God with injustice, for
punishing him when he was not wicked, for which he appeals to God:
“Thou knowest that I am not wicked” (ver. 7), and that God acted
not like a Creator (ver. 8). If our projects are disappointed, what
fretfulness against God’s management are our hearts racked with!
How do uncomely passions bubble upon us, interpretatively at least
wishing that the arms of his power had been bound, and the eye of his
omniscience been hoodwinked, that we might have been left to our own
liberty and designs? and this oftentimes when we have more reason to
bless him than repine at him. The Israelites murmured more against
God in the wilderness, with manna in their mouths, than they did at
Pharaoh in the brick‑kilns, with their garlic and onions between their
teeth. Though we repine at instruments in our afflictions, yet God
counts it a reflection upon himself. The Israelites speaking against
Moses, was, in God’s interpretation, {a131} a rebellion against
himself:[219] and rebellion is always a desire of imposing laws
and conditions upon those against whom the rebellion is raised. The
sottish dealings of the vine‑dressers in Franconia with the statue of
St. Urban, the protector of the vines, upon his own day, is an emblem
of our dealing with God: if it be a clear day and portend a prosperous
vintage, they honor the statue and drink healths to it; if it be
a rainy day, and presage a scantiness, they daub it with dirt in
indignation. We cast out our mire and dirt against God when he acts
cross to our wishes, and flatter him when the wind of his providence
joins itself to the tide of our interest. Men set a high price upon
themselves, and are angry God values them not at the same rate, as if
their judgment concerning themselves were more piercing than his. This
is to disannul God’s judgment, and condemn him and count ourselves
righteous, a ’tis Job xl. 8. This is the epidemical disease of human
nature; they think they deserve caresses instead of rods, and upon
crosses are more ready to tear out the heart of God, than reflect
humbly upon their own hearts. When we accuse God, we applaud ourselves,
and make ourselves his superiors, intimating that we have acted more
righteously to him than he to us, which is the highest manner of
imposing laws upon him; as that emperor accused the justice of God
for snatching him out of the world too soon.[220] What a high piece
of practical atheism is this, to desire that infinite wisdom should
be guided by our folly, and asperse the righteousness of God rather
than blemish our own! Instead of silently submitting to his will
and adoring his wisdom, we declaim against him, as an unwise and
unjust governor: we would invert his order, make him the steward and
ourselves the proprietors of what we are and have: we deny ourselves
to be sinners, and our mercies to be forfeited.
4. It is evidenced in envying the gifts and prosperities of others.
Envy hath a deep tincture of practical atheism, and is a cause of
atheism.[221] We are unwilling to leave God to be the proprietor and
do what he will with his own, and as a Creator to do what he pleases
with his creatures. We assume a liberty to direct God what portions,
when and how, he should bestow upon his creatures. We would not let
him choose his own favorites, and pitch upon his own instruments for
his glory; as if God should have asked counsel of us how he should
dispose of his benefits. We are unwilling to leave to his wisdom the
management of his own judgments to the wicked, and the dispensation
of his own love to ourselves. This temper is natural: it is as ancient
as the first age of the world. Adam envied God a felicity by himself,
and would not spare a tree that he had reserved as a mark of his
sovereignty. The passion that God had given Cain to employ against
his sin, he turns against his Creator. He was wroth with God and with
Abel;[222] but envy was at the root, because his brother’s sacrifice
was accepted and his refused. How could he envy his accepted person,
without reflecting upon the {a132} Acceptor of his offering? Good men
have not been free from it. Job questions the goodness of God, that he
should shine upon the counsel of the wicked (Job x. 3). Jonah had too
much of self, in fearing to be counted a false prophet, when he came
with absolute denunciations of wrath;[223] and when he could not bring
a volley of destroying judgments upon the Ninevites, he would shoot
his fury against his Master, envying those poor people the benefit,
and God the honor of his mercy; and this after he had been sent into
the whale’s belly to learn humiliation, which, though he exercised
there, yet those two great branches of self‑pride and envy were
not lopped off from him in the belly of hell; and God was fain to
take pains with him, and by a gourd scarce makes him ashamed of his
peevishness. Envy is not like to cease till all atheism be cashiered,
and that is in heaven. This sin is an imitation of the devil, whose
first sin upon earth was envy, as his first sin in heaven was pride.
It is a wishing that to ourselves, which the devil asserted as his
right, to give the kingdoms of the world to whom he pleased:[224]
it is an anger with God, because he hath not given us a patent for
government. It utters the same language in disparagement of God, as
Absalom did in reflection on his father: If I were king in Israel,
justice should be better managed; if I were Lord of the world,
there should be more wisdom to discern the merits of men, and more
righteousness in distributing to them their several portions. Thus
we impose laws upon God, and would have the righteousness of his
will submit to the corruptions of ours, and have him lower himself to
gratify our minds, rather than fulfil his own. We charge the Author
of those gifts with injustice, that he hath not dealt equally; or with
ignorance, that he hath mistook his mark. In the same breath that we
censure him by our peevishness, we would guide him by our wills. This
is an unreasonable part of atheism. If all were in the same state and
condition, the order of the world would be impaired. Is God bound to
have a care of thee, and neglect all the world besides? “Shall the
earth be forsaken for thee?”[225] Joseph had reason to be displeased
with his brothers, if they had muttered because he gave Benjamin a
double portion, and the rest a single. It was unfit that they, who had
deserved no gift at all, should prescribe him rules how to dispense
his own doles; much more unworthy it is to deal so with God; yet this
is too rife.
5. It is evidenced in corrupt matter or ends of prayer and praise.
When we are importunate for those things that we know not whether the
righteousness, holiness, and wisdom of God can grant, because he hath
not discovered his will in any promise to bestow them, we would then
impose such conditions on God, which he never obliged himself to grant;
when we pray for things not so much to glorify God, which ought to be
the end of prayer, as to gratify ourselves. We acknowledge, indeed,
by the act of petitioning, that there is a God; but we would have him
ungod himself to be at our beck, and debase himself to serve our turns.
When we desire those things which are repugnant to those attributes
whereby he doth manage the government of the world; when, by some
superficial services, we think we have {a133} gained indulgence to
sins, which seems to be the thought of the strumpet, in her paying her
vows, to wallow more freely in the mire of her sensual pleasures――“I
have peace‑offerings with me; this day I have paid my vows, I have
made my peace with God, and have entertainment for thee;”[226] or when
men desire God to bless them in the commission of some sin, as when
Balak and Balaam offered sacrifices, that they might prosper in the
cursing of the Israelites (Numb. xxv. 1, &c.) So for a man to pray to
God to save him, while he neglects the means of salvation appointed
by God, or to renew him when he slights the word, the only instrument
to that purpose; this is to impose laws upon God, contrary to the
declared will and wisdom of God, and to desire him to slight his own
institutions. When we come into the presence of God with lusts reeking
in our hearts, and leap from sin to duty, we would impose the law
of our corruption on the holiness of God. While we pray “the will of
God may be done,” self‑love wishes its own will may be performed, as
though God should serve our humors, when we will not obey his precepts.
And when we make vows under any affliction, what is it often but a
secret contrivance to bend and flatter him to our conditions? We will
serve him if he will restore us; we think thereby to compound the
business with him, and bring him down to our terms.
6. It is evidenced in positive and bold interpretations of the
judgments of God in the world. To interpret the judgments of God to
the disadvantage of the sufferer, unless it be an unusual judgment,
and have a remarkable hand of God in it, and the sin be rendered
plainly legible in the affliction, is a presumption of this nature.
When men will judge the Galileans, whose blood Pilate mingled with
the sacrifices, greater sinners than others, and themselves righteous,
because no drops of it were dashed upon them; or when Shimei, being
of the house of Saul, shall judge according to his own interest, and
desires David’s flight upon Absalom’s rebellion to be a punishment
for invading the rights of Saul’s family, and depriving him of the
succession in the kingdom,[227] as if he had been of God’s privy
council, when he decreed such acts of justice in the world. Thus we
would fasten our own wills as a law or motive upon God, and interpret
his acts according to the motions of self. Is it not too ordinary,
when God sends an affliction upon those that bear ill‑will to us, to
judge it to be a righting of our cause, to be a fruit of God’s concern
for us in revenging our wrongs, as if we “had heard the secrets of
God,” or, as Eliphaz saith, “had turned over the records of heaven?”
(Job xv. 8.) This is a judgment according to self‑love, not a divine
rule; and imposeth laws upon heaven, implying a secret wish that God
would take care only of them, make our concerns his own, not in ways
of kindness and justice, but according to our fancies; and this is
common in the profane world, in those curses they so readily spit out
upon any affront, as if God were bound to draw his arrows and shoot
them into the heart of all their offenders at their beck and pleasure.
7. It is evidenced, in mixing rules for the worship of God with those
which have been ordered by him. Since men are most prone {a134} to
live by sense, it is no wonder that a sensible worship, which affects
their outward sense with some kind of amazement, is dear to them, and
spiritual worship most loathsome. Pompous rites have been the great
engine wherewith the devil hath deceived the souls of men, and wrought
them to a nauseating the simplicity of divine worship, as unworthy the
majesty and excellency of God.[228] Thus the Jews would not understand
the glory of the second temple in the presence of the Messiah, because
it had not the pompous grandeur of that of Solomon’s erecting. Hence
in all ages men have been forward to disfigure God’s models, and dress
up a brat of their own; as though God had been defective in providing
for his own honor in his institutions, without the assistance of his
creature. This hath always been in the world; the old world had their
imaginations, and the new world hath continued them. The Israelites in
the midst of miracles, and under the memory of a famous deliverance,
would erect a calf. The Pharisees, that sate in Moses’ chair, would
coin new traditions, and enjoin them to be as current as the law of
God.[229] Papists will be blending the christian appointments with
pagan ceremonies, to please the carnal fancies of the common people.
“Altars have been multiplied” under the knowledge of the law of
God.[230] Interest is made the balance of the conveniency of God’s
injunctions. Jeroboam fitted a worship to politic ends, and posted up
calves to prevent his subjects revolting from his sceptre, which might
be occasioned by their resort to Jerusalem, and converse with the body
of the people from whom they were separated.[231] Men will be putting
in their own dictates with God’s laws, and are unwilling he should be
the sole Governor of the world without their counsel; they will not
suffer him to be Lord of that which is purely and solely his concern.
How often hath the practice of the primitive church, the custom
wherein we are bred, the sentiments of our ancestors, been owned as
a more authentic rule in matters of worship, than the mind of God
delivered in his Word! It is natural by creation to worship God; and
it is as natural by corruption for man to worship him in a human way,
and not in a divine; is not this to impose laws upon God, to esteem
ourselves wiser than he? to think him negligent of his own service,
and that our feeble brains can find out ways to accommodate his honor,
better than himself hath done? Thus do men for the most part equal
their own imaginations to God’s oracles: as Solomon built a high place
to Moloch and Chemoch, upon the Mount of Olives, to face on the east
part Jerusalem and the temple;[232] this is not only to impose laws
on God, but also to make self the standard of them.
8. It is evidenced, in suiting interpretations of Scripture to
their own minds and humors. Like the Lacedæmonians, that dressed the
images of their gods according to the fashion of their own country,
we would wring Scripture to serve our own designs, and judge the law
of God by the law of sin, and make the serpentine seed in us to be
the interpreter of divine oracles: this is like Belshazzar to drink
healths out of the sacred vessels. As God is the author of his law
{a135} and word, so he is the best interpreter of it; the Scripture
having an impress of divine wisdom, holiness, and goodness, must be
regarded according to that impress, with a submission and meekness of
spirit and reverence of God in it; but when, in our inquiries into the
word, we inquire not of God, but consult flesh and blood, the temper
of the times wherein we live, or the satisfaction of a party we side
withal, and impose glosses upon it according to our own fancies,
it is to put laws upon God, and make self the rule of him. He that
interprets the law to bolster up some eager appetite against the will
of the lawgiver, ascribes to himself as great an authority as he that
enacted it.
9. In falling off from God after some fair compliances, when his will
grateth upon us, and crosseth ours. They will walk with him as far
as he pleaseth them, and leave him upon the first distaste, as though
God must observe their humors more than they his will. Amos must
be suspended from prophesying, because the “land could not bear his
words,” and his discourses condemned their unworthy practices against
God.[233] The young man came not to receive directions from our
Saviour, but expected a confirmation of his own rules, rather than
an imposition of new.[234] He rather cares for commendations than
instructions, and upon the disappointment turns his back; “he was
sad,” that Christ would not suffer him to be rich, and a Christian
together; and leaves him because his command was not suitable to
the law of his covetousness. Some truths that are at a further
distance from us, we can hear gladly; but when the conscience
begins to smart under others, if God will not observe our wills, we
will, with Herod, be a law to ourselves.[235] More instances might be
observed.――Ingratitude is a setting up self, and an imposing laws on
God. It is as much as to say, God did no more than he was obliged to
do; as if the mercies we have were an act of duty in God, and not of
bounty.――Insatiable desires after wealth: hence are those speeches
(James iv. 13), “We will go into such a city, and buy and sell, &c. to
get gain;” as though they had the command of God, and God must lacquey
after their wills. When our hearts are not contented with any supply
of our wants, but are craving an overplus for our lust; when we are
unsatisfied in the midst of plenty, and still like the grave, cry,
Give, give.――Incorrigibleness under affliction, &c.
II. The second main thing: As man would be a law to himself, so he
would be his own end and happiness in opposition to God. Here four
things shall be discoursed on. 1. Man would make himself his own end
and happiness. 2. He would make anything his end and happiness rather
than God. 3. He would make himself the end of all creatures. 4. He
would make himself the end of God.
First, Man would make himself his own end and happiness. As God ought
to be esteemed the first cause, in point of our dependence on him, so
he ought to be our last end, in point of our enjoyment of him. When
we therefore trust in ourselves, we refuse him as the first cause; and
when we act for ourselves, and expect a blessedness from ourselves, we
refuse him as the chiefest good, and last end, which is an undeniable
piece of atheism; for man is a creature of a higher rank than others
in the world, and was not made as animals, {a136} plants, and other
works of the divine power, materially to glorify God, but a rational
creature, intentionally to honor God by obedience to his rule,
dependence on his goodness, and zeal for his glory. It is, therefore,
as much a slighting of God, for man, a creature, to set himself up as
his own end, as to regard himself as his own law. For the discovery of
this, observe that there is a three‑fold self‑love.
1. Natural, which is common to us by the law of nature with other
creatures, inanimate as well as animate, and so closely twisted with
the nature of every creature, that it cannot be dissolved but with
the dissolution of nature itself. It consisted not with the wisdom and
goodness of God to create an unnatural nature, or to command anything
unnatural, nor doth he; for when he commands us to sacrifice ourselves,
and dearest lives for himself, it is not without a promise of a more
noble state of being in exchange for what we lose. This self‑love is
not only commendable, but necessary, as a rule to measure that duty
we owe to our neighbor, whom we cannot love as ourselves, if we do not
first love ourselves. God having planted this self‑love in our nature,
makes this natural principle the measure of our affection to all
mankind of the same blood with ourselves.
2. Carnal self‑love: when a man loves himself above God, in opposition
to God, with a contempt of God; when our thoughts, affections, designs,
centre only in our own fleshly interest, and rifle God of his honor,
to make a present of it to ourselves: thus the natural self‑love, in
itself good, becomes criminal by the excess, when it would be superior
and not subordinate to God.
3. A gracious self‑love: when we love ourselves for higher ends than
the nature of a creature, as a creature dictates, viz. in subserviency
to the glory of God. This is a reduction of the revolted creature to
his true and happy order; a Christian is therefore said to be “created
in Christ to good works.”[236] As all creatures were created, not
only for themselves, but for the honor of God; so the grace of the
new creation carries a man to answer this end, and to order all his
operations to the honor of God, and his well‑pleasing. The first is
from nature, the second from sin, the third from grace; the first is
implanted by creation, the second the fruit of corruption, and the
third is by the powerful operation of grace. This carnal self‑love is
set up in the stead of God as our last end; like the sea, which all
the little and great streams of our actions run to and rest in. And
this is, 1. Natural. It sticks as close to us as our souls; it is
as natural as sin, the foundation of all the evil in the world. As
self‑abhorrency is the first stone that is laid in conversion, so an
inordinate self‑love was the first inlet to all iniquity. As grace
is a rising from self to centre in God, so is sin a shrinking from
God into the mire of a carnal selfishness; since every creature is
nearest to itself and next to God, it cannot fall from God, but must
immediately sink into self;[237] and, therefore, all sins are well
said to be branches or modifications of this fundamental passion. What
is wrath, but a defence and strengthening self against the attempts of
some real or imaginary evil? Whence springs envy, but from a self‑love,
grieved {a137} at its own wants in the midst of another’s enjoyment,
able to supply it? What is impatience, but a regret that self is not
provided for at the rate of our wish, and that it hath met with a
shock against supposed merit? What is pride, but a sense of self‑worth,
a desire to have self of a higher elevation than others? What is
drunkenness, but a seeking a satisfaction for sensual self in the
spoils of reason? No sin is committed as sin, but as it pretends
a self‑satisfaction. Sin, indeed, may well be termed a man’s self,
because it is, since the loss of original righteousness, the form
that overspreads every part of our souls. The understanding assents
to nothing false but under the notion of true, and the will embraceth
nothing evil but under the notion of good; but the rule whereby
we measure the truth and goodness of proposed objects, is not the
unerring Word, but the inclinations of self, the gratifying of which
is the aim of our whole lives. Sin and self are all one: what is
called a living to sin in one place,[238] is called a living to self
in another: “That they that live should not live unto themselves.”[239]
And upon this account it is that both the Hebrew word, חטא, and the
Greek word, ἁμαρτάνειν, used in Scripture to express sin, properly
signify to miss the mark, and swerve from that _white_ to which all
our actions should be directed, viz. the glory of God. When we fell
to loving ourselves, we fell from loving God; and, therefore, when
the Psalmist saith (Psalm xiv. 2), there were none that sought God,
viz. as the last end; he presently adds, “They are all gone aside,”
viz. from their true mark, and therefore become filthy. 2. Since
it is natural, it is also universal.[240] The not seeking God is as
universal as our ignorance of him. No man in a state of nature but
hath it predominant; no renewed man on this side heaven but hath it
partially. The one hath it flourishing, the other hath it struggling.
If to aim at the glory of God as the chief end, and not to live to
ourselves, be the greatest mark of the restoration of the divine
image,[241] and a conformity to Christ, who glorified not himself,[242]
but the Father;[243] then every man, wallowing in the mire of corrupt
nature, pays a homage to self, as a renewed man is biassed by the
honor of God. The Holy Ghost excepts none from this crime (Phil.
ii. 21): “All seek their own.” It is rare for them to look above or
beyond themselves. Whatsoever may be the immediate subject of their
thoughts and inquiries, yet the utmost end and stage is their profit,
honor, or pleasure. Whatever it be that immediately possesses the mind
and will, self sits like a queen, and sways the sceptre, and orders
things at that rate, that God is excluded, and can find no room in
all his thoughts (Psalm x. 4): “The wicked, through the pride of his
countenance, will not seek after God; God is not in all his thoughts.”
The whole little world of man is so overflowed with a deluge of self,
that the dove, the glory of the Creator, can find no place where to
set its foot; and if ever it gain the favor of admittance, it is to
disguise and be a vassal to some carnal project, as the glory of God
was a mask for the murdering his servants. It is from the power of
this principle that the difficulty of conversion ariseth: as there
is no greater pleasure to a believing {a138} soul than the giving
itself up to God, and no stronger desire in him, than to have a fixed
and unchangeable will to serve the designs of his honor; so there is
no greater torment to a wicked man, than to part with his carnal ends,
and lay down the Dagon of self at the feet of the ark. Self‑love and
self‑opinion in the Pharisees waylaid all the entertainment of truth
(John v. 44): “They sought honor one of another, and not the honor
which comes from God.” It is of so large an extent, and so insinuating
nature, that it winds itself into the exercise of moral virtues,
mixeth with our charity (Matt. vi. 2), and finds nourishment in the
ashes of martyrdom (1 Cor. xiii. 3).
This making ourselves our end will appear in a few things.
1. In frequent self‑applauses, and inward overweening reflections.
Nothing more ordinary in the natures of men, than a dotage on their
own perfections, acquisitions, or actions in the world: “Most think of
themselves above what they ought to think” (Rom. xii. 3, 4). Few think
of themselves so meanly as they ought to think: this sticks as close
to us as our skin; and as humility is the beauty of grace, this is the
filthiest soil of nature. Our thoughts run more delightfully upon the
track of our own perfections, than the excellency of God; and when we
find anything of a seeming worth, that may make us glitter in the eyes
of the world, how cheerfully do we grasp and embrace ourselves! When
the grosser profanenesses of men have been discarded, and the floods
of them dammed up, the head of corruption, whence they sprang, will
swell the higher within, in self‑applauding speculations of their
own reformation, without acknowledgment of their own weaknesses, and
desires of divine assistance to make a further progress. “I thank God
I am not like this publican;”[244] a self‑reflection, with a contempt
rather than compassion to his neighbor, is frequent in every Pharisee.
The vapors of self‑affections, in our clouded understandings, like
those in the air in misty mornings, alter the appearance of things,
and make them look bigger than they are. This is thought by some to be
the sin of the fallen angels, who, reflecting upon their own natural
excellency superior to other creatures, would find a blessedness in
their own nature, as God did in his, and make themselves the last
end of their actions. It is from this principle we are naturally so
ready to compare ourselves rather with those that are below us, than
with those that are above us; and often think those that are above
us inferior to us, and secretly glory that we are become none of the
meanest and lowest in natural or moral excellencies. How far were
the gracious penmen of the Scripture from this, who, when possessed
and directed by the Spirit of God, and filled with a sense of him,
instead of applauding themselves, publish upon record their own faults
to all the eyes of the world! And if Peter, as some think, dictated
the Gospel which Mark wrote as his amanuensis, it is observable that
his crime in denying his Master is aggravated in that Gospel in some
circumstances, and less spoken of his repentance than in the other
evangelists: “When he thought thereon, he wept;”[245] but in the other,
“He went out and wept bitterly.”[246] This is one part {a139} of
atheism and self‑idolatry, to magnify ourselves with the forgetfulness,
and to the injury of our Creator.
2. In ascribing the glory of what we do or have to ourselves, to our
own wisdom, power, virtue, &c. How flaunting is Nebuchadnezzar at
the prospect of Babylon, which he had exalted to be the head of so
great an empire! (Dan. iv. 30): “Is not this great Babylon that I
have built? For,” &c. He struts upon the battlements of his palace,
as if there were no God but himself in the world, while his eye
could not but see the heavens above him to be none of his own framing,
attributing his acquisitions to his own arm, and referring them to
his own honor, for his own delight; not for the honor of God, as a
creature ought, nor for the advantage of his subjects, as the duty of
a prince. He regards Babylon as his heaven, and himself as his idol,
as if he were all, and God nothing. An example of this we have in the
present age. But it is often observed, that God vindicates his own
honor, brings the most heroical men to contempt and unfortunate ends,
as a punishment of their pride, as he did here (Dan. iv. 31): “While
the word was in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven,”
&c. This was Herod’s crime, to suffer others to do it:[247] he had
discovered his eloquence actively, and made himself his own end
passively, in approving the flatteries of the people, and offered not
with one hand to God the glory he received from his people with the
other.[248] Samosatenus is reported to put down the hymns which were
sung for the glory of God and Christ, and caused songs to be sung
in the temple for his own honor. When anything succeeds well, we are
ready to attribute it to our own prudence and industry: if we meet
with a cross, we fret against the stars and fortune, and second
causes, and sometimes against God: as they curse God as well as their
king (Isa. viii. 21), not acknowledging any defect in themselves. The
Psalmist, by his repetition of, “Not unto us, not unto us, but to thy
name give glory” (Psalm cxv. 1), implies the naturality of this temper,
and the difficulty to cleanse our hearts from those self‑reflections.
If it be angelical to refuse an undue glory stolen from God’s throne
(Rev. xxii. 8, 9), it is diabolical to accept and cherish it. To
seek our own glory is not glory (Prov. xxv. 27). It is vile, and the
dishonor of a creature, who by the law of his creation is referred
to another end. So much as we sacrifice to our own credit, to the
dexterity of our hands, or the sagacity of our wit, we detract from
God.
3. In desires to have self‑pleasing doctrines. When we cannot endure
to hear anything that crosses the flesh; though the wise man tells us,
it is better to hear the “rebuke of the wise, than the song of fools”
(Eccles. vii. 5). If Hanani the seer reprove king Asa for not relying
on the Lord, his passion shall be armed for self against the prophet,
and arrest him a prisoner (2 Chron. xvi. 10). If Micaiah declare to
Ahab the evil that shall befall him, Amon the governor shall receive
orders to clap him up in a dungeon. Fire doth not sooner seize upon
combustible matter than fury will be kindled, if self be but pinched.
This interest of lustful self barred the heart of Herodias against the
entertainment of the truth, and caused her {a140} savagely to dip her
hands in the blood of the Baptist, to make him a sacrifice to that
inward idol.[249]
4. In being highly concerned for injuries done to ourselves, and
little or not at all concerned for injuries done to God. How will
the blood rise in us, when our honor and reputation is invaded, and
scarce reflect upon the dishonor God suffers in our sight and hearing!
Violent passions will transform us into Boanerges in the one case, and
our unconcernedness render us Gallios in the other. We shall extenuate
that which concerns God, and aggravate that which concerns ourselves.
Nothing but the death of Jonathan, a first‑born and a generous son,
will satisfy his father Saul, when the authority of his edict was
broken by his tasting of honey, though he had recompensed his crime
committed in ignorance by the purchase of a gallant victory. But when
the authority of God was violated in saving the Amalekites’ cattle,
against the command of a greater sovereign than himself, he can daub
the business, and excuse it with a design of sacrificing. He was not
so earnest in hindering the people from the breach of God’s command,
as he was in vindicating the honor of his own:[250] he could hardly
admit of an excuse to salve his own honor; but in the concerns of
God’s honor, pretend piety, to cloak his avarice. And it is often
seen, when the violation of God’s authority, and the stain of
our own reputation are coupled together, we are more troubled for
what disgraces us than for what dishonors God. When Saul had thus
transgressed, he is desirous that Samuel would turn again to preserve
his own honor before the elders, rather than grieved that he had
broken the command of God (ver. 30).
5. In trusting in ourselves. When we consult with our own wit and
wisdom, more than inquire of God, and ask leave of him: as the
Assyrian (Isa. x. 13), “By the strength of my hands I have done it,
and by my wisdom; for I am prudent.” When we attempt things in the
strength of our own heads, and parts, and trust in our own industry,
without application to God for direction, blessing, and success, we
affect the privilege of the Deity, and make gods of ourselves. The
same language in reality with Ajax in Sophocles: “Others think to
overcome with the assistance of the gods, but I hope to gain honor
without them.” Dependence and trust is an act due from the creature
only to God. Hence God aggravates the crime of the Jews in trusting in
Egypt (Isa. xxxi. 3), “the Egyptians are men and not gods.” Confidence
in ourselves is a defection from God (Jer. xvii. 5). And when we
depart from and cast off God to depend upon ourselves, which is but
an arm of flesh, we choose the arm of flesh for our God; we rob God of
that confidence we ought to place in him, and that adoration which is
due to him, and build it upon another foundation; not that we are to
neglect the reason and parts God hath given us, or spend more time
in prayer than in consulting about our own affairs, but to mix our
own intentions in business, with ejaculations to heaven, and take
God along with us in every motion: but certainly it is an idolizing
of self, when we are more diligent in our attendance on our own wit,
than fervent in our recourses to God.
6. The power of sinful self, above the efficacy of the notion
of God, {a141} is evident in our workings for carnal self against
the light of our own consciences. When men of sublime reason, and
clear natural wisdom, are voluntary slaves to their own lusts, row
against the stream of their own consciences, serve carnal self with a
disgraceful and disturbing drudgery, making it their God, sacrificing
natural self, all sentiments of virtue, and the quiet of their lives,
to the pleasure, honor, and satisfaction of carnal self: this is a
prostituting God in his deputy, conscience, to carnal affections, when
their eyes are shut against the enlightenings of it, and their ears
deaf to its voice, but open to the least breath and whisper of self; a
debt that the creature owes supremely to God. Much more might be said,
but let us see what atheism lurks in this, and how it entrencheth upon
God.
1. It is usurping God’s prerogative. It is God’s prerogative to be his
own end, and act for his own glory; because there is nothing superior
to him in excellency and goodness to act for: he had not his being
from anything without himself, whereby he should be obliged to act
for anything but himself. To make ourselves then our last end, is to
corrival God in his being the supreme good, and blessedness to himself:
as if we were our own principle, the author of our own being, and were
not obliged to a higher power than ourselves, for what we are and have.
To direct the lines of all our motions to ourselves, is to imply that
they first issued only from ourselves. When we are rivals to God in
his chief end, we own or desire to be rivals to him in the principle
of his being: this is to set ourselves in the place of God. All things
have something without them, and above them as their end; all inferior
creatures act for some superior order in the rank of creation; the
lesser animals are designed for the greater, and all for man: man,
therefore, for something nobler than himself. To make ourselves
therefore our own end, is to deny any superior, to whom we are to
direct our actions. God alone being the supreme Being, can be his
own ultimate end: for if there were anything higher and better than
God, the purity and righteousness of his own nature would cause him
to act for and toward that as his chiefest mark: this is the highest
sacrilege, to alienate the proper good and rights of God, and employ
them for our own use; to steal from him his own honor, and put it into
our own cabinets; like those birds that ravished the sacrifice from
the altar and carried it to their own nests.[251] When we love only
ourselves, and act for no other end but ourselves, we invest ourselves
with the dominion which is the right of God, and take the crown from
his head. For as the crown belongs to the king, so to love his own
will, to will by his own will and for himself, is the property of
God; because he hath no other will, no other end above him to be the
rule and scope of his actions. When therefore we are by self‑love
transformed wholly into ourselves, we make ourselves our own
foundation, without God and against God; when we mind our own glory
and praise, we would have a royal state equal with God, who created
all things for himself.[252] What can man do more for God than he
naturally doth for himself, since he doth all those things for himself
which he should do for God? We {a142} own ourselves to be our own
creators and benefactors, and fling off all sentiments of gratitude
to him.
2. It is a vilifying of God. When we make ourselves our end, it is
plain language that God is not our happiness; we postpone God to
ourselves, as if he were not an object so excellent and fit for our
love as ourselves are (for it is irrational to make that our end,
which is not God, and not the chiefest good); it is to deny him to be
better than we, to make him not to be so good as ourselves, and so fit
to be our chiefest good as ourselves are; that he hath not deserved
any such acknowledgment at our hands by all that he hath done for us:
we assert ourselves his superiors by such kind of acting, though we
are infinitely more inferior to God than any creature can be to us.
Man cannot dishonor God more than by referring that to his own glory,
which God made for his own praise, upon account whereof he only hath a
right to glory and praise, and none else. He thus “changeth the glory
of the incorruptible God into a corruptible image;”[253] a perishing
fame and reputation, which extends but little beyond the limits of his
own habitation; or if it doth, survives but a few years, and perishes
at last with the age wherein he lived.
3. It is as much as in us lies a destroying of God. By this temper
we destroy that God that made us, because we destroy his intention
and his honor. God cannot outlive his will and his glory: because he
cannot have any other rule but his own will, or any other end but his
own honor. The setting up self as our end puts a nullity upon the true
Deity; by paying to ourselves that respect and honor which is due to
God, we make the true God as no God. Whosoever makes himself a king of
his prince’s rights and territories, manifests an intent to throw him
out of his government. To choose ourselves as our end is to undeify
God, since to be the last end of a rational creature is a right
inseparable from the nature of the Deity; and therefore not to set God,
but self always before us, is to acknowledge no being but ourselves to
be God.
Secondly. The second thing, Man would make anything his end and
happiness rather than God. An end is so necessary in all our actions,
that he deserves not the name of a rational creature that proposeth
not one to himself. This is the distinction between rational creatures
and others; they act with a formal intention, whereas other creatures
are directed to their end by a natural instinct, and moved by nature
to what the others should be moved by reason: when a man, therefore,
acts for that end which was not intended him by the law of his
creation, nor is suited to the noble faculties of his soul, he acts
contrary to God, overturns his order, and merits no better a title
than that of an atheist. A man may be said two ways to make a thing
his last end and chief good.
1. Formally. When he actually judges this or that thing to be his
chiefest good, and orders all things to it. So man doth not formally
judge sin to be good, or any object which is the incentive of sin
to be his last end: this cannot be while he hath the exercise of his
rational faculties.
2. Virtually and implicitly. When he loves anything against the {a143}
command of God, and prefers in the stream of his actions the enjoyment
of that, before the fruition of God, and lays out more strength and
expends more time in the gaining that, than answering the true end
of his creation: when he acts so as if something below God could make
him happy without God, or that God could not make him happy without
the addition of something else. Thus the glutton makes a god of his
dainties; the ambitious man of his honor; the incontinent man of his
lust; and the covetous man of his wealth; and consequently esteems
them as his chiefest good, and the most noble end, to which he directs
his thoughts: thus he vilifies and lessens the true God, which can
make him happy, in a multitude of false gods, that can only render
him miserable. He that loves pleasure more than God, says in his heart
there is no God but his pleasure. He that loves his belly more than
God, says in his heart there is no God but his belly: their happiness
is not accounted to lie in that God that made the world, but in the
pleasure or profit they make their god. In this, though a created
object be the immediate and subordinate term to which we turn, yet
principally and ultimately, the affection to it terminates in self.
Nothing is naturally entertained by us, but as it affects our sense
or mingles with some promise of advantage to us. This is seen,
1. In the fewer thoughts we have of God than of anything else. Did
we apprehend God to be our chiefest good and highest end, should we
grudge him the pains of a few days’ thoughts upon him? Men in their
travels are frequently thinking upon their intended stage: but our
thoughts run upon new acquisitions to increase our wealth, rear up our
families, revenge our injuries, and support our reputation: trifles
possess us; but “God is not in all our thoughts;”[254] seldom the
sole object of them. We have durable thoughts of transitory things,
and flitting thoughts of a durable and eternal good. The covenant of
grace engageth the whole heart to God, and bars anything else from
engrossing it: but what strangers are God and the souls of most men!
Though we have the knowledge of him by creation, yet he is for the
most part an unknown God in the relations wherein he stands to us,
because a God undelighted in: hence it is, as one observes, that
because we observe not the ways of God’s wisdom, conceive not of him
in his vast perfections, nor are stricken with an admiration of his
goodness, that we have fewer good sacred poems, than of any other
kind.[255] The wits of men hang the wing when they come to exercise
their reasons and fancies about God. Parts and strength are given us,
as well as corn and wine to the Israelites, for the service of God;
but those are consecrated to some cursed Baal.[256] Like Venus in the
Poet, we forsake heaven to follow some Adonis.
2. In the greedy pursuit of the world.[257] When we pursue worldly
wealth or worldly reputation with more vehemency than the riches of
grace, or the favor of God;――when we have a foolish imagination, that
our happiness consists in them, we prefer earth before heaven, broken
cisterns which can hold no water, before an ever‑springing fountain
of glory and bliss; and, as though there were a defect in {a144} God,
cannot be content with him as our portion, without an addition of
something inferior to him;――when we make it our hopes, and say to the
wedge, “Thou art my confidence;” and rejoice more because it is great,
and because “our hand hath gotten much,” than in the privilege of
communion with God and the promise of an everlasting fruition of
him;[258] this is so gross, that Job joins it with the idolatry of
the sun and moon, which he purgeth himself of (xxxi. 26). And the
apostle, when he mentions covetousness or covetous men, passes it not
over without the title of idolatry to the vice, and idolater to the
person;[259] in that it is a preferring clay and dirt as an end more
desirable than the original of all goodness, in regard of affection
and dependence.
3. In a strong addictedness to sensual pleasures (Phil. iii. 19).
Who make their “belly their god;” subjecting the truths of God to
the maintenance of their luxury. In debasing the higher faculties to
project for the satisfaction of the sensitive appetite as their chief
happiness, whereby many render themselves no better than a rout of
sublimated brutes among men, and gross atheists to God. When men’s
thoughts run also upon inventing new methods to satisfy their bestial
appetite, forsaking the pleasures which are to be had in God, which
are the delights of angels, for the satisfaction of brutes. This is an
open and unquestionable refusal of God for our end, when our rest is
in them, as if they were the chief good, and not God.
4. In paying a service, upon any success in the world, to instruments
more than to God, their sovereign Author. When “they sacrifice to
their net, and burn incense to their drag.”[260] Not that the Assyrian
did offer a sacrifice to his arms, but ascribed to them what was due
only to God, and appropriated the victory to his forces and arms. The
prophet alludes to those that worshipped their warlike instruments,
whereby they had attained great victories; and those artificers who
worshipped the tools by which they had purchased great wealth, in
the stead of God; preferring them as the causes of their happiness,
before God who governs the world. And are not our affections, upon
the receiving of good things, more closely fixed to the instruments
of conveyance, than to the chief Benefactor, from whose coffers they
are taken? Do we not more delight in them, and hug them with a greater
endearedness, as if all our happiness depended on them, and God were
no more than a bare spectator? Just as if when a man were warmed by
a beam, he should adore that and not admire the sun that darts it out
upon him.
5. In paying a respect to man more than God. When in a public
attendance on his service, we will not laugh, or be garish, because
men see us; but our hearts shall be in a ridiculous posture, playing
with feathers and trifling fancies, though God see us; as though
our happiness consisted in the pleasing of men, and our misery in
a respect to God. There is no fool that saith in his heart, There is
no God, but he sets up something in his heart as a god. This is,
1. A debasing of God, (1.) In setting up a creature. It speaks God
less amiable than the creature, short of those perfections which
some silly, sordid thing, which hath engrossed their affections,
is possessed {a145} with; as if the cause of all being could be
transcended by his creature, and a vile lust could equal, yea,
surmount the loveliness of God. It is to say to God, as the rich
to the poor (James ii. 3), “Stand thou there, or sit here under my
footstool;” it is to sink him below the mire of the world, to order
him to come down from his glorious throne, and take his place below
a contemptible creature, which, in regard of its infinite distance, is
not to be compared with him. It strips God of the love that is due to
him by the right of his nature and the greatness of his dignity; and
of the trust that is due to him, as the First Cause and the chiefest
good, as though he were too feeble and mean to be our blessedness.
This is intolerable, to make that which is God’s footstool, the earth,
to climb up into his throne; to set that in our heart which God hath
made even below ourselves and put under our feet; to make that which
we trample upon to dispose of the right God hath to our hearts.[261]
It is worse than if a queen should fall in love with the little image
of the prince in the palace, and slight the beauty of his person; and
as if people should adore the footsteps of a king in the dirt, and
turn their backs upon his presence. (2.) It doth more debase him to
set up a sin, a lust, a carnal affection as our chief end. To steal
away the honor due to God, and appropriate it to that which is no work
of his hands, to that which is loathsome in his sight, hath disturbed
his rest, and wrung out his just breath to kindle a hell for its
eternal lodging, a God‑dishonoring and a soul‑murdering lust, is worse
than to prefer Barabbas before Christ. The baser the thing, the worse
is the injury to him with whom we would associate it. If it were some
generous principle, a thing useful to the world, that we place in an
equality with, or a superiority above him, though it were a vile usage,
yet it were not altogether so criminal; but to gratify some unworthy
appetite with the displeasure of the Creator, something below the
rational nature of man, much more infinitely below the excellent
majesty of God, is a more unworthy usage of him. To advance one of
the most virtuous nobles in a kingdom as a mark of our service and
subjection, is not so dishonorable to a despised prince as to take
a scabby beggar or a rotten carcase to place in his throne. Creeping
things, abominable beasts, the Egyptian idols, cats and crocodiles,
were greater abominations, and a greater despite done to God, than
the image of jealousy at the gate of the altar.[262] And let not any
excuse themselves, that it is but one lust or one creature which is
preferred as the end: is not he an idolater that worships the sun or
moon, one idol, as well as he that worships the whole host of heaven?
The inordinacy of the heart to one lust may imply a stronger contempt
of him, than if a legion of lusts did possess the heart. It argues a
greater disesteem, when he shall be slighted for a single vanity. The
depth of Esau’s profaneness in contemning his birth‑right, and God in
it, is aggravated by his selling it for one morsel of meat,[263] and
that none of the daintiest, none of the costliest――a mess of pottage;
implying, had he parted with it at a greater rate, it had been more
tolerable, and his profaneness more excusable. And it is reckoned
as a high aggravation of the corruption of the Israelite judges (Amos
ii. 6), {a146} that they sold the poor for a pair of shoes; that is,
that they would betray the cause of the poor for a bribe of no greater
value than might purchase them a pair of shoes. To place any one thing
as our chief end, though never so light, doth not excuse. He that
will not stick to break with God for a trifle, a small pleasure, will
leap the hedge upon a greater temptation. Nay, and if wealth, riches,
friends, and the best thing in the world, our own lives, be preferred
before God, as our chief happiness and end but one moment, it is an
infinite wrong, because the infinite goodness and excellency of God
is denied; as though the creature or lust we love, or our own life,
which we prefer in that short moment before him, had a goodness in
itself, superior to, and more desirable than the blessedness in God.
And though it should be but one minute, and a man in all the period
of his days, both before and after that failure, should actually and
intentionally prefer God before all other things; yet he doth him an
infinite wrong, because God in every moment is infinitely good, and
absolutely desirable, and can never cease to be good, and cannot have
the least shadow or change in him and his perfections.
2. It is a denying of God (Job xxxi. 26‒28): “If I beheld the sun
when it shined, or the moon walking in its brightness, and my heart
hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand; this also
were iniquity to be punished by the judge, for I should have denied
the Lord above.” This denial of God is not only the act of an open
idolater, but the consequent of a secret confidence, and immoderate
joy in worldly goods. This denial of God is to be referred to ver. 24,
25. When a man saith to gold, “Thou art my confidence,” and rejoices
because his wealth is great; he denies that God which is superior to
all those, and the proper object of trust. Both idolatries are coupled
here together; that which hath wealth and that which hath those
glorious creatures in heaven for its object. And though some may think
it a light sin, yet the crime being of deeper guilt, a denial of God,
deserves a severer punishment, and falls under the sentence of the
just Judge of all the earth, under that notion which Job intimates in
those words, “This also were an iniquity to be punished by the Judge.”
The kissing the hand to the sun, moon, or any idol, was an external
sign of religious worship among those and other nations. This is far
less than an inward hearty confidence, and an affectionate trust. If
the motion of the hand be, much more the affection of the heart to an
excrementitious creature, or a brutish pleasure, is a denial of God,
and a kind of an abjuring of him, since the supreme affection of the
soul is undoubtedly and solely the right of the Sovereign Creator,
and not to be given in common to others, as the outward gesture may
in a way of civil respect. Nothing that is an honor peculiar to God
can be given to a creature, without a plain exclusion of God to be
God; it being a disowning the rectitude and excellency of his nature.
If God should command a creature such a love, and such a confidence
in anything inferior to him, he would deny himself his own glory, he
would deny himself to be the most excellent being. Can the Romanists
be free from this, when they call the cross _spem unicam_, and
{a147} say to the Virgin, _In te Domina speravi_, as Bonaventure?
&c. Good reason, therefore, have worldlings and sensualists, persons
of immoderate fondness to anything in the world, to reflect upon
themselves; since though they own the being of God, they are guilty
of so great disrespect to him, that cannot be excused from the title
of an unworthy atheism; and those that are renewed by the spirit
of God, may here see ground of a daily humiliation for the frequent
and too common excursions of their souls in creature confidences and
affections, whereby they fall under the charge of an act of practical
atheism, though they may be free from a habit of it.
Thirdly, Man would make himself the end of all creatures. Man would
sit in the seat of God, and set his heart as the heart of God, as the
Lord saith of Tyrus (Ezek. xxviii. 2). What is the consequence of this,
but to be esteemed the chief good and end of other creatures? a thing
that the heart of God cannot but be set upon, it being an inseparable
right of the Deity, who must deny himself if he deny this affection
of the heart. Since it is the nature of man, derived from his root,
to desire to be equal with God, it follows that he desires no creature
should be equal with him, but subservient to his ends and his glory.
He that would make himself God, would have the honor proper to God.
He that thinks himself worthy of his own supreme affection, thinks
himself worthy to be the object of the supreme affection of others.
Whosoever counts himself the chiefest good and last end, would have
the same place in the thoughts of others. Nothing is more natural
to man than a desire to have his own judgment the rule and measure
of the judgments and opinions of the rest of mankind. He that sets
himself in the place of the prince, doth, by that act, challenge all
the prerogatives and dues belonging to the prince; and apprehending
himself fit to be a king, apprehends himself also worthy of the homage
and fealty of the subjects. He that loves himself chiefly, and all
other things and persons for himself, would make himself the end of
all creatures. It hath not been once or twice only in the world that
some vain princes have assumed to themselves the title of gods, and
caused divine adorations to be given to them, and altars to smoke with
sacrifices for their honor. What hath been practised by one, is by
nature seminally in all; we would have all pay an obedience to us,
and give to us the esteem that is due to God. This is evident,
1. In pride. When we entertain a high opinion of ourselves, and act
for our own reputes, we dispossess God from our own hearts; and while
we would have our fame to be in every man’s mouth, and be admired in
the hearts of men, we would chase God out of the hearts of others, and
deny his glory a residence anywhere else, that our glory should reside
more in their minds than the glory of God; that their thoughts should
be filled with our achievements, more than the works and excellency
of God, with our image, and not with the divine. Pride would paramount
God in the affections of others, and justle God out of their souls;
and by the same reason that man doth thus in the place where he lives,
he would do so in the whole world, and press the whole creation from
the service of their true Lord, to his own service. Every proud man
would be counted by {a148} others as he counts himself, the highest,
chiefest piece of goodness, and be adored by others, as much as
he adores and admires himself. No proud man, in his self‑love, and
self‑admiration, thinks himself in an error; and if he be worthy of
his own admiration, he thinks himself worthy of the highest esteem
of others, that they should value him above themselves, and value
themselves only for him. What did Nebuchadnezzar intend by setting up
a golden image, and commanding all his subjects to worship it, upon
the highest penalty he could inflict, but that all should aim only at
the pleasing his humor?
2. In using the creatures contrary to the end God has appointed. God
created the world and all things in it, as steps whereby men might
ascend to a prospect of him, and the acknowledgment of his glory; and
we would use them to dishonor God, and gratify ourselves: he appointed
them to supply our necessities, and support our rational delights,
and we use them to cherish our sinful lusts. We wring groans from
the creature in diverting them from their true scope to one of our
own fixing, when we use them not in his service, but purely for our
own, and turn those things he created for himself, to be instruments
of rebellion against him to serve our turns, and hereby endeavor to
defeat the ends of God in them, to establish our own ends by them:
this is a high dishonor to God, a sacrilegious undermining of his
glory,[264] to reduce what God hath made to serve our own glory
and our own pleasure; it perverts the whole order of the world, and
directs it to another end than what God hath constituted, to another
intention contrary to the intention of God; and thus man makes himself
a God by his own authority. As all things were made by God, so they
are for God; but while we aspire to the end of the creation, we deny
and envy God the honor of being Creator; we cannot make ourselves the
chief end of the creatures against God’s order, but we imply thereby
that we were their first principle; for if we lived under a sense of
the Creator of them while we enjoy them for our use, we should return
the glory to the right owner. This is diabolical; though the devil,
for his first affecting an authority in heaven, has been hurled down
from the state of an angel of light into that of darkness, vileness,
and misery, to be the most accursed creature living, yet he still
aspires to mate God, contrary to the knowledge of the impossibility of
success in it. Neither the terrors he feels, nor the future torments
he doth expect, do a jot abate his ambition to be competitor with his
Creator; how often hath he, since his first sin, arrogated to himself
the honor of a God from the blind world, and attempted to make the Son
of God, by a particular worship, count him as the “chiefest good and
benefactor of the world!”[265] Since all men by nature are the devil’s
children, the serpent’s seed, they have something of this venom in
their natures, as well as others of his qualities. We see that there
may be, and is a prodigious atheism, lurking under the belief of a
God; the devil knows there is a God, but acts like an atheist; and so
do his children.
Fourthly, Man would make himself the end of God. This necessarily
follows upon the former; whosoever makes himself his own law and his
own end in the place of God, would make God the subject {a149} in
making himself the sovereign; he that steps into the throne of a
prince, sets the prince at his footstool; and while he assumes the
prince’s prerogative, demands a subjection from him. The order of the
creation has been inverted by the entrance of sin.[266] God implanted
an affection in man with a double aspect, the one to pitch upon
God, the other to respect ourselves; but with this proviso, that
our affection to God should be infinite, in regard of the object,
and centre in him as the chiefest happiness and highest end. Our
affections to ourselves should be finite, and refer ultimately to God
as the original of our being; but sin hath turned man’s affections
wholly to himself, whereas he should love God first, and himself in
order to God; he now loves himself first, and God in order to himself;
love to God is lost, and love to self hath usurped the throne. As God
by “creation put all things under the feet of man,”[267] reserving
the heart for himself, man by corruption hath dispossessed God of his
heart, and put him under his own feet. We often intend ourselves when
we pretend the honor of God, and make God and religion a stale to some
designs we have in hand; our Creator a tool for our own ends. This is
evident,
1. In our loving God, because of some self‑pleasing benefits
distributed by him. There is in men a kind of natural love to God,
but it is but a secondary one, because God gives them the good things
of this world, spreads their table, fills their cup, stuffs their
coffers, and doth them some good turns by unexpected providences; this
is not an affection to God for the unbounded excellency of his own
nature, but for his beneficence, as he opens his hand for them; an
affection to themselves, and those creatures, their gold, their honor,
which their hearts are most fixed upon, without a strong spiritual
inclination that God should be glorified by them in the use of those
mercies. It is rather a disowning of God, than any love to him,
because it postpones God to those things they love him for; this would
appear to be no love, if God should cease to be their benefactor, and
deal with them as a judge; if he should change his outward smiles into
afflicting frowns, and not only shut his hand, but strip them of what
he sent them. The motive of their love being expired, the affection
raised by it must cease for want of fuel to feed it; so that God
is beholden to sordid creatures of no value (but as they are his
creatures) for most of the love the sons of men pretend to him. The
devil spake truth of most men, though not of Job, when he said (Job i.
9): “They love not God for naught;” but while he makes a hedge about
them and their families, whilst he blesseth the works of their hands,
and increaseth their honor in the land. It is like Peter’s sharp
reproof of his Master, when he spake of the ill‑usage, even to death,
he was to meet with at Jerusalem: “This shall not be unto thee.” It
was as much out of love to himself, as zeal for his Master’s interest,
knowing his Master could not be in such a storm without some drops
lighting upon himself. All the apostasies of men in the world are
witnesses to this; they fawn whilst they may have a prosperous
profession, but will not bear one chip of the cross for the interest
of God; they would partake of his blessings, {a150} but not endure the
prick of a lance for him, as those, that admired the miracles of our
Saviour, and shrunk at his sufferings. A time of trial discovers these
mercenary souls to be more lovers of themselves than their Maker. This
is a pretended love of friendship to God, but a real love to a lust,
only to gain by God. A good man’s temper is contrary: “Quench hell,
burn heaven,” said a holy man, “I will love and fear my God.”
2. It is evident, in abstinence from some sins, not because they
offend God, but because they are against the interest of some other
beloved corruption, or a bar to something men hunt after in the world.
When temperance is cherished not to honor God, but preserve a crazy
carcase; prodigality forsaken, out of a humor of avarice; uncleanness
forsaken, not out of a hatred of lust, but love to their money;
declining a denial of the interest and truth of God, not out of
affection to them, but an ambitious zeal for their own reputation.
There is a kind of conversion from sin, when God is not made the term
of it (Jer. iv. 1): “If thou wilt return, O Israel, return unto me,
saith the Lord.”[268] When we forbear sin as dogs do the meat they
love: they forbear not out of a hatred of the carrion, but fear of
the cudgel; these are as wicked in their abstaining from sin, as
others are in their furious committing it. Nothing of the honor of
God and the end of his appointments is indeed in all this, but the
conveniences self gathers from them. Again, many of the motives the
generality of the world uses to their friends and relations to draw
them from vices, are drawn from self, and used to prop up natural or
sinful self in them. Come, reform yourself, take other courses, you
will smut your reputation and be despicable; you will destroy your
estate, and commence a beggar; your family will be undone, and you may
rot in a prison: not laying close to them the duty they owe to God,
the dishonor which accrues to him by their unworthy courses, and the
ingratitude to the God of their mercies; not that the other motives
are to be laid aside and slighted. Mint and cummin may be tithed,
but the weightier concerns are not to be omitted; but this shows that
self is the bias, not only of men in their own course, but in their
dealings with others; what should be subordinate to the honor of God,
and the duty we owe to him, is made superior.
3. It is evident, in performing duties merely for a selfish interest:
making ourselves the end of religious actions, paying a homage to that,
while we pretend to render it to God (Zech. vii. 5): “Did you at all
fast unto me, even unto me?” Things ordained by God may fall in with
carnal ends affected by ourselves; and then religion is not kept up by
any interest of God in the conscience, but the interest of self in the
heart: we then sanctify not the name of God in the duty, but gratify
ourselves: God may be the object, self is the end; and a heavenly
object is made subservient to a carnal design. Hypocrisy passes a
compliment on God, and is called flattery (Psalm lxxviii. 36): “They
did flatter him with their lips,” &c. They gave him a parcel of good
words for their own preservation. Flattery, in the old notion among
the heathens, is a vice more peculiar to serve our own turn and purvey
for the belly: they knew they could not {a151} subsist without God,
and therefore gave him a parcel of good words, that he might spare
them, and make provision for them. Israel is an empty vine,[269] a
vine, say some, with large branches and few clusters, but brings forth
fruit to himself: while they professed love to God with their lips,
it was that God should promote their covetous designs, and preserve
their wealth and grandeur;[270] in which respect a hypocrite may be
well termed a religious atheist, an atheist masked with religion. The
chief arguments which prevail with many men to perform some duties
and appear religious, are the same that Hamor and Shechem used to the
people of their city to submit to circumcision, viz. the engrossing
of more wealth (Gen. xxxiv. 21, 22): “If every male among us be
circumcised, as they are circumcised, shall not their cattle and
their substance, and every beast of theirs, be ours?” This is seen,
(1.) In unwieldiness to religious duties where self is not concerned.
With what lively thoughts will many approach to God, when a revenue
may be brought in to support their own ends! But when the concerns of
God only are in it, the duty is not the delight, but the clog; such
feeble devotions, that warm not the soul, unless there be something
of self to give strength and heat to them. Jonah was sick of his work,
and run from God, because he thought he should get no honor by his
message: God’s mercy would discredit his prophecy.[271] Thoughts of
disadvantage cut the very sinews of service. You may as well persuade
a merchant to venture all his estate upon the inconstant waves without
hopes of gain, as prevail with a natural man to be serious in duty,
without expectation of some warm advantage. “What profit should we
have if we pray to him?” is the natural question (Job xxi. 15). “What
profit shall I have if I be cleansed from my sin?” (Job xxxv. 3).
I shall have more good by my sin than by my service. It is for God
that I dance before the ark, saith David, therefore I will be more
vile (2 Sam. vi. 22). It is for self that I pray, saith a natural
man, therefore I will be more warm and quick. Ordinances of God are
observed only as a point of interest, and prayer is often most fervent,
when it is least godly, and most selfish; carnal ends and affections
will pour out lively expressions. If there be no delight in the means
that lead to God, there is no delight in God himself; because love
is _appetitus unionis_, a desire of union; and where the object is
desirable, the means that brings us to it would be delightful too.
(2.) In calling upon God only in a time of necessity. How officious
will men be in affliction, to that God whom they neglect in their
prosperity! “When he slew them, then they sought him, and they
returned and inquired after God, and they remembered that God was
their rock” (Psalm lxxviii. 34). They remembered him under the scourge,
and forgot him under his smiles: they visit the throne of grace,
knock loud at heaven’s gates, and give God no rest for their early
and importunate devotions when under distress: but when their desires
are answered, and the rod removed, they stand aloof from him, and rest
upon their own bottom, as Jer. ii. 31: “We are lords; we will come
no more unto thee.” When we have need {a152} of him, he shall find
us clients at his gate; and when we have served our turn, he hears no
more of us: like Noah’s dove sent out of the ark, that returned to him
when she found no rest on the earth, but came not back when she found
a footing elsewhere. How often do men apply themselves to God, when
they have some business for him to do for them! And then too, they are
loth to put it solely into his hand to manage it for his own honor;
but they presume to be his directors, that he may manage it for their
glory. Self spurs men on to the throne of grace; they desire to be
furnished with some mercy they want, or to have the clouds of some
judgments which they fear blown over: this is not affection to God,
but to ourselves: as the Romans worshipped a quartan ague as a goddess,
and Timorem and Pallorem, fear and paleness, as gods; not out of any
affection they had to the disease or the passion, but for fear to
receive any hurt by them. Again, when we have gained the mercy we need,
how little do we warm our souls with the consideration of that God
that gave it, or lay out the mercy in his service! We are importunate
to have him our friend in our necessities, and are ungratefully
careless of him, and his injuries he suffers by us or others. When
he hath discharged us from the rock where we stuck, we leave him, as
having no more need of him, and able to do well enough without him;
as if we were petty gods ourselves, and only wanted a lift from him
at first. This is not to glorify God as God, but as our servant; not
an honoring of God, but a self‑seeking: he would hardly beg at God’s
door, if he could pleasure himself without him.
(3.) In begging his assistance to our own projects. When we lay the
plot of our own affairs, and then come to God, not for counsel but
blessing, self only shall give us counsel how to act; but because we
believe there is a God that governs the world, we will desire him to
contribute success. God is not consulted with till the counsel of
self be fixed; then God must be the executor of our will. Self must be
the principal, and God the instrument to hatch what we have contrived.
It is worse when we beg of God to favor some sinful aim; the Psalmist
implies this (Psalm lxvi. 18): “If I regard iniquity in my heart,
the Lord will not hear me.” Iniquity regarded as the aim in prayer,
renders the prayer successless, and the suppliant an atheist, in
debasing God to back his lust by his holy providence. The disciples
had determined revenge; and because they could not act it without
their Master, they would have him be their second in their vindictive
passion (Luke ix. 55): “Call for fire from heaven.” We scarce seek
God till we have modelled the whole contrivance in our own brains,
and resolved upon the methods of performance; as though there were
not a fulness of wisdom in God to guide us in our resolves, as well
as power to breathe success upon them.
(4.) In impatience upon the refusal of our desires. How often do men’s
spirits rise against God, when he steps not in with the assistance
they want! If the glory of God swayed more with them than their
private interest, they would let God be judge of his own glory, and
rather magnify his wisdom than complain of his want of goodness.
Selfish hearts will charge God with neglect of them, if he be {a153}
not as quick in their supplies as they are in their desires; like
those in Isa. lviii. 3, “Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou
seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our souls, and thou takest
no knowledge?” When we aim at God’s glory in our importunities, we
shall fall down in humble submissions when he denies us; whereas self
riseth up in bold expostulations, as if God were our servant, and
had neglected the service he owed us, not to come at our call. We
over‑value the satisfactions of self above the honor of God. Besides,
if what we desire be a sin, our impatience at a refusal is more
intolerable: it is an anger, that God will not lay aside his holiness
to serve our corruption.
(5.) In the actual aims men have in their duties. In prayer for
temporal things, when we desire health for our own ease, wealth
for our own sensuality, strength for our revenge, children for the
increase of our family, gifts for our applause; as Simon Magus did
the Holy Ghost: or, when some of those ends are aimed at, this is
to desire God not to serve himself of us, but to be a servant to our
worldly interest, our vain glory, the greatening of our names, &c. In
spiritual mercies begged for; when pardon of sin is desired only for
our own security from eternal vengeance; sanctification desired only
to make us fit for everlasting blessedness; peace of conscience, only
that we may lead our lives more comfortably in the world; when we have
not actual intentions for the glory of God, or when our thoughts of
God’s honor are overtopped by the aims of self‑advantage: not but
that as God hath pressed us to those things by motives drawn from the
blessedness derived to ourselves by them, so we may desire them with
a respect to ourselves; but this respect must be contained within the
due banks, in subordination to the glory of God, not above it, nor in
an equal balance with it.[272] That which is nourishing or medicinal
in the first or second degree, is in the fourth or fifth degree mere
destructive poison. Let us consider it seriously; though a duty be
heavenly, doth not some base end smut us in it? [1.] How is it with
our confessions of sin? Are they not more to procure our pardon, than
to shame ourselves before God, or to be freed from the chains that
hinder us from bringing him the glory for which we were created; or
more to partake of his benefits, than to honor him in acknowledging
the rights of his justice? Do we not bewail sin as it hath ruined us,
not as it opposed the holiness of God? Do we not shuffle with God,
and confess one sin, while we reserve another; as if we would allure
God by declaring our dislike of one, to give us liberty to commit
wantonness with another; not to abhor ourselves, but to daub with
God. [2.] Is it any better in our private and family worship? Are not
such assemblies frequented by some, where some upon whom they have
a dependence may eye them, and have a better opinion of them, and
affection to them? If God were the sole end of our hearts, would
they not be as glowing under the sole eye of God, as our tongues or
carriages are seemingly serious under the eye of man? Are not family
duties performed by some that their voices may be heard, and their
reputation supported among godly neighbors? [3.] Is not the charity
of many men tainted with this {a154} end――self,[273] as the Pharisees
were, while they set the miserable object before them, but not the
Lord; bestowing alms not so much upon the necessities of the people,
as the friendship we owe them for some particular respects; or casting
our bread upon those waters which stream down in the sight of the
world, that our doles may be visible to them, and commended by them;
or when we think to oblige God to pardon our transgressions, as if
we merited it and heaven too at his hands, by bestowing a few pence
upon indigent persons? And [4.] Is it not the same with the reproofs
of men? Is not heat and anger carried out with full sail when our
worldly interest is prejudiced and becalmed in the concerns of God?
Do not many masters reprove their servants with more vehemency for the
neglect of their trade and business, than the neglect of divine duties;
and that upon religious arguments, pretending the honor of God that
they may mind their own interest? But when they are negligent in what
they owe to God, no noise is made, they pass without rebuke; is not
this to make God and religion a stale to their own ends? It is a part
of atheism not to regard the injuries done to God, as Tiberius,[274]
“Let God’s wrongs be looked to or cared for by himself.” [5.] Is
it not thus in our seeming zeal for religion? as Demetrius and the
craftsmen at Ephesus cried up aloud the greatness of Diana of the
Ephesians, not out of any true zeal they had for her, but their gain,
which was increased by the confluence of her worshippers, and the sale
of her own shrines (Acts xix. 24, 28).
4. In making use of the name of God to countenance our sin. When we
set up an opinion that is a friend to our lusts, and then dig deep
into the Scripture to find crutches to support it, and authorize our
practices; when men will thank God for what they have got by unlawful
means, fathering the fruit of their cheating craft, and the simplicity
of their chapmen upon God; crediting their cozenage by his name, as
men do brass money, with a thin plate of silver, and the stamp and
image of the prince. The Jews urge the law of God for the crucifying
his Son (John xix. 7): “We have a law, and by that law he is to die,”
and would make him a party in their private revenge. Thus often when
we have faltered in some actions, we wipe our mouths, as if we sought
God more than our own interest, prostituting the sacred name and
honor of God, either to hatch or defend some unworthy lust against
his word.[275] Is not all this a high degree of atheism?
1. It is a vilifying God, an abuse of the highest good. Other
sins subject the creature and outward things to them, but acting
in religious services for self, subjects not only the highest
concernments of men’s souls, but the Creator himself to the creature,
nay, to make God contribute to that which is the pleasure of the
devil, a greater slight than to cast the gifts of a prince to a herd
of nasty swine. It were more excusable to serve ourselves of God upon
the higher accounts, such that materially conduce to his glory; but
it is an intolerable wrong to make him and his ordinances caterers for
our own bellies, as they did:[276] they sacrificed the נדבות of which
the offerer {a155} might eat, not out of any reference to God, but
love to their gluttony; not to please him, but feast themselves. The
belly was truly made the god, when God was served only in order to
the belly; as though the blessed God had his being, and his ordinances
were enjoined to pleasure their foolish and wanton appetites; as
though the work of God were only to patronize unrighteous ends, and be
as bad as themselves, and become a pander to their corrupt affections.
2. Because it is a vilifying of God, it is an undeifying or dethroning
God. It is an acting as if we were the lords, and God our vassal; a
setting up those secular ends in the place of God, who ought to be our
ultimate end in every action; to whom a glory is as due, as his mercy
to us is utterly unmerited by us. He that thinks to cheat and put the
fool upon God by his pretences, doth not heartily believe there is
such a being. He could not have the notion of a God, without that
of omniscience and justice; an eye to see the cheat, and an arm to
punish it. The notion of the one would direct him in the manner of
his services, and the sense of the other would scare him from the
cherishing his unworthy ends. He that serves God with a sole respect
to himself, is prepared for any idolatry; his religion shall warp with
the times and his interest; he shall deny the true God for an idol,
when his worldly interest shall advise him to it, and pay the same
reverence to the basest image, which he pretends now to pay to God; as
the Israelites were as real for idolatry under their basest princes,
as they were pretenders to the true religion under those that were
pious. Before I come to the use of this, give me leave to evince this
practical atheism by two other considerations.
1. Unworthy imaginations of God. “The fool hath said in his heart,
There is no God:” that is, he is not such a God as you report him
to be; this is meant by their being “corrupt,” in the second verse,
corrupt being taken for playing the idolaters (Exod. xxxii. 7). We
cannot comprehend God; if we could, we should cease to be finite; and
because we cannot comprehend him, we erect strange images of him in
our fancies and affections. And since guilt came upon us, because we
cannot root out the notions of God, we would debase the majesty and
nature of God, that we may have some ease in our consciences, and
lie down with some comfort in the sparks of our own kindling. This
is universal in men by nature. “God is not in all his thoughts;”[277]
not in any of his thoughts, according the excellency of his nature
and greatness of his majesty. As the heathen did not glorify God as
God, so neither do they conceive of God as God; they are all infected
with some one or other ill opinion of him, thinking him not so holy,
powerful, just, good, as he is, and as the natural force of the human
understanding might arrive to. We join a new notion of God in our vain
fancies, and represent him not as he is, but as we would have him to
be, fit for our own use, and suited to our own pleasure. We set that
active power of imagination on work, and there comes out a god (a calf)
whom we own for a notion of God. Adam cast him into so narrow a mould,
as to think that himself, who had newly sprouted up by his almighty
power, was fit to be his corrival in knowledge, and had vain hopes to
grasp as {a156} much as infiniteness; if he, in his first declining,
begun to have such a conceit, it is no doubt but we have as bad under
a mass of corruption. When holy Agur speaks of God, he cries out
that he had not “the understanding of a man, nor the knowledge of
the holy;”[278] he did not think rationally of God, as man might by
his strength at his first creation. There are as many carved images
of God as there are minds of men, and as monstrous shapes as those
corruptions into which they would transform him. Hence sprang,
1. Idolatry. Vain imaginations first set afloat and kept up this in
the world. Vain imaginations of the God “whose glory they changed
into the image of corruptible man.”[279] They had set up vain images
of him in their fancy, before they set up idolatrous representations
of him in their temples; the likening him to those idols of wood and
stone, and various metals, were the fruit of an idea erected in their
own minds. This is a mighty debasing the Divine nature, and rendering
him no better than that base and stupid matter they make the visible
object of their adoration; equalling him with those base creatures
they think worthy to be the representations of him. Yet how far did
this crime spread itself in all corners of the world, not only among
the more barbarous and ignorant, but the more polished and civilized
nations! Judea only, where God had placed the ark of his presence,
being free from it, in some intervals of time only after some sweeping
judgment. And though they vomited up their idols under some sharp
scourge, they licked them up again after the heavens were cleared over
their heads: the whole book of Judges makes mention of it. And though
an evangelical light hath chased that idolatry away from a great part
of the world, yet the principle remaining coins more spiritual idols
in the heart, which are brought before God in acts of worship.
2. Hence all superstition received its rise and growth. When we mint
a god according to our own complexion, like to us in mutable and
various passions, soon angry and soon appeased, it is no wonder that
we invent ways of pleasing him after we have offended him, and think
to expiate the sin of our souls by some melancholy devotions and
self‑chastisements. Superstition is nothing else but an unscriptural
and unrevealed dread of God.[280] When they imagined him a rigorous
and severe master, they cast about for ways to mitigate him whom they
thought so hard to be pleased: a very mean thought of him, as if a
slight and pompous devotion could as easily bribe and flatter him out
of his rigors, as a few good words or baubling rattles could please
and quiet little children; and whatsoever pleased us, could please
a God infinitely above us. Such narrow conceits had the Philistines,
when they thought to still the anger of the God of Israel, whom they
thought they possessed in the ark, with the present of a few golden
mice.[281] All the superstition this day living in the world is built
upon this foundation: so natural it is to man to pull God down to
his own imaginations, rather than raise his imaginations up to God.
Hence doth arise also the diffidence of his mercy, though they repent;
measuring God by the contracted models of their own spirits; as though
his nature were as difficult to pardon {a157} their offences against
him, as they are to remit wrongs done to themselves.
3. Hence springs all presumption, the common disease of the world.
All the wickedness in the world, which is nothing else but presuming
upon God, rises from the ill interpretations of the goodness of God,
breaking out upon them in the works of creation and providence. The
corruption of man’s nature engendered by those notions of goodness
a monstrous birth of vain imaginations; not of themselves primarily,
but of God; whence arose all that folly and darkness in their minds
and conversations (Rom. i. 20, 21). They glorified him not as God,
but, according to themselves, imagined him good that themselves might
be bad; fancied him so indulgent, as to neglect his own honor for
their sensuality. How doth the unclean person represent him to his own
thoughts, but as a goat; the murderer as a tiger; the sensual person
as a swine; while they fancy a God indulgent to their crimes without
their repentance! As the image on the seal is stamped upon the wax, so
the thoughts of the heart are printed upon the actions. God’s patience
is apprehended to be an approbation of their vices, and from the
consideration of his forbearance, they fashion a god that they believe
will smile upon their crimes. They imagine a god that plays with them;
and though he threatens doth it only to scare, but means not as he
speaks. A god they fancy like themselves, that would do as they would
do, not be angry for what they count a light offence (Psalm l. 21):
“Thou thoughtest I was such a one as thyself;” that God and they were
exactly alike as two tallies. “Our wilful misapprehensions of God are
the cause of our misbehavior in all his worship. Our slovenly and lazy
services tell him to his face what slight thoughts and apprehensions
we have of him.”[282] Compare these two together. Superstition
ariseth from terrifying misapprehensions of God: presumption from
self‑pleasing thoughts. One represents him only rigorous, and the
other careless. One makes us over‑officious in serving him by our
own rules; and the other over‑bold in offending him according to our
humors. The want of a true notion of God’s justice makes some men
slight him; and the want of a true apprehension of his goodness makes
others too servile in their approaches to him. One makes us careless
of duties, and the other makes us look on them rather as physic
than food; an unsupportable penance, than a desirable privilege.
In this case hell is the principle of duty performed to heaven.
The superstitious man believes God hath scarce mercy to pardon; the
presumptuous man believes he hath no such perfection as justice to
punish. The one makes him insignificant to what he desires, kindness
and goodness; the other renders him insignificant to what he fears,
his vindictive justice. What between the idolater, the superstitious,
the presumptuous person, God should look like no God in the world.
These unworthy imaginations of God are likewise,
2. A vilifying of him. Debasing the Creator to be a creature of their
own fancies; putting their own stamp upon him; and fashioning him not
according to that beautiful image he impressed upon {a158} them by
creation; but the defaced image they inherit by their fall, and which
is worse, the image of the devil which spread itself over them at
their revolt and apostasy. Were it possible to see a picture of God,
according to the fancies of men, it would be the most monstrous being,
such a God that never was, nor ever can be. We honor God when we have
worthy opinions of him suitable to his nature; when we conceive of him
as a being of unbounded loveliness and perfection. We detract from him
when we ascribe to him such qualities as would be a horrible disgrace
to a wise and good man as injustice and impurity. Thus men debase God
when they invert his order, and would create him according to their
image, as he first created them according to his own; and think him
not worthy to be a God, unless he fully answer the mould they would
cast him into, and be what is unworthy of his nature. Men do not
conceive of God as he would have them; but he must be what they would
have him, one of their own shaping.
1. This is worse than idolatry. The grossest idolater commits not a
crime so heinous, by changing his glory into the image of creeping
things and senseless creatures, as the imagining God to be as one of
our sinful selves, and likening him to those filthy images we erect in
our fancies. One makes him an earthly God, like an earthly creature;
the other fancies him an unjust and impure God, like a wicked creature.
One sets up an image of him in the earth, which is his footstool;
the other sets up an image of him in the heart, which ought to be his
throne.
2. It is worse than absolute atheism, or a denial of God. “_Dignius
credimus non esse, quodcunque non ita fuerit, ut esse deberet_,”[283]
was the opinion of Tertullian. It is more commendable to think him not
to be, than to think him such a one as is inconsistent with his nature.
Better to deny his existence, than deny his perfection. No wise man
but would rather have his memory rot, than be accounted infamous, and
would be more obliged to him that should deny that ever he had a being
in the world, than to say he did indeed live, but he was a sot, a
debauched person, and a man not to be trusted. When we apprehend God
deceitful in his promises, unrighteous in his threatenings, unwilling
to pardon upon repentance, or resolved to pardon notwithstanding
impenitency: these are things either unworthy of the nature of God,
or contrary to that revelation he hath given of himself. Better for
a man never to have been born than be forever miserable; so better to
be thought no God, than represented impotent or negligent, unjust or
deceitful; which are more contrary to the nature of God than hell can
be to the greatest criminal. In this sense perhaps the apostle affirms
the Gentiles (Eph. ii. 12) to be such as are “without God in the
world;” as being more atheists in adoring God under such notions as
they commonly did, than if they had acknowledged no God at all.
3. This is evident by our natural desire to be distant from him, and
unwillingness to have any acquaintance with him. Sin set us first at
a distance from God; and every new act of gross sin estrangeth us more
from him, and indisposeth us more for him: it makes us {a159} both
afraid and ashamed to be near him. Sensual men were of this frame
that Job discourseth of (ch. xxi. 7‒9, 14, 15). Where grace reigns,
the nearer to God the more vigorous the motion; the nearer anything
approaches to us, that is the object of our desires, the more eagerly
do we press forward to it: but our blood riseth at the approaches of
anything to which we have an aversion. We have naturally a loathing
of God’s coming to us or our return to him: we seek not after him as
our happiness; and when he offers himself, we like it not, but put
a disgrace upon him in choosing other things before him. God and we
are naturally at as great a distance, as light and darkness, life
and death, heaven and hell. The stronger impression of God anything
hath, the more we fly from it. The glory of God in reflection upon
Moses’ face scared the Israelites; they who had desired God to speak
to them by Moses, when they saw a signal impression of God upon
his countenance, were afraid to come near him, as they were before
unwilling to come near to God.[284] Not that the blessed God is in
his own nature a frightful object; but our own guilt renders him so
to us, and ourselves indisposed to converse with him; as the light of
the sun is as irksome to a distempered eye, as it is in its own nature
desirable to a sound one. The saints themselves have had so much
frailty, that they have cried out, that they were undone, if they had
any more than ordinary discoveries of God made unto them; as if they
wished him more remote from them. Vileness cannot endure the splendor
of majesty, nor guilt the glory of a judge.
We have naturally, 1. No desire of remembrance of him, 2. Or converse
with him, 3. Or thorough return to him, 4. Or close imitation of him:
as if there were not any such being as God in the world; or as if
we wished there were none at all; so feeble and spiritless are our
thoughts of the being of a God.
1. No desire for the remembrance of him. How delightful are other
things in our minds! How burdensome the memorials of God, from whom
we have our being! With what pleasure do we contemplate the nature
of creatures, even of flies and toads, while our minds tire in the
search of Him, who hath bestowed upon us our knowing and meditating
faculties! Though God shows himself to us in every creature, in the
meanest weed as well as the highest heavens, and is more apparent in
them to our reasons than themselves can be to our sense; yet though we
see them, we will not behold God in them: we will view them to please
our sense, to improve our reason in their natural perfections; but
pass by the consideration of God’s perfections so visibly beaming
from them. Thus we play the beasts and atheists in the very exercise
of reason, and neglect our Creator to gratify our sense, as though
the pleasure of that were more desirable than the knowledge of God.
The desire of our souls is not towards his name and the remembrance
of him,[285] when we set not ourselves in a posture to feast our souls
with deep and serious meditations of him; have a thought of him, only
by the bye and away, as if we were afraid of too intimate acquaintance
with him. Are not the thoughts of God rather our invaders than our
guests; seldom invited to reside and take up their home in our hearts?
Have we not, when {a160} they have broke in upon us, bid them depart
from us,[286] and warned them to come no more upon our ground; sent
them packing as soon as we could, and were glad when they were gone?
And when they have departed, have we not often been afraid they should
return again upon us, and therefore looked about for other inmates,
things not good, or if good, infinitely below God, to possess the room
of our hearts before any thoughts of him should appear again? Have we
not often been glad of excuses to shake off present thoughts of him,
and when we have wanted real ones, found out pretences to keep God
and our hearts at a distance? Is not this a part of atheism, to be so
unwilling to employ our faculties about the giver of them, to refuse
to exercise them in a way of a grateful remembrance of him; as though
they were none of his gift, but our own acquisition; as though the
God that truly gave them had no right to them, and he that thinks on
us every day in a way of providence, were not worthy to be thought on
by us in a way of special remembrance? Do not the best, that love the
remembrance of him, and abhor this natural averseness, find, that when
they would think of God, many things tempt them and turn them to think
elsewhere? Do they not find their apprehensions too feeble, their
motions too dull, and the impressions too slight? This natural atheism
is spread over human nature.
2. No desire of converse with him. The word “remember” in the command
for keeping holy the Sabbath‑day, including all the duties of the day,
and the choicest of our lives, implies our natural unwillingness to
them, and forgetfulness of them. God’s pressing this command with more
reasons than the rest, manifests that man hath no heart for spiritual
duties. No spiritual duty, which sets us immediately face to face
with God, but in the attempts of it we find naturally a resistance
from some powerful principle; so that everyone may subscribe to the
speech of the apostle, that “when we would do good, evil is present
with them.” No reason of this can be rendered, but the natural
temper of our souls, and an affecting a distance from God under
any consideration: for though our guilt first made the breach, yet
this aversion to a converse with him steps up without any actual
reflections upon our guilt, which may render God terrible to us as
an offended judge. Are we not often also, in our attendance upon
him, more pleased with the modes of worship which gratify our fancy,
than to have our souls inwardly delighted with the object of worship
himself? This is a part of our natural atheism. To cast such duties
off by total neglect, or in part, by affecting a coldness in them, is
to cast off the fear of the Lord.[287] Not to call upon God, and not
to know him, are one and the same thing (Jer. x. 25). Either we think
there is no such Being in the world, or that he is so slight a one,
that he deserves not the respect he calls for; or so impotent and poor,
that he cannot supply what our necessities require.
3. No desire of a thorough return to him. The first man fled from
him after his defection, though he had no refuge to fly to but the
grace of his Creator. Cain went from his presence, would be a fugitive
{a161} from God rather than a suppliant to him; when by faith in, and
application of the promised Redeemer, he might have escaped the wrath
to come for his brother’s blood, and mitigated the sorrows he was
justly sentenced to bear in the world. Nothing will separate prodigal
man from commoning with swine; and make him return to his father,
but an empty trough: have we but husks to feed on, we shall never
think of a father’s presence. It were well if our sores and indigence
would drive us to him; but when our strength is devoured, we will not
“return to the Lord our God, nor seek him for all this.”[288] Not his
drawn sword, as a God of judgment, nor his mighty power, as a Lord,
nor his open arms, as the Lord their God, could move them to turn
their eyes and their hearts towards him. The more he invites us to
partake of his grace, the further we run from him to provoke his wrath:
the louder God called them by his prophets, the closer they stuck to
their Baal.[289] We turn our backs when he stretches out his hand,
stop our ears when he lifts up his voice. We fly from him when he
courts us, and shelter ourselves in any bush from his merciful hand
that would lay hold upon us; nor will we set our faces towards him,
till our way be hedged up with thorns, and not a gap left to creep
out any by‑way.[290] Whosoever is brought to a return, puts the Holy
Ghost to the pain of striving; he is not easily brought to a spiritual
subjection to God, nor persuaded to a surrender at a summons, but
sweetly overpowered by storm, and victoriously drawn into the arms
of God. God stands ready, but the heart stands off; grace is full
of entreaties, and the soul full of excuses; Divine love offers,
and carnal self‑love rejects. Nothing so pleases us as when we are
farthest from him; as if anything were more amiable, anything more
desirable, than himself.
4. No desire of any close imitation of him. When our Saviour was to
come as a refiner’s fire, to purify the sons of Levi, the cry is, “Who
shall abide the day of his coming?” (Mal. iii. 2, 3.) Since we are
alienated from the life of God, we desire no more naturally to live
the life of God, than a toad, or any other animal, desires to live
the life of a man. No heart that knows God but hath a holy ambition
to imitate him. No soul that refuseth him for a copy, but is ignorant
of his excellency. Of this temper is all mankind naturally. Man in
corruption is as loth to be like God in holiness, as Adam, after his
creation, was desirous to be like God in knowledge; his posterity are
like their father, who soon turned his back upon his original copy.
What can be worse than this? Can the denial of his being be a greater
injury than this contempt of him; as if he had not goodness to deserve
our remembrance, nor amiableness fit for our converse; as if he were
not a Lord fit for our subjection, nor had a holiness that deserved
our imitation? For the use of this:――
_Use I._ It serves for information.
1. It gives us occasion to admire the wonderful patience and mercy
of God. How many millions of practical atheists breathe every day in
his air, and live upon his bounty who deserve to be inhabitants in
hell, rather than possessors of the earth! An infinite holiness is
offended, an infinite justice is provoked; yet an infinite patience
{a162} forbears the punishment, and an infinite goodness relieves our
wants: the more we had merited his justice and forfeited his favor,
the more is his affection enhanced, which makes his hand so liberal
to us. At the first invasion of his rights, he mitigates the terror of
the threatening which was set to defend his law, with the grace of a
promise to relieve and recover his rebellious creature.[291] Who would
have looked for anything but tearing thunders, sweeping judgments,
to raze up the foundations of the apostate world? But oh, how great
are his bowels to his aspiring competitors! Have we not experimented
his contrivances for our good, though we have refused him for our
happiness? Has he not opened his arms, when we spurned with our feet;
held out his alluring mercy, when we have brandished against him
a rebellious sword? Has he not entreated us while we have invaded
him, as if he were unwilling to lose us, who are ambitious to destroy
ourselves? Has he yet denied us the care of his providence, while we
have denied him the rights of his honor, and would appropriate them
to ourselves? Has the sun forborne shining upon us, though we have
shot our arrows against him? Have not our beings been supported by
his goodness, while we have endeavored to climb up to his throne; and
his mercies continued to charm us, while we have used them as weapons
to injure him? Our own necessities might excite us to own him as our
happiness, but he adds his invitations to the voice of our wants. Has
he not promised a kingdom to those that would strip him of his crown,
and proclaimed pardon upon repentance to those that would take away
his glory? and hath so twisted together his own end, which is his
honor, and man’s true end, which is his salvation, that a man cannot
truly mind himself and his own salvation, but he must mind God’s
glory; and cannot be intent upon God’s honor, but by the same act
he promotes himself and his own happiness? so loth is God to give
any just occasion of dissatisfaction to his creature, as well as
dishonor to himself. All those wonders of his mercy are enhanced by
the heinousness of our atheism; a multitude of gracious thoughts from
him above the multitude of contempts from us.[292] What rebels in
actual arms against their prince, aiming at his life, ever found that
favor from him; to have all their necessaries richly afforded them,
without which they would starve, and without which they would be
unable to manage their attempts, as we have received from God? Had
not God had riches of goodness, forbearance, and long‑suffering, and
infinite riches too, the despite the world had done him, in refusing
him as their rule, happiness, and end, would have emptied him long
ago.[293]
2. It brings in a justification of the exercise of his justice. If
it gives us occasion loudly to praise his patience, it also stops
our mouths from accusing any acts of his vengeance. What can be too
sharp a recompense for the despising and disgracing so great a Being?
The highest contempt merits the greatest anger; and when we will not
own him for our happiness, it is equal we should feel the misery of
separation from him. If he that is guilty of treason deserves to lose
his life, what punishment can be thought great enough for him that
is so disingenuous as to prefer himself before a God so infinitely
{a163} good, and so foolish as to invade the rights of one infinitely
powerful? It is no injustice for a creature to be forever left to
himself, to see what advantage he can make of that self he was so
busily employed to set up in the place of his Creator. The soul of
man deserves an infinite punishment for despising an infinite good;
and it is not unequitable, that that self which man makes his rule
and happiness above God, should become his torment and misery by the
righteousness of that God whom he despised.
3. Hence ariseth a necessity of a new state and frame of soul,
to alter an atheistical nature. We forget God; think of him with
reluctancy; have no respect to God in our course and acts: this cannot
be our original state. God, being infinitely good, never let man come
out of his hands with this actual unwillingness to acknowledge and
serve him; he never intended to dethrone himself for the work of his
hands, or that the creature should have any other end than that of
his Creator: as the apostle saith, in the case of the Galatians’ error
(Gal. v. 8), “This persuasion came not of Him that called you;” so
this frame comes not from him that created you: how much, therefore,
do we need a restoring principle in us! Instead of ordering ourselves
according to the will of God, we are desirous to “fulfil the wills of
the flesh:”[294] there is a necessity of some other principle in us
to make us fulfil the will of God, since we were created for God, not
for the flesh. We can no more be voluntarily serviceable to God, while
our serpentine nature and devilish habits remain in us, than we can
suppose the devil can be willing to glorify God, while the nature
he contracted by his fall abides powerfully in him. Our nature and
will must be changed, that our actions may regard God as our end,
that we may delightfully meditate on him, and draw the motives of our
obedience from him. Since this atheism is seated in nature, the change
must be in our nature; since our first aspirings to the rights of
God were the fruits of the serpent’s breath which tainted our nature,
there must be a removal of this taint, whereby our natures may be
on the side of God against Satan, as they were before on the side
of Satan against God. There must be a supernatural principle before
we can live a supernatural life, _i. e._ live to God, since we are
naturally alienated from the life of God: the aversion of our natures
from God, is as strong as our inclination to evil; we are disgusted
with one, and pressed with the other; we have no will, no heart, to
come to God in any service. This nature must be broken in pieces and
new moulded, before we can make God our rule and our end: while men’s
“deeds are evil” they cannot comply with God;[295] much less while
their natures are evil. Till this be done, all the service a man
performs riseth from some “evil imagination of the heart, which is
evil, only evil, and that continually;”[296] from wrong notions of
God, wrong notions of duty, or corrupt motives. All the pretences of
devotion to God are but the adoration of some golden image. Prayers to
God for the ends of self, are like those of the devil to our Saviour,
when he asked leave to go into the herd of swine: the object was right,
Christ; the end was the destruction of the swine, and the satisfaction
of their malice to the owners; there {a164} is a necessity then that
depraved ends should be removed, that that which was God’s end in our
framing, may be our end in our acting, viz. his glory, which cannot
be without a change of nature. We can never honor him supremely whom
we do not supremely love; till this be, we cannot glorify God as God,
though we do things by his command and order; no more, than when God
employed the devil in afflicting Job.[297] His performance cannot be
said to be good, because his end was not the same with God’s; he acted
out of malice, what God commanded out of sovereignty, and for gracious
designs; had God employed an holy angel in his design upon Job, the
action had been good in the affliction, because his nature was holy,
and therefore his ends holy; but bad in the devil, because his ends
were base and unworthy.
4. We may gather from hence, the difficulty of conversion, and
mortification to follow thereupon. What is the reason men receive no
more impression from the voice of God and the light of his truth, than
a dead man in the grave doth from the roaring thunder, or a blind mole
from the light of the sun? It is because our atheism is as great as
the deadness of the one, or the blindness of the other. The principle
in the heart is strong to shut the door both of the thoughts and
affections against God. If a friend oblige us, we shall act for him as
for ourselves; we are won by entreaties; soft words overcome us; but
our hearts are as deaf as the hardest rock at the call of God; neither
the joys of heaven proposed by him can allure us, nor the flashed
terrors of hell affright us to him, as if we conceived God unable to
bestow the one or execute the other: the true reason is, God and self
contest for the deity. The law of sin is, God must be at the footstool;
the law of God is, sin must be utterly deposed. Now it is difficult
to leave a law beloved for a law long ago discarded. The mind of man
will hunt after anything; the will of man embrace anything: upon the
proposal of mean objects the spirit of man spreads its wings, flies to
catch them, becomes one with them: but attempt to bring it under the
power of God, the wings flag, the creature looks lifeless, as though
there were no spring of motion in it; it is as much crucified to God,
as the holy apostle was to the world. The sin of the heart discovers
its strength the more God discovers the “holiness of his will.”[298]
The love of sin hath been predominant in our nature, has quashed a
love to God, if not extinguished it. Hence also is the difficulty of
mortification. This is a work tending to the honor of God, the abasing
of that inordinately aspiring humor in ourselves. If the nature of man
be inclined to sin, as it is, it must needs be bent against anything
that opposes it. It is impossible to strike any true blow at any
lust till the true sense of God be re‑entertained in the soil where
it ought to grow. Who can be naturally willing to crucify what is
incorporated with him――his flesh? what is dearest to him――himself? Is
it an easy thing for man, the competitor with God, to turn his arms
against himself, that self should overthrow its own empire, lay aside
all its pretensions to, and designs for, a godhead; to hew off its
own members, and subdue its own affections? It is the nature of man to
“cover his sin,” {a165} to hide it in his bosom,[299] not to destroy
it; and as unwillingly part with his carnal affections, as the legion
of devils were with the man that had been long possessed; and when he
is forced and fired from one, he will endeavor to espouse some other
lust, as those devils desired to possess swine, when they were chased
from their possession of that man.
5. Here we see the reason of unbelief. That which hath most of God
in it, meets with most aversion from us; that which hath least of
God, finds better and stronger inclinations in us. What is the reason
that the heart of man is more unwilling to embrace the gospel, than
acknowledge the equity of the law? because there is more of God’s
nature and perfection evident in the gospel than in the law; besides,
there is more reliance on God, and distance from self, commanded
in the gospel. The law puts a man upon his own strength, the gospel
takes him off from his own bottom; the law acknowledges him to have
a power in himself, and to act for his own reward; the gospel strips
him of all his proud and towering thoughts,[300] brings him to his due
place, the foot of God; orders him to deny himself as his own rule,
righteousness, and end, “and henceforth not to live to himself.”[301]
This is the true reason why men are more against the gospel than
against the law; because it doth more deify God, and debase man. Hence
it is easier to reduce men to some moral virtue than to faith; to make
men blush at their outward vices, but not at the inward impurity of
their natures. Hence it is observed, that those that asserted that all
happiness did arise from something in a man’s self, as the Stoics and
Epicureans did, and that a wise man was equal with God, were greater
enemies to the truths of the gospel than others (Acts xvii. 18),
because it lays the axe to the root of their principal opinion,
takes the one from their self‑sufficiency, and the other from their
self‑gratification; it opposeth the brutish principle of the one,
which placed happiness in the pleasures of the body, and the more
noble principle of the other, which placed happiness in the virtue
of the mind; the one was for a sensual, the other for a moral self;
both disowned by the doctrine of the gospel.
6. It informs us, consequently, who can be the Author of grace and
conversion, and every other good work. No practical atheist ever yet
turned to God, but was turned by God; and not to acknowledge it to God
is a part of this atheism, since it is a robbing God of the honor of
one of his most glorious works. If this practical atheism be natural
to man ever since the first taint of nature in Paradise, what can be
expected from it, but a resisting of the work of God, and setting up
all the forces of nature against the operations of grace, till a day
of power dawn and clear up upon the soul?[302] Not all the angels in
heaven, or men upon earth, can be imagined to be able to persuade a
man to fall out with himself; nothing can turn the tide of nature, but
a power above nature. God took away the sanctifying Spirit from man,
as a penalty for the first sin; who can regain it but by his will and
pleasure? who can restore it, but he that removed it? Since every man
hath the same fundamental atheism {a166} in him by nature, and would
be a rule to himself and his own end, he is so far from dethroning
himself, that all the strength of his corrupted nature is alarmed up
to stand to their arms upon any attempt God makes to regain the fort.
The will is so strong against God, that it is like many wills twisted
together (Eph. ii. 3), “Wills of the flesh;” we translate it the
“desires of the flesh;” like many threads twisted in a cable, never
to be snapped asunder by a human arm; a power and will above ours,
can only untwist so many wills in a knot. Man cannot rise to an
acknowledgment of God without God; hell may as well become heaven, the
devil be changed into an angel of light. The devil cannot but desire
happiness; he knows the misery into which he is fallen, he cannot be
desirous of that punishment he knows is reserved for him. Why doth he
not sanctify God, and glorify his Creator, wherein there is abundantly
more pleasure than in his malicious course? Why doth he not petition
to recover his ancient standing? he will not; there are chains of
darkness upon his faculties; he will not be otherwise than he is; his
desire to be god of the world sways him against his own interest, and
out of love to his malice, he will not sin at a less rate to make a
diminution of his punishment. Man, if God utterly refuseth to work
upon him, is no better; and to maintain his atheism would venture a
hell. How is it possible for a man to turn himself to that God against
whom he hath a quarrel in his nature; the most rooted and settled
habit in him being to set himself in the place of God? An atheist by
nature can no more alter his own temper, and engrave in himself the
divine nature, than a rock can carve itself into the statue of a man,
or a serpent that is an enemy to man could or would raise itself to
the nobility of the human nature. That soul that by nature would strip
God of his rights, cannot, without a divine power, be made conformable
to him, and acknowledge sincerely and cordially the rights and glory
of God.
7. We may here see the reason why there can be no justification by
the best and strongest works of nature. Can that which hath atheism at
the root justify either the action or person? What strength can those
works have which have neither God’s law for their rule, nor his glory
for their end? that are not wrought by any spiritual strength from
him, nor tend with any spiritual affection to him? Can these be a
foundation for the most holy God to pronounce a creature righteous?
They will justify his justice in condemning, but cannot sway his
justice to an absolution. Every natural man in his works picks and
chooses; he owns the will of God no further than he can wring it to
suit the law of his members, and minds not the honor of God, but as it
jostles not with his own glory and secular ends. Can he be righteous
that prefers his own will and his own honor before the will and honor
of the Creator? However men’s actions may be beneficial to others,
what reason hath God to esteem them, wherein there is no respect
to him, but themselves; whereby they dethrone him in their thoughts,
while they seem to own him in their religious works? Every day
reproves us with something different from the rule; thousands of
wanderings offer themselves to {a167} our eyes: can justification
be expected from that which in itself is matter of despair?
8. See here the cause of all the apostasy in the world. Practical
atheism was never conquered in such; they are still “alienated from
the life of God,” and will not live to God, as he lives to himself and
his own honor.[303] They loathe his rule, and distaste his glory; are
loth to step out of themselves to promote the ends of another; find
not the satisfaction in him as they do in themselves; they will be
judges of what is good for them and righteous in itself, rather than
admit of God to judge for them. When men draw back from truth to error,
it is to such opinions which may serve more to foment and cherish
their ambition, covetousness, or some beloved lust that disputes with
God for precedency, and is designed to be served before him (John xii.
42, 43): “They love the praise of men more than the praise of God.” A
preferring man before God was the reason they would not confess Christ,
and God in him.
9. This shows us the excellency of the gospel and christian religion.
It sets man in his due place, and gives to God what the excellency of
his nature requires. It lays man in the dust from whence he was taken,
and sets God upon that throne where he ought to sit. Man by nature
would annihilate God and deify himself; the gospel glorifies God and
annihilates man. In our first revolt we would be like him in knowledge;
in the means he hath provided for our recovery, he designs to make
us like him in grace; the gospel shows ourselves to be an object of
humiliation, and God to be a glorious object for our imitation. The
light of nature tells us there is a God; the gospel gives us a more
magnificent report of him; the light of nature condemns gross atheism,
and that of the gospel condemns and conquers spiritual atheism in the
hearts of men.
_Use II._ Of exhortation.
First, Let us labor to be sensible of this atheism in our nature, and
be humbled for it. How should we lie in the dust, and go bowing under
the humbling thoughts of it all our days! Shall we not be sensible of
that whereby we spill the blood of our souls, and give a stab to the
heart of our own salvation? Shall we be worse than any creature, not
to bewail that which tends to our destruction? He that doth not lament
it, cannot challenge the character of a Christian, hath nothing of the
divine life and love planted in his soul. Not a man but shall one day
be sensible, when the eternal God shall call him out to examination,
and charge his conscience to discover every crime, which will then
own the authority whereby it acted; when the heart shall be torn open,
and the secrets of it brought to public view; and the world and man
himself shall see what a viperous brood of corrupt principles and ends
nested in his heart. Let us, therefore, be truly sensible of it, till
the consideration draw tears from our eyes and sorrow from our souls;
let us urge the thoughts of it upon our hearts till the core of that
pride be eaten out, and our stubbornness changed into humility; till
our heads become waters, and our eyes fountains of tears, and be a
spring of prayer to God to change the heart, and mortify the atheism
in it; and consider {a168} what a sad thing it is to be a practical
atheist: and who is not so by nature?
1. Let us be sensible of it in ourselves. Have any of our hearts been
a soil wherein the fear and reverence of God hath naturally grown?
Have we a desire to know him, or a will to embrace him? Do we delight
in his will, and love the remembrance of his name? Are our respects to
him, as God, equal to the speculative knowledge we have of his nature?
Is the heart, wherein he hath stamped his image, reserved for his
residence? Is not the world more affected than the Creator of the
world; as though that could contribute to us a greater happiness than
the Author of it? Have not creatures as much of our love, fear, trust,
nay, more, than God that framed both them and us? Have we not too
often relied upon our own strength, and made a calf of our own wisdom,
and said of God, as the Israelites of Moses, “As for this Moses we
wot not what is become of him?” (Exod. xxxii. 1) and given oftener the
glory of our good success to our drag and our net, to our craft and
our industry, than to the wisdom and blessing of God? Are we, then,
free from this sort of atheism?[304] It is as impossible to have two
Gods at one time in one heart, as to have two kings at one time in
full power in one kingdom. Have there not been frequent neglects
of God? Have we not been deaf whilst he hath knocked at our doors?
slept when he hath sounded in our ears, as if there had been no such
being as a God in the world? How many strugglings have been against
our approaches to him! Hath not folly often been committed, with
vain imaginations starting up in the time of religious service, which
we would scarce vouchsafe a look to at another time, and in another
business, but would have thrust them away with indignation? Had
they stept in to interrupt our worldly affairs, they would have been
troublesome intruders; but while we are with God they are acceptable
guests. How unwilling have our hearts been to fortify themselves with
strong and influencing considerations of God, before we addressed
to him! Is it not too often that our lifelessness in prayer proceeds
from this atheism; a neglect of seeing what arguments and pleas may
be drawn from the divine perfections, to second our suit in hand, and
quicken our hearts in the service? Whence are those indispositions
to any spiritual duty, but because we have not due thoughts of the
majesty, holiness, goodness, and excellency of God? Is there any duty
which leads to a more particular inquiry after him, or a more clear
vision of him, but our hearts have been ready to rise up and call
it cursed rather than blessed? Are not our minds bemisted with an
ignorance of him, our wills drawn by aversion from him, our affections
rising in distaste of him? more willing to know anything than his
nature, and more industrious to do anything than his will? Do we not
all fall under some one or other of these considerations? Is it not
fit, then, that we should have a sense of them? It is to be bewailed
by us, that so little of God is in our hearts, when so many evidences
of the love of God are in the creatures; that God should be so little
our end, who hath been so much our benefactor; that he should be
so {a169} little in our thoughts, who sparkles in everything which
presents itself to our eyes.
2. Let us be sensible of it in others. We ought to have a just
execration of the too open iniquity in the midst of us; and imitate
holy David, whose tears plentifully gushed out, “because men kept
not God’s law.”[305] And is it not a time to exercise this pious
lamentation? Hath the wicked atheism of any age been greater, or
can you find worse in hell, than we may hear of and behold on earth?
How is the excellent Majesty of God adored by the angels in heaven,
despised and reproached by men on earth, as if his name were published
to be matter of their sport! What a gasping thing is a natural sense
of God among men in the world! Is not the law of God, accompanied with
such dreadful threatenings and curses, made light of, as if men would
place their honor in being above or beyond any sense of that glorious
Majesty? How many wallow in pleasures, as if they had been made men
only to turn brutes, and their souls given them only for salt, to
keep their bodies from putrefying? It is as well a part of atheism not
to be sensible of the abuses of God’s name and laws by others, as to
violate them ourselves: what is the language of a stupid senselessness
of them, but that there is no God in the world whose glory is worth
a vindication, and deserves our regards? That we may be sensible of
the unworthiness of neglecting God as our rule and end, consider,
1. The unreasonableness of it as it concerns God.
1st. It is a high contempt of God. It is an inverting the order of
things; a making God the highest to become the lowest; and self the
lowest to become the highest: to be guided by every base companion,
some idle vanity, some carnal interest, is to acknowledge an
excellency abounding in them which is wanting in God; an equity in
their orders, and none in God’s precepts; a goodness in their promises,
and a falsity in God’s; as if infinite excellency were a mere vanity,
and to act for God were the debasement of our reason; to act for
self or some pitiful creature, or sordid lust, were the glory and
advancement of it. To prefer any one sin before the honor of God,
is as if that sin had been our creator and benefactor, as if it were
the original cause of our being and support. Do not men pay as great
a homage to that as they do to God? Do not their minds eagerly pursue
it? Are not the revolvings of it, in their fancies, as delightful
to them as the remembrance of God to a holy soul? Do any obey the
commands of God with more readiness than they do the orders of their
base affections? Did Peter leap more readily into the sea to meet his
Master, than many into the jaws of hell to meet their Dalilahs? How
cheerfully did the Israelites part with their ornaments for the sake
of an idol, who would not have spared a moiety for the honor of their
Deliverer![306] If to make God our end is the principal duty in nature,
then to make ourselves, or anything else, our end, is the greatest
vice in the rank of evils.
2d. It is a contempt of God as the most amiable object. God is
infinitely excellent and desirable (Zech. ix. 17): “How great is his
{a170} goodness, and how great is his beauty!” There is nothing in
him but what may ravish our affections; none that knows him but finds
attractives to keep them with him; He hath nothing in him which can
be a proper object of contempt, no defects or shadow of evil; there
is infinite excellency to charm us, and infinite goodness to allure
us,――the Author of our being, the Benefactor of our lives. Why then
should man, which is his image, be so base as to slight the beautiful
Original which stamped it on him? He is the most lovely object;
therefore to be studied, therefore to be honored, therefore to be
followed. In regard of his perfection he hath the highest right to our
thoughts. All other beings were eminently contained in his essence,
and were produced by his infinite power. The creature hath nothing
but what it hath from God. And is it not unworthy to prefer the copy
before the original――to fall in love with a picture, instead of the
beauty it represents? The creature which we advance to be our rule and
end, can no more report to us the true amiableness of God, than a few
colors mixed and suited together upon a piece of cloth, can the moral
and intellectual loveliness of the soul of man. To contemn God one
moment is more base than if all creatures were contemned by us forever;
because the excellency of creatures is, to God, like that of a drop to
the sea, or a spark to the glory of unconceivable millions of suns. As
much as the excellency of God is above our conceptions, so much doth
the debasing of him admit of unexpressible aggravations.
2. Consider the ingratitude in it. That we should resist that God with
our hearts who made us the work of his hands, and count him as nothing,
from whom we derive all the good that we are or have. There is no
contempt of man but steps in here to aggravate our slighting of God;
because there is no relation one man can stand in to another, wherein
God doth not more highly appear to man. If we abhor the unworthy
carriage of a child to a tender father, a servant to an indulgent
master, a man to his obliging friend, why do men daily act that
toward God which they cannot speak of without abhorrency, if acted
by another against man? Is God a being less to be regarded than man,
and more worthy of contempt than a creature?――“It would be strange
if a benefactor should live in the same town, in the same house with
us, and we never exchange a word with him; yet this is our case, who
have the works of God in our eyes, the goodness of God in our being,
the mercy of God in our daily food”[307]――yet think so little of him,
converse so little with him, serve everything before him, and prefer
everything above him? Whence have we our mercies but from his hand?
Who, besides him, maintains our breath this moment? Would he call
for our spirits this moment, they must depart from us to attend
his command. There is not a moment wherein our unworthy carriage is
not aggravated, because there is not a moment wherein he is not our
Guardian, and gives us not tastes of a fresh bounty. And it is no
light aggravation of our crime, that we injure him without whose
bounty, in giving us our being, we had not been capable of casting
contempt upon him: that he that hath the greatest stamp of his image,
man, {a171} should deserve the character of the worst of his rebels:
that he who hath only reason by the gift of God to judge of the equity
of the laws of God, should swell against them as grievous, and the
government of the Lawgiver as burdensome. Can it lessen the crime to
use the principle wherein we excel the beasts to the disadvantage of
God, who endowed us with that principle above the beasts?
1. It is a debasing of God beyond what the devil doth at present.
He is more excusable in his present state of acting, than man is in
his present refusing God for his rule and end. He strives against
a God that exerciseth upon him a vindictive justice; we debase a
God that loads us with his daily mercies. The despairing devils are
excluded from any mercy or divine patience; but we are not only under
the long‑suffering of his patience, but the large expressions of
his bounty. He would not be governed by him when he was only his
bountiful Creator: we refuse to be guided by him after he hath given
us the blessing of creation from his own hand, and the more obliging
blessings of redemption by the hand and blood of his Son. It cannot be
imagined that the devils and the damned should ever make God their end,
since he hath assured them he will not be their happiness; and shut up
all his perfections from their experimental notice, but those of his
power to preserve them, and his justice to punish them. They have no
grant from God of ever having a heart to comply with his will, or ever
having the honor to be actively employed for his glory. They have some
plea for their present contempt of God, not in regard of his nature,
for he is infinitely amiable, excellent and lovely, but in regard of
his administration toward them. But what plea can man have for his
practical atheism, who lives by his power, is sustained by his bounty,
and solicited by his Spirit? What an ungrateful thing is it to put off
the nature of man for that of devils, and dishonor God under mercy, as
the devils do under his wrathful anger!
2. It is an ungrateful contempt of God, who cannot be injurious to us.
He cannot do us wrong, because he cannot be unjust (Gen. xviii. 25):
“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” His nature doth as
much abhor unrighteousness, as love a communicative goodness: he never
commanded anything but what was highly conducible to the happiness
of man. Infinite goodness can no more injure man than it can dishonor
itself: it lays out itself in additions of kindness, and while we
debase him, he continues to benefit us; and is it not an unparalleled
ingratitude to turn our backs upon an object so lovely, an object
so loving, in the midst of varieties of allurements from him? God
did create intellectual creatures, angels and men, that he might
communicate more of himself and his own goodness and holiness to
man, than creatures of a lower rank were capable of. What do we
do, by rejecting him as our rule and end, but cross, as much as in
us lies, God’s end in our creation, and shut our souls against the
communications of those perfections he was so willing to bestow? We
use him as if he intended us the greatest wrong, when it is impossible
for him to do any to any of his creatures.
3. Consider the misery which will attend such a temper if it continue
{a172} predominant. Those that thrust God away as their happiness
and end, can expect no other but to be thrust away by him, as to any
relief and compassion. A distance from God here can look for nothing,
but a remoteness from God hereafter. When the devil, a creature of
vast endowments, would advance himself above God, and instruct man
to commit the same sin, he is “cursed above all creatures.”[308] When
we will not acknowledge him a God of all glory, we shall be separated
from him as a God of all comfort: “All they that are afar off shall
perish” (Psalm lxxiii. 27). This is the spring of all woe. What the
Prodigal suffered, was because he would leave his father, and live
of himself. Whosoever is ambitious to be his own heaven, will at
last find his soul to become its own hell. As it loved all things for
itself, so it shall be grieved with all things for itself. As it would
be its own god against the right of God, it shall then be its own
tormentor by the justice of God.
Secondly, Watch against this atheism, and be daily employed in the
mortification of it. In every action we should make the inquiry,
What is the rule I observe? Is it God’s will or my own? Whether do my
intentions tend to set up God or self? As much as we destroy this, we
abate the power of sin: these two things are the head of the serpent
in us, which we must be bruising by the power of the cross. Sin is
nothing else but a turning from God, and centering in self, and most
in the inferior part of self: if we bend our force against those two,
self‑will and self‑ends, we shall intercept atheism at the spring head,
take away that which doth constitute and animate all sin: the sparks
must vanish if the fire be quenched which affords them fuel. They
are but two short things to ask in every undertaking: Is God my rule
in regard of his will? Is God my end in regard of his glory? All sin
lies in the neglect of these, all grace lies in the practice of them.
Without some degree of the mortification of these; we cannot make
profitable and comfortable approaches to God. When we come with idols
in our hearts, we shall be answered according to the multitude and
the baseness of them too.[309] What expectation of a good look from
him can we have, when we come before him with undeifying thoughts of
him, a petition in our mouths, and a sword in our hearts, to stab his
honor? To this purpose,
1. Be often in the views of the excellencies of God. When we have
no intercourse with God by delightful meditations, we begin to be
estranged from him, and prepare ourselves to live without God in the
world. Strangeness is the mother and nurse of disaffection: we slight
men sometimes because we know them not. The very beasts delight in the
company of men; when being tamed and familiar, they become acquainted
with their disposition. A daily converse with God would discover so
much of loveliness in his nature, so much of sweetness in his ways,
that our injurious thoughts of God would wear off, and we should count
it our honor to contemn ourselves and magnify him. By this means a
slavish fear, which is both a dishonor to God and a torment to the
soul,[310] and the root of atheism, will be cast out, and an ingenuous
fear of him wrought in the heart. Exercised thoughts on him would
issue out in affections to him, which {a173} would engage our hearts
to make him both our rule and our end. This course would stifle any
temptations to gross atheism, wherewith good souls are sometimes
haunted, by confirming us more in the belief of a God, and discourage
any attempts to a deliberate practical atheism. We are not like to
espouse any principle which is confuted by the delightful converse we
daily have with him. The more we thus enter into the presence chamber
of God, the more we cling about him with our affections, the more
vigorous and lively will the true notion of God grow up in us, and be
able to prevent anything which may dishonor him and debase our souls.
Let us therefore consider him as the only happiness; set up the true
God in our understandings; possess our hearts with a deep sense of his
desirable excellency above all other things. This is the main thing
we are to do in order to our great business: all the directions in the
world, with the neglect of this, will be insignificant ciphers. The
neglect of this is common, and is the basis of all the mischiefs which
happen to the souls of men.
2. Prize and study the Scripture. We can have no delight in meditation
on him, unless we know him; and we cannot know him but by the means of
his own revelation; when the revelation is despised, the revealer will
be of little esteem. Men do not throw off God from being their rule,
till they throw off Scripture from being their guide; and God must
needs be cast off from being an end, when the Scripture is rejected
from being a rule. Those that do not care to know his will, that love
to be ignorant of his nature, can never be affected to his honor. Let
therefore the subtleties of reason veil to the doctrine of faith, and
the humor of the will to the command of the word.
3. Take heed of sensual pleasures, and be very watchful and cautious
in the use of those comforts God allows us. Job was afraid, when his
“sons feasted, that they should curse God in their hearts.”[311] It
was not without cause that the apostle Peter joined sobriety with
watchfulness and prayer (1 Pet. iv. 7): “The end of all things is at
hand; be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.”――A moderate use
of worldly comforts.――Prayer is the great acknowledgment of God, and
too much sensuality is a hindrance of this, and a step to atheism.
Belshazzar’s lifting himself up against the Lord, and not glorifying
of God, is charged upon his sensuality (Dan. v. 23). Nothing is more
apt to quench the notions of God, and root out the conscience of him,
than an addictedness to sensual pleasures. Therefore take heed of that
snare.
4. Take heed of sins against knowledge. The more sins against
knowledge are committed, the more careless we are, and the more
careless we shall be of God and his honor; we shall more fear his
judicial power; and the more we fear that, the more we shall disaffect
that God in whose hand vengeance is, and to whom it doth belong.
Atheism in conversation proceeds to atheism in affection, and that
will endeavor to sink into atheism in opinion and judgment.
_The sum of the whole._――And now consider in the whole what has been
spoken.
{a174} 1. Man would set himself up as his own rule. He disowns the
rule of God, is unwilling to have any acquaintance with the rule God
sets him, negligent in using the means for the knowledge of his will,
and endeavors to shake it off when any notices of it break in upon
him; when he cannot expel it, he hath no pleasure in the consideration
of it, and the heart swells against it. When the notions of the will
of God are entertained, it is on some other consideration, or with
wavering and unsettled affections. Many times men design to improve
some lust by his truth. This unwillingness respects truth as it is
most spiritual and holy; as it most relates and leads to God; as it
is most contrary to self. He is guilty of contempt of the will of God,
which is seen in every presumptuous breach of his law; in the natural
aversions to the declaration of his will and mind, which way soever he
turns; in slighting that part of his will which is most for his honor;
in the awkwardness of the heart when it is to pay God a service.
A constraint in the first engagement, slightness in the service, in
regard of the matter, in regard of the frame, without a natural vigor.
Many distractions, much weariness, in deserting the rule of God,
when our expectations are not answered upon our service, in breaking
promises with God. Man naturally owns any other rule rather than that
of God’s prescribing: the rule of Satan; the will of man; in complying
more with the dictates of men than the will of God; in observing
that which is materially so, not because it is his will, but the
injunctions of men; in obeying the will of man when it is contrary
to the will of God. This man doth in order to the setting up himself.
This is natural to man as he is corrupted. Men are dissatisfied with
their own consciences when they contradict the desires of self. Most
actions in the world are done, more because they are agreeable to self,
than as they are honorable to God; as they are agreeable to natural
and moral self, or sinful self. It is evident in neglects of taking
God’s directions upon emergent occasions; in counting the actions
of others to be good or bad, as they suit with, or spurn against our
fancies and humors. Man would make himself the rule of God, and give
laws to his Creator, in striving against his law; disapproving of his
methods of government in the world; in impatience in our particular
concerns; envying the gifts and prosperity of others; corrupt matter
or ends of prayer or praise; bold interpretations of the judgments
of God in the world; mixing rules in the worship of God with those
which have been ordained by him; suiting interpretations of Scripture
with our own minds and humors; falling off from God after some fair
compliances, when his will grates upon us, and crosseth ours.
2. Man would be his own end. This is natural and universal. This is
seen in frequent self‑applauses and inward overweening reflections; in
ascribing the glory of what we do or have to ourselves; in desire of
self‑pleasing doctrines; in being highly concerned in injuries done
to ourselves, and little or not at all concerned for injuries done to
God; in trusting in ourselves; in workings for carnal self against the
light of our own consciences: this is a usurping God’s prerogative,
vilifying God, destroying God. Man would make anything his end or
happiness rather than God. This appears in the {a175} fewer thoughts
we have of him than of anything else; in the greedy pursuit of the
world; in the strong addictedness to sensual pleasures; in paying
a service, upon any success in the world, to instruments more than
to God: this is a debasing God in setting up a creature, but more
in setting up a base lust; it is a denying of God. Man would make
himself the end of all creatures. In pride; using the creatures
contrary to the end God hath appointed: this is to dishonor God, and
it is diabolical. Man would make himself the end of God; in loving
God, because of some self‑pleasing benefits distributed by him; in
abstinence from some sins, because they are against the interest
of some other beloved corruption; in performing duties merely for
a selfish interest, which is evident in unwieldiness in religious
duties, where self is not concerned; in calling upon God only in
a time of necessity; in begging his assistance to our own projects
after we have by our own craft, laid the plot; in impatience upon
a refusal of our desires; in selfish aims we have in our duties: this
is a vilifying God, a dethroning him; in unworthy imaginations of
God, universal in man by nature. Hence spring idolatry, superstition,
presumption, the common disease of the world. This is a vilifying God;
worse than idolatry, worse than absolute atheism. Natural desires to
be distant from him; no desires for the remembrance of him; no desires
of converse with him; no desires of a thorough return to him; no
desire of any close imitation of him.
{a176} DISCOURSE III.
ON GOD’S BEING A SPIRIT.
JOHN iv. 24――God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth.
THE words are part of the dialogue between our Saviour and the
Samaritan woman.[312] Christ, intending to return from Judea to
Galilee, passed through the country of Samaria, a place inhabited not
by Jews, but a mixed company of several nations, and some remainders
of the posterity of Israel, who escaped the captivity, and were
returned from Assyria; and being weary with his journey, arrived
about the sixth hour or noon (according to the Jews’ reckoning the
time of the day), at a well that Jacob had digged, which was of great
account among the inhabitants for the antiquity of it, as well as the
usefulness of it, in supplying their necessities: he being thirsty,
and having none to furnish him wherewith to draw water, at last comes
a woman from the city, whom he desires to give him some water to
drink. The woman, perceiving him by his language or habit to be a Jew,
wonders at the question, since the hatred the Jews bore the Samaritans
was so great, that they would not vouchsafe to have any commerce with
them, not only in religious, but civil affairs, and common offices
belonging to mankind. Hence our Saviour takes occasion to publish to
her the doctrine of the gospel; and excuseth her rude answer by her
ignorance of him; and tells her, that if she had asked him a greater
matter, even that which concerned her eternal salvation, he would
readily have granted it, notwithstanding the rooted hatred between
the Jews and Samaritans; and bestowed a water of a greater virtue,
the “water of life.”[313] The woman is no less astonished at his reply
than she was at his first demand. It was strange to hear a man speak
of giving living water to one of whom he had begged the water of that
spring, and had no vessel to draw any to quench his own thirst. She
therefore demands whence he could have this water that he speaks
of,[314] since she conceived him not greater than Jacob, who had
digged that well and drank of it. Our Saviour, desirous to make a
progress in that work he had begun, extols the water he spake of,
above this of the well, from its particular virtue fully to refresh
those that drank of it, and be as a cooling and comforting fountain
within them, of more efficacy than that without.[315] The woman,
conceiving a good opinion of our Saviour, {a177} desires to partake
of this water, to save her pains in coming daily to the well, not
apprehending the spirituality of Christ’s discourse to her:[316]
Christ finding her to take some pleasure in his discourse, partly
to bring her to a sense of her sin, before he did communicate the
excellency of his grace, bids her return back to the city and bring
her husband with her to him. [317] She freely acknowledges that she
had no husband; whether having some check of conscience at present for
the unclean life she led, or loth to lose so much time in the gaining
this water so much desired by her:[318] our Saviour takes an occasion
from this to lay open her sin before her, and to make her sensible of
her own wicked life and the prophetic excellency of himself; and tells
her she had had five husbands, to whom she had been false, and by whom
she was divorced, and the person she now dwelt with was not her lawful
husband, and in living with him she violated the rights of marriage,
and increased guilt upon her conscience.[319] The woman being affected
with this discourse, and knowing him to be a stranger that could not
be certified of those things but in an extraordinary way, begins to
have a high esteem of him as a prophet.[320] And upon this opinion
she esteems him able to decide a question, which had been canvassed
between them and the Jews, about the place of worship.[321] Their
fathers worshipping in that mountain, and the Jews affirming Jerusalem
to be a place of worship, she pleads the antiquity of the worship in
this place, Abraham having built an altar there (Gen. xii. 7), and
Jacob, upon his return from Syria. And, surely, had the place been
capable of an exception, such persons as they, and so well acquainted
with the will of God, would not have pitched upon that place to
celebrate their worship. Antiquity hath, too, too often bewitched the
minds of men, and drawn them from the revealed will of God. Men are
more willing to imitate the outward actions of their famous ancestors,
than conform themselves to the revealed will of their Creator. The
Samaritans would imitate the patriarchs in the place of worship, but
not in the faith of the worshippers. Christ answers her, that this
question would quickly be resolved by a new state of the church, which
was near at hand; and neither Jerusalem, which had now the precedency,
nor that mountain, should be of any more value in that concern, than
any other place in the world:[322] but yet, to make her sensible of
her sin and that of her countrymen, tells her, that their worship
in that mountain was not according to the will of God, he having
long after the altars built in this place, fixed Jerusalem as the
place of sacrifices; besides, they had not the knowledge of that
God which ought to be worshipped by them, but the Jews had the “true
object of worship,” and the “true manner of worship, according to
the declaration God had made of himself to them.”[323] But all that
service shall vanish, the veil of the temple shall be rent in twain,
and that carnal worship give place to one more spiritual; shadows
shall fly before substance, and truth advance itself above figures;
and the worship of God shall be with the strength of the Spirit: such
a worship, and such worshippers doth the Father seek;[324] for “God is
a {a178} Spirit: and those that worship him must worship him in spirit
and in truth.” The design of our Saviour is to declare, that God is
not taken with external worship invented by men, no, nor commanded by
himself; and that upon this reason, because he is a spiritual essence,
infinitely above gross and corporeal matter, and is not taken with
that pomp which is a pleasure to our earthly imaginations.
Πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός. Some translate it just as the words lie: “Spirit is
God.”[325] But it is not unusual, both in the Old and New Testament
languages, to put the predicate before the subject, as Psalm v. 9,
“Their throat is an open sepulchre;” in the Hebrew, “A sepulchre open
their throat;” so Psalm cxi. 3, “His work is honorable and glorious;”
Heb. “Honor and glory is his work;” and there wants not one example
in the same evangelist (John i. 1), “And the Word was God;” Greek,
“And God was the Word:” in all, the predicate, or what is ascribed,
is put before the subject to which it is ascribed. One tells us, and
he, a head of a party that hath made a disturbance in the church of
God,[326] that this place is not aptly brought to prove God to be a
Spirit; and the reason of Christ runs not thus,――God is of a spiritual
essence, and therefore must be worshipped with a spiritual worship;
for the essence of God is not the foundation of his worship, but his
will; for then we were not to worship him with a corporeal worship,
because he is not a body; but with an invisible and eternal worship,
because he is invisible and eternal. But the nature of God is the
foundation of worship; the will of God is the rule of worship; the
matter and manner is to be performed according to the will of God.
But is the nature of the object of worship to be excluded? No; as the
object is, so ought our devotion to be, spiritual as he is spiritual.
God, in his commands for worship, respected the discovery of his
own nature; in the law, he respected the discovery of his mercy and
justice, and therefore commanded a worship by sacrifices; a spiritual
worship without those institutions would not have declared those
attributes which was God’s end to display to the world in Christ;
and though the nature of God is to be respected in worship, yet the
obligations of the creature are to be considered. God is a Spirit,
therefore must have a spiritual worship; the creature hath a body as
well as a soul, and both from God; and therefore ought to worship God
with the one as well as the other, since one as well as the other is
freely bestowed upon him. The spirituality of God was the foundation
of the change from the Judaical carnal worship to a more spiritual
and evangelical.
_God is a Spirit_; that is, he hath nothing corporeal, no mixture of
matter, not a visible substance, a bodily form.[327] He is a Spirit,
not a bare spiritual substance, but an understanding, willing Spirit,
holy, wise, good, and just. Before, Christ spake of the Father,[328]
the first person in the Trinity; now he speaks of God essentially: the
word Father is personal, the word God essential; so that our Saviour
would render a reason, not from any one person in the blessed Trinity,
but from the Divine nature, why we should worship in spirit, and
therefore makes use of the word God, the being a Spirit being common
{a179} to the other persons with the Father. This is the reason of
the proposition (ver. 23), “_Of a spiritual worship_.” Every nature
delights in that which is like it, and distastes that which is most
different from it. If God were corporeal, he might be pleased with the
victims of beasts, and the beautiful magnificence of temples, and the
noise of music; but being a Spirit, he cannot be gratified with carnal
things; he demands something better and greater than all those,――that
soul which he made, that soul which he hath endowed, a spirit of a
frame suitable to his nature. He indeed appointed sacrifices, and a
temple, as shadows of those things which were to be most acceptable
to him in the Messiah, but they were imposed only “till the time of
reformation.”[329]
_Must worship him_; not they may, or it would be more agreeable to
God to have such a manner of worship; but they _must_. It is not
exclusive of bodily worship; for this were to exclude all public
worship in societies, which cannot be performed without reverential
postures of the body.[330] The gestures of the body are helps to
worship, and declarations of spiritual acts. We can scarcely worship
God with our spirits without some tincture upon the outward man; but
he excludes all acts merely corporeal, all resting upon an external
service and devotion, which was the crime of the Pharisees, and the
general persuasion of the Jews as well as heathens, who used the
outward ceremonies, not as signs of better things, but as if they did
of themselves please God, and render the worshippers accepted with
him, without any suitable frame of the inward man.[331] It is as if
he had said, Now you must separate yourselves from all carnal modes
to which the service of God is now tied, and render a worship chiefly
consisting in the affectionate motions of the heart, and accommodated
more exactly to the condition of the object, who is a Spirit.
_In spirit and truth._[332] The evangelical service now required has
the advantage of the former; that was a shadow and figure, this the
body and truth.[333] Spirit, say some, is here opposed to the legal
ceremonies; truth, to hypocritical services; or, rather truth is
opposed to shadows,[334] and an opinion of worth in the outward action;
it is principally opposed to external rites, because our Saviour saith
(ver. 23): “The hour comes, and now is,” &c. Had it been opposed to
hypocrisy, Christ had said no new thing; for God always required truth
in the inward parts, and all true worshippers had served him with a
sincere conscience and single heart. The old patriarchs did worship
God in spirit and _truth_, as taken for sincerity; such a worship
was always, and is perpetually due to God, because he always was, and
eternally will be, a Spirit.[335] And it is said, “The Father seeks
such to worship him,” not, shall seek; he always sought it; it always
was performed to him by one or other in the world: and the prophets
had always rebuked them for resting upon their outward solemnities
(Isa. lviii. 7, and Micah vi. 8): but a worship without legal rites
was proper to an evangelical state and the times of the gospel, God
having then exhibited Christ, and brought into the world the substance
of those {a180} shadows, and the end of those institutions; there was
no more need to continue them when the true reason of them was ceased.
All laws do naturally expire when the true reason upon which they were
first framed is changed. Or by spirit may be meant, such a worship as
is kindled in the heart by the breath of the Holy Ghost. Since we are
dead in sin, a spiritual light and flame in the heart, suitable to the
nature of the object of our worship, cannot be raised in us without
the operation of a supernatural grace; and though the fathers could
not worship God without the Spirit, yet in the gospel‑times, there
being a fuller effusion of the Spirit, the evangelical state is called,
“the administration of the Spirit,” and “the newness of the Spirit,”
in opposition to the legal economy, entitled the “oldness of the
letter.”[336] The evangelical state is more suited to the nature
of God than any other; such a worship God must have, whereby he is
acknowledged to be the true sanctifier and quickener of the soul. The
nearer God doth approach to us, and the more full his manifestations
are, the more spiritual is the worship we return to God. The gospel
pares off the rugged parts of the law, and heaven shall remove what is
material in the gospel, and change the ordinances of worship into that
of a spiritual praise.
In the words there is: 1. A proposition,――“God is a Spirit;” the
foundation of all religion. 2. An inference,――“They that worship
him,” &c.
As God, a worship belongs to him; as a Spirit, a spiritual worship
is due to him: in the inference we have, 1. The manner of worship,
“in spirit and truth;” 2. The necessity of such a worship, “must.”
The proposition declares the nature of God; the inference, the duty
of man. The observations lie plain.
_Obs._ 1. God is a pure spiritual being: “he is a Spirit.” 2. The
worship due from the creature to God must be agreeable to the nature
of God, and purely spiritual. 3. The evangelical state is suited to
the nature of God.
I. For the first: “God is a pure spiritual being.” It is the
observation of one,[337] that the plain assertion of God’s being a
Spirit is found but once in the whole Bible, and that is in this place;
which may well be wondered at, because God is so often described
with hands, feet, eyes, and ears, in the form and figure of a man.
The spiritual nature of God is deducible from many places; but not
anywhere, as I remember, asserted _totidem verbis_, but in this text:
some allege that place (2 Cor. iii. 17), “The Lord is that Spirit,”
for the proof of it; but that seems to have a different sense: in the
text, the nature of God is described; in that place, the operations
of God in the gospel. “It is not the ministry of Moses, or that old
covenant, which communicates to you that Spirit it speaks of; but it
is the Lord Jesus, and the doctrine of the gospel delivered by him,
whereby this Spirit and liberty is dispensed to you; he opposes here
the liberty of the gospel to the servitude of the law;”[338] it is
from Christ that a divine virtue diffuseth itself by the gospel;
it is by him, not by the law, that we partake of that Spirit. The
spirituality of God is {a181} as evident as his being.[339] If
we grant that God is, we must necessarily grant that he cannot be
corporeal, because a body is of an imperfect nature. It will appear
incredible to any that acknowledge God the first Being and Creator of
all things, that he should be a massy, heavy body, and have eyes and
ears, feet and hands, as we have.――For the explication of it,
1. Spirit is taken various ways in Scripture. It signifies sometimes
an aërial substance, as Psalm xi. 6; a horrible tempest (Heb. a
spirit of tempest); sometimes the breath, which is a thin substance
(Gen. vi. 17): “All flesh, wherein is the breath of life” (Heb. spirit
of life). A thin substance, though it be material and corporeal, is
called spirit; and in the bodies of living creatures, that which is
the principle of their actions is called spirits, the animal and vital
spirits. And the finer parts extracted from plants and minerals we
call spirits, those volatile parts separated from that gross matter
wherein they were immersed, because they come nearest to the nature
of an incorporeal substance; and from this notion of the word, it is
translated to signify those substances that are purely immaterial, as
angels and the souls of men. Angels are called spirits (Psalm civ. 4):
“Who makes his angels spirits;”[340] and not only good angels are so
called, but evil angels (Mark i. 27); souls of men are called spirits
(Eccles. xii.); and the soul of Christ is called so (John xix. 30);
whence God is called “the God of the spirits of all flesh” (Numb. xxii.
16). And spirit is opposed to flesh (Isa. xxxi. 3): “The Egyptians
are flesh, and not spirit.” And our Saviour gives us the notion of
a spirit to be something above the nature of a body (Luke xxiv. 39),
“not having flesh and bones,” extended parts, loads of gross matter.
It is also taken for those things which are active and efficacious;
because activity is of the nature of a spirit: Caleb had another
spirit (Numb. xiv. 24), an active affection. The vehement motions
of sin are called spirit (Hos. iv. 12): “the spirit of whoredoms,”
in that sense that Prov. xxix. 11, “a fool utters all his mind,” all
his spirit; he knows not how to restrain the vehement motions of his
mind. So that the notion of a spirit is, that it is a fine, immaterial
substance, an active being, that acts itself and other things. A mere
body cannot act itself; as the body of man cannot move without the
soul, no more than a ship can move itself without wind and waves. So
God is called a Spirit, as being not a body, not having the greatness,
figure, thickness, or length of a body, wholly separate from anything
of flesh and matter. We find a principle within us nobler than that of
our bodies; and, therefore, we conceive the nature of God, according
to that which is more worthy in us, and not according to that which is
the vilest part of our natures. God is a most spiritual Spirit, more
spiritual than all angels, all souls.[341] As he exceeds all in the
nature of being, so he exceeds all in the nature of spirit: he hath
nothing gross, heavy, material, in his essence.
2. When we say God is a Spirit, it is to be understood by way of
negation. There are two ways of knowing or describing God: by way
of affirmation, affirming that of him by way of eminency, which is
excellent in the creature, as when we say God is wise, good; the {a182}
other, by way of negation, when we remove from God in our conceptions
what is tainted with imperfection in the creature.[342] The first
ascribes to him whatsoever is excellent; the other separates from
him whatsoever is imperfect. The first is like a limning, which adds
one color to another to make a comely picture; the other is like
a carving, which pares and cuts away whatsoever is superfluous, to
make a complete statue. This way of negation is more easy; we better
understand what God is not, than what he is; and most of our knowledge
of God is by this way; as when we say God is infinite, immense,
immutable, they are negatives; he hath no limits, is confined to
no place, admits of no change.[343] When we remove from him what is
inconsistent with his being, we do more strongly assert his being,
and know more of him when we elevate him above all, and above our own
capacity. And when we say God is a Spirit, it is a negation; he is
not a body; he consists not of various parts, extended one without
and beyond another. He is not a spirit, so as our souls are, to be
the form of any body; a spirit, not as angels and souls are, but
infinitely higher. We call him so, because, in regard of our weakness,
we have not any other term of excellency to express or conceive of
him by; we transfer it to God in honor, because spirit is the highest
excellency in our nature: yet we must apprehend God above any spirit,
since his nature is so great that he cannot be declared by human
speech, perceived by human sense, or conceived by human understanding.
II. The second thing, that “God is a Spirit.” Some among the heathens
imagined God to have a body;[344] some thought him to have a body
of air; some a heavenly body; some a human body;[345] and many of
them ascribed bodies to their gods, but bodies without blood, without
corruption, bodies made up of the finest and thinnest atoms; such
bodies, which, if compared with ours, were as no bodies. The Sadducees
also, who denied all spirits, and yet acknowledged a God, must
conclude him to be a body, and no spirit. Some among Christians have
been of that opinion. Tertullian is charged by some, and excused by
others; and some monks of Egypt were so fierce for this error, that
they attempted to kill one Theophilus, a bishop, for not being of
that judgment. But the wiser heathens were of another mind,[346] and
esteemed it an unholy thing to have such imaginations of God.[347]
And some Christians have thought God only to be free from anything of
body, because he is omnipresent, immutable, he is only incorporeal and
spiritual; all things else, even the angels, are clothed with bodies,
though of a neater matter, and a more active frame than ours; a pure
spiritual nature they allowed to no being but God. Scripture and
reason meet together to assert the spirituality of God. Had God had
the lineaments of a body, the Gentiles had not fallen under that
accusation of changing his glory into that of a corruptible man.[348]
This is signified by the name God gives himself (Exod. iii. 14): “I
am that I am;” a simple, pure, uncompounded {a183} being, without
any created mixture; as infinitely above the being of creatures as
above the conceptions of creatures (Job xxxvii. 23): “Touching the
Almighty, we cannot find him out.” He is so much a Spirit, that he
is the “Father of spirits” (Heb. xii. 9). The Almighty Father is not
of a nature inferior to his children. The soul is a spirit; it could
not else exert actions without the assistance of the body, as the act
of understanding itself, and its own nature, the act of willing, and
willing things against the incitements and interest of the body. It
could not else conceive of God, angels, and immaterial substances;
it could not else be so active, as with one glance to fetch a
compass from earth to heaven, and by a sudden motion, to elevate the
understanding from an earthly thought, to the thinking of things as
high as the highest heavens. If we have this opinion of our souls,
which, in the nobleness of their acts, surmount the body, without
which the body is but a dull inactive piece of clay, we must needs
have a higher conception of God, than to clog him with any matter,
though of a finer temper than ours: we must conceive of him by the
perfections of our souls, without the vileness of our bodies. If God
made man according to his image, we must raise our thoughts of God
according to the noblest part of that image, and imagine the exemplar
or copy not to come short, but to exceed the thing copied by it.
God were not the most excellent substance if he were not a Spirit.
Spiritual substances are more excellent than bodily; the soul of man
more excellent than other animals; angels more excellent than men.
They contain, in their own nature, whatsoever dignity there is in the
inferior creatures; God must have, therefore, an excellency above all
those, and, therefore, is entirely remote from the conditions of a
body. It is a gross conceit, therefore, to think that God is such a
spirit as the air is; for that is to be a body as the air is, though
it be a thin one; and if God were no more a spirit than that, or than
angels, he would not be the most simple being.[349] Yet some think
that the spiritual Deity was represented by the air in the ark of
the testament.[350] It was unlawful to represent him by any image
that God had prohibited. Everything about the ark had a particular
signification. The gold and other ornaments about it signified
something of Christ, but were unfit to represent the nature of God: a
thing purely invisible, and falling under nothing of sense, could not
represent him to the mind of man. The air in the ark was the fittest;
it represented the invisibility of God, air being imperceptible to our
eyes. Air diffuseth itself through all parts of the world; it glides
through secret passages into all creatures; it fills the space between
heaven and earth. There is no place wherein God is not present. To
evidence this,
1. If God were not a Spirit, he could not be Creator. All multitude
begins in, and is reduced to unity. As above multitude there is
an absolute unity, so above mixed creatures there is an absolute
simplicity. You cannot conceive number without conceiving the
beginning of it in that which was not number, viz. a unit. You cannot
conceive any mixture, but you must conceive some simple thing to
be the original and basis of it. The works of art done by {a184}
rational creatures have their foundation in something spiritual. Every
artificer, watchmaker, carpenter, hath a model in his own mind of the
work he designs to frame: the material and outward fabric is squared
according to an inward and spiritual idea. A spiritual idea speaks
a spiritual faculty as the subject of it. God could not have an idea
of that vast number of creatures he brought into being, if he had not
had a spiritual nature.[351] The wisdom whereby the world was created
could never be the fruit of a corporeal nature; such natures are
not capable of understanding and comprehending the things which are
within the compass of their nature, much less of producing them; and
therefore beasts which have only corporeal faculties move to objects
by the force of their sense, and have no knowledge of things as they
are comprehended by the understanding of man. All acts of wisdom speak
an intelligent and spiritual agent. The effects of wisdom, goodness,
power, are so great and admirable, that they bespeak him a more
perfect and eminent being than can possibly be beheld under a bodily
shape. Can a corporeal substance put “wisdom in the inward parts, and
give understanding to the heart?”[352]
2. If God were not a pure Spirit, he could not be one. If God had a
body, consisting of distinct members, as ours; or all of one nature,
as the water and air are, yet he were then capable of division, and
therefore could not be entirely one. Either those parts would be
finite or infinite: if finite, they are not parts of God; for to be
God and finite is a contradiction; if infinite, then there are as many
infinite as distinct members, and therefore as many Deities. Suppose
this body had all parts of the same nature, as air and water hath,
every little part of air is as much air as the greatest, and every
little part of water is as much water as the ocean; so every little
part of God would be as much God as the whole; as many particular
Deities to make up God, as little atoms to compose a body. What can be
more absurd? If God had a body like a human body, and were compounded
of body and soul, of substance and quality, he could not be the most
perfect unity; he would be made up of distinct parts, and those of
a distinct nature, as the members of a human body are. Where there
is the greatest unity, there must be the greatest simplicity; but God
is one. As he is free from any change, so he is void of any multitude
(Deut. vi. 4): “The Lord our God is one Lord.”
3. If God had a body as we have, he would not be invisible. Every
material thing is not visible: the air is a body yet invisible, but
it is sensible; the cooling quality of it is felt by us at every
breath, and we know it by our touch, which is the most material sense.
Everybody that hath members like to bodies, is visible; but God is
invisible.[353] The apostle reckons it amongst his other perfections
(1 Tim. i. 17): “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible.”
He is invisible to our sense, which beholds nothing but material
and colored things; and incomprehensible to our understanding, that
conceives nothing but what is finite. God is therefore a Spirit
incapable of being seen, and infinitely incapable of being understood.
{a185} If he be invisible, he is also spiritual. If he had a body, and
hid it from our eyes, he might be said not to be seen, but could not
be said to be invisible. When we say a thing is visible, we understand
that it hath such qualities which are the objects of sense, though we
may never see that which is in its own nature to be seen. God hath no
such qualities as fall under the perception of our sense. His works
are visible to us, but not his Godhead.[354] The nature of a human
body is to be seen and handled; Christ gives us such a description of
it (Luke xxiv. 39): “Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh
and bones as you see me have;” but man hath been so far from seeing
God, “that it is impossible he can see him” (1 Tim. vi. 16). There
is such a disproportion between an infinite object and a finite sense
and understanding, that it is utterly impossible either to behold or
comprehend him. But if God had a body more luminous and glorious than
that of the sun, he would be as well visible to us as the sun, though
the immensity of that light would dazzle our eyes, and forbid any
close inspection into him by the virtue of our sense. We have seen
the shape and figure of the sun, but “no man hath ever seen the shape
of God.”[355] If God had a body, he were visible, though he might not
perfectly and fully be seen by us;[356] as we see the heavens, though
we see not the extension, latitude, and greatness of them. Though
God hath manifested himself in a bodily shape (Gen. xviii. 1), and
elsewhere Jehovah appeared to Abraham, yet the substance of God was
not seen, no more than the substance of angels was seen in their
apparitions to men. A body was formed to be made visible by them, and
such actions done in that body, that spake the person that did them
to be of a higher eminency than a bare corporeal creature. Sometimes
a representation is made to the inward sense and imagination, as to
Micaiah,[357] and to Isaiah (vi. 1); but they saw not the essence of
God, but some images and figures of him proportioned to their sense
or imagination. The essence of God no man ever saw, nor can see. John
i. 18. Nor doth it follow that God hath a body,[358] because Jacob
is said to “see God face to face” (Gen. xxxii. 30); and Moses had the
like privilege (Deut. xxxiv. 10). This only signifies a fuller and
clearer manifestation of God by some representations offered to the
bodily sense, or rather to the inward spirit. For God tells Moses he
could not see his face (Exod. xxxiii. 20); and that none ever saw the
similitude of God (Deut. iv. 15). Were God a corporeal substance, he
might in some measure be seen by corporeal eyes.
4. If God were not a Spirit, he could not be infinite. All bodies are
of a finite nature; everybody is material, and every material thing
is terminated. The sun, a vast body, hath a bounded greatness; the
heavens, of a mighty bulk, yet have their limits. If God had a body he
must consist of parts, those parts would be bounded and limited, and
whatsoever is limited is of a finite virtue, and therefore below an
infinite nature. Reason therefore tells us, that the most excellent
nature, as God is, cannot be of a corporeal condition; because of the
limitation and other actions which belong to every {a186} body. God
is infinite, “for the heaven of heavens cannot contain him” (2 Chron.
ii. 6). The largest heavens, and those imaginary spaces beyond the
world, are no bounds to him. He hath an essence beyond the bounds of
the world, and cannot be included in the vastness of the heavens. If
God be infinite, then he can have no parts in him; if he had, they
must be finite or infinite: finite parts can never make up an infinite
being. A vessel of gold, of a pound weight, cannot be made of the
quantity of an ounce. Infinite parts they cannot be, because then
every part would be equal to the whole, as infinite as the whole,
which is contradictory. We see in all things every part is less than
the whole bulk that is composed of it; as every member of a man is
less than the whole body of man. If all the parts were finite, then
God in his essence were finite; and a finite God is not more excellent
than a creature: so that if God were not a Spirit, he could not be
infinite.
5. If God were not a Spirit, he could not be an independent being.
Whatsoever is compounded of many parts depends either essentially or
integrally upon those parts; as the essence of a man depends upon the
conjunction and union of his two main parts, his soul and body; when
they are separated, the essence of a man ceaseth: and the perfection
of a man depends upon every member of the body; so that if one be
wanting the perfection of the whole is wanting: as if a man hath lost
a limb, you call him not a perfect man, because that part is gone upon
which his perfection as an entire man did depend. If God therefore
had a body, the perfection of the Deity would depend upon every part
of that body; and the more parts he were compounded of, the more
his dependency would be multiplied according to the number of those
parts of the body: for that which is compounded of many parts is more
dependent than that which is compounded of fewer. And because God
would be a dependent being if he had a body, he could not be the first
being; for the compounding parts are in order of nature before that
which is compounded by them; as the soul and body are before the man
which results from the union of them. If God had parts and bodily
members as we have, or any composition, the essence of God would
result from those parts, and those parts be supposed to be before
God. For that which is a part, is before that whose part it is. As
in artificial things you may conceive it: all the parts of a watch
or clock are in time before that watch which is made by setting those
parts together. In natural things you must suppose the members of a
body framed before you can call it a man; so that the parts of this
body are before that which is constituted by them. We can conceive no
other of God, if he were not a pure, entire, unmixed Spirit. If he had
distinct parts, he would depend upon them; those parts would be before
him; his essence would be the effect of those distinct parts, and so
he would not be absolutely and entirely the first being; but he is so
(Isa. xliv. 6): “I am the first, and I am the last.” He is the first;
nothing is before him. Whereas, if he had bodily parts, and those
finite, it would follow, God is made up of those parts which are not
God; and that which is not God, is in order of nature before that
which is God. So that we see if God were not a Spirit he could not
be independent.
{a187} 6. If God were not a Spirit, he were not immutable and
unchangeable. His immutability depends upon his simplicity. He
is unchangeable in his essence, because he is a pure and unmixed
spiritual Being. Whatsoever is compounded of parts may be divided
into those parts, and resolved into those distinct parts which make
up and constitute the nature. Whatsoever is compounded is changeable
in its own nature, though it should never be changed. Adam, who was
constituted of body and soul, had he stood in innocence, had not died;
there had been no separation made between his soul and body whereof he
was constituted, and his body had not resolved into those principles
of dust from whence it was extracted. Yet in his own nature he was
dissoluble into those distinct parts whereof he was compounded; and so
the glorified saints in heaven, after the resurrection, and the happy
meeting of their souls and bodies in a new marriage knot, shall never
be dissolved; yet in their own nature they are mutable and dissoluble,
and cannot be otherwise, because they are made up of such distinct
parts that may be separated in their own nature, unless sustained by
the grace of God: they are immutable by will, the will of God, not
by nature. God is immutable by nature as well as will: as he hath
a necessary existence, so he hath a necessary unchangeableness (Mal.
iii. 6), “I, the Lord, change not.” He is as unchangeable in his
essence as in his veracity and faithfulness: they are perfections
belonging to his nature. But if he were not a pure Spirit, he could
not be immutable by nature.
7. If God were not a pure Spirit, he could not be omnipresent. He
is in heaven above, and the earth below;[359] he fills heaven and
earth.[360] The divine essence is at once in heaven and earth; but
it is impossible a body can be in two places at one and the same time.
Since God is everywhere, he must be spiritual. Had he a body, he could
not penetrate all things; he would be circumscribed in place. He could
not be everywhere but in parts, not in the whole; one member in one
place, and another in another; for to be confined to a particular
place, is the property of a body: but, since he is diffused through
the whole world, higher than heaven, deeper than hell, longer than the
earth, broader than the sea,[361] he hath not any corporeal matter.
If he had a body wherewith to fill heaven and earth, there could be no
body besides his own: it is the nature of bodies to bound one another,
and hinder the extending of one another. Two bodies cannot be in the
same place in the same point of earth: one excludes the other; and it
will follow hence that we are nothing, no substances, mere illusions;
there could be no place for anybody else.[362] If his body were as big
as the world, as it must be if with that he filled heaven and earth,
there would not be room for him to move a hand or a foot, or extend
a finger; for there would be no place remaining for the motion.
8. If God were not a Spirit, he could not be the most perfect being.
The more perfect anything is in the rank of creatures, the more
spiritual and simple it is, as gold is the more pure and perfect that
hath least mixture of other metals. If God were not a Spirit, {a188}
there would be creatures of a more excellent nature than God, as
angels and souls, which the Scripture call spirits, in opposition to
bodies. There is more of perfection in the first notion of a spirit
than in the notion of a body. God cannot be less perfect than his
creatures, and contribute an excellency of being to them which he
wants himself. If angels and souls possess such an excellency, and
God want that excellency, he would be less than his creatures, and
the excellency of the effect would exceed the excellency of the cause.
But every creature, even the highest creature, is infinitely short of
the perfection of God; for whatsoever excellency they have is finite
and limited; it is but a spark from the sun――a drop from the ocean;
but God is unboundedly perfect, in the highest manner, without any
limitation; and therefore above spirits, angels, the highest creatures
that were made by him: an infinite sublimity, a pure act, to which
nothing can be added, from which nothing can be taken. “In him there
is light and no darkness,”[363] spirituality without any matter,
perfection without any shadow or taint of imperfection. Light pierceth
into all things, preserves its own purity, and admits of no mixture of
anything else with it.
_Question._ It may be said, If God be a Spirit, and it is impossible
he can be otherwise than a Spirit, how comes God so often to have such
members as we have in our bodies ascribed to him, not only a soul, but
particular bodily parts, as heart, arms, hands, eyes, ears, face, and
back parts? And how is it that he is never called a Spirit in plain
words, but in this text by our Saviour?
_Answer._ It is true, many parts of the body, and natural affections
of the human nature, are reported of God in Scripture. Head,[364] eyes,
and eye‑lids,[365] apple of the eye, mouth, &c.; our affections also,
grief, joy, anger, &c. But it is to be considered,
1. That this is in condescension to our weakness. God being desirous
to make himself known to man, whom he created for his glory, humbles,
as it were, his own nature to such representations as may suit and
assist the capacity of the creature; since by the condition of our
nature nothing erects a notion of itself in our understanding, but
as it is conducted in by our sense.[366] God hath served himself of
those things which are most exposed to our sense, most obvious to
our understandings, to give us some acquaintance with his own nature,
and those things which otherwise we were not capable of having any
notion of. As our souls are linked with our bodies, so our knowledge
is linked with our sense; that we can scarce imagine anything, at
first, but under a corporeal form and figure, till we come, by great
attention to the object, to make, by the help of reason, a separation
of the spiritual substance from the corporeal fancy, and consider it
in its own nature. We are not able to conceive a spirit, without some
kind of resemblance to something below it, nor understand the actions
of a spirit, without considering the operations of a human body in
its several members. As the glories of another life are signified
to us by the pleasures of this; so the nature of God, by a gracious
condescension to our capacities, is {a189} signified to us by a
likeness to our own. The more familiar the things are to us which
God uses to this purpose, the more proper they are to teach us what
he intends by them.
2. All such representations are to signify the acts of God, as they
bear some likeness to those which we perform by those members he
ascribes to himself. So that those members ascribed to him rather note
his visible operations to us, than his invisible nature; and signify
that God doth some works like to those which men do by the assistance
of those organs of their bodies. So the wisdom of God is called
his eye, because he knows that with his mind which we see with our
eyes.[367] The efficiency of God is called his hand and arm; because
as we act with our hands, so doth God with his power. The divine
efficacies are signified:――by his eyes and ears, we understand his
omniscience; by his face, the manifestation of his favor; by his
mouth, the revelation of his will; by his nostrils, the acceptation
of our prayers; by his bowels, the tenderness of his compassion; by
his heart, the sincerity of his affections; by his hand, the strength
of his power; by his feet, the ubiquity of his presence. And in this,
he intends instruction and comfort: by his eyes, he signifies his
watchfulness over us; by his ears, his readiness to hear the cries
of the oppressed;[368] by his arm, his power――an arm to destroy
his enemies, and an arm to relieve his people.[369] All those are
attributed to God to signify divine actions, which he doth without
bodily organs as we do with them.
3. Consider also, that only those members which are the instruments
of the noblest actions, and under that consideration, are used
by him to represent a notion of him to our minds. Whatsoever is
perfect and excellent is ascribed to him, but nothing that savors
of imperfection.[370] The heart is ascribed to him, it being the
principle of vital actions, to signify the life that he hath in
himself; watchful and discerning eyes, not sleepy and lazy ones; a
mouth to reveal his will, not to take in food. To eat and sleep are
never ascribed to him, nor those parts that belong to the preparing or
transmitting nourishment to the several parts of the body, as stomach,
liver, reins, nor bowels under that consideration, but as they are
significant of compassion; but only those parts are ascribed to him
whereby we acquire knowledge, as eyes and ears, the organs of learning
and wisdom; or to communicate it to others, as the mouth, lips, tongue,
as they are instruments of speaking, not of tasting; or those parts
which signify strength and power, or whereby we perform the actions of
charity for the relief of others; taste and touch, senses that extend
no farther than to corporeal things, and are the grossest of all the
senses, are never ascribed to him.
4. It were worth consideration, “whether this describing God by the
members of a human body were so much figuratively to be understood,
as with respect to the incarnation of our Saviour, who was to assume
the human nature, and all the members of a human body?”[371] Asaph,
speaking in the person of God (Psalm lxxviii. 1), {a190} “I will
open my mouth in parables;” in regard of God it is to be understood
figuratively, but in regard of Christ literally, to whom it is applied
(Matt. xiii. 34, 35); and that apparition (Isa. vi.) which was the
appearance of Jehovah, is applied to Christ (John xii. 40, 41). After
the report of the creation, and the forming of man, we read of God’s
speaking to him, but not of God’s appearing to him in any visible
shape.[372] A voice might be formed in the air to give man notice of
his duty; some way of information he must have what positive laws he
was to observe, besides that law which was engraven in his nature,
which we call the law of nature; and without a voice the knowledge
of the divine will could not be so conveniently communicated to man.
Though God was heard in a voice, he was not seen in a shape; but after
the fall we several times read of his appearing in such a form; though
we read of his speaking before man’s committing of sin, yet not of
his walking, which is more corporeal, till afterwards.[373] “Though
God would not have man believe him to be corporeal, yet he judged it
expedient to give some pre‑notices of that divine incarnation which
he had promised.”[374]
5. Therefore, we must not conceive of the visible Deity according to
the letter of such expressions, but the true intent of them. Though
the Scripture speaks of his eyes and arm, yet it denies them to be
“arms of flesh.”[375] We must not conceive of God according to the
letter, but the design of the metaphor. When we hear things described
by metaphorical expressions, for the clearing them up to our fancy,
we conceive not of them under that garb, but remove the veil by an
act of our reason. When Christ is called a sun, a vine, bread, is
any so stupid as to conceive him to be a vine with material branches,
and clusters, or be of the same nature with a loaf? But the things
designed by such metaphors are obvious to the conception of a mean
understanding. If we would conceive God to have a body like a man,
because he describes himself so, we may conceit him to be like a bird,
because he is mentioned with wings;[376] or like a lion, or leopard,
because he likens himself to them in the acts of his strength and
fury.[377] He is called a rock, a horn, fire, to note his strength
and wrath; if any be so stupid as to think God to be really such,
they would make him not only a man but worse than a monster. Onkelos,
the Chaldee paraphrast upon parts of the Scripture, was so tender of
expressing the notion of any corporeity in God, that when he meets
with any expressions of that nature, he translates them according to
the true intent of them; as when God is said to descend (Gen. xi. 5),
which implies a local motion, a motion from one place to another, he
translates it, “And God revealed himself.”[378] We should conceive of
God according to the design of the expressions; when we read of his
eyes, we should conceive his omniscience; of his hand, his power;
of his sitting, his immutability; of his throne, his majesty; and
conceive of him as surmounting, not only the grossness of bodies,
but the spiritual excellency {a191} of the most dignified creatures;
something so perfect, great, spiritual, as nothing can be conceived
higher and purer. “Christ,” saith one, “is truly _Deus figuratus_; and
for his sake, was it more easily permitted to the Jews to think of God
in the shape of a man.”[379]
_Use._ If God be a pure spiritual being, then
1. Man is not the image of God, according to his external bodily form
and figure. The image of God in man consisted not in what is seen,
but in what is not seen; not in the conformation of the members, but
rather in the spiritual faculties of the soul; or, most of all, in
the holy endowments of those faculties (Eph. iv. 24): “That ye put
on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and
true holiness.”[380] The image which is restored by redeeming grace,
was the image of God by original nature. The image of God cannot be
in that part which is common to us with beasts, but rather in that
wherein we excel all living creatures, in reason, understanding, and
an immortal spirit. God expressly saith, that none “saw a similitude”
of him (Deut. iv. 15, 16); which had not been true, if man, in regard
of his body, had been the image and similitude of God, for then a
figure of God had been seen every day, as often as we saw a man or
beheld ourselves. Nor would the apostle’s argument stand good (Acts
xvii. 29), “That the Godhead is not like to stone graven by art,” if
we were not the offspring of God, and bore the stamp of his nature in
our spirits rather than our bodies.[381] It was a fancy of Eugubinus,
that when God set upon the actual creation of man, he took a bodily
form for an exemplar of that which he would express in his work, and
therefore that the words of Moses[382] are to be understood of the
body of man; because there was in man such a shape which God had then
assumed. To let alone God’s forming himself a body for that work as
a groundless fancy, man can in no wise be said to be the image of God,
in regard of the substance of his body; but beasts may as well be said
to be made in the image of God, whose bodies have the same members as
the body of man for the most part, and excel men in the acuteness of
the senses and swiftness of their motion, agility of body, greatness
of strength, and in some kind of ingenuities also, wherein man hath
been a scholar to the brutes, and beholden to their skill. The soul
comes nearest the nature of God, as being a spiritual substance; yet
considered singly, in regard of its spiritual substance, cannot well
be said to be the image of God; a beast, because of its corporeity,
may as well be called the image of a man, for there is a greater
similitude between man and a brute, in the rank of bodies, than there
can be between God and the highest angels in the rank of spirits. If
it doth not consist in the substance of the soul, much less can it in
any similitude of the body. This image consisted partly in the state
of man, as he had dominion over the creatures; partly in the nature of
man, as he was an intelligent being, and thereby was capable of having
a grant of that dominion; but principally in the conformity of the
soul with {a192} God, in the frame of his spirit, and the holiness of
his actions; not at all in the figure and form of his body, physically,
though morally there might be, as there was a rectitude in the body
as an instrument to conform to the holy motions of the soul, as the
holiness of the soul sparkled in the actions and members of the body.
If man were like God because he hath a body, whatsoever hath a body
hath some resemblance to God, and may be said to be in part his image;
but the truth is, the essence of all creatures cannot be an image of
the immense essence of God.
2. If God be a pure Spirit, “it is unreasonable to frame any image or
picture of God.”[383] Some heathens have been wiser in this than some
Christians; Pythagoras forbade his scholars to engrave any shape of
him upon a ring, because he was not to be comprehended by sense, but
conceived only in our minds: our hands are as unable to fashion him,
as our eyes to see him.[384] The ancient Romans worshipped their gods
one hundred and seventy years before any material representations
of them;[385] and the ancient idolatrous Germans thought it a wicked
thing to represent God in a human shape; yet some, and those no
Romanists, labor to defend the making images of God in the resemblance
of man, because he is so represented in Scripture: “He may be,” saith
one,[386] “conceived so in our minds, and figured so to our sense.” If
this were a good reason, why may he not be pictured as a lion, horn,
eagle, rock, since he is under such metaphors shadowed to us? The
same ground there is for the one as for the other. What though man
be a nobler creature, God hath no more the body of a man than that
of an eagle; and some perfections in other creatures represent some
excellencies in his nature and actions which cannot be figured by a
human shape, as strength by the lion, swiftness and readiness by the
wings of the bird. But God hath absolutely prohibited the making “any
image” whatsoever of him, and that with terrible threatenings (Exod.
xx. 5): “I, the Lord, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the
fathers upon their children,” and Deut. v. 8, 9. After God had given
the Israelites the commandment wherein he forbade them to have any
other gods before him, be forbids all figuring of him by the hand of
man;[387] not only images, but any likeness of him, either by things
in heaven, in the earth, or in the water. How often doth he discover
his indignation by the prophets, against them that offer to mould
him in a creature form! This law was not to serve a particular
dispensation, or to endure a particular time, but it was a declaration
of his will, invariable in all places and all times; being founded
upon the immutable nature of his being, and therefore agreeable to
the law of nature, otherwise not chargeable upon the heathens; and
therefore when God had declared his nature and his works in a stately
and majestic eloquence, he demands of them, “To whom they would liken
him, or what likeness they would compare unto him?” (Isa. xl. 18);
{a193} where they could find anything that would be a lively image
and resemblance of his infinite excellency? founding it upon the
infiniteness of his nature, which necessarily implies the spirituality
of it, God is infinitely above any statue: and those that think to
draw God by a stroke of a pencil, or form him by the engravings of
art, are more stupid than the statues themselves. To show the
unreasonableness of it, consider,
1. It is impossible to fashion any image of God. If our more capacious
souls cannot grasp his nature, our weaker sense cannot frame his image;
it is more possible, of the two, to comprehend him in our minds, than
to frame him in an image to our sense. He inhabits inaccessible light;
as it is impossible for the eye of man to see him, it is impossible
for the art of man to paint him upon walls, and carve him out of wood.
None knows him but himself, none can describe him but himself.[388]
Can we draw a figure of our own souls, and express that part of
ourselves, wherein we are most like to God? Can we extend this to any
bodily figure, and divide it into parts? How can we deal so with the
original copy, whence the first draught of our souls was taken, and
which is infinitely more spiritual than men or angels? No corporeal
thing can represent a spiritual substance; there is no proportion
in nature between them. God is a simple, infinite, immense, eternal,
invisible, incorruptible being; a statue is a compounded, finite,
limited, temporal, visible, and corruptible body. God is a living
spirit; but a statue nor sees, nor hears, nor perceives anything. But
suppose God had a body, it is impossible to mould an image of it in
the true glory of that body; can the statue of an excellent monarch
represent the majesty and air of his countenance, though made by the
skilfullest workman in the world? If God had a body in some measure
suited to his excellency, were it possible for man to make an exact
image of him, who cannot picture the light, heat, motion, magnitude,
and dazzling property of the sun? The excellency of any corporeal
nature of the least creature, the temper, instinct, artifice, are
beyond the power of a carving tool; much more is God.
2. To make any corporeal representations of God is unworthy of God.
It is a disgrace to his nature. Whosoever thinks a carnal corruptible
image to be fit for a representation of God, renders God no better
than a carnal and a corporeal being. It is a kind of debasing an angel,
who is a spiritual nature, to represent him in a bodily shape, who is
as far removed from any fleshliness as heaven from earth; much more to
degrade the glory of the divine nature to the lineaments of a man. The
whole stock of images is but a lie of God (Jer. x. 8, 14); a doctrine
of vanities and falsehood; it represents him in a false garb to the
world, and sinks his glory into that of a corruptible creature.[389]
It impairs the reverence of God in the minds of men, and by degrees
may debase men’s apprehensions of God, and be a means to make
them believe he is such a one as themselves; and that not being
free from the figure, he is not also free from the imperfections
of the bodies.[390] Corporeal images of God were the fruits of base
imaginations of him; and as they sprung from them, so {a194} they
contribute to a greater corruption of the notions of the divine nature:
the heathens begun their first representations of him by the image
of a corruptible man, then of birds, till they descended not only to
four‑footed beasts but creeping things, even serpents, as the apostle
seems to intimate in his enumeration (Rom. i. 23): it had been more
honorable to have continued in human representations of him, than have
sunk so low as beasts and serpents, the baser images; though the first
had been infinitely unworthy of him, he being more above a man, though
the noblest creature, than man is above a worm, a toad, or the most
despicable creeping thing upon the earth. To think we can make an
image of God of a piece of marble, or an ingot of gold, is a greater
debasing of him, than it would be of a great prince, if you should
represent him in the statue of a frog. When the Israelites represented
God by a calf, it is said “they sinned a great sin” (Exod. xxxii. 31):
and the sin of Jeroboam, who intended only a representation of God by
the calves at Dan and Bethel, is called more emphatically,[391] “the
wickedness of your wickedness,” the very scum and dregs of wickedness.
As men debased God by this, so God debased men for this; he degraded
the Israelites into captivity, under the worst of their enemies, and
punished the heathens with spiritual judgments, as uncleanness through
the lusts of their own hearts (Rom. i. 24); which is repeated again
in other expressions (ver. 26, 27), as a meet recompense for their
disgracing the spiritual nature of God. Had God been like to man, they
had not offended in it; but I mention this, to show a probable reason
of those base lusts which are in the midst of us, that have scarce
been exceeded by any nation, viz., the unworthy and unspiritual
conceits of God, which are as much a debasing of him as material
images were when they were more rife in the world; and may be as well
the cause of spiritual judgments upon men, as the worshipping molten
and carved images were the cause of the same upon the heathen.
3. Yet this is natural to man. Wherein we may see the contrariety
of man to God. Though God be a Spirit, yet there is nothing man is
more prone to, than to represent him under a corporeal form. The
most famous guides of the heathen world have fashioned him, not only
according to the more honorable images of men, but bestialized him
in the form of a brute. The Egyptians, whose country was the school
of learning to Greece, were notoriously guilty of this brutishness in
worshipping an ox for an image of their God; and the Philistines their
Dagon, in a figure composed of the image of a woman and a fish:[392]
such representations were ancient in the oriental parts. The gods of
Laban, that he accuseth Jacob of stealing from him, are supposed to
be little figures of men.[393] Such was the Israelites’ golden calf;
their worship was not terminated on the image, but they worshipped the
true God under that representation; they could not be so brutish as to
call a calf their deliverer, and give him so great a title (“These be
thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt,”
Exod. xxxii. 4): or that which they knew belonged to the true God,
“the God of Abraham, Isaac, {a195} and Jacob.”[394] They knew the calf
to be formed of their ear‑rings, but they had consecrated it to God
as a representation of him; though they chose the form of the Egyptian
idol, yet they knew that Apis, Osiris, and Isis, the gods of the
Egyptians adored in that figure, had not wrought their redemption from
bondage, but would have used their force, had they been possessed of
any, to have kept them under the yoke, rather than have freed them
from it; the feast also which they celebrated before that image, is
called by Aaron the feast of the Lord (Exod. xxxii. 5); a feast to
Jehovah, the incommunicable name of the creator of the world; it is
therefore evident, that both the priest and the people pretended to
serve the true God, not any false divinity of Egypt; that God who
had rescued them from Egypt, with a mighty hand, divided the Red
Sea before them, destroyed their enemies, conducted them, fed them
by miracle, spoken to them from Mount Sinai, and amazed them by his
thunderings and lightnings when he instructed them by his law; a God
whom they could not so soon forget. And with this representing God
by that image, they are charged by the Psalmist (Psalm cvi. 19, 20),
“they made a calf in Horeb, and changed their glory into a similitude
of an ox that eateth grass:” they changed their glory, that is, God,
the glory of Israel; so that they took this figure for the image of
the true God of Israel, their own God; not the God of any other nation
in the world. Jeroboam intended no other by his calves, but symbols of
the presence of the true God; instead of the ark and the propitiatory
which remained among the Jews. We see the inclination of our natures
in the practice of the Israelites; a people chosen out of the whole
world to bear up God’s name, and preserve his glory; and in that the
images of God were so soon set up in the Christian church; and to this
day, the picture of God, in the shape of an old man, is visible in the
temple of the Romanists. It is prone to the nature of man,
4. To represent God by a corporeal image; and to worship him in and
by that image, is idolatry. Though the Israelites did not acknowledge
the calf to be God, nor intended a worship to any of the Egyptian
deities by it; but worshipped that God in it, who had so lately and
miraculously delivered them from a cruel servitude; and could not in
natural reason judge him to be clothed with a bodily shape, much less
to be like an ox that eateth grass; yet the apostle brings no less
a charge against them than that of idolatry (1 Cor. x. 7); he calls
them idolaters, who before that calf kept a feast to Jehovah, citing
Exod. xxxii. 5. Suppose we could make such an image of God as might
perfectly represent him; yet since God hath prohibited it, shall we
be wiser than God? He hath sufficiently manifested himself in his
works without images: He is seen in the creatures, more particularly
in the heavens, which declare his glory. His works are more excellent
representations of him, as being the works of his own hands, than
anything that is the product of the art of man. His glory sparkles in
the heavens, sun, moon, and stars, as being magnificent pieces of his
wisdom and power; yet the kissing the hand to the sun or the heavens,
as representatives of the {a196} excellency and majesty of God,
is idolatry in Scripture account, and a denial of God;[395] a
prostituting the glory of God to a creature. Either the worship is
terminated on the image itself, and then it is confessed by all to
be idolatry, because it is a giving that worship to a creature which
is the sole right of God, or not terminated in the image, but in
the object represented by it; it is then a foolish thing; we may as
well terminate our worship on the true object without, as with an
image.[396] An erected statue is no sign or symbol of God’s special
presence, as the ark, tabernacle, temple were. It is no part of divine
institution; has no authority of a command to support it; no cordial
of a promise to encourage it; and the image being infinitely distant
from, and below the majesty and spirituality of God, cannot constitute
one object of worship with him. To put a religious character upon any
image formed by the corrupt imagination of man, as a representation of
the invisible and spiritual Deity, is to think the Godhead to be like
silver and gold, or stone graven by art and man’s device.[397]
III. This doctrine will direct us in our conceptions of God, as a pure
perfect Spirit, than which nothing can be imagined more perfect, more
pure, more spiritual.
1. We cannot have an adequate or suitable conception of God: He dwells
in inaccessible light; inaccessible to the acuteness of our fancy,
as well as the weakness of our sense. If we could have thoughts of
him, as high and excellent as his nature, our conceptions must be as
infinite as his nature. All our imaginations of him cannot represent
him, because every created species is finite; it cannot therefore
represent to us a full and substantial notion of an infinite Being. We
cannot speak or think worthily enough of him, who is greater than our
words, vaster than our understandings. Whatsoever we speak or think
of God, is handed first to us by the notice we have of some perfection
in the creature, and explains to us some particular excellency of God,
rather than the fulness of his essence. No creature, nor all creatures
together, can furnish us with such a magnificent notion of God, as can
give us a clear view of him. Yet God in his word is pleased to step
below his own excellency, and point us to those excellencies in his
works, whereby we may ascend to the knowledge of those excellencies
which are in his nature. But the creatures, whence we draw our lessons,
being finite, and our understandings being finite, it is utterly
impossible to have a notion of God commensurate to the immensity and
spirituality of his being. “God is not like to visible creatures, nor
is there any proportion between him and the most spiritual.”[398] We
cannot have a full notion of a spiritual nature, much less can we have
of God, who is a Spirit above spirits. No spirit can clearly represent
him: the angels, that are great spirits, are bounded in their extent,
finite in their being, and of a mutable nature. Yet though we cannot
have a suitable conception of God, we must not content ourselves
without any conception of him. It is our sin not to endeavor after
a true notion of {a197} him: it is our sin to rest in a mean and
low notion of him, when our reason tells us we are capable of having
higher: but if we ascend as high as we can, though we shall then
come short of a suitable notion of him, this is not our sin, but our
weakness. God is infinitely superior to the choicest conceptions, not
only of a sinner, but of a creature. If all conceptions of God below
the true nature of God were sin, there is not a holy angel in heaven
free from sin; because, though they are the most capacious creatures,
yet they cannot have such a notion of an infinite Being as is fully
suitable to his nature, unless they were infinite as he himself is.
2. But, however, we must by no means conceive of God under a human or
corporeal shape. Since we cannot have conceptions honorable enough for
his nature, we must take heed we entertain not any which may debase
his nature; though we cannot comprehend him as he is, we must be
careful not to fancy him to be what he is not. It is a vain thing to
conceive him with human lineaments: we must think higher of him than
to ascribe to him so mean a shape: we deny his spirituality when we
fancy him under such a form. He is spiritual, and between that which
is spiritual and that which is corporeal, there is no resemblance.[399]
Indeed, Daniel saw God in a human form (Dan. vii. 9): “The Ancient
of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hairs of
his head like pure wool:” he is described as coming to judgment; it
is not meant of Christ probably, because Christ (ver. 13) is called
the Son of Man coming near to the Ancient of days. This is not the
proper shape of God, for no man hath seen his shape. It was a vision
wherein such representations were made, as were accommodated to
the inward sense of Daniel; Daniel saw him in a rapture or ecstacy,
wherein outward senses are of no use. God is described, not as he is
in himself, of a human form, but in regard of his fitness to judge:
“white,” notes the purity and simplicity of the Divine nature;
“Ancient of days,” in regard of his eternity; “white hair,” in regard
of his prudence and wisdom, which is more eminent in age than youth,
and more fit to discern causes and to distinguish between right and
wrong. Visions are riddles, and must not be understood in a literal
sense. We are to watch against such determinate conceptions of God.
Vain imaginations do easily infest us; tinder will not sooner take
fire than our natures kindle into wrong notions of the Divine Majesty.
We are very apt to fashion a god like ourselves; we must therefore
look upon such representations of God, as accommodated to our weakness:
and no more think them to be literal descriptions of God, as he is in
himself, than we will think the image of the sun in the water, to be
the true sun in the heavens. We may, indeed, conceive of Christ as man,
who hath in heaven the vestment of our nature, and is _Deus figuratus_,
though we cannot conceive the godhead under a human shape.
1. To have such a fancy is to disparage and wrong God. A corporeal
fancy of God is as ridiculous in itself, and as injurious to God,
as a wooden statue. The caprices of our imagination are often
more mysterious than the images which are the works of art; it is
as irreligious {a198} to measure God’s essence by our line, his
perfections by our imperfections, as to measure his thoughts and
actings by the weakness and unworthiness of our own. This is to limit
an infinite essence, and pull him down to our scanty measures, and
render that which is unconceivably above us, equal with us. It is
impossible we can conceive God after the manner of a body, but we
must bring him down to the proportion of a body, which is to diminish
his glory, and stoop him below the dignity of his nature. God is a
pure Spirit, he hath nothing of the nature and tincture of a body;
whosoever, therefore, conceives of him as having a bodily form, though
he fancy the most beautiful and comely body, instead of owning his
dignity, detracts from the super‑eminent excellency of his nature and
blessedness. When men fancy God like themselves in their corporeal
nature, they will soon make a progress, and ascribe to him their
corrupt nature; and while they clothe him with their bodies, invest
him also in the infirmities of them. God is a jealous God, very
sensible of any disgrace, and will be as much incensed against an
inward idolatry as an outward: that command which forbade corporeal
images,[400] would not indulge carnal imaginations; since the nature
of God is as much wronged by unworthy images, erected in the fancy,
as by statues carved out of stone or metals: one as well as the other
is a deserting of our true spouse, and committing adultery; one with
a material image, and the other with a carnal notion of God. Since
God humbles himself to our apprehensions, we should not debase him
in thinking him to be that in his nature, which he makes only a
resemblance of himself to us.
2. To have such fancies of God, will obstruct and pollute our worship
of him. How is it possible to give him a right worship, of whom we
have so debasing a notion? We shall never think a corporeal deity
worthy of a dedication of our spirits. The hating instruction, and
casting God’s word behind the back, is charged upon the imagination
they had, that “God was such a one as themselves” (Psalm l. 17, 21).
Many of the wiser heathens did not judge their statues to be their
gods, or their gods to be like their statues; but suited them to
their politic designs; and judged them a good invention to keep people
within the bounds of obedience and devotion, by such visible figures
of them, which might imprint a reverence and fear of those gods upon
them; but these are false measures; a despised and undervalued God is
not an object of petition or affection. Who would address seriously
to a God he has low apprehensions of? The more raised thoughts we have
of him, the viler sense we shall have of ourselves; they would make us
humble and self‑abhorrent in our supplications to him (Job xlii. 6):
“wherefore I abhor myself,” &c.
3. Though we must not conceive of God, as of a human or corporeal
shape; yet we cannot think of God, without some reflection upon our
own being. We cannot conceive him to be an intelligent being, but we
must make some comparison between him and our own understanding nature
to come to a knowledge of him. Since we are enclosed in bodies, we
apprehend nothing but what comes in {a199} by sense, and what we in
some sort measure by sensible objects. And in the consideration of
those things which we desire to abstract from sense, we are fain to
make use of the assistance of sense and visible things: and therefore
when we frame the highest notion, there will be some similitude of
some corporeal thing in our fancy; and though we would spiritualize
our thoughts, and aim at a more abstracted and raised understanding,
yet there will be some dregs of matter sticking to our conceptions;
yet we still judge by argument and reasoning, what the thing is we
think of under those material images. A corporeal image will follow
us, as the shadow doth the body.[401] While we are in the body, and
surrounded with fleshly matter, we cannot think of things without some
help from corporeal representations: something of sense will interpose
itself in our purest conceptions of spiritual things;[402] for the
faculties which serve for contemplation, are either corporeal, as the
sense and fancy, or so allied to them, that nothing passes into them
but by the organs of the body; so that there is a natural inclination
to figure nothing but under a corporeal notion, till by an attentive
application of the mind and reason to the object thought upon, we
separate that which is bodily from that which is spiritual, and by
degrees ascend to that true notion of that we think upon, and would
have a due conception of in our mind. Therefore God tempers the
declaration of himself to our weakness, and the condition of our
natures. He condescends to our littleness and narrowness, when he
declares himself by the similitude of bodily members. As the light of
the sun is tempered, and diffuseth itself to our sense through the air
and vapors, that our weak eyes may not be too much dazzled with it;
without it we could not know or judge of the sun, because we could
have no use of our sense, which we must have before we can judge of
it in our understanding; so we are not able to conceive of spiritual
beings in the purity of their own nature, without such a temperament,
and such shadows to usher them into our minds. And therefore we find
the Spirit of God accommodates himself to our contracted and teddered
capacities, and uses such expressions of God as are suited to us in
this state of flesh wherein we are. And therefore because we cannot
apprehend God in the simplicity of his own being, and his undivided
essence, he draws the representations of himself from several
creatures and several actions of those creatures: as sometimes he is
said to be angry, to walk, to sit, to fly; not that we should rest in
such conceptions of him, but take our rise from this foundation, and
such perfections in the creatures, to mount up to a knowledge of God’s
nature by those several steps, and conceive of him by those divided
excellencies, because we cannot conceive of him in the purity of
his own essence. We cannot possibly think or speak of God, unless we
transfer the names of created perfections to him;[403] yet we are to
conceive of them in a higher manner when we apply them to the Divine
nature, than when we consider them in the several creatures formally,
exceeding those perfections and excellencies which are in the creature,
and in a more excellent manner: “as one saith, though {a200} we cannot
comprehend God without the help of such resemblances, yet we may,
without making an image of him; so that inability of ours excuseth
those apprehensions of him from any way offending against his Divine
nature.”[404] These are not notions so much suited to the nature of
God as the weakness of man. They are helps to our meditations, but
ought not to be formal conceptions of him. We may assist ourselves in
our apprehensions of him, by considering the subtilty and spirituality
of air; and considering the members of a body, without thinking him
to be air, or to have any corporeal member. Our reason tells us,
that whatsoever is a body, is limited and bounded; and the notion
of infiniteness and bodiliness, cannot agree and consist together:
and therefore what is offered by our fancy should be purified by our
reason.
4. Therefore we are to elevate and refine all our notions of God, and
spiritualize our conceptions of him. Every man is to have a conception
of God; therefore he ought to have one of the highest elevation. Since
we cannot have a full notion of him, we should endeavor to make it as
high and as pure as we can. Though we cannot conceive of God, but some
corporeal representations or images in our minds will be conversant
with us, as motes in the air when we look upon the heavens, yet our
conceptions may and must rise higher. As when we see the draught of
the heavens and earth in a globe, or a kingdom in a map, it helps our
conceptions, but doth not terminate them: we conceive them to be of a
vast extent, far beyond that short description of them. So we should
endeavor to refine every representation of God, to rise higher and
higher, and have our apprehensions still more purified; separating the
perfect from the imperfect, casting away the one, and greatening the
other; conceive him to be a Spirit diffused through all, containing
all, perceiving all. All the perfections of God are infinitely
elevated above the excellencies of the creatures; above whatsoever
can be conceived by the clearest and most piercing understanding.
The nature of God as a Spirit is infinitely superior to whatsoever
we can conceive perfect in the notion of a created spirit. Whatsoever
God is, he is infinitely so: he is infinite Wisdom, infinite Goodness,
infinite Knowledge, infinite Power, infinite Spirit; infinitely
distant from the weakness of creatures, infinitely mounted above
the excellencies of creatures: as easy to be known that he is,
as impossible to be comprehended what he is. Conceive of him as
excellent, without any imperfection; a Spirit without parts; great
without quantity; perfect without quality; everywhere without place;
powerful without members; understanding without ignorance; wise
without reasoning; light without darkness; infinitely more excelling
the beauty of all creatures, than the light in the sun, pure and
unviolated, exceeds the splendor of the sun dispersed and divided
through a cloudy and misty air: and when you have risen to the highest,
conceive him yet infinitely above all you can conceive of spirit,
and acknowledge the infirmity of your own minds. And whatsoever
conception comes into your minds, say, This is not God; God is more
than this: if I could conceive {a201} him, he were not God; for God
is incomprehensibly above whatsoever I can say, whatsoever I can think
and conceive of him.
_Inference 1._ If God be a Spirit, no corporeal thing can defile
him. Some bring an argument against the omnipresence of God, that it
is a disparagement to the Divine essence to be everywhere, in nasty
cottages as well as beautiful palaces and garnished temples. What
place can defile a spirit? Is light, which approaches to the nature of
spirit, polluted by shining upon a dunghill, or a sunbeam tainted by
darting upon a quagmire? Doth an angel contract any soil, by stepping
into a nasty prison to deliver Peter? What can steam from the most
noisome body to pollute the spiritual nature of God? As he is “of
purer eyes than to behold iniquity,”[405] so he is of a more spiritual
substance than to contract any physical pollution from the places
where he doth diffuse himself. Did our Saviour, who had a true body,
derive any taint from the lepers he touched, the diseases he cured, or
the devils he expelled? God is a pure Spirit; plungeth himself into no
filth; is dashed with no spot by being present with all bodies. Bodies
only receive defilement from bodies.
_Inference 2._ If God be a Spirit, he is active and communicative.
He is not clogged with heavy and sluggish matter, which is cause of
dulness and inactivity. The more subtle, thin, and approaching nearer
the nature of a spirit anything is, the more diffusive it is. Air
is a gliding substance; spreads itself through all regions, pierceth
into all bodies; it fills the space between heaven and earth; there is
nothing but partakes of the virtue of it. Light, which is an emblem of
spirit, insinuates itself into all places, refresheth all things. As
spirits are fuller, so they are more overflowing, more piercing, more
operative than bodies. The Egyptian horses were weak things, because
they were “flesh, and not spirit.”[406] The soul being a spirit,
conveys more to the body than the body can to it. What cannot so
great a spirit do for us? What cannot so great a spirit work in us?
God, being a spirit above all spirits, can pierce into the centre of
all spirits; make his way into the most secret recesses; stamp what
he pleases. It is no more to him to turn our spirits, than to make a
wilderness become waters, and speak a chaos into a beautiful frame of
heaven and earth. He can act our souls with infinite more ease than
our souls can act our bodies; he can fix in us what motions, frames,
inclinations he pleases; he can come and settle in our hearts with
all his treasures. It is an encouragement to confide in him, when
we petition him for spiritual blessings: as he is a spirit, he is
possessed with “spiritual blessings.”[407] A spirit delights to bestow
things suitable to its nature, as bodies do to communicate what is
agreeable to theirs. As he is a Father of spirits, we may go to him
for the welfare of our spirits; he being a Spirit, is as able to
repair our spirits as he was to create them. As he is a Spirit, he is
indefatigable in acting. The members of the body tire and flag; but
who ever heard of a soul wearied with being active? who ever heard of
a weary angel? In the purest simplicity, there is the greatest power,
the most efficacious goodness, the most reaching justice to affect
the spirit, that can insinuate itself everywhere {a202} to punish
wickedness without weariness, as well as to comfort goodness. God
is active, because he is spirit; and if we be like to God, the more
spiritual we are, the more active we shall be.
_Inference 3._ God being a Spirit, is immortal. His being immortal,
and being invisible, are joined together.[408] Spirits are in their
nature incorruptible; they can only perish by that hand that framed
them. Every compounded thing is subject to mutation; but God, being
a pure and simple Spirit, is without corruption, without any shadow
of change.[409] Where there is composition, there is some kind
of repugnancy of one part against the other; and where there is
repugnancy, there is a capability of dissolution. God, in regard of
his infinite spirituality, hath nothing in his own nature contrary
to it; can have nothing in himself which is not himself. The world
perishes; friends change and are dissolved; bodies moulder, because
they are mutable. God is a Spirit in the highest excellency and glory
of spirits; nothing is beyond him; nothing above him; no contrariety
within him. This is our comfort, if we devote ourselves to him;
this God is our God; this Spirit is our Spirit; this is our all,
our immutable, our incorruptible support; a Spirit that cannot die
and leave us.
_Inference 4._ If God be a Spirit, we see how we can only converse
with him by our spirits. Bodies and spirits are not suitable to one
another: we can only see, know, embrace a spirit with our spirits. He
judges not of us by our corporeal actions, nor our external devotions
by our masks and disguises: he fixes his eye upon the frame of the
heart, bends his ear to the groans of our spirits. He is not pleased
with outward pomp. He is not a body; therefore the beauty of temples,
delicacy of sacrifices, fumes of incense, are not grateful to him;
by those, or any external action, we have no communion with him.
A spirit, when broken, is his delightful sacrifice;[410] we must
therefore, have our spirits fitted for him, “be renewed in the spirit
of our minds,”[411] that we may be in a posture to live with him, and
have an intercourse with him. We can never be united to God but in
our spirits: bodies unite with bodies, spirits with spirits. The more
spiritual anything is, the more closely doth it unite. Air hath the
closest union; nothing meets together sooner than that, when the parts
are divided by the interposition of a body.
_Inference 5._ If God be a Spirit, he can only be the true
satisfaction of our spirits: spirit can only be filled with spirit:
content flows from likeness and suitableness. As we have a resemblance
to God in regard of the spiritual nature of our soul, so we can have
no satisfaction but in him. Spirit can no more be really satisfied
with that which is corporeal, than a beast can delight in the company
of an angel. Corporeal things can no more fill a hungry spirit, than
pure spirit can feed an hungry body. God, the highest Spirit, can only
reach out a full content to our spirits. Man is lord of the creation:
nothing below him can be fit for his converse; nothing above him
offers itself to his converse but God. We have no correspondence with
angels. The influence they have upon us, the protection they {a203}
afford us, is secret and undiscerned; but God, the highest Spirit,
offers himself to us in his Son, in his ordinances, is visible in
every creature, presents himself to us in every providence; to him
we must seek; in him we must rest. God had no rest from the creation
till he had made man; and man can have no rest in the creation till
he rests in God. God only is our dwelling place;[412] our souls should
only long for him:[413] our souls should only wait upon him. The
spirit of man never riseth to its original glory, till it be carried
up on the wings of faith and love to its original copy. The face
of the soul looks most beautiful, when it is turned to the face of
God, the Father of spirits; when the derived spirit is fixed upon
the original Spirit, drawing from it life and glory. Spirit is only
the receptacle of spirit. God, as Spirit, is our principle; we must
therefore live upon him. God, as Spirit, hath some resemblance to us
as his image; we must, therefore, only satisfy ourselves in him.
_Inference 6._ If God be a Spirit, we should take most care of that
wherein we are like to God. Spirit is nobler than body; we must,
therefore, value our spirits above our bodies. The soul, as spirit,
partakes more of the divine nature, and deserves more of our choicest
cares. If we have any love to this Spirit, we should have a real
affection to our own spirits, as bearing a stamp of the spiritual
Divinity, the chiefest of all the works of God; as it is said of
behemoth (Job xl. 19). That which is most the image of this immense
spirit, should be our darling; so David calls his soul (Psalm xxxv.
17). Shall we take care of that wherein we partake not of God, and not
delight in the jewel which hath his own signature upon it? God was not
only the Framer of spirits, and the End of spirits; but the Copy and
Exemplar of spirits. God partakes of no corporeity; he is pure Spirit.
But how do we act, as if we were only matter and body! We have but
little kindness for this great Spirit as well as our own, if we take
no care of his immediate offspring, since he is not only Spirit, but
the Father of spirits.[414]
_Inference 7._ If God be a Spirit, let us take heed of those sins
which are spiritual. Paul distinguisheth between the filth of the
flesh, and that of the spirit.[415] By the one we defile the body;
by the other we defile the spirit, which, in regard of its nature, is
of kin to the Creator. To wrong one who is near of kin to a prince,
is worse than to injure an inferior subject. When we make our spirits,
which are most like to God in their nature, and framed according
to his image, a stage to act vain imaginations, wicked desires, and
unclean affections, we wrong God in the excellency of his work, and
reflect upon the nobleness of the pattern; we wrong him in that part
where he hath stamped the most signal character of his own spiritual
nature; we defile that whereby we have only converse with him as a
Spirit, which he hath ordered more immediately to represent him in
this nature, than all corporeal things in the world can, and make that
Spirit with whom we desire to be joined unfit for such a knot. God’s
spirituality is the root of his other perfections. We have already
heard he could not be infinite, omnipresent, immutable, without {a204}
it. Spiritual sins are the greatest root of bitterness within us.
As grace in our spirits renders us more like to a spiritual God, so
spiritual sins bring us into a conformity to a degraded devil.[416]
Carnal sins change us from men to brutes, and spiritual sins divest
us of the image of God for the image of Satan. We should by no means
make our spirits a dunghill, which bear upon them the character of
the spiritual nature of God, and were made for his residence. Let us,
therefore, behave ourselves towards God in all those ways which the
spiritual nature of God requires us.
{a205} DISCOURSE IV.
ON SPIRITUAL WORSHIP.
JOHN iv. 24.――God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth.
HAVING thus despatched the first proposition, “God is a Spirit,” it
will not be amiss to handle the inference our Saviour makes from that
proposition, which is the second observation propounded.
_Doct._ That the worship due from us to God ought to be spiritual, and
spiritually performed. Spirit and truth are understood variously. We
are to worship God,
1. Not by legal ceremonies. The evangelical administration being
called spirit, in opposition to the legal ordinances as carnal; and
truth in opposition to them as typical. As the whole Judaical service
is called flesh, so the whole evangelical service is called spirit; or
spirit may be opposed to the worship at Jerusalem, as it was carnal;
truth, to the worship on the Mount Gerizim, because it was false. They
had not the true object of worship, nor the true medium of worship
as those at Jerusalem had. Their worship should cease, because it was
false; and the Jewish worship should cease, because it was carnal.
There is no need of a candle when the sun spreads his beams in the air;
no need of those ceremonies when the Sun of righteousness appeared;
they only served for candles to instruct and direct men till the time
of his coming. The shadows are chased away by displaying the substance,
so that they can be of no more use in the worship of God, since the
end for which they were instituted is expired; and that discovered to
us in the gospel, which the Jews sought for in vain among the baggage
and stuff of their ceremonies.
2. With a spiritual and sincere frame. _In spirit_, _i. e._ with
spirit; with the inward operations of all the faculties of our souls,
and the cream and flower of them; and the reason is, because there
ought to be a worship suitable to the nature of God; and as the
worship was to be spiritual, so the exercise of that worship ought
to be in a spiritual manner.[417] It shall be a worship “in truth,”
because the true God shall be adored without those vain imaginations
and fantastic resemblances of him,[418] which were common among the
blind Gentiles, and contrary to the glorious nature of God, and
unworthy ingredients in religious services. It shall be a worship “in
spirit,” without those carnal rites the degenerate Jews rested on;
such a {a206} posture of soul which is the life and ornament of every
service God looks for at your hands. There must be some proportion
between the object adored, and the manner in which we adore it; it
must not be a mere corporeal worship, because God is not a body; but
it must rise from the centre of our soul, because God is a Spirit. If
he were a body, a bodily worship might suit him, images might be fit
to represent him; but being a Spirit, our bodily services enter us not
into communion with him. Being a spirit, we must banish from our minds
all carnal imaginations of him, and separate from our wills all cold
and dissembled affections to him. We must not only have a loud voice,
but an elevated soul; not only a bended knee, but a broken heart;
not only a supplicating tone, but a groaning spirit; not only a ready
ear for the word, but a receiving heart; and this shall be of greater
value with him, than the most costly outward services offered at
Gerizim or Jerusalem. Our Saviour certainly meant not by worshipping
in spirit, only the matter of the evangelical service, as opposed
to the legal administration, without the manner wherein it was to
be performed. It is true, God always sought a worship in spirit; he
expected the heart of the worshipper should join with his instituted
rights of adoration in every exercise of them; but he expects such a
carriage more under the gospel administration, because of the clearer
discoveries of his nature made in it, and the greater assistances
conveyed by it.
I shall, therefore, 1. Lay down some general propositions. 2. Show
what this spiritual worship is. 3. Why we must offer to God a
spiritual service. 4. The use.
1. Some general propositions.
_Prop. I._ The right exercise of worship is founded upon, and riseth
from, the spirituality of God.[419] The first ground of the worship
we render to God, is the infinite excellency of his nature, which
is not only one attribute, but results from all; for God, as God, is
the object of worship; and the notion of God consists not in thinking
him wise, good, just, but all those infinitely beyond any conception;
and hence it follows that God is an object infinitely to be loved and
honored. His goodness is sometimes spoken of in Scripture as a motive
of our homage (Psalm cxxx. 4): “There is forgiveness with thee that
thou mayest be feared.” Fear, in the Scripture dialect, signifies the
“whole worship of God” (Acts x. 35): but in every nation, “he that
fears him” is accepted of him.[420] If God should act towards men
according to the rigors of his justice due to them for the least of
their crimes, there could be no exercise of any affection but that
of despair, which could not engender a worship of God, which ought to
be joined with love, not with hatred. The beneficence and patience of
God, and his readiness to pardon men, is the reason of the honor they
return to him; and this is so evident a motive, that generally the
idolatrous world ranked those creatures in the number of their gods,
which they perceived useful and beneficial to mankind, as the sun
and moon, the Egyptians the ox, &c. And the more beneficial anything
appeared to mankind, the higher station men gave it in the rank
of their deities, and bestowed a more peculiar and solemn worship
{a207} upon it. Men worshipped God to procure and continue his favor,
which would not have been acted by them, had they not conceived it
a pleasing thing to him to be merciful and gracious. Sometimes his
justice is proposed to us as a motive of worship (Heb. xii. 28, 29):
“Serve God with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming
fire;” which includes his holiness, whereby he doth hate sin, as well
as his wrath, whereby he doth punish it. Who but a mad and totally
brutish person, or one that was resolved to make war against heaven,
could behold the effects of God’s anger in the world, consider him
in his justice as a “consuming fire,” and despise him, and rather be
drawn out by that consideration to blasphemy and despair, than to seek
all ways to appease him? Now though the infinite power of God, his
unspeakable wisdom, his incomprehensible goodness, the holiness of
his nature, the vigilance of his providence, the bounty of his hand,
signify to man that he should love and honor him, and are the motives
of worship; yet the spirituality of his nature is the rule of worship,
and directs us to render our duty to him with all the powers of our
soul. As his goodness beams out upon us, worship is due in justice to
him; and as he is the most excellent nature, veneration is due to him
in the highest manner with the choicest affections. So that indeed
the spirituality of God comes chiefly into consideration in matter of
worship: all his perfections are grounded upon this: he could not be
infinite, immutable, omniscient, if he were a corporeal being;[421] we
cannot give him a worship unless we judge him worthy, excellent, and
deserving a worship at our hands; and we cannot judge him worthy of
a worship, unless we have some apprehensions and admirations of his
infinite virtues; and we cannot apprehend and admire those perfections,
but as we see them as causes shining in their effects. When we see,
therefore, the frame of the world to be the work of his power, the
order of the world to be the fruit of his wisdom, and the usefulness
of the world to be the product of his goodness, we find the motives
and reasons of worship; and weighing that this power, wisdom, goodness,
infinitely transcend any corporeal nature, we find a rule of worship,
that it ought to be offered by us in a manner suitable to such a
nature as is infinitely above any bodily being. His being a Spirit
declares what he is; his other perfections declare what kind of Spirit
he is. All God’s perfections suppose him a Spirit; all centre in
this; his wisdom doth not suppose him merciful, or his mercy suppose
him omniscient; there may be distinct notions of those, but all
suppose him to be of a spiritual nature. How cold and frozen will our
devotions be, if we consider not his omniscience, whereby he discerns
our hearts! How carnal will our services be, if we consider him not as
a pure Spirit![422] In our offers to, and transactions with men, we
deal not with them as mere animals, but as rational creatures; and we
debase their natures if we treat them otherwise; and if we have not
raised apprehensions of God’s spiritual nature in our treating with
him, but allow him only such frames as we think fit enough for men, we
debase his spirituality to the littleness of our own being. We must,
therefore, possess our souls with {a208} this; we shall else render
him no better than a fleshly service. We do not much concern ourselves
in those things of which we are either utterly ignorant, or have but
slight apprehensions of. That is the first proposition;――The right
exercise of worship is grounded upon the spirituality of God.
_Prop. II._ This spiritual worship of God is manifest by the light of
nature, to be due to him. In reference to this, consider,
1. The outward means or matter of that worship which would be
acceptable to God, was not known by the light of nature. The law for a
worship, and for a spiritual worship by the faculties of our souls was
natural, and part of the law of creation; though the determination of
the particular acts, whereby God would have this homage testified, was
of positive institution, and depended not upon the law of creation.
Though Adam in innocence knew God was to be worshipped, yet by nature
he did not know by what outward acts he was to pay this respect, or at
what time he was more solemnly to be exercised in it than at another:
this depended upon the directions God, as the sovereign Governor
and Lawgiver, should prescribe. You therefore find the positive
institutions of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and the
determination of the time of worship (Gen. ii. 3, 17). Had there been
any such notion in Adam naturally, as strong as that other, that a
worship was due to God, there would have been found some relics of
these modes universally consented to by mankind, as well as of the
other. But though all nations have by an universal consent concurred
in the acknowledgment of the being of God, and his right to adoration,
and the obligation of the creature to it; and that there ought to be
some public rule and polity in matters of religion (for no nation hath
been in the world without a worship, and without external acts and
certain ceremonies to signify that worship); yet their modes and rites
have been as various as their climates, unless in that common notion
of sacrifices, not descending to them by nature, but tradition from
Adam; and the various ways of worship have been more provoking than
pleasing. Every nation suited the kind of worship to their particular
ends and polities they designed to rule by. How God was to be
worshipped is more difficult to be discerned by nature with its eyes
out than with its eyes clear.[423] The pillars upon which the worship
of God stands cannot be discerned without revelation, no more than
blind Samson could tell where the pillars of the Philistines’ theatre
stood, without one to conduct him. What Adam could not see with his
sound eyes, we cannot with our dim eyes; he must be told from heaven
what worship was fit for the God of heaven. It is not by nature that
we can have such a full prospect of God as may content and quiet us;
this is the noble effect of Divine revelation; He only knows himself,
and can only make himself known to us. It could not be supposed that
an infinite God should have no perfections but what were visible
in the works of his hands; and that these perfections should not
be infinitely greater, than as they were sensible in their present
effects: this had been to apprehend God a limited Being, meaner than
he is. Now it is impossible to honor God as we ought, {a209} unless we
know him as he is; and we could not know him as he is, without divine
revelation from himself; for none but God can acquaint us with his
own nature: and therefore the nations void of this conduct, heaped up
modes of worship from their own imaginations, unworthy of the majesty
of God, and below the nature of man. A rational man would scarce
have owned such for signs of honor, as the Scripture mentions in the
services of Baal and Dagon; much less an infinitely wise and glorious
God. And when God had signified his mind to his own people, how
unwilling were they to rest satisfied with God’s determination, but
would be warping to their own inventions, and make gods, and ways of
worship to themselves![424] as in the matter of the golden calf, as
was lately spoken of.
2. Though the outward manner of worship acceptable to God could not be
known without revelation, and those revelations might be various; yet
the inward manner of worship with our spirits was manifest by nature:
and not only manifest by nature to Adam in innocence, but after his
fall, and the scales he had brought upon his understanding by that
fall. When God gave him his positive institutions before the fall,
or whatsoever additions God should have made, had he persisted in
that state; or, when he appointed him, after his fall, to testify his
acknowledgment of him by sacrifices, there needed no command to him
to make those acknowledgments by those outward ways prescribed to
him, with the intention and prime affection of his spirit: this nature
would instruct him in without revelation; for he could not possibly
have any semblance of reason to think that the offering of beasts, or
the presenting the first fruits of the increase of the ground, as an
acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty over him and his bounty to him,
was sufficient, without devoting to him that part wherein the image
of his Creator did consist: he could not but discern, by a reflection
upon his own being, that he was made for God as well as by God: for it
is a natural principle of which the apostle speaks (Rom. xi. 36), “For
of him, and through him, and to him are all things,” &c.: that the
whole whereof he did consist was due to God; and that his body, the
dreggy and dusty part of his nature, was not fit to be brought alone
before God, without that nobler principle, which he had, by creation,
linked with it. Nothing in the whole law of nature, as it is informed
of religion, was clearer, next to the being of a God, than this manner
of worshipping God with the mind and spirit. And as the Gentiles
never sunk so low into the mud of idolatry, as to think the images
they worshipped were really their gods, but the representations, or
habitations of their gods; so they never deserted this principle in
the notion of it, that God was to be honored with the best they were,
and the best they had: as they never denied the being of a God in
the notion, though they did in the practice, so they never rejected
this principle in notion, though they did, and now most men do, in
the inward observation of it: it was a maxim among them that God was
_mens animus_, mind and spirit, and therefore was to be honored with
the mind and spirit: that religion did not consist in the ceremonies
of the body, but the work of the soul; whence the speech of one
of them: {a210} “Sacrifice to the gods, not so much clothed with
purple garments as a pure heart:”[425] and of another: “God regards
not the multitude of the sacrifices, but the disposition of the
sacrificer.”[426] It is not fit we should deny God the cream and the
flower, and give him the flotten part and the stalks. And with what
reverence and intention of mind they thought their worship was to be
performed, is evident by the priests crying out often, _Hoc age_, Mind
this, let your spirits be intent upon it. This could not but result,
(1.) From the knowledge of ourselves. It is a natural principle,
“God hath made us, and not we ourselves” (Psalm c. 1, 2). Man knows
himself to be a rational creature; as a creature he was to serve
his Creator, and as a rational creature with the best part of that
rational nature he derived from him. By the same act of reason that
he knows himself to be a creature, he knows himself to have a Creator;
that this Creator is more excellent than himself, and that an honor
is due from him to the Creator for framing of him; and, therefore,
this honor was to be offered to him by the most excellent part
which was framed by him. Man cannot consider himself as a thinking,
understanding, being, but he must know that he must give God the
honor of his thoughts, and worship him with those faculties whereby
he thinks, wills, and acts.[427] He must know his faculties were given
him to act, and to act for the glory of that God who gave him his soul,
and the faculties of it; and he could not in reason think they must be
only active in his own service, and the service of the creature, and
idle and unprofitable in the service of his Creator. With the same
powers of our soul, whereby we contemplate God, we must also worship
God; we cannot think of him but with our minds, nor love him but with
our will; and we cannot worship him without the acts of thinking and
loving, and therefore cannot worship him without the exercise of our
inward faculties: how is it possible then for any man that knows his
own nature, to think that extended hands, bended knees, and lifted up
eyes, were sufficient acts of worship, without a quickened and active
spirit?
(2.) From the knowledge of God. As there was a knowledge of God by
nature, so the same nature did dictate to man, that God was to be
glorified as God; the apostle implies the inference in the charge he
brings against them for neglecting it.[428] “We should speak of God
as he is,” said one;[429] and the same reason would inform them that
they were to act towards God as he is. The excellency of the object
required a worship according to the dignity of his nature, which could
not be answered but by the most serious inward affection, as well
as outward decency; and a want of this cannot but be judged to be
unbecoming the majesty of the Creator of the world, and the excellency
of religion. No nation, no person, did ever assert, that the vilest
part of man was enough for the most excellent Being, as God is; that a
bodily service could be a sufficient acknowledgment for the greatness
of God, or a sufficient return for the bounty of God. Man could not
but know that he was to act in religion conformably to the object
of religion, and to the excellency of his own {a211} soul:[430]
the notion of a God was sufficient to fill the mind of man with
admiration and reverence, and the first conclusion from it would be
to honor God, and that he have all the affection placed on him that so
infinite and spiritual a Being did deserve: the progress then would be,
that this excellent Being was to be honored with the motions of the
understanding and will, with the purest and most spiritual powers in
the nature of man, because he was a spiritual being, and had nothing
of matter mingled with him. Such a brutish imagination, to suppose
that blood and fumes, beasts and incense, could please a Deity,
without a spiritual frame, cannot be supposed to befall any but those
that had lost their reason in the rubbish of sense. Mere rational
nature could never conclude that so excellent a Spirit would be put
off with a mere animal service; an attendance of matter and body
without spirit, when they themselves, of an inferior nature, would
be loth to sit down contented with an outside service from those that
belong to them; so that this instruction of our Saviour, that God is
to be worshipped in spirit and truth, is conformable to the sentiments
of nature, and drawn from the most undeniable principles of it. The
excellency of God’s nature, and the excellent constitution of human
faculties, concur naturally to support this persuasion; this was as
natural to be known by men, as the necessity of justice and temperance
for the support of human societies and bodies. It is to be feared,
that if there be not among us such brutish apprehensions, there are
such brutish dealings with God, in our services, against the light of
nature; when we place all our worship of God in outward attendances
and drooping countenances, with unbelieving frames and formal
devotions; when prayer is muttered over in private, slightly, as
a parrot learns lessons by rote, not understanding what it speaks,
or to what end it speaks it; not glorifying God in thought and spirit,
with understanding and will.
_Prop. III._ Spiritual worship therefore was always required by
God, and always offered to him by one or other. Man had a perpetual
obligation upon him to such a worship from the nature of God; and
what is founded upon the nature of God is invariable. This and that
particular mode of worship may wax old as a garment, and as a vesture
may be folded up and changed, as the expression is of the heavens;[431]
but God endures forever; his spirituality fails not, therefore a
worship of him in spirit must run through all ways and rites of
worship. God must cease to be Spirit, before any service but that
which is spiritual can be accepted by him. The light of nature is
the light of God; the light of nature being unchangeable, what was
dictated by that, was alway, and will alway be, required by God.
The worship of God being perpetually due from the creature, the
worshipping him as God is as perpetually his right. Though the outward
expressions of his honor were different, one way in Paradise (for
a worship was then due, since a solemn time for that worship was
appointed), another under the law, another under the gospel; the
angels also worship God in heaven, and fall down before his throne;
yet, though they differ in rites, they agree in this necessary
ingredient, all rites, though of a different shape, {a212} must be
offered to him, not as carcasses, but animated with the affections of
the soul. Abel’s sacrifice had not been so excellent in God’s esteem,
without those gracious habits and affections working in his soul.[432]
Faith works by love; his heart was on fire as well as his sacrifice.
Cain rested upon his present; perhaps thought he had obliged God;
he depended upon the outward ceremony, but sought not for the inward
purity: it was an offering brought to the Lord;[433] he had the right
object, but not the right manner (Gen. iv. 7): “If thou doest well,
shalt thou not be accepted?” And in the command afterwards to Abraham,
“Walk before me, and be thou perfect,” was the direction in all our
religious acts and walkings with God. A sincere act of the mind and
will, looking above and beyond all symbols, extending the soul to
a pitch far above the body, and seeing the day of Christ through
the veil of the ceremonies, was required by God: and though Moses,
by God’s order, had instituted a multitude of carnal ordinances,
sacrifices, washings, oblations of sensible things, and recommended
to the people the diligent observation of those statutes, by the
allurements of promises and denouncing of threatenings; as if there
were nothing else to be regarded, and the true workings of grace were
to be buried under a heap of ceremonies; yet sometimes he doth point
them to the inward worship, and, by the command of God, requires of
them the “circumcision of the heart” (Deut. x. 16), the turning to
God with “all their heart and all their soul” (Deut. xxx. 10): whereby
they might recollect, that it was the engagement of the heart and the
worship of the Spirit that was most agreeable to God; and that he took
not any pleasure in their observance of ceremonies, without true piety
within, and the true purity of their thoughts.
_Prop. IV._ It is, therefore, as much every man’s duty to worship God
in spirit, as it is their duty to worship him. Worship is so due to
him as God, as that he that denies it disowns his deity; and spiritual
worship is so due, that he that waives it denies his spirituality. It
is a debt of justice we owe to God, to worship him; and it is as much
a debt of justice to worship him according to his nature. Worship is
nothing else but a rendering to God the honor that is due to him; and,
therefore, the right posture of our spirits in it is as much, or more,
due, than the material worship in the modes of his own prescribing:
that is, grounded both upon his nature and upon his command; this
only upon his command, that is perpetually due; whereas, the channel
wherein outward worship runs may be dried up, and the river diverted
another way; such a worship wherein the mind thinks of God, feels a
sense of God, has a spirit consecrated to God, the heart glowing with
affections to God; it is else a mocking God with a feather. A rational
nature must worship God with that wherein the glory of God doth most
sparkle in him. God is most visible in the frame of the soul, it is
there his image glitters; he hath given us a jewel as well as a case,
and the jewel as well as the case we must return to him; the spirit
is God’s gift, and must “return to him;”[434] it must return to him
in every service morally, as well as it must return to him at last
physically. It is not fit we should serve {a213} our Maker only with
that which is the brute in us, and withhold from him that which doth
constitute us reasonable creatures; we must give him our bodies, but
a “living sacrifice.”[435] If the spirit be absent from God when the
body is before him, we present a dead sacrifice; it is morally dead in
the duty, though it be naturally alive in the posture and action. It
is not an indifferent thing whether we shall worship God or no; nor is
it an indifferent thing whether we shall worship him with our spirits
or no; as the excellency of man’s knowledge consists in knowing things
as they are in truth, so the excellency of the will in willing things
as they are in goodness. As it is the excellency of man, to know God
as God; so it is no less his excellency, as well as his duty to honor
God as God. As the obligation we have to the power of God for our
being, binds us to a worship of him; so the obligation we have to his
bounty for fashioning us according to his own image, binds us to an
exercise of that part wherein his image doth consist. God hath “made
all things for himself” (Prov. xvi. 4), that is, for the evidence of
his own goodness and wisdom; we are therefore to render him a glory
according to the excellency of his nature, discovered in the frame of
our own. It is as much our sin not to glorify God as God, as not to
attempt the glorifying of him at all; it is our sin not to worship
God as God, as well as to omit the testifying any respect at all to
him. As the Divine nature is the object of worship, so the Divine
perfections are to be honored in worship; we do not honor God if we
honor him not as he is; we honor him not as a Spirit, if we think him
not worthy of the ardors and ravishing admirations of our spirits. If
we think the devotions of the body are sufficient for him, we contract
him into the condition of our own being; and not only deny him to be
a spiritual nature, but dash out all those perfections which he could
not be possessed of were he not a Spirit.
_Prop. V._ The ceremonial law was abolished to promote the
spirituality of divine worship. That service was gross, carnal,
calculated for an infant and sensitive church. It consisted in
rudiments, the circumcision of the flesh, the blood and smoke of
sacrifices, the steams of incense, observation of days, distinction
of meats, corporal purifications; every leaf of the law is clogged
with some rite to be particularly observed by them. The spirituality
of worship lay veiled under a thick cloud, that the people could not
behold the glory of the gospel, which lay covered under those shadows
(2 Cor. iii. 13): “They could not steadfastly look to the end of
that which is abolished:” They understood not the glory and spiritual
intent of the law, and therefore came short of that spiritual frame in
the worship of God, which was their duty. And therefore in opposition
to this administration, the worship of God under the gospel is called
by our Saviour in the text, a worship in spirit; more spiritual for
the matter, more spiritual for the motives, and more spiritual for
the manner and frames of worship.
1. This legal service is called flesh in Scripture, in opposition to
the gospel, which is called spirit. The ordinances of the law, though
of divine institution, are dignified by the apostle with no better a
{a214} title than carnal ordinances,[436] and a carnal command:[437]
but the gospel is called the ministration of the Spirit, as being
attended with a special and spiritual efficacy on the minds of
men.[438] And when the degenerate Galatians, after having tasted of
the pure streams of the gospel, turned about to drink of the thicker
streams of the law, the apostle tells them, that they begun in the
spirit and would now be made perfect in the flesh;[439] they would
leave the righteousness of faith for a justification by works. The
moral law, which is in its own nature spiritual,[440] in regard of
the abuse of it, in expectation of justification by the outward works
of it, is called flesh: much more may the ceremonial administration,
which was never intended to run parallel with the moral, nor had any
foundation in nature as the other had. That whole economy consisted
in sensible and material things, which only touched the flesh: it
is called the letter and the oldness of the letter;[441] as letters,
which are but empty sounds of themselves, but put together and formed
into words, signify something to the mind of the hearer or reader:
an old letter, a thing of no efficacy upon the spirit, but as a law
written upon paper. The gospel hath an efficacious spirit attending it,
strongly working upon the mind and will, and moulding the soul into
a spiritual frame for God, according to the doctrine of the gospel;
the one is old and decays, the other is new and increaseth daily. And
as the law itself is called flesh, so the observers of it and resters
in it are called Israel after the flesh;[442] and the evangelical
worshipper is called a Jew after the spirit (Rom. ii. 29). They were
Israel after the flesh as born of Jacob, not Israel after the spirit
as born of God; and therefore the apostle calls them Israel and not
Israel;[443] Israel after a carnal birth, not Israel after a spiritual;
Israel in the circumcision of the flesh, not Israel by a regeneration
of the heart.
2. The legal ceremonies were not a fit means to bring the heart
into a spiritual frame. They had a spiritual intent; the rock and
manna prefigured the salvation and spiritual nourishment by the
Redeemer.[444] The sacrifices were to point them to the justice of God
in the punishment of sin, and the mercy of God in substituting them
in their steads, as types of the Redeemer and the ransom by his blood.
The circumcision of the flesh was to instruct them in the circumcision
of the heart: they were flesh in regard of their matter, weakness and
cloudiness, spiritual in regard of their intent and signification;
they did instruct, but not efficaciously work strong spiritual
affections in the soul of the worshipper. They were weak and beggarly
elements;[445] had neither wealth to enrich nor strength to nourish
the soul: they could not perfect the comers to them, or put them
into a frame agreeable to the nature of God,[446] nor purge the
conscience from those dead and dull dispositions which were by nature
in them:[447] being carnal they could not have an efficacy to purify
the conscience of the offerer and work spiritual effects: had they
continued without the exhibition of Christ, they could never have
wrought any change in us or purchased {a215} any favor for us.[448]
At the best they were but shadows, and came inexpressibly short of the
efficacy of that person and state whose shadows they were. The shadow
of a man is too weak to perform what the man himself can do, because
it wants the life, spirit, and activity of the substance: the whole
pomp and scene was suited more to the sensitive than the intellectual
nature; and, like pictures, pleased the fancy of children rather than
improved their reason. The Jewish state was a state of childhood,[449]
and that administration a pedagogy.[450] The law was a schoolmaster
fitted for their weak and childish capacity, and could no more
spiritualize the heart, than the teachings in a primer‑school can
enable the mind, and make it fit for affairs of state; and because
they could not better the spirit, they were instituted only for a time,
as elements delivered to an infant age, which naturally lives a life
of sense rather than a life of reason. It was also a servile state,
which doth rather debase than elevate the mind; rather carnalize
than spiritualize the heart: besides, it is a sense of mercy that
both melts and elevates the heart into a spiritual frame: “There is
forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared;”[451] and they
had, in that state, but some glimmerings of mercy in the daily bloody
intimations of justice. There was no sacrifice for some sins, but
a cutting off without the least hints of pardon; and in the yearly
remembrance of sin there was as much to shiver them with fear, as to
possess them with hopes; and such a state which always held them under
the conscience of sin, could not produce a free spirit, which was
necessary for a worship of God according to his nature.
3. In their use they rather hindered than furthered a spiritual
worship. In their own nature they did not tend to the obstructing a
spiritual worship, for then they had been contrary to the nature of
religion, and the end of God who appointed them; nor did God cover the
evangelical doctrine under the clouds of the legal administration, to
hinder the people of Israel from perceiving it, but because they were
not yet capable to bear the splendor of it, had it been clearly set
before them. The shining of the face of Moses was too dazzling for
their weak eyes, and therefore there was a necessity of a veil, not
for the things themselves, but the “weakness of their eyes.”[452] The
carnal affections of that people sunk down into the things themselves;
stuck in the outward pomp, and pierced not through the veil to the
spiritual intent of them; and by the use of them without rational
conceptions, they besotted their minds and became senseless of those
spiritual motions required of them. Hence came all their expectations
of a carnal Messiah; the veil of ceremonies was so thick, and the film
upon their eyes so condensed, that they could not look through the
veil to the Spirit of Christ; they beheld not the heavenly Canaan for
the beauty of the earthly; nor minded the regeneration of the spirit,
while they rested upon the purifications of the flesh; the prevalency
of sense and sensitive affections diverted their minds from inquiring
into {a216} the intent of them. Sense and matter are often clogs to
the mind, and sensible objects are the same often to spiritual motions.
Our souls are never more raised than when they are abstracted from
the entanglements of them. A pompous worship, made up of many sensible
objects, weakens the spirituality of religion. Those that are most
zealous for outward, are usually most cold and indifferent in inward
observances; and those that overdo in carnal modes, usually underdo
in spiritual affections. This was the Jewish state.[453] The nature
of the ceremonies being pompous and earthly by their show and beauty,
meeting with their weakness and childish affections, filled their eyes
with an outward lustre, allured their minds and detained them from
seeking things higher and more spiritual; the kernel of those rights
lay concealed in a thick shell; the spiritual glory was little seen;
and the spiritual sweetness little tasted. Unless the Scripture be
diligently searched, it seems to transfer the worship of God from the
true faith and the spiritual motions of the heart, and stake it down
to outward observances, and the _opus operatum_. Besides, the voice
of the law did only declare sacrifices, and invited the worshippers to
them with a promise of the atonement of sin, turning away the wrath of
God. It never plainly acquainted them that those things were types and
shadows of something future; that they were only outward purifications
of the flesh; it never plainly told them, at the time of appointing
them, that those sacrifices could not abolish sin, and reconcile them
to God. Indeed, we see more of them since their death and dissection,
in that one Epistle to the Hebrews, than can be discerned in the five
books of Moses. Besides, man naturally affects a carnal life, and
therefore affects a carnal worship; he designs the gratifying his
sense, and would have a religion of the same nature. Most men have
no mind to busy their reasons about the things of sense, and are
naturally unwilling to raise them up to those things which are allied
to the spiritual nature of God; and therefore the more spiritual any
ordinance is, the more averse is the heart of man to it. There is a
simplicity of the gospel from which our minds are easily corrupted
by things that pleasure the sense, as Eve was by the curiosity of her
eyes, and the liquorishness of her palate.[454] From this principle
hath sprung all the idolatry in the world. The Jews knew they had a
God who had delivered them, but they would have a sensible God to go
before them;[455] and the papacy at this day is a witness of the truth
of this natural corruption.
4. Upon these accounts, therefore, God never testified himself well
pleased with that kind of worship. He was not displeased with them,
as they were his own institution, and ordained for the representing
(though in an obscure manner) the glorious things of the gospel; nor
was he offended with those people’s observance of them; for, since
he had commanded them, it was their duty to perform them, and their
sin to neglect them; but he was displeased with them as they were
practised by them, with souls as morally carnal in the practices, as
the ceremonies were materially carnal {a217} in their substance. It
was not their disobedience to observe them; but it was a disobedience,
and a contempt of the end of the institution to rest upon them; to be
warm in them, and cold in morals; they fed upon the bone and neglected
the marrow; pleased themselves with the shell, and sought not for the
kernel; they joined not with them the internal worship of God; fear
of him, with faith in the promised Seed, which lay veiled under those
coverings (Hos. vi. 6); “I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the
knowledge of God more than burnt‑offerings;” and therefore he seems
sometimes weary of his own institutions, and calls them not his own,
but their sacrifices, their feasts (Isa. i. 11, 14): they were his by
appointment, theirs by abuse; the institution was from his goodness
and condescension, therefore his; the corruption of them was from the
vice of their nature, therefore theirs. He often blamed them for their
carnality in them; showed his dislike of placing all their religion
in them; gives the sacrificers, on that account, no better a title
than that of the princes of Sodom and Gomorrah;[456] and compares
the sacrifices themselves to the “cutting off a dog’s neck,” “swine’s
blood,” and “the murder of a man.”[457] And indeed God never valued
them, or expressed any delight in them; he despised the feasts of the
wicked (Amos v. 21); and had no esteem for the material offerings of
the godly (Psalm l. 13): “Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the
blood of goats?” which he speaks to his saints and people, before he
comes to reprove the wicked; which he begins (ver. 16), “But to the
wicked, God said,” &c. So slightly he esteems them, that he seems to
disown them to be any part of his command, when he brought his people
out of the land of Egypt (Jer. vii. 21): “I spake not to your fathers,
nor commanded them concerning burnt‑offerings and sacrifices.” He did
not value and regard them, in comparison with that inward frame which
he had required by the moral law; that being given before the law
of ceremonies, obliged them, in the first place, to an observance of
those precepts. They seemed to be below the nature of God, and could
not of themselves please him. None could in reason persuade themselves
that the death of a beast was a proportionable offering for the sin of
a man, or ever was intended for the expiation of transgression. In the
same rank are all our bodily services under the gospel; a loud voice
without spirit, bended bulrushes without inward affections, are no
more delightful to God, than the sacrifices of animals; it is but a
change of one brute for another of a higher species; a mere brute for
that part of man which hath an agreement with brutes; such a service
is a mere animal service, and not spiritual.
5. And therefore God never intended that sort of worship to be durable,
and had often mentioned the change of it for one more spiritual. It
was not good or evil in itself; whatsoever goodness it had was solely
derived to it by institution, and therefore it was mutable. It had no
conformity with the spiritual nature of God who was to be worshipped,
nor with the rational nature of man who was to worship; and therefore
he often speaks of taking away the new {a218} moons, and feasts,
and sacrifices, and all the ceremonial worship, as things he took no
pleasure in, to have a worship more suited to his excellent nature;
but he never speaks of removing the gospel administration, and the
worship prescribed there, as being more agreeable to the nature and
perfections of God, and displaying them more illustriously to the
world. The apostle tells us, it was to be “disannulled because of its
weakness;”[458] a determinate time was fixed for its duration, till
the accomplishment of the truth figured under that pedagogy.[459] Some
of the modes of that worship being only typical, must naturally expire
and be insignificant in their use, upon the finishing of that by the
Redeemer, which they did prefigure: and other parts of it, though God
suffered them so long, because of the weakness of the worshipper, yet
because it became not God to be always worshipped in that manner, he
would reject them, and introduce another more spiritual and elevated.
“Incense and a pure offering” should be offered everywhere unto his
name.[460] He often told them he would make a “new covenant by the
Messiah,” and the old should be rejected;[461] that the “former things
should not be remembered, and the things of old no more considered,”
when he should do “a new thing in the earth.”[462] Even the ark of
the covenant, the symbol of his presence, and the glory of the Lord in
that nation, should not any more be remembered and visited;[463] that
the temple and sacrifices should be rejected, and others established;
that the order of the Aaronical priesthood should be abolished, and
that of Melchizedek set up in the stead of it, in the person of the
Messiah, to endure forever;[464] that Jerusalem should be changed;
a new heaven and earth created; a worship more conformable to heaven,
more advantageous to earth. God had proceeded in the removal of some
parts of it, before the time of taking down the whole furniture of
this house; the pot of manna was lost; Urim and Thummim ceased; the
glory of the temple was diminished; and the ignorant people wept at
the sight of the one, without raising their faith and hope in the
consideration of the other, which was promised to be filled with
a spiritual glory. And as soon as ever the gospel was spread in the
world, God thundered out his judgments upon that place in which he
had fixed all those legal observances; so that the Jews, in the letter
and flesh, could never practise the main part of their worship, since
they were expelled from that place where it was only to be celebrated.
It is one thousand six hundred years since they have been deprived
of their altar, which was the foundation of all the Levitical worship,
and have wandered in the world without a sacrifice, a prince, or
priest, an ephod or teraphim.[465] And God fully put an end to it
in the command he gave to the apostles, and in them to us, in the
presence of Moses and Elias, to hear his Son only (Matt. xvii. 5):
“Behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” And at the death of
our Saviour, testified it to that whole nation and the world, by
the rending in twain the veil of the temple. The whole frame of that
service, {a219} which was carnal, and, by reason of the corruption of
man, weakened, is nulled; and a spiritual worship is made known to the
world, that we might now serve God in a more spiritual manner, and
with more spiritual frames.
_Prop. VI._ The service and worship the gospel settles is spiritual,
and the performance of it more spiritual. Spirituality is the genius
of the gospel, as carnality was of the law; the gospel is therefore
called spirit; we are abstracted from the employments of sense, and
brought nearer to a heavenly state. The Jews had angels’ bread poured
upon them; we have angels’ service prescribed to us, the praises
of God, communion with God in spirit, through his Son Jesus Christ,
and stronger foundations for spiritual affections. It is called a
“reasonable service;”[466] it is suited to a rational nature, though
it finds no friendship from the corruption of reason. It prescribes
a service fit for the reasonable faculties of the soul, and advanceth
them while it employs them. The word reasonable may be translated
“word‑service,”[467] as well as reasonable service; an evangelical
service, in opposition to a law service. All evangelical service is
reasonable, and all truly reasonable service is evangelical.
The matter of the worship is spiritual; it consists in love of
God, faith in God, recourse to his goodness, meditation on him, and
communion with him. It lays aside the ceremonial, spiritualizeth the
moral. The commands that concerned our duty to God, as well as those
that concerned our duty to our neighbor, were reduced by Christ to
their spiritual intention. The motives are spiritual; it is a state
of more grace, as well as of more truth,[468] supported by spiritual
promises, beaming out in spiritual privileges; heaven comes down in
it to earth, to spiritualize earth for heaven. The manner of worship
is more spiritual; higher flights of the soul, stronger ardors
of affection, sincerer aims at his glory; mists are removed from
our minds, clogs from the soul, more of love than fear; faith in
Christ kindles the affections, and works by them. The assistances
to spiritual worship are greater. The Spirit doth not drop, but is
plentifully poured out. It doth not light sometimes upon, but dwells
in the heart. Christ suited the gospel to a spiritual heart, and the
Spirit changeth the carnal heart to make it fit for a spiritual gospel.
He blows upon the garden, and causes the spices to flow forth; and
often makes the soul in worship like the chariots of Aminadab, in a
quick and nimble motion. Our blessed Lord and Saviour, by his death,
discovered to us the nature of God; and after his ascension sent his
Spirit to fit us for the worship of God, and converse with him. One
spiritual evangelical believing breath is more delightful to God than
millions of altars made up of the richest pearls, and smoking with
the costliest oblations, because it is spiritual; and a mite of spirit
is of more worth than the greatest weight of flesh: one holy angel is
more excellent than a whole world of mere bodies.
_Prop. VII._ Yet the worship of God with our bodies is not to be
rejected upon the account that God requires a spiritual worship.
Though we must perform the weightier duties of the law, yet we are
{a220} not to omit and leave undone the lighter precepts, since both
the _magnalia_ and _minutula legis_, the greater and the lesser duties
of the law, have the stamp of divine authority upon them. As God under
the ceremonial law did not command the worship of the body and the
observation of outward rites without the engagement of the spirit,
so neither doth he command that of the spirit without the peculiar
attendance of the body. The Schwelksendians denied bodily worship;
and the indecent postures of many in public attendance intimate no
great care either of composing their bodies or spirits. A morally
discomposed body intimates a tainted heart. Our bodies as well as our
spirits are to be presented to God.[469] Our bodies in lieu of the
sacrifices of beasts, as in the Judaical institutions; body for the
whole man; a living sacrifice, not to be slain, as the beasts were,
but living a new life, in a holy posture, with crucified affections.
This is the inference the apostle makes of the privileges of
justification, adoption, co‑heirship with Christ, which he had before
discoursed of; privileges conferred upon the person, and not upon a
part of man.
1. Bodily worship is due to God. He hath a right to an adoration by
our bodies, as they are his by creation; his right is not diminished,
but increased, by the blessing of redemption: (1 Cor. vi. 20) “For
you are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your bodies and
your spirits, which are God’s.” The body, as well as the spirit, is
redeemed, since our Saviour suffered crucifixion in his body, as well
as agonies in his soul. Body is not taken here for the whole man, as
it may be in Rom xii.; but for the material part of our nature, it
being distinguished from the spirit. If we are to render to God an
obedience with our bodies, we are to render him such acts of worship
with our bodies as they are capable of. As God is the Father of
spirits, so he is the God of all flesh; therefore the flesh he hath
framed of the earth, as well as the noble portion he hath breathed
into us, cannot be denied him without a palpable injustice. The
service of the body we must not deny to God, unless we will deny him
to be the author of it, and the exercise of his providential care
about it. The mercies of God are renewed every day upon our bodies
as well as our souls, and, therefore, they ought to express a fealty
to God for his bounty every day. “Both are from God; both should be
for God. Man consists of body and soul; the service of man is the
service of both. The body is to be sanctified as well as the soul;
and, therefore, to be offered to God as well as the soul. Both are
to be glorified, both are to glorify. As our Saviour’s divinity was
manifested in his body, so should our spirituality in ours. To give
God the service of the body and not of the soul, is hypocrisy; to
give God the service of the spirit and not of the body, is sacrilege;
to give him neither, atheism.”[470] If the only part of man that
is visible were exempted from the service of God, there could be
no visible testimonies of piety given upon any occasion. Since not
a moiety of man, but the whole is God’s creature, he ought to pay
a homage with the whole, and not only with a moiety of himself.
{a221} 2. Worship in societies is due to God, but this cannot be
without some bodily expressions. The law of nature doth as much direct
men to combine together in public societies for the acknowledgment of
God, as in civil communities for self‑preservation and order; and a
notice of a society for religion is more ancient than the mention of
civil associations for politic government (Gen. iv. 26): “Then began
men to call upon the name of the Lord,” viz., in the time of Seth.
No question but Adam had worshipped God before, as well as Abel, and
a family religion had been preserved; but, as mankind increased in
distinct families, they knit together in companies to solemnize the
worship of God.[471] Hence, as some think, those that incorporated
together for such ends, were called the “sons of God;” sons by
profession, though not sons by adoption; as those of Corinth were
saints by profession, though in such a corrupted church they could
not be all so by regeneration; yet saints, as being of a Christian
society, and calling upon the name of Christ, that is, worshipping God
in Christ, though they might not be all saints in spirit and practice.
So Cain and Abel met together to worship (Gen. iv. 3) “at the end of
the days,” at a set time. God settled a public worship among the Jews,
instituted synagogues for their convening together, whence called the
“synagogues of God.”[472] The Sabbath was instituted to acknowledge
God a common benefactor. Public worship keeps up the memorials of God
in a world prone to atheism, and a sense of God in a heart prone to
forgetfulness. The angels sung in company, not singly, at the birth
of Christ,[473] and praised God not only with a simple elevation of
their spiritual nature, but audibly, by forming a voice in the air.
Affections are more lively, spirits more raised in public than private;
God will credit his own ordinance. Fire increaseth by laying together
many coals on one place; so is devotion inflamed by the union of
many hearts, and by a joint presence; nor can the approach of the
last day of judgment, or particular judgments upon a nation, give
a writ of ease from such assemblies. (Heb. x. 25): “Not forsaking the
assembling ourselves together; but so much the more as you see the
day approaching.” Whether it be understood of the day of judgment,
or the day of the Jewish destruction and the Christian persecution,
the apostle uses it as an argument to quicken them to the observance,
not to encourage them to a neglect. Since, therefore, natural
light informs us, and divine institution commands us, publicly to
acknowledge ourselves the servants of God, it implies the service of
the body. Such acknowledgments cannot be without visible testimonies,
and outward exercises of devotion, as well as inward affections. This
promotes God’s honor, checks others’ profaneness, allures men to the
same expressions of duty; and though there may be hypocrisy and an
outward garb without an inward frame, yet better a moiety of worship
than none at all; better acknowledge God’s right in one than disown it
in both.
3. Jesus Christ, the most spiritual worshipper, worshipped God
with his body. He prayed orally, and kneeled, “Father, if it be
{a222} thy will,”[474] &c. He blessed with his mouth, “Father, I thank
thee.”[475] He lifted up his eyes as well as elevated his spirit, when
he praised his Father for mercy received, or begged for the blessings
his disciples wanted.[476] The strength of the spirit must have vent
at the outward members. The holy men of God have employed the body in
significant expressions of worship; Abraham in falling on his face,
Paul in kneeling, employing their tongues, lifting up their hands.
Though Jacob was bed‑rid, yet he would not worship God without some
devout expression of reverence; it is in one place “leaning upon his
staff;”[477] in another, “bowing himself upon his bed’s head.”[478]
The reason of the diversity is in the Hebrew word, which, without
vowels, may be read _mittah_, a bedor _matteh_, a staff; however, both
signify a testimony of adoration by a reverent gesture of the body.
Indeed, in angels and separated souls, a worship is performed purely
by the spirit; but while the soul is in conjunction with the body, it
can hardly perform a serious act of worship without some tincture upon
the outward man and reverential composure of the body. Fire cannot be
in the clothes but it will be felt by the members, nor flames be pent
up in the soul without bursting out in the body. The heart can no
more restrain itself from breaking out, than Joseph could inclose his
affections without expressing them in tears to his brethren.[479] “We
believe, and therefore speak.”[480]
To conclude: God hath appointed some parts of worship which cannot
be performed without the body, as sacraments; we have need of them
because we are not wholly spiritual and incorporeal creatures. The
religion which consists in externals only is not for an intellectual
nature; a worship purely intellectual is too sublime for a nature
allied to sense, and depending much upon it. The christian mode of
worship is proportioned to both; it makes the sense to assist the
mind, and elevates the spirit above the sense. Bodily worship helps
the spiritual: the members of the body reflect back upon the heart,
the voice bars distractions, the tongue sets the heart on fire in good
as well as in evil. It is as much against the light of nature to serve
God without external significations, as to serve him only with them
without the intention of the mind. As the invisible God declares
himself to men by visible works and signs, so should we declare our
invisible frames by visible expressions. God hath given us a soul and
body in conjunction; and we are to serve him in the same manner he
hath framed us.
II. The second thing I am to show is, what spiritual worship is. In
general, the whole spirit is to be employed; the name of God is not
sanctified but by the engagement of our souls. Worship is an act of
the understanding, applying itself to the knowledge of the excellency
of God and actual thoughts of his majesty; recognizing him as the
supreme Lord and Governor of the world, which is natural knowledge;
beholding the glory of his attributes in the Redeemer, which is
evangelical knowledge. This is the sole act of the spirit of man. The
same reason is for all our worship as for our thanksgiving. This must
be done with understanding: (Psalm xlvii. 7) {a223} “Sing ye praise
with understanding;” with a knowledge and sense of his greatness,
goodness, and wisdom. It is also an act of the will, whereby the soul
adores and reverences his majesty, is ravished with his amiableness,
embraceth his goodness, enters itself into an intimate communion with
this most lovely object, and pitcheth all his affections upon him. We
must worship God understandingly; it is not else a reasonable service.
The nature of God and the law of God abhor a blind offering; we must
worship him heartily, else we offer him a dead sacrifice. A reasonable
service is that wherein the mind doth truly act something with God.
All spiritual acts must be acts of reason, otherwise they are not
human acts, because they want that principle which is constitutive of
man, and doth difference him from other creatures. Acts done only by
sense are the acts of a brute; acts done by reason are the acts of a
man. That which is only an act of sense cannot be an act of religion.
The sense, without the conduct of reason, is not the subject of
religious acts; for then beasts were capable of religion as well as
men. There cannot be religion where there is not reason; and there
cannot be the exercise of religion where there is not an exercise of
the rational faculties; nothing can be a christian act that is not a
human act. Besides, all worship must be for some end; the worship of
God must be for God. It is by the exercise of our rational faculties
that we only can intend an end. An ignorant and carnal worship is a
brutish worship. Particularly,
1. Spiritual worship is a worship from a spiritual nature. Not only
physically spiritual, so our souls are in their frame; but morally
spiritual, by a renewing principle. The heart must be first cast into
the mould of the gospel, before it can perform a worship required by
the gospel. Adam living in Paradise might perform a spiritual worship;
but Adam fallen from his rectitude could not: we, being heirs of his
nature, are heirs of his impotence. Restoration to a spiritual life
must precede any act of spiritual worship. As no work can be good,
so no worship can be spiritual, till we are created in Christ.[481]
Christ is our life.[482] As no natural action can be performed without
life in the root or heart, so no spiritual act without Christ in the
soul. Our being in Christ is as necessary to every spiritual act as
the union of our soul with our body is necessary to natural action.
Nothing can exceed the limits of its nature; for then it should
exceed itself in acting, and do that which it hath no principle to do.
A beast cannot act like a man, without partaking of the nature of a
man; nor a man act like an angel, without partaking of the angelical
nature. How can we perform spiritual acts without a spiritual
principle? Whatsoever worship proceeds from the corrupted nature,
cannot deserve the title of spiritual worship, because it springs
not from a spiritual habit. If those that are evil cannot speak good
things, those that are carnal cannot offer a spiritual service. Poison
is the fruit of a viper’s nature (Matt. xii. 34): “O generation of
vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? for out of the
abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” As the root is, so is the
fruit. If the soul be habitually carnal, {a224} the worship cannot
be actually spiritual. There may be an intention of spirit, but there
is no spiritual principle as a root of that intention. A heart may
be sensibly united with a duty, when it is not spiritually united
with Christ in it. Carnal motives and carnal ends may fix the mind
in an act of worship, as the sense of some pressing affliction may
enlarge a man’s mind in prayer. Whatsoever is agreeable to the nature
of God must have a stamp of Christ upon it; a stamp of his grace
in performance, as well as of his mediation in the acceptance. The
apostle lived not, but Christ lived in him;[483] the soul worships
not, but Christ in him. Not that Christ performs the act of worship,
but enables us spiritually to worship, after he enables us spiritually
to live. As God counts not any soul living but in Christ, so he
counts not any a spiritual worshipper but in Christ. The goodness and
fatness of the fruit come from the fatness of the olive wherein we are
engrafted. We must find healing in Christ’s wings, before God can find
spirituality in our services. All worship issuing from a dead nature
is but a dead service. A living action cannot be performed, without
being knit to a living root.
2. Spiritual worship is done by the influence and with the assistance
of the Spirit of God. A heart may be spiritual, when a particular act
of worship may not be spiritual. The Spirit may dwell in the heart,
when he may suspend his influence on the act. Our worship is then
spiritual, when the fire that kindles our affections comes from heaven,
as that fire upon the altar wherewith the sacrifices were consumed.
God tastes a sweetness in no service, but as it is dressed up by the
hand of the Mediator, and hath the air of his own Spirit in it; they
are but natural acts, without a supernatural assistance; without
an actual influence, we cannot act from spiritual motives, nor for
spiritual ends, nor in a spiritual manner. We cannot mortify a lust
without the Spirit,[484] nor quicken a service without the Spirit.
Whatsoever corruption is killed, is slain by his power; whatsoever
duty is spiritualized, is refined by his breath. He quickens our
dead bodies in our resurrection;[485] he renews our dead souls in our
regeneration; he quickens our carnal services in our adorations; the
choicest acts of worship are but infirmities without his auxiliary
help.[486] We are logs, unable to move ourselves, till he raise our
faculties to a pitch agreeable to God; puts his hand to the duty, and
lifts that up and us with it. Never any great act was performed by the
apostles to God, or for God; but they are said to be filled with the
Holy Ghost. Christ could not have been conceived immaculate as that
“holy thing,” without the Spirit’s overshadowing the Virgin; nor any
spiritual act conceived in our heart, without the Spirit’s moving
upon us, to bring forth a living religion from us. The acts of worship
are said to be in the Spirit, “supplication in the Spirit;”[487]
not only with the strength and affection of our own spirits, but
with the mighty operation of the Holy Ghost, if Jude may be the
interpreter;[488] the Holy Ghost exciting us, impelling us, and firing
our souls by his divine flame; raising up the affections, and making
the {a225} soul cry with a holy importunity, Abba, Father. To render
our worship spiritual, we should, before every engagement in it,
implore the actual presence of the Spirit, without which we are not
able to send forth one spiritual breath or groan; but be wind‑bound
like a ship without a gale, and our worship be no better than carnal.
How doth the spouse solicit the Spirit with an “Awake, O north wind,
and come, thou south wind,”[489] &c.
3. Spiritual worship is done with sincerity. When the heart stands
right to God, and the soul performs what it pretends to perform; when
we serve God with our spirits, as the apostle (Rom. i. 9), “God is
my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son:”
this is not meant of the Holy Ghost; for the apostle would never have
called the Spirit of God his own spirit; but with my spirit, that
is, a sincere frame of heart. A carnal worship, whether under the law
or gospel, is, when we are busied about external rites, without an
inward compliance of soul. God demands the heart; “My son, give me thy
heart;”[490] not give me thy tongue, or thy lips, or thy hands; these
may be given without the heart, but the heart can never be bestowed
without these as its attendants. A heap of services can be no more
welcome to God, without our spirits, than all Jacob’s sons could be
to Joseph, without the Benjamin he desired to see. God is not taken
with the cabinet, but the jewel; he first respected Abel’s faith and
sincerity, and then his sacrifice; he disrespected Cain’s infidelity
and hypocrisy, and then his offering. For this cause he rejected the
offerings of the Jews, the prayers of the Pharisees, and the alms of
Ananias and Sapphira, because their hearts and their duties were at
a distance from one another. In all spiritual sacrifices, our spirits
are God’s portion. Under the law, the reins were to be consumed by
the fire on the altar, because the secret intentions of the heart were
signified by them (Psalm vii. 9), “The Lord trieth the heart and the
reins.” It was an ill omen among the heathen, if a victim wanted a
heart. The widow’s mites, with her heart in them, were more esteemed
than the richer offerings without it.[491] Not the quantity of service,
but the will in it, is of account with this infinite Spirit. All
that was to be brought for the framing of the tabernacle was to be
offered “willingly with the heart.”[492] The more of will, the more of
spirituality and acceptableness to God (Psalm cxix. 108), “Accept the
free‑will offering of my lips.” Sincerity is the salt which seasons
every sacrifice. The heart is most like to the object of worship; the
heart in the body is the spring of all vital actions; and a spiritual
soul is the spring of all spiritual actions. How can we imagine God
can delight in the mere service of the body, any more than we can
delight in converse with a carcass? Without the heart it is no worship;
it is a stage play; an acting a part without being that person really
which is acted by us: a hypocrite, in the notion of the word, is a
stage‑player. We may as well say a man may believe with his body, as
worship God only with his body. Faith is a great ingredient in worship;
and it is “with the heart man believes unto righteousness.”[493] We
may be truly said to worship God, {a226} though we want perfection;
but we cannot be said to worship him, if we want sincerity; a statue
upon a tomb, with eyes and hands lifted up, offers as good and true
a service; it wants only a voice, the gestures and postures are the
same; nay, the service is better; it is not a mockery; it represents
all that it can be framed to; but to worship without our spirits, is
a presenting God with a picture, an echo, voice, and nothing else;
a compliment; a mere lie; a “compassing him about with lies.”[494]
Without the heart the tongue is a liar; and the greatest zeal
a dissembling with him. To present the spirit, is to present with
that which can never naturally die; to present him only the body, is
to present him that which is every day crumbling to dust, and will at
last lie rotting in the grave; to offer him a few rags, easily torn; a
skin for a sacrifice, a thing unworthy the majesty of God; a fixed eye
and elevated hands, with a sleepy heart and earthly soul, are pitiful
things for an ever‑blessed and glorious Spirit: nay, it is so far
from being spiritual, that it is blasphemy; to pretend to be a Jew
outwardly, without being so inwardly, is, in the judgment of Christ,
to blaspheme.[495] And is not the same title to be given with as much
reason to those that pretend a worship and perform none? Such a one is
not a spiritual worshipper, but a blaspheming devil in Samuel’s mantle.
4. Spiritual worship is performed with an unitedness of heart.
The heart is not only now and then with God, but “united to fear or
worship his name.”[496] A spiritual duty must have the engagement
of the spirit, and the thoughts tied up to the spiritual object. The
union of all the parts of the heart together with the body is the
life of the body; and the moral union of our hearts is the life of any
duty. A heart quickly flitting from God makes not God his treasure; he
slights the worship, and therein affronts the object of worship. All
our thoughts ought to be ravished with God; bound up in him as in a
bundle of life; but when we start from him to gaze after every feather,
and run after every bubble, we disown a full and affecting excellency,
and a satisfying sweetness in him. When our thoughts run from God, it
is a testimony we have no spiritual affection to God; affection would
stake down the thoughts to the object affected; it is but a mouth love,
as the prophet praiseth it;[497] but their hearts go “after their
covetousness;” covetous objects pipe, and the heart danceth after them;
and thoughts of God are shifted off to receive a multitude of other
imaginations; the heart and the service staid awhile together, and
then took leave of one another. The Psalmist[498] still found his
heart with God when he awaked; still with God in spiritual affections
and fixed meditations. A carnal heart is seldom with God, either in or
out of worship; if God should knock at the heart in any duty, it would
be found not at home, but straying abroad. Our worship is spiritual
when the door of the heart is shut against all intruders, as our
Saviour commands in closet‑duties.[499] It was not his meaning to
command the shutting the closet‑door, and leave the heart‑door open
for every thought that would be apt to haunt us. Worldly affections
are to be laid aside if we would have {a227} our worship spiritual;
this was meant by the Jewish custom of wiping or washing off the
dust of their feet before their entrance into the temple, and of not
bringing money in their girdles. To be spiritual in worship, is to
have our souls gathered and bound up wholly in themselves, and offered
to God. Our loins must be girt, as the fashion was in the eastern
countries, where they wore long garments, that they might not waver
with the wind, and be blown between their legs, to obstruct them in
their travel: our faculties must not hang loose about us. He is a
carnal worshipper that gives God but a piece of his heart, as well as
he that denies him the whole of it; that hath some thoughts pitched
upon God in worship, and as many willingly upon the world. David
sought God, not with a moiety of his heart, but with his “whole heart;”
with his entire frame;[500] he brought not half his heart, and left
the other in the possession of another master. It was a good lesson
Pythagoras gave his scholars,[501] “Not to make the observance of God
a work by the bye.” If those guests be invited, or entertained kindly,
or if they come unexpected, the spirituality of that worship is lost;
the soul kicks down what it wrought before: but if they be brow‑beaten
by us, and our grief rather than our pleasure, they divert our
spiritual intention from the work in hand, but hinder not God’s
acceptance of it as spiritual, because they are not the acts of our
will, but offences to our wills.
5. Spiritual worship is performed with a spiritual activity, and
sensibleness of God; with an active understanding to meditate on his
excellency, and an active will to embrace him when he drops upon the
soul. If we understand the amiableness of God, our affections will be
ravished; if we understand the immensity of his goodness, our spirits
will be enlarged. We are to act with the highest intention suitable
to the greatness of that God with whom we have to do (Psalm cl. 2):
“Praise him according to his excellent greatness;” not that we can
worship him equally, but in some proportion the frame of the heart is
to be suited to the excellency of the object; our spiritual strength
is to be put out to the utmost, as creatures that act naturally do.
The sun shines, and the fire burns to the utmost of their natural
power. This is so necessary, that David, a spiritual worshipper,
prays for it before he sets upon acts of adoration (Psalm lxxx. 18):
“Quicken us, that we may call upon thy name;” as he was loth to have
a drowsy faculty, he was loth to have a drowsy instrument, and would
willingly have them as lively as himself (Psalm lvii. 8): “Awake up,
my glory; awake, psaltery and harp; I myself will awake early.” How
would this divine soul screw himself up to God, and be turned into
nothing but a holy flame! Our souls must be boiling hot when we serve
the Lord.[502] The heart doth no less burn when it spiritually comes
to God, than when God doth spiritually approach to it;[503] a Nabal’s
heart, one as cold as a stone, cannot offer up a spiritual service.
Whatsoever is enjoined us as our duty, ought to be performed with the
greatest intenseness of our spirit. As it {a228} is our duty to pray,
so it is our duty to pray with the most fervent importunity. It is
our duty to love God, but with the purest and most sublime affections;
every command of God requires the whole strength of the creature to be
employed in it. That love to God wherein all our duty to God is summed
up, is to be with all our strength, with all our might, &c.[504]
Though in the covenant of grace he hath mitigated the severity of the
law, and requires not from us such an elevation of our affections as
was possible in the state of innocence, yet God requires of us the
utmost moral industry to raise our affections to a pitch, at least
equal to what they are in other things. What strength of affection
we naturally have, ought to be as much and more excited in acts of
worship, than upon other occasions and our ordinary works. As there
was an inactivity of soul in worship, and a quickness to sin, when
sin had the dominion; so when the soul is spiritualized, the temper is
changed; there is an inactivity to sin, and an ardor in duty; the more
the soul is “dead to sin,” the more it is “alive to God,”[505] and
the more lively too in all that concerns God and his honor; for grace
being a new strength added to our natural, determines the affections
to new objects, and excites them to a greater vigor. And as the
hatred of sin is more sharp, the love to everything that destroys the
dominion of it is more strong; and acts of worship may be reckoned as
the chiefest batteries against the power of this inbred enemy. When
the Spirit is in the soul, like the rivers of waters flowing out of
the belly, the soul hath the activity of a river, and makes haste to
be swallowed up in God, as the streams of the river in the sea. Christ
makes his people “kings and priests to God;”[506] first kings, then
priests; gives first a royal temper of heart, that they may offer
spiritual sacrifices as priests, kings and priests to God, acting
with a magnificent spirit in all their motions to him. We cannot be
spiritual priests, till we be spiritual kings. The Spirit appeared in
the likeness of fire, and where he resides, communicates, like fire,
purity and activity. Dulness is against the light of nature. I do not
remember that the heathen ever offered a snail to any of their false
deities, nor an ass, but to Priapus, their unclean idol; but the
Persians sacrificed to the sun a horse, a swift and generous creature.
God provided against those in the law, commanding an ass’ firstling,
the offspring of a sluggish creature, to be redeemed, or his neck
broke, but by no means to be offered to him.[507] God is a Spirit
infinitely active, and therefore frozen and benumbed frames are
unsuitable to him; he “rides upon a cherub” and flies; he comes upon
the “wings of the wind;” he rides upon a “swift cloud;”[508] and
therefore demands of us not a dull reason, but an active spirit. God
is a living God, and therefore must have a lively service. Christ is
life, and slothful adorations are not fit to be offered up in the name
of life. The worship of God is called wrestling in Scripture; and Paul
was a striver in the service of his Master,[509] “in an agony.”[510]
Angels worshipped God spiritually with their wings on; and when God
commands them to worship Christ, the next Scripture quoted is, that
he makes them {a229} “flames of fire.”[511] If it be thus, how may
we charge ourselves? What Paul said of the sensual widow,[512] that
she is “dead while she lives,” we may say often of ourselves, we are
dead while we worship. Our hearts are in duty as the Jews were in
deliverances, as those “in a dream;”[513] by which unexpectedness
God showed the greatness of his care and mercy; and we attend him as
men in a dream, whereby we discover our negligence and folly. This
activity doth not consist in outward acts; the body may be hot, and
the heart may be faint, but in an inward stirring, meltings, flights.
In the highest raptures the body is most insensible. Strong spiritual
affections are abstracted from outward sense.
6. Spiritual worship is performed with acting spiritual habits. When
all the living springs of grace are opened, as the fountains of the
deep were in the deluge, the soul and all that is within it, all the
spiritual impresses of God upon it, erect themselves to “bless his
holy name.”[514] This is necessary to make a worship spiritual. As
natural agents are determined to act suitable to their proper nature,
so rational agents are to act conformable to a rational being. When
there is a conformity between the act and the nature whence it flows,
it is a good act in its kind; if it be rational, it is a good rational
act, because suitable to its principle; as a man endowed with reason
must act suitable to that endowment, and exercise his reason in his
acting; so a Christian endued with grace, must act suitable to that
nature, and exercise his grace in his acting. Acts done by a natural
inclination are no more human acts than the natural acts of a beast
may be said to be human; though they are the acts of a man, as he is
the efficient cause of them, yet they are not human acts, because they
arise not from that principle of reason which denominates him a man.
So acts of worship performed by a bare exercise of reason, are not
christian and spiritual acts, because they come not from the principle
which constitutes him a Christian; reason is not the principle, for
then all rational creatures would be Christians. They ought, therefore,
to be acts of a higher principle, exercises of that grace whereby
Christians are what they are; not but that rational acts in worship
are due to God, for worship is due from us as men, and we are settled
in that rank of being by our reason. Grace doth not exclude reason,
but ennobles it, and calls it up to another form; but we must not rest
in a bare rational worship, but exert that principle whereby we are
Christians. To worship God with our reason, is to worship him as men;
to worship God with our grace is to worship him as Christians, and
so spiritually; but to worship him only with our bodies, is no better
than brutes. Our desires of the word are to issue from the regenerate
principle (1 Pet. ii. 2): “As new‑born babes desire the sincere milk
of the word;” it seems to be not a comparison, but a restriction.
All worship must have the same spring, and be the exercise of that
principle, otherwise we can have no communion with God. Friends that
have the same habitual dispositions, have a fundamental fitness for an
agreeable converse with one another; but if the temper wherein their
likeness consists be languishing, and the string out of tune, there is
not an actual fitness; {a230} and the present indisposition breaks the
converse, and renders the company troublesome. Though we may have the
habitual graces which compose in us a resemblance to God, yet for want
of acting those suitable dispositions, we render ourselves unfit for
his converse, and make the worship, which is fundamentally spiritual,
to become actually carnal. As the will cannot naturally act to any
object but by the exercise of its affections, so the heart cannot
spiritually act towards God but by the exercise of graces. This is
God’s music (Eph. v. 19): “Singing and making melody to God in your
hearts.” Singing and all other acts of worship are outward, but the
spiritual melody is “by grace in the heart” (Col. iii. 16): this
renders it a spiritual worship; for it is an effect of the fulness of
the spirit in the soul, as (ver. 19), “But be filled with the Spirit.”
The overflowing of the Spirit in the heart, setting the soul of a
believer thus on work to make a spiritual melody to God, shows that
something higher than bare reason is put in tune in the heart. Then
is the fruit of the garden pleasant to Christ, when the Holy Spirit,
“the north and south wind, blow upon the spices,” and strike out the
fragrancy of them.[515] Since God is the Author of graces, and bestows
them to have a glory from them, they are best employed about him and
his service. It is fit he should have the cream of his own gifts.
Without the exercise of grace we perform but a work of nature, and
offer him a few dry bones without marrow. The whole set of graces must
be one way or other exercised. If any treble be wanting in a lute,
there will be great defect in the music. If any one spiritual string
be dull, the spiritual harmony of worship will be spoiled. And
therefore;
1. Faith must be acted in worship; a confidence in God. A natural
worship cannot be performed without a natural confidence in the
goodness of God; whosoever comes to him, must regard him as a rewarder,
and a faithful Creator.[516] A spiritual worship cannot be performed
without an evangelical confidence in him as a gracious Redeemer. To
think him a tyrant, meditating revenge, damps the soul; to regard him
as a gracious king, full of tender bowels, spirits the affections to
him. The mercy of God is the proper object of trust (Psalm xxxiii. 18):
“The eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, upon them that
hope in his mercy.” The worship of God in the Old Testament is most
described by fear; in the New Testament by faith. Fear, or the worship
of God, and hope in his mercy are linked together; when they go hand
in hand, the accepting eye of God is upon us; when we do not trust,
we do not worship. Those of Judah had the temple‑worship among them,
especially in Josiah’s time (Zeph. iii. 2), the time of that prophecy;
yet it was accounted no worship, because no trust in the worshippers.
Interest in God cannot be improved without an exercise of faith. The
gospel‑worship is prophesied of, to be a confidence in God, as in a
husband more than in a lord (Hos. ii. 16): “Thou shalt call me Ishi,
and shalt call me no more Baali.” “Thou shalt call me;” that is, thou
shalt worship me, worship being often comprehended under invocation.
More confidence is to be exercised in a husband or father, than in a
lord {a231} or master. If a man have not faith, he is without Christ;
and though a man be in Christ by the habit of faith, he performs a
duty out of Christ without an act of faith: without the habit of faith,
our persons are out of Christ; and without the exercise of faith,
the duties are out of Christ. As the want of faith in a person is
the death of the soul, so the want of faith in a service is the death
of the offering. Though a man were at the cost of an ox, yet to kill
it without bringing it to the “door of the tabernacle,” was not a
sacrifice, but a murder (Lev. xvii. 3, 4). The tabernacle was a type
of Christ, and a look to him is necessary in every spiritual sacrifice.
As there must be faith to make any act an act of obedience, so there
must be faith to make any act of worship spiritual. That service is
not spiritual that is not vital; and it cannot be vital without the
exercise of a vital principle; all spiritual life is “hid in Christ,”
and drawn from him by faith (Gal. ii. 20). Faith, as it hath relation
to Christ, makes every act of worship a living act, and, consequently,
a spiritual act. Habitual unbelief cuts us off from the body of Christ
(Rom. xi. 20): “Because of unbelief they were broken off;” and a want
of actuated belief breaks us off from a present communion with Christ
in spirit. As unbelief in us hinders Christ from doing any mighty work,
so unbelief in us hinders us from doing any mighty spiritual duty; so
that the exercise of faith, and a confidence in God, is necessary to
every duty.
2. Love must be acted to render a worship spiritual. Though God
commanded love in the Old Testament, yet the manner of giving the law
bespoke more of fear than love. The dispensation of the law was with
fire, thunder, &c., proper to raise horror, and benumb the spirit;
which effect it had upon the Israelites, when they desired that God
would speak no more to them. Grace is the genius of the gospel, proper
to excite the affection of love. The law was given by the “disposition
of angels,” with signs to amaze; the gospel was ushered in with the
“songs of angels,” composed of peace and good‑will, calculated to
ravish the soul. Instead of the terrible voice of the law, “Do this
and live,” the comfortable voice of the gospel is, “Grace, grace!”
Upon this account the principle of the Old Testament was fear, and the
worship often expressed by the fear of God. The principle of the New
Testament is love. The Mount Sinai gendereth to bondage (Gal. iv. 44);
Mount Sion, from whence the gospel or evangelical law goes forth,
gendereth to liberty; and therefore the “spirit of bondage unto fear,”
as the property of the law, is opposed to the state of adoption, the
principle of love, as the property of the gospel (Rom. viii. 15);
and therefore the worship of God under the gospel, or New Testament,
is oftener expressed by love than fear, as proceeding from higher
principles, and acting nobler passions. In this state we are to serve
him without fear (Luke i. 74); without a bondage fear; not without
a fear of unworthy treating him; with a “fear of his goodness” as it
is prophesied of (Hos. ix. 5). Goodness is not the object of terror,
but reverence; God, in the law, had more the garb of a judge; in the
gospel, of a father; the name of a father is sweeter and bespeaks more
of affection. As their services were with a feeling of the thunders
of the law in their consciences, {a232} so is our worship to be with
a sense of gospel grace in our spirits; spiritual worship is that,
therefore, which is exercised with a spiritual and heavenly affection,
proper to the gospel. The heart should be enlarged according to the
liberty the gospel gives of drawing near to God as a father. As he
gives us the nobler relation of children, we are to act the nobler
qualities of children. Love should act according to its nature, which
is desired of union; desire of a moral union by affections, as well as
a mystical union by faith; as flame aspires to reach flame, and become
one with it. In every act of worship we should endeavor to be united
to God, and become one spirit with him. This grace doth spiritualize
worship; in that one word, love, God hath wrapt up all the devotion
he requires of us; it is the total sum of the first table, “Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God:” it is to be acted in everything we do; but
in worship our hearts should more solemnly rise up and acknowledge
him amiable and lovely, since the law is stripped of its cursing
power, and made sweet in the blood of the Redeemer. Love is a thing
acceptable of itself, but nothing acceptable without it; the gifts
of one man to another are spiritualized by it. We would not value a
present without the affection of the donor; every man would lay claim
to the love of others, though he would not to their possessions.
Love is God’s right in every service, and the noblest thing we can
bestow upon him in our adorations of him. God’s gifts to us are
not so estimable without his love; nor our services valuable by him
without the exercise of a choice affection. Hezekiah regarded not his
deliverance without the love of the Deliverer; “In love to my soul
thou hast delivered me” (Isa. xxxviii. 17). So doth God say, In love
to my honor thou hast worshipped me: so that love must be acted, to
render our worship spiritual.
3. A spiritual sensibleness of our own weakness is necessary to make
our worship spiritual. Affections to God cannot be without relentings
in ourselves. When the eye is spiritually fixed upon a spiritual God,
the heart will mourn that the worship is no more spiritually suitable.
The more we act love upon God, as amiable and gracious, the more
we should exercise grief in ourselves, as we are vile and offending.
Spiritual worship is a melting worship, as well as an elevating
worship; it exalts God, and debaseth the creature. The Publican was
more spiritual in his humble address to God, when the Pharisee was
wholly carnal with his swelling language. A spiritual love in worship
will make us grieve that we have given him so little, and could give
him no more. It is a part of spiritual duty to bewail our carnality
mixed with it; as we receive mercies spiritually, when we receive
them with a sense of God’s goodness and our own vileness; in the same
manner we render a spiritual worship.
4. Spiritual desires for God render the service spiritual; when the
soul “follows hard after him” (Psalm lxiii. 8); pursues after God as
a God of infinite and communicative goodness, with sighs and groans
unutterable. A spiritual soul seems to be transformed into hunger and
thirst, and becomes nothing but desire. A carnal worshipper is taken
with the beauty and magnificence of the temple; a spiritual worshipper
desires to see the glory of God in the sanctuary (Psalm lxiii. 2),
{a233} he pants after God: as he came to worship, to find God, he
boils up in desires for God, and is loth to go from it without God,
“the living God” (Psalm xlii. 2). He would see the Urim and the
Thummim; the unusual sparkling of the stones upon the high‑priest’s
breast‑plate. That deserves not the title of spiritual worship, when
the soul makes no longing inquiries: “Saw you him whom my soul loves?”
A spiritual worship is when our desires are chiefly for God in the
worship; as David desires to dwell in the house of the Lord; but his
desire is not terminated there, but to behold the beauty of the Lord
(Psalm xxvii. 4), and taste the ravishing sweetness of his presence.
No doubt but Elijah’s desires for the enjoyment of God while he
was mounting to heaven, were as fiery as the chariot wherein he was
carried. Unutterable groans acted in worship are the fruit of the
Spirit, and certainly render it a spiritual service (Rom. viii. 26).
Strong appetites are agreeable to God, and prepare us to eat the fruit
of worship. A spiritual Paul presseth forward to know Christ, and the
power of his resurrection; and a spiritual worshipper actually aspires
in every duty to know God, and the power of his grace. To desire
worship as an end is carnal; to desire it as a means, and act desires
in it for communion with God in it, is spiritual, and the fruit of
a spiritual life.
5. Thankfulness and admiration are to be exercised in spiritual
service. This is a worship of spirits; praise is the adoration of the
blessed angels (Isa. vi. 3), and of glorified spirits (Rev. iv. 11):
“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor, and power;” and
(Rev. v. 13, 14), they worship him ascribing “Blessing, honor, glory,
and power to Him that sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb forever
and ever.” Other acts of worship are confined to this life, and leave
us as soon as we have set our foot in heaven; there, no notes but
this of praise are warbled out; the power, wisdom, love, and grace in
the dispensation of the gospel, seat themselves in the thoughts and
tongues of blessed souls. Can a worship on earth be spiritual, that
hath no mixture of an eternal heavenly duty with it? The worship of
God in innocence had been chiefly an admiration of him in the works
of creation; and should not our evangelical worship be an admiration
of him in the works of redemption, which is a restoration to a better
state? After the petitioning for pardoning grace (Hos. xiv. 2), there
is a rendering the calves or heifers of our lips, alluding to the
heifers used in eucharistical sacrifices. The praise of God is the
choicest sacrifice and worship under a dispensation of redeeming grace;
this is the prime and eternal part of worship under the gospel. The
Psalmist (Psalm cxlix. cl.), speaking of the gospel times, spurs on to
this kind of worship; “Sing to the Lord a new song; let the children
of Zion be joyful in their king; let the saints be joyful in glory,
and sing aloud upon their beds; let the high praises of God be in
their mouths;” he begins and ends both psalms with “Praise ye the
Lord.” That cannot be a spiritual and evangelical worship, that hath
nothing of the praise of God in the heart. The consideration of God’s
adorable perfections, discovered in the gospel, will make us come to
him with more seriousness; beg blessings of him with more confidence;
fly to him with a winged {a234} faith and love, and more spiritually
glorify him in our attendances upon him.
6. Spiritual worship is performed with delight. The evangelical
worship is prophetically signified by keeping the feast of tabernacles;
“They shall go up from year to year, to worship the King, the Lord
of Hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles” (Zech. xiv. 16):
why that feast, when there were other feasts observed by the Jews?
That was a feast celebrated with the greatest joy; typical of the
gladness which was to be under the exhibition of the Messiah, and a
thankful commemoration of the redemption wrought by him. It was to be
celebrated five days after the “solemn day of atonement” (Lev. xxiii.
34, compared with ver. 27), wherein there was one of the solemnest
types of the sacrifice of the death of Christ. In this feast they
commemorated their exchange of Egypt for Canaan; the manna wherewith
they were fed; the water out of the rock wherewith they were refreshed;
in remembrance of this, they poured water on the ground, pronouncing
those words in Isaiah, they shall “draw waters out of the wells
of salvation;” which our Saviour refers to himself (John vii. 37),
inviting them to him, to drink “upon the last day, the great day of
the feast of tabernacles,” wherein the solemn ceremony was observed.
Since we are freed by the death of the Redeemer from the curses of the
law, God requires of us a joy in spiritual privileges. A sad frame in
worship gives the lie to all gospel liberty, to the purchase of the
Redeemer’s death, the triumphs of his resurrection: it is a carriage,
as if we were under the influences of the legal fire and lightning,
and an entering a protest against the freedom of the gospel. The
evangelical worship is a spiritual worship; and praise, joy, and
delight are prophesied of, as great ingredients in attendance on
gospel ordinances (Isaiah xii. 3‒5). What was occasion of terror in
the worship of God under the law, is the occasion of delight in the
worship of God under the gospel. The justice and holiness of God, so
terrible in the law, becomes comfortable under the gospel; since they
have feasted themselves on the active and passive obedience of the
Redeemer. The approach is to God as gracious, not to God as unpacified;
as a son to a father, not as a criminal to a judge. Under the law, God
was represented as a judge; remembering their sin in their sacrifices,
and representing the punishment they had merited: in the gospel as
a father, accepting the atonement, and publishing the reconciliation
wrought by the Redeemer. Delight in God is a gospel frame; therefore
the more joyful, the more spiritual: “The sabbath is to be a delight;”
not only in regard of the day, but in regard to the duties of it (Isa.
lviii. 13); in regard of the marvellous work he wrought on it; raising
up our blessed Redeemer on that day, whereby a foundation was laid for
the rendering our persons and services acceptable to God (Psalm cxviii.
24); “This is the day which the Lord hath made, we will be glad and
rejoice in it.” A lumpish frame becomes not a day and a duty, that
hath so noble and spiritual a mark upon it. The angels, in the first
act of worship after the creation, were highly joyful (Job xxxviii. 7):
“They shouted for joy,” &c. The saints have particularly acted this in
their worship. David would not content himself with an approach to the
altar, without going to {a235} God as his “exceeding joy” (Psalm xliii.
4). My triumphant joy: when he danced before the ark, he seems to be
transformed into delight and pleasure (2 Sam. vi. 14, 16). He had as
much delight in worship, as others had in their harvest and vintage.
And those that took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, would as
joyfully attend upon the communications of God. Where there is a
fulness of the Spirit, there is a “waking melody to God in the heart”
(Eph. v. 18, 19); and where there is an acting of love (as there is
in all spiritual services), the proper fruit of it is joy in a near
approach to the object of the soul’s affection. Love is _appetitus
unionis_; the more love, the more delight in the approachings of
God to the soul, or the outgoings of the soul to God. As the object
of worship is amiable in a spiritual eye, so the means tending to a
communion with this object are delightful in the exercise. Where there
is no delight in a duty, there is no delight in the object of the duty;
the more of grace, the more of pleasure in the actings of it; as the
more of nature there is in any natural agent, the more of pleasure in
the act, so the more heavenly the worship, the more spiritual. Delight
is the frame and temper of glory. A heart filled up to the brim with
joy, is a heart filled up to the brim with the Spirit; joy is the
fruit of the Holy Ghost (Gal. v. 22). (1.) Not the joy of God’s
dispensation flowing from God, but a gracious active joy streaming
to God. There is a joy, when the comforts of God are dropped into the
soul, as oil upon the wheel; which indeed makes the faculties move
with more speed and activity in his service, like the chariots of
Aminadab; and a soul may serve God in the strength of this taste,
and its delight terminate in the sensible comfort. This is not the
joy I mean, but such a joy that hath God for its object, delighting
in him as the term, in worship as the way to him; the first is God’s
dispensation, the other is our duty; the first is an act of God’s
favor to us, the second a sprout of habitual grace in us. The comforts
we have from God may elevate our duties; but the grace we have within
doth spiritualize our duties. (2.) Nor is every delight an argument of
a spiritual service. All the requisites to worship must be taken in. A
man may invent a worship and delight in it; as Micah in the adoration
of his idol, when he was glad he had got both an Ephod and a Levite
(Judges xvii). As a man may have a contentment in sin, so he may have
a contentment in worship; not because it is a worship of God, but the
worship of his own invention, agreeable to his own humor and design,
as (Isa. lviii. 2) it is said, they “delighted in approaching to God;”
but it was for carnal ends. Novelty engenders complacency; but it
must be a worship wherein God will delight; and that must be a worship
according to his own rule and infinite wisdom, and not our shallow
fancies. God requires a cheerfulness in his service, especially under
the gospel, where he sits upon a throne of grace; discovers himself
in his amiableness, and acts the covenant of grace, and the sweet
relation of a father. The priests of old were not to sully themselves
with any sorrow, when they were in the exercise of their functions.
God put a bar to the natural affections of Aaron and his sons, when
Nadab and Abihu had been cut off by a severe hand of God (Lev. x. 6).
Every true Christian in a higher order of priesthood, is a person
{a236} dedicated to joy and peace, offering himself a lively sacrifice
of praise and thanksgiving; and there is no christian duty, but is to
be set off and seasoned with cheerfulness: he that loves a cheerful
giver in acts of charity, requires no less a cheerful spirit in acts
of worship; as this is an ingredient in worship, so it is the means
to make your spirits intent in worship. When the heart triumphs in the
consideration of divine excellency and goodness, it will be angry at
anything that offers to jog and disturb it.
7. Spiritual worship is to be performed, though with a delight in
God, yet with a deep reverence of God. The gospel, in advancing the
spirituality of worship, takes off the terror, but not the reverence
of God; which is nothing else in its own nature, but a due and high
esteem of the excellency of a thing according to the nature of it; and,
therefore, the gospel presenting us with more illustrious notices of
the glorious nature of God, is so far from indulging any disesteem of
him, that it requires of us a greater reverence suitable to the height
of its discovery, above what could be spelt in the book of creation;
the gospel worship is therefore expressed by trembling (Hos. xi. 10):
“They shall walk after the Lord; he shall roar like a lion; when
he shall roar, then the children shall tremble from the West.” When
the lion of the tribe of Judah shall lift up his powerful voice
in the gospel, the western Gentiles shall run trembling to walk
after the Lord. God hath alway attended his greatest manifestations
with remarkable characters of majesty, to create a reverence in
his creature: he caused the “wind to march before him,” to cut the
mountain, when he manifested himself to Elijah (1 Kings xix. 11); “A
wind and a cloud of fire,” before that magnificent vision to Ezekiel
(chap. i. 4, 5); “Thunders and lightnings” before the giving the law
(Exod. xix. 18); and a “mighty wind” before the giving the Spirit
(Acts ii.): God requires of us an awe of him in the very act of
performance. The angels are pure, and cannot fear him as sinners, but
in “reverence they cover their faces” when they stand before him (Isa.
vi. 2): his power should make us reverence him, as we are creatures;
his justice, as we are sinners; his goodness, as we are restored
creatures. “God is clothed with unspeakable majesty; the glory of his
face shines brighter than the lights of heaven in their beauty. Before
him the angels tremble, and the heavens melt; we ought not therefore
to come before him with the sacrifice of fools, nor tender a duty to
him, without falling low upon our faces, and bowing the knees of our
hearts in token of reverence.”[517] Not a slavish fear, like that
of devils; but a “godly fear,” like that of saints (Heb. xii. 28);
joined with a sense of an unmovable kingdom, becometh us; and this
the apostle calls a grace necessary to make our service acceptable,
and therefore the grace necessary to make it spiritual, since nothing
finds admission to God, but what is of a spiritual nature. The
consideration of his glorious nature should imprint an awful respect
upon our souls to him; his goodness should make his majesty more
adorable to us, as his majesty makes his goodness more admirable in
his condescensions to us. As God is a Spirit, our worship must be
spiritual; and being, as he is, the supreme Spirit, our worship {a237}
must be reverential; we must observe the state he takes upon him in
his ordinances; “He is in heaven, we upon the earth;” we must not
therefore be “hasty to utter anything before God” (Eccles. v. 7).
Consider him a Spirit in the highest heavens, and ourselves spirits
dwelling in a dreggy earth. Loose and garish frames debase him to our
own quality; slight postures of spirit intimate him to be a slight and
mean being; our being in covenant with him, must not lower our awful
apprehensions of him; as he is the Lord thy God, it is a glorious and
fearful name, or wonderful (Deut. xxviii. 58); though he lay by his
justice to believers, he doth not lay by his majesty; when we have a
confidence in him, because he is the Lord our God, we must have awful
thoughts of his majesty, because his name is glorious. God is terrible
from his holy places, in regard of the great things he doth for his
Israel (Psalm lxviii. 35); we should behave ourselves with that inward
honor and respect of him, as if he were present to our bodily eyes;
the higher apprehensions we have of his majesty, the greater awe will
be upon our hearts in his presence, and the greater spirituality in
our acts. We should manage our hearts so, as if we had a view of God
in his heavenly glory.
8. Spiritual worship is to be performed with humility in our spirits.
This is to follow upon the reverence of God. As we are to have high
thoughts of God, that we may not debase him; we must have low thoughts
of ourselves, not to vaunt before him. When we have right notions of
the Divine Majesty, we shall be as worms in our own thoughts, and
creep as worms into his presence; we can never consider him in his
glory, but we have a fit opportunity to reflect upon ourselves, and
consider how basely we revolted from him, and how graciously we are
restored by him. As the gospel affords us greater discoveries of God’s
nature, and so enhanceth our reverence of him, so it helps us to a
fuller understanding of our own vileness and weakness, and therefore
is proper to engender humility; the more spiritual and evangelical
therefore any service is, the more humble it is. That is a spiritual
service that doth most manifest the glory of God; and this cannot
be manifested by us, without manifesting our own emptiness and
nothingness. The heathens were sensible of the necessity of humility
by the light of nature;[518] after the name of God, signified by Εἶ
inscribed on the temple at Delphos, followed Γνῶθί σεαυτον, whereby
was insinuated, that when we have to do with God, who is the only
_Ens_, we should behave ourselves with a sense of our own infirmity,
and infinite distance from him. As a person, so a duty leavened
with pride, hath nothing of sincerity, and therefore nothing of
spirituality in it (Hab. ii. 4): “His soul which is lifted up, is not
upright in him.” The elders that were crowned by God to be kings and
priests, to offer spiritual sacrifices, uncrown themselves in their
worship of him, and cast down their ornaments at “his feet”[519] the
Greek word to worship, προσκυνεῖν, signifies to creep like a dog upon
his belly before his master; to lie low. How deep should our sense be
of the privilege of God’s admitting us to his worship, and affording
us such a mercy under our deserts of wrath! How mean should be our
thoughts, both of our persons {a238} and performances! How patiently
should we wait upon God for the success of worship! How did Abraham,
the father of the faithful, equal himself to the earth, when he
supplicated the God of heaven, and devote himself to him under the
title of very “dust and ashes!” (Gen. xviii. 27.) Isaiah did but
behold an evangelical apparition of God and the angels worshipping him,
and presently reflects upon his “own uncleanness” (Isa. vi. 5). God’s
presence both requires and causes humility. How lowly is David in his
own opinion, after a magnificent duty performed by himself and his
people (1 Chron. xxix. 14): “Who am I? and what is my people, that we
should be able to offer so willingly?” The more spiritual the soul is
in its carriage to God, the more humble it is; and the more gracious
God is in his communications to the soul, the lower it lies. God
commanded not the fiercer creatures to be offered to him in sacrifices,
but lambs and kids, meek and lowly creatures; none that had stings
in their tails, or venom in their tongues[520] The meek lamb was the
daily sacrifice; the doves were to be offered by pairs; God would not
have honey mixed with any sacrifice (Lev. ii. 11), that breeds choler,
and choler pride; but oil he commanded to be used, that supples and
mollifies the parts. Swelling pride and boiling passions render our
services carnal; they cannot be spiritual, without a humble sweetness
and an innocent sincerity; one grain of this transcends the most
costly sacrifices: a contrite heart puts a gloss upon worship (Psalm
li. 16, 17). The departure of men and angels from God, began in pride;
our approaches and return to him must begin in humility; and therefore
all those graces, which are bottomed on humility, must be acted in
worship, as faith, and a sense of our own indigence. Our blessed
Saviour, the most spiritual worshipper, prostrated himself in the
garden with the greatest lowliness, and offered himself upon the cross
a sacrifice with the greatest humility. Melted souls in worship have
the most spiritual conformity to the person of Christ in the state of
humiliation, and his design in that state; as worship without it is
not suitable to God, so neither is it advantageous for us. A time of
worship is a time of God’s communication. The vessel must be melted
to receive the mould it is designed for; softened wax is fittest to
receive a stamp, and a spiritually melted soul fittest to receive a
spiritual impression. We cannot perform duty in an evangelical and
spiritual strain, without the meltingness and meanness in ourselves
which the gospel requires.
9. Spiritual worship is to be performed with holiness. God is a holy
Spirit; a likeness to God must attend the worshipping of God as he
is; holiness is alway in season; “It becomes his house forever” (Psalm
xci. 5). We can never serve the living God till we “have consciences
purged from dead works” (Heb. ix. 14). Dead works in our consciences
are unsuitable to God, an eternal living Spirit. The more mortified
the heart, the more quickened the service. Nothing can please an
infinite purity but that which is pure; since God is in his glory, in
his ordinances, we must not be in our filthiness. The holiness of his
Spirit doth sparkle in his ordinances; the holiness of our spirits
ought also to sparkle in our observance of them. The {a239} holiness
of God is most celebrated in the worship of angels;[521] spiritual
worship ought to be like angelical; that cannot be with souls totally
impure. As there must be perfect holiness to make a worship perfectly
spiritual; so there must be some degree of holiness to make it in any
measure spiritual. God would have all the utensils of the sanctuary
employed about his service to be holy; the inwards of the sacrifice
were to be rinsed thrice.[522] The crop and feathers of sacrificed
doves were to be hung eastward towards the entrance of the temple, at
a distance from the holy of holies, where the presence of God was most
eminent (Lev. i. 16). When Aaron was to go into the holy of holies,
he was to “sanctify himself” in an extraordinary manner (Lev. xvi. 4).
The priests were to be bare‑footed in the temple, in the exercise of
their office; shoes alway were to be put off upon holy ground: “Look
to thy foot when thou goest to the house of God,” saith the wise man
(Eccles. v. 1). Strip the affections, the feet of the soul, of all the
dirt contracted; discard all earthly and base thoughts from the heart.
A beast was not to touch the Mount Sinai, without losing his life; nor
can we come near the throne with brutish affections, without losing
the life and fruit of the worship. An unholy soul degrades himself
from a spirit to a brute, and the worship from spiritual to brutish.
If any unmortified sin be found in the life, as it was in the comers
to the temple, it taints and pollutes the worship (Isa. i. 15). All
worship is an acknowledgment of the excellency of God as he is holy;
hence it is called, a “sanctifying God’s name” (Jer. vii. 9, 10); how
can any person sanctify God’s name that hath not a holy resemblance
to his nature? If he be not holy as he is holy, he cannot worship
him according to his excellency in spirit and in truth; no worship
is spiritual wherein we have not a communion with God. But what
intercourse can there be between a holy God, and an impure creature;
between light and darkness? We have no fellowship with him in any
service, unless “we walk in the light,” in service and out of service,
as he is light (1 John i. 7). The heathen thought not their sacrifices
agreeable to God without washing their hands; whereby they signified
the preparation of their hearts, before they made the oblation: clean
hands without a pure heart, signify nothing; the frame of our hearts
must answer the purity of the outward symbols (Psalm xxvi. 6): “I will
wash my hands in innocence, so will I compass thine altar, O Lord;” he
would observe the appointed ceremonies, but not without “cleansing his
heart as well as his hands.” Vain man is apt to rest upon outward acts
and rites of worship; but this must alway be practised; the words are
in the present tense, “I wash,” “I compass.” Purity in worship ought
to be our continual care. If we would perform a spiritual service,
wherein we would have communion with God, it must be in holiness;
if we would walk with Christ, it must be in “white” (Rev. iii. 4),
alluding to the white garments the priests put on, when they went to
perform their service; as without this we cannot see God in heaven,
so neither can we see the beauty of God in his own ordinances.
10. Spiritual worship is performed with spiritual ends, with raised
{a240} aims at the glory of God. No duty can be spiritual that hath a
carnal aim; where God is the sole object, he ought to be the principal
end; in all our actions he is to be our end, as he is the principle
of our being; much more in religious acts, as he is the object of our
worship. The worship of God in Scripture is expressed by the “seeking
of him” (Heb. xi. 6); him, not ourselves; all is to be referred to God.
As we are “not to live to ourselves, that being the sign of a carnal
state, so we are not to worship for ourselves” (Rom. xiv. 7, 8). As
all actions are denominated good from their end, as well as their
object, so upon the same account they are denominated spiritual.
The end spiritualizeth our natural actions, much more our religious;
then are our faculties devoted to him when they centre in him. If the
intention be evil, there is nothing but darkness in the whole service
(Luke xi. 34). The first institution of the Sabbath, the solemn day
for worship, was to contemplate the glory of God in his stupendous
works of creation, and render him a homage for them (Rev. iv. 11):
“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive honor, glory, and power; for
thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and
were created.” No worship can be returned without a glorifying of
God; and we cannot actually glorify him, without direct aims at the
promoting his honor. As we have immediately to do with God, so we
are immediately to mind the praise of God. As we are not to content
ourselves with habitual grace, but be rich in the exercise of it in
worship, so we are not to acquiesce in the habitual aims at the glory
of God, without the actual overflowings of our hearts in those aims.
It is natural for man to worship God for self; self‑righteousness is
the rooted aim of man in his worship since his revolt from God, and
being sensible it is not to be found in his natural actions, he seeks
for it in his moral and religious. By the first pride we flung God off
from being our sovereign, and from being our end, since a pharisaical
spirit struts it in nature, not only to do things to be seen of
men, but to be admired by God (Isa. lviii. 3): “Wherefore have we
fasted and thou takest no knowledge?” This is to have God worship
them, instead of being worshipped by them. Cain’s carriage after his
sacrifice testified some base end in his worship; he came not to God
as a subject to a sovereign, but as if he had been the sovereign, and
God the subject; and when his design is not answered, and his desire
not gratified, he proves more a rebel to God, and a murderer of his
brother. Such base scents will rise up in our worship from the body
of death which cleaves to us, and mix themselves with our services,
as weeds with the fish in the net. David, therefore, after his people
had offered willingly to the temple, begs of God that their “hearts
might be prepared to him” (1 Chron. xxix. 18); that their hearts might
stand right to God, without any squinting to self‑ends. Some present
themselves to God, as poor men offer a present to a great person; not
to honor him, but to gain for themselves a reward richer than their
gift. “What profit is it that we have kept his ordinance?” &c. (Mal.
iii. 14). Some worship him, intending thereby to make him amends for
the wrong they have done him; wipe off their scores, and satisfy their
debts; as though a spiritual wrong could be {a241} recompensed with a
bodily service, and an infinite Spirit be outwitted and appeased by a
carnal flattery. Self is the spirit of carnality; to pretend a homage
to God, and intend only the advantage of self, is rather to mock
him than worship him. When we believe that we ought to be satisfied,
rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves, imagine that he
should submit his own honor to our advantage; we make ourselves more
glorious than God, as though we were not made for him, but he hath a
being only for us; this is to have a very low esteem of the majesty
of God. Whatsoever any man aims at in worship above the glory of God,
that he forms as an idol to himself instead of God, and sets up a
golden image, God counts not this as a worship. The offerings made in
the wilderness for forty years together, God esteemed as not offered
to him (Amos v. 25): “Have you offered to me sacrifices and offerings
in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?” They did it not to
God, but to themselves; for their own security, and the attainment of
the possession of the promised land. A spiritual worshipper performs
not worship for some hopes of carnal advantage; he uses ordinances as
means to bring God and his soul together, to be more fitted to honor
God in the world, in his particular place; when he hath been inflamed
and humble in any address or duty, he gives God the glory; his heart
suits the doxology at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, ascribes the
kingdom, power, and glory to God alone, and if any viper of pride
starts out upon him, he endeavors presently to shake it off. That
which was the first end of our framing, ought to be the chief end of
our acting towards God; but when men have the same ends in worship as
brutes, the satisfaction of a sensitive part, the service is no more
than brutish. The acting for a sensitive end is unworthy the majesty
of God to whom we address, and unbecoming a rational creature. The
acting for a sensitive end is not a rational, much less can it be a
spiritual service; though the act may be good in itself, yet not good
in the agent, because he wants a due end. We are, then, spiritual,
when we have the same end in our redeemed services, as God had in his
redeeming love, viz., his own glory.
11. Spiritual service is offered to God in the name of Christ. Those
are only “spiritual sacrifices, that are offered up to God by Jesus
Christ” (1 Pet. ii. 5); that are the fruits of the sanctification
of the Spirit, and offered in the mediation of the Son: as the altar
sanctifies the gift, so doth Christ spiritualize our services for
God’s acceptation; as the fire upon the altar separated the airy and
finer parts of the sacrifice from the terrene and earthly; this is
the golden altar upon which the prayers of the saints are offered
up “before the throne” (Rev. viii. 3). As all that we have from God
streams through his blood, so all that we give to God ascends by
virtue of his merits. All the blessings God gave to the Israelites
came out of Sion,[523] that is, from the gospel hid under the law;
all the duties we present to God are to be presented in Sion, in an
evangelical manner; all our worship must be bottomed on Christ. God
hath intended that we should “honor the Son, as we honor the Father;”
as we honor the Father by offering our service only to him, so we
{a242} are to honor the Son by offering it only in his name; in him
alone God is well pleased, because in him alone he finds our services
spiritual and worthy of acceptation; we must therefore take fast
hold of him with our spirits, and the faster we hold him, the more
spiritual is our worship. To do anything in the name of Christ, is not
to believe the worship shall be accepted for itself, but to have our
eye fixed upon Christ for the acceptance of it, and not to rest upon
the work done, as carnal people are apt to do. The creatures present
their acknowledgments to God by man; and man can only present his
by Christ. It was utterly unlawful after the building of the temple,
to sacrifice anywhere else; the temple being a type of Christ, it is
utterly unlawful for us to present our services in any other name than
his. This is the way to be spiritual. If we consider God out of Christ,
we can have no other notions but those of horror and bondage. We
behold him a Spirit, but environed with justice and wrath for sinners;
but the consideration of him in Christ, veils his justice, draws forth
his mercy, represents him more a father than a judge. In Christ the
aspect of justice is changed, and by that the temper of the creature;
so that in and by this Mediator, we “can have a spiritual boldness,
and access to God with confidence” (Eph. iii. 12), whereby the spirit
is kept from benumbness and distraction, and our souls quickened and
refined. The thoughts kept upon Christ in a duty of worship quickly
elevates the soul, and benumbness the whole service. Sin makes our
services black, and the blood of Christ makes both our persons and
services white.
To conclude this head. God is a Spirit infinitely happy, therefore
we must approach to him with cheerfulness; he is a Spirit of infinite
majesty, therefore we must come before him with reverence; he is a
Spirit infinitely high, therefore we must offer up our sacrifices with
the deepest humility; he is a Spirit infinitely holy, therefore we
must address him with purity; he is a Spirit infinitely glorious, we
must therefore acknowledge his excellency in all that we do, and in
our measures contribute to his glory, by having the highest aims in
his worship; he is a Spirit infinitely provoked by us, therefore we
must offer up our worship in the name of a pacifying Mediator and
Intercessor.
III. The third general is, Why a spiritual worship is due to God,
and to be offered to him. We must consider the object of worship,
and the subject of worship; the worshipper and the worshipped. God
is a spiritual Being; man is a reasonable creature. The nature of God
informs us what is fit to be presented to him; our own nature informs
us what is fit to be presented by us.
_Reason I._ The best we have is to be presented to God in worship.
For,
1. Since God is the most excellent Being, he is to be served by
us with the most excellent thing we have, and with the choicest
veneration. God is so incomprehensibly excellent, that we cannot
render him what he deserves: we must render him what we are able to
offer: the best of our affections; the flower of our strength; the
cream and top of our spirits. By the same reason that we are bound to
give God the best worship, we must offer it to him in the best manner.
We cannot give to God anything too good for so blessed {a243} a Being;
God being a “great king,” slight services become not his majesty
(Mal. i. 13, 14); it is unbecoming the majesty of God, and the reason
of a creature, to give him a trivial thing; it is unworthy to bestow
the best of our strength on our lust, and the worst and weakest in
the service of God. An infinite Spirit should have affections as near
to infinite as we can; as he is a Spirit without bounds, so he should
have a service without limits; when we have given him all, we cannot
serve him according to the excellency of his nature (Josh. xxiv. 19);
and shall we give him less than all? His infinite excellency, and our
dependence on him as creatures, demands the choicest adoration; our
spirits, being the noblest part of our nature, are as due to him as
the service of our bodies, which are the vilest; to serve him with the
worst only, is to diminish his honor.
2. Under the law, God commanded the best to be offered him. He
would have the males, the best of the kind; the fat, the best of the
creature;[524] he commanded them to offer him the firstlings of the
flock; not the firstlings of the womb, but the firstlings of the year:
the Jewish cattle having two breeding‑times, in the beginning of the
spring and the beginning of September; the latter breed was the weaker,
which Jacob knew (Gen. xxx.) when he laid the rods before the cattle
when they were strong in the spring, and withheld them when they were
feeble in the autumn. One reason (as the Jews say) why God accepted
not the offering of Cain was, because he brought the meanest, not the
best of the fruit; and therefore, it is said, only that he brought of
the “fruit” of the ground (Gen. iv. 3), not the first of the fruit,
or the best of the fruit, as Abel, who brought the “firstling” of his
flock, and the fat thereof (ver. 4).
3. And this the heathen practised by the light of nature. They for the
most part offered males, as being more worthy; and burnt the male, not
the female frankincense, as it is divided into those two kinds; they
offered the best, when they offered their children to Moloch. Nothing
more excellent than man, and nothing dearer to parents than their
children, which are part of themselves. When the Israelites would have
a golden calf for a representation of God, they would dedicate their
jewels, and strip their wives and children of their richest ornaments,
to show their devotion. Shall men serve their dumb idols with the best
of their substance, and the strength of their souls; and shall the
living God have a duller service from us, than idols had from them?
God requires no such hard, but delightful worship from us, our spirits.
4. All creatures serve man, by the providential order of God, with the
best they have. As we, by God’s appointment, receive from creatures
the best they can give, ought we not with a free will to render to God
the best we can offer? The beasts give us their best fat; the trees
their best fruit; the sun its best light; the fountains their best
streams; shall God order us the best from creatures, and we put him
off with the worst from ourselves?
5. God hath given us the choicest thing he had――a Redeemer that was
the power of God, and the wisdom of God; the best he had in {a244}
heaven, his own Son, and in himself a sacrifice for us, that we might
be enabled to present ourselves a sacrifice to him. And Christ offered
himself for us, the best he had, and that with the strength of the
Deity through the eternal Spirit; and shall we grudge God the best
part of ourselves? As God would have a worship from his creature,
so it must be with the best part of his creature. If we have “given
ourselves to the Lord” (2 Cor. viii. 5), we can worship with no less
than ourselves. What is the man without his spirit? If we are to
worship God with all that we have received from him, we must worship
him with the best part we have received from him; it is but a small
glory we can give him with the best, and shall we deprive him of his
right by giving him the worst? As what we are is from God, so what we
are ought to be for God. Creation is the foundation of worship (Psalm
c. 2, 3): “Serve the Lord with gladness; know ye that the Lord he is
God; it is he that hath made us.” He hath ennobled us with spiritual
affections; where is it fittest for us to employ them, but upon him?
and at what time, but when we come solemnly to converse with him? Is
it justice to deny him the honor of his best gift to us? our souls
are more his gift to us, than anything in the world; other things
are so given that they are often taken from us, but our spirits
are the most durable gift. Rational faculties cannot be removed
without a dissolution of nature. Well then, as he is God, he is to be
honored with all the propensions and ardor that the infiniteness and
excellency of such a Being require, and the incomparable obligations
he hath laid upon us in this state deserve at our hands. In all our
worship, therefore, our minds ought to be filled with the highest
admiration, love, and reverence. Since our end was to glorify God, we
answer not our end, and honor him not, unless we give him the choicest
we have.[525]
_Reason II._ We cannot else act towards God according to the nature
of rational creatures. Spiritual worship is due to God, because of his
nature; and due from us, because of our nature. As we are to adore God,
so we are to adore him as men; the nature of a rational creature makes
this impression upon him; he cannot view his own nature without having
this duty striking upon his mind. As he knows, by inspection into
himself, that there was a God that made him; so, that he is made to be
in subjection to God, subjection to him in his spirit as well as his
body, and ought morally to testify this natural dependence on him. His
constitution informs him that he hath a capacity to converse with God;
that he cannot converse with him, but by those inward faculties; if
it could be managed by his body without his spirit, beasts might as
well converse with God as men. It can never be a “reasonable service”
(Rom. xii. 1), as it ought to be, unless the reasonable faculties be
employed in the management of it; it must be a worship prodigiously
lame, without the concurrence of the chiefest part of man with it.
As we are to act conformably to the nature of the object, so also
to the nature of our own faculties. Our faculties, in the very gift
of them to us, were destined to be exercised, about what? What? All
other things but the Author of them. It is a conceit cannot enter into
the heart {a245} of a rational creature, that he should act as such
a creature in other things, and as a stone in things relating to the
donor of them; as a man, with his mind about him in the affairs of the
world; as a beast, without reason in his acts towards God. If a man
did not employ his reason in other things, he would be an unprofitable
creature in the world: if he do not employ his spiritual faculties
in worship, he denies them the proper end and use for which they were
given him; it is a practical denial that God hath given him a soul,
and that God hath any right to the exercise of it. If there were no
worship appointed by God in the world, the natural inclination of man
to some kind of religion would be in vain; and if our inward faculties
were not employed in the duties of religion they would be in vain;
the true end of God in the endowment of us with them would be defeated
by us, as much as lies in us, if we did not serve him with that
which we have from him solely at his own cost. As no man can with
reason conclude, that the rest commanded on the Sabbath and the
sanctification of it, was only a rest of the body, that had been
performed by the beasts as well as men, but some higher end was aimed
at for the rational creature; so no man can think that the command for
worship terminated only in the presence of the body; that God should
give the command to man as a reasonable creature, and expect no other
service from him than that of a brute. God did not require a worship
from man for any want he had, or any essential honor that could
accrue to him, but that men might testify their gratitude to him,
and dependence on him. It is the most horrid ingratitude not to have
lively and deep sentiments of gratitude after such obligations, and
not to make those due acknowledgments that are proper for a rational
creature. Religion is the highest and choicest act of a reasonable
creature; no creature under heaven is capable of it that wants reason.
As it is a violation of reason not to worship God, so it is no less a
violation of reason not to worship him with the heart and spirit; it
is a high dishonor to God, and defeats him not only of the service due
to him from man, but that which is due to him from all the creatures.
Every creature, as it is an effect of God’s power and wisdom, doth
passively worship God; that is, it doth afford matter of adoration
to man that hath reason to collect it, and return it where it is due.
Without the exercise of the soul, we can no more hand it to God, than
without such an exercise, we can gather it from the creature; so that
by this neglect, the creatures are restrained from answering their
chief end; they cannot pay any service to God without man; nor can
man, without the employment of his rational faculties, render a homage
to God, any more than beasts can. This engagement of our inward power
stands firm and inviolable, let the modes of worship be what they
will, or the changes of them by the sovereign authority of God never
so frequent; this could not expire or be changed as long as the nature
of man endured. As man had not been capable of a command for worship,
unless he had been endued with spiritual faculties; so he is not
active in a true practice of worship, unless they be employed by
him in it. The constitution of man makes this manner of worship
perpetually obligatory, and the oblation can never cease, till man
{a246} cease to be a creature furnished with such faculties; in our
worship, therefore, if we would act like rational creatures, we should
extend all the powers of our souls to the utmost pitch, and essay
to have apprehensions of God, equal to the excellency of his nature,
which, though we may attempt, we can never attain.
_Reason III._ Without this engagement of our spirits no act is an
act of worship. True worship, being an acknowledgment of God and the
perfections of his nature, results only from the soul, that being
only capable of knowing God and those perfections which are the object
and motive of worship. The posture of the body is but to testify the
inward temper and affection of the mind; if, therefore, it testifies
what it is not, it is a lie, and no worship; the cringes a beast may
be taught to make to an altar may as well be called worship, since a
man thinks as little of that God he pretends to honor, as the beast
doth of the altar to which he bows. Worship is a reverent remembrance
of God, and giving some honor to him with the intention of the soul;
it cannot justly have the name of worship, that wants the essential
part of it; it is an ascribing to God the glory of his nature, an
owning subjection and obedience to him as our sovereign Lord; this is
as impossible to be performed without the spirit, as that there can be
life and motion in a body without a soul; it is a drawing near to God,
not in regard of his essential presence, so all things are near to God,
but in an acknowledgment of his excellency, which is an act of the
spirit; without this, the worst of men in a place of worship are as
near to God as the best. The necessity of the conjunction of our soul
ariseth from the nature of worship, which being the most serious thing
we can be employed in, the highest converse with the highest object
requires the choicest temper of spirit in the performance. That
cannot be an act of worship, which is not an act of piety and virtue;
but there is no act of virtue done by the members of the body,
without the concurrence of the powers of the soul. We may as well
call the presence of a dead carcass in a place of worship, an act of
religion, as the presence of a living body without an intent spirit;
the separation of the soul from one is natural, the other moral; that
renders the body lifeless, but this renders the act loathsome to God;
as the being of the soul gives life to the body, so the operation of
the soul gives life to the actions. As he cannot be a man that wants
the form of a man, a rational soul; so that cannot be a worship that
wants an essential part, the act of the spirit; God will not vouchsafe
any acts of man so noble a title without the requisite qualifications
(Hos. v. 6): “They shall go with their flocks and their herds to
seek the Lord,” &c. A multitude of lambs and bullocks for sacrifice,
to appease God’s anger. God would not give it the title of worship,
though instituted by himself, when it wanted the qualities of such
a service. “The spirit of whoredom was in the midst of them” (v. 4).
In the judgment of our Saviour, it is a “vain worship, when the
traditions of men are taught for the doctrines of God” (Matt. xv. 9);
and no less vain must it be, when the bodies of men are presented
to supply the place of their spirits. As an omission of duty is a
contempt of God’s sovereign authority, so the omission of the manner
of it is a contempt of it, and of his {a247} amiable excellency; and
that which is a contempt and mockery, can lay no just claim to the
title of worship.
_Reason IV._ There is in worship an approach of God to man. It was
instituted to this purpose, that God might give out his blessings to
man; and ought not our spirits to be prepared and ready to receive his
communications? We are, in such acts, more peculiarly in his presence.
In the Israelites hearing the law, it is said, God was to “come among
them” (Exod. xix. 10, 11). Then, men are said to stand before the
Lord (Deut. x. 8): “God, before whom I stand” (1 Kings, xvii. 1):
that is, whom I worship; and therefore when Cain forsook the worship
of God settled in his father’s family, he is said, “to go out from the
presence of the Lord” (Gen. iv. 16). God is essentially present in the
world; graciously present in his church. The name of the evangelical
city is Jehovah Shammah (Ezek. xlviii. 35), “the Lord is there.” God
is more graciously present in the evangelical institutions than in
the legal; he “loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings
of Jacob” (Ps. lxxxvii. 2); his evangelical law and worship which was
to go forth from Zion, as the other did from Sinai (Mic. iv. 2). God
delights to approach to men, and converse with them in the worship
instituted in the gospel, more than in all the dwellings of Jacob. If
God be graciously present, ought not we to be spiritually present? A
lifeless carcass service becomes not so high and delectable a presence
as this; it is to thrust him from us, not invite him to us; it is
to practise in the ordinances what the prophet predicts concerning
men’s usage of our Saviour (Isa. liii. 2): “There is no form, no
comeliness, nor beauty that we should desire him.” A slightness in
worship reflects upon the excellency of the object of worship. God
and his worship are so linked together, that whosoever thinks the
one not worth his inward care, esteems the other not worth his inward
affection. How unworthy a slight is it of God, who proffers the
opening his treasure; the re‑impressing his image; conferring his
blessings; admits us into his presence, when he hath no need for us;
who hath millions of angels to attend him in his court, and celebrate
his praise! He that worships not God with his spirit, regards not
God’s presence in his ordinances, and slights the great end of God in
them, and that perfection he may attain by them. We can only expect
what God hath promised to give, when we tender to him what he hath
commanded us to present. If we put off God with a shell, he will put
us off with a husk. How can we expect his heart, when we do not give
him ours; or hope for the blessing needful for us, when we render not
the glory due to him? It cannot be an advantageous worship without
spiritual graces; for those are uniting, and union is the ground of
all communion.
_Reason V._ To have a spiritual worship is God’s end in the
restoration of the creature, both in redemption by his Son and
sanctification by his spirit. A fitness for spiritual offerings was
the end of the “coming of Christ” (Mal. iii. 3); he should purge them
as gold and silver by fire, a spirit burning up their dross, melting
them into a holy compliance with and submission to God. To what
purpose? That they may offer to the lord an offering in righteousness;
a pure {a248} offering from a purified spirit; he came to “bring us
to God” (1 Pet. iii. 18) in such a garb, as that we might be fit to
converse with him. Can we be thus, without a fixedness of our spirits
on him? The offering of spiritual sacrifices is the end of making
any a “spiritual habitation” and a “holy priesthood” (1 Pet. ii. 5).
We can no more be worshippers of God without a worshipper’s nature,
than a man can be a man without human nature. As man was at first
created for the honor and worship of God, so the design of restoring
that image which was defaced by sin tends to the same end. We are not
brought to God by Christ, nor are our services presented to him, if
they be without our spirits; would any man that undertakes to bring
another to a prince, introduce him in a slovenly and sordid habit,
such a garb that he knows hateful to him? or bring the clothes or
skin of a man stuffed with straw, instead of the person? to come with
our skins before God, without our spirits, is contrary to the design
of God in redemption and regeneration. If a carnal worship would
have pleased God, a carnal heart would have served his turn, without
the expense of his Spirit in sanctification. He bestows upon man a
spiritual nature, that he may return to him a spiritual service; he
enlightens the understanding, that he may have a rational service;
and new moulds the will, that he may have a voluntary service. As it
is the milk of the word wherewith he feeds us, so it is the service
of the word wherewith we must glorify him. So much as there is of
confusedness in our understanding, so much of starting and levity in
our wills, so much of slipperiness and skipping in our affections; so
much is abated of the due qualities of the worship of God, and so much
we fall short of the end of redemption and sanctification.
_Reason VI._ A spiritual worship is to be offered to God, because
no worship but that can be acceptable. We can never be secured of
acceptance without it; he being a Spirit, nothing but the worship
in spirit can be suitable to him: what is unsuitable, cannot be
acceptable; there must be something in us, to make our services
capable of being presented by Christ for an actual acceptation.
No service is “acceptable to God by Jesus Christ,” but as it is a
spiritual sacrifice, and offered by a spiritual heart (1 Pet. ii. 5).
The sacrifice is first spiritual, before it be acceptable to God by
Christ; when it is “an offering in righteousness,” it is then, and
only then, pleasant to the Lord (Mal. iii. 3, 4). No prince would
accept a gift that is unsuitable to his majesty, and below the
condition of the person that presents it. Would he be pleased with
a bottle of water for drink, from one that hath his cellar full of
wine? How unacceptable must that be that is unsuitable to the Divine
Majesty! And what can be more unsuitable than a withdrawing the
operations of our souls from him, in the oblation of our bodies? We as
little glorify God as God, when we give him only a corporeal worship,
as the heathen did, when they represented him in a corporeal shape
(Rom. i. 21); one as well as the other denies his spiritual nature:
this is worse, for had it been lawful to represent God to the eye, it
could not have been done but by a bodily figure suited to the sense;
but since it is necessary to worship him, it cannot be by a corporeal
attendance, {a249} without the operation of the Spirit. A spiritual
frame is more pleasing to God than the highest exterior adornments,
than the greatest gifts, and the highest prophetic illuminations.
“The glory of the second temple” exceeded the glory of the first
(Hag. ii. 8, 9). As God accounts the spiritual glory of ordinances
most beneficial for us, so our spiritual attendance upon ordinances
is most pleasing to him; he that offers the greatest services without
it, offers but flesh (Hos. viii. 13): “They sacrifice flesh for the
sacrifices of my offerings, but the Lord accepts them not.” Spiritual
frames are the soul of religious services; all other carriages without
them are contemptible to this spirit: we can never lay claim to that
promise of God, none shall “seek my face in vain.” We affect a vain
seeking of him, when we want a due temper of spirit for him; and vain
spirits shall have vain returns: it is more contrary to the nature of
God’s holiness to have communion with such, than it is contrary to the
nature of light to have communion with darkness. To make use of this:
_Use 1._ First it serves for information.
1. If spiritual worship be required by God, how sad is it for them
that they are so far from giving God a spiritual worship, that they
render him no worship at all! I speak not of the neglect of public,
but of private; when men present not a devotion to God from one year’s
end to the other. The speech of our Saviour, that we must worship God
in spirit and truth, implies that a worship is due to him from every
one; that is the common impression upon the consciences of all men
in the world, if they have not by some constant course in gross sins,
hardened their souls, and stifled those natural sentiments. There
was never a nation in the world without some kind of religion; and
no religion was ever without some modes to testify a devotion; the
heathens had their sacrifices and purifications; and the Jews, by
God’s order, had their rites, whereby they were to express their
allegiance to God. Consider,
(1.) Worship is a duty incumbent upon all men. It is a homage mankind
owes to God, under the relation wherein he stands obliged to him; it
is a prime and immutable justice to own our allegiance to him; it is
as unchangeable a truth that God is to be worshipped, as that God is;
he is to be worshipped as God, as creator, and therefore by all, since
he is the Creator of all, the Lord of all, and all are his creatures,
and all are his subjects. Worship is founded upon creation (Psalm c.
2, 3): it is due to God for himself and his own essential excellency,
and therefore due from all; it is due upon the account of man’s nature;
the human rational nature is the same in all. Whatsoever is due to
God upon the account of man’s nature, and the natural obligations
he hath laid upon man, is due from all men; because they all enjoy
the benefits which are proper to their nature. Man in no state
was exempted, nor can be exempted from it; in Paradise he had his
Sabbath and sacraments; man therefore dissolves the obligation of a
reasonable nature, by neglecting the worship of God. Religion is in
the first place to be minded. As soon as Noah came out of the ark, he
contrived not a habitation for himself, but an altar for the Lord, to
acknowledge him the author of his preservation from the deluge (Gen.
viii. 20): and wheresoever {a250} Abraham came, his first business was
to erect an altar, and pay his arrears of gratitude to God, before he
ran upon the score for new mercies (Gen. xii. 7; xiii. 4, 18): he left
a testimony of worship wherever he came.
(2.) Wholly therefore to neglect it, is a high degree of atheism.
He that calls not upon God, “saith in his heart, There is no God;”
and seems to have the sentiments of natural conscience, as to God,
stifled in him (Psalm xiv. 1, 4): it must arise from a conceit that
there is no God, or that we are equal to him, adoration not being due
from persons of an equal state; or that God is unable, or unwilling to
take notice of the adoring acts of his creatures: what is any of these
but an undeifying the supreme Majesty? When we lay aside all thoughts
of paying any homage to him, we are in a fair way opinionatively to
deny him, as much as we practically disown him. Where there is no
knowledge of God, that is, no “acknowledgment of God,” a gap is opened
to all licentiousness (Hos. iv. 1, 2); and that by degrees brawns the
conscience, and razeth out the sense of God. Those forsake God that
“forget his holy mountain” (Isa. lxv. 11); they do not practically
own him as the Creator of their souls or bodies. It is the sin of
Cain, who turning his back upon worship, is said to “go out from
the presence of the Lord” (Gen. iv. 16). Not to worship him with our
spirits, is against his law of creation: not to worship him at all, is
against his act of creation; not to worship him in truth, is hypocrisy;
not to worship him at all, is atheism; whereby we render ourselves
worse than the worms in the earth, or a toad in a ditch.
(3.) To perform a worship to a false God, or to the true God in a
false manner, seems to be less a sin than to live in perpetual neglect
of it. Though it be directed to a false object instead of God, yet it
is under the notion of a God, and so is an acknowledgment of such a
Being as God in the world; whereas the total neglect of any worship,
is a practical denying of the existence of any supreme Majesty.
Whosoever constantly omits a public and private worship, transgresses
against an universally received dictate; for all nations have agreed
in the common notion of worshipping God, though they have disagreed in
the several modes and rites whereby they would testify that adoration.
By a worship of God, though superstitious, a veneration and reverence
of such a being is maintained in the world; whereas by a total neglect
of worship, he is virtually disowned and discarded, if not from his
existence, yet from his providence and government of the world; all
the mercies we breathe in are denied to flow from him. A foolish
worship owns religion, though it bespatters it; as if a stranger
coming into a country mistakes the subject for the prince, and pays
that reverence to the subject which is due to the prince; though
he mistakes the object, yet he owns an authority; or if he pays any
respect to the true prince of that country after the mode of his own,
though appearing ridiculous in the place where he is, he owns the
authority of the prince; whereas the omission of all respect would
be a contempt of majesty: and, therefore, the judgments of God have
been more signal upon the sacrilegious contemners of worship among
the heathens, than upon {a251} those that were diligent and devout in
their false worship; and they generally owned the blessings received
to the preservation of a sense and worship of a Deity among them.
Though such a worship be not acceptable to God, and every man is
bound to offer to God a devotion agreeable to his own mind; yet it
is commendable, not as worship, but as it speaks an acknowledgment of
such a being as God, in his power and creation, and his beneficence
in his providence. Well, then, omissions of worship are to be avoided.
Let no man execute that upon himself which God will pronounce at last
as the greatest misery, and bid God depart from him, who will at last
be loth to hear God bid him depart from him. Though man hath natural
sentiments that God is to be worshipped, yet having an hostility in
his nature, he is apt to neglect, or give it him in a slight manner;
he therefore sets a particular mark and notice of attention upon the
fourth command, “Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath day.” Corrupt
nature is apt to neglect the worship of God, and flag in it. This
command, therefore, which concerns his worship, he fortifies with
several reasons. Nor let any neglect worship, because they cannot
find their hearts spiritual in it. The further we are from God, the
more carnal shall we be. No man can expect heat by a distance from the
sunbeams, or other means of warmth. Though God commanded a circumcised
heart in the Jewish services, yet he did not warrant a neglect of the
outward testimonies of religion he had then appointed. He expected,
according to his command, that they should offer the sacrifices, and
practise the legal purification he had commanded; he would have them
diligently observed, though he had declared that he imposed them only
for a time; and our Saviour ordered the practice of those positive
rites as long as the law remained unrepealed, as in the case of
the leper (Mark xiv. 4). It is an injustice to refuse the offering
ourselves to God according to the manner he hath in his wisdom
prescribed and required. If spiritual worship be required by God, then,
2. It informs us, that diligence in outward worship is not to be
rested in. Men may attend all their days on worship, with a juiceless
heart and unquickened frame, and think to compensate the neglect
of the manner with abundance of the matter of service.[526] Outward
expressions are but the badges and liveries of service, not the
service itself. As the strength of sin lies in the inward frame
of the heart, so the strength of worship in the inward complexion
and temper of the soul. What do a thousand services avail, without
cutting the throat of our carnal affections? What are loud prayers,
but as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, without divine charity?
A pharisaical diligence in outward forms, without inward spirit, had
no better a title vouchsafed by our Saviour than that of hypocritical.
God desires not sacrifices, nor delights in burnt‑offerings: shadows
are not to be offered instead of substance. God required the heart
of man for itself, but commanded outward ceremonies as subservient to
inward worship, and goads and spurs unto it. They were never appointed
as the substance of religion, but auxiliaries to it. What value had
the offering of the human nature of Christ been of, if he {a252} had
not had a divine nature to qualify him to be the Priest? and what is
the oblation of our bodies, without a priestly act of the spirit in
the presentation of it? Could the Israelites have called themselves
worshippers of God according to his order, if they had brought a
thousand lambs that had died in a ditch, or been killed at home? They
were to be brought living to the altar; the blood shed at the foot
of it. A thousand sacrifices killed without had not been so valuable
as one brought alive to the place of offering: one sound sacrifice
is better than a thousand rotten ones. As God took no pleasure in
the blood of beasts without its relation to the Antitype; so he takes
no pleasure in the outward rites of worship, without faith in the
Redeemer. To offer a body with a sapless spirit, is a sacrilege of the
same nature with that of the Israelites when they offered dead beasts.
A man without spiritual worship is dead while he worships, though by
his diligence in the externals of it, he may, like the angel of the
church of Sardis, “have a name to live” (Rev. iii. 1). What security
can we expect from a multitude of dead services? What weak shields are
they against the holy eye and revenging wrath of God! What man, but
one out of his wits, would solicit a dead man to be his advocate or
champion? Diligence in outward worship is not to be rested in.
_Use II._ shall be for examination. Let us try ourselves concerning
the manner of our worship. We are now in the end of the world, and
the dregs of time; wherein the apostle predicts there may be much of
a form, and little of the power of godliness (2 Tim. iii. 1, 5); and,
therefore, it stands us in hand to search into ourselves, whether it
be not thus with us? whether there be as much reverence in our spirits
as there may be devotion in our countenances and outward carriages.
1. How, therefore, are our hearts prepared to worship? Is our
diligence greater to put our hearts in an adoring posture, than our
bodies in a decent garb? or are we content to have a muddy heart,
so we may have a dressed carcass? To have a spirit a cage of unclean
birds, while we wipe the filth from the outside of the platter, is
no better than a pharisaical devotion, and deserves no better a name
than that of a whited sepulchre. Do we take opportunities to excite
and quicken our spirits to the performance, and cry aloud with David,
“Awake, awake, my glory!” Are not our hearts asleep when Christ
knocks? When we hear the voice of God, “Seek my face;” do we answer
him with warm resolutions, “Thy face, Lord, we will seek?” (Ps. xxvii.
8.) Do we comply with spiritual motions, and strike whilst the iron is
hot? Is there not more of reluctancy than readiness? Is there a quick
rising of the soul in reverence to the motion, as Eglon to Ehud; or a
sullen hanging the head at the first approach of it? Or if our hearts
seem to be engaged and on fire, what are the motives that quicken
that fire? Is it only the blast of a natural conscience, fear of
hell, desires of heaven, as abstracted from God? or is it an affection
to God; an obedient will to please him; longings to enjoy him, as a
holy and sanctifying God in his ordinances, as well as a blessed and
glorified God in heaven? What do we expect in our approaches from
him? that which may make {a253} divine impressions upon us, and more
exactly conform us to the Divine nature? or do we design nothing but
an empty formality, a rolling eye, and a filling the air with a few
words, without any openings of heart to receive the incomes, which,
according to the nature of the duty, might be conveyed to us? Can this
be a spiritual worship? The soul then closely waits upon him, when its
expectation is only from him (Psalm lxii.6). Are our hearts seasoned
with a sense of sin; a sight of our spiritual wants; raised notions
of God; glowing affections to him; strong appetite after a spiritual
fulness? Do we rouse up our sleepy spirits, and make a covenant with
all that is within us to attend upon him? So much as we want of this,
so much we come short of a spiritual worship. In Ps. lvii. 7 (“My
heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed”), David would fix his heart,
before he would engage in a praising act of worship. He appeals to God
about it, and that with doubling the expression, as being certain of
an inward preparedness. Can we make the same appeals in a fixation of
spirit?
2. How are our hearts fixed upon him; how do they cleave to him in
the duty? Do we resign our spirits to God, and make them an entire
holocaust, a whole burnt‑offering in his worship? or do we not
willingly admit carnal thoughts to mix themselves with spiritual
duties, and fasten our minds to the creature, under pretences of
directing them to the Creator? Do we not pass a mere compliment
upon God, by some superficial act of devotion; while some covetous,
envious, ambitious, voluptuous imagination may possess our minds?
Do we not invert God’s order, and worship a lust instead of God with
our spirits, that should not have the least service, either from
our souls or bodies, but with a spiritual disdain be sacrificed to
the just indignation of God? How often do we fight against his will,
while we cry, “Hail, Master!” instead of crucifying our own thoughts,
crucifying the Lord of our lives; our outward carriage plausible, and
our inward stark naught! Do we not often regard iniquity more than
God in our hearts, in a time of worship?――roll some filthy imagination
as a sweet morsel under our tongues, and taste more sweetness in that
than in God? Do not our spirits smell rank of earth, while we offer
to heaven; and have we not hearts full of thick clay, as their “hands
were full of blood?” (Isa. i. 15.) When we sacrifice, do we not wrap
up our souls in communion with some sordid fancy, when we should
entwine our spirits about an amiable God? While we have some fear of
him, may we not have a love to something else above him? This is to
worship, or swear by the Lord, and by Malcham (Zeph. i. 5). How often
doth an apish fancy render a service inwardly ridiculous, under a
grave outward posture; skipping to the shop, warehouse, counting‑house,
in the space of a short prayer! and we are before God as a Babel, a
confusion of internal languages; and this in those parts of worship
which are, in the right use, most agreeable to God, profitable for
ourselves, ruinous to the kingdom of sin and Satan, and means to bring
us into a closer communion with the Divine Majesty. Can this be a
spiritual worship?
3. How do we act our graces in worship? Though the instrument {a254}
be strung, if the strings be not wound up, what melody can be the
issue? All readiness and alacrity discover a strength of nature; and
a readiness in spirituals discovers a spirituality in the heart. As
unaffecting thoughts of God are not spiritual thoughts, so unaffecting
addresses to God are not spiritual addresses. Well, then, what
awakenings, and elevations of faith and love have we? What strong
outflowings of our souls to him? What indignation against sin?
What admirations of redeeming grace? How low have we brought our
corruptions to the footstool of Christ, to be made his conquered
enemies? How straitly have we clasped our faith about the cross and
throne of Christ, to become his intimate spouse? Do we in hearing hang
upon the lips of Christ; in prayer take hold of God, and will not let
him go; in confessions rend the caul of our hearts, and indite our
souls before him with a deep humility? Do we act more by a soaring
love than a drooping fear? So far as our spirits are servile, so far
they are legal and carnal; so much as they are free and spontaneous,
so much they are evangelical and spiritual. As men under the law
are subject to the constraint of “bondage all their life‑time” (Heb.
ii. 15), in all their worship; so under the gospel they are under a
constraint of love (2 Cor. v. 14): how then are believing affections
exercised, which are alway accompanied with holy fear; a fear of his
goodness that admits us into his presence, and a fear to offend him in
our act of worship? So much as we have of forced or feeble affection,
so much we have of carnality.
4. How do we find our hearts after worship? By an after carriage we
may judge of the spirituality of it.
(1.) How are we as to inward strength? When a worship is spiritually
performed, grace is more strengthened, corruption more mortified;
the soul, like Samson after his awakening, goes out with a renewed
strength; as the inward man is renewed day by day, that is, every day;
so it is renewed in every worship. Every shower makes the grass and
fruit grow in good ground where the root is good, and the weeds where
the ground is naught; the more prepared the heart is to obedience
in other duties after worship, the more evidence there is that it
hath been spiritual in the exercise of it. It is the end of God in
every dispensation, as in that of John Baptist, “to make ready a
people prepared for the Lord” (Luke i. 17): when the heart is by
worship prepared for fresh acts of obedience, and hath a more exact
watchfulness against the encroachments of sin. As carnal men after
worship sprout up in spiritual wickedness, so do spiritual worshippers
in spiritual graces; spiritual fruits are a sign of a spiritual frame.
When men are more prone to sin after duty, it is a sign there was
but little communion with God in it; and a greater strength of sin,
because such an act is contrary to the end of worship which is the
subduing of sin. It is a sign the physic hath wrought well, when the
stomach hath a better appetite to its appointed food; and worship
hath been well performed, when we have a stronger inclination to
other acts well pleasing to God, and a more sensible distaste of
those temptations we too much relished before. It is a sign of a good
concoction, {a255} when there is a greater strength in the vitals of
religion, a more eager desire to know God. When Moses had been praying
to God, and prevailed with him, he puts up a higher request to “behold
his glory” (Exod. xxxiii. 13, 18): when the appetite stands strong to
fuller discoveries of God, it is a sign there hath been a spiritual
converse with him.
(2.) How is it especially as to humility? The Pharisees’ worship was,
without dispute, carnal; and we find them not more humble after all
their devotions, but overgrown with more weeds of spiritual pride;
they performed them as their righteousness. What men dare plead before
God in his day, they plead before him in their hearts in their day;
but this men will do at the day of judgment: “We have prophesied in
thy name,” &c. (Matt. vii. 21). They show what tincture their services
left upon their spirits; that which excludes them from any acceptation
at the last day, excludes them from any estimation of being spiritual
in this day. The carnal worshippers charge God with injustice in not
rewarding them, and claim an acceptation as a compensation due to
them (Isa. lviii. 3): “Wherefore have we afflicted our souls, and thou
takest no knowledge?” A spiritual worshipper looks upon his duties
with shame, as well as he doth upon his sins with confusion; and
implores the mercy of God for the one as well as the other. In Psalm
cxliii. 2, the prophet David, after his supplications, begs of God
not to enter into judgment with him; and acknowledges any answer that
God should give him, as a fruit of his faithfulness to his promise,
and not the merit of his worship: “In thy faithfulness answer me,” &c.
Whatsoever springs from a gracious principle, and is the breath of the
Spirit, leaves a man more humble; whereas, that which proceeds from
a stock of nature, hath the true blood of nature running in the veins
of it; viz., that pride which is naturally derived from Adam. The
breathing of the Divine Spirit is, in everything, to conform us to
our Redeemer; that being the main work of his office, is his work in
every particular christian act influenced by him. Now Jesus Christ,
in all his actions, was an exact pattern of all humility. After the
institution and celebration of the supper, a special act of worship in
the church, though he had a sense of all the authority his Father had
given him, yet he “humbles himself to wash his disciples’ feet” (John
xiii. 2‒4); and after his sublime prayer (John xvii.), “He humbles
himself to the death, and offers himself” to his murderers, because
of his Father’s pleasure. (John xviii. 1): “When he had spoken those
words, he went over the brook Kedron into the garden.” What is the
end of God in appointing worship, is the end of a spiritual heart in
offering it; not his own exaltation, but God’s glory. Glorifying the
name of God is the fruit of that evangelical worship the Gentiles were
in time to give to God (Ps. lxxxvi. 9): “All nations which thou hast
made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord, and shall glorify
thy name.” Let us examine, then, what debasing ourselves there is in
a sense of our own vileness, and distance from so glorious a Spirit.
Self‑denial is the heart of all gospel grace. Evangelical, {a256}
spiritual worship cannot be without the ingredient of the main
evangelical principle.
(3.) What delight is there after it? What pleasure is there, and what
is the object of that pleasure? Is it the communion we have had with
God, or a fluency in ourselves? Is it something which hath touched
our hearts, or tickled our fancies? As the strength of sin is known
by the delightful thoughts of it after the commission; so is the
spirituality of duty, by the object of our delightful remembrance
after the performance. It was a sign David was spiritual in the
worship of God in the tabernacle, when he enjoyed it, because he
longed for the spiritual part of it, when he was exiled from it; his
desires were not only for liberty to revisit the tabernacle, but to
see the “power and glory of God in the sanctuary,” as he had seen
it before (Ps. lxiii. 2): his desires for it could not have been so
ardent, if his reflection upon what had past had not been delightful;
nor could his soul be poured out in him, for the want of such
opportunities, if the remembrance of the converse he had had with
God, had not been accompanied with a delightful relish (Ps. xlii. 4).
Let us examine what delight we find in our spirits after worship.
_Use III._ is of comfort. And it is very comfortable to consider,
that the smallest worship with the heart and spirit, flowing from
a principle of grace, is more acceptable than the most pompous
veneration; yea, if the oblation were as precious as the whole circuit
of heaven and earth without it. That God that values a cup of cold
water given to any as his disciple, will value a sincere service above
a costly sacrifice. God hath his eye upon them that honor his nature;
he would not “seek such to worship him,” if he did not intend to
accept such a worship from them; when we therefore invoke him, and
praise him, which are the prime parts of religion, he will receive
it as a sweet savor from us, and overlook infirmities mixed with
the graces. The great matter of discomfort, and that which makes
us question the spirituality of worship, is the many starts of our
spirits, and rovings to other things. For answer to which,
1. It is to be confessed that these starts are natural to us. Who is
free from them? We bear in our bosoms a nest of turbulent thoughts,
which, like busy gnats, will be buzzing about us while we are in our
most inward and spiritual converses. Many wild beasts lurk in a man’s
heart, as in a close and covert wood, and scarce discover themselves
but at our solemn worship. No duty so holy, no worship so spiritual,
that can wholly privilege us from them; they will jog us in our most
weighty employments, that, as God said to Cain, sin lies at the door,
and enters in, and makes a riot in our souls. As it is said of wicked
men, “they cannot sleep” for multitude of thoughts (Eccles. v. 12);
so it may be of many a good man, he cannot worship for multitude of
thoughts; there will be starts, and more in our religious than natural
employments; it is natural to man. Some therefore think, the bells
tied to Aaron’s garments, between the pomegranates, were to warn the
people, and recall their fugitive minds to the present service, when
they heard the sound of them, upon the least motion of the high‑priest.
The sacrifice of Abraham, the father or the faithful, was not exempt
from the fowls {a257} pecking at it (Gen. xv. 11). Zechariah himself
was drowsy in the midst of his visions, which being more amazing,
might cause a heavenly intentness (Zech. iv. 1): “The angel that
talked with me, came again and awaked me, as a man is awaked out of
sleep.” He had been roused up before, but he was ready to drop down
again; his heart was gone, till the angel jogged him. We may complain
of such imaginations, as Jeremiah doth of the enemies of the Jews
(Lam. iv. 19). Our persecutors are swifter than eagles; they light
upon us with as much speed as eagles upon a carcass; they pursue us
upon the mountain of divine institutions, and they lay wait for us in
the wilderness, in our retired addresses to God. And this will be so
while,
(1.) There is natural corruption in us. There are in a godly man
two contrary principles, flesh and spirit, which endeavor to hinder
one another’s acts, and are alway stirring upon the offensive or
defensive part (Gal. v. 17). There is a body of death, continually
exhaling its noisome vapors: it is a body of death in our worship,
as well as in our natures; it snaps our resolutions asunder (Rom.
vii. 19); it hinders us in the doing good, and contradicts our
wills in the stirring up evil. This corruption being seated in all
the faculties, and a constant domestic in them, has the greater
opportunity to trouble us, since it is by those faculties that we
spiritually transact with God; and it stirs more in the time of
religious exercises, though it be in part mortified; as a wounded
beast, though tired, will rage and strive to its utmost, when the
enemy is about to fetch a blow at it. All duties of worship tend to
the wounding of corruption; and it is no wonder to feel the striving
of sin to defend itself and offend us, when we have our arms in our
hands to mortify it, that the blow may be diverted which is directed
against it. The apostles had aspiring thoughts; and being persuaded of
an earthly kingdom, expected a grandeur in it; and though we find some
appearance of it at other times, as when they were casting out devils,
and gave an account of it to their Master, he gives them a kind of
a check (Luke x. 20), intimating that there was some kind of evil in
their rejoicing upon that account; yet this never swelled so high, as
to break out into a quarrel who should be greatest, until they had the
most solemn ordinance, the Lord’s supper, to quell it (Luke xxii. 24).
Our corruption is like lime, which discovers not its fire by any smoke
or heat, till you cast water, the enemy of fire, upon it; neither doth
our natural corruption rage so much, as when we are using means to
quench and destroy it.
(2.) While there is a devil, and we in his precinct. As he accuseth
us to God, so he disturbs us in ourselves; he is a bold spirit, and
loves to intrude himself when we are conversing with God: we read,
that when the angels presented themselves before God, Satan comes
among them (Job i. 6). Motions from Satan will thrust themselves
in with our most raised and angelical frames; he loves to take off
the edge of our spirits from God; he acts but after the old rate; he
from the first envied God an obedience from man, and envied man the
felicity of communion with God; he is unwilling God should have the
honor of worship, and that we should have the fruit of it; {a258} he
hath himself lost it, and therefore is unwilling we should enjoy it;
and being subtle, he knows how to make impressions upon us suitable to
our inbred corruptions, and assault us in the weakest part. He knows
all the avenues to get within us (as he did in the temptation of Eve),
and being a spirit, he wants not a power to dart them immediately upon
our fancy; and being a spirit, and therefore active and nimble, he
can shoot those darts faster than our weakness can beat them off. He
is diligent also, and watcheth for his prey, and seeks to devour our
services as well as our souls, and snatch our best morsels from us. We
know he mixed himself with our Saviour’s retirements in the wilderness,
and endeavored to fly‑blow his holy converse with his Father in the
preparation to his mediatory work. Satan is God’s ape, and imitates
the Spirit in the office of a remembrancer; as the Spirit brings good
thoughts and divine promises to mind, to quicken our worship, so the
devil brings evil things to mind, and endeavors to fasten them in
our souls to disturb us; and though all the foolish starts we have in
worship are not purely his issue, yet being of kin to him, he claps
his hands, and sets them on like so many mastiffs, to tear the service
in pieces. And both those distractions, which arise from our own
corruption and from Satan, are most rife in worship, when we are under
some pressing affliction. This seems to be David’s case, Ps. lxxxvi.
when in ver. 11 he prays God to unite his heart to fear and worship
his name; he seems to be under some affliction, or fear of his enemies:
“O free me from those distractions of spirit, and those passions which
arise in my soul, upon considering the designs of my enemies against
me, and press upon me in my addresses to thee, and attendances on
thee. ” Job also in his affliction complains (Job xvii. 11) that
“his purposes were broken off;” he could not make an even thread
of thoughts and resolutions; they were frequently snapt asunder,
like rotten yarn when one is winding it up. Good men and spiritual
worshippers have lain under this trouble. Though they are a sign of
weakness of grace, or some obstructions in the acting of strong grace,
yet they are not alway evidences of a want of grace; what ariseth from
our own corruption, is to be matter of humiliation and resistance;
what ariseth from Satan, should edge our minds to a noble conquest of
them. If the apostle did comfort himself with his disapproving of what
rose from the natural spring of sin within him, with his consent to
the law, and dissent from his lust; and charges it not upon himself,
but upon the sin that dwelt in him, with which he had broken off the
former league, and was resolved never to enter into amity with it;
by the same reason we may comfort ourselves, if such thoughts are
undelighted in, and alienate not our hearts from the worship of God
by all their busy intrusions to interrupt us.
2. These distractions (not allowed) may be occasions, by an holy
improvement, to make our hearts more spiritual after worship, though
they disturb us in it, by answering those ends for which we may
suppose God permits them to invade us. And that is,
First, When they are occasions to humble us,
(1.) For our carriage in the particular worship. There is nothing
so dangerous as spiritual pride; it deprived devils and men of the
{a259} presence of God, and will hinder us of the influence of God.
If we had had raised and uninterrupted motions in worship, we should
be apt to be lifted up; and the devil stands ready to tempt us to
self‑confidence. You know how it was with Paul (2 Cor. xii. 1‒7);
his buffetings were occasions to render him more spiritual than his
raptures, because more humble. God suffers those wanderings, starts,
and distractions, to prevent our spiritual pride; which is as a worm
at the root of spiritual worship, and mind us of the dusty frame of
our spirits, how easily they are blown away; as he sends sickness to
put us in mind of the shortness of our breath, and the easiness to
lose it. God would make us ashamed of ourselves in his presence; that
we may own, that what is good in any duty, is merely from his grace
and Spirit, and not from ourselves; that with Paul we may cry out,
“By grace we are what we are,” and by grace we do what we do; we may
be hereby made sensible, that God can alway find something in our
exactest worship, as a ground of denying us the successful fruit of it.
If we cannot stand upon our duties for salvation, what can we bottom
upon in ourselves? If therefore they are occasions to make us out of
love with any righteousness of our own, to make us break our hearts
for them, because we cannot keep them out; if we mourn for them as
our sins, and count them our great afflictions, we have attained
that brokenness which is a choice ingredient in a spiritual sacrifice.
Though we have been disturbed by them, yet we are not robbed of the
success; we may behold an answer of our worship in our humiliation,
in spite of all of them.
(2.) For the baseness of our nature. These unsteady motions help us
to discern that heap of vermin that breeds in our nature. Would any
man think he had such an averseness to his Creator and Benefactor;
such an unsuitableness to him; such an estrangedness from him, were
it not for his inspection into his distracted frame? God suffers this
to hang over us as a rod of correction, to discover and fetch out the
folly of our hearts. Could we imagine our natures so highly contrary
to that God who is so infinitely amiable, so desirable an object;
or that there should be so much folly and madness in the heart, as
to draw back from God in those services which God hath appointed
as pipes through which to communicate his grace, to convey himself,
his love and goodness to the creature? If, therefore, we have a deep
sense of, and strong reflections upon our base nature, and bewail that
mass of averseness which lies there, and that fulness of irreverence
towards the God of our mercies, the object of our worship, it is a
blessed improvement of our wanderings and diversions. Certainly, if
any Israelite had brought a lame and rotten lamb to be sacrificed to
God, and afterward had bewailed it, and laid open his heart to God
in a sensible and humble confession of it, that repentance had been a
better sacrifice, and more acceptable in the sight of God, than if he
had brought a sound and a living offering.
Secondly, When they are occasions to make us prize duties of worship.
When we argue, as rationally we may, that they are of singular use,
since our corrupt hearts and a malicious devil doth chiefly endeavor
to hinder us from them, and that we find we have not those gadding
thoughts when we are upon worldly business, or {a260} upon any sinful
design which may dishonor God and wound our souls. This is a sign
sin and Satan dislike worship, for he is too subtle a spirit to
oppose that which would further his kingdom. As it is an argument the
Scripture is the word of God, because the wickedness of the world doth
so much oppose it, so it is a ground to believe the profitableness
and excellency of worship, because Satan and our own unruly hearts
do so much interrupt us in it: if, therefore, we make this use of our
cross‑steps in worship, to have a greater value for such duties, more
affections to them, and desires to be frequent in them, our hearts are
growing spiritual under the weights that would depress them to
carnality.
Thirdly, When we take a rise from hence, to have heavenly admirations
of the graciousness of God, that he should pity and pardon so many
slight addresses to him, and give any gracious returns to us. Though
men have foolish rangings every day, and in every duty, yet free
grace is so tender as not to punish them (Gen. viii. 21): “And the
Lord smelt a sweet savor; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not
curse the ground for man’s sake, for the imagination of man’s heart
is evil from his youth.” It is observable, that this was just after
a sacrifice which Noah offered to God (ver. 20): but probably not
without infirmities common to human nature, which may be grounded upon
the reason God gives, that though he had destroyed the earth before,
because of the “evil of man’s imaginations” (Gen. vi. 5), he still
found evil imaginations; he doth not say in the heart of Cham, or
others of Noah’s family, but in man’s heart, including Noah also, who
had both the judgments of God upon the former world, and the mercy
of God in his own preservation, before his eyes; yet God saw evil
imaginations rooted in the nature of man, and though it were so, yet
he would be merciful. If, therefore, we can, after finding our hearts
so vagrant in worship, have real frames of thankfulness that God hath
spared us, and be heightened in our admirations at God’s giving us
any fruit of such a distracted worship, we take advantage from them
to be raised into an evangelical frame, which consists in the humble
acknowledgments of the grace of God. When David takes a review of
those tumultuous passions which had ruffled his mind, and possessed
him with unbelieving notions of God in the persons of his prophets
(Ps. cxvi. 11), how high doth his soul mount in astonishment and
thankfulness to God for his mercy! (ver. 12.) Notwithstanding his
distrust, God did graciously perform his promise, and answer his
desire: then it is, “What shall I render to the Lord?” His heart was
more affected for it, because it had been so passionate in former
distrusts. It is indeed a ground of wondering at the patience of the
Spirit of God, that he should guide our hearts when they are so apt to
start out, as it is the patience of a master to guide the hand of his
scholar, while he mixes his writing with many blots. It is not one
or two infirmities the Spirit helps us in, and helps over, but many
(Rom. viii. 26). It is a sign of a spiritual heart, when he can take
a rise to bless God for the renewing and blowing up his affections,
in the midst of so many incursions from Satan to the contrary, and
the readiness of the heart too much to comply with them.
{a261} Fourthly, When we take occasion from thence to prize the
mediation of Christ. The more distractions jog us, the more need
we should see of going out to a Saviour by faith. One part of our
Saviour’s office is to stand between us and the infirmities of our
worship. As he is an advocate, he presents our services, and pleads
for them and us (1 John ii. 1), for the sins of our duties, as well as
for our other sins. Jesus Christ is an High‑priest, appointed by God
to take away the “iniquities of our holy things,” which was typified
by Aaron’s plate upon his mitre (Exod. xxviii. 36, 38). Were there
no imperfections, were there no creeping up of those frogs into our
minds, we should think our worship might merit acceptance with God
upon its own account; but if we behold our own weakness, that not
a tear, a groan, a sigh, is so pure, but must have Christ to make
it entertainable; that there is no worship without those blemishes;
and upon this, throw all our services into the arms of Christ for
acceptance, and solicit him to put his merits in the front, to make
our ciphers appear valuable; it is a spiritual act, the design of God
in the gospel being to advance the honor and mediation of his Son.
That is a spiritual and evangelical act which answers the evangelical
design. The design of Satan, and our own corruption is defeated, when
those interruptions make us run swifter, and take faster hold on the
High‑priest who is to present our worship to God, and our own souls
receive comfort thereby. Christ had temptations offered to him by
the devil in his wilderness retirement, that, from an experimental
knowledge, he might be able more “compassionately to succor us” (Heb.
ii. 18); we have such assaults in our retired worship especially,
that we may be able more highly to value him and his mediation.
3. Let us not, therefore, be discouraged by those interruptions and
starts of our hearts.
(1.) If we find in ourselves a strong resistance of them. The flesh
will be lusting; that cannot be hindered; yet if we do not fulfil the
lusts of it, rise up at its command, and go about its work, we may be
said to walk in the Spirit (Gal. v. 16, 17): we “walk in the Spirit,”
if we “fulfil not the lusts of the flesh,” though there be a lusting
of the flesh against the Spirit; so we worship in the Spirit, though
there be carnal thoughts arising if we do not fulfil them; though
the stirring of them discovers some contrariety in us to God, yet the
resistance manifests that there is a principle of contrariety in us
to them; that as there is something of flesh that lusts against the
spirit, so there is something of spirit in worship which lusts against
the flesh: we must take heed of omitting worship, because of such
inroads, and lying down in the mire of a total neglect. If our spirits
are made more lively and vigorous against them; if those cold vapors
which have risen from our hearts make us, like a spring in the midst
of the cold earth, more warm, there is, in this case, more reason
for us to bless God, than to be discouraged. God looks upon it as
the disease, not the wilfulness of our nature; as the weakness of the
flesh, not the willingness of the spirit. If we would shut the door
upon them, it seems they are unwelcome company; men do not use to lock
their doors upon those they love; if they break in and disturb {a262}
us with their impertinences, we need not be discomforted, unless we
give them a share in our affections, and turn our back upon God to
entertain them; if their presence makes us sad, their flight would
make us joyful.
(2.) If we find ourselves excited to a stricter watch over our
hearts against them; as travellers will be careful when they come to
places where they have been robbed before, that they be not so easily
surprised again. We should not only lament when we have had such
foolish imaginations in worship breaking in upon us, but also bless
God that we have had no more, since we have hearts so fruitful of
weeds. We should give God the glory when we find our hearts preserved
from these intruders, and not boast of ourselves, but return him our
praise for the watch and guard he kept over us, to preserve us from
such thieves. Let us not be discomforted; for as the greatness of our
sins, upon our turning to God, is no hindrance to our justification,
because it doth not depend upon our conversion as the meritorious
cause, but upon the infinite value of our Saviour’s satisfaction,
which reaches the greatest sins as well as the least; so the multitude
of our bewailed distractions in worship are not a hindrance to our
acceptation, because of the uncontrollable power of Christ’s
intercession.
_Use IV._ is for exhortation. Since spiritual worship is due to God,
and the Father seeks such to worship him, how much should we endeavor
to satisfy the desire and order of God, and act conformable to the law
of our creation and the love of redemption! Our end must be the same
in worship which was God’s end in creation and redemption; to glorify
his name, set forth his perfections, and be rendered fit, as creatures
and redeemed ones, to partake of that grace which is the fruit of
worship. An evangelical dispensation requires a spiritual homage; to
neglect, therefore, either the matter or manner of gospel duties, is
to put a slight upon gospel privileges. The manner of duty is ever
of more value than the matter; the scarlet dye is more precious than
the cloth tinctured with it. God respects more the disposition of
the sacrificer than the multitude of the sacrifices.[527] The solemn
feasts appointed by God were but dung as managed by the Jews (Mal.
ii. 3). The heart is often welcome without the body, but the body
never grateful without the heart. The inward acts of the spirit
require nothing from without to constitute them good in themselves;
but the outward acts of devotion require inward acts to render them
savory to God. As the goodness of outward acts consists not in the
acts themselves, so the acceptableness of them results not from the
acts themselves, but from the inward frame animating and quickening
those acts, as blood and spirits running through the veins of a duty
to make it a living service in the sight of God. Imperfections in
worship hinder not God’s acceptation of it, if the heart, spirited
by grace, be there to make it a sweet savor. The stench of burning
flesh and fat in the legal sacrifices might render them noisome to the
outward senses; but God smelt a sweet savor in them, as they {a263}
respected Christ. When the heart and spirit are offered up to God, it
may be a savory duty, though attended with unsavory imperfections; but
a thousand sacrifices without a stamp of faith, a thousand spiritual
duties with an habitual carnality, are no better than stench with God.
The heart must be purged, as well as the temple was by our Saviour, of
the thieves that would rob God of his due worship. Antiquity had some
temples wherein it was a crime to bring any gold; therefore those that
came to worship laid their gold aside before they went into the temple.
We should lay aside our worldly and trading thoughts before we address
to worship (Isa. xxvi. 9): “With my spirit within me will I seek thee
early.” Let not our minds be gadding abroad, and exiled from God and
themselves. It will be thus when the “desire of our soul is to his
name, and the remembrance of him” (ver. 8). When he hath given so
great and admirable a gift as that of his Son, in whom are all things
necessary to salvation, righteousness, peace, and pardon of sin, we
should manage the remembrance of his name in worship with the closest
unitedness of heart, and the most spiritual affections. The motion
of the spirit is the first act in religion; to this we are obliged in
every act. The devil requires the spirit of his votaries; should God
have a less dedication than the devil?
Motives to back this exhortation.
I. Not to give God our spirit is a great sin. It is a mockery of God,
not worship, contempt, not adoration, whatever our outward fervency or
protestations may be.[528] Every alienation of our hearts from him is
a real scorn put upon him. The acts of the soul are real, and more the
acts of the man than the acts of the body; because they are the acts
of the choicest part of man, and of that which is the first spring of
all bodily motions; it is the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος, the internal speech
whereby we must speak with God. To give him, therefore, only an
external form of worship without the life of it, is a taking his name
in vain. We mock him, when we mind not what we are speaking to him, or
what he is speaking to us; when the motions of our hearts are contrary
to the motions of our tongues; when we do anything before him slovenly,
impudently, or rashly. As in a lutinist it is absurd to sing one tune
and play another; so it is a foul thing to tell God one thing with
our lips, and think another with our hearts. It is a sin like that
the apostle chargeth the heathens with (Rom. i. 28): “They like not to
retain God in their knowledge.” Their stomachs are sick while they are
upon any duty, and never leave working till they have thrown up all
the spiritual part of worship, and rid themselves of the thoughts of
God, which are as unwelcome and troublesome guests to them. When men
behave themselves in the sight of God, as if God were not God, they
do not only defame him, but deny him, and violate the unchangeable
perfections of the Divine nature.
1. It is against the majesty of God, when we have not awful thoughts
of that great Majesty to whom we address; when our souls cleave
not to him when we petition him in prayer, or when he gives out his
orders to us in his Word. It is a contempt of the majesty of a prince,
if, whilst he is speaking to us, we listen not to him with {a264}
reverence and attention, but turn our backs on him, to play with one
of his hounds, or talk with a beggar; or while we speak to him, to
rake in a dunghill. Solomon adviseth us to “keep our foot when we go
to the house of God” (Eccles. v. 1). Our affections should be steady,
and not slip away again; why? (ver. 2) because “God is in heaven,”
&c. He is a God of majesty; earthly, dirty frames are unsuitable
to the God of heaven; low spirits are unsuitable to the Most High.
We would not bring our mean servants or dirty dogs into a prince’s
presence chamber; yet we bring not only our worldly, but our profane
affections into God’s presence. We give in this case those services
to God which our Governor would think unworthy of him (Mal. i. 8). The
more excellent and glorious God is, the greater contempt of him it is
to suffer such foolish affections to be competitors with him for our
hearts. It is a scorn put upon him to converse with a creature, while
we are dealing with him; but a greater to converse in our thoughts
and fancies with some sordid lust, which is most hateful to him; and
the more aggravation it attracts, in that we are to apprehend him the
most glorious object sitting upon his throne in time of worship, and
ourselves standing as vile creatures before him, supplicating for our
lives, and the conveyance of grace and mercy to our souls; as if a
grand mutineer, instead of humbly begging the pardon of his offended
prince, should present his petition not only scribbled and blotted,
but besmeared with some loathsome excrement. It is unbecoming both the
majesty of God, and the worship itself, to present him with a picture
instead of a substance, and bring a world of nasty affections in
our hearts, and ridiculous toys in our heads before him, and worship
with indisposed and heedless souls. He is a great King (Mal. i. 14):
therefore address to him with fear and reverence.
2. It is against the life of God. Is a dead worship proportioned
to a living God? The separation of heavenly affections from our
souls before God, makes them as much a carcass in his sight, as the
divorce of the soul makes the body a carcass. When the affections
are separated, worship is no longer worship, but a dead offering,
a lifeless bulk; for the essence and spirit of worship is departed.
Though the soul be present with the body in a way of information, yet
it is not present in a way of affection, and this is the worst; for
it is not the separation of the soul from informing that doth separate
a man from God, but the removal of our affections from him. If a
man pretend an application to God, and sleep and snore all the time,
without question such a one did not worship. In a careless worship
the heart is morally dead while the eyes are open: the heart of the
spouse (Cant. v. 2) waked while her eyes slept; and our hearts, on the
contrary, sleep while our eyes wake. Our blessed Saviour hath died to
purge our consciences from dead works and frames, that we may serve
the living God (Heb. ix. 14); to serve God as a God of life. David’s
soul cried and fainted for God under this consideration (Ps. xlii. 2);
but to present our bodies without our spirits, is such a usage of
God, that implies he is a dead image, not worthy of any but a dead
and heartless service, like one of those idols the Psalmist speaks of
(Ps. cxv. 5), that have “eyes, and see not; ears, {a265} and hear not;”
no life in it. Though it be not an objective idolatry, because the
worship is directed to the true God; yet I may call it a subjective
idolatry in regard of the frame, fit only to be presented to some
senseless stock. We intimate God to be no better than an idol, and
to have no more knowledge of us and insight into us, than an idol can
have. If we did believe him to be the living God, we durst not come
before him with services so unsuitable to him, and reproaches of him.
3. It is against the infiniteness of God. We should worship God with
those boundless affections which bear upon them a shadow or image
of his infiniteness; such are the desires of the soul which know no
limits, but start out beyond whatsoever enjoyment the heart of man
possesses. No creeping creature was to be offered to God in sacrifice,
but such as had legs to run, or wings to fly. For us to come before
God with a light creeping frame, is to worship him with the lowest
finite affections, as though anything, though never so mean or torn,
might satisfy an infinite Being; as though a poor shallow creature
could give enough to God without giving him the heart, when, indeed,
we cannot give him a worship proportionable to his infiniteness, did
our hearts swell as large as heaven in our desires for him in every
act of our duties.
4. It is against the spirituality of God. God being a Spirit, calls
for a worship in spirit; to withhold this from him implies him to
be some gross corporeal matter. As a Spirit, he looks for the heart;
a wrestling heart in prayer, a trembling heart in the Word (Isa.
lxvi. 2). To bring nothing but the body when we come to a spiritual
God to beg spiritual benefits, to wait for spiritual communications,
which can only be dispensed to us in a spiritual manner, is unsuitable
to the spiritual nature of God. A mere carnal service implicitly
denies his spirituality, which requires of us higher engagements than
mere corporeal ones. Worship should be rational, not an imaginative
service, wherein is required the activity of our noblest faculties;
and our fancy ought to have no share in it, but in subserviency to
the more spiritual part of our soul.
5. It is against the supremacy of God. As God is one and the only
Sovereign; so our hearts should be one, cleaving wholly to him, and
undivided from him. In pretending to deal with him, we acknowledge his
deity and sovereignty; but in withholding our choicest faculties and
affections from him, and the starting of our minds to vain objects,
we intimate their equality with God, and their right as well as his
to our hearts and affections. It is as if a princess should commit
adultery with some base scullion while she is before her husband,
which would be a plain denial of his sole right to her. It intimates
that other things are superior to God; they are true sovereigns that
engross our hearts. If a man were addressing himself to a prince, and
should in an instant turn his back upon him, upon a beck or nod from
some inconsiderable person; is it not an evidence that that person
that invited him away hath a greater sovereignty over him than that
prince to whom he was applying himself? And do we not discard God’s
absolute dominion over us, when, at the least beck of a corrupt
inclination, we can dispose of our hearts to it, and alienate {a266}
them from God? as they, in Ezek. xxxiii. 32, left the service of God
for the service of their covetousness, which evidenced that they owned
the authority of sin more than the authority of God. This is not to
serve God as our Lord and absolute Master, but to make God serve our
turn, and submit his sovereignty to the supremacy of some unworthy
affection. The creature is preferred before the Creator, when the
heart runs most upon it in time of religious worship, and our own
carnal interest swallows up the affections that are due to God. It is
“an idol set up in the heart” (Ezek. xiv. 4) in his solemn presence,
and attracts that devotion to itself which we only owe to our
Sovereign Lord; and the more base and contemptible that is to which
the spirit is devoted, the more contempt there is of God’s dominion.
Judas’s kiss, with a “Hail Master!” was no act of worship, or an
owning his Master’s authority, but a designing the satisfaction of
his covetousness in the betraying of him.
6. It is against the wisdom of God. God, as a God of order, has put
earthly things in subordination to heavenly; and we, by this unworthy
carriage, invert this order, and put heavenly things in subordination
to earthly; in placing mean and low things in our hearts, and bringing
them so placed into God’s presence, which his wisdom at the creation
put under our feet. A service without spiritual affections is a
“sacrifice of fools” (Eccles. v. 1), which have lost their brains and
understandings: a foolish spirit is very unsuitable to an infinitely
wise God. Well may God say of such a one, as Achish of David, who
seemed mad, “Why have you brought this fellow to play the madman in
my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?” (1 Sam. xxi. 15.)
7. It is against the omnisciency of God. To carry it fair without,
and impertinently within, is as though God had not an all‑seeing eye
that could pierce into the heart, and understand every motion of the
inward faculties; as though God were easily cheated with an outward
fawning service, like an apothecary’s box with a gilded title, that
may be full of cobwebs within. What is such a carriage, but a design
to deceive God, when, with Herod, we pretend to worship Christ, and
intend to murder all the motions of Christ in our souls? A heedless
spirit, an estrangement of our souls, a giving the reins to them to
run out from the presence of God to see every reed shaken with the
wind, is to deny him to be the Searcher of hearts, and the Discerner
of secret thoughts; as though he could not look through us to the
darkness and remoteness of our minds, but were an ignorant God, who
might be put off with the worst as well as the best in our flock. If
we did really believe there were a God of infinite knowledge, who saw
our frames and whether we came dressed with wedding garments suitable
to the duties we are about to perform, should we be so garish, and put
him off with such trivial stuff, without any reverence of his Majesty?
8. It is against the holiness of God. To alienate our spirits is to
offend him while we pretend to worship him; though we may be mighty
officious in the external part, yet our base and carnal affections
make all our worship but as a heap of dung; and who would not look
upon it as an affront to lay dung before a prince’s throne? {a267}
(Prov. xxi. 27), “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination;” how
much more when he brings it with a wicked mind? A putrefied carcass
under the law had not been so great an affront to the holiness of God,
as a frothy unmelted heart, and a wanton fancy, in a time of worship.
God is so holy, that if we could offer the worship of angels, and
the quintessence of our souls in his service, it would be beneath his
infinite purity; how unworthy, then, are they of him, when they are
presented not only without the sense of our uncleanness, but sullied
with the fumes and exhalations of our corrupt affections, which are as
so many plague‑spots upon our duties, contrary to the unspotted purity
of the Divine nature? Is not this an unworthy conceit of God, and
injurious to his infinite holiness?
9. It is against the love and kindness of God. It is a condescension
in God to admit a piece of earth to offer up a duty to him, when
he hath myriads of angels to attend him in his court, and celebrate
his praise. To admit man to be an attendant on him, and a partner
with angels, is a high favor. It is not a single mercy, but a heap
of mercies, to be admitted into the presence of God (Ps. v. 7): “I
will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercies.” When the
blessed God is so kind as to give us access to his majesty, do we not
undervalue his kindness when we deal uncivilly with him, and deny him
the choicest part of ourselves? It is a contempt of his sovereignty,
as our spirits are due to him by nature; a contempt of his goodness,
as our spirits are due to him by gratitude. How abusive a carriage
is it to make use of his mercy to encourage our impudence, that
should excite our fear and reverence! How unworthy would it be for
an indigent debtor to bring to his indulgent creditor an empty purse
instead of payment! When God holds out his golden sceptre to encourage
our approaches to him, stands ready to give us the pardon of sin and
full felicity, the best things he hath, is it a fit requital of his
kindness to give him a formal outside only, a shadow of religion; to
have the heart overswayed with other thoughts and affections, as if
all his proffers were so contemptible as to deserve only a slight at
our hands? It is a contempt of the love and kindness of God.
10. It is against the sufficiency and fulness of God. When we give God
our bodies, and the creature our spirits, it intimates a conceit that
there is more content to be had in the creature than in God blessed
forever; that the waters in the cistern are sweeter than those in
the fountain. Is not this a practical giving God the lie, and denying
those promises wherein he hath declared the satisfaction he can give
to the spirit, as he is the God of the spirits of all flesh? If we
did imagine the excellency and loveliness of God were worthy to be
the ultimate object of our affections, the heart would attend more
closely upon him, and be terminated in him; did we believe God to
be all‑sufficient, full of grace and goodness, a tender Father, not
willing to forsake his own, willing, as well as able, to supply their
wants, the heart would not so lamely attend upon him, and would not
upon every impertinency be diverted from him. There is much of a wrong
notion of God, and a predominancy of the world above him in the heart,
when we can more savorly relish the thoughts of {a268} low inferior
things than heavenly, and let our spirits upon every trifling occasion
be fugitive from him; it is a testimony that we make not God our
chiefest good. If apprehensions of his excellency did possess our
souls, they would be fastened on him, glued to him; we should not
listen to that rabble of foolish thoughts that steal our hearts
so often from him. Were our breathings after God as strong as the
pantings of the hart after the water‑brooks, we should be like that
creature, not diverted in our course by every puddle. Were God the
predominant satisfactory object in our eye, he would carry our whole
soul along with him. When our spirits readily retreat from God in
worship upon every giddy motion, it is a kind of repentance that ever
we did come near him, and implies that there is a fuller satisfaction,
and more attractive excellency in that which doth so easily divert us,
than in that God to whose worship we did pretend to address ourselves.
It is as if, when we are petitioning a prince, we should immediately
turn about, and make request to one of his guard, as though so mean a
person were more able to give us the boon we want than the sovereign
is.
II. Consideration by way of motive. To have our spirits off from God
in worship is a bad sign: it was not so in innocence. The heart of
Adam could cleave to God: the law of God was engraven upon him, he
could apply himself to the fulfilling of it without any twinkling.
There was no folly and vanity in his mind, no independency in his
thoughts, no duty was his burden; for there was in him a proneness
to, and a delight in, all the duties of worship. It is the fall hath
distempered us; and the more unwieldiness there is in our spirits, the
more carnal our affections are in worship, the more evidence there is
of the strength of that revolted state.
1. It argues much corruption in the heart. As by the eructations of
the stomach, we may judge of the windiness and foulness of it; so,
by the inordinate motions of our minds and hearts, we may judge of
the weakness of its complexion. A strength of sin is evidenced by the
eruptions and ebullitions of it in worship, when they are more sudden,
numerous, and vigorous than the motions of grace. When the heart
is apt, like tinder, to catch fire from Satan, it is a sign of much
combustible matter suitable to his temptation. Were not corruption
strong, the soul could not turn so easily from God when it is in his
presence, and hath an advantageous opportunity to create a fear and
awe of God in it. Such base fruit could not sprout up so suddenly,
were there not much sap and juice in the root of sin. What communion
with a living root can be evidenced without exercises of an inward
life? That spirit, which is a well of living waters in a gracious
heart, will be especially springing up when it is before God.
2. It shows much affection to earthly things, and little to heavenly.
There must needs be an inordinate affection to earthly things, when,
upon every slight solicitation, we can part with God, and turn the
back upon a service glorious for him and advantageous for ourselves,
to wed our hearts to some idle fancy that signifies nothing. How
can we be said to entertain God in our affections, when we give
him not the precedency in our understandings, but let every {a269}
trifle jostle the sense of God out of our minds? Were our hearts
fully determined to spiritual things, such vanities could not seat
themselves in our understandings, and divide our spirits from God.
Were our hearts balanced with a love to God, the world could never
steal our hearts so much from his worship, but his worship would
draw our hearts to it. It shows a base neutrality in the greatest
concernments; a halting between God and Baal; a contrariety between
affection and conscience, when natural conscience presses a man to
duties of worship, and his other affections pull him back, draw him
to carnal objects, and make him slight that whereby he may honor God.
God argues the profaneness of the Jews’ hearts from the wickedness
they brought into his house, and acted there (Jer. xxiii. 11): “Yea,
in my house,” that is, my worship, “I found their wickedness,” saith
the Lord. Carnality in worship is a kind of an idolatrous frame;
when the heart is renewed, idols are cast to the moles and the bats
(Isa. ii. 20).
3. It shows much hypocrisy to have our spirits off from God. The mouth
speaks, and the carriage pretends what the heart doth not think; there
is a dissent of the heart from the pretence of the body. Instability
is a sure sign of hypocrisy. Double thoughts argue a double heart.
The wicked are compared to chaff (Ps. i. 4), for the uncertain and
various motions of their minds, by the least wind of fancy. The least
motion of a carnal object diverts the spirit from God, as the scent
of carrion doth the raven from the flight it was set upon. The people
of God are called God’s spouse, and God calls himself their husband;
whereby is noted the most intimate union of the soul with God; and
that there ought to be the highest love and affection to him, and
faithfulness in his worship; but when the heart doth start from him
in worship, it is a sign of the unsteadfastness of it with God, and
a disrelish of any communion with him; it is, as God complains of the
Israelites, a going a whoring after our own imaginations. As grace
respects God as the object of worship, so it looks most upon God in
approaching to him. Where there is a likeness and love, there is a
desire of converse and intimacy; if there be no spiritual entwining
about God in our worship, it is a sign there is no likeness to him, no
true sense of him, no renewed image of God in us; every living image
will move strongly to join itself with its original copy, and be glad,
with Jacob, to sit steadily in those chariots that shall convey him
to his beloved Joseph.
III. Consider the danger of a carnal worship.
1. We lose the comfort of worship. The soul is a great gainer when it
offers a spiritual worship, and as great a loser when it is unfaithful
with God. Treachery and perfidiousness hinder commerce among men;
so doth hypocrisy in its own nature communion with God. God never
promised anything to the carcass, but to the spirit of worship. God
hath no obligation upon him, by any word of his, to reward us with
himself, when we perform it not to himself; when we give an outside
worship, we have only the outside of an ordinance; we can expect
no kernel, when we give God only the shell: he that only licks the
outside of the glass, can never be refreshed {a270} with the rich
cordial enclosed within. A cold and lazy formality will make God
to withdraw the light of his countenance, and not shine with any
delightful communications upon our souls; but if we come before him
with a liveliness of affections, and steadiness of heart, he will draw
the veil, and cause his glory to display itself before us. An humble
praying Christian, and a warm, affectionate Christian in worship, will
soon find a God who is delighted with such frames, and cannot long
withhold himself from the soul. When our hearts are inflamed with love
to him in worship, it is a preparation to some act of love on his part,
whereby he intends further to gratify us. When John was in the Spirit
on the Lord’s day, that is, in spiritual employment, and meditation,
and other duties, he had that great revelation of what should happen
to the church in all ages (Rev. i. 10); his being in the Spirit,
intimates his ordinary course on that day, and not any extraordinary
act in him, though it was followed with an extraordinary discovery
of God to him; when he was thus engaged, “he heard a voice behind
him.” God doth not require of us spirituality in worship to advantage
himself, but that we might be prepared to be advantaged by him. If we
have a clear and well‑disposed eye, it is not a benefit to the sun,
but fits us to receive benefits from his beams. Worship is an act that
perfects our own souls; they are then most widened by spiritual frames,
to receive the influence of divine blessings, as an eye most opened
receives the fruit of the sun’s light better than the eye that is shut.
The communications of God are more or less, according as our spiritual
frames are more or less in our worship; God will not give his
blessings to unsuitable hearts. What a nasty vessel is a carnal heart
for a spiritual communication! The chief end of every duty enjoined
by God, is to have communion with him; and therefore it is called a
drawing near to God; it is impossible, therefore, that the outward
part of any duty can answer the end of God in his institution. It is
not a bodily appearance or gesture whereby men can have communion with
God, but by the impressions of the heart, and reflections of the heart
upon God; without this, all the rich streams of grace will run beside
us, and the growth of the soul be hindered and impaired. A “diligent
hand makes rich,” saith the wise man; a diligent heart in spiritual
worship, brings in rich incomes to the humble and spiritual soul.
2. It renders the worship not only unacceptable, but abominable
to God. It makes our gold to become dross, it soils our duties, and
bespots our souls. A carnal and unsteady frame shows an indifferency
of spirit at best; and lukewarmness is as ungrateful to God, as heavy
and nauseous meat is to the stomach; he “spews them out of his mouth”
(Rev. iii. 16). As our gracious God doth overlook infirmities where
intentions are good, and endeavors serious and strong; so he loathes
the services where the frames are stark naught (Ps. lxvi. 18): “If
I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear my prayer.”
Lukewarm and indifferent services stink in the nostrils of God. The
heart seems to loathe God when it starts from him upon every occasion,
when it is unwilling to employ itself about, and stick close to him:
and can God be pleased with such a frame? The {a271} more of the
heart and spirit is in any service, the more real goodness there
is in it, and the more savory it is to God; the less of the heart
and spirit, the less of goodness, and the more nauseous to God, who
loves righteousness and “truth in the inward parts” (Ps. li. 6).
And therefore infinite goodness and holiness cannot but hate worship
presented to him with deceitful, carnal, and flitting affections; they
must be more nauseous to God, than a putrefied carcass can be to man;
they are the profanings of that which should be the habitation of the
Spirit; they make the spirit, the seat of duty, a filthy dunghill;
and are as loathsome to God, as money‑changers in the temple were to
our Saviour. We see the evil of carnal frames, and the necessity and
benefit of spiritual frames: for further help in this last, let us
practise these following directions:
1. Keep up spiritual frames out of worship. To avoid low affections,
we must keep our hearts as much as we can in a settled elevation. If
we admit unworthy dispositions at one time, we shall not easily be rid
of them in another;[529] as he that would not be bitten with gnats in
the night, must keep his windows shut in the day: when they are once
entered, it is not easy to expel them; in which respect, one adviseth
to be such out of worship as we would be in worship. If we mix
spiritual affections with our worldly employments, worldly affections
will not mingle themselves so easily with our heavenly engagements.
If our hearts be spiritual in our outward calling, they will scarce be
carnal in our religious service. If “we walk in the Spirit, we shall
not fulfil the lusts of the flesh” (Gal. v. 16). A spiritual walk in
the day will hinder carnal lustings in worship. The fire was to be
kept alive upon the altar, when sacrifices were not offered, from
morning till night, from night till morning, as well as in the very
time of sacrifice. A spiritual life and vigor out of worship would
render it at its season sweet and easy, and preserve a spontaneity
and preparedness to it, and make it both natural and pleasant to us.
Anything that doth unhinge and discompose our spirits, is inconsistent
with religious services, which are to be performed with the greatest
sedateness and gravity. All irregular passions disturb the serenity of
the spirit, and open the door for Satan: saith the apostle (Eph. iv.
26, 27), “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath; neither give place
to the devil.” Where wrath breaks the lock, the devil will quickly
be over the threshold; and though they be allayed, yet they leave
the heart sometime after, like the sea rolling and swelling after
the storm is ceased. Mixture with ill company leaves a tincture upon
us in worship. Ephraim’s allying himself with the Gentiles, bred an
indifferency in religion (Hos. vii. 8): “Ephraim hath mixed himself
with the people; Ephraim is a cake not turned:” it will make our
hearts, and consequently our services, half dough, as well as half
baked; these and the like, make the Holy Spirit withdraw himself, and
then the soul is like a wind‑bound vessel, and can make no way. When
the sun departs from us, it carries its beams away with it; then “doth
darkness spread itself over the earth, and the beasts of the forests
creep out” (Ps. civ. 20). When the Spirit withdraws awhile from a
good man, it carries {272} away (though not habitual, yet) much of
the exciting and assisting grace; and then carnal dispositions perk
up themselves from the bosom of natural corruption. To be spiritual
in worship, we must bar the door at other times against that which
is contrary to it; as he that would not be infected with a contagious
disease, carries some preservative about with him, and inures himself
to good scents. To this end, be much in secret ejaculations to God;
these are the purest nights of the soul, that have more of fervor and
less of carnality; they preserve a liveliness in the spirit, and make
it more fit to perform solemn stated worship with greater freedom and
activity; a constant use of this would make our whole lives, lives of
worship. As frequent sinful acts strengthen habits of sin, so frequent
religious acts strengthen habits of grace.
2. Excite and exercise particularly a love to God, and dependence on
him. Love is a commanding affection, a uniting grace; it draws all
the faculties of the soul to one centre. The soul that loves God, when
it hath to do with him, is bound to the beloved object; it can mind
nothing else during such impressions. When the affection is set to
the worship of God, everything the soul hath will be bestowed upon it;
as David’s disposition was to the temple (1 Chron. xxix. 3). Carnal
frames, like the fowls, will be lighting upon the sacrifice, but not
when it is inflamed; though the scent of the flesh invite them, yet
the heat of the fire drives them to their distance. A flaming love
will singe the flies that endeavor to interrupt and disturb us. The
happiness of heaven consists in a full attraction of the soul to God,
by his glorious influence upon it; there will be such a diffusion of
his goodness throughout the souls of the blessed, as will unite the
affections perfectly to him; these affections which are scattered here,
will be there gathered into one flame, moving to him, and centering in
him: therefore, the more of a heavenly frame possesses our affections
here, the more settled and uniform will our hearts be in all their
motions to God, and operations about him. Excite a dependence on him:
(Prov. xvi. 3) “Commit thy works to the Lord, and thy thoughts shall
be established.” Let us go out in God’s strength, and not in our own;
vain is the help of man in anything, and vain is the help of the heart.
It is through God only we can do valiantly in spiritual concerns as
well as temporal; the want of this makes but slight impressions upon
the spirit.
3. Nourish right conceptions of the majesty of God in your minds.
Let us consider that we are drawing to God, the most amiable object,
the best of beings, worthy of infinite honor, and highly meriting the
highest affections we can give; a God that made the world by a word,
that upholds the great frame of heaven and earth; a Majesty above
the conceptions of angels; who uses not his power to strike us to our
deserved punishment, but his love and bounty to allure us; a God that
gave all the creatures to serve us, and can, in a trice, make them as
much our enemies as he hath now made them our servants. Let us view
him in his greatness, and in his goodness, that our hearts may have a
true value of the worship of so great a majesty, and count it the most
worthy employment with all diligence to attend upon him. When we have
a fear of God, it will make our worship {a273} serious; when we have
a joy in God, it will make our worship durable. Our affections will be
raised when we represent God in the most reverential, endearing, and
obliging circumstances. We honor the majesty of God, when we consider
him with due reverence according to the greatness and perfection of
his works, and in this reverence of his majesty doth worship chiefly
consist. Low thoughts of God will make low frames in us before him.
If we thought God an infinite glorious Spirit, how would our hearts
be lower than our knees in his presence! How humbly, how believingly
pleading is the Psalmist, when he considers God to be without
comparison in the heavens; to whom none of the sons of the mighty
can be likened; when there was none like to him in strength and
faithfulness round about (Ps. lxxxix 6‒8). We should have also deep
impressions of the omniscience of God, and remember we have to deal
with a God that searcheth the heart and trieth the reins, to whom the
most secret temper is as visible as the loudest words are audible;
that though man judges by outward expressions, God judges by inward
affections. As the law of God regulates the inward frames of the heart,
so the eye of God pitches upon the inward intentions of the soul.
If God were visibly present with us, should we not approach to him
with strong affections, summon our spirits to attend upon him, behave
ourselves modestly before him? Let us consider he is as really present
with us, as if he were visible to us; let us, therefore, preserve
a strong sense of the presence of God. No man, but one out of his
wits, when he were in the presence of a prince, and making a speech
to him, would break off at every period, and run after the catching of
butterflies. Remember in all worship you are before the Lord, to whom
all things are open and naked.
4. Let us take heed of inordinate desires after the world. As the
world steals away a man’s heart from the word, so it doth from all
other worship; “It chokes the word” (Matt. xiii. 27); it stifles all
the spiritual breathings after God in every duty; the edge of the soul
is blunted by it, and made too dull for such sublime exercises. The
apostle’s rule in prayer, when he joins “sobriety with watching unto
prayer” (1 Pet. iv. 7), is of concern in all worship, sobriety in the
pursuit and use of all worldly things. A man drunk with worldly fumes
cannot watch, cannot be heavenly, affectionate, spiritual in service.
There is a magnetic force in the earth to hinder our flights to heaven.
Birds, when they take their first flights from the earth, have more
flutterings of their wings, than when they are mounted further in the
air, and got more without the sphere of the earth’s attractiveness:
the motion of their wings is more steady, that you can perceive them
stir; they move like a ship with a full gale. The world is a clog
upon the soul, and a bar to spiritual frames; it is as hard to elevate
the heart to God in the midst of a hurry of worldly affairs, as it is
difficult to meditate when we are near a great noise of waters falling
from a precipice, or in the midst of a volley of muskets. Thick clayey
affections bemire the heart, and make it unfit for such high flights
it is to take in worship; therefore, get your hearts clear from
worldly thoughts and desires, if you would be more spiritual in
worship.
{a274} 5. Let us be deeply sensible of our present wants, and the
supplies we may meet with in worship. Cold affections to the things we
would have will grow cooler; weakness of desire for the communications
in worship, will freeze our hearts at the time of worship, and make
way for vain and foolish diversions. A beggar that is ready to perish,
and knows he is next door to ruin, will not slightly and dully beg an
alms, and will not be diverted from his importunity by every slight
call, or the moving of an atom in the air. Is it pardon we would have?
let us apprehend the blackness of sin, with the aggravations of it
as it respects God; let us be deeply sensible of the want of pardon
and worth of mercy, and get your affections into such a frame as
a condemned man would do; let us consider, that as we are now at
the throne of God’s grace, we shall shortly be at the bar of God’s
justice; and if the soul should be forlorn there, how fixedly and
earnestly would it plead for mercy! Let us endeavor to stir up the
same affections now, which we have seen some dying men have, and
which we suppose despairing souls would have done at God’s tribunal.
We must be sensible that the life or death of our souls depends upon
worship.[530] Would we not be ashamed to be ridiculous in our carriage
while we are eating; and shall we not be ashamed to be cold or garish
before God, when the salvation of our souls, as well as the honor of
God, is concerned? If we did see the heaps of sins, the eternity of
punishment due to them; if we did see an angry and offended Judge; if
we did see the riches of mercy, the glorious outgoings of God in the
sanctuary, the blessed doles he gives out to men when they spiritually
attend upon him, both the one and the other would make us perform our
duties humbly, sincerely, earnestly, and affectionately, and wait upon
him with our whole souls, to have misery averted, and mercy bestowed.
Let our sense of this be encouraged by the consideration of our
Saviour presenting his merits; with what affection doth he present his
merits, his blood shed upon the cross, now in heaven? And shall our
hearts be cold and frozen, flitting and unsteady, when his affections
are so much concerned? Christ doth not present any man’s case and
duties without a sense of his wants; and shall we have none of
our own? Let me add this; let us affect our hearts with a sense of
what supplies we have met with in former worship; the delightful
remembrance of what converse we have had with God in former worship
would spiritualize our hearts for the present worship. Had Peter had
a view of Christ’s glory in the mount fresh in his thoughts, he would
not so easily have turned his back upon his Master, nor would the
Israelites have been at leisure for their idolatry, had they preserved
the sense of the majesty of God discovered in his late thunders from
Mount Sinai.
6. If anything intrudes that may choke the worship, cast it speedily
out. We cannot hinder Satan and our own corruption from presenting
coolers to us, but we may hinder the success of them; we cannot hinder
the gnats from buzzing about us when we are in our business, but we
may prevent them from settling upon us. A man that is running on a
considerable errand, will shun all unnecessary discourse, that may
make him forget or loiter in his business. What {a275} though there
may be something offered that is good in itself, yet if it hath a
tendency to despoil God of his honor, and ourselves of the spiritual
intentness in worship, send it away. Those that weed a field of
corn, examine not the nature and particular virtues of the weeds, but
consider only how they choke the corn, to which the native juice of
the soil is designed. Consider what you are about; and if anything
interpose that may divert you, or cool your affections in your present
worship, cast it out.
7. As to private worship, let us lay hold of the most melting
opportunities and frames. When we find our hearts in a more than
ordinary spiritual frame, let us look upon it as a call from God to
attend him; such impressions and notions are God’s voice, inviting
us into communion with him in some particular act of worship, and
promising us some success in it. When the Psalmist had a secret
motion to “seek God’s face” (Ps. xxvii. 8), and complied with it,
the issue is the encouragement of his heart, which breaks out into
an exhortation to others to be of good courage, and wait on the Lord
(v. 13, 14): “Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall
strengthen thy heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.” One blow will do more
on the iron when it is hot, than a hundred when it is cold; melted
metals may be stamped with any impression; but, once hardened, will
with difficulty be brought into the figure we intend.[531]
8. Let us examine ourselves at the end of every act of worship, and
chide ourselves for any carnality we perceive in them. Let us take a
review of them, and examine the reason, why art thou so low and carnal,
O my soul? as David did of his disquietedness (Ps. xlii. 5): “Why art
thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me?”
If any unworthy frames have surprised us in worship, let us seek them
out after worship; call them to the bar; make an exact scrutiny into
the causes of them, that we may prevent their incursions another time;
let our pulses beat quick by way of anger and indignation against
them; this would be a repairing what hath been amiss; otherwise they
may grow, and clog an after‑worship more than they did a former.
Daily examination is an antidote against the temptations of the
following day, and constant examination of ourselves after duty is a
preservative against vain encroachments in following duties; and upon
the finding them out, let us apply the blood of Christ by faith for
our cure, and draw strength from the death of Christ for the conquest
of them, and let us also be humbled for them. God lifts up the humble;
when we are humbled for our carnal frames in one duty, we shall find
ourselves by the grace of God more elevated in the next.
{a276} DISCOURSE V.
ON THE ETERNITY OF GOD.
PSALM xc. 2.――Before the mountains were brought forth, or
ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from
everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
THE title of this psalm is a prayer; the author, Moses. Some think
not only this, but the ten following psalms, were composed by him. The
title wherewith he is dignified is, “The man of God,” as also in Deut.
xxxiii. 1. One inspired by him to be his interpreter, and deliver his
oracles; one particularly directed by him;[532] one who as a servant
did diligently employ himself in his master’s business, and acted for
the glory of God;[533] he was the minister of the Old Testament, and
the prophet of the New.[534]
There are two parts of this psalm. 1. A complaint of the frailty of
man’s life in general (v. 3‒6); and then a particular complaint of
the condition of the church (v. 8‒10). 2. A prayer (v. 12). But before
he speaks of the shortness of human life, he fortifies them by the
consideration of the refuge they had, and should find in God (v. 1):
“Lord, thou hast been our dwelling‑place in all generations.” We have
had no settled abode in the earth, since the time of Abraham’s being
called out from Ur of the Chaldees. We have had Canaan in a promise,
we have it not yet in possession; we have been exposed to the
cruelties of an oppressing enemy, and the incommodities of a desert
wilderness; we have wanted the fruits of the earth, but not the dews
of heaven. “Thou hast been our dwelling‑place in all generations.”
Abraham was under thy conduct; Isaac and Jacob under thy care; their
posterity was multiplied by thee, and that under their oppressions.
Thou hast been our shield against dangers, our security in the times
of trouble; when we were pursued to the Red Sea, it was not a creature
delivered us; and when we feared the pinching of our bowels in the
desert, it was no creature rained manna upon us. Thou hast been
our dwelling‑place; thou hast kept open house for us, sheltered us
against storms, and preserved us from mischief, as a house doth an
inhabitant from wind and weather; and that not in one or two, but in
all generations. Some think an allusion is here made to the ark, to
which they were to have recourse in all emergencies. Our refuge and
defence hath not been from created things; not from the ark, but from
the God of the ark. Observe,
1. God is a perpetual refuge and security to his people. His
providence is not confined to one generation; it is not one age {a277}
only that tastes of his bounty and compassion. His eye never yet slept,
nor hath he suffered the little ship of his church to be swallowed up,
though it hath been tossed upon the waves; he hath always been a haven
to preserve us, a house to secure us; he hath always had compassions
to pity us, and power to protect us; he hath had a face to shine,
when the world hath had an angry countenance to frown.[535] He brought
Enoch home by an extraordinary translation from a brutish world; and
when he was resolved to reckon with men for their brutish lives, he
lodged Noah, the phœnix of the world, in an ark, and kept him alive
as a spark in the midst of many waters, whereby to rekindle a church
in the world; in all generations he is a dwelling‑place to secure his
people here, or entertain them above. His providence is not wearied,
nor his care fainting; he never wanted will to relieve us, “for he
hath been our refuge,” nor ever can want power to support us, “for he
is a God from everlasting to everlasting.” The church never wanted a
pilot to steer her, and a rock to shelter her, and dash in pieces the
waves which threaten her.
2. How worthy is it to remember former benefits, when we come to
beg for new. Never were the records of God’s mercies so exactly
revised, as when his people have stood in need of new editions of
his power. How necessary are our wants to stir us up to pay the rent
of thankfulness in arrear! He renders himself doubly unworthy of the
mercies he wants, that doth not gratefully acknowledge the mercies he
hath received. God scarce promised any deliverance to the Israelites,
and they, in their distress, scarce prayed for any deliverance; but
that from Egypt was mentioned on both sides, by God to encourage them,
and by them to acknowledge their confidence in him. The greater our
dangers, the more we should call to mind God’s former kindness. We
are not only thankfully to acknowledge the mercies bestowed upon our
persons, or in our age, but those of former times. “Thou hast been our
dwelling‑place in all generations.” Moses was not living in the former
generations, yet he appropriates the former mercies to the present age.
Mercies, as well as generations, proceed out of the loins of those
that have gone before. All mankind are but one Adam; the whole church
but one body. In the second verse he backs his former consideration.
1. By the greatness of his power in forming the world. 2. By the
boundlessness of his duration: “From everlasting to everlasting.” As
thou hast been our dwelling‑place, and expended upon us the strength
of thy power and riches of thy love, so we have no reason to doubt
the continuance on thy part, if we be not wanting on our parts; for
the vast mountains and fruitful earth are the works of thy hands, and
there is less power requisite for our relief, than there was for their
creation; and though so much strength hath been upon various occasions
manifested, yet thy arm is not weakened, for “from everlasting to
everlasting thou art God.”[536] Thou hast always been God, and no
time can be assigned as the beginning of thy being.[537] The mountains
are not of so long a standing as thyself; they are {a278} the effects
of thy power, and therefore cannot be equal to thy duration; since
they are the effects, they suppose the precedency of their cause.
If we would look back, we can reach no further than the beginning of
the creation, and account the years from the first foundation of the
world; but after that we must lose ourselves in the abyss of eternity;
we have no cue to guide our thoughts; we can see no bounds in thy
eternity. But as for man, he traverseth the world a few days, and
by thy order pronounced concerning all men, returns to the dust, and
moulders into the grave. By mountains, some understand angels, as
being creatures of a more elevated nature; by earth, they understand
human nature, the earth being the habitation of men. There is no
need to divert in this place from the letter to such a sense. The
description seems to be poetical, and amounts to this: he neither
began with the beginning of time, nor will expire with the end of it;
he did not begin when he made himself known to our fathers, but his
being did precede the creation of the world, before any created being
was formed, and any time settled.[538] “Before the mountains were
brought forth,” or before they were begotten or born; the word being
used in those senses in Scripture; before they stood up higher than
the rest of the earthly mass God had created. It seems that mountains
were not casually cast up by the force of the deluge softening the
ground, and driving several parcels of it together, to grow up into a
massy body, as the sea doth the sand in several places; but they were
at first formed by God. The eternity of God is here described,
1. In his priority: “Before the world.”
2. In the extension of his duration: “From everlasting to everlasting
thou art God.” He was before the world, yet he neither began nor ends;
he is not a temporary, but an eternal God; it takes in both parts
of eternity, what was before the creation of the world, and what is
after; though the eternity of God be one permanent state, without
succession, yet the spirit of God, suiting himself to the weakness
of our conception, divides it into two parts; one past before the
foundation of the world, another to come after the destruction of the
world; as he did exist before all ages, and as he will exist after
all ages. Many truths lie couched in the verse.
1. The world hath a beginning of being: it was not from eternity, it
was once nothing; had it been of a very long duration, some records
would have remained of some memorable actions done of a longer date
than any extant. 2. The world owes its being to the creating power of
God: “Thou hast formed it” out of nothing into being; Thou, that is,
God; it could not spring into being of itself; it was nothing; it must
have a former. 3. God was in being before the world: the cause must
be before the effect; that word which gives being, must be before
that which receives being. 4. This Being was from eternity: “From
everlasting.” 5. This Being shall endure to eternity: “To everlasting.”
6. There is but one God, one eternal: “From everlasting to everlasting,
thou art {a279} God.” None else but one hath the property of eternity;
the gods of the heathen cannot lay claim to it.
_Doct._ God is of an eternal duration. The eternity of God is the
foundation of the stability of the covenant, the great comfort of a
Christian. The design of God in Scripture is, to set forth his dealing
with men in the way of a covenant. The priority of God before all
things begins the Bible: “In the beginning God created” (Gen. i. 1).
His covenant can have no foundation, but in his duration before and
after the world:[539] and Moses here mentions his eternity, not only
with respect to the essence of God, but to his federal providence;
as he is the dwelling‑place of his people in all generations. The
duration of God forever is more spoken of in Scripture than his
eternity, _à parte ante_, though that is the foundation of all the
comfort we can take from his immortality: if he had a beginning, he
might have an end, and so all our happiness, hope and being would
expire with him; but the Scripture sometimes takes notice of his being
without beginning, as well as without end: “Thou art from everlasting”
(Ps. xciii. 2); “Blessed be God from everlasting to everlasting” (Ps.
xli. 13); “I was set up from everlasting” (Prov. viii. 23): if his
wisdom were from everlasting, himself was from everlasting: whether we
understand it of Christ the Son of God, or of the essential wisdom of
God, it is all one to the present purpose. The wisdom of God supposeth
the essence of God, as habits in creatures suppose the being of some
power or faculty as their subject. The wisdom of God supposeth mind
and understanding, essence and substance. The notion of eternity is
difficult; as Austin said of time,[540] if no man will ask me the
question, what time is, I know well enough what it is; but if any ask
me what it is, I know not how to explain it; so may I say of eternity;
it is easy in the word pronounced, but hardly understood, and more
hardly expressed; it is better expressed by negative than positive
words. Though we cannot comprehend eternity, yet we may comprehend
that there is an eternity; as, though we cannot comprehend the
essence of God what he is, yet we may comprehend that he is; we may
understand the notion of his existence, though we cannot understand
the infiniteness of his nature; yet we may better understand eternity
than infiniteness; we can better conceive a time with the addition of
numberless days and years, than imagine a Being without bounds; whence
the apostle joins his eternity with his power; “His eternal power and
Godhead” (Rom. i. 20); because, next to the power of God, apprehended
in the creature, we come necessarily by reasoning, to acknowledge
the eternity of God. He that hath an incomprehensible power must
needs have an eternity of nature; his power is most sensible in the
creatures to the eye of man, and his eternity easily from thence
deducible by the reason of man. Eternity is a perpetual duration,
which hath neither beginning nor end; time hath both. Those things
we say are in time that have beginning, grow up by degrees, have
succession of parts; eternity is contrary to time, and is therefore
a permanent and immutable state; a perfect possession {a280} of life
without any variation; it comprehends in itself all years, all ages,
all periods of ages; it never begins; it endures after every duration
of time, and never ceaseth; it doth as much outrun time, as it went
before the beginning of it: time supposeth something before it; but
there can be nothing before eternity; it were not then eternity. Time
hath a continual succession; the former time passeth away and another
succeeds: the last year is not this year, nor this year the next.
We must conceive of eternity contrary to the notion of time; as the
nature of time consists in the succession of parts, so the nature of
eternity in an infinite immutable duration. Eternity and time differ
as the sea and rivers; the sea never changes place, and is always
one water; but the rivers glide along, and are swallowed up in the
sea; so is time by eternity.[541] A thing is said to be eternal, or
everlasting rather, in Scripture,
1. When it is of a long duration, though it will have an end; when
it hath no measures of time determined to it; so circumcision is said
to be in the flesh for an “everlasting covenant” (Gen. xvii. 13); not
purely everlasting, but so long as that administration of the covenant
should endure. And so when a servant would not leave his master,
but would have his ear bored, it is said, he should be a servant
“forever” (Deut. xv. 17); _i. e._ till the jubilee, which was every
fiftieth year: so the meat‑offering they were to offer is said to
be “perpetual” (Lev. vi. 20); Canaan is said to be given to Abraham
for an “everlasting” possession (Gen. xvii. 8); when as the Jews are
expelled from Canaan, which is given a prey to the barbarous nations.
Indeed circumcision was not everlasting; yet the substance of the
covenant whereof this was a sign, viz., that God would be the God of
believers, endures forever; and that circumcision of the heart, which
was signified by circumcision of the flesh, shall remain forever in
the kingdom of glory: it was not so much the lasting of the sign, as
of the thing signified by it, and the covenant sealed by it: the sign
had its abolition; so that the apostle is so peremptory in it, that he
asserts, that if any went about to establish it, he excluded himself
from a participation of Christ (Gal. v. 2). The sacrifices were to be
perpetual, in regard to the thing signified by them; viz., the death
of Christ, which was to endure in the efficacy of it: and the passover
was to be “forever” (Exod. xii. 24), in regard of the redemption
signified by it, which was to be of everlasting remembrance. Canaan
was to be an everlasting possession, in regard of the glory of heaven
typified, to be forever conferred upon the spiritual seed of Abraham.
2. When a thing hath no end, though it hath a beginning. So angels and
souls are everlasting; though their being shall never cease, yet there
was a time when their being began; they were nothing before they were
something, though they shall never be nothing again, but shall live
in endless happiness or misery. But that properly is eternal that hath
neither beginning nor end; and thus eternity is a property of God.
In this doctrine I shall show, I. How God is eternal, or in what
respects eternity is his property. II. That he is eternal, and must
{a281} needs be so. III. That eternity is only proper to God, and not
common to him with any creature. IV. The use.
I. How God is eternal, or in what respects he is so. Eternity is a
negative attribute, and is a denying of God any measures of time, as
immensity is a denying of him any bounds of place. As immensity is the
diffusion of his essence, so eternity is the duration of his essence;
and when we say God is eternal, we exclude from him all possibility
of beginning and ending, all flux and change. As the essence of God
cannot be bounded by any place, so it is not to be limited by any time:
as it is his immensity to be everywhere, so it is his eternity to be
alway. As created things are said to be somewhere in regard of place,
and to be present, past, or future, in regard of time; so the Creator
in regard of place is everywhere, in regard of time is _semper_.[542]
His duration is as endless as his essence is boundless: he always
was and always will be, and will no more have an end than he had
a beginning; and this is an excellency belonging to the Supreme
Being.[543] As his essence comprehends all beings, and exceeds them,
and his immensity surmounts all places; so his eternity comprehends
all times, all durations, and infinitely excels them.[544]
1. God is without beginning. “In the beginning” God created the world
(Gen. i. 1). God was then before the beginning of it; and what point
can be set wherein God began, if he were before the beginning of
created things? God was without beginning, though all other things
had time and beginning from him. As unity is before all numbers, so
is God before all his creatures. Abraham called upon the name of the
everlasting God (Gen. xxi. 33) the eternal God.[545]――It is opposed to
the heathen gods, which were but of yesterday, new coined, and so new;
but the eternal God was before the world was made. In that sense it is
to be understood; “The mystery which was kept secret since the world
began, but now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets,
according to the command of the everlasting God, made known to all
nations for the obedience of faith” (Rom. xvi. 26). The gospel is not
preached by the command of a new and temporary god, but of that God
that was before all ages: though the manifestation of it be in time,
yet the purpose and resolve of it was from eternity. If there were
decrees before the foundation of the world, there was a Decreer
before the foundation of the world. Before the foundation of the
world he loved Christ as a Mediator; a fore‑ordination of him was
before the foundation of the world (John xvii. 24); a choice of men,
and therefore a Chooser before the foundation of the world (Eph. i. 4);
a grace given in Christ before the world began (2 Tim. i. 9), and
therefore a Donor of that grace. From those places, saith Crellius,
it appears that God was before the foundation of the world, but they
do not assert an absolute eternity; but to be before all creatures
is equivalent to his being from eternity.[546] Time began with
the foundation of the world; but God being before time, could have
no beginning in time. Before the beginning of the creation, and
the beginning of {a282} time, there could be nothing but eternity;
nothing but what was uncreated, that is, nothing but what was without
beginning. To be in time is to have a beginning; to be before all time
is never to have a beginning, but always to be; for as between the
Creator and creatures there is no medium, so between time and eternity
there is no medium. It is as easily deduced that he that was before
all creatures is eternal, as he that made all creatures is God. If
he had a beginning, he must have it from another, or from himself;
if from another, that from whom he received his being would be better
than he, so more a God than he. He cannot be God that is not supreme;
he cannot be supreme that owes his being to the power of another. He
would not be said only to have immortality as he is (1 Tim. vi. 16),
if he had it dependent upon another; nor could he have a beginning
from himself; if he had given beginning to himself, then he was once
nothing; there was a time when he was not; if he was not, how could he
be the Cause of himself? It is impossible for any to give a beginning
and being to itself: if it acts it must exist, and so exist before
it existed. A thing would exist as a cause before it existed as an
effect. He that is not, cannot be the cause that he is; if, therefore,
God doth exist, and hath not his being from another, he must exist
from eternity. Therefore, when we say God is of and from himself,
we mean not that God gave being to himself; but it is negatively
to be understood that he hath no cause of existence without himself.
Whatsoever number of millions of millions of years we can imagine
before the creation of the world, yet God was infinitely before those;
he is therefore called the “Ancient of Days” (Dan. vii. 9), as being
before all days and time, and eminently containing in himself all
times and ages. Though, indeed, God cannot properly be called ancient,
that will testify that he is decaying, and shortly will not be; no
more than he can be called young, which would signify that he was not
long before. All created things are new and fresh; but no creature can
find out any beginning of God: it is impossible there should be any
beginning of him.
2. God is without end. He always was, always is, and always will
be what he is. He remains always the same in being; so far from any
change, that no shadow of it can touch him (James i. 17). He will
continue in being as long as he hath already enjoyed it; and if we
could add never so many millions of years together, we are still
as far from an end as from a beginning; for “the Lord shall endure
forever” (Ps. ix. 7). As it is impossible he should not be, being
from all eternity, so it is impossible that he should not be to all
eternity. The Scripture is most plentiful in testimonies of this
eternity of God, _à parte post_, or after the creation of the world:
he is said to “live forever” (Rev. iv. 9, 10). The earth shall perish,
but God shall “endure forever,” and his “years shall have no end” (Ps.
cii. 27). Plants and animals grow up from small beginnings, arrive
to their full growth, and decline again, and have always remarkable
alterations in their nature; but there is no declination in God by all
the revolutions of time. Hence some think the incorruptibility of the
Deity was signified by the shittim, or cedar wood, whereof the ark
was made, it being of an incorruptible nature (Exod. xxv. 10). {a283}
That which had no beginning of duration can never have an end, or any
interruptions in it. Since God never depended upon any, what should
make him cease to be what eternally he hath been, or put a stop to the
continuance of his perfections? He cannot will his own destruction;
that is against universal nature in all things to cease from being, if
they can preserve themselves. He cannot desert his own being, because
he cannot but love himself as the best and chiefest good. The reason
that anything decays is either its own native weakness, or a superior
power of something contrary to it. There is no weakness in the nature
of God that can introduce any corruption, because he is infinitely
simple without any mixture; nor can he be overpowered by anything
else; a weaker cannot hurt him, and a stronger than he there cannot
be; nor can he be outwitted or circumvented, because of his infinite
wisdom.[547] As he received his being from none, so he cannot be
deprived of it by any: as he doth necessarily exist, so he doth
necessarily always exist. This, indeed, is the property of God;
nothing so proper to him as always to be. Whatsoever perfections
any being hath, if it be not eternal, it is not divine. God only is
immortal;[548] he only is so by a necessity of nature. Angels, souls,
and bodies too, after the resurrection, shall be immortal, not by
nature, but grant; they are subject to return to nothing, if that word
that raised them from nothing should speak them into nothing again.
It is as easy with God to strip them of it, as to invest them with
it; nay, it is impossible but that they should perish, if God should
withdraw his power from preserving them, which he exerted in creating
them; but God is immovably fixed in his own being; that as none
gave him his life, so none can deprive him of his life, or the
least particle of it. Not a jot of the happiness and life which God
infinitely possesses can be lost; it will be as durable to everlasting,
as it hath been possessed from everlasting.
3. There is no succession in God. God is without succession or
change. It is a part of eternity; “from everlasting to everlasting he
is God,” _i. e._ the same. God doth not only always remain in being,
but he always remains the same in that being: “thou art the same”
(Ps. cii. 27). The being of creatures is successive; the being of God
is permanent, and remains entire with all its perfections unchanged
in an infinite duration. Indeed, the first notion of eternity is to be
without beginning and end, which notes to us the duration of a being
in regard of its existence; but to have no succession, nothing first
or last, notes rather the perfection of a being in regard of its
essence. The creatures are in a perpetual flux; something is acquired
or something lost every day. A man is the same in regard of existence
when he is a man, as he was when he was a child; but there is a new
succession of quantities and qualities in him. Every day he acquires
something till he comes to his maturity; every day he loseth something
till he comes to his period. A man is not the same at night that he
was in the morning; something is expired, and something is added;
every day there is a change in his age, a change in his substance,
a change in his accidents. But God hath his whole being in one and
the same point, or moment of eternity. {a284} He receives nothing as
an addition to what he was before; he loseth nothing of what he was
before; he is always the same excellency and perfection in the same
infiniteness as ever. His years do not fail (Heb. i. 12), his years
do not come and go as others do; there is not this day, to‑morrow, or
yesterday, with him. As nothing is past or future with him in regard
of knowledge, but all things are present, so nothing is past or future
in regard of his essence. He is not in his essence this day what he
was not before, or will be the next day and year what he is not now.
All his perfections are most perfect in him every moment; before all
ages, after all ages.[549] As he hath his whole essence undivided in
every place, as well as in an immense space, so he hath all his being
in one moment of time, as well as in infinite intervals of time. Some
illustrate the difference between eternity and time by the similitude
of a tree, or a rock standing upon the side of a river, or shore
of the sea; the tree stands always the same and unmoved, while the
waters of the river glide along at the foot. The flux is in the river,
but the tree acquires nothing but a diverse respect and relation of
presence to the various parts of the river as they flow. The waters
of the river press on, and push forward one another, and what the
river had this minute, it hath not the same the next.[550] So are all
sublunary things in a continual flux. And though the angels have no
substantial change, yet they have an accidental; for the actions of
the angels this day are not the same individual actions which they
performed yesterday: but in God there is no change; he always remains
the same. Of a creature, it may be said he was, or he is, or he shall
be; of God it cannot be said but only he is.[551] He is what he always
was, and he is what he always will be; whereas a creature is what he
was not, and will be what he is not now. As it may be said of the
flame of a candle, it is a flame; but it is not the same individual
flame as was before, nor is it the same that will be presently after;
there is a continual dissolution of it into air, and a continual
supply for the generation of more. While it continues it may be said
there is a flame; yet not entirely one, but in a succession of parts.
So of a man it may be said, he is in a succession of parts; but he is
not the same that he was, and will not be the same that he is. But God
is the same, without any succession of parts and of time; of him it
may be said, “He is.” He is no more now than he was, and he shall be
no more hereafter than he is. God possesses a firm and absolute being,
always constant to himself.[552] He sees all things sliding under
him in a continual variation; he beholds the revolutions in the world
without any change of his most glorious and immovable nature. All
other things pass from one state to another; from their original,
to their eclipse and destruction; but God possesses his being in one
indivisible point, having neither beginning, end, nor middle.
(1.) There is no succession in the knowledge of God. The variety
of successions and changes in the world make not succession, or new
{a285} objects in the Divine mind; for all things are present to
him from eternity in regard of his knowledge, though they are not
actually present in the world, in regard of their existence. He doth
not know one thing now, and another anon; he sees all things at once;
“Known unto God are all things from the beginning of the world” (Acts
xv. 18); but in their true order of succession, as they lie in the
eternal council of God, to be brought forth in time. Though there be
a succession and order of things as they are wrought, there is yet no
succession in God in regard of his knowledge of them. God knows the
things that shall be wrought, and the order of them in their being
brought upon the stage of the world; yet both the things and the order
he knows by one act. Though all things be present with God, yet they
are present to him in the order of their appearance in the world,
and not so present with him as if they should be wrought at once.
The death of Christ was to precede his resurrection in order of time;
there is a succession in this; both at once are known by God; yet the
act of his knowledge is not exercised about Christ as dying and rising
at the same time; so that there is succession in things when there
is no succession in God’s knowledge of them. Since God knows time,
he knows all things as they are in time; he doth not know all things
to be at once, though he knows at once what is, has been, and will
be. All things are past, present, and to come, in regard of their
existence; but there is not past, present, and to come, in regard of
God’s knowledge of them,[553] because he sees and knows not by any
other, but by himself; he is his own light by which he sees, his own
glass wherein he sees; beholding himself, he beholds all things.
(2.) There is no succession in the decrees of God. He doth not decree
this now, which he decreed not before; for as his works were known
from the beginning of the world, so his works were decreed from the
beginning of the world; as they are known at once, so they are decreed
at once; there is a succession in the execution of them; first grace,
then glory; but the purpose of God for the bestowing of both, was
in one and the same moment of eternity. “He chose us in him before
the foundation of the world, that we should be holy” (Eph. i. 4): The
choice of Christ, and the choice of some in him to be holy and to be
happy, were before the foundation of the world. It is by the eternal
counsel of God all things appear in time; they appear in their order
according to the counsel and will of God from eternity. The redemption
of the world is after the creation of the world; but the decree
whereby the world was created, and whereby it was redeemed, was from
eternity.
(3.) God is his own eternity. He is not eternal by grant, and the
disposal of any other, but by nature and essence.[554] The eternity
of God is nothing else but the duration of God; and the duration
of God is nothing else but his existence enduring.[555] If eternity
were anything distinct from God, and not of the essence of God, then
there would be something which was not God, necessary to perfect God.
As immortality is the great perfection of a rational creature, so
eternity is the choice perfection of God, yea, the gloss and lustre of
all {a286} others. Every perfection would be imperfect, if it were not
always a perfection. God is essentially whatsoever he is, and there
is nothing in God but his essence. Duration or continuance in being
in creatures, differs from their being; for they might exist but for
one instant, in which case they may be said to have being, but not
duration, because all duration includes _prius et posterius_. All
creatures may cease from being if it be the pleasure of God; they are
not, therefore, durable by their essence, and therefore are not their
own duration, no more than they are their own existence. And though
some creatures, as angels, and souls, may be called everlasting, as
a perpetual life is communicated to them by God; yet they can never
be called their own eternity, because such a duration is not simply
necessary, nor essential to them, but accidental, depending upon the
pleasure of another; there is nothing in their nature that can hinder
them from losing it, if God, from whom they received it, should design
to take it away; but as God is his own necessity of existing, so he is
his own duration in existing; as he doth necessarily exist by himself,
so he will always necessarily exist by himself.[556]
(4.) Hence all the perfections of God are eternal. In regard of
the Divine eternity, all things in God are eternal; his power, mercy,
wisdom, justice, knowledge. God himself were not eternal if any of his
perfections, which are essential to him, were not eternal also; he had
not else been a perfect God from all eternity, and so his whole self
had not been eternal. If anything belonging to the nature of a thing
be wanting, it cannot be said to be that thing which it ought to be.
If anything requisite to the nature of God had been wanting one moment,
he could not have been said to be an eternal God.
II. God is eternal. The Spirit of God in Scripture condescends to
our capacities in signifying the eternity of God by days and years,
which are terms belonging to time, whereby we measure it (Ps. cii. 27).
But we must no more conceive that God is bounded or measured by time,
and hath succession of days, because of those expressions, than we
can conclude him to have a body, because members are ascribed to
him in Scripture, to help our conceptions of his glorious nature and
operations. Though years are ascribed to him, yet they are such as
cannot be numbered, cannot be finished, since there is no proportion
between the duration of God, and the years of men. “The number of his
years cannot be searched out, for he makes small the drops of water;
they pour down rain according to the vapor thereof” (Job xxxvi. 26,
27). The numbers of the drops of rain which have fallen in all parts
of the earth since the creation of the world, if subtracted from the
number of the years of God, would be found a small quantity, a mere
nothing, to the years of God. As all the nations in the world compared
with God, are but as the “drop of a bucket, worse than nothing, than
vanity” (Isa. xl. 15); so all the ages of the world, if compared with
God, amount not to so much as the one hundred thousandth part of a
minute; the minutes from the creation may be numbered, but the years
of the duration of God being infinite, are without measure. As one day
is to the life of man, so are a thousand years to the life of God. The
Holy Ghost expresseth {a287} himself to the capacity of man, to give
us some notion of an infinite duration, by a resemblance suited to the
capacity of man.[557] If a thousand years be but as a day to the life
of God, then as a year is to the life of man, so are three hundred
and sixty‑five thousand years to the life of God; and as seventy years
are to the life of man, so are twenty‑five millions four hundred and
fifty thousand years to the life of God. Yet still, since there is no
proportion between time and eternity, we must dart our thoughts beyond
all those; for years and days measure only the duration of created
things, and of those only that are material and corporeal, subject to
the motion of the heavens, which makes days and years.[558] Sometimes
this eternity is expressed by parts, as looking backward and forward;
by the differences of time, “past, present, and to come” (Rev. i. 8),
“which was, and is, and is to come” (Rev. iv. 8).[559] Though this
might be spoken of anything in being, though but for an hour, it was
the last minute, it is now, and it will be the next minute; yet the
Holy Ghost would declare something proper to God, as including all
parts of time; he always was, is now, and always shall be. It might
always be said of him, he was, and it may always be said of him, he
will be; there is no time when he began, no time when he shall cease.
It cannot be said of a creature he always was, he always is what
he was, and he always will be what he is; but God always is what he
was, and always will be what he is; so that it is a very significant
expression of the eternity of God, as can be suited to our capacities.
1. His eternity is evident, by the name God gives himself (Exod. iii.
14): “And God said unto Moses, I am that I am; thus shalt thou say
to the children of Israel, ‘I Am hath sent me unto you.’” This is
the name whereby he is distinguished from all creatures; I Am, is his
proper name. This description being in the present tense, shows that
his essence knows no past, nor future; if it were _he was_, it would
intimate he were not now what he once was; if it were _he will be_,
it would intimate he were not yet what he will be; but _I Am_; I
am the only being, the root of all beings; he is therefore, at the
greatest distance from not being, and that is eternal. So that _is_
signifies his eternity, as well as his perfection and immutability.
As _I Am_ speaks the want of no blessedness, so it speaks the want
of no duration; and therefore the French, wherever they find this
word Jehovah, in the Scripture, which we translate Lord, and Lord
eternal, render it the Eternal,――I am always and immutably the same.
The eternity of God is opposed to the volubility of time, which is
extended into past, present and to come. Our time is but a small drop,
as a sand to all the atoms and small particles of which the world is
made; but God is an unbounded sea of being. “I Am that I Am;” _i. e._
an infinite life; I have not that now, which I had not formerly;
I shall not afterwards have that which I have not now; I am that in
every moment which I was, and will be in all moments of time; nothing
can be added to me, nothing can be detracted from me; there is nothing
superior to him, which can detract from him; nothing desirable {a288}
that can be added to him. Now if there were any beginning and end of
God, any succession in him, he could not be “I Am;”[560] for in regard
of what was past, he would not be; in regard of what was to come, he
is not yet; and upon this account a heathen argues well;[561] of all
creatures it may be said they were, or they will be; but of God it
cannot be said anything else but _est_, God is, because he fills an
eternal duration. A creature cannot be said to be, if it be not yet,
nor if it be not now, but hath been.[562] God only can be called
“I Am;” all creatures have more of not being, than being; for every
creature was nothing from eternity, before it was made something
in time; and if it be incorruptible in its whole nature, it will be
nothing to eternity after it hath been something in time; and if it be
not corruptible in its nature, as the angels, or in every part of its
nature, as man in regard of his soul; yet it hath not properly a being,
because it is dependent upon the pleasure of God to continue it, or
deprive it of it; and while it is, it is mutable, and all mutability
is a mixture of not being. If God therefore be properly “I Am,” _i. e._
being, it follows that he always was; for if he were not always, he
must, as was argued before, be produced by some other, or by himself;
by another he could not; then he had not been God, but a creature;
nor by himself, for then as producing, he must be before himself, as
produced; he had been before he was. And he always will be; for being
“I Am,” having all being in himself, and the fountain of all being to
everything else, how can he ever have his name changed to I am not.
2. God hath life in himself (John v. 26): “The Father hath life in
himself;” he is the “living God;” therefore “steadfast forever” (Dan.
vi. 26). He hath life by his essence, not by participation. He is a
sun to give light and life to all creatures, but receives not light
or life from anything; and therefore he hath an unlimited life, not
a drop of life, but a fountain; not a spark of a limited life, but a
life transcending all bounds. He hath life in himself; all creatures
have their life in him and from him. He that hath life in himself doth
necessarily exist, and could never be made to exist; for then he had
not life in himself, but in that which made him to exist, and gave
him life. What doth necessarily exist therefore, exists from eternity;
what hath being of itself could never be produced in time, could not
want being one moment, because it hath being from its essence, without
influence of any efficient cause. When God pronounced his name, “I Am
that I Am,” angels and men were in being; the world had been created
above two thousand four hundred years; Moses, to whom he then speaks,
was in being; yet God only is, because he only hath the fountain of
being in himself; but all that they were was a rivulet from him. He
hath from nothing else, that he doth subsist; everything else hath its
subsistence from him as their root, as the beam from the sun, as the
rivers and fountains from the sea.[563] All life is seated in God,
as in its proper throne, in its most perfect purity. God is life; it
is in him originally, radically, therefore eternally. He is a pure
act, nothing but vigor and act; he hath by his nature that life which
others have by his grant; {a289} whence the Apostle saith (1 Tim. vi.
16) not only that he is immortal, but he hath immortality in a full
possession; fee simple, not depending upon the will of another, but
containing all things within himself. He that hath life in himself,
and is from himself, cannot but be. He always was, because he received
his being from no other, and none can take away that being which was
not given by another. If there were any space before he did exist,
then there was something which made him to exist; life would not then
be in him, but in that which produced him into being; he could not
then be God, but that other which gave him being would be God.[564]
And to say God sprung into being by chance, when we see nothing in
the world that is brought forth by chance, but hath some cause of
its existence, would be vain; for since God is a being, chance, which
is nothing, could not bring forth something; and by the same reason,
that he sprung up by chance, he might totally vanish by chance. What a
strange notion of a God would this be! such a God that had no life in
himself but from chance! Since he hath life in himself, and that there
was no cause of his existence, he can have no cause of his limitation,
and can no more be determined to a time, than he can to a place. What
hath life in itself, hath life without bounds, and can never desert
it, nor be deprived of it; so that he lives necessarily, and it is
absolutely impossible that he should not live; whereas all other
things “live, and move, and have their being in him” (Acts xvii. 28);
and as they live by his will, so they can return to nothing at his
word.
3. If God were not eternal, he were not immutable in his nature. It
is contrary to the nature of immutability to be without eternity; for
whatsoever begins, is changed in its passing from not being to being.
It began to be what it was not; and if it ends, it ceaseth to be what
it was; it cannot therefore be said to be God, if there were neither
beginning or ending, or succession in it (Mal. iii. 6): “I am the Lord,
I change not;” (Job xxxvii. 23): “Touching the Almighty, we cannot
find him out.” God argues here, saith Calvin, from his unchangeable
nature as Jehovah, to his immutability in his purpose. Had he not been
eternal, there had been the greatest change from nothing to something.
A change of essence is greater than a change of purpose. God is a
sun glittering always in the same glory; no growing up in youth; no
passing on to age. If he were not without succession, standing in one
point of eternity, there would be a change from past to present, from
present to future. The eternity of God is a shield against all kind
of mutability. If anything sprang up in the essence of God that was
not there before, he could not be said to be either an eternal, or an
unchanged substance.
4. God could not be an infinitely perfect Being, if he were not
eternal. A finite duration is inconsistent with infinite perfection.
Whatsoever is contracted within the limits of time, cannot swallow up
all perfections in itself. God hath an unsearchable perfection. “Canst
thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty
unto perfection?” (Job xi. 7.) He cannot be found out: he {a290} is
infinite, because he is incomprehensible. Incomprehensibility ariseth
from an infinite perfection, which cannot be fathomed by the short
line of man’s understanding. His essence in regard of its diffusion,
and in regard of its duration, is incomprehensible, as well as his
action: if God, therefore, had beginning, he could not be infinite;
if not infinite, he did not possess the highest perfection; because a
perfection might be conceived beyond it. If his being could fail, he
were not perfect; can that deserve the name of the highest perfection,
which is capable of corruption and dissolution? To be finite and
limited, is the greatest imperfection, for it consists in a denial of
being. He could not be the most blessed Being if he were not always
so, and should not forever remain so; and whatsoever perfections he
had, would be soured by the thoughts, that in time they would cease,
and so could not be pure affections, because not permanent; but “He
is blessed from everlasting to everlasting” (Ps. xli. 13). Had he a
beginning, he could not have all perfection without limitation; he
would have been limited by that which gave him beginning; that which
gave him being would be God, and not himself, and so more perfect than
he: but since God is the most sovereign perfection, than which nothing
can be imagined perfecter by the most capacious understanding, He is
certainly “eternal;” being infinite, nothing can be added to him,
nothing detracted from him.
5. God could not be omnipotent, almighty, if he were not eternal.
The title of almighty agrees not with a nature that had a beginning;
whatsoever hath a beginning was once nothing; and when it was nothing,
could act nothing: where there is no being there is no power. Neither
doth the title of almighty agree with a perishing nature: he can
do nothing to purpose, that cannot preserve himself against the
outward force and violence of enemies, or against the inward causes
of corruption and dissolution. No account is to be made of man,
because “his breath is in his nostrils” (Isa. ii. 22); could a better
account be made of God, if he were of the like condition? He could not
properly be almighty, that were not always mighty; if he be omnipotent,
nothing can impair him; he that hath all power, can have no hurt. If
he doth whatsoever he pleaseth, nothing can make him miserable, since
misery consists in those things which happen against our will.[565]
The almightiness and eternity of God are linked together: “I am Alpha
and Omega, the beginning and ending, saith the Lord, which was, and
which is, and which is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. i. 8): almighty
because eternal, and eternal because almighty.
6. God would not be the first cause of all if he were not eternal;
but he is the first and the last; the first cause of all things, the
last end of all things:[566] that which is the first cannot begin to
be; it were not then the first; it cannot cease to be: whatsoever is
dissolved, is dissolved into that whereof it doth consist, which was
before it, and then it was not the first. The world might not have
been; it was once nothing; it must have some cause to call it out of
nothing: nothing hath no power to make itself something; there {a291}
is a superior cause, by whose will and power it comes into being,
and so gives all the creatures their distinct forms.[567] This power
cannot but be eternal; it must be before the world; the founder must
be before the foundation; and his existence must be from eternity; or
we must say nothing did exist from eternity:[568] and if there were no
being from eternity, there could not now be any being in time. What we
see, and what we are, must arise from itself or some other; it cannot
from itself: if anything made itself, it had a power to make itself;
it then had an active power before it had a being; it was something
in regard of power, and was nothing in regard of existence at the same
time. Suppose it had a power to produce itself, this power must be
conferred upon it by another; and so the power of producing itself,
was not from itself, but from another; but if the power of being was
from itself, why did it not produce itself before? why was it one
moment out of being?[569] If there be any existence of things, it is
necessary that that which was the “first cause,” should “exist from
eternity.” Whatsoever was the immediate cause of the world, yet the
first and chief cause wherein we must rest, must have nothing before
it; if it had anything before it, it were not the first; he therefore
that is the first cause, must be without beginning; nothing must be
before him; if he had a beginning from some other, he could not be
the first principle and author of all things; if he be the first cause
of all things, he must give himself a beginning, or be from eternity:
he could not give himself a beginning; whatsoever begins in time was
nothing before, and when it was nothing, it could do nothing; it could
not give itself anything, for then it gave what it had not, and did
what it could not. If he made himself in time, why did he not make
himself before? what hindered him? It was either because he could
not, or because he would not; if he could not, he always wanted power,
and always would, unless it were bestowed upon him, and then he could
not be said to be from himself. If he would not make himself before,
then he might have made himself when he would: how had he the power
of willing and nilling without a being? Nothing cannot will or nill;
nothing hath no faculties; so that it is necessary to grant some
eternal being, or run into inextricable labyrinths and mazes. If we
deny some eternal being, we must deny all being; our own being, the
being of everything about us; unconceivable absurdities will arise.
So, then, if God were the cause of all things, he did exist before
all things, and that from eternity.
III. Eternity is only proper to God, and not communicable. It is as
great a madness to ascribe eternity to the creature, as to deprive the
Lord of the creature of eternity.[570] It is so proper to God, that
when the apostle would prove the deity of Christ, he proves it by his
immutability and eternity, as well as his creating power: “Thou art
the same, and thy years shall not fail” (Heb. i. 10‒12). The argument
had not strength, if eternity belonged essentially to any but God; and
therefore he is said only to have “immortality” (1 Tim. vi. 16): all
other things receive their being from him, and can be deprived {a292}
of their being by him: all things depend on him; he of none: all other
things are like clothes, which would consume if God preserved them not.
Immortality is appropriated to God, _i. e._ an independent immortality.
Angels and souls have an immortality, but by donation from God, not
by their own essence; dependent upon their Creator, not necessary in
their own nature: God might have annihilated them after he had created
them; so that their duration cannot properly be called an eternity,
it being extrinsical to them, and dependent upon the will of their
Creator, by whom they may be extinguished; it is not an absolute and
necessary, but a precarious immortality. Whatsoever is not God, is
temporary; whatsoever is eternal, is God. It is a contradiction to say
a creature can be eternal; as nothing eternal is created, so nothing
created is eternal. What is distinct from the nature of God cannot
be eternal, eternity being the essence of God. Every creature, in the
notion of a creature, speaks a dependence on some cause, and therefore
cannot be eternal. As it is repugnant to the nature of God not to be
eternal, so it is repugnant to the nature of a creature to be eternal;
for then a creature would be equal to the Creator, and the Creator, or
the Cause, would not be before the creature, or effect.[571] It would
be all one to admit many gods, as many eternals; and all one to say,
God can be created, as to say a creature can be uncreated, which is
to be eternal.
1. Creation is a producing something from nothing. What was once
nothing, cannot therefore be eternal; not being was eternal; therefore
its being could not be eternal, for it should be then before it was,
and would be something when it was nothing. It is the nature of a
creature to be nothing before it was created; what was nothing before
it was, cannot be equal with God in an eternity of duration.
2. There is no creature but is mutable, therefore not eternal. As
it had a change from nothing to something, so it may be changed from
being to not being. If the creature were not mutable, it would be most
perfect, and so would not be a creature, but God; for God only is most
perfect. It is as much the essence of a creature to be mutable, as
it is the essence of God to be immutable. Mutability and eternity are
utterly inconsistent.
3. No creature is infinite, therefore not eternal: to be infinite in
duration is all one as to be infinite in essence. It is as reasonable
to conceive a creature immense, filling all places at once, as eternal,
extended to all ages; because neither can be without infiniteness,
which is the property of the Deity.[572] A creature may as well be
without bounds of place, as limitations of time.
4. No effect of an intellectual free agent can be equal in duration
to its cause. The productions of natural agents are as ancient often
as themselves; the sun produceth a beam as old in time as itself;
but who ever heard of a piece of wise workmanship as old as the wise
artificer? God produced a creature, not necessarily and naturally, as
the sun doth a beam, but freely, as an intelligent agent. The sun was
not necessary; it might be or not be, according to the {a293} pleasure
of God. A free act of the will is necessary to precede in order of
time, as the cause of such effects as are purely voluntary.[573] Those
causes that act as soon as they exist act naturally, necessarily, not
freely, and cannot cease from acting. But suppose a creature might
have existed by the will of God from eternity; yet, as some think,
it could not be said absolutely, and in its own nature to be eternal,
because eternity was not of the essence of it. The creature could not
be its own duration; for though it were from eternity, it might not
have been from eternity, because its existence depended upon the free
will of God, who might have chose whether he would have created it or
no. God only is eternal; “the first and the last, the beginning and
the end;” who, as he subsisted before any creature had a being, so he
will eternally subsist if all creatures were reduced to nothing.
IV. _Use 1._ Information. If God be of an eternal duration, then
“Christ is God.” Eternity is the property of God, but it is ascribed
to Christ: “He is before all things” (Col. i. 17), _i. e._ all created
things; he is therefore no creature, and if no creature, eternal. “All
things were created by him,” both in heaven and in earth, angels, as
well as men, whether they be thrones or dominions (ver. 16). If all
things were his creatures, then he is no creature; if he were, all
things were not created by him, or he must create himself. He hath no
difference of time; for he is “the same yesterday, to‑day, and forever:
”[574] the same, with the name of God, “I Am,” which signifies his
eternity. He is no more to‑day than he was yesterday, nor will be
any other to‑morrow than he is to‑day; and therefore Melchizedec,
whose descent, birth, and death, father and mother, beginning and end
of days, are not upon record, was a type of the existence of Christ
without difference of time; “Having neither beginning of days nor end
of life, but made like the Son of God” (Heb. vii. 3). The suppression
of his birth and death was intended by the Holy Ghost as a type of
the excellency of Christ’s person in regard of his eternity, and
the duration of his charge in regard of his priesthood. As there
was an appearance of an eternity in the suppression of the race of
Melchisedec, so there is a true eternity in the Son of God. How could
the eternity of the Son of God be expressed by any resemblance so
well, as by such a suppression of the beginning and end of this great
person, different from the custom of the Spirit of God in the Old
Testament, who often records the generations and ends of holy men;
and why might not this, which was a kind of a shadow of eternity,
be a representation of the true eternity of Christ, as well as the
restoration of Isaac to his father without death, is said to be
a figure of the resurrection of Christ after a real death?[575]
Melchisedec is only mentioned once (without any record of his
extraction) in his appearance to Abraham after his victory, as if
he came from heaven only for that action, and instantly disappeared
again, as if he had been an eternal person. And Christ himself hints
his own eternity: “I came forth from the Father, and am come into
{a294} the world; again I leave the world, and go to the Father” (John
xvi. 28). He goes to the Father as he came from the Father; he goes
to the Father “for everlasting,” so he came from the Father “from
everlasting;” there is the same duration in coming forth from the
Father, as in returning to the Father. But more plainly: he speaks
of a glory that he “had with the Father before the world was” (John
xvii. 5), when there was no creature in being. This is an actual glory,
and not only in decree; for a decreed glory believers had, and why
may not every one of them say the same words, “Father, glorify me
with that glory which I had with thee before the world was,” if it
were only a glory in decree? Nay, it may be said of every man, he
was before the world was, because he was so in decree. Christ speaks
of something peculiar to him, a glory in actual possession before
the world was: “Glorify me, embrace, honor me as thy Son, whereas I
have now been, in the eyes of the world, handled disgracefully as a
servant.” If it were only in decree, why is not the like expression
used of others in Scripture as well as of Christ? Why did he not use
the same words for his disciples that were then with him, who had a
glory in decree? His eternity is also mentioned in the Old Testament:
“The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works
of old” (Prov. viii. 22). If he were the work of God, he existed
before himself, if he existed before all the works of God. It is so
not properly meant of the essential wisdom of God, since the discourse
runs in the name of a person; and several passages there are which
belong not so much to the essential wisdom of God, as ver. 13: “The
evil way and the froward mouth do I hate,” which belongs rather to the
holiness of God, than to the essential wisdom of God; besides, it is
distinguished from Jehovah, as possessed by him, “and rejoicing before
him.” Yet plainer: “Out of thee,” _i. e._ Bethlehem, “shall he come
forth to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of
old, from everlasting,” מימי עולם “from the ways of eternity” (Mic. v. 2).
There are two goings forth of Christ described, one from Bethlehem, in
the days of his incarnation, and another from eternity. The Holy Ghost
adds, after his prediction of his incarnation, his going out from
everlasting, that none should doubt of his deity. If this going out
from everlasting were only in the purpose of God, it might be said
of David, and of every creature; and in Isa. ix. 6 he is particularly
called the “everlasting,” or “eternal Father;” not the Father in the
Trinity, but a Father to us; yet “eternal,” the “Father of eternity.”
As he is the “mighty God,” so he is “the everlasting Father.” Can
such a title be ascribed to any whose being depends upon the will
of another, and may be dashed out at the pleasure of a superior? As
the eternity of God is the ground of all religion, so the eternity
of Christ is the ground of the Christian religion. Could our sins be
perfectly expiated had he not an eternal divinity to answer for the
offences committed against an eternal God? Temporary sufferings had
been of little validity, without an infiniteness and eternity in his
person to add weight to his passion.
2. If God be eternal, he knows all things as present. All things are
present to him in his eternity; for this is the notion of eternity,
{a295} to be without succession.[576] If eternity be one indivisible
point, and is not diffused into preceding and succeeding parts, then
that which is known in it or by it is perceived without any succession,
for knowledge is as the substance of the person knowing; if that hath
various actions and distinct from itself, then it understands things
in differences of time as time presents them to view. But, since
God’s being depends not upon the revolutions of time, so neither does
his knowledge; it exceeds all motions of years and days, comprehends
infinite spaces of past and future. God considers all things in his
eternity in one simple knowledge, as if they were now acted before him:
“Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world;”
ἀπ᾽ αἰῶνος, _à seculo_, “from eternity” (Acts xv. 18). God’s knowledge
is co‑eternal with him; if he knows that in time which he did not not
know from eternity, he would not be eternally perfect, since knowledge
is the perfection of an intelligent nature.
3. How bold and foolish is it for a mortal creature to censure the
counsels and actions of an eternal God, or be too curious in his
inquisitions! It is by the consideration of the unsearchable number
of the years of God that Elihu checks too bold inquiries: “who hath
enjoined him his way, or who can say, Thou hast wrought iniquity?
Behold, God is great, and we know him not; neither can the number of
his years be searched out.”[577] Eternity sets God above our inquiries
and censures. Infants of a day old are not able to understand the
acts of wise and gray heads: shall we, that are of so short a being
and understanding as yesterday, presume to measure the motions
of eternity by our scanty intellects? We that cannot foresee an
unexpected accident which falls in to blast a well‑laid design, and
run a ship many leagues back from the intended harbor; we cannot
understand the reason of things we see done in time, the motions of
the sea, the generation of rain, the nature of light, the sympathies
and antipathies of the creatures; and shall we dare to censure
the actions of an eternal God, so infinitely beyond our reach? The
counsels of a boundless being are not to be scanned by the brain of a
silly worm, that hath breathed but a few minutes in the world. Since
eternity cannot be comprehended in time, it is not to be judged by
a creature of time: “Let us remember to magnify his works which we
behold,” because he is eternal, which is the exhortation of Elihu,
backed by this doctrine of God’s eternity (Job xxxvi. 24), and not
accuse any work of him who is the “Ancient of Days,” or presume to
direct him of whose eternity we come infinitely short. Whenever,
therefore, any unworthy notion of the counsels and works of God is
suggested to us by Satan, or our own corrupt hearts, let us look
backward to God’s eternal and our own short duration, and silence
ourselves with the same question wherewith God put a stop to the
reasoning of Job――“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the
earth?” (Job xxxviii. 4), and reprove ourselves for our curiosity,
since we are of so short a standing, and were nothing when the eternal
God laid the first stone of the world.
4. What a folly and boldness is there in sin, since an eternal God
{a296} is offended thereby! All sin is aggravated by God’s eternity.
The blackness of the heathen idolatry was in changing the glory of
the incorruptible God (Rom. i. 23); erecting resemblances of him
contrary to his immortal nature; as if the eternal God, whose life is
as unlimited as eternity, were like those creatures whose beings are
measured by the short ell of time, which are of a corruptible nature,
and daily passing on to corruption; they could not really deprive God
of his glory and immortality, but they did in estimation. There is in
the nature of every sin a tendency to reduce God to a not being. He
that thinks unworthily of God, or acts unworthily towards him, doth
(as much as in him lies) sully and destroy these two perfections of
his, immutability and eternity. It is a carriage, as if he were as
contemptible as a creature that were but of yesterday, and shall not
remain in being to‑morrow. He that would put an end to God’s glory
by darkening it, would put an end to God’s life by destroying it. He
that should love a beast with as great an affection as he loves a man,
contemns a rational nature; and he that loves a perishing thing with
the same affection he should love an everlasting God, contemns his
eternity; he debaseth the duration of God below that of the world. The
low valuation of God speaks him in his esteem no better than withering
grass, or a gourd, which lasts for a night; and the creature which
possesses his affection, to be a good that lasts forever. How foolish,
then, is every sin that tends to destroy a being that cannot destroy
or desert himself; a Being, without whose eternity the sinner himself
could not have had the capacity of a being to affront him! How base is
that which would not let the works of God remain in their established
posture! How much more base is not enduring the fountain and glory of
all beings, that would not only put an end to the beauty of the world,
but the eternity of God!
5. How dreadful is it to lie under the stroke of an eternal God!
His eternity is as great a terror to him that hates him, as it is
a comfort to him that loves him; because he is the “living God,
an everlasting king, the nations shall not be able to abide his
indignation” (Jer. x. 10). Though God be least in their thoughts, and
is made light of in the world, yet the thoughts of God’s eternity,
when he comes to judge the world, shall make the slighters of him
tremble. That the Judge and punisher lives forever, is the greatest
grievance to a soul in misery, and adds an inconceivable weight to it,
above what the infiniteness of God’s executive power could do without
that duration. His eternity makes the punishment more dreadful than
his power; his power makes it sharp, but his eternity renders it
perpetual; ever to endure, is the sting at the end of every lash.
And how sad is it to think that God lays his eternity to pawn for the
punishment of obstinate sinners, and engageth it by an oath, that he
will “whet his glittering sword,” that his “hand shall take hold of
judgment,” that he will “render vengeance to his enemies, and a reward
to them that hate him;” a reward proportioned to the greatness of
their offences, and the glory of an eternal God! “I lift up my hand to
heaven, and say, I live forever;” (Deut. xxxii. 40, 41): _i. e._, as
surely as I live forever, I will whet my glittering sword. {a297} As
none can convey good with a perpetuity, so none can convey evil with
such a lastingness as God. It is a great loss to lose a ship richly
fraught in the bottom of the sea, never to be cast upon the shore;
but how much greater is it to lose eternally a sovereign God, which
we were capable of eternally enjoying, and undergo an evil as durable
as that God we slighted, and were in a possibility of avoiding! The
miseries of men after this life are not eased, but sharpened, by the
life and eternity of God.
_Use 2._ Of comfort. What foundation of comfort can we have in any
of God’s attributes, were it not for his infiniteness and eternity,
though he be “merciful, good, wise, faithful?” What support could
there be, if they were perfections belonging to a corruptible God?
What hopes of a resurrection to happiness can we have, or of the
duration of it, if that God that promised it were not immortal to
continue it, as well as powerful to effect it? His power were not
Almighty, if his duration were not eternal.
1. If God be eternal, his covenant will be so. It is founded upon
the eternity of God; the oath whereby he confirms it, is by his
life. Since there is none greater than himself, he swears by himself
(Heb. vi. 13), or by his own life, which he engageth together with his
eternity for the full performance; so that if he lives forever, the
covenant shall not be disannulled; it is an “immutable counsel” (ver.
16, 17). The immutability of his counsel follows the immutability of
his nature. Immutability and eternity go hand in hand together. The
promise of eternal life is as ancient as God himself in regard of the
purpose of the promise, or in regard of the promise made to Christ
for us. “Eternal life which God promised before the world began.”
(Tit. i. 2): As it hath an ante‑eternity, so it hath a post‑eternity;
therefore the gospel, which is the new covenant published, is termed
the “everlasting gospel” (Rev. xiv. 6), which can no more be altered
and perish, than God can change and vanish into nothing; he can as
little morally deny his truth, as he can naturally desert his life.
The covenant is there represented in a green color, to note its
perpetual verdure; the rainbow, the emblem of the covenant “about the
throne, was like to an emerald” (Rev. iv. 3), a stone of a green color,
whereas the natural rainbow hath many colors; this but one, to signify
its eternity.
2. If God be eternal, he being our God in covenant, is an eternal
good and possession. “This God is our God forever and ever” (Ps.
xlviii. 14): “He is a dwelling‑place in all generations.” We shall
traverse the world awhile, and then arrive at the blessings Jacob
wished for Joseph, “the blessings of the everlasting hills” (Gen.
xlix. 26). If an estate of a thousand pound per annum render a man’s
life comfortable for a short term, how much more may the soul be
swallowed up with joy in the enjoyment of the Creator, whose years
never fail, who lives forever to be enjoyed, and can keep us in life
forever to enjoy him! Death, indeed, will seize upon us by God’s
irreversible order, but the immortal Creator will make him disgorge
his morsel, and land us in a glorious immortality; our souls at their
dissolution, and our bodies at the resurrection, after which they
shall remain forever, and employ the extent of that boundless {a298}
eternity, in the fruition of the sovereign and eternal God; for it
is impossible that the believer, who is united to the immortal God
that is from everlasting to everlasting, can ever perish; for being
in conjunction with him who is an ever‑flowing fountain of life, he
cannot suffer him to remain in the jaws of death. While God is eternal,
and always the same, it is not possible that those that partake of his
spiritual life, should not also partake of his eternal. It is from the
consideration of the endlessness of the years of God that the church
comforts herself that “her children shall continue, and their seed
be established forever” (Ps. cii. 27, 28). And from the eternity
of God Habakkuk (chap. i. 12) concludes the eternity of believers,
“Art not thou from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? we shall
not die, O Lord.” After they are retired from this world, they shall
live forever with God, without any change by the multitude of those
imaginable years and ages that shall run forever. It is that God that
hath neither beginning nor end, that is our God; who hath not only
immortality in himself, but immortality to give out to others. As
he hath “abundance of spirit” to quicken them (Mal. ii. 15), so he
hath abundance of immortality to continue them. It is only in the
consideration of this a man can with wisdom say, “Soul, take thy ease;
thou hast goods laid up for many years” (Luke xii. 19, 20): to say it
of any other possession is the greatest folly in the judgment of our
Saviour. “Mortality shall be swallowed up of immortality;” “rivers
of pleasure” shall be “for evermore.” Death is a word never spoken
there by any; never heard by any in that possession of eternity; it
is forever put out as one of Christ’s conquered enemies. The happiness
depends upon the presence of God, with whom believers shall be forever
present. Happiness cannot perish as long as God lives; he is the first
and the last; the first of all delights, nothing before him; the last
of all pleasures, nothing beyond him; a paradise of delights in every
point, without a flaming sword.
3. The enjoyment of God will be as fresh and glorious after many ages,
as it was at first. God is eternal, and eternity knows no change;
there will then be the fullest possession without any decay in the
object enjoyed. There can be nothing past, nothing future; time
neither adds to it, nor detracts from it; that infinite fulness of
perfection which flourisheth in him now, will flourish eternally,
without any discoloring of it in the least, by those innumerable ages
that shall run to eternity, much less any despoiling him of them:
“He is the same in his endless duration” (Ps. cii. 27). As God is,
so will the eternity of him be, without succession, without division;
the fulness of joy will be always present; without past to be thought
of with regret for being gone; without future to be expected with
tormenting desires. When we enjoy God, we enjoy him in his eternity
without any flux; an entire possession of all together, without the
passing away of pleasures that may be wished to return, or expectation
of future joys which might be desired to hasten. Time is fluid, but
eternity is stable; and after many ages, the joys will be as savory
and satisfying as if they had been but that moment first tasted by
our hungry appetites. When the glory of the Lord shall rise upon you,
it shall be so far from ever setting, that after millions {a299} of
years are expired, as numerous as the sands on the sea‑shore, the sun,
in the light of whose countenance you shall live, shall be as bright
as at the first appearance; he will be so far from ceasing to flow,
that he will flow as strong, as full, as at the first communication
of himself in glory to the creature. God, therefore, as sitting upon
his throne of grace, and acting according to his covenant, is like
a jasper‑stone, which is of a green color, a color always delightful
(Rev. iv. 3); because God is always vigorous and flourishing; a pure
act of life, sparkling new and fresh rays of life and light to the
creature, flourishing with a perpetual spring, and contenting the most
capacious desire; forming your interest, pleasure, and satisfaction;
with an infinite variety, without any change or succession; he will
have variety to increase delights, and eternity to perpetuate them;
this will be the fruit of the enjoyment of an infinite and eternal God:
he is not a cistern, but a fountain, wherein water is always living,
and never putrefies.
4. If God be eternal, here is a strong ground of comfort against all
the distresses of the church, and the threats of the church’s enemies.
God’s abiding forever is the plea Jeremy makes for his return to
his forsaken church: “Thou, O Lord, remainest forever; thy throne
from generation to generation” (Lam. v. 19, 20). The church is weak;
created things are easily cut off; what prop is there, but that God
that lives forever? What, though Jerusalem lost its bulwarks, the
temple were defaced, the land wasted; yet the God of Jerusalem sits
upon an eternal throne, and from everlasting to everlasting there is
no diminution of his power. The prophet intimates in this complaint,
that it is not agreeable to God’s eternity to forget his people, to
whom he hath from eternity borne good‑will. In the greatest confusions,
the church’s eyes are to be fixed upon the eternity of God’s throne,
where he sits as governor of the world. No creature can take any
comfort in this perfection, but the church; other creatures depend
upon God, but the church is united to him. The first discovery of
the name “I am,” which signifies the divine eternity, as well as
immutability, was for the comfort of the “oppressed Israelites in
Egypt” (Exod. iii. 14, 15): it was then published from the secret
place of the Almighty, as the only strong cordial to refresh them: it
hath not yet, it shall not ever lose its virtue in any of the miseries
that have, or shall successively befall the church. It is a comfort as
durable as the God whose name it is; he is still “I Am;” and the same
to the church, as he was then to his Israel. His spiritual Israel have
a greater right to the glories of it, than the carnal Israel could
have. No oppression can be greater than theirs; what was a comfort
suited to that distress, hath the same suitableness to every other
oppression. It was not a temporary name, but a name forever; his
“memorial to all generations” (ver. 15), and reacheth to the church of
the Gentiles with whom he treats as the God of Abraham; ratifying that
covenant by the Messiah, which he made with Abraham, the father of the
faithful. The church’s enemies are not to be feared; they may spring
as the grass, but soon after do wither by their own inward principles
of decay, or are cut down by the hand of God (Ps. xcii. 7‒9). They
may be instruments of the {a300} anger of God, but “they shall be
scattered as the workers of iniquity by the hand of the Lord, that
is high for evermore” (ver. 8), and is engaged by his promise, to
preserve a church in the world. They may threaten, but their breath
may vanish as soon as their threatenings are pronounced; for they
carry their breath in no surer a place than their own nostrils, upon
which the eternal God can put his hand, and sink them with all their
rage. Do the prophets and instructors of the church “live forever”
(Zech. i. 5)? No: shall, then, the adversaries and disturbers of
the church live forever? They shall vanish as a shadow; their being
depends upon the eternal God of the faithful, and the everlasting
Judge of the wicked. He that inhabits eternity is above them that
inhabit mortality; and must, whether they will or no, “say to
corruption, Thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art my mother,
and my sister” (Job xvii. 14.) When they will act with a confidence,
as if they were living gods, he will not be mated; but evidence
himself to be a living God above them. Why, then, should mortal
men be feared in their frowns, when an immortal God hath promised
protection in his word, and lives forever to perform it?
5. Hence follows another comfort; since God is eternal, he hath
as much power as will to be as good as his word. His promises are
established upon his eternity; and his perfection is a main ground
of trust; “Trust in the Lord forever: for in the Lord Jehovah is
everlasting strength” (Isa. xxvi. 4). ביה יהוה צור עולמים His name is doubled;
that name, Jah and Jehovah, which was always the strength of his
people; and not a single one, but the strength or rock of eternities:
not a failing, but an eternal truth and power; that as his strength
is eternal, so our trust in him should imitate his eternity in its
perpetuity; and therefore in the despondency of his people, as if God
had forgot his promises, and made no account of them, or his word, and
were weary of doing good, he calls them to reflect on what they had
heard of his eternity, which is attended with immutability, who hath
an infiniteness of power to perform his will, and an infiniteness
of understanding to judge of the right seasons of it. His wisdom,
will, truth, have always been, and will to eternity be the same
(Isa. xl. 27, 28). He wants not life, any more than love, forever
to help us; since his word is past, he will never fail us; since
his life continues, he can never be out of a capacity to relieve us;
and, therefore, whenever we foolishly charge him by our distrustful
thoughts, we forget his love, which made the promise, and his eternal
life, which can accomplish it. As his word is the bottom of our trust,
and his truth is the assurance of his sincerity, so his eternity is
the assurance of his ability to perform: “His word stands forever”
(ver. 8). A man may be my friend this day, and be in another world
to‑morrow; and though he be never so sincere in his word, yet death
snaps his life asunder, and forbids the execution. But as God cannot
die, so he cannot lie; because he is the eternity of Israel: “The
strength of Israel will not lie, nor repent,” נצח perpetuity, or
eternity of Israel (1 Sam. xv. 29). Eternity implies immutability;
we could have no ground for our hopes, if we knew him not to be longer
lived than ourselves. The Psalmist beats {a301} off our hands from
trust in men, “because their breath goes forth, they return to their
earth, and in that day their thoughts perish” (Ps. cxlvi. 3, 4).
And if the God of Jacob were like them, what happiness could we have
in making him our help? As his sovereignty in giving precepts had
not been a strong ground of obedience, without considering him as
an eternal lawgiver, who could maintain his rights; so his kindness
in making the promises had not been a strong ground of confidence,
without considering him as an eternal promiser, whose thoughts and
whose life can never perish.[578] And this may be one reason why the
Holy Ghost mentions so often the post‑eternity of God, and so little
his ante‑eternity; because that is the strongest foundation of our
faith and hope, which respects chiefly that which is future, and not
that which is past; yet, indeed, no assurance of his after‑eternity
can be had, if his ante‑eternity be not certain. If he had a beginning,
he may have an end; and if he had a change in his nature, he might
have in his counsels; but since all the resolves of God are as himself
is, eternal, and all the promises of God are the fruits of his counsel,
therefore they cannot be changed; if he should change them for the
better, he would not have been eternally wise, to know what was best;
if for the worse, he had not been eternally good or just. Men may
break their promises, because they are made without foresight; but
God, that inhabits eternity, foreknows all things that shall be done
under the sun, as if they had been then acting before him; and nothing
can intervene, or work a change in his resolves; because the least
circumstances were eternally foreseen by him. Though there may be
variations, and changes to our sight, the wind may tack about, and
every hour new and cross accidents happen; yet the eternal God, who
is eternally true to his word, sits at the helm, and the winds and
the waves obey him. And though he should defer his promise a thousand
years, yet he is “not slack” (2 Pet. iii. 8, 9); for he defers it but
a day to his eternity: and who would not with comfort stay a day in
expectation of a considerable advantage?
_Use 3._ For exhortation. 1. To something which concerns us in
ourselves; 2. To something which concerns us with respect to God.
1. To something which concerns us in ourselves.
(1.) Let us be deeply affected with our sins long since committed.
Though they are past with us, they are, in regard of God’s eternity,
present with him; there is no succession in eternity, as there is in
time. All things are before God at once; our sins are before him, as
if committed this moment, though committed long ago. As he is what
he is in regard of duration, so he knows what he knows in regard of
knowledge. As he is not more than he was, nor shall not be any more
than he is, so he always knew what he knows, and shall not cease
to know what he now knows. As himself, so his knowledge, is one
indivisible point of eternity. He knows nothing but what he did know
from eternity; he shall know no more for the future than he now knows.
Our sins being present with him in his eternity, should be present
with us in our regard of remembrance of them, and sorrow for them.
What though many years are lapsed, much time run out, {a302} and our
iniquities almost blotted out of our memory; yet since a thousand
years are, in God’s sight, and in regard of his eternity, but as a
day――“A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday, when it
is past, and as a watch in the night” (Ps. xc. 4)――they are before
him. For suppose a man were as old as the world, above five thousand
six hundred years; the sins committed five thousand years ago, are,
according to that rule, but as if they were committed five days ago;
so that sixty‑two years are but as an hour and a half; and the sins
committed forty years since as if they were committed but this present
hour. But if we will go further, and consider them but as a watch
of the night, about three hours (for the night, consisting of twelve
hours, was divided into set watches), then a thousand years are but
as three hours in the sight of God; and then sins committed sixty
years ago are but as if they were committed within this five minutes.
Let none of us set light by the iniquities committed many years ago,
and imagine that length of time can wipe out their guilt. No: let
us consider them in relation to God’s eternity, and excite an inward
remorse, as if they had been but the birth of this moment.
(2.) Let the consideration of God’s eternity abate our pride. This
is the design of the verses following the text: the eternity of God
being so sufficient to make us understand our own nothingness, which
ought to be one great end of man, especially as fallen. The eternity
of God should make us as much disesteem ourselves, as the excellency
of God made Job abhor himself (Job xlii. 5, 6). His excellency should
humble us under a sense of our vanity, and his eternity under a sense
of the shortness of our duration. If man compares himself with other
creatures, he may be too sensible of his greatness; but if he compares
himself with God, he cannot but be sensible of his baseness.
1st. In regard of our impotence to comprehend this eternity of God.
How little do we know, how little can we know, of God’s eternity!
We cannot fully conceive it, much less express it; we have but a
brutish understanding in all those things, as Agur said of himself
(Prov. xxx. 7). What is infinite and eternal, cannot be comprehended
by finite and temporary creatures; if it could, it would not be
infinite and eternal;[579] for to know a thing, is to know the extent
and cause of it. It is repugnant to eternity to be known, because it
hath no limits, no causes; the most soaring understanding cannot have
a proportionable understanding of it. What disproportion is there
between a drop of water and the sea in their greatness and motion; yet
by a drop we may arrive to a knowledge of the nature of the sea, which
is a mass of drops joined together; but the longest duration of times
cannot make us know what eternity is, because there is no proportion
between time and eternity. The years of God are as numberless as
his thoughts (Ps. xl. 5), and our minds as far from reckoning the
one as the other. If our understandings are too gross to comprehend
the majesty of his infinite works, they are much more too short to
comprehend the infiniteness of his eternity.
{a303} 2d. In regard of the vast disproportion of our duration to this
duration of God.
[1.] We have more of nothing than being. We were nothing from an
unbegun eternity, and we might have been nothing to an endless
eternity, had not God called us into being; and if he please we may
be nothing by as short an annihilating word, as we were something by
a creating word. As it is the prerogative of God to be, “I am that I
am;” so it is the property of a creature to be, “I am not what I am;”
I am not by myself what I am, but by the indulgence of another. I was
nothing formerly; I may be nothing again, unless he that is “I Am”
make me to subsist what I now am. Nothing is as much the title of
the creature as being is the title of God. Nothing is so holy as God,
because nothing hath being as God: “There is none holy as the Lord,
for there is none besides thee” (1 Sam. ii. 2). Man’s life is an image,
a dream, which are next to nothing; and if compared with God, worse
than nothing; a nullity as well as a vanity, because “with God only
is the fountain of life” (Ps. xxxvi. 9). The creature is but a drop
of life from him, dependent on him: a drop of water is a nothing if
compared with the vast conflux of waters and numberless drops in the
ocean. How unworthy is it for dust and ashes, kneaded together in time,
to strut against the Father of eternity! Much more unworthy for that
which is nothing, worse than nothing, to quarrel with that which is
only being, and equal himself with Him that inhabits eternity.
[2.] What being we have had a beginning. After an unaccountable
eternity was run out, in the very dregs of time, a few years ago we
were created, and made of the basest and vilest dross of the world,
the slime and dust of the earth; made of that wherewith birds build
their nests; made of that which creeping things make their habitation,
and beasts trample upon. How monstrous is pride in such a creature, to
aspire, as if he were the Father of eternity, and as eternal as God,
and so his own eternity!
[3.] What being we have is but of a short duration in regard of our
life in this world. Our life is in a constant change and flux; we
remain not the same an entire day; youth quickly succeeds childhood,
and age as speedily treads upon the heels of youth; there is a
continual defluxion of minutes, as there is of sands in a glass. He is
as a watch wound up at the beginning of his life, and from that time
is running down, till he comes to the bottom; some part of our lives
is cut off every day, every minute. Life is but a moment: what is past
cannot be recalled, what is future cannot be ensured. If we enjoy this
moment, we have lost that which is past, and shall presently lose this
by the next that is to come. The short duration of men is set out in
Scripture by such creatures as soon disappear: a worm (Job xxv. 6),
that can scarce outlive a winter; grass, that withers by the summer
sun. Life is a “flower,” soon withering (Job xiv. 2); a “vapor,” soon
vanishing (James iv. 14); a “smoke,” soon disappearing (Ps. cii. 3).
The strongest man is but compacted dust; the fabric must moulder;
the highest mountain falls and comes to naught. Time gives place to
eternity; we live now, and die to‑morrow. {a304} Not a man since the
world began ever lived a day in God’s sight; for no man ever lived a
thousand years. The longest day of any man’s life never amounted to
twenty‑four hours in the account of divine eternity: a life of so many
hundred years, with the addition “he died,” makes up the greatest part
of the history of the patriarchs (Gen. v.); and since the life of man
hath been curtailed, if any be in the world eighty years, he scarce
properly lives sixty of them, since the fourth part of time is at
least consumed in sleep. A greater difference there is between the
duration of God and that of a creature, than between the life of
one for a minute, and the life of one that should live as many years
as the whole globe of heaven and earth, if changed into papers,
could contain figures. And this life, though but of a short duration
according to the period God hath determined, is easily cut off; the
treasure of life is deposited in a brittle vessel. A small stone
hitting against Nebuchadnezzar’s statue will tumble it down into a
poor and nasty grave; a grape‑stone, the bone of a fish, a small fly
in the throat, a moist damp, are enough to destroy an earthly eternity,
and reduce it to nothing. What a nothing, then, is our shortness, if
compared with God’s eternity; our frailty, with God’s duration! How
humble, then, should perishing creatures be before an eternal God,
with whom “our days are as a hand’s breadth, and our age as nothing!”
(Ps. xxxix. 5.) The angels, that have been of as long a duration as
heaven and earth, tremble before him; the heavens melt at his presence;
and shall we, that are but of yesterday, approach a divine eternity
with unhumbled souls, and offer the calves of our lips with the pride
of devils, and stand upon our terms with him, without falling upon our
faces, with a sense that we are but dust and ashes, and creatures of
time? How easy is it to reason out man’s humility! but how hard is it
to reason man into it!
(3.) Let the consideration of God’s eternity take off our love and
confidence from the world, and the things thereof. The eternity of
God reproaches a pursuit of the world, as preferring a momentary
pleasure before an everlasting God; as though a temporal world could
be a better supply than a God whose years never fail. Alas! what is
this earth men are so greedy of, and will get, though by blood and
sweat? What is this whole earth, if we had the entire possession of
it, if compared with the vast heavens, the seat of angels and blessed
spirits? It is but as an atom to the greatest mountain, or as a drop
of dew to the immense ocean. How foolish is it to prefer a drop before
the sea, or an atom before the world! The earth is but a point to the
sun; the sun with its whole orb, but a little part of the heavens if
compared with the whole fabric. If a man had the possession of all
those, there could be no comparison between those that have had a
beginning, and shall have an end, and God who is without either of
them. Yet how many are there that make nothing of the divine eternity,
and imagine an eternity of nothing!
[1.] The world hath been but of a short standing. It is not yet six
thousand years since the foundations of it were laid, and therefore
it cannot have a boundless excellency, as that God, who hath {a305}
been from everlasting, doth possess. If Adam had lived to this day,
and been as absolute lord of his posterity, as he was of the other
creatures, had it been a competent object to take up his heart? had
he not been a madman, to have preferred this little created pleasure
before an everlasting uncreated God? a thing that had a dependent
beginning, before that which had an independent eternity?
[2.] The beauties of the world are transitory and perishing. The
whole world is nothing else but a fluid thing; the fashion of it is a
pageantry, “passing away” (1 Cor. vii. 31): though the glories of it
might be conceived greater than they are, yet they are not consistent,
but transient; there cannot be an entire enjoyment of them, because
they grow up and expire every moment, and slip away between our
fingers while we are using them. Have we not heard of God’s dispersing
the greatest empires like “chaff before a whirlwind,” or as “smoke out
of a chimney” (Hos. xiii. 3), which, though it appears as a compacted
cloud, as if it would choke the sun, is quickly scattered into several
parts of the air, and becomes invisible? Nettles have often been heirs
to stately palaces, as God threatens Israel (Hos. ix. 6). We cannot
promise ourselves over night anything the next day. A kingdom with
the glory of a throne may be cut off in a morning (Hos. x. 15). The
new wine may be taken from the mouth when the vintage is ripe; the
devouring locust may snatch away both the hopes of that and the
harvest (Joel i. 15); they are, therefore, things which are not, and
nothing cannot be a fit object for confidence or affection; “Wilt
thou set thy eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make
themselves wings” (Prov. xxiii. 5). They are not properly beings,
because they are not stable, but flitting. They are not, because they
may not be the next moment to us what they are this: they are but
cisterns, not springs, and broken cisterns, not sound and stable; no
solidity in their substance, nor stability in their duration. What
a foolish thing is it then, to prefer a transient felicity, a mere
nullity, before an eternal God! What a senseless thing would it be
in a man to prefer the map of a kingdom, which the hand of a child
can tear in pieces, before the kingdom shadowed by it! How much more
inexcusable is it to value things, that are so far from being eternal,
that they are not so much as dusky resemblances of an eternity. Were
the things of the world more glorious than they are, yet they are but
as a counterfeit sun in a cloud, which comes short of the true sun in
the heavens, both in glory and duration; and to esteem them before God,
is inconceivably baser, than if a man should value a party‑colored
bubble in the air, before a durable rock of diamonds. The comforts
of this world are as candles, that will end in a snuff; whereas the
felicity that flows from an eternal God, is like the sun, that shines
more and more to a perfect day.
[3.] They cannot therefore be fit for a soul, which was made to have
an interest in God’s eternity. The soul being of a perpetual nature,
was made for the fruition of an eternal good; without such a good it
can never be perfect. Perfection, that noble thing, riseth {a306} not
from anything in this world, nor is a title due to a soul while in
this world; it is then they are said to be made perfect, when they
arrive at that entire conjunction with the eternal God in another
life (Heb. xii. 23). The soul cannot be ennobled by an acquaintance
with these things, or established by a dependence on them; they cannot
confer what a rational nature should desire, or supply it with what
it wants. The soul hath a resemblance to God in a post‑eternity; why
should it be drawn aside by the blandishments of earthly things, to
neglect its true establishment, and lackey after the body, which is
but the shadow of the soul, and was made to follow it and serve it?
But while it busieth itself altogether in the concerns of a perishing
body, and seeks satisfaction in things that glide away, it becomes
rather a body than soul, descends below its nature, reproacheth that
God who hath imprinted upon it an image of his own eternity, and
loseth the comfort of the everlastingness of its Creator. How shall
the whole world, if our lives were as durable as that, be a happy
eternity to us, who have souls that shall survive all the delights of
it, which must fry in those flames that shall fire the whole frame of
nature at the general conflagration of the world? (2 Pet. iii. 10.)
[4.] Therefore let us provide for a happy interest in the eternity of
God. Man is made for an eternal state. The soul hath such a perfection
in its nature, that it is fit for eternity, and cannot display all
its operations but in eternity. To an eternity it must go, and live
as long as God himself lives. Things of a short duration are not
proportioned to a soul made for an eternal continuance; to see that it
be a comfortable eternity, is worth all our care. Man is a forecasting
creature, and considers not only the present, but the future too, in
his provisions for his family; and shall he disgrace his nature in
casting off all consideration of a future eternity? Get possession,
therefore, of the eternal God. “A portion in this life” is the lot
of those who shall be forever miserable (Ps. xvii. 14). But God,
“an everlasting portion,” is the lot of them that are designed for
happiness. “God is my portion forever” (Ps. lxxiii. 26). “Time is
short” (1 Cor. vii. 29). The whole time for which God designed this
building of the world, is of a little compass; it is a stage erected
for rational creatures to act their parts upon for a few thousand
years; the greatest part of which time is run out; and then shall time,
like a rivulet, fall into the sea of eternity, from whence it sprung.
As time is but a slip of eternity, so it will end in eternity; our
advantages consist in the present instant; what is past never promised
a return, and cannot be fetched back by all our vows. What is future,
we cannot promise ourselves to enjoy; we may be snatched away before
it comes. Every minute that passeth, speaks the fewer remaining,
till the time of death; and as we are every hour further from our
beginning, we are nearer our end. The child born this day grows up, to
grow nothing at last. In all ages there is “but a step between us and
death,” as David said of himself (1 Sam. xx. 3). The little time that
remains for the devil till the day of judgment, envenoms his wrath;
he rageth, because “his time is short” (Rev. xii. 12). The little time
that remains between this moment {a307} and our death, should quicken
our diligence to inherit the endless and unchangeable eternity of God.
[5.] Often meditate on the eternity of God. The holiness, power, and
eternity of God, are the fundamental articles of all religion, upon
which the whole body of it leans; his holiness for conformity to him,
his power and eternity for the support of faith and hope. The strong
and incessant cries of the four beasts, representing that christian
church, are “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is,
and is to come” (Rev. iv. 8). Though his power is intimated, yet the
chiefest are his holiness, three times expressed; and his eternity
which is repeated, “who lives forever and ever” (ver. 9). This ought
to be the constant practice in the church of the Gentiles, which
this book chiefly respects; the meditation of his converting grace
manifested to Paul, ravished the apostle’s heart; but not without
the triumphant consideration of his immortality and eternity, which
are the principal parts of the doxology: “Now unto the King eternal,
immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever
and ever” (1 Tim. i. 15‒17). It could be no great transport to the
spirit, to consider him glorious without considering him immortal. The
unconfinedness of his perfections in regard of time, presents the soul
with matter of the greatest complacency. The happiness of our souls
depends upon his other attributes, but the perpetuity of it upon his
eternity. Is it a comfort to view his immense wisdom; his overflowing
goodness; his tender mercy; his unerring truth? What comfort were
there in any of those, if it were a wisdom that could be baffled; a
goodness that could be damped; a mercy that can expire; and a truth
that can perish with the subject of it? Without eternity, what were
all his other perfections, but as glorious, yet withering flowers;
a great, but a decaying beauty? By a frequent meditation of God’s
eternity, we should become more sensible of our own vanity and the
world’s triflingness; how nothing should ourselves; how nothing would
all other things appear in our eyes! how coldly should we desire them!
how feebly should we place any trust in them! Should we not think
ourselves worthy of contempt to dote upon a perishing glory, to expect
support from an arm of flesh, when there is an eternal beauty to
ravish us, an eternal arm to protect us? Asaph, when he considered God
“a portion forever,” thought nothing of the glories of the earth, or
the beauties of the created heavens, worth his appetite or complacency,
but “God” (Ps. lxxiii. 25, 26). Besides, an elevated frame of heart at
the consideration of God’s eternity, would batter down the strongholds
and engines of any temptation: a slight temptation will not know where
to find and catch hold of a soul high and hid in a meditation of it;
and if it doth, there will not be wanting from hence preservatives to
resist and conquer it. What transitory pleasures will not the thoughts
of God’s eternity stifle? When this work busieth a soul, it is too
great to suffer it to descend, to listen to a sleeveless errand from
hell or the world. The wanton allurements of the flesh will be put
off with indignation. The proffers of the world will be ridiculous
when they are cast into the balance with the eternity of God, which
sticking in our thoughts, we shall not be {a308} so easy a prey for
the fowler’s gin. Let us, therefore, often meditate upon this, but
not in a bare speculation, without engaging our affections, and making
every notion of the divine eternity end in a suitable impression
upon our hearts. This would be much like the disciples gazing upon
the heavens at the ascension of their Master, while they forgot the
practice of his orders (Acts i. 11). We may else find something of
the nature of God, and lose ourselves, not only in eternity, but to
eternity.
2. And hence the second part of the exhortation is, to something which
concerns us with a respect to God.
(1.) If God be eternal, how worthy is he of our choicest affections,
and strongest desires of communion with him! Is not everything to be
valued according to the greatness of its being! How, then, should we
love him, who is not only lovely in his nature, but eternally lovely;
having from everlasting all those perfections centered in himself,
which appear in time! If everything be lovely, by how much more
it partakes of the nature of God, who is the chief good; how much
more infinitely lovely is God, who is superior to all other goods,
and eternally so! Not a God of a few minutes, months, years, or
millions of years; not of the dregs of time or the top of time, but
of eternity; above time, inconceivably immense beyond time. The loving
him infinitely, perpetually, is an act of homage due to him for his
eternal excellency; we may give him the one, since our souls are
immortal, though we cannot the other, because they are finite. Since
he incloseth in himself all the excellencies of heaven and earth
forever, he should have an affection, not only of time in this world,
but of eternity in future; and if we did not owe him a love for what
we are by him, we owe him a love for what he is in himself; and more
for what he is, than for what he is to us. He is more worthy of our
affections because he is the eternal God, than because he is our
Creator; because he is more excellent in his nature, than in his
transient actions; the beams of his goodness to us, are to direct our
thoughts and affections to him; but his own eternal excellency ought
to be the ground and foundation of our affections to him. And truly,
since nothing but God is eternal, nothing but God is worth the loving;
and we do but a just right to our love, to pitch it upon that which
can always possess us and be possessed by us; upon an object that
cannot deceive our affection, and put it out of countenance by a
dissolution. And if our happiness consists in being like to God, we
should imitate him in loving him as he loves himself, and as long as
he loves himself; God cannot do more to himself than love himself;
he can make no addition to his essence, nor diminution from it. What
should we do less to an eternal Being, than to bestow affections upon
him, like his own to himself; since we can find nothing so durable as
himself, for which we should love it?
(2.) He only is worthy of our best service. The Ancient of Days is to
be served before all that are younger than himself; our best obedience
is due to him as a God of unconfined excellency; everything that is
excellent deserves a veneration suitable to its excellency. As God
is infinite, he hath right to a boundless service; as he is {a309}
eternal, he hath right to a perpetual service: as service is a debt
of justice upon the account of the excellency of his nature, so a
perpetual service is as much a debt of justice upon the account of
his eternity. If God be infinite and eternal, he merits an honor and
comportment from his creatures, suited to the unlimited perfection
of his nature, and the duration of his being. How worthy is the
Psalmist’s resolution! “I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have any being” (Ps. civ. 33).
It is the use he makes of the endless duration of the glory of God;
and will extend to all other service as well as praise. To serve other
things, or to serve ourselves, is too vast a service upon that which
is nothing. In devoting ourselves to God, we serve him that is, that
was, so as that he never began; is to come, so as that he never shall
end; by whom all things are what they are; who hath both eternal
knowledge to remember our service, and eternal goodness to reward it.
{a310} DISCOURSE VI.
ON THE IMMUTABILITY OF GOD.
PSALM cii. 26, 27.――They shall perish, but thou shalt endure:
yea, all of them shall wax old as a garment; as a vesture
shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: But thou
art the same, and thy years shall have no end.
THIS Psalm contains a complaint of a people pressed with a great
calamity; some think of the Jewish church in Babylon; others think the
Psalmist doth here personate mankind lying under a state of corruption,
because he wishes for the coming of the Messiah, to accomplish that
redemption promised by God, and needed by them. Indeed the title
of the Psalm is “A prayer of the afflicted when he is overwhelmed,
and pours out his complaint before the Lord;” whether afflicted with
the sense of corruption, or with the sense of oppression. And the
redemption by the Messiah, which the ancient church looked upon as
the fountain of their deliverance from a sinful or a servile bondage,
is in this psalm spoken of. A set time appointed for the discovery
of his mercy to Sion (ver. 13); an appearance in glory to build up
Sion (ver. 16); the loosing of the prisoner by redemption, and them
that are appointed to death (ver. 20); the calling of the Gentiles
(ver. 22); and the latter part of the psalm, wherein are the verses
I have read, are applied to Christ (Heb. i.) Whatsoever the design
of the psalm might be, many things are intermingled that concern the
kingdom of the Messiah, and redemption by Christ.
Some make three parts of the psalm. 1. A petition plainly delivered
(ver. 1, 2): “Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto thee,”
&c. 2. The petition strongly and argumentatively enforced and pleaded
(ver. 3), from the misery of the petitioner in himself, and his
reproach from his enemies. 3. An acting of faith in the expectation of
an answer in the general redemption promised (ver. 12, 13): “But thou,
O Lord, shalt endure forever; thou shalt arise and have mercy upon
Sion; the heathen shall fear thy name.” The first part is the petition
pleaded; the second part is the petition answered, in an assurance
that there should in time be a full deliverance.[580] The design
of the penman is to confirm the church in the truth of the divine
promises; that though the foundations of the world should be ripped
up, and the heavens clatter together, and the whole fabric of them
be unpinned and fall to pieces, the firmest parts of it dissolved;
yet the church should continue {a311} in its stability, because it
stands not upon the changeableness of creatures, but is built upon
the immutable rock of the truth of God, which is as little subject
to change, as his essence.
_They shall perish, thou shalt change them._ As he had before ascribed
to God the “foundation of heaven and earth” (ver. 25), so he ascribes
to God here the destruction of them. Both the beginning and end of the
world are here ascertained. There is nothing, indeed, from the present
appearance of things, that can demonstrate the cessation of the world.
The heaven and earth stand firm; the motions of the heavenly bodies
are the same, their beauty is not decayed; individuals corrupt, but
the species and kinds remain. The successions of the year observe
their due order; but the sin of man renders the change of the present
appearance of the world necessary to accomplish the design of God for
the glory of his elect. The heavens do not naturally perish, as some
fancied an old age of the world, wherein it must necessarily decay as
the bodies of animals do; or that the parts of the heavens are broken
off by their rubbing one against another in their motion, and falling
to the earth, are the seeds of those things that grow among us.[581]
_The earth and heavens._ He names here the most stable parts of
the world, and the most beautiful parts of the creation; those that
are freest from corruptibility and change, to illustrate thereby
the immutability of God; that though the heavens and earth have a
prerogative of fixedness above other parts of the world, and the
creatures that reside below, the heavens remain the same as they
were created, and the centre of the earth retains its fixedness, and
are as beautiful and fresh in their age as they were in their youth
many years ago, notwithstanding the change of the elements, fire
and water being often turned into air, so that there may remain but
little of that air which was first created by reason of the continual
transmutation; yet this firmness of the earth and heavens is not to
be regarded in comparison of the unmovableness and fixedness of the
being of God; as their beauty comes short of the glory of his being,
so doth their firmness come short of his stability. Some, by heavens
and earth, understand the creatures which reside in the earth, and
those which are in the air, which is called heaven often in Scripture;
but the ruin and fall of these being seen every day, had been no fit
illustration of the unchangeableness of God.
_They, shall perish, they shall be changed._ 1. They _may_ perish,
say some; they have it not from themselves that they do not perish,
but from thee, who didst endue them with an incorruptible nature; they
shall perish if thou speakest the word; thou canst with as much ease
destroy them, as thou didst create them. But the Psalmist speaks not
of their possibility, but the certainty of their perishing. 2. They
_shall_ perish in their qualities and motion, not in their substance,
say others. They shall cease from that motion which is designed
properly for the generation and corruption of things in the earth;
but in regard of their substance and beauty they shall remain. As when
the strings or wheels of a clock or watch are taken off, the material
parts remain, though the motion of it, and the use for discovering
{a312} the time of the day, ceaseth.[582] To perish, doth not signify
alway a falling into nothing, an annihilation, by which both the
matter and the form are destroyed, but a ceasing of the present
appearance of them; a ceasing to be what they now are; as a man is
said to perish when he dies, whereas the better part of man doth not
cease to be. The figure of the body moulders away, and the matter of
it returns to dust; but the soul being immortal ceaseth not to act,
when the body, by reason of the absence of the soul, is incapable
of acting. So the heavens shall perish; the appearance they now have
shall vanish, and a more glorious and incorruptible frame be erected
by the power and goodness of God. The dissolution of heaven and earth
is meant by the word _perish_; the raising a new frame is signified
by the word _changed_: as if the Spirit of God would prevent any wrong
meaning of the word _perish_, by alleviating the sense of that, by
another which signifies only a mutation and change; as when we change
a habit and garment, we quit the old to receive the new.
_As a garment, as a vesture._ Thou shalt change them, ἑλίξεις,[583]
thou shalt fold them up. The heavens are compared to a curtain (Ps.
civ. 2), and shall in due time be folded up as clothes and curtains
are. As a garment encompasseth the whole body, so do the heavens
encircle the earth.[584] Some say, as a garment is folded up to be
laid aside, that when there is need it may be taken again for use;
so shalt thou fold up the heavens like a garment, that when they are
repaired, thou mayest again stretch them out about the earth; thou
shalt fold them up, so that what did appear shall not now appear.
It may be illustrated by the metaphor of a scroll or book, which
the Spirit of God useth (Isa. xxxiv. 4; Rev. vi. 14): “The heavens
departed as a scroll when it is rolled together.” When a book is
rolled up or shut, nothing can be read in it till it be opened again;
so the face of the heavens, wherein the stars are as letters declaring
the glory of God, shall be shut or rolled together, so that nothing
shall appear, till by its renovation it be opened again: as a garment
it shall be changed, not to be used in the same fashion, and for the
same use again. It seems, indeed, to be for the worse; an old garment
is not changed but into rags, to be put to other uses, and afterwards
thrown upon the dunghill; but similitudes are not to be pressed
too far; and this will not agree with the new heavens and new
earth, physically so, as well as metaphorically so. It is not likely
the heavens will be put to a worse use than God designed them for
in creation; however, a change as a garment, speaks not a total
corruption, but an alteration of qualities; as a garment not to
be used in the same fashion as before. We may observe, that it is
probable the world shall not be annihilated, but refined. It shall
lose its present form and fashion; but not its foundation: indeed, as
God raised it from nothing, so he can reduce it into nothing; yet it
doth not appear that God will annihilate it, and utterly destroy both
the matter and form of it; part shall be consumed, and part purified
(2 Pet. iii. 12, 13): “The heavens shall be on fire and dissolved;
nevertheless, we, according to his promise, look for a new heaven and
a new earth.” They shall be melted down as gold by the artificer, to
be refined from its dross, {a313} and wrought into a more beautiful
fashion, that they may serve the design of God for those that shall
reside therein; a new world wherein righteousness shall dwell: the
apostle opposing it thereby to the old world wherein wickedness did
reside. The heavens are to be purged, as the vessels that held the
sin‑offering were to be purified by the fire of the sanctuary. God,
indeed, will take down this scaffold, which he hath built to publish
his glory. As every individual hath a certain term of its duration, so
an end is appointed for the universal nature of heaven and earth (Isa.
li. 6): “The heavens shall vanish like smoke” which disappears. As
smoke is resolved and attenuated into air, not annihilated, so shall
the world assume a new face, and have a greater clearness and splendor;
as the bodies of men, dissolved into dust, shall have more glorious
qualities at their resurrection; as a vessel of gold is melted down
to remove the batterings in it, and receive a more comely form by the
skill of the workman.
1. The world was not destroyed by the deluge: it was rather washed by
water, than consumed; so it shall be rather refined by the last fire,
than lie under an irrecoverable ruin.
2. It is not likely God would liken the everlastingness of his
covenant, and the perpetuity of his spiritual Israel, to the duration
of the ordinances of the heavens (as he doth in Jer. xxxi. 35, 36), if
they were wholly to depart from before him. Though that place may only
tend to an assurance of a church in the world, while the world endures;
yet it would be but small comfort, if the happiness of believers
should endure no longer than the heavens and earth, if they were to
have a total period.
3. Besides, the bodies of the saints must have place for their support
to move in, and glorious objects suited to those glorious senses which
shall be restored to them; not in any carnal way, which our Saviour
rejects, when he saith, There is no eating, or drinking, or marrying,
&c. in the other world; but whereby they may glorify God; though how
or in what manner their senses shall be used, would be rashness to
determine; only something is necessary for the corporeal state of
men, that there may be an employment for their senses as well as their
souls.
4. Again, How could the creature, the world, or any part of it, be
said to be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious
liberty of the sons of God, if the whole frame of heaven and earth
were to be annihilated (Rom. viii. 21)? The apostle saith also, that
the creature waits with an “earnest expectation for this manifestation
of the sons of God” (ver. 19); which would have no foundation if the
whole frame should be reduced to nothing. What joyful expectation can
there be in any of a total ruin? How should the creature be capable
of partaking in this glorious liberty of the sons of God?[585] As the
world for the sin of man lost its first dignity, and was cursed after
the fall, and the beauty bestowed upon it by creation defaced; so
it shall recover that ancient glory, when he shall be fully restored
by the resurrection to that dignity he lost by his first sin. As man
shall be freed from his corruptibility to receive {a314} that glory
which is prepared for him, so shall the creatures be freed from that
imperfection or corruptibility, those stains and spots upon the face
of them, to receive a new glory suited to their nature, and answerable
to the design of God, when the glorious liberty of the saints shall
be accomplished.[586] As when a prince’s nuptials are solemnized, the
whole country echoes with joy; so the inanimate creatures, when the
time of the marriage of the Lamb is come, shall have a delight and
pleasure from that renovation. The apostle sets forth the whole world
as a person groaning; and the Scripture is frequent in such metaphors;
as when the creatures are said to wait upon God, and to be troubled,
the hills are said to leap and the mountains to rejoice (Ps. civ.
27‒29); the creature is said to groan, as the heavens are said to
declare the glory of God, passively, naturally, not rationally. It is
not likely angels are here meant, though they cannot but desire it;
since they are affected with the dishonor and reproach God hath in the
world, they cannot but long for the restoration of his honor in the
restoration of the creature to its true end: and, indeed, the angels
are employed to serve man in this sinful state, and cannot but in
holiness wish the creature freed from his corruption. Nor is it meant
of the new creatures, which have the first fruits of the Spirit;
those he brings in afterwards, groaning and waiting for the adoption
(ver. 23); where he distinguisheth the rational creature from the
creature he had spoken of before. If he had meant the believing
creature by that creature that desired the liberty of the sons of
God, what need had there been of that additional distinction, and
not only they, but we also who have the first fruits of the Spirit,
groan within ourselves? Whereby it seems he means some creatures below
rational creatures, since neither angels nor blessed souls can be said
to travail in pain, with that distress as a woman in travail hath, as
the word signifies, who perform the work joyfully which God sets them
upon.[587] If the creatures be subject to vanity by the sin of man,
they shall also partake of a happiness by the restoration of man. The
earth hath borne thorns and thistles, and venomous beasts; the air
hath had its tempests and infectious qualities; the water hath caused
its floods and deluges. The creature hath been abused to luxury and
intemperance; and been tyrannized over by man, contrary to the end of
its creation. It is convenient that some time should be allotted for
the creature’s attaining its true end, and that it may partake of the
peace of man, as it hath done of the fruits of his sin; otherwise it
would seem, that sin had prevailed more than grace, and would have
had more power to deface, than grace to restore things into their due
order.
5. Again, Upon what account should the Psalmist exhort the heavens to
rejoice, and the earth to be glad, when God “comes to judge the world
with righteousness” (Ps. xcvi. 11‒13), if they should be annihilated
and sunk forever into nothing? “It would seem,” saith Daille, “to be
an impertinent figure, if the Judge of the world brought to them a
total destruction; an entire ruin could not be matter of triumph to
creatures, who naturally have that instinct or {a315} inclination
put into them by their Creator, to preserve themselves, and to effect
their own preservation.”
6. Again, the Lord is to rejoice in his works (Ps. civ. 31): “The
glory of the Lord shall endure forever; the Lord shall rejoice in
his works;” not hath, but shall rejoice in his works: in the works of
creation, which the Psalmist had enumerated, and which is the whole
scope of the Psalm: and he intimates that it is part of the glory of
the Lord which endures forever; that is, his manifestative glory, to
rejoice in his works: the glory of the Lord must be understood with
reference to the creation he had spoken of before. How short was that
joy God had in his works after he had sent them beautified out of his
hand! How soon did he repent, not only that he had made man, but was
grieved at the heart also, that he made the other creatures which
man’s sin had disordered! (Gen. vi. 7.) What joy can God have in them,
since the curse upon the entrance of sin into the world remains upon
them? If they are to be annihilated upon the full restoration of his
holiness, what time will God have to rejoice in the other works of
creation? It is the joy of God to see all his works in due order;
every one pointing to their true end; marching together in their
excellency, according to his first intendment in their creation. Did
God create the world to perform its end only for one day; scarce so
much, if Adam fell the very first day of his creation? What would have
been their end, if Adam had been confirmed in a state of happiness as
the angels were? ’tis likely will be answered and performed upon the
complete restoration of man to that happy state from whence he fell.
What artificer compiles a work by his skill, but to rejoice in it? And
shall God have no joy from the works of his hands? Since God can only
rejoice in goodness, the creatures must have that goodness restored
to them which God pronounced them to have at the first creation, and
which he ordained them for, before he can again rejoice in his works.
The goodness of the creatures is the glory and joy of God.
_Inference 1._ We may infer from hence, what a base and vile thing sin
is, which lays the foundation of the world’s change. Sin brings it to
a decrepit age; sin overturned the whole work of God (Gen. iii. 17);
so that to render it useful to its proper end, there is a necessity of
a kind of a new creating it. This causes God to fire the earth for a
purification of it from that infection and contagion brought upon it
by the apostasy and corruption of man. It hath served sinful man, and
therefore must undergo a purging flame, to be fit to serve the holy
and righteous Creator. As sin is so riveted in the body of man, that
there is need of a change by death to raze it out; so hath the curse
for sin got so deep into the bowels of the world, that there is need
of a change by fire to refine it for its master’s use. Let us look
upon sin with no other notion than as the object of God’s hatred, the
cause of his grief in the creatures, and the spring of the pain and
ruin of the world.
2. How foolish a thing is it to set our hearts upon that which shall
perish, and be no more what it is now! The heavens and the earth,
the solidest and firmest parts of the creation, shall not continue in
the posture they are; they must perish and undergo a refining {a316}
change. How feeble and weak are the other parts of the creation, the
little creatures walking upon and fluttering about the world, that
are perishing and dying every day; and we scarce see them clothed with
life and beauty this day, but they wither and are despoiled of all
the next; and are such frail things fit objects for our everlasting
spirits and affections? Though the daily employment of the heavens is
the declaration of the glory of God (Ps. xix. 1), yet neither this,
nor their harmony, order, beauty, amazing greatness and glory of them,
shall preserve them from a dissolution and melting at the presence
of the Lord. Though they have remained in the same posture from the
creation till this day, and are of so great antiquity, yet they must
bow down to a change before the will and word of their Creator; and
shall we rest upon that which shall vanish like smoke? Shall we take
any creature for our support like ice, that will crack under our
feet, and must, by the order of their Lord Creator, deceive our hopes?
Perishing things can be no support to the soul; if we would have rest,
we must run to God and rest in God. How contemptible should that be to
us, whose fashion shall pass away, which shall not endure long in its
present form and appearance; contemptible as a rest, not contemptible
as the work of God; contemptible as an end, not contemptible as a
means to attain our end! If these must be changed, how unworthy are
other things to be the centre of our souls, that change in our very
using of them, and slide away in our very enjoyment of them!
_Thou art the same._ The essence of God, with all the perfections
of his nature, are pronounced the same, without any variation from
eternity to eternity; so that the text doth not only assert the
eternal duration of God, but his immutability in that duration.
His eternity is signified in that expression, “Thou shalt endure;”
his immutability in this, “Thou art the same.” To endure, argues
indeed his immutability as well as eternity; for what endures, is not
changed, and what is changed, doth not endure;[588] but “Thou art the
same”[589] doth more fully signify it. He could not be the same if he
could be changed into any other thing than what he is; the Psalmist
therefore puts not thou hast been, or shalt be, but thou art the same,
without any alteration. “Thou art the same;” that is, the same God;
the same in essence and nature; the same in will and purpose. Thou
dost change all other things as thou pleasest, but thou art immutable
in every respect, and receivest no shadow of change, though never
so light and small. The Psalmist here alludes to the name Jehovah,
I Am;[590] and doth not only ascribe immutability to God, but exclude
everything else from partaking in that perfection. All things else
are tottering; God sees all other things in continual motion under
his feet, like water passing away and no more seen; while he remains
fixed and immovable; his wisdom and power, his knowledge and will,
are always the same. His essence can receive no alteration, neither
by itself, nor by any external cause; whereas other things either
naturally decline to destruction, pass from one term to another, till
they come to their period; or shall at the last {a317} day be wrapped
up, after God hath completed his will in them and by them, as a man
doth a garment he intends to repair and transform to another use. So
that in the text, God, as immutable, is opposed to all creatures as
perishing and changeable.
_Doctrine._ God is unchangeable in his essence, nature, and
perfections. Immutability and eternity are linked together; and,
indeed, true eternity is true immutability; whence eternity is
defined the possession of an immutable life. Yet immutability differs
from eternity in our conception; immutability respects the essence
or existence of a thing; eternity respects the duration of a being in
that state, or rather, immutability is the state itself;[591] eternity
is the measure of that state. A thing is said to be changed, when it
is otherwise now in regard of nature, state, will, or any quality than
it was before; when either something is added to it, or taken from it;
when it either loses or acquires. But now it is the essential property
of God, not to have any accession to, or diminution of, his essence
or attributes, but to remain entirely the same. He wants nothing;
he loses nothing; but doth uniformly exist by himself, without any
new nature, new thoughts, new will, new purpose, or new place. This
unchangeableness of God was anciently represented by the figure of
a cube, a piece of metal or wood framed four‑square, when every side
is exactly of the same equality; cast it which way you will, it will
always be in the same posture, because it is equal to itself in all
its dimensions.[592] He was therefore said to be the centre of all
things, and other things the circumference; the centre is never moved,
while the circumference is; it remains immovable in the midst of the
circle; “There is no variableness nor shadow of turning with him”
(James i. 17). The moon hath her spots, so hath the sun; there is a
mixture of light and darkness; it hath its changes; sometimes it is
in the increase, sometimes in the wane; it is always either gaining
or losing, and by the turnings and motions, either of the heavenly
bodies or of the earth, it is in its eclipse, by the interposition of
the earth between that and the sun. The sun also hath its diurnal and
annual motion; it riseth and sets, and puts on a different face; it
doth not always shine with the noon‑day light; it is sometimes veiled
with clouds and vapors; it is always going from one tropic to another,
whereby it makes various shadows on the earth, and produceth the
various seasons of the year; it is not always in our hemisphere, nor
doth it always shine with an equal force and brightness in it. Such
shadows and variations have no place in the eternal Father of Lights;
he hath not the least spot or diminution of brightness; nothing can
cloud him or eclipse him.
For the better understanding this perfection of God, I shall premise
three things.
1. The immutability of God is a perfection. Immutability considered
in itself, without relation to other things, is not a perfection. It
is the greatest misery and imperfection of the evil angels, that they
are immutable in malice against God; but as God is infinite in essence,
infinitely good, wise, holy; so it is a perfection necessary to his
nature, that he should be immutably all this, all excellency, {a318}
goodness, wisdom, immutably all that he is; without this he would be
an imperfect Being. Are not the angels in heaven, who are confirmed
in a holy and happy state, more perfect than when they were in a
possibility of committing evil and becoming miserable? Are not the
saints in heaven, whose wills by grace do unalterably cleave to God
and goodness, more perfect than if they were as Adam in Paradise,
capable of losing their felicity, as well as preserving it? We count a
rock, in regard of its stability, more excellent than the dust of the
ground, or a feather that is tossed about with every wind; is it not
also the perfection of the body to have a constant tenor of health,
and the glory of a man not to warp aside from what is just and right,
by the persuasions of any temptations?
2. Immutability is a glory belonging to all the attributes of God.
It is not a single perfection of the Divine nature, nor is it limited
to particular objects thus and thus disposed. Mercy and justice have
their distinct objects and distinct acts; mercy is conversant about
a penitent, justice conversant about an obstinate sinner. In our
notion and conception of the Divine perfections, his perfections
are different: the wisdom of God is not his power, nor his power his
holiness, but immutability is the centre wherein they all unite. There
is not one perfection but may be said to be and truly is, immutable;
none of them will appear so glorious without this beam, this sun of
immutability, which renders them highly excellent without the least
shadow of imperfection. How cloudy would his blessedness be if it were
changeable! How dim his wisdom, if it might be obscured! How feeble
his power, if it were capable to be sickly and languish! How would
mercy lose much of its lustre, if it could change into wrath; and
justice much of its dread, if it could be turned into mercy, while the
object of justice remains unfit for mercy, and one that hath need of
mercy continues only fit for the Divine fury! But unchangeableness is
a thread that runs through the whole web; it is the enamel of all the
rest; none of them without it could look with a triumphant aspect. His
power is unchangeable: “In the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength”
(Isa. xxvi. 4). His mercy and his holiness endure forever: he never
could, nor ever can, look upon iniquity (Hab. i. 13). He is a rock in
the righteousness of his ways, the truth of his word, the holiness of
his proceedings, and the rectitude of his nature. All are expressed
Deut xxxii. 4: “He is a rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways
are judgment; a God of truth, and without iniquity; just and right
is he.” All that we consider in God is unchangeable; for his essence
and his properties are the same, and, therefore, what is necessarily
belonging to the essence of God, belongs also to every perfection of
the nature of God; none of them can receive any addition or diminution.
From the unchangeableness of his nature, the apostle (James i. 17)
infers the unchangeableness of his holiness, and himself (in Mal.
iii. 6) the unchangeableness of his counsel.
3. Unchangeableness doth necessarily pertain to the nature of God. It
is of the same necessity with the rectitude of his nature; he can no
more be changeable in his essence than he can be unrighteous in his
actions. God is a necessary Being; he is necessarily what he is, and,
{a319} therefore, is unchangeably what he is. Mutability belongs to
contingency. If any perfection of his nature could be separated from
him, he would cease to be God. What did not possess the whole nature
of God, could not have the essence of God; it is reciprocated with the
nature of God. Whatsoever is immutable by nature is God; whatsoever is
God is immutable by nature. Some creatures are immutable by his grace
and power. God is holy, happy, wise, good, by his essence; angels
and men are made holy, wise, happy, strong, and good, by qualities
and graces.[593] The holiness, happiness, and wisdom of saints and
angels, as they had a beginning, so they are capable of increase
and diminution, and of an end also; for their standing is not from
themselves, or from the nature of created strength, holiness, or
wisdom, which in themselves are apt to fail, and finally to decay;
but from the stability and confirmation they have by the gift and
grace of God. The heaven and earth shall be changed; and after that
renewal and reparation they shall not be changed. Our bodies after the
resurrection shall not be changed, but forever be “made conformable
to the glorious body of Christ” (Phil. iii. 21); but this is by the
powerful grace of God: so that, indeed, those things may be said
afterwards rather to be unchanged than unchangeable, because they are
not so by nature, but by sovereign dispensation. As creatures have not
necessary beings, so they have not necessary immutability. Necessity
of being, and, therefore, immutability of being, belongs by nature
only to God; otherwise, if there were any change in God, he would be
sometimes what he was not, and would cease to be what he was, which is
against the nature, and, indeed, against the natural notion of a Deity.
Let us see then,
I. In what regards God is immutable. II. Prove that God is immutable.
III. That this is proper to God, and incommunicable to any creature.
IV. Some propositions to clear the unchangeableness of God from
anything that seems contrary to it. V. The use.
I. In what respects God is unchangeable.
1. God is unchangeable in his essence. He is unalterably fixed in
his being, so that not a particle of it can be lost from it, not a
mite added to it. If a man continue in being as long as Methuselah,
nine hundred and sixty‑nine years; yet there is not a day, nay, an
hour, wherein there is not some alteration in his substance. Though
no substantial part is wanting, yet there is an addition to him by
his food, a diminution of something by his labor; he is always making
some acquisition, or suffering some loss: but in God there can be no
alteration, by the accession of anything to make his substance greater
or better, or by diminution to make it less or worse. He who hath not
being from another, cannot but be always what he is: God is the first
Being, an independent Being; he was not produced of himself, or of
any other, but by nature always hath been, and, therefore, cannot by
himself, or by any other, be changed from what he is in his own nature.
That which is not may as well assume to itself a being, as he who
hath and is all being, have the least change from what he is. Again,
because he is a Spirit, he is not subject to those mutations which
are found in corporeal and bodily natures; because he is an {a320}
absolutely simple Spirit, not having the least particle of composition;
he is not capable of those changes which may be in created spirits.
(1.) If his essence were mutable, God would not truly be; it could
not be truly said by himself, “I Am that I Am” (Exod. iii. 14), if
he were such a thing or Being at this time, and a different Being at
another time. Whatsoever is changed properly is not, because it doth
not remain to be what it was; that which is changed was something, is
something, and will be something. A being remains to that thing which
is changed; yet though it may be said such a thing is, yet it may be
also said such a thing is not, because it is not what it was in its
first being; it is not now what it was, it is now what it was not; it
is another thing than it was, it was another thing than it is; it will
be another thing than what it is or was. It is, indeed, a being, but
a different being from what it was before. But if God were changed,
it could not be said of him that he is, but it might also be said of
him that he is not; or if he were changeable, or could be changed, it
might be said of him he is, but he will not be what he is; or he may
not be what he is, but there will be or may be some difference in his
being, and so God would not be “I Am that I Am;” for though he would
not cease utterly to be, yet he would cease to be what he was before.
(2.) Again: if his essence were mutable, he could not be perfectly
blessed, and fully rejoice in himself. If he changed for the better,
he could not have an infinite pleasure in what he was before the
change, because he was not infinitely blessed; and the pleasure of
that state could not be of a higher kind than the state itself, or,
at least, the apprehension of a happiness in it. If he changed for
the worse, he could not have a pleasure in it after the change; for
according to the diminution of his state would be the decrease of his
pleasure. His pleasure could not be infinite before the change, if
he changed for the better; it could not be infinite after the change,
if he changed for the worse. If he changed for the better, he would
not have had an infinite goodness of being before; and not having an
infinite goodness of being, he would have a finite goodness of being;
for there is no medium between finite and infinite. Then, though the
change were for the better, yet, being finite before, something would
be still wanting to make him infinitely blessed; because being finite,
he could not change to that which is infinite; for finite and infinite
are extremes so distant, that they can never pass into one another;
that is, that that which is finite should become infinite, or that
which is infinite should become finite; so that supposing him mutable,
his essence in no state of change could furnish him with an infinite
peace and blessedness.
(3.) Again: if God’s essence be changed, he either increaseth or
diminisheth.[594] Whatsoever is changed, doth either gain by receiving
something larger and greater than it had in itself before, or gains
nothing by being changed. If the former, then it receives more than
itself, more than it had in itself before. The Divine nature cannot
be increased; for whatsoever receives anything than what it had in
itself before, must necessarily receive it from another, because {a321}
nothing can give to itself that which it hath not. But God cannot
receive from another what he hath not already, because whatsoever
other things possess is derived from him, and, therefore, contained
in him, as the fountain contains the virtue in itself which it conveys
to the streams; so that God cannot gain anything. If a thing that is
changed gain nothing by that change, it loseth something of what it
had before in itself; and this loss must be by itself or some other.
God cannot receive any loss from anything in himself; he cannot will
his own diminution, that is repugnant to every nature. He may as well
will his own destruction as his own decrease: every decrease is a
partial destruction. But it is impossible for God to die any kind
of death, to have any resemblance of death, for he is immortal, and
“only hath immortality” (1 Tim. vi. 16), therefore impossible to be
diminished in any particle of his essence; nor can he be diminished by
anything in his own nature, because his infinite simplicity admits of
nothing distinct from himself, or contrary to himself. All decreases
come from something contrary to the nature of that thing which doth
decrease. Whatsoever is made less than itself, was not truly _unum_,
one and simple, because that which divides itself in separation was
not the same in conjunction. Nor can he be diminished by any other
without himself; because nothing is superior to God, nothing stronger
than God which can oppress him. But whatsoever is changed is weaker
than that which changeth it, and sinks under a power it cannot
successfully resist; weakness belongs not to the Deity.[595] Nor,
lastly, can God change from a state wherein he is, to another state
equal to the former, as men in some cases may do; for in passing from
one state to another equal to it, something must be parted with which
he had before, that some other thing may accrue to him as a recompense
for that loss, to make him equal to what he was. This recompense then
he had not before, though he had something equal to it. And in this
case it could not be said by God “I Am that I Am,” but I am equal to
what I was; for in this case there would be a diminution and increase
which, as was showed, cannot be in God.
(4.) Again: God is of himself, from no other.[596] Natures, which
are made by God, may increase, because they began to be; they may
decrease, because they were made of nothing, and so tend to nothing;
the condition of their original leads them to defect, and the power
of their Creator brings them to increase. But God hath no original;
he hath no defect, because he was not made of nothing: he hath no
increase, because he had no beginning. He was before all things, and,
therefore, depends upon no other thing which, by its own change, can
bring any change upon him. That which is from itself cannot be changed,
because it hath nothing before it, nothing more excellent than itself;
but that which is from another as its first cause and chief good, may
be changed by that which was its efficient cause and last end.[597]
2. God is immutable in regard of knowledge. God hath known from
all eternity all that which he can know, so that nothing is hid from
him. He knows not at present any more than he hath known {a322} from
eternity: and that which he knows now he always knows: “All things are
open and naked before him” (Heb. iv. 13). A man is said to be changed
in regard of knowledge, when he knows that now which he did not know
before, or knows that to be false now which he thought true before,
or has something for the object of his understanding now, which he had
not before. But,
(1.) This would be repugnant to the wisdom and omniscience which
belongs to the notions of a Deity. That cannot be God that is not
infinitely wise; that cannot be infinitely wise that is either
ignorant of, or mistaken in, his apprehension of any one thing. If God
be changed in knowledge, it must be for want of wisdom; all change of
this nature in creatures implies this defect preceding or accompanying
it. Such a thought of God would have been unworthy of him that is
“only wise,” that hath no mate for wisdom (1 Tim. i. 17); none wise
beside himself. If he knew that thing this day which he knew not
before, he would not be an “only wise” Being; for a being that did
know everything at once might be conceived, and so a wiser being
be apprehended by the mind of man. If God understood a thing at one
time which he did not at another, he would be changed from ignorance
to knowledge; as if he could not do that this day which he could
do to‑morrow, he would be changed from impotence to power. He could
not be always omniscient, because there might be yet something still
to come which he yet knows not, though he may know all things that
are past. What way soever you suppose a change, you must suppose a
present or a past ignorance; if he be changed in his knowledge for
the perfection of his understanding, he was ignorant before; if his
understanding be impaired by the change, he is ignorant after it.
(2.) If God were changeable in his knowledge, it would make him unfit
to be an object of trust to any rational creature. His revelations
would want the due ground for entertainment, if his understanding
were changeable; for that might be revealed as truth now which might
prove false hereafter, and that as false now which hereafter might
prove true; and so God would be an unfit object of obedience in regard
of his precepts, and an unfit object of confidence in regard of his
promises. For if he be changeable in knowledge he is defective in
knowledge, and might promise that now which he would know afterwards
was unfit to be promised, and, therefore, unfit to be performed.
It would make him an incompetent object of dread, in regard of his
threatenings; for he might threaten that now which he might know
hereafter were not fit or just to be inflicted. A changeable mind and
understanding cannot make a due and right judgment of things to be
done, and things to be avoided; no wise man would judge it reasonable
to trust a weak and flitting person. God must needs be unchangeable
in his knowledge; but, as the schoolmen say, that, as the sun always
shines, so God always knows; as the sun never ceaseth to shine, so God
never ceaseth to know. Nothing can be hid from the vast compass of his
understanding, no more than anything can shelter itself without the
verge of his power. This farther appears in that,
1st. God knows by his own essence. He doth not know, as we {a323}
do, by habits, qualities, species, whereby we may be mistaken at one
time and rectified at another. He hath not an understanding distinct
from his essence as we have, but being the most simple Being, his
understanding is his essence; and as from the infiniteness of his
essence we conclude the infiniteness of his understanding, so from
the unchangeableness of his essence, we may justly conclude the
unchangeableness of his knowledge. Since, therefore, God is without
all composition, and his understanding is not distinct from his
essence, what he knows, he knows by his essence, and there can then be
no more mutability in his knowledge than there can be in his essence;
and if there were any in that, he could not be God, because he would
have the property of a creature. If his understanding then be his
essence, his knowledge is as necessary, as unchangeable as his essence.
As his essence eminently contains all perfections in itself, so his
understanding comprehends all things past, present, and future, in
itself. If his understanding and his essence were not one and the same,
he were not simple, but compounded: if compounded, he would consist of
parts; if he consisted of parts, he would not be an independent Being,
and so would not be God.
2d. God knows all things by one intuitive act. As there is no
succession in his being, so that he is one thing now and another
thing hereafter; so there is no succession in his knowledge. He knows
things that are successive, before their existence and succession, by
one single act of intuition; by one cast of his eye all things future
are present to him in regard of his eternity and omnipresence; so that
though there is a change and variation in the things known, yet his
knowledge of them and their several changes in nature is invariable
and unalterable. As imagine a creature that could see with his eye
at one glance the whole compass of the heavens, by sending out beams
from his eye without receiving any species from them, he would see the
whole heavens uniformly, this part now in the east, then in the west,
without any change in his eye, for he sees every part and every motion
together; and though that great body varies and whirls about, and is
in continual agitation, his eye remains steadfast, suffers no change,
beholds all their motions at once and by one glance. God knows all
things from eternity, and, therefore, perpetually knows them;[598] the
reason is because the Divine knowledge is infinite,[599] and therefore,
comprehends all knowable truths at once. An eternal knowledge
comprehends in itself all time, and beholds past and present in the
same manner, and, therefore, his knowledge is immutable: by one simple
knowledge he considers the infinite spaces of past and future.
3d. God’s knowledge and will is the cause of all things and their
successions.[600] There can be no pretence of any changeableness of
knowledge in God; but in this case, before things come to pass, he
knows that they will come to pass; after they are come to pass, he
knows that they are past, and slide away. This would be something if
the succession of things were the cause of the Divine knowledge, as it
is of our knowledge; but on the contrary, the {a324} Divine knowledge
and will is the cause of the succession of them: God doth not know
creatures because they are; but they are because he knows them: “All
his works were known to him from the beginning of the world” (Acts xv.
18). All his works were not known to him, if the events of all those
works were not also known to him; if they were not known to him, how
should he make them? he could not do anything ignorantly. He made them
then after he knew them, and did not know them after he made them.
His knowledge of them made a change in them; their existence made no
change in his knowledge. He knew them when they were to be created,
in the same manner that he knew them after they were created; before
they were brought into act, as well as after they were brought into
act; before they were made, they were, and were not; they were in the
knowledge of God, when they were not in their own nature; God did not
receive his knowledge from their existence, but his knowledge and will
acted upon them to bring them into being.
4th. Therefore the distinction of past and future makes no change in
the knowledge of God. When a thing is past, God hath no more distinct
knowledge of it after it is past, than he had when it was to come; all
things were all in their circumstances of past, present, and to come;
seen by his understanding, as they were determined by his will.[601]
Besides, to know a day to be past or future, is only to know the state
of that day in itself, and to know its relation to that which follows,
and that which went before. This day wherein we are, if we consider it
in the state wherein it was yesterday, it was to come, it was future;
but if we consider it in that state wherein it will be to‑morrow, we
understand it as past. This in man cannot be said to be a different
knowledge of the thing itself, but only of the circumstance attending
a thing, and the different relation of it. As I see the sun this
day, I know it was up yesterday, I know it will be up to‑morrow; my
knowledge of the sun is the same; if there be any change, it is in the
sun, not in my knowledge; only I apply my knowledge to such particular
circumstances. How much more must the knowledge of those things in
God be unchangeable, who knows all those states, conditions, and
circumstances, most perfectly from eternity; wherein there is no
succession, no past or future, and therefore will know them forever!
He always beholds the same thing; he sees, indeed, succession in
things, and he sees a thing to be past which before was future. As
from eternity he saw Adam as existing in such a time; in the first
time he saw that he would be, in the following time he saw that he had
been; but this he knew from eternity; this he knew in the same manner;
though there was a variation in Adam, yet there was no variation in
God’s knowledge of him, in all his states; though Adam was not present
to himself, yet in all his states he was present to God’s eternity.
5th. Consider, that the knowledge of God, in regard of the manner of
it, as well as the objects, is incomprehensible to a finite creature.
So that though we cannot arrive to a full understanding of the manner
of God’s knowledge, yet we must conceive so of it, as to {a325} remove
all imperfection from him in it. And since it is an imperfection to be
changeable, we must remove that from God; the knowledge of God about
things past, present and future, must be inconceivably above ours:
“His understanding is infinite” (Ps. cxlvii. 5). There is no number
of it; it can no more be calculated or drawn into an account by us,
than infinite spaces, which have no bounds and limits, can be measured
by us. We can no more arrive, even in heaven, to a comprehensive
understanding of the manner of his knowledge, than of the infinite
glory of his essence; we may as well comprehend one as the other. This
we must conclude, that God being not a body, doth not see one thing
with eyes, and another thing with mind, as we do; but being a spirit,
he sees and knows only with mind, and his mind is himself, and is as
unchangeable as himself; and therefore as he is not now another thing
than what he was, so he knows not anything now in another manner than
as he knew it from eternity; he sees all things in the glass of his
own essence; as, therefore, the glass doth not vary, so neither doth
his vision.
3. God is unchangeable in regard of his will and purpose. A change
in his purpose is, when a man determines to do that now which before
he determined not to do, or to do the contrary; when a man hates
that thing which he loved, or begins to love that which he before
hated; when the will is changed, a man begins to will that which he
willed not before, and ceaseth to will that which he willed before.
But whatsoever God hath decreed, is immutable; whatsoever God hath
promised, shall be accomplished: “The word that goes forth of his
mouth shall not return to him void, but it shall accomplish that
which he pleaseth” (Isa. lv. 11); whatsoever “he purposeth, he will
do” (Isa. xlvi. 11; Numb. xxiii. 19); his decrees are therefore called
“mountains of brass” (Zech. vi. 1): brass, as having substance and
solidity; mountains, as being immovable, not only by any creature, but
by himself; because they stand upon the basis of infallible wisdom,
and are supported by uncontrollable power. From this immutability
of his will, published to man, there could be no release from the
severity of the law, without satisfaction made by the death of a
Mediator, since it was the unalterable will of God, that death should
be the wages of sin; and from this immutable will it was, that the
length of time, from the first promise of the Redeemer to his mission,
and the daily provocations of men, altered not his purpose for the
accomplishment of it in the fulness of that time he had resolved upon;
nor did the wickedness of former ages hinder the addition of several
promises as buttresses to the first. To make this out, consider,
(1.) The will of God is the same with his essence. If God had a will
distinct from his essence, he would not be the most simple Being. God
hath not a faculty of will distinct from himself; as his understanding
is nothing else but _Deus intelligens_, God understanding; so his will
is nothing else but _Deus volens_, God willing; being, therefore, the
essence of God; though it is considered, according to our weakness,
as a faculty, it is as his understanding and wisdom, eternal and
immutable; and can no more be changed than his essence. The {a326}
immutability of the Divine counsel depends upon that of his essence;
he is the Lord Jehovah, therefore he is true to his word (Mal. iii. 6;
Isa. xliii. 13): “Yea, before the day I am he, and there is none that
can deliver out of my hand.” He is the same, immutable in his essence,
therefore irresistible in his power.
(2.) There is a concurrence of God’s will and understanding in
everything. As his knowledge is eternal, so is his purpose. Things
created had not been known to be, had not God resolved them to be
the act of his will; the existence of anything supposeth an act of
his will. Again, as God knows all things by one simple vision of
his understanding, so he wills all things by one act of volition;
therefore the purpose of God in the Scripture is not expressed by
counsels in the plural number, but counsel; showing that all the
purposes of God are not various, but as one will, branching itself
out into many acts towards the creature; but all knit in one root,
all links of one chain. Whatsoever is eternal is immutable; as his
knowledge is eternal, and therefore immutable, so is his will; he
wills or nills nothing to be in time, but what he willed and nilled
from eternity; if he willed in time that to be that he willed not
from eternity, then he would know that in time which he knew not from
eternity; for God knows nothing future, but as his will orders it to
be future, and in time to be brought into being.
(3.) There can be no reason for any change in the will of God. When
men change in their minds, it must be for want of foresight; because
they could not foresee all the rubs and bars which might suddenly
offer themselves; which if they had foreseen, they would not have
taken such measures: hence men often will that which they afterwards
wish they had not willed when they come to understand it clearer,
and see that to be injurious to them which they thought to be good
for them; or else the change proceeds from a natural instability
without any just cause, and an easiness to be drawn into that which is
unrighteous; or else it proceeds from a want of power, when men take
new counsels, because they are invincibly hindered from executing the
old. But none of those can be in God.
1st. It cannot be for want of foresight. What can be wanting to an
infinite understanding? How can any unknown event defeat his purpose,
since nothing happens in the world but what he wills to effect, or
wills to permit; and therefore all future events are present with him?
Besides, it doth not consist with God’s wisdom to resolve anything,
but upon the highest reason; and what is the highest and infinite
reason, cannot but be unalterable in itself; for there can be no
reason and wisdom higher than the highest. All God’s purposes are not
bare acts of will, but acts of counsel. “He works all things according
to the counsel of his own will” (Eph. i. 11): and he doth not say so
much that his will, as that “his counsel shall stand” (Isa. xlvi. 10).
It stands, because it is counsel; and the immutability of a promise
is called the “immutability of his counsel” (Heb. vi. 17), as being
introduced and settled by the most perfect wisdom, and therefore to
be carried on to a full and complete execution; his purpose, then,
cannot be changed for want of foresight; for this would be a charge
of weakness.
{a327} 2d. Nor can it proceed from a natural instability of his will,
or an easiness to be drawn to that which is unrighteous. If his will
should not adhere to his counsel, it is because it is not fit to be
followed, or because it will not follow it; if not fit to be followed,
it is a reflection upon his wisdom; if it be established, and he will
not follow it, there is a contrariety in God, as there is in a fallen
creature, will against wisdom. That cannot be in God which he hates
in a creature, viz. the disorder of faculties, and being out of their
due place. The righteousness of God is like a “great mountain” (Ps.
xxxvi. 6). The rectitude of his nature is as immovable in itself,
as all the mountains in the world are by the strength of man. “He is
not as a man, that he should repent or lie” (Numb. xxiii. 19); who
often changes, out of a perversity of will, as well as want of wisdom
to foresee, or want of ability to perform. His eternal purpose must
either be righteous or unrighteous; if righteous and holy, he would
become unholy by the change; if not righteous nor holy, then he
was unrighteous before the change; which way soever it falls, it
would reflect upon the righteousness of God, which is a blasphemous
imagination.[602] If God did change his purpose, it must be either
for the better,――then the counsel of God was bad before; or for the
worse,――then he was not wise and good before.
3d. Nor can it be for want of strength. Who hath power to control him?
Not all the combined devices and endeavors of men can make the counsel
of God to totter (Prov. xix. 21): “There are many devices in a man’s
heart; nevertheless the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand;” that,
and that only shall stand. Man hath a power to devise and imagine,
but no power to effect and execute of himself. God wants no more power
to effect what he will, than he wants understanding to know what is
fit. Well, then, since God wanted not wisdom to frame his decrees,
nor holiness to regulate them, nor power to effect them, what should
make him change them? since there can be no reason superior to
his, no event unforeseen by him, no holiness comparable to his, no
unrighteousness found in him, no power equal to his, to put a rub in
his way.
4th. Though the will of God be immutable, yet it is not to be
understood so, as that the things themselves so willed are immutable.
Nor will the immutability of the things willed by him, follow upon the
unchangeableness of his will in willing them; though God be firm in
willing them, yet he doth not will that they should alway be. God did
not perpetually will the doing those things which he once decreed to
be done; he decreed that Christ should suffer, but he did not decree
that Christ should alway suffer; so he willed the Mosaical rites for
a time, but he did not will that they should alway continue; he willed
that they should endure only for a time; and when the time came for
their ceasing, God had been mutable if he had not put an end to them,
because his will had fixed such a period. So that the changing of
those things which he had once appointed to be practised, is so far
from charging God with changeableness, that God would be mutable if
he did not take them away; since he decreed as well their abolition at
such a time, as their continuance till such a {a328} time; so that the
removal of them was pursuant to his unchangeable will and decree. If
God had decreed that such laws should alway continue, and afterwards
changed that decree, and resolved the abrogation of them, then indeed
God had been mutable; he had rescinded one decree by another; he
had then seen an error in his first resolve, and there must be some
weakness in the reason and wisdom whereon it was grounded.[603] But it
was not so here; for the change of those laws is so far from slurring
God with any mutability, that the very change of them is no other
than the issue of his eternal decree; for from eternity he purposed
in himself to change this or that dispensation, though he did decree
to bring such a dispensation into the world. The decree itself
was eternal and immutable, but the thing decreed was temporary and
mutable. As a decree from eternity doth not make the thing decreed to
be eternal, so neither doth the immutability of the decree render the
thing so decreed to be immutable: as for example, God decreed from all
eternity to create the world; the eternity of this decree did not make
the world to be in being and actually created from eternity; so God
decreed immutably that the world so created should continue for such
a time; the decree is immutable if the world perish at that time,
and would not be immutable if the world did endure beyond that time
that God hath fixed for the duration of it: as when a prince orders a
man’s remaining in prison for so many days; if he be prevailed with to
give him a delivery before those days, or to continue him in custody
for the same crime after those days, his order is changed; but if he
orders the delivery of him just at that time, till which he had before
decreed that he should continue in prison, the purpose and order of
the prince remains firm, and the change in the state of the prisoner
is the fruit of that firm and fixed resolution: so that we must
distinguish between the person decreeing, the decree itself, and
the thing decreed. The person decreeing, viz., God, is in himself
immutable, and the decree is immutable; but the thing decreed may be
mutable; and if it were not changed according to the first purpose,
it would argue the decree itself to be changed; for while a man wills
that this may be done now, and another thing done afterwards, the same
will remains; and though there be a change in the effects, there is no
change in the will.
5th. The immutability of God’s will doth not infringe the liberty
of it. The liberty of God’s will consists with the necessity of
continuing his purpose. God is necessarily good, immutably good; yet
he is freely so, and would not be otherwise than what he is. God was
free in his first purpose; and purposing this or that by an infallible
and unerring wisdom, it would be a weakness to change the purpose. But,
indeed, the liberty of God’s will doth not seem so much to consist
in an indifferency to this or that, as in an independency on anything
without himself: his will was free, because it did not depend upon the
objects about which his will was conversant. To be immutably good is
no point of imperfection, but the height of perfection.
4. As God is unchangeable in regard of essence, knowledge, purpose,
{a329} so he is unchangeable in regard of place. He cannot be changed
in time, because he is eternity; so he cannot be changed in place,
because he hath ubiquity: he is eternal, therefore cannot be changed
in time; he is omnipresent, therefore cannot be changed in place: he
doth not begin to be in one place wherein he was not before, or cease
to be in a place wherein he was before. He that fills every place in
heaven and earth, cannot change place; he cannot leave one to possess
another, that is equally, in regard of his essence, in all: “He fills
heaven and earth” (Jer. xxiii. 24). The heavens that are not subject
to those changes to which sublunary bodies are subject, that are not
diminished in quantity or quality; yet they are alway changing place
in regard of their motion; no part of them doth alway continue in the
same point: but God hath no change of his nature, because he is most
inward in everything; he is substantially in all spaces, real and
imaginary; there is no part of the world which he doth not fill; no
place can be imagined wherein he doth not exist. Suppose a million of
worlds above and about this, encircling one another; his essence would
be in every part and point of those worlds; because it is indivisible,
it cannot be divided; nor can it be contained within those created
limits of millions of worlds, when the most soaring and best coining
fancy hath run through all creatures to the highest sphere of the
heavens, and imagined one world after another, till it can fancy
no more: none of these, nor all of these, can contain God; for the
“heaven of heavens cannot contain him” (1 Kings viii. 27); “He is
higher than heaven, deeper than hell” (Job xi. 8), and possesses
infinite imaginary spaces beyond created limits. He who hath no cause
of being, can have no limits of being;[604] and though by creation he
began to be in the world, yet he did not begin to be where the world
is, but was in the same imaginary space from all eternity; for he was
alway in himself by his own eternal _ubi_. Therefore observe, that
when God is said to draw near to us when we draw near to him (James
iv. 8), it is not by local motion or change of place, but by special
and spiritual influences, by exciting and supporting grace. As we
ordinarily say, the sun is come into the house when yet it remains in
its place and order in the heavens, because the beams pierce through
the windows and enlighten the room, so when God is said to come down
or descend (Gen. xi. 5; Exod. xxxiv. 5), it is not by a change of
place, but a change of outward acts, when he puts forth himself in
ways of fresh mercy or new judgments, in the effluxes of his love
or the flames of his wrath. When good men feel the warm beams of his
grace refreshing them, or wicked men feel the hot coals of his anger
scorching them. God’s drawing near to us is not so much his coming to
us, but his drawing us to him;[605] as when watermen pull a rope that
is in one end fastened to the shore, and the other end to the vessel;
the shore is immovable, yet it seems to the eye to come to them,
but they really move to the shore. God is an immovable rock; we are
floating and uncertain creatures; while he seems to approach to us, he
doth really make us to approach to him; he comes not to us by {a330}
any change of place himself, but draws us to him by a change of mind,
will, and affections in us.
II. The second thing propounded, is the reasons to prove God
immutable. The heathens acknowledged God to be so: Plato[606] and the
Pythagoreans called God, or the stable good principle, αὐτόν, _idem_:
the evil principle, ἕτερον, another thing, changeable; one thing one
time, and another thing another time[607] (Dan. vi. 26): “He is the
living God, and steadfast forever.”
1. The name Jehovah signifies this attribute (Exod. iii. 14): “I am
that I am; I am hath sent me to you.” It signifies his immutability
as well as eternity. I am, signifies his eternity; that, or the same
that I am, his immutability:[608] as it respects the essence of God,
it signifies his unchangeable being from eternity to eternity; as it
respects the creature, it signifies his constancy in his counsels and
promises, which spring from no other cause but the unchangeableness
of his nature.[609] The reason why men stand not to their covenant,
is because they are not always the same; I am, that is, I am the same,
before the creation of the world, and since the creation of the world;
before the entrance of sin, and since the entrance of sin; before
their going into Egypt, and while they remain in Egypt. The very
name Jehovah[610] bears, according to the grammatical order, a mark
of God’s unchangeableness; it never hath anything added to it, nor
anything taken from it; it hath no plural number, no affixes――a custom
peculiar to the eastern languages; it never changes its letters as
other words do. That only is a true being which hath not only an
eternal existence, but stability in it: that is not truly a being,
that never remains in the same state.[611] All things that are changed
cease to be what they were, and begin to be what they were not, and
therefore cannot have the title truly applied to them, they are; they
are, indeed, but like a river in a continual flux, that no man ever
sees the same; let his eye be fixed upon one place of it, the water
he sees, slides away, and that which he saw not succeeds in its place;
let him take his eye off but for the least moment, and fix it there
again, and he sees not the same that he saw before. All sensible
things are in a perpetual stream; that which is sometimes this and
sometimes that, is not, because it is not always the same; whatsoever
is changed, is something now which it was not alway; but of God it
is said, I am, which could not be if he were changeable; for it may
be said of him, he is not, as well as he is, because he is not what
he was; if we say not of him, he was, nor he will be, but only he is,
whence should any change arrive? He must invincibly remain the same,
of whose nature, perfections, knowledge and will, it cannot be said it
was, as if it were not now in him; or it shall be, as if it were not
yet in him; but he is, because he doth not only exist, but doth alway
exist the same. I am, that is, I receive from no other what I am in
myself; he depends upon no other in his {a331} essence, knowledge,
purposes, and therefore hath no changing power over him.
2. If God were changeable, he could not be the most perfect Being.
God is the most perfect Being, and possesses in himself infinite and
essential goodness (Matt. v. 48): “Your heavenly Father is perfect.”
If he could change from that perfection, he were not the highest
exemplar and copy for us to write after. If God doth change, it
must be either to a greater perfection than he had before, or to a
less, _mutatio perfectiva vel amissiva_; if he changes to acquire a
perfection he had not, then he was not before the most excellent Being;
necessarily, he was not what he might be; there was a defect in him,
and a privation of that which is better than what he had and was; and
then he was not alway the best, and so was not alway God; and being
not alway God, could never be God; for to begin to be God is against
the notion of God; not to a less perfection than he had; that were to
change to imperfection, and to lose a perfection which he possessed
before, and cease to be the best Being; for he would lose some good
which he had, and acquire some evil which he was free from before.
So that the sovereign perfection of God is an invincible bar to any
change in him; for which way soever you cast it for a change, his
supreme excellency is impaired and nulled by it: for in all change
there is something from which a thing is changed, and something to
which it is changed; so that on the one part there is a loss of what
it had, and on the other part there is an acquisition of what it had
not. If to the better, he was not perfect, and so was not God; if to
the worse, he will not be perfect, and so be no longer God after that
change. If God be changed, his change must be voluntary or necessary;
if voluntary, he then intends the change for the better, and chose
it to acquire a perfection by it; the will must be carried out to
anything under the notion of some goodness in that which it desires.
Since good is the object of the desire and will of the creature, evil
cannot be the object of the desire and will of the Creator. And if he
should be changed for the worse, when he did really intend the better,
it would speak a defect of wisdom, and a mistake of that for good
which was evil and imperfect in itself; and if it be for the better,
it must be a motion or change for something without himself; that
which he desireth is not possessed by himself, but by some other.
There is, then, some good without him and above him, which is the end
in this change; for nothing acts but for some end, and that end is
within itself or without itself; if the end for which God changes be
without himself, then there is something better than himself: besides,
if he were voluntarily changed for the better, why did he not change
before? If it were for want of power, he had the imperfection of
weakness; if for want of knowledge of what was the best good, he had
the imperfection of wisdom, he was ignorant of his own happiness; if
he had both wisdom to know it, and power to effect it, it must be for
want of will; he then wanted that love to himself and his own glory,
which is necessary in the Supreme Being. Voluntarily he could not be
changed for the worse, he could not be such an enemy {a332} to his
own glory; there is nothing but would hinder its own imperfection
and becoming worse. Necessarily he could not be changed, for that
necessity must arise from himself, and then the difficulties spoken
of before will recur, or it must arise from another; he cannot be
bettered by another, because nothing hath any good but what it hath
received from the hands of his bounty, and that without loss to
himself, nor made worse; if anything made him worse, it would be sin,
but that cannot touch his essence or obscure his glory, but in the
design and nature of the sin itself (Job xxxv. 6, 7): “If thou sinnest,
what dost thou against him? or if thy transgressions be multiplied,
what dost thou unto him? if thou be righteous, what givest thou him;
or what receives he at thy hand?” He hath no addition by the service
of man, no more than the sun hath of light by a multitude of torches
kindled on the earth; nor any more impair by the sins of men, than
the light of the sun hath by men’s shooting arrows against it.
3. God were not the most simple being if he were not immutable.[612]
There is in everything that is mutable a composition either essential
or accidental; and in all changes, something of the thing changed
remains, and something of it ceaseth and is done away; as for example,
in an accidental change, if a white wall be made black, it loses its
white color; but the wall itself, which was the subject of that color,
remains and loses nothing of its substance: likewise in a substantial
change, as when wood is burnt, the substantial part of wood is lost,
the earthly part is changed into ashes, the airy part ascends in smoke,
the watery part is changed into air by the fire: there is not an
annihilation of it, but a resolution of it into those parts whereof it
was compounded; and this change doth evidence that it was compounded
of several parts distinct from one another. If there were any change
in God, it is by separating something from him, or adding something
to him; if by separating something from him, then he was compounded
of something distinct from himself; for if it were not distinct from
himself it could not be separated from him without loss of his being;
if by adding anything to him, then it is a compounding of him, either
substantially or accidentally. Mutability is absolutely inconsistent
with simplicity, whether the change come from an internal or external
principle. If a change be wrought by something without, it supposeth
either contrary or various parts in the thing so changed, whereof it
doth consist; if it be wrought by anything within, it supposeth that
the thing so changed doth consist of one part that doth change it,
and another part that is changed, and so it would not be a simple
being. If God could be changed by anything within himself, all in God
would not be God; his essence would depend upon some parts, whereof
some would be superior to others; if one part were able to change
or destroy another, that which doth change would be God, that which
is changed would not be God; so God would be made up of a Deity and
a non‑Deity, and part of God would depend upon God; part would be
dependent, and part would be independent; part would be mutable, part
immutable: so that {a333} mutability is against the notion of God’s
independency as well as his simplicity. God is the most simple being;
for that which is first in nature, having nothing beyond it, cannot by
any means be thought to be compounded; for whatsoever is so, depends
upon the parts whereof it is compounded, and so is not the first being:
now God being infinitely simple, hath nothing in himself which is not
himself, and therefore cannot will any change in himself, he being his
own essence and existence.[613]
4. God were not eternal if he were mutable. In all change there is
something that perishes, either substantially or accidentally. All
change is a kind of death, or imitation of death; that which was dies,
and begins to be what it was not. The soul of man, though it ceaseth
not to be and exist, yet when it ceaseth to be in quality what it was,
is said to die. Adam died when he changed from integrity to corruption,
though both his soul and body were in being (Gen. ii. 17); and the
soul of a regenerate man is said to “die to sin,” when it is changed
from sin to grace (Rom. vi. 11). In all change there is a resemblance
of death; so the notion of mutability is against the eternity of God.
If anything be acquired by a change, then that which is acquired was
not from eternity, and so he was not wholly eternal; if anything be
lost which was from eternity, he is not wholly everlasting; if he did
decrease by the change, something in him which had no beginning would
have an end; if he did increase by that change, something in him would
have a beginning that might have no end. What is changed doth not
remain, and what doth not remain is not eternal.[614] Though God alway
remains in regard of existence, he would be immortal, and live alway;
yet if he should suffer any change, he could not properly be eternal,
because he would not alway be the same, and would not in every part
be eternal; for all change is finished in time, one moment preceding,
another moment following; but that which is before time cannot be
changed by time. God cannot be eternally what he was; that is, he
cannot have a true eternity, if he had a new knowledge, a new purpose,
a new essence; if he were sometimes this and sometimes that, sometimes
know this and sometimes know that, sometimes purpose this and
afterwards hath a new purpose; he would be partly temporary and partly
eternal, not truly and universally eternal. He that hath anything of
newness, hath not properly and truly an entire eternity. Again, by
the same reason that God could in the least cease to be what he was,
he might also cease wholly to be; and no reason can be rendered why
God might not cease wholly to be, as well as cease to be entirely and
uniformly what he was. All changeableness implies a corruptibility.
5. If God were changeable, he were not infinite and almighty. All
change ends in addition or diminution; if anything be added, he was
not infinite before, if anything be diminished, he is not infinite
after. All change implies bounds and limits to that which is changed;
but God is infinite; “His greatness is unsearchable:”[615] we can add
number to number without any end, and can conceive {a334} an infinite
number; yet the greatness of God is beyond all our conceptions. But
if there could be any change in his greatness for the better, it would
not be unsearchable before that change; if for the worse, it would
not be unsearchable after that change. Whatsoever hath limits and is
changeable, is conceivable and searchable; but God is not only not
known, but impossible in his own nature to be known and searched out,
and, therefore, impossible to have any diminution in his nature. All
that which is changed arrives to something which it was not before,
or ceaseth in part to be what it was before. He would not also be
almighty. What is omnipotent cannot be made worse; for to be made
worse, is in part to be corrupted. If he be made better, he was not
almighty before; something of power was wanting to him. If there
should be any change, it must proceed from himself or from another;
if from himself, it would be an inability to preserve himself in the
perfection of his nature; if from another, he would be inferior in
strength, knowledge, and power, to that which changes him, either in
his nature, knowledge, or will; in both an inability; an inability in
him to continue the same, or an inability in him to resist the power
of another.
6. The world could not be ordered and governed but by some Principle
or Being which were immutable. Principles are alway more fixed and
stable than things which proceed from those principles; and this is
true both in morals and naturals. Principles in conscience, whereby
men are governed, remain firmly engraven in their minds. The root
lies firmly in the earth, while branches are shaken with the wind. The
heavens, the cause of generation, are more firm and stable than those
things which are wrought by their influence. All things in the world
are moved by some power and virtue which is stable; and unless it were
so, no order would be observed in motion, no motion could be regularly
continued. He could not be a full satisfaction to the infinite desire
of the souls of his people. Nothing can truly satisfy the soul of man
but rest; and nothing can give it rest but that which is perfect and
immutably perfect; for else it would be subject to those agitations
and variations which the being it depends upon is subject to. The
principle of all things must be immutable,[616] which is described
by some by a unity, the principle of number, wherein there is a
resemblance of God’s unchangeableness. A unit is not variable; it
continues in its own nature immutably a unit. It never varies from
itself; it cannot be changed from itself; but is, as it were, so
omnipotent towards others, that it changes all numbers. If you add
any number, it is the beginning of that number, but the unit is not
increased by it; a new number ariseth from that addition, but the unit
still remains the same, and adds value to other figures, but receives
none from them.
III. The third thing to speak to is, that immutability is proper
to God, and incommunicable to any creature. Mutability is natural to
every creature as a creature, and immutability is the sole perfection
of God. He only is infinite wisdom, able to foreknow future events;
he only is infinitely powerful, able to call forth all means to
effect; so that wanting neither wisdom to contrive, nor strength to
execute, {a335} he cannot alter his counsel. None being above him,
nothing in him contrary to him, and being defective in no blessedness
and perfection, he cannot vary in his essence and nature. Had not
immutability as well as eternity been a property solely pertaining
to the Divine nature, as well as creative power and eternal duration,
the apostle’s argument to prove Christ to be God from this perpetual
sameness, had come short of any convincing strength. These words of
the text he applies to Christ (Heb. i. 10‒12): “They shall be changed,
but thou art the same.” There had been no strength in the reason, if
immutability by nature did belong to any creature.
The changeableness of all creatures is evident:
1. Of corporeal creatures it is evident to sense. All plants and
animals, as they have their duration bounded in certain limits; so
while they do exist, they proceed from their rise to their fall. They
pass through many sensible alterations, from one degree of growth to
another, from buds to blossoms, from blossoms to flowers and fruits.
They come to their pitch that nature had set them, and return back
to the state from whence they sprung; there is not a day but they
make some acquisition, or suffer some loss. They die and spring up
every day; nothing in them more certain than their inconstancy: “The
creature is subject to vanity” (Rom. viii. 20). The heavenly bodies
are changing their place; the sun every day is running his race, and
stays not in the same point; and though they are not changed in their
essence, yet they are in their place. Some, indeed, say there is a
continual generation of light in the sun, as there is a loss of light
by the casting out its beams, as in a fountain there is a flowing out
of the streams, and a continual generation of supply. And though these
heavenly bodies have kept their standing and motion from the time of
their creation, yet both the sun’s standing still in Joshua’s time,
and its going back in Hezekiah’s time, show that they are changeable
at the pleasure of God. But in man the change is perpetually visible;
every day there is a change from ignorance to knowledge, from one
will to another, from passion to passion, sometimes sad and sometimes
cheerful, sometimes craving this, and presently nauseating it; his
body changes from health to sickness, or from weakness to strength;
some alteration there is either in body or mind. Man, who is the
noblest creature, the subordinate end of the creation of other things,
cannot assure himself of a consistency and fixedness in anything the
short space of a day, no, not of a minute. All his months are months
of vanity (Job vii. 3); whence the Psalmist calls man at the “best
estate altogether vanity,” a mere heap of vanity (Ps. xxxv.) As he
contains in his nature the nature of all creatures, so he inherits in
his nature the vanity of all creatures. A little world, the centre of
the world and of the vanity of the world; yea, “lighter than vanity”
(Ps. lxii. 9), more movable than a feather; tossed between passion and
passion, daily changing his end, and changing the means; an image of
nothing.
2. Spiritual natures, as angels. They change not in their being, but
that is from the indulgence of God. They change not in their goodness,
but that is not from their nature, but divine grace in their {a336}
confirmation; but they change in their knowledge; they know more
by Christ than they did by creation (1 Tim. iii. 16). They have an
addition of knowledge every day, by the providential dispensations
of God to his church (Eph. iii. 10); and the increase of their
astonishment and love is according to the increase of their knowledge
and insight. They cannot have a new discovery without new admirations
of what is discovered to them: there is a change in their joy when
there is a change in a sinner (Luke xv. 10). They were changed in
their essence, when they were made such glorious spirits of nothing;
some of them were changed in their will, when of holy they became
impure. The good angels were changed in their understandings, when
the glories of God in Christ were presented to their view; and all can
be changed in their essence again; and as they were made of nothing,
so by the power of God may be reduced to nothing again. So glorified
souls shall have an unchanged operation about God, for they shall
behold his face without any grief or fear of loss, without vagrant
thoughts; but they can never be unchangeable in their nature, because
they can never pass from finite to infinite.
No creature can be unchangeable in its nature:――1. Because every
creature rose from nothing. As they rose from nothing, so they
tend to nothing, unless they are preserved by God. The notion of
a creature speaks changeableness; because to be a creature is to be
made something of nothing, and, therefore, creation is a change of
nothing into something. The being of a creature begins from change,
and, therefore, the essence of a creature is subject to change. God
only is uncreated, and, therefore, unchangeable. If he were made he
could not be immutable; for the very making is a change of not being
into being. All creatures were made good, as they were the fruits of
God’s goodness and power; but must needs be mutable, because they were
the extracts of nothing. 2. Because every creature depends purely upon
the will of God. They depend not upon themselves, but upon another for
their being. As they received their being from the word of his mouth
and the arm of his power, so by the same word they can be cancelled
into nothing, and return into as little significancy as when they were
nothing. He that created them by a word, can by a word destroy them:
if God should “take away their breath, they die, and return into their
dust” (Ps. civ. 29). As it was in the power of the Creator that things
might be, before they actually were, so it is in the power of the
Creator that things after they are may cease to be what they are; and
they are, in their own nature, as reducible to nothing as they were
producible by the power of God from nothing; for there needs no more
than an act of God’s will to null them, as there needed only an act of
God’s will to make them. Creatures are all subject to a higher cause:
they are all reputed as nothing. “He doth according to his will in the
armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can
stay his hand, or say unto him, What dost thou?” (Dan. iv. 35.) But
God is unchangeable, because he is the highest good; none above him,
all below him; all dependent on him; himself upon none. 3. No creature
is absolutely perfect. No {a337} creature can be so perfect, or can
ever be, but something by the infinite power of God may be added to it;
for whatsoever is finite may receive greater additions, and, therefore,
a change. No creature you can imagine, but in your thoughts you may
fancy him capable of greater perfections than you know he hath, or
than really he hath. The perfections of all creatures are searchable;
the perfection of God is only unsearchable (Job xi. 6), and, therefore,
he only immutable. God only is always the same. Time makes no addition
to him, nor diminisheth anything of him. His nature and essence, his
wisdom and will, have always been the same from eternity, and shall be
the same to eternity, without any variation.
IV. The fourth thing propounded is, Some propositions to clear this
unchangeableness of God from anything that seems contrary to it.
_Prop. I._ There was no change in God when he began to create the
world in time. The creation was a real change, but the change was
not subjectively in God, but in the creature; the creature began
to be what it was not before. Creation is considered as active or
passive.[617] Active creation is the will and power of God to create.
This is from eternity, because God willed from eternity to create
in time; this never had beginning, for God never began in time to
understand anything, to will anything, or to be able to do anything;
but he alway understood and alway willed those things which he
determined from eternity to produce in time. The decree of God may be
taken for the act decreeing, that is eternal and the same, or for the
object decreed, that is in time; so that there may be a change in the
object, but not in the will whereby the object doth exist.
1. There was no change in God by the act of creation, because there
was no new will in him. There was no new act of his will which was not
before. The creation began in time, but the will of creating was from
eternity. The work was new, but the decree whence that new work sprung
was as ancient as the Ancient of Days. When the time of creating came,
God was not made _ex nolente volens_, as we are; for whatsoever God
willed to be now done, he willed from eternity to be done; but he
willed also that it should not be done till such an instant of time,
and that it should not exist before such a time. If God had willed the
creation of the world only at that time when the world was produced,
and not before, then, indeed, God had been changeable. But though God
spake that word which he had not spoke before, whereby the world was
brought into act; yet he did not will that will he willed not before.
God did not create by a new counsel or new will, but by that which was
from eternity (Eph. i. 9). All things are wrought according to that
“purpose in himself,” and according to “the counsel of his will” (ver.
11); and as the holiness of the elect is the fruit of his eternal will
“before the foundation of the world” (ver. 4), so, likewise, is the
existence of things, and of those persons whom he did elect. As when
an artificer frames a house or a temple according to that model he had
in his mind some years before, there is no change {a338} in the model
in his mind; the artificer is the same, though the work is produced by
him some time after he had framed that copy of it in his own mind, but
there is a change of the thing produced by him according to that model.
Or, when a rich man intends, four or five years hence, if he lives,
to build a hospital, is there any change in will, when, after the
expiration of that time, he builds and endows it? Though it be after
his will, yet it is the fruit of his precedent will. So God, from all
eternity, did will and command that the creatures should exist in such
a part of time; and, by his eternal will, all things, whether past,
present, or to come, did, do, and shall exist, at that point of time
which that will did appoint for them: not, as though God had a new
will when things stood up in being, but only that which was prepared
in his immutable counsel and will from eternity, doth then appear.
There can be no instant fixed from eternity, wherein it can be said,
God did not will the creation of the world; for had the will of God
for the shortest moment been undetermined to the creation of the world,
and afterwards resolved upon it, there had been a moral change in God
from not willing to willing; but this there was not, for God executes
nothing in time which he had not ordained from eternity, and appointed
all the means and circumstances whereby it should be brought about. As
the determination of our Saviour to suffer was not a new will, but an
eternal counsel, and wrought no change in God (Acts ii. 23).
2. There is no change in God by the act of creation, because there was
no new power in God. Had God had a will at the time of creation which
he had not before, there had been a moral change in him; so had there
been in him a power only to create then and not before, there had been
a physical change in him from weakness to ability. There can be no
more new power in God, than there can be a new will in God; for his
will is his power, and what he willeth to effect, that he doth effect:
as he was unchangeably holy, so he was unchangeably almighty, “which
was, and is, and is to come” (Rev. iv. 8); which was almighty, and
is almighty, and ever will be almighty. The work therefore makes no
change in God, but there is a change in the thing wrought by that
power of God. Suppose you had a seal engraven upon some metal a
hundred years old, or as old as the creation, and you should this
day, so many ages after the engraving of it, make an impression of
that seal upon wax; would you say the engravement upon the seal were
changed, because it produced that stamp upon the wax now which it did
not before? No, the change is purely in the wax, which receives a new
figure or form by the impression; not in the seal, that was capable of
imprinting the same long before. God was the same from eternity as he
was when he made a signature of himself upon the creatures by creation,
and is no more changed by stamping them into several forms, than the
seal is changed by making impression upon the wax. As when a house is
enlightened by the sun, or that which was cold is heated by it, there
is a change in the house from darkness to light, from coldness to heat;
but is there any change in the light and heat of the sun? There is a
change in the thing enlightened or warmed by that light and heat which
remains fixed and constant in the sun, which was {a339} as capable in
itself to produce the same effects before, as at that instant when it
works them; so when God is the author of a new work, he is not changed,
because he works it by an eternal will and an eternal power.
3. Nor is there any new relation acquired by God by the creation of
the world. There was a new relation acquired by the creature, as, when
a man sins, he hath another relation to God than he had before,――he
hath relation to God, as a criminal to a Judge; but there is no change
in God, but in the malefactor. The being of men makes no more change
in God than the sins of men. As a tree is now on our right hand,
and by our turning about it is on our left hand, sometimes before us,
sometimes behind us, according to our motion near it or about it, and
the turning of the body; there is no change in the tree, which remains
firm and fixed in the earth, but the change is wholly in the posture
of the body, whereby the tree may be said to be before us or behind
us, or on the right hand or on the left hand.[618] God gained no new
relation of Lord or Creator by the creation; for though he had created
nothing to rule over, yet he had the power to create and rule, though
he did not create and rule: as a man may be called a skilful writer,
though he does not write, because he is able to do it when he pleases;
or a man skilful in physic is called a physician, though he doth
not practise that skill, or discover his art in the distribution of
medicines, because he may do it when he pleases; it depends upon his
own will to show his art when he has a mind to it. So the name Creator
and Lord belongs to God from eternity, because he could create and
rule, though he did not create and rule. But, howsoever, if there were
any such change of relation, that God may be called Creator and Lord
after the creation and not before, it is not a change in essence, nor
in knowledge, nor in will; God gains no perfection nor diminution by
it; his knowledge is not increased by it; he is no more by it than
he was, and will be, if all those things ceased; and therefore Austin
illustrates it by this similitude:――as a piece of money when it is
given as the price of a thing, or deposited only as a pledge for the
security of a thing borrowed; the coin is the same, and is not changed,
though the relation it had as a pledge and as a price be different
from one another: so that suppose any new relation be added, yet there
is nothing happens to the nature of God which may infer any change.
_Prop. II._ There was no change in the Divine nature of the Son,
when he assumed human nature. There was an union of the two natures,
but no change of the Deity into the humanity, or of the humanity into
the Deity: both preserved their peculiar properties. The humanity was
changed by a communication of excellent gifts from the divine nature,
not by being brought into an equality with it, for that was impossible
that a creature should become equal to the Creator. He took the “form
of a servant,” but he lost not the form of God; he despoiled not
himself of the perfections of the Deity. He was indeed emptied, “and
became of no reputation” (Phil. ii. 7); but he did not cease to be God,
though he was reputed to be only a man, {a340} and a very mean one too.
The glory of his divinity was not extinguished nor diminished, though
it was obscured and darkened, under the veil of our infirmities; but
there was no more change in the hiding of it, than there is in the
body of the sun when it is shadowed by the interposition of a cloud.
His blood while it was pouring out from his veins was the “blood of
God” (Acts xx. 28); and, therefore, when he was bowing the head of
his humanity upon the cross, he had the nature and perfections of
God; for had he ceased to be God, he had been a mere creature, and his
sufferings would have been of as little value and satisfaction as the
sufferings of a creature. He could not have been a sufficient Mediator,
had he ceased to be God: and he had ceased to be God, had he lost any
one perfection proper to the divine nature; and losing none, he lost
not this of unchangeableness, which is none of the meanest belonging
to the Deity. Why by his union with the human nature should he lose
this, any more than he lost his omniscience, which he discovered
by his knowledge of the thoughts of men; or his mercy, which he
manifested to the height in the time of his suffering? That is truly a
change, when a thing ceaseth to be what it was before: this was not in
Christ; he assumed our nature without laying aside his own. When the
soul is united to the body, doth it lose any of those perfections that
are proper to its nature? Is there any change either in the substance
or qualities of it? No; but it makes a change in the body, and of a
dull lump it makes it a living mass, conveys vigor and strength to it,
and, by its power, quickens it to sense and motion.[619] So did the
divine nature and human remain entire; there was no change of the one
into the other, as Christ by a miracle changed water into wine, or
men by art change sand or ashes into glass: and when he prays “for the
glory he had with God before the world was” (John xvii. 5), he prays
that a glory he had in his Deity might shine forth in his person as
Mediator, and be evidenced in that height and splendor suitable to
his dignity, which had been so lately darkened by his abasement;
that as he had appeared to be the Son of Man in the infirmity of the
flesh, he might appear to be the Son of God in the glory of his person,
that he might appear to be the Son of God and the Son of Man in one
person.[620] Again, there could be no change in this union; for, in
a real change, something is acquired which was not possessed before,
neither formally nor eminently: but the divinity had from eternity,
before the incarnation, all the perfections of the human nature
eminently in a nobler manner than they are in themselves, and
therefore could not be changed by a real union.[621]
_Prop. III._ Repentance and other affections ascribed to God in
Scripture, argue no change in God. We often read of God’s repenting,
repenting of the good he promised (Jer. xviii. 10), and of the evil
he threatened (Exod. xxxii. 14; John iii. 10), or of the work he hath
wrought (Gen. vi. 6). We must observe, therefore, that,
1. Repentance is not properly in God. He is a pure Spirit, and is not
capable of those passions which are signs of weakness and impotence,
{a341} or subject to those regrets we are subject to. Where there is
a proper repentance there is a want of foresight, an ignorance of what
would succeed, or a defect in the examination of the occurrences which
might fall within consideration. All repentance of a fact is grounded
upon a mistake in the event which was not foreseen, or upon an after
knowledge of the evil of the thing which was acted by the person
repenting. But God is so wise that he cannot err, so holy he cannot
do evil; and his certain prescience, or foreknowledge, secures him
against any unexpected events. God doth not act but upon clear and
infallible reason; and a change upon passion is accounted by all
so great a weakness in man, that none can entertain so unworthy a
conceit of God. Where he is said to repent (Gen. vi. 6), he is also
said to grieve; now no proper grief can be imagined to be in God. As
repentance is inconsistent with infallible foresight, so is grief no
less inconsistent with undefiled blessedness. God is “blessed forever”
(Rom. ix. 8), and therefore nothing can befall him that can stain that
blessedness. His blessedness would be impaired and interrupted while
he is repenting, though he did soon rectify that which is the cause
of his repentance. “God is of one mind, and who can turn him? what his
soul desires that he doth” (Job xxiii. 13).
2. But God accommodates himself in the Scripture to our weak capacity.
God hath no more of a proper repentance, than he hath of a real body;
though he, in accommodation to our weakness, ascribes to himself the
members of our bodies to set out to our understanding the greatness of
his perfections, we must not conclude him a body like us; so, because
he is said to have anger and repentance, we must not conclude him
to have passions like us. When we cannot fully comprehend him as he
is, he clothes himself with our nature in his expressions that we may
apprehend him as we are able, and by an inspection into ourselves,
learn something of the nature of God; yet those human ways of
speaking ought to be understood in a manner agreeable to the infinite
excellency and majesty of God, and are only designed to mark out
something in God which hath a resemblance with something in us; as we
cannot speak to God as gods, but as men, so we cannot understand him
speaking to us as a God, unless he condescend to speak to us like a
man. God therefore frames his language to our dulness, not to his own
state, and informs us by our own phrases, what he would have us learn
of his nature, as nurses talk broken language to young children. In
all such expressions, therefore, we must ascribe the perfection we
conceive in them to God, and lay the imperfection at the door of the
creature.
3. Therefore, repentance in God is only a change of his outward
conduct, according to his infallible foresight and immutable will.
He changes the way of his providential proceeding according to the
carriage of the creature, without changing his will, which is the rule
of his providence. When God speaks of his repenting “that he had made
man” (Gen. vi. 6), it is only his changing his conduct from a way of
kindness to a way of severity, and is a word suited to our capacities
to signify his detestation of sin, and his resolution to punish {a342}
it, after man had made himself quite another thing, than God had made
him; “it repents me,” that is, I am purposed to destroy the world, as
he that repents of his work throws it away;[622] as if a potter cast
away the vessel he had framed, it were a testimony that he repented
that ever he took pains about it, so the destruction of them seems
to be a repentance in God that ever he made them; it is a change of
events, not of counsels. Repentance in us is a grief for a former
fact, and a changing of our course in it; grief is not in God, but
his repentance is a willing a thing should not be as it was, which
will was fixed from eternity; for God, foreseeing man would fall,
and decreeing to permit it, he could not be said to repent in time
of what he did not repent from eternity; and therefore, if there were
no repentance in God from eternity, there could be none in time.[623]
But God is said to repent when he changes the disposition of affairs
without himself; as men, when they repent, alter the course of their
actions, so God alters things, _extra se_, or without himself, but
changes nothing of his own purpose within himself. It rather notes
the action he is about to do, than anything in his own nature, or
any change in his eternal purpose. God’s repenting of his kindness
is nothing but an inflicting of punishment, which the creature by
the change of his carriage hath merited: as his repenting of the
evil threatened is the withholding the punishment denounced, when the
creature hath humbly submitted to his authority, and acknowledged his
crime. Or else we may understand those expressions of joy, and grief,
and repentance, to signify thus much, that the things declared to be
the objects of joy, and grief, and repentance, are of that nature,
that if God were capable of our passions, he would discover himself
in such cases as we do; as when the prophets mention the joys and
applaudings of heaven, earth, and the sea, they only signify that
the things they speak of are so good, that if the heavens and the sea
had natures capable of joy, they would express it upon that occasion
in such a manner as we do; so would God have joy at the obedience
of men, and grief at the unworthy carriage of men, and repent of his
kindness when men abuse it, and repent of his punishment when men
reform under his rod, were the majesty of his nature capable of such
affections.[624]
_Prop. IV._ The not fulfilling of some predictions in Scripture,
which seem to imply a changeableness of the Divine will, do not argue
any change in it. As when he reprieved Hezekiah from death, after a
message sent by the prophet Isaiah, that he should die (2 Kings xx.
1‒5; Isa. xxxviii. 1‒5), and when he made an arrest of that judgment
he had threatened by Jonah against Nineveh (Jon. iii. 4‒10). There is
not, indeed, the same reason of promises and threatenings altogether;
for in promising, the obligation lies upon God, and the right to
demand is in the party that performs the condition of the promise: but
in threatenings, the obligation lies upon the sinner, and God’s right
to punish is declared thereby; so that though God doth not punish, his
will is not changed, because his will was to declare the demerit of
sin, and his right to punish {a343} upon the commission of it; though
he may not punish according to the strict letter of the threatening
the person sinning, but relax his own law for the honor of his
attributes, and transfer the punishment from the offender to a person
substituted in his room: this was the case in the first threatening
against man, and the substituting a Surety in the place of the
malefactor. But the answer to these cases is this, that where we
find predictions in Scripture declared, and yet not executed, we
must consider them, not as absolute but conditional, or as the civil
law calls it, an interlocutory sentence.[625] God declared what
would follow by natural causes, or by the demerit of man, not what
he would absolutely himself do: and in many of those predictions,
though the condition be not expressed, yet it is to be understood;
so the promises of God are to be understood, with the condition
of perseverance in well doing; and threatenings, with a clause of
revocation annexed to them, provided that men repent: and this God
lays down as a general case, alway to be remembered as a rule for
the interpreting his threatenings against a nation, and the same
reason will hold in threatenings against a particular person. (Jer.
xviii. 7‒10) “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and
concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and destroy it;
if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil,
I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them;” and so when
he speaks of planting a nation, if they do evil, he will repent of the
good, &c. It is a universal rule by which all particular cases of this
nature are to be tried; so that when man’s repentance arrives, God
remains firm in his first will, always equal to himself; and it is not
he that changes, but man. For since the interposition of the Mediator,
with an eye to whom God governed the world after the fall, the right
of punishing was taken off if men repented, and mercy was to flow out,
if by a conversion men returned to their duty (Ezek. xviii. 20, 21).
This, I say, is grounded upon God’s entertaining the Mediator; for the
covenant of works discovered no such thing as repentance or pardon.
Now these general rules are to be the interpreters of particular cases:
so that predictions of good are not to be counted absolute, if men
return to evil; nor predictions of evil, if men be thereby reduced to
a repentance of their crimes. So Nineveh shall be destroyed, that is,
according to the general rule, unless the inhabitants repent, which
they did; they manifested a belief of the threatening, and gave glory
to God by giving credit to the prophet: and they had a notion of this
rule God lays down in the other prophets; for they had an apprehension
that, upon their humbling themselves, they might escape the threatened
vengeance, and stop the shooting those arrows that were ready in
the bow.[626] Though Jonah proclaimed destruction without declaring
any hopes of an arrest of judgment, yet their natural notion of God
afforded some natural hopes of relief if they did their duty, and
spurned not against the prophet’s message; and therefore, saith one,
God did not always express this condition, because it was needless;
his own rule revealed in Scripture was sufficient to some; and the
natural notion all men had of God’s goodness upon their repentance,
made {a344} it not absolutely necessary to declare it. And besides,
saith he, it is bootless; the expressing it can do but little good;
secure ones will repent never the sooner, but rather presume upon
their hopes of God’s forbearance, and linger out their repentance till
it be too late. And to work men to repentance, whom he hath purposed
to spare, he threatens them with terrible judgments; which by how
much the more terrible and peremptory they are, are likely to be more
effectual for that end God in his purpose designs them; viz. to humble
them under a sense of their demerit, and an acknowledgment of his
righteous justice; and, therefore, though they be absolutely denounced,
yet they are to be conditionally interpreted with a reservation of
repentance. As for that answer which one gives, that by forty days
was not meant forty natural days, but forty prophetical days, that
is years, a day for a year; and that the city was destroyed forty
years after by the Medes; the expression of God’s repenting upon their
humiliation puts a bar to that interpretation; God repented, that is,
he did not bring the punishment upon them according to those days the
prophet had expressed; and, therefore, forty natural days are to be
understood; and if it were meant forty years, and they were destroyed
at the end of that term, how could God be said to repent, since
according to that, the punishment threatened was, according to the
time fixed, brought upon them? and the destruction of it forty years
after will not be easily evinced, if Jonah lived in the time of
Jeroboam, the second king of Israel, as he did (2 Kings xiv. 25);
and Nineveh was destroyed in the time of Josiah, king of Judah. But
the other answer is plain. God did not fulfil what he had threatened,
because they reformed what they had committed: when the threatening
was made, they were a fit object for justice; but when they repented,
they were a fit object for a merciful respite. To threaten when sins
are high, is a part of God’s justice; not to execute when sins are
revoked by repentance, is a part of God’s goodness. And in the case
of Hezekiah (2 Kings xx. 1, 5), Isaiah comes with a message from God,
that he should “set his house in order,” for he shall die; that is,
the disease was mortal, and no outward applications could in their own
nature resist the distemper: “Behold, I will add to thy days fifteen
years; I will heal thee” (Isa. xxxviii. 1, 5). It seems to me to be
one entire message, because the latter part of it was so suddenly
after the other committed to Isaiah, to be delivered to Hezekiah;
for he was not gone out of the king’s house, before he was ordered
to return with the news of his health, by an extraordinary indulgence
of God against the power of nature and force of the disease, “Behold,
I will add to thy life;” noting it as an extraordinary thing; he was
in the second court of the king’s house when this word came to him
(2 Kings xx. 4); the king’s house having three courts, so that he
was not gone above half‑way out of the palace. God might send this
message of death, to prevent the pride Hezekiah might swell with for
his deliverance from Sennacherib: as Paul had a messenger of Satan to
buffet him to prevent his lifting up (2 Cor. xii. 7); and this good
man was subject to this sin, as we find afterwards in the case of the
Babylonish ambassadors; and God delayed this other part of the message
to humble him, and {a345} draw out his prayer: and as soon as ever
he found Hezekiah in this temper, he sent Isaiah with a comfortable
message of recovery; so that the will of God was to signify to him the
mortality of his distemper, and afterwards to relieve him by a message
of an extraordinary recovery.
_Prop. V._ God is not changed, when of loving to any creatures he
becomes angry with them, or of angry he becomes appeased. The change
in these cases is in the creature; according to the alteration in the
creature, it stands in a various relation to God: an innocent creature
is the object of his kindness, an offending creature is the object of
his anger; there is a change in the dispensations of God, as there is
a change in the creature making himself capable of such dispensations.
God always acts according to the immutable nature of his holiness,
and can no more change in his affections to good and evil, than he can
in his essence. When the devils, now fallen, stood as glorious angels,
they were the objects of God’s love, because holy; when they fell,
they were the objects of God’s hatred, because impure; the same reason
which made him love them while they were pure, made him hate them when
they were criminal. The reason of his various dispensations to them
was the same in both, as considered in God, his immutable holiness;
but as respecting the creature, different; the nature of the creature
was changed, but the Divine holy nature of God remained the same:
“With the pure thou wilt show thyself pure, and with the froward, thou
wilt show thyself froward” (Ps. xviii. 26): he is a refreshing light
to those that obey him, and a consuming fire to those that resist him.
Though the same angels were not always loved, yet the same reason that
moved him to love them, moved him to hate them. It had argued a change
in God if he had loved them alway, in whatsoever posture they were
towards him; it could not be counted love, but a weakness and impotent
fondness; the change is in the object, not in the affection of God;
for the object loved before is not beloved now, because that which
was the motive of love, is not now in it; so that the creature having
a different state from what it had, falls under a different affection
or dispensation. It had been a mutable affection in God to love that
which was not worthy of love with the same love wherewith he loved
that which had the greatest resemblance to himself; had God loved the
fallen angels in that state and for that state, he had hated himself,
because he had loved that which was contrary to himself and the
image of his own holiness, which made them appear before, good in his
sight. The will of God is unchangeably set to love righteousness and
hate iniquity, and from this hatred to punish it; and if a righteous
creature contracts the wrath of God, or a sinful creature hath the
communications of God’s love, it must be by a change in themselves.
Is the sun changed when it hardens one thing and softens another,
according to the disposition of the several subjects? Or when the sun
makes a flower more fragrant, and a dead carcass more noisome? There
are divers effects, but the reason of that diversity is not in the sun,
but in the subject; the sun is the same, and produceth those different
effects by the same quality of heat; so if an unholy soul approach to
God, God looks angrily {a346} upon him; if a holy soul come before him,
the same immutable perfection in God draws out his kindness towards
him: as some think, the sun would rather refresh than scorch us, if
our bodies were of the same nature and substance with that luminary.
As the will of God for creating the world was no new, but an eternal
will, though it manifested itself in time, so the will of God for the
punishment of sin, or the reconciliation of the sinner, was no new
will: though his wrath in time break out in the effects of it upon
sinners, and his love flows out in the effects of it upon penitents.
Christ by his death reconciling God to man, did not alter the will of
God, but did what was consonant to his eternal will; he came not to
change his will, but to execute his will: “Lo, I come to do thy will,
O God” (Heb. x. 7). And the grace of God in Christ was not a new grace,
but an old grace in a new appearance; “the grace of God hath appeared”
(Tit. i. 11).
_Prop. VI._ A change of laws by God argues no change in God, when
God abrogates some laws which he had settled in the church, and enacts
others. I spake of this something the last day; I shall only add this:
God commanded one thing to the Jews, when the church was in an infant
state; and removed those laws, when the church came to some growth.
The elements of the world were suited to the state of children (Gal.
iv. 3). A mother feeds not the infant with the same diet as she doth
when it is grown up. Our Saviour acquainted not his disciples with
some things at one time which he did at another, because they were
not able to bear them: where was the change; in Christ’s will, or in
their growth from a state of weakness to that of strength? A physician
prescribes not the same thing to a person in health, as he doth to one
conflicting with a distemper; nor the same thing in the beginning as
he doth in the state or declination of the disease. The physician’s
will and skill are the same, but the capacity and necessity of the
patient for this or that medicine, or method of proceeding, are not
the same. When God changed the ceremonial law, there was no change in
the Divine will, but an execution of his will; for when God commanded
the observance of the law he intended not the perpetuity of it;
nay, in the prophets he declares the cessation of it; he decreed to
command it, but he decreed to command it only for such a time; so
that the abrogation of it was no less an execution of his decree, than
the establishment of it for a season was; the commanding of it was
pursuant to his decree for the appointing of it, and the nulling of it
was pursuant to his decree of continuing it only for such a season; so
that in all this there was no change in the will of God. The counsel
of God stands sure; what changes soever there are in the world, are
not in God or his will, but in the events of things, and the different
relations of things to God: it is in the creature, not in the Creator.
The sun alway remains of the same hue, and is not discolored in itself,
because it shines green through a green glass, and blue through a blue
glass; the different colors come from the glass, not from the sun; the
change is alway in the disposition of the creature, and not in the
nature of God or his will.
V. _Use 1._ For information.
1. If God be unchangeable in his nature, and immutability be a {a347}
property of God, then Christ hath a Divine nature. This in the Psalm
is applied to Christ in the Hebrews (Heb. i. 11), where he joins the
citation out of this Psalm with that out of Ps. xlv. 6, 7, “Thy throne,
O God, is forever and ever; thou hast loved righteousness and hated
iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil
of gladness above thy fellows; and thou, Lord, in the beginning hast
laid the foundation of the earth,” &c. As the first must necessarily
be meant of Christ the Mediator, and therein he is distinguished
from God, as one anointed by him; so the other must be meant of
Christ, whereby he is made one with God in regard of the creation
and dissolution of the world, in regard of eternity and immutability.
Both the testimonies are linked together by the copulative _and_, “and
thou, Lord;” declaring thereby that they are both to be understood
of the same person, the Son of God. The design of the chapter is to
prove Christ to be God; and such things are spoken of him as could not
belong to any creature; no, not to the most excellent of the angels.
The same person that is said to be anointed above his fellows, and
is said to lay the foundation of the earth and heavens, is said to be
the same; that is, the same in himself; the prerogative of sameness
belongs to that person as well as creation of heaven and earth. The
Socinians say it is spoken of God, and that God shall destroy the
heavens by Christ; if so, Christ is not a mere creature, not created
when he was incarnate; for the same person that shall change the world
did create the world; if God shall change the world by him, God also
created the world by him; he was then before the world was; for how
could God create the world by one that was not; that was not in being
till after the creation of the world? The heavens shall be changed,
but the person who is to change the heavens is said to be the same, or
unchangeable in the creation as well as the dissolution of the world.
This sameness refers to the whole sentence. The Psalm wherein the
text is, and whence this in the Hebrews is cited, is properly meant
of Christ, and redemption by him, and the completing of it at the last
day, and not of the Babylonish captivity;[627] that captivity was not
so deplorable as the state of the Psalmist describes; Daniel and his
companions flourished in that captivity; it could not reasonably be
said of them, that their days were consumed like smoke, their hearts
withered like grass; that they forgot to “eat their bread” (ver. 3, 4).
Besides, he complains of “shortness of life” (ver. 11); but none had
any more reason to complain of that in the time of the captivity, than
before and after it, than at any other time: their deliverance would
contribute nothing to the natural length of their lives. Besides, when
Sion should be built, the heathen should “fear the name of the Lord”
(that is, worship God), and “all the kings of the earth his glory”
(ver. 15). The rearing the second temple after the deliverance, did
not proselyte the nations; nor did the kings of the earth worship the
glory of God; nor did God appear in such glory at the erecting the
second temple. The second temple was less glorious than the first, for
it wanted some of the ornaments which were the glory of the first; but
it is {a348} said of this state, that when the Lord should build up
Sion, he should “appear in his glory” (ver. 16); his proper glory,
and extraordinary glory. Now that God who shall appear in glory, and
build up Sion, is the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world; he builds
up the church, he causes the nations to fear the Lord, and the kings
of the earth his glory; he broke down the partition wall, and opened
a door for the entrance of the Gentiles; he struck the chains from
off the prisoners, and loosed those that were appointed to death by
the curse of the law (ver. 20): and to this person is ascribed the
creation of the world; and he is pronounced to remain the same in the
midst of an infinite number of changes in inferior things. And it is
likely the Psalmist considers not only the beginning of redemption,
but the completing of it at the second coming of Christ; for he
complains of those evils which shall be removed by his second coming,
viz., the shortness of life, persecutions and reproaches wherewith the
church is afflicted in this world; and comforts not himself with those
attributes which are directly opposed to sin, as the mercy of God,
the covenant of God, but with those that are opposed to mortality
and calamities, as the unchangeableness and eternity of God; and from
thence infers a perpetual establishment of believers. “The children
of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established
before thee” (ver. 28): so that the Psalm itself seems to aim in the
whole discourse at Christ, and asserts his divinity, which the apostle,
as an interpreter, doth fully evidence; applying it to him, and
manifesting his deity by his immutability as well as eternity.[628]
While all other things lose their forms, and pass through multitudes
of variations, he constantly remains the same, and shall be the same,
when all the empires of the world shall slide away, and a period be
put to the present motions of the creation: and as there was no change
made in his being by the creation of things, so neither shall there be
by the final alteration of things; he shall see them finish, as he saw
them rise up into being, and be the same after their reign, as he was
before their original; he is the first and the last (Rev. i. 17).
2. Here is ground and encouragement for worship. An atheist will make
another use of this; if God be immutable, why should we worship him,
why should we pray to him? good will come if he wills it; evil cannot
be averted by all our supplications, if he hath ordained it to fall
upon us. But certainly since unchangeableness is knowing, and willing
goodness is a perfection, an adoration and admiration is due to
God, upon the account of this excellence. If he be God, he is to be
reverenced, and the more highly reverenced, because he cannot but be
God. Again, what comfort could it be to pray to a God, that like the
chameleon changed colors every day, every moment? What encouragement
could there be to lift up our eyes to one that were of one mind this
day and of another mind tomorrow? Who would put up a petition to an
earthly prince that were so mutable, as to grant a petition one day
and deny it another, and change his own act? But if a prince promise
this or that thing upon such or such a condition, and you know his
promise to be as unchangeable as the laws of the Medes and Persians,
would any man {a349} reason thus? because it is unchangeable we will
not seek to him, we will not perform the condition, upon which the
fruit of the proclamation is to be enjoyed. Who would not count such
an inference ridiculous? What blessings hath not God promised upon
the condition of seeking him? Were he of an unrighteous nature, or
changeable in his mind, this would be a bar to our seeking him, and
frustrate our hopes; but since it is otherwise, is not this excellency
of his nature the highest encouragement, to ask of him the blessings
he hath promised, and a beam from heaven to fire our zeal in asking?
If you desire things against his will, which he hath declared he will
not grant, prayer then would be an act of disobedience and injury to
him, as well as an act of folly in itself; his unchangeableness then
might stifle such desires: but if we ask according to his will, and
according to our reasonable wants, what ground have we to make such
a ridiculous argument? He hath willed everything that may be for
our good, if we perform the condition he hath required; and hath
put it upon record, that we may know it and regulate our desires
and supplications according to it. If we will not seek him, his
immutability cannot be a bar, but our own folly is the cause; and by
our neglect we despoil him of this perfection as to us, and either
imply that he is not sincere, and means not as he speaks; or that he
is as changeable as the wind, sometimes this thing, sometimes that,
and not at all to be confided in. If we ask according to his revealed
will, the unchangeableness of his nature will assure us of the grant;
and what a presumption would it be in a creature dependent upon his
sovereign, to ask that which he knows he has declared his will against;
since there is no good we can want, but he hath promised to give, upon
our sincere and ardent desire for it? God hath decreed to give this
or that to man, but conditionally, and by the means of inquiring after
him, and asking for it: “Ask, and you shall receive” (Ezek. xxxvi. 37;
Matt. vii. 7): as much as to say, You shall not receive unless you ask.
When the highest promises are made, God expects they should be put
in suit; our Saviour joins the promise and the petition together;
the promise to encourage the petition, and the petition to enjoy
the promise: he doth not say perhaps it shall be given, but it shall,
that is, it certainly shall; your heavenly Father is unchangeably
willing to give you those things. We must depend upon his immutability
for the thing, and submit to his wisdom for the time. Prayer is an
acknowledgment of our dependence upon God; which dependence could have
no firm foundation without unchangeableness. Prayer doth not desire
any change in God, but is offered to God that he would confer those
things which he hath immutably willed to communicate; but he willed
them not without prayer as the means of bestowing them. The light
of the sun is ordered for our comfort, for the discovery of visible
things, for the ripening the fruits of the earth; but withal it
is required that we use our faculty of seeing, that we employ our
industry in sowing and planting, and expose our fruits to the view of
the sun, that they may receive the influence of it. If a man shuts his
eyes, and complains that the sun is changed into darkness, it would
be ridiculous; the sun is not changed, but we alter ourselves; nor is
God changed {a350} in not giving us the blessings he hath promised,
because he hath promised in the way of a due address to him, and
opening our souls to receive his influence, and to this, his
immutability is the greatest encouragement.
3. This shows how contrary man is to God in regard of his
inconstancy. What an infinite distance is there between the immutable
God, and mutable man, and how should we bewail this flittingness
in our nature! There is a mutability in us as creatures, and a
creature cannot but be mutable by nature, otherwise it were not a
creature but God. The establishment of any creature is from grace
and gift; naturally we tend to nothing, as we come from nothing. This
creature‑mutability is not our sin, yet it should cause us to lie
down under a sense of our own nothingness, in the presence of the
Creator. The angels as creatures, though not corrupt, cover their
faces before him: and the arguments God uses to humble Job, though
a fallen creature, are not from his corruption: for I do not remember
that he taxed him with that; but from the greatness of his majesty and
excellency of his nature declared in his works (Job xxxviii.‒xli.);
and, therefore, men that have no sense of God and humility before him,
forget that they are creatures as well as corrupt ones. How great is
the distance between God and us, in regard of our inconstancy in good,
which is not natural to us by creation: for the mind and affections
were regular, and by the great artificer were pointed to God as
the object of knowledge and love. We have the same faculties of
understanding, will, and affection, as Adam had in innocence; but
not with the same light, the same bias, and the same ballast. Man,
by his fall, wounded his head and heart; the wound in his head made
him unstable in the truth, and that in his heart unsteadfast in
his affections: he changed himself from the image of God to that of
the devil, from innocence to corruption, and from an ability to be
steadfast to a perpetual inconstancy; “his silver became dross, and
his wine was mixed with water” (Isa. i. 22). He changed,
(1.) To inconstancy in truth, opposed to the immutability of
knowledge in God. How are our minds floating between ignorance and
knowledge! Truth in us is like those ephemera, creatures of a day’s
continuance,――springs up in the morning, and expires at night. How
soon doth that fly away from us which we have had, not only some weak
flashes of, but which we have learned and have had some relish of! The
devil stood not in the truth (John viii. 44), and therefore manages
his engines to make us as unstable as himself: our minds reel, and
corrupt reasonings oversway us; like sponges we suck up water, and a
light compression makes us spout it out again. Truths are not engraven
upon our hearts, but writ as in dust, defaced by the next puff of wind,
“carried about with every wind of doctrine” (Eph. iv. 14); like a ship
without a pilot and sails, at the courtesy of the next storm, or like
clouds that are tenants to the wind and sun, moved by the wind and
melted by the sun. The Galatians were no sooner called into the grace
of God, but they were removed from it (Gal. i. 6); some have been
reported to have _menstruam fidem_, kept an opinion for a month;
and many are like him that believed the soul’s immortality no longer
than he had Plato’s {a351} book of that subject in his hand:[629] one
likens such to children; they play with truths as children do with
babies, one while embrace them, and a little after throw them into
the dirt. How soon do we forget what the truth is delivered to us, and
what it represented us to be (James i. 23, 24). Is it not a thing to
be bewailed, that man should be such a weathercock, turned about with
every breath of wind, and shifting aspects as the wind shifts points?
(2.) Inconstancy in will, and affections opposed to the immutability
of will in God. We waver between God and Baal; and while we are
not only resolving, but upon motion a little way, look back with a
hankering after Sodom; sometimes lifted up with heavenly intentions,
and presently cast down with earthly cares, like a ship that by an
advancing wave seems to aspire to heaven, and the next fall of the
waves makes it sink down to the depths. We change purposes oftener
than fashions, and our resolutions are like letters in water, whereof
no mark remains; we will be as John to‑day to love Christ, and as
Judas to‑morrow to betray him, and, by an unworthy levity, pass into
the camp of the enemies of God; resolved to be as holy as angels in
the morning, when the evening beholds us as impure as devils. How
often do we hate what before we loved, and shun what before we longed
for! and our resolutions are like vessels of crystal, which break at
the first knock, are dashed in pieces by the next temptation. Saul
resolved not to persecute David any more, but you soon find him upon
his old game. Pharaoh more than once promised, and probably resolved,
to let Israel go, but at the end of the storm his purposes vanish
(Exod. viii. 27, 32). When an affliction pincheth men, they intend
to change their course, and the next news of ease changes their
intentions; like a bow not fully bent in their inclinations, they
cannot reach the mark, but live many years between resolutions of
obedience and affections to rebellion (Ps. lxxviii. 17): and what
promises men make to God are often the fruit of their passion, their
fear, not of their will. The Israelites were startled at the terrors
wherewith the law was delivered, and promised obedience (Exod. xx. 19),
but a month after forgot them, and make a golden calf, and in the
sight of Sinai call for, and dance before, their gods (Exod. xxxii.);
never people more unconstant. Peter, who vowed an allegiance to his
Master, and a courage to stick to him, forswears him almost with the
same breath. Those that cry out with a zeal, “The Lord he is God,”
shortly after return to the service of their idols (1 Kings xviii. 39).
That which seems to be our pleasure this day, is our vexation
to‑morrow; a fear of a judgment puts us into a religious pang, and a
love to our lusts reduceth us to a rebellious inclination; as soon as
the danger is over, the saint is forgotten: salvation and damnation
present themselves to us, touch us, and engender some weak wishes,
which are dissolved by the next allurements of a carnal interest. No
hold can be taken of our promises, no credit is to be given to our
resolutions.
(3.) Inconstancy in practice. How much beginning in the Spirit, and
ending in the flesh; one day in the sanctuary, another in the stews;
clear in the morning as the sun, and clouded before noon; {a352} in
heaven by an excellency of gifts, in hell by a course of profaneness;
like a flower, which some mention, that changes its color three times
a day, one part white, then purple, then yellow! The spirit lusts
against the flesh, and the flesh quickly triumphs over the spirit.
In a good man how often is there a spiritual lethargy; though he doth
not openly defame God, yet he doth not always glorify him; he doth
not forsake the truth, but he doth not always make the attainment of
it, and settlement in it his business. This levity discovers itself in
religious duty, “when I would do good, evil is present with me” (Rom.
vii. 21). Never more present, than when we have a mind to do good,
and never more present than when we have a mind to do the best and
greatest good. How hard is it to make our thoughts and affections keep
their stand! place them upon a good object, and they will be frisking
from it, as a bird from one bough, one fruit, to another: we vary
postures according to the various objects we meet with. The course
of the world is a very airy thing, suited to the uncertain notions of
that “prince of the power of the air,” which works in it (Eph. ii. 2).
This ought to be bewailed by us. Though we may stand fast in the truth,
though we may spin our resolutions into a firm web, though the spirit
may triumph over the flesh in our practice, yet we ought to bewail
it, because inconstancy is our nature, and what fixedness we have in
good is from grace. What we find practised by most men is natural to
all;[630] “as face answers to face in a glass, so doth heart to heart”
(Prov. xxvii. 19); a face in the glass is not more like a natural face,
whose image it is, than one man’s heart is naturally like another.
1st. It is natural to those out of the church. Nebuchadnezzar is
so affected with Daniel’s prophetic spirit, that he would have none
accounted the true God, but the “God of Daniel” (Dan. ii. 47). How
soon doth this notion slip from him, and an image must be set up for
all to worship, upon pain of a most cruel, painful death! Daniel’s God
is quite forgotten. The miraculous deliverance of the three children,
for not worshipping his image, makes him settle a decree to secure the
honor of God from the reproach of his subjects (Dan. iii. 29); yet, a
little while after, you have him strutting in his palace, as if there
were no God but himself.
2d. It is natural to those in the Church. The Israelites were the
only church God had in the world, and a notable example of inconstancy.
After the miracles of Egypt, they murmured against God, when they saw
Pharaoh marching with an army at their heels. They desired food, and
soon nauseated the manna they were before fond of. When they came into
Canaan, they sometimes worshipped God, and sometimes idols, not only
the idols of one nation, but of all their neighbors. In which regard
God calls this, his heritage; “a speckled bird” (Jer. xii. 9); a
peacock, saith Hierom, inconstant, made up of varieties of idolatrous
colors and ceremonies. This levity of spirit is the root of all
mischief; it scatters our thoughts in the service of God; it is the
cause of all revolts and apostasies from him; it makes us unfit to
receive the communications of God: whatsoever we hear is like words
writ in sand, ruffled out by the {a353} next gale; whatsoever is put
into us is like precious liquor in a palsy hand, soon spilt: it breeds
distrust of God when we have an uncertain judgment of him, we are not
like to confide in him; an uncertain judgment will be followed with
a distrustful heart. In fine, where it is prevalent, it is a certain
sign of ungodliness. To be driven with the wind like chaff, and to
be ungodly, is all one in the judgment of the Holy Ghost (Ps. i. 4);
the ungodly are “like the chaff which the wind drives away,” which
signifies not their destruction, but their disposition, for their
destruction is inferred from it (ver. 5), “therefore the ungodly shall
not stand in judgment.” How contrary is this to the unchangeable God,
who is alway the same, and would have us the same, in our religious
promises and resolutions for good!
4. If God be immutable, it is sad news to those that are resolved in
wickedness, or careless of returning to that duty he requires. Sinners
must not expect that God will alter his will, make a breach upon his
nature, and violate his own word to gratify their lusts. No, it is not
reasonable God should dishonor himself to secure them, and cease to be
God, that they may continue to be wicked, by changing his own nature,
that they may be unchanged in their vanity. God is the same; goodness
is as amiable in his sight, and sin as abominable in his eyes now, as
it was at the beginning of the world. Being the same God, he is the
same enemy to the wicked as the same friend to the righteous. He is
the same in knowledge, and cannot forget sinful acts. He is the same
in will, and cannot approve of unrighteous practices. Goodness cannot
but be alway the object of his love, and wickedness cannot but be
alway the object of his hatred: and as his aversion to sin is alway
the same, so as he hath been in his judgments upon sinners, the same
he will be still; for the same perfection of immutability belongs
to his justice for the punishment of sin, as to his holiness for his
disaffection to sin. Though the covenant of works was changeable by
the crime of man violating it, yet it was unchangeable in regard of
God’s justice vindicating it, which is inflexible in the punishment of
the breaches of his law. The law had a preceptive part, and a minatory
part: when man changed the observation of the precept, the righteous
nature of God could not null the execution of the threatening; he
could not, upon the account of this perfection, neglect his just word,
and countenance the unrighteous transgression. Though there were no
more rational creatures in being but Adam and Eve, yet God subjected
them to that death he had assured them of: and from this immutability
of his will, ariseth the necessity of the suffering of the Son of
God for the relief of the apostate creature. His will in the second
covenant is as unchangeable as that in the first, only repentance is
settled as the condition of the second, which was not indulged in the
first; and without repentance, the sinner must irrevocably perish, or
God must change his nature: there must be a change in man; there can
be none in God; his bow is bent, his arrows are ready, if the wicked
do not turn (Ps. vii. 11). There is not an atheist, an hypocrite, a
profane person, that ever was upon the earth, but God’s soul abhorred
him as such, and the like he will {a354} abhor forever; while any
therefore continue so, they may sooner expect the heavens should roll
as they please, the sun stand still at their order, the stars change
their course at their beck, than that God should change his nature,
which is opposite to profaneness and vanity; “Who hath hardened
himself against him, and hath prospered?” (Job ix. 4.)
_Use 2._ Of comfort. The immutability of a good God is a strong ground
of consolation. Subjects wish a good prince to live forever, as being
loth to change him, but care not how soon they are rid of an oppressor.
This unchangeableness of God’s will shows him as ready to accept any
that come to him as ever he was; so that we may with confidence make
our address to him, since he cannot change his affections to goodness.
The fear of change in a friend hinders a full reliance upon him; an
assurance of stability encourages hope and confidence. This attribute
is the strongest prop for faith in all our addresses; it is not a
single perfection, but the glory of all those that belong to his
nature; for he is unchangeable in his love (Jer. xxxi. 3), in his
truth (Ps. cxvii. 2). The more solemn revelation of himself in this
name, Jehovah, which signifies chiefly his eternity and immutability,
was to support the Israelites’ faith in expectation of a deliverance
from Egypt, that he had not retracted his purpose, and his promise
made to Abraham for giving Canaan to his posterity (Exod. iii. 14‒17).
Herein is the basis and strength of all his promises; therefore,
saith the Psalmist, “Those that know thy name, will put their trust
in thee” (Ps. ix. 10): those that are spiritually acquainted with
thy name, Jehovah, and have a true sense of it upon their hearts,
will put their trust in thee. His goodness could not be distrusted,
if his unchangeableness were well apprehended and considered. All
distrust would fly before it, as darkness before the sun; it only
gets advantage of us when we are not well grounded in his name; and
if ever we trusted God, we have the same reason to trust him forever:
(Isa. xxvi. 4) “Trust in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah
is everlasting strength;” or, as it is in the Hebrew, “a Rock of
Ages,” that is, perpetually unchangeable. We find the traces of God’s
immutability in the creatures. He has, by his peremptory decree, set
bounds to the sea: “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, and here
shall thy proud waves be stayed” (Job xxxviii. 11). Do we fear the sea
overflowing us in this island? No, because of his fixed decree. And
is not his promise in his Word as unchangeable as his word concerning
inanimate things, as good a ground to rest upon?
1. The covenant stands unchangeable. Mutable creatures break their
leagues and covenants, and snap them asunder like Samson’s cords, when
they are not accommodated to their interests. But an unchangeable God
keeps his: “The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but
my kindness shall not depart from thee, nor shall the covenant of my
peace be removed” (Isa. liv. 10). The heaven and earth shall sooner
fall asunder, and the strongest and firmest parts of the creation
crumble to dust, sooner than one iota of my covenant shall fail. It
depends upon the unchangeableness of his will and the unchangeableness
of his word, and, therefore, is called “the immutability of his
counsel” (Heb. vi. 17). It is the {a355} fruit of the everlasting
purpose of God; whence the apostle links purpose and grace together
(2 Tim. i. 9). A covenant with a nation may be changeable, because
it may not be built upon the eternal purpose of God, “to put his fear
in the heart;” but with respect to the creature’s obedience. Thus
God chose Jerusalem as the place wherein he would “dwell forever”
(Ps. cxxxii. 14), yet he threatens to depart from them when they had
broken covenant with him; “and the glory of the Lord went up from the
midst of the city to the mountain on the east side” (Ezek. xi. 33).
The covenant of grace doth not run, “I will be your God if you
will be my people;” but “I will be their God, and they shall be my
people” (Hos. ii. 19, &c.) “I will betroth thee to me forever; I will
say, Thou art my people, and they shall say, Thou art my God.” His
everlasting purpose is, to write his laws in the hearts of the elect.
He puts a condition to his covenant of grace, the condition of faith,
and he resolves to work that condition in the hearts of the elect;
and, therefore, believers have two immutable pillars for their support,
stronger than those erected by Solomon at the porch of the temple
(1 Kings vii. 21), called Jakin and Boaz, to note the firmness of
that building dedicated to God; these are election, or the standing,
counsel of God, and the covenant of grace. He will not revoke the
covenant, and blot the names of his elect out of the book of life.
2. Perseverance is ascertained. It consists not with the majesty of
God to call a person effectually to himself to‑day, to make him fit
for his eternal love, to give him faith, and take away that faith
to‑morrow. His effectual call is the fruit of his eternal election,
and that counsel hath no other foundation but his constant and
unchangeable will; a foundation that stands sure, and, therefore,
called the foundation of God, and not of the creature; “the foundation
of God stands sure, the Lord knows who are his” (2 Tim. ii. 19). It
is not founded upon our own natural strength; it may be then subject
to change, as all the products of nature are. The fallen angels had
created grace in their innocency, but lost it by their fall. Were this
the foundation of the creature, it might soon be shaken; since man,
after his revolt, can ascribe nothing constant to himself, but his own
inconstancy. But the foundation is not in the infirmity of nature, but
the strength of grace, and of the grace of God, who is immutable, who
wants not virtue to be able, nor kindness to be willing, to preserve
his own foundation.[631] To what purpose doth our Saviour tell his
disciples their names “were written in heaven” (Luke x. 20), but to
mark the infallible certainty of their salvation by an opposition to
those things which perish, and have their “names written in the earth”
(Jer. xvii. 23); or upon the sand, where they may be defaced? And why
should Christ order his disciples to rejoice that their names were
written in heaven, if God were changeable to blot them out again? or
why should the apostle assure us, that though God had rejected the
greatest part of the Jews, he had not, therefore, rejected his people
elected according to his purpose and immutable counsel; because there
are none of the elect of God but will come to salvation? For, saith
he, the “election hath obtained it” (Rom. xi. 7); that is, {a356}
all those that are of the election have obtained it, and the others
are hardened. Where the seal of sanctification is stamped, it is a
testimony of God’s election, and that foundation shall stand sure:
“The foundation of the Lord stands sure, having this seal, the Lord
knows who are his;” that is the foundation, the “naming the name of
Christ,” or believing in Christ, and “departing from iniquity,” is the
seal.[632] As it is impossible when God calls those things that are
not, but that they should spring up into being and appear before him;
so it is impossible but that the seed of God, by his eternal purpose,
should be brought to a spiritual life, and that calling cannot be
retracted; for that “gift and calling is without repentance” (Rom.
xi. 29). And when repentance is removed from God in regard of some
works, the immutability of those works is declared; and the reason of
that immutability is their pure dependence on the eternal favor and
unchangeable grace of God “purposed in himself” (Eph. i. 9, 11), and
not upon the mutability of the creature. Hence their happiness is not
as patents among men, _quam diu bene se gesserint_, so long as they
behave themselves well; but they have a promise that they shall behave
themselves so as never wholly to depart from God (Jer. xxxii. 40): “I
will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away
from them to do them good, but I will put my fear in their hearts,
that they shall not depart from me.” God will not turn from them, to
do them good, and promiseth that they shall not turn from him forever,
or forsake him. And the bottom of it is the everlasting covenant,
and, therefore, believing and sealing for security are linked together
(Eph. i. 13). And when God doth inwardly teach us his law, he puts
in a will not to depart from it: (Ps. cxix. 102) “I have not departed
from thy judgments;” what is the reason? “For thou hast taught me.”
3. By this eternal happiness is insured. This is the inference made
from the eternity and unchangeableness of God in the verse following
the text (ver. 28): “The children of thy servants shall continue,
and their seed shall be established before thee.” This is the sole
conclusion drawn from those perfections of God solemnly asserted
before. The children which the prophets and apostles have begotten
to thee, shall be totally delivered from the relics of their apostasy,
and the punishment due to them, and rendered partakers of immortality
with thee, as sons to dwell in their Father’s house forever. The
Spirit begins a spiritual life here, to fit for an immutable life in
glory hereafter, where believers shall be placed upon a throne that
cannot be shaken, and possess a crown that shall not be taken off
their heads forever.
_Use 3._ Of exhortation. 1. Let a sense of the changeableness and
uncertainty of all other things beside God, be upon us. There are as
many changes as there are figures in the world. The whole fashion of
the world is a transient thing; every man may say as Job, “Changes and
war are against me” (Job x. 17). Lot chose the plain of Sodom, because
it was the richer soil. He was but a little time there before he was
taken prisoner, and his substance made the spoil of his enemies. That
is again restored; but a while after, fire from {a357} heaven devours
his wealth, though his person was secured from the judgment by a
special Providence. We burn with a desire to settle ourselves, but
mistake the way, and build castles in the air, which vanish like
bubbles of soap in water. And, therefore,
(1.) Let not our thoughts dwell much upon them. Do but consider those
souls that are in the possession of an unchangeable God, that behold
his never‑fading glory! Would it not be a kind of hell to them to have
their thoughts starting out to these things, or find any desire in
themselves to the changeable trifles of the earth? Nay, have we not
reason to think that they cover their faces with shame, that ever
they should have such a weakness of spirit when they were here below,
as to spend more thoughts upon them than were necessary for this
present life; much more that they should at any time value and court
them above an unchangeable good? Do they not disdain themselves that
they should ever debase the immutable perfections of God, as to have
neglecting thoughts of him at any time, for the entertainment of such
a mean and inconstant rival?
(2.) Much less should we trust in them, or rejoice in them. The best
things are mutable, and things of such a nature are not fit objects
of confidence. Trust not in riches, they have their wanes as well as
increases; they rise sometimes like a torrent, and flow in upon men,
but resemble also a torrent in as sudden a fall and departure, and
leave nothing but slime behind them. Trust not in honor; all the honor
and applause in the world is no better than an inheritance of wind,
which the pilot is not sure of, but shifts from one corner to another,
and stands not perpetually in the same point of the heavens. How, in
a few ages did the house of David, a great monarch, and a man after
God’s own heart, descend to a mean condition, and all the glory of
that house shut up in the stock of a carpenter? David’s sheep‑hook
was turned into a sceptre, and the sceptre by the same hand of
Providence turned into a hatchet in Joseph his descendant. Rejoice not
immoderately in wisdom; that, and learning languish with age. A wound
in the head may impair that which is the glory of man. If an organ
be out of frame, folly may succeed, and all a man’s prudence be wound
up in an irrecoverable dotage. Nebuchadnezzar was no fool, yet, by a
sudden hand of God, he became not only a fool or a madman, but a kind
of brute. Rejoice not in strength; that decays, and a mighty man may
live to see his strong arm withered, and a grasshopper to become a
burthen (Eccles. xii. 5): “The strong men shall bow themselves, and
the grinders shall cease because they are few” (ver. 3): nor rejoice
in children; they are like birds upon a tree, that make a little
chirping music, and presently fall into the fowler’s net. Little
did Job expect such sad news as the loss of all his progeny at a
blow, when the messenger knocked at his gate; and such changes happen
oftentimes when our expectations of comfort, and a contentment in them,
are at the highest. How often doth a string crack when the musician
hath wound it up to a just height for a tune, and all his pains and
delight marred in a moment! Nay, all these things change while we
are using them, like ice that melts between our fingers, {a358}
and flowers that wither while we are smelling to them. The apostle
gave them a good title when he called them “uncertain riches,” and
thought it a strong argument to dissuade them from trusting in them
(1 Tim. vi. 17). The wealth of the merchant depends upon the winds
and waves, and the revenue of the husbandman upon the clouds; and
since they depend upon those things which are used to express the
most changeableness, they can be no fit object for trust. Besides,
God sometimes kindles a fire under all a man’s glory, which doth
insensibly consume it (Isa. x. 16); and while we have them, the fear
of losing them renders us not very happy in the fruition of them;
we can scarce tell whether they are contentments or no, because
sorrow follows them so close at the heels. It is not an unnecessary
exhortation for good men; the best men have been apt to place too
much trust in them. David thought himself immutable in his prosperity,
and such thoughts could not be without some immoderate outlets of
the heart to them, and confidences in them; and Job promised himself
to die in his nest, and “multiply his days as the sand,” without
any interruption (Job xxix. 18, 19, &c.); but he was mistaken and
disappointed. Let me add this: trust not in men, who are as inconstant
as anything else, and often change their most ardent affections into
implacable hatred; and though their affections may not be changed, the
power to help you may. Haman’s friends, that depended on him one day,
were crest‑fallen the next, when their patron was to exchange his
chariot of state for an ignominious gallows.
(3.) Prefer an immutable God before mutable creatures. Is it not
a horrible thing to see what we are, and what we possess, daily
crumbling to dust, and in a continual flux from us, and not seek
out something that is permanent, and always abide the same, for our
portion? In God, or Wisdom, which is Christ, there is substance (Prov.
viii. 21), in which respect he is opposed to all the things in the
world, that are but shadows, that are shorter or longer, according
to the motion of the sun; mutable also, by every little body that
intervenes. God is subject to no decay within, to no force without;
nothing in his own nature can change him from what he is, and there
is no power above can hinder him from being what he will to the soul.
He is an ocean of all perfection: he wants nothing without himself to
render him blessed, which may allure him to a change. His creatures
can want nothing out of him to make them happy, whereby they may be
enticed to prefer anything before him. If we enjoy other things, it is
by God’s donation, who can as well withdraw them as bestow them; and
it is but a reasonable, as well as a necessary thing, to endeavor the
enjoyment of the immutable Benefactor, rather than his revocable gifts.
If the creatures had a sufficient virtue in themselves to ravish
our thoughts and engross our souls; yet when we take a prospect of a
fixed and unchangeable Being, what beauty, what strength have any of
those things to vie with him? How can they bear up and maintain their
interest against a lively thought and sense of God? All the glory of
them would fly before him like that of the stars before the sun. They
were once nothing, they may be nothing again; as their own nature
brought {a359} them not out of nothing, so their nature secures them
not from being reduced to nothing. What an unhappiness is it to have
our affections set upon that which retains something of its _non esse_
with its _esse_, its not being with its being; that lives indeed, but
in a continual flux, and may lose that pleasurableness to‑morrow which
charms us to‑day?
2. This doctrine will teach us patience under such providences as
declare his unchangeable will. The rectitude of our wills consists in
conformity to the Divine, as discovered in his words, and manifested
in his providence, which are the effluxes of his immutable will. The
time of trial is appointed by his immutable will (Dan. xi. 35); it
is not in the power of the sufferer’s will to shorten it, nor in the
power of the enemies’ will to lengthen it. Whatsoever doth happen hath
been decreed by God (Eccles. vi. 10), “That which hath been is named
already;” therefore to murmur or be discontented is to contend with
God, who is mightier than we, to maintain his own purposes. God doth
act all things conveniently for that immutable end intended by himself,
and according to the reason of his own will, in the true point of time
most proper for it and for us, not too soon or too slow, because he is
unchangeable in knowledge and wisdom. God doth not act anything barely
by an immutable will, but by an immutable wisdom, and an unchangeable
rule of goodness; and, therefore, we should not only acquiesce in what
he works, but have a complacency in it; and by having our wills thus
knitting themselves with the immutable will of God, we attain some
degree of likeness to him in his own unchangeableness. When, therefore,
God hath manifested his will in opening his decree to the world by his
work of providence, we must cease all disputes against it, and, with
Aaron hold our peace, though the affliction be very smart (Rev. x. 3).
“All flesh must be silent before God” (Zech. ii. 13); for whatsoever
is his counsel shall stand, and cannot be recalled. All struggling
against it is like a brittle glass contending with a rock; for “if
he cut off and shut up, or gather together, then who can hinder him?”
(Job xi. 10.) Nothing can help us, if he hath determined to afflict
us, as nothing can hurt us, if he hath determined to secure us. The
more clearly God hath evidenced this or that to be his will, the more
sinful is our struggling against it. Pharaoh’s sin was the greater
in keeping Israel, by how much the more God’s miracles had been
demonstrations of his settled will to deliver them. Let nothing snatch
our hearts to a contradiction to him, but let us fear and give glory
to him, when the hour of judgment which he hath appointed is come (Rev.
xiv. 7); that is, comply with the unchangeable will of his precept,
the more he declares the immutable will of his providence. We must not
think God must disgrace his nature and change his proceedings for us;
better the creature should suffer, than God be impaired in any of his
perfections. If God changed his purpose he would change his nature.
Patience is the way to perform the immutable will of God, and a means
to attain a gracious immutability for ourselves by receiving the
promise (Heb. x. 36), “Ye have need of patience, that after ye have
done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.”
{a360} 3. This doctrine will teach us to imitate God in this
perfection, by striving to be immovable in goodness. God never goes
back from himself; he finds nothing better than himself for which he
should change; and can we find anything better than God, to allure
our hearts to a change from him? The sun never declines from the
ecliptic line, nor should we from the paths of holiness. A steadfast
obedience is encouraged by an unchangeable God to reward it (1 Cor.
xv. 58): “Be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work
of the Lord, knowing that your labor shall not be in vain in the
Lord.” Unsteadfastness is the note of a hypocrite (Ps. lxxviii. 37):
steadfastness in that which is good is the mark of a saint; it is the
character of a righteous person to “keep the truth” (Isa. xxvi. 2).
And it is as positively said that “he that abides not in the doctrine
of Christ hath not God” (2 John, 9); but he that doth, “hath both
the Father and the Son.” So much of uncertainty, so much of nature,
so much of firmness in duty, so much of grace. We can never honor
God unless we finish his work; as Christ did not glorify God but in
finishing the work God gave him to do (John xvii. 4). The nearer the
world comes to an end, the more is God’s immutability seen in his
promises and predictions, and the more must our unchangeableness
be seen in our obedience (Heb. x. 23, 25): “Let us hold fast the
profession of our faith without wavering, and so much the more as
you see the day approaching.” The christian Jews were to be the more
tenacious of their faith, the nearer they saw the day approaching, the
day of Jerusalem’s destruction prophesied of by Daniel (Dan. ix. 26),
which accomplishment must be a great argument to establish the
christian Jews in the profession of Christ to be the Messiah, because
the destruction of the city was not to be before the cutting off the
Messiah. Let us be, therefore, constant in our profession and service
of God, and not suffer ourselves to be driven from him by the ill
usage, or flattered from him by the caresses of the world.
(1.) It is reasonable. If God be unchangeable in doing us good, it is
reason we should be unchangeable in doing him service. If he assure
us that he is our God, our “I Am,” he would also that we should be his
people; his we are. If he declare himself constant in his promises,
he expects we should be so in our obedience. As a spouse, we should
be unchangeably faithful to him as a Husband; as subjects, have an
unchangeable allegiance to him as our Prince. He would not have us
faithful to him for an hour or a day, but “to the death” (Rev. ii. 10);
and it is reason we should be his, and if we be his children, imitate
him in his constancy of his holy purposes.
(2.) It is our glory and interest. To be a reed shaken with every wind
is no commendation among men, and it is less a ground of praise with
God. It was Job’s glory that he held fast his integrity (Job i. 22):
“In all this Job sinned not;” in all this,――which whole cities and
kingdoms would have thought ground enough of high exclamations against
God, and also against the temptation of his wife,――he retained his
integrity (Job ii. 9): “Dost thou still retain thy integrity?” The
devil, who by God’s permission stripped him {a361} of his goods and
health, yet could not strip him of his grace. As a traveller, when the
wind and snow beats in his face, wraps his cloak more closely about
him to preserve that and himself. Better we had never made profession,
than afterwards to abandon it; such a withering profession serves
for no other use than to aggravate the crime, if any of us fly like a
coward, or revolt like a traitor; what profit will it be to a soldier,
if he hath withstood many assaults, and turn his back at last? If we
would have God crown us with an immutable glory, we must crown our
beginnings with a happy perseverance (Rev. ii. 10): “Be faithful to
the death, and I will give thee a crown of life;” not as though this
were the cause to merit it, but a necessary condition to possess it:
constancy in good is accompanied with an immutability of glory.
(3.) By an unchangeable disposition to good, we should begin the
happiness of heaven upon earth. This is the perfection of blessed
spirits, those that are nearest to God as angels and glorified souls,
they are immutable; not, indeed, by nature, but by grace; yet not only
by a necessity of grace, but a liberty of will: grace will not let
them change; and that grace doth animate their wills that they would
not change; an immutable God fills their understandings and affections,
and gives satisfaction to their desires. The saints when they were
below, tried other things, and found them deficient; but now they
are so fully satisfied with the beatific vision, that if Satan should
have an entrance among the angels and sons of God, it is not likely
he should have any influence upon them; he could not present to their
understandings anything that could either at the first glance, or upon
a deliberate view, be preferable to what they enjoy and are fixed in.
Well, then, let us be immovable in the knowledge and love of God. It
is the delight of God to see his creatures resemble him in what they
are able. Let not our affections to him be as Jonah’s gourd, growing
up in one night and withering the next. Let us not only fight a good
fight, but do so till we have finished our course, and imitate God
in an unchangeableness of holy purposes; and to that purpose, examine
ourselves daily what fixedness we have arrived unto; and to prevent
any temptation to a revolt, let us often possess our minds with
thoughts of the immutability of God’s nature and will, which, like
fire under water, will keep a good matter boiling up in us, and make
it both retain and increase its heat.
(4.) Let this doctrine teach us to have recourse to God, and aim at a
near conjunction with him. When our spirits begin to flag, and a cold
aguish temper is drawing upon us, let us go to him who can only fix
our hearts, and furnish us with a ballast to render them steadfast.
As he is only immutable in his nature, so he is the only principle
of immutability, as well as being in the creature. Without his grace,
we shall be as changeable in our appearances as the chameleon, and in
our turnings as the wind. When Peter trusted in himself, he changed to
the worse; it was his Master’s recourse to God for him that preserved
in him a reducing principle, which changed him again for the better,
and fixed him in it (Luke xxii. 32). It will be our interest to be in
conjunction with him, that moves not about with the heavens, nor is
turned by the force of nature, nor {a362} changed by the accidents in
the world; but sits in the heavens, moving all things by his powerful
arm, according to his infinite skill. While we have him for our God,
we have his immutability as well as any other perfection of his nature
for our advantage; the nearer we come to him, the more stability we
shall have in ourselves; the further from him, the more liable to
change. The line that is nearest to the place where it is first fixed,
is least subject to motion; the further it is stretched from it, the
weaker it is, and more liable to be shaken. Let us also affect those
things which are nearest to him in this perfection; the righteousness
of Christ that shall never wear out, and the graces of the Spirit that
shall never burn out; by this means, what God is infinitely by nature,
we shall come to be finitely immutable by grace, as much as the
capacity of a creature can contain.
{a363} DISCOURSE VII.
ON GOD’S OMNIPRESENCE.
JEREMIAH xxiii. 24.――Can any hide himself in secret places, that
I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and
earth? saith the Lord.
THE occasion of this discourse begins ver. 16, where God admonisheth
the people, not to hearken to the words of the false prophets which
spake a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the
Lord. They made the people vain by their insinuations of peace, when
God had proclaimed war and calamity; and uttered the dreams of their
fancies, and not the visions of the Lord; and so turned the people
from the expectation of the evil day which God had threatened (ver.
17): “They say still unto them that despise me, The Lord hath said,
Ye shall have peace: and they say unto every one that walks after the
imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you.” And they
invalidate the prophecies of those whom God had sent, ver. 18: “Who
hath stood in the counsel of the Lord, and hath perceived and heard
his word? who hath marked his word, and heard it?” Who hath stood in
the counsel of the Lord? Are they acquainted with the secrets of God
more than we? Who have the word of the Lord, if we have not? Or, it
may be a continuation of God’s admonition: believe not those prophets;
for who of them have been acquainted with the secrets of God? or by
what means should they learn his counsel? No; assure yourselves “a
whirlwind of the Lord is gone forth in fury, even a grievous whirlwind;
it shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked” (ver. 19). A
whirlwind shall come from Babylon; it is just at the door, and shall
not be blown over; it shall fall with a witness upon the wicked people
and the deceiving prophets, and sweep them together into captivity.
For (ver. 20), “The anger of the Lord shall not return, until he
have executed, and till he have performed the thoughts of his heart.”
My fury shall not be a childish fury, that quickly languisheth, but
shall accomplish whatsoever I threaten; and burn so hot, as not to be
cool, till I have satisfied my vengeance; “in the latter days ye shall
consider it perfectly” (ver. 20), when the storm shall beat upon you,
you shall then know that the calamities shall answer the words you
have heard. When the conqueror shall waste your grounds, demolish your
houses, and manacle your hands, then shall you consider it, and have
the wishes of fools, that you had had your eyes in your heads before;
you shall then know the falseness of your guides, and the {a364} truth
of my prophets, and discern who stood in the counsel of the Lord, and
subscribe to the messages I have sent you.
Some understand this not only of the Babylonish captivity, but
refer it to the time of Christ, and the false doctrine of men’s own
righteousness in opposition to the righteousness of God; understanding
this verse to be partly a threatening of wrath, which shall end in
an advantage to the Jews, who shall in the latter time consider the
falseness of their notions about a legal righteousness, and so make
it a promise; they shall then know the intent of the Scripture, and in
the latter days, the latter end of the world, when time shall be near
the rolling up, they shall reflect upon themselves; they shall “look
upon Him whom they have pierced;” and till these latter days, they
shall be hardened, and believe nothing of evangelical truths. Now
God denieth that he sent those prophets (ver. 21): “I have not sent
these prophets, yet they ran; I have not spoken to them, yet they
prophesied.” They have intruded themselves without a commission from
me, whatsoever their brags are. The reason to prove it is (ver. 22),
“If they had stood in my counsel,” if they had been instructed, and
inspired by me, “they would have caused my people to hear my words;”
they would have regulated themselves according to my word, “and have
turned them from their evil way;” _i. e._ endeavored to shake down
their false confidences of peace, and make them sensible of their
false notions of me, and my ways. Now because those false prophets
could not be so impudent as to boast that they prophesied in the name
of God, when they had not commission from him, unless they had some
secret sentiment, that they and their intentions were hid from the
knowledge and eye of God; he adds (ver. 33), “Am I a God at hand,
and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places, that
I shall not see him?” Have I not the power of seeing and knowing what
they do, what they design, what they think? Why should I not have
such a power, since I fill heaven and earth by my essence? “Am I a
God at hand, and not a God afar off?” He excludes here the doctrine
of those that excluded the providence of God from extending itself to
the inferior things of the earth; which error was ancient, as ancient
as the time of Job, as appears by their opinion, that God’s eyes were
hood‑winked and muffled by the thickness of the clouds, and could not
pierce through their dark and dense body (Job xxii. 14): “Thick clouds
are a covering to him, that he seeth not.”
Some refer it to time.[633] Do you imagine me a God new framed like
your idols, beginning a little time ago, and not existing before the
foundation of the world; yea, from eternity? a God afar off, further
than your acutest understandings can reach? I am of a longer standing,
and you ought to know my majesty. But it rather refers to place
than time. Do you think I do not behold everything in the earth, as
well as in heaven? Am I locked up within the walls of my palace, and
cannot peep out to behold the things done in the world? or that am I
so linked to pleasure in the place of my glory, as earthly kings are
in their courts, that I have no mind or leisure {a365} to take notice
of the carriages of men upon earth? God doth not say, He was afar off,
but only gives an account of the inward thoughts of their minds, or
at least of the language expressed by their actions. The interrogation
carries in it a strong affirmation, and assures us more of God’s care,
and the folly of men in not considering it. “Am I a God at hand, and
not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places?” (Heb.) In
hiddenesses, in the deepest cells. What! are you besotted by your base
lusts, that you think me a God careless, ignorant, blind, that I can
see nothing, but as a purblind man, what is very near my eye? Are
you so out of your wits, that you imagine you can deceive me? Do
not all your behaviors speak such a sentiment to lie secret in your
heart, though not formed into a full conception, yet testified by
your actions? No, you are much mistaken; it is impossible but that
I should see and know all things, since I am present with all things,
and am not at a greater distance from the things on earth than from
the things in heaven; for I fill all that vast fabric which is divided
into those two parts of heaven and earth; and he that hath such an
infinite essence, cannot be distant, cannot be ignorant; nothing
can be far from his eyes, since everything is so near to his essence.
So that it is an elegant expression of the omniscience of God, and
a strong argument for it. He asserts, first, the universality of his
knowledge; but lest they should mistake, and confine his presence only
to heaven, he adds, That he “fills heaven and earth.” I do not see
things so, as if I were in one place, and the things seen in another,
as it is with man; but whatsoever I see, I see not without myself,
because every corner of heaven and earth is filled by me. He that
fills all, must needs see and know all. And indeed, men that question
the knowledge of God, would be more convinced by the doctrine of his
immediate presence with them. And this seems to be the design and
manner of arguing in this place. Nothing is remote from my knowledge,
because nothing is distant from my presence.
_I fill heaven and earth_: he doth not say, “I am in heaven and earth,
” but I _fill_ heaven and earth; _i. e._ say some, with my knowledge,
others, with my authority or my power.[634] But,
1. The word _filling_ cannot properly be referred to the act of
understanding and will. A presence by knowledge is to be granted, but
to say such a presence fills a place is an improper speech: knowledge
is not enough to constitute a presence. A man at London knows there is
such a city as Paris, and knows many things in it; can he be concluded,
therefore, to be present in Paris, or fill any place there, or be
present with the things he knows there? If I know anything to be
distant from me, how can it be present with me? For by knowing it to
be distant, I know it not to be present. Besides, filling heaven and
earth is distinguished here from knowing or seeing: his presence is
rendered as an argument to prove his knowledge. Now a proposition,
and the proof of that proposition, are distinct, and not the same. It
cannot be imagined that God should prove _idem per idem_, as we say;
for what would be the import of the speech then? I know all things,
I see all things, because {a366} I know and see all things.[635] The
Holy Ghost here accommodates himself to the capacity of men; because
we know that a man sees and knows that which is done, where he is
corporally present; so he proves that God knows all things that are
done in the most secret caverns of the heart, because he is everywhere
in heaven and earth, as light is everywhere in the air, and air
everywhere in the world. Hence the schools use the term _repletive_
for the presence of God.
2. Nor by filling of heaven and earth is meant his authority and
power. It would be improperly said of a king, that in regard of
the government of his kingdom, is everywhere by his authority, that
he fills all the cities and countries of his dominions. “I, do not
I fill?”[636] That “I” notes the essence of God, as distinguished
according to our capacity, from the perfections pertaining to his
essence, and is in reason better referred to the substance of God,
than to those things we conceive as attributes in him. Besides, were
it meant only of his authority or power, the argument would not run
well. I see all things, because my authority and power fills heaven
and earth. Power doth not always rightly infer knowledge, no, not in
a rational agent. Many things in a kingdom are done by the authority
of the king, that never arrive to the knowledge of the king. Many
things in us are done by the power of our souls, which yet we have not
a distinct knowledge of in our understandings. There are many motions
in sleep, by the virtue of the soul informing the body, that we have
not so much as a simple knowledge of in our minds. Knowledge is not
rightly inferred from power, or power from knowledge. By filling
heaven and earth is meant, therefore, a filling it with his essence.
No place can be imagined that is deprived of the presence of God; and
therefore when the Scripture anywhere speaks of the presence of God,
it joins heaven and earth together: He so fills them, that there is no
place without him. We do not say a vessel is full so long as there is
any space to contain more. Not a part of heaven, nor a part of earth,
but the whole heaven, the whole earth, at one and the same time. If he
were only in one part of heaven, or one part of earth; nay, if there
were any part of heaven, or any part of earth void of him, he could
not be said to fill them. “I fill heaven and earth,” not a part of
me fills one place, and another part of me fills another, but I, God,
fill heaven and earth; I am whole God filling the heaven, and whole
God, filling the earth. I fill heaven, and yet fill earth; I fill
earth, and yet fill heaven, and fill heaven and earth at one and the
same time. “God fills his own works,” a heathen philosopher saith.[637]
I. Here is then a description of God’s presence. 1. By power,
“Am I not a God afar off?” a God in the extension of his arm. 2. By
knowledge, “Shall I not see them?” 3. By essence; as an undeniable
ground for inferring the two former: “I fill heaven and earth.”
_Doctrine._ God is essentially everywhere present in heaven and
earth. If God be, he must be somewhere; that which is nowhere, is
nothing. Since God is, he is in the world; not in one part of it;
for {a367} then he were circumscribed by it: if in the world, and
only there, though it be a great space, he were also limited. Some
therefore said, “God was everywhere, and nowhere.”[638] Nowhere,
_i. e._ not bounded by any place, nor receiving from any place
anything for his preservation or sustainment. He is everywhere,
because no creature, either body or spirit, can exclude the presence
of his essence; for he is not only near, but in everything (Acts
xvii. 28): “In him we live, and move, and have our being.” Not absent
from anything, but so present with them, that they live and move in
him, and move more in God, than in the air or earth wherein they are;
nearer to us than our flesh to our bones, than the air to our breath;
he cannot be far from them that live, and have every motion in him.
The apostle doth not say, By him, but in him, to show the inwardness
of his presence. As eternity is the perfection whereby he hath neither
beginning nor end, immutability is the perfection whereby he hath
neither increase nor diminution, so immensity or omnipresence is that
whereby he hath neither bounds nor limitation. As he is in all time,
yet so as to be above time; so is he in all places, yet so as to be
above limitation by any place. It was a good expression of a heathen
to illustrate this, “That God is a sphere or circle, whose centre
is everywhere, and circumference nowhere.” His meaning was, that
the essence of God was indivisible; _i. e._ could not be divided. It
cannot be said, here and there the lines of it terminate; it is like
a line drawn out in infinite spaces, that no point can be conceived
where its length and breadth ends. The sea is a vast mass of waters;
yet to that it is said, “Hitherto shalt thou go, and no further.”
But it cannot be said of God’s essence, hitherto it reaches, and no
further; here it is, and there it is not. It is plain, that God is
thus immense, because he is infinite; we have reason and Scripture
to assent to it, though we cannot conceive it. We know that God is
eternal, though eternity is too great to be measured by the short line
of a created understanding. We cannot conceive the vastness and glory
of the heavens, much less that which is so great, as to fill heaven
and earth, yea (1 Kings viii. 27), “not to be contained in the heaven
of Heavens.” Things are said to be present, or in a place,
1. Circumscriptive, as circumscribed. This belongs to things that
have quantity, as bodies that are encompassed by that place wherein
they are; and a body fills but one particular space wherein it is, and
the space is commensurate to every part of it, and every member hath a
distinct place. The hand is not in the same particular space that the
foot or head is.
2. Definitive, which belongs to angels and spirits, which are said to
be in a point, yet so as that they cannot be said to be in another at
the same time.
3. _Repletive_, filling all places. This belongs only to God: as he
is not measured by time, so he is not limited by place. A body or
spirit, because finite, fills but one space; God, because infinite,
fills all, yet so as not to be contained in them, as wine and water
is in a vessel. He is from the height of the heavens to the bottom
of the deeps, in {a368} every point of the world, and in the whole
circle of it, yet not limited by it, but beyond it. Now this hath
been acknowledged by the wisest in the world. Some indeed had other
notions of God. The more ignorant sort of the Jews confined him to the
temple.[639] And God intimates, that they had such a thought when he
asserts his presence in heaven and earth, in opposition to the temple
they built as his house, and the place of his rest.[640] And the
idolaters among them, thought their gods might be at a distance from
them, which Elias intimates in the scoff he puts upon them (1 Kings
xviii. 17), “Cry aloud, for he is a god,” meaning Baal; “either he is
talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey;” and they followed
his advice, and cried louder (ver. 28), whereby it is evident, they
looked not on it as a mock, but as a truth. And the Syrians called the
God of Israel the God of the hills, as though his presence were fixed
there, and not in the valleys (1 Kings xx. 23); and their own gods in
the valleys, and not in the mountains; they fancied every god to have
a particular dominion and presence in one place and not in another,
and bounded the territories of their gods as they did those of their
princes.[641] And some thought him tied to and shut up in their
temples and groves wherein they worshipped him.[642] Some of them
thought God to be confined to heaven, and therefore sacrificed upon
the highest mountains, that the steam might ascend nearer heaven,
and their praises be heard better in those places which were nearest
to the habitation of God. But the wiser Jews acknowledged it, and
therefore called God place,[643] whereby they denoted his immensity;
he was not contained in any place; every part of the world subsists by
Him: he was a place to himself, greater than anything made by Him. And
the wiser heathens acknowledged it also. One calls God a mind passing
through the universal nature of things;[644] another, that He was an
infinite and immense air;[645] another, that it is as natural to think
God is everywhere, as to think that God is: hence they called God the
soul of the world; that as the soul is in every part of the body to
quicken it, so is God in every part of the world to support it. And
there are some resemblances of this in the world, though no creature
can fully resemble God in any one perfection; for then it would not
be a creature, but God. But air and light are some resemblances of it:
air is in all the spaces of the world, in the pores of all bodies, in
the bowels of the earth, and extends itself from the lowest earth to
the highest regions; and the heavens themselves are probably nothing
else but a refined kind of air; and light diffuseth itself through
the whole air, and every part of it is truly light, as every part of
the air is truly air; and though they seem to be mingled together,
yet they are distinct things, and not of the same essence; so is the
essence of God in the whole world, not by diffusion as air or light,
not mixed with any creature, but remaining distinct from the essence
of any created being. Now, when this hath been owned by men instructed
only in the school of nature, it is a greater {a369} shame to any
acquainted with the Scripture to deny. For the understanding of this,
there shall be some propositions premised in general.
_Prop. I._ This is negatively to be understood. Our knowledge
of God is most by withdrawing from him, or denying to him in our
conceptions any weaknesses or imperfections in the creature. As the
infiniteness of God is a denial of limitation of being, so immensity
or omnipresence is a denial of limitation of place: and when we say,
God is _totus_ in every place, we must understand it thus; that he is
not everywhere by parts, as bodies are, as air and light are; He is
everywhere, _i. e._ his nature hath no bounds; he is not tied to any
place, as the creature is, who, when he is present in one place, is
absent from another. As no place can be without God, so no place can
compass and contain him.
_Prop. II._ There is an influential omnipresence of God.
1. Universal with all creatures. He is present with all things by
his authority, because all things are subject to him: by his power,
because all things are sustained by him: by his knowledge, because all
things are naked before him. He is present in the world, as a king is
in all parts of his kingdom regally present: providentially present
with all, since his care extends to the meanest of his creatures. His
power reacheth all, and his knowledge pierceth all. As everything in
the world was created by God, so everything in the world is preserved
by God; and since preservation is not wholly distinct from creation,
it is necessary God should be present with everything while he
preserves it, as well as present with it when he created it. “Thou
preservest man and beast” (Ps. xxxvi. 6). “He upholds all things by
the word of his power” (Heb. i. 3). There is a virtue sustaining every
creature, that it may not fall back into that nothing from whence
it was elevated by the power of God. All those natural virtues we
call the principles of operation, are fountains springing from his
goodness and power; all things are acted and managed by him, as
well as preserved by him; and in this sense God is present with all
creatures; for whatsoever acts another, is present with that which
it acts, by sending forth some virtue and influence whereby it acts:
if free agents do not only live, but move in him and by him (Acts
xvii. 28), much more are the motions of other natural agents by
a virtue communicated to them, and upheld in them in the time of
their acting. This virtual presence of God is evident to our sense,
a presence we feel; his essential presence is evident in our reason.
This influential presence may be compared to that of the sun, which
though at so great a distance from the earth, is present in the air
and earth by its light, and within the earth by its influence in
concocting those metals which are in the bowels of it, without being
substantially either of them. God is thus so intimate with every
creature, that there is not the least particle of any creature, but
the marks of his power and goodness are seen in it, and his goodness
doth attend them, and is more swift in its effluxes than the breakings
out of light from the sun, which yet are more swift than can be
declared; but to say he is in the world only by his virtue, is to
acknowledge only the effects of his power and wisdom in the world,
{a370} that his eye sees all, his arm supports all, his goodness
nourisheth all, but himself and his essence at a distance from
them;[646] and so the soul of man according to its measure would have
in some kind a more excellent manner of presence in the body, than
God according to the infiniteness of his Being with his creatures;
for that doth not only communicate life to the body, but is actually
present with it, and spreads its whole essence through the body and
every member of it. All grant, that God is efficaciously in every
creek of the world; but some say he is only substantially in heaven.
2. Limited to such subjects that are capacitated for this or
that kind of presence. Yet it is an omnipresence, because it is
a presence in all the subjects capacitated for it; thus there is
a special providential presence of God with some in assisting them
when he sets them on work as his instruments for some special service
in the world. As with Cyrus (Isa. xlv. 2), “I will go before thee;”
and with Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander, whom he protected and directed
to execute his counsels in the world; such a presence Judas and
others[647] that shall not enjoy his glorious presence, had in
the working of miracles in the world. Besides,[648] as there is an
effective presence of God with all creatures, because he produced
them and preserves them, so there is an objective presence of God with
rational creatures, because he offers himself to them to be known and
loved by them. He is near to wicked men in the offers of his grace,
“Call ye upon him while he is near” (Isa. lv. 6); besides, there is a
gracious presence of God with his people in whom he dwells and makes
his abode, as in a temple consecrated to him by the graces of the
Spirit. “We will come” (John xiv. 23), _i. e._ the Father and the Son,
and make our abode with him. He is present with all by the presence
of his Divinity, but only in his saints by a presence of a gracious
efficacy; he walks in the midst of the golden candlesticks, and hath
dignified the congregation of his people with the title of Jehovah
Shammah, “the Lord is there” (Ezek. xlviii. 35): “in Salem is his
tabernacle, and his dwelling‑place in Sion” (Ps. lxxvi. 2). As he
filled the tabernacle, so he doth the church with the signs of his
presence; this is not the presence wherewith he fills heaven and
earth. His Spirit is not bestowed upon all to reside in their hearts,
enlighten their minds, and bedew them with refreshing comforts. When
the Apostle speaks of God being “above all and through all” (Eph.
iv. 6), above all in his majesty, through all in his providence;
he doth not appropriate that as he doth what follows, “and in you
all;” in you all by a special grace; as God was specially present
with Christ by the grace of union, so he is specially present
with his people by the grace of regeneration. So there are several
manifestations of his presence; he hath a presence of glory in heaven,
whereby he comforts the saints; a presence of wrath in hell, whereby
he torments the damned; in heaven he is a God spreading his beams of
light; in hell, a God distributing his strokes of justice; by the one
he fills heaven; by the other he fills hell; by his providence and
essence he fills both heaven and earth.
{a371} _Prop. III._ There is an essential presence of God in the
world. He is not only everywhere by his power upholding the creatures,
by his wisdom understanding them, but by his essence containing them.
That anything is essentially present anywhere, it hath from God; God
is therefore much more present everywhere, for he cannot give that
which he hath not.
1. He is essentially present in all places.[649] It is as reasonable
to think the essence of God to be everywhere as to be always.
Immensity is as rational as eternity. That indivisible essence which
reaches through all times may as well reach through all places. It is
more excellent to be always than to be everywhere; for to be always in
duration is intrinsical; to be everywhere is intrinsic. If the greater
belongs to God, why not the less? As all times are a moment to his
eternity, so all places are as a point to his essence. As he is larger
than all time, so he is vaster than all place. The nations of the
world are to him “as the dust of the balance” or “drop of a bucket”
(Isa. xl. 15). “The nations are accounted as the small dust.” The
essence of God may well be thought to be present everywhere with
that which is no more than a grain of dust to him, and in all those
isles, which, if put together, “are a very little thing” in his hand.
Therefore, saith a learned Jew,[650] if a man were set in the highest
heavens he would not be nearer to the essence of God than if he were
in the centre of the earth. Why may not the presence of God in the
world be as noble as that of the soul in the body, which is generally
granted to be essentially in every part of the body of man, which is
but a little world, and animates every member by its actual presence,
though it exerts not the same operation in every part?[651] The world
is less to the Creator than the body to the soul, and needs more the
presence of God than the body needs the presence of the soul. That
glorious body of the sun visits every part of the habitable earth
in twenty‑four hours by its beams, which reaches the troughs of the
lowest valleys as well as the pinnacles of the highest mountains;
must we not acknowledge in the Creator of this sun an infinite greater
proportion of presence? Is it not as easy, with the essence of God,
to overspread the whole body of heaven and earth as it is for the sun
to pierce and diffuse itself through the whole air, between it and the
earth, and send up its light also as far to the regions above? Do we
not see something like it in sounds and voices? Is not the same sound
of a trumpet, or any other musical instrument, at the first breaking
out of a blast, in several places within such a compass at the same
time? Doth not every ear that hears it receive alike the whole sound
of it? And fragrant odors, scented in several places at the same time,
in the same manner; and the organ proper for smelling takes in the
same in every person within the compass of it. How far is the noise
of thunder heard alike to every ear in places something distant from
one another! And do we daily find such a manner of presence in those
things of so low a concern, and not imagine a kind of presence of God
greater than all those? Is the sound of thunder, the voice of God as
it is called, everywhere in such a compass? and shall not the essence
of {a372} an infinite God be much more everywhere? Those that would
confine the essence of God only to heaven, and exclude it from the
earth, run into great inconveniences. It may be demanded whether he
be in one part of the heavens or in the whole vast body of them. If
in one part of them, his essence is bounded; if he moves from that
part he is mutable, for he changes a place wherein he was, for another
wherein he was not. If he be always fixed in one part of the heavens,
such a notion would render him little better than a living statue.[652]
If he be in the whole heaven, why cannot his essence possess a greater
space than the whole heavens, which are so vast? How comes he to be
confined within the compass of that, since the whole heaven compasseth
the earth? If he be in the whole heaven he is in places farther
distant one from another than any part of the earth can be from the
heavens; since the earth is like a centre in the midst of a circle,
it must be nearer to every part of the circle than some parts of the
circle can be to one another. If, therefore, his essence possesses the
whole heavens, no reason can be rendered why he doth not also possess
the earth, since also the earth is but a little point in comparison of
the vastness of the heavens: if, therefore, he be in every part of the
heavens, why not in every part of the earth? The Scripture is plain
(Ps. cxxxix. 7‒9), “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither
shall I fly from thy presence? If I ascend up to heaven, thou art
there; if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there; if I take
the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall uphold me.
” If he be in heaven, earth, hell, sea, he fills all places with his
presence. His presence is here asserted in places the most distant
from one another. All the places then between heaven and earth are
possessed by his presence. It is not meant of his knowledge, for that
the Psalmist had spoken of before (ver. 2, 3), “Thou understandest
my thoughts afar off; thou art acquainted with all my ways:” besides,
“thou art there;” not thy wisdom or knowledge, but thou, thy essence,
not only thy virtue. For, having before spoken of his omniscience, he
proves that such knowledge could not be in God, unless he were present
in his essence in all places, so as to be excluded from none. He fills
the depths of hell, the extension of the earth, and the heights of
the heavens. When the Scripture mentions the power of God only, it
expresseth it by hand or arm; but when it mentions the Spirit of God,
and doth not intend the Third Person in the Trinity, it signifies
the nature and essence of God. And so here, when he saith, “Whither
shall I go from thy Spirit?” he adds, exegetically, “Whither shall
I fly from thy presence?” or (Heb.) “face: ” and the face of God in
Scripture signifies the essence of God (Exod. xxxiii. 20, 23); “Thou
canst not see my face,” and “My face shall not be seen.” The effects
of his power, wisdom, and providence are seen, which are his back
parts, but not his face. The effects of his power and wisdom are seen
in the world, but his essence is invisible; and this the Psalmist
elegantly expresseth, Had I wings endued with as much quickness as the
first dawnings of the morning light, or the first darts of any {a373}
sunbeam that spreads itself through the hemisphere, and passeth many
miles in as short a space as I can think a thought, I should find
thy presence in all places before me, and could not fly out of the
infinite compass of thy essence.
2. “He is essentially present with all creatures.” If he be in all
places, it follows that he is with all creatures in those places;
as he is in heaven, so he is with all angels; as he is in hell, so
he is with all devils: as he is in the earth and sea, he is with all
creatures inhabiting those elements; as his essential presence was the
ground of the first being of things by creation, so it is the ground
of the continued being of things by conservation; as his essential
presence was the original, so it is the support of the existence of
all the creatures. What are all those magnificent expressions of his
creative virtue, but testimonies of his essential presence at the
laying the foundation of the world (Isa. xl. 12), “when he measured
the waters in the hollow of his hand, meted out heaven with the span,
and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the
mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?” He sets forth the
power and majesty of God in the creation and preservation of things,
and every expression testifies his presence with them. The waters that
were upon the face of the earth at first were no more than a drop in
the palm of a man’s hand, which in every part is touched by his hand;
and thus he is equally present with the blackest devils, as well as
the brightest angels; with the lowest dust, as well as with the most
sparkling sun. He is equally present with the damned and the blessed,
as he is an infinite Being, but not in regard of his goodness and
grace. He is equally present with the good and the bad, with the
scoffing Athenians, as well as the believing apostles, in regard of
his essence, but not in regard of the breathing of his divine virtues
upon them to make them like himself (Acts xvii. 27). “He is not far
from every one of us; for in him we live, and move, and have our
being.” The apostle includes all; he tells them they should seek the
Lord; the Lord that they were to seek, is God essentially considered.
We are, indeed, to seek the perfections of God, that glitter in his
works, but to the end that they should direct us to the seeking of
God himself in his own nature and essence;[653] and, therefore, what
follows, “In him we live,” is to be understood, not of his power and
goodness, perfections of his nature, distinguished according to our
manner of conception from his essence, but of the essential presence
of God with his creatures. If he had meant it of his efficacy in
preserving us, it had not been any proof of his nearness to us. Who
would go about to prove the body or substance of the sun to be near us
because it doth warm and enlighten us, when our sense evidenceth the
distance of it? We live in the beams of the sun, but we cannot be said
to live in the sun, which is so far distant from us. The expression
seems to be more emphatical than to intend any less than his essential
presence; but we live in him not only as the efficient cause of our
life, but as the foundation sustaining our lives and motions, as if he
were like air, diffused round about us; and we move in him, as Austin
saith, as a sponge in the {a374} sea, not containing him, but being
contained by him. He compasseth all, is encompassed by none; he fills
all, is comprehended by none. The Creator contains the world, the
world contains not the Creator; as the hollow of the hand contains the
water, the water in the hollow of the hand contains not the hand; and
therefore some have chose to say, rather, that the world is in God, it
lives and moves in him, than that God is in the world. If all things
thus live and move in him, then he is present with everything that
hath life and motion; and as long as the devils and damned have life,
and motion, and being, so long is he with them; for whatsoever lives
and moves, lives and moves in him. This essential presence is,
(1.) Without any mixture. I fill heaven and earth; not, I am mixed
with heaven and earth: his essence is not mixed with the creatures;
it remains entire in itself. The sponge retains the nature of a sponge,
though encompassed by the sea, and moving in it; and the sea still
retains its own nature. God is most simple; his essence therefore is
not mixed with anything. The light of the sun is present with the air,
but not mixed with it; it remains light, and the air remains air; the
light of the sun is diffused through all the hemisphere, it pierceth
all transparent bodies, it seems to mix itself with all things, yet
remains unmixed and undivided; the light remains light, and the air
remains air; the air is not light, though it be enlightened. Or, take
this similitude: When many candles are lighted up in a room, the light
is all together, yet not mixed with one another; every candle hath a
particular light belonging to it, which may be separated in a moment,
by removing one candle from another; but if they were mixed, they
could not be separated, at least so easily. God is not formally one
with the world, or with any creature in the world by his presence in
it; nor can any creature in the world, no, not the soul of man, or an
angel, come to be essentially one with God, though God be essentially
present with it.
(2.) The essential presence is without any division of himself. “I
fill heaven and earth,” not part in heaven, and part in earth; I fill
one as well as the other: one part of his essence is not in one place,
and another part of his essence in another place, he would then be
changeable; for that part of his essence which were now in this place,
he might alter it to another, and place that part of his essence which
were in another place to this; but he is undivided everywhere. As his
eternity is one indivisible point, though in our conception we divide
it into past, present, and to come, so the whole world is as a point
to him, in regard of place, as before was said; it is as a small dust,
and grain of dust: it is impossible that one part of his essence can
be separated from another, for he is not a body, to have one part
separable from another. The light of the sun cannot be cut into parts,
it cannot be shut into any place and kept there, it is entire in
every place. Shall not God, who gives the light that power, be much
more present himself? Whatsoever hath parts is finite, but God is
infinite, therefore hath no parts of his essence. Besides, if there
were such a division of his being, he would not be the most simple and
uncompounded being, but would be made up of various parts; he would
not be a Spirit, for parts are evidences of composition; {a375} and
it could not be said that God is here or there, but only a part of God
here, and a part of God there. But he fills heaven and earth; he is
as much a God in the earth beneath as in heaven above (Deut. iv. 39);
entirely in all places, not by scraps and fragments of his essence.
(3.) This essential presence is not by multiplication. For that which
is infinite cannot multiply itself, or make itself more or greater
than it was.
(4.) This essential presence is not by extension or diffusion, as a
piece of gold may be beaten out to cover a large compass of ground;
no, if God should create millions of worlds he would be in them all,
not by stretching out his being, but by the infiniteness of his being;
not by a new growth of his being, but by the same essence he had from
eternity: upon the same reasons mentioned before, his simplicity and
indivisibility.
(5.) But totally. There is no space, not the least, wherein God is not
wholly, according to his essence, and wherein his whole substance doth
not exist; not a part of heaven can be designed wherein the Creator
is not wholly; as he is in one part of heaven, he is in every part of
heaven. Some kind of resemblance we may have from the water of the sea,
which fills the great space of the world, and is diffused through all;
yet the essence of water is in every drop of water in the sea, as much
as the whole; and the same quality of water, though it comes short
in quantity; and why shall we not allow God a nobler way of presence
without diffusion, as is in that? or take this resemblance; since God
likens himself to light in the Scripture, “he covereth himself with
light.”[654] A crystal globe hung up in the air hath light all about
it, all within it, every part is pierced by it, wherever you see
the crystal you see the light; the light in one part of the crystal
cannot be distinguished from the light in the other part; and the
whole essence of light is in every part; and shall not God be as much
present with his creatures, as one creature can be with another?[655]
God is totally everywhere by his own simple substance.
_Prop. IV._ God is present beyond the world. He is within and above
all places, though places should be infinite in number; as he was
before and beyond all time, so he is above and beyond all place; being
from eternity before any real time, he must also be without as well
as within any real space; if God were only confined to the world, he
would be no more infinite in his essence than the world is in quantity;
as a moment cannot be conceived from eternity, wherein God was not in
being, so a space cannot be conceived in the mind of man, wherein God
is not present; he is not contained in the world nor in the heavens
(1 Kings viii. 27). “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold,
the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee.” Solomon wonders that God
should appoint a temple to be erected to him upon the earth, when he
is not contained in the vast circuit of the heavens; his essence is
not straitened in the limits of any created work; he is not contained
in the heavens, _i. e._ in the manner that he is there; but he is
there in his essence, and therefore cannot be contained {a376} there
in his essence. If it should be meant only of his power and providence,
it would conclude also for his essence; if his power and providence
were infinite, his essence must be so too; for the infiniteness of his
essence is the ground of the infiniteness of his power. It can never
enter into any thought, that a finite essence can have an infinite
power, and that an infinite power can be without an infinite essence;
it cannot be meant of his providence, as if Solomon should say, the
heaven of heavens cannot contain thy providence; for naming the heaven
of heavens, that which encircles and bounds the other parts of the
world, he could not suppose a providence to be exercised where there
was no object to exercise it about; as no creature is mentioned to be
beyond the uttermost heaven, which he calls here the heaven of heavens:
besides, to understand it of his providence, doth not consist with
Solomon’s admiration: he wonders that God, that hath so immense an
essence, should dwell in a temple made with hands; he could not so
much wonder at his providence in those things that immediately concern
his worship. Solomon plainly asserts this of God, That he was so far
from being bounded within the rich wall of the temple, which with so
much cost he had framed for the glory of his name, that the richer
palace of the heaven of heavens could not contain him; it is true,
it could not contain his power and wisdom, because his wisdom could
contrive other kind of worlds, and his power erect them. But doth the
meaning of that wise king reach no farther than this? Will the power
and wisdom of God reside on the earth? He was too wise to ask such
a question, since every object that his eyes met with in the world
resolved him, that the wisdom and power of God dwelt upon the earth,
and glittered in everything he had created; and reason would assure
him that the power that had framed this world, was able to frame any
more; but Solomon, considering the immensity of God’s essence, wonders
that God should order a house to be built for him, as if he wanted
roofs and coverings, and habitation, as bodily creatures do. Will God
indeed dwell in a temple, who hath an essence so immense as not to be
contained in the heaven of heavens? It is not the heaven of heavens
that can contain him, his substance. Here he asserts the immensity of
his essence, and his presence not only in the heaven, but beyond the
heavens; he that is not contained in the heavens, as a man is in a
chamber, is without, and above, and beyond the heavens; it is not said,
they do not contain him, but it is impossible they should contain him;
they cannot contain him. It is impossible, then, but that he should
be above them; he that is without the compass of the world, is not
bounded by the limits of the world, as his power is not limited by
the things he hath made, but can create innumerable worlds, so can his
essence be in innumerable spaces; for as he hath power enough to make
more worlds, so he hath essence enough to fill them, and therefore
cannot be confined to what he hath already created; innumerable
worlds cannot be a sufficient place to contain God; he can only be
a sufficient place to himself;[656] He that was before the world,
and place, and all things, was to himself a world, a place, and
everything:[657] He is really out {a377} of the world in himself,
as he was in himself before the creation of the world: as because
God was before the foundation of the world, we conclude his eternity;
so because he is without the bounds of the world, we conclude his
immensity, and from thence his omnipresence. The world cannot be said
to contain him, since it was created by him; it cannot contain him
now, who was contained by nothing before the world was: as there was
no place to contain him before the world was, there can be no place
to contain him since the world was. God might create more worlds,
circular and round as this, and those could not be so contiguous,
but some spaces would be left between; as, take three round balls,
lay them as close as you can to one another, there will be some spaces
between; none would say but God would be in these spaces, as well
as in the world he had created, though there were nothing real and
positive in those spaces: why should we then exclude God from those
imaginary spaces without the world? God might also create many worlds,
and separate them by distances, that they might not touch one another,
but be at a great distance from one another; and would not God fill
them as well as he doth this? if so, he must also fill the spaces
between them; for if he were in all those worlds, and not in the
spaces between those worlds, his essence would be divided; there would
be gaps in it, his essence would be cut into parts, and the distance
between every part of his essence, would be as great as the space
between each world. The essence of God may be conceived then well
enough to be in all those infinite spaces where he can erect new
worlds.
I shall give one place more to prove both these propositions, viz.
that God is essentially in every part of the world, and essentially
above ours without the world (Isa. lxvi. 1): “The heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.” He is essentially in every part of the
world; he is in heaven and earth at the same time, as a man is upon
his throne and his footstool. God describes himself in a human shape,
accommodated to our capacity; as if he had his head in heaven, and his
feet on earth. Doth not his essence then, fill all intermediate spaces
between heaven and earth? As when the head of a man is in the upper
part of a room, and his feet upon the floor, his body fills up the
space between the head and his feet: this is meant of the essence
of God; it is a similitude drawn from kings sitting upon the throne,
and not their power and authority, but the feet of their persons
are supported by the footstool; so here it is not meant only of the
perfections of God, but the essence of God. Besides, God seems to tax
them with an erroneous conceit they had, as though his essence were
in the temple, and not in any part of the world; therefore God makes
an opposition between heaven and earth, and the temple: “Where is
the house that you built unto me? and where is the place of my rest?”
Had he understood it only of his providence, it had not been anything
against their mistake; for they granted his providence to be not only
in the temple, but in all parts of the world. “Where is the house that
you build to me;” to Me, not to my power or providence, but think to
include Me within those walls. Again, it shows God to be above the
heavens, if the heavens be his throne; he sits upon them, and is above
them, as {a378} kings are above the thrones on which they sit. So it
cannot be meant of his providence, because no creature being without
the sphere of the heavens, there is nothing of the power and the
providence of God visible there, for there is nothing for him to
employ his providence about; for providence supposeth a creature
in actual being; it must be therefore meant of his essence, which
is above the world and in the world. And the like proof you may
see (Job. xi. 7, 8), “It is as high as heaven, what canst thou do?
deeper than hell, what canst thou know? the measure thereof is longer
than the earth, and broader than the sea.” Where he intends the
unsearchableness of God’s wisdom, but proves it by the infiniteness
of his essence, (Heb.) “he is the height of the heavens,” he is the
top of all the heavens; so that, when you have begun at the lowest
part, and traced him through all the creatures, you will find his
essence filling all the creatures, to be at the top of the world,
and infinitely beyond it.
_Prop. V._ This is the property of God, incommunicable to any
creature. As no creature can be eternal and immutable, so no creature
can be immense, because it cannot be infinite; nothing can be of an
infinite nature, and therefore nothing of an immense presence but God.
It cannot be communicated to the human nature of Christ, though in
union with the Divine;[658] some indeed argue, that Christ in regard
of his human nature is everywhere, because he sits at the right hand
of God, and the right hand of God is everywhere. His sitting at the
right hand of God signifies his exaltation, and cannot with any reason,
be extended to such a kind of arguing. “The hearts of kings are in the
hand of God;” are the hearts of kings everywhere, because God’s hand
is everywhere? The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God; is
the soul, therefore, of every righteous man everywhere in the world?
The right hand of God is from eternity; is the humanity of Christ,
therefore, from eternity, because it sits at the right hand of God?
The right hand of God made the world; did the humanity of Christ,
therefore, make heaven and earth? the humanity of Christ must then be
confounded with his divinity; be the same with it, not united to it.
All creatures are distinct from their Creator, and cannot inherit
the properties essential to his nature, as eternity, immensity,
immutability, omnipresence, omniscience; no angel, no soul, no
creature can be in all places at once; before they can be so they
must be immense, and so must cease to be creatures, and commence God;
this is impossible.
II. Reasons to prove God’s essential presence. _Reason I._ Because
he is infinite. As he is infinite, he is everywhere; as he is simple,
his whole essence is everywhere: for, in regard of his infiniteness,
he hath no bounds; in regard of his simplicity, he hath no parts: and,
therefore, those that deny God’s omnipresence, though they pretend to
own him infinite, must really conceive him finite.
1. God is infinite in his perfections. None can set bounds to
terminate the greatness and excellency of God (Ps. cxlv. 3): “His
greatness is unsearchable,” Sept. οὐκ ἔστι πέρας, there is no end,
no limitation. What hath no end is infinite; his power is infinite
(Job v. 9): {a379} “which doth great things and unsearchable;”――no end
of those things he is able to do. His wisdom infinite (Ps. cxlvii. 5);
he understands all things past, present, and to come; what is
already made, what is possible to be made. His duration infinite
(Job xxxvi. 26): “The number of his years cannot be searched out,”
ἀπέραντος. To make a finite thing of nothing is an argument of an
infinite virtue. Infinite power can only extract something out of the
barren womb of nothing; but all things were drawn forth by the word
of God, the heavens, and all the host of them; the sun, moon, stars,
the rich embellishments of the world, appeared in being “at the
breath of his mouth” (Ps. xxxiii. 6). The author, therefore, must be
infinite; and since nothing is the cause of God, or of any perfection
in him,――since he derives not his being, or the least spark of his
glorious nature, from anything without him,――he cannot be limited
in any part of his nature by anything without him; and, indeed, the
infiniteness of his power and his other perfections is asserted by
the prophet, when he tells us that “the nations are as a drop of a
bucket, or the dust of the balance, and less than nothing and vanity”
(Isa. xl. 15, 17), they are all so in regard of his power, wisdom, &c.
Conceive what a little thing a grain of dust or sand is to all the
dust that may be made by the rubbish of a house: what a little thing
the heap of the rubbish of a house is to the vast heap of the rubbish
of a whole city, such an one as London; how little that, also, would
be to the dust of a whole empire; how inconsiderable that, also,
to the dust of one quarter of the world, Europe or Asia; how much
less that, still, to the dust of the whole world! The whole world
is composed of an unconceivable number of atoms, and the sea of an
unconceivable number of drops; now what a little grain of dust is in
comparison to the dust of the whole world――a drop of water from the
sea, to all the drops remaining in the sea――that is the whole world to
God. Conceive it still less, a mere nothing, yet is it all less than
this in comparison of God; there can be nothing more magnificently
expressive of the infiniteness of God to a human conception, than
this expression of God himself in the prophet. In the perfection of
a creature, something still may be thought greater to be added to it;
but God containing all perfections in himself formally, if they be
mere perfections, and eminently, if they be but perfections in the
creature, mixed with imperfection, nothing can be thought greater,
and therefore every one of them is infinite.
2. If his perfections be infinite, his essence must be so. How God
can have infinite perfections, and a finite essence, is unconceivable
by a human or angelical understanding; an infinite power, an infinite
wisdom, an infinite duration, must needs speak an infinite essence;
since the infiniteness of his attributes is grounded upon the
infiniteness of his essence: to own infinite perfections in a finite
subject is contradictory. The manner of acting by his power, and
knowing by his wisdom, cannot exceed the manner of being by his
essence. His perfections flow from his essence, and the principle must
be of the same rank with what flows from it; and, if we conceive his
essence to be the cause of his perfections, it is utterly impossible
that an infinite effect should arise from a finite cause: but, indeed,
his {a380} perfections are his essence; for though we conceive the
essence of God as the subject, and the attributes of God as faculties
and qualities in that subject, according to our weak model, who
cannot conceive of an infinite God without some manner of likeness to
ourselves――who find understanding, and will, and power in us distinct
from our substance; yet truly and really there is no distinction
between his essence and attributes; one is inseparable from the other.
His power and wisdom are his essence; and therefore to maintain God
infinite in the one, and finite in the other, is to make a monstrous
god, and have an unreasonable notion of the Deity; for there would be
the greatest disproportion in his nature, since there is no greater
disproportion can possibly be between one thing and another than there
is between finite and infinite. God must not only then be compounded,
but have parts of the greatest distance from one another in nature;
but God, being the most simple being without the least composition,
both must be equally infinite: if, then, his essence be not infinite,
his power and wisdom cannot be infinite, which is both against
scripture and reason. Again, how should his essence be finite, and
his perfections be infinite, since nothing out of himself gave them
either the one or the other?[659] Again, either the essence can be
infinite, or it cannot; if it cannot, there must be some cause of
that impossibility; that can be nothing without him, because nothing
without him can be as powerful as himself, much less too powerful for
him; nothing within him can be an enemy to his highest perfection;
since he is necessarily what he is, he must be necessarily the
most perfect being, and therefore necessarily infinite, since to be
something infinitely is a greater perfection than to be something
thing finitely:[660] if he can be infinite he is infinite, otherwise
he could be greater than he is, and so more blessed and more perfect
than he is, which is impossible: for being the most perfect Being, to
whom nothing can be added, he must needs be infinite.
3. If, therefore, God have an infinite essence, he hath an infinite
presence. An infinite essence cannot be contained in a finite place,
as those things which are finite have a bounded space wherein they are;
so that which is infinite hath an unbounded space; for, as finiteness
speaks limitedness, so infiniteness speaks unboundedness; and if
we grant to God an infinite duration, there is no difficulty in
acknowledging an infinite presence: indeed, the infiniteness of God is
a property belonging to him in regard of time and place; he is bounded
by no place, and limited to no time. Again, infinite essence may as
well be everywhere, as infinite power reaches everything; it may as
well be present with every being, as infinite power in its working may
be present with nothing to bring it into being. Where God works by his
power, he is present in his essence; because his power and his essence
cannot be separated; and therefore his power, wisdom, goodness, cannot
be anywhere where his essence is not: his essence cannot be severed
from his power, nor his power from his essence; for the power of
God is nothing but God acting, and the wisdom of God nothing but God
knowing. As the power of God {a381} is always, so is his essence――as
the power of God is everywhere, so is his essence: whatsoever God is,
he is alway, and everywhere. To confine him to a place, is to measure
his essence; as to confine his actions, is to limit his power; his
essence being no less infinite than his power and his wisdom, can be
no more bounded than his power and wisdom; but they are not separable
from his essence, yea, they are his essence. If God did not fill the
whole world, he would be determined to some place, and excluded from
others; and so his substance would have bounds and limits, and then
something might be conceived greater than God; for we may conceive
that a creature may be made by God of so vast a greatness as to fill
the whole world, for the power of God is able to make a body that
should take up the whole space between heaven and earth, and reach
to every corner of it. But nothing can be conceived by any creature
greater than God; he exceeds all things, and is exceeded by none. God,
therefore, cannot be included in heaven, nor included in the earth;
cannot be contained in either of them; for, if we should imagine
them vaster than they are, yet still they would be finite; and if his
essence were contained in them, it could be no more infinite than the
world which contains it, as water is not of a larger compass than the
vessel which contains it. If the essence of God were limited, either
in the heavens or earth, it must needs be finite, as the heaven and
earth are; but there is no proportion between finite and infinite; God,
therefore, cannot be contained in them. If there were an infinite body,
that must be everywhere; certainly, then, an infinite Spirit must be
everywhere; unless we will account him finite, we can render no reason
why he should not be in one creature as well as in another. If he
be in heaven, which is his creature, why can he not be in the earth,
which is as well his creature as the heavens?
_Reason II._ Because of the continual operation of God in the world.
This was one reason which made the heathen believe that there was an
infinite Spirit in the vast body of the world, acting in everything,
and producing those admirable motions which we see everywhere in
nature: that cause which acts in the most perfect manner, is also in
the most perfect manner present with its effects.
God preserves all, and therefore is in all; the apostle thought
it a good induction (Acts xvii. 27), “He is not far from us, for in
him we live.” _For_ being as much as _because_, shows, that from his
operation he concluded his real presence with all: it is not, His
virtue is not far from every one of us, but He, his substance, himself;
for, none that acknowledge a God will deny the absence of the virtue
of God from any part of the world. He works in everything, everything
lives and works in him; therefore he is present with all:[661] or
rather, if things live, they are in God, who gives them life. If
things live, God is in them, and gives them life; if things move, God
is in them, and gives them motion; if things have any being, God is in
them, and gives them being; if God withdraws himself, they presently
lose their being, and therefore some have compared the creature to
the impression of a seal upon the water, that cannot be preserved
but by the presence of the seal. As his presence was actual {a382}
with what he created, so his presence is actual with what preserves,
since creation and preservation do so little differ; if God creates
things by his essential presence, by the same he supports them; if
his substance cannot be disjoined from his preserving power, his power
and wisdom cannot be separated from his essence; where there are the
marks of the one, there is the presence of the other; for it is by his
essence that he is powerful and wise; no man can distinguish the one
from the other in a simple being; God doth not preserve and act things
by a virtue diffused from him. It may be demanded whether that virtue
be distinct from God; if it be not, it is then the essence of God; if
it be distinct it is a creature, and then it may be asked, how that
virtue which preserves other things, is preserved itself; it must
be ultimately resolved into the essence of God, or else there must
be a running _in infinitum_: or else,[662] is that virtue of God a
substance, or not? Is it endued with understanding, or not? If it hath
understanding, how doth it differ from God? If it wants understanding,
can any imagine that the support of the world, the guidance of all
creatures, the wonders of nature, can be wrought, preserved, managed
by a virtue that hath nothing of understanding in it? If it be not
a substance, it can much less be able to produce such excellent
operations as the preserving all the kinds of things in the world,
and ordering them to perform such excellent ends; this virtue is,
therefore, God himself――the infinite power and wisdom of God; and
therefore, wheresoever the effects of these are seen in the world, God
is essentially present: some creatures, indeed, act at a distance by a
virtue diffused. But such a manner of acting comes from a limitedness
of nature, that such a nature cannot be everywhere present and extend
its substance to all parts. To act by a virtue, speaks the subject
finite, and it is a part of indigence: kings act in their kingdoms by
ministers and messengers, because they cannot act otherwise; but God
being infinitely perfect, works all things in all immediately (1 Cor.
xii. 6). Illumination, sanctification, grace, &c., are the immediate
works of God in the heart, and immediate agents are present with
what they do: it is an argument of the greater perfection of a being,
to know things immediately, which are done in several places, than
to know them at the second hand by instruments; it is no less a
perfection to be everywhere, rather than to be tied to one place
of action, and to act in other places by instruments, for want of a
power to act immediately itself. God, indeed, acts by means and second
causes in his providential dispensations in the world, but this is
not out of any defect of power to work all immediately himself; but he
thereby accommodates his way of acting to the nature of the creature,
and the order of things which he hath settled in the world. And when
he works by means, he acts with those means, in those means, sustains
their faculties and virtues in them, concurs with them by his power;
so that God’s acting by means doth rather strengthen his essential
presence than weaken it, since there is a necessary dependence of the
creatures upon the Creator in their being and acting; and what they
are, they are by the power of God; what they act, they act in the
power of God, concurring {a383} with them; they have their motion in
him as well as their being: and where the power of God is, his essence
is, because they are inseparable; and so this omnipresence ariseth
from the simplicity of the nature of God; the more vast anything is,
the less confined. All that will acknowledge God so great, as to be
able to work all things by his will, without an essential presence,
cannot imagine him upon the same reason, so little as to be contained
in, and bounded by any place.
_Reason III._ Because of his supreme perfection. No perfection is
wanting to God; but an unbounded essence is a perfection; a limited
one is an imperfection. Though it be a perfection in a man to be wise,
yet it is an imperfection that his wisdom cannot rule all the things
that concern him; though it be a perfection to be present in a place
where his affairs lie, yet is it an imperfection that he cannot be
present everywhere in the midst of all his concerns; if any man could
be so, it would be universally owned as a prime perfection in him
above others: is that which would be a perfection in man to be denied
to God?[663] as that which hath life is more perfect than that which
hath not life; and that which hath sense is more perfect than that
which hath only life as the plants have; and what hath reason, is more
perfect than that which hath only life and sense, as the beasts have;
so what is everywhere, is more perfect than that which is bounded in
some narrow confines: if a power of motion be more excellent than to
be bed‑rid, and swiftness in a creature be a more excellent endowment
than to be slow and snail‑like, then to be everywhere without
motion, is inconceivably a greater excellency than to be everywhere
successively by motion. God sets forth his readiness to help his
people and punish his enemies, or his omnipresence, by swiftness, or
“flying upon the wings of the wind” (Ps. xviii. 10): the wind is in
every part of the air, where it blows; it cannot be said that it is
in this or that point of the air where you feel it, so as to exclude
it from another part of the air where you are not; it seems to possess
all at once. If the Divine essence had any bounds of place, it would
be imperfect, as well as if it had bounds of time; where anything hath
limitation, it hath some defect in being; and therefore if God were
confined or concluded, he would be as good as nothing in regard of
infiniteness. Whence should this restraint arise? there is no power
above him to restrain him to a certain space; if so, then he would
not be God, but that power which restrained him would be God: not from
his own nature, for the being everywhere implies no contradiction to
his nature; if his own nature determined him to a certain place, then
if he removed from that place, he would act against his nature; to
conceive any such thing of God is highly absurd. It cannot be thought
God should voluntarily impose any such restraint or confinement upon
himself; this would be to deny himself a perfection he might have; if
God have not this perfection, it is either because it is inconsistent
with his nature; or, because he cannot have it; or, because he will
not. The former cannot be; for if he hath impressed upon air and
light a resemblance of his excellency, to diffuse themselves and fill
so vast a space, is such an excellency {a384} inconsistent with the
Creator more than the creature? whatsoever perfection the creature
hath, is eminently in God. “Understand, O ye brutish among the people:
and ye fools, when will you be wise? He that planted the ear, shall he
not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see? he that teacheth
man knowledge, shall not he know?” (Ps. xciv. 8, 9.) By the same
reason he that hath given such a power to those creatures, air and
light, shall not he be much more filling all spaces of the world? It
is so clear a rule, that the Psalmist fixes a folly and brutishness
upon those that deny it; it is not therefore inconsistent with
his nature, it were not then a perfection but an imperfection; but
whatsoever is an excellency in creatures, cannot in a way of eminency
be an imperfection in God; if it be then a perfection, and God want it,
it is because he cannot have it; where, then, is his power? How can he
be then the fountain of his own Being? If he will not, where is his
love to his own nature and glory? since no creature would deny that to
itself which it can have, and is an excellency to it; God, therefore,
hath not only a power or fitness to be everywhere, but he is actually
everywhere.
_Reason IV._ Because of his immutability. If God did not fill all
the spaces of heaven and earth, but only possess one, yet it must
be acknowledged that God hath a power to move himself to another. It
were absurd to fix God in a part of the heavens, like a star in an
orb, without a power of motion to another place. If he be therefore
essentially in heaven, may he not be upon the earth if he please, and
transfer his substance from one place to another? to say he cannot,
is to deny him a perfection which he hath bestowed upon his creatures;
the angels, his messengers, are sometimes in heaven, sometimes on
the earth; the eagles, meaner creatures, are sometimes in the air
out of sight, sometimes upon the earth. If he doth move, therefore,
and recede from one place and settle in another, doth he not declare
himself mutable by changing places?――by being where he was not before,
and in not being where he was before? He would not fill heaven and
earth at once, but successively; no man can be said to fill a room,
that moves from one part of a room to another; if therefore any in
their imaginations stake God to the heavens, they render him less than
his creatures; if they allow him a power of motion from one place to
another, they conceive him changeable; and in either of them they own
him no greater than a finite and limited Being; limited to heaven, if
they fix him there; limited to that space to which they imagine him
to move.
_Reason V._ Because of his omnipotency. The Almightiness of God is
a notion settled in the minds of all,――that God can do whatsoever
he pleases, everything that is not against the purity of his nature,
and doth not imply a contradiction in itself; he can therefore
create millions of worlds greater than this; and millions of heavens
greater than this heaven he hath already created; if so, he is then
in inconceivable spaces beyond this world, for his essence is not
less narrower than his power; and his power is not to be thought of
a further extent than his essence; he cannot be excluded therefore
from those vast spaces where his power may fix those worlds if he
please; if so, it is no wonder that he should fill this {a385} world:
and there is no reason to exclude God from the narrow space of this
world, that is not contained in infinite spaces beyond the world.
God is wheresoever he hath a power to act; but he hath a power to act
everywhere in the world, everywhere out of the world; he is therefore
everywhere in the world, everywhere out of the world. Before this
world was made, he had a power to make it in the space where now it
stands; was he not then unlimitedly where the world now is, before
the world received a being by his powerful word? Why should he not
then be in every part of the world now? Can it be thought that God who
was immense before, should, after he had created the world, contract
himself to the limits of one of his creatures, and tie himself to a
particular place of his own creation, and be less after his creation
than he was before? This might also be prosecuted by an argument from
his eternity. What is eternal in duration, is immense in essence; the
same reason which renders him eternal, renders him immense; that which
proves him to be always, will prove him to be everywhere.
III. The third thing is, Propositions for the further clearing this
doctrine from any exceptions.
1. This truth is not weakened by the expressions in Scripture, where
God is said to dwell in heaven and in the temple.
(1.) He is indeed said to sit in heaven (Ps. ii. 4), and to dwell
on high (Ps. cxiii. 5), but he is nowhere said to dwell only in
the heavens, as confined to them. It is the court of his majestical
presence, but not the prison of his essence: for when we are told that
“the heaven is his throne,” we are told with the same breath that the
“earth is his footstool” (Isa. lxvi. 1). He dwells on high, in regard
of the excellency of his nature, but he is in all places, in regard of
the diffusion of his presence. The soul is essentially in all parts of
the body, but it doth not exert the same operations in all; the more
noble discoveries of it are in the head and heart. In the head where
it exerciseth the chiefest senses for the enriching the understanding;
in the heart, where it vitally resides, and communicates life and
motion to the rest of the body. It doth not understand with the foot
or toe, though it be in all parts of the body it informs; and so
God may be said to dwell in heaven, in regard of the more excellent
and majestic representations of himself, both to the creatures that
inhabit the place, as angels and blessed spirits, and also in those
marks of his greatness which he hath planted before, those spiritual
natures which have a nobler stamp of God upon them, and those
excellent bodies, as sun and stars, which, as so many tapers, light us
to behold his glory (Ps. xix. 1), and astonish the minds of men when
they gaze upon them. It is his court, where he hath the most solemn
worship from his creatures, all his courtiers attending there with
a pure love and glowing zeal. He reigns there in a special manner,
without any opposition to his government; it is, therefore, called
his “holy dwelling place” (2 Chron. iii. 27). The earth hath not that
title, since sin cast a stain and a ruining curse upon it. The earth
is not his throne, because his government is opposed: but heaven is
none of Satan’s precinct, and the rule of God is uncontradicted by
the inhabitants of it. It is from thence also he hath {a386} given
the greatest discoveries of himself; thence he sends the angels his
messengers, his Son upon Redemption, his Spirit for sanctification.
From heaven his gifts drop down upon our heads, and his grace upon
our hearts (James iii. 17). From thence the chiefest blessings of
earth descend. The motions of the heavens fatten the earth; and the
heavenly bodies are but stewards to the earthly comforts for man by
their influence. Heaven is the richest, vastest, most steadfast, and
majestic part of the visible creation. It is there where he will at
last manifest himself to his people in a full conjunction of grace and
glory, and be forever open to his people in uninterrupted expressions
of goodness, and discoveries of his presence, as a reward of their
labor and service; and in these respects it may peculiarly be called
his throne. And this doth no more hinder his essential presence in
all parts of the earth, than it doth his gracious presence in all the
hearts of his people. God is in heaven, in regard of the manifestation
of his glory; in hell, by the expressions of his justice; in the earth,
by the discoveries of his wisdom, power, patience, and compassion; in
his people, by the monuments of his grace; and in all, in regard of
his substance.
(2.) He is said also to dwell in the ark and temple. It is called
(Ps. xxvi. 8) “the habitation of his house, and the place where his
honor dwells;” and to dwell in Jerusalem as in his holy mountain,
“The mountain of the Lord of Hosts” (Zech. viii. 3), in regard of
publishing his oracles, answering their prayers, manifesting more of
his goodness to the Israelites, than to any other nation in the world;
erecting his true worship among them, which was not settled in any
part of the world besides: and his worship is principally intended in
that psalm. The ark is the place where his honor dwells. The worship
of God is called the glory of God; “They changed the glory of God into
an image made like to corruptible man” (Rom. i. 23), _i. e._, they
changed the worship of God into idolatry; and to that also doth the
place in Zechariah refer. Now, because he is said to dwell in heaven,
is he essentially only there? Is he not as essentially in the temple
and ark as he is in heaven, since there are as high expressions of
his habitation there as of his dwelling in heaven? If he dwell only
in heaven, how came he to dwell in the temple? both are asserted in
Scripture, one as much as the other. If his dwelling in heaven did not
hinder his dwelling in the ark, it could as little hinder the presence
of his essence on the earth. To dwell in heaven, and in one part of
the earth at the same time, is all one as to dwell in all parts of
heaven, and all parts of earth. If he were in heaven, and in the ark
and temple, it was the same essence in both, though not the same kind
of manifestation of himself. If by his dwelling in heaven he meant
his whole essence, why is it not also to be meant by his dwelling in
the ark? It was not, sure, part of his essence that was in heaven,
and part of his essence that was on earth; his essence would then be
divided; and can it be imagined that he should be in heaven and the
ark at the same time, and not in the spaces between? Could his essence
be split into fragments, and a gap made in it, that two distant spaces
should be filled by him, and all between be empty of him, so that
God’s being said {a387} to dwell in heaven, and in the temple, is so
far from impairing the truth of this doctrine, that it more confirms
and evidences it.
2. Nor do the expressions of God’s coming to us, or departing from
us, impair this doctrine of his omnipresence. God is said to hide his
face from his people (Ps. x. 1); to be far from the wicked; and the
Gentiles are said to be afar off, viz. from God (Prov. xv. 29; Eph.
ii. 17), and upon the manifestation of Christ made near. These must
not be understood of any distance or nearness of his essence, for that
is equally near to all persons and things; but of some other special
way and manifestation of his presence. Thus, God is said to be in
believers by love, as they are in him (1 John iv. 15); “He that abides
in love, abides in God, and God in him.” He that loves, is in the
thing beloved; and when two love one another, they are in one another.
God is in a righteous man by a special grace, and far from the wicked
in regard of such special works; and God is said to be in a place by
a special manifestation, as when he was in the bush (Exod. iii.), or
manifesting his glory upon Mount Sinai (Exod. xxiv. 16); “The glory
of the Lord abode about Mount Sinai.” God is said to hide his face
when he withdraws his comforting presence, disturbs the repose of our
hearts, flasheth terror into our consciences, when he puts men under
the smart of the cross; as though he had ordered his mercy utterly
to depart from them, or when he doth withdraw his special assisting
providence from us in our affairs; so he departed from Saul, when he
withdrew his direction and protection from him in the concerns of his
government (1 Sam. xvi. 14); “The Spirit of the Lord departed from
Saul,” _i. e._ the spirit of government. God may be far from us in
one respect, and near to us in another; far from us in regard of
comfort, yet near to us in regard of support, when his essential
presence continues the same: this is a necessary consequent upon the
infiniteness of God, the other is an act of the will of God; so he was
said to forsake Christ, in regard of his obscuring his glory from his
human nature, and inflicting his wrath, though he was near to him in
regard of his grace, and preserved him from contracting any spot in
his sufferings. We do not say the sun is departed out of the heavens
when it is bemisted; it remains in the same part of the heavens,
passes on its course, though its beams do not reach us by reason of
the bar between us and it. The soul is in every part of the body, in
regard of its substance, and constantly in it, though it doth not act
so sprightly and vigorously at one time as at another in one and the
same member, and discover itself so sensibly in its operations; so
all the various effects of God towards the sons of men, are but divers
operations of one and the same essence. He is far from us, or near
to us, as he is a judge or a benefactor. When he comes to punish, it
notes not the approach of his essence, but the stroke of his justice;
when he comes to benefit, it is not by a new access of his essence,
but an efflux of his grace: he departs from us when he leaves us to
the frowns of his justice; he comes to us when he encircles us in
the arms of his mercy; but he was equally present with us in both
dispensations, in regard of his essence. And, likewise, God is said to
come down (Gen. xi. 5, “And the Lord came down to see the city”), when
he doth some signal and wonderful {a388} works which attract the minds
of men to the acknowledgment of a Supreme Power and Providence in the
world, who judged God absent and careless before.
3. Nor is the essential presence of God with all creatures any
disparagement to him. Since it was no disparagement to create the
heaven and the earth, it is no disparagement to him to fill them; if
he were essentially present with them when he created them, it is no
dishonor to him to be essentially present with them to support them;
if it were his glory to create them by his essence, when they were
nothing, can it be his disgrace to be present by his essence, since
they are something, and something good, and very good in his eye (Gen.
i. 31)? God saw every thing, and behold it was very good, or mighty
good; all ordered to declare his goodness, wisdom, power, and to make
him adorable to man, and therefore took complacency in them. There is
a harmony in all things, a combination in them for those glorious ends
for which God created them; and is it a disgrace for God to be present
with his own harmonious composition? Is it not a musician’s glory to
touch with his fingers the treble, the least and tenderest string,
as well as the strongest and greatest bass? Hath not everything some
stamp of God’s own being upon it, since he eminently contains in
himself the perfections of all his works? Whatsoever hath being, hath
a footstep of God upon it, who is all being; everything in the earth
is his footstool, having a mark of his foot upon it; all declare the
being of God, because they had their being from God; and will God
account it any disparagement to him to be present with that which
confirms his being, and the glorious perfections of his nature, to
his intelligent creatures? The meanest things are not without their
virtues, which may boast God’s being the Creator of them, and rank
them in the midst of his works of wisdom as well as power. Doth God
debase himself to be present by his essence, with the things he hath
made, more than he doth to know them by his essence? Is not the least
thing known by him? How? not by a faculty or act distinct from his
essence, but by his essence itself. How is anything disgraceful to the
essential presence of God, that is not disgraceful to his knowledge
by his essence? Besides, would God make anything that should be an
invincible reason to him to part with his own infiniteness, by a
contraction of his own essence into a less compass than before? it
was immense before, it had no bounds; and would God make a world
that he would be ashamed to be present with, and continue it to the
diminution and lessening of himself, rather than annihilate it to
avoid the disparagement? This were to impeach the wisdom of God, and
cast a blemish upon his infinite understanding, that he knows not
the consequences of his work, or is well contented to be impaired in
the immensity of his own essence by it. No man thinks it a dishonor
to light, a most excellent creature, to be present with a toad or
serpent; and though there be an infinite disproportion between light,
a creature, and the Father of lights, the Creator: yet God, being a
Spirit, knows how to be with bodies as if they were not bodies;[664]
and being {a389} jealous of his own honor, would not, could not do any
thing that might impair it.
4. Nor will it follow, That because God is essentially everywhere,
that everything is God. God is not everywhere by any conjunction,
composition or mixture with anything on earth. When light is in every
part of a crystal globe, and encircles it close on every side, do they
become one? No; the crystal remains what it is, and the light retains
its own nature; God is not in us as a part of us, but as an efficient
and preserving cause; it is not by his essential presence, but his
efficacious presence, that he brings any person into a likeness to his
own nature; God is so in his essence with things, as to be distinct
from them, as a cause from the effect; as a Creator different from
the creature, preserving their nature, not communicating his own; his
essence touches all, is in conjunction with none; finite and infinite
cannot be joined; he is not far from us, therefore near to us; so near
that we live and move in him (Acts xvii. 28). Nothing is God because
it moves in him, any more than a fish in the sea, is the sea, or a
part of the sea, because it moves in it. Doth a man that holds a thing
in the hollow of his hand, transform it by that action, and make it
like his hand?[665] The soul and body are more straitly united, than
the essence of God is, by his presence, with any creature. The soul is
in the body as a form in matter, and from their union doth arise a man;
yet in this near conjunction, both body and soul remain distinct; the
soul is not the body, nor the body the soul; they both have distinct
natures and essences; the body can never be changed into a soul,
nor the soul into a body; no more can God into the creature, or the
creature into God. Fire is in heated iron in every part of it, so that
it seems to be nothing but fire; yet is not fire and iron the same
thing. But such a kind of arguing against God’s omnipresence, that if
God were essentially present, everything would be God, would exclude
him from heaven as well as from earth. By the same reason, since they
acknowledge God essentially in heaven, the heaven where he is should
be changed into the nature of God; and by arguing against his presence
in earth, upon this ground they run such an inconvenience, that they
must own him to be nowhere, and that which is nowhere is nothing.
Doth the earth become God, because God is essentially there, any more
than the heavens, where God is acknowledged by all to be essentially
present? Again, if where God is essentially, that must be God; then
if they place God in a point of the heavens, not only that point must
be God, but all the world; because if that point be God, because God
is there, then the point touched by that point must be God, and so
consequently as far as there are any points, touched by one another.
We live and move in God, so we live and move in the air; we are no
more God by that, than we are mere air because we breathe in it,
and it enters into all the pores of our body; nay, where there was a
straiter union of the divine nature to the human in our Saviour, yet
the nature of both was distinct, and the humanity was not changed into
the divinity, nor the divinity into the humanity.
5. Nor doth it follow, that because God is everywhere, therefore
{a390} a creature may be worshipped without idolatry. Some of the
heathens who acknowledged God’s omnipresence, abused it to the
countenancing idolatry; because God was resident in everything,
they thought everything might be worshipped; and some have used it
as an argument against this doctrine; the best doctrines may by men’s
corruption be drawn out into unreasonable and pernicious conclusions.
Have you not met with any, that from the doctrine of God’s free mercy,
and our Saviour’s satisfactory death, have drawn poison to feed
their lusts, and consume their souls?――a poison composed by their own
corruption, and not offered by those truths. The Apostle intimates
to us, that some did, or at least were ready to be more lavish in
sinning, because God was abundant in grace;[666] “Shall we continue
in sin, that grace may abound?” when he prevents an objection that he
thought might be made by some: but as to this case, since though God
be present in everything, yet everything retains its nature distinct
from the nature of God; therefore it is not to have a worship due to
the excellency of God. As long as anything remains a creature, it is
only to have the respect from us, which is due to it in the rank of
creatures. When a prince is present with his guard, or if he should go
arm in arm with a peasant, is, therefore, the veneration and honor due
to the prince to be paid to the peasant, or any of his guard? Would
the presence of the prince excuse it, or would it not rather aggravate
it? He acknowledged such a person equal to me, by giving him my rights,
even in my sight. Though God dwelt in the temple, would not the
Israelites have been accounted guilty of idolatry had they worshipped
the images of the cherubims, or the ark, or the altar, as objects of
worship, which were erected only as means for his service? Is there
not as much reason to think God was as essentially present in the
temple as in heaven, since the same expressions are used of the one
and the other? The sanctuary is called the glorious high throne (Jer.
xvii. 13); and he is said to dwell between the cherubims (Ps. lxxx. 1),
_i. e._ the two cherubims that were at the two ends of the mercy seat,
appointed by God as the two sides of his throne in the sanctuary
(Exod. xxv. 18), where he was to dwell (ver. 8), and meet, and commune,
with his people (ver. 22). Could this excuse Manasseh’s idolatry
in bringing in a carved image into the house of God (1 Chron.
xxxiii. 7)? had it been a good answer to the charge, God is present
here, and therefore everything may be worshipped as God? If he be only
essentially in heaven, would it not be idolatry to direct a worship
to the heavens, or any part of it as a due object, because of the
presence of God there? Though we look up to the heavens, where we pray
and worship God, yet heaven is not the object of worship; the soul
abstracts God from the creature.
6. Nor is God denied by being present with those creatures which seem
filthy to us. Nothing is filthy in the eye of God as his creature; he
could never else have pronounced all good; whatsoever is filthy to us,
yet, as it is a creature, it owes itself to the power of God: his
essence is no more defiled by being present with it, than his {a391}
power by producing it: no creature is foul in itself, though it may
seem so to us. Doth not an infant lie in a womb of filthiness and
rottenness? yet is not the power of God present with it, in working
it curiously in the lower parts of the earth? Are his eyes defiled by
seeing the substance when it is yet imperfect? or his hand defiled by
writing every member in his book (Ps. cxxxix. 15, 16)? Have not the
vilest and most noisome things excellent medicinal virtues? How are
they endued with them? How are those qualities preserved in them?
by anything without God, or no? Every artificer looks with pleasure
upon the work he hath wrought with art and skill. Can his essence be
defiled by being present with them, any more than it was in giving
them such virtues, and preserving them in them? God measures the
heavens and the earth with his hand; is his hand defiled by the evil
influences of the planets, or the corporeal impurities of the earth?
Nothing can be filthy in the eye of God but sin, since everything else
owes its being to him. What may appear deformed and unworthy to us,
is not so to the Creator; he sees beauty where we see deformity; finds
goodness where we behold what is nauseous to us. All creatures being
the effects of his power, may be the objects of his presence. Can any
place be more foul than hell, if you take it either for the hell of
the damned, or for the grave where there is rottenness? yet there
he is (Ps. cxxxix. 8). When Satan appeared before God, and God spake
with him (Job i. 7), could God contract any impurity by being present
where that filthy spirit was, more impure than any corporeal, noisome,
and defiling thing can be? No; God is purity to himself in the midst
of noisomeness; a heaven to himself in the midst of hell. Whoever
heard of a sunbeam stained by shining upon a quagmire, any more than
sweetened by breaking into a perfumed room?[667] Though the light
shines upon pure and impure things, yet it mixes not itself with
either of them; so though God be present with devils and wicked
men, yet without any mixture; he is present with their essence to
sustain it and support it; not in their defection, wherein lies their
defilement, and which is not a physical, but a moral evil; bodily
filth can never touch an incorporeal substance. Spirits are not
present with us in the same manner that one body is present with
another; bodies can by a touch only, defile bodies. Is the glory of
an angel stained by being in a coal‑mine? or could the angel that came
into the lion’s den to deliver Daniel, be any more disturbed by the
stench of the place, than he could be scratched by the paws, or torn
by the teeth, of the beasts (Dan. vi. 22)? Their spiritual nature
secures them against any infection when they are ministering spirits
to persecuted believers in their nasty prisons (Acts xii. 7). The soul
is straitly united with the body, but it is not made white or black
by the whiteness or blackness of its habitation. Is it infected by
the corporeal impurities of the body, while it continually dwells in
a sea of filthy pollution? If the body be cast into a common shore, is
the soul defiled by it? Can a diseased body derive a contagion to the
spirit that animates it? Is it not often the purer by grace, the more
the body is infected by nature? Hezekiah’s spirit was scarce ever more
fervent {a392} with God, than when the sore, which some think to be
a plague sore, was upon him (Isa. xxxviii. 3). How can any corporeal
filth impair the purity of the divine essence? It may as well be said,
that God is not present in battles and fights for his people (Joshua
xxiii. 10), because he would not be disturbed by the noise of cannons,
and clashing of swords, as that he is not present in the world because
of the ill scents. Let us therefore conclude this with the expression
of a learned man of our own:[668] “To deny the omnipresence of God,
because of ill scented places, is to measure God rather by the nicety
of sense, than by the sagacity of reason.”
IV. _Use._ First, of information.
1. Christ hath a divine nature. As eternity and immutability, two
incommunicable properties of the divine nature, are ascribed to
Christ, so also is this of omnipresence or immensity (John iii. 13):
“No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven,
even the Son of Man which is in heaven.” Not which was, but which
is. He comes from heaven by incarnation, and remains in heaven by
his divinity. He was, while he spake to Nicodemus, locally on earth,
in regard of his humanity; but in heaven according to his deity, as
well as upon earth in the union of his divine and human nature. He
descended upon earth, but he left not heaven; he was in the world
before he came in the flesh (John i. 10): “He was in the world, and
the world was made by him.” He was in the world, as the “light that
enlightens every man that comes into the world.” In the world as God,
before he was in the world as man. He was then in the world as man,
while he discoursed with Nicodemus; yet so, that he was also in heaven
as God. No creature but is bounded in place, either circumscribed
as body, or determined as spirit to be in one space, so as not to be
in another at the same time; to leave a place where they were, and
possess a place where they were not. But Christ is so on earth, that
at the same time he is in heaven; he is therefore infinite. To be
in heaven and earth at the same moment of time, is a property solely
belonging to the Deity, wherein no creature can be a partner with him.
He was in the world before he came to the world, and “the world was
made by him” (John i. 10). His coming was not as the coming of angels,
that leave heaven, and begin to be on earth, where they were not
before; but such a presence as can be ascribed only to God, who fills
heaven and earth. Again, if all things were made by him, then he was
present with all things which were made; for where there is a presence
of power, there is also a presence of essence, and therefore he is
still present; for the right and power of conservation follows the
power of creation. And, according to this divine nature, he promiseth
his presence with his church (Matt. xviii. 20): “There am I in the
midst of them:” and (Matt. xxviii. 20), “I am with you alway, even to
the end of the world,” _i. e._ by his divinity: for he had before told
them (Matt. xxvi. 11), that they were not to have him alway with them,
_i. e._ according to his humanity; but in his Divine nature he is
present with, and walks in the midst of, the golden candlesticks. If
we understand it of a presence by his Spirit in the midst of {a393}
the church, doth it invalidate his essential presence? No; he is no
less than the Spirit whom he sends; and therefore as little confined
as the Spirit is, who dwells in every believer: and this may also
be inferred from John x. 30: “My father and I are one;” not one by
consent, though that be included, but one in power: for he speaks
not of their consent, but of their joint power in keeping his people.
Where there is a unity of essence, there is a unity of presence.
2. Here is a confirmation of the spiritual nature of God. If he were
an infinite body, he could not fill heaven and earth, but with the
exclusion of all creatures. Two bodies cannot be in the same space;
they may be near one another, but not in any of the same points
together. A body bounded he hath not, for that would destroy his
immensity; he could not then fill heaven and earth, because a body
cannot be at one and the same time in two different spaces; but God
doth not fill heaven at one time, and the earth at another, but both
at the same time. Besides a limited body cannot be said to fill the
whole earth, but one particular space in the earth at a time. A body
may fill the earth with its virtue, as the sun, but not with its
substance. Nothing can be everywhere with a corporeal weight and mass;
but God being infinite, is not tied to any part of the world, but
penetrates all, and equally acts by his infinite power in all.
3. Here is an argument for providence. His presence is mentioned in
the text, in order to his government of the affairs of the world. Is
he everywhere, to be unconcerned with everything? Before the world
had a being, God was present with himself; since the world hath
a being, he is present with his creatures, to exercise his wisdom
in the ordering, as he did his power in the production of them.
As the knowledge of God is not a bare contemplation of a thing, so
his presence is not a bare inspection into a thing. Were it an idle
careless presence, it were a presence to no purpose, which cannot
be imagined of God. Infinite power, goodness, and wisdom, being
everywhere present with his essence, are never without their exercise.
He never manifests any of his perfections, but the manifestation is
full of some indulgence and benefit to his creatures. It cannot be
supposed God should neglect those things, wherewith he is constantly
present in a way of efficiency and operation. He is not everywhere
without acting everywhere. “Wherever his essence is, there is a power
and virtue worthy of God everywhere dispensed.”[669] He governs by
his presence what he made by his power; and is present as an agent
with all his works. His power and essence are together, to preserve
them while he pleases, as his power and his essence were together,
to create them when he saw good to do it. Every creature hath a stamp
of God, and his presence is necessary to keep the impression standing
upon the creature. As all things are his works, they are the objects
of his cares; and the wisdom he employed in framing them will not
suffer him to be careless of them. His presence with them engageth
him in honor not to be a negligent Governor. {a394} His immensity fits
him for government; and where there is a fitness, there is an exercise
of government, where there are objects for the exercise of it. He is
worthy to have the universal rule of the world; he can be present in
all places of his empire; there is nothing can be done by any of his
subjects, but in his sight. As his eternity renders him King alway, so
his immensity renders him King everywhere. If he were only present in
heaven, it might occasion a suspicion that he minded only the things
of heaven, and had no concern for things below that vast body; but if
he be present here, his presence hath a tendency to the government of
those things with which he is present. We are all in him as fish in
the sea; and he bears all creatures in the womb of his providence, and
the arms of his goodness. It is most certain that his presence with
his people is far from being an idle one; for when he promises to be
with them, he adds some special cordial, as, “I will be with thee,
and bless thee” (Gen. xxvi. 3.) “I am with thee, and I will strengthen
thee” (Jer. xv. 20.) “I will help thee, I will uphold thee” (Isa. xli.
10, 14.) Infinite goodness will never countenance a negligent presence.
4. The omniscience of God is inferred from hence. If God be present
everywhere, he must needs know what is done everywhere. It is for this
end he proclaims himself a God filling heaven and earth, in the text,
“Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him, saith
the Lord? I have heard what the prophets say, that prophesy lies in
my name: if I fill heaven and earth, the most secret thing cannot be
hid from my sight.” An intelligent being cannot be everywhere present,
and more intimate in everything, than it can be in itself; but he
must know what is done without, what is thought within. Nothing can be
obscure to Him who is in every part of the world, in every part of his
creatures. Not a thought can start up but in his sight, who is present
in the souls and minds of everything. How easy is it with him, to
whose essence the world is but a point, to know and observe everything
done in this world, as any of us can know what is done in one point of
place where we are present! If light were an understanding being, it
would behold and know everything done where it diffuseth itself. God
is light (as light in a crystal glass all within it, all without it),
and is not ignorant of what is done within and without; no ignorance
can be fastened upon him who hath an universal presence. Hence, by the
way, we may take notice of the wonderful patience of God, who bears
with so many provocations; not from a principal of ignorance, for he
bears with sins that are committed near him in his sight, sins that
he sees, and cannot but see.
5. Hence may be inferred the incomprehensibility of God. He that
fills heaven and earth cannot be contained in anything; he fills
the understandings of men, the understandings of angels, but is
comprehended by neither; it is a rashness to think to find out any
bounds of God; there is no measuring of an infinite Being; if it were
to be measured it were not infinite; but because it is infinite, it is
not to be measured. God sits above the cherubims {a395} (Ezek. x. 1),
above the fulness, above the brightness, not only of a human, but a
created understanding. Nothing is more present than God, yet nothing
more hid; he is light, and yet obscurity;[670] his perfections are
visible, yet unsearchable; we know there is an infinite God, but
it surpasseth the compass of our minds; we know there is no number
so great, but another may be added to it; but no man can put it in
practice, without losing himself in a maze of figures. What is the
reason we comprehend not many, nay, most things in the world? partly
from the excellency of the object, and partly from the imperfection of
our understandings. How can we then comprehend God, who exceeds all,
and is exceeded by none; contains all, and is contained by none; is
above our understanding, as well as above our sense? as considered in
himself infinite; as considered in comparison with our understandings,
incomprehensible; who can, with his eye, measure the breadth, length
and depth of the sea, and at one cast, view every dimension of the
heavens? God is greater, and we cannot know him (Job xxxvi. 26); he
fills the understanding as he fills heaven and earth; yet is above the
understanding as he is above heaven and earth. He is known by faith,
enjoyed by love, but comprehended by no mind. God is not contained in
that one syllable, God; by it we apprehend an excellent and unlimited
nature; himself only understands himself, and can unveil himself.
6. How wonderful is God, and how nothing are creatures! “Ascribe
the greatness to our God” (Deut. xxxiii. 3); he is admirable in the
consideration of his power, in the extent of his understanding, and no
less wonderful in the immensity of his essence: that, as Austin saith,
he is in the world, yet not confined to it; he is out of the world,
yet not debarred from it; he is above the world, yet not elevated
by it; he is below the world, yet not depressed by it; he is above
all, equalled by none; he is in all, not because he needs them, but
they stand in need of him; this, as well as eternity, makes a vast
disproportion between God and the creature: the creature is bounded
by a little space, and no space is so great as to bound the Creator.
By this we may take a prospect of our own nothingness: as in the
consideration of God’s holiness we are minded of our own impurity;
and in the thoughts of his wisdom have a view of our own folly; and
in the meditation of his power, have a sense of our weakness; so his
immensity should make us, according to our own nature, appear little
in our own eyes. What little, little, little things are we to God!
less than an atom in the beams of the sun; poor drops to a God that
fills heaven and earth, and yet dare we to strut against him, and
dash ourselves against a rock? If the consideration of ourselves in
comparison with others, be apt to puff us up, the consideration of
ourselves in comparison with God, will be sufficient to pull us down.
If we consider him in the greatness of his essence, there is but
little more proportion between him and us, than between being and
not being, than between a drop and the ocean. How should we never
think of God without a holy admiration of his greatness, {a396} and a
deep sense of our own littleness! and as the angels cover their faces
before him, with what awe should creeping worms come into his sight!
and since God fills heaven and earth with his presence, we should fill
heaven and earth with his glory; for this end he created angels to
praise him in heaven, and men to worship him on earth, that the places
he fills with his presence may be filled with his praise: we should be
swallowed up in admiration of the immensity of God, as men are at the
first sight of the sea, when they behold a mass of waters, without
beholding the bounds and immense depth of it.
7. How much is this attribute of God forgotten or contemned! We
pretend to believe him to be present everywhere, and yet many live
as if he were present nowhere.
(1.) It is commonly forgotten, or not believed. All the extravagances
of men may be traced to the forgetfulness of this attribute as
their spring. The first speech Adam spake in paradise after his fall,
testified his unbelief of this (Gen. iii. 10); “I heard thy voice in
the garden, and I hid myself;” his ear understood the voice of God,
but his mind did not conclude the presence of God; he thought the
trees could shelter him from Him whose eye was present in the minutest
parts of the earth; he that thought after his sin, that he could hide
himself from the presence of his justice, thought before that he could
hide himself from the presence of his knowledge; and being deceived in
the one, he would try what would be the fruit of the other. In both he
forgets, if not denies, this attribute; either corrupt notions of God,
or a slight belief of what in general men assent unto, gives birth to
every sin. In all transgressions there is something of atheism; either
denying the being of God, or a dash upon some perfection of God;――a
not believing his holiness to hate it, his truth that threatens, his
justice to punish it, and his presence to observe it. Though God be
not afar off in his essence, he is “afar off in the apprehension of
the sinner.”[671] There is no wicked man, but if he be an atheist, he
is a heretic; and to gratify his lust, will fancy himself to be out of
the presence of his Judge. His reason tells him, God is present with
him, his lust presseth him to embrace the season of sensual pleasure;
he will forsake his reason, and prove a heretic, that he may be an
undisturbed sinner; and sins doubly, both in the error of his mind,
and the vileness of his practice; he will conceit God with those in
Job, “veiled with thick clouds” (Job xxii. 14), and not able to pierce
into the lower world, as if his presence and cares were confined to
celestial things, and the earth were too low a sphere for his essence
to reach, at least with any credit. It is forgotten by good men, when
they fear too much the designs of their enemies; “Fear not, for I
am with thee” (Isa. xliii. 5). If the presence of God be enough to
strengthen against fear, then the prevailing of fear issues from our
forgetfulness of it.
(2.) This attribute of God’s omnipresence is for the most part
contemned. When men will commit that in the presence of God which
they would be afraid or ashamed to do before the eye of man, men do
not practice that modesty before God as before men. He that {a397}
would restrain his tongue out of fear of men’s eye, will not restrain
either tongue or hands out of fear of God’s. What is the language
of this, but that God is not present with us, or his presence ought
to be of less regard with us, and influence upon us, than that of a
creature?[672] Ask the thief why he dares to steal? will he not answer,
“No eye sees him?” Ask the adulterer why he strips himself of his
chastity, and invades the rights of another? will he not answer (Job
xxiv. 15), “No eye sees me?” He disguiseth himself to be unseen by
man, but slights the all‑seeing eye of God. If only a man know them,
they are in terror of the shadow of death; they are planet‑struck,
but stand unshaken at the presence of God (Job xxiv. 17). Is not this
to account God as limited as man――as ignorant, as absenting, as if
God were something less than those things which restrain us? ’Tis a
debasing God below a creature. If we can forbear sin from an awe of
the presence of man, to whom we are equal in regard of nature, or from
the presence of a very mean man, to whom we are superior in regard of
condition, and not forbear it because we are within the ken of God, we
respect him not only as our inferior, but inferior to the meanest man
or child of his creation, in whose sight we would not commit the like
action: it is to represent him as a sleepy, negligent, or careless
God; as though anything might be concealed from him, before whom
the least fibres of the heart are anatomised and open, who sees as
plainly midnight as noon‑day sins (Heb. iv. 13). Now this is a high
aggravation of sin: to break a king’s laws, in his sight, is more bold
than to violate them behind his back; as it was Haman’s offence when
he lay upon Esther’s bed, to force the queen before the king’s face.
The least iniquity receives a high tincture from this; and no sin can
be little that is an affront in the face of God, and casting the filth
of the creature before the eyes of his holiness: as if a wife should
commit adultery before her husband’s face, or a slave dishonor his
master, and disobey his commands in his presence. And hath it not
often been thus with us? have we not been disloyal to God in his sight,
before his eyes, those pure eyes that cannot behold iniquity without
anger and grief? (Isa. lxv. 12), “Ye did evil before my eyes.” Nathan
chargeth this home upon David (2 Sam. xii. 9), “Thou hast despised the
commandment of the Lord, to do evil in his sight;” and David, in his
repentance, reflects upon himself for it (Ps. li. 4); “Against thee,
thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight.” I observed
not thy presence, I neglected thee while thy eye was upon me. And this
consideration should sting our hearts in all our confessions of our
crimes. Men will be afraid of the presence of others, whatsoever they
think in their heart. How unworthily do we deal with God, in not
giving him so much as an eye‑service, which we do man!
8. How terrible should the thoughts of this attribute be to
sinners! How foolish is it, to imagine any hiding‑place from the
incomprehensible God, who fills and contains all things, and is
present in every point of the world![673] When men have shut the door,
and {a398} made all darkness within, to meditate or commit a crime,
they cannot in the most intricate recesses be sheltered from the
presence of God. If they could separate themselves from their own
shadows, they could not avoid his company, or be obscured from his
sight.[674] Hypocrites cannot disguise their sentiments from him; he
is in the most secret nook of their hearts. No thought is hid, no lust
is secret, but the eye of God beholds this, and that, and the other.
He is present with our heart when we imagine, with our hands when we
act. We may exclude the sun from peeping into our solitudes, but not
the eyes of God from beholding our actions. “The eyes of the Lord
are in every place, beholding the evil and good” (Prov. xv. 3). He
lies in the depths of our souls, and sees afar off our designs before
we have conceived them. He is in the greatest darkness, as well as
the clearest light; in the closest thought of the mind, as well as
the openest expressions. Nothing can be hid from him, no, not in the
darkest cells or thickest walls. “He compasseth our path wherever we
are” (Ps. cxxxix. 3), and “is acquainted with all our ways.” He is
as much present with wicked men to observe their sins, as he is to
detest them. Where he is present in his essence, he is present in his
attributes: his holiness to hate, and his justice to punish, if he
please to speak the word. It is strange men should not be mindful
of this, when their very sins themselves might put them in mind of
his presence. Whence hast thou the power to act? who preserves thy
being, whereby thou art capable of committing that evil? Is it not
his essential presence that sustains us, and his arm that supports
us? and where can any man fly from his presence? Not the vast regions
of heaven could shelter a sinning angel from his eye: how was Adam
ferreted out of his hiding‑places in paradise? Nor can we find the
depths of the sea a sufficient covering to us. If we were with Jonah,
closeted up in the belly of a whale; if we had the “wings of the
morning,” as quick a motion as the light at the dawning of the day,
that doth in an instant surprise and overpower the regions of darkness,
and could pass to the utmost parts of the earth or hell, there we
should find him, there his eye would be upon us, there would his hand
lay hold of us, and lead us as a conqueror triumphing over a captive
(Ps. cxxxix. 8‒10). Nay, if we could leap out of the compass of heaven
and earth, we should find as little reserves from him: he is without
the world in those infinite spaces which the mind of man can imagine.
In regard of his immensity, nothing in being can be distant from him,
wheresoever it is.
Second, _Use_ is for comfort. That God is present everywhere, is as
much a comfort to a good man, as it is a terror to a wicked one. He
is everywhere for his people, not only by a necessary perfection of
his nature, but an immense diffusion of his goodness. He is in all
creatures as their preserver: in the damned, as their terror; in his
people, as their protector. He fills hell with his severity, heaven
with his glory, his people with his grace. He is with his people
as light in darkness, a fountain in a garden, as manna in the ark.
God is in the world as a spring of preservation; in the church as
his {a399} cabinet, his spring of grace and consolation. A man is
present sometimes in his field, but more delightfully in his garden.
A vine yard, as it hath more of cost, so more of care, and a watchful
presence of the owner (Isa. xxvii. 3); “I, the Lord, do keep it,” viz.
his vineyard; “I will water it every moment, lest any hurt it: I will
keep it night and day.” As there is a presence of essence, which is
natural, so there is a presence of grace, which is federal: a presence
by covenant; “I will not leave thee, I will be with thee.” This latter
depends upon the former; for, take away the immensity of God, and
you leave no foundation for his universal gracious presence with his
people in all their emergencies, in all their hearts. And, therefore,
where he is present in his essence, he cannot be absent in his grace,
from them that fear him. It is from his filling heaven and earth he
proves his knowledge of the designs of the false prophets; and from
the same topic may as well be inferred the employment of his power and
grace for his people.
1. The omnipresence of God is a comfort in all violent temptations.
No fiery dart can be so present with us, as God is present both with
that and the marksman. The most raging devils cannot be so near us, as
God is to us and them. He is present with his people to relieve them,
and present with the devil to manage him to his own holy purposes: so
he was with Job, defeating his enemies, and bringing him triumphantly
out of those pressing trials. This presence is such a terror, that
whatsoever the devil can despoil us of, he must leave this untouched.
He might scratch the apostle with a thorn (2 Cor. xii. 7, 9), but
he could not rifle him of the presence of divine grace, which God
promised him. He must prevail so far as to make God cease to be God,
before he can make him to be distant from us; and while this cannot
be, the devils and men can no more hinder the emanations of God to the
soul, than a child can cut off the rays of the sun from embellishing
the earth. It is no mean support for a good man, at any time, buffeted
by a messenger of Satan, to think God stands near him, and behold
how ill he is used. It would be a satisfaction to a king’s favorite,
in the midst of the violence some enemies might use to him upon a
surprise, to understand that the king who loves him stands behind
a curtain, and through a hole sees the injuries he suffers: and were
the devil as considering as he is malicious, he could not but be in
great fear at God’s being in the generation of the righteous, as his
serpentine seed is (Prov. iii. 6): “They were in great fear, for God
is in the generation of the righteous.”
2. The omnipresence of God is a comfort in sharp afflictions. Good
men have a comfort in this presence in their nasty prisons, oppressing
tribunals; in the overflowing waters or scorching flames he is still
with them (Isa. xliii. 2); and many times by his presence keeps
the bush from consuming, when it seems to be all in a flame. In
afflictions God shows himself most present, when friends are most
absent: “When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord shall
take me up” (Ps. xxvii. 10), then God will stoop and gather me into
his protection; or, (Heb.) “shall gather me,” alluding to those tribes
that were to bring up the rear in the Israelites’ march, to take
care that {a400} none were left behind, and exposed to famine or wild
beasts, by reason of some disease that disenabled them to keep pace
with their brethren. He that is the sanctuary of his people in all
calamities, is more present with them to support them, than their
adversaries can be present with them to afflict them (Psal. xlvi. 2),
a present help in the time of trouble; He is present with all things
for this end; though his presence be a necessary presence in regard of
the immensity of his nature, yet the end of this presence in regard
that it is for the good of his people, is a voluntary presence. It is
for the good of man he is present in the lower world, and principally
for the good of his people, for whose sake he keeps up the world (2
Chron. xvi. 9). “His eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth,
to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect
towards him.” If he doth not deliver good men from afflictions, he
will be so present as to manage them in them, as that his glory shall
issue from them, and their grace be brightened by them.[675] What a
man was Paul when he was lodged in a prison, or dragged to the courts
of judicature, when he was torn with rods, or laden with chains! then
did he show the greatest miracles, made the judge tremble upon the
bench, and brake the heart, though not the prison, of the jailor;
so powerful is the presence of God in the pressures of his people.
This presence outweighs all other comforts, and is more valuable
to a Christian than barns of corn, or cellars of wine can be to a
covetous man (Ps. iv. 7): it was this presence was David’s cordial
in the mutinying of his soldiers (1 Sam. xxx. 6). What a comfort is
this in exile, or a forced desertion of our habitations! Good men may
be banished from their country, but never from the presence of their
Protector; ye cannot say of any corner of the earth, or of any dungeon
in a prison, God is not here; if you were cast out of your country
a thousand miles off, you are not out of God’s precinct; his arm is
there to cherish the good, as well as to drag out the wicked; it is
the same God, the same presence in every country, as well as the same
sun, moon, and stars; and were not God everywhere, yet he could not be
meaner than his creature the sun in the firmament, which visits every
part of the habitable world in twenty‑four hours.
3. The omnipresence of God is a comfort in all duties of worship. He
is present to observe, and present to accept our petitions, and answer
our suits. Good men have not only the essential presence, which is
common to all, but his gracious presence; not only the presence that
flows from his nature, but that which flows from his promise; his
essential presence makes no difference between this and that man in
regard of spirituals, without this in conjunction with it; his nature
is the cause of the presence of his essence; his will engaged by his
truth is the cause of the presence of his grace. He promised to meet
the Israelites in the place where he should set his name, and in all
places where he doth record it (Exod. xx. 4). “In all places where
I record my name, I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee;” in
every place where I shall manifest the special presence of my divinity.
In all places, hands may be lifted up, without doubting of his ability
to hear; he dwells in the contrite hearts, wherever {a401} it is
most in the exercise of contrition; which is usually in times of
special worship (Isa. lvii. 15), and that to revive and refresh them.
Habitation notes a special presence, though he dwell in the highest
heavens in the sparklings of his glory, he dwells also in the lowest
hearts in the beams of his grace; as none can expel him from his
dwelling in heaven, so none can reject him from his residence in the
heart. The tabernacle had his peculiar presence fixed to it (Levit.
xxvi. 11); his soul should not abhor them, as they are washed by
Christ, though they are loathsome by sin: in a greater dispensation
there cannot be a less presence, since the church under the New
Testament is called the temple of the Lord, wherein he will both dwell
and walk (2 Cor. vi. 6); or, I will indwell in them; as if he should
say, I will dwell in and in them; I will dwell in them by grace, and
walk in them by exciting their graces; he will be more intimate with
them than their own souls, and converse with them as the living God,
_i. e._ as a God that hath life in himself, and life to convey to them
in their converse with him; and show his spiritual glory among them
in a greater measure than in the temple, since that was but a heap
of stones, and the figure of the Christian church the mystical body
of his Son. His presence is not less in the substance than it was in
the shadow; this presence of God in his ordinances, is the glory of a
church, as the presence of a king is the glory of a court, the defence
of it, too, as a wall of fire (Zech. ii. 5); alluding to the fire
travellers in a wilderness made to fright away wild beasts. It is
not the meanness of the place of worship can exclude him; the second
temple was not so magnificent as the first of Solomon’s erecting, and
the Jews seemed to despond of so glorious a presence of God in the
second, as they had in the first, because they thought it not so good
for the entertainment of Him that inhabits eternity; but God comforts
them against this conceit again and again (Hag. ii. 3, 4): “be strong,
be strong, be strong, I am with you;” the meanness of the place shall
not hinder the grandeur of my presence, no matter what the room is,
so it be the presence‑chamber of the king, wherein he will favor
our suits; he can everywhere slide into our souls with a perpetual
sweetness, since he is everywhere, and so, intimate with every one
that fears him. If we should see God on earth in his amiableness, as
Moses did, should we not be encouraged by his presence, to present our
requests to him, to echo out our praises of him? and have we not as
great a ground now to do it, since he is as really present with us, as
if he were visible to us? he is in the same room with us, as near to
us as our souls to our bodies, not a word but he hears, not a motion
but he sees, not a breath but he perceives; he is through all, he is
in all.
4. The omnipresence of God is a comfort in all special services. God
never puts any upon a hard task, but he makes promises to encourage
them and assist them, and the matter of the promise is that of his
presence; so he did assure the prophets of old when he set them
difficult tasks, and strengthened Moses against the face of Pharaoh,
by assuring him “he would be with his mouth” (Exod. iv. 12); and
when Christ put his apostles upon a contest with the whole world, to
preach a gospel that would be foolishness to the Greeks, {a402} and
a stumbling block to the Jews, he gives them a cordial only composed
of his presence (Matt. xxviii. 20), I will be with you; it is this
presence scatters by its light the darkness of our spirits; it is
this that is the cause of what is done for his glory in the world; it
is this that mingles itself with all that is done for his honor; it is
this from whence springs all the assistance of his creatures, marked
out for special purposes.
5. This presence is not without the special presence of all his
attributes. Where his essence is, his perfections are, because they
are one with his essence; yea, they are his essence, though they
have their several degrees of manifestation. As in the covenant, he
makes over himself, not a part of himself, but his whole deity; so in
promising of his presence, he means not a part of it, but the whole,
the presence of all the excellencies of his nature to be manifested
for our good. It is not a piece of God is here and another parcel
there, but God in his whole essence and perfections; in his wisdom to
guide us, his power to protect and support us, his mercy to pity us,
his fulness to refresh us, and his goodness to relieve us: he is ready
to sparkle out in this or that perfection, as the necessities of his
people require, and his own wisdom directs for his own honor; so that
being not far from us in an excellency of his nature, we can quickly
have recourse to him upon any emergency; so that if we are miserable,
we have the presence of his goodness; if we want direction, we have
the presence of his wisdom; if we are weak, we have the presence of
his power; and should we not rejoice in it, as a man doth in the
presence of a powerful, wealthy, and compassionate friend?
Third, _Use._ Of Exhortation.
1. Let us be much in the actual thoughts of this truth. How should
we enrich our understandings with the knowledge of the excellency of
God, whereof this is none of the least; nor hath less of honey in its
bowels, though it be more terrible to the wicked than the presence
of a lion; it is this that makes all other excellencies of the divine
nature sweet. What would grace, wisdom, power, signify at a distance
from us? Let us frame in our minds a strong idea of it; it is this
makes so great a difference between the actions of one man and another;
one maintains actual thoughts of it, another doth not: though all
believe it as a perfection pertaining to the infiniteness of his
essence. David, or rather a greater than David, had God always before
him; there was no time, no occasion, wherein he did not stir up some
lively thoughts of him (Ps. xvi. 8). Let us have right notions of it;
imagine not God as a great King, sitting only in his majesty in heaven;
acting all by his servants and ministers. This, saith one,[676] is
a childish and unworthy conceit of God, and may in time bring such
a conceiver by degrees to deny his providence; the denial of this
perfection is an axe at the root of religion; if it be not deeply
imprinted in the mind, personal religion grows faint and feeble.
Who would fear that God that is not imagined to be a witness of his
actions? Who would worship a God at a distance both from the worship
and the worshipper?[677] Let us believe this truth, {a403} but not
with an idle faith, as if we did not believe it. Let us know, that as
wheresoever the fish moves, it is in the water; wheresoever the bird
moves, it is in the air; so wheresoever we move, we are in God. As
there is not a moment but we are under his mercy, so there is not a
moment that we are out of his presence. Let us therefore look upon
nothing, without thinking who stands by, without reflecting upon him
in whom it lives, moves and hath its being. When you view a man, you
fix your eyes upon his body, but your mind upon that invisible part
that acts every member by life and motion, and makes them fit for your
converse. Let us not bound our thoughts to the creatures we see, but
pierce through the creature to that boundless God we do not see: we
have continual remembrances of his presence; the light, whereby we see,
and the air, whereby we live, give us perpetual notices of it, and
some weak resemblance; why should we forget it? yea, what a shame is
our unmindfulness of it, when every cast of our eye, every motion of
our lungs, jogs us to remember it? Light is in every part of the air,
in every part of the world, yet not mixed with any, both remain entire
in their own substance. Let us not be worse than some of the heathens,
who pressed this notion upon themselves for the spiriting their
actions with virtue, that all places were full of God. This was the
means Basil used to prescribe, upon a question asked him, How shall we
do to be serious? mind God’s presence. How shall we avoid distractions
in service? think of God’s presence. How shall we resist temptation?
oppose to them the presence of God.[678]
(1.) This will be a shield against all temptations. God is present,
is enough to blunt the weapons of hell; this will secure us from a
ready compliance with any base and vile attractives, and curb that
headstrong principle in our nature, that would join hands with them;
the thoughts of this would, like the powerful presence of God with
the Israelites, take off the wheels from the chariots of our sensitive
appetites, and make them perhaps move slower, at least, towards a
temptation. How did Peter fling off the temptation which had worsted
him, upon a look from Christ! The actuated faith of this would
stifle the darts of Satan, and fire us with an anger against his
solicitations, as strong as the fire that inflames the darts. Moses’
sight of Him that was invisible, strengthened him against the costly
pleasures and luxuries of a prince’s court (Heb. xi. 27). We are
utterly senseless of a Deity, if we are not moved with this item
from our consciences, God is present. Had our first parents actually
considered the nearness of God to them, when they were tempted to eat
of the forbidden fruit, they had not probably been so easily overcome
by the temptation. What soldier would be so base as to revolt under
the eye of a tender and obliging general? or what man so negligent of
himself, as to rob a house in the sight of a judge? Let us consider
that God is as near to observe us, as the devil to solicit us, yea,
nearer; the devil stands by us, but God is in us; we may have a
thought the devil knows not, but not a thought but God is actually
present with, as our souls are with the thoughts they think; nor
can any creature attract our heart, if our minds were fixed on that
invisible presence {a404} that contributes to that excellency, and
sustains it, and considered that no creature could be so present with
us as the Creator is.
(2.) It will be a spur to holy actions. What man would do an unworthy
action, or speak an unhandsome word, in the presence of his prince?
The eye of the general inflames the spirit of a soldier. Why did David
keep God’s testimonies (Ps. cxix. 168)? because he considered that
all his ways were before him; because he was persuaded his ways were
present with God; God’s precepts should be present with him. The same
was the cause of Job’s integrity (Job xxxi. 4): “Doth he not see my
ways?” To have God in our eye is the way to be sincere (Gen. xvii. 1);
“walk before me” as in my sight, “and be thou perfect.” Communion with
God consists chiefly in an ordering our ways as in the presence of him
that is invisible. This would make us spiritual, raised and watchful
in all our passions, if we considered that God is present with us
in our shops, in our chambers, in our walks, and in our meetings, as
present with us as with the angels in heaven; who, though they have
a presence of glory above us, yet have not a greater measure of his
essential presence than we have. What an awe had Jacob upon him when
he considered God was present in Bethel (Gen. xxviii. 16, 17)! If
God should appear visibly to us when we were alone, should we not be
reverend and serious before him? God is everywhere about us, he doth
encompass us with his presence. Should not God’s seeing us have the
same influence upon us as our seeing God? He is not more essentially
present if he should so manifest himself to us, than when he doth
not. Who would appear besmeared in the presence of a great person? or
not be ashamed to be found in his chamber in a nasty posture by some
visitant? Would not a man blush to be catched about some mean action,
though it were not an immoral crime? If this truth were impressed upon
our spirits, we should more blush to have our souls daubed with some
loathsome lust; swarms of sin, like Egyptian lice and frogs, creeping
about our heart in his sight. If the most sensual man be ashamed to
do a dishonest action in the sight of a grave and holy man, one of
great reputation for wisdom and integrity, how much more should we
lift up ourselves in the ways of God, who is infinite and immense, is
everywhere, and infinitely superior to man, and more to be regarded!
We could not seriously think of his presence but there would pass some
intercourse between us; we should be putting up some petition upon
the sense of our indigence, or sending up our praises to him upon the
sense of his bounty. The actual thoughts of the presence of God is the
life and spirit of all religion; we could not have sluggish spirits
and a careless watch if we considered that his eye is upon us all the
day.
(3.) It will quell distractions in worship. The actual thoughts of
this would establish our thoughts, and pull them back when they begin
to rove: the mind could not boldly give God the slip if it had lively
thoughts of it; the consideration of this would blow off all the
froth that lies on the top of our spirits. An eye, taken up with the
presence of one object, is not at leisure to be filled with another:
he that looks intently upon the sun, shall have nothing for a while
but the sun in his eye. Oppose to every intruding thought {a405} the
idea of the Divine omnipresence, and put it to silence by the awe of
his Majesty. When the master is present, scholars mind their books,
keep their places, and run not over the forms to play with one another;
the master’s eye keeps an idle servant to his work, that otherwise
would be gazing at every straw, and prating to every passenger. How
soon would the remembrance of this dash all extravagant fancies out of
countenance, just as the news of the approach of a prince would make
the courtiers bustle up themselves, huddle up their vain sports, and
prepare themselves for a reverent behavior in his sight! We should not
dare to give God a piece of our heart when we apprehended him present
with the whole: we should not dare to mock one that we knew were more
inwards with us than we are with ourselves, and that beheld every
motion of our mind, as well as action of our body.
2. Let us endeavor for the more special and influential presence
of God. Let the essential presence of God be the ground of our awe,
and his gracious influential presence the object of our desire. The
heathen thought themselves secure if they had their little petty
household gods with them in their journeys: such seem to be the images
Rachel stole from her father (Gen. xxxi. 19) to company her travel
with their blessings: she might not at that time have cast off all
respect to those idols, in the acknowledgment of which she had been
educated from her infancy; and they seem to be kept by her till God
called Jacob to Bethel, after the rape of Dinah (Gen. xxxv. 4), when
Jacob called for the strange gods, and hid them under the oak. The
gracious presence of God we should look after, in our actions, as
travellers, that have a charge of money or jewels, desire to keep
themselves in company that may protect them from highwaymen that would
rifle them. Since we have the concerns of the eternal happiness of our
souls upon our hands, we should endeavor to have God’s merciful and
powerful presence with us in all our ways (Ps. xiv. 5); “In all thy
ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths:” acknowledge him
before any action, by imploring; acknowledge him after, by rendering
him the glory; acknowledge his presence before worship, in worship,
after worship: it is this presence makes a kind of heaven upon earth;
causeth affliction to put off the nature of misery. How much will the
presence of the sun outshine the stars of lesser comforts, and fully
answer the want of them! The ark of God going before us, can only make
all things successful. It was this led the Israelites over Jordan,
and settled them in Canaan. Without this we signify nothing: though
we live without this, we cannot be distinguished forever from devils;
his essential presence they have; and if we have no more, we shall be
no better. It is the enlivening fructifying presence of the sun that
revives the languishing earth; and this only can repair our ruined
soul. Let it be, therefore, our desire, that as he fills heaven and
earth by his essence, he may fill our understandings and wills by his
grace, that we may have another kind of presence with us than animals
have in their brutish state, or devils in their chains: his essential
presence maintains our beings, but his gracious presence confers and
continues a happiness.
{a406} DISCOURSE VIII.
ON GOD’S KNOWLEDGE.
Psalm cxlvii. 5.――Great is our Lord, and of great power; his
understanding is infinite.
It is uncertain who was the author of this psalm, and when it was
penned; some think after the return from the Babylonish captivity.
It is a psalm of praise, and is made up of matter of praise from the
beginning to the end: God’s benefits to the church, his providence
over his creatures, and the essential excellency of his nature.
The psalmist doubles his exhortation to praise God (ver. 1), “Praise
ye the Lord, sing praise to our God;” to praise him from his dominion
as “Lord,” from his grace and mercy as “our God;” from the excellency
of the duty itself, “it is good, it is comely:” some read it comely,
some lovely, or desirable, from the various derivations of the word.
Nothing doth so much delight a gracious soul, as an opportunity
of celebrating the perfections and goodness of the Creator. The
highest duties a creature can render to the Creator are pleasant
and delightful in themselves; “it is comely.” Praise is a duty that
affects the whole soul. The praise of God is a decent thing; the
excellency of God’s nature deserves it, and the benefits of God’s
grace requires it. It is comely when done as it ought to be, with the
heart as well as with the voice; a sinner sings ill, though his voice
be good; the soul in it is to be elevated above earthly things. The
first matter of praise is God’s erecting and preserving his church
(ver. 2): “The Lord doth build up Jerusalem, he gathers together
the outcasts of Israel.” The walls of demolished Jerusalem are now
re‑edified; God hath brought back the captivity of Jacob, and reduced
his people from their Babylonish exile, and those that were dispersed
into strange regions, he hath restored to their habitations. Or, it
may be prophetic of the calling of the Gentiles, and the gathering
the outcasts of the spiritual Israel, that were before as without God
in the world, and strangers to the covenant of promise. Let God be
praised, but especially for building up his church, and gathering the
Gentiles, before counted as outcasts (Isa. xi. 12); he gathers them
in this world to the faith, and hereafter to glory.
_Obs. 1._ From the two first verses, observe: 1. All people are
under God’s care; but he has a particular regard to his church. This
is the signet on his hand, as a bracelet upon his arm; this is his
garden which he delights to dress; if he prunes it, it is to purge
it; {a407} if he digs about his vine, and wounds the branches, it is
to make it beautiful with new clusters, and restore it to a fruitful
vigor. 2. All great deliverances are to be ascribed to God, as the
principal Author, whosoever are the instruments. The Lord doth build
up Jerusalem, he gathers together the outcasts of Israel. This great
deliverance from Babylon is not to be ascribed to Cyrus or Darius,
or the rest of our favorers; it is the Lord that doth it; we had his
promise for it, we have now his performance. Let us not ascribe that
which is the effect of his truth, only to the good will of men; it
is God’s act, not by might, nor by power, nor by weapons of war, or
strength of horses, but by the Spirit of the Lord. He sent prophets
to comfort us while we were exiles; and now he hath stretched out his
own arm to work our deliverance according to his word; blind man looks
so much upon instruments, that he hardly takes notice of God, either
in afflictions or mercies, and this is the cause that robs God of so
much prayer and praise in the world. (ver. 3.) “He heals the broken
in heart, and binds up their wounds.” He hath now restored those who
had no hope but in his word; he hath dealt with them as a tender and
skilful chirurgeon; he hath applied his curing plasters, and dropped
in his sovereign balsams; he hath now furnished our fainting hearts
with refreshing cordials, and comforted our wounds with strengthening
ligatures. How gracious is God, that restores liberty to the captives,
and righteousness to the penitent! Man’s misery is the fittest
opportunity for God to make his mercy illustrious in itself, and most
welcome to the patient. He proceeds (ver. 4), wonder not that God
calls together the outcasts, and singles them out from every corner
for a return; why can he not do this, as well as tell the number
of the stars, and call them all by their names? There are none of
his people so despicable in the eye of man, but they are known and
regarded by God; though they are clouded in the world, yet they are
the stars of the world; and shall God number the inanimate stars in
the heavens, and make no account of his living stars on the earth? No,
wherever they are dispersed, he will not forget them; however they are
afflicted, he will not despise them; the stars are so numerous, that
they are innumerable by man; some are visible and known by men; others
lie more hid and undiscovered in a confused light, as those in the
milky way; man cannot see one of them distinctly. God knows all his
people. As he can do what is above the power of man to perform, so
he understands what is above the skill of man to discover; shall man
measure God by his scantiness? Proud man must not equal himself to God,
nor cut God as short as his own line. He tells the number of the stars,
and calls them all by their names. He hath them all in his list, as
generals the names of their soldiers in their muster‑roll, for they
are his host, which he marshals in the heavens, as in Isaiah xl. 26,
where you have the like expression; he knows them more distinctly
than man can know anything, and so distinctly, as to call “them all
by their names.” He knows their names, that is, their natural offices,
influences the different degrees of heat and light, their order and
motion; and all of them, the least glimmering star, as well as the
most glaring planet: this, man cannot do; “Tell the {a408} stars
if thou be able to number them” (Gen. xv. 5), saith God to Abraham,
whom Josephus represents as a great astronomer: “Yea, they cannot be
numbered” (Jer. xxxiii. 22); and the uncertainty of the opinions of
men, evidenceth their ignorance of their number; some reckoning 1022;
others 1025; others 1098; others 7000, beside those that by reason
of their mixture of light with one another, cannot be distinctly
discerned, and others, perhaps so high, as not to be reached by the
eye of man. To impose names on things, and names according to their
natures, is both an argument of power and dominion, and of wisdom
and understanding: from the imposition of names upon the creatures by
Adam, the knowledge of Adam is generally concluded; and it was also
a fruit of that dominion God allowed him over the creatures. Now he
that numbers and names the stars that seem to lie confused among one
another, as well as those that appear to us in an unclouded night,
may well be supposed accurately to know his people, though lurking in
secret caverns, and know those that are fit to be instruments of their
deliverance; the one is as easy to him as the other; and the number of
the one as distinctly known by him as the multitude of the other. “For
great is our Lord, and of great power; his understanding is infinite”
(ver. 5). He wants not knowledge to know the objects, nor power to
effect his will concerning them. Of great power, רב כוח. Much power,
plenteous in power; so the word רב, is rendered (Ps. v. 15), רב חסד,
a multitude of power, as well as a multitude of mercy; a power that
exceeds all created power and understanding. His understanding is
infinite. You may not imagine, how he can call all the stars by name,
the multitude of the visible being so great, and the multitude of the
invisible being greater; but you must know, that as God is Almighty,
so he is omniscient; and as there is no end of his power, so no
account can exactly be given of his understanding; his understanding
is infinite, אין מספר. No number or account of it; and so the same words
are rendered, “a nation strong, and without number” (Joel i. 6): no
end of his understanding: (Syriac) no measure, no bounds. His essence
is infinite, and so is his power and understanding; and so vast is
his knowledge, that we can no more comprehend it, than we can measure
spaces that are without limits, or tell the minutes or hours of
eternity. Who, then, can fathom that whereof there is no number, but
which exceeds all, so that there is no searching of it out? He knows
universals, he knows particulars: we must not take understanding here,
as noting a faculty, but the use of the understanding in the knowledge
of things, and the judgment, תבונה, in the consideration of them, and
so it is often used. In the verse there is a description of God.
1. In his essence, “great is our Lord.” 2. In his power of “great
power.” 3. In his knowledge, “his understanding is infinite:” his
understanding is his eye, and his power is his arm. Of his infinite
understanding I am to discourse.
_Doctrine._ God hath an infinite knowledge and understanding. All
knowledge. Omnipresence, which before we spake of, respects his
essence; omniscience respects his understanding, according to our
{a409} manner of conception. This is clear in Scripture; hence God
is called a God of knowledge (Sam. ii. 3), “the Lord is a God of
knowledge,” (_Heb._) knowledges, in the plural number, of all kind
of knowledge; it is spoken there to quell man’s pride in his own
reason and parts; what is the knowledge of man but a spark to the
whole element of fire, a grain of dust, and worse than nothing, in
comparison of the knowledge of God, as his essence is in comparison
of the essence of God? All kind of knowledge. He knows what angels
know, what man knows, and infinitely more; he knows himself, his own
operations, all his creatures, the notions and thoughts of them; he is
understanding above understanding, mind above mind, the mind of minds,
the light of lights; this the Greek word, Θεὸς, signifies in the
etymology of it, of Θείσθαι, to _see_, to contemplate; and δαίμων of
δαίω, _scio_. The names of God signify a nature, viewing and piercing
all things; and the attribution of our senses to God in Scripture, as
hearing and seeing, which are the senses whereby knowledge enters into
us, signifies God’s knowledge.
1. The notion of God’s knowledge of all things lies above the ruins
of nature; it was not obliterated by the fall of man. It was necessary
offending man was to know that he had a Creator whom he had injured,
that he had a Judge to try and punish him; since God thought fit to
keep up the world, it had been kept up to no purpose, had not this
notion been continued alive in the minds of men; there would not have
been any practice of his laws, no bar to the worst of crimes. If men
had thought they had to deal with an ignorant Deity, there could be no
practice of religion. Who would lift up his eyes, or spread his hands
towards heaven, if he imagined his devotion were directed to a God as
blind as the heathens imagined fortune? To what boot would it be for
them to make heaven and earth resound with their cries, if they had
not thought God had an eye to see them, and an ear to hear them? And
indeed the very notion of a God at the first blush, speaks him a Being
endued with understanding; no man can imagine a Creator void of one
of the noblest perfections belonging to those creatures, that are the
flower and cream of his works.
2. Therefore all nations acknowledge this, as well as the existence
and being of God. No nation but had their temples, particular
ceremonies of worship, and presented their sacrifices, which they
could not have been so vain as to do, without an acknowledgment of
this attribute. This notion of God’s knowledge owed not its rise to
tradition, but to natural implantation; it was born and grew up with
every rational creature. Though the several nations and men of the
world agreed not in one kind of deity, or in their sentiments of his
nature or other perfections, some judging him clothed with a fine and
pure body, others judging him an uncompounded spirit, some fixing him
to a seat in the heavens, others owning his universal presence in all
parts of the world; yet they all agreed in the universality of his
knowledge, and their own consciences reflecting their crimes, unknown
to any but themselves, would keep this notion in some vigor, whether
they would or no. Now this being implanted in the minds of all men by
nature, cannot be false, for nature imprints {a410} not in the minds
of all men an assent to a falsity. Nature would not pervert the reason
and minds of men. Universal notions of God are from original, not
lapsed nature, and preserved in mankind in order to a restoration from
a lapsed state. The heathens did acknowledge this: in all the solemn
covenants, solemnized with oaths and the invocation of the name of
God, this attribute was supposed.[679] They confessed knowledge to
be peculiar to the Deity; _scientia deorum vita_, saith Cicero. Some
called him Νοῦς, _mens_, mind, pure understanding, without any note,
Ἐπόπτης, the inspector of all. As they called him life, because he was
the author of life, so they called him _intellectus_, because he was
the author of all knowledge and understanding in his creatures; and
one being asked, whether any man could be hid from God? no, saith
he, not so much as thinking.[680] Some call him the eye of the world;
and the Egyptians represented God by an eye on the top of a sceptre,
because God is all eye, and can be ignorant of nothing.
And the same nation made eyes and ears of the most excellent metals,
consecrating them to God, and hanging them up in the midst of their
temples, in signification of God’s seeing and hearing all things;
hence they called God light, as well as the Scripture, because all
things are visible to him.
For the better understanding of this, we will enquire, I. What kind
of knowledge or understanding there is in God. II. What God knows.
III. How God knows things. IV. The proof that God knows all things.
V. The use of all to ourselves.
I. What kind of understanding or knowledge there is in God. The
knowledge of God in Scripture hath various names, according to the
various relations or objects of it: in respect of present things, it
is called knowledge or sight; in respect of things past, remembrance;
in respect of things future, or to come, it is called foreknowledge,
or prescience (1 Pet. i. 2); in regard of the universality of
the objects, it is called omniscience; in regard to the simple
understanding of things, it is called knowledge; in regard of acting
and modelling the ways of acting, it is called wisdom and prudence
(Eph. i. 8). He must have knowledge, otherwise he could not be wise;
wisdom is the flower of knowledge, and knowledge is the root of wisdom.
As to what this knowledge is, if we know what knowledge is in man, we
may apprehend what it is in God, removing all imperfection from it,
and ascribing to him the most eminent way of understanding; because
we cannot comprehend God, but as he is pleased to condescend to us
in his own ways of discovery, that is, under some way of similitude
to his perfectest creatures, therefore we have a notion of God by
his understanding and will; understanding, whereby he conceives
and apprehends things; will, whereby he extends himself in acting
according to his wisdom, and whereby he doth approve or disapprove;
yet we must not measure his understanding by our own, or think it to
be of so gross a temper as a created mind; that he hath eyes of flesh,
or sees or knows as man {a411} sees (Job x. 4). We can no more measure
his knowledge by ours than we can measure his essence by our essence.
As he hath an incomprehensible essence, to which ours is but as a drop
of a bucket, so he hath an incomprehensible knowledge, to which ours
is but as a grain of dust, or mere darkness: his thoughts are above our
thoughts, as the heavens are above the earth. The knowledge of God is
variously divided by the schools, and acknowledged by all divines.
1. A knowledge _visionis et simplicis intelligentiæ_; the one we may
call a sight, the other an understanding; the one refers to sense, the
other to the mind. (1.) A knowledge of vision or sight. Thus God knows
himself and all things that really were, are, or shall be in time;
all those things which he hath decreed to be, though they are not yet
actually sprung up in the world, but lie couchant in their causes.
(2.) A knowledge of intelligence or simple understanding. The object
of this is not things that are in being, or that shall by any decree
of God ever be existent in the world, but such things as are possible
to be wrought by the power of God, though they shall never in the
least peep up into being, but lie forever wrapt up in darkness and
nothing.[681] This also is a necessary knowledge to be allowed to God,
because the object of this knowledge is necessary. The possibility
of more creatures than ever were or shall be, is a conclusion that
hath a necessary truth in it; as it is necessary that the power of God
can produce more creatures, though it be not necessary that it should
produce more creatures, so it is necessary that whatsoever the power
of God can work, is possible to be. And as God knows this possibility,
so he knows all the objects that are thus possible; and herein doth
much consist the infiniteness of his knowledge, as shall be shown
presently. These two kinds of knowledge differ; that of vision, is of
things which God hath decreed to be, though they are not yet; that of
intelligence is of things which never shall be; yet they may be, or
are possible to be, if God please to will and order their being; one
respects things that shall be, the other, things that may be, and
are not repugnant to the nature of God to be. The knowledge of vision
follows the act of God’s will, and supposeth an act of God’s will
before, decreeing things to be. (If we could suppose any first or
second in God’s decree, we might say God knew them as possible before
he decreed them; he knew them as future, because he decreed them.)
For without the will of God decreeing a thing to come to pass, God
cannot know that it will infallibly come to pass. But the knowledge of
intelligence stands without any act of his will, in order to the being
of those things he knows; he knows possible things only in his power;
he knows other things both in his power as able to effect them, and
in his will, as determining the being of them; such knowledge we must
grant to be in God, for there is such a kind of knowledge in man;
for man doth not only know and see what is before his eyes in this
world, but he may have a conception of many more worlds, and many more
creatures, which he knows are possible to the power of God.
2. There is a speculative and practical knowledge in God. (1.) A
{a412} speculative knowledge is, when the truth of a thing is known
without a respect to any working or practical operation. The knowledge
of things possible is in God only speculative,[682] and some say God’s
knowledge of himself is only speculative, because there is nothing
for God to work in himself: and though he knows himself, yet this
knowledge of himself doth not terminate there, but flowers into a
love of himself, and delight in himself; yet this love of himself, and
delight in himself, is not enough to make it a practical knowledge,
because it is natural, and naturally and necessarily flows from the
knowledge of himself and his own goodness: he cannot but love himself,
and delight in himself, upon the knowledge of himself. But that which
is properly practice, is where there is a dominion over the action,
and it is wrought not naturally and necessarily, but in a way of
freedom and counsel. As when we see a beautiful flower or other thing,
there ariseth a delight in the mind; this no man will call practice,
because it is a natural affection of the will, arising from the virtue
of the object, without any consideration of the understanding in a
practical manner by counselling, commanding, &c. (2.) A practical
knowledge: which tends to operation and practice, and is the principle
of working about things that are known; as the knowledge an artificer
hath in an art or mystery. This knowledge is in God: the knowledge
he hath of the things he hath decreed, is such a kind of knowledge;
for it terminates in the act of creation, which is not a natural and
necessary act, as the loving himself, and delighting in himself is,
but wholly free: for it was at his liberty whether he would create
them or no; this is called discretion (Jer. x. 12): “He hath stretched
out the heavens by his discretion.” Such also is his knowledge of
the things he hath created, and which are in being, for it terminates
in the government of them for his own glorious ends. It is by this
knowledge “the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down their
dew” (Prov. iii. 20). This is a knowledge whereby he knows the essence,
qualities, and properties of what he creates and governs in order to
his own glory, and the common good of the world over which he resides;
so that speculative knowledge is God’s knowledge of himself and things
possible; practical knowledge is his knowledge of his creatures and
things governable; yet in some sort this practical knowledge is not
only of things that are made, but of things which are possible, which
God might make, though he will not: for as he knows that they can
be created, so he knows how they are to be created, and how to be
governed, though he never will create them. This is a practical
knowledge: for it is not requisite to constitute a knowledge practical,
actually to act, but that the knowledge in itself be referable to
action.[683]
3. There is a knowledge of approbation, as well as apprehension.
This the Scripture often mentions. Words of understanding are used to
signify the acts of affection. This knowledge adds to the simple act
of the understanding, the complacency and pleasure of the will, and
is improperly knowledge, because it belongs to the will, and not to
the understanding; only it is radically in the understanding, because
affection implies knowledge: men cannot approve of {a413} that which
they are ignorant of. Thus knowledge is taken (Amos iii. 2), “You only
have I known of all the families of the earth;” and (2 Tim. ii. 19),
“The Lord knows who are his,” that is, he loves them; he doth not
only know them, but acknowledges them for his own. It notes, not
only an exact understanding, but a special care of them; and so is
that to be understood (Gen. i.), “God saw every thing that he had
made, and behold it was very good:” that is, he saw it with an eye
of approbation, as well as apprehension. This is grounded upon God’s
knowledge of vision, his sight of his creatures; for God doth not love
or delight in anything but what is actually in being, or what he hath
decreed to bring into being. On the contrary, also, when God doth not
approve, he is said not to know (Matt. xxv. 12), “I know you not,”
and (Matt. vii. 23), “I never knew you;” he doth not approve of their
works. It is not an ignorance of understanding, but an ignorance of
will; for while he saith he never knew them, he testifies that he did
know them, in rendering the reason of his disapproving them, because
he knows all their works: so he knows them, and doth not know them
in a different manner: he knows them so as to understand them, but
he doth not know them so as to love them. We must, then, ascribe an
universal knowledge to God. If we deny him a speculative knowledge,
or knowledge of intelligence, we destroy his Deity, we make him
ignorant of his own power: if we deny him practical knowledge, we
deny ourselves to be his creatures; for, as his creatures, we are the
fruits of this, his discretion, discovered in creation: if we deny
his knowledge of vision, we deny his governing dominion. How can he
exercise a sovereign and uncontrollable dominion, that is ignorant
of the nature and qualities of the things he is to govern? If he had
not knowledge he could make no revelation; he that knows not cannot
dictate; we could then have no Scripture. To deny God knowledge, is
to dash out the Scripture, and demolish the Deity. God is described in
Zech. iii. 9, “with seven eyes,” to show his perfect knowledge of all
things, all occurrences in the world; and the cherubims, or whatsoever
is meant by the wings, are described to be full of eyes, both “before
and behind” (Ezek. i. 18), round about them; much more is God all
eye, all ear, all understanding. The sun is a natural image of God;
if the sun had an eye, it would see; if it had an understanding, it
would know all visible things; it would see what it shines upon, and
understand what it influenceth, in the most obscure bowels of the
earth. Doth God excel his creature, the sun, in excellency and beauty,
and not in light and understanding? certainly more than the sun excels
an atom or grain of dust. We may yet make some representation of this
knowledge of God by a lower thing, a picture, which seems to look
upon every one, though there be never so great a multitude in the
room where it hangs; no man can cast his eye upon it, but it seems to
behold him in particular, and so exactly, as if there were none but
him upon whom the eye of it were fixed; and every man finds the same
cast of it: shall art frame a thing of that nature, and shall not the
God of art and all knowledge, be much more in reality than that is
in imagination? Shall not God have a far greater capacity to behold
everything in {a414} the world, which is infinitely less to him than
a wide room to a picture?
II. The second thing, What God knows; how far his understanding
reaches.
1. God knows himself, and only knows himself. This is the first and
original knowledge, wherein he excels all creatures. No man doth
exactly know himself; much less doth he understand the full nature
of a spirit; much less still the nature and perfections of God; for
what proportion can there be between a finite faculty and an infinite
object? Herein consists the infiniteness of God’s knowledge, that he
knows his own essence, that he knows that which is unknowable to any
else. It doth not so much consist in knowing the creatures, which he
hath made, as in knowing himself, who was never made. It is not so
much infinite, because he knows all things which are in the world, or
that shall be; or things that he can make, because the number of them
is finite; but because he hath a perfect and comprehensive knowledge
of his own infinite perfections.[684] Though it be said that angels
“see his face” (Matt. xviii. 10), that sight notes rather their
immediate attendance, than their exact knowledge; they see some signs
of his presence and majesty, more illustrious and express than ever
appeared to man in this life; but the essence of God is invisible to
them, hid from them in the secret place of eternity; none knows God
but himself (1 Cor. ii. 11): “What man knows the things of a man save
the spirit of a man? so the things of God knows no man but the Spirit
of God; the Spirit of God searches the deep things of God;” searcheth,
that is, exactly knows, thoroughly understands, as those who have
their eyes in every chink and crevice, to see what lies hid there; the
word search notes not an inquiry, but an exact knowledge, such as men
have of things upon a diligent scrutiny: as when God is said to search
the heart and the reins, it doth not signify a precedent ignorance,
but an exact knowledge of the most intimate corners of the hearts
of men. As the conceptions of men are unknown to any but themselves,
so the depths of the divine essence, perfections, and decrees, are
unknown to any but to God himself; he only knows what he is, and
what he knows, what he can do, and what he hath decreed to do. For
first, if God did not know himself, he would not be perfect. It is
the perfection of a creature to know itself, much more a perfection
belonging to God. If God did not comprehend himself, he would want an
infinite perfection, and so would cease to be God, in being defective
in that which intellectual creatures in some measure possess. As
God is the most perfect being, so he must have the most perfect
understanding: if he did not understand himself, he would be under the
greatest ignorance, because he would be ignorant of the most excellent
object. Ignorance is the imperfection of the understanding; and
ignorance of one’s self is a greater imperfection than ignorance of
things without. If God should know all things without himself, and not
know himself, he would not have the most perfect knowledge, because he
would not have the knowledge of the best {a415} of objects. Secondly,
Without the knowledge of himself, he could not be blessed. Nothing can
have any complacency in itself, without knowledge of itself. Nothing
can in a rational manner enjoy itself, without understanding itself.
The blessedness of God consists not in the knowledge of anything
without him, but in the knowledge of himself and his own excellency,
as the principle of all things; if, therefore, he did not perfectly
know himself and his own happiness, he could not enjoy a happiness;
for to be, and not to know to be, is as if a thing were not. “He
is God, blessed forever” (Rom. ix. 5.), and therefore forever had a
knowledge of himself. Thirdly, Without the knowledge of himself, he
could create nothing. For he would be ignorant of his own power, and
his own ability; and he that doth not know how far his power extends,
could not act: if he did not know himself, he could know nothing; and
he that knows nothing, can do nothing; he could not know an effect to
be possible to him, unless he knew his own power as a cause. Fourthly,
Without the knowledge of himself, he could govern nothing. He could
not, without the knowledge of his own holiness and righteousness,
prescribe laws to men, nor without a knowledge of his own nature
order himself a manner of worship suitable to it. All worship must be
congruous to the dignity and nature of the object worshipped: he must
therefore know his own authority, whereby worship was to be enacted;
his own excellency, to which worship was to be suited; his own glory,
to which worship was to be directed. If he did not know himself,
he did not know what to punish, because he would not know what was
contrary to himself: not knowing himself, he would not know what was a
contempt of him, and what an adoration of him; what was worthy of God,
and what was unworthy of him. In fine, he could not know other things,
unless he knew himself; unless he knew his own power, he could not
know how he created things; unless he knew his own wisdom, he could
not know the beauty of his works; unless he knew his own glory, he
could not know the end of his works; unless he knew his own holiness,
he could not know what was evil; and unless he knew his own justice,
he could not know how to punish the crimes of his offending creatures.
And, therefore,
(1.) God knows himself, because his knowledge, with his will, is
the cause of all other things that can fall under his cognizance:
he knows himself first, before he can know any other thing; that is,
first according to our conceptions; for, indeed, God knows himself and
all other things at once; he is the first truth, and therefore is the
first object of his own understanding. There is nothing more excellent
than himself, and therefore nothing more known to him than himself. As
he is all knowledge, so he hath in himself the most excellent object
of knowledge. To understand, is properly to know one’s self. No object
is so intelligible to God as God is to himself, nor so intimately and
immediately joined with his understanding as himself; for his
understanding is his essence, himself.
(2.) He knows himself by his own essence. He knows not himself and his
own power by the effect, because he knows himself {a416} from eternity,
before there was a world, or any effect of his power extant. It is not
a knowledge by the cause, for God hath no cause; nor a knowledge of
himself by any species, or anything from without: if it were anything
from without himself, that must be created or uncreated; if uncreated
it would be God; and so we must either own many Gods, or own it to
be his essence, and so not distinct from himself: if created, then
his knowledge of himself would depend upon a creature: he could not,
then, know himself from eternity, but in time, because nothing can
be created from eternity, but in time. God knows not himself by any
faculty, for there is no composition in God; he is not made up of
parts, but is a simple being; some, therefore, have called God, not
_intellectus_, understanding, because that savors of a faculty, but
_intellectio_, intellection: God is all act in the knowledge of
himself and his knowledge of other things.
(3.) God, therefore, knows himself perfectly, comprehensively. Nothing
in his own nature is concealed from him; he reflects upon everything
that he is.[685] There is a positive comprehension, so God doth not
comprehend himself; for what is comprehended hath bounds, and what is
comprehended by itself is finite to itself; and there is a negative
comprehension――God so comprehends himself; nothing in his own nature
is obscure to him, unknown by him; for there is as great a perfection
in the understanding of God to know, as there is in the divine nature
to be known. The understanding of God, and the nature of God, are both
infinite, and so equal to one another: his understanding is equal to
himself; he knows himself so well, that nothing can be known by him
more perfectly than himself is known to himself. He knows himself
in the highest manner, because nothing is so proportioned to the
understanding of God as himself. He knows his own essence, goodness,
power; all his perfections, decrees, intentions, acts, the infinite
capacity of his own understanding, so that nothing of himself is in
the dark to himself: and, in this respect, some use this expression,
that the infiniteness of God is in a manner finite to himself, because
it is comprehended by himself. Thus God transcends all creatures; thus
his understanding is truly infinite, because nothing but himself is
an infinite object for it: what angels may understand of themselves
perfectly I know not, but no creature in the world understands himself.
Man understands not fully the excellency and parts of his own nature;
upon God’s knowledge of himself depends the comfort of his people,
and the terror of the wicked: this is also a clear argument for
his knowledge of all other things without himself; he that knows
himself, must needs know all other things less than himself, and which
were made by himself; when the knowledge of his own immensity and
infiniteness is not an object too difficult for him, the knowledge
of a finite and limited creature, in all his actions, thoughts,
circumstances, cannot be too hard for him: since he knows himself,
who is infinite, he cannot but know whatsoever is finite. This is the
foundation of all his other knowledge; the knowledge of everything
present, past, {a417} and to come, is far less than the knowledge
of himself. He is more incomprehensible in his own nature, than all
things created, or that can be created, put together can be. If he,
then, have a perfect comprehensive knowledge of his own nature, any
knowledge of all other things is less than the knowledge of himself;
this ought to be well considered by us, as the fountain whence all his
other knowledge flows.
2. Therefore God knows all other things, whether they be possible,
past, present, or future; whether they be things that he can do,
but will never do, or whether they be things that he hath done, but
are not now; things that are now in being, or things that are not
now existing, that lie in the womb of their proper and immediate
causes.[686] If his understanding be infinite, he then knows all
things whatsoever that can be known, else his understanding would
have bounds, and what hath limits is not infinite, but finite. If
he be ignorant of any one thing that is knowable, that is a bound to
him, it comes with an exception, a _but_, God knows all things _but_
this; a bar is then set to his knowledge. If there were anything, any
particular circumstance in the whole creation or non‑creation, and
possible to be known by him, and yet were unknown to him, he could not
be said to be omniscient; as he would not be Almighty if any one thing,
that implied not a repugnancy to his nature, did transcend his power.
First, All things possible. No question but God knows what he could
create, as well as what he hath created; what he would not create,
as well as what he resolved to create; he knew what he would not
do before he willed to do it; this is the next thing which declares
the infiniteness of his understanding; for, as his power is infinite,
and can create innumerable worlds and creatures, so is his knowledge
infinite, in knowing innumerable things possible to his power.
Possibles are infinite; that is, there is no end of what God can do,
and therefore no end of what God doth know; otherwise his power would
be more infinite than his knowledge: if he knew only what is created,
there would be an end of his understanding, because all creatures may
be numbered, but possible things cannot be reckoned up by any creature.
There is the same reason of this in eternity; when never so many
numbers of years are run out, there is still more to come, there
still wants an end; and when millions of worlds are created, there
is no more an end of God’s power than of eternity. Thus there is no
end of his understanding; that is, his knowledge is not terminated
by anything. This the Scripture gives us some account of: God knows
things that are not, “for he calls things that are not as if they
were” (Rom. iv. 17); he calls things that are not, as if they were in
being; what he calls is not unknown to him: if he knows things that
are not, he knows things that may never be; as he knows things that
shall be, because he wills them, so he knows things that might be,
because he is able to effect them: he knew that the inhabitants of
Keilah would betray David to Saul if he remained in that place (1 Sam.
xxiii. 11); he knew what they would do upon that occasion, though it
was never done; as he knew what was in {a418} their power and in their
wills, so he must needs know what is within the compass of his own
power; as he can permit more than he doth permit so he knows what
he can permit, and what, upon that permission, would be done by his
creatures; so God knew the possibility of the Tyrians’ repentance,
if they had had the same means, heard the same truths, and beheld the
same miracles which were offered to the ears, and presented to the
eyes of the Jews (Matt. xi. 21). This must needs be so, because,
1. Man knows things that are possible to him, though he will never
effect them. A carpenter knows a house in the model he hath of it
in his head, though he never build a house according to that model.
A watch‑maker hath the frame of a watch in his mind, which he will
never work with his instruments; man knows what he could do, though he
never intends to do it.[687] As the understanding of man hath a virtue,
that where it sees one man it may imagine thousands of men of the same
shape, stature, form, parts; yea, taller, more vigorous, sprightly,
intelligent, than the man he sees; because it is possible such a
number may be. Shall not the understanding of God much more know what
he is able to effect, since the understanding of man can know what
he is never able to produce, yet may be produced by God, viz. that he
who produced this man which I see, can produce a thousand exactly like
him? If the Divine understanding did not know infinite things, but
were confined to a certain number, it may be demanded whether God can
understand anything farther than that number, or whether he cannot?
If he can, then he doth actually understand all those things which he
hath a power to understand; otherwise there would be an increase of
God’s knowledge, if it were actually now, and not before, and so he
would be more perfect than he was before; if he cannot understand them,
then he cannot understand what a human mind can understand; for our
understandings can multiply numbers _in infinitum_; and there is no
number so great, but a man can still add to it: we must suppose the
divine understanding more excellent in knowledge. God knows all that
a man can imagine, though it never were, nor never shall be; he must
needs know whatsoever is in the power of man to imagine or think,
because God concurs to the support of the faculty in that imagination;
and though it may be replied, an atheist may imagine that there
is no God, a man may imagine that God can lie, or that he can be
destroyed; doth God know therefore that he is not? or that he can
lie, or cease to be? No, he knows he cannot; his knowledge extends
to things possible, not to things impossible to himself; he knows
it as imaginable by man, not as possible in itself; because it is
utterly impossible, and repugnant to the nature of God,[688] since he
eminently contains in himself all things possible, past, present, and
to come; he cannot know himself without knowing them.
2. God knowing his own power, knows whatsoever is in his power to
effect. If he knows not all things possible, he could not know the
extent of his own power, and so would not know himself, as a cause
sufficient for more things than he hath created. How can he {a419}
comprehend himself, who comprehends not all effluxes of things
possible that may come from him, and be wrought by him? How can he
know himself as a cause, if he know not the objects and works which he
is able to produce?[689] Since the power of God extends to numberless
things, his knowledge also extends to numberless objects; as if
a unit is, could see the numbers it could produce, it would see
infinite numbers: for a unit, as it were, all number. God knowing the
fruitfulness of his own virtue, knows a numberless multitude of things
which he can do, more than have been done, or shall be done by him;
he therefore knows innumerable worlds, innumerable angels, with higher
perfections, than any of them which he hath created have: so that if
the world should last many millions of years, God knows that he can
every day create another world more capacious than this; and having
created an inconceivable number, he knows he could still create more:
so that he beholds infinite worlds, infinite numbers of men, and other
creatures in himself, infinite kinds of things, infinite species, and
individuals under those kinds, even as many as he can create, if his
will did order and determine it; for not being ignorant of his own
power, he cannot be ignorant of the effects wherein it may display
and discover itself. A comprehensive knowledge of his own power doth
necessarily include the objects of that power; so he knows whatsoever
he could effect, and whatsoever he could permit, if he pleased to do
it. If God could not understand more than he hath created, he could
not create more than he hath created: for it cannot be conceived how
he can create anything that he is ignorant of; what he doth not know,
he cannot do: he must know also the extent of his own goodness, and
how far anything is capable to partake of it: so much therefore, as
any detract from the knowledge of God, they detract from his power.
3. It is further evident that God knows all possible things, because
he knew those things which he has created, before they were created,
when they were yet in a possibility. If God knew things before they
were created, he knew them when they were in a possibility, and not
in actual reality. It is absurd to imagine that his understanding did
lackey after the creatures, and draw knowledge from them after they
were created. It is absurd to think that God did create, before he
knew what he could or would create. If he knew those things he did
create when they were possible, he must know all things which he can
create, and therefore all things that are possible. To conclude this,
we must consider that this knowledge is of another kind than his
knowledge of things that are or shall be. He sees possible things as
possible, not as things that ever are or shall be. If he saw them as
existing or future, and they shall never be, this knowledge would be
false, there would be a deceit in it, which cannot be. He knows those
things not in themselves, because they are not, nor in their causes,
because they shall never be: he knows them in his own power, not in
his will: he understands them as able to produce them, not as willing
to effect them. Things possible he knows only in his power; things
future he knows both in his power and his {a420} will, as he is both
able and determined in his own good pleasure to give being to them.
Those that shall never come to pass, he knows only in himself as a
sufficient cause; those things that shall come into being, he knows
in himself as the efficient cause, and also in their immediate second
causes. This should teach us to spend our thoughts in the admiration
of the excellency of God, and the divine knowledge; his understanding
is infinite.
Secondly, God knows all things past. This is an argument used by God
himself to elevate his excellency above all the commonly adored idols
(Isa. xli. 22): “Let them show the former things, what they be, that
we may consider them, and know the latter end of them.” He knows them
as if they were now present, and not past: for indeed in his eternity
there is nothing past or future to his knowledge. This is called
remembrance, in Scripture, as when God remembered Rachel’s prayer for
a child (Gen. xxx. 22), and he is said to put tears into his bottle,
and write them in his book of accompts, which signifies the exact
and unerring knowledge in God of the minute circumstances past in
the world; and this knowledge is called a book of remembrance (Mal.
iii. 16), signifying the perpetual presence of things past, before
him. There are two elegant expressions, signifying the certainty
and perpetuity of God’s knowledge of sins past (Job xiv. 17), “My
transgression is sealed up in a bag, and thou sewest up mine iniquity;”
a metaphor, taken from men that put up in a bag the money they would
charily keep, tie the bag, sew up the holes, and bind it hard, that
nothing may fall out; or a vessel, wherein they reserve liquors, and
daub it with pitch and glutinous stuff, that nothing may leak out, but
be safely kept till the time of use; or else, as some think, from the
bags attornies carry with them, full of writings, when they are to
manage a cause against a person. Thus we find God often in Scripture
calling to men’s minds their past actions, upbraiding them with their
ingratitude, wherein he testifies his remembrance of his own past
benefits and their crimes. His knowledge in this regard hath something
of infinity in it, since though the sins of all men that have been
in the world are finite in regard of number, yet when the sins of one
man in thoughts, words, and deeds, are numberless in his own account,
and perhaps in the count of any creature, the sins of all the vast
numbers of men that have been, or shall be, are much more numberless,
it cannot be less than infinite knowledge that can make a collection
of them, and take a survey of them all at once. If past things had
not been known by God, how could Moses have been acquainted with the
original of things? How could he have declared the former transactions,
wherein all histories are silent but the Scripture? How could he know
the cause of man’s present misery so many ages after, wherewith all
philosophy was unacquainted? How could he have writ the order of the
creation, the particulars of the sin of Adam, the circumstances of
Cain’s murder, the private speech of Lamech to his wives, if God had
not revealed them? And how could a revelation be made, if things past
were forgotten by him? Do we not remember many things done among men,
as well as by ourselves, and reserve the forms of divers things in
our minds, which {a421} rise as occasions are presented to draw them
forth? And shall not God much more, who hath no cloud of darkness upon
his understanding? A man that makes a curious picture, hath the form
of it in his mind before he made it; and if the fire burn it, the form
of it in his mind is not destroyed by the fire, but retained in it.
God’s memory is no less perfect than his understanding. If he did not
know things past, he could not be a righteous Governor, or exercise
any judicial act in a righteous manner; he could not dispense rewards
and punishments, according to his promises and threatenings, if things
that were past could be forgotten by him; he could not require that
which is past (Eccles. iii. 15), if he did not remember that which is
past. And though God be said to forget in Scripture, and not to know
his people, and his people pray to him to remember them, as if he
had forgotten them (Ps. cxix. 49), this is improperly ascribed to
God.[690] As God is said to repent, when he changes things according
to his counsel beyond the expectation of men, so he is said to forget,
when he defers the making good his promise to the godly, or his
threatenings to the wicked; this is not a defect of memory belonging
to his mind, but an act of his will. When he is said to remember his
covenant, it is to will grace according to his covenant; when he is
said to forget his covenant, it is to intercept the influences of it,
whereby to punish the sin of his people; and when he is said not to
know his people, it is not an absolute forgetfulness of them, but
withdrawing from them the testimonies of his kindness, and clouding
the signs of his favor; so God in pardon is said to forget sin, not
that he ceaseth to know it, but ceaseth to punish it. It is not to be
meant of a simple forgetfulness, or a lapse of his memory, but of a
judicial forgetfulness; so when his people in Scripture pray, Lord,
remember thy word unto thy servant, no more is to be understood but,
Lord, fulfil thy word and promise to thy servant.
Thirdly, He knows things present (Heb. iv. 13): “All things are
naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do;” this
is grounded upon the knowledge of himself; it is not so difficult
to know all creatures exactly, as to know himself, because they are
finite, but himself is infinite; he knows his own power, and therefore
everything through which his omnipotence is diffused, all the acts
and objects of it; not the least thing that is the birth of his power,
can be concealed from him; he knows his own goodness, and therefore
every object upon which the warm beams of his goodness strike; he
therefore knows distinctly the properties of every creature, because
every property in them is a ray of his goodness; he is not only the
efficient, but the exemplary cause; therefore as he knows all that
his power hath wrought, as he is the efficient, so he knows them in
himself as the pattern; as a carpenter can give an account of every
part and passage in a house he hath built, by consulting the model in
his own mind, whereby he built it. “He looked upon all things after
he had made them, and pronounced them good” (Gen. i. 3), full of
a natural goodness he had endowed them with: he did not ignorantly
pronounce them so, and call them good, {a422} whether he knew them or
not; and therefore he knows them in particular, as he knew them all
in their first presence. Is there any reason he should be ignorant of
everything now present in the world, or that anything that derives an
existence from him as a free cause, should be concealed from him? If
he did not know things present in their particularities, many things
would be known by man, yea, by beasts, which the infinite God were
ignorant of; and if he did not know all things present, but only
some, it is possible for the most blessed God to be deceived and be
miserable: ignorance is a calamity to the understanding: he could
not prescribe laws to his creatures, unless he knew their natures to
which those laws were to be suited: no, not natural ordinances to the
sun, moon, and heavenly bodies, and inanimate creatures, unless he
knew the vigor and virtue in them, to execute those ordinances; for
to prescribe laws above the nature of things, is inconsistent with
the wisdom of government; he must know how far they were able to obey;
whether the laws were suited to their ability: and for his rational
creatures, whether the punishments annexed to the law were proper, and
suited to the transgression of the creature.
1. He knows all creatures from the highest to the lowest, the least
as well as the greatest. He knows the ravens and their young ones
(Job xxxviii. 41); the drops of rain and dew which he hath begotten
(Job xxxviii. 29); every bird in the air, as well as any man doth what
he hath in a cage at home (Ps. l. 11): “I know all the fowls in the
mountains, and the wild beasts in the field;” which some read creeping
things. The clouds are numbered in his wisdom (Job xxxviii. 37); every
worm in the earth, every drop of rain that falls upon the ground, the
flakes of snow, and the knots of hail, the sands upon the sea‑shore,
the hairs upon the head; it is no more absurd to imagine that God
knows them, than that God made them; they are all the effects of his
power, as well as the stars which he calls by their names, as well
as the most glorious angel and blessed spirit; he knows them as well
as if there were none but them in particular for him to know; the
least things were framed by his art as well as the greatest; the
least things partake of his goodness as well as the greatest; he knows
his own arts, and his own goodness, and therefore all the stamps and
impressions of them upon all his creatures; he knows the immediate
causes of the least, and therefore the effects of those causes.
Since his knowledge is infinite, it must extend to those things
which are at the greatest distance from him, to those which approach
nearest to not being; since he did not want power to create, he
cannot want understanding to know everything he hath created, the
dispositions, qualities, and virtues of the minutest creature. Nor
is the understanding of God embased, and suffers a diminution by the
knowledge of the vilest and most inconsiderable things. Is it not
an imperfection to be ignorant of the nature of anything? and can
God have such a defect in his most perfect understanding? Is the
understanding of man of an impurer alloy by knowing the nature of
the rankest poisons? by understanding a fly, or a small insect? or
by considering the deformity of a toad? Is it not generally counted a
note of a dignified mind to be able to discourse of the {a423} nature
of them? Was Solomon, who knew all from the cedar to the hyssop,
debased by so rich a present of wisdom from his Creator? Is any
glass defiled by presenting a deformed image? Is there anything more
vile than the “imaginations, which are only evil, and continually?”
Doth not the mind of man descend to the mud of the earth, play the
adulterer or idolater with mean objects, suck in the most unclean
things? yet God knows these in all their circumstances, in every
appearance, inside and outside. Is there anything viler than some
thoughts of men? than some actions of men? their unclean beds and
gluttonous vomiting, and Luciferian pride? yet do not these fall under
the eye of God, in all their nakedness? The Second Person’s taking
human nature, though it obscured, yet it did not disparage the Deity,
or bring any disgrace to it. Is gold the worse for being formed into
the image of a fly? doth it not still retain the nobleness of the
metal? When men are despised for descending to the knowledge of mean
and vile things, it is because they neglect the knowledge of the
greater, and sin in their inquiries after lesser things, with a
neglect of that which concerns more the honor of God and the happiness
of themselves; to be ambitious of such a knowledge, and careless of
that of more concern, is criminal and contemptible. But God knows the
greatest as well as the least; mean things are not known by him to
exclude the knowledge of the greater; nor are vile things governed by
him to exclude the order of the better. The deformity of objects known
by God doth not deform him, nor defile him; he doth not view them
without himself, but within himself, wherein all things in their ideas
are beautiful and comely: our knowledge of a deformed thing is not
a deforming of our understanding, but is beautiful in the knowledge,
though it be not in the object; nor is there any fear that the
understanding of God should become material by knowing material things,
any more than our understandings lose their spirituality by knowing
the nature of bodies; it is to be observed, therefore, that only
those senses of men, as seeing, hearing, smelling, which have those
qualities for their objects that come nearest the nature of spiritual
things, as light, sounds, fragrant odors, are ascribed to God in
Scripture; not touching or tasting, which are senses that are not
exercised without a more immediate commerce with gross matter; and
the reason may be, because we should have no gross thoughts of God,
as if he were a body, and made of matter, like the things he knows.
2. As he knows all creatures, so God knows all the actions of
creatures. He counts in particular all the ways of men. “Doth he not
see all my ways, and count all my steps” (Job xxxi. 4)? He “tells”
their “wanderings,” as if one by one (Ps. lvi. 8). “His eyes are upon
all the ways of man, and he sees all his goings” (Job xxxiv. 21); a
metaphor taken from men, when they look wistly, with fixed eyes upon
a thing, to view it in every circumstance, whence it comes, whether
it goes, to observe every little motion of it. God’s eye is not a
wandering, but a fixed eye; and the ways of man are not only “before
his eyes,” but he doth exactly “ponder them” (Prov. v. 21); as one
that will not be ignorant of the least mite in them, but weigh and
examine them by the standard of his law; he may as well know {a424}
the motions of our members, as the hairs of our heads; the smallest
actions before they be, whether civil, natural, or religious, fall
under his cognizance; what meaner than a man carrying a pitcher, yet
our Saviour foretels it (Luke xxii. 10); God knows not only what men
do, but what they would have done, had he not restrained them; what
Abimelech would have done to Sarah, had not God put a bar in his way
(Gen. xx. 6); what a man that is taken away in his youth would have
done, had he lived to a riper age; yea, he knows the most secret words
as well as actions; the words spoken by the king of Israel in his
bed‑chamber, were revealed to Elisha (2 Kings vi. 12); and indeed, how
can any action of man be concealed from God? Can we view the various
actions of a heap of ants, or a hive of bees in a glass, without
turning our eyes; and shall not God behold the actions of all men in
the world, which are less than bees or ants in his sight, and more
visible to him than an ant‑hill or bee‑hive can be to the acutest eye
of man?
3. As God knows all the actions of creatures, so he knows all the
thoughts of creatures. The thoughts are the most closeted acts of man,
hid from men and angels, unless disclosed by some outward expressions;
but God descends into the depths and abysses of the soul, discerns the
most inward contrivances; nothing is impenetrable to him; the sun doth
not so much enlighten the earth, as God understands the heart; all
things are as visible to him, as flies and motes enclosed in a body
of transparent crystal; this man naturally allows to God. Men often
speak to God by the motions of their minds and secret ejaculations,
which they would not do, if it were not naturally implanted in them,
that God knows all their inward motions; the Scripture is plain and
positive in this, “He tries the heart and the reins” (Ps. vii. 9), as
men, by the use of fire, discern the drossy and purer parts of metals.
The secret intentions and aims, the most lurking affections seated
in the reins; he knows that which no man, no angel, is able to know,
which a man himself knows not, nor makes any particular reflection
upon; yea, “he weighs the Spirit” (Prov. xvi. 2); he exactly numbers
all the devices and inclinations of men, as men do every piece of
coin they tell out of a heap. “He discerns the thoughts and intents of
the heart” (Heb. iv. 12); all that is in the mind, all that is in the
affections, every stirring and purpose; “so that not one thought can
be withheld from him” (Job xlii. 2); yea, “Hell and destruction are
before him, much more then the hearts of the children of men” (Prov.
xv. 11); he works all things in the bowels of the earth, and brings
forth all things out of that treasure, say some; but more naturally,
God knows the whole state of the dead, all the receptacles and graves
of their bodies, all the bodies of men consumed by the earth, or
devoured by living creatures; things that seem to be out of all being;
he knows the thoughts of the devils and damned creatures, whom he hath
cast out of his care forever into the arms of his justice, never more
to cast a delightful glance towards them; not a secret in any soul
in hell (which he hath no need to know, because he shall not judge
them by any of the thoughts they now have, since they were condemned
to punishment) is hid from him; much more is he acquainted with the
{a425} thoughts of living men, the counsels of whose hearts are yet
to be manifested, in order to their trial and censure; yea, he knows
them before they spring up into actual being (Ps. cxxxix. 2): “Thou
understandest my thoughts afar off;” my thoughts, that is, every
thought; though innumerable thoughts pass through me in a day, and
that in the source and fountain, when it is yet in the womb, before
it is our thought; if he knows them before their existence, before
they can be properly called ours, much more doth he know them when
they actually spring up in us: he knows the tendency of them; where
the bird will light when it is in flight; he knows them exactly, he
is therefore called a “discerner” or criticiser “of the heart” (Heb.
iv. 12), as a critic discerns every letter, point, and stop; he is
more intimate with us than our souls with our bodies, and hath more
the possession of us than we have of ourselves; he knows them by an
inspection into the heart, not by the mediation of second causes, by
the looks or gestures of men, as men may discern the thoughts of one
another. (1.) God discerns all good motions of the mind and will.
These he puts into men, and needs must God know his own act; he knew
the son of “Jeroboam to have some good thing in him towards the Lord
God of Israel” (1 Kings xiv. 13); and the integrity of David and
Hezekiah; the freest motions of the will and affections to him: “Lord,
thou knowest that I love thee,” saith Peter (John xxi. 17). Love
can be no more restrained, than the will itself can; a man may make
another to grieve and desire, but none can force another to love.
(2.) God discerns all the evil motions of the mind and will; “Every
imagination of the heart” (Gen. vi. 5); the vanity of “men’s thoughts”
(Ps. xciv. 11); their inward darkness, and deceitful disguises.
No wonder that God, who fashioned the heart, should understand the
motions of it (Ps. xxxiii. 13, 15): “He looks from heaven and beholds
all the children of men; he fashioneth their hearts alike, and
considers all their works.” Doth any man make a watch, and yet be
ignorant of its motion? Did God fling away the key to this secret
cabinet, when he framed it, and put off the power of unlocking it
when he pleased? He did not surely frame it in such a posture as that
anything in it should be hid from his eye; he did not fashion it to be
privileged from his government; which would follow if he were ignorant
of what was minted and coined in it. He could not be a Judge to
punish men, if the inward frames and principles of men’s actions were
concealed from him; an outward action may glitter to an outward eye,
yet the secret spring be a desire of applause, and not the fear and
love of God. If the inward frames of the heart did lie covered from
him in the secret recesses of the heart; those plausible acts, which
in regard of their principles, would merit a punishment, would meet
with a reward; and God should bestow happiness where he had denounced
misery. As without the knowledge of what is just, he could not be a
wise Lawgiver, so without the knowledge of what is inwardly committed,
he could not be a righteous Judge: acts that are rotten in the spring,
might be judged good by the fair color and appearance. This is the
glory of God at the last day, “to manifest the secrets of all hearts”
(1 Cor. iv. 5); and the prophet Jeremiah links {a426} the power
of judging and the prerogative of trying the hearts together (Jer.
xi. 20): “But thou, O Lord of hosts, that judgest righteously, that
triest the reins and the heart;” and (Jer. xvii. 10): “I, the Lord,
search the heart, I try the reins;” to what end? even to “give every
man according to his way, and according to the fruit of his doings.”
And, indeed, his binding up the whole law with that command of not
coveting, evidenceth that he will judge men by the inward affections
and frames of their hearts. Again, God sustains the mind of man in
every act of thinking; in him we have not only the principle of life,
but every motion, the motion of our minds as well as of our members:
“In him we live and move,” &c. (Acts xvii. 28). Since he supports
the vigor of the faculty in every act, can he be ignorant of those
acts which spring from the faculty, to which he doth at that instant
communicate power and ability? Now this knowledge of the thoughts of
men is,
1st. An incommunicable property, belonging only to the Divine
understanding. Creatures, indeed, may know the thoughts of others
by divine revelation, but not by themselves; no creature hath a key
immediately to open the minds of men, and see all that lodgeth there;
no creature can fathom the heart by the line of created knowledge.[691]
Devils may have a conjectural knowledge, and may guess at them, by the
acquaintance they have with the disposition and constitution of men,
and the images they behold in their fancies; and by some marks which
an inward imagination may stamp upon the brain, blood, animal spirits,
face, &c. But the knowing the thoughts merely as thought, without any
impression by it, is a royalty God appropriates to himself, as the
main secret of his government, and a perfection declarative of his
Deity, as much as any else (Jer. xvii. 9, 10): “The heart of man is
desperately wicked, who can know it?” yes, there is one, and but one,
“I, the Lord, search the heart, I try the reins.” “Man looks on the
outward appearance, but the Lord looks upon the heart” (1 Sam. xvi. 7);
where God is distinguished by this perfection from all men whatsoever,
others may know by revelation, as Elisha did what was in Gehazi’s
heart (2 Kings, v. 26). But God knows a man more than any man knows
himself; what person upon earth understands the windings and turnings
of his own heart, what reserves it will have, what contrivances, what
inclinations? all which God knows exactly.
2d. God acquires no new knowledge of the thoughts and hearts by the
discovery of them in the actions. He would then be but equal in this
part of knowledge to his creature; no man or angel but may thus arrive
to the knowledge of them; God were then excluded from an absolute
dominion over the prime work of his lower creation; he would have made
a creature superior in this respect to himself, upon whose will to
discover, his knowledge of their inward intentions should depend; and
therefore when God is said to search the heart, we must not understand
it as if God were ignorant before, and was fain to make an exact
scrutiny and inquiry, before he attained what he desired to know; but
God condescends to our capacity in the expression of his own knowledge,
signifying that his {a427} knowledge is as complete as any man’s
knowledge can be of the designs of others, after he hath sifted them
by a strict and thorough examination, and wrung out a discovery of
their intentions; that he knows them as perfectly as if he had put
them upon the rack, and and forced them to make a discovery of their
secret plottings. Nor must we understand that in Gen. xxii. 12, where
God saith, after Abraham had stretched out his hand to sacrifice his
son, “Now I know that thou fearest God,” as though God was ignorant
of Abraham’s gracious disposition to him; did Abraham’s drawing his
knife furnish God with a new knowledge? no, God knew Abraham’s pious
inclinations before (Gen. xviii. 19): “I know him, that he will
command his children after him,” &c. Knowledge is sometimes taken
for approbation; then the sense will be, Now I approve this fact
as a testimony of thy fear of me, since thy affection to thy Isaac
is extinguished by the more powerful flame of affection to my will
and command; I now accept thee, and count thee a meet subject of my
choicest benefits: or, Now I know, that is, I have made known and
manifested the faith of Abraham to himself and to the world: thus Paul
uses the word know (1 Cor. ii. 2): “I have determined to know nothing;”
that is, to declare and teach nothing, to make known nothing but
Christ crucified: or else, Now I know, that is, I have an evidence
and experiment in this noble fact, that thou fearest me. God often
condescends to our capacity in speaking of himself after the manner of
men, as if he had (as men do) known the inward affections of others by
their outward actions.
4. God knows all the evils and sins of creatures. (1.) God knows all
sin. This follows upon the other. If he knows all the actions and
thoughts of creatures, he knows also all the sinfulness in those acts
and thoughts. This Zophar infers from God’s punishing men (Job xi. 11);
for he knows vain man, he sees his wickedness also; he knows every man,
and sees the wickedness of every man; he looks down from heaven, and
beholds not only the filthy persons, but what is filthy in them (Psal.
xiv. 2, 3), all nations in the world, and every man of every nation;
none of their iniquity is hid from his eyes; he searches Jerusalem
with candles (Jer. xvi. 17). God follows sinners step by step, with
his eye, and will not leave searching out till he hath taken them; a
metaphor taken from one that searches all chinks with a candle, that
nothing can be hid from him. He knows it distinctly in all the parts
of it, how an adulterer rises out of his bed to commit uncleanness,
what contrivances he had, what steps he took, every circumstance in
the whole progress; not only evil in the bulk, but every one of the
blacker spots upon it, which may most aggravate it. If he did not know
evil, how could he permit it, order it, punish it, or pardon it? Doth
he permit he knows not what? order to his own holy ends what he is
ignorant of? punish or pardon that which he is uncertain whether it
be a crime or no? “Cleanse me,” saith David, “from my secret faults”
(Ps. xix. 12), secret in regard of others, secret in regard of himself;
how could God cleanse him from that whereof he was ignorant? He knows
sins before they are committed, much more when they are in act; he
foreknew the idolatry and apostacy of the Jews; {a428} what gods they
would serve, in what measure they would provoke him, and violate his
covenant (Deut. xxxi. 20, 21); he knew Judas’ sin long before Judas’
actual existence, foretelling it in the Psalms; and Christ predicts
it before he acted it. He sees sins future in his own permitting will;
he sees sins present in his own supporting act. As he knows things
possible to himself, because he knows his own power, so he knows
things practicable by the creature, because he knows the power and
principles of the creature.[692] This sentiment of God is naturally
written in the fears of sinners, upon lightning, thunder, or some
prodigious operation of God in the world; what is the language of them,
but that he sees their deeds, hears their words, knows the inward
sinfulness of their hearts; that he doth not only behold them as a
mere spectator, but considers them as a just judge. And the poets say,
that the sins of men leaped into heaven, and were writ in parchments
of Jupiter,[693] _scelus in terram geritur, in cœlo scribitur_:
sin is acted on earth, and recorded in heaven. God indeed doth not
behold evil with the approving eye; he knows it not with a practical
knowledge to be the author of it, but with a speculative knowledge,
so as to understand the sinfulness of it; or a knowledge _simplicis
intelligentiæ_, of simple intelligence, as he permits them, not
positively wills them; he knows them not with a knowledge of assent to
them, but dissent from them. Evil pertains to a dissenting act of the
mind, and an aversive act of the will; and what though evil formerly
taken, hath no distinct conception, because it is a privation; a
defect hath no being, and all knowledge is by the apprehension of
some being; would not this lie as strongly against our own knowledge
of sin? Sin is a privation of the rectitude due to an act; and who
doubts man’s knowledge of sin? by his knowing the act, he knows the
deficiency of the act; the subject of evil hath a being, and so hath
a conception in the mind; that which hath no being cannot be known
by itself, or in itself; but will it follow that it cannot be known
by its contrary? as we know darkness to be a privation of light, and
folly to be a privation of wisdom. God knows good all by himself,
because he is the sovereign good; is it strange then, that he should
know all evil, since all evil is in some natural good. (2.) The manner
of God’s knowing evil is not so easily known. And indeed, as we cannot
comprehend the essence of God, though it is easily intelligible that
there is such a Being, so we can as little comprehend the manner
of God’s knowledge, though we cannot but conclude him to be an
intelligent Being, a pure understanding, knowing all things. As God
hath a higher manner of being than his creatures, so he hath another
and higher manner of knowing; and we can as little comprehend the
manner of his knowing, as we can the manner of his being. But as to
the manner, doth not God know his own law? and shall he not know how
much any action comes short of his rule? he cannot know his own rule
without knowing all the deviations from it. He knows his own holiness,
and shall he not see how any action is contrary to the holiness of his
own {a429} nature? Doth not God know everything that is true? and is
it not true that this or that is evil? and shall God be ignorant of
any truth? How doth God know that he cannot lie, but by knowing his
own veracity? How doth God know that he cannot die, but by knowing
his own immutability? and by knowing those, he knows what a lie is,
he knows what death is; so if sin never had been, if no creature had
ever been, God would have known what sin was, because he knows his
own holiness; because he knew what law was fit to be appointed to
his creatures if he should create them, and that that law might be
transgressed by them. God knows all good, all goodness in himself; he
therefore hath a foundation in himself to know all that comes short
of that goodness, that is opposite to that holiness: as if light
were capable of understanding, it would know darkness only by knowing
itself; by knowing itself, it would know what is contrary to itself.
God knows all created goodness which he hath planted in the creature;
he knows then all defects from this goodness, what perfection an act
is deprived of; what is opposite to that goodness, and that is evil.
As we know sickness by health, discord by harmony, blindness by sight,
because it is a privation of sight, whosoever knows one contrary knows
the other; God knows unrighteousness by the idea which he hath of
righteousness, and sees an act deprived of that rectitude and goodness
which ought to be in it; he knows evil because he knows the causes
whence evil proceeds.[694] A painter knows a picture of his own
framing, and if any one dashes any base color upon it, shall not he
also know that? God by his hand painted all creatures, impressed upon
man the fair stamp and color of his own image; the devil defiles it;
man daubs it. Doth not God, that knows his own work, know how this
piece is become different from his work? Doth not God, that knows
his creatures’ goodness, which himself was the fountain of, know the
change of this goodness? Yea, he knew before, that the devil would sow
tares where he had sown wheat; and therefore that controversy of some
in the schools, whether God knew evil by its opposition to created
or uncreated goodness, is needless. We may say God knows sin as it
is opposite to created goodness, yet he knows it radically by his
own goodness, because he knows the goodness he hath communicated to
the creature by his own essential goodness in himself. To conclude
this head: The knowledge of sin doth not bespot the holiness of God’s
nature; for the bare knowledge of a crime doth not infect the mind
of man with the filth and pollution of that crime, for then every man
that knows an act of murder committed by another, would, by that bare
knowledge, be tainted with his sin; yea, and a judge that condemns a
malefactor, may as well condemn himself if this were so: the knowledge
of sins infects not the understandings that knows them, but only the
will that approves them. It is no discredit to us to know evil, in
order to pass a right judgment upon it; so neither can it be to God.
Fourthly, God knows all future things, all things to come. The
differences of time cannot hinder a knowledge of all things by him,
who is before time, above time, that is not measured by hours, or
{a430} days, or years; if God did not know them, the hindrance must
be in himself, or in the things themselves, because they are things to
come: not in himself; if it did, it must arise from some impotency in
his own nature, and so we render him weak; or from an unwillingness
to know, and so we render him lazy, and an enemy to his own perfection;
for, simply considered, the knowledge of more things is a greater
perfection than the knowledge of a few; and if the knowledge of a
thing includes something of perfection, the ignorance of a thing
includes something of imperfection. The knowledge of future things is
a greater perfection than not to know them, and is accounted among men
a great part of wisdom, which they call foresight; it is then surely
a greater perfection in God to know future things, than to be ignorant
of them. And would God rather have something of imperfection than be
possessor of all perfection? Nor doth the hindrance lie in the things
themselves, because their futurition depends upon his will; for as
nothing can actually be without his will, giving it existence, so
nothing can be future without his will, designing the futurity of it.
Certainly if God knows all things possible, which he will not do, he
must know all things future, which he is not only able, but resolved
to do, or resolved to permit. God’s perfect knowledge of himself,
that is, of his own infinite power and concluding will, necessarily
includes a foreknowledge of what he is able to do, and what he will do.
Again, if God doth not know future things, there was a time when God
was ignorant of most things in the world; for before the deluge he was
more ignorant than after; the more things were done in the world, the
more knowledge did accrue to God, and so the more perfection; then the
understanding of God was not perfect from eternity, but in time; nay,
is not perfect yet, if he be ignorant of those things which are still
to come to pass; he must tarry for a perfection he wants, till those
futurities come to be in act, till those things which are to come,
cease to be future, and begin to be present. Either God knows them,
or desires to know them; if he desires to know them and doth not,
there is something wanting to him; all desire speaks an absence of the
object desired, and a sentiment of want in the person desiring: if he
doth not desire to know them, nay, if he doth not actually know them,
it destroys all providence, all his government of affairs; for his
providence hath a concatenation of means with a prospect of something
that is future: as in Joseph’s case, who was put into the pit, and
sold to the Egyptians in order to his future advancement, and the
preservation both of his father and his envious brethren. If God did
not know all the future inclinations and actions of men, something
might have been done by the will of Potiphar, or by the free‑will of
Pharaoh, whereby Joseph might have been cut short of his advancement,
and so God have been interrupted in the track and method of his
designed providences. He that hath decreed to govern man for that
end he hath designed him, knows all the means before, whereby he will
govern him, and therefore hath a distinct and certain knowledge of all
things; for a confused knowledge is an imperfection in government; it
is in this the infiniteness of his understanding is more seen than in
knowing things past or present; his {a431} eyes are a flame of fire
(Rev. i. 14), in regard of the penetrating virtue of them into things
impenetrable by any else. To make it further appear that God knows all
things future, consider,
1. Everything which is the object of God’s knowledge without himself
was once only future. There was a moment when nothing was in being
but himself: he knew nothing actually past, because nothing was
past; nothing actually present, because nothing had any existence but
himself; therefore only what was future. And why not everything that
is future now, as well as only what was future and to come to pass
just at the beginning of the creation? God indeed knows everything
as present, but the things themselves known by him were not present,
but future; the whole creation was once future, or else it was from
eternity; if it begun in time, it was once future in itself, else it
could never have begun to be. Did not God know what would be created
by him, before it was created by him?[695] Did he create he knew not
what, and knew not before, what he should create? Was he ignorant
before he acted, and in his acting, what his operation would tend to?
or did he not know the nature of things, and the ends of them, till
he had produced them and saw them in being? Creatures, then, did not
arise from his knowledge, but his knowledge from them; he did not
then will that his creatures should be, for he had then willed what
he knew not, and knew not what he willed; they, therefore, must be
known before they were made, and not known because they were made; he
knew them to make them, and he did not make them to know them; By the
same reason that he knew what creatures should be before they were,
he knows still what creatures shall be before they are;[696] for all
things that are, were in God, not really in their own nature, but in
him as a cause; so the earth and heavens were in him, as a model is
in the mind of a workman, which is in his mind and soul, before it be
brought forth into outward act.
2. The predictions of future things evidence this. There is not a
prophecy of any thing to come, but is a spark of his foreknowledge,
and bears witness to the truth of this assertion, in the punctual
accomplishment of it; this is a thing challenged by God as his own
peculiar, wherein he surmounts all the idols that man’s inventions
have godded in the world (Isa. xli. 21, 22): Let them bring them forth
(speaking of the idols) and show us what shall happen, or declare us
things to come: show the things that are to come hereafter, that we
may know that you are gods. Such a fore‑knowledge of things to come,
is here ascribed to God by God himself, as a distinction of him from
all false gods; such a knowledge, that if any could prove that they
were possessors of, he would acknowledge them gods as well as himself:
“that we may know that you are gods.” He puts his Deity to stand or
fall upon this account, and this should be the point which should
decide the controversy, whether he or the heathen idols were the true
God; the dispute is managed by this medium,――He that knows things to
come, is God; I know things to come, _ergo_, I am God; the idols know
not things to come, therefore they are not gods; God submits the being
of his Deity to this trial. If God know {a432} things to come no more
than the heathen idols, which were either devils or men, he would
be, in his own account, no more a God than devils or men, no more
a God than the pagan idols he doth scoff at for this defect. If the
heathen idols were to be stripped of their deity for want of this
foreknowledge of things to come, would not the true God also fall from
the same excellency if he were defective in knowledge? He would, in
his own judgment, no more deserve the title and character of a God
than they. How could he reproach them for that, if it were wanting
in himself? It cannot be understood of future things in their causes,
when the effects necessarily arise from such causes, as light from
the sun, and heat from the fire: many of these men know; more of
them angels and devils know: if God, therefore, had not a higher and
farther knowledge than this, he would not by this be proved to be God
any more than angels and devils, who know necessary effects in their
causes. The devils, indeed, did predict some things in the heathen
oracles; but God is differenced from them here by the infiniteness
of his knowledge, in being able to predict things to come that they
knew not, or things in their particularities, things that depended
on the liberty of man’s will, which the devils could lay no claim to
a certain knowledge of. Were it only a conjectural knowledge that is
here meant, the devils might answer, they can conjecture, and so their
deity was as good as God’s; for, though God might know more things,
and conjecture nearer to what would be, yet still it would be but
conjectural, and therefore not a higher kind of knowledge than what
the devils might challenge. How much, then, is God beholden to the
Socinians for denying the knowledge of all future things to him, upon
which here he puts the trial of his Deity? God asserts his knowledge
of things to come, as a manifest evidence of his Godhead; those that
deny, therefore, the argument that proves it, deny the conclusion too;
for this will necessarily follow, that if he be God, because he knows
future things then he that doth not know future things is not God;
and if God knows not future things but only by conjecture, then there
is no God, because a certain knowledge, so as infallibly to predict
things to come, is an inseparable perfection of the Deity: it was,
therefore, well said of Austin, that it was as high a madness to deny
God to be, as to deny him the foreknowledge of things to come. The
whole prophetic part of Scripture declares this perfection of God;
every prophet’s candle was lighted at this torch; they could not have
this foreknowledge of themselves; why might not many other men have
the same insight, if it were nature? It must be from some superior
Agent; and all nations owned prophecy as a beam from God, a fruit of
Divine illumination.[697] Prophecy must be totally expunged if this be
denied; for the subjects of prophecy are things future, and no man is
properly a prophet but in prediction. Now prediction is nothing but
foretelling, and things foretold are not yet come, and the foretelling
of them supposeth them not to be yet, but that they shall be in time;
several such predictions we have in Scripture, the event whereof
hath been certain. The years of famine in Egypt foretold that he
would order second causes for bringing that judgment upon them; the
captivity {a433} of his people in Babylon, the calling of the Gentiles,
the rejection of the Jews. Daniel’s revelation of Nebuchadnezzar’s
dream; that prince refers to God as the revealer of secrets (Dan.
ii. 47). By the same reason that he knows one thing future by himself,
and by the infiniteness of his knowledge before any causes of them
appear, he doth know all things future.
3. Some future things are known by men; and we must allow God a
greater knowledge than any creature. Future things in their causes
may be known by angels and men, (as I said before); whosoever knows
necessary causes, and the efficacy of them, may foretell the effects;
and when he sees the meeting and concurrence of several causes
together, he may presage what the consequent effect will be of such
a concurrence: so physicians foretel the progress of a disease, the
increase or diminution of it by natural signs; and astronomers foretel
eclipses by their observation of the motion of heavenly bodies, many
years before they happen;[698] can they be hid from God, with whom
are the reasons of all things?[699] An expert gardener, by knowing
the root in the depth of winter, can tell what flowers and what fruit
it will bear, and the month when they will peep out their heads;
and shall not God much more, that knows the principles of all his
creatures, and is exactly privy to all their natures and qualities,
know what they will be, and what operations shall be from those
principles? Now, if God did know things only in their causes, his
knowledge would not be more excellent than the knowledge of angels and
men, though he might know more than they of the things that will come
to pass, from every cause singly, and from the concurrence of many.
Now, as God is more excellent in being than his creature, so he is
more excellent in the objects of his knowledge, and the manner of his
knowledge; well, then, shall a certain knowledge of something future,
and a conjectural knowledge of many things, be found among men? and
shall a determinate and infallible knowledge of things to come be
found nowhere, in no being? If the conjecture of future things savours
of ignorance, and God knows them only by conjecture, there is, then,
no such thing in being as a perfect intelligent Being, and so no God.
4. God knows his own decree and will, and therefore must needs know
all future things. If anything be future, or to come to pass, it
must be from itself or from God: not from itself, then it would be
independent and absolute: if it hath its futurity from God, then God
must know what he hath decreed to come to pass; those things that are
future, in necessary causes, God must know, because he willed them to
be causes of such effects; he, therefore, knows them, because he knows
what he willed. The knowledge of God cannot arise from the things
themselves, for then the knowledge of God would have a cause without
him; and knowledge, which is an eminent perfection, would be conferred
upon him by his creatures. But as God sees things possible in the
glass of his own power, so he sees things future in the glass of
his own will; in his effecting will, if he hath decreed to produce
them; in his permitting will, as he hath decreed to suffer them and
dispose of them; nothing can pass out of the rank of {a434} things
merely possible into the order of things future, before some act of
God’s will hath passed for its futurition.[700] It is not from the
infiniteness of his own nature, simply considered, that God knows
things to be future;[701] for as things are not future because God is
infinite (for then all possible things should be future), so neither
is any thing known to be future only because God is infinite, but
because God hath decreed it; his declaration of things to come,
is founded upon his appointment of things to come.[702] In Isaiah
xliv. 7, it is said, “And who, as I, shall call and declare it, since
I appointed the ancient people, and the things that are coming?”[703]
Nothing is created or ordered in the world but what God decreed to
be created and ordered. God knows his own decree, and therefore all
things which he hath decreed to exist in time; not the minutest part
of the world could have existed without his will, not an action can
be done without his will; as life, the principle, so motion, the fruit
of that life, is by and from God; as he decreed life to this or that
thing, so he decreed motion as the effect of life, and decreed to
exert his power in concurring with them, for producing effects natural
from such causes; for without such a concourse they could not have
acted anything, or produced anything; and therefore as for natural
things, which we call necessary causes, God foreseeing them all
particularly in his own decree, foresaw also all effects which must
necessarily flow from them, because such causes cannot but act when
they are furnished with all things necessary for action: he knows his
own decrees, and therefore necessarily knows what he hath decreed, or
else we must say things come to pass whether God will or no, or that
he wills he knows not what; but this cannot be, for “known unto God
are all his works, from the beginning of the world” (Acts xv. 18). Now
this necessarily flows from that principle first laid down, that God
knows himself, since nothing is future without God’s will; if God did
not know future things, he would not know his own will; for as things
possible could not be known by him, unless he knew the fulness of his
own power, so things future could not be known by his understanding,
unless he knew the resolves of his own will. Thus the knowledge of God
differs from the knowledge of men;[704] God’s knowledge of his works
precedes his works; man’s knowledge of God’s works follows his works,
just as an artificer’s knowledge of a watch, instrument, or engine,
which he would make, is before his making of it; he knows the motion
of it, and the reason of those motions before it is made, because he
knows what he hath determined to work; he knows not those motions from
the consideration of them after they were made, as the spectator doth,
who, by viewing the instrument after it is made, gains a knowledge
from the sight and the consideration of it, till he understands the
reason of the whole; so we know things from the consideration of them
after we see them in being, and therefore we know not future things:
but God’s knowledge doth not arise from things because they are, but
because he wills them to be; and therefore he knows everything that
shall be, because it {a435} cannot be without his will, as the Creator
and maintainer of all things; knowing his own substance, he knows all
his works.
5. If God did not know all future things, he would be mutable in his
knowledge. If he did not know all things that ever were or are to be,
there would be upon the appearance of every new object, an addition
of light to his understanding, and therefore such a change in him as
every new knowledge causes in the mind of a man, or as the sun works
in the world upon its rising every morning, scattering the darkness
that was upon the face of the earth; if he did not know them before
they came, he would gain a knowledge by them when they came to pass,
which he had not before they were effected; his knowledge would be
new according to the newness of the objects, and multiplied according
to the multitude of the objects. If God did know things to come as
perfectly as he knew things present and past, but knew those certainly,
and the others doubtfully and conjecturally, he would suffer some
change, and acquire some perfection in his knowledge, when those
future things should cease to be future, and become present; for he
would know it more perfectly when it were present, than he did when
it was future, and so there would be a change from imperfection to a
perfection; but God is every way immutable. Besides, that perfection
would not arise from the nature of God, but from the existence and
presence of the thing; but who will affirm that God acquires any
perfection of knowledge from his creatures, any more than he doth of
being? he would not then have that knowledge, and consequently that
perfection from eternity, as he had when he created the world, and
will not have a full perfection of the knowledge of his creature till
the end of the world, nor of immortal souls, which will certainly act
as well as live to eternity; and so God never was, nor ever will be,
perfect in knowledge; for when you have conceived millions of years,
wherein angels and souls live and act, there is still more coming than
you can conceive, wherein they will act. And if God be always changing
to eternity, from ignorance to knowledge, as those acts come to be
exerted by his creatures, he will not be perfect in knowledge, no, not
to eternity, but will always be changing from one degree of knowledge
to another; a very unworthy conceit to entertain of the most blessed,
perfect, and infinite God! Hence, then, it follows, that
(1.) God foreknows all his creatures. All kinds which he determined
to make; all particulars that should spring out of every species; the
time when they should come forth of the womb; the manner how; “In thy
Book all my members were written” (Ps. cxxxix. 16). Members is not in
the _Heb._ whence some refer all, to all living creatures whatsoever,
and all the parts of them which God did foresee; he knew the number
of creatures with all their parts; they were written in the book
of his foreknowledge; the duration of them, how long they shall
remain in being, and act upon the stage; he knows their strength, the
links of one cause with another, and what will follow in all their
circumstances, and the series and combinations of effects with their
causes. The duration of everything is foreknown, because determined
(Job. xiv. 5); “seeing his days {a436} are determined, the number
of his months are with thee; thou hast appointed his bounds, that
he cannot pass;” bounds are fixed, beyond which none shall reach; he
speaks of days and months, not of years, to give us notice of God’s
particular foreknowledge of everything, of every day, month, year,
hour of a man’s life.
(2.) All the acts of his creatures are foreknown by him. All natural
acts, because he knows their causes; voluntary acts I shall speak of
afterwards.
(3.) This foreknowledge was certain. For it is an unworthy notion of
God to ascribe to him a conjectural knowledge; if there were only a
conjectural knowledge, he could but conjecturally foretel anything;
and then it is possible the events of things might be contrary to his
predictions. It would appear then that God were deceived and mistaken,
and then there could be no rule of trying things, whether there were
from God or no; for the rule God sets down to discern his words from
the words of false prophets, is the event and certain accomplishment
of what is predicted (Deut. xviii. 21) to that question, “How shall
we know whether God hath spoken or no?” he answers, that “if the thing
doth not come to pass, the Lord hath not spoken.” If his knowledge
of future things were not certain, there were no stability in this
rule, it would fall to the ground: we never yet find God deceived
in any prediction, but the event did answer his forerevelation; his
foreknowledge, therefore, is certain and infallible. We cannot make
God uncertain in his knowledge, but we must conceive him fluctuating
and wavering in his will; but if his will be not yea and nay, but yea,
his knowledge is certain, because he doth certainly will and resolve.
(4.) This foreknowledge was from eternity. Seeing he knows things
possible in his power, and things future in his will; if his power and
resolves were from eternity, his knowledge must be so too, or else we
must make him ignorant of his own power, and ignorant of his own will
from eternity; and consequently not from eternity blessed and perfect.
His knowledge of possible things must run parallel with his power,
and his knowledge of future things run parallel with his will. If
he willed from eternity, he knew from eternity what he willed; but
that he did will from eternity, we must grant, unless we would render
him changeable, and conceive him to be made in time of not willing,
willing. The knowledge God hath in time, was always one and the same,
because his understanding is his proper essence, and of an immutable
nature.[705] And indeed the actual existence of a thing is not simply
necessary to its being perfectly known; we may see a thing that is
past out of being, when it doth actually exist; and a carpenter may
know the house he is to build, before it be built, by the model of
it in his own mind; much more we may conceive the same of God whose
decrees were before the foundation of the world;[706] and to be before
time was, and to be from eternity, hath no difference. As God in his
being exceeds all beginning of time, so doth his knowledge all motions
of time.
(5.) God foreknows all things as present with him from eternity. As
he knows mutable things with an immutable and firm knowledge, {a437}
so he knows future things with a present knowledge;[707] not that the
things which are produced in time, were actually and really present
with him in their own beings from eternity; for then they could not
be produced in time; had they a real existence, then they would not be
creatures, but God; and had they actual being, then they could not be
future, for future speaks a thing to come that is not yet. If things
had been actually present with him, and yet future, they had been made
before they were made, and had a being before they had a being; but
they were all present to his knowledge as if they were in actual being,
because the reason of all things that were to be made, was present
with him. The reason of the will of God that they shall be, was
equally eternal with him, wherein he saw what, and when, and how he
would create things, how he would govern them, to what ends he would
direct them.[708] Thus all things are present to God’s knowledge,
though in their own nature they may be past or future, not in
_esse reali_, but in _esse intelligibili_, objectively, not actually
present;[709] for as the unchangeableness and infiniteness of God’s
knowledge of changeable and finite things, doth not make the things
he knows immutable and infinite, so neither doth the eternity of his
knowledge make them actually present with him from eternity; but all
things are present to his understanding, because he hath at once a
view of all successions of times; and his knowledge of future things
is as perfect as of present things, or what is past; it is not a
certain knowledge of present things, and an uncertain knowledge of
future, but his knowledge of one is as certain and unerring as his
knowledge of the other;[710] as a man that beholds a circle with
several lines from the centre, beholds the lines as they are joined
in the centre, beholds them also as they are distant and severed from
one another, beholds them in their extent and in their point all at
once, though they may have a great distance from one another. He saw
from the beginning of time to the last minute of it, all things coming
out of their causes, marching in their order according to his own
appointment; as a man may see a multitude of ants, some creeping one
way, some another, employed in several businesses for their winter
provision. The eye of God at once runs through the whole circle of
time; as the eye of man upon a tower sees all the passengers at once,
though some be past, some under the tower, some coming at a farther
distance. “God,” saith Job, “looks to the end of the earth, and sees
under the whole heaven” (Job xxviii. 24); the knowledge of God is
expressed by sight in Scripture, and futurity to God is the same
thing as distance to us; we can with a perspective‑glass make things
that are afar off appear as if they were near; and the sun, so many
thousand miles distant from us, to appear as if it were at the end of
the glass: why, then, should future things be at so great a distance
from God’s knowledge, when things so far from us may be made to
approach so near to us? God considers all things in his own simple
knowledge, as if they were now acted; and therefore some have
chosen to call the knowledge of things to come, not prescience, or
foreknowledge, but knowledge; {a438} because God sees all things in
one instant, _scientiâ nunquam deficientis instantiæ_.[711] Upon this
account, things that are to come, are set down in Scripture as present,
and sometimes as past (Isa. ix. 6): “Unto us a child is born,” though
not yet born; so of the sufferings of Christ (Isa. liii. 4, &c.): “He
hath borne our griefs, he was wounded for our transgressions, he was
taken from prison,” &c., not shall be; and (Ps. xxii. 18): “they part
my garments among them,” as if it were present; all to express the
certainty of God’s foreknowledge, as if things were actually present
before him.
(6.) This is proper to God, and incommunicable to any creature.
Nothing but what is eternal can know all things that are to come.
Suppose a creature might know things that are to come, after he is
in being, he cannot know things simply as future, because there were
things future before he was in being. The devils know not men’s hearts,
therefore cannot foretel their actions with any certainty; they
may indeed have a knowledge of some things to come, but it is only
conjectural, and often mistaken; as the devil was in his predictions
among the heathen, and in his presage of “Job’s cursing God to his
face” upon his pressing calamities (Job i. 11). Sometimes, indeed,
they have a certain knowledge of something future by the revelation
of God, when he uses them as instruments of his vengeance, or for
the trial of his people, as in the case of Job, when he gave him a
commission to strip him of his goods; or, as the angels have, when
he uses them as instruments of the deliverance of his people.
(7.) Though this be certain, that God foreknows all things and
actions, yet the manner of his knowing all things before they come, is
not so easily resolved. We must not, therefore, deny this perfection
in God, because we understand not the manner how he hath the knowledge
of all things. It were unworthy for us to own no more of God than we
can perfectly conceive of him; we should then own no more of him than
that he doth exist. “Canst thou,” saith Job, “by searching, find out
God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?” (Job xi. 7).
Do we not see things unknown to inferior creatures, to be known to
ourselves? Irrational creatures do not apprehend the nature of a man,
nor what we conceived of them when we look upon them; nor do we know
what they fancy of us when they look wistly upon us; for ought as I
know, we understand as little the manner of their imaginations, as
they do of ours; and shall we ascribe a darkness in God as to future
things, because we are ignorant of them, and of the manner how he
should know them?[712] shall we doubt whether God doth certainly know
those things which we only conjecture? As our power is not the measure
of the power of God, so neither is our knowledge the judge of the
knowledge of God, no better nor so well as an irrational nature can be
the judge of our reason. Do we perfectly know the manner how we know?
shall we therefore deny that we know anything? We know we have such a
faculty which we call understanding, but doth any man certainly know
what it is? and because he doth not, shall he deny that which is plain
and evident to him? {a439} Because we cannot ascertain ourselves of
the causes of the ebbing and flowing of the sea, of the manner how
minerals are engendered in the earth, shall we therefore deny that
which our eyes convince us of? And this will be a preparation to the
last thing.
Fifthly, God knows all future contingencies, that is, God knows all
things that shall accidentally happen, or, as we say, by chance; and
he knows all the free motions of men’s wills that shall be to the
end of the world. If all things be open to him (Heb. iv. 13), then
all contingencies are, for they are in the number of things; and as,
according to Christ’s speech, those things that are impossible to
man, are possible to God, so those things which are unknown to man,
are known to God; because of the infinite fulness and perfection of
the divine understanding. Let us see what a contingent is. That is
contingent which we commonly call accidental, as when a tile falls
suddenly upon a man’s head as he is walking in the street; or when
one letting off a musket at random shoots another he did not intend to
hit; such was that arrow whereby Ahab was killed, shot by a soldier at
a venture (1 Kings xxii. 39); this some call a mixed contingent, made
up partly of necessity, and partly of accident; it is necessary the
bullet, when sent out of the gun, or arrow out of the bow, should fly
and light somewhere; but it is an accident that it hits this or that
man, that was never intended by the archer. Other things, as voluntary
actions, are purely contingents, and have nothing of necessity in
them; all free actions that depend upon the will of man, whether to
do, or not to do, are of this nature, because they depend not upon a
necessary cause, as burning doth upon the fire, moistening upon water,
or as descent or falling down is necessary to a heavy body; for those
cannot in their own nature do otherwise; but the other actions depend
upon a free agent, able to turn to this or that point, and determine
himself as he pleases. Now we must know, that what is accidental in
regard of the creature, is not so in regard of God; the manner of
Ahab’s death was accidental, in regard of the hand by which he was
slain, but not in regard of God who foretold his death, and foreknew
the shot, and directed the arrow; God was not uncertain before of
the manner of his fall, nor hovered over the battle to watch for
an opportunity to accomplish his own prediction; what may be or not
be, in regard of us, is certain in regard of God; to imagine that
what is accidental to us, is so to God, is to measure God by our
short line. How many events following upon the results of princes in
their counsels, seem to persons, ignorant of those counsels, to be a
haphazard, yet were not contingencies to the prince and his assistants,
but foreseen by him as certainly to issue so as they do, which
they knew before would be the fruit of such causes and instruments
they would knit together! That may be necessary in regard of God’s
foreknowledge, which is merely accidental in regard of the natural
disposition of the immediate causes which do actually produce it;
contingent in its own nature, and in regard of us, but fixed in
the knowledge of God. One illustrates it by this similitude;[713] a
master sends two servants to one and the same place, two several ways,
unknown to one another; {a440} they meet at the place which their
master had appointed them; their meeting is accidental to them, one
knows not of the other, but it was foreseen by the master that they
should so meet; and that in regard of them it would seem a mere
accident, till they came to explain the business to one another; both
the necessity of their meeting, in regard of their master’s order, and
the accidentalness of it in regard of themselves, were in both their
circumstances foreknown by the master that employed them. For the
clearing of this, take it in this method.
1. It is an unworthy conceit of God in any to exclude him from the
knowledge of these things.
(1.) It will be a strange contracting of him to allow him no greater
a knowledge than we have ourselves. Contingencies are known to us
when they come into act, and pass from futurity to reality; and when
they are present to us, we can order our affairs accordingly; shall we
allow God no greater a measure of knowledge than we have, and make him
as blind as ourselves, not to see things of that nature before they
come to pass? Shall God know them no more? Shall we imagine God knows
no otherwise than we know? and that he doth, like us, stand gazing
with admiration at events? man can conjecture many things; is it fit
to ascribe the same uncertainty to God, as though he, as well as we,
could have no assurance till the issue appear in the view of all? If
God doth not certainly foreknow them, he doth but conjecture them;
but a conjectural knowledge is by no means to be fastened on God;
for that is not knowledge, but guess, and destroys a Deity by making
him subject to mistake; for he that only guesseth, may guess wrong;
so that this is to make God like ourselves, and strip him of an
universally acknowledged perfection of omniscience. A conjectural
knowledge, saith one,[714] is as unworthy of God as the creature is
unworthy of omniscience. It is certain man hath a liberty to act many
things this or that way as he pleases; to walk to this or that quarter,
to speak or not to speak; to do this or that thing, or not to do it;
which way a man will certainly determine himself, is unknown before to
any creature, yea, often at the present to himself, for he may be in
suspense; but shall we imagine this future determination of himself is
concealed from God? Those that deny God’s foreknowledge in such cases,
must either say, that God hath an opinion that a man will resolve
rather this way than that; but then if a man by his liberty determine
himself contrary to the opinion of God, is not God then deceived?
and what rational creature can own him for a God that can be deceived
in anything? or else they must say that God is at uncertainty,
and suspends his opinion without determining it any way; then he
cannot know free acts till they are done; he would then depend
upon the creature for his information; his knowledge would be every
instant increased, as things, he knew not before, came into act;
and since there are every minute an innumerable multitude of various
imaginations in the minds of men, there would be every minute an
accession of new knowledge to God which he had not before; besides,
this knowledge would be mutable according to the wavering and {a441}
weathercock resolutions of men, one while standing to this point,
another while to that, if he depended upon the creature’s
determination for his knowledge.
(2.) If the free acts of men were unknown before to God, no man
can see how there can be any government of the world by him. Such
contingencies may happen, and such resolves of men’s free‑wills
unknown to God, as may perplex his affairs, and put him upon new
counsels and methods for attaining those ends which he settled at
the first creation of things; if things happen which God knows not
of before, this must be the consequence; where there is no foresight,
there is no providence; things may happen so sudden, if God be
ignorant of them, that they may give a check to his intentions and
scheme of government, and put him upon changing the whole model of it.
How often doth a small intervening circumstance, unforeseen by man,
dash in pieces a long meditated and well‑formed design! To govern
necessary causes, as sun and stars, whose effects are natural and
constant in themselves, is easy to be imagined; but how to govern the
world that consists of so many men of free‑will, able to determine
themselves to this or that, and which have no constancy in themselves,
as the sun and stars have, cannot be imagined; unless we will allow
in God as great a certainty of foreknowledge of the designs and
actions of men, as there is inconstancy in their resolves. God must
be altering the methods of his government every day, every hour, every
minute, according to the determinations of men, which are so various
and changeable in the whole compass of the world in the space of one
minute; he must wait to see what the counsels of men will be, before
he could settle his own methods of government; and so must govern
the world according to their mutability, and not according to any
certainty in himself. But his counsel is stable in the midst of
multitudes of free devices in the heart of man (Prov. xix. 21), and
knowing them all before, orders them to be subservient to his own
stable counsel. If he cannot know what to‑morrow will bring forth in
the mind of a man, how can he certainly settle his own determination
of governing him? His decrees and resolves must be temporal, and
arise _pro re nata_, and he must alway be in counsel what he should do
upon every change of men’s minds. This is an unworthy conceit of the
infinite majesty of heaven, to make his government depend upon the
resolves of men, rather than their resolves upon the design of God.
2. It is therefore certain, that God doth foreknow the free and
voluntary acts of man. How could he else order his people to ask of
him things to come, in order to their deliverance, such things as
depended upon the will of man, if he foreknew not the motions of their
will (Isa. xlv. 11)?
(1.) Actions good or indifferent depending upon the liberty of man’s
will as much as any whatsoever. Several of these he hath foretold; not
only a person to build up Jerusalem was predicted by him, but the name
of that person, Cyrus (Isa. xliv. 28). What is more contingent, or is
more the effect of the liberty of man’s will, than the names of their
children? Was not the destruction of the Babylonish empire foretold,
which Cyrus undertook, not by any {a442} compulsion, but by a free
inclination and resolve of his own will? And was not the dismission
of the Jews into their own country a voluntary act in that conqueror?
If you consider the liberty of man’s will, might not Cyrus as well
have continued their yoke, as have struck off their chains, and kept
them captive, as well as dismissed them? Had it not been for his own
interest, rather to have strengthened the fetters of so turbulent a
people, who being tenacious of their religion and laws different from
that professed by the whole world, were like to make disturbances more
when they were linked in a body in their own country, than when they
were transplanted and scattered into the several parts of his empire?
It was in the power of Cyrus (take him as a man) to choose one or the
other; his interest invited him to continue their captivity, rather
than grant their deliverance; yet God knew that he would willingly
do this rather than the other; he knew this which depended upon the
will of Cyrus; and why may not an infinite God foreknow the free acts
of all men, as well as of one? If the liberty of Cyrus’ will was no
hindrance to God’s certain and infallible foreknowledge of it, how
can the contingency of any other thing be a hindrance to him? for
there is the same reason of one and all; and his government extends
to every village, every family, every person, as well as to kingdoms
and nations. So God foretold, by his prophet, not only the destruction
of Jeroboam’s altar, but the name of the person that should be the
instrument of it (1 Kings xiii. 2), and this about 300 years before
Josiah’s birth. It is a wonder that none of the pious kings of Judah,
in detestation of idolatry, and hopes to recover again the kingdom
of Israel, had in all that space named one of their sons by that name
of Josiah, in hopes that that prophecy should be accomplished by him;
that Manasseh only should do this, who was the greatest imitator of
Jeroboam’s idolatry among all the Jewish kings, and indeed went beyond
them; and had no mind to destroy in another kingdom what he propagated
in his own. What is freer than the imposition of a name? yet this he
foreknew, and this Josiah was Manasseh’s son (2 Kings xxi. 26). Was
there anything more voluntary than for Pharaoh to honor the butler
by restoring him to his place, and punish the baker by hanging him
on a gibbet? yet this was foretold (Gen. xl. 8). And were not all the
voluntary acts of men, which were the means of Joseph’s advancement,
foreknown by God, as well as his exaltation, which was the end he
aimed at by those means? Many of these may be reckoned up. Can all
the free acts of man surmount the infinite capacity of the Divine
understanding? If God singles out one voluntary action in man as
contingent as any, and lying among a vast number of other designs
and resolutions, both antecedent and subsequent, why should he not
know the whole mass of men’s thoughts and actions, and pierce into
all that the liberty of man’s will can effect? why should he not know
every grain, as well as one that lies in the midst of many of the same
kind? And since the Scripture gives so large an account of contingents,
predicted by God, no man can certainly prove that anything is
unforeknown to him. It is as reasonable to think he knows every
contingent, as that he knows some that lie as much hid from the eye of
any creature, {a443} since there is no more difficulty to an infinite
understanding to know all, than to know some.[715] Indeed, if we deny
God’s foreknowledge of the voluntary actions of men, we must strike
ourselves off from the belief of scripture predictions that yet remain
unaccomplished, and will be brought about by the voluntary engagements
of men, as the ruin of antichrist, &c. If God foreknows not the
secret motions of man’s will, how can he foretel them? if we strip
him of this perfection of prescience, why should we believe a word of
scripture predictions? all the credit of the word of God is torn up by
the roots. If God were uncertain of such events, how can we reconcile
God’s declaration of them to his truth; and his demanding our belief
of them to his goodness? Were it good and righteous in God to urge
us to the belief of that he were uncertain of himself, how could
he be true in predicting things he were not sure of? or good, in
requiring credit to be given to that which might be false? This would
necessarily follow, if God did not foreknow the motions of men’s wills,
whereby many of his predictions were fulfilled, and some remain yet to
be accomplished.
(2.) God foreknows the voluntary sinful motions of men’s wills.
First, God had foretold several of them. Were not all the minute
sinful circumstances about the death of our blessed Redeemer, as the
piercing him, giving him gall to drink, foretold, as well as the not
breaking his bones, and parting his garments? What were those but the
free actions of men, which they did willingly without any constraint?
and those foretold by David, Isaiah, and other prophets; some above a
thousand, some eight hundred, and some more, some fewer years before
they came to pass; and the events punctually answered the prophesies.
Many sinful acts of men, which depended upon their free will, have
been foretold. The Egyptians’ voluntary oppressing Israel (Gen.
xv. 13); Pharaoh’s hardening his heart against the voice of Moses
(Exod. iii. 19); that Isaiah’s message would be in vain to the people
(Isa. vi. 9); that the Israelites would be rebellious after Moses’
death, and turn idolaters (Deut. xxxi. 16); Judas’ betraying of our
Saviour, a voluntary action (John vi. _ult._); he was not forced to
do what he did, for he had some kind of repentance for it; and not
violence, but voluntariness falls under repentance. Second, His truth
had depended upon this foresight. Let us consider that in Gen. xv. 16,
“But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again;” that is,
the posterity of Abraham shall come into Canaan, for the iniquity of
the Amorites is not yet full.[716] God makes a promise to Abraham,
of giving his posterity the land of Canaan, not presently, but in
the fourth generation; if the truth of God be infallible in the
performance of his promise, his understanding is as infallible in the
foresight of the Amorites’ sin; the fullness of their iniquity was to
precede the Israelites’ possession. Did the truth of God depend upon
an uncertainty? did he make the promise hand over head (as we say)?
How could he, with any wisdom and truth, {a444} assure Israel of the
possession of the land in the fourth generation, if he had not been
sure that the Amorites would fill up the measure of their iniquities
by that time? If Abraham had been a Socinian, to deny God’s knowledge
of the free acts of men, had he not a fine excuse for unbelief? What
would his reply have been to God? Alas, Lord, this is not a promise
to be relied upon, the Amorites’ iniquity depends upon the acts
of their free will, and such thou canst have no knowledge of; thou
canst see no more than a likelihood of their iniquity being full, and
therefore there is but a likelihood of thy performing thy promise,
and not a certainty! Would not this be judged not only a saucy, but
a blasphemous answer? And upon these principles the truth of the
most faithful God had been dashed to uncertainty and a peradventure.
Third, God provided a remedy for man’s sin, and therefore foresaw the
entrance of it into the world by the fall of Adam. He had a decree
before the foundation of the world, to manifest his wisdom in the
gospel by Jesus Christ, an “eternal purpose in Jesus Christ” (Eph.
iii. 11), and a decree of election past before the foundation of the
world;――a separation of some to redemption, and forgiveness of sin in
the blood of Christ, in whom they were from eternity chosen, as well
as in time accepted in Christ (Eph. i. 4, 6, 7), which is called a
“purpose in himself” (ver. 9); had not sin entered, there had been
no occasion for the death of the Son of God, it being everywhere
in Scripture laid upon that score;――a decree for the shedding
of blood, supposed a decree for the permission of sin, and a
certain foreknowledge of God, that it would be committed by man.
An uncertainty of foreknowledge, and a fixedness of purpose, are
not consistent in a wise man, much less in the only wise God. God’s
purpose to manifest his wisdom to men and angels in this way might
have been defeated, had God had only a conjectural foreknowledge
of the fall of man; and all those solemn purposes of displaying
his perfections in those methods had been to no purpose;[717] the
provision of a remedy supposed a certainty of the disease. If a
sparrow fall not to the ground without the will of God, how much less
could such a deplorable ruin fall upon mankind, without God’s will
permitting it, and his knowledge foreseeing it? It is not hard to
conceive how God might foreknow it?[718] he indeed decreed to create
man in an excellent state; the goodness of God could not but furnish
him with a power to stand; yet in his wisdom he might foresee that
the devil would be envious to man’s happiness, and would, out of
envy, attempt his subversion. As God knew of what temper the faculties
were he had endued man with, and how far they were able to endure the
assaults of a temptation, so he also foreknew the grand subtelties of
Satan, how he would lay his mine, and to what point he would drive his
temptation; how he would propose and manage it, and direct his battery
against the sensitive appetite, and assault the weakest part of the
fort; might he not foresee that the efficacy of the temptation would
exceed the measure of the resistance; cannot God know how far the
malice of Satan would extend, what shots he would, according to his
nature, use, how high he would charge his temptation without his
powerful restraint, {a445} as well as an engineer judge how many shots
of a cannon will make a breach in a town, and how many casks of powder
will blow up a fortress, who never yet built the one, nor founded
the other? We may easily conclude God could not be deceived in the
judgment of the issue and event, since he knew how far he would let
Satan loose, how far he would permit man to act; and since he dives
to the bottom of the nature of all things, he foresaw that Adam was
endued with an ability to stand; as he foresaw that Benhadad might
naturally recover of his disease; but he foresaw also that Adam would
sink under the allurements of the temptation, as he foresaw that
Hazael would let Benhadad live (2 Kings viii. 10). Now since the whole
race of mankind lies in corruption, and is subject to the power of
the devil (1 John iii. 18), may not God, that knows that corruption
in every man’s nature, and the force of every man’s spirit, and what
every particular nature will incline him to upon such objects proposed
to him, and what the reasons of the temptation will be, know also the
issues? is there any difficulty in God’s foreknowing this, since man
knowing the nature of one he is well acquainted with, can conclude
what sentiments he will have, and how he will behave himself upon
presenting this or that object to him? If a man that understands the
disposition of his child or servant, knows before what he will do upon
such an occasion, may not God much more, who knows the inclination of
all his creatures, and from eternity run with his eyes over all the
works he intended? Our wills are in the number of causes; and since
God knows our wills, as causes, better than we do ourselves, why
should he be ignorant of the effects? God determines to give grace to
such a man, not to give it to another, but leave him to himself, and
suffer such temptations to assault him; now God knowing the corruption
of man in the whole mass, and in every part of it, is it not easy
for him to foreknow what the future actions of the will will be, when
the tinder and fire meet together, and how such a man will determine
himself, both us to the substance and manner of the action? Is it
not easy for him to know how a corrupted temper and a temptation will
suit? God is exactly privy to all the gall in the hearts of men, and
what principles they will have, before they have a being. He “knows
their thoughts afar off” (Ps. cxxxix. 2), as far off as eternity, as
some explain the words, and thoughts are as voluntary as anything;
he knows the power and inclinations of men in the order of second
causes; he understands the corruption of men, as well as “the poison
of dragons, and the venom of asps;” this is “laid up in store with
him, and sealed among his treasures” (Deut. xxxii. 33, 34): among
the treasures of his foreknowledge, say some. What was the cruelty of
Hazael, but a free act? yet God knew the frame of his heart, and what
acts of murder and oppression would spring from that bitter fountain,
before Hazael had conceived them in himself (2 Kings viii. 12), as a
man that knows the minerals through which the waters pass, may know
what relish they will have before they appear above the earth, so our
Saviour knew how Peter would deny him; he knew what quantity of powder
would serve for such a battery, in what measure he would let loose
Satan, {a446} how far he would leave the reins in Peter’s hands, and
then the issue might easily be known; and so in every act of man, God
knows in his own will what measure of grace he will give, to determine
the will to good, and what measure of grace he will withdraw from such
a person, or not give to him; and, consequently, how far such a person
will fall or not. God knows the inclinations of the creature; he knows
his own permissions, what degrees of grace he will either allow him,
or keep from him, according to which will be the degree of his sin.
This may in some measure help our conceptions in this, though, as
was said before, the manner of God’s foreknowledge is not so easily
explicable.
(3.) God’s foreknowledge of man’s voluntary actions doth not
necessitate the will of man. The foreknowledge of God is not deceived,
nor the liberty of man’s will diminished. I shall not trouble you with
any school distinctions, but be as plain as I can, laying down several
propositions in this case.
_Prop. I._ It is certain all necessity doth not take away liberty,
indeed a compulsive necessity takes away liberty, but a necessity
of immutability removes not liberty from God; why should, then, a
necessity of infallibility in God remove liberty from the creature?
God did necessarily create the world, because he decreed it; yet
freely, because his will from eternity stood to it, he freely decreed
it and freely created it, as the apostle saith in regard of God’s
decrees, “Who hath been his counsellor” (Rom. xi. 34)? so in regard of
his actions I may say, Who hath been his compeller? he freely decreed,
and he freely created. Jesus Christ necessarily took our flesh,
because he had covenanted with God so to do, yet he acted freely and
voluntarily according to that covenant, otherwise his death had not
been efficacious for us. A good man doth naturally, necessarily, love
his children, yet voluntarily: it is part of the happiness of the
blessed to love God unchangeably, yet freely, for it would not be
their happiness if it were done by compulsion. What is done by force
cannot be called felicity, because there is no delight or complacency
in it; and, though the blessed love God freely, yet, if there were
a possibility of change, it would not be their happiness, their
blessedness would be damped by their fear of falling from this love,
and consequently from their nearness to God, in whom their happiness
consists: God foreknows that they will love him forever, but are they
therefore compelled forever to love him? If there were such a kind
of constraint, heaven would be rendered burdensome to them, and so
no heaven. Again, God’s foreknowledge of what he will do, doth not
necessitate him to do: he foreknew that he would create a world, yet
he freely created a world. God’s foreknowledge doth not necessitate
himself; why should it necessitate us more than himself? We may
instance in ourselves: when we will a thing, we necessarily use our
faculty of will; and when we freely will any thing, it is necessary
that we freely will; but this necessity doth not exclude, but include,
liberty; or, more plainly, when a man writes or speaks, whilst he
writes or speaks, those actions are necessary, because to speak and be
silent, to write and not to write, at the same time, are impossible;
yet our writing {a447} or speaking doth not take away the power not
to write or to be silent at that time if a man would be so; for he
might have chose whether he would have spoke or writ. So there is
a necessity of such actions of man, which God foresees; that is, a
necessity of infallibility, because God cannot be deceived, but not
a coactive necessity, as if they were compelled by God to act thus or
thus.
_Prop. II._ No man can say in any of his voluntary actions that
he ever found any force upon him. When any of us have done anything
according to our wills, can we say we could not have done the contrary
to it? were we determined to it in our own intrinsic nature, or did we
not determine ourselves? did we not act either according to our reason,
or according to outward allurements? did we find anything without us,
or within us, that did force our wills to the embracing this or that?
Whatever action you do, you do it because you judge it fit to be done,
or because you will do it. What, though God foresaw that you would do
so, and that you would do this or that, did you feel any force upon
you? did you not act according to your nature? God foresees that you
will eat or walk at such a time; do you find anything that moves you
to eat, but your own appetite? or to walk, but your own reason and
will? If prescience had imposed any necessity upon man, should we not
probably have found some kind of plea from it in the mouth of Adam?
he knew as much as any man ever since knew of the nature of God, as
discoverable in creation; he could not in innocence fancy an ignorant
God, a God that knew nothing of future things; he could not be so
ignorant of his own action, but he must have perceived a force upon
his will, had there been any; had he thought that God’s prescience
imposed any necessity upon him, he would not have omitted the plea,
especially when he was so daring as to charge the providence of God
in the gift of the woman to him, to be the cause of his crime (Gen.
iii. 12.) How come his posterity to invent new charges against God,
which their father Adam never thought of, who had more knowledge than
all of them? He could find no cause of his sin but the liberty of his
own will; he charges it, not upon any necessity from the devil, or
any necessity from God; nor doth he allege the gift of the woman as a
necessary cause of his sin, but an occasion of it, by giving the fruit
to him. Judas knew that our Saviour did foreknow his treachery, for he
had told him of it in the hearing of his disciples (John xiii. 21‒26),
yet he never charged the necessity of his crime upon the foreknowledge
of his Master; if Judas had not done it freely, he had had no reason
to repent of it; his repentance justifies Christ from imposing any
necessity upon him by that foreknowledge. No man acts anything, but
he can give an account of the motives of his action; he cannot father
it upon a blind necessity; the will cannot be compelled, for then it
would cease to be the will: God doth not root up the foundations of
nature, or change the order of it, and make men unable to act like
men, that is, as free agents. God foreknows the actions of irrational
creatures; this concludes no violence upon their nature, for we find
their actions to be according to their nature, and spontaneous.
{a448} _Prop. III._ God’s foreknowledge is not, simply considered, the
cause of anything. It puts nothing into things, but only beholds them
as present, and arising from their proper causes. The knowledge of God
is not the principle of things, or the cause of their existence, but
directive of the action; nothing is because God knows it, but because
God wills it, either positively or permissively; God knows all things
possible; yet, because God knows them they are not brought into actual
existence, but remain still only as things possible; knowledge only
apprehends a thing, but acts nothing; it is the rule of acting, but
not the cause of acting; the will is the immediate principle, and
the power the immediate cause; to know a thing is not to do a thing,
for then we may be said to do everything that we know: but every man
knows those things which he never did, nor never will do; knowledge
in itself is an apprehension of a thing, and is not the cause of it.
A spectator of a thing is not the cause of that thing which he sees,
that is, he is not the cause of it, as he beholds it. We see a man
write, we know before that he will write at such a time; but this
foreknowledge is not the cause of his writing. We see a man walk, but
our vision of him brings no necessity of walking upon him; he was free
to walk or not to walk.[719] We foreknow that death will seize upon
all men, we foreknow that the seasons of the year will succeed one
another, yet is not our foreknowledge the cause of this succession
of spring after winter, or of the death of all men, or any man? We
see one man fighting with another; our sight is not the cause of
that contest, but some quarrel among themselves, exciting their own
passions. As the knowledge of present things imposeth no necessity
upon them while they are acting, and present, so the knowledge of
future things imposeth no necessity upon them while they are coming.
We are certain there will be men in the world to‑morrow, and that the
sea will ebb and flow; but is this knowledge of ours the cause that
those things will be so? I know that the sun will rise to‑morrow, it
is true that it shall rise; but it is not true that my foreknowledge
makes it to rise. If a physician prognosticates, upon seeing the
intemperances and debaucheries of men, that they will fall into such
a distemper, is his prognostication any cause of their disease, or of
the sharpness of any symptoms attending it? The prophet foretold the
cruelty of Hazael before he committed it; but who will say that the
prophet was the cause of his commission of that evil? And thus the
foreknowledge of God takes not away the liberty of man’s will, no more
than a foreknowledge that we have of any man’s actions takes away his
liberty. We may upon our knowledge of the temper of a man, certainly
foreknow, that if he falls into such company, and get among his cups,
he will be drunk; but is this foreknowledge the cause that he is
drunk? No; the cause is the liberty of his own will, and not resisting
the temptation. God purposes to leave such a man to himself and his
own ways; and man being so left, God foreknows what will be done
by him according to that corrupt nature which is in him; though the
decree of God of leaving a {a449} man to the liberty of his own will
be certain, yet the liberty of man’s will as thus left, is the cause
of all the extravagances he doth commit. Suppose Adam had stood, would
not God certainly have foreseen that he would have stood? yet it would
have been concluded that Adam had stood, not by any necessity of God’s
foreknowledge, but by the liberty of his own will. Why should then
the foreknowledge of God add more necessity to his falling than to
his standing? And though it be said sometimes in Scripture, that
such a thing was done “that the Scripture might be fulfilled,” as
John xii. 38, “that the saying of Esais might be fulfilled, Lord,
who hath believed our report?” the word _that_ doth not infer that
the prediction of the prophet was the cause of the Jews’ belief, but
infers this, that the prediction was manifested to be true by their
unbelief, and the event answered the prediction; this prediction
was not the cause of their sin, but their foreseen sin was the cause
of this prediction; and so the particle that is taken (Ps. li. 6),
“Against thee, thee only have I sinned, that thou mightest be
justified,” &c.; the justifying God was not the end and intent of
the sin, but the event of it upon his acknowledgment.[720]
_Prop. IV._ God foreknows things, because they will come to pass;
but things are not future, because God knows them. Foreknowledge
presupposeth the object which is foreknown; a thing that is to come to
pass is the object of the Divine knowledge, but not the cause of the
act of divine knowledge; and though the foreknowledge of God doth in
eternity precede the actual presence of a thing which is foreseen as
future, yet the future thing, in regard of its futurity, is as eternal
as the foreknowledge of God: as the voice is uttered before it be
heard, and a thing is visible before it be seen, and a thing knowable
before it be known. But how comes it to be knowable to God? it must
be answered, either in the power of God as a thing possible, or in the
will of God as a thing future; he first willed, and then knew what he
willed; he knew what he willed to effect, and he knew what he willed
to permit; as he willed the death of Christ by a determinate counsel,
and willed the permission of the Jew’s sin, and the ordering of the
malice of their nature to that end (Acts ii. 22). God decrees to make
a rational creature, and to govern him by a law; God decrees not to
hinder this rational creature from transgressing his law; and God
foresees that what he would not hinder, would come to pass. Man did
not sin because God foresaw him; but God foresaw him to sin, because
man would sin. If Adam and other men would have acted otherwise, God
would have foreknown that they would have acted well; God foresaw
our actions because they would so come to pass by the motion of our
freewill, which he would permit, which he would concur with, which he
would order to his own holy and glorious ends, for the manifestation
of the perfection of his nature. If I see a man lie in a sink, no
necessity is inferred upon him from my sight to lie in that filthy
place, but there is a necessity inferred by him that lies there, that
I should see him in that condition if I pass by, and cast my eye that
way.
_Prop. V._ God did not only foreknow our actions, but the manner
{a450} of our actions. That is, he did not only know that we would do
such actions, but that we would do them freely; he foresaw that the
will would freely determine itself to this or that; the knowledge of
God takes not away the nature of things; though God knows possible
things, yet they remain in the nature of possibility; and though
God knows contingent things, yet they remain in the nature of
contingencies; and though God knows free agents, yet they remain in
the nature of liberty. God did not foreknow the actions of man, as
necessary, but as free; so that liberty is rather established by this
foreknowledge, than removed. God did not foreknow that Adam had not
a power to stand, or that any man hath not a power to omit such a
sinful action, but that he would not omit it. Man hath a power to
do otherwise than that which God foreknows he will do. Adam was not
determined by any inward necessity to fall, nor any man by any inward
necessity to commit this or that particular sin; but God foresaw that
he would fall, and fall freely; for he saw the whole circle of means
and causes whereby such and such actions should be produced, and can
be no more ignorant of the motions of our wills, and the manner of
them, than an artificer can be ignorant of the motions of his watch,
and how far the spring will let down the string in the space of an
hour; he sees all causes leading to such events in their whole order,
and how the free‑will of man will comply with this, or refuse that; he
changes not the manner of the creature’s operation, whatsoever it be.
_Prop. VI._ But what if the foreknowledge of God, and the liberty of
the will, cannot be fully reconciled by man? shall we therefore deny
a perfection in God to support a liberty in ourselves? Shall we rather
fasten ignorance upon God, and accuse him of blindness, to maintain
our liberty? That God doth foreknow everything, and yet that there
is liberty in the rational creature, are both certain; but how fully
to reconcile them, may surmount the understanding of man. Some truths
the disciples were not capable of bearing in the days of Christ; and
several truths our understandings cannot reach as long as the world
doth last; yet, in the mean time, we must, on the one hand, take heed
of conceiving God ignorant, and on the other hand, of imagining the
creature necessitated; the one will render God imperfect, and the
other will seem to render him unjust, in punishing man for that sin
which he could not avoid, but was brought into by a fatal necessity.
God is sufficient to render a reason of his own proceedings, and clear
up all at the day of judgment; it is a part of man’s curiosity, since
the fall, to be prying into God’s secrets, things too high for him;
whereby he singes his own wings, and confounds his own understanding.
It is a cursed affectation that runs in the blood of Adam’s posterity,
to know as God, though our first father smarted and ruined his
posterity in that attempt; the ways and knowledge of God are as much
above our thoughts and conceptions as the heavens are above the earth
(Isa. lv. 9),[721] and so sublime, that we cannot comprehend them in
their true and just greatness; his designs are so mysterious, and the
ways of his conduct so profound, that it is not possible to dive into
them. The force of our {a451} understandings is below his infinite
wisdom, and therefore we should adore him with an humble astonishment,
and cry out with the apostle (Rom. xi. 33): “O the depth of the riches
of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments,
and his ways past finding out!” Whenever we meet with depths that we
cannot fathom, let us remember that he is God, and we his creatures;
and not be guilty of so great extravagance, as to think that a subject
can pierce into all the secrets of a prince, or a work understand all
the operations of the artificer. Let us only resolve not to fasten
anything on God that is unworthy of the perfection of his nature,
and dishonorable to the glory of his majesty; nor imagine that we
can ever step out of the rank of creatures to the glory of the Deity,
to understand fully everything in his nature. So much for the second
general, what God knows.
III. The third is, how God knows all things. As it is necessary we
should conceive God to be an understanding being, else he could not be
God, so we must conceive his understanding to be infinitely more pure
and perfect than ours in the act of it, else we liken him to ourselves,
and debase him as low as his footstool.[722] As among creatures there
are degrees of being and perfection, plants above earth and sand,
because they have a power of growth, beasts above plants, because
to their power of growth there is an addition of excellency of sense,
rational creatures above beasts, because to sense there is added the
dignity of reason. The understanding of man is more noble than all
the vegetative power of plants, or the sensative power of beasts:
God therefore must be infinitely more excellent in his understanding,
and therefore in the manner of it. As man differs from a beast in
regard of his knowledge, so doth God also from man, in regard of his
knowledge. As God therefore is in being and perfection, infinitely
more above a man than a man is above a beast, the manner of his
knowledge must be infinitely more above a man’s knowledge, than the
knowledge of a man is above that of a beast; our understanding can
clasp an object in a moment that is at a great distance from our sense;
our eye, by one elevated motion, can view the heavens; the manner of
God’s understanding must be unconceivably above our glimmerings; as
the manner of his being is infinitely more perfect than all beings, so
must the manner of his understanding be infinitely more perfect than
all created understandings.[723] Indeed, the manner of God’s knowledge
can no more be known by us than his essence can be known by us; and
the same incapacity in man, which renders him unable to comprehend
the being of God, renders him as unable to comprehend the manner of
God’s understanding. As there is a vast distance between the essence
of God and our beings, so there is between the thoughts of God and
our thoughts; the heavens are not so much higher than the earth, as
the thoughts of God are above the thoughts of men, yea, and of the
highest angel (Isa. lv. 8, 9), yet though we know not the manner of
God’s knowledge, we know that he knows; as though we know not the
infiniteness of God, yet we know that he is infinite. It is God’s
{a452} sole prerogative to know himself, what he is; and it is equally
his prerogative to know how he knows; the manner of God’s knowledge
therefore must be considered by us as free from those imperfections
our knowledge is encumbered with. In general, God doth necessarily
know all things; he is necessarily omnipresent, because of the
immensity of his essence; so he is necessarily omniscient, because of
the infiniteness of his understanding. It is no more at the liberty
of his will, whether he will know all things, than whether he will be
able to create all things; it is no more at the liberty of his will,
whether he will be omniscient, than whether he will be holy; he can
as little be ignorant, as he can be impure; he knows not all things,
because he will know them, but because it is essential to his nature
to know them. In particular,
_Prop. I._ God knows by his own essence; that is, he sees the nature
of things in the ideas of his own mind, and the events of things in
the decrees of his own will; he knows them not by viewing the things,
but by viewing himself; his own essence is the mirror and book,
wherein he beholds all things that he doth ordain, dispose and execute;
and so he knows all things in their first and original cause; which is
no other than his own essence willing, and his own essence executing
what he wills; he knows them in his power, as the physical principle;
in his will, as the moral principle of things, as some speak. He
borrows not the knowledge of creatures from the creatures, nor depends
upon them for means of understanding, as we poor worms do, who are
beholden to the objects abroad to assist us with images of things,
and to our senses to convey them into our minds; God would then
acquire a perfection from those things which are below himself, and an
excellency from those things which are vile; his knowledge would not
precede the being of the creatures, but the creatures would be before
the act of his knowledge. If he understood by images drawn from the
creatures, as we do, there would be something in God which is not God,
viz. the images of things drawn from outward objects: God would then
depend upon creatures for that which is more noble than a bare being;
for to be understanding, is more excellent than barely to be. Besides,
if God’s knowledge of his creatures were derived from the creatures
by the impression of anything upon him, as there is upon us, he could
not know from eternity, because from eternity there was no actual
existence of anything but himself; and therefore there could not be
any images shot out from anything, because there was not anything in
being but God; as there is no principle of being to anything but by
his essence, so there is no principle of the knowledge of anything by
himself but his essence; if the knowledge of God were distinct from
his essence, his knowledge were not eternal, because there is nothing
eternal but his essence. His understanding is not a faculty in him as
it is in us, but the same with his essence, because of the simplicity
of his nature; God is not made up of various parts, one distinct from
another, as we are, and therefore doth not understand by a part of
himself, but by himself; so that to be, and to understand, is the
same with God; his essence is not one thing, and the power whereby he
understands another; he would then be compounded, and not be {a453}
the most simple being. This is also necessary for the perfection of
God; for the more perfect and noble the way and manner of knowing
is, the more perfect and noble is the knowledge. The perfection
of knowledge depends upon the excellency of the medium whereby we
know. As a knowledge by reason, is a more noble way of knowing than
knowledge by sense; so it is more excellent for God to know by his
essence, than by anything without him, anything mixed with him; the
first would render him dependent, and the other would demolish his
simplicity. Again, the natures of all things are contained in God,
not formally; for then the nature of the creatures would be God;
but eminently, “He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that
formed the eye, shall he not see?” (Ps. xciv. 9.) He hath in himself
eminently the beauty, perfection, life and vigor of all creatures;
he created nothing contrary to himself, but everything with some
footsteps of himself in them; he could not have pronounced them
good, as he did, had there been anything in them contrary to his own
goodness; and therefore as his essence primarily represents itself,
so it represents the creatures, and makes them known to him. As
the essence of God is eminently all things, so by understanding his
essence, he eminently understands all things.[724] And therefore
he hath not one knowledge of himself, and another knowledge of the
creatures; but by knowing himself as the original and exemplary cause
of all things, he cannot be ignorant of any creature which he is the
cause of; so that he knows all things, not by an understanding of them,
but by an understanding of himself; by understanding his own power as
the efficient of them, his own will as the orderer of them, his own
goodness as the adorner and beautifier of them, his own wisdom as the
disposer of them, and his own holiness, to which many of their actions
are contrary. As he sees all things possible in his own power, because
he is able to produce them; so he sees all things future in his own
will, decreeing to effect them, if they be good, or decreeing to
permit them if they be evil.[725] In this class he sees what he will
give being to, and what he will suffer to fall into a deficiency,
without looking out of himself, or borrowing knowledge from his
creatures; he knows all things in himself. And thus his knowledge is
more noble, and of a higher elevation than ours, or the knowledge of
any creature can be; he knows all things by one comprehension of the
causes in himself.
_Prop. II._ God knows all things by one act of intuition. This the
schools call an intuitive knowledge. This follows upon the other; for
if he know by his own essence, he knows all things by one act, there
would be otherwise a division in his essence, a first and a last, a
nearness and a distance. As what he made, he made by one word; so what
he sees, he pierceth into by one glance from eternity to eternity: as
he wills all things by one act of his will, so he knows all things by
one act of his understanding: he knows not some things discursively
from other things, nor knows one thing successively after another. As
by one act he imparts essence to things; so by one act he knows the
nature of things.
1. He doth not know by discourse, as we do;――that is, by deducing
{a454} one thing from another, and from common notions drawing out
other rational conclusions and arguing one thing from another, and
springing up various consequences from some principle assented to.
But God stands in no need of reasonings; the making inferences and
abstracting things, would be stains in the infinite perfection of God;
here would be a mixture of knowledge and ignorance; while he knew
the principle, he would not know the consequence and conclusion,
till he had actually deduced it; one thing would be known after
another, and so he would have an ignorance, and then a knowledge; and
there would be different conceptions in God, and knowledge would be
multiplied according to the multitude of objects; as it is in human
understandings. But God knows all things before they did exist, and
never was ignorant of them (Acts xv. 18): “Known unto God are all his
works from the beginning of the world.” He therefore knows them all at
once; the knowledge of one thing was not before another, nor depended
upon another, as it doth in the way of human reasoning.[726] Though,
indeed, some make a virtual discourse in God; that is, though God
hath a simple knowledge, yet it doth virtually contain a discourse by
the flowing of one knowledge from another; as from the knowledge of
his own power, he knows what things are possible to be made by him;
and from the knowledge of himself, he passes to the knowledge of the
creatures; but this is only according to our conception, and because
of our weakness they are apprehended as two distinct acts in God, one
of which is the reason of another; as we say that one attribute is
the reason of another; as his mercy may be said to be the reason of
his patience; and his omnipresence to be the reason of the knowledge
of present things done in the world. God, indeed, by one simple act,
knows himself and the creatures; but when that act whereby he knows
himself, is conceived by us to pass to the knowledge of the creatures,
we must not understand it to be a new act, distinct from the other;
but the same act upon different terms or objects; such an order is in
our understandings and conceptions, not in God’s.
2. Nor doth he know successively as we do: that is, not by drops,
one thing after another. This follows from the former; a knowledge of
all things without discourse, is a knowledge without succession.[727]
The knowledge of one thing is not in God before another, one act of
knowledge doth not beget another; in regard of the objects, one thing
is before another, one year before another, one generation of men
before another, one is the cause, the other is the effect; in the
creatures there is such a succession, and God knows there will be such
a succession; but there is no such order in God’s knowledge, for he
knows all those successions by one glance, without any succession of
knowledge in himself. Man, in his view of things, must turn sometimes
his body, sometimes only his eyes, he cannot see all the contents
of a letter at once; and though he beholds all the lines in the page
of a book at once, and a whole country in a map, yet to know what is
contained in them, he must turn his eye from word to word, and line to
line, and so spin out one thing after another by {a455} several acts
and motions. We behold a great part of the sea at once,[728] but not
all the dimensions of it; for to know the length of the sea, we move
our eyes one way; to see the breadth of it, we turn our eyes another
way; to behold the depth of it, we have another motion of them. And
when we cast our eyes up to heaven, we seem to receive in an instant,
the whole extent of the hemisphere; yet there is but one object the
eye can attentively pitch upon, and we cannot distinctly view what
we see in a lump, without various motions of our eyes, which is not
done without succession of time.[729] And certainly the understanding
of angels is bounded, according to the measure of their beings; so
that it cannot extend itself at one time, to a quantity of objects,
to make a distinct application of them, but the objects must present
themselves one by one; but God is all eye, all understanding; as there
is no succession in his essence, so there is none in his knowledge;
his understanding in the nature and in the act, is infinite, as it
is in the text. He therefore sees, eternally and universally, all
things by one act, without any motion, much less various motions; the
various changes of things, in their substance, qualities, places, and
relations, withdraw not anything from his eye, nor bring any new thing
to his knowledge; he doth not upon consideration of present things
turn his mind from past; or when he beholds future things turn his
mind from present; but he sees them not one after another, but all
at once and all together; the whole circle of his own counsels, and
all the various lines drawn forth from the centre of his will, to
the circumference of his creatures; just as if a man were able in
one moment to read a whole library; or, as if you should imagine
a transparent crystal globe, hung up in the midst of a room, and
so framed as to take in the images of all things in the room, the
fret‑work in the ceiling, the inlaid parts of the floor and the
particular parts of the tapestry about it, the eye of a man would
behold all the beauty of the room at once in it. As the sun by one
light and heat frames sensible things, so God by one simple act knows
all things; as he knows mutable things by an immutable knowledge,
bodily things by a spiritual knowledge, so he knows many things by one
knowledge (Heb. iv. 13): “All things are open and naked to him,” more
than any one thing can be to us; and therefore he views all things
at once, as well as we can behold and contemplate one thing alone.
As he is the Father of lights, a God of infinite understanding, there
is no variableness in his mind, nor any shadow of turning of his
eye, as there is of ours, to behold various things (James i. 17); his
knowledge being eternal, includes all times; there is nothing past or
future with him, and therefore he beholds all things by one and the
same manner of knowledge, and comprehends all knowable things by one
act, and in one moment. This must needs be so,
(1.) Because of the eminency of God. God is above all, and therefore
cannot but see the motions of all. He that sits in a theatre, or at
the top of a place, sees all things, all persons; by one aspect he
comprehends the whole circle of the place; whereas, he that sits below,
when he looks before, he cannot see things behind; God {a456} being
above all, about all, in all, sees at once the motions of all. The
whole world, in the eye of God, is less than a point that divides one
sentence from another in a book; as a cypher, a “grain of dust” (Isa.
xl. 15); so little a thing can be seen by man at once; and all things
being as little in the eye of God, are seen at once by him. As all
time is but a moment to his eternity, so all things are but as a point
to the immensity of his knowledge, which he can behold with more ease
than we can move or turn our eye.
(2.) Because all the perfections of knowing are united in God.[730] As
particular senses are divided in man,――by one he sees, by another he
smells, yet all those are united in one common sense, and this common
sense comprehends all,――so the various and distinct ways of knowledge
in the creatures are all eminently united in God. A man when he
sees a grain of wheat, understands at once all things that can in
time proceed from that seed; so God, by beholding his own virtue and
power, beholds all things which shall in time be unfolded by him.
We have a shadow of this way of knowledge in our own understanding;
the sense only perceives a thing present, and one object only proper
and suitable to it; as the eye sees color, the ear hears sounds; we
see this and that man, one time this, another minute that; but the
understanding abstracts a notion of the common nature of man, and
frames a conception of that nature wherein all men agree; and so in
a manner beholds and understands all men at once, by understanding the
common nature of man, which is a degree of knowledge above the sense
and fancy; we may then conceive an infinite vaster perfection in the
understanding of God. As to know, is simply better than not to know at
all; so to know by one act comprehensive, is a greater perfection than
to know by divided acts, by succession to receive information, and to
have an increase or decrease of knowledge; to be like a bucket, always
descending into the well, and fetching water from thence. It is a
man’s weakness that he is fixed on one object only at a time; it is
God’s perfection that he can behold all at once, and is fixed upon one
no more than upon another.
_Prop. III._ God knows all things independently. This is essential to
an infinite understanding. He receives not his knowledge from anything
without him; he hath no tutor to instruct him, or book to inform him:
“Who hath been his counsellor?” saith the prophet (Isa. xl. 13); he
hath no need of the counsels of others, nor of the instructions of
others. This follows upon the first and second propositions; if he
knows things by his essence, then, as his essence is independent from
the creatures, so is his knowledge; he borrows not any images from the
creature; hath no species or pictures of things in his understanding,
as we have; no beams from the creature strike upon him to enlighten
him, but beams from him upon the world; the earth sends not light
to the sun, but the sun to the earth. Our knowledge, indeed, depends
upon the object, but all created objects depend upon God’s knowledge
and will; we could not know creatures unless they were; but creatures
could not be unless God knew them. As nothing that he wills is the
cause of his will, so {a457} nothing that he knows is the cause of his
knowledge; he did not make things to know them, but he knows them to
make them: who will imagine that the mark of the foot in the dust is
the cause that the foot stands in this or that particular place? If
his knowledge did depend upon the things, then the existence of things
did precede God’s knowledge of them: to say that they are the cause of
God’s knowledge, is to say that God was not the cause of their being;
and if he did create them, it was effected by a blind and ignorant
power; he created he knew not what, till he had produced it. If
he be beholden for his knowledge to the creatures he hath made, he
had then no knowledge of them before he made them. If his knowledge
were dependent upon them, it could not be eternal, but must have a
beginning when the creatures had a beginning, and be of no longer
a date than since the nature of things was in actual existence; for
whatsoever is a cause of knowledge, doth precede the knowledge it
causes, either in order of time, or order of nature: temporal things,
therefore, cannot be the cause of that knowledge which is eternal. His
works could not be foreknown to him, if his knowledge commenced with
the existence of his works (Acts xv. 18): if he knew them before he
made them, he could not derive a knowledge from them after they were
made. He made all things in wisdom (Ps. civ. 24). How can this be
imagined, if the things known where the cause of his knowledge, and
so before his knowledge, and therefore before his action?[731] God
would not then be the first in the order of knowing agents, because
he would not act by knowledge, but act before he knew, and know
after he had acted; and so the creature which he made would be before
the act of his understanding, whereby he knew what he made. Again,
since knowledge is a perfection, if God’s knowledge of the creatures
depended upon the creatures, he would derive an excellency from them,
they would derive no excellency from any idea in the Divine mind;
he would not be infinitely perfect in himself; if his perfection in
knowledge were gained from anything without himself and below himself,
he would not be sufficient of himself, but be under an indigence,
which wanted a supply from the things he had made, and could not
be eternally perfect till he had created and seen the effects of
his own power, goodness, and wisdom, to render him more wise and
knowing in time than he was from eternity. Who can fancy such a God
as this without destroying the Deity he pretends to adore? for if his
understanding be perfected by something without him, why may not his
essence be perfected by something without him; that, as he was made
knowing by something without him, he might be made God by something
without him? How could his understanding be infinite if it depended
upon a finite object, as upon a cause? Is the majesty of God to be
debased to a mendicant condition, to seek for a supply from things
inferior to himself? Is it to be imagined that a fool, a toad, a fly,
should be assistant to the knowledge of God? that the most noble being
should be perfected by things so vile; that the Supreme Cause of all
things should receive any addition of knowledge, and be determined in
his understanding, by the notion {a458} of things so mean? To conclude
this particular, all things depend upon his knowledge, his knowledge
depends upon nothing, but is as independent as himself and his own
essence.
_Prop. IV._ God knows all things distinctly. His understanding is
infinite in regard of clearness; “God is light, and in him is no
darkness at all” (John i. 5); he sees not through a mist or cloud;
there is no blemish in his understanding, no mote or beam in his
eye, to render any thing obscure to him. Man discerns the surface and
outside side of things; little or nothing of the essence of things;
we see the noblest thing but “as in a glass darkly” (1 Cor. xiii. 12);
the too great nearness, as well as the too great distance of a thing,
hinders our sight; the smallness of a mote escapes our eye, and so our
knowledge; also the weakness of our understanding is troubled with the
multitude of things, and cannot know many things but confusedly: but
God knows the forms and essence of things, every circumstance; nothing
is so deep, but he sees to the bottom; he sees the mass, and sees the
motes of beings; his understanding being infinite, is not offended
with a multitude of things, or distracted with the variety of them;
he discerns every thing infinitely more clearly and perfectly than
Adam or Solomon could any one thing in the circle of their knowledge;
what knowledge they had, was from him; he hath, therefore, infinitely
a more perfect knowledge than they were capable in their natures to
receive a communication of. All things are open to him (Heb. iv. 13);
the least fibre, in its nakedness and distinct frame, is transparent
to him, as, by the help of glasses, the mouth, feet, hands, of a small
insect, are visible to a man, which seem to the eye, without that
assistance, one entire piece, not diversified into parts. All the
causes, qualities, natures, properties of things, are open to him; “he
brings out the host of heaven by number, and calleth them by names”
(Isa. xl. 26); he numbers the hairs of our heads: what more distinct
than number? Thus God beholds things in every unity, which makes up
the heap; he knows, and none else can, every thing in its true and
intimate causes, in its original and intermediate causes; in himself,
as the cause of every particular of their being, every property in
their being. Knowledge by the causes is the most noble and perfect
knowledge, and most suited to the infinite excellency of the Divine
Being; he created all things, and ordered them to a universal and
particular end; he, therefore, knows the essential properties of
every thing, every activity of their nature, all their fitness for
those distinct ends, to which he orders them, and for which he
governs and disposeth them, and understands their darkest and most
hidden qualities infinitely clearer than any eye can behold the clear
beams of the sun. He knows all things as he made them; he made them
distinctly, and therefore knows them distinctly, and that every
individual; therefore God is said (Gen. i. 31) to see every thing that
he had made; he took a review of every particular creature he had made,
and upon his view pronounced it good. To pronounce that good, which
was not exactly known in every creek, in every mite of its nature,
had not consisted with his veracity; for every one that speaks truth
ignorantly, that knows not that he speaks truth, is a liar in speaking
{a459} that which is true. God knows every act of his own will,
whether it be positive or permissive, and therefore every effect of
his will. We must needs ascribe to God a perfect knowledge; but a
confused knowledge cannot challenge that title. To know things only in
a heap is unworthy of the Divine perfection; for if God knows his own
ends in the creation of things, he knows distinctly the means whereby
he will bring them to those ends for which he hath appointed them: no
wise man intends an end, without a knowledge of the means conducing to
that end; an ignorance, then, of any thing in the world, which falls
under the nature of a means to a Divine end (and there is nothing in
the world but doth), would be inconsistent with the perfection of God;
it would ascribe to him a blind providence in the world. As there can
be nothing imperfect in his being and essence, so there can be nothing
imperfect in his understanding and knowledge, and therefore not a
confused knowledge, which is an imperfection. “Darkness and light
are both alike to him” (Ps. cxxxix. 12); he sees distinctly into the
one, as well as the other; what is darkness to us, is not so to him.
_Prop. V._ God knows all things infallibly. His understanding is
infinite in regard of certainty; every tittle of what he knows is as
far from failing as what he speaks; our Saviour affirms the one (Matt.
v. 18), and there is the same reason of the certainty of one as well
as the other; his essence is the measure of his knowledge; whence it
is as impossible that God should be mistaken in the knowledge of the
least thing in the world, as it is that he should be mistaken in his
own essence; for, knowing himself comprehensively, he must know all
others things infallibly; since he is essentially omniscient, he is
no more capable of error in his understanding than of imperfection in
his essence; his counsels are as unerring as his essence is perfect,
and his knowledge as infallible as his essence is free from defect.
Again, since God knows all things with a knowledge of vision, because
he wills them, his knowledge must be as infallible as his purpose; now
his purpose will certainly be effected; “what he hath thought shall
come to pass, and what he hath purposed shall stand” (Isa. xiv. 24);
“his counsel shall stand, and he will do all his pleasure” (Isa.
xlvi. 10). There may be interruptions of nature, the foundation of
it may be out of course, but there can be no bar upon the Author of
nature; he hath an infinite power to carry on and perfect the resolves
of his own will; he can effect what he pleases by a word. Speech is
one of the least motions; yet when God said, “let there be light,
there was light” arising from darkness. No reason can be given why
God knows a thing to be, but because he infallibly wills it to be.
Again,[732] the schools make this difference between the knowledge
of the good and bad angels, that the good are never deceived; for
that is repugnant to their blessed state; for deceit is an evil and
an imperfection inconsistent with that perfect blessedness the good
angels are possessed of; and would it not much more be a stain upon
the blessedness of that God, that is blessed forever, to be subject
to deceit? His knowledge therefore is not an opinion, for an opinion
is uncertain; a man knows not {a460} what to think, but leans to one
part of the question proposed, rather than to the other. If things did
not come to pass therefore as God knows them, his knowledge would be
imperfect; and since he knows by his essence, his essence also would
be imperfect, if God were exposed to any deceit in his knowledge;
he knows by himself, who is the highest truth; and therefore it is
impossible he should err in his understanding.
_Prop. VI._ God knows immutably. His understanding else could not be
infinite; everything and every act that is mutable, is finite, it hath
its bounds; for there is a term from which it changeth, and a term to
which it changes.[733] There is a change in the understanding, when
we gain the knowledge of a thing, which was unknown to us before; or
when we actually consider a thing which we did not know before, though
we had the principles of the knowledge of it; or, when we know that
distinctly, which we before knew confusedly. None of these can be
ascribed to God without a manifest disparagement of his infiniteness.
Our knowledge indeed is alway arriving to us or flowing from us; we
pass from one degree to another; from worse to better, or from better
to worse; but God loses nothing by the ages that are run, nor will
gain anything by the ages that are to come. If there were a variation
in the knowledge of God, by the daily and hourly changes in the world,
he would grow wiser than he was, he was not then perfectly wise
before. A change in the objects known, infers not any change in the
understanding exercised about them; the wheel moves round, the spokes
that are lowest are presently highest, and presently return to be low
again; but the eye that beholds them changes not with the motions of
the wheels. God’s knowledge admits no more of increase or decrease,
than his essence doth; since God knows by his essence, and the essence
of God is God himself, his knowledge must be void of any change. The
knowledge of possible things, arising from the knowledge of his own
power, cannot be changed unless his power be changed, and God become
weak and impotent; the knowledge of future things cannot be changed,
because that knowledge ariseth from his will, which is irreversible,
“the counsel of the Lord that shall stand” (Prov. xix. 21); so that
if God can never decay into weakness, and never turn to inconstancy,
there can be no variation of his knowledge. He knows what he can do,
and he knows what he will do; and both these being immutable, his
knowledge must, consequently, be so too. It was not necessary that
this or that creature should be, and therefore it was not necessary
that God should know this or that creature with a knowledge of vision;
but after the will of God had determined the existence of this or that
creature, his knowledge being then determined to this or that object,
did necessarily continue unchangeable. God, therefore, knows no more
now than he did before; and at the end of the world, he shall know
no more than he doth now; and from eternity, he knows no less than
he doth now, and shall do to eternity. Though things pass into being
and out of being, the knowledge of God doth not vary with them, for
he knows them as well before they were, as when {a461} they are, and
knows them as well when they are past, as when they are present.
_Prop. VII._ God knows all things perpetually, _i. e._ in act. Since
he knows by his essence, he always knows, because his essence never
ceaseth, but is a pure act; so that he doth not know only in habit,
but in act. Men that have the knowledge of some art or science, have
it always in habit, though when they are asleep they have it not in
act: a musician hath the habit of music, but doth not so much as think
of it when his senses are bound up. But God is an unsleepy eye;[734]
he never slumbers nor sleeps; he never slumbers, in regard of his
providence, and therefore never slumbers in regard of his knowledge.
He knows not himself, nor any other creature more perfectly at one
time than at another; he is perpetually in the act of knowing, as the
sun is in the act of shining; the sun never ceased to shine in one or
other part of the world, since it was first fixed in the heavens; nor
God to be in the act of knowledge, since he was God; and therefore
since he always was, and always will be God, he always was and always
will be in the act of knowledge; always knowing his own essence, he
must alway actually know what hath been gone and ceased from being,
and what shall come and arise into being; as a watchmaker knows what
watch he intends to make, and after he hath made it, though it be
broken to pieces, or consumed by the fire, he still knows it, because
he knows the copy of it in his own mind. Some, therefore, in regard
of this perpetual act of the Divine knowledge, have called God not
_intellectus_, but the intellection of intellections; we have no
proper English word to express the act of the understanding; as his
power is co‑eternal with him, so is his knowledge; all times past,
present, and to come, are embraced in the bosom of his understanding;
he fixed all things in their seasons, that nothing new comes to him,
nothing old passes from him.[735] What is done in a thousand years,
is actually present with his knowledge, as what is done in one day,
or in one watch in the night, is with ours; since a “thousand years
are no more to God than a day,” or a “watch in the night” is to us
(Ps. xc. 4). God is in the highest degree of being, and therefore
in the highest degree of understanding. Knowledge is one of the most
perfect acts in any creature. God therefore hath all actual, as well
as essential and habitual knowledge; his understanding is infinite.
IV. The fourth general is, Reasons to prove this.
_Reason 1._ God must know what any creature knows, and more than any
creature knows. There is nothing done in the world but is known by
some creature or other; every action is at least known by the person
that acts, and therefore known by the Creator, who cannot be exceeded
by any of the creatures, or all of them together; and every creature
is known by him, since every creature is made by him.[736] And as
God works all things by an infinite power, so he knows all things
by an infinite understanding. First, the perfection of God requires
this.[737] All perfections that include no essential defect, are
formally in God; but knowledge includes no essential defect {a462} in
itself, therefore it is in God. Knowledge in itself is desirable, and
an excellency; ignorance is a defect; it is impossible that the least
grain of defect can be found in the most perfect Being. Since God is
wise, he must be knowing; for wisdom must have knowledge for the basis
of it. A creature can no more be wise without knowledge, than he can
be active without strength. Now God is “only wise” (Rom. xvi. 27);
and, therefore, only knowing in the highest degree of knowledge,
incomprehensibly beyond all degrees of knowledge, because infinite.
Again, the more spiritual anything is, the more understanding it
is. The dull body understands nothing; sense perceives, but the
understanding faculty is seated in the soul, which is of a spiritual
nature, which knows things that are present, remembers things that
are past, foresees many things to come. What is the property of a
spiritual nature, must be, in a most eminent manner, in the supreme
spirit of the world; that is, in the highest degree of spirituality,
and most remote from any matter. Again, nothing can enjoy other things,
but by some kind of understanding them; God hath the highest enjoyment
of himself, of all things he hath created, of all the glory that
accrues to him by them; nothing of perfection and blessedness can
be wanting to him. Felicity doth not consist with ignorance, and all
imperfect knowledge is a degree of ignorance: God, therefore, doth
perfectly know himself, and all things from whence he designs any
glory to himself. The most noble manner of acting must be ascribed to
God, as being the most noble and excellent Being; to act by knowledge
is the most excellent manner of acting; God hath, therefore, not only
knowledge, but the most excellent manner of knowledge; for as it is
better to know than to be ignorant, so it is better to know in the
most excellent manner, than to have a mean and low kind of knowledge;
his knowledge, therefore, must be every way as perfect as his essence,
infinite as well as that. An infinite nature must have an infinite
knowledge: a God ignorant of anything cannot be counted infinite, for
he is not infinite to whom any degree of perfection is wanting.
_Reason 2._ All the knowledge in any creature is from God. And you
must allow God a greater and more perfect knowledge than any creature
hath, yea, than all creatures have. All the drops of knowledge
any creature hath, come from God; and all the knowledge in every
creature, that ever was, is, or shall be, in the whole mass, was
derived from him. If all those several drops in particular creatures,
were collected into one spirit, into one creature, it would be an
unconceivable knowledge, yet still lower than what the Author of all
that knowledge hath; for God cannot give more knowledge than he hath
himself; nor is the creature capable of receiving so much knowledge
as God hath. As the creature is incapable of receiving so much power
as God hath, for then it would be almighty, so it is incapable of
receiving so much knowledge as God hath, for then it would be God.
Nothing can be made by God equal to him in anything; if anything could
be made as knowing as God, it would be eternal as God, it would be
the cause of all things as God. The knowledge that we poor worms have,
is an argument God uses for {a463} the asserting the greatness of his
own knowledge (Ps. xciv. 10): “He that teaches man knowledge, shall
not he know?” Man hath here knowledge ascribed to him; the author of
this knowledge is God; he furnished him with it, and therefore doth
in a higher manner possess it, and much more than can fall under the
comprehension of any creature; as the sun enlightens all things, but
hath more light in itself than it darts upon the earth or the heavens:
and shall not God eminently contain all that knowledge he imparts to
the creatures, and infinitely more exact and comprehensive?
_Reason 3._ The accusations of conscience evidence God’s knowledge of
all actions of his creatures. Doth not conscience check for the most
secret sins, to which none are privy but a man’s self, the whole world
beside being ignorant of his crime? Do not the fears of another Judge
gall the heart? If a judgment above him be feared, an understanding
above him discerning their secrets is confessed by those fears; whence
can those horrors arise, if there be not a superior that understands
and records the crime? What perfection of the Divine Being can this
relate unto, but omniscience? What other attribute is to be feared, if
God were defective in this? The condemnation of us by our own hearts,
when none in the world can condemn us, renders it legible, that there
is One “greater than our hearts” in respect of knowledge, who “knoweth
all things” (1 John iii. 20). Conscience would be a vain principle,
and stingless without this; it would be an easy matter to silence
all its accusations, and mockingly laugh in the face of its severest
frowns. What need any trouble themselves, if none knows their crimes
but themselves? Concealed sins, gnawing the conscience, are arguments
of God’s omniscience of all present and past actions.
_Reason 4._ God is the first cause of everything, every creature is
his production. Since all creatures, from the highest angel to the
lowest worm, exist by the power of God, if God understands his own
power and excellency, nothing can be hid from him, that was brought
forth by that power, as well as nothing can be unknown to him, that
that power is able to produce. “If God knows nothing besides himself,
he may then believe there is nothing besides himself; we shall then
fancy a God miserably mistaken: if he knows nothing besides himself,
then things were not created by him, or not understandingly and
voluntarily created, but dropped from him before he was aware.”[738]
To think that the First Cause of all should be ignorant of those
things he is the cause of, is to make him not a voluntary, but natural
agent, and therefore necessary; and then that the creature came from
him as light from the sun, and moisture from the water; this would be
an absurd opinion of the world’s creation; if God be a voluntary agent,
as he is, he must be an intelligent agent. The faculty of will is
not in any creature, without that of understanding also. If God be an
intelligent agent, his knowledge must extend as far as his operation,
and every object of his operation, unless we imagine God hath lost his
memory, in that long tract of time since the first creation of them.
An artificer cannot be ignorant of his own work: if God knows himself,
he knows himself to be a {a464} cause; how can he know himself to be
a cause, unless he know the effects he is the cause of? One relation
implies another; a man cannot know himself to be a father, unless
he hath a child, because it is a name of relation, and in the notion
of it refers to another. The name of cause is a name of relation,
and implies an effect; if God therefore know himself in all his
perfections, as the cause of things, he must know all his acts,
what his wisdom contrived, what his counsel determined, and what
his power effected. The knowledge of God is to be supposed in a free
determination of himself; and that knowledge must be perfect, both
of the object, act, and all the circumstances of it. How can his will
freely produce anything that was not first known in his understanding?
From this the prophet argues the understanding of God, and the
unsearchableness of it, because he is the “Creator of the ends of
the earth” (Isa. xl. 28), and the same reason David gives of God’s
knowledge of him, and of everything he did, and that afar off, because
he was formed by him (Ps. cxxxix. 2, 15, 16). As the perfect making of
things only belongs to God: so doth the perfect knowledge of things;
it is as absurd to think, that God should be ignorant of what he hath
given being to; that he should not know all the creatures and their
qualities, the plants and their virtues; as that a man should not
know the letters that are formed by him in writing. Everything bears
in itself the mark of God’s perfection; and shall not God know the
representation of his own virtue?
_Reason 5._ Without this knowledge, God could no more be the
Governor, than he could be the Creator of the world. Knowledge is
the basis of providence; to know things, is before the government
of things; a practical knowledge cannot be without a theoretical
knowledge. Nothing could be directed to its proper end, without the
knowledge of the nature of it, and its suitableness to answer that
end for which it is intended. As everything, even the minutest, falls
under the conduct of God, so everything falls under the knowledge of
God. A blind coachman is not able to hold the reins of his horses,
and direct them in right paths: since the providence of God is about
particulars, his knowledge must be about particulars; he could not
else govern them in particular; nor could all things be said to depend
upon him in their being and operations. Providence depends upon the
knowledge of God, and the exercise of it upon the goodness of God;
it cannot be without understanding and will; understanding, to know
what is convenient, and will to perform it. When our Saviour therefore
speaks of providence, he intimates these two in a special manner,
“Your heavenly Father knows that you have need of these things” (Matt.
vi. 32), and goodness, in Luke xi. 13. The reason of providence is so
joined with omniscience, that they cannot be separated. What a kind of
God would he be that were ignorant of those things that were governed
by him! The ascribing this perfection to him, asserts his providence;
for it is as easy for one that knows all things, to look over the
whole world, if writ with monosyllables, in every little particular of
it; as it is with a man to take a view of one letter in an alphabet.
Again, if God were not omniscient, how could he reward the good, and
punish the evil? the {a465} works of men are either rewardable or
punishable; not only according to their outward circumstances, but
inward principles and ends, and the degrees of venom lurking in the
heart.[739] The exact discerning of these, without a possibility to
be deceived, is necessary to pass a right and infallible judgment upon
them, and proportion the censure and punishment to the crime: without
such a knowledge and discerning, men would not have their due; nay, a
judgment just for the matter, would be unjust in the manner, because
unjustly past, without an understanding of the merit of the cause.
It is necessary therefore that the Supreme Judge of the world should
not be thought to be blindfold, when he distributes his rewards and
punishments, and muffle his face when he passes his sentence. It
is necessary to ascribe to him the knowledge of men’s thoughts and
intentions; the secret wills and aims; the hidden works of darkness in
every man’s conscience, because every man’s work is to be measured by
the will and inward frame. It is necessary that he should perpetually
retain all those things in the indelible and plain records of his
memory, that there may not be any work without a just proportion of
what is due to it. This is the glory of God, to discover the secrets
of all hearts at last, as 1 Cor. iv. 5, “The Lord shall bring to light
the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels
of all hearts, and then shall every man have praise of God.” This
knowledge fits him to be a judge; the reason why the ungodly shall not
stand in judgment, is because God knows their ways, which is implied
in his knowing the way of the righteous (Ps. i. 5, 6). I now proceed
to the use.
_Use I._ is of information or instruction. If God hath all knowledge;
then,
_Instruct. 1._ Jesus Christ is not a mere creature. The two titles of
wonderful Counsellor, and mighty God, are given him in conjunction
(Isa. ix. 6), not only the Angel of the covenant, as he is called
(Malach. iii. 1), or the executor of his counsels, but a counsellor,
in conjunction with him in counsel as well as power: this title is
superior to any title given to any of the prophets in regard of their
predictions; and therefore I should take it rather as the note of his
perfect understanding, than of his perfect teaching and discovering;
as Calvin doth. He is not only the revealer of what he knows, so were
the prophets according to their measures; but the counsellor of what
he revealed, having a perfect understanding of all the counsels of God,
as being interested in them, as the mighty God. He calls himself by
the peculiar title of God, and declares that he will manifest himself
by this prerogative to all the churches (Rev. ii. 23): “And all the
churches shall know that I am he which searches the reins and hearts,”
the most hidden operations of the minds of men, that lie locked up
from the view of all the world besides. And this was no new thing
to Him, after his ascension; for the same perfection he had in the
time of his earthly flesh (Luke vi. 8), he knew their thoughts; his
eyes are therefore compared (Cant. v. 12) to doves’ eyes, which are
clear and quick; and to a flame of fire (Rev. i. 14), not only heat
to consume his enemies, but light to discern {a466} their contrivances
against the church; he pierceth by his knowledge, into all parts, as
fire pierceth into the closest particle of iron, and separates between
the most united parts of metals; and some tell us, he is called a Roe,
from the perspicacity of his sight, as well as from the swiftness of
his motion.
1. He hath a perfect knowledge of the Father; he knows the Father, and
none else knows the Father; angels know God, men know God, but Christ
in a peculiar manner knows the Father; no man knows the Son but the
Father; neither knows any man the Father, save the Son (Matt. xi. 27);
he knows so, as that he learns not from any other; he doth perfectly
comprehend him, which is beyond the reach of any creature, with the
addition of all the divine virtue; not because of any incapacity in
God to reveal, but the incapacity of the creature to receive; finite
is incapable of being made infinite, and therefore incapable of
comprehending infinite; so that Christ cannot be _Deus factus_, made
of a creature a God, to comprehend God; for then of finite he would
become infinite, which is a contradiction. As the Spirit is God,
because he searches the deep things of God (1 Cor. ii. 10), that is
comprehends them,[740] as the spirit of a man doth the things of a man
(now the spirit of man understands what it thinks, and what it wills),
so the Spirit of God understands what is in the understanding of God,
and what is in the will of God. He hath an absolute knowledge ascribed
to him, and such as could not be ascribed to anything but a divinity:
now if the Spirit knows the deep things of God, and takes from Christ
what he shows to us of him (John xvi. 15), he cannot be ignorant of
those things himself; he must know the depths of God, that affords
us that Spirit, that is not ignorant of any of the counsels of the
Father’s will; since he comprehends the Father, and the Father him,
he is in himself infinite; for God whose essence is infinite, is
infinitely knowable; but no created understanding can infinitely know
God. The infiniteness of the object hinders it from being understood
by anything that is not infinite. Though a creature should understand
all the works of God, yet it cannot be therefore said to understand
God himself: as though I may understand all the volitions and motions
of my soul, yet it doth not follow that therefore I understand the
whole nature and substance of my soul; or if a man understood all the
effects of the sun, that therefore he understands fully the nature
of the sun. But Christ knows the Father, he lay in the bosom of the
Father, was in the greatest intimacy with him (John i. 18), and from
this intimacy with him, he saw him and knew him; so he knows God
as much as he is knowable; and therefore knows him perfectly as the
Father knows himself by a comprehensive vision; this is the knowledge
of God wherein properly the infiniteness of his understanding appears:
and our Saviour uses such expressions which manifest his knowledge to
be above all created knowledge, and such a manner of knowledge of the
Father, as the Father hath of him.
2. Christ knows all creatures. That knowledge which comprehends God,
comprehends all created things as they are in God; it is a knowledge
that sinks to the depths of his will, and therefore extends {a467} to
all the acts of his will in creation and providence; by knowing the
Father he knows all things that are contained in the virtue, power,
and will of God; “whatsoever the Father doth, that the Son doth” (John
v. 19). As the Father therefore knows all things he is the cause of,
so doth the Son know all things he is the worker of; as the perfect
making of all things belongs to both, so doth the perfect knowledge of
all things belong to both; where the action is the same, the knowledge
is the same. Now the Father did not create one thing and Christ
another; “but all things were created by him, and for him, all things
both in heaven and earth” (Col. i. 16): as he knows himself as the
cause of all things, and the end of all things, he cannot be ignorant
of all things that were effected by him, and are referred to him; he
knows all creatures in God, as he knows the essence of God, and knows
all creatures in themselves, as he knows his own acts and the fruits
of his power; those things must be in his knowledge that were in his
power; all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God are hid in
him (Col. ii. 3). Now it is not the wisdom of God to know in part, and
be in part ignorant. He cannot be ignorant of anything, since there is
nothing but what was made by him (John i. 3), and since it is less to
know than create; for we know many things which we cannot make.[741]
If he be the Creator, he cannot but be the discerner of what he made;
this is a part of wisdom belonging to an artificer, to know the nature
and quality of what he makes. Since he cannot be ignorant of what he
furnished with being, and with various endowments, he must know them
not only universally, but particularly.
3. Christ knows the heart and affections of men. Peter scruples not
to ascribe to him this knowledge, among the knowledge of all other
things (John xxi. 17). “Lord thou knowest all things, thou knowest
that I love thee.” From Christ’s knowledge of all things, he concludes
his knowledge of the inward frames and dispositions of men. To search
the heart is the sole prerogative of God (1 Kings viii. 39), for thou,
even thou only knowest the hearts of all the children of men: shall we
take _only_ here with a limitation, as some that are no friends to the
Deity of Christ would, and say, God only knows the hearts of men from
himself, and by his own infinite virtue? Why may we not take _only_
in other places with a limitation, and make nonsense of it, as Ps.
lxxxvi. 10, “Thou art God alone.” Is it to be understood that God
is God alone from himself, but other gods may be made by him, and so
there may be numberless infinites? As God is God alone, so that none
can be God but himself; so he alone knows all the hearts of all the
children of men, and none but he can know them; this knowledge is from
his nature. The reason why God knows the hearts of men, is rendered
in the Scripture double, because he created them, and because he is
present everywhere (Ps. xxxiii. 13, 15),[742] these two are by the
confession of Christians and Pagans universally received as the proper
characters of divinity, whereby the Deity is distinguished from all
creatures. Now when Christ ascribes this to himself, and that with
such an emphasis, that nothing greater than that could be urged, as he
doth (Rev. ii. 23), we must conclude that he is of the same essence
with {a468} God, one with him in his nature, as well as one with him
in his attributes. God only knows the hearts of the children of men;
there is the unity of God: Christ searches the hearts and reins; there
is a distinction of persons in a oneness of essence; he knows the
hearts of all men, not only of those that were with him in the time
of the flesh, that have been, and shall be, since his ascension; but
of those that lived and died before his coming; because he is to be
the Judge of all that lived before his humiliation on earth, as well
as after his exaltation in heaven. It pertains to him, as a Judge, to
know distinctly the merits of the cause of which he is to judge; and
this excellency of searching the hearts is mentioned by himself with
relation to his judicial proceeding, “I will give to every one of
you according to your works.” And though a creature may know what
is in a man’s heart, if it be revealed to him, yet such a knowledge
is a knowledge only by report, not by inspection; yet this latter is
ascribed to Christ (John ii. 24, 25): “he knew all men, and needed
not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man:” he
looked into their hearts. The Evangelist, to allay the amazement of
men at his relation of our Saviour’s knowledge of the inward falsity
of those that made a splendid profession of him, doth not say the
Father revealed it to him, but intimates it to be an unseparable
property of his nature. No covering was so thick as to bound his eye;
no pretence so glittering as to impose upon his understanding. Those
that made a profession of him, and could not be discerned by the eye
of man from his faithfulest attendants, were in their inside known
to him plainer than their outside was to others; and, therefore, he
committed not himself to them, though they seemed to be persuaded to
a real belief in his name, because of the power of his miracles, and
were touched with an admiration of him, as some great prophet, and,
perhaps, declared him to be the Messiah (ver. 23).
4. He had a foreknowledge of the particular inclinations of men,
before those distinct inclinations were in actual being in them.
This is plainly asserted, John vi. 64: “But there are some of you
that believe not; for Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that
believed not, and who should betray him.” When Christ assured them,
from the knowledge of the hearts of his followers, that some of them
were void of that faith they professed, the Evangelist, to stop their
amazement that Christ should have such a power and virtue, adds, that
he “knew from the beginning;” that he had not only a present knowledge,
but a foreknowledge, of every one’s inclination; he knew, not only
now and then what was in the hearts of his disciples, but from the
beginning, of any one’s giving up their names to him; he knew whether
it were a pretence or sincere; he knew who should betray him; and
there was no man’s inward affection but was foreseen by him.[743]
“From the beginning,” whether we understand it from the beginning
of the world, as when Christ saith, concerning divorces, “From the
beginning it was not so,” that is, from the beginning of the world,
from the beginning of the law of nature; or, from the beginning of
their attending him, as it is taken, Luke i. 2; he had a certain
prescience of the inward dispositions {a469} of men’s hearts, and
their succeeding sentiments; he foreknew the treacherous heart of
Judas in the midst of his splendid profession, and discerned his
resolution in the root, and his thought in the confused chaos of
his natural corruption; he knew how it would spring up before it did
spring up, before Judas had any distinct and formal conception of
it himself, or before there was any actual preparation to a resolve.
Peter’s denial was not unknown to him, when Peter had a present
resolution, and no question spake it in the present sincerity of his
soul, “never to forsake him;” he foreknew what would be the result
of that poison which lurked in Peter’s nature, before Peter himself
imagined anything of it; he discerned Peter’s apostatizing heart, when
Peter resolved the contrary: our Saviour’s prediction was accomplished,
and Peter’s valiant resolution languished into cowardice. Shall we
then conclude our blessed Saviour a creature, who perfectly and only
knew the Father, who knew all creatures; who had all the treasures
of wisdom and knowledge who knew the inward motions of men’s hearts
by his own virtue, and had, not only a present knowledge, but a
prescience of them?
_Instruct. 2._ The second instruction from this position, That
God hath an infinite knowledge and understanding. Then there is a
providence exercised by God in the world, and that about everything.
As providence infers omniscience as the guide of it, so omniscience
infers providence as the end of it. What exercise would there be of
this attribute, but in the government of the world? To this, this
infinite perfection refers (Jer. xvii. 10), “I the Lord search the
heart, I try the reins, to give every man according to his ways, and
according to the fruit of his doings.” He searches the heart to reward,
he rewards every man according to the rewardableness of his actions;
his government, therefore, extends to every man in the world; there
is no heart but he searches, therefore no heart but he governs; to
what purpose, else, would be this knowledge of all his creatures?
for a mere contemplation of them? No. What pleasure can that be to
God, who knows himself, who is infinitely more excellent than all his
creatures? Doth he know them to neglect all care of them? this must
be either out of sloth; but how incompatible is laziness to a pure and
infinite activity! or out of majesty; but it is no less for the glory
of his majesty to conduct them, than it was for the glory of his power
to erect them into being. He that counts nothing unworthy of his arms
to make, nothing unworthy of his understanding to know, why should he
count anything unworthy of his wisdom to govern? If he knows them to
neglect them, it must be because he hath no will to it, or no goodness
for it; either of these would be a stain upon God; to want goodness
is to be evil, and to want will is to be negligent and scornful, which
are inconsistent with an infinite, active goodness. Doth a father
neglect providing for the wants of the family which he knows? or a
physician, the cure of that disease he understands? God is omniscient,
he therefore sees all things; he is good, he doth not therefore
neglect anything, but conducts it to the end he appointed it. There is
nothing so little that can escape his knowledge, and therefore nothing
so little but falls under his providence; nothing so sublime as to be
{a470} above his understanding, and therefore nothing can be without
the compass of his conduct; nothing can escape his eye, and therefore
nothing can escape his care; nothing is known to him in vain, as
nothing was made by him in vain; there must be acknowledged, therefore,
some end of this knowledge of all his creatures.
_Instruct. 3._ Hence, then, will follow the certainty of a day of
judgment. To what purpose can we imagine this attribute of omniscience,
so often declared and urged in Scripture to our consideration, but
in order to a government of our practice, and a future trial? Every
perfection of the Divine nature hath sent out brighter rays in the
world than this of his infinite knowledge. His power hath been seen in
the being of the world, and his wisdom in the order and harmony of the
creatures; his grace and mercy hath been plentifully poured out in his
mission of a Redeemer, and his justice hath been elevated by the dying
groans of the Son of God upon the cross. But hath his omniscience yet
met with a glory proportionable to that of his other perfections? All
the attributes of God that have appeared in some beautiful glimmerings
in the world, wait for a more full manifestation in glory, as
the creatures do for the “manifestation of the sons of God” (Rom.
viii. 19); but especially this, since it hath been less evidenced than
others, and as much, or more, abused than any; it expects, therefore,
a public righting in the eye of the world. There have been, indeed,
some few sparks of this perfection sensibly struck out now and then
in the world in some horrors of conscience, which have made men
become their own accusers of unknown crimes, in bringing out hidden
wickedness to a public view by various providences. This hath also
been the design of sprinklings of judgments upon several generations,
as (Ps. xc. 8), “We are consumed by thy anger, and by thy wrath we are
troubled; thou hast set our iniquities before thee, and our secret
sins in the light of thy countenance.” The word עלומנו signifies youth,
as well as secret, _i. e._, sins committed long ago, and that with
secrecy. By this he hath manifested that secret sins are not hid from
his eye. Though inward terrors and outward judgments have been let
loose to worry men into a belief of this, yet the corruptions of men
would still keep a contrary notion in their minds, that “God hath
forgotten, that he hides his face from transgression, and will not
regard their impiety” (Ps. x. 11). There must, therefore, be a time
of trial for the public demonstration of this excellency, that it may
receive its due honor, by a full testimony that no secrecy can be a
shelter from it. As his justice, which consists in giving every one
his due, could not be glorified, unless men were called to an account
for their actions, so neither would his omniscience appear in its
illustrious colors, without such a manifestation of the secret motions
of men’s hearts, and of villanies done under lock and key, when none
were conscious to them, but the committers of them. Now the last
judgment is the time appointed for the “opening of the books” (Dan.
vii. 10). The book of God’s records, and conscience the counterpart,
were never fully opened and read before, only now and then some pages
turned to, in particular judgments; and out of those “books shall men
be judged according to their works” {a471} (Rev. xx. 12). Then shall
the defaced sins be brought, with all their circumstances, to every
man’s memory; the counsels of men’s hearts fled far from their present
remembrance, all the habitual knowledge they had of their own actions,
shall, by God’s knowledge of them, be excited to an actual review;
and their works not only made manifest to themselves, but notorious
to the world: all the words, thoughts, deeds of men, shall be brought
forth into the light of their own minds by the infinite light of
God’s understanding reflecting on them. His knowledge renders him an
unerring witness, as well as his justice “a swift witness” (Mal. iii.
5); a swift witness, because he shall, without any circuit, or length
of speech, convince their consciences, by an inward illumination of
them, to take notice of the blackness and deformity of their hearts
and works. In all judgments God is somewhat known to be the searcher
of hearts; the time of judgment is the time of his remembrance (Hos.
viii. 13): “Now will he remember their iniquity, and visit their
sins;” but the great instant, or now, of the full glorifying it, is
the grand day of account. This attribute must have a time for its
full discovery; and no time can be fit for it but a time of a general
reckoning. Justice cannot be exercised without omniscience; for as
justice is a giving to every one his due, so there must be knowledge
to discern what is due to every man; the searching the heart is in
order to the rewarding the works.
_Instruct. 4._ This perfection in God gives us ground to believe a
resurrection. Who can think this too hard for his power, since not
the least atom of the dust of our bodies can escape his knowledge? An
infinite understanding comprehends every mite of a departed carcase;
this will not appear impossible, nor irrational, to any, upon a
serious consideration, of this excellency in God. The body is perished,
the matter of it hath been since clothed with different forms and
figures; part of it hath been made the body of a worm, part of it
returned to the dust that hath been blown away by the wind; part of it
hath been concocted in the bodies of canibals, fish, ravenous beasts;
the spirits have evaporated into air, part of the blood melted into
water; what, then, is the matter of the body annihilated? is that
wholly perished? no; the foundation remains, though it hath put on
a variety of forms; the body of Abel, the first man that died, nor
the body of Adam, are not, to this day, reduced to nothing; indeed,
the quantity and the quality of those bodies have been lost by various
changes they have past through since their dissolution; but the
matter, or substance of them, remains entire, and is not capable
to be destroyed by all those transforming alterations, in so long
a revolution of time. The body of a man in his infancy and his old
age, if it were Methuselah’s, is the same in the foundation in those
multitude of years; though the quantity of it be altered, the quality
different; though the color and other things be changed in it, the
matter of this body remains the same among all the alterations after
death. And can it be so mixed with other natures and creatures, as
that it is past finding out by an infinite understanding? Can any
particle of this matter escape the eye of Him that makes and beholds
all those various {a472} alterations, and where every mite of the
substance of those bodies is particularly lodged, so as that he
cannot compact it together again for a habitation of that soul, that
many a year before fled from it?[744] Since the knowledge of God is
infinite, and his providence extensive over the least as well as the
greatest parts of the world, he must needs know the least as well
as the greatest of his creatures in their beginning, progress, and
dissolution; all the forms through which the bodies of all creatures
roll, the particular instants of time, and the particular place when
and where those changes are made, they are all present with him; and,
therefore, when the revolution of time allotted by him for the reunion
of souls and deceased bodies is come, it cannot be doubted but, out
of the treasures of his knowledge, he can call forth every part of
the matter of the bodies of men, from the first to the last man that
expired, and strip it of all those forms and figures which it shall
then have, to compact it to be a lodging for that soul which before
it entertained; and though the bodies of men have been devoured by
wild beasts in the earth, and fish in the sea, and been lodged in the
stomachs of barbarous men‑eaters, the matter is not lost. There is but
little of the food we take that is turned into the substance of our
own bodies; that which is not proper for nourishment, which is the
greatest part, is separated, and concocted, and rejected; whatsoever
objections are made, are answered by this attribute. Nothing hinders a
God of infinite knowledge from discerning every particle of the matter,
wheresoever it is disposed; and since he hath an eye to discern, and
a hand to recollect and unite, what difficulty is there in believing
this article of the christian faith? he that questions this revealed
truth of the resurrection of the body, must question God’s omniscience
as well as his omnipotence and power.
_Instruct. 5._ What semblance of reason is there to expect a
justification in the sight of God by anything in ourselves? Is there
any action done by any of us, but upon a scrutiny we may find flaws
and deficiency in it? What then? shall not this perfection of God
discern them? the motes that escape our eyes cannot escape his (1 John
iii. 20): “God is greater than our hearts, and knows all things;” so
that it is in vain for any man to flatter himself with the rectitude
of any work, or enter into any debate with him who can bring a
thousand articles against us, out of his own infinite records, unknown
to us, and unanswerable by us. If conscience, a representative or
counterpart of God’s omniscience in our own bosoms, find nothing done
by us, but in a copy short of the original, and beholds, if not blurs,
yet imperfections in the best actions, God must much more discern
them; we never knew a copy equally exact with the original. If our
own conscience be as a thousand witnesses, the knowledge of God is as
millions of witnesses against us; if our corruption be so great, and
our holiness so low, in our own eyes, how much greater must the one,
and how much meaner must the other, appear in the eyes of God? God
hath an unerring eye to see, as well as an unspotted holiness to hate,
and an unbribable justice to punish; he wants no more understanding
to know the shortness of our actions, {a473} than he doth holiness
to enact, and power to execute, his laws; nay, suppose we could
recollect many actions, wherein there were no spot visible to us, the
consideration of this attribute should scare us from resting upon any
or all of them, since it is the Lord that, by a piercing eye, sees and
judges according to the heart, and not according to appearance. The
least crookedness of a stick, not sensible to an acute eye, yet will
appear when laid to the line; and the impurity of a counterfeit metal
be manifest when applied to the touchstone; so will the best action
of any mere man in the world, when it comes to be measured in God’s
knowledge by the straight line of his law. Let every man, therefore,
as Paul, though he should know nothing by himself, think not himself
therefore justified; since it is the Lord, who is of an infinite
understanding, that judgeth (1 Cor. iv. 4). A man may be justified in
his own sight, “but not any living man can be justified in the sight
of God” (Ps. cxliii. 2); in his sight, whose eye pierceth into our
unknown secrets and frames: it was, therefore, well answered of a good
man upon his death bed, being asked “What he was afraid of?” “I have
labored,” saith he, “with all my strength to observe the commands
of God; but since I am a man, I am ignorant whether my works are
acceptable to God, since God judges in one manner, and I in another
manner.” Let the consideration therefore of this attribute, make us
join with Job in his resolution (Job ix. 21): “Though we were perfect,
yet would we not know our own souls.” I would not stand up to plead
any of my virtues before God. Let us, therefore, look after another
righteousness, wherein the exact eye of the Divine omniscience, we are
sure, can discern no stain or crookedness.
_Instruct. 6._ What honorable and adoring thoughts ought we to
have of God for this perfection! Do we not honor a man that is able
to predict? do we not think it a great part of wisdom? Have not all
nations regarded such a faculty as a character and a mark of divinity?
There is something more ravishing in the knowledge of future things,
both to the person that knows them, and the person that hears them,
than there is in any other kind of knowledge; whence the greatest
prophets have been accounted in the greatest veneration, and men
have thought it a way to glory, to divine and predict. Hence it was
that the devils and pagan oracles gained so much credit; upon this
foundation were they established, and the enemies of mankind owned
for a true God;――I say, from the prediction of future things, though
their oracles were often ambiguous, many times false; yet those poor
heathens framed many ingenious excuses to free their adored gods
from the charge of falsity and imposture: and shall we not adore
the true God, the God of Israel, the God blessed for ever, for this
incommunicable property, whereby he flies above the wings of the wind,
the understandings of men and cherubims?[745] Consider how great it
is to know the thoughts and intentions, and works of one man, from
the beginning to the end of his life; to foreknow all these before
the being of this man, when he was lodged afar off in the loins of his
ancestors, yea, of Adam; how much greater is it to foreknow and know
the thoughts and {a474} works of three or four men, of a whole village
or neighborhood! It is greater still to know the imaginations and
actions of such a multitude of men as are contained in London, Paris,
or Constantinople; how much greater still to know the intentions
and practices, the clandestine contrivances of so many millions that
have, do, or shall swarm in all quarters of the world, every person
of them having millions of thoughts, desires, designs, affections,
and actions! Let this attribute, then, make the blessed God honorable
in our eyes, and adorable in all our affections; especially since it
is an excellency which hath so lately discovered itself, in bringing
to light the hidden things of darkness, in opening, and in part
confounding, the wicked devices of bloody men. Especially let us
adore God for it, and admire it in God, since it is so necessary a
perfection, that without it the goodness of God had been impotent,
and could not have relieved us; for what help can a distressed person
expect from a man of the sweetest disposition and the strongest arm,
if the eyes which should discover the danger, and direct the defence
and rescue, were closed up by blindness and darkness? Adore God for
this wonderful perfection.
_Instruct. 7._ In the consideration of this excellent attribute, what
low thoughts should we have of our own knowledge, and how humble ought
we to be before God! There is nothing man is more apt to be proud of
than his knowledge; it is a perfection he glories in; but if our own
knowledge of the little outside and barks of things puffs us up, the
consideration of the infiniteness of God’s knowledge should abate the
tumor: as our beings are nothing in regard to the infiniteness of his
essence, so our knowledge is nothing in regard of the vastness of his
understanding. We have a spark of being, but nothing to the heat of
the sun; we have a drop of knowledge, but nothing to the Divine ocean.
What a vain thing is it for a shallow brook to boast of its streams
before a sea, whose depths are unfathomable! As it is a vanity to
brag of our strength, when we remember the power of God, and of our
prudence, when we glance upon the wisdom of God, so it is no less a
vanity to boast of our knowledge, when we think of the understanding
and knowledge of God. How hard is it for us to know anything![746]
Too much noise deafens us, and too much light dazzles us; too much
distance alienates the object from us, and too much nearness bars up
our sight from beholding it. When we think ourselves to be near the
knowledge of a thing, as a ship to the haven, a puff of wind blows
us away, and the object which we desired to know eternally flies from
us; we burn with a desire of knowledge, and yet are oppressed with
the darkness of ignorance; we spend our days more in dark Egypt, than
in enlightened Goshen. In what narrow bounds is all the knowledge of
the most intelligent persons included![747] How few understand the
exact harmony of their own bodies, the nature of the life they have
in common with other animals! Who understands the nature of his own
faculties, how he knows, and how he wills; how the understanding
proposeth, and how the will embraceth; how his spiritual soul is
united to his material body; what the nature is of the operation of
{a475} our spirits? Nay, who understands the nature of his own body,
the offices of his senses, the motion of his members, how they come to
obey the command of the will, and a thousand other things? What a vain,
weak, and ignorant thing is man, when compared with God! yet there is
not a greater pride to be found among devils, than among ignorant men,
with a little, very little, flashy knowledge. Ignorant man is as proud
as if he knew as God. As the consideration of God’s omniscience should
render him honorable in our eyes, so it should render us vile in our
own. God, because of his knowledge, is so far from disdaining his
creatures, that his omniscience is a minister to his goodness. No
knowledge that we are possessed of should make us swell with too high
a conceit of ourselves, and a disdain of others. We have infinitely
more of ignorance than knowledge. Let us therefore remember, in all
our thoughts of God, that he is God, and we are men; and therefore
ought to be humble, as becomes men, and ignorant and foolish men,
to be; as weak creatures should lie low before an Almighty God, and
impure creatures before a holy God, false creatures before a faithful
God, finite creatures before an infinite God, so should ignorant
creatures before an all‑knowing God. All God’s attributes teach
admiring thoughts of God, and low thoughts of ourselves.
_Instruct. 8._ It may inform us how much this attribute is injured
in the world. The first error after Adam’s eating the forbidden
fruit was the denial of this, as well as the omnipresence of God,
(Gen. iii. 10,) “I heard thy voice in the garden, and I hid myself;”
as if the thickness of the trees could screen him from the eye of
his Creator. And after Cain’s murder, this is the first perfection he
affronts, (Gen. iv. 9), “Where is Abel, thy brother?” saith God. How
roundly doth he answer, “I know not!” as if God were as weak as man,
to be put off with a lie. Man doth as naturally hate this perfection
as much as he cannot naturally but acknowledge it; he wishes God
stripped of this eminency, that he might be incapable to be an
inspector of his crimes, and a searcher of the closets of his heart.
In wishing him deprived of this, there is a hatred of God himself; for
it is a loathing an essential property of God, without which he would
be a pitiful Governor of the world. What a kind of God should that
be, of a sinner’s wishing, that had wanted eyes to see a crime, and
righteousness to punish it! The want of the consideration of this
attribute, is the cause of all sin in the world (Hos. vii. 2), “They
consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness;”
they speak not to their hearts, or make any reflection upon the
infiniteness of my knowledge; it is a high contempt of God, as if he
were an idol, a senseless stock or stone; in all evil practices this
is denied. We know God sees all things, yet we live and walk as if he
knew nothing. We call him omniscient, and live as if he were ignorant;
we say he is all eye, yet act as if he were wholly blind.
In particular, this attribute is injured, by invading the peculiar
rights of it, by presuming on it, and by a practical denial of it.
First, By invading the peculiar rights of it. 1. By invocation of
creatures. Praying to saints, by the Romanists, is a disparagement
{a476} to this divine excellency; he that knows all things, is only
fit to have the petitions of men presented to him; prayer supposeth
an omniscient Being, as the object of it; no other being but God
ought to have that honor acknowledged to it; no understanding but
his is infinite; no other presence but his is everywhere; to implore
any deceased creature for a supply of our wants, is to own in them a
property of the Deity, and make them deities that were but men; and
increase their glory by a diminution of God’s honor, in ascribing
that perfection to creatures which belongs only to God. Alas! they
are so far from understanding the desires of our souls, that they
know not the words of our lips: it is against reason to address our
supplications to them that neither understand us nor discern us (Isa.
lxiii. 16), “Abraham is ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledges us
not.” The Jews never called upon Abraham, though the covenant was made
with him for the whole seed; not one departed saint for the whole four
thousand years, between the creation of the world, and the coming of
Christ, was ever prayed to by the Israelites, or ever imagined to have
a share in God’s omniscience: so that to pray to St. Peter, St. Paul,
much less to St. Roch, St. Swithin, St. Martin, St. Francis, &c. is
such a superstition, that hath no footing in the Scripture. To desire
the prayers of the living, with whom we have a communion, who can
understand and grant our desires, is founded upon a mutual charity;
but to implore persons that are absent, at a great distance from us,
with whom we have not, nor know how to have, any commerce, supposeth
them, in their departure, to have put off humanity, and commenced gods,
and endued with some part of the Divinity to understand our petitions;
we are, indeed, to cherish their memories, consider their examples,
imitate their graces, and observe their doctrines; we are to follow
them as saints, but not elevate them as gods, in ascribing to them
such a knowledge, which is the only necessary right of their and our
common Creator.[748] As the invocation of saints mingles them with
Christ, in the exercise of his office, so it sets them equal with
God in the throne of his omniscience, as if they had as much credit
with God as Christ, by way of mediation, and as much knowledge of
men’s affairs as God himself. Omniscience is peculiar to God, and
incommunicable to any creature; it is the foundation of all religion,
and therefore one of the choicest acts of it; viz. prayer and
invocation. To direct our vows and petitions to any one else, is to
invade the peculiarity of this perfection in God, and to rank some
creatures in a partnership with him in it.
2. This attribute is injured by curiosity of knowledge; especially
of future things, which God hath not discovered in natural causes,
or supernatural revelation. It is a common error of men’s spirits
to aspire to know what God would have hidden, and to pry into Divine
secrets; and many men are more willing to remain without the knowledge
of those things which may, with a little industry, be attained,
than be divested of the curiosity of inquiring into those things
which are above their reach; it is hence that some have laid aside
the study of the common remedies of nature to find out the {a477}
philosopher’s stone, which scarce any ever yet attempted but sunk in
the enterprise.[749] From this inclination to know the most abstruse
and difficult things, it is that the horrors of magic and vanities of
astrology have sprung, whereby men have thought to find, in a commerce
with devils and the jurisdiction of the stars, the events of their
lives, and the disposal of states and kingdoms. Hence, also, arose
those multitudes of ways of divination, invented among the heathen,
and practised too commonly in these ages of the world. This is an
invasion of God’s prerogative, to whom secret things belong (Deut.
xxix. 29); “Secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but revealed
things belong to us and our children.” It is an intolerable boldness
to attempt to fathom those, the knowledge whereof God hath reserved
to himself, and to search that which God will have to surpass our
understandings, whereby we more truly envy God a knowledge superior
to our own, than we, in Adam, imagined that he envied us. Ambition is
the greatest cause of this; ambition to be accounted some great thing
among men, by reason of a knowledge estranged from the common mass of
mankind, but more especially that soaring pride to be equal with God,
which lurks in our nature ever since the fall of our first parents:
this is not yet laid aside by men, though it was the first thing that
embroiled the world with the wrath of God. Some think a curiosity
of knowledge was the cause of the fall of devils; I am sure it was
the fall of Adam, and is yet the crime of his posterity; had he been
contented to know what God had furnished him with, neither he nor his
posterity had smarted under the venom of the serpent’s breath. All
curious and bold inquiries into things not revealed are an attempt
upon the throne of God, and are both sinful and pernicious, like
to glaring upon the sun, where, instead of a greater acuteness, we
meet with blindness, and too dearly buy our ignorance in attempting
a superfluous knowledge. As God’s knowledge is destined to the
government of the world, so should ours be to the advantage of the
world, and not degenerate into vain speculations.
3. This attribute is injured by swearing by creatures. To swear
by the name of God, in a righteous cause,[750] when we are lawfully
called to it by a superior power, or for the necessary decision of
some controversy, for the ends of charity and justice, is an act
of religion, and a part of worship, founded upon, and directed to,
the honor of this attribute; by it we acknowledge the glory of his
infallible knowledge of all things; but to swear by false gods, or by
any creature, is blasphemous; it sets the creature in the place of God,
and invests it in that which is the peculiar honor of the Divinity;
for when any swear truly, they intend the invocation of an infallible
Witness, and the bringing an undoubted testimony for what they do
assert: while, any, therefore, swear by a creature, or a false god,
they profess that that creature, or that which they esteem to be a god,
is an infallible witness, which to be is only the right of God; they
attribute to the creature that which is the property of God alone, to
know the heart, and to be a witness whether they speak true or no: and
this was accounted, by all nations, the true design {a478} of an oath.
As to swear falsely is a plain denial of the all‑knowledge of God, so
to swear by any creature is to set the creature upon the throne of God,
in ascribing that perfection to the creature which sovereignly belongs
to the Creator; for it is not in the power of any to witness to the
truth of the heart, but of him that is the searcher of hearts.
4. We sin against this attribute by censuring the hearts of others.
An open crime, indeed, falls under our cognizance, and therefore under
our judgment; for whatsoever falls under the authority of man to be
punished, falls under the judgment of man to be censured, as an act
contrary to the law of God; yet, when a censure is built upon the evil
of the act which is obvious to the view, if we take a step farther to
judge the heart and state, we leave the revealed rule of the law, and
ambitiously erect a tribunal equal with God’s, and usurp a judicial
power, pertaining only to the Supreme Governor of the world, and
consequently pretend to be possessed of the perfection of omniscience,
which is necessary to render him capable of the exercise of that
sovereign authority: for it is in respect of his dominion that God
hath the supreme right to judge; and in respect of his knowledge
that he hath an incommunicable capacity to judge. In an action
that is doubtful, the good or evil whereof depends only upon God’s
determination, and wherein much of the judgment depends upon the
discerning the intention of the agent, we cannot judge any man without
a manifest invasion of God’s peculiar right: such actions are to be
tried by God’s knowledge, not by our surmises; God only is the master
in such cases, to whom a person stands or falls (Rom. xiv. 4). ’Till
the true principle and ends of an action be known by the confession
of the party acting it, a true judgment of it is not in our power.
Principles and ends lie deep and hid from us; and it is intolerable
pride to pretend to have a joint key with God to open that cabinet
which he hath reserved to himself. Besides the violation of the rule
of charity in misconstruing actions which may be great and generous in
their root and principle, we invade God’s right, as if our ungrounded
imaginations and conjectures were in joint commission with this
sovereign perfection; and thereby we become usurping judges of
evil thoughts (James ii. 4). It is, therefore, a boldness worthy to
be punished by the judge, to assume to ourselves the capacity and
authority of him who is the only Judge: for as the execution of the
Divine law, for the inward violation of it, belongs only to God, so is
the right of judging a prerogative belonging only to his omniscience;
his right is, therefore, invaded, if we pretend to a knowledge of it.
This humor of men the apostle checks, when he saith (1 Cor. iv. 5),
“He that judgeth me is the Lord; therefore judge nothing before the
time, until the Lord come, who will manifest the counsels of all
hearts.” It is not the time yet for God to erect the tribunal for the
trial of men’s hearts, and the principles of their actions; he hath
reserved the glorious discovery of this attribute for another season:
we must not, therefore, presume to judge of the counsels of men’s
hearts till God hath revealed them by opening the treasures of his
own knowledge; much less are we to judge any man’s final condition.
Manasseh may sacrifice to devils, {a479} and unconverted Paul tear
the church in pieces; but God had mercy on them, and called them. The
actions may be censured, not the state, for we know not whom God may
call. In censuring men, we may doubly imitate the devil, in a false
accusation of the brethren, as well as in an ambitious usurpation of
the rights of God.
Secondly, This perfection is injured by presuming upon it, or
making an ill use of it. As in the neglect of prayer for the supply of
men’s wants, because God knows them already, so that that which is an
encouragement to prayer, they make the reason of restraining it before
God. Prayer is not to administer knowledge to God, but to acknowledge
this admirable perfection of the Divine nature. If God did not know,
there were indeed no use of prayer; it would be as vain a thing to
send up our prayers to heaven, as to implore the senseless statue,
or picture of a prince, for a protection. We pray because God knows:
for though he knows our wants with a knowledge of vision, yet he
will not know them with a knowledge of supply, till he be sought unto
(Matt. vi. 32, 33; vii. 11.) All the excellencies of God are ground of
adoration; and this excellency is the ground of that part of worship
we call prayer. If God be to be worshipped, he is to be called upon:
invocations of his name in our necessities is a chief act of worship;
whence the temple, the place of solemn worship, was not called the
house of sacrifice, but the house of prayer. Prayer was not appointed
for God’s information, as if he were ignorant, but for the expression
of our desires; not to furnish him with a knowledge of what we want,
but to manifest to him, by some rational sign convenient to our nature,
our sense of that want, which he knows by himself. So that prayer is
not designed to acquaint God with our wants, but to express the desire
of a remedy of our wants. God knows our wants, but hath not made
promises barely to our wants, but to our asking, that his omniscience
in hearing, as well as his sufficiency in supplying, may have a
sensible honor in our acknowledgments and receipts. It is therefore an
ill use of this excellency of God to neglect prayer to him as needless,
because he knows already.
Thirdly. This perfection of God is wronged by a practical denial
of it. It is the language of every sin, and so God takes it when he
comes to reckon with men for their impieties. Upon this he charges
the greatness of the iniquity of Israel, the overflowing of blood in
the land, and the perverseness of the city: “They say, the Lord hath
forsaken the earth, and the Lord sees not” (Ezek. ix. 9): they deny
his eyes to see, and his resolution to punish.
1. It will appear, in forbearing sin from a sense of man’s knowledge,
not of God’s. Open impieties are refrained because of the eye of man,
but secret sins are not checked because of the eye of God. Wickedness
is committed in darkness, that is restrained in light, as if darkness
were as great a clog to God’s eyes as it is to ours; as though his
eyes were muffled with the curtains of the night (Job xxii. 14.) This,
it is likely, was at the root of Jonah’s flight; he might have some
secret thought that his Master’s eye could not follow him, as though
the close hatches of a ship could secure him from the knowledge of
God, as well as the sides of a ship {a480} could from the dashing of
the waves. What lies most upon the conscience when it is graciously
wounded, is least regarded or contemned when it is basely inclined.
David’s heart smote him not only for his sin in the gross, but as
particularly cirumstantiated by the commission of it in the sight of
God (Ps. li. 4): “Against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done this
evil in thy sight.” None knew the reason of Uriah’s death but myself,
and because others knew it not, I neglected any regard to this Divine
eye. When Jacob’s sons used their brother Joseph so barbarously, they
took care to hide it from their father, but cast away all thoughts
of God, from whom it could not be concealed. Doth not the presence of
a child bridle a man from the act of a longed‑for sin, when the eye
of God is of no force to restrain him, as if God’s knowledge were of
less value than the sight of a little boy or girl, as if a child only
could see, and God were blind? He that will forbear an unworthy action
for fear of an informer, will not forbear it for God; as if God’s
omniscience were not as full an intelligencer to him, as man can be
an informer to a magistrate. As we acknowledge the power of men seeing
us when we are ashamed to commit a filthy action in their view, so
we discover the power of God seeing us, when we regard not what we do
before the light of his eyes. Secret sins are more against God than
open: open sins are against the law; secret sins are against the law,
and this prime perfection of his nature. The majesty of God is not
only violated, but the omniscience of God disowned, who is the only
witness; we must, in all of them, either imagine him to be without
eyes to behold us, or without an arm of justice to punish us. And
often it is, I believe, in such cases, that if any thoughts of God’s
knowledge strike upon men, they quickly damp them, lest they should
begin to know what they fear, and fear that they might not eat their
pleasant sinful morsels.
2. It appears in partial confessions of sin before God. As by a free,
full, and ingenious confession, we offer a due glory to this attribute,
so by a feigned and curtailed confession, we deny him the honor of
it: for, though by any confession we in part own him to be a Sovereign
and Judge, yet by a half and pared acknowledgment, we own him to be
no more than a humane and ignorant one. Achan’s full confession gave
God the glory of his omniscience, manifested in the discovery of his
secret crime. “And Joshua said unto Achan, My son, give, I pray thee,
glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto him” (Joshua
vii. 19). And so (Ps. l. 23): “Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me,”
or confession, as the word signifieth, in which sense I would rather
take it, referring to this attribute, which God seems to tax sinners
with the denial of (ver. 21), telling them that he would open the
records of their sins before them, and indict them particularly for
every one. If, therefore, you would glorify this attribute, which
shall one day break open your consciences, offer to me a sincere
confession. When David speaks of the happiness of a pardoned man,
he adds, “in whose spirit there is no guile,”[751] not meaning a
sincerity in general, but an ingenuity in confessing. To excuse, or
extenuate sin, is to deny God the {a481} knowledge of the depths of
our deceitful hearts: when we will mince it rather than aggravate it;
lay it upon the inducements of others, when it was the free act of our
own wills, study shifts to deceive our Judge; this is to speak lies of
him, as the expression is (Hos. vii. 13), as though he were a God easy
to be cheated, and knew no more than we were willing to declare. What
did Saul’s transferring his sin from himself to the people (1 Sam. xv.
15), but charge God with a defect in this attribute? When man could
not be like God, in his knowledge, he would fancy a God like to him
in his ignorance, and imagine a possibility of hiding himself from his
knowledge. And all men tread, more or less, in their father’s steps,
and are fruitful to devise distinctions to disguise errors in doctrine,
and excuses to palliate errors in practice: this crime Job removes
from himself, when he speaks of several acts of his sincerity (Job
xxxi. 33): “If I covered my transgressions as Adam, by hiding my
iniquity in my bosom:” I hid not any of my sins in my own conscience,
but acknowledged God a witness to them, and gave him the glory of his
knowledge by a free confession. I did not conceal it from God as Adam
did, or as men ordinarily do; as if God could understand no more of
their secret crimes than they will let him, and had no more sense of
their faults than they would furnish him with. As the first rise of
confession is the owning of this attribute (for the justice of God
would not scare men, nor the holiness of God awe them, without a sense
of his knowledge of their iniquities), so to drop out some fragments
of confession, discover some sins, and conceal others, is a plain
denial of the extensiveness of the Divine knowledge.
3. It is discovered by putting God off with an outside worship. Men
are often flatterers of God, and think to bend him by formal glavering
devotions, without the concurrence of their hearts; as though he could
not pierce into the darkness of the mind, but did as little know us
as one man knows another. There are such things as feigned lips (Ps.
xvii. 1), a contradiction between the heart and the tongue, a clamor
in the voice, and scoffing in the soul; a crying out to God, thou art
my Father, the guide of my youth, and yet speaking and doing evil to
the utmost of our power (Jer. iii. 4, 5). As if God could be imposed
upon by fawning pretences; and like old Isaac, take Jacob for Esau,
and be cozened by the smell of his garments: as if he could not
discern the negro heart under an angel’s garb. Thus Ephraim, the
ten tribes, apostatized from the true religion, would go with their
flocks and their herds to seek the Lord (Hos. v. 6), would sacrifice
multitudes of sheep and heifers, which was the main outside of the
Jewish religion; only with their flocks and their herds, not with
their hearts, with those inward qualifications of deep humiliation
and repentance for sin; as though outside appearances limited God’s
observation, whereas God had told them before (ver. 3), that he “knew
Ephraim, and Israel was not hid from him.” Thus to do is to put a
cheat upon God, and think to blind his all‑seeing eye, and therefore
it is called deceit (Ps. lxxviii. 36). They did flatter him with their
mouths. The word פתה signifies to deceive, as well as to flatter; not
that they, or any else, can deceive {a482} God, but it implies an
endeavor to deceive him, by a few dissembling words and gestures, or
an imagination that God was satisfied with bare professions, and would
not concern himself in a further inquisition. This is an unworthy
conceit of God, to fancy that we can satisfy for inward sins, and
avert approaching judgments, by external offerings, by a loud voice
with a false heart, as if God (like children) would be pleased with
the glittering of an empty shell, or the rattling of stones, the
chinkling of money, a mere voice and crying, without inward frames
and intentions of service.
4. In cherishing multitudes of evil thoughts. No man but would blush
for shame, if the base, impure, slovenly thoughts, either in or out
of duties of worship, were visible to the understanding of man; how
diligent would he be to curb his luxuriant and unworthy fancies, as
well as bite in his words! but when we give the reins to the motions
of our hearts, and suffer them to run at random without a curb, it is
an evidence we are not concerned for their falling under the notice of
the eye of God; and it argues a very weak belief of this perfection,
or scarce any belief at all. Who can think any man’s heart, possessed
with a sense of this infinite excellency, that suffers his mind, in
his meditations on God, to wander into every sty, and be picking up
stones upon a dunghill? What doth it intimate, but that those thoughts
are as invisible, or unaudible to God, as they are to men without the
garments of words?[752] When a man thinks of obscene things, his own
natural notions, if revived, would tell him that God discerns what he
thinks, that the depths of his heart are open to him: and the voice of
those notions are――deface those vain imaginations out of your minds.
But what is done? Men cast away rational light, muster up conceits
that God sees them not, knows them not, and so sink into the puddle
of their sordid imaginations, as though they remained in darkness to
God. I might further instance. _In omissions of prayer_, which arise
sometimes from a flat atheism: who will call upon a God, that believes
no such Being? or from partial atheism, either a denial of God’s
sufficiency to help, or of his omniscience to know, as if God were
like the statue of Jupiter in Crete, framed without ears. _In the
hypocritical pretences of men, to exempt them from the service God
calls them to._ When men pretend one thing and intend another: this
lurks in the veins sometimes of the best men; sometimes it ariseth
from the fear of man; when men are more afraid of the power of man,
than of dissembling with the Almighty, it will pretend a virtue
to cover a secret wile, and choose the tongue of the crafty as the
expression in Job (ch. xv. 5). The case is plain in Moses, who, when
ordered to undertake an eminent service, pretends a want of eloquence,
and an ungrateful “slowness of speech” (Exod. iv. 10). This generous
soul, that before was not afraid to discover himself in the midst of
Egypt for his countrymen, answers sneakingly to God, and would veil
his carnal fear with a pretence of insufficiency and humility; “Who
am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh” (Exod. iii. 11)? He could not well
allege an inability to go to Pharaoh, since he had had an education
in the Egyptian learning, which rendered him capable to appear
{a483} at court. God at last uncaseth him, and shews it all to be
a dissimulation, and whatsoever was the pretence, fear lay at the
bottom. He was afraid of his life upon his appearance before Pharaoh,
from whose face he had fled upon the slaying the Egyptians; which God
intimates to him (Exod. iv. 19), “Go, and return into Egypt, for all
the men are dead which sought thy life.” What doth this carriage speak,
but as if God’s eye were not upon our inward parts, as though we could
lock him out of our hearts, that cannot be shut out from any creek of
the hearts of men and angels?
_Use II._ is of comfort. It is a ground of great comfort under
the present dispensation wherein we are; we have heard the doctrinal
part, and God hath given us the experimental part of it in his special
providence this day, upon the stage of the world.[753] And, blessed be
God, that he hath given us a ground of comfort, without going out of
our ordinary course to fetch it, whereby it seems to be peculiarly of
God’s ordering for us.
1. It is a comfort in all the clandestine contrivances of men
against the church. His eyes pierce as far as the depths of hell. Not
one of his church’s adversaries lies in a mist; all are as plain as
the stars which he numbers: “Mine adversaries are all before thee” (Ps.
lxix. 19), more exactly known to thee than I can recount them. It is
a prophecy of Christ, wherein Christ is brought in speaking to God of
his own and the church’s enemies: he comforts himself with this, that
God hath his eye upon every particular person among his adversaries:
he knows where they repose themselves, when they go out to consult,
and when they come in with their resolves. He discerns all the rage
that spirits their hearts, in what corner it lurks, how it acts;
all the disorders, motions of it, and every object of that rage; he
cannot be deceived by the closest and subtlest person. Thus God speaks
concerning Sennacherib and his host against Jerusalem (Isa. xxxvii. 28,
29). After he had spoke of the forming of his church, and the weakness
of it, he adds, “But I know thy abode, and thy going out, and thy
coming in, and thy rage against me. Because thy rage against me, and
thy tumult, is come up into mine ears, therefore will I put my hook in
thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back,” &c.
He knows all the methods of the counsels, the stages they had laid,
the manner of the execution of their designs, all the ways whither
they turned themselves, and would use them no better than men do
devouring fish and untamed beasts, with a hook in the nose, and a
bridle in the mouth. Those statesmen (in Isa. xxix. 15) thought their
contrivances too deep for God to fathom, and too close for God to
frustrate; “they seek deep to hide their counsels from the Lord;
surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the
potter’s clay,” of no more force and understanding than a potter’s
vessel, which understands not its own form wrought by the artificer,
nor the use it is put to by the buyer and possessor; or shall be
esteemed as a potter’s vessel, that can be as easily flung back into
the mass from whence it was taken, as preserved in the figure it is
now endued with. No secret designer is shrouded from God’s sight, or
{a484} can be sheltered from God’s arm; he understands the venom of
their hearts better than we can feel it, and discovers their inward
fury more plainly than we can see the sting or teeth of a viper when
they are opened for mischief; and to what purpose doth God know and
see them, but in order to deliver his people from them in his own due
time? “I know their sorrow, and am come down to deliver them” (Exod.
iii. 7, 8). The walls of Jerusalem are continually before him; he
knows, therefore, all that would undermine and demolish them; none can
hurt Zion by any ignorance or inadvertency in God. It is observable,
that our Saviour, assuming to himself a different title in every
epistle to the seven churches, doth particularly ascribe to himself
this of knowledge and wrath in that to Thyatira, an emblem or
description of the Romish state (Rev. ii. 18): “And unto the angel of
the church of Thyatira write, These things, saith the Son of God, who
hath his eyes like a flame of fire, and his feet like fine brass.”
His eyes, like a flame of fire, are of a piercing nature, insinuating
themselves into all the pores and parts of the body they encounter
with, and his feet like brass, to crush them with, is explained (ver.
23), “I will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall
know that I am he which searches the reins and the heart, and I will
give to every one of you according to your works.” He knows every
design of the Romish party, designed by that church of Thyatira.[754]
Jezebel, there, signifies a whorish church; such a church as shall
act as Jezebel, Ahab’s wife, who was not only a worshipper of idols,
but propagated idolatry in Israel, slew the prophets, persecuted
Elijah, murdered Naboth, the name whereof signifies prophecy, seized
upon his possession. And if it be said that (ver. 19) this church was
commended for her works, faith, patience, it is true Rome did at first
strongly profess Christianity, and maintained the interest of it, but
afterwards fell into the practice of Jezebel, and committed spiritual
adultery: and is she to be owned for a wife, that now plays the harlot,
because she was honest and modest at her first marriage? And though
she shall be destroyed, yet not speedily (ver. 22); “I will cast her
into a bed,” seems to intimate the destruction of Jezebel, not to
be at once and speedily, but in a lingering way, and by degrees, as
sickness consumes a body.[755]
2. This perfection of God fits him to be a special object of trust.
If he were forgetful, what comfort could we have in any promise?
How could we depend upon him, if he were ignorant of our state? His
compassion to pity us, his readiness to relieve us, his power to
protect and assist us, would be insignificant, without his omniscience
to inform his goodness, and direct the arm of his power. This
perfection is, as it were, God’s office of intelligence: as you go to
your memorandum‑book to know what you are to do, so doth God to his
omniscience; this perfection is God’s eye, to acquaint him with the
necessities of his church, and directs all his other attributes in
their exercise for and about his people. You may depend upon his mercy
{a485} that hath promised, and upon his truth to perform; upon his
sufficiency to supply you, and his goodness to relieve you, and his
righteousness to reward you; because he hath an infinite understanding
to know you and your wants, you and your services. And without this
knowledge of his, no comfort could be drawn from any other perfection;
none of them could be a sure nail to hang our hopes and confidence
upon. This is that the church alway celebrated (Ps. cv. 7): “He hath
remembered his covenant forever, and the word which he hath commanded
to a thousand generations;” and (ver. 42), “He remembered his holy
promise;” “And he remembered for them his covenant” (Ps. cvi. 45).
He remembers and understands his covenant, therefore his promise to
perform it, and therefore our wants to supply them.
3. And the rather, because God knows the persons of all his own.
He hath in his infinite understanding, the exact number of all the
individual persons that belong to him (2 Tim. ii. 19): “The Lord
knows them that are his.” He knows all things, because he hath created
them; and he knows his people because he hath not only made them,
but also chose them; he could no more choose he knew not what, than
he could create he knew not what; and he knows them under a double
title; of creation as creatures, in the common mass of creation; as
new creatures by a particular act of separation. He cannot be ignorant
of them in time, whom he foreknew from eternity; his knowledge in time
is the same he had from eternity; he foreknew them that he intended
to give the grace of faith unto; and he knows them after they believe,
because he knows his own act, in bestowing grace upon them, and his
own mark and seal wherewith he hath stamped them. No doubt but he
that “calls the stars of heaven by their names” (Ps. clxvii. 4), knows
the number of those living stars that sparkle in the firmament of his
church. He cannot be ignorant of their persons, when he numbers the
hairs of their heads, and hath registered their names in the book of
life. As he only had an infinite mercy to make the choice, so he only
hath an infinite understanding to comprehend their persons. We only
know the elect of God by a moral assurance in the judgment of charity,
when the conversation of men is according to the doctrine of God. We
have not an infallible knowledge of them, we may be often mistaken;
Judas, a devil, may be judged by man for a saint, till he be stripped
of his disguise. God only hath an infallible knowledge of them, he
knows his own records, and the counterparts in the hearts of his
people; none can counterfeit his seal, nor can any rase it out. When
the church is either scattered like dust by persecution, or overgrown
with superstition and idolatry, that there is scarce any grain of true
religion appearing, as in the time of Elijah, who complained that he
was left alone, as if the church had been rooted out of that corner of
the world (1 Kings xix. 14, 18); yet God knew that he had a number fed
in a cave, and had reserved seven thousand men that had preserved the
purity of his worship, and not bowed their knee to Baal.[756] Christ
knew his sheep, as well as he is known of them; yea, better than
they can know him (John x. 14). History acquaints us, that Cyrus had
so {a486} vast a memory, that he knew the name of every particular
soldier in his army, which consisted of divers nations; shall it be
too hard for an infinite understanding to know every one of that host
that march under his banners? may he not as well know them, as know
the number, qualities, influences, of those stars which lie concealed
from our eye, as well as those that are visible to our sense? Yes,
he knows them, as a general to employ them, as a shepherd to preserve
them; he knows them in the world to guard them, and he knows them when
they are out of the world to gather them, and cull out their bodies,
though wrapped up in a cloud of the putrified carcases of the wicked.
As he knew them from all eternity to elect them, so he knows them
in time to clothe their persons with righteousness, to protect their
persons in calamity, according to his good pleasure, and at last to
raise and reward them according to his promise.
4. We may take comfort from hence, that our sincerity cannot be
unknown to an infinite understanding. Not a way of the righteous is
concealed from him, and, therefore, “they shall stand in judgment
before him” (Ps. i. 6): “The Lord knows the way of the righteous;”
he knows them to observe them, and he knows them to reward them. How
comfortable is it to appeal to this attribute of God for our integrity,
with Hezekiah (2 Kings xx. 3)! “Remember, Lord, how I have walked
before thee in truth, and with a perfect heart.” Christ himself is
brought in in this prophetical psalm, drawing out the comfort of this
attribute (Ps. xl. 9): “I have not restrained my lips, O Lord, thou
knowest;” meaning his faithfulness in declaring the righteousness of
God. Job follows the same steps, “Also now behold, my record is in
heaven, and my witness is on high” (Job xvi. 19); my innocence hath
the testimony of men, but my greatest support is in the records of God.
Also now, or, besides the testimony of my own heart, I have another
witness in heaven, that knows the heart, and can only judge of the
principles of my actions, and clear me from the scorns of my friends
and the accusations of men, with a justification of my innocence; he
repeats it twice, to take the greater comfort in it. God knows that
we do that in the simplicity of our hearts, which may be judged by men
to be done for unworthy and sordid ends: he knows not only the outward
action, but the inward affection, and praises that which men often
dispraise, and writes down that with an _Euge!_ “Well done, good and
faithful servant,” which men daub with their severest censures (Rom.
ii. 29). How refreshing is it to consider, that God never mistakes
the appearance for reality, nor is led by the judgment of man!
He sits in heaven, and laughs at their follies and censures. If
God had no sounder and no more piercing a judgment than man, woe
be to the sincerest souls that are often judged hypocrites by some.
What a happiness is it for integrity to have a judge of infinite
understanding, who will one day wipe off the dirt of worldly
reproaches! Again, God knows the least dram of grace and righteousness
in the hearts of his people, though but as a smoking flax, or the
least bruise of a saving conviction (Matt. xii. 20), and knows it so
as to cherish it; he knows that work he hath begun, and never hath
his eye off from it to abandon it.
{a487} 5. The consideration of this excellent perfection in God may
comfort us in our secret prayers, sighs, and works. If God were not
of infinite understanding to pierce into the heart, what comfort hath
a poor creature that hath a scantiness of expressions but a heart in
a flame? If God did not understand the heart, faith and prayer, which
are eternal works, would be in vain. How could he give that mercy
our hearts plead for if he were ignorant of our inward affections?
Hypocrites might scale heaven by lofty expressions, and a sincere
soul come short of the happiness he is prepared for, for want of
flourishing gifts. Prayer is an eternal work; words are but the
garment of prayer; meditation is the body, and affection the soul and
life of prayer; “Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation”
(Ps. v. 1). Prayer is a rational act; an act of the mind, not the act
of a parrot: prayer is an act of the heart, though the speaking prayer
is the work of the tongue; now God gives ear to the words, but he
considers the meditation of the frame of the heart. Consideration is
a more exact notice than hearing; the act only of the ear. Were not
God of an infinite understanding, and omniscient, he might take fine
clothes, a heap of garments, for the man himself, and be put off by
glittering words, without a spiritual frame. What matter of rejoicing
is it that we call not upon a deaf and ignorant idol, but on one that
listens to our secret petitions, to give them a dispatch, that knows
our desires afar off, and from the infiniteness of his mercy, joined
with his omniscience, stands ready to give us a return? Hath he not
a book of remembrance for them that fear him, and for their sighs and
ejaculations to him, as well as their discourses of him, (Mal. iii.
16); and not only what prayers they utter, but what gracious and holy
thoughts they have of him that thought upon his name? Though millions
of supplications be put up at the same time, yet they have all a
distinct file (as I may say) in an infinite understanding, which
perceives and comprehends them all. As he observes millions of sins
committed at the same time, by a vast number of persons, to record
them in order to punishment, so he distinctly discerns an infinite
number of cries, at the same moment, to register them in order to an
answer. A sigh cannot escape an infinite understanding, though crowded
among a mighty multitude of cries from others, or covered with many
unwelcome distractions in ourselves, no more than a believing touch
from the woman that had the bloody issue could be concealed from
Christ, and be undiscerned from the press of the thronging multitudes:
our groans are as audible and intelligible to him as our words, and
he knows what is the mind of his own Spirit, though expressed in no
plainer language than sobs and heavings (Rom. viii. 27). Thus David
cheers up himself under the neglects of his friends (Ps. xxxviii. 9);
“Lord, my desire is before thee, and my groaning is not hid from thee.”
Not a groan of a panting spirit shall be lost, till God hath lost
his knowledge; not a petition forgotten while God hath a record, nor a
tear dried while God hath a bottle to reserve it in (Ps. lvi. 8). Our
secret works are also known and observed by him; not only our outward
labor, but our inward love in it (Heb. vi. 10). If, with Isaac, we
go privately into the field to meditate, or secretly “cast {a488} our
bread upon the waters,” he keeps his eye upon us to reward us, and
returns the fruit into our own bosoms (Matt. vi. 4, 6); yea, though
it be but a cup of cold water, from an inward spring of love, given
to a disciple, “He sees your works, and your labor, and faith, and
patience” in working them (Rev. ii. 2); all the marks of your industry,
and strength of your intentions, and will be as exact at last, in
order to a due praise, as to open sins, in order to a just recompense
(1 Cor. iv. 5).
6. The consideration of this excellent attribute affords comfort
in the afflictions of good men. He knows their pressures, as well
as hears their cries (Exod. iii. 7). His knowledge comes not by
information from us; but his compassionate listening to our cries
springs from his own inspection into our sorrows; he is affected with
them, before we make any discovery of them; he is not ignorant of the
best season, when they may be usefully inflicted, and when they may be
profitably removed. The tribulation and poverty of his church is not
unknown to him (Rev. ii. 8, 9); “I know thy works and tribulation,”
&c. He knows their works, and what tribulation they meet with for
him; he sees their extremities, when they are toiling against the wind
and tide of the world (Mark vi. 48); yea, the natural exigencies of
the multitude are not neglected by him; he discerns to take care of
them. Our Saviour considered the three days’ fasting of his followers,
and miraculously provides a dish for them in the wilderness. No
good man is ever out of God’s mind, and therefore never out of his
compassionate care: his eye pierceth into their dungeons, and pities
their miseries. Joseph may forget his brethren, and the disciples
not know Christ, when he walks upon the midnight waves and turbulent
sea,[757] but a lion’s den cannot obscure a Daniel from his sight,
nor the depths of the whale’s belly bury Jonah from the Divine
understanding: he discerns Peter in his chains, and Stephen under the
stones of martyrdom; he knows Lazarus under his tattered rags, and
Abel wallowing in his blood; his eye and knowledge goes along with his
people, when they are transplanted into foreign countries, and sold
for slaves into the islands of the Grecians, “for he will raise them
out of the place” (Joel iii. 6, 7). He would defeat the hopes of the
persecutors, and applaud the patience of his people. He knows his
people in the tabernacle of life, and in the valley of the shadow of
death (Ps. xxiii). He knows all penal evils, because he commissions
and directs them. He knows the instruments, because they are his sword
(Ps. xvii. 13); and he knows his gracious sufferer because he hath his
mark. He discerns Job in his anguish, and the devil in his malice. By
the direction of this attribute he orders calamities, and rescues from
them. “Thou hast seen it, for thou beholdest mischief and spite” (Ps.
x. 14). That is the comfort of the psalmist, and the comfort of every
believer, and the ground of committing themselves to God under all the
injustice of men.
7. It is a comfort in all our infirmities. As he knows our sins to
charge them, so he knows the weakness of our nature to pity us. As
his infinite understanding may scare us, because he knows our {a489}
transgressions, so it may relieve us, because he knows our natural
mutability in our first creation; “he knows our frame, he remembers
that we are dust” (Ps. ciii. 14). ’Tis the reason of the precedent
verses why he removes our transgression from us, why he is so backward
in punishing, so patient in waiting, so forward in pitying; Why? He
doth not only remember our sins, but remember our frame of forming;
what brittle, though clear glasses we were by creation, how easy to be
cracked! He remembers our impotent and weak condition by corruption;
what a sink we have of vain imaginations that remain in us after
regeneration; he doth not only consider that we were made according
to his image, and therefore able to stand, but that we were made
of dust and weak matter, and had a sensitive soul, like that of
beasts, as well as an intellectual nature, like that of angels, and
therefore liable to follow the dictates of it, without exact care
and watchfulness. If he remembered only the first, there would be no
issue but indignation; but the consideration of the latter moves his
compassion. How miserable should we be for want of this perfection in
the Divine nature, whereby God remembers and reflects upon his past
act in our first frame, and the mindfulness of our condition excites
the motion of his bowels to us! Had he lost the knowledge how he first
framed us, did he not still remember the mutability of our nature, as
we were formed and stamped in his mint, how much more wretched would
our condition be than it is! If his remembrance of our original be one
ground of his pity, the sense of his omniscience should be a ground of
our comfort in the stirring of our infirmities: he remembers we were
but dust when he made us, and yet remembers we are but dust while he
preserves and forbears us.
8. It is some comfort in the fears of some lurking corruption in our
hearts. We know by this whither to address ourselves for the search
and discovery of it: perhaps some blessings we want are retarded; some
calamities we understand not the particular cause of, are inflicted;
some petitions we have put up, hang too long for an answer; and the
chariot wheels of Divine goodness move slow, and are long in coming.
Let us beg the aid of this attribute to open to us the remoras, to
discover what base affection there is that retards the mercies we
want, or attracts the affliction we feel, or bars the door against the
return of our supplications. What our dim sight cannot discover, the
clear eye of God can make visible to us (Job x. 2): “Show me wherefore
thou contendest with me.” As in want of pardon, we particularly plead
his mercy, and in our desires for the performance of his promise,
we argue with him from his faithfulness, so in the fear of any
insincerity or hidden corruption we should implore his omniscience:
for as God is a God in covenant, our God, our God in the whole of his
nature, so the perfections of his nature are employed in their several
stations, as assistances of his creatures. This was David’s practice
and comfort, after that large meditation, on the omniscience and
omnipresence of God, he turns his thoughts of it into petitions for
the employment of it in the concerns of his soul, and begs a mercy
suitable to the glory of this perfection (Ps. cxxxix. 23): “Search me,
O God, and try my heart, {a490} try me, and know my thoughts;” dive
to the bottom (ver. 24), “and see if there be any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.” His desire is not barely that
God should know him, for it would be senseless to beg of God that
he should have mercy, or faithfulness, or power, or knowledge in
his nature; but he desires the exercise of this attribute, in the
discovery of himself to himself, in order to his sight of any wicked
way, and humiliation for it, and reformation of it, in order to his
conduct to everlasting life. As we may appeal to this perfection to
judge us when the sincerity of our actions is censured by others,
so we may implore it to search us when our sincerity is questioned
by ourselves, that our minds may be enlightened by a beam from his
knowledge, and the little thieves may be pulled out of their dens in
our hearts by the hand of his power. In particular, it is our comfort
that we can, and our necessity that we must address particularly to
this, when we engage solemnly in a work of self‑examination; that
we may have a clearer eye to direct us than our own, that we may not
mistake brass for gold, or counterfeit graces for true; that nothing
that is filthy and fit to be cast out, may escape our sight, and
preserve its station. And we need not question the laying at the
door of this neglect (viz. not calling in this attribute to our aid,
whose proper office it is, as I may so say, to search and inquire)
all the mistakes, ill success, and fruitlessness of our endeavors
in self‑examination, because we would engage in it in the pitiful
strength of our own dimness, and not in the light of God’s countenance,
and the assistance of his eye, which can discern what we cannot see,
and discover that to us which we cannot manifest to ourselves. It is
a comfort to a learner of an art to have a skilful eye to overlook his
work, and inform him of the defects. Beg the help of the eye of God in
all your searches and self‑examinations.
9. The consideration of this attribute is comfortable in our
assurances of, and reflections upon, the pardon of sin, or seeking
of it. As God punishes men for sin according to his knowledge of them,
which is greater than the knowledge their own consciences have of
them, so he pardons according to his knowledge: he pardons not only
according to our knowledge, but according to his own; he is greater
than any man’s heart, to condemn for that which a man is at present
ignorant of; and greater than our hearts, to pardon that which is
not at present visible to us; he knows that which the most watchful
conscience cannot take a survey of: if God had not an infinite
understanding of us, how could we have a perfect and full pardon from
him? It would not stand with his honor to pardon he knew not what. He
knows what crimes we have to be pardoned, when we know not all of them
ourselves, that stand in need of a gracious remission; his omniscience
beholds every sin to charge it upon our Saviour. If he knows our sins
that are black, he knows every mite of Christ’s righteousness which
is pure, and the utmost extent of his merits, as well as the demerit
of our iniquities. As he knows the filth of our sin, he also knows
the covering of our Saviour: he knows the value of the Redeemer’s
sufferings, and exactly understands every plea in the intercession of
our Advocate. {a491} Though God knows our sins _oculo indice_, yet he
doth not see them _oculo judice_, with a judicial eye: his omniscience
stirs not up his justice to revenge, but his mercy to pity. His
infinite understanding of what Christ hath done, directs him to disarm
his justice, and sound an alarm to his bowels. As he understands
better than we what we have committed, so he understands better than
we what our Saviour hath merited; and his eye directs his hand in the
blotting out guilt, and applying the remedy.
_Use III._ shall be to sinners, to humble them, and put them upon
serious consideration. This attribute speaks terrible things to a
profligate sinner. Basil thinks that the ripping open the sins of the
damned to their faces by this perfection of God, is more terrible than
their other torments in hell. God knows the persons of wicked men, not
one is exempted from his eye; he sees all the actions of men, as well
as he knows their persons (Job xi. 11): “He knows vain men, he sees
wickedness also” (Job xxxiv. 21): “His eye is upon all their goings.”
He hears the most private whispers (Ps. cxxxix. 4), the scope, manner,
circumstance of speaking, he knows it altogether: he understands all
our thoughts, the first bubblings of that bitter spring (Ps. cxxxix.
2); the quickest glances of the fancy, the closest musings of the mind,
and the abortive wouldings or wishes of the will, the language of the
heart, as well as the language of the tongue; not a foolish thought,
or an idle word, not a wanton glance, or a dishonest action, not a
negligent service, or a distracting fancy, but is more visible to him,
than the filth of a dunghill can be to any man by the help of a sun
beam. How much better would it be for desperate sinners to have their
crimes known to all the angels in heaven, and men upon earth, and
devils in hell, than that they should be known to their Sovereign,
whose laws they have violated, and to their Judge, whose righteousness
obligeth him to revenge the injury!
1. Consider what a poor refuge is secrecy to a sinner. Not the
mists of a foggy day, nor the obscurity of the darkest night, not
the closest curtains, nor the deepest dungeon, can hide any sin
from the eye of God. Adam is known in his thickets, and Jonah in his
cabin. Achan’s wedge of gold is discerned by him, though buried in the
earth, and hooded with a tent. Shall Sarah be unseen by him, when she
mockingly laughs behind the door? Shall Gehazi tell a lie, and comfort
himself with an imagination of his master’s ignorance, as long as God
knows it? Whatsoever works men do, are not hid from God, whether done
in the darkness or daylight, in the midnight darkness, or the noon‑day
sun: he is all eye to see, and he hath a great wrath to punish. The
wheels of Ezekiel are full of eyes: a piercing eye to behold the
sinner, and a swift wheel of wrath to overtake him. God is light, and
of all things light is most difficultly kept out. The secretest sins
are set in the light of his countenance (Ps. xc. 8), as legible to him,
as if written with a sun‑beam; more visible to him than the greatest
print to the sharpest eye. The fornications of the Samaritan woman,
perhaps known only to her own conscience, were manifest to Christ
(John iv. 16.) There is nothing so secretly done, but there is an
infallible witness to prepare {a492} a charge. Though God be invisible
to us, we must not imagine we are so to him; it is a vanity, therefore,
to think that we can conceal ourselves from God, by concealing the
notions of God from our sense and practice. If men be as close from
the eyes of all men, as from those of the sun, yea, if they could
separate themselves from their own shadow, they could not draw
themselves from God’s understanding: how, then, can darkness shelter
us, or crafty artifices defend us? With what shame will sinners be
filled, when God, who hath traced their steps, and writ their sins in
a book, shall make a repetition of their ways, and unveil the web of
their wickedness!
2. What a dreadful consideration is this to the juggling
hypocrite, that masks himself with an appearance of piety? An infinite
understanding judges not according to veils and shadows, but according
to truth; “He judges not according to appearance” (1 Sam. xvi. 7). The
outward comeliness of a work imposeth not on him, his knowledge, and
therefore his estimations are quite of another nature than those of
men. By this perfection God looks through the veil, and beholds the
litter of abominations in the secrets of the soul; the true quality
and principle of every work, and judges of them as they are, and not
as they appear. Disguised pretexts cannot deceive him; the disguises
are known afar off, before they are weaved; he pierceth into the
depths of the most abstruse wills; all secret ends are dissected
before him; every action is naked in its outside, and open in its
inside; all are as clear to him as if their bodies were of crystal;
so that if there be any secret reserves, he will certainly reprove us
(Job xiii. 10). We are often deceived; we may take wolves for sheep,
and hypocrites for believers; for the eyes of men are no better
than flesh, and dive no further than appearance; but an infinite
understanding, that fathoms the secret depths of the heart, is too
knowing to let a dream pass for a truth, or mistake a shadow for
a body. Though we call God Father all our days, speak the language
of angels, or be endowed with the gifts of miracles, he can discern
whether we have his mark upon us; he can espy the treason of Judas
in a kiss; Herod’s intent of murdering under a specious pretence of
worship; a Pharisee’s fraud under a broad phylactery; a ravenous wolf
under the softness of a sheep’s skin; and the devil in Samuel’s mantle,
or when he would shroud himself among the sons of God (Job i. 6, 7).
All the rooms of the heart, and every atom of dust in the least chink
of it, is clear to his eye; he can strip sin from the fairest excuses,
pierce into the heart with more ease than the sun can through the
thinnest cloud or vapor; and look through all Ephraim’s ingenuous
inventions to excuse his idolatry (Hos. v. 3). Hypocrisy, then,
is a senseless thing, since it cannot escape unmasking, by an
infinite understanding. As all our force cannot stop his arm, when
he is resolved to punish, so all our sophistry cannot blind his
understanding, when he comes to judge. Woe to the hypocrite, for God
sees him; all his juggling is open and naked to infinite understanding.
3. Is it not also a senseless thing to be careless of sins committed
long ago? The old sins forgotten by men, stick fast in an infinite
{a493} understanding: time cannot rase out that which hath been known
from eternity. Why should they be forgotten many years after they
were acted, since they were foreknown in an eternity before they were
committed, or the criminal capable to practise them? Amalek must pay
their arrears of their ancient unkindness to Israel in the time of
Saul, though the generation that committed them were rotten in their
graves (1 Sam. xv. 2). Old sins are written in a book, which lies
always before God; and not only our own sins, but the sins of our
fathers, to be requited upon their posterity.[758] What a vanity
is it then to be regardless of the sins of an age that went before
us! because they are in some measure out of our knowledge, are they
therefore blotted out of God’s remembrance? Sins are bound up with him,
as men do bonds, till they resolve to sue for the debt; the iniquity
of Ephraim is bound up (Hos. xiii. 12). As his foreknowledge extends
to all acts that shall be done, so his remembrance extends to all acts
that have been done. We may as well say, God foreknows nothing that
shall be done to the end of the world, as that he forgets anything
that hath been done from the beginning of the world. The former ages
of the world are no further distant from him than the latter. God hath
a calendar (as it were) or an account book of men’s sins ever since
the beginning of the world, what they did in their childhood, what in
their youth, what in their manhood, and what in their old age: he hath
them in store among his treasures (Deut. xxxii. 34): he hath neither
lost his understanding to know them, nor his resolution to revenge
them: as it follows, “to me vengeance belongs” (ver. 35). He intends
to enrich his justice with a glorious manifestation, by rendering
a due recompense. And it is to be observed, that God doth not only
necessarily remember them, but sometimes binds himself by an oath to
do it (Amos viii. 7); “The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob,
Surely I will never forget any of their works.” Or, in the Hebrew, “If
I ever forget any of their works;” that is, let me not be accounted
a God forever, if I do forget; let me lose my godhead, if I lose
my remembrance. It is not less a misery to the wicked, than it is
a comfort to the godly, that their record is in heaven.
4. Let it be observed, that this infinite understanding doth exactly
know the sins of men; he knows so as to consider. He doth not only
know them, but intently behold them (Ps. xi. 4): “His eyelids try the
children of men,” a metaphor taken from men that contract the eyelids,
when they would wistly and accurately behold a thing; it is not a
transient and careless look (Ps. x. 14): “Thou hast seen it;” thou
hast intently beheld it, as the word properly signifies: he beholds
and knows the actions of every particular man, as if there were none
but he in the world; and doth not only know, but ponder (Prov. v. 21),
and consider their works (Ps. xxxiii. 15); he is not a bare spectator,
but a diligent observer (1 Sam. ii. 3); “By him actions are weighed:”
to see what degree of good or evil there is in them, what there is to
blemish them, what to advantage them, what the quality and quantity of
every action is. Consideration takes in every {a494} circumstance of
the considered object: notice is taken of the place where, the minute
when, the mercy against which it is committed; the number of them is
exact in God’s book: “They have tempted me now these ten times” (Numb.
xiv. 22), against the demonstrations of my glory in Egypt and the
wilderness. The whole guilt in every circumstance is spread before him:
his knowledge of men’s sins is not confused; such an imperfection an
infinite understanding cannot be subject to: it is exact, for iniquity
is marked before him (Jer. ii. 22).
5. God knows men’s miscarriage so as to judge. This use his
omniscience is put to, to maintain his sovereign authority in the
exercise of his justice. His notice of the sins of men is in order to
a just retribution (Ps. x. 14): “Thou hast seen mischief to requite
it with thy hand.” The eye of his knowledge directs the hand of his
justice; and no sinful action that falls under his cognizance, but
will fall under his revenge; they can as little escape his censure as
they can his knowledge: he is a witness in his omniscience, that he
may be a judge in his righteousness; he knows the hearts of the wicked,
so as to hate their works, and testify his abhorrency of that which
is of high value with men (Luke xvi. 15). Sin is not preserved in
his understanding, or written down in his book to be moth‑eaten as
an old manuscript, but to be opened one day, and copied out in the
consciences of men: he writes them to publish them, and sets them
in the light of his countenance, to bring them to the light of their
consciences. What a terrible consideration is it, to think that the
sins of a day are upon record in an infallible understanding, much
more the sins of a week; what a number, then, do the sins of a month,
a year, ten or forty years, arise to! How many actions against charity,
against sincerity! what an infinite number is there of them, all bound
up in the court rolls of God’s omniscience, in order to a trial, to
be brought out before the eyes of men! Who can seriously consider all
those bonds, reserved in the cabinet of God’s knowledge, to be sued
out against the sinner in due time, without an inexpressible horror?
_Use IV._ is of exhortation. Let us have a sense of God’s knowledge
upon our hearts. All wickedness hath a spring from a want of due
consideration and sense of it. David concludes it so (Ps. lxxxvi. 14),
“the proud rose against him, and violent men sought after his soul,
because they did not set God before them.” They think God doth not
know, and therefore care not what, nor how they act. When the fear
of this attribute is removed, a door is opened to all impiety.
What is there so villanous, but the minds of men will attempt to
act? What reverence of a Deity can be left, when the sense of his
infinite understanding is extinguished? What faith could there be in
judgments in witnesses? How would the foundations of human society be
overturned; the pillars upon which commerce stands, be utterly broken
and dissolved! What society can be preserved, if this be not truly
believed, and faithfully stuck to! But how easily would oaths be
swallowed and quickly violated, if the sense of this perfection were
rooted out of the minds of men! What fear could they have of calling
to witness a Being they imagine blind and ignorant? {a495} Men
secretly imagine, that God knows not, or soon forgets, and then make
bold to sin against him (Ezek. viii. 12). How much does it therefore
concern us to cherish and keep alive the sense of this? “If God writes
us upon the palms of his hands,” as the expression is, to remember us,
let us engrave him upon the tables of our hearts to remember him. It
would be a good motto to write upon our minds, God knows all, he is of
infinite understanding.
1. This would give check to much iniquity. Can a man’s conscience
easily and delightfully swallow that which he is sensible falls under
the cognizance of God, when it is hateful to the eyes of his holiness,
and renders the actor odious to him? “Doth he not see my ways, and
count all my steps,” saith Job (xxxi. 4)? To what end doth he fix
this consideration? To keep him from wanton glances; temptations have
no encouragement to come near him, that is constantly armed with the
thoughts that his sin is booked in God’s omniscience. If any impudent
devil hath the face to tempt us, we should not have the impudence to
join issue with him under the sense of an infinite understanding. How
fruitless would his wiles be against this consideration! How easily
would his snares be cracked by one sensible thought of this! This doth
Solomon prescribe to allay the heat of carnal imaginations (Prov. v.
20, 21). It were a useful question to ask, at the appearance of every
temptation, at the entrance upon every action, as the church did in
temptations to idolatry (Ps. xliv. 21): “Shall not God search this out,
for he knows the secrets of the heart?” His understanding comprehends
us more than our consciences can our acts, or our understanding our
thoughts. Who durst speak treason against a prince, if he were sure
he heard him, or that it would come to his knowledge? A sense of God’s
knowledge of wickedness in the first motion, and inward contrivance,
would bar the accomplishment and execution. The consideration of God’s
infinite understanding would cry _stand_ to the first glances of the
heart to sin.
2. It would make us watchful over our hearts and thoughts. Should we
harbor any unworthy thoughts in our cabinet, if our heads and hearts
were possessed with this useful truth, that God knows everything which
comes into our minds (Ezek. xi. 5)? We should as much blush at the
rising of impure thoughts before the understanding of God, as at the
discovery of unworthy actions to the knowledge of men, if we lived
under a sense, that not a thought of all those millions, which flutter
about our minds, can be concealed from him. How watchful and careful
should we be of our hearts and thoughts!
3. It would be a good preparation to every duty. This consideration
should be the preface to every service; the Divine understanding
knows how I now act. This would engage us to serious intention, and
quell wandering and distracting fancies. Who would come before God,
with a careless and ignorant soul, under a sense of his infinite
understanding, and prerogative of searching the heart? “O thou that
sittest in heaven!” was a consideration the psalmist had at the
beginning of his prayer (Ps. cxxiii. 1): whereby he testifies not only
an apprehension of the majesty and power of God, but of his {a496}
omniscience; as one sitting above, beholds all that is below; would we
offer to God such raw and undigested petitions? would there be so much
flatness in our services? should our hearts so often give us the slip?
would any hang down their heads like a bulrush, by an affected or
counterfeit humility, while the heart is filled with pride, if we did
actuate faith in this attribute? No; our prayers would be more sound,
our devotions more vigorous, our hearts more close, our spirits like
the chariots of Aminadab, more swift in their motions: everything
would be done by us with all our might, which would be very feeble
and faint, if we conceived God to be of a finite understanding like
ourselves. Let us therefore, before every duty, not draw, but open the
curtains between God and our souls, and think that we are going before
him that sees us, before him that knows us (Gen. xvi. 12). And the
stronger impressions of the Divine knowledge are upon our minds, the
better would our preparation be for, and the more active our frames in
every service: and certainly we may judge of the suitableness of our
preparations, by the strength of such impressions upon us.
4. This would tend to make us sincere in our whole course. This
prescription David gave to Solomon, to maintain a soundness and
health of spirit in his walk before God (1 Chron. xxviii. 9): “And
thou, Solomon, my son, know the God of thy fathers, and serve him
with a perfect heart, for the Lord understands all the imaginations
of the thoughts.” Josephus gives this reason for Abel’s holiness,
that he believed God was ignorant of nothing.[759] As the doctrine of
omniscience is the foundation of all religion, so the impression of
it would promote the practice of all religion. When all our ways are
imagined by us to be before the Lord, we shall then keep his precepts
(Ps. cxix. 168). And we can never be perfect or sincere till we “walk
before God” (Gen. xvii. 1); as under the eye of God’s knowledge. What
we speak, what we think, what we act, is in his sight; he knows every
place where we are, everything that we do, as well as Christ knew
Nathaniel under the fig‑tree. As he is too powerful to be vanquished,
so he is too understanding to be deceived; the sense of this would
make us walk with as much care, as if the understanding of all men did
comprehend us and our actions.
5. The consideration of this attribute would make us humble. How
dejected would a person be if he were sure all the angels in heaven
and men upon earth, did perfectly know his crimes, with all their
aggravations! But what is created knowledge to an infinite and just
censuring understanding! When we consider that he knows our actions,
whereof there are multitudes, and our thoughts, whereof there are
millions; that he views all the blessings bestowed upon us; all the
injuries we have returned to him; that he exactly knows his own bounty,
and our ingratitude; all the idolatry, blasphemy, and secret enmity
in every man’s heart against him; all tyrannical oppressions, hidden
lusts, omissions of necessary duties, violations of plain precepts,
every foolish imagination, with all the circumstances of them, and
that perfectly in their full anatomy, every mite of unworthiness and
wickedness in every circumstance; and {a497} add to this his knowledge,
the wonders of his patience, which are miraculous upon the score of
his omniscience, that he is not as quick in his revenge as he is in
his understanding, but is so far from inflicting punishment, that
he continues his former benefits, arms not his justice against us,
but solicits our repentance, and waits to be gracious with all this
knowledge of our crimes; should not the consideration of this melt
our hearts into humiliation before him, and make us earnest in begging
pardon and forgiveness of him? Again, do we not all find a worm in
our best fruit, a flaw in our soundest duties? Shall any of us vaunt,
as if God beheld only the gold, and not any dross; as if he knew one
thing only, and not another? If we knew something by ourselves to
cheer us, do we not also know something, yea, many things, to condemn
us, and therefore to humble us? Let the sense of God’s infinite
knowledge, therefore, be an incentive and argument for more
humiliation in us. If we know enough to render ourselves vile in our
own eyes, how much more doth God know to render us vile in his!
6. The consideration of this excellent perfection should make us to
acquiesce in God, and rely upon him in every strait. In public, in
private; he knows all cases, and he knows all remedies; he knows the
seasons of bringing them, and he knows the seasons of removing them,
for his own glory. What is contingent in respect of us, and of our
foreknowledge, and in respect of second causes, is not so in regard
of God’s, who hath the knowledge of the futurition of all things;
he knows all causes in themselves, and, therefore, knows what every
cause will produce, what will be the event of every counsel and of
every action. How should we commit ourselves to this God of infinite
understanding, who knows all things, and foreknows everything;
that cannot be forced through ignorance to take new counsel, or be
surprised with anything that can happen to us! This use the Psalmist
makes of it (Ps. x. 14): “Thou hast seen it, the poor committeth
himself unto thee.” Though “some trust in chariots and horses” (Ps.
xx. 7), some in counsels and counsellors, some in their arms and
courage, and some in mere vanity and nothing; yet, let us remember
the name and nature of the Lord our God, his divine perfections, of
which this of his infinite understanding and omniscience is none of
the least, but so necessary, that without it he could not be God, and
the whole world would be a mere chaos and confusion.
{a498} DISCOURSE IX.
ON THE WISDOM OF GOD.
ROMANS xvi. 27.――To God only wise be glory, through Jesus Christ,
for ever. Amen.
THIS chapter being the last of this Epistle, is chiefly made up of
charitable and friendly salutations and commendations of particular
persons, according to the earliness and strength of their several
graces, and their labor of love for the interest of God and his people.
In verse 17, he warns them not to be drawn aside from the gospel
doctrine, which had been taught them, by the plausible pretences and
insinuations which the corrupters of the doctrine and rule of Christ
never want from the suggestions of their carnal wisdom. The brats of
soul‑destroying errors may walk about the world in a garb and disguise
of good words and fair speeches, as it is in the 18th verse; by “good
words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.” And for
their encouragement to a constancy in the gospel doctrine, he assures
them, that all those that would dispossess them of truth, to possess
them with vanity, are but Satan’s instruments, and will fall under the
same captivity and yoke with their principal (ver. 18); “The God of
peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.” Whence, observe,
1. All corrupters of divine truth, and troublers of the church’s
peace, are no better than devils. Our Saviour thought the name, Satan,
a title merited by Peter, when he breathed out an advice, as an axe
at the root of the gospel, the death of Christ, the foundation of all
gospel truth; and the apostle concludes them under the same character,
which hinder the superstructure, and would mix their chaff with his
wheat (Matt. xvi. 23), “Get thee behind me, Satan.” It is not, Get
thee behind me, Simon, or, Get thee behind me, Peter; but “Get thee
behind me, Satan; thou art an offence to me.” Thou dost oppose thyself
to the wisdom, and grace, and authority of God, to the redemption of
man, and to the good of the world. As the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of
truth, so is Satan the spirit of falsehood: as the Holy Ghost inspires
believers with truth, so doth the devil corrupt unbelievers with error.
Let us cleave to the truth of the gospel, that we may not be counted
by God as part of the corporation of fallen angels, and not be barely
reckoned as enemies of God, but in league with the greatest enemy to
his glory in the world.
2. The Reconciler of the world will be the Subduer of Satan. The God
of peace sent the Prince of peace to be the restorer of his rights,
and the hammer to beat in pieces the usurper of them. As a {a499} God
of truth, he will make good his promise; as a God of peace, he will
perfect the design his wisdom hath laid, and begun to act. In the
subduing Satan, he will be the conqueror of his instruments: he saith
not, God shall bruise your troublers and heretics, but Satan: the fall
of a general proves the rout of the army. Since God, as a God of peace,
hath delivered his own, he will perfect the victory, and make them
cease from bruising the heel of his spiritual seed.
3. Divine evangelical truth shall be victorious. No weapon formed
against it shall prosper: the head of the wicked shall fall as low
as the feet of the godly. The devil never yet blustered in the world,
but he met at last with a disappointment: his fall hath been like
lightning, sudden, certain, vanishing.
4. Faith must look back as far as the foundation promise. “The God
of peace shall bruise,” &c. The apostle seems to allude to the first
promise (Gen. ii. 15),――a promise that hath vigor to nourish the
church in all ages of the world: it is the standing cordial; out
of the womb of this promise all the rest have taken their birth.
The promises of the Old Testament were designed for those under the
New, and the full performance of them is to be expected, and will be
enjoyed by them. It is a mighty strengthening to faith, to trace the
footsteps of God’s truth and wisdom, from the threatening against the
serpent in Eden, to the bruise he received in Calvary, and the triumph
over him upon Mount Olivet.
5. We are to confide in the promise of God, but leave the season of
its accomplishment to his wisdom. He will “bruise Satan under your
feet,” therefore do not doubt it; and shortly, therefore, wait for it.
Shortly it will be done, that is, quickly, when you think it may be a
great way off; or shortly, that is, seasonably, when Satan’s rage is
hottest. God is the best judge of the seasons of distributing his own
mercies, and darting out his own glory: it is enough to encourage our
waiting, that it will be, and that it will be shortly; but we must not
measure God’s shortly by our minutes.
The apostle after this, concludes with a comfortable prayer, that
since they were liable to many temptations to turn their backs upon
the doctrine which they had learned; yet he desires God, who had
brought them to the knowledge of his truth, would confirm them in the
belief of it, since it was the gospel of Christ, his dear Son, and
a mystery he had been chary of and kept in his own cabinet, and now
brought forth to the world in pursuance of the ancient prophesies, and
now had published to all nations for that end that it might be obeyed;
and concludes with a doxology, a voice of praise, to Him, who was only
wise to effect his own purposes (ver. 25, 26, 27), “Now to him that
is of power to establish you according to my gospel, and the preaching
of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was
kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest, and by
the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the
everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.
” This doxology is interlaced with many comforts for the Romans. He
explains the causes of this glory to God, power, and wisdom; power to
establish the Romans in grace, which includes his will. This he proves
from a {a500} divine testimony, viz., the gospel; the gospel committed
to him, and preached by him, which he commends, by calling it the
preaching of Christ; and describes it, for the instruction and comfort
of the church from the adjuncts, the obscurity of it under the Old
Testament, and the clearness of it under the New. It was hid from
the former ages, and kept in silence; not simply and absolutely, but
comparatively and in part; because in the Old Testament, the doctrine
of salvation by Christ was confined to the limits of Judea, preached
only to the inhabitants of that country: to them he gave “his statutes
and his judgments, and dealt not so magnificently with any nation” (Ps.
cxlvii. 19, 20); but now he causes it to spring with greater majesty
out of those narrow bounds, and spread its wings about the world.
This manifestation of the gospel he declares, 1. from the subject, All
nations. 2. From the principal efficient cause of it, The commandment
and order of God. 3. The instrumental cause, The prophetic Scriptures.
4. From the end of it, The obedience of faith.[760]
_Observ. 1._ The glorious attributes of God bear a comfortable
respect to believers. Power and wisdom are here mentioned as two props
of their faith; his power here includes his goodness. Power to help,
without will to assist, is a dry chip. The apostle mentions not God’s
power simply and absolutely considered, for that of itself is no more
comfort to men, then it is to devils; but, as considered in the gospel
covenant, his power, as well as his other perfections, are ingredients
in that cordial of God’s being our God. We should never think of the
excellencies of the Divine nature, without considering the duties they
demand, and gathering the honey they present.
_Observ. 2._ The stability of a gracious soul depends upon the
wisdom as well as the power of God. It would be a disrepute to
the Almightiness of God if that should be totally vanquished which
was introduced by his mighty arm, and rooted in the soul by an
irresistible grace. It would speak a want of strength to maintain
it, or a change of resolution, and so would be no honor to the wisdom
of his first design. It is no part of the wisdom of an artificer, to
let a work wherein he determined to shew the greatness of his skill,
be dashed in pieces, when he hath power to preserve it. God designed
every gracious soul for a piece of his workmanship (Eph. ii. 10). What,
to have the skill of his grace defeated? If any soul which he hath
graciously conquered should be wrested from him, what could be thought
but that his power is enfeebled? If deserted by him, what could be
imagined, but that he repented of his labor, and altered his counsel,
as if rashly undertaken? These Romans were rugged pieces, and lay in a
filthy quarry, when God came first to smooth them; for so the apostle
represents them with the rest of the heathen (Rom. i. 19); and would
he throw them away, or leave them to the power of his enemy, after
all his pains he had taken with them to fit them for his building? Did
he not foresee the designs of Satan against them, what stratagems he
would use to defeat his purposes and strip him of the honor of his
work; and would God so gratify his enemy, and disgrace his own wisdom?
The {a501} deserting of what hath been acted is a real repentance, and
argues an imprudence in the first resolve and attempt. The gospel is
called the manifold wisdom of God (Eph. iii. 10); the fruit of it, in
the heart of any person, which is a main design of it, hath a title to
the same character; and shall this grace, which is the product of this
gospel, and therefore the birth of manifold wisdom, be suppressed? It
is at God’s hand we must seek our fixedness and establishment, and act
faith upon these two attributes of God. Power is no ground to expect
stability, without wisdom interesting the agent in it, and finding
out and applying the means for it. Wisdom is naked without power to
act, and power is useless without wisdom to direct. They are these two
excellencies of the Deity the apostle here pitches the hope and faith
of the converted Romans upon for their stability.
_Observ. 3._ Perseverance of believers in grace is a gospel
doctrine. “According to my gospel,” my gospel ministerially, according
to that gospel doctrine I have taught you in this epistle (for, as
the prophets were comments upon the law, so are the epistles upon the
gospel), this very doctrine he had discoursed of (Rom. viii. 38, 39),
where he tells them, that neither death nor life, the terrors of a
cruel death, or the allurements of an honorable and pleasant life, nor
principalities and powers, with all their subtelty and strength, nor
the things we have before us, nor the promises of a future felicity,
by either angels in heaven or devils in hell, not the highest angel,
nor the deepest devil, is able to separate us, us Romans, “from the
love of God which is in Christ Jesus.” So that, according to my gospel,
may be according to that declaration of the gospel, which I have made
in this epistle, which doth not only promise the first creating grace,
but the perfecting and crowning grace; for not only the being of grace,
but the health, liveness, and perpetuity of grace is the fruit of the
new covenant (Jer. xxxii. 40.)
_Observ. 4._ That the gospel is the sole means of a Christian’s
establishment; “According to my gospel,” that is, by my gospel. The
gospel is the instrumental cause of our spiritual life; it is the
cause also of the continuance of it; it is the seed whereby we were
born, and the milk whereby we are nourished (1 Pet. i. 23); it is
the “power of God to salvation” (1 Pet. ii. 2), and therefore to all
the degrees of it (John xvii. 17); “Sanctify them by thy truth,” or
through thy truth; by or through his truth he sanctifies us, and by
the same truth he establisheth us. The first sanctification, and the
progress of it, the first lineaments, and the last colors, are wrought
by the gospel. The gospel, therefore, ought to be known, studied,
and considered by us. It is the charter of our inheritance, and the
security for our standing. The law acquaints us with our duty, but
contributes nothing to our strength and settlement.
_Observ. 5._ The gospel is nothing else but the revelation of Christ
(ver. 25); “According to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ;”
the discovery of the mystery of redemption and salvation in and by him.
It is _genitivus objecti_, that preaching wherein Christ is declared
and set out, with the benefits accruing by him. This is the privilege,
the wisdom of God reserved for the latter times, which the Old
Testament church had only under a veil.
{a502} _Observ. 6._ It is a part of the excellency of the gospel
that it had the Son of God for its publisher: “The preaching of Jesus
Christ.” It was first preached to Adam, in Paradise, by God; and
afterwards published by Christ in person, to the inhabitants of Judea.
It was not the invention of man, but copied from the bosom of the
Father by him that lay in his bosom. The gospel we have, is the
same which our Saviour himself preached when he was in the world:
he preached it not to the Romans, but the same gospel he preached
is transmitted to the Romans. It, therefore, commands our respect;
whoever slights it, it is as much as if he slighted Jesus Christ
himself, were he in person to sound it from his own lips. The validity
of a proclamation is derived from the authority of the prince that
dictates it and orders it; yet the greater the person that publisheth
it, the more dishonor is cast upon the authority of the prince that
enjoins it, if it be contemned. The everlasting God ordained it, and
the eternal Son published it.
_Observ. 7._ The gospel was of an eternal resolution, though of
a temporary revelation (ver. 25); “According to the revelation of
the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began.” It is an
everlasting gospel; it was a promise “before the world began” (Titus
i. 2). It was not a new invention, but only kept secret among the
arcana, in the breast of the Almighty. It was hidden from angels, for
the depths of it are not yet fully made known to them; their desire
to look into it, speaks yet a deficiency in their knowledge of it
(1 Peter, i. 12). It was published in paradise, but in such words as
Adam did not fully understand: it was both discovered and clouded in
the smoke of sacrifices: it was wrapped up in a veil under the law,
but not opened till the death of the Redeemer: it was then plainly
said to the cities of Judah, “Behold! your God comes!” The whole
transaction of it between the Father and the Son, which is the spirit
of the gospel, was from eternity; the creation of the world was
in order to the manifestation of it. Let us not, then, regard the
gospel as a novelty; the consideration of it, as one of God’s cabinet
rarities, should enhance our estimation of it. No traditions of men,
no inventions of vain wits, that pretend to be wiser than God, should
have the same credit with that which bears date from eternity.
_Observ. 8._ That divine truth is mysterious; “According to the
revelation of the mystery, Christ manifested in the flesh.” The whole
scheme of godliness is a mystery. No man or angel could imagine how two
natures so distant as the Divine and human should be united; how the
same person should be criminal and righteous; how a just God should
have a satisfaction, and sinful man a justification; how the sin should
be punished, and the sinner saved. None could imagine such a way of
justification as the apostle in this epistle declares: it was a mystery
when hid under the shadows of the law, and a mystery to the prophets
when it sounded from their mouths; they searched it, without being able
to comprehend it (1 Peter, i. 10, 11.) If it be a mystery, it is humbly
to be submitted to: mysteries surmount human reason. The study of
the gospel must not be with a yawning and careless frame. Trades, you
{a503} call mysteries, are not learned sleeping and nodding: diligence
is required; we must be disciples at God’s feet. As it had God for
the author, so we must have God for the teacher of it; the contrivance
was his, and the illumination of our minds must be from him. As God
only manifested the gospel, so he can only open our eyes to see the
mysteries of Christ in it. In verse 26 we may observe,
1. The Scriptures of the Old Testament verify the substance of the New,
and the New doth evidence the authority of the Old, by the Scriptures
of the prophets made known. The Old Testament credits the New, and
the New illustrates the Old. The New Testament is a comment upon the
prophetic part of the Old. The Old shews the promises and predictions
of God, and the New shews the performance. What was foretold in the Old,
is fulfilled in the New; the predictions are cleared by the events. The
predictions of the Old are divine, because they are above the reason
of man to foreknow; none but an infinite knowledge could foretel
them, because none but an infinite wisdom could order all things for
the accomplishment of them. The Christian religion hath, then, the
surest foundation, since the Scriptures of the prophets, wherein it
is foretold, are of undoubted antiquity, and owned by the Jews and
many heathens, which are and were the great enemies of Christ. The Old
Testament is therefore to be read for the strengthening of our faith.
Our blessed Saviour himself draws the streams of his doctrine from
the Old Testament: he clears up the promise of eternal life, and the
doctrine of the resurrection, from the words of the covenant, “I am
the God of Abraham,” &c. (Matt. xxii. 32.) And our apostle clears up
the doctrine of justification by faith from God’s covenant with Abraham
(Rom. iv.) It must be read, and it must be read as it is writ: it was
writ to a gospel end, it must be studied with a gospel spirit. The
Old Testament was writ to give credit to the New, when it should be
manifested in the world. It must be read by us to give strength to
our faith, and establish us in the doctrine of Christianity. How many
view it as a bare story, an almanack out of date, and regard it as a
dry bone, without sucking from it the evangelical marrow! Christ is,
in Genesis, Abraham’s seed; in David’s psalms and the prophets, the
Messiah and Redeemer of the world.
2. Observe, The antiquity of the gospel is made manifest by the
Scriptures of the prophets. It was of as ancient a date as any prophecy:
the first prophecy was nothing else but a gospel charter; it was not
made at the incarnation of Christ, but made manifest. It then rose
up to its meridian lustre, and sprung out of the clouds, wherewith
it was before obscured. The gospel was preached to the ancients by
the prophets, as well as to the Gentiles by the apostles (Heb. iv. 2);
“Unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them.” To them first,
to us after; to them indeed more cloudy, to us more clear; but they
as well as we, were evangelized, as the word signifies. The covenant
of grace was the same in the writings of the prophets, and the
declarations of the evangelists and apostles. Though by our Saviour’s
incarnation, the gospel light was clearer, and by his ascension, the
effusions of the Spirit {a504} fuller and stronger; yet the believers
under the Old Testament, saw Christ in the swaddling bands of legal
ceremonies, and the lattice of prophetical writings; they could not
else offer one sacrifice, or read one prophecy with a faith of the
right stamp. Abraham’s justifying faith had Christ for its object,
though it was not so explicit as ours, because the manifestation was
not so clear as ours.
3. All truth is to be drawn from Scripture. The apostle refers them
here to the gospel and the prophets: the Scripture is the source of
divine knowledge; not the traditions of men, nor reason separate from
Scripture. Whosoever brings another doctrine, coins another Christ;
nothing is to be added to what is written, nothing detracted from it.
He doth not send us for truth, to the puddles of human inventions, to
the enthusiasms of our brain; not to the See of Rome, no, nor to the
instructions of angels; but the writings of the prophets, as they clear
up the declarations of the apostles. The church of Rome is not made
here the standard of truth: but the Scriptures of the prophets are to
be the touch‑stone to the Romans, for the trial of the truth of the
gospel.
4. How great is the goodness of God! The borders of grace are
enlarged to the Gentiles, and not hid under the skirts of the Jews.
He that was so long the God of the Jews, is now also manifest to be
the God of the Gentiles: the gospel is now made known to all nations,
according to the commandment of the everlasting God. Not only in a
way of common providence, but special grace; in calling them to the
knowledge of himself, and a justification of them by faith, he hath
brought strangers to him, to the adoption of children, and lodged them
under the wings of the covenant, that were before alienated from him
through the universal corruption of nature. Now he hath manifested
himself a God of truth, mindful of his promise in blessing all nations
in the seed of Abraham. The fury of devils, and the violence of men
could not hinder the propagation of the gospel: its light hath been
dispersed as far as that of the sun; and that grace that founded in the
Gentile’s ears, hath bent many of their hearts to the obedience of it.
5. Observe that libertinism and licentiousness find no encouragement
in the gospel. It was made known to all nations for the obedience of
faith. The goodness of God is published, that our enmity to him may
be parted with. Christ’s righteousness is not offered to us to be put
on, that we may roll more warmly in our lusts. The doctrine of grace
commands us to give up ourselves to Christ, to be accepted through him,
and to be ruled by him. Obedience is due to God, as a sovereign lord in
his law; and it is due out of gratitude, as he is a God of grace in the
gospel. The discovery of a further perfection in God weakens not the
right of another, nor the obligation of the duty the former attribute
claims at our hands. The gospel frees us from the curse, but not from
the duty and service: “We are delivered from the hands of our enemies,
that we might serve God in holiness and righteousness” (Luke i. 74).
“This is the will of God” in the gospel, “even our sanctification.”
When a prince strikes off a malefactor’s chains, though he deliver
him from the punishment of his crime, he frees him not from the duty
of {a505} a subject: his pardon adds a greater obligation than his
protection did before, while he was loyal. Christ’s righteousness gives
us a title to heaven; but there must be a holiness to give us a fitness
for heaven.
6. Observe, that evangelical obedience, or the obedience of Faith, is
only acceptable to God. Obedience of faith; _genitivus speciei_, noting
the kind of obedience God requires; an obedience springing from faith,
animated and influenced by faith. Not obedience of faith, as though
faith were the rule, and the law were abrogated; but to the law as a
rule, and from faith as a principle. There is no true obedience before
faith (Heb. xi. 6.) “Without faith it is impossible to please God;”
and therefore without faith impossible to obey him. A good work cannot
proceed from a defiled mind and conscience; and without faith every
man’s mind is darkened, and his conscience polluted (Tit. i. 15). Faith
is the band of union to Christ, and obedience is the fruit of union;
we cannot bring forth fruit without being branches (John xv. 4, 5),
and we cannot be branches without believing. Legitimate fruit follows
upon marriage to Christ, not before it (Rom. vii. 4). “That you should
be married to another, even to him that is raised from the dead, that
you should bring forth fruit unto God.” All fruit before marriage is
bastard, and bastards were excluded from the sanctuary. Our persons
must be first accepted in Christ, before our services can be acceptable;
those works are not acceptable where the person is not pardoned. Good
works flow from a pure heart; but the heart cannot be pure before faith.
All the good works reckoned up in the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews
were from this spring; those heroes first believed and then obeyed. By
faith Abel was righteous before God, without it his sacrifice had been
no better than Cain’s: by faith Enoch pleased God, and had a divine
testimony to his obedience before his translation; by faith Abraham
offered up Isaac, without which he had been no better than a murderer.
All obedience hath its root in faith, and is not done in our own
strength, but in the strength and virtue of another, of Christ, whom
God hath set forth as our head and root.
7. Observe, faith and obedience are distinct, though inseparable:
“The obedience of faith.” Faith, indeed, is obedience to a gospel
command, which enjoins us to believe; but it is not all our
obedience. Justification and sanctification are distinct acts of
God; justification respects the person, sanctification the nature;
justification is first in order of nature, and sanctification follows:
they are distinct, but inseparable; every justified person hath a
sanctified nature, and every sanctified nature supposeth a justified
person. So faith and obedience are distinct: faith as the principle,
obedience as the product; faith as the cause, obedience as the effect;
the cause and the effect are not the same. By faith we own Christ as
our Lord: by obedience we regulate ourselves according to his command.
The acceptance of the relation to him as a subject, precedes the
performance of our duty: by faith we receive his law, and by obedience
we fulfil it. Faith makes us God’s children (Gal. iii. 26). Obedience
manifests us to be Christ’s disciples (John xv. 8). Faith is {a506}
the touchstone of obedience; the touchstone, and that which is tried
by it, are not the same. But though they are distinct, yet they are
inseparable. Faith and obedience are joined together; obedience follows
faith at the heels. Faith purifies the heart, and a pure heart cannot
be without pure actions. Faith unites us to Christ, whereby we partake
of his life; and a living branch cannot be without fruit in its season,
and “much fruit” (John xv. 5), and that naturally from a “newness of
spirit” (Rom. vii. 9); not constrained by the rigors of the law, but
drawn forth from a sweetness of love; for faith works by love. The
love of God is the strong motive, and love to God is the quickening
principle; as there can be no obedience without faith, so no
faith without obedience. After all this, the apostle ends with the
celebration of the wisdom of God; “To God only wise, be glory, through
Jesus Christ forever.” The rich discovery of the gospel cannot be
thought of, by a gracious soul, without a return of praise to God, and
admiration of his singular wisdom.
_Wise God._ His power before, and his wisdom here, are mentioned in
conjunction (in which his goodness is included, as interested in his
establishing power) as the ground of all the glory and praise God hath
from his creatures.
_Only wise._ As Christ saith (Matt. xix. 17), “None is good, but God;”
so the apostle saith, None wise, but God. As all creatures are unclean
in regard of his purity, so they are all fools in regard of his wisdom;
yea, the glorious angels themselves (Job iv. 18). Wisdom is the royalty
of God; the proper dialect of all his ways and works. No creature can
lay claim to it; he is so wise, that he is wisdom itself.
_Be glory, through Jesus Christ._ As God is only known in and by
Christ, so he must be only worshipped and celebrated in and through
Christ. In him we must pray to him, and in him we must praise him. As
all mercies flow from God through Christ to us, so all our duties are
to be presented to God through Christ. In the Greek, _verbatim_, it
runs thus: “To the alone wise God, through Jesus Christ, to him be
glory forever.” But we must not understand it, as if God were wise by
Jesus Christ, but that thanks is to be given to God through Christ;
because in and by Christ God hath revealed his wisdom to the world.
The Greek hath a repetition of the article ᾧ, and expressed in the
translation, “To him be glory.” Beza expungeth this article, but
without reason, for ᾧ is as much as αὐτῷ, “to him;” and joining
this, “the only wise God” with ver. 25, “to him that is of power to
establish you;” reading it thus, “To him that is of power to establish
you, the only wise God,” leaving the rest in a parenthesis, it runs
smoothly, “to him be glory, through Jesus Christ,” And Crellius, the
Socinian, observes, that this article ᾧ, which some leave out, might
be industriously inserted by the apostle, to shew that the glory we
ascribe to God is also given to Christ. We may observe, that neither in
this place, nor any where in Scripture, is the Virgin Mary, or any of
the saints, associated with God or Christ in the glory ascribed to them.
In the words there is, 1. An appropriation of wisdom to God, and
{a507} a remotion of it from all creatures; “only wise God.” 2. A
glorifying him for it. The point I shall insist upon is, That wisdom is
a transcendant excellency of the Divine nature. We have before spoken
of the knowledge of God, and the infiniteness of it; the next attribute
is the wisdom of God. Most confound the knowledge and wisdom of God
together; but there is a manifest distinction between them in our
conception. I shall handle it thus: I. Shew what wisdom is. Then
lay down, II. Some propositions about the wisdom of God. And shew,
III. That God is wise, and only wise. IV. Wherein his wisdom appears.
V. The Use.
I. What wisdom is. Wisdom, among the Greeks, first signified an
eminent perfection in any art or mystery; so a good statuary, engraver,
or limner, was called wise, as having an excellent knowledge in his
particular art. But afterwards the title of wise was appropriated
to those that devoted themselves to the contemplation of the highest
things that served for a foundation to speculative sciences.[761] But
ordinarily we count a man a wise man, when he conducts his affairs
with discretion, and governs his passions with moderation, and carries
himself with a due proportion and harmony in all his concerns. But in
particular, wisdom consists,
1. In acting for a right end. The chiefest part of prudence is in
fixing a right end, and in choosing fit means, and directing them to
that scope; to shoot at random is a mark of folly. As he is the wisest
man that hath the noblest end and fittest means, so God is infinitely
wise; as he is the most excellent being, so he hath the most excellent
end. As there is none more excellent than himself, nothing can be his
end but himself; as he is the cause of all, so he is the end of all;
and he puts a true bias into all the means he useth to hit the mark
he aims at: “Of him, and through him, and to him, are all things”
(Rom. xi. 36).
2. Wisdom consists in observing all circumstances for action. He is
counted a wise man that lays hold of the fittest opportunities to bring
his designs about, that hath the fullest foresight of all the little
intrigues which may happen in a business he is to manage, and times
every part of his action in an exact harmony with the proper minutes of
it. God hath all the circumstances of things in one entire image before
him; he hath a prospect of every little creek in any design. He sees
what second causes will act, and when they will act this or that; yea,
he determines them to such and such acts; so that it is impossible he
should be mistaken, or miss of the due season of bringing about his own
purposes. As he hath more goodness than to deceive any, so he hath more
understanding than to be mistaken in any thing. Hence the time of the
incarnation of our blessed Saviour is called the fulness of time, the
proper season for his coming. Every circumstance about Christ was timed
according to the predictions of God; even so little a thing as not
parting his garment, and the giving him gall and vinegar to drink;
and all the blessings he showers down upon his people, according to
the covenant of grace, are said to come “in his season” (Ezek. xxxiv.
25, 26).
{a508} 3. Wisdom consists in willing and acting according to the
right reason, according to a right judgment of things. We can never
count a wilful man a wise man; but him only that acts according to
a right rule, when right counsels are taken and vigorously executed.
The resolves and ways of God are not mere will, but will guided by the
reason and counsel of his own infinite understanding (Eph. i. 11); “Who
works all things according to the counsel of his own will.” The motions
of the Divine will are not rash, but follow the proposals of the Divine
mind; he chooses that which is fittest to be done, so that all his
works are graceful, and all his ways have a comeliness and decorum in
them. Hence all his ways are said to be “judgment” (Deut. xxxii. 4),
not mere will. Hence it appears, that wisdom and knowledge are two
distinct perfections. Knowledge hath its seat in the speculative
understanding, wisdom in the practical. Wisdom and knowledge are
evidently distinguished as two several gifts of the Spirit in man
(1 Cor. xii. 8); “To one is given, by the Spirit, the word of wisdom;
to another, the word of knowledge, by the same Spirit.” Knowledge is
an understanding of general rules, and wisdom is a drawing conclusions
from those rules in order to particular cases. A man may have the
knowledge of the whole Scripture, and have all learning in the treasury
of his memory, and yet be destitute of skill to make use of them
upon particular occasions, and untie those knotty questions which
may be proposed to him, by a ready application of those rules. Again,
knowledge and wisdom may be distinguished, in our conception, as two
distinct perfections in God: the knowledge of God is his understanding
of all things; his wisdom is the skilful resolving and acting of
all things. And the apostle, in his admiration of him, owns them as
distinct; “O the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge
of God” (Rom. xi. 33)! Knowledge is the foundation of wisdom, and
antecedent to it; wisdom the superstructure upon knowledge: men may
have knowledge without wisdom, but not wisdom without knowledge;
according to our common proverb, “The greatest clerks are not the
wisest men.” All practical knowledge is founded in speculation, either
_secundum rem_, as in a man; or, _secundum rationem_, as in God.
They agree in this, that they are both acts of the understanding; but
knowledge is the apprehension of a thing, and wisdom is the appointing
and ordering of things. Wisdom is the splendor and lustre of knowledge
shining forth in operations, and is an act both of understanding and
will; understanding in counselling and contriving, will in resolving
and executing: counsel and will are linked together (Eph. i. 11).
II. The second thing is to lay down some propositions in general,
concerning the wisdom of God.
First, There is an essential and a personal wisdom of God. The
essential wisdom, is the essence of God; the personal wisdom is the Son
of God. Christ is called Wisdom by himself (Luke vii. 35). The wisdom
of God by the apostle (1 Cor. i. 24). The wisdom I speak of belongs
to the nature of God, and is considered a necessary perfection. The
personal wisdom is called so, because he opens to us the secrets of God.
If the Son were that wisdom whereby the {a509} Father is wise, the Son
would be also the essence whereby the Father is God. If the Son were
the wisdom of the Father, whereby he is essentially wise, the Son would
be the essence of the Father, and the Father would have his essence
from the Son, since the wisdom of God is the essence of God; and so
the Son would be the Father, if the wisdom and power of the Father were
originally in the Son.
Secondly, Therefore the wisdom of God is the same with the essence
of God. Wisdom in God is not a habit added to his essence, as it is
in man, but it is his essence. It is like the splendor of the sun,
the same with the sun itself; or like the brightness of crystal, which
is not communicated to it by anything else, as the brightness of a
mountain is by the beam of the sun, but it is one with the crystal
itself. It is not a habit superadded to the Divine essence; that
would be repugnant to the simplicity of God, and speak him compounded
of divers principles; it would be contrary to the eternity of his
perfections: if he be eternally wise, his wisdom is his essence; for
there is nothing eternal but the essence of God. As the sun melts some
things, and hardens others; blackens some things, and whitens others,
and produceth contrary qualities in different subjects, yet it is
but one and the same quality in the sun, which is the cause of those
contrary operations; so the perfections of God seem to be diverse in
our conceptions, yet they are but one and the same in God.[762] The
wisdom of God, is God acting prudently; as the power of God, is God
acting powerfully; and the justice of God, is God acting righteously;
and therefore it is more truly said, that God is wisdom, justice, truth,
power, than that he is wise, just, true, &c. as if he were compounded
of substance and qualities. All the operations of God proceed from
one simple essence; as all the operations of the mind of man, though
various, proceed from one faculty of understanding.
Thirdly, Wisdom is the property of God alone: He is “only wise.” It
is an honor peculiar to him. Upon the account that no man deserved
the title of wise, but that it was a royalty belonging to God,[763]
Pythagoras would not be called Σόφος, a title given to their learned
men, but Φιλόσοφος. The name philosopher arose out of a respect to this
transcendent perfection of God.
1. God is “only wise” _necessarily_. As he is necessarily God, so he
is necessarily wise; for the notion of wisdom is inseparable from the
notion of a Deity. When we say, God is a Spirit, is true, righteous,
wise; we understand that he is transcendently these, by an intrinsic
and absolute necessity, by virtue of his own essence, without the
efficiency of any other, or any efficiency in and by himself. God doth
not make himself wise, no more than he makes himself God. As he is a
necessary Being in regard of his life, so he is necessarily wise in
regard of his understanding. Synesius saith, that God is essentiated,
οὐσιοῦσθαι, by his understanding. He places the substance of God in
understanding and wisdom: wisdom is the first vital operation of God.
He can no more be unwise than he can be untrue; for folly in the mind
is much the same with falsity in speech. Wisdom among men is gained
by age and experience, furthered by instructions and exercise; but the
wisdom of {a510} God is his nature. As the sun cannot be without light,
while it remains a sun, and as eternity cannot be without immortality,
so neither can God be without wisdom. As he only hath immortality
(1 Tim. vi. 16), not arbitrarily, but necessarily; so he only hath
wisdom: not because he will be wise, but because he cannot but be wise.
He cannot but contrive counsels, and exert operations, becoming the
greatness and majesty of his nature.
2. Therefore “only wise” _originally_. God is αὐτοδίδακτος αὐτόσοφος.
Men acquire wisdom by the loss of their fairest years; but his wisdom
is the perfection of the Divine nature, not the birth of study, or the
growth of experience, but as necessary, as eternal, as his essence. He
goes not out of himself to search wisdom: he needs no more the brains
of creatures in the contrivance of his purposes, than he doth their arm
in the execution of them. He needs no counsel, he receives no counsel
from any (Rom. xi. 34): “Who hath been his counsellor?” and (Isa. xl.
14) “With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, or taught him
in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and showed to him
the path of understanding?” He is the only Fountain of wisdom to others;
angels and men have what wisdom they have, by communication from him.
All created wisdom is a spark of the Divine light, like that of the
stars borrowed from the sun. He that borrows wisdom from another, and
doth not originally possess it in his own nature, cannot properly be
called wise. As God is the only Being, in regard that all other beings
are derived from him, so he is only wise, because all other wisdom
flows from him. He is the spring of wisdom to all; none the original
of wisdom to him.
3. Therefore “only wise” _perfectly_. There is no cloud upon his
understanding. He hath a distinct and certain knowledge of all things
that can fall under action; as he hath a perfect knowledge without
ignorance, so he hath a beautiful wisdom without mole or wart. Men are
wise, yet have not an understanding so vast as to grasp all things,
nor a perspicacity so clear, as to penetrate into the depths of all
being. Angels have more delightful and lively sparks of wisdom, yet so
imperfect, that in regard of the wisdom of God they are charged with
folly (Job iv. 18). Their wisdom as well as their holiness is veiled in
the presence of God. It vanisheth, as the glowing of a fire doth before
the beauty of the sun, or as the light of a candle in the midst of a
sunshine contracts itself, and none of its rays are seen, but in the
body of the flame. The angels are not perfectly wise, because they are
not perfectly knowing: the gospel, the great discovery of God’s wisdom,
was hid from them for ages.
4. Therefore “only wise” _universally_. Wisdom in one man is of one
sort, in another of another sort; one is a wise tradesman, another
a wise statesman, and another a wise philosopher: one is wise in the
business of the world, another is wise in divine concerns. One hath not
so much of plenty of one sort, but he may have a scantiness in another;
one may be wise for invention, and foolish in execution; an artificer
may have skill to frame an engine, and not skill to use it. The ground
that is fit for olives may not be fit {a511} for vines; that will
bear one sort of grain and not another. But God hath an universal
wisdom, because his nature is wise; it is not limited, but hovers over
everything, shines in every being. His executions are as wise as his
contrivances: he is wise in his resolves, and wise in his ways: wise
in all the varieties of his works of creation, government, redemption.
As his will wills all things, and his power effects all things, so
his wisdom is the universal director of the motions of his will, and
the executions of his power: as his righteousness is the measure of
the matter of his actions, so his wisdom is the rule that directs the
manner of his actions. The absolute power of God is not an unruly power:
his wisdom orders all things, so that nothing is done but what is fit
and convenient, and agreeable to so excellent a Being: as he cannot do
an unjust thing because of his righteousness, so he cannot do an unwise
act, because of his infinite wisdom. Though God be not necessitated
to any operation without himself, as to the creation of anything, yet
supposing he will act, his wisdom necessitates him to do that which is
congruous, as his righteousness necessitates him to do that which is
just: so that though the will of God be the principle, yet his wisdom
is the rule of his actions. We must, in our conceiving of the order,
suppose wisdom antecedent to will: none that acknowledges a God can
have such an impious thought as to affix temerity and rashness to
any of his proceedings. All his decrees are drawn out of the infinite
treasury of wisdom in himself.[764] He resolves nothing about any of
his creatures without reason; but the reason of his purposes is in
himself, and springs from himself, and not from the creatures: there
is not one thing that he wills but “he wills by counsel, and works by
counsel” (Eph. i. 11). Counsel writ down every line, every letter, in
his eternal Book; and all the orders are drawn out from thence by his
wisdom and will: what was illustrious in the contrivance, glitters
in the execution. His understanding and will are infinite; what is
therefore the act of his will, is the result of his understanding, and
therefore rational. His understanding and will join hands; there is no
contest in God, will against mind, and mind against will; they are one
in God, one in his resolves, and one in all his works.
5. Therefore he is “only wise” _perpetually_. As the wisdom of man
is got by ripeness of age, so it is lost by decay of years; it is
got by instruction, and lost by dotage. The perfectest minds, when
in the wane, have been darkened with folly: Nebuchadnezzar, that was
wise for a man, became as foolish as a brute. But the Ancient of Days
is an unchangeable possessor of prudence; his wisdom is a mirror of
brightness, without a defacing spot. It was “possessed by him in the
beginning of his ways, before his works of old” (Prov. viii. 22),
and he can never be dispossessed of it in the end of his works. It
is inseparable from him: the being of his Godhead may as soon cease
as the beauty of his mind; “with him is wisdom” (Job xii. 13); it is
inseparable from him; therefore, as durable as his essence. It is a
wisdom infinite, and therefore without increase or decrease in itself.
The experience of so many ages in the government {a512} of the world
hath added nothing to the immensity of it, as the shining of the sun
since the creation of the world hath added nothing to the light of that
glorious body. As ignorance never darkens his knowledge, so folly never
disgraces his prudence. God infatuates men, but neither men nor devils
can infatuate God; he is unerringly wise; his counsel doth not vary and
flatter; it is not one day one counsel, and another day another, but
it stands like an immovable rock, or a mountain of brass. “The counsel
of the Lord stands forever, and the thoughts of his heart to all
generations” (Ps. xxxiii. 11).
6. He is only wise _incomprehensibly_. “His thoughts are deep”
(Ps. xcii. 5); “His judgments unsearchable, his ways past finding out”
(Rom. xi. 33): depths that cannot be fathomed; a splendor more dazzling
to our dim minds than the light of the sun to our weak eyes. The wisdom
of one man may be comprehended by another, and over‑comprehended; and
often men are understood by others to be wiser in their actions than
they understand themselves to be; and the wisdom of one angel may be
measured by another angel of the same perfection. But as the essence,
so the wisdom of God is incomprehensible to any creature; God is
only comprehended by God. The secrets of wisdom in God are double to
the expressions of it in his works (Job xi. 6, 7): “Canst thou, by
searching, find out God?” There is an unfathomable depth in all his
decrees, in all his works; we cannot comprehend the reason of his works,
much less that of his decrees, much less that in his nature; because
his wisdom, being infinite as well as his power, can no more act to the
highest pitch than his power. As his power is not terminated by what he
hath wrought, but he could give further testimonies of it, so neither
is his wisdom, but he could furnish us with infinite expressions and
pieces of his skill. As in regard of his immensity he is not bounded
by the limits of place; in regard of his eternity, not measured by the
minutes of time; in regard of his power, not terminated with this or
that number of objects; so, in regard of his wisdom, he is not confined
to this or that particular mode of working; so that in regard of the
reason of his actions, as well as the glory and majesty of his nature,
he dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim. vi. 16); and whatsoever we
understand of his wisdom in creation and providence, is infinitely less
than what is in himself and his own unbounded nature. Many things in
Scripture are declared chiefly to be the acts of the Divine will, yet
we must not think that they were acts of mere will without wisdom,
but they are represented so to us, because we are not capable of
understanding the infinite reason of its acts: his sovereignty is more
intelligible to us than his wisdom. We can better know the commands of
a superior, and the laws of a prince, than understand the reason that
gave birth to those laws. We may know the orders of the Divine will,
as they are published, but not the sublime reason of his will. Though
election be an act of God’s sovereignty, and he hath no cause from
without to determine him, yet his infinite wisdom stood not silent
while mere dominion acted. Whatsoever God doth, he doth wisely, as well
as sovereignly; though that wisdom which lies in the secret places of
the Divine Being be as incomprehensible to us as the effects of his
{a513} sovereignty and power in the world are visible, God can give
a reason of his proceeding, and that drawn from himself, though we
understand it not. The causes of things visible lie hid from us. Doth
any man know how to distinguish the seminal virtue of a small seed from
the body of it, and in what nook and corner that lies, and what that
is that spreads itself in so fair a plant, and so many flowers? Can we
comprehend the justice of God’s proceedings in the prosperity of the
wicked, and the afflictions of the godly? Yet as we must conclude them
the fruits of an unerring righteousness, so we must conclude all his
actions the fruits of an unspotted wisdom, though the concatenation of
all his counsels is not intelligible to us; for he is as essentially
and necessarily wise, as he is essentially and necessarily good and
righteous. God is not only so wise that nothing more wise can be
conceived, but he is more wise than can be imagined; something greater
in all his perfections than can be comprehended by any creature. It is
a foolish thing, therefore, to question that which we cannot comprehend;
we should adore it instead of disputing against it; and take it for
granted, that God would not order anything, were it not agreeable to
the sovereignty of his wisdom, as well as that of his will. Though
the reason of man proceed from the wisdom of God, yet there is more
difference between the reason of man, and the wisdom of God, than
between the light of the sun, and the feeble shining of the glow‑worm;
yet we presume to censure the ways of God, as if our purblind reason
had a reach above him.
7. God is “only wise” _infallibly_. The wisest men meet with rubs
in the way, that make them fall short of what they aim at; they often
design, and fail; then begin again; and yet all their counsels end in
smoke, and none of them arrive at perfection. If the wisest angels lay
a plot, they may be disappointed; for though they are higher and wiser
than man, yet there is One higher and wiser than they, that can check
their projects. God always compasseth his end, never fails of anything
he designs and aims at; all his undertakings are counsel and will; as
nothing can resist the efficacy of his will, so nothing can countermine
the skill of his counsel: “There is no wisdom, nor understanding,
nor counsel against the Lord” (Prov. xxi. 30). He compasseth his ends
by those actions of men and devils, wherein they think to cross him;
they shoot at their own mark, and hit his. Lucifer’s plot, by divine
wisdom, fulfilled God’s purpose against Lucifer’s mind. The counsel of
redemption by Christ, the end of the creation of the world, rode into
the world upon the back of the serpent’s temptation. God never mistakes
the means, nor can there be any disappointments to make him vary his
counsels, and pitch upon other means than what before he had ordained.
His “word that goeth forth of his mouth shall not return to him void,
but it shall accomplish that which he pleases, and it shall prosper in
the thing whereto he sent it” (Isa. lv. 11). What is said of his word,
is true of his counsel; it shall prosper in the thing for which it is
appointed; it cannot be defeated by all the legions of men and devils;
for “as he thinks, so shall it come to pass; and as he hath purposed,
so shall it stand; the Lord hath purposed, and who shall {a514}
disannul it” (Isa. xiv. 24, 27)? The wisdom of the creature is a drop
from the wisdom of God, and is like a drop to the ocean, and a shadow
to the sun; and, therefore, is not able to meet the wisdom of God,
which is infinite and boundless. No wisdom is exempted from mistakes,
but the Divine: he is wise in all his resolves, and never “calls back
his words” and purposes (Isa. xxxi. 2).
III. The third general is to prove that God is wise. This is ascribed
to God in Scripture (Dan. ii. 20); “Wisdom and might are his;” wisdom
to contrive, and power to effect. Where should wisdom dwell, but in
the head of a Deity? and where should power triumph, but in the arm of
Omnipotency?[765] All that God doth, he doth artificially, skilfully;
whence he is called the “Builder of the heavens” (Heb. xi. 10),
Τεχνίτης an artifical and curious builder, a builder by art: and
that word (Prov. viii. 30) meant of Christ; “Then I was by him as one
brought up with him;” some render it, Then I was the curious artificer;
and the same word, is translated, a cunning workman (Cant. vii. 5). For
this cause, counsel is ascribed to God;[766] not properly, for counsel
implies something of ignorance, or irresolution, antecedent to the
consultation, and a posture of will afterwards, which was not before.
Counsel is, properly, a laborious deliberation, and a reasoning of
things; an invention of means for the attainment of the end, after a
discussing and reasoning of all the doubts which arise, _pro re natâ_,
about the matter in counsel. But God hath no need to deliberate in
himself what are the best means to accomplish his ends: he is never
ignorant or undetermined what course he should take, as men are before
they consult. But it is an expression, in condescension to our capacity,
to signify that God doth nothing but with reason and understanding,
with the highest prudence and for the most glorious ends, as men do
after consultation and the weighing of every foreseen circumstance.
Though he acts all things sovereignly by his will, yet he acts all
things wisely by his understanding; and there is not a decree of his
will but he can render a satisfactory reason for, in the face of men
and angels. As he is the cause of all things, so he hath the highest
wisdom for the ordering of all things. If wisdom among men be the
knowledge of divine and human things, God must be infinitely wise,
since knowledge is most radiant in him; he knows what angels and men do
and infinitely more; what is known by them obscurely, is known by him
clearly; what is known by man after it is done, was known by God before
it was wrought. By his wisdom, as much as by anything, he infinitely
differs from all his creatures, as by wisdom man differs from a brute.
We cannot frame a notion of God, without conceiving him infinitely wise.
We should render him very inconsiderable, to imagine him furnished
with an infinite knowledge, and not have an infinite wisdom to make
use of that knowledge, or to fancy him with a mighty power destitute
of prudence. Knowledge without prudence, is an eye without motion;
and power without discretion, is an arm without a head; a hand to act,
without {a515} understanding to contrive and model; a strength to act,
without reason to know how to act: it would be a miserable notion of
a God, to fancy him with a brutish and unguided power. The heathens,
therefore, had, and could not but have, this natural notion of God.
Plato, therefore, calls him _Mens_;[767] and Cleanthes used to call God
Reason; and Socrates thought the title of Σοφός too magnificent to be
attributed to anything else but God alone.
Arguments to prove that God is wise.――_Reason 1._ God could not be
infinitely perfect without wisdom. A rational nature is better than an
irrational nature. A man is not a perfect man without reason; how can
God without it be an infinitely perfect God? Wisdom is the most eminent
of all virtues; all the other perfections of God without this, would be
as a body without an eye, a soul without understanding. A Christian’s
graces want their lustre, when they are destitute of the guidance
of wisdom: mercy is a feebleness, and justice a cruelty; patience a
timorousness, and courage a madness, without the conduct of wisdom; so
the patience of God would be cowardice, his power an oppression, his
justice a tyranny, without wisdom as the spring and holiness as the
rule. No attribute of God could shine with a due lustre and brightness
without it. Power is a great perfection, but wisdom a greater.[768]
Wisdom may be without much power, as in bees and ants; but power is a
tyrranical thing without wisdom and righteousness. The pilot is more
valuable because of his skill, than the galley slave because of his
strength; and the conduct of a general more estimable than the might
of a private soldier. Generals are chosen more by their skill to guide,
than their strength to act; what a clod is a man without prudence;
what a nothing would God be without it! This is the salt that gives
relish to all other perfections in a creature; this is the jewel in
the ring of all the excellencies of the Divine nature, and holiness is
the splendor of that jewel. Now God being the first Being, possesses
whatsoever is most noble in any being. If therefore wisdom, which
is the most noble perfection in any creature, were wanting to God,
he would be deficient in that which is the highest excellency. God
being the living God, as he is frequently termed in Scripture, he hath
therefore the most perfect manner of living, and that must be a pure
and intellectual life; being essentially living, he is essentially in
the highest degree of living. As he hath an infinite life above all
creatures, so he hath an infinite intellectual life, and therefore
an infinite wisdom; whence some have called God, not _sapientem_, but
_super sapientem_,[769] not only wise, but above all wisdom.
_Reason 2._ Without infinite wisdom he could not govern the world.
Without wisdom in forming the matter, which was made by Divine power,
the world could have been no other than a chaos; and without wisdom
in government, it could have been no other than a heap of confusion;
without wisdom the world could not have been created in the posture it
is. Creation supposeth a determination of the will putting power upon
acting; the determination of the will supposeth {a516} the counsel
of the understanding, determining the will: no work, but supposeth
understanding as well as will in a rational agent. As without skill
things could not be created, so without it things cannot be governed.
Reason is a necessary perfection to him that presides over all things:
without knowledge there could not be in God a foundation for government,
and without wisdom there could not be an exercise of government; and
without the most excellent wisdom, he could not be the most excellent
governor. He could not be an universal governor, without a universal
wisdom; nor the sole governor without an unimitable wisdom; nor an
independent governor without an original and independent wisdom; nor a
perpetual governor without an incorruptible wisdom. He would not be the
Lord of the world in all points, without skill to order the affairs of
it. Power and wisdom are foundations of all authority and government;
wisdom to know how to rule and command; power to make those commands
obeyed: no regular order could issue out without the first, nor could
any order be enforced without the second. A feeble wisdom, and a
brutish power, seldom or never produce any good effect. Magistracy
without wisdom, would be a frantic power, a rash conduct; like a strong
arm when the eye is out, it strikes it knows not what, and leads it
knows not whither. Wisdom without power, would be like a great body
without feet,[770] like the knowledge of a pilot that hath lost his arm,
who, though he knows the rule of navigation, and what course to follow
in his voyage, yet cannot manage the helm: but when those two, wisdom
and power, are linked together, there ariseth from both a fitness for
government. There is wisdom to propose an end, and both wisdom and
power employ means that conduct to that end. And therefore when God
demonstrates to Job his right of government, and the unreasonableness
of Job’s quarrelling with his proceedings, he chiefly urgeth upon him
the consideration of those two excellencies of his nature, power and
wisdom, which are expressed in his works (chap. xxxviii.‒xli.) A prince
without wisdom, is but a title without a capacity to perform the office;
no man without it is fit for government; nor could God without wisdom
exercise a just dominion in the world. He hath, therefore, the highest
wisdom, since he is the universal governor. That wisdom which is able
to govern a family, may not be able to govern a city; and that wisdom
which governs a city, may not be able to govern a nation or kingdom,
much less a world. The bounds of God’s government being greater than
any, his wisdom for government must needs surmount the wisdom of
all. And though the creatures be not in number actually infinite,
yet they cannot be well governed, but by One endowed with infinite
discretion.[771] Providential government can be no more without
infinite wisdom, than infinite wisdom can be without Providence.
_Reason 3._ The creatures working for an end, without their own
knowledge, demonstrate the wisdom of God that guides them. All things
in the world work for some end; the ends are unknown to them, though
many of their ends are visible to us. As there was some prime cause,
which by his power inspired them with their several {a517} instincts;
so there must be some supreme wisdom, which moves and guides them to
their end. As their being manifests his power that endowed them, so the
acting according to the rules of their nature, which they themselves
understand not, manifests his wisdom in directing them. Everything
that acts for an end, must know that end, or be directed by another to
attain that end. The arrow doth not know who shoots it, or to what end
it is shot, or what mark is aimed at; but the archer that puts it in,
and darts it out of the bow, knows. A watch hath a regular motion, but
neither the spring, nor the wheels that move, know the end of their
motion; no man will judge a wisdom to be in the watch, but in the
artificer that disposed the wheels and spring, by a joint combination
to produce such a motion for such an end. Doth either the sun that
enlivens the earth, or the earth that travels with the plant, know
what plant it produceth in such a soil, what temper it should be of,
what fruit it should bear, and of what color? What plant knows its
own medicinal qualities, its own beautiful flowers, and for what use
they are ordained? When it strikes up its head from the earth, doth it
know what proportion of them there will be? yet it produceth all these
things in a state of ignorance. The sun warms the earth, concocts the
humors, excites the virtue of it, and cherishes the seeds which are
cast into her lap, yet all unknown to the sun or the earth. Since,
therefore, that nature, that is the immediate cause of those things
doth not understand its own quality, nor operation, nor the end of
its action, that which thus directs them must be conceived to have an
infinite wisdom. When things act by a rule they know not, and move for
an end they understand not, and yet work harmoniously together for an
end, that all of them, we are sure, are ignorant of, it mounts up our
minds to acknowledge the wisdom of that Supreme Cause that hath ranged
all these inferior causes in their order, and imprinted upon them
the laws of their motions according to the ideas in his own mind, who
orders the rule by which they act, and the end for which they act, and
directs every motion according to their several natures, and therefore
possessed with infinite wisdom in his own nature.
_Reason 4._ God is the fountain of all wisdom in the creatures, and,
therefore, is infinitely wise himself. As he hath a fulness of being in
himself, because the streams of being are derived to other things from
him, so he hath a fulness of wisdom, because he is the spring of wisdom
to angels and men. That being must be infinitely wise from whence all
other wisdom derives its original; for nothing can be in the effect,
which is not eminently in the cause; the cause is alway more perfect
than the effect. If, therefore, the creatures are wise, the Creator
must be much more wise. If the Creator were destitute of wisdom, the
creature would be much more perfect than the Creator. If you consider
the wisdom of the spider in her web, which is both her house and
net; the artifice of the bee in her comb, which is both her chamber
and granary; the provision of the pismire in her repositories for
corn,――the wisdom of the Creator is illustrated by them: whatsoever
excellency you see in any creature, is an image of some excellency in
God. The skill of the artificer is visible in {a518} the fruits of his
art; a workman transcribes his spirit in the work of his hands. But
the wisdom of rational creatures, as men, doth more illustrate it; all
arts among men are the rays of Divine wisdom shining upon them, and,
by a common gift of the Spirit, enlightening their minds to curious
inventions, as (Prov. viii. 12): “I, wisdom, find out the knowledge of
witty inventions;” that is, I give a faculty to men to find them out;
without my wisdom all things would be buried in darkness and ignorance:
whatsoever wisdom there is in the world, it is but a shadow of the
wisdom of God, a small rivulet derived from him, a spark leaping
out from uncreated wisdom (Isa. liv. 16): “He created the smith that
bloweth the coals in the fire, and makes the instruments.” The skill to
use those weapons in warlike enterprises is from him: “I have created
the waster to destroy;” it is not meant of creating their persons, but
communicating to them their art; he speaks it there to expel fear from
the church of all warlike preparations against them; he had given men
the skill to form and use weapons, and could as well strip them of it,
and defeat their purposes. The art of husbandry is a fruit of divine
teaching (Isa. xxviii. 24, 25). If those lower kinds of knowledge, that
are common to all nations, and easily learned by all, are discoveries
of Divine wisdom, much more the nobler sciences, intellectual and
political wisdom (Dan. ii. 21): “He gives wisdom to the wise, and
knowledge to them that know understanding;” speaking of the more
abstruse parts of knowledge, “The inspiration of the Almighty gives
understanding” (Job xxxii. 8). Hence the wisdom which Solomon expressed
in the harlot’s case (1 Kings iii. 28), was, in the judgment of all
Israel, the wisdom of God; that is, a fruit of Divine wisdom, a beam
communicated to him from God. Every man’s soul is endowed, more or
less, with those noble qualities; the soul of every man exceeds that
of a brute; if the streams be so excellent, the fountain must be fuller
and clearer. The first Spirit must infinitely more possess what other
spirits derive from him by creation; were the wisdom of all the angels
in heaven, and men on earth, collected in one spirit, it must be
infinitely less than what is in the spring; for no creature can be
equal to the Creator. As the highest creature already made, or that we
can conceive may be made by infinite power, would be infinitely below
God in the notion of a creature, so it would be infinitely below God in
the notion of wise.
IV. The fourth thing is, wherein the wisdom of God appears. It appears,
1st, In creation. 2dly, In government. 3dly, In redemption.
First, In creation. As in a musical instrument there is first the
skill of the workman in the frame, then the skill of the musician in
stringing it proper for such musical notes as he will express upon
it, and after that the tempering of the strings, by various stops,
to a delightful harmony, so is the wisdom of God seen in framing
the world, then in tuning it, and afterwards in the motion of the
several creatures. The fabric of the world is called the wisdom of God
(1 Cor. i. 21): “After that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom
knew not God;” _i. e._, by the creation the world knew not God. The
framing cause is there put for the effect and the work framed; because
{a519} the Divine wisdom stepped forth in the creatures, to a public
appearance, as if it had presented itself in a visible shape to
man, giving instructions in and by the creatures, to know and adore
him. What we translate (Gen. i. 1) “In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth,” the Targum expresseth, “In wisdom God created
the heaven and the earth.” Both bear a stamp of this perfection on
them;[772] and when the apostle tells the Romans (Rom. i. 20) “The
invisible things of God were clearly understood by the things that are
made,” the word he uses is ποιήμασι not ἔργοις; this signifies a work
of labor, but ποίημα a work of skill, or a poem. The whole creation is
a poem, every species a stanza, and every individual creature a verse
in it. The creation presents us with a prospect of the wisdom of God,
as a poem doth the reader with the wit and fancy of the composer: “By
wisdom he created the earth” (Prov. iii. 19), “and stretched out the
heavens by discretion” (Jer. x. 12). There is not anything so mean, so
small, but glitters with a beam of Divine skill; and the consideration
of them would justly make every man subscribe to that of the psalmist,
“O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them
all” (Ps. civ. 24). All, the least as well as the greatest, and the
meanest as well as the noblest; even those creatures which seem ugly
and deformed to us, as toads, &c., because they fall short of those
perfections which are the dowry of other animals: in these there is
a footstep of Divine wisdom, since they were not produced by him at
random, but determined to some particular end, and designed to some
usefulness, as parts of the world in their several natures and stations.
God could never have had a satisfaction in the review of his works, and
pronounced them good or comely, as he did (Gen. i. 31), had they not
been agreeable to that eternal original copy in his own mind. It is
said he was refreshed, _viz._ with that review (Exod. xxxi. 17), which
could not have been, if his piercing eye had found any defect in any
thing which had sprung out of his hand, or an unsuitableness to that
end for which he created them. He seems to do as a man that hath made
a curious and polite work, with exact care to peer about every part
and line, if he could perceive any imperfection in it, to rectify the
mistake: but no defect was found by the infinitely wise God upon this
second examination. This wisdom of the creation appears, 1. In the
variety. 2. In the beauty. 3. The fitness of every creature for its
use. 4. The subordination of one creature to another, and the joint
concurrence of all to one common end.
1. In the variety (Ps. civ. 24): “O Lord, how manifold are thy works!”
How great a variety is there of animals and plants, with a great
variety of forms, shapes, figurations, colors, various smells, virtues,
and qualities! and this rarity is produced from one and the same matter,
as beasts and plants from the earth (Gen. i. 11, 24): “Let the earth
bring forth living creatures; and the earth brought forth grass, and
the herb yielding seed after his kind:” such diversity of fowl and fish
from the water (Gen. i. 20): “Let the waters bring forth abundantly
the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly;” such a
beautiful and active variety from so dull a matter {a520} as the earth;
so solid a variety from so fluid a matter as the water; so noble a
piece as the body of man, with such variety of members fit to entertain
a more excellent soul as a guest, from so mean a matter as the dust of
the ground (Gen. ii. 7). This extraction of such variety of forms out
of one single and dull matter, is the chemistry of Divine wisdom. It is
a greater skill to frame noble bodies of vile matter, as varieties of
precious vessels of clay and earth, than of a nobler matter, as gold
and silver. Again, all those varieties propagate their kind in every
particular and quality of their nature, and uniformly bring forth exact
copies according to the first pattern God made of the kind (Gen. i. 11,
12, 24). Consider, also, how the same piece of ground is garnished with
plants and flowers of several virtues, fruits, colors, scents, without
our being able to perceive any variety in the earth that breeds them,
and not so great a difference in the roots that bear them. Add to this
the diversities of birds of different colors, shapes, notes, consisting
of various parts, wings like oars, to cut the air, and tails as the
rudder of a ship, to guide their motion. How various, also, are the
endowments of the creatures! some have vegetation, and the power of
growth; others have the addition of sense, and others the excellency of
reason; something wherein all agree, and something wherein all differ;
variety in unity, and unity in variety: the wisdom of the workman had
not been so conspicuous had there been only one degree of goodness: the
greatest skill is seen in the greatest variety. The comeliness of the
body is visible in the variety of members, and their usefulness to
one another. What an inform thing had man been had he been all ear,
or all eye! If God had made all the stars to be suns, it would have
been a demonstration of his power, but, perhaps, less of his wisdom:
no creatures, with the natures they now have, could have continued in
being under so much heat: there was no less wisdom went to the frame
of the least, than to the greatest creature. It speaks more art in a
limner to paint a landscape exactly, than to draw the sun, though the
sun be a more glorious body. I might instance also, in the different
characters and features imprinted upon the countenances of men and
women, the differences of voices and statures, whereby they are
distinguished from one another: these are the foundations of order and
of human society, and administration of justice. What confusion would
have been, if a grown‑up son could not be known from his father, the
magistrate from the subject, the creditor from the debtor, the innocent
from the criminal! The laws God hath given to mankind could not have
been put in execution: this variety speaks the wisdom of God.
2. The wisdom of the creation appears in the beauty, and order, and
situation of the several creatures (Eccles. iii. 11): “He hath made
everything beautiful in his time.” As their being was a fruit of Divine
power, so their order is a fruit of Divine wisdom. All creatures are
as members in the great body of the world, proportioned to one another,
and contributing to the beauty of the whole; so that if the particular
forms of everything, the union of all for the composition of the
world, and the laws which are established in the order of nature
for its conservation, be considered, it would ravish us {a521} with
an admiration of God.[773] All the creatures are so many pictures
or statues, exactly framed by line (Ps. xix. 4): “Their line is
gone through all the earth;” their “line,” a measuring line, or a
carpenter’s rule, whereby he proportions several pieces to be exactly
linked and coupled together. “Their line,” that is, their harmonious
proportion, and the instruction from it, is gone forth through all the
earth. Upon the account of this harmony, some of the ancient heathens
framed the images of their gods with musical instruments in their hands,
signifying that God wrought all things in a due proportion.[774] The
heavens speak this wisdom in their order. The revolutions of the sun
and moon determine the seasons of the year, and make day and night in
orderly succession. The stars beautify the heavens, and influence the
earth, and keep their courses (Judges v. 20). They keep their stations
without interfering with one another; and though they have rolled about
for so many ages, they observe their distinct laws, and in the variety
of their motions have not disturbed one another’s functions. The sun is
set as the heart in the midst of this great body, to afford warmth to
all: and had it been set lower, it had long since turned the earth into
flame and ashes: had it been placed higher, the earth would have wanted
the nourishment and refreshment necessary for it. Too much nearness
had ruined the earth by parching heat, and too great a distance had
destroyed the earth by starving it with cold.[775] The sun hath also
its appointed motion; had it been fixed without motion, half of the
earth had been unprofitable; there had been a perpetual darkness in
a moiety of it; nothing had been produced for nourishment, and so it
had been rendered uninhabitable: but now, by its motion, it visits all
the climates of the world, runs its circuit, so that “nothing is hid
from the heat thereof,” (Ps. xix. 6). It imparts its virtue to every
corner of the world in its daily and yearly visits. Had it been fixed,
the fruits of the earth under it had been parched and destroyed before
their maturity; but all those inconveniences are provided against by
the perpetual motion of the sun. This motion is orderly; it makes its
daily course from east to west, its yearly motion from north to south:
it goes to the north, till it comes to the point God hath set it, and
then turns back to the south, and gains some point every day: it never
riseth nor sets in the same place one day, where it did the day before.
The world is never without its light; some see it rising the same
moment we see it setting.[776] The earth also speaks the Divine wisdom;
it is the pavement of the world, as the heaven is the ceiling of
fretwork. It is placed lowermost, as being the heaviest body, and fit
to receive the weightiest matter, and provided as an habitation proper
for those creatures which derive the matter of their bodies from it,
and partake of its earthly nature; and garnished with other creatures
for the profit or pleasure of man.[777] The sea also speaks the same
Divine wisdom. “He strengthened the fountains of the deep, and gave the
sea a decree that it should not pass his {a522} command” (Prov. viii.
28, 29). He hath given it certain bounds that it should not overflow
the earth (Job xxviii. 11). It contains itself in the situation
wherein God hath placed it, and doth not transgress its bounds. What
if some part of a country, a little spot, hath been overflowed by it,
and groaned under its waves? yet for the main, it retains the same
channels wherein it was at first lodged. All creatures are clothed
with an outward beauty, and endowed with an inward harmony; there is an
agreement in all parts of this great body; every one is beautiful and
orderly; but the beauty of the world results from all of them disposed
and linked together.
3. This wisdom is seen in the fitness of everything for its end, and
the usefulness of it. Divine wisdom is more illustrious in the fitness
and usefulness of this great variety, than in the composure of their
distinct parts: as the artificer’s skill is more eminent in fitting
the wheels, and setting them in order for their due motion, than in
the external fabric of the materials which compose the clock. After the
most diligent inspection, there can be found nothing in the creation
unprofitable; nothing but is capable of some service, either for the
support of our bodies, recreation of our senses, or moral instruction
of our minds: not the least creature but is formed, and shaped, and
furnished with members and parts, in a due proportion for its end
and service in the world; nothing is superfluous, nothing defective.
The earth is fitted in its parts;[778] the valleys are appointed for
granaries, the mountains to shadow them from the scorching heat of the
sun; the rivers, like veins, carry refreshment to every member of this
body; plants and trees thrive on the face of the earth, and metals are
engendered in the bowels of it, for materials for building, and other
uses for the service of man. “There he causes the grass to grow for the
cattle and herb for the service of man, that he may bring forth food
out of the earth” (Ps. civ. 14). The sea is fitted for use; it is a
fish pond for the nourishment of man; a boundary for the dividing of
lands and several dominions: it joins together nations far distant:
a great vessel for commerce (Ps. civ. 26), “there go the ships.” It
affords vapors to the clouds, wherewith to water the earth, which the
sun draws up, separating the finer from the salter parts, that the
earth may be fruitful without being burdened with barrenness by the
salt. The sea hath also its salt, its ebbs, and floods; the one as
brine, the other as motion, to preserve it from putrefaction, that it
may not be contagious to the rest of the world. Showers are appointed
to refresh the bodies of living creatures, to open the womb of the
earth, and “water the ground to make it fruitful” (Ps. civ. 3). The
clouds, therefore, are called the chariots of God; he rides in them
in the manifestation of his goodness and wisdom. Winds are fitted to
purify the air, to preserve it from putrefaction, to carry the clouds
to several parts, to refresh the parched earth, and assist her fruits:
and also to serve for the commerce of one nation with another by
navigation.[779] God, in his wisdom and goodness, “walks upon the
wings of the wind” (Ps. civ. 3). Rivers[780] are appointed to bathe the
ground, and render it fresh and lively; {a523} they fortify cities, are
the limits of countries, serve for commerce; they are the watering‑pots
of the earth, and the vessels for drink for the living creatures that
dwell upon the earth. God cut those channels for the wild asses, the
beasts of the desert, which are his creatures as well as the rest (Ps.
civ. 10, 12, 13). Trees are appointed for the habitations of birds,
shadows for the earth, nourishment for the creatures, materials for
building, and fuel for the relief of man against cold. The seasons of
the year have their use; the winter makes the juice retire into the
earth, fortifies plants, and fixes their roots: it moistens the earth
that was dried before by the heat of summer, and cleanseth and prepares
it for a new fruitfulness. The spring calls out the sap in new leaves
and fruit. The summer consumes the superfluous moisture, and produceth
nourishment for the inhabitants of the world.[781] The day and night
have also their usefulness: the day gives life to labor, and is a guide
to motion and action (Ps. civ. 24), “The sun ariseth, man goeth forth
to his labor until the evening.” It warms the air, and quickens nature;
without day the world would be a chaos, an unseen beauty. The night
indeed casts a veil upon the bravery of the earth, but it draws the
curtains from that of heaven; though it darkens below, it makes us see
the beauty of the world above, and discovers to us a glorious part of
the creation of God, the tapestry of heaven, and the motions of the
stars, hid from us by the eminent light of the day. It procures a truce
from labor, and refresheth the bodies of creatures, by recruiting the
spirits which are scattered by watching. It prevents the ruin of life,
by a reparation of what was wasted in the day. It takes from us the
sight of flowers and plants, but it washeth their face with dews for
a new appearance next morning. The length of the day and night is not
without a mark of wisdom; were they of a greater length, as the length
of a week or month, the one would too much dry, and the other too
much moisten; and for want of action, the members would be stupified.
The perpetual succession of day and night is an evidence of the Divine
wisdom in tempering the travel and rest of creatures. Hence, the
psalmist tells us (Ps. lxxxiv. 16, 17), “The day is thine, and the
night is thine; thou hast prepared the light of the sun, and made
summer and winter;” _i. e._ they are of God’s framing, not without
a wise counsel and end. Hence, let us ascend to the bodies of living
creatures, and we shall find every member fitted for use. What a
curiosity is there in every member! Every one fitted to a particular
use in their situation, form, temper, and mutual agreement for the good
of the whole: the eye to direct; the ear to receive directions from
others; the hands to act; the feet to move. Every creature hath members
fitted for that element wherein it resides; and in the body, some parts
are appointed to change the food into blood, others to refine it, and
others to distribute and convey it to several parts for the maintenance
of the whole: the heart to mint vital spirits for preserving life,
and the brain to coin animal spirits for life and motion; the lungs
to serve for the cooling the heart, which else would be parched as the
ground in summer. The motion of the members of the body by one act of
the will, and also without the will by a {a524} natural instinct, is
an admirable evidence of Divine skill in the structure of the body; so
that well might the psalmist cry out (Ps. cxxxix. 14), “I am fearfully
and wonderfully made!” But how much more of this Divine perfection is
seen in the soul! A nature, furnished with a faculty of understanding
to judge of things, to gather in things that are distant, and to
reason and draw conclusions from one thing to another, with a memory
to treasure up things that are past, with a will to apply itself so
readily to what the mind judges fit and comely, and fly so speedily
from what it judges ill and hurtful. The whole world is a stage; every
creature in it hath a part to act, and a nature suited to that part and
end it is designed for; and all concur in a joint language to publish
the glory of Divine wisdom; they have a voice to proclaim the “glory
of God” (Ps. xix. 1, 3). And it is not the least part of God’s skill,
in framing the creatures so, that upon man’s obedience, they are the
channels of his goodness; and upon man’s disobedience, they can, in
their natures, be the ministers of his justice for the punishing of
offending creatures.
4. This wisdom is apparent in the linking of all these useful parts
together, so that one is subordinate to the other for a common end. All
parts are exactly suited to one another, and every part to the whole,
though they are of different natures, as lines distant in themselves,
yet they meet in one common centre, the good and the preservation of
the universe; they are all jointed together, as the word translated
_framed_ (Heb. xi. 2) signifies; knit by fit hands and ligaments to
contribute mutual beauty, strength, and assistance to one another;
like so many links of a chain coupled together, that though there be
a distance in place, there is a unity in regard of connection and end,
there is a consent in the whole (Hos. ii. 21, 22). “The heavens hear
the earth; and the earth hears the corn, and the wine, and the oil.”
The heavens communicate their qualities to the earth, and the earth
conveys them to the fruits she bears.[782] The air distributes light,
wind and rain to the earth; the earth and the sea render to the
air exhalations and vapors, and altogether charitably give to the
plants and animals that which is necessary for their nourishment and
refreshment. The influences of the heavens animate the earth; and the
earth affords matter, in part, for the influences it receives from
the regions above. Living creatures are maintained by nourishment;
nourishment is conveyed to them by the fruits of the earth; the fruits
of the earth are produced by means of rain and heat; matter for rain
and dew is raised by the heat of the sun; and the sun by its motion
distributes heat and quickening virtue to all parts of the earth. So
colors are made for the pleasure of the eye, sounds for the delight
of the ear; light is formed, whereby the eye may see the one, and air
to convey the species of colors to the eye, and sound to the ear; all
things are like the wheels of a watch compacted: and though many of
the creatures be endowed with contrary qualities, yet they are joined
in a marriage‑knot for the public security, and subserviency to the
preservation and order of the universe; as the variety of strings upon
an instrument, sending forth various and distinct sounds, are tempered
together, for the framing excellent and {a525} delightful airs. In
this universal conspiring of the creatures together to one end, is the
wisdom of the Creator apparent; in tuning so many contraries as the
elements are, and preserving them in their order, which if once broken,
the whole frame of nature would crack, and fall in pieces; all are so
interwoven and inlaid together, by the Divine workmanship, as to make
up one entire beauty in the whole fabric: as every part in the body of
man hath a distinct comeliness, yet there is besides, the beauty of the
whole, that results from the union of divers parts exactly fashioned to
one another, and linked together.
By the way, _Use_. How much may we see of the perfection of God in
everything that presents itself to our eyes! And how should we be
convinced of our unworthy neglect of ascending to him with reverend
and admiring thoughts, upon the prospect of the creatures! What dull
scholars are we, when every creature is our teacher, every part of the
creature a lively instruction! Those things that we tread under our
feet, if used by us according to the full design of their creation,
would afford rich matter, not only for our heads, but our hearts. As
grace doth not destroy nature, but elevate it, so neither should the
fresher and fuller discoveries of Divine wisdom in redemption deface
all our thoughts of his wisdom in creation. Though the greater light
of the sun obscures the lesser sparkling of the stars, yet it gives
way in the night to the discovery of them, that God may be seen, known,
and considered, in all his works of wonder, and miracles of nature. No
part of Scripture is more spiritual than the Psalms; none filled with
clearer discoveries of Christ in the Old Testament; yet how often do
the penmen consider the creation of God, and find their meditations
on him to be sweet, as considered in his works (Ps. civ. 34)! “My
meditation of him shall be sweet.” When? why, after a short history
of the goodness and wisdom of God in the frame of the world, and the
species of the creatures.
Secondly. The wisdom of God appears in his government of his
creatures. The regular motion of the creatures speaks for this
perfection, as well as the exact composition of them. If the
exquisiteness of the frame conducts us to the skill of the Contriver,
the exactness of their order, according to his will and law, speaks
no less the wisdom of the Governor. It cannot be thought that a rash
and irrational power presides over a world so well disposed: the
disposition of things hath no less characters of skill, than the
creation of them. No man can hear an excellent lesson upon a lute,
but must presently reflect upon the art of the person that touches it.
The prudence of man appears in wrapping up the concerns of a kingdom
in his mind, for the well‑ordering of it; and shall not the wisdom of
God shine forth, as he is the director of the world? I shall omit his
government of inanimate creatures, and confine the discourse to his
government of man, as rational, as sinful, as restored.
1st. In his government of man as a rational creature.
1. In the law he gives to man. Wisdom framed it, though will
enacted it. The will of God is the rule of righteousness to us, but
the wisdom of God is the foundation of that rule of righteousness which
he prescribes us. The composure of a musician is the rule {a526} of
singing to his scholars; yet the consent and harmony in that composure
derives not itself from his will, but from his understanding; he would
not be a musician if his composures were contrary to the rules of true
harmony: so the laws of men are composed by wisdom, though they are
enforced by will and authority.[783] The moral law, which was the law
of nature, the law imprinted upon Adam, is so framed as to secure the
rights of God as supreme, and the rights of men in their distinctions
of superiority and equality: it is therefore called “holy and good”
(Rom. vii. 12); holy, as it prescribes our duty to God in his worship;
good, as it regulates the offices of human life, and preserves the
common interest of mankind.
(1.) It is suited to the nature of man. As God hath given a law of
nature, a fixed order to inanimate creatures, so he hath given a law of
reason to rational creatures: other creatures are not capable of a law
differencing good and evil, because they are destitute of faculties and
capacities to make distinction between them. It had not been agreeable
to the wisdom of God to propose any moral law to them, who had neither
understanding to discern, nor will to choose. It is therefore to be
observed, that whilst Christ exhorted others to the embracing his
doctrine, yet he exhorted not little children, though he took them in
his arms, because, though they had faculties, yet they were not come to
such a maturity as to be capable of a rational instruction. But there
was a necessity for some command for the government of man; since God
had made him a rational creature, it was not agreeable to his wisdom to
govern him as a brute, but as a rational creature, capable of knowing
his precepts, and voluntarily walking in them; and without a law,
he had not been capable of any exercise of his reason in services
respecting God. He therefore gives him a law, with a covenant annexed
to it, whereby man is obliged to obedience, and secured of a reward.
This was enforced with severe penalties, death, with all the horrors
attending it, to deter him from transgression (Gen. ii. 17); wherein
is implied a promise of continuance of life, and all its felicities,
to allure him to a mindfulness of his obligation. So perfect a hedge
did Divine wisdom set about him, to keep him within the bounds of that
obedience, which was both his debt and security, that wheresoever he
looked, he saw either something to invite him, or something to drive
him to the payment of his duty, and perseverance in it. Thus the law
was exactly framed to the nature of man; man had twisted in him a
desire of happiness; the promise was suited to cherish this natural
desire. He had also the passion of fear; the proper object of this
was any thing destructive to his being, nature, and felicity; this
the threatening met with. In the whole it was accommodated to man as
rational; precepts to the law in his mind, promises to the natural
appetite, threatenings to the most prevailing affection, and to the
implanted desires of preserving both his being and happiness in that
being. These were rational motives, fitted to the nature of Adam, which
was above the life God had given plants, and the sense he had given
animals. The command given man in innocence was suited to his strength
and power. God gave him not {a527} any command but what he had ability
to observe: and since we want not power to forbear an apple in our
corrupted and impotent state, he wanted not strength in his state of
integrity. The wisdom of God commanded nothing but what was very easy
to be observed by him, and inferior to his natural ability. It had
been both unjust and unwise to have commanded him to fly up to the sun,
when he had not wings; or stop the course of the sea, when he had not
strength.
(2.) It is suited to the happiness and benefit of man. God’s laws
are not an act of mere authority respecting his own glory, but of
wisdom and goodness respecting man’s benefit. They are perfective
of man’s nature, conferring a wisdom upon him, “rejoicing his heart,
enlightening his eyes” (Ps. xix. 7, 8), affording him both a knowledge
of God and of himself. To be without a law, is for men to be as beasts,
without justice and without religion: other things are for the good
of the body, but the laws of God for the good of the soul; the more
perfect the law, the greater the benefit. The laws given to the Jews
were the honor and excellency of that nation (Deut. i. 8); “What nation
is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous?”
They were made statesmen in the judicial law, ecclesiastics in the
ceremonial, honest men in the second table, and divine in the first.
All his laws are suited to the true satisfaction of man, and the good
of human society. Had God framed a law only for one nation, there would
have been the characters of a particular wisdom; but now an universal
wisdom appears, in accommodating his law, not only to this or that
particular society or corporation of men, but to the benefit of all
mankind, in the variety of climates and countries wherein they live;
everything that is disturbing to human society is provided against;
nothing is enjoined but what is sweet, rational, and useful: it orders
us not to attempt anything against the life of our neighbor, the honor
of his bed, propriety in his goods, and the clearness of his reputation;
and, if well observed, would alter the face of the world, and make it
look with another hue. The world would be altered from a brutish to
a human world; it would change lions and wolves, men of lion‑like and
wolfish disposition, into reason and sweetness. And because the whole
law is summed up in love, it obligeth us to endeavor the preservation
of one another’s beings, the favoring of one another’s interests, and
increasing the goods, as much as justice will permit, and keeping up
one another’s credits, because love, which is the soul of the law,
is not shown by a cessation from action, but signifies an ardor, upon
all occasions, in doing good. I say, were this law well observed, the
world would be another thing than it is: it would become a religious
fraternity; the voice of enmity, and the noise of groans and cursings,
would not be heard in our streets; peace would be in all borders;
plenty of charity in the midst of cities and countries; joy and singing
would sound in all habitations. Man’s advantage was designed in God’s
laws, and doth naturally result from the observance of them. God so
ordered them, by his wisdom, that the obedience of man should draw
forth his goodness, and prevent those smarting judgments which were
necessary {a528} to reduce the creature to order that would not
voluntarily continue in the order God had appointed. The laws of men
are often unjust, oppressive, cruel, sometimes against the law of
nature; but an universal wisdom and righteousness glitters in the
Divine law; there is nothing in it but is worthy of God, and useful for
the creature; so that we may well say, with Job, “Who teaches like God”
(Job xxxvi. 22)? or as some render it, “Who is a lawgiver like God?”
Who can say to him, Thou hast wrought iniquity or folly among men?
His precepts were framed for the preservation of man in that rectitude
wherein he was created, in that likeness to God wherein he was first
made, that there might be a correspondence between the integrity of
the creature and the goodness of his Creator, by the obedience of man;
that man might exercise his faculties in operation worthy of him, and
beneficial to the world.
(3.) The wisdom of God is seen in suiting his laws to the consciences
as well as the interests of all mankind (Rom. ii. 14); “The Gentiles
do, by nature, the things contained in the law;” so great an affinity
there is between the wise law and the reason of man. There is a natural
beauty emerging from them, and darting upon the reasons and consciences
of men, which dictates to them that this law is worthy to be observed
in itself. The two main principles of the law, the love and worship
of God, and doing as we would be done by, have an indelible impression
in the consciences of all men, in regard of the principle, though they
are not suitably expressed in the practice. Were there no law outwardly
published, yet every man’s conscience would dictate to him that God was
to be acknowledged, worshipped, loved, as naturally as his reason would
acquaint him that there was such a being as God. This suitableness of
them to the consciences of men is manifest, in that the laws of the
best governed nations among the heathen have had an agreement with them.
Nothing can be more exactly composed, according to the rules of right
and exact reason, than this; no man but approves of something in it,
yea, of the whole, when he exerciseth that dim reason which he hath.
Suppose any man, not an absolute atheist, he cannot but acknowledge
the reasonableness of worshipping God. Grant him to be a spirit, and it
will presently appear absurd to represent him by any corporeal image,
and derogate from his excellency by so mean a resemblance; with the
same easiness he will grant a reverence due to the name of God; that
we must not serve our turn of him, by calling him to witness to a lie
in a solemn oath; that as worship is due to him, so is some stated time
a circumstance necessary to the performance of that worship. And as
to the second table, will any man, in his right reason, quarrel with
that command that engageth his inferiors to honor him, that secures
his being from a violent murder, and his goods from unjust rapine? and
though, by the fury of his lusts, he break the laws of wedlock himself,
yet he cannot but approve of that law, as it prohibits every man
from doing him the like injury and disgrace. The suitableness of the
law to the consciences of men is further evidenced by those furious
reflections, and strong alarms of conscience, upon a transgression
of it, {a529} and that in all parts of the world, more or less, in all
men; so exactly hath Divine wisdom fitted the law to the reason and
consciences of men, as one tally to another: indeed, without such an
agreement, no man’s conscience could have any ground for a hue and cry;
nor need any man be startled with the records of it. This manifests the
wisdom of God in framing his laws so that the reasons and consciences
of all men do, one time or other, subscribe to it. What governor in the
world is able to make any law distinct from this revealed by God, that
shall reach all places, all persons, all hearts? We may add to this the
extent of his commands, in ordering goodness at the root, not only in
action, but affection; not only in the motion of the members, but the
disposition of the soul; which suiting a law to the inward frame of man,
is quite out of the compass of the wisdom of any creature.
(4.) His wisdom is seen in the encouragements he gives for the
studying and observing his will (Ps. xix. 11); “In keeping thy
commandments there is great reward.” The variety of them; there is
not any particular genius in man but may find something suitable to
win upon him in the revealed will of God. There is a strain of reason
to satisfy the rational; of eloquence, to gratify the fanciful; of
interest, to allure the selfish; of terror, to startle the obstinate.
As a skilful angler stores himself with baits, according to the
appetites of the sorts of fish he intends to catch, so in the word
of God there are varieties of baits, according to the varieties of
the inclinations of men; threatenings to work upon fear; promises to
work upon love; examples of holy men set out for imitation; and those
plainly; neither his threatenings nor his promises are dark, as the
heathen oracles; but peremptory, as becomes a sovereign lawgiver;
and plain, as was necessary for the understanding of a creature.
As he deals graciously with men in exhorting and encouraging them,
so he deals wisely herein, by taking away all excuse from them if
they ruin the interest of their souls, by denying obedience to their
Sovereign. Again, the rewards God proposeth are accommodated, not to
the brutish parts of man, his carnal sense and fleshly appetite, but
to the capacity of a spiritual soul, which admits only of spiritual
gratifications; and cannot, in its own nature, without a sordid
subjection to the humors of the body, be moved by sensual proposals.
God backs his precepts with that which the nature of man longed for,
and with spiritual delights, which can only satisfy a rational appetite;
and thereby did as well gratify the noblest desires in man, as oblige
him to the noblest service and work.[784] Indeed, virtue and holiness
being perfectly amiable, ought chiefly to affect our understandings,
and by them draw our wills to the esteem and pursuit of them. But
since the desire of happiness is inseparable from the nature of man,
as impossible to be disjoined as an inclination to descend to be
severed from heavy bodies, or an instinct to ascend from light and
airy substances; God serves himself of the inclination of our natures
to happiness, to enjender in us an esteem and affection to the holiness
he doth require. He proposeth the enjoyment of a supernatural good
and everlasting glory, as a bait to that insatiable {a530} longing
our natures have for happiness, to receive the impression of holiness
into our souls. And, besides, he doth proportion rewards according the
degrees of men’s industry, labor, and zeal for him; and weighs out a
recompense, not only suited to, but above the service. He that improves
five talents, is to be ruler over five cities; that is, a greater
proportion of honor and glory than another (Luke xix. 17, 18); as a
wise father excites the affection of his children to things worthy of
praise, by varieties of recompenses according to their several actions.
And it was the wisdom of the steward, in the judgment of our Saviour,
to give every one the “portion that belonged to him” (Luke xii. 42).
There is no part of the word wherein we meet not with the will and
wisdom of God, varieties of duties, and varieties of encouragement,
mingled together.
(5.) The wisdom of God is seen in fitting the revelations of his will
to aftertimes, and for the preventing of the foreseen corruptions of
men. The whole revelation of the mind of God is stored with wisdom in
the words, connexion, sense; it looks backwards to past, and forwards
to ages to come: a hidden wisdom lies in the bowels of it, like gold
in a mine. The Old Testament was so composed, as to fortify the New,
when God should bring it to light. The foundations of the gospel were
laid in the law: the predictions of the Prophets, and figures of the
law, were so wisely framed, and laid down in such clear expressions,
as to be proofs of the authority of the New Testament, and convictions
of Jesus’ being the Messiah (Luke xxiv. 14). Things concerning Christ
were written in Moses, the Prophets, and Psalms; and do, to this day,
stare the Jews so in the face, that they are fain to invent absurd
and nonsensical interpretations to excuse their unbelief, and continue
themselves in their obstinate blindness. And in pursuance of the
efficacy of those predictions, it was a part of the wisdom of God to
bring forth the translation of the Old Testament, (by the means of
Ptolomy, king of Egypt, some hundreds of years before the coming of
Christ) into the Greek language, the tongue then most known in the
world; and why? to prepare the Gentiles, by the reading of it, for that
gracious call he intended them, and for the entertainment of the gospel,
which some few years after was to be published among them; that, by
reading the predictions so long before made, they might more readily
receive the accomplishment of them in their due time. The Scripture is
written in such a manner, as to obviate errors foreseen by God to enter
into the church. It may be wondered, why the universal particle should
be inserted by Christ, in the giving the cup in the supper, which
was not in the distributing the bread (Matt. xxvi. 27): “Drink ye all
of it;” not at the distributing the bread, “Eat you all of it;” and
Mark, in his relation, tells us, “They all drank of it” (Mark xi. 23).
The church of Rome hath been the occasion of discovering to us the
wisdom of our Saviour, in inserting that particle _all_, since they
were so bold to exclude the communicants from the cup by a trick
of concomitancy. Christ foresaw the error, and therefore put in a
little word to obviate a great invasion: and the Spirit of God hath
particularly left upon record that particle, as we may reasonably
suppose to such a purpose. And so, in the description {a531} of
the “blessed Virgin” (Luke i. 27), there is nothing of her holiness
mentioned, which is with much diligence recorded of Elizabeth (ver. 6):
“Righteous, walking in all the commandments of God, blameless;”
probably to prevent the superstition which God foresaw would arise in
the world. And we do not find more undervaluing speeches uttered by
Christ to any of his disciples, in the exercise of his office, than to
her, except to Peter. As when she acquainted him with the want of wine
at the marriage in Cana, she receives a slighting answer: “Woman, what
have I to do with thee” (John ii. 4)? And when one was admiring the
blessedness of her that bare him, he turns the discourse another way,
to pronounce a blessedness rather belonging to them that “hear the word
of God, and keep it” (Luke xi. 27, 28); in a mighty wisdom to antidote
his people against any conceit of the prevalency of the Virgin over him
in heaven, in the exercise of his mediatory office.
2. As his wisdom appears in his government by his laws, so it
appears in the various inclinations and conditions of men. As there
is a distinction of several creatures, and several qualities in them,
for the common good of the world, so among men there are several
inclinations and several abilities, as donatives from God, for the
common advantage of human society; as several channels cut out from
the same river run several ways, and refresh several soils, one man is
qualified for one employment, another marked out by God for a different
work, yet all of them fruitful to bring in a revenue of glory to God,
and a harvest of profit to the rest of mankind. How unuseful would the
body be, if it had but “one member” (1 Cor. xii. 19)! How unprovided
would a house be, if it had not vessels of dishonor as well as of
honor! The corporation of mankind would be as much a chaos, as the
matter of the heavens and the earth was, before it was distinguished by
several forms breathed into it at the creation. Some are inspired with
a particular genius for one art, some for another; every man hath a
distinct talent. If all were husbandmen, where would be the instruments
to plough and reap? If all were artificers, where would they have
corn to nourish themselves? All men are like vessels, and parts in
the body, designed for distinct offices and functions for the good
of the whole, and mutually return an advantage to one another. As the
variety of gifts in the church is a fruit of the wisdom of God, for the
preservation and increase of the church, so the variety of inclinations
and employments in the world is a fruit of the wisdom of God, for the
preservation and subsistence of the world by mutual commerce. What
the apostle largely discourseth of the former, in 1 Cor. xii. may be
applied to the other. The various conditions of men is also a fruit
of Divine wisdom. Some are rich, and some poor; the rich have as much
need of the poor, as the poor have of the rich; if the poor depend upon
the rich for their livelihood, the rich depend upon the poor for their
conveniences. Many arts would not be learned by men, if poverty did
not oblige them to it; and many would faint in the learning of them, if
they were not thereunto encouraged by the rich. The poor labor for the
rich, as the earth sends vapors into the vaster and fuller air; and the
rich return advantages again to the poor, as the clouds {a532} do the
vapors in rain upon the earth. As meat would not afford a nourishing
juice without bread, and bread without other food would immoderately
fill the stomach, and not be well digested, so the rich would be
unprofitable in the commonwealth without the poor, and the poor would
be burdensome to a commonwealth without the rich. The poor could not
be easily governed without the rich, nor the rich sufficiently and
conveniently provided for without the poor. If all were rich, there
would be no objects for the exercise of a noble part of charity: if all
were poor, there were no matter for the exercise of it. Thus the Divine
wisdom planted various inclinations, and diversified the conditions of
men for the public advantages of the world.
2dly. God’s wisdom appears, in the government of men, as fallen and
sinful; or, in the government of sin. After the law of God was broke,
and sin invaded and conquered the world, divine wisdom had another
scene to act in, and other methods of government were necessary. The
wisdom of God is then seen in ordering those jarring discords, drawing
good out of evil, and honour to himself out of that which in its own
nature tended to the supplanting of his glory. God being a sovereign
good, would not suffer so great an evil to enter, but to serve himself
of it for some greater end, for all his thoughts are full of goodness
and wisdom. Now, though the permission of sin be an act of his
sovereignty, and the punishment of sin be an act of his justice, yet
the ordination of sin to good, is an act of his wisdom, whereby he doth
dispose the evil, overrules the malice, and orders the events of it to
his own purposes. Sin in itself is a disorder, and therefore God doth
not permit sin for itself; for in its own nature it hath nothing of
amiableness, but he wills it for some righteous end, which belongs to
the manifestation of his glory, which is his aim in all the acts of his
will; he wills it not as sin, but as his wisdom can order it to some
greater good than was before in the world, and make it contribute to
the beauty of the order he intends. As a dark shadow is not delightful
and pleasant in itself, nor is drawn by a painter for any amiableness
there is in the shadow itself, but as it serves to set forth that
beauty which is the main design of his art, so the glorious effects
which arise from the entrance of sin into the world, are not from the
creatures evil, but the depths of divine wisdom. Particularly,
1. God’s wisdom is seen in the bounding of sin; as it is said of the
wrath of man, it shall praise him, and the remainder of wrath God doth
restrain (Ps. lxxvi. 10). He sets limits to the boiling corruption of
the heart, as he doth to the boisterous waves of the sea; “Hitherto
shalt thou go, and no further.” As God is the rector of the world, he
doth so restrain sin, so temper and direct it, as that human society is
preserved, which else would be overflown with a deluge of wickedness,
and ruin would be brought upon all communities. The world would be a
shambles, a brothel‑house, if God, by his wisdom and goodness, did not
set bars to that wickedness which is in the hearts of men: the whole
earth would be as bad as hell. Since the heart of man is a hell of
corruption, by that the souls of all men would be excited to the acting
the worst villanies; since {a533} “every thought of the heart of man
is only evil, and that continually” (Gen. vi. 5). If the wisdom of God
did not stop these floodgates of evil in the hearts of men, it would
overflow the world, and frustrate all the gracious designs he carries
on among the sons of men. Were it not for this wisdom, every house
would be filled with violence, as well as every nature is with sin.
What harm would not strong and furious beasts do, did not the skill of
man tame and bridle them? How often hath Divine wisdom restrained the
viciousness of human nature, and let it run, not to that point they
designed, but to the end he purposed! Laban’s fury, and Esau’s enmity
against Jacob, were pent in within bounds for Jacob’s safety, and their
hearts overruled from an intended destruction of the good man, to a
perfect amity (Gen. xxxi. 29, and xxxii.)
2. God’s wisdom is seen in the bringing glory to himself out of sin.
(1.) Out of sin itself. God erects the trophies of honor upon
that which is a natural means to hinder and deface it. His glorious
attributes are drawn out to our view, upon the occasion of sin, which
otherwise had lain hid in his own Being. Sin is altogether black and
abominable; but by the admirable wisdom of God, he hath drawn out
of the dreadful darkness of sin the saving beams of his mercy, and
displayed his grace in the incarnation and passion of his Son for the
atonement of sin. Thus he permitted Adam’s fall, and wisely ordered
it, for a fuller discovery of his own nature, and a higher elevation
of man’s good, that “as sin reigned to death, so might grace reign
through righteousness to eternal life, by Jesus Christ” (Rom. v. 21).
The unbounded goodness of God could not have appeared without it. His
goodness in rewarding innocent obedience would have been manifested;
but not his mercy, in pardoning rebellious crimes. An innocent creature
is the object of the rewards of grace, as the standing angels are under
the beams of grace; but not under the beams of mercy, because they
were never sinful, and, consequently, never miserable. Without sin
the creature had not been miserable: had man remained innocent, he
had not been the subject of punishment; and without the creature’s
misery, God’s mercy in sending his Son to save his enemies, could not
have appeared. The abundance of sin is a passive occasion for God to
manifest the abundance of his grace. The power of God in the changing
the heart of a rebellious creature, had not appeared, had not sin
infected our nature. We had not clearly known the vindictive justice
of God, had no crime been committed; for that is the proper object of
Divine wrath. The goodness of God could never have permitted justice to
exercise itself upon an innocent creature, that was not guilty either
personally or by imputation (Ps. xi. 7), “The righteous Lord loveth
righteousness, his countenance doth uphold the upright.” Wisdom is
illustrious hereby. God suffered man to fall into a mortal disease, to
shew the virtue of his own restoratives to cure sin, which in itself
is incurable by the art of any creature. And otherwise this perfection,
whereby God draws good out of evil, had been utterly useless, and would
have been destitute of an object wherein to discover itself. Again,
wisdom, in ordering a rebellious head‑strong world to its own ends, is
greater than the ordering an {a534} innocent world, exactly observant
of his precepts, and complying with the end of the creation. Now,
without the entrance of sin, this wisdom had wanted a stage to act
upon. Thus God raised the honor of this wisdom, while man ruined the
integrity of his nature; and made use of the creature’s breach of his
divine law, to establish the honor of it in a more signal and stable
manner, by the active and passive obedience of the Son of his bosom.
Nothing serves God so much, as an occasion of glorifying himself, as
the entrance of sin into the world; by this occasion God communicates
to us the knowledge of those perfections of his nature, which had else
been folded up from us in an eternal night; his justice had lain in
the dark, as having nothing to punish; his mercy had been obscure, as
having none to pardon; a great part of his wisdom had been silent, as
having no such object to order.
(2.) His wisdom appears, in making use of sinful instruments. He uses
the malice and enmity of the devil to bring about his own purposes, and
makes the sworn enemy of his honor contribute to the illustrating of it
against his will. This great craftsmaster he took in his own net, and
defeated the devil by the devil’s malice; by turning the contrivances
he had hatched and accomplished against man, against himself. He
used him as a tempter, to grapple with our Saviour in the wilderness,
whereby to make him fit to succor us; and as the god of this world, to
conspire the wicked Jews to crucify him, whereby to render him actually
the Redeemer of the world, and so make him an ignorant instrument of
that divine glory he designed to ruin. It is more skill to make a
curious piece of workmanship with ill‑conditioned tools, than with
instruments naturally fitted for the work: it is no such great wonder
for a limner to draw an exact piece with a fit pencil and suitable
colors, as to begin and perfect a beautiful work with a straw and
water, things improper for such a design.[785] This wisdom of God is
more admirable and astonishing than if a man were able to rear a vast
palace by fire, whose nature is to consume combustible matter not to
erect a building. To make things serviceable contrary to their own
nature, is a wisdom peculiar to the Creator of Nature. God’s making use
of devils, for the glory of his name, and the good of his people, is a
more amazing piece of wisdom than his goodness in employing the blessed
angels in his work. To promise, that the world, (which includes the god
of the world), and death, and things present, let them be as evil as
they will, should be ours, that is, for our good, and for his glory,
is an act of goodness; but to make them serviceable to the honor of
Christ, and the good of his people, is a wisdom that may well raise our
highest admirations: they are for believers, as they are for the glory
of Christ, and as Christ is for the glory of God (1 Cor. iii. 22). To
chain up Satan wholly, and frustrate his wiles, would be an argument
of Divine goodness; but to suffer him to run his risk, and then improve
all his contrivances for his own glorious and gracious ends and
purposes, manifests, besides his power and goodness, his wisdom also.
He uses the sins of evil instruments for the glory of his justice (Isa.
x. 5‒7). Thus he served {a535} himself of the ambition and covetousness
of the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Romans, for the correction of his
people, and punishment of his rebels, just as the Roman magistrates
used the fury of lions and other wild beasts, in their theatres, for
the punishment of criminals: the lions acted their natural temper in
tearing those that were exposed to them for a prey; but the intent of
the magistrates was to punish their crimes. the lions with their rage,
that they had from their natures; but served themselves of that natural
rage to execute justice.
(3.) God’s wisdom is seen in bringing good to the creature out of sin.
He hath ordered sin to such an end as man never dreamt of, the devil
never imagined, and sin in its own nature could never attain. Sin in
its own nature tends to no good, but that of punishment, whereby the
creature is brought into order. It hath no relation to the creature’s
good in itself, but to the creature’s mischief: but God, by an act
of infinite wisdom, brings good out of it to the creature, as well as
glory to his name, contrary to the nature of the crime, the intention
of the criminal, and the design of the tempter. God willed sin, that
is, he willed to permit it, that he might communicate himself to the
creature in the most excellent manner. He willed the permission of
sin, as an occasion to bring forth the mystery of the incarnation and
passion of our Saviour; as he permitted the sin of Joseph’s brethren,
that he might use their evil to a good end. He never, because of his
holiness, wills sin as an end; but in regard of his wisdom he wills to
permit it as a means and occasion; and thus, to draw good out of those
things which are in their own nature most contrary to good, is the
highest pitch of wisdom.
[1.] The redemption of man in so excellent a way, was drawn from
the occasion of sin. The greatest blessing that ever the world was
blessed with, was ushered in by contraieties, by the lust and irregular
affection of man; the first promise of the Redeemer by the fall of Adam
(Gen. iii. 15), and the bruising the heel of that promised Seed, by the
blackest tragedy acted by wicked rebels, the treachery of Judas, and
the rage of the Jews; the highest good hath been brought forth by the
greatest wickedness. As God out of the chaos of rude and indigested
matter framed the first creation; so from the sins of men, and malice
of Satan, he hath erected the everlasting scheme of honor in a new
creation of all things by Jesus Christ. The devil inspired man, to
content his own fury in the death of Christ; and God ordered it to
accomplish his own design of redemption in the passion of the Redeemer;
the devil had his diabolical ends, and God overpowers his actions to
serve his own divine ends. The person that betrayed him was admitted
to be a spectator of the most private actions of our Saviour, that
his innocence might be justified; to shew, that he was not afraid to
have his enemies judges of his most retired privacies. While they all
thought to do their own wills, Divine wisdom orders them to do God’s
will (Acts ii. 23): “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel
and foreknowledge of God, you have taken, and by wicked hands have
crucified and slain.” And wherein the crucifiers of {a536} Christ
sinned, in shedding the richest blood, upon their repentance they found
the expiation of their crimes, and the discovery of a superabundant
mercy. Nothing but the blood was aimed at by them: the best blood was
shed by them; but infinite Wisdom makes the cross the scene of his own
righteousness, and the womb of man’s recovery. By the occasion of man’s
lapsed state, there was a way open to raise man to a more excellent
condition than that whereinto he was put by creation: and the depriving
man of the happiness of an earthly paradise, in a way of justice, was
an occasion of advancing him to a heavenly felicity, in a way of grace.
The violation of the old covenant occasionally introduced a better: the
loss of the first integrity ushered in a more stable righteousness, an
everlasting righteousness (Dan. ix. 24). And the falling of the first
head was succeeded by one whose standing could not but be eternal. The
fall of the devil was ordered by infinite Wisdom, for the good of that
body from which he fell. It is supposed by some, that the devil was the
chief angel in heaven, the head of all the rest; and that he falling,
the angels were left as a body without a head; and after he had
politically beheaded the angels, he endeavored to destroy man, and rout
him out of paradise; but God takes the opportunity to set up his Son,
as the head of angels and men. And thus whilst the devil endeavored to
spoil the corporation of angels, and make them a body contrary to God,
God makes angels and men one body under one head, for his service.
The angels in losing a defectible head, attained a more excellent and
glorious Head in another nature, which they had not before; though of
a lower nature in his humanity, yet of a more glorious nature in his
divinity: from whence many suppose they derive their confirming grace,
and the stability of their standing. “All things in heaven and earth
are gathered together in Christ” (Eph i. 10), ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι, all
united in him, and reduced under one head: that though our Saviour be
not properly their Redeemer, for redemption supposeth captivity, yet in
some sense he is their Head and Mediator: so that now the inhabitants
of heaven and earth are but one family (Eph. iii. 15). And the
innumerable company of angels are parts of that heavenly and triumphant
Jerusalem, and that general assembly, whereof Jesus Christ is Mediator
(Heb. xii. 22, 29).
[2.] The good of a nation often, by the skill of Divine wisdom, is
promoted by the sins of some men. The patriarchs’ selling Joseph to the
Midianites (Gen. xxxvii. 28), was without question a sin, and a breach
of natural affection; yet, by God’s wise ordination, it proved the
safety of the whole church of God in the world, as well as the Egyptian
nation (Gen. xlv. 5, 8; l. 20). The Jews’ unbelief was a step whereby
the Gentiles arose to the knowledge of the gospel; as the setting of
the sun in one place is the rising of it in another (Matt. xxii. 9).
He uses the corruptions of men instrumentally to propogate his gospel:
he built up the true church by the preaching of some out of envy
(Phil. i. 15), as he blessed Israel out of the mouth of a false prophet
(Numb. xxiii.) How often have the heresies of men been the occasion of
clearing up the truth of God, and fixing the more lively impressions
of it on {a537} the hearts of believers! Neither Judah nor Tamar, in
their lust, dreamt of a stock for the Redeemer; yet God gave a son
from that unlawful bed, whereof “Christ came according to the flesh”
(Gen. xxxviii. 29, compared with Matt. i. 3). Jonah’s sin was probably
the first and remote occasion of the Ninevites giving credit to his
prophecy; his sin was the cause of his punishment, and his being flung
into the sea might facilitate the reception of his message, and excite
the Ninevites’ repentance, whereby a cloud of severe judgment was blown
away from them. It is thought by some, that when Jonah passed through
the streets of Nineveh, with his proclamation of destruction, he might
be known by some of the mariners of that ship, from whence he was cast
overboard into the sea, and might, after their voyage, be occasionally
in that city, the metropolis of the nation, and the place of some
of their births; and might acquaint the people, that this was the
same person they had cast into the sea, by his own consent, for his
acknowledged running from the presence of the Lord: for that he had
told them (Jonah i. 10); and the mariner’s prayer (ver. 14) evidenced
it; whereupon they might conclude his message worthy of belief, since
they knew from such evidences, that he had sunk into the bowels of the
waters, and now saw him safe in their streets, by a deliverence unknown
to them; and that therefore that power that delivered him, could
easily verify his word in the threatened judgment. Had Jonah gone at
first, without committing that sin, and receiving that punishment, his
message had not been judged a divine prediction, but a fruit of some
enthusiastic madness; his sin upon this account was the first occasion
of averting a judgment from so great a city.
[3.] The good of the sinner himself is sometimes promoted by Divine
wisdom ordering the sin. As God had not permitted sin to enter upon
the world, unless to bring glory to himself by it; so he would not let
sin remain in the little world of a believer’s heart, if he did not
intend to order it for his good. What is done by man, to his damage
and disparagement, is directed by Divine wisdom to his advantage; not
that it is the intent of the sin, or the sinner; but it is the event of
the sin, by the ordination of Divine wisdom and grace. As without the
wisdom of God permitting sin to enter into the world, some attributes
of God had not been experimentally known, so some graces could not have
been exercised; for where had there been an object for that noble zeal,
in vindicating the glory of God, had it not been invaded by an enemy?
The intenseness of love to him could not have been so strong, had
we not an enemy to hate for his sake. Where had there been any place
for that noble part of charity in holy admonitions and compassion
to the souls of our neighbors, and endeavors to reduce them out of
a destructive, to a happy path? Humility would not have had so many
grounds for its growth and exercise, and holy sorrow had no fuel. And
as without the appearance of sin there had been no exercise of the
patience of God, so without afflictions, the fruits of sin, there had
been no ground for the exercise of the patience of a christian, one
of the noblest parts of valor. Now sin being evil, and such as cannot
but be evil, hath no respect in itself to any {a538} good, and cannot
work a gracious end, or anything profitable to the creature; nay it is
a hindrance to any good, and, therefore, what good comes from it, is
accidental; occasioned, indeed, by sin, but efficiently caused by the
over‑ruling wisdom of God, taking occasion thereby to display itself
and the Divine goodness.
1. The sins and corruptions remaining in the heart of man, God orders
for good; and there are good effects by the direction of his wisdom and
grace, as the soul respects God.
(1.) God often brings forth a sensibleness of the necessity of
dependence on him. The nurse often lets the child slip, that it may the
better know who supports it, and may not be too venturous and confident
of its own strength. Peter would trust in habitual grace, and God
suffers him to fall, that he might trust more in assisting grace (Matt.
xxvi. 35): “Though I should die with thee, yet I will not deny thee.”
God leaves sometimes the brightest souls in eclipse, to manifest that
their holiness, and the preservation of it, depend upon the darting
out his beams upon them. As the falls of men are the effects of their
coldness and remissness in acts of faith and repentance, so the fruit
of these falls is often a running to him for refuge, and a deeper
sensibleness where their security lies. It makes us lower our swelling
sails, and come under the lee and protection of Divine grace. When the
pleasures of sin answer not the expectations of a revolted creature,
he reflects upon his former state, and sticks more close to God, when
before God had little of his company (Hos. ii. 7): “I will return to
my first husband, for then it was better with me than now.” As God
makes the sins of men sometimes an occasion of their conversion, so he
sometimes makes them an occasion of a further conversion. Onesimus run
from Philemon, and was met with by Paul, who proved an instrument of
his conversion (Philem. 10): “My son, Onesimus, whom I have begotten
in my bonds.” His flight from his master was the occasion of his
regeneration by Paul, a prisoner. The falls of believers God orders to
their further stability; he that is fallen for want of using his staff,
will lean more upon it to preserve himself from the like disaster. God,
by permitting the lapses of men, doth often make them despair of their
own strength to subdue their enemies, and rely upon the strength of
Christ, wherein God hath laid up power for us, and so becomes stronger
in that strength which God hath ordained for them. We are very apt to
trust in ourselves, and have confidence in our own worth and strength;
and God lets loose corruptions to abate this swelling humor. This was
the reason of the apostle Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor. xii. 7);
whether it were a temptation, or corruption, or sickness, that he might
be sensible of his own inability, and where the sufficiency of grace
for him was placed. He that is in danger of drowning, and hath the
waves come over his head, will, with all the might he hath, lay hold
upon anything near him, which is capable to save him. God lets his
people sometimes sink into such a condition, that they may lay the
faster hold on him who is near to all that call upon him.
(2.) God hereby raiseth higher estimations of the value and virtue of
the blood of Christ. As the great reason why God permitted sin {a539}
to enter into the world, was to honor himself in the Redeemer, so the
continuance of sin, and the conquests it sometimes makes in renewed
men, are to honor the infinite value and virtue of the Redeemer’s merit,
which God, from the beginning, intended to magnify: the value of it, in
taking off so much successive guilt; and the virtue of it, in washing
away so much daily filth. The wisdom of God hereby keeps up the credit
of imputed righteousness, and manifests the immense treasure of the
Redeemer’s merit to pay such daily debts. Were we perfectly sanctified,
we should stand upon our own bottom, and imagine no need of the
continual and repeated imputation of the righteousness of Christ for
our justification: we should confide in inherent righteousness, and
slight imputed. If God should take off all remainders of sin, as well
as the guilt of it, we should be apt to forget that we are fallen
creatures, and that we had a Redeemer; but the relics of sin in us mind
us of the necessity of some higher strength to set us right: they mind
us both of our own misery, and the Redeemer’s perpetual benefit. God,
by this, keeps up the dignity and honor of our Saviour’s blood to the
height, and therefore sometimes lets us see, to our own cost, what
filth yet remains in us for the employment of that blood, which we
should else but little think of, and less admire. Our gratitude is so
small to God as well as man, that the first obligations are soon forgot
if we stand not in need of fresh ones successively to second them; we
should lose our thankful remembrance of the first virtue of Christ’s
blood in washing us, if our infirmities did not mind us of fresh
reiterations and applications of it. Our Saviour’s office of advocacy
was erected especially for sins committed after a justified and renewed
state (1 John ii. 1). We should scarce remember we had an Advocate,
and scarce make use of him without some sensible necessity; but our
remainders of sin discover our impotency, and an impossibility for us
either to expiate our sin, or conform to the law, which necessitates
us to have recourse to that person whom God hath appointed to make up
the breaches between God and us. So the apostle wraps up himself in the
covenant of grace and his interest in Christ, after his conflict with
sin (Rom. vii. _ult._), “I thank God, through Jesus Christ.” Now, after
such a body of death, a principle within me that sends up daily steams,
yet as long as I serve God with my mind, as long as I keep the main
condition of the covenant, “there is no condemnation” (Rom. viii. 1):
Christ takes my part, procures my acceptance, and holds the band
of salvation firm in his hands. The brightness of Christ’s grace
is set off by the darkness of our sin. We should not understand the
sovereignty of his medicines, if there were no relics of sin for him to
exercise his skill upon: the physician’s art is most experimented, and
therefore most valued in relapses, as dangerous as the former disease.
As the wisdom of God brought our Saviour into temptation, that he might
have compassion to us, so it permits us to be overcome by temptation,
that we might have due valuations of him.
(3.) God hereby often engageth the soul to a greater industry for his
glory. The highest persecutors, when they have become converts have
been the greatest champions for that cause they both hated and {a540}
oppressed. The apostle Paul is such an instance of this, that it needs
no enlargement. By how much they have failed of answering the end of
their creation in glorifying God, by so much the more they summon up
all their force for such an end, after their conversion; to restore
as much as they can of that glory to God, which they, by their sin,
had robbed him of. Their sins, by the order of Divine wisdom, prove
whetstones to sharpen the edge of their spirits for God. Paul never
remembered his persecuting fury, but he doubled his industry for the
service of God, which before he trampled under his feet. The further
we go back, the greater leap many times we take forward. Our Saviour,
after his resurrection, put Peter upon the exercise of that love to him,
which had so lately shrunk his head out of suffering (John xxi. 15‒17);
and no doubt, but the consideration of his base denial, together with
a reflection upon a gracious pardon, engaged his ingenuous soul to
stronger and fiercer flames of affection. A believer’s courage for God
is more sharpened oftentimes by the shame of his fall: he endeavors to
repair the faults of his ingratitude and his disingenuity by larger and
stronger steps of obedience; as a man in a fight, having been foiled by
his enemy, reassumes new courage by his fall, and is many times obliged
to his foil, both for his spirit and his victory. A gracious heart will,
upon the very motions to sin, double its vigor, as well as by good ones:
it is usually more quickened, both in its motion to God and for God, by
the temptations and motions to sin which run upon it. This is another
good the wisdom of God brings forth from sin.
(4.) Again, humility towards God is another good Divine wisdom brings
forth from the occasion of sin. By this God beats down all good opinion
of ourselves. Hezekiah was more humbled by his fall into pride, than by
all the distress he had been in by Sennacherib’s army (2 Chron. xxxii.
26). Peter’s confidence before his fall, gave way to an humble modesty
after it; you see his confidence (Mark xiv. 24). “Though all should be
offended in thee, yet will not I;” and you have the mark of his modesty
(John xxi. 17). It is not then, Lord, I will love thee to the death,
I will not start from thee; but, “Lord, thou knowest that I love thee:”
I cannot assure myself of anything after this miscarriage; but, Lord,
thou knowest there is a principle of love in me to thy name. He was
ashamed, that himself who appeared such a pillar, should bend as meanly
as a shrub to a temptation. The reflection upon sin lays a man as low
as hell in his humiliation, as the commission of sin did in the merit.
When David comes to exercise repentance for his sin, he begins it from
the well‑head of sin (Ps. li. 5), his original corruption, and draws
down the streams of it to the last commission; perhaps he did not so
seriously humble himself for the sin of his nature all his days, so
much as at that time; at least, we have not such evidences of it. And
Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart; not only for the
pride of his act (2 Chron. xxxii. 26), but for the pride in the heart,
which was the spring of that pride in act, in showing his treasures to
the Babylonish ambassadors. God lets sin continue in the hearts of the
best in this world, and sometimes gives the reins to Satan, and {a541}
a man’s own corruption, to keep up a sense of the ancient sale we made
of ourselves to both.
2. In regard of ourselves. Herein is the wonder of Divine wisdom, that
God many times makes a sin, which meritoriously fits us for hell, a
providential occasion to fit us for heaven; when it is an occasion of a
more humble faith and believing humility, and an occasion of a thorough
sanctification and growth in grace, which prepares us for a state of
glory.
(1.) He makes use of one sin’s breaking out to discover more; and so
brings us to a self‑abhorrency and indignation against sin, the first
step towards heaven. Perhaps David, before his gross fall, thought he
had no hypocrisy in him. We often find him appealing to God for his
integrity, and desiring God to try him, if any guile could be found in
his heart, as if he could find none himself; but his lapse into that
great wickedness makes him discern much falseness in his soul, when
he desires God to renew a right spirit within him, and speaks of truth
in the inward parts (Ps. li. 6, 10). The stirring of corruption makes
all the mud at the bottom appear, which before a soul did not suspect.
No man would think there were so great a cloud of smoke contained in
a little stick of wood, were it not for the powerful operation of the
fire, that both discovers and separates it. Job, that cursed the day of
his birth, and uttered many impatient expressions against God upon the
account of his own integrity; upon his recovery from his affliction,
and God’s close application of himself, was wrought to a greater
abhorrency of himself than ever we read he was exercised in before (Job
xlii. 6). The hostile acts of sin increase the soul’s hatred of it; and
the deeper our humiliations are for it, the stronger impressions of
abhorrency are made upon us.
(2.) He often orders it, to make conscience more tender, and the soul
more watchful. He that finds by his calamity his enemy to have more
strength against him than he suspected, will double his guards, and
quicken his diligence against him. A being overtaken by some sin, is,
by the wisdom of God, disposed to make us more fearful of cherishing
any occasion to inflame it, and watchful against every motion and start
of it. By a fall, the soul hath more experience of the deceitfulness
of the heart; and by observing its methods, is rendered better able to
watch against them. It is our ignorance of the devices of Satan, and
our own hearts, that makes us obnoxious to their surprises. A fall
into one sin is often a prevention of more which lay in wait for us;
as the fall of a small body into an ambush prevents the design of the
enemy upon a greater: as God suffers heresies in the church, to try
our faith, so he suffers sins to remain, and sometimes to break out, to
try our watchfulness. This advantage he brings from them, to steel our
resolutions against the same sins, and quicken our circumspection for
the future against new surprises by a temptation. David’s sin was ever
before him (Ps. li. 3), and made his conscience cry, Blood, blood! upon
every occasion: he refused the water of the well of Bethlehem (2 Sam.
xxiii. 16, 17), because it was gained with the hazard of lives: he
could endure nothing that had the taste of blood {a542} in it. Our
fear of a thing depends much upon a trial of it: a child will not
fear too near approaches to the fire till he feels the smart of it.
Mortification doth not wholly suppress the motions of sin, though it
doth the resolutions to commit it; but that there will be a proneness
in the relics of it, to entice a man into those faults, which, upon
sight of their blemishes, cost him so many tears; as great sicknesses,
after the cure, are more watched, and the body humored, that a man
might not fall from the craziness they have left in him, which he is
apt to do if relapses are not provided against. A man becomes more
careful of anything that may contribute to the resurrection of an
expired disease.
(3.) God makes it an occasion of the mortification of that sin which
was the matter of the fall. The liveliness of one sin, in a renewed
man, many times is the occasion of the death of it. A wild beast, while
kept close in a den, is secure in its life, but when it breaks out to
rapine, it makes the master resolve to prevent any further mischief by
the death of it. The impetuous stirring of a humor, in a disease, is
sometimes critical, and a prognostic of the strength of nature against
it, whereby the disease loses its strength, by its struggling, and
makes room for health to take place by degrees. One sin is used by
God for the destruction both of itself and others, as the flesh of a
scorpion cures the biting of it. It sometimes, by wounding us, loseth
its sting, and, like the bee, renders itself incapable of a second
revenge. Peter, after his gross denial, never denied his Master
afterwards. The sin that lay undiscovered, is, by a fall, become
visible, and so more obvious to a mortifying stroke. The soul lays the
faster hold on Christ and the promise, and goes out against that enemy,
in the name of that Lord of Hosts, of which he was too negligent before;
and, therefore, as he proves more strong, so more successful: he hath
more strength, because he hath less confidence in himself, and more in
God, the prime strength of his soul. As it was with Christ, so it is
with us; while the devil was bruising his heel, he was bruising his
head; and while the devil is bruising our heel, the God of peace and
wisdom is sometimes bruising his head, both in us and for us, so that
the strugglings of sin are often as the faint groans or bitings of a
beast that is ready to expire. It is just with a man, sometimes, as
with a running fountain that hath mud at the bottom, when it is stirred
the mud tinctures and defiles it all over; yet some of that mud hath a
vent with the streams which run from it, so that, when it is re‑settled
at the bottom, it is not so much in quantity as it was before. God, by
his wisdom, weakens the sin by permitting it to stir and defile.
(4.) Sometimes Divine wisdom makes it an occasion to promote a
sanctification in all parts of the soul. As the working of one
ill‑humor in the body is an occasion of cashiering, not only that, but
the rest, by a sound purge; as a man, that is a little cold, doth not
think of the fire, but if he slips with one foot into an icy puddle,
he hastens to the fire, whereby not only that part, but all the rest
receive a warmth and strength upon that occasion; or, as if a person
fall into the mire, his clothes are washed, and by that means cleansed,
not only from the filth at present contracted, but from the {a543}
former spots that were before unregarded. God, by his wisdom, brings
secret sins to a discovery, and thereby cleanseth the soul of them.
David’s fall might be ordered as an answer to his former petition
(Ps. xix. 12): “Cleanse thou me from my secret sins;” and as he did
earnestly pray after his fall, so no doubt but he endeavored a thorough
sanctification (Ps. li. 7); “Purge me, wash me;” and that he meant
not only a sanctification from that single sin, but from all, root and
branch, is evident by that complaint of the flaw in his nature (ver. 5):
the dross and chaff which lies in the heart is hereby discovered, and
an opportunity administered of throwing it out, and searching all the
corners of the heart to discover where it lay. As God sometimes takes
occasion from one sin to reckon with men, in a way of justice, for
others, so he sometimes takes occasion, from the commission of one sin,
to bring out all the actions against the sinner, to make him, in a way
of gracious wisdom, set more cordially upon the work of sanctification.
A great fall sometimes hath been the occasion of a man’s conversion.
The fall of mankind occasioned a more blessed restoration; and the
falls of particular believers ofttimes occasion a more extensive
sanctification. Thus the only wise God makes poisons in nature to
become medicines in a way of grace and wisdom.
(5.) Hereby the growth in grace is furthered. It is a wonder of Divine
wisdom, to subtract sometimes grace from a person, and let him fall
into sin, thereby to occasion the increase of habitual grace in him,
and to augment it by those ways that seemed to depress it. By making
sins an occasion of a more vigorous acting, the contrary grace, the
wisdom of God, makes our corruptions, in their own nature destructive,
to become profitable to us. Grace often breaks out more strongly
afterwards, as the sun doth with its heat, after it hath been masked
and interrupted with a mist: they often, through the mighty working of
the Spirit, make us more humble, and “humility fits us to receive more
grace from God” (James iv. 6). How doth faith, that sunk under the
waves, lift up its head again, and carry the soul out with a greater
liveliness! What ardors of love, what floods of repenting tears, what
severity of revenge, what horrors at the remembrance of the sin, what
tremblings at the appearance of a second temptation! so that grace
seems to be awakened to a new and more vigorous life (2 Cor. vii. 11).
The broken joint is many times stronger in the rupture than it was
before. The luxuriancy of the branches of corruption is an occasion
of purging, and purging is with a design to make grace more fruitful
(John xv. 2); “He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.” Thus
Divine wisdom doth both sharpen and brighten us by the dust of sin,
and ripen and mellow the fruits of grace by the dung of corruption.
Grace grows the stronger by opposition, as the fire burns hottest and
clearest when it is most surrounded by a cold air; and our natural heat
reassumes a new strength by the coldness of the winter. The foil under
a diamond, though an imperfection in itself, increaseth the beauty and
lustre of the stone. The enmity of man was a commendation of the grace
of God: it occasioned the {a544} breaking out of the grace of God upon
us; and is an occasion, by the wisdom and grace of God, of the increase
of grace many times in us. How should the consideration of God’s
incomprehensible wisdom, in the management of evil, swallow us up in
admiration! who brings forth such beauty, such eminent discoveries
of himself, such excellent good to the creature, out of the bowels of
the greatest contrarieties, making dark shadows serve to display and
beautify, to our apprehensions, the Divine glory! If evil were not in
the world, men would not know what good is; they would not behold the
lustre of Divine wisdom, as without night we could not understand the
beauty of the day. Though God is not the author of sin, because of
his holiness, yet he is the administrator of sin by his wisdom, and
accomplisheth his own purposes, by the iniquities of his enemies, and
the lapses and infirmities of his friends. Thus much for the second,
the government of man in his lapsed state, and the government of sin,
wherein the wisdom of God doth wonderfully appear.
3dly. The wisdom of God appears in the government of man in his
conversion and return to him. If there be a counsel in framing the
lowest creature, and in the minutest passages of providence, there
must needs be a higher wisdom in the government of the creature to a
supernatural end, and framing the soul to be a monument of his glory.
The wisdom of God is seen with more admirations, and in more varieties,
by the angels, in the church than in the creation (Eph. iii. 10);
that is, in forming a church out of the rubbish of the world, out of
contrarieties and contradictions to him, which is greater than the
framing a celestial and elementary world out of a rude chaos. The most
glorious bodies in the world, even those of the sun, moon, and stars,
have not such stamps of Divine skill upon them as the soul of man; nor
is there so much of wisdom in the fabric and faculties of that, as in
the reduction of a blind, wilful, rebellious soul, to its own happiness,
and God’s glory (Eph. i. 11, 12); “He worketh all things according to
the counsel of his own will, that we should be for the praise of his
glory.” If all things, then this, which is none of the least of his
works; to the praise of the glory of his goodness in his work, and to
the praise of the rule of his work, his counsel, in both the act of
his will, and the act of his wisdom. The restoring of the beauty of the
soul, and its fitness for its true end, speaks no less wisdom than the
first draught of it in creation: and the application of redemption, and
bringing forth the fruits of it, is as well an act of his prudence, as
the contrivance was of his counsel. Divine wisdom appears,
1. In the subjects of conversion. His goodness reigns in the very dust,
and he erects the walls and ornaments of his temple from the clay and
mud of the world. He passes over the wise, and noble, and mighty, that
may pretend some grounds of boasting in their own natural or acquired
endowments; and pitches upon the most contemptible materials, wherewith
to build a spiritual tabernacle for himself (1 Cor. i. 26, 27), “the
foolish, and weak things of the world;” those that are naturally most
unfit for it, and most refractory to it. Herein lies the skill of an
architect, to render the most knotty, {a545} crooked, and inform pieces,
by his art, subservient to his main purpose and design. Thus God hath
ordered, from the beginning of the world, contrary tempers, various
humors, diverse nations, as stones of several natures, to be a building
for himself, fitly framed together, and to be his own family (1 Cor.
iii. 9). Who will question the skill that alters a black jet into a
clear crystal, a glow‑worm into a star, a lion into a lamb, and a swine
into a dove? The more intricate and knotty any business is, the more
eminent is any man’s ability and prudence, in untying the knots and
bringing it to a good issue. The more desperate the disease, the more
admirable is the physician’s skill in the cure. He pitches upon men for
his service, who have natural dispositions to serve him in such ways as
he disposeth of them, after their conversion: so Paul was naturally a
conscientious man; what he did against Christ was from the dictates of
an erroneous conscience, soaked in the Pharisaical interpretations of
the Jewish law: he had a strain of zeal to prosecute what his depraved
reason and conscience did inform him in. God pitches upon this man,
and works him in the fire for his service. He alters not his natural
disposition, to make him of a constitution and temper contrary to
what he was before; but directs it to another object, claps in another
bias into the bowl, and makes his ill‑governed dispositions move in
a new way of his own appointment, and guides that natural heat to the
service of that interest which he was before ambitious to extirpate;
as a high‑mettled horse, when left to himself, creates both disturbance
and danger, but under the conduct of a wise rider, moves regularly; not
by a change of his natural fierceness, but a skilful management of the
beast to the rider’s purpose.
2. In the means of conversion. The prudence of man consists in the
timing the executions of his counsels; and no less doth the wisdom of
God consist in this. As he is a God of judgment or wisdom, he waits to
introduce his grace into the soul in the fittest season. This attribute,
Paul, in the story of his own conversion, puts a particular remark
upon, which he doth not upon any other; in that catalogue he reckons
up (1 Tim. i. 17), “Now, unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible,
the only wise God, be honor and glory, for ever and ever. Amen.” A most
solemn doxology, wherein wisdom sits upon the throne above all the rest,
with a special Amen to the glory of it, which refers to the timing
of his mercy so to Paul, as made most for the glory of his grace, and
the encouragement of others from him as the pattern. God took him at
a time when he was upon the brink of hell; when he was ready to devour
the new‑born infant church at Damascus; when he was armed with all the
authority from without, and fired with all the zeal from within, for
the prosecution of his design: then God seizeth upon him, and runs him
in a channel for his own honor, and his creatures’ happiness. It is
observable[786] how God set his eye upon Paul all along in his furious
course, and lets him have the reins, without putting out his hand
to bridle him; yet no motion he could take, but the eye of God runs
along with him: he suffered him to kick against the pricks of miracles,
and the convincing discourse of Stephen at his martyrdom. {a546}
There were many that voted for Stephen’s death, as the witnesses that
flung the stones first at him; but they are not named, only Saul, who
testified his approbation as well as the rest, and that by watching
the witnesses’ clothes while they were about that bloody work (Acts
vii. 58); “the witnesses laid their clothes at a young man’s feet,
named Saul.” Again, though multitudes were consenting to his death,
yet (Acts viii. 1) Saul only is mentioned. God’s eye is upon him, yet
he would not at that time stop his fury. He goes on further, and makes
“havoc of the church” (Acts viii. 3). He had surely many more complices,
but none are named (as if none regarded with any design of grace) but
Saul: yet God would not reach out his hand to change him, but eyes him,
waiting for a fitter opportunity, which in his wisdom he did foresee.
And, therefore (Acts ix. 1) the Spirit of God adds a _yet_; “Saul yet
breathing out threatenings.” It was not God’s time yet, but it would
be shortly. But, when Saul was putting in execution his design against
the church of Damascus, when the devil was at the top of his hopes, and
Saul in the height of his fury, and the Christians sunk into the depth
of their fears, the wisdom of God lays hold of the opportunity, and by
Paul’s conversion at this season, defeats the devil, disappoints the
high priests, shields his people, discharges their fears, by pulling
Saul out of the devil’s hands, and forming Satan’s instruments to a
holy activity against him.
3. The wisdom of God appears in the manner of conversion. So great
a change God makes, not by a destruction, but with a preservation of,
and suitableness to nature. As the devil tempts us, not by offering
violence to our natures, but by proposing things convenient to our
corrupt natures, so doth God solicit us to a return by proposals suited
to our faculties. As he doth in nature convey nourishment to men, by
means of the fruits of the earth, and produceth the fruits of the earth
by the influences of heaven; the influences of heaven do not force the
earth, but excite that natural virtue and strength which is in it. So
God produceth grace in the soul by the means of the word, fitted to the
capacity of man, as man, and proportioned to his rational faculties,
as rational. It would be contrary to the wisdom of God to move man
like a stone, to invert the order and privilege of that nature which
he settled in creation; for then God would in vain have given man
understanding and will: because, without moving man according to those
faculties, they would remain unprofitable and unuseful in man.[787]
God doth not reduce us to himself, as logs, by a mere force, or as
slaves forced by a cudgel, to go forth to that place, and do that
work which they have no stomach to: but he doth accommodate himself
to those foundations he hath laid in our nature, and guides us in a
way agreeable thereunto, by an action as sweet as powerful; clearing
our understandings of dark principles, whereby we may see his truth,
our own misery, and the seat of our happiness; and bending our wills
according to this light, to desire and move conveniently to this
end of our calling; efficaciously, yet agreeably; powerfully, yet
without imposing on our natural faculties; sweetly, without violence,
in ordering the {a547} means; but effectually, without failing, in
accomplishing the end.[788] And therefore the Scripture calleth it,
teaching (John vi. 45), alluring (Hos. ii. 15), calling us to seek the
Lord (Ps. xxvii. 8). Teaching is an act of wisdom; alluring, an act of
love; calling, an act of authority: but none of them argue a violent
constraint. The principle that moves the will is supernatural; but the
will, as a natural faculty, concurs in the act or motion. God doth not
act in this in a way of absolute power, without an infinite wisdom,
suiting himself to the nature of the things he acts upon: he doth
not change the physical nature, though he doth the moral. As in the
government of the world, he doth not make heavy things ascend, nor
light things descend, ordinarily, but guides their motions according
to their natural qualities: so God doth not strain the faculties
beyond their due pitch. He lets the nature of the faculty remain, but
changes the principle in it: the understanding remains understanding,
and the will remains will. But where there was before folly in the
understanding, he puts in a spirit of wisdom; and where there was
before a stoutness in the will, he forms it to a pliableness to his
offers. He hath a key to fit every ward in the lock, and opens the will
without injuring the nature of the will. He doth not change the soul
by an alteration of the faculties, but by an alteration of something
in them: not by an inroad upon them, or by mere power, or a blind
instinct, but by proposing to the understanding something to be known,
and informing it of the reasonableness of his precepts, and the innate
goodness and excellency of his offers, and by inclining the will to
love and embrace what is proposed. And things are proposed under those
notions, which usually move our wills and affections. We are moved by
things as they are good, pleasant, profitable; we entertain things as
they make for us, and detest things as they are contrary to us. Nothing
affects us but under such qualities, and God suits his encouragements
to these natural affections which are in us: his power and wisdom go
hand in hand together; his power to act what his wisdom orders, and his
wisdom to conduct what his power executes. He brings men to him in ways
suited to their natural dispositions. The stubborn he tears like a lion,
the gentle he wins like a turtle, by sweetness; he hath a hammer to
break the stout, and a cord of love to draw the more pliable tempers:
he works upon the more rational in a way of gospel reason; upon the
more ingenuous in a way of kindness, and draws them by the cords of
love. The wise men were led to Christ by a star, and means suited to
the knowledge and study that those eastern nations used, which was much
in astronomy: he worketh upon others by miracles accommodated to every
one’s sense, and so proportions the means according to the nature of
the subjects he works upon.
4. The wisdom of God is apparent in his discipline and penal evils. The
wisdom of human governments is seen in the matter of their laws, and in
the penalties of their laws, and in the proportion of the punishment to
the offence, and in the good that redounds from the punishment either
to the offender, or to the community. The wisdom of God is seen in the
penalty of death upon the transgression {a548} of his law; both in that
it was the greatest evil that man might fear, and so was a convenient
means to keep him in his due bound, and also in the proportion of it
to the transgression. Nothing less could be in a wise justice inflicted
upon an offender for a crime against the highest Being and the Supreme
Excellency: but this hath been spoken of before in the wisdom of his
laws. I shall only mention some few; it would be too tedious to run
into all.
(1.) His wisdom appears in judgments, in the suiting them to the
qualities of persons, and nature of sins. He deviseth evil (Jer. xviii.
11); his judgments are fruits of counsel. “He also is wise, and will
bring evil” (Isa. xxxi. 2),――evil suitable to the person offending,
and evil suitable to the offence committed: as the husbandman doth
his threshing instruments to the grain: he hath a rod for the cummin,
a tenderer seed, and a flail for the harder; so hath God greater
judgments for the obdurate sinner, and lighter for those that have
something of tenderness in their wickedness (Isa. xxviii. 27, 29):
“Because he is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working;” so some
understand the place, “With the froward, he will show himself froward.”
He proportions punishment to the sin, and writes the cause of the
judgment in the forehead of the judgment itself. Sodom burned in lust,
and was consumed by fire from heaven. The Jews sold Christ for thirty
pence; and at the taking of Jerusalem, thirty of them were sold
for a penny. So Adonibezek cut off the thumbs and great toes of
others, and he is served in the same kind (Judges i. 7). The Babel
builders designed an indissoluble union, and God brings upon them an
unintelligible confusion. And in Exod. ix. 9, the ashes of the furnace
where the Israelites burnt the Egyptian bricks, sprinkled towards
heaven, brought boils upon the Egyptian bodies, that they might feel in
their own, what pain they had caused in the Israelites’ flesh; and find,
by the smart of the inflamed scab, what they had made the Israelites
endure. The waters of the river Nilus are turned into blood, wherein
they had stifled the breath of the Israelites’ infants: and at last the
prince, and the flower of their nobility, are drowned in the Red Sea.
It is part of the wisdom of justice to proportion punishment to the
crime, and the degrees of wrath to the degrees of malice in the sin.
Afflictions also are wisely proportioned: God, as a wise physician,
considers the nature of the humor and strength of the patient, and
suits his medicines both to the one and the other (1 Cor. x. 13).
(2.) In the seasons of punishments and afflictions. He stays till sin
be ripe, that his justice may appear more equitable, and the offender
more inexcusable (Dan. ix. 14); he watches upon the evil to bring it
upon men; to bring it in the just season and order for his righteous
and gracious purpose; his righteous purpose on the enemies, and his
gracious purpose on his people. Jerusalem’s calamity came upon them,
when the city was full of people at the solemnity of the passover,
that he might mow down his enemies at once, and time their destruction
to such a moment wherein they had timed the crucifixion of his Son. He
watched over the clouds of his judgments, and kept them from pouring
down, till his people, the Christians, were provided for, and had
departed out of the city to the {a549} chambers and retiring places
God had provided for them. He made not Jerusalem the shambles of his
enemies, till he had made Pella, and other places, the arks of his
friends. As Pliny tells us, “The providence of God holds the sea in a
calm for fifteen days, that the halcyons, little birds that frequent
the shore, may build their nests, and hatch up their young.” The
judgment upon Sodom was suspended for some hours, till Lot was secured.
God suffered not the church to be invaded by violent persecutions, till
she was established in the faith: he would not expose her to so great
combats, while she was weak and feeble, but gave her time to fortify
herself, to be rendered more capable of bearing up under them.[789] He
stifled all the motions of passion the idolaters might have for their
superstition, till religion was in such a condition, as rather to
be increased and purified, than extinguished by opposition. Paul was
secured from Nero’s chains, and the nets of his enemies, till he had
broke off the chain of the devil from many cities of the Gentiles, and
catched them by the net of the gospel out of the sea of the world. Thus
the wisdom of God is seen in the seasons of judgments and afflictions.
(3.) It is apparent in the gracious issue of afflictions and penal
evils. It is a part of wisdom to bring good out of evil of punishment,
as well as to bring good out of sin. The church never was so like
to heaven, as when it was most persecuted by hell: the storms often
cleansed it and the lance often made it more healthful. Job’s integrity
had not been so clear, nor his patience so illustrious, had not the
devil been permitted to afflict him. God, by his wisdom, outwits Satan;
when he by his temptations intends to pollute us and buffet us, God
orders it to purify us; he often brings the clearest light out of the
thickest darkness, makes poisons to become medicines. Death itself, the
greatest punishment in this life, and the entrance into hell in its own
nature, he hath by his wise contrivance, made to his people the gate of
heaven, and the passage into immortality.[790] Penal evils in a nation
often end in a public advantage: troubles and wars among a people
are many times not destroying, but medicinal, and cure them of that
degeneracy, luxury, and effeminateness, they contracted by a long peace.
(4.) This wisdom is evident in the various ends which God brings about
by afflictions. The attainment of various ends by one and the same
means, is the fruit of the agent’s prudence. By the same affliction,
the wise God corrects sometimes for some base affection, excites some
sleepy grace, drives out some lurking corruption, refines the soul, and
ruins the lust; discovers the greatness of a crime, the vanity of the
creature, and the sufficiency in himself. The Jews bind Paul, and by
the judge he is sent to Rome; while his mouth is stopped in Judea, it
is opened in one of the greatest cities of the world, and his enemies
unwittingly contribute to the increase of the knowledge of Christ
by those chains, in that city (Acts xxviii. 31) that triumphed over
the earth. And his afflictive bonds added courage and resolution to
others (Phil. i. 14): “Many waxing confident by my bonds;” which could
not in their own nature produce such an effect, but by the order and
contrivance of Divine wisdom: {a550} in their own nature, they would
rather make them disgust the doctrine he suffered for, and cool their
zeal in the propagating of it, for fear of the same disgrace and
hardship they saw him suffer.[791] But the wisdom of God changed the
nature of these fetters, and conducted them to the glory of his name,
the encouragement of others, the increase of the gospel, and the
comfort of the apostle himself (Phil. i. 12, 13, 18). The sufferings
of Paul at Rome confirmed the Philippians, a people at a distance from
thence, in the doctrine they had already received at his hands. Thus
God makes sufferings sometimes, which appear like judgments, to be
like the viper on Paul’s hand (Acts xxviii. 6), a means to clear up
innocence, and procure favor to the doctrine among those barbarians.
How often hath he multiplied the church by death and massacres, and
increased it by those means used to annihilate it!
(5.) The Divine wisdom is apparent in the deliverances he affords to
other parts of the world, as well as to his church. There are delicate
composures, curious threads in his webs, and he works them like an
artificer: a goodness wrought for them, curiously wrought (Ps. xxxi.
19), [1.] In making the creatures subservient in their natural order
to his gracious ends and purposes. He orders things in such a manner,
as not to be necessitated to put forth an extraordinary power in
things, which some part of the creation might accomplish. Miraculous
productions would speak his power; but the ordering the natural course
of things, to occasion such effects they were never intended for, is
one part of the glory of his wisdom. And that his wisdom may be seen
in the course of nature, he conducts the motions of creatures, and
acts them in their own strength; and doth that by various windings and
turnings of them, which he might do in an instant by his power, in a
supernatural way. Indeed, sometimes he hath made invasions on nature,
and suspended the order of their natural laws for a season, to show
himself the absolute Lord and Governor of nature: yet if frequent
alterations of this nature were made, they would impede the knowledge
of the nature of things, and be some bar to the discovery and glory
of his wisdom, which is best seen by moving the wheels of inferior
creatures in an exact regularity to his own ends. He might, when his
little church in Jacob’s family was like to starve in Canaan, have, for
their preservation, turned the stones of the country into bread; but
he sends them down to Egypt to procure corn, that a way might be opened
for their removal into that country; the truth of his prediction in
their captivity accomplished, and a way made after the declaration
of his great name, Jehovah, both in the fidelity of his word and
the greatness of his power, in their deliverance from that furnace
of affliction. He might have struck Goliath, the captain of the
Philistine’s army, with a thunderbolt from heaven, when he blasphemed
his name, and scared his people; but he useth the natural strength of
a stone, and the artificial motion of a sling, by the arm of David,
to confront the giant, and thereby to free Judea from the ravage of
a potent enemy. He might have delivered the Jews from Babylon by as
strange miracles as he used in their deliverance from Egypt: he {a551}
might have plagued their enemies, gathered his people into a body, and
protected them by the bulwark of a cloud and a pillar of fire, against
the assaults of their enemies. But he uses the differences between the
Persians and those of Babylon, to accomplish his ends. How sometimes
hath the veering about of the wind on a sudden been the loss of a navy,
when it hath been put upon the point of victory, and driven back the
destruction upon those which intended it for others! and the accidental
stumbling, or the natural fierceness of a horse, flung down a general
in the midst of a battle, where he hath lost his life by the throng,
and his death hath brought a defeat to his army, and deliverance to the
other party, that were upon the brink of ruin! Thus doth the wisdom of
God link things together according to natural order, to work out his
intended preservation of a people. [2.] In the season of deliverance.
The timing of affairs is a part of the wisdom of man, and an eminent
part of the wisdom of God. It is in due season he sends the former
and the latter rain, when the earth is in the greatest indigence,
and when his influences may most contribute to the bringing forth and
ripening the fruit. The dumb creatures have their meat from him in due
season (Ps. civ. 27): and in his due season have his darling people
their deliverance. When Paul was upon his journey to Damascus with
a persecuting commission, he is struck down for the security of the
church in that city. The nature of the lion is changed in due season,
for the preservation of the lambs from worrying. The Israelites are
miraculously rescued from Egypt, when their wits were at a loss, when
their danger to human understanding was unavoidable; when earth and
sea refused protection, then the wisdom and power of heaven stepped
in to effect that which was past the skill of the conductors of that
multitude. And when the lives of the Jews lay at the stake, and their
necks were upon the block at the mercy of their enemies’ swords by
an order from Shushan, not only a reprieve, but a triumph, arrives to
the Jews, by the wisdom of God guiding the affair, whereby of persons
designed to execution, they are made conquerors, and have opportunity
to exercise their revenge instead of their patience, proving triumphers
where they expected to be sufferers (Esth. viii. 9). How strangely doth
God, by secret ways, bow the hearts of men and the nature of things
to the execution of that which he designs, notwithstanding all the
resistance of that which would traverse the security of his people!
How often doth he trap the wicked in the work of their own hands, make
their confidence to become their ruin, and ensnare them in those nets
they wrought and laid for others (Ps. ix. 16)! “The wicked is snared in
the work of his own hands. He scatters the proud in the imagination of
their hearts” (Luke i. 51), in the height of their hopes, when their
designs have been laid so deep in the foundation, and knit and cemented
so close in their superstructure, that no human power or wisdom could
rase them down: he hath then disappointed their projects, and befooled
their craft. How often hath he kept back the fire, when it hath been
ready to devour; broke the arrows when they have been prepared in the
bow; turned the spear into the bowels of the bearers, and wounded them
at the very instant they were ready to wound {a552} others! [3.] In
suiting instruments to his purpose. He either finds them fit, or makes
them on a sudden fit for his gracious ends. If he hath a tabernacle to
build, he will fit a Bezaleel and an Aholiab with the spirit of wisdom
and understanding in all cunning workmanship (Exod. xxxi. 3, 6). If
he finds them crooked pieces, he can, like a wise architect, make them
straight beams for the rearing his house, and for the honor of his
name. He sometimes picks out men according to their natural tempers,
and employs them in his work. Jehu, a man of a furious temper, and
ambitious spirit, is called out for the destruction of Ahab’s house.
Moses, a man furnished with all Egyptian wisdom, fitted by a generous
education, prepared also by the affliction he met with in his flight,
and one who had had the benefit of conversation with Jethro, a man of
more than an ordinary wisdom and goodness, as appears by his prudent
and religious counsel; this man is called out to be the head and
captain of an oppressed people, and to rescue them from their bondage,
and settle the first national church in the world. So Elijah, a
high‑spirited man, of a hot and angry temper, one that slighted the
frowns, and undervalued the favor of princes, is set up to stem the
torrent of Israelitish idolatry. So Luther, a man of the same temper,
is drawn out by the same wisdom to encounter the corruptions in the
church, against such opposition, which a milder temper would have sunk
under. The earth, in Rev. xii. 16, is made an instrument to help the
woman: when the grandees of that age transferred the imperial power
upon Constantine, who became afterwards a protecting and nursing father
to the church, an end which many of his favorers never designed, nor
ever dreamt of: but God, by his infinite wisdom, made these several
designs, like several arrows shot at rovers, meet in one mark to which
he directed them, viz., in bringing forth an instrument to render peace
to the world and security and increase to his church.
III. The wisdom of God doth wonderfully appear in redemption. His
wisdom in creature ravisheth the eye and understanding; his wisdom
in government doth no less affect a curious observer of the links and
concatenation of the means; but his wisdom in redemption mounts the
mind to a greater astonishment. The works of creation are the footsteps
of his wisdom; the work of redemption is the face of his wisdom. A man
is better known by the features of his face, than by the prints of his
feet. We, with “open face,” or a revealed face, “beholding the glory of
the Lord” (2 Cor. iii. 18). Face, there, refers to God, not to us; the
glory of God’s wisdom is now open, and no longer covered and veiled by
the shadows of the law. As we behold the light glorious as scattered
in the air before the appearance of the sun, but more gloriously in the
face of the sun when it begins its race in our horizon. All the wisdom
of God in creation, and government in his variety of laws, was like
the light the three first days of the creation, dispersed about the
world; but the fourth day it was more glorious, when all gathered into
the body of the sun (Gen. i. 4, 16). So the light of Divine wisdom
and glory was scattered about the world, and so more obscure, till the
fourth divine day of the world, about the four thousandth year, it was
gathered into one body, the Sun of Righteousness, and so shone {a553}
out more gloriously to men and angels. All things are weaker the
thinner they are extended, but stronger the more they are united and
compacted in one body and appearance. In Christ, in the dispensation
by him, as well as his person, were “hid all the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge” (Coloss. ii. 3). Some doles of wisdom were given out
in creation, but the treasures of it opened in redemption, the highest
degrees of it that ever God did exert in the world. Christ is therefore
called the “wisdom of God,” as well as the “power of God” (1 Cor.
i. 24); and the gospel is called the “wisdom of God.” Christ is the
wisdom of God principally, and the gospel instrumentally, as it is the
power of God instrumentally to subdue the heart to himself. This is
wrapped up in the appointing Christ as Redeemer, and opened to us in
the revelation of it by the gospel.
1. It is a hidden wisdom. In this regard God is said, in the text, to
be only wise: and it is said to be a “hidden wisdom” (1 Tim. i. 17),
and “wisdom in a mystery” (1 Cor. ii. 7), incomprehensible to the
ordinary capacity of an angel, more than the obstruse qualities of the
creatures are to the understanding of man. No wisdom of men or angels
is able to search the veins of this mine, to tell all the threads of
this web, or to understand all the lustre of it; they are as far from
an ability fully to comprehend it, as they were at first to contrive it.
That wisdom that invented it can only comprehend it. In the uncreated
understanding only there is a clearness of light without any shadow of
darkness. We come as short of full apprehensions of it, as a child doth
of the counsel of the wisest prince. It is so hidden from us, that,
without revelation, we could not have the least imagination of it; and
though it be revealed to us, yet, without the help of an infiniteness
of understanding, we cannot fully fathom it: it is such a tractate of
divine wisdom, that the angels never before had seen the edition of it,
till it was published to the world (Eph. iii. 10): “to the intent that
now unto principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known
by the church the manifold wisdom of God.” Now made known to them,
not before; and now made known to them “in the heavenly places.” They
had not the knowledge of all heavenly mysteries, though they had the
possession of heavenly glory: they knew the prophecies of it in the
word, but attained not a clear interpretation of those prophecies till
the things that were prophesied of came upon the stage.
2. Manifold wisdom: so it is called. As manifold as mysterious: variety
in the mystery, and mystery in every part of the variety. It was not
one single act, but a variety of counsels met in it; a conjunction of
excellent ends and excellent means. The glory of God, the salvation of
man, the defeat of the apostate angels, the discovery of the blessed
Trinity in their nature, operations, their combined and distinct acts
and expressions of goodness. The means are the conjunction of two
natures, infinitely distinct from one another; the union of eternity
and time, of mortality and immortality: death is made the way to
life, and shame the path to glory. The weakness of the cross is the
reparation of man, and the creature is made wise by the “foolishness of
preaching;” fallen man grows rich by {a554} the poverty of the Redeemer,
and man is filled by the emptiness of God; the heir of hell made a son
of God, by God’s taking upon him the “form of a servant;” the son of
man advanced to the highest degree of honor, by the Son of God becoming
of “no reputation.” It is called (Eph. i. 8) “abundance of wisdom and
prudence.” Wisdom, in the eternal counsel, contriving a way; prudence,
in the temporary revelation, ordering all affairs and occurrences
in the world for the attaining the end of his counsel. Wisdom refers
to the mystery; prudence, to the manifestation of it in fit ways and
convenient seasons. Wisdom, to the contrivance and order; prudence,
to the execution and accomplishment. In all things God acted as became
him, as a wise and just Governor of the world (Heb. ii. 10). Whether
the wisdom of God might not have found out some other way, or whether
he were, in regard of the necessity and naturalness of his justice,
limited to this, is not the question; but that it is the best and
wisest way for the manifestation of his glory, is out of question.
This wisdom will appear in the different interests reconciled by it:
in the subject, the second person in the Trinity, wherein they were
reconciled: in the two natures, wherein he accomplished it; whereby
God is made known to man in his glory, sin eternally condemned, and
the repenting and believing sinner eternally rescued: the honor and
righteousness of the law vindicated both in the precept and penalty:
the devil’s empire overthrown by the same nature he had overturned,
and the subtilty of hell defeated by that nature he had spoiled:
the creature engaged in the very act to the highest obedience and
humility, that, as God appears as a God upon his throne, the creature
might appear in the lowest posture of a creature, in the depths of
resignation and dependence: the publication of this made in the gospel,
by ways congruous to the wisdom which appeared in the execution of his
counsel, and the conditions of enjoying the fruit of it, most wise and
reasonable.
1. The greatest different interests are reconciled, justice in
punishing, and mercy in pardoning. For man had broken the law, and
plunged himself into a gulf of misery: the sword of vengeance was
unsheathed by justice, for the punishment of the criminal; the bowels
of compassion were stirred by mercy, for the rescue of the miserable.
Justice severely beholds the sin, and mercy compassionately reflects
upon the misery. Two different claims are entered by those concerned
attributes: justice votes for destruction, and mercy votes for
salvation. Justice would draw the sword, and drench it in the blood of
the offender; mercy would stop the sword, and turn it from the breast
of the sinner. Justice would edge it, and mercy would blunt it. The
arguments are strong on both sides.
(1.) Justice pleads. I arraign, before thy tribunal, a rebel, who was
the glorious work of thy hands, the centre of thy rich goodness, and a
counterpart of thy own image; he is indeed miserable, whereby to excite
thy compassion; but he is not miserable, without being criminal. Thou
didst create him in a state, and with ability to be otherwise: the
riches of thy bounty aggravate the blackness {a555} of his crime. He
is a rebel, not by necessity, but will. What constraint was there upon
him to listen to the counsels of the enemy of God? What force could
there be upon him, since it is without the compass of any creature to
work upon, or constrain the will? Nothing of ignorance can excuse him;
the law was not ambiguously expressed, but in plain words, both as to
precept and penalty; it was writ in his nature in legible characters:
had he received any disgust from thee after his creation, it would not
excuse his apostasy, since, as a Sovereign, thou wert not obliged to
thy creature. Thou hadst provided all things richly for him; he was
crowned with glory and honor: thy infinite power had bestowed upon him
an habitation richly furnished, and varieties of servants to attend
him. Whatever he viewed without, and whatever he viewed within himself,
were several marks of thy Divine bounty, to engage him to obedience:
had there been some reason of any disgust, it could not have balanced
that kindness which had so much reason to oblige him: however, he
had received no courtesy from the fallen angel, to oblige him to turn
into his camp. Was it not enough, that one of thy creatures would have
stripped thee of the glory of heaven, but this also must deprive thee
of thy glory upon earth, which was due from him to thee as his Creator?
Can he charge the difficulty of the command? No: it was rather below,
than above his strength. He might rather complain that it was no higher,
whereby his obedience and gratitude might have a larger scope, and a
more spacious field to move in than a precept so light; so easy, as
to abstain from one fruit in the garden. What excuse can he have, that
would prefer the liquorishness of his sense before the dictates of his
reason, and the obligations of his creation? The law thou didst set
him was righteous and reasonable; and shall righteousness and reason be
rejected by the supreme and infallible reason, because the rebellious
creature hath trampled upon it? What! must God abrogate his holy law,
because the creature hath slighted it? What reflection will this be
upon the wisdom that enacted it, and upon the equity of the command
and sanction of it? Either man must suffer, or the holy law be
expunged, and forever out of date. And is it not better man should
eternally smart under his crime, than any dishonorable reflections
of unrighteousness be cast upon the law, and of folly, and want
of foresight upon the Lawgiver? Not to punish, would be to approve
the devil’s lie, and justify the creature’s revolt. It would be a
condemnation of thy own law as unrighteous, and a sentencing thy own
wisdom as imprudent. Better man should forever bear the punishment of
his offence, than God bear the dishonor of his attributes: better man
should be miserable than God should be unrighteous, unwise, false,
and tamely bear the denial of his sovereignty. But what advantage
would it be to gratify mercy by pardoning the malefactor? Besides the
irreparable dishonor to the law, the falsifying thy veracity in not
executing the denounced threatenings, he would receive encouragement by
such a grace to spurn more at thy sovereignty, and oppose thy holiness
by running on in a course of sin with hopes of impunity. If the
creature be restored, it cannot be expected that he that hath fared so
well, after the {a556} breach of it, should be very careful of a future
observance: his easy readmission would abet him in the repetition of
his offence, and thou shalt soon find him cast off all moral dependence
on thee. Shall he be restored without any condition, or covenant? He
is a creature not to be governed without a law, and a law is not to
be enacted without a penalty. What future regard will he have to thy
precept, or what fear will he have of thy threatening, if his crime be
so lightly past over? Is it the stability of thy word? What reason will
he have to give credit to that, which he hath found already disregarded
by thyself? Thy truth in future threatenings will be of no force with
him, who hath experienced thy laying it aside in the former. It is
necessary, therefore, that the rebellious creature should be punished
for the preservation of the honor of the law, and the honor of the
Lawgiver, with all those perfections that are united in the composure
of it.
(2.) Mercy doth not want a plea. It is true, indeed, the sin of man
wants not its aggravations: he hath slighted thy goodness, and accepted
thy enemy as his counsellor; but it was not a pure act of his own, as
the devil’s revolt was: he had a tempter, and the devil had none: he
had, I acknowledge, an understanding to know thy will, and a power
to obey it; yet he was mutable, and had a capacity to fall. It was no
difficult task that was set him, nor a hard yoke that was laid upon him;
yet he had a brutish part, as well as a rational, and sense as well as
soul; whereas the fallen angel was a pure intellectual spirit. Did God
create the world to suffer an eternal dishonor, in letting himself be
outwitted by Satan, and his work wrested out of his hands? Shall the
work of eternal counsel presently sink into irreparable destruction,
and the honor of an almighty and wise work be lost in the ruin of the
creature? This would seem contrary to the nature of thy goodness, to
make man only to render him miserable: to design him in his creation
for the service of the devil, and not for the service of his Creator.
What else could be the issue, if the chief work of thy hand, defaced
presently after the erecting, should forever remain in this marred
condition? What can be expected upon the continuance of his misery, but
a perpetual hatred, and enmity of thy creature against thee? Did God
in creation design his being hated, or his being loved by his creature?
Shall God make a holy law, and have no obedience to that law from that
creature whom it was made to govern? Shall the curious workmanship of
God, and the excellent engravings of the law of nature in his heart,
be so soon defaced, and remain in that blotted condition forever? This
fall thou couldst not but in the treasures of thy infinite knowledge
foresee. Why hadst thou goodness then to create him in an integrity,
if thou wouldst not have mercy to pity him in misery? Shall thy enemy
forever trample upon the honor of thy work, and triumph over the glory
of God, and applaud himself in the success of his subtilty? Shall thy
creature only passively glorify thee as an avenger, and not actively
as a compassionater? Am not I a perfection of thy nature as well as
justice? Shall justice engross all, and I never come into view? It is
resolved already, that the fallen angels shall be no subjects for me
to exercise myself upon; {a557} and I have now less reason than before
to plead for them: they fell with a full consent of will, without any
motion from another; and not content with their own apostasy they envy
thee, and thy glory upon earth, as well as in heaven, and have drawn
into their party the best part of the creation below. Shall Satan
plunge the whole creation in the same irreparable ruin with himself?
If the creature be restored, will he contract a boldness in sin by
impurity? Hast thou not a grace to render him ingenuous in obedience,
as well as a compassion to recover him from misery? What will hinder,
but that such a grace, which hath established the standing angels,
may establish this recovered creature? If I am utterly excluded from
exercising myself on men, as I have been from devils, a whole species
is lost; nay, I can never expect to appear upon the stage: if thou wilt
quite ruin him by justice, and create another world, and another man,
if he stand, thy bounty will be eminent, yet there is no room for mercy
to act, unless by the commission of sin, he exposeth himself to misery;
and if sin enter into another world, I have little hopes to be heard
then, if I am rejected now. Worlds will be perpetually created by
goodness, wisdom, and power; sin entering into these worlds, will be
perpetually punished by justice; and mercy, which is a perfection of
thy nature, will forever be commanded silence, and lie wrapt up in an
eternal darkness. Take occasion now, therefore, to expose me to the
knowledge of thy creature, since without misery, mercy can never set
foot into the world. Mercy pleads, if man be ruined, the creation is
in vain; justice pleads, if man be not sentenced, the law is in vain;
truth backs justice, and grace abets mercy. What shall be done in this
seeming contradiction? Mercy is not manifested, if man be not pardoned;
justice will complain, if man be not punished.
(3.) An expedient is found out, by the wisdom of God, to answer
these demands, and adjust the differences between them. The wisdom of
God answers, I will satisfy your pleas. The pleas of justice shall be
satisfied in punishing, and the pleas of mercy shall be received in
pardoning. Justice shall not complain for want of punishment, nor mercy
for want of compassion. I will have an infinite sacrifice to content
justice; and the virtue and fruit of that sacrifice shall delight mercy.
Here shall justice have punishment to accept, and mercy shall have
pardon to bestow. The rights of both are preserved, and the demands of
both amicably accorded in punishment and pardon, by transferring the
punishment of our crimes upon a surety, exacting a recompense from his
blood by justice, and conferring life and salvation upon us by mercy
without the expense of one drop of our own. Thus is justice satisfied
in its severities, and mercy in its indulgences. The riches of grace
are twisted with the terrors of wrath. The bowels of mercy are wound
about the flaming sword of justice, and the sword of justice protects
and secures the bowels of mercy. Thus is God righteous without being
cruel, and merciful without being unjust; his righteousness inviolable,
and the world recoverable. Thus is a resplendent mercy brought forth
in the midst of all the curses, confusions, and wrath threatened to
the offender. This is the admirable temperament found out by the wisdom
{a558} of God: his justice is honored in the sufferings of man’s surety;
and his mercy is honored in the application of the propitiation to
the offender (Rom. iii. 24, 25): “Being justified freely by his grace,
through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ: whom God hath set
forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his
righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the
forbearance of God.” Had we in our persons been sacrifices to justice,
mercy had forever been unknown; had we been solely fostered by mercy,
justice had forever been secluded; had we, being guilty, been absolved,
mercy might have rejoiced, and justice might have complained; had we
been solely punished, justice would have triumphed, and mercy grieved.
But by this medium of redemption, neither hath ground of complaint;
justice hath nothing to charge, when the punishment is inflicted; mercy
hath whereof to boast when the surety is accepted. The debt of the
sinner is transferred upon the surety, that the merit of the surety may
be conferred upon the sinner; so that God now deals with our sins in
a way of consuming justice, and with our persons in a way of relieving
mercy. It is highly better, and more glorious, than if the claim of one
had been granted, with the exclusion of the demand of the other; it had
then been either an unrighteous mercy, or a merciless justice; it is
now a righteous mercy, and a merciful justice.
2. The wisdom of God appears in the subject or person wherein these
were accorded; the Second Person is the blessed Trinity. There was a
congruity in the Son’s undertaking and effecting it rather than any
other person, according to the order of the persons, and the several
functions of the persons, as represented in Scripture. The Father,
after creation, is the lawgiver, and presents man with the image
of his own holiness and the way to his creatures’ happiness; but
after the fall, man was too impotent to perform the law, and too
polluted to enjoy a felicity. Redemption was then necessary; not
that it was necessary for God to redeem man, but it was necessary
for man’s happiness that he should be recovered. To this the Second
Person is appointed, that by communion with him, man might derive
a happiness, and be brought again to God. But since man was blind
in his understanding, and an enemy in his will to God, there must be
the exerting of a virtue to enlighten his mind, and bend his will to
understand, and accept of this redemption; and this work is assigned
to the Third Person, the Holy Ghost.
(1.) It was not congruous that the Father should assume human nature,
and suffer in it for the redemption of man. He was first in order; he
was the lawgiver, and therefore to be the judge. As lawgiver, it was
not convenient he should stand in the stead of the law‑breaker; and as
judge, it was as little convenient he should be reputed a malefactor.
That he who had made a law against sin denounced a penalty upon the
commission of sin, and whose part it was actually to punish the sinner,
should become sin for the wilful transgressor of his law. He being the
rector, how could he be an advocate and intercessor to himself? How
could he be the judge and the sacrifice? a judge, and yet a mediator
to himself? If he had been the sacrifice, there must be some person
to examine the validity {a559} of it, and pronounce the sentence of
acceptance. Was it agreeable that the Son should sit upon a throne of
judgment, and the Father stand at the bar, and be responsible to the
Son? That the Son should be in the place of a governor, and the Father
in the place of the criminal? That the Father should be bruised (Isa.
liii. 10) by the Son, as the Son was by the Father (Zech. xiii. 70)?
that the Son should awaken a sword against the Father, as the Father
did against the Son? That the Father should be sent by the Son, as the
Son was by the Father (Gal. iv. 4)? The order of the persons in the
blessed Trinity had been inverted and disturbed. Had the Father been
sent, he had not been first in order; the sender is before the person
sent: as the Father begets, and the son is begotten (John i. 14), so
the Father sends, and the son is sent. He whose orders is to send,
cannot properly send himself.
(2.) Nor was it congruous that the Spirit should be sent upon this
affair. If the Holy Ghost had been sent to redeem us, and the Son to
apply that redemption to us, the order of the Persons had also been
inverted; the Spirit, then, who was third in order, had been second
in operation. The Son would then have received of the Spirit, as the
Spirit doth now of Christ, “and shew it unto us” (John i. 15). As the
Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son, so the proper function
and operation of it was in order after the operations of the Father
and the Son. Had the Spirit been sent to redeem us, and the Son sent by
the Father, and the Spirit to apply that redemption to us, the Son in
his acts had proceeded from the Father and the Spirit; the Spirit, as
sender, had been in order before the Son; whereas, the Spirit is called
“the Spirit of Christ,” as sent by Christ from the “Father” (Gal.
iv. 6; John xv. 27). But as the order of the works, so the order of
the Persons is preserved in their several operations. Creation, and a
law to govern the creature, precedes redemption. Nothing, or that which
hath no being, is not capable of a redeemed being. Redemption supposeth
the existence and the misery of a person redeemed. As creation precedes
redemption, so redemption precedes the application of it. As redemption
supposeth the being of the creature, so application of redemption
supposeth the efficacy of redemption. According to the order of these
works, is the order of the operations of the Three Persons. Creation
belongs to the Father, the first person; redemption, the second work,
is the function of the Son, the second person; application, the third
work, is the office of the Holy Ghost, the third person. The Father
orders it, the Son acts it, the Holy Ghost applies it. He purifies our
souls to understand, believe, and love these mysteries. He forms Christ
in the womb of the soul, as he did the body of Christ in the womb of
the Virgin. As the Spirit of God moved upon the waters, to garnish
and adorn the world, after the matter of it was formed (Gen. i. 2),
so he moves upon the heart, to supple it to a compliance with Christ,
and draws the lineaments of the new creation in the soul, after the
foundation is laid. The Son pays the price that was due from us to
God, and the Spirit is the earnest of the promises of life and glory
purchased by the merit of that {a560} death.[792] It is to be observed,
that the Father, under the dispensation of the law, proposed the
commands, with the promises and threatenings, to the understandings of
men; and Christ, under the dispensation of grace, when he was upon the
earth, proposeth the gospel as the means of salvation, exhorts to faith
as the condition of salvation; but it was neither the functions of the
one or the other to display such an efficacy in the understanding and
will to make men believe and obey; and, therefore, there were such few
conversions in the time of Christ, by his miracles. But this work was
reserved for the fuller and brighter appearance of the Spirit, whose
office it was to convince the world of the necessity of a Redeemer,
because of their lost condition; of the person of the Redeemer, the Son
of God; of the sufficiency and efficacy of redemption, because of his
righteousness and acceptation by the Father. The wisdom of God is seen
in preparing and presenting the objects, and then in making impression
of them upon the subject he intends. And thus is the order of the Three
Persons preserved.
(3.) The Second Person had the greatest congruity in this work. He by
whom God created the world was most conveniently employed in restoring
the defaced world (John i. 4): who more fit to recover it from its
lapsed state than he that had erected it in its primitive state (Heb.
i. 2)? He was the light of men in creation, and therefore it was most
reasonable he should be the light of men in redemption. Who fitter to
reform the Divine image than he that first formed it? Who fitter to
speak for us to God than he who was the Word (John i. 1)? Who could
better intercede with the Father than he who was the only begotten and
beloved Son? Who so fit to redeem the forfeited inheritance as the
Heir of all things? Who fitter and better to prevail for us to have
the right of children than he that possessed it by nature? We fell from
being the sons of God, and who fitter to introduce us into an adopted
state than the Son of God? Herein was an expression of the richer grace,
because the first sin was immediately against the wisdom of God, by an
ambitious affectation of a wisdom equal to God, that that person, who
was the wisdom of God, should be made a sacrifice for the expiation of
the sin against wisdom.
3. The wisdom of God is seen in the two natures of Christ, whereby
this redemption was accomplished. The union of the two natures was the
foundation of the union of God and the fallen creature.
1st. The union itself is admirable: “The Word is made flesh” (John
i. 14), one “equal with God in the form of a servant” (Phil. ii. 7).
When the apostle speaks of “God manifested in the flesh,” he speaks
“the wisdom of God in a mystery” (1 Tim. iii. 16); that which is
incomprehensible to the angels, which they never imagined before it
was revealed, which perhaps they never knew till they beheld it. I am
sure, under the law, the figures of the cherubims were placed in the
sanctuary, with their “faces looking towards the propitiatory,” in a
perpetual posture of contemplation and admiration (Exod. xxxvii. 9),
to which the apostle alludes (1 Pet. i. 12). Mysterious {a561} is the
wisdom of God to unite finite and infinite, almightiness and weakness,
immortality and mortality, immutability, with a thing subject to
change; to have a nature from eternity, and yet a nature subject to
the revolutions of time; a nature to make a law, and a nature to be
subjected to the law; to be God blessed forever, in the bosom of his
Father, and an infant exposed to calamities from the womb of his mother:
terms seeming most distant from union, most uncapable of conjunction,
to shake hands together, to be most intimately conjoined; glory and
vileness, fulness and emptiness, heaven and earth; the creature with
the Creator; he that made all things, in one person with a nature that
is made; Immanuel, God, and man in one; that which is most spiritual to
partake of that which is carnal flesh and blood (Heb. ii. 14); one with
the Father in his Godhead, one with us in his manhood; the Godhead to
be in him in the fullest perfection, and the manhood in the greatest
purity; the creature one with the Creator, and the Creator one with the
creature. Thus is the incomprehensible wisdom of God declared in the
“Word being made flesh.”
2d. In the manner of this union. A union of two natures, yet
no natural union. It transcends all the unions visible among
creatures:[793] it is not like the union of stones in a building, or
two pieces of timber fastened together, which touch one another only in
their superficies and outside, without any intimacy with one another.
By such a kind of union God would not be a man: the Word could not so
be made flesh. Nor is it a union of parts to the whole, as the members
and the body; the members are parts, the body is the whole; for the
whole results from the parts, and depends upon the parts: but Christ,
being God, is independent upon anything. The parts are in order of
nature before the whole, but nothing can be in order of nature before
God. Nor is it as the union of two liquors, as when wine and water are
mixed together, for they are so incorporated as not to be distinguished
from one another; no man can tell which particle is wine, and which is
water. But the properties of the Divine nature are distinguishable from
the properties of the human. Nor is it as the union of the soul and
body, so as that the Deity is the form of the humanity, as the soul is
the form of the body: for as the soul is but a part of the man, so the
Divinity would be then but a part of the humanity; and as a form, or
the soul, is in a state of imperfection, without that which it is to
inform, so the Divinity of Christ would have been imperfect till it
had assumed the humanity, and so the perfection of an eternal Deity
would have depended on a creature of time. This union of two natures
in Christ is incomprehensible: and it is a mystery we cannot arrive
to the top of, how the Divine nature, which is the same with that of
the Father and the Holy Ghost, should be united to the human nature,
without its being said that the Father and the Holy Ghost were united
to the flesh; but the Scripture doth not encourage any such notion; it
speaks only of the Word, the person of the Word being made flesh, and
in his being made flesh, distinguisheth him from the Father, as “the
{a562} only begotten of the Father” (John i. 14). The person of the Son
was the term of this union.
(1.) This union doth not confound the properties of the Deity and
those of the humanity. They remain distinct and entire in each other.
The Deity is not changed into flesh, nor the flesh transformed into God:
they are distinct, and yet united; they are conjoined, and yet unmixed:
the dues of either nature are preserved. It is impossible that the
majesty of the Divinity can receive an alteration. It is as impossible
that the meanness of the humanity can receive the impressions of the
Deity, so as to be changed into it, and a creature be metamorphosed
into the Creator, and temporary flesh become eternal, and finite mount
up into infinity: as the soul and body are united, and make one person,
yet the soul is not changed into the perfections of the body, nor the
body into the perfections of the soul. There is a change made in the
humanity, by being advanced to a more excellent union, but not in the
Deity, as a change is made in the air, when it is enlightened by the
sun, not in the sun, which communicates that brightness to the air.
Athanasius makes the burning bush to be a type of Christ’s incarnation
(Exod. iii. 2): the fire signifying the Divine nature, and the bush the
human. The bush is a branch springing up from the earth, and the fire
descends from heaven; as the bush was united to the fire, yet was not
hurt by the flame, nor converted into fire, there remained a difference
between the bush and the fire, yet the properties of the fire shined
in the bush, so that the whole bush seemed to be on fire. So in the
incarnation of Christ, the human nature is not swallowed up by the
Divine, nor changed into it, nor confounded with it, but so united,
that the properties of both remain firm: two are so become one, that
they remain two still: one person in two natures, containing the
glorious perfections of the Divine, and the weaknesses of the human.
The “fulness of the Deity dwells bodily in Christ” (Col. ii. 9).
(2.) The Divine nature is united to every part of the humanity.
The whole Divinity to the whole humanity; so that no part but may
be said to be the member of God, as well as the blood is said to be
the “blood of God” (Acts xx. 28). By the same reason, it may be said,
the hand of God, the eye of God, the arm of God. As God is infinitely
present everywhere, so as to be excluded from no place, so is the Deity
hypostatically everywhere in the humanity, not excluded from any part
of it; as the light of the sun in every part of the air; as a sparkling
splendor in every part of the diamond. Therefore, it is concluded,
by all that acknowledge the Deity of Christ, that when his soul was
separated from the body, the Deity remained united both to soul and
body, as light doth in every part of a broken crystal.
(3.) Therefore, perpetually united (Col. ii. 9). The “fulness of
the Godhead dwells in him bodily.” It dwells in him, not lodges in
him, as a traveller in an inn: it resides in him as a fixed habitation.
As God describes the perpetuity of his presence in the ark by his
habitation or dwelling in it (Exod. xxix. 44), so doth the apostle the
inseparable duration of the Deity in the humanity, and the indissoluble
union of the humanity with the Deity. It was united on earth; {a563}
it remains united in heaven. It was not an image or an apparition, as
the tongues wherein the Spirit came upon the apostles, were a temporary
representation, not a thing united perpetually to the person of the
Holy Ghost.
(4.) It was a personal union. It was not an union of persons, though
it was a personal union; so Davenant expounds (Col. ii. 9), Christ did
not take the person of man, but the nature of man into subsistence with
himself. The body and soul of Christ were not united in themselves, had
no subsistence in themselves, till they were united to the person of
the Son of God. If the person of a man were united to him, the human
nature would have been the nature of the person so united to him, and
not the nature of the Son of God (Heb. ii. 14, 16), “Forasmuch then as
the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise
took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had
the power of death, that is, the devil. For verily he took not on him
the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham.” He took
flesh and blood to be his own nature, perpetually to subsist in the
person of the Λόγος, which must be by a personal union, or no way: the
Deity united to the humanity, and both natures to be one person. This
is the mysterious and manifold wisdom of God.
3d. The end of this union.
(1.) He was hereby fitted to be a Mediator. He hath something like to
man, and something like to God. If he were in all things only like to
man, he would be at a distance from God: if he were in all things only
like to God, he would be at a distance from man. He is a true Mediator
between mortal sinners and the immortal righteous One. He was near to
us by the infirmities of our nature, and near to God by the perfections
of the Divine; as near to God in his nature, as to us in ours; as
near to us in our nature, as he is to God in the Divine. Nothing that
belongs to the Deity, but he possesses; nothing that belongs to the
human nature, but he is clothed with. He had both the nature which had
offended, and that nature which was offended: a nature to please God,
and a nature to pleasure us: a nature, whereby he experimentally knew
the excellency of God, which was injured, and understood the glory due
to him, and consequently the greatness of the offence, which was to be
measured by the dignity of his person: and a nature whereby he might be
sensible of the miseries contracted by, and endure the calamities due
to the offender, that he might both have compassion on him, and make
due satisfaction for him. He had two distinct natures capable of the
affections and sentiments of the two persons he was to accord; he was a
just judge of the rights of the one, and the demerit of the other.[794]
He could not have this full and perfect understanding if he did not
possess the perfections of the one, and the qualities of the other;
the one fitted him for “things appertaining to God” (Heb. v. 1),
and the other furnished him with a sense of the “infirmities of man”
(Heb. iv. 15).
(2.) He was hereby fitted for the working out the happiness of man.
A Divine nature to communicate to man, and a human nature {a564} to
carry up to God. [1.] He had a nature whereby to suffer for us, and a
nature whereby to be meritorious in those sufferings. A nature to make
him capable to bear the penalty, and a nature to make his sufferings
sufficient for all that embraced him. A nature, capable to be exposed
to the flames of Divine wrath, and another nature, incapable to be
crushed by the weight, or consumed by the heat of it: a human nature
to suffer, and stand a sacrifice in the stead of man; a Divine nature
to sanctify these sufferings, and fill the nostrils of God with a sweet
savor, and thereby atone his wrath: the one to bear the stroke due to
us, and the other to add merit to his sufferings for us. Had he not
been man, he could not have filled our place in suffering; and could
he otherwise have suffered, his sufferings had not been applicable to
us; and had he not been God, his sufferings had not been meritoriously
and fruitfully applicable. Had not his blood been the blood of God,
it had been of as little advantage as the blood of an ordinary man,
or the blood of the legal sacrifices (Heb. ix. 12). Nothing less than
God could have satisfied God for the injury done by man. Nothing less
than God could have countervailed the torments due to the offending
creature. Nothing less than God could have rescued us out of the hands
of the jailor, too powerful for us. [2.] He had, therefore, a nature
to be compassionate to us, and victorious for us. A nature sensibly
to compassionate us, and another nature, to render those compassions
effectual for our relief; he had the compassions of our nature to pity
us, and the patience of the Divine nature to bear with us. He hath the
affections of a man to us, and the power of a God for us: a nature to
disarm the devil for us, and another nature to be insensible of the
working of the devil in us, and against us. If he had been only God, he
would not have had an experimental sense of our misery; and if he had
been only man, he could not have vanquished our enemies; had he been
only God, he could not have died; and had he been only man, he could
not have conquered death. [3.] A nature efficaciously to instruct us.
As man, he was to instruct us sensibly; as God, he was to instruct us
infallibly. A nature, whereby he might converse with us, and a nature,
whereby he might influence us in those converses. A human mouth to
minister instruction to man, and a Divine power to imprint it with
efficacy. [4.] A nature to be a pattern to us. A pattern of grace as
man, as Adam was to have been to his posterity:[795] a Divine nature
shining in the human, the image of the invisible God in the glass
of our flesh, that he might be a perfect copy for our imitation (Col.
i. 15), “The image of the invisible God, and the first‑born of every
creature” in conjunction. The virtues of the Deity are sweetened and
tempered by the union with the humanity, as the beams of the son are by
shining through a colored glass, which condescends more to the weakness
of our eye. Thus the perfections of the invisible God, breaking through
the first‑born of every creature, glittering in Christ’s created state,
became more sensible for contemplation by our mind, and more imitiable
for conformity in our practice. [5.] A nature to be a ground of
confidence in our approach to God. A nature wherein we may behold him,
and wherein we may approach {a565} to him. A nature for our comfort,
and a nature for our confidence. Had he been only man, he had been too
feeble to assure us; and had he been only God, he had been too high
to attract us: but now we are allured by his human nature, and assured
by his Divine, in our drawing near to heaven. Communion with God
was desired by us, but our guilt stifled our hopes, and the infinite
excellency of the Divine nature would have damped our hopes of speeding;
but since these two natures, so far distant, are met in a marriage‑knot,
we have a ground of hope, nay, an earnest, that the Creator and
believing creature shall meet and converse together. And since our sins
are expatiated by the death of the human nature in conjunction with
the Divine, our guilt, upon believing, shall not hinder us from this
comfortable approach. Had he been only man, he could not have assured
us an approach to God: had he been only God, his justice would not have
admitted us to approach to him; he had been too terrible for guilty
persons, and too holy for polluted persons to come near to him: but by
being made man, his justice is tempered, and by his being God and man,
his mercy is ensured. A human nature he had, one with us, that we
might be related to God, as one with him. [6.] A nature to derive all
good to us. Had he not been man, we had had no share or part in him:
a satisfaction by him had not been imputed to us. If he were not God,
he could not communicate to us divine graces and eternal happiness;
he could not have had power to convey so great a good to us, had he
been only man; and he could not have done it, according to the rule of
inflexible righteousness, had he been only God. As man, he is the way
of conveyance; as God, he is the spring of conveyance. From this grace
of union, and the grace of unction, we find rivers of waters flowing
to make glad the city of God. Believers are his branches, and draw sap
from him, as he is their root in his human nature, and have an endless
duration of it from his Divine. Had he not been man, he had not been
in a state to obey the law; had he not been God as well as man, his
obedience could not have been valuable to be imputed to us. How should
this mystery be studied by us, which would afford us both admiration
and content! Admiration, in the incomprehensibleness of it; contentment,
in the fitness of the Mediator. By this wisdom of God we receive the
props of our faith, and the fruits of joy and peace. Wisdom consists
in choosing fit means, and conducting them in such a method, as may
reach with good success the variety of marks which are aimed at. Thus
hath the wisdom of God set forth a Mediator, suited to our wants,
fitted for our supplies, and ordered so the whole affair by the union
of these two natures in the person of the Redeemer, that there could be
no disappointment, by all the bustle hell and hellish instruments could
raise against it.
4. The wisdom of God is seen in this way of redemption, in vindicating
the honor and righteousness of the law, both as to precept and penalty.
The first and irreversible design of the law was obedience. The penalty
of the law had only entrance upon transgression. Obedience was the
design, and the penalty was added to enforce the observance of the
precept (Gen. ii. 17): “Thou shalt not eat;” there is the precept:
“In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt die;” {a566} there is the
penalty. Obedience was our debt to the law, as creatures; punishment
was due from the law to us, as sinners: we are bound to endure the
penalty for our first transgression, but the penalty did not cancel
the bond of future obedience; the penalty had not been incurred
without transgressing the precept; yet the precept was not abrogated
by enduring the penalty. Since man so soon revolted, and by this revolt
fell under the threatening, the justice of the law had been honored
by man’s sufferings, but the holiness and equity of the law had been
honored by man’s obedience. The wisdom of God finds out a medium to
satisfy both: the justice of the law is preserved in the execution of
the penalty; and the holiness of the law is honored in the observance
of the precept. The life of our Saviour is a conformity to the precept,
and his death is a conformity to the penalty; the precepts are exactly
performed, and the curse punctually executed, by a voluntary observing
the one, and a voluntary undergoing the other. It is obeyed, as if it
had not been transgressed, and executed as if it had not been obeyed.
It became the wisdom, justice, and holiness of God, as the Rector of
the world, to exact it (Heb. ii. 10), and it became the holiness of the
Mediator to “fulfil all the righteousness of the law” (Rom. viii. 3;
Matt. iii. 15). And thus the honor of the law was vindicated in all
the parts of it. The transgression of the law was condemned in the
flesh of the Redeemer, and the righteousness of the law was fulfilled
in his person: and both these acts of obedience, being counted as
one righteousness, and imputed to the believing sinner, render him a
subject to the law, both in its perceptive and minatory part. By Adam’s
sinful acting we were made sinners, and by Christ’s righteous acting
we are made righteous (Rom. v. 19): “As by one man’s disobedience
many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made
righteous.” The law was obeyed by him, that the righteousness of it
might be fulfilled in us (Rom. viii. 4). It is not fulfilled in us, or
in our actions, by inherency, but fulfilled in us by imputation of that
righteousness which was exactly fulfilled by another. As he died for us,
and rose again for us, so he lived for us. The commands of the law were
as well observed for us, as the threatenings of the law were endured
for us. This justification of a sinner, with the preservation of the
holiness of the law in truth, in the inward parts, in sincerity of
intention, as well as conformity in action, is the wisdom of God, the
gospel wisdom which David desires to know (Ps. li. 6): “Thou desirest
truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me
to know wisdom;” or, as some render it, “the hidden things of wisdom.”
Not an inherent wisdom in the acknowledgments of his sin, which he had
confessed before, but the wisdom of God in providing a medicine, so as
to keep up the holiness of the law in the observance of it in truth,
and the averting the judgment due to the sinner. In and by this way
methodized by the wisdom of God, all doubts and troubles are discharged.
Naturally, if we take a view of the law to behold its holiness and
justice, and then of our hearts, to see the contrariety in them to the
command, and the pollution repugnant to its holiness; and after this,
cast our eyes upward, and beholding a flaming sword, edged with curses
and wrath; {a567} is there any matter, but that of terror, afforded by
any of these? But when we behold, in the life of Christ, a conformity
to the mandatory part of the law, and in the cross of Christ, a
sustaining the minatory part of the law, this wisdom of God gives a
well‑grounded and rational dismiss to all the horrors that can seize
upon us.
5. The wisdom of God in redemption is visible in manifesting two
contrary affections at the same time, and in one act: the greatest
hatred of sin, and the greatest love to the sinner. In this way he
punishes the sin without ruining the sinner, and repairs the ruins of
the sinner without indulging the sin. Here is eternal love and eternal
hatred; a condemning the sin to what it merited, and an advancing the
sinner to what he could not expect. Herein is the choicest love and
the deepest hatred manifested: an implacableness against the sin, and
a placableness to the sinner. His hatred of sin hath been discovered
in other ways: in punishing the devil without remedy; sentencing man
to an expulsion from paradise, though seduced by another; in accursing
the serpent, an irrational creature, though but a misguided instrument.
The whole tenor of his threatenings declare his loathing of sin,
and the sprinklings of his judgments in the world, and the horrible
expectations of terrified consciences confirm it. But what are all
these testimonies to the highest evidence that can possibly be given
in the sheathing the sword of his wrath in the heart of his Son? If
a father should order his son to take a mean garb below his dignity,
order him to be dragged to prison, seem to throw off all affection of
a father for the severity of a judge, condemn his son to a horrible
death, be a spectator of his bleeding condition, withhold his hand from
assuaging his misery, regard it rather with joy than sorrow, give him a
bitter cup to drink, and stand by to see him drink it off to the bottom,
dregs and all, and flash frowns in his face all the while; and this
not for any fault of his own, but the rebellion of some subjects he
undertook for, and that the offenders might have a pardon sealed by the
blood of the son, the sufferer: all this would evidence his detestation
of the rebellion, and his affection to the rebels; his hatred to their
crime, and his love to their welfare. This did God do. He “delivered
Christ up for our offences” (Rom. viii. 32); the Father gave him the
cup (John xviii. 18); the Lord bruised him with pleasure (Isa. liii.
10), and that for sin. He transferred upon the shoulders of his Son
the pain we had merited, that the criminal might be restored to the
place he had forfeited. He hates the sin so as to condemn it forever,
and wrap it up in the curse he had threatened; and loves the sinner,
believing and repenting, so as to mount him to an expectation of a
happiness exceeding the first estate, both in glory and perpetuity.
Instead of an earthly paradise, lays the foundation of an heavenly
mansion, brings forth a weight of glory from a weight of misery,
separates the comfortable light of the sun from the scorching heat
we had deserved at his hands. Thus hath God’s hatred of sin been
manifested. He is at eternal defiance with sin, yet nearer in alliance
with the sinner than he was before the revolt; as if man’s miserable
fall had endeared him to the Judge. This is the wisdom {a568} and
prudence of “grace wherein God hath abounded” (Eph. i. 9): a wisdom in
twisting the happy restoration of the broken amity, with an everlasting
curse upon that which made the breach, both upon sin the cause, and
upon Satan the seducer to it. Thus is hatred and love, in their highest
glory, manifested together: hatred to sin, in the death of Christ, more
than if the torments of hell had been undergone by the sinner; and love
to the sinner, more than if he had, by an absolute and simple bounty,
bestowed upon him the possession of heaven; because the gift of his
Son, for such an end, is a greater token of his boundless affections,
than a re‑instating man in paradise. Thus is the wisdom of God seen in
redemption, consuming the sin, and recovering the sinner.
6. The wisdom of God is evident in overturning the devil’s empire by
the nature he had vanquished, and by ways quite contrary to what that
malicious spirit could imagine. The devil, indeed, read his own doom
in the first promise, and found his ruin resolved upon, by the means
of the “Seed of the woman;” but by what seed was not so easily known
to him.[796] And the methods whereby it was to be brought about was
a mystery kept secret from the malicious devils, since it was not
discovered to the obedient angels. He might know, from Isa. liii.,
that the Redeemer was assured to divide the spoil with the strong, and
rescue a part of the lost creation out of his hands; and that this was
to be effected by making his soul an offering for sin: but could he
imagine which way his soul was to be made such an offering? He shrewdly
suspected Christ, just after his inauguration into his office by
baptism, to be the Son of God: but did he ever dream that the Messiah,
by dying as a reputed malefactor, should be a sacrifice for the
expiation of the sin the devil had introduced by his subtilty? Did he
ever imagine a cross should dispossess him of his crown, and that dying
groans should wrest the victory out of his hands? He was conquered by
that nature he had cast headlong into ruin: a woman, by his subtilty,
was the occasion of our death; and a woman, by the conduct of the only
wise God, brings forth the Author of our life, and the Conqueror of our
enemies. The flesh of the old Adam had infected us, and the flesh of
the new Adam cures us (1 Cor. xv. 21): “By man came death; by man also
came the resurrection from the dead.” We are killed by the old Adam,
and raised by the new; as among the Israelites, a fiery serpent gave
the wound, and a brazen serpent administers the cure. The nature that
was deceived bruiseth the deceiver, and raiseth up the foundations of
his kingdom. Satan is defeated by the counsels he took to secure his
possession, and loses the victory by the same means whereby he thought
to preserve it. His tempting the Jews to the sin of crucifying the
Son of God, had a contrary success to his tempting Adam to eat of the
tree. The first death he brought upon Adam, ruined us, and the death he
brought by his instruments upon the second Adam, restored us. By a tree,
if one may so say, he had triumphed over the world, and by the fruit of
a tree, one hanging upon a tree, he is discharged of his {a569} power
over us (Heb. ii. 14): “Through death he destroyed Him that had the
power of death.” And thus the devil ruins his own kingdom while he
thinks to confirm and enlarge it; and is defeated by his own policy,
whereby he thought to continue the world under his chains, and deprive
the Creator of the world of his purposed honor. What deeper counsel
could he resolve upon for his own security, than to be instrumental in
the death of him, who was God, the terror of the devil himself, and to
bring the Redeemer of the world to expire with disgrace in the sight of
a multitude of men? Thus did the wisdom of God shine forth in restoring
us by methods seemingly repugnant to the end he aimed at, and above
the suspicion of a subtle devil, whom he intended to baffle. Could
he imagine that we should be healed by stripes, quickened by death,
purified by blood, crowned by a cross, advanced to the highest honor
by the lowest humility, comforted by sorrows, glorified by disgrace,
absolved by condemnation, and made rich by poverty? That the sweetest
honey should at once spring out of the belly of a dead lion, the lion
of the tribe of Judah, and out of the bosom of the living God? How
wonderful is this wisdom of God! that the Seed of the woman, born of a
mean virgin, brought forth in a stable, spending his days in affliction,
misery, and poverty, without any pomp and splendor, passing some
time in a carpenter’s shop, with carpenter’s tools (Mark vi. 6), and
afterwards exposed to a horrible and disgraceful death, should, by
this way, pull down the gates of hell, subvert the kingdom of the
devil, and be the hammer to break in pieces that power, which he had so
long exercised over the world! Thus became he the author of our life,
by being bound for a while in the chains of death, and arrived to a
principality over the most malicious powers, by being a prisoner for
us, and the anvil of their rage and fury.
7. The wisdom of God appears, in giving us this way the surest ground
of comfort, and the strongest incentive to obedience. The rebel is
reconciled, and the rebellion shamed; God is propitiated, and the
sinner sanctified, by the same blood. What can more contribute to our
comfort and confidence, than God’s richest gift to us? What can more
enflame our love to him, than our recovery from death by the oblation
of his Son to misery and death for us? It doth as much engage our duty
as secure our happiness. It presents God glorious and gracious, and
therefore every way fit to be trusted in regard of the interest of his
own glory in it, and in regard of the effusions of his grace by it. It
renders the creature obliged in the highest manner, and so awakens his
industry to the strictest and noblest obedience. Nothing so effectual
as a crucified Christ to wean us from sin, and stifle all motions of
despair; a means, in regard of the justice signalized in it, to make
man to hate the sin which had ruined him; and a means, in regard of the
love expressed to make him delight in that law he had violated (2 Cor.
v. 14, 15). The love of Christ, and therefore the love of God expressed
in it, constrains us no longer to live to ourselves.
(1.) It is a ground of the highest comfort and confidence in God.
{a570} Since he hath given such an evidence of his impartial truth to
his threatening for the honor of his justice, we need not question but
he will be as punctual to his promise for the honor of his mercy. It is
a ground of confidence in God, since he hath redeemed us in such a way
as glorifies the steadiness of his veracity, as well as the severity of
his justice; we may well trust him for the performance of his promise,
since we have experience of the execution of his threatening; his
merciful truth will as much engage him to accomplish the one, as his
just truth did to inflict the other. The goodness which shone forth
in weaker rays in the creation, breaks out with stronger beams in
redemption. And the mercy which before the appearance of Christ was
manifested in some small rivulets, diffuseth itself like a boundless
ocean. That God, that was our Creator, is our Redeemer, the repairer
of our breaches, and the restorer of our paths to dwell in. And the
plenteous redemption from all iniquity, manifested in the incarnation
and passion of the Son of God, is much more a ground of hope in the
Lord than it was in past ages, when it could not be said, “The Lord
hath, but the Lord shall, redeem Israel from all his iniquities” (Ps.
cxxx. 8). It is a full warrant to cast ourselves into his arms.
(2.) An incentive to obedience.
[1.] The commands of the gospel require the obedience of the creature.
There is not one precept in the gospel which interferes with any rule
in the law, but strengthens it, and represents it in its true exactness:
the heat to scorch us is allayed, but the light to direct us is not
extinguished. Not the least allowance to any sin is granted; not the
least affection to any sin is indulged. The law is tempered by the
gospel, but not nulled and cast out of doors by it: it enacts that
none but those that are sanctified, shall be glorified; that there must
be grace here, if we expect glory hereafter; that we must not presume
to expect an admittance to the vision of God’s face unless our souls
be clothed with a robe of holiness (Heb. xii. 14). It requires an
obedience to the whole law in our intention and purpose, and an
endeavor to observe it in our actions; it promotes the honor of God,
and ordains a universal charity among men; it reveals the whole counsel
of God, and furnisheth men with the holiest laws.
[2.] It presents to us the exactest pattern for our obedience. The
redeeming person is not only a propitiation for the sin, but a pattern
to the sinner (1 Pet. ii. 21). The conscience of man, after the fall
of Adam, approved of the reason of the law, but by the corruption
of nature man had no strength to perform the law. The possibility of
keeping the law, by human nature, is evidenced by the appearance and
life of the Redeemer, and an assurance given that it shall be advanced
to such a state as to be able to observe it: we aspire to it in this
life, and have hopes to attain it in a future; and, while we are here,
the actor of our redemption is the copy for our imitation. The pattern
to imitate is greater than the law to be ruled by. What a lustre did
his virtues cast about the world! How attractive are his graces! With
what high examples for all duties has he furnished us out of the copy
of his life!
[3.] It presents us with the strongest motives to obedience (Tit. ii.
11, 12): {a571} “The grace of God teaches us to deny ungodliness.”
What chains bind us faster and closer than love? Here is love to our
nature in his incarnation; love to us, though enemies, in his death
and passion; encouragements to obedience by the proffers of pardon
for former rebellions. By the disobedience of man, God introduceth
his redeeming grace, and engageth his creature to more ingenuous and
excellent returns than his innocent state could oblige him to. In his
created state he had goodness to move him, he hath the same goodness
now to oblige him as a creature, and a greater love and mercy to oblige
him as a repaired creature; and the terror of justice is taken off,
which might envenom his heart as a criminal. In his revolted state
he had misery to discourage him; in his redeemed state he hath love
to attract him. Without such a way, black despair had seized upon the
creature exposed to a remediless misery, and God would have had no
returns of love from the best of his earthly works; but if any sparks
of ingenuity be left, they will be excited by the efficacy of this
argument. The willingness of God to receive returning sinners, is
manifested in the highest degree; and the willingness of a sinner to
return to him in duty hath the strongest engagements. He hath done as
much to encourage our obedience, as to illustrate his glory. We cannot
conceive what could be done greater for the salvation of our souls, and
consequently what could have been done, more to enforce our observance.
We have a Redeemer, as man, to copy it to us, and as God, to perfect us
in it. It would make the heart of any to tremble to wound him that hath
provided such a salve for our sores, and to make grace a warrant for
rebellion――motives capable to form rocks into a flexibleness. Thus is
the wisdom of God seen in giving us a ground to the surest confidence,
and furnishing us with incentives to the greatest obedience, by the
horrors of wrath, death and sufferings of our Saviour.
8. The wisdom of God is apparent in the condition he hath settled for
the enjoying the fruits of redemption: and this is faith, a wise and
reasonable condition and the concomitants of it――
(1.) In that it is suited to man’s lapsed state and God’s glory.
Innocence is not required here; that had been a condition impossible
in its own nature after the fall. The rejecting of mercy is now only
condemning, where mercy is proposed. Had the condition of perfection in
works been required, it had rather been a condemnation than redemption.
Works are not demanded, whereby the creature might ascribe anything
to himself, but a condition, which continues in man a sense of his
apostasy, abates all aspiring pride, and makes the reward of grace,
not of debt; a condition, whereby mercy is owned, and the creature
emptied; flesh silenced in the dust, and God set upon his throne of
grace and authority; the creature brought to the lowest debasement,
and Divine glory raised to the highest pitch. The creature is brought
to acknowledge mercy, and seal to justice; to own the holiness of God,
in the hatred of sin; the justice of God, in the punishment of sin; and
the mercy of God, in the pardoning of sin: a condition that despoils
nature of all its pretended excellency; beats down the glory of man at
the foot of God (1 Cor. i. 29, 31). It subjects the reason and will of
man to the wisdom and authority {a572} of God; it brings the creature
to an unreserved submission and entire resignation. God is made the
sovereign cause of all; the creature continued in his emptiness, and
reduced to a greater dependence upon God than by a creation; depending
upon him for a constant influx, for an entire happiness: a condition
that renders God glorious in the creature, and the fallen creature
happy in God; God glorious in his condescension to man, and man happy
in his emptiness before God. Faith is made the condition of man’s
recovery, that “the lofty looks of man might be humbled, and the
haughtiness of man be pulled down” (Isa. ii. 11); that every towering
imagination might be levelled (2 Cor. x. 5). Man must have all from
without doors; he must not live upon himself, but upon another’s
allowance. He must stand to the provision of God, and be a perpetual
suitor at his gates.
(2.) A condition opposite to that which was the cause of the fall.
We fell from God by an unbelief of the threatening; he recovers us by
a belief of the promise; by unbelief we laid the foundation of God’s
dishonor; by faith, therefore, God exalts the glory of his free grace.
We lost ourselves by a desire of self‑dependence, and our return
is ordered by way of self‑emptiness. It is reasonable we should be
restored in a way contrary to that whereby we fell; we sinned by a
refusal of cleaving to God; it is a part of Divine wisdom to restore
us in a denial of our own righteousness and strength.[797] Man having
sinned by pride, the wisdom of God humbles him (saith one) at the very
root of the tree of knowledge, and makes him deny his own understanding,
and submit to faith, or else, forever to lose his desired felicity.
(3.) It is a condition suited to the common sentiment and custom
of the world. There is more of belief than reason in the world. All
instructors and masters in sciences and arts, require, first a belief
in their disciples, and a resignation of their understandings and wills
to them. And it is the wisdom of God to require that of man, which his
own reason makes him submit to another which is his fellow‑creature. He,
therefore, that quarrels with the condition of faith, must quarrel with
all the world, since belief is the beginning of all knowledge;[798]
yea, and most of the knowledge in the world, may rather come under the
title of belief, than of knowledge; for what we think we know this day,
we may find from others such arguments as may stagger our knowledge,
and make us doubt of that we thought ourselves certain of before: nay,
sometimes we change our opinions ourselves without any instructor,
and see a reason to entertain an opinion quite contrary to what we
had before. And if we found a general judgment of others to vote
against what we think we know, it would make us give the less credit
to ourselves and our own sentiments. All knowledge in the world is
only a belief, depending upon the testimony or arguings of others; for,
indeed, it may be said of all men, as in Job (viii. 9), “We are but of
yesterday, and know nothing.” Since, therefore, belief is so universal
a thing in the world, the wisdom of God requires that of us which
every man must count reasonable, or render himself utterly ignorant of
anything. It is a condition that is common to all religions. All {a573}
religions are founded upon a belief: unless men did believe future
things, they would not hope nor fear. A belief and resignation was
required in all the idolatries in the world; so that God requires
nothing but what a universal custom of the world gives its suffrage to
the reasonableness of: indeed, justifying faith is not suited to the
sentiments of men; but that faith which must precede justifying, a
belief of the doctrine, though not comprehended by reason, is common to
the custom of the world.[799] It is no less madness not to submit our
reason to faith, than not to regulate our fancies by reason.
(4.) This condition of faith and repentance is suited to the
conscience of men. The law of nature teaches us, that we are bound to
believe every revelation from God, when it is made known to us: and
not only to assent to it as true, but embrace it as good. This nature
dictates, that we are as much obliged to believe God, because of his
truth, as to love him, because of his goodness. Every man’s reason
tells him, he cannot obey a precept, nor depend upon a promise, unless
he believes both the one and the other. No man’s conscience but will
inform him, upon hearing the revelation of God concerning his excellent
contrivance of redemption, and the way to enjoy it, that it is very
reasonable he should strip off all affections to sin, lie down in
sorrow, and bewail what he hath done amiss against so tender a God.
Can you expect that any man that promises you a great honor or a rich
donative, should demand less of you than to trust his word, bear an
affection to him, and return him kindness? Can any less be expected
by a prince than obedience from a pardoned subject, and a redeemed
captive? If you have injured any man in his body, estate, reputation,
would you not count it a reasonable condition for the partaking of
his clemency and forgiveness, to express a hearty sorrow for it,
and a resolution not to fall into the like crime again? Such are the
conditions of the gospel, suited to the consciences of men.
(5.) The wisdom of God appears, in that this condition was only
likely to attain the end. There are but two common heads appointed by
God,――Adam and Christ: by one we are made a living soul, by the other
a quickening spirit: by the one we are made sinners, by the other we
are made righteous. Adam fell as a head, and all his members, his whole
issue and posterity, fell with him, because they proceeded from him
by natural generation. But since the second Adam cannot be our head
by natural generation, there must be some other way of engrafting us
in him, and uniting us to him as our Head, which must be moral and
spiritual; this cannot rationally be conceived to be by any other way
than what is suitable to a reasonable creature, and, therefore, must
be by an act of the will, consent and acceptance, and owning the terms
settled for an admission to that union. And this is that we properly
call faith, and, therefore, called a receiving of him (John i. 12).
[1.] Now this condition of enjoying the fruits of redemption could not
be a bare knowledge; for that is but only an act of the understanding,
and doth not in itself include the act of the will, and so would have
united only one faculty to him, not the whole soul: but {a574} faith
is an act both of the understanding and will too; and principally of
the will, which doth presuppose an act of the understanding: for there
cannot be a persuasion in the will, without a proposition from the
understanding. The understanding must be convinced of the truth and
goodness of a thing, before the will can be persuaded to make any
motion towards it; and, therefore, all the promises, invitations,
and proffers, are suited to the understanding and will; to the
understanding in regard of knowledge, to the will in regard of appetite;
to the understanding as true, to the will as good; to the understanding
as practical, and influencing the will.
[2.] Nor could it be an entire obedience. That, as was said before,
would have made the creature have some matter of boasting, and this
was not suitable to the condition he was sunk into by the fall.
Besides, man’s nature being corrupted, was rendered incapable to obey,
and unable to have one thought of a due obedience (2 Cor. iii. 5).
When man turned from God, and upon that was turned out of paradise,
his return was impossible by any strength of his own; his nature was
as much corrupted as his re‑entrance into paradise was prohibited.
That covenant, whereby he stood in the garden, required a perfection of
action and intention in the observance of all the commands of God: but
his fall had cracked his ability to recover happiness by the terms and
condition of an entire obedience; yet man being a person governable by
a law, and capable of happiness by a covenant, if God would restore him,
and enter into a covenant with him, we must suppose it to have some
condition, as all covenants have. That condition could not be works,
because man’s nature was polluted. Indeed, had God reduced man’s
body to the dust, and his soul to nothing, and framed another man,
he might have governed him by a covenant of works: but that had not
been the same man that had revolted, and upon his revolt was stained
and disabled. But suppose God had, by any transcendent grace, wholly
purified him from the stain of his former transgression, and restored
to him the strength and ability he had lost, might he not as easily
have rebelled again? And so the condition would never have been
accomplished, the covenant never have been performed, and happiness
never have been enjoyed. There must be some other condition then in
the covenant God would make for man’s security. Now faith is the most
proper for receiving the promise of pardon of sin: belief of those
promises is the first natural reflection that a malefactor can make
upon a pardon offered him, and acceptance of it is the first consequent
from that belief. Hence is faith entitled a persuasion of, and
embracing the promises (Heb. xi. 13), and a receiving the atonement
(Rom. v. 11). Thus the wisdom of God is apparent in annexing such a
condition to the covenant, whereby man is restored, as answers the end
of God for his glory, the state, conscience, and necessity of man, and
had the greatest congruity to his recovery.
9. This wisdom of God is manifest in the manner of the publishing and
propagating this doctrine of redemption.
(1.) In the gradual discoveries of it. Flashing a great light in the
face of a sudden is amazing; should the sun glare in our eye in all
its brightness on a sudden, after we have been in a thick darkness,
{a575} it would blind us, instead of comforting us: so great a work
as this must have several digestions. God first reveals of what seed
the Redeeming Person should be, “the Seed of the woman” (Gen. iii. 15);
then of what nation (Gen. xxvi. 4); then of what tribe (Gen. xlix.
12),――of the tribe of Judah; then of what family,――the family of David;
then what works he was to do, what sufferings to undergo. The first
predictions of our Saviour were obscure. Adam could not well see the
redemption in the promise for the punishment of death which succeeded
in the threatening; the promise exercised his faith, and the obscurity
and bodily death, his humility. The promise made to Abraham was
clearer than the revelations made before, yet he could not tell how
to reconcile his redemption with his exile. God supported his faith
by the promise, and exercised his humility by making him a pilgrim,
and keeping him in a perpetual dependence upon him in all his motions.
The declarations to Moses are brighter than those to Abraham: the
delineations of Christ by David, in the Psalms, more illustrious
than the former: and all those exceeded by the revelations made to
the prophet Isaiah, and the other prophets, according as the age did
approach wherein the Redeemer was to enter into his office. God wrapped
up this gospel in a multitude of types and ceremonies fitted to the
infant state of the church (Gal. iv. 3). An infant state is usually
affected with sensible things; yet all those ceremonies were fitted
to that great end of the gospel, which he would bring forth in time to
the world. And the wisdom of God in them would be amazing, if we could
understand the analogy between every ceremony in the law and the thing
signified by it: as it cannot but affect a diligent reader to observe
that little account of them we have by the apostle Paul, sprinkled in
his epistles, and more largely in that to the Hebrews. As the political
laws of the Jews flowed from the depth of the moral law, so their
ceremonial did from the depth of evangelical counsels, and all of
them had a special relation to the honor of God, and the debasing
the creature. Though God formed the mass and matter of the world at
the first creation at once, yet his wisdom took six days time for the
disposing and adorning it. The more illustrious truths of God are not
to be comprehended on a sudden by the weakness of men. Christ did not
declare all truths to his disciples in the time of his life, because
they were not able at that present to bear them (John xvi. 12): “Ye
cannot bear them now;” some were reserved for his resurrection, others
for the coming of the Spirit, and the full discovery of all kept back
for another world. This doctrine God figured out in the law, oracled
by the prophets, and unveiled by Christ and his apostles.
(2.) The wisdom of God appeared in using all proper means to render the
belief of it easy.
[1.] The most minute things that were to be transacted were predicted
in the ancient foregoing age, long before the coming of the Redeemer.
The vinegar and gall offered to him upon the cross, the parting his
garments, the not breaking of his bones, the piercing of his hands and
feet, the betraying of him, the slighting of him by the multitude, all
were exactly painted and represented in variety of figures. There was
light enough to good men not to mistake {a576} him, and yet not so
plain as to hinder bad men from being serviceable to the counsels of
God in the crucifying of him when he came.
[2.] The translation of the Old Testament from the private language of
the Jews, into the most public language of the world; that translation
which we call Septuagint, from Hebrew into Greek, some years before
the coming of Christ, that tongue being most diffused at that time,
by reason of the Macedonian empire, raised by Alexander, and the
university of Athens, to which other nations resorted for learning
and education. This was a preparation for the sons of Japhet to “dwell
in the tents of Shem.” By this was the entertainment of the gospel
facilitated; when they compared the prophesies of the Old Testament
with the declarations of the New, and found things so long predicted
before they were transacted in the public view.
[3.] By ordering concurrent testimonies, as to matter of fact, that
the matter of fact was not deniable. That there was such a person as
Christ, that his miracles were stupendous, that his doctrine did not
incline to sedition, that he affected not worldly applause, that he
did suffer at Jerusalem, was acknowledged by all; not a man among the
greatest enemies of Christians was found that denied the matter of fact.
And this great truth, that Christ is the Messiah and Redeemer, hath
been with universal consent owned by all the professors of Christianity
throughout the world: whatever bickerings there have been among them
about some particular doctrines, they all centred in that truth of
Christ’s being the Redeemer. The first publication of this doctrine was
sealed by a thousand miracles, and so illustrious, that he was an utter
stranger to the world that was ignorant of them.
[4.] In keeping up some principles and opinions in the world to
facilitate the belief of this, or render men inexcusable for rejecting
of it. The incarnation of the son of God could not be so strange to
the world, if we consider the general belief of the appearances[800]
of their gods among them; that the Epicureans and others, that denied
any such appearances, were counted atheists.[801] And Pythagoras was
esteemed to be one, not of the inferior genii and lunar demons, but one
of the higher gods, who appeared in a human body, for the curing and
rectifying mortal life;[802] and himself tells Abaris, the Scythian,
that he was ἀνθρωπόμορφος, that he “took the flesh of man,” that
men might not be astonished at him, and in a fright fly from his
instructions. It was not therefore accounted an irrational thing
among them, that God should be incarnate: but, indeed, the great
stumbling‑block was a crucified God. But had they known the holy and
righteous nature of God, the malice of sin, the universal corruption of
human nature, the first threatening, and the necessity of vindicating
the honor of the law, and clearing the justice of God, the notion of
his crucifixion would not have appeared so incredible, since they
believed the possibility of an incarnation.
Another principle was that universal one of sacrifices for
expiation, and rendering God propitious to man, and was practised among
{a577} all nations. I remember not any wherein this custom did not
prevail; for it did even among those people where the Jews, as being
no trading nation, had not any commerce; and also in America, found out
in these latter ages. It was not a law of nature; no man can find any
such thing written in his own heart, but a tradition from Adam. Now
that among the loss of so many other doctrines that were handed down
from Adam to his immediate posterity, as, in particular, that of the
“Seed of the woman,” which one would think a necessary appendix to that
of sacrificing, this latter should be preserved as a fragment of an
ancient tradition, seems to be an act of Divine wisdom, to prepare
men for the entertainment of the doctrine of the great Sacrifice for
the expiation of the sin of the world. And as the apostle forms his
argument from the Jewish sacrifices, in the epistle to the Hebrews,
for the convincing them of the end of the death of Christ, so did the
ancient fathers make use of this practice of the heathen to convince
them of the same doctrine.
[5.] The wisdom of God appeared in the time and circumstances of the
first solemn publication of the gospel by the apostles at Jerusalem.
The relation you may read in Acts ii. 1‒12. The Spirit was given to the
apostles on the day of Pentecost; a time wherein there were multitudes
of Jews from all nations, not only near, but remote, that heard the
great things of God spoken in the several languages of those nations
where their habitations were fixed, and that by twelve illiterate
men, that two or three hours before knew no language but that of
their native country. It was the custom of the Jews, that dwelt among
other nations, at a distance from Jerusalem, to assemble together at
Jerusalem at the feast of Pentecost: and God pitched upon this season,
that there might be witnesses of this miracle in many parts of the
world: there were some of every nation under heaven (ver. 5); that is,
of that known part of the world, so saith the text. Fourteen several
nations are mentioned; and proselytes as well as Jews by birth. They
are called “devout men,” men of conscience, whose testimony would carry
weight with it among their neighbors at their return, because of their
reputation by their religious carriage. Again, this was not heard and
seen by some of them at one time, and some at another, by some one
hour, by others the next successively,[803] but altogether, in a solemn
assembly, that the testimony of so many witnesses at a time, might be
more valid, and the truth of the doctrine appear more illustrious and
undeniable. And it must needs be astonishing to them, to hear that
person magnified in so miraculous a manner, who had so lately been
condemned by their countrymen as a malefactor. Wisdom consists in
the timing of things. And in this circumstance doth the wisdom of God
appear, in furnishing the apostles with the Spirit at such a time, and
bringing forth such a miracle, as the gift of tongues, on a sudden,
that every nation might hear in their own language the wonder of
redemption, and as witnesses at their returns into their own countries,
report it to others; that the credit they had, in their several places,
might facilitate the belief and entertainment of the gospel, when
the apostles, or others, should arrive to those several charges
and dioceses {a578} appointed for them to preach the gospel in. Had
this miracle been wrought in the presence only of the inhabitants of
Judea, that understood only their own language, or one or two of the
neighboring tongues, it had been counted by them rather a madness than
a miracle. Or had they understood all the tongues which they spoke,
the news of it had spread no further than the limits of their own
habitations, and had been confined within the narrow bounds of the land
of Judea. But now it is carried to several remote nations, where any
of those auditors then assembled had their residence. As God chose the
time of the Passover for the death of Christ, that there might be the
greatest number of the inhabitants of the country, as witnesses of the
matter of fact, the innocence and sufferings of Christ, so he chose the
time of Pentecost for the first publishing the value and end of this
blood to the world. Thus the evangelical law was given in a confluence
of people from all parts and nations, because it was a covenant with
all nations: and the variety of languages spoken by a company of poor
Galileans, bred up at the lake of Tiberias, and in poor corners of
Canaan, without the instructions of men for so great a skill, might
well evidence to the hearers, that God that brought the confusion of
languages first at Babel, did only work that cure of them, and combine
all together at Jerusalem.
(3.) The wisdom of God is seen in the instruments he employed in the
publishing the gospel. He did not employ philosophers, but fishermen;
used not acquired arts, but infused wisdom and courage. This treasure
was put into, and preserved in earthen vessels, that the wisdom, as
well as the power of God, might be magnified. The weaker the means are
which attain the end, the greater is the skill of the conductor of them.
Wise princes choose men of most credit, interest, wisdom, and ability,
to be ministers of their affairs, and ambassadors to others. But what
were these that God chose for so great a work, as the publishing a new
doctrine to the world? What was their quality but mean, what was their
authority without interest? What was their ability, without eminent
parts for so great a work, but what Divine grace in a special manner
endowed them with? Nay, what was their disposition to it? as dull and
unwieldy. Witness the frequent rebukes for their slow‑heartedness,
from their Master, when he conversed in the flesh with them. And one of
the greatest of them, so fond of the Jewish ceremonies and Pharisaical
principles, wherein he had been more than ordinarily principled, that
he hated the Christian religion to extirpation, and the professors of
it to death; by those ways which were out of the road of human wisdom,
and would be accounted the greatest absurdity to be practised by men
that have a repute for discretion, did God advance his wisdom (1 Cor.
i. 25): “The foolishness of God is wiser than man.” By this means it
was indisputably evidenced to unbiassed minds, that the doctrine was
divine. It could not rationally be imagined, that instruments destitute
of all human advantages, should be able to vanquish the world, confound
Judaism, overturn heathenism, chase away the devils, strip them of
their temples, alienate the minds of men from their several religions,
which had been rooted in them by education, and established by a long
succession. It could not, I {a579} say, reasonably be imagined to be
without a supernatural assistance, an heavenly and efficacious working:
whereas, had God taken a course agreeable to the prudence of man, and
used those that had been furnished with learning, tipped with eloquence,
and armed with human authority, the doctrines would have been thought
to have been of a human invention, and to be some subtle contrivance
for some unworthy and ambitious end: the nothingness and weakness
of the instruments manifest them to be conducted by a Divine power,
and declare the doctrine itself to be from heaven. When we see such
feeble instruments proclaiming a doctrine repugnant to flesh and blood,
sounding forth a crucified Christ to be believed in, and trusted on,
and declaiming against the religion and worship under which the Roman
empire had long flourished; exhorting them to the contempt of the
world, preparation for afflictions, denying themselves, and their own
honors, by the hopes of an unseen reward, things so repugnant to flesh
and blood; and these instruments concurring in the same story, with
an admirable harmony in all parts, and sealing this doctrine with
their blood; can we upon all this, ascribe this doctrine to a human
contrivance, or fix any lower author of it than the wisdom of heaven?
It is the wisdom of God that carries on his own designs in methods most
suitable to his own greatness, and different from the customs and modes
of men, that less of humanity, and more of divinity might appear.
(4.) The wisdom of God appears in the ways and manner, as well as in
the instruments of its propagation, by ways seemingly contrary. You
know how God had sent the Jews into captivity in Babylon, and though he
struck off their chains, and restored them to their country, yet many
of them had no mind to leave a country wherein they had been born and
bred. The distance from the place of the original of their ancestors,
and their affection to the country wherein they were born, might
have occasioned their embracing the idolatrous worship of the place.
Afterwards the persecutions of Antiochus scattered many of the Jews for
their security into other nations; yet a great part, and perhaps the
greatest, preserved their religion, and by that were obliged to come
every year to Jerusalem to offer, and so were present at the effusion
of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and were witnesses of the
miraculous effects of it. Had they not been dispersed by persecution,
had they not resided in several countries, and been acquainted with
their languages, the gospel had not so easily been diffused into
several countries of the world. The first persecutions also raised
against the church, propagated the gospel; the scattering of the
disciples enflamed their courage, and dispersed the doctrine (Acts viii.
3), according to the prophecy of Daniel (xii. 4): “Many should run to
and fro, and knowledge should be increased.” The flights and hurryings
of men should enlarge the territories of the gospel. There was not a
tribunal, but the primitive Christians were cited to; not a horrible
punishment, but was inflicted upon them. Treated they were, as the
dregs and offals of mankind, as the common enemies of the world; yet
the flames of the martyrs brightened the doctrine, and the captivity of
its professors made way for the throne of its empire. The imprisonment
of {a580} the ark was the downfall of Dagon. Religion grew stronger
by sufferings, and Christianity taller by injuries. What can this be
ascribed to, but the conduct of a wisdom superior to that of men and
devils, defeating the methods of human and hellish policy; thereby
making the “wisdom of this world foolishness with God” (1 Cor. iii. 19)?
V. The _Use 1._ Of Information. If wisdom be an excellency of the
Divine nature; then,
1. Christ’s Deity may hence be asserted. Wisdom is the emphatical
title of Christ in Scripture (Prov. viii. 12, 13, 31), where wisdom
is brought in speaking as a distinct person; ascribing counsel, and
understanding, and the knowledge of witty inventions to itself. He is
called also the power of God, and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. i. 24).
And the ancients generally understood that place (Col. ii. 3), “In him
are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” as an assertion of
the Godhead of Christ, in regard of the infiniteness of his knowledge;
referring wisdom to his knowledge of divine things; and knowledge to
his understanding of all human things. But the natural sense of the
place seems to be this, that all wisdom and knowledge is displayed by
Christ in the gospel; and the words, ἐν αὐτῷ, refer either to Christ,
or the mystery of God spoken of, (ver. 2). But the Deity of Christ,
in regard of infinite wisdom, may be deduced from his creation of
things, and his government of things; both which are ascribed to him in
Scripture. The first ascribed to him (John i. 3): “All things were made
by him;” and (ver. 27), “Without him was not any thing made, that was
made.” The second (John v. 22): “The Father hath committed all judgment
to the Son;” and both put together (Col. ii. 16, 17). Now since he hath
the government of the world, he hath the perfections necessary to so
great a work. As the creation of the world, which is ascribed to him,
requires an infinite power, so the government of the world requires an
infinite wisdom. That he hath the knowledge of the hearts of men, was
proved in handling the omniscience of God. That knowledge would be to
little purpose without wisdom to order the motions of men’s hearts,
and conduct all the qualities and actions of creatures, to such an
end as is answerable to a wise government; we cannot think so great an
employment can be without an ability necessary for it. The government
of men and angels is a great part of the glory of God; and if God
should entrust the greatest part of his glory in hands unfit for so
great a trust, it would be an argument of weakness in God, as it is in
men, to pitch upon unfit instruments for particular charges; since God
hath therefore committed to him his greatest glory, the conduct of all
things for the highest end, he hath a wisdom requisite for so great an
end, which can be no less than infinite. If then Christ were a finite
person, he would not be capable of an infinite communication; he could
not be a subject wherein infinite wisdom could be lodged; for the
terms finite and infinite are so distant, that they cannot commence
one another; finite can never be changed into infinite, no more than
infinite can into finite.
2. Hence we may assert the right and fitness of God for the
government {a581} of the world, as he is the wisest Being. Among men,
those who are excellent in judgment, are accounted fittest to preside
over, and give orders to others; the wisest in a city are most capable
to govern a city; or at least, though ignorant men may bear the title,
yet the advice of the soundest and skilfullest heads should prevail
in all public affairs: we see in nature, that the eye guides the body,
and the mind directs the eye. Power and wisdom are the two arms of
authority; wisdom knows the end, and directs the means; power executes
the means designed for such an end.[804] The more splendid and strong
those are in any, the more authority results from thence, for the
conduct of others that are of an inferior orb; now God being infinitely
excellent in both, his ability and right to the management of the world
cannot be suspected; the whole world is but one commonwealth, whereof
God is the monarch. Did the government of the world depend upon the
election of men and angels, where could they pitch, or where would they
find perfections capable of so great a work, but in the Supreme Wisdom?
His wisdom hath already been apparent in those laws, whereby he formed
the world into a civil society, and the Israelites into a commonwealth.
The one suited to the consciences and reasons of all his subjects, and
the other suited to the genius of that particular nation, drawn out of
the righteousness of the moral law, and applicable to all cases that
might arise among them in their government; so that Moses asserts,
that the wisdom apparent in their laws enacted by God, as their chief
magistrate, would render them famous among other nations, in regard of
their wisdom, as well as their righteousness (Deut. iv. 6, 7, 9). Also,
this perfection doth evidence, that God doth actually govern the world.
It would not be a commendable thing for a man to make a curious piece
of clock‑work, and take no care for the orderly motion of it. Would God
display so much of his skill in framing the heaven and earth, and none
in actual guidance of them to their particular and universal ends? Did
he lay the foundation in order, and fit every stone in the building,
make all things in weight and measure, to let them afterwards run at
hap‑hazard? Would he bring forth his power to view in the creation,
and let a more glorious perfection lie idle, when it had so large a
field to move in? Infinite wisdom is inconsistent with inactivity.
All prudence doth illustrate itself in untying the hardest knots, and
disposing the most difficult affairs to a happy and successful issue.
All those various arts and inventions among men which lend their
assisting hand to one another, and those various employments their
several geniuses lead them to, whereby they support one another’s
welfare, are beams and instincts of Divine wisdom in the government
of the world. He that “made all things in wisdom” (Ps. civ. 24), would
not leave his works to act and move only according to their own folly,
and idly behold them jumble together, and run counter to that end he
designed them for; we must not fancy Divine wisdom to be destitute of
activity.
3. Here we may see a ground of God’s patience. The most impotent
persons are the most impatient, when unforeseen emergencies {a582}
arise; or at events expected by them, when their feeble prudence was
not a sufficient match to contest with them, or prevent them. But the
wiser any man is, the more he bears with those things which seem to
cross his intentions, because he knows he grasps the whole affair, and
is sure of attaining the end he proposeth to himself; yet, as a finite
wisdom can have but a finite patience, so an infinite wisdom possesses
an infinite patience. The wise God intends to bring glory to himself,
and good to some of his creatures, out of the greatest evils that can
happen in the world, he beholds no exorbitant afflictions and monstrous
actions, but what he can dispose to a good and glorious end, even to
“work together for good to them that love God” (Rom. viii. 28); and,
therefore, doth not presently fall foul upon the actors, till he hath
wrought out that temporary glory to himself, and good to his people
which he designs. The times of ignorance God winked at, till he had
brought his Son into the world, and manifested his wisdom in redemption,
and when this was done he presseth men to a “speedy repentance” (Acts
xvii. 30); that, as he forbore punishing their crimes, in order to
the displaying his wisdom in the designed redemption; so when he had
effected it, they must forbear any longer abusing his patience.
4. Hence appears the immutability of God in his decrees. He is not
destitute of a power and strength to change his own purposes, but his
infinite perfection of wisdom is a bar to his laying aside his eternal
resolves and forming new ones (Isa. xlvi. 10); he resolves the end from
the beginning, and his counsel stands; stands immovable, because it
is his counsel. It is an impotent counsel, that is subject to a daily
thwarting itself. Inconstant persons are accounted, by men, destitute
of a due measure of prudence. If God change his mind it is either for
the better or the worse; if for the better, he was not wise in his
former purpose; if for the worse, he is not wise in his present resolve.
No alteration can be without a reflection of weakness upon the former
or present determination. God must either cease to be as wise as he was
before, or begin to be wiser than he was before the change, which to
think or imagine is to deny a Deity. If any man change his resolution,
he is apprehensive of a flaw in his former purpose, and finds an
inconvenience in it, which moves him to such a change, which must be
either for want of foresight in himself, or want of a due consideration
of the object of his counsel, neither of which can be imagined of God
without a denial of the Deity. No, there are no blots and blemishes in
his purposes and promises. Repentance, indeed, is an act of wisdom in
the creature, but it presupposeth folly in his former actions, which
is inconsistent with infinite perfection. Men are often too rash in
promising; and, therefore, what they promise in haste, they perform at
leisure, or not at all: they consider not before they vow, and make
after‑inquiries, whether they had best stand to it. The only wise God
needs not any after‑game: as he is sovereignly wise, he sees no cause
of reversing anything, and wants not expedients for his own purpose;
and as he is infinitely powerful, he hath no superior to hinder him
from executing his will, and making his people enjoy the effects of his
wisdom. If he had a recollection of thoughts, as man hath, and {a583}
and saw a necessity to mend them, he were not infinitely wise in his
first decrees: as in creation he looked back upon the several pieces of
that goodly frame he had erected, and saw them so exact that he did not
take up his pencil again to mend any particle of the first draught, so
his promises are made with such infinite wisdom and judgment, that what
he writes is irreversible and forever, as the decrees of the Medes and
Persians. All the words of God are eternal because they are the births
of righteousness and judgment (Hos. ii. 19); “I will betroth thee to
me forever, in righteousness and judgment.” He is not of a wavering
and flitting discretion: if he threatens, he wisely considers what he
threatens; if he promises, he wisely considers what he promises; and
therefore is immutable in both.
5. Hence it follows that God is a fit object for our trust and
confidence: for God being infinitely wise, when he promises anything,
he sees everything which may hinder, and everything which may promote
the execution of it, so that he cannot discover anything afterwards
that may move him to take up after‑thoughts: he hath more wisdom than
to promise anything hand over head, or anything which he knows he
cannot accomplish. Though God, as true, be the object of our trust,
yet God, as wise, is the foundation of our trust. We trust him in his
promise; the promise was made by mercy, and it is performed by truth;
but wisdom conducts all means to the accomplishment of it. There are
many men, whose honesty we can confide in, but whose discretion we are
diffident of: but there is no defect, either of the one or the other,
which may scare us from a depending upon God in our concerns. The words
of man’s wisdom the apostle entitles “enticing” (1 Cor. ii. 4), in
opposition to the words of God’s wisdom, which are firm, stable, and
undeniable demonstrations. As the power of God is an encouragement
of trust, because he is able to effect, so the wisdom of God comes
into the rank of those attributes which support our faith. To put a
confidence in him, we must be persuaded, not only that he is ignorant
of nothing in the world, but that he is wise to manage the whole course
of nature, and dispose of all his creatures, for the bringing his
purposes and his promises to their designed perfection.
6. Hence appears the necessity of a public review of the management
of the world, and of a day of judgment. As a day of judgment may be
inferred from many attributes of God, as his sovereignty, justice,
omniscience, &c., so, among the rest, from this of wisdom. How much
of this perfection will lie unveiled and obscure, if the sins of men
be not brought to view, whereby the ordering the unrighteous actions
of men, by his directing and over‑ruling hand of providence, in
subserviency to his own purposes and his people’s good, may appear in
all its glory! Without such a public review, this part of wisdom will
not be clearly visible; how those actions, which had a vile foundation
in the hearts and designs of men, and were formed there to gratify some
base lust, ambition, and covetousness, &c. were, by a secret wisdom
presiding over them, conducted to amazing ends. It is a part of Divine
wisdom to right itself, and convince men of the reasonableness of its
laws, and the unreasonableness of their contradictions {a584} to it.
The execution of the sentence is an act of justice, but the conviction
of the reasonableness of the sentence is an act of wisdom, clearing up
the righteousness of the proceeding; and this precedes, and the other
follows (Jude 15); “To convince all that are ungodly of all their
ungodly deeds.” That wisdom which contrived satisfaction, as well as
that justice which required it, is concerned in righting the law which
was enacted by it. The wisdom of a sovereign Lawgiver is engaged not
to see his law vilified and trampled on, and exposed to the lusts and
affronts of men, without being concerned in vindicating the honor of
it. It would appear a folly to enact and publish it, if there were
not a resolution to right and execute it. The wisdom of God can no
more associate iniquity and happiness together, than the justice of
God can separate iniquity from punishment. It would be defective,
if it did always tamely bear the insolences of offenders, without a
time of remark of their crimes, and a justification of the precept,
rebelliously spurned at. He would be unwise, if he were unjust;
unrighteousness hath no better a title in Scripture than that of
folly. It is no part of Wisdom to give birth to those laws which he
will always behold ineffectual, and neither vindicate his law by a due
execution of the penalty, nor right his own authority, contemned in
the violation of his law, by a just revenge: besides, what wisdom would
it be for the Sovereign Judge to lodge such a spokesman for himself as
conscience in the soul of man, if it should be alway found speaking,
and at length be found false in all that it speaks? There is, therefore,
an apparent prospect of the day of account, from the consideration of
this perfection of the Divine nature.
7. Hence we have a ground for a mighty reverence and veneration of the
Divine Majesty. Who can contemplate the sparklings of this perfection
in the variety of the works of his hands, and the exact government of
all his creatures, without a raised admiration of the excellency of his
Being, and a falling flat before him, in a posture of reverence to so
great a Being? Can we behold so great a mass of matter, digested into
several forms, so exact a harmony and temperament in all the creatures,
the proportions of numbers and measures, and one creature answering
the ends and designs of another, the distinct beauties of all, the
perpetual motion of all things without checking one another; the
variety of the nature of things, and all acting according to their
nature with an admirable agreement, and all together, like different
strings upon an instrument, emitting divers sounds, but all reduced to
order in one delightful lesson;――I say, can we behold all this without
admiring and adoring the Divine wisdom, which appears in all? And
from the consideration of this, let us pass to the consideration of
his wisdom in redemption, in reconciling divided interests, untying
hard knots, drawing one contrary out of another; and we must needs
acknowledge that the wisdom of all the men on earth, and angels in
heaven, is worse than nothing and vanity in comparison of this vast
Ocean. And as we have a greater esteem for those that invent some
excellent artificial engines, what reverence ought we to have for
him that hath stamped an unimitable wisdom upon all his works! Nature
orders {a585} us to give honor to our superiors in knowledge, and
confide in their counsels; but none ought to be reverenced as much
as God, since none equals him in wisdom.
8. If God be infinitely wise, it shows us the necessity of our address
to him, and invocation of his Name. We are subject to mistakes, and
often overseen; we are not able rightly to counsel ourselves. In some
cases, all creatures are too short‑sighted to apprehend them, and too
ignorant to give advice proper for them, and to contrive remedies for
their ease; but with the Lord there is counsel (Jer. xxxii. 19), “He is
great in counsel, and mighty in working;” great in counsel to advise us,
mighty in working to assist us. We know not how to effect a design, or
prevent an expected evil. We have an infinite Wisdom to go to, that is
every way skilful to manage any business we desire, to avert any evil
we fear, to accomplish anything we commit into his hands. When we know
not what to resolve, he hath a counsel to “guide us” (Ps. lxxiii. 24).
He is not more powerful to effect what is needful, than wise to direct
what is fitting. All men stand in need of the help of God, as one man
stands in need of the assistance of other men, and will not do anything
without advice; and he that takes advice, deserves the title of a wise
man, as well as he that gives advice. But no man needs so much the
advice of another man, as all men need the counsel and assistance
of God: neither is any man’s wit and wisdom so far inferior to the
prudence and ability of an angel, as the wisdom of the wisest man and
the most sharp‑sighted angel, is inferior to the infinite wisdom of God.
We see, therefore, that it is best for us to go to the fountain, and
not content ourselves with the streams; to beg advice from a wisdom
that is infinite and infallible, rather than from that which is finite
and fallible.
_Use 2._ If wisdom be the perfection of the Divine Majesty, how
prodigious is the contempt of it in the world? In general, all sin
strikes at this attribute, and is in one part or other a degrading
of it: the first sin directed its venom against this. As the devils
endeavored to equal their Creator in power, so man endeavored to equal
him in wisdom: both indeed scorned to be ruled by his order; but man
evidently exalted himself against the wisdom of God, and aspired to be
a sharer with him in his infinite knowledge; would not let him be the
only wise God, but cherished an ambition to be his partner. Just as
if a beam were able to imagine it might be as bright as the sun; or a
spark fancy it could be as full fraught with heat as the whole element
of fire. Man would not submit to the infinite wisdom of God in the
prohibition of one single fruit in the garden, when by the right of
his sovereign authority, he might have granted him only the use of
one. All presumptuous sins are of this nature; they are, therefore,
called reproaches of God (Num. xv. 30), “the soul that doth ought
presumptuously, reproacheth the Lord.” All reproaches are either for
natural, moral, or intellectual defects. All reproaches of God must
imply either a weakness or unrighteousness in God: if unrighteousness,
his holiness is denied; if weakness, his wisdom is blemished. In
general, all sin strikes at this perfection two ways.
{a586} 1. As it defaceth the wise workmanship of God. Every sin is a
deforming and blemishing our own souls, which, as they are the prime
creatures in the lower world, so they have greater characters of Divine
wisdom in the fabric of them: but this image of God is ruined and
broken by sin. Though the spoiling of it be a scorn of his holiness, it
is also an affront to his wisdom; for though his power was the cause of
the production of so fair a piece, yet his wisdom was the guide of his
power, and his holiness the pattern whereby he wrought it. His power
effected it, and his holiness was exemplified in it; but his wisdom
contrived it. If a man had a curious clock or watch, which had cost him
many years pains and the strength of his skill to frame it; for another,
after he had seen and considered it, to trample upon it, and crush it
in pieces, would argue a contempt of the artificer’s skill. God hath
shown infinite art in the creation of man; but sin unbeautifies man,
and ravisheth his excellency. It cuts and slasheth the image of God
stamped by divine wisdom, as though it were an object only of scorn
and contempt. The sinner in every sin acts, as if he intended to put
himself in a better posture, and in a fairer dress, than the wisdom of
God hath put him in by creation.
2. In the slighting his laws. The laws of God are highly
rational; they are drawn from the depths of the Divine understanding,
wherein there is no unclearness, and no defect. As his understanding
apprehends all things in their true reason, so his will enjoins all
things for worthy and wise ends. His laws are contrived by his wisdom
for the happiness of man, whose happiness, and the methods to it, he
understands better than men or angels can do. His laws being the orders
of the wisest understanding, every breach of his law is a flying in
the face of his wisdom. All human laws, though they are enforced by
sovereign authority, yet they are, or ought to be, in the composing of
them, founded upon reason, and should be particular applications of the
law of nature to this or that particular emergency. The laws of God,
then, who is _summa ratio_, are the birth of the truest reason; though
the reason of every one of them may not be so clear to us. Every law,
though it consists in an act of the will, yet doth pre‑suppose an act
of the understanding. The act of the Divine understanding in framing
the law, must be supposed to precede the act of his will in commanding
the observance of that law. So every sin against the law, is not only
against the will of God commanding, but the reason of God contriving,
and a cleaving to our own reason, rather than the understanding or
mind of God: as if God had mistaken in making his law, and we had more
understanding to frame a better, and more conducing to our happiness:
as if God were not wise enough to govern us, and prescribe what we
should do, and what we should avoid; as if he designed not our welfare
but our misfortune. Whereas, the precepts of God are not tyrannical
edicts, or acts of mere will, but the fruits of counsel; and, therefore,
every breach of them is a real declamation against his discretion and
judgment, and preferring our own imaginations, or the suggestions of
the devil, as our rule, before the results of Divine counsel. While we
acknowledge {a587} him wise in our opinion, we speak him foolish by our
practice; when, instead of being guided by him, we will guide ourselves.
No man will question, but it is a controlling Divine wisdom, to make
alterations in his precepts; dogmatically, either to add some of
their own, or expunge any of his: and is it not a crime of the like
reflection to alter them practically? When we will observe one part
of the law, and not another part; but pick and choose where we please
ourselves, as our humors and carnal interest prompt us; it is to charge
that part of the law with folly, which we refuse to conform unto. The
more cunning any man is in sin, the more his sin is against Divine
wisdom, as if he thought to outwit God. He that receives the promises
of God, and the “testimony of Christ, sets to his seal, that God
is true” (John iii. 33). By the like strength of argument, it will
undeniably follow, that he that refuseth obedience to his precepts,
sets to his seal that God is foolish. Were they not rational, God would
not enjoin them; and if they are rational, we are enemies to infinite
wisdom, by not complying with them. If infinite prudence hath made the
law, why is not every part of it observed; if it were not made with
the best wisdom, why is any part of it observed? If the defacing of
his image be any sin, as being a defaming his wisdom in creation, the
breaking his law is no less a sin, as being a disgracing his wisdom in
his administration. ’Tis upon this account, likely, that the Scripture
so often counts sinners fools, since it is certainly inexcusable folly
to contradict undeniable and infallible Wisdom; yet this is done in the
least sin: and as he that breaks one tittle of the law, is deservedly
accounted guilty of the breach of the whole (James ii. 10), so he that
despiseth the least stamp of wisdom in the minutest part of the law,
is deservedly counted as a contemner of it, in the frame of the whole
statute‑book. But, in particular, the wisdom of God is affronted and
invaded.
(1.) By introducing new rules and modes of worship, different
from Divine institutions. Is not this a manifest reflection on this
perfection of God, as though he had not been wise enough to provide
for his own honor, and model his own service, but stood in need of our
directions, and the _caprichios_ of our brains? Some have observed,
that it is a greater sin in worship to do that we should not, than to
omit what we should perform.[805] The one seems to be out of weakness,
because of the high exactness of the law; and the other out of
impudence, accusing the wisdom of God of imperfection, and controlling
it in its institutions. At best, it seems to be an imputation of
human bashfulness to the Supreme Sovereign; as if he had been ashamed
to prescribe all that was necessary to his own honor, but had left
something to the ingenuity and gratitude of men. Man has, ever since
the foolish conceit of his old ancestor Adam, presumed he could be
as wise as God; and if he who was created upright entertained such
conceits, much more doth man now, under a mass of corruption, so
capable to foment them. This hath been the continual practice of men;
not so much to reject what once they had received as Divine, but add
something of their own inventions to it. The {a588} heathens renounced
not the sacrificing of beasts for the expiation of their offences
(which the old world had received by tradition from Adam, and the
new world, after the deluge, from Noah). But they had blended that
tradition with rites of their own, and offered creatures unclean in
themselves, and not fit to be offered to an infinitely pure Being; for
the distinction of clean and unclean was as ancient as Noah (Gen. viii.
20), yea, before (Gen. vii. 2). So the Jews did not discard what they
had received from God, as circumcision, the Passover, and sacrifices;
but they would mix a heap of heathenish rites with the ceremonies of
Divine ordination, and practise things which he had not commanded,
as well as things which he had enjoined them. And, therefore, it is
observable, that when God taxeth them with sin, he doth not say, they
brought in those things which he had forbidden into his worship; but
those things which he had not commanded, and had given no order for, to
intimate, that they were not to move a step without his rule (Jer. vii.
31): “They have built the high palaces of Tophet, which I commanded
them not, neither came it into my heart;” and (Levit. x. 1); Nadab’s
and Abihu’s strange fire was not commanded; so charging them with
impudence and rashness in adding something of their own, after he
had revealed to them the manner of his service, as if they were as
wise as God. So loth is man to acknowledge the supremacy of Divine
understanding, and be sensible of his own ignorance. So after the
divulging of the gospel, the corruptors of religion did not fling off,
but preserved the institutions of God, but painted and patched them up
with pagan ceremonies; imposed their own dreams with as much force as
the revelations of God. Thus hath the papacy turned the simplicity of
the gospel into pagan pomp, and religion into politics; and revived
the ceremonial law, and raked some limbs of it out of the grave, after
the wisdom of God had rung her knell, and honorably interred her; and
sheltered the heathenish superstitions in christian temples, after the
power of the gospel had chased the devils, with all their trumpery,
from their ancient habitations. Whence should this proceed, but from a
partial atheism, and a mean deceit of the Divine wisdom? As though God
had not understanding enough to prescribe the form of his own worship;
and not wisdom enough to support it, without the crutches of human
prudence. Human prudence is too low to parallel Divine wisdom; it is
an incompetent judge of what is fit for an infinite Majesty. It is
sufficiently seen in the ridiculous and senseless rights among the
heathens; and the cruel and devilish ones fetched from them by the
Jews. What work will human wisdom make with divine worship, when it
will presume to be the director of it, as a mate with the wisdom of
God! Whence will it take its measures, but from sense, humor and fancy?
as though what is grateful and comely to a depraved reason, were as
beautiful to an unspotted and Infinite Mind. Do not such tell the world,
that they were of God’s cabinet council, since they will take upon them
to judge, as well as God, what is well‑pleasing to him? Where will it
have the humility to stop, if it hath the presumption to add any one
thing to revealed modes of worship? How did God tax the Israelites with
making idols “according to their own understanding” {a589} (Hos. xiii.
2)! imagining their own understandings to be of a finer make, and a
perfecter mould than their Creator’s; and that they had fetched more
light from the chaos of their own brains, than God had from eternity in
his own nature. How slight will the excuse be, God hath not forbidden
this, or that, when God shall silence men with the question, Where,
or when did I command this, or that? There was no addition to be
made under the law to the meanest instrument God had appointed in
his service. The sacred perfume was not to have one ingredient more
put into it, than what God had prescribed in the composition; nor was
any man upon pain of death to imitate it; nor would God endure that
sacrifices should be consumed with any other fire than that which came
down from heaven. So tender is God of any invasions of his wisdom and
authority. In all things of this nature, whatsoever voluntary humility
and respect to God they may be disguised with, there is a swelling
of the fleshly mind against infinite understanding, which the apostle
nauseates (Col. ii. 18). Such mixtures have not been blessed by God: as
God never prospered the mixtures of several kinds of creatures, to form
and multiply a new species, as being a dissatisfaction with his wisdom
as Creator; so he doth not prosper mixtures in worship, as being a
conspiracy against his wisdom as a Lawgiver. The destruction of the
Jews was judged by some of their doctors to be, for preferring human
traditions before the written word; which they ground on (Isaiah
xxix. 33): “Their fear for me was taught by the precepts of men.”
The injunctions of men were the rule of their worship, and not the
prescripts of my law.[806] To conclude, such as make alterations in
religion, different from the first institution, are intolerable busy
bodies, that will not let God alone with his own affairs. Vain man
would be wiser than his Maker, and be dabbling in that which is His
sole prerogative.
2. In neglecting means instituted by God. When men have risings of
heart against God’s ordinances, “they reject the counsel of the Lord
against themselves,” or, in themselves (Luke vii. 30), ἠθέτησαν.
They disannulled the wisdom of God, the spring of his ordinances. All
neglects are disregards of Divine prescriptions, as impertinent and
unavailable to that end for which they were appointed, as not being
suited to the common dictates of reason; sometimes out of a voluntary
humility, such as Peter’s was, when he denied Christ’s condescension
to wash his feet (John xiii. 8), and thereby judged of the comeliness
of his Master’s intention and action. Such as continually neglect the
great institution of the Lord’s supper, out of a sense of unworthiness,
are in the same rank with Peter, and do, as well as he, fall under the
blame and reproof of Christ. Men would be saved, and use the means,
but either means of their own appointment, or not at all the means of
God’s ordering.[807] They would have God’s wisdom and will condescend
to theirs, and not theirs conformed to God’s; as if our blind judgments
were fittest to make the election of the paths to happiness. Like
Naaman, who, when he was ordered {a590} by the prophet, for the cure
of his leprosy, to “wash seven times in Jordan,” would be the prophet’s
director, and have him touch him with his hand; as if a patient, sick
of a desperate disease, should prescribe to his skilful physician what
remedies he should order for his cure, and make his own infirm reason,
or his gust and palate, the rule, rather than the physician’s skill.
Men’s inquiries are, “Who will show us any good?” They rather fasten
upon any means than that which God hath ordained.[808] We invert the
order Divine wisdom hath established, when we would have God save us in
our own way, not in his. It is the same thing as if we would have God
nourish us without bread, and cure our disease without medicines, and
increase our wealth without our industry, and cherish our souls without
his word and ordinances. It is to demand of him an alteration of his
methods, and a separation of that which he hath by his eternal judgment
joined together. Therefore for a man to pray to God to save him when he
will not use the means he hath appointed for salvation, when he slights
the word, which is the instrument of salvation, is a contempt of the
wisdom of Divine institutions. Also in omissions of prayer. When we
consult not with God upon emergent occasions, we trust more to our
own wisdom than God’s, and imply that we stand not in need of his
conduct, but have ability to direct ourselves, and accomplish our ends
without his guidance. Not seeking God is, by the prophet, taxed to be
a reflection upon this perfection of God (Isa. xxxi. 1, 2): “They look
not to the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the Lord” &c. And the like
charge he brings against them (Hos. viii. 9): “They are gone up to
Assyria, a wild ass alone by himself, not consulting God.”
3. In censuring God’s revelations and actions, if they be not
according to our schemes: when we will not submit to his plain will
without penetrating into the unrevealed reason of it, nor adore his
counsels without controlling them, as if we could correct both law
and gospel, and frame a better method of redemption than that of God’s
contriving. Thus men slighted the wisdom of God in the gospel, because
it did not agree with that philosophical wisdom and reason they had
sucked in by education from their masters (1 Cor. i. 21, 22), contrary
to their practice in their superstitious worship, where the oracles
they thought divine were entertained with reverence, not with dispute,
and though ambiguous, were not counted ridiculous by the worshipper.
How foolish is man in this wherein he would be accounted wise! Adam,
in innocence, was unfit to control the doctrine of God when the eye of
his reason was clear; and much more are we, since the depravation of
our natures. The revelations of God tower above reason in its purity,
much more above reason in its mud and earthiness. The rays of Divine
wisdom are too bright for our human understandings, much more for our
sinful understandings. It is base to set up reason, a finite principle,
against an infinite wisdom; much baser to set up a depraved and
purblind reason against an all‑seeing and holy wisdom. If we would have
a reason for all that God speaks, and all that God acts, our wisdom
must become infinite as his, or his wisdom become finite as {a591}
ours. All the censures of God’s revelations arise from some prejudicate
opinions, or traditional maxims, that have enthroned themselves in
our minds, which are made the standard whereby to judge the things of
God, and receive or reject them as they agree with, or dissent from,
those principles (Col. ii. 8). Hence it was that the philosophers,
in the primitive times, were the greatest enemies to the gospel: and
the contempt of Divine wisdom, in making reason the supreme judge of
Divine revelation, was the fruitful mother of the heresies in all ages
springing up in the church, and especially of that Socinianism, that
daily insinuates itself into the minds of men. This is a wrong to
the wisdom of God. He that censures the words or actions of another,
implies that he is, in his censure, wiser than the person censured
by him. It is as insupportable to determine the truth of God’s plain
dictates by our reason, as it is to measure the suitableness or
unsuitableness of his actions by the humor of our will. We may sooner
think to span the sun, or grasp a star, or see a gnat swallow a
Leviathan, than fully understand the debates of eternity. To this we
may refer too curious inquiries into Divine methods, and “intruding
into those things which are not revealed” (Col. ii. 18). It is to
affect a wisdom equal with God, and an ambition to be of his cabinet
council. We are not content to be creatures, that is, to be every way
below God; below him in wisdom, as well as power.
4. In prescribing God’s method of acting. When we pray for a thing
without a due submission to God’s will; as if we were his counsellors,
yea his tutors, and not his subjects, and God were bound to follow our
humors, and be swayed according to the judgment of our ignorance; when
we would have such a mercy which God thinks not fit to give, or have
it in this method, which God designs to convey through another channel.
Thus we would have the only wise God take his measures from our
passions; such a controlling of God was Jonah’s anger about a gourd
(chap. iv. 1): “It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.”
We would direct Him how to dispose of us; as though he, that had
infinite wisdom to contrive and rear the excellent fabric of the world,
had not wisdom enough, without our discretions, to place us in a sphere
proper for his own ends, and the use he intends us in the universe.
All the speeches of men (would I had been in such an office, had
such a charge; would I had such a mercy, in such a method, or by such
instruments,) are entrenchments upon God’s wise disposal of affairs.
This imposing upon God is a hellish disposition, and in hell we find
it. The rich man in hell, that pretends some charity for his brethren
on earth, would direct God a way to prevent their ruin, by sending one
from the dead to school them, as a more effectual means than “Moses
and the prophets” (Luke xvi. 29, 30). It is a temper also to be found
on earth; what else was the language of Saul’s saving the Amalekites’
cattle against the plain command of God (1 Sam. xv. 15)? As if God in
his fury had overshot himself and overlooked his altar, in depriving it
of so great a booty for its service; as if it were an unwise thing in
God, to lose the prey of so many stately cattle, that might make the
altar smoke with their entrails, and serve to expiate the sins of the
people; and therefore he would rectify that which he {a592} thought
to be an oversight in God, and so magnifies his own prudence and
discretion above the Divine. We will not let God act as he thinks fit,
but will be directing him, and “teaching him knowledge” (Job. xxi. 22).
As if God were a statue, an idol, that had eyes and saw not, hands,
but acted not; and could be turned as an image may be, to what quarter
of the heaven we please ourselves. The wisdom of God is unbiassed; he
orders nothing but what is fittest for his end, and we would have our
shallow brains the bias of God’s acting. And will not God resent such
an indignity, as a reflection upon his wisdom as well as authority,
when we intimate that we have better heads than he, and that he comes
short of us in understanding?
5. In murmuring and impatience. One demands a reason, why he hath
this or that cross? Why he hath been deprived of such a comfort, lost
such a venture, languisheth under such a sickness, is tormented with
such pains, oppressed by tyrannical neighbors, is unsuccessful in such
designs? In these, and such like, the wisdom of God is questioned and
defamed. All impatience is a suspicion, if not a condemnation of the
prudence of God’s methods, and would make human feebleness and folly
the rule of God’s dealing with his creatures. This is a presuming
to instruct God, and a reproving him for unreasonableness in his
proceedings, when his dealings with us do not exactly answer our
fancies and wishes; as if God, who made the world in wisdom, wanted
skill for the management of his creatures in it (Job xl. 2): “Shall he
that contends with the Almighty, instruct him? he that reproveth God,
let him answer it.” We that are not wise enough to know ourselves,
and what is needful for us; presume to have wit enough to guide God in
his dealing with us. The wisdom of God rendered Job more useful to the
world by his afflictions, in making him a pattern of patience, than if
he had continued him in a confluence of all worldly comforts, wherein
he had been beneficial only in communicating his morsels to his poor
neighbors. All murmuring is a fastening error upon unerring Wisdom.
6. In pride and haughtiness of spirit. No proud man, but sets his
heart “as the heart of God” (Ezek. xxviii. 2, 3). The wisdom of God
hath given to men divers offices, set them in divers places; some have
more honorable charges, some meaner. Not to give that respect their
offices and places call for, is to quarrel with the wisdom of God, and
overturn the rank and order wherein he hath placed things. It is unfit
we should affront God in the disposal of his creatures, and intimate to
him by our carriage, that he had done more wisely in placing another,
and that he hath done foolishly in placing this or that man in such
a charge. Sometimes men are unworthy the place they fill; they may be
set there in judgment to themselves and others: but the wisdom of God
in his management of things, is to be honored and regarded. It is an
infringing the wisdom of God, when we have a vain opinion of ourselves,
and are blind to others. When we think ourselves monarchs, and treat
others as worms or flies in comparison of us. He who would reduce all
things to his own honor, perverts the order of the world, and would
constitute another {a593} order than what the wisdom of God hath
established; and move them to an end contrary to the intention of God,
and charges God with want of discretion and skill.
7. Distrust of God’s promise is an impeachment of his wisdom.
A secret reviling of it, as if he had not taken due consideration
before he past his word; or a suspicion of his power, as if he could
not accomplish his word. We trust the physician’s skill with our bodies,
and the lawyer’s counsel with our estates; but are loath to rely upon
God for the concerns of our lives. If he be wise to dispose of us, why
do we distrust him? If we distrust him, why do we embrace an opinion
of wisdom? Unbelief also is a contradiction to the wisdom of God in
the gospel, &c., but that I have already handled in a discourse of the
nature of unbelief.
_Use 3._ Of comfort. God hath an infinite wisdom, to conduct us in
our affairs, rectify us in our mistakes, and assist us in our straits.
It is an inestimable privilege to have a God in covenant with us; so
wise, to communicate all good, to prevent all evil; who hath infinite
ways to bring to pass his gracious intentions towards us. “How
unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out” (Rom.
xi. 33)! His judgments or decrees are incomprehensibly wise, and the
ways of effecting them are as wise as his resolves effected by them.
We can as little search into his methods of acting, as we can into his
wisdom of resolving; both his judgments and ways are unsearchable.
1. Comfort in all straits and afflictions. There is a wisdom in
inflicting them, and a wisdom in removing them. He is wise to suit
his medicines to the humor of our disease, though he doth not to the
humor of our wills: he cannot mistake the nature of our distemper, or
the virtue of his own physic. Like a skilful physician, he sometimes
prescribes bitter potions, and sometimes cheering cordials, according
to the strength of the malady, and necessity of the patient, to reduce
him to health. As nothing comes from him, but what is for our good, so
nothing is acted by him in a rash and temerarious way. His wisdom is as
infinite as his goodness; and as exact in managing, as his goodness is
plentiful in streaming out to us. He understands our griefs, weighs our
necessities, and no remedies are beyond the reach of his contrivance.
When our feeble wits are bewildered in a maze, and at the end of their
line for a rescue, the remedies unknown to us are not unknown to God.
When we know not how to prevent a danger, the wise God hath a thousand
blocks to lay in the way; when we know not how to free ourselves from
an oppressive evil, he hath a thousand ways of relief. He knows how
to time our crosses, and his own blessings. The heart of a wise God,
as well as the heart of a wise man, discerns both time and judgment
(Eccles. viii. 5). There is as much judgment in sending them, as
judgment in removing them. How comfortable is it to think, that our
distresses, as well as our deliverances, are the fruits of infinite
wisdom! Nothing is done by him too soon or too slow; but in the true
point of time, with all its due circumstances, most conveniently for
his glory and our good. How wise is God to bring the glory of our
salvation out of the depths of a seeming ruin. {a594} and make the
evils of affliction subservient to the good of the afflicted.
2. In temptations, his wisdom is no less employed in permitting
them, than in bringing them to a good issue. His wisdom in leading
our Saviour to be tempted of the devil, was to fit him for our succor;
and his wisdom in suffering us to be tempted, is to fit us for his
own service, and our salvation. He makes a thorn in the flesh to be an
occasion of a refreshing grace to the spirit, and brings forth cordial
grapes from those pricking brambles, and magnifies his grace by his
wisdom, from the deepest subtilties of hell. Let Satan’s intentions be
what they will, he can be for him at every turn, to outwit him in his
stratagems, to baffle him in his enterprises; to make him instrumental
for our good, where he designs nothing but our hurt. The Lord hath his
methods of deliverance from him (2 Pet. ii. 9). “The Lord knows how to
deliver the godly out of temptation.”
3. In denials, or delays of answers of prayer. He is gracious to hear;
but he is wise to answer in an acceptable time, and succor us in a day
proper for our salvation (2 Cor. vi. 2). We have partial affections to
ourselves, ignorance is natural to us (Rom. viii. 26). We ask we know
not what, because we ask out of ignorance. God grants what he knows,
what is fit for him to do, and fit for us to receive; and the exact
season wherein it is fittest for him to bestow a mercy. As God would
have us bring forth our fruit in season, so he will send forth his
mercies in season. He is wise to suit his remedy to our condition, to
time it so, as that we shall have an evident prospect of his wisdom
in it; that more of Divine skill, and less of human, may appear in the
issue. He is ready at our call; but he will not answer, till he see
the season fit to reach out his hand. He is wise to prove our faith,
to humble us under the sense of our own unworthiness, to wet our
affections, to set a better estimate on the blessings prayed for, and
that he may double the blessing, as we do our devotion: but when his
wisdom sees us fit to receive his goodness, he grants what we stand in
need of. He is wise to choose the fittest time, and faithful to give
the best covenant mercy.
4. In all evils threatened to the church by her enemies. He hath
knowledge to foresee them, and wisdom to disappoint them (Job. v. 13);
“He taketh the wise in their own craftiness, and the counsel of the
froward is carried headlong.” The church hath the wisdom of God, to
enter the lists with the policy of hell. He defeated the serpent in
the first net he laid, and brought a glorious salvation out of hell’s
rubbish, and is yet as skilful to disappoint the after‑game of the
serpentine brood. The policy of hell, and the subtilty of the world,
are no better than folly with God (1 Cor. iii. 19). All creatures are
fools, as creatures, in comparison with the Creator. The angels he
chargeth with folly, much more us sinners. Depraved understandings are
not fit mates for a pure and unblemished mind. Pharaoh, with his wisdom,
finds a grave in the sea; and Ahitophel’s plots are finished in his
own murder. He breaks the enemies by his power, and orders them by his
skill to be a feast to his people (Ps. lxxiv. 14); “Thou breakest the
head of the leviathan, and gavest {a595} him to be meat to the people
in the wilderness.” The spoils of the Egyptians’ carcasses, cast upon
the shore, served the Israelites’ necessities (or were as meat to them);
as being a deliverance the church might feed upon in all ages, in a
wilderness condition, to maintain their faith, the vital principle of
the soul. There is a wisdom superior to the subtilties of men, which
laughs at their follies, and “hath them in derision” (Ps. ii. 4).
“There is no wisdom or counsel against the Lord” (Prov. xxi. 30). You
never question the wisdom of an artist to use his file, when he takes
it into his hand. Wicked instruments are God’s axes and files; let him
alone, he hath skill enough to manage them: God hath too much affection
to destroy his people, and wisdom enough to beautify them by the worst
tools he uses. He can make all things conspire to a perfect harmony for
his own ends, and his people’s good, when they see no way to escape a
danger feared, or attain a blessing wanted.
_Use 4._ For Exhortation. 1. Meditate on the wisdom of God in creation
and government. How little do we think of God when we behold his works!
Our sense dwells upon the surface of plants and animals, beholds the
variety of their colors, and the progress in their motion; our reason
studies the qualities of them; our spirits seldom take a flight to the
Divine wisdom which framed them. Our senses engross our minds from God,
that we scarce have a thought free to bestow upon the Maker of them,
but only on the by. The constancy of seeing things that are common
stifles our admiration of God, due upon the sight of them. How seldom
do we raise our souls as far as heaven, in our views of the order of
the world, the revolutions of the seasons, the nature of the creatures
that are common among us, and the mutual assistance they give to
each other! Since God hath manifested himself in them, to neglect the
consideration of them is to neglect the manifestation of God, and the
way whereby he hath transmitted something of his perfections to our
understanding. It renders men inexcusably guilty of not glorifying
of God (Rom. i. 19, 20). We can never neglect the meditation of the
creatures, without a blemish cast upon the Creator’s wisdom. As every
river can conduct us to the sea, so every creature points us to an
ocean of infinite wisdom. Not the minutest of them, but rich tracts of
this may be observed in them, and a due sense of God result from them.
They are exposed to our view, that something of God may be lodged
in our minds; that, as our bodies extract their quintessence for our
nourishment, so our minds may extract a quintessence for the Maker’s
praise. Though God is principally to be praised, in and for Christ,
yet, as grace doth not rase out the law of nature, so the operations
of grace put not the dictates of nature to silence, nor suspend the
homage due to God upon our inspection of his works. God hath given full
testimonies of this perfection in the heavenly bodies, dispersing their
light, and distributing their influences to every part of the world;
in framing men into societies, giving them various dispositions for
the preservation of governments; making some wise for counsel, others
martial for action; changing old empires, and raising new. Which way
soever we cast our eyes, we shall find frequent occasions to cry out,
“O the depth {a596} of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge
of God” (Rom. xi. 33)! To this purpose, we must not only look upon
the bulk and outside of his works, but consider from what principles
they were raised, in what order disposed, and the exact symmetry and
proportion of their parts. When a man comes into a city or temple, and
only considers the surface of the buildings, they will amaze his sense,
but not better his understanding, unless he considers the methods of
the work, and the art whereby it was erected.
(1.) This was an end for which they were created. God did not make the
world for man’s use only, but chiefly for his own glory; for man’s use
to enjoy his creatures, and for his own glory to be acknowledged in his
creatures, that we may consider his art in framing them, and his skill
in disposing them, and not only gaze upon the glass without considering
the image it represents, and acquainting ourselves whose image it is.
The creatures were not made for themselves, but for the service of the
Creator, and the service of man. Man was not made for himself, but for
the service of the Lord that created him. He is to consider the beauty
of the creation, that he may thereby glorify the Creator. He knows in
part their excellency; the creatures themselves do not. If, therefore,
man be idle and unobservant of them, he deprives God of the glory
of his wisdom, which he should have by his creatures. The inferior
creatures themselves cannot observe it. If man regard it not, what
becomes of it? his glory can only be handed to him by man. The other
creatures cannot be active instruments of his glory, because they
know not themselves, and therefore cannot render him an active praise.
Man is, therefore, bound to praise God for himself, and for all his
creatures, because he only knows himself, and the perfections of the
creatures, and the Author both of himself and them. God created such
variety, to make a report of himself to us; we are to receive the
report, and to reflect it back to him. To what purpose did he make so
many things, not necessary, for the support and pleasure of our lives,
but that we should behold him in them, as well as in the other? We
cannot behold the wisdom of God in his own essence, and eternal ideas,
but by the reflection of it in the creatures: as we cannot steadily
behold the sun with our eye, but either through a glass, or by
reflection of the image of it in the water. God would have us meditate
on his perfections; he therefore chose the same day wherein he
reviewed his work and rested from it, to be celebrated by man for the
contemplation of him (Gen. ii. 2, 3), that we should follow his example,
and rejoice, as himself did, in the frequent reviews of his wisdom
and goodness in them. In vain would the creatures afford matter for
this study, if they were wholly neglected. God offers something to our
consideration in every creature. Shall the beams of God shine round
about us, and strike our eyes, and not affect our minds? Shall we be
like ignorant children, that view the pictures, or point to the letters
in a book, without any sense and meaning? How shall God have the homage
due to him from his works, if man hath no care to observe them? The
148th Psalm is an exhortation to this. The view of them should often
extract from us a wonder of the like nature of {a597} that of David’s
(Ps. civ. 24): “O Lord, how wonderful are thy works, in wisdom hast
thou made them all!” The world was not created to be forgotten, nor man
created to be unobservant of it.
(2.) If we observe not the wisdom of God in the views of the creatures,
we do no more than brutes. To look upon the works of God in the world,
is no higher an act than mere animals perform. The glories of heaven,
and beauties of the earth, are visible to the sense of beasts and
birds. A brute beholds the motion of a man, as it may see the wheels
of a clock, but understands not the inward springs of motion; the end
for which we move, or the soul that acts us in our motion; much less
that Invisible Power which presides over the creatures, and conducts
their motion. If a man do no more than this, he goes not a step beyond
a brutish nature, and may very well acknowledge himself with Asaph, a
foolish and ignorant beast before God (Ps. lxxiii. 22). The world is
viewed by beasts, but the Author of it to be contemplated by man. Since
we are in a higher rank than beasts, we owe a greater debt than beasts;
not only to enjoy the creatures, as they do, but behold God in the
creatures, which they cannot do. The contemplation of the reason of
God in his works, is a noble and suitable employment for a rational
creature: we have not only sense to perceive them, but souls to mind
them. The soul is not to be without its operation: where the operation
of sense ends, the work of the soul ought to begin. We travel over
them by our senses, as brutes; but we must pierce further by our
understandings, as men, and perceive and praise Him that lies invisible
in his visible manufactures. Our senses are given us as servants to the
soul, and our souls bestowed upon us for the knowledge and praise of
their and our common Creator.
(3.) This would be a means to increase our humility. We should then
flag our wings, and vail our sails, and acknowledge our own wisdom
to be as a drop to the ocean, and a shadow to the sun. We should have
mean thoughts of the nothingness of our reason, when we consider the
sublimity of the Divine wisdom. Who can seriously consider the sparks
of infinite skill in the creature, without falling down at the feet of
the Divine Majesty, and acknowledge himself a dark and foolish creature
(Ps. viii. 4, 5)? When the Psalmist considered the heavens, the moon,
and stars, and God’s ordination and disposal of them, the use that
results from it is, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” We
should no more think to mate him in prudence, or set up the spark of
our reason to vie with the sun. Our reason would more willingly submit
to the revelation, when the characters of Divine wisdom are stamped
upon it, when we find his wisdom in creation incomprehensible to us.
(4.) It would help us in our acknowledgments of God, for his goodness
to us. When we behold the wisdom of God in creatures below us, and how
ignorant they are of what they possess, it will cause us to reflect
upon the deeper impressions of wisdom in the frame of our own bodies
and souls, an excellency far superior to theirs; this would make us
admire the magnificence of his wisdom and goodness, sound forth his
praise for advancing us in dignity above other works of his hands,
and stamping on us, by infinite art, {a598} a nobler image of himself.
And by such a comparison of ourselves with the creatures below us, we
should be induced to act excellently, according to the nature of our
souls; not brutishly, according to the nature of the creatures God hath
put under our feet.
(5.) By the contemplation of the creatures, we may receive some
assistance in clearing our knowledge in the wisdom of redemption.
Though they cannot of themselves inform us of it, yet since God hath
revealed his redeeming grace, they can illustrate some particulars of
it to us. Hence the Scripture makes use of the creatures, to set forth
things of a higher orb to us: our Saviour is called a Sun, a Vine, and
a Lion; the Spirit likened to a dove, fire, and water. The union of
Christ and his church, is set forth by the marriage union of Adam and
Eve. God hath placed in corporeal things the images of spiritual, and
wrapped up in his creating wisdom the representations of his redeeming
grace: whence some call the creatures, natural types of what was to be
transacted in a new formation of the world, and allusions to what God
intended in and by Christ.
(6.) The meditation of God’s wisdom in the creatures is, in part, a
beginning of heaven upon earth. No doubt but there will be a perfect
opening of the model of Divine wisdom. Heaven is for clearing what is
now obscure, and a full discovering of what seems at present intricate
(Ps. xxxvi. 9): ‘In his light shall we see light:’ all the light in
creation, government, and redemption. The wisdom of God in the new
heavens, and the new earth, would be to little purpose, if that also
were not to be regarded by the inhabitants of them. As the saints are
to be restored to the state of Adam, and higher; so they are to be
restored to the employment of Adam, and higher: but his employment
was, to behold God in the creatures. The world was so soon depraved,
that God had but little joy in, and man but little knowledge of his
works. And since the wisdom of God in creation is so little seen by
our ignorance here, would not God lose much of the glory of it, if the
glorified souls should lose the understanding of it above? When their
darkness shall be expelled, and their advantages improved; when the eye
that Adam lost shall be fully restored, and with a greater clearness;
when the creature shall be restored to its true end, and reason to its
true perfection (Rom. viii. 21, 22); when the fountains of the depths
of nature and government shall be opened, knowledge shall increase,
and according to the increase of our knowledge, shall the admiration
of Divine wisdom increase also. The wisdom of God in creation was
not surely intended to lie wholly unobserved in the greatest part
of it; but since there was so little time for the full observation
of it, there will be a time wherein the wisdom of God shall enjoy
a resurrection, and be fully contemplated by his understanding and
glorified creature.
_Exhort. 2._ Study and admire the wisdom of God in redemption. This is
the duty of all Christians. We are not called to understand the great
depth of philosophy; we are not called to a skill in the intricacies of
civil government, or understand all the methods of physic; but we are
called to be Christians, that is, studiers of Divine {a599} evangelical
wisdom. There are first principles to be learned; but not those
principles to be rested in without a further progress (Heb. vi. 1):
“Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go
on to perfection.” Duties must be practised, but knowledge is not to be
neglected. The study of Gospel mysteries, the harmony of Divine truths,
the sparkling of Divine wisdom, in their mutual combination to the
great ends of God’s glory and man’s salvation, is an incentive to duty,
a spur to worship, and particularly to the greatest and highest part
of worship, that part which shall remain in heaven; the admiration and
praise of God, and delight in him. If we acquaint not ourselves with
the impressions of the glory of Divine wisdom in it, we shall not much
regard it as worthy our observance in regard of that duty. The gospel
is a mystery; and, as a mystery, hath something great and magnificent
in it worthy of our daily inspection; we shall find fresh springs
of new wonders, which we shall be invited to adore with a religious
astonishment. It will both raise and satisfy our longings. Who can come
to the depths of “God manifested in the flesh?” How amazing is it, and
unworthy of a slight thought, that the death of the Son of God should
purchase the happy immortality of a sinful creature, and the glory
of a rebel be wrought by the ignominy of so great a person! that our
Mediator should have a nature whereby to covenant with his Father, and
a nature whereby to be a Surety for the creature! How admirable is it,
that the fallen creature should receive an advantage by the forfeiture
of his happiness! How mysterious is it, that the Son of God should
bow down to death upon a cross for the satisfaction of justice; and
rise triumphantly out of the grave, as a declaration, that justice
was contented and satisfied! that he should be exalted to heaven to
intercede for us; and at last return into the world to receive us, and
invest us with a glory forever with himself! Are these things worthy
of a careless regard, or a blockish amazement? What understanding
can pierce into the depths of the divine doctrine of the incarnation
and birth of Christ; the indissoluble union of the two natures? What
capacity is able to measure the miracles of that wisdom, found in the
whole draught and scheme of the gospel? Doth it not merit, then, to be
the object of our daily meditation? How comes it to pass, then, that
we are so little curious to concern our thoughts in those wonders,
that we scarce taste or sip of these delicacies? that we busy ourselves
in trifles, and consider what we shall eat, and in what fashion we
shall be dressed; please ourselves with the ingeniousness of a lace
or feather; admire a moth‑eaten manuscript, or some half‑worn piece
of antiquity, and think our time ill‑spent in the contemplating
and celebrating that wherein God hath busied himself, and eternity
is designed for the perpetual expressions of? How inquisitive
are the blessed angels! with what vigor do they renew their daily
contemplations of it, and receive a fresh contentment from it; still
learning, and still inquiring (1 Pet. i. 12)! Their eye is never off
the mercy‑seat; they strive to see the bottom of it, and employ all the
understanding they have to conceive the wonders of it. Shall the angels
be ravished with it, and bend themselves {a600} down to study it, who
have but little interest in it in comparison of us, for whom it was
both contrived and dispensed;――and shall not our pains be greater
for this hidden treasure? Is not that worthy the study of a rational
creature, that is worthy the study of the angelical? There must indeed
be pains; it is expressed by “digging” (Prov. ii. 4). A lazy arm will
not sink to the depth of a mine. The neglect of meditating on it is
inexcusable, since it hath the title and character of the wisdom of God.
The ancient prophets searched into it, when it was folded up in shadows,
when they saw only the fringes of Wisdom’s garment (1 Pet. i. 10);
and shall not we, since the sun hath mounted up in our horizon, and
sensibly scattered the light of the knowledge of this and the other
perfections of God? As the Jewish sabbath was appointed to celebrate
the perfections of God, discovered in creation, so is the Christian
sabbath appointed to meditate on, and bless God, for the discovery of
his perfections in redemption. Let us, therefore, receive it according
to its worth: let it be our only rule to walk by. It is worthy to
be valued above all other counsels; and we should never think of it
without the doxology of the apostle, “To the only wise God be glory
through Jesus Christ, for ever!” that our speculations may end in
affectionate admirations, and thanksgivings, for that which is so full
of wonders. What a little prospect should we have had of God, and the
happiness of man, had not his wisdom and goodness revealed these things
to us! The gospel is a marvellous light, and should not be regarded
with a stupid ignorance, and pursued with a duller practice.
_Exhort. 3._ Let none of us be proud of, or trust in our own wisdom.
Man, by affecting wisdom out of the way of God, got a crack in his
head, which hath continued five thousand years and upwards, and ever
since our own wisdom and “knowledge hath perverted us” (Isa. xlvii. 10).
To be guided by this, is to be under the conduct of a blind leader,
and follow a traitor and enemy to God and ourselves. Man’s prudence
often proves hurtful to him: he often accomplisheth his ruin, while
he designs his establishment; and finds his fall, where he thought to
settle his fortune: such bad eyes hath human wisdom often in its own
affairs. Those that have been heightened with a conceit of their own
cunning, have at last proved the greatest fools. God delights to make
“foolish the wisdom of this world” (1 Cor. i. 20). Thus God writ folly
upon the crafty brains of Ahithophel, and simplicity upon the subtle
projects of Herod against our Saviour; and the devil, the prince of
carnal wisdom, was befooled into a furthering our redemption by his own
projects to hinder it. Carnal policy, against the prescripts of Divine
wisdom, never prospers: it is like an _ignis fatuus_, which leads men
out of the way of duty, and out of the way of security, and perverts
them into the mire and dangerous precipices. When Jeroboam would coin
a religion to serve his interest of state, he tore up the foundations
both of his kingdom and family. The way the Jews took to prevent a
fresh invasion of the Romans, by the crucifying Christ, brought the
judgment more swift upon them (John xi. 48). There is no man ruined
here, or damned hereafter, but by his own wisdom and will. (Prov. iii.
5, 7), “The fear of the Lord, and departure from evil, are inconsistent
with an {a601} overweening conceit of our own wisdom;” and leaning to
our own understanding, is inconsistent with a trusting in the Lord with
all our hearts. It is as much a deifying ourselves, to trust to our
own wit, as it is a deifying the creature to affect or confide in it,
superior to God or equally with him. The true way to wisdom is to be
sensible of our own folly (1 Cor. iii. 18), “If any man be wise, let
him become a fool.” He that distrusts his own guidance, will more
securely and successfully follow the counsel of another in whom he
confides. The more water, or any other liquor, is poured out of a
vessel, the more air enters. The more we distrust our own wisdom, the
more capable we are of the conduct of God’s. Had Jehoshaphat relied
upon his own policy, he might have found a defeat when he met with a
deliverance; but he disowned his own skill and strength in telling God,
“We know not what to do, but our eyes are upon thee” (2 Chron. xx. 12).
Let us, therefore, with Agur, disesteem our own understanding to esteem
Divine. Human prudence is like a spider’s web, easily blown away, and
swept down by the besom of some unexpected revolution. God, by his
infinite wisdom, can cross the wisdom of man, and make a man’s own
prudence hang in his own light. (Isa. xxix. 14), “The understanding
of their prudent men shall be hid.”
_Exhort. 4._ Seek to God for wisdom. The wisdom we have by nature,
is like the weeds the earth brings forth without tillage. Our wisdom
since the fall, is the wisdom of the serpent, without the innocency of
the dove: it flows from self‑love, runs into self‑interest. It is the
wisdom of the flesh, and a prudence to manage means for the contending
our lusts. Our best wisdom is imperfect, a mere nothing and vanity,
in comparison of the Divine, as our beings are in comparison of his
essence. We must go to God for a holy and innocent wisdom, and fill
our cisterns from a pure fountain. The wisdom that was the glory of
Solomon, was the donation of the Most High. (James i. 5), “If any
man want wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally,
and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” The faculty of
understanding is from God by nature; but a heavenly light to direct
the understanding is from God by grace. Children have an understanding,
but stand in need of wise masters to rectify it, and form judicious
notions in it. “There is a spirit in man, but the inspiration of the
Almighty gives him understanding” (Job xxxii. 8). We must beg of God,
wisdom. The gospel is the wisdom of God; the concerns of it great
and mysterious, not to be known without a “new understanding” (1 John
v. 20). A new understanding is not to be had but from the Creator of
the first. The Spirit of God is the “searcher of the deep things of
God;” the revealer of them to us, and the enlightener of our minds
to apprehend them; and, therefore, called a “Spirit of wisdom and
revelation” (Eph. i. 17). Christ is made wisdom to us, as well as
righteousness; not only by imputation, but effusion.[809] Seek to God,
therefore, for that wisdom which is like the sun, and not that worldly
wisdom which is like a shadow: for that wisdom whose effects are not so
outwardly glorious, but inwardly sweet, seek it from him, and seek it
in {a602} his word, that is, the transcript of Divine wisdom; “through
his precepts understanding is to be had” (Ps. cxix. 104). As the wisdom
of men appears in their laws, so doth the wisdom of God in his statutes.
By this means we arrive to a heavenly sagacity. If these be rejected,
what wisdom can there be in us? a dream and conceit only (Jer. viii):
“They have rejected the word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them?”
Who knows how to order any concerns as he ought, or any one faculty
of his soul? Therefore, desire God’s direction in outward concerns, in
personal, family, in private and public. He hath not only a wisdom for
our salvation, but for our outward direction. He doth not only guide
us in the one, and leave Satan to manage us in the other. Those that
go with Saul to a witch of Endor, go to hell for craft, and prefer the
wisdom of the hostile serpent before the holy counsel of a faithful
Creator. If you want health in your body, you advise with a physician;
if direction for your estate, you resort to a lawyer; if passage for a
voyage, you address to a pilot; why not much more yourselves, your all,
to a wise God? As Pliny said, concerning a wise man, “O, Sir, how many
Catos are there in that wise person!” how much more wisdom than men or
angels possess, is infinitely centered in the wise God!
_Exhort. 5._ Submit to the wisdom of God in all cases. What else was
inculcated in the first precept, forbidding man to eat of the fruit of
the “tree of knowledge of good and evil,” but that he should take heed
of the swelling of his mind against the wisdom of God? It is a wisdom
incomprehensible to flesh and blood; we should adore it in our minds,
and resign up ourselves to it in our practice. How unreasonable are
repinings against God, whereby a creature’s ignorance indicts and
judges a Creator’s prudence! Were God weak in wisdom, and only mighty
in power, we might suspect his conduct. Power without wisdom and
goodness is an unruly and ruinous thing in the world. But God being
infinite in one, as well as the other, we have no reason to be jealous
of him, and repine against his methods; why should we quarrel with
him that we are not as high, or as wealthy as others; that we have not
presently the mercy we want? If he be wise, we ought to stay his time,
and wait his leisure, because “he is a God of judgment” (Isa. xxx. 18).
Presume not to shorten the time which his discretion hath fixed; it
is a folly to think to do it. By impatience we cannot hasten relief;
we alienate him from us by debasing him to stand at our bar, disturb
ourselves, lose the comfort of our lives, and the sweetness of his
mercy. Submission to God we are in no case exempted from, because
there is no case wherein God doth not direct all the acts of his will
by counsel. Whatsoever is drawn by a straight rule must be right and
straight; the rule that is right in itself, is the measure of the
straightness of everything else; whatsoever is wrought in the world by
God, must be wise, good, righteous; because God is essentially wisdom,
goodness, and righteousness.
(1.) Submit to God, in his revelations. 1. Measure them not by reason:
the truths of the gospel must be received with a self‑emptiness and
annihilation of the creature. If our reason seems to lift up itself
against revelation, because it finds no testimony for it in its {a603}
own light, consider how crazy it is in natural and obvious things,
and therefore sure it is not strong enough to enter into the depths
of Divine wisdom: the wisdom of God in the gospel is too great an ocean
to be contained or laved out by a cockleshell. It were not infinite,
if it were not beyond our finite reach; our reason must as well stoop
to his wisdom, as our wills to his sovereignty. How great a vanity is
it for a glow‑worm to boast that it is as full of light as the sun in
the firmament! for reason to leave its proper sphere, is to fall into
confusion, and thicken its own darkness. We should settle ourselves
in the belief of the Scripture, and confirm ourselves by a meditation
on those many undeniable arguments for its Divine authority,――the
fulfilling of its predictions, the antiquity of the writing, the
holiness of the precepts, the heavenliness of the doctrine, the
glorious effects it hath produced, and doth yet produce, different
from human methods of success; and submit our reason to the voice of so
high a majesty. 2. Not to be too curiously inquisitive into what is not
revealed. There is something hid in whatsoever is revealed. We know the
Son of God was begotten from eternity, but how he was begotten, we are
ignorant. We know there is a union of the Divine nature with the human,
and that the fulness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily; but the
manner of its inhabitation we are in a great part ignorant of. We know
that God hath chosen some and refused others, and that he did it with
counsel; but the reason why he chose this man and not that, we know not;
we can refer it to nothing but God’s sovereign pleasure. It is revealed
that there will be a day wherein God shall judge the world; but the
particular time is not revealed. We know that God created the world in
time; but why he did not create the world millions of years before, we
are ignorant of, and our reasons would be bewildered in their too much
curiosity. If we ask why he did not create it before, we may as well
ask why he did create it then? And may not the same question be asked,
if the world had been created millions of years before it was? That he
created it in six days, and not in an instant, is revealed; but why he
did not do it in a moment, since we are sure he was able to do it, is
not revealed. Are the reasons of a wise man’s proceedings hid from us?
and shall we presume to dive into the reason of the proceedings of an
only wise God, which he hath judged not expedient to discover to us?
Some sparks of his wisdom he hath caused to issue out, to exercise and
delight our minds; others he keeps within the centre of his own breast;
we must not go about to unlock his cabinet. As we cannot reach to the
utmost lines of his power, so we cannot grasp the intimate reasons
of his wisdom. We must still remember, that which is finite can never
be able to comprehend the reasons, motives, and methods of that which
is infinite. It doth not become us to be resty, because God hath
not admitted us into the debates of eternity. We are as little to
be curious at what God hath hid, as to be careless of what God hath
manifested. Too great an inquisitiveness beyond our line, is as much a
provoking arrogance, as a blockish negligence of what is revealed, is
a slighting ingratitude.
(2.) Submit to God in his precepts and methods. Since they are {a604}
the results of infinite wisdom, disputes against them are not tolerable;
what orders are given out by infallible Wisdom are to be entertained
with respect and reverence, though the reason of them be not visible
to our purblind minds. Shall God have less respect from us than earthly
princes, whose laws we observe without being able to pierce into the
exact reason of them all? Since we know he hath not a will without an
understanding, our observance of him must be without repining; we must
not think to mend our Creator’s laws, and presume to judge and condemn
his righteous statutes. If the flesh rise up in opposition, we must
cross its motions, and silence its murmurings; his will should be an
acceptable will to us, because it is a wise will in itself. God hath no
need to impose upon us and deceive us; he hath just and righteous ways
to attain his glory and his creatures’s good. To deceive us, would be
to dishonor himself, and contradict his own nature. He cannot impose
false injurious precepts, or unavailable to his subjects’ happiness;
not false, because of his truth; not injurious, because of his
goodness; not vain, because of his wisdom. Submit, therefore, to him
in his precepts, and in his methods too. The honor of his wisdom, and
the interest of our happiness, call for it. Had Noah disputed with
God about building an ark, and listened to the scoffs of the senseless
world, he had perished under the same fate, and lost the honor of a
preacher and worker of righteousness. Had not the Israelites been their
own enemies, if they had been permitted to be their own guides, and
returned to the Egyptian bondage and furnaces, instead of a liberty
and earthly felicity in Canaan? Had our Saviour gratified the Jews by
descending from the cross, and freeing himself from the power of his
adversaries, he might have had that faith from them which they promised
him; but it had been a faith to no purpose, because without ground;
they might have believed him to be the Son of God, but he could not
have been the Saviour of the world. His death, the great ground and
object of faith, had been unaccomplished; they had believed a God
pardoning without a consent to his justice, and such a faith could not
have rescued them from falling into eternal misery. The precepts and
methods of Divine wisdom must be submitted to.
(3.) Submit to God in all crosses and revolutions. Infinite Wisdom
cannot err in any of his paths, or step the least hair’s breadth from
the way of righteousness: there is the understanding of God in every
motion; an eye in every wheel, the wheel that goes over us and crusheth
us. We are led by fancy more than reason: we know no more what we ask,
or what is fit for us, than the mother of Zebedee’s children did, when
she petitioned Christ for her sons’ advancement, when he came into his
temporal kingdom (Matt. xx. 22): the things we desire might pleasure
our fancy or appetite, but impair our health: one man complains for
want of children, but knows not whether they may prove comforts or
crosses: another for want of health, but knows not whether the health
of his body may not prove the disease of his soul. We might lose in
heavenly things, if we possess in earthly things what we long for. God,
in regard of his infinite wisdom, is fitter to carve out a condition
than we ourselves; our shallow reason and self‑love, would wish for
those things that {a605} are injurious to God, to ourselves, to the
world; but God always chooses what is best for his glory, and what
is best for his creatures, either in regard to themselves, or as they
stand in relation to him, or to others, as parts of the world. We are
in danger from our self‑love, in no danger in complying with God’s
wisdom: when Rachel would die, if she had no children, she had children,
but death with one of them (Gen. xxx. 1). Good men may conclude,
that whatsoever is done by God in them, or with them, is best and
fittest for them; because by the covenant which makes over God to them,
as their God, the conduct of his wisdom is assured to them as well
as any other attribute: and, therefore, as God in every transaction
appears as their God, so he appears as their wise Director, and by
this wisdom he extracts good out of evil, makes the affliction which
destroys our outward comforts consume our inward defilements; and the
waves which threatened to swallow up the vessel, to cast it upon the
shore: and when he hath occasion to manifest his anger against his
people, his wisdom directs his wrath. In judgment he hath “a work to
do upon Zion;” and when that work is done, he punishes the fruit of the
“stout heart of the king of Assyria” (Isa. x. 12); as in the answers of
prayer he doth give oftentimes “above what we ask or think” (Eph. iii.
20), so in outward concerns he doth above what we can expect, or by
our short‑sightedness, conclude will be done. Let us, therefore, in all
things, frame our minds to the Divine Wisdom, and say with the Psalmist
(Ps. xlvii. 4): “The Lord shall choose our inheritance and condition
for us.”
_Exhort. 6._ Censure not God in any of his ways. Can we understand the
full scope of Divine wisdom in creation, which is perfected before our
eyes? Can we, by a rational knowledge, walk over the whole surface of
the earth, and wade through the sea? Can we understand the nature of
the heavens? Are all, or most, or the thousandth part of the particles
of Divine skill, known by us, yea, or any of them thoroughly known? How
can we, then, understand his deeper methods in things that are but of
yesterday, that we have not had a time to view? We should not be too
quick, or too rash, in our judgments of him: the best that we attain to,
is but feeble conjectures at the designs of God. As there is something
hid in whatsoever is revealed in his word, so there is something
inaccessible to us in his works, as well as in his nature and Majesty.
In our Saviour’s act in washing his disciples’ feet, he checked Peter’s
contradiction (John xiii. 7): “What I do, thou knowest not now, but
thou shalt know hereafter.” God were not infinitely wise if the reason
of all his acts were obvious to our shallowness. He is no profound
statesman, whose inward intention can be sounded by vulgar heads at
the first act he starts in his designed method. The wise God is, in
this, like wise men, that have not breasts like glasses of crystal, to
discover all that they intend. There are “secrets of wisdom above our
reach” (Job xi. 6); nay, when we see all his acts, we cannot see all
the draughts of his skill in them. An unskilful hearer of a musical
lesson may receive the melody with his ear, and understand not the
rarities of the composition as it was wrought by the musician’s mind.
Under the Old Testament there was more of Divine power, {a606} and
less of his wisdom apparent in his acts: as his laws, so his acts, were
more fitted to their sense. Under the New Testament there is more of
wisdom, and less of power; as his laws, so his acts, are more fitted
to a spiritual mind; wisdom is less discernible than power. Our wisdom,
therefore, in this case, as it doth other things, consists in silence
and expectation of the end and event of a work. We owe that honor to
God that we do to men wiser than ourselves, to imagine he hath reason
to do what he doth, though our shallowness cannot comprehend it. We
must suffer God to be wiser than ourselves, and acknowledge that there
is something sovereign in his ways not to be measured by the feeble
reed of our weak understandings. And, therefore, we should acquiesce
in his proceedings; take heed we be not found slanderers of God, but
be adorers instead of censurers; and lift up our heads in admiration of
him and his ways, instead of citing him to answer it at our bar. Many
things in the first appearance may seem to be rash and unjust, which,
in the issue, appear comely and regular. If it had been plainly spoke
before that the Son of God should die, that a most holy person should
be crucified, it would have seemed cruel to expose a son to misery;
unjust to inflict punishment upon one that was no criminal; to join
together exact goodness and physical evil; that the sovereign should
die for the malefactor, and the observer of the law for the violators
of it. But when the whole design is unravelled, what an admirable
connexion is there of justice and mercy, love and wisdom, which before
would have appeared absurd to the muddied reason of man! We see the
gardener pulling up some delightful flowers by the roots, digging up
the earth, overwhelming it with dung; an ignorant person would imagine
him wild, out of his wits, and charge him with spoiling his garden: but
when the spring is arrived, the spectator will acknowledge his skill
in his former operations. The truth is, the whole design and methods
of God are not to be judged by us in this world; the full declaration
of the whole contexture is reserved for the other world, to make up a
part of good men’s happiness in the amazing views of Divine wisdom, as
well as the other perfections of his nature. We can no more perfectly
understand his wisdom than we can his mercy and justice, till we see
the last lines of all drawn, and the full expressions of them; we
should therefore be sober and modest in the consideration of God’s
ways; “his judgments are unsearchable, and his ways past finding out.”
The riches of his wisdom are past our counting, his depths not to
be fathomed, yet they are depths of righteousness and equity; though
the full manifestation of that equity, the grounds and methods of his
proceedings are unknown to us. As we are too short fully to know God,
so we are too ignorant fully to comprehend the acts of God: since he
is a God of judgment, we should wait till we see the issue of his works
(Isa. xxx. 18). And in the meantime, with the apostle in the text, give
him the glory of all, in the same expressions, “To the only wise God be
glory, through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen.”
{b1} THE EXISTENCE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD
STEPHEN CHARNOCK
TWO VOLUMES IN ONE
Volume 2
{b2}
{b3} CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
DISCOURSE X.
ON THE POWER OF GOD.
JOB xxvi. 14.――Lo! these are parts of his ways: but how little
a portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who
can understand? b5
DISCOURSE XI.
ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD.
EXODUS xv. 11.――Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises,
doing wonders? b108
DISCOURSE XII.
ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD.
MARK x. 18.――And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good?
There is none good but one, that is, God. b209
DISCOURSE XIII.
ON GOD’S DOMINION.
PSALM ciii. 19.――The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens:
and his kingdom ruleth over all. b356
DISCOURSE XIV.
ON GOD’S PATIENCE.
NAHUM i. 3.――The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and
will not at all acquit the wicked: the Lord hath his way in the
whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his
feet. b472
INDEX. b525
OF TEXTS. b541
{b4}
{b5} DISCOURSE X.
ON THE POWER OF GOD.
JOB xxvi. 14.――Lo! these are parts of his ways: but how little a
portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can
understand?
BILDAD had, in the foregoing chapter, entertained Job with a
discourse of the dominion and power of God, and the purity of his
righteousness, whence he argues an impossibility of the justification
of man in his presence, who is no better than a worm. Job, in this
chapter, acknowledges the greatness of God’s power, and descants more
largely upon it than Bildad had done; but doth preface it with a kind
of ironical speech, as if he had not acted a friendly part, or spake
little to the purpose, or the matter in hand: the subject of Job’s
discourse was the worldly happiness of the wicked, and the calamities
of the godly: and Bildad reads him a lecture, of the extent of God’s
dominion, the number of his armies, and the unspotted rectitude of
his nature, in comparison of which the purest creatures are foul
and crooked. Job, therefore, from ver. 1‒4, taxeth him in a kind of
scoffing manner, that he had not touched the point, but rambled from
the subject in hand, and had not applied a salve proper to this sore
(ver. 2): “How hast thou helped him that is without power? how savest
thou the arm of him that hath no strength?” &c.; your discourse is
so impertinent, that it will neither strengthen a weak person, nor
instruct a simple one.[810] But since Bildad would take up the argument
of God’s power, and discourse so short of it, Job would show that he
wanted not his instructions in that kind, and that he had more distinct
conceptions of it than his antagonist had uttered: and therefore
from ver. 5 to the end of the chapter, he doth magnificently treat
of the power of God in several branches. And (ver. 5) he begins with
the lowest. “Dead things are formed from under the waters, and the
inhabitants thereof:” You read me a lecture of the power of God in
the heavenly host: indeed it is visible there, yet of a larger extent;
and monuments of it are found in the lower parts. What do you think of
those dead things under the earth and waters, of the corn that dies,
and by the moistening influences of the clouds, springs up again with
a numerous progeny and increase for the nourishment of man? What do you
think of those varieties of metals and minerals conceived in the bowels
of the earth; those pearls and riches in the depths of the waters,
midwifed by this power of God? Add to these those more prodigious
creatures in the {b6} sea, the inhabitants of the waters, with their
vastness and variety, which are all the births of God’s power; both in
their first creation by his mighty voice, and their propagation by his
cherishing providence. Stop not here, but consider also that his power
extends to hell; either the graves the repositories of all the crumbled
dust that hath yet been in the world (for so hell is sometimes taken
in Scripture: ver. 6, “Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath
no covering.”) The several lodgings of deceased men are known to him:
no screen can obscure them from his sight, nor their dissolution be
any bar to his power, when the time is come to compact those mouldered
bodies to entertain again their departed souls, either for weal or woe.
The grave, or hell, the place of punishment, is naked before him; as
distinctly discerned by him, as a naked body in all its lineaments by
us, or a dissected body is in all its parts by a skilful eye.
Destruction hath no covering; none can free himself from the power of
his hand. Every person in the bowels of hell; every person punished
there is known to him, and feels the power of his wrath. From the lower
parts of the world he ascends to the consideration of the power of God
in the creation of heaven and earth; “He stretches out the north over
the empty places” (ver. 7). The north, or the north pole, over the air,
which, by the Greeks, was called void or empty, because of the tenuity
and thinness of that element; and he mentions here the north, or north
pole, for the whole heaven, because it is more known and apparent than
the southern pole. “And hangs the earth upon nothing:” the massy and
weighty earth hangs like a thick globe in the midst of a thin air,
that there is as much air on the one side of it, as on the other. The
heavens have no prop to sustain them in their height, and the earth
hath no basis to support it in its place. The heavens are as if you saw
a curtain stretched smooth in the air without any hand to hold it; and
the earth is as if you saw a ball hanging in the air without any solid
body to under‑prop it, or any line to hinder it from falling; both
standing monuments of the omnipotence of God. He then takes notice of
his daily power in the clouds; “He binds up the waters in his thick
clouds, and the cloud is not rent under them” (ver. 8). He compacts
the waters together in clouds, and keeps them by his power in the air
against the force of their natural gravity and heaviness, till they are
fit to flow down upon the earth, and perform his pleasure in the places
for which he designs them. “The cloud is not rent under them;” the thin
air is not split asunder by the weight of the waters contained in the
cloud above it. He causes them to distil by drops, and strains them,
as it were, through a thin lawn, for the refreshment of the earth; and
suffers them not to fall in the whole lump, with a violent torrent,
to waste the industry of man, and bring famine upon the world, by
destroying the fruits of the earth. What a wonder it would be to see
but one entire drop of water hang itself but one inch above the ground,
unless it be a bubble which is preserved by the air enclosed within it!
What a wonder would it be to see a gallon of water contained in a thin
cobweb as strongly as in a vessel {b7} of brass! Greater is the wonder
of Divine power in those thin bottles of heaven, as they are called
(Job xxxviii. 37); and therefore called his clouds here, as being daily
instances of his omnipotence: that the air should sustain those rolling
vessels, as it should seem, weightier than itself; that the force of
this mass of waters should not break so thin a prison, and hasten to
its proper place, which is below the air: that they should be daily
confined against their natural inclination, and held by so slight
a chain; that there should be such a gradual and successive falling
of them, as if the air were pierced with holes like a gardener’s
watering‑pot, and not fall in one entire body to drown or drench
some parts of the earth. These are hourly miracles of Divine power,
as little regarded as clearly visible. He proceeds (ver. 9), “He
holds back the face of his throne, and spreads the clouds upon it.”
The clouds are designed as curtains to cover the heavens, as well
as vessels to water the earth (Ps. cxlvii. 8). As a tapestry curtain
between the heavens, the throne of God (Isa. lxvi. 1), and the earth
his footstool: the heavens are called his throne, because his power
doth most shine forth there, and magnificently declare the glory of God;
and the clouds are as a screen between the scorching heat of the sun,
and the tender plants of the earth, and the weak bodies of men. From
hence he descends to the sea, and considers the Divine power apparent
in the bounding of it (ver. 10); “He hath compassed the waters with
bounds, till the day and night come to an end.” This is several times
mentioned in Scripture as a signal mark of Divine strength (Job xxxviii.
8; Prov. viii. 27). He hath measured a place for the sea, and struck
the limits of it as with a compass, that it might not mount above
the surface of the land, and ruin the ends of the earth’s creation;
and this, while day and night have their mutual turns, till he shall
make an end of time by removing the measures of it. The bounds of the
tumultuous sea are, in many places, as weak as the bottles of the upper
waters; the one is contained in thin air, and the other restrained by
weak sands, in many places, as well as by stubborn rocks in others;
that, though it swells, foams, roars, and the waves, encouraged and
egged on by strong winds, come like mountains against the shore; they
overflow it not, but humble themselves when they come near to those
sands, which are set as their lists and limits, and retire back to the
womb that brought them forth, as if they were ashamed and repented of
their proud invasion: or else it may be meant of the tides of the sea,
and the stated time God hath set it for its ebbing and flowing, till
night and day come to an end;[811] both that the fluid waters should
contain themselves within due bounds, and keep their perpetually
orderly motion, are amazing arguments of Divine power. He passes on to
the consideration of the commotions in the air and earth, raised and
stilled by the power of God; “The pillars of heaven tremble, and are
astonished at his reproof.” By pillars of heaven are not meant angels,
as some think, but either the air, called the pillars of heaven in
regard of place, as it continues and knits together the parts of the
world, as pillars do the upper and nether parts of a building: as
the lowest parts of the earth are {b8} called the foundations of the
earth, so the lowest parts of the heaven may be called the pillars of
heaven:[812] or else by that phrase may be meant mountains, which seem,
at a distance, to touch the sky, as pillars do the top of a structure;
and so it may be spoken, according to vulgar capacity, which imagines
the heavens to be sustained by the two extreme parts of the earth,
as a convex body, or to be arched by pillars; whence the Scripture,
according to common apprehensions, mentions the ends of the earth, and
the utmost parts of the heavens, though they have properly no end, as
being round. The power of God is seen in those commotions in the air
and earth, by thunders, lightnings, storms, earthquakes, which rack
the air, and make the mountains and hills tremble as servants before a
frowning and rebuking master. And as he makes motions in the earth and
air, so is his power seen in their influences upon the sea; “He judges
the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smites through
the proud” (ver. 12). At the creation he put the waters into several
channels, and caused the dry land to appear barefaced for a habitation
for man and beasts; or rather, he splits the sea by storms, as though
he would make the bottom of the deep visible, and rakes up the sands
to the surface of the waters, and marshals the waves into mountains
and valleys. After that, “he smites through the proud,” that is,
humbles the proud waves, and, by allaying the storm, reduceth them to
their former level: the power of God is visible, as well in rebuking,
as in awakening the winds; he makes them sensible of his voice, and,
according to his pleasure, exasperates or calms them. The “striking
through the proud” here, is not, probably, meant of the destruction
of the Egyptian army, for some guess that Job died that year,[813]
or about the time of the Israelites coming out of Egypt; so that this
discourse here, being in the time of his affliction, could not point at
that which was done after his restoration to his temporal prosperity.
And now, at last, he sums up the power of God, in the chiefest of his
works above, and the greatest wonder of his works below (ver. 13);
“By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed
the crooked serpent,” &c. The greater and lesser lights, sun, moon,
and stars, the ornaments and furniture of heaven; and the whale, a
prodigious monument of God’s power, often mentioned in Scripture to
this purpose, and, in particular, in this book of Job (ch. xli.); and
called by the same name of crooked serpent (Isa. xxvii. 1), where it
is applied, by way of metaphor, to the king of Assyria or Egypt, or
all oppressors of the church. Various interpretations there are of this
crooked serpent: some understanding that constellation in heaven which
astronomers call the dragon; some that combination of weaker stars,
which they call the galaxia, which winds about the heavens: but it is
most probable that Job, drawing near to a conclusion of his discourse,
joins the two greatest testimonies of God’s power in the world, the
highest heavens, and the lowest leviathan, which is here called a bar
serpent,[814] in regard of his strength and hardness, as mighty men are
called bars in Scripture (Jer. li. 30); “Her bars are broken things.”
And in regard of this power of God {b9} in the creation of this
creature, it is particularly mentioned in the catalogue of God’s works
(Gen. i. 21); “And God created great whales;” all the other creatures
being put into one sum, and not particularly expressed. And now he
makes use of this lecture in the text, “Lo, these are parts of his ways;
but how little a portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power
who can understand?” This is but a small landscape of some of his works
of power; the outsides and extremities of it; more glorious things are
within his palaces: though those things argue a stupendous power of the
Creator, in his works of creation and providence, yet they are nothing
to what may be declared of his power. And what may be declared, is
nothing to what may be conceived; and what may be conceived, is nothing
to what is above the conceptions of any creature. These are but little
crumbs and fragments of that Infinite Power, which is, in his nature,
like a drop in comparison of the mighty ocean; a hiss or whisper in
comparison of a mighty voice of thunder.[815] This, which I have spoken,
is but like a spark to the fiery region, a few lines, by the by, a drop
of speech.
_The thunder of his power._ Some understand it of thunder literally,
for material thunder in the air: “The thunder of his power,” that is,
according to the Hebrew dialect, “his powerful thunder.” This is not
the sense; the nature of thunder in the air doth not so much exceed
the capacity of human understanding; it is, therefore, rather to be
understood metaphorically, “the thunder of his power,” that is, the
greatness and immensity of his power, manifested in the magnificent
miracles of nature, in the consideration whereof men are astonished,
as if they had heard an unusual clap of thunder. So thunder is used
(Job xxxix. 25), “The thunder of the captains;” that is, strength and
force of the captains of an army: and (ver. 19), God, speaking to Job
of a horse, saith, “Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?” that is,
strength: and thunder being a mark of the power of God, some of the
heathen have called God by the name of a Thunderer.[816] As thunder
pierceth the lowest places, and alters the state of things, so doth
the power of God penetrate into all things whatsoever; the thunder of
his power, that is, the greatness of his power; as “the strength of
salvation” (Ps. xx. 6), that is, a mighty salvation.
_Who can understand?_ Who is able to count all the monuments of
his power? How doth this little, which I have spoken of, exceed
the capacity of our understanding, and is rather the matter of our
astonishment, than the object of our comprehensive knowledge. The power
of the greatest potentate, or the mightiest creature, is but of small
extent: none but have their limits; it may be understood how far they
can act, in what sphere their activity is bounded: but when I have
spoken all of Divine power that I can, when you have thought all that
you can think of it, your souls will prompt you to {b10} conceive
something more beyond what I have spoken, and what you have thought.
His power shines in everything, and is beyond everything. There is
infinitely more power lodged in his nature, not expressed to the world.
The understanding of men and angels, centred in one creature, would
fall short of the perception of the infiniteness of it. All that can
be comprehended of it, are but little fringes of it, a small portion.
No man ever discoursed, or can, of God’s power, according to the
magnificence of it. No creature can conceive it; God himself only
comprehends it; God himself is only able to express it. Man’s power
being limited, his line is too short to measure the incomprehensible
omnipotence of God. “The thunder of his power who can understand?”
that is, none can. The text is a lofty declaration of the Divine power,
with a particular note of attention, _Lo!_ I. In the expressions of
it, in the works of creation and providence, _Lo, these are his ways_;
ways and works excelling any created strength, referring to the little
summary of them he had made before. II. In the insufficiency of these
ways to measure his power, _But how little a portion is heard of him_.
III. In the incomprehensibleness of it, _The thunder of his power,
who can understand?_ _Doctrine._ Infinite and incomprehensible power
pertains to the nature of God, and is expressed, in part, in his works;
or, though there be a mighty expression of Divine power in his works,
yet an incomprehensible power pertains to his nature. “The thunder of
his power, who can understand?”
His power glitters in all his works, as well as his wisdom (Ps. lxii.
11): “Twice have I heard this, that power belongs unto God.” In the
law and in the prophets, say some; but why power twice, and not mercy,
which he speaks of in the following verse? he had heard of power twice,
from the voice of creation, and from the voice of government. Mercy was
heard in government after man’s fall, not creation; innocent man was
an object of God’s goodness, not of his mercy, till he made himself
miserable; power was expressed in both; or, twice have I heard that
power belongs to God, that is, it is a certain and undoubted truth,
that power is essential to the Divine nature. It is true, mercy is
essential, justice is essential; but power more apparently essential,
because no acts of mercy, or justice, or wisdom, can be exercised by
him without power; the repetition of a thing confirms the certainty
of it. Some observe, that God is called Almighty seventy times in
Scripture.[817] Though his power be evident in all his works, yet he
hath a power beyond the expression of it in his works, which, as it is
the glory of his nature, so it is the comfort of a believer. To which
purpose the apostle expresseth it by an excellent paraphrasis for the
honor of the Divine nature (Eph. iii. 20): “Now unto him that is able
to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think, unto him
be glory in the churches.” We have reason to acknowledge him Almighty,
who hath a power of acting above our power of understanding. Who could
have imagined such a powerful operation in the propagation of the
gospel, and the conversion of the Gentiles, which the apostle seems to
hint at in that place? His power is expressed by “horns in his hands”
(Hab. iii. 4); {b11} because all the works of his hands are wrought
with Almighty strength. Power is also used as a name of God (Mark xiv.
62): “The Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power,” that is, at
the right hand of God; God and power are so inseparable, that they are
reciprocated. As his essence is immense, not to be confined in place;
as it is eternal, not to be measured by time; so it is Almighty, not
to be limited in regard of action.
1. It is ingenuously illustrated by some by a unit;[818] all
numbers depend upon it; it makes numbers by addition, multiplies them
unexpressibly; when one unit is removed from a number, how vastly doth
it diminish it! It gives perfection to all other numbers, it receives
perfection from none. If you add a unit before 100, how doth it
multiply it to 1,100! If you set a unit before 20,000,000, it presently
makes the number swell up to 120,000,000; and so powerful is a unit,
by adding it to numbers, that it will infinitely enlarge them to such
a vastness, that shall transcend the capacity of the best arithmetician
to count them. By such a meditation as this, you may have some prospect
of the power of that God who is only unity; the beginning of all things,
as a unit is the beginning of all numbers; and can perform as many
things really, as a unit can numerically; that is, can do as much
in the making of creatures, as a unit can do in the multiplying of
numbers. The omnipotence of God was scarce denied by any heathen that
did not deny the being of a God; and that was Pliny, and that upon weak
arguments.
2. Indeed we cannot have a conception of God, if we conceive him
not most powerful, as well as most wise; he is not a God that cannot
do what he will, and perform all his pleasure. If we imagine him
restrained in his power, we imagine him limited in his essence; as
he hath an infinite knowledge to know what is possible, he cannot be
without an infinite power to do what is possible; as he hath a will to
resolve what he sees good, so he cannot want a power to effect what he
sees good to decree; as the essence of a creature cannot be conceived
without that activity that belongs to his nature; as when you conceive
fire, you cannot conceive it without a power of burning and warming;
and when you conceive water, you cannot conceive it without a power of
moistening and cleansing: so you cannot conceive an infinite essence
without an infinite power of activity; and therefore a heathen could
say, “If you know God, you know he can do all things;” and therefore,
saith Austin, “Give me not only a Christian, but a Jew; not only a Jew,
but a heathen, that will deny God to be Almighty.” A Jew, a heathen,
may deny Christ to be omnipotent, but no heathen will deny God to
be omnipotent, and no devil will deny either to be so: God cannot be
conceived without some power, for then he must be conceived without
action. Whose, then, are those products and effects of power, which are
visible to us in the world? to whom do they belong? who is the Father
of them? God cannot be conceived without a power suitable to his nature
and essence. If we imagine him to be of an infinite essence, we must
imagine him to be of an infinite power and strength.
{b12} In particular, I shall show――I. The nature of God’s power.
II. Reasons to prove that God must needs be powerful. III. How his
power appears in creation, in government, in redemption. IV. The Use.
I. What this power is; or the nature of it.
1. Power sometimes signifies authority: and a man is said to be
mighty and powerful in regard of his dominion, and the right he hath
to command multitudes of other persons to take his part; but power
taken for strength, and power taken for authority, are distinct things,
and may be separated from one another. Power may be without authority;
as in successful invasions, that have no just foundation. Authority
may be without power; as in a just prince, expelled by an unjust
rebellion, the authority resides in him, though he be overpowered, and
is destitute of strength to support and exercise that authority. The
power of God is not to be understood of his authority and dominion,
but his strength to act; and the word in the text properly signifies
strength.[819]
2. This power is divided ordinarily into absolute and ordinate.
Absolute, is that power whereby God is able to do that which he will
not do, but is possible to be done; ordinate, is that power whereby God
doth that which he hath decreed to do, that is, which he hath ordained
or appointed to be exercised;[820] which are not distinct powers, but
one and the same power. His ordinate power is a part of his absolute;
for if he had not a power to do every thing that he could will, he
might not have the power to do everything that he doth will. The object
of his absolute power is all things possible; such things that imply
not a contradiction, such that are not repugnant in their own nature to
be done, and such as are not contrary to the nature and perfections of
God to be done. Those things that are repugnant in their own nature to
be done are several, as to make a thing which is past not to be past.
As, for example, the world is created; God could have chose whether
he would create the world, and after it is created he hath power to
dissolve it; but after it was created, and when it is dissolved, it
will be eternally true, that the world was created, and that it was
dissolved; for it is impossible, that that which was once true, should
ever be false: if it be true that the world was created, it will
forever be true that it was created, and cannot be otherwise. And also,
if it be once true that God hath decreed, it is impossible in its own
nature to be true that God hath not decreed. Some things are repugnant
to the nature and perfections of God; as it is impossible for his
nature to die and perish; impossible for him, in regard of truth, to
lie and deceive. But of this hereafter; only at present to understand
the object of God’s absolute power to be things possible, that is,
possible in nature; not by any strength in themselves, or of themselves;
for nothing hath no strength, and everything is nothing before it comes
into being;[821] so God, by his absolute power, might have prevented
the sin of the fallen angels, and so have preserved them in their first
habitation. He might, by his absolute power, have restrained the devil
from tempting of Eve, or restrained her and Adam from swallowing {b13}
the bait, and joining hands with the temptation. By his absolute power,
God might have given the reins to Peter to betray his Master, as well
as to deny him; and employed Judas in the same glorious and successful
service, wherein he employed Paul. By his absolute power, he might have
created the world millions of years before he did create it, and can
reduce it into its empty nothing this moment. This the Baptist affirms,
when he tells us, “That God is able of these stones (meaning the stones
in the wilderness, and not the people which came out to him out of
Judea, which were children of Abraham) to raise up children to Abraham”
(Matt. iii. 9); that is, there is a possibility of such a thing there
is no contradiction in it, but that God is able to do it if he please.
But now the object of his ordinate power, is all things ordained by
him to be done, all things decreed by him; and because of the Divine
ordination of things, this power is called ordinate; and what is thus
ordained by him he cannot but do, because of his unchangeableness. Both
those powers are expressed (Matt. xxvi. 53, 54), “My Father can send
twelve legions of angels,” there is his absolute power; “but how then
shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” there is his
ordinate power. As his power is free from any act of his will, it is
called absolute; as it is joined with an act of his will, it is called
ordinate. His absolute power is necessary, and belongs to his nature;
his ordinate power is free, and belongs to his will;――a power guided
by his will,――not, as I said before, that they are two distinct powers,
both belonging to his nature, but the latter is the same with the
former, only it is guided by his will and wisdom.
3. It follows, then, that the power of God is that ability and
strength, whereby he can bring to pass whatsoever he please; whatsoever
his infinite wisdom can direct, and whatsoever the infinite purity
of his will can resolve. Power, in the primary notion of it, doth not
signify an act, but an ability to bring a thing into act; it is power,
as able to act before it doth actually produce a thing: as God had an
ability to create before he did create, he had power before he acted
that power without. Power notes the principle of the action, and,
therefore, is greater than the act itself. Power exercised and diffused,
in bringing forth and nursing in its particular objects without, is
inconceivably less than that strength which is infinite in himself, the
same with his essence, and is indeed himself: by his power exercised
he doth whatsoever he actually wills; but by the power in his nature,
he is able to do whatsoever he is able to will. The will of creatures
may be, and is more extensive than their power; and their power more
contracted and shortened than their will: but, as the prophet saith,
“His counsel shall stand, and he will do all his pleasure” (Isa. xlvi.
10). His power is as great as his will, that is, whatsoever can fall
within the verge of his will, falls within the compass of his power.
Though he will never actually will this or that, yet supposing he
should will it, he is able to perform it: so that you must, in your
notion of Divine power, enlarge it further than to think God can only
do what he hath resolved to do; but that he hath as infinite a capacity
of power to act, as he hath an infinite capacity of will to resolve.
Besides, this power is of that {b14} nature, that he can do whatsoever
he pleases without difficulty, without resistance; it cannot be checked,
restrained, frustrated.[822] As he can do all things possible in regard
of the object, he can do all things easily in regard of the manner of
acting: what in human artificers is knowledge, labor, industry, that in
God is his will; his will works without labor; his works stand forth as
he wills them. Hands and arms are ascribed to him for our conceptions,
because our power of acting is distinct from our will; but God’s power
of acting is not really distinct from his will; it is sufficient to
the existence of a thing that God wills it to exist; he can act what he
will only by his will, without any instruments. He needs no matter to
work upon, because he can make something from nothing; all matter owes
itself to his creative power: he needs no time to work in, for he can
make time when he pleases to begin to work: he needs no copy to work by;
himself is his own pattern and copy in his works. All created agents
want matter to work upon, instruments to work with, copies to work by;
time to bring either the births of their minds, or the works of their
hands, to perfection: but the power of God needs none of these things,
but is of a vast and incomprehensible nature, beyond all these. As
nothing can be done without the compass of it, so itself is without
the compass of every created understanding.
4. This power is of a distinct conception from the wisdom and will of
God. They are not really distinct, but according to our conceptions.
We cannot discourse of Divine things, without observing some proportion
of them with human, ascribing unto God the perfections, sifted from
the imperfections of our nature. In us there are three orders――of
understanding, will, power; and, accordingly, three acts, counsel,
resolution, execution; which, though they are distinct in us, are not
really distinct in God. In our conceptions, the apprehension of a thing
belongs to the understanding of God; determination, to the will of God;
direction, to the wisdom of God; execution, to the power of God. The
knowledge of God regards a thing as possible, and as it may be done;
the wisdom of God regards a thing as fit, and convenient to be done;
the will of God resolves that it shall be done; the power of God is
the application of his will to effect what it hath resolved. Wisdom
is a fixing the being of things, the measures and perfections of their
several beings; power is a conferring those perfections and beings
upon them. His power is his ability to act, and his wisdom is the
director of his action: his will orders, his wisdom guides, and his
power effects. His will as the spring, and his power as the worker,
are expressed (Ps. cxv. 3). “He hath done whatsoever he pleased. He
commanded, and they were created” (Ps. cxl. 5); and all three expressed
(Eph. i. 11), “Who works all things according to the counsel of his
own will:” so that the power of God is a perfection, as it were,
subordinate to his understanding and will, to execute the results of
his wisdom, and the orders of his will; to his wisdom as directing,
because he works skilfully; to his will as moving and applying, because
he works voluntarily and freely. The exercise of his power depends upon
his will: his will is the supreme cause of everything {b15} that stands
up in time, and all things receive a being as he wills them. His power
is but will perpetually working, and diffusing itself in the season his
will hath fixed from eternity; it is his eternal will in perpetual and
successive springs and streams in the creatures; it is nothing else but
the constant efficacy of his omnipotent will. This must be understood
of his ordinate power; but his absolute power is larger than his
resolving will: for though the Scripture tells us, “He hath done
whatsoever he will,” yet it tells us not, that he hath done whatsoever
he could: he can do things that he will never do. Again, his power is
distinguished from his will in regard of the exercise of it, which is
after the act of his will: his will was conversant about objects, when
his power was not exercised about them. Creatures were the objects of
his will from eternity, but they were not from eternity the effects of
his power. His purpose to create was from eternity, but the execution
of his purpose was in time. Now this execution of his will we call
his ordinate power: his wisdom and his will are supposed antecedent
to his power, as the counsel and resolve; as the cause precedes the
performance of the purpose as the effect. Some[823] distinguish his
power from his understanding and will, in regard that his understanding
and will are larger than his absolute power; for God understands sins,
and wills to permit them, but he cannot himself do any evil or unjust
action, nor have a power of doing it. But this is not to distinguish
that Divine power, but impotence; for to be unable to do evil is the
perfection of power; and to be able to do things unjust and evil, is
a weakness, imperfection, and inability. Man indeed wills many things
that he is not able to perform, and understands many things that he is
not able to effect; he understands much of the creatures, something of
sun, moon, and stars; he can conceive many suns, many moons, yet is not
able to create the least atom: but there is nothing that belongs to
power but God understands, and is able to effect. To sum this up, the
will of God is the root of all, the wisdom of God is the copy of all,
and the power of God is the framer of all.
5. The power of God gives activity to all the other perfections of
his nature, and is of a larger extent and efficacy, in regard of its
objects, than some perfections of his nature. I put them both together.
(1.) It contributes life and activity to all the other perfections of
his nature. How vain would be his eternal counsels, if power did not
step in to execute them! His mercy would be a feeble pity, if he were
destitute of power to relieve; and his justice a slighted scarecrow,
without power to punish; his promises an empty sound, without power
to accomplish them. As holiness is the beauty, so power is the life
of all his attributes in their exercise; and as holiness, so power, is
an adjunct belonging to all, a term that may be given to all. God hath
a powerful wisdom to attain his ends without interruption: he hath
a powerful mercy to remove our misery; a powerful justice to lay all
misery upon offenders: he hath a powerful truth to perform his promises;
an infinite power to bestow rewards, and inflict penalties. It is
to this purpose power is first put {b16} in the two things which the
Psalmist had heard (Ps. lxii. 11, 12). “Twice have I heard,” or two
things have I heard; first power, then mercy and justice, included in
that expression, “Thou renderest to every man according to his work:”
in every perfection of God he heard of power. This is the arm, the
hand of the Deity, which all his other attributes lay hold on, when
they would appear in their glory; this hands them to the world: by
this they act, in this they triumph. Power framed every stage for their
appearance in creation, providence, redemption.
(2.) It is of a larger extent, in regard of its objects, than
some other attributes. Power doth not alway suppose an object,
but constitutes an object. It supposeth an object in the act of
preservation, but it makes an object in the act of creation; but
mercy supposeth an object miserable, yet doth not make it so. Justice
supposeth an object criminal, but doth not constitute it so: mercy
supposeth him miserable, to relieve him; justice supposeth him criminal,
to punish him: but power supposeth not a thing in real existence,
but as possible; or rather, it is from power that any thing hath a
possibility, if there be no repugnancy in the nature of the thing.
Again, power extends further than either mercy or justice. Mercy hath
particular objects, which justice shall not at last be willing to
punish; and justice hath particular objects, which mercy at last shall
not be willing to refresh: but power doth, and alway will, extend to
the objects of both mercy and justice. A creature, as a creature, is
neither the object of mercy nor justice, nor of rewarding goodness: a
creature, as innocent, is the object of rewarding goodness; a creature,
as miserable, is the object of compassionate mercy; a creature, as
criminal, is the object of revenging justice: but all of them the
objects of power, in conjunction with those attributes of goodness,
mercy, and justice, to which they belong. All the objects that mercy,
and justice, and truth, and wisdom, exercise themselves about, hath a
possibility and an actual being from this perfection of Divine power.
It is power first frames a creature in a capacity of nature for mercy
or justice, though it doth not give an immediate qualification for the
exercise of either. Power makes man a rational creature, and so confers
upon him a nature mutable, which may be miserable by its own fault,
and punishable by God’s justice; or pitiable by God’s compassion, and
relievable by God’s mercy: but it doth not make him sinful, whereby
he becomes miserable and punishable. Again, power runs through all the
degrees of the states of a creature. As a thing is possible, or may
be made, it is the object of absolute power; as it is factibile, or
ordered to be made, it is the object of ordinate power: as a thing is
actually made, and brought into being, it is the object of preserving
power. So that power doth stretch out its arms to all the works of God,
in all their circumstances, and at all times. When mercy ceaseth to
relieve a creature, when justice ceaseth to punish a creature, power
ceaseth not to preserve a creature. The blessed in heaven, that are
out of the reach of punishing justice, are forever maintained by power
in that blessed condition: the damned in hell, that are cast out of
the {b17} bosom of entreating mercy, are forever sustained in those
remediless torments by the Arm of Power.
6. This power is originally and essentially in the nature of God, and
not distinct from his essence. It is originally and essentially in God.
The strength and power of great kings is originally in their people,
and managed and ordered by the authority of the prince for the common
good. Though a prince hath authority in his person to command, yet
he hath not sufficient strength in his person, without the assistance
of others, to make his commands to be obeyed. He hath not a single
strength in his own person to conquer countries and kingdoms, and
increase the number of his subjects: he must make use of the arms of
his own subjects, to overrun other places, and yoke them under his
dominion: but the power of all things that ever were, are, or shall be,
is originally and essentially in God. It is not derived from any thing
without him, as the power of the greatest potentates in the world is:
therefore (Ps. lxii. 11) it is said, “Power belongs unto God,” that is,
solely and to none else. He hath a power to make his subjects, and as
many as he pleases; to create worlds, to enjoin precepts, to execute
penalties, without calling in the strength of his creatures to his aid.
The strength that the subjects of a mortal prince have, is not derived
to them from the prince, though the exercise of it for this or that
end, is ordered and directed by the authority of the prince: but what
strength soever any thing hath to act as a means, it hath from the
power of God as Creator, as well as whatsoever authority it hath to act
is from God, as a Rector and Governor of the world. God hath a strength
to act without means, and no means can act any thing without his power
and strength communicated to them. As the clouds, in ver. 8, before
the text, are called God’s clouds, “his clouds:” so all the strength
of creatures may be called, and truly is, God’s strength and power in
them: a drop of power shot down from heaven, originally only in God.
Creatures have but a little mite of power; somewhat communicated to
them, somewhat kept and reserved from them, of what they are capable
to possess. They have limited natures, and therefore a limited sphere
of activity. Clothes can warm us, but not feed us; bread can nourish
us, but not clothe us. One plant hath a medicinal quality against
one disease, another against another; but God is the possessor of
universal power, the common exchequer of this mighty treasure. He acts
by creatures, as not needing their power, but deriving power to them:
what he acts by them, he could act himself without them: and what they
act as from themselves, is derived to them from him through invisible
channels. And hence it will follow, that because power is essentially
in God, more operations of God are possible than are exerted. And as
power is essentially in God, so it is not distinct from his essence. It
belongs to God in regard of the inconceivable excellency and activity
of his essence.[824] And omnipotent is nothing but the Divine essence
efficacious _ad extra_. It is his essence as operative, and the
immediate principle of operation: as the power of enlightening in the
sun, and the power of heating in the fire, are not things distinct {b18}
from the nature of them; but the nature of the sun bringing forth light,
and the nature of the fire bringeth forth heat. The power of acting is
the same with the substance of God, though the action from that power
be terminated in the creature. If the power of God were distinct from
his essence, he were then compounded of substance and power, and would
not be the most simple being. As when the understanding is informed
in several parts of knowledge, it is skilled in the government of
cities and countries, it knows this or that art: it learns mathematics,
philosophy; this, or that science. The understanding hath a power to
do this; but this power, whereby it learns those excellent things,
and brings forth excellent births, is not a thing distinct from
the understanding itself; we may rather call it the understanding
powerful, than the power of the understanding; and so we may rather
say, God powerful, than say, the power of God; because his power is
not distinct from his essence. From both these, it will follow, that
this omnipotence is incommunicable to any creature; no creature can
inherit it, because it is a contradiction for any creature to have the
essence of God. This omnipotence is a peculiar right of God, wherein no
creature can share with him. To be omnipotent is to be essentially God.
And for a creature to be omnipotent, is for a creature to be its own
Creator. It being therefore the same with the essence of the Godhead,
it cannot be communicated to the humanity of Christ, as the Lutherans
say it is, without the communication of the essence of the Godhead;
for then the humanity of Christ would not be humanity, but Deity. If
omnipotence were communicated to the humanity of Christ, the essence of
God were also communicated to his humanity, and then eternity would be
communicated. His humanity then was not given him in time; his humanity
would be uncompounded, that is, his body would be no body, his soul no
soul. Omnipotence is essentially in God; it is not distinct from the
essence of God, it is his essence, omnipotent, able to do all things.
7. Hence it follows, that this power is infinite (Eph. i. 19);
“What is the exceeding greatness of his power,” &c. “according to the
working of his mighty power.” God were not omnipotent, unless his power
were infinite; for a finite power is a limited power, and a limited
power cannot effect everything that is possible. Nothing can be too
difficult for the Divine power to effect; he hath a fullness of power,
an exceeding strength, above all human capacities; it is a “mighty
power” (Eph. i. 19), “able to do above all that we can ask or think”
(Eph. iii. 20): that which he acts, is above the power of any creature
to act. Infinite power consists in the bringing things forth from
nothing. No creature can imitate God in this prerogative of power. Man
indeed can carve various forms, and erect various pieces of art, but
from pre‑existent matter. Every artificer hath the matter brought to
his hand, he only brings it forth in a new figure. Chemists separate
one thing from another, but create nothing, but sever those things
which were before compacted and crudled together: but when God speaks a
powerful word, nothing begins to be something: things stand forth from
the womb of nothing, and obey his mighty command, and take what forms
he {b19} is pleased to give them. The creating one thing, though never
so small and minute, as the least fly, cannot be but by an infinite
power; much less can the producing of such variety we see in the world.
His power is infinite, in regard it cannot be resisted by anything that
he hath made; nor can it be confined by anything he can will to make.
“His greatness is unsearchable” (Ps. cxlv. 3). It is a greatness, not
of quantity, but quality. The greatness of his power hath no end: it
is a vanity to imagine any limits can be affixed to it, or that any
creature can say, “Hitherto it can go, and no further.” It is above all
conception, all inquisition of any created understanding. No creature
ever had, nor ever can have, that strength of wit and understanding, to
conceive the extent of his power, and how magnificently he can work.
First, His essence is infinite. As in a finite subject there is a
finite virtue, so in an infinite subject there must be an infinite
virtue. Where the essence is limited, the power is so:[825] where the
essence is unlimited, the power knows no bounds.[826] Among creatures,
the more excellency of being and form anything hath, the more activity,
vigor, and power it hath, to work according to its nature. The sun hath
a mighty power to warm, enlighten, and fructify, above what the stars
have; because it hath a vaster body, more intense degrees of light,
heat, and vigor. Now, if you conceive the sun made much greater than it
is, it would proportionably have greater degrees of power to heat and
enlighten than it hath now: and were it possible to have an infinite
heat and light, it would infinitely heat and enlighten other things;
for everything is able to act according to the measures of its being:
therefore, since the essence of God is unquestionably infinite, his
power of acting must be so also. His power (as was said before) is one
and the same with his essence: and though the knowledge of God extends
to more objects than his power, because he knows all evils of sin,
which because of his holiness he cannot commit, yet it is as infinite
as his knowledge, because it is as much one with his essence, as his
knowledge and wisdom is: for as the wisdom or knowledge of God is
nothing but the essence of God, _knowing_, so the power of God is
nothing but the essence of God, _able_.
The objects of Divine power are innumerable. The objects of Divine
power are not essentially infinite; and therefore we must not measure
the infiniteness of Divine power by an ability to make an infinite
being; because there is an incapacity in any created thing to be
infinite; for to be a creature and to be infinite; to be infinite
and yet made, is a contradiction. To be infinite, and to be God, is
one and the same thing. Nothing can be infinite but God; nothing but
God is infinite. But the power of God is infinite, because it can
produce infinite effects, or innumerable things, such as surpass the
arithmetic of a creature; nor yet doth the infiniteness consist simply
in producing innumerable effects; for that a finite cause can produce.
Fire can, by its finite and limited heat, burn numberless combustible
things and parcels; and the understanding of man hath an infinite
number of thoughts and acts of intellection, {b20} and thoughts
different from one another. Who can number the imaginations of his
fancy, and thoughts of his mind, the space of one month or year? much
less of forty or an hundred years; yet all these thoughts are about
things that are in being, or have a foundation in things that are
in being. But the infiniteness of God’s power consists in an ability
to produce infinite effects, formally distinct, and diverse from
one another; such as never had being, such as the mind of man cannot
conceive: “Able to do above what we can think” (Eph. iii. 20). And
whatsoever God hath made, or is able to make, he is able to make in
an infinite manner, by calling them to stand forth from nothing. To
produce innumerable effects of distinct natures, and from so distant
a term as nothing, is an argument of infinite power. Now, that the
objects of Divine power are innumerable, appears, because God can do
infinitely more than he hath done, or will do. Nothing that God hath
done can enfeeble or dull his power; there still resides in him an
ability beyond all the settled contrivances of his understanding and
resolves of his will, which no effects which he hath wrought can drain
and put to a stand. As he can raise stones to be children to Abraham
(Matt. iii. 9); so with the same mighty word, whereby he made one world,
he can make infinite numbers of worlds to be the monuments of his glory.
After the prophet Jeremiah (ch. xxxii. 17), had spoke of God’s power
in creation, he adds, “And there is nothing too hard for thee.” For
one world that he hath made, he can create millions: for one star which
he hath beautified the heavens with, he could have garnished it with
a thousand, and multiplied, if he had pleased, every one of those into
millions, “for he can call things that are not” (Rom. iv. 17); not
some things, but all things possible. The barren womb of nothing can
no more resist his power now to educe a world from it, than it could
at first: no doubt, but for one angel which he hath made, he could
make many worlds of angels. He that made one with so much ease, as
by a word, cannot want power to make many more, till he wants a word.
The word that was not too weak to make one, cannot be too weak to make
multitudes. If from one man he hath, in a way of nature, multiplied
so many in all ages of the world, and covered with them the whole face
of the earth; he could, in a supernatural way, by one word, multiply
as many more. “It is the breath of the Almighty that gives life”
(Job. xxxiii. 4). He can create infinite species and kinds of creatures
more than he hath created, more variety of forms: for since there is
no searching of his greatness, there is no conceiving the numberless
possible effects of his power. The understanding of man can conceive
numberless things possible to be, more than have been or shall be.
And shall we imagine, that a finite understanding of a creature hath
a greater omnipotency to conceive things possible, than God hath to
produce things possible? When the understanding of man is tired in
its conceptions, it must still be concluded, that the power of God
extends, not only to what can be conceived, but infinitely beyond the
measures of a finite faculty. “Touching the Almighty, we cannot find
him out; he is excellent in power and in judgment” (Job xxxvi. 23).
For the understanding of man, {b21} in its conceptions of more kind of
creatures, is limited to those creatures which are: it cannot, in its
own imagination, conceive anything but what hath some foundation in and
from something already in being. It may frame a new kind of creature,
made up of a lion, a horse, an ox; but all those parts whereof its
conception is made, have distinct beings in the world, though not in
that composition as his mind mixes and joins them; but no question
but God can create creatures that have no resemblance with any kind
of creatures yet in being. It is certain that if God only knows those
things which he hath done, and will do, and not all things possible to
be done by him, his knowledge were finite; so if he could do no more
than what he hath done, his power would be finite.
(1.) Creatures have a power to act about more objects than they
do. The understanding of man can frame from one principle of truth,
many conclusions and inferences more than it doth. Why cannot, then,
the power of God frame from one first matter, an infinite number of
creatures more than have been created? The Almightiness of God in
producing real effects, is not inferior to the understanding of man
in drawing out real truths. An artificer that makes a watch, supposing
his life and health, can make many more of a different form and motion;
and a limner can draw many draughts, and frame many pictures with a new
variety of colors, according to the richness of his fancy. If these can
do so, that require a pre‑existent matter framed to their hands, God
can much more, who can raise beautiful structures from nothing. As long
as men have matter, they can diversify the matter, and make new figures
from it; so long as there is nothing, God can produce out of that
nothing whatsoever he pleases. We see the same in inanimate creatures.
A spark of fire hath a vast power in it: it will kindle other things,
increase and enlarge itself; nothing can be exempt from the active
force of it. It will alter, by consuming or refining, whatsoever you
offer to it. It will reach all, and refuse none; and by the efficacious
power of it, all those new figures which we see in metals, are brought
forth; when you have exposed to it a multitude of things, still add
more, it will exert the same strength; yea, the vigor is increased
rather than diminished. The more it catcheth, the more fiercely and
irresistibly it will act; you cannot suppose an end of its operation,
or a decrease of its strength, as long as you can conceive its duration
and continuance: this must be but a weak shadow of that infinite power
which is in God. Take another instance, in the sun: it hath power every
year to produce flowers and plants from the earth; and is as able to
produce them now, as it was at the first lighting it and rearing it in
that sphere wherein it moves. And if there were no kind of flowers and
plants now created, the sun hath a power residing in it, ever since its
first creation, to afford the same warmth to them for the nourishing
and bringing them forth. Whatsoever you can conceive the sun to be able
to do in regard of plants, that can God do in regard of worlds; produce
more worlds than the sun doth plants every year, without weariness,
without languishment. The sun is able to influence more things than
it doth, and produce {b22} numberless effects; but it doth not do so
much as it is able to do, because it wants matter to work upon. God,
therefore, who wants no matter, can do much more than he doth; he can
either act by second causes if there were more, or make more second
causes if he pleased.
(2.) God is the most free agent. Every free agent can do more than he
will do. Man being a free creature, can do more than ordinarily he doth
will to do. God is most free, as being the spring of liberty in other
creatures; he acts not by a necessity of nature, as the waves of the
sea, or the motions of the wind; and, therefore, is not determined to
those things which he hath already called forth into the world. If God
be infinitely wise in contrivance, he could contrive more than he hath,
and therefore, can effect more than he hath effected. He doth not act
to the extent of his power upon all occasions. It is according to his
will that he works (Eph. i.). It is not according to his work that
he wills; his work is an evidence of his will, but not the rule of
his will. His power is not the rule of his will, but his will is the
disposer of his power, according to the light of his infinite wisdom,
and other attributes that direct his will; and therefore his power
is not to be measured by his actual will. No doubt, but he could in a
moment have produced that world which he took six days’ time to frame;
he could have drowned the old world at once, without prolonging the
time till the revolution of forty days; he was not limited to such
a term of time by any weakness, but by the determination of his own
will. God doth not do the hundred thousandth part of what he is able
to do, but what is convenient to do, according to the end which he hath
proposed to himself. Jesus Christ, as man, could have asked legions of
angels; and God, as a sovereign, could have sent them (Matt. xxvi. 53).
God could raise the dead every day if he pleased, but he doth not:
he could heal every diseased person in a moment, but he doth not. As
God can will more than he doth actually will, so he can do more than
he hath actually done; he can do whatsoever he can will; he can will
more worlds, and therefore can create more worlds. If God hath not
ability to do more than he will do, he then can do no more than what he
actually hath done; and then it will follow, that he is not a free, but
a natural and necessary agent, which cannot be supposed of God.
Second. This power is infinite in regard of action. As he can produce
numberless objects above what he hath produced, so he could produce
them more magnificently than he hath made them. As he never works to
the extent of his power in regard of things, so neither in regard of
the manner of acting; for he never acts so but he could act in a higher
and perfecter manner.
(1.) His power is infinite in regard of the independency of action:
he wants no instrument to act. When there was nothing but God, there
was no cause of action but God; when there was nothing in being but
God, there could be no instrumental cause of the being of anything.
God can perfect his action without dependence on any thing;[827] and to
be simply independent, is to be simply infinite. In {b23} this respect
it is a power incommunicable to any creature, though you conceive a
creature in higher degrees of perfection than it is. A creature cannot
cease to be dependent, but it must cease to be a creature; to be a
creature and independent, are terms repugnant to one another.
(2.) But the infiniteness of Divine power consists in an ability to
give higher degrees of perfection to everything which he hath made. As
his power is infinite extensive, in regard of the multitude of objects
he can bring into being, so it is infinite intensive, in regard of the
manner of operation, and the endowments he can bestow upon them.[828]
Some things, indeed, God doth so perfect, that higher degrees of
perfection cannot be imagined to be added to them.[829] As the humanity
of Christ cannot be united more gloriously than to the person of the
Son of God, a greater degree of perfection cannot be conferred upon
it. Nor can the souls of the blessed have a nobler object of vision
and fruition than God himself, the infinite Being: no higher than
the enjoyment of himself can be conferred upon a creature, _respectu
termini_. This is not want of power; he cannot be greater, because he
is greatest; not better, because he is best; nothing can be more than
infinite. But as to the things which God hath made in the world, he
could have given them other manner of being than they have. A human
understanding may improve a thought or conclusion; strengthen it with
more and more force of reason; and adorn it with richer and richer
elegancy of language: why, then, may not the Divine providence produce
a world more perfect and excellent than this? He that makes a plain
vessel, can embellish it more, engrave more figures upon it, according
to the capacity of the subject: and cannot God do so much more with
his works? Could not God have made this world of a larger quantity,
and the sun of a greater bulk and proportionable strength, to influence
a bigger world? so that this world would have been to another that God
might have made, as a ball or a mount, this sun as a star to another
sun that he might have kindled. He could have made every star a sun,
every spire of grass a star, every grain of dust a flower, every soul
an angel. And though the angels be perfect creatures, and inexpressibly
more glorious than a visible creature, yet who can imagine God so
confined, that he cannot create a more excellent kind, and endow those
which he hath made with excellency of a higher rank than he invested
them with at the first moment of their creation? Without question God
might have given the meaner creatures more excellent endowments, put
them into another order of nature for their own good and more diffusive
usefulness in the world. What is made use of by the prophet (Mal. ii.
15) in another case, may be used in this: “Yet had he a residue of
Spirit.” The capacity of every creature might have been enlarged by
God; for no work of his in the world doth equal his power, as nothing
that he hath framed doth equal his wisdom. The same matter which is the
matter of the body of a beast, is the matter of a plant and flower; is
the matter of the body of a man; and so was capable of a higher form
and higher perfections, than God hath been pleased {b24} to bestow upon
it. And he had power to bestow that perfection on one part of matter
which he denied to it, and bestowed on another part. If God cannot make
things in a greater perfection, there must be some limitation of him:
he cannot be limited by another, because nothing is superior to God. If
limited by himself, that limitation is not from a want of power, but a
want of will. He can, by his own power, raise stones to be children to
Abraham (Matt. iii. 9): he could alter the nature of the stones, form
them into human bodies, dignify them with rational souls, inspire those
souls with such graces that may render them the children of Abraham.
But for the more fully understanding the nature of this power, we may
observe,
[1.] That though God can make everything with a higher degree of
perfection, yet still within the limits of a finite being. No creature
can be made infinite, because no creature can be made God. No creature
can be so improved as to equal the goodness and perfection of God;[830]
yet there is no creature but we may conceive a possibility of its being
made more perfect in that rank of a creature than it is: as we may
imagine a flower or plant to have greater beauty and richer qualities
imparted to it by Divine power, without rearing it so high as to the
dignity of a rational or sensitive creature. Whatsoever perfections
may be added by God to a creature, are still finite perfections; and a
multitude of finite excellences can never amount to the value and honor
of infinite: as if you add one number to another as high as you can,
as much as a large piece of paper can contain, you can never make
the numbers really infinite, though they may be infinite in regard
of the inability of any human understanding to count them. The finite
condition of the creature suffers it not to be capable of an infinite
perfection. God is so great, so excellent, that it is his perfection
not to have any equal; the defect is in the creature, which cannot be
elevated to such a pitch; as you can never make a gallon measure to
hold the quantity of a butt, or a butt the quantity of a river, or a
river the fulness of the sea.
[2.] Though God hath a power to furnish every creature with greater
and nobler perfections than he hath bestowed upon it, yet he hath
framed all things in the perfectest manner, and most convenient to
that end for which he intended them. Everything is endowed with the
best nature and quality suitable to God’s end in creation, though not
in the best manner for itself.[831] In regard of the universal end,
there cannot be a better; for God himself is the end of all things,
who is the Supreme Goodness. Nothing can be better than God, who could
not be God if he were not superlatively best, or _optimus_; and he
hath ordered all things for the declaration of his goodness or justice,
according to the behaviors of his creatures. Man doth not consider what
strength or power he can put forth in the means he useth to attain such
an end, but the suitableness of them to his main design, and so fits
and marshals them to his grand purpose. Had God only created things
that are most excellent, he had created only angels and men; how, then,
would his wisdom have {b25} been conspicuous in other works in the
subordination and subserviency of them to one another? God therefore
determined his power by his wisdom: and though his absolute power could
have made every creature better, yet his ordinate power, which in every
step was regulated by his wisdom, made everything best for his designed
intention.[832] A musician hath a power to wind up a string on a lute
to a higher and more perfect note in itself, but in wisdom he will not
do it, because the intended melody would be disturbed thereby if it
were not suited to the other strings on the instrument; a discord would
mar and taint the harmony which the lutenist designed. God, in creation,
observed the proportions of nature: he can make a spider as strong as
a lion; but according to the order of nature which he hath settled,
it is not convenient that a creature of so small a compass should be
as strong as one of a greater bulk. The absolute power of God could
have prepared a body for Christ as glorious as that he had after his
resurrection; but that had not been agreeable to the end designed
in his humiliation: and, therefore, God acted most perfectly by his
ordinate power, in giving him a body that wore the livery of our
infirmities. God’s power is alway regulated by his wisdom and will;
and though it produceth not what is most perfect in itself, yet what
is most perfect and decent in relation to the end he fixed. And so in
his providence, though he could rack the whole frame of nature to bring
about his ends in a more miraculous way and astonishment to mortals,
yet his power is usually and ordinarily confined by his will to act in
concurrence with the nature of the creatures, and direct them according
to the laws of their being, to such ends which he aims at in their
conduct, without violencing their nature.
[3.] Though God hath an absolute power to make more worlds, and
infinite numbers of other creatures, and to render every creature a
higher mark of his power, yet in regard of his decree to the contrary,
he cannot do it. He hath a physical power, but after his resolve to the
contrary, not a moral power: the exercise of his power is subordinate
to his decree, but not the essence of his power. The decree of God
takes not away any power from God, because the power of God is his
own essence, and incapable of change; and is as great physically and
essentially after his decree, as it was before; only his will hath put
in a bar to the demonstration of all that power which he is able to
exercise.[833] As a prince that can raise 100,000 men for an invasion,
raises only 20 or 30,000; he here, by his order, limits his power, but
doth not divest himself of his authority and power to raise the whole
number of the forces of his dominions if he pleases: the power of God
hath more objects than his decree hath; but since it is his perfection
to be immutable, and not to change his decree, he cannot morally put
forth his power upon all those objects, which, as it is essentially in
him, he hath ability to do. God hath decreed to save those that believe
in Christ, and to judge unbelievers to everlasting perdition: he cannot
morally damn the first, or save the latter; yet he hath not divested
himself of his absolute power to {b26} save all or damn all.[834] Or
suppose God hath decreed not to create more worlds than this we are now
in, doth his decree weaken his strength to create more if he pleased?
His not creating more is not a want of strength, but a want of will: it
is an act of liberty, not an act of impotency. As when a man solemnly
resolves not to walk in such a way, or come at such a place, his
resolution deprives him not of his natural strength to walk thither,
but fortifies his will against using his strength in any such motion
to that place. The will of God hath set bounds to the exercise of his
power, but doth not infringe that absolute power which still resides
in his nature: he is girded about with more power than he puts forth
(Ps. lxv. 6).
[4.] As the power of God is infinite in regard of his essence, in
regard of the objects, in regard of action, so, fourthly, in regard
of duration. The apostle calls it “an eternal power” (Rom. i. 20). His
eternal power is collected and concluded from the things that are made:
they must needs be the products of some Being which contains truly in
itself all power, who wrought them without engines, without instruments;
and, therefore, this power must be infinite, and possessed of an
unalterable virtue of acting. If it be eternal, it must be infinite,
and hath neither beginning nor end; what is eternal hath no bounds. If
it be eternal, and not limited by time, it must be infinite, and not
to be restrained by any finite object: his power never begun to be,
nor ever ceaseth to be; it cannot languish; men are fain to unbend
themselves, and must have some time to recruit their tired spirits:
but the power of God is perpetually vigorous, without any interrupting
qualm (Isa. xl. 28): “Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard,
that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the
earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?” That might which suffered no
diminution from eternity, but hatched so great a world by brooding
upon nothing, will not suffer any dimness or decrease to eternity. This
power being the same with his essence, is as durable as his essence,
and resides for ever in his nature.
8. The eighth consideration, for the right understanding of this
attribute, the impossibility of God’s doing some things, is no
infringing of his almightiness, but rather a strengthening of it. It
is granted that some things God cannot do; or, rather, as Aquinas and
others, it is better to say, such things cannot be done, than to say
that God cannot do them; to remove all kind of imputation or reflection
of weakness on God,[835] and because the reason of the impossibility of
those things is in the nature of the things themselves.
1. Some things are impossible in their own nature. Such are all
those things which imply a contradiction; as for a thing to be, and not
to be at the same time; for the sun to shine, and not to shine at the
same moment of time; for a creature to act, and not to act at the same
instant: one of those parts must be false; for if it be true that the
sun shines this moment, it must be false to say it doth not shine. So
it is impossible that a rational creature can be without reason: ’Tis
a contradiction to be a rational creature, and yet want that which is
essential to a rational creature. So it is impossible that the will of
man can be compelled, because liberty is the essence of the {b27} will;
while it is will it cannot be constrained; and if it be constrained,
it ceaseth to be will. God cannot at one time act as the author of the
will and the destroyer of the will.[836] It is impossible that vice
and virtue, light and darkness, life and death, should be the same
thing. Those things admit not of a conception in any understanding.
Some things are impossible to be done, because of the incapability of
the subject; as for a creature to be made infinite, independent, to
preserve itself without the Divine concourse and assistance. So a brute
cannot be taken into communion with God, and to everlasting spiritual
blessedness, because the nature of a brute is incapable of such an
elevation: a rational creature only can understand and relish spiritual
delights, and is capable to enjoy God, and have communion with him.
Indeed, God may change the nature of a brute, and bestow such faculties
of understanding and will upon it, as to render it capable of such a
blessedness; but then it is no more a brute, but a rational creature:
but, while it remains a brute, the excellency of the nature of God doth
not admit of communion with such a subject; so that this is not for
want of power in God, but because of a deficiency in the creature: to
suppose that God could make a contradiction true, is to make himself
false, and to do just nothing.
2. Some things are impossible to the nature and being of God. As
to die, implies a flat repugnance to the nature of God; to be able to
die, is to be able to be cashiered out of being. If God were able to
deprive himself of life, he might then cease to be: he were not then
a necessary, but an uncertain, contingent being, and could not be said
only to have immortality, as he is (1 Tim. vi. 16). He cannot die who
is life itself, and necessarily existent; he cannot grow old or decay,
because he cannot be measured by time: and this is no part of weakness,
but the perfection of power. His power is that whereby he remains
forever fixed in his own everlasting being. That cannot be reckoned as
necessary to the omnipotence of God which all mankind count a part of
weakness in themselves: God is omnipotent, because he is not impotent;
and if he could die, he would be impotent, not omnipotent: death is the
feebleness of nature. It is undoubtedly the greatest impotence to cease
to be: who would count it a part of omnipotency to disenable himself,
and sink into nothing and not being? The impossibility for God to
die is not a fit article to impeach his omnipotence; this would be
a strange way of arguing: a thing is not powerful, because it is not
feeble, and cannot cease to be powerful, for death is a cessation of
all power. God is almighty in doing what he will, not in suffering
what he will not.[837] To die is not an active, but a passive power; a
defect of a power: God is of too noble a nature to perish. Some things
are impossible to that eminency of nature which he hath above all
creatures; as to walk, sleep, feed, these are imperfections belonging
to bodies and compounded natures. If he could walk, he were not
everywhere present: motion speaks succession. If he could increase,
he would not have been perfect before.
3. Some things are impossible to the glorious perfections of God.
God cannot do anything unbecoming his holiness and goodness; {b28} any
thing unworthy of himself, and against the perfections of his nature.
God can do whatsoever he can will. As he doth actually do whatsoever
he doth actually will, so it is possible for him to do whatsoever it
is possible for him to will. He doth whatsoever he will, and can do
whatsoever he can will; but he cannot do what he cannot will: he cannot
will any unrighteous thing, and therefore cannot do any unrighteous
thing. God cannot love sin, this is contrary to his holiness; he cannot
violate his word, this is a denial of his truth; he cannot punish
an innocent, this is contrary to his goodness; he cannot cherish an
impenitent sinner, this is an injury to his justice; he cannot forget
what is done in the world, this is a disgrace to his omniscience; he
cannot deceive his creature, this is contrary to his faithfulness: none
of these things can be done by him, because of the perfection of his
nature. Would it not be an imperfection in God to absolve the guilty,
and condemn the innocent? Is it congruous to the righteous and holy
nature of God, to command murder and adultery; to command men not
to worship him, but to be base and unthankful? These things would be
against the rules of righteousness; as, when we say of a good man, he
cannot rob or fight a duel, we do not mean that he wants a courage for
such an act, or that he hath not a natural strength and knowledge to
manage his weapon as well as another, but he hath a righteous principle
strong in him which will not suffer him to do it; his will is settled
against it: no power can pass into act unless applied by the will; but
the will of God cannot will anything but what is worthy of him, and
decent for his goodness.
(1.) The Scripture saith it is impossible for God to lie
(Heb. vi. 18); and God cannot deny himself because of his faithfulness
(2 Tim. ii. 13). As he cannot die, because he is life itself; as he
cannot deceive, because he is goodness itself; as he cannot do an
unwise action, because he is wisdom itself, so he cannot speak a false
word, because he is truth itself. If he should speak anything as true,
and not know it, where is his infinite knowledge and comprehensiveness
of understanding? If he should speak anything as true, which he
knows to be false, where is his infinite righteousness? If he should
deceive any creature, there is an end of his perfection of fidelity
and veracity. If he should be deceived himself, there is an end of his
omniscience; we must then fancy him to be a deceitful God, an ignorant
God, that is, no God at all. If he should lie, he would be God and no
God; God upon supposition, and no God, because not the first truth.[838]
All unrighteousness is weakness, not power; it is a defection from
right reason, a deviation from moral principles, and the rule of
perfect action, and ariseth from a defect of goodness and power: it
is a weakness, and not omnipotence, to lose goodness: God is light; it
is the perfection of light not to become darkness, and a want of power
in light, if it should become darkness:[839] his power is infinitely
strong, so is his wisdom infinitely clear, and his will infinitely pure:
would it not be a part of weakness to have a disorder in himself, and
these perfections shock one against another? Since all perfections are
in God, in the most sovereign {b29} height of perfection, nothing can
be done by the infiniteness of one against the infiniteness of the
other. He would then be unstable in his own perfections, and depart
from the infinite rectitude of his own will, if he should do an evil
action. Again,[840] what is an argument of greater strength, than to
be utterly ignorant of infirmity? God is omnipotent because he cannot
do evil, and would not be omnipotent if he could; those things would
be marks of weakness, and not characters of majesty. Would you count
a sweet fountain impotent because it cannot send forth bitter streams?
or the sun weak, because it cannot diffuse darkness as well as light
in the air? There is an inability arising from weakness, and an ability
arising from perfection: it is the perfection of angels and blessed
spirits, that they cannot sin; and it would be the imperfection of God,
if he could do evil.
(2.) Hence it follows, that it is impossible that a thing past should
not be past. If we ascribe a power to God, to make a thing that is past
not to be past, we do not truly ascribe power to him, but a weakness;
for it is to make God to lie, as though God might not have created man,
yet, after he had created Adam, though he should presently have reduced
Adam to his first nothing, yet it would be forever true that Adam was
created, and it would forever be false that Adam never was created: so,
though God may prevent sin, yet when sin hath been committed, it will
alway be true that sin was committed; it will never be true to say
such a creature that did sin, did not sin; his sin cannot be recalled:
though God, by pardon, take off the guilt of Peter’s denying our
Saviour, yet it will be eternally true that Peter did deny him. It is
repugnant to the righteousness and truth of God to make that which was
once true to become false, and not true; that is, to make a truth to
become a lie, and a lie to become a truth. This is well argued from Heb.
vi. 18: “It is impossible for God to lie.” The apostle argues, that
what God had promised and sworn will come to pass, and cannot but come
to pass.[841] Now, if God could make a thing past not to be past, this
consequence would not be good, for then he might make himself not to
have promised, not to have sworn, after he hath promised and sworn; and
so, if there were a power to undo that which is past, there would be no
foundation for faith, no certainty of revelation. It cannot be asserted,
that God hath created the world; that God hath sent his Son to die;
that God hath accepted his death for man. These might not be true, if
it were possible, that that which hath been done, might be said never
to have been done: so that what any may imagine to be a want of power
in God, is the highest perfection of God, and the greatest security to
a believing creature that hath to do with God.
4. Some things are impossible to be done, because of God’s ordination.
Some things are impossible, not in their own nature, but in regard
of the determined will of God: so God might have destroyed the world
after Adam’s fall, but it was impossible; not that God wanted power to
do it, but because he did not only decree from eternity to create the
world, but did also decree to redeem the world {b30} by Jesus Christ,
and erected the world in order to the manifestation of his “glory in
Christ” (Eph. i. 4, 5). The choice of some in Christ was “before the
foundation of the world.” Supposing that there was no hindrance in the
justice of God to pardon the sin of Adam after his fall, and to execute
no punishment on him, yet in regard of God’s threatening, that in the
day he eat of the forbidden fruit he should die, it was impossible:
so, though it was possible that the cup should pass from our blessed
Saviour, that is, possible in its own nature, yet it was not possible
in regard of the determination of God’s will, since he had both decreed
and published his will to redeem man by the passion and blood of his
Son. These things God, by his absolute power, might have done; but
upon the account of his decree, they were impossible, because it is
repugnant to the nature of God to be mutable: it is to deny his own
wisdom which contrived them, and his own will which resolved them, not
to do that which he had decreed to do. This would be a diffidence in
his wisdom, and a change of his will. The impossibility of them is no
result of a want of power, no mark of an imperfection, of feebleness
and impotence; but the perfection of immutability and unchangeableness.
Thus have I endeavored to give you a right notion of this excellent
attribute of the power of God, in as plain terms as I could, which may
serve us for a matter of meditation, admiration, fear of him, trust
in him, which are the proper uses we should make of this doctrine of
Divine power. The want of a right understanding of this doctrine of the
Divine power hath caused many to run into mighty absurdities; I have,
therefore, taken the more pains to explain it.
II. The second thing I proposed, is the reasons to prove God to be
omnipotent. The Scripture describes God by this attribute of power
(Ps. cxv. 3): “He hath done whatsoever he pleased.” It sometimes sets
forth his power in a way of derision of those that seem to doubt of it.
When Sarah doubted of his ability to give her a child in her old age
(Gen. xviii. 14), “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” They deserve
to be scoffed, that will despoil God of his strength, and measure him
by their shallow models. And when Moses uttered something of unbelief
of this attribute, as if God were not able to feed 600,000 Israelites,
besides women and children, which he aggravates by a kind of imperious
scoff; “Shall the flocks and the herds be slain for them to suffice
them? Or, shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them?”
&c. (Numb. xi. 22). God takes him up short (ver. 23): “Is the Lord’s
hand waxed short?” What! can any weakness seize upon my hand? Can I
draw out of my own treasures what is needful for a supply? The hand
of God is not at one time strong, and another time feeble. Hence it is
that we read of the hand and arm of God, an outstretched arm; because
the strength of a man is exerted by his hand and arm; the power of God
is called the arm of his power, and the right hand of his strength.
Sometimes, according to the different manifestation of it, it is
expressed by finger, when a less power is evidenced; by hand, when
something greater; by arm, when more mighty than the former. Since God
is eternal, without limits of time, he is also Almighty, {b31} without
limits of strength. As he cannot be said to be more in being now than
he was before, so he is neither more nor less in strength than he was
before: as he cannot cease to be so, so he cannot cease to be powerful,
because he is eternal. His eternity and power are linked together as
equally demonstrable (Rom. i. 20); God is called the God of gods _El
Elohim_ (Dan. xi. 36); the Mighty of mighties, whence all mighty
persons have their activity and vigor: he is called the Lord of Hosts,
as being the Creator and Conductor of the heavenly militia.
_Reason 1._ The power that is in creatures demonstrates a greater and
an unconceivable power in God. Nothing in the world is without a power
of activity according to its nature: no creature but can act something.
The sun warms and enlightens everything: it sends its influences
upon the earth, into the bowels of the earth, into the depths of the
sea: all generations owe themselves to its instrumental virtue. How
powerful is a small seed to rise into a mighty tree with a lofty top,
and extensive branches, and send forth other seeds, which can still
multiply into numberless plants! How wonderful is the power of the
Creator, who hath endowed so small a creature as a seed, with so
fruitful an activity! Yet this is but the virtue of a limited nature.
God is both the producing and preserving cause of all the virtue in any
creature, in every creature. The power of every creature belongs to him
as the Fountain, and is truly his power in the creature. As he is the
first Being, he is the original of all being; as he is the first Good,
he is the spring of all goodness; as he is the first Truth, he is the
source of all truth; so, as he is the first Power, he is the fountain
of all power.
1. He, therefore, that communicates to the creature what power it hath,
contains eminently much more power in himself. (Ps. xciv. 10), “He that
teaches man knowledge, shall not he know?” So he that gives created
beings power, shall not he be powerful? The first Being must have as
much power as he hath given to others: he could not transfer that upon
another, which he did not transcendently possess himself. The sole
cause of created power cannot be destitute of any power in himself.
We see that the power of one creature transcends the power of another.
Beasts can do the things that plants cannot do; besides the power of
growth, they have a power of sense and progressive motion. Men can do
more than beasts; they have rational souls to measure the earth and
heavens, and to be repositories of multitudes of things, notions, and
conclusions. We may well imagine angels to be far superior to man: the
power of the Creator must far surmount the power of the creature, and
must needs be infinite: for if it be limited, it is limited by himself
or by some other; if by some other, he is no longer a Creator, but
a creature; for that which limits him in his nature, did communicate
that nature to him; not by himself, for he would not deny himself any
necessary perfection: we must still conclude a reserve of power in him,
that he that made these can make many more of the same kind.
2. All the power which is distinct in the creatures, must be united in
God. One creature hath a strength to do this, another to do that; every
creature is as a cistern filled with a particular and limited {b32}
power, according to the capacity of its nature, from this fountain;
all are distinct streams from God. But the strength of every creature,
though distinct in the rank of creatures, is united in God the centre,
whence those lines were drawn, the fountain whence those streams
were derived. If the power of one creature be admirable, as the power
of an angel, which the Psalmist saith (Ps. ciii. 20), “excelleth in
strength;” how much greater must the power of a legion of angels be!
How inconceivably superior the power of all those numbers of spiritual
natures, which are the excellent works of God! Now, if all this
particular power, which is in every angel distinct, were compacted
in one angel, how would it exceed our understanding, and be above our
power to form a distinct conception of it! What is thus divided in
every angel, must be thought united in the Creator of angels, and far
more excellent in him. Everything is in a more noble manner in the
fountain, than in the streams which distil and descend from it. He that
is the Original of all those distinct powers, must be the seat of all
power without distinction: in him is the union of all without division;
what is in them as a quality, is in him as his essence. Again, if all
the powers of several creatures, with all their principal qualities and
vigors, both of beasts, plants, and rational creatures, were united in
one subject; as if one lion had the strength of all the lions that ever
were; or, if one elephant had the strength of all the elephants that
ever were; nay, if one bee had all the power of motion and stinging
that all bees ever had, it would have a vast strength; but if the
strength of all those thus gathered into one of every kind should be
lodged in one sole creature, one man, would it not be a strength too
big for our conception? Or, suppose one cannon had all the force of all
the cannons that ever were in the world, what a battery would it make,
and, as it were, shake the whole frame of heaven and earth! All this
strength must be much more incomprehensible in God; all is united in
him. If it were in one individual created nature, it would still be
but a finite power in a finite nature: but in God it is infinite and
immense.
_Reason 2._ If there were not an incomprehensible power in God, he
would not be infinitely perfect. God is the first Being; it can only
be said of him, _Est_, he is. All other things are nothing to him;
“less than nothing and vanity” (Isa. xl. 17), and “reputed as nothing”
(Dan. iv. 35). All the inhabitants of the earth, with all their wit and
strength, are counted as if they were not; just in comparison with Him
and his being, as a little mote in the sun‑beams: God, therefore, is
a pure Being. Any kind of weakness whatsoever is a defect, a degree of
not being; so far as anything wants this or that power, it may be said
not to be. Were there anything of weakness in God, any want of strength
which belonged to the perfection of a nature, it might be said of God,
He is not this or that, he wants this or that perfection of Being, and
so he would not be a pure Being, there would be something of not being
in him. But God being the first Being, the only original Being, he is
infinitely distant from not being, and therefore infinitely distant
from anything of weakness. Again, if God can know whatsoever is
possible to be done by him, and cannot do it, there would be something
more in his knowledge {b33} than in his power.[842] What would then
follow? That the essence of God would be in some regard greater than
itself, and less than itself, because his knowledge and his power
are his essence; his power as much his essence as his knowledge: and
therefore, in regard of his knowledge, his essence would be greater;
in regard of his power, his essence would be less; which is a thing
impossible to be conceived in a most perfect Being. We must understand
this of those things which are properly and in their own nature
subjected to the Divine knowledge; for otherwise God knows more than he
can do, for he knows sin, but he cannot act it, because sin belongs not
to power but weakness; and sin comes under the knowledge of God, not in
itself and its own nature, but as it is a defect from God, and contrary
to good, which is the proper object of Divine knowledge. He knows it
also not as possible to be done by himself, but as possible to be done
by the creature. Again, if God were not omnipotent, we might imagine
something more perfect than God:[843] for if we bar God from any
one thing which in its own nature is possible, we may imagine a being
that can do that thing, one that is able to effect it; and so imagine
an agent greater than God, a being able to do more than God is able
to do, and consequently a being more perfect than God: but no being
more perfect than God can be imagined by any creature. Nothing can be
called most perfect, if anything of activity be wanting to it. Active
power follows the perfection of a thing, and all things are counted
more noble by how much more of efficacy and virtue they possess. We
count those the best and most perfect plants, that have the greatest
medicinal virtue in them, and power of working upon the body for the
cure of distempers. God is perfect of himself, and therefore most
powerful of himself. If his perfection in wisdom and goodness be
unsearchable, his power, which belongs to perfection, and without which
all the other excellencies of his nature were insignificant, and could
not show themselves, (as was before evidenced,) must be unsearchable
also. It is by the title of Almighty he is denominated, when declared
to be unsearchable to perfection (Job xi. 7): “Canst thou by searching
find out God, canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?” This
would be limited and searched out, if he were destitute of an active
ability to do whatsoever he pleased to do, whatsoever was possible to
be done. As he hath not a perfect liberty of will, if he could not will
what he pleased; so he would not have a perfect activity, if he could
not do what he willed.
_Reason 3._ The simplicity of God manifests it. Every substance, the
more spiritual it is, the more powerful it is. All perfections are more
united in a simple, than in a compounded being. Angels, being spirits,
are more powerful than bodies. Where there is the greatest simplicity,
there is the greatest unity; and where there is the greatest unity,
there is the greatest power. Where there is a composition of a faculty
and a member, the member or organ may be weakened and rendered unable
to act, though the power doth still reside in the faculty. As a man,
when his arm or hand is cut off or broke, he hath the faculty of motion
still; but he hath lost {b34} that instrument that part whereby he
did manifest and put forth that motion: but God being a pure spiritual
nature, hath no members, no organs to be defaced or impaired. All
impediments of actions arise either from the nature of the thing that
acts, or from something without it. There can be no hindrance to God to
do whatsoever he pleases; not in himself, because he is the most simple
being, hath no contrariety in himself, is not composed of divers things;
and it cannot be from anything without himself, because nothing is
equal to him, much less superior. He is the greatest, the Supreme: all
things were made by him, depend upon him, nothing can disappoint his
intentions.
_Reason 4._ The miracles that have been in the world evidence the
power of God. Extraordinary productions have awakened men from their
stupidity, to the acknowledgment of the immensity of Divine power.
Miracles are such effects as have been wrought without the assistance
and co‑operation of natural causes, yea, contrary and besides the
ordinary course of nature, above the reach of any created power.
Miracles have been; and saith Bradwardine,[844] to deny that ever
such things were, is uncivil: it is inhuman to deny all the histories
of Jews and Christians; whosoever denies miracles, must deny all
possibility of miracles, and so must imagine himself fully skilled in
the extent of Divine power. How was the sun suspended from its motion
for some hours (Josh. x. 13); “the dead raised from the grave;” those
reduced from the brink of it, that had been brought near to it by
prevailing diseases; and this by a word speaking? How were the famished
lions bridled from exercising their rage upon Daniel, exposed to them
for a prey (Dan. vi. 22)? the activity of the fire curbed for the
preservation of the three children (Dan. iii. 15)? which proves a Deity
more powerful than all creatures. No power upon earth can hinder the
operation of the fire upon combustible matter, when they are united,
unless by quenching the fire, or removing the matter: but no created
power can restrain the fire, so long as it remains so, from acting
according to its nature. This was done by God in the case of the three
children, and that of the burning bush (Exod. iii. 2). It was as much
miraculous that the bush should not consume, as it was natural that
it should burn by the efficacy of the fire upon it. No element is so
obstinate and deaf, but it hears and obeys his voice, and performs
his orders, though contrary to its own nature: all the violence of the
creature is suspended as soon as it receives his command. He that gave
the original to nature, can take away the necessity of nature;[845]
he presides over creatures, but is not confined to those laws he hath
prescribed to creatures. He framed nature, and can turn the channels
of nature according to his own pleasure. Men dig into the bowels of
nature, search into all the treasures of it, to find medicines to cure
a disease, and after all their attempts it may prove labor in vain:
but God, by one act of his will, one word of his mouth, overturns the
victory of death, and rescues from the most desperate diseases.[846]
All the miracles which were wrought by the apostles, either speaking
some words or touching with the hand, {b35} were not effected by any
virtue inherent in their words or in their touches; for such virtue
inherent in any created finite subject would be created and finite
itself, and consequently were incapable to produce effects which
required an infinite virtue, as miracles do which are above the power
of nature. So when our Saviour wrought miracles, it was not by any
quality resident in his human nature, but by the sole power of his
Divinity. The flesh could only do what was proper to the flesh; but the
Deity did what was proper to the Deity. “God alone doth wonders” (Ps.
cxxxvi. 4): excluding every other cause from producing those things. He
only doth those things which are above the power of nature, and cannot
be wrought by any natural causes whatsoever. He doth not hereby put his
omnipotence to any stress: it is as easy with him to turn nature out
of its settled course, as it was to place it in that station it holds,
and appoint it that course it runs. All the works of nature are indeed
miracles and testimonies of the power of God producing them, and
sustaining them: but works above the power of nature, being novelties
and unusual, strike men with a greater admiration upon their appearance,
because they are not the products of nature, but the convulsions of
it. I might also add as an argument, the power of the mind of man to
conceive more than hath been wrought by God in the world. And God can
work whatsoever perfection the mind of man can conceive: otherwise
the reaches of a created imagination and fancy would be more extensive
than the power of God. His power, therefore, is far greater than the
conception of any intellectual creature; else the creature would be
of a greater capacity to conceive than God is to effect. The creature
would have a power of conception above God’s power of activity; and
consequently a creature, in some respect greater than himself. Now
whatsoever a creature can conceive possible to be done, is but finite
in its own nature; and if God could not produce what being a created
understanding can conceive possible to be done, he would be less than
infinite in power, nay, he could not go to the extent of what is finite.
But I have touched this before; that God can create more than he hath
created, and in a more perfect way of being, as considered simply in
themselves.
III. The third general thing is to declare, how the power of God
appears in Creation, in Government, in Redemption.
FIRST, In CREATION. With what majestic lines doth God set for his power,
in the giving being and endowments to all the creatures in the world
(Job xxxviii.)! All that is in heaven and earth is his, and shows the
greatness of his power, glory, victory, and majesty (1 Chron. xxix. 11).
The heaven being so magnificent a piece of work, is called emphatically,
“the firmament of his power” (Ps. cl. 1); his power being more
conspicuous and unavailed in that glorious arch of the world. Indeed,
“God exalts by his power” (Job xxxvi. 22), that is, exalts himself
by his power in all the works of his hands; in the smallest shrub,
as well as the most glorious sun. All his works of nature are truly
miracles, though we consider them not, being blinded with two frequent
and customary a sight of them; yet, in the neglect of all the rest, the
view {b36} of the heavens doth more affect us with astonishment at the
might of God’s arm: these declare his glory, and “the firmament showeth
his handy work” (Ps. xix. 1). And the Psalmist peculiarly calls them
his heavens, and the work of his fingers (Ps. viii. 3): these were
immediately created by God, whereas many other things in the world
were brought into being by the power of God, yet by the means of the
influence of the heavens.
1. His power is the first thing evident in the story of the creation.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. i. 1).
There is no appearance of anything in this declaratory preface, but of
power: the characters of wisdom march after in the distinct formation
of things, and animating them with suitable qualities for an universal
good. By heaven and earth, is meant the whole mass of the creatures:
by heaven, all the airy region, with all the host of it; by the earth,
is meant, all that which makes the entire inferior globe.[847] The Jews
observe, that in the first of Genesis, in the whole chapter, unto the
finishing the work in six days, God is called אלהים, which is a name
of Power, and that thirty‑two times in that chapter; but after the
finishing the six days’ work, he is called האלהים, which, according to
their notion, is a name of goodness and kindness: his power is first
visible in framing the world, before his goodness is visible in the
sustaining and preserving it. It was by this name of Power and Almighty
that he was known in the first ages of the world, not by his name,
Jehovah (Exod. vi. 3): “And I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
by the name of God Almighty; but by my name Jehovah was I not known
to them.” Not but that they were acquainted with the name, but did not
experience the intent of the name, which signified his truth in the
performance of his promises; they knew him by that name as promising,
but they knew him not by that name, as performing. He would be known
by his name Jehovah, true to his word, when he was about to effect
the deliverance from Egypt; a type of the eternal redemption, wherein
the truth of God, in performing of his first promise, is gloriously
magnified. And hence it is that God is called Almighty more in the
book of Job than in all the Scripture besides, I think about thirty‑two
times, and Jehovah but once, which is Job xii. 9, unless in Job xxxviii.
when God is introduced speaking himself; which is an argument of Job’s
living before the deliverance from Egypt, when God was known more by
his works of creation than by the performance of his promises, before
the name Jehovah was formally published. Indeed, this attribute of his
eternal power, is the first thing visible and intelligible upon the
first glance of the eye upon the creatures (Rom. i. 20). Bring a man
out of the cave where he hath been nursed, without seeing anything out
of the confines of it, and let him lift up his eyes to the heavens,
and take a prospect of that glorious body, the sun, then cast them down
to the earth, and behold the surface of it, with its green clothing;
the first notion which will start up in his mind from that spring
of wonders, is that of power, which he will at first adore with a
religious astonishment. The wisdom of God in them is not so presently
apparent, till after a more {b37} exquisite consideration of his works
and knowledge of the properties of their natures, the conveniency of
their situations, and the usefulness of their functions, and the order
wherein they are linked together for the good of the universe.
2. By this creative power God is often distinguished from all the idols
and false gods in the world. And by this title he sets forth himself
when he would act any great and wonderful work in the world (Ps. cxxxv.
5, 6): “He is great above all gods,” for “he hath done whatsoever he
pleased in heaven and in earth.” Upon this is founded all the worship
he challengeth in the world, as his peculiar, glory (Rev. iv. 11):
“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, honor, and power, for thou
hast created all things.” And (Rev. x. 6) “I have made the earth, and
created man upon it.” “I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens,
and all their host have I commanded” (Isa. xlv. 12). What is the issue
(ver. 16)? “They shall be ashamed and confounded, all of them, that are
makers of idols.” And the weakness of idols is expressed by this title.
“The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth” (Jer. x. 11).
“The portion of Jacob is not like them, for he is the former of all
things” (ver. 16). What is not that God able to do, that hath created
so great a world? How doth the power of God appear in creation?
1st. In making the world of nothing. When we say, the world was made
of nothing, we mean, that there was no matter existent for God to work
upon, but what he raised himself in the first act of creation. In this
regard, the power of God in creation surmounts his power in providence.
Creation supposeth nothing, providence supposeth something in being.
Creation intimates a creature making, providence speaks a thing already
made, and capable of government, and in government. God uses second
causes to bring about his purposes.
1. The world was made of nothing. The earth which is described as the
first matter, without any form or ornament, without any distinction or
figures, was of God’s forming in the bulk, before he did adorn it with
his pencil (Gen. i. 1, 2). God, in the beginning, creating the heaven
and the earth, includes two things: First. That those were created
in the beginning of time, and before all other things. Secondly. That
God begun the creation of the world from those things.[848] Therefore
before the heavens and the earth there was nothing absolutely created,
and therefore no matter in being before an act of creation passed upon
it. It could not be eternal, because nothing can be eternal but God;
it must therefore have a beginning. If it had a beginning from itself,
then it was before it was. If it acted in the making itself before it
was made, then it had a being before it had a being; for that which
is nothing, can act nothing: the action of anything supposeth the
existence of the thing which acts. It being made, it was not before
it was made; for to be made is to be brought into being. It was made,
then, by another, and that Maker is God. It is necessary that the First
Original of things was from nothing: when we see one thing to arise
from another, we must suppose an original of the first of each kind; as,
when we see {b38} a tree spring up from a seed, we know that seed came
out of the bowels of another tree; it had a parent, it had a master; we
must come to some first, or else we run into an endless maze: we must
come to some first tree, some first seed that had no cause of the same
kind, no matter of it, but was mere nothing. Creation doth suppose a
production from nothing; because, if you suppose a thing without any
real or actual existence, it is not capable of any other production
than from nothing: nothing must be supposed before the world, or we
must suppose it eternal, and that is to deny it to be a creature, and
make it God.[849] The creation of spiritual substances, such as angels
and souls, evince this; those things that are purely spiritual, and
consist not of matter, cannot pretend to any original from matter, and
therefore they rose up from nothing. If spiritual things arose from
nothing, much more may corporeal, because they are of a lower nature
than spiritual; and he that can create a higher nature of nothing,
can create an inferior nature of nothing. As bodily things are more
imperfect than spiritual, so their creation may be supposed easier than
that of spiritual. There was as little need of any matter to be wrought
to his hands, to contrive into this visible fabric, as there was to
erect such an excellent order as the glorious cherubims.
2. This creation of things from nothing speaks an infinite power.
The distance between nothing and being hath been alway counted so
great, that nothing but an Infinite Power can make such distances meet
together, either for nothing to pass into being, or being to return to
nothing. To have a thing arise from nothing, was so difficult a text
to those that were ignorant of the Scripture, that they knew not how
to fathom it, and therefore laid it down as a certain rule, that of
nothing, nothing is made; which is true of a created power, but not of
an uncreated and Almighty Power. A greater distance cannot be imagined
than that which is between nothing and something; that which hath no
being, and that which hath; and a greater power cannot be imagined than
that which brings something out of nothing. We know not how to conceive
a nothing, and afterwards a being from that nothing; but we must
remain swallowed up in admiration of the Cause that gives it being, and
acknowledge it to be without any bounds and measures of greatness and
power.[850] The further anything is from being, the more immense must
that power be which brings it into being: it is not conceivable that
the power of all the angels in one can give being to the smallest spire
of grass. To imagine, therefore, so small a thing as a bee, a fly,
a grain of corn, or an atom of dust, to be made of nothing, would
stupefy any creature in the consideration of it, much more to behold
the heavens, with all the troop of stars; the earth, with all its
embroidery; and the sea, with all her inhabitants of fish; and man, the
noblest creature of all, to arise out of the womb of mere emptiness.
Indeed, God had not acted as an almighty Creator, if he had stood in
need of any materials but of his own framing: it had been as much as
his Deity was worth, if he had not had all within the compass of his
own power that was necessary to operation; if he must have been {b39}
beholden to something without himself, and above himself, for matter to
work upon: had there been such a necessity, we could not have imagined
him to be omnipotent, and, consequently, not God.
3. In this the power of God exceeds the power of all natural and
rational agents. Nature, or the order of second causes, hath a vast
power; the sun generates flies and other insects, but of some matter,
the slime of the earth or a dunghill; the sun and the earth bring
forth harvests of corn, but from seed first sown in the earth; fruits
are brought forth, but from the sap of the plant; were there no seed
or plants in the earth, the power of the earth would be idle, and
the influence of the sun insignificant; whatsoever strength either
of them had in their nature, must be useless without matter to work
upon. All the united strength of nature cannot produce the least thing
out of nothing; it may multiply and increase things, by the powerful
blessing God gave it at the first erecting of the world, but it cannot
create. The word which signifies _creation_, used in Gen. i. 1, is not
ascribed to any second cause, but only to God; a word, in that sense,
as incommunicable to anything else as the action it signifies. Rational
creatures can produce admirable pieces of art from small things, yet
still out of matter created to their hands. Excellent garments may
be woven, but from the entrails of a small silkworm. Delightful and
medicinal spirits and essences may be extracted, by ingenious chemists,
but out of the bodies of plants and minerals. No picture can be drawn
without colors; no statue engraven without stone; no building erected
without timber, stones, and other materials: nor can any man raise
a thought without some matter framed to his hands, or cast into him.
Matter is, by nature, formed to the hands of all artificers; they
bestow a new figure upon it, by the help of instruments, and the
product of their own wit and skill, but they create not the least
particle of matter; when they want it, they must be supplied or else
stand still, as well as nature, for none of them, or all together, can
make the least mite or atom: and when they have wrought all that they
can, they will not want some to find a flaw and defect in their work.
God, as a Creator, hath the only prerogative to draw what he pleases
from nothing, without any defect, without any imperfection: he can
raise what matter he please; ennoble it with what form he pleases. Of
nothing, nothing can be made, by any created agent: but the omnipotent
Architect of the world is not under the same necessity, nor is limited
to the same rule, and tied by so short a tedder as created nature, or
an ingenious, yet feeble artificer.
2d. It appears, in raising such variety of creatures from this
barren womb of nothing, or from the matter which he first commanded to
appear out of nothing. Had there been any pre‑existent matter, yet the
bringing forth such varieties and diversities of excellent creatures,
some with life, some with sense, and others with reason superadded
to the rest, and those out of indisposed and undigested matter, would
argue an infinite power resident in the first Author of this variegated
fabric. From this matter he formed that glorious sun, which every day
displays its glory, scatters its beams, clears the air, ripens our
fruits, and maintains the propagation of creatures in {b40} the world.
From this matter he lighted those torches which he set in the heaven to
qualify the darkness of the night: from this he compacted those bodies
of light, which, though they seem to us as little sparks, as if they
were the glow‑worms of heaven, yet some of them exceed in greatness
this globe of the earth on which we live: and the highest of them hath
so quick a motion, that some tell us they run, in the space of every
hour, 42,000,000 of leagues. From the same matter he drew the earth
on which we walk; from thence he extracted the flowers to adorn it,
the hills to secure the valleys, and the rocks to fortify it against
the inundations of the sea; and on this dull and sluggish element he
bestowed so great a fruitfulness, to maintain, feed, and multiply so
many seeds of different kinds, and conferred upon those little bodies
of seeds a power to multiply their kinds, in conjunction with the
fruitfulness of the earth, to many thousands. From this rude matter,
the slime or dust of the earth, he kneaded the body of man, and wrought
so curious a fabric, fit to entertain a soul of a heavenly extraction,
formed by the breath of God (Gen. ii. 7). He brought light out of thick
darkness, and living creatures, fish and fowl, out of inanimate waters
(Gen. i. 20), and gave a power of spontaneous motion to things arising
from that matter which had no living motion. To convert one thing into
another, is an evidence of infinite power, as well as creating things
of nothing; for the distance between life and not life is next to
that which is between being and not being. God first forms matter
out of nothing, and then draws upon, and from this indisposed chaos,
many excellent portraitures. Neither earth nor sea were capable of
producing living creatures without an infinite power working upon it,
and bringing into it such variety and multitude of forms; and this is
called, by some, mediate creation, as the producing the chaos, which
was without form and void, is called immediate creation. Is not the
power of the potter admirable in forming, out of tempered clay, such
varieties of neat and curious vessels, that, after they are fashioned
and past the furnace, look as if they were not of any kin to the matter
they are formed of? and is it not the same with the glass‑maker, that,
from a little melted jelly of sand and ashes, or the dust of flint, can
blow up so pure a body as glass, and in such varieties of shapes? and
is not the power of God more admirable, because infinite in speaking
out so beautiful a world out of nothing, and such varieties of living
creatures from matter utterly indisposed, in its own nature, for such
forms?
3d. And this conducts to a third thing, wherein the power of God
appears, in that he did all this with the greatest ease and facility.
1. Without instruments. As God made the world without the advice, so
without the assistance, of any other: “He stretched forth the heavens
alone, and spread abroad the earth by himself” (Isa. xliv. 24). He had
no engine, but his word; no pattern or model, but himself. What need
can he have of instruments, that is able to create what instruments
he pleases? Where there is no resistance in the object, where no
need of preparation or instrumental advantage in the agent; there the
actual determination of the will is sufficient to a production. What
instrument need {b41} we to the thinking of a thought, or an act of
our will? Men, indeed, cannot act anything without tools; the best
artificer must be beholden to something else for his noblest works
of art. The carpenter cannot work without his rule, and axe, and saw,
and other instruments; the watch‑maker cannot act without his file
and pliers; but in creation, there is nothing necessary to God’s
bringing forth a world, but a simple act of his will, which is both
the principal cause, and instrumental. He had no scaffolds to rear it,
no engines to polish it, no hammers or mattocks to clod and work it
together. It is a miserable error to measure the actions of an Infinite
Cause by the imperfect model of a finite, since, by his own “power and
out‑stretched arm, he made the heaven and the earth” (Jer. xxxii. 17).
What excellency would God have in his work above others, if he needed
instruments, as feeble men do?[851] Every artificer is counted more
admirable, that can frame curious works with the less matter, fewer
tools, and assistances. God uses instruments in his works of providence,
not for necessity, but for the display of his wisdom in the management
of them; yet those instruments were originally framed by him without
instruments. Indeed, some of the Jews thought the angels were the
instruments of God in creating man, and that those words, “Let us
make man in our own image” (Gen. i. 26), were spoken to angels. But
certainly the Scripture, which denies God any counsellor in the model
of creation (Isa. xl. 12‒14), doth not join any instrument with him in
the operation, which is everywhere ascribed to himself “without created
assistance” (Isa. xlv. 18). It was not to angels God spake in that
affair; if so, man was made after the image of angels, if they were
companions with God in that work; but it is everywhere said, that “Man
was made after the image of God” (Gen. i. 27). Again, the image wherein
man was created, was that of dominion over the lower creatures, as
appears ver. 26, which we find not conferred upon angels; and it is not
likely that Moses should introduce the angels, as God’s privy counsel,
of whose creation he had not mentioned one syllable. “Let us make man,”
rather signifies the Trinity, and not spoken in a royal style, as some
think. Which of the Jewish kings wrote in the style, _We_? That was
the custom of later times; and we must not measure the language of
Scripture by the style of Europe, of a far later date than the penning
the history of the creation. If angels were his counsellors in the
creation of the material world, what instrument had he in the creation
of angels? If his own wisdom were the director, and his own will the
producer of the one; why should we not think, that he acted by his sole
power in the other? It is concluded by most, that the power of creation
cannot be derived to any creature, it being a work of omnipotency;
the drawing something out from nothing, cannot be communicated without
a communication of the Deity itself. The educing things from nothing
exceeds the capacity of any creature, and the creature is of too feeble
a nature to be elevated to so high a degree. It is very unreasonable
to think, that God needed any such aid. If an instrument were necessary
for God to create the world, then he could {b42} not do it without
that instrument: if he could not, he were not then all‑sufficient
in himself, if he depended upon anything without himself, for the
production or consummation of his works. And it might be inquired, how
that instrument came into being; if it begun to be, and there was a
time when it was not, it must have its being from the power of God; and
then, why could not God as well create all things without an instrument,
as create that instrument without an instrument? For there was no more
power necessary to a producing the whole without instruments, than to
produce one creature without an instrument. No creature can, in its own
nature, be an instrument of creation. If any such instrument were used
by God, it must be elevated in a miraculous and supernatural way; and
what is so an instrument, is, in effect, no instrument; for it works
nothing by its own nature, but from an elevation by a superior nature,
and beyond its own nature. All that power in the instrument is truly
the power of God, and not the power of the instrument; and, therefore,
what God doth by an instrument, he could do as well without. If you
should see one apply straw to iron, for the cutting of it, and effect
it, you would not call the straw an instrument in that action, because
there was nothing in the nature of the straw to do it. It was done
wholly by some other force, which might have done it as well without
the straw as with it. The narrative of the creation in Genesis, removes
any instrument from God. The plants which are preserved and propagated
by the influence of the sun, were created the day before the sun, viz.
on the “third day,” whereas, the light was collected into the body of
the sun on the “fourth day” (Gen. i. 11, 16); to show, that though the
plants do instrumentally owe their yearly beauty and preservation to
the sun, yet they did not in any manner owe their creation to the
instrumental heat and vigor of it.
2. God created the world by a word, by a simple act of his will. The
whole creation is wrought by a word; “God said, Let there be light;”
and “God said, Let there be a firmament.”[852] Not that we should
understand it of a sensible word, but understand it of a powerful order
of his own will, which is expressed by the Psalmist in the nature of
a command (Ps. xxxiii. 9): “He spake, and it was done; he commanded,
and it stood fast;” and (Ps. cxlviii. 5), “He commanded, and they
were created.” At the same instant that he willed them to stand forth,
they did stand forth. The efficacious command of the Creator was the
original of all things: the insensibility of nothing obeyed the act
of his will. Creation is therefore entitled a calling (Rom. iv. 17):
“He calls those things which are not, as if they were.” To create is
no more with God, than to call; and what he calls, presents itself
before him in the same posture that he calls it. He did with more ease
make a world, than we can form a thought. It is the same ease to him to
create worlds, as to decree them; there needs no more than a resolve to
have things wrought at such a time, and they will be, according to his
pleasure. This will is his power; “Let there be light,” is the precept
of his will; {b43} and “there was light,” is the effect of his precept.
By a word, was the matter of the heavens and the earth framed; by a
word, things separate themselves from the rude mass into their proper
forms; by a word, light associates itself into one body, and forms a
sun; by a word, are the heavens, as it were, bespangled with stars,
and the earth dressed with flowers; by a word, is the world both ceiled
and floored: one act of his will, formed the world, and perfected its
beauty. All the variety and several exploits of his power were not
caused by distinct words or acts of power. God uttered not distinct
words for distinct species; as, let there be an elephant, and let there
be a lion; but as he produced those various creatures out of one matter,
so by one word. By one single command, those varieties of creatures,
with their clothing, ornaments, distinct notes, qualities, functions,
were brought forth (Gen. i. 11): by one word, all the seeds of the
earth, with their various virtues: by one word, all the fish of the sea,
and fowls of the air, in their distinct natures, instincts, colors (Gen.
i. 20): by one word, all the beasts of the field, with their varieties
(Gen. i. 24). Heaven and earth, spiritual and corporeal creatures,
mortal and immortal, the greater and the less, visible and invisible,
were formed with the same ease:[853] a word made the least, and a word
made the greatest. It is as little difficulty to him to produce the
highest angel, as the lightest atom. It is enough for the existence
of the stateliest cherubim, for God only to will his being. It was
enough for the forming and fixing the sun, to will the compacting
of light into one body. The creation of the soul of man is expressed
by inspiration (Gen. ii. 7); to show, that it is as easy with God
to create a rational soul, as for man to breathe.[854] Breathing is
natural to man, by a communication of God’s goodness; and the creation
of the soul is as easy to God, by virtue of his Almighty word. As there
was no proportion between nothing and being, so there was as little
proportion between a word and such glorious effects. A mere voice,
coming from an Omnipotent will, was capable to produce such varieties,
which angels and men have seen in all ages of the world, and this
without weariness. What labor is there in willing? what pain could
there be in speaking a word? (Isa. xl. 28), “The Creator of the
ends of the earth is not weary.” And though he be said to rest after
the creation, it is to be meant a rest from work, not a repose from
weariness. So great is the power of God, that without any matter,
without any instruments, he could create many worlds, and with the
same ease as he made this.
4th. I might add also, the appearance of this power in the
instantaneous production of things. The ending of his word was not only
the beginning, but the perfection of every thing he spake into being;
not several words to several parts and members, but one word, one
breath of his mouth, one act of his will, to the whole species of the
creatures, and to every member in each individual. Heaven and earth
were created in a moment; six days went to their disposal; and that
comely order we observe in the world was the work of a week: the matter
was formed as soon as God had spoken the word; and in every part of
the creation, as soon as God spake the word, {b44} “Let it be so” (Gen.
i.), the answer immediately is, “It was so;” which notes the present
standing up of the creature according to the act of his will: and,
therefore,[855] one observes, that “Let there be light, and there was
light;” in the Hebrew are the same words, without any alteration of
letter or point, only the conjunctive particle added, יהי אור ויהי אור, “Let
there be light, and let there be light,” to show, that the same instant
of the speaking the Divine word, was the appearance of the creature: so
great was the authority of his will.
SECONDLY, We are to show God’s power in the GOVERNMENT of the world. As
God decreed from eternity the creation of things in time, so he decreed
from eternity the particular ends of creatures, and their operation
respecting those ends. Now, as there was need of his power to execute
his decree of creation, there is also need of his power to execute his
decree about the manner of government.[856] All government is an act of
the understanding, will, and power. Prudence to design belongs to the
understanding; the election of the means belongs to the will; and the
accomplishment of the whole is an act of power. It is a hard matter
to determine which is most necessary: wisdom stands in as much need
of power to perfect, as power doth of wisdom, to model and draw out
a scheme; though wisdom directs, power must effect. Wisdom and power
are distinct things among men: a poor man in a cottage may have more
prudence to advise, than a privy counsellor; and a prince more power
to act, than wisdom to conduct. A pilot may direct though he be lame,
and cannot climb the masts, and spread the sails: but God is wanting in
nothing; neither in wisdom to design, nor in will to determine, nor in
power to accomplish. His wisdom is not feeble, nor his power foolish:
a feeble wisdom could not act what it would, and a foolish power would
act more than it should. The power expressed in his government is
shadowed forth in the living creatures, which are God’s instruments in
it. It is said, “Every one of them had four faces” (Ezek. i. 10); that
of a man to signify wisdom; of a lion, eagle, the strongest among birds,
to signify their courage and strength to perform their offices. This
power is evident in the _natural_, _moral_, _gracious_ government.
There is a natural providence, which consists in the preservation of
all things, propagation of them by corruptions and generations, and in
a co‑operation with them in their motions to attain their ends. Moral
government is of the hearts and actions of men. Gracious government, as
respecting the Church.
_First_, His power is evident in _natural_ government.
1. In preservation. God is the great Father of the world, to nourish
it as well as create it.[857] Man and beast would perish if there were
not herbs for their food; and herbs would wither and perish, if the
earth were not watered with fruitful showers. This some of the heathens
acknowledged, in their worshipping God under the image of an ox, a
useful creature, by reason of its strength, to which we owe so much of
our food in corn. Hence, God is styled the “Preserver of man and beast”
(Ps. xxxvi. 6). Hence, the Jews called God,[858] _Place_; because he is
the subsistence of all things. By {b45} the same word whereby he gave
being to things, he gives to them continuance and duration in being
so much a term of time. As they were “created by his word,” they are
supported by his word (Heb. i. 3). The same powerful fiat, “Let the
earth bring forth grass” (Gen. i. 11), when the plants peeped upon man
out of nothing, is expressed every spring, when they begin to lift up
their heads from their naked roots and winter graves. The resurrection
of light every morning, the reviving the pleasure of all things to the
eye; the watering the valleys from the mountain springs; the curbing
the natural appetite of the waters from covering the earth; every
draught that the beasts drink, every lodging the fowls have, every
bit of food for the sustenance of man and beast, is ascribed to the
“opening of his hand,” the diffusing of his power (Ps. civ. 27, &c.),
as much as the first creation of things, and endowing them with their
particular nature: whence the plants, which are so serviceable, are
called “the trees of the Lord” (ver. 16), of Jehovah, that hath only
being and power in himself. The whole Psalm is but the description of
his preserving, as the first of Genesis is of his creating power. It is
by this power angels have so many thousand years remained in the power
of understanding and willing. By this power things distant in their
natures have been joined together; a spiritual soul and a dusty body
knit in a marriage knot. By this power the heavenly bodies have for
so many ages rolled in their spheres, and the tumultuous elements have
persisted in their order: by this hath the matter of the world been to
this day continued, and as capable of entertaining forms as it was at
the first creation. What an amazing sight would it be to see a man hold
a pillar of the Exchange upon one of his fingers? What is this to the
power of God, “who holds the waters in the hollow of his hand, metes
out the heaven with a span, and weighs the mountains in scales, and the
hills in a balance” (Isa. xl. 12)? The preserving the earth from the
violence of the sea is a plain instance of this power.[859] How is that
raging element kept pent within those lists where he first lodged it;
continues its course in its channel without overflowing the earth, and
dashing in pieces the lower part of the creation? The natural situation
of the water is to be above the earth, because it is lighter; and to
be immediately under the air, because it is heavier than that thinner
element. Who restrains this natural quality of it, but that God that
first formed it? The word of command at first, “Hitherto shalt thou go,
and no further,” keeps those waters linked together in their den, that
they may not ravage the earth, but be useful to the inhabitants of it.
And when once it finds a gap to enter, what power of earth can hinder
its passage? How fruitless sometimes is all the art of man to send it
to its proper channel, when once it hath spread its mighty waves over
some countries, and trampled part of the inhabited earth under its
feet? It hath triumphed in its victory, and withstood all the power of
man to conquer its force. It is only the power of God that doth bridle
it from spreading itself over the whole earth. And that his power might
be more manifest, he hath set but a weak and small bank against it.
Though he hath bounded it in some places by {b46} mighty rocks, which
lift up their heads above it, yet in most places by feeble sand. How
often is it seen in every stormy motion, when the waves boil high and
roll furiously, as if they would swallow up all the neighboring houses
upon the shore; when they come to touch those sandy limits, they bow
their heads, fall flat, and sink into the lap whence they were raised,
and seem to foam with anger that they can march no further, but must
split themselves at so weak an obstacle! Can the sand be thought to
be the cause of this? The weakness of it gives no footing to such a
thought. Who can apprehend, that an enraged army should retire upon
the opposition of a straw in an infant’s hand? Is it the nature of the
water? Its retirement is against the natural quality of it; pour but a
little upon the ground, and you always see it spread itself. No cause
can be rendered in nature; it is a standing monument of the power of
God in the preservation of the world, and ought to be more taken notice
of by us in this island, surrounded with it, than by some other
countries in the world.
(1.) We find nothing hath power to preserve itself. Doth not every
creature upon earth require the assistance of some other for its
maintenance? “Can the rush grow up without mire? can the flag grow up
without water” (Job viii. 11)? Can man or beast maintain itself without
grain from the bowels of the earth? Would not every man tumble into
the grave, without the aid of other creatures to nourish him? Whence
do these creatures receive that virtue of supplying him nourishment,
but from the sun and earth? and whence do they derive that virtue, but
from the Creator of all things? And should he but slack his hand, how
soon would they and all their qualities perish, and the links of the
world fall in pieces, and dash one another into their first chaos and
confusion! All creatures indeed have an appetite to preserve themselves;
they have some knowledge of the outward means for their preservation;
so have irrational animals a natural instinct, as well as men have
some skill to avoid things that are hurtful, and apply things that are
helpful. But what thing in the world can preserve itself by an inward
influx into its own being? All things want such a power without God’s
_fiat_, “Let it be so:” nothing but is destitute of such a power for
its own preservation, as much as it is of a power for its own creation.
Were there any true power for such a work, what need of so many
external helps from things of an inferior nature to that which is
preserved by them? No created thing hath a power to preserve any
decayed being. Who can lay claim to such a virtue, as to recall a
withering flower to its former beauty, to raise the head of a drooping
plant, or put life into a gasping worm when it is expiring; or put
impaired vitals into their former posture? Not a man upon earth, nor an
angel in heaven, can pretend to such a virtue; they may be spectators,
but not assisters, and are, in this case, physicians of no value.
(2.) It is, therefore, the same Power preserves things which at first
created them. The creature doth as much depend upon God, in the first
instant of its being, for its preservation, as it did, when it was
nothing, for its production and creation into being: as the continuance
of a thought of our mind depends upon the power of our mind, {b47}
as well as the first framing of that thought.[860] There is a little
difference between creating and preserving power, as there is between
the power of mine eye to begin an act of vision and continue that act
of vision, as to cast my eye upon an object and continue it upon that
object: as the first act is caused by the eye, so the duration of
the act is preserved by the eye; shut the eye, and the act of vision
perishes; divert the eye from that object, and that act of vision is
exchanged for another. And, therefore, the preservation of things is
commonly called a continual creation: and certainly it is no less,
if we understand it of a preservation by an inward influence into the
being of things. It is one and the same action invariably continued,
and obtaining its force every moment; the same action whereby he
created them of nothing, and which every moment hath a virtue to
produce a thing out of nothing, if it were not yet extant in the world:
it remains the same without any diminution throughout the whole time
wherein anything doth remain in the world.[861] For all things would
return to nothing, if God did not keep them up in the elevation and
state to which he at first raised them by his creative power (Acts
xvii. 28): “In him we live, and move, and have our being.” By him, or
by the same Power whence we derived our being, are our lives maintained:
as it was his Almighty Power whereby we were, after we had been nothing,
so it is the same power whereby we now are, after he hath made us
something. Certainly all things have no less a dependence on God
than light upon the sun, which vanisheth and hides its head upon the
withdrawing of the sun. And should God suspend that powerful Word,
whereby he erected the frame of the world, it would sink down to what
it was, before he commanded it to stand up. There needs no new act of
power to reduce things to nothing, but the cessation of that Omnipotent
influx. When the appointed time set them for their being comes to a
period, they faint and bend down their heads to their dissolution; they
return to their elements, and perish (Ps. civ. 29): “Thou hidest thy
face, and they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die,
and return to their dust.” That which was nothing cannot remain on
this side nothing, but by the same Power that first called it out of
nothing. As when God withdrew his concurring power from the fire, its
quality ceased to act upon the three children: so if he withdraws his
sustaining power from the creature, its nature will cease to be.
2. It appears in propagation. That powerful word (Gen. i. 22, 23),
“Increase and multiply,” pronounced at the first creation, hath spread
itself over every part of the world; every animal in the world, in
the formation of every one of them. From two of a kind, how great a
number of individuals and single creatures have been multiplied, to
cover the face of the earth in their continued successions! What a
world of plants spring up from the womb of a dry earth, moistened by
the influence of a cloud, and hatched by the beams of the sun! How
admirable an instance of his propagating power is it, that from a
little seed a massy root should strike into the bowels of the earth, a
tall body and thick branches, with leaves {b48} and flowers of various
colors, should break through the surface of the earth, and mount up
towards heaven, when in the seed you neither smell the scent, nor see
any firmness of a tree, nor behold any of those colors which you view
in the flowers that the ears produce! A power not to be imitated by any
creature. How astonishing is it, that a small seed, whereof many will
not amount to the weight of a grain, should spread itself into leaves,
bark, fruit of a vast weight, and multiply itself into millions of
seeds! What power is that, that from one man and woman hath multiplied
families, and from families, stocked the world with people! Consider
the living creatures, as formed in the womb of their several kinds;
every one is a wonder of power. The Psalmist instanceth in the
forming and propagation of man (Ps. cxxxix. 14): “I am fearfully
and wonderfully made; marvellous are thy works.” The forming of the
parts distinctly in the womb, the bringing forth into the world every
particular member, is a roll of wonders, of power. That so fine a
structure as the body of man should be polished in “the lower parts
of the earth,” as he calls the womb (ver. 15), in so short a time,
with members of a various form and usefulness, each laboring in their
several functions! Can any man give an exact account of the manner
“how the bones do grow in the womb” (Eccles. xi. 5)? It is unknown
to the father, and no less hid from the mother, and the wisest men
cannot search out the depth of it. It is one of the secret works of an
Omnipotent Power, secret in the manner, though open in the effect. So
that we must ascribe it to God, as Job doth, “Thine hands have made
me and fashioned me together round about” (Job x. 8). Thy hands which
formed heaven, have formed every part, every member, and wrought me
like a mighty workman. The heavens are said to be the “work of God’s
hands,” and man is here said to be no less. The forming and propagation
of man from that earthy matter, is no less a wonder of power than the
structure of the world from a rude and indisposed matter. A heathen
philosopher descants elegantly upon it: “Dost thou understand (my son)
the forming of man in the womb; who erected that noble fabric? who
carved the eyes, the crystal windows of light, and the conductors of
the body; who bored the nostrils and ears, those loopholes of scents
and sounds; who stretched out and knit the sinews and ligaments for
the fastening of every member; who cast the hollow veins, the channels
of blood; set and strengthened the bones, the pillars and rafters of
the body; who digged the pores, the sinks to expel the filth; who made
the heart, the repository of the soul, and formed the lungs like a
pipe? What mother, what father, wrought these things? No, none but the
Almighty God, who made all things according to his pleasure; it is He
who propagates this noble piece from a pile of dust. Who is born by his
own advice; who gives stature, features, sense, wit, strength, speech,
but God?”[862] It is no less a wonder, that a little infant can live so
long in a dark sink, in the midst of filth, without breathing; and the
eduction of it out of the womb is no less a wonder than the forming,
increase, nourishment of it in that cell. A wonder, that the life of
the infant {b49} is not the death of the mother, or the life of the
mother the death of the infant. This little creature when it springs
up from such small beginnings by the power of God, grows up to be
one of the lords of the world, to have a dominion over the creatures,
and propagates its kind in the same manner: all this is unaccountable
without having recourse to the power of God in the government of the
creatures. And to add to this wonder, consider also what multitudes
of formations and births there are at one time all over the world,
in every of which the finger of God is at work; and it will speak an
unwearied power. It is admirable in one man, more in a town of men,
still more in a greater and larger kingdom, a vaster world; there is a
birth for every hour in this city, were but 168 born in a week, though
the weekly bills mention more: what is this city to three kingdoms?
what three kingdoms to a populous world? Eleven thousand and eighty
will make one for every minute in the week; what is this to the weekly
propagation in all the nations of the universe, besides the generation
of all the living creatures in that space, which are the works of God’s
fingers as well as man? What will be the result of this, but the notion
of an unconceivable, unwearied Almightiness, always active, always
operating?
3. It appears in the motions of all creatures. “All things live and
move in him” (Acts xvii. 28); by the same power that creatures have
their beings, they have their motions: they have not only a being
by his powerful command, but they have their minutely motion by his
powerful concurrence. Nothing can act without the almighty influx of
God, no more than it can exist without the creative word of God. It is
true indeed, the ordering of all motions to his holy ends, is an act
of wisdom; but the motion itself, whereby those ends are attained, is
a work of his power.
(1.) God, as the first cause, hath an influence into the motions of
all second causes. As all the wheels in a clock are moved in their
different motions by the force and strength of the principal and
primary wheel; if there be any defect in that, or if that stand still,
all the rest languish and stand idle the same moment. All creatures
are his instruments, his engines, and have no spirit, but what he
gives, and what he assists. Whatsoever nature works, God works in
nature; nature is the instrument, God is the supporter, director,
mover of nature; that which the prophet saith in another case, may be
the language of universal nature: “Lord, thou hast wrought all our work
in us” (Isa. xxvi. 12). They are works subjectively, efficiently, as
second causes; God’s works originally, concurrently. The sun moved not
in the valley of Ajalon for the space of many hours, in the time of
Joshua (Josh. x. 13); nor did the fire exercise its consuming quality
upon the three children, in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace (Dan. iii. 25): he
withdrew not his supporting power from their being, for then they had
vanished, but his influencing power from their qualities, whereby their
motion ceased, till he returned his influential concurrence to them;
which evidenceth, that without a perpetual derivation of Divine power,
the sun could not run one stride or inch of its race, nor the fire
devour one grain of light chaff, or an inch of straw. Nothing without
his sustaining power can continue {b50} in being; nothing without
his co‑working power can exercise one mite of those qualities it
is possessed of. All creatures are wound up by him, and his hand is
constantly upon them, to keep them in perpetual motion.
(2.) Consider the variety of motions in a single creature. How many
motions are there in the vital parts of a man, or in any other animal,
which a man knows not, and is unable to number! The renewed motion of
the lungs, the systoles and diastoles of the heart; the contractions
and dilations of the heart, whereby it spouts out and takes in blood;
the power of concoction in the stomach; the motion of the blood in the
veins, &c., all which were not only settled by the powerful hand of God,
but are upheld by the same, preserved and influenced in every distinct
motion by that power that stamped them with that nature. To every one
of those there is not only the sustaining power of God holding up their
natures, but the motive power of God concurring to every motion; for
if we move in him as well as we live in him, then every particle of our
motion is exercised by his concurring power, as well as every moment of
our life supported by his preserving power. What an infinite variety of
motions is there in the whole world in universal nature, to all which
God concurs, all which he conducts, even the motions of the meanest
as well as the greatest creatures, which demonstrate the indefatigable
power of the governor! It is an Infinite Power which doth act in so
many varieties, whereby the soul forms every thought, the tongue speaks
every word, the body exerts every action. What an Infinite Power is
that which presides over the birth of all things, concurs with the
motion of the sap in the tree, rivers on the earth, clouds in the air,
every drop of rain, fleece of snow, crack of thunder! Not the least
motion in the world, but is under an actual influence of this Almighty
Mover. And lest any should scruple the concurrence of God to so many
varieties of the creature’s motion, as a thing utterly inconceivable,
let them consider the sun, a natural image and shadow of the
perfections of God; doth not the power of that finite creature extend
itself to various objects at the same moment of time? How many insects
doth it animate, as flies, &c., at the same moment throughout the
world! How many several plants doth it erect at its appearance in the
spring, whose roots lay mourning in the earth all the foregoing winter!
What multitudes of spires of grass, and nobler flowers, doth it midwife
in the same hour! It warms the air, melts the blood, cherishes living
creatures of various kinds, in distinct places, without tiring: and
shall the God of this sun be less than his creature?
(3.) And since I speak of the sun, consider the power of God in the
motion of it. The vastness of the sun is computed to be, at the least,
166 times bigger than the earth, and its distance from the earth, some
tell us, to be about 4,000,000 of miles;[863] whence it follows, that
it is whirled about the world with that swiftness, that in the space
of an hour it runs 1,000,000 of miles, which is as much as if it should
move round about the surface of the earth fifty times in one hour;
which vastness exceeds the swiftness of a bullet shot out {b51} of a
cannon, which is computed to fly not above three miles in a minute:[864]
so that the sun runs further in one hour’s space, than a bullet can in
5,000, if it were kept in motion; so that if it were near the earth,
the swiftness of its motion would shatter the whole frame of the world,
and dash it in pieces; so that the Psalmist may well say, “It runs a
race like a strong man” (Ps. xix. 5). What an incomprehensible Power
is that which hath communicated such a strength and swiftness to the
sun, and doth daily influence its motion; especially since after all
those years of its motion, wherein one would think it should have spent
itself, we behold it every day as vigorous as Adam did in Paradise,
without limping, without shattering itself, or losing any thing of
its natural spirits in its unwearied motion. How great must that power
be, which hath kept this great body so entire, and thus swiftly moves
it every day! Is it not now an argument of omnipotency, to keep all
the strings of nature in tune; to wind them up to a due pitch for the
harmony he intended by them; to keep things that are contrary from that
confusion they would naturally fall into; to prevent those jarrings
which would naturally result from their various and snarling qualities;
to preserve every being in its true nature; to propagate every kind
of creature; order all the operations, even the meanest of them,
when there are such innumerable varieties? But let us consider, that
this power of preserving things in their station and motion, and the
renewing of them, is more stupendous than that which we commonly call
miraculous. We call those miracles, which are wrought out of the track
of nature, and contrary to the usual stream and current of it; which
men wonder at, because they seldom see them, and hear of them as things
rarely brought forth in the world; when the truth is, there is more of
power expressed in the ordinary station and motion of natural causes
than in those extraordinary exertings of power. Is not more power
signalized in that whirling motion of the sun every hour for so many
ages, than in the suspending of its motion one day, as it was in the
days of Joshua? That fire should continually ravage and consume, and
greedily swallow up every thing that is offered to it, seems to be
the effect of as admirable a power, as the stopping of its appetite
a few moments, as in the case of the three children. Is not the rising
of some small seeds from the ground, with a multiplication of their
numerous posterity, an effect of as great a power, as our Saviour’s
feeding many thousands with a few loaves, by a secret augmentation of
them?[865] Is not the chemical producing so pleasant and delicious a
fruit as the grape, from a dry earth, insipid rain, and a sour vine,
as admirable a token of Divine power, as our Saviour’s turning water
into wine? Is not the cure of diseases by the application of a simple
inconsiderable weed, or a slight infusion, as wonderful in itself, as
the cure of it by a powerful weed? What if it be naturally designed
to heal; what is that nature, who gave that nature, who maintains that
nature, who conducts it, co‑operates with it? Doth it work of itself,
and by its own strength? why not then equally in all, in one as well as
another? {b52} Miracles, indeed, affect more, because they testify the
immediate operation of God, without the concurrence of second causes;
not that there is more of the power of God shining in them than in the
other.
_Secondly_, This power is evident in _moral_ government.
1. In the restraint of the malicious nature of the devil. Since
Satan hath the power of an angel, and the malice of a devil, what
safety would there be for our persons from destruction, what security
for our goods from rifling, by this invisible, potent, and envious
spirit, if his power were not restrained, and his malice curbed, by
One more mighty than himself? How much doth he envy God the glory of
his creation; and man, the use and benefit of it! How desirous would
he be, in regard of his passion, how able in regard of his strength and
subtlety, to overthrow or infect all worship, but what was directed to
himself; to manage all things according to his lusts, turn all things
topsy‑turvy, plague the world, burn cities, houses, plunder us of
the supports of nature, waste kingdoms, &c.; if he were not held in a
chain, as a ravenous lion, or a furious wild horse, by the Creator and
Governor of the world! What remedy could be used by man against the
activity of this unseen and swift spirit? The world could not subsist
under his malice; he would practise the same things upon all as he did
upon Job, when he had got leave from his Governor; turn the swords of
men into one another’s bowels; send fire from heaven upon the fruits
of the earth and the cattle intended for the use of man; raise winds,
to shake and tear our houses upon our heads; daub our bodies with
scalbs and boils, and let all the humors in our blood loose upon us.
He that envied Adam a paradise, doth envy us the pleasure of enjoying
its out‑works. If we were not destroyed by him, we should live in a
continued vexation by spectrums and apparitions, affrighting sounds and
noise, as some think the Egyptians did in that three days’ darkness: he
would be alway winnowing us, as he desired to winnow Peter (Luke xxii.
31). But God over‑masters his strength, that he cannot move a hair’s
breadth beyond his tedder; not only is he unable to touch an upright
Job, but to lay his fingers upon one of the unbelieving Gadarenes
forbidden and filthy swine without special license (Matt. viii. 31).
When he is cast out of one place, he walks “through dry places seeking
rest” (Luke xi. 24), new objects for his malicious designs,――but
finding none, till God lets loose the reins upon him for a new
employment. Though Satan’s power be great, yet God suffers him not to
tempt as much as his diabolical appetite would, but as much as Divine
wisdom thinks fit; and the Divine power tempers the other’s active
malice, and gives the creature victory, where the enemy intended
spoil and captivity. How much stronger is God, than all the legions of
hell; as he that holds a “strong man” (Luke xi. 22) from effecting his
purpose, testifies more ability than his adversary! How doth he lock
him up for a “thousand years” (Rev. xx. 3) in a pound, which he cannot
leap over! and this restraint is wrought partly by blinding the devil
in his designs, partly by denying him concourse to his motion; as he
hindered the active quality of the fire upon the three children, by
withdrawing {b53} his power, which was necessary to the motion of it;
and his power is as necessary for the motion of the devil, as for that
of any other creature: sometimes he makes him to confess him against
his own interest, as Apollo’s oracle confessed.[866] And though
when the devil was cast out of the possessed person, he publicly
owned Christ to be the “Holy one of God” (Mark i. 24), to render him
suspected by the people of having commerce with the unclean spirits;
yet this he could not do without the leave and permission of God, that
the power of Christ, in stopping his mouth and imposing silence upon
him, might be evidenced; and that it reaches to the gates of hell,
as well as to the quieting of winds and waves. This is a part of
the strength, as well as the wisdom of God, that “the deceived and
the deceiver are his” (Job xii. 16): wisdom to defeat, and power to
overrule his most malicious designs, to his own glory.
2. In the restraint of the natural corruption of men. Since the
_impetus_ of original corruption runs in the blood, conveyed down from
Adam to the veins of all his posterity, and universally diffused in all
mankind; what wreck and havoc would it make in the world, if it were
not suppressed by this Divine power which presides over the hearts of
men! Man is so wretched by nature, that nothing but what is vile and
pernicious can drop from him. Man “drinks iniquity like water,” being,
by nature, “abominable and filthy” (Job xv. 16). He greedily swallows
all matter for iniquity, everything suitable to the mire and poison in
his nature, and would sprout it out with all fierceness and insolence.
God himself gives us the description of man’s nature (Gen. vi. 5),
that he hath not one good imagination at any time; and the apostle from
the Psalmist dilates and comments upon it (Rom. iii. 10, &c.) “There
is none righteous; no, not one; their mouth is full of cursing and
bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood,” &c. This corruption is
equal in all, natural in all; it is not more poisonous or more fierce
in one man, than in another. The root of all men is the same; all the
branches therefore do equally possess the villanous nature of the root.
No child of Adam can, by natural descent, be better than Adam, or have
less of baseness, and vileness, and venom, than Adam. How fruitful
would this loathsome lake be in all kind of streams! What unbridled
licentiousness and headstrong fury would triumph in the world, if the
power of God did not interpose itself to lock down the flood‑gates
of it! What rooting up of human society would there be! how would the
world be drenched in blood, the number of malefactors be greater than
that of apprehenders and punishers! How would the prints of natural
laws be rased out of the heart, if God should leave human nature to
itself! Who can read the first chapter of Romans, (verses 24 to 29),
without acknowledging this truth? where there is a catalogue of those
villanies which followed upon God’s pulling up the sluices, and letting
the malignity of their inward corruption have its natural course! If
God did not hold back the fury of man, his garden would be overrun, his
vine rooted up; the inclinations of men would hurry them to the worst
of wickedness. How great is that Power that curbs, bridles, or changes
{b54} as many headstrong horses at once, and every minute, as there are
sons of Adam upon the earth? The “floods lift up their waves; the Lord
on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty
waves of the sea” (Ps. xciii. 3, 4); that doth hush and pen in the
turbulent passions of men.
3. In the ordering and framing the hearts of men to his own ends. That
must be an Omnipotent hand that grasps and contains the hearts of all
men; the heart of the meanest person, as well as of the most towering
angel, and turns them as he pleases, and makes them sometime ignorantly,
sometime knowingly, concur to the accomplishment of his own purposes!
When the hearts of men are so numerous, their thoughts so various
and different from one another, yet he hath a key to those millions
of hearts, and with infinite power, guided by as infinite wisdom, he
draws them into what channels he pleases, for the gaining his own ends.
Though the Jews had imbrued their hands in the blood of our Saviour,
and their rage was yet reeking‑hot against his followers, God bridled
their fury in the church’s infancy, till it had got some strength, and
cast a terror upon them by the wonders wrought by the apostles (Acts ii.
43): “And fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were
done by the apostles.” Was there not the same reason in the nature of
the works our Saviour wrought, to point them to the finger of God, and
calm their rage? Yet did not the power of God work upon their passions
in those miracles, nor stop the impetuousness of the corruption
resident in their hearts. Yet now those who had the boldness to attack
the Son of God and nail him to the cross, are frighted at the
appearance of twelve unarmed apostles; as the sea seems to be afraid
when it approacheth the bounds of the feeble sand. How did God bend the
hearts of the Egyptians to the Israelites, and turn them to that point,
as to lend their most costly vessels, their precious jewels, and rich
garments, to supply those whom they had just before tyranically loaded
with their chains (Exod. iii. 21, 22)! When a great part of an army
came upon Jehoshaphat, to dispatch him into another world, how doth God,
in a trice, touch their hearts, and move them, by a secret instinct,
at once to depart from him (1 Chron. xviii. 31)! as if you should
see a numerous sight of birds in a moment turn wing another way, by a
sudden and joint consent. When he gave Saul a kingdom, he gave him a
spirit fit for government, “and gave him another heart” (1 Sam. x. 9);
and brought the people to submit to his yoke, who, a little before,
wandered about the land upon no nobler employment than the seeking
of asses. It is no small remark of the power of God, to make a number
of strong and discontented persons, and desirous enough of liberty,
to bend their necks under the yoke of government, and submit to the
authority of one, and that of their own nature, often weaker and
unwiser than the most of them, and many times an oppressor and invader
of their rights. Upon this account David calls God “his fortress, tower,
shield” (Ps. cxliv. 2); all terms of strength in subduing the people
under him. It is the mighty hand of God that links princes and people
together in the bands of government. The same hand that assuageth the
waves of the sea, suppresseth the tumults of the people.
{b55} _Thirdly_, It appears in his _gracious_ and judicial government.
1. In his gracious government. In the deliverance of his church: he
is the “strength of Israel” (1 Sam. xv. 29), and hath protected his
little flock in the midst of wolves; and maintained their standing,
when the strongest kingdoms have sunk, and the best jointed states have
been broken in pieces; when judgments have ravaged countries, and torn
up the mighty, as a tempestuous wind hath often done the tallest trees,
which seemed to threaten heaven with their tops, and dare the storm
with the depth of their roots, when yet the vine and rose‑bushes have
stood firm, and been seen in their beauty next morning. The state of
the church hath outlived the most flourishing monarchies, when there
hath been a mighty knot of adversaries against her; when the bulls
of Bashan have pushed her, and the whole tribe of the dragon have
sharpened their weapons, and edged their malice; when the voice was
strong, and the hopes high to rase her foundation even with the ground;
when hell hath roared; when the wit of the world hath contrived, and
the strength of the world hath attempted her ruin; when decrees have
been passed against her, and the powers of the world armed for the
execution of them; when her friends have drooped and skulked in corners;
when there was no eye to pity, and no hand to assist, help hath come
from heaven; her enemies have been defeated; kings have brought gifts
to her, and reared her; tears have been wiped off her cheeks, and her
very enemies, by an unseen power, have been forced to court her whom
before they would have devoured quick. The devil and his armies have
sneaked into their den, and the church hath triumphed when she hath
been upon the brink of the grave. Thus did God send a mighty angel
to be the executioner of Sennacherib’s army, and the protector of
Jerusalem, who run his sword into the hearts of eighty thousand
(2 Kings xix. 35), when they were ready to swallow up his beloved
city. When the knife was at the throats of the Jews, in Shushan (Esther
viii.), by a powerful hand it was turned into the hearts of their
enemies. With what an out‑stretched arm were the Israelites freed from
the Egyptian yoke (Deut. iv. 34)! When Pharaoh had mustered a great
army to pursue them, assisted with six hundred chariots of war, the Red
Sea obstructed their passage before, and an enraged enemy trod on their
rear; when the fearful Israelites despaired of deliverance, and the
insolent Egyptian assured himself of his revenge, God stretches out his
irresistible arm to defeat the enemy, and assist his people; he strikes
down the wolves, and preserves the flock. God restrained the Egyptian
enmity against the Israelites till they were at the brink of the Red
Sea, and then lets them follow their humor, and pursue the fugitives,
that his power might more gloriously shine forth in the deliverance
of the one, and the destruction of the other. God might have brought
Israel out of Egypt in the time of those kings that had remembered the
good service of Joseph to their country, but he leaves them till the
reign of a cruel tyrant, suffers them to be slaves, that they might by
his sole power, be conquerors, which had had no appearance had there
been a willing dismission of them at the first summons (Exod. ix. 16);
“In very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to {b56} shew
my power, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.”
I have permitted thee to rise up against my people, and keep them in
captivity, that thou mightest be an occasion for the manifestation of
my power in their rescue; and whilst thou art obstinate to enslave them,
I will stretch out my arm to deliver them, and make my name famous
among the Gentiles, in the wreck of thee and thy host in the Red Sea.
The deliverance of the church hath not been in one age, or in one part
of the world, but God hath signalized his power in all kingdoms where
she hath had a footing: as he hath guided her in all places by one rule,
animated her by one spirit, so he hath protected her by the same arm of
power. When the Roman emperors bandied all their force against her, for
about three hundred years, they were further from effecting her ruin at
the end than when they first attempted it; the church grew under their
sword, and was hatched under the wings of the Roman eagle, which were
spread to destroy her. The ark was elevated by the deluge, and the
waters the devil poured out to drown her did but slime the earth for
a new increase of her. She hath sometimes been beaten down, and, like
Lazarus, hath seemed to be in the grave for some days, that the power
of God might be more visible in her sudden resurrection, and lifting up
her head above the throne of her persecutors.
2. In his judicial proceedings. The deluge was no small testimony
of his power, in opening the cisterns of heaven, and pulling up the
sluices of the sea. He doth but call for the waters of the sea, and
they “pour themselves upon the face of the earth” (Amos ix. 6.) In
forty days’ time the waters overtopped the highest mountains fifteen
cubits (Gen. vii. 17‒20); and by the same power he afterwards reduced
the sea to its proper channel, as a roaring lion into his den. A shower
of fire from heaven, upon Sodom, and the cities of the plain, was a
signal display of his power, either in creating it on the sudden, for
the execution of his righteous sentence, or sending down the element of
fire, contrary to its nature, which affects ascent, for the punishment
of rebels against the light of nature. How often hath he ruined the
most flourishing monarchies, led princes away spoiled, and overthrown
the mighty, which Job makes an argument of his strength (Job xii. 13,
14). Troops of unknown people, the Goths and Vandals, broke the Romans,
a warlike people, and hurled down all before them. They could not have
had the thought to succeed in such an attempt, unless God had given
them strength and motion for the executing his judicial vengeance upon
the people of his wrath. How did he evidence his power, by daubing the
throne of Pharaoh, and his chamber of presence, as well as the houses
of his subjects, with the slime of frogs (Exod. viii. 3); turning their
waters into blood, and their dust into biting lice (Exod. vii. 20);
raising his militia of locusts against them; causing a three days’
darkness without stopping the motion of the sun; taking off their
first‑born, the excellency of their strength, in a night, by the stroke
of the angel’s sword! He takes off the chariot wheels of Pharaoh, and
presents him with a destruction where he expected a victory; brings
those waves over the heads of him and his host, which stood {b57}
firm as marble walls for the safety of his people; the sea is made to
swallow them up, that durst not, by the order of their Governor, touch
the Israelites: it only sprinkled the one as a type of baptism, and
drowned the other as an image of hell. Thus he made it both a deliverer
and a revenger, the instrument of an offensive and defensive war (Isa.
xl. 23, 24); “He brings princes to nothing, and makes the judges of the
earth as vanity.” Great monarchs have, by his power, been hurled from
their thrones and their sceptres, like Venice‑glasses, broken before
their faces, and they been advanced that have had the least hopes
of grandeur. He hath plucked up cedars by the roots, lopped off the
branches, and set a shrub to grow up in the place; dissolved rocks,
and established bubbles (Luke i. 52): “He hath showed strength with his
arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts;
he hath put down the mighty from their seat, and exalted them of low
degree.”――And these things he doth magnify his power in:――
(1.) By ordering the nature of creatures as he pleases. By restraining
their force, or guiding their motions. The restraint of the destructive
qualities of the creatures argues as great a power as the change of
their natures, yea, and a greater. The qualities of creatures may be
changed by art and composition, as in the preparing of medicines; but
what but a Divine Power could restrain the operation of the fire from
the three children, while it retained its heat and burning quality in
Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace? The operation was curbed while its nature was
preserved. All creatures are called his host, because he marshals and
ranks them as an army to serve his purposes. The whole scheme of nature
is ready to favor men when God orders it, and ready to punish men when
God commissions it. He gave the Red Sea but a check, and it obeyed his
voice (Ps. cvi. 9): “He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it was dried up;”
the motion of it ceased, and the waters of it were ranged as defensive
walls, to secure the march of his people: and at the motion of the hand
of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the sea recovered its violence, and
the walls that were framed came tumbling down upon the Egyptian’s heads
(Exod. xiv. 27). The Creator of nature is not led by the necessity of
nature: he that settled the order of nature, can change or restrain the
order of nature according to his sovereign pleasure. The most necessary
and useful creatures he can use as instruments of his vengeance: water
is necessary to cleanse, and by that he can deface a world; fire is
necessary to warm, and by that he can burn a Sodom: from the water
he formed the fowl (Gen. i. 21), and by that he dissolves them in the
deluge; fire or heat is necessary to the generation of creatures, and
by that he ruins the cities of the plain. He orders all as he pleases,
to perform every tittle and punctilio of his purpose. The sea observed
him so exactly, that it drowned not one Israelite, nor saved one
Egyptian (Ps. cvi. 11). There was not one of them left. And to perfect
the Israelites’ deliverance, he followed them with testimonies of his
power above the strength of nature. When they wanted drink, he orders
Moses to strike a rock, and the rock spouts a river, and a channel is
formed for it to attend them in their journey. When they wanted bread,
he {b58} dressed manna for them in the heavens, and sent it to their
tables in the desert. When he would declare his strength, he calls
to the heavens to pour down righteousness, and to the earth to bring
forth salvation (Isa. xlv. 8). Though God had created righteousness or
deliverance for the Jews in Babylon, yet he calls to the heavens and
the earth to be assistant to the design of Cyrus, whom he had raised
for that purpose, as he speaks in the beginning of the chapter (verses
1‒4). As God created man for a supernatural end, and all creatures
for man as their immediate end, so he makes them, according to
opportunities, subservient to that supernatural end of man, for which
he created him. He that spans the heavens with his fist, can shoot all
creatures like an arrow, to hit what mark he pleases. He that spread
the heavens and the earth by a word, and can by a word fold them
up more easily than a man can a garment (Heb. i. 12), can order the
streams of nature; cannot he work without nature as well as with it,
beyond nature, contrary to nature, that can, as it were, fillip nature
with his finger into that nothing whence he drew it; who can cast down
the sun from his throne, clap the distinguished parts of the world
together, and make them march in the same order to their confusion, as
they did in their creation: who can jumble the whole frame together,
and, by a word, dissolve the pillars of the world, and make the fabric
lie in a ruinous heap?
(2.) In effecting his purposes by small means: in making use of the
meanest creatures. As the power of God is seen in the creation of the
smallest creatures, and assembling so many perfections in the little
body of an insect, as an ant, or spider, so his power is not less
magnified in the use he makes of them. As he magnifies his wisdom,
by using ignorant instruments, so he exalts his power, by employing
weak instruments in his service: the meanness and imperfection of the
matter sets off the excellency of the workman; so the weakness of the
instrument is no foil to the power of the principal Agent. When God
hath effected things by means in the Scripture, he hath usually brought
about his purposes by weak instruments. Moses, a fugitive from Egypt,
and Aaron a captive in it, are the instruments of the Israelites’
deliverance. By the motion of Moses’ rod, he works wonders in the
court of Pharaoh, and summons up his judgments against him. He brought
down Pharaoh’s stomach for a while, by a squadron of lice and locusts,
wherein Divine power was more seen, than if Moses had brought him to
his own articles by a multitude of warlike troops. The fall of the
walls of Jericho by the sound of rams’ horns, was a more glorious
character of God’s power, than if Joshua had battered it down with a
hundred of warlike engines (Josh vi. 20). Thus the great army of the
Midianites, which lay as grasshoppers upon the ground, were routed by
Gideon in the head of three hundred men; and Goliath, a giant, laid
level with the ground by David, a stripling, by the force of a sling:
a thousand Philistines dispatched out of the world by the jaw‑bone of
an ass in the hand of Samson. He can master a stout nation by an army
of locusts, and render the teeth of those little insects as destructive
as the teeth, yea, the strongest teeth, the cheek‑teeth, of a great
lion (Joel i. 6, 7). The thunderbolt, which produces sometimes {b59}
dreadful effects, is compacted of little atoms which fly in the air,
small vapors drawn up by the sun, and mixed with other sulphurous
matter and petrifying juice. Nothing is so weak, but his strength can
make victorious; nothing so small, but by his power he can accomplish
his great ends by it; nothing so vile, but his might can conduct to his
glory; and no nation so mighty, but he can waste and enfeeble by the
meanest creatures. God is great in power in the greatest things, and
not little in the smallest; his power in the minutest creatures which
he uses for his service, surmounts the force of our understanding.
THIRDLY. The power of God appears in REDEMPTION. As our Saviour
is called the Wisdom of God, so he is called the Power of God (1 Cor.
i. 24). The arm of Power was lifted up as high as the designs of Wisdom
were laid deep: as this way of redemption could not be contrived but by
an Infinite Wisdom, so it could not be accomplished but by an Infinite
Power. None but God could shape such a design, and none but God could
effect it. The Divine Power in temporal deliverances, and freedom
from the slavery of human oppressors, vails to that which glitters in
redemption; whereby the devil is defeated in his designs, stripped of
his spoils, and yoked in his strength. The power of God in creation
requires not those degrees of admiration, as in redemption. In creation,
the world was erected from nothing; as there was nothing to act, so
there was nothing to oppose; no victorious devil was in that to be
subdued; no thundering law to be silenced; no death to be conquered;
no transgression to be pardoned and rooted out; no hell to be shut; no
ignominious death upon the cross to be suffered. It had been, in the
nature of the thing, an easier thing to Divine Power to have created
a new world than repaired a broken, and purified a polluted one. This
is the most admirable work that ever God brought forth in the world,
greater than all the marks of his power in the first creation.
And this will appear, I. In the Person redeeming. II. In the
publication and propagation of the doctrine of redemption. III. In the
application of redemption.
I. In the Person redeeming. _First_, In his conception.
1. He was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin
(Luke i. 35): “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of
the Highest shall overshadow thee:” which act is expressed to be the
effect of the infinite power of God; and it expresses the supernatural
manner of the forming the humanity of our Saviour, and signifies
not the Divine nature of Christ infusing itself into the womb of the
virgin; for the angel refers it to the manner of the operation of the
Holy Ghost in the producing the human nature of Christ, and not to the
nature assuming that humanity into union with itself. The Holy Ghost,
or the Third Person in the Trinity, overshadowed the virgin, and by
a creative act framed the humanity of Christ, and united it to the
Divinity. It is, therefore, expressed by a word of the same import with
that used in Gen. i. 2, “The Spirit moved upon the face of the waters,”
which signifies (as it were) a brooding upon the chaos, shadowing it
with his wings, as hens sit upon their eggs, to form them and hatch
them {b60} into animals; or else it is an allusion to the “cloud which
covered the tent of the congregation, when the glory of the Lord filled
the tabernacle” (Exod. xl. 34). It was not such a creative act as we
call immediate, which is a production out of nothing; but a mediate
creation, such as God’s bringing things into form out of the first
matter, which had nothing but an obediential or passive disposition
to whatsoever stamp the powerful wisdom of God should imprint upon
it. So the substance of the Virgin had no active, but only a passive
disposition to this work: the matter of the body was earthy, the
substance of the virgin; the forming of it was heavenly, the Holy
Ghost working upon that matter. And therefore when it is said, that
“she was found with child of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. i. 18), it is to be
understood of the efficacy of the Holy Ghost, not of the substance of
the Holy Ghost. The matter was natural, but the manner of conceiving
was in a supernatural way, above the methods of nature. In reference
to the active principle the Redeemer is called in the prophecy (Isa.
iv. 2), “The branch of the Lord,” in regard of the Divine hand that
planted him: in respect to the passive principle, the fruit of the
earth, in regard of the womb that bare him; and therefore said to be
“made of a woman” (Gal. iv. 4). That part of the flesh of the virgin
whereof the human nature of Christ was made, was refined and purified
from corruption by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, as a skilful
workman separates the dross from the gold: our Saviour is therefore
called, “that holy thing” (Luke i. 35), though born of the virgin: he
was necessarily some way to descend from Adam. God, indeed, might have
created his body out of nothing, or have formed it (as he did Adam’s)
out of the dust of the ground: but had he been thus extraordinarily
formed, and not propagated from Adam, though he had been a man like
one of us, yet he would not have been of kin to us, because it would
not have been a nature derived from Adam, the common parent of us all.
It was therefore necessary to an affinity with us, not only that he
should have the same human nature, but that it should flow from the
same principle, and be propagated to him.[867] But now, by this way of
producing the humanity of Christ of the substance of the virgin, he was
in Adam (say some) corporally, but not seminally; of the substance of
Adam, or a daughter of Adam, but not of the seed of Adam: and so he
is of the same nature that had sinned, and so what he did and suffered
may be imputed to us; which, had he been created as Adam, could not be
claimed in a legal and judicial way.
2. It was not convenient he should be born in the common order of
nature, of father and mother: for whosoever is so born is polluted.
“A clean thing cannot be brought out of an unclean” (Job xiv. 4). And
our Saviour had been incapable of being a redeemer, had he been tainted
with the least spot of our nature, but would have stood in need of
redemption himself. Besides, it had been inconsistent with the holiness
of the Divine nature, to have assumed a tainted and defiled body. He
that was the fountain of blessedness to all nations, was not to be
subject to the curse of the law for himself; which he would have been,
had he been conceived in an ordinary {b61} way. He that was to overturn
the devil’s empire, was not to be any way captive under the devil’s
power, as a creature under the curse; nor could he be able to break the
serpent’s head, had he been tainted with the serpent’s breath. Again,
supposing that Almighty God by his divine power had so ordered the
matter, and so perfectly sanctified an earthly father and mother from
all original spot, that the human nature might have been transmitted
immaculate to him, as well as the Holy Ghost did purge that part of the
flesh of the virgin of which the body of Christ was made, yet it was
not convenient that that person, that was God blessed for ever as well
as man, partaking of our nature, should have a conception in the same
manner as ours, but different, and in some measure conformable to the
infinite dignity of his person: which could not have been, had not
a supernatural power and a Divine person been concerned as an active
principle in it; besides, such a birth had not been agreeable to the
first promise, which calls him “the Seed of the woman” (Gen. i. 15),
not of the man; and so the veracity of God had suffered some detriment:
the Seed of the woman only is set in opposition to the seed of the
serpent.
3. By this manner of conception the holiness of his nature is secured,
and his fitness for his office is assured to us. It is now a pure and
unpolluted humanity that is the temple and tabernacle of the Divinity:
the fulness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily, and dwells in him
holily. His humanity is supernaturalized and elevated by the activity
of the Holy Ghost, hatching the flesh of the virgin into man, as the
chaos into a world. Though we read of some sanctified from the womb,
it was not a pure and perfect holiness; it was like the light of fire
mixed with smoke, an infused holiness accompanied with a natural taint:
but the holiness of the Redeemer by this conception, is like the light
of the sun, pure, and without spot. The Spirit of holiness supplying
the place of a father in the way of creation. His fitness for his
office is also assured to us; for being born of the virgin, one of our
nature, but conceived by the Spirit of a Divine person, the guilt of
our sins may be imputed to him because of our nature, without the stain
of sin inherent in him; because of his supernatural conception he is
capable, as one of kin to us, to bear our curse without being touched
by our taint. By this means our sinful nature is assumed without sin
in that nature which was assumed by him: “flesh he hath, but not sinful
flesh” (Rom. viii. 3). Real flesh, but not really sinful, only by way
of imputation. Nothing but the power of God is evident in this whole
work: by ordinary laws and the course of nature a virgin could not bear
a son: nothing but a supernatural and almighty grace could intervene to
make so holy and perfect a conjunction. The generation of others, in an
ordinary way, is by male and female: but the virgin is overshadowed by
the Spirit and power of the Highest.[868] Man only is the product of
natural generation; this which is born of the virgin is the holy thing,
the Son of God. In other generations, a rational soul is only united
to a material body: but in this, the Divine nature is united with the
human in one person by an indissoluble union.
{b62} The _Second_ act of power in the person redeeming, is the union
of the two natures, the Divine and human. The designing indeed of this
was an act of wisdom; but the accomplishing it was an act of power.
1. There is in this redeeming person a union of two natures. He is
God and man in one person (Heb. i. 8, 9). “Thy throne, O God, is for
ever and ever: God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of
gladness,” &c. The Son is called God, having a throne for ever and ever,
and the unction speaks him man: the Godhead cannot be anointed, nor
hath any fellows. Humanity and Divinity are ascribed to him (Rom. i. 3,
4). “He was of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared
to be the Son of God, by his resurrection from the dead.” The Divinity
and humanity are both prophetically joined (Zech. xii. 10), “I will
pour out my Spirit;” the pouring forth the Spirit is an act only of
Divine grace and power. “And they shall look upon me whom they have
pierced;” the same person pours forth the Spirit as God, and is pierced
as man. “The Word was made flesh” (John i. 14). Word from eternity was
made flesh in time; Word and flesh in one person; a great God, and a
little infant.
2. The terms of this union were infinitely distant. What greater
distance can there be than between the Deity and humanity, between
the Creator and a creature? Can you imagine the distance between
eternity and time, Infinite Power and miserable infirmity, an immortal
spirit and dying flesh, the highest Being and nothing? yet these are
espoused. A God of unmixed blessedness is linked personally with a
man of perpetual sorrows: life incapable to die, joined to a body
in that economy incapable to live without dying first; infinite
purity, and a reputed sinner; eternal blessedness with a cursed nature,
Almightiness and weakness, omniscience and ignorance, immutability
and changeableness, incomprehensibleness and comprehensibility; that
which cannot be comprehended, and that which can be comprehended; that
which is entirely independent, and that which is totally dependent;
the Creator forming all things, and the creature made, met together to
a personal union; “The word made flesh” (John i. 14), the eternal Son,
the “Seed of Abraham” (Heb. ii. 16). What more miraculous, than for God
to become man, and man to become God? That a person possessed of all
the perfections of the Godhead, should inherit all the imperfections of
the manhood in one person, sin only excepted: a holiness incapable of
sinning to be made sin; God blessed forever, taking the properties of
human nature, and human nature admitted to a union with the properties
of the Creator: the fulness of the Deity, and the emptiness of man
united together (Col. ii. 9); not by a shining of the Deity upon
the humanity, as the light of the sun upon the earth, but by an
inhabitation or indwelling of the Deity in the humanity. Was there not
need of an Infinite Power to bring together terms so far asunder, to
elevate the humanity to be capable of, and disposed for, a conjunction
with the Deity? If a clod of earth should be advanced to, and united
with the body of the sun, such an advance would evidence itself to be
a work of Almighty power: the clod hath nothing in its {b63} own nature
to render it so glorious, no power to climb up to so high a dignity:
how little would such a union be, to that we are speaking of! Nothing
less than an Incomprehensible Power could effect what an
Incomprehensible Wisdom did project in this affair.
3. Especially since the union is so strait. It is not such a union
as is between a man and his house he dwells in, whence he goes out and
to which he returns, without any alteration of himself or his house;
nor such a union as is between a man and his garment, which both
communicate and receive warmth from one another; nor such as is between
an artificer and his instrument wherewith he works; nor such a union
as one friend hath with another: all these are distant things, not one
in nature, but have distinct substances. Two friends, though united by
love, are distinct persons; a man and his clothes, an artificer and his
instruments, have distinct subsistencies; but the humanity of Christ
hath no subsistence, but in the person of Christ. The straitness of
this union is expressed, and may be somewhat conceived, by the union of
fire with iron; “fire pierceth through all the parts of iron, it unites
itself with every particle, bestows a light, heat, purity, upon all
of it; you cannot distinguish the iron from the fire, or the fire from
the iron, yet they are distinct natures; so the Deity is united to the
whole humanity, seasons it, and bestows an excellency upon it, yet the
natures still remain distinct. And as during that union of fire with
iron, the iron is incapable of rust or blackness, so is the humanity
incapable of sin: and as the operation of fire is attributed to the
red‑hot iron (as the iron may be said to heat, burn, and the fire may
be said to cut and pierce), yet the imperfections of the iron do not
affect the fire; so in this mystery, those things which belong to the
Divinity are ascribed to the humanity, and those things which belong to
the humanity, are ascribed to the Divinity, in regard of the person in
whom those natures are united: yet the imperfections of the humanity
do not hurt the Divinity.”[869] The Divinity of Christ is as really
united with the humanity, as the soul with the body; the person was
one, though the natures were two; so united, that the sufferings of
the human nature were the sufferings of that person, and the dignity
of the Divine was imputed to the human, by reason of that unity of both
in one person; hence the blood of the human nature is said to be the
“blood of God” (Acts xx. 28). All things ascribed to the Son of God,
may be ascribed to this man; and the things ascribed to this man, may
be ascribed to the Son of God, as this man is the Son of God, eternal,
Almighty; and it may be said, “God suffered, was crucified,” &c., for
the person of Christ is but one, most simple; the person suffered, that
was God and Man united, making one person.[870]
4. And though the union be so strait, yet without confusion of the
natures, or change of them into one another. The two natures of Christ
are not mixed, as liquors that incorporate with one another when they
are poured into a vessel; the Divine nature is not turned into the
human, nor the human into the Divine; one nature doth not swallow up
another, and make a third nature distinct from each {b64} of them.[871]
The Deity is not turned into the humanity, as air (which is next to
a spirit) may be thickened and turned into water, and water may be
rarified into air by the power of heat boiling it. The Deity cannot
be changed, because the nature of it is to be unchangeable; it would
not be Deity, if it were mortal and capable of suffering. The humanity
is not changed into the Deity, for then Christ could not have been a
sufferer; if the humanity had been swallowed up into the Deity, it had
lost its own distinct nature, and put on the nature of the Deity, and,
consequently, been incapable of suffering; finite can never, by any
mixture, be changed into infinite, nor infinite into finite. This union,
in this regard, may be resembled to the union of light and air, which
are strictly joined; for the light passes through all parts of the air,
but they are not confounded, but remain in their distinct essences as
before the union, without the least confusion with one another. The
Divine nature remains as it was before the union, entire in itself;
only the Divine person assumes another nature to himself.[872] The
human nature remains, as it would have done, had it existed separately
from the Λόγος, except that then it would have had a proper subsistence
by itself, which now it borrows from its union with the Λόγος, or, word;
but that doth not belong to the constitution of its nature. Now let us
consider, what a wonder of power is all this: the knitting a noble soul
to a body of clay, was not so great an exploit of Almightiness, as the
espousing infinite and finite together. Man is further distant from God,
than man from nothing. What a wonder is it, that two natures infinitely
distant, should be more intimately united than anything in the world;
and yet without any confusion! that the same person should have both a
glory and a grief; an infinite joy in the Deity, and an inexpressible
sorrow in the humanity! That a God upon a throne should be an infant in
a cradle; the thundering Creator be a weeping babe and a suffering man,
are such expressions of mighty power, as well as condescending love,
that they astonish men upon earth, and angels in heaven.
_Thirdly_, Power was evident in the progress of his life; in the
miracles he wrought. How often did he expel malicious and powerful
devils from their habitations; hurl them from their thrones, and make
them fall from heaven like lightning! How many wonders were wrought
by his bare word, or a single touch! Sight restored to the blind,
and hearing to the deaf; palsy members restored to the exercise of
their functions; a dismiss given to many deplorable maladies; impure
leprosies chased from the persons they had infected, and bodies
beginning to putrefy raised from the grave. But the mightiest argument
of power was his patience; that He who was, in his Divine nature,
elevated above the world, should so long continue upon a dunghill,
endure the contradiction of sinners against himself, be patiently
subject to the reproaches and indignities of men, without displaying
that justice which was essential to the Deity; and, in especial manner,
daily merited by their provoking crimes. The patience of man under
great affronts, is a greater argument of power, than the brawniness
of his arm; a strength employed {b65} in the revenge of every injury,
signifies a greater infirmity in the soul, than there can be ability
in the body.
_Fourthly_, Divine power was apparent in his resurrection. The
unlocking the belly of the whale for the deliverance of Jonas; the
rescue of Daniel from the den of lions; and the restraining the fire
from burning the three children, were signal declarations of his power,
and types of the resurrection of our Saviour. But what are those to
that which was represented by them? That was a power over natural
causes, a curbing of beasts, and restraining of elements; but in
the resurrection of Christ, God exercised a power over himself,
and quenched the flames of his own wrath, hotter than millions of
Nebuchadnezzar’s furnaces; unlocked the prison doors, wherein the
curses of the law had lodged our Saviour, stronger than the belly and
ribs of a leviathan. In the rescue of Daniel and Jonas, God overpowered
beasts; and in this tore up the strength of the old serpent, and
plucked the sceptre from the hand of the enemy of mankind. The work
of resurrection, indeed, considered in itself, requires the efficacy
of an Almighty power; neither man nor angel can create new dispositions
in a dead body, to render it capable of lodging a spiritual soul; nor
can they restore a dislodged soul, by their own power, to such a body.
The restoring a dead body to life requires an infinite power, as well
as the creation of the world; but there was in the resurrection of
Christ, something more difficult than this; while he lay in the grave
he was under the curse of the law, under the execution of that dreadful
sentence, “Thou shalt die the death.” His resurrection was not only the
re‑tying the marriage knot between his soul and body, or the rolling
the stone from the grave; but a taking off an infinite weight, the sin
of mankind, which lay upon him. So vast a weight could not be removed
without the strength of an Almighty arm. It is, therefore, not to an
ordinary operation, but an operation with power (Rom. i. 4), and such a
power wherein the glory of the Father did appear (Rom. vi. 4); “Raised
up from the dead by the glory of the Father,” that is, the glorious
power of God. As the Eternal generation is stupendous, so is his
resurrection, which is called, a new begetting of him (Acts xiii. 33).
It is a wonder of power, that the Divine and human nature should be
joined; and no less wonder that his person should surmount and rise up
from the curse of God, under which he lay. The apostle, therefore, adds
one expression to another, and heaps up a variety, signifying thereby
that one was not enough to represent it (Eph. i. 19); “Exceeding
greatness of power, and working of mighty power, which he wrought in
Christ when he raised him from the dead.” It was an hyperbole of power,
the excellency of the mightiness of his strength: the loftiness of the
expressions seems to come short of the apprehension he had of it in his
soul.
II. This power appears in the publication and propagation of the
doctrine of redemption. The Divine power will appear, if you consider,
1. The nature of the doctrine. 2. The instruments employed in it.
3. The means they used to propagate it. 4. The success they had.
1. The nature of the doctrine. (1.) It was contrary to the common
{b66} received reason of the world. The philosophers, the masters of
knowledge among the Gentiles, had maxims of a different stamp from
it. Though they agreed in the being of a God, yet their notions of his
nature were confused and embroiled with many errors; the unity of God
was not commonly assented unto; they had multiplied deities according
to the fancies they had received from some of a more elevated wit and
refined brain than others. Though they had some notion of mediators,
yet they placed in those seats their public benefactors, men that had
been useful to the world, or their particular countries, in imparting
to them some profitable invention. To discard those, was to charge
themselves with ingratitude to them, from whom they had received signal
benefits, and to whose mediation, conduct, or protection, they ascribed
all the success they had been blessed with in their several provinces,
and to charge themselves with folly for rendering an honor and worship
to them so long. Could the doctrine of a crucified Mediator, whom they
had never seen, that had conquered no country for them, never enlarged
their territories, brought to light no new profitable invention for
the increase of their earthly welfare, as the rest had done, be thought
sufficient to balance so many of their reputed heroes? How ignorant
were they in the foundations of the true religion! The belief of a
Providence was staggering; nor had they a true prospect of the nature
of virtue and vice; yet they had a fond opinion of the strength of
their own reason, and the maxims that had been handed down to them by
their predecessors, which Paul (1 Tim. vi. 20) entitles, a “science
falsely so called,” either meant of the philosophers or the Gnostics.
They presumed that they were able to measure all things by their own
reason; whence, when the apostle came to preach the doctrine of the
Gospel at Athens, the great school of reason in that age, they gave him
no better a title than that of a babbler (Acts xvii. 18), and openly
mocked him (ver. 32); a seed gatherer,[873] one that hath no more
brain or sense than a fellow that gathers up seeds that are spilled
in a market, or one that hath a vain and empty sound, without sense or
reason, like a foolish mountebank; so slightly did those rationalists
of the world think of the wisdom of heaven. That the Son of God should
veil himself in a mortal body, and suffer a disgraceful death in
it, were things above the ken of reason. Besides, the world had a
general disesteem of the religion of the Jews, and were prejudiced
against anything that came from them; whence the Romans, that used to
incorporate the gods of other conquered nations in their capital, never
moved to have the God of Israel worshipped among them. Again, they
might argue against it with much fleshly reason: here is a crucified
God, preached by a company of mean and ignorant persons, what reason
can we have to entertain this doctrine, since the Jews, who, as they
tell us, had the prophecies of him, did not acknowledge him? Surely,
had there been such predictions, they would not have crucified, but
crowned their King, and expected from him the conquest of the earth
under their power. What reason have we to entertain him, whom his
own nation, among whom he lived, with whom he conversed {b67} so
unanimously, by the vote of the rulers as well as the rout, rejected?
It was impossible to conquer minds possessed with so many errors, and
applauding themselves in their own reason, and to render them capable
of receiving revealed truths without the influence of a Divine power.
(2.) It was contrary to the customs of the world. The strength of
custom in most men, surmounts the strength of reason, and men commonly
are so wedded to it, that they will be sooner divorced from anything
than the modes and patterns received from their ancestors. The
endeavoring to change customs of an ancient standing, hath begotten
tumults and furious mutinies among nations, though the change would
have been much for their advantage. This doctrine struck at the root
of the religion of the world, and the ceremonies, wherein they had been
educated from their infancy, delivered to them from their ancestors,
confirmed by the customary observance of many ages, rooted in their
minds and established by their laws (Acts xviii. 13); “This fellow
persuadeth us to worship God contrary to the law;” against customs, to
which they ascribed the happiness of their states, and the prosperity
of their people, and would put, in the place of this religion they
would abolish, a new one instituted by a man, whom the Jews had
condemned, and put to death upon a cross, as an impostor, blasphemer,
and seditious person. It was a doctrine that would change the customs
of the Jews, who were intrusted with the oracles of God. It would
bury forever their ceremonial rites, delivered to them by Moses, from
that God, who had, with a mighty hand, brought them out of Egypt,
consecrated their law with thunders and lightnings from Mount Sinai, at
the time of its publication, backed it with severe sanctions, confirmed
it by many miracles, both in the wilderness and their Canaan, and had
continued it for so many hundred years. They could not but remember
how they had been ravaged by other nations, and judgments sent upon
them when they neglected and slighted it; and with what great success
they were followed when they valued and observed it; and how they had
abhorred the Author of this new religion, who had spoken slightly of
their traditions, till they put him to death with infamy. Was it an
easy matter to divorce them from that worship, upon which were entailed,
as they imagined, their peace, plenty, and glory, things of the dearest
regard with mankind? The Jews were no less devoted to their ceremonial
traditions than the heathen were to their vain superstitions. This
doctrine of the gospel was of that nature, that the state of religion,
all over the earth, must be overturned by it; the wisdom of the Greeks
must vail to it, the idolatry of the people must stoop to it, and the
profane customs of men must moulder under the weight of it. Was it
an easy matter for the pride of nature to deny a customary wisdom, to
entertain a new doctrine against the authority of their ancestors, to
inscribe folly upon that which hath made them admired by the rest of
the world? Nothing can be of greater esteem with men, than the credit
of their lawgivers and founders, the religion of their fathers, and
prosperity of themselves: hence the minds of men were sharpened against
it. The Greeks, the {b68} wisest nation, slighted it as foolish; the
Jews, the religious nation, stumbled at it, as contrary to the received
interpretations of ancient prophecies and carnal conceits of an earthly
glory. The dimmest eye may behold the difficulty to change custom, a
second nature: it is as hard as to change a wolf into a lamb, to level
a mountain, stop the course of the sun, or change the inhabitants of
Africa into the color of Europe. Custom dips men in as durable a dye as
nature. The difficulties of carrying it on against the Divine religion
of the Jew, and rooted custom of the Gentiles, were unconquerable by
any but an Almighty power. And in this the power of God hath appeared
wonderfully.
(3.) It was contrary to the sensuality of the world, and the lusts of
the flesh. How much the Gentiles were overgrown with base and unworthy
lusts at the time of the publication of the gospel, needs no other
memento than the apostle’s discourse (Rom. i.). As there was no error
but prevailed upon their minds, so there was no brutish affection
but was wedded to their hearts. The doctrine proposed to them was not
easy; it flattered not the sense, but checked the stream of nature. It
thundered down those three great engines whereby the devil had subdued
the world to himself: “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and
the pride of life:” not only the most sordid affections of the flesh,
but the more refined gratifications of the mind: it stripped nature
both of devil and man; of what was commonly esteemed great and virtuous.
That which was the root of their fame, and the satisfaction of their
ambition, was struck at by this axe of the gospel. The first article of
it ordered them to deny themselves, not to presume upon their own worth;
to lay their understandings and wills at the foot of the cross, and
resign them up to one newly crucified at Jerusalem: honors and wealth
were to be despised, flesh to be tamed, the cross to be borne, enemies
to be loved, revenge not to be satisfied, blood to be spilled, and
torments to be endured for the honor of One they never saw, nor ever
before heard of; who was preached with the circumstances of a shameful
death, enough to affright them from the entertainment: and the report
of a resurrection and glorious ascension were things never heard of
by them before, and unknown in the world, that would not easily enter
into the belief of men: the cross, disgrace, self‑denial, were only
discoursed of in order to the attainment of an invisible world, and
an unseen reward, which none of their predecessors ever returned to
acquaint them with; a patient death, contrary to the pride of nature,
was published as the way to happiness and a blessed immortality: the
dearest lusts were to be pierced to death for the honor of this new
Lord. Other religions brought wealth and honor; this struck them
off from such expectations, and presented them with no promise of
anything in this life, but a prospect of misery; except those inward
consolations to which before they had been utter strangers, and had
never experimented. It made them to depend not upon themselves, but
upon the sole grace of God. It decried all natural, all moral idolatry,
things as dear to men as the apple of their eyes. It despoiled them of
whatsoever the mind, will, and affections of men, naturally lay claim
to, and glory in. It pulled {b69} self up by the roots, unmanned carnal
man, and debased the principle of honor and self‑satisfaction, which
the world counted at that time noble and brave. In a word, it took them
off from themselves, to act like creatures of God’s framing; to know no
more than he would admit them, and do no more than he did command them.
How difficult must it needs be to reduce men, that placed all their
happiness in the pleasures of this life, from their pompous idolatry
and brutish affections, to this mortifying religion! What might the
world say? Here is a doctrine will render us a company of puling
animals: farewell generosity, bravery, sense of honor, courage in
enlarging the bounds of our country, for an ardent charity to the
bitterest of our enemies. Here is a religion will rust our swords,
canker our arms, dispirit what we have hitherto called virtue, and
annihilate what hath been esteemed worthy and comely among mankind.
Must we change conquest for suffering, the increase of our reputation
for self‑denial, the natural sentiment of self‑preservation for
affecting a dreadful death? How impossible was it that a crucified
Lord, and a crucifying doctrine should be received in the world without
the mighty operation of a divine power upon the hearts of men! And in
this also the almighty power of God did notably shine forth.
2. Divine power appeared in the instruments employed for the
publishing and propagating the gospel; who were (1.) Mean and
worthless in themselves: not noble and dignified with an earthly
grandeur, but of a low condition, meanly bred: so far from any splendid
estates, that they possessed nothing but their nets; without any credit
and reputation in the world; without comeliness and strength; as unfit
to subdue the world by preaching, as an army of hares were to conquer
it by war: not learned doctors, bred up at the feet of the famous
Rabbins at Jerusalem, whom Paul calls “the princes of the world” (1 Cor.
ii. 8); nor nursed up in the school of Athens, under the philosophers
and orators of the time: not the wise men of Greece, but the fishermen
of Galilee; naturally skilled in no language but their own, and no more
exact in that than those of the same condition in any other nation:
ignorant of everything but the language of their lakes, and their
fishing trade; except Paul, called some time after the rest to that
employment: and after the descent of the Spirit, they were ignorant and
unlearned in everything but the doctrine they were commanded to publish;
for the council, before whom they were summoned, proved them to be
so, which increased their wonder at them (Acts iv. 13). Had it been
published by a voice from heaven, that twelve poor men, taken out of
boats and creeks, without any help of learning, should conquer the
world to the cross, it might have been thought an illusion against all
the reason of men; yet we know it was undertaken and accomplished by
them. They published this doctrine in Jerusalem, and quickly spread
it over the greatest part of the world. Folly outwitted wisdom, and
weakness overpowered strength. The conquest of the east by Alexander
was not so admirable as the enterprise of these poor men. He attempted
his conquest with the hands of a warlike nation, though, indeed, but a
small number of thirty thousand {b70} against multitudes, many hundred
thousands of the enemies; yet an effeminate enemy; a people inured to
slaughter and victory attacked great numbers, but enfeebled by luxury
and voluptuousness. Besides, he was bred up to such enterprises, had a
learned education under the best philosopher, and a military education
under the best commander, and a natural courage to animate him. These
instruments had no such advantage from nature; the heavenly treasure
was placed in those earthen vessels, as Gideon’s lamps in empty
pitchers (Judges vii. 16), that the excellency, or hyperbole, of the
power, might be of God (2 Cor. iv. 7), and the strength of his arm be
displayed in the infirmity of the instruments. They were destitute of
earthly wisdom, and therefore despised by the Jews, and derided by the
Gentiles; the publishers were accounted madmen, and the embracers fools.
Had they been men of known natural endowments, the power of God had
been veiled under the gifts of the creature.
(2.) Therefore a Divine power suddenly spirited them, and fitted
them for so great a work. Instead of ignorance, they had the knowledge
of the tongues; and they that were scarce well skilled in their own
dialect, were instructed on the sudden to speak the most flourishing
languages in the world, and discourse to the people of several nations
the great things of God (Acts ii. 11). Though they were not enriched
with any worldly wealth, and possessed nothing, yet they were so
sustained that they wanted nothing in any place where they came; a
table was spread for them in the midst of their bitterest enemies.
Their fearfulness was changed into courage, and they that a few days
before skulked in corners for fear of the Jews (John xx. 19), speak
boldly in the name of that Jesus, whom they had seen put to death by
the power of the rulers and the fury of the people: they reproach them
with the murder of their Master, and outbrave that great people in the
midst of their temple, with the glory of that person they had so lately
crucified (Acts ii. 23; iii. 13). Peter, that was not long before
qualmed at the presence of a maid, was not daunted at the presence of
the council, that had their hands yet reeking with the blood of his
Master; but being filled with the Holy Ghost, seems to dare the power
of the priests and Jewish governors, and is as confident in the council
chamber, as he had been cowardly in the high‑priest’s hall (Acts iv. 9),
&c., the efficacy of grace triumphing over the fearfulness of nature.
Whence should this ardor and zeal, to propagate a doctrine that had
already borne the scars of the peoples’ fury be, but from a mighty
Power, which changed those hares into lions, and stripped them of
their natural cowardice to clothe them with a Divine courage; making
them in a moment both wise and magnanimous, alienating them from any
consultations with flesh and blood? As soon as ever the Holy Ghost
came upon them as a mighty rushing wind, they move up and down for the
interest of God; as fish, after a great clap of thunder, are roused,
and move more nimbly on the top of the water; therefore, that which did
so fit them for this undertaking, is called by the title of “power from
on high” (Luke xxiv. 49).
3. The Divine power appears in the means whereby it was propagated.
{b71} (1.) By means different from the methods of the world. Not
by force of arms, as some religions have taken root in the world.
Mahomet’s horse hath trampled upon the heads of men, to imprint an
Alcoran in their brains, and robbed men of their goods to plant their
religion. But the apostles bore not this doctrine through the world
upon the points of their swords; they presented a bodily death where
they would bestow an immortal life. They employed not troops of men in
a warlike posture, which had been possible for them after the gospel
was once spread; they had no ambition to subdue men unto themselves,
but to God; they coveted not the possessions of others; designed not to
enrich themselves; invaded not the rights of princes, nor the liberties
and properties of the people: they rifled them not of their estates,
nor scared them into this religion by a fear of losing their worldly
happiness. The arguments they used would naturally drive them from
an entertainment of this doctrine, rather than allure them to be
proselytes to it: their design was to change their hearts, not their
government; to wean them from the love of the world, to a love of a
Redeemer; to remove that which would ruin their souls. It was not to
enslave them, but ransom them; they had a warfare, but not with carnal
weapons, but such as were “mighty through God for the pulling down
strongholds” (2 Cor. x. 4); they used no weapons but the doctrine they
preached. Others that have not gained conquests by the edge of the
sword and the stratagems of war, have extended their opinions to others
by the strength of human reason, and the insinuations of eloquence.
But the apostles had as little flourish in their tongues, as edge upon
their swords: their preaching was “not with the enticing words of man’s
wisdom” (1 Cor. ii. 4); their presence was mean, and their discourses
without varnish; their doctrine was plain, a “crucified Christ;” a
doctrine unlaced, ungarnished, untoothsome to the world; but they had
the demonstration of the Spirit, and a mighty power for their companion
in the work. The doctrine they preached, viz. the death, resurrection
and ascension of Christ, are called the powers, not of this world, but
“of the world to come” (Heb. vi. 5). No less than a supernatural power
could conduct them in this attempt, with such weak methods in human
appearance.
(2.) Against all the force, power, and wit of the world. The
division in the eastern empire, and the feeble and consuming state of
the western, contributed to Mahomet’s success.[874] But never was Rome
in a more flourishing condition: learning, eloquence, wisdom, strength,
were at the highest pitch. Never was there a more diligent watch
against any innovations; never was that state governed by more severe
and suspicious princes, than at the time when Tiberius and Nero held
the reins. No time seemed to be more unfit for the entrance of a new
doctrine than that age, wherein it begun to be first published; never
did any religion meet with that opposition from men. Idolatry hath been
often settled without any contest; but this hath suffered the same fate
with the institutor of it, and endured the contradictions of sinners
against itself: and those that published it, were not only without any
worldly prop, but exposed {b72} themselves to the hatred and fury, to
the racks and tortures, of the strongest powers on earth. It never set
foot in any place, but the country was in an uproar (Acts xix. 28);
swords were drawn to destroy it; laws made to suppress it; prisons
provided for the professors of it; fires kindled to consume them, and
executioners had a perpetual employment to stifle the progress of it.
Rome, in its conquest of countries, changed not the religion, rites,
and modes of their worship: they altered their civil government, but
left them to the liberty of their religion, and many times joined with
them in the worship of their peculiar gods; and sometime imitated them
at Rome, instead of abolishing them in the cities they had subdued.
But all their councils were assembled, and their force was bandied
“against the Lord, and against his Christ;” and that city that kindly
received all manner of superstitions, hated this doctrine with an
irreconcileable hatred. It met with reproaches from the wise, and fury
from the potentates; it was derided by the one as the greatest folly,
and persecuted by the other as contrary to God and mankind; the one
were afraid to lose their esteems by the doctrine, and the other to
lose their authority by a sedition they thought a change of religion
would introduce. The Romans, that had been conquerors of the earth,
feared intestine commotions, and the falling asunder the links of their
empire: scarce any of their first emperors, but had their swords dyed
red in the blood of the Christians. The flesh with all its lusts, the
world with all its flatteries, the statesmen with all their craft, and
the mighty with all their strength, joined together to extirpate it:
though many members were taken off by the fires, yet the church not
only lived, but flourished, in the furnace. Converts were made by the
death of martyrs; and the flames which consumed their bodies, were the
occasion of firing men’s hearts with a zeal for the profession of it.
Instead of being extinguished, the doctrine shone more bright, and
multiplied under the sickles that were employed to cut it down. God
ordered every circumstance so, both in the persons that published it,
the means whereby, and the time when, that nothing but his power might
appear in it, without anything to dim and darken it.
4. The Divine power was conspicuous in the great success it had under
all these difficulties. Multitudes were prophesied of to embrace it;
whence the prophet Isaiah, after the prophecy of the death of Christ
(Isa. liii.), calls upon the church to enlarge her tents, and “lengthen
out her cords” to receive those multitudes of children that should call
her mother (Isa. liv. 2, 3); for she should “break forth on the right
hand and on the left, and her seed should inherit the Gentiles!” the
idolaters and persecutors should list their names in the muster‑roll of
the church. Presently, after the descent of the Holy Ghost from heaven
upon the apostles, you find the hearts of three thousand melted by a
plain declaration of this doctrine; who were a little before so far
from having a favorable thought of it, that some of them at least,
if not all, had expressed their rage against it, in voting for the
condemning and crucifying the Author of it (Acts ii. 41, 42): but in a
moment they were so altered, that they breathe out affections instead
of fury; neither the {b73} respect they had to their rulers, nor the
honor they bore to their priests; not the derisions of the people,
nor the threatening of punishment, could stop them from owning it in
the face of multitudes of discouragements. How wonderful is it that
they should so soon, and by such small means, pay a reverence to the
servants, who had none for the Master! that they should hear them
with patience, without the same clamor against them as against Christ,
“Crucify them, crucify them!” but, that their hearts should so suddenly
be inflamed with devotion to him dead, whom they so much abhorred when
living. It had gained footing not in a corner of the world, but in the
most famous cities; in Jerusalem, where Christ had been crucified; in
Antioch, where the name of Christians first began; in Corinth, a place
of ingenious arts; and Ephesus, the seat of a noted idol. In less
than twenty years, there was never a province of the Roman empire, and
scarce any part of the known world, but was stored with the professors
of it. Rome, that was the metropolis of the idolatrous world, had
multitudes of them sprinkled in every corner, whose “faith was spoken
of throughout the world” (Rom. i. 8). The court of Nero, that monster
of mankind, and the cruelest and sordidest tyrant that ever breathed,
was not empty of sincere votaries to it; there were “saints in Cæsar’s
house” while Paul was under Nero’s chain (Phil. iv.): and it maintained
its standing, and flourished in spite of all the force of hell, two
hundred and fifty years before any sovereign prince espoused it. The
potentates of the earth had conquered the lands of men, and subdued
their bodies; these vanquished hearts and wills, and brought the most
beloved thoughts under the yoke of Christ: so much did this doctrine
overmaster the consciences of its followers, that they rejoiced more
at their yoke, than others at their liberty; and counted it more a
glory to die for the honor of it, than to live in the profession of
it. Thus did our Saviour reign and gather subjects in the midst of his
enemies; in which respect, in the first discovery of the gospel, he is
described as “a mighty Conqueror” (Rev. vi. 2), and still conquering
in the greatness of his strength. How great a testimony of his power
is it, that from so small a cloud should rise so glorious a sun,
that should chase before it the darkness and power of hell; triumph
over the idolatry, superstition, and profaneness of the world! This
plain doctrine vanquished the obstinacy of the Jews, baffled the
understanding of the Greeks, humbled the pride of the grandees, threw
the devil not only out of bodies, but hearts; tore up the foundation
of his empire, and planted the cross, where the devil had for many
ages before established his standard. How much more than a human force
is illustrious in this whole conduct! Nothing in any age of the world
can parallel it: it being so much against the methods of nature, the
disposition of the world, and (considering the resistance against it)
seems to surmount even the works of creation. Never were there, in
any profession, such multitudes, not of bedlams, but men of sobriety,
acuteness, and wisdom, that exposed themselves to the fury of the
flames, and challenged death in the most terrifying shapes for the
honor of this doctrine. To conclude, this should be often meditated
upon to form our understandings to a {b74} full assent to the gospel,
and the truth of it; the want of which consideration of power, and
the customariness of an education in the outward profession of it, is
the ground of all the profaneness under it, and apostasy from it; the
disesteem of the truth it declares, and the neglect of the duties it
enjoins. The more we have a prospect and sense of the impressions of
Divine power in it, the more we shall have a reverence of the Divine
precepts.
III. The third thing is, the power of God appears in the application
of redemption, as well as in the Person redeeming, and the publication
and propagation of the doctrine of redemption: 1. In the planting grace.
2. In the pardon of sin. 3. In the preserving grace.
First, In the planting grace. There is no expression which the
Spirit of God hath thought fit in Scripture to resemble this work
to, but argues the exerting of a Divine power for the effecting of it.
When it is expressed by light, it is as much as the power of God in the
creating the sun; when by regeneration, it is as much as the power of
God in forming an infant, and fashioning all the parts of a man; when
it is called resurrection, it is as much as the rearing of a body again
out of putrified matter; when it is called creation, it is as much as
erecting a comely world out of mere nothing, or an inform and uncomely
mass. As we could not contrive the death of Christ for our redemption,
so we cannot form our souls to the acceptation of it; the infinite
efficacy of grace is as necessary for the one, as the infinite wisdom
of God was for laying the platform of the other. It is by his power we
have whatsoever pertains to godliness as well as life (2 Pet. i. 3);
he puts his fingers upon the handle of the lock, and turns the heart
to what point he pleases; the action whereby he performs this, is
expressed by a word of force; “He hath snatched us from the power of
darkness:”[875] the action whereby it is performed manifests it. In
reference to this power, it is called creation, which is a production
from nothing; and conversion is a production from something more
incapable of that state, than mere nothing is of being. There is
greater distance between the terms of sin and righteousness, corruption
and grace, than between the terms of nothing and being; the greater
the distance is, the more power is required to the producing any thing.
As in miracles, the miracle is the greater, where the change is the
greater; and the change is the greater, where the distance is the
greater. As it was a more signal mark of power to change a dead man
to life, than to change a sick man to health; so that the change here
being from a term of a greater distance, is more powerful than the
creation of heaven and earth. Therefore, whereas creation is said to
be wrought by his hands, and the heavens by his fingers, or his word;
conversion is said to be wrought by his arm (Isa. liii. 1). In creation,
we had an earthly; by conversion, a heavenly state: in creation,
nothing is changed into something; in conversion, hell is transformed
into heaven, which is more than the turning nothing into a glorious
angel. In that thanksgiving of our Saviour, for the revelation of the
knowledge of himself to babes, the simple of the world, he gives {b75}
the title to his Father, of “Lord of heaven and earth” (Matt. xi. 5);
intimating it to be an act of his creative and preserving power; that
power whereby he formed heaven and earth, hath preserved the standing,
and governed the motions of all creatures from the beginning of the
world. It is resembled to the most magnificent act of divine power that
God ever put forth, viz. that “in the resurrection of our Saviour” (Eph.
i. 19); wherein there was more than an ordinary impression of might.
It is not so small a power as that whereby we speak with tongues, or
whereby Christ opened the mouths of the dumb, and the ears of the deaf,
or unloosed the cords of death from a person. It is not that power
whereby our Saviour wrought those stupendous miracles when he was in
the world: but that power which wrought a miracle that amazed the most
knowing angels, as well as ignorant man; the taking off the weight of
the sin of the world from our Saviour, and advancing him in his human
nature to rule over the angelic host, making him head of principalities
and powers; as much as to say, as great as all that power which is
displayed in our redemption, from the first foundation to the last
line in the superstructure. It is, therefore, often set forth with an
emphasis, as “Excellency of power” (2 Cor. iv. 7), and “Glorious power”
(2 Pet. i. 3): “to glory and virtue,” we translate it, but it is διὰ
δόξης, through glory and virtue, that is, by a glorious virtue or
strength.
The instrument whereby it is wrought, is dignified with the title of
power. The gospel which God useth in this great affair is called “The
power of God to salvation” (Rom. i. 16), and the “Rod of his strength”
(Ps. cx. 2); and the day of the gospel’s appearance in the heart is
emphatically called, “The day of power” (ver. 3); wherein he brings
down strong‑holds and towering imaginations. And, therefore, the angel
Gabriel, which name signifies the power of God, was always sent upon
those messages which concerned the gospel, as to Daniel, Zacharias,
Mary.[876] The gospel is the power of God in a way of instrumentality,
but the almightiness of God is the principal in a way of efficiency.
The gospel is the sceptre of Christ; but the power of Christ is the
mover of that sceptre. The gospel is not as a bare word spoken, and
proposing the thing; but as backed with a higher efficacy of grace;
as the sword doth instrumentally cut, but the arm that wields it gives
the blow, and makes it successful in the stroke. But this gospel is the
power of God, because he edgeth this by his own power, to surmount all
resistance, and vanquish the greatest malice of that man he designs to
work upon. The power of God is conspicuous,
1. In turning the heart of man against the strength of the
inclinations of nature. In the forming of man of the dust of the
ground; as the matter contributed nothing to the action whereby
God formed it, so it had no principle of resistance contrary to the
design of God; but in converting the heart, there is not only wanting
a principle of assistance from him in this work, but the whole strength
of corrupt nature is alarmed to combat against the power of his grace.
When the gospel is presented, the understanding is not only ignorant of
it, but the will perverse against it; the one doth not relish, and the
{b76} other doth not esteem, the excellency of the object. The carnal
wisdom in the mind contrives against it, and the rebellious will puts
the orders in execution against the counsel of God, which requires the
invincible power of God to enlighten the dark mind, to know what it
slights; and the fierce will, to embrace what it loathes. The stream of
nature cannot be turned, but by a power above nature; it is not all the
created power in heaven and earth can change a swine into a man, or a
venomous toad into an holy and illustrious angel. Yet this work is not
so great, in some respect, as the stilling the fierceness of nature,
the silencing the swelling waves in the heart, and the casting out
those brutish affections which are born and grow up with us. There
would be no, or far less, resistance in a mere animal, to be changed
into a creature of a higher rank, than there is in a natural man to
be turned into a serious Christian. There is in every natural man a
stoutness of heart, a stiff neck, unwillingness to good, forwardness
to evil; Infinite Power quells this stoutness, demolisheth these
strongholds, turns this wild ass in her course, and routs those armies
of turbulent nature against the grace of God. To stop the floods of the
sea is not such an act of power, as to turn the tide of the heart. This
power hath been employed upon every convert in the world; what would
you say, then, if you knew all the channels in which it hath run since
the days of Adam? If the alteration of one rocky heart into a pool of
water be a wonder of power, what then is the calming and sweetening
by his word those 144,000 of the tribes of Israel, and that numberless
multitude of all nations and people that shall stand “before the
throne” (Rev. vii. 9), which were all naturally so many raging seas?
Not one converted soul from Adam to the last that shall be in the end
of the world, but is a trophy of the Divine conquest. None were pure
volunteers, nor listed themselves in his service, till he put forth his
strong arm to draw them to him. No man’s understanding, but was chained
with darkness, and fond of it; no man but had corruption in his will,
which was dearer to him than anything else which could be proposed
for his true happiness. These things are most evident in Scripture and
experience.
2. As it is wrought against the inclinations of nature, so
against a multitude of corrupt habits rooted in the souls of men. A
distemper in its first invasion may more easily be cured, than when
it becomes chronical and inveterate. The strength of a disease, or
the complication of many, magnifies the power of the physician, and
efficacy of the medicine that tames and expels it. What power is that
which hath made men stoop, when natural habits have been grown giants
by custom; when the putrefaction of nature hath engendered a multitude
of worms; when the ulcers are many and deplorable; when many cords,
wherewith God would have bound the sinner, have been broken, and (like
Sampson) the wicked heart hath gloried in its strength, and grown more
proud, that it hath stood like a strong fort against those batteries,
under which others have fallen flat; every proud thought, every evil
habit captivated, serves for matter of triumph to the “power of God”
(2 Cor. x. 5). What resistance will a multitude of them make, when
one of them is enough {b77} to hold the faculty under its dominion,
and intercept its operations? So many customary habits, so many old
natures, so many different strengths added to nature, every one of
them standing as a barricado against the way of grace; all the errors
the understanding is possessed with, think the gospel folly; all the
vices the will is filled with, count it the fetter and band. Nothing so
contrary to man, as to be thought a fool; nothing so contrary to man,
as to enter into slavery. It is no easy matter to plant the cross of
Christ upon a heart guided by many principles against the truth of it,
and biased by a world of wickedness against the holiness of it. Nature
renders a man too feeble and indisposed, and custom renders a man more
weak and unwilling to change his hue (Jer. xiii. 23). To dispossess man
then of his self‑esteem and self‑excellency; to make room for God in
the heart, where there was none but for sin, as dear to him as himself;
to hurl down the pride of nature; to make stout imaginations stoop to
the cross; to make desires of self‑advancement sink into a zeal for the
glorifying of God, and an overruling design for his honor, is not to
be ascribed to any but an outstretched arm wielding the sword of the
Spirit. To have a heart full of the fear of God, that was just before
filled with a contempt of him; to have a sense of his power, an eye to
his glory, admiring thoughts of his wisdom, a faith in his truth, that
had lower thoughts of him and all his perfections, than he had of a
creature; to have a hatred of his habitual lusts, that had brought him
in much sensitive pleasure; to loath them as much as he loved them;
to cherish the duties he hated; to live by faith in, and obedience to,
the Redeemer, who was before so heartily under the conduct of Satan
and self; to chase the acts of sin from his members, and the pleasing
thoughts of sin from his mind; to make a stout wretch willingly fall
down, crawl upon the ground, and adore that Saviour whom before he
out‑dared, is a triumphant act of Infinite Power that can subdue all
things to itself, and break those multitudes of locks and bolts that
were upon us.
3. Against a multitude of temptations and interests. The temptations
rich men have in this world are so numerous and strong, that the
entrance of one of them into the kingdom of heaven, that is, the
entertainment of the gospel, is made by our Saviour an impossible thing
with men, and procurable only by the power of God (Luke xviii. 24‒26).
The Divine strength only can separate the world from the heart, and the
heart from the world. There must be an incomprehensible power to chase
away the devil, that had so long, so strong a footing in the affections;
to render the soil he had sown with so many tares and weeds, capable
of good grain; to make spirits, that had found the sweetness of worldly
prosperity, wrapt up all their happiness in it, and not only bent down,
but――as it were――buried in earth and mud, to be loosened from those
beloved cords, to disrelish the earth for a crucified Christ; I say,
this must be the effect of an almighty power.
4. The manner of conversion shews no less the power of God. There is
not only an irresistible force used in it, but an agreeable sweetness.
The power is so efficacious, that nothing can vanquish it; and so sweet,
that none did ever complain of it. The Almighty {b78} virtue displays
itself invincibly, yet without constraint; compelling the will without
offering violence to it, and making it cease to be will: not forcing it,
but changing it: not dragging it, but drawing it; making it will where
before it nilled; removing the corrupt nature of the will, without
invading the created nature and rights of the faculty; not working in
us against the physical nature of the will, but working it “to will”
(Phil. ii. 13). This work is therefore called creation, resurrection,
to shew its irresistible power; it is called illumination, persuasion,
drawing, to shew the suitableness of its efficacy to the nature of
the human faculties: it is a drawing with cords, which testifies
an invincible strength; but, with cords of love, which testifies
a delightful conquest. It is hard to determine whether it be more
powerful than sweet, or more sweet than powerful. It is no mean part
of the power of God to twist together victory and pleasure; to give
a blow as delightful as strong, as pleasing to the sufferer, as it is
sharp to the sinner.
Secondly, The power of God, in the application of redemption, is
evident in the pardoning a sinner.
1. In the pardon itself. The power of God is made the ground of
his patience; or the reason why he is patient, is, because he would
“shew his power” (Rom. ix. 22). It is a part of magnanimity to pass by
injuries: as weaker stomachs cannot concoct the tougher food, so weak
minds cannot digest the harder injuries: he that passes over a wrong is
superior to his adversary that does it. When God speaks of his own name
as merciful, he speaks first of himself as powerful (Exod. xxxiv. 6),
“The Lord, The Lord God,” that is, The Lord, the strong Lord, Jehovah,
the strong Jehovah. Let the power of my Lord be great, saith Moses,
when he prays for the forgiveness of the people:[877] the word _jigdal_
is written with a great _jod_, or a _jod_ above the other letters.
The power of God in pardoning is advanced beyond an ordinary strain,
beyond the creative strength. In the creation, he had power over the
creatures; in this, power over himself: in creation, not himself, but
the creatures were the object of his power; in that, no attribute of
his nature could article against his design. In the pardon of a sinner,
after many overtures made to him and refused by him, God exerciseth a
power over himself; for the sinner hath dishonored God, provoked his
justice, abused his goodness, done injury to all those attributes which
are necessary to his relief: it was not so in creation, nothing was
incapable of disobliging God from bringing it into being. The dust,
which was the matter of Adam’s body, needed only the extrinsic power
of God to form it into a man, and inspire it with a living soul: it
had not rendered itself obnoxious to Divine justice, nor was capable to
excite any disputes between his perfections. But after the entrance of
sin, and the merit of death, thereby there was a resistance in justice
to the free remission of man: God was to exercise a power over himself,
to answer his justice, and pardon the sinner; as well as a power over
the creature, to reduce the run away and rebel. Unless we have recourse
to the infiniteness of God’s power, the infiniteness of our guilt will
weigh us down: we must consider not only that we {b79} have a mighty
guilt to press us, but a mighty God to relieve us. In the same act of
his being our righteousness, he is our strength: “In the Lord have I
righteousness and strength” (Isa. xlv. 24).
2. In the sense of pardon. When the soul hath been wounded with the
sense of sin, and its iniquities have stared it in the face, the
raising the soul from a despairing condition, and lifting it above
those waters which terrified it, to cast the light of comfort, as well
as the light of grace, into a heart covered with more than an Egyptian
darkness, is an act of his infinite and creating power (Isa. lvii. 19);
“I create the fruit of the lips; Peace.” Men may wear out their lips
with numbering up the promises of grace and arguments of peace, but
all will signify no more, without a creative power, than if all men and
angels should call to that white upon the wall to shine as splendidly
as the sun. God only can create Jerusalem, and every child of Jerusalem
a rejoicing (Isa. xlv. 18). A man is no more able to apply to himself
any word of comfort, under the sense of sin, than he is able to convert
himself, and turn the proposals of the word into gracious affections in
his heart. To restore the joy of salvation, is, in David’s judgment, an
act of sovereign power, equal to that of creating a clean heart (Ps. li.
10, 12). Alas! it is a state like to that of death; as infinite power
can only raise from natural death, so from a spiritual death; also from
a comfortless death: “In his favor there is life;” in the want of his
favor there is death. The power of God hath so placed light in the sun,
that all creatures in the world, all the torches upon earth, kindled
together, cannot make it day, if that doth not rise; so all the angels
in heaven, and men upon earth, are not competent chirurgeons for a
wounded spirit. The cure of our spiritual ulcers, and the pouring in
balm, is an act of sovereign creative power: it is more visible in
silencing a tempestuous conscience than the power of our Saviour was
in the stilling the stormy winds and the roaring waves. As none but
infinite power can remove the guilt of sin, so none but infinite power
can remove the despairing sense of it.
Thirdly, This power is evident in the preserving grace. As the
providence of God is a manifestation of his power in a continued
creation, so the preservation of grace is a manifestation of his power
in a continued regeneration. To keep a nation under the yoke, is an act
of the same power that subdued it. It is this that strengthens men in
suffering against the fury of hell (Col. i. 13); it is this that keeps
them from falling against the force of hell――the Father’s hand (John x.
29). His strength abates and moderates the violence of temptations; his
staff sustains his people under them; his might defeats the power of
Satan, and bruiseth him under a believer’s feet. The counter‑workings
of indwelling corruption, the reluctances of the flesh against the
breathings of the spirit, the fallacy of the senses, and the rovings
of the mind, have ability quickly to stifle and extinguish grace, if
it were not maintained by that powerful blast that first imbreathed it.
No less power is seen in perfecting it, than was in planting it (2 Pet.
i. 3); no less in fulfilling the work of faith, than in engrafting
the word of faith (2 Thess. i. 11). The apostle well understood the
necessity and efficacy of it in the preservation of faith, {b80} as
well as in the first infusion, when he expresses himself in those terms
of a greatness or hyperbole of power, “His mighty power,” or the power
of his might (Eph. i. 19). The salvation he bestows, and the strength
whereby he effects it, are joined together in the prophet’s song (Isa.
xii. 2): “The Lord is my strength and my salvation.” And indeed, God
doth more magnify his power in continuing a believer in the world, a
weak and half‑rigged vessel, in the midst of so many sands whereon it
might split, so many rocks whereon it might dash, so many corruptions
within, and so many temptations without, than if he did immediately
transport him into heaven, and clothe him with a perfect sanctified
nature.――To conclude, what is there, then, in the world which is
destitute of notices of Divine power? Every creature affords us the
lesson; all acts of Divine government are the marks of it. Look into
the word, and the manner of its propagation instructs us in it; your
changed natures, your pardoned guilt, your shining comfort, your
quelled corruptions, the standing of your staggering graces, are
sufficient to preserve a sense, and to prevent a forgetfulness, of
this great attribute, so necessary for your support, and conducing so
much to your comfort.
_Use I._ Of information and instruction.
_Instruct. 1._ If incomprehensible and infinite power belongs to
the nature of God, then Jesus Christ hath a divine nature, because
the acts of power proper to God are ascribed to him. This perfection
of omnipotence doth unquestionably pertain to the Deity, and is an
incommunicable property, and the same with the essence of God: he,
therefore, to whom this attribute is ascribed, is essentially God. This
is challenged by Christ, in conjunction with eternity (Rev. i. 8); “I
am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which
is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” This the Lord
Christ speaks of himself. He who was equal with God, proclaims himself
by the essential title of the Godhead, part of which he repeats again
(ver. 11), and this is the person which “walks in the midst of the
seven golden candlesticks,” the person that “was dead and now lives”
(ver. 17, 18), which cannot possibly be meant of the Father, the First
Person, who can never come under the denomination of having been dead.
Being, therefore, adorned with the same title, he hath the same Deity;
and though his omnipotence be only positively asserted (ver. 8), yet,
his eternity being asserted (ver. 11, 17), it inferreth his immense
power; for he that is eternal, without limits of time, must needs be
conceived powerful, without any dash of infirmity. Again, when he is
said to be a child born, and a son given, in the same breath he is
called the Mighty God (Isa. ix. 6). It is introduced as a ground of
comfort to the church, to preserve their hopes in the accomplishment of
the promises made to them before. They should not imagine him to have
only the infirmity of a man, though he was veiled in the appearance of
a man. No, they should look through the disguise of his flesh, to the
might of his Godhead. The attribute of mighty is added to the title of
God, because the consideration of power is most capable to sustain the
drooping church in such a condition, and to prop up her hopes. It is
upon this account he saith of himself, “Whatsoever things the {b81}
Father doth, those also doth the Son likewise” (John v. 19). In the
creation of heaven, earth, sea, and the preservation of all creatures,
the Son works with the same will, wisdom, virtue, power, as the Father
works: not as two may concur in an action in a different manner, as
an agent and an instrument, a carpenter and his tools, but in the same
manner of operation, ὁμοίως, which we translate likeness, which doth
not express so well the emphasis of the word. There is no diversity of
action between us; what the Father doth, that I do by the same power,
with the same easiness in every respect; there is the same creative,
productive, conservative power in both of us; and that not in one work
that is done, _ad extra_, but in all, in whatsoever the Father doth. In
the same manner, not by a delegated, but natural and essential power,
by one undivided operation and manner of working.
1st. The creation, which is a work of Omnipotence, is more than once
ascribed to him. This he doth own himself; the creation of the earth,
and of man upon it; the stretching out the heavens by his hands, and
the forming of “all the hosts of them by his command” (Isa. xlv. 12).
He is not only the Creator of Israel, the church (ver. 12), but of the
whole world, and every creature on the face of the earth, and in the
glories of the heavens; which is repeated also ver. 18, where, in this
act of creation, he is called God himself, and speaks of himself in
the term Jehovah; and swears by himself (ver. 23). What doth he swear?
“That unto me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall swear.”
Is this Christ? Yes, if the apostle may be believed, who applies
it to him (Rom. xiv. 11) to prove the appearance of all men before
the judgment‑seat of Christ, whom the prophet calls (ver. 15) “a God
that hides himself;” and so he was a hidden God when obscured in our
fleshly infirmities. He was in conjunction with the Father when the sea
received his decree, and the foundations of the earth were appointed;
not as a spectator, but as an artificer, for so the word in Prov.
viii. 30, signifies, “as one brought up with him;” it signifies also,
“a cunning workman” (Cant. vii. 1). He was the east, or the sun, from
whence sprang all the light of life and being to the creature; so the
word קדם (ver. 22), which is translated, “before his works of old,” is
rendered by some, and signifies the east as well as before: but if it
notes only his existence before, it is enough to prove his Deity. The
Scripture doth not only allow him an existence before the world, but
exalts him as the cause of the world: a thing may precede another that
is not the cause of that which follows; a precedency in age doth not
entitle one brother, or thing, the cause of another: but our Saviour is
not only ancienter than the world, but is the Creator of the world (Heb.
i. 10, 11). “Who laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens
are the work of his hands.” So great an eulogy cannot be given to one
destitute of omnipotence; since the distance between being and not
being is so vast a gulf that cannot be surmounted and stepped over,
but by an Infinite Power: he is the first and the last, that called
the “generations from the beginning” (Isa. xli. 4), and had an almighty
voice to call them out of nothing. In which regard he is called the
“everlasting Father” (Isa. ix. 6), as being the efficient {b82} of
creation; as God is called the Father of the rain, or as father is
taken for the inventor of an art; as Jubal, the first framer and
inventor of music, is called “the father of such as handle the harp”
(Gen. iv. 21). And that Person is said to “make the sea, and form the
dry land by his hands” (Ps. xcv. 5, 6) against whom we are exhorted not
to harden our hearts, which is applied to Christ by the apostle (Heb.
iii. 8); in ver. 6, he is called “a great King,” and “a great God our
Maker.” The places wherein the creation is attributed to Christ, those
that are the antagonists of his Deity, would evade by understanding
them of the new, or evangelical, not of the first, old material
creation: but what appearance is there for such a sense? Consider,
(1.) That of Heb. i. 10, 11, it is spoken of that earth and heavens
which were in the beginning of time; it is that earth shall perish,
that heaven that shall be folded up, that creation that shall grow old
towards a decay; that is, only the visible and material creation: the
spiritual shall endure forever; it grows not old to decay, but grows up
to a perfection; it sprouts up to its happiness, not to its detriment.
The same Person creates that shall destroy, and the same world is
created by him that shall be destroyed by him, as well as it subsisted
by virtue of his omnipotency.
(2.) Can that also (Heb. i. 2), “By whom also he made the worlds,”
speaking of Christ, bear the same plea? It was the same Person by whom
“God spake to us in these last times,” the same Person which he hath
constituted “Heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds:”
and the particle _also_, intimates it to be a distinct act from his
speaking or prophetical office, whereby he restored and new created
the world, as well as the rightful foundation God had to make him
“Heir of all things.” It refers likewise, not to the time of Christ’s
speaking upon earth, but to something past, and something different
from the publication of the gospel: it is not “doth make,” which had
been more likely if the apostle had meant only the new creation; but
“hath made,”[878] referring to time long since past, something done
before his appearance upon earth as a Prophet: “By whom also he made
the worlds,” or ages, all things subjected to, or measured by time;
which must be meant according to the Jewish phrase of this material
visible world: so they entitle God in their Liturgy, the “Lord of Ages,”
that is, the Lord of the world, and all ages and revolutions of the
world, from the creation to the last period of time. If anything were
in being before this frame of heaven and earth, and within the compass
of time, it received being and duration from the Son of God. The
apostle would give an argument to prove the equity of making him Heir
of all things as Mediator, because he was the framer of all things
as God. He may well be the Heir or Lord of angels as well as men, who
created angels as well as men: all things were justly under his power
as Mediator, since they derived their existence from him as Creator.
(3.) But what evasion can there be for that (Col. i. 16)? “By him were
all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, whether
they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, {b83} all
things were created by him and for him.” He is said to be the Creator
of material and visible things, as well as spiritual and invisible;
of things in heaven, which needed no restoration, as well as things on
earth, which were polluted by sin, and stood in need of a new creation.
How could the angels belong to the new creation, who had never put off
the honor and purity of the first? Since they never divested themselves
of their original integrity, they could not be reinvested with that
which they never lost. Besides, suppose the holy angels be one way
or other reduced as parts of the new creation, as being under the
mediatory government of our Saviour, as their Head, and in regard of
their confirmation by him in that happy state. In what manner shall the
devils be ranked among new creatures? They are called principalities
and powers as well as the angels, and may come under the title of
things invisible: that they are called principalities and powers is
plain (Eph. vi. 12): “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of
this world; against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Good angels
are not there meant, for what war have believers with them, or they
with believers? They are the guardians of them, since Christ hath taken
away the enmity between our Lord and theirs, in whose quarrel they
were engaged against us: and since the apostle, speaking of “all things
created by him,” expresseth it so, that it cannot be conceived he
should except anything; how come the finally impenitent and unbelievers,
which are things in earth, and visible, to be listed here in the roll
of new creatures? None of these can be called new creatures, because
they are subjected to the government of Christ; no more than the earth
and sea, and the animals in it, are made new creatures, because they
are all under the dominion of Christ and his providential government.
Again, the apostle manifestly makes the creation he here speaks of,
to be the material, and not the new creation; for that he speaks of
afterwards as a distinct act of our Lord Jesus, under the title of
Reconciliation (Col. i. 20, 21), which was the restoration of the world,
and the satisfying for that curse that lay upon it. His intent is here
to show that not an angel in heaven, nor a creature upon earth, but was
placed in their several degrees of excellency by the power of the Son
of God, who, after that act of creation, and the entrance of sin, was
the “reconciler” of the world through the blood of his cross.
(4.) There is another place as clear (John i. 3): “All things were
made by him, and without him was nothing made that was made.” The
creation is here ascribed to him; affirmatively, “All things were made
by him;” negatively, there was nothing made without him: and the words
are emphatical, οὐδὲ ἕν, not one thing; excepting nothing; including
invisible things, as well as things conspicuous to sense only,
mentioned in the story of the creation (Gen. i.); not only the entire
mass, but the distinct parcels, the smallest worm and the highest angel,
owe their original to him. And if not _one_ thing, then the matter
was not created to his hands; and his work consisted not only in the
forming things from that matter: if that _one_ thing of matter were
excepted, a chief thing were excepted; if {084} _not one thing_ were
excepted, then he created something of nothing, because spirits, as
angels and souls, are not made of any pre‑existing or fore‑created
matter. How could the evangelist phrase it more extensively and
comprehensively? This is a character of Omnipotency; to create the
world, and everything in it, of nothing, requires an infinite virtue
and power. If all things were created by Him, they were not created
by him as man, because himself, as man, was not in being before the
creation; if all things were made by him, then himself was not made,
himself was not created; and to be existent without being made, without
being created, is to be unboundedly omnipotent. And if we understand it
of the new creation, as they do that will not allow him an existence in
his Deity before his humanity, it cannot be true of that; for how could
he regenerate Abraham, make Simeon and Anna new creatures, who “waited
for the salvation of Israel,” and form John Baptist, and fill him with
the Holy Ghost, even from the womb (Luke i. 15), who belonged to the
new creation, and was to prepare the way, if Christ had not a being
before him? The evangelist alludes to, and explains the history of
the creation, in the beginning, and acquaints us what was meant by
God, said so often, _viz._ the eternal Word, and describes him in
his creative power, manifested in the framing the world, before he
describes him in his incarnation, when he came to lay the foundation of
the restoration of the world (John i. 14), “The Word was made flesh;”
this Word who was “with God, who was God, who made all things,” and
gave being to the most glorious angels and the meanest creature without
exception; this Word, in time, “was made flesh.”
(5.) The creation of things mentioned in these Scriptures cannot be
attributed to him as an instrument. As if when it is said, “God created
all things by him, and by him made the worlds,” we were to understand
the Father to be the agent, and the Son to be a tool in his Father’s
hand, as an axe in the hand of a carpenter, or a file in the hand of
a smith, or a servant acting by command as the organ of his master.
The preposition _per_, or διά, doth not always signify an instrumental
cause: when it is said, that the apostle gave the Thessalonians a
command “by Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. iv. 2), was Christ the instrument,
and not the Lord of that command the apostle gave? The immediate
operation of Christ dwelling in the apostles, was that whereby they
gave the commands to their disciples. When we are called “by God”
(1 Cor. i. 9), is he the instrumental, or principal cause of our
effectual vocation? And can the will of God be the instrument of
putting Paul into the apostleship, or the sovereign cause of investing
him with that dignity, when he calls himself an “Apostle by the will
of God” (Eph. i. 3)? And when all things are said to be through God,
as well as of him, must he be counted the instrumental cause of his
own creation, counsels, and judgments (Rom. xi. 36)? When we “mortify
the deeds of the body through the Spirit” (Rom. viii. 13), or keep the
“treasure of the word by the Holy Ghost” (2 Tim. i. 14), is the Holy
Ghost of no more dignity in such acts than an instrument? Nor doth the
gaining a thing by a person make him a mere instrument or inferior; as
when a man gains his right in a way of justice against his adversary
by the magistrate, {b85} is the judge inferior to the suppliant? If the
Word were an instrument in creation, it must be a created or uncreated
instrument: if created, it could not be true what the Evangelist saith,
that “all things were made by him,” since himself, the principal thing,
could not be made by himself: if uncreated, he was God, and so acted
by a Divine omnipotency, which surmounts an instrumental cause. But,
indeed, an instrument is impossible in creation, since it is wrought
only by an act of the Divine will. Do we need any organ to an act
of volition? The efficacious will of the Creator is the cause of the
original of the body of the world, with its particular members and
exact harmony. It was formed “by a word, and established by a command”
(Ps. xxxiii. 9); the beauty of the creation stood up at the precept
of his will. Nor was the Son a partial cause; as when many are said to
build a house, one works one part, and another frames another part: God
created all things by the immediate operation of the Son, in the unity
of essence, goodness, power, wisdom; not an extrinsic, but a connatural
instrument. As the sun doth illustrate all things by his light, and
quickens all things by his heat, so God created the worlds by Christ,
as he was the “brightness or splendor of his glory, the exact image of
his person;” which follows the declaration of his making the worlds by
him (Heb. i. 3, 4), to show, that he acted not as an instrument, but
one in essential conjunction with him, as light and brightness with
the sun. But suppose he did make the world as a kind of instrument,
he was then before the world, not bounded by time; and eternity cannot
well be conceived belonging to a Being without omnipotency. He is the
End, as well as the Author, of the creatures (Col. i. 16); not only
the principle which gave them being, but the sea, into whose glory they
run and dissolve themselves, which consists not with the meanness of an
instrument.
2d. As creation, so preservation, is ascribed to Him (Col. i. 17). “By
him all things consist.” As he preceded all things in his eternity, so
he establishes all things by his omnipotency, and fixes them in their
several centres, that they sink not into that nothing from whence
he fetched them. By him they flourish in their several beings, and
observe the laws and orders he first appointed: that power of his which
extracted them from insensible nothing, upholds them in their several
beings with the same facility as he spake being into them, even “by the
word of his power” (Heb. i. 3), and by one creative continued voice,
called all generations, from the beginning to the period of the world
(Isa. xli. 4), and causes them to flourish in their several seasons.
It is “by him kings reign, and princes decree justice,” and all things
are confined within the limits of government. All which are acts of an
Infinite Power.
3d. Resurrection is also ascribed to Him. The body crumbled to
dust, and that dust blown to several quarters of the world, cannot be
gathered in its distinct parts, and new formed for the entertainment
of the soul, without the strength of an infinite arm. This he will do,
and more; change the vileness of an earthly body into the glory of an
heavenly one; a dusty flesh into a spiritual body, which is an argument
of a power invincible, to which all things cannot but stoop; {b86} for
it is by such an operation, which testifies an ability “to subdue all
things to himself” (Phil. iii. 21), especially when he works it with
the same ease as he did the creation, by the power of his voice. (John
v. 28), “All that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall
come forth:” speaking them into a restored life from insensible dust,
as he did into being from an empty nothing. The greatest acts of
power are owned to belong to creation, preservation, resurrection.
Omnipotence, therefore, is his right; and, therefore, a Deity cannot be
denied to him that inherits a perfection essential to none but God, and
impossible to be entrusted in, or managed by the hands of any creatures.
And this is no mean comfort to those that believe in him: he is, in
regard of his power, “the horn of salvation;” so Zacharias sings of him
(Luke i. 69). Nor could there be any more mighty found out upon whom
God could have “laid our help” (Ps. lxxxix. 19). No reason, therefore,
to doubt his ability to save to the utmost, who hath the power of
creation, preservation, and resurrection in his hands. His promises
must be accomplished, since nothing can resist him: he hath power to
fulfil his word, and bring all things to a final issue, because he is
Almighty: by his outstretched arm in the deliverance of his Israel from
Egypt, (for it was his arm, 1 Cor. x.) he showed that he was able to
deliver us from spiritual Egypt. The charge of Mediator to expiate
sin, vanquish hell, form a church, conduct and perfect it, are not
to be effected by a person of less ability than infinite. Let this
almightiness of His be the bottom, wherein to cast and fix the anchor
of our hopes.
_Instruct. 2._ Hence may be inferred the Deity of the Holy Ghost.
Works of omnipotency are ascribed to the Spirit of God: by the motion
of the wings of this Spirit, as a bird over her eggs, was that rude and
unshapen mass hatched into a comely world.[879] The stars,――or perhaps
the angels, are meant by the “garnishing of the heavens” in the verse
before the text,――were brought forth in their comeliness and dignity,
as the ornaments of the upper world, by this Spirit; “By his Spirit he
hath garnished the heavens.” To this Spirit Job ascribes the formation
both of the body and soul, under the title of Almighty (Job xxxiii. 4),
“The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty
hath given me life.” Resurrection, another work of omnipotency, is
attributed to him (Rom. viii. 11). The conception of our Saviour in
the womb; the miracles that he wrought, were by the power of the Spirit
in him. Power is a title belonging to him, and sometimes both are put
together (1 Thess. i. 5, and other places). And that great power of
changing the heart, and sanctifying a polluted nature, a work greater
than creation, is frequently acknowledged in the Scripture to be
the peculiar act of the Holy Ghost. The Father, Son, Spirit, are one
principle in creation, resurrection, and all the works of omnipotence.
_Instruct. 3._ Inference from the doctrine. The blessedness of God
is hence evidenced. If God be Almighty, he can want nothing; all want
speaks weakness. If he doth what he will, he cannot be miserable;
all misery consists in those things which happen contrary to our
will. There is nothing can hinder his happiness, because nothing {b87}
can resist his power. Since he is omnipotent, nothing can hurt him,
nothing can strip him of what he hath, of what he is.[880] If he can
do whatsoever he will, he cannot want anything that he wills. He is as
happy, as great, as glorious, as he will; for he hath a perfect liberty
of will to will, and a perfect power to attain what he will; his will
cannot be restrained, nor his power meted. It would be a defect in
blessedness, to will what he were not able to do: sorrow is the result
of a want of power, with a presence of will. If he could will anything
which he could not effect, he would be miserable, and no longer God:
he can do whatsoever he pleases, and therefore can want nothing that
pleases him.[881] He cannot be happy, the original of whose happiness
is not in himself: nothing can be infinitely happy, that is limited and
bounded.
_Instruct. 4._ Hence is the ground for the immutability of God. As he
is incapable of changing his resolves, because of his infinite wisdom,
so he is incapable of being forced to any change, because of his
infinite power. Being almighty, he can be no more changed from power to
weakness; than, being all‑wise, he can be changed from wisdom to folly;
or, being omniscient, from knowledge to ignorance. He cannot be altered
in his purposes, because of his wisdom; nor in the manner and method of
his actions, because of his infinite strength. Men, indeed, when their
designs are laid deepest, and their purposes stand firmest, yet are
forced to stand still, or change the manner of the execution of their
resolves, by reason of some outward accidents that obstruct them in
their course; for, having not wisdom to foresee future hindrances, they
have not power to prevent them, or strength to remove them, when they
unexpectedly interpose themselves between their desire and performance;
but no created power has strength enough to be a bar against God. By
the same act of his will that he resolves a thing, he can puff away any
impediments that seem to rise up against him. He that wants no means
to effect his purposes, cannot be checked by anything that riseth up to
stand in his way; heaven, earth, sea, the deepest places, are too weak
to resist his will (Ps. cxxxv. 6). The purity of the angels will not,
and the devil’s malice cannot, frustrate his will; the one voluntarily
obeys the beck of his hand, and the other is vanquished by the power
of it. What can make him change his purposes; who (if he please) can
dash the earth against the heavens in the twinkling of an eye, untying
the world from its centre, clap the stars and elements together into
one mass, and blow the whole creation of men and devils into nothing?
Because he is almighty, therefore he is immutable.
_Instruct. 5._ Hence is inferred the providence of God, and his
government of the world. His power, as well as his wisdom, gives him
a right to govern: nothing can equal him, therefore nothing can share
the command with him; since all things are his works, it is fittest
they should be under his order: he that frames a work, is fittest to
guide and govern it. God hath the most right to govern, because he hath
knowledge to direct his power, and power to execute the results of his
wisdom: he knows what is convenient to order, {b88} and hath strength
to effect what he orders. As his power would be oppressive without
goodness and wisdom, so his goodness and wisdom would be fruitless
without power. An artificer that hath lost his hands may direct, but
cannot make an engine: a pilot that hath lost his arms may advise the
way of steerage, but cannot hold the helm; something is wanting in
him to be a complete governor: but since both counsel and power are
infinite in God, hence results an infinite right to govern, and an
infinite fitness, because his will cannot be resisted, his power cannot
be enfeebled or diminished; he can quicken and increase the strength of
all means as he pleases. He can hold all things in the world together,
and preserve them in those functions wherein he settled them, and
conduct them to those ends for which he designed them. Every artificer,
the more excellent he is, and the more excellency of power appears in
his work, is the more careful to maintain and cherish it. Those that
deny Providence, do not only ravish from him the bowels of his goodness,
but strip him of a main exercise of his power, and engender in men a
suspicion of weariness and feebleness in him; as though his strength
had been spent in making them, that none is left to guide them. They
would make him headless in regard of his wisdom, and bowelless in
regard of his goodness, and armless in regard of his strength. If he
did not, or were not able to preserve and provide for his creatures,
his power in making them would be, in a great part, an invisible power;
if he did not preserve what he made, and govern what he preserves, it
would be a kind of strange and rude power, to make, and suffer it to be
dashed in pieces at the pleasure of others. If the power of God should
relinquish the world, the life of things would be extinguished, the
fabric would be confounded, and fall into a deplorable chaos. That
which is composed of so many various pieces, could not maintain its
union, if there were not a secret virtue binding them together and
maintaining those varieties of links. Well, then, since God is not only
so good, that he cannot will anything but what is good; so wise, that
he cannot err or mistake; but also so able, that he cannot be defeated
or mated; he hath every way a full ability to govern the world: where
those three are infinite, the right and fitness resulting from thence
is unquestionable: and, indeed, to deny God this active part of his
power, is to render him weak, foolish, cruel, or all.
_Instruct. 6._ Here is a ground for the worship of God. Wisdom and
power are the grounds of the respect we give to men; they being both
infinite in God, are the foundation of a solemn honor to be returned
to him by his creatures. If a man makes a curious engine, we honor him
for his skill; if another vanquish a vigorous enemy, we admire him for
his strength: and shall not the efficacy of God’s power in creation,
government, redemption, enflame us with a sense of the honor of his
name and perfections? We admire those princes that have vast empires,
numerous armies, that have a power to conquer their enemies, and
preserve their own people in peace. How much more ground have we to pay
a mighty reverence to God, who, without trouble and weariness, made and
manages this vast empire of the world by a word and beck! What sensible
{b89} thoughts have we of the noise of thunder, the power of the sun,
the storms of the sea! These things that have no understanding have
struck men with such a reverence, that many have adored them as gods.
What reverence and adoration doth this mighty power, joined with an
infinite wisdom in God, demand at our hands! All religion and worship
stands especially upon two pillars, goodness, and power in God; if
either of these were defective, all religion would faint away. We can
expect no entertainment with him without goodness, nor any benefit
from him without power. This God prefaceth to the command to worship
him, the benefit his goodness had conferred upon them, and the
powerful manner of conveyance of it to them (2 Kings xvii. 36): “The
Lord brought you up from the land of Egypt with great power, and an
out‑stretched arm; him shall you fear, and him shall you worship,
and to him shall you do sacrifice.” Because this attribute is a main
foundation of prayer, the Lord’s Prayer is concluded with a doxology of
it, “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory.” As he is rich,
possessing all blessings; so he is powerful, to confer all blessings
on us, and make them efficacious to us. The Jews repeat many times
in their prayers, some say an hundred times, מלך העולם, “The King of
the world;” it is both an awe and an encouragement.[882] We could not,
without consideration of it, pray in faith of success; nay, we could
not pray at all, if his power were defective to help us, and his
mercy too weak to relieve us. Who would solicit a lifeless, or lie
a prostrate suppliant, to a feeble arm? Upon this ability of God, our
Saviour built his petitions (Heb. v. 7): “He offered up strong cries
unto Him that was able to save him from death.” Abraham’s faith hung
upon the same string (Rom. iv. 21), and the captived church supplicates
God to act according to the greatness of his power (Ps. lxxix. 11).
In all our addresses this is to be eyed and considered; God is able to
help, to relieve, to ease me, let my misery be never so great, and my
strength never so weak (Matt. viii. 2): “If thou wilt, thou canst make
me clean,” was the consideration the leper had when he came to worship
Christ; he was clear in his power, and therefore worshipped him, though
he was not equally clear in his will. All worship is shot wrong that
is not directed to, and conducted by, the thoughts of this attribute,
whose assistance we need. When we beg the pardon of our sins, we should
eye mercy and power; when we beg his righting us in any case where
we are unjustly oppressed, we do not eye righteousness without power;
when we plead the performance of his promise, we do not regard his
faithfulness only without the prop of his power. As power ushers in all
the attributes of God in their exercise and manifestation in the world,
so should it be the butt our eyes should be fixed upon in all our
acts of worship: as without his power his other attributes would be
useless, so without due apprehensions of his power our prayers will be
faithless and comfortless. The title in the Lord’s prayer directs us
to a prospect both of his goodness and power; his goodness in the word
Father, his greatness, excellency, and power, in the word Heaven. The
heedless consideration of the infiniteness of this perfection {b90}
roots up piety in the midst of us, and makes us so careless in worship.
Did we more think of that Power that raised the world out of nothing,
that orders all creatures by an act of his will, that performed so
great an exploit as that of our redemption, when masterless sin had
triumphed over the world, we should give God the honor and adoration
which so great an excellency challengeth and deserves at our hands,
though we ourselves had not been the work of his hands, or the
monuments of his strength; how could any creature engross to itself
that reverence from us which is due to the powerful Creator, of whom
it comes infinitely short in strength as well as wisdom?
_Instruct. 7._ From this we have a ground for the belief of the
resurrection. God aims at the glory of his power, as well as the glory
of any other attribute. Moses else would not have culled out this as
the main argument, in his pleading with God, for the sheathing the
sword which he began to draw out against them in the wilderness (Numb.
xiv. 16): “The nations will say, Because the Lord was not able to bring
these people into the land which he sware to them,” &c. As the finding
out the particulars of the dust of our bodies discovers the vastness
of his knowledge, so to raise them will manifest the glory of his power
as much as creation; bodies that have mouldered away into multitudes
of atoms, been resolved into the elements, passed through varieties
of changes, been sometimes the matter to lodge the form of a plant, or
been turned into the substance of a fish or fowl, or vapored up into a
cloud, and been part of that matter which hath compacted a thunder‑bolt,
disposed of in places far distant, scattered by the winds, swallowed
and concocted by beasts; for these to be called out from their
different places of abode, to meet in one body, and be restored to
their former consistency, in a marriage union, in the “twinkling of an
eye” (1 Cor. xv. 22), it is a consideration that may justly amaze us,
and our shallow understandings are too feeble to comprehend it. But
is it not credible, since all the disputes against it may be silenced
by reflections on Infinite Power, which nothing can oppose, for which
nothing can be esteemed too difficult to effect, which doth not imply
a contradiction in itself? It was no less amazing to the blessed virgin
to hear a message that she should conceive a Son without knowing a
man; but she is quickly answered, by the angel, with a “Nothing is
impossible to God” (Luke i. 34, 37). The distinct parts off our bodies
cannot be hid from his all‑seeing eye, wherever they are lodged,
and in all the changes they pass through, as was discoursed when the
Omniscience of God was handled; shall, then, the collection of them
together be too hard for his invincible power and strength, and the
uniting all those parts into a body, with new dispositions to receive
their several souls, be too big and bulky for that Power which never
yet was acquainted with any bar? Was not the miracle of our Saviour’s
multiplying the loaves, suppose it had not been by a new creation, but
a collection of grain from several parts, very near as stupendous as
this? Had any one of us been the only creatures made just before the
matter of the world, and beheld that inform chaos covered with a thick
darkness, mentioned Gen. i. 2, would not {b91} the report, that from
this dark deep, next to nothing, should be raised such a multitude of
comely creatures, with such innumerable varieties of members, voices,
colors, motions, and such numbers of shining stars, a bright sun, one
uniform body of light from this darkness, that should, like a giant,
rejoice to run a race, for many thousands of years together, without
stop or weariness; would not all these have seemed as incredible as the
collection of scattered dust? What was it that erected the innumerable
host of heaven, the glorious angels, and glittering stars, for aught
we know more numerous than the bodies of men, but an act of the Divine
will? and shall the power that wrought this sink under the charge of
gathering some dispersed atoms, and compacting them into a human body?
Can you tell how the dust of the ground was kneaded by God into the
body of man, and changed into flesh, skin, hair, bones, sinews, veins,
arteries, and blood, and fitted for so many several activities, when a
human soul was breathed into it?[883] Can you imagine how a rib, taken
from Adam’s side, a lifeless bone, was formed into head, hands, feet,
eyes? Why may not the matter of men, which have been, be restored, as
well as that which was not, be first erected? Is it harder to repair
those things which were, than to create those things which were not? Is
there not the same Artificer? Hath any disease or sickliness abated his
power? Is the Ancient of Days grown feeble? or shall the elements, and
other creatures, that alway yet obeyed his command, ruffle against his
raising voice, and refuse to disgorge those remains of human bodies
they have swallowed up in their several bowels? Did the whole world,
and all the parts of it, rise at his word? and shall not some parts of
the world, the dust of the dead, stand up out of the graves at a word
of the same mighty efficacy? Do we not annually see those marks of
power which may stun our incredulity in this concern? Do you see in
a small acorn, or little seed, any such sights, as a tree with body,
bark, branches, leaves, flowers, fruit――where can you find them? Do you
know the invisible corners where they lurk in that little body? And yet
these you afterwards view rising up from this little body, when sown
in the ground, that you could not possibly have any prospect of when
you rolled it in your hand, or opened its bowels. And why may not all
the particulars of our bodies, however disposed as to their distinct
natures invisibly to us, remain distinct, as well as if you mingle a
thousand seeds together? they will come up in their distinct kinds, and
preserve their distinct virtues. Again, is not the making heaven and
earth, the union of the Divine and human nature, eternity and infirmity,
to make a virgin conceive a Son, bear the Creator, and bring forth the
Redeemer, to form the blood of God of the flesh of a virgin, a greater
work than the calling together and uniting the scattered parts of our
bodies, which are all of one nature and matter? And since the power of
God is manifested in pardoning innumerable sins, is not the scattering
our transgressions, as far as the east is from the west, as the
expression is, Ps. ciii. 12, and casting such numbers into the depths
of the sea, which is God’s power over himself, a greater argument of
{b92} might than the recalling and repairing the atoms of our bodies
from their various receptacles? It is not hard for them to believe this
of the resurrection, that have been sensible of the weight and force
of their sins, and the power of God in pardoning and vanquishing that
mighty resistance which was made in their hearts against the power of
his renewing and sanctifying grace. The consideration of the infinite
power of God is a good ground of the belief of the resurrection.
_Instruct. 8._ Since the power of God is so great and incomprehensible,
how strange is it that it should be contemned and abused by the
creatures as it is! The power of God is beaten down by some, outraged
by others, blasphemed by many, under their sufferings. The stripping
God of the honor of his creation, and the glory of his preservation of
the world, falls under this charge: thus do they that deny his framing
the world alone, or thought the first matter was not of God’s creation,
and such as fancied an evil principle, the author of all evil, as God
is the author of all good, and so exempt from the power of God, that
it could not be vanquished by him. These things have formerly found
defenders in the world; but they are, in themselves, ridiculous and
vain, and have no footing in common reason, and are not worthy of
debate in a christian auditory.
In general, all idolatry in the world did arise from the want of
a due notion of this Infinite Power. The heathen thought one God was
not sufficient for the managing all things in the world, and therefore
they feigned several gods, that had several charges; as Ceres presided
over the fruits of the earth; Esculapius over the cure of distempers;
Mercury for merchandise and trade; Mars for war and battles; Apollo and
Minerva for learning and ingenious arts; and Fortune for casual things.
Whence doth the other sort of idolatry, the adoring our bags and gold,
our dependencies on, and trusting in, creatures for help arise, but
from ignorance of God’s power, or mean and slender apprehensions of it?
First, there is a contempt of it. Secondly, An abuse of it.
1. It is contemned in every sin, especially in obstinacy in sin. All
sin whatsoever is built upon some false notion or monstrous conception
of one or other of God’s perfections, and in particular of this. It
includes a secret and lurking imagination, that we are able to grapple
with Omnipotence, and enter the lists with Almightiness; what else can
be judged of the apostle’s expression (1 Cor. x. 22), “Do we provoke
the Lord to jealousy; are we stronger than he?” Do we think we have
an arm too powerful for that justice we provoke, and can repel that
vengeance we exasperate? Do we think we are an even match for God, and
are able to despoil him of his Divinity? To despise his will, violate
his order, practise what he forbids with a severe threatening, and
pawns his power to make it good, is to pretend to have an arm like God,
and be able to thunder with a voice equal or superior to him, as the
expression is (Job xl. 9). All security in sin is of this strain; when
men are not concerned at Divine threatenings, nor staggered in their
sinful race, they intimate, that the declarations of Divine Power are
but vain‑glorious boastings; that God is not so strong and able as he
{b93} reports himself to be; and therefore they will venture it, and
dare him to try, whether the strength of his arm be as forcible as
the words of his mouth are terrible in his threats; this is to believe
themselves Creators, not creatures. We magnify God’s power in our wants,
and debase it in our rebellions; as though Omnipotence were only able
to supply our necessities, and unable to revenge the injuries we offer
him.
2. This power is contemned in distrust of God. All distrust is founded
in a doubting of his truth, as if he would not be as good as his word;
or of his omniscience, as if he had not a memory to retain his word;
or of his power, as if he could not be as great as his word. We measure
the infinite power of God by the short line of our understandings,
as if infinite strength were bounded within the narrow compass of our
finite reason; as if he could do no more than we were able to do. How
soon did those Israelites lose the remembrance of God’s outstretched
arm, when they uttered that atheistical speech (Ps. lxxviii. 19), “Can
God furnish a table in the wilderness?” As if he that turned the dust
of Egypt into lice, for the punishment of their oppressors, could not
turn the dust of the wilderness into corn, for the support of their
bodies! As if he that had miraculously rebuked the Red Sea, for their
safety, could not provide bread, for their nourishment! Though they had
seen the Egyptians with lost lives in the morning, in the same place
where their lives had been miraculously preserved in the evening, yet
they disgrace that experimental power, by opposing to it the stature
of the Anakims, the strength of their cities, and the height of their
walls (Numb. xiii. 32). And (Numb. xiv. 3). “Wherefore hath the Lord
brought us into this land to fall by the sword?” As though the giants
of Canaan were too strong for Him, for whom they had seen the armies of
Egypt too weak. How did they contract the almightiness of God into the
littleness of a little man, as if he must needs sink under the sword
of a Canaanite? This distrust must arise either from a flat atheism, a
denial of the being of God, or his government of the world; or unworthy
conceits of a weakness in him, that he had made creatures too hard for
himself; that he were not strong enough to grapple with those mighty
Anakims, and give them the possession of Canaan against so great a
force. Distrust of him implies either that he was always destitute of
power, or that his power is exhausted by his former works, or that it
is limited, and near a period: it is to deny him to be the Creator that
moulded heaven and earth. Why should we, by distrust, put a slight upon
that power which he hath so often expressed, and which, in the minutest
works of his hands, surmount the force of the sharpest understanding?
3. It is contemned in too great a fear of man, which ariseth from a
distrust of Divine power. Fear of man is a crediting the might of man
with a disrepute of the arm of God, it takes away the glory of his
might, and renders the creature stronger than God; and God more feeble
than a mortal; as if the arm of man were a rod of iron, and the arm
of God a brittle reed. How often do men tremble at the threatenings
and hectorings of ruffians, yet will stand as stakes {b94} against
the precepts and threatenings of God, as though he had less power to
preserve us, than enemies had to destroy? With what disdain doth God
speak to men infected with this humor (Isa. li. 12, 13)? “Who art
thou, that art afraid of a man that shall die, and the Son of man that
shall be made as grass; and forgettest the Lord thy Maker, that hath
stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundation of the earth;
and hast feared continually every day, because of the fury of the
oppressor?” To fear man that is as grass, that cannot think a thought
without a Divine concourse, that cannot breathe, but by a Divine power,
nor touch a hair without license first granted from heaven; this is
forgetfulness, and consequently a slight of that Infinite Power, which
hath been manifested in founding the earth and garnishing the heavens.
All fear of man, in the way of our duty, doth in some sort thrust out
the remembrance, and discredit the great actions of the Creator. Would
not a mighty prince think it a disparagement to him, if his servant
should decline his command for fear of one of his subjects? and hath
not the great God just cause to think himself disgraced by us, when
we deny him obedience for fear of a creature: as though he had but
an infant ability too feeble to bear us out in duty, and incapable to
balance the strength of an arm of flesh?
4. It is contemned by trusting in ourselves, in means, in man, more
than in God. When in any distress we will try every creature refuge,
before we have recourse to God; and when we apply ourselves to him,
we do it with such slight and perfunctory frames, and with so much
despondency, as if we despaired either of his ability or will to help
us; and implore him with cooler affections than we solicit creatures:
or, when in a disease we depend upon the virtue of the medicine, the
ability of the physician, and reflect not upon that power that endued
the medicine with that virtue, and supports the quality in it, and
concurs to the operation of it. When we depend upon the activity of
the means, as if they had power originally in themselves, and not
derivatively; and do not eye the power of God animating and assisting
them. We cannot expect relief from anything with a neglect of God, but
we render it in our thoughts more powerful than God: we acknowledge
a greater fulness in a shallow stream, than in an eternal spring; we
do, in effect, depose the true God, and create to ourselves a new one;
we assert, by such a kind of acting, the creature, if not superior,
yet equal with God, and independent on him. When we trust in our own
strength, without begging his assistance; or boast of our own strength,
without acknowledging his concurrence, as the Assyrian; “By the
strength of my hand have I done this; I have put down the inhabitants
like a valiant man” (Isa. x. 13). It is, as if the axe should boast
itself against him that hews therewith, and thinks itself more mighty
than the arm that wields it (ver. 15), when we trust in others more
than in God. Thus God upbraids those by the prophet, that sought help
from Egypt, telling them (Isa. xxxi. 3), “The Egyptians were men, and
not gods;” intimating, that by their dependence on them, they rendered
them gods and not men, and advanced them from the state of creatures
to that of almighty {b95} deities. It is to set a pile of dust, a heap
of ashes, above Him that created and preserves the world. To trust
in a creature, is to make it as infinite as God; to do that which is
impossible in itself to be done. God himself cannot make a creature
infinite, for that were to make him God. It is also contemned when we
ascribe what we receive to the power of instruments, and not to the
power of God. Men, in whatsoever they do for us, are but the tools
whereby the Creator works. Is it not a disgrace to the limner to admire
his pencil, and not himself; to the artificer, to admire his file and
engines, and not his power? “It is not I,” saith Paul, “that labor, but
the grace, the efficacious grace of God, which is in me.” Whatsoever
good we do is from him, not from ourselves; to ascribe it to ourselves,
or to instruments, is to overlook and contemn his power.
5. Unbelief of the gospel is a contempt and disowning Divine power.
This perfection hath been discovered in the conception of Christ,
the union of the two natures, his resurrection from the grave, the
restoration of the world, and the conversion of men, more than in the
creation of the world: then what a disgrace is unbelief to all that
power that so severely punished the Jews for the rejecting the gospel:
turned so many nations from their beloved superstitions; humbled the
power of princes and the wisdom of philosophers; chased devils from
their temples by the weakness of fishermen; planted the standard of
the gospel against the common notions and inveterate customs of the
world! What a disgrace is unbelief to this power which hath preserved
Christianity from being extinguished by the force of men and devils,
and kept it flourishing in the midst of sword, fire, and executioners;
that hath made the simplicity of the gospel overpower the eloquence
of orators, and multiplied it from the ashes of martyrs, when it was
destitute of all human assistances! Not heartily to believe and embrace
that doctrine, which hath been attended with such marks of power, is
a high reflection upon this Divine perfection, so highly manifested in
the first publication, propagation, and preservation of it.
Secondly, The power of God is abused, as well as contemned.
1. When we make use of it to justify contradictions. The doctrine of
transubstantiation is an abuse of this power. When the maintainers of
it cannot answer the absurdities alleged against it, they have recourse
to the power of God. It implies a contradiction, that the same body
should be on earth and in heaven at the same instant of time; that it
should be at the right hand of God, and in the mouth and stomach of a
man; that it should be a body of flesh, and yet bread to the eye and
to the taste; that it should be visible and invisible, a glorious body,
and yet gnawn by the teeth of a creature; that it should be multiplied
in a thousand places, and yet an entire body in every one, where there
is no member to be seen, no flesh to be tasted; that it should be above
us in the highest heavens, and yet within us in our lower bowels; such
contradictions as these are an abuse of the power of God. Again, we
abuse this power when we believe every idle story that is reported,
because God is able to make it so if he pleased. We may as well believe
Æsop’s Fables to be true, that birds spake, and beasts reasoned,
because the power of {b96} God can enable such creatures to such
acts. God’s power is not the rule of our belief of a thing without
the exercise of it in matter of fact, and the declaration of it upon
sufficient evidence.
2. The power of God is abused by presuming on it, without using
the means he hath appointed. When men sit with folded arms, and make
a confidence in his power a glorious title to their idleness and
disobedience, they would have his strength do all, and his precept
should move them to do nothing; this is a trust of his power against
his command, a pretended glorifying his power with a slight of his
sovereignty. Though God be almighty, yet, for the most part, he
exerciseth his might in giving life and success to second causes and
lawful endeavors. When we stay in the mouth of danger, without any call
ordering us to continue, and against a door of providence opened for
our rescue, and sanctuary ourselves in the power of God without any
promise, without any providence conducting us; this is not to glorify
the Divine might, but to neglect it, in neglecting the means which his
power affords to us for our escape; to condemn it to our humors, to
work miracles for us according to our wills, and against his own.[884]
God could have sent a worm to be Herod’s executioner when he sought the
life of our Saviour, or employed an angel from heaven to have tied his
hands or stopped his breath, and not put Joseph upon a flight to Egypt
with our Saviour; yet had it not been an abuse of the power of God,
for Joseph to have neglected the precept, and slighted the means God
gave him for the preserving his own life and that of the child’s?
Christ himself, when the Jews consulted to destroy him, presumed not
upon the power of God to secure him, but used ordinary means for his
preservation, by walking no more openly, but retiring himself into a
city near the wilderness till the hour was come, and the call of his
Father manifest (John xi. 53, 54). A rash running upon danger, though
for the truth itself, is a presuming upon, and consequently an abuse
of, this power; a proud challenging it to serve our turns against the
authority of his will, and the force of his precept; a not resting in
his ordinate power, but demanding his absolute power to pleasure our
follies and presumptions; concluding and expecting more from it than
what is authorized by his will.
_Instruct. 9._ If infinite power be a peculiar property of God, how
miserable will all wicked rebels be under this power of God! Men may
break his laws, but not impair his arm; they may slight his word, but
cannot resist his power. If he swear that he will sweep a place with
the besom of destruction, “as he hath thought, so shall it come to pass;
and as he hath purposed, so shall it stand,” (Isa. xiv. 23, 24). Rebels
against an earthly prince may exceed him in strength, and be more
powerful than their sovereign; none can equal God, much less exceed
him. As none can exercise an act of hostility against him without his
permissive will, so none can struggle from under his hand without his
positive will. He hath an arm not to be moved, a hand not to be wrung
aside. God is represented on his throne like a “jasper stone” (Rev. iv.
3), as one of invincible power when he comes to judge; the jasper is a
stone which withstands the {b97} greatest force.[885] Though men resist
the order of his laws, they cannot the sentence of their punishment,
nor the execution of it. None can any more exempt themselves from the
arm of his strength, than they can from the authority of his dominion.
As they must bow to his sovereignty, so must they sink under his force.
A prisoner in this world may make his escape, but a prisoner in the
world to come cannot (Job x. 7). “There is none that can deliver out of
thine hand.” “There is none to deliver when he tears in pieces” (Ps. l.
22). His strength is uncontrollable; hence his throne is represented as
a “fiery flame” (Dan. vii. 9). As a spark of fire hath power to kindle
one thing after another, and increase till it consumes a forest, a city,
swallow up all combustible matter till it consumes a world, and many
worlds, if they were in being, what power hath the tree to resist the
fire, though it seems mighty, when it outbraves the winds? What man,
to this day, hath been able to free himself from that chain of death
God clapped upon him for his revolt? And if he be too feeble to rescue
himself from a temporal, much less from an eternal death. The devils
have, to this minute, groaned under the pile of wrath, without any
success in delivering themselves by all their strength, which much
surmounts all the strength of mankind, nor have they any hopes to work
their rescue to eternity. How foolish is every sinner! Can we poor
worms strut it out against Infinite Power? We cannot resist the meanest
creatures when God commissions them, and puts a sword into their hands.
They will not, no, not the worms, be startled at the glory of a king,
when they have the Creator’s warrant to be his executioners (Acts xii.
23). Who can withstand him, when he commands the waves and inundations
of the sea to leap over the shore; when he divides the ground in
earthquakes, and makes it gape wide to swallow the inhabitants of it;
when the air is corrupted to breed pestilences; when storms and showers,
unseasonably falling, putrify the fruits of the earth; what created
power can mend the matter, and, with a prevailing voice, say to him,
What dost thou? There are two attributes God will make glister in
hell to the full; his wrath and his power (Rom. ix. 22): “What if God,
willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with
much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction?” If
it were mere wrath, and no power to second it, it were not so terrible;
but it is wrath and power: both are joined together. It is not only a
sharp sword, but a powerful arm; and not only that, for then it were
well for the damned creature. To have many sharp blows, and from a
strong arm, this may be without putting forth the highest strength a
man hath; but in this God makes it his design to make his power known
and conspicuous; he takes the sword, as it were, in both hands, that
he may show the strength of his arm in striking the harder blow; and
therefore the apostle calls it (2 Thess. i. 9) “the glory of his power,”
which puts a sting into his wrath; and it is called (Rev. xix. 15)
“the fierceness of the wrath of the Almighty.” God will do it in
such a manner as to make men sensible of his almightiness in every
stroke. {b98} How great must that vengeance be, that is backed by all
the strength of God! When there will be a powerful wrath, without a
powerful compassion; when all his power shall be exercised in punishing,
and not the least mite of it exercised in pitying; how irresistible
will be the load of such a weighty hand! How can the dust of the
balance break the mighty bars, or get out of the lists of a powerful
vengeance, or hope for any grain of comfort? O, that every obstinate
sinner would think of this, and consider his unmeasurable boldness
in thinking himself able to grapple with Omnipotence! What force can
any have to resist the presence of Him, before whom rocks melt, and
the heavens, at length, shall be shrivelled up as a parchment by the
last fire! As the light of God’s face is too dazzling to be beheld
by us, so the arm of his power is too mighty to be opposed by us.
His almightiness is above the reach of our potsherd strength, as his
infiniteness is above the capacity of our purblind understanding. God
were not omnipotent, if his power could be rendered ineffectual by any.
_Use II._ A second use of this point, from the consideration of the
infinite power of God, is of comfort. As Omnipotence is an ocean that
cannot be fathomed, so the comforts from it are streams that cannot
be exhausted. What joy can be wanting to him that finds himself folded
in the arms of Omnipotence? This perfection is made over to believers
in the covenant, as well as any other attribute; “I am the Lord, your
God;” therefore, that power, which is as essential to the Godhead as
any other perfection of his nature, is, in the rights and extent of it,
assured unto you. Nay, may we not say, it is made over more than any
other, because it is that which animates every other perfection; and is
the Spirit that gives them motion and appearance in the world. If God
had expressed himself in particular, as, “I am a true God, a wise God,
a loving God, a righteous God, I am yours;” what would all, or any
of those, have signified, unless the other also had been implied, as,
“I am an almighty God, I am your God?” In God’s making over himself
in any particular attribute, this of his power is included in every
one, without which, all his other grants would be insignificant. It
is a comfort that power is in the hands of God; it can never be better
placed, for he can never use his power to injure his confiding creature;
if it were in our own hands, we might use it to injure ourselves. It is
a power in the hands of an indulgent Father, not a hard‑hearted tyrant;
it is a just power; “His right hand is full of righteousness” (Ps.
xlviii. 10); because of his righteousness he can never use it ill, and
because of his wisdom he can never use it unseasonably. Men that have
strength, often misplace the actings of it, because of their folly;
and sometimes employ it to base ends, because of their wickedness;
but this power in God is always awakened by goodness, and conducted by
wisdom; it is never exercised by self‑will and passion, but according
to the immutable rule of his own nature, which is righteousness. How
comfortable is it to think, that you have a God that can do what he
pleases; nothing so difficult but he can effect, nothing so strong but
he can overrule! You need not dread men, since you have One to restrain
them; nor fear devils, {b99} since you have One to chain them; no
creature but is acted by this power; no creature but must fall upon the
withdrawing of this power. It was not all laid out in creation; it is
not weakened by his preservation of things; he yet hath a fullness of
power, and a residue of Spirit; for whom should that eternal arm of the
Lord be displayed, and that incomprehensible thunder of his power be
shot out, but for those for whose sake and for whose comfort it is
revealed in his word? In particular,
1. Here is comfort in all afflictions and distresses. Our evils can
never be so great to oppress us, as his power is great to deliver us.
The same power that brought a world out of a chaos, and constituted,
and hath hitherto preserved, the regular motion of the stars, can bring
order out of our confusions, and light out of our darkness. When our
Saviour was in the greatest distress, and beheld the face of his Father
frowning, while he was upon the cross, in his complaint to him, he
exerciseth faith upon his power (Matt. xxvii. 46): “Eli, Eli: My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” that this, My strong, my strong; El,
is a name of power, belonging to God; he comforts himself in his power,
while he complains of his frowns. Follow his pattern, and forget not
that power that can scatter the clouds, as well as gather them together.
The Psalmist’s support in his distress, was in the creative power of
God (Ps. cxxi. 2): “My help comes from the Lord, which made heaven and
earth.”
2. It is comfort in all strong and stirring corruptions and
mighty temptations. It is by this we may arm ourselves, and “be strong
in the power of his might” (Eph. vi. 10); by this we may conquer
principalities and powers, as dreadful as hell, but not so mighty as
heaven; by this we may triumph over lusts within, too strong for an
arm of flesh; by this the devils that have possessed us may be cast
out; the battered walls of our souls may be repaired; and the sons
of Anak laid flat. That power that brought light out of darkness, and
over‑mastered the deformity of the chaos, and set bounds to the ocean,
and dried up the Red Sea by a rebuke, can quell the tumults in our
spirits, and level spiritual Goliahs by his word. When the disciples
heard that terrifying speech of our Saviour, concerning rich men, that
it was “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than
for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Matt. xix. 24), to
entertain the gospel, which commanded self‑denial; and that, because
of the allurements of the world, and the strong habits in their soul;
Christ refers them to the power of God (ver. 26), who could expel those
ill habits, and plant good ones: “With men this is impossible, but
with God all things are possible.” There is no resistance, but he can
surmount; no strong‑hold, but he can demolish; no tower, but he can
level.
3. It is comfort from hence, that all promises shall be performed.
Goodness is sufficient to make a promise, but power is necessary to
perform a promise. Men that are honest, cannot often make good their
words, because something may intervene that may shorten their ability:
but nothing can disable God, without diminishing his godhead. He
hath an infiniteness of power to accomplish his word, as well as an
infiniteness of goodness to make and utter his word. {b100} That might
whereby he made heaven and earth, and his keeping truth forever, are
joined together (Ps. cxlvi. 5, 6); his Father’s faithfulness, and
his creative power are linked together. It is upon this basis the
covenant, and every part of it, is established, and stands as firm as
the almightiness of God, whereby he sprung up the earth, and reared
the heavens. “No power can resist his will” (Rom. ix. 19); “Who can
disannul his purpose, and turn back his hand when it is stretched out”
(Isa. xiv. 27)? His word is unalterable, and his power is invincible.
He could not deceive himself, for he knew his own strength when he
promised: no unexpected event can change his resolution, because
nothing can happen without the compass of his foresight. No created
strength can stop him in his action, because all creatures are ready
to serve him at his command; not the devils in hell, nor all the wicked
men on earth, since he hath strength to restrain them, and an arm
to punish them. What can be too hard for Him that created heaven and
earth? Hence it was, that when God promised anything anciently to his
people, he used often the name of the Almighty, the Lord that created
heaven and earth, as that which was an undeniable answer to any
objection, against anything that might be made against the greatness
and stupendousness of any promise; by that name, in all his works of
grace, was he known to them (Exod. vi. 3). When we are sure of his
will, we need not question his strength, since he never over‑engaged
himself above his ability. He that could not be resisted by anything in
creation, nor vanquished by devils in redemption, can never want power
to glorify his faithfulness in his accomplishment of whatsoever he hath
promised.
4. From this infiniteness of power in God, we have ground of
assurance for perseverance. Since conversion is resembled to the works
of creation and resurrection, two great marks of his strength, he doth
not surely employ himself in the first of changing the heart, to let
any created strength baffle that power which he began and intends to
glorify. It was this might that struck off the chain, and expelled
that strong one that possessed you. What, if you are too weak to keep
him out of his lost possession, will God lose the glory of his first
strength, by suffering his foiled adversary to make a re‑entry, and
regain his former usurpation? His out‑stretched arm will not do less
by his spiritual, than it did by his national Israel: it guarded them
all the way to Canaan, and left them not to shift for themselves after
he had struck off the fetters of Egypt, and buried their enemies in
the Red Sea (Deut. i. 31). This greatness of the Father, above all,
our Saviour makes the ground of believers’ continuance forever, against
the blasts of hell and engines of the world (John x. 29). “My Father
is greater than all, and none is able to pluck them out of my Father’s
hands.” Our keeping is not in our own weak hands, but in the hands of
Him who is mighty to save. That power of God keeps us which intends
our salvation. In all fears of falling away, shelter yourselves in
the power of God: “He shall be holden up,” saith the apostle, speaking
concerning one weak in faith; and no other reason is rendered by him
but this, “For God is able to make him to stand” (Rom. xiv. 4).
{b101} 5. From this attribute of the infinite power of God, we have
a ground of comfort in the lowest estate of the church. Let the state
of the church be never so deplorable, the condition never so desperate,
that Power that created the world, and shall raise the bodies of
men, can create a happy state for the church, and raise her from an
overwhelming grave; though the enemies trample upon her, they cannot
upon the arm that holds her, which by the least motion of it, can
lift her up above the heads of her adversaries, and make them feel the
thunder of that Power that none can understand: by the “blast of God
they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils they are consumed” (Job
iv. 9); they “shall be scattered as chaff before the wind.” If once
he “draw his hand out of his bosom,” all must fly before him, or sink
under him (Ps. lxxiv. 11): and when there is “none to help, his own arm
sustains him, and brings salvation, and his fury doth uphold him” (Isa.
lxiii. 5). What if the church totter under the underminings of hell?
What if it hath a sad heart and wet eyes? In what a little moment can
he make the night turn into day, and make the Jews, that were preparing
for death in Shushan, triumph over the necks of their enemies, and
march in one hour with swords in their hands, that expected the last
hour “ropes about their necks” (Esth. ix. 1, 5)? If Israel be pursued
by Pharaoh, the sea shall open its arms to protect them: if they
be thirsty, a rock shall spout out water to refresh them: if they
be hungry, heaven shall be their granary for manna: if Jerusalem be
besieged, and hath not force enough to encounter Sennacherib, an angel
shall turn the camp into an Aceldema, a field of blood. His people
shall not want deliverances, till God want a power of working miracles
for their security: he is more jealous of his power, than the church
can be of her safety. And if we should want other arguments to press
him, we may implore him by virtue of his power: for when there is
nothing in the church as a motive to him to save it, there is enough
in his own name, and “the illustration of his power” (Ps. cvi. 8). Who
can grapple with the omnipotency of that God, who is jealous of, and
zealous for, the honor of it? And therefore God, for the most part,
takes such opportunities to deliver, wherein his almightiness may be
most conspicuous, and his counsels most admirable. He awakened not
himself to deliver Israel, till they were upon the brink of the Red Sea;
nor to rescue the three children, till they were in the fiery furnace;
nor Daniel, till he was in the lion’s den. It is in the weakness of his
creature that his strength is perfected, not in a way of addition of
perfectness to it, but in a way of manifestation of the perfection of
it; as it is the perfection of the sun to shine and enlighten the world,
not that the sun receives an increase of light by the darting of his
beams, but discovers his glory to the admiration of men, and pleasure
of the world. If it were not for such occasions, the world would not
regard the mightiness of God, nor know what power were in him. It
traverses the stage in its fulness and liveliness upon such occasions,
when the enemies are strong, and their strength edged with an intense
hatred, and but little time between the contrivance and execution. It
is a great comfort that the lowest distresses of the church are a fit
scene for the discovery of this attribute, and that the {b102} glory
of God’s omnipotence, and the church’s security, are so straitly linked
together. It is a promise that will never be forgotten by God, and
ought never to be forgotten by us, that “in this mountain the hand of
the Lord shall rest” (Isa. xxv. 10); that is, the power of the Lord
shall abide; and Moab “shall be trodden under him, even as straw is
trodden down for the dunghill.” And the “plagues of Babylon shall come
in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; for strong is the Lord
who judgeth her” (Rev. xviii. 8).
_Use III._ The third use is for exhortation.
1. Meditate on this power of God, and press it often upon your minds.
We conclude many things of God that we do not practically suck the
comfort of, for want of deep thoughts of it, and frequent inspection
into it. We believe God to be true, yet distrust him; we acknowledge
him powerful, yet fear the motion of every straw. Many truths, though
assented to in our understandings, are kept under hatches by corrupt
affections, and have not their due influence, because they are not
brought forth into the open air of our souls by meditation. If we
will but search our hearts, we shall find it is the power of God we
often doubt of. When the heart of Ahaz and his subjects trembled at
the combination of the Syrian and Israelitish kings against him, for
want of a confidence in the power of God, God sends his prophet with
commission to work a miraculous sign at his own choice, to rear up his
fainting heart; and when he refused to ask a sign out of diffidence
of that almighty Power, the prophet complains of it as an affront to
his Master (Isa. vii. 12, 13). Moses, so great a friend of God, was
overtaken with this kind of unbelief, after all the experiments of
God’s miraculous acts in Egypt; the answer God gives him manifests this
to be at the core: “Is the Lord’s hand waxed short” (Numb. xi. 23)? For
want of actuated thoughts of this, we are many times turned from our
known duty by the blast of a creature; as though man had more power to
dismay us, than God hath to support us in his commanded way. The belief
of God’s power is one of the first steps to all religion; without
settled thoughts of it, we cannot pray lively and believingly for the
obtaining the mercies we want, or the averting the evils we fear; we
should not love him, unless we are persuaded he hath a power to bless
us; nor fear him, unless we were persuaded of his power to punish
us. The frequent thoughts of this would render our faith more stable,
and our hopes more stedfast; it would make us more feeble to sin,
and more careful to obey. When the virgin staggered at the message of
the angel, that she should “bear a Son,” he, in his answer, turns her
to the creative power of God (Luke i. 35), “The power of the Highest
shall overshadow thee;” which seems to be in allusion to the Spirit’s
moving upon the face of the deep, and bringing a comely world out of
a confused mass. Is it harder for God to make a virgin conceive a Son
by the power of his Spirit, than to make a world? Why doth he reveal
himself so often under the title of Almighty, and press it upon us,
but that we should press it upon ourselves? And shall we be forgetful
of that which everything about us, everything within us, is a mark of?
How come we by a power of seeing and hearing, a faculty, and act of
understanding {b103} and will, but by this power framing us, this power
assisting us? What though the thunder of his power cannot be understood,
no more can any other perfection of his nature; shall we, therefore,
seldom think of it? The sea cannot be fathomed, yet the merchant
excuseth not himself from sailing upon the surface of it. We cannot
glorify God without due consideration of this attribute; for his power
is his glory as much as any other, and called both by the name of glory
(Rom. vi. 4), speaking of Christ’s resurrection by the glory of the
Father; and also “the riches of his glory” (Eph. iii. 16). Those that
have strong temptations in their course and over‑pressing corruptions
in their hearts, have need to think of it out of interest, since
nothing but this can relieve them. Those that have experimented the
working of it in their new creation, are obliged to think of it out of
gratitude. It was this mighty power over himself that gave rise to all
that pardoning grace already conferred, or hereafter expected; without
it our souls had been consumed, the world overturned; we could not
have expected a happy heaven, but have lain yelling in an eternal hell,
had not the power of his mercy exceeded that of his justice, and his
infinite power executed what his infinite wisdom had contrived for our
redemption. How much also should we be raised in our admirations of
God, and ravish ourselves in contemplating that might that can raise
innumerable worlds in those infinite imaginary spaces without this
globe of heaven and earth, and exceed inconceivably what he hath done
in the creation of this?
2. From the pressing the consideration of this upon ourselves, let us
be induced to trust God upon the account of his power. The main end of
the revelation of his power to the patriarchs, and of the miraculous
operations of it in Egypt, was to induce them to an entire reposing
themselves in God: and the Psalmist doth scarce speak of the Divine
Omnipotence without making this inference from it; and scarce exhorts
to a trust in God, but backs it with a consideration of his power in
creation, it being the chief support of the soul (Ps. cxlvi. 1): “Happy
is he whose hope is in the Lord his God, which made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that therein is.” That Power is invincible that drew
the world out of nothing: nothing can happen to us harder than the
making the world without the concurrence of instruments: no difficulty
can nonplus that strength, that hath drawn all things out of nothing,
or out of a confused matter next to nothing: no power can rifle what we
commit to him (2 Tim. i. 12). He is all power, above the reach of all
power; all other powers in the world flowing from him, or depending on
him, he is worthy to be trusted, since we know him true, without ever
breaking his word; and Omnipotent, never failing of his purpose; and
a confidence in it is the chief act whereby we can glorify this power,
and credit his arm. A strong God, and a weak faith in omnipotence,
do not suit well together. Indeed, we are more engaged to a trust in
Divine power than the ancient patriarchs were; they had the verbal
declaration of his power, and many of them little other evidence of
it, than in the creation of the world; and their faith in God being
established in this first discovery of his omnipotence, drew out
itself further to believe, that whatsoever God promised by his word, he
{b104} was able to perform, as well as the creation of the world out of
nothing; which seems to be the intendment of the apostle (Heb. xi. 3);
not barely to speak of the creation of the world by God, which was a
thing the Hebrews understood well enough from their ancient oracles;
but to show the foundation of the patriarch’s faith, _viz._ God making
the world by his Word, and what use they made of the discovery of his
power in that, to lead them to believe the promise of God concerning
the Seed of the woman to be brought into the world. But we have
not only the same foundation, but superadded demonstrations of this
attribute in the conception of our Saviour, the union of the two
natures, the glorious redemption, the propagation of the gospel, and
the new creation of the world. They relied upon the naked power of God,
without those more illustrious appearances of it, which have been in
the ages since, and arrived to their notice; we have the wonderful
effects of that which they had but obscure expectations of.
(1.) Consider, trust in God can never be without taking in God’s power
as a concurrent foundation with his truth. It is the main ground of
trust, and so set forth in the prophet (Isa. xxvi. 4); “Trust ye in the
Lord for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.” And
the faith of the ancients so recommended (Heb. xi.), had this chiefly
for its ground; and the faith in gospel times is called a “trusting
on his arm” (Isa. li. 5.) All the attributes of God are the objects
of our veneration, but they do not equally contribute to the producing
trust in our hearts; his eternity, simplicity, infiniteness, ravish
and astonish our minds when we consider them; but there is no immediate
tendency in their nature to allure us to a confidence in him, no, not
in an innocent state, much less in a lapsed and revolted condition: but
the other perfections of his nature, as his holiness, righteousness,
mercy, are amiable to us in regard of the immediate operations of them
upon and about the creature, and so have something in their own nature
to allure us to repose ourselves in him; but yet those cannot engage
to an entire trust in him without reflecting upon his ability, which
can only render those useful and successful to the creature.[886] For
whatsoever bars stand in the way of his holy, righteous, and merciful
proceedings towards his creatures, are not overmastered by those
perfections, but by that strength of his which can only relieve us
in concurrence with the other attributes. How could his mercy succor
us without his arm, or his wisdom guide us without his hand, or his
truth perform promises to us without his strength? As no attribute
can act without it, so in our addresses to him upon the account of
any particular perfection in the Godhead according to our indigency,
our eye must be perpetually fixed upon this of his power, and our
faith would be feeble and dispirited without eyeing this: without this,
his holiness, which hates sin, would not be regarded; and his mercy,
pitying a grieving sinner, would not be valued. As this power is the
ground of a wicked man’s fear, so it is the ground of a good man’s
trust. This was that which was the principal support of Abraham, not
barely his promise, but his ability to make it good (Rom. iv. 21);
{b105} and when he was commanded to sacrifice Isaac, the ability of
God to raise him up again (Heb. xi. 19). All faith would droop, and be
in the mire, without leaning upon this; all those attributes which we
consider as moral in God, would have no influence upon us without this,
which we consider physically in God. Though we value the kindness men
may express to us in our distresses, yet we make them not the objects
of our confidence, unless they have an ability to act what they express.
There can be no trust in God without an eye to his power.
(2.) Sometimes the power of God is the sole object of trust. As when
we have no promise to assure us of his will, we have nothing else to
pitch upon but his ability; and that not his absolute power, but his
ordinate, in the way of his providence; we must not trust in it so
as to expect he should please our humor with fresh miracles, but rest
upon his power, and leave the manner to his will. Asa, when ready to
conflict with the vast Ethiopian army, pleaded nothing else but this
power of God (2 Chron. xiv. 11). And the three children, who had no
particular promise of deliverance (that we read of) stuck to God’s
ability to preserve them against the king’s threatening, and owned
it in the face of the king, yet with some kind of inward intimations
in their own spirits, that he would also deliver them (Dan. iii. 17).
“Our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us from the burning fiery
furnace.” And accordingly the fire burnt the cords that tied them,
without singeing any thing else about them. But when this power
hath been exercised upon like occasions, it is a precedent he hath
given us to rest upon. Precedents in law are good pleas, and strong
encouragements to the client to expect success in his suit. “Our
fathers trusted in thee, and thou didst deliver them,” saith David (Ps.
xxii. 4). And Jehoshaphat, in a case of distress (2 Chron. xx. 7), “Art
not thou our God, that didst drive out the inhabitants of this land
before thy people Israel?” When we have not any statute law and promise
to plead, we may plead his power, together with the former precedents
and act of it. The centurion had nothing else to act his faith upon but
the power of Christ, and some evidences of it in the miracles reported
of him; but he is silent in the latter, and casts himself only upon the
former, acknowledging that Christ had the same command over diseases,
as himself had over his soldiers (Matt. viii. 10). And our Saviour,
when he receives the petition of the blind men, requires no more of
them in order to a cure, but a belief of his ability to perform it
(Matt. ix. 28). “Believe you that I am able to do this?” His will is
not known but by revelation, but his power is apprehended by reason,
as essentially and eternally linked with the notion of a God. God also
is jealous of the honor of this attribute; and since it is so much
virtually discredited, he is pleased when any do cordially own it, and
entirely resign themselves to the assistance of it. Well, then, in all
duties where faith is particularly to be acted, forget not this as the
main prop of it: do you pray for a flourishing and triumphing grace?
Consider him “as able to make all grace to abound in you” (2 Cor. ix.
8). Do you want comfort and reviving under your contritions and godly
sorrow? Consider him, as he declares himself, {b106} “the high and
lofty One” (Isa. lvii. 15). Are you under pressing distresses? take
Eliphaz’s advice to Job, when he tells him what he himself would do if
he were in his case (Job v. 8), “I would seek unto God, and unto God
would I commit my cause:” but observe under what consideration (ver. 9)
as to one “that doth great things, and unsearchable; marvellous things
without number.” When you beg of him the melting your rocky hearts, the
dashing in pieces your strong corruptions, the drawing his beautiful
image in your soul, the quickening your dead hearts, and reviving your
drooping spirits, and supplying your spiritual wants, consider him as
one “able to do abundantly,” not only “above what you can ask,” but
“above what you can think” (Eph. iii. 20). Faith will be spiritless,
and prayer will be lifeless, if power be not eyed by us in those things
which cannot be done without an arm of Omnipotence.
3. This doctrine teacheth us humility and submission. The vast
disproportion between the mightiness of God, and the meanness of
a creature, inculcates the lesson of humility in his presence. How
becoming is humility under a mighty hand (1 Pet. v. 6)! What is an
infant in a giant’s hand, or a lamb in a lion’s paw? Submission to
irresistible power is the best policy, and the best security; this
gratifies and draws out goodness, whereas murmuring and resistance
exasperates and sharpens power. We sanctify his name, and glorify his
strength, by falling down before it; it is an acknowledgment of his
invisible strength, and our inability to match it. How low should we
therefore lie before him, against whose power our pride and murmuring
can do no good, who can out‑wrestle us in our contests, and alway
overcome when he judges (Rom. iii. 4)!
4. This doctrine teacheth us not to fear the pride and force of man.
How unreasonable is it to fear a limited, above an unbounded power!
How unbecoming is the fear of man in him, who hath an interest in a
strength able to curb the strongest devils! Who would tremble at the
threats of a dwarf, that hath a mighty and watchful giant for his
guard? If God doth but arise, his enemies are scattered (Ps. lxviii.
1): the least motion makes them fly before him: it is no difficult
thing for Him, that made them by a word, to unmake their designs, and
shiver them in pieces by the breath of his mouth: “He brings princes to
nothing, and makes the judges of the earth vanity; they wither when he
blows upon them, and their stock shall not take root in the earth. He
can command a whirlwind to take them away as stubble” (Isa. xl. 23, 24);
yea, with the “shaking of his hand he makes servants to become rulers
of those that were their masters” (Zech. ii. 9). Whole nations are no
more in his hands than a “morning cloud,” or the “dew upon the ground,”
or “the chaff before the wind,” or the smoke against the motion of the
air, which, though it appear out of a chimney like a black invincible
cloud, is quickly dispersed, and becomes invisible (Hos. xiii. 3). How
inconsiderable are the most mighty to this strength, which can puff
away a whole world of proud grasshoppers, and a whole sky of daring
clouds! He that by his word masters the rage of the sea, can overrule
the pride and power of men. Where is the fury of the oppressor? It
cannot overleap the bounds he hath set it, nor march an inch {b107}
beyond the point he hath prescribed it. Fear not the confederacies of
man, but “sanctify the Lord of hosts; let him be your fear, and let him
be your dread” (Isa. viii. 13). To fear men is to dishonor the name of
God, and regard him as a feeble Lord, and not as the Lord of hosts, who
is mighty in strength, so that they that harden themselves against him
shall not prosper.
5. Therefore this doctrine teacheth us the fear of God. The prophet
Jeremiah counts it as an impossible thing for men to be destitute of
the fear of God, when they seriously consider his name to be great and
mighty (Jer. x. 6, 7): “Thou art great, and thy name is great in might:
who would not fear thee, O thou King of nations?” Shall we not tremble
at his presence, who hath placed the “sand for the bound of the sea by
a perpetual decree;” that though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet
they cannot prevail (Jer. v. 22). He can arm the weakest creature for
our destruction, and disarm the strongest creatures which appear for
our preservation. He can command a hair, a crumb, a kernel, to go awry,
and strangle us. He can make the heavens brass over our head, stop
close the bottles of the clouds, and make the fruit of the fields droop,
when there is a small distance to the harvest; he can arm men’s wit,
wealth, hands, against themselves; he can turn our sweet morsels into
bitter, and our own consciences into devouring lions; he can root
up cities by moles, and conquer the proudest by lice and worms. The
omnipotence of God is not only the object of a believer’s trust, but
a believer’s fear. It is from the consideration of this power only,
that our Saviour presses his disciples, whom he entitles his friends,
to fear God; which lesson he presses by a double repetition, and with
a kind of asseveration, without rendering any other reason than this of
the ability of God to cast into hell (Luke xii. 5). We are to fear Him
because he can; but bless his goodness because he will not. In regard
of his omnipotence, he is to be reverenced, not only by mortal men,
but by the blessed angels, who are past the fear of any danger by his
power, being confirmed in a happy state by his unalterable grace: when
they adore him for his holiness, they reverence him for his power with
covered faces: the title of the “Lord of hosts” is joined in their
reverential praise with that of his holiness (Isa. vi. 3), “Holy, holy,
holy is the Lord of hosts.” How should we adore that Power which can
preserve us, when devils and men conspire to destroy us! How should
we stand in awe of that Power which can destroy us, though angels
and men should combine to preserve us! The parts of his ways which
are discovered, are sufficient motives to an humble and reverential
adoration: but who can fear and adore him according to the vastness of
his power, and his excellent greatness, since “the thunder of his power
who can understand?”
{b108} DISCOURSE XI.
ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD.
EXODUS xv. 11.――Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises,
doing wonders?
THIS verse is one of the loftiest descriptions of the majesty and
excellency of God in the whole Scripture.[887] It is a part of Moses’
Ἐπινίκιον, or “triumphant song,” after a great and real, and a typical
victory; in the womb of which all the deliverances of the church were
couched. It is the first song upon holy record, and it consists of
gratulatory and prophetic matter; it casts a look backward to what God
did for them in their deliverance from Egypt; and a look forward to
what God shall do for the church in future ages. That deliverance was
but a rough draught of something more excellent to be wrought towards
the closing up of the world; when his plagues shall be poured out
upon the anti‑christian powers, which should revive the same song of
Moses in the church, as fitted so many ages before for such a scene
of affairs (Rev. xv. 2, 3). It is observed, therefore, that many words
in this song are put in the future tense, noting a time to come; and
the very first word, ver. 1, “Then sang Moses and the children of
Israel this song;” ישיר, shall sing; implying, that it was composed and
calculated for the celebrating some greater action of God’s, which was
to be wrought in the world.[888] Upon this account, some of the Jewish
rabbins, from the consideration of this remark, asserted the doctrine
of the resurrection to be meant in this place; that Moses and those
Israelites should rise again to sing the same song, for some greater
miracles God should work, and greater triumphs he should bring forth,
exceeding those wonders at their deliverance from Egypt.
It consists of, 1. A preface (ver. 1); “I will sing unto the
Lord.”[889] 2. An historical narration of matter of fact (ver. 3, 4),
“Pharaoh’s chariots and his host hath he cast into the Red Sea;” which
he solely ascribes to God (ver. 6), “Thy right hand, O Lord, is become
glorious in power: thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the
enemy;” which he doth prophetically, as respecting something to be done
in after‑times; or further for the completing of that deliverance; or,
as others think, respecting their entering into Canaan; for the words,
in these two verses, are put in the future tense. The manner of the
deliverance is described (ver. 8); “The floods stood upright {b109} as
an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea.” In the
9th verse, he magnifies the victory from the vain glory and security
of the enemy; “The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will
divide the spoil,” &c. And ver. 16, 17, He prophetically describes
the fruit of this victory, in the influence it shall have upon those
nations, by whose confines they were to travel to the promised land;
“Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of thy arm they
shall be as still as a stone, till thy people pass over which thou hast
purchased.” The phrase of this and the 17th and 18th verses, seems to
be more magnificent than to design only the bringing the Israelites
to the earthly Canaan; but seems to respect the gathering his redeemed
ones together, to place them in the spiritual sanctuary which he had
established, wherein the Lord should reign forever and ever, without
any enemies to disturb his royalty; “The Lord shall reign forever and
ever” (ver. 18). The prophet, in the midst of his historical narrative,
seems to be in an ecstasy, and breaks out in a stately exaltation of
God in the text.
_Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? &c._ Interrogations
are, in Scripture, the strongest affirmations or negations; it is
here a strong affirmation of the incomparableness of God, and a strong
denial of the worthiness of all creatures to be partners with him in
the degrees of his excellency; it is a preference of God before all
creatures in holiness, to which the purity of creatures is but a shadow
in desert of reverence and veneration, he being “fearful in praises.”
The angels cover their faces when they adore him in his particular
perfections.
_Amongst the gods._ Among the idols of the nations, say some;
others say,[890] it is not to be found that the Heathen idols are ever
dignified with the title of “strong or mighty,” as the word translated
gods, doth import; and therefore understand it of the angels, or other
potentates of the world; or rather inclusively, of all that are noted
for, or can lay claim to, the title of strength and might upon the
earth or in heaven. God is so great and majestic, that no creature can
share with him in his praise.
_Fearful in praises._ Various are the interpretations of this
passage: to be “reverenced in praises;” his praise ought to be
celebrated with a religious fear. Fear is the product of his mercy
as well as his justice; “He hath forgiveness that he may be feared”
(Ps. cxxx. 4). Or, “fearful in praises;” whom none can praise without
amazement at the considerations of his works. None can truly praise
him without being affected with astonishment at his greatness.[891]
Or, “fearful in praises;” whom no mortal can sufficiently praise,
since he is above all praise.[892] Whatsoever a human tongue can speak,
or an angelical understanding think of the excellency of his nature
and the greatness of his works, falls short of the vastness of the
Divine perfection. A creature’s praises of God are as much below the
transcendent eminency of God, as the meanness of a creature’s being
is below the eternal fulness of the Creator. Or, rather, “fearful,” or
terrible, “in praises;” that is, in the matter of thy praise: and the
learned Rivet concurs with me in {b110} this sense. The works of God,
celebrated in this song, were terrible; it was the miraculous overthrow
of the strength and flower of a mighty nation; his judgments were
severe, as well as his mercy was seasonable. The word נורא signifies
glorious and illustrious, as well as terrible and fearful. No man can
hear the praise of thy name, for those great judicial acts, without
some astonishment at thy justice, the stream, and thy holiness,
the spring of those mighty works. This seems to be the sense of the
following words, “doing wonders:” fearful in the matter of thy praise;
they being wonders which thou hast done among us and for us.
_Doing wonders._ Congealing the waters by a wind, to make them stand
like walls for the rescue of the Israelites; and melting them by a
wind, for the overthrow of the Egyptians, are prodigies that challenge
the greatest adorations of that mercy which delivered the one, and that
justice which punished the other; and of the arm of that power whereby
he effected both his gracious and righteous purposes.
Whence observe, that the judgments of God upon his enemies, as well
as his mercies to his people, are matters of praise. The perfections
of God appear in both. Justice and mercy are so linked together in his
acts of providence, that the one cannot be forgotten whilst the other
is acknowledged. He is never so terrible as in the assemblies of his
saints, and the deliverance of them (Ps. lxxxix. 7). As the creation
was erected by him for his glory; so all the acts of his government
are designed for the same end: and his creatures deny him his due, if
they acknowledge not his excellency in whatsoever dreadful, as well
as pleasing garbs, it appears in the world. His terror as well as his
righteousness appears, when he is a God of salvation (Ps. lxv. 5).
“By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of our
salvation.” But the expression I pitch upon in the text to handle, is
_glorious in holiness_. He is magnified or honorable in holiness; so
the word נאדר is translated (Isa. xlii. 21). “He will magnify the law,
and make it honorable.” Thy holiness hath shone forth admirably in
this last exploit, against the enemies and oppressors of thy people.
The holiness of God is his glory, as his grace is his riches: holiness
is his crown, and his mercy is his treasure. This is the blessedness
and nobleness of his nature; it renders him glorious in himself, and
glorious to his creatures, that understand any thing of this lovely
perfection. Holiness is a glorious perfection belonging to the nature
of God. Hence he is in Scripture styled often the Holy One, the Holy
One of Jacob, the Holy One of Israel; and oftener entitled Holy, than
Almighty, and set forth by this part of his dignity more than by any
other. This is more affixed as an epithet to his name than any other:
you never find it expressed, His mighty name, or His wise name; but His
great name, and most of all, His holy name. This is his greatest title
of honor; in this doth the majesty and venerableness of his name appear.
When the sinfulness of Sennacherib is aggravated, the Holy Ghost takes
the rise from this attribute (2 Kings xix. 22). “Thou hast lift up
thine eyes on high, even against the Holy One of Israel;” not against
the wise, mighty, &c., but against the Holy One of Israel, as that
wherein the majesty of God was most illustrious. It {b111} is upon this
account he is called light, as impurity is called darkness; both in
this sense are opposed to one another: he is a pure and unmixed light,
free from all blemish in his essence, nature, and operations.
1. Heathens have owned it. Proclus calls him, the undefiled Governor of
the world.[893] The poetical transformations of their false gods, and
the extravagancies committed by them, was――in the account of the wisest
of them――an unholy thing to report and hear.[894] And some vindicate
Epicurus from the atheism wherewith he was commonly charged; that he
did not deny the being of God, but those adulterous and contentious
deities the people worshipped, which were practices unworthy and
unbecoming the nature of God.[895] Hence they asserted, that virtue was
an imitation of God, and a virtuous man bore a resemblance to God: if
virtue were a copy from God, a greater holiness must be owned in the
original. And when some of them were at a loss how to free God from
being the author of sin in the world, they ascribe the birth of sin to
matter, and run into an absurd opinion, fancying it to be uncreated,
that thereby they might exempt God from all mixture of evil; so sacred
with them was the conception of God, as a Holy God.
2. The absurdest heretics have owned it. The Maniches and Marchionites,
that thought evil came by necessity, yet would salve God’s being the
author of it, by asserting two distinct eternal principles, one the
original of evil, as God was the fountain of good: so rooted was the
notion of this Divine purity, that none would ever slander goodness
itself with that which was so disparaging to it.[896]
3. The nature of God cannot rationally be conceived without it.
Though the power of God be the first rational conclusion, drawn from
the sight of his works, wisdom the next, from the order and connexion
of his works, purity must result from the beauty of his works: that God
cannot be deformed by evil, who hath made every thing so beautiful in
its time. The notion of a God cannot be entertained without separating
from him whatsoever is impure and bespotting both in his essence
and actions. Though we conceive him infinite in Majesty, infinite in
essence, eternal in duration, mighty in power, and wise and immutable
in his counsels; merciful in his proceedings with men, and whatsoever
other perfections may dignify so sovereign a Being, yet if we conceive
him destitute of this excellent perfection, and imagine him possessed
with the least contagion of evil, we make him but an infinite monster,
and sully all those perfections we ascribed to him before; we rather
own him a devil than a God. It is a contradiction to be God and to
be darkness, or to have one mote of darkness mixed with his light. It
is a less injury to him to deny his being, than to deny the purity of
it; the one makes him no god, the other a deformed, unlovely, and a
detestable god. Plutarch said not amiss, That he should count himself
less injured by that man, that should deny that there was such a man as
Plutarch, than by him that should affirm that there was such {b112} a
one indeed, but he was a debauched fellow, a loose and vicious person.
It is a less wrong to God to discard any acknowledgments of his being,
and to count him nothing, than to believe him to exist, but imagine
a base and unholy Deity: he that saith, God is not holy, speaks much
worse than he that saith, There is no God at all. Let these two things
be considered.
I. If any, this attribute hath an excellency above his other
perfections. There are some attributes of God we prefer, because of our
interest in them, and the relation they bear to us: as we esteem his
goodness before his power, and his mercy whereby he relieves us, before
his justice whereby he punisheth us; as there are some we more delight
in, because of the goodness we receive by them; so there are some that
God delights to honor, because of their excellency.
1. None is sounded out so loftily, with such solemnity, and so
frequently by angels that stand before his throne, as this. Where do
you find any other attribute trebled in the praises of it, as this
(Isa. vi. 3)? “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth
is full of his glory;” and (Rev. iv. 8), “The four beasts rest not day
and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,” &c. His power
or sovereignty, as Lord of hosts, is but once mentioned, but with a
ternal repetition of his holiness. Do you hear, in any angelical song,
any other perfection of the Divine Nature thrice repeated? Where do
we read of the crying out Eternal, eternal, eternal; or, Faithful,
faithful, faithful, Lord God of Hosts? Whatsoever other attribute is
left out, this God would have to fill the mouths of angels and blessed
spirits for ever in heaven.
2. He singles it out to swear by (Ps. lxxxix. 35): “Once have I sworn
by my holiness, that I will not lie unto David:” and (Amos iv. 2), “The
Lord will swear by his holiness:” he twice swears by his holiness; once
by his power (Isa. lxii. 8); once by all, when he swears by his name
(Jer. xliv. 26). He lays here his holiness to pledge for the assurance
of his promise, as the attribute most dear to him, most valued by
him, as though no other could give an assurance parallel to it in this
concern of an everlasting redemption which is there spoken of: he that
swears, swears by a greater than himself; God having no greater than
himself, swears by himself: and swearing here by his holiness, seems
to equal that single one to all his other attributes, as if he were
more concerned in the honor of it, than of all the rest. It is as if he
should have said, Since I have not a more excellent perfection to swear
by, than that of my holiness, I lay this to pawn for your security, and
bind myself by that which I will never part with, were it possible for
me to be stripped of all the rest. It is a tacit imprecation of himself,
If I lie unto David, let me never be counted holy, or thought righteous
enough to be trusted by angels or men. This attribute he makes most of.
3. It is his glory and beauty. Holiness is the honor of the creature;
sanctification and honor are linked together (1 Thess. iv. 4); much
more is it the honor of God; it is the image of God in the creature
(Eph. iv. 24). When we take the picture of a man, we draw the most
beautiful part, the face, which is a member of the greatest excellency.
When God would be drawn to the life, as much {b113} as can be, in the
spirit of his creatures, he is drawn in this attribute, as being the
most beautiful perfection of God, and most valuable with him. Power
is his hand and arm; omniscience, his eye; mercy, his bowels; eternity,
his duration; his holiness is his beauty (2 Chron. xx. 21);――“should
praise the beauty of holiness.” In Ps. xxvii. 4, David desires “to
behold the beauty of the Lord, and inquire in his holy temple;” that
is, the holiness of God manifested in his hatred of sin in the daily
sacrifices. Holiness was the beauty of the temple (Isa. xlvi. 11);
holy and beautiful house are joined together; much more the beauty of
God that dwelt in the sanctuary. This renders him lovely to all his
innocent creatures, though formidable to the guilty ones. A heathen
philosopher could call it the beauty of the Divine essence, and say,
that God was not so happy by an eternity of life, as by an excellency
of virtue.[897] And the angels’ song intimate it to be his glory
(Isa. vi. 3); “The whole earth is full of thy glory;” that is, of his
holiness in his laws, and in his judgments against sin, that being the
attribute applauded by them before.
4. It is his very life. So it is called (Eph. iv. 18), “Alienated
from the life of God,” that is, from the holiness of God: speaking of
the opposite to it, the uncleanness and profaneness of the Gentiles. We
are only alienated from that which we are bound to imitate; but this is
the perfection alway set out as the pattern of our actions, “Be ye holy,
as I am holy;” no other is proposed as our copy; alienated from that
purity of God, which is as much as his life, without which he could not
live. If he were stripped of this, he would be a dead God, more than by
the want of any other perfection. His swearing by it intimates as much;
he swears often by his own life; “As I live, saith the Lord:” so he
swears by his holiness, as if it were his life, and more his life than
any other. Let me not live, or let me not be holy, are all one in his
oath. His Deity could not outlive the life of his purity.
II. As it seems to challenge an excellency above all his other
perfections, so it is the glory of all the rest. As it is the glory
of the Godhead, so it is the glory of every perfection in the Godhead.
As his power is the strength of them, so his holiness is the beauty
of them. As all would be weak, without almightiness to back them, so
all would be uncomely without holiness to adorn them. Should this be
sullied, all the rest would lose their honor and their comfortable
efficacy: as, at the same instant that the sun should lose its light,
it would lose its heat, its strength, its generative and quickening
virtue. As sincerity is the lustre of every grace in a Christian, so is
purity the splendor of every attribute in the Godhead. His justice is
a holy justice; his wisdom a holy wisdom; his arm of power a holy arm
(Ps. xcviii. 1); his truth or promise a holy promise (Ps. cv. 42).
Holy and true go hand in hand (Rev. vi. 10). His name, which signifies
all his attributes in conjunction, is holy (Ps. ciii. 1); yea, he is
“righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works” (Ps. cxlv. 17):
it is the rule of all his acts, the source of all his punishments. If
every attribute of the Deity were a distinct member, purity would be
the form, the soul, the spirit to animate them. Without it, his {b114}
patience would be an indulgence to sin, his mercy a fondness, his wrath
a madness, his power a tyranny, his wisdom an unworthy subtilty. It
is this gives a decorum to all. His mercy is not exercised without it,
since he pardons none but those that have an interest, by union, in the
obedience of a Mediator, which was so delightful to his infinite purity.
His justice, which guilty man is apt to tax with cruelty and violence
in the exercise of it, is not acted out of the compass of this rule.
In acts of man’s vindictive justice there is something of impurity,
perturbation, passion, some mixture of cruelty; but none of these fall
upon God in the severest acts of wrath. When God appears to Ezekiel,
in the resemblance of fire, to signify his anger against the house
of Judah for their idolatry, “from his loins downward” there was “the
appearance of fire;” but, from the loins upward, “the appearance of
brightness, as the color of amber” (Ezek. viii. 2). His heart is clear
in his most terrible acts of vengeance; it is a pure flame, wherewith
he scorcheth and burns his enemies: he is holy in the most fiery
appearance. This attribute, therefore, is never so much applauded, as
when his sword hath been drawn, and he hath manifested the greatest
fierceness against his enemies. The magnificent and triumphant
expression of it in the text, follows just upon God’s miraculous defeat
and ruin of the Egyptian army: “The sea covered them; they sank as lead
in the mighty waters:” then it follows, “Who is like unto thee, O Lord,
glorious in holiness?” And when it was so celebrated by the seraphims
(Isa. vi. 3), it was when the “posts moved, and the house was filled
with smoke” (ver. 4), which are signs of anger (Ps. xviii. 7, 8).
And when he was about to send Isaiah upon a message of spiritual and
temporal judgments, that he would make the “heart of that people fat,
and their ears heavy, and their eyes shut; waste their cities without
inhabitant, and their houses without man, and make the land desolate”
(ver. 9‒12): and the angels which here applaud him for his holiness,
are the executioners of his justice, and here called seraphims, from
burning or fiery spirits, as being the ministers of his wrath. His
justice is part of his holiness, whereby he doth reduce into order
those things that are out of order. When he is consuming men by his
fury, he doth not diminish, but manifest purity (Zeph. iii. 5); “The
just Lord is in the midst of her; he will do no iniquity.” Every action
of his is free from all tincture of evil. It is also celebrated with
praise, by the four beasts about his throne, when he appears in a
covenant garb with a rainbow about his throne, and yet with thunderings
and lightnings shot against his enemies (Rev. iv. 8, compared with
ver. 3, 5), to show that all his acts of mercy, as well as justice,
are clear from any stain. This is the crown of all his attributes, the
life of all his decrees, the brightness of all his actions: nothing
is decreed by him, nothing is acted by him, but what is worthy of the
dignity, and becoming the honor, of this attribute.
For the better understanding this attribute, observe, I. The nature
of this holiness. II. The demonstration of it. III. The purity of his
nature in all his acts about sin. IV. The use of all to ourselves.
I. The nature of Divine holiness _in general_. The holiness of
God _negatively_, is a perfect and unpolluted freedom from all evil.
As we {b115} call gold pure that is not embased by any dross, and
that garment clean that is free from any spot, so the nature of
God is estranged from all shadow of evil, all imaginable contagion.
_Positively_, It is the rectitude or integrity of the Divine nature,
or that conformity of it, in affection and action, to the Divine will,
as to his eternal law, whereby he works with a becomingness to his own
excellency, and whereby he hath a delight and complacency in everything
agreeable to his will, and an abhorrency of everything contrary
thereunto. As there is no darkness in his understanding, so there is no
spot in his will: as his mind is possessed with all truth, so there is
no deviation in his will from it. He loves all truth and goodness; he
hates all falsity and evil. In regard of his righteousness, he loves
righteousness (Ps. xi. 7); “The righteous Lord loveth righteousness,”
and “hath no pleasure in wickedness” (Ps. v. 4). He values purity in
his creatures, and detests all impurity, whether inward or outward. We
may, indeed, distinguish the holiness of God from his righteousness in
our conceptions: holiness is a perfection absolutely considered in the
nature of God; righteousness, a perfection, as referred to others, in
his actions towards them and upon them.[898]
_In particular_, this property of the Divine nature is, 1. An essential
and necessary perfection: he is essentially and necessarily holy. It
is the essential glory of his nature: his holiness is as necessary as
his being; as necessary as his omniscience: as he cannot but know what
is right, so he cannot but do what is just. His understanding is not
as created understanding, capable of ignorance as well as knowledge;
so his will is not as created wills, capable of unrighteousness, as
well as righteousness. There can be no contradiction or contrariety in
the Divine nature, to know what is right, and to do what is wrong; if
so, there would be a diminution of his blessedness, he would not be
a God alway blessed, “blessed forever,” as he is (Rom. ix. 5). He is
as necessarily holy, as he is necessarily God; as necessarily without
sin, as without change. As he was God from eternity, so he was holy
from eternity. He was gracious, merciful, just in his own nature, and
also holy; though no creature had been framed by him to exercise his
grace, mercy, justice, or holiness upon.[899] If God had not created
a world, he had, in his own nature, been Almighty, and able to create
a world. If there never had been anything but himself, yet he had been
omniscient, knowing everything that was within the verge and compass of
his infinite power; so he was pure in his own nature, though he never
had brought forth any rational creature whereby to manifest this purity.
These perfections are so necessary, that the nature of God could not
subsist without them. And the acts of those, _ad intra_, or within
himself, are necessary; for being omniscient in nature, there must be
an act of knowledge of himself and his own nature. Being infinitely
holy, an act of holiness in infinitely loving himself, must necessarily
flow from this perfection.[900] As the Divine will cannot but be
perfect, so it cannot be wanting to render the highest love to itself,
to its goodness, to the Divine nature, which is due to him. Indeed,
the acts of those, _ad extra_, {b116} are not necessary, but upon a
condition. To love righteousness, without himself, or to detect sin, or
inflict punishment for the committing of it, could not have been, had
there been no righteous creature for him to love, no sinning creature
for him to loathe, and to exercise his justice upon, as the object of
punishment. Some attributes require a condition to make the acts of
them necessary; as it is at God’s liberty, whether he will create a
rational creature, or no; but when he decrees to make either angel or
man, it is necessary, from the perfection of his nature, to make them
righteous. It is at God’s liberty whether he will speak to man, or no;
but if he doth, it is impossible for him to speak that which is false,
because of his infinite perfection of veracity. It is at his liberty
whether he will permit a creature to sin; but if he sees good to suffer
it, it is impossible but that he should detest that creature that
goes cross to his righteous nature. His holiness is not solely an act
of his will, for then he might be unholy as well as holy; he might
love iniquity and hate righteousness; he might then command that which
is good, and afterwards command that which is bad and unworthy; for
what is only an act of his will, and not belonging to his nature, is
indifferent to him. As the positive law he gave to Adam, of not eating
the forbidden fruit, was a pure act of his will, he might have given
him liberty to eat of it, if he had pleased, as well as prohibited him.
But what is moral and good in its own nature, is necessarily willed by
God, and cannot be changed by him, because of the transcendent eminency
of his nature, and righteousness of his will. As it is impossible for
God to command his creature to hate him, or to dispense with a creature
for not loving him,――for this would be to command a thing intrinsically
evil, the highest ingratitude, the very spirit of all wickedness, which
consists in the hating God,――yet, though God be thus necessarily holy,
he is not so by a bare and simple necessity, as the sun shines, or
the fire burns; but by a free necessity, not compelled thereunto, but
inclined from the fulness of the perfection of his own nature and will;
so as by no means he can be unholy, because he will not be unholy; it
is against his nature to be so.
2. God is only absolutely holy; “There is none holy as the Lord”
(1 Sam. ii. 2); it is the peculiar glory of his nature; as there is
none good but God, so none holy but God. No creature can be essentially
holy, because mutable; holiness is the substance of God, but a quality
and accident in a creature. God is infinitely holy, creatures finitely
holy. He is holy from himself, creatures are holy by derivation from
him. He is not only holy, but holiness; holiness in the highest degree,
is his sole prerogative. As the highest heaven is called the heaven
of heavens, because it embraceth in its circle all the heavens, and
contains the magnitude of them, and hath a greater vastness above
all that it encloseth, so is God the Holy of holies; he contains the
holiness of all creatures put together, and infinitely more. As all
the wisdom, excellency, and power of the creatures if compared with
the wisdom, excellency, and power of God, is but folly, vileness, and
weakness; so the highest created purity, if set in parallel with God,
is but impurity and uncleanness (Rev. xv. 4): “Thou only art holy.” It
is like the light {b117} of a glow‑worm to that of the sun (Job xiii.
15); “The heavens are not pure in his sight, and his angels he charged
with folly” (Job iv. 18). Though God hath crowned the angels with an
unspotted sanctity, and placed them in a habitation of glory, yet, as
illustrious as they are, they have an unworthiness in their own nature
to appear before the throne of so holy a God; their holiness grows dim
and pale in his presence. It is but a weak shadow of that Divine purity,
whose light is so glorious, that it makes them cover their faces out of
weakness to behold it, and cover their feet out of shame in themselves.
They are not pure in his sight, because, though they love God (which
is a principle of holiness) as much as they can, yet, not so much as
he deserves; they love him with the intensest degree, according to
their power; but not with the intensest degree, according to his own
amiableness; for they cannot infinitely love God, unless they were as
infinite as God, and had an understanding of his perfections equal with
himself, and as immense as his own knowledge. God, having an infinite
knowledge of himself, can only have an infinite love to himself, and,
consequently, an infinite holiness without any defect; because he
loves himself according to the vastness of his own amiableness, which
no finite being can. Therefore, though the angels be exempt from
corruption and soil, they cannot enter into comparison with the purity
of God, without acknowledgment of a dimness in themselves. Besides,
he charges them with folly, and puts no trust in them; because they
have the power of sinning, though not the act of sinning; they have a
possible folly in their own nature to be charged with. Holiness is a
quality separable from them, but it is inseparable from God. Had they
not at first a mutability in their nature, none of them could have
sinned, there had been no devils; but because some of them sinned, the
rest might have sinned. And though the standing angels shall never be
changed, yet they are still changeable in their own nature, and their
standing is due to grace, not to nature; and though they shall be for
ever preserved, yet they are not, nor ever can be, immutable by nature,
for then they should stand upon the same bottom with God himself; but
they are supported by grace against that changeableness of nature which
is essential to a creature; the Creator only hath immortality, that
is, immutability (1 Tim. iii. 16). It is as certain a truth, that no
creature can be naturally immutable and impeccable, as that God cannot
create anything actually polluted and imperfect. It is as possible
that the highest creature may sin, as it is possible that it may be
annihilated; it may become not holy, as it may become not a creature,
but nothing. The holiness of a creature may be reduced into nothing,
as well as his substance; but the holiness of the Creator cannot be
diminished, dimmed, or overshadowed (James i. 17): “He is the Father
of lights, with whom is no variableness or shadow of turning.” It is
as impossible his holiness should be blotted, as that his Deity should
be extinguished: for whatsoever creature hath essentially such or such
qualities, cannot be stripped of them, without being turned out of
its essence. As a man is essentially rational; and if he ceaseth to be
rational, he ceaseth to be {b118} man. The sun is essentially luminous;
if it should become dark in its own body, it would cease to be the
sun. In regard to this absolute and only holiness of God, it is thrice
repeated by the seraphims (Isa. vi. 3). The three‑fold repetition
of a word notes the certainty or absoluteness of the thing, or the
irreversibleness of the resolve; as (Ezek. xxi. 27), “I will overturn,
overturn, overturn,” notes the certainty of the judgment; also, (Rev.
viii. 8), “Woe, woe, woe;” three times repeated, signifies the same.
The holiness of God is so absolutely peculiar to him, that it can no
more be expressed in creatures, than his omnipotence, whereby they
may be able to create a world; or his omniscience, whereby they may be
capable of knowing all things, and knowing God as he knows himself.
3. God is so holy, that he cannot possibly approve of any evil done by
another, but doth perfectly abhor it; it would not else be a glorious
holiness (Ps. v. 3). “He hath no pleasure in wickedness.” He doth not
only love that which is just, but abhor, with a perfect hatred, all
things contrary to the rule of righteousness. Holiness can no more
approve of sin than it can commit it: to be delighted with the evil in
another’s act, contracts a guilt, as well as the commission of it; for
approbation of a thing is a consent to it. Sometimes the approbation
of an evil in another is a more grievous crime than the act itself, as
appears in Rom. i. 32, who knowing the judgment of God, “not only do
the same, but have pleasure in them that do it;” where the “not only”
manifests it to be a greater guilt to take pleasure in them. Every sin
is aggravated by the delight in it; to take pleasure in the evil of
another’s action, shows a more ardent affection and love to sin, than
the committer himself may have. This, therefore, can as little fall
upon God, as to do an evil act himself; yet, as a man may be delighted
with the consequences of another’s sin, as it may occasion some public
good, or private good to the guilty person, as sometimes it may be an
occasion of his repentance, when the horridness of a fact stares him in
the face, and occasions a self‑reflection for that, and other crimes,
which is attended with an indignation against them, and sincere remorse
for them; so God is pleased with those good things his goodness and
wisdom bring forth upon the occasion of sin. But in regard of his
holiness, he cannot approve of the evil, whence his infinite wisdom
drew forth his own glory, and his creature’s good. His pleasure is not
in the sinful act of the creature, but in the act of his own goodness
and skill, turning it to another end than what the creature aimed at.
(1.) He abhors it necessarily. Holiness is the glory of the Deity,
therefore necessary. The nature of God is so holy, that he cannot but
hate it (Hab. i. 13): “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and
canst not look on iniquity:” he is more opposite to it than light to
darkness, and, therefore, it can expect no countenance from him. A love
of holiness cannot be without a hatred of everything that is contrary
to it. As God necessarily loves himself, so he must necessarily hate
everything that is against himself: and as he loves himself for his
own excellency and holiness, he must necessarily detest whatsoever
is repugnant to his holiness, because of the evil of it. Since he
is infinitely good, he cannot but love goodness, as it is {b119} a
resemblance to himself, and cannot but abhor unrighteousness, as being
most distant from him, and contrary to him. If he have any esteem for
his own perfections, he must needs have an implacable aversion to all
that is so repugnant to him, that would, if it were possible, destroy
him, and is a point directed, not only against his glory, but against
his life. If he did not hate it, he would hate himself: for since
righteousness is his image, and sin would deface his image; if he did
not love his image, and loathe what is against his image, he would
loathe himself, he would be an enemy to his own nature. Nay, if it were
possible for him to love it, it were possible for him not to be holy,
it were possible then for him to deny himself, and will that he were no
God, which is a palpable contradiction.[901] Yet this necessity in God
of hating sin, is not a brutish necessity, such as is in mere animals,
that avoid, by a natural instinct, not of choice, what is prejudicial
to them; but most free, as well as necessary, arising from an infinite
knowledge of his own nature, and of the evil nature of sin, and the
contrariety of it to his own excellency, and the order of his works.
(2.) Therefore intensely. Nothing do men act for more than their glory.
As he doth infinitely, and therefore perfectly know himself, so he
infinitely, and therefore perfectly knows what is contrary to himself,
and, as according to the manner and measure of his knowledge of himself,
is his love to himself, as infinite as his knowledge, and therefore
inexpressible and unconceivable by us: so, from the perfection of
his knowledge of the evil of sin, which is infinitely above what any
creature can have, doth arise a displeasure against it suitable to that
knowledge. In creatures the degrees of affection to, or aversion from
a thing, are suited to the strength of their apprehensions of the good
or evil in them. God knows not only the workers of wickedness, but the
wickedness of their works (Job xi. 11), for “he knows vain men, he sees
wickedness also.” The vehemency of this hatred is expressed variously
in Scripture; he loathes it so, that he is impatient of beholding it;
the very sight of it affects him with detestation (Hab. i. 13); he
hates the first spark of it in the imagination (Zech. viii. 17); with
what variety of expressions doth he repeat his indignation at their
polluted services (Amos v. 21, 22); “I hate, I detest, I despise, I
will not smell, I will not regard; take away from me the noise of thy
songs, I will not hear!” So, (Isa. i. 14), “My soul hates, they are a
trouble to me, I am weary to bear them.” It is the abominable thing
that he hates (Jer. xliv. 4); he is vexed and fretted at it (Isa. lxiii.
10; Ezek. xvi. 33). He abhors it so, that his hatred redounds upon the
person that commits it. (Ps. v. 5), “He hates all workers of iniquity.”
Sin is the only primary object of his displeasure: he is not displeased
with the nature of man as man, for that was derived from him; but with
the nature of man as sinful, which is from the sinner himself. When
a man hath but one object for the exercise of all his anger, it is
stronger than when diverted to many objects: a mighty torrent, when
diverted into many streams, is weaker than when it comes in a full body
upon one place only. The infinite anger and hatred of {b120} God, which
is as infinite as his love and mercy, has no other object, against
which he directs the mighty force of it, but only unrighteousness. He
hates no person for all the penal evils upon him, though they were more
by ten thousand times than Job was struck with, but only for his sin.
Again, sin being only evil, and an unmixed evil, there is nothing in
it that can abate the detestation of God, or balance his hatred of it;
there is not the least grain of goodness in it, to incline him to the
least affection to any part of it. This hatred cannot but be intense;
for as the more any creature is sanctified, the more is he advanced in
the abhorrence of that which is contrary to holiness; therefore, God
being the highest, most absolute and infinite holiness, doth infinitely,
and therefore intensely, hate unholiness; being infinitely righteous,
doth infinitely abhor unrighteousness; being infinitely true, doth
infinitely abhor falsity, as it is the greatest and most deformed evil.
As it is from the righteousness of his nature that he hath a content
and satisfaction in righteousness (Ps. xi. 7), “The righteous Lord
loveth righteousness;” so it is from the same righteousness of his
nature, that he detests whatsoever is morally evil: as his nature
therefore is infinite, so must his abhorrence be.
(3.) Therefore universally, because necessarily and intensely. He doth
not hate it in one, and indulge it in another, but loathes it wherever
he finds it; not one worker of iniquity is exempt from it (Ps. v. 5):
“Thou hatest all workers of iniquity.” For it is not sin, as in this
or that person, or as great or little; but sin, as sin is the object
of his hatred; and, therefore, let the person be never so great, and
have particular characters of his image upon him, it secures him not
from God’s hatred of any evil action he shall commit. He is a jealous
God, jealous of his glory (Exod. xx. 5); a metaphor, taken from jealous
husbands, who will not endure the least adultery in their wives, nor
God the least defection of man from his law. Every act of sin is a
spiritual adultery, denying God to be the chief good, and giving that
prerogative by that act to some vile thing. He loves it no more in his
own people than he doth in his enemies; he frees them not from his rod,
the testimony of his loathing their crimes: whosoever sows iniquity,
shall reap affliction. It might be thought that he affected their dross,
if he did not refine them, and loved their filth, if he did not cleanse
them; because of his detestation of their sin, he will not spare them
from the furnace, though because of love to their persons in Christ,
he will exempt them from Tophet. How did the sword ever and anon drop
down upon David’s family, after his unworthy dealing in Uriah’s case,
and cut off ever and anon some of the branches of it? He doth sometimes
punish it more severely in this life in his own people, than in others.
Upon Jonah’s disobedience a storm pursues him, and a whale devours him,
while the profane world lived in their lusts without control. Moses,
for one act of unbelief, is excluded from Canaan, when greater sinners
attained that happiness. It is not a light punishment, but a vengeance
he takes on their inventions (Ps. xcix. 8), to manifest that he hates
sin as sin, and not because the worst persons commit it. Perhaps, had a
profane man touched the ark, the hand of God had {b121} not so suddenly
reached him; but when Uzzah, a man zealous for him, as may be supposed
by his care for the support of the tottering ark, would step out of
his place, he strikes him down for his disobedient action, by the side
of the ark, which he would indirectly (as not being a Levite) sustain
(2 Sam. vi. 7). Nor did our Saviour so sharply reprove the Pharisees,
and turn so short from them as he did from Peter, when he gave a
carnal advice, and contrary to that wherein was to be the greatest
manifestation of God’s holiness, _viz._ the death of Christ (Matt. xvi.
23). He calls him Satan, a name sharper than the title of the devil’s
children wherewith he marked the Pharisees, and given (besides him) to
none but Judas, who made a profession of love to him, and was outwardly
ranked in the number of his disciples. A gardener hates a weed the more
for being in the bed with the most precious flowers. God’s hatred is
universally fixed against sin, and he hates it as much in those whose
persons shall not fall under his eternal anger, as being secured in
the arms of a Redeemer, by whom the guilt is wiped off, and the filth
shall be totally washed away: though he hates their sin, and cannot but
hate it, yet he loves their persons, as being united as members to the
Mediator and mystical Head. A man may love a gangrened member, because
it is a member of his own body, or a member of a dear relation, but
he loathes the gangrene in it more than in those wherein he is not so
much concerned. Though God’s hatred of believers’ persons is removed
by faith in the satisfactory death of Jesus Christ, yet his antipathy
against sin was not taken away by that blood; nay, it was impossible
it should. It was never designed, nor had it any capacity to alter the
unchangeable nature of God, but to manifest the unspottedness of his
will, and his eternal aversion to anything that was contrary to the
purity of his Being, and the righteousness of his laws.
(4.) Perpetually: this must necessarily follow upon the others. He
can no more cease to hate impurity than he can cease to love holiness:
if he should in the least instant approve of anything that is filthy,
in that moment he would disapprove of his own nature and being; there
would be an interruption in his love of himself, which is as eternal as
it is infinite. How can he love any sin which is contrary to his nature,
but for one moment, without hating his own nature, which is essentially
contrary to sin? Two contraries cannot be loved at the same time; God
must first begin to hate himself before he can approve of any evil
which is directly opposite to himself. We, indeed, are changed with a
temptation, sometimes bear an affection to it, and sometimes testify an
indignation against it; but God is always the same without any shadow
of change, and “is angry with the wicked every day” (Ps. vii. 11),
that is, uninterruptedly in the nature of his anger, though not in the
effects of it. God indeed may be reconciled to the sinner, but never to
the sin; for then he should renounce himself, deny his own essence and
his own divinity, if his inclinations to the love of goodness, and his
aversion from evil, could be changed, if he suffered the contempt of
the one, and encouraged the practice of the other.
4. God is so holy, that he cannot but love holiness in others. {b122}
Not that he owes anything to his creature, but from the unspeakable
holiness of his nature, whence affections to all things that bear a
resemblance of him do flow; as light shoots out from the sun, or any
glittering body: it is essential to the infinite righteousness of his
nature to love righteousness wherever he beholds it (Ps. xi. 7): “The
righteous Lord loveth righteousness.” He cannot, because of his nature,
but love that which bears some agreement with his nature, that which
is the curious draught of his own wisdom and purity: he cannot but
be delighted with a copy of himself: he would not have a holy nature,
if he did not love holiness in every nature: his own nature would be
denied by him, if he did not affect everything that had a stamp of his
own nature upon it. There was indeed nothing without God, that could
invite him to manifest such goodness to man, as he did in creation:
but after he had stamped that rational nature with a righteousness
convenient for it, it was impossible but that he should ardently
love that impression of himself, because he loves his own Deity, and
consequently all things which are any sparks and images of it: and
were the devils capable of an act of righteousness, the holiness of his
nature would incline him to love it, even in those dark and revolted
spirits.
5. God is so holy, that he cannot positively will or encourage
sin in any. How can he give any encouragement to that which he cannot
in the least approve of, or look upon without loathing, not only the
crime, but the criminal? Light may sooner be the cause of darkness than
holiness itself be the cause of unholiness, absolutely contrary to it:
it is a contradiction, that he that is the Fountain of good should be
the source of evil; as if the same fountain should bubble up both sweet
and bitter streams, salt and fresh (James iii. 11); since whatsoever
good is in man acknowledges God for its author, it follows that men are
evil by their own fault. There is no need for men to be incited to that
to which the corruption of their own nature doth so powerfully bend
them. Water hath a forcible principle in its own nature to carry it
downward; it needs no force to hasten the motion: “God tempts no man,
but every man is drawn away by his own lust” (James i. 13, 14). All
the preparations for glory are from God (Rom. ix. 23); but men are said
to “be fitted to destruction” (ver. 22); but God is not said to fit
them; they, by their iniquities, fit themselves for ruin, and he, by
his long‑suffering, keeps the destruction from them for awhile.
(1.) God cannot command any unrighteousness. As all virtue is summed
up in a love to God, so all iniquity is summed up in an enmity to God:
every wicked work declares a man an enemy to God (Col. i. 21): “enemies
in your minds by wicked works.” If he could command his creature
anything which bears an enmity in its nature to himself, he would then
implicitly command the hatred of himself, and he would be, in some
measure, a hater of himself: he that commands another to deprive him
of his life, cannot be said to bear any love to his own life. God
can never hate himself, and therefore cannot command anything that is
hateful to him and tends to a hating of him, and driving the creature
further from him; in that very moment that God should command such a
thing, he would cease to be {b123} good. What can be more absurd to
imagine, than that Infinite Goodness should enjoin a thing contrary to
itself, and contrary to the essential duty of a creature, and order him
to do anything that bespeaks an enmity to the nature of the Creator,
or a deflouring and disparaging his works? God cannot but love himself,
and his own goodness; he were not otherwise good; and, therefore,
cannot order the creature to do anything opposite to this goodness,
or anything hurtful to the creature itself, as unrighteousness is.
(2.) Nor can God secretly inspire any evil into us. It is as much
against his nature to incline the heart to sin as it is to command
it: as it is impossible but that he should love himself, and therefore
impossible to enjoin anything that tends to a hatred of himself; by the
same reason it is as impossible that he should infuse such a principle
in the heart, that might carry a man out to any act of enmity against
him. To enjoin one thing, and incline to another, would be an argument
of such insincerity, unfaithfulness, contradiction to itself, that it
cannot be conceived to fall within the compass of the Divine nature
(Deut. xxxii. 4), who is a “God without iniquity,” because “a God
of truth” and sincerity, “just and right is he.” To bestow excellent
faculties upon man in creation, and incline him, by a sudden impulsion,
to things contrary to the true end of him, and induce an inevitable
ruin upon that work which he had composed with so much wisdom and
goodness, and pronounced good with so much delight and pleasure, is
inconsistent with that love which God bears to the creature of his own
framing: to incline his will to that which would render him the object
of his hatred, the fuel for his justice, and sink him into deplorable
misery, it is most absurd, and unchristian‑like to imagine.
(3.) Nor can God necessitate man to sin. Indeed sin cannot be
committed by force; there is no sin but is in some sort voluntary;
voluntary in the root, or voluntary in the branch; voluntary by
an immediate act of the will, or voluntary by a general or natural
inclination of the will. That is not a crime to which a man is
violenced, without any concurrence of the faculties of the soul to that
act; it is indeed not an act, but a passion; a man that is forced is
not an agent, but a patient under the force: but what necessity can
there be upon man from God, since he hath implanted such a principle
in him, that he cannot desire anything but what is good, either really
or apparently; and if a man mistakes the object, it is his own fault;
for God hath endowed him with reason to discern, and liberty of will
to choose upon that judgment. And though it is to be acknowledged that
God hath an absolute sovereign dominion over his creature, without any
limitation, and may do what he pleases, and dispose of it according
to his own will, as a “potter doth with his vessel” (Rom. ix. 21);
according as the church speaks (Isa. lxiv. 8), “We are the clay, and
thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand;” yet he cannot
pollute any undefiled creature by virtue of that sovereign power,
which he hath to do what he will with it; because such an act would be
contrary to the foundation and right of his dominion, which consists in
the excellency of his nature, his immense wisdom, and unspotted purity;
if God should therefore do {b124} any such act, he would expunge the
right of his dominion by blotting out that nature which renders him fit
for that dominion, and the exercise of it.[902] Any dominion which is
exercised without the rules of goodness, is not a true sovereignty, but
an insupportable tyranny. God would cease to be a rightful Sovereign if
he ceased to be good; and he would cease to be good, if he did command,
necessitate, or by any positive operation, incline inwardly the heart
of a creature directly to that which were morally evil, and contrary to
the eminency of his own nature. But that we may the better conceive of
this, let us trace man in his first fall, whereby he subjected himself
and all his posterity to the curse of the law and hatred of God; we
shall find no footsteps, either of precept, outward force, or inward
impulsion.[903] The plain story of man’s apostasy dischargeth God
from any interest in the crime as an encouragement, and excuseth
him from any appearance of suspicion, when he showed him the tree
he had reserved, as a mark of his sovereignty, and forbad him to eat
of the fruit of it; he backed the prohibition with the threatening
the greatest evil, _viz._ death; which could be understood to imply
nothing less than the loss of all his happiness; and in that couched
an assurance of the perpetuity of his felicity, if he did not,
rebelliously, reach forth his hand to take and “eat of the fruit” (Gen.
ii. 16, 17). It is true God had given that fruit an excellency, “a
goodness for food, and a pleasantness to the eye” (Gen. iii. 6). He had
given man an appetite, whereby he was capable of desiring so pleasant
a fruit; but God had, by creation, arranged it under the command of
reason, if man would have kept it in its due obedience; he had fixed a
severe threatening to bar the unlawful excursions of it; he had allowed
him a multitude of other fruits in the garden, and given him liberty
enough to satisfy his curiosity in all, except this only. Could there
be anything more obliging to man, to let God have his reserve of that
one tree, than the grant of all the rest; and more deterring from any
disobedient attempt than so strict a command, spirited with so dreadful
a penalty? God did not solicit him to rebel against him; a solicitation
to it, and a command against it, were inconsistent. The devil assaults
him, and God permitted it, and stands, as it were, a spectator of the
issue of the combat. There could be no necessity upon man to listen to,
and entertain the suggestions of the serpent; he had a power to resist
him, and he had an answer ready for all the devil’s arguments, had
they been multiplied to more than they were; the opposing the order
of God had been a sufficient confutation of all the devil’s plausible
reasonings; that Creator, who hath given me my being, hath ordered me
not to eat of it. Though the pleasure of the fruit might allure him,
yet the force of his reason might have quelled the liquorishness of
his sense; the perpetual thinking of, and sounding out, the command
of God, had silenced both Satan and his own appetite; had disarmed the
tempter, and preserved his sensitive part in its due subjection. What
inclination can we suppose there could be from the Creator, when, upon
the very first offer of the temptation, Eve opposes to the tempter
the prohibition and threatening of God, and strains it to a higher peg
than we find God had {b125} delivered it in? For in Gen. ii. 17, it is,
“You shall not eat of it;” but she adds (Gen. iii. 3), “Neither shall
you touch it;” which was a remark that might have had more influence
to restrain her. Had our first parents kept this fixed upon their
understandings and thoughts, that God had forbidden any such act as the
eating of the fruit, and that he was true to execute the threatening
he had uttered, of which truth of God they could not but have a natural
notion, with what ease might they have withstood the devil’s attack,
and defeated his design! And it had been easy with them, to have kept
their understandings by the force of such a thought, from entertaining
any contrary imagination. There is no ground for any jealousy of any
encouragements, inward impulsions, or necessity from God in this affair.
A discharge of God from this first sin will easily induce a freedom
of him from all other sins which follow upon it. God doth not then
encourage, or excite, or incline to sin. How can he excite to that
which, when it is done, he will be sure to condemn? How can he be a
righteous Judge to sentence a sinner to misery for a crime acted by
a secret inspiration from himself? Iniquity would deserve no reproof
from him, if he were any way positively the author of it. Were God
the author of it in us, what is the reason our own consciences accuse
us for it, and convince us of it? that, being God’s deputy, would not
accuse us of it, if the sovereign power by which it acts, did incline
us to it. How can he be thought to excite to that which he hath enacted
such severe laws to restrain, or incline man to that which he hath
so dreadfully punished in his Son, and which it is impossible but the
excellency of his nature must incline him eternally to hate? We may
sooner imagine, that a pure flame shall engender cold, and darkness
be the offspring of a sunbeam, as imagine such a thing as this. “What
shall we say, is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.” The
apostle execrates such a thought (Rom. ix. 14).
6. God cannot act any evil, in or by himself. If he cannot approve
of sin in others, nor excite any to iniquity, which is less, he cannot
commit evil himself, which is greater; what he cannot positively will
in another, can never be willed in himself; he cannot do evil through
ignorance, because of his infinite knowledge; nor through weakness,
because of his infinite power; nor through malice, because of his
infinite rectitude. He cannot will any unjust thing, because, having an
infinitely perfect understanding, he cannot judge that to be true which
is false; or that to be good which is evil: his will is regulated by
his wisdom. If he could will any unjust and irrational thing, his will
would be repugnant to his understanding; there would be a disagreement
in God, will against mind, and will against wisdom; he being the
highest reason, the first truth, cannot do an unreasonable, false,
defective action. It is not a defect in God that he cannot do evil, but
a fulness and excellency of power; as it is not a weakness in the light,
but the perfection of it, that it is unable to produce darkness; “God
is the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness” (James i. 17).
Nothing pleases him, nothing is acted by him, but what is beseeming
the infinite excellency of his own nature; the voluntary necessity
whereby God cannot be unjust, {b126} renders him a God blessed forever;
he would hate himself for the chief good, if, in any of his actions,
he should disagree with his goodness. He cannot do any unworthy thing,
not because he wants an infinite power, but because he is possessed
of an infinite wisdom, and adorned with an infinite purity; and being
infinitely pure, cannot have the least mixture of impurity. As if you
can suppose fire infinitely hot, you cannot suppose it to have the
least mixture of coldness; the better anything is, the more unable it
is to do evil; God being the only goodness, can as little be changed
in his goodness as in his essence.
II. The next inquiry is, The proof that God is holy, or the
manifestation of it. Purity is as requisite to the blessedness of God,
as to the being of God; as he could not be God without being blessed,
so he could not be blessed without being holy. He is called by the
title of Blessed, as well as by that of holy (Mark xiv. 61); “Art thou
the Christ, the son of the Blessed?” Unrighteousness is a misery and
turbulency in any spirit wherein it is; for it is a privation of an
excellency which ought to be in every intellectual being, and what can
follow upon the privation of an excellency but unquietness and grief,
the moth of happiness? An unrighteous man, as an unrighteous man, can
never be blessed, though he were in a local heaven. Had God the least
spot upon his purity, it would render him as miserable in the midst of
his infinite sufficiency, as iniquity renders a man in the confluence
of his earthly enjoyments. The holiness and felicity of God are
inseparable in him. The apostle intimates that the heathen made
an attempt to sully his blessedness, when they would liken him to
corruptible, mutable, impure man (Rom. i. 23, 25): “They changed the
glory of the incorruptible God into an image, made like to corruptible
man;” and after, he entitles God a “God blessed forever.” The gospel
is therefore called, “The glorious gospel of the blessed God” (1 Tim.
i. 11), in regard of the holiness of the gospel precepts, and in
regard of the declaration of the holiness of God in all the streams
and branches, wherein his purity, in which his blessedness consists,
is as illustrious as any other perfection of the Divine Being. God hath
highly manifested this attribute in the state of nature; in the legal
administration; in the dispensation of the gospel. His wisdom, goodness,
and power, are declared in creation; his sovereign authority in his
law; his grace and mercy in the gospel, and his righteousness in all.
Suitable to this threefold state, may be that eternal repetition of his
holiness in the prophecy (Isa. vi. 3); holy, as Creator and Benefactor;
holy, as Lawgiver and Judge; holy, as Restorer and Redeemer.
First, His holiness appears, as he is Creator, in framing man in a
perfect uprightness. Angels, as made by God, could not be evil; for
God beheld his own works with pleasure, and could not have pronounced
them all good, had some been created pure, and others impure; two moral
contrarieties could not be good. The angels had a first estate, wherein
they were happy (Jude 6); and had they not left their own habitation
and state, they could not have been miserable. But, because the
Scripture speaks only of the creation of man, we will consider, that
the human nature was well strung and {b127} tuned by God, according
to the note of his own holiness (Eccles. vii. 29); “God hath made
man upright:” he had declared his power in other creatures, but would
declare in his rational creature, what he most valued in himself; and,
therefore, created him upright, with a wisdom which is the rectitude
of the mind, with a purity which is the rectitude of the will and
affections. He had declared a purity in other creatures, as much as
they were capable of, viz. in the exact tuning them to answer one
another. And that God, who so well tuned and composed other creatures,
would not make man a jarring instrument, and place a cracked creature
to be Lord of the rest of his earthly fabric. God, being holy, could
not set his seal upon any rational creature, but the impression would
be like himself, pure and holy also; he could not be created with
an error in his understanding; that had been inconsistent with the
goodness of God to his rational creature; if so, the erroneous motion
of the will, which was to follow the dictates of the understanding,
could not have been imputed to him as his crime, because it would
have been, not a voluntary, but a necessary effect of his nature; had
there been an error in the first wheel, the error of the next could
not have been imputed to the nature of that, but to the irregular
motion of the first wheel in the engine. The sin of men and angels,
proceeded not from any natural defect in their understandings, but
from inconsideration; he that was the author of harmony in his other
creatures, could not be the author of disorder in the chief of his
works. Other creatures were his footsteps, but man was his image (Gen.
i. 26, 27): “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness;” which,
though it seems to imply no more in that place, than an image of his
dominion over the creatures, yet the apostle raises it a peg higher,
and gives us a larger interpretation of it (Col. iii. 10): “And have
put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of
Him that created him;” making it to consist in a resemblance to his
righteousness. Image, say some, notes the form, as man was a spirit
in regard of his soul; likeness, notes the quality implanted in his
spiritual nature; the image of God was drawn in him, both as he was a
rational, and as he was a holy creature. The creatures manifested the
being of a superior power, as their cause, but the righteousness of
the first man evidenced, not only a sovereign power, as the donor of
his being, but a holy power, as the pattern of his work. God appeared
to be a holy God in the righteousness of his creature, as well as an
understanding God in the reason of his creature, while he formed him
with all necessary knowledge in his mind and all necessary uprightness
in his will. The law of love to God, with his whole soul, his whole
mind, his whole heart and strength, was originally written upon his
nature; all the parts of his nature were framed in a moral conformity
with God, to answer this law, and imitate God in his purity, which
consists in a love of himself, and his own goodness and excellency.
Thus doth the clearness of the stream point us to the purer fountain,
and the brightness of the beam evidence a greater splendor in the sun
which shot it out.
Secondly, His holiness appears in his laws, as he is a Lawgiver and a
Judge. Since man was bound to be subject to God, as a creature, {b128}
and had a capacity to be ruled by the law, as an understanding and
willing creature; God gave him a law, taken from the depths of his holy
nature, and suited to the original faculties of man. The rules which
God hath fixed in the world, are not the resolves of bare will, but
result particularly from the goodness of his nature; they are nothing
else but the transcripts of his infinite detestation of sin, as he is
the unblemished governor of the world. This being the most adorable
property of his nature, he hath impressed it upon that law which he
would have inviolably observed as a perpetual rule for our actions,
that we may every moment think of this beautiful perfection. God can
command nothing but what hath some similitude with the rectitude of his
own nature; all his laws, every paragraph of them, therefore, scent of
this, and glitter with it (Deut. iv. 8): “What nation hath statutes and
judgments so righteous as all this law I set before you this day?” and,
therefore, they are compared to fine gold, that hath no speck or dross
(Ps. xix. 10).
This purity is evident――1. In the moral law, or law of nature. 2. In
the ceremonial law. 3. In the allurements annexed to it, for keeping
it, and the affrightments to restrain from the breaking of it. 4. In
the judgments inflicted for the violation of it.
1. In the moral law: which is therefore dignified with the title of
Holy, twice in one verse (Rom. vii. 12): “Wherefore, the law is holy,
and the commandment is holy, just, and good;” it being the express
image of God’s will, as our Saviour was of his person, and bearing a
resemblance to the purity of his nature. The tables of this law were
put into the ark, that, as the mercy seat was to represent the grace
of God, so the law was to represent the holiness of God (Ps. xix. 1).
The Psalmist, after he had spoken of the glory of God in the heavens,
wherein the power of God is exposed to our view, introduceth the law,
wherein the purity of God is evidenced to our minds (ver. 7, 8, &c.):
“Perfect, pure, clean, righteous,” are the titles given to it. It is
clearer in holiness than the sun is in brightness; and more mighty in
itself, to command the conscience, than the sun is to run its race. As
the holiness of the Scripture demonstrates the divinity of its Author;
so the holiness of the law doth the purity of the Lawgiver.
(1.) The purity of this law is seen in the matter of it. It prescribes
all that becomes a creature towards God, and all that becomes one
creature towards another of his own rank and kind. The image of God is
complete in the holiness of the first table, and the righteousness of
the second; which is intimated by the apostle (Eph. iv. 24), the one
being the rule of what we owe to God, the other being the rule of what
we owe to man: there is no good but it enjoins, and no evil but it
disowns. It is not sickly and lame in any part of it; not a good action,
but it gives it its due praise; and not an evil action, but it sets a
condemning mark upon. The commands of it are frequently in Scripture
called judgments, because they rightly judge of good and evil; and are
a clear light to inform the judgment of man in the knowledge of both.
By this was the understanding of David enlightened to know every false
way, and to “hate it” (Ps. cxix. 104). There is no case can happen,
but may meet with a determination from it; it teaches men the noblest
manner of living a {b129} life like God himself; honorably for the
Lawgiver, and joyfully for the subject. It directs us to the highest
end; sets us at a distance from all base and sordid practices; it
proposeth light to the understanding, and goodness to the will. It
would tune all the strings, set right all the orders of mankind: it
censures the least mote, countenanceth not any stain in the life. Not
a wanton glance can meet with any justification from it (Matt. v. 28);
not a rash anger but it frowns upon (ver. 22). As the Lawgiver wants
nothing as an addition to his blessedness, so his law wants nothing as
a supplement to its perfection (Deut. iv. 2). What our Saviour seems
to add, is not an addition to mend any defects, but a restoration of
it from the corrupt glosses, wherewith the Scribes and Pharisees had
eclipsed the brightness of it: they had curtailed it, and diminished
part of its authority, cutting off its empire over the least evil, and
left its power only to check the grosser practices. But Christ restores
it to the due extent of its sovereignty, and shows it those dimensions
in which the holy men of God considered it as “exceeding broad” (Ps.
cxix. 96), reaching to all actions, all motions, all circumstances
attending them; full of inexhaustible treasures of righteousness.
And though this law, since the fall, doth irritate sin, it is no
disparagement, but a testimony to the righteousness of it; which
the apostle manifests by his “Wherefore” (Rom. vii. 8), “sin, taking
occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence;”
and repeating the same sense (ver. 11), subjoins a “Wherefore” (ver.
12), “Wherefore the law is holy.” The rising of men’s sinful hearts
against the law of God, when it strikes with its preceptive and
minatory parts upon their consciences, evidenceth the holiness of the
law and the Lawgiver. In its own nature it is a directing rule, but
the malignant nature of sin is exasperated by it; as an hostile quality
in a creature will awaken itself at the appearance of its enemy. The
purity of this beam, and transcript of God, bears witness to a greater
clearness and beauty in the sun and original. Undefiled streams
manifest an untainted fountain.
(2.) It is seen in the manner of its precepts. As it prescribes all
good, and forbids all evil, so it doth enjoin the one, and banish the
other as such. The laws of men command virtuous things; not as virtuous
in themselves, but as useful for human society; which the magistrate
is the conservator of, and the guardian of justice.[904] The laws
of men contain not all the precepts of virtue, but only such as are
accommodated to their customs, and are useful to preserve the ligaments
of their government. The design of them is not so much to render the
subjects good men, as good citizens: they order the practice of those
virtues that may strengthen civil society, and discountenance those
vices only which weaken the sinews of it: but God, being the guardian
of universal righteousness, doth not only enact the observance of all
righteousness, but the observance of it as righteousness. He commands
that which is just in itself, enjoins virtues as virtues, and prohibits
vices as vices: as they are profitable or injurious to ourselves, as
well as to others. Men command temperance and justice; not as virtues
in themselves, but as they prevent {b130} disorder and confusion in a
commonwealth; and forbid adultery and theft, not as vices in themselves,
but as they are intrenchments upon property; not as hurtful to the
person that commits them, but as hurtful to the person against whose
right they are committed. Upon this account, perhaps, Paul applauds the
holiness of the law of God in regard of its own nature, as considered
in itself, more than he doth the justice of it in regard of man, and
the goodness and conveniency of it to the world (Rom. vii. 12); the law
is holy twice, and just and good but once.
(3.) In the spiritual extent of it. The most righteous powers of the
world do not so much regard in their laws what the inward affections
of their subjects are: the external acts are only the objects of their
decrees, either to encourage them if they be useful, or discourage
them if they be hurtful to the community. And, indeed, they can do no
other, for they have no power proportioned to inward affections, since
the inward disposition falls not under their censure; and it would
be foolish for any legislative power to make such laws, which it is
impossible for it to put in execution. They can prohibit the outward
acts of theft and murder, but they cannot command the love of God, the
hatred of sin, the contempt of the world; they cannot prohibit unclean
thoughts, and the atheism of the heart. But the law of God surmounts in
righteousness all the laws of the best‑regulated commonwealths in the
world: it restrains the licentious heart, as well as the violent hand;
it damps the very first bubblings of corrupt nature, orders a purity in
the spring, commands a clean fountain, clean streams, clean vessels. It
would frame the heart to an inward, as well as the life to an outward
righteousness, and make the inside purer than the outside. It forbids
the first belchings of a murderous or adulterous intention: it obligeth
a man as a rational creature, and therefore exacts a conformity of
every rational faculty, and of whatsoever is under the command of them.
It commands the private closet to be free from the least cobweb, as
well as the outward porch to be clean from mire and dirt. It frowns
upon all stains and pollutions of the most retired thoughts: hence the
apostle calls it a “spiritual law” (Rom. vii. 14), as not political,
but extending its force further than the frontiers of the man; placing
its ensigns in the metropolis of the heart and mind, and curbing with
its sceptre the inward motions of the spirit, and commanding over the
secrets of every man’s breast.
(4.) In regard of the perpetuity of it. The purity and perpetuity of
it are linked together by the Psalmist (Ps. xix. 9): “The fear of the
Lord is clean, enduring for ever;” the fear of the Lord, that is, that
law which commands the fear and worship of God, and is the rule of
it. And, indeed, God values it at such a rate, that rather than part
with a tittle, or let the honor of it lie in the dust, he would not
only let “heaven and earth pass away,” but expose his Son to death
for the reparation of the wrong it had sustained. So holy it is, that
the holiness and righteousness of God cannot dispense with it, cannot
abrogate it, without despoiling himself of his own being: it is a
copy of the eternal law. Can he ever abrogate the command of love to
himself, without showing some contempt {b131} of his own excellency and
very being? Before he can enjoin a creature not to love him, he must
make himself unworthy of love, and worthy of hatred; this would be the
highest unrighteousness, to order us to hate that which is only worthy
of our highest affections. So God cannot change the first command, and
order us to worship many gods; this would be against the excellency and
unity of God: for God cannot constitute another God, or make anything
worthy of an honor equal with himself.[905] Those things that are good,
only because they are commanded, are alterable by God: those things
that are intrinsically and essentially good, and therefore commanded,
are unalterable as long as the holiness and righteousness of God stand
firm. The intrinsic goodness of the moral law, the concern God hath
for it; the perpetuity of the precepts of the first table, and the care
he hath had to imprint the precepts of the second upon the minds and
consciences of men, as the Author of nature for the preservation of the
world, manifests the holiness of the Lawmaker and Governor.
2. His holiness appears in the ceremonial law: in the variety of
sacrifices for sin, wherein he writ his detestation of unrighteousness
in bloody characters. His holiness was more constantly expressed in
the continual sacrifices, than in those rarer sprinklings of judgments
now and then upon the world; which often reached, not the worst, but
the most moderate sinners, and were the occasions of the questioning
of the righteousness of his providence both by Jews and Gentiles.
In judgments his purity was only now and then manifest: by his long
patience, he might be imagined by some reconciled to their crimes, or
not much concerned in them; but by the morning and evening sacrifice
he witnessed a perpetual and uninterrupted abhorrence of whatsoever
was evil. Besides those, the occasional washings and sprinklings upon
ceremonial defilements, which polluted only the body, gave an evidence,
that everything that had a resemblance to evil, was loathsome to him.
Add, also, the prohibitions of eating such and such creatures that were
filthy; as the swine that wallowed in the mire, a fit emblem for the
profane and brutish sinner; which had a moral signification, both of
the loathsomeness of sin to God, and the aversion themselves ought to
have to everything that was filthy.
3. This holiness appears in the allurements annexed to the law for
keeping it, and the affrightments to restrain from the breaking of
it. Both promises and threatenings have their fundamental root in the
holiness of God, and are both branches of this peculiar perfection. As
they respect the nature of God, they are declarations of his hatred of
sin, and his love of righteousness; the one belong to his threatenings,
the other to his promises; both join together to represent this divine
perfection to the creature, and to excite to an imitation in the
creature. In the one, God would render sin odious, because dangerous,
and curb the practice of evil, which would otherwise be licentious;
in the other, he would commend righteousness, and excite a love of
it, which would otherwise be cold. By there God suits the two great
affections of men, fear and hope; {b132} both the branches of self‑love
in man: the promises and threatenings are both the branches of holiness
in God. The end of the promises is the same with the exhortation the
apostle concludes from them (2 Cor. vii. 1); “Having these promises,
let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit,
perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” As the end of precept is to
direct, the end of threatenings is to deter from iniquity, so that the
promises is to allure to obedience. Thus God breathes out his love to
righteousness in every promise; his hatred of sin in every threatening.
The rewards offered in the one, are the smiles of pleased holiness;
and the curses thundered in the other, are the sparklings of enraged
righteousness.
4. His holiness appears in the judgment inflicted for the violation
of this law. Divine holiness is the root of Divine justice, and Divine
justice is the triumph of Divine holiness. Hence both are expressed in
Scripture by one word of righteousness, which sometimes signifies the
rectitude of the Divine nature, and sometimes the vindicative stroke of
his arm (Ps. ciii. 6); “The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment
for all that are oppressed.” So (Dan. ix. 7) “Righteousness (that is,
justice) belongs to thee.” The vials of his wrath are filled from his
implacable aversion to iniquity. All penal evils shower down upon the
heads of wicked men, spread their root in, and branch out from, this
perfection. All the dreadful storms and tempests in the world are blown
up by it. Why doth he “rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible
tempest!” Because “the righteous Lord loveth righteousness” (Ps. xi.
6, 7). And, as was observed before, when he was going about the
dreadfulest work that ever was in the world, the overturning the Jewish
state, hardening the hearts of that unbelieving people, and cashiering
a nation, once dear to him, from the honor of his protection; his
holiness, as the spring of all this, is applauded by the seraphims (Isa.
vi. 3, compared with ver. 9‒11), &c. Impunity argues the approbation
of a crime, and punishment the abhorrency of it. The greatness of
the crime, and the righteousness of the Judge, are the first natural
sentiments that arise in the minds of men upon the appearance of Divine
judgments in the world, by those that are near them;[906] as, when
men see gibbets erected, scaffolds prepared, instruments of death
and torture provided, and grievous punishments inflicted, the first
reflection in the spectator is the malignity of the crime, and the
detestation the governors are possessed with.
(1.) How severely hath he punished his most noble creatures for it!
The once glorious angels, upon whom he had been at greater cost than
upon any other creatures, and drawn more lively lineaments of his own
excellency, upon the transgression of his law, are thrown into the
furnace of justice, without any mercy to pity them (Jude 6). And though
there were but one sort of creatures upon the earth that bore his image,
and were only fit to publish and keep up his honor below the heavens,
yet, upon their apostasy, though upon a temptation from a subtle and
insinuating spirit, the man, with all his posterity, is sentenced to
misery in life, and death at {b133} last; and the woman, with all her
sex, have standing punishments inflicted on them, which, as they begun
in their persons, were to reach as far as the last member of their
successive generations. So holy is God, that he will not endure a
spot in his choicest work. Men, indeed, when there is a crack in an
excellent piece of work, or a stain upon a rich garment, do not cast it
away; they value it for the remaining excellency, more than hate it for
the contracted spot; but God saw no excellency in his creature worthy
regarding, after the image of that which he most esteemed in himself
was defaced.
(2.) How detestable to him are the very instruments of sin! For the
ill use the serpent, an irrational creature, was put to by the devil,
as an instrument in the fall of man, the whole brood of those animals
are cursed (Gen. iii. 14), “cursed above all cattle, and above every
beast of the field.” Not only the devil’s head is threatened to be
for ever bruised, and, as some think, rendered irrecoverable upon this
further testimony of his malice in the seduction of man, who, perhaps,
without this new act, might have been admitted into the arms of mercy,
notwithstanding his first sin; “though the Scripture gives us no
account of this, only this is the only sentence we read of pronounced
against the devil, which puts him into an irrecoverable state by a
mortal bruising of his head.” But, I say, he is not only punished,
but the organ, whereby he blew in his temptation, is put into a worse
condition than it was before. Thus God hated the sponge, whereby
the devil deformed his beautiful image: thus God, to manifest his
detestation of sin, ordered the beast, whereby any man was slain, to
be slain as well as the malefactor (Lev. xx. 15). The gold and silver
that had been abused to idolatry, and were the ornaments of images,
though good in themselves, and incapable of a criminal nature, were
not to be brought into their houses, but detested and abhorred by them,
because they were cursed, and an abomination to the Lord. See with what
loathing expressions this law is enjoined to them (Deut. vii. 25, 26).
So contrary is the holy nature of God to every sin, that it curseth
everything that is instrumental in it.
(3.) How detestable is everything to him that is in the sinner’s
possession! The very earth, which God had made Adam the proprietor of,
was cursed for his sake (Gen. iii. 17, 18). It lost its beauty, and
lies languishing to this day; and, notwithstanding the redemption by
Christ, hath not recovered its health, nor is it like to do, till the
completing the fruits of it upon the children of God (Rom. viii. 20‒22).
The whole lower creation was made subject to vanity, and put into pangs,
upon the sin of man, by the righteousness of God detesting his offence.
How often hath his implacable aversion from sin been shown, not only
in his judgments upon the offender’s person, but by wrapping up, in
the same judgment, those which stood in a near relation to them! Achan,
with his children and cattle, are overwhelmed with stones, and burned
together (Josh. vii. 24, 25). In the destruction of Sodom, not only
the grown malefactors, but the young spawn, the infants, at present
incapable of the same wickedness, and their cattle, were burned up
by the same fire from heaven; and the place where their habitations
stood, is, at this day, {b134} partly a heap of ashes, and partly an
infectious lake, that chokes any fish that swims into it from Jordan,
and stifles, as is related, by its vapor, any bird that attempts to
fly over it. O, how detestable is sin to God, that causes him to turn
a pleasant land, as the “garden of the Lord” (as it is styled Gen.
xiii. 10), into a lake of sulphur; to make it, both in his word and
works, as a lasting monument of his abhorrence of evil!
(4.) What design hath God in all these acts of severity and
vindictive justice, but to set off the lustre of his holiness? He
testifies himself concerned for those laws, which he hath set as hedges
and limits to the lusts of men; and, therefore, when he breathes forth
his fiery indignation against a people, he is said to get himself
honor: as when he intended the Red Sea should swallow up the Egyptian
army (Exod. xiv. 17, 18), which Moses, in his triumphant song, echoes
back again (Exod. xv. 1): “Thou hast triumphed gloriously;” gloriously
in his holiness, which is the glory of his nature, as Moses himself
interprets it in the text. When men will not own the holiness of
God, in a way of duty, God will vindicate it in a way of justice
and punishment. In the destruction of Aaron’s sons, that were
will‑worshippers, and would take strange fire, “sanctified” and
“glorified” are coupled (Lev. x. 3): he glorified himself in that act,
in vindicating his holiness before all the people, declaring that he
will not endure sin and disobedience. He doth therefore, in this life,
more severely punish the sins of his people, when they presume upon
any act of disobedience, for a testimony that the nearness and dearness
of any person to him shall not make him unconcerned in his holiness,
or be a plea for impurity. The end of all his judgments is to witness
to the world his abominating of sin. To punish and witness against
men, are one and the same thing (Micah i. 2): “The Lord shall witness
against you;” and it is the witness of God’s holiness (Hos. v. 5):
“And the pride of Israel doth testify to his face:” one renders it the
excellency of Israel, and understands it of God: the word גאון, which is
here in our translation, “pride,” is rendered “excellency” (Amos viii.
7): “The Lord God hath sworn by his excellency;” which is interpreted
“holiness” (Amos iv. 2): “The Lord God hath sworn by his holiness.”
What is the issue or end of this swearing by “holiness,” and of his
“excellency” testifying against them? In all those places you will find
them to be sweeping judgments: in one, Israel and Ephraim shall “fall
in their iniquity;” in another, he will “take them away with hooks,”
and “their posterity with fish‑hooks;” and in another, he would “never
forget any of their works.” He that punisheth wickedness in those he
before used with the greatest tenderness, furnisheth the world with
an undeniable evidence of the detestableness of it to him. Were not
judgments sometimes poured out upon the world, it would be believed
that God were rather an approver than an enemy to sin. To conclude,
since God hath made a stricter law to guide men, annexed promises above
the merit of obedience to allure them, and threatenings dreadful enough
to affright men from disobedience, he cannot be the cause of sin, nor
a lover of it. How can he be the author of that which he so severely
forbids; or love that which he delights to punish; or be fondly
indulgent to any evil, when he {b135} hates the ignorant instruments
in the offences of his reasonable creatures?
Thirdly. The holiness of God appears in our restoration. It is in the
glass of the gospel we behold the “glory of the Lord” (2 Cor. iii. 18);
that is, the glory of the Lord, into whose image we are changed; but
we are changed into nothing, as the image of God, but into holiness:
we bore not upon us by creation, nor by regeneration, the image of
any other perfection: we cannot be changed into his omnipotence,
omniscience, &c., but into the image of his righteousness. This is the
pleasing and glorious sight the gospel mirror darts in our eyes. The
whole scene of redemption is nothing else but a discovery of judgment
and righteousness (Isa. i. 27): “Zion shall be redeemed with judgment,
and her converts with righteousness.”
1. This holiness of God appears in the manner of our restoration, viz.
by the death of Christ. Not all the vials of judgments, that have, or
shall be poured out upon the wicked world, nor the flaming furnace of
a sinner’s conscience, nor the irreversible sentence pronounced against
the rebellious devils, nor the groans of the damned creatures, give
such a demonstration of God’s hatred of sin, as the wrath of God let
loose upon his Son. Never did Divine holiness appear more beautiful
and lovely, than at the time our Saviour’s countenance was most marred
in the midst of his dying groans. This himself acknowledges in that
prophetical psalm (xxii. 1, 2), when God had turned his smiling face
from him, and thrust his sharp knife into his heart, which forced that
terrible cry from him, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
He adores this perfection of holiness (ver. 3), “But thou art holy;”
thy holiness is the spring of all this sharp agony, and for this thou
inhabitest, and shalt forever inhabit, the praises of all thy Israel.
Holiness drew the veil between God’s countenance and our Saviour’s
soul. Justice indeed gave the stroke, but holiness ordered it. In this
his purity did sparkle, and his irreversible justice manifested that
all those that commit sin are worthy of death; this was the perfect
index of his “righteousness” (Rom. iii. 25), that is, of his holiness
and truth; then it was that God that is holy, was “sanctified in
righteousness” (Isa. v. 16). It appears the more, if you consider,
(1.) The dignity of the Redeemer’s person. One that had been from
eternity; had laid the foundations of the world; had been the object of
the Divine delight: he that was God blessed forever, become a curse; he
who was blessed by angels, and by whom God blessed the world, must be
seized with horror; the Son of eternity must bleed to death! When did
ever sin appear so irreconcileable to God? Where did God ever break out
so furiously in his detestation of iniquity? The Father would have the
most excellent person, one next in order to himself, and equal to him
in all the glorious perfections of his nature (Phil. ii. 6), die on a
disgraceful cross, and be exposed to the flames of Divine wrath, rather
than sin should live, and his holiness remain forever disparaged by the
violations of his law.
(2.) The near relation he stood in to the Father. He was his “own Son
that he delivered up” (Rom. viii. 32); his essential image, as dearly
beloved by him as himself; yet he would abate nothing of his hatred of
those sins imputed to one so dear to him, and who {b136} never had done
anything contrary to his will. The strong cries uttered by him could
not cause him to cut off the least fringe of this royal garment, nor
part with a thread the robe of his holiness was woven with. The torrent
of wrath is opened upon him, and the Father’s heart beats not in the
least notice of tenderness to sin, in the midst of his Son’s agonies.
God seems to lay aside the bowels of a father, and put on the garb
of an irreconcileable enemy,[907] upon which account, probably, our
Saviour in the midst of his passion gives him the title of God; not
of Father, the title he usually before addressed to him with, (Matt.
xxvii. 46), “My God, my God;” not, My Father, my Father; “why hast
thou forsaken me?” He seems to hang upon the cross like a disinherited
son, while he appeared in the garb and rank of a sinner. Then was his
head loaded with curses, when he stood under that sentence of “Cursed
is every one that hangs upon a tree” (Gal. iii. 13), and looked as one
forlorn and rejected by the Divine purity and tenderness. God dealt
not with him as if he had been one in so near a relation to him. He
left him not to the will only of the instruments of his death; he would
have the chiefest blow himself of bruising of him (Isa. liii. 10):
“It pleased the Lord to bruise him:” the Lord, because the power of
creatures could not strike a blow strong enough to satisfy and secure
the rights of infinite holiness. It was therefore a cup tempered and
put into his hands by his Father; a cup given him to drink. In other
judgments he lets out his wrath against his creatures; in this he lets
out his wrath, as it were, against himself, against his Son, one as
dear to him as himself. As in his making creatures, his power over
nothing to bring it into being appeared; but in pardoning sin he hath
power over himself; so in punishing creatures, his holiness appears
in his wrath against creatures, against sinners by inherency; but by
punishing sin in his Son, his holiness sharpens his wrath against him
who was his equal, and only a reputed sinner; as if his affection to
his own holiness surmounted his affection to his Son: for he chose
to suspend the breakings out of his affections to his Son, and see
him plunged in a sharp and ignominious misery, without giving him any
visible token of his love, rather than see his holiness lie groaning
under the injuries of a transgressing world.
(3.) The value he puts upon his holiness appears further, in the
advancement of this redeeming person, after his death. Our Saviour
was advanced, not barely for his dying, but for the respect he had
in his death to this attribute of God (Heb. i. 9): “Thou hast loved
righteousness, and hated iniquity: therefore God, even thy God, hath
anointed thee with the oil of gladness,” &c. By righteousness is meant
this perfection, because of the opposition of it to iniquity. Some
think “therefore” to be the final cause; as if this were the sense,
“Thou art anointed with the oil of gladness, that thou mightest love
righteousness and hate iniquity.” But the Holy Ghost seeming to speak
in this chapter not only of the Godhead of Christ but of his exaltation;
the doctrine whereof he had begun in ver. 3, and prosecutes in the
following verses, I would rather understand “therefore,” for “this
cause, or reason, hath God anointed thee;” not “to {b137} this end.”
Christ indeed had an unction of grace, whereby he was fitted for
his mediatory work; he had also an unction of glory, whereby he was
rewarded for it. In the first regard, it was a qualifying him for his
office; in the second regard, it was a solemn inaugurating him in his
royal authority. And the reason of his being settled upon a “throne
for ever and ever,” is, “because he loved righteousness.” He suffered
himself to be pierced to death, that sin, the enemy of God’s purity,
might be destroyed, and the honor of the law, the image of God’s
holiness, might be repaired and fulfilled in the fallen creature. He
restored the credit of Divine holiness in the world, in manifesting,
by his death, God an irreconcileable enemy to all sin; in abolishing
the empire of sin, so hateful to God, and restoring the rectitude of
nature, and new framing the image of God in his chosen ones. And God
so valued this vindication of his holiness, that he confers upon him,
in his human nature, an eternal royalty and empire over angels and men.
Holiness was the great attribute respected by Christ in his dying, and
manifested in his death; and for his love to this, God would bestow
an honor upon his person, in that nature wherein he did vindicate the
honor of so dear a perfection. In the death of Christ, he showed his
resolution to preserve its rights; in the exaltation of Christ, he
evinced his mighty pleasure for the vindication of it; in both, the
infinite value he had for it, as dear to him as his life and glory.
(4.) It may be farther considered, that in this way of redemption,
his holiness in the hatred of sin seems to be valued above any other
attribute. He proclaims the value of it above the person of his Son;
since the Divine nature of the Redeemer is disguised, obscured, and
vailed, in order to the restoring the honor of it. And Christ seems
to value it above his own person, since he submitted himself to the
reproaches of men, to clear this perfection of the Divine nature, and
make it illustrious in the eyes of the world. You heard before, at the
beginning of the handling this argument, it was the beauty of the Deity,
the lustre of his nature, the link of all his attributes, his very life;
he values it equal with himself, since he swears by it, as well as by
his life; and none of his attributes would have a due decorum without
it; it is the glory of power, mercy, justice, and wisdom, that they are
all holy; so that though God had an infinite tenderness and compassion
to the fallen creature, yet it should not extend itself in his relief
to the prejudice of the rights of his purity: he would have this
triumph in the tenderness of his mercy, as well as the severities
of his justice. His mercy had not appeared in its true colors, nor
attained a regular end, without vengeance on sin. It would have been
a compassion that would, in sparing the sinner, have encouraged the
sin, and affronted holiness in the issues of it: had he dispersed his
compassions about the world, without the regard to his hatred of sin,
his mercy had been too cheap, and his holiness had been contemned; his
mercy would not have triumphed in his own nature, whilst his holiness
had suffered; he had exercised a mercy with the impairing his own glory;
but now, in this way of redemption, the rights of both are secured,
both have their due lustre: the odiousness of sin is equally {b138}
discovered with the greatest of his compassions; an infinite abhorrence
of sin, and an infinite love to the world, march hand in hand together.
Never was so much of the irreconcileableness of sin to him set forth,
as in the moment he was opening his bowels in the reconciliation of
the sinner. Sin is made the chiefest mark of his displeasure, while
the poor creature is made the highest object of Divine pity. There
could have been no motion of mercy, with the least injury to purity
and holiness. In this way mercy and truth, mercy to the misery of the
creature, and truth to the purity of the law, “have met together;” the
righteousness of God, and the peace of the sinner, “have kissed each
other” (Ps. lxxxv. 10).
2. The holiness of God in his hatred of sin appears in our
justification, and the conditions he requires of all that would
enjoy the benefit of redemption. His wisdom hath so tempered all the
conditions of it, that the honor of his holiness is as much preserved,
as the sweetness of his mercy is experimented by us; all the conditions
are records of his exact purity, as well as of his condescending grace.
Our justification is not by the imperfect works of creatures, but by
an exact and infinite righteousness, as great as that of the Deity
which had been offended: it being the righteousness of a Divine person,
upon which account it is called the righteousness of God; not only in
regard of God’s appointing it, and God’s accepting it, but as it is
a righteousness of that person that was God, and is God. Faith is the
condition God requires to justification; but not a dead, but an active
faith, such a “faith as purifies the heart” (James ii. 20; Acts xv. 9).
He calls for repentance, which is a moral retracting our offences,
and an approbation of contemned righteousness and a violated law;
an endeavor to gain what is lost, and to pluck out the heart of that
sin we have committed. He requires mortification, which is called
crucifying; whereby a man would strike as full and deadly a blow at
his lusts, as was struck at Christ upon the cross, and make them as
certainly die, as the Redeemer did. Our own righteousness must be
condemned by us, as impure and imperfect: we must disown everything
that is our own, as to righteousness, in reverence to the holiness of
God, and the valuation of the righteousness of Christ. He hath resolved
not to bestow the inheritance of glory without the root of grace. None
are partakers of the Divine blessedness that are not partakers of the
Divine nature: there must be a renewing of his image before there be
a vision of his face (Heb. xii. 14). He will not have men brought only
into a relative state of happiness by justification, without a real
state of grace by sanctification; and so resolved he is in it, that
there is no admittance into heaven of a starting, but a persevering
holiness (Rom. ii. 7), “a patient continuance in well‑doing:” patient,
under the sharpness of affliction, and continuing, under the pleasures
of prosperity. Hence it is that the gospel, the restoring doctrine,
hath not only the motives of rewards to allure to good, and the danger
of punishments to scare us from evil, as the law had; but they are set
forth in a higher strain, in a way of stronger engagement; the rewards
are heavenly, and the punishments eternal: and more powerful motives
besides, from the choicer expressions of God’s love in the death of his
Son. The whole design of {b139} it is to reinstate us in a resemblance
to this Divine perfection; whereby he shows what an affection he hath
to this excellency of his nature, and what a detestation he hath of
evil, which is contrary to it.
3. It appears in the actual regeneration of the redeemed souls, and a
carrying it on to a full perfection. As election is the effect of God’s
sovereignty, our pardon the fruit of his mercy, our knowledge a stream
from his wisdom, our strength an impression of his power; so our purity
is a beam from his holiness. The whole work of sanctification, and the
preservation of it, our Saviour begs for his disciples of his Father,
under this title (John xvii. 11, 17): “Holy Father, keep them through
thy own name,” and “sanctify them through thy truth;” as the proper
source whence holiness was to flow to the creature: as the sun is
the proper fountain whence light is derived, both to the stars above,
and the bodies here below. Whence He is not only called Holy, but the
Holy One of Israel (Isa. xliii. 15), “I am the Lord your Holy One, the
Creator of Israel:” displaying his holiness in them, by a new creation
of them as his Israel. As the rectitude of the creature at the first
creation was the effect of his holiness, so the purity of the creature,
by a new creation, is a draught of the same perfection. He is called
the Holy One of Israel more in Isaiah, that evangelical prophet, in
erecting Zion, and forming a people for himself, than in the whole
Scripture besides. As he sent Jesus Christ to satisfy his justice
for the expiation of the guilt of sin, so he sends the Holy Ghost for
the cleansing of the filth of sin, and overmastering the power of it:
Himself is the fountain, the Son is the pattern, and the Holy Ghost the
immediate imprinter of this stamp of holiness upon the creature. God
hath such a value for this attribute, that he designs the glory of this
in the renewing the creature, more than the happiness of the creature;
though the one doth necessarily follow upon the other, yet the one
is the principal design, and the other the consequent of the former:
whence our salvation is more frequently set forth, in Scripture,
by a redemption from sin, and sanctification of the soul, than by a
possession of heaven.[908] Indeed, as God could not create a rational
creature, without interesting this attribute in a special manner,
so he cannot restore the fallen creature without it. As in creating
a rational creature, there must be holiness to adorn it, as well
as wisdom to form the design, and power to effect it; so in the
restoration of the creature, as he could not make a reasonable creature
unholy, so he cannot restore a fallen creature, and put him in a
meet posture to take pleasure in him, without communicating to him a
resemblance of himself. As God cannot be blessed in himself without
this perfection of purity, so neither can a creature be blessed without
it. As God would be unlovely to himself without this attribute, so
would the creature be unlovely to God, without a stamp and mark of it
upon his nature. So much is this perfection one with God, valued by him,
and interested in all his works and ways!
III. The third thing I am to do, is to lay down some proposition in
the defence of God’s holiness in all his acts, about, or concerning
{b140} sin. It was a prudent and pious advice of Camero, not to be too
busy and rash in inquiries and conclusions about the reason of God’s
providence in the matter of sin. The Scripture hath put a bar in the
way of such curiosity, by telling us, that the ways of God’s wisdom and
righteousness in his judgments are “unsearchable” (Rom. xi. 33): much
more the ways of God’s holiness, as he stands in relation to sin, as a
Governor of the world; we cannot consider those things without danger
of slipping: our eyes are too weak to look upon the sun without being
dazzled: too much curiosity met with a just check in our first parent.
To be desirous to know the reason of all God’s proceedings in the
matter of sin, is to second the ambition of Adam, to be as wise as God,
and know the reason of his actings equally with himself. It is more
easy, as the same author saith, to give an account of God’s providence
since the revolt of man, and the poison that hath universally seized
upon human nature, than to make guesses at the manner of the fall
of the first man. The Scripture hath given us but a short account of
the manner of it, to discourage too curious inquiries into it. It is
certain that God made man upright; and when man sinned in paradise, God
was active in sustaining the substantial nature and act of the sinner
while he was sinning, though not in supporting the sinfulness of the
act: he was permissive in suffering it: he was negative in withholding
that grace which might certainly have prevented his crime, and
consequently his ruin; though he withheld nothing that was sufficient
for his resistance of that temptation wherewith he was assaulted. And
since the fall of man, God, as a wise governor, is directive of the
events of the transgression, and draws the choicest good out of the
blackest evil, and limits the sins of men, that they creep not so far
as the evil nature of men would urge them to; and as a righteous Judge,
he takes away the talent from idle servants, and the light from wicked
ones, whereby they stumble and fall into crimes, by the inclinations
and proneness of their own corrupt natures, leaves them to the bias of
their own vicious habits, denies that grace which they have forfeited,
and have no right to challenge, and turns their sinful actions into
punishments, both to the committers of them and others.
_Prop. I._ God’s holiness is not chargeable with any blemish for
his creating man in a mutable state. It is true, angels and men were
created with a changeable nature; as though there was a rich and
glorious stamp upon them by the hand of God, yet their natures were not
incapable of a base and vile stamp from some other principle: as the
silver which bears upon it the image of a great prince, is capable of
being melted down, and imprinted with no better an image than that of
some vile and monstrous beast. Though God made man upright, yet he was
capable of seeking “many inventions” (Eccl. vii. 29); yet the hand of
God was not defiled by forming man with such a nature. It was suitable
to the wisdom of God to give the rational creature, whom he had
furnished with a power of acting righteously, the liberty of choice,
and not fix him in an unchangeable state without a trial of him in his
natural; that if he did obey, his obedience might be the more valuable;
and if he did freely offend, his offence might be more inexcusable.
{b141} 1. No creature can be capable of immutability by nature.
Mutability is so essential to a creature, that a creature cannot be
supposed without it; you must suppose it a Creator, not a creature, if
you allow it to be of an immutable nature. Immutability is the property
of the Supreme Being. God “only hath immortality” (1 Tim. vi. 16);
immortality, as opposed not only to a natural, but to a sinful death;
the word _only_ appropriates every sort of immortality to God, and
excludes every creature, whether angel or man, from a partnership with
God in this by nature. Every creature, therefore, is capable of a death
in sin. “None is good but God,” and none is naturally free from change
but God, which excludes every creature from the same prerogative;
and certainly, if one angel sinned, all might have sinned, because
there was the same root of mutability in one as well as another. It
is as possible for a creature to be a Creator, as for a creature to
have naturally an incommunicable property of the Creator. All things,
whether angels or men, are made of nothing, and therefore, capable of
defection;[909] because a creature being made of nothing, cannot be
good, _per essentiam_, or essentially good, but by participation from
another. Again, every rational creature, being made of nothing, hath a
superior which created him and governs him, and is capable of a precept;
and, consequently, capable of disobedience as well as obedience to the
precept, to transgress it, as well as obey it. God cannot sin, because
he can have no superior to impose a precept on him. A rational creature,
with a liberty of will and power of choice, cannot be made by nature
of such a mould and temper, but he must be as well capable of choosing
wrong, as of choosing right; and, therefore, the standing angels, and
glorified saints, though they are immutable, it is not by nature that
they are so, but by grace, and the good pleasure of God; for though
they are in heaven, they have still in their nature a remote power
of sinning, but it shall never be brought into act, because God will
always incline their wills to love him, and never concur with their
wills to any evil act. Since, therefore, mutability is essential to a
creature as a creature, this changeableness cannot properly be charged
upon God as the author of it; for it was not the term of God’s creating
act, but did necessarily result from the nature of the creature, as
unchangeableness doth result from the essence of God. The brittleness
of a glass is no blame to the art of him that blew up the glass into
such a fashion; that imperfection of brittleness is not from the
workman, but the matter; so, though unchangeableness be an imperfection,
yet it is so necessary a one, that no creature can be naturally without
it; besides, though angels and men were mutable by creation, and
capable to exercise their wills, yet they were not necessitated to evil,
and this mutability did not infer a necessity that they should fall,
because some angels, which had the same root of changeableness in their
natures with those that fell, did not fall, which they would have done,
if capableness of changing, and necessity of changing, were one and the
same thing.
2. Though God made the creature mutable, yet he made him not {b142}
evil. There could be nothing of evil in him that God created after
his own image, and pronounced “good” (Gen. i. 27, 31). Man had an
ability to stand, as well as a capacity to fall: he was created with
a principal of acting freely, whereby he was capable of loving God as
his chief good, and moving to him as his last end; there was a beam
of light in man’s understanding to know the rule he was to conform
to, a harmony between his reason and his affections, an original
righteousness: so that it seemed more easy for him to determine his
will to continue in obedience to the precept, than to swerve from it;
to adhere to God as his chief good, than to listen to the charms of
Satan. God created him with those advantages, that he might with more
facility have kept his eyes fixed upon the Divine beauty, than turn
his back upon it, and with greater ease have kept the precept God gave
him, than have broken it. The very first thought darted, or impression
made, by God, upon the angelical or human nature, was the knowledge of
himself as their Author, and could be no more than such whereby both
angels and men might be excited to a love of that adorable Being, that
had framed them so gloriously out of nothing; and if they turned their
wills and affections to another object it was not by the direction
of God, but contrary to the impression God had made upon them, or
the first thought he flashed into them. They turned themselves to the
admiring their own excellency, or affecting an advantage distinct from
that which they were to look for only from God (1 Tim. iii. 6). Pride
was the cause of the condemnation of the devil. Though the wills of
angels and men were created mutable, and so were imperfect, yet they
were not created evil. Though they might sin, yet they might not sin,
and, therefore, were not evil in their own nature. What reflection,
then, could this mutability of their nature be upon God? So far is it
from any, that he is fully cleared, by storing up in the nature of man
sufficient provision against his departure from him. God was so far
from creating him evil, that he fortified him with a knowledge in his
understanding, and a strength in his nature to withstand any invasion.
The knowledge was exercised by Eve, in the very moment of the serpent’s
assaulting her (Gen. iii. 3); Eve said to the serpent, “God hath said,
ye shall not eat of it:” and had her thoughts been intent upon this,
“God hath said,” and not diverted to the motions of the sensitive
appetite and liquorish palate, it had been sufficient to put by all
the passes the devil did, or could have made at her. So that you see,
though God made the creature mutable, yet he made him not evil. This
clears the holiness of God.
3. Therefore it follows, That though God created man changeable, yet
he was not the cause of his change by his fall. Though man was created
defectible, yet he was not determined by God influencing his will by
any positive act to that change and apostasy. God placed him in a free
posture, set life and happiness before him on the one hand, misery and
death on the other; as he did not draw him into the arms of perpetual
blessedness, so he did not drive him into the gulf of his misery.[910]
He did not incline him to evil. It was repugnant {b143} to the goodness
of God to corrupt the righteousness of those faculties he had so lately
beautified him with. It was not likely he should deface the beauty of
that work he had composed with so much wisdom and skill. Would he, by
any act of his own, make that bad, which, but a little before, he had
acquiesced in as good? Angels and men were left to their liberty and
conduct of their natural faculties; and if God inspired them with any
motions, they could not but be motions to good, and suited to that
righteous nature he had endued them with. But it is most probable
that God did not, in a supernatural way, act inwardly upon the mind
of man, but left him wholly to that power, which he had, in creation,
furnished him with. The Scripture frees God fully from any blame in
this, and lays it wholly upon Satan, as the tempter, and upon man, as
the determiner of his own will (Gen. iii. 6); Eve “took of the fruit,
and did eat;” and Adam took from her of the fruit, “and did eat.” And
Solomon (Eccles. vii. 29) distinguisheth God’s work in the creation of
man “upright,” from man’s work in seeking out those ruining inventions.
God created man in a righteous state, and man cast himself into a
forlorn state. As he was a mutable creature, he was from God; as he was
a changed and corrupted creature, it was from the devil seducing, and
his own pliableness in admitting. As silver, and gold, and other metals,
were created by God in such a form and figure, yet capable of receiving
other forms by the industrious art of man; when the image of a man is
put upon a piece of metal, God is not said to create that image, though
he created the substance with such a property, that it was capable of
receiving it; this capacity is from the nature of the metal by God’s
creation of it, but the carving the figure of this or that man is not
the act of God, but the act of man. As images, in Scripture, are called
the work of men’s hands, in regard of the imagery, though the matter,
wood or stone, upon which the image was carved, was a work of God’s
creative power. When an artificer frames an excellent instrument, and
a musician exactly tunes it, and it comes out of their hands without
a blemish, but capable to be untuned by some rude hand, or receive
a crack by a sudden fall, if it meet with a disaster, is either the
workman or musician to be blamed? The ruin of a house, caused by the
wastefulness or carelessness of the tenant, is not to be imputed to the
workman that built it strong, and left it in a good posture.
_Prop. II._ God’s holiness is not blemished by enjoining man a law,
which he knew he would not observe.
1. The law was not above his strength. Had the law been impossible to
be observed, no crime could have been imputed to the subject, the fault
had lain wholly upon the Governor; the non‑observance of it had been
from a want of strength, and not from a want of will. Had God commanded
Adam to fly up to the sun, when he had not given him wings, Adam might
have a will to obey it, but his power would be too short to perform it.
But the law set him for a rule, had nothing of impossibility in it; it
was easy to be observed; the command was rather below, than above his
strength; and the sanction of it was more apt to restrain and scare him
from the breach of it, than encourage any daring attempts against it;
he had as much {b144} power, or rather more, to conform to it, than
to warp from it; and greater arguments and interest to be observant
of it, than to violate it; his all was secured by the one, and his ruin
ascertained by the other. The commands of God are not grievous (1 John
v. 3); from the first to the last command, there is nothing impossible,
nothing hard to the original and created nature of man, which were all
summed up in a love to God, which was the pleasure and delight of man,
as well as his duty, if he had not, by inconsiderateness, neglected the
dictates and resolves of his own understanding. The law was suited to
the strength of man, and fitted for the improvement and perfection of
his nature; in which respect, the apostle calls it “good,” as it refers
to man, as well as “holy,” as it refers to God (Rom. vii. 12). Now,
since God created man a creature capable to be governed by a law, and
as a rational creature endued with understanding and will, not to be
governed, according to his nature, without a law; was it congruous to
the wisdom of God to respect only the future state of man, which, from
the depth of his infinite knowledge, he did infallibly foresee would
be miserable, by the wilful defection of man from the rule? Had it been
agreeable to the wisdom of God, to respect only this future state, and
not the present state of the creature; and therefore leave him lawless,
because he knew he would violate the law? Should God forbear to act
like a wise governor, because he saw that man would cease to act like
an obedient subject? Shall a righteous magistrate forbear to make just
and good laws, because he foresees, either from the dispositions of his
subjects, their ill‑humor, or some circumstances which will intervene,
that multitudes of them will incline to break those laws, and fall
under the penalty of them? No blame can be upon that magistrate
who minds the rule of righteousness, and the necessary duty of his
government, since he is not the cause of those turbulent affections of
men, which he wisely foresees will rise up against his just edicts.
2. Though the law now be above the strength of man, yet is not the
holiness of God blemished by keeping it up. It is true, God hath been
graciously pleased to mitigate the severity and rigor of the law,
by the entrance of the gospel; yet where men refuse the terms of the
gospel, they continue themselves under the condemnation of the law,
and are justly guilty of the breach of it, though they have no strength
to observe it. The law, as I said before, was not above man’s strength,
when he was possessed of original righteousness, though it be above
man’s strength, since he was stripped of original righteousness. The
command was dated before man had contracted his impotency, when he
had a power to keep it as well as to break it. Had it been enjoined
to man only after the fall, and not before, he might have had a better
pretence to excuse himself, because of the impossibility of it; yet he
would not have had sufficient excuse, since the impossibility did not
result from the nature of the law, but from the corrupted nature of the
creature. It was “weak through the flesh” (Rom. viii. 3), but it was
promulged when man had a strength proportioned to the commands of it.
And now, since man hath unhappily made himself incapable of obeying it,
must God’s holiness in his law be blemished for enjoining it? Must he
abrogate those commands, and prohibit {b145} what before he enjoined,
for the satisfaction of the corrupted creature? Would not this be
his “ceasing to be holy,” that his creature might be unblameably
unrighteous? Must God strip himself of his holiness, because man will
not discharge his iniquity? He cannot be the cause of sin, by keeping
up the law, who would be the cause of all the unrighteousness of
men, by removing the authority of it. Some things in the law that
are intrinsically good in their own nature, are indispensable, and
it is repugnant to the nature of God not to command them. If he were
not the guardian of his indispensable law, he would be the cause and
countenancer of the creatures’ iniquity. So little reason have men to
charge God with being the cause of their sin, by not repealing his law
to gratify their impotence, that he would be unholy if he did. God must
not lose his purity, because man hath lost his, and cast away the right
of his sovereignty, because man hath cast away his power of obedience.
3. God’s foreknowledge that his law would not be observed, lays no
blame upon him. Though the foreknowledge of God be infallible, yet
it doth not necessitate the creature in acting. It was certain from
eternity, that Adam would fall, that men would do such and such actions,
that Judas would betray our Saviour; God foreknew all those things
from eternity; but, it is as certain that this foreknowledge did not
necessitate the will of Adam, or any other branch of his posterity, in
the doing those actions that were so foreseen by God; they voluntarily
run into such courses, not by any impulsion. God’s knowledge was not
suspended between certainty and uncertainty; he certainly foreknew that
his law would be broken by Adam; he foreknew it in his own decree of
not hindering him, by giving Adam the efficacious grace which would
infallibly have prevented it; yet Adam did freely break this law, and
never imagined that the foreknowledge of God did necessitate him to it;
he could find no cause of his own sin, but the liberty of his own will;
he charges the occasion of his sin upon the woman, and consequently
upon God in giving the woman to him (Gen. iii. 12). He could not be so
ignorant of the nature of God, as to imagine him without a foresight
of future things: since his knowledge of what was to be known of God
by creation, was greater than any man’s since, in all probability.
But, however, if he were not acquainted with the notion of God’s
foreknowledge, he could not be ignorant of his own act; there could
not have been any necessity upon him, any kind of constraint of him
in his action, that could have been unknown to him; and he would not
have omitted a plea of so strong a nature, when he was upon his trial
for life or death; especially when he urgeth so weak an argument, to
impute his crime to God, as the gift of the woman; as if that which
was designed him for a help, were intended for his ruin. If God’s
prescience takes away the liberty of the creature, there is no such
thing as a free action in the world (for there is nothing done but
is foreknown by God, else we render God of a limited understanding),
nor ever was, no, not by God himself, _ad extra_; for whatsoever he
hath done in creation, whatsoever he hath done since the creation,
was foreknown by him: he resolved to do it, and, therefore, foreknew
that he would do it. Did God do it, {b146} therefore, necessarily,
as necessity is opposed to liberty? As he freely decrees what he will
do, so he effects what he freely decreed. Foreknowledge is so far from
intrenching upon the liberty of the will, that predetermination, which
in the notion of it speaks something more, doth not dissolve it; God
did not only foreknow, but determine the suffering of Christ (Acts iv.
27, 28). It was necessary, therefore, that Christ should suffer, that
God might not be mistaken in his foreknowledge, or come short of his
determinate decree; but did this take away the liberty of Christ in
suffering? (Eph. v. 2): “Who offered himself up to God;” that is, by a
voluntary act, as well as designed to do it by a determinate counsel.
It did infallibly secure the event, but did not annihilate the liberty
of the action, either in Christ’s willingness to suffer, or the crime
of the Jews that made him suffer. God’s prescience is God’s provision
of things arising from their proper causes; as a gardener foresees
in his plants the leaves and the flowers that will arise from them in
the spring, because he knows the strength and nature of their several
roots which lie under ground; but his foresight of these things is not
the cause of the rise and appearance of those flowers. If any of us
see a ship moving towards such a rock or quicksand, and know it to be
governed by a negligent pilot, we shall certainly foresee that the ship
will be torn in pieces by the rock, or swallowed up by the sands; but
is this foresight of ours from the causes, any cause of the effect; or
can we from hence be said to be the authors of the miscarriage of the
ship, and the loss of the passengers and goods? The fall of Adam was
foreseen by God to come to pass by the consent of his free will, in
the choice of the proposed temptation. God foreknew Adam would sin,
and if Adam would not have sinned, God would have foreknown that he
would not sin. Adam might easily have detected the serpent’s fraud,
and made a better election; God foresaw that he would not do it; God’s
foreknowledge did not make Adam guilty or innocent: whether God had
foreknown it or no, he was guilty by a free choice, and a willing
neglect of his own duty. Adam knew that God foreknew that he might
eat of the fruit, and fall and die, because God had forbidden him; the
foreknowledge that he would do it, was no more a cause of his action,
than the foreknowledge that he might do it. Judas certainly knew
that his Master foreknew that he would betray him, for Christ had
acquainted him with it (John xiii. 21, 26); yet he never charged this
foreknowledge of Christ with any guilt of his treachery.
_Prop. III._ The holiness of God is not blemished by decreeing the
eternal rejection of some men. Reprobation, in its first notion, is
an act of preterition, or passing by. A man is not made wicked by the
act of God; but it supposeth him wicked; and so it is nothing else but
God’s leaving a man in that guilt and filth wherein he beholds him.
In its second notion, it is an ordination, not to a crime, but to a
punishment (Jude 4): “an ordaining to condemnation.” And though it be
an eternal act of God, yet, in order of nature, it follows upon the
foresight of the transgression of man, and supposeth the crime. God
considers Adam’s revolt, and views the whole mass of his corrupted
posterity, and chooses some to reduce to himself by {b147} his grace,
and leaves others to lie sinking in their ruins. Since all mankind fell
by the fall of Adam, and have corruption conveyed to them successively
by that root, whereof they are branches; all men might justly be left
wallowing in that miserable condition to which they are reduced by the
apostasy of their common head; and God might have passed by the whole
race of man, as well as he did the fallen angels, without any hope of
redemption. He was no more bound to restore man, than to restore devils,
nor bound to repair the nature of any one son of Adam; and had he dealt
with men as he dealt with the devils, they had had, all of them, as
little just ground to complain of God; for all men deserved to be left
to themselves, for all were concluded under sin; but God calls out some
to make monuments of his grace, which is an act of the sovereign mercy
of that dominion, whereby “he hath mercy on whom he will have mercy”
(Rom. ix. 18); others he passes by, and leaves them remaining in that
corruption of nature wherein they were born. If men have a power to
dispose of their own goods, without any unrighteousness, why should not
God dispose of his own grace, and bestow it upon whom he pleases; since
it is a debt to none, but a free gift to any that enjoy it? God is not
the cause of sin in this, because his operation about this is negative;
it is not an action, but a denial of action, and therefore cannot
be the cause of the evil actions of men.[911] God acts nothing, but
withholds his power; he doth not enlighten their minds, nor incline
their wills so powerfully, as to expel their darkness, and root out
those evil habits which possess them by nature. God could, if he would,
savingly enlighten the minds of all men in the world, and quicken their
hearts with a new life by an invincible grace; but in not doing it,
there is no positive act of God, but a cessation of action. We may with
as much reason say, that God is the cause of all the sinful actions
that are committed by the corporation of devils, since their first
rebellion, because he leaves them to themselves, and bestows not a new
grace upon them,――as say, God is the cause of the sins of those that he
overlooks and leaves in that state of guilt wherein he found them. God
did not pass by any without the consideration of sin; so that this act
of God is not repugnant to his holiness, but conformable to his justice.
_Prop. IV._ The holiness of God is not blemished by his secret will
to suffer sin to enter into the world. God never willed sin by his
preceptive will. It was never founded upon, or produced by any word
of his, as the creation was. He never said, Let there be sin under the
heaven, as he said, “Let there be water under the heaven.” Nor doth
he will it by infusing any habit of it, or stirring up inclinations to
it; no, “God tempts no man” (James i. 13). Nor doth he will it by his
approving will; it is detestable to him, nor ever can he be otherwise;
he cannot approve it either before commission or after.
1. The will of God is in some sort concurrent with sin. He doth not
properly will it, but he wills not to hinder it, to which, by his
omnipotence, he could put a bar. If he did positively will it, it might
be wrought by himself, and so could not be evil. If he did {b148} in
no sort will it, it would not be committed by his creature; sin entered
into the world, either God willing the permission of it, or not willing
the permission of it. The latter cannot be said; for then the creature
is more powerful than God, and can do that which God will not permit.
God can, if he be pleased, banish all sin in a moment out of the world:
he could have prevented the revolt of angels, and the fall of man;
they did not sin whether he would or no: he might, by his grace, have
stepped in the first moment, and made a special impression upon them of
the happiness they already possessed, and the misery they would incur
by any wicked attempt. He could as well have prevented the sin of the
fallen angels, and confirmed them in grace, as of those that continued
in their happy state: he might have appeared to man, informed him of
the issue of his design, and made secret impressions upon his heart,
since he was acquainted with every avenue to his will. God could have
kept all sin out of the world, as well as all creatures from breathing
in it; he was as well able to bar sin forever out of the world, as
to let creatures lie in the womb of nothing, wherein they were first
wrapped. To say God doth will sin as he doth other things, is to deny
his holiness; to say it entered without anything of his will, is to
deny his omnipotence. If he did necessitate Adam to fall, what shall
we think of his purity? If Adam did fall without any concern of God’s
will in it, what shall we say of his sovereignty? The one taints his
holiness, and the other clips his power. If it came without anything
of his will in it, and he did not foresee it, where is his omniscience?
If it entered whether he would or no, where is his omnipotence (Rom.
ix. 19)? “Who hath resisted his will?” There cannot be a lustful act
in Abimelech, if God will withhold his power (Gen. xx. 6); “I withheld
thee:” nor a cursing word in Balaam’s mouth, unless God give power
to speak it (Numb. xxii. 38): “Have I now any power at all to say
anything? The word that God puts in my mouth, that shall I speak.” As
no action could be sinful, if God had not forbidden it; so no sin could
be committed, if God did not will to give way to it.
2. God doth not will directly, and by an efficacious will. He doth not
directly will it, because he hath prohibited it by his law, which is
a discovery of his will: so that if he should directly will sin, and
directly prohibit it, he would will good and evil in the same manner,
and there would be contradictions in God’s will: to will sin absolutely,
is to work it (Ps. cxv. 3): “God hath done whatsoever he pleased.” God
cannot absolutely will it, because he cannot work it. God wills good by
a positive decree, because he hath decreed to effect it.[912] He wills
evil by a private decree, because he hath decreed not to give that
grace which would certainly prevent it. God doth not will sin simply,
for that were to approve it, but he wills it, in order to that good
his wisdom will bring forth from it.[913] He wills not sin for itself,
but for the event. To will sin as sin, or as purely evil, is not in
the capacity of a creature, neither of man nor devil. The will of a
rational creature cannot will anything but under the appearance of good,
of some good in the sin itself, or some good in the issue of it. {b149}
Much more is this far from God, who, being infinitely good, cannot will
evil as evil; and being infinitely knowing, cannot will that for good
which is evil.[914] Infinite wisdom can be under no error or mistake:
to will sin as sin, would be an unanswerable blemish on God; but to
will to suffer it in order to good, is the glory of his wisdom; it
could never have peeped up its head, unless there had been some decree
of God concerning it. And there had been no decree of God concerning
it, had he not intended to bring good and glory out of it. If God did
directly will the discovery of his grace and mercy to the world, he did
in some sort will sin, as that without which there could not have been
any appearance of mercy in the world; for an innocent creature is not
the object of mercy, but a miserable creature: and no rational creature
but must be sinful before it be miserable.
3. God wills the permission of sin. He doth not positively will sin,
but he positively wills to permit it. And though he doth not approve
of sin, yet he approves of that act of his will, whereby he permits it.
For since that sin could not enter into the world without some concern
of God’s will about it, that act of his will that gave way to it, could
not be displeasing to him: God could never be displeased with his own
act: “He is not as man, that he should repent” (1 Sam. xv. 29). What
God cannot repent of, he cannot but approve of: it is contrary to the
blessedness of God to disapprove of, and be displeased with any act
of his own will. If he hated any act of his own will, he would hate
himself, he would be under a torture: every one that hates his own acts,
is under some disturbance and torment for them. That which is permitted
by him, is in itself, and in regard of the evil of it, hateful to him:
but as the prospect of that good which he aims at in the permission
of it is pleasing to him, so that act of his will, whereby he permits
it, is ushered in by an approving act of his understanding. Either God
approved of the permission, or not; if he did not approve his own act
of permission, he could not have decreed an act of permission. It is
inconceivable that God should decree such an act which he detested,
and positively will that which he hated. Though God hated sin, as being
against his holiness, yet he did not hate the permission of sin, as
being subservient by the immensity of his wisdom to his own glory. He
could never be displeased with that which was the result of his eternal
counsel, as this decree of permitting sin was, as well as any other
decree, resolved upon in his own breast. For as God acts nothing in
time, but what he decreed from eternity, so he permits nothing in
time but what he decreed from eternity to permit. To speak properly,
therefore, God doth not will sin, but he wills the permission of it,
and this will to permit is active and positive in God.
4. This act of permission is not a mere and naked permission, but
such an one as is attended with a certainty of the event. The decrees
of God to make use of the sin of man for the glory of his grace in the
mission and passion of his Son, hung upon this entrance of sin. Would
it consist with the wisdom of God to decree such great and stupendous
things, the event whereof should depend upon an uncertain foundation
which he might be mistaken in? God would have {b150} sat in counsel
from eternity to no purpose, if he had only permitted those things to
be done, without any knowledge of the event of this permission. God
would not have made such provision for redemption to no purpose, or an
uncertain purpose, which would have been, if man had not fallen; or if
it had been an uncertainty with God whether he would fall or no. Though
the will of God about sin was permissive, yet the will of God about
that glory he would promote by the defect of the creature, was positive;
and, therefore, he would not suffer so many positive acts of his will
to hang upon an uncertain event; and, therefore, he did wisely and
righteously order all things to the accomplishment of his great and
gracious purposes.
5. This act of permission doth not taint the holiness of God.
That there is such an act as permission, is clear in Scripture (Acts
xiv. 16): “Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own
ways.” But that it doth not blemish the holiness of God, will appear,
1st. From the nature of this permission.
1. It is not a moral permission, a giving liberty of toleration by any
law to commit sin with impunity; when, what one law did forbid, another
law doth leave indifferent to be done or not, as a man sees good in
himself. As when there is a law made among men, that no man shall
go out of such a city or country without license; to go out without
license is a crime by the law; but when that law is repealed by another,
that gives liberty for men to go and come at their pleasure, it doth
not make their going or coming necessary, but leaves those which were
before bound, to do as they see good in themselves. Such a permission
makes a fact lawful, though not necessary; a man is not obliged to do
it, but he is left to his own discretion to do as he pleases, without
being chargeable with a crime for doing it. Such a permission there
was granted by God to Adam of eating of the fruits of the garden, to
choose any of them for food, except the tree of “knowledge of good and
evil.” It was a precept to him, not to “eat of the fruit of the tree
of knowledge of good and evil;” but the other was a permission, whereby
it was lawful for him to feed upon any other that was most agreeable
to his appetite: but there is not such a permission in the case of sin;
this had been an indulgence of it, which had freed man from any crime,
and, consequently, from punishment; because, by such a permission by
law, he would have had authority to sin if he pleased. God did not
remove the law, which he had before placed as a bar against evil, nor
ceased that moral impediment of his threatening: such a permission as
this, to make sin lawful or indifferent, had been a blot upon God’s
holiness.
2. But this permission of God, in the case of sin, is no more than the
not hindering a sinful action, which he could have prevented. It is not
so much an action of God, as a suspension of his influence, which might
have hindered an evil act, and a forbearing to restrain the faculties
of man from sin; it is, properly, the not exerting that efficacy
which might change the counsels that are taken, and prevent the action
intended; as when one man sees another ready to fall, and can preserve
him from falling by reaching out his hand, he permits {b151} him
to fall, that is, he hinders him not from falling. So God describes
his act about Abimelech (Gen. xx. 6); “I withheld thee from sinning
against me, therefore suffered I thee not to touch her.” If Abimelech
had sinned, he had sinned by God’s permission; that is, by God’s not
hindering, or not restraining him by making any impressions upon him.
So that permission is only a withholding that help and grace, which, if
bestowed, would have been an effectual remedy to prevent a crime; and
it is rather a suspension, or cessation, than properly a permission,
and sin may be said to be committed, not without God’s permission,
rather than by his permission. Thus, in the fall of man, God did not
hold the reins strict upon Satan, to restrain him from laying the bait,
nor restrain Adam from swallowing the bait: he kept to himself that
efficacious grace which he might have darted out upon man to prevent
his fall. God left Satan to his malice of tempting, and Adam to his
liberty of resisting, and his own strength, to use that sufficient
grace he had furnished him with, whereby he might have resisted and
overcome the temptation. As he did not drive man to it, so he did not
secretly restrain him from it. So, in the Jews crucifying our Saviour,
God did not imprint upon their minds, by his Spirit, a consideration
of the greatness of the crime, and the horror of his justice due to it;
and, being without those impediments, they run furiously, of their own
accord, to the commission of that evil; as, when a man lets a wolf or
dog out upon his prey, he takes off the chain which held them, and they
presently act according to their natures.[915] In the fall of angels
and men, God’s act was leaving them to their own strength; in sins
after the fall, it is God’s giving them up to their own corruption;
the first is a pure suspension of grace; the other hath the nature of
a punishment (Ps. lxxxi. 12): “So I gave them up to their own hearts’
lusts.” The first object of this permissive will of God was to leave
angels and men to their liberty, and the use of their free will, which
was natural to them,[916] not adding that supernatural grace which was
necessary, not that they should not at all sin, but that they should
infallibly not sin: they had a strength sufficient to avoid sin, but
not sufficient infallibly to avoid sin; a grace sufficient to preserve
them, but not sufficient to confirm them.
3. Now this permission is not the cause of sin, nor doth blemish the
holiness of God. It doth not intrench upon the freedom of men, but
supposeth it, establisheth it, and leaves man to it. God acted nothing,
but only ceased to act; and therefore could not be the efficient cause
of man’s sin. As God is not the author of good, but by willing and
effecting it, so he is not the author of evil, but by willing and
effecting it: but he doth not positively will evil, nor effect it by
any efficacy of his own. Permission is no action, nor the cause of that
action which is permitted; but the will of that person who is permitted
to do such an action is the cause.[917] God can no more be said to
be the cause of sin, by suffering a creature to act as it will, than
he can be said to be the cause of the not being of any creature, by
denying it being, and letting it remain nothing; it is not from God
that it is nothing, it is nothing in itself. Though God be said {b152}
to be the cause of creation, yet he is never by any said to be the
cause of that nothing which was before creation. This permission of God
is not the cause of sin, but the cause of not hindering sin. Man and
angels had a physical power of sinning from God, as they were created
with freewill, and supported in their natural strength; but the moral
power to sin was not from God; he counselled them not to it, laid no
obligation upon them to use their natural power for such an end; he
only left them to their freedom, and not hindered them in their acting
what he was resolved to permit.
2d. The holiness of God is not tainted by this, because he was under no
obligation to hinder their commission of sin. Ceasing to act, whereby
to prevent a crime or mischief, brings not a person permitting it under
guilt, unless where he is under an obligation to prevent it; but God,
in regard of his absolute dominion, cannot be charged with any such
obligation. One man, that doth not hinder the murder of another, when
it is in his power, is guilty of the murder in part; but, it is to be
considered, that he is under a tie by nature, as being of the same kind,
and being the other’s brother, by a communion of blood, also under
an obligation of the law of charity, enacted by the common Sovereign
of the world: but what tie was there upon God, since the infinite
transcendancy of his nature, and his sovereign dominion, frees him from
any such obligation (Job ix. 12)? “If he takes away, who shall say,
What dost thou?” God might have prevented the fall of men and angels;
he might have confirmed them all in a state of perpetual innocency; but
where is the obligation? He had made the creature a debtor to himself,
but he owed nothing to the creature. Before God can be charged with
any guilt in this case, it must be proved, not only that he could, but
that he was bound to hinder it. No person can be justly charged with
another’s fault, merely for not preventing it, unless he be bound to
prevent it; else, not only the first sin of angels and man would be
imputed to God, as the Author, but all the sins of men. He could not
be obliged by any law, because he had no superior to impose any law
upon him; and it will be hard to prove that he was obliged, from his
own nature, to prevent the entrance of sin, which he would use as an
occasion to declare his own holiness, so transcendent a perfection of
his nature, more than ever it could have been manifested by a total
exclusion of it, _viz._ in the death of Christ. He is no more bound,
in his own nature, to preserve, by supernatural grace, his creature
from falling, after he had framed him with a sufficient strength to
stand, than he was obliged, in his own nature, to bring his creature
into being when it was nothing. He is not bound to create a rational
creature, much less bound to create him with supernatural gifts; though,
since God would make a rational creature, he could not but make him
with a natural uprightness and rectitude. God did as much for angels
and men as became a wise governor: he had published his law, backed it
with severe penalties, and the creature wanted not a natural strength
to observe and obey it. Had not man power to obey all the precepts
of the law, as well as one? How was God bound to give him more grace,
since what he had already was enough to shield him, and keep up his
resistance {b153} against all the power of hell? It had been enough to
have pointed his will against the temptation, and he had kept off the
force of it. Was there any promise past to Adam of any further grace
which he could plead as a tie upon God? No such voluntary limit upon
God’s supreme dominion appears upon record. Was anything due to man
which he had not? anything promised him which was not performed?
What action of debt, then, can the creature bring against God?
Indeed, when man began to neglect the light of his own reason, and
became inconsiderate of the precept, God might have enlightened his
understanding by a special flash, a supernatural beam, and imprinted
upon him a particular consideration of the necessity of his obedience,
the misery he was approaching to by his sin, the folly of any
apprehension of an equality in knowledge; he might have convinced
him of the falsity of the serpent’s arguments, and uncased to him the
venom that lay under those baits. But how doth it appear that God was
bound to those additional acts when he had already lighted up in him a
“spirit, which was the candle of the Lord” (Prov. xx. 27), whereby he
was able to discern all, if he had attended to it. It was enough that
God did not necessitate man to sin, did not counsel him to it; that
he had given him sufficient warning in the threatening, and sufficient
strength in his faculties, to fortify him against temptation. He gave
him what was due to him as a creature of his own framing; he withdrew
no help from him, that was due to him as a creature, and what was not
due he was not bound to impart. Man did not beg preserving grace of
God, and God was not bound to offer it, when he was not petitioned for
it especially: yet if he had begged it, God having before furnished
him sufficiently, might, by the right of his sovereign dominion, have
denied it without any impeachment of his holiness and righteousness.
Though he would not in such a case have dealt so bountifully with his
creature as he might have done, yet he could not have been impleaded,
as dealing unrighteously with his creature. The single word that God
had already uttered, when he gave him his precept, was enough to oppose
against all the devil’s wiles, which tended to invalidate that word:
the understanding of man could not imagine that the word of God was
vainly spoken; and the very suggestion of the devil, as if the Creator
should envy his creature, would have appeared ridiculous, if he had
attended to the voice of his own reason. God had done enough for him,
and was obliged to do no more, and dealt not unrighteously in leaving
him to act according to the principles of his nature. To conclude, if
God’s permission of sin were enough to charge it upon God, or if God
had been obliged to give Adam supernatural grace, Adam, that had so
capacious a brain, could not be without that plea in his mouth, “Lord
thou mightest have prevented it; the commission of it by me could not
have been without thy permission of it:” or, “Thou hast been wanting
to me, as the author of my nature.” No such plea is brought by Adam
into the court, when God tried and cast him; no such pleas can have
any strength in them. Adam had reason enough to know, that there was
sufficient reason to overrule such a plea.
Since the permission of sin casts no dirt upon the holiness of God,
{b154} as I think hath been cleared, we may under this head consider
two things more.
1. That God’s permission of sin is not so much as his restraint or
limitation of it. Since the entrance of the first sin into the world
by Adam, God is more a hinderer than a permitter of it. If he hath
permitted that which he could have prevented, he prevents a world more,
that he might, if he pleased, permit: the hedges about sin are larger
than the outlets; they are but a few streams that glide about the world,
in comparison of that mighty torrent he dams up both in men and devils.
He that understands what a lake of Sodom is in every man’s nature,
since the universal infection of human nature, as the apostle describes
it (Rom. iii. 9, 10, &c.), must acknowledge, that if God should cast
the reins upon the necks of sinful men, they would run into thousands
of abominable crimes, more than they do: the impression of all natural
laws would be rased out, the world would be a public stew, and a more
bloody slaughter house; human society would sink into a chaos; no
starlight of commendable morality would be seen in it; the world would
be no longer an earth, but an hell, and have lain deeper in wickedness
than it doth. If God did not limit sin, as he doth the sea, and put
bars to the waves of the heart, as well as those of the waters, and
say of them, “Hitherto you shall go, and no further;” man hath such a
furious ocean in him, as would overflow the banks; and where it makes a
breach in one place, it would in a thousand, if God should suffer it to
act according to its impetuous current. As the devil hath lust enough
to destroy all mankind, if God did not bridle him; deal with every man
as he did with Job, ruin their comforts, and deform their bodies with
scabs; infect religion with a thousand more errors; fling disorders
into commonwealths, and make them as a fiery furnace, full of nothing
but flame; if he were not chained by that powerful arm, that might let
him loose to fulfil his malicious fury; what rapines, murders, thefts,
would be committed, if he did not stint him! Abimelech would not only
lust after Sarah, but deflour her; Laban not only pursue Jacob, but
rifle him; Saul not only hate David, but murder him; David not only
threaten Nabal, but root him up, and his family, did not God girdle in
the wrath of man:[918] a greater remainder of wrath is pent in, than
flames out, which yet swells for an outlet. God may be concluded more
holy in preventing men’s sins, than the author of sin in permitting
some; since, were it not for his restraints by the pull‑back of
conscience, and infused motions and outward impediments, the world
would swarm more with this cursed brood.
2. His permission of sin is in order to his own glory, and a greater
good. It is no reflection upon the Divine goodness to leave man to his
own conduct, whereby such a deformity as sin sets foot in the world;
since he makes his wisdom illustrious in bringing good out of evil,
and a good greater than that evil he suffered to spring up.[919] God
did not permit sin, as sin, or permit it barely for itself. As sin
is not lovely in its own nature, so neither is the permission of sin
intrinsically good or amiable for itself, but for those ends aimed at
in {b155} the permission of it. God permitted sin, but approved not
of the object of that permission, sin; because that, considered in its
own nature, is solely evil: nor can we think that God could approve
of the act of permission, considered only in itself as an act; but as
it respected that event which his wisdom would order by it. We cannot
suppose that God should permit sin, but for some great and glorious
end: for it is the manifestation of his own glorious perfections he
intends in all the acts of his will (Prov. xvi. 4), “The Lord hath
made all things for himself”――פעל hath wrought all things; which is not
only his act of creation, but ordination: “for himself,” that is, for
the discovery of the excellency of his nature, and the communication
of himself to his creature. Sin indeed, in its own nature, hath no
tendency to a good end; the womb of it teems with nothing but monsters;
it is a spurn at God’s sovereignty, and a slight of his goodness: it
both deforms and torments the person that acts it; it is black and
abominable, and hath not a mite of goodness in the nature of it. If it
ends in any good, it is only from that Infinite transcendency of skill,
that can bring good out of evil, as well as light out of darkness.
Therefore God did not permit it as sin, but as it was an occasion for
the manifestation of his own glory. Though the goodness of God would
have appeared in the preservation of the world, as well as it did in
the creation of it, yet his mercy could not have appeared without the
entrance of sin, because the object of mercy is a miserable creature;
but man could not be miserable as long as he remained innocent. The
reign of sin opened a door for the reign and triumph of grace (Rom.
v. 21), “As sin hath reigned unto death, so might grace reign through
righteousness to eternal life;” without it, the bowels of mercy had
never sounded, and the ravishing music of Divine grace could never
have been heard by the creature. Mercy, which renders God so amiable,
could never else have beamed out to the world. Angels and men upon this
occasion beheld the stirrings of Divine grace, and the tenderness of
Divine nature, and the glory of the Divine persons in their several
functions about the redemption of man, which had else been a spring
shut up, and a fountain sealed; the song of glory to God, and good will
to men in a way of redemption had never been sung by them. It appears
in his dealing with Adam, that he permitted his fall, not only to show
his justice in punishing, but principally his mercy in rescuing; since
he proclaims to him first the promise of a Redeemer to “bruise the
serpent’s head,” before he settled the punishment he should smart under
in the world (Gen. iii. 15‒17). And what fairer prospect could the
creature have of the holiness of God, and his hatred of sin, than in
the edge of that sword of justice, which punished it in the sinner;
but glittered more in the punishment of a Surety so near allied to
him? Had not man been criminal, he could not have been punishable, nor
any been punishable for him: and the pulse of Divine holiness could
not have beaten so quick, and been so visible, without an exercise of
his vindicative justice. He left man’s mutable nature, to fall under
righteousness, that thereby he might commend the righteousness of his
own nature (Rom. iii. 7). Adam’s sin in its nature tended to the ruin
of the world, and God takes an occasion {b156} from it for the glory of
his grace in the redemption of the world; he brings forth thereby a new
scene of wonders from heaven, and a surprising knowledge on earth; as
the sun breaks out more strongly after a night of darkness and tempest.
As God in creation framed a chaos by his power, to manifest his wisdom
in bringing order out of disorder, light out of darkness, beauty out
of confusion and deformity, when he was able by a word to have made
all creatures stand up in their beauty, without the precedency of a
chaos; so God permitted a moral chaos to manifest a greater wisdom
in the repairing a broken image, and restoring a deplorable creature,
and bringing out those perfections of his nature, which had else been
wrapt up in a perpetual silence in his own bosom. It was therefore very
congruous to the holiness of God to permit that which he could make
subservient for his own glory, and particularly for the manifestation
of this attribute of holiness, which seems to be in opposition to such
a permission.[920]
_Prop. V._ The holiness of God is not blemished by his concurrence
with the creature in the material part of a sinful act. Some to free
God from having any hand in sin, deny his concurrence to the actions of
the creature; because, if he concurs to a sinful action, he concurs to
the sin also: not understanding how there can be a distinction between
the act, and the sinfulness or viciousness of it; and how God can
concur to a natural action, without being stained by that moral evil
which cleaves to it. For the understanding of this, observe,
1. There is a concurrence of God to all the acts of the creature (Acts
xvii. 28); “in him we live, and move, and have our being.” We depend
upon God in our acting as well as in our being: there is as much an
efficacy of God in our motion as in our production; as none have life
without his power in producing it, so none have any operation without
his providence concurring with it. In him, or by him, that is, by his
virtue preserving and governing our motions, as well as by his power
bringing us into being. Hence man is compared to an axe (Isa. x. 15),
an instrument that hath no action, without the co‑operation of a
superior agent handling it: and the actions of the second causes are
ascribed to God; the grass, that is, the product of the sun, rain, and
earth, he is said to make to grow upon the mountains (Ps. cxlvii. 8);
and the skin and flesh, which is by natural generation, he is said
to clothe us with (Job x. 5), in regard of his co‑working with second
causes, according to their natures. As nothing can exist, so nothing
can operate without him; let his concurrence be removed, and the being
and action of the creature cease; remove the sun from the horizon, or
a candle from a room, and the light which flowed from either of them
ceaseth. Without God’s preserving and concurring power, the course
of nature would sink, and the creation be in vain. All created things
depend upon God as agents, as well as beings, and are subordinate to
him in a way of action, as well as in a way of existing.[921] If God
suspend his influence from their action, they would cease to act, as
the fire did from {b157} burning the three children, as well as if God
suspend his influence from their being, they would cease to be. God
supports the nature whereby actions are wrought, the mind where actions
are consulted, and the will where actions are determined, and the
motive‑power whereby actions are produced. The mind could not contrive,
nor the hand act, a wickedness, if God did not support the power of the
one in designing, and the strength of the other in executing a wicked
intention. Every faculty in its being, and every faculty in its motion,
hath a dependence upon the influence of God. To make the creature
independent upon God in anything which speaks perfection, as action
considered as action is, is to make the creature a sovereign being.
Indeed, we cannot imagine the concurrence of God to the good actions
of men since the fall, without granting a concurrence of God to evil
actions; because there is no action so purely good but hath a mixture
of evil in it, though it takes its denomination of good from the better
part (Eccles. vii. 20), “There is no man that doth good, and sins not.”
2. Though the natural virtue of doing a sinful action be from God, and
supported by him, yet this doth not blemish the holiness of God; while
God concurs with them in the act, he instils no evil into men.
(1.) No act, in regard of the substance of it, is evil. Most of the
actions of our faculties, as they are actions, might have been in the
state of innocency. Eating is an act Adam would have used if he had
stood firm, but not eating to excess. Worship was an act that should
have been performed to God in innocence, but not hypocritically. Every
action is good by a physical goodness, as it is an act of the mind or
hand, which have a natural goodness by creation; but every action is
not morally good: the physical goodness of the action depends on God,
the moral evil on the creature. There is no action, as a corporeal
action, is prohibited by the law of God; but as it springs from an evil
disposition, and is tainted by a venomous temper of mind.[922] There
is no action so bad, as attended with such objects and circumstances;
but if the objects and circumstances were changed, might be a brave
and commendable action: so that the moral goodness or badness of an
act is not to be esteemed from the substance of the act, which hath
always a physical goodness; but from the objects, circumstances, and
constitution of the mind in the doing of it. Worship is an act good
in itself; but the worship of an image is bad in regard of the object.
Were that act of worship directed to God that is paid to a statue, and
offered up to him with a sincere frame of mind, it would be morally
good. The act, in regard of its substance, is the same in both,
and considered as separated from the object to which the worship is
directed, hath the same real goodness in regard of the substance; but
when you consider this action in relation to the different objects, the
one hath a moral goodness, and the other a moral evil. So in speaking:
speaking being a motion of the tongue in the forming of words, is an
excellency belonging to a reasonable creature; an endowment bestowed,
continued, and supported by God. Now, if the same tongue {b158} forms
words whereby it curseth God this minute, and forms words whereby it
blesses and praises God the next minute, the faculty of speaking is the
same, the motion of the tongue is the same in pronouncing the name of
God either in a way of cursing or blessing (James iii. 9, 10); it is
the “same mouth that blesseth and curseth;” and the motion of it is
naturally good in regard of the substance of the act in both; it is the
use of an excellent power God hath given, and which God preserves, in
the use of it. But the estimation of the moral goodness or evil is not
from the act itself, but from the disposition of the mind. Once more:
killing, as an act is good; nor is it unlawful as an act; for if so,
God would never have commanded his people Israel to wage any war, and
justice could not be done upon malefactors by the magistrate. A man
were bound to sacrifice his life to the fury of an invader, rather than
secure it by dispatching that of an enemy; but killing an innocent,
or killing without authority, or out of revenge, is bad. It is not the
material part of the act, but the object, manner, and circumstance,
that makes it good or evil. It is no blemish to God’s holiness to
concur to the substance of an action, without having any hand in the
immorality of it; because, whatsoever is real in the substance of the
action might be done without evil. It is not evil as it is an act,
as it is a motion of the tongue or hand, for then every motion of the
tongue or hand would be evil.
(2.) Hence it follows, that an act, as an act, is one thing, and
the viciousness another. The action is the efficacy of the faculty,
extending itself to some outward object; but the sinfulness of an act
consists in a privation of that comeliness and righteousness which
ought to be in an action; in a want of conformity of the act with the
law of God, either written in nature, or revealed in the Word.[923] Now,
the sinfulness of an action is not the act itself, but is considered in
it as it is related to the law, and is a deviation from it; and so it
is something cleaving to the action, and therefore to be distinguished
from the act itself, which is the subject of the sinfulness. When
we say such an action is sinful, the action is the subject, and the
sinfulness of the action is that which adheres to it. The action is not
the sinfulness, nor the sinfulness the action; they are distinguished
as the member, and a disease in the member, the arm and the palsy in
it: the arm is not the palsy, nor is the palsy the arm; but the palsy
is a disease that cleaves to the arm: so sinfulness is a deformity that
cleaves to an action. The evil of an action is not the effect of an
action, nor attends it as it is an action, but as it is an action so
circumstantiated, and conversant about this or that object; for the
same action done by two several persons, may be good in one, and bad
in the other; as when two judges are in joint commission for the trial
of a malefactor, both upon the appearance of his guilt condemn him.
This action in both, considered as an action, is good; for it is an
adjudging a man to death, whose crime deserves such a punishment. But
this same act, which is but one joint act of both, may be morally good
in one judge, and morally evil in the other: morally good in him that
condemns him out of an unbiassed consideration {b159} of the demerit
of his fact, obedience to the law, and conscious of the duty of his
place; and morally evil in the other, who hath no respect to those
considerations, but joins in the act of condemnation, principally moved
by some private animosity against the prisoner, and desire of revenge
for some injury he hath really received, or imagines that he hath
received from him. The act in itself is the same materially in both;
but in one it is an act of justice, and in the other an act of murder,
as it respects the principles and motives of it in the two judges; take
away the respect of private revenge, and the action in the ill judge
had been as laudable as the action of the other. The substance of an
act, and the sinfulness of an act, are separable and distinguishable;
and God may concur with the substance of an act, without concurring
with the sinfulness of the act: as the good judge, that condemned
the prisoner out of conscience, concurred with the evil judge, who
condemned the prisoner out of private revenge; not in the principle and
motive of condemnation, but in the material part of condemnation. So
God assists in that action of a man wherein sin is placed, but not in
that which is the formal reason of sin, which is a privation of some
perfection the action ought morally to have.
(3.) It will appear further in this, that hence it follows that the
action, and the viciousness of the action, may have two distinct causes.
That may be a cause of the one that is not the cause of the other,
and hath no hand in the producing of it. God concurs to the act of the
mind as it counsels, and to the external action upon that counsel, as
he preserves the faculty, and gives strength to the mind to consult,
and the other parts to execute; yet he is not in the least tainted
with the viciousness of the action. Though the action be from God as
a concurrent cause, yet the ill quality of the action is solely from
the creature with whom God concurs. The sun and the earth concur to the
production of all the plants that are formed in the womb of the one,
and midwifed by the other. The sun distributes heat, and the earth
communicates sap; it is the same heat dispersed by the one, and the
same juice bestowed by the other: it hath not a sweet juice for one,
and a sour juice for another. This general influx of the sun and earth
is not the immediate cause that one plant is poisonous, and another
wholesome; but the sap of the earth is turned by the nature and quality
of each plant: if there were not such an influx of the sun and earth,
no plant could exert that poison which is in its nature; but yet the
sun and earth are not the cause of that poison which is in the nature
of the plant. If God did not concur to the motions of men, there could
be no sinful action, because there could be no action at all; yet this
concurrence is not the cause of that venom that is in the action, which
ariseth from the corrupt nature of the creature, no more than the sun
and earth are the cause of the poison of the plant, which is purely the
effect of its own nature upon that general influx of the sun and earth.
The influence of God pierceth through all subjects; but the action of
man done by that influence is vitiated according to the nature of its
own corruption. As the sun equally shines through all the quarrels in
the window; if the glass be bright and clear, there is a {b160} pure
splendor; if it be red or green, the splendor is from the sun; but the
discoloring of that light upon the wall, is from the quality of the
glass. But to be yet plainer: the soul is the image of God, and by the
acts of the soul, we may come to the knowledge of the acts of God; the
soul gives motion to the body and every member of it, and no member
could move without a concurrent virtue of the soul; if a member be
paralytic or gouty, whatsoever motion that gouty member hath, is
derived to it from the soul; but the goutiness of the member was not
the act of the soul, but the fruit of ill humors in the body; the
lameness of the member, and the motion of the member, have two distinct
causes; the motion is from one cause, and ill motion from another.[924]
As the member could not move irregularly without some ill humor or
cause of that distemper, so it could not move at all without the
activity of the soul: so, though God concur to the act of understanding,
willing, and execution, why can he not be as free from the irregularity
in all those, as the soul is free from the irregularity of the motion
of the body, while it is the cause of the motion itself? There are
two illustrations generally used in this case, that are not unfit; the
motion of the pen in writing is from the hand that holds it, but the
blurs by the pen are from some fault in the pen itself: and the music
of the instrument is from the hand that touches it, but the jarring
from the faultiness of the strings; both are the causes of the motion
of the pen and strings, but not the blurs or jarrings.
(4.) It is very congruous to the wisdom of God, to move his creatures
according to their particular natures; but this motion makes him not
the cause of sin. Had our innocent nature continued, God had moved us
according to that innocent nature; but when the state was changed for
a corrupt one, God must either forbear all concourse, and so annihilate
the world, or move us according to that nature he finds in us. If he
had overthrown the world upon the entrance of sin, and created another
upon the same terms, sin might have as soon defaced his second work,
as it did the first; and then it would follow, that God would have been
alway building and demolishing. It was not fit for God to cease from
acting as a wise governor of his creature, because man did cease from
his loyalty as a subject. Is it not more agreeable to God’s wisdom as
a governor, to concur with his creature according to his nature, than
to deny his concurrence upon every evil determination of the creature?
God concurred with Adam’s mutable nature in his first act of sin; he
concurred to the act, and left him to his mutability. If Adam had put
out his hand to eat of any other unforbidden fruit, God would have
supported his natural faculty then, and concurred with him in his
motion. When Adam would put out his hand to take the forbidden fruit,
God concurred to that natural action, but left him to the choice of
the object, and to the use of his mutable nature: and when man became
apostate, God concurs with him according to that condition wherein he
found him, and cannot move him otherwise, unless he should alter that
nature man had contracted. God moving the creature as he found him, is
no cause of the ill {b161} motion of the creature: as when a wheel is
broken the space of a foot, it cannot but move ill in that part till
it be mended. He that moves it, uses the same motion (as it is his act)
which he would have done had the wheel been sound; the motion is good
in the mover, but bad in the subject: it is not the fault of him that
moves it, but the fault of that wheel that is moved, whose breaches
came by some other cause. A man doth not use to lay aside his watch
for some irregularity, as long as it is capable of motion, but winds it
up: why should God cease from concurring with his creature in its vital
operations and other actions of his will, because there was a flaw
contracted in that nature, that came right and true out of his hand?
And as he that winds up his disordered watch, is in the same manner the
cause of its motion then, as he was when it was regular, yet, by that
act of his, he is not the cause of the false motion of it, but that is
from the deficiency of some part of the watch itself: so, though God
concurs to that action of the creature, whereby the wickedness of the
heart is drawn out, yet is not God therefore as unholy as the heart.
(5.) God hath one end in his concurrence, and man another in his
action: so that there is a righteous, and often a gracious end in
God, when there is a base and unworthy end in man. God concurs to
the substance of the act; man produceth the circumstance of the act,
whereby it is evil. God orders both the action wherein he concurs, and
the sinfulness over which he presides, as a governor, to his own ends.
In Joseph’s case, man was sinful, and God merciful; his brethren acted
“envy,” and God designed “mercy” (Gen. xlv. 4, 5). They would be rid
of him as an eye‑sore, and God concurred with their action to make
him their preserver (Gen. l. 20), “Ye thought evil against me, but God
meant it unto good.” God concurred to Judas his action of betraying our
Saviour; he supported his nature while he contracted with the priests,
and supported his members while he was their guide to apprehend him;
God’s end was the manifestation of his choicest love to man, and Judas’
end was the gratification of his own covetousness. The Assyrian did a
divine work against Jerusalem, but not with a Divine end (Isa. x. 5‒7).
He had a mind to enlarge his empire, enrich his coffers with the
spoil, and gain the title of a conqueror; he is desirous to invade his
neighbors, and God employs him to punish his rebels; but he means not
so, nor doth his heart think so; he intended not as God intended. The
axe doth not think what the carpenter intends to do with it. But God
used the rapine of ambitious nature as an instrument of his justice;
as the exposing malefactors to wild beasts was an ancient punishment,
whereby the magistrates intended the execution of justice, and to that
purpose used the natural fierceness of the beasts to an end different
from what those ravaging creatures aimed at. God concurred with Satan
in spoiling Job of his goods, and scarifying his body; God gave Satan
licence to do it, and Job acknowledges it to be God’s act (Job i.
12‒21); but their ends were different; God concurred with Satan for the
clearing the integrity of his servant, when Satan aimed at nothing but
the provoking him to curse his Creator. The physician applies leeches
{b162} to suck the superfluous blood, but the leeches suck to glut
themselves, without any regard to the intention of the physician, and
the welfare of the patient. In the same act where men intend to hurt,
God intends to correct; so that his concurrence is in a holy manner,
while men commit unrighteous actions. A judge commands the executioner
to execute the sentence of death, which he hath justly pronounced
against a malefactor, and admonisheth him to do it out of love to
justice; the executioner hath the authority of the judge for his
commission, and the protection of the judge for his security; the judge
stands by to countenance and secure him in the doing of it; but if the
executioner hath not the same intention as the judge, _viz._ a love to
justice in the performance of his office, but a private hatred to the
offender, the judge, though he commanded the fact of the executioner,
yet did not command this error of his in it; and though he protects him
in the fact, yet he owns not this corrupt disposition in him in the
doing what was enjoined him, as any act of his own.
To conclude this. Since the creature cannot act without God,
cannot lift up a hand, or move his tongue, without God’s preserving
and upholding the faculty, and preserving the power of action, and
preserving every member of the body in its actual motion, and in every
circumstance of its motion, we must necessarily suppose God to have
such a way of concurrence as doth not intrench upon his holiness. We
must not equal the creature to God, by denying his dependence on him;
nor must we imagine such a concurrence to the sinfulness of an act,
as stains the Divine purity, which is, I think, sufficiently salved by
distinguishing the matter of the act from the evil adhering to it; for
since all evil is founded in some good, the evil is distinguishable
from the good, and the deformity of the action from the action itself;
which, as it is a created act, hath a dependence on the will and
influence of God; and as it is a sinful act, is the product of the
will of the creature.
_Prop. VI._ The holiness of God is not blemished by proposing objects
to a man, which he makes use of to sin. There is no object proposed
to man, but is directed by the providence of God, which influenceth
all the motions in the world; and there is no object proposed to man,
but his active nature may, according to the goodness or badness of
his disposition, make a good or an ill use of. That two men, one of
a charitable, the other of a hard‑hearted disposition, meet with an
indigent and necessitous object, is from the providence of God; yet
this indigent person is relieved by the one, and neglected by the other.
There could be no action in the world, but about some object; there
could be no object offered to us but by Divine Providence; the active
nature of man would be in vain, if there were not objects about which
it might be exercised. Nothing could present itself to man as an object,
either to excite his grace, or awaken his corruption, but by the
conduct of the Governor of the world. That David should walk upon the
battlements of his palace, and Bathsheba be in the bath at the same
time, was from the Divine Providence which orders all the affairs of
the world (2 Sam. xi. 7); and so some understand (Jer. vi. 21): “Thus
saith the Lord, I will lay {b163} stumbling‑blocks before this people,
and the fathers and sons together shall fall upon them.” Since they
have offered sacrifices without those due qualifications in their
hearts, which were necessary to render them acceptable to me, I will
lay in their way such objects, which their corruption will use ill to
their farther sin and ruin; so (Ps. cv. 25), “He turned their heart
to hate his people;” that is, by the multiplying his people, he gave
occasion to the Egyptians of hating them, instead of caressing them,
as they had formerly done. But God’s holiness is not blemished by this;
for,
1. This proposing or presenting of objects invades not the liberty of
any man. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, set in the midst
of the garden of Eden, had no violent influence on man to force him
to eat of it; his liberty to eat of it, or not, was reserved entire to
himself; no such charge can be brought against any object whatsoever.
If a man meet accidentally at a table with meat that is grateful to
his palate, but hurtful to the present temper of his body, doth the
presenting this sort of food to him strip him of his liberty to decline
it, as well as to feed of it? Can the food have any internal influence
upon his will, and lay the freedom of it asleep whether he will or no?
Is there any charm in that, more than in other sorts of diet? No; but
it is the habit of love which he hath to that particular dish, the
curiosity of his fancy, and the strength of his own appetite, whereby
he is brought into a kind of slavery to that particular meat, and not
anything in the food itself. When the word is proposed to two persons,
it is embraced by the one, rejected by the other; is it from the word
itself, which is the object, that these two persons perform different
acts? The object is the same to both, but the manner of acting about
the object is not the same; is there any invasion of their liberty by
it? Is the one forced by the word to receive it, and the other forced
by the word to reject it? Two such contrary effects cannot proceed
from one and the same cause; outward things have only an objective
influence, not an inward; if the mere proposal of things did suspend or
strike down the liberty of man, no angels in heaven, no man upon earth,
no, not our Saviour himself, could do anything freely, but by force;
objects that are ill used are of God’s creation, and though they
have allurements in them, yet they have no compulsive power over the
will.[925] The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was
pleasing to the sight; it had a quality to allure; there had not else
needed a prohibition to bar the eating of it; but it could not have so
much power to allure, as the Divine threatening to deter.
2. The objects are good in themselves, but the ill use of them is
from man’s corruption. Bathsheba was, by God’s providence, presented to
David’s sight, but it was David’s disposition moved him to so evil an
act; what if God knew that he would use that object ill? yet he knew
he had given him a power to refrain from any ill use of it; the objects
are innocent, but our corruption poisons them. The same object hath
been used by one to holy purposes and holy improvements, that hath been
used by another to sinful ends; when a charitable object is presented
to a good man, and a cruel man, one {b164} relieves him, the other
reviles him; the object was rather an occasion to draw out the charity
of one, as well as the other; but the refusing to reach out a helping
hand, was not from the person in calamity, but the disposition of the
refuser to whom he was presented; it is not from the nature of the
object that men do good or evil, but from the disposition of the person;
what is good in itself, is made bad by our corruption. As the same
meat which nourishes and strengthens a sound constitution, cherisheth
the disease of another that eats at the same table, not from any
unwholesome quality in the food, but the vicious quality of the humors
lodging in the stomach, which turn the diet into fuel for themselves,
which in its own nature was apt to engender a wholesome juice. Some
are perfected by the same things whereby others are ruined. Riches
are used by some, not only for their own, but the advantage of others
in the world; by others only for themselves, and scarcely so much
as their necessities require. Is this the fault of the wealth, or
the dispositions of the persons, who are covetous instead of being
generous? It is a calumny, therefore, upon God to charge him with the
sin of man upon this account. The rain that drops from the clouds upon
the plants is sweet in itself, but when it moistens the root of any
venomous plant, it is turned into the juice of the plant, and becomes
venomous with it. The miracles that our Saviour wrought, were applauded
by some, and envied by the Pharisees; the sin arose not from the nature
of the miracles, but the malice of their spirits. The miracles were
fitter in their own nature to have induced them to an adoration of our
Saviour, than to excite so vile a passion against one that had so many
marks from heaven to dignify him, and proclaim him worthy of their
respect. The person of Christ was an object proposed to the Jews; some
worship him, others condemn and crucify him, and according to their
several vices and base ends they use this object. Judas to content
his covetousness, the Pharisees to glut their revenge, Pilate for his
ambition, to preserve himself in his government, and avoid the articles
the people might charge him with of countenancing an enemy to Cæsar.
God at that time put into their minds a rational and true proposition
which they apply to ill purposes.[926] Caiaphas said, that “it was
expedient for one man to die for the people,” which “he spake not of
himself” (John xi. 50, 51). God put it into his mind; but he might have
applied it better than he did, and considered, though the maxim was
commendable, whether it might justly be applied to Christ, or whether
there was such a necessity that he must die, or the nation be destroyed
by the Romans. The maxim was sound and holy, decreed by God; but what
an ill use did the high‑priest make of it to put Christ to death as a
seditious person, to save the nation from the Roman fury!
3. Since the natural corruption of men will use such objects ill,
may not God, without tainting himself, present such objects to them in
subserviency to his gracious decrees? Whatsoever God should present to
men in that state, they would make an ill use of; hath not God, then,
the sovereign prerogative to present what he pleases, and suppress
others? To offer that to them which may serve his {b165} holy purpose,
and hide other things from them which are not so conducing to his
gracious ends, which would be as much the occasions of exciting their
sin, as the others which he doth bring forth to their view? The Jews,
at the time of Christ, were of a turbulent and seditious humor; they
expected a Messiah, a temporal king, and would readily have embraced
any occasion to have been up in arms to have delivered themselves from
the Roman yoke; to this purpose the people attempted once to make him
king: and probably the expectation they had that he had such a design
to head them, might be one reason of their “hosannas;” because without
some such conceit it was not probable they should so soon change
their note, and vote him to the cross in so short a time, after they
had applauded him as if he had been upon a throne; but their being
defeated of strong expectations, usually ended in a more ardent fury.
This turbulent and seditious humor God directs in another channel,
suppresseth all occurrences that might excite them to a rebellion
against the Romans, which, if he had given way to, the crucifying
Christ, which was God’s design to bring about at that time, had not
probably been effected, and the salvation of mankind been hindered or
stood at a stay for a time. God, therefore, orders such objects and
occasions, that might direct this seditious humor to another channel,
which would else have run out in other actions, which had not been
conducing to the great design he had then in the world. Is it not the
right of God, and without any blemish to his holiness, to use those
corruptions which he finds sown in the nature of his creature by the
hand of Satan, and to propose such objects as may excite the exercise
of them for his own service? Sure God hath as much right to serve
himself of the creature of his own framing, and what natures soever
they are possessed with, and to present objects to that purpose, as a
falconer hath to offer this or that bird to his hawk to exercise his
courage, and excite his ravenousness, without being termed the author
of that ravenousness in the creature. God planted not those corruptions
in the Jews, but finds them in those persons over whom he hath an
absolute sovereignty in the right of a Creator, and that of a Judge
for their sins: and by the right of that sovereignty may offer such
objects and occasions, which, though innocent in themselves, he knows
they will make use of to ill purposes, but which by the same decree
that he resolves to present such occasions to them, he also resolves
to make use of them for his own glory. It is not conceivable by us
what way that death of Christ, which was necessary for the satisfaction
of Divine justice, could be brought about without ordering the evil
of some men’s hearts by special occasions to effect his purpose; we
cannot suppose that Christ can be guilty of any crime that deserved
death by the Jewish law; had he been so a criminal, he could not
have been a Redeemer: a perfect innocence was necessary to the design
of his coming.[927] Had God himself put him to that death, without
using instruments of wickedness in it, by some remarkable hand from
heaven, the innocence of his nature had been forever eclipsed, and
the voluntariness of his sacrifice had been obscured: the strangeness
of such a judgment would have made his {b166} innocence incredible;
he could not reasonably have been proposed as an object of faith.
What, to believe in one that was struck dead by a hand from heaven? The
propagation of the doctrine of redemption had wanted a foundation; and
though God might have raised him again, the certainty of his death had
been as questionable as his innocence in dying, had he not been raised.
But God orders everything so as to answer his own most wise and holy
ends, and maintain his truth, and the fulfilling the predictions of
the minutest concerns about them, and all this by presenting occasions
innocent in themselves, which the corruptions of the Jews took hold of,
and whereby God, unknown to them, brought about his own decrees: and
may not this be conceived without any taint upon God’s holiness? for
when there are seeds of all sin in man’s nature, why may not God hinder
the sprouting up of this or that kind of seed, and leave liberty to the
growth of the other, and shut up other ways of sinning, and restrain
men from them, and let them loose to that temptation which he intends
to serve himself of, hiding from them those objects which were not
so serviceable to his purpose, wherein they would have sinned, and
offer others, which he knew their corruption would use ill, and were
serviceable to his ends; since the depravation of their natures would
necessarily hurry them to evil without restraining grace, as a scale
will necessarily rise up when the weight in it, which kept it down, is
taken away?
_Prop. VII._ The holiness of God is not blemished by withdrawing his
grace from a sinful creature, whereby he falls into more sin. That God
withdraws his grace from men, and gives them up sometimes to the fury
of their lusts, is as clear in Scripture, as anything (Deut. xxix. 4):
“Yet the Lord hath not given you a heart to perceive, and eyes to see,
and ears to hear,” &c. Judas was delivered to Satan after the sop,
and put into his power, for despising former admonitions. He often
leaves the reins to the devil, that he may use what efficacy he can
in those that have offended the Majesty of God; he withholds further
influences of grace, or withdraws what before he had granted them. Thus
he withheld that grace from the sons of Eli, that might have made their
father’s pious admonitions effectual to them (1 Sam. ii. 25): “They
hearkened not to the voice of their father, because the Lord would
slay them.” He gave grace to Eli to reprove them, and withheld that
grace from them, which might have enabled them against their natural
corruption and obstinacy to receive that reproof. But the holiness of
God is not blemished by this.
1. Because the act of God in this is only negative.[928] Thus God is
said to “harden” men: not by positive hardening, or working anything
in the creature, but by not working, not softening, leaving a man
to the hardness of his own heart, whereby it is unavoidable by the
depravation of man’s nature, and the fury of his passions, but that he
should be further hardened, and “increase unto more ungodliness,” as
the expression is (2 Tim. ii. 19). As a man is said to give another his
life, when he doth not take it away when it lay at his mercy; so God
is said to “harden” a man, when he doth not {b167} mollify him when it
was in his power, and inwardly quicken him with that grace whereby he
might infallibly avoid any further provoking of him. God is said to
harden men when he removes not from them the incentives to sin, curbs
not those principles which are ready to comply with those incentives,
withdraws the common assistances of his grace, concurs not with
counsels and admonitions to make them effectual; flasheth not in the
convincing light which he darted upon them before. If hardness follows
upon God’s withholding his softening grace, it is not by any positive
act of God, but from the natural hardness of man. If you put fire
near to wax or rosin, both will melt; but when that fire is removed,
they return to their natural quality of hardness and brittleness; the
positive act of the fire is to melt and soften, and the softness of
the rosin is to be ascribed to that; but the hardness is from the rosin
itself, wherein the fire hath no influence, but only a negative act
by a removal of it: so, when God hardens a man, he only leaves him to
that stony heart which he derived from Adam, and brought with him into
the world. All men’s understandings being blinded, and their wills
perverted in Adam, God’s withdrawing his grace is but a leaving them
to their natural pravity, which is the cause of their further sinning,
and not God’s removal of that special light he before afforded them, or
restraint he held over them. As when God withdraws his preserving power
from the creature, he is not the efficient, but deficient cause of the
creature’s destruction; so, in this case, God only ceaseth to bind and
dam up that sin which else would break out.
2. The whole positive cause of his hardness is from man’s corruption.
God infuseth not any sin into his creatures, but forbears to infuse
his grace, and restrain their lusts, which, upon the removal of his
grace, work impetuously: God only gives them up to that which he knows
will work strongly in their hearts. And, therefore, the apostle wipes
off from God any positive act in that uncleanness the heathens were
given up to (Rom. i. 24, “Wherefore God gave them up to uncleanness,
through the lusts of their own hearts.” And, ver. 26, God gave them up
to “vile affections;” but they were their own affections, none of God’s
inspiring,) by adding, “through the lusts of their own hearts.” God’s
giving them up was the logical cause, or a cause by way of argument;
their own lusts were the true and natural cause; their own they were,
before they were given up to them, and belonging to none, as the author,
but themselves, after they were given up to them. The lust in the heart,
and the temptation without, easily close and mix interests with one
another: as the fire in a coal pit will with the fuel, if the streams
derived into it for the quenching it be dammed up: the natural passions
will run to a temptation, as the waters of a river tumble towards the
sea. When a man that hath bridled in a high‑mettled horse from running
out, gives him the reins; or a huntsman takes off the string that
held the dog, and lets him run after the hare,――are they the immediate
cause of the motion of the one, or the other?――no, but the mettle
and strength of the horse, and the natural inclination of the hound,
both which are left to their own motions to pursue their own natural
instincts. Man doth as naturally tend to sin as a stone to {b168}
the centre, or as a weighty thing inclines to a motion to the earth:
it is from the propension of man’s nature that he “drinks up iniquity
like water:” and God doth no more when he leaves a man to sin, by
taking away the hedge which stopped him, but leave him to his natural
inclination. As a man that breaks up a dam he hath placed, leaves
the stream to run in their natural channel; or one that takes away a
prop from a stone to let it fall, leaves it only to that nature which
inclines it to a descent; both have their motion from their own nature,
and man is sin from his own corruption. The withdrawing the sunbeams
is not the cause of darkness, but the shadiness of the earth; nor is
the departure of the sun the cause of winter, but the coldness of the
air and earth, which was tempered and beaten back into the bowels of
the earth by the vigor of the sun, upon whose departure they return to
their natural state: the sun only leaves the earth and air as it found
them at the beginning of the spring or the beginning of the day.[929]
If God do not give a man grace to melt him, yet he cannot be said to
communicate to him that nature which hardens him, which man hath from
himself. As God was not the cause of the first sin of Adam, which was
the root of all other, so he is not the cause of the following sins,
which, as branches, spring from that root; man’s free‑will was the
cause of the first sin, and the corruption of his nature by it the
cause of all succeeding sins. God doth not immediately harden any man,
but doth propose those things, from whence the natural vice of man
takes an occasion to strengthen and nourish itself. Hence, God is said
to “harden Pharaoh’s heart” (Exod. vii. 13), by concurring with the
magicians in turning their rods into serpents, which stiffened his
heart against Moses, conceiving him by reason of that, to have no more
power than other men, and was an occasion of his farther hardening:
and Pharaoh is said to “harden himself” (Exod. viii. 32); that is, in
regard of his own natural passion.
3. God is holy and righteous, because he doth not withdraw from man,
till man deserts him. To say, that God withdrew that grace from Adam,
which he had afforded him in creation, or anything that was due to him,
till he had abused the gifts of God, and turned them to an end contrary
to that of creation, would be a reflection upon the Divine holiness.
God was first deserted by man before man was deserted by God; and man
doth first contemn and abuse the common grace of God, and those relics
of natural light, that “enlighten every man that comes into the world”
(John i. 9); before God leaves him to the hurry of his own passions.
Ephraim was first joined to idols, before God pronounced the fatal
sentence, “Let him alone” (Hos. iv. 17): and the heathens first changed
the glory of the incorruptible God, before God withdrew his common
grace from the corrupted creature (Rom. i. 23, 24); and they first
“served the creature more than the Creator,” before the Creator gave
them up to the slavish chains of their vile affections (ver. 25, 26).
Israel first cast off God before God cast off them; but then “he
gave them up to their own hearts’ lusts, and they walked in their own
counsels” {b169} (Ps. lxxxi. 11, 12). Since sin entered into the world
by the fall of Adam, and the blood of all his posterity was tainted,
man cannot do anything that is formally good; not for want of faculties,
but for the want of a righteous habit in those faculties, especially in
the will; yet God discovers himself to man in the works of his hands;
he hath left in him footsteps of natural reason; he doth attend him
with common motions of his Spirit; corrects him for his faults with
gentle chastisements. He is near unto all in some kind of instructions:
he puts many times providential bars in their way of sinning; but when
they will rush into it as the horse into the battle, when they will
rebel against the light, God doth often leave them to their own course,
sentence him that is “filthy to be filthy still” (Rev. xxii. 11), which
is a righteous act of God, as he is rector and governor of the world.
Man’s not receiving, or not improving what God gives, is the cause
of God’s not giving further, or taking away his own, which before
he had bestowed; this is so far from being repugnant to the holiness
and righteousness of God, that it is rather a commendable act of his
holiness and righteousness, as the rector of the world, not to let
those gifts continue in the hand of a man who abuses them contrary to
his glory. Who will blame a father, that, after all the good counsels
he hath given to his son to reclaim him, all the corrections he
hath inflicted on him for his irregular practice, leaves him to his
own courses, and withdraws those assistances which he scoffed at,
and turned the deaf ear unto? Or, who will blame the physician for
deserting the patient, who rejects his counsel, will not follow his
prescriptions, but dasheth his physic against the wall? No man will
blame him, no man will say that he is the cause of the patient’s death,
but the true cause is the fury of the distemper, and the obstinacy
of the diseased person, to which the physician left him. And who can
justly blame God in this case, who yet never denied supplies of grace
to any that sincerely sought it at his hands; and what man is there
that lies under a hardness, but first was guilty of very provoking
sins? What unholiness is it to deprive men of those assistances,
because of their sin, and afterwards to direct those counsels and
practices of theirs, which he hath justly given them up unto, to
serve the ends of his own glory in his own methods?
4. Which will appear further by considering, that God is not obliged to
continue his grace to them. It was at his liberty whether he could give
any renewing grace to Adam after his fall, or to any of his posterity:
he was at his own liberty to withhold it or communicate it: but, if he
were under any obligation then, surely he must be under less now, since
the multiplication of sin by his creatures: but, if the obligation
were none just after the fall, there is no pretence now to fasten any
such obligation on God. That God had no obligation at first, hath been
spoken to before; he is less obliged to continue his grace after a
repeated refusal, and a peremptory abuse, than he was bound to proffer
it after the first apostasy. God cannot be charged with unholiness in
withdrawing his grace after we have received it, unless we can make it
appear that his grace was a thing due to us, as we are his creatures,
and as he is governor of the world. What prince looks upon himself as
obliged to reside in any particular {b170} place of his kingdom? But
suppose he be bound to inhabit in one particular city, yet after the
city rebels against him, is he bound to continue his court there, spend
his revenue among rebels, endanger his own honor and security, enlarge
their charter, or maintain their ancient privileges? Is it not most
just and righteous for him to withdraw himself, and leave them to their
own tumultuousness and sedition, whereby they should eat the fruit of
their own doings? If there be an obligation on God as a governor, it
would rather lie on the side of justice to leave man to the power of
the devil whom he courted, and the prevalency of those lusts he hath
so often caressed; and wrap up in a cloud all his common illuminations,
and leave him destitute of all common workings of his Spirit.
_Prop. VIII._ God’s holiness is not blemished by his commanding those
things sometimes which seem to be against nature, or thwart some other
of his precepts; as when God commanded Abraham with his own hand to
sacrifice his son (Gen. xxii. 2), there was nothing of unrighteousness
in it. God hath a sovereign dominion over the lives and beings of his
creatures, whereby as he creates one day, he might annihilate the next;
and by the same right that he might demand the life of Isaac, as being
his creature, he might demand the obedience of Abraham, in a ready
return of that to him, which he had so long enjoyed by his grant. It is
true, killing is unjust when it is done without cause, and by a private
authority; but the authority of God surmounts all private and public
authority whatsoever. Our lives are due to him when he calls for them;
and they are more than once forfeit to him by reason of transgression.
But, howsoever the case is, God commanded him to do it for the trial
of his grace, but suffered him not to do it in favor to his ready
obedience; but had Isaac been actually slain and offered, how had it
been unrighteous in God, who enacts laws for the regulation of his
creature, but never intended them to the prejudice of the rights of his
sovereignty? Another case is that of the Israelites borrowing jewels
of the Egyptians, by the order of God (Exod. xi. 2, 3; xii. 36). Is not
God Lord of men’s goods, as well as their lives? What have any, they
have not received? and that not as proprietors independent on God, but
his stewards; and may not he demand a portion of his steward to bestow
upon his favorite? He that had power to dispose of the Egyptians’ goods,
had power to order the Israelites to ask them. Besides, God acted the
part of a just judge in ordering them their wages for their service in
this method, and making their task‑masters give them some recompense
for their unjust oppression so many years; it was a command from God,
therefore, rather for the preservation of justice (the basis of all
those laws which link human society), than any infringement of it.
It was a material recompense in part, though not a formal one in the
intention of the Egyptians; it was but in part a recompense; it must
needs come short of the damage the poor captives had sustained by the
tyranny of their masters, who had enslaved them contrary to the rules
of hospitality; and could not make amends for the lives of the poor
infants of Israel, whom they had drowned in the river. He that might
for the unjust oppression of his people have taken away all their lives,
destroyed {b171} the whole nation, and put the Israelites into the
possession of their lands, could, without any unrighteousness, dispose
of part of their goods; and it was rather an act of clemency to leave
them some part, who had doubly forfeited all. Again, the Egyptians were
as ready to lend by God’s influence, as the Israelites were to ask by
God’s order: and though it was a loan, God, as Sovereign of the world,
and Lord of the earth, and the fulness thereof, alienated the property
by assuming them to the use of the tabernacle, to which service, most,
if not all of them, were afterwards dedicated. God, who is lawgiver,
hath power to dispense with his own law, and make use of his own
goods, and dispose of them as he pleases; it is no unholiness in God to
dispose of that which he hath a right unto. Indeed, God cannot command
that which is in its own nature intrinsically evil; as to command a
rational creature not to love him, not to worship him, to call God to
witness to a lie; these are intrinsically evil; but for the disposing
of the lives and goods of his creatures, which they have from him in
right, and not in absolute propriety, is not evil in him, because there
is no repugnancy in his own nature to such acts, nor is it anything
inconsistent with the natural duty of a creature, and in such cases
he may use what instruments he please. The point was, that holiness is
a glorious perfection of the nature of God. We have showed the nature
of this holiness in God; what it is; and we have demonstrated it, and
proved that God is holy, and must needs be so; and also the purity of
his nature in all his acts about sin: let us now improve it by way of
use.
IV. Is holiness a transcendent perfection belonging to the nature of
God? The first use shall be of instruction and information.
_Inform. 1._ How great and how frequent is the contempt of this eminent
perfection in the Deity! Since the fall, this attribute, which renders
God most amiable in himself, renders him most hateful to his apostate
creature. It is impossible that he that loves iniquity, can affect that
which is irreconcileably contrary to the iniquity he loves. Nothing so
contrary to the sinfulness of man as the holiness of God, and nothing
is thought of by the sinner with so much detestation. How do men
account that which is the most glorious perfection of the Divinity,
unworthy to be regarded as an accomplishment of their own souls! and
when they are pressed to an imitation of it, and a detestation of what
is contrary to it, have the same sentiment in their heart which the
devil had in his language to Christ, Why art thou come to torment
us before our time? What an enmity the world naturally hath to this
perfection, I think is visible in the practice of the heathen, who
among all their heroes which they deified, elevated none to that
dignity among them for this or that moral virtue that came nearest to
it, but for their valor or some usefulness in the concerns of this life.
Æsculapius was deified for his skill in the cure of diseases; Bacchus,
for the use of the grape; Vulcan, for his operations by fire; Hercules,
for his destroying of tyrants and monsters; but none for their mere
virtue; as if anything of purity were unworthy their consideration in
the frame of a Deity, when it is the glory of all other perfections;
so essential it is, that when men reject the imitation of this, God
regards it as a total rejection of himself, {b172} though they own all
the other attributes of his nature (Ps. lxxxi. 11): “Israel would none
of me:” why? because “they walked not in his ways” (ver. 13); those
ways wherein the purity of the Divine nature was most conspicuous; they
would own him in his power, when they stood in need of a deliverance;
they would own him in his mercy, when they were plunged in distress;
but they would not imitate him in his holiness. This being the lustre
of the Divine nature, the contempt of it is an obscuring all his other
perfections, and a dashing a blot upon his whole escutcheon. To own
all the rest, and deny him this, is to frame him as an unbeautiful
monster,――a deformed power. Indeed, all sin is against this attribute;
all sin aims in general at the being of God, but in particular at the
holiness of his Being. All sin is a violence to this perfection; there
is not an iniquity in the world, but directs its venomous sting against
the Divine purity; some sins are directed against his omniscience,
as secret wickedness; some against his providence, as distrust; some
against his mercy, as unbelief; some against his wisdom, as neglecting
the means instituted by him, censuring his ways and actings; some
against his power, as trusting in means more than in God, and the
immoderate fear of men more than of God; some against his truth, as
distrusting his promise, or not fearing his threatening; but all agree
together in their enmity against this, which is the peculiar glory of
the Deity: every one of them is a receding from the Divine image; and
the blackness of every one is the deeper, by how much the distance of
it from the holiness of God is the greater. This contrariety to the
holiness of God, is the cause of all the absolute atheism (if there be
any such) in the world; what was the reason “the fool hath said in his
heart, There is no God,” but because the fool is “corrupt, and hath
done abominable work” (Ps. xiv. 1)? If they believe the being of a
God, their own reason will enforce them to imagine him holy; therefore,
rather than fancy a holy God, they would fain fancy none at all.――In
particular,
1. The holiness of God is injured, in unworthy representations of
God, and imaginations of him in our own minds. The heathen fell under
this guilt, and ascribed to their idols those vices which their own
sensuality inclined them to, unworthy of a man, much more unworthy of a
God, that they might find a protection of their crimes in the practice
of their idols. But is this only the notion of the heathens? may there
not be many among us whose love to their lusts, and desires of sinning
without control, move them to slander God in their thoughts, rather
than reform their lives, and are ready to frame, by the power of their
imaginative faculty, a God, not only winking, but smiling, at their
impurities? I am sure God charges the impieties of men upon this score,
in that Psalm (l. 21) which seems to be a representation of the day of
judgment, as some gather from ver. 6, when God sums up all together:
“These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that
I was altogether such an one as thyself;” not a detester, but approver
of thy crimes: and the Psalmist seems to express God’s loathing of
sin in such a manner, as intimates it to be contrary to the ideas
and resemblances men make of him in their minds (Ps. v. 4); “For thou
art not a God that hast {b173} pleasure in wickedness;” as we say, in
vindication of a man, he is not such a man as you imagine him to be;
thou art not such a God as the world commonly imagines thee to be, a
God taking pleasure in iniquity. It is too common for men to fancy God
not as he is, but as they would have him; strip him of his excellency
for their own security. As God made man after his image, man would
dress God after his own modes, as may best suit the content of his
lusts, and encourage him in a course of sinning; for, when they can
frame such a notion of God, as if he were a countenancer of sin, they
will derive from thence a reputation to their crimes, commit wickedness
with an unbounded licentiousness, and crown their vices with the name
of virtues, because they are so like to the sentiments of that God
they fancy: from hence (as the Psalmist, in the Psalm before mentioned)
ariseth that mass of vice in the world; such conceptions are the
mother and nurse of all impiety. I question not but the first spring is
some wrong notion of God, in regard of his holiness: we are as apt to
imagine God as we would have him, as the black Ethiopians were to draw
the image of their gods after their own dark hue, and paint him with
their own color: as a philosopher in Theodoret speaks; If oxen and
lions had hands, and could paint as men do, they would frame the images
of their gods according to their own likeness and complexion. Such
notions of God render him a swinish being, and worse than the vilest
idols adored by the Egyptians, when men fancy a God indulgent to their
appetites and most sordid lusts.
2. In defacing the image of God in our own souls. God, in the
first draught of man, conformed him to his own image, or made him
an image of himself; because we find that in regeneration this image
is renewed (Eph. iv. 24); “The new man, which, after God, is created
in righteousness and true holiness.” He did not take angels for his
pattern, in the first polishing the soul, but himself. In defacing this
image we cast dirt upon the holiness of God, which was his pattern in
the framing of us, and rather choose to be conformed to Satan, who is
God’s grand enemy, to have God’s image wiped out of us, and the devil’s
pictured in us: therefore, natural men, in an unregenerate state,
may justly be called devils, since our Saviour called the worst man,
Judas, so (John vi. 1), and Peter, one of the best (Matt. xvi. 23):
and if this title be given, by an infallible Judge, to one of the
worst, and one of the best, it may, without wrong to any, be ascribed
to all men that wallow in their sin, which is directly contrary to
that illustrious image God did imprint upon them. How often is it seen
that men control the light of their own nature, and stain the clearest
beams of that candle of the Lord in their own spirits, that fly in the
face of their own consciences, and say to them, as Ahab to Micaiah,
Thou didst “never prophesy good to me;” thou didst never encourage
me in those things that are pleasing to the flesh; and use it at
the same rate as the wicked king did the prophet, “imprison it in
unrighteousness” (Rom. i. 18), because it starts up in them sometimes
sentiments of the holiness of God, which it represents in the soul of
man! How jolly are many men when the exhalations of their sensitive
part rise up to cloud the exactest principle of moral nature in
their minds, and render the monstrous {b174} principles of the law of
corruption more lively! Whence ariseth the wickedness which hath been
committed with an open face in the world, and the applause that hath
been often given to the worst of villanies? Have we not known, among
ourselves, men to glory in their shame, and esteem that a most gentle
accomplishment of man, which is the greatest blot upon his nature,
and which, if it were upon God, would render him no God, but an impure
devil; so that to be a gentleman among us hath been the same as to be
an incarnate devil; and to be a man, was to be no better, but worse,
than a brute? Vile wretches! is not this a contempt of Divine holiness,
to kill that Divine seed which lies languishing in the midst of
corrupted nature; to cut up any sprouts of it as weeds unworthy to grow
in their gardens, and cultivate what is the seed of hell; prefer the
rotten fruits of Sodom, marked with a Divine curse, before those relics
of the fruits of Eden, of God’s own planting?
3. The holiness of God is injured in charging our sin upon God.
Nothing is more natural to men, than to seek excuses for their sin,
and transfer it from themselves to the next at hand, and rather than
fail, shift it upon God himself; and if they can bring God into a
society with them in sin, they will hug themselves in a security that
God cannot punish that guilt wherein he is a partner. Adam’s children
are not of a different disposition from Adam himself, who, after he was
arraigned and brought to his trial, boggles not at flinging his dirt
in the face of God, his Creator, and accuseth him as if he had given
him the woman, not to be his help, but his ruin (Gen. iii. 12); “And
the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of
the tree, and I did eat.” He never supplicates for pardon, nor seeks
a remedy, but reflects his crime upon God: Had I been alone, as I was
first created, I had not eaten; but the woman, whom I received as a
special gift from thee, hath proved my tempter and my bane. When man
could not be like God in knowledge, he endeavored to make God like him
in his crime; and when his ambition failed of equalizing himself with
God, he did, with an insolence too common to corrupted nature, attempt,
by the imputation of his sin, to equal the Divinity with himself. Some
think Cain had the same sentiment in his answer to God’s demand where
his brother was (Gen. ii. 9); “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Art not thou
the Keeper and Governor of the world? why didst not thou take care of
him, and hinder my killing him, and drawing this guilt upon myself, and
terror upon my conscience? David was not behind, when, after the murder
of Uriah, he sweeps the dirt from his own door to God’s (2 Sam. xi. 25);
“The sword devoureth one as well as another;” fathering that solely
upon Divine Providence which was his own wicked contrivance: though
afterwards he is more ingenuous in clearing God, and charging himself
(Ps. li. 4): “Against thee, thee only have I sinned;” and he clears God
in his judgment too. It is too common for the “foolishness of man to
pervert his way;” and then “his heart frets against the Lord” (Prov.
xix. 3). He studies mischief, runs in a way of sin, and when he hath
conjured up troubles to himself, by his own folly, he excuseth himself,
and, with indignation, charges God as the author both of his sin and
misery, {b175} and sets his mouth against the heavens. It is a more
horrible thing to accuse God as a principal or accessary in our guilt,
than to conceive him to be a favorer of our iniquity; yet both are bad
enough.
4. The holiness of God is injured when men will study arguments from
the holy word of God to color and shelter their crimes. When men will
seek for a shelter for their lies, in that of the midwives to preserve
the children, or in that of Rahab to save the spies, as if, because
God rewarded their fidelity, he countenanced their sin. How often is
Scripture wrested to be a plea for unbecoming practices, that God,
in his word, may be imagined a patron for their iniquity? It is not
unknown that some have maintained their quaffing and carousing (from
Eccles. viii. 11), “That a man hath no better thing under the sun than
to eat, drink, and be merry:” and their gluttony (from Matt. v. 11),
“That which goes into the belly defiles not a man.” The Jesuits’ morals
are a transcript of this. How often hath the Passion of our Saviour,
the highest expression of God’s holiness, been employed to stain it,
and encourage the most debauched practices! Grace hath been turned
into wantonness, and the abundance of grace been used as a blast to
increase the flames of sin, as if God had no other aim in that work
of redemption, but to discover himself more indulgent to our sensual
appetites, and by his severity with his Son, become more gracious
to our lusts; this is to feed the roots of hell with the dews of
heaven, to make grace a pander for the abuse of it, and to employ
the expressions of his holiness in his word to be a sword against the
essential holiness of his nature: as if a man should draw an apology
for his treason out of that law that was made to forbid, not to protect,
his rebellion. Not the meanest instrument in the temple was to be
alienated from the use it was by Divine order appointed to, nor was it
to be employed in any common use; and shall the word of God, which is
the image of his holiness, be transferred by base interpretations to
be an advocate for iniquity? Such an ill use of his word reflects upon
that hand which imprinted those characters of purity and righteousness
upon it: as the misinterpretation of the wholesome laws of a prince,
made to discourage debauchery, reflects upon his righteousness and
sincerity in enacting them.
5. The holiness of God is injured, when men will put up petitions
to God to favor them in a wicked design. Such there are, and taxed by
the apostle (James iv. 3), “Ye ask amiss, that you may consume it upon
your lusts,” who desired mercies from God, with an intent to make them
instruments of sin, and weapons of unrighteousness; as it is reported
of a thief, that he always prayed for the success of his robbery.
It hath not been rare in the world to appoint fasts and prayers for
success in wars manifestly unjust, and commenced upon breaches of faith.
Many covetous men petition God to prosper them in their unjust gain; as
if the blessed God sat in his pure majesty upon a throne of grace, to
espouse unjust practices, and make iniquity prosperous. There are such
as “offer sacrifice with an evil mind” (Prov. xxi. 27), to barter with
God for a divine blessing to spirit a wicked contrivance. How great a
contempt of the holiness of God is this! How inexcusable would it be
for a favorite to address himself {b176} to a just prince with this
language: Sir, I desire a boon of such lands that lie near me, for an
addition to my estate, that I may have supports for my debauchery, and
be able to play the villain more powerfully among my neighbors! Hereby
he implies that his prince is a friend to such crimes and wickedness
he intends his petition for. Is not this the language of many men’s
hearts in the immediate presence of God? The order of prayer runs thus,
“Hallowed be thy name;” first to have a deep sense of the holiness of
the Divine nature, and an ardent desire for the glory of it. This order
is inverted by asking those things which are not agreeable to the will
of God, not meet for us to ask, and not meet for God to give; or asking
things agreeable to the will of God, but with a wicked intention. This
is, in effect, to desire God to strip himself of his holiness, and
commit sacrilege upon his own nature to gratify our lusts.
6. The purity of God is contemned, in hating and scoffing at the
holiness which is in a creature. Whoever looks upon the holiness
of a creature as an unlovely thing, can have no good opinion of the
amiableness of Divine purity. Whosoever hates those qualities and
graces that resemble God in any person, must needs contemn the original
pattern, which is more eminent in God. If there be no comeliness in
a creature’s holiness, to render it grateful to us, we should say
of God himself, were he visible among us, with those in the prophet
(Isa. liii.), “There is no beauty in him, that we should desire him.”
Holiness is beautiful in itself. If God be the most lovely Being, that
which is a likeness to him, so far as it doth resemble him, must needs
be amiable, because it partakes of God; and, therefore, those that
see no beauty in an inferior holiness, but contemn it because it is a
purity above them, contemn God much more. He that hates that which is
imperfect merely for that excellency which is in it, doth much more
hate that which is perfect, without any mixture or stain. Holiness
being the glory of God, the peculiar title of the Deity, and from him
derived unto the nature of a creature, he that mocks this in a person,
derides God himself; and, when he cannot abuse the purity in the Deity,
he will do it in his image; as rebels that cannot wrong the king in his
person, will do it in his picture, and his subjects that are loyal to
him. He that hates the picture of a man, hates the person represented
by it much more; he that hates the beams, hates the sun; the holiness
of a creature is but a beam from that infinite Sun, a stream from
that eternal Fountain. Where there is a derision of the purity of any
creature, there is a greater reflection upon God in that derision, as
he is the Author of it. If a mixed and stained holiness be more the
subject of any man’s scoffs than a great deal of sin, that person hath
a disposition more roundly to scoff at God himself, should he appear
in that unblemished and unspotted purity which infinitely shines in his
nature. O! it is a dangerous thing to scoff and deride holiness in any
person, though never so mean; such do deride and scoff at the most holy
God.
7. The holiness of God is injured by our unprepared addresses to him,
when, like swine, we come into the presence of God with all our mire
reeking and steaming upon us. A holy God requires a holy worship; and
if our best duties, having filth in every part, as {b177} performed
by us, are unmeet for God, how much more unsuitable are dead and dirty
duties to a living and immense holiness! Slight approaches and drossy
frames speak us to have imaginations of God as of a slight and sottish
being. This is worse than the heathens practised, who would purge their
flesh before they sacrificed, and make some preparations in a seeming
purity, before they would enter into their temples. God is so holy,
that were our services as refined as those of angels, we could not
present him with a service meet for his holy nature (Josh. xxiv. 19).
We contemn, then, this perfection, when we come before him without
due preparation; as if God himself were of an impure nature, and did
not deserve our purest thoughts in our applications to him; as if any
blemished and polluted sacrifice were good enough for him, and his
nature deserved no better. When we excite not those elevated frames
of spirit which are due to such a being, when we think to put him off
with a lame and imperfect service, we worship him not according to the
excellency of his nature, but put a slight upon his majestic sanctity.
When we nourish in our duties those foolish imaginations which
creep upon us; when we bring into, and continue our worldly, carnal,
debauched fancies in his presence, worse than the nasty servants, or
bemired dogs, a man would blush to be attended with in his visits to a
neat person. To be conversing with sordid sensualities, when we are at
the feet of an infinite God, sitting upon the throne of his holiness,
is as much a contempt of him, as it would be of a prince, to bring a
vessel full of nasty dung with us, when we come to present a petition
to him in his royal robes; or as it would have been to God, if the high
priest should have swept all the blood and excrements of the sacrifices
from the foot of the altar into the Holy of holies, and heaped it up
before the mercy‑seat, where the presence of God dwelt between the
cherubims, and afterwards shovelled it up into the ark, to be lodged
with Aaron’s rod and the pot of manna.
8. God’s holiness is slighted in depending upon our imperfect
services to bear us out before the tribunal of God. This is too
ordinary. The Jews were often infected with it (Rom. iii. 10), who,
not well understanding the enormity of their transgressions, the
interweaving of sin with their services, and the unspottedness of the
Divine purity, mingled an opinion of merit with their sacrifices, and
thought, by the cutting the throat of a beast, and offering it upon
God’s altar, they had made a sufficient compensation to that holiness
they had offended. Not to speak of many among the Romanists who have
the same notion, thinking to make satisfaction to God by erecting an
hospital, or endowing a church, as if this injured perfection could be
contented with the dregs of their purses, and the offering of an unjust
mammon, more likely to mind God of the injury they have done him, than
contribute to the appeasing of him. But is it not too ordinary with
miserable men, whose consciences accuse them of their crimes, to rely
upon the mumbling of a few formal prayers, and in the strength of
them, to think to stand before the tremendous tribunal of God, and
meet with a discharge upon this account from any accusation this Divine
perfection can present against them? Nay, do not the best Christians
sometimes {b178} find a principle in them, that makes them stumble
in their goings forth to Christ, and glorifying the holiness of God
in that method which he hath appointed? Sometimes casting an eye at
their grace, and sticking awhile to this or that duty, and gazing at
the glory of the temple‑building, while they should more admire the
glorious Presence that fills it. What is all this but a vilifying of
the holiness of the Divine nature, as though it would be well enough
contented with our impurities and imperfections, because they look
like a righteousness in our estimation? As though dross and dung,
which are the titles the apostles gives to all the righteousness of a
fallen creature (Phil. iii. 8), were valuable in the sight of God, and
sufficient to render us comely before him. It is a blasphemy against
this attribute, to pretend that anything so imperfect, so daubed, as
the best of our services are, can answer to that which is infinitely
perfect, and be a ground of demanding eternal life: it is at best, to
set up a gilded Dagon, as a fit companion for the ark of his Holiness;
our own righteousness as a suitable mate for the righteousness of
God: as if he had repented of the claim he made by the law to an exact
conformity, and thrown off the holiness of his nature for the fondling
of a corrupted creature. Rude and foolish notions of the Divine purity
are clearly evidenced by any confidence in any righteousness of our own,
though never so splendid. It is a rendering the righteousness of God
as dull and obscure as that of men; a mere outside, as their own; as
blind as the heathens pictured their Fortune, that knew as little how
to discern the nature and value of the offerings made to her, as to
distribute her gifts, as if it were all one to them, to have a dog or
a lamb presented in sacrifice. As if God did not well understand his
own nature, when he enacted so holy a law, and strengthened it with so
severe a threatening; which must follow upon our conceit, that he will
accept a righteousness lower than that which bears some suitableness to
the holiness of his own nature, and that of his law; and that he could
easily be put off with a pretended and counterfeit service. What are
the services of the generality of men, but suppositions, that they
can bribe God to an indulgence of them in their sins, and by an oral
sacrifice, cause him to divest himself of his hatred of their former
iniquities, and countenance their following practices. As the harlot,
that would return fresh to her uncleanness, upon the confidence that
her peace offering had contented the righteousness of God (Prov. vii.
14): as though a small service could make him wink at our sins, and
lay aside the glory of his nature; when, alas! the best duties in the
most gracious persons in this life, are but as the steams of a spiced
dung‑hill, a composition of myrrh and froth, since there are swarms of
corruptions in their nature, and secret sins that they need a cleansing
from.
9. It is a contemning the holiness of God, when we charge the law
of God with rigidness. We cast dirt upon the holiness of God when we
blame the law of God, because it shackles us, and prohibit our desired
pleasures; and hate the law of God, as they did the prophets, because
they did not prophesy smooth things; but called to them, to “get” them
“out of the way, and turn aside out {b179} of the path, and cause the
Holy One of Israel to cease from before them” (Isa. xxx. 10, 11). Put
us no more in mind of the holiness of God, and the holiness of his law;
it is a troublesome thing for us to hear of it: let him be gone from
us, since he will not countenance our vices, and indulge our crimes;
we would rather hear there is a God, than you would tell us of a holy
one. We are contrary to the law, when we wish it were not so exact;
and, therefore, contrary to the holiness of God, which set the stamp
of exactness and righteousness upon it. We think him injurious to
our liberty, when, by his precept he thwarts our pleasure; we wish
it of another frame, more mild, more suitable to our minds: it is the
same, as if we should openly blame God for consulting with his own
righteousness, and not with our humors, before he settled his law; that
he should not have drawn from the depths of his righteous nature, but
squared it to accommodate our corruption. This being the language of
such complaints, is a reproving God, because he would not be unholy,
that we might be unrighteous with impunity. Had the Divine law been
suited to our corrupt state, God must have been unholy to have complied
with his rebellious creature. To charge the law with rigidness, either
in language or practice, is the highest contempt of God’s holiness; for
it is an implicit wish, that God were as defiled, polluted, disorderly,
as our corrupted selves.
10. The holiness of God is injured opinionatively. (1.) In the opinion
of venial sins. The Romanists divide sins into venial and mortal:
mortal, are those which deserve eternal death; venial, the lighter
sort of sins, which rather deserve to be pardoned than punished; or if
punished, not with an eternal, but temporal punishment. This opinion
hath no foundation in, but is contrary to, Scripture. How can any sin
be in its own nature venial, when the due “wages of every sin is death”
(Rom. vi. 23)? and he who “continues not in every thing that the law
commands,” falls under a “curse” (Gal. iii. 10). It is a mean thought
of the holiness and majesty of God to imagine, that any sin which
is against an infinite majesty, and as infinite a purity both in
the nature of God and the law of God, should not be considered as
infinitely heinous. All sins are transgressions of the eternal law, and
in every one the infinite holiness of God is some way slighted. (2.) In
the opinion of works of supererogation. That is, such works as are not
commanded by God, which yet have such a dignity and worth in their own
nature, that the performers of them do not only merit at God’s hands
for themselves, but fill up a treasure of merits for others, that come
short of fulfilling the precepts God hath enjoined. It is such a mean
thought of God’s holiness, that the Jews, in all the charges brought
against them in Scripture, were never guilty of. And if you consider
what pitiful things they are, which are within the compass of such
works, you have sufficient reason to bewail the ignorance of man,
and the low esteem he hath of so glorious a perfection. The whipping
themselves often in a week, extraordinary watchings, fastings,
macerating their bodies, wearing a capuchin’s habit, &c. are pitiful
things to give content to an Infinite Purity. As if the precept {b180}
of God required only the inferior degrees of virtue, and the counsels
the more high and excellent; as if the law of God, which the Psalmist
counts “perfect” (Ps. xix. 7), did not command all good, and forbid
all evil; as if the holiness of God had forgotten itself in the framing
the law, and made it a scanty and defective rule; and the righteousness
of a creature were not only able to make an eternal righteousness, but
surmount it. As man would be at first as knowing as God, so some of
his posterity would be more holy than God; set up a wisdom against the
wisdom of God, and a purity above the Divine purity. Adam was not so
presumptuous; he intended no more than an equalling God in knowledge;
but those would exceed him in righteousness, and not only presume to
render a satisfaction for themselves to the holiness they have injured,
but to make a purse for the supply of others that are indigent, that
they may stand before the tribunal of God with a confidence in the
imaginary righteousness of a creature. How horrible is it for those
that come short of the law of God themselves, to think that they can
have enough for a loan to their neighbors! An unworthy opinion.
_Inform. 2._ It may inform us, how great is our fall from God, and how
distant we are from him. View the holiness of God, and take a prospect
of the nature of man, and be astonished to see a person created in the
Divine image, degenerated into the image of the devil. We are as far
fallen from the holiness of God, which consists in a hatred of sin, as
the lowest point of the earth is from the highest point of the heavens.
The devil is not more fallen from the rectitude of his nature and
likeness to God, than we are; and that we are not in the same condition
with those apostate spirits, is not from anything in our nature, but
from the mediation of Christ, upon which account God hath indulged
in us a continuance of some remainders of that which Satan is wholly
deprived of. We are departed from our original pattern; we were created
to live the “life of God,” that is, a life of “holiness;” but now we
are “alienated from the life of God” (Eph. iv. 18), and of a beautiful
piece we are become deformed, daubed over with the most defiling mud:
we “work uncleanness with greediness,” according to our ability, as
creatures; as God doth work “holiness” with affection and ardency,
according to his infiniteness, as Creator. More distant we are from
God by reason of sin, than the vilest creature, the most deformed toad,
or poisonous serpent, is from the highest and most glorious angel. By
forsaking our innocence, we departed from God as our original copy.
The apostle might well say (Rom. iii. 23), that by sin “we are come
short of the glory of God.” Interpreters trouble themselves much about
that place, “Man is come short of the glory of God,” that is, of the
holiness of God, which is the glory of the Divine nature, and was
pictured in the rational, innocent creature. By the “glory of God,”
is meant the holiness of God; (as 1 Cor. iii. 18), “Beholding, as in
a glass, the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from
glory to glory;” that is the glory of God in the text, into the image
of which we are changed; but the Scripture speaks of no other image of
God, but that of holiness; “we are come short of the glory of God;” of
the holiness of God, which is the glory of God; and {b181} the image
of it, which was the glory of man. By sin, which is particular in
opposition to the purity of God, man was left many leagues behind any
resemblance to God; he stripped off that which was the glory of his
nature, and was the only means of glorifying God as his Creator. The
word ὑστεροῦνται, the apostle uses, is very significant,――postponed
by sin an infinite distance from any imitation of God’s holiness, or
any appearance before him in a garb of nature pleasing to him. Let us
lament our fall and distance from God.
_Inform. 3._ All unholiness is vile, and opposite to the nature of God.
It is such a loathsome thing, that the “purity of God’s eye is averse
from beholding” (Hab. i. 3). It is not said there, that he will not,
but he cannot, look on evil; there cannot be any amicableness between
God and sin, the natures of both are so directly and unchangeably
contrary to one another. Holiness is the life of God; it endures as
long as his life; he must be eternally averse from sin, he can live no
longer than he lives in the hatred and loathing of it. If he should for
one instant cease to hate it, he would cease to live. To be a holy God,
is as essential to him, as to be a living God; and he would not be a
living God, but a dead God, if he were in the least point of time an
unholy God. He cannot look on sin without loathing it; he cannot look
on sin but his heart riseth against it; it must needs be most odious
to him, as that which is against the glory of his nature, and directly
opposite to that which is the lustre and varnish of all his other
perfections. It is the “abominable thing which his soul hates” (Jer.
xliv. 4); the vilest terms imaginable are used to signify it. Do you
understand the loathsomeness of a miry swine, or the nauseousness of
the vomit of a dog? these are emblems of sin (2 Peter ii. 22). Can you
endure the steams of putrefied carcasses from an open sepulchre (Rom.
iii. 23)? is the smell of the stinking sweat or excrements of a body
delightful? the word ῥυπαρία in James i. 21, signifies as much. Or is
the sight of a body overgrown with scabs and leprosy grateful to you?
So vile, so odious is sin, in the sight of God. It is no light thing,
then, to fly in the face of God; to break his eternal law; to dash both
the tables in pieces: to trample the transcript of God’s own nature
under our feet; to cherish that which was inconsistent with his honor;
to lift up our heels against the glory of his nature; to join issue
with the devil in stabbing his heart, and depriving him of his life.
Sin, in every part of it, is an opposition to the holiness of God, and
consequently an envying him a being and life, as well as a glory. If
sin be such a thing, “ye that love the Lord, hate evil.”
_Inform. 4._ Sin cannot escape a due punishment. A hatred of
unrighteousness, and consequently a will to punish it, is as essential
to God as a love of righteousness. Since he is not as an heathen idol,
but hath eyes to see, and purity to hate every iniquity, he will have
an infinite justice to punish whatsoever is against infinite holiness.
As he loves everything that is amiable, so he loathes everything that
is filthy, and that constantly, without any change; his whole nature
is set against it; he abhors nothing but this. It is not the devil’s
knowledge or activity that his hatred is terminated in, but the malice
and unholiness of his nature; it is this only is the object of his
severity; {b182} it is in the recompense of this only that there can
be a manifestation of his justice. Sin must be punished; for,
1. This detestation of sin must be manifested. How should we certainly
know his loathing of it, if he did not manifest, by some act, how
ungrateful it is to him? As his love to righteousness would not appear,
without rewarding it; so his hatred of iniquity would be as little
evidenced, without punishing it; his justice is the great witness
to his purity. The punishment, therefore, inflicted on the wicked,
shall be, in some respect, as great as the rewards bestowed upon the
righteous. Since the hatred of sin is natural to God, it is as natural
to him to show, one time or other, his hatred of it. And since men
have a conceit that God is like them in impurity, there is a necessity
of some manifestation of himself to be infinitely distant from those
conceits they have of him (Ps. l. 21); “I will reprove thee, and set
them in order before thine eyes.” He would else encourage the injuries
done to his holiness, favor the extravagances of the creature, and
condemn, or at least slight, the righteousness both of his own nature,
and his sovereign law. What way is there for God to manifest his hatred,
but by threatening the sinner? and what would this be but a vain
affrightment, and ridiculous to the sinner, if it were never to be put
in execution? There is an indissoluble connection between his hatred
of sin, and punishment of the offender (Ps. xi. 5, 6); “The wicked, his
soul hates. Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire, and brimstone,”
&c. He cannot approve of it without denying himself; and a total
impunity would be a degree of approbation. The displeasure of God
is eternal and irreconcileable against sin; for sin being absolutely
contrary to his holy nature, he is eternally contrary to it; if there
be not, therefore, a way to separate the sin from the sinner, the
sinner must lie under the displeasure of God; no displeasure can be
manifested without some marks of it upon the person that lies under
that displeasure. The holiness of God will right itself of the wrongs
done to it, and scatter the profaners of it at the greatest distance
from him, which is the greatest punishment that can be inflicted; to be
removed far from the Fountain of Life is the worst of deaths; God can
as soon lay aside his purity, as always forbear his displeasure against
an impure person; it is all one not to hate it, and not to manifest his
hatred of it.
2. As his holiness is natural and necessary, so is the punishment
of unholiness necessary to him. It is necessary that he should
abominate sin, and therefore necessary he should discountenance it. The
severities of God against sin are not vain scare‑crows; they have their
foundation in the righteousness of his nature; it is because he is a
righteous and holy God, that he “will not forgive our transgressions
and sins” (Josh. xxiv. 19), that is, that he will punish them. The
throne of his “holiness is a fiery flame” (Dan. vii. 9); there is both
a pure light and a scorching heat. Whatsoever is contrary to the nature
of God, will fall under the justice of God; he would else violate his
own nature, deny his own perfection, seem to be out of love with his
own glory and life. He doth not hate it out of choice, but from the
immutable propension of his nature; it is not so free an act of his
will, as the creation of man and angels, which he might {b183} have
forborne as well as effected. As the detestation of sin results from
the universal rectitude of his nature, so the punishment of sin follows
upon that, as he is the righteous Governor of the world: it is as much
against his nature not to punish it, as it is against his nature not
to loathe it; he would cease to be holy if he ceased to hate it, and he
would cease to hate it if he ceased to punish it. Neither the obedience
of our Saviour’s life, nor the strength of his cries, could put a
bar to the cup of his passion; God so hated sin, that when it was but
imputed to his Son, without any commission of it, he would bring a hell
upon his soul. Certainly if God could have hated sin without punishing
it, his Son had never felt the smart of his wrath; his love to his
Son had been strong enough to have caused him to forbear, had not
the holiness of his nature been stronger to move him to inflict a
punishment according to the demerit of his sin. God cannot but be
holy, and therefore cannot but be just, because injustice is a part
of unholiness.
3. Therefore there can be no communion between God and unholy spirits.
How is it conceivable, that God should hate the sin, and cherish the
sinner, with all his filth in his bosom? that he should eternally
detest the crime, and eternally fold the sinner in his arms? Can less
be expected from the purity of his nature, than to separate an impure
soul, as long as it remains so? Can there be any delightful communion
between those whose natures are contrary? Darkness and light may as
soon kiss each other, and become one nature: God and the devil may as
soon enter into an eternal league and covenant together. For God to
have pleasure in wickedness, and to admit evil to dwell with him, are
equally impossible to his nature (Ps. v. 4): while he hates impurity,
he cannot have communion with an impure person. It may as soon be
expected, that God should hate himself, offer violence to his own
nature, lay aside his purity as an abominable thing, and blot his own
glory, as love an impure person, entertain him as his delight, and set
him in the same heaven and happiness with himself, and his holy angels.
He must needs loathe him, he must needs banish him from his presence,
which is the greatest punishment. God’s holiness and hatred of sin
necessarily infer the punishment of it.
_Inform. 5._ There is, therefore, a necessity of the satisfaction of
the holiness of God by some sufficient mediator. The Divine purity
could not meet with any acquiescence in all mankind after the fall:
sin was hated; the sinner would be ruined, unless some way were found
out to repair the wrongs done to the holiness of God; either the sinner
must be condemned for ever, or some satisfaction must be made, that the
holiness of the Divine nature might eternally appear in its full lustre.
That it is essential to the nature of God to hate all unrighteousness,
as that which is absolutely repugnant to his nature, none do question.
That the justice of God is so essential to him, as that sin could not
be pardoned without satisfaction, some do question; though this latter
seems rationally to follow upon the former.[930] That holiness is
essential to the nature of God, is evident; because, else, God may
as much be conceived without purity, as he might be {b184} conceived
without the creating the sun or stars. No man can, in his right wits,
frame a right notion of a Deity without purity. It would be less
blasphemy against the excellency of God, to conceit him not knowing,
than to imagine him not holy: and, for the essentialness of his justice,
Joshua joins both his holiness and his jealousy as going hand in hand
together (Josh. xxiv. 19); “He is a holy God, he is a jealous God, he
will not forgive your sin.” But consider only the purity of God, since
it is contrary to sin, and, consequently, hating the sinner; the guilty
person cannot be reduced to God, nor can the holiness of God have any
complacency in a filthy person, but as fire hath in stubble, to consume
it. How the holy God should be brought to delight in man without a
_salvo_ for the rights of his holiness, is not to be conceived without
an impeachment of the nature of God. The law could not be abolished;
that would reflect, indeed, upon the righteousness of the Lawgiver: to
abolish it, because of sin, would imply a change of the rectitude of
his nature. Must he change his holiness for the sake of that which was
against his holiness, in a compliance with a profane and unrighteous
creature? This should engage him rather to maintain his law, than to
null it; and to abrogate his law as soon as he had enacted it, since
sin stepped into the world presently after it, would be no credit
to his wisdom. There must be a reparation made of the honor of God’s
holiness; by ourselves it could not be without condemnation; by another
it could not be without a sufficiency in the person: no creature could
do it. All the creatures being of a finite nature, could not make
a compensation for the disparagements of Infinite Holiness. He must
have despicable and vile thoughts of this excellent perfection, that
imagines that a few tears, and the glavering fawnings at the death of
a creature, can be sufficient to repair the wrongs, and restore the
rights of this attribute. It must, therefore, be such a compensation
as might be commensurate to the holiness of the Divine nature and
the Divine law, which could not be wrought by any, but Him that was
possessed of a Godhead to give efficacy and exact congruity to it. The
Person designed and appointed by God for so great an affair, was “one
in the form of God, one equal with God,” (Phil. ii. 6), who could not
be termed by such a title of dignity, if he had not been equal to God
in the universal rectitude of the Divine nature, and therefore in his
holiness. The punishment due to sin is translated to that person for
the righting Divine holiness, and the righteousness of that Person is
communicated to the sinner for the pardon of the offending creature.
If the sinner had been eternally damned, God’s hatred of sin had been
evidenced by the strokes of his justice; but his mercy to a sinner had
lain in obscurity. If the sinner had been pardoned and saved without
such a reparation, mercy had been evident; but his holiness had hid its
head for ever in his own bosom. There was therefore a necessity of such
a way to manifest his purity, and yet to bring forth his mercy: that
mercy might not alway sigh for the destruction of the creature, and
that holiness might not mourn for the neglect of its honor.
_Inform. 6._ Hence it will follow, there is no justification of a
sinner by any thing in himself. After sin had set foot in the world,
{b185} man could present nothing to God acceptable to him, or bearing
any proportion to the holiness of his law, till God set forth a Person,
upon whose account the acceptation of our persons and services is
founded (Eph. i. 6), “Who hath made us accepted in the Beloved.” The
Infinite purity of God is so glorious, that it shames the holiness
of angels, as the light of the sun dims the light of the fire; much
more will the righteousness of fallen man, who is vile, and “drinks
up iniquity like water,” vanish into nothing in his presence. With
what self‑abasement and abhorrence ought he to be possessed that comes
as short of the angels in purity, as a dunghill doth of a star! The
highest obedience that ever was performed by any mere man, since lapsed
nature, cannot challenge any acceptance with God, or stand before so
exact an inquisition. What person hath such a clear innocence, and
unspotted obedience in such a perfection, as in any degree to suit
the holiness of the Divine nature? (Ps. cxliii. 2): “Enter not into
judgment with thy servant, for in thy sight shall no man living be
justified.” If God should debate the case simply with a man in his own
person, without respecting the Mediator, he were not able to “answer
one of a thousand.” Though we are his servants, as David was, and
perform a sincere service, yet there are many little motes and dust of
sin in the best works, that cannot lie undiscovered from the eye of his
holiness; and if we come short in the least of what the law requires,
we are “guilty of all” (James ii. 10). So that “In thy sight shall no
man living be justified;” in the sight of thy infinite holiness, which
hates the least spot; in the sight of thy infinite justice, which
punishes the least transgression. God would descend below his own
nature, and vilify both his knowledge and his purity, should he accept
that for a righteousness and holiness which is not so in itself; and
nothing is so, which hath the least stain upon it contrary to the
nature of God. The most holy saints in Scripture, upon a prospect of
his purity, have cast away all confidence in themselves; every flash
of the Divine purity has struck them into a deep sense of their own
impurity and shame for it (Job xlii. 6), “Wherefore I abhor myself in
dust and ashes.” What can the language of any man be that lies under
a sense of infinite holiness and his own defilement in the least, but
that of the prophet (Isa. vi. 5), “Woe is me, I am undone?” And what is
there in the world can administer any other thought than this, unless
God be considered in Christ, “reconciling the world to himself?” As
a holy God, so righted, as that he can dispense with the condemnation
of a sinner, without dispensing with his hatred of sin; pardoning the
sin in the criminal, because it hath been punished in the Surety. That
righteousness which God hath “set forth” for justification, is not
our own, but a “righteousness which is of God” (Phil. iii. 9, 10), of
God’s appointing, and of God’s performing; appointed by the Father,
who is God, and performed by the Son, who is one with the Father; a
righteousness surmounting that of all the glorious angels, since it is
an immutable one which can never fail, an “everlasting righteousness”
(Dan. ix. 24); a righteousness wherein the holiness of God can
acquiesce, as considered in itself, because it is a righteousness of
one equal with God. As we {b186} therefore dishonor the Divine Majesty
when we insist upon our own bemired righteousness for our justification
as if “mortal man were as just as God,” and a “man as pure as his
Maker” (Job iv. 17), so we highly honor the purity of his nature,
when we charge ourselves with folly, acknowledge ourselves unclean,
and accept of that righteousness which gives a full content to his
infinite purity. There can be no justification of a sinner by anything
in himself.
_Inform. 7._ If holiness be a glorious perfection of the Divine nature,
then the Deity of Christ might be argued from hence. He is indeed
dignified with the title of the “Holy One” (Acts iii. 14, 16), a title
often given to God in the Old Testament; and he is called the “Holy of
holies” (Dan. ix. 24); but because the angels seemed to be termed “Holy
ones” (Dan. iv. 13, 17), and the most sacred place in the temple was
also called the “Holy of holies,” I shall not insist upon that. But you
find our Saviour particularly applauded by the angels, as “holy,” when
this perfection of the Divine nature, together with the incommunicable
name of God, are linked together, and ascribed to him (Isa. vi. 3):
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; and the whole earth is full of
his glory;” which the apostle interprets of “Christ” (John xii. 39, 41).
Isaiah, again: “He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their hearts,
that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their
hearts, and be converted, and I should heal them.” These things said
Isaiah, when he saw his glory, and spake of him. He that Isaiah saw
environed with the seraphims, in a reverential posture before his face,
and praised as most holy by them, was the true and eternal God; such
acclamations belong to none but the great Jehovah, God, blessed forever;
but, saith John, it was the “glory of Christ” that Isaiah saw in this
vision; Christ, therefore, is “God blessed forever,” of whom it was
said, “Holy, holy, holy Lord of Hosts.”[931] The evangelist had been
speaking of Christ, the miracles which he wrought, the obstinacy of the
Jews against believing on him; his glory, therefore, is to be referred
to the subject he had been speaking of. The evangelist was not speaking
of the Father, but of the Son, and cites those words out of Isaiah; not
to teach anything of the Father, but to show that the Jews could not
believe in Christ. He speaks of him that had wrought so many miracles;
but Christ wrought those miracles: he speaks of him whom the Jews
refused to believe on; but Christ was the person they would not believe
on, while they acknowledged God. It was the glory of this person Isaiah
saw, and this person Isaiah spake of, if the words of the evangelist be
of any credit. The angels are too holy to give acclamations belonging
to God, to any but him that is God.
_Inform. 8._ God is fully fit for the government of the world. The
righteousness of God’s nature qualifies him to be Judge of the world;
if he were not perfectly righteous and holy, he were incapable to
govern and judge the world (Rom. iii. 5): “If there be unrighteousness
with God, how shall he judge the world?” “God will not do wickedly,
neither will the Almighty pervert judgment” (Job xxxiv. 12). {b187} How
despicable is a judge that wants innocence! As omniscience fits God to
be a judge, so holiness fits him to be a righteous judge (Ps. i. 6):
“The Lord knows,” that is, loves, “the way of the righteous; but the
way of the ungodly shall perish.”
_Inform. 9._ If holiness be an eminent perfection of the Divine
nature, the Christian religion is of a Divine extraction: it discovers
the holiness of God, and forms the creature to a conformity to him.
It gives us a prospect of his nature, represents him in the “beauty of
holiness” (Ps. cx. 3), more than the whole glass of the creation. It is
in this evangelical glass the glory of the Lord is beheld, and rendered
amiable and imitable (2 Cor. iii. 18). It is a doctrine “according to
godliness” (1 Tim. vi. 3), directing us to live the life of God; a life
worthy of God, and worthy of our first creation by his hand. It takes
us off from ourselves, fixeth us upon a noble end, points our actions,
and the scope of our lives to God. It quells the monsters of sin,
discountenanceth the motes of wickedness; and it is no mean argument
for the divinity of it, that it sets us no lower a pattern for our
imitation, than the holiness of the Divine Majesty. God is exalted upon
the throne of his holiness in it, and the creature advanced to an image
and resemblance of it (1 Pet. i. 16): “Be ye holy, for I am holy.”
_Use 2._ The second use is for comfort. This attribute frowns upon
lapsed nature, but smiles in the restorations made by the gospel. God’s
holiness, in conjunction with his justice, is terrible to a guilty
sinner; but now, in conjunction with his mercy, by the satisfaction of
Christ, it is sweet to a believing penitent. In the “first covenant,”
the purity of his nature was joined with the rigors of his justice;
in the “second covenant,” the purity of his nature is joined with the
sweetness and tenderness of his mercy. In the one, justice flames
against the sinner in the right of injured holiness; in the other,
mercy yearns towards a believer, with the consent of righted holiness.
To rejoice in the holiness of God is the true and genuine spirit of a
renewed man: “My heart rejoiceth in the Lord;”――what follows?――“There
is none holy as the Lord” (1 Sam. ii. 1, 2). Some perfections of the
Divine nature are astonishing, some affrighting; but this may fill us
both with astonishment at it, and a joy in it.
1. By covenant, we have an interest in this attribute, as well as any
other. In that clause of “God’s being our God,” entire God with all his
glory, all his perfections are passed over as a portion, and a gracious
soul is brought into union with God, as his God; not with a part of
God, but with God in the simplicity, extent, integrity of his nature;
and therefore in this attribute. And, upon some account, it may seem
more in this attribute than in any other; for if he be our God, he is
our God in his life and glory, and therefore in his purity especially,
without which he could not live; he could not be happy and blessed.
Little comfort will it be to have a dead God, or a vile God, made over
to us; and as, by this covenant, he is our Father, so he gives us his
nature, and communicates his holiness in all his dispensations; and in
those that are severest, as well as those that are sweetest (Heb. xii.
10): “But he corrects us for our profit, that we might be partakers of
his holiness.” Not simply “partakers {b188} of holiness,” but of “his
holiness;” to have a portraiture of it in our nature, a medal of it in
our hearts, a spark of the same nature with that immense splendor and
flame in himself. The holiness of a covenant soul is a resemblance of
the holiness of God, and formed by it; as the picture of the sun in a
cloud is a fruit of his beams, and an image of its author. The fulness
of the perfection of holiness remains in the nature of God, as the
fulness of the light doth in the sun; yet there are transmissions of
light from the sun to the moon, and it is a light of the same nature
both in the one and in the other. The holiness of a creature is nothing
else but a reflection of the Divine holiness upon it; and to make the
creature capable of it, God takes various methods, according to his
covenant grace.
2. This attribute renders God a fit object for trust and dependence.
The notion of an unholy and unrighteous God, is an uncomfortable idea
of him, and beats off our hands from laying any hold of him. It is upon
this attribute the reputation and honor of God in the world is built;
what encouragement can we have to believe him, or what incentives
could we have to serve him, without the lustre of this in his nature?
The very thought of an unrighteous God is enough to drive men at the
greatest distance from him; as the honesty of a man gives a reputation
to his word, so doth the holiness of God give credit to his promise. It
is by this he would have us stifle our fears and fortify our trust (Isa.
xli. 14): “Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help
thee, saith the Lord, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:” he
will be in his actions what he is in his nature. Nothing shall make him
defile his own excellency; unrighteousness is the ground of mutability;
but the promise of God doth never fail, because the rectitude of his
nature doth never languish: were his attributes without the conduct
of this, they would be altogether formidable. As this is the glory of
all his other perfections, so this only renders him comfortable to a
believing soul. Might we not fear his power to crush us, his mercy to
overlook us, his wisdom to design against us, if this did not influence
them? What an oppression is power without righteousness in the hand of
a creature; destructive, instead of protecting! The devil is a mighty
spirit, but not fit to be trusted, because he is an impure spirit.
When God would give us the highest security of the sincerity of his
intentions, he swears by this attribute (Ps. viii. 35): his holiness,
as well as his truth, is laid to pawn for the security of his promise.
As we make God the judge between us and others, when we swear by him,
so he makes his holiness the judge between himself and his people, when
he swears by it.
(1.) It is this renders him fit to be confided in for the answer
of our prayers. This is the ground of his readiness to give. “If you,
being evil, know how to give good gifts, how much more shall your
Father which is in heaven give good gifts to them that ask him” (Matt.
vii. 11)! Though the holiness of God be not mentioned, yet it is to
be understood; the emphasis lies on these words, “if you, being evil:”
God is then considered in a disposition contrary to this, which can
be nothing but his righteousness. If you that are unholy, and have so
much corruption in you, to render you cruel, can bestow {b189} upon
your children the good things they want, how much more shall God,
who is holy, and hath nothing in him to check his mercifulness to
his creatures, grant the petitions of his supplicants! It was this
attribute edged the fiduciary importunity of the souls under the altar,
for the revenging their blood unjustly shed upon the earth: “How long,
O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not avenge our blood on them that
dwell on the earth” (Rev. vi. 10)? Let not thy holiness stand with
folded arms, as careless of the eminent sufferings of those that fear
thee; we implore thee by the holiness of thy nature, and the truth of
thy word.
(2.) This renders him fit to be confided in for the comfort of our
souls in a broken condition. The reviving the hearts of the spiritually
afflicted, is a part of the holiness of his nature; “Thus saith the
high and lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell
in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and
humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble” (Isa. lvii. 15).
He acknowledgeth himself the lofty One; they might therefore fear
he would not revive them; but he is also the holy One, and therefore
he will refresh them; he is not more lofty than he is holy; besides,
the argument of the immutability of his promise, and the might of
his power, here is the holiness of his nature moving him to pity his
drooping creature: his promise is ushered in with the name of power,
“high and lofty One,” to bar their distrust of his strength, and with a
declaration of his holiness, to check any despair of his will: there is
no ground to think I should be false to my word, or misemploy my power,
since that cannot be, because of the holiness of my name and nature.
(3.) This renders him fit to be confided in for the maintenance of
grace, and protection of us against our spiritual enemies. What our
Saviour thought an argument in prayer, we may well take as a ground of
our confidence. In the strength of this he puts up his suit, when in
his mediatory capacity he intercedes for the preservation of his people
(John xvii. 11); “Holy Father, keep through thy own name those that
thou hast given me, that they may be one as we are.” “Holy Father,” not
merciful Father, or powerful, or wise Father, but “holy;” and (ver. 25),
“righteous Father.” Christ pleads that attribute for the performance of
God’s word, which was laid to pawn when he passed his word: for it was
by his holiness that he swore, that “his seed should endure forever,
and his throne as the sun before him” (Ps. lxxxix. 36); which is meant
of the perpetuity of the covenant which he made with Christ, and is
also meant of the preservation of the mystical seed of David, and the
perpetuating his loving‑kindness to them (ver. 32, 33). Grace is an
image of God’s holiness, and, therefore, the holiness of God is most
proper to be used as an argument to interest and engage him in the
preservation of it. In the midst of church‑provocations, he will not
utterly extinguish, because he is the “Holy One” in the midst of her
(Hos. xi. 9): nor in the midst of judgments will he condemn his people
to death, because he is “their Holy One” (Hab. i. 12); but their
enemies shall be ordained for judgment, and established for correction.
One prophet assures them in the name of the Lord, {b190} upon the
strength of this perfection; and the other, upon the same ground, is
confident of the protection of the church, because of God’s holiness
engaged in an inviolable covenant.
3. _Comfort._ Since holiness is a glorious perfection of the nature
of God, “he will certainly value every holy soul.” It is of a greater
value with him than the souls of all men in the world, that are
destitute of it: “wicked men are the worst of vilenesses,” mere dross
and dunghill.[932] Purity, then, which is contrary to wickedness,
must be the most precious thing in his esteem; he must needs love
that quality which he is most pleased with in himself, as a father
looks with most delight upon the child which is possessed with those
dispositions he most values in his own nature. “His countenance doth
behold the upright” (Ps. xi. 7). He looks upon them with a full and
open face of favor, with a countenance clear, unmasked, and smiling
with a face full of delight. Heaven itself is not such a pleasing
object to him as the image of his own uncreated holiness in the created
holiness of men and angels: as a man esteems that most which is most
like him, of his own generation, more than a piece of art, which is
merely the product of his wit or strength. And he must love holiness in
the creature, he would not else love his own image, and, consequently,
would undervalue himself. He despiseth the image the wicked bears (Ps.
lxxiii. 20), but he cannot disesteem his own stamp on the godly; he
cannot but delight in his own work, his choice work, the master‑piece
of all his works, the new creation of things; that which is next to
himself, as being a Divine nature like himself (2 Pet. i. 4). When he
overlooks strength, parts, knowledge, he cannot overlook this: he “sets
apart him that is godly for himself” (Ps. iv. 3), as a peculiar object
to take pleasure in; he reserves such for his own complacency, when
he leaves the rest of the world to the devil’s power; he is choice
of them above all his other works, and will not let any have so great
a propriety in them as himself. If it be so dear to him here in its
imperfect and mixed condition, that he appropriates it as a peculiar
object for his own delight, how much more will the unspotted purity of
glorified saints be infinitely pleasing to him! so, that he will take
less pleasure in the material heavens than in such a soul. Sin only
is detestable to God; and when this is done away, the soul becomes as
lovely in his account, as before it was loathsome.
4. It is comfort, upon this account, that “God will perfect holiness
in every upright soul.” We many times distrust God, and despond in
ourselves, because of the infinite holiness of the Divine nature, and
the dunghill corruption in our own; but the holiness of God engageth
him to the preservation of it, and, consequently, to the perfection
of it, as appears by our Saviour’s argument (John xvii. 11), “Holy
Father, keep through thy own name, those whom thou hast given me;”――to
what end?――“that they may be one as we are;” one with us, in the
resemblances of purity. And the holiness of the soul is used as an
argument by the Psalmist (Ps. lxxxvi. 2), “Preserve my soul, for
I am holy;” that is, I have an ardent desire to holiness: thou hast
separated me from the mass of the corrupted {b191} world, preserve
and perfect me with the assembly of the glorified choir. The more holy
any are, the more communicative they are; God being most holy, is most
communicative of that which he most esteems in himself, and delights
to see in his creature: he is, therefore, more ready to impart his
holiness to them that beg for it, than to communicate his knowledge
or his power. Though he were holy, yet he let Adam fall, who never
petitioned his holiness to preserve him; he let him fall, to declare
the holiness of his own nature, which had wanted its due manifestation
without it: but since that cannot be declared in a higher manner than
it hath been already in the death of the Surety, that bore our guilt,
there is no fear he should cast the work out of his hands, since the
design of the permission of man’s apostasy, in the discovery of the
perfections of his nature, has been fully answered. The “finishing the
good work he hath begun,” hath a relation to the glory of Christ; and
his own glory in Christ to be manifested in the day of his appearing
(Phil. i. 6), wherein the glory, both of his own holiness, and the
holiness of the Mediator, are to receive their full manifestation. As
it is a part of the holiness of Christ to “sanctify his church” (Eph.
v. 26, 27) till not a wrinkle or spot be left, so it is the part of
God not to leave that work imperfect which his holiness hath attempted
a second time to beautify his creature with. He will not cease exalting
this attribute, which is the believers’ by the new covenant, till he
utters that applauding speech of his own work (Cant. iv. 7), “Thou art
all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.”
_Use 3_, is for Exhortation. Is holiness an eminent perfection of the
Divine nature? then――
_Exhort. 1._ Let us get and preserve right and strong apprehensions of
this Divine perfection. Without a due sense of it, we can never exalt
God in our hearts; and the more distinct conceptions we have of this,
and the rest of his attributes, the more we glorify him. When Moses
considered God as “his strength and salvation,” he would exalt him
(Exod. xv. 2); and he could never break out in so admirable a doxology
as that in the text, without a deep sense of the glory of his purity,
which he speaks of with so much admiration. Such a sense will be of use
to us.
1. In promoting genuine convictions. A deep consideration of the
holiness of God cannot but be followed with a deep consideration of our
impure and miserable condition by reason of sin: we cannot glance upon
it without reflections upon our own vileness. Adam no sooner heard the
voice of a holy God in the garden, but he considered his own nakedness
with shame and fear (Gen. iii. 10); much less can we fix our minds
upon it, but we must be touched with a sense of our own uncleanness.
The clear beams of the sun discover that filthiness in our garments
and members, which was not visible in the darkness of the night.
Impure metals are discerned by comparing them with that which is
pure and perfect in its kind. The sense of guilt is the first natural
result upon a sense of this excellent perfection; and the sense of the
imperfection of our own righteousness is the next. Who can think of
it, and reflect upon {b192} himself as an object fit for Divine love?
Who can have a due thought of it, without regarding himself as stubble
before a consuming fire? Who can, without a confusion of heart and face,
glance upon that pure eye which beholds with detestation the foul motes,
as well as the filthier and bigger spots? When Isaiah saw his glory,
and heard how highly the angels exalted God for this perfection, he was
in a cold sweat, ready to swoon, till a seraphim, with a coal from the
altar, both purged and revived him (Isa. vi. 5, 7). They are sound and
genuine convictions, which have the prospect of Divine purity for their
immediate spring, and not a foresight of our own misery; when it is
not the punishment we have deserved, but the holiness we have offended,
most grates our hearts. Such convictions are the first rude draughts of
the Divine image in our spirits, and grateful to God, because they are
an acknowledgment of the glory of this attribute, and the first mark
of honor given to it by the creature. Those that never had a sense of
their own vileness, were always destitute of a sense of God’s holiness.
And, by the way, we may observe, that those that scoff at any for
hanging down the head under the consideration and conviction of sin
(as is too usual with the world), scoff at them for having deeper
apprehensions of the purity of God than themselves, and consequently
make a mock of the holiness of God which is the ground of those
convictions; a sense of this would prevent such a damnable reproaching.
2. A sense of this will render us humble in the possession of the
greatest holiness a creature were capable of. We are apt to be proud,
with the Pharisee, when we look upon others wallowing in the mire of
base and unnatural lusts: but let any clap their wings, if they can,
in a vain boasting and exaltation, when they view the holiness of God.
What torch, if it had reason, would be proud, and swagger in its own
light, if it compared itself with the sun? “Who can stand before this
holy Lord God?” is the just reflection of the holiest person, as it
was of those (1 Sam. vi. 20) that had felt the marks of his jealousy
after their looking into the ark, though likely out of affection to
it, and triumphant joy at its return. When did the angels testify, by
the covering of their faces, their weakness to bear the lustre of his
majesty, but when they beheld his glory? When did they signify, by
their covering their feet, the shame of their own vileness, but when
their hearts were fullest of the applaudings of this perfection (Isa.
vi. 2, 3)? Though they found themselves without spot, yet not with
such a holiness that they could appear either with their faces or feet
unvailed and unmasked in the presence of God. Doth the immense splendor
of this attribute engender shaming reflections in those pure spirits?
What will it, what should it, do in us, that dwell in houses of clay,
and creep up and down with that clay upon our backs, and too much of
it in our hearts? The stars themselves, which appear beautiful in the
night, are masked at the awaking of the sun. What a dim light is that
of a glow‑worm to that of the sun! The apprehensions of this made the
elders humble themselves in the midst of their glory, by “casting down
their crowns before his throne” (Rev. iv. 8, 10); a metaphor {b193}
taken from the triumphing generals among the Romans, who hung up their
victorious laurels in the Capitol, dedicating them to their gods,
acknowledging them their superiors in strength, and authors of their
victory. This self‑emptiness at the consideration of Divine purity, is
the note of the true church, represented by the twenty‑four elders, and
a note of a true member of the church; whereas boasting of perfection
and merit is the property of the anti‑christian tribe, that have
mean thoughts of this adorable perfection, and think themselves more
righteous than the unspotted angels. What a self‑annihilation is there
in a good man, when the sense of Divine purity is most lively in him!
yea, how detestable is he to himself! There is as little proportion
between the holiness of the Divine Majesty, and that of the most
righteous creature, as there is between a nearness of a person that
stands upon a mountain, to the sun, and of him that beholds him in a
vale; one is nearer than the other, but it is an advantage not to be
boasted of, in regard of the vast distance that is between the sun and
the elevated spectator.
3. This would make us full of an affectionate reverence in all our
approaches to God. By this perfection God is rendered venerable, and
fit to be reverenced by his creature; and magnificent thoughts of it
in the creature would awaken him to an actual reverence of the Divine
majesty (Ps. iii. 9): “Holy and reverend is his name;” a good opinion
of this would engender in us a sincere respect towards him; we should
then “serve the Lord with fear,” as the expression is (Ps. ii. 11),
that is, be afraid to cast anything before him that may offend the eyes
of his purity. Who would venture rashly and garishly into the presence
of an eminent moralist, or of a righteous king upon his throne? The
fixedness of the angels arose from the continual prospect of this. What
if we had been with Isaiah when he saw the vision, and beheld him in
the same glory, and the heavenly choir in their reverential posture
in the service of God; would it not have barred our wanderings, and
staked us down to our duty? Would not the fortifying an idea of it
in our minds produce the same effect? It is for want of this we carry
ourselves so loosely and unbecomingly in the Divine presence, with the
same, or meaner, affections than those wherewith we stand before some
vile creature that is our superior in the world; as though a piece of
filthy flesh were more valuable than this perfection of the Divinity.
How doth the Psalmist double his exhortation to men to sing praise to
God (Ps. xlvii. 6): “Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises
unto our King, sing praises;” because of his majesty, and the purity
of his dominion! and (ver. 8), “God reigneth over the heathen, God
sitteth upon the throne of his holiness.” How would this elevate us
in praise, and prostrate us in prayer, when we praise and pray with
an understanding and insight of that nature we bless or implore; as he
speaks (ver. 7), “Sing ye praises with understanding.” The holiness of
God in his government and dominion, the holiness of his nature, and the
holiness of his precepts, should beget in us an humble respect in our
approaches. The more we grow in a sense of this, the more shall we
advance in the true performance of all our duties. Those nations which
adored the sun, had they at first seen his brightness wrapped {b194}
and masked in a cloud, and paid a veneration to it, how would their
adorations have mounted to a greater point, after they had seen it
in its full brightness, shaking off those vails, and chasing away the
mists before it! what a profound reverence would they have paid it,
when they beheld it in its glory and meridian brightness![933] Our
reverence to God in all our addresses to him will arrive to greater
degrees, if every act of duty be ushered in, and seasoned with the
thoughts of God as sitting upon a throne of holiness; we shall have a
more becoming sense of our own vileness, a greater ardor to his service,
a deeper respect in his presence, if our understanding be more cleared,
and possessed with notions of this perfection. Thus take a view of God
in this part of his glory, before you fall down before his throne, and
assure yourselves you will find your hearts and services quickened with
a new and lively spirit.
4. A due sense of this perfection in God would produce in us a fear
of God, and arm us against temptation and sin. What made the heathen
so wanton and loose, but the representations of their gods as vicious?
Who would stick at adulteries, and more prodigious lusts, that can
take a pattern for them from the person he adores for a deity? Upon
which account Plato would have poets banished from his commonwealth,
because, by dressing up their gods in wanton garbs in their poems,
they encouraged wickedness in the people. But if the thoughts of God’s
holiness were impressed upon us, we should regard sin with the same
eye, mark it with the same detestation in our measures, as God himself
doth. So far as we are sensible of the Divine purity, we should account
sin vile as it deserves; we should hate it entirely, without a grain
of love to it, and hate it perpetually (Ps. cxix. 104): “Through thy
precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way.” He
looks into God’s statute‑book, and thereby arrives to an understanding
of the purity of his nature, whence his hatred of iniquity commenced.
This would govern our motion, check our vices; it would make us tremble
at the hissing of a temptation: when a corruption did but peep out, and
put forth its head, a look to the Divine Purity would be attended with
a fresh convoy of strength to resist it. There is no such fortification,
as to be wrapped up in the sense of this: this would fill us with an
awe of God; we should be ashamed to admit any filthy thing into us,
which we know is detestable to his pure eye. As the approach of a grave
and serious man makes children hasten their trifles out of the way; so
would a consideration of this attribute make us cast away our idols,
and fling away our ridiculous thoughts and designs.
5. A due sense of this perfection would inflame us with a vehement
desire to be conformed to Him. All our desires would be ardent to
regulate ourselves according to this pattern of holiness and goodness,
which is not to be equalled; the contemplating it as it shines forth
in the face of Christ, will “transform us into the same image” (2 Cor.
iii. 19). Since our lapsed state, we cannot behold the holiness of God
in itself without affrightment; nor is it an object of imitation, but
as tempered in Christ to our view. When we cannot, without blinding
ourselves, look upon the sun in its brightness, we {b195} may behold it
through a colored glass, whereby the lustre of it is moderated, without
dazzling our eyes. The sense of it will furnish us with a greatness of
mind, that little things will be contemned by us; motives of a greater
alloy would have little influence upon us; we should have the highest
motives to every duty, and motives of the same strain which influence
the angels above. It would change us, not only into an angelical nature,
but a divine nature: we should act like men of another sphere; as if
we had received our original in another world, and seen with angels the
ravishing beauties of heaven. How little would the mean employments of
the world sink us into dirt and mud! How often hath the meditation of
the courage of a valiant man, or acuteness and industry of a learned
person, spurred on some men to an imitation of them, and transformed
them into the same nature! as the looking upon the sun imprints an
image of the sun upon our eye, that we seem to behold nothing but the
sun a while after. The view of the Divine purity would fill us with
a holy generosity to imitate him, more than the examples of the best
men upon earth. It was a saying of a heathen, that “if virtue were
visible, it would kindle a noble flame of love to it in the heart, by
its ravishing beauty.” Shall the infinite purity of the Author of all
virtue come short of the strength of a creature? Can we not render that
visible to us by frequent meditation, which, though it be invisible
in his nature, is made visible in his law, in his ways, in his Son?
It would make us ready to obey him, since we know he cannot command
anything that is sinful, but what is holy, just, and good: it would put
all our affections in their due place, elevate them above the creature,
and subject them to the Creator.
6. It would make us patient and contented under all God’s
dispensations. All penal evils are the fruits of his holiness, as
he is Judge and Governor of the world: he is not an arbitrary Judge,
nor doth any sentence pronounced, nor warrant for execution issue
from him, but what bears upon it a stamp of the righteousness of his
nature; he doth nothing by passion or unrighteousness, but according
to the eternal law of his own unstained nature, which is the rule to
him in his works, the basis and foundation of his throne and sovereign
dominion (Ps. lxxxix. 14): “Justice,” or righteousness, “and judgment
are the habitation of thy throne;” upon these his sovereign power
is established: so that there can be no just complaint or indictment
brought against any of his proceedings with men. How doth our Saviour,
who had the highest apprehensions of God’s holiness, justify God in
his deepest distresses, when he cried, and was not answered in the
particular he desired, in that prophetic Psalm of him (Ps. xxii. 2, 3),
“I cry day and night, but thou hearest not!” Thou seemest to be deaf
to all my petitions, afar off “from the words of my roaring; but thou
art holy;” I cast no blame upon thee: all thy dealings are squared
by thy holiness: this is the only law to thee; in this I acquiesce.
It is part of thy holiness to hide thy face from me, to show thereby
thy detestation of sin. Our Saviour adores the Divine purity in his
sharpest agony, and a like sense of it would guide us in the same
steps to acknowledge and glorify it, in our greatest desertions and
afflictions; especially since as they are the {b196} fruit of the
holiness of his nature, so they are the means to impart to us clearer
stamps of holiness, according to that in himself, which is the original
copy (Heb. xii. 10). He melts us down as gold, to fit us for the
receiving a new impression, to mortify the affections of the flesh, and
clothe us with the graces of his Spirit. The due sense of this would
make us to submit to his stroke, and to wait upon him for a good issue
of his dealings.
_Exhort. 2._ Is holiness a perfection of the Divine nature? Is it the
glory of the Deity? Then let us glorify this holiness of God. Moses
glorifies it in the text, and glorifies it in a song, which was a copy
for all ages. The whole corporation of seraphims have their mouths
filled with the praises of it. The saints, whether militant on earth,
or triumphant in heaven, are to continue the same acclamation, “Holy,
holy, holy, Lord God of hosts” (Rev. iv. 8). Neither angels nor
glorified spirits exalt at the same rate the power which formed them
creatures, nor goodness which preserves them in a blessed immortality,
as they do holiness, which they bear some beams of in their own nature,
and whereby they are capacitated to stand before His throne. Upon the
account of this, a debt of praise is demanded of all rational creatures
by the Psalmist (Ps. xcix. 3), “Let them praise thy great and terrible
name, for it is holy.” Not so much for the greatness of his Majesty, or
the treasures of his justice; but as they are considered in conjunction
with his holiness, which renders them beautiful; “for it is holy.”
Grandeur and majesty, simply in themselves, are not objects of
praise, nor do they merit the acclamations of men, when destitute of
righteousness: this only renders everything else adorable; and this
adorns the Divine greatness with an amiableness (Isa. xii. 6): “Great
is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee;” and makes his might
worthy of praise (Luke i. 49). In honoring this, which is the soul and
spirit of all the rest, we give a glory to all the perfections which
constitute and beautify his nature: and without the glorifying this
we glorify nothing of them, though we should extol every other single
attribute a thousand times. He values no other adoration of his
creatures, unless this be interested, nor accepts anything as a glory
from them (Lev. x. 3) “I will be sanctified in them that come near me,
and I will be glorified:” as if he had said, In manifesting my name
to be holy, you truly, you only honor me. And as the Scripture seldom
speaks of this perfection without a particular emphasis, it teaches us
not to think of it without a special elevation of heart: by this act
only, while we are on earth, can we join consort with the angels in
heaven; he that doth not honor it, delight in it, and in the meditation
of it, hath no resemblance of it; he hath none of the image, that
delights not in the original. Everything of God is glorious, but this
most of all. If he built the world principally for anything, it was
for the communication of his goodness, and display of his holiness.
He formed the rational creature to manifest his holiness in that law
whereby he was to be governed: then deprive not God of the design of
his own glory. We honor this attribute,
1. When we make it the ground of our love to God. Not because he is
gracious to us, but holy in himself. As God honors it, {b197} in loving
himself for it, we should honor it, by pitching our affections upon him
chiefly for it. What renders God amiable to himself, should render him
lovely to all his creatures (Isa. xlii. 21): “The Lord is well pleased
for his righteousness’ sake.” If the hatred of evil be the immediate
result of a love to God, then the peculiar object or term of our love
to God, must be that perfection which stands in direct opposition to
the hatred of evil (Ps. xcvii. 10): “Ye that love the Lord, hate evil.”
When we honor his holiness in every stamp and impression of it: his law,
not principally because of its usefulness to us, its accommodateness
to the order of the world, but for its innate purity; and his people,
not for our interest in them, so much as for bearing upon them this
glittering mark of the Deity, we honor then the purity of the Lawgiver,
and the excellency of the Sanctifier.
2. We honor it, when we regard chiefly the illustrious appearance of
this in his judgments in the world. In a case of temporal judgment,
Moses celebrates it in the text; in a case of spiritual judgments, the
angels applaud it in Isaiah. All his severe proceedings are nothing
but the strong breathings of this attribute. Purity is the flash of his
revenging sword. If he did not hate evil, his vengeance would not reach
the committers of it. He is a “refiner’s fire” in the day of his anger
(Mal. iii. 2). By his separating judgments, “he takes away the wicked
of the earth like dross” (Ps. cxix. 119). How is his holiness honored,
when we take notice of his sweeping out the rubbish of the world; how
he suits punishment to sin, and discovers his hatred of the matter
and circumstances of the evil, in the matter and circumstances of the
judgment. This perfection is legible in every stroke of his sword; we
honor it when we read the syllables of it, and not by standing amazed
only at the greatness and severity of the blow, when we read how holy
he is in his most terrible dispensations: for as in them God magnifies
the greatness of his power, so he sanctifies himself; that is, declares
the purity of his nature as a revenger of all impiety (Ezek. xxxviii.
22, 23); “And I will plead against him with pestilence, and with blood:
and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the people
that are with him, an overflowing rain and great hailstones; fire, and
brimstone. Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself.”
3. We honor this attribute, when we take notice of it in every
accomplishment of his promise, and every grant of a mercy. His truth
is but a branch of his righteousness, a slip from this root. He is
glorious in holiness in the account of Moses, because he “led forth his
people whom he had redeemed” (Exod. xv. 13); his people by a covenant
with their fathers, being the God of Moses, the God of Israel, and
the God of their fathers (ver. 2). “My God, and my father’s God, I
will exalt thee.” For what? for his faithfulness to his promise. The
holiness of God, which Mary (Luke i. 49) magnifies, is summed up in
this, the help he afforded his servant Israel in the “remembrance of
his mercy, as he spake to our fathers, to Abraham and his seed forever”
(ver. 54, 55). The certainty of his covenant mercy depends upon an
unchangeableness of his holiness. What are “sure mercies,” (Isa. lv. 3),
are holy mercies in the Septuagint, {b198} and in Acts xiii. 34, which
makes that translation canonical. His nearness to answer us, when we
call upon him for such mercies, is a fruit of the holiness of his name
and nature (Ps. clxv. 17). “The Lord is holy in all his works; the Lord
is nigh to all them that call upon him.” Hannah, after a return of
prayer, sets a particular mark upon this, in her song (1 Sam. ii. 2);
“There is none holy as the Lord;” separated from all dross, firm to
his covenant, and righteous in it to his suppliants, that confide
in him, and plead his word. When we observe the workings of this in
every return of prayer, we honor it; it is a sign the mercy is really
a return of prayer, and not a mercy of course, bearing upon it only the
characters of a common providence. This was the perfection David would
bless, for the catalogue of mercies in Ps. ciii. 1, &c.; “Bless his
holy name.” Certainly, one reason why sincere prayer is so delightful
to him, is because it puts him upon the exercise of this his beloved
perfection, which he so much delighteth to honor. Since God acts in all
those as the governor of the world, we honor him not, unless we take
notice of that righteousness which fits him for a governor, and is
the inward spring of all his motions (Gen. xviii. 25). “Shall not the
Judge of all the earth do right?” It was his design in his pity to
Israel, as well as the calamities he intended against the heathens, to
be “sanctified in them;” that is, declared holy in his merciful as well
as his judicial procedure (Ezek. xxxvi. 21, 23). Hereby God credits his
righteousness, which seemed to be forgotten by the one, and contemned
by the other;[934] he removes, by this, all suspicion of unfaithfulness
in him.
4. We honor this attribute, when we trust his covenant, and promise
against outward appearances. Thus our Saviour, in the prophecy of him
(Ps. xxii. 2‒4), when God seemed to bar up the gates of his palace
against the entry of any more petitions, this attribute proves the
support of the Redeemer’s soul; “But thou art holy, O thou that
inhabitest the praises of Israel:” as it refers to what goes before,
it has been twice explained; as it refers to what follows, it is a
ground of trust; “Thou inhabitest the praises of Israel:” thou hast
had the praises of Israel for many ages, for thy holiness. How? “Our
fathers trusted in thee, and thou didst deliver them;” they honored
thy holiness by their trust, and thou didst honor their faith by
a deliverance; thou always hadst a purity that would not shame nor
confound them. I will trust in thee as thou art holy, and expect the
breaking out of this attribute for my good as well as my predecessors;
“Our fathers trusted in thee,” &c.
5. We honor this attribute, when we show a greater affection to the
marks of his holiness in times of the greatest contempt of it. As the
Psalmist (Ps. cxix. 126, 127); “They have made void thy law, therefore
I love thy commandments above gold;” while they spurn at the purity
of thy law, I will value it above the gold they possess; I will esteem
it as gold, because others count it as dross; by their scorn of it,
my love to it shall be the warmer; and my hatred of iniquity shall be
the sharper: the disdain of others should inflame us with a zeal and
fortitude to appear in behalf of his despised honor. {b199} We honor
this holiness many other ways; by preparation for our addresses to him,
out of a sense of his purity; when we imitate it: as He honors us by
“teaching us his statutes” (Ps. cxix. 135), so we honor him by learning
and observing them. When we beg of him to show himself a refiner of
us, to make us more conformable to him in holiness, and bless him for
any communication of it to us, it renders us beautiful and lovely in
his sight. To conclude: to honor it, is the way to engage it for us;
to give it the glory of what it hath done, by the arm of power for
our rescue from sin, and beating down our corruptions at his feet,
is the way to see more of its marvellous works, and behold a clearer
brightness. As unthankfulness makes him withdraw his grace (Rom. i. 21,
24), so glorifying him causes him to impart it. God honors men in the
same way they honor him; when we honor him by acknowledging his purity,
he will honor us by communicating of it to us. This is the way to
derive a greater excellency to our souls.
_Exhort. 3._ Since holiness is an eminent perfection of the Divine
nature, let us labor after a conformity to God in this perfection. The
nature of God is presented to us in the Scripture, both as a pattern to
imitate, and a motive to persuade the creature to holiness (1 John iii.
3; Matt. v. 48; Lev. xi. 44; 1 Pet. i. 15, 16). Since it is, therefore,
the nature of God, the more our natures are beautified with it, the
more like we are to the Divine nature. It is not the pattern of angels,
or archangels, that our Saviour, or his apostle, proposeth for our
imitation; but the original of all purity, God himself; the same that
created us, to be imitated by us. Nor is an equal degree of purity
enjoined us; though we are to be pure, and perfect, and merciful
as God is, yet not essentially so; for that would be to command us
an impossibility in itself; as much as to order us to cease to be
creatures, and commence gods. No creature can be essentially holy but
by participation from the chief Fountain of Holiness; but we must have
the same kind of holiness, the same truth of holiness. As a short line
may be as straight as another, though it parallel it not in the immense
length of it; a copy may have the likeness of the original, though not
the same perfection; we cannot be good, without eyeing some exemplar
of goodness as the pattern. No pattern is so suitable as that which is
the highest goodness and purity. That limner that would draw the most
excellent piece, fixes his eyes upon the most perfect pattern. He that
would be a good orator, or poet, or artificer, considers some person
most excellent in each kind, as the object of his imitation. Who so
fit as God to be viewed as the pattern of holiness, in our intendment
of, and endeavor after holiness? The Stoics, one of the best sects
of philosophers, advised their disciples to pitch upon some eminent
example of virtue, according to which to form their lives; as Socrates,
&c. But true holiness doth not only endeavor to live the life of a
good man, but chooses to live a divine life; as before the man was
“alienated from the life of God” (Eph. iv. 19), so, upon his return, he
aspires after the life of God. To endeavor to be like a good man is to
make one image like another; to set our clocks by other clocks, without
regarding the sun: but true holiness consists in a likeness to the most
exact sampler. God {b200} being the first purity, is the rule as well
as the spring of all purity in the creature, the chief and first object
of imitation. We disown ourselves to be his creatures, if we breathe
not after a resemblance to him in what he is imitable. There was in man,
as created according to God’s image, a natural appetite to resemble God:
it was at first planted in him by the Author of his nature. The devil’s
temptation of him by that motive to transgress the law, had been as
an arrow shot against a brazen wall, had there not been a desire of
some likeness to his Creator engraven upon him (Gen. iii. 5): it would
have had no more influence upon him, than it could have had upon a
mere animal. But man mistook the term; he would have been like God in
knowledge, whereas, he should have affected a greater resemblance of
him in purity. O that we could exemplify God in our nature! Precepts
may instruct us more, but examples affect us more; one directs us, but
the other attracts us. What can be more attractive of our imitation,
than that which is the original of all purity, both in men and angels?
This conformity to him consists in an imitation of him,
1. In his law. The purity of his nature was first visible in this
glass; hence, it is called a “holy” law (Rom. vii. 12); a “pure”
law (Ps. xix. 8). Holy and pure, as it is a ray of the pure nature
of the Lawgiver. When our lives are a comment upon his law, they are
expressive of his holiness: we conform to his holiness when we regulate
ourselves by his law, as it is a transcript of his holiness: we do not
imitate it, when we do a thing in the matter of it agreeable to that
holy rule, but when we do it with respect to the purity of the Lawgiver
beaming in it. If it be agreeable to God’s will, and convenient for
some design of our own, and we do anything only with a respect to that
design, we make not God’s holiness discovered in the law our rule, but
our own conveniency: it is not a conformity to God, but a conformity
of our actions to _self_. As in abstinence from intemperate courses,
not because the holiness of God in his law hath prescribed it, but
because the health of our bodies, or some noble contentments of life,
require it; then it is not God’s holiness that is our rule, but our
own security, conveniency, or something else which we make a God to
ourselves. It must be a real conformity to the law: our holiness should
shine as really in the practice, as God’s purity doth in the precept.
God hath not a pretence of purity in his nature, but a reality: it is
not only a sudden boiling up of an admiration of him, or a starting
wish to be like him, from some sudden impression upon the fancy,
which is a mere temporary blaze, but a settled temper of soul, loving
everything that is like him, doing things out of a firm desire to
resemble his purity in the copy he hath set; not a resting in negatives,
but aspiring to positives; holy and harmless are distinct things: they
were distinct qualifications in our High Priest in his obedience to the
law (Heb. vii. 26), so they must be in us.
2. In his Christ. As the law is the transcript, so Christ is the
image of his holiness: the glory of God is too dazzling to be beheld
by us: the acute eye of an angel is too weak to look upon that bright
sun without covering his face: we are much too weak to take {b201} our
measures from that purity which is infinite in his nature. But he hath
made his Son like us, that by the imitation of him in that temper, and
shadow of human flesh, we may arrive to a resemblance of him (2 Cor.
iii. 18). Then there is a conformity to him, when that which Christ did
is drawn in lively colors in the soul of a Christian; when, as he died
upon the cross, we die to our sins; as he rose from the grave, we rise
from our lusts; as he ascended on high, we mount our souls thither;
when we express in our lives what shined in his, and exemplify in our
hearts what he acted in the world, and become one with him, as he was
separate from sinners. The holiness of God in Christ is our ultimate
pattern: as we are not only to believe in Christ, but “by Christ in
God” (John xiv. 1), so we are not only to imitate Christ, but the
holiness of God as discovered in Christ. And, to enforce this upon us,
let us consider,
(1.) It is this only wherein he commands our imitation of him. We
are not commanded to be mighty and wise, as God is mighty and wise: but
“be holy, as I am holy.” The declarations of his power are to enforce
our subjection; those of his wisdom, to encourage our direction by him;
but this only to attract our imitation. When he saith, “I am holy,”
the immediate inference he makes, is, “Be ye so too,” which is not
the proper instruction from any other perfection.[935] Man was created
by Divine power, and harmonized by Divine wisdom, but not after them,
or according to them, as the true image; this was the prerogative
of Divine holiness, to be the pattern of his rational creature:[936]
wisdom and power were subservient to this, the one as the pencil,
the other as the hand that moved it. The condition of a creature is
too mean to have the communications of the Divine essence; the true
impressions of his righteousness and goodness we are only capable of.
It is only in those moral perfections we are said to resemble God.
The devils, those impure and ruined spirits, are nearer to him in
strength and knowledge than we are; yet in regard of that natural and
intellectual perfection, never counted like him, but at the greatest
distance from him, because at the greatest distance from his purity.
God values not a natural might, nor an acute understanding, nor
vouchsafes such perfections the glorious title of that of his image.
Plutarch saith, God is angry with those that imitate his thunder or
lightning, his works of majesty, but delighted with those that imitate
his virtue.[937] In this only we can never incur any reproof from him,
but for falling short of him and his glory. Had Adam endeavored after
an imitation of this, instead of that of Divine knowledge, he had
escaped his fall, and preserved his standing; and had Lucifer wished
himself like God in this, as well as his dominion, he had still been
a glorious angel, instead of being now a ghastly devil: to reach after
a union with the Supreme Being, in regard of holiness, is the only
generous and commendable ambition.
(2.) This is the prime way of honoring God. We do not so glorify God by
elevated admirations, or eloquent expressions, or pompous services of
him, as when we aspire to a conversing with him with unstained spirits,
and live to him in living like him. The angels are {b202} not called
holy for applauding his purity, but conforming to it. The more perfect
any creature is in the rank of beings, the more is the Creator honored;
as it is more for the honor of God to create an angel or man, than a
mere animal; because there are in such clearer characters of Divine
power and goodness, than in those that are inferior. The more perfect
any creature is morally, the more is God glorified by that creature;
it is a real declaration, that God is the best and most amiable Being;
that nothing besides him is valuable, and worthy to be object of our
imitation. It is a greater honoring of him, than the highest acts of
devotion, and the most religious bodily exercise, or the singing this
song of Moses in the text, with a triumphant spirit; as it is more the
honor of a father to be imitated in his virtues by his son, than to
have all the glavering commendations by the tongue or pen of a vicious
and debauched child. By this we honor him in that perfection which is
dearest to him, and counted by him as the chiefest glory of his nature.
God seems to accept the glorifying this attribute, as if it were a real
addition to that holiness which is infinite in his nature, and because
infinite, cannot admit of any increase: and, therefore, the word
sanctified is used instead of glorified. (Isa. viii. 13), “Sanctify the
Lord of Hosts himself, and let him be your fear, and let him be your
dread.” And (Isa. xxix. 23), “They shall sanctify the holy One of Jacob,
and fear the God of Israel.” This sanctification of God is by the
fear of him, which signifies in the language of the Old Testament, a
reverence of him, and a righteousness before him. He doth not say, when
he would have his power or wisdom glorified, Empower me or make me wise;
but when he would have his holiness glorified by the creature, it is,
Sanctify me; that is, manifest the purity of my nature by the holiness
of your lives: but he expresseth it in such a term, as if it were an
addition to this infinite perfection; so acceptable it is to him, as if
it were a contribution from his creature for the enlarging an attribute
so pleasing to him, and so glorious in his eye. It is, as much as in
the creature lies, a preserving the life of God, since this perfection
is his life; and that he would as soon part with his life as part
with his purity. It keeps up the reputation of God in the world, and
attracts others to a love of him; whereas, unworthy carriages defame
God in the eyes of men, and bring up an ill report of him, as if he
were such an one as those that profess him, and walk unsuitably to
their profession, appear to be.
(3.) This is the excellency and beauty of a creature. The title of
“beauty” is given to it in Ps. cx. 3; “beauties,” in the plural number,
as comprehending it in all other beauties whatsoever. What is a Divine
excellency cannot be a creature’s deformity: the natural beauty of it
is a representation of the Divinity; and a holy man ought to esteem
himself excellent in being such in his measure as his God is, and puts
his principal felicity in the possession of the same purity in truth.
This is the refined complexion of the angels that stand before his
throne. The devils lost their comeliness when they fell from it. It
was the honor of the human nature of our Saviour, not only to be united
to the Deity, but to be sanctified by it. He was “fairer than all the
children of men,” because he had a holiness above the children {b203}
of men: “grace was poured into his lips” (Ps. xlv. 2). It was the
jewel of the reasonable nature in paradise: conformity to God was
man’s original happiness in his created state; and what was naturally
so, cannot but be immutably so in its own nature. The beauty of every
copied thing consists in its likeness to the original; everything hath
more of loveliness, as it hath greater impressions of its first pattern:
in this regard holiness hath more of beauty on it than the whole
creation, because it partakes of a greater excellency of God than the
sun, moon, and stars. No greater glory can be, than to be a conspicuous
and visible image of the invisible, and holy, and blessed God. As this
is the splendor of all the Divine attributes, so it is the flower of
all a christian’s graces, the crown of all religion: it is the glory
of the Spirit. In this regard the king’s daughter is said to be “all
glorious within” (Ps. xlv. 13). It is more excellent than the soul
itself, since the greatest soul is but a deformed piece without it: a
“diamond without lustre.”[938] What are the noble faculties of the soul
without it, but as a curious rusty watch, a delicate heap of disorder
and confusion? It is impossible there can be beauty where there are
a multitude of “spots and wrinkles” that blemish a countenance (Eph.
v. 27). It can never be in its true brightness but when it is perfect
in purity; when it regains what it was possessed of by creation, and
dispossessed of by the fall, and recovers its primitive temper. We
are not so beautiful by being the work of God, as by having a stamp of
God upon us. Worldly greatness may make men honorable in the sight of
creeping worms. Soft lives, ambitious reaches, luxurious pleasures, and
a pompous religion, render no man excellent and noble in the sight of
God: this is not the excellency and nobility of the Deity which we are
bound to resemble; other lines of a Divine image must be drawn in us to
render us truly excellent.
(4.) It is our life. What is the life of God is truly the life of
a rational creature.[939] The life of the body consists not in the
perfection of its members, and the integrity of its organs; these
remain when the body becomes a carcass; but in the presence of the
soul, and its vigorous animation of every part to perform the distinct
offices belonging to each of them. The life of the soul consists not in
its being, or spiritual substance, or the excellency of its faculties
of understanding and will, but in the moral and becoming operations of
them. The spirit is only “life because of righteousness” (Rom. viii.
10). The faculties are turned by it, to acquit themselves in their
functions, according to the will of God; the absence of this doth not
only deform the soul, but, in a sort, annihilate it, in regard of its
true essence and end. Grace gives a Christian being, and a want of
it is the want of a true being (1 Cor. xv. 10). When Adam divested
himself of his original righteousness, he came under the force of the
threatening, in regard of a spiritual death; every person is “morally
dead while he lives” an unholy life (1 Tim. v. 6). What life is to the
body, that is righteousness to the spirit; and the greater measure of
holiness it hath, the more of life it hath, because it is in a {b204}
greater nearness, and partakes more fully of the fountain of life.
Is not that the most worthy life, which God makes most account of,
without which his life could not be a pleasant and blessed life, but a
life worse than death? What a miserable life is that of the men of the
world, that are carried, with greedy inclinations, to all manner of
unrighteousness, whither their interests or their lusts invite them!
The most beautiful body is a carcass, and the most honorable person
hath but a brutish life (Ps. xlix. 20); miserable creatures when their
life shall be extinct without a Divine rectitude, when all other things
will vanish as the shadows of the night at the appearance of the sun!
Holiness is our life.
(5.) It is this only fits us for communion with God. Since it is
our beauty and our life, without it what communion can an excellent
God have with deformed creatures; a living God with dead creatures?
“Without holiness none shall see God” (Heb. xii. 14). The creature must
be stripped of his unrighteousness, or God of his purity, before they
can come together. Likeness is the ground of communion, and of delight
in it: the opposition between God and unholy souls is as great as that
between “light and darkness” (1 John i. 6). Divine fruition is not so
much by a union of presence as a union of nature. Heaven is not so much
an outward as an inward life; the foundation of glory is laid in grace;
a resemblance to God is our vital happiness, without which the vision
of God would not be so much as a cloudy and shadowy happiness, but
rather a torment than a felicity; unless we be of a like nature to God,
we cannot have a pleasing fruition of him. Some philosophers think that
if our bodies were of the same nature with the heavens, of an ethereal
substance, the nearness to the sun would cherish, not scorch us. Were
we partakers of a Divine nature, we might enjoy God with delight;
whereas, remaining in our unlikeness to him, we cannot think of him,
and approach to him without terror. As soon as sin had stripped man
of the image of God, he was an exile from the comfortable presence of
God, unworthy for God to hold any correspondence with: he can no more
delight in a defiled person than a man can take a toad into intimate
converse with him; he would hereby discredit his own nature, and
justify our impurity. The holiness of a creature only prepares him for
an eternal conjunction with God in glory. Enoch’s walking with God was
the cause of his being so soon wafted to the place of a full fruition
of him; he hath as much delight in such as in heaven itself; one is his
habitation as well as the other; the one is his habitation of glory,
and the other is the house of his pleasure: if he dwell in Zion, it
must be a “holy mountain” (Joel iii. 17), and the members of Zion must
be upheld in their rectitude and integrity before they be “set before
the face of God forever” (Ps. xli. 12). Such are styled his jewels, his
portion, as if he lived upon them, as a man upon his inheritance. As
God cannot delight in us, so neither can we delight in God without
it. We must purify ourselves “as he is pure,” if we expect to “see him
as he is,” in the comfortable glory and beauty of his nature (1 John
iii. 2, 3), else the sight of God would be terrible and troublesome:
we cannot be satisfied with the likeness of God at the resurrection,
unless we have a righteousness {b205} wherewith to “behold his face”
(Ps. xvii. 15). It is a vain imagination in any to think that heaven
can be a place of happiness to him, in whose eye the beauty of holiness
which fills and adorns it, is an unlovely thing; or that any can have
a satisfaction in that Divine purity which is loathsome to him in the
imitations of it. We cannot enjoy him, unless we resemble him; nor take
any pleasure in him, if we were with him, without something of likeness
to him. Holiness fits us for communion with God.
(6.) We can have no evidence of our election and adoption without it.
Conformity to God, in purity, is the fruit of electing love (Eph. i. 4);
“He hath chosen us that we should be holy.” The goodness of the fruit
evidenceth the nature of the root: this is the seal that assures us the
patent is the authentic grant of the Prince. Whatsoever is holy, speaks
itself to be from God; and whosoever is holy, speaks himself to belong
to God. This is the only evidence that “we are born of God” (1 John ii.
29). The subduing our souls to him, the forming us into a resemblance
to himself, is a more certain sign we belong to him, than if we had,
with Isaiah, seen his glory in the vision, with all his train of angels
about him. This justifies us to be the seed of God, when he hath, as it
were, taken a slip from his own purity, and engrafted it in our spirits:
he can never own us for his children without his mark, the stamp of
holiness. The devil’s stamp is none of God’s badge. Our spiritual
extraction from him is but pretended, unless we do things worthy of
so illustrious a birth, and becoming the honor of so great a Father:
what evidence can we else have of any child‑like love to God, since the
proper act of love is to imitate the object of our affections? And that
we may be in some measure like to God in this excellent perfection.
1st. Let us be often viewing and ruminating on the holiness of God,
especially as discovered in Christ. It is by a believing meditation
on him, that we are “changed into the same image” (2 Cor. iii. 18).
We can think often of nothing that is excellent in the world, but
it draws our faculties to some kind of suitable operation; and why
should not such an excellent idea of the holiness of God in Christ
perfect our understandings, and awaken all the powers of our souls to
be formed to actions worthy of him? A painter employed in the limning
some excellent piece, has not only his pattern before his eyes, but his
eye frequently upon the pattern, to possess his fancy to draw forth an
exact resemblance. He that would express the image of God, must imprint
upon his mind the purity of his nature; cherish it in his thoughts,
that the excellent beauty of it may pass from his understanding to his
affections, and from his affections to his practice. How can we arise
to a conformity to God in Christ, whose most holy nature we seldom
glance upon, and more rarely sink our souls into the depths of it by
meditation! Be frequent in the meditation of the holiness of God.
2d. Let us often exercise ourselves in acts of love to God, because
of this perfection. The more adoring thoughts we have of God, the more
delightfully we shall aspire to, and more ravishingly catch after,
anything that may promote the more full draught of his Divine image in
our hearts. What we intensely affect, we desire to {b206} be as near
to as we can, and to be that very thing, rather than ourselves. All
imitations of others arise from an intense love to their persons or
excellency. When the soul is ravished with this perfection of God, it
will desire to be united with it; to have it drawn in it, more than
to have its own being continued to it: it will desire and delight
in its own being, in order to this heavenly and spiritual work. The
impressions of the nature of God upon it, and the imitations of the
nature of God by it, will be more desirable than any natural perfection
whatsoever. The will in loving is rendered like the object beloved;
is turned into its nature,[940] and imbibes its qualities. The soul,
by loving God, will find itself more and more transformed into the
Divine image; whereas, slighted ensamples are never thought worthy of
imitation.
3d. Let us make God our end. Every man’s mind forms itself to a
likeness to that which it makes its chief end. An earthly soul is as
drossy as the earth he gapes for; an ambitious soul is as elevated
as the honor he reaches at; the same characters that are upon the
thing aimed at, will be imprinted upon the spirit of him that aims at
it. When God and his glory are made our end, we shall find a silent
likeness pass in upon us; the beauty of God will by degrees enter upon
our souls.
4th. In every deliberate action, let us reflect upon the Divine
purity as a pattern. Let us examine whether anything we are prompted
unto bear an impression of God upon it; whether it looks like a thing
that God himself would do in that case, were he in our natures and
in our circumstances. See whether it hath the livery of God upon it,
how congruous it is to his nature; whether, and in what manner, the
holiness of God can be glorified thereby; and let us be industrious
in all this; for can such an imitation be easy which is resisted by
the constant assaults of the flesh, which is discouraged by our own
ignorance, and depressed by our faint and languishing desires after
it? O! happy we, if there were such a heart in us!
_Exhort. 4._ If holiness be a perfection belonging to the nature of
God; then, where there is some weak conformity to the holiness of God,
let us labor to grow up in it, and breathe after fuller measures of it.
The more likeness we have to him, the more love we shall have from him.
Communion will be suitable to our imitation; his love to himself in
his essence, will cast out beams of love to himself in his image. If
God loves holiness in a lower measure, much more will he love it in a
higher degree, because then his image is more illustrious and beautiful,
and comes nearer to the lively lineaments of his own infinite purity.
Perfection in anything is more lovely and amiable than imperfection in
any state; and the nearer anything arrives to perfection, the further
are those things separated from it which might cool an affection to it.
An increase in holiness is attended with a manifestation of his love
(John xiv. 21): “He that hath my commandments, and keeps them, he it is
that loves me, and he shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him,
and I will manifest myself to him.” It is a testimony of love to God,
and God will not be behind‑hand with the creature in kindness; {b207}
he loves a holy man for some resemblance to him in his nature; but when
there is an abounding in sanctified dispositions suitable to it, there
is an increase of favor; the more we resemble the original, the more
shall we enjoy the blessedness of that original: as any partake more of
the Divine likeness, they partake more of the Divine happiness.
_Exhort. 5._ Let us carry ourselves holily, in a spiritual manner, in
all our religious approaches to God (Ps. xciii. 5); “Holiness becomes
thy house, O Lord, for ever.” This attribute should work in us a deep
and reverential respect to God. This is the reason rendered why we
should “worship at his footstool,” in the lowest posture of humility
prostrate before him, because “he is holy” (Ps. xcix. 5). Shoes must
be put off from our feet (Exod. iii. 5), that is, lusts from our
affections, everything that our souls are clogged and bemired with,
as the shoe is with dirt. He is not willing we should offer to him an
impure soul, mired hearts, rotten carcasses, putrefied in vice, rotten
in iniquity; our services are to be as free from profaneness, as the
sacrifices of the law were to be free from sickliness or any blemish.
Whatsoever is contrary to his purity, is abhorred by him, and unlovely
in his sight; and can meet with no other success at his hands, but a
disdainful turning away both of his eye and ear (Isa. i. 15). Since he
is an immense purity, he will reject from his presence, and from having
any communion with him, all that which is not conformable to him; as
light chases away the darkness of the night, and will not mix with it.
If we “stretch out” our “hands towards him,” we must “put iniquity far
away from us” (Job xi. 13, 14); the fruits of all service will else
drop off to nothing. “Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be
pleasant to the Lord:” when? when the heart is purged by Christ sitting
as a “purifier of silver” (Mal. iii. 3, 4). Not all the incense of the
Indies yield him so sweet a savor, as one spiritual act of worship from
a heart estranged from the vileness of the world, and ravished with an
affection to, and a desire of imitating, the purity of his nature.
_Exhort. 6._ Let us address for holiness to God, the fountain of it. As
he is the author of bodily life in the creature, so he is the author of
his own life, the life of God in the soul. By his holiness he makes men
holy, as the sun by his light enlightens the air. He is not only the
Holy One, but our Holy One (Isa. xliii. 15); “The Lord that sanctifies
us” (Levit. xx. 8). As he hath mercy to pardon us, so he hath holiness
to purify us, the excellency of being a sun to comfort us, and a shield
to protect us, giving “grace and glory” (Ps. lxxiv. 11). Grace whereby
we may have communion with him to our comfort, and strength against our
spiritual enemies for our defence; grace as our preparatory to glory,
and grace growing up till it ripen in glory. He only can mould us into
a Divine frame; the great original can only derive the excellency of
his own nature to us. We are too low, too lame, to lift up ourselves
to it; too much in love with our own deformity, to admit of this beauty
without a heavenly power inclining our desires for it, our affections
to it, our willingness to be partakers of it. He can as soon set the
beauty of holiness in {b208} a deformed heart, as the beauty of harmony
in a confused mass, when he made the world. He can as soon cause the
light of purity to rise out of the darkness of corruption, as frame
glorious spirits out of the insufficiency of nothing. His beauty doth
not decay; he hath as much in himself now as he had in his eternity;
he is as ready to impart it, as he was at the creation; only we must
wait upon him for it, and be content to have it by small measures and
degrees. There is no fear of our sanctification, if we come to him as
a God of holiness, since he is a God of peace, and the breach made by
Adam is repaired by Christ (1 Thess. v. 23): “And the very God of peace
sanctify you wholly,” &c. He restores the sanctifying Spirit which
was withdrawn by the fall, as he is a God pacified, and his holiness
righted by the Redeemer. The beauty of it appears in its smiles upon
a man in Christ, and is as ready to impart itself to the reconciled
creature, as before justice was to punish the rebellious one. He loves
to send forth the streams of this perfection into created channels,
more than any else. He did not design the making the creature so
powerful as he might, because power is not such an excellency in his
own nature, but as it is conducted and managed by some other excellency.
Power is indifferent, and may be used well or ill, according as the
possessor of it is righteous or unrighteous. God makes not the creature
so powerful as he might, but he delights to make the creature that
waits upon him as holy as it can be; beginning it in this world, and
ripening it in the other. It is from him we must expect it, and from
him that we must beg it, and draw arguments from the holiness of his
nature, to move him to work holiness in our spirits; we cannot have a
stronger plea. Purity is the favorite of his own nature, and delights
itself in the resemblances of it in the creature. Let us also go to God,
to preserve what he hath already wrought and imparted. As we cannot
attain it, so we cannot maintain it without him. God gave it Adam,
and he lost it; when God gives it us, we shall lose it without his
influencing and preserving grace; the channel will be without a stream,
if the fountain do not bubble it forth; and the streams will vanish, if
the fountain doth not constantly supply them. Let us apply ourselves to
him for holiness, as he is a God glorious in holiness; by this we honor
God, and advantage ourselves.
{b209} DISCOURSE XII.
ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD.
MARK x. 18.――And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good?
There is none good but one, that is, God.
THE words are part of a reply of our Saviour to the young man’s
petition to him: a certain person came in haste, “running” as being
eager for satisfaction, to entreat his directions, what he should do to
inherit everlasting life; the person is described only in general (ver.
17), “There came one,” a certain man: but Luke describes him by his
dignity (Luke xviii. 18), “A certain ruler;” one of authority among the
Jews. He desires of him an answer to a legal question, “What he should
do?” or, as Matthew hath it, “What good thing shall I do, that I may
have eternal life” (Matt. xix. 16)? He imagined everlasting felicity
was to be purchased by the works of the law; he had not the least
sentiments of faith: Christ’s answer implies, there was no hopes of the
happiness of another world by the works of the law, unless they were
perfect, and answerable to every divine precept. He doth not seem to
have any ill, or hypocritical intent in his address to Christ; not to
tempt him, but to be instructed by him. He seems to come with an ardent
desire, to be satisfied in his demand; he performed a solemn act of
respect to him, he kneeled to him, γονυπετήσας, prostrated himself
upon the ground; besides, Christ is said (ver. 21) to love him, which
had been inconsistent with the knowledge Christ had of the hearts and
thoughts of men, and the abhorrence he had of hypocrites, had he been
only a counterfeit in this question. But the first reply Christ makes
to him, respects the title of “Good Master,” which this ruler gave him
in his salutation.
1st. Some think, that Christ hereby would draw him to an
acknowledgment of him as God; you acknowledge me “good;” how come you
to salute me with so great a title, since you do not afford it to your
greatest doctors? Lightfoot, _in loc._ observes, that the title of
_Rabbi bone_ is not in all the Talmud. You must own me to be God, since
you own me to be “good:” goodness being a title only due, and properly
belonging, to the Supreme Being. If you take me for a common man, with
what conscience can you salute me in a manner proper to God? since no
man is “good,” no, not one, but the heart of man is evil continually.
The Arians used this place, to back their denying the Deity of Christ:
because, say they, he did not acknowledge himself “good,” therefore he
did not acknowledge himself God. But he doth not here deny his Deity,
but reproves {b210} him for calling him good, when he had not yet
confessed him to be more than a man.[941] You behold my flesh, but
you consider not the fulness of my Deity; if you account me “good,”
account me God, and imagine me not to be a simple and a mere man.[942]
He disowns not his own Deity, but allures the young man to a confession
of it. Why callest thou me good, since thou dost not discover any
apprehensions of my being more than a man? Though thou comest with a
greater esteem to me than is commonly entertained of the doctors of the
chair, why dost thou own me to be “good,” unless thou own me to be God?
If Christ had denied himself in this speech to be “good,” he had rather
entertained this person with a frown and a sharp reproof for giving him
a title due to God alone, than have received him with that courtesy and
complaisance as he did.[943] Had he said, there is none “good” but the
Father, he had excluded himself; but in saying, there is none “good”
but God, he comprehends himself.
2d. Others say, that Christ had no intention to draw him to an
acknowledgment of his Deity, but only asserts his divine authority
or mission from God. For which interpretation Maldonat calls Calvin
an Arianizer.[944] He doth not here assert the essence of his Deity,
but the authority of his doctrine; as if he should have said, You do
without ground give me the title of “good,” unless you believe I have
a Divine commission for what I declare and act. Many do think me an
impostor, an enemy of God, and a friend to devils; you must firmly
believe that I am not so, as your rulers report me, but that I am sent
of God, and authorized by him; you cannot else give me the title of
good, but of wicked. And the reason they give for this interpretation,
is, because it is a question, whether any of the apostles understood
him, at this time, to be God, which seems to have no great strength in
it; since not only the devil had publicly owned him to be the “Holy One
of God” (Luke iv. 34), but John the Baptist had borne record, that he
was the “Son of God” (John i. 32, 34); and before this time Peter had
confessed him openly, in the hearing of the rest of the disciples, that
he was “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. xvi. 16). But I
think Paræus’ interpretation is best, which takes in both those; either
you are serious or deceitful in this address; if you are serious, why
do you call me “good,” and make bold to fix so great a title upon one
you have no higher thoughts of than a mere man? Christ takes occasion
from hence, to assert God to be only and sovereignly “good:” “There is
none good but God.”[945] God only hath the honor of absolute goodness,
and none but God merits the name of “good.” A heathen could say much
after the same manner; All other things are far from the nature of good;
call none else good but God, for this would be a profane error: other
things are only good in opinion, but have not the true substance of
goodness: he is “good” in a more excellent way than any creature can be
denominated “good.”[946]
1. God is only originally good, good of himself. All created goodness
is a rivulet from this fountain, but Divine goodness hath {b211} no
spring; God depends upon no other for his goodness; he hath it in, and
of, himself: man hath no goodness from himself, God hath no goodness
from without himself: his goodness is no more derived from another than
his being: if we were good by any external thing, that thing must be in
being before him, or after him; if before him, he was not then himself
from eternity; if after him, he was not good in himself from eternity.
The end of his creating things, then, was not to confer a goodness upon
his creatures, but to partake of a goodness from his creatures. God is
good by and in himself, since all things are only good by him; and all
that goodness which is in creatures, is but the breathing of his own
goodness upon them: they have all their loveliness from the same hand
they have their being from. Though by creation God was declared good,
yet he was not made good by any, or by all the creatures. He partakes
of none, but all things partake of him. He is so good, that he gives
all, and receives nothing; only good, because nothing is good but by
him: nothing hath a goodness but from him.
2. God only is infinitely good. A boundless goodness that knows no
limits, a goodness as infinite as his essence, not only good, but best;
not only good, but goodness itself, the supreme inconceivable goodness.
All things else are but little particles of God, small sparks from this
immense flame, sips of goodness to this fountain. Nothing that is good
by his influence can equal him who is good by himself: derived goodness
can never equal primitive goodness. Divine goodness communicates itself
to a vast number of creatures in various degrees; to angels, glorified
spirits, men on earth, to every creature; and when it hath communicated
all that the present world is capable of, there is still less displayed,
than left to enrich another world. All possible creatures are not
capable of exhausting the wealth, the treasures, that Divine bounty is
filled with.
3. God is only perfectly good, because only infinitely good. He is
good without indigence, because he hath the whole nature of goodness,
not only some beams that may admit of increase of degree. As in him is
the whole nature of entity, so in him is the whole nature of excellency.
As nothing hath an absolute perfect being but God, so nothing hath an
absolutely perfect goodness but God; as the sun hath a perfection of
heat in it, but what is warmed by the sun is but imperfectly hot, and
equals not the sun in that perfection of heat wherewith it is naturally
endued. The goodness of God is the measure and rule of goodness in
everything else.
4. God only is immutably good. Other things may be perpetually good by
supernatural power, but not immutably good in their own nature. Other
things are not so good, but they may be bad; God is so good, that he
cannot be bad. It was the speech of a philosopher, that it was a hard
thing to find a good man, yea, impossible; but though it were possible
to find a good man, he would be good but for some moment, or a short
time: for though he should be good at this instant, it was above the
nature of man to continue in a habit of goodness, without going awry
and warping.[947] But “the goodness of God endureth forever” (Ps.
lii. 1). God always glitters in goodness, {b212} as the sun, which
the heathens called the visible image of the Divinity, doth with light.
There is not such a perpetual light in the sun as there is a fulness
of goodness in God; “no variableness” in him, as he is the “Father of
Lights” (James i. 17).
Before I come to the doctrine, that is, the chief scope of the words,
some remarks may be made upon the young man’s question and carriage:
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
1. The opinion of gaining eternal life by the outward observation of
the law, will appear very unsatisfactory to an inquisitive conscience.
This ruler affirmed, and certainly did confidently believe, that he had
fulfilled the law (ver. 20): “All this have I observed from my youth;”
yet he had not any full satisfaction in his own conscience; his heart
misgave, and started upon some sentiments in him, that something else
was required, and what he had done might be too weak, too short to
shoot heaven’s lock for him. And to that purpose he comes to Christ,
to receive instructions for the piecing up whatsoever was defective.
Whosoever will consider the nature of God, and the relation of a
creature, cannot with reason think, that eternal life was of itself
due from God as a recompense to Adam, had he persisted in a state of
innocence. Who can think so great a reward due, for having performed
that which a creature in that relation was obliged to do? Can any man
think another obliged to convey an inheritance of a thousand pounds per
annum upon his payment of a few farthings, unless any compact appears
to support such a conceit? And if it were not to be expected in the
integrity of nature, but only from the goodness of God, how can it be
expected since the revolt of man, and the universal deluge of natural
corruption? God owes nothing to the holiest creature; what he gives is
a present from his bounty, not the reward of the creature’s merit. And
the apostle defies all creatures, from the greatest to the least, from
the tallest angel to the lowest shrub, to bring out any one creature
that hath first given to God (Rom. xi. 35); “Who hath first given
to him, and it shall be recompensed to him again?” The duty of the
creature, and God’s gift of eternal life, is not a bargain and sale.
God gives to the creature, he doth not properly repay; for he that
repays hath received something of an equal value and worth before.
When God crowns angels and men, he bestows upon them purely what is
his own, not what is theirs by merit and and natural obligation: though
indeed, what God gives by virtue of a promise made before, is, upon the
performance of the condition, due by gracious obligation. God was not
indebted to man in innocence, but every man’s conscience may now mind
him that he is not upon the same level as in the state of integrity;
and that he cannot expect anything from God, as the salary of his merit,
but the free gift of Divine liberality. Man is obliged to the practice
of what is good, both from the excellency of the Divine precepts, and
the duty he owes to God; and cannot, without some declaration from
God, hope for any other reward, than the satisfaction of having well
acquitted himself.[948]
2. It is the disease of human nature, since its corruption, to hope
for eternal life by the tenor of the covenant of works. Though this
{b213} ruler’s conscience was not thoroughly satisfied with what he had
done, but imagined he might, for all that, fall short of eternal life,
yet he still hugs the imagination of obtaining it by doing (ver. 17);
“What shall I do, that I may inherit eternal life?” This is natural
to corrupted man. Cain thought to be accepted for the sake of his
sacrifice; and, when he found his mistake, he was so weary of seeking
happiness by doing, that he would court misery by murdering. All men
set too high a value upon their own services. Sinful creatures would
fain make God a debtor to them, and be purchasers of felicity: they
would not have it conveyed to them by God’s sovereign bounty, but by
an obligation of justice upon the value of their works. The heathens
thought God would treat men according to the merit of their services;
and it is no wonder they should have this sentiment, when the Jews,
educated by God in a wiser school, were wedded to that notion. The
Pharisees were highly fond of it: it was the only argument they used
in prayer for Divine blessing. You have one of them boasting of his
frequency in fasting, and his exactness in paying his tithes (Luke
xix. 12); as if God had been beholden to him, and could not, without
manifest wrong, deny him his demand. And Paul confesseth it to be his
own sentiment before his conversion; he accounted this “righteousness
of the law gain to him” (Phil. iii. 7); he thought, by this, to make
his market with God. The whole nation of the Jews affected it,[949]
compassing sea and land to make out a righteousness of their own, as
the Pharisees did to make proselytes. The Papists follow their steps,
and dispute for justification by the merit of works, and find out
another key of works of supererogation, to unlock heaven’s gate, than
whatever the Scripture informed us of. It is from hence, also, that men
are so ready to make faith, as a work, the cause of our justification.
Man foolishly thinks he hath enough to set up himself after he hath
proved bankrupt, and lost all his estate. This imagination is born with
us, and the best Christians may find some sparks of it in themselves,
when there are springings up of joy in their hearts, upon the more
close performance of one duty than of another; as if they had wiped off
their scores, and given God a satisfaction for their former neglects.
“We have forsaken all, and followed thee,” was the boast of his
disciples: “What shall we have, therefore?” was a branch of this root
(Matt. xix. 27). Eternal life is a gift, not by any obligation of
right, but an abundance of goodness; it is owing, not to the dignity
of our works, but the magnificent bounty of the Divine nature, and
must be sued for by the title of God’s promise, not by the title of
the creature’s services. We may observe,
3. How insufficient are some assents to Divine truth, and
some expressions of affection to Christ, without the practice of
christian precepts. This man addressed Christ with a profound respect,
acknowledging him more than an ordinary person, with a more reverential
carriage than we read any of his disciples paid to him in the days of
his flesh; he fell down at his feet, kissed his knees, as the custom
was, when they would testify the great respect they had to any eminent
person, especially to their rabbins. All this some think to be {b214}
included in the word γονυπετήσας.[950] He seems to acknowledge him the
Messiah by giving him the title of “Good,” a title they did not give
to their doctors of the chair; he breathes out his opinion, that he was
able to instruct him beyond the ability of the law; he came with a more
than ordinary affection to him, and expectation of advantage from him,
evident by his departing sad, when his expectations were frustrated by
his own perversity; it was a sign he had a high esteem of him from whom
he could not part without marks of his grief. What was the cause of his
refusing the instructions he pretended such an affection to receive?
He had possessions in the world. How soon do a few drops of worldly
advantages quench the first sparks of an ill‑grounded love to Christ!
How vain is a complimental and cringing devotion, without a supreme
preference of God, and valuation of Christ above every outward
allurement. We may observe this,
4. We should never admit anything to be ascribed to us, which is
proper to God. “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one,
that is, God.” If you do not acknowledge me God, ascribe not to me the
title of Good. It takes off all those titles which fawning flatterers
give to men, “mighty,” “invincible” to princes, “holiness” to the
pope. We call one another good, without considering how evil; and wise,
without considering how foolish; mighty, without considering how weak,
and knowing, without considering how ignorant. No man, but hath more of
wickedness than goodness; of ignorance than knowledge; of weakness than
strength. God is a jealous God of his own honor; he will not have the
creature share with him in his royal titles. It is a part of idolatry
to give men the titles which are due to God; a kind of a worship of
the creature together with the Creator. Worms will not stand out, but
assault Herod in his purple, when he usurps the prerogative of God, and
prove stiff and invincible vindicators of their Creator’s honor, when
summoned to arms by the Creator’s word (Acts xii. 22, 23).
_Doctrine._ The observation which I intend to prosecute, is this:――Pure
and perfect goodness is only the royal prerogative of God; goodness is
a choice perfection of the Divine nature. This is the true and genuine
character of God; he is good, he is goodness, good in himself, good
in his essence, good in the highest degree, possessing whatsoever is
comely, excellent, desirable; the highest good, because first good:
whatsoever is perfect goodness, is God; whatsoever is truly goodness
in any creature, is a resemblance of God.[951] All the names of God are
comprehended in this one of good. All gifts, all variety of goodness,
are contained in him as one common good. He is the efficient cause
of all good, by an overflowing goodness of his nature; he refers
all things to himself, as the end, for the representation of his own
goodness; “Truly God is good” (Ps. lxxiii. 1). Certainly, it is an
undoubted truth; it is written in his works of nature, and his acts of
grace (Exod. xxxiv. 6). “He is abundant in goodness.” And every thing
is a memorial, not of some few sparks, but of his greater goodness (Ps.
cxlv. 7). This is often celebrated in the Psalms, and men invited more
than once, to sing forth the praises of it (Ps. cvii. 8, 15, 21, 31).
It may better be admired than {b215} sufficiently spoken of, or thought
of, as it merits. It is discovered in all his works, as the goodness of
a tree in all its fruits; it is easy to be seen, and more pleasant to
be contemplated. In general,
1. All nations in the world have acknowledged God good; Τὸ Ἀγαθὸν was
one of the names the Platonists expressed him by; and good and God, are
almost the same words in our language. All as readily consented in the
notion of his goodness, as in that of his Deity. Whatsoever divisions
or disputes there were among them in the other perfections of God,
they all agreed in this without dispute, saith Synesius. One calls him
Venus, in regard of his loveliness.[952] Another calls him Ἐρώτα love,
as being the band which ties all things together.[953] No perfection
of the Divine nature is more eminently, nor more speedily visible in
the whole book of the creation, than this. His greatness shines not
in any part of it, where his goodness doth not as gloriously glister:
whatsoever is the instrument of his work, as his power; whatsoever is
the orderer of his work, as his wisdom; yet nothing can be adored as
the motive of his work, but the goodness of his nature. This only could
induce him to resolve to create: his wisdom then steps in, to dispose
the methods of what he resolved; and his power follows to execute,
what his wisdom hath disposed, and his goodness designed. His power in
making, and his wisdom in ordering, are subservient to his goodness;
and this goodness, which is the end of the creation, is as visible to
the eyes of men, as legible to the understanding of men, as his power
in forming them, and his wisdom in tuning them. And as the book of
creation, so the records of his government must needs acquaint them
with a great part of it, when they have often beheld him, stretching
out his hand, to supply the indigent, relieve the oppressed, and punish
the oppressors, and give them, in their distresses, what might “fill
their hearts with food and gladness.” It is this the apostle (Rom. i.
20, 21), means by his Godhead, which he links with his eternity and
power, as clearly seen in the things that are made, as in a pure glass,
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world, are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his
eternal power and Godhead.” The Godhead which comprehends the whole
nature of God as discoverable to his creatures, was not known, yea,
was impossible to be known, by the works of creation. There had been
nothing then reserved to be manifested in Christ: but his goodness,
which is properly meant there by his Godhead, was as clearly visible
as his power. The apostle upbraids them with their unthankfulness, and
argues their inexcusableness, because the arm of his power in creation
made no due impression of fear upon their spirits, nor the beams of
his goodness wrought in them sufficient sentiments of gratitude. Their
not glorifying God, was a contempt of the former; and their not being
thankful, was a slight of the latter. God is the object of honor,
as he is powerful, and the object of thankfulness properly as he is
bountiful. All the idolatry of the heathens, is a clear testimony of
their common sentiment of the goodness of God: since the more eminently
useful any person was in some advantageous invention for the benefit
of mankind, they thought he {b216} merited a rank in the number of
their deities. The Italians esteemed Pythagoras a god, because he
was φιλανθρωπότατος:[954] to be good and useful, was an approximation
to the Divine nature. Hence it was, that when the Lystrians saw a
resemblance of the Divine goodness in the charitable and miraculous
cure of one of their crippled citizens, presently they mistook Paul
and Barnabas for gods, and inferred from thence their right to divine
worship, inquiring into nothing else but the visible character of
their goodness and usefulness, to capacitate them for the honor of
a sacrifice (Acts xiv. 8‒11). Hence it was, that they adored those
creatures that were a common benefit, as the sun and moon, which must
be founded upon a pre‑existent notion, not only of a Being, but of
the bounty and goodness of God, which was naturally implanted in them,
and legible in all God’s works. And the more beneficial anything was
to them, and the more sensible advantages they received from it, the
higher station they gave it in the rank of their idols, and bestowed
upon it a more solemn worship: an absurd mistake to think everything
that was sensibly good to them, to be God, clothing himself in such
a form to be adored by them. And upon this account the Egyptians
worshipped God under the figure of an ox; and the East Indians, in some
parts of their country, deify a heifer, intimating the goodness of God,
as their nourisher and preserver, in giving them corn, whereof the ox
is an instrument in serving for ploughing, and preparing the ground.
2. The notion of goodness is inseparable from the notion of a God. We
cannot own the existence of God, but we must confess also the goodness
of his nature. Hence, the apostle gives to his goodness the title of
his Godhead, as if goodness and godhead were convertible terms (Rom.
i. 20). As it is indissolubly linked with the being of a Deity, so
it cannot be severed from the notion of it: we as soon undeify him
by denying him good, as by denying him great: _Optimus_, _Maximus_,
the best, greatest, was the name whereby the Romans entitled Him. His
nature is as good, as it is majestic; so doth the Psalmist join them
(Ps. cxlv. 6, 7), “I will declare my greatness; they shall abundantly
utter the memory of thy great goodness.” They considered his goodness
before his greatness, in putting _Optimus_ before _Maximus_; greatness
without sweetness, is an unruly and affrighting monster in the world;
like a vast turbulent sea, always casting out mire and dirt. Goodness
is the brightness and loveliness of our majestical Creator. To fancy
a God without it, is to fancy a miserable, scanty, narrow‑hearted,
savage God, and so an unlovely, and horrible being: for he is not a
God that is not good; he is not a God that is not the highest good:
infinite goodness is more necessary to, and more straitly joined with
an infinite Deity, than infinite power and infinite wisdom: we cannot
conceive him God, unless we conceive him the highest good, having
nothing superior to himself in goodness, as he hath nothing superior to
himself in excellency and perfection. No man can possibly form a notion
of God in his mind, and yet form a notion of something better than God;
for whoever thinks anything better than God, fancieth a God {b217} with
some defect: by how much the better he thinks that thing to be, by so
much the more imperfect he makes God in his thoughts. This notion of
the goodness of God was so natural, that some philosophers and others,
being startled at the evil they saw in the world, fancied, besides
a good God, an evil principle, the author of all punishments in the
world. This was ridiculous; for those two must be of equal power, or
one inferior to the other; if equal, the good could do nothing, but the
evil one would restrain him; and the evil one could do nothing, but the
good one would contradict him; so they would be always contending, and
never conquering: if one were inferior to the other, then there would
be nothing but what that superior ordered. Good, if the good one were
superior; and nothing but evil, if the bad one were superior. In the
prosecution of this, let us see.
I. What this goodness is. II. Some propositions concerning the nature
of it. III. That God is good. IV. The manifestation of it in creation,
providence, and redemption. V. The use.
I. What this goodness is. There is a goodness of being, which is the
natural perfection of a thing; there is the goodness of will, which
is the holiness, and righteousness of a person; there is the goodness
of the hand, which we call liberality, or beneficence, a doing good to
others.
1. We mean not by this, the goodness of his essence, or the
perfection of his nature. God is thus good, because his nature is
infinitely perfect; he hath all things requisite to the completing of a
most perfect and sovereign Being. All good meets in his essence, as all
water meets in the ocean. Under this notion all the attributes of God,
which are requisite to so illustrious a Being, are comprehended. All
things that are, have a goodness of being in them, derived to them by
the power of God, as they are creatures; so the devil is good, as he is
a creature of God’s making: he hath a natural goodness, but not a moral
goodness: when he fell from God, he retained his natural goodness as
a creature; because he did not cease to be, he was not reduced to that
nothing, from whence he was drawn; but he ceased to be morally good,
being stripped of his righteousness by his apostasy; as a creature,
he was God’s work; as a creature, he remains still God’s work; and,
therefore, as a creature, remains still good, in regard of his created
being. The more of being anything hath, the more of this sort of
natural goodness it hath; and so the devil hath more of this natural
goodness than men have; because he hath more marks of the excellency
of God upon him, in regard of the greatness of his knowledge, and the
extent of his power, the largeness of his capacity, and the acuteness
of his understanding, which are natural perfections belonging to the
nature of an angel, though he hath lost his moral perfections. God
is sovereignly and infinitely good in this sort of goodness. He is
unsearchably perfect (Job xi. 7); nothing is wanting to his essence,
that is necessary to the perfection of it; yet this is not that which
the Scripture expresseth under the term of goodness, but a perfection
of God’s nature as related to us, and which he poureth forth upon all
his creatures, as goodness which flows from this natural perfection of
the Deity.
{b218} 2. Nor is it the same with the blessedness of God, but something
flowing from his blessedness. Were he not first infinitely blessed, and
full in himself, he could not be infinitely good and diffusive to us;
had he not an infinite abundance in his own nature, he could not be
overflowing to his creatures; had not the sun a fulness of light in
itself, and the sea a vastness of water, the one could not enrich the
world with its beams, nor the other fill every creek with its waters.
3. Nor is it the same with the holiness of God. The holiness of God
is the rectitude of his nature, whereby he is pure, and without spot
in himself; the goodness of God is the efflux of his will, whereby he
is beneficial to his creatures: the holiness of God is manifest in his
rational creatures; but the goodness of God extends to all the works of
his hands. His holiness beams most in his law; his goodness reacheth to
everything that had a being from him (Ps. cxlv. 9): “The Lord is good
to all.” And though he be said in the same Psalm (ver. 17) to be “holy
in all his works,” it is to be understood of his bounty, bountiful in
all his works; the Hebrew word signifying both holy and liberal, and
the margin of the Bible reads it “merciful” or “bountiful.”
4. Nor is this goodness of God the same with the mercy of God. Goodness
extends to more objects than mercy; goodness stretcheth itself out to
all the works of his hands; mercy extends only to a miserable object;
for it is joined with a sentiment of pity, occasioned by the calamity
of another. The mercy of God is exercised about those that merit
punishment; the goodness of God is exercised upon objects that have
not merited anything contrary to the acts of his bounty. Creation is
an act of goodness, not of mercy; providence in governing some part of
the world, is an act of goodness, not of mercy.[955] The heavens, saith
Austin, need the goodness of God to govern them, but not the mercy of
God to relieve them; the earth is full of the misery of man, and the
compassions of God; but the heavens need not the mercy of God to pity
them, because they are not miserable; though they need the goodness and
power of God to sustain them; because, as creatures, they are impotent
without him. God’s goodness extends to the angels, that kept their
standing, and to man in innocence, who in that state stood not in need
of mercy. Goodness and mercy are distinct, though mercy be a branch
of goodness; there may be a manifestation of goodness, though none of
mercy. Some think Christ had been incarnate, had not man fallen: had
it been so, there had been a manifestation of goodness to our nature,
but not of mercy, because sin had not made our natures miserable.
The devils are monuments of God’s creating goodness, but not of his
pardoning compassions. The grace of God respects the rational creature;
mercy the miserable creature; goodness all his creatures, brutes, and
the senseless plants, as well as reasonable man.
5. By goodness, is meant the bounty of God. This is the notion of
goodness in the world; when we say a good man, we mean either a holy
man in his life, or a charitable and liberal man in the management
{b219} of his goods. A righteous man, and a good man, are distinguished
(Rom. v. 7). “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet for
a good man one would even dare to die;” for an innocent man, one as
innocent of the crime as himself would scarce venture his life; but for
a good man, a liberal, tender‑hearted man, that had been a common good
in the place where he lived, or had done another as great a benefit
as life itself amounts to, a man out of gratitude might dare to die.
“The goodness of God is his inclination to deal well and bountifully
with his creatures.”[956] It is that whereby he wills there should be
something besides himself for his own glory. God is good himself, and
to himself, _i. e._ highly amiable to himself; and, therefore, some
define it a perfection of God, whereby he loves himself and his own
excellency; but as it stands in relation to his creatures, it is that
perfection of God whereby he delights in his works, and is beneficial
to them. God is the highest goodness, because he doth not act for
his own profit, but for his creatures’ welfare, and the manifestation
of his own goodness. He sends out his beams, without receiving any
addition to himself, or substantial advantage from his creatures. It
is from this perfection that he loves whatsoever is good, and that is
whatsoever he hath made, “for every creature of God is good” (1 Tim.
iv. 4); every creature hath some communications from him, which cannot
be without some affection to them; every creature hath a footstep of
Divine goodness upon it; God, therefore, loves that goodness in the
creature, else he would not love himself. God hates no creature, no,
not the devils and damned, as creatures; he is not an enemy to them,
as they are the works of his hands; he is properly an enemy, that doth
simply and absolutely wish evil to another; but God doth not absolutely
wish evil to the damned; that justice that he inflicts upon them, the
deserved punishment of their sin, is part of his goodness, as shall
afterwards be shown.[957] This is the most pleasant perfection of the
Divine nature; his creating power amazes us; his conducting wisdom
astonisheth us; his goodness, as furnishing us with all conveniences,
delights us; and renders both his amazing power, and astonishing wisdom,
delightful to us. As the sun, by effecting things, is an emblem of
God’s power; by discovering things to us, is an emblem of his wisdom;
but by refreshing and comforting us, is an emblem of his goodness;
and without this refreshing virtue it communicates to us, we should
take no pleasure in the creatures it produceth, nor in the beauties
it discovers. As God is great and powerful, he is the object of our
understanding; but as good and bountiful, he is the object of our love
and desire.
6. The goodness of God comprehends all his attributes. All the acts of
God are nothing else but the effluxes of his goodness, distinguished by
several names, according to the objects it is exercised about. As the
sea, though it be one mass of water, yet we distinguish it by several
names, according to the shores it washeth, and beats upon; as the
British and German Ocean, though all be one sea. When Moses longed
to see his glory, God tells him, he would give him a prospect of his
goodness (Ex. xxxiii. 19): “I will make {b220} all my goodness to pass
before thee.” His goodness is his glory and Godhead, as much as is
delightfully visible to his creatures, and whereby he doth benefit
man: “I will cause my goodness,” or “comeliness,” as Calvin renders it,
“to pass before thee;” what is this, but the train of all his lovely
perfections springing from his goodness? the whole catalogue of mercy,
grace, long‑suffering, abundance of truth, summed up in this one word
(Ex. xxxiv. 6). All are streams from this fountain; he could be none of
this, were he not first good. When it confers happiness without merit,
it is grace; when it bestows happiness against merit, it is mercy; when
he bears with provoking rebels, it is long‑suffering; when he performs
his promise, it is truth; when it meets with a person to whom it is
not obliged, it is grace; when he meets with a person in the world,
to which he hath obliged himself by promise, it is truth;[958] when
it commiserates a distressed person, it is pity; when it supplies an
indigent person, it is bounty; when it succors an innocent person, it
is righteousness; and when it pardons a penitent person, it is mercy;
all summed up in this one name of goodness; and the Psalmist expresseth
the same sentiment in the same words (Ps. cxlv. 7, 8): “They shall
abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness, and shall sing of
thy righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow
to anger, and of great mercy; the Lord is good to all, and his tender
mercies are over his works.” He is first good, and then compassionate.
Righteousness is often in Scripture taken, not for justice, but
charitableness; this attribute, saith one,[959] is so full of God,
that it doth deify all the rest, and verify the adorableness of him.
His wisdom might contrive against us, his power bear too hard upon us;
one might be too hard for an ignorant, and the other too mighty for
an impotent creature; his holiness would scare an impure and guilty
creature, but his goodness conducts them all for us, and makes them all
amiable to us; whatever comeliness they have in the eye of a creature,
whatever comfort they afford to the heart of a creature, we are obliged
for all to his goodness. This puts all the rest upon a delightful
exercise; this makes his wisdom design for us, and this makes his power
to act for us; this veils his holiness from affrighting us, and this
spirits his mercy to relieve us: all his acts towards man, are but the
workmanship of this.[960] What moved him at first to create the world
out of nothing, and erect so noble a creature as man, endowed with such
excellent gifts; was it not his goodness? what made him separate his
Son to be a sacrifice for us, after we had endeavored to rase out the
first marks of his favor; was it not a strong bubbling of goodness?
What moves him to reduce a fallen creature to the due sense of his
duty, and at last bring him to an eternal felicity; is it not, only
his goodness? This is the captain attribute that leads the rest to
act. This attends them, and spirits them in all his ways of acting.
This is the complement and perfection of all his works; had it not
been for this, which set all the rest on work, nothing of his wonders
had been seen in creation, nothing of his compassions had been seen in
redemption.
{b221} II. The second thing is, some propositions to explain the nature
of this goodness.
1. He is good by his own essence. God is not only good in his essence,
but good by his essence; the essence of “every created being is good;”
so the unerring God pronounced everything which he had made (Gen. i.
31). The essence of the worst creatures, yea, of the impure and savage
devils, is good; but they are not good _per essentiam_, for then they
could not be bad, malicious, and oppressive. God is good, as he is God;
and therefore good by himself, and from himself, not by participation
from another; he made everything good, but none made him good; since
his goodness was not received from another, he is good by his own
nature. He could not receive it from the things he created, they are
later than he; since they received all from him, they could bestow
nothing on him; and no God preceded him, in whose inheritance and
treasures of goodness, he could be a successor; he is absolutely his
own goodness, he needed none to make him good; but all things needed
him, to be good by him. Creatures are good by being made so by him, and
cleaving to him; he is good without cleaving to any goodness without
him. Goodness is not a quality in him, but a nature; not a habit added
to his essence, but his essence itself; he is not first God, and then
afterwards good; but he is good as he is God; his essence, being one
and the same, is formally and equally God and good.[961] Αὐτάγαθον,
“good of himself,” was one of the names the Platonists gave him. He
is essentially good in his own nature, and not by any outward action
which follows his essence. He is an independent Being, and hath nothing
of goodness or happiness from anything without him, or anything he
doth act about. If he were not good by his essence, he could not be
eternally good, he could not be the first good; he would have something
before him, from whence he derived that goodness wherewith he is
possessed; nor could he be perfectly good, for he could not be equally
good to that from whom he derived his goodness; no star, no splendid
body, that derives light from the sun, doth equal that sun by which it
is enlightened. Hence his goodness must be infinite, and circumscribed
by no limits; the exercise of his goodness may be limited by himself;
but his goodness, the principle, cannot; for since his essence is
infinite, and his goodness is not distinguished from his essence, it is
infinite also; if it were limited, it were finite; he cannot be bounded
by anything without him; if so, then he were not God, because he would
have something superior to him, to put bars in his way; if there were
anything to fix him, it must be a good or evil being; good it cannot
be, for it is the property of goodness to encourage goodness, not to
bound it; evil it cannot be, for then it would extinguish goodness,
as well as limit it; it would not be content with the circumscribing
it, without destroying it; for it is the nature of every contrary, to
endeavor the destruction of its opposite. He is essentially good by his
own essence; therefore, good of himself; therefore, eternally good; and
therefore, abundantly good.
2. God is the prime and chief goodness. Being good _per se_, and
{b222} by his own essence, he must needs be the chief goodness, in
whom there can be nothing but good, from whom there can proceed nothing
but good, to whom all good whatsoever must be referred, as the final
cause of all good. As he is the chief Being, so he is the chief good;
and as we rise by steps from the existence of created things, to
acknowledge one Supreme Being, which is God, so we mount by steps from
the consideration of the goodness of created things, to acknowledge
one Infinite Ocean of sovereign goodness, whence the streams of
created goodness are derived. When we behold things that partake of
goodness from another, we must acquiesce in one that hath goodness by
participation from no other, but originally from himself, and therefore
supremely in himself above all other things: so that, as nothing
greater and more majestic can be imagined, so also nothing better and
more excellent can be conceived than God. Nothing can add to him, or
make him better than he is; nothing can detract from him, to make him
worse; nothing can be added to him, nothing can be severed from him; no
created good can render him more excellent; no evil, from any creature,
can render him less excellent; “our goodness extends not to him” (Ps.
xvi. 2); “wickedness may hurt a man, as we are, and our righteousness
may profit the son of man; but, if we be righteous, what give we to
Him, or what receives he at our hands” (Job xxxv. 7, 8)? as he hath no
superior in place above him, so, being chief of all, he cannot be made
better by any inferior to him. How can he be made better by any that
hath from himself all that he hath? The goodness of a creature may be
changed, but the goodness of the Creator is immutable; he is always
like himself, so good that he cannot be evil, as he is so blessed that
he cannot be miserable. Nothing is good but God, because nothing is
of itself but God; as all things, being from nothing, are nothing
in comparison of God, so all things, being from nothing, are scanty
and evil in comparison of God. If anything had been, _ex Deo_, God
being the matter of it, it had been as good as God is; but since
the principle, whence all things were drawn, was nothing, though the
efficient cause by which they were extracted from nothing was God, they
are as nothing in goodness, and not estimable in comparison of God (Ps.
lxxiii. 25): “Whom have I in heaven but thee?” &c. God is all good;
every creature hath a distinct variety of goodness: God distinctly
pronounced every day’s work in the creation “good.” Food communicates
the goodness of its nourishing virtue to our bodies; flowers the
goodness of their odors to our smell; every creature a goodness of
comeliness to our sight; plants the goodness of healing qualities
for our cure; and all derive from themselves a goodness of knowledge,
objectively to our understandings. The sun, by one sort of goodness,
warms us; metals enrich us; living creatures sustain us, and delight
us by another; all those have distinct kinds of goodness, which are
eminently summed up in God, and are all but parts of his immense
goodness. It is he that enlightens us by his sun, nourisheth us by
bread (Matt. iv. 4): “It is not by bread alone that we live, but by
the word of God.” It is all but his own supreme goodness, conveyed to
us through those varieties of conduit‑pipes. “God is all good;” other
things are good in {b223} their kind; as, a good man, a good angel,
a good tree, a good plant; but God hath a good of all kinds eminently
in his nature. He is no less all‑good, than he is almighty, and
all‑knowing; as the sun contains in it all the light, and more light
than is in all the clearest bodies in the world, so doth God contain in
himself all the good, and more good than is in the richest creatures.
Nothing is good, but as it resembles him; as nothing is hot, but as it
resembles fire, the prime subject of heat. God is omnipotent, therefore
no good can be wanting to him. If he were destitute of any which he
could not have, he were not almighty: he is so good, that there is no
mixture of anything which can be called not good in him; everything
besides him wants some good, which others have. Nothing can be so
evil as God is good. There can be no evil but there is some mixture of
good with it; no nature so evil but there is some spark of goodness in
it: but God is a good which hath no taint of evil; nothing can be so
supreme an evil as God is supreme goodness. He is only good, without
capacity of increase; he is all good, and unmixedly good; none good but
God: a goodness, like the sun, that hath all light, and no darkness.
That is the second thing; he is the supreme and chief goodness.
3. This goodness is communicative. None so communicatively good as
God. As the notion of God includes goodness, so the notion of goodness
includes diffusiveness; without goodness he would cease to be a Deity,
and without diffusiveness he would cease to be good. The being good is
necessary to the being God; for goodness is nothing else, in the notion
of it, but a strong inclination to do good; either to find or make an
object, wherein to exercise itself, according to the propension of its
own nature; and it is an inclination of communicating itself, not for
its own interest, but the good of the object it pitcheth upon. Thus
God is good by nature; and his nature is not without activity; he acts
conveniently to his own nature (Ps. cxix. 68): “Thou art good, and dost
good.” And nothing accrues to him, by the communications of himself
to others, since his blessedness was as great before the frame of any
creature as ever it was since the erecting of the world; so that the
goodness of Christ himself increaseth not the lustre of his happiness
(Ps. xvi. 2): “My goodness extends not to thee.” He is not of a
niggardly and envious nature; he is too rich to have any cause to envy,
and too good to have any will to envy; he is as liberal as he is rich,
according to the capacity of the object about which his goodness is
exercised. The Divine goodness, being the supreme goodness, is goodness
in the highest degree of activity; not an idle, enclosed, pent up
goodness, as a spring shut up, or a fountain sealed, bubbling up within
itself, but bubbling out of itself: a fountain of gardens to water
every part of his creation; “He is an ointment poured forth” (Cant. i.
3): nothing spreads itself more than oil, and takes up a larger space
wheresoever it drops. It may be no less said of the goodness of God,
as it is of the fulness of Christ (Eph. i. 23); “He fills all in all:”
he fills rational creatures with understanding, sensitive nature with
vigor and motion, the whole world with beauty and sweetness. Every
taste, every touch of a creature, is a taste and {b224} touch of Divine
goodness. Divine goodness offers itself in one spark in this creature,
in another spark in the other creature, and altogether make up a
goodness inconceivable by any creature. The whole mass, and extracted
spirit of it, is infinitely short of the goodness of the Divine nature,
imperfect shadows of that goodness which is in himself. Indeed, the
more excellent anything is, the more nobly it acts; how remotely doth
light, that excellent brightness of the creation, disperse itself! How
doth that glorious creature, which God hath set in the heavens, spread
its wings over heaven and earth, roll itself about the world, cast
its beams upward and downward, insinuate into all corners, pierce the
depths, and shoot up its rays into the heights, encircle the higher and
lower creatures in its arms, reach out its communications to influence
everything under the earth, as well as dart its beams of light and
heat on things above, or upon the earth! “Nothing is hid from it” (Ps.
xix. 6); not from its power, nor from its sweetness. How communicative
also is water, a necessary and excellent creature! How active is it
in a river, to nourish the living creatures engendered in its womb!
refresheth every shore it runs by; promotes the propagation of fruits
for the nourishment, and bestows a verdure upon the ground, for the
delight of man; and where it cannot reach the higher ground in its
substance, it doth by its vapors, mounted up and concocted by the sun,
and gently distilled upon the earth, for the opening its womb to bring
forth its fruits. God is more prone to communicate himself, than the
sun to spread its wings, or the earth to mount up its fruits, or the
water to multiply living creatures.[962] Goodness is his nature. Hence
were there internal communications of himself from eternity; diffusions
of himself, without himself, in time, in the creation of the world,
like a full vessel running over. He created the world that he might
impart his goodness to something without him, and diffuse larger
measures of his goodness, after he had laid the first foundation of
it in his being; and therefore he created several sorts of creatures,
that they might be capable of various and distinct measures of his
liberality, according to the distinct capacities of their nature, but
imparted most to the rational creature, because that is only capable
of an understanding to know him, and will to embrace him. He is the
highest goodness, and therefore a communicative goodness, and acts
excellently according to his nature.
4. God is necessarily good. None is necessarily good but God; he
is as necessarily good, as he is necessarily God. His goodness is as
inseparable from his nature as his holiness. He is good by nature, not
only by will; as he is holy by nature, not only by will, he is good
in his nature, and good in his actions; and as he cannot be bad in his
nature, so he cannot be bad in his communications; he can no more act
contrary to this goodness in any of his actions, than he can un‑God
himself. It is not necessary that God should create a world; he was at
his own choice whether he would create or no; but when he resolves to
make a world, it is necessary that he should make it good, because he
is goodness itself, and cannot act against his own nature. He could not
create anything without goodness in the very {b225} act; the very act
of creation, or communicating being to anything without himself, is in
itself an act of goodness, as well as an act of power; had he not been
good in himself, nothing could have been endued with any goodness by
him. In the act of giving being, he is liberal; the being he bestows is
a displaying his own liberality; he could not confer what he needs not,
and which could not be deserved, without being bountiful; since what
was nothing, could not merit to be brought into being, the very act
of giving to nothing a being, was an act of choice goodness. He could
not create anything without goodness as the motive, and the necessary
motive; his goodness could not necessitate him to make the world, but
his goodness could only move him to resolve to make a world; he was not
bound to erect and fashion it because of his goodness, but he could not
frame it without his goodness as the moving cause. He could not create
anything, but he must create it good. It had been inconsistent with
the supreme goodness of his nature, to have created only murderous,
ravenous, injurious creatures; to have created a bedlam rather than
a world: a mere heap of confusion would have been as inconsistent
with his Divine goodness, as with his Divine wisdom. Again, when
his goodness had moved him to make a creature, his goodness would
necessarily move him to be beneficial to his creature; not that this
necessity results from any merit in the creature, which he had framed;
but from the excellency and diffusiveness of his own nature, and
his own glory; the end for which he formed it, which would have
been obscure, yea, nothing, without some degrees of his bounty. What
occasion of acknowledgments and praise could the creature have for
its being, if God had given him only a miserable being, while it was
innocent in action? The goodness of God would not suffer him to make a
creature, without providing conveniences for it, so long as he thought
good to maintain its being, and furnishing it with that which was
necessary to answer that end for which he created it; and his own
nature would not suffer him to be unkind to his rational creature,
while it was innocent. It had been injustice to inflict evil upon the
creature, that had not offended, and had no relation to an offending
creature; the nature of God could not have brought forth such an act:
and, therefore, some say, that God, after he had created man, could
not presently annihilate him, and take away his life and being.[963]
As a sovereign, he might do it; as Almighty, he was able to do it, as
well as create him; but in regard of his goodness, he could not morally
do it: for had he annihilated man as soon as ever he had made him,
he had not made man for himself, and for his own glory; to be loved,
worshipped, sought, and acknowledged by him. He would not then have
been the end of man; he had created him in vain, and the world in vain,
which he assures us he did not (Isa. xlv. 18, 19). And, certainly,
if the gifts of God be without repentance, man could not have been
annihilated after his creation, without repentance in God, without any
cause, had not sin entered into the world. If God did not say to man,
after sin had made its entrance into the world, “Seek ye me in vain,”
he could not, because of his goodness, have said so to man in his
innocence. {b226} As God is necessarily mind, so he is necessarily will;
as he is necessarily knowing, so he is necessarily loving. He could
not be blessed, if he did not know himself, and his own perfection;
nor good, if he did not delight in himself, and his own perfections.
And this goodness whereby he delights in himself, is the source of his
delight in his creatures, wherein he sees the footsteps of himself.
If he loves himself, he cannot but love the resemblance of himself,
and the image of his own goodness. He loves himself, because he is the
highest goodness and excellency; and loves everything as it resembles
himself, because it is an efflux of his own goodness; and as he
doth necessarily love himself, and his own excellency, so he doth
necessarily love anything that resembles that excellency, which is the
primary object of his esteem. But,
5. Though he be necessarily good, yet he is also freely good. The
necessity of the goodness of his nature hinders not the liberty of
his actions; the matter of his acting is not at all necessary, but the
manner of his acting in a good and bountiful way, is necessary, as well
as free.[964] He created the world and man freely, because he might
choose whether he would create it, but he created them good necessarily,
because he was first necessarily good in his nature, before he
was freely a Creator. When he created man, he freely gave him a
positive law, but necessarily a wise and righteous law; because he was
necessarily wise, and righteous, before he was freely a Lawgiver. When
he makes a promise, he freely lets the word go out of his lips, but
when he hath made it, he is necessarily a faithful performer; because
he was necessarily true and righteous in his nature, before he was
freely a promiser. God is necessarily good in his nature, but free in
his communications of it; to make him necessarily to communicate his
goodness in the first creation of the creature, would render him but
impotent, good without liberty and without will; if the communications
of it be not free, the eternity of the world must necessarily be
concluded, which some anciently asserted from the naturalness of God’s
goodness, making the world flow from God as light from the sun. God,
indeed, is necessarily good, _affectivé_ in regard of his nature,
but freely good, _affectivé_, in regard of the effluxes of it to this
or that particular subject he pitcheth on. He is not so necessarily
communicative of his goodness as the sun of his light, or a tree of
its cooling shade, that chooseth not its objects, but enlightens all
indifferently, without any variation or distinction; this were to
make God of no more understanding than the sun, to shine not where it
pleaseth, but where it must. He is an understanding agent, and hath a
sovereign right to choose his own subjects; it would not be a supreme
goodness, if it were not a voluntary goodness. It is agreeable to the
nature of the highest good, to be absolutely free, to dispense his
goodness in what methods and measures he pleaseth, according to the
free determinations of his own will, guided by the wisdom of his mind,
and regulated by the holiness of his nature. He is not to “give an
account of any of his matters” (Job xxxiii. 13); “He will have mercy
on whom he will have mercy, and he will have compassion on whom he
will have compassion” (Rom. ix. 15); {b227} and he will be good, to
whom he will be good; when he doth act, he cannot but act well, so it
is necessary; yet he may act this good or that good, to this or that
degree, so it is free. As it is the perfection of his nature, it is
necessary; as it is the communication of his bounty, it is voluntary.
The eye cannot but see if it be open, yet it may glance upon this or
that color, fix upon this or that object, as it is conducted by the
will. God necessarily loves himself, because he is good, yet not by
constraint, but freedom; because his affection to himself is from a
knowledge of himself. He necessarily loves his own image, because it
is his image; yet freely, because not blindly, but from motions of
understanding and will. What necessity could there be upon him, to
resolve to communicate his goodness? It could not be to make himself
better by it, for he had a goodness incapable of any addition; he
confers a goodness on his creatures, but reaps not a harvest of
goodness to his own essence from his creatures. What obligation could
there be from the creature, to confer a goodness on him to this or that
degree, for this or that duration? If he had not created a man, nor
angel, he had done them no wrong; if he had given them only a simple
being, he had manifested a part of his goodness, without giving them a
right to challenge any more of him; if he had taken away their beings
after a time when he had answered his end, he had done them no injury:
for what law obliged him to enrich them, and leave them in that being
wherein he had invested them, but his sole goodness? Whatever sparks
of goodness any creature hath, are the free effusions of God’s bounty,
the offspring of his own inclination to do well, the simple favor
of the donor; not purchased, not merited by the creature. God is as
unconstrained in his liberty, in all his communications, as infinite
in his goodness, the fountain of them.
6. This goodness is communicative with the greatest pleasure. Moses
desired to see his glory, God assures him he should see his goodness
(Exod. xxxiii. 18, 19); intimating that his goodness is his glory, and
his glory his delight also. He sends not forth his blessings with an
ill will; he doth not stay till they are squeezed from him; he prevents
men with his blessings of goodness (Ps. xxi. 3); he is most delighted
when he is most diffusive; and his pleasure in bestowing, is larger
than his creature’s in possessing. He is not covetous of his own
treasures. He lays up his goodness in order to laying it out with a
complacency wholly divine. The jealousy princes have of their subjects
makes them sparing of their gifts, for fear of giving them materials
for rebellion: God’s foresight of the ill use men would make of his
benefits damped him not in bestowing his largesses. He is incapable
of envy; his own happiness can no more be diminished, than it can be
increased. None can over‑top him in goodness, because nothing hath any
good but what is derived from him; his gifts are without repentance:
sorrow hath no footing in him, who is infinitely happy, as well as
infinitely good. Goodness and envy are inconsistent. How unjustly, then,
did the devil accuse God! What God gives out of goodness, he gives with
joy and gladness. He did not only will that we should be, but rejoice
that he had brought us into being; he rejoiced in his works (Ps. civ.
31), {b228} and his wisdom stood by him, “delighting in the habitable
parts of the earth” (Prov. viii. 31). He beheld the world after
its creation with a complacency, and still governs it with the same
pleasure wherewith he reviewed it. Infinite cheerfulness attends
infinite goodness. He would not give, if he had not a pleasure that
others should enjoy his goodness; since he is better than anything,
and more communicative than anything; he is more joyful in giving out,
than the sun can be to run its race, in pouring forth light. He is said
only to repent, and grieve, when men answer not the obligations and
ends of his goodness; which would be their own felicity, as well as his
glory. Though he doth not force greater degrees of his goodness upon
those that neglect it, yet he denies them not to those that solicit
him for it: it is always greater pleasure to him to impart upon the
importunities of the creatures, than it is to a mother to reach out
her breast to her crying and longing infant. He is not wearied by the
solicitations of men; he is pleased with their prayers, because he
is pleased with the imparting of his own goodness: he seems to be in
travail with it, longing to be delivered of it into the lap of his
creature. He is as much delighted with petitions for his liberality
in bestowing his best goodness, as princes are weary of the craving
of their subjects. None can be so desirous to squeeze those that are
under them, as God is delighted to enlarge his hand towards them.
It is the nature of his goodness to be glad of men’s solicitations
for it, because they are significant valuations of it, and therefore
fit occasions for him to bestow it. Since he doth not delight in the
unhappiness of any of his creatures, he certainly delights in what may
conduce unto their felicity. He doth with the same delight multiply
the effects of his goodness where his wisdom sees it convenient, as he
beheld the first‑fruits of his goodness with a complacency upon laying
the top‑stone of the creation.
7. The displaying of this goodness was the motive and end of all
his works of creation and providence.[965] God being infinitely wise,
would not act without the highest reason, and for the highest end. The
reason that induced him to create, must be of as great an eminency as
himself: the motive could not be taken without him, because there was
nothing but himself in being; it must be taken, therefore, from within
himself, and from some one of those most excellent perfections whereby
we conceive him. But, upon the exact consideration of all of them,
none can seem to challenge that honor of being the motive of them, to
resolve the setting forth any work, but his own goodness; this being
the first thing manifest in his creation, seems to be the first thing
moving him to a resolution to create. Wisdom may be considered as
directing, power considered as acting, but it is natural to reflect
upon goodness as moving the one to direct, and the other to act.
Power was the principle of his action, wisdom the rule of his action,
goodness the motive of his action; principle and rule are awakened by
the motive, and subservient to the end. That which is the most amiable
perfection in the Divine nature, and that which he first took notice
of, as the footsteps of them, in the distinct view of every day’s work,
and the general view {b229} of the whole frame, seems to claim the
best right to be entitled the motive and end of his creation of things.
God could have no end but himself, because there was nothing besides
himself. Again, the end of every agent is that which he esteems good,
and the best good for that kind of action: since nothing is to be
esteemed good but God, nothing can be the ultimate end of God but
himself, and his own goodness. What a man wills chiefly is his end; but
God cannot will any other thing but himself as his end, because there
is nothing superior to himself in goodness. He cannot will anything
that supremely serves himself and his own goodness as his end; for, if
he did, that which he wills must be superior to himself in goodness,
and then he is not God; or inferior to him in goodness, and then he
would not be righteous, in willing that which is a lower good before
a higher. God cannot will anything as his end of acting, but himself,
without undeifying himself. God’s will being infinitely good, cannot
move for anything but what is infinitely good; and, therefore,
whatsoever God made, he made for himself (Prov. xvi. 4), that
whatsoever he made might bear a badge of this perfection upon it, and
be a discovery of his wonderful goodness: for the making things for
himself doth not signify any indigence in God, that he made anything
to increase his excellency (for that is capable of no addition), but to
manifest his excellency. God possessing everything eminently in himself,
did not create the world for any need he had of it; finite things were
unable to make any accession to that which is infinite. Man, indeed,
builds a house to be a shelter to him against wind and weather, and
makes clothes to secure him from cold, and plants gardens for his
recreation and health. God is above all those little helps; he did not
make the world for himself in such a kind, but for himself, _i. e._
the manifestation of himself and the riches of his nature; not to make
himself blessed, but to discover his own blessedness to his creatures,
and to communicate something of it to them. He did not garnish the
world with so much bounty, that he might live more happily than he did
before, but that his rational creatures might have fit conveniences.
As the end for which God demands the performance of our duty is not for
his own advantage, but for our good (Deut. x. 13), so the end why he
conferred upon us the excellency of such a being was for our good, and
the discovery of his goodness to us; for had not God created the world,
he had been wholly unknown to any but himself; he produced creatures,
that he might be known: as the sun shines not only to discover other
things, but to be seen itself in its beauty and brightness. God would
create things, because he would be known in his glory and liberality;
hence is it that he created intellectual creatures, because without
them the rest of the creation could not be taken notice of: it had been
in some sort in vain; for no nature lower than an understanding nature,
was able to know the marks of God in the creation, and acknowledge him
as God. In this regard, God is good above all creatures, because he
intends only to communicate his goodness in creation, not to acquire
any goodness, or excellency from them, as men do in their framing
of things. God is all, and is destitute of nothing, and, therefore,
nothing accrues to {b230} him by the creation, but the acknowledgment
of his goodness. This goodness, therefore, must be the motive and end
of all his works.
III. The third thing, that God is good.
1. The more excellent anything is in nature, the more of goodness and
kindness it hath. For we see more of love and kindness in creatures
that are endued with sense, to their descendants, than in plants, that
have only a principle of growth. Plants preserve their seeds whole that
are enclosed in them; animals look to their young only after they are
dropped from them; yet, after some time, take no more notice of them
than of a stranger that never had any birth from them. But man, that
hath a higher principle of reason, cherisheth his offspring, and gives
them marks of his goodness while he lives, and leaves not the world at
the time of his death without some testimonies of it: much more must
God, who is a higher principle than sense or reason, be “good” and
bountiful to all his offspring. The more perfect anything is, the more
it doth communicate itself. The sun is more excellent than the stars,
and, therefore, doth more sensibly, more extensively, disperse its
liberal beams than the stars do. And the better any man is, the more
charitable he is; God being the most excellent nature, having nothing
more excellent than himself, because nothing more ancient than himself,
who is the Ancient of Days: there is nothing, therefore, better and
more bountiful than himself.
2. He is the cause of all created goodness; he must therefore
himself be the Supreme Good. What good is in the heavens, is the
product of some Being above the earth; and those varieties of goodness
in the earth, and several creatures, are somewhere in their fulness and
union: that, therefore, which possesses all those scattered goodnesses
in their fulness, must be all good, all that good which is displayed
in creatures; therefore sovereignly best. Whatsoever natural or
moral goodness there is in the world, in angels, or men, or inferior
creatures, is a line drawn from that centre, the bubblings of that
fountain. God cannot but be better than all, since the goodness that
is in creatures is the fruit of his own. If he were not good, he could
produce no good: he could not bestow what he had not. If the creature
be “good,” as the apostle says “every creature is” (1 Tim. iv. 4), he
must needs be better than all, because they have nothing but what is
derived to them from him; and much more goodness than all, because
finite beings are not capable of receiving into them, and containing
in themselves, all that goodness which is in an Infinite Being; when
we search for good in creatures, they come short of that satisfaction
which is in God (Ps. iv. 6). As the certainty of a first principle of
all things, is necessarily concluded from the being of creatures, and
the upholding and sustaining power and virtue of God is concluded from
the mutability of those things in the world; whence we infer, that
there must be some stable foundation of those tottering things, some
firm hinge upon which those changeable things do move, without which
there would be no stability in the kinds of things, no order, no
agreement, or union among them: so from the goodness of everything, and
their usefulness to us, we must conclude {b231} him good, who made all
those things. And since we find distinct goodnesses in the creature,
we must conclude that one principle whence they did flow, excels in the
glory of goodness: all those little glimmerings of goodness which are
scattered in the creatures, as the image in the glass, represent the
face, posture, motion of him whose image it is, but not in the fulness
of life and spirit, as in the original; it is but a shadow at the
best, and speaks something more excellent in the copy. As God hath an
infiniteness of being above them, so he hath a supremacy of goodness
beyond them: what they have, is but a participation from him; what he
hath, must be infinitely supereminent above them. If anything be good
by itself, it must be infinitely good, it would set itself no bounds;
we must make as many gods, as particulars of goodness in the world: but
being good by the bounty of another, that from whence they flow must be
the chief goodness. It is God’s excellency and goodness, which, like a
beam, pierceth all things: he decks spirits with reason, endues matter
with form, furnisheth everything with useful qualities.[966] As one
beam of the sun illustrates fire, water, earth; so one beam of God
enlightens and endows minds, souls, and universal nature: nothing in
the world had its goodness from itself, any more than it had its being
from itself. The cause must be richer than the effect.
But that which I intend is _the defence of this goodness_.
First, The goodness of God is not impaired by suffering sin to enter
into the world, and man to fall thereby. It is rather a testimony
of God’s goodness, that he gave man an ability to be happy, than any
charge against his goodness, that he settled man in a capacity to be
evil. God was first a benefactor to man, before man could be a rebel
against God. May it not be inquired, whether it had not been against
the wisdom of God, to have made a rational creature with liberty, and
not suffer him to act according to the nature he was endowed with, and
to follow his own choice for some time? Had it been wisdom to frame a
free creature, and totally to restrain that creature from following its
liberty? Had it been goodness, as it were, to force the creature to be
happy against its will? God’s goodness furnished Adam with a power to
stand; was it contrary to his goodness, to leave Adam to a free use of
that power? To make a creature, and not let that creature act according
to the freedom of his nature, might have been thought to have been
a blot upon his wisdom, and a constraint upon the creature, not to
make use of that freedom of his nature, which the Divine goodness had
bestowed upon him. To what purpose did God make a law, to govern his
rational creature, and yet resolve that creature should not have his
choice, whether he would obey it or no? Had he been really constrained
to observe it, his observation of it could no more have been called
obedience, than the acts of brutes that have a kind of natural
constraint upon them by the instinct of their nature, can be called
obedience: in vain had God endowed a creature with so great and noble a
principle as liberty. Had it been goodness in God, after he had {b232}
made a reasonable creature, to govern him in the same manner as he
does brutes by a necessary instinct? It was the goodness of God to the
nature of men and angels, to leave them in such a condition, to be able
to give him a voluntary obedience, a nobler offering than the whole
creation could present him with; and shall this goodness be undervalued,
and accounted mean, because man made an ill use of it, and turned it
into wantonness? As the unbelief of man doth not diminish the redeeming
grace of God (Rom. iii. 3), so neither doth the fall of man lessen the
creating goodness of God. Besides, why should the permission of sin
be thought more a blemish to his goodness, than the providing a way
of redemption for the destroying the works of sin and the devil, be
judged the glory of it, whereby he discovered a goodness of grace that
surpassed the bounds of nature? If this were a thing that might seem to
obscure or deface the goodness of God, in the permission of the fall of
angels and Adam, it was in order to bring forth a greater goodness in
a more illustrious pomp, to the view of the world (Rom. xi. 32): “God
hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.”
But if nothing could be alleged for the defence of his goodness in
this, it were most comely for an ignorant creature not to impeach his
goodness, but adore him in his proceedings, in the same language the
apostle doth (ver. 33): “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom
and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways
past finding out!”
Secondly, Nor is his goodness prejudiced, by not making all things the
equal subjects of it.
1. It is true all things are not subjects of an equal goodness. The
goodness of God is not so illustriously manifested in one thing as
another. In the creation he hath dropped goodness upon some, in giving
them beings and sense, and poured it upon others in endowing them with
understanding and reason. The sun is full of light, but it hath a want
of sense; brutes excel in the vigor of sense, but they are destitute
of the light of reason; man hath a mind and reason conferred on him,
but he hath neither the acuteness of mind, nor the quickness of motion
equal with an angel. In providence also he doth give abundance, and
opens his hand to some; to others he is more sparing: he gives greater
gifts of knowledge to some, while he lets others remain in ignorance;
he strikes down some, and raiseth others; he afflicts some with a
continual pain, while he blesseth others with an uninterrupted health;
he hath chosen one nation wherein to set up his gospel sun, and leaves
another benighted in their own ignorance. “Known was God in Judea; they
were a peculiar people alone of all the nations of the earth” (Deut.
xiv. 2). He was not equally good to the angels: he held forth his
hand to support some in their happy habitation, while he suffered
others to sink in irreparable ruin; and he is not so diffusive here
of his goodness to his own as he will be in heaven. Here their sun is
sometimes clouded, but there all clouds and shades will be blown away,
and melted into nothing: instead of drops here, there will be above
rivers of life. Is any creature destitute of the open marks of his
goodness, though all are not enriched with those signal characters
which he vouchsafes to {b233} others? He that is unerring, pronounced
everything good distinctly in its production, and the whole good in
its universal perfection (Gen. i. 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). Though he
made not all things equally good, yet he made nothing evil; and though
one creature in regard of its nature may be better than another, yet
an inferior creature, in regard of its usefulness in the order of the
creation, may be better than a superior. The earth hath a goodness
in bringing forth fruits, and the waters in the sea a goodness in
multiplying food. That any of us have a being is goodness; that we have
not so healthful a being as others is unequal, but not unjust goodness.
He is good to all, though not in the same degree: “The whole earth is
full of his mercy” (Ps. cxix. 64). A good man is good to his cattle,
to his servants; he makes a provision for all, but he bestows not those
floods of bounty upon them that he doth upon his children. As there
are various gifts, but one Spirit (1 Cor. xii. 4), so there are various
distributions, but from one goodness; the drops, as well as the fuller
streams, are of the same fountain, and relish of the nature of it; and
though he do not make all men partake of the riches of his grace after
the corruption of their nature, is his goodness disgraced hereby? or
doth he merit the title of cruelty? Will any diminish the goodness of
a father for his not setting up his son after he hath foolishly and
wilfully proved bankrupt; or not rather admire his liberality in giving
him so large a stock to trade with when he first set him up in the
world?
2. The goodness of God to creatures, is to be measured by their
distinct usefulness to the common end. It were better for a toad or
serpent to be a man, _i. e._ better for the creature itself, as it were
advanced to a higher degree of being, but not better for the universe:
he could have made every pebble a living creature, and every living
creature a rational one; but that he made everything as we see, it was
a goodness to the creature itself; but that he did not make it of a
higher elevation in nature, was a part of his goodness to the rational
creature. If all were rational creatures, there would have been wanting
creatures of an inferior nature for their conveniency; there would have
wanted the manifestation of the variety and “fulness of his goodness.”
Had all things in the world been rational creatures, much of that
goodness which he hath communicated to rational creatures would not
have appeared: how could man have showed his skill in taming and
managing creatures more mighty than himself? What materials would there
have been to manifest the goodness of God, bestowed upon the reasonable
creatures for framing excellent works and inventions? Much of the
goodness of God had lain wrapt up from sense and understanding. All
other things partake not of so great a goodness as man; yet they are
so subservient to that goodness poured forth on man, that little of it
could have been seen without them. Consider man, every member in his
body hath a goodness in itself; but a greater goodness as referred to
the whole, without which the goodness of the more noble part would not
be manifested. The head is the most excellent member, and hath greater
impressions of Divine goodness upon it, in regard that it is the organ
of understanding: {b234} were every member of the body a head, what a
deformed monster would man be! If he were all head, where would be feet
for motion, and arms for action? Man would be fit only for thought, and
not for exercise. The goodness of God in giving man so noble a part as
the head, could not be known without a tongue, whereby to express the
conception of his mind; and without feet and hands whereby to act much
of what he conceives, and determines, and execute the resolves of his
will; all those have a goodness in themselves, an honor, a comeliness
from the goodness of God (1 Cor. xii. 22, 23), but not so great
a goodness as the nobler part: yet, if you consider them in their
functions, and refer them to that excellent member which they serve,
their inferior goodness is absolutely necessary to the goodness of the
other; without which, the goodness of the head and understanding would
lie in obscurity, be insignificant to the whole world, and, in a great
measure, to the person himself that wants such members.
3. “The goodness of God is more seen in this inequality.” If God
were equally good to all, it would destroy commerce, unity, the
links of human society, damp charity, and render that useless which
is one of the noblest and delightfulest duties to be exercised here;
it would cool prayer, which is excited by wants, and is a necessary
demonstration of the creature’s dependence on God. But in this
inequality every man hath enough in his enjoyments for praise, and
in his wants, matter for his prayer. Besides the inequality of the
creature is the ornament of the world; what pleasure could a garden
afford if there were but one sort of flowers, or one sort of plants?
far less than when there is variety to please the sight, and every
other sense. Again, the freedom of Divine goodness, which is the glory
of it, is evident hereby; had he been alike good to all, it would have
looked like a necessary, not a free act; but by the inequality, it
is manifest that he doth not do it by a natural necessity as the sun
shines, but by a voluntary liberty, as being the entire Lord, and free
disposer of his own goods; and that is the gift of the pleasure of his
will, as well as the efflux of his nature, that he hath not a goodness
without wisdom, but a wisdom as rich as his bounty.
4. The goodness of God could not be equally communicated to all,
after their settlement in their several beings,――because they have not
a capacity in their natures for it: he doth bestow the marks of his
goodness according to that natural capacity of fitness he perceives in
his creatures; as the water of the sea fills every creek and gulf with
different measures, according to the compass each have to contain it;
and as the sun doth disperse light to the stars above, and the places
below, to some more, to some less, according to the measures of their
reception. God doth not do good to all creatures according to the
greatness of his own power, and the extent of his own wealth, but
according to the capacity of the subject; not so much good as he can do,
but so much good as the creature can receive. The creature would sink,
if God would pour out all his goodness upon it; as Moses would have
perished, if God should have shown him all his glory (Exod. xxxiii.
18, 20). He doth {b235} manifest more good to his reasonable creatures,
because they are more capable of acknowledging, and setting forth his
goodness.
5. God ought to be allowed the free disposal of his own goodness.
Is not God the Lord of his own gifts; and will you not allow him the
privilege of having some more peculiar objects of his love and pleasure,
which you allow without blame to man, and use yourself without any
sense of a crime? Is a prince esteemed good, though he be not equally
bountiful to all his servants, nor equally gracious in pardoning
all his rebels; and shall the goodness of the great Sovereign of the
world be impeached, notwithstanding those mighty distributions of it,
because he will act according to his own wisdom and pleasure, and not
according to men’s fancies and humors? Must purblind reason be the
judge and director how God shall dispose of his own, rather than his
own infinite wisdom and sovereign will? Is God less good, because there
are numberless nothings, which he is able to bring into being? He could
create a world of more creatures than he hath done: doth he, therefore,
wish evil to them, by letting them remain in that nothing from whence
he could draw them? No; but he denies that good to them, which he is
able, if he pleased, to confer upon them. If God doth not give that
good to a creature which it wants by its own demerit, can he be said to
wish evil to it; or, only to deny that goodness which the creature hath
forfeited, and which is at God’s liberty to retain or disperse?[967]
Though God cannot but love his own image where he finds it, yet when
this image is lost, and the devil’s image voluntary received, he may
choose whether he will manifest his goodness to such a one or no. Will
you not account that man liberal, that distributes his alms to a great
company, though he rejects some? Much more will you account him good,
if he rejects none that implore him, but dispenseth his doles to every
one upon their petition: and is he not good, because he will not bestow
a farthing upon those that address not themselves to him? God is so
good, that he denies not the best good to those that seek him: he
hath promised life and happiness to them that do so. Is he less good,
because he will not distribute his goodness to those that despise
him? Though he be good, yet his wisdom is the rule of dispensing his
goodness.
6. The severe punishment of offenders, and the afflictions he inflicts
upon his servants, are no violations of his goodness. The notion of
God’s vindictive justice is as naturally inbred, and implanted in the
mind of man, as that of his goodness, and those two sentiments never
shocked one another. The heathen never thought him bad, because he was
just; nor unrighteous, because he was good. God being infinitely good,
cannot possibly intend or act anything but what is good: “Thou art good,
and thou doest good;” _i. e._ whatsoever thou dost is good, whatsoever
it be, pleasant or painful to the creature (Ps. cxix. 68): punishments
themselves are not a moral evil in the person that inflicts, though
they are a natural evil in the person that suffers them.[968] In
ordering punishment to the wicked, good is added to evil; in ordering
impunity {b236} to the wicked, evil is added to evil. To punish
wickedness is right, therefore good: to leave men uncontrolled in their
wickedness, is unrighteous, and therefore bad. But, again, shall his
justice in some few judgments in the world, impeach his goodness, more
than his wonderful patience to sinners is able to silence the calumnies
against him? Is not his hand fuller of gracious doles, than of dreadful
thunderbolts? Doth he not oftener seem forgetful of his justice, when
he pours out upon the guilty the streams of his mercy, than to be
forgetful of his goodness, when he sprinkles in the world some drops
of his wrath?
First, God’s judgments in the world, do not infringe his goodness; for,
1. The justice of God is a part of the goodness of his nature.
God himself thought so, when he told Moses he would make all his
goodness pass before him (Exod. xxxiii. 19): he leaves not out in
that enumeration of the parts of it, his resolution, by no means to
clear the guilty, but to visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children (Exod. xxxiv. 7). It is a property of goodness to hate evil,
and, therefore, a property of goodness to punish it: it is no less
righteousness to give according to the deserts of a person in a way
of punishment, than to reward a person that obeys his precepts in a
way of recompense. Whatsoever is righteous is good; sin is evil; and,
therefore, whatsoever doth witness against it, is good; his goodness,
therefore, shines in his justice, for without being just he could not
be good. Sin is a moral disorder in the world: every sin is injustice:
injustice breaks God’s order in the world; there is a necessity
therefore of justice to put the world in order. Punishment orders the
person committing the injury, who, when he will not be in the order
of obedience, must be in the order of suffering for God’s honor. The
goodness of all things which God pronounced so, consisted in their
order and beneficial helpfulness to one another: when this order is
inverted, the goodness of the creature ceaseth: if it be a bad thing
to spoil this order, is it not a part of Divine goodness to reduce them
into order, that they may be reduced in some measure to their goodness?
Do we ever account a governor less in goodness, because he is exact in
justice, and punisheth that which makes a disorder in his government?
and is it a diminution of the Divine goodness, to punish that which
makes a disorder in the world? As wisdom without goodness would be a
serpentine craft, and issue in destruction; so goodness without justice
would be impotent indulgence, and cast things into confusion. When
Abel’s blood cried out for vengeance against Cain, it spake a good
thing; Christ’s blood speaking better things than the blood of Abel,
implies that Abel’s blood spake a good thing; the comparative implies
a positive (Heb. xii. 24). If it were the goodness of that innocent
blood to demand justice, it could not be a badness in the Sovereign
of the world to execute it. How can God sustain the part of a good
and righteous judge, if he did not preserve human society? and how
would it be preserved, without manifesting himself by public judgments
against public wrongs? Is there not as great a necessity that goodness
should have instruments of judgment, as that there should be {b237}
prisons, bridewells, and gibbets, in a good commonwealth? Did not the
thunderbolts of God sometimes roar in the ears of men, they would sin
with a higher hand than they do, fly more in the face of God, make
the world as much a moral, as it was at first a natural chaos: the
ingenuity of men would be damped, if there were not something to work
upon their fears, to keep them in their due order. Impunity of the
innocent person is worse than any punishment. It is a misery to want
medicines for the cure of a sharp disease; and a mark of goodness in
a prince to consult for the security of the political body, by cutting
off a gangrened and corrupting member: and what prince would deserve
the noble title of good, if he did not restrain, by punishment, those
evils which impair the public welfare? Is it not necessary that the
examples of sin, whereby others have been encouraged to wickedness,
should be made examples of justice, whereby the same persons and others
may be discouraged from what before they were greedily inclined unto?
Is not a hatred of what is bad and unworthy, as much a part of Divine
goodness, as a love to what is excellent, and bears a resemblance to
himself? Could he possibly be accounted good, that should bear the same
degree of affection to a prodigious vice, as to a sublime virtue? and
should behave himself in the same manner of carriage to the innocent
and culpable? could you account him good, if he did always with
pleasure behold evil, and perpetually suffer the oppressions of the
innocent under unpunished wickedness? How should we know the goodness
of the Divine nature, and his affection to the goodness of his creature,
if he did not by some acts of severity witness his implacable aversion
against sin, and his care to preserve the good government of the world?
If corrupted creatures should always be exempt from the effects of
his indignation, he would declare himself not to be infinitely good,
because he would not be really righteous. No man thinks it a natural
vice in the sun, by the power of its scorching heat, to dry up and
consume the unwholesome vapors of the air; nor are the demonstrations
of Divine justice any blots upon his goodness, since they are both for
the defence and glory of his holiness, and for the preservation of the
beauty and order of the world.
2. Is it not part of the goodness of God to make laws, and annex
threatenings; and shall it be an impeachment of his goodness to support
them? The more severe laws are made for deterring evil, the better is
that prince accounted in making such provision for the welfare of the
community. The design of laws, and the design of upholding the honor of
those laws by the punishment of offenders, is to promote goodness and
restrain evil; the execution of those laws must be therefore pursuant
to the same design of goodness which first settled them. Would it not
be contrary to goodness, to suffer that which was designed for the
support of goodness, to be scorned and slighted? It would neither be
prudence nor goodness, but folly and vice, to let laws, which were
made to promote virtue, be broken with impunity. Would not this be
to weaken virtue, and give a new life and vigor to vice? Not only
the righteousness of the law itself, but the wisdom of the Lawgiver
would be exposed {b238} to contempt, if the violations of it remained
uncontrolled, and the violence offered by men passed unpunished.
None but will acknowledge the Divine precepts to be the image of the
righteousness of God, and beneficial for the common good of the world
(Rom. vii. 12): “The law is holy, just, and good,” and so is every
precept of it; the law is for no other end, but to keep the creature
in subjection to, and dependence on God; this dependence could not be
preserved without a law, nor that law be kept in reputation, without
a penalty; nor would that penalty be significant without an execution.
Every law loseth the nature of a law, without a penalty; and the
penalty loseth its vigor, without the infliction of it: how can those
laws attain their end, if the transgressions of them be not punished?
Would not the wickedness of the men’s hearts be encouraged by such a
kind of uncomely goodness? and all the threatenings be to no other end,
than to engender vain and fruitless fears in the minds of men? Is it
good for the majesty of God to suffer itself to be trampled on by his
vassals? to suffer men, by their rebellion, to level his law with the
wickedness of their own hearts; and by impunity slight his own glory,
and encourage their disobedience? Who would give any man, any prince,
any father, that should do so, the name of a good governor? If it were
a fruit of Divine goodness to make laws, is it contrary to goodness
to support the honor of them? It is every whit as rational and as good
to vindicate the honor of his laws by justice, as at first to settle
them by authority; as much goodness to vindicate it from contempt, as
at first to enact it; as it is as much wisdom to preserve a law, as
at first to frame it: shall his precepts be thought by him unworthy
of a support, that were not thought by him unworthy to be made? The
same reason of goodness that led him to enjoin them, will lead him
to revenge them. Did evil appear odious to him, while he enacted this
law; and would not his goodness, as well as his wisdom, appear odious
to him, if he did never execute it? Would it not be a denial of his
own goodness, to be led by the foolish and corrupt judgment of his
creatures, and slight his own law, because his rebels spurn at it?
Since he valued it before they could actually contemn it, would he not
misjudge his own law and his own wisdom, discount from the true value
of them, condemn his own acts, censure his precepts as unrighteous,
and therefore evil and injurious? remove the differences between good
and evil, look upon vice as virtue, and wickedness as righteousness,
if he thought his commands unworthy a vindication? How can there be any
support to the honor of his precepts, without sometimes executing the
severity of his threatenings? And as to his threatenings of punishment
for the breach of his laws, are they not designed to discourage
wickedness, as the promises of reward were designed to encourage
goodness? Hath he not multiplied the one, to scare men from sin, as
well as the other, to allure men to obedience? Is not the same truth
engaged to support the one, as well as the other; and how could he
be abundant in goodness, if he were not abundant in truth (Exod. xxxiv.
6)? both are linked together; if he neglected his truth, he would
be out of love with his own goodness; since it cannot be manifested
in performing the promises to the obedient, if {b239} it be not also
manifested in executing his threatenings upon the rebellious. Had not
God annexed threatenings to his laws, he would have had no care of
his own goodness. The order between God and the creature, wherein the
declaration of his goodness consisted, might have been easily broken by
his creature; man would have freed himself from subjection to God; been
unaccountable to him, had this consisted with that infinite goodness
whereby he loves himself, and loves his creatures. As therefore the
annexing threatenings to his law, was a part of his goodness; the
execution of them is so far from being a blemish, that it is the
honor of his goodness. The rewards of obedience, and the punishment of
disobedience, refer to the same end, _viz._ the due manifestation of
the valuation of his own law, the glorifying his own goodness, which
enjoined so beneficial a law for man, and the support of that goodness
in the creatures, which by that law he demands righteously and kindly
of them.
3. Hence it follows, That not to punish evil, would be a want of
goodness to himself. The goodness of God is an indulgent goodness, in a
way of wisdom and reason; not a fond goodness, in a way of weakness and
folly: would it not be a weakness, always to bear with the impenitent?
a want of expressing a goodness to goodness itself? Would not goodness
have more reason to complain, for a want of justice to rescue it,
than men have reason to complain, for the exercise of justice in
the vindication of it? If God established all things in order, with
infinite wisdom and goodness, and God silently beheld, forever, this
order broken, would he not either charge himself with a want of power,
or a want of will, to preserve the marks of his own goodness? Would
it be a kindness to himself to be careless of the breaches of his own
orders? His throne would shake, yea, sink from under him, if justice,
whereby he sentenceth, and judgment, whereby he executes his sentence,
were not the supports of it (Ps. lxxxix. 14). “Justice and judgment
are the habitation of thy throne,” מכון, the stability or foundation of
thy throne. So, Ps. xciii. 2. Man would forget his relation to God;
God would be unknown to be sovereign of the world, were he careless
of the breaches of his own order (Ps. ix. 16). “The Lord is known by
the judgments which he executes;” is it not a part of his goodness, to
preserve the indispensable order between himself and his creatures? His
own sovereignty, which is good, and the subjection of the creature to
him as sovereign, which is also good; the one would not be maintained
in its due place, nor the other restrained in due limits, without
punishment. Would it be a goodness in him to see goodness itself
trampled upon constantly, without some time or other appearing for
the relief of it? Is it not a goodness to secure his own honor,
to prevent further evil? Is it not a goodness to discourage men by
judgments, sometimes, from a contempt and ill use of his bounty; as
well as sometimes patiently to bear with them, and wait upon them for a
reformation? Must God be bad to himself, to be kind to his enemies? And
shall it be accounted an unkindness, and a mark of evil in him, not to
suffer himself to be always outraged and defied? The world is wronged
by sin, as well as God is injured by it. How could God be good to
himself, if he righted not his {b240} own honor? or be a good governor
of the world, if he did not sometimes witness against the injuries it
receives sometimes from the works of his hands? Would he be good to
himself, as a God, to be careless of his own honor? or good, as the
Rector of the world, and be regardless of the world’s confusion? That
God should give an eternal good to that creature that declines its duty,
and despiseth his sovereignty, is not agreeable to the goodness of his
wisdom, or that of his righteousness. It is a part of God’s goodness
to love himself. Would he love his sovereignty, if he saw it daily
slighted, without sometimes discovering how much he values the honor
of it? Would he have any esteem for his own goodness, if he beheld it
trampled upon, without any will to vindicate it? Doth mercy deserve
the name of cruelty, because it pleads against a creature that hath so
often abused it, and hath refused to have any pity exercised towards it
in a righteous and regular way? Is sovereignty destitute of goodness,
because it preserves its honor against one that would not have it reign
over him? Would he not seem, by such a regardlessness, to renounce his
own essence, undervalue and undermine his own goodness, if he had not
an implacable aversion to whatsoever is contrary to it? If men turn
grace into wantonness, is it not more reasonable he should turn his
grace into justice? All his attributes, which are parts of his goodness,
engage him to punish sin; without it, his authority would be vilified,
his purity stained, his power derided, his truth disgraced, his justice
scorned, his wisdom slighted; he would be thought to have dissembled in
his laws; and be judged, according to the rules of reason, to be void
of true goodness.
4. Punishment is not the primary intention of God. It is his goodness
that he hath no mind to punish; and therefore he hath put a bar to
evil, by his prohibitions and threatenings, that he might prevent sin,
and, consequently, any occasions of severity against his creature.[969]
The principal intention of God, in his law, was to encourage goodness,
that he might reward it; and when, by the commission of evil, God is
provoked to punish, and takes the sword into his hand, he doth not act
against the nature of his goodness, but against the first intention
of his goodness in his precepts, which was to reward; as a good judge
principally intends, in the exercise of his office, to protect good men
from violence, and maintain the honor of the laws, yet, consequently,
to punish bad men, without which the protection of the good would not
be secured, nor the honor of the law be supported; and a good judge, in
the exercise of his office, doth principally intend the encouragement
of the good, and wisheth there were no wickedness that might occasion
punishment; and, when he doth sentence a malefactor, in order to the
execution of him, he doth not act against the goodness of his nature,
but pursuant to the duty of his place, but wisheth he had no occasion
for such severity. Thus God seems to speak of himself (Isa. xxviii. 21);
he calls the act of his wrath his “strange work, his strange act;” a
work, not against his nature, as the Governor of the world, but against
his first intention, as Creator, which was to manifest his goodness;
therefore he moves with a slow pace in those acts, {b241} brings out
his judgments with relentings of heart, and seems to cast out his
thunderbolts with a trembling hand: “He doth not afflict willingly, nor
grieve the children of men” (Lam. iii. 33); and therefore he “delights
not in the death of a sinner” (Ezek. xxxiii. 11); not in death, as
death; in punishment, as punishment; but as it reduceth the suffering
creature to the order of his precept, or reduceth him into order under
his power, or reforms others who are spectators of the punishment upon
a criminal of their own nature; God only hates the sin, not the sinner;
he desires only the destruction of the one, not the misery of the other;
the nature of a man doth not displease him, because it is a work of
his own goodness, but the nature of the sinner displeaseth him, because
it is a work of the sinner’s own extravagance.[970] Divine goodness
pitcheth not its hatred primarily upon the sinner, but upon the sin:
but since he cannot punish the sin without punishing the subject to
which it cleaves, the sinner falls under his lash. Whoever regards a
good judge as an enemy to the malefactor, but as an enemy to his crime,
when he doth sentence and execute him?
5. Judgments in the world have a goodness in them, therefore they are
no impeachments of the goodness of God.
(1.) A goodness in their preparations. He sends not judgments without
giving warnings; his justice is so far from extinguishing his goodness,
that his goodness rather shines out in the preparations of his justice;
he gives men time, and sends them messengers, to persuade them to
another temper of mind, that he may change his hand, and exercise
his liberality where he threatened his severity. When the heathen had
presages of some evil upon their persons or countries, they took them
for invitations to repentance, excited themselves to many acts of
devotion, implored his favor, and often experimented it. The Ninevites,
upon the proclamation of the destruction of their city by Jonah, fell
to petitioning him, whereby they signified, that they thought him good,
though he were just, and more prone to pity than severity; and their
humble carriage caused the arrows he had ready against them to drop
out of his hands (Jonah iii. 9, 10). When he brandisheth his sword,
he wishes for some to stand in that gap, to mollify his anger, that
he might not strike the fatal blow (Ezek. xxxii. 30); “I sought for
a man among them that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap
before me in the land, that I should not destroy it.” He was desirous
that his creatures might be in a capacity to receive the marks of
his bounty.[971] This he signified, not obscurely, to Moses (Exod.
xxxii. 10), when he spoke to him to let him alone, that his anger
might wax hot against the people, after they had made a golden calf and
worshipped it. “Let me alone,” said God: not that Moses restrained him,
saith Chrysostom, who spake nothing to him, but stood silent before him,
and knew nothing of the people’s idolatry; but God would give him an
occasion of praying for them, that he might exercise his mercy towards
them; yet in such a manner, that the people, being struck with a sense
of their crime, and the horror of Divine justice, they might be amended
for the future, when they should understand that their death was not
averted by their {b242} own merit or intercession, but by Moses, his
patronage of them, and pleading for them; as we see sometimes masters
and fathers angry with their servants and children, and preparing
themselves to punish them, but secretly wish some friend to intercede
for them, and take them out of their hands: there is a goodness shining
in the preparations of his judgments.
2. A goodness in the execution of them. They are good, as they shew
God disaffected to evil, and conduce to the glory of his holiness, and
deter others from presumptuous sins (Deut. x. 3): “I will be glorified
in all that draw near unto me;”――in his judgment upon Nadab and Abihu,
the sons of Aaron, for offering strange fire. By them God preserves
the excellent footsteps of his own goodness in his creation and his
law, and curbs the licentiousness of men, and contains them within the
bounds of their duty. “Thy judgments are good,” saith the Psalmist (Ps.
cxix. xxxix.); _i. e._ thy judicial proceedings upon the wicked; for
he desires God there to turn away, by some signal act, the reproach
the wicked cast upon him. Can there be any thing more miserable than
to live in a world full of wickedness, and void of the marks of Divine
goodness and justice to repress it? Were there not judgments in the
world, men would forget God, be insensible of his government of the
world, neglect the exercises of natural and christian duties; religion
would be at its last gasp, and expire among them, and men would pretend
to break God’s precepts by God’s authority. Are they not good, then,
as they restrain the creature from further evils; affright others from
the same crimes which they were inclinable to commit? He strikes some,
to reform others that are spectators; as Apollonius tamed pigeons by
beating dogs before them. Punishments are God’s gracious warnings to
others, not to venture upon the crimes which they see attended with
such judgments. The censers of Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, were to be
wrought into plates for a covering of the altar, to abide there as
a memento to others, not to approach to the exercise of the priestly
office without an authoritative call from God (Numb. xvi. 38, 40);
and those judgments exercised in the former ages of the world, were
intended by Divine goodness for warnings, even in evangelical times.
Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt, to prevent men from
apostasy; that use Christ himself makes of it, in the exhortation
against “turning back” (Luke xvii. 32, 33). And (Ps. lviii. 10): “The
righteous shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.” When God
shall drench his sword in the blood of the wicked, the righteous shall
take occasion from thence, to purify themselves, and reform their ways,
and look to the paths of their feet. Would not impunity be hurtful
to the world, and men receive encouragement to sin, if severities
sometimes did not bridle them from the practice of their inclinations?
Sometimes the sinner himself is reformed, and sometimes removed from
being an example to others. Though thunder be an affrightening noise,
and lightning a scaring flash, yet they have a liberal goodness in them,
in shattering and consuming those contagious vapors which burden and
infect the air, and thereby render it more clear and healthful. Again,
there are few acts of Divine justice upon a people, but are in {b243}
the very execution of them attended with demonstrations of his goodness
to others; he is a protector of his own, while he is a revenger on
his enemies; when he rides upon his horses in anger against some, his
chariots are “chariots of salvation” to others (Hab. iii. 8). Terror
makes way for salvation; the overthrow of Pharaoh and the strength of
his nation, completed the deliverance of the Israelites. Had not the
Egyptians met with their destruction, the Israelites had unavoidably
met with their ruin, against all the promises God had made to them,
and to the defamation of his former justice, in the former plagues upon
their oppressors. The death of Herod was the security of Peter, and the
rest of the maliced christians. The gracious deliverance of good men
is often occasioned by some severe stroke upon some eminent persecutor;
the destruction of the oppressor is the rescue of the innocent. Again,
where is there a judgment but leaves more criminals behind than it
sweeps away, that deserved to be involved in the same fate with the
rest? More Egyptians were left behind to possess and enjoy the goodness
of their fruitful land, than they were that were hurried into another
world by the overflowing waves; is not this a mark of goodness as
well as severity? Again, is it not a goodness in Him not to pour out
judgments according to the greatness of his power? to go gradually to
work with those whom he might in a moment blow to destruction with one
breath of his mouth? Again, he sometimes exerciseth judgments upon some,
to form a new generation for himself; he destroyed an old world, to
raise a new one more righteous, as a man pulls down his old buildings
to erect a sounder and more stately fabric. To sum up what hath been
said in this particular; how could God be a friend to goodness, if
he were not an enemy to evil? how could he shew his enmity to evil,
without revenging the abuse and contempt of his goodness? God would
rather have the repentance of a sinner than his punishment; but the
sinner would rather expose himself to the severest frowns of God, than
pursue those methods wherein he hath settled the conveyances of his
kindness; “You will not come to me that you might have life,” saith
Christ. How is eternity of punishment inconsistent with the goodness of
God? nay, how can God be good without it? If wickedness always remain
in the nature of man, is it not fit the rod should always remain on
the back of men? Is it a want of goodness that keeps an incorrigible
offender in chains in a bridewell? While sin remains, it is fit it
should be punished; would not God else be an enemy to his own goodness,
and shew favor to that which doth abuse it, and is contrary to it?
He hath threatened eternal flames to sinners, that he might the more
strongly excite them to a reformation of their ways, and a practice of
his precepts. In those threatenings he hath manifested his goodness;
and can it be bad in him to defend what his goodness hath commanded,
and execute what his goodness hath threatened? His truth is also a part
of his goodness; for it is nothing but his goodness performing that
which it obliged him to do. That is the first thing; severe judgments
in the world are no impeachments of his goodness.
Secondly, The afflictions God inflicts upon his servants, are no
{b244} violations of his goodness. Sometimes God afflicts men for their
temporal and eternal good; for the good of their grace, in order to the
good of their glory; which is a more excellent good, than afflictions
can be an evil. The heathens reflected upon Ulysses’ hardship, as
a mark of Jupiter’s goodness and love to him, that his virtue might
be more conspicuous. By strong persecutions brought upon the church,
her lethargy is cured, her chaff purged, the glorious fruit of the
gospel brought forth in the lives of her children; the number of her
proselytes multiply, and the strength of her weak ones is increased,
by the testimonies of courage and constancy which the stronger present
to them in their sufferings. Do these good effects speak a want of
goodness in God, who brings them into this condition? By those he cures
his people of their corruptions, and promotes their glory, by giving
them the honor of suffering for the truth, and raiseth their spirits
to a divine pitch. The epistles of Paul to the Ephesians, Philippians,
and Colossians, wrote by him while he was in Nero’s chains, seem to
have a higher strain than some of those he wrote when he was at liberty.
As for afflictions, they are marks of a greater measure of fatherly
goodness than he discovers to those that live in an uninterrupted
prosperity, who are not dignified with that glorious title of sons, as
those are that “he chasteneth” (Heb. xii. 6, 7). Can any question the
goodness of the father that corrects his child to prevent his vice and
ruin, and breed him up to virtue and honor? It would be a cruelty in
a father leaving his child without chastisement, to leave him to that
misery an ill education would reduce him to: “God judges us that we
might not be condemned with the world” (1 Cor. xi. 32). Is it not a
greater goodness to separate us from the world to happiness by his
scourge, than to leave us to the condemnation of the world for our
sins? Is it not a greater goodness to make us smart here, than to see
us scorched hereafter? As he is our Shepherd, it is no part of his
enmity or ill‑will to us, to make us feel sometimes the weight of his
shepherd’s crook, to reduce us from our struggling. The visiting our
transgressions with rods, and our iniquities with stripes, is one of
the articles of the covenant of grace, wherein the greatest lustre
of his goodness appears (Ps. lxxxix. 33). The advantage and gain of
our afflictions is a greater testimony of his goodness to us, than the
pain can be of his unkindness; the smart is well recompensed by the
accession of clearer graces. It is rather a high mark of goodness, than
an argument for the want of it, that he treats us as his children, and
will not suffer us to run into that destruction we are more ambitious
of, than the happiness he hath prepared for us, and by afflictions he
fits us for the partaking of, by “imparting his holiness,” together
with the inflicting his rod (Heb. xii. 10). That is the third thing,
God is good.
IV. The fourth thing is the manifestation of this goodness in
_Creation_, _Redemption_, and _Providence_.
_First_, In _Creation_. This is apparent from what hath been said
before, that no other attribute could be the motive of his creating,
but his goodness; his goodness was the cause that he made any thing,
and his wisdom was the cause that he made every thing in {b245} order
and harmony. He pronounced “every thing good,” _i. e._ such as became
his goodness to bring forth into being, and rested in them more, as
they were stamps of his goodness, than as they were marks of his power,
or beams of his wisdom. And if all creatures were able to answer to
this question, What that was which created them? the answer would be,
Almighty power, but employed by the motion of infinite goodness.[972]
All the varieties of creatures are so many apparitions of this goodness.
Though God be one, yet he cannot appear as a God but in variety. As
the greatness of power is not manifest but in variety of works, and an
acute understanding not discovered but in variety of reasonings, so an
infinite goodness is not so apparent as in variety of communications.
1. The creation proceeds from goodness. It is the goodness of God to
extract such multitudes of things from the depths of nothing. Because
God is good, things have a being; if he had not been good, nothing
could have been good; nothing could have imparted that which it
possessed not; nothing but goodness could have communicated to things
an excellency, which before they wanted. Being is much more excellent
than nothing. By this goodness, therefore, the whole creation was
brought out of the dark womb of nothing; this formed their natures,
this beautified them with their several ornaments and perfections,
whereby everything was enabled to act for the good of the common world.
God did not create things because he was a living Being, but because
he was a good Being. No creature brought forth anything in the world
merely because it is, but because it is good, and by a communicated
goodness fitted for such a production. If God had been the creating
principle of things only as he was a living Being, or as he was an
understanding Being, then all things should have partaken of life and
understanding, because all things were to bear some characters of the
Deity upon them. If by understanding, solely, God were the Creator of
all things, all things should have borne the mark of the Deity upon
them, and should have been more or less understanding; but he created
things as he was good, and by goodness he renders all things more
or less like himself: hence everything is accounted more noble, not
in regard of its being, but in regard of the beneficialness of its
nature. The being of things was not the end of God in creating, but the
goodness of their being. God did not rest from his works because they
were his works, _i. e._ because they had a being; but because they
had a good being (Gen. i.); because they were naturally useful to
the universe: nothing was more pleasing to him, than to behold those
shadows and copies of his own goodness in his works.
2. Creation was the first act of goodness without himself. When
he was alone from eternity, he contented himself with himself,
abounding in his own blessedness, delighting in that abundance; he was
incomprehensively rich in the possession of an unstained felicity.[973]
This creation was the first efflux of his goodness without himself:
for the work of creation cannot be called a work of mercy.[974] Mercy
supposeth a creature miserable, but that which hath no being is subject
{b246} to no misery; for to be miserable supposeth a nature in being,
and deprived of that good which belongs to the pleasure and felicity
of nature; but since there was no being, there could be no misery.
The creation, therefore, was not an act of mercy, but an act of sole
goodness; and, therefore, it was the speech of an heathen, that when
God first set upon the creation of the world, he transformed himself
into love and goodness, Εἰς ἔρωτα μεταβλῆθαι τὸν θεὸν μέλλοντα
δημιουργεῖν.[975] This led forth, and animated his power, the first
moment it drew the universe out of the womb of nothing. And,
3. There is not one creature but hath a character of his goodness.
The whole world is a map to represent, and a herald to proclaim this
perfection. It is as difficult not to see something of it in every
creature with the eye of our minds, as it is not to see the beams of
the shining sun with those off our bodies. “He is good to all” (Ps.
cxlv. 9); he is, therefore, good in all; not a drop of the creation,
but is a drop of his goodness. These are the colors worn upon the
heads of every creature. As in every spark the light of the fire is
manifested, so doth every grain of the creation wear the visible badges
of this perfection. In all the lights, the Father of Lights hath made
the riches of goodness apparent; no creature is silent in it; it is
legible to all nations in every work of his hands. That, as it is said
of Christ (Ps. xl. 7), “In the volume of thy book it is written of me:”
In the volume of the book of the Scripture it is written of me, and my
goodness in redemption: so it may be said of God, In the volume of the
book of the creature it is written of me, and my goodness in creation.
Every creature is a page in this book, whose “line is gone through
all the earth, and their words to the end of the world” (Ps. xix. 4);
though, indeed, the less goodness in some is obscured by the more
resplendent goodness he hath imparted unto others. What an admirable
piece of goodness is it to communicate life to a fly! How should we
stand gazing upon it, till we turn our eye inwards, and view our own
frame, which is much more ravishing!
But let us see the goodness of God in the creation of man,――_in the
being and nature of man_. God hath, with a liberal hand, conferred upon
every creature the best being it was capable of in that station and
order, and conducing to that end and use in the world he intended it
for. But when you have run over all the measures of goodness God hath
poured forth upon other creatures, you will find a greater fulness
of it in the nature of man, whom he hath placed in a more sublime
condition, and endued with choicer prerogatives, than other creatures:
he was made but little lower than the angels, and much more loftily
crowned with glory and honor than other creatures (Ps. viii. 5). Had it
not been for Divine goodness, that excellent creature had lain wrapt up
in the abyss of nothing; or if he had called it out of nothing, there
might have been less of skill and less of goodness displayed in the
forming of it, and a lesser kind of being imparted to it, than what he
hath conferred.
1. How much of goodness is visible in his body! God drew out some part
of the dust of the ground, and copied out this perfection, as well as
that of his power, on that mean matter, by erecting it into {b247} the
form of a man, quickening that earth by the inspiration of a “living
soul” (Gen. ii. 7): of this matter he composed an excellent body, in
regard of the majesty of the face, erectness of its stature, and grace
of every part. How neatly hath he wrought this “tabernacle of clay,
this earthly house,” as the apostle calls it (2 Cor. v. 1)! a curious
wrought piece of needle‑work, a comely artifice (Ps. cxxxix. 15), an
embroidered case for an harmonious lute. What variety of members, with
a due proportion, without confusion, beautiful to sight, excellent
for use, powerful for strength! It hath eyes to conduct its motion, to
serve in matter for the food, and delight of the understanding; ears to
let in the pleasure of sound, to convey intelligence of the affairs of
the world, and the counsels of heaven, to a more noble mind. It hath
a tongue to express and sound forth what the learned inhabitant in it
thinks; and hands to act what the inward counsellor directs; and feet
to support the fabric. It is tempered with a kindly heat, and an oily
moisture for motion, and endued with conveyances for air, to qualify
the fury of the heat, and nourishment to supply the decays of moisture.
It is a cabinet fitted by Divine goodness for the enclosing a rich
jewel; a palace made of dust, to lodge in it the viceroy of the world;
an instrument disposed for the operations of the nobler soul which
he intended to unite to that refined matter. What is there in the
situation of every part, in the proportion of every member, in the
usefulness of every limb and string to the offices of the body, and
service of the soul; what is there in the whole structure that doth
not inform us of the goodness of God?
2. But what is this to that goodness which shines in the nature of the
soul? Who can express the wonders of that comeliness that is wrapped up
in this mask of clay? A soul endued with a clearness of understanding
and freedom of will: faculties no sooner framed, but they were able
to produce the operation they were intended for; a soul that excelled
the whole world, that comprehended the whole creation; a soul that
evidenced the extent of its skill in giving names to all that variety
of creatures which had issued out of the hand of Divine Power (Gen.
ii. 19); a soul able to discover the nature of other creatures, and
manage and conduct their motions. In the ruins of a palace we may see
the curiosity displayed, and the cost expended in the building of it;
in the ruins of this fallen structure, we still find it capable of a
mighty knowledge; a reason able to regulate affairs, govern states,
order more mighty and massy creatures, find out witty inventions; there
is still an understanding to irradiate the other faculties, a mind
to contemplate its own Creator, a judgment to discern the differences
between good and evil, vice and virtue, which the goodness of God hath
not granted to any lower creature. These excellent faculties, together
with the power of self‑reflection, and the swiftness of the mind in
running over the things of the creation, are astonishing gleams of the
vast goodness of that Divine Hand which ennobled this frame. To the
other creatures of this world, God had given out some small mites from
his treasury; but in the perfections of man, he hath opened the more
secret parts {b248} of his exchequer, and liberally bestowed those
doles, which he hath not expended upon the other creatures on earth.
3. Besides this, he did not only make man so noble a creature in his
frame, but “he made him after his own image in holiness.” He imparted
to him a spark of his own comeliness, in order to a communion with
himself in happiness, had man stood his ground in his trial, and used
those faculties well, which had been the gift of his Bountiful Creator:
he “made man after his image,” after his own image (Gen. i. 26, 27);
that as a coin bears the image of the prince, so did the soul of man
the “image of God:” not the image of angels, though the speech be in
the plural number: “Let us make man.” It is not to a creature, but to
a Creator; let “us,” that are his makers, make him in the image of his
makers. God created man, angels did not create him; God created man
in his “own” image, not, therefore, in the image of angels: the nature
of God, and the nature of angels, are not the same. Where, in the
whole Scripture, is man said to be made after the image of angels? God
made man not in the image of angels, to be conformed to them as his
prototype, but in the image of the blessed God, to be conformed to the
Divine nature: that as he was conformed to the image of his holiness,
he might also partake of the image of his blessedness, which, without
it, could not be attained: for as the felicity of God could not be
clear without an unspotted holiness, so neither can there be a glorious
happiness without purity in the creature; this God provided for in his
creation of man, giving him such accomplishments in those two excellent
pieces of soul and body, that nothing was wanting to him but his own
will, to instate him in an invariable felicity. He was possessed with
such a nature by the hand of Divine Goodness, such a loftiness of
understanding, and purity of faculties, that he might have been for
ever happy as well as the standing angels: and he was placed in such a
condition, that moved the envy of fallen spirits; he had as much grace
bestowed upon him, as was proportionable to that covenant God then made
with him: the tenor of which was, that his life should continue so long
as his obedience, and his happiness endure so long as his integrity:
and as God, by creation, had given him an integrity of nature, so he
had given him a power to persist in it, if he would. Herein is the
goodness of God displayed, that he made man after his own image.
4. As to the life of man in this world, God, by an immense goodness,
copied out in him the whole creation, and made him an abridgment of
the higher and lower world,――a little world in a greater one. The link
of the two worlds, of heaven and earth, as the spiritual and corporeal
natures are united in him, the earth in the dust of his body, and the
heavens in the crystal of his soul: he hath the upper springs of the
life of angels in his reason, and the nether springs of the life of
animals in his sense. God displayed those virtues in man, which he
had discovered in the rest of the lower creation; but, besides the
communication which he had with earth in his nature, God gave him a
participation with heaven in his spirit. A mere bodily being he hath
given to the heavens, earth, elements; a vegetative life, or a life of
growth, he hath vouchsafed to the plants of the ground: he {b249} hath
stretched out his liberality more to animals and beasts, by giving
them sense. All these hath his goodness linked in man, being, life,
sense, with a richer dole than any of those creatures have received in
a rational, intellectual life, whereby he approacheth to the nature of
angels. This some of the Jews understood (Gen. ii. 7): “God breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,”
חיים, breath of lives, in the Hebrew; not one sort of life, but that
variety of lives which he had imparted to other creatures: all the
perfections scattered in other creatures do unitedly meet in man: so
that Philo might well call him “every creature, the model of the whole
creation:” his soul is heaven, and his body is earth.[976] So that the
immensity of his goodness to man, is as great as all that goodness you
behold in sensitive and intelligible things.
5. All this was free goodness. God eternally possessed his own
felicity in himself, and had no need of the existence of anything
without himself for his satisfaction. Man, before his being, could
have no good qualities to invite God to make him so excellent a fabric:
for, being nothing, he was as unable to allure and merit, as to bring
himself into being; nay, he created a multitude of men, who, he foresaw
would behave themselves in as ungrateful a manner, as if they had not
been his creatures, but had bestowed that rich variety upon themselves
without the hand of a superior Benefactor. How great is this goodness,
that hath made us models of the whole creation, tied together heaven
and earth in our nature, when he might have ranked us among the lower
creatures of the earth, made us mere bodies as the stones, or mere
animals as the brutes, and denied us those capacious souls, whereby
we might both know him and enjoy him! What could man have been more,
unless he had been the original, which was impossible? He could not
be greater than to be an image of the Deity, an epitome of the whole.
Well may we cry out with the Psalmist (Ps. viii. 1, 4), “O Lord, our
Lord, how excellent is thy name,” the name of thy goodness, “in all
the earth!” How, more particularly in man! “What is man that thou art
mindful of him?” What is a little clod of earth and dust, that thou
shouldst ennoble him with so rich a nature, and engrave upon him such
characters of thy immense Being?
6. The goodness of God appears in the conveniences he provided for,
and gave to man. As God gave him a being morally perfect in regard of
righteousness, so he gave him a being naturally perfect in regard of
delightful conveniences, which was the fruit of excellent goodness;
since there was no quality in man, to invite God to provide him so
rich a world, nor to bestow upon him so comely a being.
(1.) The world was made for man. Since angels have not need of anything
in this world, and are above the conveniences of earth and air, it will
follow, that man, being the noblest creature on the earth, was the more
immediate end of the visible creation. All inferior things are made
to be subservient to those that have a more excellent prerogative of
nature; and, therefore, all things for man, who exceeds all the rest
in dignity: as man was made for the honor of God, so the world was made
for the support and delight of man, {b250} in order to his performing
the service due from him to God. The empire God settled man in as his
lieutenant over the works of his hands, when he gave him possession of
paradise, is a clear manifestation of it: God put all things under his
feet, and gave him a deputed dominion over the rest of the creatures
under himself, as the absolute sovereign (Ps. viii. 6‒8); “Thou madest
him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all
things under his feet, all sheep and oxen; yea, and the beasts of
the field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea; yea, and
whatsoever passeth over the paths of the sea.” What less is witnessed
to by the calamity all creatures were subjected to by the corruption
of man’s nature? Then was the earth cursed, and a black cloud flung
upon the beauty of the creation, and the strength and vigor of it
languisheth to this day under the curse of God (Gen. ii. 17, 18), and
groans under that vanity the sin of man subjected it to (Rom. viii. 20,
22). The treasons of man against God brought misery upon that which was
framed for the use of man: as when the majesty of a prince is violated
by the treason and rebellion of his subjects, all that which belongs to
them, and was, before the free gift of the prince to them, is forfeit;
their habitations, palaces, cattle, all that belongs to them bear the
marks of his sovereign fury: had not the delicacies of the earth been
made for the use of man, they had not fallen under the indignation
of God upon the sin of man. God crowned the earth with his goodness
to gratify man; gave man a right to serve himself of the delightful
creatures he had provided (Gen. i. 28‒30); yea, and after man had
forfeited all by sin, and God had washed again the creature in a
deluge, he renews the creation, and delivers it again into the hand of
man, binding all creatures to pay a respect to him, and recognise him
as their Lord, either spontaneously, or by force; and commissions them
all to fill the heart of man with “food and gladness” (Gen. ix. 2, 3):
and he loves all creatures as they conduce to the good of, and are
serviceable to, his prime creature, which he set up for his own glory:
and therefore, when he loves a person, he loves what belongs to him:
he takes care of Jacob and his cattle: of penitent Nineveh and their
cattle (Jonah iv. 11): as when he sends judgments upon men he destroys
their goods.
(2.) God richly furnished the world for man. He did not only erect a
stately palace for his habitation, but provided all kind of furniture
as a mark of his goodness, for the entertainment of his creature, man:
he arched over his habitation with a bespangled heaven, and floored
it with a solid earth, and spread a curious wrought tapestry upon the
ground where he was to tread, and seemed to sweep all the rubbish of
the chaos to the two uninhabitable poles. When at the first creation of
the matter the waters covered the earth, and rendered it uninhabitable
for man, God drained them into the proper channels he had founded for
them, and set a bound that they might not pass over, that they turn not
again to “cover the earth” (Gen. i. 9). They fled and hasted away to
their proper stations (Ps. civ. 7‒9), as if they were ambitious to deny
their own nature, and content themselves with an imprisonment for the
convenient habitation of Him who was to be appointed Lord of the world.
He hath set up standing {b251} lights in the heaven, to direct our
motion, and to regulate the seasons: the sun was created, that man
might see to “go forth to his labor” (Ps. civ. 22, 23): both sun and
moon, though set in the heaven, were formed to “give light” on the
earth (Gen. i. 15, 17). The air is his aviary, the sea and rivers
his fish‑ponds, the valleys his granary, the mountains his magazine;
the first afford man creatures for nourishment, the other metals for
perfection: the animals were created for the support of the life of
man; the herbs of the ground were provided for the maintenance of their
lives; and gentle dews, and moistening showers, and, in some places,
slimy floods appointed to render the earth fruitful, and capable to
offer man and beast what was fit for their nourishment. He hath peopled
every element with a variety of creatures both for necessity and
delight; all furnished with useful qualities for the service of man.
There is not the most despicable thing in the whole creation but it is
endued with a nature to contribute something for our welfare: either
as food to nourish us when we are healthful; or as medicine to cure us
when we are distempered; or as a garment to clothe us when we are naked,
and arm us against the cold of the season; or as a refreshment when we
are weary; or as a delight when we are sad: all serve for necessity or
ornament, either to spread our table, beautify our dwellings, furnish
our closets, or store our wardrobes (Ps. civ. 24): “The whole earth
is full of his riches.” Nothing but by the rich goodness of God is
exquisitely accommodated, in the numerous brood of things, immediately
or mediately for the use of man; all, in the issue, conspire together
to render the world a delightful residence for man; and, therefore,
all the living creatures were brought by God to attend upon man after
his creation, to receive a mark of his dominion over them, by the
“imposition of their names” (Gen. ii. 19, 20). He did not only give
variety of senses to man, but provided variety of delightful objects
in the world for every sense; the beauties of light and colors for
our eye, the harmony of sounds for our ear, the fragrancy of odors
for our nostrils, and a delicious sweetness for our palates: some have
qualities to pleasure; all, everything, a quality to pleasure, one or
other: he doth not only present those things to our view, as rich men
do in ostentation their goods, he makes us the enjoyers as well as the
spectators, and gives us the use as well as the sight; and, therefore,
he hath not only given us the sight, but the knowledge of them: he
hath set up a sun in the heavens, to expose their outward beauty
and conveniences to our sight; and the candle of the Lord is in us,
to expose their inward qualities and conveniences to our knowledge,
that we might serve ourselves of, and rejoice in, all this furniture
wherewith he hath garnished the world, and have wherewithal to employ
the inquisitiveness of our reason, as well as gratify the pleasures
of our sense; and, particularly, God provided for innocent man a
delightful mansion‑house, a place of more special beauty and curiosity,
the garden of Eden, a delightful paradise, a model of the beauties
and pleasures of another world, wherein he had placed whatsoever might
contribute to the felicity of a rational and animal life, the life of
a creature composed of mire and dust, of sense and reason (Gen. ii. 9).
Besides the other delicacies {b252} consigned, in that place, to the
use of man, there was a tree of life provided to maintain his being,
and nothing denied, in the whole compass of that territory, but one
tree, that of the knowledge of good and evil, which was no mark of
an ill‑will in his Creator to him, but a reserve of God’s absolute
sovereignty, and a trial of man’s voluntary obedience. What blur was it
to the goodness of God, to reserve one tree for his own propriety, when
he had given to man, in all the rest, such numerous marks of his rich
bounty and goodness? What Israel, after man’s fall, enjoyed sensibly,
Nehemiah calls “great goodness” (Neh. ix. 25). How inexpressible, then,
was that goodness manifested to innocent man, when so small a part
of it, indulged to the Israelites after the curse upon the ground,
is called, as truly it merits, such great goodness! How can we pass
through any part of this great city, and cast our eyes upon the
well‑furnished shops, stored with all kinds of commodities, without
reflections upon this goodness of God starting up before our eyes in
such varieties, and plainly telling us that he hath accommodated all
things for our use, suited things, both to supply our need, content a
reasonable curiosity, and delight us in our aims at, and passage to,
our supreme end!
(3.) The goodness of God appears in the laws he hath given to man,
the covenant he hath made with him. It had not been agreeable to the
goodness of God to let a creature, governable by a law, be without a
law to regulate him; his goodness then which had broke forth in the
creation, had suffered an eclipse and obscurity in his government. As
infinite goodness was the motive to create, so infinite goodness was
the motive of his government. And this appears,
[1.] In the fitting the law to the nature of man. It was rather below
than above his strength; he had an integrity in his nature to answer
the righteousness of the precept. God created “man upright” (Eccles.
vii. 29); his nature was suited to the law, and the law to his nature;
it was not above his understanding to know it, nor his will to embrace
it, nor his passions to be regulated by it. The law and his nature were
like to exact straight lines, touching one another in every part when
joined together. God exacted no more by his law than what was written
by nature in his heart: he had a knowledge by creation to observe the
law of his creation, and he fell not for want of a righteousness in his
nature: he was enabled for more than was commanded him, but wilfully
indisposed to less than he was able to perform. The precepts were
easy, not only becoming the authority of a sovereign to exact, but
the goodness of a father to demand, and the ingenuity of a creature
and a son to pay. “His commands are not grievous” (1 John v. 3); the
observance of them had filled the spirit of man with an extraordinary
contentment. It had been no less a pleasure and a delightful
satisfaction to have kept the law in a created state, than it is to
keep it in some measure in a renewed state. The renewed nature finds a
suitableness in the law to kindle a “delight” (Ps. i. 2): it could not
then have anywise shook the nature of an upright creature, nor have
been a burden too heavy for his shoulders to bear. Though he had not
a grace {b253} given him above nature, yet he had not a law given him
that surmounted his nature: it did not exceed his created strength,
and was suited to the dignity and nobility of a rational nature. It was
a “just law” (Rom. vii. 12), and, therefore, not above the nature of
the subject that was bound to obey it. And had it been impossible to
be observed, it had been unrighteous to be enacted: it had not been a
matter of Divine praise, and that seven times a day; as it is, “Seven
times a day do I praise thee, because of thy righteous judgments” (Ps.
cxix. 164). The law was so righteous, that Adam had every whit as much
reason to bless God in his innocence for the righteousness of it, as
David had with the relics of enmity against it: his goodness shines
so much in his law, as merits our praise of him, as he is a sovereign
Lawgiver, as well as a gracious Benefactor, in the imparting to us a
being.
[2.] In fitting it for the happiness of man. For the satisfaction
of his soul, which finds a reward in the very act of keeping it, (Ps.
cxix. 165), “Great peace in the loving it;” for the preservation of
human society, wherein consists the external felicity of man. It had
been inconsistent with the Divine goodness to enjoin man anything that
should be oppressive and uncomfortable. Bitterness cannot come from
that which is altogether sweet: goodness would not have obliged the
creature to anything, but what is not only free from damaging him, but
wholly conducing to his welfare, and perfective of his nature. Infinite
wisdom could not order anything but what was agreeable to infinite
goodness. As his laws are the most rational, as being the contrivance
of infinite wisdom; so they are the best, as being the fruit of
infinite goodness. His laws are not only the acts of his sovereign
authority, but the effluxes of his loving‑kindness, and the conductors
of man to an enjoyment of a greater bounty: he minds as well the
promotion of his creatures’ felicity, as the asserting his own
authority; as good princes make laws for their subjects’ benefit
as well as their own honor. What was said of a more difficult and
burdensome law long after man’s fall, may much more be said of the easy
law of nature in the state of man’s innocence, that it was “for our
good” (Deut. x. 12, 13). He never pleaded with the Israelites for the
observation of his commands upon the account of his authority, so much
as upon the score of their benefit by them (Deut. iv. 40; xii. 28). And
when his precepts were broken, he seems sometimes to be more grieved
for men’s impairing their own felicity by it, than for their violating
his authority: “O, that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments, then
had thy peace been as a river!” (Isa. xlviii. 18). Goodness cannot
prescribe a thing prejudicial: whatsoever it enjoins, is beneficial to
the spiritual and eternal happiness of the rational creature: this was
both the design of the law given, and the end of the law. Christ, in
his answer to the young man’s question, refers him to the moral law,
which was the law of nature in Adam, as that whereby eternal life was
to be gained: which evidenceth, that when the law was first given as
the covenant of works, it was for the happiness of man; and the end of
giving it was, that man might have eternal life by it: there would else
be no strength or truth in that answer of Christ {b254} to that Ruler.
And, therefore, Stephen calls the law given by Moses, which was the
same with the law of nature in Adam, “the living oracles” (Acts vii.
38). He enjoined men’s services to them not simply for his own glory,
but his glory in men’s welfare: as if there were any being better than
himself, his goodness and righteousness would guide him to love that
better than himself; because it is good and righteous to love that
best which is most amiable: so, if there were any that could do us
more good, and shower down more happiness upon us than himself, he
would be content we should obey that as sovereign, and steer our course
according to his laws: “If God be God, follow him; but if Baal, then
follow him” (1 Kings xviii. 21). If the observance of the precepts of
Baal be more beneficial to you; if you can advance your nature by his
service, and gain a more mighty crown of happiness than by mine, follow
him with all my heart: I never intended to enjoin you anything to
impair, but increase your happiness. The chief design of God in his law
is the happiness of the subject; and obedience is intended by him as
a means for the attaining of happiness, as well as preserving his own
sovereignty: this is the reason why he wished that Israel had walked in
his ways, “that their time might have endured forever” (Ps. lxxxi. 13,
15, 16). And by the same reason, this was his intendment in his law
given to man, and his covenant made with man at the creation, that he
might be fed with the finest part of his bounty, and be satisfied with
honey out of the eternal Rock of Ages. To paraphrase his expression
there:――The goodness of God appears further,
[3.] In engaging man to obedience by promises and threatenings. A
threatening is only mentioned (Gen. ii. 17), but a promise is implied:
if eternal death were fixed for transgression, eternal life was thereby
designed for obedience: and that it was so, the answer of Christ to
the Ruler evidenceth, that the first intendment of the precept was the
eternal life of the subject, ordered to obey it.
1st. God might have acted, in settling his law, only as a sovereign.
Though he might have dealt with man upon the score of his absolute
dominion over him as his creature, and signified his pleasure upon
the right of his sovereignty, threatening only a penalty if man
transgressed, without the promising a bountiful acknowledgment of
his obedience by a reward as a benefactor: yet he would treat with
man in gentle methods, and rule him in a track of sweetness as well
as sovereignty: he would preserve the rights of his dominion in the
authority of his commands, and honor the condescensions of his goodness
in the allurements of a promise. He that might have solely demanded a
compliance with his will, would kindly article with him, to oblige him
to observe him out of love to himself as well as duty to his Creator;
that he might have both the interest of avoiding the threatened evil
to affright him, and the interest of attaining the promised good to
allure him to obedience. How doth he value the title of Benefactor
above that of a Lord, when he so kindly solicits, as well as commands;
and engageth to reward that obedience which he might have absolutely
claimed as his due, by enforcing fears of the severest penalty! {b255}
His sovereignty seems to stoop below itself for the elevation of his
goodness; and he is pleased to have his kindness more taken notice
of than his authority. Nothing imported more condescension than his
bringing forth his law in the nature of a covenant, whereby he seems
to humble himself, and veil his superiority to treat with man as his
equal, that the very manner of his treatment might oblige him in the
richest promises he made to draw him, and the startling threatenings
he pronounced to link him to his obedience: and, therefore, is it
observable, that when after the transgression of Adam God comes to deal
with him, he doth not do it in that thundering rigor, which might have
been expected from an enraged sovereign, but in a gentle examination
(Gen. iii. 11, 13): “Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded
thee that thou shouldst not eat?” To the woman, he said no more than,
“What is this that thou hast done?” And in the Scripture we find, when
he cites the Israelites before him for their sin, he expostulates with
them not so much upon the absolute right he had to challenge their
obedience, as upon the equity and reasonableness of his law which they
had transgressed; that by the same argument of sweetness, wherewith
he would attract them to their duty, he might shame them after their
offence (Isa. i. 2; Ezek. xviii. 25).
2d. By the threatenings he manifests his goodness as well as by his
promises. He promises that he might be a rewarder, and threatens that
he might not be a punisher; the one is to elevate our hope, and the
other to excite our fear, the two passions whereby the nature of man
is managed in the world. He imprints upon man sentiments of a misery by
sin, in his thundering commination, that he might engage him the more
to embrace and be guided by the motives of sweetness in his gracious
promises. The design of them was to preserve man in his due bounds,
that God might not have occasion to blow upon him the flames of his
justice; to suppress those irregular passions, which the nature of man
(though created without any disorder) was capable of entertaining upon
the appearance of suitable objects; and to keep the waves from swelling
upon any turning wind, that so man, being modest in the use of the
goodness God had allowed him, might still be capable of fresh streams
of Divine bounty, without ever falling under his righteous wrath for
any transgression. What a prospect of goodness is in this proceeding,
to disclose man’s happiness to be as durable as his innocence; and set
before a rational creature the extremest misery due to his crime, to
affright him from neglecting his Creator, and making unworthy returns
to his goodness! What could be done more by goodness to suit that
passion of fear which was implanted in the nature of man, than to
assure him he should not degenerate from the righteousness of his
nature, and violate the authority of his Creator, without falling from
his own happiness, and sinking into the most deplorable calamity!
3d. The reward he promised manifests yet further his goodness to man.
It was his goodness to intend a reward to man; no necessity could
oblige God to reward man, had he continued obedient in his created
state: for in all rewards which are truly merited, beside {b256} some
kind of equality to be considered between the person doing service and
the person rewarding, and also between the act performed and the reward
bestowed, there must also be considered the condition of the person
doing the service, that he is not obliged to do it as a duty, but is
at his own choice whether to offer it or no. But man, being wholly
dependent on God in his being and preservation, having nothing of his
own, but what he had received from the hands of Divine bounty, his
service was due by the strongest obligation to God (1 Cor. iv. 7). But
there was no natural engagement on God to return a reward to him; for
man could return nothing of his own but that only which he had received
from his Creator. It must be pure goodness that gives a gracious reward
for a due debt, to receive his own from man, and return more than he
had received. A Divine reward doth far surmount the value of a rational
service. It was, therefore, a mighty goodness to stipulate with man,
that upon his obedience he should enjoy an immortality in that nature.
The article on man’s part was obedience, which was necessarily just,
and founded in the nature of man; he had been unjust, ungrateful, and
violated all laws of righteousness, had he committed any act unworthy
of one that had been so great a subject of Divine liberality.[977]
But the article on God’s part, of giving a perpetual blessedness
to innocent man, was not founded upon rules of strict justice and
righteousness, for that would have argued God to be a debtor to man;
but that God cannot be to the work of his hands, that had received the
materials of his being and acting from him, as the vessel doth from
the potter. But this was founded only on the goodness of the Divine
nature, whereby he cannot but be kind to an innocent and holy creature.
The nature of God inclined him to it by the rules of goodness, but
the service of man could not claim it by the rules of justice without
a stipulation; so that the covenant whereby God obliged himself to
continue the happiness of man upon the continuance of his obedience, in
the original of it, springs from pure goodness; though the performance
of it, upon the fulfilling condition required in the creature, was
founded upon the rules of righteousness and truth, after Divine
goodness had brought it forth. God did create man for a reward and
happiness; now God’s implanting in the nature of man a desire after
happiness, and some higher happiness than he had in creation invested
him in, doth evidence that God did not create man only for his own
service, but for his attaining a greater happiness. All rational
creatures are possessed with a principle of seeking after good, the
highest good, and God did not plant in man this principle in vain; it
had not been goodness to put this principle in man, if he had designed
never to bestow a happiness on man for his obedience: this had been
repugnant to the goodness and wisdom of God; and the Scripture doth
very emphatically express the felicity of man to be the design of
God in the first forming him and moulding him a creature, as well as
working him a new creature; “He that hath wrought us for the self‑same
thing is God” (2 Cor. v. 1, 5): he framed this earthly tabernacle for
a residence in an eternal habitation, {b257} and a better habitation
than an earthly paradise. What we expect in the resurrection, that very
same thing God did in creation intend us for; but since the corruption
of our natures, we must undergo a dissolution of our bodies, and may
have just reason of a despondency, since sin hath seemed to change the
course of God’s bounty, and brought us under a curse. He hath given
us the earnest of his Spirit, as an assurance that he will perform
that very self‑same thing, the conferring that happiness upon renewed
creatures for which he first formed man in creation, when he compacted
his earthly tabernacle of the dust of the ground, and reared it up
before him.
4th. It was a mighty goodness that God should give man an eternal
reward. That an eternity of reward was promised, is implied in the
death that was threatened upon transgression: whatsoever you conceive
the threatened death to be, either for nature, or duration upon
transgression; of the same nature and duration you must suppose the
life to be, which is implied upon his constancy in his integrity.
As sin would render him an eternal object of God’s hatred, so his
obedience would render him an eternally amiable object to his Creator,
as the standing angels are preserved and confirmed in an entire
felicity and glory. Though the threatening be only expressed by God
(Gen. ii. 17), yet the other is implied, and might easily be concluded
from it by Adam. And one reason why God only expressed the threatening,
and not the promise, was, because man might collect some hopes and
expectations of a perpetual happiness from that image of God which he
beheld in himself, and from the large provision he had made for him in
the world, and the commission given him to increase and multiply, and
to rule as a lord over his other works; whereas he could not so easily
have imagined himself capable of being exposed to such an extraordinary
calamity as an eternal death, without some signification of it from God.
It is easily concludable, that eternal life was supposed to be promised,
to be conferred upon him if he stood, as well as eternal death to be
inflicted on him if he rebelled.[978] Now this eternal life was not
due to his nature, but it was a pure beam, and gift of Divine goodness;
for there was no proportion between man’s service in his innocent
estate, and a reward so great both for nature and duration: it was a
higher reward than can be imagined either due to the nature of man,
or upon any natural right claimable by his obedience. All that could
be expected by him was but a natural happiness, not a supernatural:
as there was no necessity upon the account of natural righteousness,
so there was no necessity upon the account of the goodness of God to
elevate the nature of man to a supernatural happiness, merely because
he created him: for though it be necessary for God, when he would
create, in regard of his wisdom, to create for some end, yet it was
not necessary that end should be a supernatural end and happiness,
since a natural blessedness had been sufficient for man. And though
God, in creating angels and men intellectual and rational creatures,
did make them necessary for himself and his own glory, yet it was
not necessarily for him to {b258} order either angels or men to such
a felicity as consists in a clear vision, and so high a fruition,
of himself: for all other things are made by him for himself, and
yet not for the vision of himself, God might have created man only
for a natural happiness, according to the perfection of his natural
faculties, and had dealt bountifully with him, if he had never intended
him a supernatural blessedness and an eternal recompense: but what a
largeness of goodness is here, to design man, in his creation, for so
rich a blessedness as an eternal life, with the fruition of himself! He
hath not only given to man all things which are necessary, but designed
for man that which the poor creature could not imagine: he garnished
the earth for him, and garnished him for an eternal felicity, had he
not, by slighting the goodness of God, stripped himself of the present,
and forfeited his future blessedness.
_Secondly_, The manifestation of this goodness in _Redemption_. The
whole gospel is nothing but one entire mirror of Divine goodness: the
whole of redemption is wrapped up in that one expression of the angels’
song (Luke ii. 14), “Good‑will towards men.” The angels sang but one
song before, which is upon record, but the matter of it seems to be
the wisdom of God chiefly in creation (Job xxxviii. 7; compare chap.
ix. 5, 6, 8, 9). The angels are there meant by the “morning stars;” the
visible stars of heaven were not distinctly formed when the foundations
of the earth were laid: and the title of the sons of God verifies it,
since none but creatures of understanding are dignified in Scripture
with that title. There they celebrate his wisdom in creation; here his
goodness in redemption, which is the entire matter of the song.
i. Goodness was the spring of redemption. All and every part of it owes
only to this perfection the appearance of it in the world. This only
excited wisdom to bring forth from so great an evil as the apostasy
of man, so great a good as the recovery of him. When man fell from
his created goodness, God would evidence that he could not fall from
his infinite goodness: that the greatest evil could not surmount
the ability of his wisdom to contrive, nor the riches of his bounty
to present us a remedy for it. Divine Goodness would not stand by
a spectator, without being reliever of that misery man had plunged
himself into; but by astonishing methods it would recover him to
happiness, who had wrested himself out of his hands, to fling himself
into the most deplorable calamity: and it was the greater, since it
surmounted those natural inclinations, and those strong provocations
which he had to shower down the power of his wrath. What could be the
source of such a procedure, but this excellency of Divine nature, since
no violence could force him, nor was there any merit to persuade to
such a restoration? This, under the name of his “love,” is rendered
the sole cause of the redeeming death of the Son: it was to commend his
love with the highest gloss, and in so singular a manner that had not
its parallel in nature, nor in all his other works, and reaches in the
brightness of it beyond the manifested extent of any other attribute
(Rom. v. 8). It must be only a miraculous goodness that induced him
to expose the life of his Son to those difficulties in the world, and
death upon the cross, {b259} for the freedom of sordid rebels: his
great end was to give such a demonstration of the liberality of his
nature, as might be attractive to his creature, remove its shakings and
tremblings, and encourage its approaches to him. It is in this he would
not only manifest his love, but assume the name of “Love.” By this name
the Holy Ghost calls him, in relation to this good will manifested in
his Son (1 John iv. 8, 9), “God is love.” In this is manifested the
love of God towards us, because that God sent his only‑begotten Son
into the world, that we might “live through him.” He would take the
name he never expressed himself in before. He was Jehovah, in regard of
the truth of his promise; so he would be known of old: he is Goodness,
in regard of the grandeur of his affection in the mission of his Son:
and, therefore, he would be known by the name of Love now, in the days
of the gospel.
ii. It was a pure goodness. He was under no obligation to pity our
misery, and repair our ruins: he might have stood to the terms of the
first covenant, and exacted our eternal death, since we had committed
an infinite transgression: he was under no tie to put off the robes
of a judge for the bowels of a father, and erect a mercy‑seat above
his tribunal of justice.[979] The reparation of man had no necessary
connexion with his creation; it follows not, that because Goodness
had extracted us from nothing by a mighty power, that it must lift us
out of wilful misery by a mighty grace. Certainly that God who had no
need of creating us, had far less need of redeeming us: for, since he
created one world, he could have as easily destroyed it, and reared
another. It had not been unbecoming the Divine Goodness or Wisdom, to
have let man perpetually wallow in that sink wherein he had plunged
himself, since he was criminal by his own will, and, therefore,
miserable by his own fault: nothing could necessitate this reparation.
If Divine Goodness could not be obliged by the angelical dignity to
repair that nature, he is further from any obligation by the meanness
of man to repair human nature. There was less necessity to restore man
than to restore the fallen angels. What could man do to oblige God to
a reparation of him, since he could not render him a recompense for his
goodness manifested in his creation? He must be much more impotent to
render him a debtor for the redemption of him from misery. Could it be
a salary for anything we had done? Alas! we are so far from meriting
it, that by our daily demerits, we seem ambitious to put a stop to any
further effusions of it: we could not have complained of him, if he had
left us in the misery we had courted, since he was bound by no law to
bestow upon us the recovery we wanted. When the apostle speaks of the
gospel of “redemption,” he giveth it the title of the “gospel of the
blessed God” (2 Tim. i. 11). It was the gospel of a God abounding in
his own blessedness, which received no addition by man’s redemption;
if he had been blessed by it, it had been a goodness to himself, as
well as to the creature: it was not an indigent goodness needing the
receiving anything from us; but it was a pure goodness, streaming out
of itself, without bringing anything into itself for the perfection of
it: there was no goodness in {b260} us to be the motive of his love,
but his goodness was the fountain of our benefit.
iii. It was a distinct goodness of the whole Trinity. In the creation
of man we find a general consultation (Gen. i. 26), without those
distinct labors and offices of each person, and without those raised
expressions and marks of joy and triumph as at man’s restoration. In
this there are distinct functions; the grace of the Father, the merit
of the Son, and the efficacy of the Spirit. The Father makes the
promise of redemption, the Son seals it with his blood, and the Spirit
applies it. The Father adopts us to be his children, the Son redeems us
to be his members, and the Spirit renews us to be his temples. In this
the Father testifies himself well‑pleased in a voice; the Son proclaims
his own delight to do the will of God, and the Spirit hastens, with
the wing of a dove, to fit him for his work, and afterwards, in his
apparition in the likeness of fiery tongues, manifests his zeal for
the propagation of the redeeming gospel.
iv. The effects of it proclaim His great goodness. It is by this we are
delivered from the corruption of our nature, the ruin of our happiness,
the deformity of our sins, and the punishment of our transgressions;
he frees us from the ignorance wherewith we were darkened and from the
slavery wherein we were fettered. When he came to make Adam’s process
after his crime, instead of pronouncing the sentence of death he had
merited, he utters a promise that man could not have expected; his
kindness swells above his provoked justice, and, while he chaseth
him out of paradise, he gives him hopes of regaining the same, or a
better habitation; and is, in the whole, more ready to prevent him
with the blessings of his goodness, than charge him with the horror
of his crimes (Gen. iii. 15). It is a goodness that pardons us more
transgressions than there are moments in our lives, and overlooks
as many follies as there are thoughts in our heart: he doth not only
relieve our wants, but restores us to our dignity. It is a greater
testimony of goodness to instate a person in the highest honors, than
barely to supply his present necessity: it is an admirable pity whereby
he was inclined to redeem us, and an incomparable affection whereby
he was resolved to exalt us. What can be desired more of him than his
goodness hath granted? He hath sought us out when we were lost, and
ransomed us when we were captives; he hath pardoned us when we were
condemned, and raised us when we were dead. In creation he reared
us from nothing, in redemption he delivers our understanding from
ignorance and vanity, and our wills from impotence and obstinacy, and
our whole man from a death worse than that nothing he drew us from by
creation.
v. Hence we may consider the height of this goodness in redemption to
exceed that in creation. He gave man a being in creation, but did not
draw him from inexpressible misery by that act. His liberality in the
gospel doth infinitely surpass what we admire in the works of nature;
his goodness in the latter is more astonishing to our belief, than
his goodness in creation is visible to our eye. There is more of his
bounty expressed in that one verse, “So God loved the world, that he
gave his only begotten Son” (John iii. 16), than {b261} there is in
the whole volume of the world: it is an incomprehensible _so_; a _so_
that all the angels in heaven cannot analyse; and few comment upon,
or understand, the dimensions of this _so_. In creation he formed an
innocent creature of the dust of the ground; in redemption he restores
a rebellious creature by the blood of his Son: it is greater than that
goodness manifested in creation.
1st. In regard of the difficulty in effecting it. In creation, mere
nothing was vanquished to bring us into being; in redemption, sullen
enmity was conquered for the enjoyment of our restoration; in creation,
he subdued a nullity to make us creatures; in redemption, his goodness
overcomes his omnipotent justice to restore us to felicity. A word from
the mouth of Goodness inspired the dust of men’s bodies with a living
soul; but the blood of his Son must be shed, and the laws of natural
affection seems to be overturned, to lay the foundation of our renewed
happiness. In the first, heaven did but speak, and the earth was formed;
in the second, heaven itself must sink to earth, and be clothed with
dusty earth, to reduce man’s dust to its original state.
2d. This goodness is greater than that manifested in creation, in
regard of its cost. This was a more expensive goodness than what was
laid out in creation. “The redemption of one soul is precious” (Ps.
xlix. 8), much more costly than the whole fabric of the world, or as
many worlds as the understandings of angels in their utmost extent can
conceive to be created. For the effecting of this, God parts with his
dearest treasure, and his Son eclipses his choicest glory. For this,
God must be made man, Eternity must suffer death, the Lord of angels
must weep in a cradle, and the Creator of the world must hang like a
slave; he must be in a manger in Bethlehem, and die upon a cross on
Calvary; unspotted righteousness must be made sin, and unblemished
blessedness be made a curse. He was at no other expense than the breath
of his mouth to form man; the fruits of the earth could have maintained
innocent man without any other cost; but his broken nature cannot be
healed without the invaluable medicine of the blood of God. View Christ
in the womb and in the manger, in his weary steps and hungry bowels,
in his prostrations in the garden, and in his clodded drops of bloody
sweat; view his head pierced with a crown of thorns, and his face
besmeared with the soldiers’ slabber; view him in his march to Calvary,
and his elevation on the painful cross, with his head hanged down,
and his side streaming blood; view him pelted with the scoffs of the
governors, and the derisions of the rabble; and see, in all this, what
cost Goodness was at for man’s redemption! In creation, his power made
the sun to shine upon us, and, in redemption, his bowels sent a Son to
die for us.
3d. This goodness of God in redemption is greater than that
manifested in creation, in regard of man’s desert of the contrary.
In the creation, as there was nothing without him to allure him to
the expressions of his bounty, so there was nothing that did damp the
inclinations of his goodness: the nothing from whence the world was
drawn, could never merit, nor demerit a being, because it was nothing;
as there was nothing to engage him, so there was nothing {b262} to
disoblige him; as his favor could not be merited, so neither could his
anger be deserved. But in this he finds ingratitude against the former
marks of his goodness, and rebellion against the sweetness of his
sovereignty,――crimes unworthy of the dews of goodness, and worthy
of the sharpest strokes of vengeance; and therefore the Scripture
advanceth the honor of it above the title of mere goodness, to that of
“grace” (Rom. i. 2; Titus ii. 11); because men were not only unworthy
of a blessing, but worthy of a curse. An innocent nothing more
deserves creation, than a culpable creature deserves an exemption from
destruction. When man fell, and gave occasion to God to repent of his
created work, his ravishing goodness surmounted the occasions he had of
repenting, and the provocations he had to the destruction of his frame.
4th. It was a greater goodness than was expressed towards the angels.
1. A greater goodness than was expressed towards the standing angels.
The Son of God did no more expose his life for the confirmation of
those that stood, than for the restoration of those that fell; the
death of Christ was not for the holy angels, but for simple man; they
needed the grace of God to confirm them, but not the death of Christ to
restore or preserve them; they had a beloved holiness to be established
by the powerful grace of God, but not any abominable sin to be blotted
out by the blood of God; they had no debt to pay but that of obedience;
but we had both a debt of obedience to the precepts, and a debt of
suffering to the penalty, after the fall. Whether the holy angels were
confirmed by Christ, or no, is a question: some think they were, from
Colos. i. 20, where “things in heaven” are said to be “reconciled;”
but some think, that place signifies no more than the reconciliation
of things in heaven, if meant of the angels, to things on earth,
with whom they were at enmity in the cause of their Sovereign; or
the reconciliation of things in heaven to God, is meant the glorified
saints, who were once in a state of sin, and whom the death of Christ
upon the cross reached, though dead long before. But if angels were
confirmed by Christ, it was by him not as a slain sacrifice, but as a
sovereign Head of the whole creation, appointed by God to gather all
things into one; which some think to be the intendment of Eph. i. 10,
where all things, as well those in heaven, as those in earth, are said
to be “gathered together in one, in Christ.” Where is a syllable in
Scripture of his being crucified for angels, but only for sinners? Not
for the confirmation of the one, but the reconciliation of the other;
so that the goodness whereby God continued those blessed spirits in
heaven, through the effusions of his grace, is a small thing to the
restoring us to our forfeited happiness, through the streams of Divine
blood. The preserving a man in life is a little thing, and a smaller
benefit than the raising a man from death. The rescuing a man from
an ignominious punishment, lays a greater obligation than barely to
prevent him from committing a capital crime. The preserving a man
standing upon the top of a steep hill, is more easy than to bring
a crippled and phthisical man, from the bottom to the top. The
continuance God gave to the angels, is not so signal a mark of {b263}
his goodness as the deliverance he gave to us; since they were not sunk
into sin, nor by any crime fallen into misery.
2. His goodness in redemption is greater than any goodness expressed to
the fallen angels. It is the wonder of his goodness to us, that he was
mindful of fallen man, and careless of fallen angels; that he should
visit man, wallowing in death and blood, with the dayspring from on
high, and never turn the Egyptian darkness of devils into cheerful day;
when they sinned, Divine thunder dashed them into hell; when man sinned,
Divine blood wafts the fallen creature from his misery: the angels
wallow in their own blood forever, while Christ is made partaker of
our blood, and wallows in his blood, that we might not forever corrupt
in ours; they tumbled down from heaven, and Divine goodness would not
vouchsafe to catch them; man tumbles down, and Divine goodness holds
out a hand drenched in the blood of Him, that was from the foundations
of the world, to lift us up (Heb. ii. 16). He spared not those
dignified spirits, when they revolted; and spared not punishing his
Son for dusty man, when he offended; when he might as well forever have
let man lie in the chains wherein he had entangled himself, as them.
We were as fit objects of justice as they, and they as fit objects of
goodness as we; they were not more wretched by their fall than we; and
the poverty of our nature rendered us more unable to recover ourselves,
than the dignity of theirs did them; they were his Reuben, his
first‑born; they were his might, and the beginning of his strength;
yet those elder sons he neglected, to prefer the younger; they were the
prime and golden pieces of creation, not laden with gross matter, yet
they lie under the ruins of their fall, while man, lead in comparison
of them, is refined for another world. They seemed to be fitter objects
of Divine goodness, in regard of the eminency of their nature above the
human; one angel excelled in endowments of mind and spirit, vastness of
understanding, greatness of power, all the sons of men; they were more
capable to praise him, more capable to serve him; and because of the
acuteness of their comprehension, more able to have a due estimate of
such a redemption, had it been afforded them; yet that goodness which
had created them so comely, would not lay itself out in restoring the
beauty they had defaced. The promise was of bruising the serpent’s
head for us, not of lifting up the serpent’s head with us; their nature
was not assumed, nor any command given them to believe or repent; not
one devil spared, not one apostate spirit recovered, not one of those
eminent creatures restored; every one of them hath only a prospect of
misery, without any glimpse of recovery; they were ruined under one sin,
and we repaired under many. All His redeeming goodness was laid out
upon man (Ps. cxliv. 3); “What is man that thou takest knowledge of him;
and the Son of man, that thou makest account of him?” Making account of
him above angels; as they fell without any tempting them, so God would
leave them to rise, without any assisting them. I know the schools
trouble themselves to find out the reasons of this peculiarity of grace
to man, and not to them; because the whole human nature fell, but only
a part of the angelical; the one sinned by a seduction, and the other
{b264} by a sullenness, without any tempter; every angel sinned by his
own proper will, whereas Adam’s posterity sinned by the will of the
first man, the common root of all. God would deprive the devil of any
glory in the satisfaction of his envious desire to hinder man from
attainment and possession of that happiness which himself had lost.
The weakness of man below the angelical nature might excite the Divine
mercy; and since all the things of the lower world were created for man,
God would not lose the honor of his works, by losing the immediate end
for which he framed them. And finally, because in the restoration of
angels, there would have been only a restoration of one nature, that
was not comprehensive of the nature of inferior things; but after all
such conjectures, man must sit down, and acknowledge Divine goodness
to be the only spring, without any other motive. Since Infinite Wisdom
could have contrived a way for redemption for fallen angels, as well as
for fallen man, and restored both the one and the other; why might not
Christ have assumed their nature as well as ours, into the unity of the
Divine person, and suffered the wrath of God in their nature for them,
as well as in his human soul for us? It is as conceivable that two
natures might have been assumed by the Son of God, as well as three
souls be in man distinct, as some think there are.
3. To enhance this goodness yet higher; it was a greater goodness to us,
than was for a time manifested to Christ himself. To demonstrate his
goodness to man, in preventing his eternal ruin, he would for a while
withhold his goodness from his Son, by exposing his life as the price
of our ransom; not only subjecting him to the derisions of enemies,
desertions of friends, and malice of devils, but to the inexpressible
bitterness of his own wrath in his soul, as made an offering for sin.
The particle _so_ (John iii. 16), seems to intimate this supremacy of
goodness; He “so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.”
He so loved the world, that he seemed for a time not to love his Son in
comparison of it, or equal with it. The person to whom a gift is given
is, in that regard, accounted more valuable than the gift or present
made to him: thus God valued our redemption above the worldly happiness
of the Redeemer, and sentenceth him to an humiliation on earth, in
order to our exaltation in heaven; he was desirous to hear him groaning,
and see him bleeding, that we might not groan under his frowns, and
bleed under his wrath; he spared not him, that he might spare us;
refused not to strike him, that he might be well pleased with us;
drenched his sword in the blood of his Son, that it might not forever
be wet with ours, but that his goodness might forever triumph in our
salvation; he was willing to have his Son made man, and die, rather
than man should perish, who had delighted to ruin himself; he seemed to
degrade him for a time from what he was.[980] But since he could not be
united to any but to an intellectual creature, he could not be united
to any viler and more sordid creature than the earthly nature of
man: and when this Son, in our nature, prayed that the cup might pass
from him, Goodness would not suffer it, to show how it valued {b265}
the manifestation of itself, in the salvation of man, above the
preservation of the life of so dear a person.
In particular, wherein this goodness appears:――
1st. The first resolution to redeem, and the means appointed for
redemption, could have no other inducement but Divine goodness. We
cannot too highly value the merit of Christ; but we must not so much
extend the merit of Christ, as to draw a value to eclipse the goodness
of God; though we owe our redemption and the fruits of it to the death
of Christ, yet we owe not the first resolutions of redemption, and
assumption of our nature, the means of redemption, to the merit of
Christ. Divine goodness only, without the association of any merit, not
only of man, but of the Redeemer himself, begat the first purpose of
our recovery; he was singled out, and predestinated to be our Redeemer,
before he took our nature to merit our redemption. “God sent his Son,”
is a frequent expression in the Gospel of St. John (John iii. 34; v. 24;
xvii. 3). To what end did God send Christ, but to redeem? The purpose
of redemption, therefore, preceded the pitching upon Christ as the
means and procuring cause of it, _i. e._ of our actual redemption, but
not of the redeeming purpose; the end is always in intention before
the means.[981] “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten
Son;” the love of God to the world was first in intention, and the
order of nature, before the will of giving his Son to the world. His
intention of saving was before the mission of a Saviour; so that this
affection rose, not from the merit of Christ, but the merit of Christ
was directed by this affection. It was the effect of it, not the
cause. Nor was the union of our nature with his merited by him; all his
meritorious acts were performed in our nature; the nature, therefore,
wherein he performed it, was not merited; that grace which was not,
could not merit what it was; he could not merit that humanity, which
must be assumed before he could merit anything for us, because all
merit for us must be offered in the nature which had offended. It is
true “Christ gave himself,” but by the order of Divine goodness; he
that begat him, pitched upon him, and called him to this great work
(Heb. v. 5); he is therefore called “the Lamb of God,” as being set
apart by God to be a propitiating and appeasing sacrifice. He is the
“Wisdom of God,” since from the Father he reveals the counsel and order
of redemption. In this regard he calls God “his God” in the prophet
(Isa. xlix. 4), and in the evangelist (John xx. 17); though he was big
with affection for the accomplishment, yet he came not to do his “own
will,” but the will of Divine goodness; his own will it was, too, but
not principally, as being the first wheel in motion, but subordinate
to the eternal will of Divine bounty. It was by the will of God that
he came, and by his will he drank the dreggy cup of bitterness. Divine
justice laid “upon him the iniquity of us all,” but Divine goodness
intended it for our rescue; Divine goodness singled him out, and set
him apart; Divine goodness invited him to it; Divine goodness commanded
him to effect it, and put a law into his heart, to bias him in the
performing of it; Divine goodness sent him, and Divine goodness moved
justice to bruise him; and, after {b266} his sacrifice, Divine goodness
accepted him, and caressed him for it. So earnest was it for our
redemption, as to give out special and irreversible orders: death
was commanded to be endured by him for us, and life commanded to be
imparted by him to us (John x. 16, 18). If God had not been the mover,
but had received the proposal from another, he might have heard it, but
was not bound to grant it; his sovereign authority, was not under any
obligation to receive another’s sponsion for the miserable criminal.
As Christ is the head of man, so “God is the head of Christ” (1 Cor.
xi. 3); he did nothing but by his directions, as he was not a Mediator,
but by the constitution of Divine goodness. As a “liberal man deviseth
liberal things” (Isa. ii. 8), so did a bountiful God devise a bountiful
act, wherein his kindness and love as a Saviour appeared: he was
possessed with the resolutions to manifest his goodness in Christ, “in
the beginning of his way” (Prov. viii. 22, 23), before he descended
to the act of creation. This intention of goodness preceded his making
that creature man, who, he foresaw, would fall, and, by his fall,
disjoint and entangle the whole frame of the world, without such a
provision.
2d. In God’s giving Christ to be our Redeemer, he gave the highest gift
that it was possible for Divine goodness to bestow. As there is not a
greater God than himself to be conceived, so there is not a greater
gift for this great God to present to his creatures: never did God go
farther, in any of his excellent perfections, than this. It is such a
dole that cannot be transcended with a choicer; he is, as it were, come
to the last mite of his treasure; and though he could create millions
of worlds for us, he cannot give a greater Son to us. He could abound
in the expressions of his power, in new creations of worlds, which
have not yet been seen, and in the lustre of his wisdom in more stately
structures; but if he should frame as many worlds as there are mites
of dust and matter in this, and make every one of them as bright
and glorious as the sun, though his power and wisdom would be more
signalized, yet his goodness could not, since he hath not a choicer
gift to bless those brighter worlds withal, than he hath conferred upon
this: nor can immense goodness contrive a richer means to conduct those
worlds to happiness, than he hath both invented for this world, and
presented it with. It cannot be imagined, that it can extend itself
farther than to give a gift equal with himself; a gift as dear to him
as himself. His wisdom, had it studied millions of eternities (excuse
the expression, since eternity admits of no millions, it being an
interminable duration), it could have found out no more to give; this
goodness could have bestowed no more, and our necessity could not
have required a greater offering for our relief. When God intended, in
redemption, the manifestation of his highest goodness, it could not be
without the donation of the choicest gift; as, when he would insure our
comfort, he swears “by himself,” because he cannot swear “by a greater”
(Heb. vi. 13): so, when we would insure our happiness, he gives us his
Son, because he cannot give a greater, being equal with himself. Had
the Father given himself in person, he had given one first in order,
but not greater in essence and glorious perfections: it could have been
no more than the life of God, and should then have been {b267} laid
down for us; and so it was now, since the human nature did not subsist
but in his Divine person.
1. It is a greater gift than worlds, or all things purchased by him.
What was this gift but “the image of his person, and the brightness of
his glory” (Heb. i. 3)? What was this gift but one as rich as eternal
blessedness could make him? What was this gift, but one that possessed
the fulness of earth, and the more immense riches of heaven? It is a
more valuable present, than if he presented us with thousands of worlds
of angels and inferior creatures, because his person is incomparably
greater, not only than all conceivable, but inconceivable, creations;
we are more obliged to him for it, than if he had made us angels of
the highest rank in heaven, because it is a gift of more value than the
whole angelical nature, because he is an infinite person, and therefore
infinitely transcends whatsoever is finite, though of the highest
dignity. The wounds of an Almighty God for us are a greater testimony
of goodness, than if we had all the other riches of heaven and earth.
This perfection had not appeared in such an astonishing grandeur, had
it pardoned us without so rich a satisfaction; that had been pardon
to our sin, not a God of our nature. “God so loved the world” that he
pardoned it, had not sounded so great and so good, as God so loved the
world, that he “gave his only‑begotten Son.” _Est aliquid in Christo
formosius Servatore._ There is something in Christ more excellent and
comely than the office of a Saviour; the greatness of his person is
more excellent, than the salvation procured by his death: it was a
greater gift than was bestowed upon innocent Adam, or the holy angels.
In the creation, his goodness gave us creatures for our use: in our
redemption, his goodness gives us what was dearest to him for our
service, our Sovereign in office to benefit us, as well as in a royalty
to govern us.
2. It was a greater gift, because it was his own Son, not an angel. It
had been a mighty goodness to have given one of the lofty seraphims; a
greater goodness to have given the whole corporation of those glorious
spirits for us, those children of the Most High: but he gave that Son,
whom he commands “all the angels to worship” (Heb. i. 6), and all men
to adore, and pay the “lowest homage to” (Ps. ii. 12); that Son that
is to be honored by us, as we “honor the Father” (John v. 23); that Son
which was his “delight” (Prov. viii. 30); his delights in the Hebrew,
wherein all the delights of the Father were gathered in one, as well as
of the whole creation; and not simply a Son, but an only‑begotten Son,
upon which Christ lays the stress with an emphasis (1 John iii. 16).
He had but one Son in heaven or earth, one Son from an unviewable
eternity, and that one Son he gave for a degenerate world; this son
he consecrated for “evermore a Priest” (Heb. vii. 28). “The word of
the oath makes the Son;” the peculiarity of his Sonship heightens the
goodness of the Donor. It was no meaner a person that he gave to empty
himself of his glory, to fulfil an obedience for us, that we might
be rendered happy partakers of the Divine nature. Those that know
the natural affection of a father to a son, must judge the affection
of God the Father to the Son infinitely greater, than the affection
of an earthly {b268} father to the son of his bowels. It must be an
unparalleled goodness, to give up a Son that he loved with so ardent
an affection, for the redemption of rebels: abandon a glorious Son to
a dishonorable death, for the security of those that had violated the
laws of righteousness, and endeavored to pull the sovereign crown from
his head. Besides, being an only Son, all those affections centered
in him, which in parents would have been divided among a multitude
of children: so, then, as it was a testimony of the highest faith and
obedience in “Abraham to offer up his only‑begotten son to God” (Heb.
xi. 17); so it was the triumph of Divine goodness, to give so great,
so dear a person, for so little a thing as man; and for such a piece
of nothing and vanity, as a sinful world.
3. And this Son given to rescue us by his death. It was a gift to us;
for our sakes he descended from his throne, and dwelt on earth; for our
sakes he was “made flesh,” and infirm flesh; for our sakes he was “made
a curse,” and scorched in the furnace of his Father’s wrath; for our
sakes he went naked, armed only with his own strength, into the lists
of that combat with the devils, that led us captive. Had he given
him to be a leader for the conquest of some earthly enemies, it had
been a great goodness to display his banners, and bring us under his
conduct; but he sent him to lay down his life in the bitterest and most
inglorious manner, and exposed him to a cursed death for our redemption
from that dreadful curse, which would have broken us to pieces, and
irreparably have crushed us. He gave him to us, to suffer for us as
a man, and redeem us as a God; to be a sacrifice to expiate our sin
by translating the punishment upon himself, which was merited by us.
Thus was he made low to exalt us, and debased to advance us, “made
poor to enrich us” (2 Cor. viii. 9); and eclipsed to brighten our
sullied natures, and wounded, that he might be a physician for our
languishments. He was ordered to taste the bitter cup of death, that we
might drink of the rivers of immortal life and pleasures: to submit to
the frailties of the human nature, that we might possess the glories
of the divine: he was ordered to be a sufferer, that we might be no
longer captives; and to pass through the fire of Divine wrath, that
he might purge our nature from the dross it had contracted. Thus was
the righteous given for sin, the innocent for criminals, the glory
of heaven for the dregs of earth, and the immense riches of a Deity
expended to restock man.
4. And a Son that was exalted for what he had done for us by the order
of Divine goodness. The exaltation of Christ was no less a signal mark
of his miraculous goodness to us, than of his affection to him: since
he was obedient by Divine goodness to die for us, his advancement was
for his obedience to those orders. The name given to him “above every
name” (Phil. ii. 8, 9), was a repeated triumph of this perfection;
since his passion was not for himself, he was wholly innocent, but
for us who were criminal. His advancement was not only for himself as
Redeemer, but for us as redeemed: Divine goodness centered in him, both
in his cross and in his crown; for it was for the “purging our sins,
he sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb. i. 3): and
the whole blessed society {b269} of principalities and powers in heaven
admire this goodness of God, and ascribe to him “honor, glory, and
power” for advancing the “Lamb slain” (Rev. v. 11‒13). Divine goodness
did not only give him to us, but gave him power, riches, strength, and
honor, for manifesting this goodness to us, and opening the passages
for its fuller conveyances to the sons of men. Had not God had thoughts
of a perpetual goodness, he would not have settled him so near him, to
manage our cause, and testified so much affection to him on our behalf.
This goodness gave him to be debased for us, and ordered him to be
enthroned for us: as it gave him to us bleeding, so it would give him
to us triumphing; that as we have a share by grace in the merits of his
humiliation, we might partake also of the glories of his coronation;
that, from first to last, we may behold nothing but the triumphs of
Divine goodness to fallen man.
5. In bestowing this gift on us, Divine goodness gives whole God to
us. Whatsoever is great and excellent in the Godhead, the Father gives
us, by giving us his Son: the Creator gives himself to us in his Son
Christ. In giving creatures to us, he gives the riches of earth; in
giving himself to us, he gives the riches of heaven, which surmount
all understanding: it is in this gift he becomes our God, and passeth
over the title of all that he is for our use and benefit, that every
attribute in the Divine nature may be claimed by us; not to be imparted
to us whereby we may be deified, but employed for our welfare, whereby
we may be blessed. He gave himself in creation to us in the image of
his holiness; but, in redemption, he gave himself in the image of his
person: he would not only communicate the goodness without him, but
bestow upon us the infinite goodness of his own nature; that that which
was his own end and happiness might be our end and happiness, _viz._
himself. By giving his Son, he hath given himself; and in both gifts
he hath given all things to us. The Creator of all things is eminently
all things: “He hath given all things into the hands of his Son” (John
iii. 35); and, by consequence, given all things into the hands of his
redeemed creatures, by giving them Him to whom he gave all things;
whatsoever we were invested in by creation, whatsoever we were deprived
of by corruption, and more, he hath deposited in safe hands for our
enjoyment: and what can Divine goodness do more for us? What further
can it give unto us, than what it hath given, and in that gift designed
for us?
3d. This goodness is enhanced by considering the state of man in the
first transgression, and since.
1. Man’s first transgression. If we should rip up every vein of that
first sin, should we find any want of wickedness to excite a just
indignation? What was there but ingratitude to Divine bounty, and
rebellion against Divine sovereignty? The royalty of God was attempted;
the supremacy of Divine knowledge above man’s own knowledge envied; the
riches of goodness, whereby he lived and breathed, slighted. There is a
discontent with God upon an unreasonable sentiment, that God had denied
a knowledge to him which was his right and due, when there should have
been an humble acknowledgment of that unmerited goodness, which had not
only {b270} given him a being above other creatures, but placed him the
governor and lord of those that were inferior to him. What alienation
of his understanding was there from knowing God, and of his will from
loving him! A debauch of all his faculties; a spiritual adultery, in
preferring, not only one of God’s creatures, but one of his desperate
enemies, before him; thinking him a wiser counsellor than Infinite
Wisdom, and imagining him possessed with kinder affections to him than
that God who had newly created him. Thus he joins in league with hell
against heaven, with a fallen spirit against his bountiful Benefactor,
and enters into society with rebels that just before commenced a war
against his and their common Sovereign: he did not only falter in, but
cast off, the obedience due to his Creator; endeavored to purloin his
glory, and actually murdered all those that were virtually in his loins.
“Sin entered into the world” by him, “and death by sin, and passed
upon all men” (Rom. v. 12), taking them off from their subjection to
God, to be slaves to the damned spirits, and heirs of their misery:
and, after all this, he adds a foul imputation on God, taxing him as
the author of his sin, and thereby stains the beauty of his holiness.
But, notwithstanding all this, God stops not up the flood‑gates of
his goodness, nor doth he entertain fiery resolutions against man, but
brings forth a healing promise; and sends not an angel upon commission
to reveal it to him, but preaches it himself to this forlorn and
rebellious creature (Gen. iii. 15).
2. Could there be anything in this fallen creature to allure God
to the expression of his goodness? Was there any good action in all
his carriage that could plead for a re‑admission of him to his former
state? Was there one good quality left, that could be an orator to
persuade Divine goodness to such a gracious procedure? Was there any
moral goodness in man, after this debauch, that might be an object of
Divine love? What was there in him, that was not rather a provocation
than an allurement? Could you expect that any perfection in God should
find a motive in this ungrateful apostate to open a mouth for him, and
be an advocate to support him, and bring him off from a just tribunal?
or, after Divine goodness had begun to pity and plead for man, is
it not wonderful that it should not discontinue the plea, after it
found man’s excuse to be as black as his crime (Gen. iii. 12), and
his carriage, upon his examination, to be as disobliging as his first
revolt? It might well be expected, that all the perfections in the
Divine nature would have entered into an association eternally to
treat this rebel according to his deserts. What attractives were there
in a silly worm, much less in such complete wickedness, inexcusable
enmity, infamous rebellion, to design a Redeemer for him, and such a
person as the Son of God to a fleshy body, an eclipse of glory, and an
ignominious cross? The meanness of man was further from alluring God to
it, than the dignity of angels.
3. Was there not a world of demerit in man, to animate grace as well
as wrath against him? We were so far from deserving the opening any
streams of goodness, that we had merited floods of devouring wrath.
What were all men but enemies to God in a high {b271} manner? Every
offence was infinite, as being committed against a being of infinite
dignity; it was a stroke at the very being of God, a resistance of all
his attributes; it would degrade him from the height and perfection of
his nature; it would not, by its good will, suffer God to be God. If he
that hates his brother is a murderer of his brother (1 John iii. 15),
he that hates his Creator is a murderer of the Deity, and every
“carnal mind is enmity to God” (Rom. viii. 7): every sin envies him
his authority, by breaking his precept; and envies him his goodness, by
defacing the marks of it: every sin comprehends in it more than men or
angels can conceive: that God who only hath the clear apprehensions of
his own dignity, hath the sole clear apprehensions of sin’s malignity.
All men were thus by nature: those that sinned before the coming of the
Redeemer had been in a state of sin; those that were to come after him
would be in a state of sin by their birth, and be criminals as soon as
ever they were creatures. All men, as well the glorified, as those in
the flesh at the coming of the Redeemer, and those that were to be born
after, were considered in a state of sin by God, when he bruised the
Redeemer for them; all were filthy and unworthy of the eye of God; all
had employed the faculties of their souls, and the members of their
bodies, which they enjoyed by his goodness, against the interest of
his glory. Every rational creature had made himself a slave to those
creatures over whom he had been appointed a lord, subjected himself
as a servant to his inferior, and strutted as a superior against his
liberal Sovereign, and by every sin rendered himself more a child of
Satan, and enemy of God, and more worthy of the curses of the law, and
the torments of hell. Was it not, now, a mighty goodness that would
surmount those high mountains of demerit, and elevate such creatures
by the depression of his Son? Had we been possessed of the highest
holiness, a reward had been the natural effect of goodness. It was not
possible that God should be unkind to a righteous and innocent creature;
his grace would have crowned that which had been so agreeable to him.
He had been a denier of himself, had he numbered innocent creatures in
the rank of the miserable; but to be kind to an enemy, to run counter
to the vastness of demerit in man, was a superlative goodness, a
goodness triumphing above all the provocations of men, and pleas of
justice: it was an abounding goodness of grace; “where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound” (Rom. v. 20), ὑπερεπερίσσευσεν; it swelled
above the heights of sin, and triumphed more than all his other
attributes.
4. Man was reduced to the lowest condition. Our crimes had brought us
to the lowest calamity; we were brought to the dust, and prepared for
hell. Adam had not the boldness to request, and therefore we may judge
he had not the least hopes of pardon; he was sunk under wrath, and
could have expected no better an entertainment than the tempter, whose
solicitations he submitted to. We had cast the diadem from our heads,
and lost all our original excellency; we were lost to our own happiness,
and lost to our Creator’s service, when he was so kind as to send his
Son to seek us (Matt. xviii. 11), and so liberal as to expend his blood
for our cure and preservation. How great was that goodness that would
not abandon us in our misery, {b272} but remit our crimes, and rescue
our persons, and ransom our souls by so great a price from the rights
of justice, and horrors of hell, we were so fitted for?
5. Every age multiplied provocations; every age of the world proved
more degenerate. The traditions, which were purer and more lively
among Adam’s immediate posterity, were more dark among his further
descendants; idolatry, whereof we have no marks in the old world
before the deluge, was frequent afterwards in every nation: not only
the knowledge of the true God was lost, but the natural reverential
thoughts of a Deity were expelled. Hence gods were dubbed according to
men’s humors; and not only human passions, but brutish vices, ascribed
to them: as by the fall we were become less than men, so we would fancy
God no better than a beast, since beasts were worshipped as gods (Rom.
i. 21); yea, fancied God no better than a devil, since that destroyer
was worshipped instead of the Creator, and a homage paid to the powers
of hell that had ruined them, which was due to the goodness of that
Benefactor, who had made them and preserved them in the world. The
vilest creatures were deified; reason was debased below common sense;
and men adored one end of a “log,” while they “warmed themselves with
the other” (Isa. xliv. 14, 16, 17); as if that which was ordained for
the kitchen were a fit representation for God in the temple. Thus were
the natural notions of a Deity depraved; the whole world drenched in
idolatry; and though the Jews were free from that gross abuse of God,
yet they were sunk also into loathsome superstitions, when the goodness
of God brought in his designed Redeemer and redemption into the world.
6. The impotence of man enhanceth this goodness. Our own eye did scarce
pity us, and it was impossible for our own hands to relieve us; we were
insensible of our misery, in love with our death; we courted our chains,
and the noise of our fettering lusts were our music, “serving divers
lusts and pleasures” (Tit. iii. 3). Our lusts were our pleasures;
Satan’s yoke was as delightful to us to bear, as to him to impose:
instead of being his opposers in his attempts against us, we were his
voluntary seconds, and every whit as willing to embrace, as he was to
propose, his ruining temptations. As no man can recover himself from
death, so no man can recover himself from wrath; he is as unable to
redeem, as to create himself; he might as soon have stripped himself
of his being, as put an end to his misery; his captivity would have
been endless, and his chains remediless, for anything he could do
to knock them off, and deliver himself; he was too much in love with
the sink of sin, to leave wallowing in it, and under too powerful a
hand, to cease frying in the flames of wrath. As the law could not
be obeyed by man, after a corrupt principle had entered into him, so
neither could justice be satisfied by him after his transgression.
The sinner was indebted, but bankrupt; as he was unable to pay a mite
of that obedience he owed to the precept, because of his enmity, so
he was unable to satisfy what he owed to the penalty, because of his
feebleness: he was as much without love to observe the one, as “without
strength” to bear the other: he could not, because of his “enmity, be
subject to {b273} the law” (Rom. viii. 7), or compensate for his sin,
because he was “without strength” (Rom. v. 6). His strength to offend
was great; but to deliver himself a mere nothing. Repentance was not a
thing known by man after the fall, till he had hopes of redemption; and
if he had known and exercised it, what compensation are the tears of a
malefactor for an injury done to the crown, and attempting the life of
his prince? How great was Divine goodness, not only to pity men in this
state, but to provide a strong Redeemer for them! “O Lord, my strength,
and my Redeemer!” said the Psalmist (Ps. xix. 14): when he found out
a Redeemer for our misery, he found out a strength for our impotency.
To conclude this: behold the “goodness of God,” when we had thus
unhandsomely dealt with him; had nothing to allure his goodness,
multitudes of provocations to incense him, were reduced to a condition
as low as could be, fit to be the matter of his scoffs, and the sport
of Divine justice, and so weak that we could not repair our own ruins;
then did he open a fountain of fresh goodness in the death of his Son,
and sent forth such delightful streams, as in our original creation
we could never have tasted; not only overcame the resentments of a
provoked justice, but magnified itself by our lowness, and strengthened
itself by our weakness. His goodness had before created an innocent,
but here it saves a malefactor; and sends his Son to die for us, as if
the Holy of holies were the criminal, and the rebel the innocent. It
had been a pompous goodness to have given him as a king; but a goodness
of greater grandeur to expose him as a sacrifice for slaves and enemies.
Had Adam remained innocent, and proved thankful for what he had
received, it had been great goodness to have brought him to glory; but
to bring filthy and rebellious Adam to it, surmounts, by inexpressible
degrees, that sort of goodness he had experimented before; since it was
not from a light evil, a tolerable curse unawares brought upon us, but
from the yoke we had willingly submitted to, from the power of darkness
we had courted, and the furnace of wrath we had kindled for ourselves.
What are we dead dogs, that he should behold us with so gracious an
eye? This goodness is thus enhanced, if you consider the state of man
in his first transgression, and after.
4th. This goodness further appears in the high advancement of our
nature, after it had so highly offended. By creation, we had an
affinity with animals in our bodies, with angels in our spirits, with
God in his image; but not with God in our nature, till the incarnation
of the Redeemer. Adam, by creation, was the son of God (Luke iii. 38),
but his nature was not one with the person of God: he was his son, as
created by him, but had no affinity to him by virtue of union with him:
but now man doth not only see his nature in multitudes of men on earth,
but, by an astonishing goodness, beholds his nature united to the Deity
in heaven: that as he was the son of God by creation, he is now the
brother of God by redemption; for with such a title doth that Person,
who was the Son of God as well as the Son of man, honor his disciples
(John xx. 17): and because he is of the same nature with them, he “is
not ashamed to call them brethren” (Heb. ii. 11). Our nature, which
was infinitely {b274} distant from, and below the Deity, now makes
one person with the Son of God. What man sinfully aspired to, God hath
graciously granted, and more: man aspired to a likeness in knowledge,
and God hath granted him an affinity in union. It had been astonishing
goodness to angelize our natures; but in redemption Divine goodness
hath acted higher, in a sort to deify our natures. In creation, our
nature was exalted above other creatures on earth; in our redemption,
our nature is exalted above all the host of heaven: we were higher than
the beasts, as creatures, but “lower than the angels” (Ps. viii. 5);
but, by the incarnation of the Son of God, our nature is elevated
many steps above them. After it had sunk itself by corruption below
the bestial nature, and as low as the diabolical, the “fulness of the
Godhead dwells in our nature bodily” (Col. ii. 9), but never in the
angels, angelically. The Son of God descended to dignify our nature,
by assuming it; and ascended with our nature to have it crowned above
those standing monuments of Divine power and goodness (Eph. i. 20, 21).
That Person that descended in our nature into the grave, and in the
same nature was raised up again, is, in that same nature, set at the
right hand of God in heaven, “far above all principality, and power,
and might, and dominion, and every name that is named.” Our refined
clay, by an indissoluble union with this Divine Person, is honored
to sit forever upon a throne above all the tribes of seraphims and
cherubims; and the Person that wears it, is the head of the good angels,
and the conqueror of the bad; the one are put under his feet, and the
other commanded to adore him, “that purged our sins in our nature”
(Heb. i. 3, 6): that Divine Person in our nature receives adoration
from the angels; but the nature of man is not ordered to pay any homage
and adorations to the angels. How could Divine goodness, to man, more
magnify itself? As we could not have a lower descent than we had by sin,
how could we have a higher ascent than by a substantial participation
of a divine life, in our nature, in the unity of a Divine Person? Our
earthly nature is joined to a heavenly Person; our undone nature united
to “one equal with God” (Phil. ii. 6). It may truly be said, that man
is God, which is infinitely more glorious for us, than if it could
be said, man is an angel. If it were goodness to advance our innocent
nature above other creatures, the advancement of our degenerate nature
above angels deserves a higher title than mere goodness. It is a
more gracious act, than if all men had been transformed into the pure
spiritual nature of the loftiest cherubims.
5th. This goodness is manifest in the covenant of grace made with us,
whereby we are freed from the rigor of that of works. God might have
insisted upon the terms of the old covenant, and required of man the
improvement of his original stock; but God hath condescended to lower
terms, and offered man more gracious methods, and mitigated the rigor
of the first, by the sweetness of the second.
1. It is goodness, that he should condescend to make another covenant
with man. To stipulate with innocent and righteous {b275} Adam for his
obedience, was a stoop of his sovereignty; though he gave the precept
as a sovereign Lord, yet in his covenanting, he seems to descend to
some kind of equality with that dust and ashes with whom the treated.
Absolute sovereigns do not usually covenant with their people, but
exact obedience and duty, without binding themselves to bestow a reward;
and if they intend any, they reserve the purpose in their own breasts,
without treating their subjects with a solemn declaration of it. There
was no obligation on God to enter into the first covenant, much less,
after the violation of the first, to the settlement of a new. If God
seemed in some sort to equal himself to man in the first, he seemed to
descend below himself in treating with a rebel upon more condescending
terms in the second. If his covenant with innocent Adam was a stoop
of his sovereignty, this with rebellious Adam seems to be a stripping
himself of his majesty in favor of his goodness; as if his happiness
depended upon us, and not ours upon him. It is a humiliation of himself
to behold the things in heaven, the glorious angels, as well as things
on earth, mortal men (Ps. cxiii. 6); much more to bind himself in
gracious bonds to the glorious angels; and much more if to rebel man.
In the first covenant there was much of sovereignty as well as goodness;
in the second there is less of sovereignty, and more of grace: in
the first there was a righteous man for a holy God; in the second a
polluted creature for a pure and provoked God: in the first he holds
his sceptre in his hand, to rule his subjects; in the second he seems
to lay by his sceptre, to court and espouse a beggar (Hosea ii. 18‒20):
in the first he is a Lord; in the second a husband; and binds himself
upon gracious conditions to become a debtor. How should this goodness
fill us with an humble astonishment, as it did Abraham, when he “fell
on his face,” when he heard God speaking of making a covenant with him!
(Gen. xvii. 2, 3). And if God speaking to Israel out of the fire, and
making them to hear his voice out of heaven, that he might instruct
them, was a consideration whereby Moses would heighten their admiration
of Divine goodness, and engage their affectionate obedience to him
(Deut. iv. 32, 36, 40), how much more admirable is it for God to speak
so kindly to us through the pacifying blood of the covenant, that
silenced the terrors of the old, and settled the tenderness of the new!
2. His goodness is seen in the nature and tenor of the new covenant.
There are in this richer streams of love and pity. The language of one
was, Die, if thou sin; that of the other, Live, if thou believest:[982]
the old covenant was founded upon the obedience of man; the new one
is not founded upon the inconstancy of man’s will, but the firmness of
Divine love, and the valuable merit of Christ. The head of the first
covenant was human and mutable; the Head of the second is divine and
immutable. The curse due to us by the breach of the first, is taken
off by the indulgence of the second: we are by it snatched from the
jaws of the law, to be wrapped up in the bosom of grace (Rom. viii. 1).
“For you are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. vi. 14); from
the curse {b276} and condemnation of the law, to the sweetness and
forgiveness of grace. Christ bore the one, being “made a curse for us”
(Gal. iii. 13), that we might enjoy the sweetness of the other; by this
we are brought from Mount Sinai, the mount of terror, to Mount Sion,
the mount of sacrifice, the type of the great Sacrifice (Heb. xii. 18,
22). That covenant brought in death upon one offence, this covenant
offers life after many offences (Rom. v. 16, 17): that involves us in
a curse, and this enricheth us with a blessing; the breaches of that
expelled us out of Paradise, and the embracing of this admits us into
heaven. This covenant demands, and admits of that repentance whereof
there was no mention in the first; that demanded obedience, not
repentance upon a failure; and though the exercise of it had been never
so deep in the fallen creature, nothing of the law’s severity had been
remitted by any virtue of it. Again, the first covenant demanded exact
righteousness, but conveyed no cleansing virtue, upon the contracting
any filth. The first demands a continuance in the righteousness
conferred in creation; the second imprints a gracious heart in
regeneration. “I will pour clean water upon you; I will put a new
spirit within you,” was the voice of the second covenant, not of the
first. Again, as to pardon: Adam’s covenant was to punish him, not to
pardon him, if he fell; that threatened death upon transgression, this
remits it; that was an act of Divine sovereignty, declaring the will
of God; this is an act of Divine grace, passing an act of oblivion on
the crimes of the creature: that, as it demanded no repentance upon a
failure, so it promised no mercy upon guilt; that convened our sin, and
condemned us for it; this clears our guilt, and comforts us under it.
The first covenant related us to God as a Judge; every transgression
against it forfeited his indulgence as a Father: the second delivers
us from God as a condemning Judge, to bring us under his wing, as an
affectionate Father; in the one there was a dreadful frown to scare us;
in the other, a healing wing to cover and relieve us. Again, in regard
of righteousness: that demanded our performance of a righteousness in
and by ourselves, and our own strength; this demands our acceptance
of a righteousness higher than ever the standing angels had; the
righteousness of the first covenant was the righteousness of a man,
the righteousness of the second is the righteousness of a God (2 Cor.
v. 21). Again, in regard of that obedience it demands: it exacts not
of us, as a necessary condition, the perfection of obedience, but
the sincerity of obedience; an uprightness in our intention, not an
unspottedness in our action; an integrity in our aims, and an industry
in our compliance with divine precepts: “Walk before me, and be thou
perfect” (Gen. xvii. 1); _i. e._ sincere. What is hearty in our actions,
is accepted; and what is defective, is overlooked, and not charged upon
us, because of the obedience and righteousness of our Surety. The first
covenant rejected all our services after sin; the services of a person
under the sentence of death, are but dead services: this accepts our
imperfect services, after faith in it; that administered no strength
to obey, but supposed it; this supposeth our inability to obey, and
confers some strength for it: “I will put my spirit {b277} within you,
and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ezek. xxxvi. 27). Again, in
regard of the promises: the old covenant had good, but the new hath
“better promises” (Heb. viii. 6), of justification after guilt and
sanctification after filth, and glorification at last of the whole
man. In the first, there was provision against guilt, but none for the
removal of it: provision against filth, but none for the cleansing of
it; promise of happiness implied, but not so great a one as that “life
and immortality” in heaven, “brought to light by the gospel” (2 Tim.
i. 10). Why said to be “brought to light by the gospel?” because it
was not only buried, upon the fall of man under the curses of the law,
but it was not so obvious to the conceptions of man in his innocent
state. Life indeed was implied to be promised upon his standing, but
not so glorious an immortality disclosed, to be reserved for him, if
he stood: as it is a covenant of better promises, so a covenant of
sweeter comforts; comforts more choice, and comforts more durable; an
“everlasting consolation, and a good hope” are the fruits of “grace,”
_i. e._ the covenant of grace (2 Thess. ii. 16). In the whole there is
such a love disclosed, as cannot be expressed; the apostle leaves it to
every man’s mind to conceive it, if he could, “What manner of love the
Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God”
(1 John iii. 1). It instates us in such a manner of the love of God as
he bears to his Son, the image of his person (John xvii. 23): “That the
world may know that thou hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.”
3. This goodness appears in the choice gift of himself which he hath
made over in this covenant (Gen. xvii. 7). You know how it runs in
Scripture: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer.
xxxii. 38): a propriety in the Deity is made over by it. As he gave
the blood of his Son to seal the covenant, so he gave himself as the
blessing of the covenant; “He is not ashamed to be called their God”
(Heb. xi. 16). Though he be environed with millions of angels, and
presides over them in an inexpressible glory, he is not ashamed of his
condescensions to man, and to pass over himself as the propriety of his
people, as well as to take them to be his. It is a diminution of the
sense of the place, to understand it of God, as Creator; what reason
was there for God to be ashamed of the expressions of his power, wisdom,
goodness, in the works of his hands? But we might have reason to think
there might be some ground in God to be ashamed of making himself over
in a deed of gift to a mean worm and filthy rebel; this might seem a
disparagement to his majesty; but God is not ashamed of a title so mean,
as the God of his despised people; a title below those others, of the
“Lord of hosts, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders,
riding on the wings of the wind, walking in the circuits of heaven.” He
is no more ashamed of this title of being our God, than he is of those
other that sound more glorious; he would rather have his greatness
veil to his goodness, than his goodness be confined by his majesty;
he is not only our God, but our God as he is the God of Christ: he is
not ashamed to be our propriety, and Christ is not ashamed to own his
people in a partnership with him in this propriety (John xx. 17): {b278}
“I ascend to my God, and your God.” This of God’s being our God, is the
quintessence of the covenant, the soul of all the promises: in this he
hath promised whatsoever is infinite in him, whatsoever is the glory
and ornament of his nature, for our use; not a part of him, or one
single perfection, but the whole vigor and strength of all. As he is
not a God without infinite wisdom, and infinite power, and infinite
goodness, and infinite blessedness, &c., so he passes over, in this
covenant, all that which presents him as the most adorable Being to
his creatures; he will be to them as great, as wise, as powerful, as
good as he is in himself; and the assuring us, in this covenant, to
be our God, imports also that he will do as much for us, as we would
do for ourselves, were we furnished with the same goodness, power, and
wisdom: in being our God, he testifies it is all one, as if we had the
same perfections in our own power to employ for our use; for he being
possessed with them, it is as much as if we ourselves were possessed
with them, for our own advantage, according to the rules of wisdom,
and the several conditions we pass through for his glory. But this
must be taken with a relation to that wisdom, which he observes in
his proceedings with us as creatures, and according to the several
conditions we pass through for his glory. Thus God’s being ours is more
than if all heaven and earth were ours besides; it is more than if we
were fully our own, and at our own dispose; it makes “all things that
God hath ours” (1 Cor. iii. 22); and therefore, not only all things he
hath created, but all things that he can create; not only all things
that he hath contrived, but all things that he can contrive: for in
being ours, his power is ours, his possible power as well as his active
power; his power, whereby he can effect more than he hath done, and
his wisdom, whereby he can contrive more than he hath done; so that if
there were need of employing his power to create many worlds for our
good, he would not stick at it; for if he did, he would not be our
God, in the extent of his nature, as the promise intimates. What a rich
goodness, and a fulness of bounty, is there in this short expression,
as full as the expression of a God can make it, to be intelligible, to
such creatures as we are!
4. This goodness is further manifest in the confirmation of the
covenant. His goodness did not only condescend to make it for our
happiness, after we had made ourselves miserable, but further
condescended to ratify it in the solemnest manner for our assurance,
to overrule all the despondencies unbelief could raise up in our souls.
The reason why he confirmed it by an oath, was to show the immutability
of his glorious counsel, not to tie himself to keep it, for his word
and promise is in itself as immutable as his oath; they were “two
immutable things, his word and his oath,” one as unchangeable as the
other; but for the strength of our consolation, that it might have
no reason to shake and totter (Heb. vi. 17, 18): he would condescend
as low as was possible for a God to do for the satisfaction of the
dejected creature. When the first covenant was broken, and it was
impossible for man to fulfil the terms of it, and mount to happiness
thereby, he makes another; and, as if we had reason to distrust him in
the first, he solemnly ratifies it in a higher manner than {b279} he
had done the other, and swears by himself that he will be true to it,
not so much out of an election of himself, as the object of the oath
(Heb. vi. 13): “Because he could not swear by a greater, he swears by
himself;” whereby the apostle clearly intimates, that Divine goodness
was raised to such a height for us, that if there had been anything
else more sacred than himself, or that could have punished him if he
had broken it, that he would have sworn by, to silence any diffidence
in us, and confirm us in the reality of his intentions. Now if it were
a mighty mark of goodness for God to stoop to a covenanting with us, it
was more for a sovereign to bind himself so solemnly to be our debtor
in a promise, as well as he was our sovereign in the precept, and stoop
so low in it to satisfy the distrust of that creature, that deserved
for ever to lie soaking in his own ruins, for not believing his bare
word. What absolute prince would ever stoop so low as to article with
rebellious subjects, whom he could in a moment set his foot upon and
crush; much less countenance a causeless distrust of his goodness by
the addition of his oath, and thereby bind his own hands, which were
unconfined before, and free to do what he pleased with them?
5. This goodness of God is remarkable also in the condition of this
covenant which is faith. This was the easiest condition, in its own
nature, that could be imagined; no difficulty in it but what proceeds
from the pride of man’s nature, and the obstinacy of his will. It
was not impossible in itself; it was not the old condition of perfect
obedience. It had been mighty goodness to set us up again upon our old
stock, and restore us to the tenor and condition of the covenant of
works, or to have required the burdensome ceremonies of the law. Nor is
it an exact knowledge he requires of us; all men’s understandings being
of a different size, they had not been capable of this. It was the
most reasonable condition, in regard of the excellency of the things
proposed, and the effects following upon it; nay, it was necessary. It
had been a want of goodness to himself and his own honor; he had cast
that off, had he not insisted on this condition of faith, it being the
lowest he could condescend to with a _salvo_ for his glory. And it was
a goodness to us; it is nothing else he requires, but a willingness
to accept what he hath contrived and acted for us: and no man can be
happy against his will; without this belief, at least, man could never
voluntarily have arrived to his happiness. The goodness of God is
evidenced in that.
[1st.] It is an easy condition, not impossible. 1. It was not the
condition of the old covenant. The condition of that was an entire
obedience to every precept with a man’s whole strength, and without
any flaw or crack. But the condition of the evangelical covenant is a
sincere, though weak, faith; He hath suited this covenant to the misery
of man’s fallen condition; he considers our weakness, and that we are
but dust, and therefore exacts not of us an entire, but a sincere,
obedience. Had God sent Christ to expiate the crime of Adam, restore
him to his paradise estate, and repair in man the ruined image of
holiness, and after this to have renewed the covenant of works for
the future, and settled the same condition in exacting a complete
obedience for the time to come; Divine goodness had {b280} been above
any accusation, and had deserved our highest admiration in the pardon
of former transgressions, and giving out to us our first stock. But
Divine goodness took larger strides: he had tried our first condition,
and found his mutable creature quickly to violate it: had he demanded
the same now, it is likely it had met with the same issue as before,
in man’s disobedience and fall; we should have been as men, as Adam
(Hos. vi. 7), “transgressing the covenant;” and then we must have
lain groaning under our disease, and wallowing in our blood, unless
Christ had come to die for the expiation of our new crimes; for every
transgression had been a violation of that covenant, and a forfeiture
of our right to the benefits of it. If we had broke it but in one
tittle, we had rendered ourselves incapable to fulfil it for the
future; that one transgression had stood as a bar against the pleas of
after‑obedience. But God hath wholly laid that condition aside as to us,
and settled that of faith, more easy to be performed, and to be renewed
by us. It is infinite grace in him, that he will accept of faith in
us, instead of that perfect obedience he required of us in the covenant
of works. 2. It is easy, not like the burdensome ceremonies appointed
under the law. He exacts not now the legal obedience, expensive
sacrifices, troublesome purifications, and abstinences, that “yoke of
bondage” (Gal. v. 1) which they were “not able to bear” (Acts xv. 10).
He treats us not as servants, or children, in their nonage, under the
elements of the world, nor requires those innumerable bodily exercises
that he exacted of them: he demands not “a thousand of lambs,” and
“rivers of oil;” but he requires a sincere confession and repentance,
in order to our absolution; an “unfeigned faith,” in order to our
blessedness, and elevation to a glorious life. He requires only that
we should believe what he saith, and have so good an opinion of his
goodness and veracity, as to persuade ourselves of the reality of his
intentions, confide in his word, and rely upon his promise, cordially
embrace his crucified Son, whom he hath set forth as the means of our
happiness, and have a sincere respect to all the discoveries of his
will. What can be more easy than this? Though some in the days of the
apostles, and others since have endeavored to introduce a multitude of
legal burdens, as if they envied God the expressions of his goodness,
or thought him guilty of too much remissness, in taking off the yoke,
and treating man too favorably. 3. Nor is it a clear knowledge of every
revelation, that is the condition of this covenant. God in his kindness
to man hath made revelations of himself, but his goodness is manifested
in obliging us to believe him, not fully to understand him. He hath
made them, by sufficient testimonies, as clear to our faith, as they
are incomprehensible to our reason: he hath revealed a Trinity of
Persons, in their distinct offices, in the business of redemption,
without which revelation of a Trinity we could not have a right
notion and scheme of redeeming grace. But since the clearness of men’s
understanding is sullied by the fall, and hath lost its wings to fly up
to a knowledge of such sublime things as that of the Trinity, and other
mysteries of the Christian religion, God hath manifested his goodness
in not obliging us to understand them but to believe them; and hath
given us reason enough {b281} to believe it to be his revelation,
(both from the nature of the revelation itself, and the way and manner
of propagating it, which is wholly divine, exceeding all the methods
of human art,) though he hath not extended our understandings to a
capacity to know them, and render a reason of every mystery. He did not
require of every Israelite, or of any of them that were stung by the
fiery serpents, that they should understand, or be able to discourse
of the nature and qualities of that brass of which the serpent upon
the pole was made, or by what art that serpent was formed, or in what
manner the sight of it did operate in them for their cure; it was
enough that they did believe the institution and precept of God, and
that their own cure was assured by it: it was enough if they cast their
eyes upon it according to the direction. The understandings of men
are of several sizes and elevations, one higher than another: if the
condition of this covenant had been a greatness of knowledge, the
most acute men had only enjoyed the benefits of it. But it is “faith,”
which is as easy to be performed by the ignorant and simple, as by
the strongest and most towering mind: it is that which is within the
compass of every man’s understanding. God did not require that every
one within the verge of the covenant should be able to discourse of
it to the reasons of men; he required not that every man should be a
philosopher, or an orator, but a believer. What could be more easy than
to lift up the eye to the brazen serpent, to be cured of a fiery sting?
What could be more facile than a glance, which is done without any pain,
and in a moment? It is a condition may be performed by the weakest as
well as the strongest: could those that were bitten in the most vital
part cast up their eyes, though at the last gasp, they would arise to
health by the expulsion of the venom.
[2d.] As it is easy, so it is reasonable. Repent and believe, is
that which is required by Christ and the apostles for the enjoyment of
the kingdom of heaven. It is very reasonable that things so great and
glorious, so beneficial to men, and revealed to them by so sound an
authority, and an unerring truth, should be believed. The excellency
of the thing disclosed could admit of no lower a condition than to
be believed and embraced. There is a sort of faith, that is a natural
condition in everything: all religion in the world, though never
so false, depends upon a sort of it; for unless there be a belief
of future things, there would never be a hope of good, or a fear of
evil, the two great hinges upon which religion moves. In all kinds of
learning, many things must be believed before a progress can be made.
Belief of one another is necessary in all acts of human life; without
which human society would be unlinked and dissolved. What is that faith
that God requires of us in this covenant, but a willingness of soul
to take God for our God, Christ for our Mediator, and the procurer
of our happiness (Rev. xxii. 17)? What prince could require less upon
any promise he makes his subjects, than to be believed as true, and
depended on as good; that they should accept his pardon, and other
gracious offers, and be sincere in their allegiance to him, avoiding
all things that may offend him, and pursuing all things that may please
him? Thus God, by so {b282} small and reasonable a condition as faith,
lets in the fruits of Christ’s death into our soul, and wraps us up
in the fruition of all the privileges purchased by it. So much he hath
condescended in his goodness, that upon so slight a condition we may
plead his promise, and humbly challenge, by virtue of the covenant,
those good things he hath promised in his word. It is so reasonable a
condition, that if God did not require it in the covenant of grace, the
creature were obliged to perform it: for the publishing any truth from
God, naturally calls for credit to be given it by the creature, and
an entertainment of it in practice. Could you offer a more reasonable
condition yourselves, had it been left to your choice? Should a prince
proclaim a pardon to a profligate wretch, would not all the world cry
shame of him, if he did not believe it upon the highest assurances? and
if ingenuity did not make him sorry for his crimes, and careful in the
duty of a subject, surely the world would cry shame of such a person.
[3d.] It is a necessary condition. 1. Necessary for the honor of
God. A prince is disparaged if his authority in his law, and if his
graciousness in his promises, be not accepted and believed. What
physician would undertake a cure, if his precepts may not be credited?
It is the first thing in the order of nature, that the revelation of
God should be believed, that the reality of his intentions in inviting
man to the acceptance of those methods he hath prescribed for their
attaining their chief happiness, should be acknowledged. It is a
debasing notion of God, that he should give a happiness, purchased by
Divine blood, to a person that hath no value for it, nor any abhorrency
of those sins that occasioned so great a suffering, nor any will to
avoid them: should he not vilify himself, to bestow a heaven upon that
man that will not believe the offers of it, nor walk in those ways
that lead to it? that walks so, as if he would declare there was no
truth in his word, nor holiness in his nature? Would not God by such
an act verify a truth in the language of their practice, _viz._ that he
were both false and impure, careless of his word, and negligent of his
holiness? As God was so desirous to ensure the consolation of believers,
that if there had been a greater Being than himself to attest, and for
him to be responsible to, for the confirmation of his promise, he would
willingly have submitted to him, and have made him the umpire, “He
swore by himself, because he could not swear by a greater” (Heb. vi.
19); by the same reason, had it stood with the majesty and wisdom of
God to stoop to lower conditions in this covenant, for the reducing of
man to his duty and happiness, he would have done it; but his goodness
could not take lower steps, with the preservation of the rights of his
majesty, and the honor of his wisdom. Would you have had him wholly
submitted to the obstinate will of a rebellious creature, and be ruled
only by his terms? Would you have had him received men to happiness,
after they had heightened their crimes by a contempt of his grace,
as well as of his creating goodness, and have made them blessed under
the guilt of their crimes without an acknowledgment? Should he glorify
one that will not believe what he hath revealed, nor repent of what
himself hath committed; and so save a man after {b283} a repeated
unthankfulness to the most immense grace that ever was, or can be,
discovered and offered, without a detestation of his ingratitude, and
a voluntary acceptance of his offers? It is necessary, for the honor
of God, that man should accept of his terms, and not give laws to him
to whom he is obnoxious as a guilty person, as well as subject as a
creature. Again, it was very equitable and necessary for the honor of
God, that since man fell by an unbelief of his precept and threatening,
he should not rise again without a belief of his promise, and casting
himself upon his truth in that: since he had vilified the honor of his
truth in the threatening; since man in his fall would lean to his own
understanding against God, it is fit that, in his recovery, the highest
powers of his soul, his understanding and will, should be subjected to
him in an entire resignation. Now, whereas knowledge seems to have a
power over its object, faith is a full submission to that which is the
object of it. Since man intended a glorying in himself, the evangelical
covenant directs its whole battery against it, that men may “glory
in nothing but Divine goodness” (1 Cor. i. 29‒31). Had man performed
exact obedience by his own strength, he had had something in himself
as the matter of his glory. And though, after the fall, grace had made
itself illustrious in setting him up upon a new stock, yet had the same
condition of exact obedience been settled in the same manner, man would
have had something to glory in, which is struck off wholly by faith;
whereby man in every act must go out of himself for a supply, to that
Mediator which Divine goodness and grace hath appointed. 2. It is
necessary for the happiness of man. That can be no contenting condition
wherein the will of man doth not concur. He that is forced to the
most delicious diet, or to wear the bravest apparel, or to be stored
with abundance of treasure, cannot be happy in those things without
an esteem of them, and delight in them: if they be nauseous to him,
the indisposition of his mind is a dead fly in those boxes of precious
ointment. Now, faith being a sincere willingness to accept of Christ,
and to come to God by him, and repentance being a detestation of
that which made man’s separation from God, it is impossible he
could be voluntarily happy without it: man cannot attain and enjoy
a true happiness without an operation of his understanding about
the object proposed, and the means appointed to enjoy it. There must
be a knowledge of what is offered, and of the way of it, and such a
knowledge as may determine the will to affect that end, and embrace
those means; which the will can never do, till the understanding be
fully persuaded of the truth of the offerer, and the goodness of the
proposal itself, and the conveniency of the means for the attaining of
it. It is necessary, in the nature of the thing, that what is revealed
should be believed to be a Divine revelation. God must be judged
true in the promising justification and sanctification, the means of
happiness; and if any man desires to be partaker of those promises, he
must desire to be sanctified; and how can he desire that which is the
matter of those promises, if he wallow in his own lusts, and desire
to do so, a thing repugnant to the promise itself? Would you have God
force man to be happy against his will? Is it not very reasonable he
should demand the consent {b284} of his reasonable creature to that
blessedness he offers him? The new covenant is a “marriage covenant”
(Hos. ii. 16, 19, 20), which implies a consent on our parts, as well as
a consent on God’s part; that is no marriage that hath not the consent
of both parties. Now faith is our actual consent, and repentance and
sincere obedience are the testimonies of the truth and reality of this
consent.
6th. Divine goodness is eminent in his methods of treating with men
to embrace this covenant. They are methods of gentleness and sweetness:
it is a wooing goodness, and a bewailing goodness; his expressions
are with strong motions of affection: he carrieth not on the gospel
by force of arms: he doth not solely menace men into it, as worldly
conquerors have done; he doth not, as Mahomet, plunder men’s estates,
and wound their bodies, to imprint a religion on their souls: he doth
not erect gibbets, and kindle faggots, to scare men to an entering into
covenant with him. What multitudes might he have raised by his power,
as well as others! What legions of angels might he have rendezvoused
from heaven, to have beaten men into a profession of the gospel! Nor
doth he only interpose his sovereign authority in the precept of faith,
but useth rational expostulations, to move men voluntarily to comply
with his proposals (Isa. i. 18), “Come now, and let us reason together,”
saith the Lord. He seems to call heaven and earth to be judge,
whether he had been wanting in any reasonable ways of goodness, to
overcome the perversity of the creature; (Isa. i. 2), “Hear, O heavens,
and give ear, O earth, I have nourished and brought up children.” What
various encouragements doth he use agreeable to the nature of men,
endeavoring to persuade them with all tenderness, not to despise their
own mercies, and be enemies to their own happiness! He would allure
us by his beauty, and win us by his mercy. He uses the arms of his own
excellency and our necessity to prevail upon us, and this after the
highest provocations. When Adam had trampled upon his creating goodness,
it was not crushed; and when man had cast it from him, it took the
higher rebound: when the rebel’s provocation was fresh in his mind,
he sought him out with a promise in his hand, though Adam fled from
him out of enmity as well as fear (Gen. iii). And when the Jews had
outraged his Son, whom he loved from eternity, and made the Lord of
heaven and earth bow down his head like a slave on the cross, yet in
that place, where the most horrible wickedness had been committed, must
the gospel be preached: the law must go forth out of that Sion, and the
apostles must not stir from thence till they had received the promise
of the Spirit, and published the word of grace in that ungrateful city,
whose inhabitants yet swelled with indignation against the Lord of Life,
and the doctrine he had preached among them (Luke xxiv. 47; Acts i.
4, 5). He would overlook their indignities out of tenderness to their
souls, and expose the apostles to the peril of their lives, rather than
expose his enemies to the fury of the devil.
1. How affectionately doth he invite men! What multitudes of alluring
promises and pressing exhortations are there everywhere sprinkled in
the Scripture, and in such a passionate manner, as if God were solely
concerned in our good, without a glance on his own {b285} glory! How
tenderly doth he woo flinty hearts, and express more pity to them
than they do to themselves! With what affection do his bowels rise
up to his lips in his speech in the prophet, Isa. li. 4, “Hearken to
me, O my people, and give ear unto me, O my nation!” “My people,” “my
nation!”――melting expressions of a tender God soliciting a rebellious
people to make their retreat to him. He never emptied his hand of
his bounty, nor divested his lips of those charitable expressions. He
sent Noah to move the wicked of the old world to an embracing of his
goodness, and frequent prophets to the provoking Jews; and as the world
continued, and grew up to a taller stature in sin, he stoops more in
the manner of his expressions. Never was the world at a higher pitch
of idolatry than at the first publishing the gospel; yet, when we
should have expected him to be a punishing, he is a beseeching God.
The apostle fears not to use the expression for the glory of Divine
goodness; “We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you
by us” (2 Cor. v. 20). The beseeching voice of God is in the voice of
the ministry, as the voice of the prince is in that of the herald: it
is as if Divine goodness did kneel down to a sinner with ringed hands
and blubbered cheeks, entreating him not to force him to re‑assume a
tribunal of justice in the nature of a Judge, since he would treat with
man upon a throne of grace in the nature of a Father; yea, he seems
to put himself into the posture of the criminal, that the offending
creature might not feel the punishment due to a rebel. It is not the
condescension, but the interest, of a traitor to creep upon his knees
in sackcloth to his sovereign, to beg his life; but it is a miraculous
goodness in the sovereign to creep in the lowest posture to the rebel,
to importune him, not only for an amity to him, but a love for his own
life and happiness: this He doth, not only in his general proclamations,
but in his particular wooings, those inward courtings of his Spirits,
soliciting them with more diligence (if they would observe it) to their
happiness, than the devil tempts them to the ways of their misery: as
he was first in Christ, reconciling the world, when the world looked
not after him, so he is first in his Spirit, wooing the world to accept
of that reconciliation, when the world will not listen to him. How
often doth he flash up the light of nature and the light of the word
in men’s hearts, to move them not to lie down in sparks of their own
kindling, but to aspire to a better happiness, and prepare them to be
subject to a higher mercy, if they would improve his present entreaties
to such an end! And what are his threatenings designed for, but to move
the wheel of our fears, that the wheel of our desire and love might
be set on motion for the embracing his promise? They are not so much
the thunders of his justice, as the loud rhetoric of his good will, to
prevent men’s misery under the vials of wrath: it is his kindness to
scare men by threatenings, that justice might not strike them with the
sword: it is not the destruction, but the preserving reformation, that
he aims at: he hath no pleasure in the death of the wicked; this he
confirms by his oath. His threatenings are gracious expostulations with
them: “Why will ye die, O house of Israel” (Ezek. xxxiii. 11)? They
are like the noise a favorable officer makes in the street, {b286} to
warn the criminal he comes to seize upon, to make his escape: he never
used his justice to crush men, till he had used his kindness to allure
them. All the dreadful descriptions of a future wrath, as well as the
lively descriptions of the happiness of another world, are designed
to persuade men; the honey of his goodness is in the bowels of those
roaring lions: such pains doth Goodness take with men, to make them
candidates for heaven.
2. How readily doth he receive men when they do return! We have
David’s experience for it (Ps. xxxii. 5); “I said, I will confess my
transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.
Selah.” A sincere look from the creature draws out his arms, and opens
his bosom; he is ready with his physic to heal us, upon a resolution
to acquaint him with our disease, and by his medicines prevents the
putting our resolution into a petition. The Psalmist adds a “Selah” to
it, as a special note of thankfulness for Divine goodness. He doth not
only stand ready to receive our petitions while we are speaking, but
answers us before we call (Isa. lxv. 24); listening to the motions of
our heart, as well as to the supplications of our lips. He is the true
Father, that hath a quicker pace in meeting, than the prodigal hath
in returning; who would not have his embraces and caresses interrupted
by his confession (Luke xv. 20‒22); the confession follows, doth not
precede, the Father’s compassion. How doth he rejoice in having an
opportunity to express his grace, when he hath prevailed with a rebel
to throw down his arms, and lie at his feet; and this because “he
delights in mercy” (Micah vii. 18)! He delights in the expressions of
it from himself, and the acceptance of it by his creature.
3. How meltingly doth he bewail man’s wilful refusal of his goodness!
It is a mighty goodness to offer grace to a rebel; a mighty goodness
to give it him after he hath a while stood off from the terms; an
astonishing goodness to regret and lament his wilful perdition. He
seems to utter those words in a sigh, “O that my people had hearkened
unto me, and Israel had walked in my way” (Ps. lxxxi. 13)! It is true,
God hath not human passions, but his affections cannot be expressed
otherwise in a way intelligible to us; the excellency of his nature
is above the passions of men; but such expressions of himself manifest
to us the sincerity of his goodness: and that, were he capable of our
passions, he would express himself in such a manner as we do: and we
find incarnate Goodness bewailing with tears and sighs the ruin of
Jerusalem (Luke xix. 42). By the same reason that when a sinner returns
there is joy in heaven, upon his obstinacy there is sorrow in earth.
The one is, as if a prince should clothe all his court in triumphant
scarlet, upon a rebel’s repentance; and the other, as if a prince put
himself and his court in mourning for a rebel’s obstinate refusal of
a pardon, when he lies at his mercy. Are not now these affectionate
invitations, and deep bewailings of their perversity, high testimonies
of Divine goodness? Do not the unwearied repetitions of gracious
encouragements deserve a higher name than that of mere goodness? What
can be a stronger evidence of the sincerity of it, than the sound
of his saving voice in our enjoyments, the motion of his Spirit in
our hearts, and his grief {b287} for the neglect of all? These are
not testimonies of any want of goodness in his nature to answer us,
or unwillingness to express it to his creature. Hath he any mind to
deceive us, that thus intreats us? The majesty of his nature is too
great for such shifts; or, if it were not, the despicableness of our
condition would render him above the using any. Who would charge that
physician with want of kindness, that freely offers his sovereign
medicine, importunes men, by the love they have to their health,
to take it, and is dissolved into tears and sorrow when he finds it
rejected by their peevish and conceited humor?
7th. Divine goodness is eminent in the sacraments he hath affixed to
this covenant, especially the Lord’s supper. As he gave himself in his
Son, so he gives his Son in the sacrament; he doth not only give him
as a sacrifice upon the cross for the expiation of our crimes, but as
a feast upon the table for the nourishment of our souls: in the one he
was given to be offered; in this he gives him to be partaken of, with
all the fruits of his death; under the image of the sacramental signs,
every believer doth eat the flesh, and drink the blood of the great
Mediator of the covenant. The words of Christ, “This is my body, and
this is my blood,” are true to the end of the world (Matt. xxvi. 26,
28). This is the most delicious viand of heaven, the most exquisite
dainty food God can feed us with: the delight of the Deity, the
admiration of angels; a feast with God is great, but a feast on God
is greater. Under those signs that body is presented; that which was
conceived by the Spirit, inhabited by the Godhead, bruised by the
Father to be our food, as well as our propitiation, is presented to us
on the table. That blood which satisfied justice, washed away our guilt
on the cross, and pleads for our persons at the throne of grace; that
blood which silenced the curse, pacified heaven, and purged earth, is
given to us for our refreshment. This is the bread sent from heaven,
the true manna; the cup is “the cup of blessing,” and, therefore, a
cup of goodness (1 Cor. x. 15). It is true, bread doth not cease to
be bread, nor the wine cease to be wine; neither of them lose their
substance, but both acquire a sanctification, by the relation they have
to that which they represent, and give a nourishment to that faith that
receives them. In those God offers us a remedy for the sting of sin,
and troubles of conscience; he gives us not the blood of a mere man,
or the blood of an incarnate angel, but of God blessed forever; a blood
that can secure us against the wrath of heaven, and the tumults of
our consciences; a blood that can wash away our sins, and beautify
our souls; a blood that hath more strength than our filth, and more
prevalency than our accuser; a blood that secures us against the
terrors of death, and purifies us for the blessedness of heaven.
The goodness of God complies with our senses, and condescends to our
weakness; he instructs us by the eye, as well as by the ear; he lets us
see, and taste, and feel him, as well as hear him; he veils his glory
under earthly elements, and informs our understanding in the mysteries
of salvation by signs familiar to our senses; and because we cannot
with our bodily eyes behold him in his glory, he presents him to the
eyes of our minds in elements, to affect our understandings in the
{b288} representations of his death. The body of Christ crucified is
more visible to our spiritual sense, than the invisible Deity could be
visible in his flesh upon earth; and the power of his body and blood
is as well experimented in our souls, as the power of his Divinity was
seen by the Jews in his miraculous actions in his body in the world.
It is the goodness of God, to mind us frequently of the great things
Christ hath purchased; that as himself would not let them be out of his
mind, to communicate them to us, so he would give us means to preserve
them in our minds, to adore him for them, and request them of him;
whereby he doth evidence his own solicitousness, that we should not be
deprived by our own forgetfulness of that grace Christ hath purchased
for us; it was to remember the Redeemer, “and show his death till he
came” (1 Cor. xi. 25, 26).
1. His goodness is seen in the end of it, which is a sealing the
covenant of grace. The common nature and end of sacraments is to seal
the covenant they belong to, and the truths of the promises of it.[983]
The legal sacraments of circumcision and the passover sealed the legal
promises and the covenant in the Judicial administration of it; and
the evangelical sacraments seal the evangelical promises, as a ring
confirms a contract of marriage, and a seal the articles of a compact;
by the same reason, circumcision is called a “seal of the righteousness
of faith” (Rom. iv. 11); other sacraments may have the same title; God
doth attest, that he will remain firm in his promise, and the receiver
attests he will remain firm in his faith. In all reciprocal covenants,
there are mutual engagements, and that which serves for a seal on the
part of the one, serves for a seal also on the part of the other; God
obligeth himself to the performance of the promise, and man engageth
himself to the performance of his duty. The thing confirmed by this
sacrament is the perpetuity of this covenant in the blood of Christ,
whence it is called “the New Testament,” or covenant “in the blood of
Christ” (Luke xxii. 20). In every repetition of it, God, by presenting,
confirms his resolution to us, of sticking to this covenant for the
merit of Christ’s blood; and the receiver, by eating the body and
drinking the blood, engageth himself to keep close to the condition
of faith, expecting a full salvation and a blessed immortality upon
the merit of the same blood alone. This sacrament could not be called
the “New Testament, or Covenant,” if it had not some relation to
the covenant; and what it can be but this, I do not understand. The
covenant itself was confirmed “by the death of Christ” (Heb. ix. 15),
and thereby made unchangeable both in the benefits to us, and the
condition required of us; but he seals it to our sense in a sacrament,
to give us strong consolation; or, rather, the articles of the covenant
of redemption between the Father and the Son, agreed on from eternity,
were accomplished on Christ’s part by his death, on the Father’s part
by his resurrection; Christ performed what he promised in the one, and
God acknowledgeth the validity of it, and performs what he had promised
in the other. The covenant of grace, founded upon this covenant of
redemption, is sealed in the sacrament; God owns his standing to the
terms of it, as sealed by the blood of the Mediator, by presenting
{b289} him to us under those signs, and gives us a right upon faith to
the enjoyment of the fruits of it. As the right of a house is made over
by the delivery of the key, and the right of land translated by the
delivery of a turf; whereby he gives us assurance of his reality, and
a strong support to our confidence in him; not that there is any virtue
and power of sealing in the elements themselves, no more than there is
in a turf to give an enfeoffment in a parcel of land; but as the power
of one is derived from the order of the law, so the confirming power
of the sacrament is derived from the institution of God; as the oil
wherewith kings were anointed, did not of itself confer upon them that
royal dignity, but it was a sign of their investiture into office,
ordered by Divine institution. We can with no reason imagine, that
God intended them as naked signs or pictures, to please our eyes with
the image of them, to represent their own figures to our eyes, but to
confirm something to our understanding by the efficacy of the Spirit
accompanying them:[984] they convey to the believing receiver what
they represent, as the great seal of a prince, fixed to the parchment,
doth the pardon of a rebel as well as its own figure. Christ’s death,
and the grace of the covenant is not only signified, but the fruits
and merit of that death communicated also. Thus doth Divine goodness
evidence itself, not only in making a gracious covenant with us, but
fixing seals to it; not to strengthen his own obligation, which stood
stronger than the foundations of heaven and earth, upon the credit of
his word, but to strengthen our weakness, and support our security, by
something which might appear more formal and solemn than a bare word.
By this, the Divine goodness provides against our spiritual faintings,
and shows us by real signs as well as verbal declarations, that the
covenant sealed by the blood of Christ, is unalterable; and thereby
would fortify and mount our hopes to degrees in some measure suitable
to the kindness of the covenant, and the dignity of the Redeemer’s
blood. And it is yet a further degree of this goodness, that he hath
appointed us so often to celebrate it, whereby he shows how careful
he is to keep up our tottering faith, and preserve us constant in our
obedience; obliging himself to the performance of his promise, and
obliging us to the payment of our duty.
2. His goodness is seen in the sacrament in giving us in it an
union and communion with Christ. There is not only a commemoration
of Christ dying, but a communication of Christ living. The apostle
strongly asserts it by way of interrogation (1 Cor. x. 16), “The cup
of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of
Christ? the bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body
of Christ?” In the cup there is a communication of the blood of Christ,
a conveyance of a right to the merits of his death, and the blessedness
of his life: we are not less by this made one body with Christ than we
are by baptism (1 Cor. xii. 13): and “put on Christ” living in this, as
well as in baptism (Gal. iii. 27); that as his taking our infirm flesh
was a real incarnation, so the giving us his flesh to eat is a mystical
incarnation in believers, whereby they become one body with him as
crucified, and one body with {b290} him as risen; for if Christ himself
be received by faith in the word (Col. ii. 6), he is no less received
by faith in the sacrament. When the Holy Ghost is said to be received,
the graces or gifts of the Holy Ghost are received; so when Christ
is received, the fruits of his death are really partaken of. The
Israelites that ate of the sacrifices, did “partake of the altar”
(1 Cor. x. 18), _i. e._ had a communion with the God of Israel, to
whom they had been sacrificed; and those that “ate of the sacrifices”
offered to idols, had a “fellowship with devils,” to whom those
sacrifices were offered (ver. 20). Those that partake of the sacraments
in a due manner, have a communion with that God to whom it was
sacrificed, and a communion with that body which was sacrificed to
God; not that the substance of that body and blood is wrapped up in
the elements, or that the bread and wine are transformed into the body
and blood of Christ, but as they represent him, and by virtue of the
institution are, in estimation himself, his own body and blood; by the
same reason as he is called “Christ our passover,” he may be called
“Christ our supper” (1 Cor. v. 7): for as they are so reckoned to an
unworthy receiver, as if they were the real body and blood of Christ,
because by his not discerning the Lord’s body in it, or making light
of it as common bread, he is judged “guilty of the body and blood of
Christ,” guilty of treating him in as base a manner as the Jews did
when they crowned him with thorns (1 Cor. xi. 27, 29): by the same
reason they must be reckoned to a worthy receiver, as the very body
and blood of Christ: so that as the unworthy receiver “eats and drinks
damnation,” the worthy receiver “eats and drinks” salvation. It would
be an empty mystery, and unworthy of an institution by Divine goodness,
if there were not some communion with Christ in it: there would be
some kind of deceit in the precept, “Take, eat, and drink, this is
my body and blood,” if there were not a conveyance of spiritual vital
influences to our souls: for the natural end of eating and drinking is
the nourishment and increase of the body, and preservation of life, by
that which we eat and drink. The infinite wise, gracious, and true God,
would never give us empty figures without accomplishing that which is
signified by them, and suitable to them. How great is this goodness of
God! he would have his Son in us, one with us, straitly joined to us,
as if we were his proper flesh and blood: in the incarnation Divine
goodness united him to our nature; in the sacrament, it doth in a sort
unite him with his purchased privileges to our persons; we have not a
communion with a part or a member of his body, or a drop of his blood,
but with his whole body and blood, represented in every part of the
elements. The angels in the heaven enjoy not so great a privilege; they
have the honor to be under him as their Head, but not that of having
him for their food; they behold him, but they do not taste him. And,
certainly, that goodness that hath condescended so much to our weakness,
would impart it to us in a very glorious manner, were we capable of
it. But, because a man cannot behold the light of the sun in its full
splendor by reason of the infirmities of his eyes, he must behold it
by the help of a glass, and such a communication through a colored and
opaque glass, is as real from the sun itself, though not so glorious,
but more shrouded {b291} and obscure; it is the same light that shines
through that medium, as spreads itself gloriously in the open air,
though the one be masked, and the other open‑faced. To conclude this,
by the way, we may take notice of the neglect of this ordinance:
if it be a token of Divine goodness to appoint it, it is no sign of
our estimation of Divine goodness to neglect it. He that values the
kindness of his friend, will accept of his invitation, if there be not
some strong impediments in the way, or so much familiarity with him
that his refusal upon a light occasion would not be unkindly taken. But
though God put on the disposition of a friend to us, yet he looseth not
the authority of a sovereign; and the humble familiarity he invites us
to, doth not diminish the condition and duty of a subject. A sovereign
prince would not take it well, if a favorite should refuse the offered
honor of his table. The viands of God are not to be slighted. Can
we live better upon our poor pittance than upon his dainties? Did
not Divine goodness condescend in it to the weakness of our faith,
and shall we conceit our faith stronger than God thinks it? If he
thought fit by those seals to make a deed of gift to us, shall we be so
unmannerly to him, and such enemies to the security he offers us over
and above his word, as not to accept it? Are we unwilling to have our
souls inflamed with love, our hearts filled with comfort, and armed
against the attempts of our enemies? It is true, there is a guilt of
the body and blood of Christ contracted by a slightness in the manner
of attending; is it not also contracted by a refusal and neglect? What
is the language of it? If it speaks not the death of Christ in vain, it
speaks the institution of this ordinance as a remembrance of his death,
to be a vanity, and no mark of Divine goodness. Let us, therefore, put
such a value upon Divine goodness in this affair, as to be willing to
receive the conveyances of his love, and fresh engagements of our duty;
the one is due from us to the kindness of our friend, and the other
belongs to our duty as his subjects.
vi. By this redemption God restores us to a more excellent condition
than Adam had in innocence. Christ was sent by Divine goodness, not
only to restore the life Adam’s sin had stripped us of, but to give
it more abundantly than Adam’s standing could have conveyed it to us
(John x. 10), “I am come that they might have life, and that they might
have it more abundantly.” More abundantly for strength, more abundantly
for duration, a life abounding with greater felicity and glory: the
substance of those better promises of the new covenant than what
attended the old. There are fuller streams of grace by Christ than
flowed to Adam, or could flow from Adam. As Christ never restored any
to health and strength while he was in the world, but he gave them
a greater measure of both than they had before; so there is the same
kindness, no question, manifested in our spiritual condition. Adam’s
life might have preserved us, but Adam’s death could not have rescued
either himself or his posterity; but, in our redemption, we have a
Redeemer, who hath “died to expiate our sins,” and so crowned with
life to save, and forever preserve our persons (Rom. v. 10), “Because
I live, ye shall live also:” so that by redeeming goodness the life
of a believer {b292} is as perpetual as the life of the Redeemer
Christ (John xiv. 19). Adam, though innocent, was under the danger
of perishing; a believer, though culpable, is above the fears of
mutability. Adam had a holiness in his nature, but capable of being
lost; by Christ believers have a holiness bestowed, not capable of
being rifled, but which will remain till it be at last fully perfected:
though they have a power to change in their nature, yet they are above
an actual final change by the indulgence of Divine grace. Adam stood
by himself; believers stand in a root, impossible to be shaken or
corrupted: by this means the “promise is sure to all the seed” (Rom.
iv. 16). Christ is a stronger person than Adam, who can never break
covenant with God, and the truth of God will never break covenant with
him. We are united to a more excellent Head than Adam: instead of a
root merely human, we have a root Divine as well as human. In him we
had the righteousness of a creature merely human; in this we have a
righteousness divine, the righteousness of God‑man; the stock is no
longer in our own hands, but in the hands of One that cannot embezzle
it, or forfeit it: Divine goodness hath deposited it strongly for our
security. The stamp we receive, by the Divine goodness, from the second
Adam, is more noble than that we should have received from the first,
had he remained in his created state: Adam was formed of the dust of
the earth, and the new man is formed by the incorruptible seed of the
word; and at the resurrection, the body of man shall be endued with
better qualities than Adam had at creation: they shall be like that
glorious Body which is in heaven, in union with the person of the “Son
of God” (Phil. iii. 21). Adam, at the best, had but an earthly body,
but the Lord from heaven hath a “heavenly body,” the image of which
shall be borne by the redeemed ones, as they have borne the image
of the earthly (1 Cor. xv. 47‒49). Adam had the society of beasts;
redeemed ones expect, by Divine goodness in redemption, a commerce
with angels; as they are reconciled to them by his death, they shall
certainly come to converse with them at the consummation of their
happiness; as they are made of one family, so they will have a peculiar
intimacy: Adam had a paradise, and redeemed ones a heaven provided for
them; a happier place with a richer furniture. It is much to give so
complete a paradise to innocent Adam; but more to give heaven to an
ungrateful Adam, and his rebellious posterity: it had been abundant
goodness to have restored us to the same condition in that paradise
from whence we were ejected; but a superabundant goodness to bestow
upon us a better habitation in heaven, which we could never have
expected. How great is that goodness, when by sin we were fallen to
be worse than nothing, that He should raise us to be more than what we
were; that restored us, not to the first step of our creation, but to
many degrees of elevation beyond it! not only restores us, but prefers
us; not only striking off our chains, to set us free, but clothing
us with a robe of righteousness, to render us honorable; not only
quenching our hell, but preparing a heaven; not re‑garnishing an
earthly, but providing a richer palace: his goodness was so great,
that, after it had rescued us, it would not content itself with the
old furniture, but makes all new for us in another {b293} world; a new
wine to drink; a new heaven to dwell in; a more magnificent structure
for our habitation: thus hath Goodness prepared for us a straiter
union, a stronger life, a purer righteousness, an unshaken standing,
and a fuller glory; all more excellent than was within the compass of
innocent Adam’s possession.
vii. This goodness in redemption extends itself to the lower creation.
It takes in, not only man, but the whole creation, except the fallen
angels, and gives a participation of it to insensible creatures; upon
the account of this redemption the sun, and all kind of creatures, were
preserved, which otherwise had sunk into destruction upon the sin of
man, and ceased from their being, as man had utterly ceased from his
happiness (Colos. i. 17): “By him all things consist.” The fall of man
brought, not only a misery upon himself, but a vanity upon the creature;
the earth groaned under a curse for his sake. They were all created for
the glory of God, and the support of man in the performance of his duty,
who was obliged to use them for the honor of Him that created them both.
Had man been true to his obligations, and used the creatures for that
end to which they were dedicated by the Creator; as God would have then
rejoiced in his works, so his works would have rejoiced in the honor
of answering so excellent an end: but when man lost his integrity,
the creatures lost their perfection; the honor of them was stained
when they were debased to serve the lusts of a traitor, instead
of supporting the duty of a subject, and employed in the defence
of the vices of men against the precepts and authority of their
common Sovereign. This was a vilifying the creature, as it would be
a vilifying the sword of a prince, which is, for the maintenance of
justice, to be used for the murder of an innocent; and a dishonoring a
royal mansion, to make it a storehouse for a dunghill. Had those things
the benefit of sense, they would groan under this disgrace, and rise up
in indignation against them that offered them this affront, and turned
them from their proper end. When sin entered, the heavens that were
made to shine upon man, and the earth that was made to bear and nourish
an innocent creature, were now subjected to serve a rebellious creature;
and as man turned against God, so he made those instruments against
God, to serve his enmity, luxury, sensuality. Hence the creatures
are said to groan (Rom. viii. 22); “The whole creation groans and
travails in pain together until now.” They would really groan, had
they understanding to be sensible of the outrage done them. “The whole
creation.”――It is the pang of universal nature, the agony of the whole
creation, to be alienated from the original use for which they were
intended, and be disjointed from their end to serve the disloyalty of
a rebel. The drunkard’s cup, and the glutton’s table, the adulterer’s
bed, and the proud man’s purple, would groan against the abuser of them.
But when all the fruits of redemption shall be completed, the goodness
of God shall pour itself upon the creatures, deliver them from the
“bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of
God” (Rom. viii. 21); they shall be reduced to their true end, and
returned in their original harmony. As the creation doth passionately
groan under its vanity, so it doth “earnestly expect and wait for its
deliverance {b294} at the time of the manifestation of the sons of God”
(ver. 19). The manifestation of the sons of God is the attainment of
the liberty of the creature. They shall be freed from the vanity under
which they are enslaved; as it entered by sin, it shall vanish upon the
total removal of sin. What use they were designed for in paradise they
will have afterwards, except that of the nourishment of men, who shall
be as “angels, neither eating nor drinking:” the glory of God shall be
seen and contemplated in them. It can hardly be thought that God made
the world to be little a moment after he had reared it, sullied by the
sin of man, and turned from its original end, without thoughts of a
restoration of it to its true end, as well as man to his lost happiness.
The world was made for man: man hath not yet enjoyed the creature in
the first intention of them; sin made an interruption in that fruition.
As redemption restores man to his true end, so it restores the
creatures to their true use. The restoration of the world to its beauty
and order was the design of the Divine goodness in the coming of Christ,
as it is intimated in Isa. xi. 6‒9; as he “came not to destroy the
law, but to fulfil it,” so he came not to destroy the creatures, but to
repair them: to restore to God the honor and pleasure of the creation,
and restore to the creatures their felicity in restoring their order:
the fall corrupted it, and the full redemption of men restores it.
The last time is called, not a time of destruction, but a “time of
restitution,” and that “of all things” (Acts iii. 21) of universal
nature, the main part of the creation at least. All those things which
were the effects of sin will be abolished; the removal of the cause
beats down the effect. The disorder and unruliness of the creature,
arising from the venom of man’s transgression, all the fierceness of
one creature against another shall vanish. The world shall be nothing
but an universal smile; nature shall put on triumphant vestments: there
shall be no affrighting thunders, choking mists, venomous vapors, or
poisonous plants. It would not else be a restitution of all things.
They are now subject to be wasted by judgments for the sin of their
possessor, but the perfection of man’s redemptions shall free them
from every misery. They have an advancement at the present, for they
are under a more glorious Head, as being the possession of Christ,
the heavenly Adam, much superior to the first: as it is the glory
of a person to be a servant to a prince, rather than a peasant. And
afterwards, they shall be elevated to a better state, sharing in
man’s happiness, as well as they did in his misery: as servants are
interested in the good fortune of their master, and bettered by his
advance in his prince’s favor. As man in his first creation was mutable
and liable to sin, so the creatures were liable to vanity; but as man
by grace shall be freed from the mutability, so shall the creatures be
freed from the fears of an invasion, by the vanity that sullied them
before. The condition of the servants shall be suited to that of their
Lord, for whom they were designed: hence, all creatures are called
upon to rejoice upon the perfection of salvation, and the appearance
of Christ’s royal authority in the world. If they were to be destroyed,
there would be no ground to invite them to triumph (Ps. xcvi. 11, 12;
cxviii. 7, 8). Thus doth Divine goodness spread its kind arms over the
whole creation.
{b295} _Thirdly._ The third thing is the goodness of God in his
_Government_. That goodness that despised not their creation, doth not
despise their conduct. The same goodness that was the head that framed
them, is the helm that guides them; his goodness hovers over the whole
frame, either to prevent any wild disorders unsuitable to his creating
end, or to conduct them to those ends which might illustrate his wisdom
and goodness to his creatures. His goodness doth no less incline him
to provide for them, than to frame them. It is the natural inclination
of man to love what is purely the birth of his own strength or skill.
He is fond of preserving his own inventions, as well as laborious in
inventing them. It is the glory of a man to preserve them, as well as
to produce them. God loves everything which he hath made, which love
could not be without a continued diffusiveness to them, suitable to the
end for which he made them. It would be a vain goodness, if it did not
interest itself in managing the world, as well as erecting it: without
his government everything in the world would jostle against one another:
the beauty of it would be more defaced, it would be an unruly mass, a
confused chaos rather than a Κόσμος, a comely world. If Divine goodness
respected it when it was nothing, it would much more respect it when
it was something, by the sole virtue of his power and good‑will to it,
without any motive from anything else than himself, because there was
nothing else but himself. But since he sees his own stamp in things
without himself in the creature, which is a kind of motive or moving
object to Divine goodness to preserve it, when there was nothing
without himself that could be any motive to Him to create it: as when
God hath created a creature, and it falls into misery, that misery of
the creature, though it doth not necessitate his mercy, yet meeting
with such an affection as mercy in his nature, is a moving object to
excite it; as the repentance of Nineveh drew forth the exercise of
his pity and preserving goodness. Certainly, since God is good, he is
bountiful; and if bountiful, he is provident. He would seem to envy and
malign his creatures, if he did not provide for them, while he intends
to use them: but infinite goodness cannot be effected with envy; for
all envy implies a want of that good in ourselves, which we regard with
so evil an eye in another. But God, being infinitely blessed, hath not
the want of any good that can be a rise to such an uncomely disposition.
The Jews thought that Divine goodness extended only to them in an
immediate and particular care, and left all other nations and things to
the guidance of angels. But the Psalmist (Ps. cvii. a psalm calculated
for the celebration of this perfection, in the continued course of
his providence throughout all ages of the world) ascribes to Divine
goodness immediately all the advantages men meet with. He helps them
in their actions, presides over their motions, inspects their several
conditions, labors day and night in a perpetual care of them. The whole
life of the world is linked together by Divine goodness. Everything
is ordered by him in the place where he hath set it, without which the
world would be stripped of that excellency it hath by creation.
1st. This goodness is evident in the care he hath of all creatures.
There is a peculiar goodness to his people; but this takes not away
{b296} his general goodness to the world: though a master of a family
hath a choicer affection to those that have an affinity to him in
nature, and stand in a nearer relation, as his wife, children, servants;
yet he hath a regard to his cattle, and other creatures he nourisheth
in his house. All things are not only before his eyes, but in his bosom;
he is the nurse of all creatures, supplying their wants, and sustaining
them from that nothing they tend to. The “earth is full of his riches”
(Ps. civ. 24); not a creek or cranny but partakes of it. Abundant
goodness daily hovers over it, as well as hatched it. The whole world
swims in the rich bounty of the Creator, as the fish do in the
largeness of the sea, and birds in the spaciousness of the air.[985]
The goodness of God is the river that waters the whole earth. As a
lifeless picture casts its eye upon every one in the room, so doth a
living God upon everything in the world. And as the sun illuminates all
things which are capable of partaking of its light, and diffuseth its
beams to all things which are capable of receiving them, so doth God
spread his wings over the whole creation, and neglects nothing, wherein
he sees a mark of his first creating goodness.
1. His goodness is seen, in preserving all things. “O Lord, thou
preservest man and beast” (Ps. xxxvi. 6). Not only man, but beasts, and
beasts as well as men; man, as the most excellent creature, and beasts
as being serviceable to man, and instruments of his worldly happiness.
He continues the species of all things, concurs with them in their
distinct offices, and quickens the womb of nature. He visits man
every day, and makes him feel the effects of his providence, in giving
him “fruitful seasons, and filling his heart with food and gladness”
(Acts xiv. 17), as witnesses of his liberality and kindness to man.
“The earth is visited and watered by the river of God. He settles the
furrows of the earth, and makes it soft with showers,” that the corn
may be nourished in its womb, and spring up to maturity. “He crowns the
year with his goodness, and his paths drop fatness. The little hills
rejoice on every side; the pastures are clothed with flocks, and the
valleys are covered over with corn,” as the Psalmist elegantly says
(Ps. lxv. 9, 10; cvii. 35, 36). He waters the ground by his showers,
and preserves the little seed from the rapine of animals. “He draws
not out the evil arrows of famine,” as the expression is (Ezek. v. 16).
Every day shines with new beams of his Divine goodness. The vastness of
this city, and the multitudes of living souls in it, is an astonishing
argument. What streams of nourishing necessaries are daily conveyed
to it! Every mouth hath bread to sustain it; and among all the number
of poor in the bowels and skirts of it, how rare is it to hear of any
starved to death for want of it! Every day he “spreads a table” for
us, and that with varieties, and “fills our cups” (Ps. xxiii. 5). He
shortens not his hand, nor withdraws his bounty: the increase of one
year by his blessing, restores what was spent by the former. He is
the “strength of our life” (Ps. xxvii. 1), continuing the vigor of
our limbs, and the health of our bodies; secures us from “terrors by
night, and the arrows of diseases that fly by day” (Ps. xci. 5); {b297}
“sets a hedge about our estates” (Job i. 10), and defends them against
the attempts of violence; preserves our houses from flames that might
consume them, and our persons from the dangers that lie in wait for
them; watcheth over us “in our goings out, and our comings in” (Ps.
cxxi. 8), and way‑lays a thousand dangers we know not of: and employs
the most glorious creatures in heaven in the service of mean “men upon
earth” (Ps. xci. 11): not by a faint order, but a pressing charge over
them, to “keep them in all his ways.” Those that are his immediate
servants before his throne, he sends to minister to them that were
once his rebels. By an angel he conducted the affairs of Abraham (Gen.
xxiv. 7): and by an angel secured the life of Ishmael (Gen. xxi. 17):
glorious angels for mean man, holy angels for impure man, powerful
angels for weak man. How in the midst of great dangers, doth his sudden
light dissipate our great darkness, and create a deliverance out of
nothing! How often is he found a present help in time of trouble!
When all other assistance seems to stand at a distance, he flies to us
beyond our expectations, and raises us up on the sudden from the pit of
our dejectedness, as well as that of our danger, exceeding our wishes,
and shooting beyond our desires as well as our deserts. How often,
in the time of confusion, doth he preserve an indefensible place from
the attacks of enemies, like a bark in the midst of a tempestuous
sea! the rage falls upon other places round about them, and, by a
secret efficacy of Divine goodness, is not able to touch them. He hath
peculiar preservations for his Israel in Egypt, and his Lots in Sodom,
his Daniels in the lions’ dens, and his children in a fiery furnace. He
hath a tenderness for all, but a peculiar affection to those that are
in covenant with him.
2. The goodness of God is seen in taking care of the animals and
inanimate things. Divine goodness embraceth in its arms the lowest
worm as well as the loftiest cherubim: he provides food for the “crying
ravens” (Ps. cxlvii. 9), and a prey for the appetite of the “hungry
lion” (Ps. civ. 21): “He opens his hand, and fills with good those
innumerable creeping things, both small and great beasts; they are all
waiters upon him, and all are satisfied by their bountiful Master” (Ps.
civ. 25‒28). They are better provided for by the hand of heaven, than
the best favorite is by an earthly prince: for “they are filled with
good.” He hath made channels in the wildest deserts, for the watering
of beasts, and trees for the nests and “habitation of birds” (Ps. civ.
10, 12, 17). As a Law‑giver to the Jews, he took care that the poor
beast should not be abused by the cruelty of man: he provided for the
ease of the laboring beast in that command of the Sabbath, wherein
he provided for his own service: the cattle was to do “no work” on
it (Exod. xx. 10). He ordered that the mouth of the ox should not be
muzzled while it trod out the corn (Deut. xxv. 4, it being the manner
of those countries to separate the corn from the stalk by that means,
as we do in this by thrashing), regarding it as a part of cruelty to
deprive the poor beast of tasting, and satisfying itself with that
which he was so officious by his labor to prepare for the use of man.
And when any met with a nest of young birds, though {b298} they might
take the young to their use, they were forbidden to seize upon the
dam, that she might not lose the objects of her affection and her own
liberty in one day (Deut. xxii. 6).
And see how God enforceth this precept with a threatening of a
shortness of life, if they transgressed it (Deut. xxii. 7)! “Thou shalt
let the dam go, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest
prolong thy days.” He would revenge the cruelty to dumb creatures with
the shortness of the oppressor’s life: nor would he have cruelty used
to creatures that were separated for his worship: he therefore provides
that a cow, or an ewe, and their young ones, should “not be killed for
sacrifice in one day” (Lev. xxii. 28). All which precepts, say the Jews,
are to teach men mercifulness to their beasts; so much doth Divine
goodness bow down itself, to take notice of those mean creatures, which
men have so little regard to, but for their own advantage; yea, he is
so good, that he would have worship declined for a time in favor of
a distressed beast; the “helping a sheep, or an ox, or an ass, out
of a pit,” was indulged them even “on the Sabbath‑day,” a day God had
peculiarly sanctified and ordered for his service (Matt. xii. 11; Luke
xiv. 5): in this case he seems to remit for a time the rights of the
Deity for the rescue of a mere animal. His goodness extends not only to
those kind of creatures that have life, but to the insensible ones; he
clothes the grass, and “arrays the lilies of the field” with a greater
glory than Solomon had upon his throne (Matt. vi. 28, 29); and such
care he had of those trees which bore fruit for the maintenance of man
or beast, that he forbids any injury to be offered to them, and bars
the rapine and violence, which by soldiers used to be practised (Deut.
xx. 19), though it were to promote the conquest of their enemy. How
much goodness is it, that he should think of so small a thing as man!
How much more that he should concern himself in things that seem so
petty as beasts and trees! Persons seated in a sovereign throne, think
it a debasing of their dignity to regard little things: but God, who
is infinitely greater in majesty above the mightiest potentate, and
the highest angel, yet is so infinitely good, as to employ his divine
thoughts about the meanest things. He who possesses the praises of
angels, leaves not off the care of the meanest creatures: and that
majesty that dwells in a pure heaven, and an inconceivable light,
stoops to provide for the ease of those creatures that lie and lodge
in the dirt and dung of the earth. How should we be careful not to use
those unmercifully, which God takes such care of in his law, and not to
distrust that goodness, that opens his hand so liberally to creatures
of another rank!
3. The goodness of God is seen in taking care of the meanest
rational creatures; as servants and criminals. He provided for the
liberty of slaves, and would not have their chains continue longer
than the seventh year, unless they would voluntarily continue under
the power of their masters; and that upon pain of his displeasure, and
the withdrawing his blessing (Deut. xv. 18). And though, by the laws
of many nations, masters had an absolute power of life and death over
their servants, yet God provided that no member should be lamed, not an
eye, no, nor a tooth, struck out, but the master was {b299} to pay for
his folly and fury the price of the “liberty of his servant” (Exod. xxi.
26, 27): he would not suffer the abused servant to be any longer under
the power of that man that had not humanity to use him as one of the
same kindred and blood with himself. And though those servants might
be never so wicked, yet, when unjustly afflicted, God would interest
himself as their guardian in their protection and delivery. And when a
poor slave had been provoked, by the severity of his master’s fury, to
turn fugitive from him, he was, by Divine order, not to be delivered
up again to his master’s fury, but dwell in that city, and with that
person, to whom he had “fled for refuge” (Deut. xxiii. 15, 16). And
when public justice was to be administered upon the lesser sort of
criminals, the goodness of God ordered the “number of blows” not
to exceed forty, and left not the fury of man to measure out the
punishment to excess (Deut. xxv. 3). And in any just quarrel against
a provoking and injuring enemy, he ordered them not to ravage with the
sword till they had summoned a rendition of the place (Deut. xx. 10).
And as great a care he took of the poor, that they should have the
gleanings both of the vineyard and field (Lev. xix. 10; xxiii. 22), and
not be forced to pay “usury for the money lent them” (Exod. xxii. 25).
4. His goodness is seen in taking care of the wickedest persons. “The
earth is full of his goodness” (Ps. xxxvii. 5). The wicked as well as
the good enjoy it; they that dare lift up their hands against heaven
in the posture of rebels, as well as those that lift up their eyes in
the condition of suppliants. To do good to a criminal, far surmounts
that goodness that flows down upon an innocent object: now God is
not only good to those that have some degrees of goodness, but to
those that have the greatest degrees of wickedness, to men that turn
his liberality into affronts of him, and have scarce an appetite to
anything but the violation of his authority and goodness. Though, upon
the fall of Adam, we have lost the pleasant habitation of paradise,
and the creatures made for our use are fallen from their original
excellency and sweetness; yet he hath not left the world utterly
incommodious for us, but yet stores it with things not only for
the preservation, but delight of those that make their whole lives
invectives against this good God. Manna fell from heaven for the
rebellious as well as for the obedient Israelites. Cain as well as
Abel, and Esau as well as Jacob, had the influences of his sun, and
the benefits of his showers. The world is yet a kind of paradise to the
veriest beasts among mankind; the earth affords its riches, the heavens
its showers, and the sun its light, to those that injure and blaspheme
him: “He makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends
rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. v. 45). The wickedest
breathe in his air, walk upon his earth, and drink of his water, as
well as the best. The sun looks with as pleasant and bright an eye
upon a rebellious Absalom, as a righteous David; the earth yields its
plants and medicines to one as well as to the other; it is seldom that
He deprives any of the faculties of their souls, or any members of
their bodies. God distributes his blessings where he might shoot his
thunders; and darts his light on those who deserve an eternal darkness;
and presents the good things of the earth to those {b300} that merit
the miseries of hell; for “the earth, and the fulness thereof, is the
Lord’s” (Ps. xxiv. 1); everything in it is his in propriety, ours in
trust; it is his corn, his wine (Hos. ii. 8); he never divested himself
of the propriety, though he grants us the use; and by those good things
he supports multitudes of wicked men, not one or two, but the whole
shoal of them in the world; for he is “the Saviour of all men,” _i. e._
is the preserver of all men (1 Tim. iv. 10). And as he created them,
when he foresaw they would be wicked; so he provides for them, when
he beholds them in their ungodliness. The ingratitude of men stops
not the current of his bounty, nor tires his liberal hand; howsoever
unprofitable and injurious men are to him, he is liberal to them;
and his goodness is the more admirable, by how much the more the
unthankfulness of men is provoking: he sometimes affords to the worst a
greater portion of these earthly goods; they often swim in wealth, when
others pine away their lives in poverty. And the silk‑worm yields its
bowels to make purple for tyrants, while the oppressed scarce have from
the sheep wool enough to cover their nakedness; and though he furnish
men with those good things, upon no other account than what princes
do, when they nourish criminals in a prison till the time of their
execution, it is a mark of his goodness. Is it not the kindness of a
prince to treat his rebels deliciously? to give them the liberty of the
prison, and the enjoyments of the delights of the place, rather than
to load their legs with fetters, and lodge them in a dark and loathsome
dungeon, till he orders them, for their crime, to be conducted to the
scaffold or gibbet? Since God is thus kind to the vilest men, whose
meanness, by reason of sin, is beyond that of any other creature, as
to shoot such rays of goodness upon them; how inexpressible would be
the expressions of his goodness, if the Divine image were as pure and
bright upon them as it was upon innocent Adam!
2d. His goodness is evident in the preservation of human society. It
belongs to his power that he is able to do it, but to his goodness that
he is willing to do it.
1. This goodness appears in prescribing rules for it. The moral law
consists but of ten precepts, and there are more of them ordered for
the support of human society, than for the adoration and honor of
himself (Exod. xx. 1, 2); four for the rights of God, and six for
the rights of man, and his security in his authority, relations, life,
goods, and reputation; superiors not to be dishonored, life not to
be invaded, chastity not to be stained, goods not to be filched, good
name not to be cracked by false witness, nor anything belonging to our
neighbor to be coveted; and in the whole Scripture, not only that which
was calculated for the Jews, but compiled for the whole world; he hath
fixed rules for the ordering all relations, magistrates, and subjects;
parents and children; husbands and wives; masters and servants; rich
and poor, find their distinct qualifications and duties. There would
be a paradisiacal state, if men had a goodness to observe what God
hath had a goodness to order for the strengthening the sinews of
human society; the world would not groan under oppressing tyrants,
nor princes tremble under discontented subjects, or mighty rebels;
children would not be provoked to anger by the unreasonableness {b301}
of their parents, nor parents sink under grief by the rebellion of
their children; masters would not tyrannize over the meanest of their
servants, nor servants invade the authority of their masters.
2. The goodness of God in the preserving human society, is seen in
setting a magistracy to preserve it. Magistracy is from God in its
original; the charter was drawn up in paradise; civil subordination
must have been had man remained in innocence; but the charter was more
explicitly renewed and enlarged at the restoration of the world after
the deluge, and given out to man under the broad seal of heaven; “Whoso
sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” (Gen. ix. 6). The
command of shedding the blood of a murderer was a part of his goodness,
to secure the lives of those that bore his image. Magistrates are “the
shields of the earth,” but they “belong to God” (Ps. xlvii. 9). They
are fruits of his goodness in their original, and authority; were
there no magistracy, there would be no government, no security to any
man under his own vine and fig tree; the world would be a den of wild
beasts preying upon one another; every one would do what seems good in
his eyes; the loss of government is a judgment God brings upon a nation
when men become “as the fishes of the sea,” to devour one another,
because they “have no ruler over them” (Hab. i. 14). Private
dissensions will break out into public disorders and combustions.
3. The goodness of God in the preservation of human society, is seen in
the restraints of the passions of men. He sets bounds to the passions
of men as well as to the rollings of the sea; “He stilleth the noise
of the waves, and the tumults of the people” (Ps. lxv. 7). Though God
hath erected a magistracy to stop the breaking out of those floods of
licentiousness, which swell in the hearts of men; yet, if God should
not hold stiff reins on the necks of those tumultuous and foaming
passions, the world would be a place of unruly confusion, and hell
triumph upon earth; a crazy state would be quickly broke in pieces by
boisterous nature. The tumults of a people could no more be quelled by
the force of man, than the rage of the sea by a puff of breath; without
Divine goodness, neither the wisdom nor watchfulness of the magistrates,
nor the industry of officers, could preserve a state. The laws of men
would be too slight to curb the lusts of men, if the goodness of God
did not restrain them by a secret hand, and interweave their temporal
security with observance of those laws. The sons of Belial did murmur
when Saul was chosen king; and that they did no more was the goodness
of God, for the preservation of human society. If God did not restrain
the impetuousness of men’s lusts, they would be the entire ruin of
human society; their lusts would render them as bad as beasts, and
change the world into a savage wilderness.
4. The goodness of God is seen in the preservation of human society,
in giving various inclinations to men for public advantage. If all men
had an inclination to one science or art, they would all stand idle
spectators of one another; but God hath bestowed various dispositions
and gifts upon men, for the promoting the common good, that they
may not only be useful to themselves, but to society. He {b302} will
have none idle, none unuseful, but every one acting in a due place,
according to their measures, for the good of others.
5. The goodness of God is seen in the witness he bears against those
sins that disturb human society. In those cases he is pleased to
interest himself in a more signal manner, to cool those that make it
their business to overturn the order he hath established for the good
of the earth. He doth not so often in this world punish those faults
committed immediately against his own honor, as those that put the
world into a hurry and confusion: as a good governor is more merciful
to crimes against himself, than those against his community. It is
observed that the most turbulent seditious persons in a state come to
most violent ends, as Corah, Adonijah, Zimri: Ahithopel draws Absalom’s
sword against David and Israel, and the next is, he twists a halter
for himself: Absalom heads a party against his father, and God, by
a goodness to Israel, hangs him up, and prevents not its safety by
David’s indulgence, and a future rebellion, had life been spared
by the fondness of his father. His providence is more evident in
discovering disturbers, and the causes that move them, in defeating
their enterprises, and digging the contrivers out of their caverns and
lurking holes: in such cases, God doth so act, and use such methods,
that he silenceth any creature from challenging any partnership with
him in the discovery. He doth more severely in this world correct those
actions that unlink the mutual assistance between man and man, and the
charitable and kind correspondence he would have kept up. The sins for
which the “wrath of God comes upon the children of disobedience” (Col.
iii. 5, 6) in this world are of this sort; and when princes will be
oppressing the people, God will be “pouring contempt on the princes,
and set the poor on high from affliction” (Ps. cvii. 40, 41). An
evidence of God’s care and kindness in the preserving human society, is
those strange discoveries of murders, though never so clandestine and
subtilly committed, more than of any other crime among men: Divine care
never appears more than in bringing those hidden and injurious works of
darkness to light, and a due punishment.
6. His goodness is seen in ordering mutual offices to one another
against the current of men’s passions. Upon this account he ordered, in
his laws for the government of the Israelites, that a man should reduce
the wandering beast of his enemy to the hand of his rightful proprietor,
though he were a provoking enemy; and also “help the poor beast that
belonged to one that hated him, when he saw him sink under his burden”
(Exod. xxiii. 4, 5). When mutual assistance was necessary, he would not
have men considered as enemies, or considered as wicked, but as of the
same blood with ourselves, that we might be serviceable to one another
for the preservation of life and goods.
7. His goodness is seen in remitting something of his own right, for
the preserving a due dependence and subjection. He declines the right
he had to the vows of a minor, or one under the power of another,
waving what he might challenge by the voluntary obligation of his
creature, to keep up the due order between parents and children,
husbands and wives, superiors and inferiors; those that {b303} were
under the power of another, as a child under his parents, or a wife
under her husband, if they had “vowed a vow unto the Lord,” which
concerned his honor and worship, it was void without the approbation of
that person under whose charge they were (Num. xxx. 3, 4, &c.). Though
God was the Lord of every man’s goods, and men but his stewards; and
though he might have taken to himself what another had offered by a vow,
since whatsoever could be offered was God’s own, though it was not the
parties’ own who offered it; yet God would not have himself adored by
his creature to the prejudice of the necessary ties of human society;
he lays aside what he might challenge by his sovereign dominion, that
there might not be any breach of that regular order which was necessary
for the preservation of the world. If Divine goodness did not thus
order things, he would not do the part of a Rector of the world; the
beauty of the world would be much defaced, it would be a confused mass
of men and women, or rather, beasts and bedlams. Order renders every
city, every nation, yea, the whole earth, beautiful: this is an effect
of Divine goodness.
3d. His goodness is evident in encouraging anything of moral goodness
in the world. Though moral goodness cannot claim an eternal reward,
yet it hath been many times rewarded with a temporal happiness; he
hath often signally rewarded acts of honesty, justice, and fidelity,
and punished the contrary by his judgments, to deter man from such an
unworthy practice, and encourage others to what was comely, and of a
general good report in the world. Ahab’s humiliation put a demurrer
to God’s judgments intended against him; and some ascribe the great
victories and success of the Romans to that justice which was observed
among themselves. Baruch was but an amanuensis to the Prophet Jeremy to
write his prophecy, and very despondent of his own welfare (Jer. xlv.
13); God upon that account provides for his safety, and rewards the
industry of his service with the security of his person; he was not a
statesman, to declare against the corrupt counsels of them that sat at
the helm, nor a prophet, to declare against their profane practices,
but the prophet’s scribe; and as he writes in God’s service the
prophecies revealed to the prophet, God writes his name in the roll of
those that were designed for preservation in that deluge of judgments
which were to come upon that nation. Epicurus complained of the
administration of God, that the virtuous moralist had not sufficient
smiles of Divine favor, nor the swinish sensualist frowns of Divine
indignation. But what if they have not always that confluence of
outward wealth and pleasures, but remain in the common level? yet they
have the happiness and satisfaction of a clear reputation, the esteem
of men, and the secret applauses of their very enemies, besides the
inward ravishments upon an exercise of virtue, and the commendatory
subscription of their own hearts, a dainty the vicious man knows not of;
they have an inward applause from God as a reward of Divine goodness,
instead of those racks of conscience upon which the profane are
sometimes stretched. He will not let the worst men do him any service
(though they never intended in the act of service him, but themselves)
without giving them their wages: he will not let {b304} them hit him
in the teeth as if he were beholden to them. If Nebuchadnezzar be the
instrument of God’s judgments against Tyrus and Israel, he will not
only give him that rich city, but a richer country, Egypt, the granary
for her neighbors, a wages above his work. In this is Divine goodness
eminent, since, in the most moral actions, as there is something
beautiful, so there is something mixed, hateful to the infinitely
exact holiness of the Divine nature; yet he will not let that which is
pleasing to him go unrewarded, and defeat the expectations of men, as
men do with those they employ, when, for one flaw in an action, they
deny them the reward due for the other part. God encouraged and kept
up morality in the cities of the Gentiles for the entertainment of
a further goodness in the doctrine of the gospel when it should be
published among them.
4th. Divine goodness is eminent in providing a Scripture as a rule to
guide us, and continuing it in the world. If man be a rational creature,
governable by a law, can it be imagined there should be no revelation
of that law to him? Man, by the light of reason, must needs confess
himself to be in another condition than he was by creation, when he
came first out of the hands of God; and can it be thought, that God
should keep up the world under so many sins against the light of nature,
and bestow so many providential influences, to invite men to return to
him, and acquaint no men in the world with the means of that return?
Would he exact an obedience of men, as their consciences witness he
doth, and furnish them with no rules to guide them in the darkness they
cannot but acknowledge that they have contracted? No; Divine goodness
hath otherwise provided: this Bible we have is his word and rule. Had
it been a falsity and imposture, would that goodness, that watches over
the world, have continued it so long? That goodness that overthrew the
burdensome rites of Moses, and expelled the foolish idolatry of the
Pagans, would have discovered the imposture of this, had it not been
a transcript of his own will. Whatever mistakes he suffers to remain
in the world, what goodness had there been to suffer this anciently
amongst the Jews, and afterwards to open it to the whole world, to
abuse men in religion and worship, which so nearly concerned himself
and his own honor, that the world should be deceived by the devil
without a remedy in the morning of its appearance? It hath been honored
and admired by some heathens, when they have cast their eyes upon it,
and their natural light made them behold some footsteps of a Divinity
in it. If this, therefore, be not a Divine prescript, let any that deny
it, bring as good arguments for any book else, as can be brought for
this. Now, the publishing this is an argument of Divine goodness: it is
designed to win the affections of beggarly man, to be espoused to a God
of eternal blessedness and immense riches. It speaks words in season:
no doubts but it resolves; no spiritual distemper but it cures; no
condition but it hath a comfort to suit it. It is a garden which the
hand of Divine bounty hath planted for us; in it he condescends to
shadow himself in those expressions that render him in some manner
intelligible to us. Had God wrote in a loftiness of style suitable to
the greatness of his majesty, his writing had been as little understood
by us, as the {b305} brightness of his glory can be beheld by us.
But he draws phrases from our affairs, to express his mind to us;
he incarnates himself in his word to our minds, before his Son was
incarnate in the flesh to the eyes of men: he ascribes to himself eyes,
ears, hands, that we might have, from the consideration of ourselves,
and the whole human nature, a conception of his perfections: he assumes
to himself the members of our bodies, to direct our understandings in
the knowledge of his Deity; this is his goodness. Again, though the
Scripture was written upon several occasions, yet in the dictating of
it, the goodness of God cast his eye upon the last ages of the world
(1 Cor. x. 11): “They are written for our admonition, upon whom the
ends of the world are come.” It was given to the Israelites, but Divine
goodness intended it for the future Gentiles. The old writings of
the prophets were thus designed, much more the later writings of the
apostles. Thus did Divine goodness think of us, and prepare his records
for us, before we were in the world: these he hath written plain for
our instruction, and wrapped up in them what is necessary for our
salvation: it is clear to inform our understanding, and rich to comfort
us in our misery; it is a light to guide us, and a cordial to refresh
us; it is a lamp to our feet, and a medicine for our diseases; a
purifier of our filth, and a restorer of us in our faintings. He hath
by his goodness sealed the truth of it, by his efficacy on multitudes
of men: he hath made it the “word of regeneration” (James i. 18). Men,
wilder and more monstrous than beasts, have been tamed and changed by
the power of it: it hath raised multitudes of dead men from a grave
fuller of horror than any earthly one. Again, Goodness was in all ages
sending his letters of advice and counsel from heaven, till the canon
of the Scripture was closed; sometimes he wrote to chide a froward
people, sometimes to cheer up an oppressed and disconsolate people,
according to the state wherein they were; as we may observe by the
several seasons wherein parts of Scripture were written. It was His
goodness that he first revealed anything of his will after the fall; it
was a further degree of goodness, that he would add more cubits to its
stature; before he would lay aside his pencil, it grew up to that bulk
wherein we have it. And his goodness is further seen in the preserving
it; he hath triumphed over the powers that opposed it, and showed
himself good to the instruments that propagated it: he hath maintained
it against the blasts of hell, and spread it in all languages against
the obstructions of men and devils. The sun of his word is by his
kindness preserved in our horizon, as well as the sun in the heavens.
How admirable is Divine goodness! He hath sent his Son to die for us,
and his written word to instruct us, and his Spirit to edge it for
an entrance into our souls: he hath opened the womb of the earth to
nourish us, and sent down the records of heaven to direct us in our
pilgrimage: he hath provided the earth for our habitation, while we are
travellers, and sent his word to acquaint us with a felicity at the end
of our journey, and the way to attain in another world what we want in
this, _viz._ a happy immortality.
5th. His goodness in his government is evident, in conversions of
men. Though this work be wrought by his power, yet his power {b306}
was first solicited by his goodness. It was his rich goodness that he
would employ his power to pierce the scales of a heart as hard as those
of the “leviathan.” It was this that opened the ears of men to hear
him, and draws them from the hurry of worldly cares, and the charms
of sensual pleasures, and, which is the top of all, the impostures and
cheats of their own hearts. It is this that sends a spark of his wrath
into men’s consciences, to put them to a stand in sin, that he might
not send down a shower of brimstone eternally to consume their persons.
This it was that first showed you the excellency of the Redeemer, and
brought you to taste the sweetness of his blood, and find your security
in the agonies of his death. It is his goodness to call one man and not
another, to turn Paul in his course, and lay hold of no other of his
companions. It is his goodness to call any, when he is not bound to
call one.
1. It is his goodness to pitch upon mean and despicable men in the
eye of the world; to call this poor publican, and overlook that proud
Pharisee, this man that sits upon a dunghill, and neglect him that
glisters in his purple. His majesty is not enticed by the lofty titles
of men, nor, which is more worth, by the learning and knowledge of men.
“Not many wise, not many mighty,” not many doctors, not many lords,
though some of them; but his goodness condescends to the “base things”
of the world, and things which are “despised” (1 Cor. i. 26‒28). “The
poor receive the gospel” (Matt. xi. 5), when those that are more acute,
and furnished with a more apprehensive reason, are not touched by it.
2. The worst men. He seizeth sometimes upon men most soiled, and
neglects others that seem more clean and less polluted. He turns
men in their course in sin, that, by their infernal practices, have
seemed to have gone to school to hell, and to have sucked in the sole
instructions of the devil. He lays hold upon some when they are most
under actual demerit, and snatches them as fire‑brands out of the fire,
as upon Paul when fullest of rage against him; and shoots a beam of
grace, where nothing could be justly expected but a thunderbolt of
wrath. It is his goodness to visit any, when they lie putrefying in
their loathsome lusts; to draw near to them who have been guilty of
the greatest contempt of God, and the light of nature; the murdering
Manassehs, the persecuting Sauls, the Christ‑crucifying Jews,――persons
in whom lusts had had a peaceable possession and empire for many years.
3. His goodness appears in converting men possessed with the greatest
enmity against him, while he was dealing with them. All were in such
a state, and framing contrivances against him, when Divine goodness
knocked at the door (Col. i. 21). He looked after us when our backs
were turned upon him, and sought us when we slighted him, and were
a “gainsaying people” (Rom. x. 21); when we had shaken off his
convictions, and contended with our Maker, and mustered up the powers
of nature against the alarms of conscience; struggled like wild bulls
in a net, and blunted those darts that stuck in our souls. Not a man
that is turned to him, but had lifted up the heel against his gospel
grace, as well as made light of his creating goodness. Yet it hath
employed itself about such ungrateful {b307} wretches, to polish those
knotty and rugged pieces for heaven; and so invincibly, that he would
not have his goodness defeated by the fierceness and rebellion of the
flesh. Though the thing was more difficult in itself (if anything may
be said to have a difficulty to omnipotency) than to make a stone live,
or to turn a straw into a marble pillar. The malice of the flesh makes
a man more unfit for the one, than the nature of the straw unfits it
for the other.
4. His goodness appears in turning men, when they were pleased with
their own misery, and unable to deliver themselves; when they preferred
a hell before him, and were in love with their own vileness; when his
call was our torment, and his neglect of us had been accounted our
felicity. Was it not a mighty goodness to keep the light close to our
eyes, when we endeavored to blow it out; and the corrosive near to
our hearts, when we endeavored to tear it off, being more fond of our
disease than the remedy? We should have been scalded to death with the
Sodomite, had not God laid his good hand upon us, and drawn us from
the approaching ruin we affected, and were loath to be freed from.
And had we been displeased with our state, yet we had been as unable
spiritually to raise ourselves from sin to grace, as to raise ourselves
naturally from nothing to being. In this state we were when his
goodness triumphed over us; when he put a hook into our nostrils, to
turn us in order to our salvation; and drew us out of the pit which we
had digged, when he might have left us to sink under the rigors of his
justice we had merited. Now this goodness in conversion is greater than
that in creation; as in creation there is nothing to oppose him, so
there was nothing to disoblige him; creation was terminated to the
good of a mutable nature, and conversion tends to a supernatural good.
God pronounced all creatures good at first, and man among the rest,
but did not pronounce any of them, or man himself, his “portion,” his
“inheritance,” his “_segullah_,” his “house,” his “diadem.” He speaks
slightly of all those things which he made, the noblest heavens, as
well as the lowest earth, in comparison of a true convert: “All those
things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been: but to this
man will I look, to him that is of a contrite spirit” (Isa. lxvi. 1, 2).
It is more goodness to give the espousing grace of the covenant, than
the completing glory of heaven; as it is more for a prince to marry a
beggar, than only to bring her to live deliciously in his courts. All
other benefits are of a meaner strain, if compared with this; there is
little less of goodness in imparting the holiness of his nature, than
imputing the righteousness of his Son.
6th. The Divine goodness doth appear in answering prayers. He
delights to be familiarly acquainted with his people, and to hear them
call upon him. He indulgeth them a free access to him, and delights
in every address of an “upright man” (Prov. xv. 8). The wonderful
efficacy of prayer depends not upon the nature of our petitions or the
temper of our soul, but the goodness of God to whom we address. Christ
establisheth it upon this bottom: when he exhorts to ask in his name,
he tells them the spring of all their grants is the Father’s love: “I
say not, I will pray the Father for you, for {b308} the Father himself
loves you” (John xvi. 26, 27). And since it is of itself incredible,
that a Majesty, exalted above the cherubims, should stoop so low as to
give a miserable and rebellious creature admittance to him, and afford
him a gracious hearing, and a quick supply, Christ ushers in the
promise of answering prayer with a note of great assurance: “I say unto
you, Ask, and it shall be given you” (Luke xi. 9, 10). I, that know
the mind of my Father, and his good disposition, assure you your prayer
shall not be in vain. Perhaps you will not be so ready of yourselves
to imagine so great a liberality; but take it upon my word, it is
true, and so you will find it. And his bounty travels, as it were, in
birth, to give the greatest blessings, upon our asking, rather than the
smallest: “your heavenly Father shall give his Holy Spirit to them that
ask him” (ver. 13): which in Matt. vii. 11, is called, “good things.”
Of all the good and rich things Divine goodness hath in his treasury,
he delights to give the best upon asking, because God doth act so as
to manifest the greatness of his bounty and magnificence to men; and,
therefore, is delighted when men, by their petitioning him, own such
a liberal disposition in him, and put him upon the manifesting it.
He would rather you should ask the greatest things heaven can afford,
than the trifles of this world; because his bounty is not discovered in
meaner gifts: he loves to have an opportunity to manifest his affection
above the liberality and tenderness of worldly fathers. He doth more
wait to give in a way of grace, than we to beg; and, “therefore, will
the Lord wait, that he may be gracious unto you” (Isa. xxx. 18). He
stands expecting your suits, and employs his wisdom in pitching upon
the fittest seasons, when the manifestation of his goodness may be
most gracious in itself, and the mercy you want most welcome to you;
as it follows, “for the Lord is a God of judgment.” He chooseth the
time wherein his doles may be most acceptable to his suppliants; “In
an acceptable time have I heard thee” (Isa. xlix. 8). He often opens
his hand while we are opening our lips, and his blessings meet our
petitions at the first setting out upon their journey to heaven: “While
they are yet speaking, I will hear” (Isa. lxv. 24). How often do we
hear a secret voice within us, while we are praying, saying, “Your
prayer is granted;” as well as hear a voice behind us, while we are
erring, saying, “This is the way, walk in it!” And his liberality
exceeds often our desires, as well as our deserts; and gives out more
than we had the wisdom or confidence to ask. The apostle intimates
it in that doxology, “Unto Him who is able to do abundantly above all
that we ask or think” (Eph. iii. 20). This power would not have been so
strong an argument of comfort, if it were never put in practice; he is
more liberal than his creatures are craving. Abraham petitioned for the
life of Ishmael, and God promiseth him the “birth of Isaac” (Gen. xvii.
18, 19). Isaac asks for a “child,” and God gives him “two” (Gen. xxv.
21, 22). Jacob desires “food” to eat, and “raiment” to put on; God
confines not his bounty within the narrow limits of his petition, but
instead of a “staff,” wherewith he passed Jordan, makes him repass
it with “two bands” (Gen. xxviii. 20). David asked life of God, and
he gave him “life,” and a “crown” to boot (Ps. xxi. 2‒5). The {b309}
Israelites would have been contented with a free life in Egypt; they
only cried to have their chains struck off; God gave them that, and
adopts them to be his “peculiar people,” and raises them into a famous
state. It is a wonder that God should condescend so much, that he
should hear prayers so weak, so cold, so wandering, and gather up our
sincere petitions from the dung of our distractions and diffidence.
David vents his astonishment at it; “Blessed be God, for he hath shown
me marvellous kindness. I said in my haste, I am cut off from before
thine eyes: nevertheless, thou heardest the voice of my supplication”
(Ps. xxxi. 21, 22). How do we wonder at the goodness of a petty man,
in granting our desires; how much more should we at the humility and
goodness of the most sovereign Majesty of heaven and earth!
7th. The goodness of God is seen in bearing with the infirmities of his
people, and accepting imperfect obedience. Though Asa had many blots in
his escutcheon, yet they are overlooked, and this note set upon record
by Divine goodness, that his heart was perfect towards the Lord all his
days; “But the high places were not removed: nevertheless, Asa’s heart
was perfect with the Lord all his days” (1 Kings, xv. 14). He takes
notice of a sincere, though chequered obedience, to reward it, which
could claim nothing but a slight from him, if he were extreme to mark
what is done amiss. When there is not an opportunity to work, but only
to will, he accepts the will, as if it had passed into work and act. He
sees no iniquity in Jacob (Numb. xxiii. 21), _i. e._ He sees it not so
as to cast off a respect to their persons, and the acceptance of their
services: his omniscience knows their sins, but his goodness doth not
reject their persons. He is of so good a disposition, that he delights
in a weak obedience of his servants, not in the imperfection, but in
the obedience (Ps. xxxvii. 23); “He delights in the way of a good man,”
though he sometimes slips in it: he accepts a poor man’s pigeon, as
well as a rich man’s ox: he hath a bottle for the tears, and a book
for the “services of the upright,” as well as for the most perfect
obedience of angels (Ps. lvi. 8): he preserves their tears, as if they
were a rich and generous wine, as the vine‑dresser doth the expressions
of the grape.
8th. The goodness of God is seen in afflictions and persecutions. If it
be “good for us to be afflicted,” for which we have the psalmist’s vote
(Ps. cxix. 71), then goodness in God is the principal cause and orderer
of the afflictions. It is his goodness to snatch away that whence we
fetch supports for our security, and encouragements for our insolence
against him: he takes away the thing which we have some value for, but
such as his infinite wisdom sees inconsistent with our true happiness.
It is no ill‑will in the physician to take away the hurtful matter the
patient loves, and prescribe bitter potions, to advance that health
which the other impaired; nor any mark of unkindness in a friend,
to wrest a sword out of a madman’s hand, wherewith he was about to
stab himself, though it were beset with the most orient pearls. To
prevent what is evil, is to do us the greatest good. It is a kindness
to prevent a man from falling down a precipice, though it be with
a violent blow, that lays him flat upon {b310} the ground at some
distance from the edge of it. By afflictions he often snaps asunder
those chains which fettered us, and quells those passions which ravaged
us: he sharpens our faith, and quickens our prayers; he brings us in
the secret chamber of our own heart, which we had little mind before
to visit by a self‑examination. It is such a goodness that he will
vouchsafe to correct man in order to his eternal happiness, that Job
makes it one part of his astonishment (Job. vii. 17); “What is man,
that thou shouldest magnify him? that thou shouldest set thy heart upon
him? and that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every
moment?” His strokes are often the magnifyings and exaltings of man.
He sets his heart upon man, while he inflicts the smart of his rod: he
shows thereby, what a high account he makes of him, and what a special
affection he bears to him. When he might treat us with more severity
after the breach of his covenant, and make his jealousy flame out
against us in furious methods, he will not destroy his relation to
us, and leave us to our own inclinations, but deal with us as a father
with his children; and when he takes this course with us, it is when
it cannot be avoided without our ruin: his goodness would not suffer
him to do it, if our badness did not force him to it (Jer. ix. 7), “I
will melt them and try them, for how shall I do for the daughter of my
people?” What other course can I take but this, according to the nature
of man? The goldsmith hath no other way to separate the dross from the
metal, but by melting it down. And when the impurities of his people
necessitate him to this proceeding, “he sits as a refiner” (Mal. iii.
3): he watches for the purifying the silver, not for his own profit
as the goldsmith, but out of a care of them, and good will to them; as
himself speaks (Isa. xlviii. 10), “I have refined thee, but not with
silver;” or, as some read it, “not for silver.” As when he scatters
his people abroad for their sin, he will not leave them without his
presence for their “sanctuary” (Ezek. xi. 16): he would by his presence
with them supply the place of ordinances, or be an ark to them in the
midst of the deluge: his hand that struck them, is never without a
goodness to comfort them and pity them. When Jacob was to go into
Egypt, which was to prove a furnace of affliction to his offspring, God
promises to go down with him, and to “bring him up again” (Gen. xlvi.
4): a promise not only made to Jacob in his person, but to Jacob in
his posterity. He returned not out of Egypt in his person, but as the
father of a numerous posterity. He that would go down with their root,
and afterwards bring up the branches, was certainly with them in all
their oppressions: “I will go down with thee.” “Down,” saith one; what
a word is that for a Deity! into Egypt, idolatrous Egypt; what a place
is that for his holiness![986] Yet O, the goodness of God! He never
thinks himself low enough to do his people good, nor any place too bad
for his society with them. So when he had sent away into captivity the
people of Israel by the hand of the Assyrian, his bowels yearn after
them in their affliction (Isa. lii. 4, 5); the Assyrian “oppressed
them without cause,” _i. e._ without a just cause in the conqueror
to inflict so great an evil upon them, but not without {b311} cause
from God, whom they had provoked. “Now, therefore, what have I here,
saith the Lord?” What do I here? I will not stay behind them. What
do I longer here? for I will redeem again those jewels the enemy hath
carried away. That chapter is a prophecy of redemption: God shows
himself so good to his people in their persecutions, that he gives
them occasion to glorify him in the very fires, as the Divine order is
(Isa. xxiv. 15), “Wherefore glorify the Lord in the fires.”
9th. The goodness of God is seen in temptations. In those he takes
occasion to show his care and watchfulness, as a father uses the
distress of a child as an opportunity for manifesting the tenderness
of his affection. God is at the beginning and end of every temptation;
he measures out both the quality and quantity: he exposeth them not to
temptation beyond the ability he had already granted them, or will at
the time, or afterwards multiply in them. He hath promised his people
that “the gate of hell shall not prevail against them” (1 Cor. x. 13):
that “in all things” they shall be “more than conquerors through Him
that loved them:” that the most raging malice of hell shall not wrest
them out of his hands. His goodness is not less in performing than
it was in promising: and as the care of his providence extends to the
least as well as the greatest, so the watchfulness of his goodness
extends to us in the least as well as in the greatest temptations.
1. The goodness of God appears in shortening temptations. None of them
can go beyond their “appointed times” (Dan. xi. 35): the strong blast
Satan breathes cannot blow, nor the waves he raises rage one minute
beyond the time God allows them; when they have done their work, and
come to the period of their time, God speaks the word, and the wind and
sea of hell must obey him, and retire into their dens. The more violent
temptations are, the shorter time doth God allot to them. The assaults
Christ had at the time of his death were of the most pressing and
urging nature: the powers of darkness were all in arms against him;
the reproaches and scorns put upon him, questioning his sonship, were
very sharp; yet a little before his suffering he calls it but an hour
(Luke xxii. 53), “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” A
short time that men and devils were combined against him; and the
time of temptation that is to come upon all the world for their trial,
is called but an “hour” (Rev. iii. 10). In all such attempts, the
greatness of the rage is a certain prognostic of the shortness of the
season (Rev. xii. 12).
2. The goodness of God appears in strengthening his people under
temptations. If he doth not restrain the arm of Satan from striking,
he gives us a sword to manage the combat, and a shield to bear off the
blow (Eph. vi. 16, 17). If he obscures his goodness in one part, he
clears and brightens it in another: he either binds the strong man that
he shall not stir, or gives us armor to render us victorious. If we
fall, it is not for want of provision from him, but for want of our
“putting on the armor of God” (Eph. vi. 11, 13). When we have not a
strength by nature, he gives it us by grace: he often quells those
passions within which would join hands with, and second the temptation
without. He either qualifies the temptation {b312} suitably to the
force we have, or else supplies us with a new strength to mate the
temptation he intends to let loose against us; he knows we are but dust,
and his goodness will not have us unequally matched. The Jews that
in Antiochus’ time were under great temptation to apostasy by reason
of the violence of their persecutions, were, “out of weakness, made
strong” for the combat (Heb. xi. 34). The Spirit came more strongly
upon Sampson when the Philistines most furiously and confidently
assaulted him. His Spirit is sent to strengthen his people before the
devil is permitted to tempt them (Matt. iv. 2); “Then was Jesus led
up of the Spirit.” Then; When? When the Spirit had in an extraordinary
manner descended upon him (Matt. iii. 16), “then,” and not before. As
the angels appeared to Christ, after his temptation, to minister to him,
so they appeared to him before his passion, the time of the strongest
powers of darkness, to strengthen him for it: he is so good, that when
he knows our potsherd strength too weak, he furnisheth our recruits
from his own omnipotence (Eph. vi. 10); “Be strong in the Lord, and
in the power of his might.” He doth, as it were, breathe in something
of his own almightiness, to assist us in our wrestling against
principalities and powers, and make us capable to sustain the violent
storms of the enemies.
3. The goodness of God is seen in temptations, in giving great comforts
in or after them. The Israelites had a more immediate provision of
manna from heaven when they were in the wilderness. We read not that
the Father spake audibly to the Son, and gave him so loud a testimony,
that he was his “beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased,” till he was
upon the brink of strong temptations (Matt. iii. 17): nor sent angels
to minister immediately to his person, till after his success (Matt.
iv. 11). Job never had such evidences of Divine love till after he had
felt the sharp strokes of Satan’s malice; he had heard of God before,
by the “hearing of the ear,” but afterwards is admitted into greater
familiarity (Job. xlii. 5): he had more choice appearances, clearer
illuminations, and more lively instructions. And, though his people
fall into temptation, yet, after their rising, they have more signal
marks of his favor than others have, or themselves, before they fell.
Peter had been the butt of Satan’s rage, in tempting him to deny
Christ, and he had shamefully complied with the temptation; yet, to
him particularly, must the first news of the Redeemer’s resurrection
be carried, by God’s order, in the mouth of an angel (Mark xvi. 7);
“Go your ways, tell his disciples, and Peter.” We have the greatest
communion with God after a victory; the most refreshing truths after
the devil hath done his worst. God is ready to furnish us with strength
in a combat, and cordials after it.
4. The goodness of God is seen in temptations, in discovering and
advancing inward grace by this means. The issue of a temptation of
a Christian is often like that of Christ’s, the manifesting a greater
vigor of the Divine nature, in affections to God, and enmity to sin.
Spices perfume not the air with their scent till they are invaded by
the fire: the truth of grace is evidenced by them. The assault of an
enemy revives, and actuates that strength and courage which is {b313}
in a man, perhaps unknown to himself, as well as others, till he meets
with an adversary: many seem good, not that they are so in themselves,
but for want of a temptation: this many times verifies a virtue, which
was owned upon trust before, and discovers that we had more grace than
we thought we had. The solicitations of Joseph’s mistress cleared up
his chastity: we are many times under temptation, as a candle under
the snuffer; it seems to be out, but presently burns the clearer.
Afflictions are like those clouds which look black, and eclipse the sun
from the earth, but yet, when they drop, refresh that ground they seem
to threaten, and multiply the grain on the earth, to serve for our food;
and so our troubles, while they wet us to the skin, wash much of that
dust from our graces which in a clearer day had been blown upon us.
Too much rest corrupts; exercise teacheth us to manage our weapons: the
spiritual armor would grow rusty, without opportunity to furbish it up;
faith receives a new heart by every combat, and by every victory; like
a fire, it spreads itself further, and gathers strength by the blowing
of the wind. While the gardener commands his servant to shake the tree,
he intends to fasten its roots, and settle it firmer in its place; and
is this an ill‑will to the plant?
5. His goodness is seen in temptations, in preventing sin which we
were likely to fall into. Paul’s thorn in the flesh was to prevent the
pride of his spirit, and let out the windiness of his heart (2 Cor.
xii. 7), lest it should be exalted above measure. The goodness of
God makes the devil a polisher, while he intends to be a destroyer.
The devil never works, but suitably to some corruption lurking in
us: Divine goodness makes his fiery darts a means to discover, and
so to prevent the treachery of that perfidious inmate in our hearts;
humility is a greater benefit than a putrefying pride; if God brings
us into a wilderness to be tempted of the devil, it is to bring down
our loftiness, to starve our carnal confidence, and expel our rusting
“security” (Deut. viii. 2); we many times fly under a temptation to
God, from whom we sat too loose before. Is it not goodness to use those
means that may drive us into his own arms? It is not a want of goodness
to soap the garment, in order to take away the spots; we have reason
to bless God for the assaults from hell, as well as pure mercies from
heaven; and it is a sin to overlook the one as well as the other, since
Divine goodness shines in both.
6. The goodness of God is seen in temptations, in fitting us more for
his service. Those whom God intends to make choice instruments in his
service, are first seasoned with strong temptations, as timber reserved
for the strong beams of a building is first exposed to sun and wind,
to make it more compact for its proper use. By this men are brought to
answer the end of their creation, the service of God, which is their
proper goodness. Peter was, after his foil by a temptation, more
courageous in his Master’s cause than before, and the more fitted to
strengthen his brethren.
Thus the goodness of God appears in all parts of his government.
V. I shall now come to the _Use_. First, Of instruction.
1. If God be so good, how unworthy is the contempt or abuse of his
goodness! (1.) The contempt and abuse of Divine goodness is {b314}
frequent and common; it began in the first ages of the world, and
commenced a few moments after the creation; it hath not to this day
diminished its affronts; Adam began the dance, and his posterity have
followed him; the injury was directed against this, when he entertained
the seducer’s notion of God’s being an envious Deity, in not indulging
such a knowledge as he might have afforded him (Gen. iii. 5): “God doth
know, that you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” The charge of
envy is utterly inconsistent with pure goodness. What was the language
of this notion, so easily entertained by Adam, but that the tempter
was better than God, and the nature of God as base and sordid as the
nature of a devil? Satan paints God with his own colors, represents
him as envious and malicious as himself; Adam admires, and believes
the picture to be true, and hangs it up as a beloved one in the closet
of his heart. The devil still drives on the same game, fills men’s
hearts with the same sentiments, and by the same means he murdered our
first parents, he redoubles the stabs to his posterity. Every violation
of the Divine law is a contempt of God’s goodness, as well as his
sovereignty, because his laws are the products both of the one and
the other. Goodness animates them, while sovereignty enjoys them: God
hath commanded nothing but what doth conduce to our happiness. All
disobedience implies, that his law is a snare to entrap us, and make
us miserable, and not an act of kindness, to render us happy, which
is a disparagement to this perfection, as if he had commanded what
would promote our misery, and prohibited what would conduce to our
blessedness: to go far from him, and walk after vanity, is to charge
him with our iniquity, and unrighteousness, baseness, and cruelty, in
his commands: God implies it by his speech (Jer. ii. 5), “What iniquity
have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and
walked after vanity?” as if, like a tyrant, he had consulted cruelty in
the composure of them, and designed to feast himself with the blood and
misery of his creatures. Every sin is, in its own nature, a denial of
God to be the chiefest good and happiness, and implies that it is no
great matter to lose him: it is a forsaking him as the Fountain of Life,
and a preferring a cracked and “empty cistern” as the chief happiness
before him (Jer. ii. 13). Though sin is not so evil as God is good,
yet it is the greatest evil, and stands in opposition to God as the
greatest good. Sin disorders the frame of the world; it endeavored to
frustrate all the communications of Divine goodness in creation, and to
stop up the way of any further streams of it to his creatures.
(2.) The abuse and contempt of the Divine goodness is base and
disingenious. It is the highest wickedness, because God is the highest
goodness, pure goodness that cannot have anything in him worthy of our
contempt. Let men injure God under what notion they will, they injure
his goodness; because all his attributes are summed up in this one, and
all, as it were, deified by it. For whatsoever power or wisdom he might
have, if he were destitute of this he were not God: the contempt of
his goodness implies him to be the greatest evil, and worst of beings.
Badness, not goodness, is the proper object of contempt: as respect
is a propension of mind to {b315} something that is good, so contempt
is an alienation of the mind from something as evil, either simply
or supposedly evil in its nature, or base or unworthy in its action
towards that person that contemns it. As men desire nothing but
what they apprehend to be good, so they slight nothing but what they
apprehend to be evil: since nothing, therefore, is more contemned by us
than God, nothing more spurned at by us than God, it will follow that
we regard him as the most loathsome and despicable being, which is the
greatest baseness. And our contempt of him is worse than that of the
devils; they injure him under the inevitable strokes of his justice,
and we slight him when we are surrounded with the expressions of his
bounty; they abuse him under vials of wrath, and we under a plenteous
liberality: they malice him, because he inflicts on them what is
hurtful; and we despise him, because he commands what is profitable,
holy, and honorable, in its own nature, though not in our esteem. They
are not under those high obligations as we; they abuse his creating,
and we his redeeming goodness: he never sent his Son to shed a drop of
blood for their recovery; they can expect nothing but the torment of
their persons, and the destruction of their works; but we abuse that
goodness that would rescue us since we are miserable, as well as that
righteousness which created us innocent. How base is it to use him so
ill, that is not once or twice, but a daily, hourly Benefactor to us;
whose rain drops upon the earth for our food, and whose sun shines
upon the earth for our pleasure as well as profit: such a Benefactor
as is the true Proprietor of what we have, and thinks nothing too good
for them that think everything too much for his service! How unworthy
is it to be guilty of such base carriage towards him, whose benefits
we cannot want, nor live without! How disingenious both to God and
ourselves, to “despise the riches of his goodness, that are designed to
lead us to repentance” (Rom. ii. 4), and by that to happiness! And more
heinous are the sins of renewed men upon this account, because they are
against his “goodness” not only offered to them, but tasted by them;
not only against the notion of goodness, but the experience of goodness,
and the relished sweetness of choicest bounty.
(3.) God takes this contempt of his goodness heinously. He never
upbraids men with anything in the Scripture, but with the abuse of
the good things he hath vouchsafed them, and the unmindfulness of the
obligations arising from them. This he bears with the greatest regret
and indignation. Thus he upbraids Eli with the preference of him to
the priesthood above other families (1 Sam. ii. 28): and David with his
exaltation to the crown of Israel (2 Sam. xii. 7‒9), when they abused
those honors to carelessness and licentiousness. All sins offend God,
but sins against his goodness do more disparage him; and, therefore,
his fury is the greater, by how much the more liberally his benefits
have been dispensed. It was for abuse of Divine goodness, as soon as it
was tasted, that some angels were hurled from their blessed habitation
and more happy nature: it was for this Adam lost his present enjoyments,
and future happiness, for the abuse of God’s goodness in creation. For
the abuse of God’s goodness the old world fell under the fury {b316} of
the flood; and for the contempt of the Divine goodness in redemption,
Jerusalem, once the darling city of the infinite Monarch of the
world, was made an Aceldema, a field of blood. For this cause it is,
that candlesticks have been removed, great lights put out, nations
overturned, and ignorance hath triumphed in places bright before with
the beams of heaven. God would have little care of his own goodness, if
he always prostituted the fruits of it to our contempt. Why should we
expect he should always continue that to us which he sees we will never
use to his service? When the Israelites would dedicate the gifts of God
to the service of Baal, then he would return, and take away his corn,
and his wine, and make them know by the loss, that those things were
his in dominion, which they abused, as if they had been sovereign lords
of them (Hos. ii. 8, 9). Benefits are entailed upon us no longer than
we obey (Josh. xxiv. 20): “If you forsake the Lord, he will do you hurt,
after he hath done you good.” While we obey, his bounty shall shower
upon us: and when we revolt, his justice shall consume us. Present
mercies abused, are no bulwarks against independent judgments. God hath
curses as well as blessings; and they shall light more heavy when his
blessings have been more weighty: justice is never so severe as when
it comes to right goodness, and revenge its quarrel for the injuries
received.
A convenient inquiry may be here, How God’s goodness is contemned or
abused?
1st. By a forgetfulness of his benefits. We enjoy the mercies, and
forget the Donor; we take what he gives, and pay not the tribute he
deserves; the “Israelites forgot God their Saviour, which had done
great things in Egypt” (Ps. cvi. 21). We send God’s mercies where we
would have God send our sins, into the land of forgetfulness, and write
his benefits where himself will write the names of the wicked, in the
dust, which every wind defaceth: the remembrance soon wears out of
our minds, and we are so far from remembering what we had before, that
we scarce think of that hand that gives, the very instant wherein his
benefits drop upon us. Adam basely forgot his Benefactor, presently
after he had been made capable to remember him, and reflect upon
him; the first remark we hear of him, is of his forgetfulness, not
a syllable of his thankfulness. We forget those souls he hath lodged
in us, to acknowledge his favors to our bodies; we forget that image
wherewith he beautified us, and that Christ he exposed as a criminal
to death for our rescue, which is such an act of goodness as cannot be
expressed by the eloquence of the tongue, or conceived by the acuteness
of the mind. Those things which are so common, that they cannot be
invisible to our eyes, are unregarded by our minds; our sense prompts
our understanding, and our understanding is deaf to the plain dictates
of our sense. We forget his goodness in the sun, while it warms us, and
his showers while they enrich us; in the corn, while it nourisheth us,
and the wine while it refresheth us; “She did not know that I gave her
corn, and wine, and oil” (Hos. ii. 8): she that might have read my hand
in every bit of bread, and every drop of drink, did not consider this.
It is an injustice {b317} to forget the benefits we receive from man;
it is a crime of a higher nature to forget those dispensed to us by
the hand of God, who gives us those things that all the world cannot
furnish us with, without him. The inhabitants of Troas will condemn
us, who worshipped mice, in a grateful remembrance of the victory they
had made easy for them, by gnawing their enemies’ bow‑strings. They
were mindful of the courtesy of animals, though unintended by those
creatures; and we are regardless of the fore‑meditated bounty of God.
It is in God’s judgment a brutishness beyond that of a stupid ox, or a
duller ass; “The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but
Israel doth not know, my people do not consider” (Isa. i. 3). The ox
knows his owner that pastures him, and the ass his master that feeds
him; but man is not so good as to be like to them, but so bad as to be
inferior to them: he forgets Him that sustains him, and spurns at him,
instead of valuing him for the benefits conferred by him. How horrible
is it, that God should lose more by his bounty, than he would do by his
parsimony! If we had blessings more sparingly, we should remember him
more gratefully. If he had sent us a bit of bread in a distress by a
miracle, as he did to Elijah by the ravens, it would have stuck longer
in our memories; but the sense of daily favors soonest wears out of our
minds, which are as great miracles as any in their own nature, and the
products of the same power; but the wonder they should beget in us, is
obscured by their frequency.
2d. The goodness of God is contemned by an impatient murmuring. Our
repinings proceed from an inconsideration of God’s free liberality,
and an ungrateful temper of spirit. Most men are guilty of this. It is
implied in the commendation of Job under his pressures (Job i. 22): “In
all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly,” as if it were a
character peculiar to him, whereby he verified the eulogy God had given
of him before (ver. 8), that there was “none like him in the earth,
a perfect and an upright man.” What is implied by the expression? but
that scarce a man is to be found without unjust complaints of God, and
charging him under their crosses with cruelty; when in the greatest
they have much more reason to bless him for his bounty in the remainder.
Good men have not been innocent. Baruch complains of God for adding
grief to his sorrow, not furnishing him with those “great things” he
expected (Jer. xlv. 3, 4); whereas, he had matter of thankfulness in
God’s gift of his life as a prey. But his master chargeth God in a
higher strain: “O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived: I am
in derision daily” (Jer. xx. 7). When he met with reproach instead of
success in the execution of his function, he quarrels with God, as if
he had a mind to cheat him into a mischief, when he had more reason
to bless him for the honor of being employed in his service. Because
we have not what we expect, we slight his goodness in what we enjoy.
If he cross us in one thing, he might have made us successless in
more: if he take away some things, he might as well have taken away
all. The unmerited remainder, though never so little, deserves our
acknowledgements more than the deserved loss can justify our repining.
And for that {b318} which is snatched from us, there is more cause
to be thankful, that we have enjoyed it so long, than to murmur that
we possess it no longer. Adam’s sin implies a repining: he imagined
God had been short in his goodness, in not giving him a knowledge he
foolishly conceived himself capable of, and would venture a forfeiture
of what already had been bountifully bestowed upon him. Man thought
God had envied him, and ever since man studies to be even with God, and
envies him the free disposal of his own doles: all murmuring, either in
our own cause or others, charges God with a want of goodness, because
there is a want of that which he foolishly thinks would make himself
or others happy. The language of this sin is, that man thinks himself
better than God; and if it were in his power, would express a more
plentiful goodness than his Maker. As man is apt to think himself
“more pure than God” (Job iv. 17), so of a kinder nature also than
an infinite goodness. The Israelites are a wonderful example of this
contempt of Divine goodness; they had been spectators of the greatest
miracles, and partakers of the choicest deliverance: he had solicited
their redemption from captivity; and when words would not do, he came
to blows for them, musters up his judgments against their enemies,
and, at last, as the Lord of hosts and God of battles, totally defeats
their pursuers, and drowns them and their proud hopes of victory in
the Red Sea. Little account was made of all this by the redeemed ones;
“they lightly esteemed the rock of their salvation,” and launch into
greater unworthiness, instead of being thankful for the breaking their
yoke: they are angry with him, that he had done so much for them:
they repented that ever they had complied with him, for their own
deliverance, and had a regret that they had been brought out of Egypt:
they were angry that they were freemen, and that their chains had been
knocked off: they were more desirous to return to the oppression of
their Egyptian tyrants, than have God for their governor and caterer,
and be fed with his manna. “It was well with us in Egypt: Why came
we forth out of Egypt?” which is called a “despising the Lord” (Numb.
xi. 18, 20). They were so far from rejoicing in the expectation of the
future benefits promised them, that they murmured that they had not
enjoyed less; they were so sottish, as to be desirous to put themselves
into the irons whence God had delivered them: they would seek a remedy
in that Egypt, which had been the prison of their nation, and under
the successors of that Pharaoh, who had been the invader of their
liberties; they would snatch Moses from the place where the Lord, by an
extraordinary providence, hath established him; they would stone those
that minded them of the goodness of God to them, and thereupon of their
crime and their duty (Numb. xvi. 3, 9‒11); they rose against their
benefactors, and “murmured against God,” that had strengthened the
hands of their deliverers; they “despised the manna” he had sent them,
and “despised the pleasant land” he intended them (Ps. cvi. 24): all
which was a high contempt of God and his unparalleled goodness and care
of them. All murmuring is an accusation of Divine goodness.
{b319} 3d. By unbelief and impenitency. What is the reason we come not
to Him when he calls us; but some secret imagination that he is of an
ill nature, means not as he speaks, but intends to mock us, instead of
welcoming us? When we neglect his call, spurn at his bowels, slight the
riches of his grace; as it is a disparagement to his wisdom to despise
his counsel, so it is to his goodness to slight his offers, as though
you could make better provision for yourselves than he is able or
willing to do. It disgraceth that which is designed to the praise of
the glory of his grace, and renders God cruel to his own Son, as being
an unnecessary shedder of his blood. As the devil by his temptation of
Adam, envied God the glory of his creating goodness, so unbelief envies
God the glory of his redeeming grace: it is a bidding defiance to him,
and challenging him to muster up the legions of his judgments, rather
than have sent his Son to suffer for us, or his Spirit to solicit us.
Since the sending his Son was the greatest act of goodness that God
could express, the refusal of him must be the highest reproach of that
liberality God designed to commend to the world in so rare a gift: the
ingratitude in this refusal must be as high in the rank of sins, as the
person slighted is in the rank of beings, or rank of gifts. Christ is
a gift (Rom. v. 16), the royalest gift, an unparalleled gift, springing
from inconceivable treasures of goodness (John iii. 16). What is our
turning our backs upon this gift but a low opinion of it? as though the
richest jewel of heaven were not so valuable as a swinish pleasure on
earth, and deserved to be treated at no other rate than if mere offals
had been presented to us. The plain language of it is, that there were
no gracious intentions for our welfare in this present; and that he
is not as good, in the mission of his Son, as he would induce us to
imagine. Impenitence is also an abuse of this goodness, either by
presumption, as if God would entertain rebels that bid defiance against
him with the same respect that he doth his prostrate and weeping
suppliants; that he will have the same regard to the swine as to
the children, and lodge them in the same habitation; or it speaks a
suspicion of God as a deceitful Master, one of a pretended, not a real
goodness, that makes promises to mock men, and invitations to delude
them: that he is an implacable tyrant, rather than a good Father;
a rigid, not a kind Being, delightful only to mark our faults, and
overlook our services.
4th. The goodness of God is contemned by a distrust of his
providence. As all trust in him supposeth him good, so all distrust
of him supposeth him evil; either without goodness to exert his power,
or without power to display his goodness. Job seems to have a spice of
this in his complaint (Job xxx. 20), “I cry unto thee, and thou dost
not hear me; I stand up, and thou regardest me not.” It is a fume of
the serpent’s venom, first breathed into man, to suspect him of cruelty,
severity, regardlessness, even under the daily evidences of his good
disposition: and it is ordinary not to believe him when he speaks, nor
credit him when he acts; to question the goodness of his precepts, and
misinterpret the kindness of his providence; as if they were designed
for the supports of a tyranny, and the deceit of the miserable. Thus
the Israelites thought their miraculous deliverance {b320} from Egypt,
and the placing them in security in the wilderness, was intended only
to pound them up for a slaughter (Numb. xiv. 3): thus they defiled
the lustre of Divine goodness which they had so highly experimented,
and placed not that confidence in him which was due to so frequent
a Benefactor, and thereby crucified the rich kindness of God, as
Genebrard translates the word “limited” (Ps. lxxviii. 41). It is also
a jealousy of Divine goodness, when we seek to deliver ourselves from
our straits by unlawful ways, as though God had not kindness enough
to deliver us without committing evil. What! did God make a world, and
all creatures in it, to think of them no more, not to concern himself
in their affairs? If he be good, he is diffusive, and delights to
communicate himself; and what subjects should there be for it, but
those that seek him, and implore his assistance? It is an indignity
to Divine bounty to have such mean thoughts of it, that it should be
of a nature contrary to that of his works, which, the better they are,
the more diffusive they are. Doth a man distrust that the sun will
not shine any more, or the earth not bring forth its fruit? Doth he
distrust the goodness of an approved medicine for the expelling his
distemper? If we distrust those things, should we not render ourselves
ridiculous and sottish? and if we distrust the Creator of those things,
do we not make ourselves contemners of his goodness? If his caring for
us be a principal argument to move us to cast our care upon him, as
it is 1 Pet. v. 7, “Casting your care upon him, for he cares for you;”
then, if we cast not our care upon him, it is a denial of his gracious
care of us, as if he regarded not what becomes of us.
5th. We do contemn or abuse his goodness by omissions of duty. These
sometimes spring from injurious conceits of God, which end in desperate
resolutions. It was the crime of a good prophet in his passion (2 Kings
vi. 33): “This evil is of the Lord, why should I wait on the Lord any
longer?” God designs nothing but mischief to us, and we will seek him
no longer. And the complaint of those in Malachi (Mal. iii. 14) is
of the same nature; “Ye have said, It is vain to serve God; and what
profit is it that we have kept his ordinances?” We have all this while
served a hard Master, not a Benefactor, and have not been answered with
advantages proportionable to our services; we have met with a hand too
niggardly to dispense that reward which is due to the largeness of our
offerings. When men will not lift up their eyes to heaven, and solicit
nothing but the contrivance of their own brain, and the industry of
their own heads, they disown Divine goodness, and approve themselves
as their own gods, and the spring of their own prosperity. Those that
run not to God in their necessity, to crave his support, deny either
the arm of his power, or the disposition of his will, to sustain and
deliver them: they must have very mean sentiments, or none at all, of
this perfection, or think him either too empty to fill them, or too
churlish to relieve them; that he is of a narrow and contracted temper,
and that they may sooner expect to be made better and happier by
anything else than by him: and as we contemn his goodness by a total
omission of those duties which respect our own advantage and supply, as
prayer; so we contemn him as the chiefest good, by an omission of {b321}
the due manner of any act of worship which is designed purely for the
acknowledgment of him. As every omission of the material part of a duty
is a denial of his sovereignty as commanding it, so every omission of
the manner of it, not performing it with due esteem and valuation of
him, a surrender of all the powers of our soul to him, is a denial of
him as the most amiable object. But certainly to omit those addresses
to God which his precept enjoins, and his excellency deserves, speaks
this language, that they can be well enough, and do well enough,
without God, and stand in no need of his goodness to maintain them. The
neglect or refusal in a malefactor to supplicate for his pardon, is a
wrong to, and contempt of, the prince’s goodness: either implying that
he hath not a goodness in his nature worthy of an address, or that he
scorns to be obliged to him for any exercise of it.
6th. The goodness of God is contemned, or abused, in relying upon our
services to procure God’s good will to us. As, when we stand in need
either of some particular mercy, or special assistance; when pressures
are heavy, and we have little hopes of ease in an ordinary way; when
the devotions in course have not prevailed for what we want; we engage
ourselves by extraordinary vows and promises to God, hereby to open
that goodness which seems to be locked up from us.[987] Sometimes,
indeed, vows may proceed from a sole desire to engage ourselves
to God, from a sense of the levity and inconstancy of our spirits;
binding ourselves to God by something more sacred and inviolable than a
common resolution. But many times the vowing the building of a temple,
endowing a hospital, giving so much in alms if God will free them from
a fit of sickness, and spin out the thread of their lives a little
longer (as hath been frequent among the Romanists), arises from an
opinion of laziness and a selfishness in the Divine goodness; that it
must be squeezed out by some solemn promises of returns to him, before
it will exercise itself to take their parts. Popular vows are often
the effects of an ignorance of the free and bubbling nature of this
perfection of the generousness and royalty of Divine goodness: as
if God were of a mean and mechanic temper, not to part with anything
unless he were in some measure paid for it; and of so bad a nature as
not to give passage to any kindness to his creature without a bribe. It
implies also that he is of an ignorant as well as contracted goodness;
that he hath so little understanding, and so much weakness of judgment,
as to be taken with such trifles, and ceremonial courtships, and little
promises; and meditated only low designs, in imparting his bounty:
it is just as if a malefactor should speak to a prince,――Sir, if you
will but bestow a pardon upon me, and prevent the death I have merited
for this crime, I will give you this rattle. All vows made with such a
temper of spirit to God, are as injurious and abusive to his goodness,
as any man will judge such an offer to be to a majestic and gracious
prince; as if it were a trading, not a free and royal goodness.
7th. The goodness of God is abused when we give up our souls and
affections to those benefits we have from God; when we make {b322}
those things God’s rivals, which were sent to woo us for him, and offer
those affections to the presents themselves, which they were sent to
solicit for the Master. This is done, when either we place our trust in
them, or glue our choicest affections to them. This charge God brings
against Jerusalem, the trusting in her own beauty, glory, and strength,
though it was a comeliness put upon her by God (Ezek. xvi. 14, 15).
When a little sunshine of prosperity breaks out upon us, we are apt
to grasp it with so much eagerness and closeness, as if we had no
other foundation to settle ourselves upon, no other being that might
challenge from us our sole dependence. And the love of ourselves, and
of creatures above God, is very natural to us: “Lovers of themselves,
and lovers of pleasure more than of God” (2 Tim. iii. 2, 4). Self‑love
is the root, and the love of pleasures the top branch, that mounts its
head highest against heaven. It is for the love of the world that the
dangers of the sea are passed over, that men descend into the bowels
of the earth, pass nights without sleep, undertake suits without
intermission, wade through many inconveniences, venture their souls,
and contemn God; in those things men glory, and foolishly grow proud
by them, and think themselves safe and happy in them.[988] Now to love
ourselves above God, is to own ourselves better than God, and that
we transcend him in an amiable goodness; or, if we love ourselves
equal with God, it at least manifests that we think God no better than
ourselves; and think ourselves our own chief good, and deny anything
above us to outstrip us in goodness, whereby to deserve to be the
centre of our affections and actions, and to love any other creature
above him, is to conclude some defect in God; that he hath not so
much goodness in his own nature as that creature hath, to complete
our felicity; that God is a slighter thing than that creature. It is
to account God, what all the things in the world are,――an imaginary
happiness, a goodness of clay; and them what God is,――a Supreme
Goodness. It is to value the goodness of a drop above that of the
spring, and the goodness of the spark above that of the sun. As if the
bounty of God were of a less alloy than the advantages we immediately
receive from the hands of a silly worm. By how much the better we
think a creature to be, and place our affections chiefly upon it, by so
much the more deficient and indigent we conclude God; for God wants so
much in our conception, as the other thing hath goodness above him in
our thoughts. Thus is God lessened below the creature, as if he had a
mixture of evil in him, and were capable of an imperfect goodness. He
that esteems the sun that shines upon him, the clothes that warm him,
the food that nourisheth him, or any other benefit above the Donor,
regards them as more comely and useful than God himself; and behaves
himself as if he were more obliged to them than to God, who bestowed
those advantageous qualities upon them.
8th. The Divine goodness is contemned, in sinning more freely upon
the account of that goodness, and employing God’s benefits in a
drudgery for our lusts. This is a treachery to his goodness, to make
his benefits serve for an end quite contrary to that for which {b323}
he sent them. As if God had been plentiful in his blessings, to hire
them to be more fierce in their rebellions, and fed them to no other
purpose, but that they might more strongly kick against him; this is
the fruit which corrupt nature produceth. Thus the Egyptians, who had
so fertile a country, prove unthankful to the Creator, by adoring the
meanest creatures, and putting the sceptre of the Monarch of the world
into the hands of the sottishest and cruellest beasts. And the Romans
multiply their idols, as God multiplied their victories. This is also
the complaint of God concerning Israel: “She did not know that I gave
her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which
they prepared for Baal” (Hos. ii. 8). They ungratefully employed the
blessings of God in the worship of an idol against the will of the
Donor. So in Hos. x. 1; “According to the multitude of his fruit,
he hath increased the altars; according to the goodness of his land,
they have made goodly images.” They followed their own inventions
with the strength of my outward blessings; as their wealth increased,
they increased the ornaments of their images; so that what were before
of wood and stone, they advanced to gold and silver. And the like
complaint you may see Ezek. 16, 17. Thus,
[1.] The benefits of God are abused to pride, when men standing upon
a higher ground of outward prosperity, vaunt it loftily above their
neighbors; the common fault of those that enjoy a worldly sunshine,
which the apostle observes in his direction to Timothy; “Charge them
that are rich in this world, that they be not high‑minded” (1 Tim. vi.
17). It is an ill use of Divine blessings to be filled by them with
pride and wind. Also,
[2.] When men abuse plenty to ease; because they have abundance, spend
their time in idleness, and make no other use of Divine benefits than
to trifle away their time, and be utterly useless to the world.
[3.] When they also abuse peace and other blessing to security; as
they which would not believe the threatenings of judgment, and the
storm coming from a far country, because the Lord was in Sion, and her
King in her; “Is not the Lord in Sion, is not her King in her” (Jer.
viii. 19)? thinking they might continue their progress in their sin,
because they had the temple, the seat of the Divine glory, Sion, and
the promise of an everlasting kingdom to David; abusing the promise
of God to presumption and security, and turning the grace of God into
wantonness.
[4.] Again, when they abuse the bounty of God to sensuality and
luxury, misemploying the provisions God gives them, in resolving to
live like beasts, when by a good improvement of them, they might attain
the life of angels. Thus is the light of the sun abused to conduct them,
and the fruits of the earth abused to enable them to their prodigious
debauchery: as we do, saith one, with the Thames, which brings us in
provision, and we soil it with our rubbish.[989] The more God sows his
gifts, the more we sow our cockle and darnel. Thus we make our outward
happiness the most unhappy part of our lives, and by the strength
of Divine blessings, exceed all laws of reason and religion too. How
unworthy a carriage is this, to use the expressions {b324} of Divine
goodness as occasions of a greater outrage and affront of him; when we
stab his honor by those instruments he puts into our hands to glorify
him! as if a favorite should turn that sword into the bowels of his
prince, wherewith he knighted him; and a servant, enriched by a lord,
should hire by that wealth, murderers to take away his life! How
brutish is it, the more God courts us with his blessings, the more
to spurn at him with our feet; like the mule that lifts up his heel
against the dam, as soon as ever it hath sucked her! We never beat God
out of our hearts, but by his own gifts; he receives no blows from men,
but by those instruments he gave them to promote their happiness. While
man is an enjoyer, he makes God a loser, by his own blessings; inflames
his rebellion by those benefits which should kindle his love; and runs
from him by the strength of those favors which should endear the donor
to him: “Do you thus requite the Lord, O foolish people, and unwise?”
is the expostulation (Deut. xxxii. 6). Divine goodness appears in the
complaint of the abuse of it, in giving them titles below their crime,
and complaining more of their being unfaithful to their own interest,
than enemies to his glory: “foolish and unwise” in neglecting their own
happiness; a charge below the crime, which deserved to be “abominable,
ungrateful people to a prodigy.” All this carriage towards God, is as
if a man should knock the chirurgeon on the head, as soon as he hath
set and bound up his dislocated members. So God compares the ungrateful
behavior of the Israelites against him: “Though I have bound and
strengthened their arms, yet do they imagine mischief against me” (Hos.
vii. 15): a metaphor taken from a chirurgeon that applies corroborating
plasters to a broken limb.
9th. We contemn the goodness of God, in ascribing our benefits to other
causes than Divine goodness. Thus Israel ascribed her felicity, plenty,
and success, to her idols, as “rewards which her lovers had given her”
(Hos. ii. 5, 12). And this charge Daniel brought home upon Belshazzar:
“Thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, and brass, and iron;
and the God in whose hand is thy breath, and whose are all thy ways,
hast thou not glorified” (Dan. v. 23). The God who hath given success
to the arms of thy ancestors, and conveyed by their hands so large
a dominion to thee, thou hast not honored in the same rank with the
sordidest of thy idols. It is the same case, when we own him not as
the author of any success in our affairs, but by an overweaning conceit
of our own sagacity, applaud and admire ourselves, and overlook the
hand that conducted us, and brought our endeavors to a good issue.
We eclipse the glory of Divine goodness, by setting the crown that is
due to it upon the head of our own industry; a sacrilege worse than
Belshazzar’s drinking of wine with his lords and concubines in the
sacred vessels pilfered from the temple; as in that place of Daniel.
This was the proud vaunt of the Assyrian conqueror, for which God
threatens to punish the fruit of his stout heart: “By the strength of
my hand, I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent;” and, “I
have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures;”
and, “I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man” (Isa. x.
12‒14). Not a word of Divine goodness and assistance in all this, but
applauding {b325} his own courage and conduct. This is a robbing of
God, to set up ourselves, and making Divine goodness a footstool, to
ascend into his throne. And as it is unjust, so it is ridiculous, to
ascribe to ourselves, or instruments, the chief honor of any work; as
ridiculous as if a soldier, after a victory, should erect an altar to
the honor of his sword; or an artificer offer sacrifices to the tools
whereby he completed some excellent and useful invention: a practice
that every rational man would disdain, where he should see it. It is
a discarding any thoughts of the goodness of God, when we imagine,
that we chiefly owe anything in this world to our own industry or wit,
to friends or means, as though Divine goodness did not open its hand
to interest itself in our affairs, support our ability, direct our
counsels, and mingle itself with anything we do. God is the principal
author of any advantage that accrues to us, of any wise resolution we
fix upon, or any proper way we take to compass it; no man can be wise
in opposition to God, act wisely, or well without him; his goodness
inspires men with generous and magnificent counsels, and furnisheth
them with fit and proportionable means; when he withdraws his hand,
men’s heads grow foolish, and their hands feeble; folly and weakness
drop upon them, as darkness upon the world upon the removal of the sun;
it is an abuse of Divine goodness not to own it, but erect an idol in
its place. Ezra was of another mind when he ascribed to the good hand
of God the “providing ministers for the temple,” and not to his own
care and diligence (chap. viii. 18); and Nehemiah, the “success he had
with the king” in the behalf of his nation, and not solely to his favor
with the prince, or the arts he used to please him (chap. ii. 8).
2. The second information is this: If God be so good, it is a
certain argument that man is fallen from his original state. It is the
complaint of man, sometimes, that other creatures have more of earthly
happiness than men have; live freer from cares and trouble, and are not
racked with that solicitousness and anxiety as man is: have not such
distempers to embitter their lives. It is a good ground for man to look
into himself, and consider whether he hath not, some ways or other,
disobliged God more than other creatures can possibly do. We often
find that the creatures men have need of in this state, do not answer
the expectation of man: “Cursed be the ground for thy sake” (Gen. iii.
17). A fruitful land is made barren; thorns and thistles triumph upon
the face of the earth, instead of good fruit. Is it likely that that
goodness, which is as infinite as his power, and knows no more limits
than his Almightiness, should imprint so many scars upon the world, if
he had not been heinously provoked by some miscarriage of his creature?
Infinite Goodness could never move Infinite Justice to inflict
punishment upon creatures, if they had not highly merited it; we cannot
think that any creature was blemished with a principle of disturbance,
as it came first out of the hand of God. All things were certainly
settled in a due order and dependence upon one another; nothing could
be ungrateful and unuseful to man by the original law of their creation;
if there had, it had not been goodness, but evil and baseness, that
had created the world. When we see, therefore, the course of nature
overturned, the order {b326} Divine goodness had placed, disturbed;
and the creatures pronounced good and useful to man, employed as
instruments of vengeance against him; we must conclude some horrible
blot upon human nature, and very odious to a God of infinite goodness;
and that this blot was dashed upon man by himself, and his own fault;
for it is repugnant to the infinite goodness of God to put into the
creature a sinning nature, to hurry him into sin, and then punish him
for that which he had impressed upon him. The goodness of God inclines
him to love goodness wherever he finds it; and not to punish any that
have not deserved it by their own crimes. The curse we therefore see
the creatures groan under, the disorders in nature, the frustrating the
expectations of man in the fruits of the earth and plentiful harvests,
the trouble he is continually exposed to in the world, which tedders
down his spirit from more generous employments, shows that man is not
what he was when Divine goodness first erected him; but hath admitted
into his nature something more uncomely in the eye of God; and so
heinous, that it puts his goodness sometimes to a stand, and makes him
lay aside the blessings his hand was filled with, to take up the arms
of vengeance, wherewith to fight against the world. Divine goodness
would have secured his creatures from any such invasions, and never
used those things against man, which he designed in the first frame
for man’s service, were there not some detestable disorder risen in
the nature of man which makes God withhold his liberality and change
the dispensation of his numerous benefits into legions of judgments.
The consideration of the Divine goodness, which is a notion that man
naturally concludes to be inseparable from the Deity, would, to an
unbiassed reason, verify the history of those punishments settled
upon man in the third chapter of Genesis, and make the whole seem more
probable to reason at the first relation. This instruction naturally
flows from the doctrine of Divine goodness: if God be so good, it is
a certain argument that man is fallen from his original state.
3. The third information is this: If God be infinitely good, there
can be no just complaint against God, if men be punished for abusing
his goodness. Man had nothing, nay, it was impossible he could have
anything, from Infinite Goodness to disoblige him, but to engage him.
God never did, nay, never could, draw his sword against man, till man
had slighted him and affronted him by the strength of his own bounty.
It is by this God doth justify his severest proceedings against men,
and very seldom charges them with any else as the matter of their
provocations (Hos. ii. 9): “Therefore will I return, and take away my
corn in the time thereof, and my wine in the season thereof, and will
recover my wool and my flax.” And in Ezek. xvi., after he had drawn out
a bill of complaint against them, and inserted only the abuse of his
benefits, as a justification of what he intended to do; he concludes
(ver. 27), “Behold, therefore, I have stretched out my hand over thee,
and diminished thy ordinary food, and delivered thee unto the will
of them that hate thee.” When men suffer, they suffer justly; they
were not constrained by any violence, or forced by any necessity, nor
provoked by any ill usage, to turn head against God, but broke the
bands of {b327} the strongest obligations and most tender allurements.
What man, what devil, can justly blame God for punishing them, after
they had been so intolerably bold, as to fly in the face of that
goodness that had obliged them, by giving them beings of a higher
elevation than to inferior creatures, and furnishing them with
sufficient strength to continue in their first habitation? Man seems to
have less reason to accuse God of rigor than devils; since, after his
unreasonable revolt, a more express goodness than that which created
him hath solicited him to repentance, courted him by melting promises
and expostulations, added undeniable arguments of bounty, and drawn
out the choicest treasures of heaven, in the gift of his Son, to
prevail over men’s perversity. And yet man, after he might arrive to
the height and happiness of an angel, will be fond of continuing in
the meanness and misery of a devil; and more strongly link himself to
the society of the damned spirits, wherein, by his first rebellion,
he had incorporated himself. Who can blame God for vindicating his own
goodness from such desperate contempts, and the extreme ingratitude of
man? If God be good, it is our happiness to adhere to him; if we depart
from him, we depart from goodness; and if evil happen to us, we cannot
blame God, but ourselves, for our departure.[990] Why are men happy?
because they cleave to God. Why are men miserable? because they recede
from God. It is then our own fault that we are miserable; God cannot be
charged with any injustice if we be miserable, since his goodness gave
means to prevent it, and afterwards added means to recover us from it,
but all despised by us. The doctrine of Divine goodness justifies every
stone laid in the foundation of hell, and every spark in that burning
furnace, since it is for the abuse of infinite goodness that it was
kindled.
4. The fourth information: Here is a certain argument, both for God’s
fitness to govern the world, and his actual government of it.
(1.) This renders him fit for the government of the world, and gives
him a full title to it. This perfection doth the Psalmist celebrate
throughout the 107th Psalm, where he declares God’s works of providence
(ver. 8, 15, 21, 32). Power without goodness would deface, instead
of preserving; ruin is the fruit of rigor without kindness; but God,
because of his infinite and immutable goodness, cannot do anything
unworthy of himself, and uncomely in itself, or destructive to
any moral goodness in the creature. It is impossible he should do
anything that is base, or act anything but for the best, because he is
essentially and naturally, and, therefore, necessarily good. As a good
tree cannot bring forth bad fruit, so a good God cannot produce evil
acts, no more than a pure beam of the sun can engender so much as a
mite of darkness, or infinite heat produce any particle of cold. As God
is so much light, that he can be no darkness, so he is so much good,
that he can have no evil; and because there is no evil in him, nothing
simply evil can be produced by him. Since he is good by nature, all
evil is against his nature, and God can do nothing against his nature;
it would be a part of impotence in him to will that which is evil; and,
therefore, the misery man {b328} feels, as well as the sin whereby he
deserves that misery, are said to be from himself (Hos. xiii. 9): “O
Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself!” And though God sends judgments
upon the world, we have shown these to be intended for the support and
vindication of his goodness. And Hezekiah judged no otherwise, when,
after the threatening of the devastation of his house, the plundering
his treasures, and captivity of his posterity, he replies, “Good is
the word of the Lord, which thou hast spoken” (Isa. xxxix. 8). God
cannot act anything that is base and cruel, because his goodness is
as infinite as his power, and his power acts nothing but what his
wisdom directs, and his goodness moves him to. Wisdom is the head in
government, omniscience the eye, power the arm, and goodness the heart
and spirit in them, that animates all.
(2.) As goodness renders Him fit to govern the world, so God doth
actually govern the world. Can we understand this perfection aright,
and yet imagine that he is of so morose a disposition as to neglect
the care of his creatures? that his excellency, which was displayed
in framing the world, should withdraw and wrap up itself in his own
bosom, without looking out, and darting itself out in the disposal
of them? Can that which moved him first to erect a world, suffer him
to be unmindful of his own work? Would he design first to display it
in creation, and afterwards obscure the honor of it? That cannot be
entitled an infinite permanent goodness, which should be so indifferent
as to let the creatures tumble together as they please, without any
order, after he had moulded them in his hand. If goodness be diffusive
and communicative of itself, can it consist with the nature of it, to
extend itself to the giving the creatures being, and then withdraw and
contract itself, not caring what becomes of them? It is the nature of
goodness, after it hath communicated itself, to enlarge its channels;
that fountain that springs up in a little hollow part of the earth,
doth in a short progress increase its streams, and widen the passages
through which it runs; it would be a blemish to Divine goodness, if
it did desert what it made, and leave things to wild confusions, which
would be, if a good hand did not manage them, and a good mind preside
over them. This is the lesson intended to us by all his judgments
(Dan. iv. 17), “That the living may know that the Most High rules in
the kingdoms of men.” If he doth not actually govern the world, he must
have devolved it somewhere, either to men or angels; not to men, who
naturally want a goodness and wisdom to govern themselves, much more to
govern others exactly. And, besides the misinterpretations of actions,
they are liable to the want of patience, to bear with the provocations
of the world; since some of the best at one time in the world, and, in
the greatest example of meekness and sweetness, would have kindled a
fire in heaven to have consumed the Samaritans, for no other affront
than a non‑entertainment of their Master and themselves (Luke ix. 54).
Nor hath he committed the disposal of things to angels, either good or
bad; though he useth them as instruments in his government, yet they
are not the principal pilots to steer the world. Bad angels certainly
are not; they would make continual ravages, meditate ruin, never defeat
their own counsels, which they manage by the {b329} wicked as the
instruments in the world, nor fill their spirits with disquiet and
restlessness when they are engaged in some ruinous design, as often
is experienced: nor hath he committed it to the good angels, who,
for aught we know, are not more numerous than the evil ones are;
but besides, we can scarcely think their finite nature capable of so
much goodness, as to bear the innumerable debaucheries, villanies,
blasphemies, vented in one year, one week, one day, one hour,
throughout the world; their zeal for their Creator might well be
supposed to move them to testify their affection to him in a constant
and speedy righting of his injured honor upon the heads of the
offenders. The evil angels have too much cruelty, and would have no
care of justice, but take pleasure in the blood of the most innocent,
as well as the most criminal; and the good angels have too little
tenderness to suffer so many crimes: since the world, therefore,
continues without those floods of judgments, which it daily merits;
since, notwithstanding all the provocations, the order of it is
preserved; it is a testimony that an Infinite Goodness holds the helm
in his hands, and spreads its warm wings over it.
5. The fifth information is this: Hence we may infer the ground of all
religion; it is this perfection of goodness. As the goodness of God is
the lustre of all his attributes, so it is the foundation and link of
all true religious worship: the natural religion of the heathens was
introduced by the consideration of Divine goodness, in the being he had
bestowed upon them, and the provisions that were made for them. Divine
bounty was the motive to erect altars, and present sacrifices, though
they mistook the object of their worship, and offered the dues of the
Creator to the instruments whereby he conveyed his benefits to them:
and you find, that the religion instituted by him among the Jews,
was enforced upon them by the consideration of their miraculous
deliverance from Egypt, the preservation of them in the wilderness, and
the enfeoffing them in a land flowing with milk and honey. Every act
of bounty and success the heathens received, moved them to appoint new
feasts, and repeat their adorations of those deities they thought the
authors and promoters of their victories and welfare. The devil did not
mistake the common sentiment of the world in Divine service, when he
alleged to God, that “Job did not fear him for nought,” _i. e._ worship
him for nothing (Job i. 9). All acts of devotion take their rise from
God’s liberality, either from what they have or from what they hope;
praise speaks the possession, and prayer the expectation, of some
benefit from his hand: though some of the heathens made fear to be the
prime cause of the acknowledgment and worship of a deity, yet surely
something else besides and beyond this established so great a thing as
religion in the world; an ingenuous religion could never have been born
into the world without a notion of goodness, and would have gaped its
last as soon as this notion should have expired in the minds of men.
What encouragement can fear of power give, without sense of goodness?
just as much as thunder hath, to invite a man to the place where it is
like to fall, and crush him. The nature of “fear” is to drive from, and
the nature of “goodness” to allure to, the object: the Divine thunders,
prodigies, and other armies {b330} of his justice in the world, which
are the marks of his power, could conclude in nothing but a slavish
worship: fear alone would have made men blaspheme the Deity; instead
of serving him, they would have fretted against him; they might
have offered him a trembling worship; but they could never have, in
their minds, thought him worthy of an adoration; they would rather
have secretly complained of him, and cursed him in their heart, than
inwardly have admired him: the issue would have been the same, which
Job’s wife advised him to, when God withdrew his protection from his
goods and body: “Curse God, and die” (Job ii. 9). It is certainly the
common sentiment of men, that he that acts cruelly and tyrannically, is
not worthy of an integrity to be retained towards him in the hearts of
his subjects; but Job fortifies himself against this temptation from
his bosom friend, by the consideration of the good he had received from
God, which did more deserve a worship from him than the present evil
had reason to discourage it. Alas! what is only feared, is hated, not
adored. Would any seek to an irreconcileable enemy? would any person
affectionately list himself in the service of a man void of all good
disposition? would any distressed person put up a petition to that
prince, who never gave any experiment of the sweetness of his nature,
but always satiated himself with the blood of the meanest criminals?
All affection to service is rooted up when hopes of receiving good are
extinguished: there could not be a spark of that in the world, which is
properly called religion, without a notion of goodness; the existence
of God is the first pillar, and the goodness of God in rewarding the
next, upon which coming to him (which includes all acts of devotion)
is established (Heb. xi. 6); “He that comes unto God, must believe that
he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him:”
if either of those pillars be not thought to stand firm, all religion
falls to the ground. It is this, as the most agreeable motive, that
the apostle James uses, to encourage men’s approach to God, because
“he gives liberally, and upbraideth not” (James i. 5). A man of a kind
heart and a bountiful hand shall have his gate thronged with suppliants,
who sometimes would be willing to lay down their lives; “for a good
man one would even dare to die:” when one of a niggardly or tyrannical
temper shall be destitute of all free and affectionate applications.
What eyes would be lifted up to heaven? what hands stretched out, if
there were not a knowledge of goodness there to enliven their hopes of
speeding in their petitions? Therefore Christ orders our prayers to be
directed to God as a Father, which is a title of tenderness, as well as
a “Father in heaven,” a mark of his greatness; the one to support our
confidence, as well as the other to preserve our distance. God could
not be ingenuously adored and acknowledged, if he were not liberal
as well as powerful; the goodness of God is the foundation of all
ingenuous religion, devotion and worship.
6. The sixth instruction: The goodness of God renders God amiable. His
goodness renders him beautiful, and his beauty renders him lovely; both
are linked together (Zech. ix. 17): “How great is his goodness! and how
great is his beauty!” This is the most powerful attractive, and masters
the affections of the soul: it {b331} is goodness only supposed, or
real, that is thought worthy to demerit our affections to anything. If
there be not a reality of this, or at least an opinion and estimation
of it in an object, it would want a force and vigor to allure our will.
This perfection of God is the loadstone to draw us, and the centre for
our spirits to rest in.
1. This renders God amiable to himself. His goodness is his “Godhead”
(Rom. i. 20): by his Godhead is meant his goodness; if he loves his
Godhead for itself, he loves his goodness for itself; he would not
be good, if he did not love himself; and if there were anything more
excellent, and had a greater goodness than himself, he would not be
good if he did not love that greater goodness above himself; for not
only a hatred of goodness is evil, but an indifferent or cold affection
to goodness hath a tincture of evil in it. If God were not good, and
yet should love himself in the highest manner, he would be the greatest
evil, and do the greatest evil in that act; for he would set his love
upon that which is not the proper object of such an affection, but the
object of aversion: his own infinite excellency, and goodness of his
nature, renders him lovely and delightful to himself; without this he
could not love himself in a commendable and worthy way, and becoming
the purity of a Deity; and he cannot but love himself for this; for,
as creatures, by not loving him as the supreme good, deny him to be
the choicest good, so God would deny himself, and his own goodness,
if he did not love himself, and that for his goodness. But the apostle
tells us, that “God cannot deny himself” (2 Tim. ii. 13). Self‑love,
upon this account, is the only prerogative of God, because there is
not anything better than himself that can lay any just claim to his
affections: he only ought to love himself, and it would be an injustice
in him to himself, if he did not. He only can love himself for this:
an infinite goodness ought to be infinitely loved, but he only being
infinite, can only love himself according to the due merit of his own
goodness. He cannot be so amiable to any man, to any angel, to the
highest seraphim, as he is to himself; because he is only capable in
regard of his infinite wisdom, to know the infiniteness of his own
goodness. And no creature can love him as he ought to be loved, unless
it had the same infinite capacity of understanding to know him, and of
affection to embrace him. This first renders God amiable to himself.
2. It ought therefore to render him amiable to us. What renders him
lovely to his own eye, ought to render him so to ours; and since, by
the shortness of our understandings, we cannot love him as he merits,
yet we should be induced by the measures of his bounty, to love him
as we can. If this do not present him lovely to us, we own him rather
a devil than a God: if his goodness moved him to frame creatures, his
goodness moved him also to frame creatures for himself and his own
glory. It is a mighty wrong to him not to look with a delightful eye
upon the marks of it, and return an affection to God in some measure
suitable to his liberality to us; we are descended as low as brutes,
if we understand him not to be the perfect good; and we are descended
as low as devils, if our affections are not attracted by it.
{b332} (1.) If God were not infinitely good, he could not be the
object of supreme love. If he were finitely good, there might be other
things as good as God, and then God in justice could not challenge our
choicest affections to him above anything else: it would be a defect of
goodness in him to demand it, because he would despoil that which were
equally good with him, of its due and right to our affections, which
it might claim from us upon the account of its goodness: God would be
unjust to challenge more than was due to him; for he would claim that
chiefly to himself which another had a lawful share in. Nothing can be
supremely loved that hath not a triumphant excellency above all other
things; where is an equality of goodness, neither can justly challenge
a supremacy, but only an equality of affection.
(2.) This attribute of goodness renders him more lovely than any other
attribute. He never requires our adoration of him so much as the
strongest or wisest, but as the best of beings: he uses this chiefly
to constrain and allure us. Why would he be feared or worshipped, but
because “there is forgiveness with him” (Ps. cxxx. 4)? it is for his
goodness’ sake that he is sued to by his people in distress (Ps. xxv.
7), “For thy goodness’ sake, O Lord.” Men may be admired because of
their knowledge, but they are affected because of their goodness: the
will, in all the variety of objects it pursues, centres in this one
thing of good as the term of its appetite. All things are beloved
by men, because they have been bettered by them. Severity can never
conquer enmity, and kindle love: were there nothing but wrath in the
Deity, it would make him be feared, but render him odious, and that to
an innocent nature. As the spouse speaks of Christ (Cant. v. 10, 11),
so we may of God: though she commends him for his head, the excellency
of his wisdom; his eyes, the extent of his omniscience; his hands, the
greatness of his power; and his legs, the swiftness of his motions and
ways to and for his people; yet the “sweetness of his mouth,” in his
gracious words and promises, closes all, and is followed with nothing
but an exclamation, that “he is altogether lovely” (ver. 16). His mouth,
in pronouncing pardon of sin, and justification of the person, presents
him most lovely. His power to do good is admirable, but his will to
do good is amiable: this puts a gloss upon all his other attributes.
Though he had knowledge to understand the depth of our necessities, and
power to prevent them, or rescue us from them, yet his knowledge would
be fruitless, and his power useless, if he were of a rigid nature, and
not touched with any sentiments of kindness.
(3.) This goodness therefore lays a strong obligation upon us. It is
true he is lovely in regard of his absolute goodness, or the goodness
of his nature, but we should hardly be persuaded to return him an
affection without his relative goodness, his benefits to his creatures;
we are obliged by both to love him.
[1.] By his absolute goodness, or the goodness of his nature. Suppose a
creature had drawn its original from something else wherein God had no
influx, and had never received the least {b333} mite of a benefit from
him, but from some other hand, yet the infinite excellency and goodness
of his nature would merit the love of that creature, and it would act
sordidly and disingenuously if it did not discover a mighty respect
for God: for what ingenuity could there be in a rational creature,
that were possessed with no esteem for any nature filled with unbounded
goodness and excellency, though he had never been obliged to him for
any favor? That man is accounted odious, and justly despicable by man,
that reproaches and disesteems, nay, that doth not value a person of a
high virtue in himself, and an universal goodness and charity to others,
though himself never stood in need of his charity, and never had any
benefit conveyed from his hands, nor ever saw his face, or had any
commerce with him: a value of such a person is but a just due to the
natural claim of virtue. And, indeed, the first object of love is God
in the excellency of his own nature, as the first object of love in
marriage is the person; the portion is a thing consequent upon it. To
love God only for his benefits, is to love ourselves first, and him
secondarily: to love God for his own goodness and excellency, is a true
love of God; a love of him for himself. That flaming fire in his own
breast, though we have not a spark of it, hath a right to kindle one
in ours to him.
[2.] By his relative goodness, or that of his benefits. Though the
excellency of his own nature, wherein there is a combination of
goodness, must needs ravish an apprehensive mind; yet a reflection
upon his imparted kindness, both in the beings we have from him, and
the support we have by him, must enhance his estimation. When the
excellency of his nature, and the expressions of his bounty are in
conjunction, the excellency of his own nature renders him estimable
in a way of justice, and the greatness of his benefits renders him
valuable in a way of gratitude: the first ravisheth, and the other
allures and melts: he hath enough in his nature to attract, and
sufficient in his bounty to engage our affections. The excellency of
his nature is strong enough of itself to blow up our affections to
him, were there not a malignity in our hearts that represents him under
the notion of an enemy; therefore in regard of our corrupt state, the
consideration of Divine largesses comes in for a share in the elevation
of our affections. For, indeed, it is a very hard thing for a man to
love another, though never so well qualified, and of an eminent virtue,
while he believes him to be his enemy, and one that will severely
handle him, though he hath before received many good turns from him;
the virtue, valor, and courtesy of a prince, will hardly make him
affected by those against whom he is in arms, and that are daily
pilfered by his soldiers, unless they have hopes of a reparation from
him, and future security from injuries. Christ, in the repetition of
the command to “love God with all our mind, with all our heart, and
with all our soul,” _i. e._ with such an ardency above all things which
glitter in our eye, or can be created by him, considers him as “our
God” (Matt. xxii. 37). And the Psalmist considers him as one that
had kindly employed his power for him, in the eruption of his love
(Ps. xviii. 1), “I will love thee, O Lord, my strength;” and so in
Ps. cxvi. 1, “I love the Lord, because he hath heard the voice {b334}
of my supplications.” An esteem of the benefactor is inseparable
from gratitude for the received benefits: and should not then the
unparalleled kindness of God advance him in our thoughts, much more
than slighter courtesies do a created benefactor in ours? It is an
obligation on every man’s nature to answer bounty with gratitude, and
goodness with love. Hence you never knew any man, nor can the records
of eternity produce any man, or devil, that ever hated any person, or
anything as good in itself: it is a thing absolutely repugnant to the
nature of any rational creature. The devils hate not God because he
is good, but because he is not so good to them as they would have him;
because he will not unlock their chains, turn them into liberty, and
restore them to happiness; _i. e._ because he will not desert the
rights of abused goodness. But how should we send up flames of love to
that God, since we are under his direct beams, and enjoy such plentiful
influences! If the sun is comely in itself, yet it is more amiable to
us, by the light we see, and the warmth we feel.
1st. The greatness of his benefits have reason to affect us with a love
to him. The impress he made upon our souls when he extracted us from
the darkness of nothing; the comeliness he hath put upon us by his own
breath; the care he took of our recovery, when we had lost ourselves;
the expense he was at for our regaining our defaced beauty; the gift
he made of his Son; the affectionate calls we have heard to over‑master
our corrupt appetites, move us to repentance, and make us disaffect our
beloved misery; the loud sound of his word in our ears, and the more
inward knockings of his Spirit in our heart; the offering us the gift
of himself, and the everlasting happiness he courts us to, besides
those common favors we enjoy in the world, which are all the streams of
his rich bounty: the voice of all is loud enough to solicit our love,
and the merit of all ought to be strong enough to engage our love:
“there is none like the God of Jeshurun, who rides upon the heaven in
thy help, and in his excellency on the sky” (Deut. xxxiii. 26).
2d. The unmeritedness of them doth enhance this. It is but reason to
love him who hath loved us first (1 John iv. 19). Hath he placed his
delight upon any when they were nothing, and after they were sinful;
and shall he set his delight upon such vile persons, and shall not we
set our love upon so excellent an object as himself? How base are we,
if his goodness doth not constrain us to affect him who hath been so
free in his favor to us, who have merited the quite contrary at his
hands? If “his tender mercies are over all his works” (Ps. cxlv. 9),
he ought for it to be esteemed by all his works that are capable of
a rational estimation.
3d. Goodness in creatures makes them estimable, much more should the
goodness of God render him lovely to us. If we love a little spark of
goodness in this or that creature, if a drop be so delicious to us,
shall not the immense Sun of goodness, the ever‑flowing Fountain of all,
be much more delightful? The original excellency always outstrips what
is derived from it; if so mean and contracted an object as a little
creature deserves estimation for a little mite communicated to it, so
great and extended a goodness as is in the Creator {b335} much more
merits it at our hands: he is good after the infinite methods of a
Deity: a weak resemblance is lovely; much more amiable, then, must be
the incomprehensible original of that beauty. We love creatures for
what we think to be good in them, though it may be hurtful; and shall
we not love God, who is a real and unblemished goodness, and from whose
hand are poured out all those blessings that are conveyed to us by
second causes? The object that delights us, the capacity we have to
delight in it, are both from him; our love, therefore, to him should
transcend the affection we bear to any instruments he moves for our
welfare. “Among the gods, there is none like thee, O Lord, neither
are there any works like unto thy works” (Ps. lxxxvi. 8): among the
pleasantest creatures there is none like the Creator, nor any goodness
like unto his goodness. Shall we love the food that nourisheth us,
and the medicine that cures us, and the silver whereby we furnish
ourselves with useful commodities? Shall we love a horse, or dog, for
the benefits we have by them? and shall not the spring of all those
draw our souls after it, and make us aspire to the honor of loving
and embracing Him who hath stored every creature with that which may
pleasure us? But, instead of endeavoring to parallel our affection with
his kindness, we endeavor to make our disingenuity as extensive and
towering as his Divine goodness.
4th. This is the true end of the manifestation of his goodness, that he
might appear amiable, and have a return of affection. Did God display
his goodness only to be thought of, or to be loved? It is the want of
such a return, that he hath usually aggravated, from the benefits he
hath bestowed upon men. Every thought of him should be attended with a
motion suitable to the excellency of his nature and works. Can we think
those nobler spirits, the angels, look upon themselves, or those frames
of things in the heavens and earth, without starting some practical
affection to him for them? Their knowledge of his excellency and
works cannot be a lazy contemplation: it is impossible their wills and
affections should be a thousand miles distant from their understandings
in their operations. It is not the least part of his condescending
goodness to court in such methods the affections of us worms, and
manifest his desire to be beloved by us. Let us give him, then, that
affection he deserves, as well as demands, and which cannot be withheld
from him without horrible sacrilege. There is nothing worthy of love
besides him; let no fire be kindled in our hearts, but what may ascend
directly to him.
7. The seventh instruction is this: This renders God a fit object of
trust and confidence. Since none is good but God, none can be a full
and satisfactory ground or object of confidence but God: as all things
derive their beings, so they derive their helpfulness to us from God;
they are not, therefore, the principal objects of trust, but that
goodness alone that renders them fit instruments of our support; they
can no more challenge from us a stable confidence, than they can a
supreme affection. It is by this the Psalmist allures men to a trust
in him; “Taste and see how good the Lord is:” what is the consequence?
“Blessed is the man that trusts in thee” (Ps. xxxiv. 8). The voice of
Divine goodness sounds nothing more intelligibly, {b336} and a taste
of it produceth nothing more effectually, than this. As the vials of
his justice are to make us fear him, so the streams of his goodness
are to make us rely on him: as his patience is designed to broach our
repentance, so his goodness is most proper to strengthen our assurance
in him: that goodness which surmounted so many difficulties, and
conquered so many motions that might be made against any repeated
exercise of it, after it had been abused by the first rebellion of
man; that goodness that after so much contempt of it, appeared in such
a majestic tenderness, and threw aside those impediments which men had
cast in the way of Divine inclinations: this goodness is the foundation
of all reliance upon God. Who is better than God? and, therefore, who
more to be trusted than God? As his power cannot act anything weakly,
so his goodness cannot act anything unbecomingly, and unworthy of his
infinite majesty. And here consider,
(1.) Goodness is the first motive of trust. Nothing but this could
be the encouragement to man, had he stood in a state of innocence, to
present himself before God; the majesty of God would have constrained
him to keep his due distance, but the goodness of God could only
hearten his confidence: it is nothing else now that can preserve the
same temper in us in our lapsed condition. To regard him only as the
Judge of our crimes, will drive us from him; but only the regard of
him as the Donor of our blessings, will allure us to him. The principal
foundation of faith is not the word of God, but God himself, and
God as considered in this perfection. As the goodness of God in his
invitations and providential blessings “leads us to repentance” (Rom.
ii. 4), so, by the same reason, the goodness of God by his promises
leads us to reliance. If God be not first believed to be good, he would
not be believed at all in anything that he speaks or swears: if you
were not satisfied in the goodness of a man, though he should swear
a thousand times, you would value neither his word nor oath as any
security. Many times, where we are certain of the goodness of a man,
we are willing to trust him without his promise. This Divine perfection
gives credit to the Divine promises; they of themselves would not be
a sufficient ground of trust, without an apprehension of his truth;
nor would his truth be very comfortable without a belief of his good
will, whereby we are assured that what he promises to give, he gives
liberally, free, and without regret. The truth of the promiser makes
the promise credible, but the goodness of the promiser makes it
cheerfully relied on. In Ps. lxxiii. (Asaph’s penitential psalm for
his distrust of God,) he begins the first verse with an assertion of
this attribute (ver. 1), “Truly God is good to Israel;” and ends with
this fruit of it (ver. 28), “I will put my trust in the Lord God.” It
is a mighty ill nature that receives not with assurance the dictates
of Infinite Goodness, (that cannot deceive or frustrate the hopes we
conceive of him) that is inconceivably more abundant in the breast
and inclinations of the promiser, than expressible in the words of his
promise, “All true faith works by love” (Gal. v. 6), and, therefore,
necessarily includes a particular eyeing of this excellency in the
Divine nature, which renders him amiable, and is the motive and
encouragement of {b337} a love to him. His power indeed is a foundation
of trust, but his goodness is the principal motive of it. His power
without good‑will would be dangerous, and could not allure affection;
and his good‑will without power would be useless; and though it might
merit a love, yet could not create a confidence; both in conjunction
are strong grounds of hope, especially since his goodness is of the
same infinity with his wisdom and power; and that he can be no more
wanting in the effusions of this upon them that seek him, than in his
wisdom to contrive, or his power to effect, his designs and works.
(2.) This goodness is more the foundation and motive of trust under
the gospel, than under the law. They under the law had more evidences
of Divine power, and their trust eyed that much; though there was an
eminency of goodness in the frequent deliverances they had, yet the
power of God had a more glorious dress than his goodness, because
of the extraordinary and miraculous ways whereby he brought those
deliverances about. Therefore, in the catalogue of believers in Heb.
xi. you shall find the power of God to be the centre of their rest and
trust; and their faith was built upon the extraordinary marks of Divine
power, which were frequently visible to them. But under the gospel,
goodness and love was intended by God to be the chief object of trust;
suitable to the excellency of that dispensation, he would have an
exercise of more ingenuity in the creatures: therefore, it is said
(Hos. iii. 5), a promise of gospel‑times, “They shall fear God and his
goodness in the latter days,” when they shall return to “seek the Lord,
and David their king.” It is not said, they shall fear God, and his
power, but the Lord and his goodness, or the Lord for his goodness:
fear is often in the Old Testament taken for faith, or trust. This
Divine goodness, the object of faith, is that goodness discovered in
David their king; the Messiah, our Jesus. God, in this dispensation,
recommends his goodness and love, and reveals it more clearly than
other attributes, that the soul might have more prevailing and sweeter
attractives to confide in him.
(3.) A confidence in him gives him the glory of his goodness. Most
nations that had nothing but the light of nature, thought it a great
part of the honor that was due to God, to implore his goodness, and
cast their cares upon it. To do good, is the most honorable thing in
the world, and to acknowledge a goodness in a way of confidence, is
as high an honor as we can give to it, and a great part of gratitude
for what it hath already expressed. Therefore we find often, that
an acknowledgment of one benefit received, was attended with a trust
in him for what they should in the future need (Ps. lvi. 13): “Thou
hast delivered my soul from death, wilt thou not deliver my feet from
falling?” So, 2 Cor. i. 10: and they who have been most eminent for
their trust in him, have had the greatest eulogies and commendations
from him. As a diffidence doth disparage this perfection, thinking
it meaner and shallower than it is, so confidence highly honors it.
We never please him more, than when we trust in him; “The Lord takes
pleasure in them that fear him, in them that hope in his mercy” (Ps.
cxlvii. 11). He takes it for an honor to have this attribute exalted by
such a carriage of his {b338} creature. He is no less offended when we
think his heart straitened, as if he were a parsimonious God; than when
we think his arm shortened, as if he were an impotent and feeble God.
Let us, therefore, make this use of his goodness, to hearten our faith.
When we are scared by the terrors of his justice, when we are dazzled
by the arts of his wisdom, and confounded by the splendor of his
majesty, we may take refuge in the sanctuary of his goodness; this will
encourage us, as well as astonish us; whereas, the consideration of
his other attributes would only amaze us, but can never refresh us, but
when they are considered marching under the conduct and banners of this.
When all the other perfections of the Divine nature are looked upon in
conjunction with this excellency, each of them send forth ravishing and
benign influences upon the applying creature. It is more advantageous
to depend upon Divine bounty, than our own cares; we may have better
assurance upon this account in his cares for us, than in ours for
ourselves. Our goodness for ourselves is finite; and besides, we are
too ignorant: his goodness is infinite, and attended with an infinite
wisdom; we have reason to distrust ourselves, not God. We have reason
to be at rest, under that kind influence we have so often experimented;
he hath so much goodness, that he can have no deceit: his goodness in
making the promise, and his goodness in working the heart to a reliance
on it, are grounds of trust in him; “Remember thy word to thy servant,
upon which thou hast caused me to hope” (Ps. cxix. 49). If his promise
did not please him, why did he make it? If reliance on the promise did
not please him, why did his goodness work it? It would be inconsistent
with his goodness to mock his creature, and it would be the highest
mockery to publish his word, and create a temper in the heart of his
supplicant, suited to his promise which he never intended to satisfy.
He can as little wrong his creature, as wrong himself; and, therefore,
can never disappoint that faith which in his own methods casts itself
into the arms of his kindness, and is his own workmanship, and calls
him Author. That goodness that imparted itself so freely in creation,
will not neglect those nobler creatures that put their trust in him.
This renders God a fit object for trust and confidence.
8. The eighth instruction: This renders God worthy to be obeyed
and honored. There is an excellency in God to allure, as well as
sovereignty to enjoin obedience: the infinite excellency of his nature
is so great, that if his goodness had promised us nothing to encourage
our obedience, we ought to prefer him before ourselves, devote
ourselves to serve him, and make his glory our greatest content;
but much more when he hath given such admirable expressions of his
liberality, and stored us with hopes of richer and fuller streams of
it. When David considered the absolute goodness of his nature, and the
relative goodness of his benefits, he presently expresseth an ardent
desire to be acquainted with the Divine statutes, that he might make
ingenious returns in a dutiful observance; “Thou art good, and thou
dost good; teach me thy statutes” (Ps. cxix. 68). As his goodness is
the original, so the acknowledgment of it is the end of all, which
cannot be without an observance {b339} of his will. His goodness
requires of us an ingenuous, not a servile obedience. And this is
established upon two foundations.
[1.] Because the bounty of God hath laid upon us the strongest
obligations. The strength of an obligation depends upon the greatness
and numerousness of the benefits received. The more excellent the
favors are which are conferred upon any person, the more right hath the
benefactor to claim an observance from the person bettered by him. Much
of the rule and empire which hath been in several ages conferred by
communities upon princes, hath had its first spring from a sense of the
advantages they have received by them, either in protecting them from
their enemies, or rescuing them from an ignoble captivity; in enlarging
their territories, or increasing their wealth. Conquest hath been the
original of a constrained, but beneficence always the original of a
voluntary and free subjection.[991] Obedience to parents is founded
upon their right, because they are instrumental in bestowing upon
us being and life; and because this of life is so great a benefit,
the law of nature never dissolves this obligation of obeying and
honoring parents; it is as long‑lived as the law of nature, and hath
an universal practice, by the strength of that law, in all parts of the
world: and those rightful chains are not unlocked, but by that which
unties the knot between soul and body: much more hath God a right to be
obeyed and reverenced, who is the principal Benefactor, and moved all
those second causes to impart to us, what conduced to our advantage.
The just authority of God over us results from the superlativeness of
his blessings he hath poured down upon us, which cannot be equalled,
much less exceeded, by any other. As therefore upon this account he
hath a claim to our choicest affections, so he hath also to most exact
obedience; and neither one nor other can be denied him, without a
sordid and disingenuous ingratitude; God therefore aggravates the
rebellion of the Jews from the cares he had in the bringing them up
(Isa. ii. 2), and the miraculous deliverance from Egypt (Jer. xi.
7, 8); implying that those benefits were strong obligations to an
ingenuous observance of him.
[2.] It is established upon this, that God can enjoin the observance of
nothing but what is good. He may by the right of his sovereign dominion,
command that which is indifferent in its own nature: as in positive
laws, the not eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, which had not been evil in itself, set aside the command of God
to the contrary; and likewise in those ceremonial laws he gave the Jews:
but in regard to the transcendent goodness and righteousness of his
nature, he will not, he cannot command anything that is evil in itself,
or repugnant to the true interest of his creature; and God never
obliged the creature to anything but what was so free from damaging it,
that it highly conduced to its good and welfare: and therefore it is
said, that “his commands are not grievous” (1 John v. 3): not grievous
in their own nature, nor grievous to one possessed with a true reason.
The command given to Adam in Paradise was not grievous in itself,
nor could he ever have thought it so, but upon a false supposition
instilled into him by the tempter. There is a pleasure results from the
law of God {b340} to a holy rational nature, a sweetness tasted both
by the understanding and by the will, for they both “rejoice the heart
and enlighten the eyes” of the mind (Ps. xix. 8). God being essentially
wisdom and goodness, cannot deviate from that goodness in any orders
he gives the creature; whatsoever he enacts must be agreeable to that
rule, and therefore he can will nothing but what is good and excellent,
and what is good for the creature; for since he hath put originally
into man a natural instinct to desire that which is good, he would
never enact any thing for the creature’s observance,[992] that might
control that desire imprinted by himself, but what might countenance
that impression of his own hand; for if God did otherwise, he would
contradict his own natural law, and be a deluder of his creatures, if
he impressed upon them desires one way, and ordered directions another.
The truth is, all his moral precepts are comely in themselves, and
they receive not their goodness from God’s positive command, but that
command supposeth their goodness; if everything were good because God
loves it, or because God wills it, _i. e._ that God’s loving it or
willing it made that good which was not good before, then, as Camero
well argues somewhere, God’s goodness would depend upon his loving
himself; he was good because he loved himself, and was not good till he
loved himself; whereas, indeed, God’s loving himself, doth not make him
good, but supposeth him good: he was good in the order of nature before
he loved himself; and his being good was the ground of his loving
himself, because, as was said before, if there were anything better
than God, God would love that; for it is inconsistent with the nature
of God and infinite goodness not to love that which is good, and not
to love that supremely which is the supreme good. Further to understand
it, you may consider, if the question be asked, why God loves himself?
you would think it a reasonable answer to say, because he is good.
But if the question be asked, why God is good? you would think that
answer, because he loves himself, would be destitute of reason; but
the true answer would be, because his nature is so, and he could not
be God if he were not good: therefore God’s goodness is in order of
our conception before his self‑love, and not his self‑love before his
goodness; so the moral things God commands, are good in themselves
before God commands them; and such, that if God should command the
contrary, it would openly speak him evil and unrighteous. Abstract
from Scripture, and weigh things in your own reason; could you conceive
God good, if he should command a creature not to love him? could you
preserve the notion of a good nature in him, if he did command murder,
adultery, tyranny, and cutting of throats? You would wonder to what
purpose he made the world, and framed it for society, if such things
were ordered, that should deface all comeliness of society: the moral
commands given in the word, appeared of themselves very beautiful to
mere reason, that had no knowledge of the written law; they are good,
and because they are so, his goodness had moved his sovereign authority
strictly to enjoin them. Now this goodness, whereby he cannot oblige
a {b341} creature to anything that is evil, speaks him highly worthy
of our observance, and our disobedience to his law to be full of
inconceivable malignity: that is the last thing.
_Second Use_ is of comfort. He is a good without mixture, good
without weariness――none good but God, none good purely, none good
inexhaustibly, but God; because he is good, we may, upon our speaking,
expect his instruction; “Good is the Lord, therefore will he teach
sinners in his way” (Ps. xxv. 8). His goodness makes him stoop to be
the tutor to those worms that lie prostrate before him; and though
they are sinners full of filth, he drives them not from his school,
nor denies them his medicines, if they apply themselves to him as a
physician. He is good in removing the punishment due to our crimes, and
good in bestowing benefits not due to our merits; because he is good,
penitent believers may expect forgiveness; “Thou, Lord, art good, and
ready to forgive” (Ps. lxxxvi. 5). He acts not according to the rigor
of the law, but willingly grants his pardon to those that fly into the
arms of the Mediator; his goodness makes him more ready to forgive,
than our necessities make us desirous to enjoy; he charged not upon Job
his impatient expressions in cursing the day of his birth; his goodness
passed that over in silence, and extols him for speaking the thing
that is right, right in the main, when he charges his friends for
not speaking of him the thing that is right, as his servant Job had
done (Job xlii. 7). He is so good, that if we offer the least thing
sincerely, he will graciously receive it; if we have not a lamb
to offer, a pigeon or turtle shall be accepted upon his altar; he
stands not upon costly presents, but sincerely tendered services. All
conditions are sweetened by it; whatsoever any in the world enjoy, is
from a redundancy of this goodness; but whatsoever a good man enjoys,
is from a propriety in this goodness.
1. Here is comfort in our addresses to him. If he be a fountain
and sea of goodness, he cannot be weary of doing good, no more than a
fountain or sea are of flowing. All goodness delights to communicate
itself; infinite goodness hath then an infinite delight in expressing
itself; it is a part of his goodness not to be weary of showing it; he
can never, then, be weary of being solicited for the effusions of it;
if he rejoices over his people to do them good, he will rejoice in any
opportunities offered to him to honor his goodness, and gladly meet
with a fit subject for it; he therefore delights in prayer. Never can
we so delight in addressing, as he doth in imparting; he delights more
in our prayers than we can ourselves; goodness is not pleased with
shyness. To what purpose did his immense bounty bestow his Son upon us,
but that we should be “accepted” both in our persons and petitions (Eph.
i. 6)? “His eyes are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their
cry” (Ps. xxxiv. 15); he fixes the eye of his goodness upon them, and
opens the ears of his goodness for them; he is pleased to behold them,
and pleased to listen to them, as if he had no pleasure in anything
else; he loves to be sought to, to give a vent to his bounty; “Acquaint
thyself with God, and thereby good shall come unto thee” (Job xxii. 21).
The word signifies, to accustom ourselves to God; the more we accustom
ourselves in speaking, the more he will accustom himself in giving; he
loves not {b342} to keep his goodness close under lock and key, as men
do their treasures. If we knock, he opens his exchequer (Matt. vii. 7);
his goodness is as flexible to our importunities, as his power is
invincible by the arm of a silly worm; he thinks his liberality honored
by being applied to, and your address to be a recompense for his
expense. There is no reason to fear, since he hath so kindly invited
us, but he will as heartily welcome us; the nature of goodness is to
compassionate and communicate, to pity and relieve, and that with a
heartiness and cheerfulness; man is weary of being often solicited,
because he hath a finite, not a bottomless, goodness: he gives
sometimes to be rid of his suppliant, not to encourage him to a second
approach. But every experience God gives us of his bounty, is a motive
to solicit him afresh, and a kind of obligation he hath laid upon
himself to “renew it” (1 Sam. xvii. 37): it is one part of his goodness
that it is boundless and bottomless; we need not fear the wasting of
it, nor any weariness in him to bestow it. The stock cannot be spent,
and infinite kindness can never become niggardly; when we have enjoyed
it, there is still an infinite ocean in Him to refresh us, and as full
streams as ever to supply us. What an encouragement have we to draw
near to God! We run in our straits to those that we think have most
good will, as well as power to relieve and protect us. The oftener
we come to him, and the nearer we approach to him, the more of his
influences we shall feel: as the nearer the sun, the more of its
heat insinuates itself into us. The greatness of God, joined with his
goodness, hath more reason to encourage our approach to him, than our
flight from him, because his greatness never goes unattended with his
goodness; and if we were not so good, he would not be so great in the
apprehensions of any creature. How may his goodness, in the great gift
of his Son, encourage us to apply to him: since he hath set him as
a day’s‑man between himself and us, and appointed him an Advocate to
present our requests for us, and speed them at the throne of grace;
and he never leaves till Divine goodness subscribes a _fiat_ to our
believing and just petitions!
2. Here is comfort in afflictions. What can we fear from the conduct
of Infinite Goodness? Can his hand be heavy upon those that are humble
before him? They are the hands of Infinite Power indeed, but there is
not any motion of it upon his people, but is ordered by a goodness as
infinite as his power, which will not suffer any affliction to be too
sharp or too long. By what ways soever he conveys grace to us here, and
prepares us for glory hereafter, they are good, and those are the good
things he hath chiefly obliged himself to give (Ps. lxxxiv. 11): “Grace
and glory” will he “give, and no good thing will he withhold from them
that walk uprightly.” This David comforted himself with, in that which
his devout soul accounted the greatest calamity, his absence from
the courts and house of God (ver. 2). Not an ill will, but a good
will, directs his scourges; he is not an idle spectator of our combats;
his thoughts are fuller of kindness than ours, in any case, can be of
trouble: and because he is good, he wills the best good in everything
he acts; in exercising virtue, or correcting vice. There is no
affliction without some apparent mixtures of goodness; when he speaks
how he had smitten {b343} Israel (Jer. ii. 30), he presently adds (ver.
31), “Have I been a wilderness to Israel, a land of darkness?” Though
he led them through a desert, yet he was not a desert to them; he
was no land of darkness to them; while they marched through a land of
barrenness, he was a caterer to provide them “manna,” and a place of
“broad rivers” and streams. How often hath Divine goodness made our
afflictions our consolations; our diseases, our medicines, and his
gentle strokes, reviving cordials! How doth he provide for us above
our deserts, even while he doth punish us beneath our merits! Divine
goodness can no more mean ill, than Divine wisdom can be mistaken in
its end, or Divine power overruled in its actions. “Charity thinks
no evil” (1 Cor. xiii. 5); charity in the stream doth not, much less
doth charity in the fountain. To be afflicted by a hand of goodness
hath something comfortable in it, when to be afflicted by an evil
hand is very odious. Elijah, who was loth to die by the hand of a
whorish idolatrous Jezebel, was very desirous to die by the hand of God
(1 Kings, xix. 2‒4). He accounted it a misery to have died by her hand,
who hated him, and had nothing but cruelty; and, therefore, fled from
her, when he wished for death, as a desirable thing by the hand of that
God who had been good to him, and could not but be good in whatsoever
he acted.
3. The third comfort flowing from this doctrine of the goodness of
God, is, it is a ground of assurance of happiness. If God be so good,
that nothing is better, and loves himself, as he is good, he cannot
be wanting in love to those that resemble his nature, and imitate his
goodness: he cannot but love his own image of goodness; wherever he
finds it, he cannot but be bountiful to it; for it is impossible there
can be any love to any object, without wishing well to it, and doing
well for it. If the soul loves God as its chiefest good, God will love
the soul as his pious servant: as he hath offered to them the highest
allurements, so he will not withhold the choicest communications.
Goodness cannot be a deluding thing; it cannot consist with the
nobleness and largeness of this perfection to invite the creature
to him, and leave the creature empty of him when it comes. It is
inconsistent with this perfection to give the creature a knowledge of
himself, and a desire of enjoyment larger than that knowledge; a desire
to know, and enjoy him perpetually, yet never intend to bestow an
eternal communication of himself upon it. The nature of man was erected
by the goodness of God, but with an enlarged desire for the highest
good, and a capacity of enjoying it. Can goodness be thought to be
deceitful, to frustrate its own work, be tired with its own effusions,
to let a gracious soul groan under its burden, and never resolve to
ease him of it; to see delightfully the aspirings of the creature to
another state, and resolve never to admit him to a happy issue of those
desires? It is not agreeable to this inconceivable perfection to be
unconcerned in the longings of his creature, since their first longings
were placed in them by that goodness which is so free from mocking the
creature, or falling short of its well‑grounded expectations or desires,
that it infinitely exceeds them. If man had continued in innocence,
the goodness of God, without question, would have continued him in
happiness: and, {b344} since he hath had so much goodness to restore
man, would it not be dishonorable to that goodness to break his own
conditions, and defeat the believing creature of happiness, after it
hath complied with his terms? He is a believer’s God in covenant, and
is a God in the utmost extent of this attribute, as well as of any
other; and, therefore, will not communicate mean and shallow benefits,
but according to the grandeur of it, sovereign and divine, such as the
gift of a happy immortality. Since he had no obligation upon him, to
make any promise, but the sweetness of his own nature, the same is as
strong upon him to make all the words of his grace good; they cannot
be invalid in any one tittle of them as long as his nature remains the
same; and his goodness cannot be diminished without the impairing of
his Godhead, since it is inseparable from it. Divine goodness will not
let any man serve God for nought; he hath promised our weak obedience
more than any man in his right wits can say it merits (Matt. x. 42):
“A cup of cold water shall not lose its reward.” He will manifest our
good actions as he gave so high a testimony to Job, in the face of the
devil, his accuser: it will not only be the happiness of the soul, but
of the body, the whole man, since soul and body were in conjunction
in the acts of righteousness; it consists not with the goodness of God
to reward the one, and to let the other lie in the ruins of its first
nothing: to bestow joy upon the one for its being principal, and leave
the other without any sentiments of joy, that was instrumental in
those good works, both commanded and approved by God: he that had the
goodness to pity our original dust, will not want a goodness to advance
it: and if we put off our bodies, it is but afterwards to put them on
repaired and fresher. From this goodness, the upright may expect all
the happiness their nature is capable of.
4. It is a ground of comfort in the midst of public dangers. This hath
more sweetness in it to support us, than the malice of enemies hath
to deject us; because he is “good,” he is “a stronghold in the day of
trouble” (Nah. i. 7). If his goodness extends to all his creatures, it
will much more extend to those that honor him: if the earth be full of
his goodness, that part of heaven which he hath upon earth shall not be
empty of it. He hath a goodness often to deliver the righteous, and a
justice to put the wicked in his stead (Prov. xi. 8). When his people
have been under the power of their enemies, he hath changed the scene,
and put the enemies under the power of his people: he hath clapped upon
them the same bolts which they did upon his servants. How comfortable
is this goodness that hath yet maintained us in the midst of dangers,
preserved us in the mouth of lions, quenched kindled fire; hitherto
rescued us from designed ruin subtilly hatched, and supported us in
the midst of men very passionate for our destruction; how hath this
watchful goodness been a sanctuary to us in the midst of an upper hell!
_Third Use_ is of exhortation.
1. How should we endeavor after the enjoyment of God as good! How
earnestly should we desire him! As there is no other goodness worthy of
our supreme love, so there is no other goodness worthy our most ardent
thirst. Nothing deserves the name of a desirable {b345} good, but as it
tends to the attainment of this: here we must pitch our desires, which
otherwise will terminate in nullities or inconceivable disturbances.
(1.) Consider, nothing but good can be the object of a rational
appetite. The will cannot direct its motion to anything under the
notion of evil, evil in itself, or evil to it; whatsoever courts it
must present itself in the quality of a good in its own nature, or
in its present circumstances to the present state and condition of
the desire; it will not else touch or affect the will. This is the
language of that faculty: “Who will show me any good?” (Ps. iv. 6),
and good is as inseparably the object of the will’s motion, as truth is
of the understanding’s inquiry. Whatsoever a man would allure another
to comply with, he must propose to the person under the notion of some
beneficialness to him in point of honor, profit, or pleasure. To act
after this manner is the proper character of a rational creature; and
though that which is evil is often embraced instead of that which is
good, and what we entertain as conducing to our felicity proves our
misfortune, yet that is from our ignorance, and not from a formal
choice of it as evil; for what evil is chosen it is not possible to
choose under the conception of evil, but under the appearance of a good,
though it be not so in reality. It is inseparable from the wills of all
men to propose to themselves that which in the opinion and judgment of
their understandings or imagination is good, though they often mistake
and cheat themselves.
(2.) Since that good is the object of a rational appetite, the purest,
best, and most universal good, such as God is, ought to be most sought
after. Since good only is the object of a rational appetite, all the
motions of our souls should be carried to the first and best good: a
real good is most desirable; the greatest excellency of the creatures
cannot speak them so, since, by the corruption of man, they are
“subjected to vanity” (Rom. viii. 20). God is the most excellent good
without any shadow; a real something without that nothing which every
creature hath in its nature (Isa. xl. 17). A perfect good can only
give us content: the best goodness in the creature is but slender and
imperfect; had not the venom of corruption infused a vanity into it,
the make of it speaks it finite, and the best qualities in it are
bounded, and cannot give satisfaction to a rational appetite which
bears in its nature an imitation of Divine infiniteness, and therefore
can never find an eternal rest in mean trifles. God is above the
imperfection of all creatures; creatures are but drops of goodness, at
best but shallow streams; God is like a teeming ocean, that can fill
the largest as well as the narrowest creek. He hath an accumulative
goodness; several creatures answer several necessities, but one God
can answer all our wants: he hath an universal fulness, to overtop
our universal emptiness: he contains in himself the sweetness of all
other goods, and holds in his bosom plentifully what creatures have in
their natures sparingly. Creatures are uncertain goods; as they begin
to exist, so they may cease to be; they may be gone with a breath, they
will certainly languish if God blows upon them (Isa. xl. 24): the same
breath that raised them can blast them; but who can rifle God of the
least part {b346} of his excellency? Mutability is inherent in the
nature of every creature, as a creature. All sublunary things are as
gourds, that refresh us one moment with their presence, and the next
fret us with their absence; like fading flowers, strutting to‑day, and
drooping to‑morrow (Isa. xl. 6): while we possess them, we cannot clip
their wings, that may carry them away from us, and may make us vainly
seek what we thought we firmly held. But God is as permanent a good as
he is a real one: he hath wings to fly to them that seek him, but no
wings to fly from them forever, and leave them. God is an universal
good; that which is good to one may be evil to another; what is
desirable by one maybe refused as inconvenient for another: but God
being an universal, unstained good, is useful for all, convenient to
the natures of all but such as will continue in enmity against him.
There is nothing in God can displease a soul that desires to please him;
when we are in darkness, he is a light to scatter it; when we are in
want, he hath riches to relieve us; when we are in spiritual death, he
is a Prince of life to deliver us; when we are defiled, he is holiness
to purify us: it is in vain to fix our hearts anywhere but on him, in
the desire of whom there is a delight, and in the enjoyment of whom
there is an inconceivable pleasure.
(3.) He is most to be sought after, since all things else that are
desirable had their goodness from him. If anything be desirable because
of its goodness, God is much more desirable because of his, since all
things are good by a participation, and nothing good but by his print
upon it: as what being creatures have was derived to them by God, so
what goodness they are possessed with they were furnished with it by
God; all goodness flowed from him, and all created goodness is summed
up in him. The streams should not terminate our appetite without
aspiring to the fountain. If the waters in the channel, which receive
mixture, communicate a pleasure, the taste of the fountain must be
much more delicious; that original Perfection of all things hath an
inconceivable beauty above those things it hath framed. Since those
things live not by their own strength, nor nourish us by their own
liberality, but by the “word of God” (Matt. iv. 4), that God that
speaks them into life, and speaks them into usefulness, should be most
ardently desired as the best. If the sparkling glory of the visible
heavens delight us, and the beauty and bounty of the earth please and
refresh us, what should be the language of our souls upon those views
and tastes but that of the Psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but thee?
and there is none upon earth that I can desire beside thee” (Ps. lxxiii.
25). No greater good can possibly be desired, and no less good should
be ardently desired. As he is the supreme good, so we should bear that
regard to him as supremely, and above all, to thirst for him: as he is
good, he is the object of desire; as the choicest and first goodness,
he is desirable with the greatest vehemency. “Give me children, or
else I die” (Gen. xxx. 1), was an uncomely speech; the one was granted,
and the other inflicted; she had children, but the last cost her her
life: but, Give me God, or I will not be content, is a gracious speech,
wherein we cannot miscarry; all that God demands of us is, that we
should long for him, and look for our happiness only in {b347} him.
That is the first thing, endeavor after the enjoyment of God as good.
2. Often meditate on the goodness of God. What was man produced for,
but to settle his thoughts upon this? What should have been Adam’s
employment in innocence, but to read over all the lines of nature,
and fix his contemplations on that good hand that drew them? What
is man endued with reason for, above all other animals, but to take
notice of this goodness spread over all the creatures, which they
themselves, though they felt it, could not have such a sense of as to
make answerable returns to their Benefactor? Can we satisfy ourselves
in being spectators of it, and enjoyers of it, only in such a manner as
the brutes are? The beasts behold things as well as we, they feel the
warm beams of this goodness as well as we, but without any reflection
upon the Author of them. Shall Divine blessings meet with no more from
us but a brutish view and beholding of them? What is more just, than to
spend a thought upon Him who hath enlarged his hand in so many benefits
to us? Are we indebted to any more than we are to him? Why should we
send our souls to visit anything more than him in his works? That we
are able to meditate on him is a part of his goodness to us, who hath
bestowed that capacity upon us; and, if we will not, it is a great part
of our ingratitude. Can anything more delightful enter into us, than
that of the kind and gracious disposition of that God who first brought
us out of the abyss of an unhappy nothing, and hath hitherto spread
his wings over us? Where can we meet with a nobler object than Divine
goodness? and what nobler work can be practised by us than to consider
it? What is more sensible in all the operations of his hands than his
skill, as they are considered in themselves, and his goodness, as they
are considered in relation to us? It is strange that we should miss
the thoughts of it; that we should look upon this earth, and everything
in it, and yet overlook that which it is most full of, _viz._ Divine
goodness (Ps. xxxiii. 5); it runs through the whole web of the world;
all is framed and diversified by goodness; it is one entire single
goodness, which appears in various garbs and dresses in every part of
the creation. Can we turn our eyes inward, and send our eyes outward,
and see nothing of a Divinity in both worthy of our deepest and
seriousest thoughts? Is there anything in the world we can behold,
but we see his bounty, since nothing was made but is one way or other
beneficial to us? Can we think of our daily food, but we must have
some reflecting thoughts on our great Caterer? Can the sweetness of
the creature to our palate obscure the sweetness of the Provider to our
minds? It is strange that we should be regardless of that wherein every
creature without us, and every sense within us and about us, is a tutor
to instruct us! Is it not reason we should think of the times wherein
we were nothing, and from thence run back to a never‑begun eternity,
and view ourselves in the thoughts of that goodness, to be in time
brought forth upon this stage, as we are at present? Can we consider
but one act of our understandings, but one thought, one blossom, one
spark of our souls mounting upwards, and not reflect upon the goodness
of God to us, who, in that faculty that {b348} sparkles out rational
thoughts, has advanced us to a nobler state, and endued us with a
nobler principle, than all the creatures we see on earth, except those
of our own rank and kind? Can we consider but one foolish thought, one
sinful act, and reflect upon the guilt and filth of it, and not behold
goodness in sparing us, and miracles of goodness in sending his Son
to die for us, for the expiation of it? This perfection cannot well be
out of our thoughts, or at least it is horrible it should, when it is
writ in every line of the creation, and in a legible rubric, in bloody
letters, in the cross of his Son. Let us think with ourselves, how
often he hath multiplied his blessings, when we did deserve his wrath!
how he hath sent one unexpected benefit upon the heel of another, to
bring us with a swift pace the tidings of good‑will to us! how often
hath he delivered us from a disease that had the arrows of death in its
hand ready to pierce us! how often hath he turned our fears into joys,
and our distempers into promoters of our felicity! how often hath he
mated a temptation, sent seasonable supplies in the midst of a sore
distress, and prevented many dangers which we could not be so sensible
of, because we were, in a great measure, ignorant of them! How should
we meditate upon his goodness to our souls, in preventing some sins,
in pardoning others, in darting upon us the knowledge of his gospel,
and of himself, in the face of his Son Christ! This seems to stick much
upon the spirit of Paul, since he doth so often sprinkle his epistles
with the titles of the “grace of God, riches of grace, unsearchable
riches of God, riches of glory,” and cannot satisfy himself, with the
extolling of it. Certainly, we should bear upon our heart a deep and
quick sense of this perfection; as it was the design of God to manifest
it, so it would be acceptable to God for us to have a sense of it: a
dull receiver of his blessings is no less nauseous to him than a dull
dispenser of his alms; he loves a “cheerful giver” (2 Cor. ix. 7); he
doth himself what he loves in others; he is cheerful in giving, and
he loves we should be serious in thinking of him, and have a right
apprehension and sense of his goodness.
(1.) A right sense of his goodness would dispose us to an ingenuous
worship of God. It would damp our averseness to any act of religion;
what made David so resolute and ready to “worship towards his holy
temple” but the sense of his “loving kindness?” (Ps. cxxxviii. 2). This
would render him always in our mind a worthy object of our devotion,
a stable prop of our confidence. We should then adore him, when we
consider him as “our God,” and ourselves as “the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand” (Ps. xcv. 7): we should send up prayers with
strong faith and feeling, and praises with great joy and pleasure. The
sense of his goodness would make us love him, and our love to him would
quicken our adoration of him; but if we regard not this, we shall have
no mind to think of him, no mind to act anything towards him; we may
tremble at his presence, but not heartily worship him; we shall rather
look upon him as a tyrant, and think no other affection due to him than
what we reserve for an oppressor, _viz._ hatred and ill‑will.
(2.) A sense of it will keep us humble. A sense of it would effect
{b349} that for which itself was intended; _viz._ bring us to a
repentance for our crimes, and not suffer us to harden ourselves
against him. When we should deeply consider how he hath made the sun
to shine upon us, and his rain to fall upon the earth for our support;
the one to supple the earth, and the other to assist the juice of it
to bring forth fruits; how would it reflect upon us our ill requitals,
and make us hang down our heads before him in a low posture, pleasing
to him, and advantageous to ourselves! What would the first charge be
upon ourselves, but what Moses brings in his expostulation against the
Israelites (Deut. xxxii. 6): “Do I thus requite the Lord?” What is this
goodness for me, who am so much below him; for me, who have so much
incensed him; for me, who have so much abused what he hath allowed?
It would bring to remembrance the horror of our crimes, and set
us a blushing before him, when we should consider the multitude of
his benefits, and our unworthy behaviour, that hath not constrained
him even against the inclination of his goodness, to punish us: how
little should we plead for a further liberty in sin, or palliate our
former faults! When we set Divine goodness in one column, and our
transgressions in another, and compare together their several items,
it would fill us with a deep consciousness of our own guilt, and divest
us of any worth of our own in our approaches to him; it would humble
us, that we cannot love so obliging a God as much as he deserves to be
loved by us; it would make us humble before men. Who would be proud of
a mere gift which he knows he hath not merited? How ridiculous would
that servant be, that should be proud of a rich livery, which is a
badge of his service, not a token of his merit, but of his master’s
magnificence and bounty, which, though he wear this day, he may be
stripped of to‑morrow, and be turned out of his master’s family!
(3.) A sense of the Divine goodness would make us faithful to
him. The goodness of God obligeth us to serve him, not to offend him;
the freeness of his goodness should make us more ready to contribute
to the advancement of his glory. When we consider the benefits of a
friend proceed out of kindness to us, and not out of self ends and vain
applause, it works more upon us, and makes us more careful of the honor
of such a person. It is a pure bounty God hath manifested in creation
and providence, which could not be for himself, who, being blessed
forever, wanted nothing from us: it was not to draw a profit from us,
but to impart an advantage to us; “Our goodness extends not to him” (Ps.
xvi. 2). The service of the benefactor is but a rational return for
benefits; whence Nehemiah aggravates the sins of the Jews (Neh. ix. 35):
“They have not served thee in thy great goodness that thou gavest them;”
_i. e._ which thou didst freely bestow upon them. How should we dare
to spend upon our lusts that which we possess, if we considered by
whose liberality we came by it? how should we dare to be unfaithful in
the goods he hath made us trustees of? A deep sense of Divine goodness
will ennoble the creature, and make it act for the most glorious and
noble end; it would strike Satan’s temptation dead at a blow; it would
pull off the false mask and vizor from what he presents to us, to draw
us from the service of our Benefactor; we could not, with a {b350}
sense of this, think him kinder to us than God hath, and will be, which
is the great motive of men to join hands with him, and turn their backs
upon God.
(4.) A sense of the Divine goodness would make us patient under our
miseries. A deep sense of this would make us give God the honor of his
goodness in whatsoever he doth, though the reason of his actions be
not apparent to us, nor the event and issue of his proceedings foreseen
by us. It is a stated case, that goodness can never intend ill, but
designs good in all its acts “to them that love God” (Rom. viii. 28):
nay, he always designs the best; when he bestows anything upon his
people, he sees it best they should have it; and when he removes
anything from them, he sees it best they should lose it. When we have
lost a thing we loved, and refuse to be comforted, a sense of this
perfection, which acts God in all, would keep us from misjudging our
sufferings, and measuring the intention of the hand that sent them,
by the sharpness of what we feel. What patient, fully persuaded of the
affection of the physician, would not value him, though that which is
given to purge out the humors, racks his bowels? When we lose what we
love, perhaps it was some outward lustre tickled our apprehensions,
and we did not see the viper we would have harmed ourselves by; but God
seeing it, snatched it from us, and we mutter as if he had been cruel,
and deprived us of the good we imagined, when he was kind to us, and
freed us from the hurt we should certainly have felt. We should regard
that which in goodness he takes from us, at no other rate than some
gilded poison and lurking venom; the sufferings of men, though upon
high provocations, are often followed with rich mercies, and many times
are intended as preparations for greater goodness. When God utters that
rhetoric of his bowels, “How shall I give thee up, O Ephraim, I will
not execute the fierceness of my anger!” (Hos. xi. 8), he intended them
mercy in their captivity, and would prepare them by it, to walk after
the Lord. And it is likely the posterity of those ten tribes were the
first that ran to God, upon the publishing the gospel in the places
where they lived; he doth not take away himself when he takes away
outward comforts; while he snatcheth away the rattles we play with,
he hath a breast in himself for us to suck. The consideration of his
goodness would dispose us to a composed frame of spirit. If we are sick,
it is goodness, it is a disease, and not a hell. It is goodness, that
it is a cloud, and not a total darkness. What if he transfers from us
what we have? he takes no more than what his goodness first imparted
to us; and never takes so much from his people as his goodness leaves
them: if he strips them of their lives, he leaves them their souls, with
those faculties he furnished them with at first, and removes them from
those houses of clay to a richer mansion. The time of our sufferings
here, were it the whole course of our life, bears not the proportion of
a moment to that endless eternity wherein he hath designed to manifest
his goodness to us. The consideration of Divine goodness would teach
us to draw a calm even from storms, and distil balsam from rods. If the
reproofs of the righteous be an excellent oil (Ps. cxlv. 5), {b351} we
should not think the corrections of a good God to have a less virtue.
(5.) A sense of the Divine goodness would mount us above the world. It
would damp our appetites after meaner things; we should look upon the
world not as a God, but a gift from God, and never think the present
better than the Donor. We should never lie soaking in muddy puddles
were we always filled with a sense of the richness and clearness of
this Fountain, wherein we might bathe ourselves; little petty particles
of good would give us no content, when we were sensible of such an
unbounded ocean. Infinite goodness, rightly apprehended, would dull our
desires after other things, and sharpen them with a keener edge after
that which is best of all. How earnestly do we long for the presence of
a friend, of whose good will towards us we have full experience.
(6.) It would check any motions of envy: it would make us joy in the
prosperity of good men, and hinder us from envying the outward felicity
of the wicked. We should not dare with an evil eye to censure his good
hand (Matt. xx. 15), but approve of what he thinks fit to do, both
in the matter of his liberality and the subjects he chooseth for it.
Though if the disposal were in our hands, we should not imitate him,
as not thinking them subjects fit for our bounty; yet since it is in
his hands, we be to approve of his actions and not have an ill will
towards him for his goodness, or towards those he is pleased to make
the subject of it. Since all his doles are given to “invite man to
repentance” (Rom. ii. 4), to envy them those goods God hath bestowed
upon them, is to envy God the glory of his own goodness, and them the
felicity those things might move them to aspire to; it is to wish God
more contracted, and thy neighbor more miserable: but a deep sense of
his sovereign goodness would make us rejoice in any marks of it upon
others, and move us to bless him instead of censuring him.
(7.) It would make us thankful. What can be the most proper, the most
natural reflection, when we behold the most magnificent characters he
hath imprinted upon our souls; the conveniency of the members he hath
compacted in our bodies, but a praise of him? Such motion had David
upon the first consideration: “I will praise thee, for I am fearfully
and wonderfully made” (Ps. cxxxix. 14). What could be the most natural
reflection, when we behold the rich prerogatives of our natures above
other creatures, the provision he hath made for us for our delight in
the beauties of heaven, for our support in the creatures on earth? What
can reasonably be expected from uncorrupted man, to be the first motion
of his soul, but an extolling the bountiful hand of the invisible
donor, whoever he be? This would make us venture at some endeavors
of a grateful acknowledgment, though we should despair of rendering
anything proportionable to the greatness of the benefit; and such an
acknowledgment of our own weakness would be an acceptable part of our
gratitude. Without a due and deep sense of Divine goodness, our praise
of it, and thankfulness for it, will be but cold, formal, and customary;
our tongues may bless him, and our heart slight him: and this will lead
us to the third exhortation:
{b352} 3. Which is that of thankfulness for Divine goodness. The
absolute goodness of God, as it is the excellency of his nature,
is the object of praise: the relative goodness of God, as he is our
benefactor, is the object of thankfulness. This was always a debt
due from man to God; he had obligations in the time of his integrity,
and was then to render it; he is not less, but more obliged to it in
the state of corruption; the benefits being the greater, by how much
the more unworthy he is of them by reason of his revolt. The bounty
bestowed upon an enemy that merits the contrary, ought to be received
with a greater resentment than that bestowed on a friend, who is not
unworthy of testimonies of respect. Gratitude to God is the duty of
every creature that hath a sense of itself; the more excellent being
any enjoy the more devout ought to be the acknowledgment. How often
doth David stir up, not only himself, but summon all creatures, even
the insensible ones, to join in the concert! He calls to the “deeps,
fire, hail, snow, mountains and hills,” to bear a part in this work of
praise (Ps. cxlviii.); not that they are able to do it actively, but to
show that man is to call in the whole creation to assist him passively,
and should have so much charity to all creatures, as to receive what
they offer, and so much affection to God, as to present to him what
he receives from him. Snow and hail cannot bless and praise God, but
man ought to praise God for those things wherein there is a mixture of
trouble and inconvenience, something to molest our sense, as well as
something that improves the earth for fruit. This God requires of us:
for this he instituted several offerings, and required a little portion
of fruits to be presented to him, as an acknowledgment they held the
whole from his bounty. And the end of the festival days among the Jews
was to revive the memory of those signal acts wherein his power for
them, and his goodness to them, had been extraordinarily evident; it
is no more but our mouths to praise him, and our hand to obey him, that
he exacts at our hands. He commands us not to expend what he allows us
in the erecting stately temples to his honor; all the coin he requires
to be paid with for his expense is the “offering of thanksgiving”
(Ps. l. 14): and this we ought to do as much as we can, since we cannot
do it as much as he merits, for “who can show forth all his praise?”
(Ps. cvi. 2.) If we have the fruit of his goodness, it is fit he
should have the “fruit of our lips” (Heb. xiii. 15): the least kindness
should inflame our souls with a kindly resentment. Though some of his
benefits have a brighter, some a darker, aspect towards us, yet they
all come from this common spring; his goodness shines in all; there
are the footsteps of goodness in the least, as well as the smiles of
goodness in the greatest; the meanest therefore is not to pass without
a regard of the Author. As the glory of God is more illustrious in
some creatures than in others, yet it glitters in all, and the lowest
as well as the highest administers matter of praise; but they are not
only little things, but the choicer favors he has bestowed upon us. How
much doth it deserve our acknowledgment, that he should contrive our
recovery, when we had plotted our ruin! that when he did from eternity
behold the crimes wherewith we would incense him, he should not,
according to the rights of justice, cast us into hell, but prize us at
{b353} the rate of the blood and life of his only Son, in value above
the blood of men and lives of angels! How should we bless that God,
that we have yet a gospel among us, that we are not driven into the
utmost regions, that we can attend upon him in the face of the sun, and
not forced to the secret obscurities of the night! Whatsoever we enjoy,
whatsoever we receive, we must own him as the Donor, and read his hand
in it. Rob him not of any praise to give to an instrument. No man hath
wherewithal to do us good, nor a heart to do us good, nor opportunities
of benefitting us without him. When the cripple received the soundness
of his limbs from Peter, he praised the hand that sent it, not the hand
that brought it (Acts iii. 6): he “praised God” (ver. 8). When we want
anything that is good, let the goodness of Divine nature move us to
David’s practice, to “thirst after God” (Ps. xlii. 1): and when we feel
the motions of his goodness to us, let us imitate the temper of the
same holy man (Ps. ciii. 2): “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget
not all his benefits.” It is an unworthy carriage to deal with him as
a traveller doth with a fountain, kneel down to drink of it when he is
thirsty, and turn his back upon it, and perhaps never think of it more
after he is satisfied. 4. And, lastly, Imitate this goodness of God.
If his goodness hath such an influence upon us as to make us love him,
it will also move us with an ardent zeal to imitate him in it. Christ
makes this use from the doctrine of Divine goodness (Matt. v. 44, 45):
“Do good to them that hate you, that you may be the children of your
Father which is in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil
and on the good.” As holiness is a resemblance of God’s purity, so
charity is a resemblance of God’s goodness; and this our Saviour calls
perfection (ver. 48): “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father,
which is in heaven, is perfect.” As God would not be a perfect God
without goodness, so neither can any be a perfect Christian without
kindness; charity and love being the splendor and loveliness of all
Christian graces, as goodness is the splendor and loveliness of all
Divine attributes. This and holiness are ordered in the Scripture to be
the grand patterns of our imitation. Imitate the goodness of God in two
things.
(1.) In relieving and assisting others in distress. Let our heart be
as large in the capacity of creatures, as God’s is in the capacity of
a Creator. A large heart from him to us, and a strait heart from us to
others, will not suit: let us not think any so far below us as to be
unworthy of our care, since God thinks none that are infinitely distant
from him too mean for his. His infinite glory mounts him above the
creature, but his infinite goodness stoops him to the meanest works of
his hands. As he lets not the transgressions of prosperity pass without
punishment, so he lets not the distress of his afflicted people pass
him without support. Shall God provide for the ease of beasts, and
shall not we have some tenderness towards those that are of the same
blood with ourselves, and have as good blood to boast of as runs in
the veins of the mightiest monarch on earth; and as mean, and as little
as they are, can lay claim to as ancient a pedigree as the stateliest
prince in the world, who cannot ascend to {b354} ancestors beyond
Adam? Shall we glut ourselves with Divine beneficence to us, and wear
his livery only on our own backs, forgetting the afflictions of some
dear Joseph; when God, who hath an unblemished felicity in his own
nature, looks out of himself to view and relieve the miseries of poor
creatures? Why hath God increased the doles of his treasures to some
more than others? Was it merely for themselves, or rather that they
might have a bottom to attain the honor of imitating him? Shall we
embezzle his goods to our own use, as if we were absolute proprietors,
and not stewards entrusted for others? Shall we make a difficulty to
part with something to others, out of that abundance he hath bestowed
upon any of us? Did not his goodness strip his Son of the glory of
heaven for a time to enrich us? and shall we shrug when we are to part
with a little to pleasure him? It is not very becoming for any to be
backward in supplying the necessities of others with a few morsels, who
have had the happiness to have had their greatest necessities supplied
with his Son’s blood. He demands not that we should strip ourselves of
all for others, but of a pittance, something of superfluity, which will
turn more to our account than what is vainly and unprofitably consumed
on our backs and bellies. If he hath given much to any of us, it is
rather to lay aside part of the income for his service; else we would
monopolize Divine goodness to ourselves, and seem to distrust under our
present experiments his future kindness, as though the last thing he
gave us was attended with this language, Hoard up this, and expect no
more from me; use it only to the glutting your avarice, and feeding
your ambition: which would be against the whole scope of Divine
goodness. If we do not endeavor to write after the comely copy he hath
set us, we may provoke him to harden himself against us, and in wrath
bestow that on the fire, or on our enemies, which his goodness hath
imparted to us for his glory, and the supplying the necessities of poor
creatures. And, on the contrary, he is so delighted with this kind of
imitation of him, that a cup of cold water, when there is no more to be
done, shall not be unrewarded.
(2.) Imitate God in his goodness, in a kindness to our worst
enemies. The best man is more unworthy to receive anything from God
than the worst can be to receive from us. How kind is God to those
that blaspheme him, and gives them the same sun, and the same showers,
that he doth to the best men in the world! Is it not more our glory
to imitate God in “doing good to those that hate us,” than to imitate
the men of the world in requiting evil, by a return of a sevenfold
mischief? This would be a goodness which would vanquish the hearts of
men, and render us greater than Alexanders and Cæsars, who did only
triumph over miserable carcasses; yea, it is to triumph over ourselves
in being good against the sentiments of corrupt nature. Revenge makes
us slaves to our passions, as much as the offenders, and good returns
render us victorious over our adversaries (Rom. xii. 21): “Be not
overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” When we took up our
arms against God, his goodness contrived not our ruin, but our recovery.
This is such a goodness of God as could not be discovered in an
innocent state; while man {b355} had continued in his duty, he could
not have been guilty of an enmity; and God could not but affect him,
unless he had denied himself: so this of being good to our enemies
could never have been practised in a state of rectitude; since, where
was a perfect innocence, there could be no spark of enmity to one
another. It can be no disparagement to any man’s dignity to cast his
influences on his greatest opposers, since God, who acts for his own
glory, thinks not himself disparaged by sending forth the streams of
his bounty on the wickedest persons, who are far meaner to him than
those of the same blood can be to us. Who hath the worse thoughts of
the sun, for shining upon the earth, that sends up vapors to cloud it?
it can be no disgrace to resemble God; if his hand and bowels be open
to us, let not ours be shut to any.
{b356} DISCOURSE XIII.
ON GOD’S DOMINION.
PSALM ciii. 19.――The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens:
and his kingdom ruleth over all.
THE Psalm begins with the praise of God, wherein the penman excites his
soul to a right and elevated management of so great a duty (ver. 1):
“Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy
name:” and because himself and all men were insufficient to offer up a
praise to God answerable to the greatness of his benefits, he summons
in the end of the psalm the angels, and all creatures, to join in
concert with him. Observe,
1. As man is too shallow a creature to comprehend the excellency of
God, so he is too dull and scanty a creature to offer up a due praise
to God, both in regard of the excellency of his nature, and the
multitude and greatness of his benefits.
2. We are apt to forget Divine benefits: our souls must therefore be
often jogged, and roused up. “All that is within me,” every power of my
rational, and every affection of my sensitive part: all his faculties,
all his thoughts. Our souls will hang back from God in every duty, much
more in this, if we lay not a strict charge upon them. We are so void
of a pure and entire love to God, that we have no mind to those duties.
Wants will spur us on to prayer, but a pure love to God can only
spirit us to praise. We are more ready to reach out a hand to receive
his mercies, than to lift up our hearts to recognize them after the
receipt. After the Psalmist had summoned his own soul to this task,
he enumerates the Divine blessings received by him, to awaken his
soul by a sense of them to so noble a work. He begins at the first and
foundation mercy to himself, the pardon of his sin and justification of
his person, the renewing of his sickly and languishing nature (ver. 3):
“Who forgives all thy iniquities, and heals all thy diseases.”
His redemption from death, or eternal destruction; his expected
glorification thereupon, which he speaks of with that certainty, as
if it were present (ver. 4): “Who redeems thy life from destruction,
who crowns thee with loving‑kindness and tender mercies.” He makes his
progress to the mercy manifested to the church in the protection of
it against, or delivery of it from, oppressions (ver. 6): “The Lord
executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed.” In
the discovery of his will and law, and the glory of his merciful name
to it (ver. 7, 8): “He made known his ways unto Moses, and his acts
unto the children of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow
to anger, and plenteous in mercy:” {b357} which latter words may refer
also to the free and unmerited spring of the benefits he had reckoned
up: _viz._, the mercy of God, which he mentions also (ver. 10): “He
hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to
our iniquities;” and then extols the perfection of Divine mercy, in
the pardoning of sin (ver. 11, 12); the paternal tenderness of God
(ver. 13); the eternity of his mercy (ver. 17); but restrains it to the
proper object (ver. 11, 17), “to them that fear him;” _i. e._ to them
that believe in him. _Fear_ being the word commonly used for _faith_ in
the Old Testament, under the legal dispensation, wherein the spirit of
bondage was more eminent than the spirit of adoption, and their fear
more than their confidence. Observe,
1. All true blessings grow up from the pardon of sin (ver. 3): “Who
forgives all thine iniquities.” That is the first blessing, the top
and crown of all other favors, which draws all other blessings after
it, and sweetens all other blessings with it. The principal intent of
Christ was expiation of sin, redemption from iniquity; the purchase of
other blessings was consequent upon it. Pardon of sin is every blessing
virtually, and in the root and spring it flows from the favor of God,
and is such a gift as cannot be tainted with a curse, as outward things
may.
2. Where sin is pardoned, the soul is renewed (ver. 3): “Who heals all
thy diseases.” Where guilt is remitted, the deformity and sickness of
the soul is cured. Forgiveness is a teeming mercy; it never goes single;
when we have an interest in Christ, as bearing the chastisement of our
peace, we receive also a balsam from his blood, to heal the wounds we
feel in our nature. (Isa. liii. 5): “The chastisement of our peace was
upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.” As there is a guilt in
sin, which binds us over to punishment, so there is a contagion in sin,
which fills us with pestilent diseases; when the one is removed, the
other is cured. We should not know how to love the one without the
other. The renewing the soul is necessary for a delightful relish of
the other blessings of God. A condemned malefactor, infected with a
leprosy, or any other loathsome distemper, if pardoned, could take
little comfort in his freedom from the gibbet without a cure of his
plague.
3. God is the sole and sovereign Author of all spiritual blessings:
“Who forgives all thy iniquities, and heals all thy diseases.” He
refers all to God, nothing to himself in his own merit and strength.
All, not the pardon of one sin merited by me, not the cure of one
disease can I owe to my own power, and the strength of my freewill,
and the operations of nature. He, and he alone is the Prince of pardon,
the Physician that restores me, the Redeemer that delivers me; it is a
sacrilege to divide the praise between God and ourselves. God only can
knock off our fetters, expel our distempers, and restore a deformed
soul to its decayed beauty.
4. Gracious souls will bless God as much for sanctification as for
justification. The initials of sanctification (and there are no more
in this life) are worthy of solemn acknowledgment. It is a sign of
growth in grace when our hymns are made up of acknowledgments of God’s
sanctifying, as well as pardoning grace. In blessing God {b358} for the
one, we rather show a love to ourselves; in blessing God for the other,
we cast out a pure beam of love to God: because, by purifying grace,
we are fitted to the service of our Maker, prepared to every good work
which is delightful to him; by the other, we are eased in ourselves.
Pardon fills us with inward peace, but sanctification fills us with
an activity for God. Nothing is so capable of setting the soul in
a heavenly tune, as the consideration of God as a pardoner and as a
healer.
5. Where sin is pardoned, the punishment is remitted (ver. 3, 4): “Who
forgives all thy iniquities, and redeems thy life from destruction.”
A malefactor’s pardon puts an end to his chains, frees him from the
stench of the dungeon, and fear of the gibbet. Pardon is nothing else
but the remitting of guilt, and guilt is nothing else but an obligation
to punishment as a penal debt for sin. A creditor’s tearing a bond
frees the debtor from payment and rigor.
6. Growth in grace is always annexed to true sanctification. So that
“thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (ver. 5). Interpreters trouble
themselves much about the manner of the eagle’s renewing its youth,
and regaining its vigor: he speaks best that saith, the Psalmist speaks
only according to the opinion of the vulgar, and his design was not
to write a natural history.[993] Growth always accompanies grace, as
well as it doth nature in the body; not that it is without its qualms
and languishing fits, as children are not, but still their distempers
make them grow. Grace is not an idle, but an active principle. It is
not like the Psalmist means it of the strength of the body, or the
prosperity and stability of his government, but the vigor of his grace
and comfort, since they are spiritual blessings here that are the
matter of his song. The healing the disease conduceth to the sprouting
up and flourishing of the body. It is the nature of grace to go from
strength to strength.
7. When sin is pardoned, it is perfectly pardoned. “As far as the
east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from
us” (ver. 11, 12). The east and west are the greatest distance in the
world; the terms can never meet together. When sin is pardoned, it is
never charged again; the guilt of it can no more return, than east can
become west, or west become east.
8. Obedience is necessary to an interest in the mercy of God. “The
mercy of the Lord is to them that fear him, to them that remember his
commandments, to do them” (ver. 17). Commands are to be remembered
in order to practice; a vain speculation is not the intent of the
publication of them.
After the Psalmist had enumerated the benefits of God, he reflects upon
the greatness of God, and considers him on his throne encompassed with
the angels, the ministers of his providence. “The Lord hath prepared
his throne in the heavens and his kingdom rules over all” (ver. 19). He
brings in this of his dominion just after he had largely treated of his
mercy. Either,
1. To signify, That God is not only to be praised for his mercy, but
for his majesty, both for the height and extent of his authority.
2. To extol the greatness of his mercy and pity. What I have
{b359} said now, O my soul, of the mercy of God, and his paternal pity,
is commended by his majesty; his grandeur hinders not his clemency:
though his throne be high, his bowels are tender. He looks down upon
his meanest servants from the height of his glory. Since his majesty
is infinite, his mercy must be as great as his majesty. It must be a
greater pity lodging in his breast, than what is in any creature, since
it is not damped by the greatness of his sovereignty.
3. To render his mercy more comfortable. The mercy I have spoken
of, O my soul, is not the mercy of a subject, but of a sovereign.
An executioner may torture a criminal, and strip him of his life, and
a vulgar pity cannot relieve him, but the clemency of the prince can
perfectly pardon him. It is that God who hath none above him to control
him, none below him to resist him, that hath performed all the acts
of grace to thee. If God by his supreme authority pardons us, who can
reverse it? If all the subjects of God in the world should pardon us,
and God withhold his grant, what will it profit us? Take comfort, O my
soul, since God from his throne in the highest, and that God who rules
over every particular of the creation, hath granted and sealed thy
pardon to thee. What would his grace signify, if he were not a monarch,
extending his royal empire over everything, and swaying all by his
sceptre?
4. To render the Psalmist’s confidence more firm in any pressures.
Ver. 15, 16. He had considered the misery of man in the shortness of
his life; his place should know him no more; he should never return to
his authority, employments, opportunities, that death would take from
him; but, howsoever, the mercy and majesty of God were the ground of
his confidence. He draws himself from poring upon any calamities which
may assault him, to heaven, the place where God orders all things that
are done on the earth. He is able to protect us from our dangers, and
to deliver us from our distresses; whatsoever miseries thou mayest lie
under, O my soul, cast thy eye up to heaven, and see a pitying God in a
majestic authority: a God who can perform what he hath promised to them
that fear him, since he hath a throne above the heavens, and bears sway
over all that envy thy happiness, and would stain thy felicity: a God
whose authority cannot be curtailed and dismembered by any. When the
prophet solicits the sounding of the Divine bowels, he urgeth him by
his dwelling in heaven, the habitation of his holiness (Isa. lxiii. 15).
His kingdom ruleth over all: there is none therefore hath any authority
to make him break his covenant, or violate his promise.
5. As an incentive to obedience. The Lord is merciful, saith he, to
them “that remember his commandments to do them” (ver. 17, 18): and
then brings in the text as an encouragement to observe his precepts.
He hath a majesty that deserves it from us, and an authority to protect
us in it. If a king in a small spot of earth is to be obeyed by his
subjects, how much more is God, who is more majestic than all the
angels in heaven, and monarchs on earth; who hath a majesty to exact
our obedience, and a mercy to allure it! We should not set upon the
performance of any duty, without an eye lifted up to God as a great
king. It would make us willing to serve him; the more noble the person,
the more honorable and {b360} powerful the prince, the more glorious
is his service. A view of God upon his throne will make us think his
service our privilege, his precepts our ornaments, and obedience to him
the greatest honor and nobility. It will make us weighty and serious in
our performances: it would stake us down to any duty. The reason we are
so loose and unmannerly in the carriage of our souls before God, is
because we consider him not as a “great King” (Mal. i. 14). “Our Father,
which art in heaven,” in regard of his majesty, is the preface to
prayer.
Let us now consider the words in themselves. “The Lord hath prepared
his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.”
_The Lord hath prepared._――The word signifies “established,” as well
as “prepared,” and might so be rendered. Due preparation is a natural
way to the establishment of a thing: hasty resolves break and moulder.
This notes, 1. The infiniteness of his authority. He prepares it, none
else for him. It is a dominion that originally resides in his nature,
not derived from any by birth or commission; he alone prepared it.
He is the sole cause of his own kingdom; his authority therefore is
unbounded, as infinite as his nature: none can set laws to him, because
none but himself prepared his throne for him. As he will not impair
his own happiness, so he will not abridge himself of his own authority.
2. Readiness to exercise it upon due occasions. He hath prepared
his throne: he is not at a loss; he needs not stay for a commission
or instructions from any how to act. He hath all things ready for
the assistance of his people; he hath rewards and punishments; his
treasures and axes, the great marks of authority lying by him, the
one for the good, the other for the wicked. His “mercy he keeps by him
for thousands” (Exod. xxxiv. 7). His “arrows” he hath prepared by him
for rebels (Ps. vii. 13). 3. Wise management of it. It is prepared;
preparations imply prudence; the government of God is not a rash and
heady authority. A prince upon his throne, a judge upon the bench,
manages things with the greatest discretion, or should be supposed
so to do. 4. Successfulness and duration of it. He hath prepared or
established. It is fixed, not tottering; it is an immovable dominion;
all the strugglings of men and devils cannot overturn it, nor so much
as shake it. It is established above the reach of obstinate rebels; he
cannot be deposed from it, he cannot be mated in it. His dominion, as
himself, abides forever. And as his counsel, so his authority, shall
stand, and “he will do all his pleasure” (Isa. xlvi. 10).
_His throne in the heavens._――This is an expression to signify the
authority of God; for as God hath no member properly, though he be
so represented to us, so he hath properly no throne. It signifies his
power of reigning and judging. A throne is proper to royalty, the seat
of majesty in its excellency, and the place where the deepest respect
and homage of subjects is paid, and their petitions presented. That the
throne of God is in the heavens, that there he sits as Sovereign, is
the opinion of all that acknowledge a God; when they stand in need of
his authority to assist them, their eyes are lifted up, and their heads
stretched out to heaven; so his Son Christ prayed; he “lifted up his
eyes to heaven,” as the place where his Father sat {b361} in majesty,
as the most adorable object (John xvii. 1). Heaven hath the title of
his “throne,” as the earth hath that of his “footstool” (Isa. lxvi. 1).
And, therefore, heaven is sometimes put for the authority of God (Dan.
iv. 26). “After that thou shalt have known that the heavens do rule,”
_i. e._ that God, who hath his throne in the heavens, orders earthly
princes and sceptres as he pleases, and rules over the kingdoms of the
world. His throne in the heavens notes, 1. The glory of his dominion.
The heavens are the most stately and comely pieces of the creation. His
majesty is there most visible, his glory most splendid (Ps. xix. 1).
The heavens speak out with a full mouth his glory. It is therefore
called “the habitation” of his “holiness and of his glory” (Isa. lxiii.
15). There is the greater glister and brightness of his glory. The
whole earth, indeed, is full of his glory, full of the beams of it;
the heaven is full of the body of it; as the rays of the sun reach
the earth, but the full glory of it is in the firmament. In heaven
his dominion is more acknowledged by the angels standing at his beck,
and by their readiness and swiftness obeying his commands, going and
returning as a flash of lightning (Ezek. i. 14). His throne may well be
said to be in the heavens, since his dominion is not disputed there by
the angels that attend him, as it is on earth by the rebels that arm
themselves against him. 2. The supremacy of his empire. The heavens are
the loftiest part of the creation, and the only fit palace for him; it
is in the heavens his majesty and dignity are so sublime, that they are
elevated above all earthly empires. 3. Peculiarity of this dominion. He
rules in the heavens alone. There is some shadow of empire in the world.
Royalty is communicated to men as his substitutes. He hath disposed a
vicarious dominion to men in his footstool, the earth; he gives them
some share in his authority; and, therefore, the title of his name (Ps.
lxxxii. 6): “I have said, ye are gods;” but in heaven he reigns alone
without any substitutes; his throne is there. He gives out his orders
to the angels himself; the marks of his immediate sovereignty are there
most visible. He hath no vicars‑general of that empire. His authority
is not delegated to any creature; he rules the blessed spirits by
himself; but he rules men that are on his footstool by others of the
same kind, men of their own nature. 4. The vastness of his empire. The
earth is but a spot to the heavens; what is England in a map to the
whole earth, but a spot you may cover with your finger? much less must
the whole earth be to the extended heavens; it is but a little point or
atom to what is visible; the sun is vastly bigger than it, and several
stars are supposed to be of a greater bulk than the earth; and how many,
and what heavens are beyond, the ignorance of man cannot understand. If
the “throne” of God be there, it is a larger circuit he rules in than
can well be conceived. You cannot conceive the many millions of little
particles there are in the earth; and if all put together be but as
one point to that place where the throne of God is seated, how vast
must his empire be! He rules there over the angels, which “excel in
strength” those “hosts” of his “which do his pleasure,” in comparison
of whom all the men in the world, and the power of the greatest
potentates, is no more than the strength {b362} of an ant or fly;
multitudes of them encircle his throne, and listen to his orders
without roving, and execute them without disputing. And since his
throne is in the heavens, it will follow, that all things under the
heaven are parts of his dominion; his throne being in the highest
place, the inferior things of earth cannot but be subject to him; and
it necessarily includes his influence on all things below: because the
heavens are the cause of all the motion in the world, the immediate
thing the earth doth naturally address to for corn, wine, and oil,
above which there is no superior but the Lord (Hos. ii. 21, 22):
“The earth hears the corn, wine, and oil; the heavens hear the earth,
and the Lord hears the heavens.” 5. The easiness of managing this
government. His throne being placed on high, he cannot but behold all
things that are done below; the height of a place gives advantage to
a pure and clear eye to behold things below it. Had the sun an eye,
nothing could be done in the open air out of its ken. The “throne” of
God being in heaven, he easily looks from thence upon all the children
of men (Ps. xiv. 2): “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the
children of men, to see if there were any that did understand.” He
looks not down from heaven as if he were in regard of his presence
confined there: but he looks down majestically, and by way of authority,
not as the look of a bare spectator, but the look of a governor, to
pass a sentence upon them as a judge. His being in the heavens renders
him capable of doing “whatsoever he pleases” (Ps. cxv. 3). His “throne”
being there, he can by a word, in stopping the motions of the heavens,
turn the whole earth into confusion. In this respect, it is said, “He
rides upon the heaven in thy help” (Deut. xxxiii. 26); discharges his
thunders upon men, and makes the influences of it serve his people’s
interest. By one turn of a cock, as you see in grottoes, he can cause
streams from several parts of the heavens to refresh, or ruin the world.
6. Duration of it. The heavens are incorruptible; his throne is placed
there in an incorruptible state. Earthly empires have their decays and
dissolutions. The throne of God outlives the dissolution of the world.
_His kingdom rules over all._――He hath an absolute right over all
things within the circuit of heaven and earth; though his throne be
in heaven, as the place where his glory is most eminent and visible,
his authority most exactly obeyed, yet his kingdom extends itself to
the lower parts of the earth. He doth not muffle and cloud up himself
in heaven, or confine his sovereignty to that place, his royal power
extends to all visible, as well as invisible things: he is proprietor
and possessor of all (Deut. x. 14): “The heaven and the heaven of
heavens is the Lord’s thy God, the earth also, with all that is there.”
He hath right to dispose of all as he pleases. He doth not say, his
kingdom rules all that fear him, but, “over all;” so that it is not the
kingdom of _grace_ he here speaks of, but his _natural_ and universal
kingdom. Over angels and men; Jews and Gentiles; animate and inanimate
things.
The Psalmist considers God here as a great monarch and general, and
all creatures as his hosts and regiments under him, and takes notice
principally of two things. 1. The establishment of his throne {b363}
together with the seat of it. _He hath prepared his throne in the
heavens._ 2. The extent of his empire.――_His kingdom rules over all._
This text, in all the parts of it, is a fit basis for a discourse upon
the dominion of God, and the observation will be this.
_Doctrine._――God is sovereign Lord and King, and exerciseth a dominion
over the whole world, both heaven and earth. This is so clear, that
nothing is more spoken of in Scripture. The very name, “Lord,” imports
it; a name originally belonging to gods, and from them translated to
others. And he is frequently called “the Lord of Hosts,” because all
the troops and armies of spiritual and corporeal creatures are in his
hands, and at his service: this is one of his principal titles. And the
angels are called his “hosts” (ver. 21, following the text) his camp
and militia: but more plainly (1 Kings, xxii. 19), God is presented
upon his throne, encompassed with all the “hosts of heaven” standing
on his right hand and on his left, which can be understood of no other
than the angels, that wait for the commands of their Sovereign, and
stand about, not to counsel him, but to receive his orders. The sun,
moon, and stars, are called his “hosts” (Deut. iv. 19); appointed
by him for the government of inferior things: he hath an absolute
authority over the greatest and the least creatures; over those that
are most dreadful, and those that are most beneficial; over the good
angels that willingly obey him, over the evil angels that seem most
incapable of government. And as he is thus “Lord of hosts,” he is the
“King of glory,” or a glorious King (Ps. xxiv. 10). You find him called
a “great King,” the “Most High” (Ps. xcii. 1), the Supreme Monarch,
there being no dignity in heaven or earth but what is dim before him,
and infinitely inferior to him; yea, he hath the title of “Only King”
(1 Tim. vi. 15). The title of royalty truly and properly only belongs
to him: you may see it described very magnificently by David, at the
free‑will offering for the building of the temple (1 Chron. xxix. 11,
12): “Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory,
and the victory, and the majesty; thine is the kingdom, O God, and
thou art exalted as Head above all: both riches and honor come of thee,
and thou reignest over all; and in thy hand is power and might; and in
thy hand it is to make great, and to give strength to all.” He hath an
eminency of power or authority above all: all earthly princes received
their diadems from him, yea, even those that will not acknowledge him,
and he hath a more absolute power over them than they can challenge
over their meanest vassals: as God hath a knowledge infinitely above
our knowledge, so he hath a dominion incomprehensibly above any
dominion of man; and, by all the shadows drawn from the authority of
one man over another, we can have but weak glimmerings of the authority
and dominion of God.
There is a threefold dominion of God. 1. Natural, which is absolute
over all creatures, and is founded in the nature of God as Creator.
2. Spiritual, or gracious, which is a dominion over his church as
redeemed, and founded in the covenant of grace. 3. A glorious kingdom,
at the winding up of all, wherein he shall reign over all, either in
the glory of his mercy, as over the glorified saints, or in the glory
of his justice, in the condemned devils and men. The first {b364}
dominion is founded in nature; the second in grace; the third in regard
of the blessed in grace; in regard of the damned, in demerit in them,
and justice in him. He is Lord of all things, and always in regard
of propriety (Ps. xxiv. 1): “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness
thereof; the world, and all that dwell therein.” The earth, with the
riches and treasures in the bowels of it; the habitable world, with
everything that moves upon it, are his; he hath the sole right, and
what right soever any others have is derived from him. In regard
also of possession (Gen. xiv. 22): “The Most High God, possessor of
heaven and earth:” in respect of whom, man is not the proprietary nor
possessor, but usufructuary at the will of this grand Lord.
In the prosecution of this, I. I shall lay down some general
propositions for the clearing and confirming it. II. I shall show
wherein this right of dominion is founded. III. What the nature of it
is. IV. Wherein it consists; and how it is manifested.
I. Some general propositions for the clearing and confirming of it.
1. We must know the difference between the might or power of God and
his authority. We commonly mean by the power of God the strength of
God, whereby he is able to effect all his purposes; by the authority
of God, we mean the right he hath to act what he pleases: omnipotence
is his physical power, whereby he is able to do what he will; dominion
is his moral power, whereby it is lawful for him to do what he will.
Among men, strength and authority are two distinct things; a subject
may be a giant, and be stronger than his prince, but he hath not the
same authority as his prince: worldly dominion may be seated, not in a
brawny arm, but a sickly and infirm body. As knowledge and wisdom are
distinguished; knowledge respects the matter, being, and nature of a
thing; wisdom respects the harmony, order, and actual usefulness of a
thing; knowledge searcheth the nature of a thing, and wisdom employs
that thing to its proper use: a man may have much knowledge, and little
wisdom; so a man may have much strength, and little or no authority; a
greater strength may be settled in the servant, but a greater authority
resides in the master; strength is the natural vigor of a man: God hath
an infinite strength, he hath a strength to bring to pass whatsoever
he decrees; he acts without fainting and weakness (Isa. xl. 28), and
impairs not his strength by the exercise of it: as God is Lord, he hath
a right to enact; as he is almighty, he hath a power to execute; his
strength is the executive power belonging to his dominion: in regard
of his sovereignty, he hath a right to command all creatures; in regard
of his almightiness, he hath power to make his commands be obeyed, or
to punish men for the violation of them: his power is that whereby he
subdues all creatures under him; his dominion is that whereby he hath
a right to subdue all creatures under him. This dominion is a right
of making what he pleases, of possessing what he made, of disposing of
what he doth possess; whereas his power is an ability to make what he
hath a right to create, to hold what he doth possess, and to execute
the manner wherein he resolves to dispose of his creatures.
2. All the other attributes of God refer to this perfection of
dominion. {b365} They all bespeak him fit for it, and are discovered
in the exercise of it (which hath been manifested in the discourses of
those attributes we have passed through hitherto). His goodness fits
him for it, because he can never use his authority but for the good
of the creatures, and conducting them to their true end: his wisdom
can never be mistaken in the exercise of it; his power can accomplish
the decrees that flow from his absolute authority. What can be more
rightful than the placing authority in such an infinite Goodness, that
hath bowels to pity, as well as a sceptre to sway his subjects? that
hath a mind to contrive, and a will to regulate his contrivances for
his own glory and his creatures’ good, and an arm of power to bring
to pass what he orders? Without this dominion, some perfections, as
justice and mercy, would lie in obscurity, and much of his wisdom would
be shrouded from our sight and knowledge.
3. This of dominion, as well as that of power, hath been acknowledged
by all. The high priest was to “waive the offering,” or shake it to
and fro (Exod. xxix. 24), which the Jews say was customarily from east
to west, and from north to south, the four quarters of the world, to
signify God’s sovereignty over all the parts of the world; and some of
the heathens, in their adorations, turned their bodies to all quarters,
to signify the extensive dominion of God throughout the whole earth.
That dominion did of right pertain to the Deity, was confessed by the
heathen in the name “Baal,” given to their idols, which signifies Lord;
and was not a name of one idol, adored for a god, but common to all
the eastern idols. God hath interwoven the notion of his sovereignty
in the nature and constitution of man, in the noblest and most inward
acts of his soul, in that faculty or act which is most necessary for
him, in his converse in this world, either with God or man: it is
stamped upon the conscience of man, and flashes in his face in every
act of self‑judgment conscience passes upon a man: every reflection
of conscience implies an obligation of man to some law “written in
his heart” (Rom. ii. 15). This law cannot be without a legislator, nor
this legislator without a sovereign dominion; these are but natural and
easy consequences in the mind of man from every act of conscience. The
indelible authority of conscience in man, in the whole exercise of it,
bears a respect to the sovereignty of God, clearly proclaims not only
a supreme Being, but a supreme Governor, and points man directly to
it, that a man may as soon deny his having such a reflecting principle
within him, as deny God’s dominion over him, and consequently over the
whole world of rational creatures.
4. This notion of sovereignty is inseparable from the notion of a
God. To acknowledge the existence of a God, and to acknowledge him
a rewarder, are linked together (Heb. xi. 6). To acknowledge him a
rewarder, is to acknowledge him a governor; rewards being the marks of
dominion. The very name of God includes in it a supremacy and an actual
rule. He cannot be conceived as God, but he must be conceived as the
highest authority in the world. It is as possible for him not to be God
as not to be supreme. Wherein can the exercise of his excellencies be
apparent, but in his sovereign rule? {b366} To fancy an infinite power
without a supreme dominion, is to fancy a mighty senseless statue, fit
to be beheld, but not fit to be obeyed; as not being able or having
no right to give out orders, or not caring for the exercise of it.
God cannot be supposed to be the chief being, but he must be supposed
to give laws to all, and receive laws from none. And if we suppose
him with a perfection of justice and righteousness (which we must do,
unless we would make a lame and imperfect God) we must suppose him
to have an entire dominion, without which he could never be able to
manifest his justice. And without a supreme dominion he could not
manifest the supremacy and infiniteness of his righteousness.
(1.) We cannot suppose God a Creator, without supposing a sovereign
dominion in him. No creature can be made without some law in its
nature; if it had not law, it would be created to no purpose, to no
regular end. It would be utterly unbecoming an infinite wisdom to
create a lawless creature, a creature wholly vain; much less can a
rational creature be made without a law: if it had no law, it were not
rational: for the very notion of a rational creature implies reason to
be a law to it, and implies an acting by rule. If you could suppose
rational creatures without a law, you might suppose that they might
blaspheme their Creator, and murder their fellow‑creatures, and commit
the most abominable villanies destructive to human society, without sin;
for “where there is no law, there is no transgression.”[994] But those
things are accounted sins by all mankind, and sins against the Supreme
Being: so that a dominion, and the exercise of it, is so fast linked to
God, so entirely in him, so intrinsic in his nature, that it cannot be
imagined that a rational creature can be made by him, without a stamp
and mark of that dominion in his very nature and frame; it is so
inseparable from God in his very act of creation.
(2.) It is such a dominion as cannot be renounced by God himself. It
is so intrinsic and connatural to him, so inlaid in the nature of God,
that he cannot strip himself of it, nor of the exercise of it, while
any creature remains. It is preserved by him, for it could not subsist
of itself; it is governed by him, it could not else answer its end. It
is impossible there can be a creature, which hath not God for its Lord.
Christ himself, though in regard of his Deity equal with God, yet in
regard of his created state, and assuming our nature, was God’s servant,
was governed by him in the whole of his office, acted according to his
command and directions; God calls him his servant (Isa. xlii. 1): and
Christ, in that prophetic psalm of him, calls God his Lord (Ps. xvi. 2):
“O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord.” It was
impossible it should be otherwise; justice had been so far from being
satisfied, that it had been highly incensed if the order of things in
the due subjection to God had been broke, and his terms had not been
complied with. It would be a judgment upon the world if God should give
up the government to any else, as it is when he gives “children to be
princes” (Isa. iii. 4); _i. e._ children in understanding.
(3.) It is so inseparable, that it cannot be communicated to any {b367}
creature. No creature is able to exercise it; every creature is unable
to perform all the offices that belong to this dominion. No creature
can impose laws upon the consciences of men: man knows not the inlets
into the soul, his pen cannot reach the inwards of man. What laws he
hath power to propose to conscience, he cannot see executed; because
every creature wants omniscience; he is not able to perceive all those
breaches of the law which may be committed at the same time in so many
cities, so many chambers. Or, suppose an angel, in regard to the height
of his standing, and the insufficiency of walls, and darkness, and
distance to obstruct his view, can behold men’s actions, yet he cannot
know the internal acts of men’s minds and wills, without some outward
eruption and appearance of them. And if he be ignorant of them, how
can he execute his laws? If he only understand the outward fact without
the inward thought, how can he dispense a justice proportionable to
the crime? he must needs be ignorant of that which adds the greatest
aggravation sometimes to a sin, and inflicts a lighter punishment upon
that which receives a deeper tincture from the inward posture of the
mind, than another fact may do, which in the outward act may appear
more base and unjust; and so while he intends righteousness, may act a
degree of injustice. Besides, no creature can inflict a due punishment
for sin; that which is due to sin, is a loss of the vision and sight
of God; but none can deprive any of that but God himself; nor can a
creature reward another with eternal life, which consists in communion
with God, which none but God can bestow.[995]
II. Wherein the dominion of God is founded.
1. On the excellency of his nature. Indeed, a bare excellency of
nature bespeaks a fitness for government, but doth not properly
convey a right of government. Excellency speaks aptitude, not title: a
subject may have more wisdom than the prince, and be fitter to hold the
reins of government, but he hath not a title to royalty. A man of large
capacity and strong virtue is fit to serve his country in parliament,
but the election of the people conveys a title to him. Yet a strain
of intellectual and moral abilities beyond others, is a foundation for
dominion. And it is commonly seen that such eminences in men, though
they do not invest them with a civil authority, or an authority of
jurisdiction, yet they create a veneration in the minds of men; their
virtue attracts reverence, and their advice is regarded as an oracle.
Old men by their age, when stored with more wisdom and knowledge by
reason of their long experience, acquire a kind of power over the
younger in their dictates and councils, so that they gain, by the
strength of that excellency, a real authority in the minds of those
men they converse with, and possess themselves of a deep respect for
them. God therefore being an incomprehensible ocean of all perfection,
and possessing infinitely all those virtues that may lay a claim
to dominion, hath the first foundation of it in his own nature. His
incomparable and unparalleled excellency, as well as the greatness of
his work, attracts the voluntary worship of him as a sovereign Lord
(Ps. lxxxvi. 8): “Among the gods, there is none like unto thee; neither
are there any works {b368} like unto thy work. All nations shall come
and worship before thee.” Though his benefits are great engagements to
our obedience and affection, yet his infinite majesty and perfection
requires the first place in our acknowledgements and adorations. Upon
this account God claims it (Isa. xlvi. 9): “I am God, and there is none
like me; I will do all my pleasure:” and the prophet Jeremiah upon the
same account acknowledgeth it (Jer. x. 6, 7): “Forasmuch as there is
none like unto thee, O Lord, thou art great, and thy name is great in
might: who would not fear thee, O King of nations? for to thee doth
it appertain: forasmuch as there is none like unto thee.” And this is
a more noble title of dominion, it being an uncreated title, and more
eminent than that of creation or preservation. This is the natural
order God hath placed in his creatures, that the more excellent should
rule the inferior.[996] He committed not the government of lower
creatures to lions and tigers, that have a delight in blood, but no
knowledge of virtue; but to man, who had an eminence in his nature
above other creatures, and was formed with a perfect rectitude, and a
height of reason to guide the reins over them. In man, the soul being
of a more sublime nature, is set of right to rule over the body; the
mind, the most excellent faculty of the soul, to rule over the other
powers of it: and wisdom, the most excellent habit of the mind, to
guide and regulate that in its determinations; and when the body and
sensitive appetite control the soul and mind, it is an usurpation
against nature, not a rule according to nature. The excellency, thereof,
of the Divine nature is the natural foundation for his dominion.
He hath wisdom to know what is fit for him to do, and an immutable
righteousness whereby he cannot do any thing base and unworthy: he hath
a foreknowledge whereby he is able to order all things to answer his
own glorious designs and the end of his government, that nothing can
go awry, nothing put him to a stand, and constrain him to meditate
new counsels. So that if it could be supposed that the world had not
been created by him, that the parts of it had met together by chance,
and been compacted into such a body, none but God, the supreme and
most excellent Being in the world, could have merited, and deservedly
challenged the government of it; because nothing had an excellency of
nature to capacitate it for it, as he hath, or to enter into a contest
with him for a sufficiency to govern.[997]
2. It is founded in his act of creation. He is the sovereign Lord, as
he is the almighty Creator. The relation of an entire Creator induceth
the relation of an absolute Lord; he that gives being, motion, that is
the sole cause of the being of a thing, which was before nothing, that
hath nothing to concur with him, nothing to assist him, but by his
sole power commands it to stand up into being, is the unquestionable
Lord and proprietor of that thing that hath no dependence but upon
him; and by this act of creation, which extended to all things, he
became universal Sovereign over all things: and those that waive
the excellency of his nature as the foundation of his government,
easily acknowledge the sufficiency of it upon his actual creation. His
dominion of jurisdiction results from creation. {b369} When God himself
makes an oration in defence of his sovereignty (Job xxxviii.), his
chief arguments are drawn from creation; and (Ps. xcv. 3, 5), “The Lord
is a great King above all gods; the sea is his, and he made it:” and
so the apostle, in his sermon to the Athenians. As he “made the world,
and all things therein,” he is styled, “Lord of heaven and earth” (Acts
xvii. 24). His dominion, also, of property stands upon this basis:
“The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world, and
the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them” (Ps. lxxxix. 11). Upon
this title of forming Israel as a creature, or rather as a church, he
demands their service to him as their Sovereign: “O Jacob and Israel,
thou art my servant, I have formed thee: thou art my servant, O Israel”
(Isa. xliv. 21). The sovereignty of God naturally ariseth from the
relation of all things to himself as their entire Creator, and their
natural and inseparable dependence upon him in regard of their being
and well‑being. It depends not upon the election of men; God hath a
natural dominion over us as creatures, before he hath a dominion by
consent over us as converts: as soon as ever anything began to be a
creature, it was a vassal to God, as a Lord. Every man is acknowledged
to have a right of possessing what he hath made, and a power of
dominion over what he hath framed: he may either cherish his own work,
or dash it in pieces; he may either add a greater comeliness to it, or
deface what he hath already imparted. He hath a right of property in
it: no other man can, without injury, pilfer his own work from him. The
work hath no propriety in itself; the right must lie in the immediate
framer, or in the person that employed him. The first cause of
everything hath an unquestionable dominion of propriety in it upon the
score of justice. By the law of nations, the first finder of a country
is esteemed the rightful possessor and lord of that country, and the
first inventor of an art hath a right of exercising it. If a man hath
a just claim of dominion over that thing whose materials were not of
his framing, but from only the addition of a new figure from his skill;
as a limner over his picture, the cloth whereof he never made, nor
the colors wherewith he draws it were never endued by him with their
distinct qualities, but only he applies them by his art, to compose
such a figure; much more hath God a rightful claim of dominion over
his creatures, whose entire being, both in matter and form, and every
particle of their excellency, was breathed out by the word of his mouth.
He did not only give the matter a form, but bestowed upon the matter
itself a being; it was formed by none to his hand, as the matter is on
which an artist works. He had the being of all things in his own power,
and it was at his choice whether he would impart it or no; there can
be no juster and stronger ground of a claim than this. A man hath a
right to a piece of brass or gold by his purchase, but when by his
engraving he hath formed it into an excellent statue, there results an
increase of his right upon the account of his artifice. God’s creation
of the matter of man gave him a right over man; but his creation of
him in so eminent an excellency, with reason to guide him, a clear
eye of understanding to discern light from darkness, and truth from
falsehood, a freedom of will to act accordingly, and {b370} an original
righteousness as the varnish and beauty of all; here is the strongest
foundation for a claim of authority over man, and the strongest
obligation on man for subjection to God. If all those things had been
past over to God by another hand, he could not be the supreme Lord, nor
could have an absolute right to dispose of them at his pleasure: that
would have been the invasion of another’s right. Besides, creation is
the only first discovery of his dominion. Before the world was framed
there was nothing but God himself, and, properly, nothing is said to
have dominion over itself; this is a relative attribute, reflecting on
the works of God.[998] He had a right of dominion in his nature from
eternity, but before creation he was actually Lord only of a nullity;
where there is nothing it can have no relation; nothing is not the
subject of possession nor of dominion. There could be no exercise of
this dominion without creation: what exercise can a sovereign have
without subjects? Sovereignty speaks a relation to subjects, and none
is properly a sovereign without subjects. To conclude: from hence doth
result God’s universal dominion; for being Maker of all, he is the
ruler of all, and his perpetual dominion; for as long as God continues
in the relation of Creator, the right of his sovereignty as Creator
cannot be abolished.
3. As God is the final cause, or end of all, he is Lord of all. The
end hath a greater sovereignty in actions than the actor itself: the
actor hath a sovereignty over others in action, but the end for which
any one works hath a sovereignty over the agent himself: a limner hath
a sovereignty over the picture he is framing, or hath framed, but the
end for which he framed it, either his profit he designed from it, or
the honor and credit of skill he aimed at in it, hath a dominion over
the limner himself: the end moves and excites the artist to work; it
spirits him in it, conducts him in his whole business, possesses his
mind, and sits triumphant in him in all the progress of his work; it
is the first cause for which the whole work is wrought.[999] Now God,
in his actual creation of all, is the sovereign end of all; “for thy
pleasure they are and were created” (Rev. iv. 11); “The Lord hath made
all things for himself” (Prov. xvi. 4). Man, indeed, is the subordinate
and immediate end of the lower creation, and therefore had the dominion
over other creatures granted to him: but God being the ultimate and
principal end, hath the sovereign and principal dominion; all things as
much refer to him, as the last end, as they flow from him as the first
cause. So that, as I said before, if the world had been compacted
together by a jumbling chance, without a wise hand, as some have
foolishly imagined, none could have been an antagonist with God for the
government of the world; but God, in regard of the excellency of his
nature, would have been the Rector of it, unless those atoms that had
composed the world had had an ability to govern it. Since there could
be no universal end of all things but God, God only can claim an entire
right to the government of it; for though man be the end of the lower
creation, yet man is not the end of himself and his own being; he is
not the end of the creation of the supreme {b371} heavens; he is not
able to govern them; they are out of his ken, and out of his reach.
None fit in regard of the excellency of nature, to be the chief end
of the whole world but God; and therefore none can have a right to the
dominion of it but God: in this regard God’s dominion differs from the
dominion of all earthly potentates. All the subjects in creation were
made for God as their end, so are not people for rulers, but rulers
made for people for their protection, and the preservation of order
in societies.
4. The dominion of God is founded upon his preservation of things. (Ps.
xcv. 3, 4); “The Lord is a great King above all gods:” why? “In his
hand are all the deep places of the earth.” While his hand holds things,
his hand hath a dominion over them. He that holds a stone in the air,
exerciseth a dominion over its natural inclination in hindering it from
falling. The creature depends wholly upon God in its preservation; as
soon as that Divine hand which sustains everything were withdrawn, a
languishment and swooning would be the next turn in the creature. He is
called Lord, _Adonai_, in regard of his sustentation of all things by
his continual influx; the word coming of אדן, which signifies a basis
or pillar, that supports a building. God is the Lord of all, as he is
the sustainer of all by his power, as well as the Creator of all by
his word. The sun hath a sovereign dominion over its own beams, which
depend upon it, so that if he withdraws himself, they all attend him,
and the world is left in darkness. God maintains the vigor of all
things, conducts them in their operations; so that nothing that they
are, nothing that they have, but is owing to his preserving power.
The Master of this great family may as well be called the Lord of it,
since every member of it depends upon him for the support of that being
he first gave them, and holds of his empire. As the right to govern
resulted from creation, so it is perpetuated by the preservation of
things.
5. The dominion of God is strengthened by the innumerable benefits
he bestows upon his creatures: the benefits he confers upon us after
creation, are not the original ground of his dominion. A man hath not
authority over his servant from the kindness he shows to him, but his
authority commenceth before any act of kindness, and is founded upon a
right of purchase, conquest, or compact. Dominion doth not depend upon
mere benefits; then inferiors might have dominions over superiors. A
peasant may save the life of a prince to whom he was not subject; he
hath not therefore a right to step up into his throne and give laws to
him: and children that maintain their parents in their poverty, might
then acquire an authority over them which they can never climb to;
because the benefits they confer cannot parallel the benefits they have
received from the authors of their lives. The bounties of God to us add
nothing to the intrinsic right of his natural dominion; they being the
effects of that sovereignty, as he is a rewarder and governor; as the
benefits a prince bestows upon his favorite increases not that right of
authority which is inherent in the crown, but strengthens that dominion
as it stands in relation to the receiver, by increasing the obligation
of the favorite to an observance of him, not only as {b372} his natural
prince, but his gracious benefactor. The beneficence of God adds,
though not an original right of power, yet a foundation of a stronger
upbraiding the creature, if he walks in a violation and forgetfulness
of those benefits, and pull in pieces the links of that ingenuous duty
they call for; and an occasion of exercising of justice in punishing
the delinquent, which is a part of his empire (Isa. i. 2): “Hear, O
heavens, and give ear, O earth, the Lord hath spoken; I have nourished
children, and they have rebelled against me.” Thus the fundamental
right as Creator is made more indisputable by his relation as a
benefactor, and more as being so after a forfeiture of what was enjoyed
by creation. The benefits of God are innumerable, and so magnificent
that they cannot meet with any compensation from the creature; and,
therefore, do necessarily require a submission from the creature, and
an acknowledgment of Divine authority. But that benefit of redemption
doth add a stronger right of dominion to God; since he hath not only as
a Creator given them being and life as his creatures, but paid a price,
the price of his Son’s blood, for their rescue from captivity; so that
he hath a sovereignty of grace as well as nature, and the ransomed
ones belong to him as Redeemer as well as Creator (1 Cor. vi. 19, 20):
“Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price;” therefore your
body and your spirit are God’s. By this he acquired a right of another
kind, and bought us from that uncontrollable lordship we affected over
ourselves by the sin of Adam, that he might use us as his own peculiar
for his own glory and service. By this redemption there results to God
a right over our bodies, over our spirits, over our services, as well
as by creation; and to show the strength of this right, the apostle
repeats it, “you are bought;” a purchase cannot be without a price
paid; but he adds price also, “bought with a price.” To strengthen the
title, purchase gave him a new right, and the greatness of the price
established that right. The more a man pays for a thing, the more
usually we say, he deserves to have it, he hath paid enough for it; it
was, indeed, price enough, and too much for such vile creatures as we
are.
III. The third thing is, The nature of this dominion.
1. This dominion is independent. His throne is in the heavens; the
heavens depend not upon the earth, nor God upon his creatures. Since
he is independent in regard of his essence, he is so in his dominion,
which flows from the excellency and fulness of his essence; as he
receives his essence from none, so he derives his dominion from none;
all other dominion except paternal authority is rooted originally in
the wills of men. The first title was the consent of the people, or the
conquest of others by the help of those people that first consented;
and in the exercise of it, earthly dominion depends upon assistance
of the subjects, and the members being joined with the head carry on
the work of government, and prevent civil dissensions; in the support
of it, it depends upon the subjects’ contributions and taxes; the
subjects in their strength are the arms, and in their purses the sinews
of government; but God depends upon none in the foundation of his
government; he is not a Lord by the votes {b373} of his vassals.[1000]
Nor is it successively handed to him by any predecessor, nor
constituted by the power of a superior; nor forced he his way by war
and conquest, nor precariously attained it by suit or flattery, or
bribing promises. He holds not the right of his empire from any other;
he hath no superior to hand him to his throne, and settle him by
commission; he is therefore called “King of kings, and Lord of lords,”
having none above him; “A great King above all gods” (Ps. xcv. 3):
needing no license from any when to act, nor direction how to act,
or assistance in his action; he owes not any of those to any person;
he was not ordered by any other to create, and therefore received not
orders from any other to rule over what he hath created. He received
not his power and wisdom from another, and therefore is not subject
to any for the rule of his government. He only made his own subjects,
and from himself hath the sole authority; his own will was the cause
of their beings, and his own will is the director of their actions.
He is not determined by his creatures in any of his motions, but
determines the creatures in all; his actions are not regulated by any
law without him, but by a law within him, the law of his own nature.
It is impossible he can have any rule without himself, because there
is nothing superior to himself, nor doth he depend upon any in the
exercise of his government; he needs no servants in it, when he
uses creatures: it is not out of want of their help, but for the
manifestation of his wisdom and power. What he doth by his subjects, he
can do by himself: “The government is upon his shoulder” (Isa. ix. 6),
to show that he needs not any supporters. All other governments flow
from him, all other authorities depend upon him; _Dei Gratiâ_, or _Dei
Providentiâ_, is in the style of princes. As their being is derived
from his power, so their authority is but a branch of his dominion.
They are governors by Divine providence; God is governor by his sole
nature. All motions depend upon the first heaven, which moves all; but
that depends upon nothing. The government of Christ depends upon God’s
uncreated dominion, and is by commission from him; Christ assumed not
this honor to himself, “But he that said unto him, Thou art my Son,”
bestowed it upon him. “He put all things under his feet,” but not
himself (1 Cor. xv. 27). “When he saith, All things are put under him,
he is excepted, which did put all things under him.” He sits still as
an independent governor upon his throne.
2. This dominion is absolute. If his throne be in the heavens,
there is nothing to control him. If he be independent, he must needs
be absolute; since he hath no cause in conjunction with him as Creator,
that can share with him in his right, or restrain him in the disposal
of his creature. His authority is unlimited; in this regard the title
of “Lord” becomes not any but God properly. Tiberius, though none of
the best, though one of the subtilest princes, accounted the title of
“Lord” a reproach to him: since he was not absolute.[1001]
1st. Absolute in regard of freedom and liberty. (1.) Thus creation is
a work of his mere sovereignty; he created, because it was his pleasure
{b374} to create (Rev. iv. 11). He is not necessitated to do this or
that. He might have chosen whether he would have framed an earth and
heavens, and laid the foundations of his chambers in the waters. He
was under no obligation to reduce things from nullity to existence.
(2.) Preservation is the fruit of his sovereignty. When he had called
the world to stand out, he might have ordered it to return into its
dark den of nothingness, ripped up every part of its foundation, or
have given being to many more creatures then he did. If you consider
his absolute sovereignty, why might he not have divested Adam presently
of those rational perfections wherewith he had endowed him? And might
he not have metamorphosed him into some beast, and elevated some beast
into a rational nature? Why might he not have degraded an angel to a
worm, and advanced a worm to the nature and condition of an angel? Why
might he not have revoked that grant of dominion, which he had passed
to man over all creatures? It was free to him to permit sin to enter
into the earth, or to have excluded it out of the earth, as he doth
out of heaven. (3.) Redemption is a fruit of his sovereignty. By his
absolute sovereignty he might have confirmed all the angels in their
standing by grace, and prevented the revolt of any of their members
from him; and when there was a revolt both in heaven and earth, it was
free to him to have called out his Son to assume the angelical, as well
as the human, nature, or have exercised his dominion in the destruction
of men and devils, rather than in the redemption of any; he was under
no obligation to restore either the one or the other. (4.) May he not
impose what terms he pleases? May he not impose what laws he pleases,
and exact what he will of his creature without promising any rewards?
May he not use his own for his own honor, as well as men use for their
credit what they do possess by his indulgence? (5.) Affliction is an
act of his sovereignty. By this right of sovereignty, may not God take
away any man’s goods, since they were his doles? As he was not indebted
to us when he bestowed them, so he cannot wrong us when he removes
them. He takes from us what is more his own than it is ours, and was
never ours but by his gift, and that for a time only, not forever. By
this right he may determine our times, put a period to our days when he
pleases, strip us of one member, and lop off another. Man’s being was
from him, and why should he not have a sovereignty to take what he had
a sovereignty to give? Why should this seem strange to any of us, since
we ourselves exercise an absolute dominion over those things in our
possession, which have sense and feeling, as well as over those that
want it? Doth not every man think he hath an absolute authority over
the utensils of his house, over his horse, his dog, to preserve or kill
him, to do what he please with him, without rendering any other reason
than, _It is my own?_ May not God do much more? Doth not his dominion
over the work of his hands transcend that which a man can claim over
his beast that he never gave life unto? He that dares dispute against
God’s absolute right, fancies himself as much a god as his Creator:
understands not the vast difference between the Divine nature and his
own; between the sovereignty of God and his own, which is all the theme
{b375} God himself discourseth upon in those stately chapters (Job.
xxxviii., xxxix. &c.); not mentioning a word of Job’s sin, but only
vindicating the rights of his own authority. Nor doth Job, in his
reply (Job xl. 4), speak of his sin, but of his natural vileness as a
creature in the presence of his Creator. By this right, God unstops the
bottles of heaven in one place, and stops them in another, causing it
“to rain upon one city, and not upon another” (Amos iv. 7); ordering
the clouds to move to this or that quarter where he hath a mind to be
a benefactor or a judge. (6.) Unequal dispensations are acts of his
sovereignty. By this right he is patient toward those whose sins, by
the common voice of men, deserve speedy judgments, and pours out pain
upon those that are patterns of virtue to the world. By this he gives
sometimes the worst of men an ocean of wealth and honor to swim in,
and reduceth an useful and exemplary grace to a scanty poverty. By
this he “rules the kingdoms of men,” and sets a crown upon the head of
the basest of men (Dan. iv. 17), while he deposeth another that seemed
to deserve a weightier diadem. This is, as he is the Lord of the
ammunition of his thunders, and the treasures of his bounty. (7.) He
may inflict what torments he pleases. Some say, by this right of
sovereignty he may inflict what torments he pleaseth upon an innocent
person; which, indeed, will not bear the nature of a punishment as
an effect of justice, without the supposal of a crime; but a torment,
as an effect of that sovereign right he hath over his creature, which
is as absolute over his work as the “potter’s” power is “over his
own clay” (Jer. xviii. 6; Rom. ix. 21). May not the potter, after his
labor, either set his “vessel” up to adorn his house, or knock it in
pieces, and fling it upon the dunghill; separate it to some noble use,
or condemn it to some sordid service?[1002] Is the right of God over
his creatures less than that of the potter over his vessel, since God
contributed all to his creature, but the potter never made the clay,
which is the substance of the vessel, nor the water which was necessary
to make it tractable, but only moulded the substance of it into such a
shape? The vessel that is framed, and the potter that frames it, differ
only in life: the body of the potter, whereby he executes his authority,
is of no better a mould than the clay, the matter of his vessel. Shall
he have so absolute a power over that which is so near him, and shall
not God over that which is so infinitely distant from him? The “vessel,”
perhaps, might plead for itself that it was once part of the body of
a man, and as good as the “potter” himself; whereas no creature can
plead it was part of God, and as good as God himself. Though there
be no man in the world but deserves affliction, yet the Scripture
sometimes lays affliction upon the score of God’s dominion, without any
respect to the sin of the afflicted person. Speaking of a sick person
(James v. 15), “If he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven
him;” whereby is implied, that he might be struck into sickness by God,
without any respect to a particular sin, but in a way of trial; and
that his affliction sprung not from any exercise of Divine justice, but
from his absolute sovereignty; and so, in the case of the blind man,
when the disciples asked for what sin it was, {b376} whether for his
“own,” or his “parents sin,” he was born blind? (John ix. 3), “Neither
hath this man sinned, nor his parents;” which speaks, in itself, not
against the whole current of Scripture; but the words import thus much,
that God, in this blindness from the birth, neither respected any sin
of the man’s own, nor of his parents, but he did it as an absolute
sovereign, to manifest his own glory in that miraculous cure which
was wrought by Christ. Though afflictions do not happen without the
desert of the creature, yet some afflictions may be sent without any
particular respect to that desert, merely for the manifestation of
God’s glory, since the creature was made for God himself, and his honor,
and therefore may be used in a serviceableness to the glory of the
Creator.
2d. His dominion is absolute in regard of unlimitedness by any
law without him. He is an absolute monarch that makes laws for his
subjects, but is not bound by any himself, nor receives any rules and
laws from his subjects, for the management of his government. But most
governments in the world are bounded by laws made by common consent.
But when kings are not limited by the laws of their kingdoms, yet they
are bounded by the law of nature, and by the providence of God. But God
is under no law without himself; his rule is within him, the rectitude
and righteousness of his own nature; he is not under that law he hath
prescribed to man. The law was not made for a “righteous man” (1 Tim.
i. 9), much less for a righteous God. God is his own law; his own
nature is his rule, as his own glory is his end; himself is his end,
and himself is his law. He is moved by nothing without himself; nothing
hath the dominion of a motive over him but his own will, which is his
rule for all his actions in heaven and earth. (Dan. iv. 32), “He rules
in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomsoever he will.” And, (Rom.
ix. 18), “He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy;” as all things are
wrought by him according to his own eternal ideas in his own mind, so
all is wrought by him according to the inward motive in his own will,
which was the manifestation of his own honor. The greatest motives,
therefore, that the best persons have used, when they have pleaded for
any grant from God, was his own glory, which would be advanced by an
answer of their petition.
3d. His dominion is absolute in regard of supremacy and
uncontrollableness. None can implead him, and cause him to render a
reason of his actions. He is the sovereign King, “Who may say unto him,
What dost thou?” (Eccles. viii. 4.) It is an absurd thing for any to
dispute with God. (Rom. xi. 20), “Who art thou, O man, that repliest
against God?” Thou, a man, a piece of dust, to argue with a God
incomprehensibly above thy reason, about the reason of his works! Let
the potsherds strive with the potsherds of the earth, but “not with Him
that fashioned them” (Isa. xlv. 9). In all the desolations he works,
he asserts his own supremacy to silence men. (Ps. xlvi. 10), “Be still,
and know that I am God!” Beware of any quarrelling motions in your
minds; it is sufficient than I am God, that is supreme, and will not
be impleaded, and censured, or worded with by any creature about what I
do. He is not bound to render a {b377} reason of any of his proceedings.
Subjects are accountable to their princes, and princes to God, God
to none; since he is not limited by any superior, his prerogative is
supreme.
4th. His dominion is absolute in regard of irresistibleness. Other
governments are bounded by law; so that what a governor hath strength
to do, he hath not a right to do; other governors have a limited
ability, that what they have a right to do, they have not always a
strength to do; they may want a power to execute their own counsels.
But God is destitute of neither; he hath an infinite right, and an
infinite strength; his word is a law; he commands things to stand out
of nothing, and they do so. “He commanded,” or spake, ὁ εἰπὼν, “light
to shine out of darkness” (2 Cor. iv. 6). There is no distance of time
between his word: “Let there be light; and there was light” (Gen. i. 3).
Magistrates often use not their authority, for fear of giving occasion
to insurrections, which may overturn their empire. But if the Lord will
work, “who shall let it?” (Isa. xliii. 19): and if God will not work,
who shall force him? He can check and overturn all other powers; his
decrees cannot be stopped, nor his hand held back by any: if he wills
to dash the whole world in pieces, no creature can maintain its being
against his order. He sets the ordinances of the heavens, and the
dominion thereof in the earth; and sends lightnings, that they may go,
and say unto him, “Here we are” (Job. xxxviii. 33, 34).
3. Yet this dominion, though it be absolute, is not tyrannical, but
it is managed by the rules of wisdom, righteousness, and goodness.
If his throne be in the heavens, it is pure and good: because the
heavens are the purest parts of the creation, and influence by their
goodness the lower earth. Since he is his own rule, and his nature is
infinitely wise, holy, and righteous, he cannot do a thing but what is
unquestionably agreeable with wisdom, justice, and purity. In all the
exercises of his sovereign right, he is never unattended with those
perfections of his nature. Might not God, by his absolute power, have
pardoned men’s guilt, and thrown the invading sin out of his creatures?
but in regard of his truth pawned in his threatening, and in regard
of his justice, which demanded satisfaction, he would not. Might not
God, by his absolute sovereignty, admit a man into his friendship,
without giving him any grace? but in regard of the incongruity of such
an act to his wisdom and holiness, he will not. May he not, by his
absolute power, refuse to accept a man that desires to please him,
and reject a purely innocent creature? but in regard of his goodness
and righteousness, he will not. Though innocence be amiable in its own
nature, yet it is not necessary in regard of God’s sovereignty, that he
should love it; but in regard of his goodness it is necessary, and he
will never do otherwise. As God never acts to the utmost of his power,
so he never exerts the utmost of his sovereignty: because it would be
inconsistent with those other properties which render him perfectly
adorable to the creature. As no intelligent creature, neither angel nor
man, can be framed without a law in his nature, so we cannot imagine
God without a law in his own nature, unless we would fancy him a
rude, tyrannical, foolish being, that hath nothing of holiness, {b378}
goodness, righteousness, wisdom. If he “made the heavens in wisdom” (Ps.
cxxxvi. 5), he made them by some rule, not by a mere will, but a rule
within himself, not without. A wise work is never the result of an
absolute unguided will.
(1.) This dominion is managed by the rule of wisdom. What may appear
to us to have no other spring than absolute sovereignty, would be
found to have a depth of amazing wisdom, and accountable reason, were
our short capacities long enough to fathom it. When the apostle had
been discoursing of the eternal counsels of God, in seizing upon one
man, and letting go another, in neglecting the Jews, and gathering in
the Gentiles, which appears to us to be results only of an absolute
dominion, yet he resolves not those amazing acts into that, without
taking it for granted that they were governed by exact wisdom, though
beyond his ken to see and his line to sound. “O, the depth of the
riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God; how unsearchable are
his judgments, and his ways past finding out” (Rom. ii. 33)! There are
some things in matters of state, that may seem to be acts of mere will,
but if we were acquainted with the _arcana imperii_, the inward engines
which moved them, and the ends aimed at in those undertakings, we might
find a rich vein of prudence in them, to incline us to judge otherwise
than bare arbitrary proceedings. The other attributes of power and
goodness are more easily perceptible in the works of God than his
wisdom. The first view of the creation strikes us with this sentiment,
that the Author of this great fabric was mighty and beneficial; but his
wisdom lies deeper than to be discerned at the first glance, without
a diligent inquiry; as at the first casting our eyes upon the sea, we
behold its motion, color, and something of its vastness, but we cannot
presently fathom the depth of it, and understand those lower fountains
that supply that great ocean of waters. It is part of God’s sovereignty,
as it is of the wisest princes, that he hath a wisdom beyond the
reach of his subjects; it is not for a finite nature to understand
an Infinite Wisdom, nor for a foolish creature that hath lost his
understanding by the fall, to judge of the reason of the methods of
a wise Counsellor. Yet those actions that savor most of sovereignty,
present men with some glances of his wisdom. Was it mere will, that
he suffered some angels to fall? But his wisdom was in it for the
manifestation of his justice, as it was also in the case of Pharaoh.
Was it mere will, that he suffered sin to be committed by man? Was not
his wisdom in this for the discovery of his mercy, which never had been
known without that, which should render a creature miserable? “He hath
concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all” (Rom.
xi. 32). Though God had such an absolute right, to have annihilated the
world as soon as ever he had made it, yet how had this consisted with
his wisdom, to have erected a creature after his own image one day, and
despised it so much the next, as to cashier it from being? What wisdom
had it been to make a thing only to destroy it; to repent of his work
as soon as ever it came out of his hands, without any occasion offered
by the creature? If God be supposed to be Creator, he must be supposed
to have an end in creation; what end can that be {b379} but himself
and his own glory, the manifestation of the perfections of his nature?
What perfection could have been discovered in so quick an annihilation,
but that of his power in creating, and of his sovereignty in snatching
away the being of his rational creature, before it had laid the methods
of acting? What wisdom to make a world, and a reasonable creature for
no use; not to praise and honor him, but to be broken in pieces, and
destroyed by him?
(2.) His sovereignty is managed according to the rule of righteousness.
Worldly princes often fancy tyranny and oppression to be the chief
marks of sovereignty, and think their sceptres not beautiful till died
in blood, nor the throne secure till established upon slain carcasses.
But “justice and judgment” are the foundation of the throne of God (Ps.
lxxxix. 14); alluding perhaps to the supporters of arms and thrones,
which among princes are the figures of lions, emblems of courage, as
Solomon had (1 Kings, x. 19). But God makes not so much might, as right,
the support of his. He sits on a “throne of holiness” (Ps. xlvii. 8).
As he reigns over the heathens, referring to the calling of the
Gentiles after the rejecting of the Jews; the Psalmist here praising
the righteousness of it, as the Apostle had the unsearchable wisdom
of it (Rom. xi. 33). “In all his ways he is righteous” (Ps. cxlv. 17):
in his ways of terror as well as those of sweetness; in those works
wherein little else but that of his sovereignty appears to us. It is
always linked with his holiness, that he will not do by his absolute
right anything but what is conformable to it: since his dominion is
founded upon the excellency of his nature, he will not do anything but
what is agreeable to it, and becoming his other perfections. Though
he be an absolute sovereign, he is not an arbitrary governor; “Shall
not the Judge of all the earth do right” (Gen. xviii. 25)? _i. e._ it
is impossible but he should act righteously in every punctilio of his
government, since his righteousness capacitates him to be a judge, not
a tyrant, of all the earth. The heathen poets represented their chief
god Jupiter with Themis, or Right, sitting by him upon his throne in
all his orders. God cannot by his absolute sovereignty command some
things, because they are directly against unchangeable righteousness;
as to command a creature to hate or blaspheme the Creator, not to own
him nor praise him. It would be a manifest unrighteousness to order
the creature not to own him, upon whom he depends both in its being
and well‑being; this would be against that natural duty which is
indispensably due from every rational creature to God. This would be to
order him to lay aside his reason, while he retains it; to disown him
to be the Creator, while man remains his creature. This is repugnant
to the nature of God, and the true nature of the creature; or to exact
anything of man, but what he had given him a capacity, in his original
nature, to perform. If any command were above our natural power, it
would be unrighteous; as to command a man to grasp the globe of the
earth, to stride over the sea, to lave out the waters of the ocean;
these things are impossible, and become not the righteousness and
wisdom of God to enjoin. There can be no obligation on man to an
impossibility. God had a free dominion over nullity before the creation;
he could call it out into the being {b380} of man and beast, but he
could not do anything in creation foolishly, because of his infinite
wisdom; nor could he by the right of his absolute sovereignty make man
sinful, because of his infinite purity. As it is impossible for him
not to be sovereign, it is impossible for him to deny his Deity and
his purity. It is lawful for God to do what he will, but his will being
ordered by the righteousness of his nature, as infinite as his will, he
cannot do anything but what is just; and therefore in his dealing with
men, you find him in Scripture submitting the reasonableness and equity
of his proceedings to the judgment of his depraved creatures, and
the inward dictates of their own conscience. “And now, O inhabitants
of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, between me and my
vineyard” (Isa. v. 3). Though God be the great Sovereign of the world,
yet he acts not in a way of absolute sovereignty. He rules by law;
he is a “Lawgiver” as well as a “King” (Isa. xxxiii. 22). It had been
repugnant to the nature of a rational creature to be ruled otherwise;
to be governed as a beast, this had been to frustrate those faculties
of will and understanding which had been given him. To conclude this:
when we say, God can do this or that, or command this or that, his
authority is not bounded and limited properly. Who can reasonably
detract from his almightiness, because he cannot do anything which
savors of weakness; and what detracting is it from his authority, that
he cannot do anything unseemly for the dignity of his nature? It is
rather from the infiniteness of his righteousness than the straitness
of his authority; at most it is but a voluntary bounding his dominion
by the law of his own holiness.
(3.) His sovereignty is managed according to the rule of goodness. Some
potentates there have been in the world, that have loved to suck the
blood, and drink the tears, of their subjects; that would rule more by
fear than love; like Clearchus, the tyrant of Heraclea, who bore the
figure of a thunderbolt instead of a sceptre, and named his son Thunder,
thereby to tutor him to terrify his subjects.[1003] But as God’s throne
is a throne of holiness, so it is a “throne of grace” (Heb. iv. 16),
a throne encircled with a rainbow: “In sight like to an emerald” (Rev.
iv. 23): an emblem of the covenant, that hath the pleasantness of a
green color, delightful to the eye, betokening mercy. Though his nature
be infinitely excellent above us, and his power infinitely transcendent
over us, yet the majesty of his government is tempered with an
unspeakable goodness. He acts not so much as an absolute Lord, as a
gracious Sovereign and obliging Benefactor. He delights not to make
his subjects slaves; exacts not from them any servile and fearful, but
a generous and cheerful, obedience. He requires them not to fear, or
worship him so much for his power, as his goodness. He requires not
of a rational creature anything repugnant to the honor, dignity, and
principles of such a nature; not anything that may shame, disgrace
it, and make it weary of its own being, and the service it owes to its
Sovereign. He draws by the cords of a man; his goodness renders his
laws as sweet as honey or the honey‑comb to an unvitiated palate and
a renewed mind. And though it be granted he hath a full dispose of his
creature, as the {b381} potter of his vessel, and might by his absolute
sovereignty inflict upon an innocent an eternal torment, yet his
goodness will never permit him to use this sovereign right to the hurt
of a creature that deserves it not. If God should cast an innocent
creature into the furnace of his wrath, who can question him? But who
can think that his goodness will do so, since that is as infinite as
his authority? As not to punish the sinner would be a denial of his
justice, so to torment an innocent would be a denial of his goodness.
A man hath an absolute power over his beast, and may take away his
life, and put him to a great deal of pain; but that moral virtue of
pity and tenderness would not permit him to use this right, but when
it conduceth to some greater good than that can be evil; either for the
good of man, which is the end of the creature, or for the good of the
poor beast itself, to rid him of a greater misery; none but a savage
nature, a disposition to be abhorred, would torture a poor beast merely
for his pleasure. It is as much against the nature of God to punish
one eternally, that hath not deserved it, as it is to deny himself,
and act anything foolishly and unbeseeming his other perfections, which
render him majestical and adorable. To afflict an innocent creature
for his own good, or for the good of the world, as in the case of the
Redeemer, is so far from being against goodness, that it is the highest
testimony of his tender bowels to the sons of men. God, though he be
mighty, “withdraws not his eyes,” _i. e._ his tender respect, “from
the righteous” (Job, xxxvi. 5, 7‒10). And if he “bind them in fetters,”
it is to “show them their transgressions,” and “open their ear to
discipline,” and renewing commands, in a more sensible strain, “to
depart from iniquity.” What was said of Fabritius, “You may as soon
remove the sun from its course, as Fabritius from his honesty,” may
be of God: you may as soon dash in pieces his throne, as separate his
goodness from his sovereignty.
4. This sovereignty is extensive over all creatures. He rules all, as
the heavens do over the earth. He is “King of worlds, King of ages,” as
the word translated “eternal” signifies (1 Tim. i. 17), τῷ δὲ βασιλεῖ
τῶν αἰώνων: and the same word is so translated (Heb. i. 2), “By whom
also he made the worlds.” The same word is rendered “worlds” (Heb. xi.
3): “The worlds were framed by the Word of God.” God is King of ages
or worlds, of the invisible world and the sensible; of all from the
beginning of their creation, of whatsoever is measured by a time. It
extends over angels and devils, over wicked and good, over rational and
irrational creatures; all things bow down under his hand; nothing can
be exempted from him: because there is nothing but was extracted by
him from nothing into being. All things essentially depend upon him;
and, therefore, must be essentially subject to him; the extent of his
dominion flows from the perfection of his essence; since his essence is
unlimited, his royalty cannot be restrained. His authority is as void
of any imperfection as his essence is; it reaches out to all points of
the heaven above, and the earth below. Other princes reign in a spot of
ground. Every worldly potentate hath the confines of his dominions. The
Pyrenean mountains divide France from Spain, and the Alps, Italy from
France. None are called kings absolutely, but kings of this or {b382}
that place. But God is the King; the spacious firmament limits not his
dominion; if we could suppose him bounded by any place, in regard of
his presence, yet he could never be out of his own dominion; whatsoever
he looks upon, wheresoever he were, would be under his rule. Earthly
kings may step out of their own country into the territory of a
neighbor prince; and as one leaves his country, so he leaves his
dominion behind him; but heaven and earth, and every particle of both,
is the territory of God. “He hath prepared his throne in the heavens,
and his kingdom rules over all.”
(1.) The heaven of angels, and other excellent creatures, belong to his
authority. He is principally called “The Lord of Hosts,” in relation
to his entire command over the angelical legions: therefore, ver. 21,
following the text, they are called his “hosts,” and “ministers that
do his pleasure.” Jacob called him so before (Gen. xxxii. 1, 2). When
he met the angels of God, he calls them “the host of God;” and the
Evangelist, long after, calls them so (Luke, ii. 13): “A multitude
of the heavenly host, praising God;” and all this host he commands
(Isa. xlv. 12): “My hands have stretched out the heavens, and all
their host have I commanded.” He employs them all in his service; and
when he issues out his orders to them to do this or that, he finds no
resistance of his will. And the inanimate creatures in heaven are at
his beck; they are his armies in heaven, disposed in an excellent order
in their several ranks (Ps. cxlvii. 4): “He calls the stars by name;”
they render a due obedience to him as servants to their master, when he
singles them out, “and calls them by name,” to do some special service;
he calls them out to their several offices, as the general of an army
appoints the station of every regiment in a battalia. Or “he calls them
by name,” _i. e._ he imposeth names upon them, a sign of dominion: the
giving names to the inferior creatures being the first act of Adam’s
derivative dominion over them. These are under the sovereignty of God.
The stars, by their influences, fight against Sisera (Judges v. 20).
And the sun holds in its reins, and stands stone still, to light Joshua
to a complete victory (Josh. x. 12). They are all marshalled in their
ranks to receive his word of command, and fight in close order, as
being desirous to have a share in the ruin of the enemies of their
Sovereign. And those creatures which mount up from the earth, and take
their place in the lower heavens, vapors, whereof hail and snow are
formed, are part of the army, and do not only receive, but fulfil, his
word of command (Ps. cxlviii. 8). These are his stores and magazines
of judgment against a time of trouble, and “a day of battle and war”
(Job xxxviii. 22, 23). The sovereignty of God is visible in all their
motions, in their going and returning. If he says, Go, they go; if he
say, Come, they come; if he say, do this, they gird up their loins, and
stand stiff to their duty.
(2.) The hell of devils belong to his authority. They have cast
themselves out of the arms of his grace into the furnace of his justice;
they have, by their revolt, forfeited the treasure of his goodness,
but cannot exempt themselves from the sceptre of his dominion; when
they would not own him as a Lord Father, they are under him as a Lord
Judge; they are cast out of his affection, but not {b383} freed from
his yoke. He rules over the good angels as his subjects, over the
evil ones as his rebels. In whatsoever relation he stands, either as
a friend or enemy, he never loses that of a Lord. A prince is the lord
of his criminals as well as of his loyalest subjects. By this right
of his sovereignty, he uses them to punish some, and be the occasion
of benefit to others: on the wicked he employs them as instruments of
vengeance; towards the godly, as in the case of Job, as an instrument
of kindness for the manifestation of his sincerity against the
intention of that malicious executioner. Though the devils are
the executioners of his justice, it is not by their own authority,
but God’s; as those that are employed either to rack or execute a
malefactor, are subjects to the prince not only in the quality of
men, but in the execution of their function. The devil, by drawing men
to sin, acquires no right to himself over the sinner: for man by sin
offends not the devil, but God, and becomes guilty of punishment under
God.[1004] When, therefore, the devil is used by God for the punishment
of any, it is an act of his sovereignty for the manifestation of the
order of his justice. And as most nations use the vilest persons in
offices of execution, so doth God those vile spirits. He doth not
ordinarily use the good angels in those offices of vengeance, but in
the preservation of his people. When he would solely punish, he employs
“evil angels” (Ps. lxxviii. 49), a troop of devils. His sovereignty is
extended over the “deceiver and the deceived” (Job xii. 16); over both
the malefactor and the executioner, the devil and his prisoner. He
useth the natural malice of the devils for his own just ends, and
by his sovereign authority orders them to be the executioners of his
judgments upon their own vassals, as well as sometimes inflicters of
punishments upon his own servants.
(3.) The earth of men and other creatures belongs to his authority
(Ps. xlvii. 7). God is King of “all the earth,” and rules to the “ends”
of it (Ps. lix. 13). Ancient atheists confined God’s dominion to the
heavenly orbs, and bounded it within the circuit of the celestial
sphere (Job, xxii. 14): “He walks in the circuit of heaven,” _i. e._ he
exerciseth his dominion only there. _Pedum positio_ was the sign of the
possession of a piece of land, and the dominion of the possessor of it;
and land was resigned by such a ceremony, as now, by the delivery of a
twig or turf.[1005] But his dominion extends,
1st. Over the least creatures. All the creatures of the earth are
listed in Christ’s muster‑roll, and make up the number of his regiments.
He hath an host on earth as well as in heaven (Gen. ii. 1): “The
heavens and earth were finished, and all the host of them.” And they
are “all his servants” (Ps. cxiv. 91), and move at his pleasure. And he
vouchsafes the title of his army to the locust, caterpillar, and palmer
worm (Joel ii. 25); and describes their motions by military words,
“climbing the walls, marching, not breaking their ranks” (ver. 7). He
hath the command, as a great general, over the highest angel and the
meanest worm; all the kinds of the smallest insects he presseth for
his service. By this sovereignty he muzzled the devouring nature of the
fire to preserve the three children, and let it loose to consume their
adversaries; and if he speaks the word, {b384} the stormy waves are
hushed, as if they had no principle of rage within them (Ps. lxxxix. 9).
Since the meanest creature attains its end, and no arrow that God hath
by his power shot into the world but hits the mark he aimed at, we must
conclude, that there is a sovereign hand that governs all: not a spot
of earth, or air, or water in the world, but is his possession; not a
creature in any element but is his subject.
2d. His dominion extends over men. It extends over the highest
potentate, as well as the meanest peasant; the proudest monarch is
no more exempt than the most languishing beggar. He lays not aside
his authority to please the prince, nor strains it up to terrify the
indigent. “He accepts not the persons of princes, nor regards the rich
more than the poor; for they are all the work of his hand” (Job xxxiv.
19). Both the powers and weaknesses, the gallantry and peasantry of the
earth, stand and fall at his pleasure. Man, in innocence, was under his
authority as his creature; and man, in his revolt, is further under his
authority as a criminal: as a person is under the authority of a prince,
as a governor, while he obeys his laws; and further under the authority
of the prince, as a judge, when he violates his laws. Man is under
God’s dominion in everything, in his settlement, in his calling, in the
ordering his very habitation (Acts xvii. 26): “He determines the bounds
of their habitations.” He never yet permitted any to be universal
monarch in the world, nor over the fourth part of it, though several,
in the pride of their heart, have designed and attempted it: the pope,
who hath bid the fairest for it in spirituals, never attained it; and
when his power was most flourishing, there were multitudes that would
never acknowledge his authority.
3d. But especially this dominion, in the peculiarity of its extent, is
seen in the exercise of it over the spirits and hearts of men. Earthly
governors have, by his indulgence, a share with him in a dominion over
men’s bodies, upon which account he graceth princes and judges with the
title of “gods” (Ps. lxxxii. 6); but the highest prince is but a prince
“according to the flesh,” as the apostle calls masters in relation to
their servants (Col. iii. 22).
God is the sovereign; man rules over the beast in man, the body; and
God rules over the man in man, the soul. It sticks not in the outward
surface, but pierceth to the inward marrow. It is impossible God should
be without this; if our wills were independent of him, we were in some
sort equal with himself, in part gods, as well as creatures. It is
impossible a creature, either in whole or in part, can be exempted from
it; since he is the fashioner of hearts as well as of bodies. He is the
Father of spirits, and therefore hath the right of a paternal dominion
over them. When he established man lord of the other creatures, he did
not strip himself of the propriety; and when he made man a free agent,
and lord of the acts of his will, he did not divest himself of the
sovereignty. His sovereignty is seen,
[1.] In gifting the spirits of men. Earthly magistrates have hands too
short to inspire the hearts of their subjects with worthy sentiments:
when they confer an employment, they are not able to convey an ability
with it fit for the station: they may as soon frame a statue {b385}
of liquid water, and gild, or paint it over with the costliest colors,
as impart to any a state‑head for a state‑ministry. But when God
chooseth a Saul from so mean an employment as seeking of asses, he can
treasure up in him a spirit fit for government; and fire David, in age
a stripling, and by education a shepherd, with courage to encounter,
and skill to defeat, a massy Goliath. And when he designs a person for
glory, to stand before his throne, he can put a new and a royal spirit
into him (Ezek. xxxvi. 26). God only can infuse habits into the soul,
to capacitate it to act nobly and generously.
[2.] His sovereignty is seen in regard of the inclinations of men’s
wills. No creature can immediately work upon the will, to guide it to
what point he pleaseth, though mediately it may, by proposing reasons
which may master the understanding, and thereby determine the will. But
God bows the hearts of men, by the efficacy of his dominion, to what
centre he pleaseth. When the more overweaning sort of men, that thought
their own heads as fit for a crown as Saul’s, scornfully despised him;
yet God touched the hearts of a band of men to follow and adhere to
him (1 Sam. x. 26, 27). When the anti‑christian whore shall be ripe
for destruction, God shall “put it into the heart” of the ten horns
or kings, “to hate the whore, burn her with fire, and fulfil his will”
(Rev. xvii. 16, 17). He “fashions the hearts” alike, and tunes one
string to answer another, and both to answer his own design (Ps. xxxiii.
15). And while men seem to gratify their own ambition and malice,
they execute the will of God, by his secret touch upon their spirits,
guiding their inclinations to serve the glorious manifestation of truth.
While the Jews would, in a reproachful disgrace to Christ, crucify two
thieves with him, to render him more incapable to have any followers,
they accomplished a prophecy, and brought to light a mark of the
Messiah, whereby he had been charactered in one of their prophets, that
he should be “numbered among transgressors” (Isa. liii. 12). He can
make a man of not willing, willing; the wills of all men are in his
hand; _i. e._ under the power of his sceptre, to retain or let go upon
this or that errand, to bend this or that way; as water is carried by
pipes to what house or place the owner of it is pleased to order. “The
king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of waters; he
turns it whithersoever he will” (Prov. xxi. 1) without any limitation.
He speaks of the heart of princes; because, in regard of their height,
they seem to be more absolute, and impetuous as waters; yet God holds
them in his hand, under his dominion; turns them to acts of clemency
or severity, like waters, either to overflow and damage, or to refresh
and fructify. He can convey a spirit to them, or “cut it off” from
them (Ps. lxxvi. 12). It is with reference to his efficacious power,
in graciously turning the heart of Paul, that the apostle breaks off
his discourse of the story of his conversion, and breaks out into
a magnifying and glorifying of God’s dominion. “Now unto the King
eternal,” &c. “be honor and glory forever and ever” (1 Tim. i. 17). Our
hearts are more subject to the Divine sovereignty than our members in
their motions are subject to our own wills. As we can move our hand
east or west to any quarter of the world, so can God bend our wills to
what mark he pleases. The second cause in every {b386} motion depends
upon the first; and that will, being a second cause, may be furthered
or hindered in its inclinations or executions by God; he can bend or
unbend it, and change it from one actual inclination to another. It is
as much under his authority and power to move, or hinder, as the vast
engine of the heavens is in its motion or standing still, which he can
affect by a word. The work depends upon the workman; the clock upon the
artificer for the motions of it.
[3.] His dominion is seen in regard of terror or comfort. The heart or
conscience is God’s special throne on earth, which he hath reserved to
himself, and never indulged human authority to sit upon it. He solely
orders this in ways of conviction or comfort. He can flash terror into
men’s spirits in the midst of their earthly jollities, and put death
into the pot of conscience, when they are boiling up themselves in a
high pitch of worldly delights, and can raise men’s spirits above the
sense of torment under racks and flames. He can draw a hand‑writing not
only in the outward chamber, but the inward closet; bring the rack into
the inwards of a man. None can infuse comfort when he writes bitter
things, nor can any fill the heart with gall, when he drops in honey.
Men may order outward duties, but they cannot unlock the conscience,
and constrain men to think them duties which they are forced, by human
laws, outwardly to act: and as the laws of earthly princes are bounded
by the outward man, so do their executions and punishments reach no
further than the case of the body: but God can run upon the inward man,
as a giant, and inflict wounds and gashes there.
5. It is an eternal dominion. In regard of the exercise of it, it was
not from eternity, because there was not from eternity any creature
under the government of it; but in regard of the foundation of it,
his essence, his excellency, it is eternal; as God was from eternity
almighty, but there was no exercise or manifestation of it till he
began to create. Men are kings only for a time; their lives expire like
a lamp, and their dominion is extinguished with their lives; they hand
their empire by succession to others, but many times it is snapped off
before they are cold in their graves. How are the famous empires of the
Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, and Greeks, mouldered away, and their place
knows them no more! and how are the wings of the Roman eagle cut, and
that empire which overspread a great part of the world, hath lost most
of its feathers, and is confined to a narrower compass! The dominion
of God flourisheth from one generation to another: “He sits King
forever” (Ps. xxix. 10). His “session” signifies the establishment,
and “forever” the duration; and he “sits now,” his sovereignty is as
absolute, as powerful as ever. How many lords and princes hath this or
that kingdom had! in how many families hath the sceptre lodged! when
as God hath had an uninterrupted dominion; as he hath been always the
same in his essence, he hath been always glorious in his sovereignty:
among men, he that is lord to‑day, may be stripped of it to‑morrow; the
dominions in the world vary; he that is a prince may see his royalty
upon the wings, and feel himself laden with fetters; and a prisoner
may be “lifted from his dungeon” to a throne. But there can be no
diminution of God’s government; “His throne is from generation {b387}
to generation” (Lam. v. 19); it cannot be shaken: his sceptre, like
Aaron’s rod, is always green; it cannot be wrested out of his hands;
none raised him to it, none therefore can depose him from it; it bears
the same splendor in all human affairs; he is an eternal, an “immortal
King” (1 Tim. i. 17); as he is eternally mighty, so he is eternally
sovereign; and, being an eternal King, he is a King that gives not a
momentary and perishing, but a durable and everlasting life, to them
that obey him: a durable and eternal punishment to them that resist him.
IV. Wherein this dominion and sovereign consists, and how it is
manifested.
_First._ The first act of sovereignty is the making laws. This is
essential to God; no creature’s will can be the first rule to the
creature, but only the will of God: he only can prescribe man his
duty, and establish the rule of it; hence the law is called “the royal
law” (James ii. 8): it being the first and clearest manifestation
of sovereignty, as the power of legislation is of the authority of
a prince. Both are joined together in Isa. liii. 22: “The Lord is our
Lawgiver; the Lord is our King;” legislative power being the great mark
of royalty. God, as King, enacts his laws by his own proper authority,
and his law is a declaration of his own sovereignty, and of men’s moral
subjection to him, and dependence on him. His sovereignty doth not
appear so much in his promises as in his precepts: a man’s power over
another is not discovered by promising, for a promise doth not suppose
the promiser either superior or inferior to the person to whom the
promise is made.[1006] It is not an exercising authority over another,
but over a man’s self; no man forceth another to the acceptance of
his promise, but only proposeth and encourageth to an embracing of
it. But commanding supposeth always an authority in the person giving
the precept; it obligeth the person to whom the command is directed;
a promise obligeth the person by whom the promise is made. God, by his
command, binds the creature; by his promise he binds himself; he stoops
below his sovereignty, to lay obligations upon his own majesty; by a
precept he binds the creature, by a promise he encourageth the creature
to an observance of his precept: what laws God makes, man is bound,
by virtue of his creation, to observe; that respects the sovereignty
of God: what promises God makes, man is bound to believe; but that
respects the faithfulness of God. God manifested his dominion more to
the Jews than to any other people in the world; he was their Lawgiver,
both as they were a church and a commonwealth: as a church, he gave
them ceremonial laws for the regulating their worship; as a state, he
gave them judicial laws for the ordering their civil affairs; and as
both, he gave them moral laws, upon which both the laws of the church
and state were founded. This dominion of God, in this regard, will be
manifest,
(1.) In the supremacy of it. The sole power of making laws doth
originally reside in him (James iv. 12); “There is one Lawgiver, who is
able to save, and to destroy.” By his own law he judges of the eternal
states of men, and no law of man is obligatory, but as it {b388} is
agreeable to the laws of this supreme Lawgiver, and pursuant to his
righteous rules for the government of the world. The power that the
potentates of the world have to make laws is but derivative from God.
If their dominion be from him, as it is, for “by him kings reign” (Prov.
viii. 15), their legislative power, which is a prime flower of their
sovereignty, is derived from him also: and the apostle resolves it into
this original when he orders us to be “subject to the higher powers,
not only for wrath, but for conscience sake” (Rom. xiii. 5). Conscience,
in its operations, solely respects God; and therefore, when it is
exercised as the principle of obedience to the laws of men, it is not
with respect to them, singly considered, but as the majesty of God
appears in their station and in their decrees. This power of giving
laws was acknowledged by the heathen to be solely in God by way of
original; and therefore the greatest lawgivers among the heathen
pretended their laws to be received from some deity or supernatural
power, by special revelation: now, whether they did this seriously,
acknowledging themselves this part of the dominion of God,――for it is
certain that whatsoever just orders were issued out by princes in the
world, was by the secret influence of God upon their spirits (Prov.
viii. 15): “By me princes decree justice;” by the secret conduct of
Divine wisdom,――or whether they pretended it only as a public engine,
to enforce upon people the observance of their decrees, and gain a
greater credit to their edicts, yet this will result from it, that
the people in general entertained this common notion, that God was
the great Lawgiver of the world. The first founders of their societies
could never else have so absolutely gained upon them by such a pretence.
There was always a revelation of a law from the mouth of God in every
age: the exhortation of Eliphaz to Job (Job xxii. 22), of receiving
a “law from the mouth” of God, at the time before the moral law was
published, had been a vain exhortation had there been no revelation of
the mind of God in all ages.
(2.) The dominion of God is manifest in the extent of his laws. As
he is the Governor and Sovereign of the whole world, so he enacts laws
for the whole world. One prince cannot make laws for another, unless he
makes him his subject by right of conquest; Spain cannot make laws for
England, or England for Spain; but God having the supreme government,
as King over all, is a Lawgiver to all, to irrational, as well as
rational creatures. The “heavens have their ordinances” (Job xxxviii.
33); all creatures have a law imprinted on their beings; rational
creatures have Divine statutes copied in their heart: for men, it is
clear (Rom. ii. 14), every son of Adam, at his coming into the world,
brings with him a law in his nature, and when reason clears itself
up from the clouds of sense, he can make some difference between good
and evil; discern something of fit and just. Every man finds a law
within him that checks him if he offends it: none are without a legal
indictment and a legal executioner within them; God or none was the
Author of this as a sovereign Lord, in establishing a law in man at the
same time, wherein, as an Almighty Creator, he imparted a being. This
law proceeds from God’s general power of governing, as he is the Author
{b389} of nature, and binds not barely as it is the reason of man, but
by the authority of God, as it is a law engraven on his conscience: and
no doubt but a law was given to the angels; God did not govern those
intellectual creatures as he doth brutes, and in a way inferior to
his rule of man. Some sinned; all might have sinned in regard to the
changeableness of their nature. Sin cannot be but against some rule;
“where there is no law, there is no transgression;” what that law was
is not revealed; but certainly it must be the same in part with the
moral law, so far as it agreed with their spiritual natures; a love to
God, a worship of him, and a love to one another in their societies and
persons.
(3.) The dominion of God is manifest in the reason of some laws, which
seem to be nothing else than purely his own will. Some laws there
are for which a reason may be rendered from the nature of the thing
enjoined, as to love, honor, and worship God: for others, none but
this, God will have it so: such was that positive law to Adam of “not
eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. ii. 17), which
was merely an asserting his own dominion, and was different from that
law of nature God had written in his heart. No other reason of this
seems to us, but a resolve to try man’s obedience in a way of absolute
sovereignty, and to manifest his right over all creatures, to reserve
what he pleased to himself, and permit the use of what he pleased to
man, and to signify to man that he was to depend on him, who was his
Lord, and not on his own will. There was no more hurt in itself, for
Adam to have eaten of that, than of any other in the garden; the fruit
was pleasant to the eye, and good for food; but God would show the
right he had over his own goods, and his authority over man, to reserve
what he pleases of his own creation from his touch; and since man could
not claim a propriety in anything, he was to meddle with nothing but by
the leave of his Sovereign, either discovered by a special or general
license. Thus God showed himself the Lord of man, and that man was but
his steward, to act by his orders. If God had forbidden man the use
of more trees in the garden, his command had been just; since, as a
sovereign Lord, he might dispose of his own goods; and when he had
granted him the whole compass of that pleasant garden, and the whole
world round about for him and his posterity, it was a more tolerable
exercise of his dominion to reserve this “one tree,” as a mark of
his sovereignty, when he had left “all others” to the use of Adam. He
reserved nothing to himself, as Lord of the manor, but this; and Adam
was prohibited nothing else but this one, as a sign of his subjection.
Now for this no reason can be rendered by any man but merely the will
of God; this was merely a fruit of his dominion. For the moral laws a
reason may be rendered; to love God hath reason to enforce it besides
God’s will; _viz._, the excellency of his nature, and the greatness and
multitudes of his benefits. To love our neighbor hath enforcing reasons;
_viz._, the conjunction in blood, the preservation of human society,
and the need we may stand in of their love ourselves: but no reason
can be assigned of this positive command about the tree of knowledge
of good and evil, but the pleasure of God. It was a branch of his pure
dominion to {b390} but merely the pleasure of God. It was a branch of
his pure dominion to try man’s obedience, and a mark of his goodness
to try it by so and light a precept, when he might have extended
his authority further. Had not God given this or the like order, his
absolute dominion had not been so conspicuous. It is true, Adam had a
law of nature in him, whereby he was obliged to perpetual obedience;
and though it was a part of God’s dominion to implant it in him, yet
his supreme dominion over the creatures had not been so visible to
man but by this, or a precept of the same kind. What was commanded or
prohibited by the law of nature, did bespeak a comeliness in itself, it
appeared good or evil to the reason of man; but this was neither good
nor evil in itself, it received its sole authority from the absolute
will of God, and nothing could result from the fruit itself, as a
reason why man should not taste it, but only the sole will of God.
And as God’s dominion was most conspicuous in this precept, so man’s
obedience had been most eminent in observing it: for in his obedience
to it, nothing but the sole power and authority of God, which is the
proper rule of obedience, could have been respected, not any reason
from the thing itself. To this we may refer some other commands, as
that of appointing the time of solemn and public worship, the _seventh
day_; though the worship of God be a part of the law of nature, yet
the appointing a particular day, wherein he would be more formally
and solemnly acknowledged than on other days, was grounded upon his
absolute right of legislation: for there was nothing in the time itself
that could render that day more holy than another, though God respected
his “finishing the work of creation” in his institution of that day
(Gen. ii. 3). Such were the ceremonial commands of sacrifices and
washings under the law, and the commands of sacraments under the gospel:
the one to last till the first coming of Christ and his passion; the
other to last till the second coming of Christ and his triumph. Thus he
made natural and unavoidable uncleannesses to be sins, and the touching
a dead body to be pollution, which in their own nature were not so.
(4.) The dominion of God appears in the moral law, and his majesty in
publishing it. As the law of nature was writ by his own fingers in the
nature of man, so it was engraven by his own finger in the “tables of
stone” (Exod. xxxi. 18), which is very emphatically expressed to be a
mark of God’s dominion. “And the tables were the work of God, and the
writing was the writing of God engraven upon the tables” (Exod. xxxii.
16); and when the first tables were broken, though he orders Moses to
frame the tables, yet the writing of the law he reserves to himself
(Exod. xxxiv. 1). It is not said of any part of the Scripture, that
it was writ by the finger of God, but only of the Decalogue: herein he
would have his sovereignty eminently appear; it was published by God in
state, with a numerous attendance of his heavenly militia (Deut. xxxii.
2); and the artillery of heaven was shot off at the solemnity; and
therefore it is called a fiery law, coming from his right hand, _i. e._
his sovereign power. It was published with all the marks of supreme
majesty.
(5.) The dominion of God appears in the obligation of the law, which
reacheth the conscience. The laws of every prince are framed {b391}
for the outward conditions of men; they do not by their authority
bind the conscience; and what obligations do result from them upon the
conscience, is either from their being the same immediately with Divine
laws, or as they are according to the just power of the magistrate,
founded on the law of God. Conscience hath a protection from the King
of kings, and cannot be arrested by any human power. God hath given man
but an authority over half the man, and the worst half too, that which
is of an earthly original; but reserved the authority over the better
and more heavenly half to himself. The dominion of earthly princes
extends only to the bodies of men; they have no authority over the soul,
their punishment and rewards cannot reach it: and therefore their laws,
by their single authority, cannot bind it, but as they are coincident
with the law of God, or as the equity of them is subservient to the
preservation of human society, a regular and righteous thing, which is
the divine end in government; and so they bind, as they have relation
to God as the supreme magistrate. The conscience is only intelligible
to God in its secret motions, and therefore only guidable by God; God
only pierceth into the conscience by his eye, and therefore only can
conduct it by his rule. Man cannot tell whether we embrace this law
in our heart and consciences, or only in appearance; “He only can
judge it” (Luke xii. 3, 4), and therefore he only can impose laws
upon it; it is out of the reach of human penal authority, if their
laws be transgressed inwardly by it. Conscience is a book in some
sort as sacred as the Scripture; no addition can be lawfully made to
it, no subtraction from it. Men cannot diminish the duty of conscience,
or raze out the law God hath stamped upon it. They cannot put a
_supersedeas_ to the writ of conscience, or stop its mouth with a _noli
prosequi_. They can make no addition by their authority to bind it; it
is a flower in the crown of Divine sovereignty only.
2. His sovereignty appears in a power of dispensing with his own
laws. It is as much a part of his dominion to dispense with his laws,
as to enjoin them; he only hath the power of relaxing his own right, no
creature hath power to do it; that would be to usurp a superiority over
him, and order above God himself. Repealing or dispensing with the law
is a branch of royal authority. It is true, God will never dispense
with those moral laws which have an eternal reason in themselves and
their own nature; as for a creature to fear, love, and honor God; this
would be to dispense with his own holiness, and the righteousness of
his nature, to sully the purity of his own dominion; it would write
folly upon the first creation of man after the image of God, by writing
mutability upon himself, in framing himself after the corrupted image
of man; it would null and frustrate the excellency of the creature,
wherein the image of God mostly shines; nay, it would be to dispense
with a creature’s being a Creator, and make him independent upon the
Sovereign of the world in moral obedience. But God hath a right to
dispense with the ordinary laws of nature in the inferior creatures; he
hath a power to alter their course by an arrest of miracles, and make
them come short, or go beyond his ordinances established for them. He
hath a right to make the sun stand still, or move backward; to {b392}
bind up the womb of the earth, and bar the influences of the clouds;
bridle in the rage of the fire, and the fury of lions; make the liquid
waters stand like a wall, or pull up the dam, which he hath set to
the sea, and command it to overflow the neighboring countries: he
can dispense with the natural laws of the whole creation, and strain
everything beyond its ordinary pitch. Positive laws he hath reversed;
as the ceremonial law given to the Jews. The very nature, indeed, of
that law required a repeal, and fell of course; when that which was
intended by it was come, it was of no longer significancy; as before
it was a useful shadow, it would afterwards have been an empty one: had
not God took away this, Christianity had not, in all likelihood, been
propagated among the Gentiles. This was the “partition wall between
Jews and Gentiles” (Eph. xii. 14); which made them a distinct family
from all the world, and was the occasion of the enmity of the Gentiles
against the Jews. When God had, by bringing in what was signified by
those rites, declared his decree for the ceasing of them; and when the
Jews, fond of those Divine institutions, would not allow him the right
of repealing what he had the authority of enacting; he resolved, for
the asserting his dominion, to bury them in the ruins of the temple
and city, and make them forever incapable of practising the main and
essential parts of them; for the temple being the pillar of the legal
service, by demolishing that, God hath taken away their rights of
sacrificing, it being peculiarly annexed to that place; they have no
altar dignified with a fire from heaven to consume their sacrifices,
no legal high‑priest to offer them. God hath by his providence changed
his own law as well as by his precept; yea, he hath gone higher, by
virtue of his sovereignty, and changed the whole scene and methods of
his government after the fall, from King Creator to King Redeemer. He
hath revoked the law of works as a covenant; released the penalty of
it from the believing sinner, by transferring it upon the Surety, who
interposed himself by his own will and Divine designation. He hath
established another covenant upon other promises in a higher root, with
greater privileges, and easier terms. Had not God had this right of
sovereignty, not a man of Adam’s posterity could have been blessed; he
and they must have lain groaning under the misery of the fall, which
had rendered both himself and all in his loins unable to observe the
terms of the first covenant. He hath, as some speak, dispensed with his
own moral law in some cases; in commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son,
his only son, a righteous son, a son whereof he had the promise, that
“in Isaac should his seed be called;” yet he was commanded to sacrifice
him by the right of his absolute sovereignty as the supreme Lord of
the lives of his creatures, from the highest angel to the lowest worm,
whereby he bound his subjects to this law, not himself. Our lives are
due to him when he calls for them, and they are a just forfeit to him,
at the very moment we sin, at the very moment we come into the world,
by reason of the venom of our nature against him, and the disturbance
the first sin of man (whereof we are inheritors) gave to his glory.
Had Abraham sacrificed his son of his own head, he had sinned, yea,
in attempting it; but being authorized {b393} from heaven, his act was
obedience to the Sovereign of the world, who had a power to dispense
with his own law; and with this law he had before dispensed, in the
case of Cain’s murder of Abel, as to the immediate punishment of it
with death, which, indeed, was settled afterwards by his authority,
but then omitted because of the paucity of men, and for the peopling
the world; but settled afterwards, when there was almost, though not
altogether, the like occasion of omitting it for a time.
3. His sovereignty appears in punishing the transgression of his law.
(1.) This is a branch of God’s dominion as lawgiver. So was the
vengeance God would take upon the Amalekites (Exod. xvii. 16): “The
Lord hath sworn, that the Lord will have war;” the Hebrew is, “The
hand upon the throne of the Lord,” as in the margin: as a “lawgiver”
he “saves or destroys” (James iv. 12). He acts according to his own
law, in a congruity to the sanction of his own precepts; though he be
an arbitrary lawgiver, appointing what laws he pleases, yet he is not
an arbitrary judge. As he commands nothing but what he hath a right to
command, so he punisheth none but whom he hath a right to punish, and
with such punishment as the law hath denounced. All his acts of justice
and inflictions of curses are the effects of this sovereign dominion
(Ps. xxix. 10): “He sits King upon the floods;” upon the deluge
of waters wherewith he drowned the world, say some. It is a right
belonging to the authority of magistrates to pull up the infectious
weeds that corrupt a commonwealth; it is no less the right of God, as
the lawgiver and judge of all the earth, to subject criminals to his
vengeance, after they have rendered themselves abominable in his eyes,
and carried themselves unworthy subjects of so great and glorious a
King. The first name whereby God is made known in Scripture, is Elohim
(Gen. i. 1): “In the beginning God created the heaven and earth;”
a name which signifies his power of judging, in the opinion of some
critics; from him it is derived to earthly magistrates; their judgment
is said, therefore, to be the “judgment of God” (Deut. i. 17). When
Christ came, he proposed this great motive of repentance from the
“kingdom of heaven being at hand;” the kingdom of his grace, whereby
to invite men; the kingdom of his justice in the punishment of the
neglecters of it, whereby to terrify men. Punishments as well as
rewards belong to royalty; it issued accordingly; those that believed
and repented came under his gracious sceptre, those that neglected
and rejected it fell under his iron rod; Jerusalem was destroyed, the
temple demolished, the inhabitants lost their lives by the edge of the
sword, or lingered them out in the chains of a miserable captivity.
This term of “judge,” which signifies a sovereign right to govern
and punish delinquents, Abraham gives him, when he came to root out
the people of Sodom, and make them the examples of his vengeance
(Gen. xviii. 25).
(2.) Punishing the transgressions of his law. This is a necessary
branch of dominion. His sovereignty in making laws would be a trifle,
if there were not also an authority to vindicate those laws from
contempt and injury; he would be a Lord only spurned at by {b394}
rebels. Sovereignty is not preserved without justice. When the
Psalmist speaks of the majesty of God’s kingdom, he tells us, that
“righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne” (Ps.
xcvii. 1, 2). These are the engines of Divine dignity which render him
glorious and majestic. A legislative power would be trampled on without
executive; by this the reverential apprehensions of God are preserved
in the world. He is known to be Lord of the world “by the judgments
which he executes” (Ps. ix. 16). When he seems to have lost his
dominion, or given it up in the world, he recovers it by punishment.
When he takes some away “with a whirlwind, and in his wrath,” the
natural consequence men make of it, is this: “Surely there is a God
that judgeth the earth” (Ps. lviii. 9, 11). He reduceth the creature,
by the lash of his judgments, that would not acknowledge his authority
in his precepts. Those sins which disown his government in the heart
and conscience, as pride, inward blasphemy, &c., he hath reserved a
time hereafter to reckon for. He doth not presently shoot his arrows
into the marrow of every delinquent, but those sins which traduce his
government of the world, and tear up the foundations of human converse,
and a public respect to him, he reckons with particularly here, as well
as hereafter, that the life of his sovereignty might not always faint
in the world.
(3.) This of punishing was the second discovery of his dominion in the
world. His first act of sovereignty was the giving a law; the next, his
appearance in the state of a judge. When his orders were violated, he
rescues the honor of them by an execution of justice. He first judged
the angels, punishing the evil ones for their crime: the first court
he kept among them as a governor, was to give them a law; the second
court he kept was as a judge trying the delinquents, and adjudging
the offenders to be “reserved in chains of darkness” till the final
execution (Jude 6); and, at the same time probably, he confirmed
the good ones in their obedience by grace. So the first discovery of
his dominion to man, was the giving him a precept, the next was the
inflicting a punishment for the breach of it. He summons Adam to the
bar, indicts him for his crime, finds him guilty by his own confession,
and passeth sentence on him, according to the rule he had before
acquainted him with.
(4.) The means whereby he punisheth shows his dominion. Sometimes he
musters up hail and mildew; sometimes he sends regiments of wild beasts;
so he threatens Israel (Lev. xxvi. 22). Sometimes he sends out a party
of angels to beat up the quarters of men, and make a carnage among
them (2 Kings xix. 35). Sometimes he mounts his thundering battery, and
shoots forth his ammunition from the clouds, as against the Philistines
(1 Sam. vii. 10). Sometimes he sends the slightest creatures to shame
the pride and punish the sin of man, as “lice, frogs, locusts,” as upon
the Egyptians (Exod. viii.‒x.).
_Secondly._ This dominion it manifested by God as a proprietor and Lord
of his creatures and his own goods. And this is evident,
1. In the choice of some persons from eternity. He hath set apart some
from eternity, wherein he will display the invincible efficacy of his
grace, and thereby infallibly bring them to the fruition {b395} of
glory (Eph. i. 4, 5): “According as he hath chosen us in him before
the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame
before him in love, having predestinated us to the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.
” Why doth he write some names in the “book of life,” and leave out
others? Why doth he enrol some, whom he intends to make denizens of
heaven, and refuse to put others in his register? The apostle tells
us, it is the pleasure of his will. You may render a reason for many
of God’s actions, till you come to this, the top and foundation of all;
and under what head of reason can man reduce this act but to that of
his royal prerogative? Why doth God save some, and condemn others at
last? because of the faith of the one, and unbelief of the other. Why
do some men believe? because God hath not only given them the means of
grace, but accompanied those means with the efficacy of his Spirit. Why
did God accompany those means with the efficacy of his Spirit in some,
and not in others? because he had decreed by grace to prepare them
for glory. But why did he decree, or choose some, and not others? Into
what will you resolve this but into his sovereign pleasure? Salvation
and condemnation at the last upshot, are acts of God as the Judge,
conformable to his own law of giving life to believers, and inflicting
death upon unbelievers; for those a reason may be rendered; but the
choice of some, and preterition of others, is an act of God as he is
a sovereign monarch, before any law was actually transgressed, because
not actually given. When a prince redeems a rebel, he acts as a judge
according to law; but when he calls some out to pardon, he acts as a
sovereign by a prerogative above law; into this the apostle resolves it
(Rom. ix. 13, 15). When he speaks of God’s loving Jacob and hating Esau,
and that before they had done either good or evil, it is, “because God
will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and compassion on whom he
will have compassion.” Though the first scope of the apostle, in the
beginning of the chapter, was to declare the reason of God’s rejecting
the Jews, and calling in the Gentiles; had he only intended to demolish
the pride of the Jews, and flat their opinion of merit, and aimed no
higher than that providential act of God; he might, convincingly enough
to the reason of men, have argued from the justice of God, provoked by
the obstinacy of the Jews, and not have had recourse to his absolute
will; but, since he asserts this latter, the strength of his argument
seems to lie thus: if God by his absolute sovereignty may resolve, and
fix his love upon Jacob and estrange it from Esau, or any other of his
creatures, before they have done good or evil, and man have no ground
to call his infinite majesty to account, may he not deal thus with
the Jews, when their demerit would be a bar to any complaints of the
creature against him?[1007] If God were considered here in the quality
of a judge, it had been fit to have considered the matter of fact in
the criminal; but he is considered as a sovereign, rendering no other
reason of his action but his own will; “whom he will he hardens”
(ver. 18). And then the apostle concludes (ver. 20), “Who art thou,
O man, that repliest against God?” If the reason drawn {b396} from
God’s sovereignty doth not satisfy in this inquiry, no other reason can
be found wherein to acquiesce: for the last condemnation there will be
sufficient reason to clear the justice of his proceedings. But, in this
case of election, no other reason but what is alleged, _viz._, the will
of God, can be thought of, but what is liable to such knotty exceptions
that cannot well be untied.
(1.) It could not be any merit in the creature that might determine
God to choose him. If the decree of election falls not under the merit
of Christ’s passion, as the procuring cause, it cannot fall under the
merit of any part of the corrupted mass. The decree of sending Christ
did not precede, but followed, in order of nature, the determination of
choosing some. When men were chosen as the subjects for glory, Christ
was chosen as the means for the bringing them to glory (Eph. i. 4):
“Chosen us in him, and predestinated us to the adoption of children by
Jesus Christ.” The choice was not merely in Christ as the moving cause;
that the apostle asserts to be “the good pleasure of his will;” but
in Christ, as the means of conveying to the chosen ones the fruits of
their election. What could there be in any man that could invite God
to this act, or be a cause of distinction of one branch of Adam from
another? Were they not all hewed out of the same rock, and tainted with
the same corruption in blood? Had it been possible to invest them with
a power of merit at the first, had not that venom, contracted in their
nature, degraded all of power for the future? What merit was there
in any but of wrathful punishment, since they were all considered as
criminals, and the cursed brood of an ungrateful rebel? What dignity
can there be in the nature of the purest part of clay, to be made a
vessel of honor, more than in another part of clay, as pure as that
which was formed into a vessel for mean and sordid use? What had any
one to move his mercy more than another, since they were all children
of wrath, and equally daubed with original guilt and filth? Had not all
an equal proportion of it to provoke his justice? What merit is there
in one dry bone more than another, to be inspired with the breath of
a spiritual life? Did not all lie wallowing in their own filthy blood?
and what could the steam and noisomeness of that deserve at the hands
of a pure Majesty, but to be cast into a sink furthest from his sight?
Were they not all considered in this deplorable posture, with an equal
proportion of poison in their nature, when God first took his pen, and
singled out some names to write in the book of life? It could not be
merit in any one piece of this abominable mass, that should stir up
that resolution in God to set apart this person for a vessel of glory,
while he permitted another to putrefy in his own gore. He loved Jacob,
and hated Esau, though they were both parts of the common mass, the
seed of the same loins, and lodged in the same womb.
(2.) Nor could it be any foresight of works to be done in time by them,
or of faith, that might determine God to choose them. What good could
he foresee resulting from extreme corruption, and a nature alienated
from him? What could he foresee of good to be done by them, but what
he resolved in his own will, to bestow an ability upon them to bring
forth? His choice of them was to a {b397} holiness, not for a holiness
preceding his determination (Eph. i. 4). He hath chosen us, “that we
might be holy” before him; he ordained us “to good works,” not for them
(Eph. ii. 10). What is a fruit cannot be a moving cause of that whereof
it is a fruit: grace is a stream from the spring of electing love;
the branch is not the cause of the root, but the root of the branch;
nor the stream the cause of the spring, but the spring the cause of
the stream. Good works suppose grace, and a good and right habit in
the person, as rational acts suppose reason. Can any man say that the
rational acts man performs after his creation were a cause why God
created him? This would make creation, and everything else, not so
much an act of his will, as an act of his understanding. God foresaw no
rational act in man, before the act of his will to give him reason; nor
foresees faith in any, before the act of his will determining to give
him faith: “Faith is the gift of God” (Eph. ii. 8). In the salvation
which grows up from this first purpose of God, he regards not the works
we have done, as a principal motive to settle the top‑stone of our
happiness, but his own purpose, and the grace given in Christ; “who
hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our
own works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given
to us in Christ, before the world began” (2 Tim. i. 9). The honor of
our salvation cannot be challenged by our works, much less the honor of
the foundation of it. It was a pure gift of grace, without any respect
to any spiritual, much less natural, perfection. Why should the apostle
mention that circumstance, when he speaks of God’s loving Jacob, and
hating Esau, “when neither of them had done good or evil” (Rom. ix. 11),
if there were any foresight of men’s works as the moving cause of his
love or hatred? God regarded not the works of either as the first cause
of his choice, but acted by his own liberty, without respect to any
of their actions which were to be done by them in time. If faith be
the fruit of election, the prescience of faith doth not influence the
electing act of God. It is called “the faith of God’s elect” (Tit. i.
1): “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s
elect;” _i. e._ settled in this office to bring the elect of God to
faith. If men be chosen by God upon the foresight of faith, or not
chosen till they have faith, they are not so much God’s elect, as God
their elect; they choose God by faith, before God chooseth them by love:
it had not been the faith of God’s elect, _i. e._ of those already
chosen, but the faith of those that were to be chosen by God afterwards.
Election is the cause of faith, and not faith the cause of election;
fire is the cause of heat, and not the heat of fire; the sun is the
cause of the day, and not the day the cause of the rising of the sun.
Men are not chosen because they believe, but they believe because they
are chosen: the apostle did ill, else, to appropriate that to the elect
which they had no more interest in, by virtue of their election, than
the veriest reprobate in the world.[1008] If the foresight of what
works might be done by his creatures was the motive of his choosing
them, why did he not choose the devils to redemption, who could
have done him better service, by the strength of their nature, than
the {b398} whole mass of Adam’s posterity? Well, then, there is no
possible way to lay the original foundation of this act of election and
preterition in anything but the absolute sovereignty of God. Justice or
injustice comes not into consideration in this case. There is no debt
which justice or injustice always respects in its acting: if he had
pleased, he might have chosen all; if he had pleased, he might have
chosen none. It was in his supreme power to have resolved to have left
all Adam’s posterity under the rack of his justice; if he determined to
snatch out any, it was a part of his dominion, but without any injury
to the creatures he leaves under their own guilt. Did he not pass by
the angels, and take man? and, by the same right of dominion, may he
pick out some men from the common mass, and lay aside others to bear
the punishment of their crimes. Are they not all his subjects? all are
his criminals, and may be dealt with at the pleasure of their undoubted
Lord and Sovereign. This is a work of arbitrary power; since he might
have chosen none, or chosen all, as he saw good himself. It is at
the liberty of the artificer to determine his wood or stone to such a
figure, that of a prince, or that of a toad; and his materials have no
right to complain of him, since it lies wholly upon his own liberty.
They must have little sense of their own vileness, and God’s infinite
excellency above them by right of creation, that will contend that God
hath a lesser right over his creatures than an artificer over his wood
or stone. If it were at his liberty whether to redeem man, or send
Christ upon such an undertaking, it is as much at his liberty, and the
prerogative is to be allowed him, what person he will resolve to make
capable of enjoying the fruits of that redemption. One man was as fit a
subject for mercy as another, as they all lay in their original guilt:
why would not Divine mercy cast its eye upon this man, as well as upon
his neighbor? There was no cause in the creature, but all in God; it
must be resolved into his own will: yet not into a will without wisdom.
God did not choose hand over head, and act by mere will, without
reason and understanding; an Infinite Wisdom is far from such a kind of
procedure; but the reason of God is inscrutable to us, unless we could
understand God as well as he understands himself; the whole ground lies
in God himself, no part of it in the creature; “not in him that wills,
nor in him that runs, but in God that shows mercy” (Rom. ix. 15, 16).
Since God hath revealed no other cause than his will, we can resolve
it into no other than his sovereign empire over all creatures. It is
not without a stop to our curiosity, that in the same place where God
asserts the absolute sovereignty of his mercy to Moses, he tells him he
could not see his face: “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious;”
and he said, “Thou canst not see my face” (Exod. xxxiii. 19, 20):
the rays of his infinite wisdom are too bright and dazzling for our
weakness. The apostle acknowledged not only a wisdom in this proceeding,
but a riches and treasure of wisdom; not only that, but a depth and
vastness of those riches of wisdom; but was unable to give us an
inventory and scheme of it (Rom. xi. 33). The secrets of his counsels
are too deep for us to wade into; in attempting to know the reason of
those acts, we should find ourselves swallowed up into a bottomless
gulf: though {b399} the understanding be above our capacity, yet the
admiration of his authority and submission to it are not. “We should
cast ourselves down at his feet, with a full resignation of ourselves
to his sovereign pleasure.”[1009] This is a more comely carriage in a
Christian than all the contentious endeavors to measure God by our line.
2. In bestowing grace where he pleases. God in conversion and pardon
works not as a natural agent, putting forth strength to the utmost,
which God must do, if he did renew man naturally, as the sun shines,
and the fire burns, which always act, _ad extremum virium_, unless
a cloud interpose to eclipse the one, and water to extinguish the
other. But God acts as a voluntary agent, which can freely exert
his power when he please, and suspend it when he please. Though God
be necessarily good, yet he is not necessitated to manifest all the
treasures of his goodness to every subject; he hath power to distil his
dews upon one part, and not upon another. If he were necessitated to
express his goodness without a liberty, no thanks were due to him.
Who thanks the sun for shining on him, or the fire for warming him?
None; because they are necessary agents, and can do no other. What is
the reason he did not reach out his hand to keep all the angels from
sinking, as well as some, or recover them when they were sunk? What is
the reason he engrafts one man into the true Vine, and lets the other
remain a wild olive? Why is not the efficacy of the Spirit always
linked with the motions of the Spirit? Why does he not mould the heart
into a gospel frame when he fills the ear with a gospel sound? Why
doth he strike off the chains from some, and tear the veil from the
heart, while he leaves others under their natural slavery and Egyptian
darkness? Why do some lie under the bands of death, while another is
raised to a spiritual life? What reason is there for all this but his
absolute will? The apostle resolves the question, if the question be
asked, why he begets one and not another? Not from the will of the
creature, but “his own will,” is the determination of one (James i.
18). Why doth he work in one “to will and to do,” and not in another?
Because of “his good pleasure,” is the answer of another (Phil. ii. 13).
He could as well new create every one, as he at first created them,
and make grace as universal as nature and reason, but it is not his
pleasure so to do.
(1.) It is not from want of strength in himself. The power of God is
unquestionably able to strike off the chains of unbelief from all; he
could surmount the obstinacy of every child of wrath, and inspire every
son of Adam with faith as well as Adam himself. He wants not a virtue
superior to the greatest resistance of his creature; a victorious
beam of light might be shot into their understandings, and a flood of
grace might overspread their wills with one word of his mouth, without
putting forth the utmost of his power. What hindrance could there be in
any created spirit, which cannot be easily pierced into and new moulded
by the Father of spirits? Yet he only breathes this efficacious virtue
into some, and leaves others under that insensibility and hardness
which they love, and suffer them to continue in their benighting
ignorance, and consume themselves {b400} in the embraces of their
dear, though deceitful Delilahs. He could have conquered the resistance
of the Jews, as well as chased away the darkness and ignorance of
the Gentiles. No doubt but he could overpower the heart of the most
malicious devil, as well as that of the simplest and weakest man.
But the breath of the Almighty Spirit is in his own power, to breathe
“where he lists” (John iii. 8). It is at his liberty whether he will
give to any the feelings of the invincible efficacy of his grace; he
did not want strength to have kept man as firm as a rock against the
temptation of Satan, and poured in such fortifying grace, as to have
made him impregnable against the powers of hell, as well as he did
secure the standing of the angels against the sedition of their fellows:
but it was his will to permit it to be otherwise.
(2.) Nor is it from any prerogative in the creature. He converts not
any for their natural perfection, because he seizeth upon the most
ignorant; nor for their moral perfection, because he converts the most
sinful; nor for their civil perfection, because he turns the most
despicable.
[1.] Not for their natural perfection of knowledge. He opened the
minds and hearts of the more ignorant. Were the nature of the Gentiles
better manured than that of the Jews, or did the tapers of their
understandings burn clearer? No; the one were skilled in the prophecies
of the Messiah, and might have compared the predictions they owned with
the actions and sufferings of Christ, which they were spectators of. He
let alone those that had expectations of the Messiah, and expectations
about the time of Christ’s appearance, both grounded upon the oracles
wherewith he had entrusted them. The Gentiles were unacquainted
with the prophets, and therefore destitute of the expectations of
the Messiah (Eph. ii. 12): they were “without Christ;” without any
revelation of Christ, because “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,
and strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope, and without
God in the world,” without any knowledge of God, or promises of Christ.
The Jews might sooner, in a way of reason, have been wrought upon than
the Gentiles, who were ignorant of the prophets, by whose writings they
might have examined the truth of the apostles’ declarations. Thus are
they refused that were the kindred of Christ, according to the flesh,
and the Gentiles, that were at a greater distance from him, brought
in by God; thus he catcheth not at the subtle and mighty devils, who
had an original in spiritual nature more like to him, but at weak and
simple man.
[2.] Not for any moral perfection, because he converts the most
sinful: the Gentiles, steeped in idolatry and superstition. He sowed
more faith among the Romans than in Jerusalem; more faith in a city
that was the common sewer of all the idolatry of the nations conquered
by them, than in that city which had so signally been owned by him,
and had not practised any idolatry since the Babylonish captivity.
He planted saintship at Corinth, a place notorious for the infamous
worship of Venus, a superstition attended with the grossest uncleanness;
at Ephesus, that presented the whole world with a cup of fornication in
their temple of Diana; among the Colossians, {b401} votaries to Cybele
in a manner of worship attended with beastly and lascivious ceremonies.
And what character had the Cretians from one of their own poets,
mentioned by the apostle to Titus, whom he had placed among them to
further the progress of the gospel, but the vilest and most abominable?
(Titus i. 12): “liars,” not to be credited; “evil beasts,” not to be
associated with; “slow bellies,” fit for no service. What prerogative
was there in the nature of such putrefaction? as much as in that of a
toad to be elevated to the dignity of an angel. What steam from such
dunghills could be welcome to him, and move him to cast his eye on them,
and sweeten them from heaven? What treasures of worth were here to open
the treasures of his grace! Were such filthy snuffs fit of themselves
to be kindled by, and become a lodging for, a gospel beam? What
invitements could he have from lying, beastliness, gluttony, but only
from his own sovereignty? By this he plucked firebrands out of the fire,
while he left straighter and more comely sticks to consume to ashes.
[3.] Not for any civil perfection, because he turns the most despicable.
He elevates not nature to grace upon the account of wealth, honor, or
any civil station in the world: he dispenseth not ordinarily those
treasures to those that the mistaken world foolishly admire and dote
upon (1 Cor. i. 26); “Not many mighty, not many noble:” a purple robe
is not usually decked with this jewel; he takes more of mouldy clay
than refined dust to cast into his image, and lodges his treasures more
in the earthly vessels than in the world’s golden ones; he gives out
his richest doles to those that are the scorn and reproach of the world.
Should he impart his grace most to those that abound in wealth or honor,
it had been some foundation for a conception that he had been moved by
those vulgarly esteemed excellencies to indulge them more than others.
But such a conceit languisheth when we behold the subjects of his grace
as void originally of any allurements, as they are full of provocations.
Hereby he declares himself free from all created engagements, and that
he is not led by any external motives in the object.
[4.] It is not from any obligation which lies upon him. He is indebted
to none: disobliged by all. No man deserves from him any act of grace,
but every man deserves what the most deplorable are left to suffer.
He is obliged by the children of wrath to nothing else but showers of
wrath; owes no more a debt to fallen man, than to fallen devils, to
restore them to their first station by a superlative grace. How was he
more bound to restore them, than he was to preserve them; to catch them
after they fell, than to put a bar in the way of their falling? God,
as a sovereign, gave laws to men, and a strength sufficient to keep
those laws. What obligation is there upon God to repair that strength
man wilfully lost, and extract him out of that condition into which he
voluntarily plunged himself? What if man sinned by temptation, which
is a reason alleged by some, might not many of the devils do so too?
Though there was a first of them that sinned without a temptation,
yet many of them might be seduced into rebellion by the ringleader.
Upon that account he is no more bound to give grace to all men, than
to devils. {b402} If he promised life upon obedience, he threatened
death upon transgression. By man’s disobedience God is quit of his
promise, and owes nothing but punishment upon the violation of his law.
Indeed man may pretend to a claim of sufficient strength from him by
creation, as God is the author of nature, and he had it; but since he
hath extinguished it by his sin, he cannot in the least pretend any
obligation on God for a new strength. If it be a “peradventure” whether
he will “give repentance,” as it is 2 Tim. ii. 25, there is no tie
in the case; a tie would put it beyond a peradventure with a God that
never forfeited his obligation. No husbandman thinks himself obliged
to bestow cost and pains, manure and tillage, upon one field more than
another; though the nature of the ground may require more, yet he is at
his liberty whether he will expend more upon one than another.[1010] He
may let it lie fallow as long as he please. God is less obliged to till
and prune his creatures, than man is obliged to his field or trees.
If a king proclaim a pardon to a company of rebels, upon the condition
of each of them paying such a sum of money; their estates before were
capable of satisfying the condition, but their rebellion hath reduced
them to an indigent condition; the proclamation itself is an act of
grace, the condition required is not impossible in itself: the prince,
out of a tenderness to some, sends them that sum of money, he hath
by his proclamation obliged them to pay, and thereby enabled them to
answer the condition he requires; the first he doth by a sovereign
authority, the second he doth by a sovereign bounty. He was obliged to
neither of them; punishment was a debt due to all of them; if he would
remit it upon condition, he did relax his sovereign right; and if he
would by his largess make any of them capable to fulfil the condition,
by sending them presently a sufficient sum to pay the fine, he acted as
proprietor of his own goods, to dispose of them in such a quantity to
those to whom he was not obliged to bestow a mite.
[5.] It must therefore be an act of his mere sovereignty. This can only
sit arbitrator in every gracious act. Why did he give grace to Abel and
not to Cain, since they both lay in the same womb, and equally derived
from their parents a taint in their nature; but that he would show a
standing example of his sovereignty to the future ages of the world
in the first posterity of man? Why did he give grace to Abraham, and
separate him from his idolatrous kindred, to dignify him to be the
root of the Messiah? Why did he confine his promise to Isaac, and not
extend it to Ishmael, the seed of the same Abraham by Hagar, or to
the children he had by Keturah after Sarah’s death? What reason can be
alleged for this but his sovereign will? Why did he not give the fallen
angels a moment of repentance after their sin, but condemned them to
irrevocable pains? Is it not as free for him to give grace to whom he
please, as create what worlds he please; to form this corrupted clay
into his own image, as to take such a parcel of dust from all the rest
of the creation whereof to compact Adam’s body? Hath he not as much
jurisdiction over the sinful mass of his creatures in a new creation,
as he had over the chaos in the old? And what reason can be rendered,
{b403} of his advancing this part of matter to the nobler dignity of a
star, and leaving that other part to make up the dark body of the earth;
to compact one part into a glorious sun, and another part into a hard
rock, but his royal prerogative? What is the reason a prince subjects
one malefactor to punishment, and lifts up another to a place of trust
and profit? that Pharaoh honored the butler with an attendance on his
person, and remitted the baker to the hands of the executioner? It was
his pleasure. And is not as great right due to God, as is allowed to
the worms of the earth? What is the reason he hardens a Pharaoh, by
a denying him that grace which should mollify him, and allows it to
another? It is because he will. “Whom he will he hardens” (Rom. ix. 18).
Hath not man the liberty to pull up the sluice, and let the water run
into what part of the ground he pleases? What is the reason some have
not a heart to understand the beauty of his ways? Because the Lord doth
not give it them (Deut. xxix. 4). Why doth he not give all his converts
an equal measure of his sanctifying grace? some have mites and some
have treasures. Why doth he give his grace to some sooner, to some
later? some are inspired in their infancy, others not till a full age,
and after; some not till they have fallen into some gross sin, as Paul;
some betimes, that they may do him service: others later, as the thief
upon the cross, and presently snatcheth them out of the world? Some are
weaker, some stronger in nature, some more beautiful and lovely, others
more uncomely and sluggish. It is so in supernaturals. What reason is
there for this, but his own will? This is instead of all that can be
assigned on the part of God. He is the free disposer of his own goods,
and as a Father may give a greater portion to one child than to another.
And what reason of complaint is there against God? may not a toad
complain that God did not make it a man, and give it a portion of
reason? or a fly complain that God did not make it an angel, and give
it a garment of light; had they but any spark of understanding; as well
as man complain that God did not give him grace as well as another?
Unless he sincerely desired it, and then was denied it, he might
complain of God, though not as a sovereign, yet as a promiser of grace
to them that ask it. God doth not render his sovereignty formidable; he
shuts not up his throne of grace from any that seek him; he invites man;
his arms are open, and the sceptre stretched out; and no man continues
under the arrest of his lusts, but he that is unwilling to be otherwise,
and such a one hath no reason to complain of God.
3. His sovereignty is manifest in disposing the means of grace to some,
not to all. He hath caused the sun to shine bright in one place, while
he hath left others benighted and deluded by the devil’s oracles. Why
do the evangelical dews fall in this or that place, and not in another?
Why was the gospel published in Rome so soon, and not in Tartary? Why
hath it been extinguished in some places, as soon almost as it had been
kindled in them? Why hath one place been honored with the beams of it
in one age, and been covered with darkness the next? One country hath
been made a sphere for this star, that directs to Christ, to move
in; and afterwards it hath been taken away, and placed in another;
sometimes {b404} more clearly it hath shone, sometimes more darkly, in
the same place; what is the reason of this? It is true something of it
may be referred to the justice of God, but much more to the sovereignty
of God. That the gospel is published later, and not sooner, the apostle
tell us is “according to the commandment of the everlasting God” (Rom.
xvi. 26).
(1.) The means of grace, after the families from Adam became distinct,
were never granted to all the world. After that fatal breach in Adam’s
family by the death of Abel, and Cain’s separation, we read not of
the means of grace continued among Cain’s posterity; it seems to be
continued in Adam’s sole family, and not published in societies till
the time of Seth. “Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord”
(Gen. iv. 26). It was continued in that family till the deluge, which
was 1523 years after the creation, according to some, or 1656 years,
according to others. After that, when the world degenerated, it was
communicated to Abraham, and settled in the posterity that descended
from Jacob; though he left not the world without a witness of himself,
and some sprinklings of revelations in other parts, as appears by the
Book of Job, and the discourses of his friends.
(2.) The Jews had this privilege granted them above other nations,
to have a clearer revelation of God. God separated them from all the
world to honor them with the _depositum_ of his oracles (Rom. iii. 2):
“To them were committed the oracles of God.” In which regard all other
nations are said to be “without God” (Eph. ii. 12), as being destitute
of so great a privilege. The Spirit blew in Canaan when the lands about
it felt not the saving breath of it. “He hath not dealt so with any
nation; and as for his judgments, they have not known them” (Ps. cxlvii.
20). The rest had no warnings from the prophets, no dictates from
heaven, but what they had by the light of nature, the view of the works
of creation, and the administration of Providence, and what remained
among them of some ancient traditions derived from Noah, which, in
tract of time, were much defaced. We read but of one Jonah sent to
Nineveh, but frequent alarms to the Israelites by a multitude of
prophets commissioned by God. It is true, the door of the Jewish church
was open to what proselytes would enter themselves, and embrace their
religion and worship; but there was no public proclamation made in the
world; only God, by his miracles in their deliverance from Egypt (which
could not but be famous among all the neighbor nations), declared
them to be a people favored by heaven: but the tradition from Adam and
Noah was not publicly revived by God in other parts, and raised from
that grave of forgetfulness wherein it had lain so long buried. Was
there any reason in them for this indulgence? God might have been as
liberal to any other nation, yea, to all the nations in the world, if
it had been his sovereign pleasure: any other people were as fit to be
entrusted with his oracles, and be subjects for his worship, as that
people; yet all other nations, till the rejection of the Jews, because
of their rejection of Christ, were strangers from the covenant of
promise. These people were part of the common mass of the world: they
had no prerogative in nature above Adam’s posterity. Were {b405} they
the extract of an innocent part of his loins, and all the other nations
drained out of his putrefaction? Had the blood of Abraham, from whom
they were more immediately descended, any more precious tincture than
the rest of mankind? They, as well as other nations, were made of
“one blood” (Acts xvii. 26); and that corrupted both in the spring and
in the rivulets. Were they better than other nations, when God first
drew them out of their slavery? We have Joshua’s authority for it,
that they had complied with the Egyptian idolatry, “and served other
gods,” in that place of their servitude (Josh. xxiv. 14). Had they
had an abhorrency of the superstition of Egypt, while they remained
there, they could not so soon have erected a golden calf for worship,
in imitation of the Egyptian idols. All the rest of mankind had
as inviting reasons to present God with, as those people had. God
might have granted the same privilege to all the world, as well as
to them, or denied it them, and endowed all the rest of the world
with his statutes: but the enriching such a small company of people
with his Divine showers, and leaving the rest of the world as a
barren wilderness in spirituals, can be placed upon no other account
originally than that of his unaccountable sovereignty, of his love
to them: there was nothing in them to merit such high titles from God
as his first‑born, his peculiar treasure, the apple of his eye. He
disclaims any righteousness in them, and speaks a word sufficient to
damp such thoughts in them, by charging them with their wickedness,
while he “loaded them with his benefits” (Deut. ix. 4, 6). The Lord
“gives thee not” this land for “thy righteousness;” for thou art a
stiff‑necked people. It was an act of God’s free pleasure to “choose
them to be a people to himself” (Deut. vii. 6).
(3.) God afterwards rejected the Jews, gave them up to the hardness of
their hearts, and spread the gospel among the Gentiles. He hath cast
off the children of the kingdom, those that had been enrolled for his
subjects for many ages, who seemed, by their descent from Abraham, to
have a right to the privileges of Abraham; and called men from the east
and from the west, from the darkest corners in the world, to “sit down
with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven,” _i. e._
to partake with them of the promises of the gospel (Matt. viii. 11).
The people that were accounted accursed by the Jews enjoy the means
of grace, which have been hid from those that were once dignified this
1600 years; that they have neither ephod, nor teraphim, nor sacrifice,
nor any true worship of God among them (Hos. iii. 4). Why he should not
give them grace to acknowledge and own the person of the Messiah, to
whom he had made the promises of him for so many successive ages, but
let their “heart be fat,” and “their ears heavy” (Isa. vi. 10)?――why
the gospel at length, after the resurrection of Christ, should
be presented to the Gentiles, not by chance, but pursuant to the
resolution and prediction of God, declared by the prophets that it
should be so in time?――why he should let so many hundreds of years pass
over, after the world was peopled, and let the nations all that while
soak in their idolatrous customs?――why he should not call the Gentiles
without rejecting the Jews, and bind them both up together in the
bundle of {b406} life?――why he should acquaint some people with it
a little after the publishing it in Jerusalem, by the descent of the
Spirit, and others not a long time after?――some in the first ages
of Christianity enjoyed it; others have it not, as those in America,
till the last age of the world;――can be referred to nothing but his
sovereign pleasure. What merit can be discovered in the Gentiles? There
is something of justice in the case of the Jews’ rejection, nothing
but sovereignty in the Gentiles’ reception into the church. If the Jews
were bad, the Gentiles were in some sort worse: the Jews owned the one
true God, without mixture of idols, though they owned not the Messiah
in his appearance, which they did in a promise; but the Gentiles owned
neither the one nor the other. Some tell us, it was for the merit
of some of their ancestors. How comes the means of grace, then, to
be taken from the Jew, who had (if any people ever had) meritorious
ancestors for a plea? If the merit of some of their former progenitors
were the cause, what was the reason the debt due to their merit was not
paid to their immediate progeny, or to themselves, but to a posterity
so distant from them, and so abominably depraved as the Gentile world
was at the day of the gospel‑sun striking into their horizon? What
merit might be in their ancestors (if any could be supposed in the most
refined rubbish), it was so little for themselves, that no oil could
be spared out of their lamps for others. What merit their ancestors
might have, might be forfeited by the succeeding generations. It is
ordinarily seen, that what honor a father deserves in a state for
public service, may be lost by the son, forfeited by treason, and
himself attainted. Or was it out of a foresight that the Gentiles would
embrace it, and the Jews reject it; that the Gentiles would embrace it
in one place, and not in another? How did God foresee it, but in his
own grace, which he was resolved to display in one, not in another?
It must be then still resolved into his sovereign pleasure. Or did
he foresee it in their wills and nature? What, were they not all one
common dross? Was any part of Adam, by nature, better than another? How
did God foresee that which was not, nor could be, without his pleasure
to give ability, and grace to receive? Well, then, what reason but
the sovereign pleasure of God can be alleged, why Christ forbade the
apostles, at their first commission, to preach to the Gentiles (Matt.
x. 15), but, at the second and standing commission, orders them to
preach to “every creature?” Why did he put a demur to the resolutions
of Paul and Timothy, to impart light to Bithynia, or order them to go
into Macedonia? Was that country more worthy upon whom lay a great part
of the blood of the world shed in Alexander’s time (Acts xvi. 6, 7, 9,
10)? Why should Corazin and Bethsaida enjoy those means that were not
granted to the Tyrians and Sidonians, who might probably have sooner
reached out their arms to welcome it (Matt. xi. 21)? Why should God
send the gospel into our island, and cause it to flourish so long
here, and not send it, or continue it, in the furthest eastern parts
of the world? Why should the very profession of Christianity possess
so small a compass of ground in the world, but five parts in thirty,
the Mahometans holding six parts, and the other nineteen overgrown with
Paganism, where either the gospel was {b407} never planted, or else
since rooted up? To whom will you refer this, but to the same cause
our Saviour doth the revelation of the gospel to babes, and not to the
wise――even to his Father? “For so it seemed good in thy sight” (Matt.
xi. 25, 26); “For so was thy good pleasure before thee” (as in the
original); it is at his pleasure whether he will give any a clear
revelation of his gospel, or leave them only to the light of nature. He
could have kept up the first beam of the gospel in the promise in all
nations among the apostasies of Adam’s posterity, or renewed it in all
nations when it began to be darkened, as well as he first published it
to Adam after his fall; but it was his sovereign pleasure to permit it
to be obscured in one place, and to keep it lighted in another.
4. His sovereignty is manifest in the various influences of the means
of grace. He saith to these waters of the sanctuary, as to the floods
of the sea, “Hitherto you shall go, and no further.” Sometimes they
wash away the filth of the flesh and outward man, but not that of the
spirit; the gospel spiritualizeth some, and only moralizeth others;
some are by the power of it struck down to conviction, but not raised
up to conversion; some have only the gleams of it in their consciences,
and others more powerful flashes; some remain in their thick darkness
under the beaming of the gospel every day in their face, and after
a long insensibleness are roused by its light and warmth; sometimes
there is such a powerful breath in it, that it levels the haughty
imaginations of men, and lays them at its feet that before strutted
against it in the pride of their heart. The foundation of this is not
in the gospel itself, which is always the same, nor in the ordinances,
which are channels as sound at one time as at another, but Divine
sovereignty that spirits them as he pleaseth, and “blows when and where
it lists.” It has sometimes conquered its thousands (Acts ii. 41); at
another time scarce its tens; sometimes the harvest hath been great,
when the laborers have been but few; at another time it hath been small,
when the laborers have been many; sometimes whole sheaves; at another
time scarce gleanings. The evangelical net hath been sometimes full at
a cast, and at every cast; at another time many have labored all night,
and day too, and catched nothing (Acts, ii. 47): “The Lord added to the
church daily.” The gospel chariot doth not always return with captives
chained to the sides of it, but sometimes blurred and reproached,
wearing the marks of hell’s spite, instead of imprinting the marks of
its own beauty. In Corinth it triumphed over many people (Acts xviii.
10); in Athens it is mocked, and gathers but a few clusters (Acts xvii.
32, 34). God keeps the key of the heart, as well as of the womb. The
apostles had a power of publishing the gospel, and working miracles,
but under the Divine conduct; it was an instrumentality _durante
bene placito_, and as God saw it convenient. Miracles were not upon
every occasion allowed to them to be wrought, nor success upon every
administration granted to them; God sometimes lent them the key, but to
take out no more treasure than was allotted to them. There is a variety
in the time of gospel operation; some rise out of their graves of sin,
and beds of sluggishness, at the first appearance of this sun; others
lie snorting {b408} longer. Why doth not God spirit it at one season as
well as at another, but set his distinct periods of time, but because
he will show his absolute freedom? And do we not sometimes experiment
that after the most solemn preparations of the heart, we are frustrated
of those incomes we expected? Perhaps it was because we thought Divine
returns were due to our preparations, and God stops up the channel, and
we return drier than we came, that God may confute our false opinion,
and preserve the honor of his own sovereignty. Sometimes we leap with
John Baptist in the womb at the appearance of Christ; sometimes we lie
upon a lazy bed when he knocks from heaven; sometimes the fleece is
dry, and sometimes wet, and God withholds to drop down his dew of the
morning upon it. The dews of his word, as well as the droppings of the
clouds, belong to his royalty; light will not shine into the heart,
though it shine round about us, without the sovereign order of that God
“who commanded light to shine out of the darkness” of the chaos (2 Cor.
iv. 6). And is it not seen also in regard of the refreshing influences
of the word? sometimes the strongest arguments, and clearest promises,
prevail nothing towards the quelling black and despairing imaginations;
when, afterwards, we have found them frighted away by an unexpected
word, that seemed to have less virtue in it itself than any that passed
in vain before it. The reasonings of wisdom have dropped down like
arrows against a brazen wall, when the speech of a weaker person hath
found an efficacy. It is God by his sovereignty spirits one word and
not another; sometimes a secret word comes in, which was not thought of
before, as dropped from heaven, and gives a refreshing, when emptiness
was found in all the rest. One word from the lips of a sovereign prince
is a greater cordial than all the harangues of subjects without it;
what is the reason of this variety, but that God would increase the
proofs of his own sovereignty? that as it was a part of his dominion to
create the beauty of a world, so it is no less to create the peace as
well as the grace of the heart (Isa. lvii. 19): “I create the fruit of
the lips, peace.” Let us learn from hence to have adoring thoughts of,
not murmuring fancies against, the sovereignty of God; to acknowledge
it with thankfulness in what we have; to implore it with a holy
submission in what we want. To own God as a sovereign in a way of
dependence, is the way to be owned by him as subjects in a way of favor.
5. His sovereignty is manifested in giving a greater measure of
knowledge to some than to others. What parts, gifts, excellency of
nature, any have above others, are God’s donative; “He gives wisdom to
the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding” (Dan. ii. 21);
wisdom, the habit, and knowledge, the right use of it, in discerning
the right nature of objects, and the fitness of means conducing to the
end; all is but a beam of Divine light; and the different degrees of
knowledge in one man above another, are the effects of his sovereign
pleasure. He enlightens not the minds of all men to know every part of
his will; one “eats with a doubtful conscience,” another in “faith,”
without any staggering (Rom. xiv. 2). Peter had a desire to keep up
circumcision, not fully understanding the mind of God in the abolition
of the Jewish ceremonies; {b409} while Paul was clear in the truth
of that doctrine. A thought comes into our mind that, like a sunbeam,
makes a Scripture truth visible in a moment, which before we were
poring upon without any success; this is from his pleasure. One in the
primitive times had the gift of knowledge, another of wisdom, one the
gift of prophecy, another of tongues, one the gift of healing, another
that of discerning spirits; why this gift to one man, and not to
another? Why such a distribution in several subjects? Because it is his
sovereign pleasure. “The Spirit divides to every man severally as he
will” (1 Cor. xii. 11). Why doth he give Bezaleel and Aholiab the gift
of engraving, and making curious works for the tabernacle (Exod. xxxi.
3), and not others? Why doth he bestow the treasures of evangelical
knowledge upon the meanest of earthen vessels, the poor Galileans,
and neglect the Pharisees, stored with the knowledge both of naturals
and morals? Why did he give to some, and not to others, “to know the
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven?” (Matt. xiii. 11.) The reason is
implied in the words, “Because it was the mystery of his kingdom,” and
therefore was the act of his sovereignty. How would it be a kingdom and
monarchy if the governor of it were bound to do what he did? It is to
be resolved only into the sovereign right of propriety of his own goods,
that he furnisheth babes with a stock of knowledge, and leaves the
wise and prudent empty of it (Matt. xi. 26): “Even so, Father: for so
it seemed good in thy sight.” Why did he not reveal his mind to Eli, a
grown man, and in the highest office in the Jewish church, but open it
to Samuel, a stripling? why did the Lord go from the one to the other?
Because his motion depends upon his own will. Some are of so dull a
constitution, that they are incapable of any impression, like rocks too
hard for a stamp; others like water; you may stamp what you please, but
it vanisheth as soon as the seal is removed. It is God forms men as he
pleaseth: some have parts to govern a kingdom, others scarce brains to
conduct their own affairs; one is fit to rule men, and another scarce
fit to keep swine; some have capacious souls in crazy and deformed
bodies, others contracted spirits and heavier minds in a richer and
more beautiful case. Why are not all stones alike? some have a more
sparkling light, as gems, more orient than pebbles;――some are stars of
first, and others of a less magnitude; others as mean as glow‑worms,
a slimy lustre:――it is because he is the sovereign Disposer of what
belongs to him; and gives here, as well as at the resurrection, to one
“a glory of the sun;” to another that of the “moon;” and to a third
a less, resembling that of a “star” (1 Cor. xv. 40). And this God
may do by the same right of dominion, as he exercised when he endowed
some kinds of creatures with a greater perfection than others in
their nature. Why may he not as well garnish one man with a greater
proportion of gifts, as make a man differ in excellency from the nature
of a beast? or frame angels to a more purely spiritual nature than a
man? or make one angel a cherubim or seraphim, with a greater measure
of light than another? Though the foundation of this is his dominion,
yet his wisdom is not uninterested in his sovereign disposal; he
garnisheth those with a greater ability whom he {b410} intends for
greater service, than those that he intends for less, or none at all;
as an artificer bestows more labor, and carves a more excellent figure
upon those stones that he designs for a more honorable place in the
building. But though the intending this or that man for service be
the motive of laying in a greater provision in him than in others, yet
still it is to be referred to his sovereignty, since that first act of
culling him out for such an end was the fruit solely of his sovereign
pleasure: as when he resolved to make a creature actively to glorify
him, in wisdom he must give him reason; yet the making such a creature
was an act of his absolute dominion.
6. His sovereignty is manifest in the calling some to a more special
service in their generation. God settles some in immediate offices
of his service, and perpetuates them in those offices, with a neglect
of others, who seem to have a greater pretence to them. Moses was a
great sufferer for Israel, the solicitor for them in Egypt, and the
conductor of them from Egypt to Canaan; yet he was not chosen to the
high priesthood, but that was an office settled upon Aaron, and his
posterity after him, in a lineal descent; Moses was only pitched
upon for the present rescue of the captived Israelites, and to be the
instrument of Divine miracles; but notwithstanding all the success
he had in his conduct, his faithfulness in his employment, and the
transcendent familiarity he had with the great Ruler of the world, his
posterity were left in the common level of the tribe of Levi, without
any special mark of dignity upon them above the rest for all the
services of that great man. Why Moses for a temporary magistrate, Aaron
for a perpetual priesthood, above all the rest of the Israelites? hath
little reason but the absolute pleasure of God, who distributes his
employments as he pleaseth; and as a master orders his servant to do
the noblest work, and another to labor in baser offices, according
to his pleasure. Why doth he call out David, a shepherd, to sway the
Jewish sceptre, above the rest of the brothers, that had a fairer
appearance, and had been bred in arms, and inured to the toils and
watchings of a camp? Why should Mary be the mother of Christ, and not
some other of the same family of David, of a more splendid birth, and
a nobler education? Though some other reasons may be rendered, yet
that which affords the greatest acquiescence, is the sovereign will of
God. Why did Christ choose out of the meanest of the people the twelve
apostles, to be heralds of his grace in Judea, and other parts of the
world; and afterwards select Paul before Gamaliel, his instructor, and
others of the Jews, as learned as himself, and advance him to be the
most eminent apostle, above the heads of those who had ministered to
Christ in the days of his flesh? Why should he preserve eleven of those
he first called to propagate and enlarge his kingdom, and leave the
other to the employment of shedding his blood? Why, in the times of our
reformation, he should choose a Luther out of a monastery, and leave
others in their superstitious nastiness, to perish in the traditions of
their fathers? Why set up Calvin, as a bulwark of the gospel, and let
others as learned as himself wallow in the sink of popery? It is his
pleasure to do so. The potter hath power to separate this part of the
clay to form a vessel {b411} for a more public use, and another part of
the clay to form a vessel for a more private one. God takes the meanest
clay to form the most excellent and honorable vessels in his house. As
he formed man, that was to govern the creatures of the same clay and
earth whereof the beasts were formed, and not of that nobler element
of water, which gave birth to the fish and birds: so he forms some,
that are to do him the greatest service, of the meanest materials, to
manifest the absolute right of his dominion.
7. His sovereignty is manifest in the bestowing much wealth and honor
upon some, and not vouchsafing it to the more industrious labors and
attempts of others. Some are abased, and others are elevated; some
are enriched, and others impoverished; some scarce feel any cross, and
others scarce feel any comfort in their whole lives; some sweat and
toil, and what they labor for runs out of their reach; others sit still,
and what they wish for falls into their lap. One of the same clay hath
a diadem to beautify his head, and another wants a covering to protect
him from the weather. One hath a stately palace to lodge in, and
another is scarce master of a cottage where to lay his head. A sceptre
is put into one man’s hand, and a spade into another’s; a rich purple
garnisheth one man’s body, while another wraps himself in dunghill
rags. The poverty of some, and the wealth of others, is an effect of
the Divine sovereignty, whence God is said to be the Maker of the “poor
as well as the rich” (Prov. xxii. 2), not only of their persons, but of
their conditions. The earth, and the fulness thereof, is his propriety;
and he hath as much a right as Joseph had to bestow changes of raiment
upon what Benjamins he please. There is an election to a greater degree
of worldly felicity, as there is an election of some to a greater
degree of supernatural grace and glory: as he makes it “rain upon one
city, and not upon another” (Amos iv. 7), so he causeth prosperity to
distil upon the head of one and not upon another; crowning some with
earthly blessings, while he crosseth others with continual afflictions:
for he speaks of himself as a great proprietor of the corn that
nourisheth us, and the wine that cheers us, and the wood that warm us
(Hos. ii. 8, 9): “I will take away,” not your corn and wine, but “my
corn, my wine, my wool.” His right to dispose of the goods of every
particular person is unquestionable. He can take away from one, and
pass over the propriety to another. Thus he devolved the right of the
Egyptian jewels to the Israelites, and bestowed upon the captives what
before he had vouchsafed to the oppressors; as every sovereign state
demands the goods of their subjects for the public advantage in a case
of exigency, though none of that wealth was gained by any public office,
but by their private industry, and gained in a country not subject to
the dominion of those that require a portion of them. By this right
he changes strangely the scene of the world; sometimes those that are
high are reduced to a mean and ignominious condition, those that are
mean are advanced to a state of plenty and glory. The counter, which
in accounting signifies now but a penny, is presently raised up to
signify a pound. The proud ladies of Israel, instead of a girdle of
curious needlework, are brought to make use {b412} of a cord; as the
vulgar translates _rent_, a rag, or list of cloth (Isa. iii. 24), and
sackcloth for a stomacher instead of silk. This is the sovereign act
of God, as he is Lord of the world (Ps. lxxv. 6, 7): “Promotion cometh
neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south, but God
is the Judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.” He doth no
wrong to any man, if he lets him languish out his days in poverty and
disgrace: if he gives or takes away, he meddles with nothing but what
is his own more than ours: if he did dispense his benefits equally
to all, men would soon think it their due. The inequality and changes
preserve the notion of God’s sovereignty, and correct our natural
unmindfulness of it. If there were no changes, God would not be feared
as the “King of all the earth” (Ps. lv. 19): to this might also be
referred his investing some countries with greater riches in their
bowels, and on the surface; the disposing some of the fruitful and
pleasant regions of Canaan or Italy, while he settles others in the
icy and barren parts of the northern climates.
8. His sovereignty is manifest in the times and seasons of dispensing
his goods. He is Lord of the times when, as well as of the goods which,
he doth dispose of to any person; these “the Father hath put in his
own power” (Acts i. 7). As it was his sovereign pleasure to restore
the kingdom to Israel, so he would pitch upon the time when to do it,
and would not have his right invaded, so much as by a question out
of curiosity. This disposing of opportunities, in many things, can be
referred to nothing else but his sovereign pleasure. Why should Christ
come at the twilight and evening of the world? at the fulness, and not
at the beginning, of time? Why should he be from the infancy of the
world so long wrapt up in a promise, and not appear in the flesh till
the last times and gray hairs of the world, when so many persons, in
all nations, had been hurried out of the world without any notice of
such a Redeemer? What was this but his sovereign will? Why the Gentiles
should be left so long in the devil’s chains, wallowing in the sink of
their abominable superstitions, since God had declared his intention
by the prophets to call multitudes of them, and reject the Jews;――why
he should defer it so long, can be referred to nothing but the same
cause. What is the reason the veil continues so long upon the heart
of the Jews, that is promised, one time or other, to be taken off?
Why doth God delay the accomplishment of those glorious predictions of
the happiness and interest of that people? Is it because of the sin of
their ancestors,――a reason that cannot bear much weight? If we cast it
upon that account, their conversion can never be expected, can never
be effected; if for the sins of their ancestors, is it not also for
their own sins? Do their sins grow less in number, or less venomous, or
provoking in quality, by this delay? Is not their blasphemy of Christ
as malicious, their hatred of him as strong and rooted, as ever? Do
they not as much approve of the bloody act of their ancestors, since
so many ages are past, as their ancestors did applaud it at the time of
the execution? Have they not the same disposition and will, discovered
sufficiently by the scorn of Christ, and of those that profess his
name, to act the {b413} same thing over again, were Christ now in
the same state in the world, and they invested with the same power
of government? If their conversion were deferred one age after the
death of Christ for the sins of their preceding ancestors, is it to be
expected now; since the present generation of the Jews in all countries
have the sins of those remote, the succeeding, and their more immediate
ancestors, lying upon them? This, therefore, cannot be the reason; but
as it was the sovereign pleasure of God to foretell his intention to
overcome the stoutness of their hearts, so it is his sovereign pleasure
that it shall not be performed till the “fulness of the Gentiles be
come in” (Rom. xi. 25). As he is the Lord of his own grace, so he is
the Lord of the time when to dispense it. Why did God create the world
in six days, which he could have erected and beautified in a moment?
Because it was his pleasure so to do. Why did he frame the world when
he did, and not many ages before? Because he is Master of his own work.
Why did he not resolve to bring Israel to the fruition of Canaan till
after four hundred years? Why did he draw out their deliverance to so
long time after he began to attempt it? Why such a multitude of plagues
upon Pharaoh to work it, when he could have cut short the work by one
mortal blow upon the tyrant and his accomplices? It was his sovereign
pleasure to act so, though not without other reasons intelligible
enough by looking into the story. Why doth he not bring man to a
perfection of stature in a moment after his birth, but let him continue
in a tedious infancy, in a semblance to beasts, for the want of an
exercise of reason? Why doth he not bring this or that man, whom he
intends for service, to a fitness in an instant, but by long tracts of
study, and through many meanders and labyrinths? Why doth he transplant
a hopeful person in his youth to the pleasures of another world, and
let another, of an eminent holiness, continue in the misery of this,
and wade through many floods of afflictions? What can we chiefly
refer all these things to but his sovereign pleasure? The “times are
determined by God” (Acts xvii. 26).
_Thirdly._ The dominion of God is manifested as a governor, as well as
a lawgiver and proprietor.
1. In disposing of states and kingdoms. (Ps. lxxv. 7): “God is Judge;
he puts down one, and sets up another.” “Judge” is to be taken not in
the same sense that we commonly use the word, for a judicial minister
in a way of trial, but for a governor; as you know the extraordinary
governors raised up among the Jews were called judges, whence one
entire book in the Old Testament is so denominated, the Book of Judges.
God hath a prerogative to “change times and seasons” (Dan. ii. 21),
_i. e._ the revolutions of government, whereby times are altered. How
many empires, that have spread their wings over a great part of the
world, have had their carcasses torn in pieces; and unheard‑of nations
plucked off the wings of the Roman eagle, after it had preyed upon many
nations of the world; and the Macedonian empire was as the dew that
is dried up a short time after it falls.[1011] He erected the Chaldean
monarchy, used Nebuchadnezzar to overthrow and punish the ungrateful
Jews, and, by a {b414} sovereign act, gave a great parcel of land
into his hands; and what he thought was his right by conquest, was
God’s donative to him. You may read the charter to Nebuchadnezzar,
whom he terms his servant (Jer. xxvii. 6): “And now I have given all
those lands” (the lands are mentioned ver. 3), “into the hands of
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant:” which decree he
pronounceth after his asserting his right of sovereignty over the whole
earth (ver. 5). After that, he puts a period to the Chaldean empire,
and by the same sovereign authority decrees Babylon to be a spoil to
the nations of the north country, and delivers her up as a spoil to
the Persian (Jer. l. 9, 10): and this for the manifestation of his
sovereign dominion, that he was the Lord, that made peace, and created
evil (Isa. xlv. 6, 7). God afterwards overthrows that by the Grecian
Alexander, prophesied of under the figure of a goat, with “one horn
between his eyes” (Dan. viii.): the swift current of his victories,
as swift as his motion, showed it to be from an extraordinary hand of
heaven, and not either from the policy or strength of the Macedonian.
His strength, in the prophet, is described to be less, being but one
horn running against the Persian, described under the figure of a ram
with two horns:[1012] and himself acknowledged a Divine motion exciting
him to that great attempt, when he saw Joddus, the high‑priest, coming
out in his priestly robes, to meet him at his approach to Jerusalem,
whom he was about to worship, acknowledging that the vision which put
him upon the Persian war appeared to him in such a garb. What was the
reason Israel was rent from Judah, and both split into two distinct
kingdoms? Because Rehoboam would not hearken to sober and sound
counsels, but follow the advice of upstarts. What was the reason he did
not hearken to sound advice, since he had so advantageous an education
under his father Solomon, the wisest prince of the world? “The cause
was from the Lord” (1 Kings, xii. 15), that he might perform what he
had before spoke. In this he acted according to his royal word; but, in
the first resolve, he acted as a sovereign lord, that had the disposal
of all nations in the world. And though Ahab had a numerous posterity,
seventy sons to inherit the throne after him, yet God by his sovereign
authority gives them up into the hands of Jehu, who strips them of
their lives and hopes together: not a man of them succeeded in the
throne, but the crown is transferred to Jehu by God’s disposal. In wars,
whereby flourishing kingdoms are overthrown, God hath the chief hand;
in reference to which it is observed that, in the two prophets, Isaiah
and Jeremiah, God is called “the Lord of Hosts” one hundred and thirty
times. It is not the sword of the captain, but the sword of the Lord,
bears the first rank; “the sword of the Lord and of Gideon” (Judges vii.
18). The sword of a conqueror is the sword of the Lord, and receives
its charge and commission from the great Sovereign (Jer. xlvii. 6, 7).
We are apt to confine our thoughts to second causes, lay the fault
upon the miscarriages of persons, the ambition of the one, and the
covetousness of another, and regard them not as the effects of God’s
sovereign authority, linking second causes together to serve his
own purpose. The skill of one man may lay open the {b415} folly of a
counsellor; an earthly force may break in pieces the power of a mighty
prince: but Job, in his consideration of those things, refers the
matter higher: “He looseth the bond of kings, and girdeth their loins
with a girdle” (Job xii. 18). “He looseth the bonds of kings,” _i. e._
takes off the yokes they lay upon their subjects, “and girds their
loins with a girdle” (a _cord_, as the vulgar); he lays upon them those
fetters they framed for others; such a girdle, or band, as is the mark
of captivity, as the words, ver. 19, confirm it: “He leads princes
away spoiled, and overthrows the mighty.” God lifts up some to a great
height, and casts down others to a disgraceful ruin. All those changes
in the face of the world, the revolutions of empires, the desolating
and ravaging wars, which are often immediately the birth of the vice,
ambition, and fury of princes, are the royal acts of God as Governor of
the world. All government belongs to him; he is the Fountain of all the
great and the petty dominions in the world; and, therefore, may place
in them what substitutes and vicegerents he pleaseth, as a prince may
remove his officers at pleasure, and take their commissions from them.
The highest are settled by God _durante bene placito_, and not _quamdiu
bene se gesserint_. Those princes that have been the glory of their
country have swayed the sceptre but a short time, when the more wolvish
ones have remained longer in commission, as God hath seen fit for
the ends of his own sovereign government. Now, by the revolutions in
the world, and changes in governors and government, God keeps up the
acknowledgment of his sovereignty, when he doth arrest grand and public
offenders that wear a crown by his providence, and employ it, by their
pride, against him that placed it there. When he arraigns such by
a signal hand from heaven, he makes them the public examples of the
rights of his sovereignty, declaring thereby, that the cedars of
Lebanon are as much at his foot, as the shrubs of the valley; that he
hath as sovereign an authority over the throne in the palace, as over
the stool in the cottage.
2. The dominion of God is manifested in raising up and ordering the
spirits of men according to his pleasure. He doth, as the Father of
spirits, communicate an influence to the spirits of men, as well as an
existence; he puts what inclinations he pleaseth into the will, stores
it with what habits he please, whether natural or supernatural, whereby
it may be rendered more ready to act according to the Divine purpose.
The will of man is a finite principle, and therefore subject to Him
who hath an infinite sovereignty over all things; and God, having a
sovereignty over the will, in the manner of its acting, causeth it to
will what he wills, as to the outward act, and the outward manner of
performing it. There are many examples of this part of his sovereignty.
God, by his sovereign conduct, ordered Moses a protectoress as soon
as his parents had formed an “ark of bulrushes,” wherein to set him
floating on the river (Exod. ii. 3‒6): they expose him to the waves,
and the waves expose him to the view of Pharaoh’s daughter, whom God,
by his secret ordering her motion, had posted in that place; and though
she was the daughter of a prince that inveterately hated the whole
nation, and had, by various arts, endeavored to extirpate them, yet
God inspires the royal lady {b416} with sentiments of compassion to the
forlorn infant, though she knew him to be one of the Hebrews’ children
(ver. 6), _i. e._ one of that race whom her father had devoted to
the hands of the executioner; yet God, that doth by his sovereignty
rule over the spirits of all men, moves her to take that infant into
her protection, and nourish him at her own charge, give him a liberal
education, adopt him as her son, who, in time, was to be the ruin of
her race, and the saviour of his nation. Thus he appointed Cyrus to be
his shepherd, and gave him a pastoral spirit for the restoration of the
city and temple of Jerusalem (Isa. xliv. 28): and Isaiah (chap. xlv. 5)
tells them, in the prophecy, that he had girded him, though Cyrus had
not known him, _i. e._ God had given him a military spirit and strength
for so great an attempt, though he did not know that he was acted by
God for those divine purposes. And when the time came for the house of
the Lord to be rebuilt, the spirits of the people were raised up, not
by themselves, but by God (Ezra i. 5), “Whose spirit God had raised to
go up;” and not only the spirit of Zerubbabel, the magistrate, and of
Joshua, the priest, but the spirit of all the people, from the highest
to the meanest that attended him, were acted by God to strengthen their
hands, and promote the work (Hag. i. 14). The spirits of men, even in
those works which are naturally desirable to them, as the restoration
of the city and rebuilding of the Temple was to those Jews, are acted
by God, as the Sovereign over them, much more when the wheels of men’s
spirits are lifted up above their ordinary temper and motion. It was
this empire of God good Nehemiah regarded, as that whence he was to
hope for success; he did not assure himself so much of it, from the
favor he had with the king, nor the reasonableness of his intended
petition, but the absolute power God had over the heart of that
great monarch; and, therefore, he supplicates the heavenly, before he
petitioned the earthly, throne (Neh. ii. 4): “So I prayed to the God of
heaven.” The heathens had some glance of this; it is an expression that
Cicero hath somewhere, “That the Roman commonwealth was rather governed
by the assistance of the Supreme Divinity over the hearts of men,
than by their own counsels and management.” How often hath the feeble
courage of men been heightened to such a pitch as to stare death in the
face, which before were damped with the least thought or glance of it!
This is a fruit of God’s sovereign dominion.
3. The dominion of God is manifest in restraining the furious
passions of men, and putting a block in their way. Sometimes God doth
it by a remarkable hand, as the Babel builders were diverted from their
proud design by a sudden confusion of their language, and rendering it
unintelligible to one another; sometimes by ordinary, though unexpected,
means; as when Saul, like a hawk, was ready to prey upon David, whom
he had hunted as a partridge upon the mountains, he had another object
presented for his arms and fury by the Philistines’ sudden invasion of
a part of his territory (1 Sam. xxiii. 26‒28). But it is chiefly seen
by an inward curbing mutinous affections, when there is no visible
cause. What reason but this can be rendered, why the nations bordering
on Canaan, who bore no good will to the Jews, but rather wished the
whole race of {b417} them rooted out from the face of the earth, should
not invade their country, pillage their houses, and plunder their
cattle, while they were left naked of any human defence, the males
being annually employed at one time at Jerusalem in worship; what
reason can be rendered, but an invisible curb God put into their
spirits? What was the reason not a man, of all the buyers and sellers
in the Temple, should rise against our Saviour, when, with a high hand,
he began to whip them out, but a Divine bridle upon them? though it
appears, by the questioning his authority, that there were Jews enough
to have chased out him and his company (John ii. 15, 18). What was the
reason that, at the publishing the gospel by the apostles at the first
descent of the Spirit, those that had used the Master so barbarously
a few days before, were not all in a foam against the servants, that,
by preaching that doctrine, upbraided them with the late murder? Had
they better sentiments of the Lord, whom they had put to death? Were
their natures grown tamer, and their malignity expelled? No; but that
Sovereign who had loosed the reins of their malicious corruption,
to execute the Master for the purchase of redemption, curbed it from
breaking out against the servants, to further the propagation of the
doctrine of redemption. He that restrains the roaring lion of hell,
restrains also his whelps on earth; he and they must have a commission
before they can put forth a finger to hurt, how malicious soever their
nature and will be. His empire reaches over the malignity of devils,
as well as the nature of beasts. The lions out of the den, as well
as those in the den, are bridled by him in favor of his Daniels. His
dominion is above that of principalities and powers; their decrees are
at his mercy, whether they shall stand or fall; he hath a vote above
their stiffest resolves: his single word, _I will_, or, _I forbid_,
outweighs the most resolute purposes of all the mighty Nimrods of
the earth in their rendezvouses and cabals, in their associations and
counsels (Isa. viii. 9, 10): “Associate yourselves, O ye people, and
ye shall be broken in pieces; take counsel together, and it shall come
to nought.” “When the enemy shall come in like a flood,” with a violent
and irresistible force, intending nothing but ravage and desolation,
“the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against them” (Isa.
lix. 19), shall give a sudden check, and damp their spirits, and put
them to a stand. When Laban furiously pursued Jacob, with an intent to
do him an ill turn, God gave him a command to do otherwise (Gen. xxxi.
24). Would Laban have respected that command any more than he did the
light of nature when he worshipped idols, had not God exercised his
authority in inclining his will to observe it, or laying restraints
upon his natural inclinations, or denying his concourse to the acting
those ill intentions he had entertained? The stilling the principles of
commotion in men, and the noise of the sea, are arguments of the Divine
dominion; neither the one nor the other is in the power of the most
sovereign prince without Divine assistance: as no prince can command a
calm to a raging sea, so no prince can order stillness to a tumultuous
people; they are both put together as equally parts of the Divine
prerogative (Ps. lxv. 7), which “stills the noise of the sea, and
tumult of the people:” and David owns God’s sovereignty {b418} more
than his own, “in subduing the people under him” (Ps. xviii. 47). In
this his empire is illustrious (Ps. xxix. 10): “The Lord sitteth upon
the floods, yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever;” a King impossible
to be deposed, not only on the natural floods of the sea, that would
naturally overflow the world, but the metaphorical floods or tumults
of the people, the sea in every wicked man’s heart, more apt to
rage morally than the sea to foam naturally. If you will take the
interpretation of an angel, waters and floods, in the prophetic style,
signify the inconstant and mutable people (Rev. xvii. 1, 5): “The
waters where the whore sits are people, and multitudes, and nations,
and tongues:” so the angel expounds to John the vision which he saw
(ver. 1). The heathens acknowledged this part of God’s sovereignty
in the inward restraints of men: those apparitions of the gods and
goddesses in Homer, to several of the great men when they were in a
fury, were nothing else, in the judgment of the wisest philosophers,
than an exercise of God’s sovereignty in quelling their passions,
checking their uncomely intentions, and controlling them in that which
their rage prompted them to. And, indeed, did not God set bounds to
the storms in men’s hearts, we should soon see the funeral, not only
of religion, but civility; the one would be blown out, and the other
torn up by the roots.
4. The dominion of God is manifest in defeating the purposes and
devices of men. God often makes a mock of human projects, and doth
as well accomplish that which they never dreamt of, as disappoint
that which they confidently designed. He is present at all cabals,
laughs at men’s formal and studied counsels, bears a hand over every
egg they hatch, thwarts their best compacted designs, supplants their
contrivances, breaks the engines they have been many years rearing,
diverts the intentions of men, as a mighty wind blows an arrow from
the mark which the archer intended. (Job v. 12): “He disappointeth
the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their
enterprise; he taketh the wise in their own craftiness, and the counsel
of the froward is carried headlong.” Enemies often draw an exact scheme
of their intended proceedings, marshal their companies, appoint their
rendezvous, think to make but one morsel of those they hate; God, by
his sovereign dominion, turns the scale, changeth the gloominess of
the oppressed into a sunshine, and the enemies’ sunshine into darkness.
When the nations were gathered together against Sion, and said, “Let
her be defiled, and let our eye look upon Sion” (Micah iv. 11), what
doth God do in this case? (ver. 12), “He shall gather them,” _i. e._
those conspiring nations, as “sheaves into the floor.” Then he sounds
a trumpet to Sion: “Arise, and thresh, O daughter of Sion, for I will
make thy horn iron, and thy hoofs brass, and thou shalt beat in pieces
many people; and I will consecrate their gain unto the Lord, and their
substance unto the Lord of the whole earth.” I will make them and their
counsels, them and their strength, the monuments and signal marks of
my empire over the whole earth. When you see the cunningest designs
baffled by some small thing intervening; when you see men of profound
wisdom infatuated, mistake their way, and “grope in the noon‑day as
in the night” (Job v. 14), bewildered in {b419} a plain way; when you
see the hopes of mighty attempters dashed into despair, their triumphs
turned into funerals, and their joyful expectations into sorrowful
disappointments; when you see the weak, devoted to destruction,
victorious, and the most presumptuous defeated in their purposes, then
read the Divine dominion in the desolation of such devices. How often
doth God take away the heart and spirit of grand designs, and burst
a mighty wheel, by snatching but one man out of the world! How often
doth he “cut off the spirits of princes” (Ps. lxxvi. 12), either
from the world by death, or from the execution of their projects by
some unforeseen interruption, or from favoring those contrivances,
which before they cherished by a change of their minds! How often
hath confidence in God, and religious prayer, edged the weakest and
smallest number of weapons to make a carnage of the carnally confident!
How often hath presumption been disappointed, and the contemned enemy
rejoiced in the spoils of the proud expectant of victory! Phidias made
the image of Nemesis, or Revenge, at Marathon, of that marble which
the haughty Persians, despising the weakness of the Athenian forces,
brought with them, to erect a trophy for an expected, but an ungained,
victory.[1013] Haman’s neck, by a sudden turn, was in the halter,
when the Jews’ necks were designed to the block; Julian designed the
overthrow of all the Christians, just before his breast was pierced by
an unexpected arrow; the Powder‑traitors were all ready to give fire
to the mine, when the sovereign hand of Heaven snatched away the match.
Thus the great Lord of the world cuts off men on the pinnacle of their
designs, when they seem to threaten heaven and earth; puts out the
candle of the wicked, which they thought to use to light them to the
execution of their purposes; turns their own counsels into a curse to
themselves, and a blessing to their adversaries, and makes his greatest
enemies contribute to the effecting his purposes. How may we take
notice of God’s absolute disposal of things in private affairs, when
we see one man, with a small measure of prudence and little industry,
have great success, and others, with a greater measure of wisdom, and
a greater toil and labor, find their enterprises melt between their
fingers! It was Solomon’s observation, “That the race was not to the
swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither bread to the wise, nor
riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill” (Eccles.
ix. 11). Many things might interpose to stop the swift in his race, and
damp the courage of the most valiant: things do not happen according
to men’s abilities, but according to the overruling authority of God:
God never yet granted man the dominion of his own way, no more than to
be lord of his own time: “The way of man is not in himself, it is not
in him that walketh to direct his steps” (Jer. x. 23). He hath given
man a power of acting, but not the sovereignty to command success. He
makes even those things which men intended for their security to turn
to their ruin; Pilate delivered up Christ to be accounted a friend to
Cæsar, and Cæsar soon after proves an enemy to him, removes him from
his government, and sends him into banishment. The Jews imagined by the
crucifying Christ to keep the Roman ensigns at a {b420} distance from
them, and this hasted their march, by God’s sovereign disposal, which
ended in a total desolation. “He makes the judges fools” (Job xxii. 17),
by taking away his light from their understanding, and suffering them
to go on in the vanity of their own spirits, that his sovereignty in
the management of things may be more apparent; for then he is known to
be Lord, when he “snares the wicked in the work of his own hands” (Ps.
ix. 16). You have seen much of this doctrine in your experience, and,
if my judgment fail me not, you will yet see much more.
5. The dominion of God is manifest in sending his judgments upon
whom he please. “He kills and makes alive; he wounds and heals” whom
he pleaseth: his thunders are his own, and he may cast them upon
what subjects he thinks good: he hath a right, in a way of justice,
to punish all men; he hath his choice, in a way of sovereignty, to
pick out whom he please, to make the examples of it. Might not some
nations be as wicked as those of Sodom and Gomorrah, yet have not been
scorched with the like dreadful flames? Zoar was untouched, while the
other cities, her neighbors, were burnt to ashes. Were there never
any places and persons successors in Sodom’s guilt? Yet those only by
his sovereign authority are separated by him to be the examples of his
“eternal vengeance” (Jude 7). Why are not sinners as Sodom, like as
those ancient ones, scalded to death by the like fiery drops? It is
because it is his pleasure; and the same reason is to be rendered,
why he would in a way of justice cut off the Jews for their sins, and
leave the Gentiles untouched in the midst of their idolatries. When the
church was consumed because of her iniquities, they acknowledged God’s
sovereignty in this. “We are the clay, and thou art our Potter, and we
all the work of thy hands” (Isa. lxiv. 7, 8); thou hast a liberty to
break or preserve us. Judgments move according to God’s order. When the
sword hath a charge against Ashkelon and the sea‑shore, thither it must
march, and touch not any other place or person as it goes, though there
may be demerit enough for it to punish. When the prophet had spake
to the sword, “O thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou
be quiet? put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest and be still;” the
prophet answers for the sword, “How can it be quiet, seeing the Lord
hath given it a charge against Ashkelon? there hath he appointed it”
(Jer. xlvii. 6, 7). If he hath appointed a judgment against London
or Westminster, or any other place, there it shall drop, there it
shall pierce, and in no other place without a like charge. God, as a
sovereign, gives instructions to every judgment, when, and against whom,
it shall march, and what cities, what persons, it shall arrest; and
he is punctually obeyed by them, as a sovereign Lord. All creatures
stand ready for his call, and are prepared to be executioners of his
vengeance, when he speaks the word; they are his hosts by creation, and
in array for his service: at the sound of his trumpet, or beat of his
drum, they troop together with arms in their hands, to put his orders
exactly in execution.
6. The dominion of God is manifest in appointing to every man his
calling and station in the world. If the hairs of every man’s head
fall under his sovereign care, the calling of every man, wherein {b421}
he is to glorify God and serve his generation, which is of a greater
concern than the hairs of the head, falls under his dominion. He is
the master of the great family, and divides to every one his work as he
pleaseth. The whole work of the Messiah, the time of every action, as
well as the hour of his passion, was ordered and appointed by God. The
separation of Paul to the preaching of the gospel, was by the sovereign
disposal of God (Rom. i. 1). By the same exercise of his authority,
that he “sets every man the bounds of his habitation” (Acts xvii. 26),
he prescribes also to him the nature of his work. He that ordered Adam,
the father of mankind, his work, and the place of it, the “dressing
the garden” (Gen. ii. 15), doth not let any of his posterity be their
own choosers, without an influence of his sovereign direction on them.
Though our callings are our work, yet they are by God’s order, wherein
we are to be faithful to our great Master and Ruler.
7. The dominion of God is manifest in the means and occasions of
men’s conversion. Sometimes one occasion, sometimes another; one word
lets a man go, another arrests him, and brings him before God and his
own conscience; it is as God gives out the order. He lets Paul be a
prisoner at Jerusalem, that his cause should not be determined there;
moves him to appeal to Cæsar, not only to make him a prisoner, but
a preacher, in Cæsar’s court, and render his chains an occasion to
bring in a harvest of converts in Nero’s palace. His bonds in or for
Christ are “manifest in all the palace” (Phil. i. 12, 13); not the bare
knowledge of his bonds, but the sovereign design of God in those bonds,
and the success of them; the bare knowledge of them would not make
others more confident for the gospel, as it follows, ver. 14, without
a providential design of them. Onesimus, running from his master,
is guided by God’s sovereign order into Paul’s company, and thereby
into Christ’s arms; and he who came a fugitive, returns a Christian
(Philem. 10, 15). Some, by a strong affliction, have had by the Divine
sovereignty their understandings awakened to consider, and their wills
spirited to conversion. Monica being called Meribibula, or toss‑pot,
was brought to consider her way, and reform her life. A word hath done
that at one time, which hath often before fallen without any fruit.
Many have come to suck in the eloquence of the minister, and have found
in the honey for their ears a sting for their consciences. Austin had
no other intent in going to hear Ambrose but to have a taste of his
famous oratory. But while Ambrose spake a language to his ear, God
spake a heavenly dialect to his heart. No reason can be rendered of
the order, and timing, and influence of those things, but the sovereign
pleasure of God, who will attend one occasion and season with his
blessing, and not another.
8. The dominion of God is manifest in disposing of the lives of men.
He keeps the key of death, as well as that of the womb, in his own
hand; he hath given man a life, but not power to dispose of it, or
lay it down at his pleasure; and therefore he hath ordered man not to
murder, not another, not himself; man must expect his call and grant,
to dispose of the life of his body. Why doth he cut the thread of this
man’s life, and spin another’s out to a longer term? {b422} Why doth
one die an inglorious death, and another more honorable? One silently
drops away in the multitude, while another is made a sacrifice for the
honor of God, or the safety of his country. This is a mark of honor he
gives to one and not to another. “To you it is given” (Phil. i. 29).
The manner of Peter’s death was appointed (John xxi. 19). Why doth a
small and slight disease against the rules of physic, and the judgment
of the best practitioners, dislodge one man’s soul out of his body,
while a greater disease is mastered in another, and discharges the
patient, to enjoy himself a longer time in the land of the living?
Is it the effect of means so much as of the Sovereign Disposer of all
things? If means only did it, the same means would always work the same
effect, and sooner master a dwarfish than a giant‑like distemper. “Our
times are only in God’s hands” (Ps. xxxi. 15); either to cut short or
continue long. As his sovereignty made the first marriage knot, so he
reserves the sole authority to himself to make the divorce.
_Fourthly._ The dominion of God is manifest in his being a Redeemer,
as well as Lawgiver, Proprietor, and Governor. His sovereignty was
manifest in the creation, in bestowing upon this or that part of matter
a form more excellent than upon another. He was a Lawgiver to men and
angels, and prescribed them rules according to the counsel of his own
will. These were his creatures, and perfectly at his disposal. But in
redemption a sovereignty is exercised over the Son, the Second person
in the Trinity, one equal with the Father in essence and works, by whom
the worlds were created, and by whom they do consist. The whole gospel
is nothing else but a declaration of his sovereign pleasure concerning
Christ, and concerning us in him; it is therefore called “the mystery
of his will” (Eph. i. 9); the will of God is distinct from the will
of Christ, a purpose in himself, not moved thereunto by any; the
whole design was framed in the Deity, and as much the purpose of his
sovereign will as the contrivance of his immense wisdom. He decreed,
in his own pleasure, to have the Second Person assume our nature for
to deliver mankind from that misery whereinto it was fallen. The whole
of the gospel, and the privileges of it, are in that chapter resolved
into the will and pleasure of God. God is therefore called “the head
of Christ” (1 Cor. xi. 3). As Christ is superior to all men, and the
man superior to the woman, so is God superior to Christ, and of a more
eminent dignity; in regard of the constituting him mediator, Christ
is subject to God, as the body to the head. “Head” is a title of
government and sovereignty, and magistrates were called the “heads”
of the people. As Christ is the head of man, so is God the head of
Christ; and as man is subject to Christ, so is Christ subject to God;
not in regard of the Divine nature, wherein there is an equality, and
consequently no dominion of jurisdiction; nor only in his human nature,
but in the economy of a Redeemer, considered as one designed, and
consenting to be incarnate, and take our flesh; so that after this
agreement, God had a sovereign right to dispose of him according to the
articles consented to. In regard of his undertaking, and the advantage
he was to bring to the elect of God upon the earth, he calls God by the
{b423} solemn title of “his Lord” in that prophetic psalm of him (Ps.
xvi. 2): “O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord:
my goodness extends not unto thee, but unto the saints that are in
the earth.” It seems to be the speech of Christ in heaven, mentioning
the saints on earth as at a distance from him. I can add nothing to
the glory of thy majesty, but the whole fruit of my meditation and
sufferings will redound to the saints on earth. And it may be observed,
that God is called the Lord of Hosts in the evangelical prophets,
Isaiah, Haggai, Zachariah, and Malachi, more in reference to this
affair of redemption, and the deliverance of the church, than for any
other works of his providence in the world.
1. This sovereignty of God appears, in requiring satisfaction for
the sin of man. Had he indulged man after his fall, and remitted his
offence without a just compensation for the injury he had received
by his rebellion, his authority had been vilified, man would always
have been attempting against his jurisdiction, there would have been
a continual succession of rebellions on man’s part; and if a continual
succession of indulgences on God’s part, he had quite disowned his
authority over man, and stripped himself of the flower of his crown;
satisfaction must have been required some time or other from the person
thus rebelling, or some other in his stead; and to require it after
the first act of sin, was more preservative to the right of the Divine
sovereignty, than to do it after a multitude of repeated revolts. God
must have laid aside his authority if he had laid aside wholly the
exacting punishment for the offence of man.
2. This sovereignty of God appears, in appointing Christ to this work
of redemption. His sovereignty was before manifest over angels and
men by the right of creation; there was nothing wanting to declare the
highest charge of it, but his ordering his own Son to become a mortal
creature; the Lord of all things to become lower than those angels
that had, as well as all other things, received their being and beauty
from him, and to be reckoned in his death among the dust and refuse of
the world: he by whom God created all things, not only became a man,
but a crucified man, by the will of his Father (Gal. i. 4), “who gave
himself for our sins according to the will of God;” to which may refer
that expression (Prov. viii. 22), of his being “possessed by God in the
beginning of his way.” Possession is the dominion of a thing invested
in the possessor; he was possessed, indeed, as a Son by eternal
generation; he was possessed also in the beginning of his way or
works of creation, as a Mediator by special constitution: to this
the expression seems to refer, if you read on to the end of ver. 31,
wherein Christ speaks of his “rejoicing in the habitable part of his
earth,” the earth of the great God, who hath designed him to this
special work of redemption. He was a Son by nature, but a Mediator by
Divine will; in regard of which Christ is often called God’s servant,
which is a relation to God as a Lord. God being the Lord of all things,
the dominion of all things inferior to him is inseparable from him; and
in this regard, the whole of what Christ was to do, and did actually
do, was acted by him as the will of God, and is expressed so by himself
in the prophecy (Ps. xl. 7), “Lo, I come;” (ver. 8), “I delight to do
{b424} thy will;” which are put together (Heb. x. 7), “Lo, I come to
do thy will, O God.” The designing Christ to this work was an act of
mercy, but founded on his sovereignty. His compassionate bowels might
have pitied us without his being sovereign, but without it could not
have relieved us. It was the council of his own will, as well as of his
bowels: none was his counsellor or persuader to that mercy he showed:
(Rom. xi. 34), “Who hath been his counsellor?” for it refers to that
mercy in “sending the Deliverer out of Sion” (ver. 26), as well as to
other things the apostle had been discoursing of. As God was at liberty
to create, or not to create, so he was at liberty to redeem or not
to redeem, and at his liberty whether to appoint Christ to this work,
or not to call him out to it. In giving this order to his Son, his
sovereignty was exercised in a higher manner than in all the orders
and instructions he hath given out to men or angels, and all the
employments he ever sent them upon. Christ hath names which signify an
authority over him: he is called “an Angel,” and a “Messenger” (Mal.
iii. 1); an “Apostle” (Heb. iii. 1): declaring thereby, that God hath
as much authority over him as over the angels sent upon his messages,
or over the apostles commissioned by his authority, as he was
considered in the quality of Mediator.
3. This sovereignty of God appears in transferring our sins upon
Christ. The supreme power in a nation can only appoint or allow of a
commutation of punishment; it is a part of sovereignty to transfer the
penalty due to the crime of one upon another, and substitute a sufferer,
with the sufferer’s own consent, in the place of a criminal, whom he
had a mind to deliver from a deserved punishment. God transferred the
sins of men upon Christ, and inflicted on him a punishment for them.
He summed up the debts of man, charged them upon the score of Christ,
imputing to him the guilt, and inflicting upon him the penalty. (Isa.
liii. 6): “The Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all;” he
made them all to meet upon his back: “He hath made him to be sin
for us” (2 Cor. v. 21); he was made so by the sovereign pleasure of
God: a punishment for sin, as most understand it, which could not be
righteously inflicted, had not sin been first righteously imputed, by
the consent of Christ, and the order of the Judge of the world. This
imputation could be the immediate act of none but God, because he
was the sole creditor. A creditor is not bound to accept of another’s
suretyship, but it is at his liberty whether he will or no; and when he
doth accept of him, he may challenge the debt of him, as if he were the
principal debtor himself. Christ made himself sin for us by a voluntary
submission; and God made him sin for us by a full imputation, and
treated him penally, as he would have done those sinners in whose stead
he suffered. Without this act of sovereignty in God, we had forever
perished: for if we could suppose Christ laying down his life for us
without the pleasure and order of God, he could not have been said to
have borne our punishment. What could he have undergone in his humanity
but a temporal death? But more than this was due to us, even the wrath
of God, which far exceeds the calamity of a mere bodily death. The
soul being principal in the crime, was to {b425} be principal in the
punishment. The wrath of God could not have dropped upon his soul, and
rendered it so full of agonies, without the hand of God: a creature
is not capable to reach the soul, neither as to comfort nor terror;
and the justice of God could not have made him a sufferer, if it had
not first considered him a sinner by imputation, or by inherency, and
actual commission of a crime in his own person. The latter was far from
Christ, who was holy, harmless, and undefiled. He must be considered
then in the other state of imputation, which could not be without
a sovereign appointment, or at least concession of God: for without
it, he could have no more authority to lay down his life for us, than
Abraham could have had to have sacrificed his son, or any man to expose
himself to death without a call; nor could any plea have been entered
in the court of heaven, either by Christ for us, or by us for ourselves.
And though the death of so great a person had been meritorious in
itself, it had not been meritorious for us, or accepted for us;
Christ is “delivered up by him” (Rom. viii. 32), in every part of
that condition wherein he was, and suffered; and to that end, that
“we might become the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. v. 21): that
we might have the righteousness of him that was God imputed to us,
or that we might have a righteousness as great and proportioned to
the righteousness of God, as God required. It was an act of Divine
sovereignty to account him that was righteous a sinner in our stead,
and to account us, who were sinners, righteous upon the merit of his
death.
4. This was done by the command of God; by God as a Lawgiver, having
the supreme legislative and preceptive authority: in which respect, the
whole work of Christ is said to be an answer to a law, not one given
him, but put into his heart, as the law of nature was in the heart of
man at first. (Ps. xl. 7, 8): “Thy law is within my heart.” This law
was not the law of nature or moral law, though that was also in the
heart of Christ, but the command of doing those things which were
necessary for our salvation, and not a command so much of doing, as
of dying. The moral law in the heart of Christ would have done us no
good without the mediatory law; we had been where we were by the sole
observance of the precepts of the moral law, without his suffering
the penalty of it: the law in the heart of Christ was the law of
suffering, or dying, the doing that for us by his death which the blood
of sacrifices was unable to effect. Legal “sacrifices thou wouldest
not; thy law is within my heart;” _i. e._ thy law ordered me to be
a sacrifice; it was that law, his obedience to which was principally
accepted and esteemed, and that was principally his passive, his
obedience to death (Phil. ii. 8); this was the special command received
from God, that he should die (John x. 18). It is not so clearly
manifested when this command was given, whether after the incarnation
of Christ, or at the point of his constitution as Mediator, upon the
transaction between the Father and the Son concerning the affair of
redemption: the promise was given “before the world began” (Tit. i. 2).
Might not the precept be given, before the world began, to Christ,
as considered in the quality of Mediator and Redeemer? Precepts and
promises usually attend one another; every covenant is made up of both.
Christ, considered {b426} here as the Son of God in the Divine nature,
was not capable of a command or promise; but considered in the relation
of Mediator between God and man, he was capable of both. Promises
of assistance were made before his actual incarnation, of which the
Prophets are full: why not precepts for his obedience, since long
before his incarnation this was his speech in the Prophet, “Thy law is
within my heart!” however, a command, a law it was, which is a fruit
of the Divine sovereignty; that as the sovereignty of God was impeached
and violated by the disobedience of Adam, it might be owned and
vindicated by the obedience of Christ; that as we fell by disloyalty
to it, we might rise by the highest submission to it in another head,
infinitely superior in his person to Adam, by whom we fell.
5. This sovereignty of God appears in exalting Christ to such a
sovereign dignity as our Redeemer. Some, indeed, say, that this
sovereignty of Christ’s human nature was natural, and the right of it
resulted from its union with the Divine; as a lady of mean condition,
when espoused and married to a prince, hath, by virtue of that, a
natural right to some kind of jurisdiction over the whole kingdom,
because she is one with the king.[1014] But to waive this; the
Scripture placeth wholly the conferring such an authority upon the
pleasure and will of God. As Christ was a gift of God’s sovereign will
to us, so this was a gift of God’s sovereign will to Christ (Matt.
xxviii. 28): “All power is given me.” And he “gave him to be head over
all things to the church” (Eph. i. 22); “God gave him a name above
every name” (Phil. ii. 9); and, therefore, his throne he sits upon is
called “The throne of his Father” (Rev. iii. 21). And he “committed all
judgment to the Son,” _i. e._ all government and dominion; an empire
in heaven and earth (John v. 22); and that because he is “the Son of
Man” (ver. 27); which may understood, that the Father hath given him
authority to exercise that judgment and government as the Son of Man,
which he originally had as the Son of God; or rather, because he became
a servant, and humbled himself to death, he gives him this authority as
the reward of his obedience and humility, conformable to Phil. ii. 9.
This is an act of the high sovereignty of God, to obscure his own
authority in a sense, and take into association with him, or vicarious
subordination to him, the human nature of Christ as united to the
Divine; not only lifting it above the heads of all the angels, but
giving that person in our nature an empire over them, whose nature was
more excellent than ours: yea, the sovereignty of God appears in the
whole management of this kingly office of Christ; for it is managed
in every part of it according to God’s order (Ezek. xxxvii. 24, 25):
“David, my servant, shall be king over them,” and “my servant David
shall be their prince forever:” he shall be a prince over them, but
my servant in that principality, in the exercise and duration of it.
The sovereignty of God is paramount in all that Christ hath done as
a priest, or shall do as a king.
_Use I._ For instruction.
1. How great is the contempt of this sovereignty of God! Man {b427}
naturally would be free from God’s empire, to be a slave under the
dominion of his own lust; the sovereignty of God, as a Lawgiver, is
most abhorred by man (Lev. xxvi. 43). The Israelites, the best people
in the world, were apt, by nature, not only to despise, but abhor,
his statutes; there is not a law of God but the corrupt heart of man
hath an abhorrency of: how often do men wish that God had not enacted
this or that law that goes against the grain! and, in wishing so, wish
that he were no sovereign, or not such a sovereign as he is in his own
nature, but one according to their corrupt model. This is the great
quarrel between God and man, whether he or they shall be the Sovereign
Ruler. He should not, by the will of man, rule in any one village in
the world; God’s vote should not be predominant in any one thing. There
is not a law of his but is exposed to contempt by the perverseness of
man (Prov. i. 21): “Ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would
have none of my reproof:” _Septuag._ “Ye have made all my counsels
without authority.” The nature of man cannot endure one precept of
God, nor one rebuke from him; and for this cause God is at the expense
of judgments in the world, to assert his own empire to the teeth and
consciences of men (Ps. lix. 13): “Lord, consume them in wrath, and
let them know that God rules in Jacob, to the ends of the earth.” The
dominion of God is not slighted by any creature of this world but man;
all others observe it by observing his order, whether in their natural
motions or preternatural irruptions; they punctually act according to
their commission. Man only speaks a dialect against the strain of the
whole creation, and hath none to imitate him among all the creatures
in heaven and earth, but only among those in hell: man is more
impatient of the yoke of God than of the yoke of man. There are not
so many rebellions committed by inferiors against their superiors and
fellow‑creatures, as are committed against God. A willing and easy
sinning is an equalling the authority of God to that of man (Hos. vi.
7): “They, like men, have transgressed my covenant;” they have made
no more account of breaking my covenant than if they had broken some
league or compact made with a mere man; so slightly do they esteem the
authority of God; such a disesteem of the Divine authority is a virtual
undeifying of him.[1015] To slight his sovereignty is to stab his Deity;
since the one cannot be preserved without the support of the other, his
life would expire with his authority. How base and brutish is it for
vile dust and mouldering clay to lift up itself against the majesty
of God, whose throne is in the heavens, who sways his sceptre over all
parts of the world――a Majesty before whom the devils shake, and the
highest cherubims tremble! It is as if the thistle, that can presently
be trod down by the foot of a wild beast, should think itself a match
for the cedar of Lebanon, as the phrase is, 2 Kings xiv. 9.
Let us consider this in general; and, also, in the ordinary practice of
men. _First_, In general.
(1.) All sin in its nature is a contempt of the Divine dominion. As
every act of obedience is a confirmation of the law, and consequently a
subscription of the authority of the Lawgiver (Deut. xxvii. 26), {b428}
so every breach to it is a conspiracy against the sovereignty of the
Lawgiver; setting up our will against the will of God is an articling
against his authority, as setting up our reason against the methods
of God is an articling against his wisdom; the intendment of every act
of sin is to wrest the sceptre out of God’s hand. The authority of God
is the first attribute in the Deity which it directs its edge against;
it is called, therefore, a “transgression of his law” (1 John iii. 4),
and, therefore, a slight, or neglect, of the majesty of God; and the
not keeping his commands is called a “forgetting God” (Deut. viii. 11),
_i. e._ a forgetting him to be our absolute Lord. As the first notion
we have of God as a Creator is that of his sovereignty, so the first
perfection that sin struck at, in the violation of the law, was his
sovereignty as a Lawgiver. “Breaking the law is a dishonoring God”
(Rom. ii. 23), a snatching off his crown; to obey our own wills before
the will of God, is to prefer ourselves as our own sovereigns before
him. Sin is a wrong, and injury to God, not in his essence, that is
above the reach of a creature, nor in anything profitable to him, or
pertaining to his own intrinsic advantage; not an injury to God in
himself, but in his authority, in those things which pertain to his
glory; a disowning his due right, and not using his goods according to
his will. Thus the whole world may be called, as God calls Chaldea, “a
land of rebels” (Jer. l. 21): “Go up against the land of Merathaim,”
or rebels: rebels, not against the Jews, but against God. The mighty
opposition in the heart of man to the supremacy of God is discovered
emphatically by the apostle (Rom. viii. 7) in that expression, “The
carnal mind is enmity against God,” _i. e._ against the authority of
God, because “it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can
be.” It refuseth not subjection to this or that part, but to the whole;
to every mark of Divine authority in it; it will not lay down its arms
against it, nay, it cannot but stand upon its terms against it; the law
can no more be fulfilled by a carnal mind, than it can be disowned by
a sovereign God. God is so holy, that he cannot alter a righteous law,
and man is so averse, that he cares not for, nay, cannot fulfil, one
title; so much doth the nature of man swell against the majesty of God.
Now an enmity to the law, which is in every sin, implies a perversity
against the authority of God that enacted it.
(2.) All sin, in its nature, is the despoiling God of his sole
sovereignty, which was probably the first thing the devil aimed at.
That pride was the sin of the devil, the Scripture gives us some
account of, when the apostle adviseth not a novice, or one that hath
but lately embraced the faith, to be chosen a bishop (1 Tim. iii. 6),
“Lest, being lifted up with pride, he fall into the condemnation of
the devil;” lest he fall into the same sin for which the devil was
condemned. But in what particular thing this pride was manifest, is
not so easily discernible; the ancients generally conceived it to be
an affecting the throne of God, grounding it on Isa. xiv. 12: “How
art thou fallen, O Lucifer, son of the morning! for thou hast said in
thy heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the
stars of God.” It is certain the prophet speaks there of the king of
Babylon, and taxeth him for his pride, and gives to him the title {b429}
of “Lucifer,” perhaps likening him in his pride to the devil, and then
it notes plainly the particular sin of the devil, attempting a share in
the sovereignty of God; and some strengthen their conjecture from the
name of the archangel who contended against Satan (Jude 9), which is
Michael, which signifies, “Who as God?” or, “Who like God?” the name
of the angel giving the superiority to God, intimating the contrary
disposition in the devil, against whom he contended. It is likely his
sin was an affecting equality with God in empire, or a freedom from
the sovereign authority of God; because he imprinted such a kind of
persuasion on man at his first temptation: “Ye shall be as gods” (Gen.
iii. 5); and though it be restrained to the matter of knowledge, yet
that being a fitness for government, it may be extended to that also.
But it is plainly a persuading them, that they might be, in some sort,
equal with God, and independent on him as their superior. What he had
found so fatal to himself, he imagined would have the same success in
the ruin of man. And since the devil hath, in all ages of the world,
usurped a worship to himself which is only due to God, and would
be served by man, as if he were the God of the world; since all his
endeavor was to be worshipped as the Supreme God on earth, it is not
unreasonable to think, that he invaded the supremacy of God in heaven,
and endeavored to be like the Most High before his banishment, as he
hath attempted to be like the Most High since. And since the devil and
antichrist are reputed by John, in the Revelation, to be so near of
kin, and so like in disposition, why might not that, which is the sin
of antichrist, the image of him, be also the sin of Satan, “to exalt
himself above all that is called God” (2 Thess. ii. 4), and “sit as
God in his temple,” affecting a partnership in his throne and worship?
Whether it was this, or attempting an unaccountable dominion over
created things, or because he was the prime angel, and the most
illustrious of that magnificent corporation, he might think himself
fit to reign with God over all things else? Or if his sin were envy,
as some think, at the felicity of man in paradise, it was still a
quarrelling with God’s dominion, and right of disposing his own goods
and favors; he is, therefore, called “Belial” (2 Cor. vi. 14, 15):
“What concord hath Christ with Belial?” _i. e._ with the devil, one
“without yoke,” as the word “Belial” signifies.
(3.) It is more plain, that this was the sin of Adam. The first act
of Adam was to exercise a lordship over the lower creatures, in giving
names to them,――a token of dominion (Gen. ii. 19). The next was to
affect a lordship over God, in rebelling against him. After he had
writ the first mark of his own delegated dominion, in the names he gave
the creatures, and owned their dependence on him as their governor, he
would not acknowledge his own dependence on God. As soon as the Lord
of the world had put him into possession of the power he had allotted
him, he attempted to strip his Lord of that which he had reserved to
himself; he was not content to lay a yoke upon the other creatures,
but desirous to shake off the Divine yoke from himself, and be subject
to none but his own will; hence Adam’s sin is more particularly called
“disobedience” (Rom. v. 19): for, in the eating the apple, there was
no moral evil in itself, but a {b430} contradiction to the positive
command and order of God, whereby he did disown God’s right of
commanding him, or reserving anything from him to his own use. The
language all his posterity speaks, “Let us break his bands, and cast
away his cords from us” (Ps. ii. 3), was learned from Adam in that act
of his. The next act we read of, was that of Cain’s murdering Abel,
which was an invading God’s right, in assuming an authority to dispose
of the life of his brother,――a life which God had given him, and
reserved the period of it in his own hands. And he persists in the same
usurpation when God came to examine him, and ask him where his brother
was; how scornful was his answer! (Gen. iv. 9): “Am I my brother’s
keeper?” as much as if he had said, What have you to do to examine
me? or, What obligation is there upon me to render an account of him?
or, as one saith, it is as much as if he had said, “Go, look for him
yourself.”[1016] The sovereignty of God did not remain undisturbed as
soon as ever it appeared in creation; the devils rebelled against it in
heaven, and man would have banished it from the earth.
(4.) The sovereignty of God hath not been less invaded by the
usurpations of men. One single order of the Roman episcopacy hath
endeavored to usurp the prerogatives of God; the Pope will prohibit
what God hath allowed; the marriage of priests; the receiving of the
cup, as well as of the bread, in the sacrament; the eating of this or
that sort of meat at special times, meats which God hath sanctified;
and forbid them, too, upon pain of damnation. It is an invasion of
God’s right to forbid the use of what God hath granted, as though the
earth, and the fulness thereof, were no longer the Lord’s, but the
Pope’s; much more to forbid what God hath commanded, as if Christ
overreached his own authority, when he enjoined all to drink of the
sacramental wine, as well as eat of the sacramental bread. No lord but
will think his right usurped by that steward who shall permit to others
what his lord forbids, and forbid that which his master allows, and
act the lord instead of the servant. Add to this the pardons of many
sins, as if he had the sole key to the treasures of Divine mercy;
the disposing of crowns and dominions at his pleasure, as if God had
divested himself of the title of King of kings, and transferred it upon
the see of Rome. The allowing public stews, dispensing with incestuous
marriages, as if God had acted more the part of a tyrant than of a
righteous Sovereign in forbidding them, depriving the Jews of the
propriety in their estates upon their conversion to Christianity, as
if the pilfering men’s goods were the way to teach them self‑denial,
the first doctrine of Christian religion; and God shall have no honor
from the Jew without a breach of his law by theft from the Christian.
Granting many years’ indulgences upon slight performances, the
repeating so many _Ave‑Marias_ and _Pater‑Nosters_ in a day, canonizing
saints, claiming the keys of heaven, and disposing of the honors and
glory of it, and proposing creatures as objects of religious worship,
wherein he answers the character of the apostle (2 Thess. ii. 4),
“showing himself that he is God,” in challenging that power which is
only the right of Divine sovereignty; exalting himself above God, in
indulging {b431} those things which the law of God never allowed, but
hath severely prohibited. This controlling the sovereignty of God, not
allowing him the rights of his crown, is the soul and spirit of many
errors. Why are the decrees of election and preterition denied? Because
men will not acknowledge God the Sovereign Disposer of his creature.
Why is effectual calling and efficacious grace denied? Because they
will not allow God the proprietor and distributer of his own goods. Why
is the satisfaction of Christ denied? Because they will not allow God
a power to vindicate his own law in what way he pleaseth. Most of the
errors of men may be resolved into a denial of God’s sovereignty; all
have a tincture of the first evil sentiment of Adam.
_Secondly._ The sovereignty of God is contemned in the practices of
men――(1.) As he is a _Lawgiver_.
[1.] When laws are made, and urged in any state contrary to the law of
God. It is part of God’s sovereignty to be a Lawgiver; not to obey his
law is a breach made upon his right of government; but it is treason
in any against the crown of God, to mint laws with a stamp contrary
to that of heaven, whereby they renounce their due subjection, and
vie with God for dominion, snatch the supremacy from him, and account
themselves more lords than the Sovereign Monarch of the world. When
men will not let God be the judge of good and evil, but put in their
own vote, controlling his to establish their own; such are not content
to be as gods, subordinate to the supreme God, to sit at his feet;
nor co‑ordinate with him, to sit equal upon his throne; but paramount
to him, to over‑top and shadow his crown;――a boldness that leaves
the serpent, in the first temptation, under the character of a more
commendable modesty; who advised our first parents to attempt to be
as gods, but not above him, and would enervate a law of God, but not
enact a contrary one to be observed by them. Such was the usurpation
of Nebuchadnezzar, to set up a golden image to be adored (Dan. iii.),
as if he had power to mint gods, as well as to conquer men; to set the
stamp of a Deity upon a piece of gold, as well as his own effigies upon
his current coin. Much of the same nature was that of Darius, by the
motion of his flatterers, to prohibit any petition to be made to God
for the space of thirty days, as though God was not to have a worship
without a license from a doting piece of clay (Dan. vi. 7). So Henry
the Third of France, by his edict, silenced masters of families from
praying with their households.[1017] And it is a farther contempt of
God’s authority, when good men are oppressed by the sole weight of
power, for not observing such laws, as if they had a real sovereignty
over the consciences of men, more than God himself.[1018] When the
apostles were commanded by an angel from God, to preach in the Temple
the doctrine of Christ (Acts v. 19, 20), they were fetched from thence
with a guard before the council (ver. 6). And what is the language
of those statesmen to them? as absolute as God himself could speak to
any transgressors of his law. “Did not we straitly command you, that
you should not teach in this name?” (ver. 28). It is sufficient that
we gave you a command to be silent, and publish {b432} no more this
doctrine of Jesus; it is not for you to examine our decrees, but rest
in our order as loyal subjects, and comply with your rulers; they
might have added,――though it be with the damnation of your souls. How
would those overrule the apostles by no other reason but their absolute
pleasure! And though God had espoused their cause, by delivering them
out of the prison, wherein they had locked them the day before, yet not
one of all this council had the wit or honesty to entitle it a fighting
against God, but Gamaliel (ver. 29). So foolishly fond are men to put
themselves in the place of God, and usurp a jurisdiction over men’s
consciences: and to presume that laws made against the interest and
command of God, must be of more force than the laws of God’s enacting.
[2.] The sovereignty of God is contemned in making additions to the
laws of God. The authority of a sovereign Lawgiver is invaded and
vilified when an inferior presumes to make orders equivalent to his
edicts. It is a _præmunire_ against heaven to set up an authority
distinct from that of God, or to enjoin anything as necessary in
matter of worship for which a Divine commission cannot be shown. God
was always so tender of this part of his prerogative, that he would
not have anything wrought in the tabernacle, not a vessel, not an
instrument, but what himself had prescribed. “According to all that
I show thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of
all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it” (Exod. xxv. 9);
which is strictly urged again, ver. 40: “Look that thou make them after
their pattern;” look to it, beware of doing anything of thine own head,
and justling with my authority. It was so afterwards in the matter of
the temple, which succeeded the tabernacle; God gave the model of it
to David, and made him “understand in writing by his hand upon him,
even all the works of this pattern” (1 Chron. xxviii. 19). Neither the
royal authority in Moses, who was king in Jesurun; nor in David, who
was a man after God’s own heart, and called to the crown by a special
and extraordinary providence; nor Aaron, and the high priests his
successors, invested in the sacerdotal office, had any authority from
God, to do anything in the framing the tabernacle or temple of their
own heads. God barred them from anything of that nature, by giving them
an exact pattern, so dear to him was always this flower of his crown.
And afterwards, the power of appointing officers and ordinances in
the church was delegated to Christ, and was among the rest of those
royalties given to him, which he fully completed “for the edifying
of the body” (Eph. iv. 11, 12); and he hath the eulogy by the Spirit
of God, to be “faithful as Moses was in all his house, to Him that
appointed him” (Heb. iii. 2). Faithfulness in a trust implies a
punctual observing directions; God was still so tender of this, that
even Christ, the Son, should no more do anything in this concern
without appointment and pattern, than “Moses, a servant” (ver. 5, 6).
It seems to be a vote of nature to refer the original of the modes of
all worship to God; and therefore in all those varieties of ceremonies
among the heathens, there was scarce any but were imagined by them
to be the dictates and orders of some of their pretended deities, and
not the resolves of mere human authority. What intrusion upon God’s
right hath the papacy {b433} made in regard of officers, cardinals,
patriarchs, &c., not known in any Divine order? In regard of ceremonies
in worship, pressed as necessary to obtain the favor of God, holy water,
crucifixes, altars, images, cringings, reviving many of the Jewish
and Pagan ceremonies, and adopting them into the family of Christian
ordinances; as if God had been too absolute and arbitrary in repealing
the one, and dashing in pieces the other. When God had by his sovereign
order framed a religion for the heart, men are ready to usurp an
authority to frame one for the sense, to dress the ordinances of God
in new and gaudy habits, to take the eye by a vain pomp; thus affecting
a Divine royalty, and acting a silly childishness; and after this, to
impose the observation of those upon the consciences of men, is a bold
ascent into the throne of God; to impose laws upon the conscience,
which Christ hath not imposed, hath deservedly been thought the very
spirit of antichrist; it may be called also the spirit of anti‑god. God
hath reserved to himself the sole sovereignty over the conscience, and
never indulged men any part of it; he hath not given man a power over
his own conscience, much less one man a power over another’s conscience.
Men have a power over outward things to do this or that, where it is
determined by the law of God, but not the least authority to control
any dictate or determination of conscience: the sole empire of that
is appropriate to God, as one of the great marks of his royalty.
What an usurpation is it of God’s right to make conscience a slave
to man, which God hath solely, as the Father of spirits, subjected to
himself!――an usurpation which, though the apostles, those extraordinary
officers, might better have claimed, yet they utterly disowned any
imperious dominion over the faith of others (2 Cor. i. 24). Though in
this they do not seem to climb up above God, yet they set themselves in
the throne of God, envy him an absolute monarchy, would be sharers with
him in his legislative power, and grasp one end of his sceptre in their
own hands. They do not pretend to take the crown from God’s head, but
discover a bold ambition to shuffle their hairy scalps under it, and
wear part of it upon their own, that they may rule with him, not under
him; and would be joint lords of his manor with him, who hath, by the
apostle, forbidden any to be “lords of his heritage” (1 Pet. v. 3): and
therefore they cannot assume such an authority to themselves till they
can show where God hath resigned this part of his authority to them.
If their exposition of that place (Matt. xvi. 18), “Upon this rock I
will build my church,” be granted to be true, and that the person and
successors of Peter are meant by that rock, it could be no apology for
their usurpations; it is not Peter and his successors shall build, but
“I will build;” others are instruments in building, but they are to
observe the directions of the grand Architect.
[3.] The sovereignty of God is contemned when men prefer obedience to
men’s laws before obedience to God. As God hath an undoubted right, as
the Lawgiver and Ruler of the world, to enact laws without consulting
the pleasure of men, or requiring their consent to the verifying and
establishing his edicts, so are men obliged, by their allegiance as
subjects, to observe the laws of their Creator, without consulting
whether they be agreeable to the laws of his revolted {b434} creatures.
To consult with flesh and blood whether we should obey, is to authorize
flesh and blood above the purest and most sovereign Spirit. When men
will obey their superiors, without taking in the condition the apostle
prescribes to servants (Col. iii. 22), “In singleness of heart fearing
God,” and postpone the fear of God to the fear of man, it is to render
God of less power with them than the drop of a bucket, or dust of the
balance. When we, out of fear of punishment, will observe the laws of
men against the laws of God, it is like the Egyptians, to worship a
ravenous crocodile instead of a Deity; when we submit to human laws,
and stagger at Divine, it is to set man upon the throne of God, and
God at the footstool of man; to set man above, and God beneath; to
make him the tail, and not the head, as God speaks in another case of
Israel (Deut. xxviii. 13). When we pay an outward observation to Divine
laws, because they are backed by the laws of man, and human authority
is the motive of our observance, we subject God’s sovereignty to
man’s authority; what he hath from us, is more owing to the pleasure
of men than any value we have for the empire of God: when men shall
commit murders, and imbrue their hands in blood by the order of a
grandee; when the worst sins shall be committed by the order of papal
dispensations; when the use of his creatures, which God hath granted
and sanctified, shall be abstained from for so many days in the week,
and so many weeks in the year, because of a Roman edict, the authority
of man is acknowledged, not only equal, but superior, to that of God;
the dominion of dust and clay is preferred before the undoubted right
of the Sovereign of the world; the commands of God are made less than
human, and the orders of men more authoritative than Divine, and a
grand rebel’s usurpation of God’s right is countenanced. When men
are more devout in observance of uncertain traditions, or mere human
inventions, than at the hearing of the unquestionable oracles of God;
when men shall squeeze their countenances into a more serious figure,
and demean themselves in a more religious posture, at the appearance
of some mock ceremony, clothed in a Jewish or Pagan garb, which
hath unhappily made a rent in the coat of Christ, and pay a more
exact reverence to that which hath no Divine, but only a human stamp
upon it, than to the clear and plain word of God, which is perhaps
neglected with sleepy nods, or which is worse, entertained with profane
scoffs;――this is to prefer the authority of man employed in trifles,
before the authority of the wise Lawgiver of the world: besides, the
ridiculousness of it is as great as to adore a glow‑worm, and laugh at
the sun; or for a courtier to be more exact in his cringes and starched
postures before a puppet than before his sovereign prince. In all this
we make not the will and authority of God our rule, but the will of
man; disclaim our dependence on God, to hang upon the uncertain breath
of a creature. In all this God is made less than man, and man more
than God; God is deposed, and man enthroned; God made a slave, and man
a sovereign above him. To this we may refer the solemn addresses of
some for the maintenance of the Protestant religion according to law,
the law of man; not so much minding the law of God, resolving to make
the law, the church, the state, the rule of their religion, and {b435}
change that if the laws be changed, steering their opinions by the
compass of the magistrate’s judgment and interest.
(2.) The dominion of God, as a _Proprietor_, is practically contemned.
[1.] By envy. When we are not flush and gay, as well spread and
sparkling as others, this passion gnaws our souls, and we become the
executioners to rack ourselves, because God is the executor of his own
pleasure. The foundation of this passion is a quarrel with God; to envy
others the enjoyment of their propriety is to envy God his right of
disposal, and, consequently, the propriety of his own goods; it is a
mental theft committed against God; we rob him of his right in our will
and wish; it is a robbery to make ourselves equal with God when it is
not our due, which is implied (Phil. ii. 6), when Christ is said “to
think it no robbery to be equal with God.” We would wrest the sceptre
out of his hand, wish he were not the conductor of the world, and that
he would resign his sovereignty, and the right of the distribution
of his own goods, to the _capricios_ of our humor, and ask our leave
to what subjects he should dispense his favors. All envy is either a
tacit accusation of God as an usurper, and assuming a right to dispose
of that which doth not belong to him, and so it is a denial of his
propriety, or else charges him with a blind or unjust distribution,
and so it is a bespattering his wisdom and righteousness. When God doth
punish envy, he vindicates his own sovereignty, as though this passion
chiefly endeavored to blast this perfection (Ezek. xxv. 11, 12): “As I
live, saith the Lord, I will do according to thy anger, and according
to thy envy, and thou shall know that I am the Lord.” The sin of envy
in the devils was immediately against the crown of God, and so was
the sin of envy in the first man, envying God the sole prerogative in
knowledge above himself. This base humor in Cain, at the preference of
Abel’s sacrifice before his, was the cause that he deprived him of his
life: denying God, first his right of choice and what he should accept,
and then invading God’s right of propriety, in usurping a power over
the life and being of his brother, which solely belonged to God.
[2.] The dominion of God, as a proprietor, is practically contemned
by a violent or surreptitious taking away from any what God hath given
him the possession of. Since God is the Lord of all, and may give
the possession and dominion of things to whom he pleaseth, all theft
and purloining, all cheating and cozening another of his right, is
not only a crime against the true possessor, depriving him of what
he is entrusted with, but against God, as the absolute and universal
proprietor, having a right thereby to confer his own goods upon whom
he pleaseth, as well as against God as a Lawgiver, forbidding such a
violence: the snatching away what is another’s, denies man the right
of possession, and God the right of donation: the Israelites taking
the Egyptians’ jewels had been theft had it not been by a Divine
license and order, but cannot be slandered with such a term, after
the Proprietor of the whole world had altered the title, and alienated
them by his positive grant from the Egyptians, to confer them upon the
Israelites.
[3.] The dominion of God, as a proprietor, is practically contemned
{b436} by not using what God hath given us for those ends for which he
gave them to us. God passeth things over to us with a condition to use
that for his glory which he hath bestowed upon us by his bounty: he is
Lord of the end for which he gives, as well as Lord of what he gives;
the donor’s right of propriety is infringed when the lands and legacies
he leaves to a particular use are not employed to those ends to which
he bequeathed them: the right of the lord of a manor is violated when
the copyhold is not used according to the condition of the conveyance.
So it is an invasion of God’s sovereignty not to use the creatures for
those ends for which we are entrusted with them: when we deny ourselves
a due and lawful support from them; hence covetousness is an invasion
of his right: or when we unnecessarily waste them; hence prodigality
disowns his propriety: or when we bestow not anything upon the
relief of others; hence uncharitableness comes under the same title,
appropriating that to ourselves, as if we were the lords, when we were
but the usufructuaries for ourselves, and stewards for others; this
is to be “rich to ourselves, not to God” (Luke xii. 21), for so are
they who employ not their wealth for the service, and according to
the intent, of the donor. Thus the Israelites did not own God the true
proprietor of their corn, wine, and oil, which God had given them for
his worship, when they prepared offerings for Baal out of his stock:
“For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and
multiplied her gold and silver, which they prepared for Baal” (Hos. ii.
8); as if they had been sole proprietors, and not factors by commission,
to improve the goods for the true owner. It is the same invasion of
God’s right to use the parts and gifts that God hath given us, either
as fuel for our pride, or advancing self, or a witty scoffing at God
and religion; when we use not religion for the honor of our Sovereign,
but a stool to rise by, and observe his precepts outwardly, not out of
regard to his authority, but as a stale to our interest, and furnishing
self with a little concern and trifle; when men will wrest his word
for the favor of their lusts, which God intended for the checking of
them, and make interpretations of it according to their humors, and not
according to his will discovered in the Scripture, this is to pervert
the use of the best goods and _depositum_ he hath put into our hands,
even Divine revelations. Thus hypocrisy makes the sovereignty of God a
nullity.
(3.) The dominion of God, as a _Governor_, is practically contemned.
[1.] In idolatry. Since worship is an acknowledgment of God’s
sovereignty, to adore any creature instead of God, or to pay to
anything that homage of trust and confidence which is due to God,
though it be the highest creature in heaven or earth, is to acknowledge
that sovereignty to pertain to a creature, which is challenged by God;
as to set up the greatest lord in a kingdom in the government, instead
of the lawful prince, is rebellion and usurpation; and that woman
incurs the crime of adultery, who commits it with a person of great
port and honor, as well as with one of a mean condition. While men
create anything a god, they own themselves supreme above the true God,
yea, and above that which they account a god; for, by the right of
creation, they have a superiority, {b437} as it is a deity blown up by
the breath of their own imagination. The authority of God is in this
sin acknowledged to belong to an idol; it is called loathing of God as
a husband (Ezek. xvi. 45), all the authority of God as a husband and
Lord over them: so when we make anything or any person in the world the
chief object and prop of our trust and confidence, we act the same part.
Trust in an idol is the formal part of idolatry; “so is every one that
trusts in them” (Ps. cxv. 8), _i. e._ in idols: whatsoever thing we
make the object of our trust, we rear as an idol. It is not unlawful to
have the image of a creature, but to bestow divine adoration upon it;
it was not unlawful for the Egyptians to possess and use oxen, but to
dub them gods to be adored, it was: it is not unlawful to have wealth
and honor, nor to have gifts and parts, they are the presents of God;
but to love them above God, to fix our reliance upon them more than
upon God, is to rob God of his due, who, being our Creator, ought to
be our confidence. What we want we are to desire of him, and expect
from him. When we confide in anything else we deny God the glory of his
creation; we disown him to be Lord of the world; imply that our welfare
is in the hands of, and depends upon, that thing wherein we confide; it
is not only to “equal it to God” in sovereign power, which is his own
phrase (Isa. xl. 25), but to prefer it before him in a reproach of him.
When the hosts of heaven shall be served instead of the Lord of those
hosts; when we shall lackey after the stars, depend barely upon their
influences, without looking up to the great Director of the sun, it
is to pay an adoration unto a captain in a regiment which is due to
the general. When we shall “make gold our hope, and say to the fine
gold, Thou art my confidence,” it is to deny the supremacy of that God
that is above; as well as if we kiss our hands, in a way of adoration,
to the sun in its splendor, or “the moon walking in its brightness,”
for Job couples them together (ch. xxxi. 25‒28); it is to prefer the
authority of earth before that of heaven, and honor clay above the
Sovereign of the world: as if a soldier should confide more in the rag
of an ensign, or the fragment of a drum, for his safety, than in the
orders and conduct of his general; it were as much as is in his power
to uncommission him, and snatch from him his commander’s staff. When
we advance the creature in our love above God, and the altar of our
soul smokes with more thoughts and affections to a petty interest than
to God, we lift up that which was given us as a servant in the place
of the Sovereign, and bestow that throne upon it which is to be kept
undefiled for the rightful Lord, and subject the interest of God to
the demands of the creature. So much respect is due to God, that none
should be placed in the throne of our affections equal with him, much
less anything to perk above him.
[2.] Impatience is a contempt of God as a governor. When we meet with
rubs in the way of any design, when our expectations are crossed, we
will break through all obstacles to accomplish our projects, whether
God will or no. When we are too much dejected at some unexpected
providence, and murmur at the instruments of it, as if God divested
himself of his prerogative of conducting human {b438} affairs; when
a little cross blows us into a mutiny, and swells us into a sauciness
to implead God, or make us fret against him (as the expression is, Isa.
viii. 21), wishing him out of his throne; no sin is so devilish as this;
there is not any strikes more at all the attributes of God than this,
against his goodness, righteousness, holiness, wisdom, and doth as
little spare his sovereignty as any of the rest: what can it be else,
but an impious invasion of his dominion, to quarrel with him for what
he doth, and to say, What reason hast thou to deal thus with me? This
language is in the nature of all impatience, whereby we question his
sovereignty, and parallel our dominion with his. When men have not
that confluence of wealth or honor they greedily desired, they bark
at God, and revile his government: they are angry God doth not more
respectfully observe them, as though he had nothing to do in their
matters, and were wanting in that becoming reverence which they think
him bound to pay to such great ones as they are; they would have
God obedient to their minds, and act nothing but what he receives a
commission for from their wills. When we murmur, it is as if we would
command his will, and wear his crown; a wresting the sceptre out of his
hands to sway it ourselves; we deny him the right of government, disown
his power over us, and would be our own sovereigns: you may find the
character of it in the language of Jehoram (as many understand it),
“Behold, this evil is of the Lord; what should I wait for the Lord any
longer?” (2 Kings vi. 33). This is an evil of such a nature, that it
could come from none but the hand of God; why should I attend upon him,
as my Sovereign, that delights to do me so much mischief, that throws
curses upon me when I expected blessings? I will no more observe his
directions, but follow my own sentiments, and regard not his authority
in the lips of his doting prophet. The same you find in the Jews,
when they were under God’s lash; “And they said, There is no hope:
but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the
imagination of his evil heart” (Jer. xviii. 12): we can expect no good
from him, and therefore we will be our own sovereigns, and prefer the
authority of our own imaginations before that of his precepts. Men
would be their own carvers, and not suffer God to use his right; as if
a stone should order the mason in what manner to hew it, and in what
part of the building to place it. We are not ordinarily concerned so
much at the calamities of our neighbors, but swell against heaven at a
light drop upon ourselves. We are content God should be the sovereign
of others, so that he will be a servant to us: let him deal as he will
himself with others, so he will treat us, and what relates to us, as we
will ourselves. We would have God resign his authority to our humors,
and our humors should be in the place of a God to him, to direct him
what was fit to do in our cause. When things go not according to our
vote, our impatience is a wish that God was deposed from his throne,
that he would surrender his seat to some that would deal more favorably,
and be more punctual observers of our directions. Let us look to
ourselves in regard of this sin, which is too common, and the root of
much mischief. This seems to be the first bubbling of Adam’s will; he
was not content {b439} with the condition wherein God had placed him,
but affected another, which ended in the ruin of himself, and of
mankind.
[3.] Limiting God in his way of working to our methods, is another
part of the contempt of his dominion. When we will prescribe him
methods of acting, that he should deliver us in this or that way, we
would not suffer him to be the Lord of his own favors, and have the
privilege to be his own director. When we will limit him to such a
time, wherein to work our deliverance, we would rob him of the power of
times and seasons, which are solely in his hand. We would regulate his
conduct according to our imaginations, and assume a power to give laws
to our Sovereign. Thus the Israelites “limited the Holy One of Israel”
(Ps. lxxviii. 41): they would control his absolute dominion, and, of
a sovereign, make him their slave. Man, that is God’s vassal, would
set bounds to his Lord, and cease to be a servant, and commence master,
when he would give, not take, directions from him. When God had given
them manna, and their fancies were weary of that delicious food, they
would prescribe heaven to rain down some other sort of food for them.
When they wanted no sufficient provision in the wilderness, they
quarrelled with God for bringing them out of Egypt, and not presently
giving them a place of seed, of figs, vines, and pomegranates (Numb. xx.
5), which is called a “striving with the Lord” (ver. 13), a contending
with him for his Lordship. When we tempt God, and require a sign of him
as a mark of his favor, we circumscribe his dominion; when we will not
use the means he hath appointed, but father our laziness upon a trust
in his providence, as if we expected he should work a miracle for our
relief; when we censure him for what he hath done in the course of his
providence; when we capitulate with him, and promise such a service,
if he will do us such a good turn according to our platform, we would
bring down his sovereign pleasure to our will, we invade his throne,
and expect a submissive obedience from him. Man that hath not wit
enough to govern himself, would be governing God, and those that cannot
be their own sovereigns, affect a sovereignty over heaven.
[4.] Pride and presumption is another invasion of his dominion. When
men will resolve to go to‑morrow to such a city, to such a fair and
market, to traffic, and get gain, without thinking of the necessity
of a Divine license, as if ourselves were the lords of our time and
of our lives, and God were to lackey after us (James iv. 13, 15):
“Ye that say, To‑day we will go into such a city, and buy and sell,
whereas ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live;” as if they
had a freehold, and were not tenants at will to the Lord of the manor.
When we presume upon our own strength or wit to get the better of our
adversaries; as the Germans (as Tacitus relates) assured themselves,
by the numerousness of their army, of a victory against the Romans,
and prepared chains to fetter the captives before the conquest, which
were found in their camp after their defeat;――when we are peremptory in
expectations of success according to our will; as Pharaoh (Exod. xv. 9),
“I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my lust shall
be satisfied upon them, I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy
them:” he speaks more like a {b440} god than a man, as if he were the
sovereign power, and God only his vicar and lieutenant; how he struts,
without thinking of a superior power to curb him!――when men ascribe to
themselves what is the sole fruit of God’s sovereign pleasure; as the
king of Assyria speaks a language fit only to be spoken by God (Isa.
x. 13, 14, &c.), “I have removed the bounds of the people; my hand
hath found as a nest the riches of the people; I have gathered all
the earth;” which God declares to be a wrong to his sovereignty by the
title wherewith he prefaceth his threatening against him (ver. 16):
“Therefore shall the Lord, the Lord of hosts, send among his fat ones
leanness,” &c. It is indeed a rifling, if not of his crown, yet of
the most glittering jewel of it, his glory. “He that mocks the poor
reproacheth his Maker” (Prov. xvii. 5). He never thinks that God made
them poor, and himself rich; he owns not his riches to be dropped upon
him by the Divine hand. Self is the great invader of God’s sovereignty;
doth not only spurn at it, but usurp it, and assume divine honors,
payable only to the universal Sovereign. The Assyrian was not so
modest as the Chaldean, who would impute his power and victories to his
idol (Hab. i. 11), whom he thought to be God, though yet robbing the
true God of his authority; and so much was signified by their names,
Nebuchadnezzar, Evil‑Merodach, Belshazzar, Nebo, Merodach, Bel, being
the Chaldean idols, and the names signifying, Lord of wealth, Giver of
riches, and the like.――When we behave ourselves proudly towards others,
and imagine ourselves greater than our Maker ever meant us;――when we
would give laws to others, and expect the most submissive observances
from them, as if God had resigned his authority to us, and made us,
in his stead, the rightful monarchs of the world. To disdain that any
creature should be above us, is to disdain God’s sovereign disposition
of men, and consequently, his own superiority over us. A proud man
would govern all, and would not have God his Sovereign, but his subject;
to overvalue ourselves, is to undervalue God.
[5.] Slight and careless worship of God is another contempt of his
sovereignty. A prince is contemned, not only by a neglect of those
reverential postures which are due to him, but in a reproachful and
scornful way of paying them. To behave ourselves uncomely or immodestly
before a prince, is a disesteem of majesty. Sovereignty requires awe in
every address, where this is wanting there is a disrespect of authority.
We contemn God’s dominion when we give him the service of the lip,
the hand, the knee, and deny him that of the heart; as they in Ezekiel
xxxiii. 31, as though he were the Sovereign only of the body, and not
of the soul. To have devout figures of the face, and uncomely postures
of the soul, is to exclude his dominion from our spirits, while we own
it only over our outward man; we render him an insignificant Lord, not
worthy of any higher adorations from us than a senseless statue; we
demean not ourselves according to his majestical authority over us,
when we present him not with the cream and quintessence of our souls.
The greatness of God required a great house, and a costly palace
(1 Chron. xxix. 11, 16); David speaks it in order to the building God
a house and a temple; God being a great King expects {b441} a male
the best of our flock (Mal. i. 14), a masculine and vigorous service.
When we present him with a sleepy, sickly rheumatic service, we betray
our conceptions of him to be as mean as if he were some petty lord,
whose dominion were of no larger extent than a mole‑hill, or some
inconsiderable village.
[6.] Omission of the service he hath appointed is another contempt
of his sovereignty. This is a contempt of his dominion, whereby he
hath a right to appoint what means and conditions he pleaseth, for the
enjoyment of his proffered and promised benefits. It is an enmity to
his sceptre not to accept of his terms after a long series of precepts
and invitations made for the restoring us to that happiness we had lost,
and providing all means necessary thereunto, nothing being wanting but
our own concurrence with it, and acceptance of it, by rendering that
easy homage he requires. By withholding from him the service he enjoins,
we deny that we hold anything of him; as he that pays not the quit rent,
though it be never so small, disowns the sovereignty of the lord of the
manor; it implies, that he is a miserable poor lord, having no right,
or destitute of any power, to dispose of anything in the world to our
advantage (Job xxii. 17): “They say unto God, Depart from us, what
can the Almighty do for them?” They will have no commerce with him
in a way of duty, because they imagine him to have no sovereign power
to do anything for them in way of benefit, as if his dominion were
an empty title, and as much destitute of any authority to command a
favor for them as any idol. They think themselves to have as absolute
a disposal of things, as God himself. What can he do for us? what
can he confer upon us, that we cannot invest ourselves in? as though
they were sovereigns in an equality with God. Thus men live “without
God in the world” (Eph. ii. 12), as if there were no Supreme Being
to pay a respect to, or none fit to receive any homage at their hands;
withholding from God the right of his time and the right of his service,
which is the just claim of his sovereignty.
[7.] Censuring others is a contempt of his sovereignty. When we
censure men’s persons or actions by a rash judgment; when we will be
judges of the good and evil of men’s actions, where the law of God is
utterly silent, we usurp God’s place, and invade his right; we claim a
superiority over the law, and judge God defective, as the Rector of the
world, in his prescriptions of good and evil. (James iv. 11, 12), “He
that speaks evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaks evil
of the law, and judgeth the law; there is one Lawgiver who is able
to save, and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?” Do you
know what you do in judging another? You take upon you the garb of a
sovereign, as if he were more your servant than God’s, and more under
your authority than the authority of God; it is a setting thyself in
God’s tribunal, and assuming his rightful power of judging; thy brother
is not to be governed by thy fancy, but by God’s law, and his own
conscience.
2. _Information._ Hence it follows, that God doth actually govern the
world. He hath not only a right to rule, but “he rules over all,” so
saith the text. He is “King of kings, and Lord of lords,”――what, {b442}
to let them do what they please, and all that their lusts prompt them
to? hath God an absolute dominion? Is it good, and is it wise? Is it
then a useless prerogative of the Divine nature? Shall so excellent
a power lie idle, as if God were a lifeless image? Shall we fancy God
like some lazy monarch, that solaceth himself in the gardens of his
palace, or steeps himself in some charming pleasures, and leaves his
lieutenants to govern the several provinces, which are all members of
his empire, according to their own humor? Not to exercise this dominion
is all one as not to have it; to what purpose is he invested with this
sovereignty, if he were careless of what were done in the world, and
regarded not the oppressions of men? God keeps no useless excellency by
him; he actually reigns over the heathen (Ps. xlvii. 8), and those as
bad, or worse than heathens. It had been a vanity in David to call upon
the heavens to be glad, and the earth to rejoice, under the rule of
a “sleepy Deity” (1 Chron. xvi. 31). No; his sceptre is full of eyes,
as it was painted by the Egyptians; he is always waking, and always
more than Ahasuerus, reading over the records of human actions. Not
to exercise his authority, is all one as not to regard whether he keep
the crown upon his head, or continue the sceptre in his hand. If his
sovereignty were exempt from care, it would be destitute of justice;
God is more righteous than to resign the ensigns of his authority to
blind and oppressive man; to think that God hath a power, and doth not
use it for just and righteous ends, is to imagine him an unrighteous
as well as a careless Sovereign; such a thing in a man renders him a
base man, and a worse governor; it is a vice that disturbs the world,
and overthrows the ends of authority, as to have a power, and use it
well, is the greatest virtue of an earthly sovereign. What an unworthy
conception is it of God, to acknowledge him to be possessed of a
greater authority than the greatest monarch, and yet to think that he
useth it less than a petty lord; that his crown is of no more value
with him than a feather? This represents God impotent, that he cannot,
or unrighteous and base, that he will not administer the authority he
hath for the noblest and justest end. But can we say, that he neglects
the government of the world? How come things then to remain in their
due order? How comes the law of nature yet to be preserved in every
man’s soul? How comes conscience to check, and cite, and judge? If God
did not exercise his authority, what authority could conscience have to
disturb man in unlawful practices, and to make his sports and sweetness
so unpleasant and sour to him? Hath he not given frequent notices and
memorials, that he holds a curb over corrupt inclinations, puts rubs in
the way of malicious attempters, and often oversets the disturbers of
the peace of the world?
3. _Information._ God can do no wrong, since he is absolute Sovereign.
Man may do wrong, princes may oppress and rifle, but it is a crime in
them so to do: because their power is a power of government, and not of
propriety, in the goods or lives of their subjects; but God cannot do
any wrong, whatsoever the clamors of creatures are, because he can do
nothing but what he hath a sovereign right to do. If he takes away your
goods, he takes not {b443} away anything that is yours more than his
own, since though he entrusted you with them, he divested not himself
of the propriety. When he takes away our lives, he takes what he gave
us by a temporary donation, to be surrendered at his call: we can claim
no right in anything but by his will. He is no debtor to us: and since
he owes us nothing, he can wrong us in nothing that he takes away.
His own sovereignty excuseth him in all those acts which are most
distasteful to the creature. If we crop a medicinal plant for our
use, or a flower for our pleasure, or kill a lamb for our food, we do
neither of them any wrong: because the original of them was for our use,
and they had their life, and nourishment, and pleasing qualities for
our delight and support. And are not we much more made for the pleasure
and use of God, than any of those can be for us? “Of him and to him
are all things” (Rom. xi. 36): hath not God as much right over any one
of us, as over the meanest worm? Though there be a vast difference in
nature between the angels in heaven and the worms on earth, yet they
are all one in regard of subjection to God; he is as much the Lord of
the one as the other; as much the Proprietor of the one as the other;
as much the Governor of one as the other;――not a cranny in the world is
exempt from his jurisdiction;――not a mite or grain of a creature exempt
from his propriety. He is not our Lord by election; he was a Lord
before we were in being; he had no terms put upon him who capitulated
with him, and set him in his throne by covenant. What oath did he take
to any subject at his first investiture in his authority? His right is
as natural, as eternal as himself: as natural as his existence, and as
necessary as his Deity. Hath he any law but his own will? What wrong
can he do that breaks no law, that fulfils his law in everything he
doth, by fulfilling his own will, which as it is absolutely sovereign,
so it is infinitely righteous? In whatsoever he takes from us, then, he
cannot injure us; it is no crime in any man to seize upon his own goods
to vindicate his own honor; and shall it be thought a wrong in God to
do such things, besides the occasion he hath from every man, and that
every day provoking him to do it? He seems rather to wrong himself by
forbearing such a seizure, than wrong us by executing it.
4. _Information._ If God have a sovereignty over the whole world, then
merit is totally excluded. His right is so absolute over all creatures,
that he neither is, nor can be, a debtor to any; not to the undefiled
holiness of the blessed angels, much less to poor earthly worms;
those blessed spirits enjoy their glory by the title of his sovereign
pleasure, not by virtue of any obligation devolving from them upon God.
Are not the faculties, whereby they and we perform any act of obedience,
his grant to us? Is not the strength, whereby they and we are enabled
to do anything pleasing to him, a gift from him? Can a vassal merit of
his lord, or a slave of his master, by using his tools, and employing
his strength in his service, though it was a strength he had naturally,
not by donation from the man in whose service it is employed? God is
Lord of all――all is due to him; how can we oblige him by giving him
what {b444} is his own, more his to whom it is presented, than ours by
whom it is offered? He becomes not a debtor by receiving anything from
us, but by promising something to us.[1019]
5. _Information._ If God hath a sovereign dominion over the whole
world, then hence it follows, that all magistrates are but sovereigns
under God. He is King of kings, and Lord of lords; all the potentates
of the world are no other than his lieutenants, movable at his pleasure,
and more at his disposal than their subjects are at theirs. Though
they are dignified with the title of “gods,” yet still they are at
an infinite distance from the supreme Lord; gods under God, not to be
above him, not to be against him. The want of the due sense of their
subordination to God hath made many in the world act as sovereigns
above him more than sovereigns under him. Had they all bore a deep
conviction of this upon their spirits, such audacious language had
never dropped from the mouth of Pharaoh: “Who is the Lord, that I
should obey his voice, to let Israel go?” (Exod. v. 2), presuming that
there was no superior to control him, nor any in heaven able to be
a match for him; Darius had never published such a doting edict, as
to prohibit any petition to God; Nero had never fired Rome, and sung
at the sight of the devouring flames; nor ever had he ripped up his
mother’s belly, to see the womb where he first lodged, and received
a life so hateful to his country. Nor would Abner and Joab, the two
generals, have accounted the death of men but a sport and interlude.
“Let the young men arise and play before us” (2 Sam. ii. 14); what
play it was, the next verse acquaints you with; thrusting their swords
into one another’s sides. They were no more troubled at the death of
thousands, than a man is to kill a fly, or a flea. Had a sense of this
but hovered over their souls, people in many countries had not been
made their foot‑balls, and used worse than their dogs! Nor had the
lives of millions, worth more than a world, been exposed to fire and
sword, to support some sordid lust, or breach of faith upon an idle
quarrel, and for the depredation of their neighbors’ estates; the
flames of cities had not been so bright, nor the streams of blood so
deep, nor the cries of innocents so loud. In particular,
(1.) If God be Sovereign, all under‑sovereigns are not to rule against
him, but to be obedient to his orders. If they “rule by his authority”
(Prov. viii. 15), they are not to rule against his interest; they are
not to imagine themselves as absolute as God, and that their laws must
be of as sovereign authority against his honor, as the Divine are for
it. If they are his lieutenants on earth, they ought to act according
to his orders. No man but will account a governor of a province a rebel,
if he disobeys the orders sent to him by the sovereign prince that
commissioned him. Rebellion against God is a crime of princes, as well
as rebellion against princes a crime of subjects. Saul is charged with
it by Samuel in a high manner for an act of simple disobedience, though
intended for the service of God, and the enriching his country with
the spoils of the Amalekites. “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft”
(1 Sam. xv. 23); like witchcraft or covenanting with the devil, acting
as if he had {b445} received his commission not from God, but from
Satan. Magistrates, as commissioned by God, ought to act for him. Doth
human authority ever give a commission to any to rebel against itself?
did God ever depute any earthly sovereignty against his glory, and give
them leave to outlaw his laws, to introduce their own? No; when he gave
the vicarious dominion to Christ, he calls upon the kings of the earth
to be instructed, and be wise, and “kiss the Son” (Ps. ii. 10, 12),
_i. e._ to observe his orders, and pay him homage as their Governor.
What a silly doltish thing is it to resist that Supreme Authority, to
which the archangels submit themselves, and regulate their employments
punctually by their instructions! Those excellent creatures exactly
obey him in all the acts of their subordinate government in the world;
those in whose hand the greatest monarch is no more than a silly fly
between the fingers of a giant. A contradiction to the interest of
God hath been fatal to kings. The four monarchies have had their wings
clipped, and most of them have been buried in their own ashes; they
have all, like the imitators of Lucifer’s pride, fallen from the heaven
of their glory to the depth of their shame and misery. All governors
are bound to be as much obedient to God, as their subjects are bound
to be submissive to them. Their authority over men is limited; God’s
authority over them is absolute and unbounded. Though every soul ought
to be subject to the higher powers, yet there is a higher Power of
all, to which those higher powers are to subject themselves; they are
to be keepers of both the tables of the law of God, and are then most
sovereigns when they set in their own practice an example of obedience
to God, for their subjects to write after.
(2.) They ought to imitate God in the exercise of their sovereignty in
ways of justice and righteousness. Though God be an absolute sovereign,
yet his government is not tyrannical, but managed according to the
rules of righteousness, wisdom, and goodness. If God, that created
them as well as their subjects, doth so exercise his government, it
is a duty incumbent upon them to do the same; since they are not the
creators of their people, but the conductors. As God’s government
tends to the good of the world, so ought theirs to the good of their
countries. God committed not the government of the world to the
Mediator in an unlimited way, but for the good of the church, in order
to the eternal salvation of his people. “He gave him to be head over
all things to the church” (Eph. i. 22). He had power over the devils
to restrain them in their temptation and malice; power over the angels
to order their ministry for the heirs of salvation. So power is given
to magistrates for the civil preservation of the world and of human
society; they ought therefore to consider for what ends they were
placed over the rest of mankind, and not exercise their authority in
a licentious way, but conformable to that justice and righteousness
wherein God doth administer his government, and for the preservation of
those who are committed to them.
(3.) Magistrates must then be obeyed when they act according to God’s
order, and within the bounds of the Divine commission. They are no
friends to the sovereignty of God, that are enemies to magistracy, his
ordinance. Saul was a good governor, though none of the {b446} best
men, and the despisers of his government after God’s choice, were the
sons of Belial (1 Sam. x. 27). Christ was no enemy to Cæsar. To pull
down a faithful magistrate, such an one as Zerubbabel, is to pluck a
signet from the hand of God; for in that capacity he accounts him (Hag.
ii. 23). God’s servants stand or fall to their own Master; how doth he
check Aaron and Miriam for speaking against Moses, his servant? “Were
you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” (Numb. xii. 8);
against Moses as related to you in the capacity of a governor; against
Moses as related to you in the capacity of my servant? To speak
anything against them, as they act by God’s order, is an invasion of
God’s sovereign right, who gave them their commission. To act against
just power, or the justice of an earthly power, is to act against God’s
ordinance, who ordained them in the world, but not any abuse, or ill
use of their power.
_Use II._ How dreadful is the consideration of this doctrine to all
rebels against God! Can any man that hath brains in his head, imagine
it an inconsiderable thing to despise the Sovereign of the world? It
was the sole crime of disobedience to that positive law, whereby God
would have a visible memorial of his sovereignty preserved in the eye
of man, that showered down that deluge of misery, under which the world
groans to this day. God had given Adam a soul, whereby he might live
as a rational creature; and then gives him a law, whereby he might live
as a dutiful subject: for God forbidding him to eat of the fruit of
the tree of knowledge of good and evil, declared his own supremacy over
Adam, and his propriety in the pleasant world he had given him by his
bounty; he let him know hereby, that man was not his own lord, nor was
to live after his own sentiments, but the directions of a superior. As
when a great lord builds a magnificent palace, and brings in another to
inhabit it, he reserves a small duty to himself, not of an equal value
with the house, but for an acknowledgment of his own right, that the
tenant may know he is not the lord of it, but hath this grant by the
liberality of another.[1020] God hereby gave Adam matter for a pure
obedience, that had no foundation in his own nature by any implanted
law; he was only in it to respect the will of his Sovereign, and to
understand that he was to live under the power of a higher than himself.
There was no more moral evil in the eating of this fruit, as considered
distinct from the command, than in eating of any other fruit in the
garden: had there been no prohibition, he might with as much safety
have fed upon it as upon any other. No law of nature was transgressed
in the act of eating of it, but the sovereignty of God over him was
denied by him; and for this the death threatened was inflicted on his
posterity: for though divines take notice of other sins in the fall of
Adam, yet God, in his trial, chargeth him with none but this, and doth
put upon his question an emphasis of his own authority: “Hast thou
eaten of the tree whereof I commanded ye that thou shouldest not eat?”
(Gen. iii. 11). This I am pleased with, that thou shouldest disown my
dominion over thyself, and this garden. This was the inlet to all the
other sins: as the acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty is the first
step to the practice of all the {b447} duties of a creature, so the
disowning his sovereignty is the first spring of all the extravagances
of a creature. Every sin against the sovereign Lawgiver is worthy of
death: the transgression of this command deserved death, and procured
it to spread itself over the face of the world. God’s dominion cannot
be despised without meriting the greatest punishment.
1. Punishment necessarily follows upon the doctrine of sovereignty.
It is a faint and a feeble sovereignty that cannot preserve itself,
and vindicate its own wrongs against rebellious subjects; the height of
God’s dominion infers a vengeance on the contemners of it: if God be an
eternal King, he is an eternal Judge. Since sin unlinks the dependence
between God the Sovereign, and man the subject, if God did not
vindicate the rights of his sovereignty, and the authority of his law,
he would seem to despise his own dominion, be weary of it, and not act
the part of a good governor. But God is tender of his prerogative, and
doth most bestir himself when men exalt themselves proudly against him:
“In the thing wherein they dealt proudly, he will be above them” (Exod.
xviii. 11). When Pharaoh thought himself a mate for God, and proudly
rejected his commands, as if they had been the messages of some petty
Arabian lord, God rights his own authority upon the life of his enemy
by the ministry of the Red Sea. He turned a great king into a beast,
to make him know that the Most High ruled in the kingdoms of men: “The
demand is by the word of the holy ones, to the intent that the living
may know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdoms of men” (Dan. iv. 16,
17); and that by the petitions of the angels, who cannot endure that
the empire of God should be obscured and diminished by the pride of man.
Besides the tender respect he hath to his own glory, he is constantly
presented with the solicitations of the angels to punish the proud ones
of the earth, that darken the glory of his majesty: it is necessary
for the rescue of his honor, and necessary for the satisfaction of his
illustrious attendants, who would think it a shame to them to serve a
Lord that were always unconcerned in the rebellions of his creatures,
and tamely suffer their spurns at his throne; and therefore there is
a day wherein the haughtiness of man shall be bowed down, the cedars
of Lebanon overthrown, and high mountains levelled, that “God may
be exalted in that day” (Isa. ii. 11, 12), &c. Pride is a sin that
immediately swells against God’s authority; this shall be brought down
that God may be exalted; not that he should have a real exaltation,
as if he were actually deposed from his government, but that he shall
be manifested to be the Sovereign of the whole world. It is necessary
there should be a day to chase away those clouds that are upon his
throne, that the lustre of his majesty may break forth to the confusion
of all the children of pride that vaunt against him. God hath a
dominion over us as a Lawgiver, as we are his creatures; and a dominion
over us in a way of justice, as we are his criminals.
2. This punishment is unavoidable.
(1.) None can escape him. He hath the sole authority over hell and
death, the keys of both are in his hand: the greatest Cæsar can no
more escape him than the meanest peasant: “Who art thou, {b448} O great
mountain, before Zerubbabel?” (Zech. iv. 7). The height of angels is
no match for him, much less that of the mortal grandees of the world;
they can no more resist him than the meanest person; but are rather, as
the highest steeples, the fittest marks for his crushing thunder. If he
speaks the word, the principalities of men come down, and “the crown of
their glory” (Jer. xiii. 18). He can “take the mighty away in a moment,”
and that “without hands,” _i. e._ without instruments (Job xxxiv. 20).
The strongest are like the feet of Nebuchadnezzar’s image, iron and
clay; iron to man, but clay to God, to be crumbled to nothing.
(2.) What comfort can be reaped from a creature, when the Sovereign
of the world arms himself with terrors, and begins his visitation?
“What will you do in the day of visitation, to whom will you flee for
help, and where will you leave your glory?” (Isa. x. 3). The torments
from a subject may be relieved by the prince, but where can there be
an appeal from the Sovereign of the world? Where is there any above him
to control him, if he will overthrow us? Who is there to call him to
account, and say to him, What dost thou? He works by an uncontrollable
authority; he needs not ask leave of any; “he works, and none can
let it” (Isa. xliii. 13): as when he will relieve, none can afflict;
so when he will wound, none can relieve. If a king appoint the
punishment of a rebel, the greatest favorite in the court cannot speak
a comfortable word to him: the most beloved angel in heaven cannot
sweeten and ease the spirit of a man that the Sovereign Power is
set against to make the butt of his wrath. The devils lie under his
sentence, and wear their chains as marks of their condemnation, without
hope of ever having them filed off, since they are laid upon them by
the authority of an unaccountable Sovereign.
(3.) By his sovereign authority God can make any creature the
instrument of his vengeance. He hath all the creatures at his beck,
and can commission any of them to be a dreadful scourge. Strong winds
and tempests fulfil his word (Ps. cxlviii. 8); the lightnings answer
him at his call, and cry aloud, “Here are we” (Job xxxviii. 35). By
his sovereign authority he can render locusts as mischievous as lions,
forge the meanest creatures into swords and arrows, and commission the
most despicable to be his executioners. He can cut off joy from our
spirits, and make our own hearts be our tormentors, our most confident
friends our persecutors, our nearest relations to be his avengers;
they are more his, who is their Sovereign, than ours, who place a vain
confidence in them. Rather than Abraham shall want children, he can
raise up stones, and adopt them into his family; and rather than not
execute his vengeance, he can array the stones in the streets, and make
them his armed subjects against us. If he speak the word, a hair shall
drop from our heads to choke us, or a vapor, congealed into rheum in
our heads, shall drop down and putrefy our vitals. He can never want
weapons, who is Sovereign over the thunders of heaven and stones of
the earth, over every creature; and can, by a sovereign word, turn our
greatest comforts into curses.
3. This punishment must be terrible. How doth David, a great {b449}
king, sound in his body, prosperous in his crown, and successful in
his conquests, settled in all his royal conveniences, groan under the
wrathful touch of a greater King than himself (Ps. vi. xxxviii., and
his other penitential Psalms), not being able to give himself a writ
of ease by all the delights of his palace and kingdom! “If the wrath of
a king be as the roaring of a lion” (Prov. xix. 10) to a poor subject,
how great is the wrath of the King of kings, that cannot be set forth
by the terror of all the amazing volleys of thunder that have been
since the creation, if the noise of all were gathered into one single
crack! As there is an inconceivable ground of joy in the special favor
of so mighty a King, so is there of terror in his severe displeasure:
he is “terrible to the kings of the earth; with God is terrible
majesty” (Ps. lxxvi. 12). What a folly is it, then, to rebel against
so mighty a Sovereign!
_Use III._ Of comfort. The throne of God drops honey and sweetness, as
well as dread and terror; all his other attributes afford little relief
without this of his dominion and universal command. When, therefore,
he speaks of his being the God of his people, he doth often preface it
with “the Lord thy God;” his sovereignty, as a Lord, being the ground
of all the comfort we can take in his federal relation as our God;
thy God, but superior to thee; thy God, not as thy cattle and goods
are thine, in a way of sole propriety, but a Lord too, in a way of
sovereignty, not only over thee, but over all things else for thee. As
the end of God’s settling earthly governments was for the good of the
communities over which the governors preside, so God exerciseth his
government for the good of the world, and more particularly for the
good of the church, over which he is a peculiar Governor.
1. His love to his people is as great as his sovereignty over them.
He stands not upon his dominion with his people so much as upon his
affection to them; he would not be called “Baali, my Lord,” _i. e._
he would not be known only by the name of sovereignty, but “Ishi, my
husband,” a name of authority and sweetness together (Hos. ii. 16,
19, &c.): he signifies that he is not only the Lord of our spirits and
bodies, but a husband by a marriage knot, admitting us to a nearness to
him, and communion of goods with him. Though he majestically sits upon
a high throne, yet it is a throne “encircled with a rainbow” (Ezek. i.
28), to show that his government of his people is not only in a way of
absolute dominion, but also in a way of federal relation; he seems to
own himself their subject rather than their Sovereign, when he gives
them a charter to command him in the affairs of his church (Isa. xlv.
11); “Ask of me things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the
work of my hands command you me.” Some read it by way of question, as
a corrective of a sauciness: Do you ask me of things to come, and seem
to command me concerning the works of my hands, as if you were more
careful of my interest among my people than I am, who have formed them?
But if this were the sense, it would seem to discourage an importunity
of prayer for public deliverance; and therefore, to take it according
to our translation, it is an exhortation to prayer, and a mighty
encouragement in the management and exercise of it. Urge {b450} me
with my promise, in a way of humble importunity, and you shall find
me as willing to perform my word, and gratify your desires, as if I
were rather under your authority, than you under mine: as much as to
say, If I be not as good as my word, to satisfy those desires that
are according to my promise, implead me at my own throne, and, if
I be failing in it, I will give judgment against myself: almost like
princes’ charters, and gracious grants, “We grant such a thing against
us and our heirs,” giving the subject power to implead them if they
be not punctually observed by them. How is the love of God seen in
his condescension below the majesty of earthy governors! He that might
command, by the absoluteness of his authority, doth not only do that,
but entreats, in the quality of a subject, as if he had not a fulness
to supply us, but needed something from us for a supply of himself
(2 Cor. v. 20): “As though God did beseech you by us.” And when he may
challenge, as a due by the right of his propriety, what we bestow upon
his poor, which are his subjects as well as ours, he reckons it as a
loan to him, as if what we had were more our own than his (Prov. xix.
17). He stands not upon his dominion so much with us, when he finds us
conscientious in paying the duty we owe to him; he rules as a Father,
by love as well as by authority; he enters into a peculiar communion
with poor earthly worms, plants his gracious tabernacle among the
troops of sinners, instructs us by his word, invites us by his benefits,
admits us into his presence, is more desirous to bestow his smiles than
we to receive them, and acts in such a manner as if he were willing to
resign his sceptre into the hands of any that were possessed with more
love and kindness to us than himself: this is the comfort of believers.
2. In his being Sovereign, his pardons carry in them a full security.
He that hath the keys of hell and death, pardons the crime, and wipes
off the guilt. Who can repeal the act of the chief Governor? what
tribunal can null the decrees of an absolute throne? (Isa. xliii. 25),
“I, even I, am he that blots out thy transgressions, for my name’s
sake.” His sovereign dominion renders his mercy comfortable. The
clemency of a subject, though never so great, cannot pardon; people may
pity a criminal, while the executioner tortures him, and strips him of
his life; but the clemency of the Supreme Prince establisheth a pardon.
Since we are under the dominion of God, if he pardons, who can reverse
it? if he doth not, what will the pardons of men profit us in regard of
an eternal state? If God be a King forever, then he whom God forgives,
he in whom God reigns, shall live forever; else he would want subjects
on earth, and have none of his lower creatures, which he formed upon
the earth, to reign over after the dissolution of the world; if his
pardons did not stand secure, he would, after this life, have no
voluntary subjects that had formerly a being upon the earth; he would
be a King only over the damned creatures.
3. Corruptions will certainly be subdued in his voluntary subjects.
The covenant, “I will be your God,” implies protection, government,
and relief, which are all grounded upon sovereignty; that, therefore,
which is our greatest burden, will be removed by his sovereign power
(Mic. vii. 19): “He will subdue our iniquities.” If the {b451} outward
enemies of the church shall not bear up against his dominion, and
perpetuate their rebellions unpunished, those within, his people, shall
as little bear up against his throne, without being destroyed by him;
the billows of our own hearts, and the raging waves within us, are
as much at his beck as those without us; and his sovereignty is more
eminent in quelling the corruptions of the heart, than the commotions
of the world in reigning over men’s spirits, by changing them, or
curbing them, more than over men’s bodies, by pinching and punishing
them. The remainders of Satan’s empire will moulder away before him,
since He that is in us is a greater Sovereign “than he that is in the
world” (1 John iv. 4). His enemies will be laid at his feet, and so
never shall prevail against him, when his kingdom shall come. He could
not be Lord of any man, as a happy creature, if he did not, by his
power, make them happy; and he could not make them happy, unless, by
his grace, he made them holy: he could not be praised, as a Lord of
glory, if he did not make some creatures glorious to praise him; and
an earthly creature could not praise him perfectly, unless he had every
grain of enmity to his glory taken out of his heart. Since God is the
only Sovereign, he only can still the commotions in our spirits, and
pull down all the ensigns of the devil’s royalty; he can waste him by
the powerful word of his lips.
4. Hence is a strong encouragement for prayer. “My King,” was the
strong compellation David used in prayer, as an argument of comfort
and confidence, as well as that of “my God” (Ps. v. 2): “Hearken to the
voice of my cry, my King and my God.” To be a king is to have an office
of government and protection: he gives us liberty to approach to him
as the “Judge of all” (Heb. xii. 23), _i. e._ as the Governor of the
world; we pray to one that hath the whole globe of heaven and earth in
his hand, and can do whatsoever he will: though he be higher than the
cherubims, and transcendently above all in majesty, yet we may soar
up to him with the wings of our soul, faith and love, and lay open our
cause, and find him as gracious as if he were the meanest subject on
earth, rather than the most sovereign God in heaven. He hath as much
of tenderness as he hath of authority, and is pleased with prayer,
which is an acknowledgment of his dominion, an honoring of that which
he delights to honor; for prayer, in the notion of it, imports thus
much――that God is the Rector of the world, that he takes notice of
human affairs, that he is a careful, just, wise Governor, a storehouse
of blessing, a fountain of goodness to the indigent, and a relief
to the oppressed. What have we reason to fear when the Sovereign of
the world gives us liberty to approach to him and lay open our case?
that God, who is King of the whole earth, not only of a few villages
or cities in the earth, but the whole earth; and not only King of
this dreggy place of our dross, but of heaven, having prepared, or
established, his throne in the most glorious place of the creation.
5. Here is comfort in affliction. As a sovereign, he is the author
of afflictions; as a sovereign, he can be the remover of them; he can
command the waters of affliction to go so far and no farther. If he
speaks the word, a disease shall depart as soon as a servant shall
{b452} from your presence with a nod; if we are banished from one place,
he can command a shelter for us in another; if he orders Moab, a nation
that had no great kindness for his people, to let “his outcasts dwell
with them,” they shall entertain them, and afford them sanctuary (Isa.
xvi. 4). Again, God chasteneth as a “Sovereign,” but teacheth as a
“Father” (Ps. xcix. 12); the exercise of his authority is not without
an exercise of his goodness; he doth not correct for his own pleasure,
or the creature’s torment, but for the creature’s instruction; though
the rod be in the hand of a sovereign, yet it is tinctured with the
kindness of Divine bowels: he can order them as a sovereign to mortify
our flesh, and try our faith. In the severest tempest, the Lord that
raised the wind against us, which shattered the ship, and tore its
rigging, can change that contrary wind for a more happy one, to drive
us into the port.
6. It is a comfort against the projects of the church’s adversaries in
times of public commotions. The consideration of the Divine sovereignty
may arm us against the threatenings of mighty ones, and the menaces
of persecutors. God hath authority above the crowns of men, and a
wisdom superior to the cabals of men; none can have a step without
him; he hath a negative voice upon their counsels, a negative hand upon
their motions; their politic resolves must stop at the point he hath
prescribed them; their formidable strength cannot exceed the limits he
hath set them; their overreaching wisdom expires at the breath of God:
“There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord”
(Prov. xxi. 30); not a bullet can be discharged, nor a sword drawn,
a wall battered, nor a person despatched out of the world, without the
leave of God, by the mightiest in the world. The instruments of Satan
are no more free from his sovereign restraint than their inspirer; they
cannot pull the hook out of their nostrils, nor cast the bridle out
of their mouths; this Sovereign can shake the earth, rend the heavens,
overthrow mountains, the most mountainous opposers of his interest.
Though the nations rush in against his people like the rushing of many
waters, “God shall rebuke them, they shall be chased as the chaff of
the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the
whirlwind” (Isa. xvii. 13); so doth he often burst in pieces the most
mischievous designs, and conducts the oppressed to a happy port: he
often turns the severest tempests into a calm, as well as the most
peaceful calm into a horrible storm. How often hath a well‑rigged ship,
that seemed to spurn the sea under her feet, and beat the waves before
her to a foam, been swallowed up into the bowels of that element,
over whose back she rode a little before! God never comes to deliver
his church as a governor, but in a wrathful posture (Ezek. xx. 33):
“Surely, saith the Lord, with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched
arm, and with fury poured out, will I rule over you;” not with fury
poured out upon the church, but fury poured out upon her enemies, as
the words following evidence: the church he would bring out from the
countries where she was scattered, and bring the people into the bond
of the covenant. He sometimes “cuts off the spirits of princes” (Ps.
lxxvi. 12), _i. e._ cuts off their designs as men do the pipes of a
water‑course. The hearts of all are as open to him {b453} as the riches
of heaven, where he resides; he can slip an inclination into the heart
of the mighty, which they dreamed not of before; and if he doth not
change their projects, he can make them abortive, and waylay them in
their attempts. Laban marched with fury, but God put a padlock on his
passion against Jacob (Gen. xxxi. 24, 29); the devils, which ravage
men’s minds, must be still when he gives out his sovereign orders.
This Sovereign can make his people find favor in the eyes of the cruel
Egyptians, which had so long oppressed them (Exod. xi. 3); and speak a
good word in the heart of Nebuchadnezzar for the prophet Jeremiah, that
he should order his captain to take him into his special protection,
when he took Zedekiah away prisoner in chains, and “put out his eyes”
(Jer. xxxix. 11). His people cannot want deliverance from Him who hath
all the world at his command, when he is pleased to bestow it; he hath
as many instruments of deliverance as he hath creatures at his beck in
heaven or earth, from the meanest to the highest. As he is the Lord of
hosts, the church hath not only an interest in the strength he himself
is possessed with, but in the strength of all the creatures that are
under his command, in the elements below, and angels above. In those
armies of heaven, and in the inhabitants of the earth, he doth “what
he will” (Dan. iv. 35); they are all in order and array at his command.
There are angels to employ in a fatal stroke, lice and frogs to quell
the stubborn hearts of his enemies; he can range his thunders and
lightnings, the cannon and granadoes of heaven, and the worms of the
earth in his service; he can muzzle lions, calm the fury of the fire,
turn his enemies’ swords into their own bowels, and their artillery
on their own breasts; set the wind in their teeth, and make their
chariot‑wheels languish; make the sea enter a quarrel with them, and
wrap them in its waves till it hath stifled them in its lap. The angels
have storms, and tempests, and wars in their hands, but at the disposal
of God; when they shall cast them out against the empire of antichrist
(Rev. vii. 1, 2), then shall Satan be discharged from his throne, and
no more seduce the nations; the everlasting gospel shall be preached,
and God shall reign gloriously in Sion. Let us, therefore, shelter
ourselves in the Divine sovereignty, regard God as the most high in our
dangers and in our petitions. This was David’s resolution (Ps. lvii. 1,
2): “I will cry unto God most high;” this dominion of God is the true
“tower of David, wherein there are a thousand shields” for defence and
encouragement (Cant. iv. 4).
_Use IV._ If God hath an extensive dominion over the whole world,
this ought to be often meditated on, and acknowledged by us. This is
the universal duty of mankind. If he be the Sovereign of all, we should
frequently think of our great Prince, and acknowledge ourselves his
subjects, and him our Lord. God will be acknowledged the Lord of the
whole earth; the neglect of this is the cause of the judgments which
are sent upon the world. All the prodigies were to this end, that they
might know, or acknowledge, that “God was the Lord” (Exod. x. 2); as
God was proprietor, he demanded the first‑born of every Jew, and the
first‑born of every beast; the one was to be redeemed, and the other
sacrificed; this was the quit rent they were to pay to him for their
fruitful land. The first‑fruits of {b454} the earth were ordered to
be paid to him, as a homage due to the landlord, and an acknowledgment
they held all in chief of him. The practice of offering first‑fruits
for an acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty, was among many of the
heathens, and very ancient; hence they dedicated some of the chief of
their spoils, owning thereby the dominion and goodness of God, whereby
they had gained the victory; Cain owned this in offering the fruits
of the earth, and it was his sin he owned no more, _viz._, his being
a sinner, and meriting the justice of God, as his brother Abel did
in his bloody sacrifice. God was a sovereign Proprietor and Governor
while man was in a state of innocence; but when man proved a rebel, the
sovereignty of God bore another relation towards him, that of a Judge,
added to the other. The first‑fruits might have been offered to God in
a state of innocence, as a homage to him as Lord of the manor of the
world; the design of them was to own God’s propriety in all things, and
men’s dependence on him for the influences of heaven in producing the
fruits of the earth, which he had ordered for their use. The design
of sacrifices, and placing beasts instead of the criminal, was to
acknowledge their own guilt, and God as a sovereign Judge; Cain owned
the first, but not the second; he acknowledged his dependence on God
as a Proprietor, but not his obnoxiousness to God as a Judge; which may
be probably gathered from his own speech, when God came to examine him,
and ask him for his brother (Gen. iv. 9): “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Why do you ask me? though I own thee as the Lord of my land and goods,
yet I do not think myself accountable to thee for all my actions. This
sovereignty of God ought to be acknowledged in all the parts of it, in
all the manifestations of it to the creature; we should bear a sense
of this always upon our spirits, and be often in the thoughts of it in
our retirements; we should fancy that we saw God upon his throne in his
royal garb, and great attendants about him, and take a view of it, to
imprint an awe upon our spirits. The meditation of this would,
1. Fix us on him as an object of trust. It is upon his sovereign
dominion as much as upon anything, that safe and secure confidence
is built; for if he had any superior above him to control him in
his designs and promises, his veracity and power would be of little
efficacy to form our souls to a close adherency to him. It were not fit
to make him the object of our trust that can be gainsayed by a higher
than himself, and had not a full authority to answer our expectations;
if we were possessed with this notion fully and believingly, that God
were high above all, that “his kingdom rules over all,” we should not
catch at every broken reed, and stand gaping for comforts from a pebble
stone. He that understands the authority of a king, would not waive
a reliance on his promise to depend upon the breath of a changeling
favorite. None but an ignorant man would change the security he may
have upon the height of a rock, to expect it from the dwarfishness of
a molehill. To put confidence in any inferior lord more than in the
prince, is a folly in civil converse, but a rebellion in divine; God
only being above all, can only rule all; can command things to help us,
and check other things which we depend on, and make them fall short of
our expectations. {b455} The due consideration of this doctrine would
make us pierce through second causes to the first, and look further
than to the smaller sort of sailors, that climb the ropes, and dress
the sails, to the pilot that sits at the helm, the master, that, by
an indisputable authority, orders all their notions. We should not
depend upon second causes for our support, but look beyond them to the
authority of the Deity, and the dominion he hath over all the works
of his hands (Zech. x. 1): “Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the
latter rain;” when the seasons of the year conspire for the producing
such an effect, when the usual time of rain is wheeled about in the
year, stop not your thoughts at the point of the heavens whence you
expect it, but pierce the heavens, and solicit God, who must give order
for it before it comes. The due meditation of all things depending on
the Divine dominion would strike off our hands from all other holds, so
that no creature would engross the dependence and trust which is due to
the First Cause; as we do not thank the heavens when they pour out rain,
so we are not to depend upon them when we want it; God is to be sought
to when the womb of second causes is opened to relieve us, as well
as when the womb of second causes is barren, and brings not forth its
wonted progeny.
2. It would make us diligent in worship. The consideration of God, as
the Supreme Lord, is the foundation of all religion: “Our Father, which
art in heaven,” prefaceth the Lord’s prayer; “Father” is a name of
authority; “in heaven,” the place where he hath fixed his throne, notes
his government; not “my Father,” but “our Father,” notes the extent of
this authority. In all worship we acknowledge the object of our worship
our Lord, and ourselves his vassals; if we bear a sense that he is our
Sovereign King, it would draw us to him in every exigence, and keep us
with him in a reverential posture, in every address; when we come, we
should be careful not to violate his right, but render him the homage
due to his royalty. We should not appear before him with empty souls,
but filled with holy thoughts: we should bring him the best of our
flock, and present him with the prime of our strength; were we sensible
we hold all of him, we should not withhold anything from him which
is more worthy than another. Our hearts would be framed into an awful
regard of him, when we consider that glorious and “fearful name, the
Lord our God” (Deut. xxviii. 58). We should look to our feet when
we enter into his house; if we considered him in heaven upon his
throne, and ourselves on earth at his footstool (Eccles. v. 2), lower
before him than a worm before an angel, it would hinder garnishness
and lightness. The Jews, saith Capel, on 1 Tim. i. 17, repeat this
expression, מלך העולם, King of worlds, or Eternal King; probably the
first original of it might be to stake them down from wandering. When
we consider the majesty of God, clothed with a robe of light, sitting
upon his high throne, adorned with his royal ensigns, we should not
enter into the presence of so great a Majesty with the sacrifice of
fools, with light motions and foolish thoughts, as if he were one of
our companions to be drolled with. We should not hear his word as if it
were the voice of some ordinary peasant. The consideration of majesty
would engender reverence in our service; {b456} it would also make us
speak of God with honor and respect, as of a great and glorious king,
and not use defaming expressions of him, as if he were an infamous
being. And were he considered as a terrible majesty, he would not be
frequently solicited by some to pronounce a damnation upon them upon
every occasion.
3. It would make us charitable to others. Since he is our Lord, the
great Proprietor of the world, it is fit he should have a part of our
goods, as well as our time: he being the Lord both of our goods and
time. The Lord is to be honored with our substance (Prov. iii. 9);
kings were not to be approached to without a present; tribute is due to
kings: but because he hath no need of any from us to bear up his state,
maintain the charge of his wars, or pay his military officers and hosts,
it is a debt due to him to acknowledge him in his poor, to sustain
those that are a part of his substance; though he stands in no need of
it himself, yet the poor, that we have always with us, do; as a seventh
part of our weekly time, so some part of our weekly gains, are due to
him. There was to be a weekly laying by in store somewhat of what God
had prospered them, for the relief of others (1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2); the
quantity is not determined, that is left to every man’s conscience,
“according as God hath prospered him” that week. If we did consider God
as the Donor and Proprietor, we should dispose of his gifts according
to the design of the true owner, and act in our places as stewards
entrusted by him, and not purse up his part, as well as our own,
in our coffers. We should not deny him a small quit rent, as an
acknowledgement that we have a greater income from him; we should be
ready to give the inconsiderable pittance he doth require of us, as an
acknowledgment of his propriety, as well as liberality.
4. It would make us watchful, and arm us against all temptations.
Had Eve stuck to her first argument against the serpent, she had not
been instrumental to that destruction which mankind yet feel the smart
of (Gen. iii. 3): “God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it;” the great
Governor of the world hath laid his sovereign command upon us in this
point. The temptation gained no ground till her heart let go the sense
of this for the pleasure of her eye and palate. The repetition of this,
the great Lord of the world hath said or ordered, had both unargumented
and disarmed the tempter. A sense of God’s dominion over us would
discourage a temptation, and put it out of countenance; it would bring
us with a vigorous strength to beat it back to a retreat. If this were
as strongly urged as the temptation, it would make the heart of the
tempted strong, and the motion of the tempter feeble.
5. It would make us entertain afflictions as they ought to be
entertained, _viz._, with a respect to God. When men make light of any
affliction from God, it is a contempt of his sovereignty, as to contemn
the frown, displeasure, and check of a prince, is an affront to majesty:
it is as if they did not care a straw what God did with them, but
dare him to do his worst. There is a “despising the chastening of the
Almighty” (Job v. 17). To be unhumbled under his hand, is as much, or
more, affront to him, than to be impatient under it. Afflictions must
be entertained as a check from heaven, {b457} as a frown from the great
Monarch of the world; under the feeling of every stroke, we are to
acknowledge his sovereignty and bounty; to despise it, is to make light
of his authority over us; as to despise his favors is to make light
of his kindness to us. A sense of God’s dominion would make us observe
every check from him, and not diminish his authority by casting off a
due sense of his correction.
6. This dominion of God would make us resign up ourselves to God in
everything. He that considers himself a thing made by God, a vassal
under his authority, would not expostulate with him, and call him to an
account why he hath dealt so or so with him. It would stab the vitals
of all pleas against him. We should not then contest with him, but
humbly lay our cause at his feet, and say with Eli, (1 Sam. iii. 18),
“It is the Lord, let him do what seems good.” We should not commence a
suit against God, when he doth not answer our prayers presently, and
send the mercy we want upon the wings of the wind; he is the Lord, the
Sovereign. The consideration of this would put an end to our quarrels
with God; should I expect that the Monarch of the world should wait
upon me; or I, a poor worm, wait upon him? Must I take state upon me
before the throne of heaven, and expect the King of kings should lay by
his sceptre, to gratify my humor? Surely Jonah thought God no more than
his fellow, or his vassal, at that time when he told him to his face he
did well to be angry, as though God might not do what he pleased with
so small a thing as a gourd; he speaks as if he would have sealed a
lease of ejectment, to exclude him from any propriety in anything in
the world.
7. This dominion of God would stop our vain curiosity. When Peter
was desirous to know the fate of John, the beloved disciple, Christ
answereth no more than this: (John xxi. 22), “If I will that he tarry
till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.” Consider your duty,
and lay aside your curiosity, since it is my pleasure not to reveal it.
The sense of God’s absolute dominion would silence many vain disputes
in the world. What if God will not reveal this or that? the manner
and method of his resolves should humble the creature under intruding
inquiries.
_Use V._ Of exhortation.
1. The doctrine of the dominion of God may teach us humility. We
are never truly abased, but by the consideration of the eminence and
excellency of the Deity. Job never thought himself so pitiful a thing,
so despicable a creature, as after God’s magnificent declamation upon
the theme of his own sovereignty (Job xlii. 5, 6). When God’s name is
regarded as the most excellent and sovereign name in all the earth,
then is the soul in the fittest temper to lie low, and cry out, What
is man, that so great a Majesty should be mindful of him? When Abraham
considers God as the supreme Judge of all the earth, he then owns
“himself but dust and ashes” (Gen. xviii. 25, 27). Indeed, how can
vile and dusty man vaunt before God, when angels, far more excellent
creatures, cannot stand before him, but with a veil on their faces?
How little a thing is man in regard of all the earth! How mean a thing
is the earth in regard of the vaster heavens! How poor a thing is the
whole {b458} world in comparison of God! How pitiful a thing is man,
if compared with so excellent a Majesty! There is as great a distance
between God and man, as between being and not being; and the more
man considers the Divine royalty, the more disesteem he will have of
himself; it would make him stoop and disrobe himself, and fall low
before the throne of the King of kings, throwing down before his throne
any crown he gloried in (Rev. iv. 10).
(1.) In regard of authority. How unreasonable is pride in the presence
of majesty! How foolish is it for a country justice of peace to think
himself as great as his prince that commissioned him! How unreasonable
is pride in the presence of the greatest sovereignty! What, is human
greatness before Divine? The stars discover no light when the sun
appears, but in a humble posture withdraw in their lesser beams, to
give the sole glory of enlightening the world to the sun, who is, as
it were, the sovereign of those stars, and imparts a light unto them.
The greatest prince is infinitely less, if compared with God, than
the meanest scullion in his kitchen can be before him. As the wisdom,
goodness, and holiness of a man is a mere mote compared to the goodness
and holiness of God, so is the authority of a man a mere trifle in
regard of the sovereignty of God: and who but a simple child would be
proud of a mote or trifle? Let man be as great as he can, and command
others, he is still a subject to One greater than himself. Pride would
then vanish like smoke at the serious consideration of this sovereignty.
One of the kings of this country did very handsomely shame the flattery
of his courtiers, that cried him up as lord of sea and land, by
ordering his chair to be set on the sand of the sea shore, when the
tide was coming in, and commanding the waters not to touch his feet,
which when they did without any regard to his authority, he took
occasion thereby to put his flatterers out of countenance, and instruct
himself in a lesson of humility. “See,” saith he, “how I rule all
things, when so mean a thing as the water will not obey me!” It is a
ridiculous pride that the Turk and Persian discover in their swelling
titles. What poor sovereigns are they, that cannot command a cloud,
give out an effectual order for a drop of rain, in a time of drought,
or cause the bottles of heaven to turn their mouth another way in
a time of too much moisture! Yet their own prerogatives are so much
in their minds, that they jostle out all thoughts of the supreme
prerogative of God, and give thereby occasion to frequent rebellions
against him.
(2.) In regard of propriety. And this doctrine is no less an abatement
of pride in the highest, as well as in the meanest; it lowers pride in
point of propriety, as well as in point of authority. Is any proud of
his possessions? how many lords of those possessions have gone before
you! how many are to follow you![1021] Your dominion lasts but a short
time, too short to be a cause of any pride and glory in it. God by
a sovereign power can take you from them, or them from you, when he
pleaseth. The traveller refresheth himself in the heat of summer under
a shady tree; how many have done so before him the same day he knows
not, and {b459} how many will have the benefit after before night comes,
he is as much ignorant of; he, and the others that went before him and
follow after him, use it for their refreshment, but none of them can
say, that they are the lords of it; the property is invested in some
other person, whom perhaps they know not. The propriety of all you have
is in God, not truly in yourselves. Doth not that man deserve scorn
from you, who will play the proud fool in gay clothes and attire, which
are known to be none of his own, but borrowed? Is it not the same case
with every proud man, though he hath a property in his goods by the law
of the land? Is anything you have your own truly? Is it not lent you
by the great Lord? Is it not the same vanity in any of you, to be proud
of what you have as God’s loan to you, as for such a one to be proud
of what he hath borrowed of man? And do you not make yourselves as
ridiculous to angels and good men, who know that though it is yours in
opposition to man, yet it is not yours in opposition to God? they are
granted you only for your use, as the collar of esses and sword, and
other ensigns of the chief magistrate in the city, pass through many
hands in regard of the use of them, but the propriety remains in the
community and body of the city: or as the silver plate of a person
that invites you to a feast is for your use during the time of the
invitation. What ground is there to be proud of those things you are
not the absolute lords and proprietors of, but only have the use of
them granted to you during the pleasure of the Sovereign of the world!
2. Praise and thankfulness result from this doctrine of the sovereignty
of God.
(1.) He is to be praised for his royalty. (Ps. cxlv. 1), “I will
extoll thee, my God, O King.” The Psalmist calls upon men five times
to sing praise to him as King of all the earth. (Ps. xlvii. 6, 7),
“Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises to our king, sing
praises: for God is the King of all the earth; sing ye praises with
understanding.” All creatures, even the inanimate ones, are called
upon to praise him because of the excellency of his name and the
supremacy of his glory, in the 148th Psalm throughout, and ver. 13.
That Sovereign Power that gave us hearts and tongues, deserves to have
them employed in his praises, especially since he hath by the same
hand given us so great matter for it. As he is a Sovereign we owe him
thankfulness; he doth not deal with us in a way of absolute dominion;
he might then have annihilated us, since he hath as full a dominion to
reduce us to nothing. Consider the absoluteness of his sovereignty in
itself, and you must needs acknowledge that he might have multiplied
precepts, enjoined us the observance of more than he hath done; he
might have made our tether much shorter; he might exact obedience,
and promise no reward for it; he might dash us against the walls, as
a potter doth his vessel, and no man have any just reason to say, What
dost thou? or, Why dost thou use me so? A greater right is in him to
use us in such a manner as we do sensible as well as insensible things.
And if you consider his dominion as it is capable to be exercised in a
way of unquestionable justice, and submitted to the {b460} reason and
judgments of creatures, he might have dealt with us in a smarter way
than he hath hitherto done; instead of one affliction, we might have
had a thousand: he might have shut his own hands from pouring out any
good upon us, and ordered innumerable scourges to be prepared for us;
but he deals not with us according to the rights of his dominion. He
doth not oppress us by the greatness of his majesty; he enters into
covenant with us, and allures us by the chords of a man, and shows
himself as much a merciful as an absolute Sovereign.
(2.) As he is a Proprietor, we owe him thankfulness. He is at his own
choice whether he will bestow upon us any blessings or no; the more
value, therefore, his benefits deserve from us, and the Donor the more
sincere returns. If we have anything from the creature to serve our
turn, it is by the order of the chief Proprietor. He is the spring
of honor, and the fountain of supplies: all creatures are but as the
conduit pipes in a great city, which serve several houses with water,
but from the great spring. All things are conveyed originally from his
own hand, and are dispensed from his exchequer. If this great Sovereign
did not order them, you would have no more supplies from a creature
than you could have nourishment from a chip: it is the Divine will in
everything that doth us good; every favor from creatures is but a smile
from God, an evidence of his royalty to move us to pay a respect to
him as the great Lord. Some heathens had so much respect for God, as to
conclude that his will, and not their prudence, was the chief conductor
of their affairs. His goodness to us calls for our thankfulness, but
his sovereignty calls for a higher elevation of it: a smile from a
prince is more valued, and thought worthy of more gratitude, than
a present from a peasant; a small gift from a great person is more
gratefully to be received than a larger from an inferior person: the
condescension of royalty magnifies the gift. What is man, that thou,
so great a Majesty, art mindful of him, to bestow this or that favor
upon him?――is but a due reflection upon every blessing we receive.
Upon every fresh blessing we should acknowledge the Donor and true
Proprietor, and give him the honor of his dominion: his property ought
to be thankfully owned in everything we are capable of consecrating
to him; as David, after the liberal collection he had made for the
building of the temple, owns in his dedication of it to that use the
propriety of God: “Who am I, and what is my people, that we should be
able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of
thee, and of thine own have we given thee” (1 Chron. xxix. 14): it was
but a return of God’s own to him, as the waters of the river are no
other than the return to the sea of what was taken from it. Praise and
thankfulness is a rent due from all mankind, and from every creature,
to the great Landlord, since all are tenants, and hold by him at his
will. “Every creature in heaven and earth, and under the earth, and in
the sea,” were heard, by John, to ascribe “blessing, honor, glory, and
power, to Him that sits on the throne” (Rev. v. 13). We are as much
bound to the sovereignty of God for his preservation of us, as for his
creation of us; we are no less obliged to him that preserves our beings
when exposed to dangers, than we are for {b461} bestowing a being upon
us when we were not capable of danger. Thankfulness is due to this
Sovereign for public concerns. Hath he not preserved the ship of his
church in the midst of whistling winds and roaring waves; in the midst
of the combats of men and devils; and rescued it often when it hath
been near shipwrecked?
3. How should we be induced from hence to promote the honor of
this Sovereign! We should advance him as supreme, and all our actions
should concur in his honor: we should return to his glory what we have
received from his sovereignty, and enjoy by his mercy: he that is the
superior of all, ought to be the end of all. This is the harmony of the
creation; that which is of an inferior nature is ordered to the service
of that which is of a more excellent nature; thus water and earth, that
have a lower being, are employed for the honor and beauty of the plants
of the earth, who are more excellent in having a principle of a growing
life: these plants are again subservient to the beasts and birds,
which exceed them in a principle of sense, which the others want: those
beasts and birds are ordered for the good of man, who is superior to
them in a principle of reason, and is invested with a dominion over
them. Man having God for his superior, ought as much to serve the
glory of God, as other things are designed to be useful to man. Other
governments are intended for the good of the community, the chief
end is not the good of the governors themselves: but God being every
way sovereign, the sovereign Being, giving being to all things, the
sovereign Ruler, giving order and preservation to all things, is
also the end of all things, to whose glory and honor all things, all
creatures, are to be subservient; “for of him, and through him, and
to him, are all things, to whom be glory for ever” (Rom. xi. 36): _of_
him, as the efficient cause; _through_ him, as the preserving cause;
_to_ him, as the final cause. All our actions and thoughts ought to
be addressed to his glory; our whole beings ought to be consecrated to
his honor, though we should have no reward but the honor of having been
subservient to the end of our creation: so much doth the excellency and
majesty of God, infinitely elevated above us, challenge of us. Subjects
use to value the safety, honor, and satisfaction of a good prince above
their own: David is accounted worth ten thousand of the people; and
some of his courtiers thought themselves obliged to venture their lives
for his satisfaction in so mean a thing as a little water from the well
of Bethlehem. Doth not so great, so good a Sovereign as God, deserve
the same affection from us? “Do we swear,” saith a heathen, “to prefer
none before Cæsar, and have we not greater reason to prefer none before
God?”[1022] It is a justice due from us to God to maintain his glory,
as it is a justice to preserve the right and property of another. As
God would lay aside his Deity if he did deny himself, so a creature
acts irregularly, and out of the rank of a creature, if it doth not
deny itself for God. He that makes himself his own end, makes himself
his own sovereign. To napkin up a gift he hath bestowed upon us, or to
employ what we possess solely to our own glory, to use anything barely
for ourselves, without respect to God, is to apply it to a wrong use,
and to injure {b462} God in his propriety, and the end of his donation.
What we have ought to be used for the honor of God: he retains the
dominion and lordship, though he grants us the use: we are but stewards,
not proprietors, in regard to God, who expects an account from us, how
we have employed his goods to his honor. The kingdom of God is to be
advanced by us: we are to pray that his kingdom may come: we are to
endeavor that his kingdom may come, that is, that God may be known to
be the chief Sovereign; that his dominion, which was obscured by Adam’s
fall, may be more manifested; that his subjects, which are suppressed
in the world, may be supported; his laws, which are violated by the
rebellions of men, may be more obeyed; and his enemies be fully subdued
by his final judgment, the last evidence of his dominion in this state
of the world; that the empire of sin and the devil may be abolished,
and the kingdom of God perfected, that none may rule but the great and
rightful Sovereign. Thus while we endeavor to advance the honor of his
throne, we shall not want an honor to ourselves. He is too gracious a
Sovereign to neglect them that are mindful of his glory; “those that
honor him, he will honor” (1 Sam. ii. 30).
4. Fear and reverence of God in himself, and in his actions, is a duty
incumbent on us from this doctrine (Jer. x. 7): “Who would not fear
thee, O King of nations?” The ingratitude of the world is taxed in not
reverencing God as a great king, who had given so many marks of his
royal government among them. The prophet wonders there was no fear of
so great a King in the world, since, “among all the wise men of the
nations, and among all their kings, there is none like unto this;” no
more reverence of him, since none ruled so wisely, nor any ruled so
graciously. The dominion of God is one of the first sparks that gives
fire to religion and worship, considered with the goodness of this
Sovereign (Ps. xii. 27, 28): “All the nations shall worship before thee,
for the kingdom is the Lord’s, and he is Governor among the nations.”
Epicurus, who thought God careless of human affairs, leaving them at
hap‑hazard, to the conduct of men’s wisdom and mutability of fortune,
yet acknowledged that God ought to be worshipped by man for the
excellency of his nature, and the greatness of his majesty. How
should we reverence that God, that hath a throne encompassed with such
glorious creatures as angels, whose faces we are not able to behold,
though shadowed in assumed bodies! how should we fear the Lord of Hosts,
that hath so many armies at his command in the heavens above, and in
the earth below, whom he can dispose to the exact obedience of his
will! how should men be afraid to censure any of his actions, to sit
judge of their Judge, and call him to an account at their bar! how
should such an earth‑worm, a mean animal as man, be afraid to speak
irreverently of so great a King among his pots and strumpets! Not to
fear him, not to reverence him, is to pull his throne from under him,
and make him of a lower authority than ourselves, or any creature that
we reverence more.
5. Prayer to God, and trust in him, is inferred from his sovereignty.
If he be the supreme Sovereign, holding heaven and earth in his hand,
disposing all things here below, not committing everything {b463} to
the influence of the stars or the humors of men, we ought, then, to
apply ourselves to him in every case, implore the exercise of his
authority; we hereby own his peculiar right over all things and persons.
He only is the supreme Head in all causes, and over all persons: “Thine
is the kingdom” (Matt. vi. 13), concludes the Lord’s prayer, both as a
motive to pray, and a ground to expect what we want. He that believes
not God’s government will think it needless to call upon him, will
expect no refuge under him in a strait, but make some creature‑reed his
support. If we do not seek to him, but rely upon the dominion we have
over our own possessions, or upon the authority of anything else, we
disown his supremacy and dominion over all things; we have as good an
opinion of ourselves, or of some creatures, as we ought to have of God;
we think ourselves, or some natural cause we seek to or depend upon, as
much sovereigns as he, and that all things which concern us are as much
at the dispose of an inferior, as of the great Lord. It is, indeed,
to make a god of ourselves, or of the creature; when we seek to him,
upon all occasions, we own this Divine eminency, we acknowledge that
it is by him men’s hearts are ordered, the world governed, all things
disposed; and God, that is jealous of his glory, is best pleased
with any duty in the creature that doth acknowledge and desire the
glorification of it, which prayer and dependence on him doth in a
special manner, desiring the exercise of his authority, and the
preservation of it in ordering the affairs of the world.
6. Obedience naturally results from this doctrine. As his justice
requires fear, his goodness thankfulness, his faithfulness trust,
his truth belief, so his sovereignty, in the nature of it, demands
obedience: as it is most fit he should rule, in regard of his
excellency, so it is most fit we should obey him in regard of his
authority: he is our Lord, and we his subjects; he is our Master, and
we his servants; it is righteous we should observe him, and conform to
his will: he is everything that speaks an authority to command us, and
that can challenge an humility in us to obey. As that is the truest
doctrine that subjects us most to God, so he is the truest Christian
that doth, in his practice, most acknowledge this subjection; and
as sovereignty is the first notion a creature can have of God, so
obedience is the first and chief thing conscience reflects upon the
creature. Man holds all of God; and therefore owes all the operations
capable to be produced by those faculties to that Sovereign Power that
endowed him with them. Man had no being but from him; he hath no motion
without him; he should, therefore, have no being but for him; and
no motion but according to him: to call him Lord, and not to act in
subjection to him, is to mock and put a scorn upon him (Luke vi. 46):
“Why call you me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say?” It
is like the crucifying Christ under the title of a King. It is not
by professions, but by observance of the laws of a prince, that we
manifest a due respect to him: by that we reverence that authority
that enacted them, and the prudence that framed them.
This doctrine affords us motives to obey, and directs us to the manner
of obedience.
{b464} 1st. Motives to obey,
(1.) It is comely and orderly. Is it not a more becoming thing to
be ruled by the will of our Sovereign than by that of our lusts?――to
observe a wise and gracious Authority, than to set up inordinate
appetites in the room of his law? Would not all men account it a
disorder to be abominated, to see a slave or vassal control the just
orders of his lord, and endeavor to subject his master’s will to his
own? much more to expect God should serve our humor rather than we be
regulated by his will. It is more orderly that subjects should obey
their governors, than governors their subjects; that passion should
obey reason, than reason obey passion. When good governors are to
conform to subjects, and reason veil to passion, it is monstrous!
the one disturbs the order of a community, and the other defaceth
the beauty of the soul. Is it a comely thing for God to stoop to our
meanness, or for us to stoop to his greatness?
(2.) In regard of the Divine sovereignty, it is both honorable and
advantageous to obey God. It is, indeed, the glory of a superior to
be obeyed by his inferior; but where the sovereign is of transcendent
excellency and dignity, it is an honor to a mean person to be under his
immediate commands, and enrolled in his service. It is more honor to be
God’s subject than to be the greatest worldly monarch; his very service
is an empire, and disobedience to him is a slavery. It is a part of
his sovereignty to reward any service done him.[1023] Other lords may
be willing to recompense the service of their subjects, but are often
rendered unable; but nothing can stand in the way of God to hinder your
reward, if nothing stand in your way to hinder your obedience (Lev.
xviii. 5): “If you keep my statutes, you shall live in them; I am the
Lord.” Is there anything in the world can recompense you for rebellion
against God, and obedience to a lust? Saul cools the hearts of his
servants from running after David, by David’s inability to give
them fields and vineyards (1 Sam. xxii. 7): “Will the son of Jesse
give every one of you fields and vineyards, and make you captains of
thousands, and captains of hundreds, that you have conspired against
me?” But God hath a dominion to requite, as well as an authority to
command your obedience; he is a great Sovereign, to bear you out in
your observance of his precepts against all reproaches and violence of
men, and at last to crown you with eternal honor. If he should neglect
vindicating, one time or other, your loyalty to him, he will neglect
the maintaining and vindicating his own sovereignty and greatness.
(3.) God, in all his dispensations to man, was careful to preserve the
rights of his sovereignty in exacting obedience of his creature. The
second thing he manifested his sovereignty in was that of a Lawgiver
to Adam, after that of a Proprietor in giving him the possession of the
garden; one followed immediately the other (Gen. ii. 15, 16): “The Lord
God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it;
and the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden
thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil thou shalt not eat of it,” &c. {b465} Nothing was to be enjoyed by
man but upon the condition of obedience to his Lord; and it is observed
that in the description of the creation, God is not called “Lord” till
the finishing of the creation, and particularly in the forming of man.
“And the Lord God formed man” (Gen. ii. 7). Though he was Lord of all
creatures, yet it was in man he would have his sovereignty particularly
manifested, and by man have his authority specially acknowledged. The
law is prefaced with this title: “I am the Lord thy God” (Exod. xx. 2):
authority in Lord, sweetness in God, the one to enjoin, the other to
allure obedience; and God enforceth several of the commands with the
same title. And as he begins many precepts with it, so he concludes
them with the same title, “I am the Lord,” Lev. xix. 37, and in other
places. In all his communications of his goodness to man in ways of
blessing them, he stands upon the preservation of the rights of his
sovereignty, and manifests his graciousness in favor of his authority.
“I am the Lord your God,” your God in all my perfections for your
advantage, but yet your Sovereign for your obedience. In all his
condescension he will have the rights of this untouched and unviolated
by us. When Christ would give the most pregnant instance of his
condescending and humble kindness, he urgeth his authority to ballast
their spirits from any presumptuous eruptions because of his humility.
“You call me Master, and Lord; and you say well: for so I am” (John
xiii. 13). He asserts his authority, and presseth them to their duty,
when he had seemed to lay it by for the demeanor of a servant, and had,
below the dignity of a master, put on the humility of a mean underling,
to wash the disciples feet; all which was to oblige them to perform the
command he then gave them (ver. 14), and in obedience to his authority,
and imitation of his example.
(4.) All creatures obey him. All creatures punctually observe
the law he hath imprinted on their nature, and in their several
capacities acknowledge him their Sovereign; they move according to
the inclinations he imprinted on them. The sea contains itself in its
bounds, and the sun steps out of its sphere; the stars march in their
order, “they continue this day according to thy ordinance, for all are
thy servants” (Ps. cxix. 91). If he orders things contrary to their
primitive nature, they obey him. When he speaks the word, the devouring
fire becomes gentle, and toucheth not a hair of the children he will
preserve; the hunger‑starved lions suspend their ravenous nature, when
so good a morsel as Daniel is set before them; and the sun, which had
been in perpetual motion since its creation, obeys the writ of ease
God sent it in Joshua’s time, and stands still. Shall insensible and
sensible creatures be punctual to his orders, passively acknowledge
his authority? shall lions and serpents obey God in their places?――and
shall not man, who can, by reason, argue out the sovereignty of God,
and understand the sense and goodness of his laws, and actively obey
God with that will he hath enriched him with above other creatures? Yet
the truth is, every sensitive, yea, every senseless creature, obeys God
more than his rational, more than his gracious creatures in this world.
The rational creatures since the fall have a prevailing principle of
corruption. Let the obedience {b466} of other creatures incite us more
to imitate them, and shame our remissness in not acknowledging the
dominion of God, in the just way he prescribes us to walk in. Well
then, let us not pretend to own God as our Lord, and yet act the part
of rebels; let us give him the reverence, and pay him that obedience,
which of right belongs to so great a King. Whatsoever he speaks as a
true God, ought to be believed; whatsoever he orders as a sovereign God,
ought to be obeyed; let not God have less than man, nor man have more
than God. It is a common principle writ upon the reason of all men,
that respect and observance is due to the majesty of a man, much more
to the Majesty of God as a Lawgiver.
2d. As this doctrine presents us motives, so it directs us to the
manner and kind of our obedience to God.
(1.) It must be with a respect to his authority. As the veracity of God
is the formal object of faith, and the reason why we believe the things
he hath revealed; so the authority of God is the formal object of our
obedience, or the reason why we observe the things he hath commanded.
There must be a respect to his will as the rule, as well as to his
glory as the end. It is not formally obedience that is not done with
regard to the order of God, though it may be materially obedience, as
it answers the matter of the precept. As when men will abstain from
excess and rioting, because it is ruinous to their health, not because
it is forbidden by the great Lawgiver; this is to pay a respect to
our own conveniency and interest, not a conscientious observance
to God; a regard to our health, not to our Sovereign; a kindness to
ourselves, not a justice due to the rights of God. There must not only
be a consideration of the matter of the precept as convenient, but a
consideration of the authority of the Lawgiver as obligatory. “Thus
saith the Lord,” ushers in every order of his, directing our eye to the
authority enacting it; Jeroboam did God’s will of prophecy in taking
the kingdom of Israel; and the devils may be subservient in God’s
will or providence; but neither of them are put upon the account of
obedience, because not done intentionally with any conscience of the
sovereignty of God. God will have this owned by a regular respect to it;
so much he insists upon the honor of it, that the sacrifice of Christ,
God‑man, was most agreeable to him, not only as it was great and
admirable in itself, but also for that ravishing obedience to his will,
which was the life and glory of his sacrifice, whereby the justice of
God was not only owned in the offering, but the sovereignty of God
owned in the obedience. “He became obedient unto death; wherefore God
highly exalted him” (Phil. ii. 8).
(2.) It must be the best and most exact obedience. The most sovereign
authority calls for the exactest and lowest observance; the highest
Lord for the deepest homage; being, he is, a “great King, he must have
the best in our flock” (Mal. i. 14). Obedience is due to God, as King,
and the choicest obedience is due to him, as he is the most excellent
King. The more majestic and noble any man is, the more careful we are
in our manner of service to him. We are bound to obey God, not only
under the title of a “Lord” in regard of jurisdiction and political
subjection, but under the title of a true {b467} “Lord and Master,”
in regard of propriety; since we are not only his subjects but his
servants, the exactest obedience is due to God, _jure servitutis_;
“When you have done all, say you are unprofitable servants” (Luke
xvii. 10), because we can do nothing which we owe not to God.
(3.) Sincere and inward obedience. As it is a part of his sovereignty
to prescribe laws not only to man in his outward state, but to his
conscience, so it is a part of our subjection to receive his laws into
our will and heart. The authority of his laws exceeds human laws in the
extent and riches of them, and our acknowledgment of his sovereignty
cannot be right, but by subjecting the faculties of our soul to the
Lawgiver of our souls; we else acknowledge his authority to be as
limited as the empire of man; when his will not only sways the outward
action, but the inward motion, it is a giving him the honor of his
high throne above the throne of mortals. The right of God ought to be
preserved undamaged in affection, as well as action.
(4.) It must be sole obedience. We are ordered to serve him only;
“Him only shalt thou serve” (Matt. iv. 10): as the only Supreme Lord,
as being the highest Sovereign, it is fit he should have the highest
obedience before all earthly sovereigns, and as being unparalleled by
any among all the nations, so none must have an obedience equal to him.
When God commands, if the highest power on earth countermands it, the
precept of God must be preferred before the countermand of the creature.
“Whether it be right in the sight of God, to hearken unto you more than
unto God, judge ye” (Acts iv. 18, 19). We must never give place to the
authority of all the monarchs in the world, to the prejudice of that
obedience we owe to the Supreme Monarch of heaven and earth; this would
be to place the throne of God at the footstool of man, and debase him
below the rank of a creature. Loyalty to man can never recompense for
the mischief accruing from disloyalty to God. All the obedience we are
to give to man, is to be paid in obedience to God, and with an eye to
his precept: therefore, what servants do for their masters, they must
do “as to the Lord” (Col. iii. 23); and children are to obey their
parents “in the Lord” (Eph. vi. 1). The authority of God is to be eyed
in all the services payable to man; proper and true obedience hath God
solely for its principal and primary object; all obedience to man that
interferes with that, and would justle out obedience to God, is to be
refused. What obedience is due to man, is but rendered as a part of
obedience to God, and a stooping of his authority.
(5.) It must be universal obedience. The laws of man are not to be
universally obeyed; some may be oppressing and unjust: no man hath
authority to make an unjust law, and no subject is bound to obey an
unrighteous law; but God being a righteous Sovereign, there is not one
of his laws but doth necessarily oblige us to obedience. Whatsoever
this Supreme Power declares to be his will, it must be our care to
observe; man, being his creature, is bound to be subject to whatsoever
laws he doth impose to the meanest as well as to the greatest: they
having equally a stamp of Divine authority {b468} upon them. We are
not to pick and choose among his precepts: this is to pare away part
of his authority, and render him a half sovereign. It must be universal
in all places. An Englishman in Spain is bound to obey the laws of that
country wherein he resides: and so not responsible there for the breach
of the laws of his native country. In the same condition is a Spaniard
in England. But the laws of God are to be obeyed in every part of the
world; wheresoever Divine Providence doth cast us, it casts us not
out of the places where he commands, nor out of the compass of his
own empire. He is Lord of the world, and his laws oblige in every part
of the world; they were ordered for a world, and not for a particular
climate and territory.
(6.) It must be indisputable obedience. All authority requires
readiness in the subject; the centurion had it from his soldiers; they
went when he ordered them, and came when he beckoned to them (Matt.
viii. 9). It is more fit God should have the same promptness from his
subjects. We are to obey his orders, though our purblind understanding
may not apprehend the reason of every one of them. It is without
dispute that he is sovereign, and therefore it is without dispute that
we are bound to obey him, without controlling his conduct. A master
will not bear it from his slave, why should God from his creature?
Though God admits his creatures sometimes to treat with him about the
equality of his justice, and also about the reason of some commands,
yet sometimes he gives no other reason but his own sovereignty, “Thus
saith the Lord;” to correct the malapertness of men, and exact from
them an entire obedience to his unlimited and absolute authority. When
Abraham was commanded to offer Isaac, God acquaints him not with the
reason of his demand till after (Gen. xxii. 2, 12), nor did Abraham
enter any demur to the order, or expostulate with God, either from his
own natural affection to Isaac, the hardness of the command, it being,
as it were, a ripping up of his own bowels, nor the quickness of it
after he had been a child of the promise, and a Divine donation above
the course of nature. Nor did Paul confer with flesh and blood, and
study arguments from nature and interest to oppose the Divine command,
when he was sent upon his apostolical employment (Gal. i. 16). The more
indisputable his right is to command, the stronger is our obligation to
obey, without questioning the reason of his orders.
(7.) It must be joyful obedience. Men are commonly more cheerful
in their obedience to a great prince than to a mean peasant; because
the quality of the master renders the service more honorable. It is
a discredit to a prince’s government, when his subjects obey him with
discontent and dejectedness, as though he were a hard master, and
his laws tyrannical and unrighteous. When we pay obedience but with
a dull and feeble pace, and a sour and sad temper, we blemish our
great Sovereign, imply his commands to be grievous, void of that peace
and pleasure he proclaims to be in them; that he deserves no respect
from us, if we obey him because we must, and not because we will.
Involuntary obedience deserves not the title: it is rather submission
than obedience, an act of the body, not of the mind: a mite of
obedience with cheerfulness, is better {b469} than a talent without
it. In the little Paul did, he comforts himself in this, that with
the “mind he served the law of God” (Rom. vii. 25); the testimonies of
God were David’s delight (Ps. cxix. 24). Our understandings must take
pleasure in knowing him, our wills delightfully embrace him, and our
actions be cheerfully squared to him. This credits the sovereignty of
God in the world, makes others believe him to be a gracious Lord, and
move them to have some veneration for his authority.
(8.) It must be a perpetual obedience. As man is a subject as soon
as he is a creature, so he is a subject as long as he is a creature.
God’s sovereignty is of perpetual duration, as long as he is God; man’s
obedience must be perpetual, while he is a man. God cannot part with
his sovereignty, and a creature cannot be exempted from subjection; we
must not only serve him, but cleave to him (Deut. xiii. 4). Obedience
is continued in heaven, his throne is established in heaven, it must be
bowed to in heaven, as well as in earth. The angels continually fulfil
his pleasure.
7. _Exhortation._ Patience is a duty flowing from this doctrine. In
all strokes upon ourselves, or thick showers upon the church, “the
Lord reigns,” is a consideration to prevent muttering against him, and
make us quietly wait to see what the issue of his Divine pleasure will
be. It is too great an insolence against the Divine Majesty to censure
what he acts, or quarrel with him for what he inflicts. Proud clay doth
very unbecomingly swell against an infinite superior. If God be our
Sovereign, we ought to subscribe to his afflicting will without debates,
as well as to his liberal will with affectionate applauses. We should
be as full of patience under his sharper, as of praise under his more
grateful, dispensations, and be without reluctancy against his penal,
as well as his preceptive, pleasure. It is God’s part to inflict, and
the creature’s part to submit.
This doctrine affords us motives, and shows us the nature of patience.
1. Motives to it.
(1.) God, being Sovereign, hath an absolute right to dispose of all
things. His title to our persons and possessions is, upon this account,
stronger than our own can be; we have as much reason to be angry with
ourselves, when we assert our worldly right against others, as to be
angry with God for asserting the right of his dominion over us. Why
should we enter a charge against him, because he hath not tempered us
so strong in our bodies, drawn us with as fair colors, embellished our
spirits with as rich gifts as others? Is he not the Sovereign of his
own goods, to impart what, and in what measure, he pleaseth? Would
you be content your servants should check your pleasure in dispensing
your own favors? It is an unreasonable thing not to leave God to the
exercise of his own dominion. Though Job were a pattern of patience,
yet he had deep tinctures of impatience; he often complains of God’s
usage of him as too hard, and stands much upon his own integrity; but
when God comes, in the latter chapters of that book, to justify his
carriage towards him, he chargeth him not as a criminal, but considers
him only as his vassal. He might have found flaws enough in Job’s
carriage, {b470} and corruption enough in Job’s nature, to clear the
equity of his proceeding as a judge; but he useth no other medium to
convince him, but the greatness of his Majesty, the unlimitedness of
his sovereignty, which so appals the good man, that he puts his finger
on his mouth and stands mute with a self‑abhorrency before him, as a
Sovereign, rather than as a Judge. When he doth pinch us, and deprive
us of what we most affect, his right to do it should silence our lips
and calm our hearts from any boisterous uproars against him.
(2.) The property of all still remains in God, since he is sovereign.
He did not divest himself of the property when he granted us the use;
the earth is his, not ours; the fulness any of us have, as well as the
fulness others have. After he had given the Israelites corn, wine, and
oil, he calls them all _his_, and emphatically adds _my_, to every one
of them (Hos. ii. 9). His right is universal over every mite we have,
and perpetual too; he may, therefore, take from us what he please. He
did but deposit in our hands for awhile the benefits we enjoy, either
children, friends, estate, or lives; he did not make a total conveyance
of them, and alienate his own property, when he put them into our hands;
we can show no patent for them, wherein the full right is passed over
to us, to hold them against his will and pleasure, and implead him if
he offer to re‑assume them: he reserved a power to dispossess us upon
a forfeiture, as he is the Lord and Governor. Did any of us yet answer
the condition of his grant? it was his indulgence to allow them so long;
there is reason to submit to him, when he re‑assumes what he lent us,
and rather to thank him that he lent it so long, and did not seize upon
it sooner.
(3.) Other things have more reason to complain of our sovereignty over
them, than we of God’s exercise of his sovereignty over us. Do we not
exercise an authority over our beasts, as to strike them when we please,
and merely for our pleasure; and think we merit no reproof for it,
because they are our own, and of a nature inferior to ours? And shall
not God, who is absolute, do as much with us, who are more below him
than the meanest creatures are below us? They are creatures as well as
we, and we no more creatures than they; they were framed by Omnipotence
as well as we; there is no more difference between them and us in the
notion of creatures. As there is no difference between the greatest
monarch on earth, and the meanest beggar on the dunghill, in the notion
of a man; the beggar is a man, as well as the monarch, and as much a
man; the difference consists in the special endowments we have above
them by the bounty of their and our common Creator. We are less, if
compared with God, than the worst, meanest, and most sordid creature
can be, if compared with us. Hath not a bird or a hare (if they had a
capacity) more reason to complain of men’s persecuting them by their
hawks and their dogs? but would their complaints appear reasonable,
since both were made for the use of man, and man doth but use the
nature of the one to attain a benefit by the other? Have we any reason
to complain of God if he lets loose other creatures, the devouring
hounds of the world, to bite and afflict us? We must not open our lips
against him, nor {b471} let our heart swell against his scourge, since
both they and we were made for his use, as well as other creatures for
our; this is a reason to stifle all complaints against God, but not
to make us careless of preventing afflictions, or emerging out of them
by all just ways. The hare hath a nature to shift for itself by its
winding and turning, and the bird by its flight; and neither of them
could be blamed, if they were able, should the one scratch out the eyes
of the hounds, and the other sacrifice the hawk to its own fury.
(4.) It is a folly not to submit to him. Why should we strive against
him, since he is an unaccountable Sovereign, and “gives no account of
any of his matters?” (Job xxxiii. 13.) Who can disannul the judgment
God gives? There is no appeal from the supreme court; a higher court
can repeal or null the sentence of an inferior court, but the sentence
of the highest stands irreversible, but by itself and its own authority.
It is better to lower our sails, than to grapple with one that can
shoot us under water; to submit to that Sovereign whom we cannot subdue.
2. It shows us the true nature of patience in regard of God: it is a
submission to God’s sovereignty. As the formal object of obedience is
the authority of God enacting the law, so the formal object of patience
is the authority of God inflicting the punishment: as his right of
commanding is to be eyed in the one, so his right of punishing is
to be considered in the other. This was Eli’s condition, when he had
received a message that might put flesh and blood into a mutiny, the
rending the priesthood from his family, and the ruin of his house: yet
this consideration, “It is the Lord,” calms him into submission, and
a willing compliance with the Divine pleasure (1 Sam. iii. 18): “It
is the Lord, let him do what seems good in his sight.” Job was of the
same strain (Job i. 21): “The Lord gives, and the Lord hath taken away,
blessed be the name of the Lord;” he considers God as a sovereign, who
was not to be reproached, or have anything uncomely uttered of him, for
what he had done. To be patient because we cannot avoid it, or resist
it, is a violent, not a loyal patience; but to submit because it is the
will of God to inflict; to be silent, because the sovereignty of God
doth order it, is a patience of a true complexion. The other kind of
patience is no other than that of an enemy that will free himself as
soon as he can, and by any way, though never so violent, that offers
itself. This sort of patience is that of a subject acknowledging the
supreme authority over him, and that he ought to be ordered by the will,
and to the glory of God, more than by his own will, and for his own
ease; “I was dumb, I opened not my mouth” (Ps. xxxix. 10); not because
I could not help it, but “because thou didst it,” thou who art my
sovereign Lord. The greatness of God claims an awful and inviolable
respect from his creatures in what way soever he doth dispose of them;
this is due to him; since his kingdom ruleth over all, his kingdom
should be acknowledged by all, and his royal authority submitted to
in all that he doth.
{b472} DISCOURSE XIV.
ON GOD’S PATIENCE.
NAHUM I. 3.――The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and
will not at all acquit the wicked: the Lord hath his way in the
whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his
feet.
THE subject of this prophecy is God’s sentence against Nineveh, the
head and metropolis of the Assyrian empire: a city famous for its
strength, and thickness of its walls, and the multitude of its towers
for defence against an enemy. The forces of this empire did God use as
a scourge against the Israelites, and by their hands ruined Samaria,
the chief city of the ten tribes, and transplanted them as captives
into another country (2 Kings xvii. 5, 6), about six years after
Hezekiah came to the crown of Judah (2 Kings xviii. compared with chap.
xvii. 6), in whose time, or, as some think, later, Nahum uttered this
prophecy. The name, _Nahum_, signifies Comforter; though the matter
of his prophecy be dreadful to Nineveh, it was comfortable to the
people of God: for a promise is made, (ver. 7), “The Lord is good,
a stronghold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust
in him.” And an encouragement to Judah, to keep their solemn feasts,
(ver. 15: and also in chap. ii. 3), with a declaration of the misery
of Nineveh, and the destruction of it. Observe,
1. In all the fears of God’s people, God will have a Comforter for
them. Judah might well be dejected with the calamity of their brethren,
not knowing but it might be their own turn shortly after. They knew not
where the ambition of the Assyrian would stop; but God by his prophets
calms their fears of their furious neighbor, by predicting to them the
ruin of their feared adversary.
2. The destruction of the church’s enemies is the comfort of the church.
By that God is glorified in his justice, and the church secured in its
worship.
3. The victories of persecutors secure them not from being the
triumphs of others. The Assyrians that conquered and captived Israel,
were themselves to be conquered and captived by the Medes. The whole
oppressing empire is threatened with destruction in the ruin of
their chief city; accordingly it was accomplished, and the empire
extinguished by a greater power. God burns the rod when it hath done
the work he appointed it for; and the wisp of straw wherewith the
vessels are scoured, is flung into the fire, or upon the dunghill.
Nahum begins his prophecy majestically, with a description of the
{b473} wrath and fury of God. (Ver. 2), “God is jealous, and the Lord
revengeth; the Lord revengeth, and is furious: the Lord will take
vengeance on his adversaries, and reserveth wrath for his enemies.”
And therefore the whole of it is called (ver. 1), “The burden of
Nineveh,” as those prophecies are, which are composed of threatenings
of judgments, which lie as a mighty weight upon the heads and backs of
sinners.
_God is jealous_――jealous of his glory and worship, and jealous for
his people, and their security. He cannot long bear the oppressions of
his people, and the boasts of his enemies. He is jealous for himself,
and is jealous for you of Judah, who retain his worship. He is not
forgetful of those that remember him, nor of the danger of those
that are desirous to maintain his honor in the world. In this first
expression, the prophet uses the covenant name, God; the covenant
runs, “I am your God,” or “the Lord your God;” mostly God without Lord,
never Lord without God: and, therefore, his jealousy here is meant of
the care of his people, and the relation that his actions against his
enemies have to his servants. He is a lover of his own, and a revenger
on his enemies.
_The Lord revengeth, and is furious._――He now describes God by a name
of sovereignty and power, when he describes him in his wrath and fury,
and is furious. _Heb._ בעל חמה, _Lord of hot anger_. God will vindicate
his own glory, and have his right on his enemies in a way of punishment,
if they will not give it him in a way of obedience. It is three times
repeated, to show the certainty of the judgment;[1024] and the name of
“Lord” added to every one, to intimate the power wherewith the judgment
should be executed. It is not a fatherly correction of children in a
way of mercy, but an offended Sovereign’s destruction of his enemies in
a way of vengeance. There is an anger of God with his own people, which
hath more of mercy than wrath; in this his rod is guided by his bowels.
There is a fury of God against his enemies, where there is sole wrath
without any tincture of mercy; when his sword is all edge, without
any balsam drops upon it. Such a fury as David deprecates (Ps. vi. 1):
“O Lord, rebuke me not in thy anger, nor chasten me in thy sore
displeasure,” with a fury untempered with grace, and insupportable
wrath.
_He reserves wrath for his enemies._――He lays it up in his treasury, to
be brought out and expended in a due season. “Wrath” is supplied by our
translators, and is not in the Hebrew. He reserves, what?――that which
is too sharp to be expressed, too great to be conceived: a vengeance
it is. And ונוטר הוא, _He reserves it_. He that hath an infinite wrath, he
reserves it; that hath a strength and power to execute it.
(Ver. 3.) _The Lord is slow to anger_, _Heb._ ארך אפים, _of broad
nostrils_. The anger of God is expressed by this word, which signifies
“nostrils:” as, Job ix. 13, “If God will not withdraw his anger,”
_Heb._ “his nostrils.” And the anger whereby the wicked are consumed,
is called the “breath of nostrils” (Job iv. 9); and when he is angry,
smoke and fire are said to go out of his nostrils (2 Sam. ii. 9); and
in Psalm lxxiv. 1, “Why doth thy anger smoke?” _Heb._ “Why do {b474}
thy nostrils smoke?” So the rage of a horse, when he is provoked
in battle, is called the glory of his nostrils (Job xxxix. 20). He
breathes quick fumes, and neighs with fury. And slowness to anger is
here expressed by the phrase of “long or wide nostrils:” because in
a vehement anger, the blood boiling about the heart, exhales men’s
spirit, which fume up, and break out in dilated nostrils. But where
the passages are straighter the spirits have not so quick a vent, and
therefore raise more motions within; or, because the wider the nostrils
are, the more cool air is drawn in to temper the heat of the heart,
where the angry spirits are gathered; and so the passion is allayed,
and sooner calmed. God speaks of himself in Scripture often after the
rate of men; Jeremiah prays (ch. xv. 15) that God would not take him
away in his long‑suffering, _Heb._ “in the length of his nostrils,”
_i. e._ Be not slow and backward in thy anger against my persecutors,
as to give them time and opportunity to destroy me. The nostrils,
as well as other members of a human body, are ascribed to God. He is
slow to anger; he hath anger in his nature, but is not always in the
execution of it.
_And great in power._――This may refer to his patience as the cause of
it, or as a bar to the abuse of it.
1. “He is slow to anger, and great in power,” _i. e._ his power
moderates his anger; he is not so impotent as to be at the command
of his passions, as men are; he can restrain his anger under just
provocations to exercise it. His power over himself is the cause of
his slowness to wrath, as Numb. xiv. 17: “Let the power of my Lord be
great,” saith Moses, when he pleads for the Israelites’ pardon. Men
that are great in the world are quick in passions, and are not so ready
to forgive an injury, or bear with an offender, as one of a meaner rank.
It is a want of a power over a man’s self that makes him do unbecoming
things upon a provocation. A prince that can bridle his passion, is a
king over himself, as well as over his subjects. God is slow to anger,
because great in power: he hath no less power over himself than over
his creatures: he can sustain great injuries without an immediate and
quick revenge: he hath a power of patience, as well as a power of
justice.
2. Or thus: “He is slow to anger and great in power.” He is slow
to anger, but not for want of power to revenge himself; his power
is as great to punish, as his patience to spare. It seems thus, that
slowness to anger is brought in as an objection against the revenge
proclaimed. What do you tell us of vengeance, vengeance, nothing but
such repetitions of vengeance?――as though we were ignorant that God is
slow to anger. It is true, saith the prophet, I acknowledge it as much
as you, that God is slow to anger; but withal, great in power. His
anger certainly succeeds his abused patience; he will not always bridle
in his wrath, but one time or other let it march out in fury against
his adversaries. The Assyrians, who had captived the ten tribes, and
been victorious a little against the Jews, might think that the God
of Israel had been conquered by their gods, as well as the people
professing him had been subdued by their arms; that God had lost all
his power; and the Jews might argue, from God’s patience to his enemies,
against the credit {b475} of the prophet’s denouncing revenge. The
prophet answers, to the terror of the one, and the comfort of the other,
that this indulgence to his enemies, and not accounting with them for
their crimes, proceeded from the greatness of his patience, and not
from any debility in his power. As it refers to the Assyrian, it may
be rendered thus: You Ninevites, upon your repentance after Jonah’s
thundering of judgments, are witnesses of the slowness of God to anger,
and had your punishments deferred; but, falling to your old sins, you
shall find a real punishment, and that he hath as much power to execute
his ancient threatenings, as he had then compassion to recall them; his
patience to you then was not for want of power to ruin you, but was the
effect of his goodness towards you. As it refers to the Jews, it may be
thus paraphrased: Do not despise this threatening against your enemies
because of the greatness of their might, the seeming stability of
their empire, and the terror they possess all the nations with round
about them: it may be long before it comes, but assure yourselves the
threatening I denounce shall certainly be executed; though he hath
patience to endure them a hundred and thirty‑five years (for so long as
it was before Nineveh was destroyed after this threatening, as Ribera,
_in loc._[1025] computes from the years of the reign of the kings of
Judah), yet he hath also power to verify his word, and accomplish his
will: assure yourselves, he will not at all acquit the wicked.
_He will not acquit the wicked._――He will not always account the
criminal an innocent, as he seems to do by a present sparing of them,
and dealing with them as if they were destitute of any provoking
carriage towards him, and he void of any resentment of it. He will
“not acquit the wicked;” how is this? Who then can be saved? Is there
no place for remission? He will “not acquit the wicked.” _i. e._ he
will not acquit obstinate sinners. As he hath patience for the wicked,
so he hath mercy for the penitent. The wicked are the subjects of his
long‑suffering, but not of his acquitting grace; he doth not presently
punish their sins, because he is slow to anger; but without their
repentance he will not blot out their sins, because he is righteous in
judgment: if God should acquit them without repentance for their crimes,
he must himself repent of his own law and righteous sanction of it. “He
will not acquit,” _i. e._ he will not go back from the thing he hath
spoken, and forbear, at long run, the punishment he hath threatened.
_The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind._――The way of God signifies
sometimes the law of God, sometimes the providential operations of God:
“Is not my way equal?” (Ezek. xviii. 25). It seems there to take in
both.
_And in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet._――The
prophet describes here the fight of God with the Assyrians, as if
he rushed upon them with a mighty noise of an army, raising the dust
with the feet of their horses, and motion of their chariots.[1026]
Symbolically, it signifies the multitude of the Chaldean and Median
forces, invading, besieging, and storming the city. It signifies,
1. The rule of providence. The way of God is in every motion {b476} of
the creature; he rules all things, whirlwinds, storms, and clouds; his
way is in all their walks, in the whirlings and blusterings of the one,
in the raising and dissolving the other. He blows up the winds, and
compacts the clouds, to make them serviceable to his designs.
2. The management of wars by God. His way is in the storm: as he was
the Captain of the Assyrians against Samaria, so he will be the Captain
of the Medes against Nineveh: as Israel was not so much wasted by the
Assyrians as by the Lord, who levied and armed their forces; so Nineveh
shall be subverted, rather by God, than by the arms of the Medes. Their
force is described not to be so much from human power as Divine. God is
President in all the commotions of the world, his way is in every
whirlwind.
3. The easiness of executing the judgment. He is of so great power that
he can excite tempests in the air, and overthrow them with the clouds,
which are the dust of his feet: he can blind his enemies, and avenge
himself on them: he is Lord of clouds, and can fill their womb with
hail, lightnings, and thunders, to burst out upon those he kindles
his anger against: he is of so great force, that he needs not use the
strength of his arm, but the dust of his feet, to effect his destroying
purpose.
4. The suddenness of the judgment. Whirlwinds come suddenly, without
any harbingers to give notice of their approach: clouds are swift
in their motion; “Who are those that fly as a cloud?” (Isa. lx. 8),
_ i. e._ with a mighty nimbleness. What God doth, he shall do on the
sudden, come upon them before they are aware, be too quick for them in
his motion to overrun and overreach them. The winds are described with
wings, in regard of the quickness of their motion.
5. The terror of judgments. “The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind,”
_i. e._ in great displeasure. The anger of the Lord is often compared
to a storm; he shall bring clouds of judgments upon them, many and
thick, as terrible as when a day is turned into night, by the mustering
of the darkest clouds that interpose between the sun and the earth.
“Clouds and darkness are round about him, and a fire goes before him,”
when he “burns up his enemies” (Ps. xcvii. 2, 3). The judgments shall
have terror without mercy, as clouds obscure the light, and are dark
masks before the face and glory of the sun, and cut off its refreshing
beams from the earth. Clouds note multitude and obscurity; God could
crush them without a whirlwind, beat them to powder with one touch, but
he will bring his judgments in the most surprising and amazing manner
to flesh and blood, so that all their glory shall be changed into
nothing but terror, by the noise of the bellowing winds, and the clouds,
like ink, blacking the heavens.
6. The confusion of the offenders upon God’s proceeding. A whirlwind
is not only a boisterous wind, that hurls and rolls everything out of
its place, but, by its circular motion, by its winding to all points of
the compass, it confounds things, and jumbles them together. It keeps
not one point, but, by a circumgyration, toucheth upon all. Clouds,
like dust, shall be blown in their face, and gum up their eyes: they
shall be in a posture of confusion, not know what counsels to take,
what motions to resolve upon. Let them look {b477} to every point of
heaven and earth, they shall meet with a whirlwind to confound them,
and cloudy dust to blind them.
7. The irresistibleness of the judgment. Winds have more than a
giant‑like force, a torrent of compacted air, that, with an invincible
wifulness, bears all before it, displaceth the firmest trees, and
levels the tallest towers, and pulls up bodies from their natural place.
Clouds also are over our heads, and above our reach; when God places
them upon his people for defence they are an invincible security (Isa.
iv. 5); and when he moves them, as his chariot, against a people, they
end in an irresistible destruction. Thus the ruin of the wicked is
described (Prov. x. 25): “As the whirlwind passes, so is the wicked no
more:” it blows them down, sweeps them away, they irrecoverably fall
before the force of it. What heart can endure, and what hands can be
strong, in the days wherein God doth deal with them! (Ezek. xxii. 14).
Thus is the judgment against Nineveh described: God hath his way in the
whirlwind, to thunder down their strongest walls, which were so thick
that chariots could march abreast upon them; and batter down their
mighty towers, which that city had in multitudes upon their walls.
They are the first words I intend to insist upon, to treat of the
Patience of God described in those words, “The Lord is slow to anger.”
_Doctrine._ Slowness to anger, or admirable patience, is the property
of the Divine nature. As patience signifies suffering, so it is not
in God. The Divine nature is impassible, incapable of any impair, it
cannot be touched by the violences of men, nor the essential glory
of it be diminished by the injuries of men; but as it signifies a
willingness to defer, and an unwillingness to pour forth his wrath upon
sinful creatures, he moderates his provoked justice, and forbears to
revenge the injuries he daily meets with in the world. He suffers no
grief by men’s wronging him, but he restrains his arm from punishing
them according to their merits; and thus there is patience in every
cross a man meets with in the world, because, though it be a punishment,
it is less than is merited by the unrighteous rebel, and less than may
be inflicted by a righteous and powerful God. This patience is seen in
his providential works in the world: “He suffered the nations to walk
in their own way,” and the witness of his providence to them was his
“giving them rain and fruitful seasons, filling their heart with food
and gladness” (Acts xvi. 17). The heathens took notice of it, and
signified it by feigning their god Saturn, to be bound a whole year
in a soft cord, a cord of wool, and expressed it by this proverb:
“The mills of the gods grind slowly;” _i. e._ God doth not use men
with that severity that they deserve; the mills being usually turned
by criminals condemned to that work.[1027] This, in Scripture, is
frequently expressed by a slowness to anger (Ps. ciii. 8), sometimes
by long‑suffering, which is a patience with duration (Ps. cxlv. 8; Joel
ii. 13). He is slow to anger, he takes not the first occasions of a
provocation; he is long‑suffering (Rom. ix. 22), and (Ps. lxxxvi. 15)
he forbears punishment upon many occasions offered him. It is long
before he consents to give fire to his wrath, {b478} and shoot out his
thunderbolts. Sin hath a loud cry, but God seems to stop his ears, not
to hear the clamor it raises and the charge it presents. He keeps his
sword a long time in the sheath; one calls the patience of God the
sheath of his sword, upon those words (Ezek. xxi. 3), “I will draw
forth my sword out of his sheath.” This is one remarkable letter in the
name of God; he himself proclaims it (Exod. xxxiv. 6): “The Lord, the
Lord God, merciful, gracious, and long‑suffering.” And Moses pleads
it in the behalf of the people (Numb. xiv. 18), where he placeth it
in the first rank; the Lord is “long‑suffering and of great mercy:”
it is the first spark of mercy, and ushers it to its exercises in the
world.[1028] In the Lord’s proclamation, it is put in the middle link,
mercy and truth together; mercy could have no room to act if patience
did not prepare the way; and his truth and goodness, in his promise
of the Redeemer, would not have been manifest to the world if he had
shot his arrows as soon as men committed their sins, and deserved his
punishment. This perfection is expressed by other phrases, as “keeping
silence” (Ps. l. 21): “These things hast thou done, and I kept silence,”
אלה עשית והחרשתי; it signifies to behave one’s self as a deaf or dumb man.
I did not fly in thy face, as some do, with a great noise upon a light
provocation, as if their life, honor, estates, were at the stake; I
did not presently call thee to the bar, and pronounce judicial sentence
upon thee according to the law, but demeaned myself as if I had been
ignorant of thy crimes, and had not been invested with the power of
judging thee for them. _Chald._ “I waited for thy conversion.” God’s
patience is the silence of his justice, and the first whisper of his
mercy. It is also expressed by not laying folly to men (Job xxiv. 12);
men groan under the oppressions of others, yet God lays not folly
to them, _i. e._ to the oppressors; God suffers them to go on with
impunity. He doth not deliver his people because he would try them,
and takes not revenge upon the unrighteous, because in patience he doth
bear with them: patience is the life of his providence in this world.
He chargeth not men with their crimes here, but reserves them, upon
impenitency, for another trial. This attribute is so great a one, that
it is signally called by the name of “Perfection” (Matt. v. 45, 48).
He had been speaking of Divine goodness, and patience to evil men,
and he concludes, “Be you perfect,” &c., implying it to be an amazing
perfection of the Divine nature, and worthy of imitation.
In the prosecution of this, I. Let us consider the nature of this
patience. II. Wherein it is manifested. III. Why God doth exercise so
much patience. IV. The Use.
I. The nature of this patience.
1. It is part of the Divine goodness and mercy, yet differs from both.
God being the greatest goodness, hath the greatest mildness. Mildness
is always the companion of true goodness, and the greater the goodness
the greater the mildness. Who so holy as Christ, and who so meek? God’s
slowness to anger is a branch or slip from his mercy (Ps. cxlv. 8):
“The Lord is full of compassion, slow to anger.” {b479} It differs
from mercy in the formal consideration of the object; mercy respects
the creature as miserable, patience respects the creature as criminal;
mercy pities him in his misery, and patience bears with the sin which
engendered that misery, and is giving birth to more. Again, mercy is
one end of patience; his long‑suffering is partly to glorify his grace:
so it was in Paul (1 Tim. i. 16). As slowness to anger springs from
goodness, so it makes mercy the butt and mark of its operations (Isa.
xxx. 18): “He waits that he may be gracious.” Goodness sets God upon
the exercise of patience, and patience sets many a sinner on running
into the arms of mercy. That mercy which makes God ready to embrace
returning sinners, makes him willing to bear with them in their sins,
and wait their return. It differs also from goodness, in regard of
the object. The object of goodness is every creature, angels, men, all
inferior creatures, to the lowest worm that crawls upon the ground. The
object of patience is, primarily, man, and secondarily, those creatures
that respect men’s support, conveniency, and delight; but they are not
the objects of patience, as considered in themselves, but in relation
to man, for whose use they were created; and therefore God’s patience
to them is properly his patience with man. The lower creatures do not
injure God, and therefore are not the objects of his patience, but as
they are forfeited by man, and man deserves to be deprived of them;
as man in this regard falls under the patience of God, so do those
creatures which are designed for man’s good. That patience which spares
man, spares other creatures for him, which were all forfeited by man’s
sin, as well as his own life, and are rather the testimonies of God’s
patience, than the proper objects of it. The object of God’s goodness,
then, is the whole creation; not a devil in hell, but as a creature,
is a mark of his goodness, but not of his patience. There is a kind of
sparing exercised to the devils, in deferring their complete punishment,
and hitherto keeping off the day wherein their final sentence is to
be pronounced; yet the Scripture never mentions this by the name of
slowness to anger, or long‑suffering. It can no more be called patience,
than a prince’s keeping a malefactor in chains, and not pronouncing a
condemning sentence, or not executing a sentence already pronounced,
can be called a patience with him, when it is not out of kindness to
the offender, but for some reasons of state. God’s sparing the devils
from their total punishment――which they have not yet, but are “reserved
in chains, under darkness for it” (Jude 6)――is not in order to
repentance, or attended with any invitations from God, or hopes in them;
and, therefore, cannot come under the same title as God’s sparing man:
where there is no proposal of mercy, there is no exercise of patience.
The fallen angels had no mercy reserved for them, nor any sacrifices
prepared for them; God “spared not the angels” (2 Pet. ii. 4), “but
delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment,”
_i. e._ he had no patience for them; for patience is properly a
temporary sparing a person, with a waiting of his relenting, and a
change of his injurious demeanor. The object of goodness is more
extensive than that of patience: nor do they both consider the object
under the same relation. Goodness respects things in a capacity, or in
a state of creation, and {b480} brings them forth into creation, and
nurseth and supports them as creatures. Patience considers them already
created, and fallen short of the duty of creatures; it considers them
as sinners, or in relation to sinners. Had not sin entered, patience
had never been exercised; but goodness had been exercised, had the
creature stood firm in its created state without any transgression; nay,
creation could not have been without goodness, because it was goodness
to create; but patience had never been known without an object, which
could not have been without an injury. Where there is no wrong, no
suffering, nor like to be any, patience hath no prospect of any
operation. So, then, goodness respects persons as creatures, patience
as transgressors; mercy eyes men as miserable and obnoxious to
punishment; patience considers men as sinful, and provoking to
punishment.
2. Since it is a part of goodness and mercy, it is not an insensible
patience. What is the fruit of pure goodness cannot be from a weakness
of resentment; he is “slow to anger;” the prophet doth not say, he is
incapable of anger, or cannot discern what is a real object of anger;
it implies, that he doth consider every provocation, but he is not
hasty to discharge his arrows upon the offenders; he sees all, while he
bears with them; his omniscience excludes any ignorance; he cannot but
see every wrong; every aggravation in that wrong, every step and motion
from the beginning to the completing it; for he knows all our thoughts;
he sees the sin and the sinner at the same time; the sin with an eye of
abhorrency, and the sinner with an eye of pity. His eye is upon their
iniquities, and his hatred edged against them; while he stands with
arms open, waiting a penitent return. When he publisheth his patience
in his keeping silence, he publisheth also his resolution, to set sin
in order before their eyes (Ps. l. 21): “I will reprove thee, and set
them in order before thy eyes.” Think me not such a piece of phlegm,
and so dull as not to resent your insolences; you shall see, in my
final charge, when I come to judge, that not a wry look escaped my
knowledge, that I had an eye to behold, and a heart to loathe every
one of your transgressions. The church was ready to think that God’s
slowness to deliver her, and his bearing with her oppressors, was not
from any patience in his nature, but a drowsy carelessness, a senseless
lethargy (Ps. xliv. 23): “Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?” We must
conclude him an inapprehensive God, before we can conclude him an
insensible God. As his delaying his promise is not slackness to his
people (2 Pet. iii. 9), so his deferring of punishment is not from a
stupidity under the affronts offered him.
3. Since it is a part of his mercy and goodness, it is not a
constrained or faint‑hearted patience. It is not a slowness to anger,
arising from a despondency of his own power to revenge. He hath as
much power to punish as he hath to forbear punishment. He that created
a world in six days, and that by a word, wants not a strength to crush
all mankind in one minute; and with as much ease as a word imports,
can give satisfaction to his justice in the blood of the offender.
Patience in man is many times interpreted, and truly too, a cowardice,
a feebleness of spirit, and a want of strength. But it is {b481} not
from the shortness of the Divine arm, that he cannot reach us, nor from
the feebleness of his hand, that he cannot strike us. It is not because
he cannot level us with the dust, dash us in pieces like a potter’s
vessel, or consume us as a moth. He can make the mightiest to fall
before him, and lay the strongest at his feet the first moment of
their crime. He that did not want a powerful word to create a world,
cannot want a powerful word to dissolve the whole frame of it, and
raze it out of being. It is not, therefore, out of a distrust of his
own power, that he hath supported a sinful world for so many ages, and
patiently borne the blasphemies of some, the neglects of others, and
the ingratitude of all, without inflicting that severe justice which
righteously he might have done; he wants no thunder to crush the whole
generation of men, nor waters to drown them, nor earth to swallow them
up. How easy is it for him to single out this or that particular person
to be the object of his wrath, and not of his patience! What he hath
done to one, he may to another; any signal judgment he hath sent upon
one, is an evidence that he wants not power to inflict it upon all.
Could he not make the motes in the air to choke us at every breath,
rain thunderbolts instead of drops of water, fill the clouds with a
consuming lightning, take off the reverence and fear of man, which he
hath imprinted upon the creature, spirit our domestic beasts to be our
executioners, unloose the tiles from the house‑top to brain us, or make
the fall of a house to crush us? It is but taking out the pins, and
giving a blast, and the work is done. And doth he want a power to do
any of those things? It is not then a faint‑hearted, or feeble patience,
that he exerciseth towards man.
4. Since it is not for want of power over the creature, it is from
a fulness of power over himself. This is in the text, “The Lord is
slow to anger, and great in power;” it is a part of his dominion
over himself, whereby he can moderate, and rule his own affections
according to the holiness of his own will. As it is the effect of his
power, so it is an argument of his power; the greatness of the effect
demonstrates the fulness and sufficiency of the cause. The more feeble
any man is in reason the less command he hath over his passions, and he
is the more heady to revenge. Revenge is a sign of a childish mind; the
stronger any man is in reason, the more command he hath over himself.
“He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that rules
his own spirit, than he that takes a city” (Prov. xvi. 32); he that
can restrain his anger, is stronger than the Cæsars and Alexanders of
the world, that have filled the earth with slain carcasses and ruined
cities. By the same reason, God’s slowness to anger is a greater
argument of his power than the creating a world, or the power of
dissolving it by a word; in this he hath a dominion over creatures,
in the other over himself; this is the reason he will not return to
destroy; because “I am God, and not man” (Hos. xi. 9); I am not so
weak and impotent as man, that cannot restrain his anger. This is a
strength possessed only by a God, wherein a creature is no more able to
parallel him, than in any other; so that he may be said to be the Lord
of himself; as it is in the verse before the text, that he is the Lord
of anger, in the Hebrew, instead of {b482} “furious,” as we translate
it; so he is the Lord of patience. The end why God is patient, is
to show his power. “What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to
make his power known, endured with much long‑suffering the vessels of
wrath fitted to destruction?” (Rom. ix. 22). To show his wrath upon
sinners, and his power over himself in bearing such indignities, and
forbearing punishment so long, when men were vessels of wrath fitted
for destruction, of whom there was no hopes of amendment. Had he
immediately broken in pieces those vessels, his power had not so
eminently appeared as it hath done, in tolerating them so long, that
had provoked him to take them off so often; there is indeed the power
of his anger, and there is the power of his patience; and his power
is more seen in his patience than in his wrath: it is no wonder that
He that is above all, is able to crush all; but it is a wonder, that
he that is provoked by all, doth not, upon the first provocation, rid
his hands of all. This is the reason why he did bear such a weight of
provocations from vessels of wrath, prepared for ruin, that he might
γνωρίσαι τὸ δυνατὸν αὑτοῦ, show what he was able to do, the lordship
and royalty he had over himself. The power of God is more manifest in
his patience to a multitude of sinners, than it would be in creating
millions of worlds out of nothing; this was the δυνατὸν αὑτοῦ, a power
over himself.
5. This patience being a branch of mercy, the exercise of it is
founded in the death of Christ. Without the consideration of this, we
can give no account why Divine patience should extend itself to us, and
not to the fallen angels. The threatening extends itself to us as well
as to the fallen angels; the threatening must necessarily have sunk man,
as well as those glorious creatures, had not Christ stepped in to our
relief. Had not Christ interposed to satisfy the justice of God, man
upon his sin had been actually bound over to punishment, as well as the
fallen angels were upon theirs, and been fettered in chains as strong
as those spirits feel.[1029] The reason why man was not hurled into
the same deplorable condition upon his sin, as they were, is Christ’s
promise of taking our nature, and not theirs. Had God designed Christ’s
taking their nature, the same patience had been exercised towards
them, and the same offers would have been made to them, as are made to
us. In regard to these fruits of this patience, Christ is said to buy
the wickedest apostates from him: “Denying the Lord that bought them”
(1 Pet. ii. 1). Such were bought by him, as “bring upon themselves just
destruction, and whose damnation slumbers not” (ver. 3); he purchased
the continuance of their lives, and the stay of their execution, that
offers of grace might be made to them. This patience must be either
upon the account of the law, or the gospel; for there are no other
rules, whereby God governs the world. A fruit of the law it was not;
that spake nothing but curses after disobedience; not a letter of mercy
was writ upon that, and therefore nothing of patience; death and wrath
were denounced; no slowness to anger intimated. It must be therefore
upon account of the gospel, and a fruit of the covenant of grace,
whereof Christ was Mediator. Besides this perfection {b483} being God’s
“waiting that he might be gracious” (Isa. xxx. 18), that which made way
for God’s grace made way for his waiting to manifest it. God discovered
not his grace, but in Christ; and therefore discovered not his patience
but in Christ; it is in him he met with the satisfaction of his justice,
that he might have a ground for the manifestation of his patience. And
the sacrifices of the law, wherein the life of a beast was accepted
for the sin of man, discovered the ground of his forbearance of them
to be the expectation of the great Sacrifice, whereby sin was to be
completely expiated (Gen. viii. 21). The publication of his patience
to the end of the world is presently after the sweet savor he found
in Noah’s sacrifice. The promised and designed coming of Christ, was
the cause of that patience God exercised before in the world; and his
gathering the elect together, is the reason of his patience since his
death.
6. The naturalness of his veracity and holiness, and the strictness of
his justice, are no bars to the exercise of his patience.
(1.) His veracity. In those threatenings where the punishment is
expressed, but not the time of inflicting it prefixed and determined
in the threatening, his veracity suffers no damage by the delaying
execution; so it be once done, though a long time after, the credit of
his truth stands unshaken: as when God promises a thing without fixing
the time, he is at liberty to pitch upon what time he pleases for the
performance of it, without staining his faithfulness to his word, by
not giving the thing promised presently. Why should the deferring of
justice upon an offender be any more against his veracity than his
delaying an answer to the petitions of a suppliant? But the difference
will lie in the threatening. “In the day thou eatest thereof, thou
shalt die the death” (Gen. ii. 17). The time was there settled; “in
that day thou shalt die;” some refer “day” to eating, not to dying;
and render the sentence thus: I do not prohibit thee the eating this
fruit for a day or two, but continually. In whatsoever day thou eatest
thereof, thou shalt die; but not understanding his dying that very
day he should eat of it; referring “day” to the extensiveness of the
prohibition, as to time. But to leave this as uncertain, it may be
answered, that as in some threatenings a condition is implied, though
not expressed, as in that positive denouncing of the destruction of
Ninevah: “Yet forty days, and Ninevah shall be destroyed” (Jonah iii.
4), the condition is implied; unless they humble themselves, and repent;
for upon their repentance, the sentence was deferred. So here, “in
the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die the death,” or certainly
die, unless there be a way found for the expiation of thy crime,
and the righting my honor. This condition, in regard of the event,
may as well be asserted to be implied in this threatening, as that of
repentance was in the other; or rather, “thou shalt die,” thou shalt
die spiritually, thou shalt lose that image of mine in thy nature, that
righteousness which is as much the life of thy soul as thy soul is the
life of thy body; that righteousness whereby thou art enabled to live
to me and thy own happiness. What the soul is to the body, a quickening
soul, that the image of God is to the soul, a quickening image. Or
“thou shalt die the death,” or certainly die; thou shalt be liable to
death. {b484} And so it is to be understood, not of an actual death
of the body, but the merit of death, and the necessity of death; thou
wilt be obnoxious to death, which will be avoided, if thou dost forbear
to eat of the forbidden fruit; thou shalt be a guilty person, and so
under a sentence of death, that I may, when I please, inflict it on
thee.[1030] Death did come upon Adam that day, because his nature
was vitiated; he was then also under an expectation of death, he was
obnoxious to it, though that day it was not poured out upon him in the
full bitterness and gall of it: as when the apostle saith, “The body
is dead because of sin” (Rom. viii. 10), he speaks to the living, and
yet tells them the body was dead because of sin; he means no more than
that it was under a sentence, and so a necessity of dying, though not
actually dead; so thou shalt be under the sentence of death that day,
as certainly as if that day thou shouldst sink into the dust: and as by
his patience towards man, not sending forth death upon him in all the
bitter ingredients of it, his justice afterwards was more eminent upon
man’s surety, than it would have been if it had been then employed in
all its severe operations upon man. So was his veracity eminent also in
making good this threatening, in inflicting the punishment included in
it upon our nature assumed by a mighty Person, and upon that Person in
our nature, who was infinitely higher than our nature.
(2.) His justice and righteousness are not prejudiced by his patience.
There is a hatred of the sin in his holiness, and a sentence past
against the sin in his justice, though the execution of that sentence
be suspended, and the person reprieved by patience, which is implied
(Eccles. viii. 11): “Because sentence against an evil work is not
executed speedily; therefore, the heart of the sons of men is fully
set in them to do evil;” sentence is past, but a speedy execution is
stopped. Some of the heathens, who would not imagine God unjust, and
yet, seeing the villanies and oppressions of men in the world remain
unpunished, and frequently beholding prosperous wickedness, to free
him from the charge of injustice, denied his providence and actual
government of the world; for if he did take notice of human affairs,
and concern himself in what was done upon the earth, they could not
think an Infinite Goodness and Justice could be so slow to punish
oppressors, and relieve the miserable, and leave the world in that
disorder under the injustice of men: they judged such a patience as
was exercised by him, if he did govern the world, was drawn out beyond
the line of fit and just. Is it not a presumption in men to prescribe
a rule of righteousness and conveniency to their Creator? It might be
demanded of such, whether they never injured any in their lives; and
when certainly they have one way or another, would they not think it
a very unworthy, if not unjust, thing, that a person so injured by
them should take a speedy and severe revenge on them?――and if every
man should do the like, would there not be a speedy despatch made
of mankind? Would not the world be a shambles, and men rush forwards
to one another’s destructions, for the wrongs they have mutually
received? If it be accounted a virtue in man, and no unrighteousness,
not presently {b485} to be all on fire against an offence; by what
right should any question the inconsistency of God’s patience with
his justice? Do we praise the lenity of parents to children, and shall
we disparage the long‑suffering of God to men? We do not censure the
righteousness of physicians and chirurgeons, because they cut not off a
corrupt member this day as well as to‑morrow? And is it just to asperse
God, because he doth defer his vengeance which man assumes to himself a
right to do? We never account him a bad governor that defers the trial,
and consequently the condemnation and execution of a notorious offender
for important reasons, and beneficial to the public, either to make
the nature of his crime more evident, or to find out the rest of his
complices by his discovery. A governor, indeed, were unjust, if he
commanded that which were unrighteous, and forbade that which were
worthy and commendable; but if he delays the execution of a convict
offender for weighty reasons, either for the benefit of the state
whereof he is the ruler, or for some advantage to the offender himself,
to make him have a sense of, and a regret for his offence, we account
him not unjust for this. God doth not by his patience dispense with
the holiness of his law, nor cut off anything from its due authority.
If men do strengthen themselves by his long‑suffering against his
law, it is their fault, not any unrighteousness in him; he will take
a time to vindicate the righteousness of his own commands, if men will
wholly neglect the time of his patience, in forbearing to pay a dutiful
observance to his precept. If justice be natural to him, and he cannot
but punish sin, yet he is not necessitated to consume sinners, as
the fire doth stubble put into it, which hath no command over its own
qualities to restrain them from acting; but God is a free agent, and
may choose his own time for the distribution of that punishment his
nature leads him to. Though he be naturally just, yet it is not so
natural to him, as to deprive him of a dominion over his own acts, and
a freedom in the exerting them what time he judgeth most convenient
in his wisdom. God is necessarily holy, and is necessarily angry with
sin; his nature can never like it, and cannot but be displeased with
it; yet he hath a liberty to restrain the effects of this anger for
a time, without disgracing his holiness, or being interpreted to act
unrighteously; as well as a prince or state may suspend the execution
of a law, which they will never break, only for a time and for a public
benefit. If God should presently execute his justice, this perfection
of patience, which is a part of his goodness, would never have an
opportunity of discovery; part of his glory, for which he created the
world, would lie in obscurity from the knowledge of his creature; his
justice would be signal in the destruction of sinners, but this stream
of his goodness would be stopped up from any motion. One perfection
must not cloud another; God hath his seasons to discover all, one after
another: “The times and seasons are in his own power” (Acts i. 7): the
seasons of manifesting his own perfections as well as other things;
succession of them, in their distinct appearance, makes no invasion
upon the rights of any. If justice should complain of an injury from
patience, because it is delayed, patience hath more reason to complain
{b486} of an injury from justice, that by such a plea it would be
wholly obscured and inactive: for this perfection hath the shortest
time to act its part of any, it hath no stage but this world to move in;
mercy hath a heaven, and justice a hell, to display itself to eternity,
but long‑suffering hath only a short‑lived earth for the compass of
its operation. Again, justice is so far from being wronged by patience,
that it rather is made more illustrious, and hath the fuller scope to
exercise itself; it is the more righted for being deferred, and will
have stronger grounds than before for its activity; the equity of
it will be more apparent to every reason, the objections more fully
answered against it, when the way of dealing with sinners by patience
hath been slighted. When this dam of long‑suffering is removed,
the floods of fiery justice will rush down with more force and
violence; justice will be fully recompensed for the delay, when, after
patience is abused, it can spread itself over the offender with a more
unquestionable authority; it will have more arguments to hit the sinner
in the teeth with, and silence him; there will be a sharper edge for
every stroke; the sinner must not only pay for the score of his former
sins, but the score of abused patience, so that justice hath no reason
to commence a suit against God’s slowness to anger: what it shall want
by the fulness of mercy upon the truly penitent, it will gain by the
contempt of patience on the impenitent abusers. When men, by such a
carriage, are ripened for the stroke of justice, justice may strike
without any regret in itself, or pull‑back from mercy; the contempt
of long‑suffering will silence the pleas of the one, and spirit the
severity of the other. To conclude: since God hath glorified his
justice on Christ, as a surety for sinners, his patience is so far
from interfering with the rights of his justice, that it promotes it;
it is dispensed to this end, that God might pardon with honor, both
upon the score of purchased mercy and contented justice; that by a
penitent sinner’s return his mercy might be acknowledged free, and the
satisfaction of his justice by Christ be glorified in believing: for
he is long‑suffering from an unwillingness “that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. iii. 9); _i. e._ all
to whom the promise is made, for to such the apostle speaks, and calls
it “long‑suffering to us‑ward;” and repentance being an acknowledgment
of the demerit of sin, and a breaking off unrighteousness, gives a
particular glory to the freeness of mercy, and the equity of justice.
II. The second thing, How this patience or slowness to anger is
manifested.
1. To our first parents. His slowness to anger was evidenced in not
directing his artillery against them, when they first attempted to
rebel. He might have struck them dead when they began to bite at the
temptation, and were inclinable to a surrender; for it was a degree
of sinning, and a breach of loyalty as well, though not so much as the
consummating act. God might have given way to the floods of his wrath
at the first spring of man’s aspiring thoughts, when the monstrous
motion of being as God began to be curdled in his heart; but he took
no notice of any of their embryo sins till they came to a ripeness, and
started out of the womb of their minds into the open {b487} air: and
after he had brought his sin to perfection, God did not presently send
that death upon him, which he had merited, but continued his life to
the space of 930 years (Gen. v. 5). The sun and stars were not arrested
from doing their office for him. Creatures were continued for his use,
the earth did not swallow him up, nor a thunderbolt from heaven raze
out the memory of him. Though he had deserved to be treated with such
a severity for his ungrateful demeanor to his Creator and Benefactor,
and affecting an equality with him, yet God continued him with a
sufficiency for his content, after he turned rebel, though not with
such a liberality as when he remained a loyal subject; and though he
foresaw that he would not make an end of sinning, but with an end of
living, he used him not in the same manner as he had used the devils.
He added days and years to him, after he had deserved death, and hath
for this 5,000 years continued the propagation of mankind, and derived
from his loins an innumerable posterity, and hath crowned multitudes
of them with hoary heads. He might have extinguished human race at
the first; but since he hath preserved it till this day, it must be
interpreted nothing else but the effect of an admirable patience.
2. His slowness to anger is manifest to the Gentiles. What they were,
we need no other witness than the apostle Paul, who sums up many of
their crimes (Rom. i. 29‒32). He doth preface the catalogue with a
comprehensive expression, “Being filled with all unrighteousness;”
and concludes it with a dreadful aggravation, “They not only do the
same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” They were so soaked
and naturalized in wickedness, that they had no delight, and found no
sweetness in anything else but what was in itself abominable; all of
them were plunged in idolatry and superstition; none of them but either
set up their great men, or creatures, beneficial to the world, and some
the damned spirits in his stead, and paid an adoration to insensible
creatures or devils, which was due to God. Some were so depraved in
their lives and actions, that it seemed to be the interest of the
rest of the world, that they should have been extinguished for the
instruction of their contemporaries and posterity. The best of them
had turned all religion into a fable, coined a world of rites, some
unnatural in themselves, and most of them unbecoming a rational
creature to offer, and a Deity to accept: yet he did not presently arm
himself against them with fire and sword, nor stopped the course of
their generations, nor tear out all those relics of natural light which
were left in their minds. He did not do what he might have done, but he
winked at the “times of that ignorance” (Acts xvii. 30), their ignorant
idolatry; for that it refers to (ver. 29): “They thought the Godhead
was like to gold or silver, or stone graven by art, and men’s device;”
ὑπεριδὼν, overlooking them. He demeaned himself so, as if he did not
take notice of them. He winked as if he did not see them, and would not
deal so severely with them: the eye of his justice seemed to wink, in
not calling them to an account for their sin.
3. His slowness to anger is manifest to the Israelites. You know
how often they are called a “stiff‑necked people;” they are said to
do evil “from their youth;” _i. e._ from the time wherein they were
{b488} erected a nation and commonwealth; and that “the city had been a
provocation of his anger, and of his fury, from the day that they built
it, even to this day;” _i. e._ the day of Jeremiah’s prophecy, “that he
should remove it from before his face” (Jer. xxxii. 31): from the days
of Solomon, say some, which is too much a curtailing of the text, as
though their provocations had taken date no higher than from the time
of Solomon’s rearing the temple, and beautifying the city, whereby
it seemed to be a new building. They began more early; they scarce
discontinued their revolting from God; they were a “grief to him forty
years together in the wilderness” (Ps. xcv. 10), “yet he suffered
their manners” (Acts xiii. 18). He bore with their ill‑behaviour and
sauciness towards him; and no sooner was Joshua’s head laid, and the
elders, that were their conductors, gathered to their fathers, but the
next generation forsook God, and smutted themselves with the idolatry
of the nations (Judges ii. 7, 10, 11): and when he punished them by
prospering the arms of their enemies against them, they were no sooner
delivered upon their cry and humiliation, but they began a new scene of
idolatry; and though he brought upon them the power of the Babylonian
empire, and laid chains upon them to bring them to their right mind.
And at seventy years’ end he struck off their chains, by altering the
whole posture of affairs in that part of the world for their sakes:
overturning one empire, and settling another for their restoration to
their ancient city. And though they did not after disown him for their
God, and set up “Baal in his throne,” yet they multiplied foolish
traditions, whereby they impaired the authority of the law; yet he
sustained them with a wonderful patience, and preferred them before
all other people in the first offers of the gospel; and after they had
outraged not only his servants, the prophets, but his Son, the Redeemer,
yet he did not forsake them, but employed his apostles to solicit them,
and publish among them the doctrine of salvation: so that his treating
this people might well be called “much long‑suffering,” it being above
1500 years, wherein he bore with them, or mildly punished them, far
less than their deserts; their coming out of Egypt being about the year
of the world 2450, and their final destruction as a commonwealth, not
till about forty years after the death of Christ; and all this while
his patience did sometimes wholly restrain his justice, and sometimes
let it fall upon them in some few drops, but made no total devastation
of their country, nor wrote his revenge in extraordinary bloody
characters, till the Roman conquest, wherein he put a period to them
both as a church and state. In particular this patience is manifest,
1st. In his giving warnings of judgments, before he orders them to
go forth. He doth not punish in a passion, and hastily; he speaks
before he strikes, and speaks that he may not strike. Wrath is
published before it is executed, and that a long time; an hundred and
twenty years’ advertisement was given to a debauched world before the
heavens were opened, to spout down a deluge upon them. He will not
be accused of coming unawares upon a people; he inflicts nothing but
what he foretold either immediately to the people that provoke him,
or anciently to them that have been their forerunners {b489} in the
same provocation (Hos. vii. 12), “I will chastise them, as their
congregation hath heard.” Many of the leaves of the Old Testament are
full of those presages and warnings of approaching judgment. These make
up a great part of the volume of it in various editions, according to
the state of the several provoking times. Warnings are given to those
people that are most abominable in his sight (Zeph. ii. 1, 2); “Gather
yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired,”――it
is a _Meiosis_, O nation abhorred,――“before the decree bring forth.”
He sends his heralds before he sends his armies; he summons them by
the voice of his prophets, before he confounds them by the voice of his
thunders. When a parley is beaten, a white flag of peace is hung out,
before a black flag of fury is set up. He seldom cuts down men by his
judgments, before he hath “hewed them by his prophets” (Hos. vi. 5).
Not a remarkable judgment but was foretold: the flood to the old world
by Noah; the famine to Egypt by Joseph; the earthquake by Amos (ch. i.
1); the storm from Chaldea by Jeremiah; the captivity of the ten tribes
by Hosea; the total destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by Christ
himself. He hath chosen the best persons in the world to give those
intimations; Noah, the most righteous person on the earth, for the old
world; and his Son, the most beloved person in heaven, for the Jews
in the later time: and in other parts of the world, and in the later
times, where he hath not warned by prophets, he hath supplied it by
prodigies in the air and earth; histories are full of such items from
heaven. Lesser judgments are forewarners of greater, as lightnings
before thunder are messengers to tell us of a succeeding clap.
(1.) He doth often give warning of judgments. He comes not to
extremity, till he hath often shaken the rod over men; he thunders
often, before he crusheth them with his thunderbolt; he doth not till
after the first and second admonition punish a rebel, as he would have
us reject a heretic. “He speaks once, yea, twice” (Job xxxiii. 14),
“and man perceives it not;” he sends one message after another, and
waits the success of many messages before he strikes. Eight prophets
were ordered to acquaint the whole world with approaching judgment
(2 Pet. ii. 5): he saved “Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of
righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly,”
called “the eighth” in respect of his preaching, not in regard of his
preservation; he was the eighth preacher in order, from the beginning
of the world, that endeavored to restore the world to the way of
righteousness. Most, indeed, consider him here as the eighth person
saved, so do our translators; and, therefore, add _person_, which
is not in the Greek. Some others consider him here as the eighth
preacher of righteousness, reckoning Enoch, the son of Seth, the first,
grounding it upon Gen. iv. 26: “Then began men to call upon the name of
the Lord,” _Heb._ “Then it was began to call in the name of the Lord,”
τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ Κυρίου Θεοῦ. _Sept._ “He began to call in the name of the
Lord,” which others render, “He began to preach, or call upon men in
the name of the Lord.” The word קרא signifies to preach, or to call
upon men by preaching (Prov. i. 21): “Wisdom crieth,” or “preaches;”
and if this be so, as it is very probable, it is easy to reckon him
the eighth {b490} preacher, by numbering the successive heads of
the generations (Gen. v.), beginning at Enoch, the first preacher of
righteousness. So many there were before God choked the old world with
water, and swept them away. It is clear he often did admonish, by his
prophets, the Jews of their sin, and the wrath which should come upon
them.[1031] One prophet, Hosea, prophesied seventy years; for he
prophesied in the days of four kings of Judah, and one of Israel,
Jeroboam, the son of Joash (Hos. i. 1), or Jeroboam, the second of that
name. Uzziah, king of Judah, in whose reign Hosea prophesied, lived
thirty‑eight years after the death of Jeroboam. The second Jotham,
Uzziah’s successor, reigned sixteen years; Ahaz sixteen; Hezekiah
twenty‑nine years. Now, take nothing of Hezekiah’s time, and date
the beginning of his prophecy from the last year of Jeroboam’s reign,
and the time of Hosea’s prophecy will be seventy years complete;
wherein God warned those people, and waited the return particularly
of Israel;[1032] and not less than five of those we call the Lesser
Prophets, were sent to foretell the destruction of the ten tribes,
and to call them to repentance,――Hosea, Joel, Amos, Micah, Jonah; and
though we have nothing of Jonah’s prophecy in this concern of Israel,
yet that he lived in the time of the same Jeroboam, and prophesied
things which are not upon record in the book of Jonah, is clear
(2 Kings xiv. 25). And besides those, Isaiah prophesied also in the
reign of the same kings as Hosea did (Isa. i. 1); and it is God’s
usual method to send forth his servants, and when their admonitions
are slighted he commissions others, before he sends out his destroying
armies (Matt. xxii. 3, 4, 7).
(2.) He doth often give warning of judgments, that he might not pour
out his wrath. He summons them to a surrender of themselves, and a
return from their rebellion, that they might not feel the force of his
arms. He offers peace before he shakes off the dust of his feet, that
his despised peace might not return in vain to him to solicit a revenge
from his anger. He hath a right to punish upon the first commission
of a crime, but he warns men of what they have deserved, of what his
justice moves him to inflict, that by having recourse to his mercy he
might not exercise the rights of his justice. God sought to kill Moses
for not circumcising his son (Exod. iv. 24). Could God, that sought it,
miss a way to do it? Could a creature lurch, or fly from him? God put
on the garb of an enemy, that Moses might be discouraged from being an
instrument of his own ruin: God manifested an anger against Moses for
his neglect, as if he would then have destroyed him, that Moses might
prevent it by casting off his carelessness, and doing his duty. He
sought to kill him by some evident sign, that Moses might escape the
judgment by his obedience. He threatens Nineveh, by the prophet, with
destruction, that Nineveh’s repentance might make void the prophecy.
He fights with men by the sword of his mouth, that he might not pierce
them by the sword of his wrath. He threatens, that men might prevent
the execution of his threatening; he terrifies, that he might not
destroy, but that men by humiliation {b491} may lie prostrate before
him, and move the bowels of his mercy to a louder sound than the
voice of his anger. He takes time to whet his sword, that men may turn
themselves from the edge of it. He roars like a lion, that men, by
hearing his voice, may shelter themselves from being torn by his wrath.
There is patience in the sharpest threatening, that we may avoid the
scourge. Who can charge God with an eagerness to revenge, that sends
so many heralds, and so often before he strikes, that he might be
prevented from striking? His threatenings have not so much of a black
flag as of an olive branch. He lifts up his hand before he strikes,
that men might see and avert the stroke (Isa. xxvi. 11).
2d. His patience is manifest in long delaying his threatened judgments,
though he finds no repentance in the rebels. He doth sometimes delay
his lighter punishments, because he doth not delight in torturing
his creatures; but he doth longer delay his destroying punishments,
such as put an end to men’s happiness, and remit them to their final
and unchangeable state; because he “doth not delight in the death
of a sinner.” While he is preparing his arrows, he is waiting for an
occasion to lay them aside, and dull their points, that he may with
honor march back again, and disband his armies. He brings lighter
smarts sooner, that men might not think him asleep, but he suspends
the more terrible judgments that men might be led to repentance. He
scatters not his consuming fires at the first, but brings on ruining
vengeance with a “slow pace; sentence against an evil work is not
speedily executed” (Eccles. viii. 11). The Jews therefore say, that
Michael, the minister of justice, flies with one wing, but Gabriel, the
minister of mercy, with two. An hundred and twenty years did God wait
upon the old world, and delay their punishment all the time the “ark
was preparing” (1 Pet. iii. 20); wherein that wicked generation did
not enjoy only a bare patience, but a striving patience (Gen. vi. 3):
“My Spirit shall not always strive with man, yet his days shall be one
hundred and twenty years,” the days wherein I will strive with him;
that his long‑suffering might not lose all its fruit, and remit the
objects of it into the hands of consuming justice. It was the tenth
generation of the world from Adam, when the deluge overflowed it, so
long did God bear with them: and the tenth generation from Noah wherein
Sodom was consumed. God did not come to keep his assizes in Sodom, till
“the cry of their sins was very strong,” that it had been a wrong to
his justice to have restrained it any longer. The cry was so loud that
he could not be at quiet, as it were, on his throne of glory for the
disturbing noise (Gen. xviii. 20, 21). Sin transgresseth the law; the
law being violated, solicits justice; justice, being urged, pleads
for punishment; the cry of their sins did, as it were, force him from
heaven to come down, and examine what cause there was for that clamor.
Sin cries loud and long before he takes his sword in hand. Four hundred
years he kept off deserved destruction from the Amorites, and deferred
making good his promise to Abraham, of giving Canaan to his posterity,
out of his long‑suffering to the Amorites (Gen. xv. 16). In the fourth
generation they shall come hither again, “for the iniquity of the
Amorites {b492} is not yet full.” Their measure was filling then,
but not so full as to put a stop to any further patience till four
hundred years after. The usual time in succeeding generations, from
the denouncing of judgments to the execution, is forty years; this some
ground upon Ezek. iv. 6, “Thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house
of Judah forty days,” taking each day for a year. Though Hosea lived
seventy years, yet from the beginning of his prophesying judgments
against Israel to the pouring them out upon that idolatrous people,
it was forty years. Hosea, as was mentioned before, prophesied
against them in the days of Jeroboam the Second, in whose time God did
wonderfully deliver Israel (2 Kings xiv. 26, 27). From that time, till
the total destruction of the ten tribes, it was forty years, as may
easily be computed from the story (2 Kings xv.‒xvi.), by the reign of
the succeeding kings. So forty years after the most horrid villany that
ever was committed in the face of the sun, _viz._, the crucifying the
Son of God, was Jerusalem destroyed, and the inhabitants captived; so
long did God delay a visible punishment for such an outrage. Sometimes
he prolongs sending a threatened judgment upon a mere shadow of
humiliation; so he did that denounced against Ahab. He turned it
over to his posterity, and adjourned it to another season (1 Kings
xxi. 29). He doth not issue out an arrest upon one transgression;
you often find him not commencing a suit against men till “three and
four transgressions.” The first of Amos, all along that chapter and
the second chapter, for “three and four,” _i. e._ “seven;” a certain
number for an uncertain. He gives not orders to his judgments to march
till men be obstinate, and refuse any commerce with him; he stops
them till “there be no remedy” (2 Chron. xxxvi. 16). It must be a
great wickedness that gives vent to them (Hos. x. 15); _Heb._ “Your
wickedness of wickedness.” He is so “slow to anger,” and stays the
punishment his enemies deserve, that he may seem to have forgot his
“kindness to his friends” (Ps. xliv. 24): “Wherefore hidest thou
thy face, and forgettest our affliction and oppression?” He lets his
people groan under the yoke of their enemies, as if he were made up of
kindness to his enemies, and anger against his friends. This delaying
of punishment to evil men is visible in his suspending the terrifying
acts of conscience, and supporting it only in its checking, admonishing,
and controlling acts. The patience of a governor is seen in the patient
mildness of his deputy: David’s conscience did not terrify him till
nine months after his sin of murder. Should God set open the mouth
of this power within us, not only the earth, but our own bodies and
spirits, would be a burden to us: it is long before God puts scorpions
into the hands of men’s consciences to scourge them: he holds back
the rod, waiting for the hour of our return, as if that would be a
recompense for our offences and his forbearance.
3d. His patience is manifest in his unwillingness to execute his
judgments when he can delay no longer. “He doth not afflict willingly,
nor grieve the children of men.” (Lam. iii. 33): _Heb._ “He doth not
afflict from his heart:” he takes no pleasure in it, as he is Creator.
The height of men’s provocations, and the necessity of the {b493}
preserving his rights, and vindicating his laws, obligeth him to it,
as he is the Governor of the world; as a judge may willingly condemn
a malefactor to death out of affection to the laws, and desire to
preserve the order of government, but unwillingly, out of compassion
to the offender himself. When he resolved upon the destruction of the
old world, he spake it as a God grieved with an occasion of punishment
(Gen. vi. 6, 7, compared together). When he came to reckon with Adam,
“he walked,” he did not run with his sword in his hand upon him, as a
mighty man with an eagerness to destroy him (Gen. iii. 8), and that “in
the cool of the day,” a time when men, tired in the day, are unwilling
to engage in a hard employment. His exercising judgment is a “coming
out of his place” (Isa. xxvi. 21; Mic. i. 3): he comes out of his
station to exercise judgment; a throne is more his place than a
tribunal. Every prophecy, loaded with threatenings, is called the
“burden of the Lord;” a burden to him to execute it, as well as to men
to suffer it. Though three angels came to Abraham about the punishment
of Sodom, whereof one Abraham speaks to as to God, yet but two appeared
at the destruction of Sodom, as if the Governor of the world were
unwilling to be present at such dreadful work (Gen. xix. 1): and when
the man, that had the ink‑horn by his side, that was appointed to mark
those that were to be preserved in the common destruction, returned
to give an account of the performing his commission (Ezek. ix. 10), we
read not of the return of those that were to kill, as if God delighted
only to hear again of his works of mercy, and had no mind to hear again
of his severe proceedings. The Jews, to show God’s unwillingness to
punish, imagine that hell was created the second day, because that
day’s work is not pronounced good by God as all the other days’ works
are[1033] (Gen. i. 8).
(1.) When God doth punish he doth it with some regret. When he hurls
down his thunders, he seems to do it with a backward hand, because with
an unwilling heart.[1034] He created, saith Chrysostom, the world in
six days, but was seven days in destroying one city, Jericho, which
he had before devoted to be razed to the ground. What is the reason,
saith he, that God is so quick to build up, but slow to pull down? His
goodness excites his power to the one, but is not earnest to persuade
him to the other: when he comes to strike, he doth it with a sigh or
groan (Isa. i. 24): “Ah! I will ease me of my adversaries, and avenge
me on my enemies,” הוי, Ah! a note of grief. So Hos. vi. 4, “O Ephraim!
what shall I do unto thee? O Judah! what shall I do unto thee?” It is
an _addubitatio_, a figure in rhetoric, as if God were troubled that he
must deal so sharply with them, and give them up to their enemies:――I
have tried all means to reclaim you; I have used all ways of kindness,
and nothing prevails; what shall I do? my mercy invites me to spare
them, and their ingratitude provokes me to ruin them. God had borne
with that people of Israel almost three hundred years, from the setting
up of the calves at Dan and Bethel; sent many a prophet to warn them,
and spent many a rod to reform them: and when he comes to execute his
threatenings, he doth with a conflict in himself (Hos. xi. 8): “How
{b494} shall I give thee up, O Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee,
Israel?” as if there were a pull‑back in his own bowels. He solemnizeth
their approaching funeral with a hearty groan, and takes his farewell
of the dying malefactor with a pang in himself. How often, in former
times, when he had signed a warrant for their execution, did he call it
back? (Ps. lxxviii. 38): “Many a time turned he his anger away.” Many
a time he recalled or ordered his anger to return again, as the word
signifies, as if he were irresolute what to do: he recalled it, as a
man doth his servant, several times, when he is sending him upon an
unwelcome message; or as a tender‑hearted prince wavers and trembles
when he is to sign a writ for the death of a rebel that hath been
before his favorite, as if, when he had signed the writ, he blotted out
his name again, and flung away the pen. And his method is remarkable
when he came to punish Sodom; though the cry of their sin had been
fierce in his ears, yet when he comes to make inquisition, he declares
his intention to Abraham, as if he were desirous that Abraham should
have helped him to some arguments to stop the outgoings of his judgment.
He gave liberty to the best person in the world to stand in the gap,
and enter into a treaty with him, to show, saith one,[1035] how
willingly his mercy would have compounded with his justice for their
redemption; and Abraham interceded so long, till he was ashamed for
pleading the cause of patience and mercy to the wrong of the rights
of Divine justice. Perhaps, had Abraham had the courage to ask, God
would have had the compassion to grant a reprieve just at the time of
execution.
(2.) His patience is manifest in that when he begins to send out his
judgments, he doth it by degrees. His judgments are “as the morning
light,” which goes forth by degrees in the hemisphere (Hos. vi. 5).
He doth not shoot all his thunders at once, and bring his sharpest
judgments in array at one time, but gradually, that a people may have
time to turn to him (Joel i. 4). First the palmer‑worm, then the locust,
then the canker‑worm, then the caterpillar; what one left, the other
was to eat, if there were not a timely return. A Jewish writer[1036]
saith, these judgments came not all in one year, but one year after
another. The palmer‑worm and locust might have eaten all, but Divine
patience set bounds to the devouring creatures. God had been first as
a moth to Israel (Hos. v. 12): “Therefore will I be to the house of
Ephraim as a moth;” Rivet translates it, “I have been;” in the Hebrew
it is “I,” without adding “I have been,” or “I will be,” and more
probably “I have been;” I was as a moth, which makes little holes in
a garment, and consumes it not all at once; and as “rottenness to the
house of Judah,” or a worm that eats into wood by degrees. Indeed, this
people had consumed insensibly, partly by civil combustions, change
of governors, foreign invasions, yet they were as obstinate in their
idolatry as ever; at last God would be no longer to them as a moth, but
as a lion, tear and go away (ver. 14): so Hos. ii., God had disowned
Israel for his spouse (ver. 2), “She is not my wife, neither am I her
husband;” yet he had not taken away her ornaments, which by the right
of divorce he might have done, but still expected her reformation, for
{b495} that the threatening intimates (ver. 3); let her put away her
whoredom, “lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day when she
was born.” If she returned, she might recover what she had lost; if not,
she might be stripped of what remained: thus God dealt with Judah (Ezek.
ix. 3). The glory of God goes first from the cherub to the threshold
of the house, and stays there, as if he had a mind to be invited back
again; then it goes from the threshold of the house, and stands over
the cherubims, as if upon a penitent call it would drop down again to
its ancient station and seat, over which it hovered (Ezek. x. 18); and
when he was not solicited to return, he departs out of the city, and
stood upon the mountain, which is on the east part of the city (Ezek.
xi. 23), looking still towards, and hovering about the temple, which
was on the east of Jerusalem, as if loth to depart, and abandon the
place and people. He walks so leisurely, with his rod in his hand,
as if he had a mind rather to fling it away than use it; his patience
in not pouring out all his vials, is more remarkable than his wrath
in pouring out one or two. Thus hath God made his slowness to anger
visible to us in the gradual punishment of us; first, the pestilence on
this city, then firing our houses, consumption of trade; these have not
been answered with such a carriage as God expects, therefore a greater
is reserved. I dare prognosticate, upon reasons you may gather from
what hath been spoke before, if I be not much mistaken, the forty years
of his usual patience are very near expired; he hath inflicted some,
that he might be met with in a way of repentance, and omit with honor
the inflicting the remainder.
4th. His patience is manifest, in moderating his judgments, when he
sends them. Doth he empty his quiver of his arrows, or exhaust his
magazines of thunder? No; he could roll one thunderbolt successively
upon all mankind; it is as easy with him to create a perpetual motion
of lightning and thunder, as of the sun and stars, and make the world
as terrible by the one, as it is delightful by the other. He opens not
all his store, he sends out a light party to skirmish with men, and
puts not in array his whole army; “He stirs not up all his wrath” (Ps.
lxxviii. 38); he doth but pinch, where he might have torn asunder; when
he takes away much, he leaves enough to support us; if he had stirred
up all his anger, he had taken away all, and our lives to boot. He
rakes up but a few sparks, takes but one firebrand to fling upon men,
when he might discharge the whole furnace upon them; he sends but a
few drops out of the cloud, which he might make to break in the gross,
and fall down upon our heads to overwhelm us; he abates much of what he
might do. When he might sweep away a whole nation by deluges of water,
corruption of the air, or convulsions of the earth, or by other ways
that are not wanting at his order; he picks out only some persons,
some families, some cities; sends a plague into one house, and not into
another; here is patience to the stock of a nation, while he inflicts
punishment upon some of the most notorious sinners in it. Herod is
suddenly snatched away, being willingly flattered into the thoughts
of his being a god; God singled out the chief in the herd for whose
sake he had been affronted by the rabble (Acts xii. 22, 23). {b496}
Some find him sparing them, while others feel him destroying them; he
arrests some, when he might seize all, all being his debtors; and often
in great desolations brought upon a people for their sin, he hath left
a stump in the earth, as Daniel speaks (Dan. iv. 15), for a nation
to grow upon it again, and arise to a stronger constitution. He doth
punish “less than our iniquities deserve” (Ezra ix. 13), and rewards us
“not according to our iniquities” (Ps. ciii. 10). The greatness of any
punishment in this life, answers not the greatness of the crime. Though
there be an equity in whatsoever he doth, yet there is not an equality
to what we deserve; our iniquities would justify a severer treating of
us; his justice goes not here to the end of its line, it is stopped in
its progress, and the blows of it weakened by his patience; he did not
curse the earth after Adam’s fall, that it should bring forth no fruit,
but that it should not bring forth fruit without the wearisome toil
of man, and subjected him to distempers presently, but inflicted not
death immediately; while he punished him, he supported him; and while
he expelled him from paradise, he did not order him not to cast his eye
towards it, and conceive some hopes of regaining that happy place.
5th. His patience is seen in giving great mercies after provocations.
He is so slow to anger, that he heaps many kindnesses upon a rebel,
instead of punishment. There is a prosperous wickedness, wherein the
provoker’s strength continues firm; the troubles, which like clouds
drop upon others, are blown away from them, and they are “not plagued
like other men,” that have a more worthy demeanor towards God (Ps.
lxxiii. 3‒5). He doth not only continue their lives, but sends out
fresh beams of his goodness upon them, and calls them by his blessings,
that they may acknowledge their own fault and his bounty, which he is
not obliged to by any gratitude he meets with from them, but by the
richness of his own patient nature: for he finds the unthankfulness
of men as great as his benefits to them. He doth not only continue his
outward mercies, while we continue our sins, but sometimes gives fresh
benefits after new provocations, that if possible he might excite an
ingenuity in men. When Israel at the Red Sea flung dirt in the face
of God, by quarrelling with his servant Moses for bringing them out of
Egypt, and misjudging God in his design of deliverance, and were ready
to submit themselves to their former oppressors (Exod. xiv. 11, 12),
which might justly have urged God to say to them, Take your own course;
yet he is not only patient under their unjust charge, but “makes bare
his arm in a deliverance at the Red Sea,” that was to be an amazing
monument to the world in all ages; and afterwards, when they repiningly
quarrelled with him in their wants in the wilderness, he did not only
not revenge himself upon them, or cast off the conduct of them, but
bore with them by a miraculous long‑suffering, and supplied them with
miraculous provision,――manna from heaven, and water from a rock. Food
is given to support us, and clothes to cover us, and Divine patience
makes the creature which we turn to another use than what they were
at first intended for, serve us contrary to their own genius: for had
they reason, no question but they would complain to be subjected to the
service of man, who {b497} hath been so ungrateful to their Creator,
and groan at the abuse of God’s patience, in the abuse they themselves
suffer from the hands of man.
6th. All this is more manifest, if we consider the provocations he hath.
Wherein his slowness to anger infinitely transcends the patience of any
creature; nay, the spirits of all the angels and glorified saints in
heaven, would be too narrow to bear the sins of the world for one day,
nay, not so much as the sins of churches, which is a little spot in
the whole world; it is because he is the Lord, one of an infinite power
over himself, that not only the whole mass of the rebellious world,
but of the sons of Jacob (either considered as a church and nation
springing from the loins of Jacob, or considered as the regenerate part
of the world, sometimes called the seed of Jacob), “are not consumed”
(Mal. iii. 6). A Jonah was angry with God, for recalling his anger from
a sinful people; had God committed the government of the world to the
glorified saints, who are perfect in love and holiness, the world would
have had an end long ago; they would have acted that which they sue for
at the hands of God, and is not granted them. “How long, Lord, holy and
true, dost thou not avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”
(Rev. vi. 10). God hath designs of patience above the world, above the
unsinning angels, and perfectly renewed spirits in glory. The greatest
created long‑suffering is infinitely disproportioned to the Divine:
fire from heaven would have been showered down before the greatest
part of a day were spent, if a created patience had the conduct of the
world, though that creature were possessed with the spirit of patience,
extracted from all the creatures which are in heaven, or are, or ever
were upon the earth. Methinks Moses intimates this; for as soon as God
had passed by, proclaiming his name gracious and long suffering, as
soon as ever Moses had paid his adoration, he falls to praying that God
would go with the Israelites; “For it is a stiff‑necked people” (Exod.
xxxiv. 8, 9). What an argument is here for God to go along with them!
he might rather, since he had heard him but just before say “he would
by no means clear the guilty,” desire God to stand further off from
them, for fear the fire of his wrath should burst out from him, to burn
them as he did the Sodomites. But he considers, that as none but God
had such anger to destroy them, so none but God had such a patience
to bear with them; it is as much as if he should have said, Lord! if
thou shouldest send the most tender‑hearted angel in heaven to have
the guidance of this people, they would be a lost people; a period will
quickly be set to their lives, no created strength can restrain its
power from crushing such a stiff‑necked people; flesh and blood cannot
bear them, nor any created spirit of a greater might.
(1.) Consider the greatness of the provocations. No light matter,
but actions of a great defiance: what is the practical language of
most in the world, but that of Pharaoh? “Who is the Lord, that I should
obey him?” How many questions his being, and more his authority? What
blasphemies of him, what reproaches of his Majesty! Men “drinking up
iniquity like water,” and with a haste and ardency “rushing into sin,
as the horse into the battle.” What {b498} is there in the reasonable
creature, that hath the quickest capacity, and the deepest obligation
to serve him, but opposition and enmity, a slight of him in everything,
yea, the services most seriously performed, unsuited to the royalty and
purity of so great a Being? such provocations as dare him to his face,
that are a burden to so righteous a Judge, and so great a lover of the
authority and majesty of his laws; that were there but a spark of anger
in him, it is a wonder it doth not show itself. When he is invaded in
all his attributes, it is astonishing that this single one of patience
and meekness should withstand the assault of all the rest of his
perfections; his being, which is attacked by sin, speaks for vengeance;
his justice cannot be imagined to stand silent without charging the
sinner. His holiness cannot but encourage his justice to urge its pleas,
and be an advocate for it. His omniscience proves the truth of all
the charge, and his abused mercy hath little encouragement to make
opposition to the indictment; nothing but patience stands in the gap to
keep off the arrest of judgment from the sinner.
(2.) His patience is manifest, if you consider the multitudes of these
provocations. Every man hath sin enough in a day to make him stand
amazed at Divine patience, and to call it, as well as the apostle did,
“all long‑suffering” (1 Tim. i. 16). How few duties of a perfectly
right stamp are performed! What unworthy considerations mix themselves,
like dross, with our purest and sincerest gold! How more numerous are
the respects of the worshippers of him to themselves, than unto him!
How many services are paid him, not out of love to him, but because he
should do us no hurt, and some service; when we do not so much design
to please him, as to please ourselves by expectations of a reward from
him! What master would endure a servant that endeavored to please him,
only because he should not kill him? Is that former charge of God upon
the old world yet out of date, “That the imagination of the thoughts
of the heart of man was only evil, and that continually?” (Gen. vi. 5.)
Was not the new world as chargeable with it as the old? Certainly it
was (Gen. viii. 21); and is of as much force this very minute as it
was then. How many are the sins against knowledge, as well as those
of ignorance; presumptuous sins, as well as those of infirmity! How
numerous those of omission and commission! It is above the reach of
any man’s understanding to conceive all the blasphemies, oaths, thefts,
adulteries, murders, oppressions, contempt of religion, the open
idolatries of Turks and heathens, the more spiritual and refined
idolatries of others.[1037] Add to those, the ingratitude of those that
profess his name, their pride, earthliness, carelessness, sluggishness
to Divine duties, and in every one of those a multitude of provocations;
the whole man being engaged in every sin, the understanding contriving
it, the will embracing it, the affections complying with it, and all
the members of the body instruments in the acting the unrighteousness
of it; every one of these faculties bestowed upon men by him, are
armed against him in every act: and in every employment of them there
is a distinct provocation, though centred in one sinful end and object.
What are the offences all the {b499} men of the world receive from
their fellow‑creatures, to the injuries God receives from men, but
as a small dust of earth to the whole mass of earth and heaven too?
What multitudes of sins is one profane wretch guilty of in the space
of twenty, forty, fifty years? Who can compute the vast number of
his transgressions, from the first use of reason to the time of the
separation of his soul from his body, from his entrance into the
world to his exit? What are those, to those of a whole village of the
like inhabitants? What are those, to those of a great city? Who can
number up all the foul‑mouthed oaths, the beastly excess, the goatish
uncleanness, committed in the space of a day, year, twenty years in
this city, much less in the whole nation, least of all, in the whole
world? Were it no more than the common idolatry of former ages, when
the whole world turned their backs upon their Creator, and passed
him by to sue to a creature, a stock or stone, or a degraded spirit?
How provoking would it be to a prince to see a whole city under his
dominion deny him a respect, and pay it to his scullion, or the common
executioner he employs! Add to this the unjust invasion of kings, the
oppressions exercised upon men, all the private and public sins that
have been in the world ever since it began. The Gentiles were described
by the apostle (Rom. i. 29‒31), in a black character, “They were haters
of God;” yet how did the “riches of his patience” preserve multitudes
of such disingenuous persons, and how “many millions of such haters of
him” breathe every day in his air, and are maintained by his bounty,
have their tables spread, and their cups filled to the brim, and that,
too, in the midst of reiterated belchings of their enmity against him?
All are under sufficient provocations of him to the highest indignation.
The presiding angels over nations could not forbear, in love and
honor to their governor, to arm themselves to the destruction of
their several charges, if Divine patience did not set them a pattern,
and their obedience incline them to expect his orders, before they act
what their zeal would prompt them to. The devils would be glad of a
commission to destroy the world, but that his patience puts a stop to
their fury, as well as his own justice.
(3.) Consider the long time of this patience. He spread out his hands
“all the day” to a rebellious world (Isa. lxv. 2). All men’s day, all
God’s day, which is a “thousand years,” he hath borne with the gross of
mankind, with all the nations of the world in a long succession of ages,
for five thousand years and upwards already, and will bear with them
till the time comes for the world’s dissolution. He hath suffered the
monstrous acts of men, and endured the contradictions of a sinful world
against himself, from the first sin of Adam, to the last committed this
minute. The line of his patience hath run along with the duration of
the world to this day; and there is not any one of Adam’s posterity but
hath been expensive to him, and partaken of the riches of it.
(4.) All these he bears when he hath a sense of them. He sees
every day the roll and catalogue of sin increasing; he hath a distinct
view of every one, from the sin of Adam to the last filled up in his
omniscience; and yet gives no order for the arrest of the world. He
{b500} knows men fitted for destruction; all the instants he exerciseth
long‑suffering towards them, which makes the apostle call it not simply
long‑suffering, without the addition of πολλῇ, “much long‑suffering”
(Rom. ix. 23). There is not a grain in the whole mass of sin, that
he hath not a distinct knowledge of, and of the quality of it.
He perfectly understands the greatness of his own majesty that is
vilified, and the nature of the offence that doth disparage him. He is
solicited by his justice, directed by his omniscience, and armed with
judgments to vindicate himself, but his arm is restrained by patience.
To conclude: no indignity is hid from him, no iniquity is beloved by
him; the hatred of their sinfulness is infinite, and the knowledge of
the malice is exact. The subsisting of the world under such weighty
provocations, so numerous, so long time, and with his full sense
of every one of them, is an evidence of such a “forbearance and
long‑suffering,” that the addition of riches which the apostle puts to
it (Rom. ii. 4), labors with an insufficiency clearly to display it.
III. Why God doth exercise so much patience.
1. To show himself appeasable. God did not declare by his patience
to former ages, or any age, that he was appeased with them, or that
they were in his favor; but that he was appeasable, that he was not an
implacable enemy, but that they might find him favorable to them, if
they did seek after him. The continuance of the world by patience, and
the bestowing many mercies by goodness, were not a natural revelation
of the manner how he would be appeased: that was made known only by
the prophets, and after the coming of Christ by the apostles; and had
indeed been intelligible in some sort to the whole world, had there
been a faithfulness in Adam’s posterity, to transmit the tradition of
the first promise to succeeding generations. Had not the knowledge of
that died by their carelessness and neglect, it had been easy to tell
the reason of God’s patience to be in order to the exhibition of the
“Seed of the woman to bruise the serpent’s head.” They could not but
naturally know themselves sinners, and worthy of death; they might, by
easy reflections upon themselves, collect that they were not in that
comely and harmonious posture now, as they were when God first wrought
them with his own finger, and placed them as his lieutenants in the
world; they knew they did grievously offend him; this they were taught
by the sprinklings of his judgments among them sometimes. And since he
did not utterly root up mankind, his sparing patience was a prologue of
some further favors, or pardoning grace to be displayed to the world by
some methods of God yet unknown to them. Though the earth was something
impaired by the curse after the fall, yet the main pillars of it stood;
the state of the natural motions of the creature was not changed; the
heavens remained in the same posture wherein they were created; the
sun, and moon, and other heavenly bodies, continued their usefulness
and refreshing influences to man.
The heavens did still “declare the glory of God, day unto day” did
“utter speech; their line is gone throughout all the earth, and their
words to the end of the world” (Ps. xix. 1‒4): which declared God to be
willing to do good to his creatures, and were as so many {b501} legible
letters or rudiments, whereby they might read his patience, and that
a further design of favor to the world lay hid in that patience. Paul
applies this to the preaching of the gospel (Rom. x. 18): “Have they
not heard the word of God? yes, verily, their sound went into all the
earth, and their words unto the end of the world.” Redeeming grace
could not be spelled out by them in a clear notion, but yet they did
declare that which is the foundation of gospel mercy. Were not God
patient, there were no room for a gospel mercy, so that the heavens
declare the gospel, not formally, but fundamentally, in declaring
the long‑suffering of God, without which no gospel had been framed,
or could have been expected. They could not but read in those things
favorable inclinations towards them: and though they could not be
ignorant that they deserved a mark of justice, yet seeing themselves
supported by God, and beholding the regular motions of the heavens from
day to day, and the revolutions of the seasons of the year, the natural
conclusions they might draw from thence was, that God was placable;
since he behaved himself more as a tender friend, that had no mind to
be at war with them, than an enraged enemy. The good things which he
gave them, and the patience whereby he spared them, were no arguments
of an implacable disposition; and, therefore, of a disposition willing
to be appeased. This is clearly the design of the apostle’s arguing
with the Lystrians, when they would have offered sacrifices to Paul
(Acts xiv. 17). When God “suffered all nations to walk in their own
ways, he did not leave himself without witness, giving rain from heaven,
and fruitful seasons.” What were those witnesses of? not only of the
being of a God, by their readiness to sacrifice to those that were
not gods, only supposed to be so in their false imaginations; but
witnesses to the tenderness of God, that he had no mind to be severe
with his creatures, but would allure them by ways of goodness. Had not
God’s patience tended to this end, to bring the world under another
dispensation, the apostle’s arguing from it had not been suitable to
his design, which seems to be a hindering the sacrifices they intended
for them, and a drawing them to embrace the gospel, and therefore
preparing the way to it, by speaking of the patience and goodness of
God to them, as an unquestionable testimony of the reconcilableness of
good to them, by some sacrifice which was represented under the common
notion of sacrifices.[1038] These things were not witnesses of Christ,
or syllables whereby they could spell out the redeeming person; but
witnesses that God was placable in his own nature. When man abused
those noble faculties God had given him, and diverted them from the
use and service God intended them for, God might have stripped man of
them the first time that he misemployed them; and it would have seemed
most agreeable to his wisdom and justice, not to suffer himself to be
abused, and the world to go contrary to its natural end. But since he
did not level the world with its first nothing, but healed the world
so favorably, it was evident that his patience pointed the world to a
further design of mercy and goodness in him. To imagine that God had
no other design in his long‑suffering {b502} but that of vengeance, had
been a notion unsuitable to the goodness and wisdom of God. He would
never have pretended himself to be a friend, if he had harbored nothing
but enmity in his heart against them. It had been far from his goodness
to give them a cause to suspect such a design in him, as his patience
certainly did, had he not intended it. Had he preserved men only
for punishment, it is more like he would have treated men as princes
do those they reserve for the axe or halter, give them only things
necessary to uphold their lives till the day of execution, and not have
bestowed upon them so many good things to make their lives delightful
to them, nor have furnished them with so many excellent means to please
their senses, and recreate their minds; it had been a mocking of them
to treat them at that rate, if nothing but punishment had been intended
towards them. If the end of it, to lead men to repentance, were easily
intelligible by them, as the apostle intimates (Rom. ii. 4)――which is
to be linked with the former chapter, a discourse of the Gentiles: “Not
knowing,” saith he, “that the riches of his forbearance and goodness
leads thee to repentance”――it also gives them some ground to hope for
pardon. For what other argument can more induce to repentance than an
expectation of mercy upon a relenting, and acknowledging the crime?
Without a design of pardoning grace, his patience would have been in
a great measure exercised in vain: for by mere patience God is not
reconciled to a sinner, no more than a prince to a rebel, by bearing
with him. Nor can a sinner conclude himself in the favor of God, no
more than a rebel can conclude himself in the favor of his prince; only,
this he may conclude, that there is some hopes he may have the grant
of a pardon, since he hath time to sue it out. And so much did the
patience of God naturally signify that he was of a reconcilable temper,
and was willing men should sue out their pardon upon repentance;
otherwise, he might have magnified his justice, and condemned men by
the law of works.
(2.) He therefore exercised so much patience to wait for men’s
repentance. All the notices and warnings that God gives men, of
either public or personal calamities, is a continual invitation to
repentance. This was the common interpretation the heathens made of
extraordinary presages and prodigies, which showed as well the delays
as the approaches of judgments. What other notion but this, that those
warnings of judgments witness a slowness to anger, and a willingness to
turn his arrows another way, should move them to multiply sacrifices,
go weeping to their temples, sound out prayers to their gods, and
show all those other testimonies of a repentance which their blind
understandings hit upon? If a prince should sometimes in a light and
gentle manner punish a criminal, and then relax it, and show him much
kindness, and afterwards inflict upon him another kind of punishment as
light as the former, and less than was due to his crime, what could the
malefactor suspect by such a way of proceeding, but that the prince, by
those gently‑repeated chastisements, had a mind to move him to a regret
for his crime?[1039] And what other thoughts could men naturally have
of God’s conduct, {b503} that he should warn them of great judgments,
send light afflictions, which are testimonies rather of a patience than
of a severe wrath, but that it was intended to move them to a relenting,
and a breaking off their sins by working righteousness? Though Divine
patience does not, in the event, induce men to repentance, yet the
natural tendency of such a treatment is to mollify men’s hearts, to
overcome their obstinacy; and no man hath any reason to judge otherwise
of such a proceeding. The “long‑suffering of God is salvation,” saith
Peter (2 Pet. iii. 15), _i. e._ hath a tendency to salvation, in its
being a solicitation of men to the means of it; for the apostle cites
Paul for the confirmation of it,――“Even as our beloved brother, Paul,
hath written unto you,” which must refer to Rom. ii. 4: “it leads to
repentance,” ἄγει, it conducts, which is more than barely to invite; it
doth, as it were, take us by the hand, and point us to the way wherein
we should go; and for this end it was exercised, not only towards the
Jews, but towards the Gentiles, not only towards those that are within
the pale of the church, and under the dews of the gospel, but to those
that are in darkness, and in the shadow of death; for this discourse
of the apostle was but an inference from what he had treated of in the
first chapter concerning the idolatry and ingratitude of the Gentiles;
since the Gentiles were to be punished for the abuse of it as well as
the Jews, as he intimates, ver. 9. It is plain that his patience, which
is exercised towards the idolatrous Gentiles, was to allure them to
repentance as well as others; and it was a sufficient motive in itself
to persuade them to a change of their vile and gross acts, to such as
were morally good: and there was enough in God’s dealing with them, and
in that light they had to engage them to a better course than what they
usually walked in; and though men do abuse God’s long‑suffering, to
encourage their impenitence, and persisting in their crimes, yet that
they cannot reasonably imagine that to be the end of God is evident;
their own gripes of conscience would acquaint them that it is otherwise.
They know that conscience is a principle that God hath given them, as
well as understanding, and will, and other faculties; that God doth not
approve of that which the voice of their own consciences, and of the
consciences of all men under natural light, are utterly against: and if
there were really, in this forbearance of God, an approbation of men’s
crimes, conscience could not, frequently and universally in all men,
check them for them. What authority could conscience have to do it?
But this it doth in all men: as the apostle (Rom. i. 22), “They know
the judgment of God, that those that do such things,” which he had
mentioned before, “are worthy of death.” In this thing the consciences
of all men cannot err: they could not, therefore, conclude from hence
God’s approbation of their iniquities, but his desire that their hearts
should be touched with a repentance for them. The “sin of Ephraim is
hid” (Hos. xiii. 12, 13); _i. e._ God doth not presently take notice of
it, to order punishment; he lays it in a secret place from the eye of
his justice, that Ephraim might not be his unwise son, and “stay long
in the place of the breaking forth of children;” _i. e._ that he should
speedily reclaim himself, and not continue in the way of destruction.
God hath no {b504} need to abuse any; he doth not lie to the sons of
men; if he would have men perish, he could easily destroy them, and
have done it long ago: he did not leave the woman Jezebel in being,
nor lengthened out her time, but as a space to repent (Rev. ii. 21),
that she might reflect upon her ways, and devote herself seriously to
his service, and her own happiness. His patience stands between the
offending creature and eternal misery a long time, that men might not
foolishly throw away their souls, and be damned for their impenitency;
by this he shows himself ready to receive men to mercy upon their
return. To what purpose doth he invite men to repentance, if he
intended to deceive them, and damn them after they repent?
3. He doth exercise patience for the propagation of mankind. If God
punished every sin presently, there would not only be a period put
to churches, but to the world; without patience, Adam had sunk into
eternal anguish the first moment of his provocation, and the whole
world of mankind, in his loins, had perished with him, and never seen
the light. If this perfection had not interposed after the first sin,
God had lost his end in the creation of the world, which he “created
not in vain, but formed it to be inhabited” (Isa. xlv. 18). It had been
inconsistent with the wisdom of God to make a world to be inhabited,
and destroy it upon sin, when it had but two principal inhabitants
in it; the reason of his making this earth had been insignificant; he
had not had any upon earth to glorify him, without erecting another
world, which might have proved as sinful and as quickly wicked as this;
God should have always been pulling down and rearing up, creating and
annihilating; one world would have come after another, as wave after
wave in the sea. His patience stepped in to support the honor of God,
and the continuance of men, without which one had been in part impaired,
and the other totally lost.
4. He doth exercise patience for the continuance of the church. If he
be not patient toward sinners, what stock would there be for believers
to spring up from? He bears with the provoking carriage of men, evil
men, because out of their loins he intends to extract others, which he
will form for the glory of his grace. He hath some unborn that belong
to the election of grace, which are to be the seed of the worst of
men; Jeroboam, the chief incendiary of the Israelites to idolatry,
had an Abijah, in whom was found “some good thing towards the Lord
God of Israel” (1 Kings xiv. 13). Had Ahaz been snapped in the first
act of his wickedness, the Israelites had wanted so good a prince and
so good a man as Hezekiah, a branch of that wicked predecessor. What
gardener cuts off the thorns from the rose‑brush till he hath gathered
the roses? and men do not use to burn all the crab‑tree, but preserve
a stock to engraft some sweet fruit upon. There could not have been a
saint in the earth, nor, consequently, in heaven, had it not been for
this perfection: he did not destroy the Israelites in the wilderness,
that he might keep up a church among them, and not extinguish the whole
seed that were heirs of the promises and covenant made with Abraham.
Had God punished men for their sins as soon as they had been committed,
{b505} none would have lived to have been better, none could have
continued in the world to honor him by their virtues. Manasseh had
never been a convert, and many brutish men had never been changed from
beasts to angels, to praise and acknowledge their Creator. Had Peter
received his due recompense upon the denial of his Master, he had never
been a martyr for him; nor had Paul been a preacher of the gospel; nor
any else: and so the gospel had not shined in any part of the world.
No seed would have been brought into Christ; Christ is beholding
immediately to this attribute for all the seed he hath in the world: it
is for his name’s sake that he doth defer his anger; and for his praise
that he doth refrain from “cutting us off” (Isa. xlviii. 9): and in
the next chapter follows a prophecy of Christ. To overthrow mankind for
sin, were to prevent the spreading a church in the world: a woman that
is guilty of a capital crime, and lies under a condemning sentence,
is reprieved from execution for her being with child; it is for the
child’s sake the woman is respited, not for her own: it is for the
elect’s sake, in the loins of transgressors, that they are a long time
spared, and not for their own ( Isa. lxv. 8): “As the new wine is found
in a cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it,
so will I do for my servants’ sakes, that I may not destroy them all;”
as a husbandman spares a vine for some good clusters in it. He had
spoke of vengeance before, yet he would reserve some from whom he would
bring forth those that should be “inheritors of his mountains,” that he
might make up his church of Judea; Jerusalem being a mountainous place,
and the type of the church in all ages. What is the reason he doth
not level his thunder at the heads of those for whose destruction he
receives so many petitions from the “souls under the altar?” (Rev. vi.
9, 10). Because God had others to write a testimony for him in their
own blood, and perhaps out of the loins of those for whom vengeance
was so earnestly supplicated; and God, as the master of a vessel,
lies patiently at anchor, till the last passenger he expects be taken
in.[1040]
5. For the sake of his church he is patient to wicked men. The tares
are patiently endured till the harvest, for fear in the plucking up
the one, there might be some prejudice done to the other. Upon this
account he spares some, who are worse than others whom he crusheth by
signal judgments: the Jews had committed sins worse than Sodom, for the
confirmation of which we have God’s oath (Ezek. xvi. 48); and more by
half than Samaria, or the ten tribes had done (ver. 51): yet God spared
the Jews, though he destroyed the Sodomites. What was the reason, but a
larger remnant of righteous persons, more clusters of good grapes, were
found among them than grew in Sodom? (Isa. i. 9). A few more righteous
in Sodom had damped the fire and brimstone designed for that place,
and a “remnant of such in Judea” was a bar to that fierceness of
anger, which otherwise would have quickly consumed them. Had there
been but “ten righteous in Sodom,” Divine patience had still bound
the arms of Justice, that it should not have prepared its brimstone,
notwithstanding the clamor of the sins of the multitude. Judea was ripe
for the sickle, but God would put a lock upon the torrent of his {b506}
judgments, that they should not flow down upon that wicked place, to
make them a desolation and a curse, as long as tender‑hearted Josiah
lived, “who had humbled himself” at the threatening, and wept before
the Lord (2 Kings xxii. 19, 20). Sometimes he bears with wicked men,
that they might exercise the patience of the saints (Rev. xiv. 12):
the whole time of the “forbearance of antichrist” in all his intrusions
into the temple of God, invasions of the rights of God, usurpations
of the office of Christ, and besmearing himself with the blood of the
saints, was to give them an opportunity of patience. God is patient
towards the wicked, that by their means he might try the righteous.
He burns not the wisp till he hath scoured his vessels; nor lays by
the hammer, till he hath formed some of his matter into an excellent
fashion. He useth the worst men as rods to correct his people, before
he sweeps the twigs out of his house. God sometimes uses the thorns of
the world, as a hedge to secure his church, sometimes as instruments to
try and exercise it. Howsoever he useth them, whether for security or
trial, he is patient to them for his church’s advantage.
6. When men are not brought to repentance by his patience, he doth
longer exercise it, to manifest the equity of his future justice upon
them. As wisdom is justified by her obedient children, so is justice
justified by the rebels against patience; the contempt of the latter
is the justification of the former. The “apostles were unto God a sweet
savor of Christ in them that perish,” as well as in them that were
saved by the acceptation of their message (2 Cor. ii. 15). Both are
fragrant to God; his mercy is glorified by the one’s acceptance of it,
and his justice freed from any charge against it by the other’s refusal.
The cause of men’s ruin cannot be laid upon God, who provided means
for their salvation, and solicited their compliance with him. What
reason can they have to charge the Judge with any wrong to them, who
reject the tenders he makes, and who hath forborne them with so much
patience, when he might have censured them by his righteous justice,
upon the first crime they committed, or the first refusal of his
gracious offers? “_Quanto Dei magis judicium tardum est tanto magis
justum._”[1041] After the despising of patience, there can be no
suspicion of an irregularity in the acts of justice. Man hath no reason
to fall foul in his charge upon God, if he were punished for his own
sin, considering the dignity of the injured person, and the meanness
of himself, the offender; but his wrath is more justified when it is
poured out upon those whom he hath endured with much long‑suffering.
There is no plea against the shooting of his arrows into those, for
whom this voice hath been loud, and his arms open for their return. As
patience, while it is exercised, is the silence of his justice, so when
it is abused, it silenceth men’s complaints against his justice. The
“riches of his forbearance” made way for the manifesting the “treasures
of his wrath.” If God did but a little bear with the insolencies of men,
and cut them off after two or three sins, he would not have opportunity
to show either the power of his patience, or that of his wrath; but
when he hath a right to punish for one sin, and yet bears with them
for many, {b507} and they will not be reclaimed, the sinner is more
inexcusable, Divine justice less chargeable, and his wrath more
powerful. (Rom. ix. 22), “What if God, willing to show his wrath, and
to make his power known, endured with much long‑suffering the vessels
of wrath fitted for destruction?” The proper and immediate end of his
long‑suffering is to lead men to repentance; but after they have by
their obstinacy fitted themselves for destruction, he bears longer
with them, to “magnify his wrath” more upon them; and if it is not the
_finis operantis_, it is at least the _finis operis_, where patience
is abused. Men are apt to complain of God, that he deals hardly with
them; the Israelites seem to charge God with too much severity, to
cast them off, when so many promises were made to the fathers for their
perpetuity and preservation, which is intimated, Hos. ii. 2. “Plead
with your mother, plead:” by the double repetition of the word “plead;”
do not accuse me of being false or too rigorous, but accuse your mother,
your church, your magistracy, your ministry, for their spiritual
fornications which have provoked me; for their נאפופיה, intimating the
greatness of their sins by the reduplication of the word, “lest I strip
her naked.” I have borne with her under many provocations, and I have
not yet taken away all her ornaments, or said to her, according to the
rule of divorce, _Res tuas tibi habeto_. God answers their impudent
charge: “She is not my wife, nor am I her husband;” he doth not say
first, I am not her husband, but she is not my wife; she first withdrew
from her duty by breaking the marriage covenant, and then I ceased to
be her husband. No man shall be condemned, but he shall be convinced
of the due desert of his sin, and the justice of God’s proceeding. God
will lay open men’s guilt, and repeat the measures of his patience to
justify the severity of his wrath (Hos. vii. 10), “Sins will testify to
their face.” What is in its own nature a preparation for glory, men by
their obstinacy make a preparation for a more indisputable punishment.
We see many evidences of God’s forbearance here, in sparing men under
those blasphemies which are audible, and those profane carriages which
are visible, which would sufficiently justify an act of severity;
yet when men’s secret sins, both in heart and action, and the vast
multitude of them, far surmounting what can arrive to our knowledge
here, shall be discovered, how great a lustre will it add to God’s
bearing with them, and make his justice triumph without any reasonable
demur from the sinner himself! He is long‑suffering here, that his
justice may be more public hereafter.
_Use IV._ For instruction. How is this patience of God abused! The
Gentiles abused those testimonies of it, which were written in showers
and fruitful seasons. No nation was ever stripped of it, under the most
provoking idolatries, till after multiplied spurns at it: not a person
among us but hath been guilty of the abuse of it. How have we contemned
that which demands a reverence from us! How have we requited God’s
waitings with rebellions, while he hath continued urging and expecting
our return! Saul relented at David’s forbearing to revenge himself,
when he had his prosecuting and industrious enemy in his power. (1 Sam.
xxiv. 17), “Thou art more righteous than I; thou hast rewarded me good,
whereas I have rewarded {b508} thee evil:” and shall we not relent at
God’s wonderful long‑suffering, and silencing his anger so much? He
could puff away our lives, but he will not, and yet we endeavor to
strip him of his being, though we cannot.
1. Let us consider the ways, how slowness to anger is abused.
(1.) It is abused by misinterpretations of it, when men slander his
patience to be only a carelessness and neglect of his providence; as
Averroes argued from his slowness to anger, a total neglect of the
government of the lower world: or when men from his long‑suffering
charge him with impurity, as if his patience were a consent to their
crimes; and because he suffered them, without calling them to account,
he were one of their partisans, and as wicked as themselves (Ps. l. 21):
“Because I kept silence, thou thoughtest I was altogether such a one as
thyself.” His silence makes them conclude him to be an abettor of, and
a consort in their sins; and think him more pleased with their iniquity
than their obedience. Or when they will infer from his forbearance a
want of his omniscience; because he suffers their sins, they imagine
he forgets them (Ps. x. 11): “He hath said in his heart, God hath
forgotten:” thinking his patience proceeds not from the sweetness of
his nature, but a weakness of his mind. How base is it, instead of
admitting him, to disparage him for it; and because he stands in so
advantageous a posture towards us, not to own the choicest prerogatives
of his Deity! This is to make a perfection, so useful to us, to shadow
and extinguish those others, which are the prime flowers of his crown.
(2.) His patience is abused by continuing in a course of sin under
the influences of it. How much is it the practical language of men,
Come, let us commit this or that iniquity; since Divine patience hath
suffered worse than this at our hands! Nothing is remitted to their
sensual pleasures, and eagerness in them. How often did the Israelites
repeat their murmurings against him, as if they would put his patience
to the utmost proof, and see how far the line of it could extend! They
were no sooner satisfied in one thing, but they quarrelled with him
about another, as if he had no other attribute to put in motion against
them. They tempted him as often as he relieved them, as though the
declaration of his name to Moses (Exod. xxxiv.), “to be a God gracious,
and long‑suffering,” had been intended for no other purpose but a
protection of them in their rebellions. Such a sort of men the prophet
speaks of, that were “settled in their lees,” or dregs (Zeph. i. 12):
they were congealed, and frozen in their successful wickedness. Such
an abuse of Divine patience is the very dregs of sin; God chargeth it
highly upon the Jews (Isa. lvii. 11): “I have held my peace, even of
old, and thou fearest me not;” my silence made thee confident, yea,
impudent in thy sin.
(3.) His patience is abused by repeating sin, after God hath, by
an act of his patience, taken off some affliction from men. As metals
melted in the fire remain fluid under the operations of the flames,
yet when removed from the fire, they quickly return to their former
hardness, and sometimes grow harder than they were before; so men who,
in their afflictions, seem to be melted, like Ahab confess their sins,
lie prostrate before God, and seek him early; yet, if they be {b509}
brought from under the power of their afflictions, they return to their
old nature, and are as stiff against God, and resist the blows of the
Spirit as much as they did before. They think they have a new stock of
patience to sin upon. Pharaoh was somewhat thawed under judgments, and
frozen again under forbearance (Exod. ix. 27, 34). Many will howl when
God strikes them, and laugh at him when he forbears them. Thus that
patience which should melt us, doth often harden us, which is not an
effect natural to his patience, but natural to our abusing corruption.
(4.) His patience is abused, by taking encouragement from it to
mount to greater degrees of sin. Because God is slow to anger, men
are more fierce in sin, and not only continue in their old rebellions,
but heap new upon them. If he spare them for three transgressions,
they will commit four, as is intimated in the first and second of
Amos; “Men’s hearts are fully set in them to do evil, because sentence
against an evil work is not speedily executed” (Eccles. viii. 11).
Their hearts are more desperately bent; before they had some waverings,
and pull‑backs, but after a fair sunshine of Divine patience, they
entertain more unbridled resolutions, and pass forward with more
liberty and licentiousness. They make his long‑suffering subservient to
turn out all those little relentings and regrets they had before, and
banish all thoughts of barring out a temptation. No encouragement is
given to men by God’s patience, but they force it by their presumption.
They invert God’s order, and bind themselves stronger to iniquity by
that which should bind them faster to their duty. A happy escape at sea
makes men go more confidently into the deeps afterward. Thus we deal
with God as debtors do with good‑natured creditors: because they do not
dun them for what they owe, they take encouragement to run more upon
the score, till the sum amounts above their ability of payment.
But let it be considered, 1st. That this abuse of patience is a high
sin. As every act of forbearance obligeth us to duty, so every act of
it abused, increaseth our guilt. The more frequent its solicitations
of us have been, the deeper aggravations our sin receives by it. Every
sin, after an act of Divine patience, contracts a blacker guilt. The
sparing us after the last sin we committed, was a superadded act of
long‑suffering, and a laying out more of his riches upon us: and,
therefore, every new act committed is a despite against greater riches
expended, and greater cost upon us, and against his preserving us from
the hand of justice for the last transgression. It is disingenuous
not to have a due resentment of so much goodness, and base to injure
him the more, because he doth not right himself. Shall he receive
the more wrongs from us, by how much the sweeter he is to us? No man’s
conscience but will tell him it is vile to prefer the satisfaction of a
sordid lust, before the counsel of a God of so gracious a disposition.
The sweeter the nature, the fouler is the injury that is done unto it.
2d. It is dangerous to abuse his patience. Contempt of kindness is most
irksome to an ingenuous spirit; and he is worthy to have the arrows of
God’s indignation lodged in his heart, who despiseth the riches of his
long‑suffering. For,
[1.] The time of patience will have an end. Though his Spirit {b510}
strives with man, yet it shall “not always strive” (Gen. vi. 3). Though
there be a time wherein Jerusalem might “know the things that concerned
her peace,” yet there is another period wherein they should be “hid
from her eyes” (Luke xix. 43): “O that thou hadst known in this thy
day!” Nations have their day, and persons have their day; and the day
of most persons is shorter than the day of nations. Jerusalem had her
day of forty years; but how many particular persons were taken off
before the last or middle hours of that day were arrived! “Forty years
was God grieved” with the generation of the Israelites (Heb. iii. 11).
One carcass dropped after another in that limited time, and at the end
not a man but fell under the judicial stroke, except Caleb and Joshua.
One hundred and twenty years was the term set to the mass of the old
world, but not to every man in the old world; some fell while the ark
was preparing, as well as the whole stock when the ark was completed.
Though he be patient with most, yet he is not in the same degree with
all; every sinner hath his time of sinning, beyond which he shall
proceed no further, be his lusts never so impetuous, and his affections
never so imperious. The time of his patience is, in Scripture, set
forth sometimes by years; three years he came to find fruit on the
fig‑tree: sometimes by days; some men’s sins are sooner ripe, and
fall. There is a measure of sin (Jer. ii. 13), which is set forth by
the ephah (Zech. v. 8), which, when it is filled, is sealed up, and a
weight of lead cast upon the mouth of it. When judgments are preparing,
once and twice the Lord is prevailed with by the intercession of the
prophet: the prepared grass‑hoppers are not sent to devour, and the
kindled fire is not blown up to consume (Amos vii. 1‒8). But at last
God takes the plumb‑line, to suit and measure punishment to their
sin, and would not pass by them any more; and when their sin was ripe,
represented by a “basket of summer‑fruit,” God would withhold his hand
no longer, but brought such a day upon them, wherein “the songs of the
Temple should be howlings, and dead bodies be in every place” (Amos
viii. 2, 3). He lays by any further thoughts of patience to speed their
ruin. God had borne long with the Israelites, and long it was before
he gave them up. He would first brake the “bow in Jezreel” (Hos. i. 5);
take away the strength of the nation by the death of Zechariah, the
last of Jehu’s race, which introduced civil dissentions and ambitious
murders, for the throne, whereby in weakening one part they weakened
the whole; or, as some think, alluding to Tiglah Pilezar, who carried
captive two tribes and a half. If this would not reclaim them, then
follows “Lo‑ruhamah, I will not have mercy,” I will sweep them out of
the land (ver. 6). If they did not repent, they should be “Lo‑ammi”
(ver. 9), “You are not my people,” and “I will not be your God.” They
should be discovenanted, and stripped of all federal relation. Here
patience forever withdrew from them, and wrathful anger took its place.
And, for particular persons, the time of life, whether shorter or
longer, is the only time of long‑suffering. It hath no other stage
than the present state of things to act upon; there is none else to be
expected after but giving account of what hath been done in the body,
not of anything done after the soul is fled from the body: {b511} the
time of patience ends with the first moment of the soul’s departure
from the body. This time only is the “day of salvation;” _i. e._
the day wherein God offers it, and the day wherein God waits for our
acceptance of it: it is at his pleasure to shorten or lengthen our day,
not at ours; it is not our long‑suffering, but his; he hath the command
of it.
[2.] God hath wrath to punish, as well as patience to bear. He hath a
fury to revenge the outrages done to his meekness: when his messages of
peace, sent to reclaim men, are slighted, his sword shall be whetted,
and his instruments of war prepared (Hos. v. 3): “Blow ye the cornet in
Gibeah, and the trumpet in Ramah.” As he deals gently, like a father,
so he can punish capitally as a judge: though he holds his peace for a
long time, yet at last he will go forth like a mighty man, and stir up
jealousy, as a man of war, to cut in pieces his enemies. It is not said
he hath no anger, but that he is “slow to anger,” but sharp in it: he
hath a sword to cut, and a bow to shoot, and arrows to pierce (Ps. xii.
13): though he be long drawing the one out of its scabbard, and long
fitting the other to his bow, yet, when they are ready, he strikes home,
and hits the mark: though he hath a time of patience, yet he hath also
a “day of rebuke” (Hos. v. 9); though patience overrules justice, by
suspending it, yet justice will at last overrule patience, by an utter
silencing it. God is Judge of the whole earth to right men, yet he is
no less Judge of the injuries he receives to right himself. Though God
awhile was pressed with the murmurings of the Israelites, after their
coming out of Egypt, and seemed desirous to give them all satisfaction
upon their unworthy complaints, yet, when they came to open hostility,
in setting a golden calf in his throne, he commissions the “Levites
to kill every man his brother and companion in the camp” (Exod. xxxii.
27): and how desirous soever he was to content them before, they never
murmured afterwards but they severely smarted for it. When once he hath
begun to use his sword, he sticks it up naked, that it might be ready
for use upon every occasion. Though he hath feet of lead, yet he hath
hands of iron. It was long that he supported the peevishness of the
Jews, but at last he captived them by the arms of the Babylonians, and
laid them waste by the power of the Romans. He planted, by the apostles,
churches in the east; and when his goodness and long‑suffering
prevailed not with them, he tore them up by the roots. What Christians
are to be found in those once famous parts of Asia but what are
overgrown with much error and ignorance?
[3.] The more his patience is abused, the sharper will be the wrath
he inflicts. As his wrath restrained makes his patience long, so his
compassions restrained will make his wrath severe; as he doth transcend
all creatures in the measures of the one, so he doth transcend all
creatures in the sharpness of the other. Christ is described with “feet
of brass,” as if they burned in a furnace (Rev. i. 15), slow to move,
but heavy to crush, and hot to burn. His wrath loseth nothing by delay;
it grows the fresher by sleeping, and strikes with greater strength
when it awakes: all the time men are abusing his patience, God is
whetting his sword, and the longer it is whetting the sharper will be
the edge; the longer he is fetching his blow, the smarter it {b512}
will be. The heavier the cannons are, the more difficultly are they
drawn to the besieged town; but, when arrived, they recompense the
slowness of their march by the fierceness of their battery. “Because I
have purged thee,” _i. e._ used means for thy reformation, and waited
for it, “and thou wast not purged, thou shalt not be purged from thy
filthiness any more, till I have caused my fury to rest upon thee:
I will not go back, neither will I spare; according to thy ways, and
according to thy doings, shall they judge thee” (Ezek. xxiv. 13, 14).
God will spare as little then as he spared much before; his wrath shall
be as raging upon them as the sea of their wickedness was within them.
When there is a bank to forbid the irruption of the streams, the waters
swell; but when the bank is broke, or the lock taken away, they rush
with the greater violence, and ravage more than they would have done
had they not met with a stop: the longer a stone is in falling, the
more it bruiseth and grinds to powder. There is a greater treasure
of wrath laid up by the abuses of patience: every sin must have a
just recompense of reward; and therefore every sin, in regard of its
aggravations, must be more punished than a sin in the singleness and
simplicity of its own nature. As treasures of mercy are kept by God for
us, “he keeps mercy for thousands;” so are treasures of wrath kept by
him to be expended, and a time of expense there must be: patience will
account to justice all the good offices it hath done the sinner, and
demand to be righted by justice; justice will take the account from
the hands of patience, and exact a recompense for every disingenuous
injury offered to it. When justice comes to arrest men for their debts,
patience, mercy, and goodness, will step in as creditors, and clap
their actions upon them, which will make the condition so much more
deplorable.
[4.] When he puts an end to his abused patience, his wrath will
make quick and sure work. He that is “slow to anger” will be swift in
the execution of it. The departure of God from Jerusalem is described
with “wings and wheels” (Ezek. xi. 23). One stroke of his hand is
irresistible; he that hath spent so much time in waiting needs but
one minute to ruin; though it be long ere he draws his sword out of
his scabbard, yet, when once he doth it, he despatcheth men at a blow.
Ephraim, or the ten tribes, had a long time of patience and prosperity,
but now shall a “month devour him with his portion” (Hos. v. 7). One
fatal month puts a period to the many years’ peace and security of a
sinful nation; his arrows wound suddenly (Ps. lxiv. 7); and while men
are about to fill their bellies, he casts the fruits of his wrath upon
them (Job xx. 23), like thunder out of a cloud, or a bullet out of a
cannon, that strikes dead before it is heard. God deals with sinners
as enemies do with a town, batter it not by planted guns, but secretly
undermines and blows up the walls, whereby they involve the garrison
in a sudden ruin, and carry the town. God spared the Amalekites a
long time after the injury committed against the Israelites, in their
passage out of Egypt to Canaan; but when he came to reckon with them,
he would waste them in a trice, and make an utter consumption of them
(1 Sam. xv. 2, 3). He describes himself by a “travailing woman” (Isa.
xxiv. 14), that {b513} hath borne long in her womb, and at last sends
forth her birth with strong cries. Though he hath held his peace,
been still, and refrained himself, yet, at last, he will destroy and
devour at once: the Ninevites, spared in the time of Jonah for their
repentance, are, in nature, threatened with a certain and total ruin,
when God should come to bring them to an account for his length and
patience, so much abused by them. Though God endured the murmuring
Israelites so long in the wilderness, yet he paid them off at last,
and took away the rebels in his wrath: he uttered their sentence with
an irreversible oath, that “none of them should enter into his rest;”
and he did as surely execute it as he had solemnly sworn it.
[5.] Though he doth defer his visible wrath, yet that very delay may
be more dreadful than a quick punishment. He may forbear striking, and
give the reins to the hardness and corruption of men’s hearts; he may
suffer them to walk in their own counsels, without any more striving
with them, whereby they make themselves fitter fuel for his vengeance.
This was the fate of Israel when they would not hearken to his voice;
he “gave them up to their own hearts’ lusts, and they walked in their
own counsels” (Ps. lxxxi. 12). Though his sparing them had the outward
aspect of patience, it was a wrathful one, and attended with spiritual
judgments; thus many abusers of patience may still have their line
lengthened, and the candle of prosperity to shine upon their heads,
that they may increase their sins, and be the fitter mark at last for
his arrows; they swim down the stream of their own sensuality with a
deplorable security, till they fall into an unavoidable gulf, where,
at last, it will be a great part of their hell to reflect on the length
of Divine patience on earth, and their inexcusable abuse of it.
2. It informs us of the reason why he lets the enemies of his church
oppress it, and defers his promise of the deliverance of it. If he did
punish them presently, his holiness and justice would be glorified,
but his power over himself in his patience would be obscured. Well
may the church be content to have a perfection of God glorified, that
is not like to receive any honor in another world by any exercise of
itself. If it were not for this patience, he were incapable to be the
Governor of a sinful world; he might, without it, be the Governor of
an innocent world, but not of a criminal one; he would be the destroyer
of the world, but not the orderer and disposer of the extravagancies
and sinfulness of the world. The interest of his wisdom, in drawing
good out of evil, would not be served, if he were not clothed with
this perfection as well as with others. If he did presently destroy
the enemies of his church upon the first oppression, his wisdom in
contriving, and his power in accomplishing deliverance against the
united powers of hell and earth, would not be visible, no, nor that
power in preserving his people unconsumed in the furnace of affliction.
He had not got so great a name in the rescue of his Israel from Pharaoh,
had he thundered the tyrant into destruction upon his first edicts
against the innocent. If he were not patient to the most violent of men,
he might seem to be cruel. But when he offers peace to them under their
rebellions, waits that they may be members of his church, {b514} rather
than enemies to it, he frees himself from any such imputation, even
in the judgment of those that shall feel most of his wrath; it is this
renders the equity of his justice unquestionable, and the deliverance
of his people righteous in the judgment of those from whose fetters
they are delivered. Christ reigns in the midst of his enemies, to
show his power over himself, as well as over the heads of his enemies,
to show his power over his rebels. And though he retards his promise,
and suffers a great interval of time between the publication and
performance, sometimes years, sometimes ages to pass away, and little
appearance of any preparation, to show himself a God of truth; it is
not that he hath forgotten his word, or repents that ever he passed
it, or sleeps in a supine neglect of it: but that men might not perish,
but bethink themselves, and come as friends into his bosom, rather than
be crushed as enemies under his feet (2 Pet. iii. 9): “The Lord is not
slack concerning his promise, but is long‑suffering to us‑ward, not
willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
Hereby he shows, that he would be rather pleased with the conversion,
than the destruction, of men.
3. We see the reason why sin is suffered to remain in the regenerate;
to show his patience towards his own; for since this attribute hath
no other place of appearance but in this world, God takes opportunity
to manifest it; because, at the close of the world, it will remain
closed up in the Deity, without any further operation. As God suffers a
multitude of sins in the world, to evidence his patience to the wicked,
so he suffers great remainders of sin in his people, to show his
patience to the godly. His sparing mercy is admirable, before their
conversion, but more admirable in bearing with them after so high an
obligation as the conferring upon them special converting grace.
_Use 2._ Of comfort. It is a vast comfort to any when God is
pacified towards them; but it is some comfort to all, that God is yet
patient towards them, though but very little to a refractory sinner.
His continued patience to all, speaks a possibility of the care of all,
would they not stand against the way of their recovery. It is a terror
that God hath anger, but it is a mitigation of that terror that God
is slow to it; while his sword is in his sheath there is some hopes to
prevent the drawing of it: alas! if he were all fire and sword upon sin,
what would become of us? We should find nothing else but overflowing
deluges, or sweeping pestilences, or perpetual flashes of Sodom’s fire
and brimstone from heaven. He dooms us not presently to execution, but
gives us a long breathing time after the crime, that by retiring from
our iniquities, and having recourse to his mercy, he may be withheld
forever from signing a warrant against us, and change his legal
sentence into an evangelical pardon. It is a special comfort to his
people, that he is a “sanctuary to them” (Ezek. xi. 16); a place of
refuge, a place of spiritual communications; but it is some refreshment
to all in this life, that he is a defence to them: for so is his
patience called (Numb. xiv. 9): “Their defence is departed from them;”
speaking to the Israelites, that they should not be afraid of the
Canaanites, for {b515} their defence is departed from them. God is no
longer patient to them, since their sins be full and ripe. Patience,
as long as it lasts, is a temporary defence to those that are under the
wing of it; but to the believer it is a singular comfort; and God is
called the “God of patience and consolation” in one breath (Rom. xv. 5):
“The God of patience and consolation grant you to be like‑minded;” all
interpreters understand it effectively. The God that inspires you with
patience, and cheers you with comfort, grant this to you. Why may it
not be understood formally, of the patience belonging to the nature of
God? and though it be expressed in the way of petition, yet it might
also be proposed as a pattern for imitation, and so suits very well
to the exhortation laid down (ver. 1), which was to “bear with the
infirmities of the weak,” which he presseth them to (ver. 3) by the
example of Christ; and (ver. 5) by the patience of God to them, and so
they are very well linked together. “God of patience and consolation”
may well be joined, since patience is the first step of comfort to the
poor creature. If it did not administer some comfortable hopes to Adam,
in the interval between his fall and God’s coming to examine him, I am
sure it was the first discovery of any comfort to the creature, after
the sweeping the destroying deluge out of the world (Gen. ix. 21);
after the “savor of Noah’s sacrifice,” representing the great Sacrifice
which was to be in the world, had ascended up to God, the return from
him is a publication of his forbearing to punish any more in such a
manner: and though he found man no better than he was before, and the
imaginations of men’s hearts as evil as before the deluge, that he
would not again smite every living thing, as he had done. This was the
first expression of comfort to Noah, after his exit from the ark; and
declares nothing else but the continuance of patience to the new world
above what he had shown to the old.
1. It is a comfort, in that it is an argument of his grace to his
people. If he hath so rich a patience to exercise towards his enemies,
he hath a greater treasure to bestow upon his friends. Patience is the
first attribute which steps in for our salvation, and therefore called
“salvation” (2 Pet. iii. 15). Something else is therefore built upon
it, and intended by it, to those that believe. Those two letters of
his name, “a God keeping mercy for thousands, and forgiving iniquity,
transgressions and sin,” follow the other letter of his long‑suffering
in the proclamation (Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7). He is “slow to anger,” that
he may be merciful, that men may seek, and receive their pardon. If
he be long‑suffering, in order to be a pardoning God, he will not be
wanting in pardoning those who answer the design of his forbearance
of them. You would not have had sparing mercy to improve, if God
would have denied you saving mercy upon the improvement of his sparing
goodness. If he hath so much respect to his enemies that provoke him,
as to endure them with much long‑suffering, he will surely be very
kind to those that obey him, and conform to his will. If he hath much
long‑suffering to those that are “fitted for destruction” (Rom. ix.
22), he will have a muchness of mercy for those that are prepared for
glory by faith and repentance. {b516} It is but a natural conclusion a
gracious soul may make,――If God had not a mind to be appeased towards
me, he would not have had a mind to forbear me; but since he hath
forborne me, and given me a heart to see, and answer the true end of
that forbearance, I need not question, but that sparing mercy will end
in saving, since it finds that repentance springing up in me, which
that patience conducted me to.
2. His patience is a ground to trust in his promise. If his slowness to
anger be so great when his precept is slighted, his readiness to give
what he hath promised will be as great when his promise is believed. If
the provocations of them meet with such an unwillingness to punish them,
faith in him will meet with the choicest embraces from him. He was more
ready to make the promise of redemption after man’s apostasy, than to
execute the threatening of the law. He doth still witness a greater
willingness to give forth the fruits of the promise, than to pour out
the vials of his curses. His slowness to anger is an evidence still,
that he hath the same disposition, which is no slight cordial to faith
in his word.
3. It is a comfort in infirmities. If he were not patient, he could not
bear with so many peevishnesses and weaknesses in the hearts of his own.
If he be patient to the grosser sins of his enemies, he will be no less
to the lighter infirmities of his people. When the soul is a bruised
reed, that can emit no sound at all, or one very harsh and ungrateful,
he doth not break it in pieces, and fling it away in disdain, but waits
to see whether it will fully answer his pains, and be brought to a
better frame and sweeter note. He brings them not to account for every
slip, but, “as a father, spares his son that serves him” (Mal. iii. 17).
It is a comfort to us in our distracted services; for were it not for
this slowness to anger, he would stifle us in the midst of our prayers,
wherein there are as many foolish thoughts to disgust him, as there are
petitions to implore him. The patientest angels would hardly be able to
bear with the follies of good men in acts of worship.
_Use 3._ For exhortation.
1. Meditate often on the patience of God. The devil labors for
nothing more than to deface in us the consideration and memory of this
perfection. He is an envious creature; and since it hath reached out
itself to us and not to him, he envies God the glory of it, and man the
advantage of it: but God loves to have the volumes of it studied, and
daily turned over by us. We cannot without an inexcusable wilfulness
miss the thoughts of it, since it is visible in every bit of bread, and
breath of air in ourselves, and all about us.
(1.) The frequent consideration of his patience would render God
highly amiable to us. It is a more endearing argument than his mere
goodness; his goodness to us as creatures, endowing us with such
excellent faculties, furnishing us with such a commodious world, and
bestowing upon us so many attendants for our pleasure and service,
and giving us a lordship over his other works, deserves our affection:
but his patience to us as sinners, after we have merited the greatest
wrath, shows him to be of a sweeter disposition than creating goodness
to unoffending creatures; and, consequently, speaks a greater {b517}
love in him, and bespeaks a greater affection from us. His creating
goodness discovered the majesty of his Being, and the greatness of
his mind, but this the sweetness and tenderness of his nature. In this
patience he exceeds the mildness of all creatures to us; and therefore
should be enthroned in our affections above all other creatures. The
consideration of this would make us affect him for his nature as well
as for his benefits.
(2.) The consideration of his patience would make us frequent and
serious in the exercise of repentance. In its nature it leads to it,
and the consideration of it would engage us to it, and melt us in the
exercise of it. Could we deeply think of it without being touched with
a sense of the kindness of our forbearing Creditor and Governor? Could
we gaze upon it, nay, could we glance upon it, without relenting at
our offending one of so mild a nature, without being sensibly affected,
that he hath preserved us so long from being loaded with those chains
of darkness, under which the devils groan? This forbearance hath
good reason to make sin and sinners ashamed. That you are in being,
is not for want of advantages enough in his hand against you; many a
forfeiture you have made, and many an engagement you have broke; he
hath scarce met with any other dealing from us, than what had treachery
in it. Whatsoever our sincerity is, we have no reason to boast of it,
when we consider what mixtures there are in it, and what swarms of base
motions taint it. Hath he not lain pressed and groaning under our sins,
as a “cart is pressed with sheaves” (Amos ii. 13), when one shake of
himself, as Sampson, might have rid him of the burden, and dismissed us
in his fury into hell? If we should often ask our consciences why have
we done thus and thus against so mild a God, would not the reflection
on it put us to the blush? If men would consider, that such a time they
provoked God to his face, and yet not have felt his sword; such a time
they blasphemed him, and made a reproach of his name, and his thunder
did not stop their motion; such a time they fell into an abominable
brutishness, yet he kept the punishment of devils, the unclean spirits,
from reaching them; such a time he bore an open affront from them, when
they scoffed at his word, and he did not send a destruction, and laugh
at it: would not such a meditation work some strange kind of relentings
in men? What if we should consider, that we cannot do a sinful act
without the support of his concurring Providence? We cannot see, hear,
move, without his concourse. All creatures we use for our necessity or
pleasure, are supported by him in the very act of assisting to pleasure
us; and when we abuse those creatures against him, which he supports
for our use, how great is his patience to bear with us, that he doth
not annihilate those creatures, or at least embitter their use! What
issue could reasonably be expected from this consideration, but, “O
wretched man that I am, to serve myself of God’s power to affront him,
and of his long‑suffering to abuse him?” O infinite patience to employ
that power to preserve me, that might have been used to punish me! He
is my Creator, I could not have a being without him, and yet I offend
him! He is my Preserver, I cannot maintain my being without him, and
yet I affront him! Is this a {b518} worthy requital of God (Deut.
xxxii. 6), “Do you thus requite the Lord?” would be the heart‑breaking
reflection. How would it give men a fuller prospect of the depravation
of their nature than anything else; that their corruption should be so
deep and strong, that so much patience could not overcome it! It would
certainly make a man ashamed of his nature as well as his actions.
(3.) The consideration of his patience would make us resent more the
injuries done by others to God. A patient sufferer, though a deserving
sufferer, attracts the pity of men, that have a value for any virtue,
though clouded with a heap of vice. How much more should we have a
concern of God, who suffers so many abuses from others! and be grieved,
that so admirable a patience should be slighted by men, who solely live
by and under the daily influence of it! The impression of this would
make us take God’s part, as it is usual with men to take the part of
good dispositions that lie under oppression.
(4.) It would make us patient under God’s hand. His slowness to anger
and his forbearance is visible, in the very strokes we feel in this
life. We have no reason to murmur against him, who gives us so little
cause, and in the greatest afflictions gives us more occasion of
thankfulness than of repining. Did not slowness to the extremest anger
moderate every affliction, it had been a scorpion instead of a rod. We
have reason to bless Him, who, from his long‑suffering, sends temporal
sufferings, where eternal are justly due. (Ezra ix. 13), “Thou hast
punished us less than our iniquities do deserve.” His indulgences
towards us have been more than our corrections, and the length of his
patience hath exceeded the sharpness of his rod. Upon the account of
his long‑suffering, our mutinies against God have as little to excuse
them, as our sins against him have to deserve his forbearance. The
consideration of this would show us more reason to repine at our own
repinings, than at any of his smarter dealings; and the consideration
of this would make us submissive under the judgments we expect. His
undeserved patience hath been more than our merited judgments can
possibly be thought to be. If we fear the removal of the gospel for a
season, as we have reason to do, we should rather bless him, that by
his waiting patience, he hath continued it so long, than murmur, that
he threatens to take it away so late. He hath borne with us many a year,
since the light of it was rekindled, when our ancestors had but six
years’ of patience between the rise of Edward the Sixth, and the ascent
of Queen Mary, to the crown.
2. Exhortation is to admire and stand astonished at his patience, “and
bless him for it.” If you should have defiled your neighbor’s bed, or
sullied his reputation, or rifled his goods, would he have withheld
his vengeance, unless he had been too weak to execute it? We have done
worse to God than we can do to man, and yet he draws not that sword of
wrath out of the scabbard of his patience, to sheath it in our hearts.
It is not so much a wonder that any judgments are sent, as that there
are no more, and sharper. That the world shall be fired at last, is
not a thing so strange, as that fire doth not come down every day upon
some part of it. Had the disciples, that saw such excellent patterns of
mildness from their {b519} Master, and were so often urged to learn of
him that was lowly and meek, the government of the world, it had been
long since turned into ashes, since they were too forward to desire
him to open his magazine of judgments, and kindle a fire to consume
a Samaritan village, for a slight affront in comparison of what he
received from others, and afterwards from themselves in their forsaking
of him (Luke ix. 52‒54). We should admire and praise that here which
shall be praised in heaven; though patience shall cease as to its
exercise after the consummation of the world, it shall not cease from
receiving the acknowledgments of what it did, when it traversed the
stage of this earth. If the name of God be glorified, and acknowledged
in heaven, no question but this will also; since long‑suffering is one
of his Divine titles, a letter in his name, as well as “merciful, and
gracious, abundant in goodness and truth.” And there is good reason to
think that the patience exercised towards some, before converting grace
was ordered to seize upon them, will bear a great part in the anthems
of heaven. The greater his long‑suffering hath been to men, that lay
covered with their own dung, a long time before they were freed by
grace from their filth; the more admiringly and loudly they will cry up
his mercy to them, after they have passed the gulf, and see a deserved
hell at a distance from them, and many in that place of torment who
never had the tastes of so much forbearance. If mercy will be praised
there, that which began the alphabet of it, cannot be forgot. If Paul
speak so highly of it in a damping world, and under the pull‑backs
of a “body of death,” as he doth 1 Tim. i. 16, 17: “For this cause I
obtained mercy; that Christ might show forth all long‑suffering. Now
unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be
honor, and glory, for ever and ever. Amen.” No doubt, but he will have
a higher note for it, when he is surrounded with a heavenly flame, and
freed from all remains of dulness. Shall it be praised above, and have
we no notes for it here below? Admire Christ, too, who sued out your
reprieve upon the account of his merit. As mercy acts not upon any
but in Christ, so neither had patience borne with any but in Christ.
The pronouncing the arrest of judgment (Gen. viii. 21) was when “God
smelled a sweet savor from Noah’s sacrifice,” not from the beasts
offered, but the anti‑typical sacrifice represented. That we may be
raised to bless God for it, let us consider,
(1.) The multitude of our provocations. Though some have blacker
guilt than others, and deeper stains, yet let none wipe his mouth,
but rather imagine himself to have but little reason to bless it. Are
not all our offences as many as there have been minutes in our lives?
All the moments of our continuance in the world have been moments of
his patience and our ingratitude. Adam was punished for one sin, Moses
excluded Canaan for a passionate unbelieving word. Ananias and Sapphira
lost their lives for one sin against the Holy Ghost. One sin sullied
the beauty of the world, defaced the works of God, and cracked heaven
and earth in pieces, had not infinite satisfaction been proposed to
the provoked Justice by the Redeemer; and not one sin committed, but
is of the same {b520} venomous nature. How many of those contradictions
against himself hath he borne with! Had we been only unprofitable to
him, his forbearance of us had been miraculous; but how much doth it
exceed a miracle, and lift itself above the meanness of a conjunction
with such an epithet, since we have been provoking! Had there been
no more than our impudent or careless rushings into his presence in
worship; had they been only sins of omission, and sins of ignorance,
it had been enough to have put a stand to any further operations of
this perfection towards us. But add to those, sins of commission,
sins against knowledge, sins against spiritual motions, sins against
repeated resolutions, and pressing admonitions, the neglects of all
the opportunities of repentance; put them all together, and we can
as little recount them, as the sands on the sea‑shore. But what, do
I only speak of particular men? View the whole world, and if our own
iniquities render it an amazing patience, what a mighty supply will be
made to it in all the numerous and weighty provocations, under which
he hath continued the world for so many revolutions of years and ages!
Have not all those pressed into his presence with a loud cry, and
demanded a sentence from justice? yet hath not the Judge been overcome
by the importunity of our sins? Were the devils punished for one sin,
a proud thought, and that not committed against the blood of Christ,
as we have done numberless times; yet hath not God made us partakers in
their punishment, though we have exceeded them in the quality of their
sin. O admirable patience! that would bear with me under so many, while
he would not bear with the sinning angels for one.[1042]
(2.) Consider how mean things we are, who have provoked him. What is
man but a vile thing, that a God, abounding with all riches, should
take care of so abject a thing, much more to bear so many affronts
from such a drop of matter, such a nothing creature! That he that hath
anger at his command, as well as pity, should endure such a detestable,
deformed creature by sin, to fly in his face! “What is man, that thou
art mindful of him?” (Ps. viii.) אנוש, miserable, incurable man, derived
from a word, that signifies to be incurably sick. Man is “Adam,” earth
from his earthly original, and “Enoch,” incurable from his corruption.
Is it not worthy to be admired, that a God of infinite glory should
wait on such Adams, worms of earth, and be, as it were, a servant, and
attendant to such Enochs, sickly and peevish creatures?
(3.) Consider who it is that is thus patient. He it is that, with
one breath, could turn heaven and earth, and all the inhabitants of
both, into nothing; that could, by one thunderbolt, have razed up the
foundations of a cursed world. He that wants not instruments without
to ruin us, that can arm our own consciences against us, and can drown
us in our own phlegm; and, by taking out one pin from our bodies,
cause the whole frame to fall asunder. Besides, it is a God that, while
he suffers the sinner, hates the sin more than all the holy men upon
earth, or angels in heaven, can do; so that his patience for a minute
transcends the patience of all creatures, from the creation to the
dissolution of the world: because it is the patience of a {b521} God,
infinitely more sensible to the cursed quality of sin, and infinitely
more detesting it.
(4.) Consider how long he hath forborne his anger. A reprieve for a
week or a month is accounted a great favor in civil states; the civil
law enacts, “That if the emperor commanded a man to be condemned, the
execution was to be deferred thirty days: because in that time the
prince’s anger might be appeased.”[1043] But how great a favor is it
to be reprieved thirty years for many offences, every one of which
deserves death more at the hands of God than any offence can at the
hands of man! Paul was, according to the common account, but about
thirty years old at his conversion; and how much doth he elevate
Divine long‑suffering! Certainly there are many who have more reason,
as having larger quantities of patience cut out to them, who have
lived to see their own gray hairs in a rebellious posture against God,
before grace brought them to a surrender. We were all condemned in
the womb; our lives were forfeited the first moment of our breath, but
patience hath stopped the arrest; the merciful Creditor deserves to
have acknowledgment from us, who hath laid by his bond so many years
without putting it in suit against us. Many of your companions in sin
have perhaps been surprised long ago, and haled to an eternal prison;
nothing is remaining of them but their dust, and the time is not yet
come for your funeral. Let it be considered, that that God that would
not wait upon the fallen angels one instant after their sin, nor give
them a moment’s space of repentance, hath prolonged the life of many a
sinner in the world to innumerable moments, to 420,000 minutes in the
space of a year, to 8,400,000 minutes in the space of twenty years. The
damned in hell would think it a great kindness to have but a year’s,
month’s, nay, day’s respite, as a space to repent in.
(5.) Consider also, how many have been taken away under shorter
measures of patience: some have been struck into a hell of misery,
while thou remainest upon an earth of forbearance. In a plague, the
destroying angel hath hewed down others, and passed by us; the arrows
have flew about our heads, passed over us, and stuck in the heart of
a neighbor. How many rich men, how many of our friends and familiars,
have been seized by death since the beginning of the year, when they
least thought of it, and imagined it far from them! Have you not known
some of your acquaintance snatched away in the height of a crime? Was
not the same wrath due to you as well as to them! And had it not been
as dreadful for you to be so surprised by Him as it was for them? Why
should he take a less sturdy sinner out of thy company, and let thee
remain still upon the earth? If God had dealt so with you, how had
you been cut off, not only from the enjoyment of this life, but the
hopes of a better! And if God had made such a providence beneficial for
reclaiming you, how much reason have you to acknowledge him! He that
hath had least patience, hath cause to admire; but those that have
more, ought to exceed others in blessing him for it. If God had put
an end to your natural life before you had made provision for eternal,
how deplorable would your condition have been! {b522} Consider also,
whoever have been sinners formerly of a deeper note; might not God
have struck a man in the embraces of his harlots, and choked him in the
moment of his excessive and intemperate healths, or on the sudden have
spurted fire and brimstone into a blasphemer’s mouth? What if God had
snatched you away, when you had been sleeping in some great iniquity,
or sent you while burning in lust to the fire it merited? Might he not
have cracked the string that linked your souls to your bodies, in the
last sickness you had? And what then had become of you? What could
have been expected to succeed your impenitent state in this world, but
howlings in another? but he reprieved you upon your petitions, or the
solicitations of your friends; and have you not broke your word with
him? Have your hearts been steadfast; hath he not yet waited, expecting
when you would put your vows and resolutions into execution? What need
had he to cry out to any so loud and so long, O you fools, “how long
will you love foolishness?” (Prov. i. 22), when he might have ceased
his crying to you, and have by your death prevented your many neglects
of him? Did he do all this that any of us might add new sins to our old;
or rather, that we should bless him for his forbearance, comply with
the end of it in reforming our lives, and having recourse to his mercy?
3. Exhortion; therefore presume not upon his patience. The exercise of
it is not eternal; you are at present under his patience; yet, while
you are unconverted, you are also under his anger (Ps. vii. 11), “God
is angry with the wicked every day.” You know not how soon his anger
may turn his patience aside, and step before it. It may be his sword
is drawn out of his scabbard, his arrows may be settled in his bow; and
perhaps there is but a little time before you may feel the edge of the
one or the point of the other: and then there will be no more time for
patience in God to us, or petition from us to him. If we repent here
he will pardon us. If we defer repentance, and die without it, he will
have no longer mercy to pardon, nor patience to bear. What is there in
our power but the present? the future time we cannot command, the past
time we cannot recall; squander not then the present away. The time
will come when “time shall be no more,” and then long‑suffering shall
be no more. Will you neglect the time, wherein patience acts, and
vainly hope for a time beyond the resolves of patience? Will you spend
that in vain, which goodness hath allotted you for other purposes? What
an estimate will you make of a little forbearance to respite death,
when you are gasping under the stroke of its arrows! How much would you
value some few days of those many years you now trifle away! Can any
think God will be always at an expense with them in vain, that he will
have such riches trampled under their feet, and so many editions of
his patience be made waste paper? Do you know how few sands are yet to
run in your glass? Are you sure that He that waits to‑day, will wait
as well to‑morrow? How can you tell, but that God that is slow to anger
to‑day, may be swift to it the next? Jerusalem had but a day of peace,
and the most careless sinner hath no more. When their day was done,
they were destroyed by famine, pestilence, or sword, or led into a
doleful {b523} captivity. Did God make our lives so uncertain, and
the duration of his forbearance unknown to us, that we should live
in a lazy neglect of his glory, and our own happiness? If you should
have more patience in regard of your lives, do you know whether you
shall have the effectual offers of grace? As your lives depend upon his
will, so your conversion depends solely upon his grace. There have been
many examples of those miserable wretches, that have been left to a
reprobate sense, after they have a long time abused Divine forbearance.
Though he waits, yet he “binds up sin.” (Hos. xiii. 12), “The sin of
Ephraim is bound up,” as bonds are bound up by a creditor till a fit
opportunity: when God comes to put the bond in suit, it will be too
late to wish for that patience we have so scornfully despised. Consider
therefore the end of patience. The patience of God considered in itself,
without that which it tends to, affords very little comfort; it is but
a step to pardoning mercy, and it may be without it, and often is. Many
have been reprieved that were never forgiven; hell is full of those
that had patience as well as we, but not one that accepted pardoning
grace went within the gates of it. Patience leaves men, when their sins
have ripened them for hell; but pardoning grace never leaves men till
it hath conducted them to heaven. His patience speaks him placable,
but doth not assure us that he is actually appeased. Men may hope
that a long‑suffering tends to a pardon, but cannot be assured of
a pardon, but by something else above mere long‑suffering. Rest not
then upon bare patience, but consider the end of it; it is not that
any should sin more freely, but repent more meltingly; it is not to
spirit rebellion, but give a merciful stop to it. Why should any be so
ambitious of their ruin, as to constrain God to ruin them against the
inclinations of his sweet disposition?
4. The fourth exhortation is, Let us imitate God’s patience in
our own to others. He is unlike God that is hurried, with an unruly
impetus, to punish others for wronging him. The consideration of Divine
patience should make us square ourselves according to that pattern. God
hath exercised a long‑suffering from the fall of Adam to this minute
on innumerable subjects, and shall we be transported with desire of
revenge upon a single injury? If God were not “slow to wrath,” a sinful
world had been long ago torn up from the foundation. And if revenge
should be exercised by all men against their enemies, what man should
have been alive, since there is not a man without an enemy? If every
man were like Saul, breathing out threatenings, the world would not
only be an aceldema, but a desert. How distant are they from the nature
of God, who are in a flame upon every slight provocation from a sense
of some feeble and imaginary honor, that must bloody their sword for
a trifle, and write their revenge in wounds and death! When God hath
his glory every day bespattered, yet he keeps his sword in his sheath;
what a woe would it be to the world, if he drew it upon every affront!
This is to be like brutes, dogs, or tigers, that snarl, bite, and
devour, upon every slight occasion: but to be patient is to be divine,
and to show ourselves acquainted with the disposition of God. “Be you
therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. v. 48):
{b524} _i. e._ Be you perfect and good; for he had been exhorting
them to bless them that cursed them, and to do good to them that hated
them, and that from the example God had set them, in causing his sun to
rise upon the evil as well as the good. “Be you therefore perfect.” To
conclude: as patience is God’s perfection, so it is the accomplishment
of the soul: and as his “slowness to anger” argues the greatness of his
power over himself, so an unwillingness to revenge is a sign of a power
over ourselves which is more noble than to be a monarch over others.
{b525} INDEX.
A.
_Acquaintance_ with God.
Men are unwilling to have any, i. 158.
See _Communion_.
_Actions._
A greater proof of principles than words, i. 92.
All are known by God, i. 424.
_Activity._
Required in spiritual worship, i. 227, 228
_Adam._
The greatness of his sin, ii. 269, 429.
See _Man_, and _Fall of Man_.
_Additions._
In matters of religion an invasion of God’s sovereignty,
ii. 432, 433.
See _Worship_, and _Ceremonies_.
_Admiration._
Ought to be exercised in spiritual worship, i. 233.
_Affections_, human.
In what sense ascribed to God, i. 340‒343.
_Afflictions_, sharp.
Make Atheists fear there is a God, i. 81.
Make us impatient (see _Impatience_).
We should be patient under them (see _Patience_).
Many call on God only under them, i. 151.
Fill us with distraction in the worship of God, i. 258.
The presence of God a comfort in them, i. 399;
and his knowledge, i. 488.
The wisdom of God apparent in them, i. 547‒550.
The wisdom of God a comfort in them, i. 593;
and his power, ii. 98, 99;
and his sovereignty, ii. 451.
Do not impeach his goodness, ii. 243, 244.
The goodness of God seen in them, ii. 309‒311.
His goodness a comfort in them, ii. 342.
Acts of God’s sovereignty, ii. 373‒376;
the consideration of which would make us entertain them
as we ought, ii. 456.
_Age._
Many neglect the serving of God till old, i. 113.
_Air._
How useful a creature, i. 54.
_Almighty._
How often God is so called in Scripture, ii. 10.
How often in Job, ii. 36.
_Angels._
Good, what benefit they have by Christ, i. 536, ii. 263, 264.
Not instruments in the creation of man, ii. 41.
Evil, not redeemed, ii. 263, 264.
_Angels._
Not governors of the world, ii. 328, 329.
Subject to God, ii. 381, 382.
_Apostasy._
Men apostatize from God when his will crosses theirs, i. 135.
In times of persecution, i. 149, 150.
By reason of practical atheism, i. 167.
_Apostles_, the first preachers of the gospel.
Mean and worthless men, ii. 69‒71.
Spirited by Divine power for spreading of it, ii. 72‒74.
The wisdom of God seen in using such instruments, i. 578, 579.
_Applauding_ ourselves.
See _Pride_.
_Atheism._
Opens a door to all manner of wickedness, i. 24.
Some spice of it in all men, i. 25‒27.
The greatest folly, i. 24‒77.
Common in our days, i. 26, 79, 80.
Strikes at the foundation of all religion, i. 26.
We should establish ourselves against it, _ib._
It is against the light of natural reason, i. 2.
Against the universal consent of all nations, i. 29, 30.
But few, if any, professed it in former ages, i. 32‒34, 80.
Would root up the foundations of all government, i. 77.
Introduce all evil into the world, i. 78.
Pernicious to the atheist himself, i. 79.
The cause of public judgments, i. 80.
Men’s lusts the cause of it, i. 82.
Promoted by the devil most since the destruction of
idolatry, i. 84.
Uncomfortable, i. 85.
Directions against it, i. 87.
All sin founded in a secret atheism, i. 93.
_Atheism_, practical.
Natural to man, i. 89.
Natural since the fall, i. 90.
To all men, _ib._
Proved by arguments, i. 99‒161.
We ought to be humbled for it, both in ourselves and
others, i. 167.
How great a sin it is, i. 169‒171.
Misery will attend it, i. 171, 172.
We should watch against it, _ib._
Directions against it, i. 172, 173.
_Atheist._
Can never prove there is no God, i. 81.
All the creatures fight against him, _ib._
In afflictions, suspects and fears there is a God, i. 82.
How much pains he takes to blot out the notion, _ib._
Suppose it were an even lay that there were no God, yet he
is very imprudent, i. 83.
Uses not means to inform himself, _ib._
{b526}_Atoms._
The world not made by a casual concourse of them, i. 50.
_Attributes_ of God.
Bear a comfortable respect to believers, i. 513.
_Authority._
How distinguished from power, ii. 364.
B.
_Best_ we have.
Ought to be given to God, i. 242‒244.
_Blessings._
Spiritual, God only the author of, ii. 357.
Temporal, God uses a sovereignty in bestowing them,
ii. 412, 413.
See _Riches_.
_Body_ of man.
How curiously wrought, i. 63‒67, 523.
Every human one hath different features, i. 66.
God hath none (see _Spirit_).
We must worship God with our bodies, i. 219‒222;
yet not with our bodies only.
See _Soul_, and _Worship_.
_Bodily_ shape.
We must not conceive of God under a, i. 197, 198.
_Bodily_ members.
Ascribed to him (see _Members_.)
_Brain._
How curious a workmanship, i. 65.
C.
_Calf_, golden.
The Israelites worshipped the true God under, i. 195.
_Callings._
God fits and inclines men to several, i. 531, 532; i. 598.
Appoints every man’s calling, ii. 421.
_Cause_, a first.
Of all things, i. 50, 51;
which doth necessarily exist, and is infinitely
perfect, i. 51.
_Censure._
God not to be censured in his counsels, actions, or
revelations, i. 295.
Or in his ways, i. 605, 606.
_Censuring_ the hearts of others.
Is an injury to God’s omniscience, i. 478.
Men, is a contempt of God’s sovereignty, ii. 441.
_Ceremonial Law._
Abolished to promote spiritual worship, i. 213.
Called flesh, _ib._
Not a fit means to bring the heart into a spiritual frame,
i. 214.
Rather hindered than furthered spiritual worship, i. 215, 216.
God never testified himself well‑pleased with it, nor intended
it should always last, i. 216‒218.
The abrogation of it doth not argue any change in God, i. 346.
The holiness of God appears in it, ii. 131, 132.
_Ceremonies._
Men are prone to bring their own into God’s worship,
i. 133, 134.
See _Worship_, and _Additions_, &c.
_Chance._
The world not made nor governed by it, i. 59.
_Charity._
Men have bad ends in it, i. 153.
We should exercise it, ii. 353, 354.
The consideration of God’s sovereignty would promote it,
ii. 456.
_Cheerful_, in God’s worship.
We should be, i. 235.
_Christ._
His Godhead proved from his eternity, i. 291‒293.
From his omnipresence, i. 392, 393.
From his immutability, i. 346‒348.
From his knowledge of God, all creatures, the hearts of men,
and his prescience of their inclinations, i. 465‒469.
From his omnipotence, manifest in creation, preservation and
resurrection, ii. 80‒86.
From his holiness, ii. 190.
From his wisdom, i. 558.
_Christ._
Is God man, ii. 62.
Spiritual worship offered to God through him, i. 241, 242.
The imperfectness of our services should make us prize his
mediation, i. 261.
The only fit Person in the Trinity to assume our nature,
i. 558‒560.
Fitted to be our Mediator and Saviour by his two natures,
i. 563‒565.
Should be imitated in his holiness, and often viewed by us
to that end, ii. 200‒207.
The greatest gift, ii. 266‒269.
Appointed by the Father to be our Redeemer, ii. 424‒426.
_Christian_ religion.
Its excellency, i. 167.
Of Divine extraction, i. 580.
Most opposed in the world, i. 111.
See _Gospel_.
_Church._
God’s eternity a comfort to her in all her distresses and
threatenings of her enemies, i. 299, 300.
Under God’s special providence, i. 406.
His infinite knowledge a comfort in all subtile contrivances
of men against her, i. 483, 484.
Troublers of her peace by corrupt doctrines no better than
devils, i. 498.
God’s wisdom a comfort to her in her greatest dangers, i. 594.
Hath shown his power in her deliverance in all ages, i. 277,
ii. 55;
and in the destruction of her enemies, ii. 56‒59.
Ought to take comfort in his power in her lowest estate,
ii. 101.
Should not fear her enemies (see _Fear_).
His goodness a comfort in dangers, ii. 344.
How great is God’s love to her, ii. 449‒515.
His sovereignty a comfort to her, ii. 452, 453.
He will comfort her in her fears, and destroy her enemies,
ii. 472, 473.
God exercises patience towards her, ii. 504, 505;
for her sake to the wicked also, ii. 506.
Why her enemies are not immediately destroyed, ii. 513.
_Commands_ of God.
See _Laws_.
_Comfort._
The holiness of God to be relied on for, ii. 190, 191.
_Comfort_ us.
Creatures cannot, if God be angry, ii. 448.
_Comforts._
God gives great, in or after temptations, ii. 311‒313.
_Communion_ with God.
Man naturally no desire of, i. 161.
The advantage of, i. 172.
Can only be in our spirits, i. 202.
We should desire it, i. 308.
Cannot be between God and sinners, ii. 183.
Holiness only fits us for it, ii. 204, 205.
_Conceptions._
We cannot have adequate ones of God, i. 196, 197.
We ought to labor after as high ones as we can, _ib._
They must {b527} not be of him in a corporeal shape,
i. 197, 198.
There will be in them a similitude of some corporeal thing
in our fancy, i. 198, 199.
We ought to refine and spiritualize them, i. 200.
_Conceptions_, right.
Of him, a great help to spiritual worship, i. 272, 273.
_Concurrence_ of God.
To all the actions of his creatures, ii. 156, 157.
_Concurring_ to sinful actions.
No blemish to God’s holiness, ii. 157‒163.
_Conditions_, various.
Of men, a fruit of Divine wisdom, i. 531, 532.
_Conditions_ of the covenant.
See _Covenant_, _Faith_, and _Repentance_.
_Confession_ of sin.
Men may have bad ends in it, i. 153.
Partial ones a practical denial of God’s omniscience,
i. 480, 481.
_Conscience._
Proves a Deity, i. 69‒73.
Fears and stings of it in all men upon the commission
of sin, i. 70‒72;
though never so secret, i. 71, 72.
Cannot be totally shaken off, i. 72.
Comforts a man in well‑doing, i. 72, 73.
Necessary for the good of the world, i. 73.
Terrified ones wish there were no God, i. 97.
Men naturally displeased with it, when it contradicts the
desires of self, i. 123.
Obey carnal self against the light of it, i. 140, 141.
Accusations of it evidence God’s knowledge of all things,
i. 463.
God, and he only, can speak peace to it when troubled,
ii. 79, 386.
His laws only reach it, ii. 390, 391, 432, 433.
_Constancy_ in that which is good.
We should labor after, and why, i. 360, 361.
_Content_ the soul.
Nothing but an infinite good can, i. 73, 74.
See _Satisfaction_, and _Soul_.
_Contingents_ all foreknown by God.
See _Knowledge of God_.
_Contradictions._
Cannot be made true by God, ii. 26‒30;
yet this doth not overthrow God’s omnipotence, _ib._
It is an abuse of God’s power to endeavor to justify them
by it, ii. 95.
_Contrary._
Qualities linked together in the creatures, i. 52, 53, 524.
_Conversion._
Carnal self‑love a great hindrance to it, i. 137.
There may be a conversion from sin which is not good, i. 150.
Men are enemies to it, i. 160, 161.
The necessity of it, i. 163, 164.
God only can be the Author of it, i. 165, 166, ii. 396.
The wisdom of God appears in it, in the subjects, seasons,
and manner of it, i. 544‒547;
and his power, ii. 72‒78;
and his holiness, ii. 139;
and his goodness, ii. 306, 307;
and his sovereignty, ii. 396‒404.
He could convert all, ii. 399.
Not bound to convert any, ii. 401, 402.
The various means and occasions of it, ii. 421.
_Convictions_, genuine.
Would be promoted by right and strong apprehensions of
God’s holiness, ii. 191.
_Corruptions._
The knowledge of God a comfort under fears of them lurking
in the heart, i. 489, 490.
The power of God a comfort when they are strong and stirring,
ii. 99.
In God’s people shall be subdued, ii. 450, 451;
the remainders of them God orders for their good, i. 538, 544.
_Covenant_ of God.
With his people eternal, i. 297, 298;
and unchangeable, i. 354.
_Covenant_, God in.
An eternal good to his people, i. 297.
_Covenant_ of grace.
Conditions of, evidence the wisdom of God, i. 571.
Suited to man’s lapsed state, and God’s glory, _ib._
Opposite to that which was the cause of the fall, i. 572.
Suited to the common sentiments and customs of the world
and consciences of men, i. 572, 573.
Only likely to attain the end, i. 573.
Evidence God’s holiness, ii. 138.
The wisdom of God made over to believers in it, i. 593, 594;
and power, ii. 98;
and holiness, ii. 190, 191.
A promise of life implied in the covenant of works,
ii. 253, 254;
why not expressed, ii. 527.
The goodness of God manifest in making a covenant of grace
after man had broken the first, ii. 274, 275.
In the nature and tenor of it, ii. 275‒277.
In the choice gift of himself made over in it, ii. 277, 278.
In its confirmation, ii. 278, 279.
Its conditions easy, reasonable, necessary, ii. 279‒284.
It promises a more excellent reward than the life in paradise,
ii. 291‒293.
_Covetousness._
See _Riches_, and _World_.
_Creation._
The wisdom of God appears in it, i. 518‒525;
and should be meditated upon, i. 525;
motives to it, ii. 5‒9;
his power, ii. 35‒44;
his holiness, ii. 126, 127;
his goodness, ii. 244‒258.
Goodness the end and motive of it, ii. 228, 229.
Ascribed to Christ, ii. 81‒85.
The foundation of God’s dominion, ii. 368‒370.
_Creatures._
Evidence the being of God, i. 28, 42‒64;
in their production, i. 43‒51;
in their harmony, i. 52‒60;
in pursuing their several ends, i. 60‒62;
in their preservation, i. 62, 63.
Were not, and cannot be, from eternity, i. 45, 46, 292.
None of them can make themselves, i. 47‒49;
or the world, i. 49, 50.
Subservient to one another, i. 53, 378.
Regular, uniform, and constant in it, i. 56, 57.
Are various, i. 58, 519, 520.
Have several natures, i. 60.
All fight against the atheist, i. 82.
God ought to be studied in them, i. 86.
All manifest something of God’s perfections, _ib._
Setting them up as our end (see _End_).
Must not be worshipped (see _Idolatry_).
Used by man to a contrary end than God appointed, i. 148.
All are changeable, i. 355.
Therefore an immutable God to be preferred {b528} before
them, i. 358.
Are nothing to God, i. 395.
Are all known by God, i. 422, 423.
Shall be restored to their primitive end, i. 313, ii. 293.
Their beautiful order and situation, i. 520, 521.
Are fitted for their several ends, i. 522‒524.
None of them can be omnipresent, i. 378;
or omnipotent, ii. 18;
or infinitely perfect, ii. 24.
God could have made more than he hath, ii. 21, 22.
Made them all more perfect than they are, ii. 23, 24.
Yet all are made in the best manner, ii. 24, 25.
The power that is in them demonstrates a greater to be
in God, ii. 31.
Ordered by God as he pleases, ii. 57.
The meanest of them can destroy us by God’s order,
ii. 107, 448.
Making different ranks of them, doth not impeach God’s
goodness, ii. 232‒235.
Cursed for the sin of man, ii. 250, 293.
What benefit they have by the redemption of man, ii. 293, 294.
Cannot comfort us if God be angry, ii. 448.
All subject to God, ii. 381‒387.
All obey God, ii. 465, 466.
_Curiosity_ in inquiries about God’s counsels and actions.
A great folly, i. 295.
It is an injuring God’s knowledge, i. 475‒477.
It is a contempt of Divine wisdom, i. 590.
Should not be employed about what God hath not revealed,
i. 603, 604.
The consideration of God’s sovereignty would check it, ii. 457.
D.
_Day._
How necessary, i. 523.
_Death_ of Christ.
Its value is from his Divine Nature, i. 564.
Vindicated the honor of the law, both as to precept and
penalty, i. 566.
Overturned the Devil’s empire, i. 568.
He suffered to rescue us by it, ii. 268.
By the command of the Father, ii. 425, 426.
_Debauched_ persons.
Wish there were no God, i. 97.
_Decrees_ of God.
No succession in them, i. 285.
Unchangeable, i. 582, 583, ii. 451, 452.
See _Immutability_.
_Defilement._
God not capable of it from any corporeal thing, i. 201,
390, 392.
_Delight._
Holy duties should be performed with, i. 234‒236.
All delight in worship doth not prove it to be spiritual,
i. 235.
We should examine ourselves after worship, what delight we
had in it, i. 252.
_Deliverances._
Chiefly to be ascribed to God, i. 406.
The wisdom of God seen in them, i. 550‒552.
_Desires_, of man.
Naturally after an infinite good, i. 73, 74;
which evidences the being of a God, i. 74.
Men naturally have no desire of remembrance of God, converse
with him, thorough return to him, or imitation of him,
i. 159‒161.
_Devil._
Man naturally under his dominion, i. 118, 119.
God’s restraining him, how great a mercy (see _Restraint_).
Shall be totally subdued by God, i. 498.
Outwitted by God, i. 568.
His first sin, what it was, ii. 427‒429.
See _Angel_.
_Direction._
Men neglect to ask it of God (see _Trusting in ourselves_).
Should seek it of him, i. 585.
Not to do it, how sinful, i. 589, 590.
Should not presume to give it to him, i. 591.
_Disappointments._
Make many cast off their obedience to God, i. 115, 116.
God disappoints the devices of men, ii. 418‒420.
_Dispensations._
Of God with his own law, ii. 391‒393.
_Distance_ from God.
Naturally affected by men, i. 158, 159.
How great it is, ii. 180.
_Distractions_ in the service of God.
How natural, i. 114, 256.
Will be so while we have natural corruption within,
i. 256, 257;
while we are in the Devil’s precinct, i. 257.
Most frequent in time of affliction, i. 258.
May be improved to make us more spiritual, i. 258‒261;
when we are humbled for them in worship, i. 258, 259;
and for the baseness of our natures, the cause of them,
i. 259.
Make us prize duties of worship the more, _ib._
Fill us with admirations of the graciousness of God, i. 260.
Prize the meditation of Christ, i. 261.
They should not discourage us, if we resist them, _ib._;
and if we narrowly watch against them, i. 262.
Should be speedily cast out, i. 274.
Thoughts of God’s presence a remedy against them, i. 404.
_Distresses._
See _Afflictions_.
_Distrust_ of God.
A contempt of God’s wisdom, i. 593;
and his power, ii. 93;
and of his goodness, ii. 319, 320.
Too great fear of man arises from it, ii. 94.
See _Trusting in God_, and _in ourselves_.
_Divinity._
Of Christ (see _Christ_).
Of the Holy Ghost (see _Holy Ghost_).
_Doctrines._
That are self‑pleasing desired by men, i. 139.
See _Truths_.
_Dominion_ of God.
Distinguished from his power, ii. 364.
All his other attributes fit him for it, ii. 364, 365.
Acknowledged by all, _ib._
Inseparable from the notion of God, ii. 365, 366.
We cannot suppose God a creator without it, ii. 366.
Cannot be renounced by God himself, _ib._;
nor communicated to any creature, ii. 366, 367.
Its foundation, ii. 367‒372.
It is independent, ii. 372, 373;
absolute, ii. 373‒377;
yet not tyrannical, ii. 377, 378;
managed with wisdom, righteousness, and goodness,
ii. 378‒380.
It is eternal, ii. 386, 387.
It is manifested as he is a lawgiver, ii. 387‒394;
as a proprietor, ii. 394‒413;
as a governor, ii. 413‒422;
as a redeemer, ii. 422‒426.
The contempt of it, how great, ii. 426, 427.
{b529} All sin is a contempt of it, ii. 427, 428.
The first thing the devil aimed against, ii. 428, 429;
and Adam, ii. 429.
Invaded by the usurpations of men, ii. 430, 431.
Wherein it is contemned as he is a lawgiver, ii. 431‒435;
as a proprietor, ii. 435, 436;
as a governor, ii. 436‒441.
It is terrible to the wicked, ii. 446‒448.
Comfortable to the righteous, ii. 449‒453.
Should be often meditated upon by us, ii. 453, 454.
The advantages of so doing, ii. 454‒457.
It should teach us humility, ii. 458.
Calls for our praise and thanks, ii. 459, 460.
Should make us promote his honor, ii. 461, 462.
Calls for fear, prayer, and obedience, ii. 462, 463.
Affords motives to obedience, ii. 463‒466;
and shows the manner of it, ii. 466‒469.
Calls for patience, ii. 469.
Affords motives to it, ii. 469‒471.
Shows us the true nature of it, ii. 471.
_Duties_ of religion.
Performed often merely for self‑interest, i. 150‒154.
Men unwieldy to them, i. 151.
Perform them only in affliction, i. 151, 152.
See _Service of God_, and _Worship_.
_Dwelling_ in heaven, and in the ark.
How to be understood of God, i. 385, 386.
E.
_Ear_ of man.
How curious an organ, i. 65.
_Earth._
How useful, i. 54, 55.
The wisdom of God seen in it, i. 522.
_Earthly_ things.
See _World_.
_Ejaculations._
How useful, i. 272.
_Elect._
God knows all their persons, i. 485, 486.
_Election._
Evidenced by holiness, ii. 205.
The sovereignty of God appears in it, ii. 394‒396.
Not grounded on merit in the creature, ii. 396.
Nor on foresight of faith and good works, ii. 396‒399.
_Elements._
Though contrary, yet linked together, i. 52, 53.
_End._
All creatures conspire to one common end, i. 53‒60;
pursue their several ends, though they know them not,
i. 60‒62.
Men have corrupt ends in religious duties, i. 132, 150‒154;
for evil ends, i. 105, 106;
desire the knowledge of God’s law, for by ends, i. 104.
Man naturally would make himself his own end, i. 135‒141;
how sinful this is, i. 141, 142;
would make anything his end rather than God, i. 142‒144;
a creature, or a lust, i. 144‒146;
how sinful this is, _ib._;
would make himself the end of all creatures, i. 147, 149;
how sinful this is, i. 149;
would make himself the end of God, i. 148‒154;
how sinful this is, i. 154, 155;
cannot make God his end, till converted, i. 163, 164.
Spiritual ones required in spiritual worship, i. 239‒241;
many have other ends in it, _ib._
God orders the hearts of all men to his own, ii. 54.
God hath one, and man another in sin, i. 161, 162.
We should make God our end, ii. 206.
God makes himself his own end, how to be understood,
ii. 228‒230.
His being the end of all things is one foundation of his
dominion, ii. 370, 371.
Not using God’s gifts for the end for which he gave them,
how great a sin, ii. 435, 436.
_Enemies._
Of the church (see _Church_).
We should be kind to our worst enemies, ii. 354, 355.
_Enjoyment_ of God.
In heaven always fresh and glorious, i. 298, 299.
We should endeavor after it here, ii. 344‒346.
_Envy._
Men envy the gifts and prosperities of others, i. 131, 132.
An imitation of the devil, _ib._
A sense of God’s goodness would check it, ii. 351.
A contempt of God’s dominion, ii. 435.
_Essence_ of God.
Cannot be seen, i. 184, 185.
Is unchangeable, i. 319.
_Eternity._
A property of God and Christ, i. 278, 279, 293, 294.
What it is, i. 280.
In what respects God is eternal, i. 280‒286.
That he is so, proved, i. 286‒291.
God’s incommunicable property, i. 44‒46, 291‒293.
Dreadful to sinners, i. 295, 296.
Comfortable to the righteous, i. 297‒301.
The thoughts of it should abate our pride, i. 302‒304;
take off our love and confidence from the world, i. 304‒306.
We should provide for a happy interest in it, i. 306;
often meditate on it, i. 307, 308.
Renders him worthy of our choicest affections, i. 308;
and our best service, i. 308, 309.
_Exaltation_ of Christ.
The holiness of God appears in it, ii. 136, 137.
His goodness to us as well as to Christ, ii. 268, 269;
and his sovereignty, ii. 426.
_Examination_ of ourselves.
Before and after worship, and wherein our duty,
i. 252‒256, 275.
_Experience_ of God’s goodness.
A preservative against atheism, i. 86, 87.
_Extremity._
Then God usually delivers his church, ii. 101.
F.
_Faith._
The same thing may be the object of it, and of reason
too, i. 27‒29.
Must be exercised in spiritual worship, i. 230, 231.
The wisdom, holiness, and goodness of God in prescribing it
as a condition of the covenant of grace (see _Covenant_).
Must look back as far as the foundation promise, i. 499.
Only the obedience flowing from it acceptable to God,
i. 504, 505.
Distinct, but inseparable from obedience, i. 505, 506.
Foresight of it not the ground of election, ii. 396‒399.
_Fall_ of man.
God no way the author of it, {b530} ii. 123‒125, 142, 143.
How great it is, ii. 480, 481.
Doth not impeach God’s goodness, ii. 231, 232.
It is evident, ii. 325, 326;
brought a curse on the creatures (see _Creatures_).
_Falls_ of God’s children.
Turned to their good, i. 537‒547.
_Fear._
Not the cause of the belief of a God, i. 41.
Men that are under a slavish fear of him wish there were
no God, i. 98, 99.
Of man, a contempt of God’s power, ii. 93, 94.
Should be of God, and not of the pride or force of man,
ii. 106, 107.
God’s sovereignty should cause it, ii. 462.
_Features._
Different in every man, and how necessary it should be
so, i. 66, 67, 520.
_Fervency._
See _Activity_.
_Flesh._
The legal services so called, i. 213, 214.
_Fools._
Wicked men are so, i. 23, 586, 587.
_Folly._
Sin is so (see _Sin_).
_Forgetfulness_ of God.
Men naturally are prone to it, i. 159, 160.
Of his mercies a great sin (see _Mercies_).
How attributed to God, i. 421.
_Foreknowledge_ in God of sin.
No blemish to his holiness, ii. 145, 146.
See _Knowledge of God_.
_Future_ things.
Men desirous to know them, i. 476, 477.
Known by God, (see _Knowledge of God_).
G.
_Gabriel._
On what messages he was sent, ii. 75.
_Generation._
Could not be from eternity, i. 44‒46.
_Gifts._
God can bestow them on men, ii. 384, 385.
His sovereignty seen in giving greater measures to one
than another, ii. 408‒410.
_Glory_ of all they do or have.
Men are apt to ascribe to themselves, i. 139.
Of God little minded in many seemingly good actions,
i. 124‒127.
Men are more concerned for their own reputation than God’s
glory, i. 140.
Should be aimed at in spiritual worship, i. 239‒241.
God’s permission of sin is in order to it, ii. 154‒156.
Should be advanced by us, ii. 461, 462.
_God._
His existence known by the light of nature, i. 86;
by the creatures, i. 28, 29, 42‒64.
Miracles not wrought to prove it, i. 29.
Owned by the universal consent of all nations, i. 30, 31.
Never disputed of old, i. 31, 32.
Denied by very few, if any, i. 32, 33.
Constantly owned in all changes of the world, i. 34;
under anxieties of conscience, _ib._
The devil not able to root out the belief of it, i. 35.
Natural and innate, i. 35, 36.
Not introduced merely by tradition, i. 37, 38;
nor policy, i. 38, 39;
nor fear, i. 41.
Witnessed to by the very nature of man, i. 63‒75;
and by extraordinary occurrences, i. 76, 77;
impossible to demonstrate there is none, i. 81.
Motives to endeavor to be settled in the belief of it,
i. 84, 85.
Directions, i. 86, 87.
Men wish there were none, and who they are, i. 96‒99.
Two ways of describing him, negation and affirmation,
i. 181, 182.
Is active and communicative, i. 201.
Propriety in him a great blessedness (see _Covenant_).
Infinitely happy, ii. 86, 87.
_Good._
That which is materially so may be done, and not formally,
i. 120, 124‒126.
Actions cannot be performed before conversion, i. 163, 164.
The thoughts of God’s presence a spur to them, i. 404, 405.
God only is so, ii. 210, 211.
_Goodness._
Pure and perfect, the royal prerogative of God only, ii. 214.
Owned by all nations, ii. 215, 219.
Inseparable from the notion of God, ii. 216, 217.
What is meant by it, ii. 217.
How distinguished from mercy, ii. 218, 219.
Comprehends all his attributes, ii. 219, 220.
Is so by his essence, ii. 221, 222.
The chief, _ib._
It is communicative, ii. 223, 224;
necessary to him, ii. 224‒226;
voluntary, ii. 226, 227;
communicative with the greatest pleasure, ii. 227, 228;
the displaying of it, the motive and end of all his works,
ii. 228‒230.
Arguments to prove it a property of God, ii. 230, 231;
vindicated from the objections made against it, ii. 231‒244;
appears in creation, ii. 244‒258;
in redemption, ii. 258‒294;
in his government, ii. 295‒313;
frequently contemned and abused, ii. 313, 314;
the abuse and contempt of it, base and disingenuous,
ii. 314, 315;
highly resented by God, ii. 315, 316.
How it is contemned and abused, ii. 316‒325.
Men justly punished for it, ii. 326, 327.
Fits God for the government of the world, and engages him
actually to govern it, ii. 327, 328.
The ground of all religion, ii. 329, 330.
Renders God amiable to himself, ii. 331.
Should do so to us, and why, ii. 332‒335.
Renders him a fit object of trust, with motives to it,
drawn hence, ii. 335‒338;
and worthy to be obeyed and honored, ii. 338‒341.
Comfortable to the righteous, and wherein, ii. 341‒344.
Should engage us to endeavor after the enjoyment of him,
with motives, ii. 344‒347.
Should be often meditated on, and the advantages of so
doing, ii. 347‒351.
We should be thankful for it, ii. 351‒353;
and imitate it, and wherein, ii. 353‒355.
_Gospel._
Men greater enemies to, than to the law, i. 165.
Its excellency, i. 167, 501, 502.
Called spirit, i. 213.
The only means of establishment, i. 501.
Of an eternal resolution, though of a temporary revelation,
i. 502.
Mysterious, _ib._
The first preachers of it (see _Apostles_).
{b531} Its antiquity, i. 503, 504.
The goodness of God in spreading it among the Gentiles,
i. 504.
Gives no encouragement to licentiousness, _ib._
The wisdom of God in its propagation, i. 574‒580;
and power, ii. 65‒73.
See _Christian Religion_.
_Government_ of the World.
God could not manage it without immutability, i. 394;
and knowledge, i. 464, 465;
and wisdom, i. 575, 576.
The wisdom of God appears in his government of man,
as rational, i. 525‒532;
as sinful, i. 532‒544;
as restored, i. 544‒547.
The power of God appears in natural government, ii. 44‒52;
moral, ii. 52‒54;
gracious and judicial, ii. 55‒58.
The goodness of God in it, ii. 295‒313.
God only fit for it, i. 580, 581, 544; ii. 186, 327;
doth actually manage it, i. 580, 581; ii. 328, 329.
Is contemned, ii. 436‒441.
See _Laws_.
_Governor._
God’s dominion as such, ii. 413‒422.
_Grace._
The power of God in planting it, ii. 74‒78 (see _Conversion_);
and preserving it, ii. 79, 80 (see _Perseverance_).
God’s withdrawing it no blemish to his holiness, i. 166‒170.
Shall be perfected in the upright, ii. 190, 191.
God exercises a sovereignty in bestowing and denying it,
ii. 400‒404.
Means of grace (see _Means_).
_Graces._
Must be acted in worship, ii. 229‒234.
We should examine how we acted them after it, i. 253, 254.
_Growth_ in grace.
Annexed to true sanctification, ii. 358.
Should be labored after, ii. 206, 207.
H.
_Habits._
Spiritual, to be acted in spiritual worship, i. 229, 230.
The rooting up evil ones shows the power of God, ii. 76, 77.
_Hand._
Christ’s sitting at God’s right hand doth not prove the
ubiquity of his human nature, ii. 378.
_Hardness._
How God, and how man, is the cause of it, ii. 166‒168.
_Harmony_ of the creatures.
Show the being and wisdom of God, i. 52‒60.
_Heart_ of man.
How curiously contrived, i. 65.
We should examine ourselves, how our hearts are prepared
for worship, i. 252, 253;
how they are fixed in it, and how they are after it,
i. 253‒256.
God orders all men’s to his own ends, ii. 54.
_Heaven._
The enjoyment of God there will be always fresh and
glorious, i. 298, 299.
Why called God’s throne, i. 385, 386.
_Heavenly_ bodies.
Subservient to the good of the world, i. 53, 54.
_Hosea._
When he prophesied, ii. 490.
_Holiness._
A necessary ingredient in spiritual worship, i. 238, 239.
A glorious perfection of God, ii. 110, 111.
Owned to be so both by heathens and heretics, ii. 111.
God cannot be conceived without it, ii. 111, 112.
It hath an excellency above all his other perfections,
ii. 112.
Most loftily and frequently sounded forth by the
angels, _ib._
He swears by it, _ib._
It is his glory and life, ii. 112, 113.
The glory of all the rest, ii. 113, 114.
What it is, and how distinguished from righteousness,
ii. 114, 115.
His essential and necessary perfection, ii. 115, 116.
God only absolutely holy, ii. 116‒118.
Causes him to abhor all sin necessarily, intensely,
universally, and perpetually, ii. 118‒122.
Inclines him to love it in others, ii. 121, 190, 191.
So great that he cannot positively will and encourage sin
in others, or do it himself, ii. 122‒126.
Appears in his creation, ii. 126, 127;
in his government, ii. 127‒135;
in redemption, ii. 135‒138;
in justification, ii. 138;
in regeneration, ii. 139.
Defended in all his acts about sin, ii. 139‒171.
How much it is contemned in the world, and wherein,
ii. 171‒180.
To hate and scoff at it in others, how great a sin, ii. 176.
Necessarily obliges him to punish sin, ii. 181‒183;
and exact satisfaction for it, ii. 183, 184.
Fits him for the government of the world, ii. 186, 187.
Comfortable to holy men, ii. 190, 191.
Shall be perfected in the upright, _ib._
We should get, and preserve right and strong apprehensions
of it, and the advantage of so doing, ii. 191‒196.
We should glorify God for it, and how, ii. 196‒199;
and labor after a conformity to it, and wherein,
ii. 199‒201;
motives to do so, ii. 203‒205;
and directions, ii. 205‒207.
We should labor to grow in it, ii. 206, 207.
Exert it in our approaches to God, ii. 207.
Seek it at his hands, ii. 207, 208.
_Holy Ghost._
His Deity proved, ii. 86.
_Humility._
A necessary ingredient in spiritual worship, i. 237, 238.
We should examine ourselves about it after worship, i. 256.
A consideration of God’s eternity would promote it, i. 302;
and of his knowledge, i. 496, 497;
and of his wisdom, i. 597;
and of his power, ii. 106;
and of his holiness, ii. 192, 193;
and of his goodness, ii. 323;
and his sovereignty, ii. 457, 458.
_Hypocrites._
Their false pretences a virtual denial of God’s knowledge,
i. 481, 483;
it is terrible to them, i. 492.
I.
_Idleness._
It is an abuse of God’s mercies to make them an occasion
of it, ii. 323.
_Idolatry._
Of the heathens proves the belief of a God to be universal,
i. 30, 31.
The first object of it was the heavenly bodies, i. 43.
Springs from unworthy imaginations of God, i. 157.
Not countenanced {b532} by God’s omnipresence, i. 389, 390.
Springs from a want of due notion of God’s infinite power,
ii. 92.
A contempt of God’s dominion, ii. 436, 437.
_Image_ of God.
In man consists not in external form and figure, i. 192, 192.
Unreasonable to make any of him, i. 193‒195;
it is idolatry so to do, i. 195, 196.
The defacing it an injury to God’s holiness, ii. 173, 174.
Man, at first, made after it, ii. 248.
_Imaginations._
Men naturally have unworthy ones of God, i. 155, 156.
Vain ones the cause of idolatry, and superstition, and
presumption, i. 156, 157;
worse than idolatry or atheism, i. 158;
an injury to God’s holiness, ii. 172, 173.
_Imitation_ of God.
Man naturally hath no desire of it, i. 161.
We should strive to imitate his immutability in that which
is good, i. 360, 361.
In holiness, wherein, and why, and how, ii. 199‒207;
and in goodness, ii. 353‒355.
_Immortal._
God is so, i. 202.
See _Eternity of God_.
_Immutability._
A property of God, i. 316, 317;
a perfection, i. 317, 318;
a glory belonging to all his attributes, i. 318;
necessary to him, i. 318, 319.
God is immutable in his essence, i. 319‒321;
in knowledge, i. 321‒325;
in his will, though the things willed by him are not,
i. 325‒328.
This doth not infringe his liberty, i. 328.
Immutable in regard of place, i. 328, 329.
Proved by arguments, i. 320‒334, 582, 583; ii. 87.
Incommunicable to any creature, i. 334, 335, ii. 141.
Objections against it answered, i. 337‒346.
Ascribed to Christ, i. 346‒348.
A ground and encouragement to worship him, i. 348‒350.
How contrary to God in it man is, i. 350, 353.
Terrible to sinners, i. 353, 354.
Comfortable to the righteous, and wherein, i. 354‒356.
An argument for patience, i. 359.
Should make us prefer God before all creatures, i. 358.
We should imitate this his immutability in goodness,
motives to it, i. 360, 361.
_Impatience_ of men.
Is great when God crosses them, i. 130, 131.
A contempt of God’s wisdom, i. 592;
and of his goodness, ii. 317, 318;
and of his dominion, ii. 437, 438.
_Impenitence._
An abuse of God’s goodness, ii. 319.
It will clear the equity of God’s justice, ii. 506, 507.
An abuse of patience, ii. 508, 509.
_Imperfections._
In holy duties we should be sensible of, i. 232.
Should make us prize Christ’s meditation, i. 261.
_Impossible._
Some things are in their own nature, ii. 26, 27.
Some things so to the nature and being of God, and his
perfections, ii.27‒29.
Some things so, because of God’s ordination, ii. 29, 30.
Do not infringe the almightiness of God’s power, ii. 29‒30.
_Incarnation_ of Christ.
The power of God seen in it, ii. 59‒65.
_Incomprehensible._
God is so, i. 394, 395.
_Inconstancy._
Natural to man, i. 350‒353. In the knowledge of the truth,
i. 350, 351;
in will and affections, i. 351;
in practice, i. 352‒354;
is the root of much evil, _ib._
_Infirmities._
The knowledge of God a comfort to his people under them,
i. 488, 489.
The goodness of God in bearing with them, ii. 309.
His patience a comfort under them, ii. 516.
_Injuries._
Men highly concerned for those that are done to themselves,
little for those that are done to God, i. 140.
God’s patience under them should make us resent them,
ii. 517, 518.
_Injustice._
A contempt of God’s dominion, ii. 435.
_Innocent_ person.
Whether God may inflict eternal torments upon him,
ii. 375, 380, 381.
_Instruments._
Men are apt to pay a service to them rather than to God,
i. 144;
which is a contempt of divine power, ii. 94, 95;
and of his goodness, ii. 324, 325.
Deliverances not to be chiefly ascribed to them, i. 407.
God makes use of sinful ones, i. 534, 535.
None in creation, ii. 40‒42.
The power of God seen in effecting his purposes by weak
ones, ii. 58, 59.
_Inventions_ of men.
See _Addition_ and _Worship_.
J.
_Jehovah._
Signifies God’s eternity, i. 290;
and his immutability, i. 330.
God called so but once in the book of Job, ii. 36.
_Job._
When he lived, ii. 8.
_Jonah._
How he came to be believed by the Ninevites, i. 537.
_Joy._
A necessary ingredient in spiritual worship, i. 234‒236.
Should accompany all our duties, ii. 468, 469.
_Judging_ the hearts of others.
A great sin, i. 478, 479.
Their eternal state a greater, _ib._
_Judgment‑day._
Necessity of it, i. 470, 471, 583, 584.
_Judgments_, extraordinary.
Prove the being of God, i. 74, 75.
Men are apt to put bold interpretations on them, i. 133.
God is just in them, i. 162, 163;
especially after the abuse of his goodness and patience,
ii. 326, 327, 506, 507.
On God’s enemies, matter of praise, ii. 110.
Declare God’s holiness, ii. 132‒135;
which should be observed in them, ii. 197.
Not sent without warning, ii. 241, 242, 488‒491.
Mercy mixed with them, ii. 242, 243.
God sends them on whom he pleases, ii. 420.
Delayed a long time {b533} where there is no repentance,
ii. 491, 492.
God unwilling to pour them out when he cannot delay them any
longer, ii. 492, 493.
Poured out with regret, ii. 493, 494;
by degrees, ii. 494, 495;
moderated, ii. 495, 496.
See _Punishments_.
_Justice_ of God.
A motive to worship, i. 207.
Its plea against man, i. 554‒556.
Reconciled with mercy in Christ, i. 556, 557.
Vindictive, natural to God, ii. 181‒183.
Requires satisfaction, ii. 185, 186.
_Justification._
Cannot be by the best and strongest works of nature,
i. 166, 473, 474; ii. 177, 178, 185, 186.
The holiness of God appears in that of the gospel, ii. 138.
The expectations of it by the outward observance of the law
cannot satisfy an inquisitive conscience, ii. 212.
Men naturally look for it by works, ii. 212, 213.
K.
_Kingdoms._
Are disposed of by God, ii. 413, 414.
_Knowledge._
In God hath no succession, i. 284, 285, 294, 295, 454‒456.
Immutable, i. 321‒324, 460.
Arguments to prove it, i. 393‒395, 461‒465.
The manner of it incomprehensible, i. 324, 325, 428,
429, 438.
God is infinite in it, i. 409.
Owned by all, i. 409, 410.
He hath a knowledge of vision and intelligence, speculative
and practical, i. 411, 412;
of apprehension and approbation, i. 412, 413.
Hath a knowledge of himself, i. 414‒417.
Of all things possible, i. 417‒420;
of all things past and present, i. 420‒422.
Of all creatures, their actions and thoughts, i. 422‒427.
Of all sins, and how, i. 427‒429.
Of all future things, he alone, and how, i. 429‒439.
Of all future contingencies, i. 439‒446.
Doth not necessitate the will of man, i. 446‒451.
It is by his essence, i. 452, 453.
Intuitive, i. 453‒456.
Independent, i. 456, 457.
Distinct, i. 458, 459.
Infallible, i. 459.
No blemish to his holiness, i. 461‒465.
Infinite, attributed to Christ, i. 465‒469.
Infers his providence, i. 469, 470;
and a day of judgment, i. 470, 471;
and the resurrection, i. 471, 472.
Destroys all hopes of justification by anything in
ourselves, i. 472, 473.
Calls for our adoring thoughts of him, i. 473, 474;
and humility, i. 474, 475.
How injured in the world, and wherein, i. 475‒483.
Comfortable to the righteous, and wherein, i. 483‒491.
Terrible to sinners, i. 491, 492.
We should have a sense of it on our hearts, and the
advantages of it, i. 492‒497.
_Knowledge_ of God’s will.
Men negligent in using the means to attain it, i. 100, 101.
Enemies to it, and have no delight in it, i. 101‒103.
Seek it for by‑ends, i. 104.
Admit it with wavering affections, _ib._
Seek it, to improve some lust by it, i. 105, 106.
A sense of man’s, hath a greater influence on us than that
of God, i. 144, 145, 479, 480.
Sins against it should be avoided, i. 173.
Distinct from wisdom, i. 508.
Of all creatures, is derived from God, i. 462, 463.
Ours, how imperfect, i. 474, 475.
L.
_Law_ of God.
How opposite man naturally is to it (see _Man_).
There is one in the minds of men, which is the rule of good
and evil, i. 69, 70.
A change of them doth not infer a change in God, i. 346.
Vindicated, both as to the precept and penalty, in the death
of Christ, i. 565‒567.
Suited to our natures, happiness, and conscience,
i. 527‒529; ii. 253.
We should submit to them, i. 603, 604.
The transgression of them punished by God, ii. 132, 133,
393, 394.
God’s enjoining one which he knew man would not observe, no
blemish to his holiness, ii. 143.
To charge them with rigidness, how great a sin, ii. 178, 179.
We should imitate the holiness of them, ii. 199‒201.
The goodness of God in that of innocence, ii. 252‒254.
Cannot but be good, ii. 339, 340.
He gives laws to all, ii. 388, 389.
Positive ones, _ib._
His only reach the conscience, ii. 390, 391.
Dispensed with by him, but cannot by man, ii. 391‒393,
430, 431.
To make any, contrary to God’s, how great a sin,
ii. 431, 432;
or make additions to them, ii. 432, 433;
or obey those of men before them, ii. 433‒435, 467, 468.
See _Governor_ and _Magistrates_.
_Licentiousness._
The gospel no friend to, i. 504.
_Life_, eternal.
Expected by men from something of their own (see
_Justification_).
Assured to the people of God, i. 356.
_Light._
A glorious creature, ii. 343, 344.
_Light_ of nature.
Shows the being of a God, i. 27‒29.
_Limiting_ God.
A contempt of his dominion, ii. 439.
_Lives_ of men.
At God’s disposal, ii. 421, 422.
_Love_ to God.
Sometimes arises merely from some self‑pleasing benefits,
i. 149‒151.
A necessary ingredient in spiritual worship, i. 231, 232.
A great help to it, i. 272.
God is highly worthy of it, i. 308; ii. 196, 197, 332‒335.
Outward expressions of it insignificant without obedience,
ii. 213, 214.
God’s gospel name, ii. 257, 259.
Of God to his people, great, ii. 449, 450.
_Lusts_ of men.
Make them atheists, i. 24, 25.
{b534} M.
_Magistracy._
The goodness of God in settling it, ii. 300, 301.
_Magistrates_ are inferior to God.
To be obedient to him, ii. 444, 445.
Ought to govern justly and righteously, ii. 445.
To be obeyed, ii. 445, 446.
_Man._
Could not make himself, i. 45‒49.
The world subservient to him, i. 53‒55.
The abridgment of the universe, i. 64; ii. 248, 249.
Naturally disowns the rule God hath set him, i. 99‒117.
Owns any rule rather than God’s, i. 117‒121.
Would set himself up as his own rule, i. 121‒127.
Would give laws to God, i. 127‒135.
Would make himself his own end. (see _End_).
His natural corruption how great, ii. 53, 54.
Made holy at first, ii. 126, 127, 248;
yet mutable, which was no blemish to God’s holiness,
ii. 140‒143.
Made after God’s image, ii. 248.
The world made and furnished for him, ii. 249‒252.
In his corrupt estate, without any motives to excite God’s
redeeming love, ii. 268‒273.
Restored to a more excellent state than his first,
ii. 291‒293.
Under God’s dominion, ii. 384‒386.
_Means._
See _Instrument_.
To depend on the power of God, and neglect them, is an
abuse of it, ii. 96.
Of grace, to neglect them an affront of God’s wisdom,
i. 589, 590.
Given to some, and not to others, ii. 403‒407.
Have various influences, ii. 407, 408.
_Meditation_ on the law of God.
Men have no delight in, i. 101, 102.
_Members_, bodily.
Attributed to God do not prove him a body, i. 188‒190.
What sort of them attributed to him, i. 189;
with a respect to the incarnation of Christ, i. 189, 190.
_Mercies_ of God to sinners.
How wonderful, i. 161, 162.
A motive to worship, i. 206‒208.
Former ones should be remembered when we come to beg new
ones, i. 277, 278.
Its plea for fallen man, i. 556, 557.
It and justice reconciled in Christ, i. 557, 558.
Holiness of God in them to be observed, ii. 197, 198.
Contempt and abuse of them (see _Goodness_).
One foundation of God’s dominion, ii. 371, 372.
Call for our love of him, ii. 232‒235;
and obedience to him, ii. 338, 339.
Given after great provocations, ii. 496, 497.
_Merit_ of Christ.
Not the cause of the first resolution of God to redeem,
ii. 265, 266.
Not the cause of election, ii. 396.
Man incapable of, ii. 343, 344.
_Miracles._
Prove the being of a God, though not wrought to that end,
i. 29, 76.
Wrought by God but seldom, i. 550.
The power of God, ii. 34, 35;
seen no more in them than in the ordinary works of nature,
ii. 51, 62.
Many wrought by Christ, ii. 64.
_Moral_ goodness.
Encouraged by God, ii. 303, 304.
_Moral_ law.
Commands things good in their own nature, i. 94, 95; ii. 389.
The holiness of God appears in it, ii. 128.
Holy in the matter and manner of his precepts, ii. 128‒130.
Reaches the inward man, ii. 130.
Perpetual, ii. 130, 131.
See _Law_ of God.
Published with majesty, ii. 390.
_Mortification._
How difficult, i. 164, 165.
_Motions_ of all creatures.
In God, ii. 49.
Variety of them in a single creature, ii. 50.
_Mountains._
How useful, i. 54.
Before the deluge, i. 278.
_Mouth._
How curiously contrived, i. 65.
N.
_Nature_ of man.
Must be sanctified before it can perform spiritual worship,
i. 223, 224.
Human, highly advanced by its union with the Son of God,
ii. 273, 274.
Human and divine in Christ (see _Union_).
_Night._
How necessary, i. 523.
O.
_Obedience_ to God.
Not true unless it be universal, i. 108, 109.
Due to him upon the account of his eternity, i. 308, 309.
To him should be preferred before obedience to men (see
_Laws_).
Of faith only acceptable to God, i. 505.
Distinct, but inseparable from faith, i. 505, 506.
Shall be rewarded, i. 529, 530.
Redemption a strong incentive to it, i. 571.
Without it nothing will avail us, ii. 213, 214.
The goodness of God in accepting it, though imperfect,
ii. 309.
Due to God for his goodness, ii. 338‒341.
Due to him as a sovereign, ii. 462‒466.
What kind of it due to him, ii. 466‒469.
_Objects._
The proposing them to man which God knows he will use to
sin, no blemish to God’s holiness, ii. 161‒166.
_Obstinacy_ in sin.
A contempt of Divine power, ii. 92, 93.
_Omissions._
Of prayer, a practical denial of God’s knowledge, i. 481;
of duty, a contempt of his goodness, ii. 320, 321.
_Omnipresence._
An attribute of God, i. 366, 367.
Denied by some Jews and heathens, but acknowledged by the
wisest amongst them, i. 368.
To be understood negatively, i. 369.
Influential on all creatures, i. 369, 370.
Limited to subjects capacitated for this or that kind of
it, i. 370.
Essential, i. 371.
In all places, i. 371, 372.
With all creatures, i. 373, 374;
without mixture with them, or division of himself, i. 374.
Not by multiplication or extension, i. 375;
but totally, _ib._
{b535} In imaginary spaces beyond the world, i. 375‒377.
God’s incommunicable property, i. 378.
Arguments to prove his omnipresence, i. 378‒385.
Objections against it answered, i. 385‒392.
Ascribed to Christ, i. 392, 393.
Proves God a Spirit, i. 393;
and his providence, _ib._;
and omniscient and incomprehensible, i. 394, 395.
Calls for admiration of him, i. 395, 396.
Forgotten and contemned, i. 396, 397.
Terrible to sinners, i. 397, 398.
Comfortable to the righteous, and wherein, i. 398‒402.
Should be often thought of, and the advantages of so doing,
i. 402‒405.
_Opposition._
In the hearts of men naturally against the will of God,
i. 102, 103.
P.
_Pardon._
God’s infinite knowledge a comfort when we reflect on it, or
seek it, i. 490, 491.
The power of God in granting it, and giving a sense of it,
ii. 78‒80.
The spring of all other blessings, ii. 357.
Always accompanied with regeneration, _ib._
Punishment remitted upon it, ii. 358.
It is perfect, _ib._
Of God, and his alone, gives a full security, ii. 450.
_Patience._
Under afflictions a duty, i. 604, 605.
God’s immutability should teach us it i. 359.
A sense of God’s holiness would promote it, ii. 195, 196;
and his goodness, ii. 350.
Motives to it, ii. 469, 470.
The true nature of it, ii. 471.
Consideration of God’s patience to us would promote it,
ii. 518.
_Patience._
Of God how admirable, i. 161, 395, 396; ii. 497‒500.
His wisdom the ground of it, i. 581, 582.
Evidences his power, ii. 64, 474.
Is a property of the Divine nature, ii. 477, 478.
A part of goodness and mercy, but differs from both,
ii. 478‒480.
Not insensible, constrained, or faint‑hearted, ii. 480, 481.
Flows from his fulness of power over himself, ii. 481, 482.
Founded in the death of Christ, ii. 482, 483.
His veracity, holiness, and justice no bars to it,
ii. 483‒486.
Exercised towards our first parents, Gentiles, and
Israelites, ii. 486‒488.
Wherein it is evidenced, ii. 488‒500.
The reason of its exercise, ii. 500‒507.
It is abused, and how, ii. 507‒509.
The abuse of it sinful and dangerous, ii. 509‒513.
Exercised towards sinners and saints, ii. 513, 514.
Comfortable to all, ii. 514‒516;
especially to the righteous, _ib._
Should be meditated on, and the advantage of so doing,
ii. 516‒518.
We should admire and bless God for it, with motives so to
do, ii. 518‒522.
Should not be presumed on, ii. 522, 523.
Should be imitated, ii. 523, 524.
_Peace._
God only can speak it to troubled souls, ii. 79.
_Permission_ of sin.
What it is, and that it is no blemish to God’s holiness,
ii. 146‒156.
_Persecutions._
The goodness of God seen in them, ii. 309‒311.
See _Apostasy_.
_Perseverance_ of the saints.
A gospel doctrine, i. 501.
Certain, i. 355, 356; ii. 100, 189.
Motives to labor after it, i. 360, 361.
Depends on God’s power and wisdom, i. 500, 501; ii. 79, 80.
_Pleasures._
Sensual men strangely addicted to, i. 144.
We ought to take heed of them, i. 173.
_Poems._
Fewer sacred ones good, than of any other kind, i. 143.
_Poor._
The wisdom of God in making some so, i. 531, 532.
_Power._
Infinite, belongs to God, ii. 10.
The meaning of the word, ii. 12.
Absolute and ordinate, ii. 12, 13.
Distinct from will and wisdom, ii. 14, 15.
Gives life and activity to his other perfections,
ii. 15, 16.
Of a larger extent than some others, ii. 16.
Originally and essentially, in the nature of God, and the
same with his essence, ii. 17, 18.
Incommunicable to the creature, ii. 18, 24.
Infinite and eternal, ii. 18‒26.
Bounded by his decree, ii. 25, 26.
Not infringed by the impossibility of doing some things,
ii. 26‒30.
Arguments to prove it is in God, ii. 30‒35.
Appears in creation, ii. 35‒44;
in the government of the world, ii. 44‒59;
in redemption, ii. 59‒65;
in the publication and propagation of the gospel,
ii. 65‒74;
in planting and preserving grace, and pardoning sin,
ii. 74‒80.
Ascribed to Christ, ii. 80‒86;
and to the Holy Ghost, ii. 86.
Infers his blessedness, immutability, and providence,
ii. 86‒88.
A ground of worship, ii. 88‒90;
and for the belief of the resurrection, ii. 90‒92.
Contemned and abused, and wherein, ii. 92‒96.
Terrible to the wicked, ii. 96‒98.
Comfortable to the righteous, and wherein, ii. 98‒102.
Should be meditated on, ii. 102, 103;
and trusted in, and why, ii. 103‒106.
Should teach us humility and submission, ii. 106;
and the fear of him, and not of man, ii. 106, 107.
_Praise._
Consideration of God’s wisdom and goodness would help us to
give it to him, i. 597, 598; ii. 351.
Men backward to it, ii. 356, 357.
Due to him, ii. 459, 460.
_Prayer._
Men impatient if God do not answer it, i. 152, 153.
We should take the most melting opportunities for secret
prayer, i. 275.
Not unnecessary because of God’s immutability and knowledge,
i. 348‒350, 479.
To creatures a wrong to God’s omniscience, i. 475, 476.
Omission of it a practical denial of God’s knowledge,
i. 481.
It is a comfort that the most secret ones are understood by
God, i. 486‒488.
God’s wisdom a comfort {b536} in delaying or denying an
answer to them, i. 593.
For success on wicked designs how sinful, ii. 175, 176.
God fit to be trusted in for an answer of them, ii. 188, 189.
The goodness of God in answering them, ii. 307‒309.
His goodness a comfort in them, ii. 341, 342.
God’s dominion an encouragement to, and ground of it,
ii. 451, 462, 463.
_Preparation._
We should examine ourselves concerning it before worship,
i. 252, 253.
Consideration of God’s knowledge would promote it,
i. 495, 496.
How great a sin to come into God’s presence without it,
ii. 176, 177.
_Presence_ of men.
More regarded than God’s, i. 144.
We should seek for God’s special and influential presence,
i. 405.
See _Omnipresence_.
_Preserve_ himself.
No creature can, i. 48, 49; ii. 46, 47.
God only can the world, i. 62, 63.
The power of God seen in it, ii. 44‒47.
One foundation of God’s dominion, ii. 371.
_Presumption._
Springs from vain imaginations of God, i. 157.
A contempt of God’s dominion, ii. 440, 441.
_Pride._
How common, i. 139.
An exalting ourselves above God, i. 147, 148.
The thoughts of God’s eternity should abate it, i. 303.
An affront to God’s wisdom, i. 592.
Of our own wisdom, foolish, i. 600, 601.
God’s mercies abused to it, ii. 323.
A contempt of his dominion, ii. 439, 440.
_Principles._
Better known by actions than words, i. 92, 93.
Some kept up by God to facilitate the reception of the
gospel, i. 576, 577.
_Promises._
Men break them with God, i. 116, 117, 351, 353.
Of God shall be performed, i. 300, 301; ii. 99, 100, 516.
We should believe them, and leave God to his own season of
accomplishing them, i. 499.
Distrust of them a contempt of God’s wisdom, i. 593.
The holiness of God in the performance of them to be
observed, ii. 197, 198.
_Propagation_ of creatures.
The power of God seen in it, ii. 47‒49.
Of mankind one end of God’s patience, ii. 504.
_Prophesies._
Prove the being of God, i. 76, 77.
_Providence._
Of God proved, i. 393, 394, 469, 470; ii. 87, 88.
See _Government of the world_.
Especially to his church, and the meanest in it, i. 406‒408.
Extends to all creatures, ii. 296‒300.
Distrust of it, a contempt of God’s goodness, ii. 319, 320.
_Punishments._
See _Judgments_.
God always just in them, i. 162, 163; ii. 326, 327.
Of sinners eternal, i. 296, 297.
The wisdom of God seen in them, i. 548.
Necessarily follow sins, ii. 181‒183.
Do not impeach God’s goodness, ii. 236‒244.
Not God’s primary intention, ii. 240, 241.
Inflicting them a branch of God’s dominion, ii. 393, 394;
necessarily follow upon it, ii. 447.
Of the wicked unavoidable and terrible, ii. 447‒449.
_Purgatory._
Held by the Jews, i. 126.
R.
_Rain._
An instance of God’s wisdom and power, i. 522.
_Reason._
Should not be the measure of God’s revelations, i. 602, 603.
_Repentance._
How ascribed to God, i. 341, 342.
A reasonable condition, i. 573.
The end of God’s patience, ii. 502‒504.
The consideration of God’s patience would make us frequent
and serious in the practice of it, ii. 517, 518.
_Reprobation._
Consistent with God’s holiness and justice, ii. 146, 147.
_Reproof._
May be for evil ends, i. 154.
_Reputation._
Men more concerned for their own, than God’s glory, i. 140.
_Resignation_ of ourselves.
Would flow from consideration of God’s wisdom, i. 604, 605;
should from that of his sovereignty, ii. 457.
_Resolutions_, good.
How soon broken, i. 351.
_Restraint._
Of men and devils by God in mercy to man, i. 532, 533,
ii. 52‒54, 154, 301, 416‒418.
_Resurrection._
Of the body no incredible doctrine, i. 471, 472, ii. 90‒92.
The power of God in that of Christ, ii. 65.
Of men, ascribed to Christ, ii. 84, 85.
_Reverence._
Necessary in the worship of God, i. 236, 237.
_Revelations._
Of God are not to be censured, i. 590, 591.
_Riches._
Inordinate desire after them a hindrance to spiritual
worship, i. 273.
God exercises a sovereignty in bestowing them, ii. 411, 412.
_Rivers._
How useful, i. 522, 523.
_Rome._
Why called Babylon, i. 39.
S.
_Sacraments._
The goodness of God in appointing them. ii. 287, 288.
_Salvation_ of men.
How desirous God is of it, ii. 284‒287, 500‒502.
_Sanctification._
Deserves our thanks as much as justification, ii. 357, 358.
See _Holiness_.
_Satisfaction._
Of the soul only in God, i. 74, 202, 203, 305, 306.
Necessary for sin, ii. 183, 184.
_Sceptics._
Must own a First Cause, i. 51.
_Scoffing._
At holiness a great sin, ii. 170;
and at convictions in others, ii. 191, 192.
_Scriptures._
Are wrested and abused, i. 105, 106, 134, 135.
Ought to be prized and studied, i. 173.
The not fulfilling some predictions in them, doth not prove
God to be changeable, i. 342‒345.
Of the {b537} Old Testament give credit to the New, and of
the New illustrate those of the Old, i. 503.
All truth to be drawn thence, _ib._
Of the Old Testament to be studied, _ib._
Something in them suitable to all sorts of men, i. 528‒530.
Written so as to prevent foreseen corruptions, i. 530, 531.
To study arguments from them to defend sin, a contempt of
God’s holiness, ii. 175.
The goodness of God in giving them as a rule, ii. 304, 305.
_Sea._
How useful, i. 54, 55.
The wisdom of God seen in it, i. 522;
and his power, ii. 7, 45, 46.
_Searching_ the hearts of men.
How to be understood of God, i. 427, 428.
_Seasons._
The variety of them necessary, i. 523.
_Secresy._
A poor refuge to sinners, i. 491, 492.
_Secret_ sins.
Cause stings of conscience, i. 71, 72, 463;
known to God, i. 394, 397, 398, 490, 491;
shall be revealed in the day of judgment, i. 470, 471;
prayers and works known to God, i. 486‒488.
_Security._
Men abuse God’s blessings to it, ii. 323.
_Self._
Man most opposite to those truths that are most contrary to
it, i. 107.
Man sets up as his own rule, i. 121.
Dissatisfied with conscience when it contradicts its desires,
i. 123, 124.
Merely the agreeableness to it the springs of many materially
good actions, i. 124‒126, 149‒154, 240, 241.
Would make it the rule of God, i. 127‒135;
and his own end, and the end of all creatures, and of God
(see _End_).
Applauding thoughts of it how common, i. 138, 139.
Men ascribe the glory of what they have or do to it,
i. 139, 140;
desire doctrines pleasing to it, _ib._;
highly concerned for any injury done to it, i. 140;
obey it against the light of conscience, i. 140, 141;
how great a sin this is, i. 141, 142.
The giving mercies pleasing to it, the only cause of many
men’s love to God, i. 149, 150.
Men unwieldy to their duty where it is not concerned,
i. 151, 152;
how sinful this is, i. 154, 155.
The great enemy to the gospel and conversion, i. 165.
_Self‑love._
Threefold, i. 136.
The cause of all sin, and hindrance of conversion,
i. 135‒138.
_Service_ of God.
How unwilling men are to it, i. 112‒114;
slight in the performance of it, i. 113, 114;
show not that natural vigor in it as they do in their
worldly business, i. 113‒115;
quickly weary of it, i. 114, 115;
desert it, i. 115‒117.
The presence of God a comfort in it, i. 401, 402.
Hypocritical pretences for avoiding it, a denial of God’s
knowledge, i. 481, 482.
A sense of God’s goodness would make us faithful in it,
ii. 339‒341.
Some called to, and fitted for more eminent ones in their
generation, ii. 410‒416.
Omissions of it a contempt of God’s sovereignty, ii. 441.
_Sin._
Founded in a secret atheism and self‑love, i. 93, 136‒138.
Reflects a dishonor on all the attributes of God, i. 93, 94.
Implies God is unworthy of a being, _ib._
Would make him a foolish, impure and miserable being,
i. 94, 95.
More troublesome than holiness, i. 111, 112.
To make it our end, a great debasing of God, i. 144‒146.
No excuse, but an aggravation, that we serve but one,
i. 145, 146.
Abstinence from it proceeds many times from an evil cause,
i. 150, 479, 480.
God’s name, word, and mercies, made use of to countenance
it, i. 154; ii. 172, 173, 321‒324, 508, 509.
Spiritual to be avoided, i. 203, 204.
It is folly, i. 295, 296.
Past ones we should be humbled for, i. 301, 302, 492, 493.
Hath brought a curse on the creation, i. 315.
See _Creatures_.
Past known to God, i. 420, 421;
all known to him, and how, i. 427‒431, 493, 494.
A sense of God’s knowledge and holiness would check it,
i. 494, 495; ii. 194.
Bounded by God, i. 532, 533.
God brings glory to himself, and good to the creature out of
it, i. 533‒544.
God hath shown the greatest hatred of it in redemption,
i. 567, 568.
A contempt of God’s power, ii. 92.
Abhorred by God, ii. 118‒122, 181, 182.
In God’s people more severely punished in this world than in
others, ii. 120, 121.
God cannot be the author of it in others, or do it himself,
ii. 122‒127.
God punishes it, and cannot but do so, ii. 132, 133, 182, 183.
The instruments of it detestable to God, ii. 133, 134.
Opposite to the holiness of God, ii. 171, 172.
To charge it on God, or defend it by his word, a great sin,
ii. 174, 175.
Entrance of it into the world doth not impeach God’s
goodness, ii. 231, 232.
Those that disturb societies most signally punished in this
life, ii. 301, 302.
A contempt of God’s dominion, ii. 427‒431.
How much God is daily provoked by it, ii. 497‒499, 519, 520.
An abuse of God’s patience, ii. 508, 509.
_Sincerity._
Required in spiritual worship, i. 225, 226.
Cannot be unknown to God, i. 486.
Consideration of God’s knowledge would promote it, i. 496.
_Sinful times._
In them we should be most holy, ii. 198, 199.
_Sinners._
God hath shown the greatest love to them, and hatred to
their sins, i. 567, 568.
Everything in their possession detestable to God,
ii. 133, 134.
_Society._
The goodness of God seen in the preservation of it,
ii. 300‒302.
Could {b538} not exist without restraining grace
(see _Restraint_).
_Soul._
The vastness of its capacity, and quickness of its motion,
i. 67, 68.
Its union to the body wonderful, i. 69.
God only can satisfy it (see _Satisfaction_).
They only can converse with God, i. 202.
Should be the objects of our chiefest care, i. 203.
We should worship God with them, i. 209‒211.
The wisdom and goodness of God seen in them, ii. 49,
247, 248.
_Spaces._
Imaginary beyond the world, God is present with, i. 375‒377.
_Spirit_, that God is so.
Plainly asserted but once in scripture, i. 180.
Various acceptations of the word, i. 181, 182.
That God is so, how to be understood, _ib._
God the only pure one, i. 182, 183.
Arguments to prove God is one, i. 183‒188.
Objection against it answered, i. 188‒190.
_Spirit_ of God.
His assistance necessary to spiritual worship, i. 224, 225.
_Spirits_ of men.
Raised up, and ordered by God as he pleases, ii. 415, 416.
_Subjection_ to our superiors.
God remits of his own right for preserving it, ii. 301, 302.
_Success._
Men apt to ascribe to themselves, i. 139.
Not to be ascribed to ourselves, ii. 324, 325.
Denied by God to some, ii. 411, 412.
_Summer._
How necessary, i. 523.
_Sun._
Conveniently placed, i. 53.
Its motion useful, i. 53, 57.
The power of God seen in it, i. 195, 196.
_Supper_, Lord’s.
The goodness of God in appointing it, ii. 287, 288.
Seals the covenant of grace, ii. 288, 289.
In it we have union and communion with Christ, ii. 289‒291.
The neglect of it reproved, ii. 291.
_Supererogation._
An opinion that injures the holiness of God, ii. 179, 180.
_Superstition._
Proceeds from vain imaginations of God, i. 156, 157.
_Swearing_ by any creature.
An injury to God’s omniscience, i. 477, 478.
T.
_Temptations._
The presence of God a comfort in them, i. 399;
the thoughts of it would be a shield against them, i. 403.
The wisdom and power of God a comfort under them, i. 594;
ii. 99.
The goodness manifested to his people under them,
ii. 311‒313.
The would arm and make us watchful against them, ii. 456.
_Thankfulness._
A necessary ingredient in spiritual worship, i. 233, 234.
Due to God, ii. 351, 352, 460, 518‒522;
a sense of his goodness would promote it, i. 351.
_Theft._
An invasion of God’s dominion, ii. 435.
_Thoughts._
Should be often upon God, i. 87, 88;
seldom are on him, i. 143, 159, 160.
All known by God only, i. 424‒427;
and by Christ, i. 467‒469.
Cherishing evil ones a practical denial of God’s knowledge,
i. 482, 483.
Thoughts of God’s knowledge would make us watchful over
them, i. 495.
_Threatenings._
The not fulfilling them sometimes, argue no change in God,
i. 342‒345.
Are conditional, _ib._
The goodness of God in them, ii. 255.
Go before judgments (see _Judgments_).
_Time._
Cannot be infinite, i. 44, 45.
_Times_ of bestowing mercy.
God orders as a sovereign, ii. 412, 413.
_Tongue._
How curious a workmanship i. 66.
_Traditions._
Old ones generally lost, i. 37, 38.
Belief of a God not owing merely to them, _ib._
_Transubstantiation._
An absurd doctrine, ii. 95.
_Trees._
How useful, i. 54, 523.
_Trust_ in themselves.
Men do, and not in God, i. 150.
We should not in the world, i. 304‒307, 357, 358.
God the fit object of it, i. 484, 485, 569, 570, 583;
ii. 103, 104, 188, 335‒337, 462, 463;
means to promote it, i. 497; ii. 454, 455.
Should not in our own wisdom, i. 600, 601.
In ourselves, a contempt of God’s power and dominion,
ii. 94, 95, 436, 437.
God’s power the main ground of trusting him, ii. 104, 105;
and sometimes the only one, ii. 105, 106.
Should be placed in God against outward appearances,
ii. 198.
Goodness the first motive of it, ii. 336.
More foundations of it, and motives to it under the gospel
than under the law, ii. 337.
Gives God the glory of his goodness, ii. 337, 338.
God’s patience to the wicked, a ground for the righteous to
trust in his promise, ii. 516.
_Truths_ of God.
Most contrary to self, man most opposite to; and to those
that are most holy, spiritual, lead most to God, and
relate most to him, i. 107.
Men inconstant in the belief of them, i. 350, 351.
U.
_Ubiquity._
Of Christ’s human nature confuted, i. 378.
_Unbelief._
The reason of it, i. 165.
A contempt of Divine power, ii. 95;
and goodness, ii. 319.
_Union_ of soul and body.
An effect of Almighty power, i. 69.
_Union_ of two natures in Christ.
Made no {b539} change in his Divine nature, i. 339, 340.
Shows the wisdom of God, i. 552‒568.
How necessary for us, i. 563‒566.
Shows the power of God, ii. 62.
Explained, ii. 62, 63.
See _Incarnation_.
_Usurpations._
Of men an invasion of God’s sovereignty, ii. 430, 431.
V.
_Venial_ sins.
An opinion that reproaches God’s holiness, ii. 179.
_Virtue_ and vice.
Not arbitrary things, i. 93, 94.
W.
_Water._
An excellent creature, ii. 224.
_Weakness._
Sensibleness of a necessary ingredient in spiritual worship,
i. 232.
_Will_ of God.
Cannot be defeated, i. 95, 96.
Man averse to it (see _Man_).
The same with his essence, i. 325, 326.
Always accompanied with his understanding, i. 326.
Unchangeable, i. 326‒328.
The unchangeableness of it doth not make things willed by
him so, i. 327, 328.
Free, _ib._
How concurrent about sin, ii. 147, 148.
_Will_ of man.
Not necessitated by God’s foreknowledge, i. 446‒451;
subject to God, ii. 385, 386.
_Winds._
How useful, i. 522.
_Winter._
How useful, i. 523.
_Wisdom._
An attribute of God, i. 507.
What it is, and wherein it consists, _ib._
Distinct from knowledge, i. 508.
Essential, which is the same with his essence; and personal,
_ib._
In what sense God is only wise, i. 509‒514.
Proved to be in God, i. 515‒518.
Appears in creation, i. 518‒525.
In the government of man as rational, i. 525‒532;
as fallen and sinful, i. 532‒544;
as restored, i. 544‒552.
In redemption, i. 552‒571.
In the condition of the covenant of grace, i. 571‒574.
In the propagation of the gospel, i. 574‒580.
Ascribed to Christ, i. 580.
Renders God fit to govern the world, and inclines him
actually to govern it, i. 580‒582.
A ground of his patience and immutability in his decrees,
i. 582, 583.
Makes him a fit object of our trust, i. 583.
Infers a day of judgment, i. 583, 584.
Calls for a veneration of him, i. 584.
A ground of prayer to him, i. 585.
Prodigiously contemned, and wherein, i. 585‒593.
Comfortable to the righteous, i. 593‒595.
In creation and government should be meditated on, and
motives to it, i. 595‒598.
In redemption to be studied and admired, i. 598‒600.
To be submitted to in his revelations, precepts,
providences, i. 602‒605.
Not to be censured in any of his ways, i. 605, 606.
_Wisdom._
No man should be proud of, or trust in, i. 600, 601.
Should be sought from God, i. 601, 602.
_World._
Was not, and could not be from eternity, i. 44‒46.
Could not make itself, i. 47‒49.
No creature could make it, i. 49, 50.
Its harmony, i. 52‒60.
Greedily pursued by men, i. 143, 144.
Inordinate desires after it a great hindrance to spiritual
worship, i. 273.
Our love and confidence not to be placed in it, i. 304,
315, 316.
Shall not be annihilated, but refined, i. 311‒314.
See _Creatures_.
We should be sensible of the inconstancy of all things in
it, i. 356, 357;
our thoughts should not dwell much on them, i. 357;
we should not trust or rejoice in them, i. 357, 358.
Not to be preferred before God, i. 358, 359.
Made in the best manner, ii. 24, 25.
Made and richly furnished for man, ii. 249‒251.
A sense of God’s goodness would lift us up above it, ii. 351.
_Worship_ of God.
A folly to neglect it, i. 87, 88.
If not according to his rule, no better than a worshipping
the devil, i. 118, 119.
Men prone to corrupt it with their own rites and inventions,
i. 133, 134.
Spiritual, men naturally have no heart to, i. 160.
Cannot be right without a true notion of God, i. 198.
Should be spiritual, and spiritually performed, i. 205, 206.
God’s spirituality the rule, though his attributes be the
foundation of it, i. 206‒208; ii. 88‒90.
Spiritual, to be due to him, manifest by the light of
nature, though not the outward means and matter of an
acceptable worship discoverable by it, i. 208‒211.
Spiritual, owned to be due to God by heathens, i. 209, 210.
Always required by God, i. 211, 212.
Men as much obliged to it as to worship him at all,
i. 212, 213.
Ceremonial law abolished to promote it, i. 213‒219.
Legal ceremonies did not promote, but rather hinder it,
i. 214‒216.
By them God was never well‑pleased with, nor intended it
should be durable, i. 216‒219.
Under the gospel it is more spiritual than under the law,
i. 219.
Yet doth not exclude bodily worship, i. 219‒222.
In societies, due to God, i. 221.
Spiritual, what it is, and wherein it consists, i. 222‒242.
Due to God, proved, i. 242‒249.
Those reproved that render him none at all, i. 249.
A duty incumbent on all, i. 249, 250.
Wholly to neglect it a great degree of atheism, i. 250.
To a false God, or in a false manner, better than a total
neglect of it, i. 250, 251.
Outward, not to be rested in, i. 251, 252.
We should examine ourselves of the manner of it, and in what
particulars, i. 252‒256.
Spiritual, it is a comfort that God requires it, i. 256.
Not to give it to God, is to affront all his attributes,
i. 263‒271, 481.
To give it him, and not that of our spirits, is a bad sign,
i. 268, 269.
Merely carnal, uncomfortable, unacceptable, abominable,
i. 269‒271.
Directions {b540} for spiritual, i. 271‒275.
Immutability of God, a ground of worship, and encouragement
to it, i. 348‒350.
Bringing human inventions into it an affront to God’s wisdom,
i. 587‒589.
See _Ceremonies_.
A strong sense of God’s holiness would make us reverent in
it, ii. 194.
We should carry it holily in it, ii. 207.
Ingenuous, would be promoted by a sense of God’s goodness,
ii. 348.
Slight and careless, a contempt of God’s sovereignty,
ii. 440, 441;
and so is omission of it, ii. 441.
Thoughts of God’s sovereignty would make us diligent in it,
ii. 455, 456.
_Worship_ of creatures.
Is idolatry, i. 194‒196.
Not countenanced by God’s omnipresence, i. 390, 391.
_Wrong._
God can do none, i. 171; ii. 442, 443.
Z.
_Zeal._
Sometimes a base end in it, i. 154.
{b541} A TABLE OF THE
PLACES OF SCRIPTURE EXPLAINED IN THIS BOOK.
GENESIS.
Gen. i. 1.
i. 519; ii. 36.
Gen. i. 26.
ii. 42.
Gen. ii. 7.
i. 64; ii. 249.
Gen. ii. 17.
ii. 483.
Gen. iii. 8.
ii. 493.
Gen. iii. 15.
ii. 61.
Gen. iv. 26.
i. 221; ii. 489.
Gen. vi. 6.
i. 343.
Gen. xviii. 19.
i. 427.
Gen. xxii. 12.
_ib._
Gen. xxxii. 30.
i. 111.
Gen. xlvi. 4.
i. 310.
Gen. xlvii. 31.
i. 222.
EXODUS.
Exod. iii. 11.
i. 482.
Exod. iii. 14.
i. 287.
Exod. iv. 24.
ii. 490.
Exod. vi. 3.
ii. 36.
Exod. ix. 16.
ii. 55.
Exod. xv. 11.
ii. 108.
Exod. xxxii. 10.
ii. 241.
Exod. xxxiii. 19.
ii. 219.
Exod. xxxiv. 9.
ii. 497.
NUMBERS.
Numb. xiv. 14.
i. 190.
DEUTERONOMY.
Deut. xxxii. 33, 34.
i. 445.
Deut. xxxiv. 10.
i. 185.
1 KINGS.
1Ki. viii. 27.
i. 375.
1Ki. viii. 39.
i. 467.
2 KINGS.
2Ki. xx. 3.
i. 112.
2Ki. xx. 1, 4, 5.
i. 342, 344.
2 CHRONICLES.
2Chr. xi. 15.
i. 118.
JOB.
Job iv. 18.
ii. 117.
Job ix. 21.
i. 473.
Job xii. 18.
ii. 415.
Job xiv. 5.
i. 435.
Job xiv. 17.
i. 420.
Job xvi. 19.
i. 486.
Job xxii. 14.
ii. 383.
Job xxiv. 12.
ii. 478.
Job xxvi. 5‒14.
ii. 5‒10.
Job xxxi. 26‒28.
i. 146.
Job xxxiv. 21.
i. 423.
Job xxxviii. 7.
ii. 258.
PSALMS.
Psal. i. 4.
i. 353.
Psal. ii. 4.
i. 385.
Psal. viii. 4.
ii. 520.
Psal. x. 11, 13.
i. 23.
Psal. xiv. 1.
_ib._
Psal. xvi. 2.
ii. 423.
Psal. xix. 1‒4.
ii. 500.
Psal. xix. 4.
i. 520.
Psal. xix. 9.
ii. 130.
Psal. xix. 12.
i. 427.
Psal. xxii. 2‒4.
ii. 198.
Psal. xxvi. 8.
i. 386.
Psal. xxvii. 4.
ii. 113.
Psal. xxvii. 10.
i. 400.
Psal. xxix. 10.
ii. 393.
Psal. xxxii. 1, 2.
i. 480.
Psal. l. 21.
ii. 478, 480.
Psal. l. 23.
i. 480.
Psal. li. 4.
i. 449.
Psal. li. 6.
i. 566.
Psal. lviii. 3.
i. 90.
Psal. lviii. 4.
i. 91.
Psal. lviii. 10.
ii. 242.
Psal. lxii. 11.
ii. 10.
Psal. lxix. 19.
i. 483.
Psal. lxxiv. 14.
i. 594.
Psal. lxxvi. 12.
ii. 452.
Psal. lxxviii. 36.
i. 481.
Psal. lxxviii. 38.
ii. 494.
Psal. xc. 1.
i. 276.
{b542} Psal. xc. 2.
i. 277, 278.
Psal. xc. 8.
i. 470.
Psal. cii. 25‒27.
i. 310‒314.
Psal. cii. 3‒8.
i. 347, 348.
Psal. ciii. 5.
ii. 358.
Psal. ciii. 14.
i. 489.
Psal. ciii. 19.
ii. 358, 359.
Psal. civ. 2.
i. 42.
Psal. civ. 31.
i. 315.
Psal. cv. 25.
ii. 163.
Psal. cvi. 19.
i. 195.
Psal. cxi. 20.
i. 41.
Psal. cxiii. 5.
i. 385.
Psal. cxxx. 4.
i. 206.
Psal. cxxxix. 2.
i. 445.
Psal. cxxxix. 7‒9.
i. 372.
Psal. cxxxix. 15, 16.
i. 64.
Psal. cxxxix. 16.
i. 435.
Psal. cxxxix. 23, 24.
i. 490.
Psal. cxlv. 17.
ii. 218.
Psal. cxlvii. 1‒3.
i. 406, 407.
Psal. cxlvii. 4.
i. 407; ii. 382.
Psal. cxlvii. 5.
i. 408.
PROVERBS.
Prov. viii. 12.
i. 518.
Prov. viii. 22.
i. 294; ii. 423.
Prov. viii. 30.
i. 415.
Prov. ix. 10.
i. 41.
Prov. xv. 11.
i. 425.
Prov. xvi. 4.
ii. 155.
ECCLESIASTES.
Eccl. viii. 11.
i. 90.
ISAIAH.
Isa. i. 10, 11, 14.
i. 217.
Isa. iv. 2.
ii. 60.
Isa. ix. 6.
i. 465.
Isa. xxix. 15.
i. 483.
Isa. xxxiv. 4.
i. 312.
Isa. xxxviii. 1, 5.
i. 342.
Isa. xl. 15, 17.
i. 379.
Isa. xli. 21, 22.
i. 431.
Isa. xliii. 20, 21.
i. 115.
Isa. xlv. 5.
ii. 416.
Isa. xlv. 11.
ii. 449.
Isa. xlviii. 10.
ii. 310.
Isa. lii. 4, 5.
_ib._
Isa. liv. 16.
i. 518.
Isa. lxvi. 1.
i. 377.
JEREMIAH.
Jer. vi. 21.
ii. 162.
Jer. vii. 21.
i. 217.
Jer. xii. 9.
i. 352.
Jer. xv. 15.
ii. 474.
Jer. xvi. 17.
i. 427.
Jer. xxi. 35, 36.
i. 313.
Jer. xxiii. 16‒24.
i. 363‒366.
Jer. xxxii. 31.
ii. 488.
LAMENTATIONS.
Lam. ii. 33.
ii. 492.
EZEKIEL.
Ezek. iv. 6.
ii. 492.
Ezek. viii. 2.
ii. 114.
Ezek. ix. 10.
ii. 493.
Ezek. xi. 16.
ii. 310.
Ezek. xviii. 25.
ii. 475.
Ezek. xx. 33.
ii. 452.
DANIEL.
Dan. vii. 9.
i. 197.
HOSEA.
Hos. i. 5.
ii. 510.
Hos. ii. 2, 3.
ii. 494, 507.
Hos. ii. 16.
i. 230.
Hos. ii. 19.
ii. 449.
Hos. v. 5.
ii. 134.
Hos. v. 12.
ii. 494.
Hos. vi. 4.
_ib._
Hos. vi. 7.
ii. 427.
Hos. vii. 3.
i. 121.
Hos. vii. 15.
ii. 324.
Hos. viii. 12.
i. 100.
Hos. x. 15.
i. 194.
Hos. xi. 10.
i. 236.
Hos. xi. 8.
ii. 493.
Hos. xiii. 12, 13.
i. 494; ii. 503, 523.
Hos. xiv. 2.
i. 233.
JOEL.
Joel i. 4.
ii. 494.
AMOS.
Amos ii. 6.
i. 145, 146.
Amos iii. 2.
i. 418.
JONAH.
Jon. iii. 4, 10.
i. 342.
MICAH.
Mic. v. 2.
i. 294.
NAHUM.
Nah. i. 1, 2.
ii. 472, 473.
Nah. i. 3.
ii. 473‒477.
HABAKKUK.
Hab. i. 16.
i. 144.
ZEPHANIAH.
Zeph. ii. 1, 2.
ii. 489.
ZECHARIAH.
Zech. vi. 1.
i. 325.
Zech. viii. 3.
i. 386.
Zech. xiv. 16.
i. 234.
MALACHI.
Mal. i. 31, 14.
i. 113.
Mal. iii. 5.
i. 471.
Mal. iii. 6.
ii. 497.
{b543} MATTHEW.
Matt. i. 18.
ii. 60.
Matt. iii. 9.
ii. 13.
Matt. v. 48.
ii. 478, 523.
Matt. vii. 11.
ii. 188.
Matt. vii. 23.
i. 413.
Matt. xv. 6.
i. 110.
Matt. xviii. 10.
i. 414.
Matt. xxv. 12.
i. 413.
MARK.
Mark x. 18.
ii. 209‒211.
LUKE.
Luke i. 35.
ii. 59.
Luke x. 20.
i. 355.
JOHN.
John i. 3.
ii. 83.
John iv. 10‒24.
i. 176‒178.
John iv. 24.
i. 177‒179, 205.
John v. 19.
ii. 81.
John vi. 64.
i. 468.
John vii. 37.
i. 234.
John ix. 3.
ii. 376.
John x. 30.
i. 393.
John xii. 38.
i. 449.
John xii. 39, 41.
ii. 186.
John xvii. 5.
i. 293, 340.
ACTS.
Acts vii. 51.
i. 103.
Acts xvii. 18.
ii. 66.
Acts xvii. 28.
i. 367, 373.
Acts xvii. 30.
ii. 487.
ROMANS.
Rom. i. 9.
i. 225.
Rom. i. 19‒21.
i. 27, 28, 42, 519; ii. 216.
Rom. i. 23.
i. 386.
Rom. i. 25.
i. 80.
Rom. ii. 4.
ii. 502.
Rom. iii. 9‒12.
i. 90.
Rom. iii. 23.
ii. 180.
Rom. v. 7.
ii. 219.
Rom. vii. 6.
i. 214.
Rom. vii. 8.
i. 102.
Rom. viii. 4.
i. 566.
Rom. viii. 10.
ii. 484.
Rom. viii. 21.
i. 313.
Rom. viii. 38, 39.
i. 509.
Rom. ix. 38, 39.
i. 395.
Rom. ix. 6.
i. 214.
Rom. ix. 22.
ii. 482, 507.
Rom. x. 18.
ii. 501.
Rom. xii. 1.
ii. 220.
Rom. xv. 5.
ii. 515.
Rom. xvi. 25‒27.
i. 498‒507.
1 CORINTHIANS.
1Cor. i 21.
i. 518.
1Cor. ii. 2.
i. 427.
1Cor. ii. 10, 11.
i. 414.
1Cor. x. 20, 21.
i. 118.
2 CORINTHIANS.
2Cor. iii. 18.
i. 552.
GALATIANS.
Gal. iii. 3.
i. 214.
EPHESIANS.
Eph. i. 10.
ii. 262.
Eph. i. 18.
i. 554.
Eph. ii. 3.
i. 166.
Eph. ii. 12.
i. 89, 158.
Eph. iii. 10.
i. 553.
Eph. iv. 6.
i. 370.
PHILIPPIANS.
Phil. ii. 6.
i. 122.
COLOSSIANS.
Col. i. 16.
ii. 82.
Col. i. 20.
ii. 262.
Col. ii. 3.
i. 580.
2 TIMOTHY.
2Tim. i. 10.
ii. 277.
2Tim. ii. 19.
i. 355.
TITUS.
Tit. i. 16.
i. 25, 92.
HEBREWS.
Heb. i. 1, 2, 10, 11.
i. 347; ii. 82.
Heb. i. 9.
ii. 136.
Heb. iv. 12.
i. 424.
Heb. xi. 3.
i. 44; ii. 104.
Heb. xi. 6.
i. 27.
Heb. xi. 16.
ii. 277.
Heb. xi. 21.
i. 222.
JAMES.
Jam. ii. 10, 11.
i. 108.
Jam. iii. 15.
i. 91.
2 PETER.
2Pet. ii. 1.
ii. 482.
2Pet. ii. 5.
ii. 489.
2Pet. iii. 9.
ii. 488.
2Pet. iii. 12, 13.
i. 312.
REVELATION.
Rev. i. 10.
i. 270.
Rev. ii. 18, 19, 22.
ii. 484.
Rev. vi. 10.
i. 497.
Rev. vi. 14.
i. 312.
FOOTNOTES.
1 – The Society which met in Crosby Hall has been represented
as a _congregational church_; but Wilson, in his History
of Dissenting Churches, repeatedly speaks of it as
_Presbyterian_.――_Vide_ v. i. p. 330.
2 – Robert Hall.
3 – Toplady.
4 – Mr. J. Wickens, and Mr. Ashton.
5 – Treatise of Providence and of Thoughts.
6 – Isaiah xl. 7. נבל ציץ “the flower fadeth.” Isaiah xxviii. 1.
7 – Mais נבל and לא חכם put together. Deut. xxxii. 6. “O foolish
people and unwise.”
8 – אין אלהים “No God.” Muis.
9 – Cocceius.
10 – Not owning him as the Egyptians called, θεον εγκοσμιον.
Eugubin in cloc.
11 – Atheism absolute is not in all men’s judgments, but
practical is in all men’s actions. The Apostle in the
Romans applying the latter part of it to all mankind, but
not the former; as the word translated _corrupt_ signifies.
12 – Rom. i. 24.
13 – Heb. xi. 6.
14 – Coccei Sum. Theol. c. 8. § 1.
15 – Aquin.
16 – Heb. xi. 6.
17 – Voet. Theol. Natural. cap. 3. § 1. p. 22.
18 – Ibid.
19 – Job xxviii. 39, 40, &c. It is but one truth in philosophy
and divinity; that which is false in one, cannot be true
in another; truth, in what appearance soever, doth never
contradict itself.
20 – Isaiah xliv. 17.
21 – Charron de la Sagesse, Liv. i. ch. 7. p. 43, 44.
22 – Gassend. Phys. § 1, lib. iv. c. 2. p. 291.
23 – Amyrant des Religion, p. 50.
24 – Gassend. Phys. § 1, lib. iv. c. 2. p. 291.
25 – Gassend. Phys. § 1, lib. iv. c. 7. p. 282.
26 – Gassend. ibid. p. 290.
27 – Cicero.
28 – Gen. iii. 5.
29 – Gen. iii. 9.
30 – Pink. Eph. 6, p. 10, 11.
31 – King on Jonah, p. 16.
32 – Amyrant des Relgious, p 6‒9.
33 – Charleton.
34 – Gen. x. 9. “Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord.”
35 – Or if we understand it as some think, that he defended
his invasions under a pretext of the preserving religion,
it assures us that there was a notion of an object of
religion before, since no religion can be without an
object of worship.
36 – Fotherby de Theomastix, p. 64.
37 – And there is not a Richlieu but leaves his axioms to a
Mazarine.
38 – Ερως.
39 – Gassend. Phys. § 1. lib. iv. c. 2. p. 291, 292.
40 – Prov. ix. 10. Psalm. cxi. 10.
41 – Rom. i. 19.
42 – Jupiter est quodcunque vides, &c.
43 – Psalm viii. 1.
44 – Banes in Aquin. Par. 2. Qu. 2. Artic. 2. p. 78. col. 2.
45 – Psalm civ. 2.
46 – “For their voice goeth to the end of the earth,” Psalm
xix. 1, 2.
47 – Job xxxi. 26, 27.
48 – Philo. ex Petav. Theolo. Dog. Tom. I. lib. i. c. 1, p. 4,
somewhat changed.
49 – Rom. i. 20.
50 – Gen. i. “By faith we understand that the worlds were
framed by the word of God,” &c. Heb. xi. 3.
51 – Daille 20. Serm. Psalm cii. 26. p. 13, 14.
52 – Daille, ut supra.
53 – Petar. Theo. Dogmat. Tom. I. lib. i. c. 2. p. 15.
54 – Wolseley, on Atheism, p. 47.
55 – Petav. ut supra, p. 10.
56 – Damason.
57 – Petav. Theo. Dog. Tom. I. lib. i. c. 2. p. 14.
58 – Gen. ii. 17. Psalm xlix. 8.
59 – Therefore the heathens called God τὸ ὄν, the only Being.
Other things were not beings, because they had not all
degrees of being.
60 – Job xxxviii. 11.
61 – Isaiah xxxviii. 12.
62 – Job. vii. 6‒9.
63 – Isaiah xlv. 6, 7. Deut. iv. 35.
64 – Psalm cxxxix. 16.
65 – Coccei sum. Theol. c. 8. § 33, &c.
66 – Petav. Theol. Dog. Tom. I. lib. i. c. 2. p. 10, 11.
67 – Philo. Judæ. Petav. Theo. Dog. Tom. I. lib. i. c. 1. p. 9.
68 – Athanasius Petav. Theol. Dog. Tom. I. lib. i. c. 1. p. 4, 5.
69 – Gassend. Physic § 1. lib. iv. c. 2. p. 315.
70 – Lessius.
71 – Ps. viii. 3.
72 – Job xxxviii. 25, 27.
73 – Job xxxviii. 28.
74 – Job xxxviii. 37, 38.
75 – Psalm civ. 6, 9.
76 – Job xxxviii. 8, 9, 11.
77 – Amirald. de Trinitate, pp. 13, 18.
78 – Jer. x. 13.
79 – Morn. de Verit. c. 1. p. 7.
80 – Amirant.
81 – Coccei. sum. Theol. c. 8. § 77.
82 – Petav. ex Athanas. Theol. Dog. Tom. I. lib. i. c. 1. § 4.
83 – Whether it be the sun or the earth that moves, it is all
one. Whence have either of them this constant and uniform
motion?
84 – Josh. x. 13
85 – Matt. v. 45.
86 – Psalm civ. 5.
87 – Job xxxviii. 33.
88 – Jer. xxxiii. 20.
89 – Amirald. de Trinitate, p. 21.
90 – Gen. i. 31.
91 – Lactant.
92 – Coccei. sum. Theol. c. 8. § 63, 64.
93 – Matt. vi. 28.
94 – Coccei. sum. Theolog. c. 8. § 67, &c.
95 – Peirson on the Creed, p. 35.
96 – Gen. xxxvii.
97 – Lessius de Providen. lib. i. p. 652.
98 – Job xxxvii. 12.
99 – Gassend. Phys. § 6. lib. iv. c. 2. p. 101.
100 – Psalm xxxvi. 6.
101 – Gen. ii. 7.
102 – Lib. iii. de Usu. Partium. Petav. Theol. Dog. Tom. I.
lib. i. c. 1. p. 6.
103 – Job xxvi. 7.
104 – Theod. de Providen. Orat. 3.
105 – Eccles. xii. 4.
106 – Coccei. sum. Theol. c. 8. § 49.
107 – Ibid. c. 8. § 50, 51.
108 – More.
109 – Culverwell.
110 – Theodoret.
111 – Coccei. sum. Theolog. c. 8. § 51, 52.
112 – I do not dispute whether the soul were generated or no.
Suppose the substance of it was generated by the parents,
yet those more excellent qualities were not the result of
them.
113 – Deut. xxix. 19.
114 – Heb. xi. 6.
115 – Lib. xix. Antiq. Acts xii. 21‒23.
116 – Lessius de Provid. p. 665.
117 – Psalm cxi. 10.
118 – Lessius de Provid. p. 664.
119 – Lessius de Provid. p. 665.
120 – Psalm xix. 5.
121 – Job xviii. 7, 8, &c. to the end.
122 – Ver. 24.
123 – As Justin informs us.
124 – James ii. 19.
125 – Psalm xciv. 6, 7.
126 – Heb. xi. 27.
127 – Heb. vi. 10.
128 – Heb. xi. 6.
129 – Mal. i. 13, 14.
130 – Maimon. Funda. Legis. cap. 1.
131 – Psalm civ. 24.
132 – 1 Pet. iv. 19.
133 – Acts xvii. 24.
134 – Psalm viii. 9.
135 – Psalm xxxiv. 8.
136 – Eccl. xii. 13.
137 – Heb.
138 – Rom. i. 21.
139 – Prov. iv. 23.
140 – Job i. 5.
141 – So the Chaldee reads לית שולטנא _Non potestas_, denying the
authority of God in the world.
142 – Augustin de Civit. Dei.
143 – Rom. iii. 9‒12.
144 – Coccei.
145 – James iii. 15.
146 – Psalm lviii. 4.
147 – Illyric.
148 – Tit. iii. 3.
149 – Gen. xx. 11.
150 – Job i. 5.
151 – Jer. xxxii. 33.
152 – Deut. xxxii. 15.
153 – Numb. xv. 30. Ezek. xx. 27.
154 – Psalm xciv. 12.
155 – Job xxi. 14.
156 – Psalm 1. 17.
157 – Heb. v. 11, 12.
158 – Jer. iv. 22.
159 – Hosea viii. 12.
160 – Prov. xvii. 16.
161 – Rom. i. 21.
162 – Mark ix. 33, 38.
163 – Psalm civ. 34.
164 – Thes. Salmur. De Spiritu. Servitutis Thes. xix.
165 – Acts xix. 24, 28, 29.
166 – 1 Thess. ii. 13.
167 – James ii. 2.
168 – Gen xlix. 4. James i. 8.
169 – John v. 35.
170 – 2 Peter iii. 16.
171 – Psalm xciv. 1.
172 – Matt. iv. 4‒6.
173 – Psalm 1. 17.
174 – 2 Sam. xii. 9, 10.
175 – Claud.
176 – Rom. xiii. 10.
177 – Jer. ii. 24.
178 – Heb. xii. 20.
179 – Ver. 25.
180 – Ver. 28.
181 – Num. xxi. 4, 5, and Daillé, Serm. 1 Cor. x. Ser. 9,
pp. 234, 235, 40.
182 – Ps. cxix. 126.
183 – Psalm l, 6, 17, 19.
184 – Micah vii. 3.
185 – Job xv. 16.
186 – 1 Sam. xv. 3, 9, 15, 21.
187 – Mal. i. 13, 14.
188 – Mal. i. 14.
189 – 1 Sam. v. 4.
190 – Amos viii. 5.
191 – Psalm cxxiii. 2.
192 – Reyn.
193 – Amos iv. 6‒11.
194 – 2 Tim. iii. 4.
195 – 1 Cor. x. 20, 21.
196 – 2 Chron. xi. 15.
197 – John xvi. 2.
198 – Rom. xii. 1, 2.
199 – Hos. v. 11.
200 – Hos. vii. 3.
201 – Dan. vi.
202 – Dr. Jackson.
203 – Eph. ii. 3.
204 – Prov. iii. 5.
205 – Eccl. xi. 9.
206 – Rom. i. 28.
207 – Job xxiv. 13.
208 – 1 Thess. ii. 13.
209 – Rom. vii. 8, 9.
210 – Matt. xxiii. 14: “You devour widows’ houses, and for a
pretence make long prayers.”
211 – Gerrard _in loc._
212 – Eccles. ix. 1.
213 – Job xxii. 28.
214 – Decay of Christian Piety, p. 169, somewhat changed.
215 – Job xxi. 22.
216 – Isa. xxii. 12, 13.
217 – Rom. xi. 34.
218 – Mal. ii. 17.
219 – Numb. xvi. 41, compared with xvii. 10.
220 – Cœlum suspiciens vitam, &c. Vita Titi. c. 10.
221 – Because wicked men flourish in the world. Solicitor nullos
esse putare Deos.
222 – Gen. iv. 5.
223 – Jonah iv. 2.
224 – Luke iv. 6.
225 – Job xviii. 4.
226 – Prov. vii. 14.
227 – 2 Sam. xvi. 5.
228 – 2 Cor. xi. 3.
229 – Matt. xiii. 6.
230 – Hos. viii. 12.
231 – 1 Kings xii. 27.
232 – 1 Kings xi. 7.
233 – Amos vii. 10.
234 – Mark x. 17, 22.
235 – Mark vi. 20, 27.
236 – Eph. i. 10.
237 – More, Dial. 2. § 17. p. 274.
238 – Rom. vi.
239 – 1 Cor. v. 15.
240 – Psalm xiv. 1.
241 – 1 Cor. v. 15.
242 – Heb. i. 5.
243 – John xvii. 4.
244 – Luke xviii. 11.
245 – Mark xiv. 72.
246 – Matt. xxvi. 75. Luke xxii. 62.
247 – Sanderson’s Sermons.
248 – Acts xii. 22, 23.
249 – Mark vi. 18, 19, 28.
250 – 1 Sam. xv. 21.
251 – Sabunde, Tit. 140.
252 – Prov. xvi. 4.
253 – Rom. i. 23.
254 – Psalm x. 4.
255 – Jackson, Book I. c. 14, p. 48.
256 – Hos. ii. 8.
257 – Quod quisque præ cæteris petit, summum judicat bonum.
Boet. lib. iii. p. 24.
258 – Job xxxi. 24, 25.
259 – Col. iii. 5. Eph. v. 5.
260 – Hab. i. 16.
261 – Neremberg de Adorat. p. 30.
262 – Ezek. viii. 5, 6, 10.
263 – Heb. xii. 16.
264 – Sabunde, Tit. 200. p. 352.
265 – Matt. iv. 9.
266 – Pascal, Pens. § 30, p. 294.
267 – Psalm viii. 6.
268 – Trap, on Gen. p. 148.
269 – Hos. x. 1.
270 – Ezek. xxxiii. 31.
271 – Jonah iv. 2.
272 – Gurnall, Part III. p. 337.
273 – Matt. vi. 1.
274 – Dei injuriæ Deo curæ.
275 – Sanderson’s Sermons. Part II. p. 158.
276 – Hosea viii. 13. Vid. Cocc. _in locum_.
277 – Psalm x. 4.
278 – Prov. xxx. 2, 3.
279 – Rom. i. 21‒23.
280 – Δεισιδαιμονία.
281 – 1 Sam. vi. 3, 4.
282 – Gurnall, Part II. pp. 245, 246.
283 – Tertul. cont. Maxim. lib. i. cap. 2.
284 – Exod. xxxiv. 30.
285 – Isa. xxvi. 8.
286 – Job xxii. 17.
287 – Job xv. 4.
288 – Hos. vii. 10.
289 – Hos. xi. 2.
290 – Hos. ii. 6, 7.
291 – Gen. iii. 15.
292 – Psalm cvi. 7.
293 – Rom. ii. 4.
294 – Eph. ii. 3.
295 – John iii. 19, 20.
296 – Gen. vi. 5.
297 – Job i.
298 – Rom. vii. 9‒12.
299 – Job xxxi. 33. “If I cover my transgressions, as Adam.”
300 – 2 Cor. x. 5.
301 – 2 Cor. v. 15.
302 – Psalm cx. 3.
303 – Eph. iv. 17, 18.
304 – Lawson’s Body of Divinity, pp. 153, 154.
305 – Psalm cxix. 136.
306 – Exod. xxxii. 3,――“All the people brake off the golden
ear‑rings.”
307 – Reynolds.
308 – Gen. iii. 14.
309 – Ezek. xiv. 4.
310 – 1 John iv. 18.
311 – Job i. 4.
312 – Amarant. Paraph. sur Jean.
313 – Ver. 10; or “living water.”
314 – Ver. 11.
315 – Ver. 13, 14.
316 – Ver. 15.
317 – Ver. 16.
318 – Ver. 17.
319 – Ver. 18.
320 – Ver. 19.
321 – Ver. 20.
322 – Ver. 21.
323 – Ver. 22.
324 – Ver. 23.
325 – Vulgar Lat. Illyre. Clav.
326 – Episcop. Institut. lib. iv. c. 3.
327 – Melancthon.
328 – Ver. 23.
329 – Heb. ix. 10.
330 – Terniti.
331 – Amirald, _in loc._
332 – Amirald, _in loc._
333 – Muscul.
334 – Chemnit.
335 – Muscul.
336 – 2 Cor. iii. 8; Rom. vii. 6.
337 – Episcop. Institut. lib. iv. c. 3.
338 – Amirald, _in loc._
339 – Suarez. de Deo, vol. i. p. 9, col. 2.
340 – Heb. i. 14.
341 – Gerhard. μονοτρόπως.
342 – Gamacheus, Tom. I. Q. 3. c. i. p. 42.
343 – Coccei, Sum. Theol. c. 8.
344 – Thes. Sedan. Part II. p. 1000.
345 – Vossius Idolol. lib. ii. c. 1. Forbes, Instrument. lib. i.
c. 36.
346 – Οὐκ ὅσιον.
347 – Plutarch, incorporalis ratio divinus spiritus. _Seneca_.
348 – Rom. i. 23.
349 – Calov. Socin. Proflig. pp. 129, 130.
350 – Amirald. Sup. Heb. ix. p. 146, &c.
351 – Amyrant, Morale. Tom. I. p. 282.
352 – Job xxxviii. 36.
353 – Daille, in Tim.
354 – Rom. i. 20.
355 – John v. 37.
356 – Goulart. de Dieu, p. 94.
357 – 1 Kings xxii. 19.
358 – Goulart. de Dieu, p. 95, 96.
359 – Deut. iv. 39.
360 – Jer. xxiii. 24.
361 – Job xi. 8.
362 – Gamacheus, Theol. Tom. I. Quos 3. c. i.
363 – 1 John i. 5.
364 – Dan. vii. 9.
365 – Psalm xi. 4.
366 – “Loquitur lex secund. ling. filiorum hominum,” was the
Heathen saying.
367 – Amirald de Trin. pp. 218, 219.
368 – Psalm xxxiv. 15.
369 – Isa. li. 9.
370 – Episcop. institut. lib iv. § 3. c. 3.
371 – It is Zanchie’s observation, Tom. II. De Natura Dei,
lib. i. c. 4. Thes. 9.
372 – Amyraut, Morale. Tom. I. pp. 293, 294.
373 – Gen. iii. 8.
374 – Amirald.
375 – Job x. 4. 2 Chron. xxxii. 8.
376 – Psalm xxxvi. 7.
377 – Hos. xiii. 7, 8.
378 – Maimon. More Nevoc. par. 1. c. 27.
379 – More’s Conjectura Cabalistica, p. 122.
380 – Col. iii. 10.
381 – Petav. Theol. Dog. Tom. I. lib. ii. c. 1. p. 104.
382 – Gen. i. 26.
383 – Iamblic. Protrept. cap. 21. Symb. 24.
384 – Austin de Civitat. Dei, lib. iv. cap. 31. out of Varro.
385 – Tacitus.
386 – Gerhard, _loc._ Comun. Vol. IV. Exegesis de Natura Dei,
cap. 8. § 1.
387 – Amyraut. Morale Chrétienne, Tom. I. p. 294.
388 – Cocceius Sum. Theol. c. 9. p. 47. § 35.
389 – Rom. i. 25.
390 – Rom. i. 22.
391 – Hos. x. 15.
392 – Daillé, super Cor. i. 10, Ser. III.
393 – Gen. xxxi. 30‒34.
394 – Gen. iii. 16, 17.
395 – Job xxxi. 26‒28. Chin. Predict. Part II. p. 252.
396 – Lawson, Body Divin. p. 161.
397 – Acts xvii. 29.
398 – Amyraut. Morale. Tom. I. p.289.
399 – Episco. Institut. lib. iv. § 2. c. 10.
400 – Exod. xx. 4.
401 – Nazianzen.
402 – Amyraut, Morale, Tom. I. p. 180, &c.
403 – Lessius.
404 – Towerson on the Commandments, p. 112.
405 – Heb. i. 13.
406 – Isa. xxxi. 3.
407 – Eph. i. 3.
408 – 1 Tim. i. 17.
409 – James i. 17.
410 – Psalm li. 17.
411 – Eph. iv. 23.
412 – Psalm xc. 1.
413 – Psalm lxiii. 1.
414 – Heb. xii. 9.
415 – 2 Cor. vii. 1.
416 – Eph. ii. 2, 3.
417 – Lingend. Tom. II. p. 777.
418 – Taylor’s Exemplar, Preface, § 30.
419 – Ames Medul. lib. ii. c. 4. § 20.
420 – So 2 Kings xvii. 32, 33.
421 – Amirald, Dissert. 6, disp. i. p. 11.
422 – Amyraut, de Relig.
423 – King, on Jonah, p. 63.
424 – Amos v. 26.
425 – Menander. Grot. de Veritat Relig. lib. iv. § 12.
426 – Iamblic.
427 – Amyraut. Mor. Tom. I. pp. 309, 310.
428 – Rom. i. 21.
429 – Bias.
430 – Amyraut, _ib._
431 – Heb. i. 11, 12.
432 – Heb. xi. 4.
433 – Gen. iv. 5.
434 – Eccles. xii. 7.
435 – Rom. xii. 1.
436 – Heb. ix. 10.
437 – Heb. vii. 16.
438 – 2 Cor. iii 8.
439 – Gal. iii. 3.
440 – Rom. vii. 14.
441 – Rom. vii. 6.
442 – 1 Cor. x. 18.
443 – Rom. ix. 6.
444 – 1 Cor. x. 3, 4.
445 – Gal. iv. 9.
446 – Heb. x. 1; ix. 9.
447 – Heb. ix. 14.
448 – Burges’ Vind. p. 256.
449 – Gal. v. 2.
450 – Gal. iv. 24.
451 – Psalm cxxx. 4.
452 – 2 Cor. iii. 13, 14.
453 – Illyric de Velam. Mosis, p. 221 &c.
454 – 2 Cor. xi. 3.
455 – Exod. xxxii. 1.
456 – Isai. i. 10.
457 – Isai. lxvi. 3.
458 – Heb. vii. 18.
459 – Gal. iv. 2.
460 – Mal. i. 11.
461 – Pascal. Pen. 142.
462 – Isai. xliii. 18, 19.
463 – Jer. iii. 16.
464 – Psalm cx.
465 – Hos. iii. 4.
466 – Rom. xii. 1.
467 – Vide Hammond, _in loc._
468 – John i. 17.
469 – Rom. xii. 1.
470 – Sherman’s Greek in the Temple, pp. 61, 62.
471 – Stillingfleet’s Irenicum, c. 1. § I. p. 23.
472 – Psalm lxxiv. 8.
473 – Luke ii. 13.
474 – Luke xxii. 41, 42.
475 – Matt. xi. 26.
476 – John xi. 41; xii. 1.
477 – Heb. xi. 21.
478 – Gen. xlvii. 31.
479 – Gen. xiv. 1, 2.
480 – 2 Cor. iv. 13.
481 – Eph. ii. 10.
482 – Col. iii. 4.
483 – Gal. ii. 20.
484 – Rom. viii. 13.
485 – Rom. viii. 11.
486 – Rom. viii. 26.
487 – Eph. vi. 18.
488 – Jude 20.
489 – Cant. iv. 16.
490 – Prov. xxiii. 26.
491 – Moulin. Sermons, Decad. 4. Sermon IV. p. 80.
492 – Exod. xxv. 7.
493 – Rom. x. 10.
494 – Hos. xi. 12.
495 – Rev. ii. 9.
496 – Psalm lxxxvi. 11.
497 – Ezek. xxxiii. 31.
498 – Psalm xxxix. 18.
499 – Matt. vi. 6.
500 – Psalm cxix. 10.
501 – Οὐ γὰρ πάρεργον δεῖ ποεῖσθαι τὸν Θεόν. Iamblic. lib. i.
c. 518. p. 87.
502 – Rom. xii. 11, ζέοντες.
503 – Luke xxiv. 32.
504 – Lady Falkland’s Life, p. 130.
505 – Rom. vi. 11.
506 – Rev. i. 6.
507 – Exod. xiii. 13.
508 – Isaiah xix. 1.
509 – Col. i. 29.
510 – ἀγωνιζόμενος.
511 – Heb. i. 7.
512 – 1 Tim. v. 6.
513 – Psalm cxxvi. 1.
514 – Psalm ciii. 1.
515 – Cant. iv. 16.
516 – Heb. xi. 6.
517 – Daille, sur 3 Jean. p. 150.
518 – Plutarch, Moral. p. 344.
519 – Rev. iv. 10, compared with v.10.
520 – Caudam aculeatam vel linguam nigram, Alexand. ab Alex.
l. 3. c. 12.
521 – Isa. vi. 3. Rev. iv. 8.
522 – As the Jewish doctors observe on Lev. i. 9.
523 – Psalm cxxxiv. 3. “The Lord bless thee out of Sion.”
524 – Exod. xxix. 13. The inward fat, not the offal.
525 – Amyraut, Mor. Tom. II. p. 311.
526 – Daille, Melange des Sermons. Ser. ii.
527 – Μᾶλλον τὸ δαιμόνιον πρὸς τὸ τῶν φυόντων ἦθος ἢ τῶν
θυομένων πλῆθος. Porphyr. de Abstinentia.
528 – “Non valet protestatio contra factum,” is a rule in the
civil law.
529 – Fitzherbert, Pol. in Relig. Part II. c. 19, § 12.
530 – Guliel. Paris. Rhetor. Divin. c. 26, p. 350, col. 1.
531 – Reynolds.
532 – Coccei _in loc._
533 – Austin _in loc._
534 – Pareus _in loc._
535 – Theodoret _in loc._
536 – אל, strong.
537 – Amyrald, _in loc._
538 – Ἄναρχος καὶ ἀτελεύτητος, Theodoret _in loc._
539 – Calv. _in loc._
540 – Confes. lib. ii. Confes. 14.
541 – Moulin. Cod. 1, Ser. 2, p. 52.
542 – Gassend.
543 – Crellius de Deo, c. 18. p. 41.
544 – Lingend. Tom. II. p. 496.
545 – אל עולם.
546 – Coccei Sum. p. 48. Theol. Gerhard Exeges. c. 86. 4. p. 266.
547 – Crellius de Deo, c. 18, p. 41.
548 – 1 Tim. vi. 16. Daille, _in loc._
549 – Lessius de Perfect. Divin. lib. iv. c. 1.
550 – Gamacheus in Aquin. Part I. Qu. 10. c. 1.
551 – Gassend. Tom. I. Physic. § 1. lib. ii. c. 7. p. 223.
552 – Daille, Melange de Sermon, p. 252.
553 – Parisiensis.
554 – Calov. Socinian.
555 – Existentia durans.
556 – Gassend.
557 – Ps. xc. 4. Amyrald, Trin. p. 44.
558 – Daille, Vent. Sermons, Serm. I. sur 102, Ps. 27, p. 21.
559 – Crellius weakens this argument, De Deo, c. 18, p. 42.
560 – Thes. Salmur. p. 1. p. 145, Thes. 14.
561 – Plutarch de Εἶ, I. p. 392.
562 – Perer. in Exo. 3. Disput. 13.
563 – Petav. Theol. Dogm. Tom. I. lib. i. c. 6, § 6, 7.
564 – Amyrald, de Trinit. p. 48.
565 – Voet. Natural. Theol. p. 310.
566 – Rev. i. 8. Ficin. de Immort. lib. ii. c. 5.
567 – Coccei Sum. Theol. c. 8.
568 – Crellius de Deo, c. 18. p. 43.
569 – Petav. Theol. Dogmat. Tom. I. lib. i. c. 10, 11.
570 – Bapt.
571 – Lessius de Perfect, lib. iv. c. 2.
572 – Ibid.
573 – Crellius de Deo, c. 18. p. 43.
574 – Heb. xiii. 8. Rev. i. 8. “He which is, and which was, and
which is to come.”
575 – Mestræzat. _in loc._
576 – Petav.
577 – Job xxxvi. 26, compared with ver. 23.
578 – Crellius de Deo, c. 18, p. 44, 45.
579 – Charrontrois. Vent. liv. i. c. 5, p. 17, &c.
580 – Pareus.
581 – Plin. Hist. lib. ii. c. 3.
582 – Coccei. _in loc._
583 – Septuag.
584 – Estius in Heb. i.
585 – Hyper. in Heb. 1.
586 – Mestræzat sur. Heb. i.
587 – Mestræzat sur. Heb. i.
588 – Estius in Heb. i.
589 – Chrysostom, אתה הוא.
590 – Ἀλλοιώσεως κρείττων above all change. Theodor.
591 – Gamacheus.
592 – Amyrant sur Heb. ix. p. 153.
593 – Archbold, Serm.
594 – Hugo Victorin. in Petavio.
595 – _Ibid._
596 – Austin. Fulgen in Petavio.
597 – Petav. Tom. I. p. 173.
598 – Suarez. Vol. I. p. 137.
599 – Psalm cxlv. 5. “His understanding is infinite.”
600 – Austin. Bradwardine.
601 – Gamch. p. 1. Acquin. Qu. 9. c. i. p. 73.
602 – Maxim. Tyrius dissert. 3, 30.
603 – Turrentin de Satisfac. p. 266.
604 – Gamacheus ut supra.
605 – The ancients, as Dionysius, expressed it by this
similitude.
606 – Plato calls God οὐσίαν ἀεὶ ἐχόμενον, lib. i. de Be.
607 – Stabilisque manens dat cuncta moveri. Boet. Consolat.
lib. iii.
608 – Trap. on Exod.
609 – Amyrald, de Trinitat. p. 433.
610 – Spanhe. Synta. Part. I. p. 39.
611 – Petav. Theol. Dogmat. Tom. I. c. 6. § 6‒8.
612 – Gamach. in prim. part. Aquin. qu. 9. c. 1. part. 72.
613 – Ficinus Zachar. mitylen in Peta. Tom. I. p. 169.
614 – Austin in Pet. Tom. I. p. 201.
615 – Ps. cxlv. 3, אין חקר no end, no term.
616 – Fotherby Atheomastix, p. 308. Gerhard loc. com.
617 – Gamach. in Part I. Aquin. Q. 9. c. i. p. 72.
618 – Petav. Theol. Dogmat. Tom. I.
619 – Zanch. de Immutab. Dei.
620 – Goulart de Immutab. de Dieu.
621 – Gamach in Part I. Aquin. Qu. 9. c. i.
622 – Mercer _in loc._
623 – Petavius Theol. Dogmat.
624 – Daille, in Sermon on 2 Pet. iii. 9. p. 30.
625 – Rivet in Genes. exercita. 51. p. 213.
626 – Sanderson’s Sermon, Part II. p. 157, 158.
627 – Placeus de Deitate Christi.
628 – Daille, Melang. des Sermons, Part II. § 1. p. 8‒10, &c.
629 – Sedgwick Christ’s Counsel, p. 230.
630 – Lawrence, of Faith, p. 262.
631 – Turretin. Ser. p. 322.
632 – Cocceius.
633 – Munster, Vatablus, Castalio Oecolamp.
634 – Tum perspicacia, tum efficacia, Grot.
635 – Suarez.
636 – Amirald. de Trinitate, p. 57.
637 – Seneca de Benefic. lib. 4. c. 8. Ipse opus suum implet.
638 – Chrysostom.
639 – Hierom. on Isa. lxvi. 1.
640 – Hammond on Matt. vi. 7.
641 – Med. Diatrib. Vol. I. pp. 71, 72.
642 – Dought Analec. excurs. 61, 113.
643 – מקום Grot. upon Matt. v. 16. Mares. contra Volk. lib. i.
cap. 27. p. 494.
644 – Vide Minut. Fel. p. 20.
645 – Plotin. Enead. 6. lib. 5. cap. 4.
646 – Zanch.
647 – Matt. vii. 22. “In thy name we have done many wonderful
works.”
648 – Cajetan in Aquin. Par. i. Qu. 8. Art. 3.
649 – Ficin.
650 – Maimonid.
651 – Ficin.
652 – Hornbeck Soun. Part I. p. 303.
653 – Amyrald, de Trinit.
654 – Ps. civ. 2. John i. 5. “God is light, and in him is no
darkness at all.”
655 – Bernard.
656 – Petar.
657 – Maccor. loc. commun. cap. 19, p. 153.
658 – Rivet. Ps. cx. p. 301, col. 2.
659 – Amyrald, de Trinitat. p. 89.
660 – Deus est actus purus et nullam habet potentiam passivam.
661 – Pont.
662 – Amyrald, de Trinitat, p. 106, 107.
663 – Amyrald, de Trinitat, p. 74, 75.
664 – Gassend.
665 – Amyrald, de Trinit. pp. 99, 100.
666 – Rom. vi. 1, 2, 15. “Shall we sin, because we are not
under the law but under grace?”
667 – Shelford on the Attributes, p. 170.
668 – Dr. More.
669 – Cyril.
670 – Κρυφιότης, Dionysius called God.
671 – Drexel. Nicet. lib. ii. cap. 2.
672 – Drexel, Nicet. lib. ii. cap. 10.
673 – Quo fugis Encelade quascunque accesseris oras, sub Jove
semper eris.
674 – Ps. cxxxix. 12. “The darkness and light are both alike
to him.”
675 – Chrysostome.
676 – Musculus.
677 – Drexel.
678 – Omnia diis plena.
679 – Agamemnon, (Homer II. 3. v. 8.) making a Covenant with
Priam, invocates the Sun, Ἠέλιος ὃς πάντ᾽ ἐφορᾷς καὶ
πάντ᾽ ἐπακούεις.
680 – Gamach in 1 Pa. Aqui. Q. 14. cap. 1; p. 119. Clem.
Alexander Strom. lib. 6.
681 – Suarez de Deo, lib. 3. cap. 4. p. 130.
682 – Suarez de Deo, lib. 3. cap. 4. p. 138.
683 – Ibid. p. 140.
684 – Moulin.
685 – Magalaneus.
686 – Petar. Theol. Dogm. lib. p. 257.
687 – Ficin de Immort. lib. 2. cap. 10.
688 – Gamach.
689 – Ficin de Immort. lib. 2. cap. 10.
690 – Bradward.
691 – Daille, Serm. Part 1. p. 230.
692 – Fotherby Atheoma, p. 132.
693 – Ἐν Διὸς δέλτῳ Cross. Anthol. Dec. 1. cap. 395. p. 101.
694 – Cusan, p. 246.
695 – Petavius changed.
696 – Bradward, lib. 3 cap. 14.
697 – Pacuvius said, Siqui quæ eventura sunt provident, æqui
parent, Gell. lib. 14. c. 1.
698 – Cusanus.
699 – Fuller’s Pisgah, l. 2. p. 281.
700 – Chequell.
701 – Coccei sum. Theol. p. 50.
702 – Ibid.
703 – Gamach in Aquin, Part I. Q. 14. cap. 3. p. 124.
704 – Maimonid. More Nevoch, Part 3. cap. 21. pp. 393, 394.
705 – Gamach. in Aquin. Part I. Q. 14. cap. 3. p. 124.
706 – Eph. i. 5. and in other places.
707 – Gerhard Exeges, ch. 8. de Deo sect. 13. p. 303.
708 – Bradward, lib. 3. cap. 14.
709 – Hornbeck.
710 – Pugio Fidei, Part I. ch. 19.
711 – Boet. consolat lib. 5. pros. 6.
712 – Ficinus in Procl. cap. 91.
713 – Zanch.
714 – Scrivener.
715 – The Stoics, that thought their souls to be some particle
of God, Ἀποσπάσματα, pieces pulled off from him, did
conclude from thence that he knew all the motions of
their souls as his own mover, as things coherent with
him. Arrian Epictet. lib. 1. cap. 14. p. 60.
716 – Vid. Rivet. _in loc._ exerci. 86. p. 329.
717 – Mare. cont. Volkel. lib. 1. cap. 24. p. 343.
718 – Amyrald, de Prædestin. cap. 6.
719 – Rawley of the World, lib. i. cap. 1, sec. 12.
720 – Rivet, in Isa. liii. 1. p. 16.
721 – Daille, Melang. Part II. pp. 712, 725.
722 – Maxim. Tyrius. Dissert. 1. pp. 9, 10.
723 – Maimonides More Nevochim. Part III. c. 20. pp. 291‒293.
724 – Dionys.
725 – Kendall against Goodwin of Foreknowledge.
726 – Suarez. Vol. I. de Deo, lib. 3. cap. 2. pp. 133, 134.
727 – Gamach in Aquin Q. 14. cap. 1. p. 113.
728 – Epiphanius.
729 – Amyrant, Morale Chréti. Tom. III. p. 137.
730 – Cusan. p. 646.
731 – Bradward, lib. 1. cap. 15.
732 – Suarez. Vol. II. p. 228.
733 – Tileni Syntagma, Part I. Disp. 13. Thes. 14.
734 – Plato, ἀκοίμητος ὀφθαλμός.
735 – Damianus.
736 – Gerhard.
737 – Gamach in Aquin. Part 1. Q. 14, cap. 1. pp. 118, 119.
738 – Bradwardin, p. 6.
739 – Sabund. Tit. 84 much changed.
740 – Petav. Theo. Dogmat. I. p. 467, &c.
741 – Petav. Theol. Dogmat. Tom. I. p. 467.
742 – Placæus de Deitate Christi.
743 – Ἐξ ἀρχῆς.
744 – Daille, Serm. 15. pp. 21‒24.
745 – Sabund. Theol. Natural. Tit. 84. somewhat changed.
746 – Pascall, p. 170.
747 – Amyrant, de Prædest. pp. 116, 117. somewhat changed.
748 – Daille, Melang. Part II., pp. 560, 561.
749 – Amyrant. Moral. Tom. III. p. 75, &c.
750 – Cajetan, Sum. p. 190.
751 – Ps. xxxii. 1, 2, Camero, p. 89, col. 1.
752 – Drexel. Nicetas, lib. ii. cap. 10, p. 357.
753 – Nov. 1678, when the Popish Plot was discovered.
754 – For the evidence of it I refer you to Dr. More’s
Exposition of the Seven Churches, worthy every learned
and understanding man’s reading, and of every sober
Romanist.
755 – Coc. _in loc._
756 – Turretin’s Sermons, p. 362.
757 – Barlow’s Man’s Refuge, pp. 29, 30.
758 – Isai. lxv. 6. “Behold it is written.”
759 – Antiquit. lib. i. cap. 3.
760 – Gomarus, _in loc._
761 – Amyraut. Moral. Tom. III. p. 123.
762 – Maimon. Mor. Part I. cap. 53.
763 – Laert. lib. i. Proem.
764 – Polhill against Sherlock, p. 377.
765 – Culverwell, Light of Nature, p. 30.
766 – Isa. xlvi. 10. Jer. xxxii. 19. “Great in counsel.”
Job xii. 13. “He hath counsel and understanding.”
767 – Eugub. per Philosoph. lib. i. cap. 5.
768 – Licet magnum sit posse, majus tamen est sapere.
769 – Suarez, Vol. I. lib. i. cap. 3. p. 10.
770 – Amiraut. Moral.
771 – Amyrald, Desart. Theol. p. 111.
772 – Omne opus naturæ est opus intelligentiæ.
773 – Amyraut. Moral, Vol. I. p. 257.
774 – Mountag. against Selden, p. 281. Plutarch calls God
ἁρμονικὸς καὶ μουσικὸς; he saith nothing was made without
music.
775 – Charlton, Light of Nature, p. 57.
776 – Daille, Mel. Part I. p. 483.
777 – Amyraut. Predestin. p. 9.
778 – Amyraut. sur diverses Text. p. 127.
779 – Lessius.
780 – Daille, Melan. Part II, pp. 472, 473.
781 – Daille, Melan. II. p. 477, &c.
782 – Daille Sermon XV. p. 170.
783 – Castellio, Dialog. l. 4, p. 46.
784 – Amyraut.
785 – Moulin’s Serm. decad. 10. p. 231, 232.
786 – Which I have upon another occasion noted.
787 – Daille sur Philip. Part I. pp. 545, 646.
788 – Sanderson, Part II. p. 205.
789 – Daille sur 1 Cor. x. p. 390.
790 – Turretin, Serm. p. 53.
791 – Daille sur Philip. Part I. pp. 116, 117.
792 – Amyraut. Moral. Tom. V. pp. 478‒480.
793 – Savana Triump. Crucis, lib. iii, cap. 7. p. 211.
794 – Gomb. de Relig. p. 42.
795 – Amyraut. Morals. Tom. V. pp. 468, 469.
796 – And indeed the Heathen oracles, managed by the devils,
declared that they were not long to hold their sceptre
in the world, but the Hebrew child should vanquish them.
797 – Laud against Fisher, p. 5.
798 – Bradward, p. 28.
799 – Janeway. p. 88.
800 – Ἐπιφάνειαι.
801 – Dionys. Halicar, Antiq. l. 2, p. 128.
802 – Iamblych. Vit. Pythag., lib. i. cap. 6, p. 44, and
lib. ii. c. 19, p. 94.
803 – Faucheur. _in loc._ pp. 294, 295.
804 – Amyraut, Moral. Tom. I. pp. 258, 259.
805 – Strong, of The Will.
806 – Vaisin. The Talmud takes notice, that the court of
Bethany was wasted three years before Jerusalem, because
they preferred their own words before the words of the Law.
807 – Pont. Medit. Part III. p. 366.
808 – Durant de Tent, pp. 403, 404.
809 – Seaman’s Sermon before the Parliament.
810 – Munster.
811 – Coccei _in loc._
812 – Coccei.
813 – Drusius _in loc._
814 – As the word signifies in the Hebrew.
815 – Oecolamp.
816 – The ancient Gauls worshipped him under the name of
Taranis. The Greeks called Jupiter Βρονταῖος, and Thor;
whence our Thursday is derived, signifieth Thunderer,
a title the Germans gave their God. And Toran, in the
British language, signifies thunder. Voss. Idolo.
lib. ii. cap. 33. Camb. Britan. p. 17.
817 – Lessius, de Perfect. Divin. lib. v. cap. 1.
818 – Fotherby, Atheomastic, pp. 306, 307.
819 – גבורתו Sept. σθενος.
820 – Scaliger, Publ. Exercit. 365, § 8.
821 – Estius in Sent. lib. i. dist. 43. § 2.
822 – Cra. Syntag. lib. iii. cap. 17. p. 611.
823 – Gamacheus.
824 – Ratione summæ actualitatis essentiæ. Suarez, Vol. I.
pp. 150, 151.
825 – Operationes sequuntur essentiam.
826 – Aquin. Part 1. Qu. 25. Articæ.
827 – Suarez, Vol. I. de Deo. p. 151.
828 – Becan. Sum. Theol. p. 82.
829 – Ibid. p. 84.
830 – Gamach in Aquin. Tom. I. Qu. 25.
831 – Best, _ex parte facientis et modi_: but not _ex parte
rei_. Esti. in Senten. lib. i. distin. 44. § 2.
832 – Aquin. Part I. Qu. 25. art. 6.
833 – Gamach. in Aquin. Tom. I. Qu. 25.
834 – Crell. de Deo. cap. 22.
835 – Robins. Observ. p. 14.
836 – Magalano. de Scientia Dei, Part II. c. 6. § 3.
837 – Augus.
838 – Becan. Sum. Theolog. p. 83.
839 – Maximus Tyrius.
840 – Ambrose.
841 – Becan. Sum. Theol. p. 84. Crel. de Deo, cap. 22.
842 – Victorin. in Petar. Tom. I. p. 333.
843 – Ibid. p. 233.
844 – Lib. i. cap. 1. p. 38.
845 – Damianus, in Petar.
846 – Fauch. in Acts. Vol. II. § 56.
847 – Mercer, p. 7. col. 1, 2.
848 – Suarez, Vol. III. p. 33.
849 – Suarez, Vol. III. p. 6.
850 – Amyrald, Morale. Tom. I. p. 252.
851 – Gassend.
852 – Gen. i. 3, 5, &c. throughout the whole chapter.
853 – Augus.
854 – Theodoret.
855 – Peirs. p. 111.
856 – Suarez, Vol. I. lib. iii. cap. 10.
857 – Daille, in 1 Cor. x. p. 102.
858 – מקום.
859 – Daille, Melange, Part II. p. 457.
860 – Lessius, de Perfect. Divin. p. 69.
861 – Lessius, de Sum. Bon. pp. 580‒582.
862 – Trismegist, in Serm. Greek, in the Temple, p. 57.
863 – A Lapide, in 1 cap. Gen. xvi. Lessius, de Perfect. Divin.
pp. 90, 91.
864 – Lessius, de Providen, p. 633. Voss. de Idol. lib. ii.
cap. 2.
865 – Faucher, sur Act. Vol. II. p. 47.
866 – Cæteros deos æreos esse, &c. Grot. Verit. Rel. lib. 4.
867 – Amyrald. in Symbol. p. 103, &c.
868 – Amyrant. sur Timole, p. 292.
869 – Lessius, de Perf. Divin. lib. xii. cap. 4. p. 104.
870 – Lessius, pp. 103, 104.
871 – Lessius, pp. 103, 104. Amyrald. Irenic. p. 284.
872 – Amyrald. Irenic. p. 282.
873 – Σπερμολόγος.
874 – Daille. Serm. XV. p. 57.
875 – Colos. i. 13. ἐῤῥύσατο.
876 – Grotius in Luke i. 19.
877 – Numb. xiv. 17. ὑψωθήτω, be exalted. Sept. Strength, &c.
878 – ἐποίησεν.
879 – Gen. i. 2. So the word “moved” properly signifies.
880 – Sabunde, Tit. 39.
881 – Pont. Part VI. med. 16. p. 531.
882 – Capel. in 1 Tim. i. 17.
883 – Lingend. Tom. III. pp. 779, 780.
884 – Harwood, p. 13.
885 – Grot. _in loc._
886 – Amyrant. Moral. Tom. V. p. 170.
887 – Trap. _in loc._
888 – Manass. ben Israel, de Resurr. lib. 1, cap. 1, p. 7.
889 – Pareus in Exod. xv.
890 – Rivet.
891 – Calvin.
892 – Munster.
893 – Ἄχραντος ἡγεμών.
894 – οὐδ᾽ ἀκούειν ὅσιον. Ammon. in Plut. de Εἰ apud Delphos,
p. 393.
895 – Gassend. Tom. I. Phys. § 1, lib. 4, cap. 2, p. 289.
896 – Petav. Theol. Dogmat. Tom. I. lib. 6, cap. 5, p. 415.
897 – Plutarch Eugubin. de Perenni Phil. lib. 6, cap. 6.
898 – Martin. de Deo, p. 86.
899 – Turretin. de Satisfact. p. 28.
900 – Ochino, Predic. Part III. Bodic. 51, pp. 347, 348.
901 – Turretin. de Satisfact. pp. 35, 36.
902 – Amyrald. Disert. pp. 103, 104.
903 – Amyrald. Defens. de Calvin. pp. 151, 152.
904 – Ames de Consc. lib. v. cap. 1. quest. 7.
905 – Suarez.
906 – Amirant. Moral. Tom. V. p. 388.
907 – Lingend. Tom. III. pp. 699, 700.
908 – Tit. ii. 11‒14, and many other places.
909 – Suarez, Vol. II. p. 548.
910 – Amyr. Moral. Tom. I. pp. 615, 616.
911 – Amyral. Defence de Calv. p. 145.
912 – Rispolis.
913 – Bradward. lib. i. cap. 34. “God wills it _secundum quid_.”
914 – Aquin. cont. Gent. lib. i. cap. 95.
915 – Lawson, p. 64.
916 – Suarez, Vol. IV. p. 414.
917 – Suarez, de Legib. p. 43.
918 – Ps. lxxvi. 10, as the word “restrain” signifies.
919 – _Majus bonum_, saith Bradward.
920 – But of the wisdom of God in the permitting sin in order to
redemption, I have handled in the attribute of “Wisdom.”
921 – Suarez, Metaph. Part I. p. 552.
922 – Amyrald. de Libero arbit. pp. 98, 99.
923 – Amyrald, pp. 321, 332.
924 – Zanch. Tom. II. lib. iii. cap. 4, quest. iv. p. 226.
925 – Amyral. de Libero arbit. p. 224.
926 – Amyrald, Irenic. p. 337.
927 – This I have spoken of before, but it is necessary now.
928 – Testard, de Natur, et Grat. Thes. 150, 151. Amy on Divers
Texts, p. 311.
929 – Amyrald, de Predest. p. 107.
930 – Turretin. de Satisfac. p. 8.
931 – Placeus, de Deitat. Christi, _in loc._
932 – Ps. xii. 8. The vilest men.
933 – Amyrald. Moral. Tom. V. p. 462.
934 – Sanct. _in loc._
935 – “In this,” saith Plato, “God is ἐν μέσῳ παράδειγμα.”
936 – Eph. iv. 24. Col. iii. 10.
937 – Eugubin. de Perenni Philoso. lib. vi. cap. 6.
938 – Vaughan pp. 4, 5.
939 – Amirald. in Heb. pp. 101, 102.
940 – Amor naturam induit, et mores imbibit rei amatæ.
941 – Erasm. _in loc._
942 – Augustin.
943 – Hensius in Matt.
944 – Calvin _in loc._
945 – Trismegist. Pœmœnd. cap. 2.
946 – Eugubin. de Peren. Philos. lib. v. cap. 9.
947 – Eugubin. de Peren. Philos. lib. v. cap. 9. p. 97. col.
948 – Amyrant, Morale.
949 – Rom. x. 3. “Going about to establish their own
righteousness.”
950 – Ver. 17. Lightfoot _in loc._
951 – Ficin. in Dionys. de Divin. Nom. cap. 511.
952 – Empedocles.
953 – Hesiod.
954 – Iamblych. Vit. Pythag. lib. i. col. 6. p. 43.
955 – Lombard lib. iv. distinct. 46. p. 286.
956 – Coccei. sum. p. 50.
957 – Cajetan in secund. secunda. Qu. 34. Ar. 3.
958 – Herle upon Wisdom, cap. 5. pp. 41, 42.
959 – Ingelo Bentivolio, and Uran. Book IV. pp. 260, 261.
960 – Daille, Melang. Part II. pp. 704, 705.
961 – Ficini. Epist. lib. xi. epist. 30.
962 – Tom. II. p. 926.
963 – Cocceii sum Theolog. p. 91.
964 – Gilbert de Dei Dominio, p. 6.
965 – Amyr. Moral. Tom. I. p. 260.
966 – Ficinus in Con. Amor. Orat. 2. cap. p. 1326.
967 – Camero, p. 30.
968 – Boetius.
969 – Zarnovecius, de Satisfact. Part I. cap. i. pp. 3, 4.
970 – Suarez, Vol. I. de Deo, lib. iii. cap. 7. p. 146.
971 – Cressol. Anthol. Decad. II. p. 162.
972 – Cusan, p. 228.
973 – Petav. Theolog. Dogmat. Tom. i. p. 402.
974 – Lessius, de Perfect. Div. p. 100.
975 – Pherecydes.
976 – Eugubin, lib. v. cap. 9.
977 – Amyral. Dissertat. pp. 637, 638.
978 – Suarez. de Gratia, Vol. I. pp. 126, 127.
979 – Rada. Controvers. Part III. p. 363.
980 – Lingend. de Eucharist, pp. 84, 85.
981 – Lessius.
982 – Turreti, Ser. p. 33.
983 – Amyral. Irenicum. pp. 16, 17.
984 – Daille, Melang. Part I. p. 253.
985 – Gulielmus Parisien. p. 184.
986 – Harwood’s Sermon at Oxford, p. 5.
987 – Amyral. Moral. Tom. IV. p. 291.
988 – Cressol. Antholog. Part II. p. 29.
989 – Young, of Affliction, p. 34.
990 – Petav. Theolog. Dogmat. Vol. I. p. 407.
991 – Amyrald. Dissert. p. 65.
992 – “As a heathen,” Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. 22, p. 220.
Οὐ γὰρ θέμις διὶ βούλεσθαι ἄλλο τι ἢ τὸ κάλλιστον.
993 – Amyrald. _in loc._
994 – Maccov. Colleg. Theolog. 10 Disput. 18, pp. 6, 7, or
thereabout.
995 – Maccov. Colleg. Theolog. Disput. 18, pp. 12, 13.
996 – Raynaud, Theolog. Nat. p. 757.
997 – Camero. p. 371. Amyrald, Dissert. pp. 72, 73.
998 – Stoughton’s “Righteous Man’s Plea,” Serm. VI. p. 28.
999 – Vid. Lessium de Perfect. Divin. pp. 77, 78.
1000 – Raynaud, Theolog. Natural, pp. 760‒762.
1001 – Sueton. de Tiberio, cap. 27.
1002 – Lessius de Perfect. Divin. pp. 66, 67.
1003 – Causin, Poly‑Histor. lib. iv. cap. 22.
1004 – Suarez. Vol. II. lib. viii. cap. 20. p. 736.
1005 – Bolduc. _in loc._
1006 – Suarez. de Legib. p. 23.
1007 – Amyrald, Dissert. pp. 101, 102.
1008 – Daille, _in loc._
1009 – This was Dr. Goodwin’s speech when he was in trouble.
1010 – Claude, sur la Parabole des Noces, p. 29.
1011 – Mr. Mede, in one of his letters.
1012 – Josephus.
1013 – Causin. Symb. lib. ii. cap. 65.
1014 – Lessius, de Perfect. Divin. lib. x. p. 65.
1015 – Munster.
1016 – Trap. _in loc._
1017 – Trap. _in loc._
1018 – Faucheur, Vol. II. pp. 663, 664.
1019 – Austin.
1020 – Chrysost. in Gen. Hom. 16.
1021 – Raynard, de Deo, p. 766.
1022 – Arrian in Epictet.
1023 – Servire Deo regnare est.
1024 – Ribera, _in loc._
1025 – Page 359, col. 1.
1026 – Tirinus, _in loc._
1027 – Rhodigi. lib. vi. c. 14.
1028 – Δῆλον δὲ ὅτι ἐγχειρίδιον τὴν τιμωρίαν καλεῖ, κολεὸν δὲ
τουτέστι τὴν θήκην τοῦ ἐγχειριδίου τὴν μακροθυμίαν ὀνομάζει.
Theodoret, _in loc._
1029 – Testard. de Natur. et Grat. Thess. 119.
1030 – Perer, _in loc._
1031 – Vid. Gell’s Ἀγγελοκρατία.
1032 – Sanctius. Prolegom. in Hosea, Prolog. III.
1033 – Mercer in Gen.
1034 – Cressol. Decad. II. p. 163.
1035 – Pierce, Sinner Implead. p. 227.
1036 – Kimchi.
1037 – Lessius, p. 152.
1038 – Amyrald, Dissert. pp. 191, 192.
1039 – Amyraldus, Moral. Tom. II. p. 186.
1040 – Smith on the Creed. p. 404.
1041 – Minuc. Felix, p. 41.
1042 – Pont. Part I. p. 42.
1043 – Cod. lib. ix. Titul. 476, p. 20.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.
The following corrections have been made in the text:
Page a54:
Sentence starting: Every year are the fields....
– ‘baren’ replaced with ‘barren’
(creatures; no part is barren,)
Page a64:
Sentence starting: The Lord breathed into his....
– ‘חזום’ replaced with ‘חיים’
(“... and man,”[101] &c.: חיים, _of lives_.)
Page a75:
Sentence starting: Tully Hostilius, a Roman....
– ‘whe’ replaced with ‘who’
(a Roman king, who counted it)
Sentence starting: The strange revelations of murderers,...
– ‘vengeanee’ replaced with ‘vengeance’
(instruments of vengeance on a sinful)
Page a107:
Sentence starting: The rule of God is burthensome....
– ‘ונח’ replaced with ‘זנח’
(the word זנח signifies,)
Page a117:
Sentence starting: There is not the basest thing....
– ‘dispicable’ replaced with ‘despicable’
(of a poor despicable beggar.)
Page a154:
Sentence starting: It were more excusable to serve....
– ‘נדכות’ replaced with ‘נדבות’
(they sacrificed the נדבות)
Page a162:
Sentence starting: Has he not promised....
– ‘or’ replaced with ‘of’
(strip him of his crown)
Page a172:
Sentence starting: In every action we should....
– ‘shold’ replaced with ‘should’
(we should make the inquiry,)
Page a230:
Sentence starting: If any one spiritual....
– ‘spirital’ replaced with ‘spiritual’
(any one spiritual string)
Page a270:
Sentence starting: As our gracious God....
– ‘118’ replaced with ‘18’
(Ps. lxvi. 18)
Page a300:
Sentence starting: ביה יהוה צור עולמים....
– ‘ביה יהוה צור צול טם’ replaced with ‘ביה יהוה צור עולמים’
(ביה יהוה צור עולמים)
Page a382:
Sentence starting: To act by a virtue,...
– ‘kindoms’ replaced with ‘kingdoms’
(in their kingdoms by ministers)
Page a392:
Sentence starting: Let us therefore conclude....
– ‘expresssion’ replaced with ‘expression’
(the expression of a learned man)
Page a408:
Sentence starting: Much power, plenteous in power;...
– ‘רבחרד’ replaced with ‘רב חסד’
((Ps. v. 15), רב חסד, a multitude of power)
Sentence starting: He knows universals,...
– ‘תגונה’ replaced with ‘תבונה’
(תבונה, in the consideration of them,)
Page a410:
Sentence starting: The heathens did acknowledge....
– ‘selemnized’ replaced with ‘solemnized’
(solemnized with oaths and)
Page a414:
Sentence starting: As God is the most perfect being,...
– ‘he’ replaced with ‘be’
(he would be ignorant of)
Page a417:
Sentence starting: ....
– ‘knowedge’ replaced with ‘knowledge’
(so is his knowledge infinite,)
Page a457:
Sentence starting: Is it to be imagined....
– ‘notiou’ replaced with ‘notion’
(by the notion of things so mean?)
Page a470:
Sentence starting: The word עלומנו signifies....
– ‘צלומנו’ replaced with ‘עלומנו’
(The word עלומנו signifies youth,)
Sentence starting: As his justice, which consists....
– ‘manfestation’ replaced with ‘manifestation’
(a manifestation of the secret motions)
Page a480:
Sentence starting: David’s heart smote him....
– ‘cirumstantiated’ replaced with ‘cirumstantiated’
(as particularly cirumstantiated by the )
Page a488:
Sentence starting: His knowledge comes not....
– ‘profitaby’ replaced with ‘profitably’
(they may be profitably removed.)
Page a491:
Sentence starting: His infinite understanding....
– ‘unstanding’ replaced with ‘understanding’
(His infinite understanding of what)
Page a510:
Sentence starting: 2. Therefore “only wise”....
– ‘αὐδίδακτος’ replaced with ‘αὐτοδίδακτος’
(God is αὐτοδίδακτος αὐτόσοφος.)
Page a511:
Sentence starting: The absolute power of God....
– ‘righteousnesness’ replaced with ‘righteousness’
(because of his righteousness,)
Page a516:
Sentence starting: He could not be an universal....
– ‘wihout’ replaced with ‘without’
(without an incorruptible wisdom.)
Page a523:
Sentence starting: The summer consumes....
– ‘inhabtants’ replaced with ‘inhabitants’
(the inhabitants of the world.)
Page a535:
Sentence starting: The magistrate inspired not....
– ‘magistate’ replaced with ‘magistrate’
(The magistrate inspired not)
Page a571:
Sentence starting: The grace of God teaches....
– ‘ungodlinsss’ replaced with ‘ungodliness’
(teaches us to deny ungodliness.)
Page a593:
Sentence starting: Like a skilful physician,...
– ‘und’ replaced with ‘and’
(bitter potions, and sometimes cheering)
Page a594:
Sentence starting: He defeated the serpent....
– ‘surpentine’ replaced with ‘serpentine’
(the after‑game of the serpentine brood.)
Page b24:
Sentence starting: If limited by himself,...
– ‘limition’ replaced with ‘limitation’
(that limitation is not from)
Page b36:
Sentence starting: The Jews observe, that....
– ‘האלחום’ replaced with ‘האלהים’
(he is called האלהים,)
Page b42:
Sentence starting: And it might be inquired, how....
– ‘instrment’ replaced with ‘instrument’
(create all things without an instrument,)
Page b43:
Sentence starting: It is as little difficulty....
– ‘lighest’ replaced with ‘lightest’
(as the lightest atom.)
Page b44:
Sentence starting: There is a natural providence,...
– ‘propogation’ replaced with ‘propagation’
(propagation of them by corruptions)
Page b50:
Sentence starting: It is an Infinite Power which....
– ‘souls’ replaced with ‘soul’
(the soul forms every thought,)
Page b61:
Sentence starting: By this manner of conception....
– ‘atsured’ replaced with ‘assured’
(his fitness for his office is assured)
Page b65:
Sentence starting: (1.) It was contrary....
– ‘contary’ replaced with ‘contrary’
(It was contrary to the common)
Page b66:
Sentence starting: The philosophers, the masters....
– ‘philosphers’ replaced with ‘philosophers’
(The philosophers, the masters)
Page b71:
Sentence starting: They employed not troops....
– ‘themselve’ replaced with ‘themselves’
(subdue men unto themselves,)
Page b73:
Sentence starting: The court of Nero,...
– duplicated word removed ‘and’
(its standing, and flourished)
Page b76:
Sentence starting: The stream of nature cannot....
– ‘venemous’ replaced with ‘venomous’
(or a venomous toad into an)
Page b77:
Sentence starting: To dispossess man then of his....
– ‘makes’ replaced with ‘make’
(make desires of self‑advancement)
Page b80:
Sentence starting: And indeed, God doth....
– ‘wheron’ replaced with ‘whereon’
(sands whereon it might split,)
Page b81:
Sentence starting: So great an eulogy cannot....
– ‘surmounded’ replaced with ‘surmounted’
(cannot be surmounted and stepped over,)
Page b97:
Sentence starting: His strength is uncontrollable;...
– ‘his’ replaced with ‘is’
(his throne is represented)
Sentence starting: To have many sharp blows,...
– ‘apostles’ replaced with ‘apostle’
(therefore the apostle calls it)
Page b106:
Sentence starting: When you beg of him the melting....
– ‘liveless’ replaced with ‘lifeless’
(and prayer will be lifeless,)
Page b110:
Sentence starting: This is more affixed....
– duplicated word removed ‘his’
(or His wise name;)
Page b112:
Sentence starting: His power or sovereignty,...
– ‘sovreignty’ replaced with ‘sovereignty’
(His power or sovereignty,)
Page b117:
Sentence starting: It is as certain a truth,...
– duplicated word removed ‘any’
(cannot create anything actually)
Page b134:
Sentence starting: O, how detestable is sin....
– ‘abhorence’ replaced with ‘abhorrence’
(of his abhorrence of evil!)
Sentence starting: To punish and witness against....
– ‘נאון’ replaced with ‘גאון’
(the word גאון, which is here)
Page b140:
Sentence starting: It is certain that God made....
– ‘witholding’ replaced with ‘withholding’
(negative in withholding that grace)
Page b146:
Sentence starting: Reprobation, in its first notion,...
– duplicated word removed ‘the’
(wicked by the act of God;)
Page b168:
Sentence starting: Hence, God is said to....
– ‘father’ replaced with ‘farther’
(occasion of his farther hardening:)
Page b170:
Sentence starting: ....
– ‘Israelities’ replaced with ‘Israelites’
(of the Israelites borrowing jewels)
Page b171:
Sentence starting: ....
– ‘intrinsisically’ replaced with ‘intrinsically’
(its own nature intrinsically evil;)
Page b177:
Sentence starting: The Jews were often infected....
– ‘taansgressions’ replaced with ‘transgressions’
(the enormity of their transgressions,)
Page b178:
Sentence starting: Sometimes casting an eye....
– ‘villifying’ replaced with ‘vilifying’
(but a vilifying of the holiness)
Sentence starting: What are the services of....
– ‘practises’ replaced with ‘practices’
(their following practices.)
Page b180:
Sentence starting: We are departed from our....
– duplicated word removed ‘that’
(that is, a life of “holiness;”)
Page b181:
Sentence starting: All unholiness is vile,...
– ‘unholinesss’ replaced with ‘unholiness’
(All unholiness is vile,)
Page b186:
Sentence starting: As we therefore dishonor....
– duplicated word removed ‘a’
(as if a “mortal man were as just as God,”)
Page b190:
Sentence starting: When he overlooks strength,...
– ‘complaceny’ replaced with ‘complacency’
(such for his own complacency,)
Page b198:
Sentence starting: It was his design in his pity....
– ‘Ezra’ replaced with ‘Ezek’
(judicial procedure (Ezek. xxxvi. 21, 23))
Page b204:
Sentence starting: As soon as sin had stripped....
– ‘that’ replaced with ‘than’
(a defiled person than a man)
Page b205:
Sentence starting: Let us often exercise ourselves....
– ‘exericse’ replaced with ‘exercise’
(Let us often exercise ourselves)
Page b214:
Sentence starting: It is a part of idolatry....
– ‘idolatary’ replaced with ‘idolatry’
(part of idolatry to give men)
– ‘creatnre’ replaced with ‘creature’
(a worship of the creature together with)
Page b215:
Sentence starting: All the idolatry of the heathens,...
– ‘idolary’ replaced with ‘idolatry’
(All the idolatry of the heathens,)
Page b216:
Sentence starting: The Italians esteemed Pythagoras....
– ‘Pithagoras’ replaced with ‘Pythagoras’
(esteemed Pythagoras a god,)
Page b218:
Sentence starting: Were he not first infinitely....
– ‘itseif’ replaced with ‘itself’
(fulness of light in itself,)
Sentence starting: The mercy of God is exercised....
– ‘pnnishment’ replaced with ‘punishment’
(those that merit punishment;)
Page b220:
Sentence starting: He is first good, and then....
– ‘compasssionate’ replaced with ‘compassionate’
(and then compassionate.)
Page b239:
Sentence starting: Justice and judgment are....
– ‘חבוק’ replaced with ‘מכון’
(“... habitation of thy throne,” מכון,)
Sentence starting: So, Ps. xciii. 2....
– ‘xcii.’ replaced with ‘xciii.’
(So, Ps. xciii. 2.)
Sentence starting: And shall it be accounted....
– ‘acounted’ replaced with ‘accounted’
(be accounted an unkindness,)
Page b245:
Sentence starting: It is the goodness of God....
– ‘multitutes’ replaced with ‘multitudes’
(extract such multitudes of things)
Page b247:
Sentence starting: It hath a tongue to express....
– ‘counseller’ replaced with ‘counsellor’
(what the inward counsellor directs;)
Page b249:
Sentence starting: This some of the Jews understood....
– ‘חיום’ replaced with ‘חיים’
(חיים, breath of lives, in the Hebrew;)
Page b258:
Sentence starting: This only excited wisdom to bring....
– ‘apostacy’ replaced with ‘apostasy’
(as the apostasy of man,)
Page b289:
Sentence starting: As the right of a house....
– ‘annointed’ replaced with ‘anointed’
(wherewith kings were anointed,)
Page b297:
Sentence starting: The goodness of God is seen....
– duplicated word removed ‘and’
(the animals and inanimate things.)
Page b299:
Sentence starting: And when public justice was....
– ‘admininistered’ replaced with ‘administered’
(was to be administered upon)
Page b301:
Sentence starting: They are fruits of his goodness....
– missing word added ‘no’
(there would be no government,)
Page b303:
Sentence starting: Though moral goodness cannot....
– ‘siganlly’ replaced with ‘signally’
(hath often signally rewarded)
Page b311:
Sentence starting: The goodness of God appears....
– ‘geople’ replaced with ‘people’
(strengthening his people under)
Page b315:
Sentence starting: How disingenuous both to God....
– ‘disingenious’ replaced with ‘disingenuous’
(How disingenuous both to God)
Page b316:
Sentence starting: God hath curses as well as blessings;....
– ‘Got’ replaced with ‘God’
(God hath curses as well as blessings;)
Page b330:
Sentence starting: The nature of “fear” is to....
– ‘inwarly’ replaced with ‘inwardly’
(than inwardly have admired him:)
Page b336:
Sentence starting: As the goodness of God....
– ‘repentence’ replaced with ‘repentance’
(“leads us to repentance”)
Page b350:
Sentence starting: A deep sense of this would....
– ‘whatsover’ replaced with ‘whatsoever’
(goodness in whatsoever he doth,)
Page b354:
Sentence starting: Revenge makes us slaves’....
– ‘adverlsaries’ replaced with ‘adversaries’
(victorious over our adversaries)
– ‘evi‑’ replaced with ‘evil’
(but overcome evil with good.)
Page b364:
Sentence starting: As knowledge and wisdom are....
– ‘whatsover’ replaced with ‘whatsoever’
(to pass whatsoever he decrees;)
Page b373:
Sentence starting: The government of Christ....
– ‘commision’ replaced with ‘commission’
(by commission from him;)
Page b378:
Sentence starting: It is part of God’s sovereignty,...
– ‘sovereignity’ replaced with ‘sovereignty’
(It is part of God’s sovereignty,)
Page b414:
Sentence starting: The sword of a conqueror....
– ‘conquerer’ replaced with ‘conqueror’
(The sword of a conqueror)
Page b415:
Sentence starting: God, by his sovereign conduct,...
– “Pharoah’s” replaced with “Pharaoh’s”
(to the view of Pharaoh’s daughter,)
Page b431:
Sentence starting: It is sufficient that we gave....
– ‘yuo’ replaced with ‘you’
(we gave you a command)
Page b434:
Sentence starting: When we pay an outward....
– ‘Soverign’ replaced with ‘Sovereign’
(the Sovereign of the world;)
Page b440:
Sentence starting: Sovereignty requires awe in....
– ‘disrepect’ replaced with ‘disrespect’
(is a disrespect of authority)
Page b480:
Sentence starting: Think me not such a piece....
– ‘hehold’ replaced with ‘behold’
(I had an eye to behold)
Page b483:
Sentence starting: In those threatenings where....
– duplicated word removed ‘the’
(without fixing the time,)
Page b497:
Sentence starting: No light matter, but....
– ‘Pharoah’ replaced with ‘Pharaoh’
(but that of Pharaoh?)
Page b504:
Sentence starting: It had been inconsistent with....
– duplicated word removed ‘down’
(been pulling down and rearing)
Page b506:
Sentence starting: Divine patience had still bound....
– ‘1 Kings’ replaced with ‘2 Kings’
(2 Kings xxii. 19, 20)
Index Christ:
– ‘medtation’ replaced with ‘mediation’
(make us prize his mediation)
Index Conceptions:
– ‘similtude’ replaced with ‘similitude’
(will be in them a similitude)
Index Dominion:
– duplicated word removed ‘as’
(contemned as he is a)
Index Temptations:
– ‘soveignty’ replaced with ‘sovereignty’
(thoughts of God’s sovereignty)
Footnote 6:
– ‘ציע’ replaced with ‘ציץ’
(Isaiah xl. 7. נבל ציץ “the flower fadeth.”)
Footnote 7:
– ‘לאכחם’ replaced with ‘לא חכם’
(Mais נבל and לא חכם put together.)
Footnote 8:
– ‘אינ’ replaced with ‘אין’
(אין אלהים “No God.” Muis.)
Footnote 135:
– ‘98’ replaced with ‘8’
(Psalm xxxiv. 8.)
Footnote 282:
– ‘Gurnal’ replaced with ‘Gurnall’
(Gurnall, Part II.)
Footnote 545:
– ‘אל עדלם’ replaced with ‘אל עולם’
(אל עולם.)
Footnote 553:
– ‘Parsiensis’ replaced with ‘Parisiensis’
Footnote 615:
– ‘אדז חףר’ replaced with ‘אין חקר’
(אין חקר no end, no term.)
Footnote 643:
– ‘מולם’ replaced with ‘מקום’
(מקום Grot. upon Matt. v. 16.)
Footnote 819:
– ‘גבזדתו’ replaced with ‘גבורתו’
(גבורתו Sept. σθενος.)
Footnote 875:
– ‘Colos. i. 19.’ replaced with ‘Colos. i. 13.’
‘ἐῤῤύὁατο’ replaced with ‘ἐῤῥύσατο’
(Colos. i. 13. ἐῤῥύσατο.)
Footnote 1031:
– ‘Ἀγγελοκατία’ replaced with ‘Ἀγγελοκρατία’
(Vid. Gell’s Ἀγγελοκρατία.)
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Existence and Attributes of God, Volumes 1 and 2" ***
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