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).