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.