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.