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.