to the lowest calamity; we were brought to the dust, and prepared for
hell. Adam had not the boldness to request, and therefore we may judge
he had not the least hopes of pardon; he was sunk under wrath, and
could have expected no better an entertainment than the tempter, whose
solicitations he submitted to. We had cast the diadem from our heads,
and lost all our original excellency; we were lost to our own happiness,
and lost to our Creator’s service, when he was so kind as to send his
Son to seek us (Matt. xviii. 11), and so liberal as to expend his blood
for our cure and preservation. How great was that goodness that would
not abandon us in our misery, {b272} but remit our crimes, and rescue
our persons, and ransom our souls by so great a price from the rights
of justice, and horrors of hell, we were so fitted for?
5. Every age multiplied provocations; every age of the world proved
more degenerate. The traditions, which were purer and more lively
among Adam’s immediate posterity, were more dark among his further
descendants; idolatry, whereof we have no marks in the old world
before the deluge, was frequent afterwards in every nation: not only
the knowledge of the true God was lost, but the natural reverential
thoughts of a Deity were expelled. Hence gods were dubbed according to
men’s humors; and not only human passions, but brutish vices, ascribed
to them: as by the fall we were become less than men, so we would fancy
God no better than a beast, since beasts were worshipped as gods (Rom.
i. 21); yea, fancied God no better than a devil, since that destroyer
was worshipped instead of the Creator, and a homage paid to the powers
of hell that had ruined them, which was due to the goodness of that
Benefactor, who had made them and preserved them in the world. The
vilest creatures were deified; reason was debased below common sense;
and men adored one end of a “log,” while they “warmed themselves with
the other” (Isa. xliv. 14, 16, 17); as if that which was ordained for
the kitchen were a fit representation for God in the temple. Thus were
the natural notions of a Deity depraved; the whole world drenched in
idolatry; and though the Jews were free from that gross abuse of God,
yet they were sunk also into loathsome superstitions, when the goodness
of God brought in his designed Redeemer and redemption into the world.
6. The impotence of man enhanceth this goodness. Our own eye did scarce
pity us, and it was impossible for our own hands to relieve us; we were
insensible of our misery, in love with our death; we courted our chains,
and the noise of our fettering lusts were our music, “serving divers
lusts and pleasures” (Tit. iii. 3). Our lusts were our pleasures;
Satan’s yoke was as delightful to us to bear, as to him to impose:
instead of being his opposers in his attempts against us, we were his
voluntary seconds, and every whit as willing to embrace, as he was to
propose, his ruining temptations. As no man can recover himself from
death, so no man can recover himself from wrath; he is as unable to
redeem, as to create himself; he might as soon have stripped himself
of his being, as put an end to his misery; his captivity would have
been endless, and his chains remediless, for anything he could do
to knock them off, and deliver himself; he was too much in love with
the sink of sin, to leave wallowing in it, and under too powerful a
hand, to cease frying in the flames of wrath. As the law could not
be obeyed by man, after a corrupt principle had entered into him, so
neither could justice be satisfied by him after his transgression.
The sinner was indebted, but bankrupt; as he was unable to pay a mite
of that obedience he owed to the precept, because of his enmity, so
he was unable to satisfy what he owed to the penalty, because of his
feebleness: he was as much without love to observe the one, as “without
strength” to bear the other: he could not, because of his “enmity, be
subject to {b273} the law” (Rom. viii. 7), or compensate for his sin,
because he was “without strength” (Rom. v. 6). His strength to offend
was great; but to deliver himself a mere nothing. Repentance was not a
thing known by man after the fall, till he had hopes of redemption; and
if he had known and exercised it, what compensation are the tears of a
malefactor for an injury done to the crown, and attempting the life of
his prince? How great was Divine goodness, not only to pity men in this
state, but to provide a strong Redeemer for them! “O Lord, my strength,
and my Redeemer!” said the Psalmist (Ps. xix. 14): when he found out
a Redeemer for our misery, he found out a strength for our impotency.
To conclude this: behold the “goodness of God,” when we had thus
unhandsomely dealt with him; had nothing to allure his goodness,
multitudes of provocations to incense him, were reduced to a condition
as low as could be, fit to be the matter of his scoffs, and the sport
of Divine justice, and so weak that we could not repair our own ruins;
then did he open a fountain of fresh goodness in the death of his Son,
and sent forth such delightful streams, as in our original creation
we could never have tasted; not only overcame the resentments of a
provoked justice, but magnified itself by our lowness, and strengthened
itself by our weakness. His goodness had before created an innocent,
but here it saves a malefactor; and sends his Son to die for us, as if
the Holy of holies were the criminal, and the rebel the innocent. It
had been a pompous goodness to have given him as a king; but a goodness
of greater grandeur to expose him as a sacrifice for slaves and enemies.
Had Adam remained innocent, and proved thankful for what he had
received, it had been great goodness to have brought him to glory; but
to bring filthy and rebellious Adam to it, surmounts, by inexpressible
degrees, that sort of goodness he had experimented before; since it was
not from a light evil, a tolerable curse unawares brought upon us, but
from the yoke we had willingly submitted to, from the power of darkness
we had courted, and the furnace of wrath we had kindled for ourselves.
What are we dead dogs, that he should behold us with so gracious an
eye? This goodness is thus enhanced, if you consider the state of man
in his first transgression, and after.
4th. This goodness further appears in the high advancement of our
nature, after it had so highly offended. By creation, we had an
affinity with animals in our bodies, with angels in our spirits, with
God in his image; but not with God in our nature, till the incarnation
of the Redeemer. Adam, by creation, was the son of God (Luke iii. 38),
but his nature was not one with the person of God: he was his son, as
created by him, but had no affinity to him by virtue of union with him:
but now man doth not only see his nature in multitudes of men on earth,
but, by an astonishing goodness, beholds his nature united to the Deity
in heaven: that as he was the son of God by creation, he is now the
brother of God by redemption; for with such a title doth that Person,
who was the Son of God as well as the Son of man, honor his disciples
(John xx. 17): and because he is of the same nature with them, he “is
not ashamed to call them brethren” (Heb. ii. 11). Our nature, which
was infinitely {b274} distant from, and below the Deity, now makes
one person with the Son of God. What man sinfully aspired to, God hath
graciously granted, and more: man aspired to a likeness in knowledge,
and God hath granted him an affinity in union. It had been astonishing
goodness to angelize our natures; but in redemption Divine goodness
hath acted higher, in a sort to deify our natures. In creation, our
nature was exalted above other creatures on earth; in our redemption,
our nature is exalted above all the host of heaven: we were higher than
the beasts, as creatures, but “lower than the angels” (Ps. viii. 5);
but, by the incarnation of the Son of God, our nature is elevated
many steps above them. After it had sunk itself by corruption below
the bestial nature, and as low as the diabolical, the “fulness of the
Godhead dwells in our nature bodily” (Col. ii. 9), but never in the
angels, angelically. The Son of God descended to dignify our nature,
by assuming it; and ascended with our nature to have it crowned above
those standing monuments of Divine power and goodness (Eph. i. 20, 21).
That Person that descended in our nature into the grave, and in the
same nature was raised up again, is, in that same nature, set at the
right hand of God in heaven, “far above all principality, and power,
and might, and dominion, and every name that is named.” Our refined
clay, by an indissoluble union with this Divine Person, is honored
to sit forever upon a throne above all the tribes of seraphims and
cherubims; and the Person that wears it, is the head of the good angels,
and the conqueror of the bad; the one are put under his feet, and the
other commanded to adore him, “that purged our sins in our nature”
(Heb. i. 3, 6): that Divine Person in our nature receives adoration
from the angels; but the nature of man is not ordered to pay any homage
and adorations to the angels. How could Divine goodness, to man, more
magnify itself? As we could not have a lower descent than we had by sin,
how could we have a higher ascent than by a substantial participation
of a divine life, in our nature, in the unity of a Divine Person? Our
earthly nature is joined to a heavenly Person; our undone nature united
to “one equal with God” (Phil. ii. 6). It may truly be said, that man
is God, which is infinitely more glorious for us, than if it could
be said, man is an angel. If it were goodness to advance our innocent
nature above other creatures, the advancement of our degenerate nature
above angels deserves a higher title than mere goodness. It is a
more gracious act, than if all men had been transformed into the pure
spiritual nature of the loftiest cherubims.
5th. This goodness is manifest in the covenant of grace made with us,
whereby we are freed from the rigor of that of works. God might have
insisted upon the terms of the old covenant, and required of man the
improvement of his original stock; but God hath condescended to lower
terms, and offered man more gracious methods, and mitigated the rigor
of the first, by the sweetness of the second.
1. It is goodness, that he should condescend to make another covenant
with man. To stipulate with innocent and righteous {b275} Adam for his
obedience, was a stoop of his sovereignty; though he gave the precept
as a sovereign Lord, yet in his covenanting, he seems to descend to
some kind of equality with that dust and ashes with whom the treated.
Absolute sovereigns do not usually covenant with their people, but
exact obedience and duty, without binding themselves to bestow a reward;
and if they intend any, they reserve the purpose in their own breasts,
without treating their subjects with a solemn declaration of it. There
was no obligation on God to enter into the first covenant, much less,
after the violation of the first, to the settlement of a new. If God
seemed in some sort to equal himself to man in the first, he seemed to
descend below himself in treating with a rebel upon more condescending
terms in the second. If his covenant with innocent Adam was a stoop
of his sovereignty, this with rebellious Adam seems to be a stripping
himself of his majesty in favor of his goodness; as if his happiness
depended upon us, and not ours upon him. It is a humiliation of himself
to behold the things in heaven, the glorious angels, as well as things
on earth, mortal men (Ps. cxiii. 6); much more to bind himself in
gracious bonds to the glorious angels; and much more if to rebel man.
In the first covenant there was much of sovereignty as well as goodness;
in the second there is less of sovereignty, and more of grace: in
the first there was a righteous man for a holy God; in the second a
polluted creature for a pure and provoked God: in the first he holds
his sceptre in his hand, to rule his subjects; in the second he seems
to lay by his sceptre, to court and espouse a beggar (Hosea ii. 18‒20):
in the first he is a Lord; in the second a husband; and binds himself
upon gracious conditions to become a debtor. How should this goodness
fill us with an humble astonishment, as it did Abraham, when he “fell
on his face,” when he heard God speaking of making a covenant with him!
(Gen. xvii. 2, 3). And if God speaking to Israel out of the fire, and
making them to hear his voice out of heaven, that he might instruct
them, was a consideration whereby Moses would heighten their admiration
of Divine goodness, and engage their affectionate obedience to him
(Deut. iv. 32, 36, 40), how much more admirable is it for God to speak
so kindly to us through the pacifying blood of the covenant, that
silenced the terrors of the old, and settled the tenderness of the new!
2. His goodness is seen in the nature and tenor of the new covenant.
There are in this richer streams of love and pity. The language of one
was, Die, if thou sin; that of the other, Live, if thou believest:[982]
the old covenant was founded upon the obedience of man; the new one
is not founded upon the inconstancy of man’s will, but the firmness of
Divine love, and the valuable merit of Christ. The head of the first
covenant was human and mutable; the Head of the second is divine and
immutable. The curse due to us by the breach of the first, is taken
off by the indulgence of the second: we are by it snatched from the
jaws of the law, to be wrapped up in the bosom of grace (Rom. viii. 1).
“For you are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. vi. 14); from
the curse {b276} and condemnation of the law, to the sweetness and
forgiveness of grace. Christ bore the one, being “made a curse for us”
(Gal. iii. 13), that we might enjoy the sweetness of the other; by this
we are brought from Mount Sinai, the mount of terror, to Mount Sion,
the mount of sacrifice, the type of the great Sacrifice (Heb. xii. 18,
22). That covenant brought in death upon one offence, this covenant
offers life after many offences (Rom. v. 16, 17): that involves us in
a curse, and this enricheth us with a blessing; the breaches of that
expelled us out of Paradise, and the embracing of this admits us into
heaven. This covenant demands, and admits of that repentance whereof
there was no mention in the first; that demanded obedience, not
repentance upon a failure; and though the exercise of it had been never
so deep in the fallen creature, nothing of the law’s severity had been
remitted by any virtue of it. Again, the first covenant demanded exact
righteousness, but conveyed no cleansing virtue, upon the contracting
any filth. The first demands a continuance in the righteousness
conferred in creation; the second imprints a gracious heart in
regeneration. “I will pour clean water upon you; I will put a new
spirit within you,” was the voice of the second covenant, not of the
first. Again, as to pardon: Adam’s covenant was to punish him, not to
pardon him, if he fell; that threatened death upon transgression, this
remits it; that was an act of Divine sovereignty, declaring the will
of God; this is an act of Divine grace, passing an act of oblivion on
the crimes of the creature: that, as it demanded no repentance upon a
failure, so it promised no mercy upon guilt; that convened our sin, and
condemned us for it; this clears our guilt, and comforts us under it.
The first covenant related us to God as a Judge; every transgression
against it forfeited his indulgence as a Father: the second delivers
us from God as a condemning Judge, to bring us under his wing, as an
affectionate Father; in the one there was a dreadful frown to scare us;
in the other, a healing wing to cover and relieve us. Again, in regard
of righteousness: that demanded our performance of a righteousness in
and by ourselves, and our own strength; this demands our acceptance
of a righteousness higher than ever the standing angels had; the
righteousness of the first covenant was the righteousness of a man,
the righteousness of the second is the righteousness of a God (2 Cor.
v. 21). Again, in regard of that obedience it demands: it exacts not
of us, as a necessary condition, the perfection of obedience, but
the sincerity of obedience; an uprightness in our intention, not an
unspottedness in our action; an integrity in our aims, and an industry
in our compliance with divine precepts: “Walk before me, and be thou
perfect” (Gen. xvii. 1); _i. e._ sincere. What is hearty in our actions,
is accepted; and what is defective, is overlooked, and not charged upon
us, because of the obedience and righteousness of our Surety. The first
covenant rejected all our services after sin; the services of a person
under the sentence of death, are but dead services: this accepts our
imperfect services, after faith in it; that administered no strength
to obey, but supposed it; this supposeth our inability to obey, and
confers some strength for it: “I will put my spirit {b277} within you,
and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ezek. xxxvi. 27). Again, in
regard of the promises: the old covenant had good, but the new hath
“better promises” (Heb. viii. 6), of justification after guilt and
sanctification after filth, and glorification at last of the whole
man. In the first, there was provision against guilt, but none for the
removal of it: provision against filth, but none for the cleansing of
it; promise of happiness implied, but not so great a one as that “life
and immortality” in heaven, “brought to light by the gospel” (2 Tim.
i. 10). Why said to be “brought to light by the gospel?” because it
was not only buried, upon the fall of man under the curses of the law,
but it was not so obvious to the conceptions of man in his innocent
state. Life indeed was implied to be promised upon his standing, but
not so glorious an immortality disclosed, to be reserved for him, if
he stood: as it is a covenant of better promises, so a covenant of
sweeter comforts; comforts more choice, and comforts more durable; an
“everlasting consolation, and a good hope” are the fruits of “grace,”
_i. e._ the covenant of grace (2 Thess. ii. 16). In the whole there is
such a love disclosed, as cannot be expressed; the apostle leaves it to
every man’s mind to conceive it, if he could, “What manner of love the
Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God”
(1 John iii. 1). It instates us in such a manner of the love of God as
he bears to his Son, the image of his person (John xvii. 23): “That the
world may know that thou hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.”
3. This goodness appears in the choice gift of himself which he hath
made over in this covenant (Gen. xvii. 7). You know how it runs in
Scripture: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer.
xxxii. 38): a propriety in the Deity is made over by it. As he gave
the blood of his Son to seal the covenant, so he gave himself as the
blessing of the covenant; “He is not ashamed to be called their God”
(Heb. xi. 16). Though he be environed with millions of angels, and
presides over them in an inexpressible glory, he is not ashamed of his
condescensions to man, and to pass over himself as the propriety of his
people, as well as to take them to be his. It is a diminution of the
sense of the place, to understand it of God, as Creator; what reason
was there for God to be ashamed of the expressions of his power, wisdom,
goodness, in the works of his hands? But we might have reason to think
there might be some ground in God to be ashamed of making himself over
in a deed of gift to a mean worm and filthy rebel; this might seem a
disparagement to his majesty; but God is not ashamed of a title so mean,
as the God of his despised people; a title below those others, of the
“Lord of hosts, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders,
riding on the wings of the wind, walking in the circuits of heaven.” He
is no more ashamed of this title of being our God, than he is of those
other that sound more glorious; he would rather have his greatness
veil to his goodness, than his goodness be confined by his majesty;
he is not only our God, but our God as he is the God of Christ: he is
not ashamed to be our propriety, and Christ is not ashamed to own his
people in a partnership with him in this propriety (John xx. 17): {b278}
“I ascend to my God, and your God.” This of God’s being our God, is the
quintessence of the covenant, the soul of all the promises: in this he
hath promised whatsoever is infinite in him, whatsoever is the glory
and ornament of his nature, for our use; not a part of him, or one
single perfection, but the whole vigor and strength of all. As he is
not a God without infinite wisdom, and infinite power, and infinite
goodness, and infinite blessedness, &c., so he passes over, in this
covenant, all that which presents him as the most adorable Being to
his creatures; he will be to them as great, as wise, as powerful, as
good as he is in himself; and the assuring us, in this covenant, to
be our God, imports also that he will do as much for us, as we would
do for ourselves, were we furnished with the same goodness, power, and
wisdom: in being our God, he testifies it is all one, as if we had the
same perfections in our own power to employ for our use; for he being
possessed with them, it is as much as if we ourselves were possessed
with them, for our own advantage, according to the rules of wisdom,
and the several conditions we pass through for his glory. But this
must be taken with a relation to that wisdom, which he observes in
his proceedings with us as creatures, and according to the several
conditions we pass through for his glory. Thus God’s being ours is more
than if all heaven and earth were ours besides; it is more than if we
were fully our own, and at our own dispose; it makes “all things that
God hath ours” (1 Cor. iii. 22); and therefore, not only all things he
hath created, but all things that he can create; not only all things
that he hath contrived, but all things that he can contrive: for in
being ours, his power is ours, his possible power as well as his active
power; his power, whereby he can effect more than he hath done, and
his wisdom, whereby he can contrive more than he hath done; so that if
there were need of employing his power to create many worlds for our
good, he would not stick at it; for if he did, he would not be our
God, in the extent of his nature, as the promise intimates. What a rich
goodness, and a fulness of bounty, is there in this short expression,
as full as the expression of a God can make it, to be intelligible, to
such creatures as we are!
4. This goodness is further manifest in the confirmation of the
covenant. His goodness did not only condescend to make it for our
happiness, after we had made ourselves miserable, but further
condescended to ratify it in the solemnest manner for our assurance,
to overrule all the despondencies unbelief could raise up in our souls.
The reason why he confirmed it by an oath, was to show the immutability
of his glorious counsel, not to tie himself to keep it, for his word
and promise is in itself as immutable as his oath; they were “two
immutable things, his word and his oath,” one as unchangeable as the
other; but for the strength of our consolation, that it might have
no reason to shake and totter (Heb. vi. 17, 18): he would condescend
as low as was possible for a God to do for the satisfaction of the
dejected creature. When the first covenant was broken, and it was
impossible for man to fulfil the terms of it, and mount to happiness
thereby, he makes another; and, as if we had reason to distrust him in
the first, he solemnly ratifies it in a higher manner than {b279} he
had done the other, and swears by himself that he will be true to it,
not so much out of an election of himself, as the object of the oath
(Heb. vi. 13): “Because he could not swear by a greater, he swears by
himself;” whereby the apostle clearly intimates, that Divine goodness
was raised to such a height for us, that if there had been anything
else more sacred than himself, or that could have punished him if he
had broken it, that he would have sworn by, to silence any diffidence
in us, and confirm us in the reality of his intentions. Now if it were
a mighty mark of goodness for God to stoop to a covenanting with us, it
was more for a sovereign to bind himself so solemnly to be our debtor
in a promise, as well as he was our sovereign in the precept, and stoop
so low in it to satisfy the distrust of that creature, that deserved
for ever to lie soaking in his own ruins, for not believing his bare
word. What absolute prince would ever stoop so low as to article with
rebellious subjects, whom he could in a moment set his foot upon and
crush; much less countenance a causeless distrust of his goodness by
the addition of his oath, and thereby bind his own hands, which were
unconfined before, and free to do what he pleased with them?