delights to be familiarly acquainted with his people, and to hear them
call upon him. He indulgeth them a free access to him, and delights
in every address of an “upright man” (Prov. xv. 8). The wonderful
efficacy of prayer depends not upon the nature of our petitions or the
temper of our soul, but the goodness of God to whom we address. Christ
establisheth it upon this bottom: when he exhorts to ask in his name,
he tells them the spring of all their grants is the Father’s love: “I
say not, I will pray the Father for you, for {b308} the Father himself
loves you” (John xvi. 26, 27). And since it is of itself incredible,
that a Majesty, exalted above the cherubims, should stoop so low as to
give a miserable and rebellious creature admittance to him, and afford
him a gracious hearing, and a quick supply, Christ ushers in the
promise of answering prayer with a note of great assurance: “I say unto
you, Ask, and it shall be given you” (Luke xi. 9, 10). I, that know
the mind of my Father, and his good disposition, assure you your prayer
shall not be in vain. Perhaps you will not be so ready of yourselves
to imagine so great a liberality; but take it upon my word, it is
true, and so you will find it. And his bounty travels, as it were, in
birth, to give the greatest blessings, upon our asking, rather than the
smallest: “your heavenly Father shall give his Holy Spirit to them that
ask him” (ver. 13): which in Matt. vii. 11, is called, “good things.”
Of all the good and rich things Divine goodness hath in his treasury,
he delights to give the best upon asking, because God doth act so as
to manifest the greatness of his bounty and magnificence to men; and,
therefore, is delighted when men, by their petitioning him, own such
a liberal disposition in him, and put him upon the manifesting it.
He would rather you should ask the greatest things heaven can afford,
than the trifles of this world; because his bounty is not discovered in
meaner gifts: he loves to have an opportunity to manifest his affection
above the liberality and tenderness of worldly fathers. He doth more
wait to give in a way of grace, than we to beg; and, “therefore, will
the Lord wait, that he may be gracious unto you” (Isa. xxx. 18). He
stands expecting your suits, and employs his wisdom in pitching upon
the fittest seasons, when the manifestation of his goodness may be
most gracious in itself, and the mercy you want most welcome to you;
as it follows, “for the Lord is a God of judgment.” He chooseth the
time wherein his doles may be most acceptable to his suppliants; “In
an acceptable time have I heard thee” (Isa. xlix. 8). He often opens
his hand while we are opening our lips, and his blessings meet our
petitions at the first setting out upon their journey to heaven: “While
they are yet speaking, I will hear” (Isa. lxv. 24). How often do we
hear a secret voice within us, while we are praying, saying, “Your
prayer is granted;” as well as hear a voice behind us, while we are
erring, saying, “This is the way, walk in it!” And his liberality
exceeds often our desires, as well as our deserts; and gives out more
than we had the wisdom or confidence to ask. The apostle intimates
it in that doxology, “Unto Him who is able to do abundantly above all
that we ask or think” (Eph. iii. 20). This power would not have been so
strong an argument of comfort, if it were never put in practice; he is
more liberal than his creatures are craving. Abraham petitioned for the
life of Ishmael, and God promiseth him the “birth of Isaac” (Gen. xvii.
18, 19). Isaac asks for a “child,” and God gives him “two” (Gen. xxv.
21, 22). Jacob desires “food” to eat, and “raiment” to put on; God
confines not his bounty within the narrow limits of his petition, but
instead of a “staff,” wherewith he passed Jordan, makes him repass
it with “two bands” (Gen. xxviii. 20). David asked life of God, and
he gave him “life,” and a “crown” to boot (Ps. xxi. 2‒5). The {b309}
Israelites would have been contented with a free life in Egypt; they
only cried to have their chains struck off; God gave them that, and
adopts them to be his “peculiar people,” and raises them into a famous
state. It is a wonder that God should condescend so much, that he
should hear prayers so weak, so cold, so wandering, and gather up our
sincere petitions from the dung of our distractions and diffidence.
David vents his astonishment at it; “Blessed be God, for he hath shown
me marvellous kindness. I said in my haste, I am cut off from before
thine eyes: nevertheless, thou heardest the voice of my supplication”
(Ps. xxxi. 21, 22). How do we wonder at the goodness of a petty man,
in granting our desires; how much more should we at the humility and
goodness of the most sovereign Majesty of heaven and earth!
7th. The goodness of God is seen in bearing with the infirmities of his
people, and accepting imperfect obedience. Though Asa had many blots in
his escutcheon, yet they are overlooked, and this note set upon record
by Divine goodness, that his heart was perfect towards the Lord all his
days; “But the high places were not removed: nevertheless, Asa’s heart
was perfect with the Lord all his days” (1 Kings, xv. 14). He takes
notice of a sincere, though chequered obedience, to reward it, which
could claim nothing but a slight from him, if he were extreme to mark
what is done amiss. When there is not an opportunity to work, but only
to will, he accepts the will, as if it had passed into work and act. He
sees no iniquity in Jacob (Numb. xxiii. 21), _i. e._ He sees it not so
as to cast off a respect to their persons, and the acceptance of their
services: his omniscience knows their sins, but his goodness doth not
reject their persons. He is of so good a disposition, that he delights
in a weak obedience of his servants, not in the imperfection, but in
the obedience (Ps. xxxvii. 23); “He delights in the way of a good man,”
though he sometimes slips in it: he accepts a poor man’s pigeon, as
well as a rich man’s ox: he hath a bottle for the tears, and a book
for the “services of the upright,” as well as for the most perfect
obedience of angels (Ps. lvi. 8): he preserves their tears, as if they
were a rich and generous wine, as the vine‑dresser doth the expressions
of the grape.
8th. The goodness of God is seen in afflictions and persecutions. If it
be “good for us to be afflicted,” for which we have the psalmist’s vote
(Ps. cxix. 71), then goodness in God is the principal cause and orderer
of the afflictions. It is his goodness to snatch away that whence we
fetch supports for our security, and encouragements for our insolence
against him: he takes away the thing which we have some value for, but
such as his infinite wisdom sees inconsistent with our true happiness.
It is no ill‑will in the physician to take away the hurtful matter the
patient loves, and prescribe bitter potions, to advance that health
which the other impaired; nor any mark of unkindness in a friend,
to wrest a sword out of a madman’s hand, wherewith he was about to
stab himself, though it were beset with the most orient pearls. To
prevent what is evil, is to do us the greatest good. It is a kindness
to prevent a man from falling down a precipice, though it be with
a violent blow, that lays him flat upon {b310} the ground at some
distance from the edge of it. By afflictions he often snaps asunder
those chains which fettered us, and quells those passions which ravaged
us: he sharpens our faith, and quickens our prayers; he brings us in
the secret chamber of our own heart, which we had little mind before
to visit by a self‑examination. It is such a goodness that he will
vouchsafe to correct man in order to his eternal happiness, that Job
makes it one part of his astonishment (Job. vii. 17); “What is man,
that thou shouldest magnify him? that thou shouldest set thy heart upon
him? and that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every
moment?” His strokes are often the magnifyings and exaltings of man.
He sets his heart upon man, while he inflicts the smart of his rod: he
shows thereby, what a high account he makes of him, and what a special
affection he bears to him. When he might treat us with more severity
after the breach of his covenant, and make his jealousy flame out
against us in furious methods, he will not destroy his relation to
us, and leave us to our own inclinations, but deal with us as a father
with his children; and when he takes this course with us, it is when
it cannot be avoided without our ruin: his goodness would not suffer
him to do it, if our badness did not force him to it (Jer. ix. 7), “I
will melt them and try them, for how shall I do for the daughter of my
people?” What other course can I take but this, according to the nature
of man? The goldsmith hath no other way to separate the dross from the
metal, but by melting it down. And when the impurities of his people
necessitate him to this proceeding, “he sits as a refiner” (Mal. iii.
3): he watches for the purifying the silver, not for his own profit
as the goldsmith, but out of a care of them, and good will to them; as
himself speaks (Isa. xlviii. 10), “I have refined thee, but not with
silver;” or, as some read it, “not for silver.” As when he scatters
his people abroad for their sin, he will not leave them without his
presence for their “sanctuary” (Ezek. xi. 16): he would by his presence
with them supply the place of ordinances, or be an ark to them in the
midst of the deluge: his hand that struck them, is never without a
goodness to comfort them and pity them. When Jacob was to go into
Egypt, which was to prove a furnace of affliction to his offspring, God
promises to go down with him, and to “bring him up again” (Gen. xlvi.
4): a promise not only made to Jacob in his person, but to Jacob in
his posterity. He returned not out of Egypt in his person, but as the
father of a numerous posterity. He that would go down with their root,
and afterwards bring up the branches, was certainly with them in all
their oppressions: “I will go down with thee.” “Down,” saith one; what
a word is that for a Deity! into Egypt, idolatrous Egypt; what a place
is that for his holiness![986] Yet O, the goodness of God! He never
thinks himself low enough to do his people good, nor any place too bad
for his society with them. So when he had sent away into captivity the
people of Israel by the hand of the Assyrian, his bowels yearn after
them in their affliction (Isa. lii. 4, 5); the Assyrian “oppressed
them without cause,” _i. e._ without a just cause in the conqueror
to inflict so great an evil upon them, but not without {b311} cause
from God, whom they had provoked. “Now, therefore, what have I here,
saith the Lord?” What do I here? I will not stay behind them. What
do I longer here? for I will redeem again those jewels the enemy hath
carried away. That chapter is a prophecy of redemption: God shows
himself so good to his people in their persecutions, that he gives
them occasion to glorify him in the very fires, as the Divine order is
(Isa. xxiv. 15), “Wherefore glorify the Lord in the fires.”
9th. The goodness of God is seen in temptations. In those he takes
occasion to show his care and watchfulness, as a father uses the
distress of a child as an opportunity for manifesting the tenderness
of his affection. God is at the beginning and end of every temptation;
he measures out both the quality and quantity: he exposeth them not to
temptation beyond the ability he had already granted them, or will at
the time, or afterwards multiply in them. He hath promised his people
that “the gate of hell shall not prevail against them” (1 Cor. x. 13):
that “in all things” they shall be “more than conquerors through Him
that loved them:” that the most raging malice of hell shall not wrest
them out of his hands. His goodness is not less in performing than
it was in promising: and as the care of his providence extends to the
least as well as the greatest, so the watchfulness of his goodness
extends to us in the least as well as in the greatest temptations.
1. The goodness of God appears in shortening temptations. None of them
can go beyond their “appointed times” (Dan. xi. 35): the strong blast
Satan breathes cannot blow, nor the waves he raises rage one minute
beyond the time God allows them; when they have done their work, and
come to the period of their time, God speaks the word, and the wind and
sea of hell must obey him, and retire into their dens. The more violent
temptations are, the shorter time doth God allot to them. The assaults
Christ had at the time of his death were of the most pressing and
urging nature: the powers of darkness were all in arms against him;
the reproaches and scorns put upon him, questioning his sonship, were
very sharp; yet a little before his suffering he calls it but an hour
(Luke xxii. 53), “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” A
short time that men and devils were combined against him; and the
time of temptation that is to come upon all the world for their trial,
is called but an “hour” (Rev. iii. 10). In all such attempts, the
greatness of the rage is a certain prognostic of the shortness of the
season (Rev. xii. 12).
2. The goodness of God appears in strengthening his people under
temptations. If he doth not restrain the arm of Satan from striking,
he gives us a sword to manage the combat, and a shield to bear off the
blow (Eph. vi. 16, 17). If he obscures his goodness in one part, he
clears and brightens it in another: he either binds the strong man that
he shall not stir, or gives us armor to render us victorious. If we
fall, it is not for want of provision from him, but for want of our
“putting on the armor of God” (Eph. vi. 11, 13). When we have not a
strength by nature, he gives it us by grace: he often quells those
passions within which would join hands with, and second the temptation
without. He either qualifies the temptation {b312} suitably to the
force we have, or else supplies us with a new strength to mate the
temptation he intends to let loose against us; he knows we are but dust,
and his goodness will not have us unequally matched. The Jews that
in Antiochus’ time were under great temptation to apostasy by reason
of the violence of their persecutions, were, “out of weakness, made
strong” for the combat (Heb. xi. 34). The Spirit came more strongly
upon Sampson when the Philistines most furiously and confidently
assaulted him. His Spirit is sent to strengthen his people before the
devil is permitted to tempt them (Matt. iv. 2); “Then was Jesus led
up of the Spirit.” Then; When? When the Spirit had in an extraordinary
manner descended upon him (Matt. iii. 16), “then,” and not before. As
the angels appeared to Christ, after his temptation, to minister to him,
so they appeared to him before his passion, the time of the strongest
powers of darkness, to strengthen him for it: he is so good, that when
he knows our potsherd strength too weak, he furnisheth our recruits
from his own omnipotence (Eph. vi. 10); “Be strong in the Lord, and
in the power of his might.” He doth, as it were, breathe in something
of his own almightiness, to assist us in our wrestling against
principalities and powers, and make us capable to sustain the violent
storms of the enemies.
3. The goodness of God is seen in temptations, in giving great comforts
in or after them. The Israelites had a more immediate provision of
manna from heaven when they were in the wilderness. We read not that
the Father spake audibly to the Son, and gave him so loud a testimony,
that he was his “beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased,” till he was
upon the brink of strong temptations (Matt. iii. 17): nor sent angels
to minister immediately to his person, till after his success (Matt.
iv. 11). Job never had such evidences of Divine love till after he had
felt the sharp strokes of Satan’s malice; he had heard of God before,
by the “hearing of the ear,” but afterwards is admitted into greater
familiarity (Job. xlii. 5): he had more choice appearances, clearer
illuminations, and more lively instructions. And, though his people
fall into temptation, yet, after their rising, they have more signal
marks of his favor than others have, or themselves, before they fell.
Peter had been the butt of Satan’s rage, in tempting him to deny
Christ, and he had shamefully complied with the temptation; yet, to
him particularly, must the first news of the Redeemer’s resurrection
be carried, by God’s order, in the mouth of an angel (Mark xvi. 7);
“Go your ways, tell his disciples, and Peter.” We have the greatest
communion with God after a victory; the most refreshing truths after
the devil hath done his worst. God is ready to furnish us with strength
in a combat, and cordials after it.
4. The goodness of God is seen in temptations, in discovering and
advancing inward grace by this means. The issue of a temptation of
a Christian is often like that of Christ’s, the manifesting a greater
vigor of the Divine nature, in affections to God, and enmity to sin.
Spices perfume not the air with their scent till they are invaded by
the fire: the truth of grace is evidenced by them. The assault of an
enemy revives, and actuates that strength and courage which is {b313}
in a man, perhaps unknown to himself, as well as others, till he meets
with an adversary: many seem good, not that they are so in themselves,
but for want of a temptation: this many times verifies a virtue, which
was owned upon trust before, and discovers that we had more grace than
we thought we had. The solicitations of Joseph’s mistress cleared up
his chastity: we are many times under temptation, as a candle under
the snuffer; it seems to be out, but presently burns the clearer.
Afflictions are like those clouds which look black, and eclipse the sun
from the earth, but yet, when they drop, refresh that ground they seem
to threaten, and multiply the grain on the earth, to serve for our food;
and so our troubles, while they wet us to the skin, wash much of that
dust from our graces which in a clearer day had been blown upon us.
Too much rest corrupts; exercise teacheth us to manage our weapons: the
spiritual armor would grow rusty, without opportunity to furbish it up;
faith receives a new heart by every combat, and by every victory; like
a fire, it spreads itself further, and gathers strength by the blowing
of the wind. While the gardener commands his servant to shake the tree,
he intends to fasten its roots, and settle it firmer in its place; and
is this an ill‑will to the plant?
5. His goodness is seen in temptations, in preventing sin which we
were likely to fall into. Paul’s thorn in the flesh was to prevent the
pride of his spirit, and let out the windiness of his heart (2 Cor.
xii. 7), lest it should be exalted above measure. The goodness of
God makes the devil a polisher, while he intends to be a destroyer.
The devil never works, but suitably to some corruption lurking in
us: Divine goodness makes his fiery darts a means to discover, and
so to prevent the treachery of that perfidious inmate in our hearts;
humility is a greater benefit than a putrefying pride; if God brings
us into a wilderness to be tempted of the devil, it is to bring down
our loftiness, to starve our carnal confidence, and expel our rusting
“security” (Deut. viii. 2); we many times fly under a temptation to
God, from whom we sat too loose before. Is it not goodness to use those
means that may drive us into his own arms? It is not a want of goodness
to soap the garment, in order to take away the spots; we have reason
to bless God for the assaults from hell, as well as pure mercies from
heaven; and it is a sin to overlook the one as well as the other, since
Divine goodness shines in both.
6. The goodness of God is seen in temptations, in fitting us more for
his service. Those whom God intends to make choice instruments in his
service, are first seasoned with strong temptations, as timber reserved
for the strong beams of a building is first exposed to sun and wind,
to make it more compact for its proper use. By this men are brought to
answer the end of their creation, the service of God, which is their
proper goodness. Peter was, after his foil by a temptation, more
courageous in his Master’s cause than before, and the more fitted to
strengthen his brethren.
Thus the goodness of God appears in all parts of his government.
V. I shall now come to the _Use_. First, Of instruction.
1. If God be so good, how unworthy is the contempt or abuse of his
goodness! (1.) The contempt and abuse of Divine goodness is {b314}
frequent and common; it began in the first ages of the world, and
commenced a few moments after the creation; it hath not to this day
diminished its affronts; Adam began the dance, and his posterity have
followed him; the injury was directed against this, when he entertained
the seducer’s notion of God’s being an envious Deity, in not indulging
such a knowledge as he might have afforded him (Gen. iii. 5): “God doth
know, that you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” The charge of
envy is utterly inconsistent with pure goodness. What was the language
of this notion, so easily entertained by Adam, but that the tempter
was better than God, and the nature of God as base and sordid as the
nature of a devil? Satan paints God with his own colors, represents
him as envious and malicious as himself; Adam admires, and believes
the picture to be true, and hangs it up as a beloved one in the closet
of his heart. The devil still drives on the same game, fills men’s
hearts with the same sentiments, and by the same means he murdered our
first parents, he redoubles the stabs to his posterity. Every violation
of the Divine law is a contempt of God’s goodness, as well as his
sovereignty, because his laws are the products both of the one and
the other. Goodness animates them, while sovereignty enjoys them: God
hath commanded nothing but what doth conduce to our happiness. All
disobedience implies, that his law is a snare to entrap us, and make
us miserable, and not an act of kindness, to render us happy, which
is a disparagement to this perfection, as if he had commanded what
would promote our misery, and prohibited what would conduce to our
blessedness: to go far from him, and walk after vanity, is to charge
him with our iniquity, and unrighteousness, baseness, and cruelty, in
his commands: God implies it by his speech (Jer. ii. 5), “What iniquity
have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and
walked after vanity?” as if, like a tyrant, he had consulted cruelty in
the composure of them, and designed to feast himself with the blood and
misery of his creatures. Every sin is, in its own nature, a denial of
God to be the chiefest good and happiness, and implies that it is no
great matter to lose him: it is a forsaking him as the Fountain of Life,
and a preferring a cracked and “empty cistern” as the chief happiness
before him (Jer. ii. 13). Though sin is not so evil as God is good,
yet it is the greatest evil, and stands in opposition to God as the
greatest good. Sin disorders the frame of the world; it endeavored to
frustrate all the communications of Divine goodness in creation, and to
stop up the way of any further streams of it to his creatures.
(2.) The abuse and contempt of the Divine goodness is base and
disingenious. It is the highest wickedness, because God is the highest
goodness, pure goodness that cannot have anything in him worthy of our
contempt. Let men injure God under what notion they will, they injure
his goodness; because all his attributes are summed up in this one, and
all, as it were, deified by it. For whatsoever power or wisdom he might
have, if he were destitute of this he were not God: the contempt of
his goodness implies him to be the greatest evil, and worst of beings.
Badness, not goodness, is the proper object of contempt: as respect
is a propension of mind to {b315} something that is good, so contempt
is an alienation of the mind from something as evil, either simply
or supposedly evil in its nature, or base or unworthy in its action
towards that person that contemns it. As men desire nothing but
what they apprehend to be good, so they slight nothing but what they
apprehend to be evil: since nothing, therefore, is more contemned by us
than God, nothing more spurned at by us than God, it will follow that
we regard him as the most loathsome and despicable being, which is the
greatest baseness. And our contempt of him is worse than that of the
devils; they injure him under the inevitable strokes of his justice,
and we slight him when we are surrounded with the expressions of his
bounty; they abuse him under vials of wrath, and we under a plenteous
liberality: they malice him, because he inflicts on them what is
hurtful; and we despise him, because he commands what is profitable,
holy, and honorable, in its own nature, though not in our esteem. They
are not under those high obligations as we; they abuse his creating,
and we his redeeming goodness: he never sent his Son to shed a drop of
blood for their recovery; they can expect nothing but the torment of
their persons, and the destruction of their works; but we abuse that
goodness that would rescue us since we are miserable, as well as that
righteousness which created us innocent. How base is it to use him so
ill, that is not once or twice, but a daily, hourly Benefactor to us;
whose rain drops upon the earth for our food, and whose sun shines
upon the earth for our pleasure as well as profit: such a Benefactor
as is the true Proprietor of what we have, and thinks nothing too good
for them that think everything too much for his service! How unworthy
is it to be guilty of such base carriage towards him, whose benefits
we cannot want, nor live without! How disingenious both to God and
ourselves, to “despise the riches of his goodness, that are designed to
lead us to repentance” (Rom. ii. 4), and by that to happiness! And more
heinous are the sins of renewed men upon this account, because they are
against his “goodness” not only offered to them, but tasted by them;
not only against the notion of goodness, but the experience of goodness,
and the relished sweetness of choicest bounty.