seem to be nothing else than purely his own will. Some laws there
are for which a reason may be rendered from the nature of the thing
enjoined, as to love, honor, and worship God: for others, none but
this, God will have it so: such was that positive law to Adam of “not
eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. ii. 17), which
was merely an asserting his own dominion, and was different from that
law of nature God had written in his heart. No other reason of this
seems to us, but a resolve to try man’s obedience in a way of absolute
sovereignty, and to manifest his right over all creatures, to reserve
what he pleased to himself, and permit the use of what he pleased to
man, and to signify to man that he was to depend on him, who was his
Lord, and not on his own will. There was no more hurt in itself, for
Adam to have eaten of that, than of any other in the garden; the fruit
was pleasant to the eye, and good for food; but God would show the
right he had over his own goods, and his authority over man, to reserve
what he pleases of his own creation from his touch; and since man could
not claim a propriety in anything, he was to meddle with nothing but by
the leave of his Sovereign, either discovered by a special or general
license. Thus God showed himself the Lord of man, and that man was but
his steward, to act by his orders. If God had forbidden man the use
of more trees in the garden, his command had been just; since, as a
sovereign Lord, he might dispose of his own goods; and when he had
granted him the whole compass of that pleasant garden, and the whole
world round about for him and his posterity, it was a more tolerable
exercise of his dominion to reserve this “one tree,” as a mark of
his sovereignty, when he had left “all others” to the use of Adam. He
reserved nothing to himself, as Lord of the manor, but this; and Adam
was prohibited nothing else but this one, as a sign of his subjection.
Now for this no reason can be rendered by any man but merely the will
of God; this was merely a fruit of his dominion. For the moral laws a
reason may be rendered; to love God hath reason to enforce it besides
God’s will; _viz._, the excellency of his nature, and the greatness and
multitudes of his benefits. To love our neighbor hath enforcing reasons;
_viz._, the conjunction in blood, the preservation of human society,
and the need we may stand in of their love ourselves: but no reason
can be assigned of this positive command about the tree of knowledge
of good and evil, but the pleasure of God. It was a branch of his pure
dominion to {b390} but merely the pleasure of God. It was a branch of
his pure dominion to try man’s obedience, and a mark of his goodness
to try it by so and light a precept, when he might have extended
his authority further. Had not God given this or the like order, his
absolute dominion had not been so conspicuous. It is true, Adam had a
law of nature in him, whereby he was obliged to perpetual obedience;
and though it was a part of God’s dominion to implant it in him, yet
his supreme dominion over the creatures had not been so visible to
man but by this, or a precept of the same kind. What was commanded or
prohibited by the law of nature, did bespeak a comeliness in itself, it
appeared good or evil to the reason of man; but this was neither good
nor evil in itself, it received its sole authority from the absolute
will of God, and nothing could result from the fruit itself, as a
reason why man should not taste it, but only the sole will of God.
And as God’s dominion was most conspicuous in this precept, so man’s
obedience had been most eminent in observing it: for in his obedience
to it, nothing but the sole power and authority of God, which is the
proper rule of obedience, could have been respected, not any reason
from the thing itself. To this we may refer some other commands, as
that of appointing the time of solemn and public worship, the _seventh
day_; though the worship of God be a part of the law of nature, yet
the appointing a particular day, wherein he would be more formally
and solemnly acknowledged than on other days, was grounded upon his
absolute right of legislation: for there was nothing in the time itself
that could render that day more holy than another, though God respected
his “finishing the work of creation” in his institution of that day
(Gen. ii. 3). Such were the ceremonial commands of sacrifices and
washings under the law, and the commands of sacraments under the gospel:
the one to last till the first coming of Christ and his passion; the
other to last till the second coming of Christ and his triumph. Thus he
made natural and unavoidable uncleannesses to be sins, and the touching
a dead body to be pollution, which in their own nature were not so.
(4.) The dominion of God appears in the moral law, and his majesty in
publishing it. As the law of nature was writ by his own fingers in the
nature of man, so it was engraven by his own finger in the “tables of
stone” (Exod. xxxi. 18), which is very emphatically expressed to be a
mark of God’s dominion. “And the tables were the work of God, and the
writing was the writing of God engraven upon the tables” (Exod. xxxii.
16); and when the first tables were broken, though he orders Moses to
frame the tables, yet the writing of the law he reserves to himself
(Exod. xxxiv. 1). It is not said of any part of the Scripture, that
it was writ by the finger of God, but only of the Decalogue: herein he
would have his sovereignty eminently appear; it was published by God in
state, with a numerous attendance of his heavenly militia (Deut. xxxii.
2); and the artillery of heaven was shot off at the solemnity; and
therefore it is called a fiery law, coming from his right hand, _i. e._
his sovereign power. It was published with all the marks of supreme
majesty.
(5.) The dominion of God appears in the obligation of the law, which
reacheth the conscience. The laws of every prince are framed {b391}
for the outward conditions of men; they do not by their authority
bind the conscience; and what obligations do result from them upon the
conscience, is either from their being the same immediately with Divine
laws, or as they are according to the just power of the magistrate,
founded on the law of God. Conscience hath a protection from the King
of kings, and cannot be arrested by any human power. God hath given man
but an authority over half the man, and the worst half too, that which
is of an earthly original; but reserved the authority over the better
and more heavenly half to himself. The dominion of earthly princes
extends only to the bodies of men; they have no authority over the soul,
their punishment and rewards cannot reach it: and therefore their laws,
by their single authority, cannot bind it, but as they are coincident
with the law of God, or as the equity of them is subservient to the
preservation of human society, a regular and righteous thing, which is
the divine end in government; and so they bind, as they have relation
to God as the supreme magistrate. The conscience is only intelligible
to God in its secret motions, and therefore only guidable by God; God
only pierceth into the conscience by his eye, and therefore only can
conduct it by his rule. Man cannot tell whether we embrace this law
in our heart and consciences, or only in appearance; “He only can
judge it” (Luke xii. 3, 4), and therefore he only can impose laws
upon it; it is out of the reach of human penal authority, if their
laws be transgressed inwardly by it. Conscience is a book in some
sort as sacred as the Scripture; no addition can be lawfully made to
it, no subtraction from it. Men cannot diminish the duty of conscience,
or raze out the law God hath stamped upon it. They cannot put a
_supersedeas_ to the writ of conscience, or stop its mouth with a _noli
prosequi_. They can make no addition by their authority to bind it; it
is a flower in the crown of Divine sovereignty only.
2. His sovereignty appears in a power of dispensing with his own
laws. It is as much a part of his dominion to dispense with his laws,
as to enjoin them; he only hath the power of relaxing his own right, no
creature hath power to do it; that would be to usurp a superiority over
him, and order above God himself. Repealing or dispensing with the law
is a branch of royal authority. It is true, God will never dispense
with those moral laws which have an eternal reason in themselves and
their own nature; as for a creature to fear, love, and honor God; this
would be to dispense with his own holiness, and the righteousness of
his nature, to sully the purity of his own dominion; it would write
folly upon the first creation of man after the image of God, by writing
mutability upon himself, in framing himself after the corrupted image
of man; it would null and frustrate the excellency of the creature,
wherein the image of God mostly shines; nay, it would be to dispense
with a creature’s being a Creator, and make him independent upon the
Sovereign of the world in moral obedience. But God hath a right to
dispense with the ordinary laws of nature in the inferior creatures; he
hath a power to alter their course by an arrest of miracles, and make
them come short, or go beyond his ordinances established for them. He
hath a right to make the sun stand still, or move backward; to {b392}
bind up the womb of the earth, and bar the influences of the clouds;
bridle in the rage of the fire, and the fury of lions; make the liquid
waters stand like a wall, or pull up the dam, which he hath set to
the sea, and command it to overflow the neighboring countries: he
can dispense with the natural laws of the whole creation, and strain
everything beyond its ordinary pitch. Positive laws he hath reversed;
as the ceremonial law given to the Jews. The very nature, indeed, of
that law required a repeal, and fell of course; when that which was
intended by it was come, it was of no longer significancy; as before
it was a useful shadow, it would afterwards have been an empty one: had
not God took away this, Christianity had not, in all likelihood, been
propagated among the Gentiles. This was the “partition wall between
Jews and Gentiles” (Eph. xii. 14); which made them a distinct family
from all the world, and was the occasion of the enmity of the Gentiles
against the Jews. When God had, by bringing in what was signified by
those rites, declared his decree for the ceasing of them; and when the
Jews, fond of those Divine institutions, would not allow him the right
of repealing what he had the authority of enacting; he resolved, for
the asserting his dominion, to bury them in the ruins of the temple
and city, and make them forever incapable of practising the main and
essential parts of them; for the temple being the pillar of the legal
service, by demolishing that, God hath taken away their rights of
sacrificing, it being peculiarly annexed to that place; they have no
altar dignified with a fire from heaven to consume their sacrifices,
no legal high‑priest to offer them. God hath by his providence changed
his own law as well as by his precept; yea, he hath gone higher, by
virtue of his sovereignty, and changed the whole scene and methods of
his government after the fall, from King Creator to King Redeemer. He
hath revoked the law of works as a covenant; released the penalty of
it from the believing sinner, by transferring it upon the Surety, who
interposed himself by his own will and Divine designation. He hath
established another covenant upon other promises in a higher root, with
greater privileges, and easier terms. Had not God had this right of
sovereignty, not a man of Adam’s posterity could have been blessed; he
and they must have lain groaning under the misery of the fall, which
had rendered both himself and all in his loins unable to observe the
terms of the first covenant. He hath, as some speak, dispensed with his
own moral law in some cases; in commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son,
his only son, a righteous son, a son whereof he had the promise, that
“in Isaac should his seed be called;” yet he was commanded to sacrifice
him by the right of his absolute sovereignty as the supreme Lord of
the lives of his creatures, from the highest angel to the lowest worm,
whereby he bound his subjects to this law, not himself. Our lives are
due to him when he calls for them, and they are a just forfeit to him,
at the very moment we sin, at the very moment we come into the world,
by reason of the venom of our nature against him, and the disturbance
the first sin of man (whereof we are inheritors) gave to his glory.
Had Abraham sacrificed his son of his own head, he had sinned, yea,
in attempting it; but being authorized {b393} from heaven, his act was
obedience to the Sovereign of the world, who had a power to dispense
with his own law; and with this law he had before dispensed, in the
case of Cain’s murder of Abel, as to the immediate punishment of it
with death, which, indeed, was settled afterwards by his authority,
but then omitted because of the paucity of men, and for the peopling
the world; but settled afterwards, when there was almost, though not
altogether, the like occasion of omitting it for a time.
3. His sovereignty appears in punishing the transgression of his law.
(1.) This is a branch of God’s dominion as lawgiver. So was the
vengeance God would take upon the Amalekites (Exod. xvii. 16): “The
Lord hath sworn, that the Lord will have war;” the Hebrew is, “The
hand upon the throne of the Lord,” as in the margin: as a “lawgiver”
he “saves or destroys” (James iv. 12). He acts according to his own
law, in a congruity to the sanction of his own precepts; though he be
an arbitrary lawgiver, appointing what laws he pleases, yet he is not
an arbitrary judge. As he commands nothing but what he hath a right to
command, so he punisheth none but whom he hath a right to punish, and
with such punishment as the law hath denounced. All his acts of justice
and inflictions of curses are the effects of this sovereign dominion
(Ps. xxix. 10): “He sits King upon the floods;” upon the deluge
of waters wherewith he drowned the world, say some. It is a right
belonging to the authority of magistrates to pull up the infectious
weeds that corrupt a commonwealth; it is no less the right of God, as
the lawgiver and judge of all the earth, to subject criminals to his
vengeance, after they have rendered themselves abominable in his eyes,
and carried themselves unworthy subjects of so great and glorious a
King. The first name whereby God is made known in Scripture, is Elohim
(Gen. i. 1): “In the beginning God created the heaven and earth;”
a name which signifies his power of judging, in the opinion of some
critics; from him it is derived to earthly magistrates; their judgment
is said, therefore, to be the “judgment of God” (Deut. i. 17). When
Christ came, he proposed this great motive of repentance from the
“kingdom of heaven being at hand;” the kingdom of his grace, whereby
to invite men; the kingdom of his justice in the punishment of the
neglecters of it, whereby to terrify men. Punishments as well as
rewards belong to royalty; it issued accordingly; those that believed
and repented came under his gracious sceptre, those that neglected
and rejected it fell under his iron rod; Jerusalem was destroyed, the
temple demolished, the inhabitants lost their lives by the edge of the
sword, or lingered them out in the chains of a miserable captivity.
This term of “judge,” which signifies a sovereign right to govern
and punish delinquents, Abraham gives him, when he came to root out
the people of Sodom, and make them the examples of his vengeance
(Gen. xviii. 25).
(2.) Punishing the transgressions of his law. This is a necessary
branch of dominion. His sovereignty in making laws would be a trifle,
if there were not also an authority to vindicate those laws from
contempt and injury; he would be a Lord only spurned at by {b394}
rebels. Sovereignty is not preserved without justice. When the
Psalmist speaks of the majesty of God’s kingdom, he tells us, that
“righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne” (Ps.
xcvii. 1, 2). These are the engines of Divine dignity which render him
glorious and majestic. A legislative power would be trampled on without
executive; by this the reverential apprehensions of God are preserved
in the world. He is known to be Lord of the world “by the judgments
which he executes” (Ps. ix. 16). When he seems to have lost his
dominion, or given it up in the world, he recovers it by punishment.
When he takes some away “with a whirlwind, and in his wrath,” the
natural consequence men make of it, is this: “Surely there is a God
that judgeth the earth” (Ps. lviii. 9, 11). He reduceth the creature,
by the lash of his judgments, that would not acknowledge his authority
in his precepts. Those sins which disown his government in the heart
and conscience, as pride, inward blasphemy, &c., he hath reserved a
time hereafter to reckon for. He doth not presently shoot his arrows
into the marrow of every delinquent, but those sins which traduce his
government of the world, and tear up the foundations of human converse,
and a public respect to him, he reckons with particularly here, as well
as hereafter, that the life of his sovereignty might not always faint
in the world.
(3.) This of punishing was the second discovery of his dominion in the
world. His first act of sovereignty was the giving a law; the next, his
appearance in the state of a judge. When his orders were violated, he
rescues the honor of them by an execution of justice. He first judged
the angels, punishing the evil ones for their crime: the first court
he kept among them as a governor, was to give them a law; the second
court he kept was as a judge trying the delinquents, and adjudging
the offenders to be “reserved in chains of darkness” till the final
execution (Jude 6); and, at the same time probably, he confirmed
the good ones in their obedience by grace. So the first discovery of
his dominion to man, was the giving him a precept, the next was the
inflicting a punishment for the breach of it. He summons Adam to the
bar, indicts him for his crime, finds him guilty by his own confession,
and passeth sentence on him, according to the rule he had before
acquainted him with.
(4.) The means whereby he punisheth shows his dominion. Sometimes he
musters up hail and mildew; sometimes he sends regiments of wild beasts;
so he threatens Israel (Lev. xxvi. 22). Sometimes he sends out a party
of angels to beat up the quarters of men, and make a carnage among
them (2 Kings xix. 35). Sometimes he mounts his thundering battery, and
shoots forth his ammunition from the clouds, as against the Philistines
(1 Sam. vii. 10). Sometimes he sends the slightest creatures to shame
the pride and punish the sin of man, as “lice, frogs, locusts,” as upon
the Egyptians (Exod. viii.‒x.).
_Secondly._ This dominion it manifested by God as a proprietor and Lord
of his creatures and his own goods. And this is evident,
1. In the choice of some persons from eternity. He hath set apart some
from eternity, wherein he will display the invincible efficacy of his
grace, and thereby infallibly bring them to the fruition {b395} of
glory (Eph. i. 4, 5): “According as he hath chosen us in him before
the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame
before him in love, having predestinated us to the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.
” Why doth he write some names in the “book of life,” and leave out
others? Why doth he enrol some, whom he intends to make denizens of
heaven, and refuse to put others in his register? The apostle tells
us, it is the pleasure of his will. You may render a reason for many
of God’s actions, till you come to this, the top and foundation of all;
and under what head of reason can man reduce this act but to that of
his royal prerogative? Why doth God save some, and condemn others at
last? because of the faith of the one, and unbelief of the other. Why
do some men believe? because God hath not only given them the means of
grace, but accompanied those means with the efficacy of his Spirit. Why
did God accompany those means with the efficacy of his Spirit in some,
and not in others? because he had decreed by grace to prepare them
for glory. But why did he decree, or choose some, and not others? Into
what will you resolve this but into his sovereign pleasure? Salvation
and condemnation at the last upshot, are acts of God as the Judge,
conformable to his own law of giving life to believers, and inflicting
death upon unbelievers; for those a reason may be rendered; but the
choice of some, and preterition of others, is an act of God as he is
a sovereign monarch, before any law was actually transgressed, because
not actually given. When a prince redeems a rebel, he acts as a judge
according to law; but when he calls some out to pardon, he acts as a
sovereign by a prerogative above law; into this the apostle resolves it
(Rom. ix. 13, 15). When he speaks of God’s loving Jacob and hating Esau,
and that before they had done either good or evil, it is, “because God
will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and compassion on whom he
will have compassion.” Though the first scope of the apostle, in the
beginning of the chapter, was to declare the reason of God’s rejecting
the Jews, and calling in the Gentiles; had he only intended to demolish
the pride of the Jews, and flat their opinion of merit, and aimed no
higher than that providential act of God; he might, convincingly enough
to the reason of men, have argued from the justice of God, provoked by
the obstinacy of the Jews, and not have had recourse to his absolute
will; but, since he asserts this latter, the strength of his argument
seems to lie thus: if God by his absolute sovereignty may resolve, and
fix his love upon Jacob and estrange it from Esau, or any other of his
creatures, before they have done good or evil, and man have no ground
to call his infinite majesty to account, may he not deal thus with
the Jews, when their demerit would be a bar to any complaints of the
creature against him?[1007] If God were considered here in the quality
of a judge, it had been fit to have considered the matter of fact in
the criminal; but he is considered as a sovereign, rendering no other
reason of his action but his own will; “whom he will he hardens”
(ver. 18). And then the apostle concludes (ver. 20), “Who art thou,
O man, that repliest against God?” If the reason drawn {b396} from
God’s sovereignty doth not satisfy in this inquiry, no other reason can
be found wherein to acquiesce: for the last condemnation there will be
sufficient reason to clear the justice of his proceedings. But, in this
case of election, no other reason but what is alleged, _viz._, the will
of God, can be thought of, but what is liable to such knotty exceptions
that cannot well be untied.
(1.) It could not be any merit in the creature that might determine
God to choose him. If the decree of election falls not under the merit
of Christ’s passion, as the procuring cause, it cannot fall under the
merit of any part of the corrupted mass. The decree of sending Christ
did not precede, but followed, in order of nature, the determination of
choosing some. When men were chosen as the subjects for glory, Christ
was chosen as the means for the bringing them to glory (Eph. i. 4):
“Chosen us in him, and predestinated us to the adoption of children by
Jesus Christ.” The choice was not merely in Christ as the moving cause;
that the apostle asserts to be “the good pleasure of his will;” but
in Christ, as the means of conveying to the chosen ones the fruits of
their election. What could there be in any man that could invite God
to this act, or be a cause of distinction of one branch of Adam from
another? Were they not all hewed out of the same rock, and tainted with
the same corruption in blood? Had it been possible to invest them with
a power of merit at the first, had not that venom, contracted in their
nature, degraded all of power for the future? What merit was there
in any but of wrathful punishment, since they were all considered as
criminals, and the cursed brood of an ungrateful rebel? What dignity
can there be in the nature of the purest part of clay, to be made a
vessel of honor, more than in another part of clay, as pure as that
which was formed into a vessel for mean and sordid use? What had any
one to move his mercy more than another, since they were all children
of wrath, and equally daubed with original guilt and filth? Had not all
an equal proportion of it to provoke his justice? What merit is there
in one dry bone more than another, to be inspired with the breath of
a spiritual life? Did not all lie wallowing in their own filthy blood?
and what could the steam and noisomeness of that deserve at the hands
of a pure Majesty, but to be cast into a sink furthest from his sight?
Were they not all considered in this deplorable posture, with an equal
proportion of poison in their nature, when God first took his pen, and
singled out some names to write in the book of life? It could not be
merit in any one piece of this abominable mass, that should stir up
that resolution in God to set apart this person for a vessel of glory,
while he permitted another to putrefy in his own gore. He loved Jacob,
and hated Esau, though they were both parts of the common mass, the
seed of the same loins, and lodged in the same womb.