to have a clearer revelation of God. God separated them from all the
world to honor them with the _depositum_ of his oracles (Rom. iii. 2):
“To them were committed the oracles of God.” In which regard all other
nations are said to be “without God” (Eph. ii. 12), as being destitute
of so great a privilege. The Spirit blew in Canaan when the lands about
it felt not the saving breath of it. “He hath not dealt so with any
nation; and as for his judgments, they have not known them” (Ps. cxlvii.
20). The rest had no warnings from the prophets, no dictates from
heaven, but what they had by the light of nature, the view of the works
of creation, and the administration of Providence, and what remained
among them of some ancient traditions derived from Noah, which, in
tract of time, were much defaced. We read but of one Jonah sent to
Nineveh, but frequent alarms to the Israelites by a multitude of
prophets commissioned by God. It is true, the door of the Jewish church
was open to what proselytes would enter themselves, and embrace their
religion and worship; but there was no public proclamation made in the
world; only God, by his miracles in their deliverance from Egypt (which
could not but be famous among all the neighbor nations), declared
them to be a people favored by heaven: but the tradition from Adam and
Noah was not publicly revived by God in other parts, and raised from
that grave of forgetfulness wherein it had lain so long buried. Was
there any reason in them for this indulgence? God might have been as
liberal to any other nation, yea, to all the nations in the world, if
it had been his sovereign pleasure: any other people were as fit to be
entrusted with his oracles, and be subjects for his worship, as that
people; yet all other nations, till the rejection of the Jews, because
of their rejection of Christ, were strangers from the covenant of
promise. These people were part of the common mass of the world: they
had no prerogative in nature above Adam’s posterity. Were {b405} they
the extract of an innocent part of his loins, and all the other nations
drained out of his putrefaction? Had the blood of Abraham, from whom
they were more immediately descended, any more precious tincture than
the rest of mankind? They, as well as other nations, were made of
“one blood” (Acts xvii. 26); and that corrupted both in the spring and
in the rivulets. Were they better than other nations, when God first
drew them out of their slavery? We have Joshua’s authority for it,
that they had complied with the Egyptian idolatry, “and served other
gods,” in that place of their servitude (Josh. xxiv. 14). Had they
had an abhorrency of the superstition of Egypt, while they remained
there, they could not so soon have erected a golden calf for worship,
in imitation of the Egyptian idols. All the rest of mankind had
as inviting reasons to present God with, as those people had. God
might have granted the same privilege to all the world, as well as
to them, or denied it them, and endowed all the rest of the world
with his statutes: but the enriching such a small company of people
with his Divine showers, and leaving the rest of the world as a
barren wilderness in spirituals, can be placed upon no other account
originally than that of his unaccountable sovereignty, of his love
to them: there was nothing in them to merit such high titles from God
as his first‑born, his peculiar treasure, the apple of his eye. He
disclaims any righteousness in them, and speaks a word sufficient to
damp such thoughts in them, by charging them with their wickedness,
while he “loaded them with his benefits” (Deut. ix. 4, 6). The Lord
“gives thee not” this land for “thy righteousness;” for thou art a
stiff‑necked people. It was an act of God’s free pleasure to “choose
them to be a people to himself” (Deut. vii. 6).
(3.) God afterwards rejected the Jews, gave them up to the hardness of
their hearts, and spread the gospel among the Gentiles. He hath cast
off the children of the kingdom, those that had been enrolled for his
subjects for many ages, who seemed, by their descent from Abraham, to
have a right to the privileges of Abraham; and called men from the east
and from the west, from the darkest corners in the world, to “sit down
with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven,” _i. e._
to partake with them of the promises of the gospel (Matt. viii. 11).
The people that were accounted accursed by the Jews enjoy the means
of grace, which have been hid from those that were once dignified this
1600 years; that they have neither ephod, nor teraphim, nor sacrifice,
nor any true worship of God among them (Hos. iii. 4). Why he should not
give them grace to acknowledge and own the person of the Messiah, to
whom he had made the promises of him for so many successive ages, but
let their “heart be fat,” and “their ears heavy” (Isa. vi. 10)?――why
the gospel at length, after the resurrection of Christ, should
be presented to the Gentiles, not by chance, but pursuant to the
resolution and prediction of God, declared by the prophets that it
should be so in time?――why he should let so many hundreds of years pass
over, after the world was peopled, and let the nations all that while
soak in their idolatrous customs?――why he should not call the Gentiles
without rejecting the Jews, and bind them both up together in the
bundle of {b406} life?――why he should acquaint some people with it
a little after the publishing it in Jerusalem, by the descent of the
Spirit, and others not a long time after?――some in the first ages
of Christianity enjoyed it; others have it not, as those in America,
till the last age of the world;――can be referred to nothing but his
sovereign pleasure. What merit can be discovered in the Gentiles? There
is something of justice in the case of the Jews’ rejection, nothing
but sovereignty in the Gentiles’ reception into the church. If the Jews
were bad, the Gentiles were in some sort worse: the Jews owned the one
true God, without mixture of idols, though they owned not the Messiah
in his appearance, which they did in a promise; but the Gentiles owned
neither the one nor the other. Some tell us, it was for the merit
of some of their ancestors. How comes the means of grace, then, to
be taken from the Jew, who had (if any people ever had) meritorious
ancestors for a plea? If the merit of some of their former progenitors
were the cause, what was the reason the debt due to their merit was not
paid to their immediate progeny, or to themselves, but to a posterity
so distant from them, and so abominably depraved as the Gentile world
was at the day of the gospel‑sun striking into their horizon? What
merit might be in their ancestors (if any could be supposed in the most
refined rubbish), it was so little for themselves, that no oil could
be spared out of their lamps for others. What merit their ancestors
might have, might be forfeited by the succeeding generations. It is
ordinarily seen, that what honor a father deserves in a state for
public service, may be lost by the son, forfeited by treason, and
himself attainted. Or was it out of a foresight that the Gentiles would
embrace it, and the Jews reject it; that the Gentiles would embrace it
in one place, and not in another? How did God foresee it, but in his
own grace, which he was resolved to display in one, not in another?
It must be then still resolved into his sovereign pleasure. Or did
he foresee it in their wills and nature? What, were they not all one
common dross? Was any part of Adam, by nature, better than another? How
did God foresee that which was not, nor could be, without his pleasure
to give ability, and grace to receive? Well, then, what reason but
the sovereign pleasure of God can be alleged, why Christ forbade the
apostles, at their first commission, to preach to the Gentiles (Matt.
x. 15), but, at the second and standing commission, orders them to
preach to “every creature?” Why did he put a demur to the resolutions
of Paul and Timothy, to impart light to Bithynia, or order them to go
into Macedonia? Was that country more worthy upon whom lay a great part
of the blood of the world shed in Alexander’s time (Acts xvi. 6, 7, 9,
10)? Why should Corazin and Bethsaida enjoy those means that were not
granted to the Tyrians and Sidonians, who might probably have sooner
reached out their arms to welcome it (Matt. xi. 21)? Why should God
send the gospel into our island, and cause it to flourish so long
here, and not send it, or continue it, in the furthest eastern parts
of the world? Why should the very profession of Christianity possess
so small a compass of ground in the world, but five parts in thirty,
the Mahometans holding six parts, and the other nineteen overgrown with
Paganism, where either the gospel was {b407} never planted, or else
since rooted up? To whom will you refer this, but to the same cause
our Saviour doth the revelation of the gospel to babes, and not to the
wise――even to his Father? “For so it seemed good in thy sight” (Matt.
xi. 25, 26); “For so was thy good pleasure before thee” (as in the
original); it is at his pleasure whether he will give any a clear
revelation of his gospel, or leave them only to the light of nature. He
could have kept up the first beam of the gospel in the promise in all
nations among the apostasies of Adam’s posterity, or renewed it in all
nations when it began to be darkened, as well as he first published it
to Adam after his fall; but it was his sovereign pleasure to permit it
to be obscured in one place, and to keep it lighted in another.
4. His sovereignty is manifest in the various influences of the means
of grace. He saith to these waters of the sanctuary, as to the floods
of the sea, “Hitherto you shall go, and no further.” Sometimes they
wash away the filth of the flesh and outward man, but not that of the
spirit; the gospel spiritualizeth some, and only moralizeth others;
some are by the power of it struck down to conviction, but not raised
up to conversion; some have only the gleams of it in their consciences,
and others more powerful flashes; some remain in their thick darkness
under the beaming of the gospel every day in their face, and after
a long insensibleness are roused by its light and warmth; sometimes
there is such a powerful breath in it, that it levels the haughty
imaginations of men, and lays them at its feet that before strutted
against it in the pride of their heart. The foundation of this is not
in the gospel itself, which is always the same, nor in the ordinances,
which are channels as sound at one time as at another, but Divine
sovereignty that spirits them as he pleaseth, and “blows when and where
it lists.” It has sometimes conquered its thousands (Acts ii. 41); at
another time scarce its tens; sometimes the harvest hath been great,
when the laborers have been but few; at another time it hath been small,
when the laborers have been many; sometimes whole sheaves; at another
time scarce gleanings. The evangelical net hath been sometimes full at
a cast, and at every cast; at another time many have labored all night,
and day too, and catched nothing (Acts, ii. 47): “The Lord added to the
church daily.” The gospel chariot doth not always return with captives
chained to the sides of it, but sometimes blurred and reproached,
wearing the marks of hell’s spite, instead of imprinting the marks of
its own beauty. In Corinth it triumphed over many people (Acts xviii.
10); in Athens it is mocked, and gathers but a few clusters (Acts xvii.
32, 34). God keeps the key of the heart, as well as of the womb. The
apostles had a power of publishing the gospel, and working miracles,
but under the Divine conduct; it was an instrumentality _durante
bene placito_, and as God saw it convenient. Miracles were not upon
every occasion allowed to them to be wrought, nor success upon every
administration granted to them; God sometimes lent them the key, but to
take out no more treasure than was allotted to them. There is a variety
in the time of gospel operation; some rise out of their graves of sin,
and beds of sluggishness, at the first appearance of this sun; others
lie snorting {b408} longer. Why doth not God spirit it at one season as
well as at another, but set his distinct periods of time, but because
he will show his absolute freedom? And do we not sometimes experiment
that after the most solemn preparations of the heart, we are frustrated
of those incomes we expected? Perhaps it was because we thought Divine
returns were due to our preparations, and God stops up the channel, and
we return drier than we came, that God may confute our false opinion,
and preserve the honor of his own sovereignty. Sometimes we leap with
John Baptist in the womb at the appearance of Christ; sometimes we lie
upon a lazy bed when he knocks from heaven; sometimes the fleece is
dry, and sometimes wet, and God withholds to drop down his dew of the
morning upon it. The dews of his word, as well as the droppings of the
clouds, belong to his royalty; light will not shine into the heart,
though it shine round about us, without the sovereign order of that God
“who commanded light to shine out of the darkness” of the chaos (2 Cor.
iv. 6). And is it not seen also in regard of the refreshing influences
of the word? sometimes the strongest arguments, and clearest promises,
prevail nothing towards the quelling black and despairing imaginations;
when, afterwards, we have found them frighted away by an unexpected
word, that seemed to have less virtue in it itself than any that passed
in vain before it. The reasonings of wisdom have dropped down like
arrows against a brazen wall, when the speech of a weaker person hath
found an efficacy. It is God by his sovereignty spirits one word and
not another; sometimes a secret word comes in, which was not thought of
before, as dropped from heaven, and gives a refreshing, when emptiness
was found in all the rest. One word from the lips of a sovereign prince
is a greater cordial than all the harangues of subjects without it;
what is the reason of this variety, but that God would increase the
proofs of his own sovereignty? that as it was a part of his dominion to
create the beauty of a world, so it is no less to create the peace as
well as the grace of the heart (Isa. lvii. 19): “I create the fruit of
the lips, peace.” Let us learn from hence to have adoring thoughts of,
not murmuring fancies against, the sovereignty of God; to acknowledge
it with thankfulness in what we have; to implore it with a holy
submission in what we want. To own God as a sovereign in a way of
dependence, is the way to be owned by him as subjects in a way of favor.
5. His sovereignty is manifested in giving a greater measure of
knowledge to some than to others. What parts, gifts, excellency of
nature, any have above others, are God’s donative; “He gives wisdom to
the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding” (Dan. ii. 21);
wisdom, the habit, and knowledge, the right use of it, in discerning
the right nature of objects, and the fitness of means conducing to the
end; all is but a beam of Divine light; and the different degrees of
knowledge in one man above another, are the effects of his sovereign
pleasure. He enlightens not the minds of all men to know every part of
his will; one “eats with a doubtful conscience,” another in “faith,”
without any staggering (Rom. xiv. 2). Peter had a desire to keep up
circumcision, not fully understanding the mind of God in the abolition
of the Jewish ceremonies; {b409} while Paul was clear in the truth
of that doctrine. A thought comes into our mind that, like a sunbeam,
makes a Scripture truth visible in a moment, which before we were
poring upon without any success; this is from his pleasure. One in the
primitive times had the gift of knowledge, another of wisdom, one the
gift of prophecy, another of tongues, one the gift of healing, another
that of discerning spirits; why this gift to one man, and not to
another? Why such a distribution in several subjects? Because it is his
sovereign pleasure. “The Spirit divides to every man severally as he
will” (1 Cor. xii. 11). Why doth he give Bezaleel and Aholiab the gift
of engraving, and making curious works for the tabernacle (Exod. xxxi.
3), and not others? Why doth he bestow the treasures of evangelical
knowledge upon the meanest of earthen vessels, the poor Galileans,
and neglect the Pharisees, stored with the knowledge both of naturals
and morals? Why did he give to some, and not to others, “to know the
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven?” (Matt. xiii. 11.) The reason is
implied in the words, “Because it was the mystery of his kingdom,” and
therefore was the act of his sovereignty. How would it be a kingdom and
monarchy if the governor of it were bound to do what he did? It is to
be resolved only into the sovereign right of propriety of his own goods,
that he furnisheth babes with a stock of knowledge, and leaves the
wise and prudent empty of it (Matt. xi. 26): “Even so, Father: for so
it seemed good in thy sight.” Why did he not reveal his mind to Eli, a
grown man, and in the highest office in the Jewish church, but open it
to Samuel, a stripling? why did the Lord go from the one to the other?
Because his motion depends upon his own will. Some are of so dull a
constitution, that they are incapable of any impression, like rocks too
hard for a stamp; others like water; you may stamp what you please, but
it vanisheth as soon as the seal is removed. It is God forms men as he
pleaseth: some have parts to govern a kingdom, others scarce brains to
conduct their own affairs; one is fit to rule men, and another scarce
fit to keep swine; some have capacious souls in crazy and deformed
bodies, others contracted spirits and heavier minds in a richer and
more beautiful case. Why are not all stones alike? some have a more
sparkling light, as gems, more orient than pebbles;――some are stars of
first, and others of a less magnitude; others as mean as glow‑worms,
a slimy lustre:――it is because he is the sovereign Disposer of what
belongs to him; and gives here, as well as at the resurrection, to one
“a glory of the sun;” to another that of the “moon;” and to a third
a less, resembling that of a “star” (1 Cor. xv. 40). And this God
may do by the same right of dominion, as he exercised when he endowed
some kinds of creatures with a greater perfection than others in
their nature. Why may he not as well garnish one man with a greater
proportion of gifts, as make a man differ in excellency from the nature
of a beast? or frame angels to a more purely spiritual nature than a
man? or make one angel a cherubim or seraphim, with a greater measure
of light than another? Though the foundation of this is his dominion,
yet his wisdom is not uninterested in his sovereign disposal; he
garnisheth those with a greater ability whom he {b410} intends for
greater service, than those that he intends for less, or none at all;
as an artificer bestows more labor, and carves a more excellent figure
upon those stones that he designs for a more honorable place in the
building. But though the intending this or that man for service be
the motive of laying in a greater provision in him than in others, yet
still it is to be referred to his sovereignty, since that first act of
culling him out for such an end was the fruit solely of his sovereign
pleasure: as when he resolved to make a creature actively to glorify
him, in wisdom he must give him reason; yet the making such a creature
was an act of his absolute dominion.
6. His sovereignty is manifest in the calling some to a more special
service in their generation. God settles some in immediate offices
of his service, and perpetuates them in those offices, with a neglect
of others, who seem to have a greater pretence to them. Moses was a
great sufferer for Israel, the solicitor for them in Egypt, and the
conductor of them from Egypt to Canaan; yet he was not chosen to the
high priesthood, but that was an office settled upon Aaron, and his
posterity after him, in a lineal descent; Moses was only pitched
upon for the present rescue of the captived Israelites, and to be the
instrument of Divine miracles; but notwithstanding all the success
he had in his conduct, his faithfulness in his employment, and the
transcendent familiarity he had with the great Ruler of the world, his
posterity were left in the common level of the tribe of Levi, without
any special mark of dignity upon them above the rest for all the
services of that great man. Why Moses for a temporary magistrate, Aaron
for a perpetual priesthood, above all the rest of the Israelites? hath
little reason but the absolute pleasure of God, who distributes his
employments as he pleaseth; and as a master orders his servant to do
the noblest work, and another to labor in baser offices, according
to his pleasure. Why doth he call out David, a shepherd, to sway the
Jewish sceptre, above the rest of the brothers, that had a fairer
appearance, and had been bred in arms, and inured to the toils and
watchings of a camp? Why should Mary be the mother of Christ, and not
some other of the same family of David, of a more splendid birth, and
a nobler education? Though some other reasons may be rendered, yet
that which affords the greatest acquiescence, is the sovereign will of
God. Why did Christ choose out of the meanest of the people the twelve
apostles, to be heralds of his grace in Judea, and other parts of the
world; and afterwards select Paul before Gamaliel, his instructor, and
others of the Jews, as learned as himself, and advance him to be the
most eminent apostle, above the heads of those who had ministered to
Christ in the days of his flesh? Why should he preserve eleven of those
he first called to propagate and enlarge his kingdom, and leave the
other to the employment of shedding his blood? Why, in the times of our
reformation, he should choose a Luther out of a monastery, and leave
others in their superstitious nastiness, to perish in the traditions of
their fathers? Why set up Calvin, as a bulwark of the gospel, and let
others as learned as himself wallow in the sink of popery? It is his
pleasure to do so. The potter hath power to separate this part of the
clay to form a vessel {b411} for a more public use, and another part of
the clay to form a vessel for a more private one. God takes the meanest
clay to form the most excellent and honorable vessels in his house. As
he formed man, that was to govern the creatures of the same clay and
earth whereof the beasts were formed, and not of that nobler element
of water, which gave birth to the fish and birds: so he forms some,
that are to do him the greatest service, of the meanest materials, to
manifest the absolute right of his dominion.