upon some, and not vouchsafing it to the more industrious labors and
attempts of others. Some are abased, and others are elevated; some
are enriched, and others impoverished; some scarce feel any cross, and
others scarce feel any comfort in their whole lives; some sweat and
toil, and what they labor for runs out of their reach; others sit still,
and what they wish for falls into their lap. One of the same clay hath
a diadem to beautify his head, and another wants a covering to protect
him from the weather. One hath a stately palace to lodge in, and
another is scarce master of a cottage where to lay his head. A sceptre
is put into one man’s hand, and a spade into another’s; a rich purple
garnisheth one man’s body, while another wraps himself in dunghill
rags. The poverty of some, and the wealth of others, is an effect of
the Divine sovereignty, whence God is said to be the Maker of the “poor
as well as the rich” (Prov. xxii. 2), not only of their persons, but of
their conditions. The earth, and the fulness thereof, is his propriety;
and he hath as much a right as Joseph had to bestow changes of raiment
upon what Benjamins he please. There is an election to a greater degree
of worldly felicity, as there is an election of some to a greater
degree of supernatural grace and glory: as he makes it “rain upon one
city, and not upon another” (Amos iv. 7), so he causeth prosperity to
distil upon the head of one and not upon another; crowning some with
earthly blessings, while he crosseth others with continual afflictions:
for he speaks of himself as a great proprietor of the corn that
nourisheth us, and the wine that cheers us, and the wood that warm us
(Hos. ii. 8, 9): “I will take away,” not your corn and wine, but “my
corn, my wine, my wool.” His right to dispose of the goods of every
particular person is unquestionable. He can take away from one, and
pass over the propriety to another. Thus he devolved the right of the
Egyptian jewels to the Israelites, and bestowed upon the captives what
before he had vouchsafed to the oppressors; as every sovereign state
demands the goods of their subjects for the public advantage in a case
of exigency, though none of that wealth was gained by any public office,
but by their private industry, and gained in a country not subject to
the dominion of those that require a portion of them. By this right
he changes strangely the scene of the world; sometimes those that are
high are reduced to a mean and ignominious condition, those that are
mean are advanced to a state of plenty and glory. The counter, which
in accounting signifies now but a penny, is presently raised up to
signify a pound. The proud ladies of Israel, instead of a girdle of
curious needlework, are brought to make use {b412} of a cord; as the
vulgar translates _rent_, a rag, or list of cloth (Isa. iii. 24), and
sackcloth for a stomacher instead of silk. This is the sovereign act
of God, as he is Lord of the world (Ps. lxxv. 6, 7): “Promotion cometh
neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south, but God
is the Judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.” He doth no
wrong to any man, if he lets him languish out his days in poverty and
disgrace: if he gives or takes away, he meddles with nothing but what
is his own more than ours: if he did dispense his benefits equally
to all, men would soon think it their due. The inequality and changes
preserve the notion of God’s sovereignty, and correct our natural
unmindfulness of it. If there were no changes, God would not be feared
as the “King of all the earth” (Ps. lv. 19): to this might also be
referred his investing some countries with greater riches in their
bowels, and on the surface; the disposing some of the fruitful and
pleasant regions of Canaan or Italy, while he settles others in the
icy and barren parts of the northern climates.
8. His sovereignty is manifest in the times and seasons of dispensing
his goods. He is Lord of the times when, as well as of the goods which,
he doth dispose of to any person; these “the Father hath put in his
own power” (Acts i. 7). As it was his sovereign pleasure to restore
the kingdom to Israel, so he would pitch upon the time when to do it,
and would not have his right invaded, so much as by a question out
of curiosity. This disposing of opportunities, in many things, can be
referred to nothing else but his sovereign pleasure. Why should Christ
come at the twilight and evening of the world? at the fulness, and not
at the beginning, of time? Why should he be from the infancy of the
world so long wrapt up in a promise, and not appear in the flesh till
the last times and gray hairs of the world, when so many persons, in
all nations, had been hurried out of the world without any notice of
such a Redeemer? What was this but his sovereign will? Why the Gentiles
should be left so long in the devil’s chains, wallowing in the sink of
their abominable superstitions, since God had declared his intention
by the prophets to call multitudes of them, and reject the Jews;――why
he should defer it so long, can be referred to nothing but the same
cause. What is the reason the veil continues so long upon the heart
of the Jews, that is promised, one time or other, to be taken off?
Why doth God delay the accomplishment of those glorious predictions of
the happiness and interest of that people? Is it because of the sin of
their ancestors,――a reason that cannot bear much weight? If we cast it
upon that account, their conversion can never be expected, can never
be effected; if for the sins of their ancestors, is it not also for
their own sins? Do their sins grow less in number, or less venomous, or
provoking in quality, by this delay? Is not their blasphemy of Christ
as malicious, their hatred of him as strong and rooted, as ever? Do
they not as much approve of the bloody act of their ancestors, since
so many ages are past, as their ancestors did applaud it at the time of
the execution? Have they not the same disposition and will, discovered
sufficiently by the scorn of Christ, and of those that profess his
name, to act the {b413} same thing over again, were Christ now in
the same state in the world, and they invested with the same power
of government? If their conversion were deferred one age after the
death of Christ for the sins of their preceding ancestors, is it to be
expected now; since the present generation of the Jews in all countries
have the sins of those remote, the succeeding, and their more immediate
ancestors, lying upon them? This, therefore, cannot be the reason; but
as it was the sovereign pleasure of God to foretell his intention to
overcome the stoutness of their hearts, so it is his sovereign pleasure
that it shall not be performed till the “fulness of the Gentiles be
come in” (Rom. xi. 25). As he is the Lord of his own grace, so he is
the Lord of the time when to dispense it. Why did God create the world
in six days, which he could have erected and beautified in a moment?
Because it was his pleasure so to do. Why did he frame the world when
he did, and not many ages before? Because he is Master of his own work.
Why did he not resolve to bring Israel to the fruition of Canaan till
after four hundred years? Why did he draw out their deliverance to so
long time after he began to attempt it? Why such a multitude of plagues
upon Pharaoh to work it, when he could have cut short the work by one
mortal blow upon the tyrant and his accomplices? It was his sovereign
pleasure to act so, though not without other reasons intelligible
enough by looking into the story. Why doth he not bring man to a
perfection of stature in a moment after his birth, but let him continue
in a tedious infancy, in a semblance to beasts, for the want of an
exercise of reason? Why doth he not bring this or that man, whom he
intends for service, to a fitness in an instant, but by long tracts of
study, and through many meanders and labyrinths? Why doth he transplant
a hopeful person in his youth to the pleasures of another world, and
let another, of an eminent holiness, continue in the misery of this,
and wade through many floods of afflictions? What can we chiefly
refer all these things to but his sovereign pleasure? The “times are
determined by God” (Acts xvii. 26).
_Thirdly._ The dominion of God is manifested as a governor, as well as
a lawgiver and proprietor.
1. In disposing of states and kingdoms. (Ps. lxxv. 7): “God is Judge;
he puts down one, and sets up another.” “Judge” is to be taken not in
the same sense that we commonly use the word, for a judicial minister
in a way of trial, but for a governor; as you know the extraordinary
governors raised up among the Jews were called judges, whence one
entire book in the Old Testament is so denominated, the Book of Judges.
God hath a prerogative to “change times and seasons” (Dan. ii. 21),
_i. e._ the revolutions of government, whereby times are altered. How
many empires, that have spread their wings over a great part of the
world, have had their carcasses torn in pieces; and unheard‑of nations
plucked off the wings of the Roman eagle, after it had preyed upon many
nations of the world; and the Macedonian empire was as the dew that
is dried up a short time after it falls.[1011] He erected the Chaldean
monarchy, used Nebuchadnezzar to overthrow and punish the ungrateful
Jews, and, by a {b414} sovereign act, gave a great parcel of land
into his hands; and what he thought was his right by conquest, was
God’s donative to him. You may read the charter to Nebuchadnezzar,
whom he terms his servant (Jer. xxvii. 6): “And now I have given all
those lands” (the lands are mentioned ver. 3), “into the hands of
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant:” which decree he
pronounceth after his asserting his right of sovereignty over the whole
earth (ver. 5). After that, he puts a period to the Chaldean empire,
and by the same sovereign authority decrees Babylon to be a spoil to
the nations of the north country, and delivers her up as a spoil to
the Persian (Jer. l. 9, 10): and this for the manifestation of his
sovereign dominion, that he was the Lord, that made peace, and created
evil (Isa. xlv. 6, 7). God afterwards overthrows that by the Grecian
Alexander, prophesied of under the figure of a goat, with “one horn
between his eyes” (Dan. viii.): the swift current of his victories,
as swift as his motion, showed it to be from an extraordinary hand of
heaven, and not either from the policy or strength of the Macedonian.
His strength, in the prophet, is described to be less, being but one
horn running against the Persian, described under the figure of a ram
with two horns:[1012] and himself acknowledged a Divine motion exciting
him to that great attempt, when he saw Joddus, the high‑priest, coming
out in his priestly robes, to meet him at his approach to Jerusalem,
whom he was about to worship, acknowledging that the vision which put
him upon the Persian war appeared to him in such a garb. What was the
reason Israel was rent from Judah, and both split into two distinct
kingdoms? Because Rehoboam would not hearken to sober and sound
counsels, but follow the advice of upstarts. What was the reason he did
not hearken to sound advice, since he had so advantageous an education
under his father Solomon, the wisest prince of the world? “The cause
was from the Lord” (1 Kings, xii. 15), that he might perform what he
had before spoke. In this he acted according to his royal word; but, in
the first resolve, he acted as a sovereign lord, that had the disposal
of all nations in the world. And though Ahab had a numerous posterity,
seventy sons to inherit the throne after him, yet God by his sovereign
authority gives them up into the hands of Jehu, who strips them of
their lives and hopes together: not a man of them succeeded in the
throne, but the crown is transferred to Jehu by God’s disposal. In wars,
whereby flourishing kingdoms are overthrown, God hath the chief hand;
in reference to which it is observed that, in the two prophets, Isaiah
and Jeremiah, God is called “the Lord of Hosts” one hundred and thirty
times. It is not the sword of the captain, but the sword of the Lord,
bears the first rank; “the sword of the Lord and of Gideon” (Judges vii.
18). The sword of a conqueror is the sword of the Lord, and receives
its charge and commission from the great Sovereign (Jer. xlvii. 6, 7).
We are apt to confine our thoughts to second causes, lay the fault
upon the miscarriages of persons, the ambition of the one, and the
covetousness of another, and regard them not as the effects of God’s
sovereign authority, linking second causes together to serve his
own purpose. The skill of one man may lay open the {b415} folly of a
counsellor; an earthly force may break in pieces the power of a mighty
prince: but Job, in his consideration of those things, refers the
matter higher: “He looseth the bond of kings, and girdeth their loins
with a girdle” (Job xii. 18). “He looseth the bonds of kings,” _i. e._
takes off the yokes they lay upon their subjects, “and girds their
loins with a girdle” (a _cord_, as the vulgar); he lays upon them those
fetters they framed for others; such a girdle, or band, as is the mark
of captivity, as the words, ver. 19, confirm it: “He leads princes
away spoiled, and overthrows the mighty.” God lifts up some to a great
height, and casts down others to a disgraceful ruin. All those changes
in the face of the world, the revolutions of empires, the desolating
and ravaging wars, which are often immediately the birth of the vice,
ambition, and fury of princes, are the royal acts of God as Governor of
the world. All government belongs to him; he is the Fountain of all the
great and the petty dominions in the world; and, therefore, may place
in them what substitutes and vicegerents he pleaseth, as a prince may
remove his officers at pleasure, and take their commissions from them.
The highest are settled by God _durante bene placito_, and not _quamdiu
bene se gesserint_. Those princes that have been the glory of their
country have swayed the sceptre but a short time, when the more wolvish
ones have remained longer in commission, as God hath seen fit for
the ends of his own sovereign government. Now, by the revolutions in
the world, and changes in governors and government, God keeps up the
acknowledgment of his sovereignty, when he doth arrest grand and public
offenders that wear a crown by his providence, and employ it, by their
pride, against him that placed it there. When he arraigns such by
a signal hand from heaven, he makes them the public examples of the
rights of his sovereignty, declaring thereby, that the cedars of
Lebanon are as much at his foot, as the shrubs of the valley; that he
hath as sovereign an authority over the throne in the palace, as over
the stool in the cottage.
2. The dominion of God is manifested in raising up and ordering the
spirits of men according to his pleasure. He doth, as the Father of
spirits, communicate an influence to the spirits of men, as well as an
existence; he puts what inclinations he pleaseth into the will, stores
it with what habits he please, whether natural or supernatural, whereby
it may be rendered more ready to act according to the Divine purpose.
The will of man is a finite principle, and therefore subject to Him
who hath an infinite sovereignty over all things; and God, having a
sovereignty over the will, in the manner of its acting, causeth it to
will what he wills, as to the outward act, and the outward manner of
performing it. There are many examples of this part of his sovereignty.
God, by his sovereign conduct, ordered Moses a protectoress as soon
as his parents had formed an “ark of bulrushes,” wherein to set him
floating on the river (Exod. ii. 3‒6): they expose him to the waves,
and the waves expose him to the view of Pharaoh’s daughter, whom God,
by his secret ordering her motion, had posted in that place; and though
she was the daughter of a prince that inveterately hated the whole
nation, and had, by various arts, endeavored to extirpate them, yet
God inspires the royal lady {b416} with sentiments of compassion to the
forlorn infant, though she knew him to be one of the Hebrews’ children
(ver. 6), _i. e._ one of that race whom her father had devoted to
the hands of the executioner; yet God, that doth by his sovereignty
rule over the spirits of all men, moves her to take that infant into
her protection, and nourish him at her own charge, give him a liberal
education, adopt him as her son, who, in time, was to be the ruin of
her race, and the saviour of his nation. Thus he appointed Cyrus to be
his shepherd, and gave him a pastoral spirit for the restoration of the
city and temple of Jerusalem (Isa. xliv. 28): and Isaiah (chap. xlv. 5)
tells them, in the prophecy, that he had girded him, though Cyrus had
not known him, _i. e._ God had given him a military spirit and strength
for so great an attempt, though he did not know that he was acted by
God for those divine purposes. And when the time came for the house of
the Lord to be rebuilt, the spirits of the people were raised up, not
by themselves, but by God (Ezra i. 5), “Whose spirit God had raised to
go up;” and not only the spirit of Zerubbabel, the magistrate, and of
Joshua, the priest, but the spirit of all the people, from the highest
to the meanest that attended him, were acted by God to strengthen their
hands, and promote the work (Hag. i. 14). The spirits of men, even in
those works which are naturally desirable to them, as the restoration
of the city and rebuilding of the Temple was to those Jews, are acted
by God, as the Sovereign over them, much more when the wheels of men’s
spirits are lifted up above their ordinary temper and motion. It was
this empire of God good Nehemiah regarded, as that whence he was to
hope for success; he did not assure himself so much of it, from the
favor he had with the king, nor the reasonableness of his intended
petition, but the absolute power God had over the heart of that
great monarch; and, therefore, he supplicates the heavenly, before he
petitioned the earthly, throne (Neh. ii. 4): “So I prayed to the God of
heaven.” The heathens had some glance of this; it is an expression that
Cicero hath somewhere, “That the Roman commonwealth was rather governed
by the assistance of the Supreme Divinity over the hearts of men,
than by their own counsels and management.” How often hath the feeble
courage of men been heightened to such a pitch as to stare death in the
face, which before were damped with the least thought or glance of it!
This is a fruit of God’s sovereign dominion.
3. The dominion of God is manifest in restraining the furious
passions of men, and putting a block in their way. Sometimes God doth
it by a remarkable hand, as the Babel builders were diverted from their
proud design by a sudden confusion of their language, and rendering it
unintelligible to one another; sometimes by ordinary, though unexpected,
means; as when Saul, like a hawk, was ready to prey upon David, whom
he had hunted as a partridge upon the mountains, he had another object
presented for his arms and fury by the Philistines’ sudden invasion of
a part of his territory (1 Sam. xxiii. 26‒28). But it is chiefly seen
by an inward curbing mutinous affections, when there is no visible
cause. What reason but this can be rendered, why the nations bordering
on Canaan, who bore no good will to the Jews, but rather wished the
whole race of {b417} them rooted out from the face of the earth, should
not invade their country, pillage their houses, and plunder their
cattle, while they were left naked of any human defence, the males
being annually employed at one time at Jerusalem in worship; what
reason can be rendered, but an invisible curb God put into their
spirits? What was the reason not a man, of all the buyers and sellers
in the Temple, should rise against our Saviour, when, with a high hand,
he began to whip them out, but a Divine bridle upon them? though it
appears, by the questioning his authority, that there were Jews enough
to have chased out him and his company (John ii. 15, 18). What was the
reason that, at the publishing the gospel by the apostles at the first
descent of the Spirit, those that had used the Master so barbarously
a few days before, were not all in a foam against the servants, that,
by preaching that doctrine, upbraided them with the late murder? Had
they better sentiments of the Lord, whom they had put to death? Were
their natures grown tamer, and their malignity expelled? No; but that
Sovereign who had loosed the reins of their malicious corruption,
to execute the Master for the purchase of redemption, curbed it from
breaking out against the servants, to further the propagation of the
doctrine of redemption. He that restrains the roaring lion of hell,
restrains also his whelps on earth; he and they must have a commission
before they can put forth a finger to hurt, how malicious soever their
nature and will be. His empire reaches over the malignity of devils,
as well as the nature of beasts. The lions out of the den, as well
as those in the den, are bridled by him in favor of his Daniels. His
dominion is above that of principalities and powers; their decrees are
at his mercy, whether they shall stand or fall; he hath a vote above
their stiffest resolves: his single word, _I will_, or, _I forbid_,
outweighs the most resolute purposes of all the mighty Nimrods of
the earth in their rendezvouses and cabals, in their associations and
counsels (Isa. viii. 9, 10): “Associate yourselves, O ye people, and
ye shall be broken in pieces; take counsel together, and it shall come
to nought.” “When the enemy shall come in like a flood,” with a violent
and irresistible force, intending nothing but ravage and desolation,
“the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against them” (Isa.
lix. 19), shall give a sudden check, and damp their spirits, and put
them to a stand. When Laban furiously pursued Jacob, with an intent to
do him an ill turn, God gave him a command to do otherwise (Gen. xxxi.
24). Would Laban have respected that command any more than he did the
light of nature when he worshipped idols, had not God exercised his
authority in inclining his will to observe it, or laying restraints
upon his natural inclinations, or denying his concourse to the acting
those ill intentions he had entertained? The stilling the principles of
commotion in men, and the noise of the sea, are arguments of the Divine
dominion; neither the one nor the other is in the power of the most
sovereign prince without Divine assistance: as no prince can command a
calm to a raging sea, so no prince can order stillness to a tumultuous
people; they are both put together as equally parts of the Divine
prerogative (Ps. lxv. 7), which “stills the noise of the sea, and
tumult of the people:” and David owns God’s sovereignty {b418} more
than his own, “in subduing the people under him” (Ps. xviii. 47). In
this his empire is illustrious (Ps. xxix. 10): “The Lord sitteth upon
the floods, yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever;” a King impossible
to be deposed, not only on the natural floods of the sea, that would
naturally overflow the world, but the metaphorical floods or tumults
of the people, the sea in every wicked man’s heart, more apt to
rage morally than the sea to foam naturally. If you will take the
interpretation of an angel, waters and floods, in the prophetic style,
signify the inconstant and mutable people (Rev. xvii. 1, 5): “The
waters where the whore sits are people, and multitudes, and nations,
and tongues:” so the angel expounds to John the vision which he saw
(ver. 1). The heathens acknowledged this part of God’s sovereignty
in the inward restraints of men: those apparitions of the gods and
goddesses in Homer, to several of the great men when they were in a
fury, were nothing else, in the judgment of the wisest philosophers,
than an exercise of God’s sovereignty in quelling their passions,
checking their uncomely intentions, and controlling them in that which
their rage prompted them to. And, indeed, did not God set bounds to
the storms in men’s hearts, we should soon see the funeral, not only
of religion, but civility; the one would be blown out, and the other
torn up by the roots.