devices of men. God often makes a mock of human projects, and doth
as well accomplish that which they never dreamt of, as disappoint
that which they confidently designed. He is present at all cabals,
laughs at men’s formal and studied counsels, bears a hand over every
egg they hatch, thwarts their best compacted designs, supplants their
contrivances, breaks the engines they have been many years rearing,
diverts the intentions of men, as a mighty wind blows an arrow from
the mark which the archer intended. (Job v. 12): “He disappointeth
the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their
enterprise; he taketh the wise in their own craftiness, and the counsel
of the froward is carried headlong.” Enemies often draw an exact scheme
of their intended proceedings, marshal their companies, appoint their
rendezvous, think to make but one morsel of those they hate; God, by
his sovereign dominion, turns the scale, changeth the gloominess of
the oppressed into a sunshine, and the enemies’ sunshine into darkness.
When the nations were gathered together against Sion, and said, “Let
her be defiled, and let our eye look upon Sion” (Micah iv. 11), what
doth God do in this case? (ver. 12), “He shall gather them,” _i. e._
those conspiring nations, as “sheaves into the floor.” Then he sounds
a trumpet to Sion: “Arise, and thresh, O daughter of Sion, for I will
make thy horn iron, and thy hoofs brass, and thou shalt beat in pieces
many people; and I will consecrate their gain unto the Lord, and their
substance unto the Lord of the whole earth.” I will make them and their
counsels, them and their strength, the monuments and signal marks of
my empire over the whole earth. When you see the cunningest designs
baffled by some small thing intervening; when you see men of profound
wisdom infatuated, mistake their way, and “grope in the noon‑day as
in the night” (Job v. 14), bewildered in {b419} a plain way; when you
see the hopes of mighty attempters dashed into despair, their triumphs
turned into funerals, and their joyful expectations into sorrowful
disappointments; when you see the weak, devoted to destruction,
victorious, and the most presumptuous defeated in their purposes, then
read the Divine dominion in the desolation of such devices. How often
doth God take away the heart and spirit of grand designs, and burst
a mighty wheel, by snatching but one man out of the world! How often
doth he “cut off the spirits of princes” (Ps. lxxvi. 12), either
from the world by death, or from the execution of their projects by
some unforeseen interruption, or from favoring those contrivances,
which before they cherished by a change of their minds! How often
hath confidence in God, and religious prayer, edged the weakest and
smallest number of weapons to make a carnage of the carnally confident!
How often hath presumption been disappointed, and the contemned enemy
rejoiced in the spoils of the proud expectant of victory! Phidias made
the image of Nemesis, or Revenge, at Marathon, of that marble which
the haughty Persians, despising the weakness of the Athenian forces,
brought with them, to erect a trophy for an expected, but an ungained,
victory.[1013] Haman’s neck, by a sudden turn, was in the halter,
when the Jews’ necks were designed to the block; Julian designed the
overthrow of all the Christians, just before his breast was pierced by
an unexpected arrow; the Powder‑traitors were all ready to give fire
to the mine, when the sovereign hand of Heaven snatched away the match.
Thus the great Lord of the world cuts off men on the pinnacle of their
designs, when they seem to threaten heaven and earth; puts out the
candle of the wicked, which they thought to use to light them to the
execution of their purposes; turns their own counsels into a curse to
themselves, and a blessing to their adversaries, and makes his greatest
enemies contribute to the effecting his purposes. How may we take
notice of God’s absolute disposal of things in private affairs, when
we see one man, with a small measure of prudence and little industry,
have great success, and others, with a greater measure of wisdom, and
a greater toil and labor, find their enterprises melt between their
fingers! It was Solomon’s observation, “That the race was not to the
swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither bread to the wise, nor
riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill” (Eccles.
ix. 11). Many things might interpose to stop the swift in his race, and
damp the courage of the most valiant: things do not happen according
to men’s abilities, but according to the overruling authority of God:
God never yet granted man the dominion of his own way, no more than to
be lord of his own time: “The way of man is not in himself, it is not
in him that walketh to direct his steps” (Jer. x. 23). He hath given
man a power of acting, but not the sovereignty to command success. He
makes even those things which men intended for their security to turn
to their ruin; Pilate delivered up Christ to be accounted a friend to
Cæsar, and Cæsar soon after proves an enemy to him, removes him from
his government, and sends him into banishment. The Jews imagined by the
crucifying Christ to keep the Roman ensigns at a {b420} distance from
them, and this hasted their march, by God’s sovereign disposal, which
ended in a total desolation. “He makes the judges fools” (Job xxii. 17),
by taking away his light from their understanding, and suffering them
to go on in the vanity of their own spirits, that his sovereignty in
the management of things may be more apparent; for then he is known to
be Lord, when he “snares the wicked in the work of his own hands” (Ps.
ix. 16). You have seen much of this doctrine in your experience, and,
if my judgment fail me not, you will yet see much more.
5. The dominion of God is manifest in sending his judgments upon
whom he please. “He kills and makes alive; he wounds and heals” whom
he pleaseth: his thunders are his own, and he may cast them upon
what subjects he thinks good: he hath a right, in a way of justice,
to punish all men; he hath his choice, in a way of sovereignty, to
pick out whom he please, to make the examples of it. Might not some
nations be as wicked as those of Sodom and Gomorrah, yet have not been
scorched with the like dreadful flames? Zoar was untouched, while the
other cities, her neighbors, were burnt to ashes. Were there never
any places and persons successors in Sodom’s guilt? Yet those only by
his sovereign authority are separated by him to be the examples of his
“eternal vengeance” (Jude 7). Why are not sinners as Sodom, like as
those ancient ones, scalded to death by the like fiery drops? It is
because it is his pleasure; and the same reason is to be rendered,
why he would in a way of justice cut off the Jews for their sins, and
leave the Gentiles untouched in the midst of their idolatries. When the
church was consumed because of her iniquities, they acknowledged God’s
sovereignty in this. “We are the clay, and thou art our Potter, and we
all the work of thy hands” (Isa. lxiv. 7, 8); thou hast a liberty to
break or preserve us. Judgments move according to God’s order. When the
sword hath a charge against Ashkelon and the sea‑shore, thither it must
march, and touch not any other place or person as it goes, though there
may be demerit enough for it to punish. When the prophet had spake
to the sword, “O thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou
be quiet? put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest and be still;” the
prophet answers for the sword, “How can it be quiet, seeing the Lord
hath given it a charge against Ashkelon? there hath he appointed it”
(Jer. xlvii. 6, 7). If he hath appointed a judgment against London
or Westminster, or any other place, there it shall drop, there it
shall pierce, and in no other place without a like charge. God, as a
sovereign, gives instructions to every judgment, when, and against whom,
it shall march, and what cities, what persons, it shall arrest; and
he is punctually obeyed by them, as a sovereign Lord. All creatures
stand ready for his call, and are prepared to be executioners of his
vengeance, when he speaks the word; they are his hosts by creation, and
in array for his service: at the sound of his trumpet, or beat of his
drum, they troop together with arms in their hands, to put his orders
exactly in execution.
6. The dominion of God is manifest in appointing to every man his
calling and station in the world. If the hairs of every man’s head
fall under his sovereign care, the calling of every man, wherein {b421}
he is to glorify God and serve his generation, which is of a greater
concern than the hairs of the head, falls under his dominion. He is
the master of the great family, and divides to every one his work as he
pleaseth. The whole work of the Messiah, the time of every action, as
well as the hour of his passion, was ordered and appointed by God. The
separation of Paul to the preaching of the gospel, was by the sovereign
disposal of God (Rom. i. 1). By the same exercise of his authority,
that he “sets every man the bounds of his habitation” (Acts xvii. 26),
he prescribes also to him the nature of his work. He that ordered Adam,
the father of mankind, his work, and the place of it, the “dressing
the garden” (Gen. ii. 15), doth not let any of his posterity be their
own choosers, without an influence of his sovereign direction on them.
Though our callings are our work, yet they are by God’s order, wherein
we are to be faithful to our great Master and Ruler.
7. The dominion of God is manifest in the means and occasions of
men’s conversion. Sometimes one occasion, sometimes another; one word
lets a man go, another arrests him, and brings him before God and his
own conscience; it is as God gives out the order. He lets Paul be a
prisoner at Jerusalem, that his cause should not be determined there;
moves him to appeal to Cæsar, not only to make him a prisoner, but
a preacher, in Cæsar’s court, and render his chains an occasion to
bring in a harvest of converts in Nero’s palace. His bonds in or for
Christ are “manifest in all the palace” (Phil. i. 12, 13); not the bare
knowledge of his bonds, but the sovereign design of God in those bonds,
and the success of them; the bare knowledge of them would not make
others more confident for the gospel, as it follows, ver. 14, without
a providential design of them. Onesimus, running from his master,
is guided by God’s sovereign order into Paul’s company, and thereby
into Christ’s arms; and he who came a fugitive, returns a Christian
(Philem. 10, 15). Some, by a strong affliction, have had by the Divine
sovereignty their understandings awakened to consider, and their wills
spirited to conversion. Monica being called Meribibula, or toss‑pot,
was brought to consider her way, and reform her life. A word hath done
that at one time, which hath often before fallen without any fruit.
Many have come to suck in the eloquence of the minister, and have found
in the honey for their ears a sting for their consciences. Austin had
no other intent in going to hear Ambrose but to have a taste of his
famous oratory. But while Ambrose spake a language to his ear, God
spake a heavenly dialect to his heart. No reason can be rendered of
the order, and timing, and influence of those things, but the sovereign
pleasure of God, who will attend one occasion and season with his
blessing, and not another.
8. The dominion of God is manifest in disposing of the lives of men.
He keeps the key of death, as well as that of the womb, in his own
hand; he hath given man a life, but not power to dispose of it, or
lay it down at his pleasure; and therefore he hath ordered man not to
murder, not another, not himself; man must expect his call and grant,
to dispose of the life of his body. Why doth he cut the thread of this
man’s life, and spin another’s out to a longer term? {b422} Why doth
one die an inglorious death, and another more honorable? One silently
drops away in the multitude, while another is made a sacrifice for the
honor of God, or the safety of his country. This is a mark of honor he
gives to one and not to another. “To you it is given” (Phil. i. 29).
The manner of Peter’s death was appointed (John xxi. 19). Why doth a
small and slight disease against the rules of physic, and the judgment
of the best practitioners, dislodge one man’s soul out of his body,
while a greater disease is mastered in another, and discharges the
patient, to enjoy himself a longer time in the land of the living?
Is it the effect of means so much as of the Sovereign Disposer of all
things? If means only did it, the same means would always work the same
effect, and sooner master a dwarfish than a giant‑like distemper. “Our
times are only in God’s hands” (Ps. xxxi. 15); either to cut short or
continue long. As his sovereignty made the first marriage knot, so he
reserves the sole authority to himself to make the divorce.
_Fourthly._ The dominion of God is manifest in his being a Redeemer,
as well as Lawgiver, Proprietor, and Governor. His sovereignty was
manifest in the creation, in bestowing upon this or that part of matter
a form more excellent than upon another. He was a Lawgiver to men and
angels, and prescribed them rules according to the counsel of his own
will. These were his creatures, and perfectly at his disposal. But in
redemption a sovereignty is exercised over the Son, the Second person
in the Trinity, one equal with the Father in essence and works, by whom
the worlds were created, and by whom they do consist. The whole gospel
is nothing else but a declaration of his sovereign pleasure concerning
Christ, and concerning us in him; it is therefore called “the mystery
of his will” (Eph. i. 9); the will of God is distinct from the will
of Christ, a purpose in himself, not moved thereunto by any; the
whole design was framed in the Deity, and as much the purpose of his
sovereign will as the contrivance of his immense wisdom. He decreed,
in his own pleasure, to have the Second Person assume our nature for
to deliver mankind from that misery whereinto it was fallen. The whole
of the gospel, and the privileges of it, are in that chapter resolved
into the will and pleasure of God. God is therefore called “the head
of Christ” (1 Cor. xi. 3). As Christ is superior to all men, and the
man superior to the woman, so is God superior to Christ, and of a more
eminent dignity; in regard of the constituting him mediator, Christ
is subject to God, as the body to the head. “Head” is a title of
government and sovereignty, and magistrates were called the “heads”
of the people. As Christ is the head of man, so is God the head of
Christ; and as man is subject to Christ, so is Christ subject to God;
not in regard of the Divine nature, wherein there is an equality, and
consequently no dominion of jurisdiction; nor only in his human nature,
but in the economy of a Redeemer, considered as one designed, and
consenting to be incarnate, and take our flesh; so that after this
agreement, God had a sovereign right to dispose of him according to the
articles consented to. In regard of his undertaking, and the advantage
he was to bring to the elect of God upon the earth, he calls God by the
{b423} solemn title of “his Lord” in that prophetic psalm of him (Ps.
xvi. 2): “O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord:
my goodness extends not unto thee, but unto the saints that are in
the earth.” It seems to be the speech of Christ in heaven, mentioning
the saints on earth as at a distance from him. I can add nothing to
the glory of thy majesty, but the whole fruit of my meditation and
sufferings will redound to the saints on earth. And it may be observed,
that God is called the Lord of Hosts in the evangelical prophets,
Isaiah, Haggai, Zachariah, and Malachi, more in reference to this
affair of redemption, and the deliverance of the church, than for any
other works of his providence in the world.
1. This sovereignty of God appears, in requiring satisfaction for
the sin of man. Had he indulged man after his fall, and remitted his
offence without a just compensation for the injury he had received
by his rebellion, his authority had been vilified, man would always
have been attempting against his jurisdiction, there would have been
a continual succession of rebellions on man’s part; and if a continual
succession of indulgences on God’s part, he had quite disowned his
authority over man, and stripped himself of the flower of his crown;
satisfaction must have been required some time or other from the person
thus rebelling, or some other in his stead; and to require it after
the first act of sin, was more preservative to the right of the Divine
sovereignty, than to do it after a multitude of repeated revolts. God
must have laid aside his authority if he had laid aside wholly the
exacting punishment for the offence of man.
2. This sovereignty of God appears, in appointing Christ to this work
of redemption. His sovereignty was before manifest over angels and
men by the right of creation; there was nothing wanting to declare the
highest charge of it, but his ordering his own Son to become a mortal
creature; the Lord of all things to become lower than those angels
that had, as well as all other things, received their being and beauty
from him, and to be reckoned in his death among the dust and refuse of
the world: he by whom God created all things, not only became a man,
but a crucified man, by the will of his Father (Gal. i. 4), “who gave
himself for our sins according to the will of God;” to which may refer
that expression (Prov. viii. 22), of his being “possessed by God in the
beginning of his way.” Possession is the dominion of a thing invested
in the possessor; he was possessed, indeed, as a Son by eternal
generation; he was possessed also in the beginning of his way or
works of creation, as a Mediator by special constitution: to this
the expression seems to refer, if you read on to the end of ver. 31,
wherein Christ speaks of his “rejoicing in the habitable part of his
earth,” the earth of the great God, who hath designed him to this
special work of redemption. He was a Son by nature, but a Mediator by
Divine will; in regard of which Christ is often called God’s servant,
which is a relation to God as a Lord. God being the Lord of all things,
the dominion of all things inferior to him is inseparable from him; and
in this regard, the whole of what Christ was to do, and did actually
do, was acted by him as the will of God, and is expressed so by himself
in the prophecy (Ps. xl. 7), “Lo, I come;” (ver. 8), “I delight to do
{b424} thy will;” which are put together (Heb. x. 7), “Lo, I come to
do thy will, O God.” The designing Christ to this work was an act of
mercy, but founded on his sovereignty. His compassionate bowels might
have pitied us without his being sovereign, but without it could not
have relieved us. It was the council of his own will, as well as of his
bowels: none was his counsellor or persuader to that mercy he showed:
(Rom. xi. 34), “Who hath been his counsellor?” for it refers to that
mercy in “sending the Deliverer out of Sion” (ver. 26), as well as to
other things the apostle had been discoursing of. As God was at liberty
to create, or not to create, so he was at liberty to redeem or not
to redeem, and at his liberty whether to appoint Christ to this work,
or not to call him out to it. In giving this order to his Son, his
sovereignty was exercised in a higher manner than in all the orders
and instructions he hath given out to men or angels, and all the
employments he ever sent them upon. Christ hath names which signify an
authority over him: he is called “an Angel,” and a “Messenger” (Mal.
iii. 1); an “Apostle” (Heb. iii. 1): declaring thereby, that God hath
as much authority over him as over the angels sent upon his messages,
or over the apostles commissioned by his authority, as he was
considered in the quality of Mediator.
3. This sovereignty of God appears in transferring our sins upon
Christ. The supreme power in a nation can only appoint or allow of a
commutation of punishment; it is a part of sovereignty to transfer the
penalty due to the crime of one upon another, and substitute a sufferer,
with the sufferer’s own consent, in the place of a criminal, whom he
had a mind to deliver from a deserved punishment. God transferred the
sins of men upon Christ, and inflicted on him a punishment for them.
He summed up the debts of man, charged them upon the score of Christ,
imputing to him the guilt, and inflicting upon him the penalty. (Isa.
liii. 6): “The Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all;” he
made them all to meet upon his back: “He hath made him to be sin
for us” (2 Cor. v. 21); he was made so by the sovereign pleasure of
God: a punishment for sin, as most understand it, which could not be
righteously inflicted, had not sin been first righteously imputed, by
the consent of Christ, and the order of the Judge of the world. This
imputation could be the immediate act of none but God, because he
was the sole creditor. A creditor is not bound to accept of another’s
suretyship, but it is at his liberty whether he will or no; and when he
doth accept of him, he may challenge the debt of him, as if he were the
principal debtor himself. Christ made himself sin for us by a voluntary
submission; and God made him sin for us by a full imputation, and
treated him penally, as he would have done those sinners in whose stead
he suffered. Without this act of sovereignty in God, we had forever
perished: for if we could suppose Christ laying down his life for us
without the pleasure and order of God, he could not have been said to
have borne our punishment. What could he have undergone in his humanity
but a temporal death? But more than this was due to us, even the wrath
of God, which far exceeds the calamity of a mere bodily death. The
soul being principal in the crime, was to {b425} be principal in the
punishment. The wrath of God could not have dropped upon his soul, and
rendered it so full of agonies, without the hand of God: a creature
is not capable to reach the soul, neither as to comfort nor terror;
and the justice of God could not have made him a sufferer, if it had
not first considered him a sinner by imputation, or by inherency, and
actual commission of a crime in his own person. The latter was far from
Christ, who was holy, harmless, and undefiled. He must be considered
then in the other state of imputation, which could not be without
a sovereign appointment, or at least concession of God: for without
it, he could have no more authority to lay down his life for us, than
Abraham could have had to have sacrificed his son, or any man to expose
himself to death without a call; nor could any plea have been entered
in the court of heaven, either by Christ for us, or by us for ourselves.
And though the death of so great a person had been meritorious in
itself, it had not been meritorious for us, or accepted for us;
Christ is “delivered up by him” (Rom. viii. 32), in every part of
that condition wherein he was, and suffered; and to that end, that
“we might become the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. v. 21): that
we might have the righteousness of him that was God imputed to us,
or that we might have a righteousness as great and proportioned to
the righteousness of God, as God required. It was an act of Divine
sovereignty to account him that was righteous a sinner in our stead,
and to account us, who were sinners, righteous upon the merit of his
death.
4. This was done by the command of God; by God as a Lawgiver, having
the supreme legislative and preceptive authority: in which respect, the
whole work of Christ is said to be an answer to a law, not one given
him, but put into his heart, as the law of nature was in the heart of
man at first. (Ps. xl. 7, 8): “Thy law is within my heart.” This law
was not the law of nature or moral law, though that was also in the
heart of Christ, but the command of doing those things which were
necessary for our salvation, and not a command so much of doing, as
of dying. The moral law in the heart of Christ would have done us no
good without the mediatory law; we had been where we were by the sole
observance of the precepts of the moral law, without his suffering
the penalty of it: the law in the heart of Christ was the law of
suffering, or dying, the doing that for us by his death which the blood
of sacrifices was unable to effect. Legal “sacrifices thou wouldest
not; thy law is within my heart;” _i. e._ thy law ordered me to be
a sacrifice; it was that law, his obedience to which was principally
accepted and esteemed, and that was principally his passive, his
obedience to death (Phil. ii. 8); this was the special command received
from God, that he should die (John x. 18). It is not so clearly
manifested when this command was given, whether after the incarnation
of Christ, or at the point of his constitution as Mediator, upon the
transaction between the Father and the Son concerning the affair of
redemption: the promise was given “before the world began” (Tit. i. 2).
Might not the precept be given, before the world began, to Christ,
as considered in the quality of Mediator and Redeemer? Precepts and
promises usually attend one another; every covenant is made up of both.
Christ, considered {b426} here as the Son of God in the Divine nature,
was not capable of a command or promise; but considered in the relation
of Mediator between God and man, he was capable of both. Promises
of assistance were made before his actual incarnation, of which the
Prophets are full: why not precepts for his obedience, since long
before his incarnation this was his speech in the Prophet, “Thy law is
within my heart!” however, a command, a law it was, which is a fruit
of the Divine sovereignty; that as the sovereignty of God was impeached
and violated by the disobedience of Adam, it might be owned and
vindicated by the obedience of Christ; that as we fell by disloyalty
to it, we might rise by the highest submission to it in another head,
infinitely superior in his person to Adam, by whom we fell.