sovereign dignity as our Redeemer. Some, indeed, say, that this
sovereignty of Christ’s human nature was natural, and the right of it
resulted from its union with the Divine; as a lady of mean condition,
when espoused and married to a prince, hath, by virtue of that, a
natural right to some kind of jurisdiction over the whole kingdom,
because she is one with the king.[1014] But to waive this; the
Scripture placeth wholly the conferring such an authority upon the
pleasure and will of God. As Christ was a gift of God’s sovereign will
to us, so this was a gift of God’s sovereign will to Christ (Matt.
xxviii. 28): “All power is given me.” And he “gave him to be head over
all things to the church” (Eph. i. 22); “God gave him a name above
every name” (Phil. ii. 9); and, therefore, his throne he sits upon is
called “The throne of his Father” (Rev. iii. 21). And he “committed all
judgment to the Son,” _i. e._ all government and dominion; an empire
in heaven and earth (John v. 22); and that because he is “the Son of
Man” (ver. 27); which may understood, that the Father hath given him
authority to exercise that judgment and government as the Son of Man,
which he originally had as the Son of God; or rather, because he became
a servant, and humbled himself to death, he gives him this authority as
the reward of his obedience and humility, conformable to Phil. ii. 9.
This is an act of the high sovereignty of God, to obscure his own
authority in a sense, and take into association with him, or vicarious
subordination to him, the human nature of Christ as united to the
Divine; not only lifting it above the heads of all the angels, but
giving that person in our nature an empire over them, whose nature was
more excellent than ours: yea, the sovereignty of God appears in the
whole management of this kingly office of Christ; for it is managed
in every part of it according to God’s order (Ezek. xxxvii. 24, 25):
“David, my servant, shall be king over them,” and “my servant David
shall be their prince forever:” he shall be a prince over them, but
my servant in that principality, in the exercise and duration of it.
The sovereignty of God is paramount in all that Christ hath done as
a priest, or shall do as a king.
_Use I._ For instruction.
1. How great is the contempt of this sovereignty of God! Man {b427}
naturally would be free from God’s empire, to be a slave under the
dominion of his own lust; the sovereignty of God, as a Lawgiver, is
most abhorred by man (Lev. xxvi. 43). The Israelites, the best people
in the world, were apt, by nature, not only to despise, but abhor,
his statutes; there is not a law of God but the corrupt heart of man
hath an abhorrency of: how often do men wish that God had not enacted
this or that law that goes against the grain! and, in wishing so, wish
that he were no sovereign, or not such a sovereign as he is in his own
nature, but one according to their corrupt model. This is the great
quarrel between God and man, whether he or they shall be the Sovereign
Ruler. He should not, by the will of man, rule in any one village in
the world; God’s vote should not be predominant in any one thing. There
is not a law of his but is exposed to contempt by the perverseness of
man (Prov. i. 21): “Ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would
have none of my reproof:” _Septuag._ “Ye have made all my counsels
without authority.” The nature of man cannot endure one precept of
God, nor one rebuke from him; and for this cause God is at the expense
of judgments in the world, to assert his own empire to the teeth and
consciences of men (Ps. lix. 13): “Lord, consume them in wrath, and
let them know that God rules in Jacob, to the ends of the earth.” The
dominion of God is not slighted by any creature of this world but man;
all others observe it by observing his order, whether in their natural
motions or preternatural irruptions; they punctually act according to
their commission. Man only speaks a dialect against the strain of the
whole creation, and hath none to imitate him among all the creatures
in heaven and earth, but only among those in hell: man is more
impatient of the yoke of God than of the yoke of man. There are not
so many rebellions committed by inferiors against their superiors and
fellow‑creatures, as are committed against God. A willing and easy
sinning is an equalling the authority of God to that of man (Hos. vi.
7): “They, like men, have transgressed my covenant;” they have made
no more account of breaking my covenant than if they had broken some
league or compact made with a mere man; so slightly do they esteem the
authority of God; such a disesteem of the Divine authority is a virtual
undeifying of him.[1015] To slight his sovereignty is to stab his Deity;
since the one cannot be preserved without the support of the other, his
life would expire with his authority. How base and brutish is it for
vile dust and mouldering clay to lift up itself against the majesty
of God, whose throne is in the heavens, who sways his sceptre over all
parts of the world――a Majesty before whom the devils shake, and the
highest cherubims tremble! It is as if the thistle, that can presently
be trod down by the foot of a wild beast, should think itself a match
for the cedar of Lebanon, as the phrase is, 2 Kings xiv. 9.
Let us consider this in general; and, also, in the ordinary practice of
men. _First_, In general.
(1.) All sin in its nature is a contempt of the Divine dominion. As
every act of obedience is a confirmation of the law, and consequently a
subscription of the authority of the Lawgiver (Deut. xxvii. 26), {b428}
so every breach to it is a conspiracy against the sovereignty of the
Lawgiver; setting up our will against the will of God is an articling
against his authority, as setting up our reason against the methods
of God is an articling against his wisdom; the intendment of every act
of sin is to wrest the sceptre out of God’s hand. The authority of God
is the first attribute in the Deity which it directs its edge against;
it is called, therefore, a “transgression of his law” (1 John iii. 4),
and, therefore, a slight, or neglect, of the majesty of God; and the
not keeping his commands is called a “forgetting God” (Deut. viii. 11),
_i. e._ a forgetting him to be our absolute Lord. As the first notion
we have of God as a Creator is that of his sovereignty, so the first
perfection that sin struck at, in the violation of the law, was his
sovereignty as a Lawgiver. “Breaking the law is a dishonoring God”
(Rom. ii. 23), a snatching off his crown; to obey our own wills before
the will of God, is to prefer ourselves as our own sovereigns before
him. Sin is a wrong, and injury to God, not in his essence, that is
above the reach of a creature, nor in anything profitable to him, or
pertaining to his own intrinsic advantage; not an injury to God in
himself, but in his authority, in those things which pertain to his
glory; a disowning his due right, and not using his goods according to
his will. Thus the whole world may be called, as God calls Chaldea, “a
land of rebels” (Jer. l. 21): “Go up against the land of Merathaim,”
or rebels: rebels, not against the Jews, but against God. The mighty
opposition in the heart of man to the supremacy of God is discovered
emphatically by the apostle (Rom. viii. 7) in that expression, “The
carnal mind is enmity against God,” _i. e._ against the authority of
God, because “it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can
be.” It refuseth not subjection to this or that part, but to the whole;
to every mark of Divine authority in it; it will not lay down its arms
against it, nay, it cannot but stand upon its terms against it; the law
can no more be fulfilled by a carnal mind, than it can be disowned by
a sovereign God. God is so holy, that he cannot alter a righteous law,
and man is so averse, that he cares not for, nay, cannot fulfil, one
title; so much doth the nature of man swell against the majesty of God.
Now an enmity to the law, which is in every sin, implies a perversity
against the authority of God that enacted it.
(2.) All sin, in its nature, is the despoiling God of his sole
sovereignty, which was probably the first thing the devil aimed at.
That pride was the sin of the devil, the Scripture gives us some
account of, when the apostle adviseth not a novice, or one that hath
but lately embraced the faith, to be chosen a bishop (1 Tim. iii. 6),
“Lest, being lifted up with pride, he fall into the condemnation of
the devil;” lest he fall into the same sin for which the devil was
condemned. But in what particular thing this pride was manifest, is
not so easily discernible; the ancients generally conceived it to be
an affecting the throne of God, grounding it on Isa. xiv. 12: “How
art thou fallen, O Lucifer, son of the morning! for thou hast said in
thy heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the
stars of God.” It is certain the prophet speaks there of the king of
Babylon, and taxeth him for his pride, and gives to him the title {b429}
of “Lucifer,” perhaps likening him in his pride to the devil, and then
it notes plainly the particular sin of the devil, attempting a share in
the sovereignty of God; and some strengthen their conjecture from the
name of the archangel who contended against Satan (Jude 9), which is
Michael, which signifies, “Who as God?” or, “Who like God?” the name
of the angel giving the superiority to God, intimating the contrary
disposition in the devil, against whom he contended. It is likely his
sin was an affecting equality with God in empire, or a freedom from
the sovereign authority of God; because he imprinted such a kind of
persuasion on man at his first temptation: “Ye shall be as gods” (Gen.
iii. 5); and though it be restrained to the matter of knowledge, yet
that being a fitness for government, it may be extended to that also.
But it is plainly a persuading them, that they might be, in some sort,
equal with God, and independent on him as their superior. What he had
found so fatal to himself, he imagined would have the same success in
the ruin of man. And since the devil hath, in all ages of the world,
usurped a worship to himself which is only due to God, and would
be served by man, as if he were the God of the world; since all his
endeavor was to be worshipped as the Supreme God on earth, it is not
unreasonable to think, that he invaded the supremacy of God in heaven,
and endeavored to be like the Most High before his banishment, as he
hath attempted to be like the Most High since. And since the devil and
antichrist are reputed by John, in the Revelation, to be so near of
kin, and so like in disposition, why might not that, which is the sin
of antichrist, the image of him, be also the sin of Satan, “to exalt
himself above all that is called God” (2 Thess. ii. 4), and “sit as
God in his temple,” affecting a partnership in his throne and worship?
Whether it was this, or attempting an unaccountable dominion over
created things, or because he was the prime angel, and the most
illustrious of that magnificent corporation, he might think himself
fit to reign with God over all things else? Or if his sin were envy,
as some think, at the felicity of man in paradise, it was still a
quarrelling with God’s dominion, and right of disposing his own goods
and favors; he is, therefore, called “Belial” (2 Cor. vi. 14, 15):
“What concord hath Christ with Belial?” _i. e._ with the devil, one
“without yoke,” as the word “Belial” signifies.
(3.) It is more plain, that this was the sin of Adam. The first act
of Adam was to exercise a lordship over the lower creatures, in giving
names to them,――a token of dominion (Gen. ii. 19). The next was to
affect a lordship over God, in rebelling against him. After he had
writ the first mark of his own delegated dominion, in the names he gave
the creatures, and owned their dependence on him as their governor, he
would not acknowledge his own dependence on God. As soon as the Lord
of the world had put him into possession of the power he had allotted
him, he attempted to strip his Lord of that which he had reserved to
himself; he was not content to lay a yoke upon the other creatures,
but desirous to shake off the Divine yoke from himself, and be subject
to none but his own will; hence Adam’s sin is more particularly called
“disobedience” (Rom. v. 19): for, in the eating the apple, there was
no moral evil in itself, but a {b430} contradiction to the positive
command and order of God, whereby he did disown God’s right of
commanding him, or reserving anything from him to his own use. The
language all his posterity speaks, “Let us break his bands, and cast
away his cords from us” (Ps. ii. 3), was learned from Adam in that act
of his. The next act we read of, was that of Cain’s murdering Abel,
which was an invading God’s right, in assuming an authority to dispose
of the life of his brother,――a life which God had given him, and
reserved the period of it in his own hands. And he persists in the same
usurpation when God came to examine him, and ask him where his brother
was; how scornful was his answer! (Gen. iv. 9): “Am I my brother’s
keeper?” as much as if he had said, What have you to do to examine
me? or, What obligation is there upon me to render an account of him?
or, as one saith, it is as much as if he had said, “Go, look for him
yourself.”[1016] The sovereignty of God did not remain undisturbed as
soon as ever it appeared in creation; the devils rebelled against it in
heaven, and man would have banished it from the earth.
(4.) The sovereignty of God hath not been less invaded by the
usurpations of men. One single order of the Roman episcopacy hath
endeavored to usurp the prerogatives of God; the Pope will prohibit
what God hath allowed; the marriage of priests; the receiving of the
cup, as well as of the bread, in the sacrament; the eating of this or
that sort of meat at special times, meats which God hath sanctified;
and forbid them, too, upon pain of damnation. It is an invasion of
God’s right to forbid the use of what God hath granted, as though the
earth, and the fulness thereof, were no longer the Lord’s, but the
Pope’s; much more to forbid what God hath commanded, as if Christ
overreached his own authority, when he enjoined all to drink of the
sacramental wine, as well as eat of the sacramental bread. No lord but
will think his right usurped by that steward who shall permit to others
what his lord forbids, and forbid that which his master allows, and
act the lord instead of the servant. Add to this the pardons of many
sins, as if he had the sole key to the treasures of Divine mercy;
the disposing of crowns and dominions at his pleasure, as if God had
divested himself of the title of King of kings, and transferred it upon
the see of Rome. The allowing public stews, dispensing with incestuous
marriages, as if God had acted more the part of a tyrant than of a
righteous Sovereign in forbidding them, depriving the Jews of the
propriety in their estates upon their conversion to Christianity, as
if the pilfering men’s goods were the way to teach them self‑denial,
the first doctrine of Christian religion; and God shall have no honor
from the Jew without a breach of his law by theft from the Christian.
Granting many years’ indulgences upon slight performances, the
repeating so many _Ave‑Marias_ and _Pater‑Nosters_ in a day, canonizing
saints, claiming the keys of heaven, and disposing of the honors and
glory of it, and proposing creatures as objects of religious worship,
wherein he answers the character of the apostle (2 Thess. ii. 4),
“showing himself that he is God,” in challenging that power which is
only the right of Divine sovereignty; exalting himself above God, in
indulging {b431} those things which the law of God never allowed, but
hath severely prohibited. This controlling the sovereignty of God, not
allowing him the rights of his crown, is the soul and spirit of many
errors. Why are the decrees of election and preterition denied? Because
men will not acknowledge God the Sovereign Disposer of his creature.
Why is effectual calling and efficacious grace denied? Because they
will not allow God the proprietor and distributer of his own goods. Why
is the satisfaction of Christ denied? Because they will not allow God
a power to vindicate his own law in what way he pleaseth. Most of the
errors of men may be resolved into a denial of God’s sovereignty; all
have a tincture of the first evil sentiment of Adam.
_Secondly._ The sovereignty of God is contemned in the practices of
men――(1.) As he is a _Lawgiver_.
[1.] When laws are made, and urged in any state contrary to the law of
God. It is part of God’s sovereignty to be a Lawgiver; not to obey his
law is a breach made upon his right of government; but it is treason
in any against the crown of God, to mint laws with a stamp contrary
to that of heaven, whereby they renounce their due subjection, and
vie with God for dominion, snatch the supremacy from him, and account
themselves more lords than the Sovereign Monarch of the world. When
men will not let God be the judge of good and evil, but put in their
own vote, controlling his to establish their own; such are not content
to be as gods, subordinate to the supreme God, to sit at his feet;
nor co‑ordinate with him, to sit equal upon his throne; but paramount
to him, to over‑top and shadow his crown;――a boldness that leaves
the serpent, in the first temptation, under the character of a more
commendable modesty; who advised our first parents to attempt to be
as gods, but not above him, and would enervate a law of God, but not
enact a contrary one to be observed by them. Such was the usurpation
of Nebuchadnezzar, to set up a golden image to be adored (Dan. iii.),
as if he had power to mint gods, as well as to conquer men; to set the
stamp of a Deity upon a piece of gold, as well as his own effigies upon
his current coin. Much of the same nature was that of Darius, by the
motion of his flatterers, to prohibit any petition to be made to God
for the space of thirty days, as though God was not to have a worship
without a license from a doting piece of clay (Dan. vi. 7). So Henry
the Third of France, by his edict, silenced masters of families from
praying with their households.[1017] And it is a farther contempt of
God’s authority, when good men are oppressed by the sole weight of
power, for not observing such laws, as if they had a real sovereignty
over the consciences of men, more than God himself.[1018] When the
apostles were commanded by an angel from God, to preach in the Temple
the doctrine of Christ (Acts v. 19, 20), they were fetched from thence
with a guard before the council (ver. 6). And what is the language
of those statesmen to them? as absolute as God himself could speak to
any transgressors of his law. “Did not we straitly command you, that
you should not teach in this name?” (ver. 28). It is sufficient that
we gave you a command to be silent, and publish {b432} no more this
doctrine of Jesus; it is not for you to examine our decrees, but rest
in our order as loyal subjects, and comply with your rulers; they
might have added,――though it be with the damnation of your souls. How
would those overrule the apostles by no other reason but their absolute
pleasure! And though God had espoused their cause, by delivering them
out of the prison, wherein they had locked them the day before, yet not
one of all this council had the wit or honesty to entitle it a fighting
against God, but Gamaliel (ver. 29). So foolishly fond are men to put
themselves in the place of God, and usurp a jurisdiction over men’s
consciences: and to presume that laws made against the interest and
command of God, must be of more force than the laws of God’s enacting.
[2.] The sovereignty of God is contemned in making additions to the
laws of God. The authority of a sovereign Lawgiver is invaded and
vilified when an inferior presumes to make orders equivalent to his
edicts. It is a _præmunire_ against heaven to set up an authority
distinct from that of God, or to enjoin anything as necessary in
matter of worship for which a Divine commission cannot be shown. God
was always so tender of this part of his prerogative, that he would
not have anything wrought in the tabernacle, not a vessel, not an
instrument, but what himself had prescribed. “According to all that
I show thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of
all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it” (Exod. xxv. 9);
which is strictly urged again, ver. 40: “Look that thou make them after
their pattern;” look to it, beware of doing anything of thine own head,
and justling with my authority. It was so afterwards in the matter of
the temple, which succeeded the tabernacle; God gave the model of it
to David, and made him “understand in writing by his hand upon him,
even all the works of this pattern” (1 Chron. xxviii. 19). Neither the
royal authority in Moses, who was king in Jesurun; nor in David, who
was a man after God’s own heart, and called to the crown by a special
and extraordinary providence; nor Aaron, and the high priests his
successors, invested in the sacerdotal office, had any authority from
God, to do anything in the framing the tabernacle or temple of their
own heads. God barred them from anything of that nature, by giving them
an exact pattern, so dear to him was always this flower of his crown.
And afterwards, the power of appointing officers and ordinances in
the church was delegated to Christ, and was among the rest of those
royalties given to him, which he fully completed “for the edifying
of the body” (Eph. iv. 11, 12); and he hath the eulogy by the Spirit
of God, to be “faithful as Moses was in all his house, to Him that
appointed him” (Heb. iii. 2). Faithfulness in a trust implies a
punctual observing directions; God was still so tender of this, that
even Christ, the Son, should no more do anything in this concern
without appointment and pattern, than “Moses, a servant” (ver. 5, 6).
It seems to be a vote of nature to refer the original of the modes of
all worship to God; and therefore in all those varieties of ceremonies
among the heathens, there was scarce any but were imagined by them
to be the dictates and orders of some of their pretended deities, and
not the resolves of mere human authority. What intrusion upon God’s
right hath the papacy {b433} made in regard of officers, cardinals,
patriarchs, &c., not known in any Divine order? In regard of ceremonies
in worship, pressed as necessary to obtain the favor of God, holy water,
crucifixes, altars, images, cringings, reviving many of the Jewish
and Pagan ceremonies, and adopting them into the family of Christian
ordinances; as if God had been too absolute and arbitrary in repealing
the one, and dashing in pieces the other. When God had by his sovereign
order framed a religion for the heart, men are ready to usurp an
authority to frame one for the sense, to dress the ordinances of God
in new and gaudy habits, to take the eye by a vain pomp; thus affecting
a Divine royalty, and acting a silly childishness; and after this, to
impose the observation of those upon the consciences of men, is a bold
ascent into the throne of God; to impose laws upon the conscience,
which Christ hath not imposed, hath deservedly been thought the very
spirit of antichrist; it may be called also the spirit of anti‑god. God
hath reserved to himself the sole sovereignty over the conscience, and
never indulged men any part of it; he hath not given man a power over
his own conscience, much less one man a power over another’s conscience.
Men have a power over outward things to do this or that, where it is
determined by the law of God, but not the least authority to control
any dictate or determination of conscience: the sole empire of that
is appropriate to God, as one of the great marks of his royalty.
What an usurpation is it of God’s right to make conscience a slave
to man, which God hath solely, as the Father of spirits, subjected to
himself!――an usurpation which, though the apostles, those extraordinary
officers, might better have claimed, yet they utterly disowned any
imperious dominion over the faith of others (2 Cor. i. 24). Though in
this they do not seem to climb up above God, yet they set themselves in
the throne of God, envy him an absolute monarchy, would be sharers with
him in his legislative power, and grasp one end of his sceptre in their
own hands. They do not pretend to take the crown from God’s head, but
discover a bold ambition to shuffle their hairy scalps under it, and
wear part of it upon their own, that they may rule with him, not under
him; and would be joint lords of his manor with him, who hath, by the
apostle, forbidden any to be “lords of his heritage” (1 Pet. v. 3): and
therefore they cannot assume such an authority to themselves till they
can show where God hath resigned this part of his authority to them.
If their exposition of that place (Matt. xvi. 18), “Upon this rock I
will build my church,” be granted to be true, and that the person and
successors of Peter are meant by that rock, it could be no apology for
their usurpations; it is not Peter and his successors shall build, but
“I will build;” others are instruments in building, but they are to
observe the directions of the grand Architect.