God being the greatest goodness, hath the greatest mildness. Mildness
is always the companion of true goodness, and the greater the goodness
the greater the mildness. Who so holy as Christ, and who so meek? God’s
slowness to anger is a branch or slip from his mercy (Ps. cxlv. 8):
“The Lord is full of compassion, slow to anger.” {b479} It differs
from mercy in the formal consideration of the object; mercy respects
the creature as miserable, patience respects the creature as criminal;
mercy pities him in his misery, and patience bears with the sin which
engendered that misery, and is giving birth to more. Again, mercy is
one end of patience; his long‑suffering is partly to glorify his grace:
so it was in Paul (1 Tim. i. 16). As slowness to anger springs from
goodness, so it makes mercy the butt and mark of its operations (Isa.
xxx. 18): “He waits that he may be gracious.” Goodness sets God upon
the exercise of patience, and patience sets many a sinner on running
into the arms of mercy. That mercy which makes God ready to embrace
returning sinners, makes him willing to bear with them in their sins,
and wait their return. It differs also from goodness, in regard of
the object. The object of goodness is every creature, angels, men, all
inferior creatures, to the lowest worm that crawls upon the ground. The
object of patience is, primarily, man, and secondarily, those creatures
that respect men’s support, conveniency, and delight; but they are not
the objects of patience, as considered in themselves, but in relation
to man, for whose use they were created; and therefore God’s patience
to them is properly his patience with man. The lower creatures do not
injure God, and therefore are not the objects of his patience, but as
they are forfeited by man, and man deserves to be deprived of them;
as man in this regard falls under the patience of God, so do those
creatures which are designed for man’s good. That patience which spares
man, spares other creatures for him, which were all forfeited by man’s
sin, as well as his own life, and are rather the testimonies of God’s
patience, than the proper objects of it. The object of God’s goodness,
then, is the whole creation; not a devil in hell, but as a creature,
is a mark of his goodness, but not of his patience. There is a kind of
sparing exercised to the devils, in deferring their complete punishment,
and hitherto keeping off the day wherein their final sentence is to
be pronounced; yet the Scripture never mentions this by the name of
slowness to anger, or long‑suffering. It can no more be called patience,
than a prince’s keeping a malefactor in chains, and not pronouncing a
condemning sentence, or not executing a sentence already pronounced,
can be called a patience with him, when it is not out of kindness to
the offender, but for some reasons of state. God’s sparing the devils
from their total punishment――which they have not yet, but are “reserved
in chains, under darkness for it” (Jude 6)――is not in order to
repentance, or attended with any invitations from God, or hopes in them;
and, therefore, cannot come under the same title as God’s sparing man:
where there is no proposal of mercy, there is no exercise of patience.
The fallen angels had no mercy reserved for them, nor any sacrifices
prepared for them; God “spared not the angels” (2 Pet. ii. 4), “but
delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment,”
_i. e._ he had no patience for them; for patience is properly a
temporary sparing a person, with a waiting of his relenting, and a
change of his injurious demeanor. The object of goodness is more
extensive than that of patience: nor do they both consider the object
under the same relation. Goodness respects things in a capacity, or in
a state of creation, and {b480} brings them forth into creation, and
nurseth and supports them as creatures. Patience considers them already
created, and fallen short of the duty of creatures; it considers them
as sinners, or in relation to sinners. Had not sin entered, patience
had never been exercised; but goodness had been exercised, had the
creature stood firm in its created state without any transgression; nay,
creation could not have been without goodness, because it was goodness
to create; but patience had never been known without an object, which
could not have been without an injury. Where there is no wrong, no
suffering, nor like to be any, patience hath no prospect of any
operation. So, then, goodness respects persons as creatures, patience
as transgressors; mercy eyes men as miserable and obnoxious to
punishment; patience considers men as sinful, and provoking to
punishment.
2. Since it is a part of goodness and mercy, it is not an insensible
patience. What is the fruit of pure goodness cannot be from a weakness
of resentment; he is “slow to anger;” the prophet doth not say, he is
incapable of anger, or cannot discern what is a real object of anger;
it implies, that he doth consider every provocation, but he is not
hasty to discharge his arrows upon the offenders; he sees all, while he
bears with them; his omniscience excludes any ignorance; he cannot but
see every wrong; every aggravation in that wrong, every step and motion
from the beginning to the completing it; for he knows all our thoughts;
he sees the sin and the sinner at the same time; the sin with an eye of
abhorrency, and the sinner with an eye of pity. His eye is upon their
iniquities, and his hatred edged against them; while he stands with
arms open, waiting a penitent return. When he publisheth his patience
in his keeping silence, he publisheth also his resolution, to set sin
in order before their eyes (Ps. l. 21): “I will reprove thee, and set
them in order before thy eyes.” Think me not such a piece of phlegm,
and so dull as not to resent your insolences; you shall see, in my
final charge, when I come to judge, that not a wry look escaped my
knowledge, that I had an eye to behold, and a heart to loathe every
one of your transgressions. The church was ready to think that God’s
slowness to deliver her, and his bearing with her oppressors, was not
from any patience in his nature, but a drowsy carelessness, a senseless
lethargy (Ps. xliv. 23): “Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?” We must
conclude him an inapprehensive God, before we can conclude him an
insensible God. As his delaying his promise is not slackness to his
people (2 Pet. iii. 9), so his deferring of punishment is not from a
stupidity under the affronts offered him.
3. Since it is a part of his mercy and goodness, it is not a
constrained or faint‑hearted patience. It is not a slowness to anger,
arising from a despondency of his own power to revenge. He hath as
much power to punish as he hath to forbear punishment. He that created
a world in six days, and that by a word, wants not a strength to crush
all mankind in one minute; and with as much ease as a word imports,
can give satisfaction to his justice in the blood of the offender.
Patience in man is many times interpreted, and truly too, a cowardice,
a feebleness of spirit, and a want of strength. But it is {b481} not
from the shortness of the Divine arm, that he cannot reach us, nor from
the feebleness of his hand, that he cannot strike us. It is not because
he cannot level us with the dust, dash us in pieces like a potter’s
vessel, or consume us as a moth. He can make the mightiest to fall
before him, and lay the strongest at his feet the first moment of
their crime. He that did not want a powerful word to create a world,
cannot want a powerful word to dissolve the whole frame of it, and
raze it out of being. It is not, therefore, out of a distrust of his
own power, that he hath supported a sinful world for so many ages, and
patiently borne the blasphemies of some, the neglects of others, and
the ingratitude of all, without inflicting that severe justice which
righteously he might have done; he wants no thunder to crush the whole
generation of men, nor waters to drown them, nor earth to swallow them
up. How easy is it for him to single out this or that particular person
to be the object of his wrath, and not of his patience! What he hath
done to one, he may to another; any signal judgment he hath sent upon
one, is an evidence that he wants not power to inflict it upon all.
Could he not make the motes in the air to choke us at every breath,
rain thunderbolts instead of drops of water, fill the clouds with a
consuming lightning, take off the reverence and fear of man, which he
hath imprinted upon the creature, spirit our domestic beasts to be our
executioners, unloose the tiles from the house‑top to brain us, or make
the fall of a house to crush us? It is but taking out the pins, and
giving a blast, and the work is done. And doth he want a power to do
any of those things? It is not then a faint‑hearted, or feeble patience,
that he exerciseth towards man.
4. Since it is not for want of power over the creature, it is from
a fulness of power over himself. This is in the text, “The Lord is
slow to anger, and great in power;” it is a part of his dominion
over himself, whereby he can moderate, and rule his own affections
according to the holiness of his own will. As it is the effect of his
power, so it is an argument of his power; the greatness of the effect
demonstrates the fulness and sufficiency of the cause. The more feeble
any man is in reason the less command he hath over his passions, and he
is the more heady to revenge. Revenge is a sign of a childish mind; the
stronger any man is in reason, the more command he hath over himself.
“He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that rules
his own spirit, than he that takes a city” (Prov. xvi. 32); he that
can restrain his anger, is stronger than the Cæsars and Alexanders of
the world, that have filled the earth with slain carcasses and ruined
cities. By the same reason, God’s slowness to anger is a greater
argument of his power than the creating a world, or the power of
dissolving it by a word; in this he hath a dominion over creatures,
in the other over himself; this is the reason he will not return to
destroy; because “I am God, and not man” (Hos. xi. 9); I am not so
weak and impotent as man, that cannot restrain his anger. This is a
strength possessed only by a God, wherein a creature is no more able to
parallel him, than in any other; so that he may be said to be the Lord
of himself; as it is in the verse before the text, that he is the Lord
of anger, in the Hebrew, instead of {b482} “furious,” as we translate
it; so he is the Lord of patience. The end why God is patient, is
to show his power. “What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to
make his power known, endured with much long‑suffering the vessels of
wrath fitted to destruction?” (Rom. ix. 22). To show his wrath upon
sinners, and his power over himself in bearing such indignities, and
forbearing punishment so long, when men were vessels of wrath fitted
for destruction, of whom there was no hopes of amendment. Had he
immediately broken in pieces those vessels, his power had not so
eminently appeared as it hath done, in tolerating them so long, that
had provoked him to take them off so often; there is indeed the power
of his anger, and there is the power of his patience; and his power
is more seen in his patience than in his wrath: it is no wonder that
He that is above all, is able to crush all; but it is a wonder, that
he that is provoked by all, doth not, upon the first provocation, rid
his hands of all. This is the reason why he did bear such a weight of
provocations from vessels of wrath, prepared for ruin, that he might
γνωρίσαι τὸ δυνατὸν αὑτοῦ, show what he was able to do, the lordship
and royalty he had over himself. The power of God is more manifest in
his patience to a multitude of sinners, than it would be in creating
millions of worlds out of nothing; this was the δυνατὸν αὑτοῦ, a power
over himself.
5. This patience being a branch of mercy, the exercise of it is
founded in the death of Christ. Without the consideration of this, we
can give no account why Divine patience should extend itself to us, and
not to the fallen angels. The threatening extends itself to us as well
as to the fallen angels; the threatening must necessarily have sunk man,
as well as those glorious creatures, had not Christ stepped in to our
relief. Had not Christ interposed to satisfy the justice of God, man
upon his sin had been actually bound over to punishment, as well as the
fallen angels were upon theirs, and been fettered in chains as strong
as those spirits feel.[1029] The reason why man was not hurled into
the same deplorable condition upon his sin, as they were, is Christ’s
promise of taking our nature, and not theirs. Had God designed Christ’s
taking their nature, the same patience had been exercised towards
them, and the same offers would have been made to them, as are made to
us. In regard to these fruits of this patience, Christ is said to buy
the wickedest apostates from him: “Denying the Lord that bought them”
(1 Pet. ii. 1). Such were bought by him, as “bring upon themselves just
destruction, and whose damnation slumbers not” (ver. 3); he purchased
the continuance of their lives, and the stay of their execution, that
offers of grace might be made to them. This patience must be either
upon the account of the law, or the gospel; for there are no other
rules, whereby God governs the world. A fruit of the law it was not;
that spake nothing but curses after disobedience; not a letter of mercy
was writ upon that, and therefore nothing of patience; death and wrath
were denounced; no slowness to anger intimated. It must be therefore
upon account of the gospel, and a fruit of the covenant of grace,
whereof Christ was Mediator. Besides this perfection {b483} being God’s
“waiting that he might be gracious” (Isa. xxx. 18), that which made way
for God’s grace made way for his waiting to manifest it. God discovered
not his grace, but in Christ; and therefore discovered not his patience
but in Christ; it is in him he met with the satisfaction of his justice,
that he might have a ground for the manifestation of his patience. And
the sacrifices of the law, wherein the life of a beast was accepted
for the sin of man, discovered the ground of his forbearance of them
to be the expectation of the great Sacrifice, whereby sin was to be
completely expiated (Gen. viii. 21). The publication of his patience
to the end of the world is presently after the sweet savor he found
in Noah’s sacrifice. The promised and designed coming of Christ, was
the cause of that patience God exercised before in the world; and his
gathering the elect together, is the reason of his patience since his
death.
6. The naturalness of his veracity and holiness, and the strictness of
his justice, are no bars to the exercise of his patience.
(1.) His veracity. In those threatenings where the punishment is
expressed, but not the time of inflicting it prefixed and determined
in the threatening, his veracity suffers no damage by the delaying
execution; so it be once done, though a long time after, the credit of
his truth stands unshaken: as when God promises a thing without fixing
the time, he is at liberty to pitch upon what time he pleases for the
performance of it, without staining his faithfulness to his word, by
not giving the thing promised presently. Why should the deferring of
justice upon an offender be any more against his veracity than his
delaying an answer to the petitions of a suppliant? But the difference
will lie in the threatening. “In the day thou eatest thereof, thou
shalt die the death” (Gen. ii. 17). The time was there settled; “in
that day thou shalt die;” some refer “day” to eating, not to dying;
and render the sentence thus: I do not prohibit thee the eating this
fruit for a day or two, but continually. In whatsoever day thou eatest
thereof, thou shalt die; but not understanding his dying that very
day he should eat of it; referring “day” to the extensiveness of the
prohibition, as to time. But to leave this as uncertain, it may be
answered, that as in some threatenings a condition is implied, though
not expressed, as in that positive denouncing of the destruction of
Ninevah: “Yet forty days, and Ninevah shall be destroyed” (Jonah iii.
4), the condition is implied; unless they humble themselves, and repent;
for upon their repentance, the sentence was deferred. So here, “in
the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die the death,” or certainly
die, unless there be a way found for the expiation of thy crime,
and the righting my honor. This condition, in regard of the event,
may as well be asserted to be implied in this threatening, as that of
repentance was in the other; or rather, “thou shalt die,” thou shalt
die spiritually, thou shalt lose that image of mine in thy nature, that
righteousness which is as much the life of thy soul as thy soul is the
life of thy body; that righteousness whereby thou art enabled to live
to me and thy own happiness. What the soul is to the body, a quickening
soul, that the image of God is to the soul, a quickening image. Or
“thou shalt die the death,” or certainly die; thou shalt be liable to
death. {b484} And so it is to be understood, not of an actual death
of the body, but the merit of death, and the necessity of death; thou
wilt be obnoxious to death, which will be avoided, if thou dost forbear
to eat of the forbidden fruit; thou shalt be a guilty person, and so
under a sentence of death, that I may, when I please, inflict it on
thee.[1030] Death did come upon Adam that day, because his nature
was vitiated; he was then also under an expectation of death, he was
obnoxious to it, though that day it was not poured out upon him in the
full bitterness and gall of it: as when the apostle saith, “The body
is dead because of sin” (Rom. viii. 10), he speaks to the living, and
yet tells them the body was dead because of sin; he means no more than
that it was under a sentence, and so a necessity of dying, though not
actually dead; so thou shalt be under the sentence of death that day,
as certainly as if that day thou shouldst sink into the dust: and as by
his patience towards man, not sending forth death upon him in all the
bitter ingredients of it, his justice afterwards was more eminent upon
man’s surety, than it would have been if it had been then employed in
all its severe operations upon man. So was his veracity eminent also in
making good this threatening, in inflicting the punishment included in
it upon our nature assumed by a mighty Person, and upon that Person in
our nature, who was infinitely higher than our nature.