There is a hatred of the sin in his holiness, and a sentence past
against the sin in his justice, though the execution of that sentence
be suspended, and the person reprieved by patience, which is implied
(Eccles. viii. 11): “Because sentence against an evil work is not
executed speedily; therefore, the heart of the sons of men is fully
set in them to do evil;” sentence is past, but a speedy execution is
stopped. Some of the heathens, who would not imagine God unjust, and
yet, seeing the villanies and oppressions of men in the world remain
unpunished, and frequently beholding prosperous wickedness, to free
him from the charge of injustice, denied his providence and actual
government of the world; for if he did take notice of human affairs,
and concern himself in what was done upon the earth, they could not
think an Infinite Goodness and Justice could be so slow to punish
oppressors, and relieve the miserable, and leave the world in that
disorder under the injustice of men: they judged such a patience as
was exercised by him, if he did govern the world, was drawn out beyond
the line of fit and just. Is it not a presumption in men to prescribe
a rule of righteousness and conveniency to their Creator? It might be
demanded of such, whether they never injured any in their lives; and
when certainly they have one way or another, would they not think it
a very unworthy, if not unjust, thing, that a person so injured by
them should take a speedy and severe revenge on them?――and if every
man should do the like, would there not be a speedy despatch made
of mankind? Would not the world be a shambles, and men rush forwards
to one another’s destructions, for the wrongs they have mutually
received? If it be accounted a virtue in man, and no unrighteousness,
not presently {b485} to be all on fire against an offence; by what
right should any question the inconsistency of God’s patience with
his justice? Do we praise the lenity of parents to children, and shall
we disparage the long‑suffering of God to men? We do not censure the
righteousness of physicians and chirurgeons, because they cut not off a
corrupt member this day as well as to‑morrow? And is it just to asperse
God, because he doth defer his vengeance which man assumes to himself a
right to do? We never account him a bad governor that defers the trial,
and consequently the condemnation and execution of a notorious offender
for important reasons, and beneficial to the public, either to make
the nature of his crime more evident, or to find out the rest of his
complices by his discovery. A governor, indeed, were unjust, if he
commanded that which were unrighteous, and forbade that which were
worthy and commendable; but if he delays the execution of a convict
offender for weighty reasons, either for the benefit of the state
whereof he is the ruler, or for some advantage to the offender himself,
to make him have a sense of, and a regret for his offence, we account
him not unjust for this. God doth not by his patience dispense with
the holiness of his law, nor cut off anything from its due authority.
If men do strengthen themselves by his long‑suffering against his
law, it is their fault, not any unrighteousness in him; he will take
a time to vindicate the righteousness of his own commands, if men will
wholly neglect the time of his patience, in forbearing to pay a dutiful
observance to his precept. If justice be natural to him, and he cannot
but punish sin, yet he is not necessitated to consume sinners, as
the fire doth stubble put into it, which hath no command over its own
qualities to restrain them from acting; but God is a free agent, and
may choose his own time for the distribution of that punishment his
nature leads him to. Though he be naturally just, yet it is not so
natural to him, as to deprive him of a dominion over his own acts, and
a freedom in the exerting them what time he judgeth most convenient
in his wisdom. God is necessarily holy, and is necessarily angry with
sin; his nature can never like it, and cannot but be displeased with
it; yet he hath a liberty to restrain the effects of this anger for
a time, without disgracing his holiness, or being interpreted to act
unrighteously; as well as a prince or state may suspend the execution
of a law, which they will never break, only for a time and for a public
benefit. If God should presently execute his justice, this perfection
of patience, which is a part of his goodness, would never have an
opportunity of discovery; part of his glory, for which he created the
world, would lie in obscurity from the knowledge of his creature; his
justice would be signal in the destruction of sinners, but this stream
of his goodness would be stopped up from any motion. One perfection
must not cloud another; God hath his seasons to discover all, one after
another: “The times and seasons are in his own power” (Acts i. 7): the
seasons of manifesting his own perfections as well as other things;
succession of them, in their distinct appearance, makes no invasion
upon the rights of any. If justice should complain of an injury from
patience, because it is delayed, patience hath more reason to complain
{b486} of an injury from justice, that by such a plea it would be
wholly obscured and inactive: for this perfection hath the shortest
time to act its part of any, it hath no stage but this world to move in;
mercy hath a heaven, and justice a hell, to display itself to eternity,
but long‑suffering hath only a short‑lived earth for the compass of
its operation. Again, justice is so far from being wronged by patience,
that it rather is made more illustrious, and hath the fuller scope to
exercise itself; it is the more righted for being deferred, and will
have stronger grounds than before for its activity; the equity of
it will be more apparent to every reason, the objections more fully
answered against it, when the way of dealing with sinners by patience
hath been slighted. When this dam of long‑suffering is removed,
the floods of fiery justice will rush down with more force and
violence; justice will be fully recompensed for the delay, when, after
patience is abused, it can spread itself over the offender with a more
unquestionable authority; it will have more arguments to hit the sinner
in the teeth with, and silence him; there will be a sharper edge for
every stroke; the sinner must not only pay for the score of his former
sins, but the score of abused patience, so that justice hath no reason
to commence a suit against God’s slowness to anger: what it shall want
by the fulness of mercy upon the truly penitent, it will gain by the
contempt of patience on the impenitent abusers. When men, by such a
carriage, are ripened for the stroke of justice, justice may strike
without any regret in itself, or pull‑back from mercy; the contempt
of long‑suffering will silence the pleas of the one, and spirit the
severity of the other. To conclude: since God hath glorified his
justice on Christ, as a surety for sinners, his patience is so far
from interfering with the rights of his justice, that it promotes it;
it is dispensed to this end, that God might pardon with honor, both
upon the score of purchased mercy and contented justice; that by a
penitent sinner’s return his mercy might be acknowledged free, and the
satisfaction of his justice by Christ be glorified in believing: for
he is long‑suffering from an unwillingness “that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. iii. 9); _i. e._ all
to whom the promise is made, for to such the apostle speaks, and calls
it “long‑suffering to us‑ward;” and repentance being an acknowledgment
of the demerit of sin, and a breaking off unrighteousness, gives a
particular glory to the freeness of mercy, and the equity of justice.
II. The second thing, How this patience or slowness to anger is
manifested.
1. To our first parents. His slowness to anger was evidenced in not
directing his artillery against them, when they first attempted to
rebel. He might have struck them dead when they began to bite at the
temptation, and were inclinable to a surrender; for it was a degree
of sinning, and a breach of loyalty as well, though not so much as the
consummating act. God might have given way to the floods of his wrath
at the first spring of man’s aspiring thoughts, when the monstrous
motion of being as God began to be curdled in his heart; but he took
no notice of any of their embryo sins till they came to a ripeness, and
started out of the womb of their minds into the open {b487} air: and
after he had brought his sin to perfection, God did not presently send
that death upon him, which he had merited, but continued his life to
the space of 930 years (Gen. v. 5). The sun and stars were not arrested
from doing their office for him. Creatures were continued for his use,
the earth did not swallow him up, nor a thunderbolt from heaven raze
out the memory of him. Though he had deserved to be treated with such
a severity for his ungrateful demeanor to his Creator and Benefactor,
and affecting an equality with him, yet God continued him with a
sufficiency for his content, after he turned rebel, though not with
such a liberality as when he remained a loyal subject; and though he
foresaw that he would not make an end of sinning, but with an end of
living, he used him not in the same manner as he had used the devils.
He added days and years to him, after he had deserved death, and hath
for this 5,000 years continued the propagation of mankind, and derived
from his loins an innumerable posterity, and hath crowned multitudes
of them with hoary heads. He might have extinguished human race at
the first; but since he hath preserved it till this day, it must be
interpreted nothing else but the effect of an admirable patience.
2. His slowness to anger is manifest to the Gentiles. What they were,
we need no other witness than the apostle Paul, who sums up many of
their crimes (Rom. i. 29‒32). He doth preface the catalogue with a
comprehensive expression, “Being filled with all unrighteousness;”
and concludes it with a dreadful aggravation, “They not only do the
same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” They were so soaked
and naturalized in wickedness, that they had no delight, and found no
sweetness in anything else but what was in itself abominable; all of
them were plunged in idolatry and superstition; none of them but either
set up their great men, or creatures, beneficial to the world, and some
the damned spirits in his stead, and paid an adoration to insensible
creatures or devils, which was due to God. Some were so depraved in
their lives and actions, that it seemed to be the interest of the
rest of the world, that they should have been extinguished for the
instruction of their contemporaries and posterity. The best of them
had turned all religion into a fable, coined a world of rites, some
unnatural in themselves, and most of them unbecoming a rational
creature to offer, and a Deity to accept: yet he did not presently arm
himself against them with fire and sword, nor stopped the course of
their generations, nor tear out all those relics of natural light which
were left in their minds. He did not do what he might have done, but he
winked at the “times of that ignorance” (Acts xvii. 30), their ignorant
idolatry; for that it refers to (ver. 29): “They thought the Godhead
was like to gold or silver, or stone graven by art, and men’s device;”
ὑπεριδὼν, overlooking them. He demeaned himself so, as if he did not
take notice of them. He winked as if he did not see them, and would not
deal so severely with them: the eye of his justice seemed to wink, in
not calling them to an account for their sin.
3. His slowness to anger is manifest to the Israelites. You know
how often they are called a “stiff‑necked people;” they are said to
do evil “from their youth;” _i. e._ from the time wherein they were
{b488} erected a nation and commonwealth; and that “the city had been a
provocation of his anger, and of his fury, from the day that they built
it, even to this day;” _i. e._ the day of Jeremiah’s prophecy, “that he
should remove it from before his face” (Jer. xxxii. 31): from the days
of Solomon, say some, which is too much a curtailing of the text, as
though their provocations had taken date no higher than from the time
of Solomon’s rearing the temple, and beautifying the city, whereby
it seemed to be a new building. They began more early; they scarce
discontinued their revolting from God; they were a “grief to him forty
years together in the wilderness” (Ps. xcv. 10), “yet he suffered
their manners” (Acts xiii. 18). He bore with their ill‑behaviour and
sauciness towards him; and no sooner was Joshua’s head laid, and the
elders, that were their conductors, gathered to their fathers, but the
next generation forsook God, and smutted themselves with the idolatry
of the nations (Judges ii. 7, 10, 11): and when he punished them by
prospering the arms of their enemies against them, they were no sooner
delivered upon their cry and humiliation, but they began a new scene of
idolatry; and though he brought upon them the power of the Babylonian
empire, and laid chains upon them to bring them to their right mind.
And at seventy years’ end he struck off their chains, by altering the
whole posture of affairs in that part of the world for their sakes:
overturning one empire, and settling another for their restoration to
their ancient city. And though they did not after disown him for their
God, and set up “Baal in his throne,” yet they multiplied foolish
traditions, whereby they impaired the authority of the law; yet he
sustained them with a wonderful patience, and preferred them before
all other people in the first offers of the gospel; and after they had
outraged not only his servants, the prophets, but his Son, the Redeemer,
yet he did not forsake them, but employed his apostles to solicit them,
and publish among them the doctrine of salvation: so that his treating
this people might well be called “much long‑suffering,” it being above
1500 years, wherein he bore with them, or mildly punished them, far
less than their deserts; their coming out of Egypt being about the year
of the world 2450, and their final destruction as a commonwealth, not
till about forty years after the death of Christ; and all this while
his patience did sometimes wholly restrain his justice, and sometimes
let it fall upon them in some few drops, but made no total devastation
of their country, nor wrote his revenge in extraordinary bloody
characters, till the Roman conquest, wherein he put a period to them
both as a church and state. In particular this patience is manifest,
1st. In his giving warnings of judgments, before he orders them to
go forth. He doth not punish in a passion, and hastily; he speaks
before he strikes, and speaks that he may not strike. Wrath is
published before it is executed, and that a long time; an hundred and
twenty years’ advertisement was given to a debauched world before the
heavens were opened, to spout down a deluge upon them. He will not
be accused of coming unawares upon a people; he inflicts nothing but
what he foretold either immediately to the people that provoke him,
or anciently to them that have been their forerunners {b489} in the
same provocation (Hos. vii. 12), “I will chastise them, as their
congregation hath heard.” Many of the leaves of the Old Testament are
full of those presages and warnings of approaching judgment. These make
up a great part of the volume of it in various editions, according to
the state of the several provoking times. Warnings are given to those
people that are most abominable in his sight (Zeph. ii. 1, 2); “Gather
yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired,”――it
is a _Meiosis_, O nation abhorred,――“before the decree bring forth.”
He sends his heralds before he sends his armies; he summons them by
the voice of his prophets, before he confounds them by the voice of his
thunders. When a parley is beaten, a white flag of peace is hung out,
before a black flag of fury is set up. He seldom cuts down men by his
judgments, before he hath “hewed them by his prophets” (Hos. vi. 5).
Not a remarkable judgment but was foretold: the flood to the old world
by Noah; the famine to Egypt by Joseph; the earthquake by Amos (ch. i.
1); the storm from Chaldea by Jeremiah; the captivity of the ten tribes
by Hosea; the total destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by Christ
himself. He hath chosen the best persons in the world to give those
intimations; Noah, the most righteous person on the earth, for the old
world; and his Son, the most beloved person in heaven, for the Jews
in the later time: and in other parts of the world, and in the later
times, where he hath not warned by prophets, he hath supplied it by
prodigies in the air and earth; histories are full of such items from
heaven. Lesser judgments are forewarners of greater, as lightnings
before thunder are messengers to tell us of a succeeding clap.
(1.) He doth often give warning of judgments. He comes not to
extremity, till he hath often shaken the rod over men; he thunders
often, before he crusheth them with his thunderbolt; he doth not till
after the first and second admonition punish a rebel, as he would have
us reject a heretic. “He speaks once, yea, twice” (Job xxxiii. 14),
“and man perceives it not;” he sends one message after another, and
waits the success of many messages before he strikes. Eight prophets
were ordered to acquaint the whole world with approaching judgment
(2 Pet. ii. 5): he saved “Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of
righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly,”
called “the eighth” in respect of his preaching, not in regard of his
preservation; he was the eighth preacher in order, from the beginning
of the world, that endeavored to restore the world to the way of
righteousness. Most, indeed, consider him here as the eighth person
saved, so do our translators; and, therefore, add _person_, which
is not in the Greek. Some others consider him here as the eighth
preacher of righteousness, reckoning Enoch, the son of Seth, the first,
grounding it upon Gen. iv. 26: “Then began men to call upon the name of
the Lord,” _Heb._ “Then it was began to call in the name of the Lord,”
τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ Κυρίου Θεοῦ. _Sept._ “He began to call in the name of the
Lord,” which others render, “He began to preach, or call upon men in
the name of the Lord.” The word קרא signifies to preach, or to call
upon men by preaching (Prov. i. 21): “Wisdom crieth,” or “preaches;”
and if this be so, as it is very probable, it is easy to reckon him
the eighth {b490} preacher, by numbering the successive heads of
the generations (Gen. v.), beginning at Enoch, the first preacher of
righteousness. So many there were before God choked the old world with
water, and swept them away. It is clear he often did admonish, by his
prophets, the Jews of their sin, and the wrath which should come upon
them.[1031] One prophet, Hosea, prophesied seventy years; for he
prophesied in the days of four kings of Judah, and one of Israel,
Jeroboam, the son of Joash (Hos. i. 1), or Jeroboam, the second of that
name. Uzziah, king of Judah, in whose reign Hosea prophesied, lived
thirty‑eight years after the death of Jeroboam. The second Jotham,
Uzziah’s successor, reigned sixteen years; Ahaz sixteen; Hezekiah
twenty‑nine years. Now, take nothing of Hezekiah’s time, and date
the beginning of his prophecy from the last year of Jeroboam’s reign,
and the time of Hosea’s prophecy will be seventy years complete;
wherein God warned those people, and waited the return particularly
of Israel;[1032] and not less than five of those we call the Lesser
Prophets, were sent to foretell the destruction of the ten tribes,
and to call them to repentance,――Hosea, Joel, Amos, Micah, Jonah; and
though we have nothing of Jonah’s prophecy in this concern of Israel,
yet that he lived in the time of the same Jeroboam, and prophesied
things which are not upon record in the book of Jonah, is clear
(2 Kings xiv. 25). And besides those, Isaiah prophesied also in the
reign of the same kings as Hosea did (Isa. i. 1); and it is God’s
usual method to send forth his servants, and when their admonitions
are slighted he commissions others, before he sends out his destroying
armies (Matt. xxii. 3, 4, 7).
(2.) He doth often give warning of judgments, that he might not pour
out his wrath. He summons them to a surrender of themselves, and a
return from their rebellion, that they might not feel the force of his
arms. He offers peace before he shakes off the dust of his feet, that
his despised peace might not return in vain to him to solicit a revenge
from his anger. He hath a right to punish upon the first commission
of a crime, but he warns men of what they have deserved, of what his
justice moves him to inflict, that by having recourse to his mercy he
might not exercise the rights of his justice. God sought to kill Moses
for not circumcising his son (Exod. iv. 24). Could God, that sought it,
miss a way to do it? Could a creature lurch, or fly from him? God put
on the garb of an enemy, that Moses might be discouraged from being an
instrument of his own ruin: God manifested an anger against Moses for
his neglect, as if he would then have destroyed him, that Moses might
prevent it by casting off his carelessness, and doing his duty. He
sought to kill him by some evident sign, that Moses might escape the
judgment by his obedience. He threatens Nineveh, by the prophet, with
destruction, that Nineveh’s repentance might make void the prophecy.
He fights with men by the sword of his mouth, that he might not pierce
them by the sword of his wrath. He threatens, that men might prevent
the execution of his threatening; he terrifies, that he might not
destroy, but that men by humiliation {b491} may lie prostrate before
him, and move the bowels of his mercy to a louder sound than the
voice of his anger. He takes time to whet his sword, that men may turn
themselves from the edge of it. He roars like a lion, that men, by
hearing his voice, may shelter themselves from being torn by his wrath.
There is patience in the sharpest threatening, that we may avoid the
scourge. Who can charge God with an eagerness to revenge, that sends
so many heralds, and so often before he strikes, that he might be
prevented from striking? His threatenings have not so much of a black
flag as of an olive branch. He lifts up his hand before he strikes,
that men might see and avert the stroke (Isa. xxvi. 11).
2d. His patience is manifest in long delaying his threatened judgments,
though he finds no repentance in the rebels. He doth sometimes delay
his lighter punishments, because he doth not delight in torturing
his creatures; but he doth longer delay his destroying punishments,
such as put an end to men’s happiness, and remit them to their final
and unchangeable state; because he “doth not delight in the death
of a sinner.” While he is preparing his arrows, he is waiting for an
occasion to lay them aside, and dull their points, that he may with
honor march back again, and disband his armies. He brings lighter
smarts sooner, that men might not think him asleep, but he suspends
the more terrible judgments that men might be led to repentance. He
scatters not his consuming fires at the first, but brings on ruining
vengeance with a “slow pace; sentence against an evil work is not
speedily executed” (Eccles. viii. 11). The Jews therefore say, that
Michael, the minister of justice, flies with one wing, but Gabriel, the
minister of mercy, with two. An hundred and twenty years did God wait
upon the old world, and delay their punishment all the time the “ark
was preparing” (1 Pet. iii. 20); wherein that wicked generation did
not enjoy only a bare patience, but a striving patience (Gen. vi. 3):
“My Spirit shall not always strive with man, yet his days shall be one
hundred and twenty years,” the days wherein I will strive with him;
that his long‑suffering might not lose all its fruit, and remit the
objects of it into the hands of consuming justice. It was the tenth
generation of the world from Adam, when the deluge overflowed it, so
long did God bear with them: and the tenth generation from Noah wherein
Sodom was consumed. God did not come to keep his assizes in Sodom, till
“the cry of their sins was very strong,” that it had been a wrong to
his justice to have restrained it any longer. The cry was so loud that
he could not be at quiet, as it were, on his throne of glory for the
disturbing noise (Gen. xviii. 20, 21). Sin transgresseth the law; the
law being violated, solicits justice; justice, being urged, pleads
for punishment; the cry of their sins did, as it were, force him from
heaven to come down, and examine what cause there was for that clamor.
Sin cries loud and long before he takes his sword in hand. Four hundred
years he kept off deserved destruction from the Amorites, and deferred
making good his promise to Abraham, of giving Canaan to his posterity,
out of his long‑suffering to the Amorites (Gen. xv. 16). In the fourth
generation they shall come hither again, “for the iniquity of the
Amorites {b492} is not yet full.” Their measure was filling then,
but not so full as to put a stop to any further patience till four
hundred years after. The usual time in succeeding generations, from
the denouncing of judgments to the execution, is forty years; this some
ground upon Ezek. iv. 6, “Thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house
of Judah forty days,” taking each day for a year. Though Hosea lived
seventy years, yet from the beginning of his prophesying judgments
against Israel to the pouring them out upon that idolatrous people,
it was forty years. Hosea, as was mentioned before, prophesied
against them in the days of Jeroboam the Second, in whose time God did
wonderfully deliver Israel (2 Kings xiv. 26, 27). From that time, till
the total destruction of the ten tribes, it was forty years, as may
easily be computed from the story (2 Kings xv.‒xvi.), by the reign of
the succeeding kings. So forty years after the most horrid villany that
ever was committed in the face of the sun, _viz._, the crucifying the
Son of God, was Jerusalem destroyed, and the inhabitants captived; so
long did God delay a visible punishment for such an outrage. Sometimes
he prolongs sending a threatened judgment upon a mere shadow of
humiliation; so he did that denounced against Ahab. He turned it
over to his posterity, and adjourned it to another season (1 Kings
xxi. 29). He doth not issue out an arrest upon one transgression;
you often find him not commencing a suit against men till “three and
four transgressions.” The first of Amos, all along that chapter and
the second chapter, for “three and four,” _i. e._ “seven;” a certain
number for an uncertain. He gives not orders to his judgments to march
till men be obstinate, and refuse any commerce with him; he stops
them till “there be no remedy” (2 Chron. xxxvi. 16). It must be a
great wickedness that gives vent to them (Hos. x. 15); _Heb._ “Your
wickedness of wickedness.” He is so “slow to anger,” and stays the
punishment his enemies deserve, that he may seem to have forgot his
“kindness to his friends” (Ps. xliv. 24): “Wherefore hidest thou
thy face, and forgettest our affliction and oppression?” He lets his
people groan under the yoke of their enemies, as if he were made up of
kindness to his enemies, and anger against his friends. This delaying
of punishment to evil men is visible in his suspending the terrifying
acts of conscience, and supporting it only in its checking, admonishing,
and controlling acts. The patience of a governor is seen in the patient
mildness of his deputy: David’s conscience did not terrify him till
nine months after his sin of murder. Should God set open the mouth
of this power within us, not only the earth, but our own bodies and
spirits, would be a burden to us: it is long before God puts scorpions
into the hands of men’s consciences to scourge them: he holds back
the rod, waiting for the hour of our return, as if that would be a
recompense for our offences and his forbearance.
3d. His patience is manifest in his unwillingness to execute his
judgments when he can delay no longer. “He doth not afflict willingly,
nor grieve the children of men.” (Lam. iii. 33): _Heb._ “He doth not
afflict from his heart:” he takes no pleasure in it, as he is Creator.
The height of men’s provocations, and the necessity of the {b493}
preserving his rights, and vindicating his laws, obligeth him to it,
as he is the Governor of the world; as a judge may willingly condemn
a malefactor to death out of affection to the laws, and desire to
preserve the order of government, but unwillingly, out of compassion
to the offender himself. When he resolved upon the destruction of the
old world, he spake it as a God grieved with an occasion of punishment
(Gen. vi. 6, 7, compared together). When he came to reckon with Adam,
“he walked,” he did not run with his sword in his hand upon him, as a
mighty man with an eagerness to destroy him (Gen. iii. 8), and that “in
the cool of the day,” a time when men, tired in the day, are unwilling
to engage in a hard employment. His exercising judgment is a “coming
out of his place” (Isa. xxvi. 21; Mic. i. 3): he comes out of his
station to exercise judgment; a throne is more his place than a
tribunal. Every prophecy, loaded with threatenings, is called the
“burden of the Lord;” a burden to him to execute it, as well as to men
to suffer it. Though three angels came to Abraham about the punishment
of Sodom, whereof one Abraham speaks to as to God, yet but two appeared
at the destruction of Sodom, as if the Governor of the world were
unwilling to be present at such dreadful work (Gen. xix. 1): and when
the man, that had the ink‑horn by his side, that was appointed to mark
those that were to be preserved in the common destruction, returned
to give an account of the performing his commission (Ezek. ix. 10), we
read not of the return of those that were to kill, as if God delighted
only to hear again of his works of mercy, and had no mind to hear again
of his severe proceedings. The Jews, to show God’s unwillingness to
punish, imagine that hell was created the second day, because that
day’s work is not pronounced good by God as all the other days’ works
are[1033] (Gen. i. 8).