down his thunders, he seems to do it with a backward hand, because with
an unwilling heart.[1034] He created, saith Chrysostom, the world in
six days, but was seven days in destroying one city, Jericho, which
he had before devoted to be razed to the ground. What is the reason,
saith he, that God is so quick to build up, but slow to pull down? His
goodness excites his power to the one, but is not earnest to persuade
him to the other: when he comes to strike, he doth it with a sigh or
groan (Isa. i. 24): “Ah! I will ease me of my adversaries, and avenge
me on my enemies,” הוי, Ah! a note of grief. So Hos. vi. 4, “O Ephraim!
what shall I do unto thee? O Judah! what shall I do unto thee?” It is
an _addubitatio_, a figure in rhetoric, as if God were troubled that he
must deal so sharply with them, and give them up to their enemies:――I
have tried all means to reclaim you; I have used all ways of kindness,
and nothing prevails; what shall I do? my mercy invites me to spare
them, and their ingratitude provokes me to ruin them. God had borne
with that people of Israel almost three hundred years, from the setting
up of the calves at Dan and Bethel; sent many a prophet to warn them,
and spent many a rod to reform them: and when he comes to execute his
threatenings, he doth with a conflict in himself (Hos. xi. 8): “How
{b494} shall I give thee up, O Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee,
Israel?” as if there were a pull‑back in his own bowels. He solemnizeth
their approaching funeral with a hearty groan, and takes his farewell
of the dying malefactor with a pang in himself. How often, in former
times, when he had signed a warrant for their execution, did he call it
back? (Ps. lxxviii. 38): “Many a time turned he his anger away.” Many
a time he recalled or ordered his anger to return again, as the word
signifies, as if he were irresolute what to do: he recalled it, as a
man doth his servant, several times, when he is sending him upon an
unwelcome message; or as a tender‑hearted prince wavers and trembles
when he is to sign a writ for the death of a rebel that hath been
before his favorite, as if, when he had signed the writ, he blotted out
his name again, and flung away the pen. And his method is remarkable
when he came to punish Sodom; though the cry of their sin had been
fierce in his ears, yet when he comes to make inquisition, he declares
his intention to Abraham, as if he were desirous that Abraham should
have helped him to some arguments to stop the outgoings of his judgment.
He gave liberty to the best person in the world to stand in the gap,
and enter into a treaty with him, to show, saith one,[1035] how
willingly his mercy would have compounded with his justice for their
redemption; and Abraham interceded so long, till he was ashamed for
pleading the cause of patience and mercy to the wrong of the rights
of Divine justice. Perhaps, had Abraham had the courage to ask, God
would have had the compassion to grant a reprieve just at the time of
execution.
(2.) His patience is manifest in that when he begins to send out his
judgments, he doth it by degrees. His judgments are “as the morning
light,” which goes forth by degrees in the hemisphere (Hos. vi. 5).
He doth not shoot all his thunders at once, and bring his sharpest
judgments in array at one time, but gradually, that a people may have
time to turn to him (Joel i. 4). First the palmer‑worm, then the locust,
then the canker‑worm, then the caterpillar; what one left, the other
was to eat, if there were not a timely return. A Jewish writer[1036]
saith, these judgments came not all in one year, but one year after
another. The palmer‑worm and locust might have eaten all, but Divine
patience set bounds to the devouring creatures. God had been first as
a moth to Israel (Hos. v. 12): “Therefore will I be to the house of
Ephraim as a moth;” Rivet translates it, “I have been;” in the Hebrew
it is “I,” without adding “I have been,” or “I will be,” and more
probably “I have been;” I was as a moth, which makes little holes in
a garment, and consumes it not all at once; and as “rottenness to the
house of Judah,” or a worm that eats into wood by degrees. Indeed, this
people had consumed insensibly, partly by civil combustions, change
of governors, foreign invasions, yet they were as obstinate in their
idolatry as ever; at last God would be no longer to them as a moth, but
as a lion, tear and go away (ver. 14): so Hos. ii., God had disowned
Israel for his spouse (ver. 2), “She is not my wife, neither am I her
husband;” yet he had not taken away her ornaments, which by the right
of divorce he might have done, but still expected her reformation, for
{b495} that the threatening intimates (ver. 3); let her put away her
whoredom, “lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day when she
was born.” If she returned, she might recover what she had lost; if not,
she might be stripped of what remained: thus God dealt with Judah (Ezek.
ix. 3). The glory of God goes first from the cherub to the threshold
of the house, and stays there, as if he had a mind to be invited back
again; then it goes from the threshold of the house, and stands over
the cherubims, as if upon a penitent call it would drop down again to
its ancient station and seat, over which it hovered (Ezek. x. 18); and
when he was not solicited to return, he departs out of the city, and
stood upon the mountain, which is on the east part of the city (Ezek.
xi. 23), looking still towards, and hovering about the temple, which
was on the east of Jerusalem, as if loth to depart, and abandon the
place and people. He walks so leisurely, with his rod in his hand,
as if he had a mind rather to fling it away than use it; his patience
in not pouring out all his vials, is more remarkable than his wrath
in pouring out one or two. Thus hath God made his slowness to anger
visible to us in the gradual punishment of us; first, the pestilence on
this city, then firing our houses, consumption of trade; these have not
been answered with such a carriage as God expects, therefore a greater
is reserved. I dare prognosticate, upon reasons you may gather from
what hath been spoke before, if I be not much mistaken, the forty years
of his usual patience are very near expired; he hath inflicted some,
that he might be met with in a way of repentance, and omit with honor
the inflicting the remainder.
4th. His patience is manifest, in moderating his judgments, when he
sends them. Doth he empty his quiver of his arrows, or exhaust his
magazines of thunder? No; he could roll one thunderbolt successively
upon all mankind; it is as easy with him to create a perpetual motion
of lightning and thunder, as of the sun and stars, and make the world
as terrible by the one, as it is delightful by the other. He opens not
all his store, he sends out a light party to skirmish with men, and
puts not in array his whole army; “He stirs not up all his wrath” (Ps.
lxxviii. 38); he doth but pinch, where he might have torn asunder; when
he takes away much, he leaves enough to support us; if he had stirred
up all his anger, he had taken away all, and our lives to boot. He
rakes up but a few sparks, takes but one firebrand to fling upon men,
when he might discharge the whole furnace upon them; he sends but a
few drops out of the cloud, which he might make to break in the gross,
and fall down upon our heads to overwhelm us; he abates much of what he
might do. When he might sweep away a whole nation by deluges of water,
corruption of the air, or convulsions of the earth, or by other ways
that are not wanting at his order; he picks out only some persons,
some families, some cities; sends a plague into one house, and not into
another; here is patience to the stock of a nation, while he inflicts
punishment upon some of the most notorious sinners in it. Herod is
suddenly snatched away, being willingly flattered into the thoughts
of his being a god; God singled out the chief in the herd for whose
sake he had been affronted by the rabble (Acts xii. 22, 23). {b496}
Some find him sparing them, while others feel him destroying them; he
arrests some, when he might seize all, all being his debtors; and often
in great desolations brought upon a people for their sin, he hath left
a stump in the earth, as Daniel speaks (Dan. iv. 15), for a nation
to grow upon it again, and arise to a stronger constitution. He doth
punish “less than our iniquities deserve” (Ezra ix. 13), and rewards us
“not according to our iniquities” (Ps. ciii. 10). The greatness of any
punishment in this life, answers not the greatness of the crime. Though
there be an equity in whatsoever he doth, yet there is not an equality
to what we deserve; our iniquities would justify a severer treating of
us; his justice goes not here to the end of its line, it is stopped in
its progress, and the blows of it weakened by his patience; he did not
curse the earth after Adam’s fall, that it should bring forth no fruit,
but that it should not bring forth fruit without the wearisome toil
of man, and subjected him to distempers presently, but inflicted not
death immediately; while he punished him, he supported him; and while
he expelled him from paradise, he did not order him not to cast his eye
towards it, and conceive some hopes of regaining that happy place.
5th. His patience is seen in giving great mercies after provocations.
He is so slow to anger, that he heaps many kindnesses upon a rebel,
instead of punishment. There is a prosperous wickedness, wherein the
provoker’s strength continues firm; the troubles, which like clouds
drop upon others, are blown away from them, and they are “not plagued
like other men,” that have a more worthy demeanor towards God (Ps.
lxxiii. 3‒5). He doth not only continue their lives, but sends out
fresh beams of his goodness upon them, and calls them by his blessings,
that they may acknowledge their own fault and his bounty, which he is
not obliged to by any gratitude he meets with from them, but by the
richness of his own patient nature: for he finds the unthankfulness
of men as great as his benefits to them. He doth not only continue his
outward mercies, while we continue our sins, but sometimes gives fresh
benefits after new provocations, that if possible he might excite an
ingenuity in men. When Israel at the Red Sea flung dirt in the face
of God, by quarrelling with his servant Moses for bringing them out of
Egypt, and misjudging God in his design of deliverance, and were ready
to submit themselves to their former oppressors (Exod. xiv. 11, 12),
which might justly have urged God to say to them, Take your own course;
yet he is not only patient under their unjust charge, but “makes bare
his arm in a deliverance at the Red Sea,” that was to be an amazing
monument to the world in all ages; and afterwards, when they repiningly
quarrelled with him in their wants in the wilderness, he did not only
not revenge himself upon them, or cast off the conduct of them, but
bore with them by a miraculous long‑suffering, and supplied them with
miraculous provision,――manna from heaven, and water from a rock. Food
is given to support us, and clothes to cover us, and Divine patience
makes the creature which we turn to another use than what they were
at first intended for, serve us contrary to their own genius: for had
they reason, no question but they would complain to be subjected to the
service of man, who {b497} hath been so ungrateful to their Creator,
and groan at the abuse of God’s patience, in the abuse they themselves
suffer from the hands of man.
6th. All this is more manifest, if we consider the provocations he hath.
Wherein his slowness to anger infinitely transcends the patience of any
creature; nay, the spirits of all the angels and glorified saints in
heaven, would be too narrow to bear the sins of the world for one day,
nay, not so much as the sins of churches, which is a little spot in
the whole world; it is because he is the Lord, one of an infinite power
over himself, that not only the whole mass of the rebellious world,
but of the sons of Jacob (either considered as a church and nation
springing from the loins of Jacob, or considered as the regenerate part
of the world, sometimes called the seed of Jacob), “are not consumed”
(Mal. iii. 6). A Jonah was angry with God, for recalling his anger from
a sinful people; had God committed the government of the world to the
glorified saints, who are perfect in love and holiness, the world would
have had an end long ago; they would have acted that which they sue for
at the hands of God, and is not granted them. “How long, Lord, holy and
true, dost thou not avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”
(Rev. vi. 10). God hath designs of patience above the world, above the
unsinning angels, and perfectly renewed spirits in glory. The greatest
created long‑suffering is infinitely disproportioned to the Divine:
fire from heaven would have been showered down before the greatest
part of a day were spent, if a created patience had the conduct of the
world, though that creature were possessed with the spirit of patience,
extracted from all the creatures which are in heaven, or are, or ever
were upon the earth. Methinks Moses intimates this; for as soon as God
had passed by, proclaiming his name gracious and long suffering, as
soon as ever Moses had paid his adoration, he falls to praying that God
would go with the Israelites; “For it is a stiff‑necked people” (Exod.
xxxiv. 8, 9). What an argument is here for God to go along with them!
he might rather, since he had heard him but just before say “he would
by no means clear the guilty,” desire God to stand further off from
them, for fear the fire of his wrath should burst out from him, to burn
them as he did the Sodomites. But he considers, that as none but God
had such anger to destroy them, so none but God had such a patience
to bear with them; it is as much as if he should have said, Lord! if
thou shouldest send the most tender‑hearted angel in heaven to have
the guidance of this people, they would be a lost people; a period will
quickly be set to their lives, no created strength can restrain its
power from crushing such a stiff‑necked people; flesh and blood cannot
bear them, nor any created spirit of a greater might.
(1.) Consider the greatness of the provocations. No light matter,
but actions of a great defiance: what is the practical language of
most in the world, but that of Pharaoh? “Who is the Lord, that I should
obey him?” How many questions his being, and more his authority? What
blasphemies of him, what reproaches of his Majesty! Men “drinking up
iniquity like water,” and with a haste and ardency “rushing into sin,
as the horse into the battle.” What {b498} is there in the reasonable
creature, that hath the quickest capacity, and the deepest obligation
to serve him, but opposition and enmity, a slight of him in everything,
yea, the services most seriously performed, unsuited to the royalty and
purity of so great a Being? such provocations as dare him to his face,
that are a burden to so righteous a Judge, and so great a lover of the
authority and majesty of his laws; that were there but a spark of anger
in him, it is a wonder it doth not show itself. When he is invaded in
all his attributes, it is astonishing that this single one of patience
and meekness should withstand the assault of all the rest of his
perfections; his being, which is attacked by sin, speaks for vengeance;
his justice cannot be imagined to stand silent without charging the
sinner. His holiness cannot but encourage his justice to urge its pleas,
and be an advocate for it. His omniscience proves the truth of all
the charge, and his abused mercy hath little encouragement to make
opposition to the indictment; nothing but patience stands in the gap to
keep off the arrest of judgment from the sinner.
(2.) His patience is manifest, if you consider the multitudes of these
provocations. Every man hath sin enough in a day to make him stand
amazed at Divine patience, and to call it, as well as the apostle did,
“all long‑suffering” (1 Tim. i. 16). How few duties of a perfectly
right stamp are performed! What unworthy considerations mix themselves,
like dross, with our purest and sincerest gold! How more numerous are
the respects of the worshippers of him to themselves, than unto him!
How many services are paid him, not out of love to him, but because he
should do us no hurt, and some service; when we do not so much design
to please him, as to please ourselves by expectations of a reward from
him! What master would endure a servant that endeavored to please him,
only because he should not kill him? Is that former charge of God upon
the old world yet out of date, “That the imagination of the thoughts
of the heart of man was only evil, and that continually?” (Gen. vi. 5.)
Was not the new world as chargeable with it as the old? Certainly it
was (Gen. viii. 21); and is of as much force this very minute as it
was then. How many are the sins against knowledge, as well as those
of ignorance; presumptuous sins, as well as those of infirmity! How
numerous those of omission and commission! It is above the reach of
any man’s understanding to conceive all the blasphemies, oaths, thefts,
adulteries, murders, oppressions, contempt of religion, the open
idolatries of Turks and heathens, the more spiritual and refined
idolatries of others.[1037] Add to those, the ingratitude of those that
profess his name, their pride, earthliness, carelessness, sluggishness
to Divine duties, and in every one of those a multitude of provocations;
the whole man being engaged in every sin, the understanding contriving
it, the will embracing it, the affections complying with it, and all
the members of the body instruments in the acting the unrighteousness
of it; every one of these faculties bestowed upon men by him, are
armed against him in every act: and in every employment of them there
is a distinct provocation, though centred in one sinful end and object.
What are the offences all the {b499} men of the world receive from
their fellow‑creatures, to the injuries God receives from men, but
as a small dust of earth to the whole mass of earth and heaven too?
What multitudes of sins is one profane wretch guilty of in the space
of twenty, forty, fifty years? Who can compute the vast number of
his transgressions, from the first use of reason to the time of the
separation of his soul from his body, from his entrance into the
world to his exit? What are those, to those of a whole village of the
like inhabitants? What are those, to those of a great city? Who can
number up all the foul‑mouthed oaths, the beastly excess, the goatish
uncleanness, committed in the space of a day, year, twenty years in
this city, much less in the whole nation, least of all, in the whole
world? Were it no more than the common idolatry of former ages, when
the whole world turned their backs upon their Creator, and passed
him by to sue to a creature, a stock or stone, or a degraded spirit?
How provoking would it be to a prince to see a whole city under his
dominion deny him a respect, and pay it to his scullion, or the common
executioner he employs! Add to this the unjust invasion of kings, the
oppressions exercised upon men, all the private and public sins that
have been in the world ever since it began. The Gentiles were described
by the apostle (Rom. i. 29‒31), in a black character, “They were haters
of God;” yet how did the “riches of his patience” preserve multitudes
of such disingenuous persons, and how “many millions of such haters of
him” breathe every day in his air, and are maintained by his bounty,
have their tables spread, and their cups filled to the brim, and that,
too, in the midst of reiterated belchings of their enmity against him?
All are under sufficient provocations of him to the highest indignation.
The presiding angels over nations could not forbear, in love and
honor to their governor, to arm themselves to the destruction of
their several charges, if Divine patience did not set them a pattern,
and their obedience incline them to expect his orders, before they act
what their zeal would prompt them to. The devils would be glad of a
commission to destroy the world, but that his patience puts a stop to
their fury, as well as his own justice.
(3.) Consider the long time of this patience. He spread out his hands
“all the day” to a rebellious world (Isa. lxv. 2). All men’s day, all
God’s day, which is a “thousand years,” he hath borne with the gross of
mankind, with all the nations of the world in a long succession of ages,
for five thousand years and upwards already, and will bear with them
till the time comes for the world’s dissolution. He hath suffered the
monstrous acts of men, and endured the contradictions of a sinful world
against himself, from the first sin of Adam, to the last committed this
minute. The line of his patience hath run along with the duration of
the world to this day; and there is not any one of Adam’s posterity but
hath been expensive to him, and partaken of the riches of it.
(4.) All these he bears when he hath a sense of them. He sees
every day the roll and catalogue of sin increasing; he hath a distinct
view of every one, from the sin of Adam to the last filled up in his
omniscience; and yet gives no order for the arrest of the world. He
{b500} knows men fitted for destruction; all the instants he exerciseth
long‑suffering towards them, which makes the apostle call it not simply
long‑suffering, without the addition of πολλῇ, “much long‑suffering”
(Rom. ix. 23). There is not a grain in the whole mass of sin, that
he hath not a distinct knowledge of, and of the quality of it.
He perfectly understands the greatness of his own majesty that is
vilified, and the nature of the offence that doth disparage him. He is
solicited by his justice, directed by his omniscience, and armed with
judgments to vindicate himself, but his arm is restrained by patience.
To conclude: no indignity is hid from him, no iniquity is beloved by
him; the hatred of their sinfulness is infinite, and the knowledge of
the malice is exact. The subsisting of the world under such weighty
provocations, so numerous, so long time, and with his full sense
of every one of them, is an evidence of such a “forbearance and
long‑suffering,” that the addition of riches which the apostle puts to
it (Rom. ii. 4), labors with an insufficiency clearly to display it.
III. Why God doth exercise so much patience.
1. To show himself appeasable. God did not declare by his patience
to former ages, or any age, that he was appeased with them, or that
they were in his favor; but that he was appeasable, that he was not an
implacable enemy, but that they might find him favorable to them, if
they did seek after him. The continuance of the world by patience, and
the bestowing many mercies by goodness, were not a natural revelation
of the manner how he would be appeased: that was made known only by
the prophets, and after the coming of Christ by the apostles; and had
indeed been intelligible in some sort to the whole world, had there
been a faithfulness in Adam’s posterity, to transmit the tradition of
the first promise to succeeding generations. Had not the knowledge of
that died by their carelessness and neglect, it had been easy to tell
the reason of God’s patience to be in order to the exhibition of the
“Seed of the woman to bruise the serpent’s head.” They could not but
naturally know themselves sinners, and worthy of death; they might, by
easy reflections upon themselves, collect that they were not in that
comely and harmonious posture now, as they were when God first wrought
them with his own finger, and placed them as his lieutenants in the
world; they knew they did grievously offend him; this they were taught
by the sprinklings of his judgments among them sometimes. And since he
did not utterly root up mankind, his sparing patience was a prologue of
some further favors, or pardoning grace to be displayed to the world by
some methods of God yet unknown to them. Though the earth was something
impaired by the curse after the fall, yet the main pillars of it stood;
the state of the natural motions of the creature was not changed; the
heavens remained in the same posture wherein they were created; the
sun, and moon, and other heavenly bodies, continued their usefulness
and refreshing influences to man.