“utter speech; their line is gone throughout all the earth, and their
words to the end of the world” (Ps. xix. 1‒4): which declared God to be
willing to do good to his creatures, and were as so many {b501} legible
letters or rudiments, whereby they might read his patience, and that
a further design of favor to the world lay hid in that patience. Paul
applies this to the preaching of the gospel (Rom. x. 18): “Have they
not heard the word of God? yes, verily, their sound went into all the
earth, and their words unto the end of the world.” Redeeming grace
could not be spelled out by them in a clear notion, but yet they did
declare that which is the foundation of gospel mercy. Were not God
patient, there were no room for a gospel mercy, so that the heavens
declare the gospel, not formally, but fundamentally, in declaring
the long‑suffering of God, without which no gospel had been framed,
or could have been expected. They could not but read in those things
favorable inclinations towards them: and though they could not be
ignorant that they deserved a mark of justice, yet seeing themselves
supported by God, and beholding the regular motions of the heavens from
day to day, and the revolutions of the seasons of the year, the natural
conclusions they might draw from thence was, that God was placable;
since he behaved himself more as a tender friend, that had no mind to
be at war with them, than an enraged enemy. The good things which he
gave them, and the patience whereby he spared them, were no arguments
of an implacable disposition; and, therefore, of a disposition willing
to be appeased. This is clearly the design of the apostle’s arguing
with the Lystrians, when they would have offered sacrifices to Paul
(Acts xiv. 17). When God “suffered all nations to walk in their own
ways, he did not leave himself without witness, giving rain from heaven,
and fruitful seasons.” What were those witnesses of? not only of the
being of a God, by their readiness to sacrifice to those that were
not gods, only supposed to be so in their false imaginations; but
witnesses to the tenderness of God, that he had no mind to be severe
with his creatures, but would allure them by ways of goodness. Had not
God’s patience tended to this end, to bring the world under another
dispensation, the apostle’s arguing from it had not been suitable to
his design, which seems to be a hindering the sacrifices they intended
for them, and a drawing them to embrace the gospel, and therefore
preparing the way to it, by speaking of the patience and goodness of
God to them, as an unquestionable testimony of the reconcilableness of
good to them, by some sacrifice which was represented under the common
notion of sacrifices.[1038] These things were not witnesses of Christ,
or syllables whereby they could spell out the redeeming person; but
witnesses that God was placable in his own nature. When man abused
those noble faculties God had given him, and diverted them from the
use and service God intended them for, God might have stripped man of
them the first time that he misemployed them; and it would have seemed
most agreeable to his wisdom and justice, not to suffer himself to be
abused, and the world to go contrary to its natural end. But since he
did not level the world with its first nothing, but healed the world
so favorably, it was evident that his patience pointed the world to a
further design of mercy and goodness in him. To imagine that God had
no other design in his long‑suffering {b502} but that of vengeance, had
been a notion unsuitable to the goodness and wisdom of God. He would
never have pretended himself to be a friend, if he had harbored nothing
but enmity in his heart against them. It had been far from his goodness
to give them a cause to suspect such a design in him, as his patience
certainly did, had he not intended it. Had he preserved men only
for punishment, it is more like he would have treated men as princes
do those they reserve for the axe or halter, give them only things
necessary to uphold their lives till the day of execution, and not have
bestowed upon them so many good things to make their lives delightful
to them, nor have furnished them with so many excellent means to please
their senses, and recreate their minds; it had been a mocking of them
to treat them at that rate, if nothing but punishment had been intended
towards them. If the end of it, to lead men to repentance, were easily
intelligible by them, as the apostle intimates (Rom. ii. 4)――which is
to be linked with the former chapter, a discourse of the Gentiles: “Not
knowing,” saith he, “that the riches of his forbearance and goodness
leads thee to repentance”――it also gives them some ground to hope for
pardon. For what other argument can more induce to repentance than an
expectation of mercy upon a relenting, and acknowledging the crime?
Without a design of pardoning grace, his patience would have been in
a great measure exercised in vain: for by mere patience God is not
reconciled to a sinner, no more than a prince to a rebel, by bearing
with him. Nor can a sinner conclude himself in the favor of God, no
more than a rebel can conclude himself in the favor of his prince; only,
this he may conclude, that there is some hopes he may have the grant
of a pardon, since he hath time to sue it out. And so much did the
patience of God naturally signify that he was of a reconcilable temper,
and was willing men should sue out their pardon upon repentance;
otherwise, he might have magnified his justice, and condemned men by
the law of works.
(2.) He therefore exercised so much patience to wait for men’s
repentance. All the notices and warnings that God gives men, of
either public or personal calamities, is a continual invitation to
repentance. This was the common interpretation the heathens made of
extraordinary presages and prodigies, which showed as well the delays
as the approaches of judgments. What other notion but this, that those
warnings of judgments witness a slowness to anger, and a willingness to
turn his arrows another way, should move them to multiply sacrifices,
go weeping to their temples, sound out prayers to their gods, and
show all those other testimonies of a repentance which their blind
understandings hit upon? If a prince should sometimes in a light and
gentle manner punish a criminal, and then relax it, and show him much
kindness, and afterwards inflict upon him another kind of punishment as
light as the former, and less than was due to his crime, what could the
malefactor suspect by such a way of proceeding, but that the prince, by
those gently‑repeated chastisements, had a mind to move him to a regret
for his crime?[1039] And what other thoughts could men naturally have
of God’s conduct, {b503} that he should warn them of great judgments,
send light afflictions, which are testimonies rather of a patience than
of a severe wrath, but that it was intended to move them to a relenting,
and a breaking off their sins by working righteousness? Though Divine
patience does not, in the event, induce men to repentance, yet the
natural tendency of such a treatment is to mollify men’s hearts, to
overcome their obstinacy; and no man hath any reason to judge otherwise
of such a proceeding. The “long‑suffering of God is salvation,” saith
Peter (2 Pet. iii. 15), _i. e._ hath a tendency to salvation, in its
being a solicitation of men to the means of it; for the apostle cites
Paul for the confirmation of it,――“Even as our beloved brother, Paul,
hath written unto you,” which must refer to Rom. ii. 4: “it leads to
repentance,” ἄγει, it conducts, which is more than barely to invite; it
doth, as it were, take us by the hand, and point us to the way wherein
we should go; and for this end it was exercised, not only towards the
Jews, but towards the Gentiles, not only towards those that are within
the pale of the church, and under the dews of the gospel, but to those
that are in darkness, and in the shadow of death; for this discourse
of the apostle was but an inference from what he had treated of in the
first chapter concerning the idolatry and ingratitude of the Gentiles;
since the Gentiles were to be punished for the abuse of it as well as
the Jews, as he intimates, ver. 9. It is plain that his patience, which
is exercised towards the idolatrous Gentiles, was to allure them to
repentance as well as others; and it was a sufficient motive in itself
to persuade them to a change of their vile and gross acts, to such as
were morally good: and there was enough in God’s dealing with them, and
in that light they had to engage them to a better course than what they
usually walked in; and though men do abuse God’s long‑suffering, to
encourage their impenitence, and persisting in their crimes, yet that
they cannot reasonably imagine that to be the end of God is evident;
their own gripes of conscience would acquaint them that it is otherwise.
They know that conscience is a principle that God hath given them, as
well as understanding, and will, and other faculties; that God doth not
approve of that which the voice of their own consciences, and of the
consciences of all men under natural light, are utterly against: and if
there were really, in this forbearance of God, an approbation of men’s
crimes, conscience could not, frequently and universally in all men,
check them for them. What authority could conscience have to do it?
But this it doth in all men: as the apostle (Rom. i. 22), “They know
the judgment of God, that those that do such things,” which he had
mentioned before, “are worthy of death.” In this thing the consciences
of all men cannot err: they could not, therefore, conclude from hence
God’s approbation of their iniquities, but his desire that their hearts
should be touched with a repentance for them. The “sin of Ephraim is
hid” (Hos. xiii. 12, 13); _i. e._ God doth not presently take notice of
it, to order punishment; he lays it in a secret place from the eye of
his justice, that Ephraim might not be his unwise son, and “stay long
in the place of the breaking forth of children;” _i. e._ that he should
speedily reclaim himself, and not continue in the way of destruction.
God hath no {b504} need to abuse any; he doth not lie to the sons of
men; if he would have men perish, he could easily destroy them, and
have done it long ago: he did not leave the woman Jezebel in being,
nor lengthened out her time, but as a space to repent (Rev. ii. 21),
that she might reflect upon her ways, and devote herself seriously to
his service, and her own happiness. His patience stands between the
offending creature and eternal misery a long time, that men might not
foolishly throw away their souls, and be damned for their impenitency;
by this he shows himself ready to receive men to mercy upon their
return. To what purpose doth he invite men to repentance, if he
intended to deceive them, and damn them after they repent?
3. He doth exercise patience for the propagation of mankind. If God
punished every sin presently, there would not only be a period put
to churches, but to the world; without patience, Adam had sunk into
eternal anguish the first moment of his provocation, and the whole
world of mankind, in his loins, had perished with him, and never seen
the light. If this perfection had not interposed after the first sin,
God had lost his end in the creation of the world, which he “created
not in vain, but formed it to be inhabited” (Isa. xlv. 18). It had been
inconsistent with the wisdom of God to make a world to be inhabited,
and destroy it upon sin, when it had but two principal inhabitants
in it; the reason of his making this earth had been insignificant; he
had not had any upon earth to glorify him, without erecting another
world, which might have proved as sinful and as quickly wicked as this;
God should have always been pulling down and rearing up, creating and
annihilating; one world would have come after another, as wave after
wave in the sea. His patience stepped in to support the honor of God,
and the continuance of men, without which one had been in part impaired,
and the other totally lost.
4. He doth exercise patience for the continuance of the church. If he
be not patient toward sinners, what stock would there be for believers
to spring up from? He bears with the provoking carriage of men, evil
men, because out of their loins he intends to extract others, which he
will form for the glory of his grace. He hath some unborn that belong
to the election of grace, which are to be the seed of the worst of
men; Jeroboam, the chief incendiary of the Israelites to idolatry,
had an Abijah, in whom was found “some good thing towards the Lord
God of Israel” (1 Kings xiv. 13). Had Ahaz been snapped in the first
act of his wickedness, the Israelites had wanted so good a prince and
so good a man as Hezekiah, a branch of that wicked predecessor. What
gardener cuts off the thorns from the rose‑brush till he hath gathered
the roses? and men do not use to burn all the crab‑tree, but preserve
a stock to engraft some sweet fruit upon. There could not have been a
saint in the earth, nor, consequently, in heaven, had it not been for
this perfection: he did not destroy the Israelites in the wilderness,
that he might keep up a church among them, and not extinguish the whole
seed that were heirs of the promises and covenant made with Abraham.
Had God punished men for their sins as soon as they had been committed,
{b505} none would have lived to have been better, none could have
continued in the world to honor him by their virtues. Manasseh had
never been a convert, and many brutish men had never been changed from
beasts to angels, to praise and acknowledge their Creator. Had Peter
received his due recompense upon the denial of his Master, he had never
been a martyr for him; nor had Paul been a preacher of the gospel; nor
any else: and so the gospel had not shined in any part of the world.
No seed would have been brought into Christ; Christ is beholding
immediately to this attribute for all the seed he hath in the world: it
is for his name’s sake that he doth defer his anger; and for his praise
that he doth refrain from “cutting us off” (Isa. xlviii. 9): and in
the next chapter follows a prophecy of Christ. To overthrow mankind for
sin, were to prevent the spreading a church in the world: a woman that
is guilty of a capital crime, and lies under a condemning sentence,
is reprieved from execution for her being with child; it is for the
child’s sake the woman is respited, not for her own: it is for the
elect’s sake, in the loins of transgressors, that they are a long time
spared, and not for their own ( Isa. lxv. 8): “As the new wine is found
in a cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it,
so will I do for my servants’ sakes, that I may not destroy them all;”
as a husbandman spares a vine for some good clusters in it. He had
spoke of vengeance before, yet he would reserve some from whom he would
bring forth those that should be “inheritors of his mountains,” that he
might make up his church of Judea; Jerusalem being a mountainous place,
and the type of the church in all ages. What is the reason he doth
not level his thunder at the heads of those for whose destruction he
receives so many petitions from the “souls under the altar?” (Rev. vi.
9, 10). Because God had others to write a testimony for him in their
own blood, and perhaps out of the loins of those for whom vengeance
was so earnestly supplicated; and God, as the master of a vessel,
lies patiently at anchor, till the last passenger he expects be taken
in.[1040]
5. For the sake of his church he is patient to wicked men. The tares
are patiently endured till the harvest, for fear in the plucking up
the one, there might be some prejudice done to the other. Upon this
account he spares some, who are worse than others whom he crusheth by
signal judgments: the Jews had committed sins worse than Sodom, for the
confirmation of which we have God’s oath (Ezek. xvi. 48); and more by
half than Samaria, or the ten tribes had done (ver. 51): yet God spared
the Jews, though he destroyed the Sodomites. What was the reason, but a
larger remnant of righteous persons, more clusters of good grapes, were
found among them than grew in Sodom? (Isa. i. 9). A few more righteous
in Sodom had damped the fire and brimstone designed for that place,
and a “remnant of such in Judea” was a bar to that fierceness of
anger, which otherwise would have quickly consumed them. Had there
been but “ten righteous in Sodom,” Divine patience had still bound
the arms of Justice, that it should not have prepared its brimstone,
notwithstanding the clamor of the sins of the multitude. Judea was ripe
for the sickle, but God would put a lock upon the torrent of his {b506}
judgments, that they should not flow down upon that wicked place, to
make them a desolation and a curse, as long as tender‑hearted Josiah
lived, “who had humbled himself” at the threatening, and wept before
the Lord (2 Kings xxii. 19, 20). Sometimes he bears with wicked men,
that they might exercise the patience of the saints (Rev. xiv. 12):
the whole time of the “forbearance of antichrist” in all his intrusions
into the temple of God, invasions of the rights of God, usurpations
of the office of Christ, and besmearing himself with the blood of the
saints, was to give them an opportunity of patience. God is patient
towards the wicked, that by their means he might try the righteous.
He burns not the wisp till he hath scoured his vessels; nor lays by
the hammer, till he hath formed some of his matter into an excellent
fashion. He useth the worst men as rods to correct his people, before
he sweeps the twigs out of his house. God sometimes uses the thorns of
the world, as a hedge to secure his church, sometimes as instruments to
try and exercise it. Howsoever he useth them, whether for security or
trial, he is patient to them for his church’s advantage.
6. When men are not brought to repentance by his patience, he doth
longer exercise it, to manifest the equity of his future justice upon
them. As wisdom is justified by her obedient children, so is justice
justified by the rebels against patience; the contempt of the latter
is the justification of the former. The “apostles were unto God a sweet
savor of Christ in them that perish,” as well as in them that were
saved by the acceptation of their message (2 Cor. ii. 15). Both are
fragrant to God; his mercy is glorified by the one’s acceptance of it,
and his justice freed from any charge against it by the other’s refusal.
The cause of men’s ruin cannot be laid upon God, who provided means
for their salvation, and solicited their compliance with him. What
reason can they have to charge the Judge with any wrong to them, who
reject the tenders he makes, and who hath forborne them with so much
patience, when he might have censured them by his righteous justice,
upon the first crime they committed, or the first refusal of his
gracious offers? “_Quanto Dei magis judicium tardum est tanto magis
justum._”[1041] After the despising of patience, there can be no
suspicion of an irregularity in the acts of justice. Man hath no reason
to fall foul in his charge upon God, if he were punished for his own
sin, considering the dignity of the injured person, and the meanness
of himself, the offender; but his wrath is more justified when it is
poured out upon those whom he hath endured with much long‑suffering.
There is no plea against the shooting of his arrows into those, for
whom this voice hath been loud, and his arms open for their return. As
patience, while it is exercised, is the silence of his justice, so when
it is abused, it silenceth men’s complaints against his justice. The
“riches of his forbearance” made way for the manifesting the “treasures
of his wrath.” If God did but a little bear with the insolencies of men,
and cut them off after two or three sins, he would not have opportunity
to show either the power of his patience, or that of his wrath; but
when he hath a right to punish for one sin, and yet bears with them
for many, {b507} and they will not be reclaimed, the sinner is more
inexcusable, Divine justice less chargeable, and his wrath more
powerful. (Rom. ix. 22), “What if God, willing to show his wrath, and
to make his power known, endured with much long‑suffering the vessels
of wrath fitted for destruction?” The proper and immediate end of his
long‑suffering is to lead men to repentance; but after they have by
their obstinacy fitted themselves for destruction, he bears longer
with them, to “magnify his wrath” more upon them; and if it is not the
_finis operantis_, it is at least the _finis operis_, where patience
is abused. Men are apt to complain of God, that he deals hardly with
them; the Israelites seem to charge God with too much severity, to
cast them off, when so many promises were made to the fathers for their
perpetuity and preservation, which is intimated, Hos. ii. 2. “Plead
with your mother, plead:” by the double repetition of the word “plead;”
do not accuse me of being false or too rigorous, but accuse your mother,
your church, your magistracy, your ministry, for their spiritual
fornications which have provoked me; for their נאפופיה, intimating the
greatness of their sins by the reduplication of the word, “lest I strip
her naked.” I have borne with her under many provocations, and I have
not yet taken away all her ornaments, or said to her, according to the
rule of divorce, _Res tuas tibi habeto_. God answers their impudent
charge: “She is not my wife, nor am I her husband;” he doth not say
first, I am not her husband, but she is not my wife; she first withdrew
from her duty by breaking the marriage covenant, and then I ceased to
be her husband. No man shall be condemned, but he shall be convinced
of the due desert of his sin, and the justice of God’s proceeding. God
will lay open men’s guilt, and repeat the measures of his patience to
justify the severity of his wrath (Hos. vii. 10), “Sins will testify to
their face.” What is in its own nature a preparation for glory, men by
their obstinacy make a preparation for a more indisputable punishment.
We see many evidences of God’s forbearance here, in sparing men under
those blasphemies which are audible, and those profane carriages which
are visible, which would sufficiently justify an act of severity;
yet when men’s secret sins, both in heart and action, and the vast
multitude of them, far surmounting what can arrive to our knowledge
here, shall be discovered, how great a lustre will it add to God’s
bearing with them, and make his justice triumph without any reasonable
demur from the sinner himself! He is long‑suffering here, that his
justice may be more public hereafter.
_Use IV._ For instruction. How is this patience of God abused! The
Gentiles abused those testimonies of it, which were written in showers
and fruitful seasons. No nation was ever stripped of it, under the most
provoking idolatries, till after multiplied spurns at it: not a person
among us but hath been guilty of the abuse of it. How have we contemned
that which demands a reverence from us! How have we requited God’s
waitings with rebellions, while he hath continued urging and expecting
our return! Saul relented at David’s forbearing to revenge himself,
when he had his prosecuting and industrious enemy in his power. (1 Sam.
xxiv. 17), “Thou art more righteous than I; thou hast rewarded me good,
whereas I have rewarded {b508} thee evil:” and shall we not relent at
God’s wonderful long‑suffering, and silencing his anger so much? He
could puff away our lives, but he will not, and yet we endeavor to
strip him of his being, though we cannot.
1. Let us consider the ways, how slowness to anger is abused.