patience to be only a carelessness and neglect of his providence; as
Averroes argued from his slowness to anger, a total neglect of the
government of the lower world: or when men from his long‑suffering
charge him with impurity, as if his patience were a consent to their
crimes; and because he suffered them, without calling them to account,
he were one of their partisans, and as wicked as themselves (Ps. l. 21):
“Because I kept silence, thou thoughtest I was altogether such a one as
thyself.” His silence makes them conclude him to be an abettor of, and
a consort in their sins; and think him more pleased with their iniquity
than their obedience. Or when they will infer from his forbearance a
want of his omniscience; because he suffers their sins, they imagine
he forgets them (Ps. x. 11): “He hath said in his heart, God hath
forgotten:” thinking his patience proceeds not from the sweetness of
his nature, but a weakness of his mind. How base is it, instead of
admitting him, to disparage him for it; and because he stands in so
advantageous a posture towards us, not to own the choicest prerogatives
of his Deity! This is to make a perfection, so useful to us, to shadow
and extinguish those others, which are the prime flowers of his crown.
(2.) His patience is abused by continuing in a course of sin under
the influences of it. How much is it the practical language of men,
Come, let us commit this or that iniquity; since Divine patience hath
suffered worse than this at our hands! Nothing is remitted to their
sensual pleasures, and eagerness in them. How often did the Israelites
repeat their murmurings against him, as if they would put his patience
to the utmost proof, and see how far the line of it could extend! They
were no sooner satisfied in one thing, but they quarrelled with him
about another, as if he had no other attribute to put in motion against
them. They tempted him as often as he relieved them, as though the
declaration of his name to Moses (Exod. xxxiv.), “to be a God gracious,
and long‑suffering,” had been intended for no other purpose but a
protection of them in their rebellions. Such a sort of men the prophet
speaks of, that were “settled in their lees,” or dregs (Zeph. i. 12):
they were congealed, and frozen in their successful wickedness. Such
an abuse of Divine patience is the very dregs of sin; God chargeth it
highly upon the Jews (Isa. lvii. 11): “I have held my peace, even of
old, and thou fearest me not;” my silence made thee confident, yea,
impudent in thy sin.
(3.) His patience is abused by repeating sin, after God hath, by
an act of his patience, taken off some affliction from men. As metals
melted in the fire remain fluid under the operations of the flames,
yet when removed from the fire, they quickly return to their former
hardness, and sometimes grow harder than they were before; so men who,
in their afflictions, seem to be melted, like Ahab confess their sins,
lie prostrate before God, and seek him early; yet, if they be {b509}
brought from under the power of their afflictions, they return to their
old nature, and are as stiff against God, and resist the blows of the
Spirit as much as they did before. They think they have a new stock of
patience to sin upon. Pharaoh was somewhat thawed under judgments, and
frozen again under forbearance (Exod. ix. 27, 34). Many will howl when
God strikes them, and laugh at him when he forbears them. Thus that
patience which should melt us, doth often harden us, which is not an
effect natural to his patience, but natural to our abusing corruption.
(4.) His patience is abused, by taking encouragement from it to
mount to greater degrees of sin. Because God is slow to anger, men
are more fierce in sin, and not only continue in their old rebellions,
but heap new upon them. If he spare them for three transgressions,
they will commit four, as is intimated in the first and second of
Amos; “Men’s hearts are fully set in them to do evil, because sentence
against an evil work is not speedily executed” (Eccles. viii. 11).
Their hearts are more desperately bent; before they had some waverings,
and pull‑backs, but after a fair sunshine of Divine patience, they
entertain more unbridled resolutions, and pass forward with more
liberty and licentiousness. They make his long‑suffering subservient to
turn out all those little relentings and regrets they had before, and
banish all thoughts of barring out a temptation. No encouragement is
given to men by God’s patience, but they force it by their presumption.
They invert God’s order, and bind themselves stronger to iniquity by
that which should bind them faster to their duty. A happy escape at sea
makes men go more confidently into the deeps afterward. Thus we deal
with God as debtors do with good‑natured creditors: because they do not
dun them for what they owe, they take encouragement to run more upon
the score, till the sum amounts above their ability of payment.
But let it be considered, 1st. That this abuse of patience is a high
sin. As every act of forbearance obligeth us to duty, so every act of
it abused, increaseth our guilt. The more frequent its solicitations
of us have been, the deeper aggravations our sin receives by it. Every
sin, after an act of Divine patience, contracts a blacker guilt. The
sparing us after the last sin we committed, was a superadded act of
long‑suffering, and a laying out more of his riches upon us: and,
therefore, every new act committed is a despite against greater riches
expended, and greater cost upon us, and against his preserving us from
the hand of justice for the last transgression. It is disingenuous
not to have a due resentment of so much goodness, and base to injure
him the more, because he doth not right himself. Shall he receive
the more wrongs from us, by how much the sweeter he is to us? No man’s
conscience but will tell him it is vile to prefer the satisfaction of a
sordid lust, before the counsel of a God of so gracious a disposition.
The sweeter the nature, the fouler is the injury that is done unto it.
2d. It is dangerous to abuse his patience. Contempt of kindness is most
irksome to an ingenuous spirit; and he is worthy to have the arrows of
God’s indignation lodged in his heart, who despiseth the riches of his
long‑suffering. For,
[1.] The time of patience will have an end. Though his Spirit {b510}
strives with man, yet it shall “not always strive” (Gen. vi. 3). Though
there be a time wherein Jerusalem might “know the things that concerned
her peace,” yet there is another period wherein they should be “hid
from her eyes” (Luke xix. 43): “O that thou hadst known in this thy
day!” Nations have their day, and persons have their day; and the day
of most persons is shorter than the day of nations. Jerusalem had her
day of forty years; but how many particular persons were taken off
before the last or middle hours of that day were arrived! “Forty years
was God grieved” with the generation of the Israelites (Heb. iii. 11).
One carcass dropped after another in that limited time, and at the end
not a man but fell under the judicial stroke, except Caleb and Joshua.
One hundred and twenty years was the term set to the mass of the old
world, but not to every man in the old world; some fell while the ark
was preparing, as well as the whole stock when the ark was completed.
Though he be patient with most, yet he is not in the same degree with
all; every sinner hath his time of sinning, beyond which he shall
proceed no further, be his lusts never so impetuous, and his affections
never so imperious. The time of his patience is, in Scripture, set
forth sometimes by years; three years he came to find fruit on the
fig‑tree: sometimes by days; some men’s sins are sooner ripe, and
fall. There is a measure of sin (Jer. ii. 13), which is set forth by
the ephah (Zech. v. 8), which, when it is filled, is sealed up, and a
weight of lead cast upon the mouth of it. When judgments are preparing,
once and twice the Lord is prevailed with by the intercession of the
prophet: the prepared grass‑hoppers are not sent to devour, and the
kindled fire is not blown up to consume (Amos vii. 1‒8). But at last
God takes the plumb‑line, to suit and measure punishment to their
sin, and would not pass by them any more; and when their sin was ripe,
represented by a “basket of summer‑fruit,” God would withhold his hand
no longer, but brought such a day upon them, wherein “the songs of the
Temple should be howlings, and dead bodies be in every place” (Amos
viii. 2, 3). He lays by any further thoughts of patience to speed their
ruin. God had borne long with the Israelites, and long it was before
he gave them up. He would first brake the “bow in Jezreel” (Hos. i. 5);
take away the strength of the nation by the death of Zechariah, the
last of Jehu’s race, which introduced civil dissentions and ambitious
murders, for the throne, whereby in weakening one part they weakened
the whole; or, as some think, alluding to Tiglah Pilezar, who carried
captive two tribes and a half. If this would not reclaim them, then
follows “Lo‑ruhamah, I will not have mercy,” I will sweep them out of
the land (ver. 6). If they did not repent, they should be “Lo‑ammi”
(ver. 9), “You are not my people,” and “I will not be your God.” They
should be discovenanted, and stripped of all federal relation. Here
patience forever withdrew from them, and wrathful anger took its place.
And, for particular persons, the time of life, whether shorter or
longer, is the only time of long‑suffering. It hath no other stage
than the present state of things to act upon; there is none else to be
expected after but giving account of what hath been done in the body,
not of anything done after the soul is fled from the body: {b511} the
time of patience ends with the first moment of the soul’s departure
from the body. This time only is the “day of salvation;” _i. e._
the day wherein God offers it, and the day wherein God waits for our
acceptance of it: it is at his pleasure to shorten or lengthen our day,
not at ours; it is not our long‑suffering, but his; he hath the command
of it.
[2.] God hath wrath to punish, as well as patience to bear. He hath a
fury to revenge the outrages done to his meekness: when his messages of
peace, sent to reclaim men, are slighted, his sword shall be whetted,
and his instruments of war prepared (Hos. v. 3): “Blow ye the cornet in
Gibeah, and the trumpet in Ramah.” As he deals gently, like a father,
so he can punish capitally as a judge: though he holds his peace for a
long time, yet at last he will go forth like a mighty man, and stir up
jealousy, as a man of war, to cut in pieces his enemies. It is not said
he hath no anger, but that he is “slow to anger,” but sharp in it: he
hath a sword to cut, and a bow to shoot, and arrows to pierce (Ps. xii.
13): though he be long drawing the one out of its scabbard, and long
fitting the other to his bow, yet, when they are ready, he strikes home,
and hits the mark: though he hath a time of patience, yet he hath also
a “day of rebuke” (Hos. v. 9); though patience overrules justice, by
suspending it, yet justice will at last overrule patience, by an utter
silencing it. God is Judge of the whole earth to right men, yet he is
no less Judge of the injuries he receives to right himself. Though God
awhile was pressed with the murmurings of the Israelites, after their
coming out of Egypt, and seemed desirous to give them all satisfaction
upon their unworthy complaints, yet, when they came to open hostility,
in setting a golden calf in his throne, he commissions the “Levites
to kill every man his brother and companion in the camp” (Exod. xxxii.
27): and how desirous soever he was to content them before, they never
murmured afterwards but they severely smarted for it. When once he hath
begun to use his sword, he sticks it up naked, that it might be ready
for use upon every occasion. Though he hath feet of lead, yet he hath
hands of iron. It was long that he supported the peevishness of the
Jews, but at last he captived them by the arms of the Babylonians, and
laid them waste by the power of the Romans. He planted, by the apostles,
churches in the east; and when his goodness and long‑suffering
prevailed not with them, he tore them up by the roots. What Christians
are to be found in those once famous parts of Asia but what are
overgrown with much error and ignorance?
[3.] The more his patience is abused, the sharper will be the wrath
he inflicts. As his wrath restrained makes his patience long, so his
compassions restrained will make his wrath severe; as he doth transcend
all creatures in the measures of the one, so he doth transcend all
creatures in the sharpness of the other. Christ is described with “feet
of brass,” as if they burned in a furnace (Rev. i. 15), slow to move,
but heavy to crush, and hot to burn. His wrath loseth nothing by delay;
it grows the fresher by sleeping, and strikes with greater strength
when it awakes: all the time men are abusing his patience, God is
whetting his sword, and the longer it is whetting the sharper will be
the edge; the longer he is fetching his blow, the smarter it {b512}
will be. The heavier the cannons are, the more difficultly are they
drawn to the besieged town; but, when arrived, they recompense the
slowness of their march by the fierceness of their battery. “Because I
have purged thee,” _i. e._ used means for thy reformation, and waited
for it, “and thou wast not purged, thou shalt not be purged from thy
filthiness any more, till I have caused my fury to rest upon thee:
I will not go back, neither will I spare; according to thy ways, and
according to thy doings, shall they judge thee” (Ezek. xxiv. 13, 14).
God will spare as little then as he spared much before; his wrath shall
be as raging upon them as the sea of their wickedness was within them.
When there is a bank to forbid the irruption of the streams, the waters
swell; but when the bank is broke, or the lock taken away, they rush
with the greater violence, and ravage more than they would have done
had they not met with a stop: the longer a stone is in falling, the
more it bruiseth and grinds to powder. There is a greater treasure
of wrath laid up by the abuses of patience: every sin must have a
just recompense of reward; and therefore every sin, in regard of its
aggravations, must be more punished than a sin in the singleness and
simplicity of its own nature. As treasures of mercy are kept by God for
us, “he keeps mercy for thousands;” so are treasures of wrath kept by
him to be expended, and a time of expense there must be: patience will
account to justice all the good offices it hath done the sinner, and
demand to be righted by justice; justice will take the account from
the hands of patience, and exact a recompense for every disingenuous
injury offered to it. When justice comes to arrest men for their debts,
patience, mercy, and goodness, will step in as creditors, and clap
their actions upon them, which will make the condition so much more
deplorable.
[4.] When he puts an end to his abused patience, his wrath will
make quick and sure work. He that is “slow to anger” will be swift in
the execution of it. The departure of God from Jerusalem is described
with “wings and wheels” (Ezek. xi. 23). One stroke of his hand is
irresistible; he that hath spent so much time in waiting needs but
one minute to ruin; though it be long ere he draws his sword out of
his scabbard, yet, when once he doth it, he despatcheth men at a blow.
Ephraim, or the ten tribes, had a long time of patience and prosperity,
but now shall a “month devour him with his portion” (Hos. v. 7). One
fatal month puts a period to the many years’ peace and security of a
sinful nation; his arrows wound suddenly (Ps. lxiv. 7); and while men
are about to fill their bellies, he casts the fruits of his wrath upon
them (Job xx. 23), like thunder out of a cloud, or a bullet out of a
cannon, that strikes dead before it is heard. God deals with sinners
as enemies do with a town, batter it not by planted guns, but secretly
undermines and blows up the walls, whereby they involve the garrison
in a sudden ruin, and carry the town. God spared the Amalekites a
long time after the injury committed against the Israelites, in their
passage out of Egypt to Canaan; but when he came to reckon with them,
he would waste them in a trice, and make an utter consumption of them
(1 Sam. xv. 2, 3). He describes himself by a “travailing woman” (Isa.
xxiv. 14), that {b513} hath borne long in her womb, and at last sends
forth her birth with strong cries. Though he hath held his peace,
been still, and refrained himself, yet, at last, he will destroy and
devour at once: the Ninevites, spared in the time of Jonah for their
repentance, are, in nature, threatened with a certain and total ruin,
when God should come to bring them to an account for his length and
patience, so much abused by them. Though God endured the murmuring
Israelites so long in the wilderness, yet he paid them off at last,
and took away the rebels in his wrath: he uttered their sentence with
an irreversible oath, that “none of them should enter into his rest;”
and he did as surely execute it as he had solemnly sworn it.
[5.] Though he doth defer his visible wrath, yet that very delay may
be more dreadful than a quick punishment. He may forbear striking, and
give the reins to the hardness and corruption of men’s hearts; he may
suffer them to walk in their own counsels, without any more striving
with them, whereby they make themselves fitter fuel for his vengeance.
This was the fate of Israel when they would not hearken to his voice;
he “gave them up to their own hearts’ lusts, and they walked in their
own counsels” (Ps. lxxxi. 12). Though his sparing them had the outward
aspect of patience, it was a wrathful one, and attended with spiritual
judgments; thus many abusers of patience may still have their line
lengthened, and the candle of prosperity to shine upon their heads,
that they may increase their sins, and be the fitter mark at last for
his arrows; they swim down the stream of their own sensuality with a
deplorable security, till they fall into an unavoidable gulf, where,
at last, it will be a great part of their hell to reflect on the length
of Divine patience on earth, and their inexcusable abuse of it.
2. It informs us of the reason why he lets the enemies of his church
oppress it, and defers his promise of the deliverance of it. If he did
punish them presently, his holiness and justice would be glorified,
but his power over himself in his patience would be obscured. Well
may the church be content to have a perfection of God glorified, that
is not like to receive any honor in another world by any exercise of
itself. If it were not for this patience, he were incapable to be the
Governor of a sinful world; he might, without it, be the Governor of
an innocent world, but not of a criminal one; he would be the destroyer
of the world, but not the orderer and disposer of the extravagancies
and sinfulness of the world. The interest of his wisdom, in drawing
good out of evil, would not be served, if he were not clothed with
this perfection as well as with others. If he did presently destroy
the enemies of his church upon the first oppression, his wisdom in
contriving, and his power in accomplishing deliverance against the
united powers of hell and earth, would not be visible, no, nor that
power in preserving his people unconsumed in the furnace of affliction.
He had not got so great a name in the rescue of his Israel from Pharaoh,
had he thundered the tyrant into destruction upon his first edicts
against the innocent. If he were not patient to the most violent of men,
he might seem to be cruel. But when he offers peace to them under their
rebellions, waits that they may be members of his church, {b514} rather
than enemies to it, he frees himself from any such imputation, even
in the judgment of those that shall feel most of his wrath; it is this
renders the equity of his justice unquestionable, and the deliverance
of his people righteous in the judgment of those from whose fetters
they are delivered. Christ reigns in the midst of his enemies, to
show his power over himself, as well as over the heads of his enemies,
to show his power over his rebels. And though he retards his promise,
and suffers a great interval of time between the publication and
performance, sometimes years, sometimes ages to pass away, and little
appearance of any preparation, to show himself a God of truth; it is
not that he hath forgotten his word, or repents that ever he passed
it, or sleeps in a supine neglect of it: but that men might not perish,
but bethink themselves, and come as friends into his bosom, rather than
be crushed as enemies under his feet (2 Pet. iii. 9): “The Lord is not
slack concerning his promise, but is long‑suffering to us‑ward, not
willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
Hereby he shows, that he would be rather pleased with the conversion,
than the destruction, of men.
3. We see the reason why sin is suffered to remain in the regenerate;
to show his patience towards his own; for since this attribute hath
no other place of appearance but in this world, God takes opportunity
to manifest it; because, at the close of the world, it will remain
closed up in the Deity, without any further operation. As God suffers a
multitude of sins in the world, to evidence his patience to the wicked,
so he suffers great remainders of sin in his people, to show his
patience to the godly. His sparing mercy is admirable, before their
conversion, but more admirable in bearing with them after so high an
obligation as the conferring upon them special converting grace.
_Use 2._ Of comfort. It is a vast comfort to any when God is
pacified towards them; but it is some comfort to all, that God is yet
patient towards them, though but very little to a refractory sinner.
His continued patience to all, speaks a possibility of the care of all,
would they not stand against the way of their recovery. It is a terror
that God hath anger, but it is a mitigation of that terror that God
is slow to it; while his sword is in his sheath there is some hopes to
prevent the drawing of it: alas! if he were all fire and sword upon sin,
what would become of us? We should find nothing else but overflowing
deluges, or sweeping pestilences, or perpetual flashes of Sodom’s fire
and brimstone from heaven. He dooms us not presently to execution, but
gives us a long breathing time after the crime, that by retiring from
our iniquities, and having recourse to his mercy, he may be withheld
forever from signing a warrant against us, and change his legal
sentence into an evangelical pardon. It is a special comfort to his
people, that he is a “sanctuary to them” (Ezek. xi. 16); a place of
refuge, a place of spiritual communications; but it is some refreshment
to all in this life, that he is a defence to them: for so is his
patience called (Numb. xiv. 9): “Their defence is departed from them;”
speaking to the Israelites, that they should not be afraid of the
Canaanites, for {b515} their defence is departed from them. God is no
longer patient to them, since their sins be full and ripe. Patience,
as long as it lasts, is a temporary defence to those that are under the
wing of it; but to the believer it is a singular comfort; and God is
called the “God of patience and consolation” in one breath (Rom. xv. 5):
“The God of patience and consolation grant you to be like‑minded;” all
interpreters understand it effectively. The God that inspires you with
patience, and cheers you with comfort, grant this to you. Why may it
not be understood formally, of the patience belonging to the nature of
God? and though it be expressed in the way of petition, yet it might
also be proposed as a pattern for imitation, and so suits very well
to the exhortation laid down (ver. 1), which was to “bear with the
infirmities of the weak,” which he presseth them to (ver. 3) by the
example of Christ; and (ver. 5) by the patience of God to them, and so
they are very well linked together. “God of patience and consolation”
may well be joined, since patience is the first step of comfort to the
poor creature. If it did not administer some comfortable hopes to Adam,
in the interval between his fall and God’s coming to examine him, I am
sure it was the first discovery of any comfort to the creature, after
the sweeping the destroying deluge out of the world (Gen. ix. 21);
after the “savor of Noah’s sacrifice,” representing the great Sacrifice
which was to be in the world, had ascended up to God, the return from
him is a publication of his forbearing to punish any more in such a
manner: and though he found man no better than he was before, and the
imaginations of men’s hearts as evil as before the deluge, that he
would not again smite every living thing, as he had done. This was the
first expression of comfort to Noah, after his exit from the ark; and
declares nothing else but the continuance of patience to the new world
above what he had shown to the old.