Of Gaston de Foix, the old chronicler admirably wrote: “He loved what ought to be loved, and hated what ought to be hated, and never had miscreant with him.”Compare Ps. 101:5, 6—“Him that hath a high look and a proud heart will I not suffer. Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me.” Even Horace Bushnell spoke of the “wrath-principle”in God. 1 K. 11:9—“And Jehovah was angry with Solomon” because of his polygamy. Jesus' anger was no less noble than his love. The love of the right involved hatred of the wrong. Those may hate who hate evil for its hatefulness and for the sake of God. Hate sin in yourself first, and then you may hate it in itself and in the world. Be angry only in Christ and with the wrath of God. W. C. Wilkinson, Epic of Paul, 264—“But we must purge ourselves of self-regard, Or we are sinful in abhorring sin.”Instance Judge Harris's pity, as he sentenced the murderer; see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 192, 193.
Horace's “Ira furor brevis est”—“Anger is a temporary madness”—is true only of selfish and sinful anger. Hence the man who is angry is popularly called “mad.”But anger, though apt to become sinful, is not necessarily so. Just anger is neither madness, nor is it brief. Instance the judicial anger of the church of Corinth in inflicting excommunication: 2 Cor. 7:11—“what indignation, yea what fear, yea what longing, yea what zeal, yea what avenging!” The only revenge permissible to the Christian church is that in which it pursues and exterminates sin. To be incapable of moral indignation against wrong is to lack real love for the right. Dr. Arnold of Rugby was never sure of a boy who only loved good; till the boy also began to hate evil, Dr. Arnold did not feel that he was safe. Herbert Spencer said that good nature with Americans became a crime. Lecky, Democracy and Liberty: “There is one thing worse than corruption, and that is acquiescence in corruption.”
Colestock, Changing Viewpoint, 139—“Xenophon intends to say a very commendable thing of Cyrus the Younger, when he writes of him that no one had done more good to his friends or more harm to his enemies.” Luther said to a monkish antagonist: “I will break in pieces your heart of brass and pulverize your iron brains.” Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:175-178—“Human character is worthless in proportion as abhorrence of sin is lacking in it. It is related of Charles II that ‘he felt no gratitude for benefits, and no resentment for wrongs; he did not love anyone, and he did not hate anyone.’ He was indifferent toward right and wrong, and the only feeling he had was contempt.” But see the death-bed scene of the “merry monarch,” as portrayed in Bp. Burnet, Evelyn's Memoirs, or the Life of Bp. Ken. Truly “The end of mirth is heaviness” (Prov. 14:13).
Stout, Manual of Psychology, 22—“Charles Lamb tells us that his friend George Dyer could never be brought to say anything in condemnation of the most atrocious crimes, except that the criminal must have been very eccentric.” Professor Seeley: “No heart is pure that is not passionate.” D. W. Simon, Redemption of Man, 249, 250, says that God's resentment “is a resentment of an essentially altruistic character.”If this means that it is perfectly consistent with love for the sinner, we can accept the statement; if it means that love is the only source of the resentment, we regard the statement as a misinterpretation of God's justice, which is but the manifestation of his holiness and is not a mere expression of his love. See a similar statement of Lidgett, Spiritual Principle of the Atonement, 251—“Because God is love, his love coëxists with his wrath against sinners, is the very life of that wrath, and is so persistent that it uses wrath as its instrument, while at the same time it seeks and supplies a propitiation.”This statement ignores the fact that punishment is never in Scripture regarded as an expression of God's love, but always of God's holiness. When we say that we love God, let us make sure that it is the true God, the God of holiness, that we love, for only this love will make us like him.
The moral indignation of a whole universe of holy beings against moral evil, added to the agonizing self-condemnations of awakened conscience in all the unholy, is only a faint and small reflection of the awful revulsion of God's infinite justice from the impurity and selfishness of his creatures, and of the intense, organic, necessary, and eternal reaction of his moral being in self-vindication and the punishment of sin; see Jer. 44:4—“Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate!” Num. 32:23—“be sure your sin will find you out”; Heb. 10:30, 31—“For we know him that said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” On justice as an attribute of a moral governor, see N. W. Taylor, Moral Government, 2:253-293; Owen, Dissertation on Divine Justice, in Works, 10:483-624.
VII. Rank and Relations of the several Attributes.
The attributes have relations to each other. Like intellect, affection and will in man, no one of them is to be conceived of as exercised separately from the rest. Each of the attributes is qualified by all the others. God's love is immutable, wise, holy. Infinity belongs to God's knowledge, power, justice. Yet this is not to say that one attribute is of as high rank as another. The moral attributes of truth, love, holiness, are worthy of higher reverence from men, and they are more jealously guarded by God, than the natural attributes of omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. And yet even among the moral attributes one stands as supreme. Of this and of its supremacy we now proceed to speak.
Water is not water unless composed of oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen cannot be resolved into hydrogen, nor hydrogen into oxygen. Oxygen has its own character, though only in combination with hydrogen does it appear in water. Will in man never acts without intellect and sensibility, yet will, more than intellect or sensibility, is the manifestation of the man. So when God acts, he manifests not one attribute alone, but his total moral excellence. Yet holiness, as an attribute of God, has rights peculiar to itself; it determines the attitude of the affections; it more than any other faculty constitutes God's moral being.
Clarke, Christian Theology, 83,92—“God would not be holy if he were not love, and could not be love if he were not holy. Love is an element in holiness. If this were lacking, there would be no perfect character as principle of his own action or as standard for us. On the other hand only the perfect being can be love. God must be free from all taint of selfishness in order to be love. Holiness requires God to act as love, for holiness is God's self-consistency. Love is the desire to impart holiness. Holiness makes God's character the standard for his creatures; but love, desiring to impart the best good, does the same. All work of love is work of holiness, and all work of holiness is work of love. Conflict of attributes is impossible, because holiness always includes love, and love always expresses holiness. They never need reconciliation with each other.”