6. The naturalness of his veracity and holiness, and the strictness of his justice, are no bars to the exercise of his patience.
(1.) His veracity. In those threatenings where the punishment is expressed, but not the time of inflicting it prefixed and determined in the threatening, his veracity suffers no damage by the delaying execution; so it be once done, though a long time after, the credit of his truth stands unshaken:as when God promises a thing without fixing the time, he is at liberty to pitch upon what time he pleases for the performance of it, without staining his faithfulness to his word, by not giving the thing promised presently. Why should the deferring of justice upon an offender be any more against his veracity than his delaying an answer to the petitions of a suppliant? But the difference will lie in the threatening. “In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die the death” (Gen. ii. 17). The time was there settled; “in that day thou shalt die;” some refer “day” to eating, not to dying; and render the sentence thus: I do not prohibit thee the eating this fruit for a day or two, but continually. In whatsoever day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die; but not understanding his dying that very day he should eat of it; referring “day” to the extensiveness of the prohibition, as to time. But to leave this as uncertain, it may be answered, that as in some threatenings a condition is implied, though not expressed, as in that positive denouncing of the destruction of Ninevah: “Yet forty days, and Ninevah shall be destroyed” (Jonah iii. 4), the condition is implied; unless they humble themselves, and repent; for upon their repentance, the sentence was deferred. So here, “in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die the death,” or certainly die, unless there be a way found for the expiation of thy crime, and the righting my honor. This condition, in regard of the event, may as well be asserted to be implied in this threatening, as that of repentance was in the other; or rather, “thou shalt die,” thou shalt die spiritually, thou shalt lose that image of mine in thy nature, that righteousness which is as much the life of thy soul as thy soul is the life of thy body; that righteousness whereby thou art enabled to live to me and thy own happiness. What the soul is to the body, a quickening soul, that the image of God is to the soul, a quickening image. Or “thou shalt die the death,” or certainly die; thou shalt be liable to death.And so it is to be understood, not of an actual death of the body, but the merit of death, and the necessity of death; thou wilt be obnoxious to death, which will be avoided, if thou dost forbear to eat of the forbidden fruit;thou shalt be a guilty person, and so under a sentence of death, that I may, when I please, inflict it on thee.[1030] Death did come upon Adam that day, because his nature was vitiated; he was then also under an expectation of death, he was obnoxious to it, though that day it was not poured out upon him in the full bitterness and gall of it: as when the apostle saith, “The body is dead because of sin” (Rom. viii. 10), he speaks to the living, and yet tells them the body was dead because of sin; he means no more than that it was under a sentence, and so a necessity of dying, though not actually dead; so thou shalt be under the sentence of death that day, as certainly as if that day thou shouldst sink into the dust: and as by his patience towards man, not sending forth death upon him in all the bitter ingredients of it, his justice afterwards was more eminent upon man’s surety, than it would have been if it had been then employed in all its severe operations upon man. So was his veracity eminent also in making good this threatening, in inflicting the punishment included in it upon our nature assumed by a mighty Person, and upon that Person in our nature, who was infinitely higher than our nature.
(2.) His justice and righteousness are not prejudiced by his patience. 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 presentlyto 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 complainof 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 openair: 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 wereerected 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 forerunnersin 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 eighthpreacher, 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 humiliationmay 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).