The Existence and Attributes of God, Volumes 1 and 2

by Stephen Charnock

1. Let us consider the ways, how slowness to anger is abused.

(1.) It is abused by misinterpretations of it, when men slander his 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 bebrought 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 Spiritstrives 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: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 itwill 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), thathath 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.