1. Therefore, first fix this in your minds, that God is righteous, wise,
government. Eccles. 3:11, 'No man can find out the work that God makes from the beginning to the end.' Though a man may see the beginning of God's works, yet is he able to walk understandingly along with divine wisdom in every step it takes? will he not lose the track often before it comes to an end? It is not the face, but the back parts of providence which we behold; why then should we usurp an authority beyond our ability, and make ourselves God's judges, as if infinite wisdom and power were bounded within the narrow compass of our purblind reasons? His ways are beyond our tracing, and his counsels too high for our short measures. Since therefore God satisfies the righteousness of his own will, let us submit our curiosity to his wisdom, and forbear our censures of that exact righteousness and superlative wisdom which we cannot comprehend.
1. Therefore, first fix this in your minds, that God is righteous, wise, and good in everything. Good, therefore nothing can be hurtful to his people; righteous, therefore nothing unjust; wise, therefore nothing in vain; our injurious thoughts of him make us so uncharitable towards him, and greater censurers of his righteous ways than we are of men's wicked actions. Clouds and darkness are about him; our eye cannot pierce through his darkness, or see the frame of his counsels; yet let these principles be kept as the centre, that 'righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne,' Ps. 89:14. He is righteous in his darkness, wise in his cloudiness; though his judgments are unsearchable to us, and his ways past finding out by our most industrious inquisitions, and a depth of knowledge and wisdom there is in them too deep for us to measure, Rom. 11:33. God was always righteous, wise, and good; he is the same still. Though the motions of the planets be contrary, yet the sphere where they are fixed, the natures wherewith they are created, are the same still. Though the providences of God have various motions, yet the spring of his counsel, the rule of his goodness, the eye of his wisdom, the arm of his power, are not altered. He acts by the same rule, disposeth by the same wisdom, orders according to the same righteousness; he is unchangeable in the midst of the changeable effects of providence.
The sun is the same body, which admits of no inward alteration,