Part 32
2. His slowness to anger is manifest to the Gentiles. What they are, we need no other witness than the apostle Paul, who sums up many of their crimes, Rom. i. 29-82. He doth preface the catalogue with a comprehen
sive 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 naturalised in wicked ness, 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 tare 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' ; wreg/S&v, 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 were erected 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. VOL. II. K k
514 CHAENOCK'S WORKS. FNAHUM I. 8.
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 man ners,' 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 of 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 original 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 restora tion 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 tradi tions, 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 fifteen hundred 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 destruc tion 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 devas tation 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,
(1.) In his giving warning 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' advertise ment 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 forerunners in the same provocation : Hosea 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 your selves together, yea, gather together, 0 nation not desired,' — it is a meiosis, 0 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
NAHUM I. 3.] GOD'S PATIENCE. 515
up. He seldom cuts down men by his judgments before he hath ' hewed them by his prophets,' Hosea 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, chap. 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 fore-warners of greater, as light nings 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, l 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
old world with approaching judgment; 2 Peter 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 endeavoured 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 on the name of the Lord ;' Heb. ' Then it was begun to call in the name of the Lord ;' TO OVO/MX, rov xus/'ou, diov, 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 N"lp signi fies 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 eighth preacher, by numbering the successive heads of the generations, Gen. v., beginning at Enoch, the first preacher of right eousness ; 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. 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, Hosea 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 Heze-
kiah'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 par ticularly of Israel. f And not less than five of those we call the lesser pro phets, 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
* Vid. Cell's ayyt'kox.eaTia. | Sanctius. Prolcgom. in Hosea, Proleg. the 3d.
513 CHAKNOCK'S WORKS. [NAHUM I. 3.
the time of the same Jeroboam, and prophesied things which are not upon record in the book of Jonah, is clear, 2 Kings xiv. 15. 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, Mat. 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 of 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 dis couraged • 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 humiliation may 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.
(2.) His patience is manifest in long delaying his threatened judgments, though he finds no repentance in the rebels. He doth sometimes delay his lighter punishments, because he doth not delight in torturing his creatures, but he doth longer delay his destroying punishments, such as put an end to
men's happiness, and remit them to their final and unchangeable state, because he doth not delight in the death of a sinner. While he is preparing his arrows, he is waiting for an occasion to lay them aside, and dull their points that he may with honour march back again, and disband his armies. He brings lighter smarts sooner, that men might not think him asleep, but he suspends the more terrible judgments, that men might be led to repent ance. He scatters not his consuming fires at the first, but brings on ruining vengeance with a slow pace : ' Sentence against an evil work is not speedily executed,' Eccles. viii. 11. The Jews therefore say, that Michael, the minister of justice, flies with one wing, but Gabriel, the minister of mercy, with two. A hundred and twenty years did God wait upon the old world, and
delay their punishment all the time ' the ark was preparing,' 1 Peter iii. 20 ; wherein that wicked generation did not enjoy only a bare patience, but a
striving patience : Gen. vi. 3, ' My Spirit shall not always strive with man,
NAHUM I. 3.] GOD'S PATIENCE. 517
yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years,' the days .wherein I will strive with him, that his long-suffering might not lose all its fruit, and remit the objects of it into the hands of consuming justice. It was the tenth generation of the world from Adam when the deluge overflowed itr so long did God bear with them ; and the tenth generation from Noah, wherein Sodom was consumed. God did not come to keep his assizes in
Sodom, till ' the cry of their sins was very strong,' that it had been a wrong to his justice to have restrained it any longer. The cry was so loud that he could not be at quiet, as it were, on his throne of glory for the disturbing noise, Gen. xviii. 20, 21. Sin transgresseth the law ; the law being vio lated, solicits justice ; justice being urged, pleads for punishment ; the cry of their sins did as it were force him from heaven to come down, and examine what cause there was for that clamour. Sin cries loud and long before he takes his sword in hand. Four hundred years he kept off deserved destruc tion from the Amorites, and deferred making good his promise to Abraham,
of giving Canaan to his posterity, out of his long-suffering to the Amorites : Gen. xv. 16, 'In the fourth generation they shall come hither again, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.' Their measure was filling then, but not so full as to put a stop to any further patience till four hundred years after. The usual time in succeeding generations from the denouncing of judgments to the execution is forty years ; this some ground upon Ezek.
iv. 6, ' Thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days,' taking each day for a year. Though Hosea lived seventy years, yet from the beginning of his prophesying judgments against Israel, to the pouring them out upon that idolatrous people, it was forty years. Hosea, as was men tioned before, prophesied against them in the days of Jeroboam the Second, in whose time God did wonderfully deliver Israel, 2 Kings xiv. 26, 27.
From that time to the total destruction' of the ten tribes it was forty years, as may easily be computed from the story, 2 Kings xv., xvi., xvii., by the reign of the succeeding kings. So forty years after the most horrid villany that was ever committed in the face of the sun, viz., the crucifying the Son of God, was Jerusalem destroyed, and the inhabitants captived ; so long did God delay a visible punishment for such an outrage. Sometimes he prolongs sending a threatened judgment upon a mere shadow of humiliation,
so he did that denounced against Ahab. He turned it over to his posterity, and adjourned it to another season, 1 Kings xxi. 29. He doth not issue out an arrest upon one transgression ; you often find him not commencing a suit against men till three and four transgressions. The first of Amos, all
along that chapter, and the second chapter, for ' three and four,' i. e. seven, a certain number for an uncertain. He gives not orders to his judgments to march till men be obstinate, and refuse any commerce with him. He stops them till there be no remedy, 2 Chron. xxxvi. 16. It must be a great wickedness that gives vent to them : Hosea x. 15, Heb., ' your wickedness of wickedness.' He is so slow to anger, and stays the punishment his enemies deserve, that he may seem to have forgot his kindness to his friends : Ps. xliv. 24, ' Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest our affliction and oppression ? ' He lets his people groan under the yoke of their enemies, as if he were made up of kindness to his enemies, and anger against his friends. This delaying of punishment to evil men is visible in his suspending the terrifying acts of conscience, and supporting it only in its checking, admonishing, and controlling acts. The patience of a governor
is seen in the patient mildness of his deputy. David's conscience did not terrify him till nine months after his sin of murder. Should God set open the mouth of this power within us, not only the earth, but our own bodies
518 CHARNOCK'S WOBKS. [NAHUM I. 3.
and spirits would be a burden to us. It is long before God puts scorpions
into the hands of men's consciences to scourge them. He holds back the rod, waiting for the hour of our return, as if that would be a recompence for
our offences, and his forbearance.
(3.) His patience is manifest in his unwillingness to execute his judgments when he can delay no longer. ' He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the
children of men,' Lam. iii. 33 ; Heb., ' He doth not afflict from his heart.' He takes no pleasure in it as he is creator. The height of men's provoca tions, and the necessity of the preserving his rights, and vindicating his laws, obligeth him to it as he is the governor of the world ; as a judge may willingly condemn a malefactor to death out of affection to the laMrs, and desire to preserve the order of government ; but unwillingly, out of compassion to the offender himself. When he resolved upon the destruc tion of the old world, he spake it as a God grieved with an occasion of punishment, Gen. vi. 6, 7, compared together. When he came to reckon
with Adam, he ' walked,' he did not run with his sword in his hand upon him, as a mighty man with an eagerness to destroy him, Gen. iii. 8, and
that ' in the cool of the day,' a time when men tired in the day are unwilling to engage in a hard employment. His exercising judgment is a
'coming out of his place,' Isa. xxvi. 1, Micah i. 8. He comes out of his station to exercise judgment ; a throne is more his place than a tribunal.
Every prophecy loaded with threatenings is called the ' burden of the Lord,' a burden to him to execute it as well as to men to suffer it. Though three angels came to Abraham about the punishment of Sodom, whereof one Abraham speaks to as to God, yet but two appeared at the destruction of Sodom, as if the governor of the world were unwilling to be present at such dreadful work, Gen. xix. 1. And when the man that had the inkhorn by his side, that was appointed to mark those that were to be preserved in the common destruction, returned to give an account of the performing his commission, Ezek. ix. 10, we read not of tlae return of those that were to kill, as if God delighted only to hear again of his works of mercy, and had
no mind to hear again of his severe proceedings. The Jews, to shew God's unwillingness to punish, imagine that hell was created the second day,
because that day's work is not pronounced good by God, as all the other day's works are, Gen. i. 8.*
[1.] When God doth punish, he doth it with some regret. When he hurls down his thunders, he seems to do it with a backward hand, because with an unwilling heart.f He created, saith Chrysostom, the world in six days, but was seven days in destroying one city, Jericho, which he had before devoted to be razed to the ground. What is the reason, saith he, that God is so quick to build up, but slow to pull down ? His goodness excites his power to the one, but is not earnest to persuade him to the other. When
he comes to strike, he doth it with a sigh or groan : Isa. i. 24, ' Ah, I will ease me of my adversaries, and avenge me of my enemies ;' ^71, ah, a note of grief. So Hosea vi. 4, ' 0 Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee ? 0 Jndah, what shall I do unto thee?' It is an addubitatio, a figure in rhetoric, as if God were troubled, that he must deal so sharply with them, and give them up to their enemies. I have tried all means to reclaim you, I have used all ways of kindness, and nothing prevails. What shall I do ? My mercy invites me to spare them, and their ingratitude provokes me to ruin them. God had borne with that people of Israel almost three hundred years, from the setting up of the calves at Dan and Bethel, sent many a prophet to warn them, and spent many a rod to reform them.
* Mercer in Gen. i. 5. t Cressol. Decad. ii. p. 163.
NAHUM I. 3.] GOD'S PATIENCE. 519
And when he comes to execute his threatenings, he doth it with a conflict
in himself. Hosea xi. 8, ' How shall I give thee np, 0 Ephraim ? how shall I deliver thee, Israel ? ' As if there were a pull-back in his own bowels, he solemniseth their approaching funeral with a hearty groan, and takes his farewell of the dying malefactor with a pang in himself. How often in former times, when he had signed a warrant for their execution, did he
call it back ? Ps. Ixxviii. 38, ' Many a time turned he his anger away.' Many a time he recalled, or ' ordered his anger to return again,' as the word signifies, as if he were irresolute what to do. He recalled it, as a man doth his servant several times, when he is sending him upon an unwelcome message ; or as a tender-hearted prince wavers, and trembles, when he is to
sign a writ for the death of a rebel that hath been before his favourite, as if, when he had signed the writ, he blotted out his name again, and flung away the pen. And his method is remarkable when he came to punish Sodom : though the cry of their sin had been fierce in his ears, yet when he comes to make inquisition he declares his intention to Abraham, as if he were desirous that Abraham should have helped him to some arguments to stop the outgoings of his judgment. He gave liberty to the best person in the world to stand in the gap, and enter into a treaty with him, to shew
(saith one*) how willingly his mercy would have compounded with his justice for their redemption. And Abraham interceded so long till he
was ashamed for pleading the cause of patience and mercy, to the wrong of the rights of divine justice. Perhaps, had Abraham had the courage to ask, God would have had the compassion to grant a reprieve just at the time of execution.
[2.J His patience is manifest, in that when he begins to send out his judgments, he doth it by degrees. His judgments are as the morning light,
which goes forth by degrees in the hemisphere, Hos. vi. 5. He doth not shoot all his thunders at once, and bring his sharpest judgments in array at one time, but gradually, that a people may have time to turn to him, Joel
i. 4 : first the palmer-worm, then the locust, then the canker-worm, then the caterpillar ; what one left, the other was to eat, if there was not a timely return. A Jewish writer f saith, these judgments came not all in one year, but one year after another. The palmer-worm and locust might have eaten all, but divine patience set bounds to the devouring creatures. God had been first ' as a moth to Israel ;' Hos. v. 12, 'Therefore will I be to the house of Ephraim as a moth.' Rivet translates it I have been ; in the Hebrew it is 1, without adding, / have been or I will be, and more probably I have been. I was as a moth, which makes little holes in a garment, and consumes
it not all at once, and as ' rottenness to the house of Judah,' or a worm that eats into wood by degrees. Indeed, this people had consumed insensi
bly, partly by civil combustions, change of governors, foreign invasions, yet they were as obstinate in their idolatry as ever ; at last, God would be no longer to them as a moth, but as a lion, tear and go away, ver. 14. So, Hos. ii., God had disowned Israel for his spouse, — ver. 2, ' She is not my wife, neither am I her husband,' — yet he had not taken away her ornaments, which, by the right of divorce, he might have done, but still expected her reformation, for that the threatening intimates : ver. 3, let her put away her whoredom, ' lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day when she was born.' If she returned, she might recover what she had lost ; if not, she might be stripped of what remained. Thus God dealt with Judah, Ezekiel ix. 3. The glory of God goes first from the cherub to the threshold of the house, and stays there, as if he had a mind to be invited back again ; then
* Pierce, Sinner Impleaded, p. 227. t Kimchi.
520 CHARNOCK'S WORKS. [NAHUM I. 3.
it goes from the threshold of the house, and stands over the cherubims, as if upon a penitent call it would drop down again to its ancient station and seat, over which it hovered, Ezek. x. 18 ; and when he was not solicited to return, he departs out of the city, and stood upon the mountain, which is on the east part of the city, Ezek. xi. 23, looking still towards, and hovering about the temple, which was on the east of Jerusalem, as if loath to depart and abandon the place and people. He walks so leisurely with his rod in his hand, as if he had a mind rather to fling it away, than use it. His patience in not pouring out all his vials, is more -remarkable than his wrath in pouring out one or two. Thus hath God made his slowness to anger visible to us in the gradual punishment of us ; first, the pestilence on this city, then firing our houses, consumption of trade, these have not been an swered with such a carriage as God expects, therefore a greater is reserved. I dare prognosticate, upon reasons you may gather from what hath been spoke before, if I be not much mistaken, the forty years of his usual patience are very near expired, he hath inflicted some that he might be met with in a way of repentance, and omit with honour the inflicting the remainder.
[4.] His patience is manifest in moderating his judgments, when he sends them. Doth he empty his quiver of his arrows, or exhaust his magazines of thunder ? No ; he could roll one thunderbolt successively upon all man kind ; it is as easy with him to create a perpetual motion of lightning and thunder, as of the sun and stars, and make the world as terrible by the one
as it is delightful by the other. He opens not all his store ; he sends out a ' light party to skirmish with men, and puts not in array his whole army. ' He stirs not up all his wrath,' Ps. Ixxviii. 38 ; he doth but pinch, where he might have torn asunder ; when he takes away much, he leaves enough to
support us. If he had stirred up all his anger, he had taken away all, and our lives to boot. He rakes up but a few sparks, takes but one firebrand to fling upon men, when he might discharge the whole furnace upon them ; he. sends but a few drops out of the cloud, which he might make to break hi the gross, and fall down upon our heads to overwhelm us ; he abates much of what he might do. When he might sweep away a whole nation by deluges of water, corruption of the air, or convulsions of the earth, or by other ways that are not wanting at his order, he picks out only some persons, some families, some cities, sends a plague into one house r,nd not into another. Here is patience to the stock of a nation, while he inflicts punishment upon some of the most notorious sinners in it. Herod is suddenly snatched away, being willingly flattered into the thoughts of his being a god ; God singled out the chief in the herd, for whose sake he had been affronted by the rabble, Acts xii. 22, 23. Some find him sparing them, while others feel him destroy
ing them ; he arrests some, when he might seize all, all being his debtors ; and often in great desolations brought upon a people for their sin, he hath left a stump in the earth, as Daniel speaks, Dan. iv. 15, for a nation to grow upon it again, and arise to a stronger constitution. He doth punish ' less than our inquiries deserve,' Ezra ix. 13, and ' rewards us not according to our iniquities,' Ps. ciii. 10. The greatness of any punishment in this life, answers not the greatness of the crime. Though there be an equity in what soever he doth, yet there is not an equality to what we deserve. Our ini quities would justify a severer treating of us ; his justice goes not here to the end of its line, it is stopped in its progress, and the blows of it weakened
by his patience. He did not curse the earth after Adam's fall, that it should bring forth no fruit, but that it should not bring forth fruit without the weari some toil of man ; and subjected him to distempers presently, but inflicted not death immediately ; while he punished him, he supported him ; and
NAHUM I. 3.J GOD'S PATIENCE. 521
while he expelled him from paradise, he did not order him not to cast his eye towards it, and conceive some hopes of regaining that happy place.
[5.] His patience is seen in giving great mercies after provocations. He is so slow to anger, that he heaps many kindnesses upon a rebel, instead of punishment. There is a prosperous wickedness, wherein the provokers' strength continues firm ; the troubles, which like clouds drop upon others,
are blown away from them, and they are ' not plagued like other men,' that have a more worthy demeanour towards God, Ps. Ixxiii. 3-5. He doth not only continue their lives, but sends out fresh beams of his goodness upon them, and calls them by his blessings, that they may acknowledge their own fault and his bounty, which he is not obliged to by any gratitude he meets with from them, but by the richness of his own patient nature ; for he finds the unthankfulness of men as great as his benefits to them. He doth not only continue his outward mercies, while we continue our sins, but sometinres gives fresh benefits after new provocations, that if possible he might excite an ingenuity in men. When Israel at the Red Sea flung dirt in the face of God, by quarrelling with his servant Moses for bringing them out of Egypt, and misjudging God in his design of deliverance, and were ready to submit themselves to their former oppressors, Exod. xiv. 11, 12, which might justly have urged God to say to them, Take your own course, yet he is not only patient under their unjust charge, but makes bare his arm in a deliverance at the Bed Sea, that was to be an amazing monument to the world in all ages ; and afterwards, when they repiningly quarrelled with him in their
•wants in the wilderness, he did not only not revenge himself upon them, or cast off the conduct of them, but bore with them by a miraculous long-suf fering, and supplied them with miraculous provision, manna from heaven, and water from a rock. Food is given to support us, and clothes to cover us,
and divine patience makes the creatures, which we turn to another use than what they were at first intended for, serve us contrary to their own genius ; for had they reason, no question but they would complain, to be subjected to the service of man, who hath been so ungrateful to their Creator, and
groan at the abuse of God's patience, in the abuse they themselves suffer from the hands of man.
[6.] All this is more manifest, if we consider the provocations he hath. Wherein his slowness to anger infinitely transcends the patience of any crea ture ; nay, the spirits of all the angels and glorified saints in heaven would be too narrow to bear the sins of the world for one day, nay, not so much as the sins of the churches, which is a little spot in the whole world ; it is
because ' he is the Lord,' one of an infinite power over himself, that not only the whole mass of the rebellious world, but of ' the sons of Jacob ' (either considered as a church and nation springing from the loins of Jacob, or con sidered as the regenerate part of the world, sometimes called the seed of
Jacob), ' are not consumed,' Mai. iii. 6. A Jonah was angry with God for recalling his anger from a sinful people. Had God committed the government of the world to the glorified saints, who are perfect in love and holiness, the world would have had an end long ago ; they would have acted that which they sue for at the hands of God, and is not granted them : Rev.
vi. 10, ' How long, Lord, holy and true, dost thou not avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth ? ' God hath designs of patience above the world, above the unsinning angels, and perfectly renewed spirits in glory. The greatest created long-suffering is infinitely disproportioned to the divine. Fire from heaven would have been showered down before the greatest part
of a day were spent, if a created patience had the conduct of the world, though that creature were possessed with the spirit of patience, extracted from all
622 CHARNOCK'S WORKS. [NAHUM I. 3.
the creatures which are in heaven, or are, or ever were, upon the earth.
Methinks Moses intimates this, for as soon as God had passed by, proclaim ing his name gracious and long-suffering, as soon as ever Moses had paid his adoration, he falls a-praying that God would go with the Israelites : Exod. xxxiv. 8, 9, ' For it is a stiff-necked people.' What an argument is here for God to go along with them ! He might rather, since he had heard
him but just before say he would ' by no means clear the guilty,' desire God to stand further off from them, for fear the fire of his wrath should burst out from him, to burn them as he did the Sodomites ; but he considers that as none but God had such anger to destroy them, so none but God had such a
patience to bear with them. It is as much as if he should have said, Lord,
if thou shouldst send the most tender-hearted angel in heaven to have the guidance of this people, they would be a lost people ; a period will quickly be set to their lives, no created strength can restrain its power from crush* ing such a stiff-necked people ; flesh and blood cannot bear them, nor any created spirit of a greater might.
First, Consider the greatness of the provocations. No light matter, but actions of a great defiance. What is the practical language of most in the
world but that of Pharaoh ! ' Who is the Lord that I should obey him ? ' How many question his being, and more, his authority ! What blasphemies
of him, what reproaches of his majesty ! Men ' drinking up iniquity like water,' and with a haste and ardency ' rushing into sin, as the horse into the battle.' What is there in the reasonable creature that hath the quickest capacity, and the deepest obligation to serve him, but opposition and enmity, a slight of him in everything, yea, the services most seriously performed, unsuited to the royalty and purity of so great a being ! Such provocations as dare him to his face, that are a burden to so righteous a judge, and so great a lover of the authority and majesty of his laws, that, were there but a spark of anger in him, it is a wonder that it doth not shew itself. When he is invaded in all his attributes, it is astonishing that this single one of patience and meekness should withstand the assault of all the rest of his perfections. His being, which is attacked by sin, speaks for vengeance ; his justice cannot be imagined to stand silent, without charging the sinner ; his holiness cannot but encourage his justice to urge its pleas, and be an advocate for it ; his omniscience proves the truth of all the charge, and his abused mercy hath little encouragement to make opposition to the indict ment : nothing but patience stands in the gap to keep off the arrest of judg ment from the sinner.
Secondly, His patience is manifest, if you consider the multitudes of these provocations. Every man hath sin enough in a day to make him stand
amazed at divine patience, and to call it, as well as the apostle did, " all longsuffering,' 1 Tim. i. 16. How few duties of a perfectly right stamp are performed ! What unworthy considerations mix themselves, like dross, with our purest and sincerest gold ! How more numerous are the respects of the worshippers of him to themselves than unto him ! How many services are paid him, not out of love to him, but because he should do us no hurt, and
some service, when we do not so much design to please him as to please ourselves, by expectations of a reward from him ! What master would endure a servant that endeavoured to please him only because he should not kill him ? Is that former charge of God upon the old world yet out of date, that ' the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of man was only evil, and that continually ' ? Gen vi. 5. Was not the new world as charge able with it as the old ? Certainly it was, Gen. viii. 21, and is of as much force this very minute as it was then. How many are the sins against
NAHUM I. 8.J GOD'S PATIENCE. 523
knowledge, as well as those of ignorance ; presumptuous sins, as well as those of infirmity ! How numerous those of omission and commission ! It
is above the reach of any man's understanding to conceive all the blasphemies, oaths, thefts, adulteries, murders, oppressions, contempt of religion, the open idolatries of Turks and heathens, the more spiritual and refined idola
tries of others.* Add to those the ingratitude of those that profess his name, their pride, earthliness, carelessness, sluggishness to divine duties, and in every one of those a multitude of provocations ; the whole man being engaged in every sin, the understanding contriving it, the will embracing it, the affections complying with it, and all the members of the body instruments in the acting the unrighteousness of it. Every one of these faculties be stowed upon men by him, are armed against him in every act ; and in every employment of them there is a distinct provocation, though centred in one sinful end and object. What are the offences all the men of the world receive from their fellow-creatures, to the injuries God receives from men, but as a small dust of earth to the whole mass of earth and heaven too ! What multitudes of sins is one profane wretch guilty of in the space of twenty, forty, fifty years ? Who can compute the vast number of his trans gressions, from the first use of reason to the time of the separation of his soul from his body, from his entrance into the world to his exit ? What are those to those of a whole village of the like inhabitants ? What are those to those of a great city ? Who can number up all the foul-mouthed oaths, the beastly excess, the goatish uncleanness committed in the space of a day, year, twenty years, in this city, much less in the whole nation, least of all in the whole world ? were it no more than the common idolatry of former ages, when the whole world turned their backs upon their Creator, and passed him by to sue to a creature, a stock, or stone, or a degraded spirit. How provoking would it be to a prince to see a whole city under his domi nion deny him a respect, and pay it to his scullion, or the common execu tioner he employs ! Add to this the unjust invasions of kings, the oppres sions exercised upon men, all the private and public sins that have been committed in the world, ever since it began. The Gentiles were described by the aposlle, Rom. i. 29-31, in a black character, they were haters of God ; yet how did the riches of his patience preserve multitudes of such disingenuous persons, and how many millions of such haters of him breathe every day in his air, and are maintained by his bounty, have their tables spread and their cups filled to the brim, and that too in the midst of reite rated belchings of their emnity against him ? All are under sufficient pro vocations of him to the highest indignation. The presiding angels over nations could not forbear, in love and honour to their government, to arm themselves to the destruction of their several charges, if divine patience did not set them a pattern, and their obedience incline them to expect his orders before they act what their zeal would prompt them to. The devils
would be glad of a commission to destroy the world, but that his patience puts a stop to their fury, as well as his own justice.
Thirdly, Consider the long time of this patience. He spread out his
hands all the day to a rebellious world, Isa. Ixv. 2. All men's day, all God's day, which is a thousand years, he hath borne with the gross of man kind, with all the nations of the world in a long succession of ages, for five thousand years and upwards already, and will bear with them till the time comes for the world's dissolution. He hath suffered the monstrous acts of men, and endured the contradictions of a sinful world against himself, from the first sin of Adam to the last committed this minute. The line of his
* Lessius, p. 152.
524 CHABNOCK'S WOEKS. [NAHUM I. 3.
patience hath run along with the duration of the world to this* day, and there
is not any one of Adam's posterity but hath been expensive to him, and partaked of the riches of it.
Fourthly, All these he bears when he hath a sense of them. He sees every day the roll and catalogue of sin increasing ; he hath a distinct view
of every one, from the sin of Adam to the. last, filled up in his omniscience, and yet gives no order for the arrest of the world. He knows men fitted for destruction, all the instants he exerciseth long-suffering towards them, which makes the apostle call it not simply ' long-suffering ' without the addition of ToXX^, ' much longsuffering,' Rom. ix. 23. There is not a grain in the whole mass of sin that he hath not a distinct knowledge of, and of the quality of it. He perfectly understands the greatness of his own majesty that is vilified, and the nature of the offence that doth disparage him. He is solicited by his justice, directed by his omniscience, and armed with judg ments to vindicate himself, but his arm is restrained by patience. To con
clude ; no indignity is hid from him, no iniquity is beloved by him ; the hatred of their sinfulness is infinite, and the knowledge of their malice is
exact. The subsisting of the world under such weighty provocations, so numerous, so long time, and with his full sense of every one of them, is an
evidence of such forbearance and long-suffering that the addition of ' riches,' which the apostle puts to it, Rom. ii. 4, labours with an insufficiency clearly to display it.
III. Why God doth exercise so much patience. 1.. To shew himself appeasable. God did not declare by his patience to former ages, or any age, that he was appeased with them, or that they were in his favour, but that he was appeasable, that he was not an implacable enemy, but that they might find him favourable to them, if they did seek after him. The continuance of the world by patience, and the bestowing many mercies by goodness, were not a natural revelation of the manner how he would be appeased ; that was made known only by the prophets, and after the coming of Christ by the apostles, and had indeed been intelligible
in some sort to the whole world, had there been a faithfulness .in Adam's posterity to transmit the tradition of the first promise to succeeding gene rations. Had not the knowledge of that died by their carelessness and
neglect, it had been easy to tell the reason of God's patience to be in order to the exhibition of the seed of the woman, to bruise the serpent's head. They could not but naturally know themselves sinners, and worthy of death ; they might, by easy reflections upon themselves, collect that they were not in that comely and harmonious posture now, as they were when God first wrought them with his own finger, and placed them as his lieu tenants in the world ; they knew they did grievously offend him, this they were taught by the sprinklings of his judgments among them sometimes. And since he did not utterly root up mankind, his sparing patience was a prologue of some further favours, or pardoning grace, to be displayed to the world by some methods of God yet unknown to them. Though the earth was something impaired by the curse after the fall, yet the main pillars of it stood ; the state of the natural motions of the creature was not changed : the heavens remained in the same posture wherein they were created ; the sun, and moon, and other heavenly bodies continued their usefulness and refresh ing influences to man : ' The heavens did still declare the glory of God ; day
unto day did utter speech ; their line is gone throughout all the earth, and
their words to the end of the world,' Ps. xix. 1-4 ; which declared God to be willing to do good to his creatures, and were as so many legible letters
XAHUM I. 3.] GOD'S PATIENCE. 525
or rudiments, whereby they might read his patience, and that a further
design of favour to the world lay hid in that patience. Paul' applies this to the preaching of the gospel : Rom. x. 18, ' Have they not heard the word of God ? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto
the end of the world.' Redeeming grace could not be spelled out by them in a clear notion ; but yet they did declare that which is the foundation of gospel mercy. Were not God patient, there were no room for a gospel mercy, so that the heavens declare the gospel, not formally but fundamentally, in de claring the long-suffering of God, without which no gospel had been framed, or could have been expected. They could not but read in those things favour able inclinations towards them. And though they could not be ignorant, that they deserved a mark of justice, yet seeing themselves supported by God, and beholding the regular motions of the heavens from day to day, and the revolutions of the seasons of the year, the natural conclusion they might draw from thence was, that God was placable, since he behaved him self more as a tender friend, that had no mind to be at war with them, than an enraged enemy. The good things which he gave them, and the patience whereby he spared them, were no arguments of an implacable dis position, and therefore of a disposition willing to be appeased. This is
clearly the design of the apostle's arguing with the Lystrians, when they would have offered sacrifices to Paul, Acts xiv. 17. When ' God suffered all nations to walk in their own ways, he did not leave himself without witness,
giving rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons.' What were those witnesses of ? Not only of the being of a God, by their readiness to sacrifice to those that were not gods, only supposed to be so in their false imaginations, but witnesses to the tenderness of God, that he had no mind to be severe with
his creatures, but would allure them by ways of goodness. Had not God's patience tended to this end, to bring the world under another dispensation,
the apostle's arguing from it had not been suitable to his design, which geems to be a hindering the sacrifices they intended for them, and a drawing them to embrace the gospel, and therefore preparing the way to it, by speak ing of the patience and goodness of God to them, as an unquestionable testimony of the reconcilableness of God to them, by some sacrifice which
was represented under the common notion of sacrifices.* These things were not witnesses of Christ, or syllables whereby they could spell out the re deeming person, but witnesses that God was placable in his own nature. When man abused those noble faculties God had given him, and diverted them from the use and service God intended them for, God might have
stripped man of them, the first time that he misemployed them ; and it would have seemed most agreeable to his wisdom and justice, not to suffer himself to be abused, and the world to go contrary to its natural end. But since he did not level the world with its first nothing, but healed the world so favourably, it was evident that his patience pointed the world to a further design of mercy and goodness in him. To imagine that God had no other design in his long-suffering but that of vengeance, had been a notion unsuit able to the goodness and wisdom of God. He would never have pretended himself to be a friend, if he had harboured nothing but enmity in his heart against them.
It had been far from his goodness, to give them a cause to suspect such a design in him, as his patience certainly did, had he not intended it. Had he preserved men only for punishment, it is more like he would have treated men as princes do those they reserve for the axe, or halter, give them only things necessary to uphold their lives till the day of execution, and not have
* Amyrald, Dissert, p. 191, 192.
526 OHARNOCK'S WORKS. [NAHUM I. 3.
bestowed upon them so many good things, to make their lives delightful to them, nor have furnished them with so many excellent means to please their senses and recreate their minds ; it had been a mocking of them to treat them at that rate, if nothing but punishment had been intended towards them. If the end of it, to lead men to repentance, were easily intelligible by them, as the apostle intimates (Rom. ii. 4, which is to be linked with the
former chapter, a discourse of the Gentiles ; ' Not knowing,' saith he, ' that the riches of his forbearance and goodness leads thee to repentance'), it also gives them some ground to hope for pardon. For what other argument can more induce to repentance, than an expectation of mercy upon a relenting and acknowledging the crime ? Without a design of pardoning grace, his patience would have been in great measure exercised in vain ; for by mere patience God is not reconciled to a sinner, no more than a prince to a rebel by bearing with him. Nor can a sinner conclude himself in the favour of God, no more than a rebel can conclude himself in the favour of his prince ; only this he may conclude, that there is some hopes he may have the grant of a pardon, since he hath time to sue it out. And so much did the patience of God naturally signify, that he was of a reconcilable temper, and was willing men should sue out their pardon upon repentance ; otherwise he might have magnified his justice, and condemned men by the law of works.
2. He therefore exercised so much patience to wait for men's repentance. All the notices and warnings that God gives men, of either public or per sonal calamities, is a continual invitation to repentance. This was the common interpretation the heathens made of extraordinary presages and prodigies, which shewed as well the delays as the approaches of judgments. What other notion but this, that those warnings of judgments witness a slowness to anger, and a willingness to turn his arrows another way, should move them to multiply sacrifices, go weeping to their temples, sound out prayers to their gods, and shew all those other testimonies of a repentance which their blind understandings hit upon ? If a prince should sometimes in a light and gentle manner punish a criminal, and then relax it and shew him much kindness, and afterwards inflict upon him another kind. of punish ment as light as the former, and less than was due to his crime, what could1 the malefactor suspect by such a way of proceeding, but that the prince, by those gently repeated chastisements, had a mind to move him to a regret for his crime ? And what other thoughts could men naturally have of
God's conduct, that he should warn them of great judgments, send light afflictions, which are testimonies rather of a patience than of a severe wrath, but that it was intended to move them to a relenting, and a breaking off their sins by working righteousness ? Though divine patience doth not in the event induce men to repentance, yet the natural tendency of such a
treatment is to mollify men's hearts, to overcome their obstinacy, and no man hath any reason to judge otherwise of such a proceeding. ' The longsuffering of God is salvation,' saith Peter, 2 Peter iii. 15 ; i. e. hath a ten dency to salvation, in its being a solicitation of men to the means of it ; for
the apostle cites Paul for the confirmation of it, ' Even as our beloved Paul hath written unto you,' which must refer to Bom. ii. 4, ' It leads to repent ance ; ' "Ays/, it conducts, which is more than barely to invite ; it doth, as it were, take us by the hand, and point us to the way wherein we should go ; and for this end it was exercised not only towards the Jews, but towards the Gentiles ; not only those that are within the pale of the church, and under the dews of the gospel, but to those that are in darkness and in the shadow of death. For this discourse of the apostle was but an inference from what
i NAUUM I. 8.] GOD'S PATIENCE.
he had treated of in the first chapter, concerning the idolatry and ingratitude of the Gentiles. Since the Gentiles were to be punished for the abuse of it
as well as the Jews, as he intimates, ver. 9, it is plain that his patience, which is exercised towards the idolatrous Gentiles, was to allure them to repentance as well as others ; and it was a sufficient motive in itself to per suade them to a change of their vile and gross acts, to such as were morally
good. And there was enough in God's dealing with them, and in that light they had, to engage them to a better course than what they usually walked in.
And though men do abuse God's long-suffering, to encourage their impeni tence, and persisting in their crimes, yet that they cannot reasonably ima gine that to be the end of God, is evident ; their own gripes of conscience
would acquaint them that it is otherwise. They know that conscience is a principle that God hath given them, as well as understanding, and will, and other faculties ; that God doth not approve of that which the voice of their own consciences, and of the consciences of all men under natural light, are utterly against. And if there were really in this forbearance of God an
approbation of men's crimes, conscience could not frequently and universally in all men check them for them. What authority could conscience have to
do it? But this it doth in all men. As the apostle, Rom. i. 22, 'They know the judgment of God, that those that do such things' — which he had mentioned before — ' are worthy of death.' In this thing the consciences of all men cannot err. They could not therefore conclude from hence God's approbation of their iniquities, but his desire that their hearts should be touched with a repentance for them.
The ' sin of Ephraim is hid,' Hosea xiii. 12, 13; i. e, God doth not pre sently take notice of it to order punishment ; he lays it in a secret place from the eye of his justice, that Ephraim might not be his unwise son, and
'stay long in the place of breaking forth of children ;' i. e. that he should speedily reclaim himself, and not continue in the way of destruction. God hath no need to abuse any, he doth not lie to the sons of men ; if he would have men perish, he could easily destroy them, and have done it long ago. He did not leave the woman Jezebel in being, nor lengthened out her time but as a space to repent, Rev. ii. 21, that she might reflect upon her ways, and devote herself seriously to his service and her own happiness. His patience stands between the offending creature and eternal misery a long time, that men might not foolishly throw away their souls, and be damned for their impenitency ; by this he shews himself ready to receive men to mercy upon their return. To what purpose doth he invite men to repentance, if he in
tended to receive* them, and damn them after they repent ?
8. He doth exercise patience for the propagation of mankind. If God punished every sin presently, there would not only be a period put to churches, but to the world ; without patience, Adam had sunk into eternal anguish the first moment of his provocation, and the whole world of man kind in his loins had perished with him, and never seen the light. If this perfection had not interposed after the first sin, God had lost his end in the creation of the world, which he ' created not in vain, but formed it to be inhabited,' Isa. xlv. 18. It had been inconsistent with the wisdom of God to make a world to be inhabited, and destroy it upon sin, when it had but two principal inhabitants in it ; the reason of his making the earth had been insignificant ; he had not had any upon earth to glorify him, without erect ing another world, which might have proved as sinful, and as quickly wicked as this. God should have always been pulling down and rearing up, creating and annihilating; one world would have come after another, as
* Qu. ' deceive ' ?— ED.
528 CHARNOCK'S WORKS. [NAHUM I. 3.
wave after wave in the sea. His patience stepped in to support the honour of God and the continuance of men, without which, one had been in part impaired, and the other totally lost.
4. He doth exercise patience for the continuance of the church. If he be not patient towards sinners, what stock would there be for believers to spring up from ? He bears with the provoking carriage of men, evil men ; because out of their loins he intends to extract others, which he will form for the
glory of his grace. He hath some unborn, that belong to the ' election of grace,' which are to be the seed of the worst of men. Jeroboam, the chief incendiary of the Israelites to idolatry, had an Abijah, in whom was found
' some good thing towards the Lord God of Israel,' 1 Kings xiv. 13. Had Ahaz been snapped in the first act of his wickedness, the Israelites had wanted so good a prince, and so good a man as Hezekiah, a branch of that wicked predecessor. What gardener cuts off the thorns from the rose-bush till he hath gathered the roses ? And men do not use to burn all the crab tree, but preserve a stock to engraft some sweet fruit upon. There could not have been a saint on earth, nor consequently in heaven, had it not been for this perfection. He did not destroy the Israelites in the wilderness, that he might keep up a church among them, and not extinguish the whole seed that were heirs of the promises and covenant made with Abraham. Had God punished men for their sins as soon as they had been committed, none would have lived to have been better, none could have continued in the world to honour him by their virtues ! Manasseh had never been a convert, and many brutish men had never been changed from beasts to angels, to praise and acknowledge their Creator. Had Peter received his due recompence upon the denial of his Master, he had never been a martyr for him ; nor had Paul been a preacher of the gospel, nor any else ; and so the gospel had not shined in any part of the world. No seed would have been brought in to Christ ; Christ is beholding immediately to this attribute for all the seed he hath in
the world. It is 'for his name's sake' that he doth 'defer his anger,' and for his 'praise' that he doth refrain from 'cutting us off,' Isa. xlviii. 9. And in the next chapter follows a prophecy of Christ. To overthrow man kind for sin, were to prevent the spreading a church in the world. . A woman that is guilty of a capital crime, and lies under a condemning sentence, is
reprieved from execution for her being with child. It is for the child's sake the woman is respited, not for her own ; it is for the elect's sake in the loins
of transgressors, that they are a long time spared, and not for their own : Isa.
Ixv. 8, 9, ' As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one saith, Destroy
it not ; for a blessing is in it : so will I do for my servants' sake, that I may not destroy them all ; as a husbandman spares a vine for some good
clusters in it.' He had spoke of vengeance before, yet he would reserve some, from whom he would bring forth those that should be inheritors of his mountains ; that he might make up his church of Judea, Jerusalem being a mountainous place, and the type of the church in all ages. What is the reason he doth not level his thunder at the heads of those for whose
destruction he receives so many petitions from ' the souls under the altar' ? Rev. vi. 9, 10. Because God had others to write a testimony for him in their own blood, and perhaps out of the loins of those for whom vengeance was so earnestly supplicated. And God, as the master of a vessel, lies
patiently at anchor till the last passenger he expects be taken in.*
5. For the sake of his church, he is patient to wicked men. The tares are patiently endured till the harvest, for fear in the plucking up the one there might be some prejudice done to the other. Upon this account he spares
* Smith on Creed, p. 404.
I. 3.] GOD'S PATIENCE. 529
some who are worse than others, whom he crusheth by signal judgments. The Jews had committed sins worse than Sodom, for the confirmation of
which we have God's oath, Ezek. xvi. 48; and more by half than Samaria or the ten tribes had done, ver. 51 ; yet God spared the Jews, though he destroyed the Sodomites. What was the reason, but a large remnant of righteous persons, more clusters of good grapes, were found among them than grew in Sodom ? Isa. i. 9. A few more righteous in Sodom had damped the lire and brimstone designed for that place, and a remnant of such in Judea was a bar to that fierceness of anger which otherwise would have quickly consumed them. Had there been but ten righteous in Sodom, divine patience had still bound the arms of justice, that it should not have prepared its brimstone, notwithstanding the clamour of the sins of the multitude. Judea was ripe for the sickle, but God would put a lock upon the torrent of his judgments, that they should not flow down upon that wicked place, to make them a desolation and a curse, as long as tender-hearted Josiah lived, who had humbled himself at the threatening, and wept before the Lord, 1 Kings xxii. 19, 20. Sometimes he bears with wicked men, that they might exercise the patience of the saints, Rev. xiv. 12. The whole time of the forbearance of antichrist in all his intrusions into the temple of God, invasions of the rights of God, usurpations of the office of Christ, and be smearing himself with the blood of the saints, was to give them an oppor tunity of patience. God is patient towards the wicked, that by their means he might try the righteous. He burns not the wisp till he hath scoured his vessels, nor lays by the hammer till he hath formed some of his matter into an excellent fashion. He useth the worst men as rods to correct his
people, before he sweeps the twigs out of his house. God sometimes uses the thorns of the world as a hedge to secure his church, sometimes as instru ments to try and exercise it. Howsoever he useth them, whether for security
or trial, he is patient to them for his church's advantage. 6. When men are not brought to repentance by his patience, he doth longer exercise it to manifest the equity of his future justice Tipon them. As wisdom is justified by her obedient children, so is justice justified by the rebels against patience ; the contempt of the latter is the justification of the former. The apostles were ' unto God a sweet savour of Christ in them that