---- CHAPTER II: An explication how this assertion is to be understood
thus mentioned, and these two alone mentioned, to speak the whole sum of all true practical religion, so of the two you find the special indigitation to be set over and put on that latter of these characters in both places, 'upon them that hope in his mercy.' Those, and those especially, that are eminent in that grace it is that 'his eyes are upon,' and whom he hath pleasure in. And let this be sufficient once for all to strike off the presumptuousness of impenitent sinners, that resolve to go on in sin, from laying on impure hands upon these 'holy mercies' (as the mercies of Christ are styled by the apostle, Acts
13:34, out of Isa. 55:3, see the margin of your Bibles). And finally, to roll the fatal stone upon the sepulchre of such sinners as shall thus presume on mercy, take but that one scripture, Deut. 29:18–20, 'If any man or woman hearing the words of this curse' (which is there pronounced upon one's turning away from the Lord after the tender of the covenant of grace, published in that and the following chapter, as Rom. 10 shews), 'shall bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart: the anger of the Lord shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven.' And this, to be sure, is load enough to press down such sinners above any other to the very bottom of hell, who, bearing themselves upon that grace made known and tendered them, shall wilfully go on in sin without repentance and turning unto God.
CHAPTER II
An explication how this assertion is to be understood 1. On the negative. Not as if alone considered, the mercies in God (as they are abstractly in God's nature) were a sole foundation for faith, but as being joined with an indefinite declaration of his good will to us men; and in that conjuncture all the mercies that are in God do
flow in to support our faith. This negative part of this explication confirmed from the instance of the devils, and of our first parents, until God's revelation of his good will to mankind made to them. 2.
The positive ground of faith laid open, and the reason why a declaration of his will is necessary.—Two premissory cautions more added, for the understanding the assertion.
Ere I come to the proof of the assertion, it is necessary to state and explain it, to prevent mistakes.
And first, on the negative; it is not as if the knowledge of the mercies in God's nature were alone a single adequate ground of faith, though we could attain unto never so enlarged apprehensions thereof. This negative is evident, 1. Because where and whom God hath absolutely and peremptorily, and for ever, by a special bar and proviso, declared, and excepted from mercy and pardon, there and unto those all the mercies that are in God's nature, though known by them, can no way be drawn in, or ever become an object or ground for their faith, such as shall anyway benefit those persons declared against. This is the case of the devils, who are shut out from mercy; and this not only by that single bolt of the law, 'Cursed be every one that continues not,' &c.; for that doth alike shut us men up, until faith, that is, the gospel, be revealed; but they have that, and a farther and stronger bolt and bar, never to be shot back, or rather (as the apostle metaphors it), 'everlasting chains,' of God's making, never to be broken or knocked off, that hold them fast under darkness. Which chains are superadded to that single sentence or curse, which merely the law pronounceth against them, for that alone might have been annulled through a grace of pardon, as well as to us men it is; but God did further declare irrecoverably against them, and each of them, personally, on the negative, that he will never be merciful to them: 'He spared them not,' says the apostle, 'but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;' he gave them no quarter. And thereupon some divines have said (which I will
not dispute) that despair of mercy, taken abstractly for this single apprehension in their understandings, that God will have no mercy on them; and that apprehension also, as it is accompanied simply with no hope of mercy, that this alone would be no sin in them, seeing it is but conformed unto what is the truth, which God hath revealed to them concerning themselves; only the consequences hereof in them are the sins, as blasphemy and the like.
2. But however, secondly, I may more safely assert, whatsoever the devils do believe, or may be supposed to believe, of the mercies that are in God's nature, that yet, however, their faith thereof doth no way capacitate them to lay hold upon them for pardon, but cause them the more to tremble at the thoughts that they are for ever utterly excluded, whilst they revolve within themselves that such riches of mercy are in God, but in nowise do concern them, and withal to think
(which hath the sting in it) that all those mercies should be 'kept,' and entirely 'reserved' (as God's expression in the second commandment is) for the sinners of the sons of men, while themselves, on the contrary, are 'kept' and reserved under those
'chains unto judgment,' as the words of two apostles are, 2 Pet. 2:4, Jude 6. But, that these apprehensions should enrage and provoke them unto that resolved and obstinate malice and revenge, which they bear against God, these all, I am sure (without any debate), are sins, yea, the highest kinds of sinnings, and yet are but the consequents of that despair fore-mentioned, which in itself alone would be no sin.
3. Nor yet, thirdly, would the single knowledge of all the mercies that are in the nature of God have been a full and sole ground of actual positive faith, unto us sinners of the sons of men, had not God after the fall first unbosomed himself, and declared his purposes of mercy towards us in his Messiah. Our first parents, during that doleful space of interim (suspension shall I call it) between their fall and that ever-to-be-blessed declaration let fall by God, of his good will to men, in the promise of the blessed 'seed of the woman,' &c., until then, I say, although they were not utterly debarred upon their sinning, as
the devils were upon theirs, yet they had not any ground or footing for a positive act of faith, for forgiveness: notwithstanding we should or might suppose them to have known, and (after their fall) to have retained, and continued to have known or remembered that infinite goodness, which is the spring of mercies in God, to have been in the divine nature, as well as any other divine perfections; and that possibly that goodness might be dissolved and melted into mercy and forgiveness unto sinners, such as now themselves were become.
But yet still the curse of the law, 'Thou shalt die the death,' standing in full force and full butt (as we say) against them; and that being the whole of the mind and will of God, which at that present was revealed to them; therefore they had no 'door of faith' and hope in any way open before them, but were, as to their own apprehension, utterly shut up, unless some 'word of faith' should be further made known to them. God had not let fall the least intimation of mercy, neither by proclaiming his nature to be merciful, nor as yet had he said, 'I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious;' nor was there any instance or example of any one of the sons of men (for, alas! there were but those two extant) whom he had de facto pardoned, which might give them any encouragement or dawn of hope.
But notwithstanding, perhaps it might be proposed as a question that would require a just debate, whether an utter despair (such as we speak of to be in the devils), singly considered, and cut off from the cursed consequents fore-mentioned, had not yet in them been properly a sin during that interval, which in the devils simply and alone it is not. And the ground of the demur is this apparent difference between the devils' condition and theirs, during that space, that God had not negatively pronounced of them, I will never be merciful, as of the devils he had from the first of their sinning. Yet still this must be said, that they had not the smallest twig for a positive act of faith to 'set foot upon' (I allude to that in Noah's flood): but in that condition of theirs, nothing in sight did appear, but an overflowing deluge of wrath, which did environ and overspread them, and their posterity in and with them, through the
first curse, not as yet taken off, nor mitigated by any new declaration of God. This for the negative state of the assertion.
II. For the positive ground of faith. Blessed, yea, for ever blessed be our God, who hath not only by that promise to them, but with millions of other promises and declarations since made to us, thrown open all the windows of heaven, and freely exposed all the mercies in his heart and nature unto us the sinful sons of men, 'Peace on earth, good will towards men,' &c., not in hell, nor to the devils: and withal hath given an invitation, nay, a command, to hope in them; and hath taught us to know him by this of his mercy, above all his perfections; yea, and pronounced of our knowledge and faith thereon, that he esteems it to be our glory, yea, his own greatest glory, that we should
'know him to be a God that exerciseth loving-kindness, righteousness, and judgment in the earth' (on earth still, not in hell); and 'that therein he doth delight,' Jer. 9:24. Moreover, in that he hath not, by any express proviso or exception, declared against any sort of sinners, or any individual person of the sons of men; so as to say of any such, or such, I will never be merciful to, nor pardon them
(as against the devils he did), that sort only excepted that sin against the Holy Ghost; thereby it comes to pass, that not any one can say, I am debarred or excluded. And hence a wide door for hope and faith stands open, for any one to come in at. Nay, he further 'commands every man everywhere to repent,' upon the hopes of mercy, through the indefinite promulgation of it; adding withal, 'whosoever believeth and repenteth, he shall be saved,' laying at the gage for the performance thereof, all the mercies in his nature, by which we, through these declarations, have free access unto, and full liberty to plead them all afore him, and urge him with them. The product or issue of all which is, that the revelation of the mercies of his nature, thus joined with the declarations of his gracious willingness to shew mercy to us men, is now become a just and meet ground and object for a sinner's faith: whereas otherwise, like as breasts never so full, if there were not a teat, and a vent fitted to the child's mouth, they would never afford any succour to a perishing infant, so here in this case. And it is not an allusion foreign to the Scriptures, to compare
God's mercies and promises unto 'breasts of consolation.' And the reason of this conclusion is, because God's shewing or his actual exercising of mercy dependeth upon an act of his will, and is not a mere, sole, single effect of his nature. For if it were solely an act of his nature, it would have been, and would still be necessary for him to shew mercy on the devils: and therefore look as God's actual shewing mercy dependeth upon an act of his will,—'I will be merciful to whom
I will,' &c.—so some revelation or manifestation of his good will (at least indefinite to mankind) is necessary to our faith, and not merely the knowledge of the mercy in his nature; and as both concur to the effecting the thing, so also the apprehension of both should do unto our believing. And otherwise, 'Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor?' Rom. 11:34. And it is notorious that the apostle utters that maxim upon this very point of God's will, in shewing mercy, for which compare ver. 30–32.
I add unto these things concerning the stating of this assertion, these two premises more, for the practical understanding of it.
1. I must not be understood, as if that every time the soul doth exercise an act of faith, he must of absolute necessity take into his thoughts such an ample review of these mercies; and that otherwise it were not faith. No: for it often falls out, that in the exercise of believing, such things as are most fundamental to faith, and were at first explicitly taken in and considered by believers, are afterwards but as things taken for granted and supposed. And yet, notwithstanding, all those subsequent after-acts of faith are put forth in the strength of them. We may know that general principles of knowledge in any kind being once inlaid and preconceived, do yet virtually work, and the force of them conduces to the making of every conclusion, when yet we do not explicitly think of those principles.
And in like manner it comes to pass, that our souls do many times really act true faith upon particular promises of forgiveness, or the like promises, when yet we did not aforehand, or together therewith, revolve in our minds at large the thoughts of these mercies, which yet are to be always supposed the bottom of those promises, and
fundamental to our faith. And notwithstanding this, yet the belief of them doth secretly and really work and accompany such a faith: even as principles of knowledge, innate and taken for granted, are wont to do our improvements of knowledge from them, whilst those principles lie dormant as to our thinking, and yet those improvements grow up in the virtue and strength of them. We may see this in that one most fundamental principle of faith of all other, that there is a God; which being inlaid in the bottom of the heart of every believer, works in all particular acts of faith whatever; and they are all founded and borne up upon the strength and weight thereof, when itself, in the way of a formed proposition, is not discerned, nor brought forth into an explicit act or thought. And thus it falls out in the faith of forgiveness, it is always put forth in the force of the belief of those mercies, when yet the conceptions thereof lay hidden deep in the soul. Which to be so, may appear by this experiment: that all our faith for forgiveness may at any time be readily and finally resolved into the mercies of God, as the ultimum objectum in quod, as the ultimate object or foundation. This will be found if the heart will at any time call for the bottom-ground of its faith, or of its recourse unto God for forgiveness, and but ask of itself the reason why it so believes, Yet, 2. It still stands good (and is even sufficiently inferred from that which was last said) that the more ample diffused prospect, view, and contemplation of these mercies, which upon all great occasions
(especially in conflicts of believing) we can possibly make or attain to, is the most conducible expedite way to give an abundant evidence unto faith, and doth wonderfully hearten a broken-hearted sinner to lay hold upon any particular promise, especially of forgiveness; which otherwise comes but barely clad, in comparison of what it appears to be, when the riches of mercy (being apprehended with it) do environ and array it, which superadd wonderful allurements to our faith. And this assertion, as I said, is inferred even from what was spoken afore, viz., that if the tacit hidden belief of fundamental principles (such this is) do virtually, yet strongly, influence all subsequent acts of faith, then much more if there be an extensive