Divine Sovereignty in the Thought of Stephen Charnock
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Divine Sovereignty
in the Thought of
Stephen Charnock
“The Puritans,” wrote Macaulay, “were men whose mind had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests . . . . Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an over-ruling providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the great Being for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute.” Of none was this more true than of Stephen Charnock. He may lack the monumental erudition of Owen, or the metaphysical brilliance of Howe, or the awful earnestness of Baxter, but nevertheless his writings are of the highest class, and Toplady wrote of his Existence and Attributes of God, “I have met with many treatises on the divine perfections; but with none which in any way equals that of Mr. Charnock. Perspicuity and depth; metaphysical sublimity and evangelical simplicity; immense learning and plain, but irrefragable reasoning; conspire to render that performance one of the most inestimable products that ever did honour to the sanctified judgment and genius of a human being.”
Of Charnock’s life little is known. Born in London in 1628, he graduated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge; obtained a fellowship at New College, Oxford, in 1650; and in 1656 moved to Ireland, where he was chaplain to the Governor, Henry Cromwell, the Protector’s son. For fifteen years after the Restoration he lived in obscurity; then, in 1675, we find him again in a pastoral charge, sharing the pulpit of Crosby Hall, London, with Thomas Watson, the ejected minister of St. Stephen’s, Walbrook, and author of A Body of Divinity. Charnock died in 1680, aged 52.
Almost all his works were published posthumously by his friends. A Discourse on Divine Providence appeared within a few months of his death in 1680, followed by his Existence and Attri-butes in 1682 and other works after a longer interval. The theme of divine sovereignty runs through them all. This study, however, will be confined mainly to what is contained in the Discourse on Providence and the Existence and Attributes—in the latter work, in the Discourses on God’s Power and Dominion especially.
Charnock’s teaching on this subject might well be summarised by quoting the Westminster Confession (3.1–2): “God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions; yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass under such conditions.” It is noteworthy that this statement links God’s sovereignty with His omnipresence and omniscience. Charnock does the same. “Let us have right notions of the omnipresence of God,” he wrote (Works, 1864, 1:454). “Wheresoever we move, we are in God. As there is not a moment but we are under his mercy, so there is not a moment that we are out of his presence. Let us therefore look on nothing without thinking who stands by, without reflecting on him in whom it lives, moves and has its being.” And he insists that God is all-knowing also. “No thought is hid, no lust is secret, but the eye of God beholds this, and that, and the other . . . We may exclude the sun from peeping into our solitudes, but not the eye of God from beholding our actions” (1:450). God knows the future as well as the present and past, and all things possible as well as all things actual; and this knowledge lies at the very root of His omnipotence, so that Charnock can say, “To deny God knowledge is to dash out the Scripture and demolish the Deity” (1:463).
This brings us to the subject of this paper proper—a subject which Charnock regarded as immensely important, for “the consideration of God as the supreme Lord is the foundation of all religion” (2:485). Again, “If God hath an extensive dominion over the whole world, this ought to be often meditated on, and acknowledged by us . . . We should bear a sense of this always upon our spirits, and be often in the thoughts of it in our retirements. We should fancy that we saw God upon his throne in his royal garb, and great attendants about him, and take a view of it, to imprint an awe on our spirits” (2:483).
Charnock analyses the notion of divine sovereignty into two strands: power, or strength, and authority, or dominion. These he distinguishes as follows: “We commonly mean by the power of God, the strength of God, whereby he is able to effect his purposes; by the authority of God, we mean the right he hath to act what he pleases. Omnipotence is his physical power, whereby he is able to do what he will; Dominion is his moral power, whereby it is lawful for him to do what he will” (2:407). Of the latter he writes, “There is a three-fold dominion of God: 1. Natural, which is absolute over all creatures, and is founded in the nature of God as creator. 2. Spiritual or gracious, which is a dominion over his church as redeemed, and (is) founded in the covenant of grace. 3. A glorious kingdom at the winding up of all, wherein he shall reign over all, either in the glory of his mercy, as over the glorified saints, or in the glory of his justice in the condemned devils and men” (2:407). Charnock develops the thought that God’s dominion over His creation is founded upon His sovereignty as Creator. “The relation of an entire Creator induceth the relation of an absolute Lord; he that giveth being, life, motion, that is the sole cause of the being of a thing which was before nothing, that had nothing to concur with him, nothing to assist him, but by his sole power commands it to stand up into being, is the unquestionable lord and proprietor of that thing . . . And by this act of creation, which extended to all things, he became universal sovereign over all things” (2:411). As proprietor of His creation, it is His prerogative to make laws for His creatures. “God as a king enacts laws by his own proper authority, and his law is a declaration of his own sovereignty, and of man’s moral subjection to him and dependence on him. His sovereignty doth not appear so much in his promises as in his precepts” (2:427). He has authority and power justly to punish those who transgress His laws, or alternatively to pass over in mercy offences against them; and both these activities are further declarations of His sovereignty.
God the Creator rules and governs all His creatures by His sovereign power. Of His rule over the inanimate and brute creation, Charnock writes, “It is one of his titles to be the preserver of beasts as well as men, Nehemiah 9:6. He is the great caterer for all creatures, Psalm 104:21. They attend on him for their daily portion, and what they gather and meet with in their pursuit is God’s gift to them, v. 27, 28 . . . . He acts them by a commandment and imprinted law upon their natures . . . They observe their stations, the law God hath set them, as if they had a rational knowledge of their duty in their particular motions, Psalm 104:19. Sometimes he makes them instruments of his ministry to us, sometimes executioners of his judgments” (1:14). Things apparently fortuitous are all in reality ordained of God and directed by His wisdom. “Providence is the great clock, keeping time and order, not only hourly, but instantly, to its own honour” (1:17).
Naturally Charnock is most interested in the way in which God governs the affairs of men. Like all the Puritans, he believes that every thought and action of every man is with the concurrent knowledge and will of God. When a man sins, he does so by divine permission; God is able either to restrain his sin or to let him do the evil that is in his heart. Similarly, if a man does a right act, it is because God has moved him to do so. Thus every deed of man, and all his circumstances, are determined by the sovereign hand of God. This is true of all men, the ungodly and rebellious no less than the saints. “When the hearts of men are so numerous, their thoughts so various and different from one another, yet he hath a key to those millions of hearts, and with infinite power, guided by an infinite wisdom, he draws them into what channels he pleases for the gaining his own ends” (2:141). “God having a sovereignty over the will in the manner of its acting, causeth it to will what he wills, as to the outward act, and the outward manner of performing it” (2:451). “As a man manages a staff which is in his own power, so doth God manage wicked men for his own holy purposes, and they can go no further than God gives them licence. . . . How great is that power that curbs, bridles or changes as many headstrong horses at once and every minute, as there are sons of Adam on the earth!”(1:17). Charnock considers that some Scripture incidents, e.g., the events of the book of Esther (the one book of Scripture in which God’s name is not even mentioned!), show God’s sovereign overruling of wicked men so plainly that, even if Scripture did not declare it to be so, they could not reasonably be ascribed to anything but God’s direct action.
Men’s callings and stations in life are equally in God’s hand: “If the hairs of every man’s head fall under his sovereign care, the calling of every man, wherein he is to glorify God, and serve his generation . . . falls under his dominion . . . Though our callings are our work, yet they are by God’s order, wherein we are to be faithful to our great master and ruler” (2:455). “His sovereignty is manifest in the bestowing much wealth and honour upon some, and not vouchsafing it to the more industrious labours and attempts of others. His right to dispose of the goods of every particular person is unquestionable. He doth no wrong to any man
. . . if he gives or takes away, he meddles with nothing but what is his own more than ours” (2:447). And God rules the affairs of nations with the same absolute sovereignty as He does the private affairs of ordinary men: “All those changes in the face of the world, the revolutions of empires, the desolating and ravaging wars which are often immediately the birth of the vice, ambition and fury of princes, are the royal acts of God as governor of the world . . .” (2:451).
Consider now, against this background of God’s rule over all nature, His redemptive sovereignty in grace. This sovereignty appears first in His forming and executing the plan of redemption in and through Christ. “The whole gospel,” says Charnock, “is nothing else but a declaration of God’s sovereign pleasure concerning Christ, and concerning us in him; it is therefore called the ‘mystery of his will,’ Epheshians 1:9; the will of God as distinct from the will of Christ, a purpose in himself, not moved thereunto by any; the whole design was framed in the deity, and (is) as much the purpose of his sovereign will as the contrivance of his immense wisdom” (2:457). Sovereignty appears in God’s appointment of His Son to redeem: “as God was at liberty to create or not to create, so he was at liberty to redeem or not to redeem, and at liberty whether to appoint Christ to this work, or not . . . ”(2:458). Sovereignty further appears throughout the Redeemer’s earthly existence: in the circumstances of His birth, His life, the manner of His death, and most especially in His resurrection. We see it in the transference of our sins to His head. Moreover, “the sovereignty of God appears in exalting Christ to such a sovereign dignity . . . to obscure his own authority in a sense, and take into association with him, or vicarious subordination to him, the human nature of Christ as united to the divine, not only lifting it above the head of all the angels, but giving that person in our nature an empire over them, whose nature was more excellent than ours . . . The sovereignty of God is paramount in all that Christ has done as a priest, or shall do as a king” (2:460).
We see God’s sovereignty also, Charnock tells us, in the content of the gospel—incarnation, atonement, mercy contrary to merit without violation of justice; all doctrines wholly contrary to the world’s wisdom—and in the manner of its propagation. God sent out ignorant man to preach it, the weak of this world to confound the mighty in order to show that excellency of the power was of Himself. “They used no weapons but the doctrine they preached. . . . No less than a supernatural power could conduct them in their attempt, with such weak methods in human appearance” (2:156). “How great a testimony of God’s power is it, that from so small a cloud should rise so glorious a sun, that should chase before it the darkness and power of hell, triumph over the idolatry, superstition and profaneness of the world” (2:158).
God’s sovereignty appears further in the application of redemption to sinful men. This is a fruit of sovereign election, free and unconditional. “He hath set apart some from eternity, wherein he will display the invincible efficacy of his grace, and thereby infallibly bring them to the fruition of glory, Ephesians 1:4. Why doth he write some names in the book of life, and leave out others? . . . The apostle tells us, it is the pleasure of his will” (2:433). “It could not be any merit in the creature that might determine God to choose him” (2:434), for the creature had none; “nor could it be any foresight of works to be done in time by them, or of faith” (2:435), since both the latter were of his enabling. “Election is the cause of faith, and not faith the cause of election . . . men are not chosen because they believe, but they believe because they are chosen . . . Well, then, there is no possible way to lay the original foundation of this act of election and preterition in anything but the absolute sovereignty of God” (2:435). God’s sovereignty is seen, too, in His dealings with Jews and Gentiles. His long-continued limitation of mercy to the Jews, “leaving the rest of the world as a barren wilderness, can be placed on no other account originally than that of the unaccountable sovereignty of his love to them.” Through Israel’s fall, the Gentiles were enriched, but again not through any merit, for if the Jews were bad, the Gentiles were worse, steeped in idolatry. “There is something of justice in the case of the Jews’ rejection, nothing but sovereignty in the Gentiles’ reception into the Church” (2:442).
The sinner’s regeneration and conversion, in accordance with God’s electing purpose, is equally an act of sovereignty. “It is resembled to the most magnificent act of divine power that God ever put forth, viz., that in the resurrection of our Saviour, Ephe-sians 1:19, wherein there was more than an ordinary impression of might” (2:159). Conversion is a divine act of extraordinary might, for, “there is in every natural man a stoutness of heart, a stiff-neck unwillingness to good, forwardness to evil. Infinite power quells this stoutness, demolisheth these strongholds . . . routs those armies of turbulent nature. To turn the floods of the sea is not such an act of power as to turn the tide of the heart.” “As conversion is wrought against the inclinations of nature, so against a multitude of corrupt habits rooted in the souls of men . . . To dispossess man of his self-esteem and self-excellency, to make room for God in the heart where there was none but for sin, as dear to him as himself, to hurl down the pride of nature, to make stout imaginations stoop to the cross, to make desires of self-advancement sink under a zeal for the glorifying of God and an over-ruling design for his honour, is not to be ascribed to any but an outstretched arm wielding the sword of the Spirit” (2:161). Charnock describes the manner of conversion thus: “The power is so efficacious, that nothing can vanquish it, and so sweet, that none did ever complain of it. The almighty virtue displays itself invincibly, yet without constraint, compelling the will without offering violence to it . . . not forcing it, but changing it; not dragging it, but drawing it . . . ”(2:162).
God’s sovereignty appears also in His preservation of the regenerate in faith and grace. “As the providence of God is a manifestation of his power in a continued creation, so the preservation of grace is a manifestation of his power in a continued regeneration . . . God doth more magnify his power in continuing a believer in the world, a weak and half-rigged vessel in the midst of so many sands whereon it might be split, so many rocks whereon it might dash, so many corruptions within, and so many temptations without, than if he did immediately transport him into heaven . . .” (2:163). God exhibits His sovereignty by overruling all circumstances for His people’s good, so that “that which in its own nature is an injury, by God’s ordering puts on the nature of a mercy; and what is poison in itself, by the almighty art becomes a sovereign medicine” (1:71). Persecutions would naturally tend to the church’s detriment, but God orders them otherwise, so that in the event “God’s vine thrives the better for pruning” (1:78). Afflictions are used to teach a man to love, trust, and pray to God more; to despise the things of this world and set his heart on things above. Thus “they can no more be said to be evil than the fire which refines the gold, and prepares it for a prince’s use” (1:36). Even a believer’s lapses into sin are made a blessing to him: “God, by permitting the lapses of men, doth often make them despair of their own strength to subdue their enemies, and rely upon the strength of Christ, wherein God hath laid up power for us, and so become stronger in that strength which God hath ordained for them” (2:38).
So much for the positive aspects of Charnock’s teaching. Let us now see how he answers five objections, raised then as now, against this doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of God.
The first is that it represents the rule of God as an arbitrary and unprincipled tyranny. Charnock replies by refusing to accept the separation of God’s attributes which the objection assumes. “Since he is his own rule, and his nature is infinitely wise, holy and righteous, he cannot do a thing but what is unquestionably agreeable with wisdom, justice and purity” (2:418). Again, “you may as soon dash in pieces his throne, as separate his goodness from his sovereignty” (2:422). If his acts seem unwise or unjust, that is because in our finitude and dulness we have failed to fathom them, and missed their true rationale.
The second objection appeals to the unequal distribution of God’s gifts to man: if this is sovereignly willed, is not the Sovereign unjust? Charnock’s reply is an application of the principle just stated to this specific case. To judge God’s providential action is presumptuously to question His wisdom, and to impugn His deity: may He not do what He will with His own? Also, the inequalities are less than might at first appear. Great possessions do not always bring great happiness, as the rich young ruler found. Nor is it all ill with the righteous under affliction; affliction, as we saw, may profit them, and the eternal blessings which God gives them far outweigh any temporary temporal advantages enjoyed by worldly men at present.
The third objection is stated as a question: “If God’s providence orders all things . . . how will you free God from being the author of sin?” In reply, Charnock reaffirms as axiomatic that “God hath a hand about all the sinful actions in the world” (1:25)—i.e., all human actions whatsoever, for none are sinless—but insists that His permission of them as acts does not imply either His causing or His approving of them as sins. Of God’s secret will to allow sin to enter the world, he writes, “He doth not properly will it, but he wills not to hinder it, to which by his omnipotence he could put a bar” (2:222). Of sins themselves, he has this to say: “God supports the faculties wherewith a man sinneth, and supports a man in that act wherein he sinneth, but concurs not to the sinfulness of that act.” It is man’s evil intention that makes an act sinful, and for this man is responsible; God enables man to do what his evil nature prompts him to do, but is not pleased with it. “God wills the permission of sin. He doth not positively will sin, but he positively wills to permit it. And though he doth not approve of sin, yet he approves of that act of his will whereby he permits it.” “This act of permission,” Charnock adds, “is not a mere and naked permission, but such a one as is attended with a certainty of the event”—i.e., an act of foreordination: for “though the will of God about sin was permissive, yet the will of God about that glory he would promote by the defect of the creature was positive . . . and therefore he did wisely and righteously order all things to the accomplishment of his great and gracious purposes” (2:223).
The fourth objection is as follows: If God concurs in the commission of every sin, and could if He so willed prevent it, and if none can repent and believe unless He draw them, is He not unjust to punish for sin? No, says Charnock; for it is not God’s permission of sin that causes sin, but the sinner’s own corruption. God never commands, inspires, or necessitates man to sin. The most He does is to withdraw restraining grace from those who first withdraw from Him. “Who will blame the physician for deserting the patient who rejects his counsel, will not follow his prescriptions, but dasheth his physic against the wall? No man will blame him, no man will say that he is the cause of the patient’s death . . . And who can justly blame God in this case, who never yet denied supplies of grace to any that sincerely sought it at his hands?” (2:240).
The fifth objection is that the doctrine stultifies prayer. If all is predetermined by God from the beginning, what effect can our prayers have? Why pray at all? Charnock’s answer is that the doctrine, so far from inhibiting prayer, should prompt it. “Let us learn to have adoring thoughts of, not murmuring fancies against, the sovereignty of God; to acknowledge it with thankfulness in what we have, to implore it with a holy submission in what we want. To own God as a sovereign in a way of dependence, is the way to be owned by him as subjects in a way of favour” (2:445). Prayer is an expression of desire, an acknowledgment of need, a profession of dependence, and a recognition that the remedy is of God’s hand alone. God “is pleased with prayer, which is an acknowledgment of his dominion . . . for prayer, in the notion of it, imports this much: that God is the rector of the world, that he takes notice of human affairs, that he is a careful, just, wise governor, a storehouse of blessing, a fountain of goodness to the indigent, and a relief to the oppressed. What have we reason to fear, when the Sovereign of the world gives us liberty to approach to him, and lay open our case?” (2:482). And our prayers have a necessary place in the outworking of God’s purposes: for “when God would do any mighty work in the world, he stirs up his people to pray for it; and their prayers by his own appointment have a mighty influence upon the government of the world” (1:92).
This brings us to the “uses”—practical applications—which Charnock draws from his exposition of the sovereignty of God. “This doctrine,” he declares, “hath an influence upon our whole course; there is nothing we meet with but an act of providence, and there is no act of providence but calls for some particular duty. Is there any good we want? We must seek it at his hands, we must depend on him for it; we must prescribe no methods to him, but leave the conduct of it to his own wisdom. Is it a cross-providence, and contrary to our desires and expectations? Murmur not at it. Is it either good or bad, and present? We must study to understand it. Is it a good and present? Give God the glory of it” (1:54). The doctrine assures us that in affliction “our evils can never be so great to oppress us as his power is great to deliver us” (2:180); and that in temptation, “though Satan’s power be great, yet God suffers him not to tempt as much as his diabolical appetite would . . . and the divine power tempers the other’s malice and gives the creature victory” (2:140). Thus the doctrine affords firm ground for present confidence and future hope. God is able to perform all that He has promised. He who purposed from all eternity the salvation of the elect will not lose them now. “Our keeping is not in our own weak hands, but in the hands of him who is mighty to save” (2:181).
Above all, however, the sovereignty of God is a doctrine to humble us, to give us a true view of the divine majesty and of our own nothingness, to teach us awe and reverence. “The greatness of God claims an awful and inviolable respect from his creatures, in what way soever he doth dispose of them” (2:499). Reverence before God was the heart of the Puritan temper, and it is this, more than anything, that imparts to Puritan writings, Charnock’s as much as any, their peculiar nobility and unction. It is in such matters as this that the Puritans have most to teach us; may God enable us to learn from them, to our profit and to His glory.