The Incomparableness of God in His Being, Attributes, Works and Word
George Swinnock, 1627-1673
"For who in the heavens can he compared to the Lord? Who among the sons of the mighty can be likened to the Lord?" Psalm 89:6
Table of Contents
1. The preface and meaning of the text
2. God is incomparable; 1. In his being
3. The incomparableness of God in his being. It is from itself, for itself, and wholly independent
4. God incomparable in his being, as he is absolutely perfect, universal, unchangeable
5. God incomparable in his being, as it is eternal and without composition
6. God incomparable in his being, as it is infinite and incomprehensible
7. God incomparable in his attributes, in his holiness, and wisdom
8. God incomparable in his attributes, in his knowledge and faithfulness
9. God incomparable in his mercy and patience
10. God incomparable in his attributes, as they are from him, as they are his essence, as they are all one in him, as they are in him in an infinite manner
11. God incomparable in his works, creation, and providence
12. God incomparable in the work of redemption; he can do all things
13. God incomparable in the manner of his working: he works irresistibly, arbitrarily
14. God incomparable in his working; he does the greatest things with ease, and without any help
15. God is incomparable in his word he speaks with incomparable authority, condescension, and efficacy
16. God is incomparable in his word: in its purity, mysteries, prophecies
17. God incomparable in his word, as it is converting, affrighting, and comforting
18. If God is incomparable, 1. How great is the malignity of sin, which despises, dishonors, and opposes this God!
19. If God be incomparable, how great is the madness and misery of impenitent sinners!
20. If God be incomparable, how monstrous is their pride who compare themselves to the incomparable God!
21. If God be incomparable, then incomparable service and worship is due to him
22. Labor for acquaintance with the incomparable God: motives to it
The knowledge of God is sanctifying, satisfying, saving
23. The means of acquaintance with God. A sense of our ignorance.
Attendance on the word. Fervent prayer
24. Exhortation to choose this incomparable God for our portion; with some motives thereunto
25. Exhortation to give God the glory of his incomparable excellency; with some considerations to enforce it
26. Comfort to them that have the incomparable God for their portion
The Epistle Dedicatory to Mr. Henry Ashurst and His Wife
Such is the excellency of the soul of man, that the very heathen, whose souls were almost wholly immersed in sensuality, and served but as salt to preserve their bodies for a time from putrefaction, according to the opinion of one of the most ingenious among them--have acknowledged the soul as a divine plant, a drop of the ocean of being, a ray of a deity; and the body but the case or cabinet of this jewel.
The dim rushlight of nature has enabled some of them to discern the spirituality, quick, comprehensive, self-reflective motions, and immortality of their specific forms, as they called their souls, and thence to conclude their worth and nobleness.
But the clear sunlight of Scripture advantages unto a fuller discovery of its excellency. It shows us its original, that it is of celestial extraction, created immediately by the Father of spirits, a beam of the Sun of righteousness, a bubble of the fountain of life, of a much higher descent than the house of clay and earthly tabernacle, the body, Genesis 2:7; Hebrews 12:9; Zechariah 12:1.
Scripture acquaints us with the soul's duration, that it runs parallel with the line of eternity, and swallows up years, and ages, and generations, and thousands of thousands, and millions of millions, as small drops and minutes and nothings, in the bottomless ocean and endlessness of its abode and continuance. When the body, like the sacrifice, falls to the earth and is turned into ashes--the soul, like the flame, aspires and ascends to God, Ecclesiastes 12:7; Philippians 1:23; Matthew 10:28, 22:31, 32.
Scripture manifests the soul's capacity, how no being is excepted from its consideration, all are within its compass and horizon; it can view every being with its intellectual eye. The soul is not bounded with corporeal beings, nor limited with material objects, nor circumscribed with created essences--but is capable of apprehending the first cause, the being of beings, the original of all things. It is able not only to retrospect upon its own motions, and to survey the several parts, and ranks, and orders, and rarities, and delicacies, and excellencies of the earth and this sublunary world, but also to ascend to the highest heavens, and behold the beautiful face of the blessed God, until it has looked itself into the very likeness, and thereby rendered itself fit and meet for his dearest love and eternal embraces.
The excellency of our souls eminently appears in its receptiveness of the divine image. Great princes do not stamp their image on mean things, such as brass and pewter, but on the most excellent metals, as silver and gold, Ephesians 4:23, 24; Colossians 3:10; Genesis 1:26. And its capableness of enjoying immediately the blessed God. To stand before kings does both speak and make a person honorable and worthy, Proverbs 22:29. God alone is the fountain of honor and the standard of excellency, Isaiah 43:5. Every being is his coin, and he stamps on it the rate it shall go at.
The holiness and happiness of
the rational creature consists in these two:
his happiness, in conformity to God;
his happiness, in communion with god.
And these two have a dependence on each other. Those alone who are like him, can enjoy him. 'If we say we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and the truth is not in us,' 1 John 1:6. Holiness, or the image of God, is not only an indispensable condition, without which no man shall enjoy God, Hebrews 12:14; John 3:3; but withal an absolutely necessary disposition, without which no man can enjoy God, Colossians 1:12; 2 Corinthians 5.
And as conformity disposes for communion, so communion increases conformity; vision causes assimilation:
in nature, Genesis 31:38, 39;
in grace, 2 Corinthians 3:18;
and in glory, 1 John 3:2.
Though the motions of the understanding and will are in some respect circular, yet the understanding is the first mover and the leading faculty, and so the knowledge of the blessed God is both antecedent to, and productive of, this image. Though the knowledge of creatures puffs up, pollutes, and so debases and destroys the soul, sinking it the deeper into Hell, as a vessel laden with silver and gold and the most precious commodities, when it miscarries, sinks the deeper for its weight and burden, 1 Corinthians 8:1; Luke 12:47, 48--yet the knowledge of God is humbling, advancing, purifying, and saving, Job 42; 2 Peter 3:18; John 17:3.
The incomparable excellency of the boundless blessed God is the subject of this treatise, which I present to you both as a testimony of the honor and service I owe to you, and of my desire to be instrumental for your spiritual and eternal good. The subject is the highest imaginable; and though the manner of handling it is plain and ordinary, and infinitely below and unfitting the divine majesty, 'For who can express his noble acts, or display all his praise,' Psalm 106:2—yet the matter of it does deserve, and may prevail for your acceptance of it.
If knowledge is the excellency of a man, and differentiates him from a beast--then surely divine knowledge, or the knowledge of God in Christ, is the excellency of a Christian, and differences him from other men. Our awe of, love to, and trust in the divine Majesty--are founded in the right knowledge of him. Men, the more they are known, the less they are esteemed; but the more the blessed God is known, the more he is prized, desired, and obeyed! Psalm 73:25; 76:7; 90:11; 9:10.
Our hatred of sin and contempt of the world, proceed from our acquaintance with God. He alone has hateful thoughts of sin, and self-loathing apprehensions because of it--who has seen the great and glorious, the good and gracious God, whose authority is despised, whose law is violated, whose name is dishonored, whose image is defaced, and whose love is abused by it! Job 42:6; Isaiah 6:5. He alone lives above this present evil world, and all the riches and honors and pleasures thereof, who can look beyond it to the infinite God, and those unsearchable riches and weights of glory, and rivers of pleasures that are in and with God. That which was rich and glorious and pleasant to a soul before, has now no worth, no glory, no pleasure--by reason of that wealth and glory and pleasure which does so infinitely exceeds in having and understanding God.
When the God of glory appeared to Abraham, he quickly and quietly left his country and kindred, and followed God, not knowing where he went, Genesis 12:1, 2; Acts 7:3. If the God of glory appear to your souls, you will soon wink upon these withering vanities, broken cisterns, and gilded nothings, and count them all but dung and dross, for the excellency of the knowledge of him in Christ.
You have begun well, go on and persevere in well-doing. I shall give you the same counsel which the holy apostle gives to those of whom he was persuaded that they had those things which accompanied salvation, Hebrews 6:9. 'Take heed lest there be in you an evil heart of unbelief, whereby you should depart away from the living God,' Hebrews 3:12. 'Look diligently, lest you should fail of the grace of God,' Hebrews 12:15. When false coin is common abroad, we are the more careful what money we take; when much false grace is up and down among us, and so many please themselves with their profession, or spiritual privileges, or sacred performances, or siding with this or that party, and form of worship, or the respect and repute they have with others; it concerns you to be the more suspicious of yourselves, lest you should fail of that grace of God which conforms the heart to the nature, and the life to the will and law of God.
SIR, You are descended of a
worthy, ancient, and religious family; your grandfather, as I have heard,
was eminent for holiness; your father is noted and honored for one that
fears God above many; you have hereby the more encouragement, advantage, and
engagement to exercise yourself to godliness. Tamerlane made it his practice
to read often the heroic deeds of his progenitors, not as proud of them, or
boasting in them, but as glorious patterns, to inflame his soul with a love
of their virtues. Man is a creature that is led more by the eye than the
ear, by patterns than by precepts; and no patterns are more prevalent than
of those whom nature and grace oblige us to esteem and affect. These
examples, above all others, as flaming beacons on a hill, call us to a stout
defense of virtue, when it is invaded by its enemies. Alexander, finding one
of his name cowardly, charged him to change his name, or to become valiant.
When one of the Scipios, descended of Scipio Africanus, became dissolute,
the Roman senate ordered him to put off that ring which he wore as the badge
of his noble family, because, by his wicked life, he was a reproach to it.
The truth is, a wicked son of a godly father, as Uriah, carries letters of
his own condemnation about him, causing the patterns and precepts of his
family to be auxiliaries to his own reproach and infamy; while the light and
luster of his ancestors renders his works of darkness the more gross and
palpable. I mention not these things as suspecting your integrity, but to
provoke and quicken you to the greater care and circumspection in your
carriage and conversation.
Mrs. Ashurst,
Your birth is honorable, but such honor without holiness extends not beyond
the meridian of this world; grace only is eternal glory.
That honor which is woven in the finest tapestry of earthly privileges will lose color, and fade away; but the knowledge of God is a possession forever. Nobility by parents is but nobility by parchment, and that is but skin-deep at most, and will waste with time. Godliness alone is that nobility which no age can consume, and which will run parallel with the line of eternity.
The whole earth has not a pleasanter sight than greatness joined with goodness. Greatness itself is venerable, but goodness joined with it, adds a new splendor and luster to it; as a sparkling diamond set in a gold ring, it attracts the eyes, and challenges a greater reverence and respect from all. Evil greatness is a swelling dropsy, a disease of the body politic, as intolerable a burden as the earth groans under; but grace and virtue are the more excellent and amiable by the greatness of the person in whom they dwell. It will be your crown and credit to prefer God before the world, to esteem holiness as the only beauty, and a title to the covenant as the only riches of your immortal soul.
You have both near and dear
relations, whose hearts will rejoice in your perseverance and progress in
the ways of God's commandments; that you may be helps to each other in the
best things, provoke one another to love, and to good works, live long
together on earth, and forever together in Heaven, is the prayer Of your
servant in the Lord,
George Swinnock
CHAPTER 1.
The preface and meaning of the text
It is certain, that our happiness in the other world will consist in part in our perfect knowledge of the blessed and boundless God: when we shall 'know him as we are known of him,' we shall be blessed as he is blessed; and when 'we shall see him as he is, we shall be like him' in purity and felicity; we shall be fully satisfied with his likeness and his love. Rich must be the delight which the most large and noble faculty of man, his understanding, shall receive, in its intimate acquaintance with, and clear and full apprehension of, the highest truth. And it is as certain, that our holiness in this world does not a little depend upon our knowledge of him, whose 'name alone is excellent.' None wander from him, prefer the flesh and world before him, and in their whole lives walk contrary to him, but from their ignorance of him. 'They are estranged from the life of God, (that is, a spiritual heavenly conversation,) through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts,' Ephesians 4:18. Dark corners of a house are filled with dust, dark cellars with vermin, and dark hearts with cursed lusts: none are enlarged in desires after God, or ravished with delight in God, or can cast their souls and all their concerns on God, but those that are acquainted with him. They who know his beauty and bounty, cannot but love him, and they who know his power and faithfulness, cannot but trust him; 'They who know your name will put their trust in you,' Psalm 9:10. Whence comes it to pass, that believers can trample on the riches and treasures, and wealth of this beggarly world, that they can lay their white and yellow earth, their silver and gold, at the apostles' feet, that they can suffer the spoiling of their goods, not only patiently, but joyfully, Hebrews 10:34, but from the knowledge of him who is true riches, Luke 16:11; substance, Proverbs 8:21; an enduring substance, Job 10:3–4; a bottomless mine of unsearchable riches, Ephesians 3:8? Whence is it, that they can refuse to be called the sons of king's daughters, that they can despise honors and preferments, spurn crowns and scepters under their feet, but from the knowledge of him who is their crown of glory, their diadem of renown, and the praise of all his saints, Hebrews 11:24, 25? That which to the sensual worldling is so glorious, has no glory in the believer's eye, by reason of the Lord of glory, who does so infinitely excel.
Whence is it, that they can hate father, mother, wife, child, liberty, yes, life itself, and leave all at the call and command of their Maker, but from the knowledge of him who is, as Elkanah said to Hannah, better to them than ten sons, than all relations, than the whole creation? Those stars vanish and disappear, when once the Sun of righteousness arises! How quickly, how quietly, without any hesitance or reluctance, will Abraham leave his country, and kindred, and father's house, when once 'the God of glory appears to him,' Acts 9:2–4. In a word, whence is it that 'they escape the pollutions of the world,' in which others are mired, drowned, and destroyed, 'but through the knowledge of God,' 2 Peter 2:20? Well may our Lord Jesus say, 'It is life eternal, to know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.' To know God affectionately, as our chief good, so as to give him our superlative esteem, and intensest love, is spiritual life here, in the habit or principle, as also in the act and exercise of it; and it is the beginning, seed, preparation, and way of our eternal life hereafter. But who can know that being which infinitely passes all knowledge? He who would know God fully, must be God himself; and he who would tell you what God is, in any measure answerable to his excellency, had need 'to know him as he is known of him.' And supposing I were able to speak of the perfection of God, as one that, like the great apostle, had been caught up 'into the third heavens:' I question whether, if I had a tongue to speak of him after that manner, you had ears to hear of him, or hearts to understand what I should speak. But though I am not able to speak, nor you to hear of God, according to his perfection, yet through the assistance of the Holy Spirit so much may be spoken and heard of him, as may tend to our present sanctification and future salvation. Though we cannot 'see him as he is,' yet we may see him as he is not; though the height of his being be above the reach of our understandings, we may get somewhat nearer to him, and indeed we have no other way while we are here, than by climbing upon the shoulders of all created excellencies, and there proclaiming, 'That none in the heavens is to be compared to the Lord, that none among the sons of the mighty is like unto the Lord.' In the words, the Psalmist compares God with, and prefers God before, the highest, the greatest in Heaven and earth.
In the words we have a comparison and a preference.
1. A comparison, and this is between God and those that are most excellent in Heaven, and the mightiest on earth.
2. A preference, of preferring God before whatever is excellent in Heaven or earth: the interrogation is a strong negation, as is frequent in Scripture, Proverbs 20:9; 'Who can say I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?' that is, none can say I have made my heart clean, or am pure from my sin; so Exodus. 15:11, 'Who is like to you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?' that is, none is like you among the gods, none is so glorious in holiness, so fearful in praises, such a wonder-working God as you are.
Thus the Psalmist understands the text; 'For who in the heavens is to be compared to the Lord? Who among the sons of the mighty can be likened to the Lord?' that is, none in the heavens, none among the sons of the mighty on earth is comparable to Jehovah.
I shall first give you the meaning of the words, and then lay down the doctrine, which will be the foundation of my discourse on the subject.
For; this causal particle gives the reason why saints and angels should join together in the praise of God. 'The heavens shall praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness also in the congregation of the saints: for who in the heavens is to be compared to the Lord?' verse 5. By the heavens, Calvin understands the holy angels, who rejoice in the church's welfare, and bless God for preserving his people, and performing his promises to them; and it is apparent by the apostle, that angels are present in the congregation of the saints, 1 Corinthians 11:11. And so this text adds another ground for their admiration of the great God; namely, his incomparable excellency. His high and matchless perfections call for high and matchless praises. Others take the text as a ground for the confirmation of the Psalmist's faith in the covenant God had made with him, mentioned verse 3, 4, namely, God's superiority over angels in Heaven, and men on earth; therefore they cannot hinder him in the accomplishment of his word, being infinitely inferior to him.
Who in the heavens? Who in the sky? Ainsworth reads it. In the clouds, is to be equaled, says Calvin, to Jehovah. Who in the higher clouds is equal to Jehovah.
Who in the heavens? that is, say some, in the starry heavens, among the celestial bodies, sun, moon, or stars; which were adored as gods, not only by the Persians, but also by some idolatrous Jews, because of their brightness and beauty, their luster and glory. Which of all those famous lamps, and heavenly luminaries, is to be compared to the Father of lights, and Sun of righteousness? They may glisten like glowworms in the night of paganism, among them who are covered with the mantle of darkness, but when this Sun arises, and day appears, they all vanish and disappear.
Who in the heavens? that is, say others, in the Heaven of heavens, the highest, the third heavens, among the celestial spirits, cherubim and seraphim, angels and archangels, principalities and powers, thrones and dominions? Who among the innumerable company of angels? who among those pure, those perfect spirits, who are the most ancient, the most honorable house of the creation, is to be compared to the Father of spirits? Though angels are glorious creatures, considered simply, and in themselves, in respect of their power, wisdom, purity, and beauty; yet if they be considered comparatively with the blessed God, I may say of them as the apostle does of the Jewish worship, which was glorious, by reason of its divine institution, in comparison with the Christian worship: 2 Corinthians
3:10, 'Even that which was glorious, had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excels.' Is to be compared to Jehovah? Is to be likened to Jehovah? Is to be equaled to Jehovah? Is to be put in the scales, and worthy to be weighed with Jehovah, that being of beings, that God of gods.
To Jehovah? This name Jehovah is the chief and most proper name of God. It signifies that being which was, is, and is to come; which is always the same, and the cause of all other beings, Revelation 1:4, 6; Psalm 102:28; Acts 17:28, and which gives a being to his word and promises. In Heaven there is among glorious angels no such being.
Who among the sons of the mighty? Who among the sons of the strong, Jun. reads it. Among the sons of the gods, says Calvin; so the Seventy read it, and understand, with the Chaldee paraphrase, angels, who are called sons of God, Job 1:6, and 38:7. But we, having understood angels, the best and highest in Heaven, by the first interrogation, 'Who in the heavens is to be compared to the Lord?' it may be most convenient to understand in this place, by sons of the mighty, the best and highest on earth, the greatest and most gracious princes and potentates, who are higher by head and shoulders than others. These are called gods, and sons of the Most High, or Almighty, Psalm 82:6. And hereby the prophet challenges both worlds, Heaven and earth, to bring forth any that may equal or compare with Jehovah.
Can be likened to the Lord? Is such a being as he is, can speak, or act as he does; is in any respect worthy to be named with him.
CHAPTER 2.
1. God is incomparable in his being.
The doctrine which I shall raise out of the words is this, That God is incomparable; or, there is none among the highest, the holiest, in Heaven or earth, like unto Jehovah. Take the greatest, the most excellent of beings in this or the other world, yet they come infinitely short of this being of beings: Psalm 86:8, 'Among the gods there is none like unto you, O Lord.' Mark, the psalmist does not choose a weak adversary for God to contend with and conquer, but the strongest. He does not compare God with the meanest and lowest, but even with the highest, and prefers God before them. 'Among the gods there is none like unto you, O Lord.' 1. Among those that are gods by unjust usurpation, as evil angels are, who are called the princes of the powers of the air, Ephesians 2:2; and the gods of this world, 2 Corinthians 4:4. Or, as antichrist, who 'exalts himself above all that is called God, or is worshiped; so that he as God sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God,' 2 Thessalonians 2:4. Among these, there is none like unto you, O Lord. These unclean beasts are unworthy to be mentioned with the high, the holy God.
2. Among those that are gods by men's erroneous persuasions and opinions, as idols, and those deities which the heathen worship, there is none like to you, o Lord. 'Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands: They have mouths, but they speak not, eyes have they, but they see not. They have ears, but they hear not; noses have they, but they smell not: They have hands, but they handle not; feet have they, but they walk not, neither speak they through their throats,' Psalm 115:4–7. Idols are the work of the creatures, and their makers are infinitely below the Creator; therefore they themselves are much more. 'We know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one,' 1 Corinthians
8:4. Though an idol be somewhat materially, yet it is nothing formally, as to the intent or purpose for which it is worshiped.
3. Among those that are gods by divine ordination, as angels, Psalm 8:5; magistrates, Psalm 82:6, who have the image of a deity stamped on them, in their authority and dominion over others, none is to be compared to Jehovah. These are gods by derivation, by deputation; as subordinate magistrates are commissioned by the supreme, and have a beam of his power communicated to them, but still remain weak creatures, limited by his precepts, and liable to his judgment. So angels and kings have some impressions of a deity on them, but their power is derivative from God, and limited by his will; yes, their essence is from him, their subsistence is by him, and their dependence is every moment upon him. Hence he is called the Most High: Psalm 92:1, 'O you Most High.' Kings and princes are high, angels and archangels are higher; but Jehovah only is the Most High; Ecclesiastes 5:8, 'He who is higher than the highest considers.' For the explication of this doctrine, the truth of it will be evident, if we consider the true God, and compare him with the highest and most excellent in Heaven and earth.
1. In his being.
2. In his attributes.
3. In his works.
4. In his word.
1. God is incomparable in his being; God has not only a being, but an excellency in his being; therefore he is called his excellency: 'Should not his excellency make you afraid,' Job 13:11. And he is said alone to be excellent: 'Your name alone is excellent,' Psalm 148:13.
By name is meant sometimes anything whereby God makes himself known, Exodus. 20:7. But here the being of God, or God himself, as Proverbs
18:10, 'The name of the Lord is a strong tower'; that is, God himself is a strong tower: Psalm 76:1, 'His name is great in Israel;' that is, the being of the great God is magnified in his church, or among his chosen. Now his being alone is excellent, because there is no such being as his; there is no being excellent besides his, because there is no being excellent like his. He is excellent in all, above all, and beyond all.
His being is such a being, that he alone is, and all besides are nonentities, and no beings in comparison of him. His name speaks the incomparable nature of his being. 'And God said unto Moses, Thus shall you say unto the children of Israel, I Am has sent you.' I Am, I, a being that really is, beside whom there is none, has sent you. What prince, what potentate can say I Am? What angel, what archangel can say I Am? No, this is the proper name of Jehovah.
Therefore, when he promises himself to be the reward of his people, he does promise himself under the notion of essence, being, substance, in opposition to all others, which are but shadows and nothings to him.
Proverbs 2:7, 'He lays up sound wisdom for the righteous.' Proverbs 8:21, 'I will cause them that love me to inherit substance.' Junius reads it, I will cause them that love me to possess that which is. God is, and all other beings are not, in comparison of him; Daniel 4:35, 'All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing.' God is, and all others are nothing; yes, if it were possible to apprehend it, less than nothing. It is a notable expression of the Holy Spirit, to set forth the excellency of God's being; and the pitifulness, baseness, and nothingness of all other beings, Isaiah 40:15–17.
Behold! (a note of attention and admiration) the nations (the Chaldeans, that are our lords and masters, or all nations of the world, be they never so high, great, strong, or glorious) are as the drop of a bucket (which falls from the bucket, or hangs on it, when the water is poured out, yet diminishes not the measure,) and the small dust of the balance, (which cleaves to the scales when the spice is put out, yet alters not the weight, it is so little.) Behold! (wonder, be amazed at it,) he takes up the isles, (the great, large, vast islands of the world,) as a very little thing, (as poor, small, inconsiderable things.) All nations before him are as nothing. Not only the great islands, but also the continents, with the several innumerable creatures in them, are not only little to this God, but as nothing, as no being to his being, and they are counted to him less than nothing and vanity. Put them in the scales with God, and they are not only light, and without any weight, nothing at all; but if men were capable of conceiving anything less than nothing, such were all the world to God.
Though the world be absolutely somewhat, yes, very great, yet comparatively to God it is nothing, less than nothing and vanity.
CHAPTER 3.
The incomparableness of God in his being.
It is from itself, for itself, and wholly independent The incomparableness of the divine being will appear in several particulars.
1. His being is from himself. No being in the world, beside his, is its own cause or original. Angels, men, the highest, yes, the lowest creatures, are derivative beings. They have what they are from another, even from God.
They are drops that flow from the ocean of all beings; they are rays derived from the sun, the fountain of light and entity. The apostle tells us that men are indebted to God for their beings, Acts 17:28. In him we have our beings. They were nothing until he spoke them into something. He formed and fashioned their bodies, Psalm 139:13–15. He created and infused their souls; he put that heaven-born inhabitant into the house of clay, Genesis 2:7; Job 10:11, 12. The whole visible world is his workmanship, Acts 17:24. God that made the world, and all things therein; the invisible world are also the effects of his powerful word. Angels, as well as men, may thank him for what they are. The greatest angel is as much bound to him for his being as the smallest atom; Colossians 1:16, 'For by him were all things created that are in Heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities or powers.' But God is indebted to none for his being; he was when none else was, even from eternity, Psalm 90:1. Therefore none could contribute the least to his being. I am Jehovah, and there is none else besides me, Isaiah 45:5, 6. I am he who gives a being to himself, that am what I am from myself and of myself, and there is no such being beside me.
2. God is being, that is, for himself; as he is his own first cause, so he is his own last end; as he is wholly from himself, so he is wholly for himself.
All other beings are not for themselves, but for another. 'All things were created by him and for him,' Colossians 1:16. Since all are from God, it is but reason that all should be for God. The rivers that run from the sea return to the sea again, owning and acknowledging their original, Ecclesiastes 1:7.
Good men are for God. 'None of us lives to himself, or dies to himself; but whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord; and whether we live or die, we are the Lord's,' Romans 14:7.
Good angels are for God, for his glory, Isaiah 6:3. Evil men, evil angels are for God, though not in their intentions and purposes, yet in his intention, and by his wise, powerful government of them and their practices; Proverbs
16:4, 'The Lord made all things for himself, even the wicked for the day of slaughter.' Good beings are for him intentionally, and evil beings are for him eventually. Nay, all beings are for him; of him, and through him, and for him are all things, Romans 11:36. But God is altogether for himself, as his highest end, and not for any others. He is his own end, as well as his own beginning; who never had a beginning, nor shall ever have an end, Revelation 1:8. As all God does is for himself; Revelation 4:11, 'You have created all things, and for your pleasure they are and were created;' so all God is, is for himself; he is infinite, wise, almighty, everlasting, unchangeable, holy, righteous, faithful being, is for himself. It is the profaneness of some men to be somewhat for God, more for the world, and most of all for their carnal selves. But it is the perfection of God to be somewhat for the world in general, more for his elect in special, and most of all for himself. Nay, in all that he is for the world or his elect, he is still most for himself. It is the excellency and purity of saints and angels to be what they are, and to do what they do, for God, to make him who is the efficient, the final cause of their beings and actions; but it is the excellency and purity of God to be what he is, and to do what he does, for himself. He who is his own happiness must be his own end.
3. His being is an independent being; he is by himself, as well as from and for himself; none ever in Heaven or earth contributed the least towards the maintenance or continuance of his being; neither the creatures' goodness nor their goods do him the least good. Not their goodness; men may be advantaged by the goodness of men, but God cannot: 'My goodness extends not to you, but to the saints that are on earth,' Psalm
16:3. Not their goods; he is the lord proprietor of the whole world, and if he wanted anything he would not ask the leave of any; for all is his own, but he is above all want: "If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world is mine, and the fullness thereof,' Psalm 50:12—that is, I declare to the world that I am incapable of the least want; or if I needed a meal's meat, I would scorn to go to the creature's door to beg it. I could supply myself out of my own store, if there were need; but there is no need at all. He challenges all the world to produce any being that ever obliged or engaged him in the least: 'Who has prevented me that I may repay him?' Job 41:11. Where is the man, where is the angel, where is the creature that can say, he ever did me the least kindness, that has been beforehand with me in courtesy, to whom I am the least in debt for my subsistence? I am here ready to make him amends; 'Who has prevented me, that I may repay him?' But all other beings are dependent; the highest, the strongest of them are not able to bear their own weight; but, like the hop or ivy, must have somewhat to lean upon: 'By him all things exist,' Colossians 1:17. He preserves them in their beings and in their motions: 'In him we live and move, and have our beings,' Acts 17:28. As the beams depend on the sun, and the streams on the fountain, so do the creatures for their beings and actions depend on God. 'He upholds all things' (as the foundation the building) 'by the word of his power,' Hebrews 1:3. He is the Atlas that bears up the whole world, without whom it would fall to nothing. 'You preserve man and beast,' Psalm 36:6.
God is to the world as the soul to the body; he animates and actuates everything in it, and enables his several creatures to all their motions.
Men are apt to think that fire can burn of itself, it being so natural to the fire to burn; yet if God does but suspend his influence, (as they speak,) a furnace heated seven times hotter than usual burns no more than water, Daniel 3:27. We are ready to conceive that it is easy for a man to see, when the organ is rightly disposed, there is a fit medium, and a due distance of the organ from the object. But yet, if God deny his concurrence, though there are these three requisites to sight, a man can see no more than if he were stark blind, Genesis 19:11; 2 Kings 6:18.
Angels themselves must have their Maker for their mover; or, as active spirits as they are, they must stand still.
CHAPTER 4.
God incomparable in his being, as he is absolutely perfect, universal, unchangeable
4. He is an absolutely perfect being. There is a twofold perfection compatible to beings. Some are perfect in their kind; that is, have all things requisite to that species of which they are. So we say the world is perfect, because it has all things needful to a world. A man is a perfect man, that has a body with all its parts and members, and a soul with all its powers and faculties. But secondly, A being is absolutely perfect, when nothing can be added to it, or taken from it, when it is incapable of the least accession or diminution. Now such a being is God, and none but God. As the sun gets nothing by the shining of the moon and the stars, neither loses anything by their eclipses or withdrawing; so the self-sufficient God gains nothing by all the suits and services, prayers and praises of his creatures; neither loses anything by their neglect of their duties. He is above the influence of all our performances; our holiness adds not the least to his happiness: 'Can a man be profitable to God, as he who is wise may be profitable to himself? Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that you are righteous? or is it gain to him that you make your ways perfect?' Job 22:2, 3. He is beyond the malice of sin. As holiness does not help him, so the sin of his creatures does not hurt him. All those darts of sin which the wicked shoot up against Heaven, fall short, and fall down upon their own heads: 'If you sin, what do you against him? or if your transgressions be multiplied, what do you unto him? If you be righteous, what give you him? or what receives he of your hand? Your wickedness may hurt a man as you are; and your righteousness may profit the sons of men,' Job 35:6–8. Flesh and blood may be injured and pierced by the weapons of unrighteousness; but not the Rock of ages; that is impenetrable. They who are of the same make and mold with ourselves may be advantaged by our blessings and praises, but not he who is above all blessing and praises.
What does the great light of the world get by the Persian's admiration and adoration of it? What is a fountain the better if men drink of its water, and commend it; or the worse if men pass by, and despise it? What would God get, if he should make millions of worlds to laud and magnify him? or what would God lose, if there were no world, no creature at all? 'Who has given to him, and it shall be recompensed again?' Romans 11:35. He has given to all whatever they are, or have; but none ever gave to him.
They who give to him their love, and fear, and trust, and names, and estates, give nothing to him. We can give nothing to him, to whom we owe all. Besides, all we have, and are, and do, and suffer for him, adds nothing to him. His declarative glory may, but his essential glory, or glorious essence, admits not in the least of any increase or decrease. But no other being is absolutely perfect. Men are exceeding imperfect since their fall. They are so far from being above all additions that they stand in continual need of additions. They need the air to breathe in, the earth to bear them, food to strengthen them, clothing to cover them, fire to warm them, sleep to refresh them; they want righteousness to justify them, the Holy Spirit to sanctify them, love to comfort them, and mercy to save them. Man is an heap of infirmities, an hospital of diseases, and a bundle of imperfections. He is so far from being absolutely perfect, that, in a moral consideration, since his apostasy, he is not perfect in his kind. And though angels are more perfect than men, yet they are imperfect to God.
Angels, it is true, are perfect in their kind, but not perfect in all kinds; something may be added to them, something may be taken from them.
The highest angel may be higher, and the holiest angel may be holier, and the best of them may be better. Though the stars differ from each other in brightness and glory, yet none of them is a sun. Though angels differ from men, and each from others in honor and excellency; yet none of them is a God, none of them is absolutely perfect.
5. God is an universal being, he has all good eminently and virtually in himself. Whatever excellencies are scattered and dispersed among the creatures in Heaven or in earth, they are all united in, and centered after an infinite manner in the Creator. It is a true rule in philosophy: Whatever good is in the effect, is more abundantly in the cause. Now God being the principle and cause of all the good and excellency that is in every creature, it must of necessity be more abundantly in him. As some potions have the quintessence of many herbs, many drugs in them; so God has the quintessence of all creatures, and infinitely more in him.
For this cause he is called by, and compared to, whatever is good and answerable, either to necessity, convenience, or delight. Sometimes to that good which is necessary; as to life, John 1:4; to the fountain of life, Psalm 36:9; to light, John 1:9; to the Father of lights, James 1:19; to food, as to bread, yes, living bread, John 6:51; to water, yes, living water, John 4:10; to rest, 'Return to your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you,' Psalm 116:7. He is the only ark wherein alone the dove, wearied about the waters of this world, can find rest. Sometimes he is compared to that good which is convenient; as to a habitation, Psalm 90:9, 10; 'O Lord, you have been our dwelling-place from all generations.' To health, Psalm 49:11–17; to peace, 2 Corinthians 13:11; to protection or defense, as a shield, which defends the body from the shot or thrusts of men, Genesis 15:1; to a wall of fire, which defends the traveler from the fury of beasts, Zechariah 2:5; to a refuge, which secures the army, when it is foiled by the enemy, Psalm 57:1; to a rock, a fortress, a high tower, Psalm 18:2; sometimes he is compared to that good which is delightful; as to riches, Job 22:24, 25; to unsearchable riches, Ephesians 3:8; durable riches, Proverbs 8:18; to honor and glory, as a royal diadem; he is called a glorious Lord, Isaiah 33:21; said to be the glory in the midst of his people, Zechariah 2:5; to joy and pleasure, Psalm 43:4; to relations, he is a father, 2 Corinthians 6:18; an husband, Hosea 2:19; to a feast of fat things, of marrow and fatness, of wine, of wine on the lees well refined, Isaiah 25:6; which are the delight of the palate; to beauty, which is the delight of the eyes, Canticles 5:10–16; to sweet smells, which are the delight of the nostrils, Canticles 4:10, and 1:3; to the, most harmonious music, which is the delight of the ears: his mouth is most sweet, or sweetnesses, Canticles 5:16; 'My soul failed when he spoke,' so ravishing was his voice, Canticles 5:6; to truth, which is the delight of the understanding, Psalm 31:5; John 14:6; to good, which is the delight of the will, Matthew 19:17.
Thus God is not one good, but all good. The truth is, all the good, all the excellencies that are in men or angels, are not worthy to be a shadow, or foil to set off those excellencies that are in God. All good is in one God, Mark 10:29, 30. But creatures are but particular beings. Man is but a particular being, a low limited being: 'What is man, that is a worm; or the son of man, that is a worm?' Job 25:6. There is some good in one man, and some good in another man; but not all good in any man; no, not in all men. Angels are but particular beings, little beings. One angel is one drop, another angel another drop, a third angel a third drop; every one is but a drop. None of them is an ocean, as God is, which contains all those drops, and infinitely more.
6. God is an unchangeable being, not only without, but incapable of the least alteration. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, Hebrews 13:8.
He is what he was, and what he will be eternally. He is the same since the world was made that he was before the world, and that he will be when this world shall be no more: 'With him is not the least variation, or shadow of turning,' James 1:17. No variableness. It is an astronomical word, taken from the heavenly bodies, which suffer many declensions and revolutions, which they call parallaxes. Though those heavenly lights are variable, have their increases and decreases, their times of rising and setting; yet our Father of lights is not variable. He knows no rising or setting, no increasing or decreasing; but shines always with the same light and luster, with the same beauty and brightness; nor shadow of turning. The lesser luminaries or stars, according to their different postures, have divers shadowings or adumbrations, according to their nearness to, or distance from the sun, their shadows are greater or lesser; but our sun is still the same, knows no clouding, no shadowing, no eclipsing. When God hates those angels as apostates, whom first he loved, as created pure and holy, he is still the same; the change is not in God, but in them. Bring clay to the sun, it hardens it; bring wax to the sun, with the same influence, it softens it, without any alteration in the sun. When God punishes a man that is wicked, and prospers the same man becoming a penitent, he is still the same. If a man walk on one side of a church, the pillars are on his left hand; if on the other side, on his right hand. The pillars remain where they were, the motion or change is in the man.
But creatures are all mutable; the heavens seem constant, but it is in inconstancy; their perpetual motion speaks their perpetual alteration: Psalm 102:26, 27, 'They shall perish, but you shall endure, they shall wax old as a garment,' that is, wearing out, and wasting every day; as a vesture shall you change them, and they shall be changed, but you, Lord, are the same forever.' The old heavens will pass away, and new ones succeed in their room at the general conflagration, but the God of Heaven will never pass away. Man is ever in motion, from one condition to another. His body changes in its age, constitution, temper; at last into rottenness, dust and corruption: 'I have said to corruption, you are my father; and to the worms, you are my brother and sister,' Job 17:14. His soul changes in its passions, affections; love, hatred, delights, desires: his whole man changes in its place, company, carriage, conversation: he bath no consistency while he is, he continues not what he was, Job 14:2, 3.
Angels are changeable; even the good angels, though not as men, yet as creatures; as perfect as they are, they have this imperfection.
1. They are who once were not, and, in regard of themselves, have a possibility not to be.
2. Angels may lose what they have, and attain what they have not.
3. Angels are mutable in regard of place, sometimes in Heaven, sometimes on earth. What little unchangeableness is in angels, is derivative, God is the original of it; their immutability at most is but from their creation, I suppose some time since; for the good angels as well as bad were created mutable, but God's immutability is from eternity. The whole world indeed is a sea of glass, Revelation 4:6, always ebbing and flowing, never at a stay; but the maker of the world may well say, 'I the Lord change not,' Malachi 3:6.
CHAPTER 5.
God incomparable in his being, as it is eternal and without composition
7. God is an eternal being, and none is eternal but he.
Time, which has a beginning and end, is compatible to men, and other visible creatures in this world. Eternity, which has a beginning and no end, is compatible to good and evil angels, and to the souls of men; but eternity, which has no beginning, succession or end, belongs only to God.
1. God has no beginning: he who 'in the beginning created the heavens and the earth,' could have no beginning himself,' Genesis 1:1. 'Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world; from everlasting to everlasting you are God,' Psalm 90:2. God is eternal, a parte ante, and puzzles most enlarged understanding to conceive his duration. 'Behold he is great, and we know him not, neither can the number of his years be searched out,' Job 36:26, Psalm 93:2.
2. God has no succession in his duration; he dwells in one indivisible point of eternity; he is what he is in one infinite moment of being; his duration knows nothing of former or latter, past or to come; his essence is not bounded by those hedges, but he enjoys his whole eternity every moment; hence he is said to 'inhabit eternity,' to be fixed always in eternity, Isaiah 57:15. 'One day with him is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,' 2 Peter 3:8. He inhabits a million of years in a moment, and each moment to him is as a million of years. He has not the least added to his duration since the world was, though it has been near six thousand years: it is not proper to say of him, he was, for none of his duration is ever past with him, or he shall be, for none of his duration is ever to come; but he is, his full eternity is always present, hence his name is I Am, Exodus. 3:14. Not I was, or shall be; and Christ tells the Jews, 'Before Abraham was, I Am,' John 8:58. It seems false grammar, but it is the most proper true divinity.
Indeed, had Adam been then alive, it had been proper for him to have said, before Abraham was, I was; or if an angel had spoken, it had been proper for him to have said, before Abraham was, I was; because men and angels enjoy their being by piecemeal, now a little and then a little, somewhat of their duration is gone, and somewhat to come; but it was most proper for him that was God to say, before Abraham was, I Am, because his duration is without all succession, the whole of it is ever present. The psalmist further clears this, 'You are my son, this day have I begotten you,' Psalm 2:7; which words are interpreted of the eternal generation of the Son of God before all worlds, and also of his resurrection in time, which was to be some hundreds of years after, as the apostle either expounds it, or alludes to it, Acts 13:33. But it is all one, for both are today; that which was from eternity, and that which was to be many hundred of years after, are both with him present this day.
Past or future is all present this day; that was not past to God which never had beginning, his son's eternal generation; nor was that to come to God which was always before him, his son's temporal resurrection. It is still, 'This day have I begotten you;' millions of years, yes, of ages, add not the least moment to his duration.
3. God has no ending: as he is from, so he is to everlasting, Psalm 90:2.
'Without beginning or end of days,' Psalm 102:27. 'But you are the same, and your years never end.' O what an excellent being is this eternal being? 'He only bath immortality,' 1 Timothy 6:16. And he is eternity itself, 1 Samuel 15:29. The eternity of Israel cannot lie.
But are men or angels comparable to God in this? Surely no. As for man, he is a bird of time, here today and gone tomorrow, Job 14:1. Of few days: 'As for man, his days are as grass,' Psalm 103:5; now flourishing, but quickly perishing.
Man has a beginning, succession, and ending. There was a time when man was not; man enjoys his time by parts and parcels, and man before long shall be no more. All men in this are alike, high or low, good or bad.
There is a vast difference between God and all men in their duration. 'Are your days as the days of man? are your years as man's years?' Job 10:5. No, in no respect. Man's days begin, succeed, and end; not so God's days.
Well might David say, though he had lived as long as Methuselah, 'Mine age is nothing unto you,' Psalm 39:5. And truly as men are far from being comparable to God, so are angels. Angels had a beginning, Colossians 1:16.
Angels have a succession in their duration; they enjoy part today, part tomorrow, part the next day; every moment adds to their duration; what is past they do not enjoy, nor what is to come, but only what is present; and thus it is also with souls of saints in Heaven.
8. God is a simple being. In this I take simplicity, not as opposed to wisdom, for in him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, Colossians
2:9, but as simplicity is opposed to mixture and composition. Thus there is a simplicity in the gospel, 2 Corinthians 12:3. So anything, the more simple it is, the more excellent it is. God is a most pure, simple, unmixed, indivisible essence; he is incapable of the least composition, and therefore of the least division. He is one most pure, one without all parts, members, accidents, and qualities. Whatever is in him is himself, his very being; therefore, that which is a quality in a man or angel, is attributed to God in the abstract. Men and angels are wise, but God is wisdom, Proverbs 9:1. Men and angels are holy, but God is holiness, Isaiah 63:15. God is all essence, all being, and nothing else.
But how unlike are men or angels to God in this! Man is a grossly compounded being; he is compounded of a body and a soul, Genesis 2:7. His body is compounded of members and parts; his members and parts are compounded of bones, and blood, and flesh, and skin, and sinews, Job 10:11. His soul is compounded, and so are the highest angels, of substance and accidents, of essence and faculties; the substance of man's soul, and of angels and their qualities, are distinct things. Their wisdom is one thing, their power another thing, their holiness a third thing, and all distinct from their essence. An angel may be an angel, and a man may be a true man, and yet be foolish, weak, and wicked. Their understanding differs from their wills, their wills differ from their affections, their affections differ from both, and all from their beings. But in God all these are one indivisible essence, to will and to understand, and to love and to hate, and to be, are all the same and one in God.
CHAPTER 6.
God incomparable in his being, as it is infinite and incomprehensible
9. God is an infinite being. He is a being that knows no bounds, no limits. His being is without all measure, all degrees and determinations.
His understanding, that is, himself, who is all understanding, is infinite, Psalm 147:5. God is a sphere, whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere. 'Behold the heavens, and Heaven of heavens cannot contain you, how much less this house which I have built,' 1 Kings 8:27. The starry heavens, or firmament, is large; it compasses the whole earth and ocean; this terrestrial world is but a point to it; but the Heaven of heavens, or the imperial Heaven, is larger; it contains the lower Heaven, but cannot contain the God of Heaven. No place can define or circumscribe him. He is neither shut up in any place nor shut out of any place. He is above place, without place, yet in all places.
'Where shall I go from your Spirit? or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Hell, (Heaven and Hell are most opposite places,) behold you are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall your hand lead me, and your right hand shall hold me,' Psalm 139:7–0. God is in Heaven, earth, sea, Hell, and infinitely more, where there is neither Heaven, nor earth, nor sea, nor Hell.
Oh, what a being is the blessed God, who is boundless not only in his duration, of which we have spoken before, and in all his perfections and attributes, of which we shall speak hereafter, but also in his essence and being! No place can circumscribe him, and nothing can define him. 'He is over all' creatures by his power and dominion; 'in you all,' by his essence and influence; 'and through all,' by his providence, Ephesians 4:6. He is everywhere, not only virtually, as the sun by his beams; nor authoritatively, as a king by subordinate officers; not at all by multiplication, as the loaves filled that place, which they Did not before the miracle; or by extension, as the rational creature fills that place when a man, which he did not when an infant; nor by local motion, from one place to another, as all bodily animate creatures; or by division, as our bodies are part in one place and part in another; or by mixture, as the air mingles itself with the terrestrial world; but essentially after an unspeakable manner. As philosophers say of the soul, it is whole in the whole body, and whole in every part of the body; so I may say of God, he is whole in the whole world, and whole in every part of the world; yes, if he should please to make ten thousand worlds, he would fill all, and his whole essence be in every part of each world, and yet without the least extension, or multiplication, or motion.
But are men or angels like to God in this? Alas, they are finite, limited beings, less than drops to this ocean. Man is in a small place, so as to fill it up by mixture of parts, and to exclude all other bodies; but himself is circumscribed in it. Angels, though they are not in a place so as to exclude bodies, yet they are in space, so as to conclude themselves therein; they are in a finite compass, beyond which their being extends not; they are so here that they are not there; so in Heaven that they are not on earth at the same time. But God is everywhere in his whole essence every moment; 'he fills all in all,' Ephesians 1:23.
10. God is an incomprehensible being, such a being as no creature, whether man or angel, can comprehend or perfectly understand. This flows from the former; if he be infinite, he must of necessity be incomprehensible; for a finite being, as all are beside himself, can never comprehend what is infinite. There is no proportion between a boundless being and a bounded understanding. But there must be a proportion between the mind of the creature and that object which is fully understood by it. The sun may be contained in a small chink, and the sea in a nut-shell, sooner than God can be contained in the limited understanding of men or angels: Job 26:14, 'Lo, these are parts of his ways,' namely, 'Hell is naked before him,' verse 6. 'He hangs the earth upon nothing,' verse 7. 'He binds up the waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not rent under them,' verse 8. 'He has compassed the waters with bounds,' verse 10. 'The pillars of Heaven tremble at his reproof,' verse 11, etc.; 'but how little a portion is heard of him!' The vulgar read it, how little a drop; others, a whisper, or smallest part of a voice; that which is known of God, to that which God is, and is in God, is but like a drop to the vast ocean, and as a whisper to a loud terrible thunder. 'How little a portion is heard of him.' Surely much is heard of him, from the voice of his almighty works of creation and providence, and especially from the voice of his word and his own mouth in the Holy Scriptures. But how little is heard of him in comparison of that immense excellency which is in him, and which he is. Heathens hear somewhat of him, Romans 1:20, 21. His saints on earth hear much more of him, Psalm 63:3–. Perfect spirits in Heaven hear most of all of him, 2 Corinthians 12:3, 4; 1 Corinthians 13:12. Yet by all these a very little portion is heard of him.
The being of God is like the peace of God, 'which passes all understanding,' Philippians 4:7. And like the love of Christ, 'which passes all knowledge,' Ephesians 3:19. This only can be known of God, that he can never be known fully; and this only can be comprehended of him, that he cannot be comprehended: 'Can you by searching find out God? can you find out the Almighty to perfection? It is as high as Heaven, what can you do? deeper than Hell, what can you know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea,' Job 11:8, 9.
'Can you by searching find out God?' it is a strong negation, that is, it is impossible by all the help and advantage of nature and are, and grace and diligence, yes, and perfect glory too, to find out God fully. Do you, a poor mean vile man, says Zophar, think to contain and comprehend him, whom the heavens, and Heaven of heavens, cannot contain or comprehend? Are you so silly as to conceive that the short line of your understanding should fathom his bottomless being? It is not in vain for you to seek him, but it is altogether in vain for you to search him.
Though he be not far from you, yet he is far above you, and far beyond you; far above your thoughts, and beyond your conceptions: he 'dwells in that light that is inaccessible, whom no man has seen, nor can see,' 1 Timothy 6:16. They who see him face to face, that is, most clearly and fully, see but little of him; clouds and darkness are in this sense ever about him. As in a dark clay we see the beams, but not the body of the sun; so even in Heaven the highest angels rather see his rays and beams than his infinite being.
'Can you find out the Almighty to perfection?' Men who seek God may find him, Proverbs 8:17; Matthew 7:7; but they cannot find him to perfection: the word for perfection signifies the height or utmost accomplishment of a thing. Somewhat of God may be known, but not all; they who find out most are far from finding out the utmost of him. The sun and all the celestial lights may sooner be grasped in the hollow of man's hand, and the vast hills and mountains weighed in a pair of common scales, than the Almighty 'found out to perfection.' Natural questions soon pose the most learned men; the forms even of inanimate creatures are riddles to most.
How frequently do the greatest scholars betake themselves to secret sympathies and antipathies, and occult qualities, as the cloak and cover of their ignorance: Ecclesiastes 11:5. 'Can you know how the bones grow of her that is with child? O how much more must divine questions exceed human understanding.
'It is as high as Heaven, what can you do?' It is as the highnesses of Heaven: take all the heights and elevations, all the spheres and altitudes of Heaven, and try if you can reach them with your short arm; yes, climb up the highest storeys, the loftiest pinnacles, touch, if you can, the several orbs; yet the knowledge of this God, or this God the object of knowledge, is above and beyond all. What a fool would he be thought, who should undertake to ascend the starry heavens; yet he who would find out God to perfection, must climb much higher. The heavens are famous for their height; yes, the starry heavens, that some wonder that the eyes of man are not tired before they reach them, Proverbs 25:3, 'The heavens for height, and the earth for depth,' yet the third heavens are much higher than they; but the most high God is far higher than the highest heavens.
'Deeper than Hell, what can you know?' Heaven and Hell are at the greatest distance, and are most remote from our apprehensions. Who knows what is done in Heaven? what in Hell? what is enjoyed in the one, or suffered in the other? No more can any know what God is. Who knows the nature, number, order, motions, influence of the heavenly bodies; something is conjecturally delivered about them, nothing certain; much less does any know the number, nature, order, wonder, worship of the celestial courtiers in the third heavens, of the thousand thousand that are before God, the ten thousand times ten thousand that minister to him; least of all can any know that being that made all these, that preserves all these, that orders and governs, animates and actuates all these; that gives them all that they are, and enables them to all that they do.
'Deeper than Hell, what can you know?' Who knows the mines and minerals which lie in the bosom, in the affections of the earth? Who knows the place of sapphires, the coral, the pearls, and the precious onyx? Job 28:5–. 'Out of the earth comes bread, etc. The stones of it are the place of sapphires, and it has dust of gold. There is a path which no bird knows, and which the vulture's eye has not seen: the lion's whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it.' Much less does any know the miseries of the damned, the extremity, universality, eternity of their torments. Who ever returned from that place, to tell us what they suffered there; or if they had, whose understanding is large enough to conceive them? 'Who knows the power of your anger? according to your fear, so is your wrath,' Psalm 90:11. Least of all can any know that God, who sets an end to darkness, and searches out all perfection; the stones of darkness and the shadow of death, Job 28:3: before whom Hell and destruction are naked and open; who forms the costly jewels, secret from the eyes of covetous mortals, who lays the dark vault of Hell, and stores it with fire and brimstone, and gnawing worms, and blackness of darkness, and all the instruments of eternal death.
'The measure thereof is longer than the earth:' the earth is long, from one end of it to another. Mathematicians tell us, from east to west, it is twenty-two thousand miles, but the knowledge of God is much longer; the measure thereof is beyond all measure.
'And broader than the sea:' the ocean is exceeding broad, it seems to them that sail on it to be without banks or bounds. Hence we read of the arms of the sea, Daniel 11:22, because of its breadth. And David calls it, Psalm 104:25, a great and wide sea; 'So is this great and wide sea wherein are things innumerable, both small and great.' But the knowledge of the great God is far greater and wider: how are the dimensions of height, depth, length and breadth, in their greatest extent and dimensions, obvious to human understandings? The heavens are high, yet their height is finite: Hell is deep, yet its depth is determined; the earth is long, yet its length is limited; the sea is broad, yet its breadth is bounded: but God is infinite, boundless, and beyond all these.
CHAPTER 7.
God incomparable in his attributes, in his holiness, and wisdom
II. God is incomparable, as in his being, so in his attributes. The attributes of God are those perfections in the divine nature which are ascribed to him, that we might the better understand him. They are so called, that is, attributes, because they are attributed to him for our sakes, though they are not in him as they are in men or angels.
There are some attributes of God which the schoolmen call incommunicable, (which I have spoken of under the former head,) because the creature, as a creature, is incapable of them, and therefore they cannot be attributed to man or angels. It is impossible for a creature to be independent, self-sufficient, eternal in a strict sense, infinite, and so forth, so that all will acknowledge God incomparable in those excellencies. There are other attributes of God which are called communicable, namely, his power, holiness, wisdom, faithfulness, and so forth, because they are communicated by him to his rational creatures, and there is some show or shadow of them in men and angels. For though it was the horrible pride, and monstrous presumption of evil angels, and Adam, at first to rival God in his properties that were incommunicable—to aspire to be like him in his independency and sovereignty; for their sin was, that they would have cut off the entail, and have held all of themselves, as their own lords and masters; and the Prince of Tyre, Ezekiel 28:6, is indicted by God of inexpiable arrogancy, 'that he dared set his heart as the heart of God:' yet it is the only godliness of the creature to be like God, in those attributes of his which are communicable. The new man is after God, Ephesians 4:24, the re-impression of his image on the creature. David is therefore called a man after God's own heart, because he was a man after God's own holiness; yes, it is the perfection and felicity of the intellectual world (Psalm 17:15; 1 John 3:3, 4) in Heaven.
But even in these properties wherein man resembles his Maker, he is exceedingly unlike him, and falls infinitely short of him.
2. God is incomparable in his attributes.
That God is incomparable in his communicable attributes, I shall open:
1. More generally.
2. More specially.
1. More generally; and here I shall enumerate some of those attributes wherein men and angels are conformable to God, and in each of them show that in those in which they come nearest to him, they come far behind.
(1.) He is incomparable in his holiness. Holiness in general is the moral goodness of a thing, or its convenience or agreement with its rule.
Holiness in the creatures is their conformity to the will of their Creator in the principle, rule, and end of their actions and motions. Holiness in God is that excellency of the divine nature by which he acts from himself, for himself, and according to his own will.
God is the holy One, Hosea 11:9, by way of eminency and excellency, because he surpasses all others in holiness. He is the holy One of Jacob, Isaiah 49:23; the holy One of Israel, Isaiah 43:14, because of their special interest and propriety in the excellent being. He is 'holy, holy, holy,' Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8. His nature is the only pattern of holiness, therefore he commands us to look on him as our example: 'Be you holy as I am holy,' 1 Peter 1:15, 16. Man was made holy, Ecclesiastes 7:29, that is, according to the image of God, Genesis 1:26; Ephesians 4:24. His will is the only rule of holiness. Hence our holiness is called a proving his good and perfect and acceptable will, Romans 12:2, and our fulfilling the will of God, Acts 13; and a walking according to his word, which is his revealed will, as our rule, Galatians 6:16. He is universally holy in his name, Luke 1:49; in his nature, Psalm 5:5, 6; Habakkuk 1:13; in his works, Psalm 145:17; in his word, Romans 7:12; Psalm 119:140. He is the original of all holiness in men or angels; they are indebted to him that they are not as unholy as the damned, as the devils, James 1:17; Ezekiel 37:28, and 38:16, 17; 1 Thessalonians 5:23. Now what man or angel is comparable to him in holiness? May I not with Moses make a challenge—Who is a God like unto you, glorious in holiness?' Exodus. 15:11.
Are men holy as he is holy? Nay, are the spirits of just men made perfect, and angels, equal to him in holiness? 'Behold, he puts no trust in his saints, (the best on earth;) the heavens (the holiest there) are unclean in his sight,' Job 15:15, 16. As for man, he is a sink of sin, a sty of filth, overspread from head to foot with the leprosy of sin, Genesis 6:5; and therefore, instead of comparing with God for holiness, is bound to abhor himself for his unholiness; yes, angels, who have nothing amiss in their natures, who never took one step awry in their lives, who have ever continued God's loyal subjects and faithful servants, observant of all his calls, and obedient to all his commands—whose obedience to him, and observance of him, is made the copy for us to write after, Matthew 6:10—yet unholy in comparison of God. 'The heavens are unclean in his sight.' The heavens, not only the place, which has a relative holiness, in regard of God's special presence; but even the persons in Heaven, perfect spirits, who have no blemish in their beings, or disorder in their motions, are unholy to him, and unclean in his sight. The holiness of angels is but the holiness of obeying a law, Psalm 103:20, 21; the holiness of God is the holiness of being a law, 1 Thessalonians 4:3. The holiness of angels is but a conformity to the pattern set them; the holiness of God is the holiness of setting them a pattern, and of being their pattern. The holiness of angels is but a derivative, God's is an original holiness.
God is so incomparable in holiness that it is said, he only, or solely, is holy, Revelation 15:4, 'Who will not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name? for you only are holy.' None is holy besides him, because none is holy like him; 1 Samuel 2:2, 'There is none holy as the Lord,' therefore none holy but the Lord: saints are holy, 1 Peter 2:9; angels are holy, Mark 8:38; but they are not holy as the Lord is holy. Without question, the heavenly host, who see him face to face, and are satisfied with his likeness, are glorious in holiness, shine brightly with those perfect beams, and that pure light which they borrow from the Sun of righteousness; but truly they are poor glow-worms to the Father of lights. Even that grace, that holiness, that glory of saints and angels which infinitely surpasses the natural heavens in all their beauty and brightness, is no grace, no holiness, no glory in this respect, by reason of that grace and holiness and glory in God, which does so infinitely excel.
(2.) God is incomparable in his wisdom, (I shall not stand upon the critical distinctions which some give between understanding, prudence, and wisdom:) wisdom in general is a right understanding of things, and the ordering ourselves and actions suitable to that understanding. It appears chiefly in these three acts: 1. In discerning the nature, causes, effects, contraries, and consequents of things, (of which we shall speak hereafter;) and this we call science. 2. In propounding the best, and highest, and noblest end to ourselves in our actions and undertakings; and this is called understanding. 3. In suiting and fitting and ordering the most proper means as may be best for the attaining our ends; and this is called prudence, which, as the rudder of the ship, steers and directs and governs all. In all these respects God is incomparable in wisdom: 'he is wise in heart,' Job 9:4, that is, most wise; for the heart is the seat of wisdom; and to be foolish, and without an heart, is all one: 'Ephraim is a silly dove, without a heart,' Hosea 7:11. There are in God 'all the treasures of wisdom,' Colossians 1:19.
A treasure denotes, 1. Preciousness; a heap of dust or coals is not a treasure, but of silver and gold. 2. Plenty; one or two pieces of things that are precious will not make a treasure, there must be a heap, or some quantity. In God there is the most precious wisdom, therefore called counsel, the effect of serious and mature deliberation; and he is called the Mighty Counselor, Ephesians 1:11; Isaiah 9:6. In God there is plenty of it, treasures; a treasure notes abundance, but treasures speak superabundance, a redundance. In God are all the treasures, all kinds, all sorts of wisdom--manifold wisdom, Ephesians 3:10, embroidered wisdom, wherein is all variety of rich and curious contrivances. These are all in God; he engrosses them all in himself; therefore you read, 'With him is wisdom and understanding,' Job 12:13; with him, as with its master and sovereign lord; with him, as with its sole owner and proprietor.
Some men are wise; light and understanding, and excellent wisdom, was found in Daniel, Daniel 5:14. David was very wise, wiser than his teachers, than his enemies, than the ancient, Psalm 119:97–9. Solomon was a wise man, he exceeded in wisdom all that were before, and all that came after him: 'And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand on the sea-shore; and Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt, for he was wiser than all men, than Ethan and Heman,' and so forth, 1 Kings 4:29–1. But was Solomon comparable to God in wisdom? Truly, he who was wiser than all men was a stark fool to God; the wisdom of man is foolishness with God, 1 Corinthians 3:19. The subtlety of the heathen, and, I may say, the greatest understanding of the Christian, is folly with God: 'The foolishness of God is wiser than man,' 1 Corinthians 1:25. If it were possible that there should be anything in God which might look like folly, or if it were lawful for us to conceive any action of God's, which, compared with his deeper contrivances, might have a show of foolishness, yet even this were wiser than the greatest wisdom of man.
Angels are wiser than men. When the woman would speak David to be very wise above the rate of mortals, she says, 'My lord is wise as an angel of God,' 2 Samuel 14:20. The excellency of their natures speaks the excellency of their wisdom, for it is the understanding that is the chief distinguishing faculty. But are angels like God in wisdom? No, they are fools to him: 'Behold, he puts no trust in his servants, he charges his angels with folly,' Job 4:18. Though they never thwarted the divine pleasure, nor in any action manifested the least imprudence; yet before him they are indicted of folly, and to him will be proved guilty of it.
Though they are not chargeable with actual, yet they are with potential folly; though God does not indict them of absolute, yet he does of comparative folly.
God does so far exceed angels and men in wisdom that he is said only to be wise: 'To the only wise God,' 1 Timothy 1:17; To God only wise,' Romans
16:27. None are wise beside him, because none are wise to him, Daniel
5:20. Wisdom is his, his peculiar, his prerogative, his wholly, his only; so his that it is none's but his.
The wisest men and angels stand in need of a master to teach them, and a tutor to instruct them; and were it not for the only wise God, they would be as unwise as the wild ass's colt, as foolish as idiots, Psalm 94:10. But God is above all teachers, all tutors, Job 21:22, 'Shall any teach God knowledge?' Some persons are incapable of teaching because of their extreme weakness; their parts are so very low and mean, that they cannot be taught. But God is incapable of teaching, because of his immense wisdom; his abilities are so high that they are above and beyond all instruction: Isaiah 40:13, 14, 'Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counselor, has taught him?' The wise Solomon had his privy counselors, the wisest princes and states have their councils, and there is reason enough for it, because two heads are better than one, as we say, and two eyes see more than one: 'Two are better than one,' Ecclesiastes 6:9; and in many counselors there is safety. But God, who is all head, all eye, all understanding, needs none to advise or counsel him. Two candles indeed are better than one, because the light of each is little and small, and capable of increase, but one sun is better than a million of candles, because its light is, after a sort, boundless, and incapable of the least addition or increase by millions of candles. Verse 14. 'With whom took he counsel?' with what angel, with what man, with what politician did he ever consult? Who instructed him in the paths of judgment? taught him what was just, what was unjust, what to do, what to forbear? how to govern and order the affairs of the world, in what manner and measure to cut out and carve every one's portion? Who taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding? Where is the creature that can say he obliged God by giving him directions in any case? Where is the man, the angel, that can speak it, that he ever taught God one lesson, or told him one letter? If any such be, God will pay him well for his learning: Romans 11:34, 35, 'Who has known the mind of the Lord? or who has been his counselor? Who has given to him, and it shall be recompensed to him again?' We may know the mind of God for our instruction, but we can never know the mind of God for his instruction, 1 Corinthians 2:16.
(3.) God is incomparable in his power. Power is that ability or force by which we act. Power in God is that attribute by which he effects whatever he pleases. In this he has no equal: 'Who is a strong God like unto you?' Psalm 89:8. Where is the being that is like him in strength? God is not only strong, but mighty in strength, Job 9:4; not only powerful, but excellent in power, Job 37:23. Job has a notable expression: chapter 9:19, 'If I speak of strength, lo he is strong'. As it is ordinary with us, when we would lift a man up to the height of praise for, any quality in him, to say, If you speak of wealth, there is a rich man; if you speak of learning, there is a scholar for you; so here says Job, 'If I speak of strength, lo he is strong.' If I speak of strength and ability to contend and fight, lo, behold, wonder, here is one that is strong indeed, that never contends but he prevails; who never combats but he conquers: he is strong indeed; he is strong to purpose, with effect. He can offend, and there is no standing before him: Daniel 4:35, he does whatever he will, and none can stay his hand. He can stop the motion of the strongest creature in its fullest, swiftest career, but none can stop or stay him in his actions. Many have presumption enough to oppose him, but none have power enough to overcome him. He can defend, and there is no striving with him: Isaiah 43:2, 'When you pass through the waters (be they never so boisterous, so tempestuous, so deep, so dangerous) I will be with you, and they shall not overflow you.' The floods of the ungodly may be very fierce and violent, but they shall never overflow, or overcome, those whom God is pleased to protect. It must be a strange and strong arrow that can pierce such a shield of defense, Genesis 15:1.
David tells us, 'God has spoken once, yes twice have I heard you,' Psalm 62:11. It was some special extraordinary thing certainly that David ushers in with such a preface, that God spoke so solemnly, and he heard so attentively. But what was it? 'That power belongs to God' as his proper peculiar excellency, as his crown and scepter.
God is not only mighty, but almighty; not only the mighty God, Isaiah 9:6, but the almighty God, 2 Corinthians 6:18. He is a God that never met with a difficulty, much less with an impossibility. Nothing is too hard for God, Genesis 18:14. All things are hard to men, and many things too hard for men or angels, but nothing is too hard for God: 'I know that you can do all things,' Job 42:2.
Men are strong: they may have a natural strength as men, a civil strength as magistrates; they may be too strong in themselves for other persons, and too strong in their armies and militias for other kingdoms and countries; but are they strong enough for God? Surely no: 1 Corinthians 1:25, The weakness of God is stronger than man. Not that there is any weakness in God—for should any think so, he ungods him—but in those actions wherein God is pleased to conceal his power, and seems to act infirmly; even that seeming infirmity excels all human power and strength. Hence it is that God throws down the gauntlet to Job: Job 40:9, 'Have you an arm like God?' By arm is meant power and strength, because the arm is that member of man by which he exerts and exercises that power and strength which he has; so Job 35:9; that is, Job, though you have had a strong natural arm, and a strong civil arm, as the greatest man in the east, and a king in the army, Job 1:3, 29:25, yet have you an arm like God? Can you make and unmake, kill and make alive, cast down and lift up at your pleasure, as I do? Is your arm as long to reach all your enemies, and as strong to break and bruise them in pieces with a blow? Have you an arm like God? Can you brandish and wield a sword with your arm to the terror and horror, to the confusion and destruction of all that oppose you? 'God has a mighty arm, strong is his hand, high is his right hand,' Psalm 89:13.
Angels are stronger than men. The evil angel is called the strong man, Luke 11:21; they are styled principalities and powers, Ephesians 6:12; roaring lions, 1 Peter 5:8; red dragons, Revelation 12:9; which denote their power to be far superior to man's. The devil is the prince of the powers of the air, Ephesians
2:2; can command storms and tempests, and with a puff of his mouth blow down houses and cities. Good angels probably are stronger; one of them in a night destroys 184,000 men. They are so strong that they are said to excel in strength, Psalm 103:20. And indeed the spirituality and purity of their natures speaks their power. Man's weakness is partly from his flesh, which is a phrase whereby the prophet describes the impotency of the creature: 'They are men, and their horses are flesh, and not spirit,' Isaiah 31:3. And when the Holy Spirit would describe the strength of a thing, he opposes it to flesh, 2 Corinthians 10:4: 'Our weapons are not fleshly or carnal, but mighty,' partly from his moral filthiness, his sin, which, being a real disease, does debilitate and weaken the powers of man. Hence, to be a sinner, and to be without strength, is all one, Romans 5:6, 8, and holiness is called the strength of man, Revelation 3:8. But angels are spirits, not flesh: 'He makes his angels spirits,' Psalm 104:4. And good angels are free from sin, therefore called holy angels, Mark 8:38. Yet notwithstanding all their power as spirits, as sinless spirits, they are weakness to God. As it is said of leviathan, 'He esteems iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood,' Job 41:27: so I may say of God; he esteems the strength of evil angels as straw, and of good angels as rotten wood. Evil angels are fettered, wherever they go, in the chains of his anger and his power, which they cannot break asunder, but must bear, as intolerable as they are. And good angels own and acknowledge his might and strength above all other, Revelation 4:8, 11. The power of God has no fellow, no parallel. There is no rock, that is, no strength, rocks being strong natural fortifications; 1 Samuel 14:4; Judges 6:16, like our God, 1 Samuel 2:2.
(4.) God is incomparable in his justice. Justice in general is the giving every one their due. In God, it is that attribute whereby he disposes all things according to the rule of equity, Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 11:5; and renders to every man according to his works, without respect of persons, Psalm 62:12; Job 34:11, 19; Galatians 6:6, 7. God is positively or affirmatively just: Zephaniah 3:5, 'The just Lord is in the midst thereof, he will not do iniquity.' He is eminently the just one, Acts 7:52; he is superlatively most just, Job 34:17. Will you condemn him that is most just? altogether just; or, as some read it, justice justice, without the least mixture, tincture, or shadow of injustice; all over just and justice. He is most just, just in the highest degree, just beyond all degrees. He gives to all their due, without fear of evil—He stands in awe of none for their power or greatness; his day of vengeance is against the cedars of Lebanon, and the oaks of Bashan, and all the high mountains, Isaiah 2:13, 14—without hope of gain; men are unjust for bribes, Hosea 4:14, and love with shame give you; but riches prevail not in the day of his wrath, Proverbs 11:4; Ezekiel 7:19. He is no taker of gifts, 2 Chronicles 19:7, and without respect to any, for their nearness or relation to him, or honors, or outward excellencies, Jeremiah 22:24. He will pluck the signet from his right hand in the day of his justice. Israel were a people near to him, Deuteronomy 4:7; Psalm 148:14, yet he does not spare them when they rebel against him, Psalm 76:1–, 44:10–5; Jeremiah 7:12. Read the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and you will find his severity to them, notwithstanding their near relation to him. Adam and angels were great and excellent beings, yet when they sinned, he made them to suffer: 'He accepts not the persons of princes, nor regards the rich more than the poor,' Job 34:19. He acts according to law most exactly, and according to a law published, and according to a most righteous and just law, Romans 2:12, 13, 15, 16, and 7:12, therefore is most just: 'Surely God will not do wickedly, neither will the Almighty pervert judgment,' Job 34:12. Surely the Almighty cannot do wickedly, neither can God pervert judgment. Men may do justly, God must do justly; he cannot but do justly; and that because his will is his law, and the most exact platform and rule of all justice and righteousness. Whatever he does is just, because he does it who is the great sovereign and supreme of the world, Job 34:12, 13.
The actions of God are often mysterious, but ever righteous: Ps.145:17, 'The Lord is holy in all his ways, and righteous in all his works.' When his paths are in the seas, and his goings in deep waters, Psalm 77:19, that none can fathom them, or find out the reason of them, even then all his ways are judgment, Deuteronomy 32:4. Not as judgment is opposed to mercy, but as judgment is opposed to injustice. 'When clouds and darkness are before him,' that is, when his providences are such hard texts that none can expound them, and such dark riddles that none can unfold them; even then, 'righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne,' Psalm 99:2. His disposing and distributive power moves always within the sphere of righteousness.
Men may be just, Matthew 1:19; Joseph was a just man; Noah, Genesis 6:9; John, Mark 6:20; Cornelius, Acts 10:22. 'But shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall man be more pure than his Maker?' Job 4:17. The expression is a denial of all comparison between God and man: it is the highest presumption for man to prefer himself before God, Isaiah 14:13, 14.
Yes, it is monstrous impudency for man to compare himself with God!
We say among men that comparisons are odious; but this is the most odious comparison of all, for Enosh, a weak frail creature, to compare with the mighty, almighty Creator; for crookedness to compare with straightness, and darkness to compare with light. The most just man compared with God is unjust; his righteousness is as a filthy rag: 'In his sight can no flesh be justified,' Psalm 143:2. Though in the sight of men a man may be just, yet in the sight of God he is unjust. Compare a star with a candle, and it is somewhat; but compare it with the sun, and it is nothing—it must hide its head for shame. Compare a godly man with a wicked man, or one not so good as himself, and he is somebody; but compare him with an angel, he is nobody: what is he then, if he be compared with a God? Job 9:2, 3: 'How should man be just with God?' Speak the way, declare the means, the manner, how man should be righteous before God, 'If he will contend with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand.' Not to one question of a thousand which God can put to him, not for one action of a thousand which himself has wrought.
Alas, is he just, who is so far from ability to justify all he does, that he cannot justify one act of a thousand that he does? Angels are just, they are righteous in their natures, have no spot in their lives, have no error, Psalm 103:20. But are they righteous to God, or before God? No, Job 4:16–8. Angels are nothing in justice to God; though they are just to man, they are unjust to God. They are in a possibility, considered in themselves, of actual injustice, which God is not; he is incapable of being unjust. Again, the law or rule of angels' righteousness is without them, and distinct from them, and thereby they are the more capable of swerving from it; but the law or rule of God's justice is within him, yes, it is himself; he is his own law, his own rule, and therefore it is impossible for him to recede or err from it. When the workman and his rule are different, there may be fear of wandering from his rule; for though the rule be straight, yet the man may, through the mistake of his eye, or shaking of his hand, draw a crooked line; but when the workman and his rule are the same, there is no fear. God's will, that acts all things, is the rule by which he acts; and therefore every line must be straight, and every action just. He can never err in anything he does, whose will is the rule of all he does, nay, whose actions are their own rule.
Such is the creature's weakness that he may wander out of his way; but such is the Creator's power and perfection that he cannot possibly wander, because he is his own way: Daniel 4:35, I Nebuchadnezzar blessed the Most High, who does according to his will in the army of Heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth.' Observe, who does according to his will, that is his essential eternal rule. God does so much surpass men and angels in justice, that he is said to be the habitation of justice: Jeremiah 1:7, 'They have sinned against the Lord, the habitation of justice,' as if justice dwelt no where, had no abode, but in him and with him.
CHAPTER 8.
God incomparable in his attributes, in his knowledge and faithfulness
(5.) God is incomparable in his knowledge. Knowledge is that attribute of God, whereby he understands all things in and of himself. He is styled in the Scriptures, 1 Samuel 2:3, a God of knowledge: 'The Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.' As Christ is called a 'Man of sorrows,' Isaiah 53:3, to express the greatness of his griefs, to denote him one made up of sorrow, little else than sorrow; so God is called a God of knowledge, to express the greatness of his knowledge, as if he were wholly and only knowledge. Hence he has eyes and ears attributed to him, because he knows all that is done as an eye-witness, and whatever is spoken as an ear-witness, 2 Chronicles 16:9; Psalm 11:7.
The understanding of God is, like himself, infinite, without bounds or limits: Psalm 147:5, 'His understanding is infinite.' He is said, Job 37:16, to be perfect in knowledge, not only comparatively, as one man may be in respect of another, or as an angel may be in respect of man; but absolutely. To his knowledge nothing can be given or added, from his knowledge nothing can be taken. His knowledge is so perfect that it admits not of an increase or decrease. Men are knowing: Solomon was famous for knowledge, 1 Chronicles 1:12; he could speak of the nature of all plants, from the cedar to the hyssop, 1 Kings 4:33. The Romans are said to be filled with all knowledge, Romans 15:14. Angels are more knowing than men; flesh is dull-sighted, and of dim understanding; spirits have sharper wits, and quicker apprehensions. The devil, though a fallen angel, has one of his names Dæon, from his knowledge. Elect angels surely know much more than devils, for they always behold the face of their Father; and in that face, as in a glass, behold more than human eyes can discern, or evil angels conceive. The spirits of just men in Heaven see face to face, and know as they are known, understand very much more than they could here below; but angels, as their understandings are of larger capacity, and their natures more excellent, must needs know more than men. But do men or angels know as God? can it be said of any man, of any angel, he is perfect in knowledge? his knowledge is incapable of addition or diminution? Can it be said of any man, any angel, his knowledge is infinite? Man's knowledge in this world is little in comparison of what it shall be, yes, nothing. 'We are but of yesterday, and know nothing,' Job 8:3. He is but of small continuance here, and has but little experience, and therefore must have but little knowledge, yes, so little that it is called nothing; yes, the knowledge of men and angels in the other world will be so little, though enough for their perfection and satisfaction, that it will be nothing in comparison of the knowledge of God; finite knowledge is nothing compared with that knowledge which is infinite.
Whether you consider the matter or object of God's knowledge, or the manner or way of it, he is incomparable in it.
1. If you consider the matter or object of his knowledge: God knows all things: John 21:17, 'Lord, you know all things:' 1 John 3:20, 'God is greater than our hearts, for he knows all things.' He knows whatever has been, whatever is, whatever shall be, whatever can be, whatever cannot be. He knows all substances, accidents, necessary, contingent things. He makes all, upholds all, governs all, and discerns all. 'The eyes of the Lord are in every place,' 2 Chronicles 16:9.
He knows those things that are most hidden, most secret, the hearts, the thoughts, the most close retired motions of the spirit of man: 1 Corinthians
2:11, 'What man knows the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him?' Yes, what angel knows the things of a man? But God does: 'Hell and destruction are before the Lord: how much more the hearts of the children of men?' Proverbs 15:11. Hell seems to be far from his sight, and very remote from Heaven his seat. The hearts of the children of men seem to be unsearchable, so deep that none can fathom them; but he has a line that will sound these depths. He knows the spirit of man better than man knows himself: 'The heart is deceitful, and desperately wicked: who knows it? (No man, no angel knows it.) 'I the Lord search the heart,' Jeremiah 17:9, 10. And none knows it but he, therefore he is incomparable herein: 'For you, you only, know the hearts of the children of men,' 1 Kings 8:39. It is his sole prerogative. Men and angels may see the skins and colors, and lineaments and proportions, and faces and garments, or outsides of things; but God sees the insides, he pries into the very affections of things, 1 Samuel 16:7. All things are naked and dissected and anatomized before him, Hebrews 4:13; 1 Chronicles 28:9; Psalm 7:10; Jeremiah 11:20.
He knows what is future, as well as what is past and present: 'You know my thoughts afar off,' Psalm 139:2. Long before I think them; they are in your thoughts, before they are in my heart. Man knows not what a day is big with, or may bring forth, Proverbs 27:1, nor angels neither; but God knows what is in the womb of eternity, what all ages and generations shall produce: 'He declares the end from the beginning, and from ancient time the things that are not yet done,' Isaiah 46:10. And tells us this is proper to himself: 'Let them declare the things that shall come to pass, that we may know that they are gods,' Isaiah 41:23. Let them foretell what is future, and we will believe their deity. Predictions are those secret things that belong only to God, Deuteronomy 29:29; Isaiah 41:22, 23, 26.
2. He is incomparable in the manner of his knowledge. God knows all things fully and perfectly; men and angels know, what they do know, but imperfectly and by halves. They know but part of what is knowable, and they know this but in part. God beholds everything thoroughly, as if, like a well-drawn picture, he beheld that alone, and none but that, 2 Chronicles
16:9; his eyelids try the children of men, Psalm 11:5, that is, he has a distinct, certain, critical, thorough knowledge of them.
God knows all things immediately, by immediate intuition, not by species. Men know things either by the senses, the eyes, ears, or tastes; or by species taken in by the sense, and imprinted on the fantasy, which are thence offered to the understanding; or else by faith, and the report of others, or by discourse and ratiocination. He knows one thing by another, the conclusion by mediums and premises; the causes by the effects, and the consequents by the antecedents. Saints and angels in Heaven know things in God, not in themselves. God knows all things in themselves, and sees all things in himself, as in a glass. Man in this world must have a twofold light to see by; a light in his eye, and a light in the air. But the Father of lights needs no light to see by: 'Darkness and light are both alike to him,' Psalm 139:12; his eyes are as a flame of fire, he sees in the dark, Revelation 1:14.
God knows all things at once. Creatures know one thing by another, and one thing after another; their understandings are unable to take in many objects at once, much less able to take in all objects at once; but God sees all things at one view: 'The Lord looks down from Heaven; he beholds all the children of men. From the place of his habitation he beholds all the inhabitants of the earth,' Psalm 33:13, 14. The eye of man may see many things at once, as a hive of bees, but if it will see other things, it must remove the sight; though the mind of man can take in more than the eye, as a whole country or world at once, yet it is only the lump or gross. If it would take the distinct knowledge of them, it must remove from thought to thought; but God takes all distinctly, particularly, at once.
God knows all things from everlasting, before ever the world had a being. Men and angels may know what is, when it is, but cannot know it as God does, before it was: Acts 15:18, 'Known to God are all his works, from the beginning of the world.' Before he erected the curious frame of the world, he knew all the rooms and furniture in it, all the motions and actions of all the inhabitants of it. He does by one pure, simple, undivided, eternal act of his understanding, know all things perfectly, immediately, distinctly, every moment.
(6.) God is incomparable in his truth and faithfulness. Truth is that attribute in God whereby he is in himself, as he reveals himself to be, and in his sayings and doings, as he speaks and acts.
God is truth in himself, and truth towards his creatures. He is truth in himself. As he truly is, and really exists. Hence he is styled the true God, Jeremiah 10:10; John 17:3, in opposition to idols, or false gods, 1 Thessalonians 1:9. So he is truly infinite, truly all-sufficient, truly eternal, truly immutable, etc. 2. As he is the unchangeable archetype and idea of all true things without himself, so all created things are true, as they answer their patterns in his mind. 3. In his immanent actions, as his decrees and eternal resolutions are all certain, and attain a punctual accomplishment, Psalm 33:11. He is never deceived nor disappointed in his purposes.
God is truth towards his creatures: 1. In his works, as all his actions of creation, preservation, government, redemption, are real; and not chimeras or appearances, Revelation 15:3; Psalm 111:7; Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 25:10.
2. In his words: all he says is truth; his precepts are true, a perfect rule of holiness, without any defect: Psalm 119:86, 'All your commandments are faithfulness;' verse 142, 'Your law is the truth.' All his promises are true, and shall be performed: 'Not one good thing fails of all that the Lord our God has promised,' Joshua 23:14. Hence the gospel, the compendium of all the promises, is often called the word of truth, James 1:18. And the covenant of grace is called sure mercies, Isaiah 55:3. All his predictions are true, and come to pass in their season, Habakkuk 2:3; Revelation 22:6, 7. 'These are true and faithful sayings,' Genesis 49:10.
His threatenings are true, and fail not of their accomplishment, 2 Kings 9:26, 36; Romans 2:2.
He is truth itself, John 14:6, and 17:6; abundant in truth, Exodus. 34:6; truth, truth; the Lord God of truth, Psalm 31:5; a God that cannot lie, Titus 1:2. All lying arises either from forgetfulness; men break their word, because their memories are slippery; but God is ever mindful of his word, Luke 1:72. To remember his holy covenant, Psalm 106:46, and 111:5, He will ever be mindful of his covenant. Or from weakness, some would, but want power to make good their promises; though they were able when they promised, yet they are by some providence or other disabled, before the day of performance comes; but the strength of Israel cannot lie, 1 Samuel 15:29. The rock, the eternity of Israel cannot lie. Or from wickedness, some can but will not make good their words; but God cannot be charged with any wickedness: Psalm 92:15, 'There is no unrighteousness in him,' 1 Kings 22:23; Ezekiel 14:9.
Men may be true, Psalm 15:4; angels are true; but neither men nor angels are true as God is, let them be put in the scales with God; 'And men of high degree are vanity, and angels of the highest degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity,' Psalm 62:9. Read over God's truth in himself, and you will see how far angels come short thereof. Are they the exemplar of all things? are all things true as they agree with the ideas in their minds? Consider his truth towards his creatures. Can it be said of an angel as of God, 'The angel that cannot lie has promised'? Titus 1:2. Are they under an absolute impossibility of deceiving? Surely if they be considered in themselves, it was as possible for them to lie as for the father of lies. It is said of God, 'It is impossible for him to lie,' Hebrews 6:18. But this cannot be spoken of elect angels considered in themselves. God is so true that he only is true, all to him are liars, Romans 3:4; Revelation 3:7, 14.
CHAPTER 9.
God incomparable in his mercy and patience
(7.) God is incomparable in his mercy. Mercy is an attribute of God, whereby he pities and relieves his creature in misery. It is an attribute which relates to the creature only; God knows himself, and loves himself, and glorifies himself; but he is not merciful to himself. It is an attribute that relates to the creature in misery. Justice seeks a worthy object, grace is exercised towards an unworthy object, but mercy looks out for a needy, an indigent object. God is bountiful and gracious to elect angels, because they could not deserve that perfection and happiness which they enjoy; but he is not merciful to them, for they were never miserable. Fallen man is the proper object of mercy, as being not only undeserving of the least good, but as also having plunged himself into all evil. Mercy is an attribute, whereby he pities his creature in misery; hence he is said in Scripture, after the manner of men, to have tender mercies, Psalm 25:6; and affections of mercy, Luke 1:58; and to be afflicted in the afflictions of his people, Isaiah 63:9; and to have his soul grieved for the miseries of Israel, Judges 10:15, 16. As tender parents are extremely troubled for the afflictions of their children, Psalm 103:12, 13, so his affections are turned within him, his repentings are kindled together, Hosea 11:8, 9.
Mercy does not only pity, but also relieve the afflicted; it has a hand to supply, as well as a heart to pity those that are in distress, Isaiah 34:17; Genesis 19:16.
The attribute of mercy is that which God glories in, and boasts of, Exodus. 33:19; Psalm 103:8. Noble and heroic spirits are ever gentle and merciful; the basest minds are most cruel, and farthest from mercy. God says, Fury is not in him,' Isaiah 27:4; 'judgment is his strange work,' Isaiah 28:21; He does not afflict willingly,' Lamentations 3:33; but 'delights in the prosperity of his servants,' Psalm 35:27. It is not his nature to disturb and destroy men, it is their sin that forces thunderbolts into his hands, Isaiah 44:22; his delight is in mercy, Micah 7:18. The blessed God has multitude of mercies, Psalm 51:1, to answer the multitude of the creature's miseries, abundant mercy, 1 Peter 1:3. He is said to be rich in mercy, Ephesians 2:4. 'Exceeding abundant rich in mercy,' Ephesians 2:7. His mercy, as oil, swims on the top of all his attributes, is his delight: Jeremiah 32:41, 'I will rejoice over them, to do them good.' His mercy, as gold, being most excellent, overlays all his works: Psalm 145:7, 'His tender mercy is over all his works.' His mercy is to all admiration: 'Oh how excellent is your loving-kindness,' Psalm 36:7. 'Oh how great is your goodness,' Psalm 31:19. His mercy is beyond all apprehension; 'Your mercy reaches to the heavens,' Psalm 108:4; 1 Corinthians 2:9. He is styled the Father of mercies, 1 Corinthians 1:3; not the Father of justice or fury.
Mercy is the joy and pleasure of God; hence he is said to have a mercy-seat, and to have a throne of grace, Hebrews 9:5. Sitting is a posture of ease and rest, but he rises to execute justice, Psalm 68:1. He does rest in his love, Zephaniah 3:17. Mercy is the glory and honor of God. When Moses desired to see the glory of God, Exodus. 33:18, the Lord proclaims, 'The Lord God gracious, merciful,' Exodus. 34:6, 7. When God promises to do great things for his people, that he will give them health, abundance of peace, cleanse them from all their filthiness, and pardon all their iniquities, Jeremiah 33:7–; he gives us the fruit of it: verse 9, 'And it shall be to me for a name of joy, a praise and glory before all nations.' His mercy is his riches, his treasure; hence he is said to be rich in mercy, Ephesians 2:4.
God is merciful in all he does, universally merciful: 'All his ways are mercy and truth,' Psalm 25:10. The whole world is a volume written within and without with characters of mercy. He is merciful to all men, Psalm 145:9; Shows mercy to thousands, Exodus. 20:6 and 34:7; Matthew 5:45, 46.
He is merciful at all times; 'His mercy endures forever,' Psalm 118:1, and 136:1–. He is merciful in all respects; he gives all sorts of mercies, 1 Timothy 6:13; Ephesians 1:3; 2 Peter 1:3, 4.
Men are merciful, Proverbs 11:17; Psalm 37:26; so are angels in a sense; but none of them comparable to God. The tender mercies of the wicked, yes, of the righteous men, yes, of angels, are cruelties to the mercies of God.
Have they such pity, such affections for miserable creatures, as God has? Have they such power, such ability, to relieve afflicted ones, as God has? Can they afford preserving, protecting mercy as God, Job 10:12; pardoning and forgiving mercy, Micah 7:18; purifying and renewing mercy, Ephesians 2:4; saving and eternal mercy? Titus 3:5, 6. Oh how infinitely short do they come of him! He is so incomparable in mercy, that mercy is said to belong only to him: 'Unto you, O Lord, belongs mercy,' Psalm 62:10; unto you, and none but you. He is so merciful, that when his affections conflict with justice on the behalf of sinners, and get the upper hand, he rejoices in the victory; 'Mercy rejoices against judgment,' James 2:14. He is so merciful, that he dispenses with his own institutions for the sake of it, Hosea 6:6; Matthew 9:13, with 12:7. Once more, he is so merciful, that he is upbraided with it, as if he were too fond of that attribute, and loved it overmuch: Jonah 4:2, 'Was not this my saying in my own country? for I knew that you were merciful.' You did send me to preach destruction and desolation to Nineveh, but when I received the message, I knew all would be prevented by mercy, and that to preach such a threatening was but to disgrace and dishonor myself, as a false prophet, before the men of Nineveh; for I thought then what is now come to pass, that, notwithstanding the peremptoriness of the message, mercy would interpose, and prove me false.
(8.) God is incomparable in his patience. Patience is that attribute in God whereby he bears with sinners, and forbears or defers their punishment, or that whereby he expects and waits long for their conversion. He is a God slow to anger, Psalm 103:8. He waits on men to do them good, Isaiah 30:18. He is long-suffering, 2 Peter 3:7, 9. Nay, he endures with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath, Romans 9:22. He is the God of patience, Romans 15:5.
The patience of God is the more admirable if we consider: How perfectly he hates sin, Psalm 5:4; Habakkuk 1:13; Proverbs 6:16. And how offensive it is to him, it grieves him, Ephesians 4:30. It presseth him as sheaves press a cart, Amos 2:13. He is broken with their whorish hearts, Ezekiel 6:9. Though he be so infinitely perfect that no sin can be hurtful to him, yet he is so infinitely pure that all sin is hateful to him.
2. What an affront sin is to him, a contempt of his authority, therefore called a despising him, 1 Samuel 2:30. An eclipsing his honor, therefore called a dishonoring him, Romans 2:23. A contention with him for mastery, therefore called a fighting against him, Acts 5:39; Job 15:25. A violation of his commands, therefore called a transgression of the law, 1 John 3:4. It affronts his wisdom, therefore called folly, 2 Samuel 24:10; his justice, therefore called unrighteousness, 1 John 1:6, 7; his patience, therefore called a despising his long-suffering, Romans 2:4; his mercy, therefore called a turning his grace into wantonness, Jude 4; his truth, therefore called a lie, Isaiah 44:20. It must be infinite patience to bear with that which is the object of infinite hatred.
3. Who they are who thus dare and provoke him? They are his creatures, Psalm 100:2, whom he has infinitely obliged, Lamentations 3:22, 23; and laden with innumerable blessings, Psalm 116:12; and loved inconceivably, John 3:16; and seeks daily to overcome with his kindness, Psalm 130:5; Hosea 11:1. Yet these turn rebels and traitors, devise and endeavor his ruin, and join with Satan, his arch-enemy, in order thereunto, Ephesians 2:2, 3; Job 15:25, 26.
4. That he knows all men's sins, the number of them, the nature of them, all the aggravations they admit of. He knows their thoughts, words, actions, Psalm 139. 'I know all their wickedness and all their sins,' Amos 5:12; Ezekiel 11:5.
5. That he has power in his hands to avenge himself when he pleases.
He can look, speak, think his creature into hell-fire. Here is the miracle: 'He who is great in power is slow to anger,' Nahum 1:3.
6. That he is the more provoked because of his patience. The revenues of Heaven are at present impaired by it. Good men hereby question and quarrel with his providence, Psalm 73:2–; Jeremiah 12:1–. Bad men hereby are encouraged to continue in sin, and to judge him an abettor of their profaneness, Ecclesiastes 8:11; Psalm 50:21.
7. That he bears, notwithstanding all this, year after year, many years; forty years with the Jews, Psalm 95:10; with the whole world one hundred and twenty years, Genesis 6:3; with the Amorites four hundred years, Genesis 15:13, 14.
8. That he does not only forbear them, but also do them good. He continues life, and health, and food, and clothing, and friends, and relations; nay, the gospel and salvation, and seasons of grace, and offers of his love and favor, and of everlasting life, Acts 17:17, 18, 27, 28; Luke 19:41; Job 21:14–6; 2 Corinthians 5:19, 20.
Men are patient. Moses was the meekest man on earth, Numbers 12:12; but could he bear as God? No. When the Israelites provoked him, he was impatient: Psalm 106:33, 'They provoked his spirit, that he spoke unadvisedly with his lips.' The apostles were good men; yet, upon a little affront, they call for fire from Heaven, Luke 9:54. If God should be as impatient towards the most patient men as they are towards others, woe would be to them that ever they were born.
But though men come short, yet are not angels as patient as God? Surely no. Angels cannot bear like God with such a froward, peevish piece as man is. The Lord told Moses that 'he would not go up in the midst of them, lest he should consume them for their sins; but he would send an angel before them, to drive out the Canaanites,' Exodus 33:2. Yet, verse 4, 'When the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned; and no man did put on his ornaments.' What evil tidings? 1. They should have an angel for their guide and guard, that was both stronger and wiser than any man.
An angel that 'should drive out their enemies,' (God undertakes for that,) and bring them into the best country under Heaven. 3. God gives them the reason why he declines their immediate conduct, lest their stubbornness should provoke him to destroy them; yet they weep and mourn at these tidings. Alas! they knew if God could not bear with their provocations, much less could angels; and therefore, if angels be their guides, they must perish. If they could tire out infinite forbearance, and drain an ocean, they must needs quickly tire out finite patience, and drain a little stream. How soon would limited forbearance and a drop of patience be spent! God is so incomparable in his patience that he is called 'the God of all patience;' not only because he has all manner of patience in him, but because he has engrossed it all to himself.
CHAPTER 10.
God incomparable in his attributes, as they are from him, as they are his essence, as they are all one in him, as they are in him in an infinite manner
2. I shall show more specially the difference between God and his creatures in reference to these communicable attributes.
1. These attributes are all essential to God. They are from God, as well as in God. He is their author as well as their subject. But in men and angels they are all derivative: though truth and justice and holiness may be in them, yet they are not from them, but from God. God is not obliged to any but himself for them, he can thank only himself that he has them; but angels and men are not obliged to themselves, but to him for them. When the high God would lay Job low, by manifesting the vast difference between himself and Job, he bids Job be obliged to himself for his excellency: Job 40:10, 'Deck yourself with majesty and excellency; array yourself with glory and beauty.' To be decked and arrayed with majesty and excellency, notes, 1. The extent and abundance of it—the whole man is covered with clothing. To be clothed with shame, is to be extremely reproached, Psalm 35:26. To be arrayed with humility, is to be very humble, lowly in an extraordinary degree, 1 Peter 5:5. 2. The publicness of it. Our deckings and raiments are visible; we cannot go abroad but all see our clothes. God speaks to Job to this purpose: Job, you have talked very presumptuously, and carried yourself as if there were no great distance or difference between me and yourself, as if you were like me, and equal to me. If you are, let me see it; deck yourself with majesty and excellency, array yourself with glory and beauty. I can deck myself, and array myself with all these in the highest degree, and will not be indebted to any others for their help; I am clothed with majesty, but no creature lent a hand for the making up or putting on those clothes; Psalm 104:1. 'I have covered myself with light as with a garment,' Psalm 104:2. But neither man nor angel afforded me the least assistance therein. Do you as much for yourself as I have done for myself, and then indeed you may compare with me. God might make the same offer to angels which he does to Job, and none of them would or could accept it. Dependence is of their essence, as they are creatures; and they can no more be separated from it than from themselves.
2. These attributes are the very essence of God, not qualities or properties, as in men and angels. The holiness of God is the holy God; 'Once have I sworn by my holiness,' Psalm 89:36; that is, by myself, 'that I will not lie unto David;' for Hebrews 6:13, 'God having no greater to swear by, swore by himself.' The power of God is the powerful God, the truth of God is the true God, the wisdom of God is the wise God. All his attributes are himself, his essence; in men and angels, their wisdom, and power, and justice, and truth, are accidents, and differ from their substances; and this is apparent, because angels and men may be, and are, without these attributes, as devils and wicked men. In them these properties are one thing and their essence is another thing, so that they may be separated.
An angel may be an angel, and not holy, nor wise, nor just, etc. A man may be a man, and not powerful, nor patient, nor merciful; and the reason is, because these properties are really distinct from the essences of men or angels; but in God they are his very being and essence; they are himself, and can no way be separated from him, no more than he can be separated from himself: God could not be God if he were not most wise, most holy, most just, most patient, etc. God's attributes are one most pure essence diversely apprehended of us, as it is diversely manifested to us.
God's punishing the wicked is his justice; God's performing his promises is his faithfulness; his relieving the miserable is his mercy; his bearing with the guilty is his patience; so are all his essence, himself.
3. Those attributes are all one in God. His justice is his mercy, and his wisdom is his patience, and his knowledge is his faithfulness, and his mercy is his justice, etc. Though they are distinguished in regard of their objects, and in regard of our apprehensions of them, and in regard of their effects, yet they are all one in themselves; and this flows from the former head, because they are the essence of God, and his essence is a pure undivided being. In men and angels, these attributes or perfections are different and several, for they may have one without the other. Their righteousness is one thing, and their power another thing, and their truth a third thing; for we see in angels some that are strong and powerful that are not righteous or faithful, and among men some have one of these perfections who have not another; yes, though in good men all these perfections are in some degree, yet all are not in any one in the same degree. There is scarce any saint who is not more eminent for some spiritual excellency than for others; but in God they are all one and the same; as when the sunbeams shine through a yellow glass they are yellow, a green glass they are green, a red glass they are red, and yet all the while the beams are the same; or as, when the sun shines on clay it hardens it, on wax it softens it, on sweet flowers it draws out their fragrance, on dunghills and ditches it draws out their ill savors, yet still it is the same sun and the same influences; the difference lies in the objects and the effects. So the great God, who is always working in the world, when he works towards the wicked in punishing he is righteous, towards the godly in saving them he is merciful; yet still the same immutable God.
4. All these attributes are in God in the highest degree, yes, beyond all degrees. These communicable attributes which are in angels and men in degrees, and limited, for a finite substance will not admit of an infinite property, are in God infinitely. Immensity, like a golden thread, runs through all his communicable properties: his understanding is infinite, Psalm 147:5. So his justice is infinite, his mercy is infinite, and all the rest.
They have no bounds, no limits, but his own will and pleasure. He never acted to the utmost in any of them; he never put forth so much power, but he could put forth more if he pleased; he never exercised so much patience, but he could exercise more if he would.
Hence it is that in Scripture they are affirmed of God not only in the concrete, but also in the abstract. He is not only loving, but love: 'God is love,' 1 John 4:7. He is not only wise, but wisdom: Proverbs 9:1, 'Wisdom has built her house.' He is not only good, but goodness: 'I will make all my goodness,' that is, myself, 'pass before you,' Exodus. 33:19. He is not only holy, but holiness: 'Look down from Heaven, the habitation where your holiness dwells,' Isaiah 63:15. Therefore these attributes of God must be boundless, because they are his being, himself.
CHAPTER 11.
God incomparable in his works, creation, and providence
3. God is incomparable in his works, as well as in his being and attributes: none has such a strong hand, such a stretched out arm, or can do like him. 'O Lord,' says Moses, 'you have begun to show to your servant your greatness, and your mighty hand: for what God is there in Heaven or on earth, that can do according to your works?' Deuteronomy 3:24. He is a God doing wonders, Exodus. 15:11. His doings are like his being: he works like a God: Isaiah 28:29, 'He is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.' His works are all wonderful: Psalm 86:10, 'You do marvelous things, you are God alone.' So that it is said of him, Numbers 23:23, 'What has God wrought?' His works are great, Joel 2:21; 'honorable and glorious,' Psalm 111:3; 'perfect,' Deuteronomy 32:4. 'God thunders marvelously with his voice; great things does he, which we cannot comprehend,' Job 37:5. The works of men and angels are little, small; some mean things they do by divine concurrence; but his works are great and unsearchable, which we cannot comprehend. If creatures do great things, in a sense, or comparatively, yet they may be found out; their fellow-creatures have a clue which will lead them into all their labyrinths, and a line which will sound the bottom of all their actions; but God's works cannot be comprehended by the understandings of any creature: 'O the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God; how unsearchable are his ways, and doings past finding out,' Romans 11:33; 'His footsteps are not known,' Psalm 77:19; yes, 'He does great things, and unsearchable, and marvelous things without number,' Job 5:9, until there be no number. If creatures do great things, and marvelous and unsearchable; yet you might soon reckon up all such works of theirs, one great, marvelous, unsearchable thing were enough for the whole creation; but God does great things and unsearchable, yes, marvelous things without number. His ways are not as man's ways: 'As far as the heavens are higher than the earth, so far are his ways above the ways of man,' Isaiah 55:8, 9. No ways like his; among all the gods, there is none like unto him; neither are there any works like unto his works, Psalm 86:8.
Whether you consider the matter of his works, and the works themselves, or his manner of working.
1. His works themselves, and therein I shall pass by his internal works, both personal and effectual, and mention only his external works.
He is incomparable in what works he is pleased to do, or has done.
(1.) Creation, herein he is incomparable. The creature cannot create; "out of nothing, comes nothing" will fit with them: man may do something towards the emendation of the form, but he cannot produce matter, no, nor mend it when it is before him. A goldsmith may make a sparkling jewel, but then you must give him gold and precious stones to make it of; he can put the matter into a better form, but he is so far from making matter where there is none, that he cannot mend the matter which you give him: he cannot make gold of silver, nor diamonds of common stones. Man's work may exceed the matter, but man's work cannot make the matter exceed itself. But God can not only make the matter to exceed itself, as in man, who is formed of the dust of the earth, he has such curious parts, veins, sinews, arteries, etc.; such members, eyes, cheeks, ears, etc.; such characters of beauty on the whole, that he looks nothing like his parent earth, the matter of which he was made, but also make matter: he has brought something, nay, all things out of nothing. All the angels and men cannot create one grain of corn, one pile of grass, one mote of dust; but the great God has erected the stately fabric of Heaven and the earth, with the curious steps and stories thereof, and the various creatures and furniture therein, of nothing. Hereby he proves himself the true God, 'The living God that made Heaven and earth, and all things therein,' Acts 14:15. He proves his deity hereby, Jeremiah 10:10– 2, 'The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, shall perish from the earth, and from under the heavens. He has made the earth by his power, he has established the world by his wisdom, and stretched out the heavens by his discretion;' that is can you be so foolish and sottish, as to imagine that blind, dumb, deaf, dead idols can compare with him who created you and all things beside? When God would proclaim his sovereignty and incomparable excellency, he challenges Job, 'Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if you have understanding. Who has laid the measures thereof, or stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof set? or who laid the corner-stone thereof?' Job 38:4, 5. God would here denote the exactness and accurateness of his works, and so he alludes to men, who, when they would set up a strong, stately, neat, compact dwelling, lay the foundations and corner-stones, and all the rest, by line and measure. But that which God would principally intimate here, is his own omnipotency, and man's impotency: 'Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?' etc. Did you then lend me a helping head how to do it, or a helping hand in the doing of it? Surely no, I did all myself. Those innumerable beings which are on earth, and in the ocean, yes, that are included within the vast circumference of the highest heavens, are all made by him out of nothing: 'Through faith we believe that the worlds were made by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things that do appear,' Hebrews 11:3.
The great God had no materials to make the great house with, he did not frame it of his own essence, or any pre-existent matter, Isaiah 45:12. Yet such admirable qualities are everywhere intermixed, matter and form, subject and accidents, power and goodness, wisdom and order; a rare symmetry, exact proportion, and beauty on the whole; a dependent subordination, and useful subserviency in every part, so equally poised, that it is hard to determine which bears the greatest weight in the mighty work, and gives abundant cause to cry out with the psalmist, 'O Lord, how marvelous are your works! in wisdom have you made them all,' Psalm 104:24.
(2.) He is incomparable in regard of providence: 1. For preservation none is like him, nay, none beside him does this; 'O you preserver of men;' Job 7:20; 'your visitation preserves my spirit,' Job 10:12. God is unlike to men; the carpenters or masons build houses, and then leave them to the care and charge of others; but God keeps up what he sets up. His providence succeeds creation, and is indeed a continual creation: 'You preserve man and beast,' Psalm 36:6. Not food, or air, or sleep, but 'you preserve man and beast:' and not only men and beasts, but 'all things exist by him,' Colossians 1:17. That hand alone which made all, can maintain all; and that power only which produced out of nothing, must preserve from nothing, Acts 17:28. 'In him we live, and move, and have our beings.' That being which gave us our beings, must uphold us in our beings: Hebrews 1:3, 'He upholds all things by the word of his power.' As a pillar, or sure foundation, upon which they stand. The air which surrounds the earth and ocean, cannot bear a feather, yet in it hangs the massy weight of earth and sea: Job 26:7, 'He hangs the earth'--earth and sea, the terrestrial globe upon nothing:' his power is the only pillar that bears them up.
As a fountain from which they derive all their virtue and operations: the beings and motions of all his creatures depend wholly upon his concurrence. If he suspends his influence, the fire will not burn, Daniel 3:27. Neither can the best eyes see, though the faculty be well-disposed, and the object be colored, and at a good distance, Genesis 19:7, as has been hinted before. It is natural to the sun to run his race strongly and swiftly, yet if he does not concur, as swift as the sun is, he cannot creep a snail's pace; he stands still in Gibeah, Joshua 10:13; Job 9:7.
3. As a sovereign bond and ligature, by which the parts of all things hold together, and are kept as water in a vessel, from flowing abroad to their dissolution. No man, no angel, can bear its own weight, much less the weight of another creature: every creature is like a glass without a bottom, which cannot stand alone, but must always be in hand.
It is impossible for the creation, or any part of it, to bear up a moment, if God should forget it, and deny his actual concurrence to it. It does constantly depend on God, as the figure of the seal imprinted on the water, which being withdrawn, the impression is instantly defaced. God is to the world as the soul to the body, which alone can actuate and move it, without which it cannot stir at all, but is as a dead corpse.
2. He governs all, and neither men nor angels can govern themselves. The great family of the world would soon lose its beauty, yes, its being, if he did not maintain its harmony and concord, by guiding them in their motions, keeping them in their several stations, and directing them to their ends: 'The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all,' Psalm 103:19. One creature would most cruelly devour another; beasts would prey on men: all creatures would become their own enemies and executioners; the whole earth would be turned into an Aceldama, and a Golgotha, a field of blood, and place of skulls, yes, into a Hell, if he did not order, and guide, and govern all. Treasons, incest, slaughters, parricides, would overwhelm the whole world, pervert the order of nature, turn all into confusion and destruction, if he did not keep the reins in his own hands, and govern all things, in every of their actions, every moment.
He governs the highest, even the governors themselves on earth, that seem to be above all government: kings and princes seem to be absolute, and wholly at their own disposal; 'Who may say to a king, What do you?' Many will tell us that their hands are their own, to do what they please; but more will acknowledge that their hearts are their own, to think as they please. But, alas, they cannot command their hands to do what they will, their hands are ruled and overruled by him, Acts 4:28.
'Herod and Pontius Pilate were gathered together, to do what your hand determined to be done.' In like manner, their hearts are not in their own hands, to think as they will, but in God's hand, to think what he will: 'The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord, and he turns it as the rivers of water, which way he pleases,' Proverbs 21:1. As the gardener turns the sluices into his ground, this way or that way, into this channel or that channel, as he thinks best for his own advantage; so God turns the hearts of kings this way or that way, which way he sees most for his glory: Proverbs 16:9, 'A man's heart devises his way, but the Lord directs his steps.' No man is master of himself, so much as of his thoughts; that heart that devises its way, is directed in those devices by God. The sun is higher than an earthly prince, and seems to be his own guide; he acts naturally, and so necessarily: 'But if he speak to the sun, it rises not, and he seals up the stars,' Job 9:9. He has a negative voice upon the motions of all beings.
He governs the lowest as well as the highest: as none are so high as to be above his precepts, so none are so low as to be below his providence: the highest must remember him, and he does not forget the lowest: 'Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father's providence,' Matthew 10:29. Sparrows seem to fly at liberty, and to fall casually; but even their flight is directed by God, and their fall ordered by him: they neither fly nor fall accidentally, but providentially.
He governs the most stubborn creatures, those which seem wholly ungovernable. The winds, the high winds, whirlwinds, seem to cast off and scorn all rule and government, but these winds are at his will: 'stormy winds fulfill his word,' Psalm 148:8. When they rush forth with such irresistible force that neither men, nor trees, nor horses can stand before them, he rides on their wings, and has them more at command than a skillful rider has a horse, to turn this way or that way at his pleasure, Psalm 104:3, and 18:10. They are all at his beck: he causes them to blow, Psalm
147:18, and ceases them, Matthew 8:26. The wise man tells us he has them in his fist, Proverbs 30:4. He can hold them fast, or let them loose, as a man what he has in his fist.
The waves seem rougher than the winds; the waters are moist bodies, that are with much difficulty contained in their own bounds, especially when the winds cross them, and contend with them; but he sits on the floods, Psalm 29:11, as a prince on his throne, enjoining and forcing obedience and submission: 'he binds the waters in a garment,' Proverbs 30:4, as women their sucking infants in mantles, with swaddling-bands, which they cannot get out of; though the sea be such a giant, such a monster, that it swallows up thousands, and buries them in its belly, that it makes all to shake and tremble when it roars and rages, yet to God it is but a little infant, which he orders as he pleases, and can lay to sleep or make quiet in an instant, when it is never so tempestuous: 'When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness its swaddling-band,' Job 38:9. Some earthly princes, heated with passion, and drunk with pride, have cast shackles into the sea, threatening it with bondage if it did not obey them. Xerxes commanded so many strokes to be given the sea, as a punishment of its rebellion against his will; but such actions are the highest folly and madness. Many have had great command at sea, but none ever had the command of the sea save God. As tempestuous and outrageous as it is, it is his quiet prisoner, and stirs not without his leave, nor otherwise than he lengthens its chain: 'I set bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed,' Job 38:10, 11.
It may easily be proved that the sea is higher than the earth, and why, then, does it not overflow it, and drown its inhabitants? Surely no reason can be given but the command the great God has over it: Psalm 104:6–, 'The waters stood above the mountains; at your rebuke they fled, at the voice of your thunder they hastened away: They go up by the mountains, they go down by the valleys, unto the place which you have founded for them: You have set a bound, that they may not pass over, that they turn not again to cover the earth.' The waters did once cover the earth, until God broke up for them his decreed place, Job 38:10, and commanded them into their appointed channels. They have a propensity and inclination still to cover the earth again. What does their constant beating upon their banks with rage and fury, and now and then encroaching upon the earth, and getting ground of it, signify, but their desire and longing to beat down all before them, and turn the dry land into a sea? The only reason why they do not accomplish their ends is, because the great Governor of the world has set them their bounds, which they cannot pass.
Some men are extreme stubborn and refractory, as immoveable as rocks, resolved and fixed for their own wills and ways; but even these God orders at his pleasure. The king of Babylon seemed an untameable beast; he had foraged many countries and kingdoms, and trampled on many idols and false gods; and he comes in a full career against the people of God, like a lion greedy of his prey, no way doubting but to tear them in pieces and devour them; as you may read in the thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth chapters of Isaiah. But mark how God governs this wild donkey, and has this monster at command: Isaiah 37:29, 'I will put my hook into your nose, and my bridle in your lips, and I will turn you back by the way by which you came.' I will put my hook into your nose; an allusion either to a fisher, when he has the fish fast on his hook, draws it which way he will, Job 41:1; or to such rings as men put into the noses of bears to keep them in, and govern them with. My bridle into your lips, Ezekiel 19:4, 9, my bit in your mouth, and my curb about your jaws; an allusion to them that ride horses, who with bridle and bit rein and restrain them, and keep them within compass, Psalm 32:9; James 3:3. As if God had said, Because you rage like some huge unruly fish, or some fierce wild beast, I will take you with my hook, and I will ring you, and curb you, and lead you, and draw you where I list.
The devils are more intractable than winds, and waves, and men. They have great power, hence called the strong man, Luke 11:21; and powers, Ephesians 6:12. Their union does much increase their strength. They are so much one in their confederacies, and all their conspiracies, that they are called the evil one, the wicked one, Matthew 13:28; the devil, 1 Peter 5:8. Because, though they are many thousands, yet they agree and unite against God, as if they were all but one. They have much knowledge, subtlety, and policy to direct their power. Their excellent natures, their great observation of persons and actions, their long experience of some thousands of years in the world, must needs speak their wisdom, or rather craftiness, to be great.
Add to these their innate implacable hatred of God, which makes them employ all their power, and improve all their policy, to offend and displease him, to break from under his yoke and subjection; yet, in spite of all their might, their craft, their malice, he governs them as a man does his prisoners whom he has in fetters: 'He has reserved them in chains of darkness,' Jude 6. He has them ever in the chains, 1. Of their own terrifying, affrighting consciences, which allow them no rest day or night. Indeed all time is a dark, dreadful time to them, and all places are dark, dismal places to them. They are, wherever they go, as prisoners with fetters upon them, yes, such shackles as enter into and pierce their spirits; in chains of darkness. 2. In chains of divine providence: God governs their persons and all their motions; they go no where but as he pleases, though they go up and down in the earth. As subtle a spirit as the devil is, he cannot touch Job, Job 1:12; no, nor the swine, without God's leave, Matthew 8:31. He who would read more of the incomparableness of God in his providence, may see it incomparably set forth by God's own mouth in the 37th, 38th, 39th, 40th, and 41st chapters of Job.
CHAPTER 12.
God incomparable in the work of redemption; he can do all things
3. He is incomparable in the work of redemption. And truly this work is his masterpiece, pure workmanship; and, indeed, all his works of creation and providence are subordinate to this. All his attributes sparkle most gloriously in this, Psalm 102:16; all his angels in Heaven admire and adore him for this, Revelation 4:10, 11. This is the work of all his works, which he is so mightily pleased with, and reaps so much glory and praise from, Isaiah
42:1, and 43:21. No angels, no men, no not all together, could with all their united worthiness redeem one soul: 'None of them can redeem his brother, or give to God a ransom for him. For the redemption of the soul is precious, it ceases forever,' Psalm 49:9. 10.
None beside God had pity enough for man's misery, or wisdom enough to find out a remedy, or power enough for his recovery.
None had pity enough for man's misery. Boundless misery called for boundless mercy; one deep for another. But where is such mercy to be found among the creatures? Man was a child of wrath, had plunged himself into an ocean of evils and fury, and this required an ocean of love and pity; but creatures at most had but drops. But the Creator had infinite grace for infinite guilt, and infinite mercy for infinite misery: Ezekiel 16:4–, 'In the day of your nativity, you were cast out, to the loathing of your person; your navel was not cut, neither were you salted with salt, nor washed with water.' Here is misery indeed, but what help or compassion from creatures? Truly none: no eye pitied you, to do any of these things unto you; who then had pity enough? 'Then I passed by you, and saw you in your blood; then was my time of love, and I bid you live; yes, when you were in your blood, I said unto you, Live.' God has great mercy for great misery, Ephesians 2:4, 5; abundant mercy for abundant misery, 1 Peter 1:3; a plaster altogether as broad and as large as the sore, John 3:16; 1 John 4:9; Ephesians 3:19; therefore the Holy Spirit observes, Luke 1:78, in the work of redemption, the tender mercy of our God from on high has visited us.
None had wisdom enough to find out a remedy. Had the creatures had pity enough, and kindness enough, they had not wisdom enough to make justice and mercy meet together, and righteousness and grace kiss each other. If God should have offered man his pardon and life, upon condition that he with angels should consult, and find out some way to satisfy his infinite justice, that was offended by sin; alas, poor man must of necessity have perished. What creature was able to undertake the satisfaction of infinite justice? It would have bankrupt them all to satisfy for one of the smallest sins. And who could have thought of God the creator to undertake it? Who dared have presumed to entertain such a motion in his heart? Could it have entered into the mind of men or angels, that the law might be fulfilled in its commands and curse, the glory of divine justice and holiness salved, and miserable man eternally saved? No creature would have thought of a way to reconcile the justice and mercy of God; no creature could have thought of any way for it; nay, no creature dared have thought of such a way as God has found out. No. He who made the world by his wisdom, Psalm 104:24, when it had unmade itself, new made it by his wisdom. Hence the redemption of man is called the manifold, the curious, the embroidered wisdom of God; such wisdom as passed the knowledge of angels, Ephesians 3:10; and the Redeemer is called the wisdom of God, 1 Corinthians 1:24; in this work is infinite wisdom because in this work infinite justice and infinite mercy do meet, Romans 3:24, 25; Ephesians 2:5, 7; 1 John 4:9, 10.
Again, None had power to have gone through with the work, if they had had wisdom to have found out a way. There was so much to be done in order to man's recovery, that it would have undone all the world, if they had undertaken it. The powers of Hell must be overcome, the curse of the law, and wrath of the law-giver, must be borne. Sin, that was so strong and fast in the heart of man, must be subdued; grace and holiness, against which man had an enmity must be infused; and what power less than omnipotent could effect either of these? God, who discovered great power in creating the world of nothing, discovered much greater in redeeming the world when it was worse than nothing. In the former he had no opposition; in the latter his law, justice, the devils of Hell, nay, man himself, did resist and oppose him. It had been impossible for the Mediator to have borne up, and held out under all those contests with the powers of darkness, the malediction of the law, the fury of his Father, if the almighty everlasting arms had not been under him. Isaiah 42:1, 'Behold my servant, whom I uphold;' Isaiah 49:8, 9. Therefore you read of power, great power, mighty power, greatness of power, exceeding greatness of power, put forth in the work of redemption: Ephesians 1:19, 20, 'And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of the mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead;' and the Redeemer is called the power of God, 1 Corinthians 1:24; the arm of the Lord, Isaiah 53:1; his strength, Isaiah 27:5; once more we read, 'Your redeemer is mighty, the Lord of hosts is his name,' Jeremiah 50:34.
2. He is incomparable, not only in what he has done, but also in what he can do. He can do what he will, nay, he can do much more than he will do.
He can do what he will. His arm is as large as his mind, and his hand equal to his heart. His will and pleasure is the only boundary of his strength and power: 'Whatever the Lord pleased, that did he in Heaven and earth, and the seas, and in all deep places,' Psalm 135:6, and 115:3. Can this be said of men or angels? Can they do what they please? Surely not!
But the Lord does what he has a mind to do: 'He is of one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desires, that he does,' Job 23:13. His heart only can limit his hands, and his strength is determined by nothing but his will. It was the saying of a prince, that he could bear a circle about his head, meaning his crown, but he could not bear a circle about his feet, he would go and come at his own pleasure, and do what he thought fit; but all the princes in the world have fetters about their feet, and chains about their hands. They cannot go where they please; Isaiah 37:33, 34, Sennacherib would needs go up to Jerusalem, and brings an army against it for that end, but his feet were fettered. 'Thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city; by the way that he came, by the same shall he return.' Neither can they do what they please. As they go, not where they will, but, where God pleases; so they do, not what they will, but, what God pleases, Acts 4:27, 28.
It is God's incomparable prerogative to go where, and do what he will.
God does not do many things that he can, but he does all things that he will. He can do more than he will. He cannot do what is sinful, he cannot lie, Titus 1:2; he cannot deny himself, 1 Timothy 2:13. He cannot do that which implies a contradiction. He cannot make himself a creature, or make a creature a God, because the doing of these things speak weakness and imperfection, but whatever speaks power or perfection, that he can do: 'He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think,' Ephesians 3:20. A man may ask much, this world, the other world, a thousand worlds after them, millions of worlds after those, better worlds, greater worlds, the sovereignty and dominion over them, the command and rule of them for ages, for generations, forever. A man may conceive more than he can ask; the mind of man is much larger than his tongue.
His apprehension does far exceed his expressions, especially of such a man whose mind is enlightened and enlarged, for of such the apostle speaks, and not contracted and narrowed to sublunary sensual objects.
But God can do more than we are able to ask or think, yes, abundantly more; so much more, that we cannot think how much more; nay, exceeding abundantly more, abundanter, above abundance.
Is anything impossible to God? Luke 1:37. With God all things are possible, Matthew 19:26. He is good at everything that is good. Men are good, some at one thing, some at another thing; so are angels: but no man, no angel is good at all things, God only can do everything, as God only can be everything; he only that is universal in his being is universal in his doings.
He can make millions of worlds in a moment, and unmake them again as soon; he can kill and make alive in the twinkling of an eye; he can build up, and pluck down, take nature off its hinges, and set it on again; make the waters, when they run never so violently, to stand still; stop the sun in its full career; keep the hottest fire from burning, or so much as singeing a hair. Shall the sun go backward, says he, ten degrees, or forward? 2 Kings 20:9, 10; take either, it is all one to me; choose which you like best—to me both are equally easy.
CHAPTER 13.
God incomparable in the manner of his working: he works irresistibly, arbitrarily
2. If you consider the manner of his working, he is incomparable therein also.
1. He works irresistibly; he works so, as none can hinder him: all the united wisdom, power of men, of angels, cannot stop him at his work. The mighty king Nebuchadnezzar was taught this truth, when he was grazing among the beasts: Daniel 4:35, 'He does according to his will in the armies of Heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand.' Mark, he does what he will, and none can stay his hand; the prayers of his people have sometimes stayed his hand, when he was going to slay and destroy, but it was because out of his grace he stayed it himself. Alas, what creature can see, or know, or reach his hand, that is invisible and omnipresent? Isaiah 48:10, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.' The counsels of men do not always stand, he makes them to fail and fall: 'He brings the counsels of the heathen to nothing, and makes the devices of the people of none effect,' Psalm 33:10. But none can make his counsel void, or his devices invalid.
What he will do he does, and there is no withstanding him. If he will bring an enemy against a nation, none can prevent their coming. Calling the ravenous bird from the east, the man that executes my counsel from a far country—Cyrus that should seize on Babylon, as a ravenous bird on his prey—I have spoken it, and I will bring it to pass. Let me see who shall hinder it; I have purposed it, and I will do it. I would see who dares undertake to oppose it, Isaiah 45:11, 12.
If he will deprive men of their honors and grandeur, of their estates and treasures, of their might and power, there is no contending with him, it must be done: Job 9:12, 'Behold, he takes away, who can hinder him?' If he will take away, nothing shall stand in his way. The four great strong monarchies of the world, that successively were the dread and terror of the earth, were taken away by him, and who hindered him? All their policy and power could not prevent him, or hinder their ruin, Daniel 2:44.
God has a negative voice upon the motions of all the creatures: 'Who is he who says, and it comes to pass, if the Lord commands it not?' Lamentations
3:27. They who reckon without him must reckon again; they must ask his leave, as well as have his assistance, or sit still and do nothing. Their wheels, though never so well oiled, stand still, or go backward, if he say nay to their motion forward: 'He speaks to the sun, and it rises not; and seals up the stars,' Job 9:7. No day, not the least light in the heavens at night, without his leave; but no creature has a negative voice upon the least of his actions; what he will do he does, and never asks men or angels' leave. Nay, challenges them to hinder him if they can: Isaiah 43:13, 'I will work; who shall let it?' Observe his resolution, 'I will work;' he speaks like one in authority, that is above all checks and controls, that can make good what he purposes in spite of all opposition; I will work. Observe also his challenge, 'Who shall let it?' Would I could see the man, the angel, that dared stand in the way of my motions. The Jews might think Babylon will let; I, says God, have sent to Babylon, and destroyed all their princes, I have broken in pieces those iron bars; there is no fear that they should hinder my entrance into their city.
He can give a supercedes to the highest attempts and strongest designs of creatures; he can blow on them, and they are soon blasted, all their politic conceptions prove abortive: 'Take counsel together, and it shall come to nothing,' Isaiah 8:10. Their most powerful engines prove ineffectual: verse 9, 'Gird yourselves, and you shall be broken in pieces.' some of them talked at a great, at a high rate; 'We will go up against Judah and destroy it, and set a king in the midst thereof, even the son of Tabeal;' but they speak beyond their strength, and reckon, as we say, without their host: Thus says the Lord God, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass,' Isaiah 7:6, 7. But none can give a supercedes to the least of his attempts: 'Behold he breaks down, and it cannot be built up again; he shuts up a man, and there can be no opening,' Job 12:14.
2. He works arbitrarily, according to his own will; he does what he will, and he alone may do what he will. It is argued by many, that some princes are not accountable for what they do to any man, but all hold they are accountable to God. They are his stewards and deputies, and must give an account to him of their stewardships. They are his creatures, and are, or ought to be, limited by his laws, and so must be responsible to him for their carriages and government. No king is absolute or arbitrary in his governments, because all kings are his subjects, and owe allegiance to his majesty, and obedience to his commands; but God is absolute and arbitrary, and may do what he will do; everything that he does is just, because he does it: 'He does what he will in Heaven and earth, and none can say unto him, What do you?' Daniel 4:35. He is responsible to none for any of his actions; none may question him, much less quarrel with him for what he does. Angels are far from being arbitrary, his will, not their own, is their rule: Psalm 103:20, 'You ministers of his that do his pleasure.' He only that is above all law is above all transgression, 1 John 3:4; and he whose will is the only rule, of rectitude and righteousness, may well do what he will, Romans 12:2.
He has an absolute unlimited propriety in all the works of his hands; he is the great proprietor of all the world, and therefore may dispose of all at his pleasure, Psalm 24:1: Matthew 20:13, 15, 'May I not do what I will with mine own? Friend, I do you no wrong.' Though men may have a civil right to their estates, and a natural right to themselves and their children, yet the original in all is still God's. He divests himself of nothing by lending anything to us, or trusting us with it; and therefore he may use what is his own, at his own liberty and pleasure, and none may question or quarrel with him for it.
Again, he is supreme, and so above all answering or accounting for anything he does: he is the most High, Psalm 92:1. It is no disparagement to men or angels to be under a law; nay, it is essential to them as they are creatures; but he who is supreme, and gives all laws to others, is under no law himself; indeed, if he had a superior, he might be called to account by him: 'But why strive you against him? he gives no account of any of his matters,' Job 33:13. Why strive you against him? Not by open force, but secret murmurings, and logical arguings, against his providential dispensations. It is vain, for he gives no account of any of his matters.
He is not bound to tell you what he does, or why he does it. He has received nothing from you, and so not bound to account to you, Romans
11:35. You have no authority to call him to account; what man or angel has power to call him to account? In the next chapter the Holy Spirit does fully speak for our purpose: Job 34:10, 12, 13, 'Far be it from God, that he should do wickedly; and from the Almighty, that he should pervert judgment. Who has given him a charge of the earth?' Whose deputy is he in the government of the world? If he be a deputy or viceroy to any superior power, then he must keep close to the instructions, and act according to the commission he receives from them, or be accountable for his wanderings and deviations; 'But who has given him a charge over the earth?' What man? what angel? where is he? what or who is he who has given him a charge? If there were one higher than God to give him a rule, then if he swerved from it, he was faulty; but because he is higher than the highest of beings, and his own law, therefore he may do what he will without blame: 'Who has enjoined him his way? or can say unto God, You have wrought iniquity?' Job 36:23. God's way is his method of working, his manner of governing the world. Now, says the Holy Spirit, who has any authority over him, to enjoin him his way of working, the path in which he should walk, that in case he stepped aside, he might say unto him, You have wrought iniquity? No, not any; and therefore it is desperate presumption for any to complain of him whatever he does: 'Who are you that replies against God?' Romans 9:20.
He is a bold man indeed that will contend with his Maker. Who are you? what manner of man? what monster of men? Who are you, a clod of clay, a lump of earth, a sink of sin, a firebrand of Hell, that you dare chop logic with God? For shame! sit still, lay your hand on your mouth, and be silent.
CHAPTER 14.
God incomparable in his working; he does the greatest things with ease, and without any help 3. He works at all times without weariness, and does the greatest things with ease. As there is nothing too hard for God, so there is nothing hard to God. He does the hardest things that are with the greatest ease.
Indeed, the great God does the greatest and hardest things with the same ease that he does the least things. It is all one to him whether his work be small or great, easy or hard to others; all is easy alike to him.
In the creation, though the building be large and vast, yet with what ease did he set it up! He did not blow or sweat, no, nor so much as stir at his work. The whole world consists of the celestial and terrestrial globe, and both were the product of his word. For the heavens: Psalm 33:6, 'By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all the host thereof by the breath of his mouth.' It was but a word, a breath, that produced that vast circumference of the heavens, and all those great luminaries there. So for the earth, 'He spoke, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast,' verse 9. He only spoke the word, and even nonentities obeyed, and became beings. Therefore, in the story of the creation, Genesis 1, we find in every day's work God only commanding, and immediately all things concurring, verse 3, 9, 12.
In his works of providence he does all things with inconceivable ease.
If he destroy and pull down, it is done with ease. 'They are crushed as a moth,' Job 4:19. How easily does a man crush a moth between his fingers! with more ease does God crush his stoutest enemies. He destroys the highest, the greatest, the strongest; the lions, young lions, with a breath, with a blast. 'By the blast of God they perish; by the breath of his nostrils they are consumed,' Job 4:9, 10. By a blast, a breath; it is easy to breathe, to send forth a blast, for a man; but much easier for God, who breathed into man the breath of life. This can put him to no pain, no toil, no trouble at all. Sennacherib comes against Jerusalem with a great army of warriors, and had, as he says, counsel and strength for war. God undertakes to deal with him on the behalf of his own people, and to destroy him; but see with what ease God does it: 2 Kings 19:17, 'I will send a blast upon him.' I will never trouble myself to use my artillery, or draw out my great ordnance of Heaven, my thunders and lightnings against so many thousand soldiers; I will only blow upon them, that shall be all.
He destroys with a word. If he do but speak, it is done. His saying is doing. 'At what time I speak concerning a nation, to pull down and to destroy,' Jeremiah 18:7. When the prophet would speak the certain ruin of the Philistines, he does it in this manner: 'Woe to the inhabitants of the sea coasts, the word of the Lord is against you,' Zephaniah 2:5; that is, The case is woeful, your condition is desperate; the whole world cannot save you, for the 'word of the Lord is against you.' Men may talk and boast, and threaten what they will do, when all the while their words are but wind, and their threatened folk live long; but the word of God, like lightning or mildew, blasts wherever it goes, and burns up to the very root. Julius Caesar told Metellus, when he would have prevented his robbing the Roman treasury, Young man, be quiet, or I will lay you dead at my feet.
And then, to magnify his own power, adds, It is harder for me to speak it than to do it. But this is certain, it is as easy for God to do anything as to speak of it; yes, he does what he will with a word. Now, how easy is it to speak! He destroys with a look, with a glance of his eye; and surely that is easy to him that is all eye, that made the eye. 'In the morning watch the Lord looked through the pillar of fire on the host of the Egyptians, and troubled them,' Exodus. 14:24. He darts out beams of death from his eyes.
One look from God will take away the life of the greatest of his adversaries. He destroys with a hiss. Oh, how little, how easy a thing is hissing: Isaiah 7:18, 'I will hiss for the flies of Egypt and the bees of Assyria, and they shall come,' etc.
He destroys with a turn of his hand: Psalm 81:13, 14, 'I would soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against them that hated them.' A turn of his hand would have subdued the proudest enemies of Israel, and have stabbed them to the heart.
He delivers his people with the greatest ease. Whatever their straits be, though various and difficult, yet he helps them out with ease. When they were in captivity, scattered up and down as exiles out of their own country, he brings them home. But how? truly, 'He says to the north, give up; and to the south, keep not back,' and so forth, Isaiah 43:6. And both hearken to his word, that his 'sons come from far, and his daughters from the ends of the earth.' When the prophet would beg of him to help his afflicted people, he only desires him to 'command deliverance for Jacob,' Psalm 44:4.
If he wills it, and commands it--the work is done.
He succeeds his ordinances, and makes them effectual for enlightening the blind and enlivening the dead (great works) with ease.
He says, Live, and the dead sinner lives, John 5:24. He commands success, and ordinances are effectual. 'There the Lord commands his blessing, even life for evermore,' Psalm 133:3.
Yes, the ocean, that is such a frightful monster, which makes such a horrible noise, and opens its mouth, roaring and raging, as if it would certainly devour us, is quelled and quieted with ease by him, Job 38:8–10.
When the sea was tempestuous, and frightened the disciples that they awake the Lord Jesus, with what ease does he cause a calm, 'Peace, be still,' Matthew 8:27; as a mother would still a crying child: Hush, be quiet, peace, no more, be still; and 'immediately there was a calm.' 4. He works wholly by his own power, without the least help from any other. Creatures are all instruments, and act in the virtue of the principal efficient. Angels and men act not in their own, but in the strength of God; they have not some help from God, but all the power by which they work from God. But God acts wholly in his own strength, he never had nor desired a helping hand from any of his creatures.
In the work of creation he erected this curious large fabric without any tool or instrument: Isaiah 44:24, 'I am the Lord that made all things, that stretches forth the heavens alone, that spreads abroad the earth by myself.' Mark, he made the heavens alone, had none with him to assist him; and he made the earth by himself, called none from Heaven to his aid. As he said to Job, 'Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if you have understanding,' Job 38:4. You were far enough off from giving any help. So he may say to angels, 'Where were you when I stretched out the heavens? declare, if you have understanding.' Some give that reason why they are not mentioned in the creation of the world, in the first of Genesis, to assure us, that God did not use their help in his work. The heavens are compared to a curtain, Psalm 104, and to a tent, Isaiah
40:22. Now we know that when curtains or tents that are very large, are to be stretched out, as the phrase is in that Isaiah 44:24, there needs many hands to it, one hand will not do it, many pair of hands must be put to it, but God spreads out those wide large curtains of Heaven alone, Job 9:8.
He borrowed not one hand to it: 'Have you with him spread out the sky, which is strong as a molten looking-glass?' Job 37:18. Was God indebted to you for affording him your arms in the unfolding and spreading that broad vast piece? In works of providence he does some great things alone by himself: Job 26:7, 'He hangs the earth on nothing,' without an Atlas to bear it up; and he preserves Moses forty days without food, Exodus. 32. And he does all things without the help of his creatures, even there and then when he makes the most use of his creatures. He uses angels and men in the government of the world; he uses many means, as food and clothing, and physic and sleep, for the preservation of our health and lives; but he does all as much and as surely as if he made not use of any means at all. He is the soul of the world, that actuates everything in it; hence we read, that instruments are called his sword, Psalm 17:14; his rod, Isaiah 10:5. What can the sword or the rod do without a hand to cut or scourge with them? therefore when his rod boasts as if it could scourge of itself, Isaiah 10:12, 13, and as if it were the hand too, 'By the strength of my hand have I done it; I have removed the bounds of the people, and robbed their treasure;' God quickly contradicts such vain babbling, and confutes such vainglorious boasting: verse 15, 'Shall the axe boast itself against him that hews therewith, or the saw magnify itself against him that shakes it?' You poor proud vain-glorious wretch, you are a mere axe, a saw, and can no more move or cut of yourself than a saw or an axe that lies on the ground, which no man meddles with. You talk arrogantly and saucily, as if you did all when you did nothing; I did all, you were all the while but the axe and saw in my hand, which I made use of.
1. Whether God have little or great means, means or no means, it is all one to him; there is not a pin to choose, as we say, for he does as much when he has means as when he has none: 2 Chronicles 14:11, 'It is all one with you to help with many, or with them that have no power.' It is not the least difference to him, it is not so much as the smallest dust in the balance to turn the scale of victory, whether God have many or few, any or none of his side.
God never made use of any creatures because he had the least need of them, or the least help by them, but partly because it is his pleasure; he uses them because he will use them: It is his pleasure 'by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe,' 1 Corinthians 1:21; not that he has the least aid from preachers. So it is his pleasure by food and sleep to preserve man's life; not that he has any help from them: 'Your visitation preserves my spirit,' Job 10:12. Partly from his own honor. Hereby he magnifies his sovereignty, and shows his dominion over all his creatures, that they are all at his beck, and he can with a stamp of his foot, or a glance of his eye, or a hiss of his mouth, call them from the uttermost parts of the world, to execute his command: 'My hand has laid the foundations of the earth, my right hand has spanned the heavens; when I call they stand up together,' Isaiah 48:13. The flies, caterpillars, locusts, stars in their courses, and so forth, all come at his call. Hereby he magnifies his power, that can do such great things by weak means. He got himself glory on Pharaoh, when he made pitiful contemptible creatures, as lice and flies, such plagues to him.
And by opening the eyes of the blind, and quickening the dead, by such weak poor instruments as men are, his strength is exceedingly exalted: 'We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power might be of God,' 2 Corinthians 4:7. Hereby he magnifies his wisdom, namely, in discovering the fitness and aptitude of his creatures to those ends and purposes for which they were created. The use of a tool discovers its worth, by discovering its serviceableness to that for which it was made.
Partly to endear creatures one to another; their mutual serviceableness each to other, causes the greater amity and unity between them, 1 Corinthians 12:21–3.
In spiritual things also God works alone, even when he has many ordinances and ministers to serve him: 'You works all our works in us, and for us,' Isaiah 26:12. Not any visions, or prophets, or industry of our own, but you works all. What is Paul? what is Apollos? Paul plants, Apollos waters, but God gives the increase. So then, observe, he who plants is God that gives the increase, 1 Corinthians 3:5. God does not use preachers because they help him in the conversion of souls; but, as I said before, because it his pleasure, 1 Corinthians 1:21; and he turns it to his honor, 2 Corinthians 4:7; therefore it is often seen that ministers of the largest gifts, of the greatest grace, are not often the most successful in their labors; because God would have us know, that it is not the parts or piety of the preacher, but his grace and Spirit that does the work; they are nothing, he is all in all. He made light the first day of the creation, and not the sun or stars until the fourth, to tell the world that he can enlighten it without the sun. It is a great honor to God that he has so many millions of creatures at his will and pleasure, that he has so many eyes to see for him, and so many ears to hear for him, and so many hands to work for him; but it is a greater honor to him that he needs none of them, he can do all without them; that though they are serviceable to him, yet they are not necessary to him; for God and all his creatures do no more, can do no more than God without any of his creatures.
CHAPTER 15.
4. God is incomparable in his Word.
God is incomparable in his word; he speaks with incomparable authority, condescension, and efficacy Fourthly, God is incomparable in his word; he speaks after an unspeakable manner: 'Never man spoke like him,' no, nor angels, his enemies themselves being judges, John 7:46. Men may speak high, and speak holily; angels may speak higher and holier, but neither speak like God: 'Behold, he exalts by his power; who teaches like him?' Job 36:22. Behold, wonder at it, he exalts by his power, is good at acting; 'Who teaches like him?' is good at instructing, and best at both, and beyond all that ever were; 'Who teaches like him?' The words are a challenge to the whole world. Bring forth the man, let me see the angel, that can speak or teach like God. He does not say, Who teaches beside God? There are many teachers beside God: the inanimate creatures are teachers, the heavens by their constant regular motion, the earth by its fecundity and fruitfulness, according to the law of their creation, teach man obedience and proficiency, Isaiah 48:13. The irrational creatures are teachers; man is sent to school to the ant and swallow, and ox and donkey, to the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air, to learn providence and prudence; to learn wisdom, to discern and improve his opportunities, and gratitude to his Father and benefactor, Proverbs 6:6; Jeremiah 7:7, 8; Isaiah 1:5; Job 12:8, 9. Men are teachers one to another. Parents and ministers do, or should, teach those that are committed to their charge or trust, Proverbs 22:6; Ephesians 4:6. Angels are teachers: the angel taught Daniel, and helped him to understand, Daniel 10:14; and surely of all finite, they are the most learned and able masters: but he says, Who teaches like him? Though many teach beside God, yet none teaches like God; none speaks like him, whether you consider the manner, the matter, or the effect of his speech.
1. He is incomparable in the manner of his speaking.
1. He speaks authoritatively, and in his own name. Good men and good angels may command, but it must be as subordinate magistrates, in the name and authority of their prince and sovereign; but God commands in his own name and authority; God gives authenticity to whatever he speaks, and he speaks with authority when he speaks. God speaks as one that has right and power to command, and as one that, upon his own account, expects to be obeyed: I am the Lord, is enough to warrant obedience to the whole decalogue. 'You shall have no other God; you shall not make to yourself any graven image, and so forth, for I am the Lord your God.' His authority is the highest, the greatest reason of any precept, and the strongest warrant for obedience: 'Therefore you shall not swear by my name falsely,' why? 'I am the Lord.' 'You shall not curse the deaf, nor lay a stumbling-block before the blind;' why not? The deaf cannot hear if I do curse them, nor the blind see if I do lay a stumbling-block before them; 'I am the Lord,' and so forth, Leviticus 19:12, etc. It is said of Christ, 'He taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes,' Matthew 7:29. He did not beg attention, but enjoin it; nor beseech obedience, but command it. As when princes enact laws, they do not entreat, but require obedience at the peril of their subjects. This is the word of the Lord, and Thus says the Lord, and The mouth of the Lord has spoken it, is sufficient to awe and require subjection from all that hear it. God is his own authority, not so men or angels; they speak from God, but he from none but himself. His word is a light, Psalm 119:104, 105, that discovers itself; and therefore it is called 'The testimony of the Lord,' Psalm 19:7; because it bears witness to itself, and needs not testimony from men or angels. What the essential Word speaks may be spoken of the declarative word: it receives not testimony from man, John 5:34. Men need grounds and reasons, and witnesses too, to prove and vouch what they say to be true, and to be so as they speak; but the word of God is a sufficient authentic testimony to itself; it is his own proof, because what truth itself speaks must of necessity be true.
2. He speaks condescendingly to the condition and understanding of those to whom he speaks; he considers the natures and tempers and capacities of his hearers, and accordingly speaks to them; he does not, as some ministers, speak in an unknown tongue, or soar into the clouds, exceed the capacities of his hearers, that he might be wondered at, not understood; but he observes their weakness and infirmities, yes, their dullness and incapacity, and teaches them as they are able to hear him.
There are depths in his word for elephants to swim in—to tell the world what and how he could speak, to exercise our industry, and prevent our contempt of it for its plainness—and there are shallows for lambs to wade through, that none might be discouraged. Christ is our priest, and the priest's lips teach knowledge, and he is a merciful priest, Hebrews 2:16.
Condescending in what he teaches, and in the way of his teaching, to the capacities of his hearers.
In what he teaches. How chary was Christ of charging his disciples with anything that they could not brook: John 16:12, 'I have many things to say unto you, but you cannot hear them now.' I have some harder lessons to teach you, but you are young scholars, and not able yet to learn them, until you have been longer in my school, and have attained more ripeness of understanding; therefore I will not trouble you now with them, but leave them to my Spirit, who shall prepare you for them, and enable you to learn them: your stomachs are weak, and yet must have that only which is of light digestion—milk, not strong meat, 1 Corinthians 3:2. Your backs are not strong, and therefore I will lay on you none but light burdens, but you cannot bear them now, and therefore you shall not hear them now, lest you should be offended and discouraged at them. When the Jews inquired of Christ why his disciples did not fast often, as well as the disciples of John and the Pharisees: observe the reason our tender-hearted Lord gives, Matthew 9:16, 17, 'No man,' says he, 'puts new wine into old bottles, lest the wine burst the bottles; or sews an old garment to new cloth, lest the rent be worse.' Alas, says he, my disciples are young beginners, babes in me, at best but little children, not strong men, or fathers, and therefore they must not be called presently to the austerities or severities of religion, lest they, poor souls, should be discouraged in their work, and faint under it; I must proportion their burden to their backs, and lead them their own pace as they are able to go at present. Hereafter indeed they shall be called to suffer great things for my name's sake; they shall be hated and persecuted of all men, but then they shall be fitted for those severities, and undergo them with courage; but yet such deep points, and obscure notions, must not be offered to novices.
In the way of his teaching he is very tender and condescending; he accommodates his discourse to their apprehension: Mark 4:33, 'He spoke as they were able to bear it;' not as he was able to speak, (he was able to read lectures above the capacities of angels,) but 'as they were able to bear it;' therefore, he spoke so much to them in parables, because they might the better understand him: for though a parable would make truth more obscure—and so parables and dark sayings are conjoined, Psalm 78:2, and to speak in parables is opposed to speaking plainly, John 16:25, 29—yet a parable revealed, unveiled, as Christ did usually to his disciples, Matthew 13:17, 37, makes truth more clear. It gives us the advantage of viewing heavenly truth in earthly glasses, the species and reflections of which we are most able to conceive; therefore our Savior says, 'If I have told you earthly things, and you believe not, (or cannot understand,) how shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly?' John 3:12.
The instructions of Christ were like water, Deuteronomy 32:2, which he poured into those narrow-mouthed vessels by little and little, as they were able to receive it; or as rain, which he distilled on his hearers, as rain on the mown grass, by drops, and drop after drop, to refresh them; not by floods to drown them. Jacob considered the children were young, and the cattle were with young, therefore drove gently, lest by over-driving he should wrong them, Genesis 33:13. So our Lord Jesus considers what men are, how impotent and infirm, and will not overdrive, overdo, lest he should undo them: Isaiah 28:10, 'He gives precept upon precept, line upon line; here a little, there a little.' Will men or angels teach with such compassion, with such condescension? It is a rule of one of the ancients, that he who will teach children, must himself be a child. He must frame and fashion himself to them, and be as one of them, or else he will never teach them. How soon would the dullness and untowardness of man tire out the patience of men and angels, and provoke them to give over teaching them! God's incomparableness herein is fully proved in the incomparableness of God in his patience, in chapter 10.
3. He speaks effectually. As he has power to command us, so he has power to enable us to obey his commands. Men and angels may tell men their duty, but they cannot teach men their duty; they cannot strengthen them, or empower them to obey. He speaks so as men hear, and believe and live: 'He who heard and learned of the Father, comes unto me,' John 6:45. We have a saying, Every man will not make a Mercury. Some so dull and blockish, that none can improve them, or do good upon them, Isaiah 32:4, that is, no creature can; but God can make the dull, the blind, the most ignorant, to conceive and consider, and apprehend and understand the darkest and most difficult points by speaking to them: Isaiah 48:17, He teaches to profit. There is a power that accompanies his teaching, that does the work. When he says, Let there be light in a dark mind, there is light; it is so. He is a God that commands light to shine out of darkness, 2 Corinthians 4:6. When he says. Let there be life in that dead soul, there is life; it is so, John 5:24. Men and angels may call long enough to the blind to see, and the dead to live, and all in vain. But if a God say to a sinner that lies rotting in the grave, almost eaten up of the vermin of lusts, unsavory, and stinking in the eyes of all men, Lazarus, sinner, come forth of your cursed carnal condition; the man that was bound hand and foot, manacled and fettered by the devil, his jailer, comes forth, is loosed of his bonds, and lives forever.
As the mariners said of Christ, He speaks with authority, and commands the winds and seas, and they obey him; what manner of man is this? Matthew 8:27: so I may say, Oh what manner of God is this, for he speaks with authority, and the high winds of violent passions, and the fierce waters of boisterous corruptions, and they obey him; they fly, they fall before him! Can men or angels speak at this rate? will sin die at their word? will the soul live at their command? How long may they call to sinners to arise from the dead, before they will, before they can answer their call! But if God speaks, the most obstinate hardened sinner obeys his voice, submits to his will, and yields himself up to his word; nay, the very devils are forced to leave their beloved mansions, the souls of men, and to seek and settle their habitations elsewhere. He commands, and the unclean spirits come out of men, Matthew 8:32. If he please but to say. Get you behind me, Satan, that prince of the powers of the air, that God of the world, who crows so much on his own dunghill, the hearts of the unregenerate, sneaks away like a coward, and must in spite of his teeth obey his command. Matthew 4:10, 11; yes, God rejects him with a word speaking, out of his strongest holds, the souls of old, senseless, seared sinners, and leads captivity captive, and makes this jailer, who laid so many in irons, his prisoner and captive.
CHAPTER 16.
God is incomparable in his word: in its purity, mysteries, prophecies 2. God is incomparable in the matter of his speech, as well as in his manner of speaking; if you consider the purity, mysteries, or predictions thereof.
1. The purity of its precepts. His word is the most pure, perfect, exact rule of righteousness that is imaginable. It commands good, nothing but good, and all good, at all times; it forbids evil, all evil, and nothing but evil, and always: 'The commandment is holy, and the law is holy, just, and good,' Romans 7:12. Holy, as it is a copy of the divine will; just, as it is correspondent to the highest reason; good, as it is most beneficial to the rational creature. It is holy, as it relates to our duty to God; just, as it respects our duty to our neighbors; good, as it concerns our duty towards ourselves. It is holy, as consecrated to the service of God; just, as a transcript of the pure law of nature; good, as it is the measure and standard of all goodness in the creatures. It is holy in what it enjoins us to do; just in what it forbids us to do; and good in both. What laws in the world are in any degree comparable to the laws of God? The Mohammedan laws, which have gained so much credit in the greatest part almost of the known world, are impure laws, allowing revenge, polygamy, and commanding slaughters, oppressions, and so forth, for the propagation of their religion.
The laws of the severest heathen, Lycurgus, and so forth, contained but the carcass and body of purity, had nothing of the soul and life thereof. How many sins against the very law of nature did that Lacedemonian lawgiver allow of! And where he or any of the rest did forbid sin, it was in the outward actions, not in the inward affections. Their laws did rather command the covering of sin, that it might not appear abroad, than the killing of sin, that it might not be at all. Their laws were defective as to persons; some men were usually privileged, and not bound to them; as to the parts of men, they gave the inward man liberty, though they restrained the outward as to punishments; the greatest penalty they could think of or impose, was a temporal death. They never dreamed of a Hell in another world. But oh how pure, how perfect is the law of God! 'Your word is very pure,' says David, Psalm 119. So pure, that there is not the least mixture, falsehood, or error in it. It commands all, and nothing but conformity to the mind of the great sovereign, and Lord of all things: 'The law of the Lord is perfect,' Psalm 19:7. So perfect, that it is not deficient in anything. It commands purity in the whole man, in every faculty of the soul, in every member of the body. It commands purity in this whole man, at all times, in all companies, in all conditions, in all relations, in all manner of conversation, 1 Peter 1:15, 16: Psalm 119:1, 2.
It is apparent to common sense, that fallen man could never dream of such strict exact precepts; no, he is so far from it, that he is wholly contrary thereunto, Romans 8:7. And angels could not imagine them, unless God had signified his mind to them. For all holiness being a conformity to the will of the Most High God, they could not discern what was holy, what was unholy, any further then they could discover the will of this incomparable God.
2. The mystery of its doctrines. It contains such depths, such bottomless profundities, that could not possibly have been imagined by men or angels, had not God revealed them. It acquaints us with things far above the reach of created reason, though not contrary; yet being told us are so correspondent, that there is no ground left for the questioning them. What the great apostle says upon occasion of one mystery, we may say upon the whole: Oh the depth, 'Oh the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God,' Romans 11:33. Oh the depth of the Holy Scriptures.
There is a depth in them that none can fathom, because a depth in them that has no bottom. Great is the mystery of the Bible. Who could think of a woman's coming into the world without a woman, as Eve; of a man's coming into the world without a man, as the Son of man; nay, without man or woman, as Adam? Who could think that the same woman should be a mother and a virgin? But these are small mysteries; who could think that many thousands, millions, living many miles and ages distant, should be fellow-members, and be truly one body, sympathizing with, serviceable to, rejoicing in the welfare of each other, and all be united unto, receive influence from, and live wholly by one head, as far from them as Heaven is from the earth? Ephesians 5:27–0; Colossians 2:19. Who could have thought that three really and personally distinct should be equal, and one in nature and essence? 1 John 5:7.
Who could have imagined that God should become man, infinite become finite, the Creator a creature; the Father of spirits become flesh, and the Lord of life be put to death? Who could conceive, that he who made all things of nothing, should be made himself of a woman, made by him? That he whom the heavens, and Heaven of heavens cannot contain, should be contained in the narrow womb of a woman? That the only bread of life should be hungry, the only water of life be thirsty; the only rest be weary, the only ease be pained, and the only joy and consolation be sorrowful, exceeding sorrowful unto death? Who could have imagined that one, yes, millions, should be rich by another's poverty, filled by another's emptiness, be exalted by another's disgrace, healed by another's wounds, eased by another's pains, be absolved by another's condemnation, and live eternally by another's temporal death? Who could have imagined that infinite justice and infinite mercy should be made fast friends, and fully satisfied by one and the same action; that the greatest fury and the greatest favor, the greatest hatred and the greatest love, should concur in, and be manifested by one and the same thing? Could men or angels speak such mysteries? Surely no. Several mysteries in the Scriptures were hid from whole ages and generations of men: 'Which in former ages was not made known to the children of men,' Ephesians 3:5. No nor to angels neither: verse 10, 'To the intent that now unto principalities and powers might be made known by the church the manifold wisdom of God.' 3. The prophecies and predictions of the word. Neither men nor angels can foretell those things which depend not on natural causes, or which may not be deduced from moral or political grounds; and even in such things as these are, they may be, and have been deceived. Therefore it was the subtlety of the old serpent to deliver his oracles often in ambiguous words and in deceitful speeches, that whatever happened, his credit might be saved. But God foretells what has no print of any footing in nature, what neither moral nor political principles can direct unto, and never fails in his predictions. He foretells the birth of Cyrus one hundred years before he was born Isaiah 44:28; the birth of Josiah, two hundred years, 1 Kings 13:2; the conversion of the Gentiles, and falling off of the Jews, above two thousand years before it came to pass, Genesis 9:27; Isaiah 49:6, and 54:9, 10. He foretells the birth of Christ near four thousand years before he came into the world, Genesis 3:15. And it is very observable how punctual and particular he is herein, as knowing how much the welfare of the world did depend upon the knowledge of the true Messiah: he tells you long beforehand of what tribe he should come, of Judah; of what family, David's; of what person, a virgin; where he should be born, in Bethlehem; whence he must be called, out of Egypt; what his condition should be in general, full of sorrows and griefs; in particular, that he should be disgraced and reviled, tempted, betrayed, apprehended, deserted by his Father and brethren; that he should die, be pierced, not have a bone broken; be buried; make his grave with the rich and the wicked, and rise again from the dead, and reap the fruit of all his passion to his full satisfaction.
He has foretold the state of the world and the church in the Revelation, from the primitive times to the dissolution of the world, though it is written in shorthand and in dark characters.
And can any men or angels foretell such things? God challenges all the gods to do this: 'Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods,' Isaiah 41:21–3. The certain prediction of future contingents is such an inseparable prerogative of the Deity, and such a special privilege of the Original of all things, that he engages to own their supremacy and acknowledge their sovereignty who can do it. It is such a jewel in his crown, that none ever shared in it: 'I have declared the former things from the beginning: I did them suddenly, and they came to pass: I have even from the beginning declared it to you; before it came to pass, I showed it to you,' Isaiah 48:3, 5. It is peculiar to him, who works all in all, to foreknow and foretell whatever shall come to pass: Acts 15:18, 'Known to God are all his works, from the beginning of the world,' yes, from all eternity. For he stood on the high mountain of eternity, and thence had a full view of all that his will would produce, and whatever should come to pass.
CHAPTER 17.
God incomparable in his word, as it is converting, affrighting, and comforting 3. God is incomparable in the effects of his word. His words are works; they are operative, as well as declarative of his pleasure. What he speaks has power and virtue in it, as well as weight and value.
1. It is efficacious in converting the soul. The word of God can stop the tide of nature, when it runs with the greatest violence; yes, it can turn it the quite contrary way. Let a man be in the height of his strength, in the heat of his youth, ruffling and bustling among the sparks of the times, taking a large draught of carnal pleasures, and having a full gust of sensual delights, making his whole life but a diversion from one pleasure to another, as if he were sent into the earth, as leviathan into the waters, only to play and sport there; when this man is in his best estate, in the zenith of health and strength, in the meridian of his age, promising himself a long day of life, and putting the day of death far from him, and thereby giving himself the more liberty to the service of his lusts, yet if the word of God come to this man, who sucks in wind as the wild ass's colt, it makes him pluck in his plumes, bid adieu to his foolish pleasures, leave his most beloved lusts, loathe himself forever loving them. It alters the man's palate; that is bitter now which was sweet before, and he cannot savor what formerly was his Heaven and happiness; it changes the bent and frame of his heart, that now he forsakes with detestation what formerly he followed after as his only felicity and chief good. The wild man is tame, the obstinate man is pliable, and the distracted man is recovered to his wits, Psalm 119:9. Men and angels may persuade, but God only can prevail. The words of creatures may work for an outward reformation, but the word of God alone for an inward renovation. He only that made the heart can mend it. Human counsels may do somewhat towards the hiding of the corruptions of nature, but divine instructions are only effectual for the healing of corrupted nature: 'The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul,' Psalm 19:7. Converting the soul: The law of man may bind the body to its good behavior, but the law of God alone can bring the soul to its good behavior. To turn a lion into a lamb, darkness into light, a stone into flesh, death into life, all which is done in conversion, can be effected by the word of none but God, Isaiah 11:8–0; Ephesians 5:8; Ezekiel 26; Ephesians 2:1, 5. No word but his can take a scion off from its own natural stock, and engraft it into a new stock, Romans 11:17; James 1:21; 2 Corinthians 10:4; Acts 2:41, and 4:4.
2. It is efficacious in affrighting the sinner. He speaks, not as men or angels, to the ears only, but to the hidden man of the heart, and shatters it in pieces. He plants his batteries of threatenings, and terrors, and curses, against the inward man of the conscience, and puts it into an ague of trembling and shaking fits, as we see in Herod, Acts 24:27, and levels it to the ground. This word, in the mouth of a poor prisoner at the bar, frights the proud sturdy judge on the bench. When God speaks, he makes the best people afraid, and cry out, Let not God speak to us, lest we die, and the best of that people exceedingly to quake and fear, Exodus. 19:19; Hebrews 12:21: 'The voice of the Lord is terrible, it shakes the cedars of Lebanon, it shatters the oaks of Bashan,' Psalm 29. Those that were monsters of mankind for cruelty and barbarousness, for stupidity and searedness, by his word have been terrified in their spirits, wounded in their consciences, cut to the heart, and forced to call out, 'Sirs, what shall we do to be saved?' Acts 2:37.
The most stubborn, senseless sinner, whom neither mercies nor miseries could move or melt, who mocked at the curses of the law and the wrath of the Lord, and as leviathan laughed at the shaking of those spears, whom, as the man possessed with the devil, no cords could hold, no chains could fasten, but he burst all asunder, when the word of the Lord has been spoken to him, instead of flying in his face, as formerly, when men have spoken to him, he has fallen down at his feet, been filled with fears and frights, felt the very fire of Hell flaming in his conscience, and become a very fear or terror to himself round about. The word of God has stuck in his heart, as the arrow in the side of the buck, allowing no ease wherever he has gone; in the night, scaring him with dreams, and terrifying him with visions; in the day admitting no rest in his flesh, nor quietness in his bones; forcing him in all places, and in all companies, still to carry his jailer, his tormentor, his executioner along with him; and at last, that he might escape a partial and temporal, to leap into a total, an eternal Hell. Ah, who knows the power of his anger? of his angry word, or is able to fear him according to his wrath? Psalm 90:11. I may challenge every man, every angel, as God himself does Job, 'Have you an arm like God? Can you thunder with your voice like him?' Job 40:9. If he utter his word of fury, the rocks are rent in pieces, the most stony hearts are melted; the mountains are moved, the highest and firmly-seated sinners are shaken out of their places and senses, the foundations of the world tremble and quake, the strongest pillars are troubled, the whole frame and body of nature is affected with a palsy: Psalm 18:13, 'The Lord thundered in the heavens, the Highest gave forth his voice;' what follows? 'hail-stones and coals of fire.' 3. It is efficacious in healing the wounded spirit. When God takes the sword of the Spirit into his own hand, and wields it with his own arm, it makes work, it makes wounds to purpose in the consciences of men; the sleepy soul is now awakened, the secure soul is now affrighted, the senseless soul is now affected with his sins and misery, Acts 2:37; the man tastes the bitterness of his original and actual corruptions, feels the weight of divine fury and indignation, finds the poison to work in his affections, and racking him with extremity of pain. There is no rest in his flesh, because of God's anger; nor quiet in his bones, because of his sins.
The arrows of the Almighty are within him, and his terrors set themselves in array against him, Psalm 38:4; Job 6:10. The unquenchable fire flashes in his face, and destruction (in his thoughts) is ready to lay hold of him; in this condition he knows not what to do, for a 'wounded spirit who can bear?' Proverbs 18:14. He tries creatures, but they can afford him no ease; miserable comforters are they all to him, and physicians of no value.
It is the same hand that wounded that alone can cure him; it is the same word that bruised him that must bind him up; let God but speak to this soul that is thus sunk down into Hell, and it will be lifted up to Heaven.
'Fools, because of their iniquities and transgressions, are afflicted, their soul abhors all manner of meat,' (they are so sick that they can relish, take down nothing,) 'and they draw near to the gates of death,' they are almost in, they are on the brink of Hell; what course must be used for their cure? Truly this, 'He sent his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction,' Psalm 107:17–0. No herb in the garden of the whole world can do these distressed creatures the least good. Friends may speak, and ministers may speak, yes, angels may speak, and yet all in vain; the wounds are incurable for all their words; but if God please to speak, the dying soul revives. His word is the only balm that can cure the wounded conscience; 'he sends his word and heals them.' Conscience is God's prisoner, he claps it in hold, he lays it in fetters, that the iron enters the very soul; this he does by his word, and truly he only who shuts up can let out; all the world cannot open the iron gate, knock off the shackles, and set the poor prisoner at liberty, until God speak the word.
David professed, he had quite fainted, had it not been for this cordial water: 'I had perished in my affliction, but your word comforted me,' Psalm 119:92. The boisterous billows went over my soul, and I had sunk in those deep waters, had not your word borne me up.
CHAPTER 18.
If God is incomparable, 1. How great is the malignity of sin, which despises, dishonors, and opposes this God! I come now to make some application of this great and weighty truth; it may be useful by way of information, counsel, and comfort.
First, By way of information. If God be so incomparable, that there is none on earth, none in Heaven comparable to him, it may inform us, 1. Of the great venom and malignity of sin, because it is an injury to so great, so glorious, so incomparable a being. The higher and better any object is, the baser and the worse is that action which is injurious to it. To throw dirt on sackcloth is not so bad as to throw dirt on scarlet or fine linen. To make a flaw in a pebble or common stone is nothing to the making a flaw in a diamond or precious stone. Those opprobrious speeches, or injurious actions, against an ordinary person, which are but a breach of the good behavior, and bear but a common action at law, if against a prince, may be high treason, because of the excellency of his place, and majesty of his person. The worth and dignity of the object does exceedingly heighten and aggravate the offence. How horrid then is sin, and of how heinous a nature, when it offends and opposes not kings, the highest of men, not angels, the highest of creatures, but God, the highest of beings; the incomparable God, to whom kings and angels, yes, the whole creation is less than nothing! We take the size of sin too low, and short, and wrong, when we measure it by the wrong it does to ourselves, or our families, or our neighbors, or the nation wherein we live; indeed, herein somewhat of its evil and mischief does appear; but to take its full length and proportion, we must consider the wrong it does to this great, this glorious, this incomparable God. Sin is incomparably malignant, because the God principally injured by it is incomparably excellent. It is one thing to displease and offend man, a poor slimy worm, a mean shallow creature, of the same make and mold with ourselves; and another thing to displease and offend God, that inconceivable immense being: 'If one man sin against another, the judge shall judge him,' (a human judge may undertake to determine and comprise offences between them that stand upon the same level,) 'but if a man sin against the Lord, who shall entreat for him?' 1 Samuel 2:25. Here the case is altered, here is a pitiful finite creature offending an infinite Creator; what man dares arbitrate this difference, nay, who can intercede and interpose between these two? Hence, hence it is that there is no less than an infinite demerit in sin, because it is an injury to an infinite majesty. Nothing discovers sin to be so great an evil, as its opposition to so vast, so matchless, so great a good, so incomparable a God.
The evil of sin appears somewhat in the injury it does to our estates; 'The drunkard and glutton shall come to poverty, and idleness shall clothe a man with rags,' Proverbs 23:21: to our names; 'The name of the wicked shall rot,' Proverbs 11:7: to our families; 'A wicked man troubles his own house,' Proverbs 15:27, and 3:33: to our neighbors; 'One sinner destroys much good,' Ecclesiastes 3:18: to our nation; Jeremiah 18:7, 8; Psalm 107:34, 'He turns a fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein:' to our bodies; 'Who has woe? who has sorrow? who has wounds without cause? They that tarry long at the wine,' Proverbs 23:29, 30, and 5:11: to our souls; 'He who sins against me wrongs his own soul,' Proverbs 8:36. But all this discovers nothing of sin's evil, to that which is discovered by the injury it does to the incomparable God, because our estates, our names, our families, our neighbors, our nations, our bodies, our souls are all nothing, infinitely less than nothing, to the great God, the incomparable. This, this is the only glass that discovers the horrid ugly features, the monstrous frightful deformities of sin's face, that it is a wrong to the blessed God, to him who is the high and lofty One, Isaiah 57:15.
1. In that sin is a breach of this incomparable God's law, a violation of his command, a contradiction of his will: 'Whoever sins transgresses the law, for sin is a transgression of the law,' 1 John 3:4. Neither the greatness nor smallness of our obedience or disobedience is to be valued according to the greatness or smallness of the thing commanded or forbidden, nor according to the greatness or smallness of the good or hurt done to man by it, but according to the greatness of the person who commands or forbids.
2. In that it is a contempt of this incomparable God's authority, a slighting his dominion, a denying his sovereignty: 'Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice?' Exodus. 5:2, is the voice of every sinner. 'We are our own, say they; who is Lord over us?' Psalm 12:4. They know no maker, and therefore own no master. For this cause the sinner is said to cast the incomparable God behind his back, as not worth minding or regarding, 1 Kings 14:9; and to despise him as some mean inconsiderable being, 1 Samuel 2:30; 2 Samuel 12:9, 10.
3. In that it is a dishonoring this incomparable God, whose name alone is excellent. It lays him low, who is the Most High, Psalm 92:1: 'Through breaking the law dishonor you God?' Romans 2:23, 24. It is ill to reproach a common man, worse to reproach a nobleman or a prince; but oh, how bad is it to reproach the great God! to blaspheme that worthy name. Sin lays the honor of this incomparable God, which is more worth than millions of worlds, in the dust, and tramples on it. The Romans, when they would mark one with ignominy, and brand him with reproach, would put him out of their senate, or any place of credit in which he was, and pull down his statue or monument, if any were erected to his honor. Sin degrades and dethrones God, it will not allow him to be the Lord and supreme of the world, and it defaces his image wherever it finds it, as one contrary expels another; it disgraces his justice, thence is called unrighteousness, 1 John 1:6; his wisdom, thence is called folly, Proverbs 5:23; his patience, thence is called murmuring, Jude 16; his power, thence is called weakness, Romans 5:8; his mercy, thence is called unthankfulness, Luke 6:35; his knowledge, thence is called ignorance, and a work of darkness, 1 Peter 1:14; Ephesians 5:8; his truth, thence is called a lie, and lying vanity, Psalm 58:2; Jonah 2:8. In all these, and every way, it disgraces his holiness, which is his glory, and the glory of all his attributes, Exodus. 15:11, thence is called filthiness, 2 Corinthians 7:1; impurity, Romans 1:24.
4. In that it is a fighting with, and to its power, a destroying this incomparable God. The murder of any man is heinous, it is horrid, it is against nature, and it is the extreme mischief that one creature can do to another, Genesis 4:10; Matthew 10:28. The murder of a father or a sovereign is far more heinous, as being more against nature, and against more engagements to the contrary. He is cursed that mocks his father, and his heart smote him who did but cut off the skirt of his king's garment, though his enemy; what a monster then is he who kills either! but oh, what a monster, what a devil is that which destroys, as far as it is able, the good, the gracious, the great, the glorious, the incomparable God! Truly, sin is such a monster, such a devil, that were its power equal to its spite, and its strength answerable to its malice, the living God should not live a moment.
All sin is God-murder: the sinner hates God, Romans 1:30, and hatred ever wishes, and, as it is able, works the destruction of its object. 'The fool has said in his heart, There is no God,' Psalm 14:1, that is, it is a pleasing thought to him, to suppose there were no God; as to guilty prisoners, to imagine there were no judge to arraign and condemn them; whom we fear as hurtful to us, we hate, and wish he were taken out of the way. In order hereunto the sinner strives with God, and contends with him, Job 34:7; fights against him, Acts 5:39. 'He stretches out his hand against God, and strengthens himself against the Almighty;' he puts forth all his force, and vents all his strength; 'he runs upon him, even on his neck, upon the thick bosses of his bucklers;' runs upon him as one enemy upon another, furiously, without fear, and, as he is able, gets him down, sets his feet on his neck, tramples on him, and crushes him, Job 15:25, 26.
Oh how odious, how loathsome, how abominable is sin, that breaks the law, slights the authority, dishonors the name, and to its utmost dethrones and destroys the being of this incomparable God, this self-sufficient, independent, absolutely perfect, eternal, incomprehensible, infinite being, which alone deserves the name of being, and to which all other beings are no beings! Reader, should this God of glory appear to you, as once to Abraham, and show you a glimpse of his excellent glory, that is above the heavens; should he discover to you but a little of that greatness which the heavens and Heaven of heavens cannot contain; of that duration which had no beginning, has no succession, knows no ending; of those perfections that admit of no bounds, no limits, that are incapable of the least addition or accession to them, and then should say unto you, as when he appeared to Saul, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? 'Man, man, why do you despise my commands? Why, why do you despise my authority? Sinner, how dare you dishonor my name, and seek my destruction? What would you then think of sin? Oh, what would you then think of yourself for your sins? Should you not have other thoughts of sin, and of yourself for sin, than ever yet you have had? Would you not even loathe yourself for being so base, so vile, so unworthy, yes, so mad as to offend and affront, and fight against such a God? Would you not cry out as Job, 'I have sinned against you, and what shall I do unto you, O you preserver of men?' Job 7:20. I have sinned against you, an incomparable, infinite, inconceivable being: I have wronged you, the most high, most holy, most blessed God, and what shall I do unto you? what amends shall I make you? what reparation shall I give you? It is impossible for me, should I weep and wail, and lament and grieve millions of ages, to make the least satisfaction for the injury I have done to such a majesty. Or would you not say as he in another place, 'Lord, I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eyes see you; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes,' Job 42:5, 6. Lord, I have heard of you somewhat by your word, and by your works, they have told me somewhat of your beauty and glory, and excellency; howbeit I believed them not, but now mine eyes have seen your majesty, and royalty, and sovereignty, wherefore I abhor myself, that ever I should transgress your godly will, that ever I should blaspheme your great name, that ever I should despise your supremacy, and fight against your majesty. Ah, I reprobate turn away mine eyes from myself, cannot endure to behold myself; my stomach is turned against myself, I loathe myself, that ever I should presume and dare to contest and contend with, to wrong and injure your excellency; I recant all that I have been, all that I have done against you, and repent, am sincerely grieved for it, heartily wish I had never been so, never done so; but since what is past cannot be recalled, I will as far as I can be revenged on myself, for my impudence and distraction, I will lie in the dust, lick the dust, own myself to be much baser and viler than the dust, I will abhor myself in dust and ashes.
This, this is the venom, the malignity of sin, that it is opposite and contrary, offensive and injurious to the incomparable God. This is the consideration which should humble us most for our sins. This was the weight that pressed David down most, and laid him so low in the day of his repentance: 'Against you, you only have I sinned, and done evil in your sight,' Psalm 51:4. Though he had sinned against the enemies of God, in occasioning their blasphemies; against the friends of God, in grieving their spirits; against his whole kingdom, in provoking God to plague them; though he had sinned against Bathsheba, in defiling her body and soul; against Uriah, both in the matter of his wife and life, and against his own body and soul; yet he looks upon these, though great in themselves, yet little, nothing comparatively; the head of the arrow that pierced his heart, was this, 'I have sinned against the Lord,' 2 Samuel 12:13. 'Against you, you only have I sinned.' The injury which he did to himself and others, was so inconsiderable, in comparison of the injury he did to God, that he passes it quite by, in his penitential psalm, and sticks wholly upon this, 'Against you, you only have I sinned.' This is the strongest, the weightiest argument to drive and dissuade from sin; none is like it.
When Moses would couch all arguments in one, he uses this instead of all: Numbers 32:23, 'But if you will not do so'—perform your promise to assist your brethren, until they have conquered their enemies, and are settled in their possessions, what then? what great harm if they do not? Is it not that they sin against their brethren, and wrong their own souls? No, but behold, mark it, it is worthy your attention, and most serious consideration—you have sinned against the Lord,' the great, the mighty, the almighty, the incomparable God.
CHAPTER 19.
If God be incomparable, how great is the madness and misery of impenitent sinners! Use 2. Secondly, If God be such an incomparable God, it informs us of the madness and misery of sinners.
1. Of their madness in daring to offend him, and to contend with him.
2. In willfully losing this incomparable God.
1. How great is their madness in daring to offend him, yes, in daring him to his face! Reader, if you should see a man without any cause striving with a whole army, hacking and hewing, and provoking them to kill him, you would think, Surely the man is mad, otherwise he would never thus willfully run himself into a certain ruin. I tell you every time you willfully break his laws, you act more like a distracted man; for you fight against that God who is stronger than millions of armies, who is almighty, and you provoke him to destroy you who can wink you into the other world, and look you into the eternal lake, and hiss you into hell-flames. Man, are you God's match, that you offers to enter the list with him? 'Do you,' says the apostle, 'provoke the Lord to anger? are you stronger than he?' 1 Corinthians 10:22. It is one thing to provoke men to anger, and another thing to provoke the Lord to anger. Man has but a little heart, and a small hand; his anger and power cannot at utmost exceed finite; but God's heart and hand, his anger and power, are both infinite. If the wrath of a king be a messenger of death, what, think you, is the wrath of immensity, and the stroke of omnipotency? What then is the wrath of a God? Sinner, do you know what you do when you break his laws, slightest his love, dishonor his name, grieve his Spirit? I tell you that you provoke a God who is incomparable in holiness, and has threatened your destruction; who is incomparable in power, and can accomplish what he has threatened; and who is incomparable in truth, and cannot but make good with his arm what he has spoken with his mouth: 'Woe be to him that strives with his Maker: let the potsherds strive with the potsherds of the earth,' Isaiah 45:1. God is a God of peace, he hates strife; but if men will be striving, he wishes them rather to meddle with those that are their matches, poor silly worms like themselves, and not to strive with their Maker, who is infinitely their superior in authority and power, and every perfection. Here is sauciness indeed, for a pitiful nothing to challenge almightiness to battle. 'Who' in his wits, in his senses, that were not quite distracted, 'would set briars and thorns against me in battle? I would go through them, I would burn them up all together,' Isaiah 27:4. Briars and thorns are not match to a fire; how easily, how speedily, how certainly does the fire consume them as soon as it lays hold of them! How much less is weak man a match for God, who is a consuming fire! When the Roman poet was desired to make verses against his emperor, he answered, I will not jeer and jest with him that can kill me in earnest.
Our Savior tells us, 'What king going to war against another, sits not down first, and consults whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that comes against him with twenty thousand? or else while the other is a great way off sends to him ambassadors, and desires conditions of peace?' Luke 14:31, 32. Oh that when the devil and flesh entice the sinner to sport with and make a mock of sin, Proverbs 10:23, he would but consider, it is ill jesting with edged tools, it is ill jesting with unquenchable burnings; for how 'can his heart endure or his hands be strong in the day that the great God shall deal with him?' Ezekiel 22:14.
2. Again, How great is their madness who will venture the eternal loss of this God, this incomparable God, for every base lust! What a madman is he who will stake a million against a mite, a crown against a crumb, substance against shadows, all things against nothing, the blessed boundless God against a moment's sensual delight! Was not Shimei bereft of his wits, to hazard his life for a little uncertain worldly profit by his servant? The Lord Jesus does most fitly call him a fool, who would hazard and lose the incomparable God for a little corruptible gold, Luke 12:20. The Spirit of God speaks the prodigal to be beside himself, when he left bread, bread enough, bread enough in his father's house, for husks, and not a bellyful neither, and among swine, Luke 15:18–20; and when he came to himself he considered what a madman he was, to wallow among swine, and feed on such brutish fare, which could never fill his belly, when he might have been feasting among the children of God in his Father's house, with plenty of what is bread indeed, able to satisfy a capacious heaven-born soul. Friend, think of it seriously the next time you are tempted to sin, will this oath, or this cup, or this theft, or this wantonness, or this neglect of duty, balance the everlasting loss of the incomparable God? Will this lust, this moment's pleasure, make amends for the loss of him who is eternal life, and a river of inconceivable and unchangeable pleasures? Shall I be so besotted, bewitched, distracted, as to lose real mercies for lying vanities, the fountain of living waters for broken cisterns, the food of angels for the world's scraps, a precious soul, an inestimable Savior, an incomparable God, for a toy, a trifle, a poor empty gilded nothing? Did ever any in Bedlam buy so dear, or sell so cheap, or manifest the like madness? 2. Of the misery of sinners. They shall lose this incomparable God forever; nay, they must have him for their everlasting enemy.
1. Their misery consists partly in this, that they must depart forever from this incomparable God: Matthew 7:23, 'Depart from me, you workers of iniquity;' Matthew 25:41, 'Depart from me, you cursed.' Oh how dreadful a sound will the word depart make in the sinner's ears; yes, what a deep wound will it make in his heart! Depart from me. Ah! where do they go that go from God? To depart from riches and honors, and carnal comforts forever, will affect and afflict him to purpose who places his happiness in them; to lose health, and liberty, and friends, and relations forever, is no inconsiderable loss to him that knows not where to have them made up. To lose the ordinances of God, seasons of grace, the offers, entreaties, invitations of the gospel forever, is such a loss that a sensualist is incapable of conceiving the greatness of. To lose the communion of perfect spirits, the company of glorious angels, the blessed exercises of the heavenly host forever, will not a little affright and amaze and vex and terrify the wicked, when they once come to have their eyes opened, and their consciences awakened in the other world.
But to depart from the incomparable God forever, to lose the only paradise of pleasures, the only fountain of living waters, the only author of true felicity; to lose the unsearchable mine of riches, the inexhaustible well of salvation, the inestimable Sun of righteousness; to lose the dearest father, the wisest guide, the strongest shield, the sweetest love, the closest friend, the tenderest mercy, the richest grace, the highest honor, the only happiness; to lose the Lord of life, the Lord of glory, the Lord of lords; to lose the God of hope, the God of all grace, the God of all consolation, the God of peace, the God of gods, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the incomparable God; and to lose him totally and forever, is the loss of all losses, is such a loss as no tongue can declare, no mind can conceive, is such a loss as never was the like before it, nor shall, nor can be the like after it. He who has lost God, has nothing left that is good, he has lost all that was worth having or saving: 'Lord, where shall we go if we go from you? you have the words of eternal life,' John 6:68.
Reader, how great is the sinner's loss in the other world, how great soever his gain is in this! Ah! 'where is his hope, though he has gained, when God shall take away his soul?' Job 27:8. Can the greatest gain counterbalance the loss of him to whom the whole world, yes, millions of worlds, are trash and trifles? The greatness of any loss is to be measured by the excellency and value of that which we lose; therefore if God be so incomparable in all perfections, the loss of sinners, who lose this God totally and eternally, must be an incomparable loss. As there is no gain equal to the gain of a God, all other gains are but painted baubles or butterflies to this; so there is no loss equal to the loss of a God, all other losses are but bugbears to fright children with to this; this is a loss with a witness, a loss which nothing can countervail, supply, or make up, in which all that is good is gone forever. As Micah said to the Israelites, when they asked him what he ailed to cry out so, 'You have taken away my God, and what have I more?' Judges 18:22. So will the sinner in the other world screech horribly, and complain heavily of his deceitful flesh, which now he makes such provision for, You have taken away my God, and what have I more? I am poor, a beggar, nothing worth, worse than nothing, wholly ruined, utterly undone by you, I have lost my God, and with him all that is good.
Reader, if you live without God, ponder, oh ponder in the midst of all your gettings, what you are losing, yes, what you shall lose, if you do not return, forever and ever. Did the disciples weep and wail, that they should see the face of a good man no more on earth: 'Sorrowing most of all, for the words that he spoke unto them, that they should see his face no more'? Acts 20:38. And do you think it will not fill your heart with sorrow, and cut it with anguish, to hear the blessed God, the incomparable God, say to you, Sinner, farewell, farewell forever, you shall see my face no more forever! Believe it, those words will sound more dolefully in your ears than you are now aware of; they will be a passing bell to all your hopes, and joys, and comforts, and delights; they will be a knell to toll the death and burial of whatever may be refreshing and reviving to you, of all your ease, and rest, and liberty, and peace, and health, and strength, and friends, and relations, and all that may in the least conduce to your comfort or happiness. Now possibly you can be merry enough without God; you had rather have his room than his company, prefer a life without him before a life with him; and say unto him, 'Depart from me, I desire not the knowledge of your ways,' Job 21:14. And the reason of this atheism and profaneness, is your ignorance; you know not what a fountain of life, what affections of love, what a hive of sweetness, what an ocean of happiness the blessed incomparable God is, neither Believe what Scripture speaks hereof; but when once you enter into the other world, and have lost this God irrecoverably, you shall know what you have lost; but then, if ever, that saying of the wise man will be verified, 'He who increases knowledge, increases sorrow,' Ecclesiastes 1:18. And then you shall believe the truth of the glass of Scripture in its representations of the beautiful face of God, though your faith will be the faith of a devil, to your terror and torment. Ah, sinner, when you shall know and believe what a vast treasure, what a river of pleasure, what a perfect good, what fullness of joy, what solid comfort, what real satisfaction, what a weight of glory you have lost forever, without the least hopes and possibility of regaining, and lost for base, vile, sordid lusts, for a little foolish brutish momentary pleasure; what thoughts, think you, will then seize you? what anguish and remorse surprise you? Ah, how will you loathe and hate, and curse yourself for your folly and madness! You will gnash your teeth for envy at them that sit at Heaven's table, feasting with the fruit of the tree of life, and drinking of the pure rivers of water which flow from the throne of God and the Lamb: and you will weep and wail for your own distraction, that you should refuse the offers of all those dainties, and delicacies, and delights, when they were made to you in the day of your life; that you should shut your own mouth, and willfully refuse all those rich and costly cordials, and shut the door of Heaven and happiness against you with your own hands. Ah, sinner, little do you know at the present what it is to lose this God. Other losses may be corrective, but this is destructive; God whips in others, but he executes in this; other losses may be the part of his children, but this is the portion of devils. All joy, all comfort, is stabbed to the heart, pierced through, the heard-blood of it is let out with this one word, sharper than any two-edged sword, Depart: 'Write this man comfortless,' (as it was said of one, Jeremiah 22:30,) 'a man that shall not prosper all his days.' Write this poor soul comfortless, a soul that shall not have a bit of bread, a drop of water, a glimpse of light, a moment's ease, a crumb of comfort, all the long day of eternity. Ah, friend, think of it early: 'Woe be to you if God depart from you,' Hosea 9:12.
2. Their misery consists in this also, that they shall have this incomparable God for their enemy. As there is no friend like God, and therefore their privative misery must be great, exceeding great, inconceivably great; so there is no enemy like God; and therefore the positive misery of sinners must be matchless and beyond all comparisons. The greater any one's power and anger are, the greater their misery is who fall under the stroke of that power and the force of that anger. God is incomparable in power; he works arbitrarily, irresistibly, omnipotently; he has a mighty and an almighty arm. God is incomparable in anger; his anger roots up, pulls down, kills, makes horrid slaughters, removes the mountains, shakes the foundations of the earth, is a consuming fire, burning and wasting all that comes near it.
'You, even you, are to be feared; for none may stand when you are angry,' Psalm 76:7. Woe, therefore, to them that have this God for their enemy; 'It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,' Hebrews 10:31. David chose rather to fall into the hands of God than men, 2 Samuel 24:14, because he was a child of God, though afflicted sharply by him; for love can consist with anger, though not with hatred; and therefore desired, since he must be scourged, to be whipped by a loving Father, who would consider his strength, what he could bear, as well as his fault and offence, and accordingly use his rod, rather than by a cruel enemy, who hated him, and had not the least mercy or pity for him. Beside, this world is the stage whereon the mercy of God acts its part. Justice must have its course and solemn triumph in the other world. He is here good to all; his sun shines, and rain falls upon the just and unjust, Psalm 145:9; Matthew 5:45. Therefore, it is better for any man upon earth to fall into the hands of God than the best friend or nearest relation in the world. But the sinner is the object only of God's wrath, of his hatred, of his abhorrency, after death. God then puts off all pity, all tenderness, all affections towards him; and the other world is the place wherein his justice, that is now clouded and eclipsed, shall shine forth in its full force and strength, and appear in all its beauty and brightness. And, therefore, it must of necessity be a fearful thing for a poor creature to fall into the hands of the living God; to have nothing but his naked flesh, his own weak soul, to bear the stroke of infinite power, set on and urged to strike home by infinite anger, and that forever.
All the rackings and torturings, the extreme pains and aches, the violent convulsions and consternations, the dreadful horror and anguish, the everlasting chains of darkness, the never-dying worm, and the fire that never goes out, of the devils and damned, are but the expressions and fruits of the matchless power and anger of this incomparable God.
Therefore they are called wrath, Romans 2:5; the wrath of God, John 3:36; and wrath to come, 1 Thessalonians 1:10. Reader, think of it; if the wrath of a king, a man like yourself, though clothed with more civil power and strength, be as 'the roaring of a lion,' Proverbs 19:12, which makes all the beasts of the forest to quake and tremble, Amos 3:6, what then is the wrath of an almighty, infinite God? If he wound his friends, the objects of his eternal choice, the travail of his beloved Son's soul, those on whom he intends to glorify the riches of his love and grace forever, in the day of his anger for their disobedience, with the wound of an enemy, yes, with the wounds of a cruel one, Jeremiah 30:14; if he break their bones, and cause the arrow of his quiver to enter into their reins; if he fill their souls with bitterness, and make them drunk with wormwood; if he makes them water their couches with tears, and go mourning all the day long; if his anger causes them to roar incessantly, and his terrors make them distracted; if he be to them as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places--how will he wound you, his enemy? how will he deal with you whom he infinitely hates? What a bear, what a lion, what a fire will he be to you! how unable will you be to stand under, and yet how impossible to avoid the weight of his omnipotent arm and infinite anger! Lay it to heart timely, and make your peace with him through his Son, that you may prevent it. Sure I am you would not fry in flames, or boil alive in a furnace of scalding lead a thousand years, for this whole world's command ten thousand years. Ah, why then should you, for a little profit, a little pleasure, a little honor for a few days, for your life is but a vapor; bring yourself under a necessity of frying in the flames, and boiling in the furnace of the Almighty God's anger forever and ever? O friend, be wise on this side the other world.
CHAPTER 20.
If God be incomparable, how monstrous is their pride who compare themselves to the incomparable God! Thirdly, If God be such an incomparable God, it informs us what abominable pride and desperate presumption they are guilty of who compare with and prefer themselves before this God. If he be so transcendently excellent in his being, attributes, word, and works, how desperately saucy and impudent are they who put themselves in the balance with God! 'Behold, all nations to me are as nothing, yes, less than nothing, and vanity. To whom then will you liken me? or to what will you compare me?' Isaiah 40:17, 18. To liken God to any is the grossest idolatry, and to liken any to God is the highest arrogancy. Babylon, that sets herself in the throne of God, and exalts herself above all that is called God, is the mystery of iniquity, the man of sin, in truth, the dregs of the very devil, 2 Thessalonians 2:9. It is a debasing God, not to adore him, and admire him according to his excellent majesty and vast immensity; what a debasing then is it of God to compare him to poor pitiful nothings, as all men and angels are to him! He debases himself to open his eyes upon men, upon angels, to behold things that are done in Heaven and earth, Psalm 113:5. But he will not debase himself to compare with men and angels; he scorns to put himself into the scales with them; he is infinitely above and beyond all comparatives, all superlatives. Comparisons, we say, are odious; but no comparison that ever was has in the least degree that odiousness which this has, for a man or an angel to compare with their Maker. The slime, and clay, and earth may very much better compare with the potter; both are narrow, limited beings; both are earth and clay; yet the potter would think it a great dishonor to him, who has a body curiously wrought, and a heaven-born spiritual immortal soul, and desperate arrogancy in the clay and dirt which he tramples on, to compare with him. And is it not greater pride in man to compare with God, when there is an infinite distance between them in all things? Yet so ambitious and arrogant is man that he dares to do this. Angels and Adam both aspired to equal their Maker; they would needs be independent and self-sufficient; they endeavored to cut off the entail, and to hold wholly and only of themselves; but they ruined themselves, and made themselves baser than beasts, by aspiring thus to raise themselves to that impossible pitch of a partnership with God.
It is a favor that men and angels may be like God in some rays and beams of his holiness and purity; but it is impossible for men or angels to be like God in the rich jewels of his crown, his independency, absolute perfection, self-sufficiency, infiniteness, and supremacy. He stamped some impressions of himself upon his creatures, but he took no impressions of his creatures upon himself; if they were made in his likeness, he was not made in their likeness; it is devilish impudence and blasphemy for the highest creature to weigh with the Creator. This was Lucifer's pride, 'I will ascend into Heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars, I will be like the most High,' Isaiah 14:13, 14. But his pride got a fall, and a shrewd one too. God cannot brook a rival, he cannot bear an equal, there must be but one sun in the heavens. A prince may take it kindly from his subjects if they endeavor to imitate him in his mercy, justice, temperance, chastity, and in those things that are general and common to him and them, because hereby his subjects honor him, for by their imitation of him they acknowledge excellency in him; but if his subjects shall undertake to imitate him in his regalia, those things that are proper to him as a king—would they aspire to make laws, to make peace and war, to wear the crown, sway the scepter, and ascend the throne, he could not bear it, but would judge them rebels guilty of high treason and worthy of death, because hereby they extremely dishonor him, namely, in making themselves equal to him, and robbing him of that superiority which God has given him. So God is pleased and delighted that men and angels should resemble him in those perfections of his that are common and communicable, as to be patient, and meek, and loving, and righteous, and heavenly, and holy, because hereby they glorify him, Matthew 5:16. But if the creatures should go about to be like him in the peculiar cognisances of the deity, his self-sufficiency, independency, governing others at their will, enacting laws to oblige the consciences of others, exacting worship from their fellow-creatures; so God cannot, God will not suffer it, for hereby they go about to rob him of his supremacy, to dethrone and ungod him.
How often does God tell us in Scripture to quell such presumptuous thoughts, that he is not man's fellow, man's familiar: 'God is not a man,' Numbers 23:19. 'I am God, and not man,' Hosea 11:9. 'He is not a man as I am,' says Job, chapter 9:32. Though God was pleased out of his infinite grace to become man, that man might once more be like God in those communicable properties aforementioned, yet he will not permit it, nay, it is altogether impossible for man to become God, and be like him in the special prerogatives of the deity. There is still an infinite distance between the divine and the human nature. They who prate of being godded, and turned into the essence of the deity, as some have impudently and blasphemously written, are either intolerably weak or devilishly wicked, or both. Now, because many are guilty of the strange presumption to compare with God who little think it, I shall very briefly name two or three sorts of men.
1. Such as quarrel with the precepts of God, as if they were too strict, too precise, too pure, and that God commanded more than was needful, Psalm
2:2; Romans 8:7. This is a comparing with God, yes, a preferring ourselves before God; and such speak as if they would be in God's throne to make laws, and as if they would enact better laws, more conducing to and convenient for the welfare of mankind. Because man has vitiated his nature and distempered all his faculties, he is angry at God for enjoining him a strict diet, and forbidding him what would feed his disease. A foul stomach loathes the wholesomest food.
2. When men question the providences of God, as if they were not good, and wise, and righteous, these compare, yes, prefer themselves before God; their voice is like Absalom's: Oh that I were judge! things should not go thus at six and sevens; see here is none to do justice to you. Oh that I governed the world! there should be no such disorders as are now, no such inequality among men. The righteous should not perish, nor the wicked flourish as they do. These ways are not equal, Ezekiel 33:17, 20.
These men contend with God for sovereignty: 'Why strive you with him?' Job 33:13. These men accuse God of folly, and think themselves wiser; 'but shall he who contends with God instruct him?' Job 40:2. He who complains of God's dealings undertakes to teach God in what manner and by what means the world should be better governed. These men compare with God for justice, nay, condemn him of injustice: Job 40:8, 'Will you condemn me, that you may be righteous?' God's ways are often secret; his paths are in the seas, and his goings in deep waters, Psalm 77:19; and because men cannot fathom them, therefore they find fault with them. He writes his mind often in shorthand, in dark characters, and because poor blind man cannot read them, therefore he wrangles with them: 'Your judgments are a great deep,' Psalm 36:6.
3. When men tax the decrees of God, as if they were unrighteous, partial, and ordered with respect of persons, they then compare with God, as if, in case they had been at Heaven's council-table when all things were debated and concluded, there should have been more mild and moderate, more just and righteous resolves and conclusions. These men think and speak evil of the things they understand not; and it would become them better to mind faith and repentance, and ensure their effectual calling, than pry into or meddle with those secrets of Heaven. No man has a line long enough to measure God by; his eternal works and ways are beyond all our understandings and apprehensions, and so much fitter for our admiration than curious disquisition, Romans 9:17–4.
4. Once more: those princes, or masters, or parents, which command what God forbids, or forbid what God commands, compare with God and usurp his authority; for their power to command, and right to be obeyed, must, in their conceits, be equal to God's, or else why do they give laws in opposition to his? or how can they expect to be obeyed? They who command divine worship to bread and wine, and places, or any creature, compare with and prefer themselves before God, which is desperate pride and presumption, 1 Kings 21:9–1; 2 Samuel 13:28.
CHAPTER 21.
If God be incomparable, then incomparable service and worship is due to him Fourthly, If God be an incomparable God, then incomparable service and worship is due to him. All service must be suitable to its object. The higher the prince, the higher honor he does and may expect. The heathen were sensible of this, that such worship must be given to their deities as was suitable to them; therefore the Persians, who worshiped the sun, offered to him a flying horse, noting strength and swiftness, because the sun was strong to run his race. God is a great God, and therefore must have great worship. Solomon gives this reason why the temple, the place of God's worship, must be great; 2 Chronicles 2:5, the house which I build is great; why? for great is our God above all gods. A great palace is most suitable and becoming a great prince. It reflects upon God, it is a slighting him, to give him anything that is ordinary, as it is to a king to be put off with common entertainment at the houses of his subjects. As he is the best, so he will be served with the best. 'Cursed be the deceiver who has in his flock a male, and offers to the Lord a corrupt thing.' Why, what is the matter, that there must be such care about, and choice of his sacrifices? God himself gives you the reason, and a good reason for it: 'For I am a great King, says the Lord of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen,' Malachi 1:14. Petty princes may be owned and served with petty presents; but a great king, a great sovereign, must have great sacrifices.
When the prophet had described the incomparable excellency of God, how all nations were to him as the least drop in a bucket to the ocean, and the small dust in the balance to the whole earth, as nothing and less than nothing, he presently infers, 'Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor all the beasts thereof for a burnt-offering,' Isaiah 40:15–7. Lebanon abounded in all spices for incense and perfumes, and in cattle for sacrifices and burnt offerings; but all the spices and perfumes there, all the beasts and cattle there, were below and insufficient for so incomparable a being; he is so great that no service can be great enough for him.
1. This incomparable God calls for incomparable awe and reverence.
Excellency commands awe. 'Should not his excellency make you afraid, and his dread fall upon you?' Job 13:11. Should not the vastness of his perfections provoke you to awfulness in your conversations? 'His name alone is excellent,' Psalm 148:13. The greater distance between any persons, the greater reverence is expected. The husband is the head of the wife, therefore she is commanded to reverence her husband, 1 Corinthians 7; Ephesians 5:33. There is a great civil distance between masters and servants, therefore the command runs: 'Servants be obedient to your masters with fear and trembling,' Ephesians 6:5. But now between God and us there is an infinite distance, and therefore there ought to be, if it were possible, infinite reverence; he is so vastly above and beyond all others in excellency, that he alone deserves the name of excellency, therefore his name is holy and reverend, Psalm 111:9, and he is to be greatly feared. The greatest excellency calls for the greatest reverence. 'Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, he is to be feared above all gods,' Psalm 96:4. This use David makes of God's incomparableness: 'Who in the heavens can be compared to the Lord? who among the sons of the mighty can be likened to the Lord?' what then; what follows on this? 'God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of his saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are round about him,' Psalm 89:6, 7; because in our whole conversations we must walk with God, therefore we are commanded 'to be in the fear of the Lord all the day long,' Proverbs 23:17. But because in ordinances we have more immediately and specially to do with him—then we are said to appear before him, Psalm 42:2—therefore we are bound therein to be most awful and reverential. Subjects show most reverence in the presence-chamber of their sovereign. Oh with what awe and dread should mortals appear in the presence of him who inhabits eternity! should dust and ashes draw near to the mighty possessor of Heaven and earth? Ecclesiastes 5:1, 2, 'Keep your foot when you go to the house of God, and be more ready to hear than to give the sacrifice of fools; be not rash with your mouth, let not your heart be hasty to utter anything before God;' but why all this care and caution? 'for God is in Heaven, and you are on earth.' His incomparable majesty calls for incomparable reverence: majesty is dreadful. He is clothed with majesty, Psalm 93:1, all over majesty, therefore let all the earth stand in awe of him. He is adorned, surrounded with majesty, therefore we must be filled with the awe of him. Isaiah 2:10, 19, 20, fear and majesty are three times conjoined. His incomparable power calls for incomparable reverence. Power is awful; and the greater the power is, the greater awe is required. Matthew 10:28, 'Fear not them that can kill the body, and can do no more; but fear him who is able to cast soul and body into Hell.' As if Christ had said, I know you are of timorous spirits, and men of fearful tempers; you are apt to tremble, and to be frightened at everything; well, I will direct you how you may make this passion advantageous to you, by turning the stream into its proper channel, by placing your fear on its proper object; I will tell you of one worthy of your fear, who deserves to be feared: so, Luke 12:4, 5, 'I will forewarn you whom you shall fear,' I will offer you an object meet for your fear, 'Fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into Hell; yes, I say unto you, Fear him.' You are apt, like children, to be frightened with bugbears, and to dread them that can only raze the skin and pinch the flesh, and at the most can but take from you a life that will fall of itself within a few days; well, I will advise you whom to stand in awe of: Fear him that can kill you and damn you, that can send your bodies to the grave, and your souls to unquenchable flames; yes, I say unto you, Fear him.
2. This incomparable God calls for incomparable humility and lowliness of spirit from us. The height of God must lay man low, and the matchless excellency of God make him base in his own eyes. When we behold ourselves in the glass of those that have little or nothing that is good or praiseworthy, or that have less than ourselves, then we spread out our plumes, and are puffed up with pride, and judge ourselves lovely creatures; but if we would behold ourselves in the glass of the incomparable God, in whose sight the heavens are unclean, in whose presence angels veil their faces, to whom ten thousand suns are perfect darkness, and all the world less than nothing; how should we pluck in our plumes, and abhor ourselves for our pride! Man never comes to a right knowledge of himself, what a pitiful, abominable wretch he is, until he comes to a right knowledge of God, what an excellent incomparable majesty he is. As when men stand high, and look downward on those below them, that are meaner and viler than themselves, their heads are giddy, and swim with conceitedness, they then are somebody in their own opinions; but when they look upwards to the great God, the sun, the soul, the substance of all worth and excellency, that high-mindedness is prevented. The best men upon a sight of God, the incomparable God, though the more excellent he is, the more cause they have of joy in having so rich a portion, yet instead of loving, have loathed themselves, and instead of admiring, have abhorred themselves. When Isaiah saw the God of glory sitting on his throne in his brightness and beauty, encircled with millions of celestial courtiers covering their faces, as ashamed of their drops in the presence of the ocean, and crying, Holy, holy, holy, as apprehending his purity beyond all their expressions, and his perfections exceeding all their apprehensions, what thoughts had he of himself? Oh what a poor, pitiful, contemptible creature did he think himself; yes, what an uncomely, loathsome, abominable creature was he in his own eye! 'Woe to me,' says he, 'I am undone, I am a man of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the Lord of hosts,' Isaiah 6:4, 5.
3. This incomparable God calls for incomparable love, the top, the cream of our affections. Good is the object of love. The greater therefore the good is, the greater love it requires; and God being the greatest good, must have the greatest love. This is the great and first command, Matthew 22:37; this is, as I may say, the only command, Deuteronomy 10:12; this is all the commands in one, Romans 13:10. Love is the decalogue contracted, and the decalogue is love opened and explained. 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind,' Matthew
22:37. God being the greatest perfection, must have the greatest affection.
The greatest love (for God is love, 1 John 4:8) calls for the greatest love.
He deserves the greatest extensively, the heart, soul, mind, strength; the greatest intensively, all the heart, all the soul, all the mind, all the strength. Reader, your love to him must be so great that your love to your father, mother, wife, child, house, land, and life, must be hatred in comparison of it, and in competition with it, Luke 16:26. The truth is, there is nothing worthy of our love like God; nay, there is nothing worthy of our love beside God. All our friends, and relations, and estates, and worldly blessings, are nothing lovely, but as they are his creatures, his comforts, instruments for his glory, and as they have relation to him; nay, sabbaths, sacraments, seasons of grace, are no more lovely than as they are his institutes, and means of communion with his majesty. 'I love the habitation of your house,' (why? because) 'it is the place where your honor dwells,' Psalm 26:8. Once more; grace itself is not lovely, but as it is the image and conformity unto, the pleasure and delight of, that which fits and makes fit for the love, embraces, and fruition of this incomparable God. Desire and delight are the two acts of love, distinguished only by the absence or presence of the object. When the object beloved is absent, the soul acts towards it in desire. When the object is present, the soul acts towards it in delight. The former is the motion, the latter the rest and repose of the soul. Now the incomparable God must have incomparable desires, panting, Psalm 42:1, longing, yes, fainting, out of vehemency of desire, Psalm 119:20, 40, 81. God must be desired above all: Psalm 73:25, 'Whom have I in Heaven but you? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside you.' The incomparable God must have incomparable delight: 'I will go to the altar of God my joy, of God my exceeding joy,' Psalm 43:4. The soul must be ravished, ecstasied in the presence and enjoyment of God, Canticles 2:4.
4. The incomparable God must have incomparable trust. The more able and faithful any person is, the more firmly we trust him. Now, God is incomparable in power, he has an almighty arm; incomparable in faithfulness, he cannot lie, Titus 1:2. 'It is impossible for him to lie,' Hebrews 6:18. Therefore God must have our surest love and firmest faith, Hebrews 6:18; Romans 4:20. We must esteem his words as good as deeds; and rely on all he promises as if it were already performed. We must not stagger or waver, but 'draw near to him with full assurance of faith,' Hebrews 10:22: His bonds must be looked upon, for they are as good, as ready money; and we must rejoice in hope of the good things promised as if we had them in hand, Romans 5:2, 3.
5. This incomparable God must have incomparable obedience in the whole course of our lives. The more virtuous, or gracious, or honorable, or excellent, the person is with whom we walk, the more we weigh our words, and ponder the paths of our feet, and watch over ourselves. God is incomparable in purity, in jealousy, in majesty, in excellency; therefore they who are ever under his eye and in his presence, and who walk with him, must walk, not as they do when with ordinary persons, carelessly and negligently, but circumspectly, accurately, exactly, to a hair's breadth, as on a ridge, Ephesians 5:15. His law must be kept to a tittle, in every punctilio, as the apple of the eye, Proverbs 7:2, which is offended with the least mote of dust; and this obedience must be not only at some seasons and in some actions, but always and in all things. 'As he who has called you is holy, so be you holy in all manner of conversation,' 1 Peter 1:15.
All our service to this incomparable God must be incomparable. Little service is unsuitable to a great God, 1 Chronicles 29:1, 2. 'David the king said unto all the congregation, Solomon my son, whom alone God has chosen, is yet young and tender, and the work (that is, of building the temple) is great; for the palace is not for man, but for the Lord God. Now I have prepared with all my might for the house of my God,' etc.
Fifthly, If God be an incomparable God, it informs us of his infinite grace and condescension, to take so much notice of, and do so much for man. The height of the person that bestows a favor, and the baseness and unworthiness of the object on whom it is bestowed, does exceedingly advance and heighten the grace and goodness of him that does it. Oh what grace is it then for the most High, the God of Heaven, the God whom the Heaven of heavens cannot contain, to manifest such, respect to vile, sinful dust and ashes, yes, to them that are rebels and traitors against his majesty, and thereby worthy of Hell! David admires it, and is amazed at it, Psalm 8:1. 'O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth! and your glory is above the heavens.' What follows? 'What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you visit him?' That God, the excellent God, the God famous in all the earth, the God glorious above the heavens, should mind man, poor, silly, simple man—weak, frail, dying man—sinful, filthy, polluted man—most, wretched, miserable man, could not but affect the heart of David with admiration and astonishment. 'What is man that you are mindful of him?' He is altogether below your thoughts, and unworthy to be a moment in your mind: 'Or the son of man that you visit him?' He does not deserve to be visited by the beasts of the earth, much less to be visited by the angels of Heaven, and least of all by the God of Heaven. He may well say as the centurion, 'Lord, I am unworthy that you should come under my roof, neither thought I myself worthy to come unto you,' Matthew 8:8. David wonders that God should mind man so much as to make the heavens, and those glorious lamps there, for his use and comfort: 'When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have made; what is man that you are mindful of him?' But how much more cause had he to wonder that the Heaven of heavens, the God of Heaven, the Sun of righteousness, the light of lights, should do so much, and be so much himself for the good and comfort of man! God does manifest much grace and condescension in taking such care of men's bodies and outward concerns. You would think it a great grace and condescension in a king to take care night and day of a poor beggar, to see to it himself, and not to leave it to servants or any others, that he have food, and clothing, and liberty, and peace, and safety every day, that his bed be made well and easy for him every night—that when he is sick he have physic, and cordials, and attendance, and should constantly visit him himself in person, that in all his wants he be supplied, in all his weaknesses supported, in all his dangers defended, and in all his distresses delivered; if this king should never stir from this beggar, but do all this in his own person; if he himself should spread his table, and provide his food, and be at the sole charge of his garments, and put them on, and make his bed, and stand by him all night while he slept, to prevent any evil that might befall him, and go up and down with him all day to protect him and counsel him, and relieve him, as occasion required, you would be amazed at the favor and kindness and condescension of this prince. Believe it, reader—surely seeing is believing—the King of kings, and Lord of lords, he whose name is 'I am,' he to whom all the kings and princes and potentates of the world are dross and dirt and dung, the incomparable God does more than all this, very much more for you every day and every night, and that in his own person. He sends you all your bread, and drink, and clothes, and makes them refreshing to you. He provides your habitation and lodging, and commands sleep for you. He is with you continually in all your outgoings, incomings, to preserve you alive, to enable you to your motions, to succeed your lawful undertakings, to relieve you in your necessities, and to defend you from all your adversaries. And is not this condescension worthy of all admiration? Oh what grace is it, that the incomparable God, who has millions of glorious angels waiting on him, and ten thousand times ten thousand always ministering to him, should thus wait on, and watch over poor crawling worms, night and day for good, Acts 7:2; Job 7:20; Psalm 4:8; Hosea 2:8; Genesis 32:9–10; Psalm 34:3–; Hebrews 1:3; Psalm 145:5, 7. Job wonders that God should condescend to correct man for his faults: 'What is man, that you do magnify him? that you set your heart upon him, that you visit him every morning?' and so forth, Job 7:17, 18. How much then does God condescend, to be his constant guide and guard, to keep him night and day lest any hurt him? Oh the grace of this God! This incomparable God does much more magnify his grace and condescension in the care he is pleased to take of men's precious souls. Herein he shows the riches of his mercy, the exceeding abundant riches of his grace, Ephesians 2:5, 7. Reader, is it not condescending grace in the highest degree, nay, beyond all degrees, for this self-sufficient, absolutely perfect, incomparable God, when the soul of man lay naked, starving, restless, encompassed with enemies, unpitied of all creatures, weltering in its blood, gasping for breath, ready every moment to fetch its last, and to be seized on by devils, dragged to their dungeon of darkness, there to fry in intolerable flames forever; for him to look on man in this loathsome condition with an eye of favor and love, to clothe it with the righteousness of a God, to feed it with that flesh which is meat indeed, and with that blood which is drink indeed, to give it rest in his own affections and bosom, to bind up its wounds, and raise it from the dead, and make it free from the slavery of Satan and his bondage to sin and death and Hell, and to adopt it for his own child, accept it as perfectly righteous, marry it to his only-begotten, the heir of all things, dwell in it by his own blessed Spirit, and carry it on eagle's wings, and conduct it safe through the wilderness of the world, and in spite of all the lions and wolves, and serpents and adders, and giants, and Anakim and Canaanites that opposed it, to bring it to a heavenly Canaan, to fullness of joy, and rivers of pleasures, and crowns of life, and weights of glory, there to reign in and with his own incomparable majesty for ages, generations, millions of ages, yes unto all eternity? Friend, friend, what is condescending grace, if this be not? Alas, the incomparable God had no obligation to man, he stood in no way need of man, he is incapable of the least good by man; he would have been as happy as he is at present, if the race of mankind had been ruined and had perished. Besides, he was infinitely disobliged by man, and had all the reason in the world to destroy him; and yet he is pleased to be as studious of man's welfare, and as solicitous about it as if it had been his own. Abigail wondered that David, anointed to a kingdom, should take her to be his wife; she scarce judged herself worthy to wash the feet of his servants, 1 Samuel 25:41.
May not you wonder more that the incomparable God should marry you to himself, who are unworthy to be his servant? David admired that God should do so much for him. Have you not cause to say as he did, Lord, what am I, and what is my father's house, that you have brought me up hitherto, pardoned, instructed, renewed me, taken me into your own family? And yet, as if this were a small thing in your sight, you speak of your servant's house for a great while to come, you are pleased to speak of your servant for an everlasting kingdom of honor and pleasure, 2 Samuel 7:18. And this condescending grace, or gracious condescension, is much the more admirable, if we consider the means by which this great work of man's recovery was effected. The incomparable God that is so great, so high, without all bounds, beyond all understanding, becomes a weak, weary, hungry, contemptible man.
Reader, here is amazing condescension. The Lord of all becomes a servant, the Lord of glory becomes of no reputation, the bread of life is hungry, and the only rest is weary, and the prince of life is put to death.
This is that which angels pry into with such astonishing pleasure, that God should become man, the law-giver be made under the law, he who tempts no man to evil, neither can be tempted to evil, should be violently tempted many days together by all the powers of darkness, the only blessing should be made a curse, that liberty should be in bonds, and truth itself belied, and justice condemned, and Heaven be laid in the belly of the earth. This is marvelous grace, indeed, such as passes all knowledge, Ephesians 3:18, 19. If all the glorious cherubim and seraphim, angels and archangels, had condescended to have been turned into toads and serpents, it had not been by the thousandth part so great a condescension, as for the incomparable God to become man; for those heavenly spirits, and toads and serpents, do meet in the genus of creatures; there is but a finite difference between the former and the latter. But God and man meet in no third, in no genus; between them there is an infinite distance. There never was, there never shall be, there never can be the like condescension.
CHAPTER 22.
Labor for acquaintance with the incomparable God: motives to it. The knowledge of God is sanctifying, satisfying, saving Secondly, This doctrine may be useful by way of counsel.
1. Study the knowledge of this God, who is so incomparable. We are all ambitious to be acquainted with persons that are eminent and excellent in place, or power, or parts, or piety, and judge it our interest and an honor to us so to be. If we could hear of one as strong as Samson, whom no cords could hold, who could slay hundreds with a jawbone; or of one as old as Methuselah, who could tell us what was done in many centuries of years; or of one as wise as Solomon, who could speak to the nature of all creatures, and answer the hardest questions we could put to him; or of one as holy as Adam in innocency, or the elect angels, who never broke the law of their Maker, but were as pure and perfect as when they came immediately out of his hands; how should we throng, and thrust, and crowd to such men! what pains should we take! what cost should we be at to obtain the favor and honor of their acquaintance! Surely, we should think, we could never view them enough, or value them enough, or know enough of them, or discourse enough with them. But, alas, what are such men, if we could find them in the world, to the blessed God? What motes, what drops, what poor pitiful nothings! What is a strong Samson to the Almighty God, but as straw, as chaff, as rotten wood, as all weakness! What is the age of Methuselah to the duration of the eternal God, to whose age millions of years add not a moment, but as a minute, as nothing! Psalm 39:5. What is the wisdom of Solomon to all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge which are in the only wise God, but a curious web of folly! Colossians 2:9. What is the holiness of an angel to the holiness of God, but as a candle to the sun, yes, as perfect night and darkness to the noonday! Oh, therefore, how should you labor to know this God! How industrious should you be to be acquainted with him! When the queen of Sheba had heard of the extraordinary knowledge and abilities of Solomon, she came from the utmost parts of the earth to see his person, and to hear his wisdom. But behold, reader, a greater than Solomon is here. Solomon was an idiot, an innocent, to this object, which I request you to know: 'The understanding of God is infinite,' Psalm 147:5: 'There is no searching of his understanding,' Isaiah 40:28. Indeed, it is bottomless, and therefore can never be found out. His knowledge can never be known fully, no, not by angels themselves. Do men beat their brains, and consume their bodies, and waste their estates, and deny themselves the pleasures of the flesh, as many heathen have done, for the knowledge of nature, of the heavenly bodies and their motions, of the sea and its ebbing and flowing, of the earth and the creatures thereon; when after all their search, they were still at a loss; and for all the knowledge they attained, they proved but learned dunces? what would you then do for the knowledge of the God of nature, of the mighty possessor of Heaven and earth, of him to whom all things are less than nothing, of him the knowledge of whom will make you wise to salvation? O friend, this is the only knowledge worth seeking, worth getting, worth prizing, worth glorying in: Jeremiah 9:23, 24, 'Thus says the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, nor the rich man glory in his riches.' Worldly knowledge, strength, wealth, are not worth glorying in; what then is? The next verse tells you: 'But let him that glories, glory in this, (in what?) that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord,' etc. This is a jewel that a man may boast of, and glory in, that he knows me, that I am the Lord.
There is an excellency in all knowledge. Knowledge is the eye of the soul, to direct it in its motions; it is the lamp, the light of the soul, set up by God himself to guide it in its actions. The understanding of man is the candle of the Lord, Proverbs 20:27. Without knowledge, the soul is but a dungeon of darkness and blackness, full of confusion and terror; but there is an incomparable excellency in the knowledge of this incomparable God. The object does elevate and heighten the act. There is a vast difference between the knowledge of earthly things and heavenly things, between the knowledge of wise, strong, faithful, merciful, just, holy men, and the only wise, omnipotent, unchangeable, righteous, most holy God. Only, before I proceed to the urging this use, I would desire you, reader, to take notice what knowledge of God it is which I am pressing you to labor for. It is not a mere notional speculative knowledge, though a knowledge of apprehension is a duty, and necessary, Ephesians 5:17; Psalm 143:8; Hebrews 8:9, 10, but an experimental knowledge: 'You have made me to know wisdom in my secret parts,' Psalm 51:6. The heart is called the secret part, because known only to God, 1 Kings 8:39; such a knowledge as affects the heart with love to him, and fear of him, and hatred of what is contrary to him; true knowledge takes the heart as well as takes the head, Psalm 1:6; 1 Kings 8:38; Philippians 3:10; and influences the life: 1 John 2:4, 'He who says, I know him, and keeps not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him,' Colossians 1:9, 10; John 10:4, 5. Right knowledge, though it begin at the head, does not end there, but falls down upon the heart to affect that, and flows out in the life to order and regulate that: Colossians 1:10, 'We pray for you, that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding;' for what end, and to what purpose? 'that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work.' To enforce this use, I shall give you two or three motives, and as many means.
To encourage you to study the knowledge of this God, consider these three properties of it.
1. The true knowledge of this God will be a sanctifying knowledge. If you have anything of a man, I mean of reason in you, holiness, which was your primitive perfection, which is the image of the incomparable God, and will fit you for his special love and eternal embraces, will be a strong and cogent argument with you. Now this knowledge of God will conform you to God, render you like unto him, who is the pattern and standard of all excellency. As I said before, knowledge is the eye by which we see God, and the vision of God causes an assimilation to him: 'But we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of our God,' 2 Corinthians 3:18. The blackamore that often looked on beautiful pictures brought forth a beautiful son. We are often changed into the postures and fashions, yes, and dispositions, of those whom we much converse with on earth. Surely, then, acquaintance with the gracious and holy God will make us in some measure to resemble him.
Other knowledge pollutes and defiles the soul. Oftentimes, the more men pick the lock of nature's cabinet, and look into her riches and treasury, her secrets and mysteries, the more atheistical they are, and forgetful of the God of nature. Hence religio medici is irreligion. They see so much of the operations of nature, that they ascribe the principal efficiency to the instrument. And hence the wisdom of the philosophers, counted the wisest men in the world, is folly, 1 Corinthians 3:19; and though they professed themselves to be wise, yet they became fools, and were guilty of all manner of wickedness, Romans 1:22, to the end. And what was the reason but this, they knew not God, with all their knowledge? 1 Corinthians 1:21.
Ignorant heads are ever accompanied with irreligious hearts, and both are attended with atheistic lives, Ephesians 4:18. The apostle tells us of the heathen, that they were estranged from the life of God, a holy life, through the ignorance that was in them, because of the blindness of their hearts. So Hosea 4:1–. But the knowledge of God purifies the soul. As the sun conveyeth heat along with its light, so grace is multiplied through the knowledge of God, 2 Peter 1:2. When Moses had conversed with God in the mount, his face shone, that the Jews could not behold him. When a soul has once acquainted himself with the blessed God, his life will shine with holiness; therefore David counsels his son Solomon to know the God of his fathers, and to serve him with a perfect heart and willing mind: first to know him, then to serve him, 1 Chronicles 28:9.
This knowledge must needs be a sanctifying knowledge, because it renders sin abominable, the world contemptible, God honorable, and the soul the more humble.
The knowledge of God will render sin most abominable to the soul; it renders sin to be exceeding sinful. The miseries that befall us in our estates, names, bodies, souls, nay, all the curses of the law and torments of the damned, do not discover the ugly, loathsome features, and monstrous deformed nature of sin, like the knowledge of this incomparable God. Job confesses his sin: chapter 42:2, 'I uttered things that I understood not;' nay, he abhors himself for his sin, verse 5. But whence came he, who sometime justified himself too much, now to abhor himself? He gives us the reason or cause of it: 'I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear,' I had some knowledge of you before, 'but now mine eyes see you,' I now have a clearer and fuller knowledge of you, 'wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.' The more we know the greatest good, the more we shall hate the greatest evil.
The knowledge of God will render the world contemptible to a Christian.
None undervalue the creature but those who have had a sight of the Creator; neither can any trample on the riches, honors, and pleasures of this world, but those who know him who is the riches, and honors, and pleasures of the other world. They who never saw the sun, wonder at a candle; and they who never knew the blessed God, wonder at, and are fond of poor low things, mean, small, pitiful things on earth. But the whole world, with all its crowns, and scepters, and diadems, and delights, is but a dunghill to him that has seen the incomparable God. Moses could refuse the honor of being the adopted child of a king's heir, reject the pleasures of Pharaoh's court, and prefer the reproaches of Christ before all the treasures of Egypt, when he had once got a sight of the incomparable God: Hebrews 11:25–7, 'For he saw him that was invisible.' The knowledge of God will render God more honorable in our esteems.
The more we know of many things and persons, the more we slight and despise them; the more we know sin, the more we loathe it; the more we know ourselves, the more we abhor ourselves; but the more we know God, the more we love him, and the more we admire him. The reason of all the contempt and affronts which we offer to God is our ignorance of him. The whole world lies in wickedness, as a beast in its dung, or vermin in their slime, 1 John 5:19; but the reason is what Christ speaks: John 17:25, 'Father, the world has not known you;' for the apostle says, 'had they known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory,' 1 Corinthians 2:8. They who know God, cannot but see infinite reason why they should love, and fear, and honor, and please him all their days. Why, do you think, is God so much wondered at, and worshiped in his church, more than in other parts of the world? Why does he inhabit their highest praises, Psalm 22:3, and greatest blessings and thanksgivings, but because he is known more there than in other parts of the world? In Judah is God known, therefore his name is great, his name alone is excellent in Israel, Psalm 76:1.
The knowledge of God makes us humble. We never are so low in our own eyes as when we see the most high God. The more we know of men that are more vain, and foolish, and wicked than ourselves, the more we are exalted and puffed up; but the more we know of God, of the great God, the incomparable God, the most holy God, to whom we are as nothing, less than nothing, worse than nothing, the more we abase ourselves.
When David is acquainted with the excellency of God: O Lord, my Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth, and your glory is above the heavens!' Psalm 8:1—what low, little, diminutive thoughts has he of himself and others; verse 4, 'What is man? or, what is the son of man?' What a poor, pitiful, contemptible thing is man! What a vain, empty, insignificant nothing is the son of man! We are ashamed of our rush candles, or glowworms, and hide our heads in the presence of the sun. The holiest man abhors himself for his unholiness before the most holy God. So Job 25:2, 'Dominion and fear are with him;' verse 3, 'There is no number of his armies;' verse 5, 'Behold even to the moon, and it shines not, and the stars are not pure in his sight: how much less man that is a worm, and the son of man that is a worm,' verse 6. A worm is the most despicable, contemptible creature; every beast tramples on it: such a creature is man in his own apprehensions, when he once understands the incomparable God.
When Isaiah had seen the Lord of hosts, though he were a holy man, he cries out, 'I am undone, I am a man of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the Lord of hosts,' Isaiah 6:3, 4. He never saw so much of his own impurity, as when he saw him in whose presence the heavens are unclean. Other knowledge, like wind in a bladder, puffs up, 1 Corinthians 8:2, but the knowledge of God, as fire near the bladder, shrinks and shrivels it up to nothing.
2. The knowledge of God is a satisfying knowledge. A man may know much of creatures, and the more he knows the more unquiet and restless he is; his knowledge, as wind to the stomach, may fill, and pain, and trouble him, but cannot satisfy him; for creatures are not that savory meat which the heaven-born spiritual immortal soul of man would have, and must have, if ever it be contented. The greatest students, who have wearied and tired out their brains and bodies in the search of nature's secrets, have found by experience, that they 'spent their strength for what is not bread, and their labor for what will not satisfy;' and they have known the truth of the wise man's saying, 'He who increases knowledge increases sorrow,' Ecclesiastes 1:18.
That knowledge which satisfies must be of an object that is suitable, in its spirituality, to the nature of the soul; in its all-sufficiency, to the manifold necessities of the soul; and in its immortality, to the duration of the soul; if either of these be wanting in it, the soul cannot receive satisfaction by it, because without all these the soul cannot be perfectly happy; and until it find that which can make it perfectly happy, it will be restless. If it meet with an object that is suitable to its nature, yet if it be not answerable to all its wants, it will still be complaining, wherein it is unsupplied, and so unquiet. If it meet with an object that is suitable to its nature, and answerable to all its wants, yet if it be not eternal, it must needs be full of fears and troubles in the forethoughts of its admission of so great a good, which would embitter the present possession of it; for the soul being incorruptible and immortal itself, cannot but desire that good which will run parallel with its own life; and if it desire it nothing will fully satisfy it until it obtain such a good. Now nothing in this world is suitable to the soul's nature—the soul is spiritual, the things of this world are carnal—nor answerable to the various indigencies of the soul—he soul's wants are many, and in a manner infinite; besides they are spiritual, as pardon of sin, peace with God, peace of conscience, and so forth, when the good things of this life are particular, finite, and bodily—nor equal to the soul's duration—the soul will abide and continue after millions of ages and generations, forever and ever; but this world passes away, and all the good things thereof. But this God, whom I am persuading you, reader, to know and acquaint yourself with, is in all these respects perfect, and so will satisfy your soul. God is a spiritual good— Spirit, John 4:23, the Father of spirits, and so suitable to the nature of your soul. He is a universal good, all good, and so answerable to the many wants of your soul. He is an eternal good, a good that never dies, never fades—a good that only has immortality, and so is equal to your soul's duration; therefore the disciple cries out to Christ, 'Show us the Father, and it suffices,' John 14:8; and David tells us, that he is fully pleased in having God for his portion, Psalm 14:5, 6.
Give any man both that which he would have, and that which he should have, and he is contented. If indeed you give a man what he would have, supposing it be that which he should not have, his desires being depraved and vitiated, he cannot be contented when he has what he desired, because lusts are insatiable, and sinful desires never satisfied; thence the heathen emperors had their inventors of new pleasures, and possibly that may be the meaning of that place, Romans 1:28. The heathen, wearied with common, invented unnatural delights. But give a man what he would have, suppose it be what he should have, his desires being rectified, and he is then at ease and rest.
He who knows God aright is fully satisfied in him; when he once drinks of the 'fountain of living waters,' he thirsts no more after other objects, Job 4:14. Though the soul still desires to know more of God, until it come to that place where it shall know as it is known, as David, though satisfied with his portion, Psalm 16:4, 5, yet thirsted after more of it, Psalm 63:1, 2, yet it is quiet and contented in God. And indeed the sweetness which it tastes in acquaintance with the incomparable God, makes it long after nearer and fuller acquaintance with him. When Moses was once acquainted with God, he begs that he might see and know more of his glory; and the reason is, because while God is the object, there can be no satiety, he being the God of all joy and consolation; neither can there be such a full acquaintance as to cease desires after further acquaintance, he being an object still too great for the faculties to comprehend. The desires of the glorified are without anxiety, because they are satisfied in the object of their desires; and their satisfaction or enjoyment is without satiety or loathing, because they see still infinite cause to desire him.
When the soul once comes to know God, as the needle touched with the loadstone, when it turns to the north, it is then quiet, though before, like the dove, it hovered up and down over the waters of this world, and could find no rest. This knowledge, if right, diffuses into the soul a sweet tranquility, silent peace, secret settled calmness, besides a ravishing prevision, and blessed fore-fruition of its fuller acquaintance in the other life.
3. The knowledge of God is a saving knowledge. Many perish for all their great knowledge of creatures; their knowledge may light them to the more dismal chambers of death, of blackness of darkness forever, Job 15:24. And indeed their knowledge, like many pigs of silver in a vessel sinking, presses them the deeper into Hell; but the knowledge of God is saving; God will know him in the other world, who knows him in this. He will be so far from knowing them hereafter who are ignorant of him here, that he will come 'in flaming fire to render vengeance on them that know not God,' 2 Thessalonians 1:7, 8. But he will own them, and take acquaintance with them then, that own him and are acquainted with him now: Psalm 91:14, 'I will set him on high, because he has known my name.' God will set him as high as Heaven, who knows his name on earth. Reader, it is as much worth as Heaven to you to know this incomparable God. 'This is life eternal, to know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,' John 17:3. It is the morning, though not the meridian of Heaven; it is the bud, though not the ripe fruit of glory; it is the seed, though not the harvest of the inheritance above, to know the true God and Jesus Christ.
This knowledge is of the same nature, though not of the same measure, with that in the other world, Ephesians 4:13. Now the Christian knows as a child, then he shall know as a man; now he sees God as it were at a distance through the prospective glass of faith, but then he shall see God face to face. 'Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now we know in part, but then we shall know as we are known,' 1 Corinthians 13:12.
CHAPTER 23.
The means of acquaintance with God. A sense of our ignorance. Attendance on the word. Fervent prayer The means which I shall offer as helpful to the attainment of this knowledge of God, are these: 1. Be sensible of your ignorance of him. A conceited scholar is no good learner. He who thinks he knows enough already, will never be indebted to a master to teach him more: 'See you a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him,' Proverbs 26:12. This is that which locked up the Pharisees in the dark dungeon of ignorance: they are blind; truth itself called them blind, Matthew 22:16, 17. But they conceited their eyes were good, and so neglected the means of curing them. 'You say you see;' I do not say you see, but you conceit so, 'therefore your sin remains,' John 9:40, 41, therefore your ignorance continues. When ignorance and confidence, which are often twins, go together, the condition of a man is helpless; partly because such a person will not take that pains in reading, and praying, and conference, and meditation, without which the knowledge of God cannot be had; Daniel 12:4, 'Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.' It is an allusion to merchants, that run to this and that port, to sell out and take in commodities; or to a tradesman, that runs to this and that mart or place to buy and sell, whereby their stocks are increased. But a conceited man will never labor thus for that which he thinks he has already. 'If you diggest as for silver, and search as for hid treasure, then you shall understand the fear of the Lord, and attain the knowledge of God,' Proverbs 2:4, 5. Men count digging hard work, and will sweat at it when they dig for silver: such diligence must they use who will get the knowledge of God. But though poor men, who are sensible of their want of the knowledge of God, and of their woeful condition thereby, will work to preserve themselves from perishing; yet rich men, who think they can do well enough without it, will spare their pains, partly, because all knowledge must be obtained from God by fervent prayer; and a conceited man will neither be instant with God for it, nor will God give it to him.
God is the God of knowledge, 1 Samuel 2:2; and from him all true saving knowledge comes; Proverbs 2:6, 'The Lord gives wisdom, out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.' As none can see the sun by candle-light, but by its own light, so none can know God savingly by the light of nature, but by light derived from himself. Now a conceited person will not go to God for knowledge. What need I? thinks he; I have enough already. Poverty is a friend to prayer: 'The poor uses entreaties,' Prov.
18:23; but pride or conceitedness is an enemy to prayer; 'The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God,' Psalm 10:4.
Who will beg that of his neighbor which he is confident he has at home? Neither will God undertake the instruction of proud scholars: 'The humble he will teach, the meek he will guide in judgment,' Psalm 25:9. Such as are willing to be taught will be thankful for their learning, and are fitted for guidance and direction; but conceited persons are quite contrary. Therefore, reader, beware of this mist in which many miscarry.
'He who thinks he knows anything, knows nothing as he ought to know,' 1 Corinthians 8:2; but labor to get your hearted affected with your ignorance, and the woeful consequents of it, Psalm 95:10, 11. This will be a good step to knowledge. The apostle gives the same direction: 1 Corinthians 3:18, 'If any man seem to be wise, let him become a fool that he may be wise.' If you seems to be knowing, be ignorant in your own sense and feeling and apprehension, that you may be knowing. Our Lord Jesus gives the same counsel to the sick and dying Laodiceans, Revelation 3:17, 18, and acquaints her that her ignorance of her ignorance, and conceitedness of her knowledge, was the great hindrance of her recovery.
2. Study much the works, and especially the word of God. The works of God are a book wherein you may read of him, and by which you may hear of him. 'The heavens declare his glory,' Psalm 19:1; 'The earth is full of his goodness,' Psalm 33:5. As the shadow has some proportion to the body to which it relates, so the works of God are some representation of the wise, powerful, gracious God to whom they belong. Romans 1:19, 21, 'The invisible things of God are seen by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead;' therefore consider the works of the Lord, and the operations of his hands.
The word of God is a glass, wherein you may see his beauty and grace and glory, and so see him as to be transformed into his likeness, 2 Cor. 3:18. In the works of God you may see his steps, the prints of his feet; they are therefore called his paths and his goings, Psalm 77:19. But in his word we may see his face, the loveliness of his countenance, how lovely and amiable he is; therefore it is called a glass, 2 Corinthians 3:18: so that, as the sight of a man's face helps and conduces more to our knowledge of him than the sight of his steps, so the word of God is a far greater means of our acquaintance with him than the works of creation and providence.
Therefore, I say, study especially the word of God. The Scripture is the key of knowledge, Luke 11:52, and unlocks the mysteries which were kept hid from ages and generations, and opens the secrets of Heaven to your soul. It is therefore called light, Psalm 119:105, and a lamp, Proverbs 6:23, because it discovers hidden things, helps you to see what you can not without it, and directs you in your motions and actions. David had more knowledge than his enemies, and they were subtle; than his teachers, and they were no dwarfs in knowledge—such as Gad and Nathan; than the ancient, and with 'the ancient is wisdom, and in length of days is understanding,' Job 12:12, 13; and what was the means of it? 'For your testimonies are my meditation,' Psalm 119:97–9. The gospel is the eye salve by which the blind come to see, Psalm 19:7. The fragrancy and attractiveness of the incomparable God increases up and down in the world as the gospel is propagated. 'Thanks be to God, who makes manifest the savor of his knowledge (the knowledge of God, like a rich perfume, causes and leaves a fragrant odoriferous scent wherever it comes) by us (the ministers of the gospel as the instruments hereof) in every place,' 2 Cor. 2:14. The ministry of the word is the chariot of the Sun of righteousness, whereby he conveys the light of the knowledge of God to the world.
Therefore attend on preaching, and give diligence to reading: 'Search the Scriptures, for they are they that testify of me,' John 5:39.
3. Be frequent and fervent with God to give you the knowledge of himself. There is a twofold light requisite to bodily vision: a light in the eye, (a blind man cannot see at noon-day;) and a light in the air, (the best eye cannot see in the dark:) so there is a twofold light requisite to the effectual sight of God—namely, the light of the word and the light of the Spirit; the word cannot do it without the Spirit, and the Spirit will not do it without the word; where the word is afforded both are needful. 'There is a spirit in man,' a passive receptiveness as a capable subject, 'but the inspiration of the Almighty gives understanding,' Job 32:8.
All natural abilities, all acquired endowments, all the reading and learning, all the teachers and tutors in the world, cannot help one poor soul to the saving knowledge of God. It is God that teaches man knowledge, Psalm 94:10. He who made light in the first creation, only can cause light in the new creation; 2 Corinthians 4:6, 'But God, who caused light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.' He that at first said, 'Let there be light,' when darkness covered the face of the world, 'and there was light,' a corporeal light, can command spiritual light, and the knowledge of his glory in the face of Christ, who is the express image of his person. Therefore the apostle betakes himself to God for the gift, 'Praying that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ would give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, in the knowledge of him,' and so forth, Ephesians 1:17, 18; so David often, Psalm 119:18, 34, 35, 125, 143, 144; Revelation 3:18. Reader, are you blind? take the counsel of your Savior. Go to him for eye salve that you may see, and be confident he who bids you come to him for that will bid you welcome when you come, Revelation 3:18. 'None knows the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him,' Matthew 11:27.
Therefore whoever you are that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death, go to the sun for light, go to the Sun of righteousness, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, Colossians 2:9, for the light of the knowledge of God. Do you not know the sinfulness and misery of a blind dark state, that vengeance is the fruit of this ignorance? Psalm 79:6; that God will pour out his wrath upon them that know him not? Go, therefore, as the blind man, to the Lord Jesus Christ. Cry, sigh, mourn, pray: 'Jesus, you son of David, have mercy on me;' though he hear not presently, hold on, continue instant in prayer; though the devil and flesh rebuke you, as the multitude him, yet hold on, call louder, 'Jesus, you son of David, have mercy on me,' Mark 10:47; 'Lord, that I might receive my sight,' verse 51; and doubt not but he will have pity on you, as he had on him, and touch your eye, and give you to see the things of your peace; for your encouragement you have his promise: Jeremiah 24:7, 'I will give them an heart to know me, that I am the Lord;' Jeremiah 31:34, 'They shall all know me, from the least to the greatest.' So James 1:6; Hosea 2:20; Heb. 8:8, 9. Oh, with what hope may you sue these bonds and plead these promises, when he who made them is a God that cannot lie, Titus 1:2, and therefore cannot but perform them! Again, observe how kindly he took it of Solomon, when he bid Solomon ask what he would, that he asked wisdom, 2 Chronicles 1:10. Give me wisdom and knowledge, says Solomon: and the thing which Solomon asked pleased the Lord, 1 Kings 3:10. And the Lord said unto Solomon, 'Because this was in your heart, because you have not asked riches, nor honor, nor the life of your enemies, nor long life, wisdom and knowledge is granted to you, and I will give you wealth and honor,' verse 11. When a poor creature, sensible of its blindness and darkness, lies at the feet of God, begging spiritual light and sight, the heart of the Redeemer is taken with such a request, and subscribes the petition with, Wisdom and knowledge is granted to you.
Be but diligent, reader, in the use of these means, and you may be confident of success: 'If you cry after knowledge, and lift up your voice for understanding; if you Seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasure, then shall you understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God; for the Lord gives wisdom, out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding,' Proverbs 2:3.
CHAPTER 24.
Exhortation to choose this incomparable God for our portion; with some motives thereunto 2. If this God be such an incomparable God, then choose this God for your portion, and take him for your happiness. Is it possible for you to read so much of the incomparableness of God in his being, attributes, works, and word, and not desire him? You can hardly see an excellent person, but you are wishing him for your friend, your companion; nor an excellent estate, but you are wishing it were your inheritance, your portion; and can you hear of him who is excellency itself originally, Job 13:11, the spring and standard of all excellency in others, whose name alone is excellent, Psalm 148:13, and not wish, Oh that this incomparable God were my friend, my father, my head, my husband, my lot, my portion? Who will give me to drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem? Oh, who will help me to drink of the well of salvation, of the fountain of living waters, of the pure river that flows from the throne of God and the Lamb? Can you hear so much of his worth, though infinitely short, and not desire him? Is it possible for a rational creature to read of such a bottomless treasure, of such boundless pleasure, of such an infinite inconceivable good, and not covet the enjoyment of it? O man, where are your wits? where are you fallen? are you a man or a beast? Ah, did you know the gift of God, and what it is that is offered you, you would scorn the highest honors, sweetest carnal delights, greatest riches, yes, trample upon all the crowns and kingdoms of this world for it. It is an ineffable privilege that you are a creature capable of so vast a happiness, it is a special favor that you have leave to aspire after such an immense inheritance; and when it is offered to you, will you refuse it? will you neglect it? Oh, will you not give it all acceptance? Having spoken in another treatise to this particular, I shall here only offer two or three things to your serious thoughts, and proceed to a third exhortation.
1. Consider, what is offered you, when the incomparable God is offered you for your portion. And truly, to explain this head fully, would require the pen, yes, exceed the skill, of an angel. None can tell what God is, but God himself. All the sheets in the explication of the doctrine speak somewhat of him, but not the thousand thousandth part of that excellency that is in him. Reader, I may tell you, when God is offered you, the greatest good that ever was, that ever will be, that ever can be, is offered you; there never was, or can be, the like offered you; more than Heaven and earth, than both worlds, than millions of worlds, is offered you. This God who is offered you is the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the God of gods, the blessed and glorious potentate, the first cause, the original being, self-sufficient, all-sufficient, absolutely perfect, incapable of any addition or diminution. This God who is offered you is the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity every moment, to whom a thousand years, yes, millions of ages, are but as one day, as one moment, whose duration is incapable of the least accession, who is boundless in his being, omnipotent in his power, unsearchable in his wisdom, inconceivable in his grace, and infinite in all his perfections. He dwells in that light that is inaccessible; before him angels, the highest of creatures, veil their faces; to him the whole creation is less than nothing, and vanity. This God who is offered you made all things of nothing, supports all things, influences all things, and is all things, and infinitely more than all things. He is so needful a good that you are undone without him. This was the misery of the heathen on earth, Ephesians 2:12, and of the damned in Hell, Matthew 25:41, the very Hell of Hell. He is so plentiful a good that you are perfectly happy in him, Psalm 144:15, you need no more. He is the Heaven of heavens, Psalm 16:11, the safest refuge. O friend, what do you think of having this God for your portion? Is it not worth the while to have this God for your God? will you not say, 'Forasmuch as there is none like unto you, O Lord; you are great, and your name is great: who would not fear you, O king of nations'? Jeremiah 10:6, 7. Again, the God who is offered you is the well of salvation, the Lord of life, the God of all consolation, a hive of sweetness, a paradise of pleasure, a Heaven of joy.
He is the richest grace, the dearest love, the surest friend, the highest honor, the vastest treasure, the exactest beauty, the chief good, and the fullest felicity. He is one that can enlarge and suit all your faculties, relieve and answer all your necessities, fill up and satisfy all the capacities of your heaven-born soul. God is a good which Christ died to purchase for you, Ephesians 2:13; 1 Peter 3:18. And surely if Christ thought him worth his blood, he is worthy your acceptance. God is a comprehensive universal good, not one, but all good; riches, honors, pleasures, friends, relations, health, life, earth, Heaven, this world, the other world, all the good of both worlds, and infinitely more; and are you not covetous of such wealth, that is better worth than both worlds? Philippians 4:19; Psalm 23:1; Genesis 17:1. God is an everlasting good, a good that will stand by you, and abide with you when all other good things shall fail you, 1 Timothy 6:7; Psalm 73:25. He is that good which you would have if you are well in your wits: he is that good which you should have if you Answer the end of your creation; he is that good which you must have, if you are not eternally miserable; he is the only suitable satisfying good, which hits the nature, and fits the desire of the rational creature. O reader, I say again, what do you think of having this incomparable God for your God? Surely by this time your heart may well melt into astonishment that he will allow you to seek so matchless a portion. Well, what say you to him? Is it not worth the while to have him for your, to whom you will call in the day of distress, to whom you will cry in a dying hour, when your soul stands quivering on your lips, ready to take its flight into the unknown regions of the other world, when devils will be waiting to seize it, as soon as ever it leaves the body, to hale it to the unquenchable flames of Hell, when your friends and relations shall be weeping and wailing by you, but unable to afford your dying body the least cordial, or your departing soul the least comfort? Ah, friend, what will you do in such an hour, which is hastening on you, without the incomparable God? Believe it, though you may live without him, you can not die, without an infinite horror, without him.
Is it not worth the while to have him for your, to whom you must stand or fall forever, from whose mouth your sentence of eternal absolution or condemnation must come, and who shall judge you to your unchangeable state of life or death? Though you may think you can do well enough at this day with the world for your portion; yet what will you do at that day, when the world shall be in a flame, if God be not your portion? Are you willing or not, to have this God for your? What say you? Can you find in your heart to deprive your precious soul of such an inestimable treasure, and to leave it naked in the other world to the cruelty of devils, and the dreadful curses of the law? Methinks, though I have spoken little, yet I have said enough, to one that will but let his reason judge, to draw out your most earnest desires after this incomparable God.
2. Consider upon what terms you may have this God for your God. You may possibly think that so boundless a good must cost you very dear, and the price must be vast of a pearl that is so matchless; but lo, to your comfort, all the condition which God requires of you is only to accept him heartily and thankfully in his Son. Can you have anything cheaper? would you desire him in his terms to fall lower? nay, is it possible so to do, and make you happy? Nor can he be your unless you receive him for your. It is a poor favor that is not worth acceptance.
Do but take him for your happiness, and you shall have him for your happiness.
You give more for your bread, your clothes, your house, for the needful comforts that are for the support of your frail body, than you need give for the great, glorious, incomprehensible, incomparable God. You payest money for them, but you may have him without money and without price. One would think that the equity of the condition should both amaze you and allure you. Consider, I say, God does not require of you things impossible to you; he does not say, If you will remove mountains, dry up oceans, stop the course of nature, create worlds, I will then be your, as great as I am; he does not say, If you will satisfy my justice, answer the demands of my law, merit my love and favor, then I will be your God. No; he himself has done all this for you by the death of his Son; all he desires is, that you would accept him in his Son for your God. Nay, he does not require of you anything that is barbarous or cruel, as the heathen deities did, by the devil, of their worshipers. He does not say, If you will lance and mangle your bodies, as Baal's priests did; if you will go barefoot in sackcloth long and tedious pilgrimages, as the papists do; if you will offer your children in the fire, and give the fruit of your bodies for the sins of your souls, as some did, then I will be your God. Again, he does not require of you things that are chargeable, to offer the best and chief of your flock daily in sacrifice to him; nor, as he once did of the young man, to sell all that you have, and give it to the poor; nor, as idolaters, to lay down such a part of your estate for your pardon; but he only requires that you would take the Lord for your God; and will you not do it? Can you deny him and your poor soul so reasonable, so equitable a request? As the servant said to Naaman, 'If the prophet had commanded you some great thing, would not you have done it? how much more then when he only says, Wash, and be clean?' so say I to you; if God had commanded the greatest things imaginable, would you not to your power have done them, that you might enjoy the blessed God for your eternal portion? how much more then when he only says, 'You shall have no other God before me'? O reader, do but observe that first command, which contains the sum both of your duty and felicity, and you are made, you are a blessed man forever. Take the true God in Jesus Christ for your God, prize him as your God, love him as your God, honor him as your God, and obey him as your God, and he will be your God forever. Do but as much for the true God as the covetous man does for his wealth, which is his God, as the intemperate man for his belly, which is his God; they give their highest esteem, their choicest affections, and their greatest service to that which they take for their God. And surely the true God is more worthy hereof, and will requite you best for them.
3. Consider for what end God offers himself to you. I would not have you mistake, because God out of his infinite pity to his miserable creatures, is instant and urgent with them to accept of him, to think therefore that God has any need of you, or seeks his own happiness therein; I tell you, if you had no more need of God than he has of you, you may let him alone. No; it is purely for your good, for your real and eternal good, that he offers himself to you; he needs your service no more than he does the service of the damned, of the devils; and he knows how to make use of you for his own glory, as he does of them, if you foolishly reject his offer of himself. Your righteousness will not help him, Job 22:2, 3, nor your wickedness hurt him, Job 35:2. He offers himself to you, not that he may be blessed by you, but that he may be bountiful to you. It is your good, not his own, that he looks at; the felicity of accepting him is your own, and the misery of neglecting him is your own, Proverbs 9:12. Men call customers to them, press them with many arguments and entreaties to buy, that they may enrich themselves by their customers; but God calls men to buy of him, not to enrich himself—he is as rich, and perfect and happy as he can be—but to enrich themselves; I counsel you, says Christ to his lukewarm church, to buy of me gold. Why? that he may get somewhat by her, and enrich himself? No; that you may be rich; that you, not I, may be rich. Now, reader, ponder it seriously, it is wholly for your own good, that you may escape wrath and death, and attain Heaven and life, that God is pleased once more to offer himself to you. What is your mind about his offer? Will you have him for your portion or no? Is there anything unreasonable in his desire or demands? Does not your eternal felicity depend on your acceptance of him? What say you? Will you have God for your portion, or will you have the devil for your portion? You shall have an eternal portion, good or bad. The worldling's portion of good things is but for this world, and the godly man's portion of evil things is but for this world; both have immortal souls, which will abide in the other world forever; and their souls must have immortal portions to abide with them there forever. Therefore, reader, consider what you do, either you must take God, in and through Christ, for your portion forever, or Hell and death and wrath and devils for your portion forever; one of the two is the portion of all the sons and daughters of Adam. If you will still prefer the world before God, and love the creature above God, and please your flesh more than God; when once you appear in the other world, God will rain on you 'fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest: this will be the portion of your cup,' Psalm 11:6. But if now you accept him in his Son (for there is no making God your friend but by Christ) for your chief good and happiness, when all your friends shall leave you, and dearest relations forsake you, yes, when 'your flesh and your heart shall fail you, God will be the strength of your heart, and your portion forever.' O friend, consider what I have said in this use, and the Lord give you understanding, that you may know when you are well offered, and be wise on this side the other world.
CHAPTER 25.
Exhortation to give God the glory of his incomparable excellency; with some considerations to enforce it If God be such an incomparable God, give him the glory and honor of his incomparable excellencies; his incomparable perfections must have incomparable praises. 'Praise him,' says the psalmist, 'according to his excellent greatness,' Psalm 150:2. But, alas! what tongue, what understanding of men or angels can do it, can praise him according to his excellent greatness? But though we cannot praise him according to the utmost of his excellencies, we must praise him according to the utmost of our abilities. The highest God, Psalm 92:1, must have the highest praises: Ps.
149:6, 'The high praises of God are in their mouths.' The greatest God, Ps.
145:3, must have our greatest praises; 'Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised.' Low or little praises are a dispraise to one so eminently, so infinitely, high and great.
Ordinary commendations of an extraordinary person are a discommendation to him. 'According to your name, so, O Lord, is your praise to the end of the earth,' Psalm 48:10. Therefore his name alone being excellent, Psalm 148:13, his praise alone must be excellent. David tells God, 'I will praise you yet more and more,' Psalm 71:14. He had already praised him much, but he would endeavor to praise him more; and when he had done so, he would praise him more, and still more. We read of songs of degrees, Psalm 120. and 121. We should ascend in our praises of God by a holy climax, until we come to the highest degree that is possible, and screw up our faculties herein to the utmost pitch that they are capable of.
Praise him for the incomparableness of his being. That he is an independent, all-sufficient, absolutely perfect, incomprehensible, omnipresent, eternal, infinite being, should much affect our hearts.
'Praise you the Lord, praise him, O you servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forever. From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, the Lord's name is to be praised.' Why? 'The Lord is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens; who is like to the Lord our God, who dwells on high?' Psalm 113:1–.
Praise him for his incomparableness in his attributes, for the incomparableness of his power: 'O Lord God of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto you?' Psalm 89:8. For the incomparableness of his holiness: 'Who is a God like unto you, glorious in holiness?' Exodus. 15:11. For the incomparableness of his mercy: 'Who is a God like unto you, pardoning iniquity, and passing by the transgressions of the remnant of his heritage, because he delights in mercy?' Praise him for the incomparableness of his words: 'Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men,' Psalm 107:8, 15, 21, 31, 72:18, and 136:4. Praise him for the work of creation, Psalm 114:1–; Job 38:4–. Praise him for his works of providence: Psalm 97:8, 9, 136 throughout, and 107. Praise him especially for the work of redemption: 'Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who has visited and redeemed his people,' Luke 1:68; Psalm 9:1; Revelation 15:3.
Praise him for the incomparableness of his word: 'Wonderful are your testimonies,' Psalm 119:129. How often does the sweet singer of Israel praise God for them, as a singular kindness! Psalm 147, two last verses. 'He gave his statutes to Moses, his laws and commandments to Jacob. He has not dealt so with every nation; praise you the Lord.' Praise him by admiring him. Wonder at his being, as they of Christ: 'What manner of man is this, that the winds and seas obey him?' Mat. 8:27. What manner of God is this, who knows no bounds, no beginning, no succession, no addition? An amazing admiration of him is a high commendation of him. And, indeed, our silent wondering at his perfections is almost all the worship we can give him: Psalm 65:1, 'Praise waits for you, O God, in Zion, 'Praise is silent for you, O God, in Zion;' not that praise was dumb or tongue-tied in Zion, for praise in no part of the world speaks higher or louder than in Zion; but to show that when the people of God set themselves to praise him, they are struck with amazement and wonder at his matchless being and beauty, at his infinite excellencies and perfections; and wanting words to express them, they sit down in a silent admiration of them. You would wonder at Adam, if he were now alive, for his age. Oh, wonder at him that is from everlasting to everlasting, that is the cause and original of all things, that is what he is, that is, and nothing else is; that is all he is in one indivisible point of eternity.
Wonder at his attributes, admire his holiness. 'Behold, he puts no trust in his servants, he charges the angels with folly,' Job 4:18. Behold, wonder at it. Again, 'Behold, he puts no trust in his saints; the heavens are not clean in his sight,' Job 15:15. Admire his wisdom; cry out with the apostle, 'Oh the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God,' Romans 11:33.
Admire his love; 'Behold what manner of love has the Father loved us with,' 1 John 3:1. Admire his power, that he can do what he will do: 'Who is a strong Lord like unto you?' Psalm 89:8.
Wonder at his works. You are ready to wonder at the rare works of some curious artist; alas! all their works are toys to the works of the mighty Creator and possessor of Heaven and earth. 'O Lord, how marvelous are your works!' Psalm 106:24. His work is honorable and glorious, Psalm 109:3, and worthy your greatest wonder.
What a piece is the creation! how marvelous! how mysterious! Psalm 8:1–.
'The heavens declare his glory,' Psalm 19:1, and the earth is 'full of his goodness,' Psalm 104:24. What a work is providence! Read Psalm 104 and 107.
How many rarities, curiosities, mysteries, are wrapped up in it, which are only seen in the other world! Psalm 77:19.
What man is this, say they, for he commands with authority, and the unclean spirits come out of men? Mark 1:27. What a masterpiece, what rare workmanship indeed is redemption! a work that the angels are always prying into and wondering at, Ephesians 3:8; 1 Peter 1:10.
Wonder at his word. When you hear it, do you not perceive a majesty and authority awing your conscience accompanying it? 'And they were all amazed and astonished at his doctrine,' Luke 4:32. The very officers who were sent to apprehend Christ could not but wonder at his words, and returned to them who set them awork. 'Never man spoke as he spoke,' John 7:47. There are great things in the law of God, Hosea 8:12; things that are wonderful, Psalm 119:18, which may well be wondered at. And all, says the evangelist, bare him witness, and 'wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth,' Luke 4:22.
Praise him by speaking always highly and honorably of him. If his name alone be excellent, take heed that you do not take his excellent name in vain. Your apprehensions of him must be ever high, and your expressions of him honorable. Your tongue is therefore called your glory, because therewith you may glorify your God, Psalm 57:8.
Never speak of God rashly or at random, without a serious consideration of whom you speak; and let your expressions of him and to him be becoming his vast perfections; 'Ascribe greatness to our God,' Deuteronomy 32:3.
Speak honorably of his being: so Moses, Exodus. 14:11, 'Who is a God like unto you, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises?' So Solomon, 1 Kings 8:23, 'Lord God of Israel, there is no God like unto you in Heaven above, or in the earth beneath.' So David, 1 Chronicles 29:11.
Speak honorably of his attributes, Psalm 68:34; of his power, mercy, truth, justice, wisdom, and holiness; 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts,' Isa. 6:3.
Speak honorably of his works: Psalm 86:8, 'Among all the gods there is none like unto you; neither are there any works like unto your works,' Ps.
145:10.
Speak honorably of his word. 'The commandments of the Lord are pure,' Psalm 19:7. 'Your word is very pure. The statutes of the Lord are right,' Ps. 19:10. 'The law is holy, just, and good,' Romans 7:12. Though Paul's corruption took occasion, by the law's prohibitions, to become the most unruly, as the water at a bridge roars the more for the stop, yet he dares not lay the least fault upon the law, but lays all upon himself; 'was the law sin? God forbid,' verse 7. Far be it from me to have the least such thought. No; the law is holy, but I am carnal, sold under sin, verse 14. So when he speaks of the gospel, how honorably does he speak of it! sometimes he calls it the glorious gospel, 2 Corinthians 4:4; the mysteries of the gospel, Ephesians 6:19; the word of truth, Colossians 1:5.
Praise him by walking circumspectly and closely with him. Live always as one that believes he has at all times to do with this incomparable God, and is created, and preserved, and redeemed, to show forth the praise of this God. When the psalmist had admired the incomparableness of this God in his being and doings, Psalm 86:8, he presently subjoins, verse 9, 'All nations whom you have made shall come and glorify your name, and worship before you. For you are great, and do wondrous things; you are God alone.' O friend, this incomparable God must have incomparable obedience; 'Be still, and know that I am God,' Psalm 46:10. 'Be still, be quiet; O sinner, cease, forbear any further to offend me, and know that I am God, incomparable in knowledge, acquainted with all your ways and works, inward, outward, secret, private, public; incomparable in holiness, and perfectly hate all your wickedness; incomparable in power, able to revenge myself on you every moment, to turn you body and soul into Hell; incomparable in justice, and will by no means clear the guilty; yet incomparable in mercy, and will accept and receive prodigals, that, sensible of their folly and filthiness, return home to me, their Father, in the Son of my love. Be still, sinner; know this, that I am God; and obey my laws. But I have spoken more fully of this in the informations; only remember that the praise of your life is the life of your praise; because hereby you do in some measure represent the excellencies of this incomparable God, visible to the world, 1 Peter 2:9; Matthew 5:18. Offering praise, and ordering the conversation aright, are joined together by God himself, and let not us part them asunder, Psalm 50:23.
To help you a little, that you may give God the praise of incomparable perfections. Consider—. This God is excellency itself; he is not only excellent, Psalm 8:1, and alone excellent, Psalm 148:13, but excellency, Job 13:11, 'should not his excellency make you afraid?' Nay, he is greatness of excellency, Exodus. 15:7, nothing but excellency, 1 John 1:6. Now, think with yourself what honor is due to one that is excellent, alone excellent, excellency itself, and nothing but excellency. Can your highest honor be high enough, or your most excellent praises be excellent enough for such an excellency? 2. This God is the standard of all excellency. Nothing is excellent but because of its relation or likeness to him. Everything is more or less excellent as it is more or less related or conformable to him. Saints are the excellent of the earth, Psalm 16:3; more excellent than their neighbors, Proverbs 12:26; but it is because of his affection to them: 'Since you are precious in my sight you are honorable,' Isaiah 43:4; and because of their relation and likeness to him, Deuteronomy 33:29; 1 Peter 2:9; Psalm 48:2, 3. The Scriptures are the most excellent of books; none like them. 'I have written unto you excellent things,' Proverbs 22:20. But what is the reason? Surely because they are the word of God, Ephesians 3:16; his mind, 2 Corinthians 2:17. 'All scripture is given by inspiration of God,' 2 Timothy 3:16. The Sabbath is the most excellent of days, the queen of days, the golden spot of the week, because it is his day, set apart by him, and devoted to him. 'My holy day, the holy of the Lord, honorable,' Isaiah 58:13. Grace is excellent, the beauty and glory of the creature, Proverbs 4:7; 2 Corinthians 3:18; more excellent than gold or fine gold, than rubies or pearls, Proverbs 3:14, 15; but why? because it is his image, it is a conformity to his nature, 2 Peter 1:4; 2 Cor. 3:18. When the Holy Spirit would render anything excellent, he mentions it with relation to God. The cedars of God, the city of God, the trees of God, the mountains of God, etc.; that is, the most excellent cedars, cities, trees, and mountains.
3. He is so excellent that even angels veil their faces in his presence. The excellent cherubim and seraphims, who are spotless in their natures, and faultless in their lives, who are the highest and most honorable, and most ancient house of the creation, who, as his special friends and favorites, are allowed to wait on him continually, to behold him face to face, and to enjoy him fully and perfectly, yet these angels veil their faces before him, as it were, ashamed of their starlight in the presence of the sun, and their drops in the presence of the ocean: Isaiah 6:1–, 'I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up. About it stood the seraphims: each had six wings; with twain he did fly, with twain he covered his feet, with twain he covered his face.' To cover the face is a sign or fruit of bashfulness, as in Rebekah, Genesis 24:65. The face of an angel is void of all spots and wrinkles, it is full of beauty and brightness, a most excellent face. 'And all the council, looking steadfastly on him, beheld his face as if it had been the face of an angel,' Acts 6:15. Yet this face, as excellent as it is, they cover, as it were, ashamed of it before that God who alone is excellent.
4. He is so incomparably excellent that he humbles himself to take notice of his perfect spirits, his heavenly host, and their perfect service in Heaven. It is not only great and infinite condescension with him to observe the highest persons on earth, as kings and princes, and the holiest persons on earth, as the most eminent saints, and the highest and holiest performances of these saints, but it is boundless humiliation in him to look upon, with the least respect, the perfect spirits of just men, the principalities and powers that are in Heaven, and their pure, perfect worship and service: Psalm 113:5, 6, 'Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwells on high, who humbles himself to behold the things that are in Heaven?' 5. He is so incomparably excellent that he is above the highest adoration and worship of his creatures. Worship is the most high, and honorable of all our works. Blessing and praising God is the most high and honorable act of worship; therefore this is that part of worship which suits the highest and most honorable state of the creature in Heaven, and must continue forever. As all our graces, of faith, and hope, and patience, and so forth, shall before long be melted into love, and joy, and delight, so all our duties, of confession, petition, hearing and reading the word, receiving the sacraments, shall all be melted into praise and thanksgiving: Revelation 7:11, 12, 'And the angels and elders that stood about the throne fell on their faces before the throne, and worshiped, saying, Amen, blessing, and honor, and thanksgiving, be unto our God, forever;' and therefore David calls upon angels and the heavenly host to praise God, Psalm 148:2, 3.
But this incomparably excellent God is above all this worship, this highest worship, though he be not above it so as to despise it, Psalm 50:15, 23, yet he is above it, so as to exceed it; that his saints and angels, though their powers are enlarged to the uttermost, though the strings of their faculties are wound and screwed up to the highest pitch and peg to sound forth his praise, even then they will fall infinitely short of praising and blessing him according to his deserts: Nehemiah 9:5, 'Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.' He does not say the name of God is exalted above the blessing and praise of men, of saints on earth in their imperfect state, nor above the blessing and praise of spirits of just men in Heaven made perfect, but above all blessing and praise, above the blessing and praise of men, of angels, of the holiest men, of the highest angels, above all blessing and praise whatever and of whoever.
6. He is so incomparably excellent that his excellencies are beyond the understanding and apprehension of men and angels. The excellency of God is not only beyond all our expressions, verbal in our words, vital or real in our lives, but also beyond all our apprehensions. A fluent tongue may speak much of the excellency of God; an enlarged rational understanding can apprehend much more. The mind of man is much wider than his mouth; but the excellency of God is infinitely beyond all our apprehensions of him. His works are unsearchable, Romans 11:33. 'Lo, he goes by me, and I see him not; he passes on, and I perceive him not,' Job 9:11. He goes by me in his works, he passes by me in the operations of his hands, and I perceive him not. There are such motions of God in the heavenly bodies, earthly plants, ordinary providences, the growth of a child in the womb, and so forth, that men are nonplused at them, they are at a loss about the nature, reason, and mode or gradual progressions of them.
How much more is his being unsearchable, and his essence past finding out? If his footsteps are inconceivable and invisible, much more is his face; if his works cannot be apprehended, much less can his nature; because his works are in some respects finite, as they are terminated on limited beings, and they are also many of them visible, and so obvious to our senses; but his essence is wholly and altogether, and in all respects infinite, and is no way visible or liable to apprehension by our senses: 1 Timothy 6:16, 'Who dwells in that light that is inaccessible.' As no mortal eye can behold the sun in its full strength, (the attempt of which, according to some, has struck the adventurers blind,) so no creature whatever can apprehend the incomparable God in his full beauty and brightness, in his boundless excellency and perfection. It is the voice of God to Moses, 'You can not see my face, for no man can see me and live,' Exodus. 33:20. No man clothed with a mortal body, or in this estate of imperfection, can behold an extraordinary created appearance of God, but he is thereat filled with fears and frights, Job 4:12–5, and 21:22; Daniel 10:8, 16, 17; Habakkuk 3:16. No man, no, nor angel, can behold God in his infinite essence, to the utmost of his perfections, but would be thereat crumbled into nothing.
Reader, if God be thus incomparably excellent, that he is excellency itself, the standard of all excellency, that angels hide their heads as ashamed of themselves before him, that he condescends to show the least respect to his high and perfect host in Heaven, that he is infinitely above all their blessings and praises, all their conceptions and apprehensions, what praise, what honor, what glory should you give to this God! Though you are unable to give him all the glory that is due to his name, yes, the thousand thousandth part thereof, yet do you give him all the glory your mind, will, heart, affections, all your faculties united together, and enlarged to the utmost, can possibly give him. Say to your soul, 'Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all within me praise his holy name,' Psalm 103:1.
CHAPTER 26.
Comfort to them that have the incomparable God for their portion Thirdly, This doctrine may be useful, by way of comfort, to all the people of God. If God be an incomparable God, then they are incomparably blessed who take him for their God, who have him for their happiness.
Every person or people is happy or miserable, as the God is whom they serve, as that is in which they place their felicity; for nothing can give out more happiness to another than it has in itself. That good must of necessity be first in the cause, either eminently or formally, which is conveyed from it to the effect. Those who serve the flesh, as their God and chief good, must needs be miserable, Philippians 3:18; Romans 16:18; because the flesh is a base and vile, Psalm 49:20, a weak and impotent, Isaiah 31:3, a fraudulent and deceitful, Jeremiah 17:9, a fading and transitory God, Psalm 73:25; 1 Corinthians 6:2–. So they who own, and prize, and love the world as their God and chief good—of such we read, the covetous man is called an idolater, and covetousness idolatry, Ephesians 5:5—are miserable, because their God is vain and empty, Ecclesiastes 1:2, 3, piercing and vexatious, 1 Timothy 6:9, 10, uncertain and unsatisfying, Ecclesiastes 5:10; 1 Timothy 6:17, frail, and not lasting, 1 Corinthians 7:29, 30; Proverbs 23:5. Thus they who have idols for their gods are miserable, because their gods are poor, pitiful, blind, deaf, and impotent deities. They have eyes, and see not the wants of their worshipers; they have ears, and hear not the supplications of their suppliants; they have hands, and work not for the relief of their servants' necessities, or their deliverance out of their distresses; and thence the prophet infers the misery of their makers and adorers: 'All that make them are like unto them,' blind, and deaf, and impotent as they are, falsehood and a lie, and vanity, and nothing as they are, 1 Corinthians 8:4; 1 Samuel 12:24, and so is every one that trusts in them, Psalm 115:5–. But the person who, through Christ, has an interest in this great God, the almighty, all-wise, all-sufficient God, is happy: 'Happy is the people whose God is the Lord,' Ps. 144:15; and incomparably happy, because that God who is his portion and happiness is an incomparable God. Therefore, as the Scripture mentions God to be incomparable in excellency, it also mentions his people to be incomparable in felicity, and infers their incomparableness from his incomparableness who is their God.
The Holy Spirit tells us, none is like God; he has no equal in worth and perfection: 'Who is a God like unto you?' Exodus. 15:11; 'Among all the gods there is none like to you,' Psalm 86:6. And the Holy Spirit tells us also that no people is like the people of God, and that because God is theirs: 'Happy are you, O Israel, who is like unto you?' why, whence comes their incomparable happiness? truly, from the incomparable God; 'Saved by the Lord, who is the shield of your help, and the sword of your excellency.' Again, 'What nation is so great, which has God so near unto them?' Deuteronomy 4:7. Israel at this time, to flesh and sense, seemed a most unhappy people; they were in a barren and howling wilderness, without a house to hide their heads in, without food, but what a miracle sent them in; without clothing, but what was on their backs; without any dealings or converse with other people; nay, in the midst of cruel and potent enemies, they must fight their way to Canaan against walled towns and sturdy giants; and yet, even in this plight, they are the happiest people under the cope of Heaven; because the God of Heaven, the incomparable God, was near to them. David asserts God's incomparable majesty, and thence Israel's incomparable felicity: 2 Samuel 7:22, 23, 'Wherefore you are great, O Lord, there is none like you.' What follows thence? 'And what nation at this day is like unto your people, even like Israel?' Reader, if you are once effectually called, if you are a regenerated, sanctified person, know to your comfort, and rejoice therein, that this incomparable God is your. 2. That all his incomparable excellencies are your. 3. That this incomparable God, with all his incomparable perfections, will be your forever.
1. This incomparable God is your. That God who has no superior, no equal, no fellow, is your. He who is, and there is none else, Isaiah 46:9, is your: he who is that he is, Exodus. 3:14, is your. You have a propriety in him, and a title to him. This is the great privilege of Heaven's favorites: 'Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and he will be their God,' Revelation 21:3. This is the great promise, the sum, the substance of all the promises: 'I will be their God, and they shall be my people,' Jeremiah 31:33. This is the great prayer of all that know how to pray, or what to pray for, Psalm 80:12, and 4:6; Exodus. 33:15; Jeremiah 14:8. This is the great purchase of the Son of God, 1 Peter 3:18. His name is therefore Immanuel, God with us.
This is Heaven, itself, the very Heaven of heavens; for it is not the place, but his presence, which makes Heaven to be Heaven: 'In your presence is fullness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasures for evermore,' Psalm 16:11.
Once more; this is the highest, the chief, the greatest gift which the infinite God can give to you. When he gives you riches, and honors, and friends, and relations, he can give you greater things; when he gives you sacraments, and Sabbaths, and seasons of grace, he can give you greater things; when he gives you pardon of sin, peace of conscience, the graces of his Spirit, he gives you great things, but yet he can give you greater; but when he gives you himself, he gives you the greatest gift that himself, though infinite in bounty, can give. Oh how sweet is that term of propriety, my God, my God. The Redeemer himself rolled it in his mouth over and over, as if he could never suck out the sweetness in it: 'Him that overcomes will I make a pillar in the house of my God; and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God,' Revelation 3:12. David dwells on it as one unwilling to leave it, Psalm 18:1, 2.
Reader, oh what cause have you to triumph in your happiness, that the infinite God is your! 'Fear not, I am your,' Isaiah 41. Scepters, and kingdoms, and honors, and possessions, and friends, and relations, and liberty, and peace, and health, and strength, are not your possibly, but God is your; he who is all these, and more than these, is your; he is your own God—even 'our own God shall bless us,' Psalm 67:6. You can not call anything outward your own. Your estate is not your own: 'I will take away my corn, and my wine, and my oil,' Hos. 2:9, Hag. 2:8. Your relations are not your own: Ezekiel 16:20, 21, 'My children which you have born to me.' Your credit is not your own; no, your very graces are not your own, Canticles 4:16. Nay, you yourself are not your own: 1 Corinthians 6:20, 'You are not your own.' Your body is not your own, 1 Corinthians 6:16; nor your souls: Ezek. 18:3, 4, 'All souls are mine.' But God is your own God, your own glory, your own exc.
2. All the incomparable excellencies of this God, his incomparable word and works, are your. As all he is is your, so all he has is your, all he can be is your, all he has done is your, all he can do is your: 1 Corinthians 3:22, 'All is your.' All his incomparable attributes are your. His incomparable power is your to protect you, Genesis 15:1, 2; Exodus. 15:9–2; his incomparable wisdom is your to direct you, Psalm 73:23; his incomparable mercy is your to pity and relieve you in your miseries, Judges 10:16; his incomparable grace is your to pardon all your iniquities, Micah 7:18; Exodus. 34:6, 7; his incomparable love is your to refresh and delight your soul, Psalm 21:5, 6; his incomparable justice is your to accept you as righteous for the sake of his Son, Romans 3:24; his incomparable faithfulness is your to fulfill all the gracious promises which he has made to you, Psalm 89:33, 34; his incomparable majesty and beauty and glory are your, to make you great, and render you lovely and glorious forever, Ezekiel 16:14; Isaiah 43:4; his incomparable joys and pleasures are your to feed on, and be filled with, Psalm 36:8; Matthew 25:21; his incomparable works are your; his works of creation, Psalm 37:11, Matthew 5:4; his works of providence, Romans 8:28; for your sakes I have sent to Babylon, Isaiah 43:14, and 43:4; his work of redemption is yours, John 10:15; Galatians 2:20; Revelation 1:5, 6; his incomparable word is your, indited for you, sanctified to you, making you wise to salvation. It is therefore called their word, the word of their testimony, Revelation 12:11. 'Whatever things were written were written for our instruction, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope,' Romans 15:4.
3. This incomparable God, and all his incomparable excellencies, will be your forever. His incomparable eternity will be your, and so long as he is God he will be your God. When the sensualist's God is gone, your God will remain; when the worldling's God fails him, your God will not forsake you; when all your honors, riches, friends, relations, leave you, your God will abide with you: 'This God is our God forever and ever,' Psalm 48:14. Not for a day, or week, or month, or year, or age, but forever and ever; not for a thousand years, or a thousand generations, or millions of millions of generations, but forever and ever; not for as many millions of ages as there are stars in Heaven, drops in the sea, creatures great and small in both worlds, but forever. Oh happy conjunction of propriety with eternity, this God is our God for ever and ever! Your immortal soul has an immortal God, an immortal good: 'You shall ever be with this incomparable Lord.' Comfort your soul in the midst of all the persecutions and afflictions that befall you in this world, with these words: 1 Thessalonians 4:16–8, 'For the Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with him in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.'