SERMON LXIX.

OF THE GOODNESS OF GOD.

PSALM CXlV. 9.

The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works.

I SHALL now more particularly confider the feveral in- SERM.

ftances before mentioned.

I. The punishment inflicted on mankind for the first tranfgreffion containeth in it much of depth and mystery, furpaffing perhaps all capacity of man to reach; its full comprehenfion being by divine wisdom, I conceive, purpofely concealed from us; fo that I cannot pretend thoroughly to explain it ; and shall not therefore speak much about it.

This indeed is clear, that God did in his proceedings, occafioned thereby, intend remarkably to evidence his grievous refentment and indignation against wilful difobedience; yet in the management thereof we may obferve, that,

1. After that provocation (in itself so high, and liable to fo great aggravations) a God did exprefs his refentment in fo calm and gentle a manner, that Adam, though abashed upon the conscience of his fault, was not yet by the vehemency of the reproof utterly dismayed or dejected.

• Vid. Chryf. 'Ανδρ. ζ'. Οὐ γὰρ εἶπε, καθάπερ εἰκὸς ἦν ὑβρισμένον εἰπεῖν, ὦ μικρές καὶ παμμίαρε, &c. Ibid.

LXIX.

SERM. 2. God ufed great moderation in the infliction of this LXIX. punishment; mitigating the extremity of the sentence Gen. ii. 17.juftly decreed and plainly declared to Adam, (that, in

cafe of his offending against the law prescribed him, he should immediately die,) for notwithstanding his forfeiture that very day of life, God reprieved him, and allowed him a long life, almost of a thousand years, after.

3. God did not quite reject man thereupon, nor did withdraw his fatherly care and providence from him, but openly continued them; infomuch that immediately after the curfe pronounced upon our first parents, the next pafGen. iii. 21. fage we meet with is, that unto Adam and his wife did the Lord God make coats, and clothed them.

4. Although indeed man was by his fault a great loser, and became deprived of high advantages; yet the mercy of God did leave him in no very deplorable estate, simply confidered, as to his life here; the relics of his first estate, and the benefits continued to him, being very confiderable; so that we the inheritors of that great disaster do commonly find the enjoyment of life, with the conveniences attending it, to be sweet and defirable.

5. The event manifefts, that while God in appearance so severely punished mankind, he did in his mind referve thoughts of highest kindness toward us; even then defigning not only to reftore us to our former degree, but to raise us to a capacity of obtaining a far more high pitch of happiness. While he excluded us from a terrestrial paradise here, he provided a far better celestial one, into which, if we please, by obedience to his holy laws, we may certainly enter. So that in this of all most heavy instance of vengeance, God's exceeding goodness and clemency do upon feveral confiderations moft clearly

fhine.

II. The calamity, which by the general deluge did overflow the world, was not (we may confider) brought upon men but in regard to the most enormous offences long continued in, and after amendment was become defperate not till after much forbearance, and till men were grown to a fuperlative pitch of wickedness, by no fit means

(by no friendly warning, no fharp reprehenfion, no mo- SERM. derate chastisement) corrigible; not until the earth was LXIX. become (especially for perfons of any innocence or integrity) no tolerable habitation, but a theatre of lamentable tragedies, a feat of horrid iniquity, a fink of loathsome impurity. So that in reafon it was to be esteemed rather a favour to mankind, to rescue it from fo unhappy a state, than to fuffer it to perfift therein. To fnatch men away out of fo uncomfortable a place, from fo wretched a condition, was a mercy; it had been a judgment to have left them annoying, rifling, and haraffing; biting, tearing, and devouring; yea, defiling and debauching each other; and fo heaping upon themselves loads of guilt, and deeper obligations to vengeance. The earth, faith the text, was Gen. vi. corrupt before God; and the earth was filled with violence. 11, 12. God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth; which univerfal and extreme corruption had not in probability sprung up in a small time; for,

Nemo repente fuit turpiffimus,

is true not only of fingle men, but of communities; no people, no age doth fuddenly degenerate into extreme degrees of wickedness; fo that the divine patience had long endured and attended upon men, before the refolution of thus punishing them was taken up; the which also was not at first peremptory and irreversible, but in God's defign and defire it was revocable; for the world had a long reprieve after the fentence paffed; execution was deferred till Noah's long preaching of righteousness, and denouncing of judgment in a manner fo notorious and fignal, (not by verbal declarations only, but by the visible structure of the ark,) could prevail nothing toward their amendment, but was either distrusted or disregarded, and perhaps derided by them. For, as St. Peter tells us, they were disobedient, when once the long fuffering of God 1 Pet. iii. waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing ; 2 Pet. ii. 5. that is, (as is collected by feveral interpreters from the text of the story,) during no less than one hundred and Gen. vi. 3. twenty years; a competent time for their recollecting

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SERM. themselves, and endeavouring by amendment of life to prevent the ruin threatened to come upon them. Yet notwithstanding that, this obftinate and incorrigible disobedience did so much displease God, as that in confideraGen. vi. 6. tion thereof God is faid to have repented that he made man on the earth, and to have been thereby grieved at the heart: yet did he fo temper his anger as not utterly to destroy mankind, but provided against its total ruin, by preferving one family as a feminary thereof; preserving the father thereof (queftionless by a special grace) from the fpreading contagion, inspiring him with faith, and qualifying him for the favour, which by him he designed to communicate unto the world; the reparation thereof, and reftoring the generations of men. So that also through this paffage of providence, how dismal and dreadful foever at first fight, much goodness will be transparent to him that looks upon it attentively.

III. In the next place, as to that extermination and excifion of the Canaanites, which carries fo horrible an apLevit. xviii. pearance of severity, we may find it qualifiable, if we confider, that for the nature of the trefpaffes, which procured it, they were insufferably heinous and abominable: most fottish, barbarous, and base fuperftitions, (cruelty and impurity being effential ingredients into their performances of religion, and it being piety with them to be exceedingly wicked,) and in their other practice most beastly lafcivioufneffes, most bloody violences, oppreffions, and rapines generally abounding. So that for those men themselves, who were by turns, as it happened, the authors and the objects of these dealings, it could not be defirable to continue in a state of living fo wretched and uncomfortable. Impunity had been no mercy to fuch people, but rather a cruelty; cutting them off must needs be the greatest favour they were capable of, it being only removing them from a hell here, and preventing their deferving many worse hells hereafter. Even to themselves it was a favour, and a greater one to their pofterity, whom they might have brought forth to fucceed into their courses, and to the confequences of them; whom they

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would have engaged into their wicked cuftoms, and their SERM. woful mischiefs. They were not so destroyed from the LXIX. land, until it grew uninhabitable in any tolerable manner, and itself could not, as it were, endure them any longer, but (as the text doth moft fignificantly express it) did fpue Levit. xviii. them out; being like a ftomach furcharged with foul or poisonous matter, which it loathes, and is pained with, and therefore naturally labours to expel. Neither was this fad doom executed upon them till after four hundred years of forbearance; for even in Abraham's time God took notice of their iniquity, then born and growing; and gave account of his fufpending their punishment; because, faid he, the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet Gen. xv. full, (that is, was not yet arrived to a pitch of desperate 16. obftinacy and incorrigibility :) while there was the leaft glimpse of hope, the least relics of any reason, any regret, any shame in them, the leaft poffibility of recovery, God stopped his avenging hand: but when all ground of hope was removed, the whole ftock of natural light and strength was embezzled, all fear, all remorfe, all modesty were quite banished away, all means of cure had proved ineffectual, the gangrene of vice had feized on every part, iniquity was grown mature and mellow; then was the ftroke of juftice indeed not more seasonable than neceffary; then was the fatal fword the only proper remedy; then fo with one ftroke to cut off them, and their fins, and their mischiefs, and their miferies together, was an argument no less strong and clear of God's merciful goodnefs, than of his just anger toward them.

IV. The like account we may render of God's judgments upon the people of Ifrael. If we confult the Prophets, who declare the state of things, the facts, the difpofitions, the guilts, that brought them down from heaven, we shall fee, that they came upon account of an univerfal apoftafy from both the faith and practice of true religion; a deep corruption (like that in the days of Gibeah, Hof. xi. 9. as the prophet Hosea speaketh) in mind and manners; an utter perverting of all truth and right; an obftinate compliance with, or emulation of, the most abominable practices