Chapter 7

CHAP. VII.

Of the sovereignty of God in his actings, and especially in influences. And 2. what sovereignty is.

Because the influence of the Lord's grace depends most upon the sovereignty of God, so far above us, as is spoken in the fourth Article; its needful we speak of these.

1. What sovereignty is. 2. In how many particulars the sovereignty of God does appear. 3. What submission we owe, and how we are to stoop thereunto. 4. Such as are most active in doing God's will, are most submissively patient in suffering his will, & contra. 5. We are to give submission of pain to God. 6. Providence of the Gospel is above Law-providence. 7. The righteousness of God is incomparably above our righteousness. 8. Our justification is not negative only. 9. The Law requires sinless suffering. 10. Inherent righteousness is not the adequate end of the Gospel.

1. To know what sovereignty is. 1. Let us see what it is not. 1. Omnipotency and sovereignty thus differ; Omnipotency looks simply to effects physically, what the Lord can do: he can of stones make sons to Abraham; he can create millions of worlds; his sovereignty is not only his holy nature what he can do and so supposes his Omnipotency, but also what he does freely, or does not freely, and does by no natural necessity, and so it includes his holy supreme liberty, and also what the Lord may do, as it were Jure he may do all things, and (as Elihu says) gives not an account of his matters to any (Job 33:13). By his holy sovereign will as above all laws that bind the rational creatures, he does as he pleases, and what he pleases: and none can say What do you? Hence 1. its graciousness of holy sovereignty, that because he is sovereign, he does not crush us; the flesh speaks that in Job 10:3 to the Lord; Is it good to you that you should oppress? And because he is sovereign upon the account of his sovereignty, he crushes not under his feet all the prisoners of the earth: to turn aside the right of a man before the face of the most High (Lamentations 3:33, 34). Whereas, to sinful sovereigns, power is a law many take by violence, fields and houses, because its in the power of their hands to do it (Micah 2); the law of the Lion and the great Fish, to devour the Lamb and swallow the lesser Fish, is only power and strength. Satan and his never stays in this side of their power, but does all the evil they can; Jeremiah 3:5. Behold, you have spoken, and done evil as you could. The sovereignty of God says he may withdraw influences of grace from Angels and Men as pleases him best; he may let this ground wither and dry up as a rock, and make the other plot of ground near by, like a fruitful paradise; and why may not sovereignty dispose of hearts to harden them? But his outgoings of sovereignty are not always to destroy.

2. Our great ones are so far above the blood, the cries and sufferings of the needy; let the poor die in the pit, they have a higher employment than to lend their heart to lodge thoughts of compassion toward the afflicted (Amos 6:1, 2, 3, 4). Greatness despises the desolation of the poor; but Job 36:5. Behold, God is mighty and despises not any; says Elihu, Psalm 69:33. The Lord despises not his prisoners; why? And is he not above their tears? Yes, 34. let Heaven and Earth praise him; then must he be great and high above the mourners, yet he owns their tears (Psalm 102:19, 20).

3. And the Lord's sovereignty hinders him not to give a sort of reckoning of his doings, Isaiah 5. Judge between me and my vineyard, Micah 6:3. O my people, what have I done to you? Often pride hinders sinful sovereigns to ease the heart of the oppressed with a reason of their deeds.

2. What is sovereignty? It is his superexcellent highness by which his holy will, essentially wise and just, is a law and rule to himself to do what he pleases, holily, wisely, most freely. But why does the Lord drive cart-wheels over the bones of his people? Let alone: he will not do it always, and say it were so, this comes forth from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working (Isaiah 28:29). A godly heart is smitten with the wisdom and authority of holy sovereignty; why is Jerusalem spoiled? And why are the nations at ease? Holy sovereignty should meeken and silence all men (Zechariah 2:13): Be silent, O all flesh before the Lord. Supreme sovereignty cannot err; and the faith of this quiets the heart under all sufferings; Hezekiah (Isaiah 38:15): What shall I say? He has spoken to me, and himself has done it. Devils and men are to be looked on as passive rods (there is no principle of life in the rod, in the sword to lift up themselves against us) they are wheels rolled about by holy sovereignty. Ah, the physician slew my child, the wicked enemy slew the father and the son, the malicious rail against me; but not any of these dumb rods did move themselves: the Lord bids Shimei curse David; the Lord sends the Assyrians against the nation of his fury. Consider the copy, holy Jesus (Matthew 26) puts three seals, three subscriptions to one blank and sad bill of wrath: Nevertheless not my will, but your will be done. How was he the foremost in the journey to Jerusalem? To suffer, as willing that his blood be ink, and his soul and body sheets of paper; on which might be written (as it were) to be read by men and angels, for all eternity, the glory and justice of spotless sovereignty; and he who said Amen to the curse, teaches us, if God should say, I have no delight in you, to consent (2 Samuel 15:26) and say, here am I, let him do to me as seems good to him. The wishes of Moses and Paul, who desire their parts in the Book of Life, and of Christ to be laid in pawn for the shining of the glory of the Lord in saving of many; and that expression of David says, that a gracious submission to sovereignty will bring the man to this, Let him do to me what seems good in his eyes; if he say, he has no delight in me: well, let angels and men read and sing the glory of the Lord, in the flamings of the holy sovereignty and spotless justice of God in my torment; and it becomes me consentingly to lay my soul as a threshing floor under his eternal smitings, and to judge I owe a spirit to be eternal oil and fire-wood, to eternally revenging wrath. The children of God know how hardly faith can command sense to come up to the obligation of receiving in the bosom, with kissing and adoring the fiery indignation of the Lord. Yet are we to drink with Christ, the cup of sad absence, and his holy withdrawings. Heman has come near this, and David and Jonah; all your waves have gone over me, your wrath lies hard upon me; and yet hear savory prayers speaking the rejoicing, and kissing of sovereignty, and prayers coming out of the furnace of Hell (Psalms 88:1): O Lord God of my salvation, I cry day and night before you. What? Cries of faith out of the bowels of a sea of wrath! Jonah 2:2: Out of the belly of Hell I cried, says Jonah; and waves of wrath, all the waves, all the waves of your wrath are gone over me, says David (Psalms 45:8): Yet the Lord will command his loving kindness in the day time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer to the God of my life. O how sweet are these; tormenting pain and godly patience; pining pain and sweet praises and psalms of sovereignty; the tormented man sings his own hell in a psalm sounding up to heaven (Psalms 6, Psalms 42, Psalms 38). God smites me, and I love God (Psalms 42:7): All your waves and your billows are gone over me; yet this sea and all the waves of this hell cannot quench heavenly love and the fire of thirsting after God (v. 1): As the hart pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after you, O God. When fiery wrath is in its outgoing, the Lord sends out wrath and arrows that stick fast in the soul; but David prays to an angry God, he roars and burns in wrath; I pray (Psalms 38): he casts on me waves of hell; I send up tears and cries to him (Psalms 6:1, 6): he breaks me with breach upon breach, and sorely vexes my soul; I believe and trust in his salvation (Psalms 18:4, 5, 6). Thus it is possible, for a saint to love his own fiery hell, and receive the coals of flaming wrath in his arms, for his holy sovereign and glorious name, who is pleased so to deal with him, and upon the consideration that so it seem good to the only wise and sovereign Lord. But oh how unlike are we to a people in the furnace adoring the Lord in the outgoings of sovereign justice! When the Lord smites, some murmur, others swear, lie, whore, oppress, many mock godliness and hate it, all go on to break the marriage-faith of a land once betrothed to God; and ah! if the watchmen had not been guides to these who highly wronged Jesus Christ.

From the former, follows patient silence, and an use of our submission to his sovereignty who withdraws his influences from us, so as sinning follows thereupon: Hence there is a great abuse of repentance, which is bastard-repentance. We grieve at the fair work of the Lord's holy permissive providence, and are not humbled at our foul sinning, resulting by our own fault, from such a providence. See a copy of a law-sorrow (repentance I call it not) in Adam, before any Gospel was heard of (Genesis 3:12), that, or, the woman whom you gave (to be) with me, she gave me of the tree: There is an emphasis in the Woman; The, or that Woman. 2. An emphasis in the Lord's liberality; You gave her, by way of goodness and liberality; but I wish the Lord never had been good nor liberal in that kind. 3. To be with me (as an helper, who now is a tempter.) 4. She (as the chief cause) gave me of the fruit, and I did eat. I repent (says he in sense) that you was that graciously good as to give me a tempter, but I am not grieved for my own sin in eating. So the common excuse; woe to the providence that God sent such an unhappy counseller to me; oh what had I to do there? So does Job repent in some respect in his weakness, not that he came in the world an heir of wrath, and a sinner, but ah the fatal and wrathful decree of God, that ever I was born to such misery (Job 3:3). Let the day perish, wherein I was born (Jeremiah 20:14). But the Lord willeth the crucifiers of Christ to mourn that they with wicked hands crucified and slew Christ: and yet Peter counsels them (Acts 2:23) to submit humbly to the determinate counsel and fore-knowledge of God. Our deceitful hearts are readier to repent for the holy events and facts of divine providence, than for our own sins, as if the holy Lord did err in his permissive providence, and we do not amiss in transgressing of an holy law. But such as are most active to do the will of God, and esteem it their meat and drink to obey his will, as Jesus Christ (John 4:34), and go about doing good (Acts 10:38, 39), are most passively savory and graciously submissive to suffer the will of God, as he was (Matthew 26), Nevertheless not my will, but your will be done; (Isaiah 53:7) He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he as a Lamb to the slaughter, and as a Sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. (1 Peter 2:23) Who when he was reviled, reviled not again: when he suffered, he threatened not, but committed himself to him that judges righteously. And Jeremiah who mourned so, for sin as he desired his head were waters, and his eyes a fountain of tears, that he might both be humbled for the judgements and the sins of the people (Jeremiah 9:1, 2), has said much in the book of the Lamentations for justifying God (Lamentations 1:18; Lamentations 3:38, 40, 41, 42; Lamentations 4:10, 11, 12, 13; Lamentations 5:19, 20), and was willing himself to be carried captive. So was Daniel who mourns and confesses and fasts three full weeks (Daniel 4; Daniel 10:2, 3), and ascribes righteousness to God. The more submission there is in Job, there is the more spiritual frame of a gracious spirit in him (Job 1:21, 22; 2 Samuel 16:10), and they who fret most at suffering; as Cain (Genesis 4:13) and Jehoram (2 Kings 6:23), Shall I wait any longer upon the Lord? are most froward and unwilling to do or act the will of God. And on the contrary, such are most impatient and blasphemous in suffering as damned reprobates, who are less active in doing God's will and denying it. 2. The Lord requires to holy sovereignty a submission to that permissive providence of his; he suspends his gracious influences, and what can we do but sin? Say a millstone were tied with chains in the air, if the chain break, the stone must fall. Remove the Sun and it must be dark night. The Lord knowingly and of purpose withdraws his influences, and angels or men in their strength cannot stand. Convene and summon the wittiest thoughts of men and angels, who acknowledge a providence, and answer to this; suppose a master of a house, excellent in goodness and of a deep reach of wisdom to let fall, out of his hand two precious stones of incomparable worth, jewels of the price of the half of the Earth, and he only can keep them safe, yet he suffers them knowingly and purposely to fall and be broken: The Lord who hangs the Earth upon nothing, and it is not moved, might and could have kept men and angels in their integrity, but of purpose he suffers them to fall and be broken upon a mighty rock.

2. A husbandman has a huge broad and vast plat of ground most fertile for wheat, olive trees, the most delicious and excellent vines in great abundance, its a wide land of honey, of milk, of many gardens of incomparably fragrant herbs, with meadows and grass for millions of flocks, he sees a great river shall overflow all this land, this husbandman only can fence off the river with a strong bank, yet he knowingly suffers the flood to overflow and drown all, that nothing can more grow in it, than the bottom of the Sea.

A governor of ten rich and populous cities, knows of a train of fire, which by degrees shall at length consume, in one flame, men, women, sucking children, gold, silver, houses, gardens, he can quench the train, if he please, yet he suffers a strong wind to blow upon it, withdraws not water from it, which is a sort of fomenting thereof, until all be consumed. What can here be said to him who gives not account of any of his matters? This is the free dispensation of the only wise God to standing and to falling angels and men, and who can judge God or find him out in this? It may seem needless curiosity to determine, which of the two providences, and which of the two wills in the holy Lord must be first or choicest; whether that by which Adam should have stood happy in perfect obedience without fall or sin given to the Covenant of Works, or that providence and will by which the Lord designed, to bring in the wonder of mercy and grace, Emanuel, God manifest in the flesh, the delight of men and angels? It seems to say that the Lord's will is more set upon Adam's final duty, which never had being, and which the Lord immutably from eternity, decreed should never be, than his holy will is fixed upon that wonder of the world, of heaven and earth; the riches of the glory of his grace and other attributes in that precious and incomparable mystery, God manifested in the flesh. It is true, God wills us rather to obey, and not to wound ourselves by sin, than put him to pardon our disobedience, or to seek a Mediator or remedy for sin. But the Lord by his commanding will, in his Law charges us under the pain of condemnation to obey; but the Lord by no commanding will in his Law charges himself to provide and seek a Satisfier and Mediator: he provides a Redeemer by his will of purpose and holy decree, nor willed he ever fallen Adam to solicit his author commanding or decreeing will to provide a Physician for sick sinners.

But except we seek a knot in a rush. First, it is Adam's duty and all mankind's in him to stand, obey and never sin: and God wills this obligation to lie upon man as an eternally obliging duty; and this is true even now and eternally [Adam ought never to have sinned.]

Second, God never willed Adam, nor commanded him in Law or Gospel, either absolutely or comparatively to put the Lord to seek a remedy or a Savior to satisfy for us, or to pardon sin; we read of no such will.

Third, nor is it fit to say, that the Lord had rather David committed adultery and murder, by God's permission, and be pardoned for it, than not to commit it; for if this be meant of the commanding will of God, no man can justly charge us with putting such contradictory wills upon God; as also it is impossible that God can will the adultery of David to be, by any other will, than his will of purpose and holy decree.

And then fourth, the righteous Lord loves righteousness, yet the Lord absolutely and simply willed rather the holy, free submissive obedience of the second Adam to be, than he wills the final obedience of the first Adam; and he wills more the manifestation of the glory of his free grace, pardoning mercy, revenging justice in that excellent of the most excellent our Emanuel, than the legislative glory of Adam and all his possible final obedience; and the Lord wills no end rather than his own glory; but the Lord never commands us to will but what he approves, and it is needless to enquire whether a more eminent declarative glory could be, than that which is the delight of the Lord's soul, the pleasure of the Lord, love greater than any man has, the rejoicing of the Lord, loved and desired to be read, looked to with wondering and adoring by the holy angels; nor can any inherent righteousness of man please the Lord, in any imaginable measure and manner, as the obedience of Christ in offering himself to God through the eternal Spirit (Hebrews 4:14). And if it be true, that lost man gains more in the second Adam, Christ Jesus, than he lost in the first Adam, clear it is that there is no comparison between the declarative glory of the Gospel, to wit, the glory of the humble, willing, and eminently and admirably excellent obedience of Christ God-man in dying tali modo and the declarative glory of the Law (2 Corinthians 3), or between the glory of the righteousness of God through faith, and the glory of the inherent righteousness through the grace of God; for the righteousness of God through faith, must be more excellent than the righteousness of man, or than all the acts of man by grace, believing, hoping, loving, repenting, praying, praising eternally in heaven, suffering of martyrdom; and therefore it cannot be said that God would rather in an antecedent, and principal intention have us to forbear sin and Adam to stand in law-obedience, than to put him to remedy sin, and out of the greatest love of God to man to send his Son in the world to save sinners, as if the intention and heart-purpose of God had been principally that the first Adam should stand, and all in him and the court of the Law of Works should be for ever; and that the Lord in a second intention and (as if it were) compelled by a cross wind must sail into a next best and second harbour, which yet undoubtedly is the excellentest and highest declarative glory of the Lord which the conceptions of angels or men can reach, and was (if I may so speak) the eternal delight of the Lord, while as yet, he had not made the earth, or the fields (Proverbs 8:23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31), though I am far from thinking that any thing without God, does conclude his holy sovereignty; yet the Lord's soul delighting in the holy obedience of Christ and the eternal declarative glory thereof, shall be highest to me, and in the hearts (I conceive) of the godly, the most eminent revealed end, and to Scripture.

4. Neither is it better pleasing to God, not to sin, then when the man has sinned, to seek pardon for sin in the blood of Christ. I know not what Scripture so speaks or so teaches — both the one and the other is the approving and commanding will of God; and if the Gospel be more glorious and excellent then the Law (2 Corinthians 3), as it must be, the seeking of a pardon is a duty commanded in the Gospel and Covenant of Grace, and not sinning, is as such an act commanded in the poor and simple Covenant of works given to Adam. I shall heartily yield to sin upon hope of pardon (if any intelligent pure and only Antinomians so teach) is utterly unlawful; but upon supposition that the person is a sinner, it is a more gracious act of obedience (yes, more glorious if I may so speak) to fly to our sanctuary and city of refuge Jesus Christ upon Gospel-principles, then upon Law-principles not to sin; and thus must the comparison of betterness and excellency be made. But the arguing seems to infer, that it is our mind, that God wills us to desire and practically to will rather that Christ the Physician should appear in the declarative glory of grace, mercy, pardoning, punishing, justice, then that we should practically will our own Law-obedience; but this is forced on us and is not our mind, but a wicked principle of Libertines; for we ought rather to obey the Law and practically to will final obedience to the Law of works and eschew sinning as Hell, rather then desire and with a more intense and a stronger practical will seek the incarnation of God; for that practical will can never be in us without sinning.

Yes, 4. It is a shame to compare together the righteousness of God (and we are in Christ made this righteousness of God, 2 Corinthians 5:21) and the inherent, mixed, imperfect righteousness of a renewed man; for the one needs no pardon, and the other is sinful, and as menstruous clothes without a pardon (Isaiah 64:6). I mean not that the believing, praying, &c. of the regenerate are formally and in the substance of the act sins, but by accident they are sinful and polluted; but even in the substance of the act, they are nothing comparable to the acts of obedience in Christ, which are every way complete and perfect according to the strictest rule of the Law of works.

Yes, 5. It is a false ground to say that by justification or remission of sins (as some say, but they are not every way the same) only the guilt of sin is removed, or only deliverance from eternal punishment; for Christ's dying and satisfying is ours, he dying in our stead and place, and we dying in him legally (not physically) and so are we not only by his satisfaction which is made ours, and by faith applied to us, negatively freed from Hell, but positively righteous (I say not inherently or personally); for Christ's satisfaction is not a mere dying, nor mere suffering; for beasts may die and suffer much. But such a dying and such a suffering: for 1. Christ's dying and satisfying has an excellency from the subject God-man who died (Acts 20:28). 2. It has an excellent qualification from the patience, submission, willingness of God-man, the like whereof could be in no simple man, in no angel, in no creature; for the personal influence of God was in him and his obedience. As for the damned in Hell, their satisfaction is of another nature different from Christ's, and is only satispassion and pure torment, not holy, willing, suffering as the Law requires sinless sufferings as contradistinguished from active obedience. Howbeit the moral Law does require patient and submissive suffering without despairing or blaspheming, in any reasonable creature; for the holy Law cannot but condemn sin and blasphemy, adhering either to our acting or suffering.

Nor 6. Let it be said to the undervaluing of the righteousness of God through faith, that inherent righteousness is the full end of Christ's blood; when in the state of glory, there shall be no more pardoning of sin, but perfect inherent holiness.

For 1. that inherent holiness in the estate of glory is not perfect legal holiness, nor the formal cause of our justification in glory; because all the glorified once sinned, and so for eternity are such as have violated the Law.

2. Our righteousness from the time forward shall not only be inherent; for the righteousness of God is an everlasting righteousness (Daniel 9:24), and how that robe of Christ's surety-righteousness shall in the state of glory, be laid by as an old useless garment, and the robe of inherent righteousness in lieu of it put on for ever, the Scripture does not speak; what men without Scripture speak, we care not.

3. Nor is our inherent righteousness only either the adequate end of Christ's blood, or of faith and labours, as if God intended as his only end to make us eternally Law-righteous; whereas he shall eternally delight in us, and lead us in glory as those that are freely redeemed in the blood of the Lamb; for the Lamb shall be the everlasting righteousness of all crowned with glory (Revelation 4:8, 9, 10; Revelation 5:11, 12, 13; Revelation 7:14, 15, 16).

3. Sovereignty challenges submission to the will of God in doing and in suffering, because it is his obliging will; we fail not a little in the former when we pray, because the mast of the ship is broken, and death is at the bedside; and we hear the Word, because it is the fashion, and abstain from fornication, and from other works of darkness, and put on a sort of holiness, not because it is the will of God, even our sanctification; as for eating, drinking, sleeping, waking, they are spiritually minded who do not these things for nature and lust, but as well-pleasing to the Lord, and find a convincing and persuading reason in the holy commanding will of the sovereign Lord why they ought to be done upon a spiritual account; and the other is no less spiritual; for many are sick and die, many are poor, and persecuted for well-doing, because they cannot choose, but so it must be, not because as Peter says (1 Peter 3:17), so is the will of God in a spiritual account to them; for when holy sovereignty has laid on the necessity of dying, of sickness and pain, and a gracious spirit shall close with that; this is spiritual patience.

Because the Lord has a dominion over second causes, and as it were, a strong lock upon all creatures to open and shut at his pleasure, and he puts a seal upon Sun and Stars (Job 9:7, 8, 9), that they cease and shine, or shine not, or go down; we are to put our Amen and seal to sovereignty's decrees. I rise early, and there is no bread; ah Lord: I lay in a soft bed, and there is no sleep in the night, but pain. Say, Amen, Lord: the Fig-tree blossoms not this year, yet I will rejoice in the Lord (Hab. 3:16, 17). Sovereignty has so appointed, there is nothing but rolling of garments in blood, and captivity and spoils; yet pray, your will be done in the Earth, as it is done in the Heaven.