as necessity is opposed to liberty? As he freely decrees what he will
do, so he effects what he freely decreed. Foreknowledge is so far from
intrenching upon the liberty of the will, that predetermination, which
in the notion of it speaks something more, doth not dissolve it; God
did not only foreknow, but determine the suffering of Christ (Acts iv.
27, 28). It was necessary, therefore, that Christ should suffer, that
God might not be mistaken in his foreknowledge, or come short of his
determinate decree; but did this take away the liberty of Christ in
suffering? (Eph. v. 2): “Who offered himself up to God;” that is, by a
voluntary act, as well as designed to do it by a determinate counsel.
It did infallibly secure the event, but did not annihilate the liberty
of the action, either in Christ’s willingness to suffer, or the crime
of the Jews that made him suffer. God’s prescience is God’s provision
of things arising from their proper causes; as a gardener foresees
in his plants the leaves and the flowers that will arise from them in
the spring, because he knows the strength and nature of their several
roots which lie under ground; but his foresight of these things is not
the cause of the rise and appearance of those flowers. If any of us
see a ship moving towards such a rock or quicksand, and know it to be
governed by a negligent pilot, we shall certainly foresee that the ship
will be torn in pieces by the rock, or swallowed up by the sands; but
is this foresight of ours from the causes, any cause of the effect; or
can we from hence be said to be the authors of the miscarriage of the
ship, and the loss of the passengers and goods? The fall of Adam was
foreseen by God to come to pass by the consent of his free will, in
the choice of the proposed temptation. God foreknew Adam would sin,
and if Adam would not have sinned, God would have foreknown that he
would not sin. Adam might easily have detected the serpent’s fraud,
and made a better election; God foresaw that he would not do it; God’s
foreknowledge did not make Adam guilty or innocent: whether God had
foreknown it or no, he was guilty by a free choice, and a willing
neglect of his own duty. Adam knew that God foreknew that he might
eat of the fruit, and fall and die, because God had forbidden him; the
foreknowledge that he would do it, was no more a cause of his action,
than the foreknowledge that he might do it. Judas certainly knew
that his Master foreknew that he would betray him, for Christ had
acquainted him with it (John xiii. 21, 26); yet he never charged this
foreknowledge of Christ with any guilt of his treachery.

_Prop. III._ The holiness of God is not blemished by decreeing the
eternal rejection of some men. Reprobation, in its first notion, is
an act of preterition, or passing by. A man is not made wicked by the
act of God; but it supposeth him wicked; and so it is nothing else but
God’s leaving a man in that guilt and filth wherein he beholds him.
In its second notion, it is an ordination, not to a crime, but to a
punishment (Jude 4): “an ordaining to condemnation.” And though it be
an eternal act of God, yet, in order of nature, it follows upon the
foresight of the transgression of man, and supposeth the crime. God
considers Adam’s revolt, and views the whole mass of his corrupted
posterity, and chooses some to reduce to himself by {b147} his grace,
and leaves others to lie sinking in their ruins. Since all mankind fell
by the fall of Adam, and have corruption conveyed to them successively
by that root, whereof they are branches; all men might justly be left
wallowing in that miserable condition to which they are reduced by the
apostasy of their common head; and God might have passed by the whole
race of man, as well as he did the fallen angels, without any hope of
redemption. He was no more bound to restore man, than to restore devils,
nor bound to repair the nature of any one son of Adam; and had he dealt
with men as he dealt with the devils, they had had, all of them, as
little just ground to complain of God; for all men deserved to be left
to themselves, for all were concluded under sin; but God calls out some
to make monuments of his grace, which is an act of the sovereign mercy
of that dominion, whereby “he hath mercy on whom he will have mercy”
(Rom. ix. 18); others he passes by, and leaves them remaining in that
corruption of nature wherein they were born. If men have a power to
dispose of their own goods, without any unrighteousness, why should not
God dispose of his own grace, and bestow it upon whom he pleases; since
it is a debt to none, but a free gift to any that enjoy it? God is not
the cause of sin in this, because his operation about this is negative;
it is not an action, but a denial of action, and therefore cannot
be the cause of the evil actions of men.[911] God acts nothing, but
withholds his power; he doth not enlighten their minds, nor incline
their wills so powerfully, as to expel their darkness, and root out
those evil habits which possess them by nature. God could, if he would,
savingly enlighten the minds of all men in the world, and quicken their
hearts with a new life by an invincible grace; but in not doing it,
there is no positive act of God, but a cessation of action. We may with
as much reason say, that God is the cause of all the sinful actions
that are committed by the corporation of devils, since their first
rebellion, because he leaves them to themselves, and bestows not a new
grace upon them,――as say, God is the cause of the sins of those that he
overlooks and leaves in that state of guilt wherein he found them. God
did not pass by any without the consideration of sin; so that this act
of God is not repugnant to his holiness, but conformable to his justice.

_Prop. IV._ The holiness of God is not blemished by his secret will
to suffer sin to enter into the world. God never willed sin by his
preceptive will. It was never founded upon, or produced by any word
of his, as the creation was. He never said, Let there be sin under the
heaven, as he said, “Let there be water under the heaven.” Nor doth
he will it by infusing any habit of it, or stirring up inclinations to
it; no, “God tempts no man” (James i. 13). Nor doth he will it by his
approving will; it is detestable to him, nor ever can he be otherwise;
he cannot approve it either before commission or after.

1. The will of God is in some sort concurrent with sin. He doth not
properly will it, but he wills not to hinder it, to which, by his
omnipotence, he could put a bar. If he did positively will it, it might
be wrought by himself, and so could not be evil. If he did {b148} in
no sort will it, it would not be committed by his creature; sin entered
into the world, either God willing the permission of it, or not willing
the permission of it. The latter cannot be said; for then the creature
is more powerful than God, and can do that which God will not permit.
God can, if he be pleased, banish all sin in a moment out of the world:
he could have prevented the revolt of angels, and the fall of man;
they did not sin whether he would or no: he might, by his grace, have
stepped in the first moment, and made a special impression upon them of
the happiness they already possessed, and the misery they would incur
by any wicked attempt. He could as well have prevented the sin of the
fallen angels, and confirmed them in grace, as of those that continued
in their happy state: he might have appeared to man, informed him of
the issue of his design, and made secret impressions upon his heart,
since he was acquainted with every avenue to his will. God could have
kept all sin out of the world, as well as all creatures from breathing
in it; he was as well able to bar sin forever out of the world, as
to let creatures lie in the womb of nothing, wherein they were first
wrapped. To say God doth will sin as he doth other things, is to deny
his holiness; to say it entered without anything of his will, is to
deny his omnipotence. If he did necessitate Adam to fall, what shall
we think of his purity? If Adam did fall without any concern of God’s
will in it, what shall we say of his sovereignty? The one taints his
holiness, and the other clips his power. If it came without anything
of his will in it, and he did not foresee it, where is his omniscience?
If it entered whether he would or no, where is his omnipotence (Rom.
ix. 19)? “Who hath resisted his will?” There cannot be a lustful act
in Abimelech, if God will withhold his power (Gen. xx. 6); “I withheld
thee:” nor a cursing word in Balaam’s mouth, unless God give power
to speak it (Numb. xxii. 38): “Have I now any power at all to say
anything? The word that God puts in my mouth, that shall I speak.” As
no action could be sinful, if God had not forbidden it; so no sin could
be committed, if God did not will to give way to it.

2. God doth not will directly, and by an efficacious will. He doth not
directly will it, because he hath prohibited it by his law, which is
a discovery of his will: so that if he should directly will sin, and
directly prohibit it, he would will good and evil in the same manner,
and there would be contradictions in God’s will: to will sin absolutely,
is to work it (Ps. cxv. 3): “God hath done whatsoever he pleased.” God
cannot absolutely will it, because he cannot work it. God wills good by
a positive decree, because he hath decreed to effect it.[912] He wills
evil by a private decree, because he hath decreed not to give that
grace which would certainly prevent it. God doth not will sin simply,
for that were to approve it, but he wills it, in order to that good
his wisdom will bring forth from it.[913] He wills not sin for itself,
but for the event. To will sin as sin, or as purely evil, is not in
the capacity of a creature, neither of man nor devil. The will of a
rational creature cannot will anything but under the appearance of good,
of some good in the sin itself, or some good in the issue of it. {b149}
Much more is this far from God, who, being infinitely good, cannot will
evil as evil; and being infinitely knowing, cannot will that for good
which is evil.[914] Infinite wisdom can be under no error or mistake:
to will sin as sin, would be an unanswerable blemish on God; but to
will to suffer it in order to good, is the glory of his wisdom; it
could never have peeped up its head, unless there had been some decree
of God concerning it. And there had been no decree of God concerning
it, had he not intended to bring good and glory out of it. If God did
directly will the discovery of his grace and mercy to the world, he did
in some sort will sin, as that without which there could not have been
any appearance of mercy in the world; for an innocent creature is not
the object of mercy, but a miserable creature: and no rational creature
but must be sinful before it be miserable.

3. God wills the permission of sin. He doth not positively will sin,
but he positively wills to permit it. And though he doth not approve
of sin, yet he approves of that act of his will, whereby he permits it.
For since that sin could not enter into the world without some concern
of God’s will about it, that act of his will that gave way to it, could
not be displeasing to him: God could never be displeased with his own
act: “He is not as man, that he should repent” (1 Sam. xv. 29). What
God cannot repent of, he cannot but approve of: it is contrary to the
blessedness of God to disapprove of, and be displeased with any act
of his own will. If he hated any act of his own will, he would hate
himself, he would be under a torture: every one that hates his own acts,
is under some disturbance and torment for them. That which is permitted
by him, is in itself, and in regard of the evil of it, hateful to him:
but as the prospect of that good which he aims at in the permission
of it is pleasing to him, so that act of his will, whereby he permits
it, is ushered in by an approving act of his understanding. Either God
approved of the permission, or not; if he did not approve his own act
of permission, he could not have decreed an act of permission. It is
inconceivable that God should decree such an act which he detested,
and positively will that which he hated. Though God hated sin, as being
against his holiness, yet he did not hate the permission of sin, as
being subservient by the immensity of his wisdom to his own glory. He
could never be displeased with that which was the result of his eternal
counsel, as this decree of permitting sin was, as well as any other
decree, resolved upon in his own breast. For as God acts nothing in
time, but what he decreed from eternity, so he permits nothing in
time but what he decreed from eternity to permit. To speak properly,
therefore, God doth not will sin, but he wills the permission of it,
and this will to permit is active and positive in God.

4. This act of permission is not a mere and naked permission, but
such an one as is attended with a certainty of the event. The decrees
of God to make use of the sin of man for the glory of his grace in the
mission and passion of his Son, hung upon this entrance of sin. Would
it consist with the wisdom of God to decree such great and stupendous
things, the event whereof should depend upon an uncertain foundation
which he might be mistaken in? God would have {b150} sat in counsel
from eternity to no purpose, if he had only permitted those things to
be done, without any knowledge of the event of this permission. God
would not have made such provision for redemption to no purpose, or an
uncertain purpose, which would have been, if man had not fallen; or if
it had been an uncertainty with God whether he would fall or no. Though
the will of God about sin was permissive, yet the will of God about
that glory he would promote by the defect of the creature, was positive;
and, therefore, he would not suffer so many positive acts of his will
to hang upon an uncertain event; and, therefore, he did wisely and
righteously order all things to the accomplishment of his great and
gracious purposes.

5. This act of permission doth not taint the holiness of God.
That there is such an act as permission, is clear in Scripture (Acts
xiv. 16): “Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own
ways.” But that it doth not blemish the holiness of God, will appear,

1st. From the nature of this permission.

1. It is not a moral permission, a giving liberty of toleration by any
law to commit sin with impunity; when, what one law did forbid, another
law doth leave indifferent to be done or not, as a man sees good in
himself. As when there is a law made among men, that no man shall
go out of such a city or country without license; to go out without
license is a crime by the law; but when that law is repealed by another,
that gives liberty for men to go and come at their pleasure, it doth
not make their going or coming necessary, but leaves those which were
before bound, to do as they see good in themselves. Such a permission
makes a fact lawful, though not necessary; a man is not obliged to do
it, but he is left to his own discretion to do as he pleases, without
being chargeable with a crime for doing it. Such a permission there
was granted by God to Adam of eating of the fruits of the garden, to
choose any of them for food, except the tree of “knowledge of good and
evil.” It was a precept to him, not to “eat of the fruit of the tree
of knowledge of good and evil;” but the other was a permission, whereby
it was lawful for him to feed upon any other that was most agreeable
to his appetite: but there is not such a permission in the case of sin;
this had been an indulgence of it, which had freed man from any crime,
and, consequently, from punishment; because, by such a permission by
law, he would have had authority to sin if he pleased. God did not
remove the law, which he had before placed as a bar against evil, nor
ceased that moral impediment of his threatening: such a permission as
this, to make sin lawful or indifferent, had been a blot upon God’s
holiness.

2. But this permission of God, in the case of sin, is no more than the
not hindering a sinful action, which he could have prevented. It is not
so much an action of God, as a suspension of his influence, which might
have hindered an evil act, and a forbearing to restrain the faculties
of man from sin; it is, properly, the not exerting that efficacy
which might change the counsels that are taken, and prevent the action
intended; as when one man sees another ready to fall, and can preserve
him from falling by reaching out his hand, he permits {b151} him
to fall, that is, he hinders him not from falling. So God describes
his act about Abimelech (Gen. xx. 6); “I withheld thee from sinning
against me, therefore suffered I thee not to touch her.” If Abimelech
had sinned, he had sinned by God’s permission; that is, by God’s not
hindering, or not restraining him by making any impressions upon him.
So that permission is only a withholding that help and grace, which, if
bestowed, would have been an effectual remedy to prevent a crime; and
it is rather a suspension, or cessation, than properly a permission,
and sin may be said to be committed, not without God’s permission,
rather than by his permission. Thus, in the fall of man, God did not
hold the reins strict upon Satan, to restrain him from laying the bait,
nor restrain Adam from swallowing the bait: he kept to himself that
efficacious grace which he might have darted out upon man to prevent
his fall. God left Satan to his malice of tempting, and Adam to his
liberty of resisting, and his own strength, to use that sufficient
grace he had furnished him with, whereby he might have resisted and
overcome the temptation. As he did not drive man to it, so he did not
secretly restrain him from it. So, in the Jews crucifying our Saviour,
God did not imprint upon their minds, by his Spirit, a consideration
of the greatness of the crime, and the horror of his justice due to it;
and, being without those impediments, they run furiously, of their own
accord, to the commission of that evil; as, when a man lets a wolf or
dog out upon his prey, he takes off the chain which held them, and they
presently act according to their natures.[915] In the fall of angels
and men, God’s act was leaving them to their own strength; in sins
after the fall, it is God’s giving them up to their own corruption;
the first is a pure suspension of grace; the other hath the nature of
a punishment (Ps. lxxxi. 12): “So I gave them up to their own hearts’
lusts.” The first object of this permissive will of God was to leave
angels and men to their liberty, and the use of their free will, which
was natural to them,[916] not adding that supernatural grace which was
necessary, not that they should not at all sin, but that they should
infallibly not sin: they had a strength sufficient to avoid sin, but
not sufficient infallibly to avoid sin; a grace sufficient to preserve
them, but not sufficient to confirm them.

3. Now this permission is not the cause of sin, nor doth blemish the
holiness of God. It doth not intrench upon the freedom of men, but
supposeth it, establisheth it, and leaves man to it. God acted nothing,
but only ceased to act; and therefore could not be the efficient cause
of man’s sin. As God is not the author of good, but by willing and
effecting it, so he is not the author of evil, but by willing and
effecting it: but he doth not positively will evil, nor effect it by
any efficacy of his own. Permission is no action, nor the cause of that
action which is permitted; but the will of that person who is permitted
to do such an action is the cause.[917] God can no more be said to
be the cause of sin, by suffering a creature to act as it will, than
he can be said to be the cause of the not being of any creature, by
denying it being, and letting it remain nothing; it is not from God
that it is nothing, it is nothing in itself. Though God be said {b152}
to be the cause of creation, yet he is never by any said to be the
cause of that nothing which was before creation. This permission of God
is not the cause of sin, but the cause of not hindering sin. Man and
angels had a physical power of sinning from God, as they were created
with freewill, and supported in their natural strength; but the moral
power to sin was not from God; he counselled them not to it, laid no
obligation upon them to use their natural power for such an end; he
only left them to their freedom, and not hindered them in their acting
what he was resolved to permit.

2d. The holiness of God is not tainted by this, because he was under no
obligation to hinder their commission of sin. Ceasing to act, whereby
to prevent a crime or mischief, brings not a person permitting it under
guilt, unless where he is under an obligation to prevent it; but God,
in regard of his absolute dominion, cannot be charged with any such
obligation. One man, that doth not hinder the murder of another, when
it is in his power, is guilty of the murder in part; but, it is to be
considered, that he is under a tie by nature, as being of the same kind,
and being the other’s brother, by a communion of blood, also under
an obligation of the law of charity, enacted by the common Sovereign
of the world: but what tie was there upon God, since the infinite
transcendancy of his nature, and his sovereign dominion, frees him from
any such obligation (Job ix. 12)? “If he takes away, who shall say,
What dost thou?” God might have prevented the fall of men and angels;
he might have confirmed them all in a state of perpetual innocency; but
where is the obligation? He had made the creature a debtor to himself,
but he owed nothing to the creature. Before God can be charged with
any guilt in this case, it must be proved, not only that he could, but
that he was bound to hinder it. No person can be justly charged with
another’s fault, merely for not preventing it, unless he be bound to
prevent it; else, not only the first sin of angels and man would be
imputed to God, as the Author, but all the sins of men. He could not
be obliged by any law, because he had no superior to impose any law
upon him; and it will be hard to prove that he was obliged, from his
own nature, to prevent the entrance of sin, which he would use as an
occasion to declare his own holiness, so transcendent a perfection of
his nature, more than ever it could have been manifested by a total
exclusion of it, _viz._ in the death of Christ. He is no more bound,
in his own nature, to preserve, by supernatural grace, his creature
from falling, after he had framed him with a sufficient strength to
stand, than he was obliged, in his own nature, to bring his creature
into being when it was nothing. He is not bound to create a rational
creature, much less bound to create him with supernatural gifts; though,
since God would make a rational creature, he could not but make him
with a natural uprightness and rectitude. God did as much for angels
and men as became a wise governor: he had published his law, backed it
with severe penalties, and the creature wanted not a natural strength
to observe and obey it. Had not man power to obey all the precepts
of the law, as well as one? How was God bound to give him more grace,
since what he had already was enough to shield him, and keep up his
resistance {b153} against all the power of hell? It had been enough to
have pointed his will against the temptation, and he had kept off the
force of it. Was there any promise past to Adam of any further grace
which he could plead as a tie upon God? No such voluntary limit upon
God’s supreme dominion appears upon record. Was anything due to man
which he had not? anything promised him which was not performed?
What action of debt, then, can the creature bring against God?
Indeed, when man began to neglect the light of his own reason, and
became inconsiderate of the precept, God might have enlightened his
understanding by a special flash, a supernatural beam, and imprinted
upon him a particular consideration of the necessity of his obedience,
the misery he was approaching to by his sin, the folly of any
apprehension of an equality in knowledge; he might have convinced
him of the falsity of the serpent’s arguments, and uncased to him the
venom that lay under those baits. But how doth it appear that God was
bound to those additional acts when he had already lighted up in him a
“spirit, which was the candle of the Lord” (Prov. xx. 27), whereby he
was able to discern all, if he had attended to it. It was enough that
God did not necessitate man to sin, did not counsel him to it; that
he had given him sufficient warning in the threatening, and sufficient
strength in his faculties, to fortify him against temptation. He gave
him what was due to him as a creature of his own framing; he withdrew
no help from him, that was due to him as a creature, and what was not
due he was not bound to impart. Man did not beg preserving grace of
God, and God was not bound to offer it, when he was not petitioned for
it especially: yet if he had begged it, God having before furnished
him sufficiently, might, by the right of his sovereign dominion, have
denied it without any impeachment of his holiness and righteousness.
Though he would not in such a case have dealt so bountifully with his
creature as he might have done, yet he could not have been impleaded,
as dealing unrighteously with his creature. The single word that God
had already uttered, when he gave him his precept, was enough to oppose
against all the devil’s wiles, which tended to invalidate that word:
the understanding of man could not imagine that the word of God was
vainly spoken; and the very suggestion of the devil, as if the Creator
should envy his creature, would have appeared ridiculous, if he had
attended to the voice of his own reason. God had done enough for him,
and was obliged to do no more, and dealt not unrighteously in leaving
him to act according to the principles of his nature. To conclude, if
God’s permission of sin were enough to charge it upon God, or if God
had been obliged to give Adam supernatural grace, Adam, that had so
capacious a brain, could not be without that plea in his mouth, “Lord
thou mightest have prevented it; the commission of it by me could not
have been without thy permission of it:” or, “Thou hast been wanting
to me, as the author of my nature.” No such plea is brought by Adam
into the court, when God tried and cast him; no such pleas can have
any strength in them. Adam had reason enough to know, that there was
sufficient reason to overrule such a plea.

Since the permission of sin casts no dirt upon the holiness of God,
{b154} as I think hath been cleared, we may under this head consider
two things more.

1. That God’s permission of sin is not so much as his restraint or
limitation of it. Since the entrance of the first sin into the world
by Adam, God is more a hinderer than a permitter of it. If he hath
permitted that which he could have prevented, he prevents a world more,
that he might, if he pleased, permit: the hedges about sin are larger
than the outlets; they are but a few streams that glide about the world,
in comparison of that mighty torrent he dams up both in men and devils.
He that understands what a lake of Sodom is in every man’s nature,
since the universal infection of human nature, as the apostle describes
it (Rom. iii. 9, 10, &c.), must acknowledge, that if God should cast
the reins upon the necks of sinful men, they would run into thousands
of abominable crimes, more than they do: the impression of all natural
laws would be rased out, the world would be a public stew, and a more
bloody slaughter house; human society would sink into a chaos; no
starlight of commendable morality would be seen in it; the world would
be no longer an earth, but an hell, and have lain deeper in wickedness
than it doth. If God did not limit sin, as he doth the sea, and put
bars to the waves of the heart, as well as those of the waters, and
say of them, “Hitherto you shall go, and no further;” man hath such a
furious ocean in him, as would overflow the banks; and where it makes a
breach in one place, it would in a thousand, if God should suffer it to
act according to its impetuous current. As the devil hath lust enough
to destroy all mankind, if God did not bridle him; deal with every man
as he did with Job, ruin their comforts, and deform their bodies with
scabs; infect religion with a thousand more errors; fling disorders
into commonwealths, and make them as a fiery furnace, full of nothing
but flame; if he were not chained by that powerful arm, that might let
him loose to fulfil his malicious fury; what rapines, murders, thefts,
would be committed, if he did not stint him! Abimelech would not only
lust after Sarah, but deflour her; Laban not only pursue Jacob, but
rifle him; Saul not only hate David, but murder him; David not only
threaten Nabal, but root him up, and his family, did not God girdle in
the wrath of man:[918] a greater remainder of wrath is pent in, than
flames out, which yet swells for an outlet. God may be concluded more
holy in preventing men’s sins, than the author of sin in permitting
some; since, were it not for his restraints by the pull‑back of
conscience, and infused motions and outward impediments, the world
would swarm more with this cursed brood.

2. His permission of sin is in order to his own glory, and a greater
good. It is no reflection upon the Divine goodness to leave man to his
own conduct, whereby such a deformity as sin sets foot in the world;
since he makes his wisdom illustrious in bringing good out of evil,
and a good greater than that evil he suffered to spring up.[919] God
did not permit sin, as sin, or permit it barely for itself. As sin
is not lovely in its own nature, so neither is the permission of sin
intrinsically good or amiable for itself, but for those ends aimed at
in {b155} the permission of it. God permitted sin, but approved not
of the object of that permission, sin; because that, considered in its
own nature, is solely evil: nor can we think that God could approve
of the act of permission, considered only in itself as an act; but as
it respected that event which his wisdom would order by it. We cannot
suppose that God should permit sin, but for some great and glorious
end: for it is the manifestation of his own glorious perfections he
intends in all the acts of his will (Prov. xvi. 4), “The Lord hath
made all things for himself”――פעל hath wrought all things; which is not
only his act of creation, but ordination: “for himself,” that is, for
the discovery of the excellency of his nature, and the communication
of himself to his creature. Sin indeed, in its own nature, hath no
tendency to a good end; the womb of it teems with nothing but monsters;
it is a spurn at God’s sovereignty, and a slight of his goodness: it
both deforms and torments the person that acts it; it is black and
abominable, and hath not a mite of goodness in the nature of it. If it
ends in any good, it is only from that Infinite transcendency of skill,
that can bring good out of evil, as well as light out of darkness.
Therefore God did not permit it as sin, but as it was an occasion for
the manifestation of his own glory. Though the goodness of God would
have appeared in the preservation of the world, as well as it did in
the creation of it, yet his mercy could not have appeared without the
entrance of sin, because the object of mercy is a miserable creature;
but man could not be miserable as long as he remained innocent. The
reign of sin opened a door for the reign and triumph of grace (Rom.
v. 21), “As sin hath reigned unto death, so might grace reign through
righteousness to eternal life;” without it, the bowels of mercy had
never sounded, and the ravishing music of Divine grace could never
have been heard by the creature. Mercy, which renders God so amiable,
could never else have beamed out to the world. Angels and men upon this
occasion beheld the stirrings of Divine grace, and the tenderness of
Divine nature, and the glory of the Divine persons in their several
functions about the redemption of man, which had else been a spring
shut up, and a fountain sealed; the song of glory to God, and good will
to men in a way of redemption had never been sung by them. It appears
in his dealing with Adam, that he permitted his fall, not only to show
his justice in punishing, but principally his mercy in rescuing; since
he proclaims to him first the promise of a Redeemer to “bruise the
serpent’s head,” before he settled the punishment he should smart under
in the world (Gen. iii. 15‒17). And what fairer prospect could the
creature have of the holiness of God, and his hatred of sin, than in
the edge of that sword of justice, which punished it in the sinner;
but glittered more in the punishment of a Surety so near allied to
him? Had not man been criminal, he could not have been punishable, nor
any been punishable for him: and the pulse of Divine holiness could
not have beaten so quick, and been so visible, without an exercise of
his vindicative justice. He left man’s mutable nature, to fall under
righteousness, that thereby he might commend the righteousness of his
own nature (Rom. iii. 7). Adam’s sin in its nature tended to the ruin
of the world, and God takes an occasion {b156} from it for the glory of
his grace in the redemption of the world; he brings forth thereby a new
scene of wonders from heaven, and a surprising knowledge on earth; as
the sun breaks out more strongly after a night of darkness and tempest.
As God in creation framed a chaos by his power, to manifest his wisdom
in bringing order out of disorder, light out of darkness, beauty out
of confusion and deformity, when he was able by a word to have made
all creatures stand up in their beauty, without the precedency of a
chaos; so God permitted a moral chaos to manifest a greater wisdom
in the repairing a broken image, and restoring a deplorable creature,
and bringing out those perfections of his nature, which had else been
wrapt up in a perpetual silence in his own bosom. It was therefore very
congruous to the holiness of God to permit that which he could make
subservient for his own glory, and particularly for the manifestation
of this attribute of holiness, which seems to be in opposition to such
a permission.[920]

_Prop. V._ The holiness of God is not blemished by his concurrence
with the creature in the material part of a sinful act. Some to free
God from having any hand in sin, deny his concurrence to the actions of
the creature; because, if he concurs to a sinful action, he concurs to
the sin also: not understanding how there can be a distinction between
the act, and the sinfulness or viciousness of it; and how God can
concur to a natural action, without being stained by that moral evil
which cleaves to it. For the understanding of this, observe,

1. There is a concurrence of God to all the acts of the creature (Acts
xvii. 28); “in him we live, and move, and have our being.” We depend
upon God in our acting as well as in our being: there is as much an
efficacy of God in our motion as in our production; as none have life
without his power in producing it, so none have any operation without
his providence concurring with it. In him, or by him, that is, by his
virtue preserving and governing our motions, as well as by his power
bringing us into being. Hence man is compared to an axe (Isa. x. 15),
an instrument that hath no action, without the co‑operation of a
superior agent handling it: and the actions of the second causes are
ascribed to God; the grass, that is, the product of the sun, rain, and
earth, he is said to make to grow upon the mountains (Ps. cxlvii. 8);
and the skin and flesh, which is by natural generation, he is said
to clothe us with (Job x. 5), in regard of his co‑working with second
causes, according to their natures. As nothing can exist, so nothing
can operate without him; let his concurrence be removed, and the being
and action of the creature cease; remove the sun from the horizon, or
a candle from a room, and the light which flowed from either of them
ceaseth. Without God’s preserving and concurring power, the course
of nature would sink, and the creation be in vain. All created things
depend upon God as agents, as well as beings, and are subordinate to
him in a way of action, as well as in a way of existing.[921] If God
suspend his influence from their action, they would cease to act, as
the fire did from {b157} burning the three children, as well as if God
suspend his influence from their being, they would cease to be. God
supports the nature whereby actions are wrought, the mind where actions
are consulted, and the will where actions are determined, and the
motive‑power whereby actions are produced. The mind could not contrive,
nor the hand act, a wickedness, if God did not support the power of the
one in designing, and the strength of the other in executing a wicked
intention. Every faculty in its being, and every faculty in its motion,
hath a dependence upon the influence of God. To make the creature
independent upon God in anything which speaks perfection, as action
considered as action is, is to make the creature a sovereign being.
Indeed, we cannot imagine the concurrence of God to the good actions
of men since the fall, without granting a concurrence of God to evil
actions; because there is no action so purely good but hath a mixture
of evil in it, though it takes its denomination of good from the better
part (Eccles. vii. 20), “There is no man that doth good, and sins not.”

2. Though the natural virtue of doing a sinful action be from God, and
supported by him, yet this doth not blemish the holiness of God; while
God concurs with them in the act, he instils no evil into men.

(1.) No act, in regard of the substance of it, is evil. Most of the
actions of our faculties, as they are actions, might have been in the
state of innocency. Eating is an act Adam would have used if he had
stood firm, but not eating to excess. Worship was an act that should
have been performed to God in innocence, but not hypocritically. Every
action is good by a physical goodness, as it is an act of the mind or
hand, which have a natural goodness by creation; but every action is
not morally good: the physical goodness of the action depends on God,
the moral evil on the creature. There is no action, as a corporeal
action, is prohibited by the law of God; but as it springs from an evil
disposition, and is tainted by a venomous temper of mind.[922] There
is no action so bad, as attended with such objects and circumstances;
but if the objects and circumstances were changed, might be a brave
and commendable action: so that the moral goodness or badness of an
act is not to be esteemed from the substance of the act, which hath
always a physical goodness; but from the objects, circumstances, and
constitution of the mind in the doing of it. Worship is an act good
in itself; but the worship of an image is bad in regard of the object.
Were that act of worship directed to God that is paid to a statue, and
offered up to him with a sincere frame of mind, it would be morally
good. The act, in regard of its substance, is the same in both,
and considered as separated from the object to which the worship is
directed, hath the same real goodness in regard of the substance; but
when you consider this action in relation to the different objects, the
one hath a moral goodness, and the other a moral evil. So in speaking:
speaking being a motion of the tongue in the forming of words, is an
excellency belonging to a reasonable creature; an endowment bestowed,
continued, and supported by God. Now, if the same tongue {b158} forms
words whereby it curseth God this minute, and forms words whereby it
blesses and praises God the next minute, the faculty of speaking is the
same, the motion of the tongue is the same in pronouncing the name of
God either in a way of cursing or blessing (James iii. 9, 10); it is
the “same mouth that blesseth and curseth;” and the motion of it is
naturally good in regard of the substance of the act in both; it is the
use of an excellent power God hath given, and which God preserves, in
the use of it. But the estimation of the moral goodness or evil is not
from the act itself, but from the disposition of the mind. Once more:
killing, as an act is good; nor is it unlawful as an act; for if so,
God would never have commanded his people Israel to wage any war, and
justice could not be done upon malefactors by the magistrate. A man
were bound to sacrifice his life to the fury of an invader, rather than
secure it by dispatching that of an enemy; but killing an innocent,
or killing without authority, or out of revenge, is bad. It is not the
material part of the act, but the object, manner, and circumstance,
that makes it good or evil. It is no blemish to God’s holiness to
concur to the substance of an action, without having any hand in the
immorality of it; because, whatsoever is real in the substance of the
action might be done without evil. It is not evil as it is an act,
as it is a motion of the tongue or hand, for then every motion of the
tongue or hand would be evil.

(2.) Hence it follows, that an act, as an act, is one thing, and
the viciousness another. The action is the efficacy of the faculty,
extending itself to some outward object; but the sinfulness of an act
consists in a privation of that comeliness and righteousness which
ought to be in an action; in a want of conformity of the act with the
law of God, either written in nature, or revealed in the Word.[923] Now,
the sinfulness of an action is not the act itself, but is considered in
it as it is related to the law, and is a deviation from it; and so it
is something cleaving to the action, and therefore to be distinguished
from the act itself, which is the subject of the sinfulness. When
we say such an action is sinful, the action is the subject, and the
sinfulness of the action is that which adheres to it. The action is not
the sinfulness, nor the sinfulness the action; they are distinguished
as the member, and a disease in the member, the arm and the palsy in
it: the arm is not the palsy, nor is the palsy the arm; but the palsy
is a disease that cleaves to the arm: so sinfulness is a deformity that
cleaves to an action. The evil of an action is not the effect of an
action, nor attends it as it is an action, but as it is an action so
circumstantiated, and conversant about this or that object; for the
same action done by two several persons, may be good in one, and bad
in the other; as when two judges are in joint commission for the trial
of a malefactor, both upon the appearance of his guilt condemn him.
This action in both, considered as an action, is good; for it is an
adjudging a man to death, whose crime deserves such a punishment. But
this same act, which is but one joint act of both, may be morally good
in one judge, and morally evil in the other: morally good in him that
condemns him out of an unbiassed consideration {b159} of the demerit
of his fact, obedience to the law, and conscious of the duty of his
place; and morally evil in the other, who hath no respect to those
considerations, but joins in the act of condemnation, principally moved
by some private animosity against the prisoner, and desire of revenge
for some injury he hath really received, or imagines that he hath
received from him. The act in itself is the same materially in both;
but in one it is an act of justice, and in the other an act of murder,
as it respects the principles and motives of it in the two judges; take
away the respect of private revenge, and the action in the ill judge
had been as laudable as the action of the other. The substance of an
act, and the sinfulness of an act, are separable and distinguishable;
and God may concur with the substance of an act, without concurring
with the sinfulness of the act: as the good judge, that condemned
the prisoner out of conscience, concurred with the evil judge, who
condemned the prisoner out of private revenge; not in the principle and
motive of condemnation, but in the material part of condemnation. So
God assists in that action of a man wherein sin is placed, but not in
that which is the formal reason of sin, which is a privation of some
perfection the action ought morally to have.

(3.) It will appear further in this, that hence it follows that the
action, and the viciousness of the action, may have two distinct causes.
That may be a cause of the one that is not the cause of the other,
and hath no hand in the producing of it. God concurs to the act of the
mind as it counsels, and to the external action upon that counsel, as
he preserves the faculty, and gives strength to the mind to consult,
and the other parts to execute; yet he is not in the least tainted
with the viciousness of the action. Though the action be from God as
a concurrent cause, yet the ill quality of the action is solely from
the creature with whom God concurs. The sun and the earth concur to the
production of all the plants that are formed in the womb of the one,
and midwifed by the other. The sun distributes heat, and the earth
communicates sap; it is the same heat dispersed by the one, and the
same juice bestowed by the other: it hath not a sweet juice for one,
and a sour juice for another. This general influx of the sun and earth
is not the immediate cause that one plant is poisonous, and another
wholesome; but the sap of the earth is turned by the nature and quality
of each plant: if there were not such an influx of the sun and earth,
no plant could exert that poison which is in its nature; but yet the
sun and earth are not the cause of that poison which is in the nature
of the plant. If God did not concur to the motions of men, there could
be no sinful action, because there could be no action at all; yet this
concurrence is not the cause of that venom that is in the action, which
ariseth from the corrupt nature of the creature, no more than the sun
and earth are the cause of the poison of the plant, which is purely the
effect of its own nature upon that general influx of the sun and earth.
The influence of God pierceth through all subjects; but the action of
man done by that influence is vitiated according to the nature of its
own corruption. As the sun equally shines through all the quarrels in
the window; if the glass be bright and clear, there is a {b160} pure
splendor; if it be red or green, the splendor is from the sun; but the
discoloring of that light upon the wall, is from the quality of the
glass. But to be yet plainer: the soul is the image of God, and by the
acts of the soul, we may come to the knowledge of the acts of God; the
soul gives motion to the body and every member of it, and no member
could move without a concurrent virtue of the soul; if a member be
paralytic or gouty, whatsoever motion that gouty member hath, is
derived to it from the soul; but the goutiness of the member was not
the act of the soul, but the fruit of ill humors in the body; the
lameness of the member, and the motion of the member, have two distinct
causes; the motion is from one cause, and ill motion from another.[924]
As the member could not move irregularly without some ill humor or
cause of that distemper, so it could not move at all without the
activity of the soul: so, though God concur to the act of understanding,
willing, and execution, why can he not be as free from the irregularity
in all those, as the soul is free from the irregularity of the motion
of the body, while it is the cause of the motion itself? There are
two illustrations generally used in this case, that are not unfit; the
motion of the pen in writing is from the hand that holds it, but the
blurs by the pen are from some fault in the pen itself: and the music
of the instrument is from the hand that touches it, but the jarring
from the faultiness of the strings; both are the causes of the motion
of the pen and strings, but not the blurs or jarrings.

(4.) It is very congruous to the wisdom of God, to move his creatures
according to their particular natures; but this motion makes him not
the cause of sin. Had our innocent nature continued, God had moved us
according to that innocent nature; but when the state was changed for
a corrupt one, God must either forbear all concourse, and so annihilate
the world, or move us according to that nature he finds in us. If he
had overthrown the world upon the entrance of sin, and created another
upon the same terms, sin might have as soon defaced his second work,
as it did the first; and then it would follow, that God would have been
alway building and demolishing. It was not fit for God to cease from
acting as a wise governor of his creature, because man did cease from
his loyalty as a subject. Is it not more agreeable to God’s wisdom as
a governor, to concur with his creature according to his nature, than
to deny his concurrence upon every evil determination of the creature?
God concurred with Adam’s mutable nature in his first act of sin; he
concurred to the act, and left him to his mutability. If Adam had put
out his hand to eat of any other unforbidden fruit, God would have
supported his natural faculty then, and concurred with him in his
motion. When Adam would put out his hand to take the forbidden fruit,
God concurred to that natural action, but left him to the choice of
the object, and to the use of his mutable nature: and when man became
apostate, God concurs with him according to that condition wherein he
found him, and cannot move him otherwise, unless he should alter that
nature man had contracted. God moving the creature as he found him, is
no cause of the ill {b161} motion of the creature: as when a wheel is
broken the space of a foot, it cannot but move ill in that part till
it be mended. He that moves it, uses the same motion (as it is his act)
which he would have done had the wheel been sound; the motion is good
in the mover, but bad in the subject: it is not the fault of him that
moves it, but the fault of that wheel that is moved, whose breaches
came by some other cause. A man doth not use to lay aside his watch
for some irregularity, as long as it is capable of motion, but winds it
up: why should God cease from concurring with his creature in its vital
operations and other actions of his will, because there was a flaw
contracted in that nature, that came right and true out of his hand?
And as he that winds up his disordered watch, is in the same manner the
cause of its motion then, as he was when it was regular, yet, by that
act of his, he is not the cause of the false motion of it, but that is
from the deficiency of some part of the watch itself: so, though God
concurs to that action of the creature, whereby the wickedness of the
heart is drawn out, yet is not God therefore as unholy as the heart.

(5.) God hath one end in his concurrence, and man another in his
action: so that there is a righteous, and often a gracious end in
God, when there is a base and unworthy end in man. God concurs to
the substance of the act; man produceth the circumstance of the act,
whereby it is evil. God orders both the action wherein he concurs, and
the sinfulness over which he presides, as a governor, to his own ends.
In Joseph’s case, man was sinful, and God merciful; his brethren acted
“envy,” and God designed “mercy” (Gen. xlv. 4, 5). They would be rid
of him as an eye‑sore, and God concurred with their action to make
him their preserver (Gen. l. 20), “Ye thought evil against me, but God
meant it unto good.” God concurred to Judas his action of betraying our
Saviour; he supported his nature while he contracted with the priests,
and supported his members while he was their guide to apprehend him;
God’s end was the manifestation of his choicest love to man, and Judas’
end was the gratification of his own covetousness. The Assyrian did a
divine work against Jerusalem, but not with a Divine end (Isa. x. 5‒7).
He had a mind to enlarge his empire, enrich his coffers with the
spoil, and gain the title of a conqueror; he is desirous to invade his
neighbors, and God employs him to punish his rebels; but he means not
so, nor doth his heart think so; he intended not as God intended. The
axe doth not think what the carpenter intends to do with it. But God
used the rapine of ambitious nature as an instrument of his justice;
as the exposing malefactors to wild beasts was an ancient punishment,
whereby the magistrates intended the execution of justice, and to that
purpose used the natural fierceness of the beasts to an end different
from what those ravaging creatures aimed at. God concurred with Satan
in spoiling Job of his goods, and scarifying his body; God gave Satan
licence to do it, and Job acknowledges it to be God’s act (Job i.
12‒21); but their ends were different; God concurred with Satan for the
clearing the integrity of his servant, when Satan aimed at nothing but
the provoking him to curse his Creator. The physician applies leeches
{b162} to suck the superfluous blood, but the leeches suck to glut
themselves, without any regard to the intention of the physician, and
the welfare of the patient. In the same act where men intend to hurt,
God intends to correct; so that his concurrence is in a holy manner,
while men commit unrighteous actions. A judge commands the executioner
to execute the sentence of death, which he hath justly pronounced
against a malefactor, and admonisheth him to do it out of love to
justice; the executioner hath the authority of the judge for his
commission, and the protection of the judge for his security; the judge
stands by to countenance and secure him in the doing of it; but if the
executioner hath not the same intention as the judge, _viz._ a love to
justice in the performance of his office, but a private hatred to the
offender, the judge, though he commanded the fact of the executioner,
yet did not command this error of his in it; and though he protects him
in the fact, yet he owns not this corrupt disposition in him in the
doing what was enjoined him, as any act of his own.

To conclude this. Since the creature cannot act without God,
cannot lift up a hand, or move his tongue, without God’s preserving
and upholding the faculty, and preserving the power of action, and
preserving every member of the body in its actual motion, and in every
circumstance of its motion, we must necessarily suppose God to have
such a way of concurrence as doth not intrench upon his holiness. We
must not equal the creature to God, by denying his dependence on him;
nor must we imagine such a concurrence to the sinfulness of an act,
as stains the Divine purity, which is, I think, sufficiently salved by
distinguishing the matter of the act from the evil adhering to it; for
since all evil is founded in some good, the evil is distinguishable
from the good, and the deformity of the action from the action itself;
which, as it is a created act, hath a dependence on the will and
influence of God; and as it is a sinful act, is the product of the
will of the creature.

_Prop. VI._ The holiness of God is not blemished by proposing objects
to a man, which he makes use of to sin. There is no object proposed
to man, but is directed by the providence of God, which influenceth
all the motions in the world; and there is no object proposed to man,
but his active nature may, according to the goodness or badness of
his disposition, make a good or an ill use of. That two men, one of
a charitable, the other of a hard‑hearted disposition, meet with an
indigent and necessitous object, is from the providence of God; yet
this indigent person is relieved by the one, and neglected by the other.
There could be no action in the world, but about some object; there
could be no object offered to us but by Divine Providence; the active
nature of man would be in vain, if there were not objects about which
it might be exercised. Nothing could present itself to man as an object,
either to excite his grace, or awaken his corruption, but by the
conduct of the Governor of the world. That David should walk upon the
battlements of his palace, and Bathsheba be in the bath at the same
time, was from the Divine Providence which orders all the affairs of
the world (2 Sam. xi. 7); and so some understand (Jer. vi. 21): “Thus
saith the Lord, I will lay {b163} stumbling‑blocks before this people,
and the fathers and sons together shall fall upon them.” Since they
have offered sacrifices without those due qualifications in their
hearts, which were necessary to render them acceptable to me, I will
lay in their way such objects, which their corruption will use ill to
their farther sin and ruin; so (Ps. cv. 25), “He turned their heart
to hate his people;” that is, by the multiplying his people, he gave
occasion to the Egyptians of hating them, instead of caressing them,
as they had formerly done. But God’s holiness is not blemished by this;
for,

1. This proposing or presenting of objects invades not the liberty of
any man. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, set in the midst
of the garden of Eden, had no violent influence on man to force him
to eat of it; his liberty to eat of it, or not, was reserved entire to
himself; no such charge can be brought against any object whatsoever.
If a man meet accidentally at a table with meat that is grateful to
his palate, but hurtful to the present temper of his body, doth the
presenting this sort of food to him strip him of his liberty to decline
it, as well as to feed of it? Can the food have any internal influence
upon his will, and lay the freedom of it asleep whether he will or no?
Is there any charm in that, more than in other sorts of diet? No; but
it is the habit of love which he hath to that particular dish, the
curiosity of his fancy, and the strength of his own appetite, whereby
he is brought into a kind of slavery to that particular meat, and not
anything in the food itself. When the word is proposed to two persons,
it is embraced by the one, rejected by the other; is it from the word
itself, which is the object, that these two persons perform different
acts? The object is the same to both, but the manner of acting about
the object is not the same; is there any invasion of their liberty by
it? Is the one forced by the word to receive it, and the other forced
by the word to reject it? Two such contrary effects cannot proceed
from one and the same cause; outward things have only an objective
influence, not an inward; if the mere proposal of things did suspend or
strike down the liberty of man, no angels in heaven, no man upon earth,
no, not our Saviour himself, could do anything freely, but by force;
objects that are ill used are of God’s creation, and though they
have allurements in them, yet they have no compulsive power over the
will.[925] The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was
pleasing to the sight; it had a quality to allure; there had not else
needed a prohibition to bar the eating of it; but it could not have so
much power to allure, as the Divine threatening to deter.

2. The objects are good in themselves, but the ill use of them is
from man’s corruption. Bathsheba was, by God’s providence, presented to
David’s sight, but it was David’s disposition moved him to so evil an
act; what if God knew that he would use that object ill? yet he knew
he had given him a power to refrain from any ill use of it; the objects
are innocent, but our corruption poisons them. The same object hath
been used by one to holy purposes and holy improvements, that hath been
used by another to sinful ends; when a charitable object is presented
to a good man, and a cruel man, one {b164} relieves him, the other
reviles him; the object was rather an occasion to draw out the charity
of one, as well as the other; but the refusing to reach out a helping
hand, was not from the person in calamity, but the disposition of the
refuser to whom he was presented; it is not from the nature of the
object that men do good or evil, but from the disposition of the person;
what is good in itself, is made bad by our corruption. As the same
meat which nourishes and strengthens a sound constitution, cherisheth
the disease of another that eats at the same table, not from any
unwholesome quality in the food, but the vicious quality of the humors
lodging in the stomach, which turn the diet into fuel for themselves,
which in its own nature was apt to engender a wholesome juice. Some
are perfected by the same things whereby others are ruined. Riches
are used by some, not only for their own, but the advantage of others
in the world; by others only for themselves, and scarcely so much
as their necessities require. Is this the fault of the wealth, or
the dispositions of the persons, who are covetous instead of being
generous? It is a calumny, therefore, upon God to charge him with the
sin of man upon this account. The rain that drops from the clouds upon
the plants is sweet in itself, but when it moistens the root of any
venomous plant, it is turned into the juice of the plant, and becomes
venomous with it. The miracles that our Saviour wrought, were applauded
by some, and envied by the Pharisees; the sin arose not from the nature
of the miracles, but the malice of their spirits. The miracles were
fitter in their own nature to have induced them to an adoration of our
Saviour, than to excite so vile a passion against one that had so many
marks from heaven to dignify him, and proclaim him worthy of their
respect. The person of Christ was an object proposed to the Jews; some
worship him, others condemn and crucify him, and according to their
several vices and base ends they use this object. Judas to content
his covetousness, the Pharisees to glut their revenge, Pilate for his
ambition, to preserve himself in his government, and avoid the articles
the people might charge him with of countenancing an enemy to Cæsar.
God at that time put into their minds a rational and true proposition
which they apply to ill purposes.[926] Caiaphas said, that “it was
expedient for one man to die for the people,” which “he spake not of
himself” (John xi. 50, 51). God put it into his mind; but he might have
applied it better than he did, and considered, though the maxim was
commendable, whether it might justly be applied to Christ, or whether
there was such a necessity that he must die, or the nation be destroyed
by the Romans. The maxim was sound and holy, decreed by God; but what
an ill use did the high‑priest make of it to put Christ to death as a
seditious person, to save the nation from the Roman fury!

3. Since the natural corruption of men will use such objects ill,
may not God, without tainting himself, present such objects to them in
subserviency to his gracious decrees? Whatsoever God should present to
men in that state, they would make an ill use of; hath not God, then,
the sovereign prerogative to present what he pleases, and suppress
others? To offer that to them which may serve his {b165} holy purpose,
and hide other things from them which are not so conducing to his
gracious ends, which would be as much the occasions of exciting their
sin, as the others which he doth bring forth to their view? The Jews,
at the time of Christ, were of a turbulent and seditious humor; they
expected a Messiah, a temporal king, and would readily have embraced
any occasion to have been up in arms to have delivered themselves from
the Roman yoke; to this purpose the people attempted once to make him
king: and probably the expectation they had that he had such a design
to head them, might be one reason of their “hosannas;” because without
some such conceit it was not probable they should so soon change
their note, and vote him to the cross in so short a time, after they
had applauded him as if he had been upon a throne; but their being
defeated of strong expectations, usually ended in a more ardent fury.
This turbulent and seditious humor God directs in another channel,
suppresseth all occurrences that might excite them to a rebellion
against the Romans, which, if he had given way to, the crucifying
Christ, which was God’s design to bring about at that time, had not
probably been effected, and the salvation of mankind been hindered or
stood at a stay for a time. God, therefore, orders such objects and
occasions, that might direct this seditious humor to another channel,
which would else have run out in other actions, which had not been
conducing to the great design he had then in the world. Is it not the
right of God, and without any blemish to his holiness, to use those
corruptions which he finds sown in the nature of his creature by the
hand of Satan, and to propose such objects as may excite the exercise
of them for his own service? Sure God hath as much right to serve
himself of the creature of his own framing, and what natures soever
they are possessed with, and to present objects to that purpose, as a
falconer hath to offer this or that bird to his hawk to exercise his
courage, and excite his ravenousness, without being termed the author
of that ravenousness in the creature. God planted not those corruptions
in the Jews, but finds them in those persons over whom he hath an
absolute sovereignty in the right of a Creator, and that of a Judge
for their sins: and by the right of that sovereignty may offer such
objects and occasions, which, though innocent in themselves, he knows
they will make use of to ill purposes, but which by the same decree
that he resolves to present such occasions to them, he also resolves
to make use of them for his own glory. It is not conceivable by us
what way that death of Christ, which was necessary for the satisfaction
of Divine justice, could be brought about without ordering the evil
of some men’s hearts by special occasions to effect his purpose; we
cannot suppose that Christ can be guilty of any crime that deserved
death by the Jewish law; had he been so a criminal, he could not
have been a Redeemer: a perfect innocence was necessary to the design
of his coming.[927] Had God himself put him to that death, without
using instruments of wickedness in it, by some remarkable hand from
heaven, the innocence of his nature had been forever eclipsed, and
the voluntariness of his sacrifice had been obscured: the strangeness
of such a judgment would have made his {b166} innocence incredible;
he could not reasonably have been proposed as an object of faith.
What, to believe in one that was struck dead by a hand from heaven? The
propagation of the doctrine of redemption had wanted a foundation; and
though God might have raised him again, the certainty of his death had
been as questionable as his innocence in dying, had he not been raised.
But God orders everything so as to answer his own most wise and holy
ends, and maintain his truth, and the fulfilling the predictions of
the minutest concerns about them, and all this by presenting occasions
innocent in themselves, which the corruptions of the Jews took hold of,
and whereby God, unknown to them, brought about his own decrees: and
may not this be conceived without any taint upon God’s holiness? for
when there are seeds of all sin in man’s nature, why may not God hinder
the sprouting up of this or that kind of seed, and leave liberty to the
growth of the other, and shut up other ways of sinning, and restrain
men from them, and let them loose to that temptation which he intends
to serve himself of, hiding from them those objects which were not
so serviceable to his purpose, wherein they would have sinned, and
offer others, which he knew their corruption would use ill, and were
serviceable to his ends; since the depravation of their natures would
necessarily hurry them to evil without restraining grace, as a scale
will necessarily rise up when the weight in it, which kept it down, is
taken away?

_Prop. VII._ The holiness of God is not blemished by withdrawing his
grace from a sinful creature, whereby he falls into more sin. That God
withdraws his grace from men, and gives them up sometimes to the fury
of their lusts, is as clear in Scripture, as anything (Deut. xxix. 4):
“Yet the Lord hath not given you a heart to perceive, and eyes to see,
and ears to hear,” &c. Judas was delivered to Satan after the sop,
and put into his power, for despising former admonitions. He often
leaves the reins to the devil, that he may use what efficacy he can
in those that have offended the Majesty of God; he withholds further
influences of grace, or withdraws what before he had granted them. Thus
he withheld that grace from the sons of Eli, that might have made their
father’s pious admonitions effectual to them (1 Sam. ii. 25): “They
hearkened not to the voice of their father, because the Lord would
slay them.” He gave grace to Eli to reprove them, and withheld that
grace from them, which might have enabled them against their natural
corruption and obstinacy to receive that reproof. But the holiness of
God is not blemished by this.

1. Because the act of God in this is only negative.[928] Thus God is
said to “harden” men: not by positive hardening, or working anything
in the creature, but by not working, not softening, leaving a man
to the hardness of his own heart, whereby it is unavoidable by the
depravation of man’s nature, and the fury of his passions, but that he
should be further hardened, and “increase unto more ungodliness,” as
the expression is (2 Tim. ii. 19). As a man is said to give another his
life, when he doth not take it away when it lay at his mercy; so God
is said to “harden” a man, when he doth not {b167} mollify him when it
was in his power, and inwardly quicken him with that grace whereby he
might infallibly avoid any further provoking of him. God is said to
harden men when he removes not from them the incentives to sin, curbs
not those principles which are ready to comply with those incentives,
withdraws the common assistances of his grace, concurs not with
counsels and admonitions to make them effectual; flasheth not in the
convincing light which he darted upon them before. If hardness follows
upon God’s withholding his softening grace, it is not by any positive
act of God, but from the natural hardness of man. If you put fire
near to wax or rosin, both will melt; but when that fire is removed,
they return to their natural quality of hardness and brittleness; the
positive act of the fire is to melt and soften, and the softness of
the rosin is to be ascribed to that; but the hardness is from the rosin
itself, wherein the fire hath no influence, but only a negative act
by a removal of it: so, when God hardens a man, he only leaves him to
that stony heart which he derived from Adam, and brought with him into
the world. All men’s understandings being blinded, and their wills
perverted in Adam, God’s withdrawing his grace is but a leaving them
to their natural pravity, which is the cause of their further sinning,
and not God’s removal of that special light he before afforded them, or
restraint he held over them. As when God withdraws his preserving power
from the creature, he is not the efficient, but deficient cause of the
creature’s destruction; so, in this case, God only ceaseth to bind and
dam up that sin which else would break out.

2. The whole positive cause of his hardness is from man’s corruption.
God infuseth not any sin into his creatures, but forbears to infuse
his grace, and restrain their lusts, which, upon the removal of his
grace, work impetuously: God only gives them up to that which he knows
will work strongly in their hearts. And, therefore, the apostle wipes
off from God any positive act in that uncleanness the heathens were
given up to (Rom. i. 24, “Wherefore God gave them up to uncleanness,
through the lusts of their own hearts.” And, ver. 26, God gave them up
to “vile affections;” but they were their own affections, none of God’s
inspiring,) by adding, “through the lusts of their own hearts.” God’s
giving them up was the logical cause, or a cause by way of argument;
their own lusts were the true and natural cause; their own they were,
before they were given up to them, and belonging to none, as the author,
but themselves, after they were given up to them. The lust in the heart,
and the temptation without, easily close and mix interests with one
another: as the fire in a coal pit will with the fuel, if the streams
derived into it for the quenching it be dammed up: the natural passions
will run to a temptation, as the waters of a river tumble towards the
sea. When a man that hath bridled in a high‑mettled horse from running
out, gives him the reins; or a huntsman takes off the string that
held the dog, and lets him run after the hare,――are they the immediate
cause of the motion of the one, or the other?――no, but the mettle
and strength of the horse, and the natural inclination of the hound,
both which are left to their own motions to pursue their own natural
instincts. Man doth as naturally tend to sin as a stone to {b168}
the centre, or as a weighty thing inclines to a motion to the earth:
it is from the propension of man’s nature that he “drinks up iniquity
like water:” and God doth no more when he leaves a man to sin, by
taking away the hedge which stopped him, but leave him to his natural
inclination. As a man that breaks up a dam he hath placed, leaves
the stream to run in their natural channel; or one that takes away a
prop from a stone to let it fall, leaves it only to that nature which
inclines it to a descent; both have their motion from their own nature,
and man is sin from his own corruption. The withdrawing the sunbeams
is not the cause of darkness, but the shadiness of the earth; nor is
the departure of the sun the cause of winter, but the coldness of the
air and earth, which was tempered and beaten back into the bowels of
the earth by the vigor of the sun, upon whose departure they return to
their natural state: the sun only leaves the earth and air as it found
them at the beginning of the spring or the beginning of the day.[929]
If God do not give a man grace to melt him, yet he cannot be said to
communicate to him that nature which hardens him, which man hath from
himself. As God was not the cause of the first sin of Adam, which was
the root of all other, so he is not the cause of the following sins,
which, as branches, spring from that root; man’s free‑will was the
cause of the first sin, and the corruption of his nature by it the
cause of all succeeding sins. God doth not immediately harden any man,
but doth propose those things, from whence the natural vice of man
takes an occasion to strengthen and nourish itself. Hence, God is said
to “harden Pharaoh’s heart” (Exod. vii. 13), by concurring with the
magicians in turning their rods into serpents, which stiffened his
heart against Moses, conceiving him by reason of that, to have no more
power than other men, and was an occasion of his farther hardening:
and Pharaoh is said to “harden himself” (Exod. viii. 32); that is, in
regard of his own natural passion.

3. God is holy and righteous, because he doth not withdraw from man,
till man deserts him. To say, that God withdrew that grace from Adam,
which he had afforded him in creation, or anything that was due to him,
till he had abused the gifts of God, and turned them to an end contrary
to that of creation, would be a reflection upon the Divine holiness.
God was first deserted by man before man was deserted by God; and man
doth first contemn and abuse the common grace of God, and those relics
of natural light, that “enlighten every man that comes into the world”
(John i. 9); before God leaves him to the hurry of his own passions.
Ephraim was first joined to idols, before God pronounced the fatal
sentence, “Let him alone” (Hos. iv. 17): and the heathens first changed
the glory of the incorruptible God, before God withdrew his common
grace from the corrupted creature (Rom. i. 23, 24); and they first
“served the creature more than the Creator,” before the Creator gave
them up to the slavish chains of their vile affections (ver. 25, 26).
Israel first cast off God before God cast off them; but then “he
gave them up to their own hearts’ lusts, and they walked in their own
counsels” {b169} (Ps. lxxxi. 11, 12). Since sin entered into the world
by the fall of Adam, and the blood of all his posterity was tainted,
man cannot do anything that is formally good; not for want of faculties,
but for the want of a righteous habit in those faculties, especially in
the will; yet God discovers himself to man in the works of his hands;
he hath left in him footsteps of natural reason; he doth attend him
with common motions of his Spirit; corrects him for his faults with
gentle chastisements. He is near unto all in some kind of instructions:
he puts many times providential bars in their way of sinning; but when
they will rush into it as the horse into the battle, when they will
rebel against the light, God doth often leave them to their own course,
sentence him that is “filthy to be filthy still” (Rev. xxii. 11), which
is a righteous act of God, as he is rector and governor of the world.
Man’s not receiving, or not improving what God gives, is the cause
of God’s not giving further, or taking away his own, which before
he had bestowed; this is so far from being repugnant to the holiness
and righteousness of God, that it is rather a commendable act of his
holiness and righteousness, as the rector of the world, not to let
those gifts continue in the hand of a man who abuses them contrary to
his glory. Who will blame a father, that, after all the good counsels
he hath given to his son to reclaim him, all the corrections he
hath inflicted on him for his irregular practice, leaves him to his
own courses, and withdraws those assistances which he scoffed at,
and turned the deaf ear unto? Or, who will blame the physician for
deserting the patient, who rejects his counsel, will not follow his
prescriptions, but dasheth his physic against the wall? No man will
blame him, no man will say that he is the cause of the patient’s death,
but the true cause is the fury of the distemper, and the obstinacy
of the diseased person, to which the physician left him. And who can
justly blame God in this case, who yet never denied supplies of grace
to any that sincerely sought it at his hands; and what man is there
that lies under a hardness, but first was guilty of very provoking
sins? What unholiness is it to deprive men of those assistances,
because of their sin, and afterwards to direct those counsels and
practices of theirs, which he hath justly given them up unto, to
serve the ends of his own glory in his own methods?

4. Which will appear further by considering, that God is not obliged to
continue his grace to them. It was at his liberty whether he could give
any renewing grace to Adam after his fall, or to any of his posterity:
he was at his own liberty to withhold it or communicate it: but, if he
were under any obligation then, surely he must be under less now, since
the multiplication of sin by his creatures: but, if the obligation
were none just after the fall, there is no pretence now to fasten any
such obligation on God. That God had no obligation at first, hath been
spoken to before; he is less obliged to continue his grace after a
repeated refusal, and a peremptory abuse, than he was bound to proffer
it after the first apostasy. God cannot be charged with unholiness in
withdrawing his grace after we have received it, unless we can make it
appear that his grace was a thing due to us, as we are his creatures,
and as he is governor of the world. What prince looks upon himself as
obliged to reside in any particular {b170} place of his kingdom? But
suppose he be bound to inhabit in one particular city, yet after the
city rebels against him, is he bound to continue his court there, spend
his revenue among rebels, endanger his own honor and security, enlarge
their charter, or maintain their ancient privileges? Is it not most
just and righteous for him to withdraw himself, and leave them to their
own tumultuousness and sedition, whereby they should eat the fruit of
their own doings? If there be an obligation on God as a governor, it
would rather lie on the side of justice to leave man to the power of
the devil whom he courted, and the prevalency of those lusts he hath
so often caressed; and wrap up in a cloud all his common illuminations,
and leave him destitute of all common workings of his Spirit.

_Prop. VIII._ God’s holiness is not blemished by his commanding those
things sometimes which seem to be against nature, or thwart some other
of his precepts; as when God commanded Abraham with his own hand to
sacrifice his son (Gen. xxii. 2), there was nothing of unrighteousness
in it. God hath a sovereign dominion over the lives and beings of his
creatures, whereby as he creates one day, he might annihilate the next;
and by the same right that he might demand the life of Isaac, as being
his creature, he might demand the obedience of Abraham, in a ready
return of that to him, which he had so long enjoyed by his grant. It is
true, killing is unjust when it is done without cause, and by a private
authority; but the authority of God surmounts all private and public
authority whatsoever. Our lives are due to him when he calls for them;
and they are more than once forfeit to him by reason of transgression.
But, howsoever the case is, God commanded him to do it for the trial
of his grace, but suffered him not to do it in favor to his ready
obedience; but had Isaac been actually slain and offered, how had it
been unrighteous in God, who enacts laws for the regulation of his
creature, but never intended them to the prejudice of the rights of his
sovereignty? Another case is that of the Israelites borrowing jewels
of the Egyptians, by the order of God (Exod. xi. 2, 3; xii. 36). Is not
God Lord of men’s goods, as well as their lives? What have any, they
have not received? and that not as proprietors independent on God, but
his stewards; and may not he demand a portion of his steward to bestow
upon his favorite? He that had power to dispose of the Egyptians’ goods,
had power to order the Israelites to ask them. Besides, God acted the
part of a just judge in ordering them their wages for their service in
this method, and making their task‑masters give them some recompense
for their unjust oppression so many years; it was a command from God,
therefore, rather for the preservation of justice (the basis of all
those laws which link human society), than any infringement of it.
It was a material recompense in part, though not a formal one in the
intention of the Egyptians; it was but in part a recompense; it must
needs come short of the damage the poor captives had sustained by the
tyranny of their masters, who had enslaved them contrary to the rules
of hospitality; and could not make amends for the lives of the poor
infants of Israel, whom they had drowned in the river. He that might
for the unjust oppression of his people have taken away all their lives,
destroyed {b171} the whole nation, and put the Israelites into the
possession of their lands, could, without any unrighteousness, dispose
of part of their goods; and it was rather an act of clemency to leave
them some part, who had doubly forfeited all. Again, the Egyptians were
as ready to lend by God’s influence, as the Israelites were to ask by
God’s order: and though it was a loan, God, as Sovereign of the world,
and Lord of the earth, and the fulness thereof, alienated the property
by assuming them to the use of the tabernacle, to which service, most,
if not all of them, were afterwards dedicated. God, who is lawgiver,
hath power to dispense with his own law, and make use of his own
goods, and dispose of them as he pleases; it is no unholiness in God to
dispose of that which he hath a right unto. Indeed, God cannot command
that which is in its own nature intrinsically evil; as to command a
rational creature not to love him, not to worship him, to call God to
witness to a lie; these are intrinsically evil; but for the disposing
of the lives and goods of his creatures, which they have from him in
right, and not in absolute propriety, is not evil in him, because there
is no repugnancy in his own nature to such acts, nor is it anything
inconsistent with the natural duty of a creature, and in such cases
he may use what instruments he please. The point was, that holiness is
a glorious perfection of the nature of God. We have showed the nature
of this holiness in God; what it is; and we have demonstrated it, and
proved that God is holy, and must needs be so; and also the purity of
his nature in all his acts about sin: let us now improve it by way of
use.

IV. Is holiness a transcendent perfection belonging to the nature of
God? The first use shall be of instruction and information.

_Inform. 1._ How great and how frequent is the contempt of this eminent
perfection in the Deity! Since the fall, this attribute, which renders
God most amiable in himself, renders him most hateful to his apostate
creature. It is impossible that he that loves iniquity, can affect that
which is irreconcileably contrary to the iniquity he loves. Nothing so
contrary to the sinfulness of man as the holiness of God, and nothing
is thought of by the sinner with so much detestation. How do men
account that which is the most glorious perfection of the Divinity,
unworthy to be regarded as an accomplishment of their own souls! and
when they are pressed to an imitation of it, and a detestation of what
is contrary to it, have the same sentiment in their heart which the
devil had in his language to Christ, Why art thou come to torment
us before our time? What an enmity the world naturally hath to this
perfection, I think is visible in the practice of the heathen, who
among all their heroes which they deified, elevated none to that
dignity among them for this or that moral virtue that came nearest to
it, but for their valor or some usefulness in the concerns of this life.
Æsculapius was deified for his skill in the cure of diseases; Bacchus,
for the use of the grape; Vulcan, for his operations by fire; Hercules,
for his destroying of tyrants and monsters; but none for their mere
virtue; as if anything of purity were unworthy their consideration in
the frame of a Deity, when it is the glory of all other perfections;
so essential it is, that when men reject the imitation of this, God
regards it as a total rejection of himself, {b172} though they own all
the other attributes of his nature (Ps. lxxxi. 11): “Israel would none
of me:” why? because “they walked not in his ways” (ver. 13); those
ways wherein the purity of the Divine nature was most conspicuous; they
would own him in his power, when they stood in need of a deliverance;
they would own him in his mercy, when they were plunged in distress;
but they would not imitate him in his holiness. This being the lustre
of the Divine nature, the contempt of it is an obscuring all his other
perfections, and a dashing a blot upon his whole escutcheon. To own
all the rest, and deny him this, is to frame him as an unbeautiful
monster,――a deformed power. Indeed, all sin is against this attribute;
all sin aims in general at the being of God, but in particular at the
holiness of his Being. All sin is a violence to this perfection; there
is not an iniquity in the world, but directs its venomous sting against
the Divine purity; some sins are directed against his omniscience,
as secret wickedness; some against his providence, as distrust; some
against his mercy, as unbelief; some against his wisdom, as neglecting
the means instituted by him, censuring his ways and actings; some
against his power, as trusting in means more than in God, and the
immoderate fear of men more than of God; some against his truth, as
distrusting his promise, or not fearing his threatening; but all agree
together in their enmity against this, which is the peculiar glory of
the Deity: every one of them is a receding from the Divine image; and
the blackness of every one is the deeper, by how much the distance of
it from the holiness of God is the greater. This contrariety to the
holiness of God, is the cause of all the absolute atheism (if there be
any such) in the world; what was the reason “the fool hath said in his
heart, There is no God,” but because the fool is “corrupt, and hath
done abominable work” (Ps. xiv. 1)? If they believe the being of a
God, their own reason will enforce them to imagine him holy; therefore,
rather than fancy a holy God, they would fain fancy none at all.――In
particular,

1. The holiness of God is injured, in unworthy representations of
God, and imaginations of him in our own minds. The heathen fell under
this guilt, and ascribed to their idols those vices which their own
sensuality inclined them to, unworthy of a man, much more unworthy of a
God, that they might find a protection of their crimes in the practice
of their idols. But is this only the notion of the heathens? may there
not be many among us whose love to their lusts, and desires of sinning
without control, move them to slander God in their thoughts, rather
than reform their lives, and are ready to frame, by the power of their
imaginative faculty, a God, not only winking, but smiling, at their
impurities? I am sure God charges the impieties of men upon this score,
in that Psalm (l. 21) which seems to be a representation of the day of
judgment, as some gather from ver. 6, when God sums up all together:
“These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that
I was altogether such an one as thyself;” not a detester, but approver
of thy crimes: and the Psalmist seems to express God’s loathing of
sin in such a manner, as intimates it to be contrary to the ideas
and resemblances men make of him in their minds (Ps. v. 4); “For thou
art not a God that hast {b173} pleasure in wickedness;” as we say, in
vindication of a man, he is not such a man as you imagine him to be;
thou art not such a God as the world commonly imagines thee to be, a
God taking pleasure in iniquity. It is too common for men to fancy God
not as he is, but as they would have him; strip him of his excellency
for their own security. As God made man after his image, man would
dress God after his own modes, as may best suit the content of his
lusts, and encourage him in a course of sinning; for, when they can
frame such a notion of God, as if he were a countenancer of sin, they
will derive from thence a reputation to their crimes, commit wickedness
with an unbounded licentiousness, and crown their vices with the name
of virtues, because they are so like to the sentiments of that God
they fancy: from hence (as the Psalmist, in the Psalm before mentioned)
ariseth that mass of vice in the world; such conceptions are the
mother and nurse of all impiety. I question not but the first spring is
some wrong notion of God, in regard of his holiness: we are as apt to
imagine God as we would have him, as the black Ethiopians were to draw
the image of their gods after their own dark hue, and paint him with
their own color: as a philosopher in Theodoret speaks; If oxen and
lions had hands, and could paint as men do, they would frame the images
of their gods according to their own likeness and complexion. Such
notions of God render him a swinish being, and worse than the vilest
idols adored by the Egyptians, when men fancy a God indulgent to their
appetites and most sordid lusts.

2. In defacing the image of God in our own souls. God, in the
first draught of man, conformed him to his own image, or made him
an image of himself; because we find that in regeneration this image
is renewed (Eph. iv. 24); “The new man, which, after God, is created
in righteousness and true holiness.” He did not take angels for his
pattern, in the first polishing the soul, but himself. In defacing this
image we cast dirt upon the holiness of God, which was his pattern in
the framing of us, and rather choose to be conformed to Satan, who is
God’s grand enemy, to have God’s image wiped out of us, and the devil’s
pictured in us: therefore, natural men, in an unregenerate state,
may justly be called devils, since our Saviour called the worst man,
Judas, so (John vi. 1), and Peter, one of the best (Matt. xvi. 23):
and if this title be given, by an infallible Judge, to one of the
worst, and one of the best, it may, without wrong to any, be ascribed
to all men that wallow in their sin, which is directly contrary to
that illustrious image God did imprint upon them. How often is it seen
that men control the light of their own nature, and stain the clearest
beams of that candle of the Lord in their own spirits, that fly in the
face of their own consciences, and say to them, as Ahab to Micaiah,
Thou didst “never prophesy good to me;” thou didst never encourage
me in those things that are pleasing to the flesh; and use it at
the same rate as the wicked king did the prophet, “imprison it in
unrighteousness” (Rom. i. 18), because it starts up in them sometimes
sentiments of the holiness of God, which it represents in the soul of
man! How jolly are many men when the exhalations of their sensitive
part rise up to cloud the exactest principle of moral nature in
their minds, and render the monstrous {b174} principles of the law of
corruption more lively! Whence ariseth the wickedness which hath been
committed with an open face in the world, and the applause that hath
been often given to the worst of villanies? Have we not known, among
ourselves, men to glory in their shame, and esteem that a most gentle
accomplishment of man, which is the greatest blot upon his nature,
and which, if it were upon God, would render him no God, but an impure
devil; so that to be a gentleman among us hath been the same as to be
an incarnate devil; and to be a man, was to be no better, but worse,
than a brute? Vile wretches! is not this a contempt of Divine holiness,
to kill that Divine seed which lies languishing in the midst of
corrupted nature; to cut up any sprouts of it as weeds unworthy to grow
in their gardens, and cultivate what is the seed of hell; prefer the
rotten fruits of Sodom, marked with a Divine curse, before those relics
of the fruits of Eden, of God’s own planting?

3. The holiness of God is injured in charging our sin upon God.
Nothing is more natural to men, than to seek excuses for their sin,
and transfer it from themselves to the next at hand, and rather than
fail, shift it upon God himself; and if they can bring God into a
society with them in sin, they will hug themselves in a security that
God cannot punish that guilt wherein he is a partner. Adam’s children
are not of a different disposition from Adam himself, who, after he was
arraigned and brought to his trial, boggles not at flinging his dirt
in the face of God, his Creator, and accuseth him as if he had given
him the woman, not to be his help, but his ruin (Gen. iii. 12); “And
the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of
the tree, and I did eat.” He never supplicates for pardon, nor seeks
a remedy, but reflects his crime upon God: Had I been alone, as I was
first created, I had not eaten; but the woman, whom I received as a
special gift from thee, hath proved my tempter and my bane. When man
could not be like God in knowledge, he endeavored to make God like him
in his crime; and when his ambition failed of equalizing himself with
God, he did, with an insolence too common to corrupted nature, attempt,
by the imputation of his sin, to equal the Divinity with himself. Some
think Cain had the same sentiment in his answer to God’s demand where
his brother was (Gen. ii. 9); “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Art not thou
the Keeper and Governor of the world? why didst not thou take care of
him, and hinder my killing him, and drawing this guilt upon myself, and
terror upon my conscience? David was not behind, when, after the murder
of Uriah, he sweeps the dirt from his own door to God’s (2 Sam. xi. 25);
“The sword devoureth one as well as another;” fathering that solely
upon Divine Providence which was his own wicked contrivance: though
afterwards he is more ingenuous in clearing God, and charging himself
(Ps. li. 4): “Against thee, thee only have I sinned;” and he clears God
in his judgment too. It is too common for the “foolishness of man to
pervert his way;” and then “his heart frets against the Lord” (Prov.
xix. 3). He studies mischief, runs in a way of sin, and when he hath
conjured up troubles to himself, by his own folly, he excuseth himself,
and, with indignation, charges God as the author both of his sin and
misery, {b175} and sets his mouth against the heavens. It is a more
horrible thing to accuse God as a principal or accessary in our guilt,
than to conceive him to be a favorer of our iniquity; yet both are bad
enough.

4. The holiness of God is injured when men will study arguments from
the holy word of God to color and shelter their crimes. When men will
seek for a shelter for their lies, in that of the midwives to preserve
the children, or in that of Rahab to save the spies, as if, because
God rewarded their fidelity, he countenanced their sin. How often is
Scripture wrested to be a plea for unbecoming practices, that God,
in his word, may be imagined a patron for their iniquity? It is not
unknown that some have maintained their quaffing and carousing (from
Eccles. viii. 11), “That a man hath no better thing under the sun than
to eat, drink, and be merry:” and their gluttony (from Matt. v. 11),
“That which goes into the belly defiles not a man.” The Jesuits’ morals
are a transcript of this. How often hath the Passion of our Saviour,
the highest expression of God’s holiness, been employed to stain it,
and encourage the most debauched practices! Grace hath been turned
into wantonness, and the abundance of grace been used as a blast to
increase the flames of sin, as if God had no other aim in that work
of redemption, but to discover himself more indulgent to our sensual
appetites, and by his severity with his Son, become more gracious
to our lusts; this is to feed the roots of hell with the dews of
heaven, to make grace a pander for the abuse of it, and to employ
the expressions of his holiness in his word to be a sword against the
essential holiness of his nature: as if a man should draw an apology
for his treason out of that law that was made to forbid, not to protect,
his rebellion. Not the meanest instrument in the temple was to be
alienated from the use it was by Divine order appointed to, nor was it
to be employed in any common use; and shall the word of God, which is
the image of his holiness, be transferred by base interpretations to
be an advocate for iniquity? Such an ill use of his word reflects upon
that hand which imprinted those characters of purity and righteousness
upon it: as the misinterpretation of the wholesome laws of a prince,
made to discourage debauchery, reflects upon his righteousness and
sincerity in enacting them.

5. The holiness of God is injured, when men will put up petitions
to God to favor them in a wicked design. Such there are, and taxed by
the apostle (James iv. 3), “Ye ask amiss, that you may consume it upon
your lusts,” who desired mercies from God, with an intent to make them
instruments of sin, and weapons of unrighteousness; as it is reported
of a thief, that he always prayed for the success of his robbery.
It hath not been rare in the world to appoint fasts and prayers for
success in wars manifestly unjust, and commenced upon breaches of faith.
Many covetous men petition God to prosper them in their unjust gain; as
if the blessed God sat in his pure majesty upon a throne of grace, to
espouse unjust practices, and make iniquity prosperous. There are such
as “offer sacrifice with an evil mind” (Prov. xxi. 27), to barter with
God for a divine blessing to spirit a wicked contrivance. How great a
contempt of the holiness of God is this! How inexcusable would it be
for a favorite to address himself {b176} to a just prince with this
language: Sir, I desire a boon of such lands that lie near me, for an
addition to my estate, that I may have supports for my debauchery, and
be able to play the villain more powerfully among my neighbors! Hereby
he implies that his prince is a friend to such crimes and wickedness
he intends his petition for. Is not this the language of many men’s
hearts in the immediate presence of God? The order of prayer runs thus,
“Hallowed be thy name;” first to have a deep sense of the holiness of
the Divine nature, and an ardent desire for the glory of it. This order
is inverted by asking those things which are not agreeable to the will
of God, not meet for us to ask, and not meet for God to give; or asking
things agreeable to the will of God, but with a wicked intention. This
is, in effect, to desire God to strip himself of his holiness, and
commit sacrilege upon his own nature to gratify our lusts.

6. The purity of God is contemned, in hating and scoffing at the
holiness which is in a creature. Whoever looks upon the holiness
of a creature as an unlovely thing, can have no good opinion of the
amiableness of Divine purity. Whosoever hates those qualities and
graces that resemble God in any person, must needs contemn the original
pattern, which is more eminent in God. If there be no comeliness in
a creature’s holiness, to render it grateful to us, we should say
of God himself, were he visible among us, with those in the prophet
(Isa. liii.), “There is no beauty in him, that we should desire him.”
Holiness is beautiful in itself. If God be the most lovely Being, that
which is a likeness to him, so far as it doth resemble him, must needs
be amiable, because it partakes of God; and, therefore, those that
see no beauty in an inferior holiness, but contemn it because it is a
purity above them, contemn God much more. He that hates that which is
imperfect merely for that excellency which is in it, doth much more
hate that which is perfect, without any mixture or stain. Holiness
being the glory of God, the peculiar title of the Deity, and from him
derived unto the nature of a creature, he that mocks this in a person,
derides God himself; and, when he cannot abuse the purity in the Deity,
he will do it in his image; as rebels that cannot wrong the king in his
person, will do it in his picture, and his subjects that are loyal to
him. He that hates the picture of a man, hates the person represented
by it much more; he that hates the beams, hates the sun; the holiness
of a creature is but a beam from that infinite Sun, a stream from
that eternal Fountain. Where there is a derision of the purity of any
creature, there is a greater reflection upon God in that derision, as
he is the Author of it. If a mixed and stained holiness be more the
subject of any man’s scoffs than a great deal of sin, that person hath
a disposition more roundly to scoff at God himself, should he appear
in that unblemished and unspotted purity which infinitely shines in his
nature. O! it is a dangerous thing to scoff and deride holiness in any
person, though never so mean; such do deride and scoff at the most holy
God.

7. The holiness of God is injured by our unprepared addresses to him,
when, like swine, we come into the presence of God with all our mire
reeking and steaming upon us. A holy God requires a holy worship; and
if our best duties, having filth in every part, as {b177} performed
by us, are unmeet for God, how much more unsuitable are dead and dirty
duties to a living and immense holiness! Slight approaches and drossy
frames speak us to have imaginations of God as of a slight and sottish
being. This is worse than the heathens practised, who would purge their
flesh before they sacrificed, and make some preparations in a seeming
purity, before they would enter into their temples. God is so holy,
that were our services as refined as those of angels, we could not
present him with a service meet for his holy nature (Josh. xxiv. 19).
We contemn, then, this perfection, when we come before him without
due preparation; as if God himself were of an impure nature, and did
not deserve our purest thoughts in our applications to him; as if any
blemished and polluted sacrifice were good enough for him, and his
nature deserved no better. When we excite not those elevated frames
of spirit which are due to such a being, when we think to put him off
with a lame and imperfect service, we worship him not according to the
excellency of his nature, but put a slight upon his majestic sanctity.
When we nourish in our duties those foolish imaginations which
creep upon us; when we bring into, and continue our worldly, carnal,
debauched fancies in his presence, worse than the nasty servants, or
bemired dogs, a man would blush to be attended with in his visits to a
neat person. To be conversing with sordid sensualities, when we are at
the feet of an infinite God, sitting upon the throne of his holiness,
is as much a contempt of him, as it would be of a prince, to bring a
vessel full of nasty dung with us, when we come to present a petition
to him in his royal robes; or as it would have been to God, if the high
priest should have swept all the blood and excrements of the sacrifices
from the foot of the altar into the Holy of holies, and heaped it up
before the mercy‑seat, where the presence of God dwelt between the
cherubims, and afterwards shovelled it up into the ark, to be lodged
with Aaron’s rod and the pot of manna.

8. God’s holiness is slighted in depending upon our imperfect
services to bear us out before the tribunal of God. This is too
ordinary. The Jews were often infected with it (Rom. iii. 10), who,
not well understanding the enormity of their transgressions, the
interweaving of sin with their services, and the unspottedness of the
Divine purity, mingled an opinion of merit with their sacrifices, and
thought, by the cutting the throat of a beast, and offering it upon
God’s altar, they had made a sufficient compensation to that holiness
they had offended. Not to speak of many among the Romanists who have
the same notion, thinking to make satisfaction to God by erecting an
hospital, or endowing a church, as if this injured perfection could be
contented with the dregs of their purses, and the offering of an unjust
mammon, more likely to mind God of the injury they have done him, than
contribute to the appeasing of him. But is it not too ordinary with
miserable men, whose consciences accuse them of their crimes, to rely
upon the mumbling of a few formal prayers, and in the strength of
them, to think to stand before the tremendous tribunal of God, and
meet with a discharge upon this account from any accusation this Divine
perfection can present against them? Nay, do not the best Christians
sometimes {b178} find a principle in them, that makes them stumble
in their goings forth to Christ, and glorifying the holiness of God
in that method which he hath appointed? Sometimes casting an eye at
their grace, and sticking awhile to this or that duty, and gazing at
the glory of the temple‑building, while they should more admire the
glorious Presence that fills it. What is all this but a vilifying of
the holiness of the Divine nature, as though it would be well enough
contented with our impurities and imperfections, because they look
like a righteousness in our estimation? As though dross and dung,
which are the titles the apostles gives to all the righteousness of a
fallen creature (Phil. iii. 8), were valuable in the sight of God, and
sufficient to render us comely before him. It is a blasphemy against
this attribute, to pretend that anything so imperfect, so daubed, as
the best of our services are, can answer to that which is infinitely
perfect, and be a ground of demanding eternal life: it is at best, to
set up a gilded Dagon, as a fit companion for the ark of his Holiness;
our own righteousness as a suitable mate for the righteousness of
God: as if he had repented of the claim he made by the law to an exact
conformity, and thrown off the holiness of his nature for the fondling
of a corrupted creature. Rude and foolish notions of the Divine purity
are clearly evidenced by any confidence in any righteousness of our own,
though never so splendid. It is a rendering the righteousness of God
as dull and obscure as that of men; a mere outside, as their own; as
blind as the heathens pictured their Fortune, that knew as little how
to discern the nature and value of the offerings made to her, as to
distribute her gifts, as if it were all one to them, to have a dog or
a lamb presented in sacrifice. As if God did not well understand his
own nature, when he enacted so holy a law, and strengthened it with so
severe a threatening; which must follow upon our conceit, that he will
accept a righteousness lower than that which bears some suitableness to
the holiness of his own nature, and that of his law; and that he could
easily be put off with a pretended and counterfeit service. What are
the services of the generality of men, but suppositions, that they
can bribe God to an indulgence of them in their sins, and by an oral
sacrifice, cause him to divest himself of his hatred of their former
iniquities, and countenance their following practices. As the harlot,
that would return fresh to her uncleanness, upon the confidence that
her peace offering had contented the righteousness of God (Prov. vii.
14): as though a small service could make him wink at our sins, and
lay aside the glory of his nature; when, alas! the best duties in the
most gracious persons in this life, are but as the steams of a spiced
dung‑hill, a composition of myrrh and froth, since there are swarms of
corruptions in their nature, and secret sins that they need a cleansing
from.

9. It is a contemning the holiness of God, when we charge the law
of God with rigidness. We cast dirt upon the holiness of God when we
blame the law of God, because it shackles us, and prohibit our desired
pleasures; and hate the law of God, as they did the prophets, because
they did not prophesy smooth things; but called to them, to “get” them
“out of the way, and turn aside out {b179} of the path, and cause the
Holy One of Israel to cease from before them” (Isa. xxx. 10, 11). Put
us no more in mind of the holiness of God, and the holiness of his law;
it is a troublesome thing for us to hear of it: let him be gone from
us, since he will not countenance our vices, and indulge our crimes;
we would rather hear there is a God, than you would tell us of a holy
one. We are contrary to the law, when we wish it were not so exact;
and, therefore, contrary to the holiness of God, which set the stamp
of exactness and righteousness upon it. We think him injurious to
our liberty, when, by his precept he thwarts our pleasure; we wish
it of another frame, more mild, more suitable to our minds: it is the
same, as if we should openly blame God for consulting with his own
righteousness, and not with our humors, before he settled his law; that
he should not have drawn from the depths of his righteous nature, but
squared it to accommodate our corruption. This being the language of
such complaints, is a reproving God, because he would not be unholy,
that we might be unrighteous with impunity. Had the Divine law been
suited to our corrupt state, God must have been unholy to have complied
with his rebellious creature. To charge the law with rigidness, either
in language or practice, is the highest contempt of God’s holiness; for
it is an implicit wish, that God were as defiled, polluted, disorderly,
as our corrupted selves.

10. The holiness of God is injured opinionatively. (1.) In the opinion
of venial sins. The Romanists divide sins into venial and mortal:
mortal, are those which deserve eternal death; venial, the lighter
sort of sins, which rather deserve to be pardoned than punished; or if
punished, not with an eternal, but temporal punishment. This opinion
hath no foundation in, but is contrary to, Scripture. How can any sin
be in its own nature venial, when the due “wages of every sin is death”
(Rom. vi. 23)? and he who “continues not in every thing that the law
commands,” falls under a “curse” (Gal. iii. 10). It is a mean thought
of the holiness and majesty of God to imagine, that any sin which
is against an infinite majesty, and as infinite a purity both in
the nature of God and the law of God, should not be considered as
infinitely heinous. All sins are transgressions of the eternal law, and
in every one the infinite holiness of God is some way slighted. (2.) In
the opinion of works of supererogation. That is, such works as are not
commanded by God, which yet have such a dignity and worth in their own
nature, that the performers of them do not only merit at God’s hands
for themselves, but fill up a treasure of merits for others, that come
short of fulfilling the precepts God hath enjoined. It is such a mean
thought of God’s holiness, that the Jews, in all the charges brought
against them in Scripture, were never guilty of. And if you consider
what pitiful things they are, which are within the compass of such
works, you have sufficient reason to bewail the ignorance of man,
and the low esteem he hath of so glorious a perfection. The whipping
themselves often in a week, extraordinary watchings, fastings,
macerating their bodies, wearing a capuchin’s habit, &c. are pitiful
things to give content to an Infinite Purity. As if the precept {b180}
of God required only the inferior degrees of virtue, and the counsels
the more high and excellent; as if the law of God, which the Psalmist
counts “perfect” (Ps. xix. 7), did not command all good, and forbid
all evil; as if the holiness of God had forgotten itself in the framing
the law, and made it a scanty and defective rule; and the righteousness
of a creature were not only able to make an eternal righteousness, but
surmount it. As man would be at first as knowing as God, so some of
his posterity would be more holy than God; set up a wisdom against the
wisdom of God, and a purity above the Divine purity. Adam was not so
presumptuous; he intended no more than an equalling God in knowledge;
but those would exceed him in righteousness, and not only presume to
render a satisfaction for themselves to the holiness they have injured,
but to make a purse for the supply of others that are indigent, that
they may stand before the tribunal of God with a confidence in the
imaginary righteousness of a creature. How horrible is it for those
that come short of the law of God themselves, to think that they can
have enough for a loan to their neighbors! An unworthy opinion.

_Inform. 2._ It may inform us, how great is our fall from God, and how
distant we are from him. View the holiness of God, and take a prospect
of the nature of man, and be astonished to see a person created in the
Divine image, degenerated into the image of the devil. We are as far
fallen from the holiness of God, which consists in a hatred of sin, as
the lowest point of the earth is from the highest point of the heavens.
The devil is not more fallen from the rectitude of his nature and
likeness to God, than we are; and that we are not in the same condition
with those apostate spirits, is not from anything in our nature, but
from the mediation of Christ, upon which account God hath indulged
in us a continuance of some remainders of that which Satan is wholly
deprived of. We are departed from our original pattern; we were created
to live the “life of God,” that is, a life of “holiness;” but now we
are “alienated from the life of God” (Eph. iv. 18), and of a beautiful
piece we are become deformed, daubed over with the most defiling mud:
we “work uncleanness with greediness,” according to our ability, as
creatures; as God doth work “holiness” with affection and ardency,
according to his infiniteness, as Creator. More distant we are from
God by reason of sin, than the vilest creature, the most deformed toad,
or poisonous serpent, is from the highest and most glorious angel. By
forsaking our innocence, we departed from God as our original copy.
The apostle might well say (Rom. iii. 23), that by sin “we are come
short of the glory of God.” Interpreters trouble themselves much about
that place, “Man is come short of the glory of God,” that is, of the
holiness of God, which is the glory of the Divine nature, and was
pictured in the rational, innocent creature. By the “glory of God,”
is meant the holiness of God; (as 1 Cor. iii. 18), “Beholding, as in
a glass, the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from
glory to glory;” that is the glory of God in the text, into the image
of which we are changed; but the Scripture speaks of no other image of
God, but that of holiness; “we are come short of the glory of God;” of
the holiness of God, which is the glory of God; and {b181} the image
of it, which was the glory of man. By sin, which is particular in
opposition to the purity of God, man was left many leagues behind any
resemblance to God; he stripped off that which was the glory of his
nature, and was the only means of glorifying God as his Creator. The
word ὑστεροῦνται, the apostle uses, is very significant,――postponed
by sin an infinite distance from any imitation of God’s holiness, or
any appearance before him in a garb of nature pleasing to him. Let us
lament our fall and distance from God.

_Inform. 3._ All unholiness is vile, and opposite to the nature of God.
It is such a loathsome thing, that the “purity of God’s eye is averse
from beholding” (Hab. i. 3). It is not said there, that he will not,
but he cannot, look on evil; there cannot be any amicableness between
God and sin, the natures of both are so directly and unchangeably
contrary to one another. Holiness is the life of God; it endures as
long as his life; he must be eternally averse from sin, he can live no
longer than he lives in the hatred and loathing of it. If he should for
one instant cease to hate it, he would cease to live. To be a holy God,
is as essential to him, as to be a living God; and he would not be a
living God, but a dead God, if he were in the least point of time an
unholy God. He cannot look on sin without loathing it; he cannot look
on sin but his heart riseth against it; it must needs be most odious
to him, as that which is against the glory of his nature, and directly
opposite to that which is the lustre and varnish of all his other
perfections. It is the “abominable thing which his soul hates” (Jer.
xliv. 4); the vilest terms imaginable are used to signify it. Do you
understand the loathsomeness of a miry swine, or the nauseousness of
the vomit of a dog? these are emblems of sin (2 Peter ii. 22). Can you
endure the steams of putrefied carcasses from an open sepulchre (Rom.
iii. 23)? is the smell of the stinking sweat or excrements of a body
delightful? the word ῥυπαρία in James i. 21, signifies as much. Or is
the sight of a body overgrown with scabs and leprosy grateful to you?
So vile, so odious is sin, in the sight of God. It is no light thing,
then, to fly in the face of God; to break his eternal law; to dash both
the tables in pieces: to trample the transcript of God’s own nature
under our feet; to cherish that which was inconsistent with his honor;
to lift up our heels against the glory of his nature; to join issue
with the devil in stabbing his heart, and depriving him of his life.
Sin, in every part of it, is an opposition to the holiness of God, and
consequently an envying him a being and life, as well as a glory. If
sin be such a thing, “ye that love the Lord, hate evil.”

_Inform. 4._ Sin cannot escape a due punishment. A hatred of
unrighteousness, and consequently a will to punish it, is as essential
to God as a love of righteousness. Since he is not as an heathen idol,
but hath eyes to see, and purity to hate every iniquity, he will have
an infinite justice to punish whatsoever is against infinite holiness.
As he loves everything that is amiable, so he loathes everything that
is filthy, and that constantly, without any change; his whole nature
is set against it; he abhors nothing but this. It is not the devil’s
knowledge or activity that his hatred is terminated in, but the malice
and unholiness of his nature; it is this only is the object of his
severity; {b182} it is in the recompense of this only that there can
be a manifestation of his justice. Sin must be punished; for,

1. This detestation of sin must be manifested. How should we certainly
know his loathing of it, if he did not manifest, by some act, how
ungrateful it is to him? As his love to righteousness would not appear,
without rewarding it; so his hatred of iniquity would be as little
evidenced, without punishing it; his justice is the great witness
to his purity. The punishment, therefore, inflicted on the wicked,
shall be, in some respect, as great as the rewards bestowed upon the
righteous. Since the hatred of sin is natural to God, it is as natural
to him to show, one time or other, his hatred of it. And since men
have a conceit that God is like them in impurity, there is a necessity
of some manifestation of himself to be infinitely distant from those
conceits they have of him (Ps. l. 21); “I will reprove thee, and set
them in order before thine eyes.” He would else encourage the injuries
done to his holiness, favor the extravagances of the creature, and
condemn, or at least slight, the righteousness both of his own nature,
and his sovereign law. What way is there for God to manifest his hatred,
but by threatening the sinner? and what would this be but a vain
affrightment, and ridiculous to the sinner, if it were never to be put
in execution? There is an indissoluble connection between his hatred
of sin, and punishment of the offender (Ps. xi. 5, 6); “The wicked, his
soul hates. Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire, and brimstone,”
&c. He cannot approve of it without denying himself; and a total
impunity would be a degree of approbation. The displeasure of God
is eternal and irreconcileable against sin; for sin being absolutely
contrary to his holy nature, he is eternally contrary to it; if there
be not, therefore, a way to separate the sin from the sinner, the
sinner must lie under the displeasure of God; no displeasure can be
manifested without some marks of it upon the person that lies under
that displeasure. The holiness of God will right itself of the wrongs
done to it, and scatter the profaners of it at the greatest distance
from him, which is the greatest punishment that can be inflicted; to be
removed far from the Fountain of Life is the worst of deaths; God can
as soon lay aside his purity, as always forbear his displeasure against
an impure person; it is all one not to hate it, and not to manifest his
hatred of it.

2. As his holiness is natural and necessary, so is the punishment
of unholiness necessary to him. It is necessary that he should
abominate sin, and therefore necessary he should discountenance it. The
severities of God against sin are not vain scare‑crows; they have their
foundation in the righteousness of his nature; it is because he is a
righteous and holy God, that he “will not forgive our transgressions
and sins” (Josh. xxiv. 19), that is, that he will punish them. The
throne of his “holiness is a fiery flame” (Dan. vii. 9); there is both
a pure light and a scorching heat. Whatsoever is contrary to the nature
of God, will fall under the justice of God; he would else violate his
own nature, deny his own perfection, seem to be out of love with his
own glory and life. He doth not hate it out of choice, but from the
immutable propension of his nature; it is not so free an act of his
will, as the creation of man and angels, which he might {b183} have
forborne as well as effected. As the detestation of sin results from
the universal rectitude of his nature, so the punishment of sin follows
upon that, as he is the righteous Governor of the world: it is as much
against his nature not to punish it, as it is against his nature not
to loathe it; he would cease to be holy if he ceased to hate it, and he
would cease to hate it if he ceased to punish it. Neither the obedience
of our Saviour’s life, nor the strength of his cries, could put a
bar to the cup of his passion; God so hated sin, that when it was but
imputed to his Son, without any commission of it, he would bring a hell
upon his soul. Certainly if God could have hated sin without punishing
it, his Son had never felt the smart of his wrath; his love to his
Son had been strong enough to have caused him to forbear, had not
the holiness of his nature been stronger to move him to inflict a
punishment according to the demerit of his sin. God cannot but be
holy, and therefore cannot but be just, because injustice is a part
of unholiness.

3. Therefore there can be no communion between God and unholy spirits.
How is it conceivable, that God should hate the sin, and cherish the
sinner, with all his filth in his bosom? that he should eternally
detest the crime, and eternally fold the sinner in his arms? Can less
be expected from the purity of his nature, than to separate an impure
soul, as long as it remains so? Can there be any delightful communion
between those whose natures are contrary? Darkness and light may as
soon kiss each other, and become one nature: God and the devil may as
soon enter into an eternal league and covenant together. For God to
have pleasure in wickedness, and to admit evil to dwell with him, are
equally impossible to his nature (Ps. v. 4): while he hates impurity,
he cannot have communion with an impure person. It may as soon be
expected, that God should hate himself, offer violence to his own
nature, lay aside his purity as an abominable thing, and blot his own
glory, as love an impure person, entertain him as his delight, and set
him in the same heaven and happiness with himself, and his holy angels.
He must needs loathe him, he must needs banish him from his presence,
which is the greatest punishment. God’s holiness and hatred of sin
necessarily infer the punishment of it.

_Inform. 5._ There is, therefore, a necessity of the satisfaction of
the holiness of God by some sufficient mediator. The Divine purity
could not meet with any acquiescence in all mankind after the fall:
sin was hated; the sinner would be ruined, unless some way were found
out to repair the wrongs done to the holiness of God; either the sinner
must be condemned for ever, or some satisfaction must be made, that the
holiness of the Divine nature might eternally appear in its full lustre.
That it is essential to the nature of God to hate all unrighteousness,
as that which is absolutely repugnant to his nature, none do question.
That the justice of God is so essential to him, as that sin could not
be pardoned without satisfaction, some do question; though this latter
seems rationally to follow upon the former.[930] That holiness is
essential to the nature of God, is evident; because, else, God may
as much be conceived without purity, as he might be {b184} conceived
without the creating the sun or stars. No man can, in his right wits,
frame a right notion of a Deity without purity. It would be less
blasphemy against the excellency of God, to conceit him not knowing,
than to imagine him not holy: and, for the essentialness of his justice,
Joshua joins both his holiness and his jealousy as going hand in hand
together (Josh. xxiv. 19); “He is a holy God, he is a jealous God, he
will not forgive your sin.” But consider only the purity of God, since
it is contrary to sin, and, consequently, hating the sinner; the guilty