2d. His goodness is evident in the preservation of human society. It belongs to his power that he is able to do it, but to his goodness that he is willing to do it.

1. This goodness appears in prescribing rules for it. The moral law consists but of ten precepts, and there are more of them ordered for the support of human society, than for the adoration and honor of himself (Exod. xx. 1, 2); four for the rights of God, and six for the rights of man, and his security in his authority, relations, life, goods, and reputation; superiors not to be dishonored, life not to be invaded, chastity not to be stained, goods not to be filched, good name not to be cracked by false witness, nor anything belonging to our neighbor to be coveted; and in the whole Scripture, not only that which was calculated for the Jews, but compiled for the whole world; he hath fixed rules for the ordering all relations, magistrates, and subjects; parents and children; husbands and wives; masters and servants; rich and poor, find their distinct qualifications and duties. There would be a paradisiacal state, if men had a goodness to observe what God hath had a goodness to order for the strengthening the sinews of human society; the world would not groan under oppressing tyrants, nor princes tremble under discontented subjects, or mighty rebels; children would not be provoked to anger by the unreasonableness of their parents, nor parents sink under grief by the rebellion of their children; masters would not tyrannize over the meanest of their servants, nor servants invade the authority of their masters.

2. The goodness of God in the preserving human society, is seen in setting a magistracy to preserve it. Magistracy is from God in its original; the charter was drawn up in paradise; civil subordination must have been had man remained in innocence; but the charter was more explicitly renewed and enlarged at the restoration of the world after the deluge, and given out to man under the broad seal of heaven; “Whoso sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” (Gen. ix. 6). The command of shedding the blood of a murderer was a part of his goodness, to secure the lives of those that bore his image. Magistrates are “the shields of the earth,” but they “belong to God” (Ps. xlvii. 9). They are fruits of his goodness in their original, and authority; were there no magistracy, there would be no government, no security to any man under his own vine and fig tree; the world would be a den of wild beasts preying upon one another; every one would do what seems good in his eyes; the loss of government is a judgment God brings upon a nation when men become “as the fishes of the sea,” to devour one another, because they “have no ruler over them” (Hab. i. 14). Private dissensions will break out into public disorders and combustions.

3. The goodness of God in the preservation of human society, is seen in the restraints of the passions of men. He sets bounds to the passions of men as well as to the rollings of the sea; “He stilleth the noise of the waves, and the tumults of the people” (Ps. lxv. 7). Though God hath erected a magistracy to stop the breaking out of those floods of licentiousness, which swell in the hearts of men; yet, if God should not hold stiff reins on the necks of those tumultuous and foaming passions, the world would be a place of unruly confusion, and hell triumph upon earth; a crazy state would be quickly broke in pieces by boisterous nature. The tumults of a people could no more be quelled by the force of man, than the rage of the sea by a puff of breath; without Divine goodness, neither the wisdom nor watchfulness of the magistrates, nor the industry of officers, could preserve a state. The laws of men would be too slight to curb the lusts of men, if the goodness of God did not restrain them by a secret hand, and interweave their temporal security with observance of those laws. The sons of Belial did murmur when Saul was chosen king; and that they did no more was the goodness of God, for the preservation of human society. If God did not restrain the impetuousness of men’s lusts, they would be the entire ruin of human society; their lusts would render them as bad as beasts, and change the world into a savage wilderness.

4. The goodness of God is seen in the preservation of human society, in giving various inclinations to men for public advantage. If all men had an inclination to one science or art, they would all stand idle spectators of one another; but God hath bestowed various dispositions and gifts upon men, for the promoting the common good, that they may not only be useful to themselves, but to society. He will have none idle, none unuseful, but every one acting in a due place, according to their measures, for the good of others.

5. The goodness of God is seen in the witness he bears against those sins that disturb human society. In those cases he is pleased to interest himself in a more signal manner, to cool those that make it their business to overturn the order he hath established for the good of the earth. He doth not so often in this world punish those faults committed immediately against his own honor, as those that put the world into a hurry and confusion: as a good governor is more merciful to crimes against himself, than those against his community. It is observed that the most turbulent seditious persons in a state come to most violent ends, as Corah, Adonijah, Zimri: Ahithopel draws Absalom’s sword against David and Israel, and the next is, he twists a halter for himself: Absalom heads a party against his father, and God, by a goodness to Israel, hangs him up, and prevents not its safety by David’s indulgence, and a future rebellion, had life been spared by the fondness of his father. His providence is more evident in discovering disturbers, and the causes that move them, in defeating their enterprises, and digging the contrivers out of their caverns and lurking holes: in such cases, God doth so act, and use such methods, that he silenceth any creature from challenging any partnership with him in the discovery. He doth more severely in this world correct those actions that unlink the mutual assistance between man and man, and the charitable and kind correspondence he would have kept up. The sins for which the “wrath of God comes upon the children of disobedience” (Col. iii. 5, 6) in this world are of this sort; and when princes will be oppressing the people, God will be “pouring contempt on the princes, and set the poor on high from affliction” (Ps. cvii. 40, 41). An evidence of God’s care and kindness in the preserving human society, is those strange discoveries of murders, though never so clandestine and subtilly committed, more than of any other crime among men: Divine care never appears more than in bringing those hidden and injurious works of darkness to light, and a due punishment.

6. His goodness is seen in ordering mutual offices to one another against the current of men’s passions. Upon this account he ordered, in his laws for the government of the Israelites, that a man should reduce the wandering beast of his enemy to the hand of his rightful proprietor, though he were a provoking enemy; and also “help the poor beast that belonged to one that hated him, when he saw him sink under his burden” (Exod. xxiii. 4, 5). When mutual assistance was necessary, he would not have men considered as enemies, or considered as wicked, but as of the same blood with ourselves, that we might be serviceable to one another for the preservation of life and goods.

7. His goodness is seen in remitting something of his own right, for the preserving a due dependence and subjection. He declines the right he had to the vows of a minor, or one under the power of another, waving what he might challenge by the voluntary obligation of his creature, to keep up the due order between parents and children, husbands and wives, superiors and inferiors; those that were under the power of another, as a child under his parents, or a wife under her husband, if they had “vowed a vow unto the Lord,” which concerned his honor and worship, it was void without the approbation of that person under whose charge they were (Num. xxx. 3, 4, &c.). Though God was the Lord of every man’s goods, and men but his stewards; and though he might have taken to himself what another had offered by a vow, since whatsoever could be offered was God’s own, though it was not the parties’ own who offered it; yet God would not have himself adored by his creature to the prejudice of the necessary ties of human society; he lays aside what he might challenge by his sovereign dominion, that there might not be any breach of that regular order which was necessary for the preservation of the world. If Divine goodness did not thus order things, he would not do the part of a Rector of the world; the beauty of the world would be much defaced, it would be a confused mass of men and women, or rather, beasts and bedlams. Order renders every city, every nation, yea, the whole earth, beautiful: this is an effect of Divine goodness.

3d. His goodness is evident in encouraging anything of moral goodness in the world. Though moral goodness cannot claim an eternal reward, yet it hath been many times rewarded with a temporal happiness; he hath often signally rewarded acts of honesty, justice, and fidelity, and punished the contrary by his judgments, to deter man from such an unworthy practice, and encourage others to what was comely, and of a general good report in the world. Ahab’s humiliation put a demurrer to God’s judgments intended against him; and some ascribe the great victories and success of the Romans to that justice which was observed among themselves. Baruch was but an amanuensis to the Prophet Jeremy to write his prophecy, and very despondent of his own welfare (Jer. xlv. 13); God upon that account provides for his safety, and rewards the industry of his service with the security of his person; he was not a statesman, to declare against the corrupt counsels of them that sat at the helm, nor a prophet, to declare against their profane practices, but the prophet’s scribe; and as he writes in God’s service the prophecies revealed to the prophet, God writes his name in the roll of those that were designed for preservation in that deluge of judgments which were to come upon that nation. Epicurus complained of the administration of God, that the virtuous moralist had not sufficient smiles of Divine favor, nor the swinish sensualist frowns of Divine indignation. But what if they have not always that confluence of outward wealth and pleasures, but remain in the common level? yet they have the happiness and satisfaction of a clear reputation, the esteem of men, and the secret applauses of their very enemies, besides the inward ravishments upon an exercise of virtue, and the commendatory subscription of their own hearts, a dainty the vicious man knows not of; they have an inward applause from God as a reward of Divine goodness, instead of those racks of conscience upon which the profane are sometimes stretched. He will not let the worst men do him any service (though they never intended in the act of service him, but themselves) without giving them their wages: he will not let them hit him in the teeth as if he were beholden to them. If Nebuchadnezzar be the instrument of God’s judgments against Tyrus and Israel, he will not only give him that rich city, but a richer country, Egypt, the granary for her neighbors, a wages above his work. In this is Divine goodness eminent, since, in the most moral actions, as there is something beautiful, so there is something mixed, hateful to the infinitely exact holiness of the Divine nature; yet he will not let that which is pleasing to him go unrewarded, and defeat the expectations of men, as men do with those they employ, when, for one flaw in an action, they deny them the reward due for the other part. God encouraged and kept up morality in the cities of the Gentiles for the entertainment of a further goodness in the doctrine of the gospel when it should be published among them.

4th. Divine goodness is eminent in providing a Scripture as a rule to guide us, and continuing it in the world. If man be a rational creature, governable by a law, can it be imagined there should be no revelation of that law to him? Man, by the light of reason, must needs confess himself to be in another condition than he was by creation, when he came first out of the hands of God; and can it be thought, that God should keep up the world under so many sins against the light of nature, and bestow so many providential influences, to invite men to return to him, and acquaint no men in the world with the means of that return? Would he exact an obedience of men, as their consciences witness he doth, and furnish them with no rules to guide them in the darkness they cannot but acknowledge that they have contracted? No; Divine goodness hath otherwise provided: this Bible we have is his word and rule. Had it been a falsity and imposture, would that goodness, that watches over the world, have continued it so long? That goodness that overthrew the burdensome rites of Moses, and expelled the foolish idolatry of the Pagans, would have discovered the imposture of this, had it not been a transcript of his own will. Whatever mistakes he suffers to remain in the world, what goodness had there been to suffer this anciently amongst the Jews, and afterwards to open it to the whole world, to abuse men in religion and worship, which so nearly concerned himself and his own honor, that the world should be deceived by the devil without a remedy in the morning of its appearance? It hath been honored and admired by some heathens, when they have cast their eyes upon it, and their natural light made them behold some footsteps of a Divinity in it. If this, therefore, be not a Divine prescript, let any that deny it, bring as good arguments for any book else, as can be brought for this. Now, the publishing this is an argument of Divine goodness: it is designed to win the affections of beggarly man, to be espoused to a God of eternal blessedness and immense riches. It speaks words in season: no doubts but it resolves; no spiritual distemper but it cures; no condition but it hath a comfort to suit it. It is a garden which the hand of Divine bounty hath planted for us; in it he condescends to shadow himself in those expressions that render him in some manner intelligible to us. Had God wrote in a loftiness of style suitable to the greatness of his majesty, his writing had been as little understood by us, as the brightness of his glory can be beheld by us. But he draws phrases from our affairs, to express his mind to us; he incarnates himself in his word to our minds, before his Son was incarnate in the flesh to the eyes of men: he ascribes to himself eyes, ears, hands, that we might have, from the consideration of ourselves, and the whole human nature, a conception of his perfections: he assumes to himself the members of our bodies, to direct our understandings in the knowledge of his Deity; this is his goodness. Again, though the Scripture was written upon several occasions, yet in the dictating of it, the goodness of God cast his eye upon the last ages of the world (1 Cor. x. 11): “They are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” It was given to the Israelites, but Divine goodness intended it for the future Gentiles. The old writings of the prophets were thus designed, much more the later writings of the apostles. Thus did Divine goodness think of us, and prepare his records for us, before we were in the world: these he hath written plain for our instruction, and wrapped up in them what is necessary for our salvation: it is clear to inform our understanding, and rich to comfort us in our misery; it is a light to guide us, and a cordial to refresh us; it is a lamp to our feet, and a medicine for our diseases; a purifier of our filth, and a restorer of us in our faintings. He hath by his goodness sealed the truth of it, by his efficacy on multitudes of men: he hath made it the “word of regeneration” (James i. 18). Men, wilder and more monstrous than beasts, have been tamed and changed by the power of it: it hath raised multitudes of dead men from a grave fuller of horror than any earthly one. Again, Goodness was in all ages sending his letters of advice and counsel from heaven, till the canon of the Scripture was closed; sometimes he wrote to chide a froward people, sometimes to cheer up an oppressed and disconsolate people, according to the state wherein they were; as we may observe by the several seasons wherein parts of Scripture were written. It was His goodness that he first revealed anything of his will after the fall; it was a further degree of goodness, that he would add more cubits to its stature; before he would lay aside his pencil, it grew up to that bulk wherein we have it. And his goodness is further seen in the preserving it; he hath triumphed over the powers that opposed it, and showed himself good to the instruments that propagated it: he hath maintained it against the blasts of hell, and spread it in all languages against the obstructions of men and devils. The sun of his word is by his kindness preserved in our horizon, as well as the sun in the heavens. How admirable is Divine goodness! He hath sent his Son to die for us, and his written word to instruct us, and his Spirit to edge it for an entrance into our souls: he hath opened the womb of the earth to nourish us, and sent down the records of heaven to direct us in our pilgrimage: he hath provided the earth for our habitation, while we are travellers, and sent his word to acquaint us with a felicity at the end of our journey, and the way to attain in another world what we want in this, viz. a happy immortality.

5th. His goodness in his government is evident, in conversions of men. Though this work be wrought by his power, yet his power was first solicited by his goodness. It was his rich goodness that he would employ his power to pierce the scales of a heart as hard as those of the “leviathan.” It was this that opened the ears of men to hear him, and draws them from the hurry of worldly cares, and the charms of sensual pleasures, and, which is the top of all, the impostures and cheats of their own hearts. It is this that sends a spark of his wrath into men’s consciences, to put them to a stand in sin, that he might not send down a shower of brimstone eternally to consume their persons. This it was that first showed you the excellency of the Redeemer, and brought you to taste the sweetness of his blood, and find your security in the agonies of his death. It is his goodness to call one man and not another, to turn Paul in his course, and lay hold of no other of his companions. It is his goodness to call any, when he is not bound to call one.

1. It is his goodness to pitch upon mean and despicable men in the eye of the world; to call this poor publican, and overlook that proud Pharisee, this man that sits upon a dunghill, and neglect him that glisters in his purple. His majesty is not enticed by the lofty titles of men, nor, which is more worth, by the learning and knowledge of men. “Not many wise, not many mighty,” not many doctors, not many lords, though some of them; but his goodness condescends to the “base things” of the world, and things which are “despised” (1 Cor. i. 26‒28). “The poor receive the gospel” (Matt. xi. 5), when those that are more acute, and furnished with a more apprehensive reason, are not touched by it.

2. The worst men. He seizeth sometimes upon men most soiled, and neglects others that seem more clean and less polluted. He turns men in their course in sin, that, by their infernal practices, have seemed to have gone to school to hell, and to have sucked in the sole instructions of the devil. He lays hold upon some when they are most under actual demerit, and snatches them as fire‑brands out of the fire, as upon Paul when fullest of rage against him; and shoots a beam of grace, where nothing could be justly expected but a thunderbolt of wrath. It is his goodness to visit any, when they lie putrefying in their loathsome lusts; to draw near to them who have been guilty of the greatest contempt of God, and the light of nature; the murdering Manassehs, the persecuting Sauls, the Christ‑crucifying Jews,—persons in whom lusts had had a peaceable possession and empire for many years.

3. His goodness appears in converting men possessed with the greatest enmity against him, while he was dealing with them. All were in such a state, and framing contrivances against him, when Divine goodness knocked at the door (Col. i. 21). He looked after us when our backs were turned upon him, and sought us when we slighted him, and were a “gainsaying people” (Rom. x. 21); when we had shaken off his convictions, and contended with our Maker, and mustered up the powers of nature against the alarms of conscience; struggled like wild bulls in a net, and blunted those darts that stuck in our souls. Not a man that is turned to him, but had lifted up the heel against his gospel grace, as well as made light of his creating goodness. Yet it hath employed itself about such ungrateful wretches, to polish those knotty and rugged pieces for heaven; and so invincibly, that he would not have his goodness defeated by the fierceness and rebellion of the flesh. Though the thing was more difficult in itself (if anything may be said to have a difficulty to omnipotency) than to make a stone live, or to turn a straw into a marble pillar. The malice of the flesh makes a man more unfit for the one, than the nature of the straw unfits it for the other.

4. His goodness appears in turning men, when they were pleased with their own misery, and unable to deliver themselves; when they preferred a hell before him, and were in love with their own vileness; when his call was our torment, and his neglect of us had been accounted our felicity. Was it not a mighty goodness to keep the light close to our eyes, when we endeavored to blow it out; and the corrosive near to our hearts, when we endeavored to tear it off, being more fond of our disease than the remedy? We should have been scalded to death with the Sodomite, had not God laid his good hand upon us, and drawn us from the approaching ruin we affected, and were loath to be freed from. And had we been displeased with our state, yet we had been as unable spiritually to raise ourselves from sin to grace, as to raise ourselves naturally from nothing to being. In this state we were when his goodness triumphed over us; when he put a hook into our nostrils, to turn us in order to our salvation; and drew us out of the pit which we had digged, when he might have left us to sink under the rigors of his justice we had merited. Now this goodness in conversion is greater than that in creation; as in creation there is nothing to oppose him, so there was nothing to disoblige him; creation was terminated to the good of a mutable nature, and conversion tends to a supernatural good. God pronounced all creatures good at first, and man among the rest, but did not pronounce any of them, or man himself, his “portion,” his “inheritance,” his “segullah,” his “house,” his “diadem.” He speaks slightly of all those things which he made, the noblest heavens, as well as the lowest earth, in comparison of a true convert: “All those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been: but to this man will I look, to him that is of a contrite spirit” (Isa. lxvi. 1, 2). It is more goodness to give the espousing grace of the covenant, than the completing glory of heaven; as it is more for a prince to marry a beggar, than only to bring her to live deliciously in his courts. All other benefits are of a meaner strain, if compared with this; there is little less of goodness in imparting the holiness of his nature, than imputing the righteousness of his Son.

6th. The Divine goodness doth appear in answering prayers. He delights to be familiarly acquainted with his people, and to hear them call upon him. He indulgeth them a free access to him, and delights in every address of an “upright man” (Prov. xv. 8). The wonderful efficacy of prayer depends not upon the nature of our petitions or the temper of our soul, but the goodness of God to whom we address. Christ establisheth it upon this bottom: when he exhorts to ask in his name, he tells them the spring of all their grants is the Father’s love: “I say not, I will pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loves you” (John xvi. 26, 27). And since it is of itself incredible, that a Majesty, exalted above the cherubims, should stoop so low as to give a miserable and rebellious creature admittance to him, and afford him a gracious hearing, and a quick supply, Christ ushers in the promise of answering prayer with a note of great assurance: “I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you” (Luke xi. 9, 10). I, that know the mind of my Father, and his good disposition, assure you your prayer shall not be in vain. Perhaps you will not be so ready of yourselves to imagine so great a liberality; but take it upon my word, it is true, and so you will find it. And his bounty travels, as it were, in birth, to give the greatest blessings, upon our asking, rather than the smallest: “your heavenly Father shall give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him” (ver. 13): which in Matt. vii. 11, is called, “good things.” Of all the good and rich things Divine goodness hath in his treasury, he delights to give the best upon asking, because God doth act so as to manifest the greatness of his bounty and magnificence to men; and, therefore, is delighted when men, by their petitioning him, own such a liberal disposition in him, and put him upon the manifesting it. He would rather you should ask the greatest things heaven can afford, than the trifles of this world; because his bounty is not discovered in meaner gifts: he loves to have an opportunity to manifest his affection above the liberality and tenderness of worldly fathers. He doth more wait to give in a way of grace, than we to beg; and, “therefore, will the Lord wait, that he may be gracious unto you” (Isa. xxx. 18). He stands expecting your suits, and employs his wisdom in pitching upon the fittest seasons, when the manifestation of his goodness may be most gracious in itself, and the mercy you want most welcome to you; as it follows, “for the Lord is a God of judgment.” He chooseth the time wherein his doles may be most acceptable to his suppliants; “In an acceptable time have I heard thee” (Isa. xlix. 8). He often opens his hand while we are opening our lips, and his blessings meet our petitions at the first setting out upon their journey to heaven: “While they are yet speaking, I will hear” (Isa. lxv. 24). How often do we hear a secret voice within us, while we are praying, saying, “Your prayer is granted;” as well as hear a voice behind us, while we are erring, saying, “This is the way, walk in it!” And his liberality exceeds often our desires, as well as our deserts; and gives out more than we had the wisdom or confidence to ask. The apostle intimates it in that doxology, “Unto Him who is able to do abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Eph. iii. 20). This power would not have been so strong an argument of comfort, if it were never put in practice; he is more liberal than his creatures are craving. Abraham petitioned for the life of Ishmael, and God promiseth him the “birth of Isaac” (Gen. xvii. 18, 19). Isaac asks for a “child,” and God gives him “two” (Gen. xxv. 21, 22). Jacob desires “food” to eat, and “raiment” to put on; God confines not his bounty within the narrow limits of his petition, but instead of a “staff,” wherewith he passed Jordan, makes him repass it with “two bands” (Gen. xxviii. 20). David asked life of God, and he gave him “life,” and a “crown” to boot (Ps. xxi. 2‒5). The Israelites would have been contented with a free life in Egypt; they only cried to have their chains struck off; God gave them that, and adopts them to be his “peculiar people,” and raises them into a famous state. It is a wonder that God should condescend so much, that he should hear prayers so weak, so cold, so wandering, and gather up our sincere petitions from the dung of our distractions and diffidence. David vents his astonishment at it; “Blessed be God, for he hath shown me marvellous kindness. I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes: nevertheless, thou heardest the voice of my supplication” (Ps. xxxi. 21, 22). How do we wonder at the goodness of a petty man, in granting our desires; how much more should we at the humility and goodness of the most sovereign Majesty of heaven and earth!

7th. The goodness of God is seen in bearing with the infirmities of his people, and accepting imperfect obedience. Though Asa had many blots in his escutcheon, yet they are overlooked, and this note set upon record by Divine goodness, that his heart was perfect towards the Lord all his days; “But the high places were not removed: nevertheless, Asa’s heart was perfect with the Lord all his days” (1 Kings, xv. 14). He takes notice of a sincere, though chequered obedience, to reward it, which could claim nothing but a slight from him, if he were extreme to mark what is done amiss. When there is not an opportunity to work, but only to will, he accepts the will, as if it had passed into work and act. He sees no iniquity in Jacob (Numb. xxiii. 21), i. e. He sees it not so as to cast off a respect to their persons, and the acceptance of their services: his omniscience knows their sins, but his goodness doth not reject their persons. He is of so good a disposition, that he delights in a weak obedience of his servants, not in the imperfection, but in the obedience (Ps. xxxvii. 23); “He delights in the way of a good man,” though he sometimes slips in it: he accepts a poor man’s pigeon, as well as a rich man’s ox: he hath a bottle for the tears, and a book for the “services of the upright,” as well as for the most perfect obedience of angels (Ps. lvi. 8): he preserves their tears, as if they were a rich and generous wine, as the vine‑dresser doth the expressions of the grape.

8th. The goodness of God is seen in afflictions and persecutions. If it be “good for us to be afflicted,” for which we have the psalmist’s vote (Ps. cxix. 71), then goodness in God is the principal cause and orderer of the afflictions. It is his goodness to snatch away that whence we fetch supports for our security, and encouragements for our insolence against him: he takes away the thing which we have some value for, but such as his infinite wisdom sees inconsistent with our true happiness. It is no ill‑will in the physician to take away the hurtful matter the patient loves, and prescribe bitter potions, to advance that health which the other impaired; nor any mark of unkindness in a friend, to wrest a sword out of a madman’s hand, wherewith he was about to stab himself, though it were beset with the most orient pearls. To prevent what is evil, is to do us the greatest good. It is a kindness to prevent a man from falling down a precipice, though it be with a violent blow, that lays him flat upon the ground at some distance from the edge of it. By afflictions he often snaps asunder those chains which fettered us, and quells those passions which ravaged us: he sharpens our faith, and quickens our prayers; he brings us in the secret chamber of our own heart, which we had little mind before to visit by a self‑examination. It is such a goodness that he will vouchsafe to correct man in order to his eternal happiness, that Job makes it one part of his astonishment (Job. vii. 17); “What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him? that thou shouldest set thy heart upon him? and that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every moment?” His strokes are often the magnifyings and exaltings of man. He sets his heart upon man, while he inflicts the smart of his rod: he shows thereby, what a high account he makes of him, and what a special affection he bears to him. When he might treat us with more severity after the breach of his covenant, and make his jealousy flame out against us in furious methods, he will not destroy his relation to us, and leave us to our own inclinations, but deal with us as a father with his children; and when he takes this course with us, it is when it cannot be avoided without our ruin: his goodness would not suffer him to do it, if our badness did not force him to it (Jer. ix. 7), “I will melt them and try them, for how shall I do for the daughter of my people?” What other course can I take but this, according to the nature of man? The goldsmith hath no other way to separate the dross from the metal, but by melting it down. And when the impurities of his people necessitate him to this proceeding, “he sits as a refiner” (Mal. iii. 3): he watches for the purifying the silver, not for his own profit as the goldsmith, but out of a care of them, and good will to them; as himself speaks (Isa. xlviii. 10), “I have refined thee, but not with silver;” or, as some read it, “not for silver.” As when he scatters his people abroad for their sin, he will not leave them without his presence for their “sanctuary” (Ezek. xi. 16): he would by his presence with them supply the place of ordinances, or be an ark to them in the midst of the deluge: his hand that struck them, is never without a goodness to comfort them and pity them. When Jacob was to go into Egypt, which was to prove a furnace of affliction to his offspring, God promises to go down with him, and to “bring him up again” (Gen. xlvi. 4): a promise not only made to Jacob in his person, but to Jacob in his posterity. He returned not out of Egypt in his person, but as the father of a numerous posterity. He that would go down with their root, and afterwards bring up the branches, was certainly with them in all their oppressions: “I will go down with thee.” “Down,” saith one; what a word is that for a Deity! into Egypt, idolatrous Egypt; what a place is that for his holiness!⁴⁶ Yet O, the goodness of God! He never thinks himself low enough to do his people good, nor any place too bad for his society with them. So when he had sent away into captivity the people of Israel by the hand of the Assyrian, his bowels yearn after them in their affliction (Isa. lii. 4, 5); the Assyrian “oppressed them without cause,” i. e. without a just cause in the conqueror to inflict so great an evil upon them, but not without cause from God, whom they had provoked. “Now, therefore, what have I here, saith the Lord?” What do I here? I will not stay behind them. What do I longer here? for I will redeem again those jewels the enemy hath carried away. That chapter is a prophecy of redemption: God shows himself so good to his people in their persecutions, that he gives them occasion to glorify him in the very fires, as the Divine order is (Isa. xxiv. 15), “Wherefore glorify the Lord in the fires.”

9th. The goodness of God is seen in temptations. In those he takes occasion to show his care and watchfulness, as a father uses the distress of a child as an opportunity for manifesting the tenderness of his affection. God is at the beginning and end of every temptation; he measures out both the quality and quantity: he exposeth them not to temptation beyond the ability he had already granted them, or will at the time, or afterwards multiply in them. He hath promised his people that “the gate of hell shall not prevail against them” (1 Cor. x. 13): that “in all things” they shall be “more than conquerors through Him that loved them:” that the most raging malice of hell shall not wrest them out of his hands. His goodness is not less in performing than it was in promising: and as the care of his providence extends to the least as well as the greatest, so the watchfulness of his goodness extends to us in the least as well as in the greatest temptations.

1. The goodness of God appears in shortening temptations. None of them can go beyond their “appointed times” (Dan. xi. 35): the strong blast Satan breathes cannot blow, nor the waves he raises rage one minute beyond the time God allows them; when they have done their work, and come to the period of their time, God speaks the word, and the wind and sea of hell must obey him, and retire into their dens. The more violent temptations are, the shorter time doth God allot to them. The assaults Christ had at the time of his death were of the most pressing and urging nature: the powers of darkness were all in arms against him; the reproaches and scorns put upon him, questioning his sonship, were very sharp; yet a little before his suffering he calls it but an hour (Luke xxii. 53), “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” A short time that men and devils were combined against him; and the time of temptation that is to come upon all the world for their trial, is called but an “hour” (Rev. iii. 10). In all such attempts, the greatness of the rage is a certain prognostic of the shortness of the season (Rev. xii. 12).

2. The goodness of God appears in strengthening his people under temptations. If he doth not restrain the arm of Satan from striking, he gives us a sword to manage the combat, and a shield to bear off the blow (Eph. vi. 16, 17). If he obscures his goodness in one part, he clears and brightens it in another: he either binds the strong man that he shall not stir, or gives us armor to render us victorious. If we fall, it is not for want of provision from him, but for want of our “putting on the armor of God” (Eph. vi. 11, 13). When we have not a strength by nature, he gives it us by grace: he often quells those passions within which would join hands with, and second the temptation without. He either qualifies the temptation suitably to the force we have, or else supplies us with a new strength to mate the temptation he intends to let loose against us; he knows we are but dust, and his goodness will not have us unequally matched. The Jews that in Antiochus’ time were under great temptation to apostasy by reason of the violence of their persecutions, were, “out of weakness, made strong” for the combat (Heb. xi. 34). The Spirit came more strongly upon Sampson when the Philistines most furiously and confidently assaulted him. His Spirit is sent to strengthen his people before the devil is permitted to tempt them (Matt. iv. 2); “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit.” Then; When? When the Spirit had in an extraordinary manner descended upon him (Matt. iii. 16), “then,” and not before. As the angels appeared to Christ, after his temptation, to minister to him, so they appeared to him before his passion, the time of the strongest powers of darkness, to strengthen him for it: he is so good, that when he knows our potsherd strength too weak, he furnisheth our recruits from his own omnipotence (Eph. vi. 10); “Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.” He doth, as it were, breathe in something of his own almightiness, to assist us in our wrestling against principalities and powers, and make us capable to sustain the violent storms of the enemies.

3. The goodness of God is seen in temptations, in giving great comforts in or after them. The Israelites had a more immediate provision of manna from heaven when they were in the wilderness. We read not that the Father spake audibly to the Son, and gave him so loud a testimony, that he was his “beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased,” till he was upon the brink of strong temptations (Matt. iii. 17): nor sent angels to minister immediately to his person, till after his success (Matt. iv. 11). Job never had such evidences of Divine love till after he had felt the sharp strokes of Satan’s malice; he had heard of God before, by the “hearing of the ear,” but afterwards is admitted into greater familiarity (Job. xlii. 5): he had more choice appearances, clearer illuminations, and more lively instructions. And, though his people fall into temptation, yet, after their rising, they have more signal marks of his favor than others have, or themselves, before they fell. Peter had been the butt of Satan’s rage, in tempting him to deny Christ, and he had shamefully complied with the temptation; yet, to him particularly, must the first news of the Redeemer’s resurrection be carried, by God’s order, in the mouth of an angel (Mark xvi. 7); “Go your ways, tell his disciples, and Peter.” We have the greatest communion with God after a victory; the most refreshing truths after the devil hath done his worst. God is ready to furnish us with strength in a combat, and cordials after it.

4. The goodness of God is seen in temptations, in discovering and advancing inward grace by this means. The issue of a temptation of a Christian is often like that of Christ’s, the manifesting a greater vigor of the Divine nature, in affections to God, and enmity to sin. Spices perfume not the air with their scent till they are invaded by the fire: the truth of grace is evidenced by them. The assault of an enemy revives, and actuates that strength and courage which is in a man, perhaps unknown to himself, as well as others, till he meets with an adversary: many seem good, not that they are so in themselves, but for want of a temptation: this many times verifies a virtue, which was owned upon trust before, and discovers that we had more grace than we thought we had. The solicitations of Joseph’s mistress cleared up his chastity: we are many times under temptation, as a candle under the snuffer; it seems to be out, but presently burns the clearer. Afflictions are like those clouds which look black, and eclipse the sun from the earth, but yet, when they drop, refresh that ground they seem to threaten, and multiply the grain on the earth, to serve for our food; and so our troubles, while they wet us to the skin, wash much of that dust from our graces which in a clearer day had been blown upon us. Too much rest corrupts; exercise teacheth us to manage our weapons: the spiritual armor would grow rusty, without opportunity to furbish it up; faith receives a new heart by every combat, and by every victory; like a fire, it spreads itself further, and gathers strength by the blowing of the wind. While the gardener commands his servant to shake the tree, he intends to fasten its roots, and settle it firmer in its place; and is this an ill‑will to the plant?

5. His goodness is seen in temptations, in preventing sin which we were likely to fall into. Paul’s thorn in the flesh was to prevent the pride of his spirit, and let out the windiness of his heart (2 Cor. xii. 7), lest it should be exalted above measure. The goodness of God makes the devil a polisher, while he intends to be a destroyer. The devil never works, but suitably to some corruption lurking in us: Divine goodness makes his fiery darts a means to discover, and so to prevent the treachery of that perfidious inmate in our hearts; humility is a greater benefit than a putrefying pride; if God brings us into a wilderness to be tempted of the devil, it is to bring down our loftiness, to starve our carnal confidence, and expel our rusting “security” (Deut. viii. 2); we many times fly under a temptation to God, from whom we sat too loose before. Is it not goodness to use those means that may drive us into his own arms? It is not a want of goodness to soap the garment, in order to take away the spots; we have reason to bless God for the assaults from hell, as well as pure mercies from heaven; and it is a sin to overlook the one as well as the other, since Divine goodness shines in both.

6. The goodness of God is seen in temptations, in fitting us more for his service. Those whom God intends to make choice instruments in his service, are first seasoned with strong temptations, as timber reserved for the strong beams of a building is first exposed to sun and wind, to make it more compact for its proper use. By this men are brought to answer the end of their creation, the service of God, which is their proper goodness. Peter was, after his foil by a temptation, more courageous in his Master’s cause than before, and the more fitted to strengthen his brethren.

Thus the goodness of God appears in all parts of his government.

V. I shall now come to the Use. First, Of instruction.

1. If God be so good, how unworthy is the contempt or abuse of his goodness! (1.) The contempt and abuse of Divine goodness is frequent and common; it began in the first ages of the world, and commenced a few moments after the creation; it hath not to this day diminished its affronts; Adam began the dance, and his posterity have followed him; the injury was directed against this, when he entertained the seducer’s notion of God’s being an envious Deity, in not indulging such a knowledge as he might have afforded him (Gen. iii. 5): “God doth know, that you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” The charge of envy is utterly inconsistent with pure goodness. What was the language of this notion, so easily entertained by Adam, but that the tempter was better than God, and the nature of God as base and sordid as the nature of a devil? Satan paints God with his own colors, represents him as envious and malicious as himself; Adam admires, and believes the picture to be true, and hangs it up as a beloved one in the closet of his heart. The devil still drives on the same game, fills men’s hearts with the same sentiments, and by the same means he murdered our first parents, he redoubles the stabs to his posterity. Every violation of the Divine law is a contempt of God’s goodness, as well as his sovereignty, because his laws are the products both of the one and the other. Goodness animates them, while sovereignty enjoys them: God hath commanded nothing but what doth conduce to our happiness. All disobedience implies, that his law is a snare to entrap us, and make us miserable, and not an act of kindness, to render us happy, which is a disparagement to this perfection, as if he had commanded what would promote our misery, and prohibited what would conduce to our blessedness: to go far from him, and walk after vanity, is to charge him with our iniquity, and unrighteousness, baseness, and cruelty, in his commands: God implies it by his speech (Jer. ii. 5), “What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and walked after vanity?” as if, like a tyrant, he had consulted cruelty in the composure of them, and designed to feast himself with the blood and misery of his creatures. Every sin is, in its own nature, a denial of God to be the chiefest good and happiness, and implies that it is no great matter to lose him: it is a forsaking him as the Fountain of Life, and a preferring a cracked and “empty cistern” as the chief happiness before him (Jer. ii. 13). Though sin is not so evil as God is good, yet it is the greatest evil, and stands in opposition to God as the greatest good. Sin disorders the frame of the world; it endeavored to frustrate all the communications of Divine goodness in creation, and to stop up the way of any further streams of it to his creatures.

(2.) The abuse and contempt of the Divine goodness is base and disingenious. It is the highest wickedness, because God is the highest goodness, pure goodness that cannot have anything in him worthy of our contempt. Let men injure God under what notion they will, they injure his goodness; because all his attributes are summed up in this one, and all, as it were, deified by it. For whatsoever power or wisdom he might have, if he were destitute of this he were not God: the contempt of his goodness implies him to be the greatest evil, and worst of beings. Badness, not goodness, is the proper object of contempt: as respect is a propension of mind to something that is good, so contempt is an alienation of the mind from something as evil, either simply or supposedly evil in its nature, or base or unworthy in its action towards that person that contemns it. As men desire nothing but what they apprehend to be good, so they slight nothing but what they apprehend to be evil: since nothing, therefore, is more contemned by us than God, nothing more spurned at by us than God, it will follow that we regard him as the most loathsome and despicable being, which is the greatest baseness. And our contempt of him is worse than that of the devils; they injure him under the inevitable strokes of his justice, and we slight him when we are surrounded with the expressions of his bounty; they abuse him under vials of wrath, and we under a plenteous liberality: they malice him, because he inflicts on them what is hurtful; and we despise him, because he commands what is profitable, holy, and honorable, in its own nature, though not in our esteem. They are not under those high obligations as we; they abuse his creating, and we his redeeming goodness: he never sent his Son to shed a drop of blood for their recovery; they can expect nothing but the torment of their persons, and the destruction of their works; but we abuse that goodness that would rescue us since we are miserable, as well as that righteousness which created us innocent. How base is it to use him so ill, that is not once or twice, but a daily, hourly Benefactor to us; whose rain drops upon the earth for our food, and whose sun shines upon the earth for our pleasure as well as profit: such a Benefactor as is the true Proprietor of what we have, and thinks nothing too good for them that think everything too much for his service! How unworthy is it to be guilty of such base carriage towards him, whose benefits we cannot want, nor live without! How disingenious both to God and ourselves, to “despise the riches of his goodness, that are designed to lead us to repentance” (Rom. ii. 4), and by that to happiness! And more heinous are the sins of renewed men upon this account, because they are against his “goodness” not only offered to them, but tasted by them; not only against the notion of goodness, but the experience of goodness, and the relished sweetness of choicest bounty.

(3.) God takes this contempt of his goodness heinously. He never upbraids men with anything in the Scripture, but with the abuse of the good things he hath vouchsafed them, and the unmindfulness of the obligations arising from them. This he bears with the greatest regret and indignation. Thus he upbraids Eli with the preference of him to the priesthood above other families (1 Sam. ii. 28): and David with his exaltation to the crown of Israel (2 Sam. xii. 7‒9), when they abused those honors to carelessness and licentiousness. All sins offend God, but sins against his goodness do more disparage him; and, therefore, his fury is the greater, by how much the more liberally his benefits have been dispensed. It was for abuse of Divine goodness, as soon as it was tasted, that some angels were hurled from their blessed habitation and more happy nature: it was for this Adam lost his present enjoyments, and future happiness, for the abuse of God’s goodness in creation. For the abuse of God’s goodness the old world fell under the fury of the flood; and for the contempt of the Divine goodness in redemption, Jerusalem, once the darling city of the infinite Monarch of the world, was made an Aceldema, a field of blood. For this cause it is, that candlesticks have been removed, great lights put out, nations overturned, and ignorance hath triumphed in places bright before with the beams of heaven. God would have little care of his own goodness, if he always prostituted the fruits of it to our contempt. Why should we expect he should always continue that to us which he sees we will never use to his service? When the Israelites would dedicate the gifts of God to the service of Baal, then he would return, and take away his corn, and his wine, and make them know by the loss, that those things were his in dominion, which they abused, as if they had been sovereign lords of them (Hos. ii. 8, 9). Benefits are entailed upon us no longer than we obey (Josh. xxiv. 20): “If you forsake the Lord, he will do you hurt, after he hath done you good.” While we obey, his bounty shall shower upon us: and when we revolt, his justice shall consume us. Present mercies abused, are no bulwarks against independent judgments. God hath curses as well as blessings; and they shall light more heavy when his blessings have been more weighty: justice is never so severe as when it comes to right goodness, and revenge its quarrel for the injuries received.

A convenient inquiry may be here, How God’s goodness is contemned or abused?

1st. By a forgetfulness of his benefits. We enjoy the mercies, and forget the Donor; we take what he gives, and pay not the tribute he deserves; the “Israelites forgot God their Saviour, which had done great things in Egypt” (Ps. cvi. 21). We send God’s mercies where we would have God send our sins, into the land of forgetfulness, and write his benefits where himself will write the names of the wicked, in the dust, which every wind defaceth: the remembrance soon wears out of our minds, and we are so far from remembering what we had before, that we scarce think of that hand that gives, the very instant wherein his benefits drop upon us. Adam basely forgot his Benefactor, presently after he had been made capable to remember him, and reflect upon him; the first remark we hear of him, is of his forgetfulness, not a syllable of his thankfulness. We forget those souls he hath lodged in us, to acknowledge his favors to our bodies; we forget that image wherewith he beautified us, and that Christ he exposed as a criminal to death for our rescue, which is such an act of goodness as cannot be expressed by the eloquence of the tongue, or conceived by the acuteness of the mind. Those things which are so common, that they cannot be invisible to our eyes, are unregarded by our minds; our sense prompts our understanding, and our understanding is deaf to the plain dictates of our sense. We forget his goodness in the sun, while it warms us, and his showers while they enrich us; in the corn, while it nourisheth us, and the wine while it refresheth us; “She did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil” (Hos. ii. 8): she that might have read my hand in every bit of bread, and every drop of drink, did not consider this. It is an injustice to forget the benefits we receive from man; it is a crime of a higher nature to forget those dispensed to us by the hand of God, who gives us those things that all the world cannot furnish us with, without him. The inhabitants of Troas will condemn us, who worshipped mice, in a grateful remembrance of the victory they had made easy for them, by gnawing their enemies’ bow‑strings. They were mindful of the courtesy of animals, though unintended by those creatures; and we are regardless of the fore‑meditated bounty of God. It is in God’s judgment a brutishness beyond that of a stupid ox, or a duller ass; “The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people do not consider” (Isa. i. 3). The ox knows his owner that pastures him, and the ass his master that feeds him; but man is not so good as to be like to them, but so bad as to be inferior to them: he forgets Him that sustains him, and spurns at him, instead of valuing him for the benefits conferred by him. How horrible is it, that God should lose more by his bounty, than he would do by his parsimony! If we had blessings more sparingly, we should remember him more gratefully. If he had sent us a bit of bread in a distress by a miracle, as he did to Elijah by the ravens, it would have stuck longer in our memories; but the sense of daily favors soonest wears out of our minds, which are as great miracles as any in their own nature, and the products of the same power; but the wonder they should beget in us, is obscured by their frequency.

2d. The goodness of God is contemned by an impatient murmuring. Our repinings proceed from an inconsideration of God’s free liberality, and an ungrateful temper of spirit. Most men are guilty of this. It is implied in the commendation of Job under his pressures (Job i. 22): “In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly,” as if it were a character peculiar to him, whereby he verified the eulogy God had given of him before (ver. 8), that there was “none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man.” What is implied by the expression? but that scarce a man is to be found without unjust complaints of God, and charging him under their crosses with cruelty; when in the greatest they have much more reason to bless him for his bounty in the remainder. Good men have not been innocent. Baruch complains of God for adding grief to his sorrow, not furnishing him with those “great things” he expected (Jer. xlv. 3, 4); whereas, he had matter of thankfulness in God’s gift of his life as a prey. But his master chargeth God in a higher strain: “O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived: I am in derision daily” (Jer. xx. 7). When he met with reproach instead of success in the execution of his function, he quarrels with God, as if he had a mind to cheat him into a mischief, when he had more reason to bless him for the honor of being employed in his service. Because we have not what we expect, we slight his goodness in what we enjoy. If he cross us in one thing, he might have made us successless in more: if he take away some things, he might as well have taken away all. The unmerited remainder, though never so little, deserves our acknowledgements more than the deserved loss can justify our repining. And for that which is snatched from us, there is more cause to be thankful, that we have enjoyed it so long, than to murmur that we possess it no longer. Adam’s sin implies a repining: he imagined God had been short in his goodness, in not giving him a knowledge he foolishly conceived himself capable of, and would venture a forfeiture of what already had been bountifully bestowed upon him. Man thought God had envied him, and ever since man studies to be even with God, and envies him the free disposal of his own doles: all murmuring, either in our own cause or others, charges God with a want of goodness, because there is a want of that which he foolishly thinks would make himself or others happy. The language of this sin is, that man thinks himself better than God; and if it were in his power, would express a more plentiful goodness than his Maker. As man is apt to think himself “more pure than God” (Job iv. 17), so of a kinder nature also than an infinite goodness. The Israelites are a wonderful example of this contempt of Divine goodness; they had been spectators of the greatest miracles, and partakers of the choicest deliverance: he had solicited their redemption from captivity; and when words would not do, he came to blows for them, musters up his judgments against their enemies, and, at last, as the Lord of hosts and God of battles, totally defeats their pursuers, and drowns them and their proud hopes of victory in the Red Sea. Little account was made of all this by the redeemed ones; “they lightly esteemed the rock of their salvation,” and launch into greater unworthiness, instead of being thankful for the breaking their yoke: they are angry with him, that he had done so much for them: they repented that ever they had complied with him, for their own deliverance, and had a regret that they had been brought out of Egypt: they were angry that they were freemen, and that their chains had been knocked off: they were more desirous to return to the oppression of their Egyptian tyrants, than have God for their governor and caterer, and be fed with his manna. “It was well with us in Egypt: Why came we forth out of Egypt?” which is called a “despising the Lord” (Numb. xi. 18, 20). They were so far from rejoicing in the expectation of the future benefits promised them, that they murmured that they had not enjoyed less; they were so sottish, as to be desirous to put themselves into the irons whence God had delivered them: they would seek a remedy in that Egypt, which had been the prison of their nation, and under the successors of that Pharaoh, who had been the invader of their liberties; they would snatch Moses from the place where the Lord, by an extraordinary providence, hath established him; they would stone those that minded them of the goodness of God to them, and thereupon of their crime and their duty (Numb. xvi. 3, 9‒11); they rose against their benefactors, and “murmured against God,” that had strengthened the hands of their deliverers; they “despised the manna” he had sent them, and “despised the pleasant land” he intended them (Ps. cvi. 24): all which was a high contempt of God and his unparalleled goodness and care of them. All murmuring is an accusation of Divine goodness.

3d. By unbelief and impenitency. What is the reason we come not to Him when he calls us; but some secret imagination that he is of an ill nature, means not as he speaks, but intends to mock us, instead of welcoming us? When we neglect his call, spurn at his bowels, slight the riches of his grace; as it is a disparagement to his wisdom to despise his counsel, so it is to his goodness to slight his offers, as though you could make better provision for yourselves than he is able or willing to do. It disgraceth that which is designed to the praise of the glory of his grace, and renders God cruel to his own Son, as being an unnecessary shedder of his blood. As the devil by his temptation of Adam, envied God the glory of his creating goodness, so unbelief envies God the glory of his redeeming grace: it is a bidding defiance to him, and challenging him to muster up the legions of his judgments, rather than have sent his Son to suffer for us, or his Spirit to solicit us. Since the sending his Son was the greatest act of goodness that God could express, the refusal of him must be the highest reproach of that liberality God designed to commend to the world in so rare a gift: the ingratitude in this refusal must be as high in the rank of sins, as the person slighted is in the rank of beings, or rank of gifts. Christ is a gift (Rom. v. 16), the royalest gift, an unparalleled gift, springing from inconceivable treasures of goodness (John iii. 16). What is our turning our backs upon this gift but a low opinion of it? as though the richest jewel of heaven were not so valuable as a swinish pleasure on earth, and deserved to be treated at no other rate than if mere offals had been presented to us. The plain language of it is, that there were no gracious intentions for our welfare in this present; and that he is not as good, in the mission of his Son, as he would induce us to imagine. Impenitence is also an abuse of this goodness, either by presumption, as if God would entertain rebels that bid defiance against him with the same respect that he doth his prostrate and weeping suppliants; that he will have the same regard to the swine as to the children, and lodge them in the same habitation; or it speaks a suspicion of God as a deceitful Master, one of a pretended, not a real goodness, that makes promises to mock men, and invitations to delude them: that he is an implacable tyrant, rather than a good Father; a rigid, not a kind Being, delightful only to mark our faults, and overlook our services.

4th. The goodness of God is contemned by a distrust of his providence. As all trust in him supposeth him good, so all distrust of him supposeth him evil; either without goodness to exert his power, or without power to display his goodness. Job seems to have a spice of this in his complaint (Job xxx. 20), “I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me; I stand up, and thou regardest me not.” It is a fume of the serpent’s venom, first breathed into man, to suspect him of cruelty, severity, regardlessness, even under the daily evidences of his good disposition: and it is ordinary not to believe him when he speaks, nor credit him when he acts; to question the goodness of his precepts, and misinterpret the kindness of his providence; as if they were designed for the supports of a tyranny, and the deceit of the miserable. Thus the Israelites thought their miraculous deliverance from Egypt, and the placing them in security in the wilderness, was intended only to pound them up for a slaughter (Numb. xiv. 3): thus they defiled the lustre of Divine goodness which they had so highly experimented, and placed not that confidence in him which was due to so frequent a Benefactor, and thereby crucified the rich kindness of God, as Genebrard translates the word “limited” (Ps. lxxviii. 41). It is also a jealousy of Divine goodness, when we seek to deliver ourselves from our straits by unlawful ways, as though God had not kindness enough to deliver us without committing evil. What! did God make a world, and all creatures in it, to think of them no more, not to concern himself in their affairs? If he be good, he is diffusive, and delights to communicate himself; and what subjects should there be for it, but those that seek him, and implore his assistance? It is an indignity to Divine bounty to have such mean thoughts of it, that it should be of a nature contrary to that of his works, which, the better they are, the more diffusive they are. Doth a man distrust that the sun will not shine any more, or the earth not bring forth its fruit? Doth he distrust the goodness of an approved medicine for the expelling his distemper? If we distrust those things, should we not render ourselves ridiculous and sottish? and if we distrust the Creator of those things, do we not make ourselves contemners of his goodness? If his caring for us be a principal argument to move us to cast our care upon him, as it is 1 Pet. v. 7, “Casting your care upon him, for he cares for you;” then, if we cast not our care upon him, it is a denial of his gracious care of us, as if he regarded not what becomes of us.

5th. We do contemn or abuse his goodness by omissions of duty. These sometimes spring from injurious conceits of God, which end in desperate resolutions. It was the crime of a good prophet in his passion (2 Kings vi. 33): “This evil is of the Lord, why should I wait on the Lord any longer?” God designs nothing but mischief to us, and we will seek him no longer. And the complaint of those in Malachi (Mal. iii. 14) is of the same nature; “Ye have said, It is vain to serve God; and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinances?” We have all this while served a hard Master, not a Benefactor, and have not been answered with advantages proportionable to our services; we have met with a hand too niggardly to dispense that reward which is due to the largeness of our offerings. When men will not lift up their eyes to heaven, and solicit nothing but the contrivance of their own brain, and the industry of their own heads, they disown Divine goodness, and approve themselves as their own gods, and the spring of their own prosperity. Those that run not to God in their necessity, to crave his support, deny either the arm of his power, or the disposition of his will, to sustain and deliver them: they must have very mean sentiments, or none at all, of this perfection, or think him either too empty to fill them, or too churlish to relieve them; that he is of a narrow and contracted temper, and that they may sooner expect to be made better and happier by anything else than by him: and as we contemn his goodness by a total omission of those duties which respect our own advantage and supply, as prayer; so we contemn him as the chiefest good, by an omission of the due manner of any act of worship which is designed purely for the acknowledgment of him. As every omission of the material part of a duty is a denial of his sovereignty as commanding it, so every omission of the manner of it, not performing it with due esteem and valuation of him, a surrender of all the powers of our soul to him, is a denial of him as the most amiable object. But certainly to omit those addresses to God which his precept enjoins, and his excellency deserves, speaks this language, that they can be well enough, and do well enough, without God, and stand in no need of his goodness to maintain them. The neglect or refusal in a malefactor to supplicate for his pardon, is a wrong to, and contempt of, the prince’s goodness: either implying that he hath not a goodness in his nature worthy of an address, or that he scorns to be obliged to him for any exercise of it.

6th. The goodness of God is contemned, or abused, in relying upon our services to procure God’s good will to us. As, when we stand in need either of some particular mercy, or special assistance; when pressures are heavy, and we have little hopes of ease in an ordinary way; when the devotions in course have not prevailed for what we want; we engage ourselves by extraordinary vows and promises to God, hereby to open that goodness which seems to be locked up from us.⁴⁷ Sometimes, indeed, vows may proceed from a sole desire to engage ourselves to God, from a sense of the levity and inconstancy of our spirits; binding ourselves to God by something more sacred and inviolable than a common resolution. But many times the vowing the building of a temple, endowing a hospital, giving so much in alms if God will free them from a fit of sickness, and spin out the thread of their lives a little longer (as hath been frequent among the Romanists), arises from an opinion of laziness and a selfishness in the Divine goodness; that it must be squeezed out by some solemn promises of returns to him, before it will exercise itself to take their parts. Popular vows are often the effects of an ignorance of the free and bubbling nature of this perfection of the generousness and royalty of Divine goodness: as if God were of a mean and mechanic temper, not to part with anything unless he were in some measure paid for it; and of so bad a nature as not to give passage to any kindness to his creature without a bribe. It implies also that he is of an ignorant as well as contracted goodness; that he hath so little understanding, and so much weakness of judgment, as to be taken with such trifles, and ceremonial courtships, and little promises; and meditated only low designs, in imparting his bounty: it is just as if a malefactor should speak to a prince,—Sir, if you will but bestow a pardon upon me, and prevent the death I have merited for this crime, I will give you this rattle. All vows made with such a temper of spirit to God, are as injurious and abusive to his goodness, as any man will judge such an offer to be to a majestic and gracious prince; as if it were a trading, not a free and royal goodness.

7th. The goodness of God is abused when we give up our souls and affections to those benefits we have from God; when we make those things God’s rivals, which were sent to woo us for him, and offer those affections to the presents themselves, which they were sent to solicit for the Master. This is done, when either we place our trust in them, or glue our choicest affections to them. This charge God brings against Jerusalem, the trusting in her own beauty, glory, and strength, though it was a comeliness put upon her by God (Ezek. xvi. 14, 15). When a little sunshine of prosperity breaks out upon us, we are apt to grasp it with so much eagerness and closeness, as if we had no other foundation to settle ourselves upon, no other being that might challenge from us our sole dependence. And the love of ourselves, and of creatures above God, is very natural to us: “Lovers of themselves, and lovers of pleasure more than of God” (2 Tim. iii. 2, 4). Self‑love is the root, and the love of pleasures the top branch, that mounts its head highest against heaven. It is for the love of the world that the dangers of the sea are passed over, that men descend into the bowels of the earth, pass nights without sleep, undertake suits without intermission, wade through many inconveniences, venture their souls, and contemn God; in those things men glory, and foolishly grow proud by them, and think themselves safe and happy in them.⁴⁸ Now to love ourselves above God, is to own ourselves better than God, and that we transcend him in an amiable goodness; or, if we love ourselves equal with God, it at least manifests that we think God no better than ourselves; and think ourselves our own chief good, and deny anything above us to outstrip us in goodness, whereby to deserve to be the centre of our affections and actions, and to love any other creature above him, is to conclude some defect in God; that he hath not so much goodness in his own nature as that creature hath, to complete our felicity; that God is a slighter thing than that creature. It is to account God, what all the things in the world are,—an imaginary happiness, a goodness of clay; and them what God is,—a Supreme Goodness. It is to value the goodness of a drop above that of the spring, and the goodness of the spark above that of the sun. As if the bounty of God were of a less alloy than the advantages we immediately receive from the hands of a silly worm. By how much the better we think a creature to be, and place our affections chiefly upon it, by so much the more deficient and indigent we conclude God; for God wants so much in our conception, as the other thing hath goodness above him in our thoughts. Thus is God lessened below the creature, as if he had a mixture of evil in him, and were capable of an imperfect goodness. He that esteems the sun that shines upon him, the clothes that warm him, the food that nourisheth him, or any other benefit above the Donor, regards them as more comely and useful than God himself; and behaves himself as if he were more obliged to them than to God, who bestowed those advantageous qualities upon them.

8th. The Divine goodness is contemned, in sinning more freely upon the account of that goodness, and employing God’s benefits in a drudgery for our lusts. This is a treachery to his goodness, to make his benefits serve for an end quite contrary to that for which he sent them. As if God had been plentiful in his blessings, to hire them to be more fierce in their rebellions, and fed them to no other purpose, but that they might more strongly kick against him; this is the fruit which corrupt nature produceth. Thus the Egyptians, who had so fertile a country, prove unthankful to the Creator, by adoring the meanest creatures, and putting the sceptre of the Monarch of the world into the hands of the sottishest and cruellest beasts. And the Romans multiply their idols, as God multiplied their victories. This is also the complaint of God concerning Israel: “She did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal” (Hos. ii. 8). They ungratefully employed the blessings of God in the worship of an idol against the will of the Donor. So in Hos. x. 1; “According to the multitude of his fruit, he hath increased the altars; according to the goodness of his land, they have made goodly images.” They followed their own inventions with the strength of my outward blessings; as their wealth increased, they increased the ornaments of their images; so that what were before of wood and stone, they advanced to gold and silver. And the like complaint you may see Ezek. 16, 17. Thus,

[1.] The benefits of God are abused to pride, when men standing upon a higher ground of outward prosperity, vaunt it loftily above their neighbors; the common fault of those that enjoy a worldly sunshine, which the apostle observes in his direction to Timothy; “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high‑minded” (1 Tim. vi. 17). It is an ill use of Divine blessings to be filled by them with pride and wind. Also,

[2.] When men abuse plenty to ease; because they have abundance, spend their time in idleness, and make no other use of Divine benefits than to trifle away their time, and be utterly useless to the world.

[3.] When they also abuse peace and other blessing to security; as they which would not believe the threatenings of judgment, and the storm coming from a far country, because the Lord was in Sion, and her King in her; “Is not the Lord in Sion, is not her King in her” (Jer. viii. 19)? thinking they might continue their progress in their sin, because they had the temple, the seat of the Divine glory, Sion, and the promise of an everlasting kingdom to David; abusing the promise of God to presumption and security, and turning the grace of God into wantonness.

[4.] Again, when they abuse the bounty of God to sensuality and luxury, misemploying the provisions God gives them, in resolving to live like beasts, when by a good improvement of them, they might attain the life of angels. Thus is the light of the sun abused to conduct them, and the fruits of the earth abused to enable them to their prodigious debauchery: as we do, saith one, with the Thames, which brings us in provision, and we soil it with our rubbish.⁴⁹ The more God sows his gifts, the more we sow our cockle and darnel. Thus we make our outward happiness the most unhappy part of our lives, and by the strength of Divine blessings, exceed all laws of reason and religion too. How unworthy a carriage is this, to use the expressions of Divine goodness as occasions of a greater outrage and affront of him; when we stab his honor by those instruments he puts into our hands to glorify him! as if a favorite should turn that sword into the bowels of his prince, wherewith he knighted him; and a servant, enriched by a lord, should hire by that wealth, murderers to take away his life! How brutish is it, the more God courts us with his blessings, the more to spurn at him with our feet; like the mule that lifts up his heel against the dam, as soon as ever it hath sucked her! We never beat God out of our hearts, but by his own gifts; he receives no blows from men, but by those instruments he gave them to promote their happiness. While man is an enjoyer, he makes God a loser, by his own blessings; inflames his rebellion by those benefits which should kindle his love; and runs from him by the strength of those favors which should endear the donor to him: “Do you thus requite the Lord, O foolish people, and unwise?” is the expostulation (Deut. xxxii. 6). Divine goodness appears in the complaint of the abuse of it, in giving them titles below their crime, and complaining more of their being unfaithful to their own interest, than enemies to his glory: “foolish and unwise” in neglecting their own happiness; a charge below the crime, which deserved to be “abominable, ungrateful people to a prodigy.” All this carriage towards God, is as if a man should knock the chirurgeon on the head, as soon as he hath set and bound up his dislocated members. So God compares the ungrateful behavior of the Israelites against him: “Though I have bound and strengthened their arms, yet do they imagine mischief against me” (Hos. vii. 15): a metaphor taken from a chirurgeon that applies corroborating plasters to a broken limb.

9th. We contemn the goodness of God, in ascribing our benefits to other causes than Divine goodness. Thus Israel ascribed her felicity, plenty, and success, to her idols, as “rewards which her lovers had given her” (Hos. ii. 5, 12). And this charge Daniel brought home upon Belshazzar: “Thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, and brass, and iron; and the God in whose hand is thy breath, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified” (Dan. v. 23). The God who hath given success to the arms of thy ancestors, and conveyed by their hands so large a dominion to thee, thou hast not honored in the same rank with the sordidest of thy idols. It is the same case, when we own him not as the author of any success in our affairs, but by an overweaning conceit of our own sagacity, applaud and admire ourselves, and overlook the hand that conducted us, and brought our endeavors to a good issue. We eclipse the glory of Divine goodness, by setting the crown that is due to it upon the head of our own industry; a sacrilege worse than Belshazzar’s drinking of wine with his lords and concubines in the sacred vessels pilfered from the temple; as in that place of Daniel. This was the proud vaunt of the Assyrian conqueror, for which God threatens to punish the fruit of his stout heart: “By the strength of my hand, I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent;” and, “I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures;” and, “I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man” (Isa. x. 12‒14). Not a word of Divine goodness and assistance in all this, but applauding his own courage and conduct. This is a robbing of God, to set up ourselves, and making Divine goodness a footstool, to ascend into his throne. And as it is unjust, so it is ridiculous, to ascribe to ourselves, or instruments, the chief honor of any work; as ridiculous as if a soldier, after a victory, should erect an altar to the honor of his sword; or an artificer offer sacrifices to the tools whereby he completed some excellent and useful invention: a practice that every rational man would disdain, where he should see it. It is a discarding any thoughts of the goodness of God, when we imagine, that we chiefly owe anything in this world to our own industry or wit, to friends or means, as though Divine goodness did not open its hand to interest itself in our affairs, support our ability, direct our counsels, and mingle itself with anything we do. God is the principal author of any advantage that accrues to us, of any wise resolution we fix upon, or any proper way we take to compass it; no man can be wise in opposition to God, act wisely, or well without him; his goodness inspires men with generous and magnificent counsels, and furnisheth them with fit and proportionable means; when he withdraws his hand, men’s heads grow foolish, and their hands feeble; folly and weakness drop upon them, as darkness upon the world upon the removal of the sun; it is an abuse of Divine goodness not to own it, but erect an idol in its place. Ezra was of another mind when he ascribed to the good hand of God the “providing ministers for the temple,” and not to his own care and diligence (chap. viii. 18); and Nehemiah, the “success he had with the king” in the behalf of his nation, and not solely to his favor with the prince, or the arts he used to please him (chap. ii. 8).

2. The second information is this: If God be so good, it is a certain argument that man is fallen from his original state. It is the complaint of man, sometimes, that other creatures have more of earthly happiness than men have; live freer from cares and trouble, and are not racked with that solicitousness and anxiety as man is: have not such distempers to embitter their lives. It is a good ground for man to look into himself, and consider whether he hath not, some ways or other, disobliged God more than other creatures can possibly do. We often find that the creatures men have need of in this state, do not answer the expectation of man: “Cursed be the ground for thy sake” (Gen. iii. 17). A fruitful land is made barren; thorns and thistles triumph upon the face of the earth, instead of good fruit. Is it likely that that goodness, which is as infinite as his power, and knows no more limits than his Almightiness, should imprint so many scars upon the world, if he had not been heinously provoked by some miscarriage of his creature? Infinite Goodness could never move Infinite Justice to inflict punishment upon creatures, if they had not highly merited it; we cannot think that any creature was blemished with a principle of disturbance, as it came first out of the hand of God. All things were certainly settled in a due order and dependence upon one another; nothing could be ungrateful and unuseful to man by the original law of their creation; if there had, it had not been goodness, but evil and baseness, that had created the world. When we see, therefore, the course of nature overturned, the order Divine goodness had placed, disturbed; and the creatures pronounced good and useful to man, employed as instruments of vengeance against him; we must conclude some horrible blot upon human nature, and very odious to a God of infinite goodness; and that this blot was dashed upon man by himself, and his own fault; for it is repugnant to the infinite goodness of God to put into the creature a sinning nature, to hurry him into sin, and then punish him for that which he had impressed upon him. The goodness of God inclines him to love goodness wherever he finds it; and not to punish any that have not deserved it by their own crimes. The curse we therefore see the creatures groan under, the disorders in nature, the frustrating the expectations of man in the fruits of the earth and plentiful harvests, the trouble he is continually exposed to in the world, which tedders down his spirit from more generous employments, shows that man is not what he was when Divine goodness first erected him; but hath admitted into his nature something more uncomely in the eye of God; and so heinous, that it puts his goodness sometimes to a stand, and makes him lay aside the blessings his hand was filled with, to take up the arms of vengeance, wherewith to fight against the world. Divine goodness would have secured his creatures from any such invasions, and never used those things against man, which he designed in the first frame for man’s service, were there not some detestable disorder risen in the nature of man which makes God withhold his liberality and change the dispensation of his numerous benefits into legions of judgments. The consideration of the Divine goodness, which is a notion that man naturally concludes to be inseparable from the Deity, would, to an unbiassed reason, verify the history of those punishments settled upon man in the third chapter of Genesis, and make the whole seem more probable to reason at the first relation. This instruction naturally flows from the doctrine of Divine goodness: if God be so good, it is a certain argument that man is fallen from his original state.

3. The third information is this: If God be infinitely good, there can be no just complaint against God, if men be punished for abusing his goodness. Man had nothing, nay, it was impossible he could have anything, from Infinite Goodness to disoblige him, but to engage him. God never did, nay, never could, draw his sword against man, till man had slighted him and affronted him by the strength of his own bounty. It is by this God doth justify his severest proceedings against men, and very seldom charges them with any else as the matter of their provocations (Hos. ii. 9): “Therefore will I return, and take away my corn in the time thereof, and my wine in the season thereof, and will recover my wool and my flax.” And in Ezek. xvi., after he had drawn out a bill of complaint against them, and inserted only the abuse of his benefits, as a justification of what he intended to do; he concludes (ver. 27), “Behold, therefore, I have stretched out my hand over thee, and diminished thy ordinary food, and delivered thee unto the will of them that hate thee.” When men suffer, they suffer justly; they were not constrained by any violence, or forced by any necessity, nor provoked by any ill usage, to turn head against God, but broke the bands of the strongest obligations and most tender allurements. What man, what devil, can justly blame God for punishing them, after they had been so intolerably bold, as to fly in the face of that goodness that had obliged them, by giving them beings of a higher elevation than to inferior creatures, and furnishing them with sufficient strength to continue in their first habitation? Man seems to have less reason to accuse God of rigor than devils; since, after his unreasonable revolt, a more express goodness than that which created him hath solicited him to repentance, courted him by melting promises and expostulations, added undeniable arguments of bounty, and drawn out the choicest treasures of heaven, in the gift of his Son, to prevail over men’s perversity. And yet man, after he might arrive to the height and happiness of an angel, will be fond of continuing in the meanness and misery of a devil; and more strongly link himself to the society of the damned spirits, wherein, by his first rebellion, he had incorporated himself. Who can blame God for vindicating his own goodness from such desperate contempts, and the extreme ingratitude of man? If God be good, it is our happiness to adhere to him; if we depart from him, we depart from goodness; and if evil happen to us, we cannot blame God, but ourselves, for our departure.⁵⁰ Why are men happy? because they cleave to God. Why are men miserable? because they recede from God. It is then our own fault that we are miserable; God cannot be charged with any injustice if we be miserable, since his goodness gave means to prevent it, and afterwards added means to recover us from it, but all despised by us. The doctrine of Divine goodness justifies every stone laid in the foundation of hell, and every spark in that burning furnace, since it is for the abuse of infinite goodness that it was kindled.

4. The fourth information: Here is a certain argument, both for God’s fitness to govern the world, and his actual government of it.

(1.) This renders him fit for the government of the world, and gives him a full title to it. This perfection doth the Psalmist celebrate throughout the 107th Psalm, where he declares God’s works of providence (ver. 8, 15, 21, 32). Power without goodness would deface, instead of preserving; ruin is the fruit of rigor without kindness; but God, because of his infinite and immutable goodness, cannot do anything unworthy of himself, and uncomely in itself, or destructive to any moral goodness in the creature. It is impossible he should do anything that is base, or act anything but for the best, because he is essentially and naturally, and, therefore, necessarily good. As a good tree cannot bring forth bad fruit, so a good God cannot produce evil acts, no more than a pure beam of the sun can engender so much as a mite of darkness, or infinite heat produce any particle of cold. As God is so much light, that he can be no darkness, so he is so much good, that he can have no evil; and because there is no evil in him, nothing simply evil can be produced by him. Since he is good by nature, all evil is against his nature, and God can do nothing against his nature; it would be a part of impotence in him to will that which is evil; and, therefore, the misery man feels, as well as the sin whereby he deserves that misery, are said to be from himself (Hos. xiii. 9): “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself!” And though God sends judgments upon the world, we have shown these to be intended for the support and vindication of his goodness. And Hezekiah judged no otherwise, when, after the threatening of the devastation of his house, the plundering his treasures, and captivity of his posterity, he replies, “Good is the word of the Lord, which thou hast spoken” (Isa. xxxix. 8). God cannot act anything that is base and cruel, because his goodness is as infinite as his power, and his power acts nothing but what his wisdom directs, and his goodness moves him to. Wisdom is the head in government, omniscience the eye, power the arm, and goodness the heart and spirit in them, that animates all.

(2.) As goodness renders Him fit to govern the world, so God doth actually govern the world. Can we understand this perfection aright, and yet imagine that he is of so morose a disposition as to neglect the care of his creatures? that his excellency, which was displayed in framing the world, should withdraw and wrap up itself in his own bosom, without looking out, and darting itself out in the disposal of them? Can that which moved him first to erect a world, suffer him to be unmindful of his own work? Would he design first to display it in creation, and afterwards obscure the honor of it? That cannot be entitled an infinite permanent goodness, which should be so indifferent as to let the creatures tumble together as they please, without any order, after he had moulded them in his hand. If goodness be diffusive and communicative of itself, can it consist with the nature of it, to extend itself to the giving the creatures being, and then withdraw and contract itself, not caring what becomes of them? It is the nature of goodness, after it hath communicated itself, to enlarge its channels; that fountain that springs up in a little hollow part of the earth, doth in a short progress increase its streams, and widen the passages through which it runs; it would be a blemish to Divine goodness, if it did desert what it made, and leave things to wild confusions, which would be, if a good hand did not manage them, and a good mind preside over them. This is the lesson intended to us by all his judgments (Dan. iv. 17), “That the living may know that the Most High rules in the kingdoms of men.” If he doth not actually govern the world, he must have devolved it somewhere, either to men or angels; not to men, who naturally want a goodness and wisdom to govern themselves, much more to govern others exactly. And, besides the misinterpretations of actions, they are liable to the want of patience, to bear with the provocations of the world; since some of the best at one time in the world, and, in the greatest example of meekness and sweetness, would have kindled a fire in heaven to have consumed the Samaritans, for no other affront than a non‑entertainment of their Master and themselves (Luke ix. 54). Nor hath he committed the disposal of things to angels, either good or bad; though he useth them as instruments in his government, yet they are not the principal pilots to steer the world. Bad angels certainly are not; they would make continual ravages, meditate ruin, never defeat their own counsels, which they manage by the wicked as the instruments in the world, nor fill their spirits with disquiet and restlessness when they are engaged in some ruinous design, as often is experienced: nor hath he committed it to the good angels, who, for aught we know, are not more numerous than the evil ones are; but besides, we can scarcely think their finite nature capable of so much goodness, as to bear the innumerable debaucheries, villanies, blasphemies, vented in one year, one week, one day, one hour, throughout the world; their zeal for their Creator might well be supposed to move them to testify their affection to him in a constant and speedy righting of his injured honor upon the heads of the offenders. The evil angels have too much cruelty, and would have no care of justice, but take pleasure in the blood of the most innocent, as well as the most criminal; and the good angels have too little tenderness to suffer so many crimes: since the world, therefore, continues without those floods of judgments, which it daily merits; since, notwithstanding all the provocations, the order of it is preserved; it is a testimony that an Infinite Goodness holds the helm in his hands, and spreads its warm wings over it.

5. The fifth information is this: Hence we may infer the ground of all religion; it is this perfection of goodness. As the goodness of God is the lustre of all his attributes, so it is the foundation and link of all true religious worship: the natural religion of the heathens was introduced by the consideration of Divine goodness, in the being he had bestowed upon them, and the provisions that were made for them. Divine bounty was the motive to erect altars, and present sacrifices, though they mistook the object of their worship, and offered the dues of the Creator to the instruments whereby he conveyed his benefits to them: and you find, that the religion instituted by him among the Jews, was enforced upon them by the consideration of their miraculous deliverance from Egypt, the preservation of them in the wilderness, and the enfeoffing them in a land flowing with milk and honey. Every act of bounty and success the heathens received, moved them to appoint new feasts, and repeat their adorations of those deities they thought the authors and promoters of their victories and welfare. The devil did not mistake the common sentiment of the world in Divine service, when he alleged to God, that “Job did not fear him for nought,” i. e. worship him for nothing (Job i. 9). All acts of devotion take their rise from God’s liberality, either from what they have or from what they hope; praise speaks the possession, and prayer the expectation, of some benefit from his hand: though some of the heathens made fear to be the prime cause of the acknowledgment and worship of a deity, yet surely something else besides and beyond this established so great a thing as religion in the world; an ingenuous religion could never have been born into the world without a notion of goodness, and would have gaped its last as soon as this notion should have expired in the minds of men. What encouragement can fear of power give, without sense of goodness? just as much as thunder hath, to invite a man to the place where it is like to fall, and crush him. The nature of “fear” is to drive from, and the nature of “goodness” to allure to, the object: the Divine thunders, prodigies, and other armies of his justice in the world, which are the marks of his power, could conclude in nothing but a slavish worship: fear alone would have made men blaspheme the Deity; instead of serving him, they would have fretted against him; they might have offered him a trembling worship; but they could never have, in their minds, thought him worthy of an adoration; they would rather have secretly complained of him, and cursed him in their heart, than inwardly have admired him: the issue would have been the same, which Job’s wife advised him to, when God withdrew his protection from his goods and body: “Curse God, and die” (Job ii. 9). It is certainly the common sentiment of men, that he that acts cruelly and tyrannically, is not worthy of an integrity to be retained towards him in the hearts of his subjects; but Job fortifies himself against this temptation from his bosom friend, by the consideration of the good he had received from God, which did more deserve a worship from him than the present evil had reason to discourage it. Alas! what is only feared, is hated, not adored. Would any seek to an irreconcileable enemy? would any person affectionately list himself in the service of a man void of all good disposition? would any distressed person put up a petition to that prince, who never gave any experiment of the sweetness of his nature, but always satiated himself with the blood of the meanest criminals? All affection to service is rooted up when hopes of receiving good are extinguished: there could not be a spark of that in the world, which is properly called religion, without a notion of goodness; the existence of God is the first pillar, and the goodness of God in rewarding the next, upon which coming to him (which includes all acts of devotion) is established (Heb. xi. 6); “He that comes unto God, must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him:” if either of those pillars be not thought to stand firm, all religion falls to the ground. It is this, as the most agreeable motive, that the apostle James uses, to encourage men’s approach to God, because “he gives liberally, and upbraideth not” (James i. 5). A man of a kind heart and a bountiful hand shall have his gate thronged with suppliants, who sometimes would be willing to lay down their lives; “for a good man one would even dare to die:” when one of a niggardly or tyrannical temper shall be destitute of all free and affectionate applications. What eyes would be lifted up to heaven? what hands stretched out, if there were not a knowledge of goodness there to enliven their hopes of speeding in their petitions? Therefore Christ orders our prayers to be directed to God as a Father, which is a title of tenderness, as well as a “Father in heaven,” a mark of his greatness; the one to support our confidence, as well as the other to preserve our distance. God could not be ingenuously adored and acknowledged, if he were not liberal as well as powerful; the goodness of God is the foundation of all ingenuous religion, devotion and worship.

6. The sixth instruction: The goodness of God renders God amiable. His goodness renders him beautiful, and his beauty renders him lovely; both are linked together (Zech. ix. 17): “How great is his goodness! and how great is his beauty!” This is the most powerful attractive, and masters the affections of the soul: it is goodness only supposed, or real, that is thought worthy to demerit our affections to anything. If there be not a reality of this, or at least an opinion and estimation of it in an object, it would want a force and vigor to allure our will. This perfection of God is the loadstone to draw us, and the centre for our spirits to rest in.

1. This renders God amiable to himself. His goodness is his “Godhead” (Rom. i. 20): by his Godhead is meant his goodness; if he loves his Godhead for itself, he loves his goodness for itself; he would not be good, if he did not love himself; and if there were anything more excellent, and had a greater goodness than himself, he would not be good if he did not love that greater goodness above himself; for not only a hatred of goodness is evil, but an indifferent or cold affection to goodness hath a tincture of evil in it. If God were not good, and yet should love himself in the highest manner, he would be the greatest evil, and do the greatest evil in that act; for he would set his love upon that which is not the proper object of such an affection, but the object of aversion: his own infinite excellency, and goodness of his nature, renders him lovely and delightful to himself; without this he could not love himself in a commendable and worthy way, and becoming the purity of a Deity; and he cannot but love himself for this; for, as creatures, by not loving him as the supreme good, deny him to be the choicest good, so God would deny himself, and his own goodness, if he did not love himself, and that for his goodness. But the apostle tells us, that “God cannot deny himself” (2 Tim. ii. 13). Self‑love, upon this account, is the only prerogative of God, because there is not anything better than himself that can lay any just claim to his affections: he only ought to love himself, and it would be an injustice in him to himself, if he did not. He only can love himself for this: an infinite goodness ought to be infinitely loved, but he only being infinite, can only love himself according to the due merit of his own goodness. He cannot be so amiable to any man, to any angel, to the highest seraphim, as he is to himself; because he is only capable in regard of his infinite wisdom, to know the infiniteness of his own goodness. And no creature can love him as he ought to be loved, unless it had the same infinite capacity of understanding to know him, and of affection to embrace him. This first renders God amiable to himself.

2. It ought therefore to render him amiable to us. What renders him lovely to his own eye, ought to render him so to ours; and since, by the shortness of our understandings, we cannot love him as he merits, yet we should be induced by the measures of his bounty, to love him as we can. If this do not present him lovely to us, we own him rather a devil than a God: if his goodness moved him to frame creatures, his goodness moved him also to frame creatures for himself and his own glory. It is a mighty wrong to him not to look with a delightful eye upon the marks of it, and return an affection to God in some measure suitable to his liberality to us; we are descended as low as brutes, if we understand him not to be the perfect good; and we are descended as low as devils, if our affections are not attracted by it.

(1.) If God were not infinitely good, he could not be the object of supreme love. If he were finitely good, there might be other things as good as God, and then God in justice could not challenge our choicest affections to him above anything else: it would be a defect of goodness in him to demand it, because he would despoil that which were equally good with him, of its due and right to our affections, which it might claim from us upon the account of its goodness: God would be unjust to challenge more than was due to him; for he would claim that chiefly to himself which another had a lawful share in. Nothing can be supremely loved that hath not a triumphant excellency above all other things; where is an equality of goodness, neither can justly challenge a supremacy, but only an equality of affection.

(2.) This attribute of goodness renders him more lovely than any other attribute. He never requires our adoration of him so much as the strongest or wisest, but as the best of beings: he uses this chiefly to constrain and allure us. Why would he be feared or worshipped, but because “there is forgiveness with him” (Ps. cxxx. 4)? it is for his goodness’ sake that he is sued to by his people in distress (Ps. xxv. 7), “For thy goodness’ sake, O Lord.” Men may be admired because of their knowledge, but they are affected because of their goodness: the will, in all the variety of objects it pursues, centres in this one thing of good as the term of its appetite. All things are beloved by men, because they have been bettered by them. Severity can never conquer enmity, and kindle love: were there nothing but wrath in the Deity, it would make him be feared, but render him odious, and that to an innocent nature. As the spouse speaks of Christ (Cant. v. 10, 11), so we may of God: though she commends him for his head, the excellency of his wisdom; his eyes, the extent of his omniscience; his hands, the greatness of his power; and his legs, the swiftness of his motions and ways to and for his people; yet the “sweetness of his mouth,” in his gracious words and promises, closes all, and is followed with nothing but an exclamation, that “he is altogether lovely” (ver. 16). His mouth, in pronouncing pardon of sin, and justification of the person, presents him most lovely. His power to do good is admirable, but his will to do good is amiable: this puts a gloss upon all his other attributes. Though he had knowledge to understand the depth of our necessities, and power to prevent them, or rescue us from them, yet his knowledge would be fruitless, and his power useless, if he were of a rigid nature, and not touched with any sentiments of kindness.

(3.) This goodness therefore lays a strong obligation upon us. It is true he is lovely in regard of his absolute goodness, or the goodness of his nature, but we should hardly be persuaded to return him an affection without his relative goodness, his benefits to his creatures; we are obliged by both to love him.

[1.] By his absolute goodness, or the goodness of his nature. Suppose a creature had drawn its original from something else wherein God had no influx, and had never received the least mite of a benefit from him, but from some other hand, yet the infinite excellency and goodness of his nature would merit the love of that creature, and it would act sordidly and disingenuously if it did not discover a mighty respect for God: for what ingenuity could there be in a rational creature, that were possessed with no esteem for any nature filled with unbounded goodness and excellency, though he had never been obliged to him for any favor? That man is accounted odious, and justly despicable by man, that reproaches and disesteems, nay, that doth not value a person of a high virtue in himself, and an universal goodness and charity to others, though himself never stood in need of his charity, and never had any benefit conveyed from his hands, nor ever saw his face, or had any commerce with him: a value of such a person is but a just due to the natural claim of virtue. And, indeed, the first object of love is God in the excellency of his own nature, as the first object of love in marriage is the person; the portion is a thing consequent upon it. To love God only for his benefits, is to love ourselves first, and him secondarily: to love God for his own goodness and excellency, is a true love of God; a love of him for himself. That flaming fire in his own breast, though we have not a spark of it, hath a right to kindle one in ours to him.

[2.] By his relative goodness, or that of his benefits. Though the excellency of his own nature, wherein there is a combination of goodness, must needs ravish an apprehensive mind; yet a reflection upon his imparted kindness, both in the beings we have from him, and the support we have by him, must enhance his estimation. When the excellency of his nature, and the expressions of his bounty are in conjunction, the excellency of his own nature renders him estimable in a way of justice, and the greatness of his benefits renders him valuable in a way of gratitude: the first ravisheth, and the other allures and melts: he hath enough in his nature to attract, and sufficient in his bounty to engage our affections. The excellency of his nature is strong enough of itself to blow up our affections to him, were there not a malignity in our hearts that represents him under the notion of an enemy; therefore in regard of our corrupt state, the consideration of Divine largesses comes in for a share in the elevation of our affections. For, indeed, it is a very hard thing for a man to love another, though never so well qualified, and of an eminent virtue, while he believes him to be his enemy, and one that will severely handle him, though he hath before received many good turns from him; the virtue, valor, and courtesy of a prince, will hardly make him affected by those against whom he is in arms, and that are daily pilfered by his soldiers, unless they have hopes of a reparation from him, and future security from injuries. Christ, in the repetition of the command to “love God with all our mind, with all our heart, and with all our soul,” i. e. with such an ardency above all things which glitter in our eye, or can be created by him, considers him as “our God” (Matt. xxii. 37). And the Psalmist considers him as one that had kindly employed his power for him, in the eruption of his love (Ps. xviii. 1), “I will love thee, O Lord, my strength;” and so in Ps. cxvi. 1, “I love the Lord, because he hath heard the voice of my supplications.” An esteem of the benefactor is inseparable from gratitude for the received benefits: and should not then the unparalleled kindness of God advance him in our thoughts, much more than slighter courtesies do a created benefactor in ours? It is an obligation on every man’s nature to answer bounty with gratitude, and goodness with love. Hence you never knew any man, nor can the records of eternity produce any man, or devil, that ever hated any person, or anything as good in itself: it is a thing absolutely repugnant to the nature of any rational creature. The devils hate not God because he is good, but because he is not so good to them as they would have him; because he will not unlock their chains, turn them into liberty, and restore them to happiness; i. e. because he will not desert the rights of abused goodness. But how should we send up flames of love to that God, since we are under his direct beams, and enjoy such plentiful influences! If the sun is comely in itself, yet it is more amiable to us, by the light we see, and the warmth we feel.

1st. The greatness of his benefits have reason to affect us with a love to him. The impress he made upon our souls when he extracted us from the darkness of nothing; the comeliness he hath put upon us by his own breath; the care he took of our recovery, when we had lost ourselves; the expense he was at for our regaining our defaced beauty; the gift he made of his Son; the affectionate calls we have heard to over‑master our corrupt appetites, move us to repentance, and make us disaffect our beloved misery; the loud sound of his word in our ears, and the more inward knockings of his Spirit in our heart; the offering us the gift of himself, and the everlasting happiness he courts us to, besides those common favors we enjoy in the world, which are all the streams of his rich bounty: the voice of all is loud enough to solicit our love, and the merit of all ought to be strong enough to engage our love: “there is none like the God of Jeshurun, who rides upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky” (Deut. xxxiii. 26).

2d. The unmeritedness of them doth enhance this. It is but reason to love him who hath loved us first (1 John iv. 19). Hath he placed his delight upon any when they were nothing, and after they were sinful; and shall he set his delight upon such vile persons, and shall not we set our love upon so excellent an object as himself? How base are we, if his goodness doth not constrain us to affect him who hath been so free in his favor to us, who have merited the quite contrary at his hands? If “his tender mercies are over all his works” (Ps. cxlv. 9), he ought for it to be esteemed by all his works that are capable of a rational estimation.

3d. Goodness in creatures makes them estimable, much more should the goodness of God render him lovely to us. If we love a little spark of goodness in this or that creature, if a drop be so delicious to us, shall not the immense Sun of goodness, the ever‑flowing Fountain of all, be much more delightful? The original excellency always outstrips what is derived from it; if so mean and contracted an object as a little creature deserves estimation for a little mite communicated to it, so great and extended a goodness as is in the Creator much more merits it at our hands: he is good after the infinite methods of a Deity: a weak resemblance is lovely; much more amiable, then, must be the incomprehensible original of that beauty. We love creatures for what we think to be good in them, though it may be hurtful; and shall we not love God, who is a real and unblemished goodness, and from whose hand are poured out all those blessings that are conveyed to us by second causes? The object that delights us, the capacity we have to delight in it, are both from him; our love, therefore, to him should transcend the affection we bear to any instruments he moves for our welfare. “Among the gods, there is none like thee, O Lord, neither are there any works like unto thy works” (Ps. lxxxvi. 8): among the pleasantest creatures there is none like the Creator, nor any goodness like unto his goodness. Shall we love the food that nourisheth us, and the medicine that cures us, and the silver whereby we furnish ourselves with useful commodities? Shall we love a horse, or dog, for the benefits we have by them? and shall not the spring of all those draw our souls after it, and make us aspire to the honor of loving and embracing Him who hath stored every creature with that which may pleasure us? But, instead of endeavoring to parallel our affection with his kindness, we endeavor to make our disingenuity as extensive and towering as his Divine goodness.

4th. This is the true end of the manifestation of his goodness, that he might appear amiable, and have a return of affection. Did God display his goodness only to be thought of, or to be loved? It is the want of such a return, that he hath usually aggravated, from the benefits he hath bestowed upon men. Every thought of him should be attended with a motion suitable to the excellency of his nature and works. Can we think those nobler spirits, the angels, look upon themselves, or those frames of things in the heavens and earth, without starting some practical affection to him for them? Their knowledge of his excellency and works cannot be a lazy contemplation: it is impossible their wills and affections should be a thousand miles distant from their understandings in their operations. It is not the least part of his condescending goodness to court in such methods the affections of us worms, and manifest his desire to be beloved by us. Let us give him, then, that affection he deserves, as well as demands, and which cannot be withheld from him without horrible sacrilege. There is nothing worthy of love besides him; let no fire be kindled in our hearts, but what may ascend directly to him.

7. The seventh instruction is this: This renders God a fit object of trust and confidence. Since none is good but God, none can be a full and satisfactory ground or object of confidence but God: as all things derive their beings, so they derive their helpfulness to us from God; they are not, therefore, the principal objects of trust, but that goodness alone that renders them fit instruments of our support; they can no more challenge from us a stable confidence, than they can a supreme affection. It is by this the Psalmist allures men to a trust in him; “Taste and see how good the Lord is:” what is the consequence? “Blessed is the man that trusts in thee” (Ps. xxxiv. 8). The voice of Divine goodness sounds nothing more intelligibly, and a taste of it produceth nothing more effectually, than this. As the vials of his justice are to make us fear him, so the streams of his goodness are to make us rely on him: as his patience is designed to broach our repentance, so his goodness is most proper to strengthen our assurance in him: that goodness which surmounted so many difficulties, and conquered so many motions that might be made against any repeated exercise of it, after it had been abused by the first rebellion of man; that goodness that after so much contempt of it, appeared in such a majestic tenderness, and threw aside those impediments which men had cast in the way of Divine inclinations: this goodness is the foundation of all reliance upon God. Who is better than God? and, therefore, who more to be trusted than God? As his power cannot act anything weakly, so his goodness cannot act anything unbecomingly, and unworthy of his infinite majesty. And here consider,

(1.) Goodness is the first motive of trust. Nothing but this could be the encouragement to man, had he stood in a state of innocence, to present himself before God; the majesty of God would have constrained him to keep his due distance, but the goodness of God could only hearten his confidence: it is nothing else now that can preserve the same temper in us in our lapsed condition. To regard him only as the Judge of our crimes, will drive us from him; but only the regard of him as the Donor of our blessings, will allure us to him. The principal foundation of faith is not the word of God, but God himself, and God as considered in this perfection. As the goodness of God in his invitations and providential blessings “leads us to repentance” (Rom. ii. 4), so, by the same reason, the goodness of God by his promises leads us to reliance. If God be not first believed to be good, he would not be believed at all in anything that he speaks or swears: if you were not satisfied in the goodness of a man, though he should swear a thousand times, you would value neither his word nor oath as any security. Many times, where we are certain of the goodness of a man, we are willing to trust him without his promise. This Divine perfection gives credit to the Divine promises; they of themselves would not be a sufficient ground of trust, without an apprehension of his truth; nor would his truth be very comfortable without a belief of his good will, whereby we are assured that what he promises to give, he gives liberally, free, and without regret. The truth of the promiser makes the promise credible, but the goodness of the promiser makes it cheerfully relied on. In Ps. lxxiii. (Asaph’s penitential psalm for his distrust of God,) he begins the first verse with an assertion of this attribute (ver. 1), “Truly God is good to Israel;” and ends with this fruit of it (ver. 28), “I will put my trust in the Lord God.” It is a mighty ill nature that receives not with assurance the dictates of Infinite Goodness, (that cannot deceive or frustrate the hopes we conceive of him) that is inconceivably more abundant in the breast and inclinations of the promiser, than expressible in the words of his promise, “All true faith works by love” (Gal. v. 6), and, therefore, necessarily includes a particular eyeing of this excellency in the Divine nature, which renders him amiable, and is the motive and encouragement of a love to him. His power indeed is a foundation of trust, but his goodness is the principal motive of it. His power without good‑will would be dangerous, and could not allure affection; and his good‑will without power would be useless; and though it might merit a love, yet could not create a confidence; both in conjunction are strong grounds of hope, especially since his goodness is of the same infinity with his wisdom and power; and that he can be no more wanting in the effusions of this upon them that seek him, than in his wisdom to contrive, or his power to effect, his designs and works.

(2.) This goodness is more the foundation and motive of trust under the gospel, than under the law. They under the law had more evidences of Divine power, and their trust eyed that much; though there was an eminency of goodness in the frequent deliverances they had, yet the power of God had a more glorious dress than his goodness, because of the extraordinary and miraculous ways whereby he brought those deliverances about. Therefore, in the catalogue of believers in Heb. xi. you shall find the power of God to be the centre of their rest and trust; and their faith was built upon the extraordinary marks of Divine power, which were frequently visible to them. But under the gospel, goodness and love was intended by God to be the chief object of trust; suitable to the excellency of that dispensation, he would have an exercise of more ingenuity in the creatures: therefore, it is said (Hos. iii. 5), a promise of gospel‑times, “They shall fear God and his goodness in the latter days,” when they shall return to “seek the Lord, and David their king.” It is not said, they shall fear God, and his power, but the Lord and his goodness, or the Lord for his goodness: fear is often in the Old Testament taken for faith, or trust. This Divine goodness, the object of faith, is that goodness discovered in David their king; the Messiah, our Jesus. God, in this dispensation, recommends his goodness and love, and reveals it more clearly than other attributes, that the soul might have more prevailing and sweeter attractives to confide in him.

(3.) A confidence in him gives him the glory of his goodness. Most nations that had nothing but the light of nature, thought it a great part of the honor that was due to God, to implore his goodness, and cast their cares upon it. To do good, is the most honorable thing in the world, and to acknowledge a goodness in a way of confidence, is as high an honor as we can give to it, and a great part of gratitude for what it hath already expressed. Therefore we find often, that an acknowledgment of one benefit received, was attended with a trust in him for what they should in the future need (Ps. lvi. 13): “Thou hast delivered my soul from death, wilt thou not deliver my feet from falling?” So, 2 Cor. i. 10: and they who have been most eminent for their trust in him, have had the greatest eulogies and commendations from him. As a diffidence doth disparage this perfection, thinking it meaner and shallower than it is, so confidence highly honors it. We never please him more, than when we trust in him; “The Lord takes pleasure in them that fear him, in them that hope in his mercy” (Ps. cxlvii. 11). He takes it for an honor to have this attribute exalted by such a carriage of his creature. He is no less offended when we think his heart straitened, as if he were a parsimonious God; than when we think his arm shortened, as if he were an impotent and feeble God. Let us, therefore, make this use of his goodness, to hearten our faith. When we are scared by the terrors of his justice, when we are dazzled by the arts of his wisdom, and confounded by the splendor of his majesty, we may take refuge in the sanctuary of his goodness; this will encourage us, as well as astonish us; whereas, the consideration of his other attributes would only amaze us, but can never refresh us, but when they are considered marching under the conduct and banners of this. When all the other perfections of the Divine nature are looked upon in conjunction with this excellency, each of them send forth ravishing and benign influences upon the applying creature. It is more advantageous to depend upon Divine bounty, than our own cares; we may have better assurance upon this account in his cares for us, than in ours for ourselves. Our goodness for ourselves is finite; and besides, we are too ignorant: his goodness is infinite, and attended with an infinite wisdom; we have reason to distrust ourselves, not God. We have reason to be at rest, under that kind influence we have so often experimented; he hath so much goodness, that he can have no deceit: his goodness in making the promise, and his goodness in working the heart to a reliance on it, are grounds of trust in him; “Remember thy word to thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to hope” (Ps. cxix. 49). If his promise did not please him, why did he make it? If reliance on the promise did not please him, why did his goodness work it? It would be inconsistent with his goodness to mock his creature, and it would be the highest mockery to publish his word, and create a temper in the heart of his supplicant, suited to his promise which he never intended to satisfy. He can as little wrong his creature, as wrong himself; and, therefore, can never disappoint that faith which in his own methods casts itself into the arms of his kindness, and is his own workmanship, and calls him Author. That goodness that imparted itself so freely in creation, will not neglect those nobler creatures that put their trust in him. This renders God a fit object for trust and confidence.

8. The eighth instruction: This renders God worthy to be obeyed and honored. There is an excellency in God to allure, as well as sovereignty to enjoin obedience: the infinite excellency of his nature is so great, that if his goodness had promised us nothing to encourage our obedience, we ought to prefer him before ourselves, devote ourselves to serve him, and make his glory our greatest content; but much more when he hath given such admirable expressions of his liberality, and stored us with hopes of richer and fuller streams of it. When David considered the absolute goodness of his nature, and the relative goodness of his benefits, he presently expresseth an ardent desire to be acquainted with the Divine statutes, that he might make ingenious returns in a dutiful observance; “Thou art good, and thou dost good; teach me thy statutes” (Ps. cxix. 68). As his goodness is the original, so the acknowledgment of it is the end of all, which cannot be without an observance of his will. His goodness requires of us an ingenuous, not a servile obedience. And this is established upon two foundations.

[1.] Because the bounty of God hath laid upon us the strongest obligations. The strength of an obligation depends upon the greatness and numerousness of the benefits received. The more excellent the favors are which are conferred upon any person, the more right hath the benefactor to claim an observance from the person bettered by him. Much of the rule and empire which hath been in several ages conferred by communities upon princes, hath had its first spring from a sense of the advantages they have received by them, either in protecting them from their enemies, or rescuing them from an ignoble captivity; in enlarging their territories, or increasing their wealth. Conquest hath been the original of a constrained, but beneficence always the original of a voluntary and free subjection.⁵¹ Obedience to parents is founded upon their right, because they are instrumental in bestowing upon us being and life; and because this of life is so great a benefit, the law of nature never dissolves this obligation of obeying and honoring parents; it is as long‑lived as the law of nature, and hath an universal practice, by the strength of that law, in all parts of the world: and those rightful chains are not unlocked, but by that which unties the knot between soul and body: much more hath God a right to be obeyed and reverenced, who is the principal Benefactor, and moved all those second causes to impart to us, what conduced to our advantage. The just authority of God over us results from the superlativeness of his blessings he hath poured down upon us, which cannot be equalled, much less exceeded, by any other. As therefore upon this account he hath a claim to our choicest affections, so he hath also to most exact obedience; and neither one nor other can be denied him, without a sordid and disingenuous ingratitude; God therefore aggravates the rebellion of the Jews from the cares he had in the bringing them up (Isa. ii. 2), and the miraculous deliverance from Egypt (Jer. xi. 7, 8); implying that those benefits were strong obligations to an ingenuous observance of him.

[2.] It is established upon this, that God can enjoin the observance of nothing but what is good. He may by the right of his sovereign dominion, command that which is indifferent in its own nature: as in positive laws, the not eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which had not been evil in itself, set aside the command of God to the contrary; and likewise in those ceremonial laws he gave the Jews: but in regard to the transcendent goodness and righteousness of his nature, he will not, he cannot command anything that is evil in itself, or repugnant to the true interest of his creature; and God never obliged the creature to anything but what was so free from damaging it, that it highly conduced to its good and welfare: and therefore it is said, that “his commands are not grievous” (1 John v. 3): not grievous in their own nature, nor grievous to one possessed with a true reason. The command given to Adam in Paradise was not grievous in itself, nor could he ever have thought it so, but upon a false supposition instilled into him by the tempter. There is a pleasure results from the law of God to a holy rational nature, a sweetness tasted both by the understanding and by the will, for they both “rejoice the heart and enlighten the eyes” of the mind (Ps. xix. 8). God being essentially wisdom and goodness, cannot deviate from that goodness in any orders he gives the creature; whatsoever he enacts must be agreeable to that rule, and therefore he can will nothing but what is good and excellent, and what is good for the creature; for since he hath put originally into man a natural instinct to desire that which is good, he would never enact any thing for the creature’s observance,⁵² that might control that desire imprinted by himself, but what might countenance that impression of his own hand; for if God did otherwise, he would contradict his own natural law, and be a deluder of his creatures, if he impressed upon them desires one way, and ordered directions another. The truth is, all his moral precepts are comely in themselves, and they receive not their goodness from God’s positive command, but that command supposeth their goodness; if everything were good because God loves it, or because God wills it, i. e. that God’s loving it or willing it made that good which was not good before, then, as Camero well argues somewhere, God’s goodness would depend upon his loving himself; he was good because he loved himself, and was not good till he loved himself; whereas, indeed, God’s loving himself, doth not make him good, but supposeth him good: he was good in the order of nature before he loved himself; and his being good was the ground of his loving himself, because, as was said before, if there were anything better than God, God would love that; for it is inconsistent with the nature of God and infinite goodness not to love that which is good, and not to love that supremely which is the supreme good. Further to understand it, you may consider, if the question be asked, why God loves himself? you would think it a reasonable answer to say, because he is good. But if the question be asked, why God is good? you would think that answer, because he loves himself, would be destitute of reason; but the true answer would be, because his nature is so, and he could not be God if he were not good: therefore God’s goodness is in order of our conception before his self‑love, and not his self‑love before his goodness; so the moral things God commands, are good in themselves before God commands them; and such, that if God should command the contrary, it would openly speak him evil and unrighteous. Abstract from Scripture, and weigh things in your own reason; could you conceive God good, if he should command a creature not to love him? could you preserve the notion of a good nature in him, if he did command murder, adultery, tyranny, and cutting of throats? You would wonder to what purpose he made the world, and framed it for society, if such things were ordered, that should deface all comeliness of society: the moral commands given in the word, appeared of themselves very beautiful to mere reason, that had no knowledge of the written law; they are good, and because they are so, his goodness had moved his sovereign authority strictly to enjoin them. Now this goodness, whereby he cannot oblige a creature to anything that is evil, speaks him highly worthy of our observance, and our disobedience to his law to be full of inconceivable malignity: that is the last thing.

Second Use is of comfort. He is a good without mixture, good without weariness—none good but God, none good purely, none good inexhaustibly, but God; because he is good, we may, upon our speaking, expect his instruction; “Good is the Lord, therefore will he teach sinners in his way” (Ps. xxv. 8). His goodness makes him stoop to be the tutor to those worms that lie prostrate before him; and though they are sinners full of filth, he drives them not from his school, nor denies them his medicines, if they apply themselves to him as a physician. He is good in removing the punishment due to our crimes, and good in bestowing benefits not due to our merits; because he is good, penitent believers may expect forgiveness; “Thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive” (Ps. lxxxvi. 5). He acts not according to the rigor of the law, but willingly grants his pardon to those that fly into the arms of the Mediator; his goodness makes him more ready to forgive, than our necessities make us desirous to enjoy; he charged not upon Job his impatient expressions in cursing the day of his birth; his goodness passed that over in silence, and extols him for speaking the thing that is right, right in the main, when he charges his friends for not speaking of him the thing that is right, as his servant Job had done (Job xlii. 7). He is so good, that if we offer the least thing sincerely, he will graciously receive it; if we have not a lamb to offer, a pigeon or turtle shall be accepted upon his altar; he stands not upon costly presents, but sincerely tendered services. All conditions are sweetened by it; whatsoever any in the world enjoy, is from a redundancy of this goodness; but whatsoever a good man enjoys, is from a propriety in this goodness.

1. Here is comfort in our addresses to him. If he be a fountain and sea of goodness, he cannot be weary of doing good, no more than a fountain or sea are of flowing. All goodness delights to communicate itself; infinite goodness hath then an infinite delight in expressing itself; it is a part of his goodness not to be weary of showing it; he can never, then, be weary of being solicited for the effusions of it; if he rejoices over his people to do them good, he will rejoice in any opportunities offered to him to honor his goodness, and gladly meet with a fit subject for it; he therefore delights in prayer. Never can we so delight in addressing, as he doth in imparting; he delights more in our prayers than we can ourselves; goodness is not pleased with shyness. To what purpose did his immense bounty bestow his Son upon us, but that we should be “accepted” both in our persons and petitions (Eph. i. 6)? “His eyes are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry” (Ps. xxxiv. 15); he fixes the eye of his goodness upon them, and opens the ears of his goodness for them; he is pleased to behold them, and pleased to listen to them, as if he had no pleasure in anything else; he loves to be sought to, to give a vent to his bounty; “Acquaint thyself with God, and thereby good shall come unto thee” (Job xxii. 21). The word signifies, to accustom ourselves to God; the more we accustom ourselves in speaking, the more he will accustom himself in giving; he loves not to keep his goodness close under lock and key, as men do their treasures. If we knock, he opens his exchequer (Matt. vii. 7); his goodness is as flexible to our importunities, as his power is invincible by the arm of a silly worm; he thinks his liberality honored by being applied to, and your address to be a recompense for his expense. There is no reason to fear, since he hath so kindly invited us, but he will as heartily welcome us; the nature of goodness is to compassionate and communicate, to pity and relieve, and that with a heartiness and cheerfulness; man is weary of being often solicited, because he hath a finite, not a bottomless, goodness: he gives sometimes to be rid of his suppliant, not to encourage him to a second approach. But every experience God gives us of his bounty, is a motive to solicit him afresh, and a kind of obligation he hath laid upon himself to “renew it” (1 Sam. xvii. 37): it is one part of his goodness that it is boundless and bottomless; we need not fear the wasting of it, nor any weariness in him to bestow it. The stock cannot be spent, and infinite kindness can never become niggardly; when we have enjoyed it, there is still an infinite ocean in Him to refresh us, and as full streams as ever to supply us. What an encouragement have we to draw near to God! We run in our straits to those that we think have most good will, as well as power to relieve and protect us. The oftener we come to him, and the nearer we approach to him, the more of his influences we shall feel: as the nearer the sun, the more of its heat insinuates itself into us. The greatness of God, joined with his goodness, hath more reason to encourage our approach to him, than our flight from him, because his greatness never goes unattended with his goodness; and if we were not so good, he would not be so great in the apprehensions of any creature. How may his goodness, in the great gift of his Son, encourage us to apply to him: since he hath set him as a day’s‑man between himself and us, and appointed him an Advocate to present our requests for us, and speed them at the throne of grace; and he never leaves till Divine goodness subscribes a fiat to our believing and just petitions!

2. Here is comfort in afflictions. What can we fear from the conduct of Infinite Goodness? Can his hand be heavy upon those that are humble before him? They are the hands of Infinite Power indeed, but there is not any motion of it upon his people, but is ordered by a goodness as infinite as his power, which will not suffer any affliction to be too sharp or too long. By what ways soever he conveys grace to us here, and prepares us for glory hereafter, they are good, and those are the good things he hath chiefly obliged himself to give (Ps. lxxxiv. 11): “Grace and glory” will he “give, and no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.” This David comforted himself with, in that which his devout soul accounted the greatest calamity, his absence from the courts and house of God (ver. 2). Not an ill will, but a good will, directs his scourges; he is not an idle spectator of our combats; his thoughts are fuller of kindness than ours, in any case, can be of trouble: and because he is good, he wills the best good in everything he acts; in exercising virtue, or correcting vice. There is no affliction without some apparent mixtures of goodness; when he speaks how he had smitten Israel (Jer. ii. 30), he presently adds (ver. 31), “Have I been a wilderness to Israel, a land of darkness?” Though he led them through a desert, yet he was not a desert to them; he was no land of darkness to them; while they marched through a land of barrenness, he was a caterer to provide them “manna,” and a place of “broad rivers” and streams. How often hath Divine goodness made our afflictions our consolations; our diseases, our medicines, and his gentle strokes, reviving cordials! How doth he provide for us above our deserts, even while he doth punish us beneath our merits! Divine goodness can no more mean ill, than Divine wisdom can be mistaken in its end, or Divine power overruled in its actions. “Charity thinks no evil” (1 Cor. xiii. 5); charity in the stream doth not, much less doth charity in the fountain. To be afflicted by a hand of goodness hath something comfortable in it, when to be afflicted by an evil hand is very odious. Elijah, who was loth to die by the hand of a whorish idolatrous Jezebel, was very desirous to die by the hand of God (1 Kings, xix. 2‒4). He accounted it a misery to have died by her hand, who hated him, and had nothing but cruelty; and, therefore, fled from her, when he wished for death, as a desirable thing by the hand of that God who had been good to him, and could not but be good in whatsoever he acted.

3. The third comfort flowing from this doctrine of the goodness of God, is, it is a ground of assurance of happiness. If God be so good, that nothing is better, and loves himself, as he is good, he cannot be wanting in love to those that resemble his nature, and imitate his goodness: he cannot but love his own image of goodness; wherever he finds it, he cannot but be bountiful to it; for it is impossible there can be any love to any object, without wishing well to it, and doing well for it. If the soul loves God as its chiefest good, God will love the soul as his pious servant: as he hath offered to them the highest allurements, so he will not withhold the choicest communications. Goodness cannot be a deluding thing; it cannot consist with the nobleness and largeness of this perfection to invite the creature to him, and leave the creature empty of him when it comes. It is inconsistent with this perfection to give the creature a knowledge of himself, and a desire of enjoyment larger than that knowledge; a desire to know, and enjoy him perpetually, yet never intend to bestow an eternal communication of himself upon it. The nature of man was erected by the goodness of God, but with an enlarged desire for the highest good, and a capacity of enjoying it. Can goodness be thought to be deceitful, to frustrate its own work, be tired with its own effusions, to let a gracious soul groan under its burden, and never resolve to ease him of it; to see delightfully the aspirings of the creature to another state, and resolve never to admit him to a happy issue of those desires? It is not agreeable to this inconceivable perfection to be unconcerned in the longings of his creature, since their first longings were placed in them by that goodness which is so free from mocking the creature, or falling short of its well‑grounded expectations or desires, that it infinitely exceeds them. If man had continued in innocence, the goodness of God, without question, would have continued him in happiness: and, since he hath had so much goodness to restore man, would it not be dishonorable to that goodness to break his own conditions, and defeat the believing creature of happiness, after it hath complied with his terms? He is a believer’s God in covenant, and is a God in the utmost extent of this attribute, as well as of any other; and, therefore, will not communicate mean and shallow benefits, but according to the grandeur of it, sovereign and divine, such as the gift of a happy immortality. Since he had no obligation upon him, to make any promise, but the sweetness of his own nature, the same is as strong upon him to make all the words of his grace good; they cannot be invalid in any one tittle of them as long as his nature remains the same; and his goodness cannot be diminished without the impairing of his Godhead, since it is inseparable from it. Divine goodness will not let any man serve God for nought; he hath promised our weak obedience more than any man in his right wits can say it merits (Matt. x. 42): “A cup of cold water shall not lose its reward.” He will manifest our good actions as he gave so high a testimony to Job, in the face of the devil, his accuser: it will not only be the happiness of the soul, but of the body, the whole man, since soul and body were in conjunction in the acts of righteousness; it consists not with the goodness of God to reward the one, and to let the other lie in the ruins of its first nothing: to bestow joy upon the one for its being principal, and leave the other without any sentiments of joy, that was instrumental in those good works, both commanded and approved by God: he that had the goodness to pity our original dust, will not want a goodness to advance it: and if we put off our bodies, it is but afterwards to put them on repaired and fresher. From this goodness, the upright may expect all the happiness their nature is capable of.

4. It is a ground of comfort in the midst of public dangers. This hath more sweetness in it to support us, than the malice of enemies hath to deject us; because he is “good,” he is “a stronghold in the day of trouble” (Nah. i. 7). If his goodness extends to all his creatures, it will much more extend to those that honor him: if the earth be full of his goodness, that part of heaven which he hath upon earth shall not be empty of it. He hath a goodness often to deliver the righteous, and a justice to put the wicked in his stead (Prov. xi. 8). When his people have been under the power of their enemies, he hath changed the scene, and put the enemies under the power of his people: he hath clapped upon them the same bolts which they did upon his servants. How comfortable is this goodness that hath yet maintained us in the midst of dangers, preserved us in the mouth of lions, quenched kindled fire; hitherto rescued us from designed ruin subtilly hatched, and supported us in the midst of men very passionate for our destruction; how hath this watchful goodness been a sanctuary to us in the midst of an upper hell!

Third Use is of exhortation.

1. How should we endeavor after the enjoyment of God as good! How earnestly should we desire him! As there is no other goodness worthy of our supreme love, so there is no other goodness worthy our most ardent thirst. Nothing deserves the name of a desirable good, but as it tends to the attainment of this: here we must pitch our desires, which otherwise will terminate in nullities or inconceivable disturbances.

(1.) Consider, nothing but good can be the object of a rational appetite. The will cannot direct its motion to anything under the notion of evil, evil in itself, or evil to it; whatsoever courts it must present itself in the quality of a good in its own nature, or in its present circumstances to the present state and condition of the desire; it will not else touch or affect the will. This is the language of that faculty: “Who will show me any good?” (Ps. iv. 6), and good is as inseparably the object of the will’s motion, as truth is of the understanding’s inquiry. Whatsoever a man would allure another to comply with, he must propose to the person under the notion of some beneficialness to him in point of honor, profit, or pleasure. To act after this manner is the proper character of a rational creature; and though that which is evil is often embraced instead of that which is good, and what we entertain as conducing to our felicity proves our misfortune, yet that is from our ignorance, and not from a formal choice of it as evil; for what evil is chosen it is not possible to choose under the conception of evil, but under the appearance of a good, though it be not so in reality. It is inseparable from the wills of all men to propose to themselves that which in the opinion and judgment of their understandings or imagination is good, though they often mistake and cheat themselves.

(2.) Since that good is the object of a rational appetite, the purest, best, and most universal good, such as God is, ought to be most sought after. Since good only is the object of a rational appetite, all the motions of our souls should be carried to the first and best good: a real good is most desirable; the greatest excellency of the creatures cannot speak them so, since, by the corruption of man, they are “subjected to vanity” (Rom. viii. 20). God is the most excellent good without any shadow; a real something without that nothing which every creature hath in its nature (Isa. xl. 17). A perfect good can only give us content: the best goodness in the creature is but slender and imperfect; had not the venom of corruption infused a vanity into it, the make of it speaks it finite, and the best qualities in it are bounded, and cannot give satisfaction to a rational appetite which bears in its nature an imitation of Divine infiniteness, and therefore can never find an eternal rest in mean trifles. God is above the imperfection of all creatures; creatures are but drops of goodness, at best but shallow streams; God is like a teeming ocean, that can fill the largest as well as the narrowest creek. He hath an accumulative goodness; several creatures answer several necessities, but one God can answer all our wants: he hath an universal fulness, to overtop our universal emptiness: he contains in himself the sweetness of all other goods, and holds in his bosom plentifully what creatures have in their natures sparingly. Creatures are uncertain goods; as they begin to exist, so they may cease to be; they may be gone with a breath, they will certainly languish if God blows upon them (Isa. xl. 24): the same breath that raised them can blast them; but who can rifle God of the least part of his excellency? Mutability is inherent in the nature of every creature, as a creature. All sublunary things are as gourds, that refresh us one moment with their presence, and the next fret us with their absence; like fading flowers, strutting to‑day, and drooping to‑morrow (Isa. xl. 6): while we possess them, we cannot clip their wings, that may carry them away from us, and may make us vainly seek what we thought we firmly held. But God is as permanent a good as he is a real one: he hath wings to fly to them that seek him, but no wings to fly from them forever, and leave them. God is an universal good; that which is good to one may be evil to another; what is desirable by one maybe refused as inconvenient for another: but God being an universal, unstained good, is useful for all, convenient to the natures of all but such as will continue in enmity against him. There is nothing in God can displease a soul that desires to please him; when we are in darkness, he is a light to scatter it; when we are in want, he hath riches to relieve us; when we are in spiritual death, he is a Prince of life to deliver us; when we are defiled, he is holiness to purify us: it is in vain to fix our hearts anywhere but on him, in the desire of whom there is a delight, and in the enjoyment of whom there is an inconceivable pleasure.

(3.) He is most to be sought after, since all things else that are desirable had their goodness from him. If anything be desirable because of its goodness, God is much more desirable because of his, since all things are good by a participation, and nothing good but by his print upon it: as what being creatures have was derived to them by God, so what goodness they are possessed with they were furnished with it by God; all goodness flowed from him, and all created goodness is summed up in him. The streams should not terminate our appetite without aspiring to the fountain. If the waters in the channel, which receive mixture, communicate a pleasure, the taste of the fountain must be much more delicious; that original Perfection of all things hath an inconceivable beauty above those things it hath framed. Since those things live not by their own strength, nor nourish us by their own liberality, but by the “word of God” (Matt. iv. 4), that God that speaks them into life, and speaks them into usefulness, should be most ardently desired as the best. If the sparkling glory of the visible heavens delight us, and the beauty and bounty of the earth please and refresh us, what should be the language of our souls upon those views and tastes but that of the Psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I can desire beside thee” (Ps. lxxiii. 25). No greater good can possibly be desired, and no less good should be ardently desired. As he is the supreme good, so we should bear that regard to him as supremely, and above all, to thirst for him: as he is good, he is the object of desire; as the choicest and first goodness, he is desirable with the greatest vehemency. “Give me children, or else I die” (Gen. xxx. 1), was an uncomely speech; the one was granted, and the other inflicted; she had children, but the last cost her her life: but, Give me God, or I will not be content, is a gracious speech, wherein we cannot miscarry; all that God demands of us is, that we should long for him, and look for our happiness only in him. That is the first thing, endeavor after the enjoyment of God as good.

2. Often meditate on the goodness of God. What was man produced for, but to settle his thoughts upon this? What should have been Adam’s employment in innocence, but to read over all the lines of nature, and fix his contemplations on that good hand that drew them? What is man endued with reason for, above all other animals, but to take notice of this goodness spread over all the creatures, which they themselves, though they felt it, could not have such a sense of as to make answerable returns to their Benefactor? Can we satisfy ourselves in being spectators of it, and enjoyers of it, only in such a manner as the brutes are? The beasts behold things as well as we, they feel the warm beams of this goodness as well as we, but without any reflection upon the Author of them. Shall Divine blessings meet with no more from us but a brutish view and beholding of them? What is more just, than to spend a thought upon Him who hath enlarged his hand in so many benefits to us? Are we indebted to any more than we are to him? Why should we send our souls to visit anything more than him in his works? That we are able to meditate on him is a part of his goodness to us, who hath bestowed that capacity upon us; and, if we will not, it is a great part of our ingratitude. Can anything more delightful enter into us, than that of the kind and gracious disposition of that God who first brought us out of the abyss of an unhappy nothing, and hath hitherto spread his wings over us? Where can we meet with a nobler object than Divine goodness? and what nobler work can be practised by us than to consider it? What is more sensible in all the operations of his hands than his skill, as they are considered in themselves, and his goodness, as they are considered in relation to us? It is strange that we should miss the thoughts of it; that we should look upon this earth, and everything in it, and yet overlook that which it is most full of, viz. Divine goodness (Ps. xxxiii. 5); it runs through the whole web of the world; all is framed and diversified by goodness; it is one entire single goodness, which appears in various garbs and dresses in every part of the creation. Can we turn our eyes inward, and send our eyes outward, and see nothing of a Divinity in both worthy of our deepest and seriousest thoughts? Is there anything in the world we can behold, but we see his bounty, since nothing was made but is one way or other beneficial to us? Can we think of our daily food, but we must have some reflecting thoughts on our great Caterer? Can the sweetness of the creature to our palate obscure the sweetness of the Provider to our minds? It is strange that we should be regardless of that wherein every creature without us, and every sense within us and about us, is a tutor to instruct us! Is it not reason we should think of the times wherein we were nothing, and from thence run back to a never‑begun eternity, and view ourselves in the thoughts of that goodness, to be in time brought forth upon this stage, as we are at present? Can we consider but one act of our understandings, but one thought, one blossom, one spark of our souls mounting upwards, and not reflect upon the goodness of God to us, who, in that faculty that sparkles out rational thoughts, has advanced us to a nobler state, and endued us with a nobler principle, than all the creatures we see on earth, except those of our own rank and kind? Can we consider but one foolish thought, one sinful act, and reflect upon the guilt and filth of it, and not behold goodness in sparing us, and miracles of goodness in sending his Son to die for us, for the expiation of it? This perfection cannot well be out of our thoughts, or at least it is horrible it should, when it is writ in every line of the creation, and in a legible rubric, in bloody letters, in the cross of his Son. Let us think with ourselves, how often he hath multiplied his blessings, when we did deserve his wrath! how he hath sent one unexpected benefit upon the heel of another, to bring us with a swift pace the tidings of good‑will to us! how often hath he delivered us from a disease that had the arrows of death in its hand ready to pierce us! how often hath he turned our fears into joys, and our distempers into promoters of our felicity! how often hath he mated a temptation, sent seasonable supplies in the midst of a sore distress, and prevented many dangers which we could not be so sensible of, because we were, in a great measure, ignorant of them! How should we meditate upon his goodness to our souls, in preventing some sins, in pardoning others, in darting upon us the knowledge of his gospel, and of himself, in the face of his Son Christ! This seems to stick much upon the spirit of Paul, since he doth so often sprinkle his epistles with the titles of the “grace of God, riches of grace, unsearchable riches of God, riches of glory,” and cannot satisfy himself, with the extolling of it. Certainly, we should bear upon our heart a deep and quick sense of this perfection; as it was the design of God to manifest it, so it would be acceptable to God for us to have a sense of it: a dull receiver of his blessings is no less nauseous to him than a dull dispenser of his alms; he loves a “cheerful giver” (2 Cor. ix. 7); he doth himself what he loves in others; he is cheerful in giving, and he loves we should be serious in thinking of him, and have a right apprehension and sense of his goodness.

(1.) A right sense of his goodness would dispose us to an ingenuous worship of God. It would damp our averseness to any act of religion; what made David so resolute and ready to “worship towards his holy temple” but the sense of his “loving kindness?” (Ps. cxxxviii. 2). This would render him always in our mind a worthy object of our devotion, a stable prop of our confidence. We should then adore him, when we consider him as “our God,” and ourselves as “the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand” (Ps. xcv. 7): we should send up prayers with strong faith and feeling, and praises with great joy and pleasure. The sense of his goodness would make us love him, and our love to him would quicken our adoration of him; but if we regard not this, we shall have no mind to think of him, no mind to act anything towards him; we may tremble at his presence, but not heartily worship him; we shall rather look upon him as a tyrant, and think no other affection due to him than what we reserve for an oppressor, viz. hatred and ill‑will.

(2.) A sense of it will keep us humble. A sense of it would effect that for which itself was intended; viz. bring us to a repentance for our crimes, and not suffer us to harden ourselves against him. When we should deeply consider how he hath made the sun to shine upon us, and his rain to fall upon the earth for our support; the one to supple the earth, and the other to assist the juice of it to bring forth fruits; how would it reflect upon us our ill requitals, and make us hang down our heads before him in a low posture, pleasing to him, and advantageous to ourselves! What would the first charge be upon ourselves, but what Moses brings in his expostulation against the Israelites (Deut. xxxii. 6): “Do I thus requite the Lord?” What is this goodness for me, who am so much below him; for me, who have so much incensed him; for me, who have so much abused what he hath allowed? It would bring to remembrance the horror of our crimes, and set us a blushing before him, when we should consider the multitude of his benefits, and our unworthy behaviour, that hath not constrained him even against the inclination of his goodness, to punish us: how little should we plead for a further liberty in sin, or palliate our former faults! When we set Divine goodness in one column, and our transgressions in another, and compare together their several items, it would fill us with a deep consciousness of our own guilt, and divest us of any worth of our own in our approaches to him; it would humble us, that we cannot love so obliging a God as much as he deserves to be loved by us; it would make us humble before men. Who would be proud of a mere gift which he knows he hath not merited? How ridiculous would that servant be, that should be proud of a rich livery, which is a badge of his service, not a token of his merit, but of his master’s magnificence and bounty, which, though he wear this day, he may be stripped of to‑morrow, and be turned out of his master’s family!

(3.) A sense of the Divine goodness would make us faithful to him. The goodness of God obligeth us to serve him, not to offend him; the freeness of his goodness should make us more ready to contribute to the advancement of his glory. When we consider the benefits of a friend proceed out of kindness to us, and not out of self ends and vain applause, it works more upon us, and makes us more careful of the honor of such a person. It is a pure bounty God hath manifested in creation and providence, which could not be for himself, who, being blessed forever, wanted nothing from us: it was not to draw a profit from us, but to impart an advantage to us; “Our goodness extends not to him” (Ps. xvi. 2). The service of the benefactor is but a rational return for benefits; whence Nehemiah aggravates the sins of the Jews (Neh. ix. 35): “They have not served thee in thy great goodness that thou gavest them;” i. e. which thou didst freely bestow upon them. How should we dare to spend upon our lusts that which we possess, if we considered by whose liberality we came by it? how should we dare to be unfaithful in the goods he hath made us trustees of? A deep sense of Divine goodness will ennoble the creature, and make it act for the most glorious and noble end; it would strike Satan’s temptation dead at a blow; it would pull off the false mask and vizor from what he presents to us, to draw us from the service of our Benefactor; we could not, with a sense of this, think him kinder to us than God hath, and will be, which is the great motive of men to join hands with him, and turn their backs upon God.

(4.) A sense of the Divine goodness would make us patient under our miseries. A deep sense of this would make us give God the honor of his goodness in whatsoever he doth, though the reason of his actions be not apparent to us, nor the event and issue of his proceedings foreseen by us. It is a stated case, that goodness can never intend ill, but designs good in all its acts “to them that love God” (Rom. viii. 28): nay, he always designs the best; when he bestows anything upon his people, he sees it best they should have it; and when he removes anything from them, he sees it best they should lose it. When we have lost a thing we loved, and refuse to be comforted, a sense of this perfection, which acts God in all, would keep us from misjudging our sufferings, and measuring the intention of the hand that sent them, by the sharpness of what we feel. What patient, fully persuaded of the affection of the physician, would not value him, though that which is given to purge out the humors, racks his bowels? When we lose what we love, perhaps it was some outward lustre tickled our apprehensions, and we did not see the viper we would have harmed ourselves by; but God seeing it, snatched it from us, and we mutter as if he had been cruel, and deprived us of the good we imagined, when he was kind to us, and freed us from the hurt we should certainly have felt. We should regard that which in goodness he takes from us, at no other rate than some gilded poison and lurking venom; the sufferings of men, though upon high provocations, are often followed with rich mercies, and many times are intended as preparations for greater goodness. When God utters that rhetoric of his bowels, “How shall I give thee up, O Ephraim, I will not execute the fierceness of my anger!” (Hos. xi. 8), he intended them mercy in their captivity, and would prepare them by it, to walk after the Lord. And it is likely the posterity of those ten tribes were the first that ran to God, upon the publishing the gospel in the places where they lived; he doth not take away himself when he takes away outward comforts; while he snatcheth away the rattles we play with, he hath a breast in himself for us to suck. The consideration of his goodness would dispose us to a composed frame of spirit. If we are sick, it is goodness, it is a disease, and not a hell. It is goodness, that it is a cloud, and not a total darkness. What if he transfers from us what we have? he takes no more than what his goodness first imparted to us; and never takes so much from his people as his goodness leaves them: if he strips them of their lives, he leaves them their souls, with those faculties he furnished them with at first, and removes them from those houses of clay to a richer mansion. The time of our sufferings here, were it the whole course of our life, bears not the proportion of a moment to that endless eternity wherein he hath designed to manifest his goodness to us. The consideration of Divine goodness would teach us to draw a calm even from storms, and distil balsam from rods. If the reproofs of the righteous be an excellent oil (Ps. cxlv. 5), we should not think the corrections of a good God to have a less virtue.

(5.) A sense of the Divine goodness would mount us above the world. It would damp our appetites after meaner things; we should look upon the world not as a God, but a gift from God, and never think the present better than the Donor. We should never lie soaking in muddy puddles were we always filled with a sense of the richness and clearness of this Fountain, wherein we might bathe ourselves; little petty particles of good would give us no content, when we were sensible of such an unbounded ocean. Infinite goodness, rightly apprehended, would dull our desires after other things, and sharpen them with a keener edge after that which is best of all. How earnestly do we long for the presence of a friend, of whose good will towards us we have full experience.

(6.) It would check any motions of envy: it would make us joy in the prosperity of good men, and hinder us from envying the outward felicity of the wicked. We should not dare with an evil eye to censure his good hand (Matt. xx. 15), but approve of what he thinks fit to do, both in the matter of his liberality and the subjects he chooseth for it. Though if the disposal were in our hands, we should not imitate him, as not thinking them subjects fit for our bounty; yet since it is in his hands, we be to approve of his actions and not have an ill will towards him for his goodness, or towards those he is pleased to make the subject of it. Since all his doles are given to “invite man to repentance” (Rom. ii. 4), to envy them those goods God hath bestowed upon them, is to envy God the glory of his own goodness, and them the felicity those things might move them to aspire to; it is to wish God more contracted, and thy neighbor more miserable: but a deep sense of his sovereign goodness would make us rejoice in any marks of it upon others, and move us to bless him instead of censuring him.

(7.) It would make us thankful. What can be the most proper, the most natural reflection, when we behold the most magnificent characters he hath imprinted upon our souls; the conveniency of the members he hath compacted in our bodies, but a praise of him? Such motion had David upon the first consideration: “I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. cxxxix. 14). What could be the most natural reflection, when we behold the rich prerogatives of our natures above other creatures, the provision he hath made for us for our delight in the beauties of heaven, for our support in the creatures on earth? What can reasonably be expected from uncorrupted man, to be the first motion of his soul, but an extolling the bountiful hand of the invisible donor, whoever he be? This would make us venture at some endeavors of a grateful acknowledgment, though we should despair of rendering anything proportionable to the greatness of the benefit; and such an acknowledgment of our own weakness would be an acceptable part of our gratitude. Without a due and deep sense of Divine goodness, our praise of it, and thankfulness for it, will be but cold, formal, and customary; our tongues may bless him, and our heart slight him: and this will lead us to the third exhortation:

3. Which is that of thankfulness for Divine goodness. The absolute goodness of God, as it is the excellency of his nature, is the object of praise: the relative goodness of God, as he is our benefactor, is the object of thankfulness. This was always a debt due from man to God; he had obligations in the time of his integrity, and was then to render it; he is not less, but more obliged to it in the state of corruption; the benefits being the greater, by how much the more unworthy he is of them by reason of his revolt. The bounty bestowed upon an enemy that merits the contrary, ought to be received with a greater resentment than that bestowed on a friend, who is not unworthy of testimonies of respect. Gratitude to God is the duty of every creature that hath a sense of itself; the more excellent being any enjoy the more devout ought to be the acknowledgment. How often doth David stir up, not only himself, but summon all creatures, even the insensible ones, to join in the concert! He calls to the “deeps, fire, hail, snow, mountains and hills,” to bear a part in this work of praise (Ps. cxlviii.); not that they are able to do it actively, but to show that man is to call in the whole creation to assist him passively, and should have so much charity to all creatures, as to receive what they offer, and so much affection to God, as to present to him what he receives from him. Snow and hail cannot bless and praise God, but man ought to praise God for those things wherein there is a mixture of trouble and inconvenience, something to molest our sense, as well as something that improves the earth for fruit. This God requires of us: for this he instituted several offerings, and required a little portion of fruits to be presented to him, as an acknowledgment they held the whole from his bounty. And the end of the festival days among the Jews was to revive the memory of those signal acts wherein his power for them, and his goodness to them, had been extraordinarily evident; it is no more but our mouths to praise him, and our hand to obey him, that he exacts at our hands. He commands us not to expend what he allows us in the erecting stately temples to his honor; all the coin he requires to be paid with for his expense is the “offering of thanksgiving” (Ps. l. 14): and this we ought to do as much as we can, since we cannot do it as much as he merits, for “who can show forth all his praise?” (Ps. cvi. 2.) If we have the fruit of his goodness, it is fit he should have the “fruit of our lips” (Heb. xiii. 15): the least kindness should inflame our souls with a kindly resentment. Though some of his benefits have a brighter, some a darker, aspect towards us, yet they all come from this common spring; his goodness shines in all; there are the footsteps of goodness in the least, as well as the smiles of goodness in the greatest; the meanest therefore is not to pass without a regard of the Author. As the glory of God is more illustrious in some creatures than in others, yet it glitters in all, and the lowest as well as the highest administers matter of praise; but they are not only little things, but the choicer favors he has bestowed upon us. How much doth it deserve our acknowledgment, that he should contrive our recovery, when we had plotted our ruin! that when he did from eternity behold the crimes wherewith we would incense him, he should not, according to the rights of justice, cast us into hell, but prize us at the rate of the blood and life of his only Son, in value above the blood of men and lives of angels! How should we bless that God, that we have yet a gospel among us, that we are not driven into the utmost regions, that we can attend upon him in the face of the sun, and not forced to the secret obscurities of the night! Whatsoever we enjoy, whatsoever we receive, we must own him as the Donor, and read his hand in it. Rob him not of any praise to give to an instrument. No man hath wherewithal to do us good, nor a heart to do us good, nor opportunities of benefitting us without him. When the cripple received the soundness of his limbs from Peter, he praised the hand that sent it, not the hand that brought it (Acts iii. 6): he “praised God” (ver. 8). When we want anything that is good, let the goodness of Divine nature move us to David’s practice, to “thirst after God” (Ps. xlii. 1): and when we feel the motions of his goodness to us, let us imitate the temper of the same holy man (Ps. ciii. 2): “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.” It is an unworthy carriage to deal with him as a traveller doth with a fountain, kneel down to drink of it when he is thirsty, and turn his back upon it, and perhaps never think of it more after he is satisfied. 4. And, lastly, Imitate this goodness of God. If his goodness hath such an influence upon us as to make us love him, it will also move us with an ardent zeal to imitate him in it. Christ makes this use from the doctrine of Divine goodness (Matt. v. 44, 45): “Do good to them that hate you, that you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good.” As holiness is a resemblance of God’s purity, so charity is a resemblance of God’s goodness; and this our Saviour calls perfection (ver. 48): “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father, which is in heaven, is perfect.” As God would not be a perfect God without goodness, so neither can any be a perfect Christian without kindness; charity and love being the splendor and loveliness of all Christian graces, as goodness is the splendor and loveliness of all Divine attributes. This and holiness are ordered in the Scripture to be the grand patterns of our imitation. Imitate the goodness of God in two things.

(1.) In relieving and assisting others in distress. Let our heart be as large in the capacity of creatures, as God’s is in the capacity of a Creator. A large heart from him to us, and a strait heart from us to others, will not suit: let us not think any so far below us as to be unworthy of our care, since God thinks none that are infinitely distant from him too mean for his. His infinite glory mounts him above the creature, but his infinite goodness stoops him to the meanest works of his hands. As he lets not the transgressions of prosperity pass without punishment, so he lets not the distress of his afflicted people pass him without support. Shall God provide for the ease of beasts, and shall not we have some tenderness towards those that are of the same blood with ourselves, and have as good blood to boast of as runs in the veins of the mightiest monarch on earth; and as mean, and as little as they are, can lay claim to as ancient a pedigree as the stateliest prince in the world, who cannot ascend to ancestors beyond Adam? Shall we glut ourselves with Divine beneficence to us, and wear his livery only on our own backs, forgetting the afflictions of some dear Joseph; when God, who hath an unblemished felicity in his own nature, looks out of himself to view and relieve the miseries of poor creatures? Why hath God increased the doles of his treasures to some more than others? Was it merely for themselves, or rather that they might have a bottom to attain the honor of imitating him? Shall we embezzle his goods to our own use, as if we were absolute proprietors, and not stewards entrusted for others? Shall we make a difficulty to part with something to others, out of that abundance he hath bestowed upon any of us? Did not his goodness strip his Son of the glory of heaven for a time to enrich us? and shall we shrug when we are to part with a little to pleasure him? It is not very becoming for any to be backward in supplying the necessities of others with a few morsels, who have had the happiness to have had their greatest necessities supplied with his Son’s blood. He demands not that we should strip ourselves of all for others, but of a pittance, something of superfluity, which will turn more to our account than what is vainly and unprofitably consumed on our backs and bellies. If he hath given much to any of us, it is rather to lay aside part of the income for his service; else we would monopolize Divine goodness to ourselves, and seem to distrust under our present experiments his future kindness, as though the last thing he gave us was attended with this language, Hoard up this, and expect no more from me; use it only to the glutting your avarice, and feeding your ambition: which would be against the whole scope of Divine goodness. If we do not endeavor to write after the comely copy he hath set us, we may provoke him to harden himself against us, and in wrath bestow that on the fire, or on our enemies, which his goodness hath imparted to us for his glory, and the supplying the necessities of poor creatures. And, on the contrary, he is so delighted with this kind of imitation of him, that a cup of cold water, when there is no more to be done, shall not be unrewarded.

(2.) Imitate God in his goodness, in a kindness to our worst enemies. The best man is more unworthy to receive anything from God than the worst can be to receive from us. How kind is God to those that blaspheme him, and gives them the same sun, and the same showers, that he doth to the best men in the world! Is it not more our glory to imitate God in “doing good to those that hate us,” than to imitate the men of the world in requiting evil, by a return of a sevenfold mischief? This would be a goodness which would vanquish the hearts of men, and render us greater than Alexanders and Cæsars, who did only triumph over miserable carcasses; yea, it is to triumph over ourselves in being good against the sentiments of corrupt nature. Revenge makes us slaves to our passions, as much as the offenders, and good returns render us victorious over our adversaries (Rom. xii. 21): “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” When we took up our arms against God, his goodness contrived not our ruin, but our recovery. This is such a goodness of God as could not be discovered in an innocent state; while man had continued in his duty, he could not have been guilty of an enmity; and God could not but affect him, unless he had denied himself: so this of being good to our enemies could never have been practised in a state of rectitude; since, where was a perfect innocence, there could be no spark of enmity to one another. It can be no disparagement to any man’s dignity to cast his influences on his greatest opposers, since God, who acts for his own glory, thinks not himself disparaged by sending forth the streams of his bounty on the wickedest persons, who are far meaner to him than those of the same blood can be to us. Who hath the worse thoughts of the sun, for shining upon the earth, that sends up vapors to cloud it? it can be no disgrace to resemble God; if his hand and bowels be open to us, let not ours be shut to any.

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← Discourse XI: On the Holiness of God · Contents · Discourse XIII: On God’s Dominion →

Footnotes

1. Erasm. in loc. ↩

2. Augustin. ↩

3. Hensius in Matt. ↩

4. Calvin in loc. ↩

5. Trismegist. Pœmœnd. cap. 2. ↩

6. Eugubin. de Peren. Philos. lib. v. cap. 9. ↩

7. Eugubin. de Peren. Philos. lib. v. cap. 9. p. 97. col. ↩

8. Amyrant, Morale. ↩

9. Rom. x. 3. “Going about to establish their own righteousness.” ↩

10. Ver. 17. Lightfoot in loc. ↩

11. Ficin. in Dionys. de Divin. Nom. cap. 511. ↩

12. Empedocles. ↩

13. Hesiod. ↩

14. Iamblych. Vit. Pythag. lib. i. col. 6. p. 43. ↩

15. Lombard lib. iv. distinct. 46. p. 286. ↩

16. Coccei. sum. p. 50. ↩

17. Cajetan in secund. secunda. Qu. 34. Ar. 3. ↩

18. Herle upon Wisdom, cap. 5. pp. 41, 42. ↩

19. Ingelo Bentivolio, and Uran. Book IV. pp. 260, 261. ↩

20. Daille, Melang. Part II. pp. 704, 705. ↩

21. Ficini. Epist. lib. xi. epist. 30. ↩

22. Tom. II. p. 926. ↩

23. Cocceii sum Theolog. p. 91. ↩

24. Gilbert de Dei Dominio, p. 6. ↩

25. Amyr. Moral. Tom. I. p. 260. ↩

26. Ficinus in Con. Amor. Orat. 2. cap. p. 1326. ↩

27. Camero, p. 30. ↩

28. Boetius. ↩

29. Zarnovecius, de Satisfact. Part I. cap. i. pp. 3, 4. ↩

30. Suarez, Vol. I. de Deo, lib. iii. cap. 7. p. 146. ↩

31. Cressol. Anthol. Decad. II. p. 162. ↩

32. Cusan, p. 228. ↩

33. Petav. Theolog. Dogmat. Tom. i. p. 402. ↩

34. Lessius, de Perfect. Div. p. 100. ↩

35. Pherecydes. ↩

36. Eugubin, lib. v. cap. 9. ↩

37. Amyral. Dissertat. pp. 637, 638. ↩

38. Suarez. de Gratia, Vol. I. pp. 126, 127. ↩

39. Rada. Controvers. Part III. p. 363. ↩

40. Lingend. de Eucharist, pp. 84, 85. ↩

41. Lessius. ↩

42. Turreti, Ser. p. 33. ↩

43. Amyral. Irenicum. pp. 16, 17. ↩

44. Daille, Melang. Part I. p. 253. ↩

45. Gulielmus Parisien. p. 184. ↩

46. Harwood’s Sermon at Oxford, p. 5. ↩

47. Amyral. Moral. Tom. IV. p. 291. ↩

48. Cressol. Antholog. Part II. p. 29. ↩

49. Young, of Affliction, p. 34. ↩

50. Petav. Theolog. Dogmat. Vol. I. p. 407. ↩

51. Amyrald. Dissert. p. 65. ↩

52. “As a heathen,” Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. 22, p. 220. Οὐ γὰρ θέμις διὶ βούλεσθαι ἄλλο τι ἢ τὸ κάλλιστον. ↩