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If thou ask then, why thou shouldst be bound to believe the creation, we say, Quia unus Deus, Because there can be but one God; and if the world be eternal, and so no creature, the world is God. If thou ask why thou shouldst be bound to believe Providence, we say, Quia Deus remunerator, Because God is to give every man according to his merits. If thou ask why thou shouldst be bound to believe that, when thou seest he doth not give every man according to his merits, we say, Quia inscrutabilia judicia ejus; O how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For, thou art yet got no farther, in measuring God, but by thine own measure; and thou hast found no other reason to lead thee, to think, that God doth not govern well, but because he doth not govern so, to thine understanding, as thou shouldst, if thou wert God. So that thou dost not only make thy weakness, but thy wickedness, that is, thy hasty disposition, to come to a present revenge, when any thing offends thee, the measure, and the model, by which the frame of God's government should be erected; and so thou comest to the worst distemper of all, insanire cum ratione, to go out of thy wits, by having too much, and to be mad with too much knowledge; not to sin out of infirmity, or temptation, or heat of blood, but to sin in cold blood, and upon just reason, and mature considerations, and so deliberately and advisedly to continue to sin.

Now the particular reason, which the perverseness of these men produceth here, in this text, is, Because God is patient and long-suffering. So he is; so he will be still: their perverseness shall not pervert his nature, his goodness. As God bade the prophet Hosea do, he hath done himself: Go, says he, and take to thee, a wife of fornication, and children of fornication; so hath he taken us, guilty of spiritual fornication. But as in the fleshly fornications of an adulterous wife, the husband is, for the most part, the last that hears of them: so, for our spiritual fornications, such is the lothness, the patience, the longanimity of our good and gracious God, that though he do know our sins, as soon as they speak, as soon as they are acted, (for that is peccatum cum voce, says St. Gregory, a speaking sin, when any sinful thought is produced into act) yea, before they speak, as soon as they are con

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ceived; yet he will not hear of our sins, he takes no knowledge of them, by punishing them, till our brethren have been scandalized, and led into temptation by them; till his law have been evacuated, that that use of the law, which is, to show sin to our consciences, be annihilated in us; till such a cry come up to him by our often and professed sinning, that it concerns him in his honour, (which he will give to none) and in his care of his churches, which he hath promised to be, till the end of all, to take knowledge of them. Yea, though this cry be come up to his ears, though it be a loud cry, either by the nature of the sin, (as heavy things make a great noise in the moving) or by reason of the number of the sins, and the often doing thereof, (for, as many children, will make as great a noise as a loud crier; so will the custom of small sins cry as loud, as those which are called peccata clamantia, crying sins) though this cry be increased by this liberty, and professed sinning, that, as the prophet says, They declare their sins, and hide them not, as Sodom did3; though the cry of the sin be increased by the cry of them, that suffer oppression by that sin, as well as by the sin itself, as the voice of Abel's blood cried from earth to heaven; yea, though this cry ring about God's ears, in his own bed-chamber, under the altar itself, in that Usquequo Domine? when the martyrs cry out with a loud voice, How long, Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood1! Yet God would fain forbear his revenge, he would fain have those martyrs rest for a little space, till their fellow-servants and their brethren were fulfilled. God would try, what Cain would say to that interrogatory, Where is thy brother Abel? And though the cry of Sodom were great, and their sin exceeding grievous, yet, says God, I will go down, and see, whether they have done altogether according unto that cry; and if not, I may know God would have been glad to have found error in their indictment; and when he could not, yet if fifty, forty-five, thirty, twenty, ten, had been found righteous, he had pardoned all: Adeo malum, quasi cum difficultate credidit, cum audivit; So loth is God to believe ill of man, when he doth hear it.

This then is his patience: but why is his patience made a

5 Isaiah iii. 9.

7 Revel. vi. 10.

6 Gen. iv. 10.

Gregory.

reason of their continuance in sins? Is it because there is no sentence denounced against sin? These busy and subtle extractors of reasons, that can distil, and draw poison out of manna, occasions of sin, out of God's patience, will not say so, that there is no sentence denounced. The word that is here used, pithgam', is not truly an Hebrew word: and though in the Book of Job, and in some other parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, we find sometimes some foreign and outlandish word, derived from other nations; yet, in Solomon's writing very rarely; neither doth Solomon himself, nor any other author, of any part of the Hebrew Bible, use this word, in any other place, than this one. The word is a Chaldee word; and hath amongst them, the same signification and largeness, as dabar in Hebrew; and that includes all a verbo ad legem; from a word suddenly and slightly spoken, to words digested and consolidated into a law. So that, though the Septuagint translate this place, Quia non est facta contradictio; as though the reason of this sinner's obduration might have been, that God had not forbidden sin; and though the Chaldee paraphrast express this place thus, Quia non est factum verbum ultionis; as though this sinner made himself believe, that God had never spoken word of revenge against sinners: yet, this sinner makes not that his reason, that there is no law, no judgment, no sentence given: for, every book of the Bible, every chapter, every verse almost, is a particular Deuteronomy, a particular renewing of the law from God's mouth, Morte morieris, Thou shalt die the death; and of that sentence from Moses' mouth, Pereundo peribitis, You shall surely perish; and of that judgment from the prophet's mouth, Non est pax impiis, There is no peace to the wicked. And if this obdurate sinner could be such a Goth and Vandal, as to destroy all records, all written laws; if he could evacuate and exterminate the whole Bible, yet he would find this law in his own heart, this sentence pronounced by his own conscience, Stipendium peccati mors est, Treason is death, and sin is treason.

His reason is not, that there is no law; he sees it: nor that he know no law; his heart tells it him: nor that he hath kept

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that law; his conscience gives judgment against him: nor that he hath a pardon for breaking that law; for he never asked it: and, besides, those pardons have in them that clause, Ita quod se bene gerat; Every pardon binds a man to the good behaviour; and by relapses into sin, we forfeit our pardons for former sins. All their reason, all their comfort, is only a reprieve, and a respite of execution: Distulit securim, attulit securitatem1; God hath taken the axe from their necks, and they have taken security into their hearts; sentence is not executed.

Execution is the life of the law; but then, it is the death of the man and therefore whosoever makes quarrels against God, or arguments of obduration, out of this respite of execution, would he be better pleased with God, if God came to a speedy execution? But let that be true, where there is no execution, there is no reverence to the law; there is truly, and in effect, no law the law is no more a law without execution, than a carcase is a man. And so much, certainly, the word, which is here rendered sententia facta, doth properly signify, a judgment perfected, executed. When Esau was born hairy", and so in the likeness of a grown and perfect man, he was called by the word of this text, Gnesau", Esau, factus, perfectus. And so, when God had perfected all his works, that is, said then, that he saw, that all was good that he had made; where there is the same word, that he had perfected13. So that, if the judgments of God had been still without execution; if all those curses'; Cursed shalt thou be in the town, and cursed in the field; cursed in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy land, and in the fruit of thy cattle; cursed when thou comest in, and when thou goest out. The Lord shall send thee cursings, and trouble, and shame, in all thou setst thy hand to. The Lord shall make a pestilence cleave to thee, and a consumption, and a fever. The Lord shall make the heavens above, as brass, and the earth under thee, as iron; with all those curses and maledictions, which he flings, and slings, and stings the soul of the sinner, so vehemently, so pathetically, in that catalogue of comminations, and interminations, in that

10 Augustine.

11 Gen. xxv. 25.

.perfecit ,עָשָׂה 19

14 Deut. xxviii. 15.

13 Gen. i. 31.

place; if all these were never brought into execution, we should say, at best, of those laws, and judgments of God, as the Roman lawyer did of that severe law of the twelve tables, by which law, he that was indebted to many men, and not able to pay, was to be cut in pieces, and divided proportionably amongst his creditors, Eo consilio tanta immanitas pœnæ denuntiata est, ne ad eam unquam perveniretur; Therefore so grievous a punishment was inflicted, that that law might never come to execution: for, from the enacting of that law, to the last times, in that government, there was never any example, of one execution of that law: so we should say, that God laid those severe penalties upon sins, only to deter men from doing them, and not with any purpose to inflict those penalties. In laws, to the making whereof, there concurs, besides the authority of the prince, the counsel and the consent of the subject, there are sometimes laws made, without any purpose of ordinary execution; of which, the civil wisdom, and the religious conscience, and the godly moderation of the prince, is made a depository, and a feoffee in trust; and those laws are only put into his hands, as a bridle, the better to rule and govern that great charge committed to him, in emergent necessities, though not in an ordinary execution of those penal laws. But who was a counseller to God, or who inserted any provisos or non obstante's into his laws? or who conditioned them, with any such reservations, that they should have no ordinary execution? And therefore an ordinary execution they have always had.

The reason why they are sometimes, and why they are not always executed, St. Chrysostom hath assigned; Si nullus puniretur, nemo existimaret Deum pre-esse rebus humanis; si omnes, nemo expectaret futuram resurrectionem: If God should punish no sins here, no man would believe a God; and if God should presently punish all here, no man would be afraid of a future judgment. There the obdurate man may find a reason of the manner of God's proceeding, in the execution of his judgments: and if he dare stand the arguing of this case, out of precedent, out of record, out of the history of God, in his word, he must hear heavy judgments denounced, and executed, in cases, where he would hardly discern any sin to have been committed, at least,

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