II. SER M. Adam, though abashed upon the confcience of his fault, was not yet by the vehemency of the reproof utterly dismayed or dejected. 2. God ufed great moderation in the infliction of this punishment; mitigating the extremity of the Gen. ii. 17. fentence juftly decreed and plainly declared to Adam, (that, in cafe of his offending against the law prescribed him, he should immediately die,) for notwithstanding his forfeiture that very day of life, God reprieved him, and allowed him a long life, almost of a thousand years after. 3. God did not quite reject man thereupon, nor did withdraw his fatherly care and providence from him, but openly continued them; infomuch that immediately after the curfe pronounced upon our firft parents, the next paffage we meet with is, that Gen. iii. 21. unto Adam and his wife did the Lord God make coats, and clothed them. 4. Although indeed man was by his fault a great lofer, and became deprived of high advantages; yet, the mercy of God did leave him in no very deplorable eftate, fimply confidered, as to his life here; the relicks of his firft eftate, and the benefits continued to him, being very confiderable; fo that we the inheritors of that great difafter do commonly find the enjoyment of life, with the conveniences attending it, to be sweet and defirable. 5. The event manifefts, that while God in appearance fo feverely punished mankind, he did in his mind referve thoughts of highest kindnefs toward us; even then defigning not only to reftore us to our former degree, but to raife us to a capacity of obtaining a far more high pitch of happiness. While he excluded us from a terreftrial paradife here, he provided a far better celeftial one, into which, if we please, by obedience to his holy laws, we may certainly enter, So that in this of all moft heavy inftance of vengeance, God's exceeding goodness and clemency do upon feveral confiderations most clearly fhine. II. The II. II. The calamity, which by the general deluge S ER M. did overflow the world, was not (we may confider) brought upon men but in regard to the moft enormous offences long continued in, and after amend ment was become defperate: not till after much forbearance, and till men were grown to a fuperlative pitch of wickednefs by no fit means (by no friendly warning, no fharp reprehenfion, no moderate chaftifement) corrigible; not until the earth was become (especially for perfons of any innocence or integrity) no tolerable habitation, but a theatre of lamentable tragedies, a feat of horrid iniquity, a fink of loathfome impurity. So that in reafon it was to be esteemed rather a favour to mankind, to rescue it from fo unhappy a ftate, than to fuffer it to perfift therein. To fnatch men away out of fo uncomfortable a place, from fo wretched a condition, was a mercy; it had been a judgment to have left them annoying, rifling, and haraffing; biting, tearing, and devouring; yea, defiling and debauching each other; and fo heaping upon themselves loads of guilt, and deeper obligations to vengeance. The earth, faith the Gen. vi. text, was corrupt before God; and the earth was filled 11, 12. with violence. God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth; which univerfal and extreme corruption had not in probability fprung up in a small time; for, Nemo repente fuit turpiffimus, is true not only of fingle men, but of communities; no people, no age, doth fuddenly degenerate into extreme degrees of wickednefs; fo that the divine patience had long endured and attended upon men, before the refolution of thus punishing them was taken up; the which also was not at firft peremptory and irreversible, but in God's defign and defire it was revocable; for the world had a long reprieve after the sentence paffed; execution was deferred till Noah's long preaching of righteousness, and denounc C 2 ing 20. II. 2 Pet. ii. 5. SER M. ing of judgment in a manner fo notorious and fignal, (not by verbal declarations only, but by the vifible ftructure of the ark,) could prevail nothing toward their amendment, but was either diftrufted or difregarded, and perhaps derided by them. For, as 1 Pet. iii. St. Peter tells us, they were disobedient, when once the long fuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing; that is, (as is collected by feveral interpreters from the text of the ftory,) durGen. vi. 3. ing no less than one hundred and twenty years; a competent time for their recollecting themselves, and endeavouring by amendment of life to prevent the ruin threatened to come upon them. Yet notwithstanding that, this obftinate and incorrigible difobedience did fo much displease God, as that in confiGen. vi. 6. deration thereof God is faid to have repented that he made man on the earth, and to have been thereby grieved at the heart: yet did he fo temper his anger as not utterly to deftroy mankind, but provided against its total ruin, by preferving one family as a feminary thereof; preferving the father thereof (queftionless by a special grace) from the spreading contagion, infpiring him with faith, and qualifying him for the favour, which by him he defigned to communicate unto the world; the reparation thereof, and reftoring the generations of men. So that alfo through this paffage of providence, how difmal and dreadful foever at firft fight, much goodness will be transparent to him that looks upon it attentively. III. In the next place, as to that extermination and excifion of the Canaanites, which carries fo horLevit. xviii. rible an appearance of severity, we may find it qualifiable, if we confider, that for the nature of the trefpaffes, which procured it, they were insufferably heinous and abominable: most fottish, barbarous, and base fuperftitions, (cruelty and impurity being effential ingredients into their performances of religion, and it being piety with them to be exceedingly wicked,) and in their other practice most beastly lascivious neffes, II. netfes, most bloody violences, oppreffions, and rapines S ER M. generally abounding. So that for those men themfelves, who were by turns, as it happened, the authors and the objects of these dealings, it could not be defirable to continue in a state of living fo wretched and uncomfortable. Impunity had been no mercy to such people, but rather a cruelty; cutting them off muft needs be the greatest favour they were capable of, it being only removing them from a hell here, and preventing their deferving many worse hells hereafter. Even to themselves it was a favour, and a greater one to their pofterity, whom they might have brought forth to fucceed in their courfes, and to the confequences of them; whom they would have engaged into their wicked cuftoms, and their woful mifchiefs. They were not fo deftroyed from the land, until it grew uninhabitable in any tolerable manner, and itself could not, as it were, endure them any longer, but (as the text doth moft fignificantly exprefs it) did fpue them out; being like a ftomach furcharged Levit. xviii. with foul or poisonous matter, which it loaths, and 28. is pained with, and therefore naturally labours to expel. Neither was this fad doom executed upon them till after four hundred years of forbearance; for even in Abraham's time God took notice of their iniquity, then born and growing; and gave account of his fufpending their punishment; because, faid he, the ini- Gen. xv. quity of the Amorites was not yet full, (that is, was not yet arrived to a pitch of defperate obftinacy and incorrigibility :) while there was the leaft glimpse of hope, the least relicks of any reafon, any regret, any shame in them, the leaft poffibility of recovery, God ftopped his avenging hand: but when all ground of hope was removed, the whole ftock of natural light and strength was embezzled, all fear, all remorfe, all modefty were quite banished away, all means of cure had proved ineffectual, the gangrene of vice had feized on every part, iniquity was grown mature and mellow; then was the ftroke of juftice indeed not 16. II. SER M. more seasonable than neceffary; then was the fatal fword the only proper remedy; then fo with one ftroke to cut off them, and their fins, and their mischiefs, and their miferies together, was an argument no less strong and clear of God's merciful goodness, than of his juft anger toward them. IV. The like account we may render of God's judgments upon the people of Ifrael. If we confult the Prophets, who declare the ftate of things, the facts, the difpofitions, the guilts, that brought them down from Heaven, we fhall fee, that they came upon account of an univerfal apoftafy from both the faith and Hof. ix. 9. practice of true religion; a deep corruption (like that in the days of Gibeah, as the prophet Hofea fpeaketh) in mind and manners; an utter perverting of all truth and right; an obftinate compliance with, or emulation of, the most abominable practices of the heathen nations about them; an univerfal apoftafy, I fay, from God and all goodness; a thorough prevalence of all iniquity. Hear the Prophets expreffing it, and deJer. v. 1. fcribing them. Jeremiah; Run ye to and fro through the freets of Jerusalem; fee now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof; if ye can find a man; if there be any that executeth judgment, that feeketh the truth, If. xxiv. 5. and I will pardon it. Ifaiah; The earth is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have tranfgreffed the laws, changed the ordinances, broken the everlasting covenant: Ah finful nation! a people laden with iniquities, a feed of evil doers; children that are corrupters! They have forfaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Ifrael unto anger; they are gone away backward, &c. Thus do thefe and other Prophets in a like ftrain defcribe in the grofs the ftate of things preceding Ezek. xxii. thofe judgments. And in Ezekiel (in divers places, particularly in the 8th, but efpecially in the 22nd chapter) we have their offences in detail, and by parts (their grofs impieties, their grievous cruelties, extortions, and oppreffions) fet out copiously, and in most lively colours. And as the quality of their provoca i. 4. |