tremble at the threatcniiigs, which roll like thunder over liis head, ready to fall every moment in some judgment or other upon him ; when he sees from whence they are sent, the perfect hatred that God bears to sin, and infinite wrath with which he is inflamed against the sinner for it. In a word, then the poor trembling soul will not count the consolation of the promises small, when it sees from what foiuitain it flows, the bosom of God's free mercy. This, indeed, is the original source of all promises. The covenant itself, which compreliends them all, is called 'mercy, 'because the product of mercy, Luke i. 72: 'To perform the mercy pro- mised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant.' Now, saith faith, if the promises flow from this sea of God's free mercy, then they must needs be infinite, boundless, and bottomless, as that is ; so that to reject the promise, or question the sufiiciency of the provision made in it, because thy sins are great or many, casts a dishonoiu-able reflection on that mercy, in whose womb the promise was conceived ; and God will certainly bring his action of defamation against thee, for aspersing this his darling attribute, which he can least endure to see slandered and traduced. God makes account you have done your worst against him, when once you report him to be immerciful, or scant in his mercy. How great a sin this is, may be conceived by the thoughts God hath of this disposition and frame of spirit in his creature. An unmercifid heart is such an abomination before the Lord, that it hath few like it. This lies at the bottom of the heathen's charge, as the sediment and grossest part of all their horrid sins, Rom. i. 31, they were implacable, unmerciful. Now to attribute that to God, which he so abhors in his creature, must needs make a heart which is tender of the good name of God, to tremble and exceedingly fear. It was a dreadful punishment God brought upon Jehoram, king of Judah, 2 Chron. xxi. 18, whom he smote in his bowels with an incilrable disease, that after two years' torment his bowels fell out. And why did this heavy plague befall him ? Surely to let him know his want of bowels of mercy to his brethren and princes, whom he most cruelly butchered. He had not bowels in his heart, and he, therefore, shall have none in his body. Now darest thou, saith faith, impute want of bowels to God, that he will not shew mercy to "thee, who penitently seekestit in Chi-ist's name, when thou seest what testimony he gives of his incensed wrath against those men who have hardened their bowels against their brethren, yea, their ene- mies ? O have a care of this. To shut thy own bowels of compassion against thy brother in need, is a grievous sin, and brings it into question whether the love of God dwells in thee, 1 Johniii. 17; but to asperse the merciful heart of God, as if his bowels of compassion were shut against a poor soul in need that desires to repent and return, is transcendently the greater abomination, and puts it out of all question (where it is persisted in) that the love of God dwells not in him. It is impossible that love to God should draw such a misshapen portrait of God as tliis is.
Section II. — Faith attends to the end of the promises, which gives a farther prospect of their greatness. Now the word, which is the light faith goes by, discovers a double end of promises, especially of the promise of pardoning mercy. First, The exalting and magnifying the riches of free grace, which God would have appear in all its glory, so far as it is possible to be exposed to the creature's view; for the full sight of God's glory is an object adequate to his own eye, and none else. See this coxmsel and mysterious design sweetly opened, Ephes. i. 6, 9, 11, 12. The sum of all which will amount to this, that God in himself hath taken up a purpose of pardoning and saving a company of poor lost sinners for Christ's sake ; and this he hath promulgated in the promises of the gospel ; and the end of all is, that he might gather these altogether at last in heaven ; some of whom are already there, others of them at present on earth, and some yet unborn, and when they shall all meet together in one glorious choir, they may, by their triumphant songs and hallelujahs, fill the heavens witli jn-aise and acclamations of thankfulness to the glory of that mercy which hath thus pardoned and saved them. Now, faith observing the praise of God's mercy to be the end aimed at by him in the promise, comes with good news to the trembling soul, and tells it, that if God will be true to his own thoughts, and keep his eye on that mark where first he hath set it, it is impossible that he should reject any poor penitent sinner merely for tlie greatness of the sins he hath committed. It is the exaltation of his mercy, saith faith, that God hath
506 ABOVE ALL, TAKING THE SHIELD OF FAITH.