[3.] Because it was vanishing. The good motions of an hard heart are of no long continuance ; they pass through, and are gone like a flash of lightning. Pharaoh's remorse for the frogs and grasshoppers was as a cloud soon blown over. Till there be sound repentance, re- morse must needs be short, for it is an unpleasing penance. Water heated is the colder afterwards, because it is rarefied ; after it hath thawed a little, it will freeze the harder. Pharaoh after every respite was hardened anew ; it is the temper of those that are doomed to de- struction.
[4.] Because his purposes came so short and lame of what God ex- pected. An hard heart, when it cannot prevail against God, would fain compound with him. First he gave leave : Exod. viii. 25, ' Go ye, sacrifice to God in the land ; ' then ver. 28, ' I will let ye go, that ye may sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness, only ye shall not go very far away;' then chap. x. 11, 'Go now, ye that are men, and serve the Lord.' Their children were to remain for hostages. Then, ver. 24, ' Go ye, serve the Lord, only let your flocks and your herds be stayed ; let your little ones also go with you.' Their cattle were to remain for a pawn, and their flocks and their herds for a forfeiture if they returned not, and a recompense for the damage of Egypt. But God would not abate him a hoof. An hard heart yieldeth to God by halves. Pharaoh hucketh with him ; first they might sacrifice in the land ; then go a little way, three days' journey ; then he would keej) their children, then their flocks and herds. An hard heart never yieldeth to God his whole demand ; the devil is loath to let go his hold. How do men buck with God in duties contrary to their affec- tions or prejudicial to their interests ? 2 Kings v. 18, ' In this thing the Lord pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Riinmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Kimmon ; when I bow myself in the house of Kimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in this thing.' They have their reservations, and in this and that thing they will be excused. These are but deceitful pangs. Pharaoh doth often eat his words, and retract every grant.
8. In process of time his hardness is improved into rage and downright
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malice: Exod. x. 28, ' Get thee from me, take heed to thyself, see my face no more ; for in the day thou seest my face thou shalt die/ Vessels, when they come to the lees, they grow sour and tart; so Pharaoh began to rim dregs. Or as beasts by long baiting grow mad and furious, so it was with Pharaoh. Men first slight the truth, and, then are hardened against it, and then come to persecute it. A river, when it hath been long kept up, swelleth and bearetli down the bank and ram])ire ; so do wicked men rage when tiieir consciences cannot withstand the. light, and their hearts will not yield to it.
9. At length Pharaoh is willing to let them go. After much ado God may get something from a hard heart ; but it is no sooner given, but reti-acted ; like fire struck out of a flint, it is hardly got, and quickly gone : Hosea vi. 4, ' Your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away.' Many may have some show of good- ness, at least at some times, who yet are little the better, and their condition nothing the better ; it proveth a great snare and neck-break to them ; its unsoundness is presently seen in its inconstancy.
10. The last news that we hear of hardening Pliaraoh's heart was a little before his destruction : Exod. xiv. 8, * And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued after the childrea of Israel,' Pharaoh begrudgeth his own grant, as if he had yielded too far. Hardness of heart will not leave us till it hatli wrought our full and final destruction. God always besotteth when he meaneth to de- stroy. Never any were hardened but to their own ruin. As God, that loveth his own, loveth them to the end, so God, that hateth those that are hardened, hateth them to the end. Pharaoh is first plagued and then destroyed. This is the upshot of all: Job ix. 4, ' Who hath hardened himself against him, and prospered?' The beginning is imposture and delusion, the middle obstinacy, and the end ruin.
11. How God hardeneth. It is a point that needeth explication. God is not and cannot be the author of sin ; if God should cause it, man should sin of necessity, and then his punishment would not be just, he being under force. God hath not brought upon any necessity of sinning ; and God, that is good, cannot be the cause of evil. If God were the immediate author, it would be no sin, for whatever God doth is good.