430 AN EXPOSITION UPON PSALM CXXX. [Ver. 4<.
dence, the apostle proves the Lcing- and the properties of God ; yea, he lets them know with whom he had to do, that God designed by his works so far to reveal himself unto them as the true and living God, the maker and governor of all things, as that they ought to have inquired more diligently after him, and not to look on him alone as the "unknown God" who alone might be known, all their idols being vain and nothing. But of the discovery of pardon and forgiveness in God by these ways and means he speaks not ; yea, he plainly shows that this was not done thereby: for the great call to saving repentance is by the revelation of forgiveness. But now, by these works of his providence, God called not the Gentiles to saving repentance. No ; saith he, " He suffered them to walk still in their own ways," Actsxiv. 16, "and winked at the times of their ignor- ance; but now," — that is, by the word of the gospel, — " commandeth them to repent," chap. xvii. 30. '
Secondly, Whereas there had been one signal act of God's pro- vidence about sin, when man first fell into the snares of it, it was so far from the revealing forgiveness in God, that it rather severely in- timated the contrary. This was God's dealing with sinning angels. The angels were the first sinners, and God dealt first with them about sin. And what was his dealing with them the Holy Ghost tell us, 2 Pet. ii. 4, ' AyysXoiv a,tiapTriffdvTO}v oux, stpsIffuTo' — " He spared not the sinning angels." " He spared them not;" it is the same word which he useth where he speaks of laying all our iniquities on Christ, he un- dergoing the punishment due unto them: E-om. viii. 32, Ov/. l:piicaTo, — " He spared him not ;" that is, he laid on him the full punishment that by the curse and sanction of the law was due unto sin. So he dealt with the angels that sinned: "He spared them not," but inflicted on them the punishment due unto sin, shutting them up under chains of darkness for the iudgment of the gi'eat day. Hitherto, then, God keeps all thoughts of forgiveness in his own eternal bosom ; there is not so much as the least dawning of it upon the Avorld. And this was at first no small prejudice against any thoughts of forgiveness. The world is made ; sin enters by the most glorious part of the creation, whose recovery by pardon might seem to be more desirable, but not the least appearance of it is discovered. Thus it was "from the -beginning of the world hid in God," Eph. iii. 9.
Thirdly, God gave unto man a law of obedience immediately upon his creation; yea, for the main of it, he implanted it in him by and in his creation. This law it was supposed that man might trans- gress. The very nature of a law prescribed unto free agents, attended with thrcatenings and promises of reward, requires that supposition. Now, there was not annexed unto this law, or revealed with it, the
Ver.4.] EVIDENCE OF FORGIVENESS WITH GOD. 431
least intimation of pardon to be obtained if transgression should en.siie. Gen, ii. 1 7, we have this law, " In the day thou eatest thou shalt surely die;" — "Dying thou shalt die;" or " bring upon thyself as- suredly the guilt of death temporal and eternal." There God leaves the sinner, under the power of that commination. Of forgiveness or pardoning mercy there is not the least intimation. To this very day that law, which was then the whole rule of life and acceptance with God, knows no such thing. " Dying thou shalt die, O sinner," is the precise and final voice of it.
From these previous considerations, added to what was formerly spoken, some things preparatory to the ensuing discourse may be in- ferred; as, —
V 1. That it is a gj'eat and rare thing to have forgiveness in Oocl discovered unto a sinful soul. A thing it is that, as hath been showed, conscience and law, with the inbred notions that are in the heart of man about God's holiness and vindictive justice, do lie against ; a matter whereof we have no natural presumption, whereof there is no common notion in the mind of man ; a thing which no con- sideration of the works of God, either of creation or providence, will reveal, and which the great instance of God's dealing with sinning angels renders deep, admirable, and mysterious. Men who have common and slight thoughts of God, of themselves, of sin, of obe- dience, of the judgment to come, of eternity, — that feed upon the ashes of rumours, reports, hear-say s, traditions, without looking into the reality of things, — may and do take this to be an ordinary and acknowledged truth, easy to be entertained, which upon the matter no man disbelieves. But convinced sinners, who make a trial of these things as running into eternity, have other thoughts of them. And as to that which, it is pretended, every one believes, we have great cause to cry out, "Lord, who hath believed our report? to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?" '