3dly. It is impossible for faith ever to consider the nature of God, but it hath a secret respect unto Jesus Christ, as the days-man or umpire between God and the soul, and as him by whom — as to all that concerns these properties of his nature — his severity and justice are already manifested and glorified.
[3.] There is one reason more why the soul will thus, in overwhelm- ing distresses, betake itself unto the nature of God, as manifested by his name; and that is taken from the nature of faith itself. The formal reason of faith is the veracity of God's word. What we believe with divine faith, we believe upon this account, — that God hath re- vealed and spoken it. And the ultimate object of faith is God's all- sufficiency. And whatsoever you act faith immediately upon, it will not rest and be satisfied till it comes, as it were, to be immersed in the all-sufficiency of God ; like the stream of a river that runs with great swiftness, and presses on till it comes to the ocean, where it is swallowed up. It is said, 1 Pet. i. 21, that " through Christ we be- lieve in God." Christ is the immediate object of faith; but God in his all-sufficiency is the ultimate object of faith.
Again : faith acts thus, because it is the great principle of that
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divine nature which God hath inlaid in our souls, created in us, and whereof he is the Father; for " of his own will he hath begotten us, by the word of truth." Faith, therefore, as it is the child of God, — the new nature that God hath ingrafted, in us, — has a natural tendency towards God ; so that it is working in and through all to God him- self, who is its Father. This is the first thing that the soul considers in God, that faith makes its application unto for relief.
2. In an overwhelming condition, faith finds relief in sovereign grace; that is, grace as it is absolutely free. What I mean by it, is that which is mentioned, Exod. xxxiii. 19, "I will be gracious unto whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy upon whom I will show mercy." The things Ave stand in need of are grace and mercy; the principle from whence they flow, and are bestowed, is the sove- reign will and pleasure of God. God refers the dispensation of all grace and mercy merely unto his own sovereign will and pleasure. Now, when the soul can find nothing in the promise, nothing in any evidence of the love of God, or in the experience that it hath formerly had, it betakes itself unto the sovereignty of grace. And in sovereign orace there are two things: —
(1.) That God is able to give relief in the state and condition wherein we are; whatever we stand in need of, — mercy, life, salvation, — God is able to give it : whatsoever he will do, he can do. And this in the Scripture is made a great encouragement of rest upon God. Thus, Dan. hi. 17, when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were in that great and overwhelming distress, what did they relieve them- selves withal ? " If it be so," say they, " our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, 0 king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." " If God will not:" it is not, " If God can- not;" for he can do what he will. If he had not been able, they would not have worshipped him. There is nothing for these sixteen hundred years that hath seemed harder to be effected, than the call of the Jews ; but the apostle gives us this ground yet to fix our hopes upon, in the expectation of it: — " They may be graffed in; ' for God is able to graff them in again/" Rom. xi. 23. The very power of God — that he is able to do whatever he j)leases — is a foundation for faith to act upon, and relieve itself by. And therefore God pleads it emphatically, Isa, 1. 2, 3, where he tells them that his hand is not shortened that it cannot save, but he is still able to do it. " Is nry hand shortened at all," saith he, " that it cannot redeem ? or have I no power to deliver? Behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea: I make the rivers a wilderness: I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering."
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Now, there are four things that are included in this very apprehen- sion of faith that God is able to do this, whatever our condition be : —
[1.] There is nothing contrary to his own nature in it. There are things that are contrary to the nature of God, and these things God cannot do. " God cannot lie/' Tit. i. 2; Heb. vi. 18. It is one part of God's infinite perfection, that he can do nothing contrary unto his own nature. So that whatever I believe is of God's sovereign grace, which he is able to do, I believe there is nothing in it contrary unto the nature of God. Whatever apprehensions we have of pardon of sin, it includes an atonement ; for without an atonement God is not able to pardon our sins: God cannot do it without satisfaction unto his justice. So that every soul that hath an apprehension that there is sovereign grace in God, whereby he is able to relieve and help him, he includes in that apprehension the belief of an atonement ; without which God cannot do it. " He cannot deny himself." It is the judg- ment of God, that " they that commit sin are worthy of death."