2. His providential government —
[Deep and mysterious are his ways, yet are they all or- dered in perfect wisdom and goodness. In the ivorld, in the Church, and in our own individual cases, there are many things which we cannot account for ; yet if we imagine that any one of them could have been more wisely appointed, we only betray our own ignorance and presumption. We cannot tell why God confined the revelation of his will to one single family for so many ages, or why it is still known to so small a part of the world: but in due time God will make it evident that such a mode of dispensing mercy was most conducive to his own glory. When a persecution arose hi the Church about Stephen, and the saints, driven from Jerusalem, were scattered over the face of the earth, it probably appeared to them an inexplicable dis- pensation : but the benefit of it soon appeared, because the banished Christians propagated the Gospel wherever they camed. And when Paul was confined in prison two years, it might be thought a most calamitous event : yet does he him- self tell us, that it tended " rather unto the furtherance of the Gospel e." Thus, in innumerable instances, we are ready to say, like Jacob, " All these things are against us," when in fact they are "all working together for our good;" and we are constrained after a season to acknowledge, that our greatest crosses were only blessings in disguised]
3. His moral perfections —
[Justice, holiness, and truth, are inseparable from the Deity; " He is a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he." The present state of things indeed does not afford us -a just criterion whereby to judge of these perfections ; be- cause eternity is not open to our view : but the brightest dis- play of them that can be exhibited to mortal eyes, is seen in the great work of redemption : for God has determined not to pardon any of the human race (at least, not any to whom the light of revelation comes,) except in a way that shall magnify these perfections ; nor will he condemn any, without making them witnesses for him, that he is holy, and just, and true. It is for this very end that he sent his only-begotten Son into the world : for, by bearing our sins in his own body on the tree, Jesus has made a complete satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, and opened a way for the exercise of mercy in perfect consistency with all the other attributes of the Deity. The true believer makes an open confession of this, and ac- knowledges, that all his hopes are founded on the sacrifice of Christ: the unbeliever experiences in his own person the weight of that justice, which he would not honour in the person
d Acts viii. 1, 4. e Phil. i. 12 — 14. f Ps. xcvii. 2.