Ps. lxxiii. 1. Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are
of a clean heart.
THE aversion which men usually feel to a vindi- cation of God's absolute sovereignty, proceeds from an idea, that the exercise of it would be repugnant to his other perfections of goodness and mercy. But there is no just foundation for this conceit : nor is there any reason why we should doubt the sove- reignty of God, any more than any other of his attributes. That God does dispense his favours according to his own will is an undeniable truth : how else can we account for his taking one nation from the midst of another nation, and forming them for his peculiar people, and giving them his righteous laws, and expelling seven nations from the land of Canaan in order to give it to his chosen people for their inheritance ? But however freely he exercises his own prerogative in this respect, he will take care that his final appointment of men's states shall accord with perfect equity : he even calls the day in which that decision shall pass, " The day of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God." The truth is, that though God has no respect to men's moral cha- racters in the first communications of his mercy, he invariably transforms the objects of that mercy in such a manner, as to make it suitable and proper that he should confer upon them the ultimate and ever- lasting tokens of his love. The Israel of old, and those to whom that name at this time belongs, were, and are, a chosen people: but all the true Israel are renewed in the spirit of their minds ; they are " such