IMMUTABILITY OF GOd's COUNSELS.
Isai. xiv. 27. The Lord of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it ? and his hand is stretched out, and loho shall turn it hack ?
IT is common with the Lord, when predicting dis- tant events, to confirm men in the expectation of them by the accomphshment of something near at hand. Thus when God foretold the incarnation of his own Son by the Prophet Isaiah, he foretold also the speedy destruction of the ten tribes, that the fulfilment of the one might excite in their minds an expectation of the other ^ : and when to Hezekiah he promised an addition of fifteen years to his life, he caused the shadow on the sun-dial of Ahaz to recede ten degrees, as a sign that his life should certainly be prolonged to the period that had been fixed^. Thus, in the chapter from whence our text is taken, and in that which precedes it, a very full and minute prophecy of the destruction of Babylon, and of the consequent restoration of the Jews to their own land, is given two hundred years before it was to be accomplished. But there was another event of great importance speedily to take place, namely, the destruction of the Assyrian army before Jerusalem : this therefore is introduced, not merely as an independent prophecy, but as a near event, which would assure to them the accomplish- ment of those which were more remote. It is in reference to all these events that the immutability of God's purpose is so strongly declared in our text, but more especially to those events which constitute the main subject of the prophecy.
The immutability of God's decrees is confessedly a very deep and mysterious subject, which we would not enter upon but with fear and trembling. We do not approve of bringing it forward on every occasion, and making it, as some do, the great subject of our ministrations : but we do not feel at liberty to pass
a Isai. vii. 14 — 16. ^ Jsai. xxxviii. 7, 8.