men are frequently in very prosperous circumstances: these things have been stumbling and puzzling to good men, and they have not been able to reconcile them to the justice of God; see Psal. Ixxiii. 4—13. Jer. xii. 1, 2. As for the afflictions God's people, these of are not punishments for sins, but chastizements of them; were they, indeed, punishments for sin, it would argue injustice, for it would be unjust to punish twice for the same sins; once in their Surety, and again in themselves: but so it is not; their afflictions come not from God as a judge, but as a father; and not from his justice, but his love; and not to their detriment and injury, but for their good. In short, they are chastened by the Lord, that they might not be condemned with the world, 1 Cor. xi. 32. And as for the prosperity of the wicked, though their eyes stand out with fatness, and they have more than heart can wish, yet they are like beasts that are fattened for the slaughter; their judgment may seem to linger, and their damnation to slumber, but they do not; sudden destruction will come upon them; the tables will, ere long, be turned, and the saints, who have now their evil things, will be comforted; and the wicked, who have now their good things, will be tormented: justice, though it may not so apparently take place now, it will hereafter; when all things will be set to rights, and the judgments of God will be manifest. There is a future state, when the justice of God will shine in all its glory.

II. God is righteous in all his ways and works and acts of grace; in the predestination of men, the choice of some, and the preterition of others. While the apostle is treating on this sublime subject, he stops and asks this question, Is there unrighteousness with God? and answers it with the utmost abhorrence and detestation, God forbid! Election is neither an act of justice nor of injustice, but of the sovereign will and pleasure of God, who does what he will with is own; gives it to one, and not to another, without any imputation of injustice; if he may give grace and glory to whom he will, without such a charge, then he may determine to give it without any. If it is no injustice in men to choose their own favourites, friends, confidents, and companions; it can be none in God to choose whom he pleases to bestow his favours on; to indulge with communion with himself now, and to dwell with him to all eternity: if it was no injustice to choose some of the angels, called elect angels, and pass by others; and even to condemn all that sinned, without shewing mercy to one individual of them; it can be no injustice in him to choose some of the race of men, and save them; and pass by others, when he could have condemned them all. Nor can the imputation of Adam's sin to all his posterity, be accounted an unrighteous action. God made man upright, he made himself a sinner: God gave him a righteous law, and abilities to keep it; he voluntarily broke it: God constituted the first man the federal head and representative of all his posterity; and who so fit for this as their natural head and common parent, with and in whom they were to stand and fall; and what injustice could be in that; since had he stood, they would have partook of the benefits of it; as

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now he fell they share in the miseries of it? and since they sinned in him, it can be no unrighteous thing to reckon it to them; or that they should be made and constituted sinners, by his disobedience. It is not reckoned unjust, ainong men, for children to be punished for the sins of their parents, and particularly treason; and what else is sin against God? Exod. xx. 5. The justice of God shines brightly in redemption by Christ; "Zion, and her converts, are redeemed in righteouness;" a full price is paid for the redemption of them; and in it and truth meet together, and righteousness and peace kiss each other:" and though it is not for all men, no injustice is done to them that are not redeem ed; for if God could in justice have condemned all, it can be no act of injustice to redeem and save some. Suppose one hundred slaves in Algiers, and a man out of his great generosity, lays down a ransom-price for fifty of them, does he, by this act of distinguished goodness and generosity, do any injustice to the others? or can they righteously complain of him for not ransoming them? In the justification of men, by the righteousness of Christ, the justice of God is very conspicuous; for though God justifies the ungodly, yet not without a perfect righteousness, such as is adequate to the demands of his righteous law; even the righteousness of his own Son, in the imputation of which, and justification by it, he appears to be just, and the justifier of him which believes in Jesus, Rom. iii. 26. Though God forgives sin, yet not without a satisfaction made to his justice; though it is according to the riches of his grace, yet through the blood of Christ shed for it; and upon the foot of the shedding of that blood, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighte usness, 1 John i. 9. and so it is both an act of grace and of justice; as is eternal glory and happiness, being the free gift of God, through Christ and his righteousness.

OF THE VERACITY OF GOD.

THE apostle says, Let God be true, and every man a liar, Rom. iii. 4. this must be affirmed of him, whatever is said of creatures, he is true, and truth itself.

I. God is true in and of himself: this epithet of attribute, is expressive, 1. Of the reality of his being; he truly and really exists: this is what every worshipper of him must believe, Heb. xi. 6. Creatures have but a shadow of being in comparison of his; Every man walks in a vain shew, or image; rather in appearance than in reality, Psal. xxxix. 6. but the existence of God is true, real, and substantial; hence he has the name Jehovah, I AM that I AM; which denotes the truth, eternity, and immutability of his essence. seems to be, and is not, is not true; what seems to be, and is, is true. the truth of his Deity; he is the true and the living God; so he is often called, 2 Chron. xv. 3. Jer. x. 10. 1 Thess. i. 9. in opposition to fictitious deities;

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who either have feigned themselves such, or are feigned so by others; gods only by name, not by nature; of which there have been many: but the true God is but one, and in distinction from such who are called gods in a figurative and metaphorical sense, gods by office under God; as Moses was to Pharaoh, and as kings, judges, and civil magistrates be, Exod. vii. 1. Psal. lxxxii. 1—7. But the Lord is God in a true and proper sense. 3. This title includes the truth and reality of all his perfections; he is not only omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, and immutable, but he is truly so: what is falsely claimed by others, or wrongly given to them, is really in him; he is not only good and gracious, holy and just, but he is truly so; what others only appear to be, he is really. 4. This may be predicated of each Person in the Godhead; the Father is the only true God, John xvii. 3. though not to the exclusion of the Son, who is also the true God and eternal life; nor of the holy Spirit, who is truth; and who, with the Father and the Son, is the one true and living God, 1 John v. 20, 6, 7. This attribute of truth removes from the divine nature every thing imperfect and sinful: it is opposed to unrighteousness, Deut. xxxii. 4. and has the epithet of just or holy along with it, when God is spoken of in his persons, ways, and works, Rev. iii. 7. and vi. 10. and xv. 3. and xvi. 7. and xix. 2. it removes from him all imputation of lying and falshood; he is not a man, that he should lie, as men do; the Strength of Israel will not lie; yea, he is God that cannot lie; it is even impossible that he should, Numb. xxiii. 19. Sam. xv. 29. Tit. i. 2. Heb. vi. 18. this frees him from all deception, he can neither deceive nor be deceived; Jeremiah, indeed, says, O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived, Jer. xx. 7. but this must be understood either as a misapprehension and mistake of the prophet; or the sense is, if I am deceived, God has deceived me; but as that cannot be, therefore I am not deceived: though rather the words may be rendered, thou hast persuaded me, and I was persuaded, to enter upon his prophetic office, and to proceed on in the execution of it. Moreover, this attribute clears God of the charge of insincerity, hypocrisy, and dissimulation, which, if in him, he could not be true. Nor on the supposition of his decree to save some men, and not all, are his declarations chargeable with any thing of that kind; as that he has no pleasure in the death of him that dies, and that he will have all men to be saved, Ezek. xviii. 32. 1 Tim. ii. 4. since the former respects not eternal death, but the captivity of the Jews, their return from it, upon their obedience, to their own land, and living in it. And the latter respects the will of God to save some of all sorts, of every rank and condition in life, and particularly Gentiles as well as Jews. In short, it removes all unfaithfulness from God, or any shadow of it: it strongly expresses the faithfulness of God; hence true and faithful are joined together, when the sayings or words of God are spoken of; nor is it any objection to the veracity of God, when what he has promised or threatened is not done; since thereunto a condition is either openly annexed or secretly understood; see Jer. xviii. 7-10. but the faithfulness of God, in his promises, &c. will be dis

tinctly considered hereafter. Concerning the veracity of God, let the following things be observed:

1. That it is essential to him, it is his very nature and essence; he is truth itself; he is not only called the God of truth, but God the truth, Deut. xxxii. 4. and so Christ asserts himself to be the truth, John xiv. 6. and the Spirit is likewise so called, 1 John v. 6. To be false, fallacious, and insincere, would be to act contrary to his nature, even to deny himself; which he cannot do. 11. It is most pure and perfect in him; as in him is light, and no darkness. at all; he is righteous, and no unrighteousness is in him: is holy, and no unholiness in him; is good, and no evil in him; is wisdom, and no folly nor weakness in him; so he is truth, and no falslood in him, nor the least mixture nor appearance of it.

111. It is first, chief, and original in him; it is first in him, as he is the first cause; it is chief, as it is perfect in him, and all truth is originally from him; natural and rational truth, which is clear and self-evident to the mind: as the Being of God, from the works of his hands, called the truth of God made manifest in men, and shewed unto them, Rom. i. 18-25. Moral truth, by which men know, in some measure, though sadly depraved, the difference between moral good, and moral evil, Rom. ii. 14, 15. Spiritual truth, truth in the inward parts, or the true grace of God; and evangelical truth, the word of truth, and the several doctrines of it; these are not of men, but of God. All untruth is from Satan, the father of lies; but all truth is from the God of truth, and from the Spirit, who leads into all truth, as it is in Jesus.

IV. Truth, as in God, is eternal; what is truth now, was always truth with him in his eternal mind; for known to him are all his works from the beginning, or from eternity, Acts xv. 18. as also his word is true from the beginning, or from eternity, Psal. cxix. 160. What is true with us to-day, might not be true yesterday, and will not be true to-morrow, because things are in a succession with us, and are so known by us; but not so with God, in whose eternal mind all things stand in one view; and besides, as veracity is his nature, his essence, it must be eternal, since that is, which contains all truth in it; and his truth will be to all generations, even for ever, Psal. c. 5. and cxvii. 2.

v. It is immutable and invariable, as he himself, as his nature is; truth does not always appear in the same light to men; at first more obscurely, then more clearly; it has its gradations and increase; but in God is always the same: creatures are mutable, fallacious, and deceitful; but God is the same, true and faithful, yesterday, to-day, and for ever. An attribute on account of which he is greatly to be praised and celebrated, Psal. lxxxix. 5. Isai. xxxviii. 19.

II. God is true in his works; or all his works are true, and his veracity is displayed in them; and these are either internal or external.

1. Internal acts within himself; some relative to himself, to the divine persons, their modes of subsisting, and distinction from each other; as paternity,

filiation, and spiration; which are true and real things: the Father is truly and properly the Father of Christ, and not in name only; and Christ is his own. proper Son, not in a figurative sense, or by office, as magistrates are called the children of the most High; but the Son of the Father in truth and love, 2 John 3. and the Spirit of truth is really breathed, and proceeds from the Father and the Son, John xv. 26. others are relative to creatures; the decrees of God within himself, which are the secret actings and workings of his mind, the thoughts of his heart, the deep things of God, his counsels of old, which are faithfulness and truth; truly made, and truly performed, Isai. xxv. 1.

H. External works, as the works of creation, providence, and grace, which are all true, and real things; and in which the veracity of God appears, both in making and in continuing them.

1. The works, of creation, the heavens and the earth, which are both his handy work, and all that are in them; in which the invisible perfections of his nature are displayed and discerned, his eternal power and Godhead, and his veracity among the rest. The heavens above us, the sun, moon, and stars we behold, and the earth on which we live, are real, and not imaginary, they truly exist. Satan pretended to shew to Christ all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, Matt. iv. 8. but this was a false and delusive representa¬ tion, a deceptio visus, by which he would have imposed on Christ, but could not.

2. The works of providence; those in an ordinary way, by which God governs the world, and disposes of all things according to truth and righteousness; and such as are of an extraordinary kind, as those done by the hands of Moses, in Egypt; and by Christ and his apostles: these were real things, to answer some wise ends and purposes in the world; when those done by the magicians were only in shew, in appearance, and by a sort of legerdemain; as those done by antichrist, in the sight of men, as they imagine, whereby he deceives them that dwell on the earth; and therefore are called lying wonders, feigned things, which have no truth in them, Rev. xiii. 13, 14. 2 Thess. ii. 9, 10. but the wonderful works of God are true, and without deceit, as are all his judg ments he executes by the sword, famine, pestilence, &c.

3. The works of grace done by him, his acts of grace, both in eternity and time; his choice of persons to eternal life, is true, firm, and real, the foundation of God, which stands sure; the covenant of grace, made in Christ, full of blessings and promises, faithfully performed; the mission of Christ into the world, and his incarnation, who was really made flesh, and dwelt among men ; the truth of which the apostle confirms by the various senses of seeing, hearing, and handling, 1 John i. 1. Justification by his righteousness, is really imputed to his people, and by which they truly become righteous; and not in a putative and imaginary sense; pardon by his blood, which is not merely typical, as by the blood of slain beasts, but real; atonement by the sacrifice of himself, which he really and truly offered up to God; and sanctification by the Spirit, which