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A04194 A treatise of the divine essence and attributes. By Thomas Iackson Doctor in Divinitie, chaplaine to his Majestie in ordinary, and vicar of S. Nicolas Church in the towne of Newcastle upon Tyne. The first part; Commentaries upon the Apostles Creed. Book 6 Jackson, Thomas, 1579-1640. 1629 (1629) STC 14318; ESTC S107492 378,415 670

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and formally included in Gods love of absolute goodnesse righteousnesse and true holinesse And the displeasure or indignation which he beares to these must needes seize on their persons that have covered thēselves with them as with a garment and to whose soules they sticke more closely than their skinnes doe to their bodies or their flesh unto their bones CHAP. 20. Whilest God of a loving Father becomes a severe Iudge their is no change or alteration at all in God but onely in men and in their actions Gods will is alwayes exactly fulfilled even in such as goe most against it How it may stand with the Iustice of God to punish transgressions temporall with tormens everlasting 1_THe summe of all is this love was the Mother of all his workes and if I may so speake the fertility of his power and Essence And seeing it is his nature as Creator and cannot change no part of our nature seeing every part was created by him can bee utterly excluded from all fruits of his love untill the sinister use of that contingencie wherewith hee indued it or the improvement of inclinations naturally bent unto evill come to that height as to imply a contradiction for infinite justice or equity to vouchsafe them any favour Whether naturall inclinations unto evill may bee thus farre improved in the children by their forefathers or no is disputable but in another place Concerning Infants save onely so farre as neglect of duties to be performed to them may concerne their Elders seeing the Scripture in this point is silent I have no minde here or elsewhere to dispute If faith they have or such holinesse as becommeth Saints neither are begotten by our writing or preaching nor is the written word the rule of theirs as of all others faith that are of yeares And unto them onely that can heare or reade or have the use of reason I write and speake this as well for their comfort and encouragement to follow goodnes or for their terror lest they follow evill Love much greater than any creature owes or performes or is capable of either in respect of himselfe or in others is the essentiall and sole fruit of Gods antecedent will whether concerning our nature as it was in the first man or now is in the severall persons derived from him And of this love every particular faculty of soule or body is a pledge undoubted all are as so many ties or handles to draw us unto him from whom we are separated onely by dissimilitude our very natures being otherwise linkt to his being with bonds of strictest reference or dependency On the contrary Wrath and Severity are the proper effects of his consequent will that is they are the infallible consequents of our neglecting and despising his will revealed for our good or sweet promises of saving health The full explication and necessary use of this distinction hath taken up its place in the Articles of Creation or Divine Providence Thus much of it may serve our present turn That Gods absolute wil was to have man capable of Heaven Hel of joyes and miseries immortall That this absolute will whose possible objects are two is in the first place set on mans eternall and everlasting joy more fervently than man can conceive yet not so as to contradict it selfe by frustrating the contrary possibility which unto man it had appointed That Gods anger never kindles but out of the ashes of his flaming love despised Nor doth the turning of tender love and compassion into severity wrath presuppose or argue any change or turning in the Father of lights and everlasting mercy it is wholly seated in mens irregular deviation from that course which by the appointment of his antecedent will they should and might have taken whereto his fatherly kindnesse did still invite them unto whose crooked wayes which they doe but should not follow from which the same infinite goodnesse doth still allure them by every temporall blessing and deterre them by every crosse and plague that doth befall them 2 This bodily Sunne which wee see never changeth with the Moone his light his heat are still the same yet one and the same heat in the spring time refresheth our bodies here in this Land but scortcheth such as brought up in this clime journey in the sands of Affricke His beames reflected on bodies solid but of corruptible and changeable nature often inflame matter capable of combustion But as some Philosophers thinke wold not annoy us unless by too much light were we in that aethereall or coelestiall region wherein it moves At least were our bodies of the like substance with the heavens the vicinity of it would rather comfort than torment us Thus is the Father of lights a refreshing flame of unquenchable love to such as are drawne by love to be like him in purity of life but a consuming fire to such as he beholdeth a farre off to such as run from him by making themselves most unlike unto him No sonnes of Adam there be which in some measure or other had not some taste or participation of his bountie And the measure of his wrath is but equall to the riches of his bounty despised To whom this infinite treasure of his bounty hath beene most liberally opened it proves in the end a storehouse of wrath and torments unlesse it finally draw them to repentance According to the height of that exaltation whereunto his antecedent will had designed them shall the degrees of their depression be in hell for not being exalted by it Nor doth any man in that lake of torments suffer paines more against his will than he had done many things against the will of his righteous Iudge daily leading him to repenttnce The flames of hell take their scantling from the flames of Gods love neglected they may not they cannot exceede the measure of this neglect Or to knit up this point with evidence of sacred truth God alwaies proportioneth his plagues or punishments in just equality to mens sinnes And the onely rule for measuring sinne or transgression right must bee taken from the degrees of mans opposition to Gods delight or pleasure in his salvation Not so much as a dramme of his delight or pleasure can be abated not a scruple of his will but must finally be accomplished The measure of his delight in mans repentance or salvation shall beee exactly satisfied and fulfilled Mans repentance he loves as hee is infinite in mercy and in bounty mans punishment he doth not love at all in it selfe yet doth hee punish as hee is infinitely just or as hee infinitely loveth justice This is but the extract of Wisedomes speech Prov. 1. vers 24. Because I have called and ye refused I have stretched out my hand and no man regarded But yee have set at nought all my counsell and would none of my reproofe I also will laugh at your calamity I will mocke when your feare commeth When your feare commeth as desolation and your
the true Church would be unwilling to put our selves upon this tryall Scripture wee grant and are ready upon as high and hard termes as they to maintaine is the onely infallible rule of rectitude or obliquitie in opinions concerning God or mans salvation Yet are we not hereby bound to reject reason and infallible rule of Art as incompetent Iudges what propositions in Scripture are equipollent which opposite which subordinate or what collections from undoubted sacred Maximes are necessary or probable or what conclusions are altogether false and sophisticall Nor ought they to suspect reason in others to bee unsanctified because it is accompanied with rules of prophane sciences For even these are the gifts of God and are sanctified in every Christian by the rule of faith And in as much as both of us admit Scripture to be the onely rule of faith in it selfe most infallible both of us are tyed by infallible consequents of truth from this rule derived to admit of this Maxime following Gods threats and promises his exhortations admonitions or protestations whether immediately made by himselfe or by his Prophets containe in them greater truth and syncerity then is in our admonitions exhortations and promises His truth and syncerity in all his wayes are the rule or patterne which we are to imitate but which wee cannot hope to equalize 2 Put the case then a religious wise and gracious Prince should exhort a young gentleman that in rigour of Law had deserved death for some aemulous quarrell in the Court to behave himselfe better hereafter and he should be sure to find greater favour at his hands than any of his adversaries no man would suspect any determination in the Prince to take away his life for this offence or any purpose to intrap him in some other A minister of publique iustice in our memory told a Butcher whom he then sentenced to death for manslaughter that he might kill Calves Oxen and Sheepe but mankinde was no butchery ware hee might not kill his honest neighbours The solecisme was so uncouth and so ill beseeming the seat of gravity and of justice that it moved laughter though in a case to be lamented throughout the assembly and a young Student standing neare the barre advised the poore condemned man to entreat a Licence to kill Calves and Sheepe that Lent The wisest of men may sometimes erre sometimes place good words amisse or give wholsome counsell such as this was had it beene uttered in due time and place out of season But to spend good words of comfort and encouragement upon such as thou hast certainly appointed to dye to floute the children of destruction with faire promises of preeminence That be farre from thee O Lord. Shall not the Iudge of all the earth doe that which is right and just a thing welbeseeming the best and wisest Princes of the earth to imitate Was then the sentence of condenmation for Cains exile or utter destruction without possibility of revocation when thou entreatedst him as a most loving Father Why art thou worth and why is thy countenance fallen If thou doe well shalt not thou bee accepted and if thou doest not well sinne lyeth at the doore and unto thee shall be his desire and thou shalt rule over him Did that which the Text saith afterward came to passe come to passe by inevitable necessity And Cain talked with Abel his brother and it came to passe when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slue him My adversaries for I am not theirs must be entreated to pardon me if I be as resolute and peremptory for my opinion hitherto delivered as they are for any other For reason and conscience ruled by Scripture perswades me it is possible for the Iudge of quick dead to be unjust in his sentences or unsyncere in his incouragement as that Cains destruction should be in respect of his decree altogether necessarie or impossible to have beene avoyded When the Lord tooke first notice of his aemulation and envie at his yonger brother God would not banish him from his brothers presence nor so tie his hands that he could not strike But he used all the meanes that aequitie in like case requires to move his heart that way which it was very possible for it to bee moved And unto this motion Cain had both Gods assistance and incouragement as readie as his generall conc●urse to conceave anger in his heart or to lift up his hand against his brother 3 The very tenor of Gods grand covenant with the sonnes of Abraham includes this twofold possibilitie one of attaining his extraordinary gracious favour by doing well another of incurring miserable calamities by doing ill If yee walke in my statutes and keepe my commandements and doe them then will I give you raine in due season and the land shall yeeld her increase and the trees of the field shall yeeld their fruit And your threshing shall reach to the vintage and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time and yee shall eate your bread to the full and dwell in your land safely c. I am the Lord your God which brought you forth out of the Land of Aegypt that yee should not bee their bondmen and I have broken the bands of your yoke and made you goe upright Levit. 26. ver 3. ad 14. But if yee will not hearken unto mee and will not doe all these commandements And if yee shall despise my statutes or if your soule abhorre my judgements so that ye will not doe all my commandements but that ye breake my covenant I also will doe this unto you I will even appoint over you terrour consumption and the burning ague c. Levit. 26. ver 14 15 16 c. This tenor or condition was to continue one and the same throughout all generations But some generations as the event hath proved were de facto partakers of the blessings promised others have had their portion in the curses Shall wee hence inferre that prosperitie was in respect of GODS decree or good pleasure altogether necessarie unto such as prospered not so much as possible unto those that perished or that their calamity was absolutely necessary I would say rather I have Gods word yea his heartie wishes for my warrant that the most prosperous times which any of Abrahams or Davids posteritie enjoyed did come farre short of that measure of prosperitie which by Gods aeternall decree was possible to all even to the whole stocke of Iacob throughout all their generations O that my people had hearkned unto me and Israel had walked in my wayes I should soone have subdued their enemies and turned my hand against their adversaries The haters of the Lord should have submitted themselves unto him but their time should have endured for ever Psal 81. verse 13 14 15. But in what estate fed with the finest of the wheate and satified with hony out of the Rocke verse 16.