Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

And the destruction of it forty years after, will not be easily evinced, if Jonah lived in the time of Jeroboam the second King of Israel, as he did^*; And Nineveh was destroyed in the time of Josiah King of Judah. But the other Answer is plain. God did not fulfil what he had threatened, because they reformed what they had committed: When the threatening was made, they were a fit Object for Justice; but when they repented, they were a fit Object for a merciful Respite. To threaten when sins are high, is a part of Gods Justice; not to execute when sins are revoked by Repentance, is a part of Gods Goodness. And in the Case of Hezekiah^*, Isaiah comes with a Message from God, that he should set his house in order, for he shall dye; that is, the Disease was mortal, and no outward Applications could in their own nature resist the Destemper. Behold, ^*I will add to thy days fifteen years; I will heal thee: It seems to me to be one entire Message, because the latter part of it was so suddenly after the other committed to Isaiah to be delivered to Hezekiah; for he was not gone out of the Kings house, before he was ordered to return with the news of his health, by an extraordinary indulgence of God against the power of Nature and force of the Disease: Behold I will add to thy Life; noting it as an extraordinary thing: He was in the second Court of the Kings House when this word came to him^*; the Kings House having three Courts, so that he was not gone above half way out of the Palace. God might send this message of Death, to prevent the Pride Hezekiah might swell with for his deliverance from Sennacherib: As Paul had a Messenger of Satan to buffet him to prevent his lifting up^*; and this good Man was subject to this sin, as we find afterwards in the Case of the Babylonish Ambassadors: And God delayed this other part of the Message to humble him, and draw out his Prayer; and as soon as ever he found Hezekiah in this temper, he sent Isaiah with a comfortable message of recovery: So that the Will of God was to signify to him the mortality of his distemper, and afterwards to relieve him by a message of an extraordinary Recovery.