Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

4. His Patience is manifest, in moderating his judgments, when he sends them. Doth he empty his Quiver of his Arrows, or exhaust his magazines of thunder? No, he could roll one Thunder-bolt successively upon all Mankind; 'Tis as easy with him to Create a perpetual motion of Lightning and Thunder, as of the Sun and Stars, and make the World as terrible by the one, as it is delightful by the other. He opens not all his store, he sends out a light party to skirmish with men, and puts not in array his whole Army, He stirs not up all his wrath, Psal. 78.38. he doth but pinch, where he might have torn asunder; When he takes away much, he leaves enough to support us. If he had stirred up all his anger, he had taken away all, and our lives to boot. He rakes up but a few sparks, takes but one firebrand to fling upon men, when he might discharge the whole Furnace upon them; He sends but a few drops out of the Cloud, which he might make to break in the gross, and fall down upon our heads to overwhelm us; he abates much of what he might do. When he might sweep away a whole Nation by deluges of water, corruption of the Air, or convulsions of the Earth, or by other ways that are not wanting at his order. He picks out only some Persons, some Families, some Cities, sends a plague into one house, and not into another; here is Patience to the stock of a Nation, while he inflicts punishment upon some of the most notorious sinners in it. Herod is suddenly snatched away, being willingly flattered into the thoughts of his being a God; God singled out the chief in the herd, for whose sake he had been affronted by the rabble. Act. 12.22, 23. Some find him sparing them, while others feel him destroying them; He arrests some, when he might seize all, all being his Debtors; And often in great desolations brought upon a people for their sin, he hath left a stump in the Earth, as Daniel speaks, Dan. 4.15. for a Nation to grow upon it again, and arise to a stronger constitution. He doth punish less than our iniquities deserve, Ezra 9.13. and rewards us not according to our iniquities. Psal. 103.10. The greatness of any punishment in this Life, answers not the greatness of the crime. Though there be an equity in whatsoever he doth, yet there is not an equality to what we deserve. Our iniquities would justify a severer treating of us;