Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

3. Consider the long time of this patience. He spread out his hand• all the day to a rebellious World. Isaiah 65.2. All mens day, all Gods day, which is a thousand years, he hath born with the gross of mankind, with all the Nations of the World in a long succession of ages for five thousand years and upwards already, and will bear with them, till the time comes for the World dissolution. He hath suffered the monstrous acts of men, and endured the contradictions of a sinful World against himself, from the first sin of Adam to the last committed this minute. The line of his patience hath run along with the duration of the World to this day; and there is not any one of Adams posterity but hath been expensive to him, and partook of the riches of it.

3. Consider the long time of this patience. He spread out his hand• all the day to a rebellious World. Isaiah 65.2. All mens day, all Gods day, which is a thousand years, he hath born with the gross of mankind, with all the Nations of the World in a long succession of ages for five thousand years and upwards already, and will bear with them, till the time comes for the World dissolution. He hath suffered the monstrous acts of men, and endur'd the contradictions of a sinful World against himself, from the first sin of Adam to the last committed this minute. The line of his patience hath run along with the duration of the World to this day; and there is not any one of Adams posterity but hath been expensive to him, and partaked of the riches of it.

4. All these he bears when he hath a sense of them. He sees every day the Roll and Catalogue of sin increasing, he hath a distinct view of every one from the sin of Adam to the last, filed up in his Omniscience; and yet gives no order for the arrest of the World. He knows men fitted for destruction, all the instants he exerciseth long-suffering towards them, which makes the Apostle call it not simply long suffering without the addition of [Greek or Hebrew], much long-suffering.