Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

2. He therefore exercised so much patience to wait for mens Repentance. All the notices and warnings that God gives men of either public or personal calamities, is a continual invitation to Repentance. This was the common interpretation the Heathens made of extraordinary Presages and Prodigies, which showed as well the delays as the approaches of Judgments. What other notion but this, that those warnings of Judgments witness a slowness to Anger, and a willingness to turn his arrows another way, should move them to multiply sacrifices, go weeping to their Temples, sound out prayers to their Gods, and show all those other Testimonies of a Repentance, which their blind understandings hit upon. If a^* Prince should sometimes in a light and gentle manner punish a criminal, and then relax it, and show him much kindness, and afterwards inflict upon him another kind of punishment as light as the former, and less than was due to his crime, what could the Malefactor suspect by such a way of proceeding, but that the Prince by those gently repeated chastisements, had a mind to move him to a regret for his crime? And what other thoughts could men naturally have of Gods conduct, that he should warn them of great judgments, send light afflictions, which are Testimonies rather of a Patience, than of a severe wrath, but that it was intended to move them to a relenting, and a breaking off their sins by ⟨p. 811⟩working Righteousness? Though Divine patience doth not in the event, induce men to Repentance, yet the natural tendency of such a treatment, is to mollify mens Hearts, to overcome their obstinacy, and no man hath any reason to judge otherwise of such a proceeding. The long suffering of God is Salvation, saith Peter. 2 Pet. 3.15. i. e. hath a tendency to Salvation, in its being a solicitation of men to the means of it: For the Apostle cites Paul for the confirmation of it, Even as our beloved Brother Paul hath written unto you, which must refer to Rom. 2.4.

2. He therefore exercised so much patience to wait for mens Repentance. All the notices and warnings that God gives men of either publick or personal calamities, is a continual invitation to Repentance. This was the common interpretation the Heathens made of extraordinary Presages and Prodigies, which shew'd as well the delays as the approaches of Judgments. What other notion but this, that those warnings of Judgments witness a slowness to Anger, and a willingness to turn his arrows another way, should move them to multiply sacrifices, go weeping to their Temples, sound out prayers to their Gods, and shew all those other Testimonies of a Repentance, which their blind understandings hit upon. If a