An exposition with practical observations continued upon the eighth, ninth and tenth chapters of…An exposition with practicall observations continued upon the eighth, ninth and tenth chapters of…

As those Scriptures seem to import that God knew not how wicked the builders of Babel were, or the dwellers in Sodom, till he took pains to enquire; so another Scripture imports, that he did not know Abraham was a godly man, till he made an experiment of it, by putting him upon that hard piece of obedience, the offering up of his son, Now I know thou fearest me (Gen. 22.12.) as if the Lord had collected his knowledge of what Abraham was, from what Abraham did. But that testimony of God, Now I know, is but now I have made it known, or, now I know that in the fruit, which I knew before in the root; now I see my fear in thy works, as before I saw it in thy faith. That place (Deut. 8.2.) bears a like sense; where Moses bespeaks Israel thus, Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these ⟨p. 475⟩forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his Commandments or no. The Lord needed not forty years, no nor one minutes experience to make up his thoughts concerning that people; he knew what they were at first sight, and what they would prove (even a stubborn, an unbelieving and a back-sliding people) before they were. God proved them, not to know what was in their hearts, but that we might know it: that, what he knew by his internal, immediate inspection, others also might know by external observation. It would not have been believed, that they were so bad, if God had not drawn it out by that forty years variety of his dispensations towards them. Or Moses describes God after the manner of men, who prove things that they may know them, whereas indeed God knows, and then proves them.

As those Scriptures seem to import that God knew not how vvicked the builders of Babel were, or the dwellers in Sodome, till he took pains to enquire; so another Scripture imports, that he did not know Abraham vvas a godly man, till he made an experiment of it, by putting him upon that hard piece of obedience, the offering up of his son, Now I know thou fearest me (Gen. 22.12.) as if the Lord had collected his knowledge of vvhat Abraham vvas, from vvhat Abraham did. But that testimony of God, Now I know, is but now I have made it known, or, now I know that in the fruit, vvhich I knew before in the root; now I see my fear in thy works, as before I saw it in thy faith. That place (