Exercitations on the Epistle to the Hebrews

§ 15 There is then no Necessary Reason inducing us to believe, that God hath left all mankind to perish in their sin and misery under the Curse without any provision of a Remedy; yea, there are on the other side Evidences many and certain, that there is a Way provided for their Recovery. For,

First, The Glorious Properties of the Nature of God whose Manifestation and Exaltation in all the works that outwardly are of him, he designeth, do require that there should be Salvation for Sinners. Even this matter of the Salvation of Sinners conduceth, yea is necessary unto the manifestation of some of those Divine Excellencies, wherein no small part of the glory of God doth consist. God had in the Creation of all things ⟨p. 79⟩glorified his Greatness, Power, Wisdom and Goodness. His Sovereignty, Righteousness, and Holiness, he had in like manner revealed in that Holy Law which he had prescribed unto Angels and Men for the Rule of their Obedience, and in the Assignation of their Reward. Upon the Sin of Angels and Men, he had made known his Severity and Vindictive Justice, in the Curse and Punishment inflicted on them. But there were yet remaining undiscovered in the Abyss of his Eternal Essence, Grace, and Pardoning Mercy, which in none of his Works had as yet exerted themselves, or manifested their Glory. And in case no Remedy be provided for mankind under the Evils mentioned, and their utter ruin, as they must have perished accordingly, so those glorious Properties of the nature of God, all ways of exerting their proper and peculiar Acts being secluded, all objects of them removed, could not have been equally glorified with his other Holy Attributes. The creatures know nothing in God, but as it manifested in its Effects. His Essence in its self dwells in Light inaccessible. Had never any stood in need of Grace or Mercy, or doing so, had never been made partakers of them, it could not have been known that there was that kind of Goodness in his Nature, which yet it is his design principally to glorify himself in. The necessity therefore of the Manifestation of these Properties of God, his Goodness, Grace, Mercy, and Readiness to Forgive, which can only be exercised about sinners, and that in their Relief and Salvation from Sin and Misery do require that the Deliverance enquired after be admitted and justly expected. And this Expectation is so much the more just and firmly grounded in that there is nothing in himself which the Lord more requireth our Conformity unto himself in, than in this Condescension, Goodness, Grace, and Readiness to forgive, which manifests how dear the glory of them is unto him.