Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

3. They differ in their Ends and aims. What is the aim and design of God in the dispensation of that forbearance, which is §. 15 manifested, and may be discovered out of Christ? the Apostle tells us Rom: 9. 22. What if God willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction? It was but to leave them inexcusable, that his power, and wrath against sin, might be manifested in their destruction. And therefore he calls it, a suffering of them to walk in their own ways, Act. 14. 16. which elsewhere he holds out as a most dreadful judgement, to wit, in respect of that issue whereto it will certainly come, as Psal. 81. 12. I gave them up to their Lusts, and they walked in their own counsels, which is ⟨p. 97⟩as dreadful a ^ggcondition as a creature is capable of falling into, in this world. And Act. 17. 30. he calls it a winking at the sins of their ignorance; as it were, taking no care nor thought of them in their dark condition, as it appears by the Antithesis, but now he commandeth all men every where to repent. He did not take so much notice of them then, as to command them to repent, by any clear Revelation of his mind and will. And therefore the exhortation of the Apostle, Rom. 2 4. and despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? is spoken to the Jews, who had advantages to learn the natural tendency of that goodness and forbearance which God exercises in Christ, which indeed leads to Repentance, or else he doth in general intimate, that in very Reason, men ought to make another use of those things, then usually they do, and which he chargeth them withal, v. 5. but after thy hardness and impenitent heart, &c. At ^*best then the patience of God unto men out of Christ, by reason of their own incorrigible stubbornness, proves but like the waters of the River Phasis, that are sweet at the top, and bitter in the bottom: they swim for a while in the sweet and good things of this life, (