The covenant of life opened, or, A treatise of the covenant of grace

¹To this is answered, the glory internal, eternal, and essential to God, the Lord must defend and love as he loves himself, by necessity of nature; and if any say that the egressions and out-goings of God to defend and love his own essential Glory, and his own holy Nature, so as he may use moderation in the degrees and time of these, and he may love himself and his own essential glory, more or less, and touching the time, he may delay to love himself, and he may love himself and his own essential glory to morrow, not to day, As the Author says, the out-goings of revenging justice are moderated in punishing; he speaks wonders and things unworthy of God. The place, Isa. 42. speaks not of this glory, for no idol, no creature,² can more take away from the Almighty this essential glory of God, nor his blessed Nature can cease to be, but there is a glory declarative of pardoning mercy, as well, as of revenging justice; It must be a carnal conception and a new dream, that God by necessity of nature, loves himself as clothed with revenging justice, or as just, and his own glory of revenging justice, but that God loves himself as merciful and ready to forgive, or his own glory of pardoning mercy freely, and by no necessity of nature: Which the Author must say, for the place, Isa. 45. should otherwise bear this sense, my glory of revenging justice only, I will not give to Idol gods and creatures. But the place of Isa. ch. 42.8. should not conclude, but they might ascribe the glory of salvation and merciful deliverances and victories over Judah, the Temple, the Sanctuary to their idol gods, the contrary whereof is intended ⟨p. 29⟩by the Prophet; But if the Lord, by necessity of nature,³ love his declarative glory, as he loves himself, then he must love glory of one attribute, as well as of another, and so as his Nature, not freedom or sovereignty puts him to it, to defend the glory of justice, when man sins; Yea so as he cannot be God and essentially just, except he vindicat his glory of justice; Yea so he must love the glory of saving and pardoning mercy, as himself, for the one glory is no less essential to God (if it be essential at all) then the other. And by this means, God, by necessity of nature, to preserve safe the glory of saving mercy, must send his Son, and by the like necessity, by which he loves himself, he must redeem man;