what the Lord Jesus thanks his Father for; and what his people find to be their great source of light, and strength, and joy. How remarkable it is, that Luther should here silence his opponent with “No, but O man, who are you that replies against God?” when, with the interval of only a single verse, the Holy Ghost had furnished him with a clue to the whole counsel of God, and with an answer to those very questions which he says it is not lawful to ask, or possible to get resolved. “What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction; And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had before prepared for glory, even us, whom he has called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?” Luther both speaks and means incorrectly here — but he says rather more than he means. It is not against the sober, hallowed use of the knowledge of this inscrutable will (for though there is that which is inscrutable in it, there is also that in it which may be known, for he has told it to us), but against those who denied, or confounded, or impugned, or reviled these distinctions, and would hear nothing of God’s sovereign majesty, and of his secret counsel, that he is aiming his dart here.
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Psalm 107.20. Luther applies this healing ‘to all men;’ but the Psalmist declares it only of ‘those who cry unto the Lord in their trouble and in particular dispensations of his hand.’ — This is not all men. [Luther has not said ‘all men’, so I’m not sure what Vaughan refers to. In the next sentence, Luther admits God’s sovereignty ‘in all things.’ Here he distinguishes those in whom God is himself the worker of their death (presumably those who are the objects of His wrath), and those in whom He finds death where He would not have it: these He heals (redeems). Luther thus affirms the condition of all men, as born into sin and death; and out of them God redeems some, who are His elect. – WHG]
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Yes — and works life and death, and all things in all things, through the agency of that proclaimed, or relative God; and in perfect consistency with — indeed, by means of — that legislative will which regulates man’s duty as his moral creature. By ‘legislative,’ I mean all which can be called ‘enactment,’ as given by God, of whatever kind; whether to one nation or to the whole world; whether Law or Gospel. See note above.
It is as the proclaimed or relative God, not as the hidden or absolute God, that he both saves and destroys; and He does this by means of his legislative enactments, not in contradiction to them. The power which he gives to his elect and saved, and which he withholds from the reprobate and damned, is distinct from these legislative enactments; and while it proceeds from the relative God, it does not proceed from him in his legislatorial relation, but in another which is distinct from and not commensurate with it, although its subjects are also subject to that relation and to its requirements. It is no part of the legislator’s office to give power, or to withhold it. He may do either. He may work anything, everything, upon, around, above, or beneath him, but He leaves the subject of his enactments a free agent: and this God does, and ever has done.
Thus it was in creation strictly so-called; God, having assumed the relation of Creator to man, gave him a law (Gen 2.17) “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it; for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” It was no part of his relation, as Creator, either to withhold temptation from his creature, whom he had “made upright,” “in his own image,” “good,” “very good “(but as we noted before, Sec xviii, not having the Holy Ghost, and therefore not held to God as though by a chain, but subsisting in a state of severance from him); nor yet to sustain him by new powers (additional to those which he had received at his creation), in a crisis of temptation. The result was that he fell; and the whole human race (which had been created in him, and of which the several individuals had a distinct personal subsistence in him, and were parts of his substance when, having first apostatized in heart, he afterwards put out his hand, and took, and ate) shared in his ruin. It is by the instrumentality of this law, then, that God both saves whom he personally wills to save, and destroys whom he personally wills to destroy: saving those to whom, by a super-creation relation which was given them in Christ Jesus before the world began, he grants his special grace; and destroying those from whom he withholds the same, in perfect consistency with all creation dues and obligations.
Thus it was in God’s dealings with the nation of Israel, and with his visible church, as for a season co-extensive with that nation. Once he had formed the seed of Abraham into a nation, and had assumed the relation of king to that people, he gave them a law by which, instrumentally, he kept them for his own, so long as it was his personal will to keep them, and scattered them when it was the counsel of his personal will to scatter them.
Israel, like Adam in Paradise, broke the. law nearly as soon as it was given him; but, by so doing, he prepared the way for all God’s future dealings with him.
By the same law instrumentally, He, in their ecclesiastical relation, saved whom he would save, through the bestowal of a grace which was not of their covenant; while he at the same time destroyed whom he would destroy, through the withholding of that grace, in perfect consistency with the provisions of the same.
Thus it is also in the Gospel Church, and in the commanded preaching of the Gospel to all nations, and tongues, and people. God, in the relation of the offended sovereign of the human race, commandeth all men every where to repent; giving them what may be called the law of repentance and faith, and demanding of them a state of mind which is suited to their condition as fallen and guilty creatures. ‘Repent, and believe the Gospel.’
Implicitly, but not explicitly, this is the demand, and the alone demand, which God has made upon man, even the whole human race, since the Fall; and shall continue to be so, till his mystery be finished by the Lord’s second coming. The form of this demand has been varied, the knowledge of it has been varied; the law, eminently so called, has been interposed to the church, God has “winked at times of ignorance;” but a Manasseh’s humbledness of mind, with a peradventure of mercy the only demand which, in consis tency with the recognition of those primary transactions in the Garden, and with the realities of the case, could be made is in truth the only demand whit.i has been made upon the sons and daughters of fallen Adam, from the period of the ejection out of Paradise until now: a demand which has served to mark the only difference that can ever be found to subsist between the several apostate members of an apostate head; viz, continued apostasy in some, and restoration in others.
By this legislative will of his, instrumentally, he fulfils the counsels of his personal will; saving whom he has predestined to save, and destroying whom he has predestined to destroy.
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Luther has in substance given the right answer to this cavil from Ezekiel, but has given it, as we have seen, in an exceptionable form; exceptionable, as it respects the distinction he institutes, ‘hidden God and revealed God;’ and exceptionable, in that he does not show the sameness of this God, which is thus distinguishingly regarded. It is to be remembered, that the words bear only by inference and consequence upon the question of Freewill (which is the question in debate), whatever may be the correct interpretation of them; neither does Erasmus represent them fairly. Erasmus speaks of wailing and working: but where does Ezekiel say that God “wails?” He says only, I would not. Erasmus argues, ‘God deplores; therefore, it is not his doing that they die; therefore, it is their own doing; therefore, there is Freewill.’ It is inference two deep; each of which requires proof. What if their death is self-wrought? Why may they not have previously forfeited their Freewill, and therefore die under bondwill? We might hold ourselves excused, therefore, from entering at all into this cavil; it is truly nihil ad nos [nothing to us].
But there are reasons why we should rather meet it in the face; and the answer has, by implication, been given to it already. Some would say, why not at once knock if down with “Secret things belong to the Lord?” (Deu 29.29) a convenient text for a perplexed disputant! My answer is, that text does not apply here. The Prophet is not speaking of the principles of divine conduct, but of those providential events and arrangements by which God realizes and fulfils them. It was in the counsels of God to bring the nation of Israel to obedience