There is a proneness in corrupted nature to despise the riches of the goodness, forbearance, and long-suffering of God, not knowing that the goodness of God leads them to repentance, and thereon after their hardness and impenitent heart treasure up to themselves wrath against the day of wrath, as our apostle speaks (Rom. 2:4–5). Considering nothing in God but mercy and long-suffering, and nothing in the gospel but grace and pardon, they are ready to despise and turn them into lasciviousness, or from them both to countenance themselves in their sins.

How God Exercises His Severity

There are some sins or degrees in sinning that neither the holiness, nor majesty, nor wisdom of God can so bear withal, as to suffer them to pass unpunished or unremarked on in this world. In such cases is God said to exercise his “severity.” And he does so, in extraordinary outward judgments upon open, profligate sinners, especially the enemies of his church and glory. Hence on such an occasion does God give that description of himself, “God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth, the Lord revengeth, and is furious; the Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies” (Nah. 1:2). When God acts toward his adversaries according to the description here given of himself, he deals with them in severity. And two things are required to make these judgments of God against his adversaries in this world to be instances thereof.

1st, that they be unusual, such as do not commonly and frequently fall out in the ordinary dispensation of divine providence (Num. 16:29–30). God does not in the government of the world suffer anything to fall out or come to pass that in the issue shall be contrary to his justice, or inconsistent with his righteousness. But yet he bears with things so for the most part, as that he will manifest himself to be exceedingly full of patience and long-suffering, as also to exercise the faith of them that believe in the expectation of a future judgment. Wherefore there must be somewhat extraordinary in those judgments wherein God will exercise and manifest severity. So it is expressed, “The Lord shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work, and bring to pass his act, his strange act” (Isa. 28:21). The work he will do is “his” work, but it is his “strange” work; that is, not strange from or opposite unto his nature, for so he will do nothing; but that which is unusual, which he does but seldom, and is therefore marvelous. Thus in sudden destructions of persecutors or persons of a flagitious wickedness, in great desolations of provoking families, cities and nations, in fire from heaven, in inundations, plagues, earthquakes, and such sudden, extraordinary, consuming judgments, God gives instances of his severity in the world (Rom. 1:18).

2nd, in this case it is required that such judgments be open, visible, and manifest both unto those who are punished, and to others who wisely consider them. So God speaks of himself: “God that repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face” (Deut. 7:10); that is, he will do it openly and manifestly, that themselves and all others shall take notice of his severity therein. This I say is one way whereby God acts his severity in this world. And hereby he pours everlasting contempt upon the security of his proudest and haughtiest adversaries. For when they think they have sufficiently provided for their own safety, and stopped all avenues of evil, according to the rules of their policy and wisdom, with the best observations they are able to make of the ordinary effects of his providence, and so give up themselves to take satisfaction in their lusts and pleasures, he breaks in upon them with an instance and example of his severity to their utter destruction. So, “when they say, ‘Peace and safety;’ then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape” (1 Thess. 5:3). This will be the state one day of the whole Babylonish interest in the world (Rev. 18:7–10). But this is not directly intended in this place, although even this effect of God’s severity overtook these apostates afterward.

In spiritual judgments. By these God in his severity leaves unprofitable, provoking, and apostate professors under the impossibility here intended of being renewed unto repentance. And this is the sorest of all God’s judgments. There is in it a sentence of eternal damnation denounced on men aforehand in this world. So our apostle tells us, “Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment” (1 Tim. 5:24). God so passes judgment concerning them in this world, as that there shall be no alteration in their state and condition to eternity. And this severity of God toward sinners under the gospel, shutting them up under final impenitency,1 consists in these four things.

1st, God puts an end unto all his expectation concerning them; he looks for no more from them, and so exercises no more care about them. While God is pleased to afford the use of means for conversion and repentance unto any, he is said to look for and expect answerable fruits: I did, says he, so to my vineyard, “and I looked” that it should bring forth grapes (Isa. 5:2, 4).

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