Tossanus

1)

Upon the 3. Chap. of S. John. v.16

God so loued the world, that hee hath giuen his onely begotten sonne, that whosoeuer beleeueth in him, should not perish, but haue euerlasting life.

MEDITATION

S. Paul oftentimes says, how he would not boast but in Jesus, and the same crucified. And indeed if man would consider these things at leisure, which are contained in this sentence of S. John, he would easily agree with that which S. Paul speaks, and should find, that there is no knowledge in the world, that gives so much contentation, as the knowledge of God’s love through Jesus Christ, in such sort as this sentence of S. John ought to be as a precious owel[?], which a man daily wears about his neck: even so ought we to imprint in our hearts, this excellent witness of God’s love. For what are men, that God loves them? what cause has the immortal, to love the poor worms of the earth? The righteous, to love sinners The Master, the ingrate, the unfaithful servants? Are we not of nature the children of wrath? [Eph. 2:3]. Ought he not without ceasing, rather to represent unto us the hatred of his just anger of this mighty God, and that because of our corruption? And moreover, if GOD had been affectioned to some just or excellent men, yet say I, this should be greatly to debate him. But O divine love: Oh wonderful divinity. Thou has loved the world, without considering any certain world, any Sex or Quality: yea, all the creatures which are come of since Adam and Eve, men and women, great and little, poor and rich, fools & wisemen. And all the cause of and occasion that thou has had to savor them, was not for their beautiful eyes, but it is even thy great and extreme bounty. All their righteousness is as an unclean cloth before him [Isaiah 64:6.]. And their excellence is but a flower which withers and Fades from day to day [Isaiah 40:6,7; 1 Pet., 1:24.]. Therefore it pleased thee O God to love man. But what, say I to love? What tongue shall not judge himself insufficient: yea, what heart shall not be unable, to deduct or comprehend this so great a love, which has brought thee to give one only and innocent son to death, and that to give life unto those creatures that are so unthankful and so corrupted? Where is it, that one shall find a man in this world, that will pledge himself, even to suffer death for another, were he his friend, and an honest man? Truly it is very rare. But what? O Lord, thou has done truly more: for thou has not given an Angel, or an Archangel, but thou has given thy only son unto a sorrowful and most shameful death, for to redeem thy enemies, that were revolted from thee: but alas, wherefore do we not love thee with a burning desire, as thou has loved us? Wherefore complain we of a little earth lost in they Service: and thou has not complained at all of the death of thy well-beloved son of thy delight, when the question was our redemption? When a prince does not give us his good countenance and favor, then we are sore troubled and grieved: and yet in respect thereof we make, ah alas, but small reckoning of thy love, which are the king of kings and eternal God. Therefore that which we do want, is, that we do not sufficiently tast how much the Lord is good and sweet. Seeing now O Lord that thy love is endless, grant us hearts, that we may comprehend his infinite goodness, and that we may forthwith feel therein and endless comfort, which may swallow up all the sorrows of this wretched life. So be it.  Daniell Tossain The Exercise of the faithful soule (Imprinted at London by Henrie Middleton for Henrie Denham, 1583), 137-141. [Some spelling modernized, some reformatting, underlining mine.]

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Parr:

Vers. 22. Indured with long-suffering the Vessels of wrath.

In these words is contained the Act we speak of, first is enduring; amplified two ways: First by the manner, which long-suffering. Second, by the object, The Vessels of Wrath.

Long-suffering is a dilation of revenge, though we be provoked. Though the Greek word be here translated long-suffering, yet properly God cannot suffer; for all things are active in God’ and whatsoever suffers or is patient, fails either in the essence, faculty or Energy. The word here used, is hard to be translated into our Tongue, we borrow from the Latins to express it in one word, by Longanimity. Between the Longanimity and Patience, Chrysostom observes this : difference: Longanimity is toward them of whom we can; Patience toward them of whom we cannot be revenged [Chrys. hom. 2 in Epist. ad Colos.]. So also Augustine, Patience is said of God, not that he suffers any evil, but because he expects sinners to conversion [Aug. l. de pars].

Doct.
God is patient towards sinners, even Reprobates Joel 2:13, Roms 2:4, 2 Pet 3:9. He endured Cain a long time, suffered him to live to build cities, to beget children. So he suffered Saul, Judas, &c.

Use 1.
Be thou patient after the example of thy Heavenly Father; whose child how art thou, if thou suffers not, but repays injuries? Socrates an Heathen Philosopher, would willingly neither suffer, nor do any wrong; but if he must choose one, he would rather choose to suffer than to do But what speak we of Heathen, when we have God himself patient toward the Reprobates?

Say not, I will recompense evil. God himself yet bears with a number of hell-hounds, Reprobates. Christ is not yet revenged, nor the blood of the Satins. Will thou be moved at a cross word, and thirst after Revenge? It may be sweet to the flesh, but it is hateful to God. If thou has put up wrong once or twice, thou thinks thyself worthy to be chronicled, as a rare example of Patience. How many thousand times has thou provoked God, and yet he forebears thee? Do thou likewise reward thy neighbor. Remember the Parable of the merciless debtor [Matt. 18.]. Give the pardon thou asks; Forgive, that thou may be forgiven. When thou cannot so bridle thy affections, that being provoked, and in thy power to revenge; and yet for conscience toward God thou forebears think thou has profited; that argues true Nobleness [Posse &c nolle nobile.]

Use 2.
For God to bear with his children which provoke him, is much; but to suffer his enemies, who seek not his favor, and are the worse because they are forborne, to suffer a drunkard, whoremonger, &c., to live long, and have a great means, and to hold his hands, must argue an infinite perfection.

Alas, what had become of the best of us if there were not such longanimity [Makrothumia]in God? We had not lived to read of these tings. God might have taken us away in our sins; if he had called us out of this world some ten or twenty years ago, before we had repented, how should we have done? If he had used Martial Law to Manasses, Paul, Mary Magdalen, they had not shined now to the comfort of sinners: He suffered the ill-manners (the word is significant [etropophoresen. Acts 13:18]) of the Israelites in the Wilderness. Consider thou which reads, how long he suffered thee: let it move thee to repentance, and to praise his patience.

Use 3.
Here is comfort to poor sinners: God is patient toward Reprobates, much more will he be toward the Elect. He which long forbears Tyrants, Drunkards, Enemies, will he be hasty and inexorable towards his children? If he spare them which never grieve for their sins, never regard his Word; will he not much more spare them which repent that they have offended him, which tremble at his word, and seek his favor? If the Reprobate fare so well, much more will he abound to us, in all riches of grace and consolation.

Elnathan Parr, The Works of that faithfull and painful Preacher, Mr Elnathan Parr (London: Printed by Ed Griffin and Wil. Hunt, 1651), 109-110.

Taffin:

1. Sam. 1:6.
Amos 3:6.
Jere, La. 3:38.
Job. 30:39.
Psalm 104,
& 105, & 106,
& 107, & 136.
Math. 10:29.

18. Moreover, as concerning the transgression of Adam & Eve, it is certain that the same never came to pass without the decree and ordinance of God. And indeed, the Holy Scripture in infinite places does testify, that all things depend upon his providence & decree. If a sparrow falls not to the ground without the will of God, shall man, so excellent a creature, created after the image of God, take so horrible a fall without his providence and decree? A man may give a little child some small stripe with a rod, without the parents’ appointment, which notwithstanding they would peradventure dissemble and wink at: but none dare undertake to cut him off the stone, or to cut off any limb, without his Father’s good will and authority: even so, the greater that the importance of Adam’s transgression was, in that it tended to destroy & overthrow so excellent a work of God, namely, man created to his image: the more are we to believe, that it was never done without his counsel or decree. Moreover, if in his providence he has ordained what he will have done with all other creatures, has he not, think you, ordained what shall be done with the principal and most excellent, for which he created all the others? Again, if God creating all the world, and man to his own image, purposed that the principal end of his work should be the manifestation of his glory: did he not also ordain means and a preparation, to declare his love in his redemption through Christ, & to make manifest his mercy to his elect, & his justice to the reprobate. And in this especially does the glory of God appear. If there were sin in the fall of Adam, so was there in the pursuit against Jesus Christ: And yet lo, the Apostle speaking unto Almighty God does say:

Doubtless against the holy Son Jesus whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel gather together, to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel had before determined to be done, [Acts 4:27.].

Again, speaking to the Jews an in express words, they object unto them, that by the hands of the wicket they took Jesus Christ and crucified him, being to them delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, [Acts 2:23.]. Albeit they cannot comprehend that Adam’s transgression wherein there was sin, came not to pass without the providence and decree of God, and yet that God is not the author of sin. Must they therefore deny his providence, & those places of Holy Scripture, wherein the Holy Ghost does so often and so evidently testify the same? Or contrary to so many testimonies of his word will they make God the author of sin? They do not murmur, blaspheme, or reply against us, but against the Holy Ghost? Must they, because they cannot comprehend how it should be possible that God should prohibit Adam that thing, which nevertheless came not to pass without his decree, will, and eternal counsel, or maliciously gather, that in God there should be two contrary wills? Let us believe so much as he testifies in his word, and reverence so much as we do not understand. If we should conjoin the redemption wrought by Jesus Christ with the fall of Adam, we should soon confess, that as well as the one as the other came to pass by the providence of God.

19.Yet if it were requisite to consider some reasons, the same which Saint Augustine does note might well content us. We safely do confess, says he, that we do well believe that God, the Lord of all, who created all things good, and who both did foresee that from that they should digress to bad, or knew that it did better beseem his almighty goodness to make of evil good, than not to suffer the evil, has so determined to lives of Angels and men, that in the same he would manifest, full what free will was about to do: next, what his grace, with the judgment of his justice, were able to bring to pass [Augustine of reproving & grace, c. 10.]. First Saint Augustine says, in that he calls God the Lord of all, he does show that he had power and authority to dispose of his creatures as he would. Secondly, in that he says, that God created all things good, he notes that God is the author of the goodness that has been in all his creatures, namely, in man, created to his image, but not of the sin afterward committed. Thirdly, in that he knew, that from good they should degenerate to evil, and yet that voluntarily he permitted it, he propounds this reason: that it better beseemed him to show his almighty goodness, in making of evil good, then in permitting evil: And then he shows that the good God gathered out of the fall of Adam. Firs, that it served to show what free will was able to do, thereby signifying that there is no steadfastness but in God: and yet that Adam was inexcusable in his fall. For having created man with free will, his sin was not upon compulsion, but voluntarily: and, indeed, he did eat of the forbidden fruit, not to the end to obey the decree of God, where of he was yet ignorant: but at the instigation of Satan, and upon a lust to be like God. And therefore, when God reproved him, he complained not of God’s decree but of his wife Eve, and his wife of the Serpent : and God in his sentence pronounced against them, he denounces them all to be guilty and worthy of punishment [Gen. 3:6, and 3:12, 13, 14.].

John Taffin, The Amendment of Life, Comprised in Fower Books: Faithfully Translated according the the French Coppie (Londini: Impensis Georg. Bishop, 1595), 439-441. [Some spelling modernized, some reformatting, underlining mine.]

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