3dly. They differ in their ends and aims. What is the aim and design of God in the dispensation of that forbearance which is manifested and may be discovered out of Christ? The apostle tells us, Rom. ix. 22, “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?” 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,” Acts xiv. 16; which elsewhere he holds out as a most dreadful judgment, — to wit, in respect of that issue whereto it will certainly come; as Ps. lxxxi. 12, “I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lusts, and they walked in their own counsels:” which is as dreadful a “Eos, quibus indulgere videtur, quibus parcere, molles venturis malis (Deus) format.” — Seneca, “De Providentiâ,” cap. iv. — “Pro dii immortales! Cur interdum in hominum sceleribus maximis, aut connivetis, aut præsentis fraudis pœnas in diem reservatis!” — Cic. pro Cæl. 24. condition as a creature is capable of falling into in this world. And Acts xvii. 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 everywhere 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. ii. 4, “Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long suffering, 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 than usually they do, and which he chargeth them withal, verse 5, “But after thy hardness and impenitent heart,” etc. At Κατὰ μὲν τοῦ ἐπιῤῥέοντος βάψαντα, γλυκὺ τὸ ὕδωρ ἀνιμήοασθαι· εἰ δὲ εἰς βάθος τὶς καθῆκεν τὴγ κάλπιν, ἁλμυρόν. — Arrian. περιπ. Εὐξείνου πόντου. 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, Luke xvi. 25; wherewith being filled, they sink to the depth of all bitterness.