The Divine Life, Treatise 1 · Chapter 19
CHAP. XIX.
18. THe next Attribute of God to be spoken of, is [His Veracity, Truth, and Faithfulness.] This is the result of his perfect Wisdome, Goodness, and Omnipotency: For because he is most Wise and Powerful, he cannot be Necessitated to Lye: And because he is most Good, he will not Lye. Though God speaketh by none but a Created Voice, and signifie his Will to us by men, that in themselves considered are defectible, yet what he maketh his Voice shall speak Truth; and what he chooseth to signifie his Will, shall truly signifie it. He therefore condemneth Lying in man, because it is contrary to his own Veracity. For if any should say that God is under no Law, and therefore is not bound to speak Ttuth, or not deceive a Prophet or Apostle by his Inspirations; I answer, that he hateth Lying as contrary to his Perfect Nature, and is himself against it, and cannot possibly be guilty of it, because of his own Perfection; and not because he is under a Law. Lying comes from some Imperfection, either of Knowledge, Power, or Goodness, which can none of them befall the Lord. The Goodness of the Creature is a Goodness of Conformity to an Obliging Law; and the Goodness of the Law is a Goodness of Conformity to, and expression of the Good Will of God. But the Goodness of God is a Perfection of Essence, the Primitive Goodness, which is the Fountain, and Standard, and End of all other Good; and not a Goodness of Conformity to another.
And this Attribute of God is of very great use to his servants. 1. From hence we must be Resolved for Duty, and for a holy, heavenly life: because the Commands of God are serious, and his Promises and Threatnings True. If God were not True, that tells us of these great Eternal things, then might we excuse our selves from Godliness, and justifie the worldling in his sensual way: There is nothing of common sense and reason that can be said against a Holy life, by a man that denieth not the Truth of God, or of his Word. And to deny Gods Truth is most unreasonable of all: O Sirs! when you read and hear of the wonderful weighty matters of the Scripture, of an Endless Life, and the way thereto; bethink you, if these things be True, what manner of persons you should be in all Holy Conversation and Godliness! 2 Pet. 3. 11. If the Word be True, that telleth us of Death and Judgement, and Heaven and Hell, is it time for us to sin, to trifle and live unready!
2. The Truth of God is the Terror of his Enemies. O happymen, if their Unbelief could make void the Threatnings of God, and doubting of them would make them false! and if their misery were as easily remedied as denied; and ended as easily as now forgotten! or forgotten hereafter as easily as now! But true and righteous is the Lord, and from the beginning his Word is true, Psal. 119. 16. Not a word shall fall to the ground, nor a jot or tittle pass unfufilled.
3. The Truth of God is the Ground of Faith, and the stay of our souls, and the Rock of all our confidence and comfort. A Christian did not differ from another man (unless in being somewhat more deluded) if God were not True. But this is the foundation of all our hopes, and the life of our Religion, and all that we are as Christians, proceeds from this. Faith is animated by Gods Veracity, and from thence all other Graces flow, or are excited in us. O Christians, what a treasure is before your eyes, when you open the Blessed Book of God! what life should it put into your confidence and comforts, to think that all these words are true! All those descriptions of the Everlasting Kingdome, and all those exceeding precious Promises of this life, and that which is to come, and all the expressions of that exceeding Love of God unto his servants, all these are the True sayings of God. A faithful witness will not Lye, Prov. 14. 5. much less will the faithful God. Eternal Life is promised by God that cannot Lye, Tit. 1. 2. [Wherein God willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of Promise, the immutability of his Counsels confirmed it by an oath; that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to Lye, we might have a strong Consolation, who have fled for Refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us] Heb. 6. 17, 18. Let Faith therefore live upon the Truth of God, and let us be strengthned, and rejoyce therein.
4. Abhor all doctrines which deny the Truth and Faithfulness of God: For they destroy the ground of Christian Faith, of all Divine Faith, and all Religion. The Veracity of God is the formal Object of all Divine Faith: We believe God, because he cannot Lye: If he can Lye, and do Lye, he is not credible. But you will say, Is there any that hold such odious doctrines? Answ. I like not the charging of Persons with the consequences of their opinions which they discern not, but disclaim: God will not charge them with such consequences, who do their best to know the truth, and why should we? All men have some errours, whose consequences contradict some Articles of Faith. It is not the persons that I perswade you to dislike, but the Doctrine. And the Doctrine is never the less to be abhorred, because a wise or good man may hold that which doth infer it.
I shall now instance only in the Dominicans predetermination. They that hold that it is necessary to the being of every circumstantiated act natural and free, that God be the principal immediate Physical efficient predetermining cause of it, do hold that he so causeth all the false speeches and writings (as well as other sins) that ever were spoken or written in the world: not only as they are acts in genere, but as these words in particular; as that he so predetermined the tongues of Ananias and Saphira to say those very words which they said, rather than others: Now seeing it is apparent 1. That God hath not a voice but speaketh to us by a Created Voice, even by Prophets and Apostles, and that the Scripture was written by men. 2. And that Gods Veracity, which is the formal object of our Faith, consisteth in his not using lying instruments, nor sending a lying messenger to us; (it is Veracitas revelantis per alium.) 3. And that no way of Inspiration can make God to be any more the cause of the words or writings of an Apostle, than his Immediate Physical efficient specifying predetermination doth (for it can do no more than irresistibly as the first cause, Physically to premove the agent to this Thought, Will, Word, or Deed, considered with all its circumstances,) It followeth that we have no certainty when God premoveth an Apostle or Prophet to speak true, and when to speak falsly; and that no words or writings are o certain truth, upon any account of Gods inspiration or premotion, because God not only can, but doth cause all the untruths that are spoken or written in the world: Therefore no Faith in Gods Revelations hath any sure foundation, nor any formal object at all: And so all Religion is dasht out at a stroke. To say that God causeth not the falsity of the word, nor the word as false, but the word which is false, might well be the justification of them that affirm God to be but the Universal Cause of the Word o… Act in genere as a Word or Act; and that the specification is only from the sinner. But in them that say he is the particular Cause of this word comparatively rather than another, it is but a contradiction: 1. For there is no other cause of the falsity, which is a meer Relation, but that which causeth the Rule and the Word or Writing which is false, and so layeth the foundation. 2. It overthroweth all certainty of Faith, if God speak to us by his Instruments, those words that are false: The Quod falsum, as well as the Qua falsum, leaveth us no ground of certainty. The Dominicans therefore have but one task in which their hope is placed, to excuse their opinion from plain obliterating all Divine Belief and Religion, and that is, to prove that there is so great a difference between Inspiration, and their Physical Predetermination, that God cannot by Inspiration premove to an untruth, though by Physical Predetermination he may: This is their task; which I see not the least possibility that ever they should perform: If God premove, and predeterminate every Will, and Tongue, and Pen, to every lye that is spoken or written, more potently and irresistibly than I move my Pen in writing, it is past my power to understand what more he can do by inspiration, to interest him in the Creatures Act: or at least how the difference can be so great as that one of the waies he can predetermine all men to their falsities, and none the other way. But of this I have written a large Disputation; yet think it not needless, even in a practical Treatise to say this much here.
5. The Truth of God must teach us to hate every Motion to Unbelief in our selves and others: It is a hainons sin to give God the Lye, though he speak to us but by his messengers: Every honest man, so far as he is honest, is to be believed: and is God less true? A graceless Gallant will challenge you the field for the dishonour, if you give him the Lye. If you deny Gods Veracity, you do not only equal him with the worst of men, but with the Devil, who was a Lyer from the beginning. Yea you make him uncapable of being the Governour of the world, or suppose him to Govern it by Deceits and Lyes. Abhor therefore the first motions of Unbelief. It makes men somewhat worse than Devils; for the Devils know that God cannot lye, and therefore they believe and tremble. Unbelief of the Truth of the Word of God, is the curse of the soul; the enemy and bane of all Grace and Religion, so far as it prevaileth: Let it be the principal care and labour of your souls, to settle the foundation of your Faith aright, and to discern the Evidence of Divine Authority in the holy Scriptures, and to extirpate the remnants of Infidelity in your hearts.
6. Let the Truth and Faithfulness of God engage you to be True and Faithful to him, and to each other. You have promised him to be his servants; be faithful in your promises: You are in Covenant with him: break not your Covenant. Many a particular promise of Reformation you have made to God: Prove not false to him that is True to you.
Be as good as your word to all men that you have to do with. Abhor a Lye as the off-spring of the Devil, who is the father of it: Remember you serve a God of Truth: and that it is the Rectitude and Glory of his servants to be conformable to him. They say the Turks are offended at Christianity, because of the lyes and falshood of Christians. But sure they were but nominal Christians, and no true Christians that ever they found such: And its pitty that Christianity should be judged of through the world, by the lives of them that never were Christians but from the teeth outward, and the skin that was washt in Baptism. They that will lye to God, and covenant to be his holy Servants, when they hate his holy service, will lye to man, when their commodity requireth it. When they seem to Repent, and honour him with their tongues [They flatter him with their mouth, and lye to him with their tongues; for their heart is not right with him, neither are they stedfast in his Covenant] Psal. 78. 34, 35, 36; 37. God saith, Levit. 19. 11. Ye shall not steal, nor deal fasly, nor lye one to another.] A Righteous man hateth lying, Prov. 13. 5. The lying tongue is but for a moment, Prov. 12. 19. For God hateth it, and it is an abomination to him, Prov. 16. 16, 17. The lovers and makers of lyes are shut out of the Kingdom of Christ, Rev. 22. 15.
But above all false Teachers that preach and prophesie lyes, and deceive the Rulers and people of the Earth, are abominable to God. See Jer. 27. 10, 14, 15, 16. & 14. 14. & 23. 25, 26, 32. Ezek. 13. 9, 12. Isa. 54. 13. When Ahab was to be destroyed, a lying spirit in the mouth of his Prophets deceived him. And if a Ruler hearken to lyes, all his servants are wicked, Prov. 29. 2.
7. Above all false witness and perjury should be most odious to the servants of the God of Truth, Prov. 19. 9. A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lyes shall perish] Eccles. 5. 4, 5. When thou vowest a vow to God, defer not to pay it. Saith David [Thy Vows are upon mee, O God, Psal. 56. 12. And unto thee shall the Vow be performed, Psal. 65. 1. Perjury is a sin that seldome scapeth vengeance, even in this life. The instances of Saul the first, and Zedekiah the last of the Kings of Judah, before their desolation, are both very terrible. Sauls posterity must be hanged, to stay the Famine that came upon the people for his breaking a Vow that was made by Joshua, and not by him, though he did it in zeal for Israel, 2 Sam. 21. Zedekiah's case you may see, 2 Chron. 26. Ezek. 17. He that sweareth, appealeth to God as the searcher of hearts, and avenger of perjury. The perjured person chooseth the vengeance of God. He is unfit (till he repent) to be a member of any civil society. For he dissolveth the bond of all societies. He cannot well be supposed to make conscience of any sin or villany in the world, against God, his Country, his King, his Friend or Neighbour, that makes no conscience of an oath. It is not easie to name a greater wickedness out of Hell, than to approve of perjury by Laws or Doctrine. And whether the Church of Rome do so or not, I only desire them to consider that have read the third Canon of the Council at Lateran under P. Innocent the third, where an Approved General Council decreeth, that the Pope discharge vassals from their allegiance or fidelity to those Temporal Lords that exterminate not Hereticks (as they call them) out of their dominions. What shall restrain men from killing Kings, or any villany, if once the bond of oatht be nullified? But Scripture saith [Keep the Kings Commandment, and that in regard of the Oath of God, Eccles. 8 2.] No man defendeth Perjury by name: But to say that men that swear to do that which God commandeth, or forbids not, are not bound to keep that oath; or that the Pope may absolve men, or disoblige them that swore fidelity to Temporal Lords, when once the Pope hath excommunicated them, doth seem to mee of the same importance.