Mateo 13:29

But he said, Nay, &c.— These words account for the justice of God in suspending his judgments. To see the full force of the reason in this respect, it is necessary we should understand what sort of sinners are spoken of, for this reason is not always applicable to all cases; many sinners are spared upon other accounts than this which is here given: the sinners intended in this passage are spared merely on account of the righteous, that they may not be involved in the punishment due to the sins of others; but some sinners are spared out of a mercy which regards themselves, in hopes of their amendment. The sinners represented by the tares are such, of whose repentance and amendment there is no hope and our Saviour has told us that these sinners shall certainly be punished at the last; which cannot certainly be said of any but incorrigible sinners: these sinners, therefore being considered as incorrigible, there was no room to justify the delay of punishment from any circumstances arising out of their own case.

Incluso la misericordia de Dios fue excluida a este respecto; porque si el pecador incorregible es objeto de misericordia, ningún pecador debe temer el castigo. Nuestro Salvador, por tanto, los abandona por completo y justifica la sabiduría y la bondad de Dios al librarlos de otros motivos. Los intereses de los hombres buenos y malos están tan unidos en este mundo; Existe tal conexión entre ellos en muchos aspectos, que ninguna calamidad significativa puede sobrevenir a los malvados, pero los justos deben participar en ella. Esta fue la súplica de Abraham cuando intercedió ante el Señor por los hombres de Sodoma. En las calamidades públicas es evidente que todos deben sufrir sin distinción: fuego y espada, hambre y pestilencia, enfurecer con indiferencia en los límites del justo y del pecador, y barrer a uno y al otro. Hasta ahora, la razón de este versículo ciertamente se extiende,

You see a great wicked man in a prosperous condition, and you think his happytranquillity a perpetual reproach to the providence of God: you would not have God rain fire and brimstone upon the city for the sake of this great offender, since many innocent persons would necessarily suffer in the ruin? No; but you would have God take him suddenly away by some secret and silent method; or you would have him punished in his fortune, and reduced to that misery which his sins deserve. This you think would be very just and reasonable, and highly becoming the wisdom of God. But do you not consider that there is no great man who is not related to others? are all the relations and dependents of this great sinner as wicked as himself? Is there not one good man the better for him? Are his children all abandoned? Or would you turn out a family of innocent children to seek their bread in the streets, rather than let the iniquity of the father go unpunished for a few years! Till you can answer these questions, you must not pretend to arraign the wisdom and goodness of God, in sparing thisoffender.

Now these considerations plainly shew the equity and goodness of God in delaying the punishment of the wicked; in both the cases above-mentioned you see that mercy triumphs over justice, and the guilty is preserved for the sake of the innocent, which is such an act of goodness, as no man surely has reason to complain of. Nor will the justice of God suffer in this account, as will plainly appear from the following considerations: the parable is evidently intended as an answer to the common objection against Providence, drawn from the prosperity of sinners, or the impunity of offenders. Ask the man who makes this objection against God's government, why he thinks it unbecoming the wisdom of God to delay the punishment of sinners? He will readily answer, because it is contrary to his justice; and to support his reason,he will farther add, that it is an undoubted maxim of justice, that all sinners deserve punishment. And here I thinkhe must stop; for he cannot enter into particular cases, unless he knew more of man than he does, or can know.

In answer to this, our Saviour owns the truth of the general maxim, as far as it relates to the desert of sinners; and thereforeteaches us, that God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world: but then he shews, from superior reasons of justice, that the application of the principle in the present case is wrong; for though it be just to punish all sinners, yet to punish them immediately, would destroy the very reason which makes it just to punish them. It is just to punish them, that there may be a difference made between the good and the bad, according to their deserts, that their punishment may be a discouragement to vice, and an encouragement to holiness and virtue. Now our Lord shews in this parable, that the immediate punishment of the wicked would quite destroy those ends of justice; for the righteous and the wicked, like the wheat and the tares, growing together in one field, are so mixed and united in interests in this world, that, as things stand, the wicked cannot be rooted out, but the righteous must suffer with them: consequently, the immediate destruction of the wicked, since it must inevitably fall upon therighteous also, would make no proper distinction between the good and the bad; could be no encouragement to holiness and virtue, for the virtuous would suffer; could be no discouragement to vice, for vice would fare as well as virtue: And therefore it is not only reasonable to delay, in innumerable instances, the punishment of the wicked, but even necessary, to the obtaining of the ends of justice, since they cannot be obtained in their immediate destruction. See Bishop Sherlock's 8th Discourse, parts 1 and 2 vol. 3. See also the Reflections.