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: — Mercy, as it is ascribed to God, may be considered and taken two ways.

I. FOR THE PRINCIPLE ITSELF; which is nothing else but the simple undivided nature of God, as it does manifest and cast abroad itself in such and such acts of grace and favour to the creature. Which very same essence or nature, according to different respects, is called wisdom, justice, power, mercy, and the like.

II. IT IS TAKEN FOR THE EFFECTS AND ACTIONS FLOWING FROM THAT PRINCIPLE BY WHICH IT DOES SO MANIFEST AND EXERT ITSELF. Which also admit of a distinction into two sorts.

1. Such as are general, and of equal diffusion to all.

2. Such as are special, and peculiarly relate to the redemption and reparation of fallen man, whom God was pleased to choose and single out from the rest of His works as the proper object for this great attribute to do its utmost upon. Now it was the former sense that was intended by the psalmist in the text, as is evident from the universality of the words. It was such a mercy as spread itself over all His works; such a one as reached as wide as creation and providence. It was like the sun and the light, to shine upon all without exception. And therefore we are not at all concerned here to treat of the miracles of God's pardoning mercy, as they display themselves in the satisfaction and ransom paid down by Christ for sinners: for it would be a great deviation from the design of the words to confine the overflowing goodness of a Creator to the more limited dispensations of a Redeemer: and so to drown a universal in a particular. For the prosecution of the words there is no way that seems more easy and natural, and withal more full, for the setting forth of God's general mercy to the creature, than to take a survey of the several parts of the creation, and therein to show how it exerts and lays itself out upon each of them How many and vast endearments might we draw from God barely as a Creator! Suppose there had never been any news of a Redeemer to fallen Adam; no hope, no after-game for him as a sinner; yet let us peruse the obligations that lay upon him as a man. Was it not enough for him, who but yesterday was nothing, to be advanced into an existence, that is, into one perfection of the Deity? Was it not honour enough for clay to be breathed upon, and for God to print His image upon a piece of dirt? Certainly it would be looked upon as a high kindness for any prince to give his subject his picture; was it no act of love, therefore, in God to give us souls endued with such bright faculties, such lively images of Himself, which He might have thrust into the world with the short and brutish perceptions of a few silly senses; .and like the beasts, have placed our intellectuals in our eyes or in our noses? Was it no favour to make that a sun which He might have made but a glow-worm? no privilege to man that he was made lord of all things below? that the world was not only his house, but his kingdom? that God should raise up one piece of earth to rule over all the rest? Surely all these were favours, and they were the early preventing favours of a Creator: for God then knew no other title, He bore no other relation to us; there was no price given to God that might induce Him to bid Adam rise out of the earth, a man rather than a spire of grass, a twig, a stone, or some such other contemptible superiority to nothing. No; He furnished him out into the world with all this retinue of perfections upon no other motive but because He had a mind to make him a glorious piece of work; a specimen of the arts of Omnipotence; to stand and glister in the top and head of the creation. Wherefore all the hard thoughts men usually have of God ought by all means and arts of consideration to be suppressed: for the better effecting of which we may fix our meditation upon these two qualities that do always attend them:

(1)  Their unreasonableness.

(2)  Their danger.

1. And first for their unreasonableness. All such thoughts are not any true resemblances of our Creator, but merely our own creatures. All the sad appearances of rigour that we paint Him under are not from Himself, but from our misrepresentations: as the fogs and mists we sometimes see about the sun issue not from Him, but ascend from below, and owe their nearness to the sun only to the deception of the spectator.

2. The other argument against men's entertaining such thoughts of God is the consideration of their exceeding danger. Their malignity is equal to their absurdity: for whosoever strives to beget or foment in his heart such persuasions concerning God makes himself the devil's orator, and declaims his cause; whose proper characteristic badge it is to be the great accuser or calumniator.

(R. South, D. D.)

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KJV: The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.

WEB: Yahweh is good to all. His tender mercies are over all his works.