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tion, and reformation of the Ninevites hereupon —
God’s gracious revocation of the sentence passed
upon them, and the preventing of the ruin threatened;
We have also Jonah’s repining at God's mercy to
Nineveh, and the fret he was in about it — the gen-
tile reproof God gave him for it, Jonah’s discontent
at the withering of the gourd, and justifying of
himself in that discontent—God’s improving of it
for his conviction, that he ought not to be angry at
the sparing of Nineveh, Man’s badness and God’s
goodness serve here for a foil to each other, that the
former may appear the more exceeding sinful, and
the latter the more exceeding gracious.
From all this we may learn, First, that though
God may suffer his people to fall into sin, yet he
will, not suffer them to lie still in it, but will take a
course effectually to show them their error, and to
bring them to themselves, and to their right mind
again. We have reason to hope that Jonah, after
this, was well reconciled to the sparing of Nineveh,
and was as well pleased with it, as ever he had been
displeased.
Second, that God will justify himself in the
methods of his grace toward repenting returning
sinners, as well as in the course his justice takes with
them that persist in there rebellion, though there are
these that murmur at the mercy of God, because
they do not understand it, (for his thoughts and
ways therein are as far above ours as heaven is above
the earth) yet he will make it evident that therein
he acts like himself, and will be justified when he
speaks. See what pains he takes with Jonah, to
convince him that it was very fit that Nineveh
should be spared. Jonah had said, I do well to be
merciful and proves it; and it is a
great encouragement to poor sinners to hope that
they shall find mercy with him; that he is so really
