“All the mercies that are in His own heart” by Thomas Goodwin
“In respect of their variety, God’s mercies are manifold mercies. Riches lie in a variety.
In Ezekiel 27:12, Tyre is said to have a multitude of all kinds of riches. Now as God hath a multitude of mercies, so He hath a multitude of all kinds of mercies.
Therefore you shall find in the Scripture that mercy still runs in the plural, not only to note out that they are many, but that they are manifold, there is variety of them.
Romans 12:1, ‘I beseech you by the mercies of God.’
In Nehemiah 9:19, 27, a chapter wherein God and man striveth, as it were, whether God’s mercies or man’s sin should outvie one another, there is mention made of the manifoldness of His mercies.
And in Isaiah 63:7, there is ‘the multitude of His loving-kindnesses,’ which are there called the ‘praises of the Lord,’ because they are His glory.
As our hearts and the devil are the father of variety of sins, so God is the father of variety of mercies, and they are as so many children to Him which He begets.
And there is no sin or misery but God hath a mercy for it, and He hath a multitude of mercies of every kind too; even like an apothecary that hath an abundance of drugs of all sorts for all kind of diseases.
As there is no disease but God hath made a remedy for it, so there is no misery but God hath mercy for it.
He hath found out a remedy for sin, the hardest thing to cure of all things else, and therefore He hath provided a remedy for all other misery.
And as there are variety of miseries which the creature is subject unto, so He hath in Himself a shop, a treasury of all sorts of mercies, divided into several promises in the Scripture, which are but as so many boxes of this treasure, the caskets of variety of mercies.
If thy heart be hard, His mercies are tender.
If thy heart be dead, He hath mercy to quicken it, as Psalm 119 hath it again and again.
If thou be sick, He hath mercy to heal thee.
If thou be sinful, He hath mercies to sanctify and cleanse thee.
As large and as various as are our wants, so large and various are His mercies.
So as we may come boldly to find grace and mercy to help us in time of need, a mercy for every need, as the Apostle speaks.
All the mercies that are in His own heart He hath transplanted them into several beds, as I may so express it, in the garden of the promises, where they grow, and He hath abundance of variety of them, suited to all the variety of the diseases of the soul.”
–Thomas Goodwin, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, Volume 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 1861/2006), 2: 187-188. Goodwin is commenting on Ephesians 2:4-6.
