being so, not able to speak, to come to any confession, any excuse, he fell further and further into displeasure, till he was bound hand and foot, and cast irrecoverably away. For Si repente interroget, quis respondebit ei1? If God surprise a conscience with a sudden question, if God deprehend a man in the act of his sin, and while he accomplishes and consummates that sin, say to his soul, Why dost thou this, upon which mine anger hangs? there God speaks to that sinner, but he confounds him with the question; it is not a leading interrogatory, it gives him no light to answer, till God's anger be out of his contemplation, he cannot so much as say Domine vim patior, responde pro me13, O Lord I am oppressed, do thou answer for me; do thou say to thyself for me, My spirit shall not always strive with man, because he is but flesh. If the Lord come in anger, if he speak in anger, if he do but look in anger, a sinner perishes; Aspexit et dissolvit gentes; He did but look, and he dissolved, he melted the nations; he poured them out as water upon the dust, and he blew them away as dust into the sea, The everlasting mountains were broken, and the ancient hills did bow 20. 18 It is not then the disputing, not the impleading, not the correcting, which this word Jacach imports, that David declines, or deprecates here, but that anger, which might change the nature of all, and make all the physic poison, all that was intended for our mollifying, to advance our obduration. For when there was no anger in the case, David is a forward scholar, to hearken to God's reasoning, and disputing, and a tractable client, and easy defendant, to answer to God's suit, and impleading, and an obsequious patient, to take any physic at his hands, if there were no anger in the cup. Ure renes et cor meum, says David"1, he provokes God with all those emphatical words, Judge me, prove me, try me, examine me, and more, ure renes, bring not only a candle to search, but even fire, to melt me; but upon what confidence all this? For thy loving kindness is ever before mine eyes. If God's anger, and not his loving kindness had been before his eyes, it had been a fearful apparition, and a dangerous issue to have gone upon. So also he surrenders himself entirely to God 17 Job ix. 12. 20 Hab. iii. 6, 18 Isa. xxxviii. 14. 19 Gen. vi. 3. 21 Psal. xxvi. 1. in another psalm, Try me O God, and know my heart; prove me, and know my thoughts, and consider, if there be any way of wickedness in me. But how concludes he? And lead me in the right way for ever22. As long as I have God by the hand, and feel his loving care of me, I can admit any weight of his hand; any furnace of his heating. Let God mould me, and then melt me again, let God make me, and then break me again, as long as he establishes and maintains a rectified assurance in my soul, that at last he means to make me a vessel of honour, to his glory, howsoever he rebuke or chastise me, yet he will not rebuke me in anger, much less chasten me in hot displeasure, which is the last, and the heaviest thing, that David deprecates in this prayer. Both these words, which we translate to chasten, and hot displeasure, are words of a heavy, and of a vehement signification. They extend both to express the eternity of God's indignation, even to the binding of the soul and body in eternal chains of darkness. For the first, Jasar, signifies oftentimes in the Scriptures, vincire, to bind, often with ropes, often with chains; to fetter, or manacle, or pinion men, that are to be executed; so that it imports a slavery, a bondage all the way, and a destruction at last. And so the word is used by Rehoboam, My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions 23. And then, the other word, Camath, doth not only signify hot displeasure, but that effect of God's hot displeasure, which is intended by the prophet Esay, Therefore hath he poured forth his fierce wrath, and the strength of battle, and that set him on fire round about, and he knew it not, and it burnt him up, and he considered it not2. These be the fearful conditions of God's hot displeasure, to be in a furnace, and not to feel it; to be in a habit of sin, and not know what leads us into temptation; to be burnt to ashes, and so not only without all moisture, all holy tears, but, as ashes, without any possibility, that any good thing can grow in us. And yet this word, camath, hath a heavier signification than this; for it signifies poison itself, destruction itself, for so it is twice taken in one verse, Their poison is like the poison of a serpent 5; so that this hot displeasure, is that poison of the soul, obduration here, and that extension of this obduration, a final impenitence in this life, and an infinite impenitibleness in the next, to die without any actual penitence here, and live without all possibility of future penitence for ever hereafter. plead for him; and So David's though I were able So David's prayer David therefore foresees, that if God rebuke in anger, it will come to a chastening in hot displeasure. For what should stop him? For, if a man sin against the Lord, who will plead for him? says Eli 26; Plead thou my cause, says David; it is only the Lord, that can be of counsel with him, and that Lord, is both the judge, and angry too. hath this force, Rebuke me not in anger, for to stand under that, yet thou wilt also chasten me in thine hot displeasure, and that no soul can bear; for as long as God's anger lasts, so long he is going on towards our utter destruction. In that state, (it is not a state) in that exinanition, in that annihilation of the soul, (it is not an annihilation, the soul is not so happy as to come to nothing) but in that misery, which can no more receive a name, than an end, all God's corrections are borne with grudging, with murmuring, with comparing our righteousness with other's righteousness; in Job's impatience, Quare posuisti me contrarium tibi? Why hast thou set me up as a mark against thee, O thou preserver of men? Thou that preservest other men, hast bent thy bow, and made me a mark for thine arrows2, , says the Lamentation: in that state we cannot cry to him, that he might answer us; if we do cry, and he answer, we cannot hear; if we do hear, we cannot believe that it is he. Cum invocantem exaudierit, says Job, If I cry, and he answer, yet I do not believe that he heard my voice". We had rather perish utterly, than stay his leisure in recovering us. Si flagellat, occidat semel, says Job in the vulgate, If God have a mind to destroy me, let him do it at one blow; Et non de pœnis rideat, Let him not sport himself with misery. Whatsoever come after, we would be content to be out of this world, so we might but change our torment, whether it be a temporal calamity that oppresses our state or body, or a spiritual burden, a perplexity that sinks our under 26 1 Sam. ii. 25. 29 Job ix. 16. 28 Lam, iii. 12. 27 Job vii. 20. 30 Ver. 23. Ut in standing, or a guiltiness that depresses our conscience. inferno protegas, as Job also speaks, O that thou wouldest hide me31, In inferno, in the grave, says the afflicted soul, but in inferno, in hell itself, says the despairing soul, rather than keep me in this torment, in this world! This is the miserable condition, or danger, that David abhors, and deprecates in this text, To be rebuked in anger, without any purpose in God to amend him; and to be chastened in his hot displeasure; so, as that we can find no interest in the gracious promises of the Gospel, no conditions, no power of revocation in the severe threatenings of the law; no difference between those torments which have attacked us here, and the everlasting torments of hell itself. That we have lost all our joy in this life, and all our hope of the next; that we would fain die, though it were by our own hands, and though that death do but unlock us a door, to pass from one hell into another. This is Ira tua Domine, et furor tuus, Thy anger, O Lord, and, thy hot displeasure. For as long as it is but ira patris, the anger of my father, which hath disinherited me, gold is thine, and silver is thine, and thou canst provide me. As long as it is but ira regis, some misinformation to the king, some misapprehension in the king, Cor regis in manu tua, The king's heart is in thy hand, and thou canst rectify it again. As long as it is but furor febris, the rage and distemper of a pestilent fever, or furor furoris, the rage of madness itself, thou wilt consider me, and accept me, and reckon with me according to those better times, before those distempers overtook me, and overthrew me. But when it comes to be Ira tua, furor tuus, Thy anger, and thy displeasure, as David did, so let every Christian find comfort, if he able to say faithfully this verse, this text, O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure; for as long as he can pray against it, he is not yet so fallen under it, but that he hath yet his part in all God's blessings, which we shed upon the congregation in our sermons, and which we seal to every soul in the sacrament of reconciliation. 31 Job xiv. 13. 396 SERMON XLIX. PREACHED UPON THE PENITENTIAL PSALMS. PSALM VI. 2, 3. Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are vexed: my soul is also sore vexed; but thou, O Lord, how long? THIS Whole Psalm is prayer; and the whole prayer is either deprecatory, as in the first verse, or postulatory. Something David would have forborne, and something done. And in that postulatory part of David's prayer, which goes through six verses of this Psalm, we consider the petitions, and the inducements; what David asks, and why: of both which, there are some mingled, in these two verses, which constitute our text. And therefore, in them, we shall necessarily take knowledge of some of the petitions, and some of the reasons. For, in the prayer, there are five petitions; first, Miserere, Have mercy upon me, think of me, look graciously towards me, prevent me with thy mercy; and then Sana me, O Lord, heal me, thou didst create me in health, but my parents begot me in sickness, and I have complicated other sicknesses with that, actual with original sin, O Lord, heal me, give me physic for them; and thirdly, Concertere, Return, O Lord, thou didst visit me in nature, return in grace, thou didst visit me in baptism, return in the other sacrament, thou dost visit me now, return at the hour of my death; and, in a fourth petition, Eripe, O Lord, deliver my soul, every blessing of thine because a snare unto me, and thy benefits I make occasions of sin, in all conversation, and even in my solitude, I admit such temptations from others, or I produce such temptations in myself, as that, whensoever thou art pleased to return to me, thou findest me at the brink of some sin, and therefore Eripe me, O Lord, take hold of me, and deliver me; and lastly, Salvum me fac, O Lord, sare me, manifest thy good purpose upon me so, that I may never be shaken, or never overthrown in the faithful hope of that salvation, which thou hast preordained for me. These are the five petitions of the prayer, |