An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

1. There must be a serious and powerful apprehension of our own inability, ¹yea, and of the weakness of all Creatures to help us, or to do good to us; for till this foundation be laid, that all power, wisdom, righteousness, and whatsoever the Creature can afford, is but a shadow, a reed, that can do no good at all, it is impossible that we should trust in the Lord. So that by this we may see the difficulty and rarity of this grace, for how hard a matter is it thus to be affected about all the means that are in the world, about all the Creatures we do enjoy; to look upon them but as those Instruments of Music, which cannot sound any longer then they are blown into? How difficult to possess our souls with this principle? to look upon thy self and all Creatures, no otherwise then the poor cripple that lay by the Poole side, that could not at all help or move it self? That do behold all things as Sarahs dead womb, or Ezekiels dry bones, unless the Lord quicken and give life? You may see this practised by the Church of Israel, when she had smarted for her carnal confidence and dependence on outward helps, so as to neglect God; see in what an humble gracious manner she maketh her confession to God, Hos. 14. 3. Asshur shall not save us, we will not ride upon horses, neither will we say any more to the works of our hands, ye are our gods: for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy. Oh blessed and self-emptied frame! here the Church repenting and turning unto God, of all the sins which she was guilty of, doth instance in her carnal confidence, as that which had most provoked God, and therefore she doth renounce and disavow all civill confidence and trusting; Asshur shall not save us, &c. And 2. All religious confidence. They will no more make their applications to their gods; and then here is the reason, because in thee the fatherless finds mercy. By this proclaiming, that they looked upon themselves, as so many poor fatherless Children, that had not wherewith to help themselves. If then an whole Nation do thus, how much more ought every particular Christian, though great, though rich, yet respectively to God, to ⟨p. 321⟩look upon himself, even as that Infant the Prophet speaketh of, New borne and exposed to danger, and no ways able to succour it self.