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…

Let us then in the next place consider, What are those immediate workings of God upon the soul, whereby he maketh the heart joyful? For David, Psal. 4. saith, God had put more joy into his heart, then any man can have in the abundance of all temporal mercies. And

Let us then in the next place consider, What are those immediate workings of God upon the soul, whereby he maketh the heart joyfull? For David, Psal. 4. saith, God had put more joy into his heart, then any man can have in the abundance of all temporal mercies. And

First, Therefore God doth comfort by illuminating and opening the understanding and opening the understanding, to know and see the grounds and reasons of comfort. And certainly, this is of great conducement to have the heart comforted, when the understanding is rightly convinced of the grounds of comfort. For as the dark night is apt to beget fears and terrors, so darkness in the understanding is a great cause of all that terror and disconsolateness, which Gods own children may many times lie under. So that as God in conversion and humiliation for sin, begins with conviction upon the heart, so also in consolation and comfort. The great impediment to a godly mans comfort, is want of spiritual knowledge, and conviction about the causes of comfort. As it was with Hagar in the wilderness, she sate weeping for her child, and gave over all as desperate, till God opened her eyes, and made her see a fountain. Thus the broken heart, judgeth it self in a wilderness destitute of all comfort, seeth nothing but matter of despair and damnation, till God enlighten the understanding about comfort grounds in the Gospel. As for example, when the Spirit of God enlightens us to receive comfort, it giveth us the eye salve:

First, Therefore God doth comfort by illuminating and opening the understanding and opening the understanding, to know and see the grounds and reasons of comfort. And certainly, this is of great conducement to have the heart comforted, when the understanding is rightly convinced of the grounds of comfort. For as the dark night is apt to beget fears and terrours, so darkness in the understanding is a great cause of all that terrour and disconsolateness, which Gods own children may many times lie under. So that as God in conversion and humiliation for sinne, begins with conviction upon the heart, so also in consolation and comfort. The great impediment to a godly mans comfort, is want of spiritual knowledge, and conviction about the causes of comfort. As it was with Hagar in the wilderness, she sate weeping for her child, and gave over all as desperate, till God opened her eyes, and made her see a fountain. Thus the broken heart, judgeth it self in a wilderness destitute of all comfort, seeth nothing but matter of despair and damnation, till God enlighten the understanding about comfortgrounds in the Gospel. As for example, when the Spirit of God enlightens us to receive comfort, it giveth us the eye salve: