An exposition with practical observations continued upon the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth chapters of…An exposition with practicall observations continued upon the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth chapters of…

First, They gave him little hope of good, or they did not open to him a done of hope wide enough: 'tis true, they made some overtures that way, which yet (comparatively to what they ought) were scarce considerable. And Eliphaz who had been somewhat large upon the point in his first congress with Job, speaks nothing of it in his last: For as if he thought his case desperate, and had given him for a lost man, he shuts up in the dark, as we see, in the close of the former Chapter; where he thunders out the judgements of God upon Hypocrites, and Bribe-takers, without so much as one word of comfort to the penitent: This is to be a Miserable comforter. The song of comforters should at least be mixed, like that of David to the Lord, of mercy and of judgement (Psal. 101.1) A song of judgement alone, or most of judgement to a heavy heart, may be called (like that of Jeremiah) A Lamentation, but it is not a Consolation.

First, They gave him little hope of good, or they did not open to him a doone of hope wide enough: 'tis true, they made some overtures that way, which yet (comparatively to what they ought) were scarce considerable. And Eliphaz who had been somewhat large upon the point in his first congresse with Job, speakes nothing of it in his last: For as if he thought his case desperate, and had given him for a lost man, he shuts up in the darke, as we see, in the close of the former Chapter; where he thunders out the judgements of God upon Hypocrites, and Bribe-takers, without so much as one word of comfort to the penitent: This is to be a Miserable comforter. The song of comforters should at least be mixt, like that of David to the Lord, of mercy and of judgement (Psal. 101.1) A song of judgement alone, or most of judgement to a heavy heart, may be called (like that of Jeremie) A Lamentation, but it is not a Consolation.

Secondly, They (as was touched before) tired out his afflicted soul with tedious discourses, and unpleasing repetitions; they always harped upon the same string, and that makes no music to a disconsolate soul. As God complains of those prayers as unpleasing, which are full of unnecessary repetitions; so also those counsels are unpleasing to man, which are made up of needless repetitions. To press the same point, though true, oft, and oft, is a weariness to the spirit; and because it suggests this suspicion, that the hearer doth oppose, or resist that truth, it proves an upbraiding, rather then a teaching, or a comforting: Comfort must be stolen in unawares, by a holy sleight of hand, it must not be beaten in with beetles, as it were, by force of hand.