A35538:736
An exposition with practical observations continued upon the thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth, fortieth, forty-first, and forty-second,…
An exposition with practical observations continued upon the thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth, fortieth, forty-first, and forty-second, being the five last, chapters of the book of Job being the substance of fifty-two lectures or meditations / by Joseph Caryl ...
London: printed by M. and S. Simmons, 1666
Title page typeset from the transcription.
AN EXPOSITION WITH Practical Observations UPON The Thirty-eighth, T… › Chapter 38 › Verse 19-21
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
The question was put to Job, whether he had disposed of them; but he could not assume to himself, that he had taken or laid the light to the bound thereof, or knew the paths to the house thereof. Light and darkness are at the dispose, and under the command of God alone. And as the work or power of God is wonderful in the dispose of natural light and darkness, so 'tis much more wonness; in the dispose of civil, spiritual, and eternal light and darkderful these the Lord taketh to their bound, and knoweth the paths to their house. I form light and create darkness (saith the Lord, Isa. 45.7.) What light and darkness doth the Lord there speak of? Surely of civil light and darkness, as the next words import, I make peace and create evil; I make and create them, I also direct and appoint them whither to go, whether to a Nation or to a man only, whether to this or that man or Nation. Darkness is of me as truly as light.
And that not only civil, but spiritual and eternal light and darkness are at Gods dispose, is as evident from the Scriptures of ⟨p. 170⟩truth. Some lands may be called lands of light (like Goshen) others (like Egypt under that three days plague) may be called lands of darkness. Of such lands that complaint is made (Psal. 74.20.) The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty. All places of the earth full of ignorance, not knowing God, of atheism, not acknowledging God, of idolatry, worshipping false gods, or the true God falsely, may be called lands of darkness, or the dark places of the earth. Now as the Lord maketh one land a place of spiritual light, so he leaveth another to be a place of darkness. And he often maketh changes from darkness to light, that's mercy, and from light to darkness, that's wrath, in the same lands. Some lands which had sate in darkness for ages and generations, the Lord hath visited with Gospel light; and some lands, which for ages and generations had that light, are now laid in darkness. How sad a witness of this are the anciently famous seats of the Asian and African Churches, now under Mahometan power!