One Hundred and Ninety Sermons on Psalm 119

Reason. There is in mans heart a mighty proneness thereto. Jer. 14. 10. You have hearts that love to wander. Man is a restless creature, that loveth shifts and changes. For weakness, they are compared to children, Hos. 11. 3. and for wandering compared to sheep, Isa. 53. 6. There is no creature so apt to go astray as sheep, and so unable to return. This is the disposition of men by nature. And mark, much of the old nature remains still with the Saints. Have they not this wandering property to the last? David acknowledgeth it, though there were some good in him. Psal. 119. 176. I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Consider, the Saints though they have sincerity, yet not perfection. And sometimes they wander through inadvertency, they are overtaken, Gal. 6. 1. as Noah was; they do not run of their own accord. And sometimes we err through the darkness that is in us; though a child of God be light in the Lord, yet he hath a great deal of darkness still It may be he is wise in generals, but ignorant in particulars; as the Heathens, in general they had good notions of an Infinite and Eternal Power, but they were vain in their imaginations, Rom. 1. 21. in their practical inferences and discourses, when they came to rest upon this God. So a child of God may have a general sense of his duty, but as to particulars he is apt to miscarry; the mind may be blinded by lust and prejudice.