A53721:731
A practical exposition on the 130th Psalm
A practical exposition on the 130th Psalm wherein the nature of the forgiveness of sin is declared, the truth and reality of it asserted, and the case of a soul distressed with the guilt of sin and relieved by a discovery of forgiveness with God is at large discoursed / by John Owen.
London: printed by Robert White for Nathaniel Ponder, 1669
AN EXPOSITION UPON PSALM CXXX. › General Scope of the whole Psalm. › Verse 4 › Section
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.
2. This alone will give you such Motives and Encouragements unto Obedience, as will give you Life, Alacrity, and Delight in it. You perform Duties, abstain from sins, but with heaviness, fear, and in bondage. Could you do as well without them, as with them, would Conscience be quiet, and hope of Eternity hold out, you would omit them for ever. This makes all your Obedience burdensome, and you cry out in your thoughts with him in the Prophet, behold what a weariness it is! the service of God is the only drudgery of your lives, which you dare not omit, and delight not to perform. From this wretched and cursed frame, there is nothing can deliver you, but this closing with forgiveness. This will give you such motives, such encouragements, as will greatly influence your hearts and souls. It will give you freedom, liberty, delight, and cheerfulness in all duties of Gospel Obedience. You will find a constraining power in the love of Christ therein; a freedom from bondage, when the Son truly hath made you free. Faith and love will work genuinely and naturally in your spirits; and that which was your greatest burden, will become your chiefest joy: 2 Cor. 7. 1. Thoughts of the Love of God, of the Blood of Christ, or the Covenant of Grace, and sense of pardon in them, will enlarge your hearts, and sweeten all your duties. You will find a new life, a new pleasure, a new satisfaction, in all that you do. Have you yet ever understood that of the Wise man, Prov. 3. 17. The ways of Wisdom are pleasantness, and her paths are peace? Have the ways of Holiness, of Obedience, of Duties been so unto you? Whatever you pretend, they are not, they cannot be so, whilst you are strangers unto that which alone can render them so unto you. I speak unto them that are under the Law; Would you be free from that bondage, that galling yoke in duties of Obedience? Would you have all that you do towards God, a delight and pleasantness unto you? this, and this alone will effect it for you.
2. This alone will give you such Motives and Encouragements unto Obedience, as will give you Life, Alacrity, and Delight in it. You perform Duties, abstain from sins, but with heaviness, fear, and in bondage. Could you do as well without them, as with them, would Conscience be quiet, and hope of Eternity hold out, you would omit them for ever. This makes all your Obedience burdensome, and you cry out in your thoughts with him in the Prophet, behold what a weariness it is! the service of God is the only drudgery of your lives, which you dare not omit, and delight not to perform. From this wretched and cursed frame, there is nothing can deliver you, but this closing with forgiveness. This will give you such motives, such encouragements, as will greatly influence your hearts and souls. It will give you freedom, liberty, delight, and chearfulness in all duties of Gospel Obedience. You will finde a constraining power in the love of Christ therein; a freedom from bondage, when the Son truely hath made you free. Faith and love will work genuinely and naturally in your spirits; and that which was your greatest burden, will become your chiefest joy: