A practical exposition on the 130th Psalm

Childhood and youth are vanity, Eccles. 11. 10. Not because they soon pass away, but because they are usually spent in vanity, as the following advice (of chap. 12. 1.) to remember God in those days, doth manifest. The way of many is to wear such things out of mind, and not to walk in a sense of their folly and madness, never to make through work with God about them. I speak of the Saints themselves; for with others that live under the Means of Grace, whom God intends any way to make useful and industrious in their Generation, this is the usual course; by convictions, restraining Grace, Afflictions, Love of Employment and Repute, God gives them another heart than they had for a season. Another heart, but not a new heart. Hence another course of life, another profession, other actions than formerly do flow; with this change they do content themselves; they look on what is past perhaps with delight, or as things fit enough for those days, but not for those they have attained unto; here they rest, and therefore never come to rest. But I speak of the Saints themselves, who make not such through, full, close work in this kind as they ought. An after-reckoning may come in on this hand to their own disturbance, and an inconquerable hinderance of their peace and settlement be brought in, on this account. So was it with Job, chap. 13. 26, He makes me possess the sins of my youth. God filled his heart, his thoughts, his mind with these sins; made them abide with him, so that he possessed them; they were always present with him. He made the sins of his youth the sufferings of his age. And it is a sad thing, as one speaks, when young sins and old bones meet together; as Zophar, chap. 20. 11. His bones are filled with the sins of his youth. The joyous frame of some mens Youth, makes way for sad work in their Age. Take heed young ⟨p. 297⟩ones, you are doing that which will abide with you to Age, if not to Eternity. This possessing of the sins of youth, Job calls, the writing of bitter things against him. As indeed it is impossible but that sin should be bitter one time or other. God calls it a root that beareth Gall and Wormwood, Deut. 29. 18. A root of bitterness springing up into defilement,