SUPPORT FROM FORGIVENESS. 113 gone, my steps had well nigh slipped." Psalm 73 : 1, '2. However my state is, yet I know that God is good good to Israel; and therewith will I support myself. When once the soul has reached this ground, that it considers God in Christ as one to be delighted in and loved, great and blessed effects will ensue. 1. Self- abhorrence and condemnation, with resignation of all to God, and permanency therein, certainly attend it. 2. Still something in God will be brought to mind, to relieve it under faintings; some new springs of hope will be every day opened. 3. And the soul will be insensibly wrought upon to delight itself in God. Though, in its own particular case, it meets with frownings, chitlings, and repulses, yet this still relieves him, that God is as has been declared; so that he says, However it be, yet God is good; and it is good for me to wait upon him. Without this discovery, the soul is not drawn to God ; and whatever it does with respect to him, it is because it dares do no otherwise, being overawed with his terror and greatness. Such obe- dience God may have from devils. 2. It removes sundry overwhelming difficulties that lie in the soul's way, before it close with this discovery of forgiveness. It takes awayall the hinderances that have been men- tioned, from the greatness, holiness, and severity of God, the strictness of the law, and the natural actings of con- science, rising up against all hopes of forgiveness. All these are by this faith removed. Where this faith is, it discovers the true nature of gospel-forgiveness. It re- veals it as flowing from the gracious heart of the Father, through the blood of the Son. This propitiation in the blood of the Son removes all these difficulties, even an- tecedently to our special sense of an interest therein. It shows how God may be exalted, and the law fulfilled, and yet forgiveness be extended to sinners. All those dreadful
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