`0 FORGIVENESS OF SIN. 4. There are also oppressing apprehensions of tempo- ral judgments; for God will judge his people; and judgment often begins at the house of God. Though God, saith such a one, should not cast me off for ever, though he should pardon my iniquities, yet he may so take vengeance of my inventions as to make me feed on gall and wormwood all my days. "My flesh trem- bleth for fear of thee, and I am afraid of thy judgments." Psalm 119 : 120. He knows not what the great God may bring upon him; and having a full sense of the guilt of sin, which is the ground of this whole condition, every judgment of God is full of terror to him. Sometimes he thinks God may lay open the vileness of his heart, and make him a scandal and a reproach in the world. " Oli !" saith he, " make me not the reproach of the foolish." Psalm 39 : 8. Sometimes he trembles, lest God should strike him suddenly with some signal judgment, and take him out of the world in darkness and sorrow; so saith David, " Take me not away in thy wrath." Sometimes he fears lest he should be like Jonah, and raise a storm in his family, in the church whereof he is a member, or in the whole nation : " let them not be ashamed for my sake." These things make his heart soft, as Job speaks, and to melt within him. When any affliction or public judgment of God is joined to a quick living sense of sin in the conscience, it overwhelms the soul, whether it be only justly feared, or be actually in- flicted, as was the case of Joseph's brethren in Egypt. The soul is then rolled from one deep to another. Sense of sin casts it on the consideration of its affliction; and affliction turns it back on a sense of sin. So deep call- eth unto deep, and all God's billows go over the soul; and they do each of them make the soul tender, and sharpen its sense unto the other. Affliction softens the soul, so that the sense of sin cuts the deeper, and makes the larger wounds; and the sense of sin weakens
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=