ON HOSEA XIV.- VERSES 3, 4. 157 sumed, deformed, wounded, and sore bruised ; without power or help at home, without friends abroad : no sense of danger, no desire of change ; patient of his disease, impatient of his cure ; but one means in the world to help him, and he unable to procure it ; and being offered to him, unwilling to entertain it ; who can expect after all this but to hear the knell ring and to see the grave opened for such a sick person as this. Now let us take a view of the physician. Surely an ordinary one would be so far from visiting such a patient, that in so desperate a condition as this he would quite forsake him, as their manner is to leave their patients when they lie a dying. Here then ob- serve the singular goodness of this physician. Though other physicians judge of the disease when it is brought unto them, yet the patient first feels it and complains of it himself; but this physician giveth the patient the very feeling of his disease, and is fain to take notice of that as well as to minister the cure. " He went on frowardly in the way of his heart," saith the Lord, and pleased himself in his own ill condi- tion ; " I have seen his ways, and will heal him," Isa. lvii. 17, 18. Also observe, other patients send for the physician, and use many entreaties to be visited and undertaken by him. Here the physician comes unsent for, and entreats the sick person to be healed. The world is undone by falling off from God, and yet God is the first that begins reconciliation, and the obstacle to it is in the world and not in him : and therefore there is a great emphasis in the apostle's expression, " God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself ;" not him- self unto the world. He entreats us to be reconciled, 2 Cor. v. 19, 20. He is " found of them that sought o
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