576 r PARDON OF SIN THE MOST DESIRABLE forgiven, it is the great thing that burdens the soul of a saint ; for where sin is not removed we have little reason to hope that sorrow .shall. So yo r find good David, where he mourns and complains before God, in the fifty first psalm, there is scarce any expression desiring the removal of affliction, but all for pardon. Purge me with hyssop, &c." He desires that every thing sinful may be removed from him. To this doctrine I shall' speak a little more at large than I have done to the former ; and, first give some reasons why a child of God under afflictions,` most earnestly and in the first' place, desires the removal of his guilt, and, Secondly,. apply the subject. The reasons are these ; First, Because an afflicting and condemning God is a thought they cannot bear ; therefore they beg that though God should continue to afflict, yet that he would not condemn them. They know, in some measure, what the desert of sin is, and the terrors of the Lord to be more dreadful and heavier than outward sufferings ! and there- fore it is that Job, in the agony of his soul, complains that, " The arrows of the Almighty stick fast in me, &c?' You scarcely hear him speak heavier words of sorrow throughout his whole book than these are : " They are heavier than the sand of the sea. My words are swal- lowed up with the thought that a terrible God has let loose his hand upon me, and does not shew me his smil- ing countenance." Secondly, Pardon is the greatest mercy, for where therè is no pardon of sin, temporal afflictions are but forerun- ners of eternal ones. Sorrows here on earth are pledges òf sorrows that will never end, to souls that have no pardon : this adds great weight to every stroke of the hand ofGod, and makes every wound the deeper : but where a soul can hope in future comforts, and by faith view a justifying God, can look beyond earth,and time, and see the pleasures that are prepared at God's right- hand, ready to be bestowed on him ; this lightens every grief,' and takes away the sting ofanguish. It is a dread- ful thing when I am under sorrows, to think that these sufferingsare part ofmy satisfaction to divine justice for sin, which shall never be fully satisfied ; that they are part of the curse ofa broken law thatshall lay on me for
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=