Doct. That though our trials be never so sharp and tedious, yet this must not lessen our respect to God or his word.
In handling this point I shall show you three things : —
1. That God may exercise his childi-en with sharp and tedious afilictions.
2. That these afflictions are apt to draw us into manifold sins and errors of practice.
3. That yet this should not be ; a gracious heart should withstand the shock of temptations.
For the first, David is an instance, whose sad complaint we have had continued for three verses together. I shall only now open the similitude in the text, whereby he representeth his condition.
1. A bottle in the smoke is dry and wrinkled and shrunk up ; so he was worn out and dried up with sorrow and long suspense of expectation. This noteth the decay of his bodily strength. So also elsewhere : Ps. cii. 3, ' My days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burnt as an hearth.' And he saith, Ps. xxxii. 4, ' Thy hand was heavy upon me ; my moisture is turned into the drought of sum- mer.' His chief sap, oil, was spent, humidum radicale. As a leathern sack, long hung up in a smoking chimney, so was he dried up, and
374 SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. [SeR. XCI.
shrivelled and wrinkled by long-continued troubles and adversity. We are told, Prov, xvii. 22, that a ' merry heart doth good like a medi- cine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones.' A cheerful heart helpeth well to recover health lost, but a sad one breedeth diseases, as we see grief is often the cause of death. Now so it may often be with God's children. God may so follow them with afflictions that sorrow may waste their natural strength, and they may have such hard and long trials as to make them go into wrinkles, and what by temporal sor- rows, troubles of conscience or sickness, the infirmities of age may be hastened upon them.
2. A bottle in the smoke is blacked and smutched, whereby is meant that his beauty was wasted as well as his strength ; and as he was withered, so he was black with extreme misery : Job xxx. 30, ' My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burnt with heat.' So Lam. V. 10, ' Our skin was black as an oven, because of the terrible famine.' So Lam. iv. 8, ' Their visage is blacker than a coal ; they are not known in the streets : their skin cleaveth to their bones, it is withered, it is become like a stick.' So here ' like a bottle in the smoke.' And you must consider that tliis was spoken of David, that ruddy youth, of whom it was said, 1 Sam. xvi. 12, ' Now he was ruddy, of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to.' But great sorrows had made an alteration, and afflictions do quickly cause the beauty of the body to fade: Ps. xxxix. 11, ' When thou with rebukes dost cor- rect man lor iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth.' God's rod may leave sad marks and prints upon the body, which do not only waste our strength, but deface our beauty. Ob- serve here the difference between the beauty and strength of the body and of the soul. The beauty of the soul groweth fairer by afflictions, whereas that of the body is blasted. David was a bottle shrivelled and shrunk up, yet the holy frame of his soul was not altered ; his beauty was gone, but not his grace. Outward beauty is but skin-deep ; turn it inside out, it is but blood and rawness. It fadeth by sickness, age, troubles of conscience, and great and mani- fold afflictions. Once more ; in the sight of God a man is never tlie more uncomely, though he be as a skin-bottle in the smoke, if he doth not ' forget his statutes ; ' if he be outwardly deformed, but yet the hidden man of the heart be well adorned, even with the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price, 1 Peter iii. 3, 4. Any great affliction soon maketh an impression upon the skin. This flower of beauty is soon blown off; age or sickness will soon shrivel it up, and make it look like a bottle in the smoke ; but let us regard the beauty of the soul, which fadeth not.
3. A dried bottle in the smoke is contemned and cast aside and of no use ; f-o was David no more esteemed and regarded among men than such a bottle would be ; and to this Christ alludeth, Mat. ix. 17, ' Men do not put new wine into old bottles, lest the bottles break, and the wine runneth out and perisheth.' An old, dry shrivelled bottle is good for nothing, the force of wine will soon break and rend it, therefore it is cast away as a thing of no use. So many times, to the great grief of their liearts, may God's children be laid aside as useless vessels. The world may cast them oft' as unworthy to live among
VeU. 83.] SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. 375