God himself must have changed, and have cast off that character, which, in appearance at least, he had on all former occasions exhibited : yea, his darling attri- butes of mercy and truth seemed to have undergone a change, and to have assumed an aspect totally different from that in which they had hitherto been viewed11.
Happily, however, the snare was broken ; and he saw, that these hard thoughts of God had no founda- tion in truth : they were the result only of his own weakness1; and would be effectually removed by a more attentive consideration of all that God had done for his people of oldk.
His temptation was at its height, when he asked the questions recorded in our text. We shall do well therefore to consider,
I. What these questions import —
They are not to be viewed as subjects of a merely speculative inquiry, but to be taken in connexion with all that agitation of mind that is depicted in the foregoing context. In this view they express,
1. Disquieting apprehensions in reference to him- self—
[He had thought in former times, that he was a monu- ment of God's " mercy,'' and an object of his " favourable" regard: but now he seems as one cast out, and doomed to everlasting misery. It must be remembered, that interroga- tions, which in our language would imply a negation of the thing inquired about, have frequently in Scripture the force of affirmations1: and thus it is in the various questions that are before us, in which therefore there is a very strong degree of apprehension intimated. Yet is this feeling by no means un- common at the present day. Many in a season of darkness are led to write bitter things against themselves, and to account all their past profession a continued scene of hypo- crisy and self-delusion. They think that they have resisted the Spirit, till they have utterly quenched his sacred motions; yea, that they have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, and placed themselves, as it were, out of the reach of mercy : and such an unhappy degree of positiveness frequently accompanies these apprehensions, that they read their doom as if it had
h ver. 7 — 9. ' ver. 10. k ver. 10—20.
1 Jer. ii. 14. and xxxi. 20.