times he should take encouragement, and should enlarge his expectations to the utmost extent that the sacred records authorize. God is the same gracious and almighty Being in every age: and what he has done for one he may do for another : and though he may not vouchsafe to us precisely the same interpositions as he did to others, he will, as far as our par- ticular occasions may call for them : and we are enemies to ourselves, if we do not open our mouths wide, and ask all that our situation and circumstances can require.]
2. The communications of his grace —
[He desired to be delivered, not from guilt only, but from the power and dominion of sin also. This desire was without reserve : he wished not to retain " any iniquity," however pleasant or profitable, or even justifiable it might be in the eyes of an ungodly world. In this he approved himself sincere and upright : and in this, every true Christian will resemble
him
But in order to this, he begged to be guided altogether by the oracles of truth. The word of God is the only standard of right and wrong : if we follow any other directory, we shall err: if we adhere to that, we cannot but fulfil the will of God. This is the constant declaration of God himself b ; and it accords with the experience of his people in every age c. Happy would it be for us, if we would study the Scriptures with this par- ticular view. We are not disposed to undervalue speculative knowledge : but that which is practical is infinitely to be pre- ferred. The Scriptures are given us as a "light to our paths" in general, and as "a lantern" in every particular case when we know not where to place "our feet." Let us truly seek to be in every thing governed by them ; and then, though we be mere fools, as it were, in other things, we shall never greatly errd.]
From this general view of the petitions, we proceed, 1 1. To shew the instruction to be derived from them —
Though not written with a didactic view, they convey much instruction, in reference both,
1. To Christian principles — [The unionoi the two petitions may not improperly suggest to us, that a desire after pardon must invariably be joined with a desire of sanctification also. Were a desire of pardon all that is required to form the Christian character, a Christian would differ but little from those who are gone beyond redemption. Sin must be hateful to us, even as it is to God himself, who cannot look upon it without the utmost abhorrence
Nor is the order in which they stand devoid of good and
b ver. 9. c ver, 11. d Ps. xix. 7. Tsai. xxxv. 8.