hast thou smitten us, and there is no healing for us ? We looked for peace, and there is no good ; and for the time of healing, and behold trouble. We acknowledge, O Lord, our wickedness, and the iniquity of our fathers ; for we have sinned against thee. Do not abhor us, for thy name's sake ; do not disgrace the throne of thy glory : remember, break not thy covenant with «sp." Now, after every allowance which must be made for the condescension of God in permitting his people to plead with him, we cannot but think, that the terms here used savour of impatience ; and that a more respectful and reverential language would have better comported with their state. But strong feelings usually issue in hasty and unadvised expressions.
Another source from which these apprehensions spring, is Unbelief. The promises of God are as clear as the powers of language can express : but we know not how to believe them. Sometimes they appear too good to be true : at other times we doubt whether they are made to us : and at other times we are ready to think that they cannot be fulfilled ; yea, the very providence of God seems to oppose their accomplishment. Hence we listen to the dictates of sense, and, because of our present distress, conclude that God hath forsaken and forgot- ten us. This was the unhappy experience of David himself, who was brought by his trouble to ask, " Will the Lord cast off for ever ? and will he be favourable no more ? Is his mercy clean gone for ever ? doth his promise fail for evermore ? Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender merciesq?" Well might he add, "This was my infirmity1;" for a dreadful infirmity it was, to entertain such distressing apprehensions for himself, and such injurious thoughts of God. Yet thus it is, that, under the influence of unbelief, multitudes are yet daily dishonouring their God.
But we must not omit to mention, that these apprehensions frequently proceed also from disease of body or mind. There is a nervous habit of body that is very apt to produce the feelings we are now speaking of; and, the mind partaking of the weakness of the body, Satan takes advantage of it, to impress on the imagination every thing that is gloomy and melancholy : ' God has not elected me : I am given over to a reprobate mind : I have sinned away my day of grace : I have committed the unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost: It is in vain for me to pray; for my doom is sealed: God has entirely forsaken me, and, as to any purposes of his grace, has eternally forgotten me.' This is indeed a most distressing state of mind ; and the more so, because the per- sons so affected have not the least conception from whence all
p Jer. xiv. 19 — 21. <i Ps. lxxvii. 7 — 9. r Vs. lxxvii. 10.