hated; and as the hatred grows stronger and stronger, sin becomes weaker and
weaker daily.— Nathaniel Vincent, 1695.
Verse 13. "Keep back thy servant also from all presumptuous sins." He
doth desire absolutely to be kept from "presumptuous sins;" but then, he
adds by way of supposition and reserve, that if he could not by reason of
his naughty heart be kept from them, yet that they might not have full power
and dominion over him.— Thomas Manton.
Verse 13. "Keep back thy servant." It is an evil man's cross to be
restrained, and a good man's joy to be kept back from sin. When sin puts
forth itself, the evil man is putting forth his hand to the sin; but when
sin puts forth itself, the good man is putting forth his hand to heaven; if
he finds his heart yielding, out he cries, O keep back thy servant. An
evil man is kept back from sin, as a friend from a friend, as a lover from
his lover, with knit affections and projects of meeting; but a good man is
kept back from sin, as a man from his deadly enemy, whose presence he
hates, and with desires of his ruin and destruction. It is the good man's
misery that he hath yet a heart to be more tamed and mastered; it is an evil
man's vexation and discontent, that still, or at any time, he is held in by
cord or bridle. And thus you see what David aims at in desiring to be kept
back from presumptuous sins, namely, not a mere suspension, but a
mortification, not a not acting only, but a subduing of the inclination; not
for a time, but for ever.— Obadiah Sedgwick.
Verse 13. "Keep back thy servant," etc. Even all the people of God,
were they not kept by God's grace and power, they would every moment be
undone both in soul and body. It is not our grace, our prayer, our
watchfulness keeps us, but it is in the power of God, his right arm,
supports us; we may see David praying to God that he would "keep" him in
both these respects from temporal dangers (Psalm 18:8, 9; "keep me", )
etc.; where he doth not only pray to be kept, but he doth insinuate how
carefully God keeps his people, and in what precious account their safety
is, even as "the apple of the eye," and for spiritual preservation he often
begs it. Though David be God's "servant" yet he will, like a wild horse,
run violently, and that into "presumptuous sins," if God "keep" him not
"back," yea, he prayeth that God would "keep" the particular parts of
his body that they sin not: "keep the door of my lips" (Psalm 141:3); he
entreateth God to "keep" his lips and to set a watch about his mouth, as
if he were not able to set guard sure enough: thus much more are we to pray
that God would "keep" our hearts, our minds, our wills, our affections,
for they are more masterful.— Anthony Burgess.
Verse 13. "Keep back thy servant." God keeps back his servants from
sin, 1. By preventing grace, which is, by infusing such a nature as is
like a bias into a bowl, drawing it aside another way; 2. By assisting
grace, which is a further strength superadded to that first-implanted
nature of holiness; like a hand upon a child holding him in; 3. By
quickening grace, which is, when God doth enliven our graces to manifest
themselves in actual opposition; so that the soul shall not yield, but keep
off from entertaining the sin; 4. By directing grace, which is, when God
confers that effectual wisdom to the mind, tenderness to the conscience,
watchfulness to the heart, that his servants become greatly solicitous of
his honour, scrupulously jealous of their own strength, and justly regardful
of the honour of their holy profession; 5. By doing grace, which is, when
God effectually inclines the hearts of his servants to the places and ways
of their refuge, safeties, and preservations from sin, by enlarging the
spirit of supplication, and framing the heart to the reverent and
affectionate use of his ordinances.— Condensed from Obadiah Sedgwick.
Verse 13. "Thy servant:" as if he had said, "O God, thou art my Lord, I
have chosen thee, to whom I will give obedience; thou art he whom I will
follow; I bestow all that I am on thee. Now a lord will help his servant
against an enemy, who for the lord's service is the servant's enemy. O my
Lord, help me! I am not able by my own strength to uphold myself, but thou
art All-sufficiency"— "Keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins." .
. . . Beloved, it is a great thing to stand in near relations to God; and
then it is a good thing to plead by them with God, forsomuch as nearer
relations have strongest force with all. The servant can do more than a
stranger, and the child than a servant, and the wife than a child. . . .
There be many reasons against sinning . . . . Now this also may come in,
namely, the specialty of our relation to God, that we are his children, and
he is our Father; we are his servants, and he is our Lord: though the common
obligations are many and sufficient, yet the special relations are also a
further tie: the more near a person comes to God, the more careful he should
be not to sin against God.— Obadiah Sedgwick.
Verse 13. "Presumptuous sins." The Rabbins distinguish all sins unto
those committed (Heb.) ignorantly, and (Heb.) presumptuously. — Benjamin Kennicott, D.D., 1718-1783.
Verse 13. "Presumptuous sins." When sin grows up from act to delight,
from delight to new acts, from repetition of sinful acts to vicious
indulgence, to habit and custom and a second nature, so that anything that
toucheth upon it is grievous, and strikes to the man's heart; when it is got
into God's place, and requires to be loved with the whole strength, makes
grace strike sail, and other vices do it homage, demands all his concerns to
be sacrificed to it and to be served with his reputation, his fortunes, his
parts, his body, and soul, to the irreparable loss of his time and eternity
both—this is the height of its dominion —then sin becomes
"exceedingly sinful," and must needs make strange and sad alterations in the
state of saints themselves, and be great hindrances to them in their way to
Heaven, having brought them so near to Hell.— Adam Littleton.
Verse 13. "Presumptuous sins." The distribution of sins into sins of
ignorance , of infirmity , and of presumption , is very usual and very
useful, and complete enough without the addition (which some make) of a
fourth sort, to wit, sins of negligence or inadvertency, all such sins
being easily reducible to some of the former three. The ground of the
distinction is laid in the soul of man, where there are three distinct prime
faculties, from which all our actions flow—the understanding, the will,
and the sensual appetite or affections. . . . The enquiry must be, when a sin is done, where the fault lay most;
and thence it must have the right denomination. 1. If the understanding
be most in fault, not apprehending that good it should, or not aright, the
sin so done, though possibly it may have in it somewhat both of infirmity
and presumption withal, is yet properly a sin of ignorance. 2. If the
main fault be in the affections, through some sudden passion or
perturbation of mind, blinding, or corrupting, or but outrunning the
judgment—as of fear, anger, desire, joy, or any of the rest—the sin
thence arising, though perhaps joined with some ignorance or presumption
withal, is yet properly a sin of infirmity. But if the understanding be
completely informed with knowledge, and not much blinded or transported with
the incursion of any sudden, or violence of any vehement perturbation, so as
the greatest blame must remain upon the untowardness of the will,
resolvedly bent upon the evil, the sin arising from such willfulness,
though probably not free from all mixture of ignorance and infirmity withal,
is yet properly a wilful presumption, such a presumptuous sin as we are
now in treaty of. Rules are soonest learned and best remembered when
illustrated with fit examples; and of such the rich storehouse of the
Scripture affordeth us in each kind variety and choice enough, whence it
shall suffice us to propose but one eminent of each sort. The men, all of
them for their holiness, of singular and worthy renown: David, St. Peter,
and St. Paul. The sins, all of them for their matter, of the greatest
magnitude: murdering of the innocent, abnegation of Christ, persecution of
the church: Paul's persecution a grievous sin, yet a sin of ignorance;
Peter's denial a grievous sin, yet a sin of infirmity; David's murder, a
far more grievous sin than either of both, because a sin of presumption.
St. Paul, before his conversion, whilst he was Saul, persecuted and wasted
the church of God to the utmost of his power, making havoc of the professors
of Christ, entering into their very houses, and haling thence to prison,
both men and women; and posting abroad with letters into remote quarters, to
do all the mischief he could, everywhere with great fury, as if he had been
mad, breathing out, wherever he came, nothing but threatenings and slaughter
against the disciples of the Lord. His affections were not set against
them through any personal provocations, but merely out of zeal to the law;
and surely his zeal had been good had it not been blind. Nor did his will
run cross to his judgment, but was led by it, for he "verily thought in
himself that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus;" and
verily his will had been good had it not been misled. But the error was in
his understanding, his judgment being not yet actually convinced of the
truth of the Christian religion. He was yet fully persuaded that Jesus was
an impostor, and Christianity a pestilent sect, raised by Satan, to the
disgrace and prejudice of Moses and the law. If these things had indeed
been so, as he apprehended them, his affections and will, in seeking to
root out such a sect, had been not only blameless but commendable. It was
his erroneous judgment that poisoned all, and made that which otherwise had
been zeal, to become persecution. But, however, the first discernable
obliquity therein being in the understanding , that persecution of his was
therefore a sin of ignorance, so called, and under that name condemned by
himself. 1 Timothy 1:13. But such was not Peter's denial of his Master.
He knew well enough who he was having conversed so long with him, and
having, long before, so amply confessed him. And he knew also that he
ought not, for anything in the world, to have denied him. That made him so
confident before that he would not do it, because he was abundantly
satisfied that he should not do it. Evident it is, then, that Peter
wanted no knowledge, either of the Master's person, or of his own duty;
and so no plea left him of ignorance, either facti or juris. Nor was
the fault so much in his will as to make it a sin properly of
presumption. For albeit de facto he did deny him when he was put to it,
and that with fearful oaths and imprecations, yet was it not done with any
prepensed apostacy, or out of design, yea, he came rather with a contrary
resolution, and he still honoured his Master in his heart, even then when
he denied him with his tongue; and as soon as ever the watchword was given
him by the second cock, to prefer to his consideration what he had done, it
grieved him sore that he had so done, and he wept bitterly for it. We find
no circumstance, in the whole relation, that argueth any deep obstinacy in
his will. But in his affections, then! Alas! there was the fail! A
sudden qualm of fear surprising his soul when he saw his Master so
despitefully used before his face (which made him apprehensive of what hard
usage himself might fall under if he should there and then have owned him)
took from him for that time the benefit and use of his reason, and so drew
all his thoughts to this one point—how to decline the present danger—
that he had never a thought at so much liberty as to consult his judgment,
whether it were a sin or no. And this, proceeding from such a sudden
distemper of passion, Peter's denial was a sin properly of infirmity. But
David's sin, in contriving the death of Uriah, was of a yet higher pitch,
and of a deeper dye than either of these. He was no such stranger in the
law of God as not to know that the wilful murder of an innocent party, such
as he also knew Uriah to be, was a most loud crying sin; and therefore
nothing surer than that it was not merely a sin of ignorance. Neither yet
was it a sin properly of infirmity, and so capable of that extenuating
circumstance of being done in the heat of anger, as his uncleanness with
Bathsheba was in the heat of lust, although that extenuation will not be
allowed to pass there, unless in tanto only, and as it standeth in
comparison with this fouler crime. But having time and leisure enough to
bethink himself what he was about, he doth it in cool blood, and with much
advised deliberation, plotting and contriving this way and that way to
perfect his design. He was resolved, whatsoever should become of it, to
have it done; in regard of which settled resolution of his will, this sin