devil at once do cry God is angry, and therefore is there neither help
nor remedy to be hoped for at His hands; at such time, I say, to sob
unto God is the demonstration of the secret seed of God which is hid in
God's elect children, and that only sob is unto God a more acceptable
sacrifice than, without this cross, to give our bodies to be burned
even for the truth's sake." Very comprehensive also is this expansion
of the second petition of the Lord's Prayer in the same treatise.[2]
"We are commanded daily to pray, 'Thy kingdom come,' which petition
asketh that sin may cease, that death may be devoured, that transitory
troubles may have an end, that Satan may be trodden under our feet,
that the whole {73} body of Christ may be restored to life, liberty,
and joy, that the powers and kingdoms of this earth may be dissolved
and destroyed, and that God the Father may be all in all things, after
that His Son Christ Jesus, the Saviour, hath rendered up the kingdom
for ever." And in these days when so much is written, both wise and
otherwise, on the subject of eschatology, some interest may be felt in
the following "bit" of exposition. "'For there is no remembrance of
Thee in death; who laudeth Thee in the pit?' As (if) David would say,
'O Lord, how shall I pray and declare Thy goodness when I am dead, and
gone into the grave? It is not the ordinary course to have Thy
miracles and wondrous works preached unto men by those that are buried
and gone down into the pit. Those that are dead make no mention of
Thee in the earth, and therefore, O Lord, spare Thy servant, that yet
for a time I may show and witness Thy wondrous works unto mankind.'
These most godly affections in David did engender in him a vehement
horror and fear of death, besides that which is natural and common to
all men, because he perfectly understood that by death he shall be
lettit (hindered) any further to advance the glory of God. Of the same
he complaineth most vehemently in the 88th Psalm, where apparently he
taketh from them that are dead, sense, remembrance, feeling, and
understanding, alleging that God worketh no miracles by the dead, that
the goodness of God cannot be preached in the grave, nor His faith in
perdition, and that His marvellous works {74} are not known in
darkness. By which speeches we may not understand that David taketh
all sense and feeling from the dead, neither yet that they who are dead
in Christ are in such estate that by God they have not consolation and
life. No; Christ Himself doth witness the contrary. But David so
vehemently depresses their estate and condition, because that after
death they are deprived from (of) all ordinary ministration in the Kirk
of God. None of those that are departed are appointed to be preachers
of God's glory unto mankind. But after death they cease any more to
advance God's holy name here among the living on earth, and so shall
even they in that behalf be unprofitable to the congregation as
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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