Some
think that David penned this psalm at the time of Absalom's rebellion;
others that Daniel, Nehemiah, or some other prophet, penned it for the use
of the church, when it was in captivity in Babylon, because it seems to
speak of the ruin of Zion and of a time set for the rebuilding of it, which
Daniel understood by books, Dan. ix. 2. Or perhaps the psalmist was himself
in great affliction, which he complains of in the beginning of the psalm,
but (as in Ps. lxxvii. and elsewhere) he comforts himself under it with the
consideration of God's eternity, and the church's prosperity and perpetuity,
how much soever it was now distressed and threatened. But it is clear, from
the application of ver. 25, 26, to Christ (Heb. i. 10-12), that the psalm
has reference to the days of the Messiah, and speaks either of his
affliction or of the afflictions of his church for his sake. In the psalm we
have, I. A sorrowful complaint which the psalmist makes, either for himself
or in the name of the church, of great afflictions, which were very
pressing, ver. 1-11. II. Seasonable comfort fetched in against these
grievances, 1. From the eternity of God, ver. 12, 24, 27. 2. From a
believing prospect of the deliverance which God would, in due time, work for
his afflicted church (ver. 13-22) and the continuance of it in the world,
ver. 28. In singing this psalm, if we have not occasion to make the same
complaints, yet we may take occasion to sympathize with those that have, and
then the comfortable part of this psalm will be the more comfortable to us
in the singing of it.
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Complaints in Affliction.
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A prayer of the afflicted, when he is
overwhelmed,
and poureth out his complaint before the Lord.
1 Hear my prayer, O LORD,
and let my cry come unto thee. 2 Hide not thy face from me in
the day when I am in trouble; incline thine ear unto me: in the day when
I call answer me speedily. 3 For my days are consumed like
smoke, and my bones are burned as a hearth. 4 My heart is
smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread.
5 By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin.
6 I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the
desert. 7 I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house
top. 8 Mine enemies reproach me all the day; and they
that are mad against me are sworn against me. 9 For I have eaten
ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping, 10 Because
of thine indignation and thy wrath: for thou hast lifted me up, and cast me
down. 11 My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I
am withered like grass.
The title of this psalm is very observable; it is a prayer of the
afflicted. It was composed by one that was himself afflicted, afflicted
with the church and for it; and on those that are of a public spirit
afflictions of that kind lie heavier than any other. It is calculated for an
afflicted state, and is intended for the use of others that may be in the
like distress; for whatsoever things were written aforetime were written
designedly for our use. The whole word of God is of use to direct us
in prayer; but here, as often elsewhere, the Holy Ghost has drawn up our
petition for us, has put words into our mouths. Hos. xiv. 2, Take with
you words. Here is a prayer put into the hands of the afflicted: let
them set, not their hands, but their hearts to it, and present it to God.
Note, 1. It is often the lot of the best saints in this world to be sorely
affected. 2. Even good men may be almost overwhelmed with their afflictions,
and may be ready to faint under them. 3. When our state is afflicted, and
our spirits are overwhelmed, it is our duty and interest to pray, and by
prayer to pour out our complaints before the Lord, which intimates
the leave God gives us to be free with him and the liberty of speech we have
before him, as well as liberty of access to him; it intimates also what an
ease it is to an afflicted spirit to unburden itself by a humble
representation of its grievances and griefs. Such a representation we have
here, in which,
I. The psalmist humbly begs of God to take notice of his affliction, and of
his prayer in his affliction, v. 1, 2. When we pray in our
affliction, 1. It should be our care that God would graciously hear us; for,
if our prayers be not pleasing to God, they will be to no purpose to
ourselves. Let this therefore be in our eye that our prayer may come unto
God, even to his ears (Ps. xviii. 6); and, in order to that, let
us lift up the prayer, and our souls with it. 2. It may be our hope
that God will graciously hear us, because he has appointed us to seek him
and has promised we shall not seek him in vain. If we put up a prayer in
faith, we may in faith say, Hear my prayer, O Lord! "Hear
me," that is, (1.) "Manifest thyself to me, hide not thy face
from me in displeasure, when I am in trouble. If thou dost not
quickly free me, yet let me know that thou favourest me; if I see not the
operations of thy hand for me, yet let me see the smiles of thy face upon
me." God's hiding his face is trouble enough to a good man even in his
prosperity (Ps. xxx. 7, Thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled);
but if, when we are in trouble, God hides his face, the case is sad indeed.
(2.) "Manifest thyself for me; not only hear me, but answer me; grant
me the deliverance I am in want of and in pursuit of; answer me speedily,
even in the day when I call." When troubles press hard upon us,
God gives us leave to be thus pressing in prayer, yet with humility and
patience.
II. He makes a lamentable complaint of the low condition to which he was
reduced by his afflictions. 1. His body was macerated and emaciated, and he
had become a perfect skeleton, nothing but skin and bones. As prosperity and
joy are represented by making fat the bones, and the bones
flourishing like a herb, so great trouble and grief are here represented
by the contrary: My bones are burnt as a hearth (v. 3); they cleave
to my skin (v. 5); nay, my heart is smitten, and withered like
grass (v. 4); it touches the vitals, and there is a sensible
decay there. I am withered like grass (v. 11), scorched with
the burning heat of my troubles. If we be thus brought low by bodily
distempers, let us not think it strange; the body is like grass, weak and of
the earth, no wonder then that it withers. 2. He was very melancholy and of
a sorrowful spirit. He was so taken up with the thoughts of his troubles
that he forgot to eat his bread (v. 4); he had no appetite to
his necessary food nor could he relish it. When God hides his face from a
soul the delights of sense will be sapless things. He was always sighing
and groaning, as one pressed above measure (v. 5), and this
wasted him and exhausted his spirits. He affected solitude, as melancholy
people do. His friends deserted him and were shy of him, and he cared as
little for their company (v. 6, 7): "I am like a pelican of
the wilderness, or a bittern (so some) that make a doleful noise;
I am like an owl, that affects to lodge in deserted ruined buildings;
I watch, and am as a sparrow upon the house-top. I live in a garret,
and there spend my hours in poring on my troubles and bemoaning
myself." Those who do thus, when they are in sorrow, humour themselves
indeed; but they prejudice themselves, and know not what they do, nor what
advantage they hereby give to the tempter. In affliction we should sit alone
to consider our ways (Lam. iii. 28), but not sit alone to indulge an
inordinate grief. 3. He was evil-spoken of by his enemies, and all manner of
evil was said against him. When his friends went off from him his foes set
themselves against him (v. 8): My enemies reproach me all the day,
designing thereby both to create vexation to him (for an ingenuous mind
regrets reproach) and to bring an odium upon him before men. When they could
not otherwise reach him they shot these arrows at him, even bitter words.
In this they were unwearied; they did it all the day; it was a
continual dropping. His enemies were very outrageous: They are mad
against me, and very obstinate and implacable. They are sworn
against me; as the Jews that bound themselves with an oath that they
would kill Paul; or, They have sworn against me as accusers, to take
away my life. 4. He fasted and wept under the tokens of God's displeasure (v.
9, 10): "I have eaten ashes like bread; instead of eating my
bread, I have lain down in dust and ashes, and I have mingled my drink
with weeping; when I should have refreshed myself with drinking I have
only eased myself with weeping." And what is the matter? He tells us (v.
10): Because of thy wrath. It was not so much the trouble itself that
troubled him as the wrath of God which he was under the apprehensions of as
the cause of the trouble. This, this was the wormwood and the gall in
the affliction and the misery: Thou hast lifted me up and cast me down,
as that which we cast to the ground with a design to dash it to pieces; we
lift up first, that we may throw it down with the more violence; or,
"Thou hast formerly lifted me up in honour, and joy, and uncommon
prosperity; but the remembrance of that aggravates the present grief and
makes it the more grievous." We must eye the hand of God both in
lifting us up and casting us down, and say, "Blessed be the name of the
Lord, who both gives and takes away." 5. He looked upon himself as a
dying man: My days are consumed like smoke (v. 3), which
vanishes away quickly. Or, They are consumed in smoke, of which
nothing remains; they are like a shadow that declines (v. 11),
like the evening-shadow, or a forerunner of approaching night. Now all this,
though it seems to speak the psalmist's personal calamities, and therefore
is properly a prayer for a particular person afflicted, yet is supposed to
be a description of the afflictions of the church of God, with which the
psalmist sympathizes, making public grievances his own. The mystical body of
Christ is sometimes, like the psalmist's body here, withered and parched,
nay, like dead and dry bones. The church sometimes is forced into
the wilderness, seems lost, and gives up herself for gone, under the
tokens of God's displeasure.
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The Future Glory of Zion.
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12 But thou, O LORD,
shalt endure for ever; and thy remembrance unto all generations.
13 Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour
her, yea, the set time, is come. 14 For thy servants take
pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof. 15 So the
heathen shall fear the name of the LORD,
and all the kings of the earth thy glory. 16 When the LORD
shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory. 17 He will
regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer.
18 This shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which
shall be created shall praise the LORD.
19 For he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from heaven did
the LORD
behold the earth; 20 To hear the groaning of the prisoner; to
loose those that are appointed to death; 21 To declare the name
of the LORD
in Zion, and his praise in Jerusalem; 22 When the people are
gathered together, and the kingdoms, to serve the LORD.
Many exceedingly great and precious comforts are here thought of, and
mustered up, to balance the foregoing complaints; for unto the upright
there arises light in the darkness, so that, though they are cast down,
they are not in despair. It is bad with the psalmist himself, bad with the
people of God; but he has many considerations to revive himself with.
I. We are dying creatures, and our interests and comforts are dying, but God
is an everliving everlasting God (v. 12): "My days are like a
shadow; there is no remedy; night is coming upon me; but, thou, O
Lord! shalt endure for ever. Our life is transient, but thine is
permanent; our friends die, but thou our God diest not; what threatened us
cannot touch thee; our names will be written in the dust and buried in
oblivion, but thy remembrance shall be unto all generations; to the
end of time, nay, to eternity, thou shalt be known and honoured." A
good man loves God better than himself, and therefore can balance his own
sorrow and death with the pleasing thought of the unchangeable blessedness
of the Eternal Mind. God endures forever, his church's faithful
patron and protector; and, his honour and perpetual remembrance being very
much bound up in her interests, we may be confident that they shall not be
neglected.
II. Poor Zion is now in distress, but there will come a time for her relief
and succour (v. 13): Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion.
The hope of deliverance is built upon the goodness of God--"Thou wilt have
mercy upon Zion, for she has become an object of thy pity;" and
upon the power of God--"Thou shalt arise and have mercy, shalt stir up
thyself to do it, shalt do it in contempt of all the opposition made by the
church's enemies." The zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this.
That which is very encouraging is that there is a time set for the
deliverance of the church, which not only will come some time, but will come
at the time appointed, the time which Infinite Wisdom has appointed (and
therefore it is the best time) and which Eternal Truth has fixed it to, and
therefore it is a certain time, and shall not be forgotten nor further
adjourned. At the end of seventy years, the time to favour Zion, by
delivering her from the daughter of Babylon, was to come, and at length it
did come. Zion was now in ruins, that is, the temple that was built in the
city of David: the favouring of Zion is the building of the temple up again,
as it is explained, v. 16. This is expected from the favour of God;
that will set all to rights, and nothing but that, and therefore Daniel
prays (Dan. ix. 17), Cause thy face to shine upon thy sanctuary, which is
desolate. The building up of Zion is as great a favour to any people as
they can desire. No blessing more desirable to a ruined state than the
restoring and re-establishing of their church-privileges. Now this is here
wished for and longed for, 1. Because it would be a great rejoicing to
Zion's friends (v. 14): Thy servants take pleasure even in the
stones of the temple, though they were thrown down and scattered, and favour
the dust, the very rubbish and ruins of it. Observe here, When the
temple was ruined, yet the stones of it were to be had for a new building,
and there were those who encouraged themselves with that, for they had a
favour even for the dust of it. Those who truly love the church of God love
it when it is in affliction as well as when it is in prosperity; and it is a
good ground to hope that God will favour the ruins of Zion when he puts it
into the heart of his people to favour them, and to show that they do so by
their prayers and by their endeavours; as it is also a good plea with God
for mercy for Zion that there are those who are so affectionately concerned
for her, and are waiting for the salvation of the Lord. 2. Because it
would have a good influence upon Zion's neighbours, v. 15. It will be
a happy means perhaps of their conversion, at least of their conviction; for
so the heathen shall fear the name of the Lord, shall have high
thoughts of him and his people, and even the kings of the earth shall be
affected with his glory. They shall have better thoughts of the church of
God than they have had, when God by his providence thus puts an honour upon
it; they shall be afraid of doing any thing against it when they see God
taking its part; nay, they shall say, We will go with you, for we have seen
that God is with you, Zech. viii. 23. Thus it is said (Esth. viii. 17)
that many of the people of the land became Jews, for the fear of the Jews
fell upon them. 3. Because it would redound to the honour of Zion's God
(v. 16): When the Lord shall build up Zion. They take it for
granted it will be done, for God himself has undertaken it, and he shall
then appear in his glory; and for that reason all that have made his
glory their highest end desire it and pray for it. Note, The edifying of the
church will be the glorifying of God, and therefore we may be assured it
will be done in the set time. Those that pray in faith, Father, glorify
thy name, may receive the same answer to that prayer which was given to
Christ himself by a voice from heaven, I have both glorified it and I
will glorify it yet again, though now for a time it may be eclipsed.
III. The prayers of God's people now seem to be slighted and no notice taken
of them, but they will be reviewed and greatly encouraged (v. 17): He
will regard the prayer of the destitute. It was said (v. 16) that
God will appear in his glory, such a glory as kings themselves shall stand
in awe of, v. 15. When great men appear in their glory
they are apt to look with disdain upon the poor that apply to them; but the
great God will not do so. Observe, 1. The meanness of the petitioners; they
are the destitute. It is an elegant word that is here used, which
signifies the heath in the wilderness, a low shrub, or bush, like the hyssop
of the wall. They are supposed to be in a low and broken state, enriched
with spiritual blessings, but destitute of temporal good things--the poor,
the weak, the desolate, the stripped; thus variously is the word rendered;
or it may signify that low and broken spirit which God looks for in all that
draw nigh to him and which he will graciously look upon. This will bring
them to their knees. Destitute people should be praying people, 1 Tim. v. 5.
2. The favour of God to them, notwithstanding their meanness: He will
regard their prayer, and will look at it, will peruse their petition (2
Chron. vi. 40), and he will not despise their prayer. More is implied
than is expressed: he will value it and be well pleased with it, and will
return an answer of peace to it, which is the greatest honour that can be
put upon it. But it is thus expressed because others despise their praying,
they themselves fear God will despise it, and he was thought to despise it
while their affliction was prolonged and their prayers lay unanswered. When
we consider our own meanness and vileness, our darkness and deadness, and
the manifold defects in our prayers, we have cause to suspect that our
prayers will be received with disdain in heaven; but we are here assured of
the contrary, for we have an advocate with the Father, and are under grace,
not under the law. This instance of God's favour to his praying people,
though they are destitute, will be a lasting encouragement to prayer (v.
18): This shall be written for the generation to come, that none may
despair, though they be destitute, nor think their prayers forgotten
because they have not an answer to them immediately. The experiences of
others should be our encouragements to seek unto God and trust in him. And,
if we have the comfort of the experiences of others, it is fit that we
should give God the glory of them: The people who shall be created shall
praise the Lord for what he has done both for them and for their
predecessors. Many that are now unborn shall, by reading the history of the
church, be wrought upon to turn proselytes. The people that shall be created
anew by divine grace, that are a kind of first-fruits of his creatures,
shall praise the Lord for his answers to their prayers when they were more
destitute.
IV. The prisoners under condemnation unjustly seem as sheep appointed for
the slaughter, but care shall be taken for their discharge (v. 19,
20): God has looked down from the height of his sanctuary, from heaven,
where he has prepared his throne, that high place, that holy place; thence
did the Lord behold the earth, for it is a place of prospect, and
nothing on this earth is or can be hidden from his all-seeing eye; he looks
down, not to take a view of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,
but to do acts of grace, to hear the groaning of the prisoners (which
we desire to be out of the hearing of), and not only to hear them, but to
help them, to loose those that are appointed to death, then when
there is but a step between them and it. Some understand it of the release
of the Jews out of their captivity in Babylon. God heard their groaning
there as he did when they were in Egypt (Exod. iii. 7, 9) and came down to
deliver them. God takes notice not only of the prayers of his afflicted
people, which are the language of grace, but even of their groans, which are
the language of nature. See the divine pity in hearing the prisoner's
groans, and the divine power in loosing the prisoner's bonds, even when they
are appointed to death and are pinioned and double-shackled. We have an
instance in Peter, Acts xii. 6. Such instances as these of the divine
condescension and compassion will help, 1. To declare the name of the
Lord in Zion, and to make it appear that he answers to his name, which
he himself proclaimed, The Lord God, gracious and merciful; and this
declaration of his name in Zion shall be the matter of his praise in
Jerusalem, v. 21. If God by his providences declare his name, we must
by our acknowledgments of them declare his praise, which ought to be the
echo of his name. God will discharge his people that were prisoners and
captives in Babylon, that they may declare his name in Zion, the
place he has chosen to put his name there, and his praise in Jerusalem,
at their return thither; in the land of their captivity they could not sing
the songs of Zion (Ps. cxxxvii. 3, 4), and God brought them again to
Jerusalem in order that they might sing them there. For this end God gives
liberty from bondage (Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy
name, Ps. cxlii. 7), and life from the dead. Let my soul live, and it
shall praise thee, Ps. cxix. 175. 2. They will help to draw in others to
the worship of God (v. 22): When the people of God are gathered
together at Jerusalem (as they were after their return out of Babylon)
many out of the kingdoms joined with them to serve the Lord. This was
fulfilled Ezra vi. 21, where we find that not only the children of Israel
that had come out of captivity, but many that had separated themselves
from them among the heathen, did keep the feast of unleavened bread
with joy. But it may look further, at the conversion of the Gentiles to
the faith of Christ in the latter days. Christ has proclaimed liberty to
the captives, and the opening of the prison to those that were bound,
that they may declare the name of the Lord in the gospel-church, in which
Jews and Gentiles shall unite.
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Hoping
in God's Compassion.
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23 He weakened my strength in the way; he
shortened my days. 24 I said, O my God, take me not away in the
midst of my days: thy years are throughout all generations.
25 Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are
the work of thy hands. 26 They shall perish, but thou shalt
endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt
thou change them, and they shall be changed: 27 But thou art
the same, and thy years shall have no end. 28 The children of
thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before
thee.
We may here observe,
I. The imminent danger that the Jewish church was in of being quite
extirpated and cut off by the captivity in Babylon (v. 23): He
weakened my strength in the way. They were for many ages in the way to
the performance of the great promise made to their fathers concerning the
Messiah, longing as much for it as ever a traveller did to be at his
journey's end. The legal institutions led them in the way; but when the ten
tribes were lost in Assyria, and the two almost lost in Babylon, the
strength of that nation was weakened, and, in all appearance, its day
shortened; for they said, Our hope is lost; we are cut off for our parts,
Ezek. xxxvii. 11. And then what becomes of the promise that Shiloh should
arise out of Judah, the star out of Jacob, and the Messiah out of the family
of David? If these fail, the promise fails. This the psalmist speaks of as
in his own person, and it is very applicable to two of the common
afflictions of this time:-- 1. To be sickly. Bodily distempers soon weaken
our strength in the way, make the keepers of the house to tremble and
the strong men to bow themselves. 2. To be short-lived. Where the former is
felt, this is feared; when in the midst of our days, according to a course
of nature, our strength is weakened, what can we expect but that the number
of our months should be cut off in the midst? and what should we do but
provide accordingly? We must own God's hand in it (for in his hand our
strength and time are), and must reconcile it to his love, for it has often
been the lot of those that have used their strength well to have it
weakened, and of those that could very ill be spared to have their days
shortened.
II. A prayer for the continuance of it (v. 24): "O my God!
take me not away in the midst of my days; let not this poor church be
cut off in the midst of the days assigned it by the promise; let it not be
cut off till the Messiah shall come. Destroy it not, for that blessing is
in it," Isa. lxv. 8. She is a criminal, but, for the sake of that
blessing which is in her, she pleads for a reprieve. This is a prayer for
the afflicted, and which, with submission to the will of God, we may in
faith put up, that God would not take us away in the midst of our days,
but that, if it be his will, he would spare us to do him further service and
to be made riper for heaven.
III. A plea to enforce this prayer taken from the eternity of the Messiah
promised, v. 25-27. The apostle quotes these verses (Heb. i. 10-12)
and tells us, He saith this to the Son, and in that exposition we
must acquiesce. It is very comfortable, in reference to all the changes that
pass over the church, and all the dangers it is in, that Jesus Christ is
the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Thy years are throughout all
generations, and cannot be shortened. It is likewise comfortable in
reference to the decay and death of our own bodies, and the removal of our
friends from us, that God is an everliving God, and that therefore, if he be
ours, in him we may have everlasting consolation. In this plea observe how,
to illustrate the eternity of the Creator, he compares it with the
mutability of the creature; for it is God's sole prerogative to be
unchangeable. 1. God made the world, and therefore had a being before it
from eternity. The Son of God, the eternal Word, made the world. It is
expressly said, All things were made by him, and without him was not any
thing made that was made; and therefore the same was in the beginning
from eternity with God, and was God, John i. 1-3; Col. i. 16; Eph.
iii. 9; Heb. i. 2. Earth and heaven, and the hosts of both, include the
universe and its fulness, and these derive their being from God by his Son (v.
25): "Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth, which
is founded on the seas and on the floods and yet it abides;
much more shall the church, which is built upon a rock. The heavens
are the work of thy hands, and by thee are all their motions and
influences directed;" God is therefore the fountain, not only of all
being, but of all power and dominion. See how fit the great Redeemer is to
be entrusted with all power, both in heaven and in earth, since he himself,
as Creator of both, perfectly knows both and is entitled to both. 2. God
will unmake the world again, and therefore shall have a being to eternity (v.
26, 27): They shall perish, for thou shalt change them by the
same almighty power that made them, and therefore, no doubt, thou shalt
endure; thou art the same. God and the world, Christ and the creature,
are rivals for the innermost and uppermost place in the soul of man, the
immortal soul; now what is here said, one would think, were enough to decide
the controversy immediately and to determine us for God and Christ. For,
(1.) A portion in the creature is fading and dying: They shall perish;
they will not last so long as we shall last. The day is coming when the
earth and all the works that are therein shall be burnt up; and then
what will become of those that have laid up their treasure in it? Heaven and
earth shall wax old as a garment, not by a gradual decay, but, when
the set time comes, they shall be laid aside like an old garment that we
have no more occasion for: As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they
shall be changed, not annihilated, but altered, it may be so that they
shall not be at all the same, but new heavens and a new earth. See
God's sovereign dominion over heaven and earth. He can change them as he
pleases and when he pleases; and the constant changes they are subject to,
in the revolutions of day and night, summer and winter, are earnests of
their last and final change, when the heavens and time (which
is measured by them) shall be no more. (2.) A portion in God is
perpetual and everlasting: Thou art the same, subject to no change;
and thy years have no end, v. 27. Christ will be the same in
the performance that he was in the promise, the same to his church in
captivity that he was to his church at liberty. Let not the church fear the
weakening of her strength, or the shortening of her days, while Christ
himself is both her strength and her life; he is the same, and has said, Because
I live you shall live also. Christ came in the fulness of time, and set
up his kingdom in spite of the power of the Old-Testament Babylon, and he
will keep it up in spite of the power of the New-Testament Babylon.
IV. A comfortable assurance of an answer to this prayer (v. 28): The
children of thy servants shall continue; since Christ is the same, the
church shall continue from one generation to another; from the eternity of
the head we may infer the perpetuity of the body, though often weak and
distempered, and even at death's door. Those that hope to wear out the
saints of the Most High will be mistaken. Christ's servants shall have
children; those children shall have a seed, a succession, of professing
people; the church, as well as the world, is under the influence of that
blessing, Be fruitful and multiply. These children shall continue,
not in their own persons, by reason of death, but in their seed, which shall
be established before God (that is, in his service, and by his grace); the
entail of religion shall not be cut off while the world stands, but, as one
generation of good people passes away, another shall come, and thus the
throne of Christ shall endure.
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