Correction, instruction: or, The rod and the word

III. How Affliction lieth in order to Instruction

1. By Correction God taketh down Pride

2. Affliction is the forge wherein he softens

3. By Chastisement Man is made more at-

tentive to God

88

4. By Affliction God openeth the eye of

ÍV. The grounds and demonstrations of the point

The Lessons themselves which God

2. The nature and properties of Divine

Teaching

ib.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

3. A teaching Chastisement the fruit of

distinguishing Love

4. A teaching Chastisement a branch of

the Covenant of Grace

5. A teaching Chastisement the purchase

of Christ's Death

6. A teaching Chastisement the result of
the offices of Christ

ib.

1. Affliction is not enough to evidence a

happy man

Affliction is not enough to conclude a

man miserable

3. Deliverance out of Trouble is not

enough to make a happy man

4.

How to judge of Affliction

5. They may be blessed whom the world

counts miserable

6. Is Chastisement a blessing when ac-

companied with instruction

7. A suffering condition is not so formidable

э as flesh and blood represent it

8. The reason why God keeps his people

so long under the rod

10. How much gracious hearts are in love

with the Word

II. Exhortation

I,

To those who are not in Affliction

2. To such as are yet in Affliction

113

ib.

122

3. To such as are come out of Affliction-

4. To Parents and Governors

CORRECTION, INSTRUCTION.

PSALM XCiv. 12.

Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O LORD and teachest him out of thy law.

THIS psalm being without a title, it is not so easily

determined, when, or by whom it was penned. Probably by David, when himself and the rest of the godly, were under a sore and bitter persecution by Saul, and others of the faction that bare sway under him. Briefly, in the psalm the prophet doth these three things.

I. He doth appeal to God for vengeance on the persecutors; describing them by their pride, (v. 2.) prophaneness, (v. 3, 4.) their intemperate virulency of speech, (v. 4.) cruelty and bloody practices, (v. 5, 6.) and lastly, by their atheistical security, (v. 7.)

II. He diverteth to the enemies, endeavouring to convince them of the brutishness and folly of their atheism, the mother and nurse of the other impieties charged on them, (v. 8.) and that by a three-fold argument.

B

1. The power and skill of God in creating the hearing and seeing organ in man, (v. 9.)

2. The sovereignty of God, and the righteousness of his judgments, which he executes in the world, (v. 10.)

3. His wisdom and knowledge, in enduing man with such an excellent intellectual faculty, whereby even the creature itself is able to attain to admirable degrees of knowledge, (v. 10, 11.)'

III. He labours to comfort the godly against all the pressures and persecutions under which they did groan and languish.

The first argument which the psalmist useth to this purpose is in the text: The sweet fruit which is to be gathered from the bitter root of affliction: the root indeed is bitter, but the fruit is sweet, even divine instruction; which therefore is no longer to be esteemed a punishment, but a blessing: Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O LORD, and teachest him out of thy law.

This being the subject I intend to insist upon, I shall contract it into this doctrinal point of observation, viz.

That man is a blessed man, whose CHASTISEMENTS
are joined with divine TEACHINGS: OF,
It is a blessed thing when CORRECTION and IN-
STRUCTION go together. The ROD and the
WORD make up a compleat blessing.

I shall take chastisements here in the utmost latitude,

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