and wide compass, extending itself to all the benefits bestowed by God upon man. But the divine Psalmist more particularly takes notice of two principal blessings of God, belonging to the faithful, (which are indeed the matter of two great articles of our Christian faith,) " the forgiveness of sin," and "the "life everlasting." The mercy of the forgiveness of sin he celebrates verse 3. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases. And again, in the eighth and following verses, The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. The blessing of everlasting life, after this present vain life, he sets forth in the verses which I have chosen for my text.

In which the royal Psalmist suggests to us a twofold meditation. 1. Of the vanity and shortness of this present life, and all the enjoyments thereof: As for man, his days are as grass: as the flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof knoweth it no more. 2. Of the everlasting mercy of God to the faithful in the other life: But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him. For the everlasting

mercy of God here spoken of, being opposed to the short transitory enjoyments of this present life, must necessarily signify the mercy and goodness of God to the faithful in the other life, which indeed is the only everlasting mercy. Hence Aben Ezra, and other of the Hebrew doctors, saw and acknowledged that this text speaks of the everlasting happiness of the righteous in the life to come. And the Chaldee paraphrast thus renders the latter part of my text: "But the mercy of the Lord is in this world, and ❝even in the world to come, upon them that fear “ him a”

The text thus briefly explained, yields us these two observations, which shall be the subject of my discourse at this time. 1. That good men, even under the Law, or Old Testament, looked beyond this present, vain, transitory life, and believed and hoped for an everlasting happiness in the life to come. 2. That a serious consideration of the vanity and shortness of this present life, and all the enjoyments thereof, is an effectual means to bring us to God, and to make us fix our hopes on him and things eternal.

1. That good men, even under the Law, or Old Testament, looked beyond this present, vain, transitory life, and believed and hoped for an everlasting happiness in the life to come. For such a faith and hope, you see, David plainly expresseth in this text, and the same he often otherwhere declares in this divine Book of Psalms. Indeed in all those places, wherein he shews the vanity and shortness of this life, and that there is no solid, substantial, and stable

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happiness to be found here below; and yet, with the same breath, sets forth the great happiness of the faithful, in their trust and dependence on God's goodness and mercy; I say, in all those places he evidently points his finger towards heaven, and directs our thoughts to the bliss and happiness of a future state. You may especially find it in Psalm xxxix. 5, 6, 7. Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Surely every man walketh in a vain show: surely they are disquieted in vain : he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them. And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in thee.

To the same purpose are those Psalms of David, wherein he amply describes the prosperous and flourishing estate of many wicked men; and on the other side, the calamitous and afflicted condition of many good and virtuous in this world; and yet in the close pronounceth these to be most happy men, and the other to be most miserable; which cannot be true, but on supposition of a future state and resurrection. Of this sort are the forty-ninth and seventy-third Psalms throughout.

But what need we search far into the Book of Psalms? The very first Psalm affords us a clear proof of this truth. For therein David first shews the blessedness of the godly man in the first and following verses: Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night, &c.

And then, on the contrary, he declares the miserable condition of the ungodly, ver. 4, 5, The ungodly are not so: (i. e. they are not blessed as the righteous, but are indeed very miserable men :) they are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore, or because, the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the right

eous.

Now what judgment or tribunal of God is that, to which all the ungodly shall be cited, in which none of them shall be able to stand? i. e. to carry their cause, but they shall all, causa cadere, "be cast, and "utterly overthrown?" Certainly this cannot be understood of any judgment of God exercised in this life. For here wicked men often prosper, and go out of the world without any discernible mark of God's judgment on them. And on the other side, many good men, as to the things of this world, are cast and overthrown, ruined and undone. David therefore undoubtedly speaks of a judgment to come. And accordingly the author of the Targum, or Chaldee Paraphrase, thus renders the words, "The ungodly shall "not be justified in the great day b." The great day, i. e. the day of the last judgment, the day of the great assize, wherein all men shall receive their final doom and sentence, called by St. Peter the day of the Lord, 2 Peter iii. 10. Again, what is that congregation of the righteous, wherein no sinner shall appear? Surely there neither is, nor ever was, nor ever will be, any such unmixed company of righteous men to be found in this world. Here the chaff and the wheat, the good and bad, are mingled together; but

a winnowing time of judgment will come, wherein the wicked shall be as the chaff which the wind driveth away, (as the Psalmist expresseth it,) and nothing but the pure and clean wheat shall remain and be laid up in God's granary. There shall then (as our Saviour assures us) be a congregation or gathering together, from one end of the heavens to the other, of all God's elect, who have been from the beginning of the world; which being placed at the right hand of the Judge, shall receive that joyful sentence, Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. In this congregation of the righteous no sinner shall be found the ungodly shall be placed altogether in another herd, at the Judge's left hand, and hear that dreadful sentence, Go, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels. This is the clear sense of those words of the Psalmist, The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. And by these texts it is evident, that David believed a future state and a judgment to come.

Nor was this faith peculiar to David, but a received notion among the Jews, in the time and age wherein David lived. For it appears that the Jews then generally believed the immortality and subsistence of the soul of man after the death of the body, and consequently a future state of happiness or misery, according to the works and actions of men in this life respectively. This, I say, appears (if we had no other evidence of it) from the history of Saul, desiring to consult the prophet Samuel after he was dead, 1 Sam.