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2 lines
2.4 KiB
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<p>These two verses are to the same purport with those next before, intimating the happiness of the godly and the misery of the wicked; it is necessary that this be inculcated upon us, so loth are we to believe and consider it. 1. Strength and stability are entailed upon integrity: <i>The way of the Lord</i> (the providence of God, the way in which he walks towards us) <i>is strength to the upright</i>, confirms him in his uprightness. All God’s dealings with him, merciful and afflictive, serve to quicken him to his duty and animate him against his discouragements. Or <i>the way of the Lord</i> (the way of godliness, in which he appoints us to walk) is <i>strength to the upright</i>; the closer we keep to that way, the more our hearts are enlarged to proceed in it, the better fitted we are both for services and sufferings. A good conscience, kept pure from sin, gives a man boldness in a dangerous time, and constant diligence in duty makes a man’s work easy in a busy time. The more we do for God the more we may do, <a class="bibleref" title="Job.17.9" href="/passage/?search=Job.17.9">Job 17:9</a>. That <i>joy of the Lord</i> which is to be found only in the <i>way of the Lord</i> will be our strength (<a class="bibleref" title="Neh.8.10" href="/passage/?search=Neh.8.10">Neh. 8:10</a>), and therefore <i>the righteous shall never be removed</i>. Those that have an established virtue have an established peace and happiness which nothing can rob them of; they <i>have an everlasting foundation</i>, <a class="bibleref" title="Prov.10.25" href="/passage/?search=Prov.10.25">Prov. 10:25</a>. 2. Ruin and destruction are the certain consequences of wickedness. <i>The wicked shall not</i> only not inherit the earth, though they lay up their treasure in it, but they shall not so much as <i>inhabit the earth</i>; God’s judgments will root them out. <i>Destruction</i>, swift and sure destruction, <i>shall be to the workers of iniquity</i>, destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power. Nay, that way of the Lord which is the strength of the upright is consumption and terror <i>to the workers of iniquity</i>; the same gospel which to the one is a <i>savour of life unto life</i> to the other is a <i>savour of death unto death</i>; the same providence, like the same sun, softens the one and hardens the other, <a class="bibleref" title="Hos.14.9" href="/passage/?search=Hos.14.9">Hos. 14:9</a>.</p>
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