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more wisdom than by talking at such a rate of indiscretion as Job asserts his friends had done. Let your speech be always with grace.'

"Verse 6.

Hear now my reasoning, and hearken to the pleadings of my lips.'

"He now requests a patient and an attentive audience to what he had to say in his own defence. If it is our duty to defend others who are injured, how much more are we bound to endeavour to convince those of their error who have reproached us, and to vindicate ourselves from every false aspersion? Some greedily drink in an evil report of their brethren, but will not have patience to hear their defence with candour, which is both cruel and unjust.

Verse 7. Will you speak wickedly for God, and talk deceitfully for him?'

"Will ye reproach me under a pretence of honouring God? He needs no such advocate, neither will he thank you for condemning me, even with a view to justify his dealings with me. I do affirm that God is righteous in afflicting me, and at the same time that I am not wicked, because I am afflicted.

"Verse 8. Will ye accept his person? ye contend for God?'

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"When under pretence of obeying God, we wrong man, we may be said to accept his person. So some say God is honoured by their opinions, and therefore they must needs be right. As Papists who pretend zeal for God in maintaing free will, lest he should seem to mock in his commands, and the Arminians as

sert, that Christ died equally for all men, lest God should seem to mock in his promises. Thus out of a professed respect for the person of God they oppose his truths. While we are zealous in maintaining one truth, we should be cautious lest we obscure another.

"We cannot suppose that Job means to blame his friends for contending for God; he surely means only that their manner of doing it was wrong.

"Verse 9. Is it good that he should search you out? or, as one man mocketh another, do ye so mock him?’

"An earthly judge may be mocked and deceived by false witnesses, so as to condemn the innocent. Man may be, and often is mocked by man, but God cannot be mocked; and you will find at last, that by all your insinuations of my deceit and hypocrisy you have not imposed upon God but deceived yourselves.

"A good end will not excuse us for any unlawful deed; and we may be justly charged with doing what may be fairly inferred from our actions, though we never had such an intention; and when God searches,

"Verse 10. He will surely reprove you if ye do secretly accept persons.

"In this Job seems to prophesy, for the event fulfilled what he said, chap. xlii. Some are afraid, many are unable, and others are unwilling to be at the pains and trouble of reproving; but God will thoroughly reprove you, for the Hebrew is, in reproving he will re

prove you, which intimates not only the cer tainty but the severity of it.

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"Some read the latter part of the verse, although ye do accept persons secretly,' which shows that however close and concealed our sins may be, that God observes and will bring us to shame by reproving us for our most secret sins.

"Now if God will not endure that any creature should be wronged, even under a pretence of doing him right, how shall those judges who favour the great ones of the world, to the prejudice and hurt of their inferiors, be able to answer for their sinful partiality?

"Job shows his friends their errors by two more arguments in verses 11, 12.

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"Verse 11. Shall not his excellency make afraid? and his dread fall upon you?" "There is an excellency in the being of God which appears in all his attributes, and in all his works. He is excellent in working, because excellent in being, Exodus, xv. 7. Deut. xxxiii. 26.

"His excellency should strongly affect and overawe our hearts into a holy composure of spirit, with a due care of pleasing him, and a fear of offending him.

"The word for make you afraid signifies extreme fear, such as doth swallow up and amaze, Isaiah xxi. 4. The night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me; that is, such a fear seized upon me, as turned all my pleasure into dread and terror.

"God is to be dreaded in the justice of his law, his awful threatenings, and in the certainty and greatness of his judgments.

"Verse 12.

Your remembrances are like unto ashes, your bodies to bodies of clay.'

"As if Job had said, your bodies, which in regard of their figure and frame, are lifted up as if they did scorn the earth, are still but clods of clay; and however beautiful and strong they appear, they must shortly be reduced to first principles, and the remains and remembrance thereof swept away like ashes.

"Verse 13. Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak, and let come on me what will.'

"Will you who are ashes and clay, stand it out before the excellency of God; of whom you ought to stand in awe, and be abased on account of your frailty?'

"Those who have high thoughts of themselves are apt to despise what is said by others. Were men low enough in their own eyes, they would be ready to embrace every advice that appeared to promote holiness.

"But why does Job say, let come on me what will? That is, censure me as much as you please, or however you may take it, I will speak; or it may be, as if he had said, you seem very tender of me, and afraid lest I expose myself to farther judgments from God for maintaining my integrity, but I will speak and bear all the blame myself, and abide his determination and submit to him.

"An upright heart is very resolute; there is nothing that can make a man afraid while he is not afraid of himself. Every good man ought to say, I will do my duty, come of it what will; and what can come of it but good? for though the Lord leave him to the cruel dealings of men he will overrule it for good.

"Verse 14. Wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in mine hand?'

"Some say this is an inquiry after the cause why he endured such grievous afflictions. Others take the words as a denial of impa→ tience.

"But it rather appears to be a self reproof. A godly man usually casts the first stone at his sin, and blames himself more than any other man can do for his own secret distempers or outward miscarriages. A carnal heart doth what it can to excuse or extenuate its sin. But a holy person doth both aggravate and rebuke himself for his own sin. Wherefore am I so vain, so earthly, so proud, so impatient, &c. Is this the way to submit to the rod of a father? "No man needs expect to be his own careither in comforts or sorrows.

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"Job having intimated that he did not carhis life in his hand, as a thing that he made no reckoning of, proceeds to make a high profession of confidence in God.

"Verse 15. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.'

"But how can a man trust in God when he is slain? Slaying sometimes notes only a civil death, or depriving a person of former favour,

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