IV. PSALM XXV. 18. Look upon my affliction and my pain, and forgive all B% my sins. OTH work and strokes ? both lash and labour to, What more could Edom or proud Ashur do ? Stripes after stripes; and blows succeeding blows! Lord, has thy scourge no mercy, and my woes No end my pains no ease? no intermission? Is this the state, is this the sad condition Of those that trust thee; will thy goodness please T' allow no other favors ? none but these? Will not the rhet'ric of my torments move? Are these the symptoms, these the signs of love? Is't not enough, enough that I fulfil The toilsome task of thy laborious will ? May not this labor expiate and purge My sin, without th' addition of a scourge ? Look on my cloudy brow, how fast it rains Sad show'rs of sweat, the fruits of fruitless pains: Behold these ridges, see what purple furrows Thy plough has made: O think upon those sorrows That once were thine; O wilt thou not be woo'd To mercy by the charms of sweat and blood ? Canst thou forget that drowsy mount wherein Thy dull disciples slept? was not my sin There punish'd in thy soul? Did not this brow Then sweat in thine? were not those drops enow? Remember Golgotha, where that spring-tide O'erflow'd thy sov'reign, sacramental side : There There was no sin, there was no guilt in thee, [me. That caus'd those pains; thou sweat'st, thou bled'st for Thy losses from my sides? my blood is thin, I am but dying dust: my day's a span; * Disaltern; i. e. set aside the alternate changes of stripes and rest, common to man. S. BERN S. BERN. Hom. lxxxi. in Cant. Miserable man! Who shall deliver me from the reproach of this shameful bondage? I am a miserable man but a free man; free, because a man; miserable, because a servant in regard of my bondage, miserable; in regard of my will, inexcuseable for my will, that was free, beslaved itself to sin, by assenting to sin; for he that committeth sin, is the servant to sin. EPIG. 4. Tax not thy God: thine own defaults did urge Jog |