Chapter 7

CHAP. VII.

Of enlargedness of heart, Psal. 119:32. I will runne the way of your commandements, when you shall enlarge my heart.

The words have no great difficulty. Running imports a cheerful, nimble, willing activeness, in giving obedience to God's commandements. Enlarging is a widening of the heart, and the Lord's giving of a wider capacity to run, by bestowing influences on David, in heavenly dispositions and actings for God. Hence the Text shall be cast into these questions.

Q. 1. Whether David was now under straitning, that he so speaks?

Q. 2. What the straitning is?

Q. 3. Whether David might promise and undertake to run, upon the supposal of an enlarged heart granted him of God?

Q. 4. Is there no running except the Lord give enlargement and new influences, and what we may here doe?

Q. 2. What enlargedness of heart is, and the branches thereof?

To the first. The frequent complaints of David in the Psalm, seem to say some straitning was on him.

1. He complaines of his soul cleaving to the dust, of his soul dropping away for heaviness.

2. He frequently seeks from God teaching, quickening, enlightning; which says that some deadness, darkness, and narrowness of heart was on. He who is nearest heaven, and is (as it were) all prayer, misses many things. Psal. 119:11. Your word have I hid in mine heart, that I may not sin against you. He must then be well instructed, when the word is hid in his heart; yet says he v. 12. Teach me your statutes. v. 14. I have rejoyced in the way of your testimonies, as much as in all riches. 24. Your testimonies also are my delight and my counsellors. 30. I have chosen the way of truth; your judgments have I laid before me. 31. I have stuck to your testimonies. What wants David then that a glorified and perfected man has? Yes, he wants more enlargedness of heart, v. 32. he wants more of God's teaching, v. 33. Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statues. He wants a bowed heart to the Law, 36. Incline my heart to your testimonies. He wants more life and spiritual vigorousnesse, 37. Quicken you me in your way. Begging and suiting supposeth need and want, at least a want of the degrees of grace. How sweet is it to be rich in missing and feeling of wants! And that is the dangerous state of Laodicea (Revelation 3:17): I am rich, and encreased with goods, and have need of nothing.

2. Where there is much sinful complaining, and onely complaining, there is lesse praying and praising. Satan can make use of bastard sense of unworthiness, and counterfeit letters from the Law to lay a man in prison, and weaken praying. David does not so complain, but he misses, and also is rich in praying and praising.

To the second. Straitning is a sort of narrowness and scarcity of heartiness in the ways of God. It comes sometime from hainous sins; the runaway child blushes, and is straitned to speak to his father. Adultery and bloodshed brings on David sealed lips and a closed heart in praising (Psalm 51:15), while God enlarge both. Lord may I have leave to pray, to believe, to apply the promises (Psalm 51:12). Psal. 119:45. I will walk at liberty; for I seek your precepts. Then casting aside the precepts brings straitning, restraint, and bands on the Christian in his walk, and in praying, praising, hearing, loving, running in the way of God's precepts. A fettered man can act little; hence drought of soul, and the rain of influences are withholden.

2. Heaviness of desertion brings on straitning (Psalm 77:4): You holdest mine eyes waking, I am so troubled that I cannot speak. Possibly from this Hezekiah is locked up in chattering like a crane in stead of praying.

3. Satan may have leave as a faingied Pursevant to imprison where he has no Law. What have you to doe to pray? Is not Joshua ragged, and cloathed with filthy garments? And Satan stands before the Angel at his right hand to resist him in praying for Jerusalem; for he is not worthy to pray for himself. But the Lord that has chosen Jerusalem rebukes him (Zechariah 3:1, 2, 3, 4).

4. There is a narrowness that comes from ignorance, until God give spiritual wisedome and largeness of heart (see 1 Kings 4:29), when we mistake God, and unbelief represents God as a lyon or a bear (Lamentations 3:10; Isaiah 38:13), and Christ is represented as a terrifying Spirit, not as Christ (Matthew 14:26; Luke 4:37). How can the poor man pray to a lyon, or a terrifying spirit? What weak influences are there in speaking to God covered with a cloud of anger.

5. The Lord out of the depth of holy soveraignty withdrawes the breathings of the Spirit, and straitens the man, that he cannot speak with lively liberty, that he may depend upon the free out-goings of the Spirit. He who waters the garden, waters every plant of the garden every moment (Isaiah 2:7), and when he waters not, there is a drying up.

6. Neglect of praying and fetching enlargement from the fountain may straiten, as appears from Paul's suiting of the prayers of the Lord's people, that God would grant him a door of utterance with holy liberty to preach the mystery of the Gospel (Ephesians 6:19; Colossians 4:3). For much of the anointing there is in the man Christ, that draws wondering at the gracious word spoken by Christ (Luke 4:18, 22). See also the Church's prayer (Acts 4:29). For it is a grant of grace to speak with enlargement.

7. If fear and dismayment be on the heart (Jeremiah 1:17), and Ezekiel may not speak at all (Ezekiel 2:6), self must be denied, and shamefastness before Kings (Psalm 119:46; see Psalm 39:1, 2) laid aside.

Q. What then shall be done to be free of the indisposition of straitning, and so to get influences of enlargement of heart?

Answ. 1. Get and entertain large apprehension of God. Who is a rock save our God? (Psalm 18:30, 31). Be principled in the broad apprehensions of Christ, he is altogether lovely, all loves (Canticles 5:16). A touch of him can save.

2. Rid marches between the Law and grace: some renewed ones must have their by past life and the strict law reconciled; otherwise they but walk in the flesh, and so live (as they imagine) in Law bondage, and are sick of the old diseases, and so weaken their faith. Hence straitning. You are under the Law, and having made a bargain with the Law to keep it, you are in the flesh, you can not speak to a strange King in another land, a King of grace, since you have fled back again to the old prison; and if you speak, it is with much straitning and doubting; you are the Law's man, and not Christ's.

Keep near communion with God; keep the vessel free of leaking, and of under water; sin weakens faith, and saddens the spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty (2 Corinthians 3).

Improve much faith. Frequent believing shall come up to full assurance, and that makes strong and bold knocking: for a Son who has right to come where his own flesh is within the vail, is vigorous; the servants knock is weak; unbelief knocks faintly. Yet mistake not heaviness, as if it were unbelief; Christ had much heaviness, even to death, in his suffering, but no weakness of faith. But Matthew 26. these, O my Father, O my Father; as that also, my God, my God, speak strong faith, much enlargement in his heaviest case. These four being observed, influences are near.

Grow in sonly love, as a child to cry Abba Father, a word of a child learning to speak (Romans 8:26).

Get and cherish the inward witnessing of the Spirit (Romans 8:16, 17), and the confirmed assurance of justification by faith: hence access and boldness (Romans 5:1, 2, 3, 4; Ephesians 3:16, 17, 18, 19).

The third question, How far David, or a child of God, may undertake to run, upon the supposal of an enlarged heart? Hence these.

Assert. 1. There is an undertaking, as if the child of God had influences at his hand. Of this nature in Scripture, Psalm 51:10, Create in me a clean heart; 11, Cast me not away from your presence; 12, Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with your free Spirit; 13, Then will I teach sinners your ways. So verse 15, O Lord open you my lips, and my mouth shall shew forth your praise. Psalm 119:27, Make me to understand the way of your precepts, so shall I talk of your wondrous works; 88, Quicken me after your loving kindness, so shall I keep the testimonies of your mouth. In which he lays it for a ground, if God graciously give a new heart, he will graciously give influences of grace to teach sinners. If the Lord of free grace open the lips, he will also give influences to make him shew forth the praises of God; not that dispositions of grace do necessarily determine us to gracious acts, or can determine the Lord to bestow influences of grace, but the Lord's free promise determines him. Where he opens one door, he opens a second, and then a third, until his child be in his bosom: when he gives one grace, he gives another; yes, because he gives grace, he lays holy bands on himself to give more grace; the Lord of grace chooses some to salvation, and gives them to his Son; and because he chooses them, he gives his Son to death for them; and because the Lord redeems them by his Son, therefore he gives to them strong faith; and because he gives to them saving faith, therefore he gives to them perseverance and glory, and so gives influences of graces in a golden link and chain (Romans 8:29, 30; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; Acts 13:48; Ephesians 1:4, 5; 1 Peter 1:2, 3).

Assert. 2. A believer under the sense of mercy and deliverance, is to engage his soul to praise. David delivered in the cave (Psalm 58:7), I will sing and praise. Psalm 30, You have turned from me my mourning into dancing; verse 12, O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you for ever. Psalm 116:8, You have delivered my soul from death; 9, I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living, out of the sense of the Lord's goodness to all. Psalm 104:33, I shall sing to the Lord in my lives, or as long as I live. Psalm 63:3, Because your loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise you, thus will I bless you while I live. Hebrew: in my lives.

Assert. 3. The man Christ may absolutely undertake (Psalm 22:22), I will declare your name to your brethren, I will praise you in the midst of the congregation. For he knows perfectly, he neither can sin, or come short of his vow; nor can the Lord withdraw influences of grace from the man Christ; but Peter had no assurance that under that particular temptation the Lord should not forsake him. The general, all the renewed have, that the Lord will not suffer his own to be tempted above their strength: Peter was obliged to watch and pray under all the particular temptations that could occur, and especially under the trial of his suffering Savior, of which he was fore-warned by the mouth of Christ, from that prophecy (Zechariah 13:7), I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.

Obj. The faith of believers is to rely upon the promised help of Christ in every temptation. Then may the believer pray to be delivered, not in the general, but in every particular not to be tempted above his strength.

Answ. The promise of preserving the elect, and of giving promised perseverance (Isaiah 54:10; Jeremiah 31:25 & 32:40), to them now converted is absolute, that the Lord will put his fear in their hearts that they shall never depart from him.

That his grace shall fortify them against atrocious sins committed with the full strength of consent and inconsistent with the seed of God, and the indwelling of that seed in them with the holy anointing (1 John 2:20, 27; chapter 3, verse 9). But there is not any promise in the New Covenant that David and Peter shall be delivered from particular sins, here and now, such as may consist with the habit of grace and the seed of God. There faith is to rely upon God and his grace that he shall not lead them into temptation, here and now, in such particular sins, not absolutely, but conditionally; so the Lord in his wisdom and holy sovereignty shall judge it fit for their humiliation and the promoting of the work of their salvation, and especially for the glory of holy sovereignty: they are to believe that the Lord shall absolutely confer upon them fundamental, and amply necessary influences of grace, but not that he shall bestow on them absolutely non-fundamental influences.

Assert. 4. It is not lawful to engage to run the ways of the Lord's commandments, leaning to the habit of grace, and the stock within the believer; Peter relied on this, I am ready (nothing habitual grace and faith) to go with you to prison and to death (Luke 22:33 and John 13:37). Peter is angry because Christ lessens his stock and habit of grace and strength of faith; Lord, why can I not follow you now? This habit of grace is not Christ, neither the Spirit; and therefore the enlarging of the heart, upon the supposal whereof David engages to run the way of the Lord's commandments, is not the only habitual enlarging of the heart, but he supposes also that the Lord must add his actual breathings and influences of grace, else he cannot run nor move at all in the way of God (John 15:5; 1 Corinthians 12:2; 2 Corinthians 3:3).

Assert. 5. Far less can we engage to run the way of the Lord upon our own strength.

1. The Apostle James rebukes such as say they shall go to such a city and buy and sell, and say not if God will (James 4:10, 11); far less can we engage to spiritual duties on our own strength.

2. This is carnal presumption for men to lay wagers on their own strength, and to say with Peter and the Disciples, they'll do wonders.

3. Men believe not the wickedness of their own hearts, nor see they to the bottom of sovereignty, the depth of sin original.

4. It is contrary to godly watchfulness, and a hardening of the heart; as Proverbs 28:14, Blessed is the man who fears always, but he that hardens his heart shall fall into mischief.

5. It is atheism to suppose that influences of saving grace are as due and connatural to men now fallen in sin as influences natural are some way due to the falling of rain, the rising and going down of the Sun, the growing of trees, the ebbing and flowing of the sea, and that we have dominion of free-will over the saving breathings of the Holy Ghost.

Whereas 6. The Gospel bids us pray, and by faith rely on the Lord for influences of grace, and give the glory and praise of the breathings of the Spirit to God.

7. It is against that humble self-denial, and godly trembling, and humble despairing of our own strength that should be in us in our undertakings of obedience.

So an huge deal of pride; 2. want of mortification to self must be lurking in our undertakings.

Assert. 6. It is not lawful to blame the Lord for our sinful omissions, for that is to father our sin upon the holy Lord; nor is that (Isaiah 63:17) O Lord, why have you made us to err from your ways, and hardened our hearts from your fear? a complaining against God.

It is 1. a tacit complaining of themselves, that they are gross matter, and the dunghill on which the Sun with his beams stirs up a stinking smell, which is not the Sun's fault.

2. As God's active hardening of us is a punishment of sin, the Church may lawfully complain of it to God, and deprecate that and all the like sad evils of punishment; yet it shall never follow that God is the author or the cause of the sins of our being passively hardened of God, or of active hardening of ourselves.

3. It is a prayer for softening and grace not to err, return for your servants' sake (v. 16): you, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer, your Name is from everlasting.

2. None of the Saints yielding to temptations do blame the Lord's withdrawing, but blame themselves and clear the Lord: Psalm 51, Against you, you only have I sinned; you have taught me wisdom in the inward parts — here is a clearing of the Lord. Isaiah 64:6, We are all as an unclean thing; v. 4, since the beginning of the world — men have not perceived a God beside you (5, 8); so Lamentations 3:34.

Assert. 7. A Believer may undertake in the strength of God (Psalm 119:33; Canticles 1:4, Draw me, we will run). Grace and the Spirit in his sweet breathings being undertakers, one may undertake for a journey, when Christ engages for such a chariot, the midst whereof is paved with love. O be humble, and lay not great wagers upon self; you know not sin original as a sin, but you know it as a mere punishment. What? we are sinners by nature, and we can do no otherwise; Pharaoh and Judas knew it so.