If any part of the Old Testament be typical, the whole life and
character of David, from his birth to his death, are eminently so. And
accordingly the history of David and his Psalms, which form a most
interesting part of his history, occupies as large a portion of the Old
Testament as all the others. The type is two-fold-now of the Messiah,
now of the Church, and of the Church in all its relations, persecuted,
victorious, backsliding, penitent. N.B. I do not find David charged with
any vices, though with heavy crimes. So it is with the Church. Vices
destroy its essence.
Ib.
The same was a strange kind of offence (said Luther) that the world
was offended at him who raised the dead, who made the blind to see,
and the deaf to hear, &c.
Our Lord alluded to the verse that immediately follows and completes his
quotations from Isaiah. [6] I, Jehovah, will come and do this. That he
implicitly declared himself the Jehovah, the Word,--this was the
offence.
Chap. XLIX. p. 443.
God wills, may one say, that we should serve him freewillingly, but he
that serveth God out of fear of punishment of hell, or out of a hope
and love of recompence, the same serveth and honoreth God not freely;
therefore such a one serveth God not uprightly nor truly.
_Answer_. This argument (said Luther) is Stoical, &c.
A truly wise paragraph. Pity it was not expounded. God will accept our
imperfections, where their face is turned toward him, on the road to the
glorious liberty of the Gospel.
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