My dear hearers may perhaps recollect I have often referred them under their various exercises to this very important chapter. The prophet predicts the state of the church in gospel days; and our dear Lord, no doubt, had his mind on this chapter, when he forewarned the disciples what they would experience, even from their nearest and dearest relatives, for the truth’s sake; that no earthly ties would subdue or remove the carnal enmity of the human heart—that the father and mother would betray their dear children, and children would rise up against their parents, in consequence of their adherence to the truth; which was the case may times during the heat of persecution, and to this hour, where sovereign grace has been manifested in a family, where one has been taken and another left, there has been a most awful opposition, which may be seen in many lamentable circumstances—_Mat._ 10th chapter. Perhaps Solomon alludes to this when he says, _For three things the earth is disquieted_, _and for four which it cannot bear_.—_Prov._ 30th.
The conquests of grace have ever disturbed the earth, and those who have preached all the words of this life are represented as having turned the world upside down, and as the troublers of Israel; while the gospel in its power has caused those who were servants to sin to lay down the arms of their rebellion, and God has set up a kingdom in their hearts which shall never be destroyed, and made them kings and priests unto God. But the prophet, no doubt, in this chapter, may allude to the state of the Jewish church, before and in her captivity, this I apprehend is the primary sense of the chapter. He laments the fewness of those who were valiant for the truth. Then represents the sins of the great, and of those in office, both in church and state. The decay of true godliness was his grief, accompanied with many heart-breaking sights of the treachery of those who were in a profession, with the weakness of the children of God themselves; _The best of them is a briar_, _the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge_. Trust ye not, therefore, in a friend; put no confidence in a guide! _Keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom_—that is, even from the saints themselves, knowing the best of men are but men at the best: and well may one of our own Poets exclaim—