Malachi 4:6

REFLECTIONS

Reader! pause over the solemn, the very solemn and awful account here given of the great and dreadful day of God, so often spoken of in scripture, and so certain and sure. Think how tremendous the judgments which will then overtake the ungodly. For if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear. Oh! what paleness, horror, and everlasting dismay, will then seize every Christless sinner, when appearing before the Judge of all the earth without an Advocate to plead his cause, and void of all righteousness to justify his person.

Reader! what can I ask for you, or for myself, as a boon from a bountiful God in Christ, but that now, even now, while the day of grace continue, Jesus may arise as the sun of righteousness on our benighted souls, with healing in his wings. Be thou, dearest Lord, our light, our life, our righteousness, now, and forever. Oh! be thou the one great source of our peace, who hast been the confidence and hope of thine Israel; and as thou hast been made a curse for thy people, so may they be made the righteousness of God in thee. Farewell Malachi! farewell till meeting together at this great day of God. May it be the portion of both Writer and Reader to meet all the Malachis' and Elijahs' of our covenant God in that day, when Jesus shall come to make up his jewels, and amidst the host of Patriarchs, Prophets, and Apostles, to praise God and the Lamb forever and ever.

And now, Reader, as with this Part of my Commentary, I close the sacred volume of the Old Testament scripture, I beg once for all, and finally, and fully, that you will bend the knee in prayer as the author hath done before you, that the Lord will bless all that it contains, as far as it is agreeable to his holy and eternal truths, and pardon all that is amiss, which human weakness, ignorance, and infirmity, have given birth to, in this feeble endeavour to be helpful to the Lord's household. May that sin-bearing Lamb of God, that taketh away the iniquities of our most holy things, cleanse all that is here unholy and unclean. It is my intention, if the Lord favors such a design, to prosecute in the same plain and humble manner, the several Books of the New Testament, by way of Commentary. But this I leave, as I do all other events, bounded as they are within the limits of a life hastening now fast to a close, to Him who fixeth both the time and place of His people's habitation. In the mean season, I here set up my Ebenezer afresh. Hitherto hath the Lord helped! And concerning my further wishes to write the Commentary for the New Testament, as the Lord hath permitted me to finish one on the Old; if the gracious Master should say concerning this, as David remarked upon another occasion, I have no delight in it; with him I would submissively say, Behold! here I am, let him do to me as seemeth him good Amen.

PLYMOUTH, CHARLES VICARAGE,

On my birthday, making 59 years of sin and vanity! April 13, 1812