EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS (2)

Verses 4, 5, 9.—He that would not be found amongst sinners in the other world, must take heed that he do not frequent their company in this. Those whom the constable finds wandering with vagrants, may be sent with them to the house of correction. “Lord,” said a good woman, on her death bed, when in some doubt of her salvation, “send me not to hell amongst wicked men, for thou knowest I never loved their company all my life long.” David deprecates their future doom upon the like ground, and argueth it as a sign of his sincerity: “I have not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with dissemblers. I have hated the congregation of evil doers; and will not sit with the wicked.... O gather not my soul with sinners.” Lord, I have not loved the wicked so well as to sit with them for a little time, and shall I live with them for ever? I have not lain amongst them rotting on the earth; and wilt thou gather my soul with those sticks for the unquenchable fire of hell? Lord, I have been so far from liking, that thou knowest I have loathed the congregation of evil doers. Do not I hate them that hate thee? Yea, I hate them with perfect hatred; and shall thy friends fare as thy foes? I appeal to thy Majesty, that my great comfort is in thy chosen. I rejoice only to be amongst thy children here, and shall I be excluded their company hereafter? “O do not gather my soul with sinners,” for the wine-press of thine eternal anger! Marcion, the heretic, seeing Polycarp, wondered that he would not own him. Do you not know me, Polycarp? Yea, saith Polycarp, “Scio te esse primogenitum diaboli;” “I know thee to be the firstborn of the devil,” and so despised him.—George Swinnock.

Verse 5.—“I have hated the congregation of evil doers,” etc. The hatred of God’s enemies, quà his enemies—“yea, I hate them right sore” so entirely opposed to the indifferentism of the present day, has always been one distinguishing mark of his ancient servants. Witness Phinehas (Psalm cvi. 31); “And that was counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations for evermore;” Samuel with Agag; Elias with the priests of Baal. And notice the commendation of the angel of Ephesus, “Thou canst not bear them that are evil.” Rev. ii. 2.—J. M. Neale.

Verse 5.—“I have hated the congregation of evil doers.” We consider them as God’s enemies, so we hate them; not their persons, but their vices; for that, as Augustine defineth, it is odium perfectum, a perfect hatred. And indeed it is the hatred that God beareth to his enemies; for “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Rom. i. 18); not against their persons—they are his workmanship, and carry his image in some sort, though much disfigured; but against the unrighteousness and ungodliness of men, by which their persons do stand obnoxious to his displeasure. And thus I find the saints of God have triumphed over the wicked, as Israel over Pharaoh, and the Gileadites over the children of Ammon; not rejoicing in the destruction of God’s creatures, but of God’s enemies; and wishing with Deborah and Barak, “So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord.” This is no more but an applauding of the judgment of God, and a celebration of his justice.—Edward Marbury.

Verse 5.—“I have hated,” etc. Consider that there can be no true friendship betwixt a godly and a wicked person; therefore it concerneth thee to be the more wary in thy choice. He that in factions hath an eye to power, in friendship will have an eye to virtue. Friendship, according to the philosopher, is one soul in two bodies. But how can they ever be of one soul that are as different as air and earth, and as contrary as fire and water? All true love is, motus animi ad fruendum Deo propter ipsum; se et proximo propter Deum—a motion of the soul towards the enjoyment of God for himself, and his neighbours for God’s sake; so that he can never truly love man who doth not love his Maker. God is the only foundation upon which we can build friendship; therefore such as live without him, cannot love us in him. That building which is loose, without this foundation can never stand long. A wicked man may call that profession he maketh to his brother by the name of love, but heathens can tell us that virtue alone is the hand which can twist the cords of love; that other combinations are but a confederacy, and all other but conjunctions in hypocrisy.—George Swinnock.

Verse 5.—Wheresoever we perceive any people to worship God truly after his word, there we may be certain the church of Christ to be, unto the which we ought to associate ourselves, and to desire, with the prophet David, to praise God in the midst of this church. But if we behold, through the iniquity of time, congregations to be made with counterfeit religion, otherwise than the word of God doth teach, we ought then, if we be required to be companions thereof, to say again with David, “I have hated the synagogue of the malignant, and will not sit with the wicked.” In the Apocalypse, the church of Ephesus is highly commended, because she tried such as said they were apostles and were not in deed, and therefore would not abide the company of them. Further, God commanded his people that they should not seek Bethel, neither enter into Galgala, where idolatry was used, by the mouth of his prophet Amos.—John Philpot (Martyr). Burnt at Smithfield, 1555.

Verse 5.—How few consider how they harden wicked men by an intimacy with them, whereas withdrawment from them might be a means to make them ashamed! Whilst we are merry and jovial with them, we make them believe their condition is not deplorable, their danger is not great; whereas if we shunned them, as we would a bowed wall, whilst they remain enemies to the Lord, this might do them good, for the startling of them, and rousing of them out of their unhappy security and strong delusions wherein they are held.—Lewis Stuckley.

Verse 6.—“I will wash mine hands in innocency.” There are two eminent lavers in the gospel; the first, Christ’s bath, a hot bath, lavacrum sanguinis, the laver of Christ’s blood; the second, our bath, a cold bath, lavacrum lachrimarum, the laver of repentance. These two mixed together will prove a sovereign composition, wrought first by Christ himself when he sweat water and blood. The first is as that pool of Bethesda into which whosoever enters with faith, is healed; the blood of Christ is the true laver of regeneration, a fountain set open for Judah and Jerusalem to wash in. “The blood of Christ purgeth us from all sins.” 1 John i. 7. We account it charity in mothers to feed their children with their own milk: how dear is the love of Christ, that both washeth and feeds us with his own blood! No sooner are we born in Christ, but just as our mother’s, so Christ’s blood is turned into milk, nourishing us to everlasting salvation. What is calamus benjamini, or storax, or a thousand rivers of oil, to make us clean, except the Lord purge and cleanse us? No; ’tis his blood “that speaks better things than the blood of Abel.” “Unto him, therefore, that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests to God and his Father: to him be glory and dominion for ever.” Rev. i. 5, 6. But yet ’tis the second bath, the laver of repentance, that must apply and make the first operative. This bath of Mary Magdalene’s repentance, it is a kind of rebaptisation, giving strength and effect to the first washing. And it implies a threefold act: first, to bruise our hearts by contrition; secondly, to lay our wounds open by confession to God; thirdly, to wash our hands in innocency, by satisfaction to men.... Wash now and wash all; from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot there is nothing in us but wounds and sores; yet above all there is something here in it that David washeth his “hands.” Indeed it is not enough to come with wet eyes, if we come with foul hands, to offer with unwashen hands; the Gentiles would not do it. Contrition and confession to God make not up complete repentance without satisfaction to men. Non remittitur peccatum nisi restituatur ablatum;[18] it is as true as old, and in old father Latimer’s English it is, “Either there must be restitution, open or secret, or else hell.” Whoever repairs not the wrong, rejoiceth in the sin. Prov. ii. 14. Where there is no satisfaction, “Non agitur sed fingitur pænitentia,” saith St. Augustine; and those who restore not all, wash not their whole hands, they dip only the tips of their fingers. Extortion, rapine, bribery, these are the sins of the hands (sins so proper to the Jews, that they may well conceive as they do that the devil lies all night on their hands, and that is it makes them so diligent in washing); but as for us Christians, unless these vipers be shaken off our hands, though ye cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, yet if you continue in your pollutions, God regards not your offering any more, nor will he receive it with good will at your hands. Matt. ii. 13.—Isaac Bargrave’s Sermon before the House of Commons, 1623.

Verse 6.—“I will wash my hands in innocency: so will I compass thine altar, O Lord.” If greatness might have privileged this person from impurity, David was a king; if the grace of his soul might have freed him from the soil of sin, he was “a man after God’s own heart.” But let not great men put too much trust in their greatness; the longer the robe is, the more soil it contracts: great power may prove the mother of great damnation. And as for purity, there is a generation that say there’s no sin in them, but they deceive themselves; there is no truth in them. Whatever Rome’s φυσιόλογοι pretend for the power of nature, and of free will, we wretched sinners are taught to conceive more truly of our own infirmity. Christ’s own apostle, stout Thomas, failed in the faith of his resurrection; Peter (whose chair is now the pretended seat of infallibility) denied his Master; David, “a man after God’s own heart,” hath need of washing; and who can say, I am pure in the sight of the Lord? Certainly, O Lord, no flesh is righteous in thy sight. No; this is the best ground of Christian felicity, if with David we fall to a sight of our own sins; if with the Publican we strike our own breasts, and not with the Pharisee, cast our eye so much upon other men’s faults. Why should we, like tailors, measure all men but ourselves? as if the best of us had not sin enough of his own to think on. See how David calls himself to account for his own sins; “O Lord, I know mine iniquity, and my sin is ever before me.” Oh, the powerful effect of Christian devotion, when by the reflective act of the understanding, science is turned into conscience, and our knowledge is but the glass of our own imperfection, the glass wherein the sight of our sins sends us presently to God, as it did David here, who makes this account only betwixt God and his own soul, “I, O Lord.” First, he takes his rise from humility and the sight of his own sins, and he soars up by the wings of faith to the throne of God’s mercy: “I, O Lord.” He sees with his own eyes, and not only with the church, or the priest’s spectacles; he is his own penitentiary and confessor; here’s no intercession by saints, no masses, merits, indulgencies, trentals, dirges: all’s done betwixt God and him: “I, O Lord.” With the eye of humility he looks to himself and his own misery; then with the eye of faith to God and his mercy, and from both these results a third virtue of repentance in the act of preparation, washing the soil of sin in the bath of sorrow: “I will wash mine hands,” etc.—Isaac Bargrave.

Verse 6.—“I will wash my hands in purity.” Referring in these words, to the ordinary use of the sacrifices, he makes a distinction between himself and those who professed to offer the same divine worship, and thrust themselves forward in the services of the sanctuary, as if they alone had the sole right to perform them. As David, therefore, and these hypocrites were one in this respect, that they entered the sanctuary, and surrounded the sacred altar together, he proceeds to show that he was a true worshipper, declaring that he not only diligently attended to the external rites, but came to worship God with unfeigned devotion. It is obvious that he alludes to the solemn rite of washing which was practised under the law. He, accordingly, reproves the gross superstition of hypocrites, who, in seeking only the purification of water, neglected true purification; whereas it was God’s design, in the appointment of the outward sign, to put men in mind of their inward pollution, and thus to encourage them to repentance. The outward washing alone, instead of profiting hypocrites, kept them at a greater distance from God. When the Psalmist, therefore, says, “I will wash my hands in innocence,” he intimates that they only gather more pollution and filth by their washings. The Hebrew word, נִקָּיוֹן nikkayon, signifies the cleanness of anything, and is figuratively used for innocence. We thus see, that as hypocrites derive no moral purity whatever from their washings, David mocks at the labour with which they vainly toil and torment themselves in such rites.—John Calvin.