Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if _there be any_ wicked way, and lead me in the way
everlasting.
This is a high and glorious Psalm of thanksgiving, wherein the
Psalmist, with a marvellous fervour of spirit, touches on that
all-high matter,—God’s predestination of all things; and proclaims
that incomprehensibleness of the divine wisdom and goodness, whereby,
in a wonderful manner, he himself and all men, with all their affairs,
all their works and all their thoughts, both the greatest and the
least, were predestinated of God from everlasting. This manifold
wisdom of God is incomprehensible to flesh and blood!
“Thou, O Lord (saith the Psalmist) hast searched me out and known me;
thou knowest me altogether; thou understandest my thoughts long before
they are conceived by me. Wherever I move, whithersoever I go, thou
surroundest me on every side; and being ever present with me, thou
beholdest all my undertakings, and my works, and my ways, and all that
I think of doing or undertaking. There is no speech, not even the
least word, upon my tongue, but thou, O God, knowest it, before I
utter it. Thine eyes beheld me, when yet imperfect in my mother’s
womb; and thou didst wonderfully form and fashion me there.” And (ver.
6) the Psalmist exclaims, “Such knowledge is too high and wonderful;
no mortal thought can attain unto it.”
Here, it is as if the Psalmist had said, it is not in the capacity or
powers of any mortal to think or determine how he will lead his life,
what he will undertake, what he will do, what he will speak, what he
will think, where he will go, or to, or from, or in what place he will
turn; but all our acts, motions, and thoughts, are nothing less than
the works of God ever present with us, doing and ruling all things as
he will. And hence (ver. 19.) he utters his indignation against the
wicked; saying, “Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God.” Here he
burns with zeal against hypocrites, who, being ignorant of all the
works and words of God, and utterly blind and mad, ascribe all their
doings to their own works and merits.
These mortals are perpetually putting forth and boasting of their own
ability and works, and are ever relying on their own doings and
merits, and ascribing unto themselves that glory which belongs to God
alone; whereas they have not one of their words in their own power, as
of, or from, themselves; but all their words and thoughts are in the
hand of God.—This glory, I say, they arrogate to themselves, when they
are all the while so far from the wisdom of God and his divine works,
that they neither know themselves nor any one part of themselves; nor
understand how they were formed or fashioned in the womb of their
mother; nor what their own body is, nor what are its properties and
organs; nor what their eyes are, nor what their brain is; nor what the
origin and nature of that motion is, by which their body is moved;
and, in a word, when they know not what the soul and this natural life
are; nor whence arise all those various motions and affections of the
mind within, nor how they are uttered outwards by the tongue.
When, therefore, this whole that we are, and this all that we do, are
not our own wisdom or doing, but God’s; and since we cannot comprehend
these earthly things; since, I say, we neither can know nor do any one
of these earthly and corporal things, as of ourselves; how awful a sin
is that enormous arrogance, whereby we profess that we have so much
power in ourselves and in our free-will, that we can understand God,
and do his divine and spiritual works, and deliver ourselves from sin,
and death, and hell.
Wherefore (ver. 20.) the Psalmist utters his holy indignation against
such hypocrites and teachers of human works and doings; saying, “Thine
enemies speak blasphemously against thee, O Lord, and they are proud
and lifted up against thee without cause. Guard thou me, and prove and
try me, that I may continue in the right way; the way that is true and
eternal;” that is, in the way of the knowledge of the word of thy
grace.