But I shall not further enlarge the porch, as designing to make way for the reader’s entrance into the house, where I doubt not but he will be pleased with the furniture and provision he finds in it. And I shall only further assure him, that this whole book was not only prepared for, but also put into, the press by the author himself, whom the Lord was pleased to remove—to the great loss and unexpressible grief of many precious souls—before the sheets could be all wrought off.
And now, as I hinted in the beginning, that what was transcribed out of the author’s heart into the book, may be transcribed out of the book into the hearts of all who shall peruse it, is the desire and prayer of
A lover and honourer of all saints as such,
George Cokayn September 21, 1688
THE ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE;
OR,
THE EXCELLENCY OF A BROKEN HEART.
‘THE SACRIFICES OF GOD ARE A BROKEN SPIRIT: A BROKEN AND A CONTRITE HEART, O GOD, THOU WILT NOT DESPISE.’—Psalm 51:17
This psalm is David’s penitential psalm. It may be fitly so called, because it is a psalm by which is manifest the unfeigned sorrow which he had for his horrible sin, in defiling of Bathsheba, and slaying Uriah her husband; a relation at large of which you have in the 11th and 12th of the Second of Samuel. Many workings of heart, as this psalm showeth, this poor man had, so soon as conviction did fall upon his spirit. One while he cries for mercy, then he confesses his heinous offences, then he bewails the depravity of his nature; sometimes he cries out to be washed and sanctified, and then again he is afraid that God will cast him away from his presence, and take his Holy Spirit utterly from him. And thus he goes on till he comes to the text, and there he stayeth his mind, finding in himself that heart and spirit which God did not dislike; ‘The sacrifices of God,’ says he, ‘are a broken spirit’; as if he should say, I thank God I have that. ‘A broken and a contrite heart,’ says he, ‘O God, thou wilt not despise’; as if he should say, I thank God I have that.