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and family duties, and we experience that the Lord is merciful and gracious.
Father of mercies, pity and pardon our innumerable sins in the precious blood of
Thy dear Son, and give us repeated instances of sanctifying and comforting grace.
Return to our family with Thy peculiar mercies, and grant us joy and peace in
believing; also more patience and confidence under present trials. Remove our
weaknesses and oh, cause us to walk in all humility and Holiness of heart and life
before Thee. Increase our knowledge and prudence. Make us sincerely and truly
pious. We desire to wait on Thy mercies; hear and help and prepare us for all Thy
work and will concerning us, also to sit on with Thee at Thy Table, and may we
obtain mercy and help in a time of need. I desire to renew covenant with our God
in Christ, and receive grace for grace. 189 Oh, may the Lord restore comfort and
strength, and we rejoice in redeeming love. Bless our Lord with piety and the
increase of peace. Pity my native country, and sanctify the calamities of war.
May they speedily cease. Keep my brethren and friends in peace, and oh, may
they all be Thine, and I hear that God has been and is still with them. May our
rulers and magistrates be more and more righteous, peaceful and pious, and we
become Holy and happy. Remember the sick and weak. Spare useful lives, and
prepare the dying for Thy blessed self. Spare our lives in mercy, and may we be
faithful in every emergency to Thy cause and interest, both in Church and schools.
Pity our youth. Bless the catechizes and seminaries, and every one of us with Thy
peace and love in our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
7. Blessed be the Lord for through-bearing mercy and strength in the performance
of the duties of yesterday. Though my house is not as it ought to be and my body
and mind afflicted, yet the Father of mercies has had compassion with unworthy
me and strengthened me at His Table, and in preaching twice from Psalm 23.2, 190
I had some comfort from what I had been reading in Van Velzen, Bekeerde
Kamerling, 191 with respect to the essential act of faith – receiving Christ – under a
sense of our own guilt and with renunciation of every other thing besides Him.
This, he says, ought to be insisted upon by ministers, and I thank the Lord for this
great truth, which I hope I have preached from own experience and intend to
inculcate upon my people, God willing to spare my life. Though I am perhaps too
severe with others who desire to approach the Table of the Lord when only
convinced of the necessity of their obtaining an interest in Christ, may I grow
more prudent and wise, not offending any of the little ones, but also faithful to all,
not leaving them to rest without being actually and vitally united to Jesus Christ. I
desire to lament my ignorance, unbelief, impatience and other innumerable sins
and shortcomings, but more and more to be built upon Christ, His person and
especially His death as the only foundation of all our hope and happiness. May
the Lord teach me by His Word and Spirit how to teach others effectively, and
also restore my strength sufficient for His work. O, Father, spare my life and
health for the service of Thy Sanctuary and my poor infant family, which I most
189
John 1:16.
190
He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters.
191
No books by Van Velzen among Westerlo’s books in 1771. He had probably borrowed a copy of
Gerardus Van Velzen’s De Bekeering des Kamerlings van Candace, Volgens de Beschrijving van den
H[eiligen] Lucas, Handel[ingen] VIII vers 26-40. Van Velzen preached in the style of Vitringa, like an
“Ernstige” Cocceian [Van den Berg 1998:435].
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