Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.
Ver. 4. Stand in awe, and sin not] Be stirred, or commoved, or troubled. Tremble and sin not. But today the word and the world too is altered; for men sin and tremble not; being arrived at that dead and dedolent disposition of those heathens who were past feeling, Ephesians 4:18,19. St Paul rather alludeth to this text, Ephesians 4:6, than citeth it, as some think.
Commune with your own heart upon your bed] Advise with your pillow what you have to do in a business so important as the practice of repentance, whereunto I am now exhorting you. Here, then, examine yourselves, prove your ownselves, as 2 Corinthians 13:5. Sift you, sift you, Zephaniah 2:2. Recoil, turn short again upon yourselves, thrust your hands into your bosoms, as Moses did, and took it out again leprous, white as snow. Take a review of your hearts and lives, converse with yourselves; a wise man can never want with whom to discourse, though he be alone. But as it is a sign that there are great distempers in that family where husband and wife go several days together and speak not the one to the other; so in that soul that flieth from itself, and can go long without examination of self. A good man's business lieth most within doors, and he taketh the fittest time (night or day) for the better despatch of it, though thereby he abridge himself of his natural rest. Mr Bradford, the young Lord Harrington, and sundry others, kept journals, or day books, and oft read them over, for a help to humiliation.
And be still. Selah] Or, make a pause, dwell upon the work of self-examination till you have made somewhat of it, till you have driven it up to a reformation, as Lamentations 3:39,40, Let us try, and turn. The word signifieth be dumb and hereupon all our silentiaries have founded their superstitious opinions and practices; such as were those old monks of Egypt, who, saith Cassian, were umbrarum more silentes et αλαλοι, as speechless as ghosts. So the Carthusian monks at this day, who speak together but once a week. Some kind of Anabaptists also will not speak a word to any but those of their own sect.