Vers. 15. Thou hast increased the nation, O Lord; thou hast increased the nation: thou art made glorious: thou hast enlarged all the coastes of the earth.
THis verse is diuersly expounded: for some think the Prophet shewes how the faith∣full are not pressed with one affliction alone, but are plunged ouer head and eares as it were in extreme miseries, and yet can see no issue out of them. Others expound it more simply thus; O Lord; thou hast inriched thy people with many benefits: and so they think that the Prophet mentions those blessings which God bestowed vpon his people diuers waies: as if he should say; Thy people, Lord, haue felt by experience, how liberall thou art by the infinite benefits which thou hast be∣stowed vpon them. But when I consider that which by and by followes, where hee saith, thou hast enlarged; that is to say, thou hast cau∣sed thy kingdome to spread, which was once shut vp within verie narrow bounds; I had ra∣ther ioyne these two things together; for so the latter member expounds the former; and that also which followes, to wit, that God shall be glorified, agrees very well. For wee know that Gods glorie shines in nothing more, then in the aduancement and inlargement of his Church.* 1.1
It is as much then as if hee had said; Lord, thou hadst in times past but a little handfull of people, but now thou hast multiplied and increased them. For the Gentiles were adopted and ioyned to the Iewes, on condition that they both should make but one people. And thus the Lord added an infinite number to them; for the children of Abraham were ga∣thered out of all nations. We must therefore supply in this place an addition of a greater number, and not of benefits; in this sense, Thou didst not content thy selfe Lord, with that small number which once thou didst in∣ioy: and therefore thou gatheredst vnto thy selfe a people without number out of all the quarters of the world.
Now this belongs to Christs Kingdome, which was euey where established by the preaching of the Gospell: and the Prophet now extols and notes out Gods mercy tou∣ching this increasing and multiplication by the word enlarged. I grant this phrase strai∣eth not much from our common manner of speech, when wee vse to speake of the inlar∣ging of a dominion, or of an inheritance: yet it is not the Prophets meaning to say, that the land shall become greater, but that it had larger bounds, and a more free habitation by meanes of the mutuall societie of the inha∣bitants after the pure worship of God was published euery where: for the discords which were betweene the Iewes & Gentiles strait∣ned their dwellings, and made them lesse free then otherwise they would haue been. Wee haue here then a promise touching the vocation of the Gentiles;* 1.2 which ought great∣ly to haue comforted the faithful in their ex∣ile, and in that miserable scattering and ba∣nishment from the Church: for howsoeuer they saw themselues wonderfully diminished and weakned, yet they might without all peraduenture, assure themselues that they should not onely increase to an infinit num∣ber; but that strange nations also, and those that were farre remote, should be added vn∣to them.