Stephen Charnock wrote an excellent tome on “The Existence and Attributes of God.” This work is full of rich truth of great benefit to the Christian. For your edification I am going to periodically post heavily edited excerpts from Charnock’s writings on the goodness of God.

In every man is a natural corruption. In every Christian there are two principles fighting against one another, flesh and spirit, which endeavor to hinder one another’s deeds. In every Christian is a body of death, continually exhaling its poisonous vapors. This body of death corrupts our worship as well as our natures. It snaps our resolutions (Rom. 7:19), it hinders us in doing good, and it contradicts our wills by stirring up evil within us. Because this corruption is in all the faculties and is a continual resident in them, it has the greater opportunity to trouble us since it is by those same faculties that we spiritually approach God. The corrupted nature is more agitated in the time of religious exercises. Though it be on the verge of the death it fights like a cornered rat. The corrupt nature will rage and strive to its utmost when the enemy is about to strike it a deadly blow.

All duties of worship tend to the wounding of corruption. No wonder sin strives viciously to defend itself and offend us when we are strive to put it to death. Sin exercises all its cunning to deflect the blow which is directed against it. Our natural corruption does not rage so greatly as when we are using fighting to quench and destroy it.