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his presence." (Psa. xvii. 2.) Thou hast violated his known laws; thou hast despised and abused his num berless mercies; thou hast affronted conscience, his vicegerent in thy soul; thou hast resisted and grieved his Spirit thou hast trifled with him in all thy pretended submissions; and in one word, and that his own, "thou hast done evil things as thou couldst." (Jer. iii. 5.) Thousands are, no doubt, already in hell, whose guilt never equalled thine; and it is astonishing, that God has spared thee to read this representation of thy case, or to make any pause upon it. O, waste not so precious a moment, but enter, as attentively, and as humbly as thou canst, into those reflections, which suit a case so lamentable, and. so terrible as thine!

The CONFESSION of a Sinner, convinced in general of his Guilt.

"O GOD! thou injured Sovereign, thou all-penetrating and mighty Judge! What shall I say to this charge? Shall I pretend I am wronged by it, and stand on the defence in thy presence! I dare not do it; for "thou knowest my foolishness, and none of my sins are hid from thee." (Psa. lxix. 5.) My conscience tells me, that a denial of my crimes would only increase them, and add new fuel to the fire of thy deserved wrath. If I justify myself, mine own mouth will condemn me; if I say I am perfect, it will also prove me perverse." (Job ix. 20.) "For innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up: they are, as I have been told in thy name, more than the hairs of my head, and therefore my heart faileth me." (Psa. xl. 12.) I am more guilty, than is possible for another to declare or represent: my heart speaks more than any other accuser. "And thou, O Lord, art much greater than my heart, and knowest all things." (1 John iii. 20.)

"What has my life been but a course of rebellion against thee? It is not this or that particular action alone, I have to lament. Nothing has been right in its principles, and views, and ends. My whole soul has

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been disordered. All my thoughts, my affections, my desires, my pursuits, have been wretchedly alienated from thee. I have acted, as if I had hated thee, who art infinitely the loveliest of all beings; as if I had been contriving, how I might tempt thee to the uttermost, and wear out thy patience, marvellous as it is. My actions have been evil; my words yet more evil than they; and, O blessed God, my heart, how much more corrupt than either! What an unexhausted fountain of sin has there been in it! A fountain of original corruption, which mingled its bitter streams with the days of early childhood; and which, alas! flows on even to this day, beyond what actions or words could express. I see this to have been the case with regard to what I can particularly survey. But Oh! how many months, and years, have I forgotten! concerning which I only know this, in the general, that they are much like those I can remember; except it be, that I have been growing worse and worse, and provoking thy patience more and more, though every new exercise of it was more and more wonderful.

"And how am I astonished, that thy forbearance is still continued! "It is, because thou art GOD, and not man." (Hos. xi. 9.) Had I, a sinful worm, been thus injured, I could not have endured it. Had I been a prince, I had long since done justice to any rebel, whose crimes had borne but a distant resemblance to mine. Had I been a parent, I had long since cast off the ungrateful child, who had made me such a return as I have all my life long been making to thee, O thou Father of my spirit! The flame of natural affection would have been extinguished; and his sight, and his very name, would have become hateful unto me. "Why then, O LORD, am I not cast out from thy presence?” (Jer. lii. 3.) Why am I not sealed up under an irreversible sentence of destruction? That I live, I owe to thine indulgence. But O, if there be yet any way of deliverance, if there be yet any hope for so guilty a creature, may it be opened upon me by thy gospel and thy grace! And if any farther alarm, humiliation, and terror, be necessary to my security and salvation, may I meet them, and bear them

all! Wound mine heart, O LORD, So that thou wilt but afterwards heal it; and break it in pieces, if thou wilt but at length condescend to bind it up." (Hosea vi. 1.)

CHAPTER V.

THE SINNER STRIPPED OF HIS VAIN PLEAS.

My last discourse left the sinner in a very alarming, and a very pitiable circumstance, a criminal convicted at the bar of God, disarmed of all pretences to perfect innocence and sinless obedience, and consequently obnoxious to the sentence of a holy law, which can make no allowance for any transgression, no, not for the least; but pronounces death, and a curse, against every act of disobedience: how much more then against those numberless and aggravated acts of rebellion, of which, O sinner, thy conscience hath condemned thee before God! I would hope, some of my readers will ingenuously fall under the conviction, and not think of making any apology for sure I am, that humbly to plead guilty at the divine bar, is the most decent, and, all things considered, the most prudent thing that can be done in such an unhappy circumstance. Yet I know the treachery, and the self-flattery, of a sinful and corrupted heart. I know what excuses it makes, and how, when it is driven from one refuge, it flees to another, to fortify itself against conviction, and to persuade, not merely another, but itself, "That if it has been in some instances to blame, it is not quite so criminal as was represented : that there are at least considerations that plead in its favour, which, if they cannot justify, will in some degree excuse. A secret reserve of this kind, sometimes perhaps scarcely formed into a distinct reflection, breaks the force of conviction, and often prevents that deep humiliation before God, which is the happiest token of approaching deliverance. I will therefore examine into some of these particulars; and for that purpose will seriously ask thee, O sinner, what thou hast to offer in arrest of judgment? What plea thou canst urge for thy

self, why the sentence of GOD should not go forth against thee, and why thou shouldst not fall into the hands of his justice?

But this I must premise, that the question is not, How wouldst thou answer to me, a weak sinful worm like thyself, who am shortly to stand with thee at the same bar: "The LORD grant, that I may find mercy of the LORD in that day?" (2 Tim. i. 18.) But, what wilt thou reply to thy Judge? What couldst thou plead, if thou wert now actually before his tribunal; where to multiply vain words, and to frame idle apologies, would be but to increase thy guilt and provocation? Surely the very thought of his presence must supersede a thou sand of those trifling excuses, which now sometimes impose on a generation that are pure in their own eyes, though they are not washed from their filthiness:" (Prov. Xxx. 12.) Or, while they are conscious of their own impurities, "trust in words that cannot profit," (Jerem. vii. 8.) "and lean upon broken reeds." (Isa. xxxvi. 6.)

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You will not, to be sure, in such a circumstance, plead, "that you are descended from pious parents." That was indeed your privilege; and wo be to you, that you have abused it, "and forsaken the GOD of your fathers." (2 Chron. vii. 22.) Ishmael was immediately descended from Abraham the friend of GOD; and Esau was the son of Isaac, who was born according to the promise; yet you know they were both cut off from the blessing, to which they apprehended they had a kind of hereditary claim. You may remember that our LORD does not only speak of one who could call Abraham father, "who was tormented in flames;" (Luke xvi. 24.) but expressly declares, that 'many of the children of the kingdom shall be shut out of it; and when others come from the most distant parts to sit down in it, shall be distinguished from their companions in misery, only by louder accents of lamentation, and more furious gnashing of teeth." (Matt. viii. 11, 12.)

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Nor will you then presume to plead, "that you had exercised your thoughts about the speculative part of religion." For to what end can this serve but to increase

your condemnation! Since you have broken God's law, since you have contracted the most obvious and apparent obligations of religion, to have inquired into it, and argued upon it, is a circumstance that proves your guilt more audacious. What! did you think religion was merely an exercise of men's wit, and the amusement of their curiosity? If you argued about it on the principles of common sense, you must have judged and proved it to be a practical thing: and if it was so, why did you not practise accordingly? You knew the particular branches of it: and why then did you not attend to every one of them? To have pleaded an unavoidable ignorance, would have been the happiest plea that could have remained for you: nay, an actual, though faulty ignorance, would have been some little allay of your guilt. But if by your own confession, you have known your Master's will, and have not done it, you bear witness against yourself, that you deserve to "be beaten with many stripes." (Luke xii. 47.)

Nor yet again will it suffice to say, "that you have had right notions both of the doctrines and the precepts of religion." Your advantage for practising was therefore the greater: but understanding, and acting right, can never go for the same thing, in the judgment of God, or of man. In "believing there is one GOD, you have done well; but the devils also believe and tremble." (James ii. 19.) In "acknowledging Christ to be the Son of GOD, and the holy one, you have done well too; but you know the unclean spirits made this very orthodox confession," (Luke iv. 34, 41;) and yet they are "reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day." (Jude, ver. 6.) And will you place any secret confidence in that, which might be pleaded by the infernal spirits, as well as by you?

But perhaps you may think of pleading that " you have actually done something in religion." Having judged what faith was the soundest, and what worship the purest, " 'you entered yourself into those societies, where such articles of faith were professed, and such

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