XVIII.

ON SPECIAL AND RECENT SIN AS FORMING AN URGENT REASON FOR CONTRITE PRAYER.

OH, that my mind were more deeply and poignantly affected at the thought of having affronted the "terrible majesty" of the universal Judge, and abused the tender forbearance of my unwearied benefactor; at having stifled the warnings of a conscience illuminated by heavenly truth, and rebelled against a holy and forgiving God; against Him who gave and sustains the very faculties by which I have transgressed; against Him who could instantaneously, by an agonizing correction, or a fearful judgment, teach me the omnipotence of his disregarded justice!

How melancholy and how criminal is that tendency which I discover in my heart, after the first

pains of self-accusation are past, to harden or soothe, rather than humble itself; to extenuate the offence, or to argue with a callous and perilous · sophistry,-So many have been the preceding offences, that this can have added little to the account of guilt.

What deadly qualities are not united in this serpent evil, which fascinates, while it pierces the soul, and has a venom that not only corrupts, but benumbs and paralyses also! It is true, the gospel of Christ invites and enjoins me to embrace the hope of abundant pardon: it forbids despondency after a genuine and penitential recourse to that Divine Saviour, whose "blood cleanseth from all sin ;"—but how shall I rightly resort to this pardoning mercy without a true and profound contrition of spirit? Or ought even the firmest hope of forgiveness to prevent or abate undissembled humiliation and bitter self-reproach, when I reflect that all past, and present, and future good, not only to the latest instant of this life, but through the boundless ages of the life to come, must be derived to me solely from the free mercy of Him whose gracious precepts I have so lately scorned or forgotten; when I meditate on having chosen or tolerated that, on account of which it behoved the Son of God to suffer untold anguish,

from pure love to the ruined victims of transgression; when I acknowledge that the conduct or spirit of which I have been recently conscious, must, if unforsaken, alienate me for ever from the temper and the joys of heaven, and condemn me, by a dreadful necessity of nature, to an exile from happiness, even were I surrounded by its brightest tokens and manifestations, where the righteous

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shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father?" Tremble, my soul, at such a thought! Shudder at having indulged for a day, or cherished for an hour, (or were it but for a moment,) that which, if perpetuated, were in itself "everlasting destruction;" that which has in it the accursed quality and savour of the "second death."

When I am penetrated with this appalling truth, that a Being, "glorious in holiness," hath "set my iniquities before Him, my secret sins in the light of his countenance;" that He "understandeth my thought afar off," and is “acquainted with all my ways;" that He could instantly lay open the record of my multiplied offences, and proclaim them by "the voice of an archangel in the great congregation of spirits and just men;' that He could fill me with that "everlasting contempt" and incurable remorse, which must be the

* Jeremy Taylor.

portion of the impenitent and unpardoned; what should be my emotion at having exposed myself to such a doom; what fervency should inspire and pervade all my pleas for the benefits of that Saviour's atoning death, "whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;" and how abundantly augmented henceforth should be my love and devotedness to Him, through whom alone I can attain the peaceful hope that my "transgression is forgiven," that my "sin is covered!" And surely nothing, except unfeigned penitence, evinced by importunate prayer, can justly afford me this testimony. I cannot, without the most dangerous and culpable presumption, account myself in a state of acceptance and reconciliation with God, except every known sin be followed by genuine repentance, thus heartily expressed. I can now have no evidence, whatever may have preceded, of being in a pardoned state, until this disposition, and this act, have been solemnly renewed. "Repentance," . says the excellent Bates, "is not an initial act of sorrow, but must be renewed all our lives. God's pardoning us is not a transient act, but continued; as conservation is a continued creation." And if

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our constant sins of imperfection and frailty make this at all times needful, then surely ought the sense of especial and peculiar guilt to constrain and stimulate us into proportionately earnest supplication. "Our desires," says the same author, "should be raised in the most intense degrees, in some proportion to the value of the blessing; they should be strong as our necessity to obtain it. The pardon of our sins is the effect of God's highest favour, of that love which is peculiar to his children; 'tis the fruit of our Saviour's bloody sufferings; without it we are miserable for ever; and can we expect to obtain it by a formal superficial prayer? It deserves the flower and zeal of our affections. How solicitous, and vehement, and unsatisfied should we be, till we have the clear testimony that we are in a state of divine favour!"

And when I thus address myself to the Sovereign Source of compassion, it is indispensable to implore not only forgiveness, but heavenly strength against the future assaults of that sin, which has "pierced me through with many sorrows;" resuming more strenuously, (notwithstanding the sad review of their former insufficiency,) and with more deep dependence on that heavenly strength, my sacred resolutions; entreating that the essential beauty and excellence of holi