act of disobedience will look so great in your own eyes, that you will think no acknowledgment, confession, or humiliation, can come up to the height of it.

And farther, if you would take knowledge of these words, "I am the Lord thy God," and suffer them to have their full force upon your minds, it would be an excellent means to bring you to the sincere confession of all sin. For one sin is as much sin against God as another; and if you truly confess any one for this reason, you will think yourself bound for the same reason to confess all; that is, as I have already observed to you, with repentance, and an unfeigned purpose to forsake them. You may not have been so happy all your lives as to say with respect to every sin, as Joseph' did, "How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God;" but if you would find mercy from the Lord, there must now be an end of your guile, and vain attempts to hide your sin from him; you must now say, and upon examination you will find cause to say it, with respect to the breach of every one of the commandments" I have done this great wickedness, and sinned against God, against the majesty and sovereignty of the just and holy Lord God, my Maker, Preserver, Governor, and Judge; woe is me, for I am undone ! I will acknowledge my wickedness, and be sorry for my sin; Lord, have mercy on me for what is past, and for the time to come incline my heart to keep thy whole law."

4. But there is yet another help in this case to be mentioned, because without it all the rest will be ineffectual, and that is, prayer: prayer to know the God with whom we have to do; prayer to know ourselves; prayer to see our sin, to know how vile it makes us, and that we shall be extremely and for ever miserable, if it is not confessed, forsaken, and forgiven. For this," says David, "shall every one that is godly," that is, every one who has

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regard to God, and desires to live and die in his favour, "make his prayer unto thee," namely, to have the wickedness of his sin forgiven. And in order to this he will likewise pray for a spirit without guile, to know himself for what he is, nothing but a sinner; that upon an humble confession and acknowledgment of his condition, without disguise or extenuation, he may find deliverance from his guilt and misery, and be refreshed with a sense of forgiveness. Consider how apt we are to deny, excuse, or palliate our sins, and what pains we take to hide them from ourselves; nay, how hard they are to be truly known, insomuch that if the Spirit does not convince us of them, they will always be concealed from us, as to their number, guilt, and heinousness, and your first prayer to God will be to have them discovered to you. If you dread them as your greatest enemies, and the wall of separation between God and you, till they are known and confessed, your cry will be, "try me, O God, and seek the ground of my heart, prove me, and examine my thoughts;" and if you do not thus pray, you trifle with your souls, and can have no proof to give of your sincerity. Elihu's advice to Job was, to say, "that which I see not, teach thou me ;" and he took the advice, and was taught it. As great a saint as he was, he saw his own sin, and all sin, as he had never done before. "Now," says he, upon the full conviction he had received of the greatness, majesty, and purity of God, and the vileness of man, "mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

Let me now remind you of the first words of the exhortation which is appointed to be read in the morning and evening service, before the general confession; and pray God you may now and always seriously attend to it, and consider it in your hearts: "Dearly beloved. brethren, the Scripture moveth us in sundry places to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wicked

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and that we should not dissemble nor cloke them before the face of Almighty God, our heavenly Father ; but confess them with an humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart, to the end that we may obtain forgiveness of the same by his infinite goodness and mercy." Is it, indeed, true that we may obtain forgiveness? What, of sin, one act of which brought death into the world? Forgiveness of our numberless sins? May we hope for it? Are we assured of it? Yes, from the mouth of God himself, over and over again; and when the penitent soul presents itself before him with this confession, “I have sinned against the Lord," the answer of all Scripture is, "The Lord hath put away thy sin, thou shalt not die." Acknowledge, confess your sins, hide them not, and though they are more in number than the hairs of your heads, the wickedness of them shall be forgiven. It would have been a grievous thing if we had been left in a state of uncertainty whether we shall ever find mercyat God's hands; and his judgments upon sin and sinners, recorded in Scripture, are very terrible to think of. But nevertheless we know they are his judgments upon the obstinate, impenitent, and unbelieving. The thunder of them rolls innocently over the heads of the humble and contrite; and that one saying is worth a world, "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John, i. 9.

You think I preach strict doctrine to you, and I fear make it a pretence for disregarding it, and continuing unawakened, to the great hazard of your souls. My brethren, the truth is strict, and if I conceal it, or diminish any thing from it, it is at the peril of my own soul as well as yours. We are sinners; we have sins innumerable, and, if they are not known and confessed, they will ruin us for ever. This is the truth of Scripture,

and what you must all come to, think and say what you please. But I beseech you to hear me a word more. Do I ever tell you of your sin, the guilt and danger of it, without telling you of your remedy, and pointing out to you the precious means of your safety? Do I not constantly preach Christ to you, as" the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world;" and declare to you from time to time, that the assurance of your pardon is sealed to you in his blood? And is this strict? Is it not very comfortable? Is it not enough to make the heart of a condemned sinner leap for joy, to hear that "God laid on him the iniquity of us all, and that there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus?" Is not this a more blessed relief to the conscience, distressed with a sense of guilt, than putting you upon the hard service of undoing the accursed effects of your sin, and making your peace with God as well as you can, by any repentance, humblings, endeavours, or works of your own? Are not those sweet words which I have already brought to your remembrance, "if we confess our sins," in truth and sincerity before God, "he is faithful and just to for give us our sins?" That is, he is, and cannot but be faithful to his word and promise; and moreover true to justice, which is now brought over to our side, and engaged by covenant to grant the forgiveness which Christ has purchased for us.

It was the saying of one who had a deep insight into the corruption of human nature and the guilt of sin, that he would creep upon his hands and knees to Jerusalem for a pardon, if there was no other way to obtain it. You need not o so far; the glad tidings of peace with God are brought home to your doors, and it is your own fault if you do not receive them into your hearts, and live and die in the comfort of them; and I would now remind you of this, as another excellent means and help, if not

of all others the best, to come at the bottom of your sin, and engage you thoroughly in the work of searching for it in life and heart. In the examination of yourselves call in faith to your aid. See your sin pardoned in Christ, and you will be the less afraid to see it in all its guilt, to confess it sincerely, mourn over it with godly sorrow, and for his sake resolve to renounce it. It was another saying of the same person, no less a man than Martin Luther, that he always hated the word repentance till he understood the meaning of that text, Rom. i. 17, "Therein," in and by the Gospel," is the righteousness. of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, the just shall live," live because made just, "by faith;" as I said before, it would have been a great discouragement in the way of self-searching, if we did not know beforehand that it would turn to account, and had been left in a state of uncertainty as to the issue of it; as we must for ever have been, if we had nothing to trust to but the merit of our own repentance: but when Christ is presented to our faith as the Peace-maker in his blood, and. we can boldly bid defiance to sin in the strength of his atonement, we shall no longer be disposed to deal deceitfully with God and our consciences, or desire to hide our iniquities, as knowing that Christ bore them one. and all in his own body on the cross, and that forgiveness waits upon the humble, penitent acknowledgment

There is a legal or natural, and a spiritual or evangelical repentance: one proceeds from a dread of punishment, rather than sense of the great evil and odious nature of sin; is perpetually haunted with unbelieving fears, continues in the main as averse to God and goodness as ever, and produces no real change, or lasting reformation: the other, beholding the curse of sin, and the mercy of deliverance from it, in the death of Christ,