Confidence towards God, explained. 337 excufable ; a man's heart cannot condemn S E R Nr. him for it ; he may confider it as proceed- XIII. ing from a natural imperfeElion, or as infe- licity, but cannot impute it to himfelf, and therefore he cannot think the fentence juft whereby he fhould incur any penal confe- quences on that account. But if, upon a re- view of our errors, it appeareth to us that they proceeded not from a total impotence in ourfelves, or from the want of fufficient means to have prevented them, but from a criminal difpofition in the mind, the cafe is quite different; the heart then chargeth it felf as guilty ; the adlions done in the pur- fuance of the miflake appear to be our faults, the penalties incurred by it to be juli, and the oppofite condemning fentence of a higher tribunal is vindicated in our own thoughts. In the prefent cafe, if our hearts do not condemn when they might and ought to have condemned us, that is, if we are led into the erroneous judgment by our own fault, and we had it in our own power to have prevented it by a due ufe of the means and opportunies we enjoyed, it doth not fol- low that God will acquit us, or that we have any jiff' ground of confidence towards him, or is the declaration in the text fo to be underfiood, VoL.III, Z 5thly,
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