34 FIRST SERMON mountain from off my back, these stings and terrors, these flames and furies out of my conscience ? Lord, my wounds stink, my lips quiver, my knees tremble, I am feeble, and broken, and roar, and languish ; thy wrath lies hard upon me, and thy waves go over my head. O if we had but a view of sin as it is in its native foulness, and did feel but a touch of that fury. which God is ready to pour out upon it, this would stain all the pride of man, and sour all the pleasures of sin, and make a man as fearful to meddle with it, as a guilty woman with the bitter water which caused the curse. Most true was that which Luther spake in this point, If a man could perfectly see his own evils, the sight thereof would be a perfect hell unto him : and this God will bring wicked men unto, `° Reprove them, and set their sins in order before them," Psal. 1. 21. Make them take a view of their own hearts and lives, fuller of sins than the firmament of stars, or a fur- nace of sparks. O consider this, you that forget me, saith the Lord, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver you. The second duty is confession ; for he that cries to have sin taken away, acknowledges that it lies upon him ; a full confession, not of many, but of all sins, either actually committed, or habitually comprised in our body of sin. As he in the comedian, said, that he had invited two guests to dinner, Philocrates and Philocrates, a single man, but a double eater : so in examination of ourselves we shall every one find sins enough in himself to denominate him a double and a treble sinner. A free confession, not as Pharaoh's, extorted upon the rack ; nor as that of Judas, squeezed out with anguish and horror ; but ingenuous and penitent, arising from the purpose of a pious heart,
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