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576
r
PARDON
OF SIN
THE
MOST
DESIRABLE
forgiven,
it
is
the
great
thing
that
burdens the
soul
of
a
saint
;
for where
sin
is
not
removed
we
have little reason
to hope
that
sorrow
.shall. So yo
r
find
good
David,
where
he
mourns and complains
before
God,
in
the
fifty
first psalm,
there
is
scarce
any
expression desiring the
removal
of
affliction,
but
all
for
pardon.
Purge
me
with
hyssop, &c."
He
desires
that
every thing
sinful
may be
removed
from
him.
To
this
doctrine
I shall'
speak a little more
at
large than
I
have
done
to the
former
;
and,
first
give
some
reasons
why
a child
of
God
under
afflictions,`
most earnestly and
in
the
first'
place, desires the removal
of
his
guilt, and,
Secondly,.
apply the subject.
The
reasons are
these
;
First,
Because an
afflicting
and condemning
God
is
a
thought
they
cannot
bear
;
therefore
they
beg
that
though
God should
continue
to
afflict,
yet
that
he
would
not
condemn
them.
They know,
in
some
measure, what the
desert of
sin
is,
and the
terrors of
the
Lord
to be
more
dreadful
and heavier than outward
sufferings
!
and
there-
fore
it
is
that Job,
in
the agony
of
his
soul,
complains
that,
"
The
arrows
of
the Almighty stick fast
in
me,
&c
?'
You scarcely hear
him
speak heavier
words
of
sorrow
throughout
his
whole book than these
are
:
"
They are
heavier than the sand
of
the
sea.
My words
are
swal-
lowed
up
with
the
thought
that
a
terrible God
has
let
loose
his
hand upon
me,
and does
not
shew me his
smil-
ing
countenance."
Secondly,
Pardon
is
the
greatest
mercy,
for where therè
is
no
pardon of
sin,
temporal
afflictions
are but forerun-
ners
of eternal
ones.
Sorrows
here
on
earth
are
pledges
òf
sorrows
that
will
never
end, to
souls
that
have no
pardon
:
this
adds great weight
to
every stroke
of
the
hand of
God,
and makes every wound the
deeper
:
but
where a
soul can
hope
in
future
comforts,
and
by
faith
view
a justifying God,
can
look beyond
earth,and
time,
and
see the
pleasures
that are prepared at
God's
right
-
hand, ready
to
be
bestowed
on him
;
this lightens every
grief,' and
takes
away
the sting
of
anguish.
It
is
a
dread-
ful thing when
I
am
under
sorrows,
to
think
that
these
sufferings
are part
of
my
satisfaction
to
divine
justice
for
sin, which shall
never
be
fully satisfied
;
that
they
are
part
of
the curse
of
a
broken law
that
shall
lay
on me
for