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32Ó
TILE
AGCfAVATIONSOF
BACKSLIDING.
V.
It
may be
there
has been much dishonour
brought
to
the
name
of God
by it.
My name
has been
continu-
ally
blasphemed
by you,
saith the Lord, among
all
na-
tions
:
yet
he
will
heal,
he
will
recover
them,
he will
restore
them again,
and bring
them
near
to
himself.
The
Third
thing I
proposed,
in
order to
discover
the
greatness
of
this
sin
of
backsliding,
was
to
shew how
God
beholds
it.
I
have
seen
his wags, ¿'c.
L
He
beholds our sins
in
all
their
number, more
than
we
can
see,
imagine, or conceive
of
them.
There
is
not a
man
upon
earth that
lives
and
sins
not, and
there
is
not
a
man
upon
earth that
lives
and
knows all
his
sins;
every
thought,
every
word,
every action,
that
has neither
a
direct, nor remote tendency
to the glory
of
God,
is
written
down as
a
sin
in
the book
of
God
;
who
then
knows
his
errors
?
but
the
Lord
beholds
them
all
;
he
knows
our
sinful
thoughts afar
off,
before they
are
formed into
purposes
of
sin
;
yet, saith
he,
I
have seen
them
all,
and
I
will
heal them
;
his
sins
are
many indeed,
but I
have a
pardon
for every one
of
them. I, even
I
am he
that
blotteth out
thy
iniquities
for
my own
name's
sake.
II.
God
sees
sin
in
the
full evil
of
its
nature, and
yet
he resolves
to
pardon,
to recover, to restore,
and
heal
them. Now this
is
what
we
can never
do,
for
we
can
never
fully
discover the
greatness of
the distance
there
is
betwixt
God
and
the
creature;
we
can
never
know fully the greatness
of that
honour and
glory
that
is
violated
by
every
sin
;
we
cannot
fully know
the
nature
of
God.
Now every
sin
has a
tendency
to strike
at
the'
nature
of
God
as well
as
against
his law
;
though God
beholds
the
iniquity
that
is
in
every
one
of their depar-
tures
from him, yet, saith
he,
I
behold,
and
I
will
heal.
One
would
think
he
should
say,
I
will
revenge,
,,
they are
so
great,
but
his
thoughts
are
not
as
man's
thoughts, nor
his
words
as
man's words.
Again,
III.
God
sees
our
backslidings with
all their compli-
cated aggravations. He seeth
that
light against
which
we
have sinned, and yet he resolves
that
he
w.ilI
pardon
the
wilful
sinner.
He
sees all
those methods
of
recovery,
which he has used in
order
to
recover
us,
and
through'
which
we
have
broken, yet
still he resolves he
will
use
other
means
that
shall
be
available.
He
will
bind
us
with bands
of
love,
though
other
bands
of
love were