We should therefore, all without exception, pray with David, " Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean ; wash me, and I .shall be whiter than snow." Yea, we should also pray wiiii him, " Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me !" For " God recjuireth truth in our inward parts:" and, if we are not thus " renewed in the spirit of our minds," we cannot hope for admission into that city " where no unclean thing can enter *=."]
Yet, after all, our guilt from these is light in com- parison of that which ariseth from our,
II. Sins of presumption —
These differ widely from the former ; being com- mitted, not from mere inadvertence or infirmity, but with the concurrence of the will in opposition to the dictates of an enlightened conscience. Yet in speaking of these we shall not confine ourselves to those grosser sins, from which more moral and decent persons are exempt ; but shall turn your attention rather to that state and habit of life which con- science must condemn, as well as the more flagrant transgressions.
Consider what " presumptuous sins" are —
[They are any sins whatever that are committed against light and knowledge, or on a presumption that God will not punibh them in the eteinal world.
Now it is perfectly well known to all of us, that we ought to have " the fear of God before our eyes :" we ought to stand in awe of God's judgments : we ought to search out and execute his commands. We ought not to live unto ourselves, but unto him : and to make his word the unvaried rule of our conduct. We know that we have duties also towards our adorable Redeemer ; and that, as we should live altogether by faith in him, so we should live altogether to his glory. Now, if we are habitually neglecting these duties, and living to ourselves and to the world, what is our life but one continued course of presumptuous sin ? I wish that the mure moral, decent, and conscien- tious part of my audience would attend to this, that they may see how great their deficiencies are, and how awful their guilt.]
To these we are ever prone —
[Every man by nature rushes into them, even as a horse into the battle : nor can any but God " keep us bac-k " from them. How daring we are in the commission of them, is plain from numberless passages of Scripture, where the language of the
carnal • Rev. xxi. 27.