deceive yourselves by endeavouring to vindicate yourselves before God: for, whatever you may say to extenuate your guilt, your sins even of infirmity need forgiveness ; and your sins of presumption, if not repented of and forgiven, will plunge you into remediless and endless ruin.]
2. To improve the present moment in order to
obtain deliverance from it —
[Now you can offer the prayer of Da\dd : but how long that privilege will be continued to you, you know not. This however you know, that your views of sin will soon be changed, either in this world or in the world to come. Conceive of a presumptuous sinner, dying in his iniquity, and first having his eyes opened in the eternal world. What does he then think of all his past excuses, on which he once placed such confident reliance ? What, if he were permitted to address you from his abode of misery, would be the scope of his admonitions? Can you doubt? And, if not, will you still go on in those ways, which your own consciences condemn? But, as the Rich Man was not suffered to return from hell to warn his surviving brethren, who were walking in his steps, so neither will any be sent from the dead, to instruct you. You have Moses and the prophets ; and those you must both hear and obey : and, if you will not believe them, nothing awaits you but to " eat the fruit of your own doings, and to be filled immediately with your own devices." Now, however, you are warned : now, I trust, your consciences attest the truth and importance of all that ye have heard : and now I conclude with that solemn admonition of St. James, " To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin°."]
. o Jam. iv. 17.