painful consequences of his licentious habits, the libertine can scarcely avoid those reflections which Solomon represents as arising in his mind : " Thou wilt mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, and say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me ! I was almost in all evil in the midst of the con- gregation and assembly ^" Nor can we doubt, but that in hell those reflections will be both universal and exceeding bitter : for the " wailing and gnashing of teeth" which will be there experienced, will arise, in no small degree, from the considera- tion of the opportunities once enjoyed, but now irrecoverably and for ever lost"^.]
2. In its operation —
[The indignation of an ungodly man is sudden and transient ; and is always accompanied with a crimination of those who have been in any measure accessary to the evils that have come upon him. But, in a man of piety, they are the fruit of deep re- flection, dwelling habitually in the mind, and always attended with self-reproach. We may see in the Prodigal Son a just exhibition of that which arises from genuine repentance. He does not, under the pressure of his distress, cry out with vehe- ment exclamations, designating his conduct by every term that an embittered spirit can suggest ; but he adopts a resolution to return to his father's house, and there, in measured and con- trite language, confesses, " I have sinned against heaven and before thee ; and am no more worthy to be called thy son." Generally speaking, the more violent the expressions are, the less genuine is the contrition from which they flow. The exercise of deep and just feeling is rather in a way af temperate meiosis, than of vehement and fluent exaggeration. The two kinds of indignation may be easily distinguished by their atten- dant feelings : the one is the fruit of wounded pride, and the root of every thing that is unhallowed, whether in word or deed; the other is the oflfspring of deep contrition ; and either the parent or the child of genuine conversion to God.]
Having discriminated, we hope, sufficiently between the expressions of our text as used by persons of opposite characters, and shewn how to distinguish them when uttered as the language of passion, we proceed to notice them,
II. As the hmguage of piety —
We know assuredly that indignation is a fruit of godly sorrow : for St. Paul says to the Corinthians,
" Prov. v. 11—14. d Matt. xiii. 42.
823.] A saint's views of himself. 307
" Behold this self-same thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what iiidignatiou, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenged" And we have seen it operate precisely as in the text, when, according to common apprehension, there would appear to be but little occasion for it. David, seeing the prosperity of the wicked, and not duly adverting to their end, had envied them : and in the review of his conduct he exclaims, " So foolish was I, and ignorant; I was even as a beast before thee^" Nor are such views uncommon to the saints : or rather, I should say, there is no true saint who does not on some occasions apply them to himself.
If it be asked, ' How can such expressions fall from the lips of a real saint?' I answer, they necessarily spring,
1. From a view of the law under which we live —
[Whilst ignorant of the spirituality and extent of God's Law, we take credit to ourselves for our external conformity to its precepts ; and are ready to imagine, that, " touching the righteousness of the Law we are blameless^." But when we come to see how " broad the commandment is^," that it reaches to the inmost thoughts of the soul, prohibiting even so much as an inordinate desire, and requiring us to " love and serve our God with all our heart, and mind, and soul, and strength," we are struck dumb ; our towering " imaginations are cast down ;" and, like the Apostle Paul, we feel the sentence of death gone forth against us', and attaching to us no less for our best deeds, than for the most sinful action of our lives^." Then we become observant of our defects : and, O ! how lothesome are we then in our own eyes ', in the view of that very obedience of which we once thought so highly ! It is no wonder, if, with this augmented view of his own deformity, the saint speak of him- self in very humiliating and degrading terms. A person coming into a room at night with a lighted taper, would see but little: if he returned at the dawn of day, he would have a clearer view of all the objects that before were scarcely visible : but, if he entered when the sun was shining forth in its strength, he would discern the smallest specks of dirt, and even the very