enabled to walk in God's statutes :" even to them is the injunction given, to " lothe themselves for their abominations."
We shall consider, I. The duty enjoined —
Repentance, though an universally acknowledged duty, is but little understood. It implies,
1. A calling of our evil ways to remembrance — [However tenacious our memory may be of evils committed
by others against us, we are very forgetful of the evils which we ourselves commit against God. But we should go back to the earliest periods of our life, and review the transactions which then took place : we should then prosecute our inquiries through each successive year, till our reason was expanded, and our judgment informed with respect to the nature and con- sequences of sin : we should advance in this way through the different stages of our existence, till we arrive at the present time. Much evil will doubtless have passed away, and left no trace behind : but much may be recalled to our minds, suffi- cient to shew, that the whole bias of our souls has been towards wickedness, and that, in proportion as our faculties of body and mind have been enlarged, we have devoted them to the service of sin and Satan.
Having brought our examination down to the present time, we should enter more deeply into the qualities even of our best actions : we should search into the motives from which they sprang ; the manner in which they were performed ; and the end at which we aimed in the performance of them : we should do this, not with a view to find our good deeds, but " our doings that were not good:" not to furnish ourselves with grounds of self-approbation and self-complacency, but rather of humiliation and contrition.]
2. A lothing of ourselves on account of them — [The calling of our ways to remembrance is only prepara- tory to that more essential part of true penitence, " the lothing of ourselves on account of them." To this it must lead : if it stop short of this, it is of no avail . It is in vain that we are alarmed and terrified with a sense of our guilt; for Pharaoh a, and Judas b, confessed their sins under a sudden impression of fear and remorse : nor will it suffice to express a considerable degree of sorrow on account of our state ; for even in Ahab's humiliation this was found c: we must be brought to self-lothing and self-abhorrence.
a Exod. x. 16, 17. b Matt, xxvii. 3—5. c 1 Kings xxi. 27.