God, who has not only loaded us with temporal blessings, but has given his only dear Son to die for us, and his Holy Spirit to instruct us ; yea, and has followed us all our days with in- treaties, expostulations, promises, seeking nothing so much as our eternal welfare ! This is the view of sin which conversion gives us ; and it is this alone which can ever dispose and induce us to lothe ourselves.]
2. We need it as much after conversion as before —
[A converted person will certainly not indulge sin : but he still carries about him a sinful nature, that is bent to backslide from God, and that still operates to the wounding of his con- science, and the offending of his Maker. Now every sin com- mitted in this state is incomparably more heinous than it would have been in his unrenewed state, because it is committed against more light and knowledge, more mercies and obliga- tions, more vows and professions. Even smaller sins involve him now in deeper guilt than his more heinous trespasses be- fore ; and therefore they demand a suitable humiliation and contrition. Hence then it is evident, that, while we carry about with us a body of sin and death, we ought incessantly to lothe ourselves, and to be crying with St. Paul, " O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me1?" Indeed this is the very frame to which God's pardoning mercy is designed to bring us. And the more we abase ourselves before him, the more evidence we have of our acceptance with him k.]
Infer —
1. How opposite to a Christian state is self- righteousness !
[If contrition be a state pleasing to God, and self-lothing be a necessary constituent of it, then self-righteousness must be most hateful to God, and most injurious to our souls ; because it necessarily leads to self-approbation and self-complacency, which are as opposite to self-lothing as darkness is to light. Would to God that this were duly considered ! Men profess to repent, and yet make a righteousness of their repentance ! a manifest proof that they know not what repentance is ! Know, my Brethren, that " all our own righteousnesses are as filthy rags1 :" that our very tears need to be washed, and our repentances to be repented cff ; and, that we must disclaim our best deeds in point of dependence, as much as the vilest sins we ever committed. We may indeed " rejoice in the testi- mony of a good conscience : " but we shall find cause for self- abhorrence, even in our best frames, and our holiest actions.]
' Rom. vii, 24. k Ps. li. 17. x Isai. lxiv. G.