pity on an impenitent transgressor, we shall not won- der at the gracious declaration which he makes for the comfort of this penitent and returning sinner; " I have heard him, and observed him : I am like a green fir-tree : from me is thy fruit found."
In discoursing on these words, we shall be natu- rally led to shew you,
I. The disposition of the true penitent —
[The unconverted man, though he may never have bowed down to stocks and stones, is an idolater: he "loves and serves the creature more than the Creator." All indeed do not worship the same idol : one gives his heart to riches, another to honour, another to pleasure ; and though all these find a higher place in our affections than we allow to God, yet each person has his favourite idol, to which he is in a more especial manner devoted : but when grace has renewed the heart, then the penitent says with Ephraim of old, " What have I to do any more with idols ? " His disposition is, To renounce all sins in general, — his besetting sin in particular ; — and this too with indignation and abhorrence.
He renounces all sins in general. — A person who is not truly penitent may exchange one sin for another ; he may exchange lewdness and intemperance for the love of honour and ambition : he may turn from prodigality to avarice ; or from indifference and profaneness to Pharisaism and hypocrisy. But he never remits one sin without taking some other in its stead; yea, he frequently puts more into the scale of pride and conceit, than ever he took out of that of sensuality or pro- faneness. But it is not thus with the true penitent: he has commenced a war against sin in general ; he endeavours to at- tack it in all quarters ; he knows that sin is idolatry, in that it is a preference given to the creature above God himself; and therefore, without making any reserves, he determines to extir- pate sin, root and branch, if possible, and says, " What have I to do any more with idols ? "
But he more particularly devotes to destruction his besetting sin. — The besetting sin of the ten tribes was idolatry : and therefore when Ephraim is brought to repentance, he is repre- sented as fixing his eyes more particularly on that sin. Indeed this was remarkably exemplified in the Jews, after their return from the Babylonish captivity : for though, before their capti- vity, they could never be kept long together from idolatry, they could not after their return be drawn to it ; insomuch, that when it was proposed to set up a statue of Augustus in the Temple, the Jews determined to perish rather than submit to it. Now every man has some sin which more easily besets