Our Lord having exposed the unreasonableness and impiety of this sin, gives,
II. The advice proper for those who are addicted to it —
The evil here reprobated is but too common, and that too, even among the professors of religion : yea, perhaps, (their profession not being sufficiently tempered with humility and love) they are more ex- posed to it than others, from a mistaken idea, that their professed regard for religion entitles them, as it w^ere, to the office of censors. But to every one who has been guilty of it we should say,
1. Consider your own great and manifold in- firmities—
[There is no greater antidote to censoriousness than this. While we continue ignorant of ourselves, we shall consider our own faults as few and venial, and shall be disposed to magnify whatever we may see amiss in others. But a know- ledge of our own hearts will convince us, that if there is " a mote in our brother's eye, there is a beam in our own." We may conceive many extenuating circumstances that may lessen the enormity of his conduct ; but we shall know many aggravating circumstances to which God and ourselves alone are privy, which may serve to heighten onr guilt, and to humble us as the very chief of sinners. When the woman taken in adultery was brought to our Lord, he bade those of her accusers who were without sin to execute the law upon her. We all know the effect which a conviction of their own personal guilt produced upon them ^. Thus shall we also drop the stone which we have taken up to cast at our neighbour, when once we are acquainted with our own vileness.]
2. Recollect the relation in which he, whom you would condemn, stands to you —
[As every person wishes to conceal his own faults, so he will be ready to extenuate the faults of those who are near and dear to him. We do not usually hear men descanting on the infirmities of their parents or children, their wife or brethren. Now the person whom the calumniator would tra- duce, is his brother. No less than thrice in the short space of the text is this endearing appellation given to our neighbour. Is he not entitled then, from this consideration, to some portion of that I'egard which we pay to our more immediate relatives ? Should we officiously pry into his defects? Should we pre- sume to criminate his motives ? Should we judge of his general
^ John viii. 7 — 9.