Confession of Sin, Humiliation, and Repentance
Jbllow upon self-examination. Advice concerning
repentance of some particular backsliding. The
great perplexity and distress of a penitent sinner
represented as a caution against retwing to
folly.
That we may turn unto the Lord, is the end of searching and trying our ways. Lord! I have been searching my heart, and considering my ways, but can find little or no good; neither can I discover all that is evil in both. But I find enough to make my own heart condemn me, and thou (who art greater than my heart, and knowest all things) mayest much more condemn me. I am altogether unclean, polluted, and abominable.
If I go about to enumerate the sins of my thoughts, words, and actions, in all the periods of my life hitherto; if I consider my omissions of-dotyf and daily crimes, by actual commission; if I reflect upon my sins according to their respective objects, as either against thee, O God, and against my neighbour, and against my own soul or body; and compare my heart and life with thy strict and holy law, and think in how many instances I have transgressed every of thy righteous commandments, I find they are more than the hairs of my head; they cannot be numbered. Who can tell how oft he hath offended? Many of my sins make little impression on my memory, I observe them not, I remember them not; but this hinders not but they may make deep impression on my conscience, which will one day be awake, and set them in order before me; and they are all written in thy book of remembrance, in order to my final judgment. AH my sins are before thee; but thou requirest my humble confession of them, in order to repentance: and, as a part thereof, that I freely acknowledge their heinous aggravations, to shame and humble myself the more before thee, whom I have ofiended and provoked.
How long did I serve divers lusts and pleasures with the neglect and forgetfulness of God! How sad a prospect may I take of the far greater part of my life past! especially of my younger years, which have been trifled away in vanity and folly I And, since I have known the way of truth, how shamefully have I prevaricated with God! I am confounded to consider how often I have despised the commandment, and rebelled against the light, against the principles of education, the checks of conscience, frequent warnings from God, and reproofs from others; contrary to my profession and experience, contrary to the obligation of peculiar mercies, solemn promises, resolutions, and engagements, and a nearer relation to God than many others; which sins have more dishonoured my Lord, discredited his holy gospel, gratified the devil, scandalized the world, and strengthened the hands of the ungodly, than the sins of others. And, alas! how much of my precious time is thus gone, which, if duly improved, would now afford me comfort to review!
How much guilt have I contracted every year, particularly in this last! I now begin another, which will soon be gone, as that which was concluded yesterday. And shall I only advance in age, to increase the number of my sins, and heighten my account against the day of reckoning? In temporal and, civil afiairs, “day unto day uttereth knowledge, and night unto night teacheth wisdom,” We are taught by experience many useful lessons, which we should not else have learned; to reform many errors and mistakes, to correct many rash and foolish actions, and speeches, &c. And shall I not learn wisdom by the experience of another year, in what concerns my greatest, my eternal interest? Shall not the reflection on my past sins prevent my commission of the like? especially, considering how my sins are aggravated by every mercy I have received; by every affliction I have undergone; every awakening sermon I have heard; every motion of God’s Spirit, and every check of my own conscience, that I have resisted; every offer of his grace; every warning of his providence; every invitation and call of bis word; every purpose to repent, and every re-H 43 solution I have made to forsake sin: the greater knowledge I have had of my danger, the longer time I have deliberated about it; the oftener I have confessed my sin, and been sorry for it; every reproof I have had from others, and every promise I have made myself, doth aggravate and increase my guilt.
How many years hath God vouchsafed me to work out ray salvation I but how little have I done towards it! Had I died this last year, how unprepared roust I have made my appearance before his tribunal! What opportunities of doing and receiving good have I let slip! Have I not made it more my business to seem religious, than really to be so? How much of the patience of God have I abused? Refusing his calls to repentance, resisting the strivings of his Spirit, smothering my convictions, and turning the grace of God into wantonness? Instead of returning gratitude for all his love, I have repeated my transgressions after forgiveness, and gone in a circle of repenting and sinning, even to this day. Lord, I am ashamed, and lay myself in the dust before thee. To me belongs nothing but shame and confusion of face. If God should condemn and punish me as a rebel and a traitor, and give me the portion of hypocrites, I cannot but own his justice; even in hell I must do it with my flaming tongue and breath.
O spare me for thy mercy’s sake! “Enter not into judgment with thy servant, for in thy sight shall no flesh living be justified, if thou layest judgment to the line, and equity to the plummet.” Give me repentance unto life, never to be repented of, never to be retracted again* Bring me to the blood of Jesus, which cleanseth from all sin* Behold the sighing of a contrite spirit; for ^’I acknowledge my transgressions unto thee, against whom I have sinned: O Lord, forgive the iniquity of my sin.” I am unworthy to lift up my hands and eyes towards heaven, unworthy to be called thy son or thy servant: I am vile in mine own eyes, because I have made myself vile in thine. For this I am troubled, and mourn, and my soul is grieved within me.
O thou heavenly physician of souls! from thy pity alone I expect my cure. I am miserable and undone without thy compassion, and expect no relief but from the treasure of thy grace. I must perish and sink under the burden of sin, if thy merciful hand do not save me, and lift me up. I am en* tangled and ensnared by the devil and ray lusts, and, without thy succour, can never hope to get free. “O Lord, forgive my sins, and heai my soul; deliver and save me for thy mercies’ sake.”
May I not yet hope in thy mercy? Thou hast mercifully borne with me hitherto, thou callest me to repent, thou commandest me to return, and promisest to forgive those sins which are confessed and forsaken: O do not cast me out of thy sight and presence, DOW that I desire, from the bottom of my heart, to return to thee! I abhor myself in dust and ashes for my past iniquities. But, alas! such is the hardness of my impenitent heart, that I am even ashamed of my humblest repentance: how much more may God despise and reject it I But hast thou not given thy blessed Son to die for sinners? and exalted him for this very end, to be a Prince aivd a SasVoMt X^
h2 give repentance and remission of sins?” And, by the word of thy grace, thou beseechest all, even the greatest sinners, to accept of mercy; and art more willing to pardon, than we can be to repent. It is thy delight and glory, agreeable to thy nature and declared name, “as a God, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.” O pardon mine iniquity, for it is great; and receive an humble penitent, who implores thy grace, according to the tenor of thy new covenant, flying to the arms of thy mercy, through the merits of Jesus Christ, “who is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him.”
Lord, hear my prayer, and let not the mixture of my weaknesses and unworthiness turn it into sin; but graciously vouchsafe to look upon a returning prodigal, and cause me to hear the voice of joy and gladness, that my sorrowful heart may be comforted, and my life be directed to thy praise. Lead me into the path of life, that I may no longer err from the way of thy commandments; teach me to do thy will, O God, and write thy law upon my heart, that I may never more return to folly. I am convinced of the evil of sin, and of thy right to govern me, of the equity and justice of thy law, of the sweetness and rewards of keeping thy precepts: O sanctify my heart, and make me sound in thy statutes, that I may hate every false way, and be devoted to thy fear, the remainder of my life.
If there be any particular lust, or wickedness, which, through the power of temptation, and the deceitfulness of sin, you have fallen into, that hath wasted conscience, and robbed you of your peace, and provoked God to write bitter things against you, be sure to humble yourself, without delay, in an especial manner, for that backsliding; confess it freely with its aggravations. Consider whether it was not after some special manifestation of God’s love, after some special warning, some strong con* viction, under, or soon after, some great affliction from God, or some more than ordinary kindness of his providence, &c. and impress such thoughts, to humble yourself the lower. Search into the grounds and causes of such apostacy; such as the abatement of your watchfulness, the neglect of serious closet devotion, making bold with temptation, too great compliance with vain company, venturing too far in lawful or indifferent things, too much confidence in your own wisdom, strength, and steadfastness, not fearing sufficiently the approaches and beginnings of sin, or avoiding the fuel, incentives, and occasions of it, &c. Palliate and disguise nothing that may make your sin exceeding sinful, lest, by some little art of the devil, you deceive yourself by a halfrepentance; and the evil spirit you think to be cast out return again with seven worse than himself, and so your latter end be worse than your beginning. For, if the sin be not truly hated, but only covered over with penitential ashes, it will quickly flame out again, when it meets with combustible matter,’ and a strong blast of temptation.
But, if you be grieved to the very heart, and abhor the sin, and resolve to quit it, you need not doubt of God’s readiness to receive you to mle. His Spirit is yet striving with you, if you w vyr ling to repent and return to God. He sought you and called you to return, when you were wandering, as a lost sheep, in the broad way; and can you think he will not be found by you, if you seek him with your whole heart? Therefore, renew your repentance, and beg more earnestly a spirit of humility, holy fear, and watchfulness: and, every morning, implore divine succours against that sin, and all temptations to it, which, as much as possible, you must avoid. Constant and fervent prayer, after repentance, must be your refuge and your remedy. If you let fall your hands, this Amalek will prevail again. As soon and as far as you fail in the constancy and fervency of that duty, your sin will get strength, and successfully attempt you another time. But, by this practice, God may turn evil to work for good, make you gain by your loss, stand the faster by your falls, and become stronger by the discovery of your weakness, and so be better established for the future.
But take heed that you pervert not the grace of God, and encourage yourself to sin again, by the supposition, that, if you should fall, it is but to repent, and renew your resolutions, and all will be well. This is a subtle artifice of Satan, but such, raethinks, as should take with none, who have ever known, by experience, what it is to repent; who have felt the burden of sin to be heavier than a millstone, than the weight of a mountain; who have tasted how evil and bitter a thing it is to depart from God, who have loathed and abhorred themselves with deep remorse, and sorrow, and anguish of spirit, wishing, with ail Ocveit VvaxV.%, .Wt llv«^ had not sinned; and, if it were in their power, would give all the world to retrieve it; and would rather die, than commit that folly again they then repented of. Let those, who have not their own experience to confirm this, read over (and consider the case of David when he wrote) the penitential psalms. How many, like him, have roared and cried out, under the sense of sin, of stings and furies in their conscience, of the poisoned arrows in their souls, and his terrors surrounding them wherever they went; from the sense of his sin’s malignity, the apprehensions of God’s anger, and the consequent fears of his wrath! Serious repentance, after great transgressions, is another thing than most imagine it: when their aggravated sins shall beset them behind and before, be placed in order before their eyes, and set in array against them. It is always a work of difficulty, as well as importance, to crucify corrupt affections, to tear a beloved lust from the heart, with self- indignation to abhor and cast away what before you loved and delighted in. How did David’s sin stare him in the face? “It is continually with me, it is ever before me,” said he. It haunted him like a spectre, or, like Belshazzar’s handwriting on the wall, it still appeared before him in some horrid shape.
However sin may smile in its first address, and bespeak us in flattering language, and promise pleasure, and profit, and great advantages, and satisfaction; these are but fair appearances, this is but the outside of the cup, and the colour of the liquor; it will prove gall and wormwood,^ and a mixture of deadly poison, if ever God set it home upon the conscience, and awaken us to a true sense o£ ll axv^X^cv continuance of daily repentance for sin which all ‘Christians are called to, ia no such easy matter neither. Constant self-abament and humiliation before God, from a sense of his majesty and holiness, and of our many sins and pollution thereby; the imperfection of our best duties continually to be bewailed; inordinate affections to be still mortified; always resisting and opposing sin in its root and branches; conflicting against the whole interest of the flesh, the world, and the devil; seeking after more holiness, to be derived unto us by the grace of Christ, to be wrought in us by his Spirit, and maintained by his power; and making daily applications to the fountain of all grace for spiritual strength to continue our warfare against sin, in all instances of outward duty, and inward actings of grace, even as long as we live; all this is included in it* Due apprehensions concerning repentance, as so comprehensive and difficult a duty, would teach us to beware of sin.