THE SINNER ARRAIGNED AND CONVICTED.
1. Conviction of guilt necessary.--2. A charge of rebellion against God advanced.--3. Where it is shown--that all men are born under God's law.--4. That no man hath perfectly kept it.--5. An appeal to the reader's conscience on this head, that he hath not.--6. That to have broken it, is an evil inexpressibly great.--7. Illustrated by a more particular view of the aggravations of this guilt, arising--from knowledge.--8. From divine favors received.--9. From convictions of conscience overborne.--10. From the strivings of God's Spirit resisted.--11.. From vows and resolutions broken.--12. The charges summed up, and left upon the sinner's conscience.--The sinner's confession under a general conviction of guilt.
1. AS I am attempting to lead you to true religion and not merely to some
superficial form of it, I am sensible I can do it no otherwise than in the way
of deep humiliation. And therefore supposing you are persuaded, through the
divine blessing on what you have before read, to take it into consideration, I
would now endeavor, in the first place, with all the seriousness I can, to make
you heartily sensible of your guilt before God. For I well know, that, unless
you are convinced of this, and affected with the conviction, all the provisions
of Gospel grace will be slighted, and your soul infallibly destroyed, in the
midst of the noblest means appointed for its recovery. I am fully persuaded
that thousands live and die in a course of sin, without feeling upon their
hearts any sense that they are sinners, though they cannot, for shame, but own
it in words. And therefore let me deal faithfully with you, though I may seem
to deal roughly; for complaisance is not to give law to addresses in which the
life of your soul is concerned.
2. Permit me therefore, O sinner, to consider
myself at this time as an advocate for God, as one employed in his name to
plead against thee and to charge thee with nothing less than being a rebel and
a traitor against the Sovereign Majesty or heaven and earth. However thou
mayest be dignified or distinguished among men; if the noblest blood run in thy
veins; if thy seat were among princes, and thine arm were "the terror of the
mighty in the land of the living," (Ezek. 32:27) it would be necessary thou
shouldst be told plainly, thou hast broken the laws of the King of kings and by
the breach of them art become obnoxious to his righteous condemnation.
3. Your conscience tells you that you were born
the natural subject of God, born under the indispensable obligations of his
law. For it is most apparent that the constitution of your rational nature,
which makes you capable of receiving law from God, binds you to obey it. And it
is equally evident and certain that you have not exactly obeyed this law, nay,
that you have violated it in many aggravated instances.
4. Will you dare to deny this? Will you dare to
assert your innocence? Remember, it must be a complete innocence; yea, and a
perfect righteousness too, or it can stand you in no stead, farther than to
prove, that, though a condemned sinner, you are not quite so criminal as some
others, and will not have quite so hot a place in hell as they. And when this
is considered, will you plead not guilty to the charge? Search the records of
your own conscience, for God searcheth them: ask it seriously, "Have you never
in your life sinned against God?" Solomon declared, that in his days "there was
not a just man upon earth, who did good and sinned not;" (Eccl. 7:20) and the
apostle Paul, "that all had sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom.
3:23) "that both Jews and Gentiles (which you know, comprehend the whole human
race) were all under sin." (Rom. 3:9) And can you pretend any imaginable reason
to believe the world is grown so much better since their days, that any should
now plead their own case as an exception? Or will you, however, presume to
arise in the face of the omniscient Majesty of heaven, and say, I am the
man?
5. Supposing, as before, you have been free from
those gross acts of immorality which are so pernicious to society that they
have generally been punishable by human laws; can you pretend that you have
not, in smaller instances, violated the rules of piety, of temperance, and
charity? Is there any one person, who has intimately known you, that would not
be able to testify you had said or done something amiss! Or if others could not
convict you, would not your own heart do it! Does it not prove you guilty of
pride, of passion, of sensuality, of an excessive fondness of the world and its
enjoyments? of murmuring, or at least of secretly repining against God, under
the strokes of an afflictive providence; of misspending a great deal of your
time; abusing the gifts of God's bounty to vain, if not, in some instances, to
pernicious purposes; of mocking him when you have pretended to engage in his
worship, "drawing near to him with your mouth and your lips while your heart
has been far front him?" (Isa. 29:13) Does not conscience condemn you of some
one breach of the law at least? And by one breach of it you are, in a sense, a
Scriptural sense, "become guilty of all," (Jam. 2:19) and are as incapable of
being justified before God, by any obedience of your own, as if you had
committed ten thousand offences. But, in reality, there are ten thousand and
more chargeable to your account. When you come to reflect on all your sins of
negligence, as we as on those of commission; on all the instances in which you
have "failed to do good when it was in the power of your hand to do it;" (Prov.
3:27) on all the instances in which acts of devotion have been omitted,
especially in secret; and on all those cases in which you have shown a stupid
disregard to the honor of God, and to the temporal and eternal happiness of
your fellow-creatures: when all these, I say, are reviewed, the number will
swell beyond all possibility of account, and force you to cry out, "Mine
iniquities are more than the hairs of my head." (Psal. 40:12) They will appear
in such a light before you, that your own heart will charge you with countless
multitudes; and how much more, "then, that God, who is greater than your heart,
and knoweth all things!" (1 John 3:20)
6. And say, sinner, is it a little thing that you
have presumed to set light by the authority of the God of heaven, and to
violate his law, if it had been by mere carelessness and inattention? How much
more heinous, therefore, is the guilt, when in an many instances you hare done
it knowingly and willfully! Give me leave seriously to ask you, and let me
entreat you to ask your own soul, "Against whom hast thou magnified thyself?
Against whom hast thou exalted thy voice," (2 Kings 19:22) or "lifted up thy
rebellious hand?" On whose law, O sinner, hast thou presumed to trample? and
whose friendship, and whose enmity, hast thou thereby dared to affront! Is it a
man like thyself that thou host insulted? Is it only a temporal monarch--only
one "who can kill thy body, and then hath no more that he can do?" (Luke,
12:4)
Nay, sinner, thou wouldst not have dared to treat
a temporal prince as thou hast treated the "King Eternal, Immortal," and
"Invisible." (1 Tim. 1:17) No price could have hired thee to deal by the
majesty of an earthly sovereign, as thou bast dealt by that God before whom the
cherubim and seraphim are continually bowing. Not one opposing or complaining,
disputing or murmuring word is heard among all the celestial legions, when the
intimations of his will are published to them. And who art thou, O wretched
man! who art thou, that thou shouldst oppose him? That thou shouldst oppose
and provoke a God of infinite power and terror, who needs but exert one single
act of his sovereign will, and thou art in a moment stripped of every
possession; cut off from every hope; destroyed and rooted up from existence, if
that were his pleasure; or, what is inconceivably conceivably worse, consigned
over to the severest and most lasting agonies? Yet this is the God whom thou
hast offended, whom thou hast affronted to his nice, presuming to violate his
express laws in his very presence. This is the God before whom thou standest as
a convicted criminal; convicted not of one or two particular offenses, but of
thousands and ten thousands; of a course and series of rebellion and
provocations, in which thou hast persisted more or less ever since thou want
born, and the particulars of which have been attended with almost every
conceivable circumstance of aggravation. Reflect on particulars, and deny the
charge if you can.
7. If knowledge be an aggravation of guilt, thy
guilt, O sinner, is greatly aggravated! For thou wast born in Emmanuel's land,
and God hath "written to thee the great things of his law," yet "thou hast
accounted them as a strange thing." (Hos. 8:12) Thou hast "known to do good,
and hast not done it;" (James 4:17) and therefore to thee the omission of it
has been sin indeed. "Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard?" (Isa. 30:28)
Wast thou not early taught the will of God? Hast thou not since received
repeated lessons, by which it has been inculcated again and again, in public
and in private, by preaching and reading the word of God? Nay, hath not thy
duty been in some instances so plain, that, even without any instruction it
all, thine own reason might easily have inferred at? And hast thou not also
been warned of the consequences of disobedience? Hast thou not "known the
righteous judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of
death?" Yet, thou hast, perhaps, "not only done the same, but hast had
pleasure in those that do them;" (Rom. 1:32) hast chosen them for thy most
intimate friends and companions; so as hereby to strengthen, by the force of
example and converse, the hands of each other in your iniquities.
8. Nay more, if Divine love and mercy be any
aggravation of the sins committed against it, thy crimes, O sinner, are
heinously aggravated. Must thou not acknowledge it, O foolish creature and
unwise! Hast thou not been "nourished and brought up by him as his child, and
yet hast rebelled against him?" (Isa. 1:2) Did not God "take you out of the
womb?" (Psal. 22:9) Did he not watch over you in your infant days, and guard
you from a multitude of dangers which the most careful parent or nurse could
not have observed or warded off? Has he not given you your rational powers? and
is it not by him you have been favored with every opportunity of improving
them? Has he not every day supplied your wants with an unwearied liberality,
and added, with respect to many who will read this, the delicacies of life to
its necessary supports? Has he not "heard you cry when trouble came upon you?"
(Job 27:9) and frequently appeared for your deliverance, when in the distress
of nature you have called upon him for help? Has be not rescued you from ruin,
when it seemed just ready to swallow you up; and healed your diseases, when it
seemed to all about you, that the residue of your days was cut off in the
midst? (Psal. 102:24) Or, if it has not been so, is not this long-continued and
uninterrupted health, which you have enjoyed for so many years, to be
acknowledged as an equivalent obligation? Look around upon all your
possessions, and say, what one thing have you in the world which his goodness
did not give you, and which he hath not thus far preserved to you? Add to all
this, the kind notice of his will which he hath sent you; the tender
expostulations which he hath used with you, to bring you to a wiser and better
temper; and the discoveries and gracious invitations of his Gospel which you
have heard, and which you have despised; and then say, whether your rebellion
has not been aggravated by the vilest ingratitude, and whether that aggravation
can be accounted small?
9. Again, if it be any aggravation of Sin to be
committed against conscience, thy crimes, O sinner! have been so aggravated.
Consult the records of it, and then dispute the fact if you can. "There is a
spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding;"
(Job 32:8) and that understanding will act, and a secret conviction or being
accountable to its Maker and Preserver is inseparable from the actings of it.
It is easy to object to human remonstrances, and to give things false colorings
before him; but the heart often condemns, while the tongue excuses. Have you
not often found it so? Has not conscience remonstrated against your past
conduct, and have not these remonstrances been very painful too! I have been
assured, by a gentleman of undoubted credit, that, when he was in the pursuit
of all the gayest sensualities of life, and was reckoned one of the happiest of
mankind, he has seen a dog come into the room where he was among his merry
companions, and has groaned inwardly and said, "O! that I had been that dog!"
And hast thou, O sinner, felt nothing like this? Has thy conscience been so
stupified, so "seared with a hot iron," (1 Tim. 4:2) that it has never cried
out for any of the violences which have been done it? Has it never warned thee
of the fatal consequences of what thou hast done in opposition to it? These
warnings are, in effect, the voice of God; they are the admonitions which he
gave thee by his vicegerent in thy breast. And when his sentence for thy evil
works is executed upon thee in everlasting death, thou shalt hear that voice
speaking to thee again in a louder tone and a severer accent than before; and
thou shalt be tormented with its upbraiding through eternity, because thou
wouldst not, in time, hearken to its admonitions.
10. Let me add farther, if it be any aggravation
that sin has been committed after God has been moving by his Spirit on the
mind, surely your sin has been attended with that aggravation too. Under the
Mosaic dispensation, dark and imperfect as it was, the Spirit strove with the
Jews else Stephen could not have charged it upon them, that through all their
generations "they had always resisted him." (Acts 7:51) Now, surely, we may
much more reasonably apprehend that he strives with sinners under the Gospel.
And have you never experienced any thing of this kind, even when there has been
no external circumstance to awaken you, nor any pious teacher near you? Have
you never perceived some secret impulse upon your mind, leading you to think of
religion, urging you to an immediate consideration or it, sweetly inviting you
to make trial of it, and warning you, that you would lament this stupid
neglect? O sinner, why were not these happy motions attended to? Why did you
not, as it were, spread out all the sail of your soul to catch that heavenly,
that favorable breeze? But you have carelessly neglected it: you have overborne
these kind influences. How reasonably then might the sentence have gone forth
in righteous displeasure, "My Spirit shall no more strive." (Gen. 6:3) And
indeed who can say that it is not already gone forth? If you feel no secret
agitation of mind, no remorse, no awakening while you read such a remonstrance
as this, there will be room, great room to suspect it.
11. There is indeed one aggravation more, which
may not attend your guilt--I mean that of being committed against solemn
covenant engagements: a circumstance which has lain heavy on the consciences of
many, who perhaps in the main series of their lives have served God with great
integrity. But let me call you to think to what this is owing. Is it not that
you have never personally made any solemn profession of devoting yourself to
God at all--have never done any thing which has appeared to your own
apprehension an act by which you have made a covenant with him, though you have
heard so much of his covenant, though you have been so solemnly and so tenderly
invited to it? And in this view, how monstrous must this circumstance appear,
which at first was mentioned as some alleviation of guilt! Yet I must add that
you are not, perhaps, altogether so free from guilt on this head as you may at
first imagine. Has your heart been, even from your youth, hardened to so
uncommon a degree that you have never cried to God in any season of danger and
difficulty? And did you never mingle vows with those cries? Did you never
promise, that, if God would hear and help you in that hour of extremity, you
would forsake your sins, and serve him as long as you lived? He heard and
helped you, or you had not been reading these lines; and, by such deliverance,
did as it were bind down your vows upon you; and therefore your guilt, in the
violation of them, remains before him, though you are stupid enough to forget
them. Nothing is forgotten, nothing is overlooked by him; and the day will
come, when the record shall be laid before you too.
12. And now, O sinner, think seriously with
thyself what defence thou wilt make to all this. Prepare thine apology; call
thy witnesses; make thine appeal from him whom thou hast thus offended, to some
superior judge, if such there be. Alas! those apologies are so weal: and vain,
that one of thy fellow-worms may easily detect and confound them; as I will
endeavor presently to show thee. But thy foreboding conscience already knows
the issue. Thou art convicted, convicted of the most aggravated offences. Thou
"hast not humbled thine heart, but lined up thyself against the Lord of
heaven," (Dan. 5:22,23) and "thy sentence shall come forth from his presence."
(Psal. 17:2) Thou hast violated his known laws; thou hast despised and abused
his numberless mercies; thou hast affronted conscience, his vicegerent in thy
soul; thou hast resisted and grieved his Spirit; thou hast trifled with him in
all thy pretended submissions; and, in one word, and that his own, "thou hast
done evil things as thou couldst." (Jer. 3:5) Thousands are no doubt already in
hell whose guilt never equaled thine; and it is astonishing that God hath
spared there to read this representation of thy case, or to make any pause upon
it. O waste not so precious a moment, but enter attentively, and as humbly us
thou canst, into these reflections which suit a case so lamentable and so
terrible as thine.
Confession of a Sinner convinced in general of his Guilt.
"O God! thou injured Sovereign, thou
all-penetrating and Almighty Judge! what shall I say to this charge! Shall I
pretend I am wronged by it, and stand on the defence in thy presence? I dare
not do it; for `thou knowest my foolishness, and none of my sins are hid from
thee.' Psal. 69:5) My conscience tells me that a denial of my crimes would only
increase them, and add new fuel to the fire of thy deserved wrath. `If I
justify myself, mine own mouth will condemn me; if I say I am perfect, it will
also prove me perverse;' (Job 9:20) `for innumerable evils have compassed me
about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look
up: they are,' as I have been told in thy name, `more than the hairs of my
head; therefore my heart faileth me.' (Psal. 40:12) I am more guilty than it is
possible for another to declare or represent. My heart speaks more than any
other accuser. And thou, O Lord, art much greater than my heart, and knowest
all things. (1 John 3:20)
"What has my life been but a course of rebellion
against thee? It is not this or that particular action alone I have to lament.
Nothing has been right in its principles, and views, and ends. My whole soul
has been disordered. All my thoughts, my affections, my desires, my pursuits
have been wretchedly alienated from thee. I have acted as if I had hated thee,
who art infinitely the loveliest of all beings; as if I had been contriving how
I might tempt thee to the uttermost, and weary out thy patience, marvelous as
it is. My actions have been evil, my words yet more evil than they! and, O
blessed God, my heart, how much more corrupt than either! What an inexhausted
fountain of sin has there been in it! A fountain of original corruption, which
mingled its bitter streams with the days of early childhood; and which, alas!
flows on even to this day, beyond what actions or words could express. I see
this to have, been the case with regard to what I can particularly survey. But,
oh! how many months and years have I forgotten, concerning which I only know
this in the general, that they are much like those I can remember; except it
be, that I have been growing worse and worse, and provoking thy patience more
and more, though every new exercise of it was more and more wonderful.
"And how am I astonished that thy forbearance is
still continued! it is because thou art `God, and not man.' (Hos. 11:9) Had I,
a sinful worm, been thus injured, I could not have endured it. Had I been a
prince, I had long since done justice on any rebel whose crimes had borne but a
distant resemblance to mine. Had I been a parent, I had long since cast off the
ungrateful child who had made me such a return as I have all my life long been
making to thee, O thou Father of my spirit! The flame of natural affection
would have been extinguished, and his sight and his very name would have become
hateful to me. Why then, O Lord, am I not `cast out from thy presence?' (Jer.
52:3) Why am I not sealed up under an irreversible sentence of destruction!
That I live, I owe to thine indulgence. But, oh! if there be yet any way of
deliverance, if there be yet any hope for so guilty a creature, may it be
opened upon me by thy Gospel and thy grace! And if any farther alarm,
humiliation, or terror be necessary to my security and salvation, may I meet
them and bear them all! Wound my heart, O Lord, so that thou wilt but
afterwards `heal it;' and break it in pieces, if thou wilt but at length
condescend to bind it up." (Hos.6:1)