on the present state of your mind. Are you burdened by sin? begin by confessing your sins. Are you rejoicing in God's goodness? pour out your heart first in grateful thanksgivings, and then confess your unworthiness of every good. "Is any afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing Psalms. James v, 5.

We will now enlarge upon each of the preceding parts of prayer.

I. CONFESSION.

Under this head express the present feelings of your soul, respecting your sinfulness and guilt. The more particular you are in enumerating those sins of which conscience accuses you, the more you aggravate your offences, and condemn, and abase yourself before God, the more He will lift you up.

Acknowledge then His spotless holiness, His almighty power, His perfect justice, and that you cannot approach with comfort, or confidence, but through the advocate of sinners, Jesus Christ the righteous, and with the feeling of the publican cry only for mercy.

-You are

Do you feel your continual proneness and propensity to sin? Confess your ORIGINAL CORRUPTION— a transgressor from the womb, (Isa. xlviii, 8.) Shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin; (Ps. li, 5.) by nature dead in trespasses and sins, and the child of wrath, Eph. ii, 5. Mark also the progress of sin, the sins of childhood, and of riper years. You may join Jeremiah in saying, "We have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers, even unto this day." Jer. iii, 25. Observe how this corruption has defiled your UNDERSTANDING, SO that you may have often to apply the description, not liking to retain God in their knowledge. (Rom. i, 28.) to yourself. Even your CONSCIENCE will,

at times, appear to be past feeling, being seared as with a hot iron. 1 Tim. iv, 2. Your AFFECTIONS have been fixed on evil things, (Matt. xv, 19.) and you can say from experience, the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Jer. xvii, 9. The wILL has become a servant to sin, (2 Pet. ii, 19.) brought in bondage unto corruption. The MEMORY has been forgetful of what is good, and retentive only of evil. Heb. ii, 1.

The powers of the soul have thus been corrupted in the fall, nor have the MEMBERS OF THE BODY been less estranged from God. The eye is full of adultery, pride, and envy. 2 Pet. ii, 14. The ear uncircumcised, Acts vii, 51; often open to slander, malignity, and sin: and often shut against divine truth. The tongue is a world of iniquity, defiling the whole body. James iii, 6. The mouth full of cursing and bitterness. The feet swift in the ways of sin. Rom. iii, 15. In short, all the members of the body have been yielded up as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. Rom. vi, 13. Those who know their own hearts, will be ready to acknowledge, that the seeds of the worst and most aggravated wickednesses which have been practised by other men, lie hid therein, (Matt. xv, 19.) and are only restrained from bursting forth by God's grace. The pious Martyr Bradford, when he saw a poor criminal led to execution, exclaimed, there, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford." He knew that the same evil principles were in his own heart which had brought the criminal to that shameful end.

But should you, from ignorance of your own heart be ready to think well of yourself, consider your ACTUAL TRANSGRESSIONS. Go through the ten commandments. See, in the first, how often you have loved the creature more than the Creator, and been among those who are

lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. See, in the second, how often you have disregarded, or slightly performed his holy worship. In the third, observe your profanation of his holy name, by an irreverent and careless use of it; and of his holy character by unholy words, or an unholy life. In the fourth, notice all your sabbath sins. In the fifth, your sins respecting your relatives as parents, brothers, sisters, and others. In the sixth, your evil thoughts of others, remembering, he that hateth his brother is a murderer. In the seventh, your licentious imaginations, "whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." By the eighth, you may bring to your recollection your partiality or hypocrisy in your dealings and transactions; by the ninth, your duplicity and want of truth; and by the tenth, your covetousness and love of worldly things.

And in order to discover more of the full extent of your sinfulness, remember that you are accountable to God, not only for SINS COMMITTED, but, for DUTIES OMITTED; and that your SINS IN THOUGHT, as well as those IN WORD AND ACTION, expose you to the displeasure of God; (Prov. xv, 26.) the thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord.

These are sins more especially against the law of God. But in SINS RELATING TO THE GOSPEL you will see more of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and thence have a more abundant cause for penitent confession. Sin, when you have heard and received the Gospel, becomes peculiarly hateful, as it is sin against love itself. Hence unbelief, impenitence, and self-righteousness, are so burdensome to the mind of the believer, and so much humble him before his God.

Any unbelief in or doubt about the love and

grace

of

God, after such displays of that love as the Bible discovers, confirmed in so many ways, and by such powerful and numerous witnesses, especially after those gracious deliverances which we have often experienced, is no common sin. It shews the Christian how he merits his Saviour's upbraidings of unbelief and hardness of heart; O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Luke' xxiv, 25. He will often be disposed to ask himself, "where is that simple reliance on the blood, righteousness, intercession, and grace of Christ, which should give the soul continual peace and joy." He will be humbled also by the mixture of selfrighteousness which appears in all his attempts to glorify God. He will often seem to himself, like the Jews, "who, going about to establish their own righteousness, did not submit themselves to the righteousness of God;" (Rom. x, 3.) and this mark of remaining pride, and selfconceit, will be confessed and bewailed. He will be greatly affected by the hardness and impenitence of his heart. The consideration that the goodness of God should have led him to repentance, and yet that he is so little affected, or moved by it, so often apparently totally insensible to it, will sometimes come home to his heart with such effect, as to bring him to the throne of grace in the most penitent confessions of a broken and contrite spirit. The particularity of our confession in all these things is of great importance to the moving and stirring up of our dull affections.

These SINS will be seen to be AGGRAVATED by the consideration of the majesty, mercy, and holiness of that God against whom they have been committed, and of the tendency of all sin. The Christian remembers how it has debased the soul of man, the fairest and most glorious

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image of God on earth; how it nailed the only Son of God on the tree; how it causes every sorrow here, and eternal sorrow in the life to come.

The MULTITUDE OF OUR SINS, will be another part of our confession; we shall say of them with David, They are more than the hairs of mine head. Ps. xl. 12. Who can tell how oft he offendeth? Ps. xix. 11. or with Ezra, our iniquities are increased over us, and our trespasses are grown up unto the heavens.” Ezra ix, 6.

There are also SOME PARTICULARLY GRIEVOUS SINS of which conscience justly accuses us. Sins, which, however now they may be forgotten, caused peculiar uneasiness and anxiety when they were first committed. I mean sins committed, more or less, against light and knowledge, against the checks of conscience, against the motions of the Spirit of God, against a bleeding Saviour, and a Father of mercies. Sins committed more or less presumptuously and wilfully, deliberately, and repeatedly.

Feeling this, you will be ready to ACKNOWLEDGE THE PUNISHMENT DUE ON ACCOUNT OF YOUR SINS, and to say with Jeremiah, "It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not." Lam. iii, 22. We have sinned in the enjoyment of every blessing; and it is right and meet we should confess that God would be just in depriving us of them, or punishing us in the use of them.

The imperfect and DEFECTIVE CHARACTER OF ALL OUR OBEDIENCE, should also be plainly confesset.-How slight and transient is our repentance!-how slow have we been to be reconciled to those with whom we have been at enmity! Have we yet fully made restitution to those we may have wronged in any way, either as to their character, their comfort, or their property? by neg