The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 Excerpt: ...to be washed off with a lesser shower. 3. Our sorrow for sins is then best accounted of for its degree, when it, together with all the penal and afflictive duties of repentance, shall have equalled or exceeded the pleasure we had in commission of the sin. 4. True repentance is a punishing duty, and acts its sorrow; and judges and condemns the sin by voluntary submitting to such sadnesses as God sends on us, or (to prevent the judgment of God) by judging ourselves, and punishing our bodies and our spirits by such instruments of piety as are troublesome to the body: such as are fasting, watching, long prayers, troublesome postures in our prayers, expensive alms, and all outward acts of humiliation. For he that must judge himself, must condemn himself if he be guilty; and if he be condemned, he must be punished; and if he be so judged, it will help to prevent 'the judgment of the Lord, St. Paul instructing us in this particular.1 But I before intimated that the punishing actions of repentance are only actions of sorrow, and therefore are to make up the proportions of it. For our grief may be so full of trouble as to outweigh all the burdens of fasts and bodily afflictions, and then the other are the less necessary; and when they are used, the benefit of them is to obtain of God a remission or a lessening of those temporal judgments which God hath decreed against the sins, as it was in the case of Ahab; but the sinner is not, by anything of this, reconciled to the eternal favour of God; for, as yet, this is but the introduction to repentance. 5. Every true penitent is obliged to confess his sins, and to humble himself before God for ever. Confession of sins hath a special promise: "If we confess our sins, He 1 i Cor. xi. 31, is faithful and just to forgive...