Five particulars to be observed in praying against guilt 1/3

           (a) Pray with a deep sense and sorrow for thy sins.  The worse nonsense in prayer is of the heart, when that hath no sense of the sin [the person praying] deprecates, or of the mercy he desires.  Nothing more hardens the heart of God against our prayer, than the hardness of our heart in prayer; and, on the contrary, no such way to melt God into pity as for our own hearts to dissolve into sorrow.  He that would have us ‘give wine unto those that be of heavy hearts,’ Prov. 31:6, saves this vessel—the promise, I mean, of pardoning mercy, which holds the sweetest wine in God’s cellar—‘to revive the heart of the contrite ones,’ Isa. 57:15.  A tear in the eye for sin adorns the creature more than a jewel in his ear, and his prayer more than all the embroidery of expres­sions in it can do.  While the publican smote his own breast, he got into God's bosom, and carried a pardon home with him.  Will Christ drop his blood to pro­cure thy pardon who canst shed no tears for thy sin? The truth is, here lies the difficulty of the work—not how to move God, but how to get the sinner's own heart melted.  It is harder to get sin felt by the crea­ture, than the burden, when felt, removed by the hand of a forgiving God.  Never was tender-hearted chirurgeon more willing to take up the vein and bind up the wound of his fainting patient, when he hath bled enough, than God is, by his pardoning mercy, to ease the troubled spirit of a mourning penitent.  It is one rule he gives his servants in their practice upon their spiritual patients, to beware of making too great an evacuation in the souls of poor sinners by exces­sive humiliation, lest thereby the spirits of their faith be too much weakened: ‘Sufficient to such a man is this punishment,’ &c.  ‘So that...ye ought rather to forgive him, and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow,’ II Cor. 2:6, 7.

           (b) Justify and clear God in all the expressions of his displeasure for thy sins.  Thou dost perhaps carry the marks of his anger on thy flesh in some outward judgement; or, which is worse, the terrors of the Lord have taken hold of thy soul, and like poisoned arrows lie burning in thy conscience, where they stick.  Acknowledge him just, and all this that has come upon thee ‘less than thy iniquities deserve,’ Ezra 9:13. The way to escape the fatal stroke of his axe is to kiss the block. Clear his justice, and fear not but his mercy will save thy life. Thou hast a promise on thy side: ‘If then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity: then will I remember my covenant,’ Lev. 26:41, 42.  David took this course and sped, ‘For I acknowledge my transgressions,’ Ps. 51:3.  And why is he so willing to spread his sins in his confession before the Lord?  See ver. 4: ‘That thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.’  He would have all the world know that God did him no wrong in the judgments that came upon him; he takes all the blame upon himself.