let us be ashamed of ourselves, that after so much mercy
we should be yet in our sins and trespasses.

There is a third application, which I intend for the ministry, who ought
to go before the people of God in the example of repentance and
humiliation. You know the old observation, _Raro vidi clericum
poenitentem_,--I have seldom seen a clergyman penitent. As Christ saith of
rich men (Mark x. 24, 25), I may say of learned men, It is easier for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a man that trusts in his
learning to enter into the kingdom of heaven. He will needs maintain the
lawfulness of all which he hath done, and will not be, as this text would
have him, ashamed of all that he hath done. Yet it is not impossible with
God to make such an one deny himself, and that whatsoever in him exalts
itself against Christ should be brought into captivity to the obedience of
Christ (2 Cor. x. 5). Among all that were converted by the ministry of the
apostles, I wonder most at the conversion of a great company of priests,
Acts vi. 7. I do not suspect, as two learned men have done,(1384) that the
text is corrupted in that place, and that it should be otherwise read. I
am the rather satisfied, because there is nothing there mentioned of the
conversion of the high priest, or of the chief priests, the heads of the
twenty-four orders which were upon the council, and had condemned Christ:
the place cannot be understood but of a multitude of common or inferior
priests, even as, by proportion, in Hezekiah's reformation, the Levites
were more upright in heart than the priests, 2 Chron. xxix. 34.

And now many of the inferior clergy (as they were abusively called) are
more upright in heart unto this present reformation than any of those who
had assumed to themselves high degrees in the church. The hardest point of
all is, so to embrace and follow reformation as to be ashamed of former
prevarications and pollutions. But in this also the Holy Ghost hath set
examples before the ministers of the gospel. I read, 2 Chron. xxx. 15,
"The priests and the Levites were ashamed, and sanctified themselves, and
brought in the burnt-offerings into the house of the Lord." They thought
it not enough to be sanctified, but they were ashamed that they had been
before defiled. A great prophet is not content to have his judgment
rectified which had been in error, but he is ashamed of the error he had
been in; "So foolish was I (saith he) and ignoran