me ariseth
properly from a filthy act, though no other evil be to follow upon it.

2. As we are ashamed of acts of filthiness, so of acts of folly. A natural
man may judge himself a fool in regard of the circumstances or consequents
of his sin, but he is not convinced that sin in itself is an act of
madness and folly. When the child of God is humbled he becomes a fool in
his own eyes,--he perceives he had done like a mad fool, 1 Cor. iii. 18;
therefore he is said then to come to himself, Luke xv. 17.

3. The child of God is ashamed of sin as an act of unkindness and
unthankfulness to a sweet merciful Lord, Psal. cxxx. 4; Rom. ii. 4. Though
there were no other evil in sin, the conscience of so much mercy and love
so far abused, and so unkindly recompensed, is that which confoundeth a
penitent sinner. As the wife of a kind husband, if she play the whore
(though the world know it not), and if her husband, when he might divorce
her, shall still love her and receive her into his bosom; such a one, if
she have at all any sense, or any bowels of sorrow, must needs be
swallowed up of shame and confusion for her undutifulness and treachery to
such a husband. But now the hypocrite is not at all troubled or afflicted
in spirit for sin as it is an act of unkindness to God.

4. Shame, as philosophers have defined it,(1386) is "the fear of a just
reproof:" not simply the fear of a reproof, but the fear of a just
reproof. That is servile; this filial. The child of God is ashamed of the
very guiltiness, and of that which may be justly laid to his charge; the
hypocrite not so. Saul was not ashamed of his sin, but he was ashamed that
Samuel should reprove him before the elders of the people, 1 Sam. xv. 15,
30. Christ's adversaries were ashamed (Luke xiii. 17), not of their error,
but because their mouths were stopped before the people, and they could
not answer him. A hypocrite is ashamed, "as a thief is ashamed when he is
found," Jer. ii. 26; mark that, "when he is found;" a thief is not ashamed
of his sin, but because he is found in it, and so brought to a shameful
end.

5. When the cause of God is in hand, a true penitent is so ashamed of
himself that he fears the people of God shall be put to shame for his
sake, and that it shall go the worse with them because of his vileness and
guiltiness. This made David pray, "O God, thou knowest my foolishness; and
my sins are not hid from thee. Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God
of h