d denounce myself. I hang myself up with this rope
on the accursed tree. And thus it was that while other men were
crucifying their Prince afresh, Mr. Desires-awake was crucifying himself
with and after his Prince. And thus it was that while the men and the
women of the town so hated and so mocked Mr. Desires-awake, his Prince so
loved and so honoured him.

3. 'Oh let not my Lord be angry; and why inquirest Thou after the name
of such a dead dog as I am?' said Desires-awake to his Prince. 'Behold,
now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord which am but dust and
ashes,' said Abraham. 'If I wash myself with snow water, and make my
hands never so clean, yet shalt thou plunge me into the ditch, and mine
own clothes shall abhor me,' said Job. 'My wounds stink and are corrupt;
my loins are filled with a loathsome disease, and there is no soundness
in my flesh,' said David. 'But we are all as an unclean thing,' said
Isaiah, 'and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.' 'I am the
chief of sinners,' said the apostle. 'Hold your peace; I am a devil and
not a man,' said Philip Neri to his sons. 'I am a sinner, and worse than
the chief of sinners, yea, a guilty devil,' said Samuel Rutherford. 'I
hated the light; I was a chief--the chief of sinners,' said Oliver
Cromwell. 'I was more loathsome in my own eyes than a toad,' said John
Bunyan. 'Sin and corruption would as naturally bubble out of my heart as
water would bubble out of a fountain. I could have changed hearts with
anybody. I thought none but the devil himself could equal me for
wickedness and pollution of mind.' 'O Despise me not,' said Bishop
Andrewes, 'an unclean worm, a dead dog, a putrid corpse. The just
falleth seven times a day; and I, an exceeding sinner, seventy times
seven. Me, O Lord, of sinners chief, chiefest, and greatest.' And
William Law, 'An unclean worm, a dead dog, a stinking carcass. Drive, I
beseech Thee, the serpent and the beast out of me. O Lord, I detest and
abhor myself for all these my sins, and for all my abuse of Thine
infinite mercy.' From all this, then, you will see that this dead dog of
ours with the rope upon his head was no strange sight at Emmanuel's
pavilion. And you and I shall still be in the same saintly succession if
we go continually with his words in our mouth, and with his instrument in
our hands and on our heads.

4. 'The Prince to whom I went,' said Mr. Desires-awake, 'is such a one
for beauty