hey will confess
themselves, in general terms, to be "_miserable sinners_:" this is a
tenet of their creed, and they feel even proud in avowing it. They will
occasionally also lament particular failings: but this confession is
sometimes obviously made, in order to draw forth a compliment for the
very opposite virtue: and where this is not the case, it is often not
difficult to detect, under this false guise of contrition, a secret
self-complacency, arising from the manifestations which they have
afforded of their acuteness or candour in discovering the infirmity in
question, or of their frankness or humility in acknowledging it. This
will scarcely seem an illiberal suspicion to any one, who either watches
the workings of his own heart, or who observes, that the faults
confessed in these instances are very seldom those, with which the
person is most clearly and strongly chargeable.

_We must plainly warn these men_, and the consideration is seriously
pressed on their instructors also, _that they are in danger of deceiving
themselves. Let them beware lest they be nominal Christians of another
sort._ These persons require to be reminded, that there is no _short
compendious method of holiness_: but that it must be the business of
their whole lives to grow in grace, and continually adding one virtue to
another, as far as may be, "to go on towards perfection." "He only that
doeth righteousness is righteous." Unless "they bring forth the fruits
of the Spirit," they can have no sufficient evidence that they have
received that "Spirit of Christ, without which they are none of his."
But where, on the whole, our unwillingness to pass an unfavourable
judgment may lead us to indulge a hope, that "the root of the matter is
found in them;" yet we must at least declare to them, that instead of
adorning the doctrine of Christ, they disparage and discredit it. The
world sees not their secret humiliation, not the exercises of their
closets, but it is acute in discerning practical weaknesses: and if it
observe that they have the same eagerness in the pursuit of wealth or
ambition, the same vain taste for ostentation and display, the same
ungoverned tempers, which are found in the generality of mankind; it
will treat with contempt their pretences to superior sanctity and
indifference to worldly things, and will be hardened in its prejudices
against the only mode, which God has provided for our escaping the wrath
to come, and obtaining etern