tian. Nor should we ever fail humbly to acknowledge, and earnestly to beg pardon of God for, those manifold offences, which elude our care, and even escape our obfervation; after the example of the pious Pfalmift in my text, faying,- Who, O Lord, can underftand his Errors? Cleanfe Thou me from fecret Faults !"

To represent to you, first, the nature and quality of those errors and fecret faults, from which it fo highly concerns us to be cleanfed-And then to offer a few fuch useful reflections as properly arife from the fubject, fhall be the bufinefs of the following difcourfe.

I. Now the errors pointed at by the inspired writer of this pfalm, are without doubt those flips and failings, to which we give in general the favourable name of fins of infirmity, i. e. fuch fins

as

as are much rather to be imputed to the weakness of our nature, than to the malice of our wills; and which have indeed no more of wilfulness in them, than what is juft neceffary to denominate them fins. For that by errors was here meant fins in an inferior degree, is plain from his praying to be cleansed from them, under the character of faults. fecret faults, as they are defervedly called, both because they are committed unawares, through inadvertency, furprize, or fome fudden paffion; and because too they are ufually forgot almost as soon as they are committed.

But the better to ftate the true notion of these, and withal to distinguish them from fuch crimes as are accompanied with a greater degree of malignity, I shall take occafion to fpecify them in

certain inftances.

VOL. II.

L

I. Now

1. Now that wherein we are most liable to err, and to which through the frailty of our nature we are most unequal, is beyond all question the government of our thoughts.-The very best men cannot but be fenfible how frequently they are overtaken in a fault from the first motions of their own hearts. Nay who is there but offends daily in this refpect? For among these are to be reckoned all those fudden gusts of the paffions, which anticipate reason, and prevent all manner of deliberation. Such was that furprizing, and as it were inftantaneous timidity of Peter, by which he was driven to deny his Lord; whom he had just before too endeavoured to defend with a blameable impetuofity.— Such was the hafty anger of Paul, when he unwittingly reviled the High Priest. Such was the transport of the Apostles, of whom it is faid, "They believed not for joy," when Jefus himself stood in the

midst of them, after that he was rifen from the dead. Of this fort too feems to have been the precipitate despair of the Keeper of the Prifon in the Acts; who upon awaking out of fleep, and feeing the prison doors open, drew out his fword and would have killed himself, fuppofing that the prifoners had been fled.

But befides these and the like intemperate effects of sudden paffion and furprize, what man has not caufe to complain of the many impure, uncharitable, and irreligious ideas, which obtrude themselves upon the mind whether he will or no, even to the reluctance and pain of every good perfon ?

It is too notorious to every one's felf, that his moft folemn fervices are not altogether free from thefe impious intruders. Unhallowed images, like so many dead flies, corrupt the offering. How

apt is the idolatrous imagination, when we are converfing with spiritual objects, and particularly in prayer, to draw the Deity with certain features and lineaments, instead of directing itself by his glorious and effential attributes, whereby alone it is given unto us to know Him? And when the attention is fixed in the best manner we are able, how easy, how infenfible the deviations from the important bufinefs we are fo much concerned to pursue? How quick the tranfitions from heavenly to earthly subjects, from eternal to temporal matters, from the word of God to the ways of Men?

But

Thus prone are we to error through the influence of our thoughts. feeing every fault rifes in degree, in proportion to the concern the will has in it; and fince the first emotions of the passions, the first rifings of the imagination, are very little, if at all, in our own power;