The Soul's Preparation for Christ

First, it is not every sight of sin will serve the turn, nor every apprehension of a mans vileness;¹ but it must have these two properties in it, First, he must see sin clearly; Secondly, convictingly. ⟨p. 13⟩First, he that will see sin clearly, must see it truly and fully, & be able to fathom the compass of his corruptions and to dive into the depth of the wretchedness of his vile heart,² otherwise it will befall a mans sin as it doth the wound of a mans body, when a man looks into the wound overly, and doth not search it to the bottom, it begins to fester and rankle, and so in the end he is slain by it; so it is with most sinners, we carry all away with this, We are sinners; and such ordinary confessions; but we never see the depth of the wound of sin, and so are slain by our sins: it is not a general, slight, & confused sight of sin that will serve the turn: it is not enough to say, It is my infirmity, and I cannot amend it: and we are all sinners, and so forth. No, this is the ground why we mistake our evils, and reform not our ways, because we have a slight and an overly sight of sin: a man must prove his ways as the goldsmith doth his gold in the fire, a man must search narrowly, and have much light to see what the vileness of his own heart is, and to see what his sins are, that do procure the wrath of God against him, as the prophet David saith:³ I considered my ways, and turned my feet into thy testimonies: the phrase in the original is thus much; I turned my sins upside down; he looked all over his ways. And as Zechariah saith:⁴ When the people shall look unto him whom they have pierced, and consider the nature of their sins, then shall they mourn: Note, that this clear sight of sin may appear in two particulars.

First, it is not every sight of sinne will serve the turne, nor every apprehension of a mans vilenesse;¹ but it must have these two properties in it, First, he must see sinne clearely; Secondly, convictingly.