A26701:387
The way to true happiness in a serious treatise /
The way to true happiness in a serious treatise / by Joseph Alleine.
London : Printed and are to be sold by Nevil Simmons, 1678
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Introduction › Chapter 6 › A short Soliloqui for an unregenerate sinner.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Oh my sins! my sins! Behold a troop cometh! Multitudes! multitudes! there is no number of their Armies. Innumerable evils have compassed me about; mine iniquities have taken hold upon me; they have set themselves in array against me. Oh! it were better to have all the Regiments of Hell come against me, than to have my sins to fall upon me, to the spoiling of my Soul. Lord, how am I surrounded! How many are they that rise up against me! They have beset me behind and before: they swarm within me and without me: they have possessed all my powers, and have •ortified mine unhappy soul, as a Garrison, which this brood of Hell doth man, and maintain, against the God that made me.
And they are as mighty, as they be many. The sands are many, but then they are not great: the mountains great, but then they are not many. But woe is me, my sins are as many ⟨p. 180⟩as the sands, sand as mighty as the Mountains. Their weight is greater than their number. It were better that the Rocks and the Mountains should fall upon them, than the crushing and unsupportable load of my own sins. Lord, I am heavy loaden: let mercy help, or I am gone. Unload me of this heavy guilt, this sinking load, or I am crushed without hope, and must be pressed down to Hell. If my grief were thoroughly weighed, and my sins laid in the balances together, they would be heavier than the sand of the Sea, therefore my words are swallowed up: they would weigh down all the rocks and the hills, and turn the balance against all the Isles of the Earth. O Lord, thou knowest my manifold transgressions, and my mighty sins.
And they are as mighty, as they be many. The sands are many, but then they are not great: the mountains great, but then they are not many. But wo is me, my sins are as many ⟨p. 180⟩as the sands, sand as mighty as the Mountains. Their weight is greater than their number. It were better that the Rocks and the Mountains should fall upon them, than the crushing and unsupportable load of my own sins. Lord, I am heavy loaden: let mercy help, or I am gone. Unload me of this heavy guilt, this sinking load, or I am crushed without hope, and must be pressed down to Hell. If my grief were thorowly weighed, and my sins laid in the ballances together, they would be heavier than the sand of the Sea, therefore my words are swallowed up: they would weigh down all the rocks and the hills, and turn the ballance against all the Isles of the Earth. O Lord, thou knowest my manifold transgressions, and my mighty sins.