A second volume of discourses or sermons on several scriptures

As many little Sins of an ordinary Infirmity, do equal the Guilt of one great Sin: So truly when we thus every Day confess many of them together, we ought to be deeply affected with true godly Sorrow, and as earnestly pray for the pardon of them, and as importunately beg power and strength against them, with the same Tears, Groans and holy Shame, as if that Day we had committed ⟨p. 94⟩some more gross and heinous Sin. When therefore in your Prayers you come to this Request▪ Lord pardon me the Sins and Failings of this Day, think with your self, now I ought to be as fervent, as affectionate and penitent, as if I were confessing Drunkenness or Murder; for possibly the little Sins and Failings that I have committed this Day, if they were all of them put together, the Guilt of them may amount to be as great as one of those gross Sins. Now upon such a general Confession and Humiliation as this is, God issues out a Pardon in course for our common and ordinary Infirmities, and by one Act of Oblivion blots out many Acts of Provocation.

There are two Considerations that may be very useful to us in order to the humbling of our selves before God for little Sins.

¹First, Consider these little Sins are those Sins whereby we continually without intermission offend against God, and provoke him against our own Souls. Still either the Matter of our Actions are ⟨p. 95⟩contrary to the Holy Will and Law of God, or the manner in which we perform them: If the Substance of our Actions are not evil, yet the Circumstances are, there's not a Word in Prayer, not a Thought in Meditation, but ath the Guilt of some Sin cleaving to […]; and if it be so with us in our Holy Performances, how do you think then it s with us in our common and ordinary Conversation? And should it not deeply humble us to consider, that there is ot one hour, no, nor one moment of ur Lives free from Sin, that our Pulses eat too slow to keep an Account of our ins by; our Thoughts are continual in Motion without intermission or cessation, and yet, Every one of the Imaginations of the Thoughts of our Hearts are only vil, and that continually,