by David Clarkson
Consider the multitude of your sins. If any one sin be so infinitely evil in itself and in its effects, oh how evil is he, what need to repent, who is guilty of a multitude of sins! And indeed so many, so numerous are our sins, as it will be hard to find an expression which may help you to conceive how many they are. I cannot better shew how innumerable they are, than by shewing they are innumerable.
And this will be evident, if ye consider that before repentance, every act, word, thought, is a sin; you can do, speak, think, nothing but sin. A bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit. A soul, till implanted into Christ, can bring forth nothing that is good, nothing but sin. And one of the first-fruits after this implantation is repentance; till then nothing but wild grapes. Now if every act you did since you were born be sin, put all those acts together, and into what a multitude will they swell! They are without number, beyond knowledge. He that takes the strictest survey of his life and actions that is possible, cannot give an account of ‘one of a thousand’, Job 9: 3. Let him be as diligent as can be, yet where he takes notice of one, a thousand will escape his observation. Those that we know are not the thousand part of those we know not. The stars in the heavens, the hairs of our head, are far more easily numbered than our sinful acts. They are like the sands on the sea-shore, which cannot be numbered. And if sinful acts be innumerable, what account can we take of our words! They are more than innumerable, as being innumerably more than our actions; ay, and our thoughts more than both. What then? How many
are all put together? Ask man, ask angels; both will be nonplussed: Ps. 19, ‘Who can understand his errors,’ &c., Ps. 40: 12.
We lose ourselves when we speak of the sins of our lives. It may astonish any considering man to take notice how many sins he is guilty of any one day; how many sins accompany any one single act; nay, how many bewray themselves in any one religious duty. Whensoever ye do anything forbidden, you omit the duty at that time commanded; and whenever you neglect that which is enjoined, the omission is joined with the acting of something forbidden; so that the sin, whether omission or commission, is always double: nay, the apostle makes every sin tenfold, James 2: 10. That which seems one to us, according to the sense of the law, and the account of God, is multiplied by ten. He breaks every command by sinning directly against one, and so sins ten times at once; besides that swarm of sinful circumstances and aggravations which surround every act in such numbers, as atoms use to surround your body in a dusty room; you may more easily number these than those. And though some count these but fractions, incomplete sins, yet even from hence it is more difficult to take an account of their number.
And, which is more for astonishment, pick out the best religious duty that ever you performed, and even in that performance you may find such a swarm of sins as cannot be numbered. In the best prayer that ever you put up to God, irreverence, lukewarmness, unbelief, spiritual pride, self-seeking, hypocrisy, distractions, &c., and many more, that an enlightened soul grieves and bewails; and yet there are many more that the pure eye of God discerns, than any man does take notice of.
And besides, every one of these many sins manifest themselves in every duty many several ways, and every way sinful.
Now if so many sins be discernable in the best duty, and many more in every unlawful acts, and the acts themselves be innumerable that have such a numberless multitude of sinful attendants, what do ye think will the total arise to? Even such a sum, as all the arithmetic of men and angels cannot give an account of. If one sin, being so infinitely evil, deserve infinite punishment, being so horribly injurious to God, being so dangerously mischievous to the soul, call for shame, sorrow, indignation, hatred, &c., oh what then does such a multitude of sins, numberless even to astonishment, call for!
Think of the guilt of sin, that you may be humbled. Think of the power of sin, that you may seek strength against it. Think not of the matter of sin . . . lest you be more and more entangled. JOHN OWEN