VirginiaHuguenot
Puritanboard Librarian
Richard Alleine, A Rebuke to Backsliders and a Spur for Loiterers, pp. 7-8, cited by Randall J. Pederson, Day by Day with the English Puritans, p. 145 (May 18):
Friends, whatever your faults are, do not mince the matter, do not count your errors little errors, your sins, little sins. Be sure of this, that mincing is not the way to mending. Shame yourselves before the Lord, abase yourselves in His sight; study the greatness of those you count your little sins; rip open your hearts, and find out what a nest of wickedness is there; ransack your your ways, and see what a course of folly and vanity is to be found there, and do not go about to hide them. "He that covereth his sins shall not prosper" (Prov. 28:13). Do not go about to hide them, but confess them, and spread them before the Lord, till your soul is ashamed. O that this word might send us to our homes, every one of us with an aching heart, and a blushing face, that it might make us all fall down before God, with Ezra's words in our mouth, "O my God, I am ashamed, and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God, for our inquities are increased over our head, and our trespasses are grown up unto the heavens" (Ezra 9:6). Let us blush at our hypocrisy, let us blush at our lukewarmness, let us blush at our wordliness and carnality; let us blush in our prayers, let us go blushing home, and weeping as we go; let us acknowledge we all are as an unclean thing, and our righteousness is as filthy rags.
