make now the firm resolution to offend thee no more.
Alas! was it just, was it right, that after being brought into existence by God, and receiving innumerable benefits at his hand, I should be so ungrateful to offend him as I have done? When this unseen and omnipotent hand formed me in my mother’s womb, and gave me hands, feet, eyes, ears, and a heart, was it for me to use them in this way as so many instruments to insult and violate thy sublime Majesty? Ah ! unhappy eyes! O wicked hands! O faithless heart! you by your sins have been the cause of grief to a God of infinite goodness, the most loving and tender of fathers.
III. Consideration. Upon the Jove of Jesus Christ, who suffered for our sins.
Look upon your loving Saviour on the cross of Calvary! His sacred hands and feet are pierced through and through with rude nails hammered deep into the wood: his kingly head is crowned with thorns; his sacred body is covered with marks of the cruel scourges; and his unspeakable agony appears in his dying eyes and the convulsions of his suffering limbs. Who is it? and what is the cause of this bloody spectacle? Ah! sinner, it is your Saviour, and your sins have brought him to this sad extremity. Yes, for your sake he became man, for the pardon of your sins he suffered and died. Cruel Jews! cruel soldiers! but far more cruel sinners, who, in our day, still crucify their Lord, and mock at his pains; for the Apostle speaks of them when he says: “ They crucify again to themselves the Son of God, and make a mockery of him.” (Heb . vi 6.)
