I. How is it that sin possesses the power of deceiving; that, being foul, it can often look so fair, or where it cannot conceal altogether, can yet conceal to so large an extent, its native hideousness? I need hardly answer that it derives this power altogether from ourselves. There is that in every one of us which is always ready to take the part of sin, to plead for sin, to be upon sin's side, sin having a natural correspondence and affinity with everything which is corrupt and fallen within us. There is (1) our love of ease; (2) our love of pleasure; (3) our pride. All the pride as well as all the passions of man are enlisted on the side of sin.
II. How shall we deliver ourselves from these sorceries of sin? How shall we understand our errors, or at least understand that we can never understand them to the full, and thus seek of God that He would cleanse us from them? (1) Grasp with a full and firm faith the blessed truth of the one sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction made for your sins. (2) Remember that He who made that atonement for your sins, and so enabled you to look them in the face for they are sins not imputed any more is also the Giver of the Spirit, of that Spirit which convinces us of sin, of righteousness, of judgment to come. Ask of God, and ask earnestly, and ask continually, for this convincing Spirit.
R. C. Trench, Sermons Preached in Ireland,p. 36.
I. The most ready method of convincing ourselves of the existence in us of faults unknown to ourselves is to consider how plainly we see the secret faults of others.
II. Consider the actual disclosures of our hidden weakness which accidents occasion. We cannot tell how we should act if brought under temptations different from those which we have hitherto experienced. This thought should keep us humble. We are sinners, but we do not know how great. He alone knows who died for our sins.
III. What if we do not know ourselves even where we havebeen tried and found faithful? Faithful Abraham, through want of faith, denied his wife. Moses, the meekest of men, was excluded from the land of promise for a passionate word. The wisdom of Solomon was seduced to bow down to idols.
IV. No one begins to examine himself and to pray to know himself, like David in the text, but he finds within him an abundance of faults which before were either entirely or almost entirely unknown to him.
V. But let a man persevere in prayer and watchfulness to the day of his death, yet he will never get to the bottom of his heart. Doubtless we must all endure that fiery and terrifying vision of our real selves, that last fiery trial of the soul before its acceptance, a spiritual agony and second death to all who are not then supported by the strength of Him who died to bring them safe through it, and in whom on earth they have believed.
VI. Call to mind the impediments that are in the way of our knowing ourselves. (1) Self-knowledge requires an effort and a work. (2) Self-love answers for our safety. (3) This favourable judgment of ourselves will specially prevail if we have the misfortune to have uninterrupted health, and high spirits, and domestic comfort. (4) The force of habit makes sins once known become secret sins. (5) To the force of habit must be added that of custom. The most religious men, unless they are specially watchful, will feel the sway of the fashion of their age, and suffer from it, as Lot in wicked Sodom, though unconsciously. (6) Our chief guide amid the evil and seducing customs of the world is obviously the Bible. "The world passeth away; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever." How much extended then, and strengthened, necessarily must be this secret dominion of sin over us when we consider how little we read Scripture! (7) To think of these things, and to be alarmed, is the first step towards acceptable obedience; to be at ease is to be unsafe. We must know what the evil of sin is hereafter if we do not learn it here.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. i., p. 41.