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Yet grace's suit meets with resistance rude
From haughty souls; for lack of innate good
To recommend them. Thus the backward bride
Affronts her suitor with her modest pride.
Black hatred for his offer'd love repays,
Pride under mask of modesty displays:

In part would save herself; hence, saucy soul!
Rejects the matchless Mate would save in whole.

SECTION II.

CONVICTION OF SIN AND WRATH, CARRIED ON MORE DEEPLY
AND EFFECTUALLY IN THE HEART.

So proudly forward is the bride, and now
Stern Heav'n begins to stare with cloudier brow;
Law-curses come with more condemning pow'r,
To scorch her conscience with a fiery show'r.
And more refulgent flashes darted in;
For by the law the knowledge is of sin.*

Black Sinai, thund'ring louder than before,

Does awful in her lofty bosom roar.

Heav'n's furious storms now rise from ev'ry airth,t

In ways more terrible to shake the earth,

* Rom. iii. 20.

† Wind, or quarter.

Isa. ii. 17, 19.

Till haughtiness of men be sunk thereby,
That Christ alone may be exalted high.
Now stable earth seems from her centre tost,
And lofty mountains in the ocean lost.

Hard rocks of flint, and haughty hills of pride,
Are torn in pieces by the roaring tide.
Each flash of new conviction's lucid rays
Heart-errors, undiscern'd till now, displays:
Wrath's massy cloud upon the conscience breaks:
And thus menacing Heav'n, in thunder speaks:
"Black wretch, thou madly under foot hast trode
Th' authority of a commanding God;

Thou, like thy kindred that in Adam fell,
Art but a law-renversing lump of hell,

And there by law and justice doom'd to dwell."
Now, now, the daunted bride her state bewails,
And downward furls her self-exalting sails;
With pungent fear, and piercing terror brought
To mortify her loftly legal thought.
Why, the commandment comes, sin is reviv'd,*
That lay so hid, while to the law she liv'd;
Infinite majesty in God is seen,

And infinite malignity in sin;

* Rom. vii. 9.

That to its expiation must amount

A sacrifice of infinite account.

Justice its dire severity displays,

The law its vast dimensions open lays.

She sees for this broad standard nothing meet,
Save an obedience sinless and complete.
Her cobweb righteousness, once in renown,
Is with a happy vengeance now swept down.
She who of daily faults could once but prate,
Sees now her sinful, miserable state.

Her heart, where once she thought some good to dwell,
The devil's cab'net fill'd with trash of hell.

Her boasted features now unmasked bare,
Her vaunted hopes are plung'd in deep despair.
Her haunted shelter-house in by-past years,
Comes tumbling down about her frighted ears.
Her former rotten faith, love, penitence,
She sees a bowing wall, and tott'ring fence.
Excellencies of thought, and word, and deed,
All swimming, drowning in a sea of dread;
Her beauty now deformity she deems,

Her heart much blacker than the devil seems.
With ready lips she can herself declare

The vilest ever breath'd in vital air.

Her former hopes, as refuges of lies,
Are swept away, and all her boasting dies.
She once imagin'd Heav'n would be unjust
To damn so many lumps of human dust
Form'd by himself; but now she owns it true,
Damnation surely is the sinner's due:

Yea, now applauds the law's just doom so well,
That justly she condemns herself to hell;
Does herein divine equity acquit,

Herself adjudging to the lowest pit.

Her language, "Oh! if God condemn, I must
From bottom of my soul declare him just :
But if his great salvation me embrace,
How loudly will I sing surprising grace!
If from the pit he to the throne me raise,
I'll rival angels in his endless praise.
If hell-deserving me to heav'n he bring,
No heart so glad, no tongue so loud shall sing.
If wisdom has not laid the saving plan,

I nothing have to claim, I nothing can.
My works but sin, my merit death I see;
Oh! mercy, mercy, mercy! pity me."
Thus all self-justifying pleas are dropp'd,
Most guilty she becomes, her mouth is stopp'd.

Pungent remorse does her past conduct blame,

And flush her conscious cheek with spreading shame.
Her self-conceited heart is self-convict,

With barbed arrows of compunction prick'd:
Wonders, how justice spares her vital breath,
How patient Heav'n adjourns the day of wrath;
How pliant earth does not with open jaws
Devour her, Korah-like, for equal cause;
How yawning hell, that gapes for such a prey,
Is frustrate with a further hour's delay.
She that could once her mighty works exalt,
And boast devotion fram'd without a fault.
Extol her natʼral pow'rs, is now brought down,
Her former madness, not her pow'rs, to own.
Her present beggar'd state, most void of grace,
Unable even to wail her woful case,

Quite pow'rless to believe, repent, or pray;
Thus pride of duties flies and dies away.
She, like a harden'd wretch, a stupid stone,
Lies in the dust, and cries, Undone, undone,

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