REPENTANCE.
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it with shame. As it is the most important, so it is the hardest of all to put in practice. Whilst we are smarting and suffering for having sinned, we may find it easy to keep from doing the same thing again, but when we get over it and forget it, it is astonishing to see how weak our resolutions are, and how many vain excuses we make to deceive ourselves, about its not being exactly the same thing, or else the circumstances are different. Though it was wrong before, it may not be wrong now, besides which no one will know it; or else it will be only this once, and then we will give it up.
