acts of humiliation, and acknowledgements of our own depravity.
No man ought to judge of the efficacy of his own repentance, or the sincerity of another's, by such variable and uncertain tokens, as proceed more from the constitution of the body than the disposition of the mind, or more from sudden passions and violent emotions, than from a fixed temper, or settled resolutions. Tears are often to be found, where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears. Even sorrow itself is no other than an accidental, or a secondary, part of repentance, which may, and, indeed, ought to arise from the consciousness of our own guilt; but which is merely a natural and necessary effect, in which choice has very little part, and which, therefore, is no virtue. He that feels no sorrow for sin has, indeed, great reason to doubt of the sincerity of his own repentance, since he seems not to be truly sensible of his danger and his misery; but he that feels it in the highest degree is not to put confidence in it. He is only to expect mercy upon his reformation.
For reformation is the chief part of repentance; not he that only bewails and confesses, but he that forsakes his sins, repents acceptably to God, that God who "will have mercy, and not sacrifice;" who will only accept a pure heart and real virtue, not outward forms of grief, or pompous solemnities of devotion. To conceive that any thing can be substituted in the place of reformation is a dangerous and fatal, though perhaps no uncommon errour; nor is it less erroneous, though less destructive, to suppose, that any thing can be added to the efficacy of a good life by a conformity to any extraordinary ceremonies or particular institutions.
To false notions of repentance many nations owe the custom, which prevails amongst them, of retiring, in the decline of life, to solitudes and cloisters, to atone for wickedness by penance and mortifications. It must, indeed, be confessed, that it may be prudent in a man, long accustomed to yield to particular temptations, to remove
