Page:Last and great sermon, of the Rev Dr William Dodd.pdf/10

( 10 ) God will consider that life is amended if he had spared it. Repentance in the sight of men, even of the penitent, is not known but by its fruits: but our creator sees the fruit blossom, or the seed. He knows those resolutions which are fixed, those conversions which would be permanent; and will receive them who are qualified by holy desires for works of righte, without exacting from them those outward duties which the shortness of their lives hindered them from performing.

Nothing therefore remains, but that we apply with all our speed, and with all our strength, to rectify our desires, and purify our thoughts; that we set God before us, in all his goodness and terrors; that we consider him as the Father and the Judge of all the earth; as a Father, desireous to save; as a Judge who cannot pardon unrepented iniquity: that we fall down before him self-condemned, and excite our hearts intense detestation of those crimes, which have provoked him; with vehement and steady resolutions, that if life were granted us, it should be spent hereafter in the practice of our duty: that we pray the Giver of grace to strengthen and improve those holy thoughts, and to accept our repentance though late, and, in its beginnings, violent; that improve every good motion by dilligent prayer; and having declared and confirmed our faith by the holy communion, we deliver ourselves into his hands,  hope, that he who created and redeemed us {{reconstruct|will} not suffer us to perish.

The condition, without which forgiveness is to be obtained is that we forgive others. There always a danger less man, fresh from a trial in which life has been lost:, should remember with resentment and malignity the prosecutor, the witnesses or  judges. It is indeed scarcely possible, that with the prejudices of an interest so weighty, and so a ting, the convict should think otherwise, than he has been treated, in some part of the p