The greatest theologian of the Roman Catholic Church has made an
induction and classification of sins that has often been borrowed by our
Protestant and Puritan divines. His classification is made, as will be
seen, on an ascending scale of guilt and aggravation. In the world of
sin, he says, there are, first, sins of ignorance; next, there are sins
of infirmity; and then, at the top, there are sins of presumption. And
this, it will be remembered, was the Psalmist's inventory and estimate of
sins also. His last and his most earnest prayer was, that he might be
kept back from all presumptuous sin. Now you know quite well, without
any explanation, what presumption is. Don't presume, you say, with
rising and scarce controlled anger. Don't presume too far. Take care,
you say, with your heart beating so high that you can scarcely command
it, take care lest you go too far. And the word of God feels and speaks
about presumptuous sin very much as you do yourself. Now, what gave this
third man who lay in fetters a little beyond the cross the name of
Presumption was just this, that he had been at the cross with his past
sin, and had left the cross to commit the same sin at the first
opportunity. Presumption presumed upon his pardon. He presumed upon the
abounding grace of God. He presumed upon the blood of Christ. He was so
high on the Atonement, that he held that the gospel was not sufficiently
preached to him, unless not past sin only and present, but also all
future sin was atoned for on the tree before it was committed. There is
a reprobate in Dante, who, all the time he was repenting, had his eye on
his next opportunity. Now, our Presumption was like that. He presumed
on his youth, on his temptations, on his opportunities, and especially on
his future reformation and the permanence and the freeness of the gospel
offer. When he was in the Interpreter's House he did not hear what the
Interpreter was saying, the blood was roaring so through his veins. His
eyes were so full of other images that he did not see the man in the iron
cage, nor the spider on the wall, nor the fire fed secretly. He had no
more intention of keeping always to the way that was as straight as a
rule could make it, than he had of cutting off both his hands and
plucking out both his eyes. When the three shining ones stripped him of
his rags and clothed him with change of raiment, he had no more intention
of keeping his garments clean than he had of flying straight up to heaven
on the spot. Now, let each man name to himself what that is in which he
intentionally, deliberately, and by foresight and forethought sins. Have
you named it? Well, it was for that that this reprobate was laid by the
heels on the immediately hither side of the cross and the sepulchre. Not
that the iron might not have been taken off his heels again on certain
conditions, even after it was on; but, even so, he would never have been
the same man again that he was before his presumptuous sin. You will
easily know a man who has committed much presumptuous sin,--that is to
say, if you have any eye for a sinner. I think I would find him out if I
heard him pray once, or preach once, or even select a psalm for public or
for family worship; even if I heard him say grace at a dinner-table, or
reprove his son, or scold his servant. Presumptuous sin has so much of
the venom and essence of sin in it that, forgiven or unforgiven, even a
little of it never leaves the sinner as it found him. Even if his
fetters are knocked off, there is always a piece of the poisonous iron
left in his flesh; there is always a fang of his fetters left in the
broken bone. The presumptuous saint will always be detected by the way
he halts on his heels all his after days. Keep back Thy servant, O God,
from presumptuous sin. Let him be innocent of the great transgression.
Dr. Thomas Goodwin says somewhere that the worm that dieth not only comes
to its sharpest sting and to its deadliest venom when it is hatched up
under gospel light. The very light of nature itself greatly aggravates
some of our sins. The light of our early education greatly aggravates
others of our sins. But nothing wounds our conscience and then
exasperates the wound like a past experience of the same sin, and,
especially, an experience of the grace of God in forgiving that sin. Had
we found young Presumption in his irons before his conversion, we would
have been afraid enough at the sight. Had we found him laid by the heels
after his first uncleanness, it would have made us shudder for ourselves.
But we are horrified and speechless as we see him apprehended and laid in
irons on the very night of his first communion, and with the wine
scarcely dry on his unclean lips. Augustine postponed his baptism till
he should have his fill of sin, and till he should no longer return to
sin like a dog to his vomit. Now, next Sabbath is our communion day in
this congregation. Let us therefore this week examine ourselves. And if
we must sin as long as we are in this world, let it henceforth be the sin
of ignorance and of infirmity.
So the three reprobates lay down to sleep again, and Christian as he left
that bottom went on in the narrow way singing:
'O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be
Let that grace, Lord, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.'