He is faithful and just to forgive me my sins, and cleanse me from all unrighteousness.  Therefore, accuse me not, Devil! for thou hast no share in me:  I belong to Christ, and not to thee.  And set not my old sins before my face; for God has set them behind His back, because I have renounced them, and sworn an oath against them, and Christ has nailed them to His cross, and now they are none of mine and none of thine, but are cast long ago into the everlasting fire of God, and burnt up and done with for ever; and I am a new man, and God’s man; and He has justified me, and will justify me, and make me just and right; and neither thou, nor any man, has a right to impute to me my past sins, for God does not impute them to me; and neither thou, nor any man, has a right to condemn me, for God has justified me.  And if it please God to humble me more (for I know I want humbling every day), and to show me more how much I owe to Him—­if it please Him, I say, to bring to light any of my past sins, I shall take it patiently as a wholesome chastening of my Heavenly Father’s; and I trust to all God’s people, and to angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, that they will look on my past sins as God looks on them, mercifully and lovingly, as things past and dead, forgiven and blotted out of God’s book, by the precious blood of Christ, and look on me as I am in Christ, not having any righteousness of my own, but Christ’s righteousness, which comes by the inspiration of His own Holy Spirit.’

Thus, my friends, we may answer the Devil, when he stands up to accuse us, and confound us in the Day of Judgment.  Thus we may answer him now, when, in melancholy moments, he sets our sins before our face, and begins taunting us, and crying, ’See what a wretch you are, what a hypocrite, too.  What would all the world think of you, if they knew as much against you as I do?  What would the world think of you, if they saw into that dirty heart of yours?’ For we can answer him—­’Whatever the world would think, I know what God Himself thinks:  He thinks of me as of a son who, after wasting his substance, and feeding on husks with the swine, has come home to his Father’s house, and cried, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son; and I know that that same good Heavenly Father, instead of shaming me, reproaching me, shutting His doors against me, has seen me afar off, and taken me home again without one harsh word, and called to all the angels in heaven, saying, “It is meet that we rejoice and be glad, for this My son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.”  And while Almighty God, who made heaven and earth, is saying that of me, it matters little what the lying Devil may say.’