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.