None whatsoever, my friends, though you were to cry to heaven for ever and ever, save the one old escape of which you hear in the church every Sunday morning:  ’When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.’

What, does not the blood of Christ cleanse us from all sin?

Yes, from all sin.  But not, necessarily, from the wages of all sin.

Judge for yourselves, my friends, again.  Listen to the voice of God revealed in facts.  If you, being a drunkard, have injured your constitution by drink, and then are converted, and repent, and turn to God with your whole soul, and become, as you may, if you will, a truly penitent, good, and therefore sober man,—­will that cure the disease of your body?  It will certainly palliate and ease it:  because, instead of being drunken, you will have become sober:  but still you will have shortened your days by your past sins; and, in so far, even though the Lord has put away your sin its wages still remain, as death.

So it is, my friends, if you will only believe it, or rather see it with your own eyes, with every sin, and every sort of sin.

You will see, if you look, that the Article speaks exact truth when it says, that the infection of nature doth remain, even in those that are regenerate.  It says that of original sin:  but it is equally true of actual sin.

Would to God that all men would but believe this, and give up the too common and too dangerous notion, that it is no matter if they go on wrong for a while, provided they come right at last!

No matter?  I ask for facts again.  Is there a man or woman in this church twenty years old who does not know that it matters?  Who does not know that, if they have done wrong in youth, their own wrong deeds haunt them and torment them?—­That they are, perhaps the poorer, perhaps the sicklier, perhaps the more ignorant, perhaps the sillier, perhaps the more sorrowful this day, for things which they did twenty, thirty years ago?  Is there any one in this church who ever did a wrong thing without smarting for it?  If there is (which I question), let him be sure that it is only because his time is not come.  Do not fancy that because you are forgiven, you may not be actually less good men all your lives by having sinned when young.

I know it is sometimes said, ’The greater the sinner, the greater the saint.’  I do not believe that:  because I do not see it.  I see, and I thank God for it, that men who have been very wrong at one time, come very right afterwards; that, having found out in earnest that the wages of sin are death, they do repent in earnest, and receive the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ.  But I see, too, that the bad habits, bad passions, bad methods of thought, which they have indulged in youth, remain more or less, and make them worse men, sillier men, less useful men, less happy men, sometimes to their lives’ end:  and they, if they be true Christians, know it, and repent of their early sins, not once for all only, but all their lives long; because they feel that they have weakened and worsened themselves thereby.