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