Oh dash these brats of Babylon in pieces! – Thomas Brooks

“Cleanse me from secret faults.” Psalm 19:12

The Christian’s greatest and hottest conflicts, are against those inward pollutions, and secret sins, which are only obvious to the eye of God and their own souls.

The hypocrite combats with those sins which are obvious to every eye. But it must be a supernatural power and principle, which puts men upon conflicting with the inward motions and secret operations of sin.

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Romans 7:24. A sincere heart weeps and laments bitterly over those secret and inward corruptions, which others will scarcely acknowledge to be sins.

The Persian kings reign powerfully, and yet are seldom seen in public. Secret sins reign in many men’s souls powerfully and dangerously, when least apparently.

Oh! but a true Christian mourns over the inward motions and first risings of sin in his soul, and so prevents an eternal danger. Upon every stirring of sin in the soul, the believer cries out, “O Lord, help! O Lord, undertake for me! Oh dash these brats of Babylon in pieces! Oh stifle the first motions of sin, that they may never conceive and bring forth!”