Advent with the Hackney Phalanx: "the season of retirement, of self-examination, of prayer, of abstinence"

From A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year, Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - a sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, setting before us the example and teaching of St John the Baptist as a pattern for Christian repentance:

Let it not be thought, then, that the well chosen season of retirement, of self-examination, of prayer, and abstinence as occasion may require, or necessity permit, with every token of sincere and heartfelt sorrow for things done amiss, or things left undone, for faults and follies deplored perhaps, but yet not wholly cured, or for misdeeds and neglects which have succeeded of some other kind; let us not think that these things are no longer: useful or expedient; that there is no garb of humiliation in the Christian household. They must have smaller experience in the way that leads to that safe and honoured path; which goes forward to the realms of perfect freedom, who can make light of the pattern of repentance ...

Let us remember, then, that the holy Baptist's character and manners are not foreign to the Christian rule. Although they present one only aspect of that pattern, yet it is alas! that which may frequently be most proper and becoming to us. In a word, let us learn from him what those exercises are which belong to penitence and reformation, in whatsoever measures or degrees we find them to be needful ...

Thus, also, let it be again remembered, that although the garb of John be not the sole garment of the Christian Church, nor his mode of life the standing pattern and example for the Christian candidate, yet his discipline will find its place, and will not want its occasions if we form right examinations of ourselves. They who live much in the world, if they would serve God truly, will not fail to find the fitness of the pattern in many a day of recollection.

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