Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

¹ Since I believe that it is the will of God that I should speak to you on the subject whereof we are now reminded by the words of the Lord out of the Holy Scriptures, I will by His assistance deliver to you, Beloved, a Sermon touching the remission of sins. For when the Gospel was being read, you gave most earnest heed, and the story was reported, and represented before the eyes of your heart. For you saw, not with the body, but with the mind, the Lord Jesus Christ “sitting at meat in the Pharisee's house,” and when invited by him, not disdaining to go.

You saw too a “woman” famous in the city, famous indeed in ill fame, “who was a sinner,” without invitation force her way into the feast, where her Physician was at meat, and with an holy shamelessness seek for health. She forced her way then, as it were unseasonably as regarded the feast, but seasonably as regarded her expected blessing; for she well knew under how severe a disease she was labouring, and she knew that He to whom she had come was able to make her whole; she approached then, not to the Head of the Lord, but to His Feet; and she who had walked long in evil, sought now the steps of Uprightness.

First she shed tears, the heart's blood; and washed the Lord's Feet with the duty of confession. She wiped them with her hair, she kissed, she anointed them: she spoke by her silence; she uttered not a word, but she manifested her devotion.