A Saying of Sir Matthew Hale.
In his treatise on the knowledge of God, this eminent Judge thus remarks: "A frequent, solemn, and serious use of the duty of prayer will interrupt a custom of sin, by degrees weaken the old man, and will in time, make a strangeness between our lusts and our souls. Let a man be sure of these two truths; that, as he that comes upon his knees with a secret purpose to hold confederacy with any sin, shall be the worse, the more hardened, and the more neglected by that God that searches the heart; so whosoever he be that comes to his Maker in the integrity of his heart, though sin adhere as close to that heart as the skin does to flesh, he shall find that employment will make those lusts that were most dear to him, by degrees to become strange and loose to his soul."