I know not what you may have been in your past life – it matters nothing. You may have broken every commandment under heaven;
you may have sinned with a high hand against light and knowledge; you may have despised a father’s warnings and a mother’s tears; you may have run greedily into every excess of riot, and plunged into every kind of abominable behavior – you may have turned your back entirely on God, His day, His house, His ministers, His word. I say again it matters nothing. Do you feel your sins? Are you sick of them? Are you ashamed of them? Are you weary of them? Then come to Christ just as you are, and Christ’s blood shall make you clean.
~ J.C. Ryle
Old Paths, “Our Sins”, [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1999], 175.