Justice and Continence had by the help of one Simon a Magician gain'd the Affections of Drusilla the Wife of Azis King of the Emisseni and lived in a state of Adultery with her Now this being the Case of Felix 't is plain that the Subject of St. Paul's Discourse was to remonstrate to him his Injustice and Intemperance and let him freely know That however he might carry it out by his Power and Authority now yet there was a time coming a future Day of Judgment when he should be called to a severe Account for all his Wickedness This was indeed an Address becoming the zeal of an Apostle and the Spirit of St. Paul And too plainly shews how little we have left in us of that Primitive warmth which inflamed this Holy Man by our different management on the like Occasions There can hardly be imagined any greater discouragement to such a freedom than what our Apostle here labour'd under To touch an Vnjust Governor in the point of his Violence and Injustice a lustful Adulterer in the business of his Incontinence this one would think should have been a pretty bold undertaking for any One But for Saint Paul a Prisoner one that was to appear as a Criminal before him for him instead of flattering this great Man as his Adversary Tertullus had done Verse 2. Instead of Applauding the great quietness which the people enjoy'd under his government and the very worthy deeds that had been done by his providence to call him to repent of his Rapine and Cruelty of his Intemperance and Adultery and this too in the presence of that very Woman whom he much loved and for whose sake he had done so many vile things this was an Honest freedom and plainness becoming an Apostolical Age but which I fear in these days of ours would be censur'd as rudeness and indiscretion any thing rather than a commendable Zeal for the Glory of God and the Salvation of Souls But alas St. Paul had not learnt that tender Application that is now a-days made to Great Persons He had no Interest of his own to pursue and therefore did not address himself after the manner of those who are more afraid of offending Men than of displeasing God and of disparaging their Character He knew the Doctrine to be seasonable to Felix and that if he pleased to make a good use of it it might be profitable too And he never stood to consider whether Felix would like it or no or whether it might not perhaps provoke him to run to any Extremities against him for his freedom In short He had an Vnjust Adulterous Man to preach to and he knew nothing so fit to reason of before him as of Righteousness Temperance and the Judgment to come And had we but the same honest Courage and Indifference that he had we should speak not only with the same freedom that he did but by the Grace of God with the same efficacy too And poor and despicable as we are thought by many yet in the power of that Divine Truth which we are sent to preach to the World make the greatest Sinners tremble to think That for all these things God will bring them to judgment And that this is the Case is the first thing I am to shew I st That the Doctrine of a Judgment to come is so highly reasonable that the greatest Infidel cannot but acknowledge the probability of it In pursuance of which Point it is not my Design to shew what Grounds the Holy Scriptures give us for the belief of a future Judgment which we all of us every day profess as an Article of our Faith and therefore cannot be supposed any of us to doubt of it What else do we meet with almost throughout the New Testament but Exhortations to live well upon this Ground That God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness Acts xvii 31 That we must all stand before the Judgment-seat of Christ Rom. xiv 10 That we must All appear before the Judgment-seat of Christ Every one to receive the things done in his Body according to what he hath done whether it be Good or Evil 2 Cor. v. 10 What Revelation has there ever been more clearly made I do not say than this That there shall be a final Judgment but of the manner and Circumstances of it How the Trumpets shall sound and the dead arise and those that are alive be changed How the just shall be caught up into the air and the sinners lie groveling below in vain crying out to the Mountains to fall upon them and to the Hills to cover them How the Judgment shall be set and the Books open'd and every man judged out of the things contained in those Books according to his works Then shall the Son of Man come in his Glory and sit down upon the Throne of his Glory And before him shall be gathered all Nations and he shall separate them the one from the other as a Shepherd divideth his Sheep from the Goats and he shall set his Sheep on his right hand and the Goats on his left And he shall say to them on his right hand Come ye Blessed of my Father inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the World But to those on the left Depart from me ye Cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels And these shall go away into Everlasting Punishment but the Righteous into Life Eternal In a word So particular is the Account which we here find of all the Circumstances of this great Audit that I scarce know any thing left unrevealed to us but only the Day and Hour when this Judgment shall be And which indeed God has in Mercy kept up from us that so we might always live in Apprehension of that which we can never tell how soon it may arrive But this is not that which my Text leads me to consider And indeed however it may be useful enough to call upon the most faithful Christians to think sometimes on this future Judgment yet it would certainly be a very needless undertaking to reason with such Persons concerning it and use any long Arguments to convince them of the futurity of it That which I have now to do is of a quite different nature 'T is to offer such Reasons for the belief of a Judgment to come as may convince the Greatest Infidel of the probability of it And shew them that whether they will believe us in other things or no yet here at least they cannot with any reason doubt of the Truth of our Doctrine but must resolve to become Good Men if they will not be persuaded to become Faithful Christians And indeed in this Sceptical Age in which we now live it may not for ought I know be altogether unseasonable to argue sometimes with Men upon their own Principles To shew them that Religion is not a
about whether it be fit to be done by him ought certainly yet much more to carry every good Christian to this farther necessary Reflection Whether it may be done by him And whosoever ventures upon any Action without this he may by accident not do ill but 't is his good Fortune not his Praise that he does not And were it never so good yet for want of doing it with that design and knowing it to be such he must not expect that God should ever impute that to him for Righteousness which he himself did not design or perform with that intent As to the other sort of Consideration That of our State and of our Duty What God requires of us and how we have lived according thereunto Certain it is that 't is absolutely necessary that we should some time or other enter upon it and then I suppose I need not say how very prudent it will be for us not to defer it For since our Life is but a puff of breath every day in our Nostrils and which we can at no time say shall be our own the next moment surely it will very much concern us not to defer considering how we are provided for another World seeing we have so very little Hopes or security in this Repentance is not a Duty that can be discharged in a Moment and I fear the best among us upon the enquiry will find that we stand in need of a very great one Now there is no time no place for Repentance but only in this present Life And should we suffer our Incogitancy so far to prevail upon us as to neglect it here we shall in vain lament our sin and our folly to all Eternity hereafter If there be therefore any one among us that has hitherto omitted so great and necessary a Consideration what shall I say to him Let him no longer defer it Nay but rather in the words of holy David Let him not go back unto his house nor climb up into his bed let him not suffer his eyes to sleep nor his eye-lids to slumber till he has begun to set about it It were no doubt very much to be wish'd that men would not suffer any day to slip without this Consideration There is I believe but seldom a day passes in which we are not guilty of something that may justly call for a particular Repentance to obtain our forgiveness And who can tell if he lies down to sleep e're he has done this whether he shall ever rise up to perform it afterwards But alas This is the greatest Instance of all of our Inconsideration And instead of repassing in this manner every day upon our Actions I fear there are many who go on whole Weeks and Months and Years without ever thinking at all of it as if it were enough to practice this duty by the same proportions which some of our modern Casuists have prescribed for that other of the Love of God some of which have thought it necessary to be done only upon Sundays and Holy-days others not above once a year some once in Five years others at any one time in our whole lives and lastly others never at all either living or dying But thô there be then no time so proper as the present for the doing of that which cannot without the greatest danger be deferr'd the least moment yet some seasons there are which seem more especially to invite us to it Thus 1 st If old Age be crept upon us or any Sickness or Danger threaten us with a speedy appearance before God's Tribunal this ought certainly at the same time that it admonishes us of the shortness of our present life to call us to an immediate providing for the next 2. Thô the hand of God be not just upon us yet if we see his Arm lifted up to strike if we have some just cause to apprehend any evils or afflictions likely to come upon us much more if our Country and our Church be in danger for the iniquity of her Children and People within her this also may be another time that seems on purpose mark'd out to call us to Consideration to think upon our ways and how to prevent both our own and the publick desolation But now 3 dly If these Evils are not merely apprehended but are actually upon us so that we already have begun to bear the punishment of our sins and may have just cause to apprehend yet more dreadful effects of them this certainly ought yet more strongly to engage us to such a Consideration In such circumstances as these the worst of men naturally become Religious God himself could say of the Rebellious Israelites That in their afflictions they would seek him early And the Prophet observed of all men in general That when God's Judgment are in the Earth then the inhabitants of the World will learn Righteousness I will only add 4 thly And with reference to the approaching season That as the time of Lent has in all Ages of the Church been look'd upon as a season proper for the business of Repentance so certainly we cannot better prepare for it than by the practice of this great Preliminary duty of Consideration without which it will be impossible for us ever to discharge it as we ought to do And however the Godly Primitive Discipline of Publick Confession and Penance has for the hardness of our hearts been of late laid aside among us yet ought we not therefore to be ever the less nay rather we should be the more careful to examine our own souls and call our ways to remembrance and by our Private Diligence make some supply of what seems to be acknowledged by our Church as wanting to our Publick Discipline And to the end I may the better enforce this Practice which upon all these accounts seems so very proper for us I will now finally Close all IV thly With some Motives that may serve to stir us up to the fulfilling of our duty in so great and necessary a part of it I have already observed in the beginning of this Discourse That 't is the want of Consideration that is really the last universal Cause of all our Sins And I have just now shewn That till it be removed it will be impossible for us to repent of them And sure then one would think that nothing more need be said to engage any sober man to the practice of it But I must now go yet farther For to compleat our Obligation to so necessary a practice Inconsideration is not only to be charged as the cause of all our evils but the corrupter of our good too It spoils our very vertues insomueh that were it possible for the unthinking man to fulfil every Command and not deviate in the least degree from the rules of his duty all would be in vain his Inconsideration alone would ruin him and his Virtues themselves lose by it not only their Praise but their very Nature
you to go along with me in these following Reflections First That though as I have just now shewn there must be the publick marks of Sorrow and Humiliation in our publick Repentance yet we must by no means stop in these nor thinks that this is all that God requires of us in order to our Forgiveness This was indeed the Vanity of the Jews heretofore and is too much the folly of some misguided Christians now Their Indignation against their Sins and against themselves for having committed them was spent especially in the outward appearance of Sorrow They rent their cloaths and put on sackcloth they wept and fasted and went softly and then they supposed they had done their business though it may be their Souls were not yet humbled nor their Hearts at all broken with any true Contrition for their Sins And so among those of the Church of Rome at this day If we may believe some of their greatest Casuists an external Worship is sufficient to carry a Man to Heaven without the trouble of the true inward Devotion of the Soul He may repent without Contrition may fast with a full Meal Nay and if the Pope pleases may obtain a plenary remission of his Sins se ancho non fosse confesso ne contrito though he has neither confess'd them to any Priest nor finds in his own Heart any manner of Contrition for them I shall not need to say how many new ways of Salvation of this kind they have found out by wearing Leathern Girdles about their Loins or Scapularies over their Shoulders by listing themselves into such or such certain Fraternities by dressing of Altars and going on Pilgrimages by Holy Water and Agnus Dei's And all which and infinite more of the like kind if as our late Masters tell us they are not Authorized by their Church yet I am sure are publickly recommended by their Greatest Men and generally practised too without any censure or contradiction among them This is certain that all these and whatever Artifices of the like kind Men may please either to flatter themselves or to delude others withal without a true Contrition and a serious Reformation they are all but Vanity they make a shew of Piety in the Eyes of Men but they avail nothing to our forgiveness with God I will not now dispute of what use some of these External Performances may be to assist our Repentance and render our Sorrow for Sin the more solemn and so in some Cases as I have before observed the more pleasing to God I know well enough that St. Paul has told us That Bodily Exercise where 't is discreetly order'd does profit a little though it be not like Godliness profitable for all things But then as 't is plain that the greatest part of those Follies so much magnified and recommended in the Church of Rome are but vain and ridiculous Impositions to cheat the silly and superstitious Multitude so 't is certain that the best of these things are neither in themselves Meritorious much less Satisfactory for Sins as they pretend them to be nor otherwise of any value at all with God than as they are attended with that true Repentance which alone can either incline his Mercy or obtain our Forgiveness If we will therefore make our solemn Humiliation this day acceptable to God and available to our selves our Country and our Religion we must take the Method of the Prophet in our Text We must turn unto the Lord our God with all our Heart and then our fasting and our weeping and our mourning shall indeed be pleasing unto him We must rent our Hearts and not i. e. rather than our Garments must humble our Souls first and then the violence we do our Bodies will be considerâ—d by him When Jonah denounced God's Judgments against Niniveh we read in his 3 d. Chapter That the People of Niniveh believed and proclaimed a Fast and put on Sackcloth from the greatest of them even unto the least But was this therefore that Repentance for which he spared them No it is not so much as once mentioned among the Reasons of it It was the Reformation of their Lives that tied up his Hand and sheathed his Sword ver 10. And God saw their Works that they turn'd from their Evil way and God repented of the Evil that he said he would do unto them and he did it not 2. And this brings me to a second Remark for the farther clearing of this great Duty viz. That not only these outward marks of penitence are not sufficient to the discharge of it but though we should to these add a true and real sorrow of heart for the Sins we have committed even this would not be sufficient to purchase our Forgiveness Now by true sorrow I do not mean that little imperfect sorrow which looks rather to the danger of our Condition than to the heinousness of our Offences and bewails our Transgressions more out of an apprehension of those Judgments that may be the Consequence of them than out of any real regret that we have sinned against a most Gracious and Merciful God For however those of the other Communion out of their great tenderness to Sinners have declared such a sorrow as this if accompanied with Confession to be sufficient to dispose Men to obtain the Grace of God by the Sacrament of Penance and therefore have resolved that true Contrition or a sorrow for sin committed with a purpose of sinning no more is not necessary to the Sacrament of Penance after the Commission of mortal Sin but that Attrition is sufficient though a Man knows it to be no more Yet I suppose it needless in this place to obviate any such gross Error however otherwise of very great danger in the Practice of this Duty Be the sorrow for sin never so sincere and our Resolutions thereupon no more to return to the Commission of it never so firm and well grounded yet if instead of making good these Resolutions we shall stop here we are but half Penitents seeing we yet want that change of life which alone is able to compleat the Nature and render the Practice of our Repentance acceptable unto God and available to our Forgiveness 3. In short Thirdly if we will truly discharge that Repentance to which we are here called we must do it not by being sorry for our Sins or by resolving against them but by an effectual forsaking of them i. e. as our Text speaks By turning unto the Lord our God This is that which alone can implore his Favour and commend us to his Mercy And this was what I before observed in the Case of Niniveh When God saw their works that they turned from their Evil way then he repented him of the Evil that he had said he would do unto them and he did it not Nay but it is not any turning unto God that will suffice neither We must turn