is and hinder Men from ever becoming better 2 Let us take care to avoid all manner of wilful Sin and especially all those great ones that come near and any way approach to this Sin against the Holy Ghost A very wilful Sin in a Christian especially is in some fense a Sin against the Holy Ghost 't is a grieving a quenching and a resisting the Spirit in the language of Holy Scripture That Blessed Spirit is concerned as the great promoter of Vertue and Goodness in the World and as the great Principle of it in the Hearts of Men and whenever we do any wicked thing we offer violence to that and by our rude and vicious carriage we affront and grieve and at last banish and drive away that Blessed Guest out of our Souls Whatever is Wicked and Sinful is so contrary to his Pure and Excellent Nature that it is highly offensive to him and if we go on in a course of long and customary Wickedness we sin the more against him and come the nearer to that sad and wretched state that is unpardonable I do not think indeed that any one Sin or particular Act of any Sin whatever puts us into that condition but as every Sickness and Indisposition of Body is a tendency to Death and Mortality so every wilful Sin is a corruption of the Mind and an approach to a state of Spiritual Death And there are some Sins that bring this sooner upon us as the acting against our Consciences and the sense of our own Minds an opposing the Truth that is evident to us a scoffing at Religion and making a mock of Sin an abusing the Scriptures and ridiculing the Holy Word of God an obstinate resistance of all the motions of Gods Holy Spirit upon our Minds These and such like gross and obstinate impieties though I do not think they are any of them the very Sin against the Holy Ghost for that ought not to be extended further than we have a warrant from Scripture yet they are so many approaches as it were to it and have more of the ill symptoms of that upon them and therefore we ought especially to avoid them lest they bring us by degrees into that sad state which is unpardonable for though one Sin I believe do not do this yet a great many may and especially such as those which do so waste the Conscience and corrupt the Mind as to make it uncurable And this is the saddest State and Condition in the World next to the State of Hell and Damnation tho' it be not the immediate Sin against the Holy Ghost Having endeavoured to give the plainest and fullest Satisfaction I can to the most doubtful and scrupulous Minds about this Sin of the Holy Ghost I shall now Discourse of some other things of a Lesser Nature which many Penitents and good Men are apt to be greatly dissatisfied with and have dark and wrong thoughts about As I. Concupiscence the Lustings of the Flesh or struggle between that and the Spirit which they find in themselves II. Trouble of Mind and a wounded Spirit which many lye under by reason of their Sins or by reason of Melancholly or both together SECT III. Of Concupiscence the Lustings of the Flesh or struggle between that and the Spirit THE right understanding of our selves is very necessary to the right understanding of Religion Religion is fitted and adapted to Humane Nature in its present state and capacity in this World and is designed not to destroy it but to perfect and improve it and raise it to its true Happiness and Perfection We cannot be like the Angels in Heaven nor like pure and glorious Spirits whilst we live here upon Earth and have Bodies of Flesh and Blood united to our Souls God who made us and knows our Frame did not intend to destroy and undo his own Creation by the Precepts of Religion nor make us cease to be Men by becoming Christians We find indeed in our selves a great many weaknesses and corruptions strong passions and sensual inclinations which if we did not wisely govern would be great occasions of Sin to us and if we let them loose would carry us into a thousand Mischiefs as well as Sins and Wickednesses They who give the reins to those and the full swinge to their Natural Lusts and Passions run into all Vice and Debauchery and commit all uncleanness with greediness And the best of Men cannot be wholly free from that Original Concupiscence and those Sensual Motions and Desires that are not alwayes agreeable to Reason and Religion but they complain of this bondage of corruption and this body of death which they cannot be delivered from Rom. 8.21 and 7.24 Grace and Religion though it gives us another Principle and conveys new powers of a Divine and Spiritual Life into our Souls yet whilst the Animal and Sensual Life remains and whilst we are compounded of Flesh and Blood as well as Spirit and Reason and have a Carnal as well as Spiritual Principle in us there will be a mighty struggle and a great contest between those two and a kind of civil war in our breasts between those different Parties and which of those shall be uppermost and have the chief Power and gain the Victory is the great point and the great concern of all Vertue and Religion since in all of us as the Apostle sayes The Flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the Flesh and these are contrary one to the other so that we cannot do the things that we would Gal. 5.17 And this we know by Experience as well as by Revelation Now this Concupiscence that remaineth in good Men is often matter of great trouble to them and they know not what to judge of it or how far it is a Sin and ought to be Repented of and what way they may best overcome it I shall therefore to clear and satisfie their thoughts about this matter of the struggle or Lusting between the Flesh and Spirit show these three things First That mere Lusting on either side is not what makes either Sin or Vertue or denominates a bad or a good Man Secondly That these are the proper matter of Vice or Vertue in which the tryal and exercise of them lye Thirdly That we ought to lessen the Power of the Fleshly Lusting and increase that of the Spirit and what are the proper means to do this I shall briefly consider First That meer Lusting on either side is not what makes either Sin or Vertue nor what constitutes or denominates a bad or a good Man For this Lusting is in both good and bad though according to several degrees and measures in the one the Lusting of the Flesh prevails and in the other that of the Spirit and 't is from this the prevalency of either of these and not the meer contention of them that we are counted good or bad before God The best of Men may have the same Passions Appetites and
if some Men were more afraid of Death than they are and as I am sure they have all reason to be that so they might be brought off from their evil wayes and not run headlong upon those dangers which are very near them though they are not sensible of them The sword hangs over their head though they do not see it and nothing but the thin thread of Life keeps it from falling upon them they walk blindfold upon the brinks of Hell and Damnation and it would be well of Fear would open their Eyes and make them recover themselves before Death makes it too late Nothing can truly and throughly arm us against the Fears of Death but Repentance and a good Life To those who have lived in the practice of them Death is a very harmless thing 't is but lying down to sleep closing the eyes and going to rest the Bodies being sensless a while till it awakes at the great day of Judgment and passing a longer night in the Grave till it arises more fresh and lively in the morning of the Resurrection and as for the Soul 't is a short and quick passage from Earth to Heaven and therefore such have no reason to be afraid of it when it approaches them never so near But then 2. Let the true Penitent quicken his Faith at that time and raise that to the highest and strongest pitch that so he may then look beyond the grave and see and believe and desire those happy and glorious things which God has prepared for him in another World If we believed those as we ought we should never be so afraid to dye if we were so affected with those pleasures that are above and that are at Gods Right-hand for evermore we should not be so loth to part with the Pleasures shall I say rather with the Troubles and the Miseries of this Life Did we think as we ought of that perfect peace and joy and satisfaction which is not to be had here but to be met with only in Heaven we should not be so fond to abide in this Valley of Tears and not go up to those Mansions above where is full Joy and Contentment Let us fix our thoughts and set our hearts upon those happy Regions of Bliss and Glory and we shall not fear to pass through the shadow of Death to come to them tho' the way to that Heavenly Canaan is through a Wilderness through the dark and unknown Region of Death through which a thousand wandering Souls are alwayes passing yet we shall be conducted safely through it by Angels who will bring us to the Palace of the great King where we shall be received by our blessed Master and Saviour and by all the Saints and holy Souls that are gone before us who as they rejoyce at a Sinners Repentance will now welcome him to his Fathers house and we shall then as much wonder at our selves for fearing to dye as we are now willing to live If the account which Scripture gives us of those invisible Regions be true and we do fully believe that Joy that Glory that Blessedness that unspeakable Happiness which is there revealed to us this our Faith joyn'd with our Repentance should overcome the Fears of Death and make us not only not afraid but desire to be dissolved and to be willing to lay down this load and luggage of Flesh because we know that if our earthly house oâ— this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens And there shall be no more Sin nor Sorrow nor Repentance but the blessed Penitent now he is safely arrived at his happy Port shall look back upon the past hazards and dangers he was in and comfortably remember how his Sins like so many Rocks had like to have split and shipwreck'd and swallowed him up in the gulph of Perdition and how by the wonderful Grace of God he hath happily escaped them and is come safe to Heaven and therefore will now offer Eternal Thanksgivings and pay his Vows of Praise to his great Deliverer and rejoyce evermore in his Glorious and Heavenly Salvation CHAP. III. Whether all Sins are Pardonable and may have the benefit of Repentance I Am next to consider Whether all Sins are Pardonable and may have this benefit of Repentance This has been denyed by a great many and particularly by the Novatians who would not allow Pardon and Absolution to wilful and great Sins committed after Baptism and this is charged upon Smalcius and other Socinians that they deny the same to heinous and habitual Sins of Relapse into which any shall fall after they have once Repented and been freed from them And there are some places of Scripture that seem very much to favour these hard Opinions as Heb. 6.4 5 6. For it is impossible for those who were once inlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come if they shall fall away to renew them again unto Repentance And Heb. 10.26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins And 2 Pet. 2.20 21 22. For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ they are again intangled therein and overcome the latter end is worse with them than the beginning For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness then after they have known it to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb The dog is returned to his own vomit and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire And in other places the Scripture speaks of a Sin unto Death 1 John 5.16 as of a more malignant and deadly Nature and different from all other Sins which are Mortal and Sins also unto Death without Repentance And our Saviour sayes expresly of the Sin against the Holy Ghost that it is unpardonable and shall not be forgiven neither in this world nor the world to come Luke 12.20 Matth. 12.32 i. e. as St. Mark expresses it It hath never forgiveness but is in danger of eternal damnation Mark 3.29 And what that is is not fully agreed on by Divines and so there may be fear if not danger of a Christians falling into it and so into an unpardonable state by the Holy Ghosts being so many wayes concerned in his Salvation and he having so many wayes to Sin against him This gives therefore great trouble to a great many Minds and if one particular Sin or any sorts of Sin be unpardonable by the Gospel they will be very fearful and can hardly be satisfied but that they have committed that Sin and so are cut off from all hopes by it and they will
competency and sufficiency with food and rayment as the Apostle has fix'd a competency 1 Tim. 6.8 with what answers the wants of Nature and the circumstances of our Condition but to be alwayes craving after more without any use or occasion this is that immoderate desire of Riches which we call Covetousness and so in other things 't is the Excess the Irregularity the immoderate and the vicious Abuse not the Natural Passion and Inclination it self that is to be denyed restrained and mortified 3. To do this we must so check and restrain and deny even our Natural Appetites that we may have the power and government alwayes over them Now if we let them loose and lay the reins upon their neck and let them take their utmost liberties and go alwayes to the furthest bounds of what is lawful they will hardly be kept in as they ought to be but we shall walk upon the brink of danger and the side of a precipice where it will be hard to escape falling sometimes and our Sensual Inclinations will grow more heady strong and ungovernable by being alwayes indulged and not used to a more severe discipline and management which all wise Men have therefore prescribed by the Rules and Precepts of Mortification and Self-denyal 4. To abate these Lustings and Desires of the Flesh and increase and raise those of the Spirit let us consider how little and mean are the objects and gratifications of the one in respect of those of the other How the one are low sordid and Brutish the other Rational and Angelical such as the highest order of Beings next to God are capable of How little is there in all the Riches and Greatness and State of this World how much less in all the mad frollicks of Debauchery and all the beastliness and filthiness of Brutish Lusts in all those things that make up Carnal Enjoyments and are the summe as the Apostle reckons them up of all that is in the World The lust of the flesh the lust of the eye and the pride of life 1 John 2.16 How much greater and nobler is it to have a wise and sober and vertuous Mind easie Thoughts and a chearful Conscience Spiritual Desires and Affections set upon things above and strong and well-grounded hopes of an Eternal Life and a Glorious Immortality These are the Objects of our Spiritual Desires and we should increase those by representing the worth and value the greatness and excellency of these above any other things that we can choose or desire or any enjoyments of the Animal and Sensual Life 'T is a vain fancy and opinion of the latter whereby we raise our imagination and heighten our expectation of something great and extraordinary in them 't is that kindles our Affections and inflames our Desires after them but did we wisely consider how vain and trifling and inconsiderable they are and how poor and little and short and sorry gratifications they afford this would wean us from such weak fancies and opinions of them and so slack and cool our Desires and Lustings after them Lastly We must use all Religious Means and Methods to mortifie and abate the Lustings of the Flesh and strengthen and increase those of the Spirit by the Acts and Exercises of Religion Piety and Devotion 'T is in the growth and prevalence of the latter lyes our Moral State and the greatest exercise of all Vertue and in the right ordering and governing of our Passions Appetites and Inclinations so that we must use all possible Methods to keep the lower Appetites under and obedient to the superiour and not let them dethrone our Reason or disobey Religion and therefore we must use all the helps we can have from Religion and Philosophy and the Divine Grace and Assistance to tame our inordinate Lusts by Fasting by Watching by Prayer by due watchfulness and circumspection over our selves and over all the weak places of our Nature that Sin do not enter in at some of those inlets that are unguarded and do not surprize and easily beset us when we are unprepared and unarmed by Religion against the assaults of it and there is nothing so helpful to this and to increase and strengthen our Spiritual Desires so that they shall alwayes prevail over the Lusts of the Flesh as the constant and uninterrupted exercises of Piety and Devotion These give life and vigour and nourishment to our Spiritual Desires and keep them alwayes warm and heated and intent upon their proper Objects whereas a neglect of those begets a carelesness stupidity and senslesness of all those things and sinks Men into a meer Sensual and Animal and Worldly and Brutal Life Nothing is therefore so proper to bring us to these Spiritual Desires and to make those alwayes prevail over the Lusts of the Flesh as Devotion and Piety which raise the Mind to things above the Body and above this World and take off and abstract the Soul from Sensual and Carnal Enjoyments and make it live up as near as it can to that Life it shall have in Heaven when it shall be all Spirit and have no Flesh or Lusts to contend with or be contrary to it I shall in the next place consider another thing which befalls many a Sinner and which tho' a due effect of his Sins and an evidence of the sad state they bring him to and so may be of great use to be duly considered on this account yet is a kind of Excess of Repentance and sometimes too great an extream that way and what ought to have the nicest Resolutions and best Directions given about it to cure and remove it I mean Trouble of Mind or a Wounded Conscience which many a Sinner lyes under and which I shall briefly Represent and Discourse of by considering how great a Misery it is above all others in this World and what Cure and Remedy there may be for it or for those who are fallen under it SECT IV. Of Trouble of Mind or a Wounded Spirit THE greatest part of our Happiness or Misery lyes in our Minds and Spirits in those inward Faculties and Sensories which are distinct from our Body and outward Senses We feel very often more pleasure or pain in those distinct from the Body than the Body it self is capable of for these are quicker and more sensible than Matter and Body can be and are the proper subject of perception of any Pleasure and Pain and of all Rational Happiness or Misery A Mans inward Thoughts do often give him more torment and uneasiness anguish and disquietude of Soul and more real pain and misery than any Bodily torment or even Death it self and therefore some have chosen Death and have willingly endured any Bodily pain rather than lye under the greater pain agonies and horrours of their own Minds and many that have been under those yet have felt an inward ward joy comfort and satisfaction of Mind that has supported them under the worst pains and sufferings of
greatest motive to Repentance that can possibly be given for nothing is so strong and powerful upon most Men as their fears which is the quickest and strongest Passion in Humane Nature and is apt to make a very great impression where nothing else will and nothing can be so much an object of our fear as Hell and Eternal Misery which is the utmost and most dreadful Evil that can be either felt or imagined I shall particularly and largely offer and represent it to the Sinners thoughts both as to its Nature consisting in the greatest pains and torments of Body and Mind and in the most wretched and miserable state and condition and as all this is Eternal and shall never have end Both which if heartily believ'd and seriously consider'd would have a mighty power and almost irresistible force to bring Men off from their greatest Sins I. Then let us consider its Nature as consisting of the greatest pains and torments both of Body and Mind and in the most wretched and miserable state and condition I shall not attempt fully to describe or draw a picture of this place of Torments our imagination is to be help'd out with all the known instances of Misery and so to form an Idea of that future and unknown and invisible one It is certain it must be adapted to those two parts of which we consist our Bodies and our Minds and what are the proper Evils to either of those we very well know sensible Pain and great Anguish and Sorrow and other tormenting Passions and these we must suppose in the highest degree to belong to Hellish Misery for as Heaven is the utmost good our Natures can possibly receive and are capable of so Hell is the greatest evil and as such is represented to us by that Revelation which assures us of it attended with the most sad and woful circumstances that can be imagined I shall offer the thoughts of it to the Sinner under such Ideas and Representations as are given of it by the Holy Ghost in Scripture And 1. We must conceive a horrid dark and dismal dungeon in some deep cavern of the Earth designed for horrour and fill'd with the blackness of darkness and inhabited only by cursed Fiends and frightful Ghosts and Devils into which the wretched Caitiff is to be thrown bound hand and foot and so cast into outer darkness Matth. 22.13 and delivered into chains of darkness 2 Pet. 2.4 Darkness is the Natural image and symbol of horrour and disconsolateness as Light is of comfort and pleasantness so that the Scripture expresses Happiness by the dwelling in light as it does Misery by being cast into outer darkness where there is not any beam of light nor any the least glimpse of joy and comfort And thus to be shut up for ever in a place of darkness and horrour and confined to this dismal and infernal Prison to all Eternity would be a dreadful Misery were there nothing else but they are to be tormented there as well as imprisoned and that with the most exquisite pains and tortures as they are described to us in the second place 2. By Fire and Burning which is the most terrible the most keen and painful of Bodily punishments which enters the tender parts with pointed and piercing fury and dissolves and distorts them with its rapid motion and has nothing to abate its extreme cruelty but that it quickly consumes and dispatches and spends it self with its own rage and violence as well as destroyes its subject But this is the dreadful Nature of that infernal Fire that it never goes out but is as the Scripture calls it unquenchable and that the miserable wretches that are condemned to it shall endure the pain and the rage of it for ever and shall never be consumed or destroyed by it but shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy Angels and in the presence of the Lamb and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever and they have no rest day nor night Rev. 14.10 11. Let us then set before us a burning Lake of liquid Fire and melted Brimstone like Nebuchadnezzars fiery Furnace heat seven times hotter than any thing we here know and the damned wretches cast into it and like Dives sadly tormented in those flames over all their parts so that the Tongue is swelled with heat as in a raging Feaver and nothing would be so comfortable to it as a drop of Water to cool it and to slake and abate the scorching Calenture Some are inclined to think all this but Allegory and Metaphor and painted Fire but the Scripture speaks so often of it that I cannot but think it may be literally true and that Fire is made the instrument of those Bodily pains that are there to be suffered and inflicted after the general Judgment and Resurrection Or however that as great pains of Body are thereby signified and exprest and shall really be endured some way or other as by burning in Fire For if the Holy Spirit to help our weak thoughts and assist our imaginations has made use of those known things only as emblems and pictures of some real pains yet they are certainly as great or greater than any of those by which they are shadowed out and represented as the pleasure of Heaven is much greater no doubt and does far exceed that of a Feast a Wedding a Crown or any such Earthly resemblance As to the proper pain and torment of the Mind which is the other and the greatest part of Hellish Misery for the Mind has a more quick and keen and immediate sense than the Body that is represented in Scripture by the worm which never dyes Matth. 9.46 i. e. by a Passion that bites and gnaws and corrodes and pains us within as the Fire or something else torments the Body from without and this includes in it all those dismal and reflecting thoughts and apprehensions which the Mind has upon its dreadful state and condition As 1. A direful perception of the Divine Anger Wrath and Displeasure which when it lyes heavy upon the Mind in the highest degree will press it into the deepest gulph of Misery and fill it with the most terrible Ideas and most dreadful apprehensions Even in this World when a Sinner tasts but a little of the Cup of Gods Fury 't is a cup of trembling and a cup of astonishment as the Scripture calls it Isa 51.17 Ezek. 23.32 and what will it then be when all the dregs of it must be drunk up When God hides his Face but a little there is all trouble and horrour and what must it then be when he hides it for ever The sense and apprehension of lying under the displeasure of Almighty Power and provoked Justice and abused Goodness and all these highly incensed against a Man and never to be appeased must be very dreadful and make sad impressions upon the Mind The Presence and the Favour of God giveth
deter Men from Disobedience and to restrain them from Wickedness Now we easily see to how little purpose a less Punishment would ferve then that of Hell to those ends since there are so few awed even by that tho' God has so severely threatned it If then for the ends of Government and for publick good such a Punishment as this be necessary it is consistent both with Justice and Goodness however fevere it be for this is the only just measure and proportion of Punishments that they be able to attain their end and the Rule of Justice is to be taken not from any private but publick Reasons 2. God has given us free choice and proposed both Eternal Happiness and Eternal Misery to us He hath set before us life and death Deut. 30.15 so that if we obey him and live wisely and vertuously we shall enjoy the one but if we choose Sin we choose Death with it and our destruction is of our selves and we judge our selves unworthy of everlasting life Acts 13.46 as Paul and Barnabas told the Jews Gods proposing such vast Rewards and Punishments as 't is perhaps a necessary sanction of his Laws so 't is perfectly our own fault and madness if we refuse the one and incur the other Secondly I shall show how this Eternity is clearly and undeniably proved from Scripture which it seems to be because the word Eternal and Everlasting and what amounts to that is alwayes used upon this account as everlasting fire Matth. 25.41 and everlasting burnings Isa 33.14 and the fire that is unquenchable and that never goes out Mark 9.46 Luke 3.17 But to this they say that the word Eternal is often used in Scripture in a limited sense according to the nature of the thing to which it belongs as the Jewish Priesthood is called an everlasting Priesthood Exod. 40.15 and their Law of Atonement is called an everlasting statute Lev. 16.34 tho' neither were to be so strictly nor to last longer than the Jewish oeconomy So Sodom and Gomorrha and the Cities about them are said to suffer the vengeance of eternal fire in ver 7. of St. Judes Epistle because it brought eternal destruction to them though there be now none of that fire remaining so shall the fire of Hell say they destroy and annihilate the wicked and so as the Scripture speaks bring everlasting death and destruction upon them though if that shall last Eternally yet they shall not be Eternally tormented in it Now in reply to this I own that the word Eternal and for ever is often used in a limited sense but that it cannot be so when it is spoken here of Hellish Torments there is this evidence that the same word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is spoken of Eternal Punishment is spoken also of Eternal Life so that if it be understood of a limited Eternity in the one it must be so in the other which no body ever held or supposed and yet there is as much Reason from hence to deny the absolute Eternity of Heaven as the absolute Eternity of Hell 2. That they suffer Eternal Death and are Eternally destroyed is not to be understood in a strict and literal sense so that they lose all Being but yet are not Eternally tormented is plain from those places where it is said They have no rest day nor night Rev. 14.11 which supposes them not to be in a state of non-existence but of actual pain 'T is said there also that they shall be tormented with fire and brimstone and that the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever ver 10.11 which can never without violence be understood of the Fire which still lasts and which they suppose to be Eternal whilst they are not tormented in it but destroyed by it though it remains still as a monument of Gods Justice and Vengeance upon Sinners for the smoke of their torment ascending for ever supposes them to be for ever tormented and their having no rest night nor day necessarily implyes this Besides as it is said The fire is not quenched nor never goes out so it is said also that their worm never dyes Now though the Fire might possibly continue without its proper subject yet the Worm there meant never can for that is only that anguish and remorse and vexatious reflection of Mind which if it never dye the subject of it must last and continue and suffer it for ever So that though our Socinian Adversaries avoid the other places of Everlasting Punishment and Everlasting and Unquenchable Fire with some Art and Sophistry yet they can never evade those of the worms never dying and of the smoke of their torments going up for ever and their having no rest day nor night Rev. 14.11 But not to dispute further of these matters let the Sinner seriously conssder and meditate of these infinitely great and infinitely lasting and never ending Torments If there be such a thing as Hell it concerns him highly to Repent and so take care to avoid it If he do not think this to be true but secretly disbelieve it he must disbelieve all Religion and all Revelation and run into the utmost madness of Scepticism and Atheism and then let him consider that 't is not his belief makes things to be true or false but whatever he thinks of them they are and will be what they are in themselves and 't is certain he can never know them to be false however he is inclined to believe them so and therefore were they never so uncertain and were it but merely probable or indeed possible that there should be any such thing yet no Man in his wits should run the venture and lye open to so prodigious and dreadful an hazard as an Eternity of Misery But to such Christians that firmly believe them and have all Reason so to do both from Revelation and Reason too for all Mankind had ever some belief and expectations of sad Punishments in another World for Wickedness to them 't is unaccountable folly and madness to live in such Sins and in such courses as will throw them into this unquenchable Fire and consign them to this dreadful and everlasting state of Misery Is there any Sin whose charms are so great whose gains are so tempting that for the enjoyment of all these for a little season 't is worth enduring the Torments of Hell for ever If these Terrors of the Lord will not perswade Men to Repent and Leave their Sins nothing will Yet there is one or two other Motives or Arguments to Repentance from Christianity which I must propose after this of Hell and all the rest namely SECT V. Other Gospel Motives to Repentance 6. ANother Motive which may be said to be peculiar to the Gospel and which should encourage to Repentance above all others is the Promise of the Divine Grace and Holy Spirit to enable us to peform it to assist us to overcome all our evil Habits and to master
it can never be imagined that he can have any love or kindness or show any favour to a wicked Man till he has turned away from his Wickedness What is so contrary to himself he can never love if he love himself for he might by the same reason as well hate himself as love that The love of God depends not upon any particular arbitrary inclination or unaccountable humour and fancy as in weak Mortals but it arises from his own Essential Excellencies and Perfections and is grounded upon a true and a lasting Principle his own Nature rather than his Will So that whilst God himself is unchangeably holy he will alwayes love any Soul that is truly holy and comes up to his original Holiness by such measures and proportions as its Nature will admit but whilst the Mind continues wicked it can never by any means in the World be reconciled to God 't is alienated from him 't is opposite to his Nature and 't is therefore the necessary object of his hatred and displeasure or as the Scripture speaks An abomination to him Sin is the only thing that God hates and the only cause why he is angry and displeased with any of his Creatures and as long as this remains there is an everlasting breach and a perpetual ground and foundation of enmity between them and not only Light and Darkness but Heaven and Hell are more irreconcilable than a Righteous God and a Wicked Soul All the Sacrifices that can be offered to atone and expiate for such an one if it continues such were they never so rich or never so many can no more commend it to God or make its peace with him than all the Bribes and Presents of the Indies could pervert a Just and Righteous Judge or blind the eyes of Justice and Integrity it self There can never be any other terms of Reconciliation between a Wicked Soul and a Righteous God but only this that it become Righteous and till it do so it can never become the object of Gods Love and Favour unless he change his own Righteous Nature and cease to be Righteous and Holy himself 3. Without this we can never be freed from the Natural and Necessary Evils of Sin upon our Minds whereby it will make us inwardly miserable till we are cured of them for though we should suppose all the Political Evils as I may call them of Sin taken away and removed i. e. all that outward Mischief and Punishment which is to be inflicted upon it from the Arbitrary Will and Threatning of the sovereign Lawgiver though he should out of tenderness and compassion or for the sake of a Sacrifice or other Consideration abate of that and not execute the utmost Penalties and those positive Severities that he had denounced against it yet so many are the Natural Evils that are annex'd to it that it would of it self make the Mind necessarily and inwardly miserable This does not depend upon the Will of God as a Governour only but as a Creator as he hath setled and ordered the nature of things and made it impossible they should ever be otherwise Misery is so entailed to Sin by the fundamental constitution of things that 't is impossible ever to cut it off It is as inseparable from and as closely connected to it as effects are to their causes and we may as well divorce Light from the Sun or Heat from Fire as Misery from Wickedness It springs out of it Naturally as a foul stream from such a corrupt fountain growes upon it as the proper and bitter fruit from such a poysonous root and Sin as a true Parent has the seeds of all Evil in its own bowels A Mind that is over-run with Vice will as necessarily be corrupted and weakened and vitiated as the Body is decayed and impaired by a Disease The one will as necessarily put the Mind out of order as Sickness does the other and till it be cured and made sound it will alwayes be in pain and uneasie Its Faculties will necessarily be weakened and impaired and disordered by it and so lose their true and proper happiness and it will be put into an unnatural frame and temper and be like the Body when its Limbs are out of joynt in great torture till it be set right again God must alter his own Nature and the Nature of things too or else Vice and Wickedness whilst 't is continued in will make the Mind miserable sickly and uneasie and fill it with restlesness and disquietude and make it a torment and vexation to it self 4. Without Repentance and being freed from our Sins we can never be capable of partaking or enjoying any true and positive Happiness much less that great and eternal one in Heave Happiness must be something within our selves like Health it consists in the right crasis and constitution of the Mind in the strength and vigour and regular operation of all its Faculties Till it be put into this state by Repentance and Vertue 't is uncapable of enjoying any true Happiness Our Vices must therefore be first cured and purged out or else our Souls will be as uncapable of enjoying their proper spiritual and rational pleasures with their Sins and wicked Habits and Dispositions upon them as our Bodies of enjoying their animal and sensual ones witha Lethargy or Apoplexy or whatever destroys their proper strength sense and perception Without Holy Minds and Vertuous Dispositions and Heavenly Affections and Inclinations as we can no way hope for Heaven so we are no way fitted or qualified for it and therefore our Minds must necessarily be disposed and prepared for that by Repentance and previous habits of Vertue and such a divine temper and holiness of Mind as can alone make us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in light as St. Paul speaks Coloss 1.12 without which we should no more enjoy Heaven than a blind Man enjoyes the light of the Sun whose Organs are spoil'd and vitiated and who wants the use of those Senses and Faculties by which he should perceive it So that if a Sinner should be sent to Heaven with all his unrepented Sins unmortified Lusts and vitious Inclinations and without that love of God and Goodness which is to fit him for it he would be not only like him which came to the Marriage-feast without a Wedding-garment who must be turned out of that company he was so unfit for but like one that had the greatest dainties set before him but that was sick and had no stomach and so could not taste or relish any of them Till the Mind is brought to love God and delight in him and in all the actions of Vertue and exercises of Religion it canot be happy in Heaven but that would rather be unagreeable and an aversion to it than an Happiness Till a Sinner therefore be brought off from his Sins by Repentance and restored to a vertuous and holy and good Mind he cannot enjoy Heaven
would never receive them again into their Communion thereby to fright all persons from all false and cowardly compliances in those times of danger and persecution but afterwards the Church was forced to abate of this rigour which had made such Disturbances and occasioned those great Schisms of the Novatians and Donatists There were other Sins also for which the guilty Penitents were excluded from all Communion to the last in those purer and severer Ages as Murder Adultery and those Unnatural Lusts which they call'd Monstra these were never admitted to Pardon and Absolution of the Church as appears by the Canons of those antient Councils of Eliberis Arle and Ancyra and by the Writings of Tertullian and others and the opposition made in Africa to the Decree of Pope Zephyrine and by the milder Canons of the Council of Nice afterwards but all this was only prudential and an external Discipline in foro humano which the Church altered according to its Discretion but they did not deny all Pardon with God for those Sins upon Repentance nor utterly cut them off from all hopes in another World but allowed God could pardon them tho' not the Church that they might be forgiven though not in this World yet in the World to come according to that Jewish Notion that though there were no Sacrifices nor ordinary means of Expiation for some Sins yet that God would forgive them hereafter Secondly That Sins are Pardoned after Baptism as well as before is plain from the Incestuous Corinthian who though he had committed such a Sin as was not usual among the Gentiles and was to be put out of the Church and to be delivered unto Satan for it yet this was not to cut him off from Pardon and Salvation but as a better means to bring him to both it was only for the destruction of the flesh that the Spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord 1 Cor. 5.5 And this sure was the design of those severe and long Penances in the Primitive Church whereby tho' they excluded Sinners from the benefits of Communion and means of Grace yet it was not to bereave them of all hopes of Pardon and consign them irreversibly to Damnation but to beget a greater terrour and dread of Sin and to make their Repentance for it more compleat and perfect and so by those present Judgments and Severities here to prevent their Eternal Condemnation hereafter for this ought to be the Rule and Measure of all Church Power and Discipline it ought to be for Edification not for Destruction and they could not miss of this The Spirit of God writes to the Church of Ephesus which were a company of Baptized Christians to Remember from whence they were fallen and Repent and do their first works Rev. 2.5 And St. Paul threatens the Christians at Corinth to bewail and correct those which had sinned and not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness they had committed 2 Cor. 12.21 but does not denounce that they were unpardonable Sad would it be if all wilful Sins were so after Baptism this would make Christianity a more terrible and severe dispensation than the Law and put us in a worse condition than we were without it and no Man would then be Baptized till he was a Clinic and near dying and going out of the World but Baptism puts us into a state of Pardon and the Grace and the Vertue of it continues all our lives and if we sin we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous 1 John 2.1 and his Mediation will upon our Repentance procure Pardon at Gods hands at all times for us Thirdly I shall next consider Sins of Relapse when a Person after Sorrow and Repentance for a Sin yet falls into it again and repeats it after he has resolved against it and been convicted of the heinousness of it now this is a sad case and shows the power of his Lusts and the weakness of Religion upon a Mans Mind and no Man who is in this state can be said to Repent He is no more got rid of his Sins than a Man is of a Feaver because it intermits sometimes and he is well by intervals but his Fits return again upon him which shows that the Disease is still in his Blood as the other's Relapses do that sin still reigns in him because he obeys it in the Lusts thereof A Man in the beginning of his Repentance from some habitual Sins may not get rid immediately of all his Evil Customs and Sinful Inclinations but they may sometimes draw him back again and sometimes master and overcome him and he may rally again and recover himself and at last vanquish them Now whilst this Conflict lasts and 't is uncertain which side will get the better and have the final victory no judgment can be made of a Mans state because the issue is doubtful and uncertain He is fighting and striving for his Life for his Soul and for Heaven and he may by his own care and endeavours and by the assistance of Heaven conquer and overcome his Sins and to him that overcometh God will give of the tree of life Rev. 2.7 but if he is overcome by them he is a slave of Sin and a captive of the Devil and a child of Hell and heir of Damnation but what shall a Man do who has often thus relapsed into Sin after his most serious Vows and Resolutions against it are his Sins against those unpardonable and is there no hopes for him I Answer by no means if he can but recover himself from them and after all attempts at last get rid of them and bring forth the contrary fruits of Repentance and Obedience I confess such an one ought to suspect himself and to suspect his Repentance till by many tryals he has made it good and confirmed it and he ought to be doubly watchful over himself and to take heed least Sin enter again at any of those weak places at which it used to have admittance and to fortifie himself against all those temptations and opportunities that used to betray him to it and therefore to keep his Mind to a close sense of Religion and to a careful use of all the Means and Instruments of it and to beg earnestly of Heaven Grace proportionable to his needs and then if it be not his own fault it will certainly be sufficient for him But such Relapses though they are not quite hopeless nor put a Man into a condition that is desperate yet they are very dangerous they grieve Gods Holy Spirit they give a new Wound to our Consciences they make the old Wound that was healed bleed afresh and render it more difficult to be cured again and more ready to mortifie and become incurable they bring the Mind to a weakness and unsteadiness and irresolution and to have no power or command over it self but let its good Purposes and Principles be bore down by a weak Lust or