forty nights and Nineveh shall be destroyed Notwithstanding the absoluteness of the sentence and the nearness of the execution the Ninevites were not out of hope but that if repentance were interposed their ruine might yet be prevented and it succeeded accordingly with them for as they believing God's word by the Prophet expected nothing but sudden destruction if they had not repented so they trusting in the goodness and exorableness of the Divine Majesty upon repentance applied themselves seriously thereto and were preserved WHEREFORE saith the relenting sinner Forasmuch as although I know not the limits of the Divine Mercy yet this I know that nothing can set limits thereto but his own wisedom and he is never so straitned but that if the case be pitiable and he see reason of mercy he can shew it consistently with his Justice here I will cast anchor I will indeavour to render my self an object of mercy and trust upon his goodness I never yet heard that any man miscarried in this bottome or that a Penitent was cast away I have often heard that God would have saved men but they would not but I never heard of any that resorted penitently to his mercy and were rejected nor do I think that Hell it self can furnish one instance of the man that can upbraid God's goodness and say I would but God would not Thus the consideration of the Divine Nature is everlastingly pregnant of incouragements to repentance and is the spring of all motion to Godward were it not for which never any had been reclaimed from a course of sin or begun a reformation But so much of that 2. IN the Second place another incouragement to this penitent resolution we are speaking of is an apprehension that it is not impossible to become perfectly new men notwithstanding our pre-ingagements in the ways of sin Opinion of absolute impossibility as we have noted before is equal to real impotency checks all motion nips all indeavour in the very bud stifles and lays asleep all the powers of the mind But hope and apprehension of feasibleness spirits all industry actuates all faculties raises the spirits and is the spring of all the great actions in the world Some daring men have effected things beyond their own expectations but no brave exploit was ever performed by such as despaired of accomplishing it nor was ever any force defeated that did praelibare victoriam and resolve to conquer When once a conceit had possessed the Midianites that they should be conquered by Gideon's Army though grounded only upon an odde dream of a brown Loaf tumbling down upon their Tents their hearts presently melted in them their spirits were emasculated and a mighty Host became an easy prey to the inconsiderable numbers which Gideon led against them And the Lord of hosts would never suffer Israel to be led on to the conquest of the Land of Canaan so long as the rumor of Giants and Anakims and walled Cities ran in the minds of the people nor untill they were brought to a confidence that they were able to conquer that good Land In like manner if the sinner think either his sins too great to be forgiven or that it is too late to mend i. e. either despair of God's grace or of his mercy he is utterly lost indeed that therefore which puts him forward upon resolution is an apprehension that God's grace is sufficient for him THE returning Prodigal saith It is true I find I have gone a great way from my Father's house and wearied my self with my own wandrings yet sure it is not impossible but I may reach home again And I saith the sinner have gone a great way towards my own undoing having indulged my passions and dethroned my reason inslaved my will weakned all my powers and hardened my own Conscience by a long course and custome of sin yet in the words of Holy Job There is hope of a tree if it be cut down that it will sprout again and that the tender branch thereof will not cease though the root thereof wax old in the earth and the stock thereof die in the ground yet through the scent of water it will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant Job 14. 7 8 9. Though I have weakened my powers yet I am a man still though I have destroyed my self yet there is hope in the God of Israel and his hand is not shortened that he cannot save TVLLY is reported to have affirmed repentance to be impossible namely for a man to retrieve himself and take up a new course contrary to that to which he hath been long habituated and no doubt it is very difficult so to do as may sufficiently appear both by what we have said already and also by that of the Prophet Jer. 13. 23. Can the Aethiopian change his skin or the Leopard his spots then may ye also do good that are accustomed to doe evil Where the Holy Ghost intimates inveterate custome to be equal to nature it self and accordingly we find by too sad experience that there are very few that doe exuere hominem shake off the yoke of custome Facilis descensus Averni Sed revocare gradus c. And upon this account it is that the conversion of old sinners is called a New Birth and a New Creation in the language of Holy Scripture Notwithstanding as our Saviour said of rich men That it was harder for a Camel to goe through the eye of a needle then for such a man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven yet to prevent mistakes adds With men it is impossible but with God all things are possible So it is in this case He can cause dry bones to live and of Stones raise up Children to Abraham The Holy Spirit can awaken those powers that were in a dead sleep Conscience is not so callous but it may be rendered soft and sensible again the will and other faculties of men though they are perverted yet are not extinct and being stirred up by the grace of God may exert themselves in a new strain oppose their old customs and introduce new habits AS custome bore down and overgrew Nature formerly so new customes may supplant the old ones and make a new Nature It is a well-known Story that when Zopyrus a great pretender to the skill of reading men's temper and inclination in their countenances had pronounced of Socrates that he was a lewd and intemperate man the Company who knew well the remarkable vertue of Socrates laughed the cunning man out of countenance till Socrates relieved him saying that indeed his inclination was naturally such as Zopyrus had pronounced but that Philosophy and the culture and care of himself had altered him to what he was BUT the Holy Scriptures as they contain both more excellent institutions of vertue and holiness then all Philosophy and more effectual methods of reclaiming and recovering men from vice and debauchery so in the History thereof they afford us the
passage from the brink of Hell to the gates of Heaven More particularly he will observe the unhappy onset and beginnings the crooked and anfractuous proceedings the dangerous precipices and the horrid and fatall mischiefs of a sinfull course graphically described He will also descry the direct but laborious the sorrowfull but certain way of recovery And lastly the glorious triumph the comfortable condition and the sure station of him that hath happily conquered the aforesaid difficulties and is arrived at the serene top of Vertue together with the general applause and universal Jubilee of Heaven and Earth upon such an atchievement And in confidence that all these things are pointed at and intended in the scene before us as I do not doubt but will be evident by and by I do design to take occasion from hence to discourse somewhat fully and practically of these three very important particulars viz. 1. Of the nature of Sin and the mischiefs of a wicked course 2. Of the nature and admirable efficacy of Repentance Lastly Of the exorableness of the Divine Majesty and the unexpressible benignity and graciousness with which he entertains returning sinners And provided the management prove answerable to the design I cannot in the least mistrust the acceptableness of a work of this nature to any sort of men who have so much seriousness and manly sense in them as to value things in proportion to their real usefulness forasmuch as there is not that subject to be treated of which comes more close and home to the greatest concerns of all mankind For In the first place There are scarcely any so prodigiously vain as not to acknowledge themselves to be sinners and what can be of more use to him that makes that acknowledgement then to understand what it is which makes Sin to be sinfull what gives it its malignity and makes guilt inseparably to adhere to it what are the several states of sin and sinners and especially what is the natural course and tendency the sudden growth and unhappy progress of sin since hereby his conscience being inlightned will be both better able to make just reflexions upon what is past and also be made more cautious and diligent for the time to come And although it be true that every man hath not run the same mad risk of sin which is here decyphered in the Prodigal Son yet as that is owing to the especial providence and preventing grace of God where-ever the case is such so that happy person will by observing the wild extravagancies the extreme follies and horrid mischiefs which others incurr before conversion be the more provoked to adore the Divine Goodness in his own preservation Again What can be of more moment to those that are apprehensive of the Majesty and Purity of God of the holiness of his Laws of the certainty of a Judgement to come and withall are sensible of the frailty of humane nature and conscious of their own many and great miscarriages then to behold the nature of Repentance plainly described and to be instructed in the methods of making good their retreat of redintegrating themselves and successfully recommending their deplorable estate and condition to the Divine Philanthropy and mercy Lastly What can be more ravishingly comfortable to a contrite sinner then to understand the efficacy of true Repentance to see a door of hope open to the worst of sinners upon their coming to themselves and returning to their duty to be assured of the hearty compassions of the Divine Majesty to see the arms of the Almighty open to receive and embrace returning Children and all this as it were in perspective lively represented § II. But in regard it is a Parable which we have in hand I think my self obliged in order to the laying a good foundation of what we shall afterwards build upon it here in our entrance to premise something briefly first touching the ancient use of this Schematical and Figurative way of expression and the Reason of such usage secondly touching the Explication and Application of such kind of discourses And for the first of these I cannot reasonably imagine that any man who shall peruse these papers should be so great a stranger to all that hath past in former times as not to be aware that it was the general custome of Wise men of old to deliver their Sentiments after this manner and in such a style and this not onely in meer humane and common Writings but even in Sacred Writ it self To say nothing of the famous Oracles of the Gentiles which in other circumstances as well as in this of Mysteriousness have been observed to Ape and imitate those of the true God And to pass by the ancient Poets who were reputed as both the Divines and the Philosophers of the Ages in which they lived and who were well known to have affected an Oracular obscurity as much as the Oracles affected their way of versifying If we take notice of the ancient Proverbs of Nations which are supposed to carry the marks of the wisedom of their respective times and people these we find for the most part obscure and Aenigmatical And for the ancient Philosophers and men of renown such as the Wise men of Greece distinctively so called or such as Pythagoras Socrates c. who were no whit inferiour to the former he knows nothing of them that is not sensible not onely of accidental but also of designed obscurity in their writings and sayings As for the Sacred Writings of the Old Testament though with all good men I worthily adore that Divine Spirit which made choice of and directed the Pen-men of Holy Scripture and readily acknowledge both the plainness and perspicuity thereof in the necessary rules of life without which it could not have answered the ends of the Divine Wisedom in the enditing of it and also that wheresoever it is abstruse it is as far from phantastry and affected obscurity as the Pagan Oracles were notoriously guilty thereof notwithstanding it cannot be denied but that as well the Prophets as other holy Pen-men do frequently make use of Metaphors Allegories and other Schematical forms which must needs be attended with competent obscurity these being as it were a veil drawn over the face of Divine Truth Hence it is that Solomon makes the words of the wise and their dark sayings to be two expressions denoting the same thing for as he in another place speaks their discourses are like Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver that is besides a truth and beauty in the outside or case of the letter they had a more rich and precious meaning within And accordingly we may observe the Apostles of our Lord in the New Testament frequently to fix upon and pursue a mystical sense of some of those passages in the Old Testament which would to an ordinary Reader have seemed most strictly and literally to be understood Yet I do not think this will prove a sufficient warrant for Philo
of mind and mistrusts that he should one day fall by the hand of Saul his rage against Nabal c. But in regard these were but imperfectly voluntary therefore they make no blot in his Character But in the matter of Vriah the fact was horrible there was time for deliberation the use of cunning and contrivance and therefore full consent Wherefore this was quite of another consideration from all the rest and left such a stain upon him as required many tears and prayers and a very serious and signal repentance to cleanse him from § VI. THUS much I had thought sufficient for the clearing the distinction between sins of infirmity and presumption but I cannot but take notice of a mistake equally common and dangerous which where-ever it takes place doth not only render all we have hitherto said useless but is of fatal consequence to the souls of men It is to this effect When men are about the commission of some great and enormous sin it is not unusual for them to find some reluctancy and abhorrence within themselves Now for the sake of this they think that although they yield to the temptation and commit the sin yet it will not be esteemed altogether a voluntary transgression but will admit of great abatements by reason of such combate and conflict which they found in themselves And to this purpose they apply that passage of the Apostle Rom. 7. 15. That which I doe I allow not for what I would that doe I not but what I would not that I doe And that which follows also vers 17. So then it is no more I that doe it but sin that dwelleth in me But to remove so dangerous a mistake it would be well considered in the first place that however some have learned to call such a reluctancy as aforesaid by the specious name of the combat between the flesh and spirit or the regenerate and unregenerate part as the same men love to speak it is certainly nothing else but meerly some remains of natural Conscience in men and is to be found in some measure in the very worst of men that is in all but those whose Consciences are seared and utterly insensible It is the very nature of Conscience it self which is nothing else but a kind of internal sense of good and evil implanted by God in the nature of man and a man may more easily destroy any of his outward senses then quite extinguish this The Apostle takes notice of it in the Romans Chap. 2. vers 15. whose vices were yet so notorious as that they were utterly out of capacity of being accounted regenerate men Indeed if a man found in himself so quick a sense of his duty and were so tender of all degrees of evil that his Conscience not only checkt but called him off and restrained him upon the first appearance or approaches of sin this as I have intimated before would be a good sign of regeneration and such beginnings of evil so resisted will not be imputed as wilfull transgressions BUT when a man's Conscience only checks him but he goes on and commits the sin the best that can be made of it is only that it is not a seared Conscience and yet such a man is in a fair way to that also for as a part of the body by being often rubbed and hurt grows at last callous and insensible so the Conscience being often resisted in its intimations and stifled and over-born by the fury of lust and passion grows at last stupid and dead So the Apostle tells us Rom. 1. 28. because they liked not to retain God in their minds he gave them up to vain imaginations and because they gave themselves to sensuality he gave them up to unnatural lusts and so by degrees 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to a reprobate mind to a state of stupidity a spirit of injudiciousness to lose the feeling of good and evil And in the mean time it is so far from extenuating the guilt of a man's sin that his heart smote him for it that on the contrary it is a great aggravation of his presumption that he went on to the commission of it notwithstanding If a man could say he did not so well know his duty as he should and therefore his Conscience not being rightly informed did not give him warning of it or that he was in a hurry and could not consider or confesses his rashness and precipitancy these are some mitigations for as S. Clemens well pronounces That which is involuntary is sudden and where a man cannot deliberate he scarcely consents But when the case is such that a man must acknowledge he knew what he did he thought of it and condemned it and yet did it this surely is an aggravation if any thing in the world be so It is saith a generous Heathen Plutarch by name a most unmanly and brutish thing for a man that knows what he should doe softly and effeminately to give himself up to the swing of intemperate passions In short if when a man confessing the truth must say he had reason against what he did but confronted it his conscience shamed him but he resolved to be shameless he had weapons in his hand to resist temptation but he cast them down and yielded all which is implied when a man saith his Conscience smote him when he went about a sin but nevertheless he persisted and committed it I say if this be not a voluntary sin there is no such thing incident to mankind § VII THUS much concerning the guilt or malignity of sin in the general Now briefly for the various states and mansions of sinners Which we shall the more easily understand if we first consider the several degrees of vertue or so many higher and lower capacities as there are of being good and holy And I know not where to find these more exactly reckoned up and described then by S. Clement of Alexandria who makes four stations of perfection 1. Not to sin at all Which saith he is the felicity of the divine nature and to be sure not the condition of any meer man in this world 2. Not to commit any wilfull or voluntary sin which is the attainment of the perfect man or true Gnostick as he uses to speak 3. Rarely to be guilty of inadvertency or involuntary Lapses which is the condition of a good proficient in religion 4. and Lastly When a man hath sinned to recover himself early by repentance and not lie under the guilt nor much less grow into a habit of sin Which lowest degree though it be vastly different from every of the former yet it is tolerable and acceptable through the mercy of God as we shall see anon NOW in some proportion to this discourse we will suppose 4 stations or degrees of wickedness 1. Such as do nothing but sin which we only mention for method-sake for as we are certain non datur summum
those worldly objects we lately spoke of all his spirits are ingaged in the pursuit of it and with that heat and vehemency that nothing can stop their carrier nor bring them under the reins of reason No considerations of God or a World to come can come into play no checks of Conscience are attended to whatsoever comes on 't the passion must be obeyed lust must have its full swing be the danger or consequence of it what it will THEN for the usual symptoms of distraction if we see a man that hath unspeakable danger over his head insomuch that every man that sees him bewails and pities him but he pities not himself if we see him disporting upon the brink of a precipice and the ground breaking away under him nay if we shall see him court danger tear his own flesh and delight in his own mischief or again suppose we observe a man to have rich offers made him but he despises them and prefers trifles before them or to be most fierce and injurious to those who are most earnest to do him good do we not account these the tokens of distraction And is not the case the very same when a man shall be found to go on in a course of sin that God and his own Conscience have denounced damnation to and be secure when there is nothing between him and utter destruction but the frail thred of life the most uncertain thing in the world when a man shall in fondness to some sin or other despise the counsels of God's word slight his promises laugh at his threatnings and even defy the Almighty when he shall express so much hate and indignation against none as those that reprove his folly advise him for his good and forewarn him of his danger in short that is every moment ready to drop into hell and yet goes on carelesly and jollily is not this laughter of his Risus Sardonius i. e. plainly and notoriously phrenetical in the highest degree We reade Acts 26. 25. that Festus was of opinion that much study had made St. Paul mad when he took notice of such a wonderfull zeal in him for Christianity that no difficulties would abate his edge no allurements or flatteries withdraw him no menaces affright him nor no sufferings prevail at all upon him But St. Paul sufficiently clears himself of that suspicion giving a just and manly account of his persuasion and the reasons of his resolution And withall vers 11. he confesses time was when he was mad indeed when he was hurried by his own passions and prejudices to make all the opposition he was able against Christianity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith he I was exceedingly mad and outragious against it But there were a great many allowances to be made in his case he had been bread a Pharisee the education in which Sect had put him under the greatest prejudices against Christianity that could be possibly the Gospel was a new thing in the World which Character was enough to condemn it but besides it lay open to a great many disadvantages which it is unseasonable here to mention by reason of all which he thought he should do God good service to oppose it he therefore only obeyed his erring Conscience followed the best reason he then had and what he did amiss he did it ignorantly and accordingly God had mercy on him But what can be pretended on the behalf of the habitual sinner against the common law of reason and morality can he plead ignorance or pretend Conscience is morality a new opinion or was debauchery ever espoused for the Dogma of any famous Sect was it ever a disputable point whether injustice adultery and other sensuality were vices or vertues did ever any man think he should do God good service by complying with these nay is it not evident that the men we speak of contradict the very principles of reason the intimations of their own Consciences they violate all the laws of wisedome goe cross to all rules of prudence nay their very interests and the principles of self-preservation May we not therefore direct our discourse to such men as Herod is said to have done a Letter to Cassius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in short Cassius thou art mad BUT let us come to particulars and we will begin with Injustice hath not God said that the unnighteous shall have no inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ or of God and have we not seen the experiment of those that have raked and torn for riches as if that were the onely thing valuable and desirable and counted all clear gain that could be gotten who yet when death hath summoned them to the righteous Tribunal of God would gladly have refunded all again and have chosen to have lived the poorest life in the world so they might have gone out of it with a good Conscience Is there not just reason to expect that all unjust acquisitions will one day prove like a barbed Arrow in a man's flesh that must either be pluckt back again and that not to be done without horrible pain and anguish or else will destroy him eternally Are not these courses condemned by Heathens and by all the reason of mankind doth not such a man make himself the hate and scorn of others and a shame to himself What is there then prevails with any man to continue such a practice is there any necessity presses him to it must a man be starved else is there any such unspeakable felicity in being rich that the temptations thereof are irresistible doth any man live more comfortably by his ill-gotten goods nay in truth these imbitter the delights of all the rest Doth riches afford a man such security quiet and repose that no man can be at ease till he have attained it or is it not certain on the contrary that the solicitude of acquiring it macerates a man with cares and projects night and day and when he hath attained his ends he lies at once under the joint inconveniences of abundance and of poverty the cares of the one and the burden of the other Wherefore upon the whole matter there is nothing in the case but the impetuousness of a greedy grasping humour that bears down his reason fools him and destroys him And if a milder name then madness be due to this condition let sobermen judge NOW take the Voluptuous man to whom no fruit is pleasant but that which is forbidden and who knows no measure of pleasure but a surfeit in the first place it is very doubtfull whether the quest of pleasures be not as troublesome as the enjoyments of them are sweet at least if we lay together the tedious expectations the frequent frustrations the certain expence of time fortune and health the secret guilt the constant fear of detection the shame and reproach upon discovery the pressing importunities of passion before enjoyment the follies and dangers in the midst and the irksomness and loathing after their
hypocrisy I know he is able and ready to reward sincerity above desert above expectation beyond all thought and imagination I am sensible that hitherto I have not only loitered in his service but declined it nay opposed affronted rebelled against him I have listed my self under his professed enemy and under that banner I have spent a great part of my time Now may it please his infinite goodness to accept me at last I vow to be intirely his I 'll dispute no commands I 'll make no exceptions but I 'll double my diligence and say with the exemplary Convert St. Paul what wilt thou have me to doe Lord § IV. THUS we have seen the nature and properties of that which we called the hinge of conversion but let us now see what are the springs or plummets that set this great Engine on work or what are the considerations by way of motive that put men upon a resolution of repentance and they are principally these four 1. A persuasion that it will not be unsuccessfull and unacceptable to God if we truely repent at last though we have been great sinners before 2. An apprehension that it is not impossible to become perfectly new men notwithstanding our pre-ingagements in the ways of sin 3. That it is not onely possible but easie so to doe if we set about it in earnest 4. A clear perception that whether it be easie or difficult there is a plain necessity of it and it must be done 1. THE first motive to a resolution of repentance is a persuasion of mind that God is not inexorable but that repentance may find acceptance with him It is a memorable story concerning the Tusculani a little people in Italy who had so highly provoked the Romans that Camillus was leading his Army towards them to take revenge but they growing quickly apprehensive of their danger took an effectual course to appease a generous enemy for they made no shew of resistance but set open their Gates and were found every man hard at his ordinary affairs submitting all to the will of those they knew themselves unable to contend with Whereupon the brave Camillus speaks to them to this purpose You saith he amongst all people have only found out the true way of abating the Romane fury and your submission hath been your best defence upon these terms we can no more find in our hearts to injure you then upon other terms you could have found power to oppose us To whom the chief Magistrate on the other side thus replies We have saith he so in good earnest repented us of our former folly that in confidence of that satisfaction to a generous enemy we are not afraid to acknowledge our fault NOT much unlike to this is the sense of the relenting Son in the Text For thinks he what I have done amiss I can neither answer to my self nor to my Father I can neither deny the fact nor defend it therefore I must try what repentance will doe and appeal from his justice to his mercy It is true I forsook my Father but it was a Father I forsook and that name speaks benignity and what may not a Son hope for from a Father There is Rhetorick in confession and contrite submission hath mighty prevalence upon all ingenuous natures Quem poenitet peccasse paenè est innocens Repentance uses to have the success even of innocency it self and I that have failed of the one will try the other My acknowledgment will prevent my accusation If I condemn my self I save my Father a labour and when I abhor my self I move his pity especially if I become another man he will see the same reason to receive me then as he hath to reject me now AND so the penitent towards God I have offended the Divine Majesty but he is a God and that name speaks goodness if he be not as good as can be he is not God and if he be nothing but what is good can proceed from him and nothing that is good but may be expected from him therefore there is hope of pardon THE wisedome of all the world hath agreed to make it the constant stile of God Optimus Maximus the greatest Goodness or the best Greatness goodness and mercy are as essential to him as power and justice nay the very latter inferr the former For what is there can tempt an infinitely perfect Being to be cruel and inexorable He that hath all fullness in himself can certainly envy nothing can hate nothing that he hath made but must needs pity those that are below him and delight to communicate himself to such as need him Envy and cruelty are the issues of meer weakness fear want and impotency The poor are apt to envy the rich because they enjoy what they want and we commonly observe that the weakest and most timorous Creatures are most revengefull and implacable The Coward is deadly and sanguinary because he is not secure of his own strength and therefore dares not slip his opportunity but strikes home and mortally lest the danger should recoil upon himself But what rich and great man envies the beggar or what valiant man was ever remorsless and sanguinary The former hath all the arguments to pity because he cannot want and the latter all the inducements to pardon because he cannot fear God is above all danger can be hurt by nothing needs nothing hath nothing to receive but much to bestow he cannot therefore be prompted to take advantage against his Creatures or delight in their misery since the only ends he hath to serve upon them is the enjoying his own fullness by reflection the diffusing and communicating himself to them and thereby making them happy WHEN God was highly provoked by the sin of David in numbring the people in which fact there was a complication of many evils there was disobedience to an express Law there was distrust of the divine providence and a vain confidence in the arm of flesh It pleased the Divine Majesty to notify his displeasure by the Prophet Nathan and withall gives David his choice either of Pestilence Famine or Sword the King refers it back again to God whether he would please to punish by the Famine or by the Pestilence for saith he Let us fall into the hands of God for his mercies are great but let us not fall into the hands of men He had rather trust the mercies of an incensed God then lie at the mercy of mortal men He knew they were transported with rage and fury but God was pitifull they often forgot themselves but God remembred sinners were but men and dust and ashes They would plague one another maliciously but God chastised in wisedom and measure And that with him according to the phrase of St. James mercy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rejoiceth against glorieth and triumpheth over justice THE Discourse of a brave Heathen is excellent to this purpose We think it just saith
something on man's part though very little and that they call Attrition by which they mean some slight sorrow for sin which they say together with the sacrament of penance or confession will reconcile a man to God without so much as contrition or true and hearty sorrow for the evil of sin this is the express doctrine of the Church of Rome and is very like the common doctrine of the Jews that confession and sacrifice were sufficient for repentance and reconciliation as if sin had no great evil in it self or no great contrariety to the divine nature only for form or order sake he thought fit that some shame or mulct should be put upon it and so a few tears or something of no great moment shall quit all the old score and purchase a new licence to sin again 3. ANOTHER opinion goes further yet requiring not only external expressions and the forms and solemnities of repentance but real and hearty sorrow for sin that a man's Conscience be really troubled and in great anguish for his sin and when this is done all is well from such trouble of Conscience they date their conversion and this they are always reflecting upon as a security not only against the sins committed before it but that from that time God sees no more sin in them as if like as it was at the Pool of Bethesda when the Angel had moved the waters all that stept in were healed These men ordinarily please themselves with melancholy complaints of themselves cry out of a naughty heart a hard heart c. and think this will doe their business as if so soon as the Patient is grown sensible of his case he were cured and to feel the smart were all one as to have the sore healed LASTLY a fourth sort go further yet and require not only contrition but resolution of obedience but content themselves and incourage men to a great degree of confidence though this resolution be never put in execution Thus a great many Saints are canonized from the Gallows and the Clinick or death-bed repentance is greatly countenanced Men commence Saints per saltum as they say as the Romans made Gentlemen Momento turbinis exit Marcus Dama in the turning of an hand a lewd and flagitious person starts up a great Saint The ground of this opinion is they suppose that which is undoubtedly true that God knows men's hearts but then they infer that which is very dangerous that therefore so that be turned right it is no matter with him whether there proceed any fruits worthy of repentance and amendment of life TO all these I might further adde those that reckon the change of opinion being of an admired Sect coming over with great zeal to a new party a demure garb an austere temper or at most some partial reformation to be sufficient signs of regeneration which fancy agrees too well to the humour of a great part of men of this age but I shall not need to proceed further in reckoning up these mistakes nor do I think it necessary to apply a particular confutation to doctrines so very absurd at the first view but I will now as I promised demonstrate the necessity of the doctrine I have asserted which will be an effectual detection of the fallacy of all these other now recired And this I will do by these four arguments § II. FIRST if God in the Holy Scripture doth require of those that have lived wickedly as the condition of their absolution and reconciliation to himself that they be not only sorry for their sins and resolve upon a new course but expresly calls for actual performance of such resolutions and real reformation then those must be strangely bold and presumptuous men that will conceive hopes of pardon upon any other terms But that this which we assert and nothing less is the declared condition of mercy these following passages amongst innumerable others do abundantly evince The first I take notice of is that of the Prophet Isaiah Chap. I. Vers 11 13 c. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrices unto me saith the Lord I am full of the burnt-offerings of Rams and the fat of fed Beasts and I delight not in the bloud of Bullocks or of Lambs or of He-Goats Bring no more vain oblations incense is abomination to me the new Moons and Sabbaths the calling of Assemblies I cannot away with it is iniquity even the solemn meeting And when you spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you yea when ye make many prayers I will not hear your hands are full of bloud Wash you make you clean put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes cease to do evil Learn to doe well seek judgment relieve the oppressed judge the Fatherless plead for the Widow Come now and let us reason together saith the Lord though your sins be as searlet they shall be as white as snow c. Of like import is that of the Prophet Ezekiel Chap. 18. Vers 21 22 28. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed and keep all my statutes and doe that which is lawfull and right he shall surely live he shall not die All the transgressions that he hath committed they shall not be mentioned unto him Because he considereth and turneth away from all his transgressions that he hath committed he shall surely live he shall not die So also Micah 6. 6 7 8. Wherewithall shall I come before the Lord and bow my self before the High God shall I come before him with the burnt-offerings with Calves of a year old Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of Rams or with ten thousand rivers of Oil shall I give my first-born for my transgression the fruit of my Body for the sin of my Soul He hath shewed thee O man what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee but to doe justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God IN all which places God puts a slight upon all the most solemn expressions of penitence when they are dis-joined from actual amendment of life And touching Sacrifice it is very remarkable that though that was a rite of God's own allowance for the expiation of sin and had also conjoined with it the guilty persons confession of his fault and that particularly as Maimonides assures us and considering the usual cost of the oblation was a mulct upon the sinner and some kind of reparation to God yet this is declared of no efficacy without reformation THUS it was in the Old Testament and in the New the case is plainer if it be possible for thus John the Baptist preaches that they should not think it sufficient to submit to the baptism of repentance But bring forth fruits worthy of repentance Matt. 3. 8. And such is the discourse of our Saviour himself Matth. 7. 21. Not every one that saith unto me Lord Lord shall enter
to receive him till he soon perceived who it was but then seized with shame he makes from him with all the speed he could The Apostle forgetting his age and gravity follows him with all his might crying out My Son my Son dost thou fly thy Father thy aged unarmed Father Fear me not I come not armed to destroy thee but desirous to save thee I 'll pray for thee I 'll intercede with Christ Jesus on thy behalf I am ready to lay down my life to save thy Soul The revolted youth hearing this makes a stand and then with eyes cast down and weapons laid aside begins to tremble and at last weeping bitterly is in the words of the Historian Re-baptized in his own tears Then S. John embracing him prays for him fasts with him instructs him and leaves him not till he had not only restored him to the society of the Church but settled him in the publick Ministry thereof THE story is very admirable in all the parts of it as wherein amongst other things we may observe in the first place how quickly bad company insinuates its contagion and corrupts youthfull minds and that neither fine parts nor the best education are sufficient security for a vertuous course unless Apollos water as well as Paul plant and God also give the increase AGAIN it is worth observing how easy and sudden the transition is from a luxurious to a lawless life This young man began his risk in riot and ends it in robbery Although this be no strange thing for besides that intemperance makes men bold and rash and fit for any desperate enterprize they that are come to that that they care not what they spend are usually forced not to regard how they get it We note also from this story that great Wits and curious tempers are like razor mettle quickly turned and if they miscarry they become the most notorious Debauchees but if they be well set and hold right become most eminently usefull Moreover we may here also take notice how a sense of guilt and dis-ingenuity baffles a man's spirit dejects his courage disarms and subdues him whereas on the other side conscience of sincerity and good designs spirits and actuates a man above his age temper and common capacity But that which I principally remark in the story is the paternal affection in the aged Apostle toward this dissolute and lost young man how fresh the concern for him was in his thoughts when he came into those parts again where he left him with what strictness he requires the depositum of the Bishop how he forgets himself to recover him what charms there were in the countenance voice motion of the aged Father how strange a thing it was to be young Hector running away from an old Apostle an armed Captain not daring to stand before unarmed and infirm old age to observe the spirit the passion the flaming love of a good man to the Soul of a desperate sinner and in all this to see a lively resemblance of God's goodness to men For God doth not only as I have said before receive men upon their return but moves towards them invites nay draws them to himself He is so far from positively hardening sinners that he takes off their hardness he allures them by his promises prevents them by his grace way-lays them by his providence calls upon them by his word melts them by his kindness works upon them by his Spirit and this Spirit takes all advantageous seasons watches the mollia tempora fandi suggests thoughts to their minds holds their minds close and intent gives them a prospect of the other world and by several other ways without violence to their faculties helps forward their return to God § V. 4. LASTLY As the Earthly Father for joy of his Sons return forgets all his anger and the causes of it passes by his ingratitude and dissolution of manners and treats him with infinite demonstrations of kindness falling on his neck and kissing him So doth our Heavenly Father cast all the iniquities of the penitent ' behind his back blots them out of his book makes no severe reflections no bitter expostulations no upbraidings but passes an act of perfect amnesty and oblivion Justin Martyr in his Work against Trypho brings in our Saviour saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The words are no where to be found in the Gospel but the sense is That God takes men as they are and considers not how evil they have been so that now they become sincerely good This the Prophet Ezekiel frequently proclaims on the behalf of God Chap. 18. especially vers 22. All his sin that he hath committed shall not be once mentioned against him but in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live For as if men apostatize from hopefull and vertuous beginnings it shall not at all avail them that they set out well and began in the Spirit whenas they end in the Flesh upon which account it is a very vain thing for them to goe about to comfort themselves against their present looseness by remembring the time of their conversion and the great passion they have sometime had for Religion but which now they have apostatized from having lost their first love so on the contrary he that was a sinner but now is not i. e. is now sincerely returned from his licentiousness to his duty shall never have his former disobedience imputed to him by God THIS truth Philo represents handsomly in his Allegorical way when glossing upon what the Scripture saith of Enoch After his translation he was not found because God had translated him he paraphrases on this manner God saith he having changed him from an evil to a vertuous man the traces of his former wickedness were no more to be found then if no such thing had ever been committed BUT this gracious procedure of God with penitent sinners deserves to be more fully and particularly unfolded and if we diligently consider what the Scripture assures us of the greatness of God's pardoning mercy we shall observe these three remarkable circumstances all pregnant of unspeakable consolation 1. He pardons great and many sins not onely lighter provocations 2. He forgives repeated follies and relapsed sinners 3. His pardon is full and absolute 1. FIRST amongst men there are some sins that are scarcely if at all thought to be pardonable as where there is malice and treachery involved in the fact or where there is contumely added to the injury And sometimes the greatness of the person injured so inhances the offence as that it is not thought fit to pardon as for instance in Treason against the Supream Power But most certainly there are all these and many more aggravations in most voluntary sins committed against God and yet he pardons Exod. 34. 7. He pardons iniquity transgression and sin i. e. sin of all kinds and degrees whatsoever excepting only the sin against the Holy Ghost which our Saviour hath
such persons were in and partly the honour and happiness of such an entertainment would compell them to come in Upon this account God propounds not only pardon of sin but all the forementioned inestimable benefits to repenting sinners as well as to those just men that need no repentance AND although it be certain that God hath neither such need of men's service as to oblige him to resort to these great inducements and it be also very true that there are but a small number of those that make up the Quire in glory who upon such motives were converted from extream debauchery yet such is the graciousness of the good Shepherd that he carries the lost Sheep home on his Shoulders rejoicing and such is the goodness of God that he sticks not at this price for the redemption of any one Soul Besides it is to be considered that as we noted from the Historian formerly Difficile est in tot humanis erroribus solâ innocentiâ vivere that though no good Subject will voluntarily transgress the laws of his Country and fall into the displeasure of the Prince yet the most wary and inoffensive person that is most secure of his own integrity would desire to live under such a government where there was room for mercy and pardon if he should offend and the best of men are so sensible of the power of temptation and the slipperiness of their station as well as conscious of their own sincerity that they are marvellously comforted and incouraged by this admirable grace and goodness of God to sinners AND whereas the fear of Hell may be thought sufficient both to reclaim sinners from their evil ways and to preserve good men from apostasy we shall find upon due consideration that fear let it be of what object it will is neither so lasting a principle nor so potent and effective a motive as hope for this last raises generosity inflames the mind spirits all the powers despises or glories in difficulty and therefore all wise men imploy this Engine especially in all great enterprizes and indeavour to make men's hopes greater then their fears and so order the matter that those they employ may have a prospect of so great a good by success in their attempts as shall outweigh all their apprehensions of difficulty or danger in the atchievement And this will be the more remarkable if we observe in that famous encounter of David with Goliah the Giant of Gath that although there was doubtless some extraordinary impulse upon David's heart to undertake that business yet the holy Text intimates that he listned to the discourses of the people and was inflamed by the general assurance was given him of a mighty and glorious reward to him that should effect it Since therefore the proposition of great and glorious hopes is so necessary not only to draw men off from the present allurements of sin and to dissolve the charms of sense which habituate sinners are bound in but also to comfort and incourage even good men themselves and to ingage both the one and the other in a generous course of vertue the Divine Majesty considering he hath to do with men and resolving to deal with them agreeably to their natures thinks it as well becoming his wisedom as his goodness not only to proclaim impunity to his rebels upon their submission but to assure them of the highest favours and preferments in the Court of Heaven 2. SECONDLY the extream difficulty and consequently the wonderfull rarity of examples of great sinners recovered to sincere piety makes such happy accidents deserve to be solemnized with the greater joy and triumph St. Gregory Nazianzen making an oration in commemoration of St. Cyprian as well reports his flagitious life before his conversion to Christianity as his admirable vertues and piety afterwards and makes the former a shadow to heighten and set off the latter For saith he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is nothing so great a matter to maintain the Character of a good man when a man hath once attained to it as to begin a whole new course of piety for now the one is but to be like a man's self and to pursue a custom or habit but the other requires a vertuous choice and a manly resolution able to bear down former habits and therefore there are but few examples of the one but many of the other INDEED it is an unspeakable advantage to be early ingaged in the ways of vertue for then by reason of the easiness of doing good which is consequent of custom a man seems to be under 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a divine fate a peculiar predestination to happiness and therefore if it be well considered there is nothing in all a man's whole life that he hath greater reason to thank God for then that good providence of his which takes hold of our tender years and forms them to a sense of Religion for hereby sin is made dreadfull to our Consciences and upon the matter vertue is as easy as vice and the narrow way to Heaven as ready to our feet as the broad way of destruction But on the other side Revocare gradus hic labor hoc opus to reduce an old dislocation is very painfull to put off the old man to change customs to cast out Satan out of his old possession must be very difficult and require a very brave and generous resolution AND although to omnipotent power all things are alike easy yet forasmuch as God not only speaks after the manner of men but also proceeds ordinarily by the course of natural causes and doth not supersede their activity but assist them proportionably to their natures it must needs notwithstanding the divine grace be a very difficult thing to recover an old and deplored sinner in whom all the powers of the mind are enfeebled the sense of Conscience stupified and the very Synteresis and natural notions of the Soul are corrupted and consequently a through reformation of such a person is like to life from the grave and must needs draw after it not only the eyes and admiration of men but also the vexation of Hell and make the Devil rage as disappointed of the prey he thought himself sure of but especially must produce joy in Heaven and amongst the holy Angels IT can indeed be no surprizal to Almighty God who foreknows all things from the beginning and is as far from admiration as from mutability of passions both which proceed from shortness of understanding nor to our Lord Jesus Christ now in glory for we see that whilst he was upon earth he knew when vertue-proceeded from him to cure the woman of her inveterate distemper But whereas men are wont to make some passionate expressions of their resentment of every new and admirable event God thinks fit also in such an extraordinary recovery as this we are speaking of to set up a monument crowning him that overcomes the aforesaid difficulties with immortal glory
in the Gospel 2. It is to be observed in consequence of the former distinction that whereas for the third sort of men of whom they had no great esteem it was accounted no wonder that they being filii terrae men of a meer secular character did hold correspondence and had intercourse with Publicans and Sinners that is such as were proscribed the Cense of Religion Nevertheless for any person of the two first ranks so to have done namely to be found maintaining any kind of society or friendly conversation with such infamous persons was held not only dishonourable and unbecoming but flatly unlawfull For according to a tradition yet extant in their writings it is reckoned as one of the six scandals that those higher Orders of Religionists are charged by all means to avoid namely to dine eat or drink with such Now this seems to be the first occasion of quarrel against our Saviour that he pretending to be some extraordinary person at least a student of the law did not use such branded persons with the same supercile and disdain that their great men were wont to do but familiarly discoursed eat and drank with them For so we read Matth. 9. 10 11. And it came to pass as Jesus sate at meat many Publicans and Sinners came and sate down with him and his disciples and when the Pharisees saw it they said unto his disciples Why eateth your Master with Publicans and Sinners c. Let it be farther noted in the third place That the covenant which God made with this people on Mount Sinai admitted of propitiation by sacrifice and thereby gave hopes of pardon onely to some smaller offences but seemed to exclude all great and notorious transgressors shutting them up under wrath and appointing them to be cut off from amongst their people And the minds of the Jews not being elevated above this literal dispensation nor being able to distinguish betwixt this political transaction and the eternal standard of justice and mercy in the divine mind they were induced to believe that God would exercise mercy upon no other terms then what he therein proclaimed and that he was inexorable and implacable in all other cases beyond the tenour of that indulgence whence it came to pass that they themselves in proportion as they thought to the divine proceedings abandoned all the aforesaid kinds of notorious sinners as castaways conceiving neither hopes of their pardon nor usefulness of indeavouring to bring them to repentance And although the excellent discourses of the Prophets might have instructed them with better and more worthy notions of God yet they superstitiously contracting those Evangelical expressions in the Prophets to the narrow sense of the Law rather then improving the text of the Law by the divine Commentaries of the Prophets continued still under the same mean and narrow apprehensions of divine mercy and consequently thereof must needs pronounce very sad and dismal dooms upon all great sinners But forasmuch as they could not but remember the very great and foul miscarriages of some otherwise very holy men in the Old Testament and particularly of David in his Adultery with Bathshebah and the Murther of Vriah for neither of which sins any sacrifice or propitiation was appointed in the Law but the offender in such cases was to be cut off without mercy therefore that they might not be constrained in consequence of the aforesaid persuasion to exclude such men from all hopes of pardon too they had artifices of extenuating such mens sins as no doubt they had of their own and rather then forgoe their hide-bound notion of God chose against all sense to make those black crimes meer peccadillo's lest by the example of such great men as David c. other sinners should be incouraged to hope for mercy beyond the tenour of their Law Now our Saviour preaching repentance and giving hopes of pardon to the greatest of sinners upon condition of their present hearty and thorough reformation several poor souls who had been reprobated and damned by these severe Interpreters of the Law were marvellously transported at so comfortable a doctrine and with great affection and frequency resort to it Hereupon these demure but dogged Leguleians are offended and insinuate a suspicion of our Saviour that he was a friend and favourer of lewd and vicious persons This I take it is the true state of the case and the rise of the excellent discourses in this Chapter For in answer to their unjust imputation our Saviour who could if he had pleased have shewed the sandy foundation of all their aforesaid Hypothesis by discovering the designs of the divine wisedom in that manner of transaction with that people in that covenant or by large deductions from the Prophets have demonstrated the uncircumscribedness of the divine goodness or with admirable wisedom silenced them by a Philosophick discourse of the divine Philanthropy He I say that could have vindicated his own doctrine and practice and both baffled their arrogance and shamed their ignorance any of these or other ways waves all this and takes a more plain and popular argument confounding them by an appeal to the common sense of mankind much after the manner that God silences the petulant disgusts of the Prophet Jonah Jonah was angry with God for being more exorable towards the Ninevites then he expected and would needs have had a vast and populous City destroyed meerly to make good his own prediction But God convinces him of his unreasonableness by a lively Emblem There was a Gourd suddenly sprung up which refreshed the Prophet with its verdure and covered him with its shadow God who had caused the Gourd to grow quickly smites it hereupon Jonah is angry again and expostulates the matter with his Maker Thou hadst pity on a contemptible Gourd for which thou didst not labour and which came up in a night and perished in a night And should not I spare Nineveh that great City upon their repentance wherein are more then one hundred and twenty thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left c. In like manner our Saviour here silences the murmurings of these hard-hearted Jews by three Parables The first concerning a Lost Sheep vers 4. The second concerning a Lost Groat vers 8. And the third of a Lost Son vers 11. In all which he appeals to common experience and the sense of humanity for evidence of the fitness of his proceedings and the absurdity of their complaints shewing that it is the common course of men to express most solicitude for that which is lost and most joy upon the recovery of that which was given up as desperate And forasmuch as the souls of men must needs be more valuable with a wise God and a gracious Creatour then those other things can be with men he leaves it to them to infer how reasonable it is to think that the divine goodness is both highly pleased with the recovery of
saith he which the Father divided amongst his Sons was Reason which God gave in common to all mankind and that in conjunction with freedom of mind for every being that hath the use of reason hath also liberty of election the latter affording a Field or Theatre for the former to act upon and the former enabling him to use the latter well And indeed it was wondrous expedient that since God had given mankind the Talent of liberty that he should therewith bestow upon him a principle of reason to restrain and govern that liberty that so having not only Sails to move him but a Compass to direct him he might shape his course agreeably to those ends God designed him for or more plainly having a copy of the divine mind implanted in his Soul he might make the elections of his will conformable to those of his Maker For since as I said before Men and Angels are not naturally and necessarily carried to their ends as other beings are but may either move regularly towards them or decline from them at their own choice had not God put upon them this bias of reason to incline them the right way they would have been in danger to have made such an exorbitant use of their freedom as to have given the whole Creation much greater disturbance then yet they have done And as well the truth of this assertion as the value of this Talent will appear most remarkably if we do but consider what great improvements some have attained to by the alone use of Reason having never any other Talent of supernatural revelation afforded them that we know of In contemplation of which Tully recounts it a prime favour of the divine Majesty to humane nature That he had endowed their minds with natural notions which are to them the seeds and principles of knowledge and vertue And he further adds Were it not that God hath thus furnished the mind with such a stock of proleptick principles of knowledge we could not have ever come to understand any thing and all industry study and inquity had been utterly lost and fruitless but by the means of these natural notions we have a kind of anticipation an intellectual taste and relish of truth and falshood good and evil and so a measure to govern our selves by in our elections and prosecutions 3. The third Talent given to all mankind for their improvement is the observable wise order and method of Divine Providence wherein there is such an admirable intertexture of mercies and afflictions as that neither a constant series of adversities and cros accidents shall break their spirit or ingulph men in despair nor yet such a constant course of perpetual prosperity as to render them too light and airy but a moderate interchange of both to make them grave and serious And besides both these dispensed not fortuitously but with such discrimination as that ordinarily men may not only be assured of a Providence in the general but be able to observe the divine displeasure against sin and wickedness by the one and his approbation of honesty and goodness by the other and so consequently be both directed in their choice and provoked to an answerable prosecution AND although it be very true that such exact course of providence be not now ordinarily observable in the world because God having now made a full and clear discovery of his whole mind to the Sons of Men by extraordinary revelation as there is no need of this lesser light when a far greater shines clearly so also it seems good to his divine wisedom to make the course of his providence more involved and intricate in many cases both for the tryal of good men and the just hardening of the wicked and unbelieving Nevertheless it is not credible that such a cryptick method should be the common course of his providence where those reasons cease and where he hath afforded no better light AND besides we are sure de facto that there was such a legible providence as we speak of in the most ancient and Patriarchal times when it was common to observe the finger of God by some calamity or other pointing out and branding the offender and his blessing visibly descending upon and crowning worthy and vertuous persons THUS God whilst as yet there was no revealed Law did confirm and bear testimony to the laws of reason and provide against the staggering and fluctuation of men's minds in deducing those natural conclusions by which they were then to govern themselves by the suffrage of his own providence Consonantly to which it was that the Scripture or Holy Writ concerning those times is little more then an history of providence or remarks of the good and evil that befell men according to the demerits of their either vertuous or vicious behaviour as whosoever considers the Books of Moses must acknowledge AND for the people of the Jews it is notorious that the course of divine providence ran all along above ground amongst them although they were not without written laws and the lively Oracles of God of which without prying into the counsels of the Almighty we may easily satisfie our selves by a double account namely partly to afford the more full testimony to those sanctions of his amongst a hard hearted People partly also to supply the visible defect of those Laws in the most material rules of vertue it pleased God to give intimation of his mind and confirmation to the dictates of nature by such extraordinary attestations of his providence BUT as for the Gentiles who were destitute of the aforesaid advantage having not the more sure word of Prophecie as the Apostle calls it there is no doubt to be made but the divine goodness did supply that defect as to the greater lines of vertue and vice by the plain legibility of his providence at least ordinarily and far beyond what he doth amongst those that live under the full light of the Gospel which whoso will not be induced to believe must justifie his incredulity by perverseness and call in question the faith of all the Histories of those times and Countreys And although we cannot deny that it pleased God sometimes even amongst those people to walk in the dark suffering the good and evil things that befell men to be no sure indications of his favour or displeasure yet the rarity of the case appears by the salvo they found out for this Phaenomenon namely they imagined that when rewards and punishments or rather good and evil were mismatched and did not apply themselves to vertue and vice respectively that it proceeded from some fatal necessity which was superiour to the Gods and not to be withstood or hindred by them By which it appears that for the most part they observed a just Nemesis and righteous distribution of rewards and punishments in the course of the world Which direction of providence added to the two former talents might be of great advantage to them
were easy to bring abundance of egregious instances hereof such as Justin Martyr St. Austin and others but to what I have said already I will only subjoin two or three Scriptural observations And the first shall be what David saith of himself Psal 119. vers 59. I thought upon my ways and turned my feet to thy precepts In the next place I cannot but take notice in the story of Isaac Gen. 24. 63. the Scripture saith of him He went out into the fields to meditate in the evening The LXX render it he went out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to talk with himself to entertain discourse with his own heart and for the convenience of doing this he chose the solitude of the Fields and the cool and quiet of the Evening And by this practice the Holy Ghost characterizes him as though a young man yet beginning to be both a wise and a pious person Nor is it to be omitted which is recorded of Ahab 1. King 21. 27. That when God threatned him with the utter extirpation of his family for his wickedness he put on Sackcloth sprinkled himself with Ashes and especially amongst the rest he walked softly that is although he did not heartily repent yet he knew well how to dissemble the doing it and acted the part of a penitent in that serious and considerative posture I will conclude this point with a passage of the Prophet Jeremiah Chap. 31. Vers 18 19. the words are these I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus Thou hast chastised me and I was chastised as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke Turn thou me and I shall be turned for thou art the Lord my God Surely after I was turned I repented and after I was instructed I smote upon my thigh I was ashamed yea even confounded because I did bear the reproach of my youth A memorable Scripture very full and apposite to my present purpose and withall so pathetick as that it is almost match for this Parable of our Saviour we have before us The reflection upon both which together lead me IN the second place to observe the occasion or what it was which put the Prodigal into a considerative temper and that was the pressure of his wants whilest wind and tide favoured him and his affaris were prosperous he made no reflections nor struck sail to any thing but now the tide forsaking him he is becalmed and then considers In like manner § III. IT is usually some affliction or other which first awakens habitual sinners into consideration and the rudiments of piety and religion Or as serious considerativeness begins conversion so commonly some sharp affliction or other begins that seriousness It cannot be doubted but that the most easy and most frequently successfull way of begetting a sense of God and of piety in the minds of men is by holy education in their youth whilest their hearts are tender and tractable not prejudiced by actual ingagements not confirmed by example nor hardened by long custome and practice and when the grace of God anticipates the Devil and prevents all his enterprises and perhaps if we look over the state of mankind we shall find amongst those that are sincerely good the number of those that have become so after a long course of sin to be very small in comparison We may also allow it for truth which is made a common maxime that ingenuous minds are most wrought upon by obligation and favour that the strongest efforts are those which are made by kindness and goodness that this latter method will melt and dissolve such as would be broken in pieces by violence But this prejudices not the business in hand for we speak of such as have lost their ingenuity old hardened sinners who must first be broken by the hammer of affliction before they will dissolve by the benign warmth of mercy and kindness These last indeed carry on the work and make a perfect change but fear and pain usually begins it But I will not stick to grant that perhaps it may fall out that some old sinner may have been reclaimed by the reading of a good book hearing a serious Sermon or by the grave admonition of a faithfull Friend without any pressing affliction to prepare him for it or as it were extort it from him Notwithstanding I verily believe if an estimate could be taken the instances of this kind would be found to be exceeding rare We find Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar humbled by adversity and their stiff Necks submitted to those acknowledgements of God's power and sovereignty which no kindness or mercy would bring them to And Manasses comes out a true convert a new man out of the furnace of affliction And David himself confesses of himself That before he was afflicted he went astray but thereby he had learnt to keep God's Commandments Psal 119. vers 67. But the whole Scripture affords no one instance that I know of of such a person as we speak of cured by any other method then this And for the whole Nation of the Jews God himself saith thus Hos 5. 15. I will go and return to my place till they acknowledge their transgression and seek my face In their affliction they will seek me early q. d. I will not only afflict my people but I will leave them under the pressure thereof and by this rack as it were extort from them a confession of my sovereignty and their own guilt for I have found by long trial that nothing else will work upon a stiff-necked generation but in their affliction I am sure they will earnestly and instantly seek after me IT was not the peculiar jealousy of Fabius concerning the Romane State which made him say Se secunda magìs quà m adversa timere That their danger was greater lest they should become rash and confident by some slight successes then that their spirits should be broken by a disaster For all men that understand themselves and value their safety above their pleasure find they have reason more to suspect the soft charm of ease peace and plenty then the rough attacks of adversity Because amongst other things a constant and stiff gale of prosperity carries men with too full sail to be checkt or controuled by counsel it presents them with too many and great temptations to be easily resisted ministers to their confident presumption that either they are good enough already because they have so many arguments of the divine favour or at least that he overlooks their miscarriages And Conscience is either out-faced or hath been so often silenced and baffled that it dares scarce mutter till the apprehension of some great danger or misery authorize and provoke it but then it recovers its speech and tells its errand TO this purpose we have a famous instance in the Brethren of Joseph Gen. 37. They prompted by envy had maliciously plotted the death or at least the perpetual servitude of their Brother and proceeded so far in it that to
forsake thee But it was only an heat and a bravery of the Apostle he had not seriously considered the business nor forecasted what might ensue there was no mature deliberation no preparations for a real encounter and therefore it sped accordingly and he came off shamefully and in him we have a standing example of the frailty of the greatest passion and of the necessity that counsel and deliberation ground our Resolutions By which means also they will become 2. DECRETORY and Peremptory which is the second property of vertuous Resolution There are some men whom an affectionate discourse a serious Sermon or any notable accident will put into a fit of devotion which shall last only untill something else come in the way and then theformer impressions give way to the latter These we commonly call good natured men whose facility of temper puts them at the mercy of every contingency and they are good and bad as occasion serves Clouds they are without water carried about of every wind as St. Jude expresses it vers 12. or as St. James Double minded men and unstable in all their ways Jam. 1. 8. that have no settled principle nothing fixed and constant to govern themselves by To these the Prophecie of Jacob concerning his Son Reuben may fitly be applied Gen. 49. 4. Vnstable as water therefore thou shalt not excell such irresolute tempers can never arrive at any excellency of vertue THE people of the Jews had no doubt a good mind to be in possession of the land of Canaan notwithstanding when-ever they met with any difficulty then would to God we were again by the flesh-pots of Aegypt and none of these light and mutable persons ever came to the good Land There were Anakims and Giants and a thousand difficulties ran in their heads which enfeebled them for the enterprize only Joshua and Caleb and such as were animated by their brave example and said Come let us go up for we are able to conquer only such I say came to the possession of it 1 Kings 18. 21. How long halt ye between two opinions said the Prophet to the men of Israel If Baal be God serve him but if Jehovah be God then serve him q. d. Whether you serve the true God or the false irresolution spoils all devotion either way for whilst you doubt and dispute your way you do but halt towards your end and design Accordingly Moses indeavours to raise a generosity of mind in the men of Israel by those words Deut. 26. 17. Thou hast vouched the Lord this day to be thy God q. d. It now becomes you to be religious in earnest to serve God with a perfect heart and a willing mind for you have now put it past all dispute you have chosen and resolved the Lord to be your God and therefore be consistent with your selves THERE is no vertue in a faint velleity when men shall speak as Agrippa in the Acts Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian It is no wisedome to put in Cautions now 't is only the language of the sluggard to say there is a Lion in the way Postquam consulueris maturè facto opus est All gallantry of mind is now after deliberation to take up an immoveable resolution for Vertue is neither a wary diffidence nor a hot fit of zeal but a constant vital heat and a settled temper of mind The young man in the Gospel St. Mark 10. 22. comes to our Saviour Good Master what good thing shall I doe that I may inherit eternal life He thought it a fine thing to be a candidate of the other World eternal life which our Saviour preached and promised was a glorious and very desirable thing and he could be well content to become a Disciple of Christ and to do some very good thing that he might attain it For indeed eternal life is that which no man can chuse but desire to have a mind to be saved is no sign of grace for a man must expresly hate himself should he do otherwise Thus far therefore he was right but after all this he went away sorrowfull without his errand he had not throughly resolved with himself to go through with it he could not find in his heart like the wise Merchant to sell and part with all he had to purchase this pearl of inestimable price But the true Penitent sets down an immoveable resolution to go through what-ever it cost him I have faultered too long already faith he now stat sententia it is as the Law of the Medes and Persians with me nothing shall dispense with my purpose or assoil my resolutions I will now return And that brings me to the 3. THIRD property of a vertuous resolution It is de praesenti a present Resolution like that of the Psalmist Psal 119. vers 59 60. I thought upon my ways and turned my feet to thy precepts I made haste and delayed not to keep thy righteous judgments q. d. My consideration lead me to resolution of amendment and I found the nature and consequence of that was such as to admit of no delay I therefore set presently about it A resolution of amendment which commences not presently but intends to do it hereafter is no repentance nor any good sign of grace forasmuch as it is probable that there is no man in the whole world at least under the light of the Gospel and who hath ever reflected upon himself or thought of God and another life but hath some time or other resolved to become a new man And indeed this is the most fatal cheat men put upon themselves and I fear now there are multitudes entered into the chambers of darkness and an irreversible estate that for a great part of their lives carried along with them both convictions of the necessity of reformation and resolutions one time or other to set about it For as I said before it is but self-love to desire eternal life and no man that considers at all can think but something must be done for the attainment of it or so thinking can so desperately abandon himself as not to intend to do it But he understands not sufficiently either the evil or the danger of sin much less hath any true sense of vertue that can find in his heart to procrastinate and adjourn the resolution of casting off the former and applying himself to the latter For where the mischief is intolerable on the one hand and the good and happiness the most unspeakable and highest that can be on the other there can be neither wisedom nor safety in any other course then that which Solomon directs Eccles 9. 10. Whatever thy hand finds to doe doe it with all thy might for there is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisedom in the grave whither thou goest When once death hath closed our eyes the time of probation is over the day of grace certainly shuts in and the night cometh when no man can
he to give both thanks and reward to him that cures our bodily infirmities though he do it not without some pain and trouble to us and why should we not rather love God's methods as the Physician of Souls there is no passion nor much less revenge in his proceedings with us he neither cuts and lances us cruelly nor uses any other sharpness then the case necessarily requires he doth nothing with intention to hurt or grieve us but proceeds with art and care designing our greatest good and in a word is in all his actions agreeable to the goodness and benignity of his own nature The summe of all which and of what we intend further to say is that of the Apostle God is good and the goodness of God leadeth to repentance Rom. 2. 5. For the consideration of that is the spring of hope and of all motion by way of return THERE are indeed some men who having entertained very crude notions of the Divine Majesty do sometimes assert on the one hand that vindictive justice is essential and natural to God so that he is bound up to require strict satisfaction and without it cannot properly pardon any transgression And others on the other hand talk at the same wild rate of his mercy and goodness as if all the instances he makes thereof were also natural and necessary and that he could not insist upon his own right but must make all the expressions of kindness that are possible towards his Creatures But both these notions are equally false and mischievous the former of them representing God a rigid Majesty and tending to desperation the other an easy and soft Deity and tempting men to presume upon him the one making him an object of horrour and the other of contempt for who can love him that cannot pity and who can reverence him who hath it not in his power to do otherwise The truth is therefore that all particular instances both of the one kind and of the other are subject to his wisedom that he can exercise either mercy or severity as he sees occasion for after this manner the Scripture speaks of him that sometime he hath mercy because he will have mercy and that when he will he hardeneth sinners for destruction AND to think otherwise of God especially in the case of mercy and pardon as if he could not dispense it as he pleases is to bring in a rigid fatality with the Stoicks instead of a God and is so far from aggrandizing the Divine Majesty that it is the greatest diminution of his power and glory and renders him less then a man for we can recedere à nostro jure remit of our own rights and give mercy a triumph over strict justice And although the sinner when he offends against God forfeits himself into the divine hand and gives God just cause to punish him if he will yet certainly he cannot by any act of his put a Law upon God or oblige him to punish or if he think fit to shew mercy AND then for the interest of God's Rectourship and government of the world it is not a necessity of punishment that conserves that but the power or freedom of punishing or remitting accordingly as it shall seem good to his own wisedom Whereby when men are both provoked to amendment by the hopes of pardon and restrained from disobedience by the fear of punishment For the liberty of dispensing either of these at pleasure is that which produces a reverence towards the Divine Majesty that is a complication of love and fear wherein the very notion of Religion consists It is not an impertinent passage to this purpose which we have in the Historian when the young Gentlemen in the new Roman Common-wealth had a design to restore the Kingly Government in the Family of the Tarquins they had Speeches made amongst them to this effect To be bound up by the rigour of Laws which had no compassion nor made allowance for contingency was very harsh and unsafe considering humane infirmity But under Kingly Government there was power of dispensation possibility of indulgence liberty of interpretation room for mercy and pardon a man that fell did not necessarily there miscarry For there was place for intercession repentance might relieve him and the prerogative of the Prince was the security of the Subject NOW that repentance is available with God we have all the assurance that can be desired for besides what we have said already from the consideration of the perfections of the Divine Nature and the interest of his Government Repentance is the great and principal Doctrine of the Gospel which the Son of God himself came to proclaim by his Preaching to confirm by his Miracles to make way for and to procure acceptance to by his Death and Sacrifice and to render throughly effectual and successfull by his Intercession at God's right hand in Heaven Wherefore as Manoah's wife reasoned when her Husband had dreadfull apprehensions of the Majesty of God who had appeared to them and concluded they should die Because they had seen God No saith she if God intended to destroy us he would not have appeared to us or much less have accepted a Sacrifice at our hands So assuredly if God had not great compassion to mankind and did not design to accept them upon repentance he would never have given his own Son to be a Sacrifice for sin Can any man suspect that God is indifferent whether men be saved or no when he hath sent his Son to save them Can any man imagine him implacable towards those whose nature he sent his Son to assume and thereby to make an union betwixt the divine and humane Natures Will any man think him inexorable to sinners who pitied them healed them conversed with them and died for them Let Devils despair who have not only no promise and no Saviour but nothing pitiable in their case having had no tempter to abuse them no flesh or body to clog them no infirmity to extenuate their presumption they are without hope and therefore incapable of repentance and so go on eternally to hate and blaspheme the God that will not pardon them But there is no cause man should do so who as he hath all the arguments of pity in his case so hath all the assurances of pardon from God upon his repentance TO say no more the very constant experience of all Ages and the common sense of all mankind leaves us without all doubt that this method of repentance pacifies the Almighty insomuch that when he hath most exprest his angry resentments and seems to have been most peremptory and decretal in his threatnings yet all but mad and desperate persons have incouraged themselves to hope for impunity upon repentance even then when there hath not been the least intimation of any such condition in his denunciations for thus when the Prophet Jonas had from the mouth of God proclaimed expresly Yet forty days and
I lain long enough under the terrours of the Law and the spirit of bondage For God requires not sorrow for it self but for its end and it is no satisfaction to him that his Creatures lie under affrightfull apprehensions besides our own Consciences will tell us we may then dry our eyes and be comfortable when the cause is taken away and not before for then is it Godly sorrow when it bringeth forth repentance not to be repented of 2 Cor. 7. 10. AND herein lies the great uncomfortableness of a death-bed repentance for besides the horrible madness of trusting the issues of eternity upon extempore preparations if it should please God to give a man both the grace and the opportunity then at last seriously to bethink himself to feel remorse for his sins to make resolutions and to renew his baptismal Covenant yet then he can give no proof to himself of his own sincerity because he cannot repair God's honour he can make no conquest over Satan he can leave no example to the world he cannot by habit and exercise make the ways of God become easy and natural to himself he cannot be said to have lived the life of the righteous and therefore cannot comfortably conclude that he shall die the death of such AS for the penitent Thief in the Gospel that accompanied our Saviour in his sufferings upon the Cross to whom our Saviour pronounced that he should that day be with him in Paradise his case was peculiar probably he had lived in great darkness and ignorance and never had the means of grace till now but however it was not unagreeable to the divine wisedom and goodness to do something extraordinary at that great time and to signalize the efficacy of our Saviour's Mediatourship by some remarkable instance at such a time when the dignity and glory of his person was most clouded and obscured and as there never was nor will be such another occasion as this so it is great and desperate folly for any man to trust to such an experiment And whereas in the Parable Matth. 20. vers 12. those Labourers that came into the Vineyard at the eleventh hour are rewarded equally with those that had born the burden and heat of the day It is in the first place to be observed that though they came late yet not so late but that they did really work in the Vineyard and then besides here is nothing contrary to what we are pressing for we are far from intention of discouraging any to return at last or from limiting the mercies of God who is able to foresee what a late Convert would have done if he had opportunity and may accordingly extend mercy to him All therefore which I say is that this is a most uncomfortable state when a man's Conscience cannot give security for him nor is there any thing that affords him positive grounds of hope having not performed the conditions of the New Covenant only he hath a general refuge in the merits of Christ and in God's mercy WHEREFORE there is all the reason and all the wisedom in the world that a man should not trust to prefaces and praeludia beginnings and first eslays of repentance but let it have its perfect work that with the Prodigal Son he not only sit down and bewail his misery or take up resolutions of returning to his Father but that he forthwith set about it and effect it So he arose and came to his Father What entertainment he meets with from his Father upon so doing I am now to shew in the third and last Part of the Parable The father said to the servants bring forth the best robe and put it on him c. S t. LVKE 15. 22. Non patitur contriti cordis holocaustum repulsam Quotiens te in conspectu Domini video suspirantem Spiritum sanctum non dubito aspirantem cum intuâ—or flentem sentio ignoscentem Cypr serm de coena Page 240. 241. THE PARABLE OF THE Prodigal Son PART III. The Prodigal received and reconciled or God's gracious reception of a Penitent Sinner S. Luke 15. Vers 22 23 24. But the Father said to his servants Bring forth the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet And bring hither the fatted Calf and kill it and let us eat and be merry For this my Son was dead and is alive again was lost and is found c. CHAP. I. Of Reconciliation or Justification THE CONTENTS § I. The passionate story of Joseph Gen. 37. parallel to this Parable before us § II. God takes notice of the first beginnings of good in men The use of that consideration § III. God's compassion and tenderness to men under agonies of mind yet without the weakness of humane passion § IV. God not only takes delight in beginnings of good but promotes them by his grace The famous story in Eusebius of St. John and a dissolute young man and several usefull observations thereupon § V. The greatness of God's pardoning mercy and the fullness and compleatness thereof upon repentance set out in several great instances full of unspeakable consolation to the Penitent and wherein God's mercies outgo those of mercifull men the greatness of the sin of our first Parents and of the Jews in crucifying our Lord which notwithstanding were both pardoned § VI. Of the Novation Heresy and the mischiefs of it § VII Practical reflections upon Justification § I. IT is a very lively and pathetick story which Moses gives us concerning Jacob and his Sons especially his beloved Son Joseph to this effect The Brethren of Joseph envying him that great share he had in his Father's affections resolve some way or other to dispatch him out of the way but that they might not imbrue their hands in his bloud they conclude to sell him a slave to the Midianites that happened at that time to come in the way and to hide their own fault from their Father they kill a Kid and dip Joseph's Coat in the bloud and telling a demure story to the old man impose upon his belief that some wild Beast had devoured his Son Which when the good man was possest of he most tenderly resents the affliction rends his Cloaths puts Sackcloth upon his Loins and mourned many days Whereupon his Sons and Daughters and even those especially that had raised the tragedy personate so well as to take upon them to be his comforters but the wound was too deep to be easily cured for he refuses consolation No saith he I will go down to the grave to my Son mourning my grief shall only wear away with my life and only the land of oblivion shall make me forget Joseph At last after a long and sad time of lamentation there comes the surprizing news to the good man Joseph thy Son is yet alive and Ruler of all the Land of Aegypt The aged Father faints at the tidings the News was too good to
he observe the most weak and imperfect essays of the new birth or as the Apostle expresses it when Christ is beginning to be formed in men I saw thee saith our Saviour to Nathanael S. Joh. 1. 48. when thou wast under the fig-tree when thou wast reasoning about me whether I was the Messias or not I was privy to that conflict of thy thoughts between the report of the miracles wrought by me and the prejudicate opinion concerning the supposed place of my nativity I was not so much offended with thy objections as pleased with thy sincerity in that thou didst diligently inquire honestly debate and proceed to resolution upon rational satisfaction Most apposite to this purpose is that passage of the Prophet Jeremiah Chap. 31. vers 18 19 20. I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus Thou hast chastised me and I was chastised as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke Turn thou me and I shall be turned for thou art the Lord my God Surely after that I was turned I repented and after that I was instructed I smote upon my thigh I was ashamed yea even confounded because I did bear the reproach of my youth And after he had thus passionately described the first kindlings of repentance in the hearts of the people of Israel he then introduces God taking notice and expressing his compassions in the next words Is Ephraim my dear Son is he a pleasant child for since I spake against him I do earnestly remember him still therefore my bowels are troubled for him I will surely have mercy upon him saith the Lord. By all which we see that God despiseth not the day of small things NOW the consideration of this affords mighty incouragement to sinners to begin their motion to God-ward who would not put himself upon the way when the first attempt of returning shall be taken notice of If a man do but consider if he doe but pray if but breathe and pant after God there is a gracious eye upon him it is not altogether lost labour Nay saith our Saviour A cup of cold water given to a disciple in the name of a disciple shall not lose its reward And if such mean performances pass not unrewarded much less doth any thing of good escape God's notice and observation And upon the same consideration there is great reason of caution and that men take heed of discouraging any though never so small hopes of good and buddings of reformation in others for seeing God takes notice of beginnings he must needs be offended with those that obstruct them and will be sure severely to resent it Let therefore those that scoff at prayer and devotion as preciseness at seriousness and self-reflection as melancholy degeneracy of spirit that either press men forward into the same excess of riot with themselves and labour to divert or stifle all workings of Conscience by the means of sensual entertainments or treat those with contumely who boggle at their extravagancies and begin to take up and reform let all such I say consider well what they doe when God's eye is upon such beginings of good lest they be found fighters against God And let all that have any sense of goodness themselves or but so much as a reverence of God's all-seeing eye think it becomes them to incourage such beginnings to indeavour to kindle such sparks and blow them up into a flame of love to God and goodness to which purpose I take liberty to apply a passage of the Prophet Isaiah Chap. 65. vers 8. Thus saith the Lord as the new wine is found in the cluster and one saith Destroy it not for there is a blessing in it q. d. The wise Master of the Vineyard especially in an unfruitfull time takes special notice of those few Grapes in a cluster that have good juice in them and will neither permit them to be carelesly crushed with the hand nor cast away amongst refuse So will the God of Israel do by his Vineyard the House of Israel he will take notice of the few that are good in the midst of a bad generation and not destroy all together And in like manner he will not despise the first essays of emergency from former vice and wickedness But thus I am led to the second parallel § III. 2. The Father as soon as he saw his Son had compassion so hath God to mankind especially when he sees them on their way homeward He had always good will towards them as they were his Creatures made in his own image designed for his service and for the enjoyment of himself and upon all these accounts hath a propension to do them good But so long as any man continues in a course of rebellion against him all the issues and expressions of this good will are obstructed which nevertheless as soon as ever he begins to relent and come to himself break out again and discover themselves For as the Psalmist tells us Like as a Father pitieth his Children so the Lord pitieth them that fear him Psal 103. 13. NOT that we are to imagine the Divine Majesty to be subject to the weakness of humane passion in a strict and proper sense so as to feel any pain or trouble upon the account of his concern for mankind for that the spirituality of his nature the perfection of his understanding and his self-sufficiency will by no means admit of But he is pleased in Holy Scripture to represent himself after that manner to the intent that we may be incouraged to hope and to indeavour since we are assured that he is not a meer spectator of the conflicts and agonies of a Penitent but hath a real inclination to do him good and would by no means have him perish To this purpose Ezek. 33. 11. he swears As I live saith the Lord God I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked but that the wicked turn from his way and live Turn ye turn ye from your evil ways for why will ye die O house of Israel What greater passion can any Father express towards his beloved Son then God here condescends to and what greater assurance can God give of his earnestness and reality then that of an Oath by himself WHILEST men are at the worst the divine goodness finds out some arguments of pity for he considers he made them fallible Creatures that he gave them not the bright and piercing intellects of Angels he joyned matter and spirit together in their composition by means whereof there is a continual contest between sense and reason a constant dispute betwixt bonum utile and jucundum that their transgression is not like that of Devils who sinned proprio motu without a tempter he knows the power of example the prejudices of education the long follies of Child-hood and therefore as I have shewed before is not implacable towards mankind whilest the state of life and this world lasts But when he takes notice that any man begins to
that end THEREFORE St. Paul though he was execrated of his own Countrymen because he forsook Moses to follow Christ yet shewed more dexterity in refuting their prejudices and more tenderness to their Souls then any other Apostle and particularly Rom. 9. 1 2 3. he expresses himself thus I say the truth in Christ I lie not my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost that I have great sorrow and heaviness in my heart For I could wish that my self were accursed from Christ for my Brethren my Kinsmen according to the flesh c. Where whatever he mean by the expression of being accursed from Christ he certainly describes the deepest compassion that a mortal breast is capable of and that he had a sense of this towards his Brethren he confirms by the most solemn Oath that can be made I need not here add because I have touched that before that such persons are also filled usually with the greatest zeal of God's glory whom they have formerly dishonoured and the greatest indignation against sin by which they have been abused and think themselves obliged to a double diligence by the consideration of their former dis-service of all which St. Paul is also an example 1 Cor. 15. 10. I laboured more abundantly then all the rest c. But I observe IN the second place such persons as have been formerly notorious for a course of wickedness and now are become sincerely good and vertuous are a standing reproof of the folly of sin nay I may call them the very credential letters of vertue and convincing arguments of the necessity of conversion such as strangely awaken men to consider their own station IT was a very good plea that the Platonist makes for Vertue in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. That the ways of vertue are more pleasant to a good man then the ways of sin and licentiousness are to an evil and vicious man and therefore more amiable and better in themselves appears saith he by this that several men who have tasted all the pleasures of sin forsake it and come over to vertue but there is scarce an instance to be found of the man that had well experimented the delights of vertue that ever could be drawn off from it or find in his heart to fall back to his former course But to see a man that had ran into all excess of riot to tack about to a quite contrary course from a drunkard to become sober from lascivious to become chaste and modest from a covetous person to become charitable from prophaneness to set himself to reade and study the Scripture and from cursing and blaspheming to bless and pray and this change to be wrought in health and strength without the check of a sick-bed or the dreadfull apprehensions of approaching death I say this spectacle cannot but be a most convincing argument of the necessity of repentance to all such as are yet in the gall of bitterness and under the bonds of iniquity LASTLY to say no more such persons so changed as aforesaid are standing monuments of the divine mercy and of the powers of the Gospel and irrefragable arguments of the possibility of recovering the greatest sinners if they be not wanting to themselves or rather if they do not chuse their own destruction For they proclaim aloud the greatness of the divine goodness the largeness of his heart the openness of his arms and they upbraid the sinner of folly of madness of cruelty to himself if yet he persevere It is said Miltiades Trophies would not suffer Themistocles to sleep and Caesar's thoughts continually upbraided him with the great exploits Alexander had effected in a few years But when a sinner shall observe such a man that was as foolish as himself to become wise and sober one that ran in the same race and was as near the pit of Hell as he escaped and himself still upon the brink of it when I say he shall consider that such a man that had all the temptations pretences excuses examples and every other instance of debauchment that himself hath to find just reason to break through those obstacles and by the mercy of God to be saved and as a fire-brand plucked out of the fire certainly if any thing in the world can move him this must make him look about him IN the 16. Chapter of this Gospel our Saviour introduces a certain rich man in Hell interceding with Abraham that Lazarus might be sent from the dead to preach repentance to his five Brethren supposing that though they would not hearken to Moses and the Prophets yet such a spectacle and so certain intelligence from the infernal regions must needs rouze them Father Abraham denied his request and God doth not use to gratify such curiosity But indeed if a man consider well it is almost the same thing when God affords us an example of a man that was dead in trespasses and sins and under the very torments of Hell in his Conscience but now redeemed and recovered by the grace of God and sends him to preach repentance to us And I think I may say in this case as the afore mentioned Simplicius said of the discourses of Epictetus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. The man that is incorrigible under such a powerfull remedy there is nothing but the very torments of the damned can work upon him And so much also for that point § IV. WE have now seen severally the three Ornaments the Father puts upon his returning Son and the favours God bestows upon a sincere Convert represented by the Best Robe a Ring on his Hand Shoes on his Feet Let us now take a view of them altogether let us I say make a stand a little and see the Son in all his new attire I mean let us suppose all these favours of God bestowed upon some pardoned sinner and then take notice what a brave and excellent person such a man will be IT was a noble character which the Historian gives of Marcus Cato homo virtuti simillimus per omnia diis quà m hominibus propior qui nunquam rectè fecit ut facere videretur sed quia aliter facere non potuit Cato saith he was vertue drawn to the life and the resemblance was so exact that it was hard to say whether vertue animated Cato or Cato gave subsistence and visibility to vertue nay such was the unshaken greatness of his mind and the purity of his life that he seemed more to participate of divine perfection then of humane frailty for he was both so far above all temptations of doing evil and also free from the allay of mean ends and designs in doing good that it seemed a kind of necessity of nature in him to doe well This was bravely said had it not been somewhat too Romantick But the man we are speaking of under the aforesaid qualifications must as much out go Cato as he out-stripped other
another Some men call the betaking themselves to a Cloister or Monastery by the name of forsaking the world as if that was the greatest instance of self-denial and mortification whereas in truth if things be well considered especially if that state of retirement be ordered as it should and pretends to be it is so far from a severity to ones self that it is the most effectually to consult a man's ease and comfort it is to forsake the hurry the trouble vexation and care of the world and to enjoy freely and without interruption the best thing this world hath which is the company of persons just like a man's self without the annoyance of different humours qualities and interests and doubtless were such a thing to be hoped for in this world which that sort of men pretend it were the most lovely and desirable thing that can be here that so many good and wise men who destine themselves only to the study of vertue and knowledge who are all of a mind all in a like condition who have no cross or interfering interests amongst them should enjoy one another constantly under the same roof relieve one anothers necessities improve one anothers parts and comfort each others minds Such a condition I say were it any where to be found on this side Heaven would tempt men to say with St. Peter Master it is good for us to be here c. But alas whatever men talk or fancy there is no so select company but there is some weakness and folly amongst them there is no such recess but emulation and passion finds entrance no wilderness without a Devil and temptation nor any life whatsoever in this world that is wholly free from care and vexation Because there is sickliness and passion divers humours of Body and different constitutions of mind the understandings of men are of several statures their interests thwart one another there will be peevishness and mis-understanding whisperings and jealousy passion and parties amongst men while they are here BUT in the Kingdom of Heaven there meet the spirits only of just men made perfect holy men freed from mis-understanding passion or imperfection no annoyance either by the vicinage of the wicked or the infirmities of the sincerely vertuous All are of one mind of one lip one heart no saying I am of Paul I of Cephas or I of Christ for Christ is all and in them all AND what a felicity this is like to be we may partly guess by the distractions of the Church here below for want of it which are such as that it 's hard to say whether Religion suffer more by its united enemies or by its divided friends and whether the uncharitableness of Christians be not as lamentable as the persecutions of Pagans But there disputes shall cease all heats be abated all controversies umpired and all having one end and interest the only emulation shall be who shall imbrace the other with the more ardent love and more adore and magnify the Divine Majesty THERE shall be the glorious Panegyris the Assembly and Church of the first born a collection of all the good men that ever were from the foundation of the world and men shall come from the East and West and from the North and from the South and sit down with Abraham Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God Here shall be no private spirit no narrow hide-bound mind that can love only their own opinion or party or kindred or benefactours but a generous love an universal good-will those shall imbrace that never saw each other before because the same image of God and goodness runs through the whole society Who would not make one of this Assembly who would not get into this Ark out of a troublesome froward contentious world and there live in love in joy in peace to all eternity THESE are some Clusters of the Land of Canaan this is a rude and imperfect draught of the New Jerusalem this I say is according as I am able to set it forth the entertainment which God gives his Children when they come home to him And so much for the third and last part of the Parable THE FATHER'S APOLOGY OR A VINDICATION OF THE Divine Goodness In the aforesaid Dispensation WE have now gone through all the three Parts of the Parable which we observed at our entrance upon it and in the first of them under the type of a loose and undutifull Son we have seen the extravagant folly and madness of a course of sin In the second under the figure of the same Son recovering his right mind and returning to himself and to his Father we have had set before us a lively draught of true repentance And in the last by the compassions and kindness of an earthly Parent in receiving blessing and rejoicing in such a Son upon his return we have had some resemblance of the unspeakable mercies of God in pardoning sanctifying and saving penitent sinners And now we are come to the Epilogue or Conclusion of the whole which in the letter contains the Apology which the Father makes for this his indulgent proceedings with his Son and in the mystery and scope of it a vindication of God's justice wisedom and goodness in treating great sinners upon their repentance with all those demonstrations of favour and bounty which we have lately discoursed of FOR as we have noted in the entrance upon this Parable the Scribes and Pharisees took great offence both at the kind and obliging conversation which our Saviour used towards Publicans and Sinners and at the incouragement he gave them in his doctrine to hope for pardon and reception with God upon their repentance the latter of these was the immediate discharge of that gracious Embassy our Saviour came into the world upon viz. to amend it and to make reconciliation between God and man and the former was only a prudent Oeconomy of his to oblige their attention and to gain opportunities of treating with men in order to their reformation BUT those ill-natured and self-weening persons who would ingross all God's favours to themselves and their own character interpret this condescension of our Saviour to bad men to be in derogation to those that were good and traduce the comfortableness of his Gospel as an incouragement to looseness For why say they should God the King of glory be thought to debase himself so far as to send Embassadours to Rebels hath he more kindness for them then for his most dutifull Subjects hath he like David such soft indulgence towards a comely but disobedient Absolom that he prefers his safety before the whole host of his most loyal Servants can it be that the Almighty should like some good natured persons be so ready to forgive their enemies that they forget their friends and themselves too what is there no difference between the good and the bad no distinction is Heaven prepared for the one as well as for the other is he likely
Having your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace which seems to allude to that passage of the Prophet Isaiah 52. 7. How beautifull are the feet of them that preach the Gospel of peace and the intent of the Apostle seems to be to injoin a readiness to promote and set forward the Christian Religion And in this sense I take it here that when God hath pardoned a sinner and sanctified and adopted him he then fits him for his service employs him in it and expects from him that he become usefull towards the reclaiming of others A great Prince of the last Age had upon some displeasure cast an old Captain and a potent Minister of his into Prison where he continued a long time without any hopes of restitution untill at length it happened that the great Monarch having projected the adjoining a neighbour Kingdom to his own dominions thought none so fit to execute his design as the person he had long kept under a restraint him therefore he sends for out of prison pardons him and commissions him for so great an affair and found the success of his courage and conduct according to his own desires It is not easy to say whether this action argued more the wisedom of the Prince who knew who was fittest for his turn and could also submit his own passion to his interest or whether it was a sign of the necessity of his affairs and of the scarcity of expert and able servants but it is certain it was a glorious testimony to the gallantry of him he so employed NOW though it be most evident that God stands in need of no man for the execution of his designs yet it is as certain that in all the instances of his providence he loves to employ the capacities of his creatures and it is the greatest honour any of them are capable of to be so made use of by him AND as for rational Beings who were at first designed and admirably fitted for his Service as well as singularly obliged by innumerable favours to be faithfull to his interest and yet have forfeited their allegeance and served against him it is an instance of the most wonderfull goodness that he should trust them again for it was very much to forgive them but to trust them when as I have noted heretofore it is become a rule of wisedom amongst them not to trust one another in such a case is very admirable and yet God doth both these and more then all this for he pardons his ingratefull rebels he fits them for service and then trusts them Nay it is oftentimes the aim of Princes when they imploy one in any eminent service that hath been formerly faulty to expose him to such difficulties as that the hazard of the imployment shall either revenge the former miscarriage or at least make him dearly earn his restitution to favour But God as he hath no ends of his own nor seeks any thing from them he indeavours to reclaim but their own good and happiness so in those he employs in any expedition he peculiarly aims at their honour and comfort therein WHEN a Man of God came to old Eli the Priest to threaten him and his Sons with the effects of God's severe displeasure for their prophaneness and the scandal they gave to his service he expresses it in these words Them that honour me I will honour and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed The import of which compared with the context plainly amounted to this that as it was the highest honour and dignity to be admitted to and to continue in a relation of service to God so it was the greatest debasement which that family should undergo to be thrust from it THE Prodigal Son in the Text as we have seen acknowledges his unworthiness to be called any more a Son and desires to be admitted but into the lowest rank of servants and into so mean a condition as that he was so far from expecting any honour by it that he thought himself incapable of any trust but the Father honours him with the highest relation of a Son and God honours penitent sinners with the most weighty and important trust putting shoes on their feet i. e. employing them in his vineyard St. Paul had a mighty sense of this 1 Tim. 1. 12. and breaks out into a passionate adoration of the divine goodness I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who hath inabled me for that he counted me faithfull putting me into the ministry who was before a blasphemer c. BUT we are not to understand any thing of this that hath been now said as if all Converts were to be imployed as God's Ministers in the publick dispensation of the Gospel for God doth not give to all such those peculiar abilities which are requisite to the discharge of it nor are all persons competent judges of the necessary qualifications thereunto and therefore it is made a special office by God which no man may undertake but either he that is called thereto miraculously by God himself as the first publishers of the Gospel were or by the orderly approbation and consecration of the Church as hath been the constant practice ever since All therefore that is hereby intended is partly to remark the transcendent goodness of God to his penitent Children in that he is pleased to pass such a perfect act of oblivion of all their former enormities as that he disdains not to admit even some of them to this highest trust and employment all their former demerits notwithstanding as we had instance in St. Paul but principally to recommend it to the care and Conscience of all those whom God hath been pleased to pardon that though they may not invade the office of the Ministery yet they ought to think themselves concerned to use their utmost indeavours within their sphere to be instruments of spiritual good to others THIS seems to be the meaning of that charge of our Saviour to St. Peter Luk. 22. 32. Thou when thou art converted strengthen thy Brethren Or if that be liable to exception yet that of King David is not Psal 51. 13. who vows it as the fruit of his own pardon that then he would teach God's ways unto sinners and transgressours should be converted unto him IT is certain Religion never prospers well in the world whilst doing good is thought to be the office of some certain persons only and not the common concern of all good men nor will it ever be a good world till men think themselves obliged to be as charitable to the Souls of men as to an Oxe or an Ass and be as ready to help them out of the snare of the Devil as the other out of a ditch And if it should happen that a Priest and a Levite should pass by a man faln amongst Thieves and wounded yet sure every good Samaritan will have compassion on him and bind up his wounds especially he that hath been
formerly a great sinner himself and hath known by sad experience the deplorableness of that condition and found mercy at God's hands methinks such a person should with warm affections and tender bowels awaken that man into an apprehension of his danger who is in the condition he himself hath escaped and incourage him to try those mercies of God which he himself hath experimented For if either a righteous man that never needed repentance i. e. such a change of his whole state as we have been speaking of should be less sensible of such a man's case or especially if a proud self-applauding Pharisee despise him yet it will by no means become a Convert to be without compassion For besides all other arguments to this purpose it may be such a man may have just cause to consider whether his own example when he did goe on in the way of sin had not that pernicious contagion as to infect or confirm this man in his wickedness which he sees him now lie under and then it will not be only charity but justice which will oblige him to this duty IT was the opinion if I remember rightly of St. Basil that in Hell the torments of the damned are daily increased in proportion as the evil seed of their corrupt doctrine or the evil example which they sowed whilst they were alive fructifies upon earth but whether that be so or no it is certain men's sins are aggravated by the mischief they do to others as well as by other circumstances and therefore every such Penitent as we speak of must think it his duty and concern to indeavour to hinder the propagation of sin and to stop the infection in others as well as to destroy the malignity of it in himself § II. NOW there are many ways which an honest heart will find out of doing this we are recommending without taking upon him to be a Preacher Solomon tells us A wicked man speaketh with his feet and teacheth with his fingers that is though he say nothing with his lips all his life and actions do teach and instruct the world in wickedness and there is no question but that holy men may most effectually recommend vertue to others by their own practice and example Example insinuates gently works insensibly but powerfully as almost all great Engines do it relieves men's modesty and yet shames their sloth it kindles emulation presses upon ingenuity recommends the excellency convinces the necessity demonstrates the possibility of vertue Besides that there are a great many of the most curious lines thereof that are not to be described by the pencil or that can be expressed by words but are to be observed in the life and conversation of good men For this reason amongst others it pleased God to send our Saviour not only to preach the divine life to the world but to live and converse with men that by his example he might more plainly convince them of it and for this cause also we solemnly thank God for the examples of all holy men that have gone before us AND besides example there are many opportunities and advantages which good men have of propagating a sense of piety and Religion such as the authority of Parents influence of benefactours interest of relations convenience of travelling together society of commerce and all other bonds of conversation Every of which a mind inflamed with the love of God and compassion to the Souls of men will find usefull to this purpose And this was the course Moses advised Israel for the keeping up a sense of God and his Laws in their minds and the propagation of it to posterity Deut. 6. 6 7. These words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart and thou shalt teach them diligently to thy Children and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up c. And for the incouragement of all good men in this business besides the great honour it is to be subservient to God in so important an affair and besides the unspeakable comfort to our own Consciences If by converting a sinner from the evil of his way we save a Soul from death and cover a multitude of sins Jam. 5. 20. and that by such an act of zeal we have also the happiness to efface our own former miscarriages Besides all this I say in present we shall also advance our own glory and crown hereafter for in the words of the Prophet Daniel They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the Firmament and they that turn many to righteousness as the Stars for ever and ever Daniel 12. 3. IT were very easy to inlarge on this subject but that which is most pertinent and the peculiar consideration of this place is to shew the particular aptness of those that have themselves been converted from a wicked life to be instrumental of recovering others which I will briefly give account of in the following particulars and so dismiss this point And in order to this § III. IN the first place it is considerable that those that are of sickly constitutions are generally observed to be more pitifull and compassionate to the infirm then those robust and healthy persons that scarce ever knew what sickness meant and those that have long languished under any painfull infirmity and at last have recovered are both the best able and most willing to give advice to others under the same distemper Upon which account it hath been the custom of some Nations who had no professed Physicians to bring their sick out into the Market-place where all persons that came were obliged by Law to take notice of them that by this means the experience of one that had escaped a disease might afford a relief to him that now laboured under it And so it is reasonable to think that those who have been sick in sin and of sin heretofore must needs by their own experience know the baits that allure men the charms that bewitch them the fallacies of Sathan that impose upon them the folly and perverseness that defixes men in that unhappy estate the workings of passion the regret of Conscience the thoughts and reasonings the objections the prejudices and the very inside of other men in that condition And therefore as God commands Israel Exod. 23. 9. Thou shalt not oppress a stranger for ye know the heart of a stranger seeing ye were strangers in the land of Aegypt i. e. they knew what injuries oppressions insolencies and affronts a stranger was exposed to and what fears anxieties and jealousies he must needs be always under and therefore it having been their own case they ought to think it reasonable to pity such so in the present case the Convert is furnished both with more observations to render him serviceable to the conversion of Souls and more compassion to apply and make use of his experience to