again unto repentance seeing they crucifie to themselves the Son of God afresh and put him to an open shame And again Heb. 10.26 For if we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin The Sin that is meant in both these places is most probably the Apostatizing from and renouncing of Christianity which the Christians were then in great danger of in those times of Danger and Persecution and therefore the Apostles had all reason to represent it as the most hazardous and guilty and to let them know that after they had once fallen from their Baptism they could not be renewed by another Baptism and after they had rejected the Sacrifice of Christ there was no other Sacrifice to be expected to be offered for their Sins nor was Christ to dye more than once This was indeed a very horrid Sin and to those especially who had probably had extraordinary Gifts communicated to them as the Phrases there used seem to denote These might well be charged with those tremendous expressions ver 29. That they had trodden under foot the Son of God and counted the blood of the covenant wherewith they were sanctified an unholy thing and done despite unto the Spirit of Grace But yet the Primitive Church how severe soever it was at first to the Lapsi in denying them Communion after they had Apostatized yet it was the same also to many other Sins to whom it utterly denyed the Communion of the Church for ever as well as to Apostacy though the Persons were never so penitent who committed them And whilst they kept to this most severe Discipline which they were forced afterwards to abate yet they did not peremptorily sentence those penitent Apostates nor any others to certain Perdition but left them to the Mercy of God for which they would not engage to be Sponsors or Sureties as not being able to ascertain them of it and this is the most I think of what St. John sayes of the sin unto death I do not say that we shall pray for it 1 John 5.16 i. e. we cannot have such an assurance that God will hear the Prayers for that as for other Sins and therefore we cannot so confidently encourage Men to pray for it tho' he does not at all forbid them to do it This Sin unto death was very likely also to be Apostacy from Christianity to the Idolatry of the Gnosticks or the Gentiles and that was certainly a very deadly Sin and such as was not to have the benefit of the Prayers of the Church but to say that this would never be Pardoned after St. Peters denyal of his Master was and after the Church did frequently admit the Lapsi at least to Lay-Communion I think we ought to have a more plain and manifest Revelation of the Will of God in that matter than we have from that difficult place However from these three places which come the nearest to this Sin though there is no mention of it in any of them it appears that either other Sins as well as that particular one of the Pharisees may be represented unpardonable or else that those expressions which are used to set out the guilt of those Sins are yet to be mollified and abated But Lastly The Evangelical Covenant of Pardon and Forgiveness being exprest in such general and large terms as extend universally to all manner of Sins without any exception whatsoever and there being no one Sin whatever exempted out of that in the Charter it self or in the Form of Absolution prescribed by Christ Matth. 16.29 John 20.23 they think it is more agreeable to say that no one particular Sin how great soever is unpardonable by the Gospel and that this will be a greater force and violence to those many Promises of the Gospel than to mitigate the severity of those expressions which seem to speak otherwise of some Sins and particularly of that against the Holy Ghost And therefore to come to a resolution in this matter that may be safe and satisfying I shall do it very briefly in two particulars 1. I say That either for those Reasons the Expression here may be mollified and not taken in its literal and rigorous sense but so as to import the great guilt of the Sin and difficulty of its Pardon but not the utter impossibility Or else 2. That there were some particular circumstances in that Sin of the Pharisees which make it a Sin proper to them in those times and such as Christians are not now in any possible danger of committing for though we have sufficient Reasons to believe the truth of Christianity upon the account of the Miracles done by our Saviour and we have an unquestioned assurance of the truth of those from undoubted History and universal Testimony and Tradition yet we cannot have that ocular evidence and visible demonstration of them that the Jews and Pharisees had and therefore if any of the Jews in our dayes who have swallowed many of them this blasphemous account of Christ and his Miracles that he did them all by the Power of Magick which he learned in Egypt if they do now vent this horrid Calumny yet I think they are not so perfectly Criminal nor is this so high a degree of villany in them as it was in their Fore-fathers who saw the very Miracles done before their faces which is the highest evidence that can be And unless the Person be in all those circumstances that they were which would make him a great deal more inexcusable I question whether he can be charged with this Sin And therefore as a Conclusion from the whole and as the most useful remark from this Subject I shall advise these two things 1. That no Sinner be discouraged from Leaving his Sins howsoever great nor from Hopes of the Divine Mercy upon any ungrounded Fears that he is fallen into this Sin and so is in a hopeless irrecoverable unpardonable state By what has been said it appears that no one now has reason to do this and it is certainly the greatest design of the Gospel and our Saviours coming into the World to perswade Mankind that were sunk into the saddest Sins and Wickedness to Repent and Forsake all their Evil wayes And there is no such means to encourage to this as to assure them of the Divine Mercy and the certain Forgiveness of all of them if they do 'T is this is the way to bring Men in to their Duty and Allegiance when their Governour proclaims an universal Act of Grace for what is past whereas the being cut off from all such hopes makes them go on and grow more desperate and 't is by this Goodness and Mercy of God held forth to all Sinners and so fully displayed in the Gospel and the Death of Christ that we are led to Repentance and therefore it ought by no means to be lessened or diminished unless we would make God less Good than he
out the fierceness of his anger upon them and they drink of the cup of his fury and feel his wrath and indignation many a sinner has done this and cryed out in the Anguish of his Soul Thy wrath lyeth hard upon me Psal 88.7 Thy fierce wrath goeth over me thy terrors have cut me off ver 16. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me and horror hath overwhelmed me Psal 55.5 Thine arrows stick fast in me and thy hand presseth me sore Psal 38.2 Who knoweth the power of thine anger even according to thy fear so is thy wrath Psal 90.11 For we are consumed by thine anger and by thy wrath are we troubled ver 7. God who is a Spirit as he can convey secret and unspeakable comfort into our Souls so he can impress intolerable and unspeakable horrors upon them and who is able to bear the weight of his Anger or endure the sense of his Wrath and Indignation In his Pleasure and Favour is Life and in his Anger is a double Death to the Soul The inward Sensation and Perception of Gods Love is the ohiefest joy and happyness to a Soul either in this World or the other and the Sense and Perception of his Anger is the greatest Misery God the fountain of all Happiness doth diffuse and communicate such a Peace Joy Comfort to good Souls such an inward Taste and Relish of Spiritual Pleasure and Delight as is unspeakable past understanding called joy in the holy Ghost and is no doubt the sweetest and most affecting pleasure a Soul is capable of this the Angels and blessed Spirits above enjoy and are transported with the most ravishing Sense and Rapturous Impressions of it and 't is what makes Heaven to them and a little foretaste of it when God lifts up the light of his countenance upon us when a pious Soul tasts and sees how good and gracious God is this puts more gladness in the heart than Corn and wine and oyl and all worldly enjoyments now on the contrary when God hides his face and withdraws his loving-kindness and imprints a strong sense of his Wrath and Anger upon the Mind this is the utmost and the deepest Misery this gives the bitterest sense of Evil fills it with the greatest horrors sinks it into the deepest gulph the bottomless Pit of Misery and is the very Punishment and Hell of the damned How happy is it then to be Reconciled to God by Repentance whom we had angred and provoked by our sins before we feel any of this and before his Wrath and Anger is poured out upon us it will certainly fall upon every Sinner some time or other unless he Repents for God though he defers his Anger for some time that his Goodness and long-suffering may lead us to Repentance yet his abused Love Patience and Mercy will turn to greater Wrath and Fury if we persist in our sins and in a course of impenitency As 't is a very terrible thing to have the great God our Enemy and he certainly is so whilst we are in a state of Sin so 't is the comfortablest thought in the World and what will alone make us happy to be Assured that he is our Friend and that we are in a State of Favour with him upon our Repentance THE CONCLVSION To Conclude As all general Christian Duties are meant by Repentance so all general Christian-Priviledges and Benefits belong to it and are the Rewards of it for as Repentance is the same thing in Scripture with Conversion Regeneration the New Birth the New Creature the New Man and the like those different words and figurative expressions denoting only the same duty importing the great Change and Alteration made upon the Mind and Life of a Sinner by the power of Grace and Religion So all the benefits and priviledges of Christianity such as Election Adoption Pardon Justification at present and Glorification afterwards which are free and gratuitous acts in God granting and bestowing those Favours upon us for Christs sake upon our being duely qualified and fitted to receive them These all belong to those who have truly Repented and become good Men and to none else For God hath only Chosen Adopted Pardoned Justified and will Glorifie such and no other and till we have Repented we have no good claim or title to any of those Our being in a good State towards God which is the thing meant by all those Phrases under some different considerations is on our side wholly owing to our true Repentance and Obedience and it is all lost and forfeited by our Impenitency and Disobedience which on the contrary make us the Children of Wrath the Children of the Devil and Heirs of Damnation put us into the worst Spiritual State of Reprobation Obduration and Excecation according to the degrees of our Sins and Impenitence and into that of Condemnation it self which is the word that directly answers to that of Justification All those Scriptural Phrases and Expressions of a good State belong to Repentance and to the true Christian Penitent and all those which signifie a bad one belong as truly to Wickedness and Impenitence for though without the Free-Grace and Mercy of God in and thorough Christ we could not be put into any such good State nor have a title to any such Priviledges meerly by vertue of our Repentance or any thing we could do yet to suppose that God will put us into those states without any regard to our own Actions or not upon the account of them is to destroy all Religion all Divine Government all Future Judgment and all Rewards and Punishments in another World I might clear and illustrate and enlarge upon these had not this Discourse already swelled upon my hands into too great a bulk and did they not run into something of Controversie which I would carefully avoid I shall therefore only give this last Advice to the Penitent who hath brought himself by the Grace of God into this Good and Happy State that when he is thus got out of the Paths of Death and of Sin into those of Life and Vertue that he would go on and proceed in the new and right way he is in and make a speedy and further progress in all Piety and Goodness that like St. Paul forgetting those things which are behind and reaching unto those which are before he may follow and apprehend them and so press forward towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus Phil. 3.13 14. that now he is become a Christian in good earnest he would more zealously promote that Religion which he opposed and was an enemy to before and show he is a true Convert by his zeal and earnestness against Vice and Irreligion that he would make all amends he can for his past miscarriages by doing the greatest good he is able by serving God and his Glory more heartily and thus loving much because much is forgiven him so that where sin abounded grace
imperfection of our Nature gratifying a low passion a foolish humour a silly custom acting in opposition to Reason and doing things quite contrary to our own wise and calm thoughts but by rashness and inconsideration doing that which we shall afterwards repent of and condemn our selves for and wish we had never done and what we know will tend more to our mischief and prejudice than any real good to us only it pleases our fancy and tickles our senses and is a little grateful to us at present so that 't is a sort of Childishness and want of Understanding and of Manly and Rational Government of our selves to yield to it and be overcome by it this it must appear to any thinking Man to a Heathen and Philosopher that considered the nature of things and the difference of Good and Evil that arose from thence and therefore that to repent of it was as necessary as for a Man to act wisely and reasonably not to do what is weak and foolish below the Nature and the Reason of a Man but now Christ besides all this has represented Sin in more ugly and frightful characters by the Gospel as that which had thrown all Mankind into the most miserable and lost condition as the work of the Devil which he came to destroy as the device and stratagem of evil and malicious Spirits to destroy us so that whenever we are drawn into Sin we are drawn in by the Devil and used as tools by cunning infernal Fiends who this way over-reach us and sport themselves in our ruine and destruction so that when we think we are enjoying our Pleasures and gratifying our Lusts and using the freedoms and liberties of Humane Nature we are but inveigled by those Devils with the baits they lay for us and the snares they every where set to entrap us and are meer slaves and properties to their cunning and cursed designs upon us so that Christ came to rescue us from those by calling us to Repentance to rescue us from the snares of the Devil and redeem us from that servitude and slavery whereby we are led captive by him Christianity better acquaints us also with the Nature of Sin and the Evils of it than Nature could by showing us the ruins it had made upon Mankind and the cost and expences Heaven was at to repair Humane Nature by letting us see the wretched and miserable estate the Sins of Mankind had thrown them into irrecoverably without a Saviour Our Salvation by that stupendous and mysterious way makes the greatness of our danger and the mischief of our Sins more evidently known to us and the whole scheme and contrivance of it contains other considerations against Sin than Natural Religion could ever have known or suggested for by this Sin appears further to be so malignant and hateful to God so detestable and odious in his sight and so contrary to his wise Government of the World that he would not pardon it without the Blood of his own Son shed as an atonement for it nor forgive it to Mankind without such a valuable compensation and satisfaction made for it as that was Now this demonstrates to us above any thing its abominable and displeasing Nature to God and that according to the wise Rules and Maximes of his Government by which he manages the World it must suffer and be severely punished and that there was no escaping of this but by an extraordinary contrivance of Divine Wisdom and Mercy which found out a way by Jesus Christ to save Sinners by Repentance Sin is a greater debt a more deep provocation to Heaven a more horrid affront to Divine Power and Authority a more considerable injury to the good of the World and to the Justice and Holiness of God than to be easily forgiven and passed by as we find by the mystery of our Redemption and the dispensation of Christianity which shows us above any thing the Nature and Evil of it and consequently the great Reasons of our Repenting from it 5. As the Nature and Evil of Sin fo the Consequences and Punishments of it are greater by Christianity and Christ by the threatning of those greater Judgments upon it has called us more loudly to Repentance Nature and the light of Reason taught all Mankind the present and Natural Evils that were like so many Curses cleaving to Sin like Hercules his poysoned shirt clinging to it and sticking fast about it God had annexed a world of evils and mischievous effects to Vice and Wickedness by the original settlement and fundamental constitution of things it was a disease to the Mind and a torment to the Conscience and very often a disease to the Body and rottenness to the Bones a wound to a Mans Credit and a blemish to his good Name and an enemy to all his Interests and to all his Happiness in this World These plain and necessary effects of Sin Mankind could not but observe as so many bitter Fruits naturally growing out of it as from a proper Root and like so many plagues sent from Heaven steeming out of this Pandora's box And these Natural Punishments of Sin and the other as Natural Goods and Rewards of Vertue were the true sanction of the Law of Nature But besides all these there are a thousand times greater and more additional evils superadded to our Sins by Christianity if we do not in time Repent of them there are the positive and eternal evils of Sin in another World for I can by no means call the Torments of Hell Natural which God has revealed to us by the Gospel How little these were known to the World before I might show from the odd fancies of the wisest Heathens about the transmigration of Souls and the revolution of all things within such a period of years and whatever guess they had rather than belief of Punishments for Sin in another World yet that they should be so great as the Scripture now represents them and that they should be Eternal which is the most dreadful part of them this can only be known from the Revelation and Will of God who may continue our being and lengthen or shorten our duration to what time he pleases and therefore as Christ has brought Life and Immortality to light by the gospel 2 Tim. 1.10 so in like manner he has brought Hell and Damnation and revealed such intolerable and greater Punishments to Sin than the World knew before as cannot but fright the most daring Sinner and make the fondest Sensualist part with his Lusts when he considers that all their tempting charms and enticing gayety and momentany pleasures shall end in nothing but Hellish torments unquenchable flames and eternal howlings and gnashings of teeth which must be owned to be a thousand times greater than all the known and visible and Natural Evils of Sin SECT IV. Motives to Repentance from the Consideration of Hell NOW because this is the greatest determent from Sin imaginable and consequently the
an irresistible force and impulse which shall do all this in an instant and convert a Sinner in a moment No this must be done gradually and successively by the bringing in of other thoughts dispositions inclinations and practices by a kindly and gentle influence upon our Minds the Spirit descending like rain or shedding its Vertue like dew upon our Hearts and so bringing forth the fruits of Repentance in us not like a violent stream or a mighty torrent bearing down all immediately before it The Spirit of God which is compared in Scripture to the winds blowing where we see the effects though we discern not the cause does not by a sudden gust like a hurricane convert a Sinner and turn him from his Sins in such a manner as a tree is torn up by the roots with a violent tempest but by a fresh and gentle gale it carries the Sinner from Vice to Vertue by filling his Mind with new thoughts and strongly moving and determining him the right way and secretly inclining his Mind to choose and his Understanding to see and consider what is his true Interest and Happiness and by an inward energy and vertue as a principle of Life acts secretly and undiscernably upon all our Faculties changing our thoughts desires and affections and working upon our Minds though in a way agreeable to our Rational Faculties yet by a Power superiour and superadded to them And now let every Sinner consider what great Motives and Encouragements and so what Obligations he hath to Repent by the Gospel how powerfully and how endearingly by Motives both of Love and Fear Christ doth there call Sinners to Repentance It was his great work and for this purpose he came into the World to recover lost and undone Mankind and to rescue them from that state of Sin and Misery they were in and to restore them to a state of Vertue and Happiness This was a design worthy Christs coming into the World and all the mysterious dispensation of Christianity 7. And this is of such absolute necessity and importance to us that 't is impossible we can otherwise escape Misery and not perish inevitably God when he would show the greatest Mercy and Kindness to us in the World and demonstrate his Love to us in the highest manner as he hath done by the Gospel yet hath there told us that except we repent we shall all certainly perish Luke 13.5 This is the perpetual and indispensable condition upon which alone we must expect any benefit by Christ and the Gospel this is as low as God can go with us Perfect and uninterrupted Obedience all our lives is his due and when we have broken that and he compounds with us and accepts of Partial and Renewed Obedience instead of Entire i. e. of Repentance and returning to our Duty instead of keeping alwayes to it this is the utmost favour can be expected from him or that he can grant to us and Repentance is the only way by which it is possible for a Sinner to escape Wrath and Damnation This I shall a little clear and make out and then perswade to this Duty of Repentance from the absolute necessity of it 1. Then 't is this alone can consist with the Wisdom and Honour of God as he is Governour of the World God as he is a Being of Infinite Goodness and Compassion to his Creatures so he is a very Wise and Prudent Governour of the World and therefore though like a merciful Prince out of the Goodness of his Nature and the tender Inclinations he has for all his Subjects he is ready to shew all Mercy and Clemency to those that have offended him yet if he should do this too easily without any security of their good behaviour for the future or any care and provision for their better Obedience it would not a little reflect upon the Wisdom of his Government and represent him as too soft and easie a Being and render his Authority in time cheap and contemptible It would not only loosen the reins of Government but be a letting them go out of his hands and throwing them upon the necks of his insolent and rebellious Vassals if without any tyes or obligations for the future or letting them know upon what conditions they should be capable of his favour and continue in it he should take off all the Punishment their past Crimes had deserved this would be to encourage them to commit new ones and give them just grounds to hope for an absolute and perpetual impunity Should God have granted by the Gospel or any other way such an Unconditional Charter of Mercy and Pardon this would have certainly destroyed that very Power by which he granted it and such a Privilege or Concession as it would greatly have reflected upon his Honour so it would have quite undermined his Authority it would have been a resigning up his Throne and a laying his Crown at the feet of his own insolent Rebels For what would have remain'd to him of Power to Govern or to Punish if he had done this If he had set out a standing Act of Grace and Mercy to all Sinners without any Condition or Proviso that they turn from their Wickedness which they had committed that they should come in and lay down all their Hostile Weapons and be Faithful and Loyal hereafter or else be utterly uncapable of any benefit of it Without this it had been rather a Dispensation or Indulgence to be Wicked than a wise Proclamation of Mercy to serve the true Ends and Interest of Government God indeed has with great Wisdom and Goodness found out such a temper in his Government and contrived such an expedient as shews the most admirable Wisdom and the most wonderful Mercy both together and that is for the sake and by the mediation of a Sacrifice to pardon and yet to punish the Sinner by the same way to give an instance of his Mercy and a remonstrance of his Justice and the design of all that is to show that though he is the most inclined to Mercy and Clemency yet he will never show it but in such a way as is consistent with the Honour and Wisdom of his Government He is willing to abate of his extream Right over his Creatures and to take off the edge and severity of his Laws so far as Prudence and the Wise Ends of Government will give leave but not so far as shall give any manner of encouragement to Disobedience and Wickedness and that would be unavoidable if he should ever grant a Pardon to wicked Men upon any other condition than turning away from their Wickedness 2. As 't is this alone can consist with the Honour and Wisdom of God as he is a wise Governour so nothing but this can render us acceptable to him as he is a truly Righteous and Holy Being If we consider God as such as a Being essentially holy so that this is not only his Perfection but his very Nature then
and the folly of it is so visible and so amazing that no Man of common Prudence no Man in his wits one would think should neglect to do it 'T is so important so weighty so absolutely necessary a Duty that our Saviour most earnestly presses it in several Discourses and proposes it in two or three Parables that it may make a more strong and lively impression upon our Minds In the Parable of the wise and foolish Virgins Mat. 25. at the beginning where the coming of the Son of Man is compared to the unexpected coming of the Bridegroom at midnight ver 6. in others to a Masters surprizing his Servants unaware at the second or third watch Luke 12.38 Matth. 24. at the latter end and in both the Evangelists to a Thief stealing upon a Man at an unknown and uncertain hour of the night The design of all which is to press this great Duty upon us of being alwayes watchful and alwayes doing our Duty and alwayes prepared for our Lords coming This is the Inference which Christ draws from all those Parables and Discourses Be ye therefore ready for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not Luke 12.40 Christ often calls himself the Son of Man and as such he is to be our Judge and as a Judge he is said to come when ever he passes Judgment upon us and therefore St. James represents the nearness of his Judgment by that phrase Behold the judge standeth before the door Jam. 5.9 and his executing Judgment and Destruction upon Jerusalem was called his coming Matth. 24.3 And as his final publick Judgment of all the World at the last day is called his coming 1 Cor. 15.23 and several times in that Chapter of St. Matthew so his private Judging of us at our Death is his coming also meant by these several Parables and for that coming of his we ought to be always ready i. e. always prepared for dying Here I shall show I. That this Readiness or Preparation consists only in Repentance and a holy Life as the fruit and perfection of it II. The great obligations we have to be alwayes thus ready and prepared for Death I. This Readiness or Preparation for Death consists only in Repentance and a good Life as the fruit of it For nothing else can fit us to dye but to Repent and live well neither can there be any other readiness and preparation for Death but only that For we must not imagine that we can be ready on a sudden and that though we were utterly unprepared before that at a few days or hours warning we can make our selves ready and fit to dye No our whole Life at least a considerable part of it is to be spent in making our selves ready for we must not think that our Souls can like our Bodies be drest in a few moments or that we can be fit to meet the Bridegroom when he calls us in hast and on a sudden Vertuous habits are not put on in a moment nor can vitious ones be so easily and quickly cast off as our cloaths are no rather like Diseases that are chronical and have by long time been growing upon us they require long time and great care and much pains and many remedies and a timely course before they can be cured and got off and before we can be well and so ready to meet the Lord. 'T is not a few penitential tears upon a Death-bed will wash away the filth of a wicked Life or cleanse a guilty and polluted Soul that has been many years contracting an habitual uncleanness whose Sins stick to it like an old Leprosie and have eat like rust or a canker into the very heart and substance of it and yet they must be all got out by Repentance and the Soul must be made sound and clear and recover it self into a vertuous and good habit before it can be ready for another World and duly prepared for a Future State Indeed there is a great difference to be made according to the past course of Mens lives there may be a great many such happy Souls who by a very careful Education and the good Example of their Parents and others and by a Vertuous disposition and inclination in themselves and above all by the Grace and Providence of God have been alwayes kept from great and mortal Sins and so never fell into a bad and damnable state all their lives but were alwayes vertuous and innocent as to any such offences as should forfeit and endanger their Salvation by the terms of the Gospel and the Covenant of Grace without that we were all in a damnable state and the Scripture hath concluded all under sin without that Gal. 3.22 For we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God and of that strict and exact Obedience which we owe to the Law of God so that if he should enter into Judgment with us and be severe and rigorous in demanding his utmost right over us we could not contend with him nor answer him one of a thousand as Job sayes Job 9.3 and no Man can upon these terms be just with God as he there sayes for so in his sight shall no man living be justified Psal 143.2 but by the Grace and Mercy of the Gospel according to which God will now deal with Mankind many I doubt not have been so justified that through their whole lives they never were in a state of Damnation for nothing puts us into that under Christianity but a great and known and wilful Sin or rather a course and habit of such Sins and though no Man liveth without Sin that is without some Frailties and Imperfections and lesser Sins which come not up to the perfection of the Divine Law for which he ought to beg pardon and say God forgive us our trespasses yet God forbid that those should put us into an ill state for then no Man in the World would be ever out of it But oh thrice happy are those Souls who have not defiled themselves with any great and damnable Sins who have alwayes kept to their first Love and preserved their first Vertue unstained and unspotted and have been so trained up in the wayes of Religion and Goodness that they never wandered or went astray from them nor never stept into the paths of wilful Sin so that their steps should at any time take hold of Death who never past out of that line which divides the two states of Grace and Damnation nor ever approached so near to the brink of Hell as to be in danger of falling into it These have reason to give thanks to God all their lives who has thus kept them out of the snare of the Devil and secured them from the jawes of Death and Destruction and whilst they persevere and go on in this good state and condition and pass from strength to strength and from one degree of grace to another and grow up in all manner of
incurable hardness to all nor so far as we know to the Scribes and Pharisees themselves but there were means still used to recover them which would have been all in vain and to no purpose if they had been under an irrecoverable and judicial hardness and it had not been only blindness or hardness in part which had happened to Israel Rom. 11.25 or to the Jews And we shall venture too far out of our depth if we offer to say that God made use of many means and remedies to convince and convert the Jews the Scribes and the Pharisees when he had appointed and decreed that none of those should have any effect or good operation upon them this will hardly be consistent with the Goodness and Mercy or with the Truth and Sincerity of the Blessed God nor does he ever for any one Sin but for a long obstinate course of many provoking Sins continued in irreclaimably against the Methods of Divine Grace give up any Person to hardness of Heart There remains I confess another way by which a Sin may become unpardonable and that is by being exempted by God from the general Promise and Covenant of Pardon which he hath made with Mankind He who has all Sovereign Power and an entire Right of Punishment and upon whose Free Grace and Arbitrary Favour all Pardon and Forgiveness depends may except what Sin he pleases out of his General Act of Grace and Proclamation of Pardon and Indempnity but this surely should be done particularly and by name and in the very Act and Proclamation it self there in the very Charter and Covenant of Grace which God has signed with Mankind this ought to be expresly exempted and whether this Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost be so or no is the question or whether this expression of our Saviours concerning it that it shall not be forgiven may be mollified and understood not in the utmost rigour of the Word but as a great many of the best Interpreters of Scripture have judged particularly St Chrysostome of old and Dr. Hammond of late that this Sin shall hardly and not without great difficulty be forgiven and not so soon or so easily as other Sins that it supposes and proceeds from such a corruption of the Mind that is more dangerous and more hard to be cured than any other distempers it is subject to but yet that 't is not quite impossible as the words literally taken seem to imply I shall offer you the Reasons that plead for this Opinion and then determine what is most safe and satisfying in this matter 1. It is very usual in Scripture to represent a thing that is very hard and difficult as if it were utterly impossible and never could be This our Saviour himself does in the case of the Rich Mans entering into the Kingdom of Heaven to express the hardness of it he does it by a thing that is utterly impossible Matth. 19.24 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God And so does the Prophet also make use of a Natural impossibility to represent the great difficulty of a Mans turning from a long course and custom of sinning Jer. 13.23 Can the Aethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil Not but it is possible notwithstanding those Proverbial expressions that a Man who has been accustomed to do evil a very great while may yet be brought off from his Sins and become a good Man or else all the Exhortations to Repentance and Promises of the Gospel are in vain and so may a good Man become a very bad one too and fall from his own stedfastness and become guilty of abominable Sins As David did that was a Man after Gods own Heart notwithstanding that St. John in the same way and manner of expression with these declares concerning him 1 Ep. 3.9 Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is horn of God That Phrase he cannot denotes not an utter impossibility for the Prophet as well as Experience too plainly show the contrary that a righteous man may turn from his righteousness and commit iniquity and dye in it Ezek. 18.26 Things are sometimes so exprest in Scripture as they often are also amongst Men as if there were no hopes nor no probable means of effecting a thing when yet there are very certain ones as in that expression 1 Sam. 2.25 not a little parallel to this If one man sin against another the judge shall judge him but if a man sin against the Lord who shall intreat for him Not that there is no Advocate nor no way of interceding with God when a Man thus sins against him but to show the guilt and danger of it above the other That place of the Hebrews chap. 6. ver 4. For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened c. If they shall fall away to renew them again to Repentance that is by very good Interpreters thought to denote only great difficulty and not impossibility in the utmost rigour and strictness which it is plain none of the other Phrases however they may sound must be taken in and therefore this expression of our Saviour concerning the Sin against the Holy Ghost they think may be mollified and understood with the same largeness and latitude as those and to import only thus much that it shall be more difficultly repented of and so more hardly forgiven than any other Sins 2. Both the first part of this Verse That all manner of sin and blasphemies shall be forgiven unto men and many other absolute and unconditional Promises or Threatnings or like Declarations in Scripture must not they say be too rigorously and literally understood for if they are the truth which is now evident in them as they are taken with that fairness and equity and those supposals which must go along with them will be forced out and they will become false for it will not be true that all manner of sins and blasphemies shall be forgiven unto men for then none should be damned of made miserable in another World And when St. Paul sayes They that do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of Heaven Gal. 5.21 it must not be made a certain and general conclusion from thence that none who were ever guilty of any one of those Sins whereof he there gives us a black Catalogue shall ever be saved nor become capable of entering into Heaven but that they shall not be so without Repentance and Amendment though that is not there mentioned nor any provision concerning that is so much as intimated in that place nor is that tho' necessary Condition to the forgiveness of every Sin exprest or put down in our Saviours general Declaration that all manner of sins and blasphemies shall be forgiven unto men
but it is without all Controversie to be supposed and the same allowances that are to be made to all these and the like expressions of Scripture without which if they are strained over-rigorously they would not be true these they think reasonable to apply to our Saviours expression concerning this Sin and that where it is said not to be forgiven that is not without a very particular and full Repentance of it And to strengthen this a little further they observe that there is another Phrase and Expression concerning this Sin used by our Saviour where the sense must not be forced so far as the words would seem to carry it and that is this That it shall not be forgiven neither in this world nor in the world to come Matth. 12.32 As if our Saviour did thereby intimate that any Sins should be pardoned in another World which are not in this Some Interpreters think that some of the Jews had this opinion as the Papists now have and that our Saviour therefore used the expression to take off all hopes from them that had such a vain belief and levelled his words against that but I rather think this to be the plain sense that it was only a common Phrase among the Jews that the thing should not be or never be without regard to any such opinion which we have not sufficient authority to prove the Jews had but only that Death they thought was a kind of Expiation for some Sins in their Life However this Phrase must have some allowance made for the words of it and so they would have the other 3. Another Reason for the abating the severity of the Expression concerning this is that there are other Sins which seem equal to this in guilt and heinousness which are yet all declared to be pardonable and those not only the most wilful Sins against Natural Light as well as Revealed Religion but against Christianity and even the Holy Ghost such as were those of the Heathen World described Rom. 2. and yet they were received into the Christian Religion and made partakers of the Christian Covenant as 't is plain many of the Corinthians also were whose Names were put in the List of the vilest Sinners 1 Cor. 6.11 And the Apostle expresly tells them That such were some of them to wit Fornicators idolaters adulterers effeminate abusers of themselves with mankind thieves covetous drunkards revilers extortioners ver 9.10 and yet these very Men were washed were sanctified were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God ver 11. And St. Peters denyal of his Master after he had seen all his Miracles and been so fully convinced by them that he was as he had confest the Son of God was a very great Sin yet upon his repenting and weeping bitterly for it it was forgiven Nay they who treated our Saviour with the basest and the cruelest usage and at last barbarously murdered him our Saviour prayed his Father even to forgive these and therefore that greatest of Sins the putting an innocent Man to death and Crucifying the very Son of God this was not excluded from Pardon but the very Blood that they thus villanously shed was an Expiation for the very Sin of shedding of it And if it be said that these however great and horrid Sins yet were not so immediately Sins against the Holy Ghost against whom peculiarly this unpardonable Sin is committed if we carefully examine the Bible we shall find a great many Sins and Provocations chiefly if not directly against him wherein he was particularly affronted if not blasphemed and reproached and yet not unpardonable St. Paul owns himself a Blasphemer as well as a Persecutor 1 Tim. 1.13 and wherein can we think his Blasphemy consisted not in blaspheming God the God of Israel for he was a very strict and Religious Worshipper of him according to the Law and the strictest Sect of the Jews but it must be in blaspheming Christianity and such things as were done to the spreading and confirmation of that And nothing seems to be so likely a subject of his Blasphemy as the Miracles of Christ and the Apostles because nothing was so strong an Argument for the Christian Religion which could not well be reproached unless those were evil spoken of and yet he obtained Mercy and became the great instance of an hearty Penitent and a zealous Convert But we have more particular Instances of some Sins against the Holy Ghost himself that tended to reproach and dishonour him in a high measure and yet are no where declared to be unpardonable Ananias is said to lye to the Holy Ghost Acts 5.3 and to tempt the Spirit of the Lord ver 9. and vertually to deny his Knowledge and Omniscience by denying part of the Money for which he had sold his Estate that was devoted by him to the Church and Simon Magus who offered Money that he might purchase the Holy Ghost and thought a few pieces of Silver a just Price and valuable Consideration for him and that the Power of God might be bought and sold for a little Money He did reproach the Holy Ghost by which the Apostles did their Miracles in the highest manner Acts 8.19 and therefore St. Peter very severely reproves him ver 20. Thy money perish with thee because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money And that expression might have been thought to have put him into an irreversible state of Ruine and Perdition had not St. Peter added what shows it to be otherwise ver 22. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness and pray God if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee And there is another Instance that seems as great and immediate a reproach to the Holy Ghost as what the Pharisees were guilty of in charging the Miracles which Christ wrought by the Power of the Holy Ghost to an Evil Spirit and that was the mocking at the Disciples upon whom the Holy Ghost was poured out on the day of Pentecost as if they had been inspired with new Wine Acts 2.13 and yet this has no Mark set upon it by the Apostles whereby it can be certainly known to be either the Sin against the Holy Ghost meant by our Saviour or a Sin that was unpardonable 4. As there are other Sins that seem equal to this yet certainly Pardonable so there are expressions concerning some other Sins which seem as much to exclude them from all hopes of remission and to pass as severe and desperate a Sentence upon them as Christ does here upon this and yet the best Interpreters think they admit of an abatement and mitigation as in Heb. 6.4.5 6. For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come If they shall fall away to renew them
very good Persons subject to it and one of the best means to cure it is to know that this is one cause of that trouble of Mind which will be so much abated when one is perswaded from whence it often comes or is heightened For Melancholly is not curable by Religion or Divinity and they who are subject to it should take the more care of their lives that there be no true and great cause to fall in and joyn with the Melancholly of their Bodies and they should make a judgment of themselves in their best tempers and when their thoughts are clearest and should trust others and especially their Spiritual Guides to judge for them since they are so unfit generally to pass judgment upon themselves 2. This Trouble of Mind which makes Men despair of Mercy is most unreasonable and contrary to the whole tenour and design of the Gospel for there is Pardon held out to the greatest Sinner by the Blood of Christ and to the greatest Sin or the greatest number of Sins if we Repent of them and leave them and become good Men before we dye This is as certain as the Gospel is true and therefore no Man has any just cause to despair for the greatest Sin or Sins who is so heartily troubled for them that he would not for the World commit them again and who resolves never to do so by the Grace of God but to practice the contrary Vertues and who makes good this Resolution by a Vertuous and Pious and Religious Life this Man will as certainly be happy as if he had been alwayes innocent and never had offended God I cannot say he will be in a state as comfortable and free from trouble though if he has thus Repented and become a good man he has good reason to be so but he will be as safe and if he has still some trouble of mind remaining upon the remembrance of his Sins though never so long past and he cannot see the Pardon of them with the same certainty and evidence that he knows he committed them yet this shall not hinder his Pardon nor affect his Salvation if he has truly and fully Repented of them For 3. And Lastly This Trouble of Mind which proceeds from judging too hardly or severely of himself is rather an Infirmity than a Sin and God will not condemn a Man for it though he may condemn himself for God will not condemn a Man unjustly though he should unjustly condemn himself much less because he does so Despair is indeed a sad state but I cannot say it is alwayes a damnable Sin or want of Faith as some think for it may arise not from a disbelief of the Gospel or of the Divine Goodness or the freeness and fullness of Gods Grace in and through Christ but meerly from a false and mistaken and too hard and humble an opinion of a Mans self and this is a fault not of a Mans Will but of his Judgment and a weakness and imperfection in his Understanding for which he shall never be condemned by a Righteous God but he will reverse this false Judgment which he made of himself when he lived or when he dyed and set it right in the Court of Heaven and do Justice to him at the great Tribunal though he did not do it to himself here That God will judge Men according to their Works is plain in Scripture but no where that I know that he will do so according to their Thoughts their vain Hopes and presumptuous or vain Fears and Troubles and Doubts and even Despairs of themselves So that tho' this Trouble of Mind or this Wounded Spirit be a comfortless and unhappy state yet it truly depends upon the cause to make judgment of it or to conclude any thing from it and true and timely Repentance is the best and certainest Remedy for it CHAP. IV. The ill Consequences drawn from the Priviledge of Repentance Obviated and Prevented THE most wicked and greatest of Sinners who have any thoughts of their Souls and of another World though they are not prevailed upon by this to become better yet make this reserve and refuge to themselves that they will Repent hereafter at some time or other and so escape the Wrath to come They know and are very sensible if they have not shaken off all Religion and all thinking and considering of these things that except they repent they shall all perish but they hope and intend to prevent this by the benefit of Repentance and so make use of that not to bring them off from their Sins but to encourage them in them with hopes to avoid all the miserable consequences of them and yet live in them and so by this priviledge of an after Repentance they set aside the present necessity of a good Life and wholly destroy or supersede all Religion I shall therefore endeavour to prevent that most common and most fatal abuse of it for I am confident there are more Souls perish by that than by any other mistake whatsoever and a thousand times more than by down-right Infidelity and Disbelief of all Religion which is a very rare thing and 't is hard to find out any certain instances that have ever been of it in the World 't is so much against the Natural Sense and Reason and Apprehension of Mankind but the other is the commonest thing in the World even for Christians perhaps above any others to make false Reasonings to themselves from this priviledge of Repentance which we have in the highest degree from the Gospel to think they may secure and save their Souls and yet indulge and allow themselves in the present enjoyment of their Sins because they may set all right by Repenting of them hereafter I shall therefore against this errour and abuse of Repentance and to obviate this mischievous Consequence offer these following Considerations 1. Can we think a Wise God would make such a Grant and Concession to his Creatures as should destroy all Religion and make void the necessity of Obedience and a good Life which according to these Mens thoughts is unavoidably done by this Gospel-priviledge of Repentance For since say they a Man is as certainly safe who comes in at any time upon Repentance and shall be as certainly saved by the Terms and Conditions of the Gospel as if he had spent all his Life in the strictest Vertue and Religion What need is there of such an early and constant and perpetual Obedience and spending a whole Life in the servitude and drudgery of Religion when coming in at the eleventh hour and working but a short space at the latter end of the day will have as much Wages and as sure a Reward and be as certainly accepted by God Shall not a Sinner when ever he returns and repents find Mercy Is there any time or bounds prefix'd to his Repentance so that he may not do it so many years hence as well as at present and after he has
down his Government of the World if he were merciful contrary to those and should not so far regard his own Honour and assert his Power and Authority and Justifie the goodness of his Laws as to revenge all open affronts against them and punish all great and notorious and habitual Sinners notwithstanding all their Prayers and Entreaties to the contrary If the cryes and lamentations of a dying Sinner should make God forgive him out of meer pity and tenderness though he had broke all the Laws of Heaven in his life and lived in direct opposition against them and never took any care to keep them this must alter the Rule of God's Government the Rule of the Gospel and the Rule of his last Judgment and he must for his sake break and act contrary to all those If notwithstanding those Gods Pity and Mercy to a poor Wretch could suffer or incline him to do this we might then as reasonably hope that this his pity might reach even to the damned in Hell their Case is very pitiable and very lamentable as well as the others and their cryes and howlings and lamentations are very loud and importunate but they are unreasonable and too late and therefore God is deaf to them one would think if Pity could so over-rule Justice as to prevail with it to dispense with the severe and righteous Rules lay'd down by the great God it would put out the flames of Hell or let the tears and cryes of the damned quench those dreadful and Everlasting burnings and not suffer so many poor and miserable Creatures to lye tortured for ever in the utmost Extremity but God's Justice and Judgment is as deep and bottomless as Hell it self and though we cannot search into all the reasons of it yet we know by his word that it shall take place and be duely executed notwithstanding his own greatest Pity and Mercy or his Creatures greatest Cryes and Lamentations A groundless presumption of God's Mercy and Pity hath ruined many Souls The Gospel declares the highest instances and degrees of it in the Redemption of the World by Jesus Christ and in pardoning our sins upon our Repentance and to show this required a wonderful Method and most Stupendous Expedient thus to find out a way to reconcile Gods Justice and Mercy together by the Sacrifice of Christ now this utmost Grace and Mercy of Heaven neither does nor could go farther than past Sins upon Repentance and Amendment Obedience and a good Life afterwards to expect any Mercy from God beyond this beyond the Gospel and the Rules and measures of Mercy there layd down is the most vain and groundless and presumptuous thing i' the World and so 't is for a dying unprepared Sinner to think he can do any thing then by which he may hope to prevail with Christ and to enter into Heaven For alass what can he then do He can use strong Crying and Tears and Prayers to God so did the Virgins and so may the Damned but alass for what can he pray That God would save him without Obedience and a good Life which he has declared he never will that he would not now punish him for a wicked and impenitent and disobedient life which he assuredly will do that he may not now be shut out when the Bridegroom is coming though he is no way prepared for it and has no Oyle in his Lamp no vertuous habits and Dispositions of mind to fit him to go in and now 't is too late to get them all on a sudden and in vain to expect to borrow this Oyl of others or to have it given by the Bridegroom himself would he pray now to God to give him Grace when he has despised and rejected it all his Life would he now have it grow up into vertuous habits and the frults of Obedience and a good life all on a sudden would he now become a new Man and a new Creature in a few hours and from a wicked Man all his life become a good one in a few days He may almost as well hope that God should make him young again now he is old and turn his old and weak and dying Body into a young and lusty and healthful one and work those mighty Miracles upon his Body as well as his Mind by his Prayers God can do the one by an Almighty Irresistible power as well as the other if he pleases but 't is very vain and groundless to depend upon the utmost of what God's power is able to do in any thing and therefore that is never to be brought in for or against any thing of this Nature The only question is not what God but what such a wicked Man and dying Sinner can then do can he have all his old habits of vice and wickedness rooted out and his Nature changed and a vertuous and holy disposition of mind planted in their stead Can that lust or sinful Inclination which was so hard to be conquered before that he pretended it was impossible for him almost to leave it can this now be so soon and so easily overcome All those Corruptions and Diseases of Soul which have been so long upon him that they are become chronical and habitual and which were before incurable by all the means of Grace and methods of Providence by all the advices and exhortations of his own Friends and God's Ministers are these now to be perfectly got off and cured on a sudden and the Mind restored to Soundness and Holyness Is that now to be done so easily and so quickly which he found so hard to do all his life and which is one of the hardest and most difficult things in the World to make a Bad Man a Good one No this is Unnatural and Impossible and cannot be in the Nature of the thing but a Man may be very sorrowful and heartily troubled that he was not so and have great trouble and remorse of Mind for his sins and so be heartily penitent for them This is all he can be and he cannot well be otherwise if he be in his Senses and hath the use of his Reason and sees such Terrible danger before him as is now unavoidable he must be greatly troubled that he hath brought himself to that that is that he must suffer for his Sin for he was never troubled at the Sin before nor would be now but like it and live in it still if that were all but he cannot but be concerned at the dreadful punishment of it and he must be very hardy indeed if he go not thus Shivering and Contrite and Penitent as they call it to his Execution this is only a Natural abhorring of pain or what is evil to us from a principle of Self-preservation not an abhorrence of Sin from Choice and Reason and free apprehension of Mind for all this is from a force and violence offered to the mind by a sense of present danger and from that Fear Terrour and Confusion that a
unlawfully had it power and opportunity for those first Motions and Inclinations are necessary and unavoidable arising from the frame and constitution of our Nature and the Mechanism of our Body Blood and Spirits so that we can no more help or prevent them than we can the senses of Pain and Pleasure or the Appetites of Thirst or Hunger or the Motions and Impressions of outward Objects made upon our Senses and therefore they are not simply evil but good in themselves so far as they are Natural and intended by God to serve the good of the World and of particular Persons and the wise ends of Providence but as they are irregular and inordinate excessive and immoderate and destroy those ends for which God intended them so far they are sinful and when any of those Natural Appetites or Sensual Inclinations grow too strong and unruly and are not kept under the government of Reason or within the bounds of Vertue and Religion then they carry Men to all loosness and wickedness and make them commit Sin and Uncleanness with greediness A good Man may with St. Paul be very sensible and complain of this body of sin and of death and of the law of sin that is in his members of many irregular Appetites and undue Passions and weak and foolish imaginations and unreasonable desires and inclinations of too quick gusts of Sensual things and too much deadness of Spiritual of having too many thoughts and designs for Earthly and present things and too little zeal and affection for things Heavenly that are a thousand times more valuable These are imperfections that are in the best of us and we see that they are so and are very sensible and complain of them but yet we cannot wholly avoid them but after all our thoughts and all our care they still return upon us and the Flesh will lust against the Spirit and there will be a perpetual war and struggle between them but if the Spirit do so far prevail by the helps of Grace and considerations of Religion that it do never yield to any wilful Sin it shall then be rewarded as a Conquerour which though it did not wholly subdue and drive out that homebred enemy yet kept it alwayes under and made it submit to its Government and not keep up an open Rebellion against it Of this I have largely discoursed in the Third Section of the Third Chapter I proceed now to those Sins which are known wilful and presumptuous habitual and reigning in us any one of which is inconsistent with a good State and excludes us out of Gods Favour here and Heaven hereafter such as the Psalmist in the forequoted place prayes against Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins lest they get the dominion over me All known and wilful Sins are presumptuous as being done in defiance of a Divine Authority that we know has forbid them and in contempt of God and his Laws to whom we owe all Honour and Obedience and notwithstanding all those threatnings and severe punishments that God has denounced against them He that sins wilfully after he has received the knowledge of the truth of these things there remains nothing for him but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries This is despising the Law of God thus wittingly and wilfully to break it and is sinning with a high hand and a most presumptuous boldness when we choose to do that which we know is most highly displeasing to Heaven and which God has laid all the obligations he possibly can upon us not to do When any such Sin gets dominion over us so that it becomes customary and habitual to us it makes us the Devils slaves and captives at his Will and shows that he is our Master and that we are the Servants of Sin and overcome by that and brought in bondage to it that it prevails upon our Minds above all the Power of Reason and Principles of Religion and that we choose it above all the great things of Heaven and another World that Religion offers to us and think it more desirable than any of those and had rather gratifie a paltry Lust and a foolish Inclination than save our Souls and have all the favour of God that we prefer it before any other good and let it have the ascendant in our Love and Affections above all other things for it is utterly inconsistent with any Love of God or any due regard to him and banishes all Principles of Religion out of our Minds and destroyes all sincerity and uprightness of Heart towards God and abandons us to a state of enmity with him and everlasting destruction hereafter This I have shown is true of every wilful and chosen and known Sin I shall now from the distinction I have given you of these Sins from those of Infirmity Ignorance and Inadvertency make the following Inferences and Remarks 1. That those Sins of Infirmity are to be Repented of i. e. we are to be sorry for them and pray God to forgive them Though they do not destroy our good state nor deprive us of Gods Favour here or Heaven hereafter yet they are such as are to be matter of Trouble and Sorrow and Humiliation to us and we are dayly to pray God to forgive us our Trespasses as Christ has taught us in the Lords Prayer and the Psalmist in the place before mentioned prayes God to cleanse him from his secret faults as well as to keep him back from presumptuous Sins For 2. These are true and proper Sins and though they are not charged upon us to our Condemnation yet this is by the great Favour and Mercy of God and by Vertue of the Gracious Covenant made in Christ with Mankind for otherwise God in Rigour and Justice might punish and condemn us for them The Papists hold a distinction between Sins Mortal and Venial in their own Nature i. e. that some Sins are in themselves damnable and others not which the Protestants have generally opposed for this Reason because all Sin is in it self Mortal and in its own Nature deserves Death as being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a breach and transgression of a Divine Law whose sanction is Death but it is pardonable only by Gods Mercy on the account of its circumstances which make it more excusable with a good and merciful God but that it is not of it self venial or so little as not to deserve Punishment they prove from hence that we are bound to pray God to forgive it Now it is pure Grace and Favour for God to forgive and what he is not obliged to and if he is not obliged to pardon it he may punish it were it not for his Mercy and Goodness and the Gracious Covenant he has made with us in the Gospel This should therefore 3. Make us very sensible of Gods infinite Mercy and kind dealing with us by the Covenant of Grace How many innumerable Sins and
Frailties are we guilty of in our Lives which are in strictness deviations from the Divine Law How many secret Sins are we to be cleansed and freed from which we might be ignorant of when we committed or not remember afterwards and which are forgotten by us and blotted out of our memories tho' they are not out of Gods but he might impute and charge them to us would he enter into strict Judgment with us How many foolish Thoughts rash Words irregular Passions unreasonable Desires are we dayly guilty of and how many defects and omissions of doing our Duty with less degrees of ardency frequency and perfection then we ought to do these all stand in need of Divine Mercy and this we shall be sure of for Christs sake if we are sincere and hearty and upright in our Obedience but this is a mighty Favour of God and of the New Covenant and calls for a great sense of Thankfulness and Gratitude To say we sin dayly and that the best things we do have Sin mixt with them is true in a certain sense as there is some defect and imperfection in our most Holy Duties and that we have some Infirmities that we ought dayly to confess and beg forgiveness of at Gods hands but this is by no means true of any such wilful Sin as every good Man must be free from whilst he is in a good state and has a title to Heaven Under the Law God had provided a standing Expiation for the lesser Sins of Ignorance and Infirmity by the dayly and other Sacrifices but there was none for presumptuous Sins but he that was guilty of them was to be cut off and dye without Mercy by the Law of Moses Christianity is a more Gracious Dispensation and allowes Pardon for the greatest Sin upon Repentance and Amendment and the Blood of Christ is a standing Expiation for those and all the lesser and dayly Sins we commit and Christ is our dayly Advocate and Intercessor with God for them 4. When the Scripture sayes that we are all Sinners and that if we say we have no Sin we deceive our selves and that there is not a Righteous Man who liveth and sinneth not and we by our dayly Confessions own our selves to be dayly Sinners this is meant only of those lesser Sins of Frailty and Infirmity Ignorance and Inconsideration which I have explained to you which are consistent with a good State which regenerate and holy Men are not quite free from which neither destroy our own sincerity nor Gods love to us nor our reasonable hopes of Heaven but any other Sins that are of a wilful and presumptuous Nature those a good Man must be wholly free from or else he loses his Goodness and becomes a Child of Wrath and Damnation till he recovers himself by Repentance and if he ever falls into any such he must exercise a most bitter and particular course of Repentance and put himself into a state of great Penitence and bring himself to an entire amendment and forsaking of it till he can have any well grounded hopes of Pardon and Salvation There have been a great many Disputes about attaining Perfection of Obedience and Vertue in this Life some holding Erroneously that they could absolutely and fully come up to it and live wholly without Sin others as Erroneously that they were such dayly Sinners as deserved dayly Gods Wrath and Damnation and that they sinned in every thing they did Now these extreams of Errors are easily reconciled and cleared this way that no one can come up to absolute Perfection so as to live without the lesser Sins of Frailty and Infirmity but every good Man ought to be so perfect as to live without any wilful chosen and known Sin 5. Even those lesser Sins we must strive against and endeavour to overcome and master and pray for the Divine Grace and use all care and watchfulness against them else they become wilful and voluntary by our neglect of them and not using a due diligence to prevent and hinder them Smaller Sins like lesser and smaller Diseases may affect and indispose the most sound and healthful Constitution but if they are neglected and suffered to grow too much upon it they may become great and mortal The first motions of Concupiscence are not strict Sins or at most but Sins of Infirmity but if those first sparks are not put out as soon as they are kindled but are suffered to glow and kindle within by morose thoughts and indulged fancies and imaginations they will break out into some undue acts and outward effects If the Passions and Appetites that are Natural to us are not mortified by due care exercise and thoughtfulness they will grow masterless and ungovernable and be at the beck of every Temptation that invites them and run greedily after every Lust that layes a proper object in their way or sets it before them A hasty fit of Anger if it be not put out may not go off in a sudden blaze and expire in its own sudden heats and Passion but the Cholerick humour may concoct into malice and revenge and habitual spite and ill will and so may a fretful peevishness and sharpness of Temper spread like a Tetter and grow incurable and eat out all that sweetness and meekness kindness love and good Nature which are to be the Vertues of a Christian in all the proper acts of them however sower be their Blood or predominant their Spleen God may abate in great measure for an unhappy Constitution but he will never allow any wilful Sin as the effect of it We must guard our selves with greater care and watchfulness where we know we lye open to any such weakness and call in all the helps of Religion to fortifie and defend us against any such enemy that we are so much in danger of else an impure an angry a covetous an ambitious thought and inclination nourished in our Hearts and not watched over and corrected may like a poysonous seed or root of bitterness if suffered to grow up bring forth all the fruits that proceed from it and make all those sinful corruptions in the Heart become wilful Sins and produce actual Transgressions in our Lives We must not allow our selves in any Sins whatever upon pretence of their being little for if we do they become wilful and chosen and as the Wise Man sayes He that sinneth by little and little shall perish by little and little A small leak in a Ship may if it be not stop'd let in Water enough in time to sink it and a small breach in the banks of a Sea-wall may cause a general inundation Some little Sins will adhere to the best of Men but they must not be voluntary or consented to but brought upon them by ignorance surprize or inadvertency and some unavoidable cause or necessity which Morally speaking is so to them and they can never perfectly help it for so much of will as there is in any Sin so
not comfort himself with that for so long as he doth it he is a slave to it and he is led captive by it so strongly that it over powers even his Conscience and his Reason and till he can break loose from it so as not to commit it again he is a servant of sin and under the greatest bondage and servitude Let a Man have never so much dislike of his Sins and pretend never so much to abominate and abhor them in his thoughts yet if he commits them in his practice 't is but protestatio as we say contra factum but a fruitless Repentance that still brings forth the unfruitful works of darkness for 't is not what Men think of their Sins but their not doing of them that is the true fruit of Repentance II. As we must leave the Sin so we must practice the contrary Vertue And this will be more easily and readily done for if the Habit of Vice and Wickedness be destroyed that of Vertue will follow of course as if the Disease be removed Health is restored Virtus est Vitium fugere The very leaving of Vice is the coming to Vertue For the Mind cannot stand still but is a moving and an active Principle and if it be not Vicious it will be Vertuous it cannot stand neuter and indifferent to those two but will necessarily take either one side or the other He that leaves off Drunkenness by so doing becomes sober He that will no longer defraud must necessarily become just The contrary Vertue does in most cases succeed the forsaken Vice as Light does succeed Darkness and Day Night It does not I confess do it alwayes for it does not necessarily follow that he who does not swear should be devout nor that he who does not cheat should be charitable nor that he who will not blaspheme God should worship him and yet those are very meet and worthy fruits of Repentance that he who has prophaned the Sacred Name of God by customary Swearing should not only leave off that upon his Repentance but with a Religious dread and awful veneration should ever after adore and worship him and he that has been unjust and unrighteous should not only break off his sin by righteousness but by shewing mercy to the poor Dan. 4.27 That as sin did before abound so now the contrary Grace and Vertue may much more abound as the Apostle speaks in another case and as he sayes in the like case to the Roman Christians who were once impure Gentiles As ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness Rom. 6.19 That now being made free from sin and become servants to God ye may have your fruit unto holiness ver 22. and that this fruit may be the greater because of the former barrenness and unfruitfulness which we were guilty of He that has neglected any necessary Duty and so is guilty of a Sin of Omission is bound to amend and repent of that as much as of any other Sin and so Repentance will oblige him to the practice of all manner of Vertue as well as the quitting and abandoning of all manner of Sin The true Penitent must not only pluck up all the Habits of Sin in his Soul and weed out all those venemous seeds of Wickedness that have grown up into sinful practices but he must have all manner of Vertue planted in his Heart and he must bring forth the fruits of his Repentance in an universal Goodness and Holiness of Life and unless it does so it is not as I shall show you true and perfect Repentance because nothing else can restore the Mind to a soundness and a good state And Repentance is like a recovery of Health after Sickness The disease must be thoroughly got off the sickly matter must be discharged the illness must be cured and removed and when that is done the Patient must get his former strength and be able to perform all the proper and vital operations and till he does this we cannot say he is well So till a Sinner has wholly got rid of his past Sins and has utterly relinquish'd and forsaken them till he has purged them all out by Repentance and has brought himself by the Grace of God to such a Spiritual strength and soundness as to perform the proper duties and operations of the new life and to practice those Vertues which were contrary to his former Vices he cannot be said to be recovered to a state of Health and Soundness and true Repentance He may be under a method of Cure indeed as a sick Man is under a course of Physick and in some fair hopes and a likely way of recovery before this and this is often called Repentance and 't is a part of it but not the whole But the great work is not done nor is his Repentance finish'd and perfected till he is come to this to forsake every former Sin and practice the contrary Vertue How long he is to do this I shall not determine as I cannot tell how long a Man must be free from a Disease before he is well and how much time exactly there must be between a state of Sickness and that of Health 'T is hard to fix the indivisible point between those two states and so it is between a state of Sin and a perfect Repentance of it but all Men can still know pretty easily when they are well and so they may by this sure mark when they have truly and fully Repented namely when they have thus brought forth the fruits of repentance Matth. 3.8 Repentance is not to be known neither is it to be counted true or at least perfect without those Those Fruits of it indeed are not different from the thing it self they are not only signs and outward marks and indications of it as the Fruit of a Tree is a sign that the Tree is alive for here the Tree would not be alive at all if it were without that Fruit. These are not then only a sign that his Repentance is true but they are like our Breath which is not only a sign that we are alive but that very thing by which we live True and perfect Repentance consists in those and is never without them as I shall shew by considering what an imperfect thing all the Repentance is which is done in a Mans Mind without any effect upon his Life and Actions SECT IV. Mental Repentance imperfect without Actual ALL that Sorrow and Trouble for Sin which a Sinner feels in his own Soul all that Conviction and Condemnation of his ill state and sad condition by reason of his past Sins when he reflects upon them and all those Vows and Purposes and Resolutions of leaving his Sins and living better hereafter though they are good symptoms and good beginnings of Repentance yet if they go no further and do not bring forth the meet fruits of
should hearken only to the desires of our Senses and our inferiour Appetites and not to the wise voice and dictates of Reason and Understanding which God had given us We shall be convinced of the folly of this and see the many ill effects that have come of it when we consider rightly and weigh things impartially and make judgment not by our Lusts and Passions but by right Reason and Wisdom and shall condemn our selves when we grow cool for all the mad frollicks and extravagancies we committed in the heat of folly and shall then feel the pains and wounds they gave us tho' we were not sensible of them before Then we shall see that danger which before we were not duly aware of and have a dread and terrour of that upon our Minds which is the due punishment of our Sins for the consciousness of our own guilt will fill us with terrible fears and we shall find the burden greater than we can bear but how fully to get rid of it is a defect and a desideratum in Natural Religion and therefore we must go further than that for the other Motives to Repentance which are fetcht from Revelation and from the Gospel and Christianity under which God now commandeth all men to Repent as St. Paul sayes Acts 17.30 now more than heretofore namely by some more proper and peculiar Motives greater than Mankind had before to encourage them to this Duty such as I shall come now to consider and shall offer very largely SECT III. Motives to Repentance from the Gospel 1. NOW then by Revelation and the Gospel we have an assurance of Gods pardoning us upon our Repentance which the World could not have without a Revelation for this depends upon the free Will and anbitrary Pleasure of God to which he is not obliged by his Essential and Natural Goodness and of which we cannot be certainly assured without an express Promise and Divine Revelation Nature taught all Mankind that there was a God the knowledge of this is not to be had from Revelation but must be supposed as previous and antecedent to it we learn it not from the Bible but from the great Volume of Nature that lyes every where written before us with the plainest Marks of an Infinite and Perfect and Wise God and in that the Characters of his Goodness are as legible as these of his Power and Wisdom by making his Sun to shine on the evil and on the good and sending Rain on the just and the unjust and by other the Natural provisions and contrivances for the good of his Creatures God has shown himself to be no evil and malicious Principle as some Hereticks imagined but a Being of Goodness which is an Essential Perfection of his Nature and as Natural and Necessary to him as his very Being And this Goodness belongs to him not only as a Creator but a Governour and obliges him not to condemn an innocent Creature nor inflict more misery upon it than he gives it good by its Being His Natural Justice as well as his Goodness hinders him from doing any injury by his Power or acting contrary to the unalterable Rules of Right and Wrong from dooming Men to Misery by an Eternal Decree before they had offended him from punishing any one more than he deserves for the fault of another and for any fault of its own that was wholly inevitable and unavoidable but after Men have wilfully offended God and been guilty of voluntary Crimes and presumptuous Disobedience against his known and Righteous Laws and so fallen under his just Anger and Displeasure that then he should not punish them as they deserve this his Natural Goodness does no way require of him if it did then he could never punish any Sin nor make any use of the Sword of Justice but his Goodness would tye up his hands and put a necessary and constant restraint upon him which would make it wholly inconsistent with his other Attributes and with his wise Government of the World in order to which it is more necessary to punish Sin than to forgive it If it be not inconsistent then with Goodness to punish Sin it is not necessary from that it should be forgiven and God is not obliged to do this from his Essential or Natural Goodness but it depends upon a more Free and Arbitrary Grace and Goodness that was not included in the Natural Knowledge of God or in the Notion of the Divine Goodness as a necessary part of it and so not knowable by the Light of Nature Gods Goodness is over all his Works and yet so far as we know he never offered forgiveness to a great number of his Creatures when they once rebelled against him and yet the Devils themselves can bring no just impeachment against the Divine Goodness notwithstanding that no more could we have done if God had dealt thus with Mankind if he had punisht us as soon as we wilfully broke his Lawes and never admitted us to Pardon A good Lawgiver is bound only to give righteous and good Lawes to his Subjects and if they break them they make themselves justly lyable to the punishment that was threatned and 't is no more contrary to Goodness to inflict that then it was at first to threaten it and though that be very severe and terrible yet if it exceed not the merit of the Crime i. e. if it be no greater than is necessary for the ends of Government for that is the only true and full measure by which the proportion of the Fault and the Punishment can be adjusted 't is no way contrary to the Goodness of the Governour to see it executed I do not think he is alwayes obliged to punish by his vindictive Justice no more than he is obliged to pardon by his Essential Goodness but here his Prerogative rogative takes place and there is room either to pardon or to punish as he pleases without regard to any Law or Obligation Mercy which is a relaxing of a Law is due by no Law if it were it would make void all other Lawes it would be not a relaxing or an abating of a Law but a correcting all other Lawes by a Law that is superiour to them and so it would be an injury or a denying a Legal Right not to grant it where that snperiour Law required it but it is a pure and arbitrary and undue favour shown to one that has no manner of right or claim to it which a supreme Governour who has a Power paramount to all Law may by vertue of that grant or deny by the meer motion and free inclination of his own good pleasure So that Mankind could not know that God would do this would be so good as to forgive their wilful Sins and Offences against him from his Natural Goodness nor could have any certain grounds to be assured of this but by his own express promise and positive declaration of this his free Grace and good Will towards them
They might have some faint hopes and probable surmizes and small expectations of this from his Natural Goodness as Malefactors may presume and hope such a thing from the temper and disposition of a good Governour but they could not necessarily conclude it or be any way ascertained of it They might have such an uncertain encouragement to hope this as the Men of Niniveh had Jonah 3.9 Who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not and this was as high as Mens hopes could rise without a Revelation of Gods pardoning them upon Repentance Their Repentance indeed was the most likely means to turn away his fierce Anger and the best thing they could do but they could not be certain that this would succeed and be effectual but in their greatest Humiliation and Mourning and Fasting they must with a doubtful Heart and a trembling Hand offer their Petitions to Heaven as a condemned Prisoner does to his angry Judge or incensed Prince not knowing whether he will vouchsafe to hearken to it or so much as to cast his eye upon it The greatest incouragement to Repentance is our being sure that it will obtain our Pardon and restore us certainly to Favour and set us right in the Court of Heaven and since we that know this can yet very hardly be perswaded to a Duty that is not so very pleasant or so very easie with what disadvantages must those who knew not this be brought to it with what desponding fears and uncertain hopes must the Prodigal Luke 15. take a weary journey and return home to his Fathers house who knew not whether he should be admitted or no when he came there with what a doubtful and perplexed Mind with what weary paces and dispirited motions must he take every step thither when he could not tell what he should meet with at his journeys end but had too much reason to fear he should for ever be cast out and excluded as he might have been by his good Father and this must be the case of the most penitent Sinner and of all Mankind when without a Revelation they had no assurance of Pardon though upon their Repentance but only an uncertain hope and presumption of it but now the greatest Sinner who has lived never so prodigally and wickedly has a thousand times greater incouragements to return and leave off all his vicious and riotous courses of living because he is most certainly assured that if he does so his Heavenly Father will receive him with open arms and the heartiest embraces and treat him as kindly and indulgently as if he had served him many years neither had transgrest at any time his commandment ver 29. In a word we have the same incouragements to repent and leave our Sins now under the Gospel as Rebels have to come in and lay down their Arms when there is a Proclamation of Pardon and an Act of Indemnity past to all that do so whereas before there was only an uncertain presumption of the Princes Mercy which they could not be sure of without a Revelation 2. We have not only Pardon given us upon promise now but granted upon a most valuable consideration and founded upon a full Expiation of Guilt and Atonement of Sin by a Sacrifice the most perfect Sacrifice of the Son of God and so purchased for us and made over to us by a Covenant established and confirmed by the Blood of Christ Pardon of Sin is so great a thing so Princely and so singular a favour the greatest Act indeed that a Prince can do and 't is so desirable so comfortable to a poor Criminal than which nothing in the World can be more valuable to him that it can never be too well assured to us and we can never be too much satisfied in it Guilt is alwayes so fearful and timorous so terrible and so uneasie a thing 't is such a heavy load and burden lying upon a Mans Mind such a deep wound upon the tenderest part of a Mans Soul that like a prick upon a Nerve it puts the whole Man into convulsions and agonies and fills him with unexpressible pains and tortures There is no such rack no such Hell indeed as what is set up and kindled in a Man 's own breast by his guilty Conscience when he is haunted by his own Sins as so many Hellish Fiends and lasht by them like so many snaky Furies that poyson and sting him to the very Heart and his own fears of Vengeance and future Punishment represent sad and frightful images like to so many Specters alwayes appearing before his Mind and therefore there is no such comfort as that which delivers us from Guilt no such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or blessed news as what our Saviour pronounces to a Sinner by the Gospel Son be of good chear thy sins are forgiven thee there is no such anodine as that which plucks out the sting of Sin and takes away the pains and the smartings of a wounded Conscience that which does this puts not only Oyl into the Wounds but new Life into the fainting Soul 't is like taking a Man off from the Rack or the Wheel and giving him more ease than he feels when he has just voided a Stone after a sharp fit And therefore the Remedy that does this is the most choice the most precious and valuable thing in the World What that is we now know by the Gospel but Mankind could not know by Natural Light what would expiate Sin and certainly take away Guilt and therefore the Heathens though they tryed all means by their Lustrations Sacrifices Purgations and other ways for the sense of their Guilt put them upon all attempts to get rid of it yet they could never find what would certainly do it but must be still fearful and melancholly under their acknowledged Guilt and unattoned Crimes Whether thousand of rams or ten thousand rivers of oyl would be accepted as a price of their Sins they could not tell or whether it would not cost more to redeem a Soul whether if they brought their first-born and offered the fruit of their Bodies for the sin of their Souls or offered up their own Blood as was sometimes done 't would be effectual was very uncertain but there was nothing they thought too dear it seems nothing however cruel either to themselves or others that they would stick at in hopes to accomplish this The most barbarous and inhumane superstition of the Heathen World in offering up their Children to Molech in offering the Sacrifices of Men which was no unusual thing among them arose from the great streight and the great darkness they were in as to the expiation of Guilt and the atonement of Sin which was so dreadful so painful that they could not bear it and yet knew not how to remove it But now God be thanked we have that which should chear up our Spirits and put us upon a hearty
Grace and Goodness tho' they have not already attained neither are already perfect as the Apostle speaks of himself Phil. 3.12 yet they are alwayes safe and alwayes ready for the coming of the Son of Man and their whole Life is a most sure a most comfortable preparation for Death But these are very few I doubt not only to the general number of Mankind but even to good Men for most of the good Men we read of in Scripture were some time or other guilty of great and wilful Faults as Noah and Abraham and David and St. Peter and St. Paul and Mary Magdalene and whilst they were so and before they had recovered themselves by Repentance I cannot but think them in a bad state for Mens states are not fixt and certain in this Life but are alterable and changed according to their outward actions and the inward temper of their Minds and when ever a wilful and a known Sin breaks the course of Vertue and destroys the habit of Goodness in their Souls it breaks their good state and destroys their comfortable condition As when a Disease strikes the Vitals of our Body and overcomes the Strength and Health of our Constitution unless we get it off it will certainly bring Death along with it God indeed has prescribed us a certain Remedy and an infallible Cure for all Mortal Sins and the greatest Spiritual Maladies and Diseases that would otherwise destroy us and bring Death upon us and that is Repentance which for the sake of Christ and his Merits and by the Mercy and Promise of God shall recover us out of that miserable and mortal state into which every wilful Sin had cast us This shall set us right again in the Court of Heaven where we were cast and condemned before and this shall bring us to a state of Life and Grace who were before struck with the sentence of Death And blessed be God who has thus graciously provided for poor and otherwise lost Sinners by Jesus Christ But Repentance alas though it be a sure Remedy yet is not so easie a one as we imagine 't is a very bitter dose that must not only go down very unpleasantly but must work strongly and powerfully upon our Minds it must not only make us sick and sorrowful contrite and troubled at the very Heart for every Transgression but it must purge out of our Souls every Sin and carry off every vile Lust and wicked Inclination It must not only work upon the peccant humours and so put the Soul into great trouble and disorder but it must perfectly heal and cure it and to do that it must take away the root of the disease it must search to the bottom of the Heart it must touch us to the quick in the tenderest part of us in the most darling Sin and most beloved Lust and it must cut and launce so deep that no secret corruption remain within and no fomes Morbi be left behind In a word it must perfectly cure the Soul and whatever disease it laboured under it must quite remove it so that it never return again upon it for 't is but a palliating a counterfeit or an imperfect cure till this be done And till the Mind be perfectly restored and amended and made better it has not truly repented and therefore the Scripture requires in Repentance not only a broken Heart which is the most significant phrase in the World for the deepest trouble of Mind for our past Sins but it requires a new Heart and a new Soul and a new Creature and a new Man to make up true Repentance and not only that we be renewed in the Spirit of our Minds but that we bring forth fruits worthy of Repentance and that we turn from every evil way and leave and forsake every Sin that we have ever been guilty of as I have more largely shown before We must do all this before we can be said truly to Repent and before we can have any good grounds to expect Pardon of any wilful Sin we ever committed in our whole lives we must thus Repent of it And though we are as sure of forgiveness if we do so as if we had never committed it which is the greatest favour in the World yet how will a poor penitent be alwayes afraid that he has not been sufficiently sorrowful and fully repented of his Sins how will his former Guilt affright him when it stares him in the face and how will the sad load of all his Sins lye heavy upon his Conscience when he is brought to a due sense of them and how must he be contented to lose a great deal of that comfort in his Mind here though he may be safe hereafter and though his Repentance may put him into a good condition yet it will make his Heart sorrowful and the remembrance of his Sins will make it often bleed afresh within him And when he looks back upon his past danger he must tremble at it tho' he has reason to hope he has escaped it and it must keep him alwayes humble and not over-confident of himself and though he has his Pardon in his hand yet he must still look upon it with tears in his eyes Nothing can truly satisfie a Man that he has repented of his Sins but that he has left them out of Religious Grounds and Principles and has had so much tryal of himself as to know he would not commit them though he were in the same circumstances and temptations that he was in before And thus when a bad Man is become a good one when he that was careless and irreligious is become pious and devout when he that was vitious and debauch'd is become sober and vertuous when he that was unjust becomes just and righteous and besides restitution for all past injustice would not commit one act of it to gain all the World when he that stole steals no more and he that was given to drunkenness or uncleanness or any other Sin wholly leaves and forsakes it and is brought by Religion to be quite another Man than he was before then and not till then is his Repentance such as may make him hope for Pardon when he lives and prepare him to dye with comfort For to proceed a little further in this great concern to make a Soul fit and ready for its immediate entering upon another state it must have these two qualifications at that time 1. It must be thoroughly purged from every Vitious Habit or else it is neither meet to be partaker of the inheritance of the Saints in light nor capable of the Pure and Spiritual and Heavenly Happiness As the Tree falls so it lyes sayes the Wise Man Ecclesiastes 11.3 And the same habit and temper as to the main which the Soul carries out of this World will abide with it in the other If any one habitual Wickedness remain upon it or the love of any one Sin be so rooted in it that if it lived
like melancholly persons who read of such grievous diseases fancy immediately that they have them themselves and that such and such symptoms are already upon them If we cannot therefore assure all Persons of Pardon for all manner of Sins however great or however circumstantiated upon their true Repentance of them it will very much take off from the encouragements to this Duty and by taking off Mens hopes in many cases and shutting the door of Mercy against them hinder them from performing this Duty and make them if not act desperately and madly as Men without hopes generally do yet throw them into a comfortless and despairing condition and overwhelm them with remediless sorrow and trouble The general scope and design of the Gospel seems to be to remove all this To preach good tidings unto the meek to bind up the broken-hearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound to comfort them that mourn Isa 61.1 To call those to come to Christ who are weary and heavy laden by reason of their Sins with a promise that he will give them rest Matth. 11.28 To preach Repentance and remission of sins in his name among all nations Luke 24.47 without excluding any Persons or excepting any Sins whatsoever to proclaim a general Amnesty and Act of Pardon to all who Repent and come in to the Gospel Had there been an exception as to a more notorious Traytor to any one though a single Sin which Mankind had been like to fall into this would have abated both from the Goodness of God and the Comfort of Men when he should be represented as implacable in some cases and never to be appeased and the other should be left in such danger and hazard that if they fell into some Sins which it was very possible for them to do that then there should be no hopes nor no means of recovery for them God I doubt not is more merciful and Mankind not so miserable as to have any Sin whatever utterly unpardonable which is Repented of but as our Saviour sayes All manner of Sin and Blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men Matth. 12.31 And as Isaiah told the Jews of old and it is not less so under the Gospel Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow though they be red like crimson they shall be as wooll Isa 1.18 that is of however high a nature or degree they are they shall upon Repentance and Amendment be done away and forgiven No Sin is too great for the infinite Mercy of God to forgive and the infinite Merit of Christs Blood to atone nor is any excepted in the Covenant of Grace which God has made with Mankind wherein he promises universally to be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and iniquities he will remember no more Heb. 8.11 Jer. 31.34 without any bar or reserve to any Sin of what nature or aggravation soever I shall therefore Examine and Answer those places of Scripture which seem to give any countenance to the other severe and cruel Doctrine as to Sins of Apostacy after Baptism or upon Relapse and then largely consider the Nature of the Sin against the Holy Ghost and how or whether that is unpardonable so as to free all honest Minds from any trouble about it SECT I. Of Apostacy Sins after Baptism Vpon Relapse FIrst then as to those places of the Hebrews which are brought as the ground of the Novatian Doctrine for the irremissibleness of wilful Sins committed after Baptism they do not belong to any Sins of a Christian whilst he continues such but to one renouncing Christianity and wholly Apostatizing from it even after he has professed it and had miraculous evidence and conviction of it They who were enlightened or Baptized 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and have tasted of the Heavenly gift have been sensible of the Benefits of Baptism and the Priviledges of Christianity and been made partakers of the Holy Ghost have further had those miraculous and extraordinary Gifts of the Holy Ghost conferred upon them which new Baptized Persons then very often had and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come have had a sense of the excellency of the Gospel and the Christian Revelation and those powerful and great Miracles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which accompanied the dispensation thereof and the times of the Messiah or that have been duly affected with the powerful Considerations of Eternity and another World which are the great things their Religion sets before them if such as these shall like Julian afterwards or the Gnosticks then fall away from all this and apostatize from their Faith and Religion by the Fears of Persecution or the Love of this World it is impossible to renew them again to Repentance seeing this their revolt implyes no less than the crucifying to themselves the Son of God afresh and putting him to open shame i. e. the condemning of Christ as a Malefactor and Impostor and so joyning and consenting with the Jews in Crucifying him as such and bringing an open reproach and discredit upon him as if he were a false Prophet and that upon Tryal and Experience they found his Religion to be false and therefore forsook it This Apostacy and renouncing the whole Religion of Christ is meant also by Sinning wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth Heb. 10.26 It is sinning in the same word and sense as the Apostate Angels did when they revolted from Heaven 2 Pet. 2.4 for in the next Verses it is called Treading under foot the Son of God i. e. Contemning him as a vile miscreant and as if he were not Risen from the Grave but lay dead there and so were to be trod upon and counting the Blood of the Covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing as if it were shed justly and so were the Blood of a common Malefactor and doing despite unto the Spirit of Grace reproaching all the evidence by which the Holy Ghost confirmed the Truth of Christ and his Doctrine both in him and his Apostles This can be no less than a malicious apostacy and defection from Christianity in general and not only a wilful breach of any of its particular Laws And something like unto these is that Sin unto death in St. John 1 Ep. 5.16 that which deserved the utmost and severest censures as he which under Moses Law sinned presumptuously and was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 did make void and throw off the Law was to dye without mercy Heb. 10.28 So under Christianity this presumptuous Sinner was to be Spiritually cut off from all the Benefits of Christian Communion and from the Prayers of the Faithful as we find they were by the Discipline of the Primitive Church This was so severe at first that they denyed all Peace and Absolution to such Apostates and Lapsi even in articulo Mortis at the point of Death and
Glutton and Wine-bibber a friend of Publicans and Sinners and to raise slanderous and false stories against any Mans Credit is one of the greatest though the commonest Sins but to proceed so far as to slander and reproach God this was accounted by one of the Heathens as bad or worse than to deny him but to represent the Holy and Blessed Spirit of God as an Apostate Angel as a Hellish Fiend and to reproach and scoff and calumniate whatever he does for the good and salvation of Mankind as the work and intrigue of the Devil This is such an horrid Sin that our Saviour says it should not be forgiven but bring certain Judgment upon them I come now to inquire how and upon what account it is Unpardonable which is the greatest difficulty about it Now though no Sin in its own Nature be unpardonable because none so great but that the infinite Mercy and Goodness of God does still exceed it and none is exempted from that General and Gracious Promise of Pardon which he hath made to Mankind and none has so much Guilt in it but that the Blood of Christ and Merit of his Sacrifice is able to atone and expiate for it and none does so far corrupt and deprave the Mind but that the Grace of God can restore and amend it yet a Sin may however be unpardonable by reason of some circumstances attending it and chiefly upon these three accounts 1. As not being Repented of for so every wilful Sin is unpardonable For though the Gospel proposes Mercy and Pardon to every Sin and Sinner without exception yet 't is upon this never failing condition of Repentance and Amendment without which we shall as certainly perish as if there had been no place for Mercy at all but we had stood under an irreversible decree of Condemnation for the first Sin we had committed The Covenant of Grace is made upon that Condition on our part which if we fail of we shall as certainly lose the benefit of it as if there had been no such Covenant made 2. That Sin is also unpardonable by the standing terms of the Divine Mercy which is not curable by all the ordinary means of the Divine Grace but resists and baffles all those remedies which can be used to that purpose As a Disease is uncurable when it is too strong for all the remedies that can be used against it so is a Sin unpardonable when it is too hard for all the means whatsoever that are proper to amend it As when a Man will be an Infidel and disobedient to God when he sees plain Miracles before his face and will not be convinced by all these which are the best and only means to that purpose when he will still be obstinate and harden himself against the highest evidence that is possible as Pharaoh did when he could not but confess that the Miracles were done by the Finger of God and yet would not hearken unto him or as the Pharisees and some of the Jews who would not be perswaded to Christianity by all the visible Wonders and extraordinary Miracles wrought by Christ and his Apostles What was there more to be done to satisfie those Men and how could any thing that God and the Divine Power was able to do convince them of their Infidelity if this would not And so now when all the considerations and all the credible evidences of Religion will not work upon a Man nor perswade him to a good Life when he resists all the means of Grace that God has appointed he then resists the last and utmost remedy that should do him good and so is necessarily in a hopeless uncurable state and condition 3. That Sin is unpardonable which provokes God to withdraw his Spirit and all the influences of the Divine Grace and to give them up to a spirit of slumber and a reprobate sense and hardness of Heart as he is sometimes said to do if not for one Sin yet for a great many obstinately and irreclaimably continued in And now let us examine the Sin against the Holy Ghost by these 3 ways 1. Can it be said to be unpardonable because unrepented of It seemeth not upon this account because it is probable that many of those who were guilty of it did afterwards Repent and turn Christians Among the many numerous Proselytes to Christianity in the time of our Saviour and especially of the Apostles it cannot be proved or thought that there were not some of those made Converts that had fall'n into it and Christ when he prayed for his Enemies and for his Crucifiers most earnestly entreated his Father to forgive them all without any exception Luke 23.24 by which he had plainly some hopes of their Repentance and Amendment and if he had not it would have been in vain to have used so many means as he did afterwards to that purpose besides that he intimates not the least word to them of their Impenitence nor was that to be said of them till the last this would not sufficiently distinguish this Sin from any other great and wilful one for any such unrepented of and that by a particular Repentance is unpardonable as well as this against the Holy Ghost unless we will venture to say what we have no sufficient warrant for and therefore is very bold and especially when 't is a kind of limiting the Grace and Mercy of God that Men could never Repent of this as they can of all others but that God who hath opened a door of Mercy and Repentance in all other cases hath absolutely shut it in this so that they shall never be able nor willing to enter in 2. Is it unpardonable upon the second account as it was not curable by any means that God had appointed and thought fit to use to that purpose This it seems not to be neither because God had not yet made use of all the means that he intended for the Conversion of the Jews and the Scribes and Pharisees Our Saviour indeed had done a great many Miracles to testifie his Divine Power but still there were a great many more which remained behind and which he had not yet performed If we look into the Gospel of St. Matthew and St. Mark and observe the time when our Saviour had his discourse of this Sin we shall find he wrought many very considerable Miracles after that and what was the design of all them but to perswade those to believe in him and to embrace Christianity who were not perswaded so to do by his former ones And there remained another Motive behind which was an evidence even beyond all and which was such an Argument to convince the Jewish Infidelity as did outdo almost all the other Miracles of our Saviour and that was his Resurrection from the Dead This was the great and irresistible proof for the Truth of Christ and his Religion and of this especially the Apostles were to be witnesses to all the World as being the
is and hinder Men from ever becoming better 2 Let us take care to avoid all manner of wilful Sin and especially all those great ones that come near and any way approach to this Sin against the Holy Ghost A very wilful Sin in a Christian especially is in some fense a Sin against the Holy Ghost 't is a grieving a quenching and a resisting the Spirit in the language of Holy Scripture That Blessed Spirit is concerned as the great promoter of Vertue and Goodness in the World and as the great Principle of it in the Hearts of Men and whenever we do any wicked thing we offer violence to that and by our rude and vicious carriage we affront and grieve and at last banish and drive away that Blessed Guest out of our Souls Whatever is Wicked and Sinful is so contrary to his Pure and Excellent Nature that it is highly offensive to him and if we go on in a course of long and customary Wickedness we sin the more against him and come the nearer to that sad and wretched state that is unpardonable I do not think indeed that any one Sin or particular Act of any Sin whatever puts us into that condition but as every Sickness and Indisposition of Body is a tendency to Death and Mortality so every wilful Sin is a corruption of the Mind and an approach to a state of Spiritual Death And there are some Sins that bring this sooner upon us as the acting against our Consciences and the sense of our own Minds an opposing the Truth that is evident to us a scoffing at Religion and making a mock of Sin an abusing the Scriptures and ridiculing the Holy Word of God an obstinate resistance of all the motions of Gods Holy Spirit upon our Minds These and such like gross and obstinate impieties though I do not think they are any of them the very Sin against the Holy Ghost for that ought not to be extended further than we have a warrant from Scripture yet they are so many approaches as it were to it and have more of the ill symptoms of that upon them and therefore we ought especially to avoid them lest they bring us by degrees into that sad state which is unpardonable for though one Sin I believe do not do this yet a great many may and especially such as those which do so waste the Conscience and corrupt the Mind as to make it uncurable And this is the saddest State and Condition in the World next to the State of Hell and Damnation tho' it be not the immediate Sin against the Holy Ghost Having endeavoured to give the plainest and fullest Satisfaction I can to the most doubtful and scrupulous Minds about this Sin of the Holy Ghost I shall now Discourse of some other things of a Lesser Nature which many Penitents and good Men are apt to be greatly dissatisfied with and have dark and wrong thoughts about As I. Concupiscence the Lustings of the Flesh or struggle between that and the Spirit which they find in themselves II. Trouble of Mind and a wounded Spirit which many lye under by reason of their Sins or by reason of Melancholly or both together SECT III. Of Concupiscence the Lustings of the Flesh or struggle between that and the Spirit THE right understanding of our selves is very necessary to the right understanding of Religion Religion is fitted and adapted to Humane Nature in its present state and capacity in this World and is designed not to destroy it but to perfect and improve it and raise it to its true Happiness and Perfection We cannot be like the Angels in Heaven nor like pure and glorious Spirits whilst we live here upon Earth and have Bodies of Flesh and Blood united to our Souls God who made us and knows our Frame did not intend to destroy and undo his own Creation by the Precepts of Religion nor make us cease to be Men by becoming Christians We find indeed in our selves a great many weaknesses and corruptions strong passions and sensual inclinations which if we did not wisely govern would be great occasions of Sin to us and if we let them loose would carry us into a thousand Mischiefs as well as Sins and Wickednesses They who give the reins to those and the full swinge to their Natural Lusts and Passions run into all Vice and Debauchery and commit all uncleanness with greediness And the best of Men cannot be wholly free from that Original Concupiscence and those Sensual Motions and Desires that are not alwayes agreeable to Reason and Religion but they complain of this bondage of corruption and this body of death which they cannot be delivered from Rom. 8.21 and 7.24 Grace and Religion though it gives us another Principle and conveys new powers of a Divine and Spiritual Life into our Souls yet whilst the Animal and Sensual Life remains and whilst we are compounded of Flesh and Blood as well as Spirit and Reason and have a Carnal as well as Spiritual Principle in us there will be a mighty struggle and a great contest between those two and a kind of civil war in our breasts between those different Parties and which of those shall be uppermost and have the chief Power and gain the Victory is the great point and the great concern of all Vertue and Religion since in all of us as the Apostle sayes The Flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the Flesh and these are contrary one to the other so that we cannot do the things that we would Gal. 5.17 And this we know by Experience as well as by Revelation Now this Concupiscence that remaineth in good Men is often matter of great trouble to them and they know not what to judge of it or how far it is a Sin and ought to be Repented of and what way they may best overcome it I shall therefore to clear and satisfie their thoughts about this matter of the struggle or Lusting between the Flesh and Spirit show these three things First That mere Lusting on either side is not what makes either Sin or Vertue or denominates a bad or a good Man Secondly That these are the proper matter of Vice or Vertue in which the tryal and exercise of them lye Thirdly That we ought to lessen the Power of the Fleshly Lusting and increase that of the Spirit and what are the proper means to do this I shall briefly consider First That meer Lusting on either side is not what makes either Sin or Vertue nor what constitutes or denominates a bad or a good Man For this Lusting is in both good and bad though according to several degrees and measures in the one the Lusting of the Flesh prevails and in the other that of the Spirit and 't is from this the prevalency of either of these and not the meer contention of them that we are counted good or bad before God The best of Men may have the same Passions Appetites and
Mercy and judges himself as incapable of it as the damned in Hell when Gods Spirit has left him so that he can neither pray nor do any thing to relieve himself but lyes as a condemned Caitiff a Malefactor sentenced past all hopes of Pardon and only expecting Punishment and the last stroke of Vengeance this is a sad a deplorable condition which I have known many a Sinner in under a Wounded Spirit and had one great instance before me when I was writing this These Wounds are not felt indeed by many a Sinner in the heat of Blood in the career of his Lusts and the hot persuit of his Sins when in his high frolicks and jovial diversions he drowns the noise of his Conscience or lulls it asleep with charming Pleasures or full Cups or some unthinking madness but it will awake one time or other and like a sleeping Lyon when 't is roused up by some Judgment by some Sickness or Affliction it will fall terribly upon him with rage and fury and tear and consume him then all the wounds which sin gave it will bleed afresh and it will feel them afterwards unless they have been cured by a timely repentance if they have festered and gangrened and mortified the Soul for a time yet when it comes to it self it will feel them with unexpressible pain and anguish which nothing can asswage I mean when a Man has sin'd away his Life and Death and his Sins are set together before him and 't is hard to know which is the more terrible When the Sting of Death swelled up with Sin and Guilt strikes as deep into a Man's Conscience and wounds his Spirit as Death it self strikes into his Body with its fatal dart so that he suffers a double death at the same time and the Spiritual far more painful than the Bodily I take a Wounded Spirit here in the highest and most common sense and though when a Mans Spirit is dejected and sunk with any thing 't is very hard to bear it which may be the sense of the Wise Mans words in the forequoted place when the strength of a Mans Mind is lost which should support him under all his infirmities that he is subject to from without yet nothing does so sink it so wound and destroy it as Sin and Guilt especially when it is come to such a degree and to such a sad condition as we commonly mean by a Wounded Spirit i. e. a Mind deeply pierced with the sense of its own Guilt and of Gods Anger upon it This likewise admits of degrees and in some cases 't is a very happy thing for a Sinner and 't is to be sure alwayes a just Punishment I shall therefore in the Third place briefly consider what is the proper Cure and Remedy of such a wounded Spirit or troubled Mind for there is no Spiritual Illness but what is curable if we take it in time by Religion no Wound of Soul but what there is Balm for in Gilead in Christianity there is no Disease too great for our Heavenly Physician but what the Gospel has a proper and certain Remedy for if we duely and timely apply it A Man may tarry too long indeed and not use the Physick till it be too late till Death comes and puts an end to the time of Tryal and the time of Repentance and then a Wounded Spirit i. e. the extremest Sorrow for a Mans Sins the deepest Contrition of Soul for them cannot come up to true Gospel Repentance to which there is a certain promise of Pardon and Forgiveness for that is only upon turning to God and leaving all our Sins and leading a new Life and bringing forth the Fruits of Repentance by Obedience to the Gospel for the future which is a necessary condition by the terms of the Gospel which he cannot perform whom God cuts off before he can do it and therefore such an one must be left to the Infinite Mercy and Righteous Judgment of God to be dealt with by such measures as are not within the Covenant of Grace or the Terms of the Gospel for by those I cannot see any title he has to Pardon But in other Cases a Wounded Spirit may be the greatest Mercy and even the very beginning of Health or of a Cure to a Soul when God does not suffer a Man to go on senslesly in his Sins till he come to a seered Conscience and a reprobate Sense and to hardness of Heart and blindness of Mind but by some methods of his Grace and Providence alarums his Conscience and awakens his stupid Mind and brings his almost sensless and stupified Soul to some Spiritual sense of his condition Then his Soul will be wounded as Davids was when he reflects upon those Sins which he committed without consideration and he will be sore struck and smitten as every Penitent must at the remembrance of his evil wayes All Repentance is such a wounding of the Soul as makes its Heart bleed within it and its Blood and Spirits melt into Tears and Sorrow for what it has done 't is not such an easie thing as most men think it to be 't is such a Pain such a Wound to the Soul that the Pleasure of the greatest Sin is but a poor trifle to it and no man that rightly understood it would venture upon any Sin from the reserved hopes of it Repentance is a bitter Remedy made up of very strong and unpleasant ingredients and we must go through a long course to purge out the old Disease and take away the root of it so that before a wicked mind can be cured by it it must be cut and lanced and wounded and have very severe applications made to it The work of Regeneration or the New Birth cannot be wrought without many pangs or throwes nor does God ever almost bring a bad man to become a good one without some trouble and disorder of Mind There is a trouble of Mind indeed which is excessive and unreasonable for every Sinner ought in some measure to be troubled in Mind and he has not a due sense of his Sins if he is not but there is a trouble of Mind which takes away the hopes of Mercy and throwes Men into despair which is commonly called a Wounded Spirit and 't is so in the highest degree and whether there is any Remedy for that and what it is and what advice is to be given in such a case and what judgment to be made of it I shall briefly consider 1. Then this is often joyned with Melancholly of Body which is very hard to be cured and till it be so it is apt to darken the Mind and bring a cloud over the Spirits and to fill the Soul with very black Idea's and Imaginations and to hinder it from making true judgment of it self or its own actions and this is as pityable and ought as much to be remedied by Physick and Care as other Diseases of Body for I have known
aversations against them or at least to let those inward thoughts and passions which are supposed to arise in it from the reflection upon them to have such outward vent and expressions as Naturally belong to them and as other objects of grief and trouble are apt to excite in them for without those inward thoughts and passions which are the springs of these outward actions they are all but feigned and hypocritical and so a mocking of God who knows the Heart and then these outward penitences are like rains and showers to make the springs rise higher and to feed and increase those inward aversions and passions and displeasures against our Sins and thus they are instruments and helps to promote Repentance as well as acts and exercises of it But I shall consider them all singly and the particular Rules belonging to each of them 1. Then Confession of Sins is a necessary part of this Repentance If we confess our sins God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins 1 Joh. 1.9 i. e. this Confession with its due effects will procure forgiveness as 't is Prov. 28.13 He that confesseth and forsaketh his sin shall have mercy This is very necessary and fit to be observed concerning Repentance and other Duties in Scripture as Faith and the like that when Pardon or Salvation is promised or ascribed to any of them they are to be taken not singly and by themselves but with all their consequences and effects so that 't is a Metonymy of a part for the whole when it is said He that believeth shall be saved i. e. he that believeth and obeyeth the Gospel and he that repenteth or he that confesseth his Sin shall be forgiven i. e. if he so repent of it or confess it as to forsake and amend it and therefore though the Gospel promises often Blessedness to single Vertues as in our Saviours Sermon on the Mount yet it means to those Vertues joyned with the others and not separate from them for they are all necessary to our true Blessedness and when some particular Duties have the promise of Salvation 't is in conjunction with all the rest for universal Obedience to all the Laws of the Gospel is the only full Condition of our Salvation and neither Faith or Repentance or any one single Vertue or Duty without that will make us happy or save us as is plain by the whole tenour of it which yet some are not so willing to understand This Confession of Sin which is the first part of Repentance to owne we have done amiss is an acknowledging the folly and evil of our Sins that we are sensible they were acts of imprudence as to our selves of unbecomingness and unworthiness to God and very impudent breaches and violations of the Laws of Heaven for our Confessions are not to instruct God or to inform him of what he already knows as well as our selves nor is he pleased with a long roll or catalogue of our Sins recited before him but they are Inditements brought against our selves a charge and pleading guilty upon it of our many Treasons and Misdemeanours against Heaven and the reading or repeating of it is to strike us with an inward sense of the sad and dreadful state we are in by reason of them and how like notorious Criminals we stand convicted by our own Consciences and condemned by our own Confession and so without infinite Mercy justly obnoxious to the severest Punishment and Judgment of God Our Confession is to quicken and enliven and strike the sense of our Sins more deeply and keenly into our Souls to make our Hearts bleed afresh upon every remembrance of them and to renew the Passions of Grief and Trouble upon the thoughts of them Like those who brought Caesars bloody Coat into the Forum and shewed the People the holes thro' which his Murderers had stab'd him that so they might move their highest rage and indignation so we are to set our Sins before us that so we may stir up our anger and hatred and displeasure the more highly against them Though they are never so long past yet we should remember them with bitterness and sigh whenever we think of them and whatever brings them to our Mind should bring such Passions along with them as show we do not like them nor are pleased with them When they rise up in our Consciences or our Memories it should be cum ructu acido with a sowerness and loathing as things most unagreeable and offensive to us and our Confession should be a discharging and casting them from us The Soul may be loaded and opprest with them till it has thus eased it self by Confession which may be like lancing an Ulcer letting out the painful and purulent matter and laying open the Wound in order to the healing of it We ought to search our Hearts and Consciences to the bottom and to own and confess all our Sins that so we may be duly affected with the grievousness of them and may excite such penitential resentments as are fit often to be stirred up in our Souls He that is sensless and stupified under his Sins is in a grievous and lamentable case The Soul is then under the height of the Disease and has the most incurable Symptoms upon it when 't is thus under a Spiritual Lethargy and its ill Habit and Crasis is like to bring it to an Apoplexy of which it will dye more certainly and unavoidably If it be possible it must be brought to pain in order to cure it and the most smarting Remedies must be used to awaken it and bring it to it self it must be burn'd and cup'd and scarified to bring some feeling to its seared Conscience and the sharp sting of its Sins must prick it to the quick to make its brawny and callous Heart have any sense of them They must therefore be offered to its thoughts and memory with all their aggravations and bitter circumstances and the most rouzing and awakening reflections and considerations And this is the design of Confession to keep a lively and quick and due sense of our manifold Sins upon our Minds that we neither forget them nor become insensible of them God will not forget them nor does he need to be reminded of them but we must remind our selves and say with David My sin is ever before me Psal 51.3 and mine iniquity have I not hid Psal 32.5 that is not from my self and my own thoughts and remembrance for to hide it from God is impossible but I will alwayes have a sorrowful sense and bitter remembrance of it 2. This is to be joyned with inward sorrow and contrition and with our outward weeping and lamenting as Peter upon denying his Master went out and wept bitterly Matth. 26. and his Penitents in the Acts were pricked to the heart Acts 2.37 and were under great sorrow and compunction of Mind and David watered his couch with his tears Psal 6.6 and rivers of water run
much there is of guilt and whatever abatements there are in our willing it by the Minds not knowing or not thinking of it or being unawares ingaged in it and not having the full use of its powers of choice or understanding so much there is of excuse for it and so far its circumstances make it pardonable by a good God who will not condemn us for any thing we cannot help and which it was not in our power to avoid and all Sins of Infirmity are such some way or other for who can help being ignorant and mistaken after he has used the best wayes he can to inform himself of his Duty and if he then commit a Sin ignorantly and through the meer error and weakness of his Understanding God will forgive it him So who can be alwayes so much upon his guard and have his thoughts so much about him as not to say a rash and unfit word or do a some way blameable action or not have some inward motions and sensual desires rising up in his Mind contrary to strict Reason and Religion If God should for every one of these enter into Judgment with us or condemn us no Man could be saved and no Flesh living could be justified But he who considers our frame and knows that we are but dust weak imperfect blind ignorant inconsiderate heedless Creatures made up of Sensual Passions Appetites and Inclinations that are a part of our Nature he will deal very graciously and favourably with us and not punish us for any unavoidable weaknesses of our Nature but only for the wilful faults and presumptuous miscarriages that we wittingly and willingly commit against him and his Laws God alone can perfectly judge and exactly distinguish between all the faults of weakness and wilfulness and tell what degrees of voluntary and involuntary and so of blame and guilt are in them he knoweth our Hearts and searcheth our Reins and can better judge of our Actions and the secret springs of them than our selves In great and notorious cases every Mans Conscience can judge for him but God is greater than our Consciences and knoweth all things and if we sincerely avoid every wilful and great and notorious Sin and would not for any Temptation in the World commit it if as the Psalmist sayes We be upright and innocent from the great transgression 't is to be hoped all our other Sins and Miscarriages are Sins of pardonable Weakness and excusable Infirmity that do no way endanger our good State and whatever wilful Sins we have been guilty of through the whole course of our Lives our having left them and truly Repented of them as I have directed frees us from all the dangers of them and puts us into the Blessed State of Pardon and Forgiveness notwithstanding the lesser Sins of Frailty and Infirmity which we cannot live wholly without SECT III. The Benefits of Repentance or the happiness of being in such a good state THE Effects and Benefits of true Repentance such as I have described and such as I have given the sure Marks and Criteria of are Pardon and Forgiveness which are very great things and very comfortable words to a poor Sinner to whom nothing can be said more reviving than those few words which Christ pronounced to the Paralytick Matth. 9.2 and which he pronounces by the Gospel to every true Penitent Son be of good chear thy sins be forgiven thee these are words as powerful and effectual as tose of Lazarus come forth and let there be light they will raise a drooping dead Soul out of the Grave and restore Life and Comfort to him they will make light spring out of darkness and dispel the doleful black State he was in and make lightsome joy and gladness arise in his Soul nothing can be said so chearing and refreshing so ravishing and transporting to him unless those other words which will follow upon it Go ye blessed receive the Kingdom prepared for you 't is a very blessed and a very happy state at present next to Heaven it self to have our sins pardoned and forgiven and to be freed from that miserable and wretched state into which they put us if we are but duly sensible of it as we ought to be How would a Criminal that was before condemned and lay under the Sentence of Death be affected do we think and his Spirit cheared and his Heart leap within him and a new Life be put into him when a Pardon is brought him from his Prince and he is discharged from his condemned state and took off from the Cart or the Ladder A Thousand times more reason has a poor Sinner to be raised and comforted when by the Mercy of God and the Love of Christ his past sins and guilt are taken away upon his true and sincere Repentance The Scripture has pronounced such an one blessed in an especial manner by the Mouth of David Psal 32.1 Blessed is the Man whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is covered and St. Paul could not find out any thing better to describe the blessedness of a Christian by the Gospel then by borrowing the same words as he tells us of David Rom. 4.6 the Holy Ghost inspiring both of them with the same Words and Idea's of Blessedness to Sinners Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin I shall show the Blessedness of this State and Condition which Repentance puts a Sinner into upon these accounts 1. As it frees him from the present miserable state he was in by reason of his Sins 2. As he is delivered thereby from the fears of another World and the more dreadful dangers hereafter 3. As he is hereby reconciled to God and restored to his favour who was angry and displeased with him before First as it frees him from the present miserable state he was in by reason of his Sins Nothing is so painful and uneasie so perplexing and tormenting as guilt when it lies heavy upon a Mans Mind and he has a quick sense and apprehension of it this is to be stung with Scorpions to be whipt with Snakes to have burning Torches and all the conceived instruments of torture applyed to us There is no torment so great as a Mans Conscience struck with the horrors of its own guilt haunted with its own fears as so many Furies or evil Spirits following and disturbing it wherever it goes when it has the image of its own foul actions always before it and imagines a Divine Judgment and Nemesis always behind it when the very chattering of the Birds speaks its crimes to it as in a known story and the hand-writing upon the wall makes it tremble and be amazed and its own inward Consciousness makes it hear and see and read its sad doom and sentence in all places and on all occasions what a lamentable condition must a Man be in when he lies thus under the load
laughs at them sometimes and would seem in his highest mirth to have courage enough to make a jest of them to others yet he fears them in good earnest and trembles at the thoughts of them when he is alone and when Death brings them nearer to him he is scared and terrified and has sufficient proof of their Reality in his own mind What a wretched and miserable Condition is he then in when the terrors of Death and the greater terrours of Hell are set before him when all about him is horror and misery and the blackness of darkness when he has nothing to look back upon but the bitter memory of his past sins and no prospect before him but the unknown and unconceivable torments of another World when Gods Anger lyes heavy upon him and sinks him into the deepest gulph of despair and the Grave and the bottomless pit are ready to swallow him up and to devour him both Soul and Body what an instance of Misery is here what a Picture of Hell nay what a real and sensible Hell is there then before us Who that stands by the Bed of such a dying Wretch and draws the Curtains and sees the Agonies and hears the doleful expressions of such a miserable Creature would not be deeply affected with such a sad state as he sees a Man put into by sin and impenitence Who would not then think Vertue and Religion very comfortable and very desirable things and much to be preferred to sinful looseness and extravagance Who would not then give all the World either that he had not sin'd or that he had Repented in time and so not brought himself into that remediless state of present and future torment Repentance if it be true and sincere will prevent a Sinners coming to this which will otherwise certainly be his Portion and he can never escape it in this World if he be not stupid but to be sure not in the next Now who that knows he must dye in a little time and that then at furthest this will be his case if he go on in his sins and be not timely brought off from them would ever madly continue in them and not break them off by Repentance when he is all the while exposed to this dreadful danger and lyes open to the fears and miseries of another World How comfortable is it to be delivered from those and to live in such a state that a Man has no reason to be afraid of Death nor to be scared with the thoughts of another World But whenever it comes he can welcome it chearfully or at least submit to it patiently without horror and distraction and have reasonable and well-grounded hopes that it shall be well with him hereafter full assurance he may never have without all manner of fears but he will have chearful and rational hopes according to the certainty and evidence of his Repentance and the sincerity of his Vertue and Obedience such a conditional assurance every one has by a Faith truly Divine that if he thus repents he shall be saved this is founded on a proposition that is Divinely revealed and so is matter of Faith but that I have so repented is not matter of Faith but only of private Judgment and Opinion of my self but I have no reason to doubt or be afraid if I know upon examining my self that I have forsaken every wilful sin and have left the ill course of life I was in and would not for any profit or pleasure commit a wilful Sin though I were never so much tempted to it and it were never so much in my power and that I have thus endeavoured to live and to do my Duty sincerely to God and Man though with great imperfections and infirmities still upon me this will give us a Rational and a Moral assurance of our Salvation which is all we can have without a particular Revelation how will this cheer and support a Man when he comes to dye how will it take out the sting and allay the bitterness of Death in great measure and be the best Cordial to keep up his Spirits in his last Agonies and Extremities being conscious to himself of his own sincerity and his conscience not condemning him as to any wilful Sin He will have confidence towards God and can assure his heart before him 1 John 3.19 He can then safely trust and rely upon the Mercy of God in and thorough Christ for the pardon of all his sins because he has truely and in time repented of them and 't is not a mere presumptuous and ungrounded confidenee which like the hope of the hypocrite shall perish Job 8.13 but he has a sure Title to it by the Gospel and the spirit of God beareth witness with his spirit and by the joynt testimony of that and his Conscience agreeing with the Rules and Measures of the Gospel for otherwise 't is but deceit and delusion he hath great inward comfort and chearful hopes of Heaven and hath no reason to fear but it shall be well with him in another world 'T is very happy to live in such a state as this where we are provided against not only all the evils of this World and the worst that can happen to us here but against Death and all the evils of another and may chearfully enjoy the blessings of Providence at present and rejoyce in the hopes of a much greater happiness hereafter so that we may as the wise Man says Eat our bread with joy and drink our wine with a merry heart for God now accepteth our works Eccles 9.7 but a state of sin and impenitence is a dreadful and a hazardous state exposed to the Terrors of Death and the amazing Evils of another World so that if a Man consider'd it as he ought he could not enjoy himself one moment nor would ever live under the fears and dangers of it for all the World and what if he thinks not of it which is all the relief he has against it Yet it is never the less in it self nor never the farther from him but though he is now never so stupid or in the deepest Lethargie yet Death and Hell will awaken him or however the flames there may be ready to catch hold of him while he is asleep and in the most sensless state 3. Repentance puts us into a very blessed and happy state as it reconciles us to God and restores us to his favour who was before angry and displeased with us We are enemies to God by our wicked works and alienated from him Coloss 1.21 Our iniquities have separated between us and our God and our sins have hid his face from us Isa 59.2 'T is they make the only breach and separation between God and his Creatures and provoke him who is Love and Goodness to put on Wrath and Anger and become even a consuming fire so that his anger is said to be kindled against sinners and wax hot against them and he poureth