hypocrisy I know he is able and ready to reward sincerity above desert above expectation beyond all thought and imagination I am sensible that hitherto I have not only loitered in his service but declined it nay opposed affronted rebelled against him I have listed my self under his professed enemy and under that banner I have spent a great part of my time Now may it please his infinite goodness to accept me at last I vow to be intirely his I 'll dispute no commands I 'll make no exceptions but I 'll double my diligence and say with the exemplary Convert St. Paul what wilt thou have me to doe Lord § IV. THUS we have seen the nature and properties of that which we called the hinge of conversion but let us now see what are the springs or plummets that set this great Engine on work or what are the considerations by way of motive that put men upon a resolution of repentance and they are principally these four 1. A persuasion that it will not be unsuccessfull and unacceptable to God if we truely repent at last though we have been great sinners before 2. An apprehension that it is not impossible to become perfectly new men notwithstanding our pre-ingagements in the ways of sin 3. That it is not onely possible but easie so to doe if we set about it in earnest 4. A clear perception that whether it be easie or difficult there is a plain necessity of it and it must be done 1. THE first motive to a resolution of repentance is a persuasion of mind that God is not inexorable but that repentance may find acceptance with him It is a memorable story concerning the Tusculani a little people in Italy who had so highly provoked the Romans that Camillus was leading his Army towards them to take revenge but they growing quickly apprehensive of their danger took an effectual course to appease a generous enemy for they made no shew of resistance but set open their Gates and were found every man hard at his ordinary affairs submitting all to the will of those they knew themselves unable to contend with Whereupon the brave Camillus speaks to them to this purpose You saith he amongst all people have only found out the true way of abating the Romane fury and your submission hath been your best defence upon these terms we can no more find in our hearts to injure you then upon other terms you could have found power to oppose us To whom the chief Magistrate on the other side thus replies We have saith he so in good earnest repented us of our former folly that in confidence of that satisfaction to a generous enemy we are not afraid to acknowledge our fault NOT much unlike to this is the sense of the relenting Son in the Text For thinks he what I have done amiss I can neither answer to my self nor to my Father I can neither deny the fact nor defend it therefore I must try what repentance will doe and appeal from his justice to his mercy It is true I forsook my Father but it was a Father I forsook and that name speaks benignity and what may not a Son hope for from a Father There is Rhetorick in confession and contrite submission hath mighty prevalence upon all ingenuous natures Quem poenitet peccasse paenè est innocens Repentance uses to have the success even of innocency it self and I that have failed of the one will try the other My acknowledgment will prevent my accusation If I condemn my self I save my Father a labour and when I abhor my self I move his pity especially if I become another man he will see the same reason to receive me then as he hath to reject me now AND so the penitent towards God I have offended the Divine Majesty but he is a God and that name speaks goodness if he be not as good as can be he is not God and if he be nothing but what is good can proceed from him and nothing that is good but may be expected from him therefore there is hope of pardon THE wisedome of all the world hath agreed to make it the constant stile of God Optimus Maximus the greatest Goodness or the best Greatness goodness and mercy are as essential to him as power and justice nay the very latter inferr the former For what is there can tempt an infinitely perfect Being to be cruel and inexorable He that hath all fullness in himself can certainly envy nothing can hate nothing that he hath made but must needs pity those that are below him and delight to communicate himself to such as need him Envy and cruelty are the issues of meer weakness fear want and impotency The poor are apt to envy the rich because they enjoy what they want and we commonly observe that the weakest and most timorous Creatures are most revengefull and implacable The Coward is deadly and sanguinary because he is not secure of his own strength and therefore dares not slip his opportunity but strikes home and mortally lest the danger should recoil upon himself But what rich and great man envies the beggar or what valiant man was ever remorsless and sanguinary The former hath all the arguments to pity because he cannot want and the latter all the inducements to pardon because he cannot fear God is above all danger can be hurt by nothing needs nothing hath nothing to receive but much to bestow he cannot therefore be prompted to take advantage against his Creatures or delight in their misery since the only ends he hath to serve upon them is the enjoying his own fullness by reflection the diffusing and communicating himself to them and thereby making them happy WHEN God was highly provoked by the sin of David in numbring the people in which fact there was a complication of many evils there was disobedience to an express Law there was distrust of the divine providence and a vain confidence in the arm of flesh It pleased the Divine Majesty to notify his displeasure by the Prophet Nathan and withall gives David his choice either of Pestilence Famine or Sword the King refers it back again to God whether he would please to punish by the Famine or by the Pestilence for saith he Let us fall into the hands of God for his mercies are great but let us not fall into the hands of men He had rather trust the mercies of an incensed God then lie at the mercy of mortal men He knew they were transported with rage and fury but God was pitifull they often forgot themselves but God remembred sinners were but men and dust and ashes They would plague one another maliciously but God chastised in wisedom and measure And that with him according to the phrase of St. James mercy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rejoiceth against glorieth and triumpheth over justice THE Discourse of a brave Heathen is excellent to this purpose We think it just saith
passage from the brink of Hell to the gates of Heaven More particularly he will observe the unhappy onset and beginnings the crooked and anfractuous proceedings the dangerous precipices and the horrid and fatall mischiefs of a sinfull course graphically described He will also descry the direct but laborious the sorrowfull but certain way of recovery And lastly the glorious triumph the comfortable condition and the sure station of him that hath happily conquered the aforesaid difficulties and is arrived at the serene top of Vertue together with the general applause and universal Jubilee of Heaven and Earth upon such an atchievement And in confidence that all these things are pointed at and intended in the scene before us as I do not doubt but will be evident by and by I do design to take occasion from hence to discourse somewhat fully and practically of these three very important particulars viz. 1. Of the nature of Sin and the mischiefs of a wicked course 2. Of the nature and admirable efficacy of Repentance Lastly Of the exorableness of the Divine Majesty and the unexpressible benignity and graciousness with which he entertains returning sinners And provided the management prove answerable to the design I cannot in the least mistrust the acceptableness of a work of this nature to any sort of men who have so much seriousness and manly sense in them as to value things in proportion to their real usefulness forasmuch as there is not that subject to be treated of which comes more close and home to the greatest concerns of all mankind For In the first place There are scarcely any so prodigiously vain as not to acknowledge themselves to be sinners and what can be of more use to him that makes that acknowledgement then to understand what it is which makes Sin to be sinfull what gives it its malignity and makes guilt inseparably to adhere to it what are the several states of sin and sinners and especially what is the natural course and tendency the sudden growth and unhappy progress of sin since hereby his conscience being inlightned will be both better able to make just reflexions upon what is past and also be made more cautious and diligent for the time to come And although it be true that every man hath not run the same mad risk of sin which is here decyphered in the Prodigal Son yet as that is owing to the especial providence and preventing grace of God where-ever the case is such so that happy person will by observing the wild extravagancies the extreme follies and horrid mischiefs which others incurr before conversion be the more provoked to adore the Divine Goodness in his own preservation Again What can be of more moment to those that are apprehensive of the Majesty and Purity of God of the holiness of his Laws of the certainty of a Judgement to come and withall are sensible of the frailty of humane nature and conscious of their own many and great miscarriages then to behold the nature of Repentance plainly described and to be instructed in the methods of making good their retreat of redintegrating themselves and successfully recommending their deplorable estate and condition to the Divine Philanthropy and mercy Lastly What can be more ravishingly comfortable to a contrite sinner then to understand the efficacy of true Repentance to see a door of hope open to the worst of sinners upon their coming to themselves and returning to their duty to be assured of the hearty compassions of the Divine Majesty to see the arms of the Almighty open to receive and embrace returning Children and all this as it were in perspective lively represented § II. But in regard it is a Parable which we have in hand I think my self obliged in order to the laying a good foundation of what we shall afterwards build upon it here in our entrance to premise something briefly first touching the ancient use of this Schematical and Figurative way of expression and the Reason of such usage secondly touching the Explication and Application of such kind of discourses And for the first of these I cannot reasonably imagine that any man who shall peruse these papers should be so great a stranger to all that hath past in former times as not to be aware that it was the general custome of Wise men of old to deliver their Sentiments after this manner and in such a style and this not onely in meer humane and common Writings but even in Sacred Writ it self To say nothing of the famous Oracles of the Gentiles which in other circumstances as well as in this of Mysteriousness have been observed to Ape and imitate those of the true God And to pass by the ancient Poets who were reputed as both the Divines and the Philosophers of the Ages in which they lived and who were well known to have affected an Oracular obscurity as much as the Oracles affected their way of versifying If we take notice of the ancient Proverbs of Nations which are supposed to carry the marks of the wisedom of their respective times and people these we find for the most part obscure and Aenigmatical And for the ancient Philosophers and men of renown such as the Wise men of Greece distinctively so called or such as Pythagoras Socrates c. who were no whit inferiour to the former he knows nothing of them that is not sensible not onely of accidental but also of designed obscurity in their writings and sayings As for the Sacred Writings of the Old Testament though with all good men I worthily adore that Divine Spirit which made choice of and directed the Pen-men of Holy Scripture and readily acknowledge both the plainness and perspicuity thereof in the necessary rules of life without which it could not have answered the ends of the Divine Wisedom in the enditing of it and also that wheresoever it is abstruse it is as far from phantastry and affected obscurity as the Pagan Oracles were notoriously guilty thereof notwithstanding it cannot be denied but that as well the Prophets as other holy Pen-men do frequently make use of Metaphors Allegories and other Schematical forms which must needs be attended with competent obscurity these being as it were a veil drawn over the face of Divine Truth Hence it is that Solomon makes the words of the wise and their dark sayings to be two expressions denoting the same thing for as he in another place speaks their discourses are like Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver that is besides a truth and beauty in the outside or case of the letter they had a more rich and precious meaning within And accordingly we may observe the Apostles of our Lord in the New Testament frequently to fix upon and pursue a mystical sense of some of those passages in the Old Testament which would to an ordinary Reader have seemed most strictly and literally to be understood Yet I do not think this will prove a sufficient warrant for Philo
in the Gospel 2. It is to be observed in consequence of the former distinction that whereas for the third sort of men of whom they had no great esteem it was accounted no wonder that they being filii terrae men of a meer secular character did hold correspondence and had intercourse with Publicans and Sinners that is such as were proscribed the Cense of Religion Nevertheless for any person of the two first ranks so to have done namely to be found maintaining any kind of society or friendly conversation with such infamous persons was held not only dishonourable and unbecoming but flatly unlawfull For according to a tradition yet extant in their writings it is reckoned as one of the six scandals that those higher Orders of Religionists are charged by all means to avoid namely to dine eat or drink with such Now this seems to be the first occasion of quarrel against our Saviour that he pretending to be some extraordinary person at least a student of the law did not use such branded persons with the same supercile and disdain that their great men were wont to do but familiarly discoursed eat and drank with them For so we read Matth. 9. 10 11. And it came to pass as Jesus sate at meat many Publicans and Sinners came and sate down with him and his disciples and when the Pharisees saw it they said unto his disciples Why eateth your Master with Publicans and Sinners c. Let it be farther noted in the third place That the covenant which God made with this people on Mount Sinai admitted of propitiation by sacrifice and thereby gave hopes of pardon onely to some smaller offences but seemed to exclude all great and notorious transgressors shutting them up under wrath and appointing them to be cut off from amongst their people And the minds of the Jews not being elevated above this literal dispensation nor being able to distinguish betwixt this political transaction and the eternal standard of justice and mercy in the divine mind they were induced to believe that God would exercise mercy upon no other terms then what he therein proclaimed and that he was inexorable and implacable in all other cases beyond the tenour of that indulgence whence it came to pass that they themselves in proportion as they thought to the divine proceedings abandoned all the aforesaid kinds of notorious sinners as castaways conceiving neither hopes of their pardon nor usefulness of indeavouring to bring them to repentance And although the excellent discourses of the Prophets might have instructed them with better and more worthy notions of God yet they superstitiously contracting those Evangelical expressions in the Prophets to the narrow sense of the Law rather then improving the text of the Law by the divine Commentaries of the Prophets continued still under the same mean and narrow apprehensions of divine mercy and consequently thereof must needs pronounce very sad and dismal dooms upon all great sinners But forasmuch as they could not but remember the very great and foul miscarriages of some otherwise very holy men in the Old Testament and particularly of David in his Adultery with Bathshebah and the Murther of Vriah for neither of which sins any sacrifice or propitiation was appointed in the Law but the offender in such cases was to be cut off without mercy therefore that they might not be constrained in consequence of the aforesaid persuasion to exclude such men from all hopes of pardon too they had artifices of extenuating such mens sins as no doubt they had of their own and rather then forgoe their hide-bound notion of God chose against all sense to make those black crimes meer peccadillo's lest by the example of such great men as David c. other sinners should be incouraged to hope for mercy beyond the tenour of their Law Now our Saviour preaching repentance and giving hopes of pardon to the greatest of sinners upon condition of their present hearty and thorough reformation several poor souls who had been reprobated and damned by these severe Interpreters of the Law were marvellously transported at so comfortable a doctrine and with great affection and frequency resort to it Hereupon these demure but dogged Leguleians are offended and insinuate a suspicion of our Saviour that he was a friend and favourer of lewd and vicious persons This I take it is the true state of the case and the rise of the excellent discourses in this Chapter For in answer to their unjust imputation our Saviour who could if he had pleased have shewed the sandy foundation of all their aforesaid Hypothesis by discovering the designs of the divine wisedom in that manner of transaction with that people in that covenant or by large deductions from the Prophets have demonstrated the uncircumscribedness of the divine goodness or with admirable wisedom silenced them by a Philosophick discourse of the divine Philanthropy He I say that could have vindicated his own doctrine and practice and both baffled their arrogance and shamed their ignorance any of these or other ways waves all this and takes a more plain and popular argument confounding them by an appeal to the common sense of mankind much after the manner that God silences the petulant disgusts of the Prophet Jonah Jonah was angry with God for being more exorable towards the Ninevites then he expected and would needs have had a vast and populous City destroyed meerly to make good his own prediction But God convinces him of his unreasonableness by a lively Emblem There was a Gourd suddenly sprung up which refreshed the Prophet with its verdure and covered him with its shadow God who had caused the Gourd to grow quickly smites it hereupon Jonah is angry again and expostulates the matter with his Maker Thou hadst pity on a contemptible Gourd for which thou didst not labour and which came up in a night and perished in a night And should not I spare Nineveh that great City upon their repentance wherein are more then one hundred and twenty thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left c. In like manner our Saviour here silences the murmurings of these hard-hearted Jews by three Parables The first concerning a Lost Sheep vers 4. The second concerning a Lost Groat vers 8. And the third of a Lost Son vers 11. In all which he appeals to common experience and the sense of humanity for evidence of the fitness of his proceedings and the absurdity of their complaints shewing that it is the common course of men to express most solicitude for that which is lost and most joy upon the recovery of that which was given up as desperate And forasmuch as the souls of men must needs be more valuable with a wise God and a gracious Creatour then those other things can be with men he leaves it to them to infer how reasonable it is to think that the divine goodness is both highly pleased with the recovery of
he to give both thanks and reward to him that cures our bodily infirmities though he do it not without some pain and trouble to us and why should we not rather love God's methods as the Physician of Souls there is no passion nor much less revenge in his proceedings with us he neither cuts and lances us cruelly nor uses any other sharpness then the case necessarily requires he doth nothing with intention to hurt or grieve us but proceeds with art and care designing our greatest good and in a word is in all his actions agreeable to the goodness and benignity of his own nature The summe of all which and of what we intend further to say is that of the Apostle God is good and the goodness of God leadeth to repentance Rom. 2. 5. For the consideration of that is the spring of hope and of all motion by way of return THERE are indeed some men who having entertained very crude notions of the Divine Majesty do sometimes assert on the one hand that vindictive justice is essential and natural to God so that he is bound up to require strict satisfaction and without it cannot properly pardon any transgression And others on the other hand talk at the same wild rate of his mercy and goodness as if all the instances he makes thereof were also natural and necessary and that he could not insist upon his own right but must make all the expressions of kindness that are possible towards his Creatures But both these notions are equally false and mischievous the former of them representing God a rigid Majesty and tending to desperation the other an easy and soft Deity and tempting men to presume upon him the one making him an object of horrour and the other of contempt for who can love him that cannot pity and who can reverence him who hath it not in his power to do otherwise The truth is therefore that all particular instances both of the one kind and of the other are subject to his wisedom that he can exercise either mercy or severity as he sees occasion for after this manner the Scripture speaks of him that sometime he hath mercy because he will have mercy and that when he will he hardeneth sinners for destruction AND to think otherwise of God especially in the case of mercy and pardon as if he could not dispense it as he pleases is to bring in a rigid fatality with the Stoicks instead of a God and is so far from aggrandizing the Divine Majesty that it is the greatest diminution of his power and glory and renders him less then a man for we can recedere à nostro jure remit of our own rights and give mercy a triumph over strict justice And although the sinner when he offends against God forfeits himself into the divine hand and gives God just cause to punish him if he will yet certainly he cannot by any act of his put a Law upon God or oblige him to punish or if he think fit to shew mercy AND then for the interest of God's Rectourship and government of the world it is not a necessity of punishment that conserves that but the power or freedom of punishing or remitting accordingly as it shall seem good to his own wisedom Whereby when men are both provoked to amendment by the hopes of pardon and restrained from disobedience by the fear of punishment For the liberty of dispensing either of these at pleasure is that which produces a reverence towards the Divine Majesty that is a complication of love and fear wherein the very notion of Religion consists It is not an impertinent passage to this purpose which we have in the Historian when the young Gentlemen in the new Roman Common-wealth had a design to restore the Kingly Government in the Family of the Tarquins they had Speeches made amongst them to this effect To be bound up by the rigour of Laws which had no compassion nor made allowance for contingency was very harsh and unsafe considering humane infirmity But under Kingly Government there was power of dispensation possibility of indulgence liberty of interpretation room for mercy and pardon a man that fell did not necessarily there miscarry For there was place for intercession repentance might relieve him and the prerogative of the Prince was the security of the Subject NOW that repentance is available with God we have all the assurance that can be desired for besides what we have said already from the consideration of the perfections of the Divine Nature and the interest of his Government Repentance is the great and principal Doctrine of the Gospel which the Son of God himself came to proclaim by his Preaching to confirm by his Miracles to make way for and to procure acceptance to by his Death and Sacrifice and to render throughly effectual and successfull by his Intercession at God's right hand in Heaven Wherefore as Manoah's wife reasoned when her Husband had dreadfull apprehensions of the Majesty of God who had appeared to them and concluded they should die Because they had seen God No saith she if God intended to destroy us he would not have appeared to us or much less have accepted a Sacrifice at our hands So assuredly if God had not great compassion to mankind and did not design to accept them upon repentance he would never have given his own Son to be a Sacrifice for sin Can any man suspect that God is indifferent whether men be saved or no when he hath sent his Son to save them Can any man imagine him implacable towards those whose nature he sent his Son to assume and thereby to make an union betwixt the divine and humane Natures Will any man think him inexorable to sinners who pitied them healed them conversed with them and died for them Let Devils despair who have not only no promise and no Saviour but nothing pitiable in their case having had no tempter to abuse them no flesh or body to clog them no infirmity to extenuate their presumption they are without hope and therefore incapable of repentance and so go on eternally to hate and blaspheme the God that will not pardon them But there is no cause man should do so who as he hath all the arguments of pity in his case so hath all the assurances of pardon from God upon his repentance TO say no more the very constant experience of all Ages and the common sense of all mankind leaves us without all doubt that this method of repentance pacifies the Almighty insomuch that when he hath most exprest his angry resentments and seems to have been most peremptory and decretal in his threatnings yet all but mad and desperate persons have incouraged themselves to hope for impunity upon repentance even then when there hath not been the least intimation of any such condition in his denunciations for thus when the Prophet Jonas had from the mouth of God proclaimed expresly Yet forty days and
And that government would justly be accounted arbitrary and tyrannical and the Sovereign rather thought to lie at catch for the penalty then to desire just obedience who shall impute that for a fault which he had not given sufficient caution against by a plain declaration of his will and pleasure For non esse non apparere aequiparantur in Jure that which cannot appear is in Laws all one as if it were not at all because an unknown Law can have no influence upon those it should concern neither directing them what to do nor forewarning what to avoid neither giving notice of their duty nor their danger and consequently works neither upon their reason nor their passion and therefore not at all IT is true that all Laws have not the same way and manner of publication for even amongst men several Nations have their several and peculiar forms of doing it The old Romans by Tables hung up in the Market and places of publick congresse some have done the same thing by the voice of a publick Herald or by the sound of Trumpet c. but however they differed in the circumstance they all agreed in the thing that Laws were not perfect and obliging till they were promulged And so it is with the Laws of God Almighty he never expects that men should govern themselves by the secret decrees of Heaven nor leaves them to guesse at the transactions in his Cabinet-Counsel but first publishes his Law and then requires conformity to it though that in divers manners as it seemed best to his divine wisedom Sometimes he exprest himself by an audible voice from Heaven wherein the Angels were employed as his Ministers namely when he gave his Laws upon Mount Sinai other times by inspiration of Prophets and Holy Men and making them the Interpreters of his mind to the world When to give the more full assurance that it was he that sent and instructed them he was wont also to send along with them some miraculous power or other as his Credential Letters under his privy Signet But most gloriously of all did he proclaim his mind when he sent his Son into the world whose every circumstance from the miracles of his Birth to the glories of his Resurrection and Ascension sufficiently proclaimed him the Messias the Messenger of the Covenant AND for the Laws of Nature these though by some perverse men they have been denied to have the nature of Laws obligatory because they have not had the like solemnity of publication as others have had yet forasmuch as these have either been written upon the fleshly tables of men's hearts where all that will look inward may read them or rather as I have intimated already are ingraven and inserted into the very nature of things and texture of the universe where whosoever hath not unmanned himself and debauched his reason may be able to discover them And besides they have manifestly the sanction of rewards and punishments in the constant experience of good and evil attending the observation and contempt of them respectively upon which accounts they must needs seem to all honest and unprejudiced minds sufficiently promulged SO that constantly some way or other according as it seemed best to him God hath always been pleased to make his mind sufficiently and certainly known to all those upon whom he intended it should have the force and obligation of a Law and he never required obedience otherwise then in proportion to such manifestation Accordingly we observe that when he had given Laws to the people of the Jews and proclaimed them very gloriously and solemnly as aforesaid yet in regard such proclamation could not certainly reach to all other Nations for that as well as for other reasons he did not exact of any other people conformity to those institutions nor judged them thereby So the Apostle assures us Rom. 2. 12. Such as have sinned without the Law shall perish without the Law and as many as have sinned under the Law shall be judged by the Law AND it is further very remarkable that even the Gospell it self which was what the Religion of the Jews was not namely an Institution fitted for all Countries Nations and Ages and which therefore our Lord Christ took care by his Apostles as his Heralds to proclaim all the world over This Gospell I say till it was fully published and untill men had time given them to consider well of it and to overcome their prejudices against it made a favourable interpretation of men's unbelief This I take to be the import of those words of our Saviour Joh. 9. 39. 41. For judgment am I come into the world that they that see not might see and that they that see might be made blind If ye were blind ye should have no sin but now ye say we see therefore your sin remaineth And to the same purpose Joh. 15. 22. If I had not come and spoken amongst them they had not had sin but now they have no cloak for their sin And of the truth of this S. Paul himself was a great instance for so he tells us 1 Tim. 1. 13. I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief q. d. I lay under mighty prejudices by reason of my education in the stiff way of a Pharisee and it required a great sincerity to be willing to listen to new proposals a huge sagacity to be able to see through those mists that were cast before my eyes and a most generous resolution to break through these and all other difficulties in consideration whereof God was pleased to make abatements of the guilt of my unbelief in proportion to the temptations I had thereto It is indeed both a well known and as well received a Maxime Ignorantia Juris non excusat that it is no excuse of a fault to say non putâram I did not know the Law because when a Law is once promulged every man is bound to take notice of it and it can be imputed to nothing else but supine and affected ignorance if he shall then continue ignorant Notwithstanding upon the self same supposition it seems to be granted that where the case is otherwise that is where the Law not being sufficiently published cannot be known by an honest diligence there ignorance is no fault because indeed as I said there the Law is no Law THOSE who consider not this point must needs be tempted to passe very dismal and damnatory sentences against the greatest part of mankind and consequently cannot avoid very hard thoughts of God for the prevention of both which great evils as also to confirm what hath been now said there is nothing more usefull then to study well the Parable of our Saviour concerning the Talents Matt. 25. 14. by the due consideration whereof we shall amongst other instructions be led into the apprehension that God proceeds not with men Arithmetically but Geometrically and that the vertue or vice which God rewards or punishes
those worldly objects we lately spoke of all his spirits are ingaged in the pursuit of it and with that heat and vehemency that nothing can stop their carrier nor bring them under the reins of reason No considerations of God or a World to come can come into play no checks of Conscience are attended to whatsoever comes on 't the passion must be obeyed lust must have its full swing be the danger or consequence of it what it will THEN for the usual symptoms of distraction if we see a man that hath unspeakable danger over his head insomuch that every man that sees him bewails and pities him but he pities not himself if we see him disporting upon the brink of a precipice and the ground breaking away under him nay if we shall see him court danger tear his own flesh and delight in his own mischief or again suppose we observe a man to have rich offers made him but he despises them and prefers trifles before them or to be most fierce and injurious to those who are most earnest to do him good do we not account these the tokens of distraction And is not the case the very same when a man shall be found to go on in a course of sin that God and his own Conscience have denounced damnation to and be secure when there is nothing between him and utter destruction but the frail thred of life the most uncertain thing in the world when a man shall in fondness to some sin or other despise the counsels of God's word slight his promises laugh at his threatnings and even defy the Almighty when he shall express so much hate and indignation against none as those that reprove his folly advise him for his good and forewarn him of his danger in short that is every moment ready to drop into hell and yet goes on carelesly and jollily is not this laughter of his Risus Sardonius i. e. plainly and notoriously phrenetical in the highest degree We reade Acts 26. 25. that Festus was of opinion that much study had made St. Paul mad when he took notice of such a wonderfull zeal in him for Christianity that no difficulties would abate his edge no allurements or flatteries withdraw him no menaces affright him nor no sufferings prevail at all upon him But St. Paul sufficiently clears himself of that suspicion giving a just and manly account of his persuasion and the reasons of his resolution And withall vers 11. he confesses time was when he was mad indeed when he was hurried by his own passions and prejudices to make all the opposition he was able against Christianity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith he I was exceedingly mad and outragious against it But there were a great many allowances to be made in his case he had been bread a Pharisee the education in which Sect had put him under the greatest prejudices against Christianity that could be possibly the Gospel was a new thing in the World which Character was enough to condemn it but besides it lay open to a great many disadvantages which it is unseasonable here to mention by reason of all which he thought he should do God good service to oppose it he therefore only obeyed his erring Conscience followed the best reason he then had and what he did amiss he did it ignorantly and accordingly God had mercy on him But what can be pretended on the behalf of the habitual sinner against the common law of reason and morality can he plead ignorance or pretend Conscience is morality a new opinion or was debauchery ever espoused for the Dogma of any famous Sect was it ever a disputable point whether injustice adultery and other sensuality were vices or vertues did ever any man think he should do God good service by complying with these nay is it not evident that the men we speak of contradict the very principles of reason the intimations of their own Consciences they violate all the laws of wisedome goe cross to all rules of prudence nay their very interests and the principles of self-preservation May we not therefore direct our discourse to such men as Herod is said to have done a Letter to Cassius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in short Cassius thou art mad BUT let us come to particulars and we will begin with Injustice hath not God said that the unnighteous shall have no inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ or of God and have we not seen the experiment of those that have raked and torn for riches as if that were the onely thing valuable and desirable and counted all clear gain that could be gotten who yet when death hath summoned them to the righteous Tribunal of God would gladly have refunded all again and have chosen to have lived the poorest life in the world so they might have gone out of it with a good Conscience Is there not just reason to expect that all unjust acquisitions will one day prove like a barbed Arrow in a man's flesh that must either be pluckt back again and that not to be done without horrible pain and anguish or else will destroy him eternally Are not these courses condemned by Heathens and by all the reason of mankind doth not such a man make himself the hate and scorn of others and a shame to himself What is there then prevails with any man to continue such a practice is there any necessity presses him to it must a man be starved else is there any such unspeakable felicity in being rich that the temptations thereof are irresistible doth any man live more comfortably by his ill-gotten goods nay in truth these imbitter the delights of all the rest Doth riches afford a man such security quiet and repose that no man can be at ease till he have attained it or is it not certain on the contrary that the solicitude of acquiring it macerates a man with cares and projects night and day and when he hath attained his ends he lies at once under the joint inconveniences of abundance and of poverty the cares of the one and the burden of the other Wherefore upon the whole matter there is nothing in the case but the impetuousness of a greedy grasping humour that bears down his reason fools him and destroys him And if a milder name then madness be due to this condition let sobermen judge NOW take the Voluptuous man to whom no fruit is pleasant but that which is forbidden and who knows no measure of pleasure but a surfeit in the first place it is very doubtfull whether the quest of pleasures be not as troublesome as the enjoyments of them are sweet at least if we lay together the tedious expectations the frequent frustrations the certain expence of time fortune and health the secret guilt the constant fear of detection the shame and reproach upon discovery the pressing importunities of passion before enjoyment the follies and dangers in the midst and the irksomness and loathing after their
were easy to bring abundance of egregious instances hereof such as Justin Martyr St. Austin and others but to what I have said already I will only subjoin two or three Scriptural observations And the first shall be what David saith of himself Psal 119. vers 59. I thought upon my ways and turned my feet to thy precepts In the next place I cannot but take notice in the story of Isaac Gen. 24. 63. the Scripture saith of him He went out into the fields to meditate in the evening The LXX render it he went out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to talk with himself to entertain discourse with his own heart and for the convenience of doing this he chose the solitude of the Fields and the cool and quiet of the Evening And by this practice the Holy Ghost characterizes him as though a young man yet beginning to be both a wise and a pious person Nor is it to be omitted which is recorded of Ahab 1. King 21. 27. That when God threatned him with the utter extirpation of his family for his wickedness he put on Sackcloth sprinkled himself with Ashes and especially amongst the rest he walked softly that is although he did not heartily repent yet he knew well how to dissemble the doing it and acted the part of a penitent in that serious and considerative posture I will conclude this point with a passage of the Prophet Jeremiah Chap. 31. Vers 18 19. the words are these I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus Thou hast chastised me and I was chastised as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke Turn thou me and I shall be turned for thou art the Lord my God Surely after I was turned I repented and after I was instructed I smote upon my thigh I was ashamed yea even confounded because I did bear the reproach of my youth A memorable Scripture very full and apposite to my present purpose and withall so pathetick as that it is almost match for this Parable of our Saviour we have before us The reflection upon both which together lead me IN the second place to observe the occasion or what it was which put the Prodigal into a considerative temper and that was the pressure of his wants whilest wind and tide favoured him and his affaris were prosperous he made no reflections nor struck sail to any thing but now the tide forsaking him he is becalmed and then considers In like manner § III. IT is usually some affliction or other which first awakens habitual sinners into consideration and the rudiments of piety and religion Or as serious considerativeness begins conversion so commonly some sharp affliction or other begins that seriousness It cannot be doubted but that the most easy and most frequently successfull way of begetting a sense of God and of piety in the minds of men is by holy education in their youth whilest their hearts are tender and tractable not prejudiced by actual ingagements not confirmed by example nor hardened by long custome and practice and when the grace of God anticipates the Devil and prevents all his enterprises and perhaps if we look over the state of mankind we shall find amongst those that are sincerely good the number of those that have become so after a long course of sin to be very small in comparison We may also allow it for truth which is made a common maxime that ingenuous minds are most wrought upon by obligation and favour that the strongest efforts are those which are made by kindness and goodness that this latter method will melt and dissolve such as would be broken in pieces by violence But this prejudices not the business in hand for we speak of such as have lost their ingenuity old hardened sinners who must first be broken by the hammer of affliction before they will dissolve by the benign warmth of mercy and kindness These last indeed carry on the work and make a perfect change but fear and pain usually begins it But I will not stick to grant that perhaps it may fall out that some old sinner may have been reclaimed by the reading of a good book hearing a serious Sermon or by the grave admonition of a faithfull Friend without any pressing affliction to prepare him for it or as it were extort it from him Notwithstanding I verily believe if an estimate could be taken the instances of this kind would be found to be exceeding rare We find Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar humbled by adversity and their stiff Necks submitted to those acknowledgements of God's power and sovereignty which no kindness or mercy would bring them to And Manasses comes out a true convert a new man out of the furnace of affliction And David himself confesses of himself That before he was afflicted he went astray but thereby he had learnt to keep God's Commandments Psal 119. vers 67. But the whole Scripture affords no one instance that I know of of such a person as we speak of cured by any other method then this And for the whole Nation of the Jews God himself saith thus Hos 5. 15. I will go and return to my place till they acknowledge their transgression and seek my face In their affliction they will seek me early q. d. I will not only afflict my people but I will leave them under the pressure thereof and by this rack as it were extort from them a confession of my sovereignty and their own guilt for I have found by long trial that nothing else will work upon a stiff-necked generation but in their affliction I am sure they will earnestly and instantly seek after me IT was not the peculiar jealousy of Fabius concerning the Romane State which made him say Se secunda magìs quà m adversa timere That their danger was greater lest they should become rash and confident by some slight successes then that their spirits should be broken by a disaster For all men that understand themselves and value their safety above their pleasure find they have reason more to suspect the soft charm of ease peace and plenty then the rough attacks of adversity Because amongst other things a constant and stiff gale of prosperity carries men with too full sail to be checkt or controuled by counsel it presents them with too many and great temptations to be easily resisted ministers to their confident presumption that either they are good enough already because they have so many arguments of the divine favour or at least that he overlooks their miscarriages And Conscience is either out-faced or hath been so often silenced and baffled that it dares scarce mutter till the apprehension of some great danger or misery authorize and provoke it but then it recovers its speech and tells its errand TO this purpose we have a famous instance in the Brethren of Joseph Gen. 37. They prompted by envy had maliciously plotted the death or at least the perpetual servitude of their Brother and proceeded so far in it that to
forty nights and Nineveh shall be destroyed Notwithstanding the absoluteness of the sentence and the nearness of the execution the Ninevites were not out of hope but that if repentance were interposed their ruine might yet be prevented and it succeeded accordingly with them for as they believing God's word by the Prophet expected nothing but sudden destruction if they had not repented so they trusting in the goodness and exorableness of the Divine Majesty upon repentance applied themselves seriously thereto and were preserved WHEREFORE saith the relenting sinner Forasmuch as although I know not the limits of the Divine Mercy yet this I know that nothing can set limits thereto but his own wisedom and he is never so straitned but that if the case be pitiable and he see reason of mercy he can shew it consistently with his Justice here I will cast anchor I will indeavour to render my self an object of mercy and trust upon his goodness I never yet heard that any man miscarried in this bottome or that a Penitent was cast away I have often heard that God would have saved men but they would not but I never heard of any that resorted penitently to his mercy and were rejected nor do I think that Hell it self can furnish one instance of the man that can upbraid God's goodness and say I would but God would not Thus the consideration of the Divine Nature is everlastingly pregnant of incouragements to repentance and is the spring of all motion to Godward were it not for which never any had been reclaimed from a course of sin or begun a reformation But so much of that 2. IN the Second place another incouragement to this penitent resolution we are speaking of is an apprehension that it is not impossible to become perfectly new men notwithstanding our pre-ingagements in the ways of sin Opinion of absolute impossibility as we have noted before is equal to real impotency checks all motion nips all indeavour in the very bud stifles and lays asleep all the powers of the mind But hope and apprehension of feasibleness spirits all industry actuates all faculties raises the spirits and is the spring of all the great actions in the world Some daring men have effected things beyond their own expectations but no brave exploit was ever performed by such as despaired of accomplishing it nor was ever any force defeated that did praelibare victoriam and resolve to conquer When once a conceit had possessed the Midianites that they should be conquered by Gideon's Army though grounded only upon an odde dream of a brown Loaf tumbling down upon their Tents their hearts presently melted in them their spirits were emasculated and a mighty Host became an easy prey to the inconsiderable numbers which Gideon led against them And the Lord of hosts would never suffer Israel to be led on to the conquest of the Land of Canaan so long as the rumor of Giants and Anakims and walled Cities ran in the minds of the people nor untill they were brought to a confidence that they were able to conquer that good Land In like manner if the sinner think either his sins too great to be forgiven or that it is too late to mend i. e. either despair of God's grace or of his mercy he is utterly lost indeed that therefore which puts him forward upon resolution is an apprehension that God's grace is sufficient for him THE returning Prodigal saith It is true I find I have gone a great way from my Father's house and wearied my self with my own wandrings yet sure it is not impossible but I may reach home again And I saith the sinner have gone a great way towards my own undoing having indulged my passions and dethroned my reason inslaved my will weakned all my powers and hardened my own Conscience by a long course and custome of sin yet in the words of Holy Job There is hope of a tree if it be cut down that it will sprout again and that the tender branch thereof will not cease though the root thereof wax old in the earth and the stock thereof die in the ground yet through the scent of water it will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant Job 14. 7 8 9. Though I have weakened my powers yet I am a man still though I have destroyed my self yet there is hope in the God of Israel and his hand is not shortened that he cannot save TVLLY is reported to have affirmed repentance to be impossible namely for a man to retrieve himself and take up a new course contrary to that to which he hath been long habituated and no doubt it is very difficult so to do as may sufficiently appear both by what we have said already and also by that of the Prophet Jer. 13. 23. Can the Aethiopian change his skin or the Leopard his spots then may ye also do good that are accustomed to doe evil Where the Holy Ghost intimates inveterate custome to be equal to nature it self and accordingly we find by too sad experience that there are very few that doe exuere hominem shake off the yoke of custome Facilis descensus Averni Sed revocare gradus c. And upon this account it is that the conversion of old sinners is called a New Birth and a New Creation in the language of Holy Scripture Notwithstanding as our Saviour said of rich men That it was harder for a Camel to goe through the eye of a needle then for such a man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven yet to prevent mistakes adds With men it is impossible but with God all things are possible So it is in this case He can cause dry bones to live and of Stones raise up Children to Abraham The Holy Spirit can awaken those powers that were in a dead sleep Conscience is not so callous but it may be rendered soft and sensible again the will and other faculties of men though they are perverted yet are not extinct and being stirred up by the grace of God may exert themselves in a new strain oppose their old customs and introduce new habits AS custome bore down and overgrew Nature formerly so new customes may supplant the old ones and make a new Nature It is a well-known Story that when Zopyrus a great pretender to the skill of reading men's temper and inclination in their countenances had pronounced of Socrates that he was a lewd and intemperate man the Company who knew well the remarkable vertue of Socrates laughed the cunning man out of countenance till Socrates relieved him saying that indeed his inclination was naturally such as Zopyrus had pronounced but that Philosophy and the culture and care of himself had altered him to what he was BUT the Holy Scriptures as they contain both more excellent institutions of vertue and holiness then all Philosophy and more effectual methods of reclaiming and recovering men from vice and debauchery so in the History thereof they afford us the
observable 1. His confession of Guilt I have sinned 2. Aggravation of the fact I have sinned against Heaven and before thee 3. The severe judgment he passes upon himself I am no more worthy to be called thy Son 4. Lastly His deprecation Yet make me as one of thy hired Servants All which deserve a little consideration the rather because we shall find them all exactly and literally exemplified in the true Penitent 1. Then the Son assumes to himself his own guilt and takes shame to himself I have sinned c. Non in aetatem non in malos consiliarios culpam rejicit sed nudam parat sine excusatione Confessionem saith the excellent H. Grotius He excuses not himself by the injudiciousness of his youth nor casts the blame upon his evil Counsellors neither accuses God nor man but himself by a plain and ingenuous acknowledgement IN like manner the true Penitent knows it is to no purpose to play the Hypocrite with God Because all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to doe He seeth not as men see beholding the outward appearance but he searches the hearts and tries the reins of the Children of men He remembers that he that hideth his sins shall not prosper but that he that confesseth and forsaketh them shall find mercy Therefore with blushing and confusion of face saith I have sinned and done very foolishly Thus the poor Publican is represented by our Saviour S. Luk. 18. 13. whenas the Pharisee stood upon his own justification and with a brazen impudence out-faces Heaven God I thank thee that I am not as other men are c. He standing afar off as not thinking himself worthy to approach so great a Majesty not daring to lift up his eyes to Heaven as dejected with the apprehension of his own demerits smites upon his breast with indignation against himself and brings out onely this contrite sigh God be mercifull to me a sinner And so the Psalmist David in that penitential Psalm of his Psal 51. vers 3. I acknowledge my transgression and my sin is ever before me Against thee thee onely have I sinned and done evil in thy sight Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my Mother conceive me c. And this is the course of every Penitent for though it be too true that Confession may be without true and compleat Repentance yet it is impossible that Repentance should be true without Confession I enter not into a discourse of Confession to men because my Text leads me not to it further then as it concerns the person injured in which case it is often necessary for the satisfaction of our Consciences and where-ever there is any ingenuity in the offended person it must needs be very prevalent towards his forgiveness But as for the Divine Majesty who is always injured in every transgression and can never have any reparation otherwise then by it it must needs be always reasonable and necessary as we shall shew more fully by and by 2. BUT the Son contents not himself with a bare acknowledgment of his fault in general but goes on to aggravate it I have sinned against Heaven and before thee If we consider the letter of those words they import I have sinned both against God and thee my earthly Parent for so the Jews were wont to express themselves calling the Divine Majesty by the name of Heaven as we may observe S. Luke 20. 4. The Baptism of John was it from Heaven or of men i. e. Was it it of God's institution or man's invention So also 1 Macc. 3. 18. It is all one with Heaven to save with few or with many i. e. with the God of Heaven And we may easily take notice that in most of the Parables of our Saviour that which is sometimes called the Kingdom of God is otherwhile expressed by the name of the Kingdom of Heaven and by both nothing else is meant but the Gospel that divine institution of Religion but if we attend to the intent of this acknowledgement of the Prodigal Son the words import an aggravation of his disobedience q. d. There was no necessity lay upon me to transgress thy yoke was easy and reasonable and therefore in disobeying thee I disobeyed God too Or I must first have cast off all reverence of God before I could be undutifull towards thee It was not the harshness and severity of my Father that drove me away but my own levity and folly that betrayed me and my stubbornness that I forsook him And the same consideration affects the heart of the Penitent For saith he I have not only offended the Divine Majesty but rebelled both against a rightfull and a gracious Sovereign have broken wise and just and equitable Laws been ingratefull towards him that had obliged me by infinite favours have slighted the most glorious propositions and neglected the most gracious and condescending conditions of being happy There was no invincible temptation upon me it was not in the power of example to debauch me I was not opprest by fate but have chosen my own destruction It is not the Apostasy of Adam that can excuse me for it was my own act I cannot say the Fathers have eaten sour grapes and the Children's teeth are set on edge for I sinned against light and Conscience with full consent and against the motions of God's Spirit to the contrary AFTER this manner the Penitent is apt to lay load upon himself no body can think or speak worse of him then he thinks and confesses of himself so far is he from extenuating his crimes that no malice can paint them worse then grief and indignation at himself doth In short with St. Paul he esteems himself the chiefest and worst of sinners THIS is a quite contrary course to that which men use to take when they plead at humane Tribunals either they deny the fact or extenuate or justify it either they plead ignorance or pretend necessity or prescribe for it from the custome and prevailing example of the world but none of these ways are of use before God and therefore are not the pleas of the Penitent The Argument of the Psalmist though it may seem a very strange one is frequent with such men Psal 25. 10. O Lord pardon my sin for it is great q. d. I am only fit to magnify thy mercy for I have sinned beyond any mercy but thine my guilt is too great a burden for me to bear if thy unspeakable mercies relieve me not What shall I do unto thee O thou redeemer of men Such a Soul is not only ashamed but loaths and abhors himself his Spirit is broken his countenance dejected his confidence dismounted he feels pain and remorse he goes heavily he is pricked to the heart and cries out in the anguish of his Soul What shall I doe But 3. HE goes on not only to accuse but to condemn himself also I am not worthy to be
that the saying of the Apostle is especially and most remarkably verified in the charity of Parents that it beareth all things hopeth all things believeth all things for they readily believe well of their Children because they so passionately desire it should be so notwithstanding the Son could not think his Father so soft and easy as to be imposed upon with words and ceremonies and himself was not now so ill natured as to go about to abuse so much goodness if it it had been in his power Wherefore the Text saith vers 20. So he arose and came to his Father i. e. he did not only change his note his address his countenance but he changed his course he returned to his Father and to the duty of a Son AND we have under this type in the former part of it seen described the preface and introduction to repentance towards God namely the sinner bewailing his sin taking shame to himself under agonies of mind pricked to the heart humbly imploring the divine favour and crying earnestly for mercy But this is not all that repentance means the principal part of it is yet behind viz. Actual Reformation This is that which every awakened Conscience in its agonies promises and resolves upon this God expects and every sincere Convert really performs For without this all the rest is but empty pomp and pageantry and meer hypocrisy as we shall shew anon But when this is added to the former such a person from thenceforth is a new man and in a new estate he hath compleatly made his return to God as the Son in the Text is said to have actually returned to his Father I have noted heretofore that all irreligion and profaneness is wont in the language of the Scripture to be expressed by the phrase of departing from God or going out from him or forsaking him and so the whole practice of Religion is contrariwise set forth by drawing nigh to or coming to God particularly Hebr. 11. 6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he that cometh to God q. d. he that becomes a Proselyte to Religion for from thence doth that word Proselyte take its original Wherefore now we will first observe what is implyed by this phrase of the Son 's returning or coming to his Father and in proportion thereto describe this most important business of the Penitent's returning to God which is his Actual Conversion or Reformation and in the former these three things seem plainly to be comprehended 1. That the Son now returns home to his Father's family and presence 2. That he returns to the duty of a Son by obedience and compliance with his Father's commands 3. That he submits to his Father's government and provision Therefore in the latter namely conversion to God these three things must semblably be implied 1. That the Penitent puts himself under the eye of God and lives in a constant practice of piety and devotion 2. That he frames himself to universal obedience to all God's commands 3. That he gives himself up to the divine disposal and intirely submits to his providence and government 1. CONCERNING the first of these there is nothing more evident or remarkable to all experience and observation then the great fervor of devotion in all true Converts from an evil life insomuch that there is not that man to be found under such a character but presently with great solemnity and seriousness he sets up the worship of God to which purpose we find in the history of the Acts of the Apostles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Worshippers or Devout persons to be the common name by which Converts to Religion are expressed and these Acts 13. 48. are said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Candidates of eternal life or put into order and disposed for salvation Compare vers 43. with 48. More particularly it is observable of St. Paul that when from a superstitious Pharisee and bitter enemy of Christianity he was reclaimed and made a Christian the assurance that God gives to Ananias of the truth of his conversion is Acts 9. 11. Behold he prays And so of Manasses 2 Chron. 33. 18. amongst the instances of his real reformation the Scripture takes especial notice of the prayer that he prayed AND this is so universal a truth that I think from hence it cometh to pass that those who have a mind hypocritically to put on the guise and appearance of Religion are wont to be notably carefull in this point for so the Pharisees cloaked all their villanies with this garb of piety Now hypocrisy would miss altogether of its design if it did not resemble the truth of things and usually their over solicitude and overdoing herein betrays them to act a part only in Religion BUT it is not only the duty of prayer which the true Penitent expresses his conversion by though this be by some too phantastically called Duty as if all piety consisted in that only for as the literal Prodigal returns to his Father's house and family so the mystical returns to God's house which is his Church and associates himself with God's servants in all the offices of Religion viz. in hearing the word reading meditation Sacraments c. Now he thinks a day spent in God's Courts better then a thousand and had rather be a door-keeper in the house of the Lord then to dwell in the tents of the wicked This one thing he desires of the Lord and is most passionate in that he may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of his life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his Temple And he so highly values the priviledge of God's Church that no private opinion no trifling scrupulosity nor petty disgust shall ever alienate him from it Here he finds himself fortified and incouraged by the great examples of holy men his prayers strengthened by the concurrence of all good people here he is under the publick dispensations of the means of grace and knowledge the very plainness and simplicity of which he now with the great Convert St. Austin values and admires more then all the Greek or Roman eloquence of Speech or subtilty of Philosophy to which every thing else seemed flat and insipid before Above all the holy Sacrament puts him into an ecstasy in this he thinks himself in God's presence in an extraordinary manner and admitted a guest at his Table the Crums of which he thinks himself unworthy of here he refreshes his hungry Soul with the Bread of Life and his wounded Conscience by the Bloud of his crucified Saviour and in both he thinks he sees his provoked but compassionate Father stand with open arms to receive him This he approaches with great reverence with shame and sorrow for his sins past together with faith and hope in God's mercy and will therefore never be negligent of it IN these and all other duties of Religion both publick and private the Convert expresses such an excellent spirit and extraordinary
I lain long enough under the terrours of the Law and the spirit of bondage For God requires not sorrow for it self but for its end and it is no satisfaction to him that his Creatures lie under affrightfull apprehensions besides our own Consciences will tell us we may then dry our eyes and be comfortable when the cause is taken away and not before for then is it Godly sorrow when it bringeth forth repentance not to be repented of 2 Cor. 7. 10. AND herein lies the great uncomfortableness of a death-bed repentance for besides the horrible madness of trusting the issues of eternity upon extempore preparations if it should please God to give a man both the grace and the opportunity then at last seriously to bethink himself to feel remorse for his sins to make resolutions and to renew his baptismal Covenant yet then he can give no proof to himself of his own sincerity because he cannot repair God's honour he can make no conquest over Satan he can leave no example to the world he cannot by habit and exercise make the ways of God become easy and natural to himself he cannot be said to have lived the life of the righteous and therefore cannot comfortably conclude that he shall die the death of such AS for the penitent Thief in the Gospel that accompanied our Saviour in his sufferings upon the Cross to whom our Saviour pronounced that he should that day be with him in Paradise his case was peculiar probably he had lived in great darkness and ignorance and never had the means of grace till now but however it was not unagreeable to the divine wisedom and goodness to do something extraordinary at that great time and to signalize the efficacy of our Saviour's Mediatourship by some remarkable instance at such a time when the dignity and glory of his person was most clouded and obscured and as there never was nor will be such another occasion as this so it is great and desperate folly for any man to trust to such an experiment And whereas in the Parable Matth. 20. vers 12. those Labourers that came into the Vineyard at the eleventh hour are rewarded equally with those that had born the burden and heat of the day It is in the first place to be observed that though they came late yet not so late but that they did really work in the Vineyard and then besides here is nothing contrary to what we are pressing for we are far from intention of discouraging any to return at last or from limiting the mercies of God who is able to foresee what a late Convert would have done if he had opportunity and may accordingly extend mercy to him All therefore which I say is that this is a most uncomfortable state when a man's Conscience cannot give security for him nor is there any thing that affords him positive grounds of hope having not performed the conditions of the New Covenant only he hath a general refuge in the merits of Christ and in God's mercy WHEREFORE there is all the reason and all the wisedom in the world that a man should not trust to prefaces and praeludia beginnings and first eslays of repentance but let it have its perfect work that with the Prodigal Son he not only sit down and bewail his misery or take up resolutions of returning to his Father but that he forthwith set about it and effect it So he arose and came to his Father What entertainment he meets with from his Father upon so doing I am now to shew in the third and last Part of the Parable The father said to the servants bring forth the best robe and put it on him c. S t. LVKE 15. 22. Non patitur contriti cordis holocaustum repulsam Quotiens te in conspectu Domini video suspirantem Spiritum sanctum non dubito aspirantem cum intuâ—or flentem sentio ignoscentem Cypr serm de coena Page 240. 241. THE PARABLE OF THE Prodigal Son PART III. The Prodigal received and reconciled or God's gracious reception of a Penitent Sinner S. Luke 15. Vers 22 23 24. But the Father said to his servants Bring forth the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet And bring hither the fatted Calf and kill it and let us eat and be merry For this my Son was dead and is alive again was lost and is found c. CHAP. I. Of Reconciliation or Justification THE CONTENTS § I. The passionate story of Joseph Gen. 37. parallel to this Parable before us § II. God takes notice of the first beginnings of good in men The use of that consideration § III. God's compassion and tenderness to men under agonies of mind yet without the weakness of humane passion § IV. God not only takes delight in beginnings of good but promotes them by his grace The famous story in Eusebius of St. John and a dissolute young man and several usefull observations thereupon § V. The greatness of God's pardoning mercy and the fullness and compleatness thereof upon repentance set out in several great instances full of unspeakable consolation to the Penitent and wherein God's mercies outgo those of mercifull men the greatness of the sin of our first Parents and of the Jews in crucifying our Lord which notwithstanding were both pardoned § VI. Of the Novation Heresy and the mischiefs of it § VII Practical reflections upon Justification § I. IT is a very lively and pathetick story which Moses gives us concerning Jacob and his Sons especially his beloved Son Joseph to this effect The Brethren of Joseph envying him that great share he had in his Father's affections resolve some way or other to dispatch him out of the way but that they might not imbrue their hands in his bloud they conclude to sell him a slave to the Midianites that happened at that time to come in the way and to hide their own fault from their Father they kill a Kid and dip Joseph's Coat in the bloud and telling a demure story to the old man impose upon his belief that some wild Beast had devoured his Son Which when the good man was possest of he most tenderly resents the affliction rends his Cloaths puts Sackcloth upon his Loins and mourned many days Whereupon his Sons and Daughters and even those especially that had raised the tragedy personate so well as to take upon them to be his comforters but the wound was too deep to be easily cured for he refuses consolation No saith he I will go down to the grave to my Son mourning my grief shall only wear away with my life and only the land of oblivion shall make me forget Joseph At last after a long and sad time of lamentation there comes the surprizing news to the good man Joseph thy Son is yet alive and Ruler of all the Land of Aegypt The aged Father faints at the tidings the News was too good to
he observe the most weak and imperfect essays of the new birth or as the Apostle expresses it when Christ is beginning to be formed in men I saw thee saith our Saviour to Nathanael S. Joh. 1. 48. when thou wast under the fig-tree when thou wast reasoning about me whether I was the Messias or not I was privy to that conflict of thy thoughts between the report of the miracles wrought by me and the prejudicate opinion concerning the supposed place of my nativity I was not so much offended with thy objections as pleased with thy sincerity in that thou didst diligently inquire honestly debate and proceed to resolution upon rational satisfaction Most apposite to this purpose is that passage of the Prophet Jeremiah Chap. 31. vers 18 19 20. I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus Thou hast chastised me and I was chastised as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke Turn thou me and I shall be turned for thou art the Lord my God Surely after that I was turned I repented and after that I was instructed I smote upon my thigh I was ashamed yea even confounded because I did bear the reproach of my youth And after he had thus passionately described the first kindlings of repentance in the hearts of the people of Israel he then introduces God taking notice and expressing his compassions in the next words Is Ephraim my dear Son is he a pleasant child for since I spake against him I do earnestly remember him still therefore my bowels are troubled for him I will surely have mercy upon him saith the Lord. By all which we see that God despiseth not the day of small things NOW the consideration of this affords mighty incouragement to sinners to begin their motion to God-ward who would not put himself upon the way when the first attempt of returning shall be taken notice of If a man do but consider if he doe but pray if but breathe and pant after God there is a gracious eye upon him it is not altogether lost labour Nay saith our Saviour A cup of cold water given to a disciple in the name of a disciple shall not lose its reward And if such mean performances pass not unrewarded much less doth any thing of good escape God's notice and observation And upon the same consideration there is great reason of caution and that men take heed of discouraging any though never so small hopes of good and buddings of reformation in others for seeing God takes notice of beginnings he must needs be offended with those that obstruct them and will be sure severely to resent it Let therefore those that scoff at prayer and devotion as preciseness at seriousness and self-reflection as melancholy degeneracy of spirit that either press men forward into the same excess of riot with themselves and labour to divert or stifle all workings of Conscience by the means of sensual entertainments or treat those with contumely who boggle at their extravagancies and begin to take up and reform let all such I say consider well what they doe when God's eye is upon such beginings of good lest they be found fighters against God And let all that have any sense of goodness themselves or but so much as a reverence of God's all-seeing eye think it becomes them to incourage such beginnings to indeavour to kindle such sparks and blow them up into a flame of love to God and goodness to which purpose I take liberty to apply a passage of the Prophet Isaiah Chap. 65. vers 8. Thus saith the Lord as the new wine is found in the cluster and one saith Destroy it not for there is a blessing in it q. d. The wise Master of the Vineyard especially in an unfruitfull time takes special notice of those few Grapes in a cluster that have good juice in them and will neither permit them to be carelesly crushed with the hand nor cast away amongst refuse So will the God of Israel do by his Vineyard the House of Israel he will take notice of the few that are good in the midst of a bad generation and not destroy all together And in like manner he will not despise the first essays of emergency from former vice and wickedness But thus I am led to the second parallel § III. 2. The Father as soon as he saw his Son had compassion so hath God to mankind especially when he sees them on their way homeward He had always good will towards them as they were his Creatures made in his own image designed for his service and for the enjoyment of himself and upon all these accounts hath a propension to do them good But so long as any man continues in a course of rebellion against him all the issues and expressions of this good will are obstructed which nevertheless as soon as ever he begins to relent and come to himself break out again and discover themselves For as the Psalmist tells us Like as a Father pitieth his Children so the Lord pitieth them that fear him Psal 103. 13. NOT that we are to imagine the Divine Majesty to be subject to the weakness of humane passion in a strict and proper sense so as to feel any pain or trouble upon the account of his concern for mankind for that the spirituality of his nature the perfection of his understanding and his self-sufficiency will by no means admit of But he is pleased in Holy Scripture to represent himself after that manner to the intent that we may be incouraged to hope and to indeavour since we are assured that he is not a meer spectator of the conflicts and agonies of a Penitent but hath a real inclination to do him good and would by no means have him perish To this purpose Ezek. 33. 11. he swears As I live saith the Lord God I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked but that the wicked turn from his way and live Turn ye turn ye from your evil ways for why will ye die O house of Israel What greater passion can any Father express towards his beloved Son then God here condescends to and what greater assurance can God give of his earnestness and reality then that of an Oath by himself WHILEST men are at the worst the divine goodness finds out some arguments of pity for he considers he made them fallible Creatures that he gave them not the bright and piercing intellects of Angels he joyned matter and spirit together in their composition by means whereof there is a continual contest between sense and reason a constant dispute betwixt bonum utile and jucundum that their transgression is not like that of Devils who sinned proprio motu without a tempter he knows the power of example the prejudices of education the long follies of Child-hood and therefore as I have shewed before is not implacable towards mankind whilest the state of life and this world lasts But when he takes notice that any man begins to
to receive him till he soon perceived who it was but then seized with shame he makes from him with all the speed he could The Apostle forgetting his age and gravity follows him with all his might crying out My Son my Son dost thou fly thy Father thy aged unarmed Father Fear me not I come not armed to destroy thee but desirous to save thee I 'll pray for thee I 'll intercede with Christ Jesus on thy behalf I am ready to lay down my life to save thy Soul The revolted youth hearing this makes a stand and then with eyes cast down and weapons laid aside begins to tremble and at last weeping bitterly is in the words of the Historian Re-baptized in his own tears Then S. John embracing him prays for him fasts with him instructs him and leaves him not till he had not only restored him to the society of the Church but settled him in the publick Ministry thereof THE story is very admirable in all the parts of it as wherein amongst other things we may observe in the first place how quickly bad company insinuates its contagion and corrupts youthfull minds and that neither fine parts nor the best education are sufficient security for a vertuous course unless Apollos water as well as Paul plant and God also give the increase AGAIN it is worth observing how easy and sudden the transition is from a luxurious to a lawless life This young man began his risk in riot and ends it in robbery Although this be no strange thing for besides that intemperance makes men bold and rash and fit for any desperate enterprize they that are come to that that they care not what they spend are usually forced not to regard how they get it We note also from this story that great Wits and curious tempers are like razor mettle quickly turned and if they miscarry they become the most notorious Debauchees but if they be well set and hold right become most eminently usefull Moreover we may here also take notice how a sense of guilt and dis-ingenuity baffles a man's spirit dejects his courage disarms and subdues him whereas on the other side conscience of sincerity and good designs spirits and actuates a man above his age temper and common capacity But that which I principally remark in the story is the paternal affection in the aged Apostle toward this dissolute and lost young man how fresh the concern for him was in his thoughts when he came into those parts again where he left him with what strictness he requires the depositum of the Bishop how he forgets himself to recover him what charms there were in the countenance voice motion of the aged Father how strange a thing it was to be young Hector running away from an old Apostle an armed Captain not daring to stand before unarmed and infirm old age to observe the spirit the passion the flaming love of a good man to the Soul of a desperate sinner and in all this to see a lively resemblance of God's goodness to men For God doth not only as I have said before receive men upon their return but moves towards them invites nay draws them to himself He is so far from positively hardening sinners that he takes off their hardness he allures them by his promises prevents them by his grace way-lays them by his providence calls upon them by his word melts them by his kindness works upon them by his Spirit and this Spirit takes all advantageous seasons watches the mollia tempora fandi suggests thoughts to their minds holds their minds close and intent gives them a prospect of the other world and by several other ways without violence to their faculties helps forward their return to God § V. 4. LASTLY As the Earthly Father for joy of his Sons return forgets all his anger and the causes of it passes by his ingratitude and dissolution of manners and treats him with infinite demonstrations of kindness falling on his neck and kissing him So doth our Heavenly Father cast all the iniquities of the penitent ' behind his back blots them out of his book makes no severe reflections no bitter expostulations no upbraidings but passes an act of perfect amnesty and oblivion Justin Martyr in his Work against Trypho brings in our Saviour saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The words are no where to be found in the Gospel but the sense is That God takes men as they are and considers not how evil they have been so that now they become sincerely good This the Prophet Ezekiel frequently proclaims on the behalf of God Chap. 18. especially vers 22. All his sin that he hath committed shall not be once mentioned against him but in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live For as if men apostatize from hopefull and vertuous beginnings it shall not at all avail them that they set out well and began in the Spirit whenas they end in the Flesh upon which account it is a very vain thing for them to goe about to comfort themselves against their present looseness by remembring the time of their conversion and the great passion they have sometime had for Religion but which now they have apostatized from having lost their first love so on the contrary he that was a sinner but now is not i. e. is now sincerely returned from his licentiousness to his duty shall never have his former disobedience imputed to him by God THIS truth Philo represents handsomly in his Allegorical way when glossing upon what the Scripture saith of Enoch After his translation he was not found because God had translated him he paraphrases on this manner God saith he having changed him from an evil to a vertuous man the traces of his former wickedness were no more to be found then if no such thing had ever been committed BUT this gracious procedure of God with penitent sinners deserves to be more fully and particularly unfolded and if we diligently consider what the Scripture assures us of the greatness of God's pardoning mercy we shall observe these three remarkable circumstances all pregnant of unspeakable consolation 1. He pardons great and many sins not onely lighter provocations 2. He forgives repeated follies and relapsed sinners 3. His pardon is full and absolute 1. FIRST amongst men there are some sins that are scarcely if at all thought to be pardonable as where there is malice and treachery involved in the fact or where there is contumely added to the injury And sometimes the greatness of the person injured so inhances the offence as that it is not thought fit to pardon as for instance in Treason against the Supream Power But most certainly there are all these and many more aggravations in most voluntary sins committed against God and yet he pardons Exod. 34. 7. He pardons iniquity transgression and sin i. e. sin of all kinds and degrees whatsoever excepting only the sin against the Holy Ghost which our Saviour hath
told us shall never be forgiven And that sin it self whatsoever it consists in is only upon this account unpardonable because it hath a finally impenitent temper joyned with it otherwise were it possible that such a sinner should repent there would be no doubt of his pardon but bating that peculiar case there is no sin but God hath pardoned and will pardon I will not take upon me to say which were the greatest sins that ever were committed by mankind but I will instance in two that must needs be acknowledged to have been very great which yet have obtained pardon and they are the sin of our first Parents and the sin of the Jews in crucifying our Saviour IN the former of these there was the breach of a known Law and that so newly given as that it could not be forgotten and it was also an easy and reasonable Law God having allowed them all the Trees in the Garden and laid an interdict only upon that one and it was no hard matter to have denied themselves that for God's sake especially considering they came newly out of his hands and saw so freshly the display of his power and wisedom in the Creation of the World and had so many and great instances of his goodness towards themselves besides they had as yet no vitiated faculties nor so much as one example of sin before them but that of the Devils which they had seen to be most severely vindicated It was a hard thing to be first in the transgression and a bold thing to venture to provoke God and to be the first instance of sin to all posterity they had the concern of all mankind upon them as who they knew must stand or fall with them and having frequent tokens of God's presence with them to sin under his eye and to hearken to the suggestions of a vile Beast the Serpent against God was prodigiously strange and yet they did it and God was pleased to pardon them IN the latter of the instances namely the Jews crucifying our Saviour besides the greatness of the Person against whom they sinned putting to death the Lord of life and glory there was designed malice perjury and subornation contumely towards an holy Person ingratitude towards one that had done them all the good they were capable of there was contradiction to the plainest evidence of miracles of all kinds and to the conviction of their own Consciences Notwithstanding all which the same St. Peter who Acts 2. 23. had charged them home in these words Ye men of Israel have with wicked hands crucified and slain Jesus of Nazareth a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God by him did in the midst of you as ye your selves know c. yet in the 38. Verse he exhorts the same men to repentance and to be baptized that they may receive remission of sins and the singular favour of the gift of the Holy Ghost TO these and several other instances of great sins which might easily be added we may cast in for the greater evidence of the vastness of the divine mercy that he pardons not only single acts of sin how hainous soever but long courses and habits of sin and those of several natures and kinds as in Manasses and in the Publicans and Harlots but that we may rise higher yet in admiration of the divine clemency we observe 2. IN the second place that he pardons also relapsed sinners They have a saying Non licèt in bello his peccare that the first faults in war are severely vindicated because there all errours are fatal and searce leave a capacity of being repeated And there are some relations so near and intimate and their ligaments so nice and curious that a breach in them can never be repaired to knit again But the relation of a Father and the goodness of a God leave always room for pardon Nay further They say saith the Prophet Jeremiah if a man put away his Wife and she goe from him and become another man's shall he return to her again But thou O Israel hast plaid the harlot with many lovers yet return again unto me saith the Lord Jer. 2. 1 2. § VI. The doctrine of the Navatians carried a great breadth with it in the Primitive times which denied repentance to those that sinned after Baptism and for that reason it is thought many holy men in those days deferred their Baptism as long as they could that they might not defile their garments but goe from that washing unspotted out of the world The opinion seemed to proceed from extraordinary purity and holiness and therefore as I said prevailed much and had a great reputation in those times and it seems it took its rise from a mistake of a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews Chap. 6. 4. However it was damned by the most learned and holy Fathers of the Church and particularly St. Basil and Gr. Nazianzen call it a damnable doctrine and destructive of Souls in that it discouraged and kept men off from repentance which God is always ready to admit of if it be sincere and such as we have before described IT is true which Clemens of Alexandria hath said that to make a common practice of sinning and then pretending repentance as if we would give God and the Devil their turns is an argument both of an impenitent and unbelieving temper for as he saith afterwards These frequent repentances as it were of course betray rather an intention of sinning again then any design of leaving it and therefore find no acceptance with God And it is also certain that a man that hath frequently relapsed having thereby exceedingly multiplied his guilt must needs feel very bitter pangs and sharp remorse when he doth return and will be ever after very apt to question his own sincerity and which is worse it is to be feared that like as it is with bones which have been often out and set again they will be very apt to slip awry so this person will be justly looked upon as in great danger and therefore hath a necessity of extraordinary watchfullness over himself But notwithstanding all this if such a man after several falls and slips shall stand right and firm at last and demonstrate the truth of his now penitent state by the following course of an holy life there is no question to be made of his acceptance with a mercifull God For God doth not proceed with men upon such terms as we do our passions are stirred many times and the provocation is too great for us to be able to concoct but he is pure mind and reason hath no boiling passion no revenge seeks only the good of his Creatures and so they become at last capable of his favour and blessing he is contented and hath his end Besides he that hath made it our duty that as often as our Brother offends against us and repents so often we should forgive
as that no old score remains upon record against the Penitent it may raise in us great admiration of his infinite goodness beget the most amiable notions of him in our minds and provoke us to love him with all our hearts So our Saviour concludes in the Gospel that where most is forgiven there must undoubtedly lie the greatest obligations of love and gratitude The Apostle tells us Rom. 5. 7. That scarcely for a righteous man will one die but for a good man some would even dare to die All God's Attributes of power and wisedom and holiness are very amiable and lovely but this of his goodness in forgiving sins comes most home to us in that he doth not rigidly insist on his own right but comply with our necessity and relieve our misery To give and bestow benefits upon us is goodness but to forgive is greater because here he divests himself of his own right recedes from his own claim and that for our unspeakable benefit In short he seems not to consider himself but us only in the dispensations of his mercy he is as good as good can be and therefore there is all the reason in the world that we should love him as much as is possible And one of the best and most acceptable ways of expressing that is that which 3. THIRDLY I make a third inference viz. that we imitate this goodness and mercifullness of his this is prest upon us by our Saviour Be ye mercifull as your Father in Heaven is mercifull It is said of Cato that the strict sanctity of his own life made him a severe and rigid Magistrate he knew not how to pardon in other men what he would not permit in himself If God who is a holy and immaculate Being should severely animadvert our failings we could not blame him though we were undone by it nay it ought to be the greatest wonder to us in the whole world that he doth not do so considering the greatness of his Majesty the justice and wisedom of his Laws and such other things of this nature as we have formerly represented But it is the most absurd thing in nature that we who are great offenders our selves that have infinite need of mercy at God's hands that we should be cruel and vindictive towards each other that God should cover our follies and we blazon those of other men shall he pardon us worms and we be remorsless towards our Brethren doth he consider humane infirmity bind up the wounds of the contrite so as to leave no scar or blemish behind of all their former miscarriages and do we rake in the wounds proclaim the follies uncover the nakedness and shame of our neighbour is it tolerable for us to equal our selves with God or are offences greater against us then against him shall we dare to do what we dare not wish should be done to us Do not we pray Enter not into judgment with thy Servants c. and confess That if God be extream to mark what we have done amiss that none can abide it and do we scrupulously weigh severely aggravate and rigorously animadvert the sins of others against our selves doth God forgive us by talents and we unmercifully exact the utmost farthing INDEED we may observe it to be the genius and custom of evil men to remember invidiously the faults which penitent men have forsaken to the end that they may revenge themselves upon them for that change which condemns their own obstinate perseverance in such courses or as hoping to excuse or justify their constant naughtiness by remarking the temporary compliance of those other with them whose contrary course now shames and reproaches them But it is quite otherwise with all good men they partly out of a sense of humanity partly to incourage men to repentance and partly also to confirm and secure such as have repented from all temptations to apostasy draw a curtain over their former misdemeanours and forget what they have forsaken and God hath forgiven therefore if we will either take pattern by God or them we ought to doe so too LASTLY but above all the rest the consideration of God's pardon and the egregious circumstances thereof should be a mighty incouragement to all sinners to repentance when we remember how gracious a Father we grieve by a willfull destroying of our selves how much he pities us and longs for our return what a serene countenance hearty welcome full pardon gracious reception and how innumerable and inestimable blessings we shall have poured out upon us at our so doing And this brings me again to the second part of the penitent Son's entertainment to which therefore I now proceed CHAP. II. Of Sanctification THE CONTENTS § I. What is meant by the best Robe and that it is the usual phrase of Scripture to set out the ornaments of the mind by those of the body § II. Sanctification in different respects both goes before and follows after Justification § III. Three remarkable differences betwixt the measure of Sanctification which God requires and that which he accepts for the present or the different stature of Grace before Justification and after it § IV. The ways by which God works men up to those higher measures of Sanctification which he requires As 1. By mighty obligation working upon their gratitude and ingenuity 2. By the efficacy of Faith 3. By the gift of the Holy Ghost § 1. THERE is a never failing spring of kindness and good will in Parents towards their Children which flows with that life and vigour that nothing is able to dam it up or interrupt it so but that if it be obstructed one way it breaks out and discovers it self another If the Children prove singularly good and vertuous then paternal affection bears a mighty stream overflows all its banks the Parents feel an unspeakable delight and satisfaction and their Children are then the Crown of their age their joy and triumph If they happen to be but tolerable they are ready to interpret all to the best and prone to heap blessings and kindnesses upon them And if they degenerate and prove very bad and undutifull this though it checks the tide yet cannot divert the current for at worst they cannot cease to pity them There is in like manner an everlasting propension in Almighty God to do good to men insomuch that when they are very bad he pities them as soon as they begin to be good he loves and blesses them but when they become generously vertuous and holy he takes complacency in them and all these different degrees of divine favour we have lively represented to us in the Parable before us But we are now upon the second of them namely the great and singular blessings which the Father frankly bestows upon his Son now that he hath repented of his extravagancy and is reconciled to him And under this rank we may reckon these three special instances FIRST whereas the Father observed his Son to return in a
love so long as they are enemies to the common enemy so it happens here that a Convert zealously combating against some one vice in studious declension of that insensibly slips into some degrees of the other extream and then finds it a fresh difficulty vincere eos per quos vicisti to conquer that other infirmity by which he conquered the former TO which purpose it is remarkable concerning that holy man St. Jerom whilst he lived in the affluence of the City and used a free conversation he felt frequent temptations of the flesh and setting himself with all his might to mortify these and to do it effectually retired into a desart that he might both take away the cause and the occasions of those dangers but whilst in that retirement he exercises himself to great severity and austerity he insensibly grew into a blameable asperity of temper which needed a second labour to subdue I will not say as some do that as God would have some remainders of the seven Nations preserved amongst the Children of Israel in the Land of Canaan to be continually as thorns in their eyes and goads in their sides so he orders it that there should be some remainders of the old Adam in us to keep us always humble and employed for certainly God would have all sin expelled our natures But this I say that as Israel was truely in possession of the Land of Canaan from such time as Joshua had conquered those powers that made head against them and had put the chief Cities and places of strength into their hands notwithstanding that a long time after some of those old inhabitants remained amongst them and were no very good Neighbours so I affirm that so long as there is not only a resolution against all sin but a constant hostile pursuit of it and that a man goes on conquering and to conquer such a man is a true Israelite though he have not perfected his conquest nor can yet say with St. Paul I have fought the good fight I have finished my course I have kept the faith and therefore henceforth is laid up for me the crown of righteousness BUT now forasmuch as God both for his own glory and service the comfort of the Convert's own Soul and his greater capacity of the Kingdom of Heaven designs to bring men to higher degrees of sanctification then what he was pleased to accept of when he first received the Penitent to mercy therefore he afterwards puts upon him the Best Robe 2. IT is to be considered that the beginnings of all things that are any way notable especially are wrought with pain and difficulty insomuch that nemo repente fit turpissimus no man finds it very easy at first to doe any egregious wickedness Men become evil by degrees and there is proficiency even in the Devil's school and therefore much more reasonably may it be expected that those that first enter into a strict course of vertue should be sensible of difficulty in their first undertaking IT was an ingenious answer which Plutarch reports to have been given by a Lacedemonian Turor when he was asked what he pretended to and of what avail his indeavours were I make saith he that to become easy and delightfull which is of it self good and necessary It is true Christ Jesus tells us his yoke is easy and his burden is light and without doubt it is so but it is a yoke and a burden still and no man finds it easy untill he have exercised himself to it rewards and punishments set before us and reason and resolution working thereupon will prevail with men to doe their duty but only practice and assuetude makes it become easy and familiar so to doe especially supposing as we do in the present case a man but lately accustomed to indulge himself in a course of sin let such a man's conversion be never so real and hearty however it cannot be expected that he should presently do Christ's commands and say they are not grievous It is certain such a man if he be what we suppose him that is sincere will resist his inclination and change his course but because it was lately a course there will yet be an inclination towards it and consequently a conflict and difficulty in avoyding it for as we said before it is only one custome can perfectly supplant another and only habit can imitate nature and make easy the cutting off our corrupt members is a hard task till by time and degrees they become mortified and then it is done without any considerable pain or difficulty Whosoever hath any principle of divine life or true sense of God in him will not allow himself in the neglect of God's worship yet he will find it no easy business to hold his heart intent and constant in it till it have become customary and natural to him and then it is so far easy and delightfull to him that he knows not how to live without it Now although that state which tuggs at the Oare and draws on heavily may be sincere because it discharges its duty honestly though with great difficulty and therefore find acceptance with a good God yet forasmuch as his intention is that we should become partakers of the divine nature and that it be our meat and drink to doe his will that the way of his commands be to us as our necessary food that we should do his will with that alacrity on earth with which it is done by the Angels in Heaven that our wills should be perfectly conformed to his and Religion become natural to us partly to the end that we may do him the more honour for there is nothing doth so much reputation to the divine Law and government as the chearfull obedience of his Subjects partly also that we may be the more fit for the Kingdom of Heaven for those most easily fall in with the heavenly Quire who have practised their part beforehand therefore since he desires that we should not only be not evil but generously good nor meerly draw on heavily and uncomfortably but fly as upon the wings of a Cherub in his service it seems good to him when he hath pardoned a penitent to confer upon him greater measures of Sanctification 3. A young Convert though he have all the parts and members of a perfect man in Christ and should also be supposed in great measure to have overcome the difficulties which always attend vertuous beginnings yet he is but a beginner and must needs be conceived weak and feeble in his whole contexture he is not only apt to be abused with Sophistry and carried about with every wind of doctrine but less able to bear the burdens and to resist the temptations he must expect to meet with the traces of his former course are not yet worn out and so he is the apter to return he is not at the top but going up hill and may easily faint or slip he hath not such experience of
formerly a great sinner himself and hath known by sad experience the deplorableness of that condition and found mercy at God's hands methinks such a person should with warm affections and tender bowels awaken that man into an apprehension of his danger who is in the condition he himself hath escaped and incourage him to try those mercies of God which he himself hath experimented For if either a righteous man that never needed repentance i. e. such a change of his whole state as we have been speaking of should be less sensible of such a man's case or especially if a proud self-applauding Pharisee despise him yet it will by no means become a Convert to be without compassion For besides all other arguments to this purpose it may be such a man may have just cause to consider whether his own example when he did goe on in the way of sin had not that pernicious contagion as to infect or confirm this man in his wickedness which he sees him now lie under and then it will not be only charity but justice which will oblige him to this duty IT was the opinion if I remember rightly of St. Basil that in Hell the torments of the damned are daily increased in proportion as the evil seed of their corrupt doctrine or the evil example which they sowed whilst they were alive fructifies upon earth but whether that be so or no it is certain men's sins are aggravated by the mischief they do to others as well as by other circumstances and therefore every such Penitent as we speak of must think it his duty and concern to indeavour to hinder the propagation of sin and to stop the infection in others as well as to destroy the malignity of it in himself § II. NOW there are many ways which an honest heart will find out of doing this we are recommending without taking upon him to be a Preacher Solomon tells us A wicked man speaketh with his feet and teacheth with his fingers that is though he say nothing with his lips all his life and actions do teach and instruct the world in wickedness and there is no question but that holy men may most effectually recommend vertue to others by their own practice and example Example insinuates gently works insensibly but powerfully as almost all great Engines do it relieves men's modesty and yet shames their sloth it kindles emulation presses upon ingenuity recommends the excellency convinces the necessity demonstrates the possibility of vertue Besides that there are a great many of the most curious lines thereof that are not to be described by the pencil or that can be expressed by words but are to be observed in the life and conversation of good men For this reason amongst others it pleased God to send our Saviour not only to preach the divine life to the world but to live and converse with men that by his example he might more plainly convince them of it and for this cause also we solemnly thank God for the examples of all holy men that have gone before us AND besides example there are many opportunities and advantages which good men have of propagating a sense of piety and Religion such as the authority of Parents influence of benefactours interest of relations convenience of travelling together society of commerce and all other bonds of conversation Every of which a mind inflamed with the love of God and compassion to the Souls of men will find usefull to this purpose And this was the course Moses advised Israel for the keeping up a sense of God and his Laws in their minds and the propagation of it to posterity Deut. 6. 6 7. These words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart and thou shalt teach them diligently to thy Children and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up c. And for the incouragement of all good men in this business besides the great honour it is to be subservient to God in so important an affair and besides the unspeakable comfort to our own Consciences If by converting a sinner from the evil of his way we save a Soul from death and cover a multitude of sins Jam. 5. 20. and that by such an act of zeal we have also the happiness to efface our own former miscarriages Besides all this I say in present we shall also advance our own glory and crown hereafter for in the words of the Prophet Daniel They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the Firmament and they that turn many to righteousness as the Stars for ever and ever Daniel 12. 3. IT were very easy to inlarge on this subject but that which is most pertinent and the peculiar consideration of this place is to shew the particular aptness of those that have themselves been converted from a wicked life to be instrumental of recovering others which I will briefly give account of in the following particulars and so dismiss this point And in order to this § III. IN the first place it is considerable that those that are of sickly constitutions are generally observed to be more pitifull and compassionate to the infirm then those robust and healthy persons that scarce ever knew what sickness meant and those that have long languished under any painfull infirmity and at last have recovered are both the best able and most willing to give advice to others under the same distemper Upon which account it hath been the custom of some Nations who had no professed Physicians to bring their sick out into the Market-place where all persons that came were obliged by Law to take notice of them that by this means the experience of one that had escaped a disease might afford a relief to him that now laboured under it And so it is reasonable to think that those who have been sick in sin and of sin heretofore must needs by their own experience know the baits that allure men the charms that bewitch them the fallacies of Sathan that impose upon them the folly and perverseness that defixes men in that unhappy estate the workings of passion the regret of Conscience the thoughts and reasonings the objections the prejudices and the very inside of other men in that condition And therefore as God commands Israel Exod. 23. 9. Thou shalt not oppress a stranger for ye know the heart of a stranger seeing ye were strangers in the land of Aegypt i. e. they knew what injuries oppressions insolencies and affronts a stranger was exposed to and what fears anxieties and jealousies he must needs be always under and therefore it having been their own case they ought to think it reasonable to pity such so in the present case the Convert is furnished both with more observations to render him serviceable to the conversion of Souls and more compassion to apply and make use of his experience to
that end THEREFORE St. Paul though he was execrated of his own Countrymen because he forsook Moses to follow Christ yet shewed more dexterity in refuting their prejudices and more tenderness to their Souls then any other Apostle and particularly Rom. 9. 1 2 3. he expresses himself thus I say the truth in Christ I lie not my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost that I have great sorrow and heaviness in my heart For I could wish that my self were accursed from Christ for my Brethren my Kinsmen according to the flesh c. Where whatever he mean by the expression of being accursed from Christ he certainly describes the deepest compassion that a mortal breast is capable of and that he had a sense of this towards his Brethren he confirms by the most solemn Oath that can be made I need not here add because I have touched that before that such persons are also filled usually with the greatest zeal of God's glory whom they have formerly dishonoured and the greatest indignation against sin by which they have been abused and think themselves obliged to a double diligence by the consideration of their former dis-service of all which St. Paul is also an example 1 Cor. 15. 10. I laboured more abundantly then all the rest c. But I observe IN the second place such persons as have been formerly notorious for a course of wickedness and now are become sincerely good and vertuous are a standing reproof of the folly of sin nay I may call them the very credential letters of vertue and convincing arguments of the necessity of conversion such as strangely awaken men to consider their own station IT was a very good plea that the Platonist makes for Vertue in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. That the ways of vertue are more pleasant to a good man then the ways of sin and licentiousness are to an evil and vicious man and therefore more amiable and better in themselves appears saith he by this that several men who have tasted all the pleasures of sin forsake it and come over to vertue but there is scarce an instance to be found of the man that had well experimented the delights of vertue that ever could be drawn off from it or find in his heart to fall back to his former course But to see a man that had ran into all excess of riot to tack about to a quite contrary course from a drunkard to become sober from lascivious to become chaste and modest from a covetous person to become charitable from prophaneness to set himself to reade and study the Scripture and from cursing and blaspheming to bless and pray and this change to be wrought in health and strength without the check of a sick-bed or the dreadfull apprehensions of approaching death I say this spectacle cannot but be a most convincing argument of the necessity of repentance to all such as are yet in the gall of bitterness and under the bonds of iniquity LASTLY to say no more such persons so changed as aforesaid are standing monuments of the divine mercy and of the powers of the Gospel and irrefragable arguments of the possibility of recovering the greatest sinners if they be not wanting to themselves or rather if they do not chuse their own destruction For they proclaim aloud the greatness of the divine goodness the largeness of his heart the openness of his arms and they upbraid the sinner of folly of madness of cruelty to himself if yet he persevere It is said Miltiades Trophies would not suffer Themistocles to sleep and Caesar's thoughts continually upbraided him with the great exploits Alexander had effected in a few years But when a sinner shall observe such a man that was as foolish as himself to become wise and sober one that ran in the same race and was as near the pit of Hell as he escaped and himself still upon the brink of it when I say he shall consider that such a man that had all the temptations pretences excuses examples and every other instance of debauchment that himself hath to find just reason to break through those obstacles and by the mercy of God to be saved and as a fire-brand plucked out of the fire certainly if any thing in the world can move him this must make him look about him IN the 16. Chapter of this Gospel our Saviour introduces a certain rich man in Hell interceding with Abraham that Lazarus might be sent from the dead to preach repentance to his five Brethren supposing that though they would not hearken to Moses and the Prophets yet such a spectacle and so certain intelligence from the infernal regions must needs rouze them Father Abraham denied his request and God doth not use to gratify such curiosity But indeed if a man consider well it is almost the same thing when God affords us an example of a man that was dead in trespasses and sins and under the very torments of Hell in his Conscience but now redeemed and recovered by the grace of God and sends him to preach repentance to us And I think I may say in this case as the afore mentioned Simplicius said of the discourses of Epictetus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. The man that is incorrigible under such a powerfull remedy there is nothing but the very torments of the damned can work upon him And so much also for that point § IV. WE have now seen severally the three Ornaments the Father puts upon his returning Son and the favours God bestows upon a sincere Convert represented by the Best Robe a Ring on his Hand Shoes on his Feet Let us now take a view of them altogether let us I say make a stand a little and see the Son in all his new attire I mean let us suppose all these favours of God bestowed upon some pardoned sinner and then take notice what a brave and excellent person such a man will be IT was a noble character which the Historian gives of Marcus Cato homo virtuti simillimus per omnia diis quà m hominibus propior qui nunquam rectè fecit ut facere videretur sed quia aliter facere non potuit Cato saith he was vertue drawn to the life and the resemblance was so exact that it was hard to say whether vertue animated Cato or Cato gave subsistence and visibility to vertue nay such was the unshaken greatness of his mind and the purity of his life that he seemed more to participate of divine perfection then of humane frailty for he was both so far above all temptations of doing evil and also free from the allay of mean ends and designs in doing good that it seemed a kind of necessity of nature in him to doe well This was bravely said had it not been somewhat too Romantick But the man we are speaking of under the aforesaid qualifications must as much out go Cato as he out-stripped other
another Some men call the betaking themselves to a Cloister or Monastery by the name of forsaking the world as if that was the greatest instance of self-denial and mortification whereas in truth if things be well considered especially if that state of retirement be ordered as it should and pretends to be it is so far from a severity to ones self that it is the most effectually to consult a man's ease and comfort it is to forsake the hurry the trouble vexation and care of the world and to enjoy freely and without interruption the best thing this world hath which is the company of persons just like a man's self without the annoyance of different humours qualities and interests and doubtless were such a thing to be hoped for in this world which that sort of men pretend it were the most lovely and desirable thing that can be here that so many good and wise men who destine themselves only to the study of vertue and knowledge who are all of a mind all in a like condition who have no cross or interfering interests amongst them should enjoy one another constantly under the same roof relieve one anothers necessities improve one anothers parts and comfort each others minds Such a condition I say were it any where to be found on this side Heaven would tempt men to say with St. Peter Master it is good for us to be here c. But alas whatever men talk or fancy there is no so select company but there is some weakness and folly amongst them there is no such recess but emulation and passion finds entrance no wilderness without a Devil and temptation nor any life whatsoever in this world that is wholly free from care and vexation Because there is sickliness and passion divers humours of Body and different constitutions of mind the understandings of men are of several statures their interests thwart one another there will be peevishness and mis-understanding whisperings and jealousy passion and parties amongst men while they are here BUT in the Kingdom of Heaven there meet the spirits only of just men made perfect holy men freed from mis-understanding passion or imperfection no annoyance either by the vicinage of the wicked or the infirmities of the sincerely vertuous All are of one mind of one lip one heart no saying I am of Paul I of Cephas or I of Christ for Christ is all and in them all AND what a felicity this is like to be we may partly guess by the distractions of the Church here below for want of it which are such as that it 's hard to say whether Religion suffer more by its united enemies or by its divided friends and whether the uncharitableness of Christians be not as lamentable as the persecutions of Pagans But there disputes shall cease all heats be abated all controversies umpired and all having one end and interest the only emulation shall be who shall imbrace the other with the more ardent love and more adore and magnify the Divine Majesty THERE shall be the glorious Panegyris the Assembly and Church of the first born a collection of all the good men that ever were from the foundation of the world and men shall come from the East and West and from the North and from the South and sit down with Abraham Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God Here shall be no private spirit no narrow hide-bound mind that can love only their own opinion or party or kindred or benefactours but a generous love an universal good-will those shall imbrace that never saw each other before because the same image of God and goodness runs through the whole society Who would not make one of this Assembly who would not get into this Ark out of a troublesome froward contentious world and there live in love in joy in peace to all eternity THESE are some Clusters of the Land of Canaan this is a rude and imperfect draught of the New Jerusalem this I say is according as I am able to set it forth the entertainment which God gives his Children when they come home to him And so much for the third and last part of the Parable THE FATHER'S APOLOGY OR A VINDICATION OF THE Divine Goodness In the aforesaid Dispensation WE have now gone through all the three Parts of the Parable which we observed at our entrance upon it and in the first of them under the type of a loose and undutifull Son we have seen the extravagant folly and madness of a course of sin In the second under the figure of the same Son recovering his right mind and returning to himself and to his Father we have had set before us a lively draught of true repentance And in the last by the compassions and kindness of an earthly Parent in receiving blessing and rejoicing in such a Son upon his return we have had some resemblance of the unspeakable mercies of God in pardoning sanctifying and saving penitent sinners And now we are come to the Epilogue or Conclusion of the whole which in the letter contains the Apology which the Father makes for this his indulgent proceedings with his Son and in the mystery and scope of it a vindication of God's justice wisedom and goodness in treating great sinners upon their repentance with all those demonstrations of favour and bounty which we have lately discoursed of FOR as we have noted in the entrance upon this Parable the Scribes and Pharisees took great offence both at the kind and obliging conversation which our Saviour used towards Publicans and Sinners and at the incouragement he gave them in his doctrine to hope for pardon and reception with God upon their repentance the latter of these was the immediate discharge of that gracious Embassy our Saviour came into the world upon viz. to amend it and to make reconciliation between God and man and the former was only a prudent Oeconomy of his to oblige their attention and to gain opportunities of treating with men in order to their reformation BUT those ill-natured and self-weening persons who would ingross all God's favours to themselves and their own character interpret this condescension of our Saviour to bad men to be in derogation to those that were good and traduce the comfortableness of his Gospel as an incouragement to looseness For why say they should God the King of glory be thought to debase himself so far as to send Embassadours to Rebels hath he more kindness for them then for his most dutifull Subjects hath he like David such soft indulgence towards a comely but disobedient Absolom that he prefers his safety before the whole host of his most loyal Servants can it be that the Almighty should like some good natured persons be so ready to forgive their enemies that they forget their friends and themselves too what is there no difference between the good and the bad no distinction is Heaven prepared for the one as well as for the other is he likely
such persons were in and partly the honour and happiness of such an entertainment would compell them to come in Upon this account God propounds not only pardon of sin but all the forementioned inestimable benefits to repenting sinners as well as to those just men that need no repentance AND although it be certain that God hath neither such need of men's service as to oblige him to resort to these great inducements and it be also very true that there are but a small number of those that make up the Quire in glory who upon such motives were converted from extream debauchery yet such is the graciousness of the good Shepherd that he carries the lost Sheep home on his Shoulders rejoicing and such is the goodness of God that he sticks not at this price for the redemption of any one Soul Besides it is to be considered that as we noted from the Historian formerly Difficile est in tot humanis erroribus solâ innocentiâ vivere that though no good Subject will voluntarily transgress the laws of his Country and fall into the displeasure of the Prince yet the most wary and inoffensive person that is most secure of his own integrity would desire to live under such a government where there was room for mercy and pardon if he should offend and the best of men are so sensible of the power of temptation and the slipperiness of their station as well as conscious of their own sincerity that they are marvellously comforted and incouraged by this admirable grace and goodness of God to sinners AND whereas the fear of Hell may be thought sufficient both to reclaim sinners from their evil ways and to preserve good men from apostasy we shall find upon due consideration that fear let it be of what object it will is neither so lasting a principle nor so potent and effective a motive as hope for this last raises generosity inflames the mind spirits all the powers despises or glories in difficulty and therefore all wise men imploy this Engine especially in all great enterprizes and indeavour to make men's hopes greater then their fears and so order the matter that those they employ may have a prospect of so great a good by success in their attempts as shall outweigh all their apprehensions of difficulty or danger in the atchievement And this will be the more remarkable if we observe in that famous encounter of David with Goliah the Giant of Gath that although there was doubtless some extraordinary impulse upon David's heart to undertake that business yet the holy Text intimates that he listned to the discourses of the people and was inflamed by the general assurance was given him of a mighty and glorious reward to him that should effect it Since therefore the proposition of great and glorious hopes is so necessary not only to draw men off from the present allurements of sin and to dissolve the charms of sense which habituate sinners are bound in but also to comfort and incourage even good men themselves and to ingage both the one and the other in a generous course of vertue the Divine Majesty considering he hath to do with men and resolving to deal with them agreeably to their natures thinks it as well becoming his wisedom as his goodness not only to proclaim impunity to his rebels upon their submission but to assure them of the highest favours and preferments in the Court of Heaven 2. SECONDLY the extream difficulty and consequently the wonderfull rarity of examples of great sinners recovered to sincere piety makes such happy accidents deserve to be solemnized with the greater joy and triumph St. Gregory Nazianzen making an oration in commemoration of St. Cyprian as well reports his flagitious life before his conversion to Christianity as his admirable vertues and piety afterwards and makes the former a shadow to heighten and set off the latter For saith he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is nothing so great a matter to maintain the Character of a good man when a man hath once attained to it as to begin a whole new course of piety for now the one is but to be like a man's self and to pursue a custom or habit but the other requires a vertuous choice and a manly resolution able to bear down former habits and therefore there are but few examples of the one but many of the other INDEED it is an unspeakable advantage to be early ingaged in the ways of vertue for then by reason of the easiness of doing good which is consequent of custom a man seems to be under 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a divine fate a peculiar predestination to happiness and therefore if it be well considered there is nothing in all a man's whole life that he hath greater reason to thank God for then that good providence of his which takes hold of our tender years and forms them to a sense of Religion for hereby sin is made dreadfull to our Consciences and upon the matter vertue is as easy as vice and the narrow way to Heaven as ready to our feet as the broad way of destruction But on the other side Revocare gradus hic labor hoc opus to reduce an old dislocation is very painfull to put off the old man to change customs to cast out Satan out of his old possession must be very difficult and require a very brave and generous resolution AND although to omnipotent power all things are alike easy yet forasmuch as God not only speaks after the manner of men but also proceeds ordinarily by the course of natural causes and doth not supersede their activity but assist them proportionably to their natures it must needs notwithstanding the divine grace be a very difficult thing to recover an old and deplored sinner in whom all the powers of the mind are enfeebled the sense of Conscience stupified and the very Synteresis and natural notions of the Soul are corrupted and consequently a through reformation of such a person is like to life from the grave and must needs draw after it not only the eyes and admiration of men but also the vexation of Hell and make the Devil rage as disappointed of the prey he thought himself sure of but especially must produce joy in Heaven and amongst the holy Angels IT can indeed be no surprizal to Almighty God who foreknows all things from the beginning and is as far from admiration as from mutability of passions both which proceed from shortness of understanding nor to our Lord Jesus Christ now in glory for we see that whilst he was upon earth he knew when vertue-proceeded from him to cure the woman of her inveterate distemper But whereas men are wont to make some passionate expressions of their resentment of every new and admirable event God thinks fit also in such an extraordinary recovery as this we are speaking of to set up a monument crowning him that overcomes the aforesaid difficulties with immortal glory