Repentance and Sincere Obedience be not the Terms of Salvation and the necessary Conditions of Happiness Whether there shall be a future Judgment when all men shall be sentenced according to their works Whether there be a Heaven and Hell Whether good men shall be eternally and unspeakably happy and wicked men extreamly and everlastingly miserable These are the great Controversies of Religion upon which we are to dispute on God's behalf against sinners God asserts and sinners deny these things not in Words but which is more emphatical and significant in their Lives and Actions These are practical Controversies of Faith and it concerns every man to be resolved and determined about them that he may frame his life accordingly And so for Repentance God says Repentance is a forsaking of sin and a through change and amendment of life the sinner says that it is only a formal Confession and a slight asking of God forgiveness God calls upon us speedily and forthwith to repent the sinner saith 't is time enough and it may safely be defer'd to sickness or death these are important Controversies and matters of moment But men do not affect common Truths whereas these are most necessary And indeed whatever is generally useful and beneficial ought to be common and not to be the less valued but the more esteemed for being so And as these Doctrines of Faith and Repentance are never unseasonable so are they more peculiarly proper when we celebrate the Holy Sacrament which was instituted for a solemn and standing Memorial of the Christian Religion and is one of the most powerful Arguments and Perswasives to repentance and a good life The Faith of the Gospel doth more particularly respect the death of Christ and therefore it is call'd Faith in his Blood because that is more especially the Object of our Faith the Blood of Christ as it was a Seal of the truth of his Doctrine so it is also a Confirmation of all the Blessings and Benefits of the New Covenant And it is one of the greatest Arguments in the world to repentance In the Blood of Christ we may see our own guilt and in the dreadful Sufferings of the Son of God the just desert of our sins for he hath born our griefs and carried our sorrows he was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities therefore the Commemoration of his Sufferings should call our sins to remembrance the Representation of his Body broken should melt our hearts and so often as we remember that his blood was shed for us our eyes should run down with rivers of tears so often as we look upon him whom we have pierced we should mourn over him When the Son of God suffered the rocks were rent in sunder and shall not the consideration of those sufferings be effectual to break the most stony and obdurate heart What can be more proper when we come to this Sacrament than the renewing of our Repentance When we partake of this Passover we should eat it with bitter herbs The most solemn Expressions of our Repentance fall short of those Sufferings which our blessed Saviour underwent for our sins if our head were waters and our eyes fountains of tears we could never sufficiently lament the cursed Effects and Consequences of those provocations which were so fatal to the Son of God And that our Repentance may be real it must be accompanied with the Resolution of a better life for if we return to our sins again we trample under foot the Son of God and profane the Blood of the Covenant and out of the Cup of Salvation we drink our own damnation and turn that which should save us into an instrument and Seal of our own ruin SERMON II. Serm. 2. Preach'd on Ash-Wednesday Of confessing and forsaking Sin in Order to Pardon PROV XXVIII 13 He that covereth his sins shall not prosper but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy SInce we are all sinners and liable to the Justice of God it is a matter of great moment to our comfort and happiness to be rightly informed by what Means and upon what Terms we may be reconciled to God and find mercy with him And to this purpose the Text gives us this advice and direction whoso confesseth and forsaketh his sin shall have mercy Vol. 8. In which words there is a great Blessing and Benefit declared and promised to sinners upon certain Conditions The Blessing and Benefit promised is the mercy and favour of God which comprehends all the happy Effects of God's mercy and goodness to sinners And the Conditions upon which this Blessing is promised are two Confession of our sins and forsaking of them and these two contain in them the whole nature of that great and necessary Duty of Repentance without which a sinner can have no reasonable hopes of the mercy of God I. Here is a Blessing or Benefit promised which is the mercy and favour of God And this in the full extent of it comprehends all the Effects of the mercy and goodness of God to sinners and doth primarily import the pardon and forgiveness of our sins And this probably Solomon did chiefly intend in this expression for so the mercy of God doth most frequently signifie in the Old Testament viz. the forgiveness of our sins And thus the Prophet explains it Isa 55.7 Let the wicked forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord and he will have mercy and to our God for he will abundantly pardon But now since the clear revelation of the Gospel the mercy of God doth not only extend to the pardon of sin but to power against it because this also is an Effect of God's free grace and mercy to sinners to enable them by the grace of his holy Spirit to master and mortifie their lusts and to persevere in Goodness to the end And it comprehends also our final pardon and absolution at the great day together with the glorious Reward of eternal life which the Apostle expresseth by finding mercy with the Lord in that day And this likewise is promised to Repentance Acts 3.19 Repent ye therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord and he shall send Jesus Christ who before was preached unto you that is that when Jesus Christ who is now preached unto you shall come you may receive the final sentence of absolution and forgiveness And thus much shall suffice to have spoken of the Blessing and Benefit here promised the mercy of God which comprehends all the blessed Effects of the divine grace and goodness to sinners the present pardon of sin and power to mortifie sin and to persevere in a good course and our final absolulution by the sentence of the great day together with the merciful and glorious Reward of eternal life II. We will consider in the next place the Conditions upon
which this Blessing is promised and they are two the Confessing and Forsaking of our sins whoso confesseth and forsaketh his sin shall have mercy and these two do contain and constitute the whole nature of Repentance without which a sinner can have no reasonable hopes to find mercy with God I begin with the First the Confession of our sins by which is meant a penitent acknowledgment of our faults to God to God I say because the Confession of our sins to men is not generally speaking a Condition of the forgiveness of them but only in some particular cases when our sins against God are accompanied and complicated with scandal and injury to men In other cases the Confession of our sins to men is not necessary to the pardon of them as I shall more fully shew in the progress of this Discourse All the difficulty in this matter is that the Confession of our sins is opposed to the covering and concealing of them he that covereth his sin shall not prosper but whoso confesseth them shall have mercy but no man can hope to hide his sin from God and therefore confession of them to God cannot be here meant But this Objection if it be of any force quite excludeth Confession to God as no part of Solomon's meaning when yet Confession of our sins to God is granted on all hands to be a necessary Condition of the forgiveness of them And to take away the whole ground of this Objection men are said in Scripture when they do not confess their sins and repent of them to hide and conceal them from God Not to acknowledge them is as if a man went about to cover them And thus David opposeth confession of sins to God to the hiding of them Psal 32.5 I acknowledged my sin unto thee and mine iniquity have I not hid I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord so that this is no reason why the Text should not be understood of the Confession of our sins to God But because the necessity of confessing our sins to men that is to the Priest in order to the forgiveness of them is a great point of difference between us and the Church of Rome it being by them esteemed a necessary Article of Faith but by us so far from being necessary to be believed that we do not believe it to be true therefore for the clear stating of this matter I shall briefly enquire into these Two things I. Whether Confession of our sins to the Priest as taught and practised in the Church of Rome be necessary to the forgiveness of them II. How far the disclosing and revealing of our sins to the Ministers of God is convenient upon other accounts and for other purposes of Religion I. Whether Confession of our sins to the Priest and the manner in which it is taught and practised in the Church of Rome be necessary to the forgiveness of them What manner of Confession this is the Council of Trent hath most precisely determined viz. Secret Confession to the Priest alone of all and every mortal sin which upon the most diligent search and examination of our Consciences we can remember our selves to be guilty of since our Baptism together with all the Circumstances of those sins which may change the nature of them because without the perfect knowledge of these the Priest cannot make a judgment of the nature and quality of mens sins nor impose fitting Penance for them This is the Confession of sins required in the Church of Rome which the same Council of Trent without any real ground from Scripture or Ecclesiastical Antiquity doth most confidently affirm to have been instituted by our Lord and by the Law of God to be necessary to salvation and to have been always practised in the Catholick Church I shall as briefly as I can examine both these Pretences of the Divine Institution and Constant Practice of this kind of Confession First For the Divine Institution of it they mainly rely upon three Texts in the first of which there is no mention at all of Confession much less of a particular Confession of all our sins with the Circumstances of them in the other two there is no mention of Confession to the Priest and yet all this ought clearly to appear in these Texts before they can ground a Divine Institution upon them for a Divine Institution is not to be founded upon obscure Consequences but upon plain words The First Text and the only one upon which the Council of Trent grounds the Necessity of Confession is John 20.23 Whosesoever sins ye remit they are remitted and whosesoever sins ye retain they are retained It is a sign they were at a great loss for a Text to prove it when they are glad to bring one that hath not one word in it concerning Confession nor the least intimation of the necessity of it But let us see how they manage it to their purpose The Apostles and their Successors saith Bellarmine by this power of remitting and retaining sins are constituted Judges of the case of Penitents but they cannot judge without hearing the Cause and this infers particular Confession of sins to the Priest from whence he concludes it necessary to the forgiveness of sins But do not the Ministers of the Gospel exercise this power of remitting sins in Baptism And yet particular Confession of all sins to the Priest is not required no not in the Church of Rome in the Baptism of adult Persons And therefore according to them particular Confession of sin to the Priest is not necessary to his exercising the power of remitting sins and consequently the necessity of Confession cannot be concluded from this Text. And to shew how they are puzled in this matter Vasquez by a strange device concludes the necessity of Confession from the power of retaining sins for says he if the Priest have a power of retaining sins that is of denying Pardon and Absolution to the Penitent then he may impose Confession as a Condition of forgiveness and not absolve the Penitent upon other terms But supposing the Priest to have this unreasonable power this makes Confession no otherwise necessary by Divine Institution than going to Jerusalem or China is in order to the forgiveness of our sins or submitting to any other foolish condition that the Priest thinks fit to require for according to this way of reasoning this power of retaining sins makes every foolish thing that the Priest shall impose upon the Penitent to be necessary by Divine Command and Institution But the truth is this power of remitting and retaining sins is exercised by the Ministers of the Gospel in the administration of the Sacraments and the preaching of the Gospel which is call'd the word of reconciliation the ministry whereof is committed to them And thus the ancient Fathers understood it and as a great Divine told them in the Council of Trent it was perhaps never expounded by any one Father concerning the
accompanied with great sorrow for our sins considering the great dishonour we have brought to God and the danger into which we have brought our selves I will declare mine iniquity says David and I will be sorry for my sin And this Sorrow must be proportionable to the degree of our Sin If we have been very wicked and have sinned greatly against the Lord and have multiplied our transgressions and continued long in an evil course have neglected God and forgotten him days without number the measure of our sorrow must bear some proportion to the degree of our Sins if they have been as Scarlet and Crimson as the Prophet expresseth it that is of a deeper dye than ordinary our Sorrow must be as deep as our Guilt for it is not a slight trouble and a few tears that will wash out such stains Not that tears are absolutely necessary tho' they do very well become and most commonly accompany a sincere Repentance All tempers are not in this alike some cannot express their sorrow by tears even then when they are most inwardly and sensibly grieved But if we can easily shed tears upon other occasions certainly rivers of tears ought to run down our eyes because we have broken Gods Laws the Reasonable and Righteous and good Laws of so good a God of so Gracious a Soveraign of so mighty a Benefactor of the Founder of our Being and the perpetual Patron and Protector of our lives but if we cannot command our tears there must however be great trouble and contrition of Spirit especially for great sins to be sure to that degree as to produce the 3. Property I mentioned of a Penitent Confession namely a sincere Resolution to leave our sins and betake our selves to a better course He does not confess his fault but stand in it who is not resolved to amend True Shame and Sorrow for our Sins is utterly inconsistent with any thought of returning to them It argues great obstinacy and impudence to confess a fault and continue in it Whenever we make Confession of our sins to God surely it is meet to say unto him I will not offend any more that which I know not teach thou me and if I have done iniquity I will do no more This is the first part of Repentance mentioned in the Text the first Condition of our finding mercy with God the Penitent acknowledgment of our sins to him I proceed to the Second Condition required to make us capable of the mercy of God which is the actual forsaking of our sins whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy I shall not go about to explain what is meant by forsaking sin it is that which every body can understand but few will do there lies all the difficulty I shall only put you in mind that forsaking of sin comprehends our return to our duty that necessarily follows from it In sins of Commission he that hath left any Vice does thereby become master of the contrary Virtue virtus est vitium fugere not to be drunk is to be sober not to oppress or defraud or deal falsly is to be Just and Honest and for sins of Omission the forsaking of them is nothing else but the doing of those Duties which we omitted and neglected before And therefore what Solomon here calls forsaking of sin is elsewhere in Scripture more fully exprest by ceasing to do evil and learning to do well Isa 1.16 By forsaking our sins and turning to God Isa 55.7 Let the wicked man forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord. By turning from all our sins and keeping all Gods Laws and Statutes Ezek. 18.21 If the wicked will turn from all his sins which he hath committed and keep all my statutes and do that which is lawful and right And this is a most Essential part of Repentance and a necessary condition of our finding mercy with God That part of Repentance which I have mentioned and insisted upon before the Penitent acknowledgment of our sins to God with Shame and Sorrow for them and a firm purpose and Resolution to leave them all this is but Preparatory to the actual forsaking of them that which perfects and compleats our Repentance is to turn from our evil ways and to break off our sins by righteousness And these terms of confessing and forsaking our sins are Reasonable in themselves and Honourable to God and Profitable to us and upon lower Terms we have no reason to expect the Mercy of God nor in truth are we capable of it either by the present forgiveness of our sins or the final absolution of the great day and the blessed Reward of Eternal Life God peremptorily requires this change as a condition of our Forgiveness and Happiness Repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out Acts 3.19 If thou wilt enter into life keep the commandments Matth. 19.17 Without holiness no man shall see the Lord Heb. 12.14 And why should any man hope for the Mercy of God upon other Terms than those which he hath so plainly and peremptorily declared It is a mean and unworthy thought of God to imagine that he will accept men to his favour and eternal life upon other Terms than of better obedience Will any wise Father or Prince accept less from his Children and Subjects will they be satisfied with sighs and tears as well as with Obedience And well pleased if they be but melancholy for their faults tho' they ne-never mend them We must not impute that to God which would be a defect of Wisdom and good Government in any Father or Prince upon Earth God values no part of Repentance upon any other account but as it tends to reclaim us to our Duty and ends in our Reformation and amendment This is that which qualifies us for the Happiness of another Life and makes us meet to be made partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in light And without this tho' God should be pleased to forgive us yet we could not forgive our selves and notwithstanding the legal discharge from Guilt the Sting of it would remain and we should like our first Parents after they had sinn'd run away and hide our selves from God tho' he spake never so kindly to us God hath placed in every Man's mind an inexorable Judge that will grant no Pardon and Forgiveness but to a reformed Penitent to him that hath such a sense of the Evil of his past Life as to become a better man for the future And whoever entertains any other notion of the Grace and Mercy of God to Sinners confounds the Nature of Things and does plainly overthrow the Reason of all Laws which is to restrain men from Sin But when it is committed to Pardon it without Amendment is to Encourage the Practice of it and to take away the Reverence and Veneration of those Laws which seem so severely to forbid it So that next to impunity the forgiveness of
the Efficacy of it in Conjunction with our Repentance and Fasting and Prayers I shall only offer to your consideration a few plain Texts of Scripture which need no comment upon them Dan. 4.27 it is the Prophets advice to Nebuchadnezzar Break off thy sins by righteousness and thine iniquity by shewing mercy to the poor if so be it may be a lengthning of thy tranquillity Acts 10.4 the Angel there tells Cornelius Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God Isa 58.5 Is not this the fast which I have chosen to loose the bands of wickedness to undo the heavy burthens and to let the oppressed go free and that ye break every yoke Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house when thou seest the naked that thou cover him and that thou hide not thy self from thine own flesh Then shall thy light break forth as the morning and thine health shall spring forth speedily and thy righteousness shall go before thee and the Glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward then shalt thou call and the Lord shall answer thee thou shalt cry and he shall say here I am To which I will only add that Gracious promise of our Saviour Blessed are the merciful for they shall find mercy and that terrible sentence in St. James He shall have Judgment without mercy that hath shewed no mercy SERMON III. Serm. 3. Of Confession and Sorrow for Sin PSAL. XXXVIII 18 I will declare mine iniquity and be sorry for my Sin IN this Psalm David does earnestly beg Mercy and Forgiveness of God and in order to the obtaining of it he declares both his Sins and his Repentance for them in these Words which contain in them two of the Necessary Ingredients or at least Concomitants of a true Repentance viz. Confession of Sin and Sorrow for it Vol. 8. I shall speak something of the first of these viz. Confession of Sin but the Second viz. Sorrow for Sin shall be the main Subject of my Discourse I. Confession of Sin I will declare mine iniquity or as it is in the Old Translation I will Confess my wickedness Of which I shall speak under these three Heads I. What Confession of Sin is II. How far 't is necessary III. What are the Reasons and grounds of this necessity I. What Confession of Sin is It is a Declaration or Acknowledgment of some moral evil or fault to another which we are conscious to our selves we have been Guilty of And this Acknowledgment may be made by us either to God or Man The Scripture mentions both Confession of our Sins to God is very frequently mentioned in Scripture as the first and necessary part of Repentance and sometimes and in some cases Confession to men is not only recommended but enjoyned II. How far Confession of our Sins is Necessary That it is necessary to confess our Sins to God the Scripture plainly declares and is I think a matter out of all dispute For it is a Necessary part of Repentance that we should confess our Sins to God with a due sense of the evil of them and therefore the Scripture maketh this a Necessary qualification and Condition of Pardon and Forgiveness Prov. 28.13 Whoso confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall have mercy 1 John 1.9 If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness implying that if we do not confess our sins to God the guilt of them will still remain to God I say for of Confession to him St. John plainly speaks when he says He is faithful and just Who God surely who tho' he be not named before yet is necessarily understood in the words before If we confess our sins i. e. to God he is faithful and just A general Confession of our sins is absolutely necessary and in some cases a particular acknowledgment of them and repentance for them especially if the sins have been great and deliberate and presumptuous in this Case a particular Confession of them and Repentance for them is necessary so far as we can particularly recollect them and call them to Remembrance Whereas for sins of ignorance and infirmity of surprize and daily incursion for lesser Omissions and the Defects and Imperfections of our best Actions and Services we have all the Reason that can be to believe that God will accept of a general Confession of them and Repentance for them And if any Man ask me where I find this distinction in Scripture between a general and particular Repentance I answer that it is not necessary it should be any where exprest in Scripture being so clearly founded in the Nature and Reason of the thing because in many cases it is not possible that we should have a particular Knowledge and Remembrance of all our particular Sins as is plain in Sins of ignorance since our very calling them by that Name does necessarily suppose that we do not know them It is impossible we should remember those Sins afterwards which we did not know when they were committed And therefore either a general Repentance for these and the other Sins I mentioned of the like Nature must be sufficient in order to the Pardon of them or we must say that they are unpardonable which would be very unreasonable because this would be to make lesser Sins more unpardonable than those which are far greater And yet tho' this difference between a general and particular Repentance be no where expresly mention'd in Scripture there does not want foundation for it there Psal 19.12 Who can understand his errours Cleanse thou me from secret Sins i. e. Such as we do not discern and take notice of when they are committed And yet David supposeth that upon a general Acknowledgment of them and Repentance for them we may be cleansed from them tho' we cannot make a particular Acknowledgment of them and exercise a particular Repentance for them because they are secret and we do not particularly understand what they are As for our confessing our Sins to Men both Scripture and Reason do in some cases recommend and enjoyn it As 1. In order to the obtaining of the Prayers of good men for us James 5.16 Confess your Sins one to another he said before The prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up This in all probability is meant of the Miraculous Power of Prayer which St. Chrysostom reckons among the Miraculous Gifts of the Spirit bestowed upon Christians in the first Ages of the Church and this is very much countenanc'd and confirm'd by what presently follows after this command of Confessing our Sins one to another and praying one for another and given as the Reason of it for the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous Man availeth much the Original is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the inspir'd prayer which in the verse
Mens sins upon such easie and unfit Terms gives boldness and encouragement to sin and must necessarily in the opinion of men lessen the Honour and Esteem of God's Laws And thus I have Considered and Explained both the Blessing and Benefit which is here promised and declared viz. the Mercy and Favour of God which comprehends both the present Forgiveness of our Sins and Power against them and Grace to Persevere in Goodness to the end and our final Absolution at the great day and the Glorious and Merciful Reward of Eternal Life and likewise the Conditions upon which this Blessing is promised viz. the Penitent acknowledgment of our sins to God with such Shame and Sorrow for them as produceth a sincere Resolution of leaving them and returning to a better course and the actual forsaking of them which involves in it our actual return to our Duty and a Constant and Sincere obedience to the Laws of God in the future course of our lives I shall now make some Application of this Discourse to our selves I am sure we are all nearly concerned in it The best of us have many sins to confess and forsake some of us very probably have need to change the whole course of our Lives to put us into a capacity of the Mercy of God This work can never be unseasonable but there cannot be a more proper time for it than when we are solemnly preparing our selves to receive the Holy Sacrament in which as we do Commemorate the great Mercy of God to Mankind so we do likewise renew and confirm our Covenant with him that Holy Covenant wherein we engage our selves to forsake our sins as ever we expect the forgiveness of them at God's hand To perswade us hereto be pleased to consider the Reasonableness of the Thing the infinite Benefit and Advantage of it and which is beyond all other Arguments the absolute Necessity of it to make us capable of the Mercy and Forgiveness of God in this World and the other and to deliver us from the wrath which is to come and from those terrible storms of vengeance which will infallibly fall upon impenitent sinners So that we have all the Reason and all the Encouragement in the World to resolve upon a better course Upon this Condition the Mercy of God is ready to meet and embrace us God will Pardon our greatest provocations and be perfectly reconciled to us So he hath declared by the Prophet Isaiah 1.16 Wash ye make you clean put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes cease to do evil learn to do well Come now and let us reason together saith the Lord tho' your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow tho' they be red as crimson they shall be as wool And what greater Encouragement can we desire than that upon so easie and advantageous Terms God should be so ready to have an end put to all Controversies and Quarrels between him and us I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God to take up a serious Resolution to break off your sins by repentance and to reform whatever upon due search and tryal of your ways you shall find to be amiss in your lives I beseech you by the Mercies of God that Mercy which naturally leads to repentance and which is long-suffering to us-ward on purpose that we may not perish but come to repentance which hath spared us so often and is not yet exhausted and tired out by our intolerable obstinacy and innumerable provocations that mercy which moved the Son of God to become man to live among us and to die for us who now as it were speaks to us from the Cross extending his pierced Hands and painful Arms to embrace us and through the gasping wounds of his side lets us see the tender and bleeding Compassion of his Heart that mercy which if we now despise it we shall in vain one day implore and catch hold of and hang upon to save us from sinking into Eternal Perdition that mercy which how much soever we now presume upon will then be so far from interposing between us and the wrath of God that it will highly inflame and exasperate it For whatever impenitent sinners may now think they will then certainly find that the Divine Justice when it is throughly provoked and whetted by his abused Mercy and Goodness will be most terribly severe and like a Rasor set with Oyl will cut the keener for its smoothness Consider this all ye that forget God lest he tear you in pieces and there be none to deliver Consider and shew your selves men O ye transgressours We do consider all this may some perhaps say but we have been great sinners so great that we doubt whether our case be not already desperate This if it be sensibly said with deep Sorrow and Contrition with that Shame and Confusion of face which becomes great offenders is a good Confession and the best Reason in the World why ye should now break off your sins For if what you have already done do really make your case so doubtful and difficult do not by sinning yet more and more against the Lord make it quite Desperate and past Remedy do but you Repent and God will yet return and have Mercy upon you And do not say you cannot do it when it must be done or you are undone Power and necessity go together when men are hard prest they find a power which they thought they had not and when it comes to the push men can do that which they plainly see they either must do or be ruined for ever But after all this I am very sensible how great a need there is of God's powerful Assistance in this case and that it is not an ordinary resolution and common measure of God's Grace that will reclaim those who have been long habituated to an evil course Let us therefore earnestly beg of him that he would make these Counsels effectual that he would grant us repentance unto life that he would make us all sensible of our faults sorry for them and resolved to amend them and let us every one put up David's prayer to God for our selves Deal with thy Servant according to thy mercy and teach me thy statutes order my steps in thy word and let not any iniquity have dominion over me teach me O Lord the way of thy statutes that I may keep them unto the end I have now done I am only to mind you of another Duty which is to accompany our Repentance and Fasting and Prayer as a Testimony of the Sincerity of our Repentance and one of the best means to make our Fasting and Prayer acceptable to God and to turn away his Judgments from us and that is Charity and Alms to the Poor whose number is very great among us and their necessities very pressing and clamorous and therefore do call for a bountiful Supply And to convince men of the Necessity of this Duty and
time I am heartily afraid that a very great part of Mankind do miscarry upon this confidence and are swallowed up in the gulf of Eternal Perdition with this Plank in their Arms. The common Custom is and I fear it is too common when the Physician hath given over his Patient then and not till then to send for the Minister not so much to enquire into the Man's condition and to give him suitable Advice as to Minister comfort and to speak Peace to him at a venture But let me tell you that herein you put an extream difficult task upon us in expecting that we should pour Wine and Oyl into the wound before it be searched and speak smooth and comfortable things to a Man that is but just brought to a sense of the long course of a lewd and wicked Life impenitently continued in Alas what comfort can we give to men in such a case We are loth to drive them to despair and yet we must not destroy them by presumption pity and good nature do strongly tempt us to make the best of their case and to give them all the little hopes which with any kind of Reason we can and God knows it is but very little that we can give to such Persons upon good ground for it all depends upon the degree and sincerity of their Repentance which God only knows and we can but guess at We can easily tell them what they ought to have done and what they should do if they were to live longer and what is the best that they can do in those straights into which they have brought themselves viz. to exercise as deep a Sorrow and Repentance for their sins as is possible and to cry mightily to God for Mercy in and through the Merit of our Blessed Saviour But how far this will be available in these Circumstances we cannot tell because we do not know whether if the Man had lived longer this Repentance and these Resolutions which he now declares of a better course would have been good And after all is done that can be done in so short a time and in such Circumstances of confusion and disorder as commonly attend dying Persons I doubt the result of all will be this that there is much more ground of fear than hope concerning them nay perhaps while we are pressing the dying sinner to Repentance and he is bungling about it he expires in great doubt and perplexity of mind what will become of him or if his Eyes be closed with more comfortable hopes of his condition the next time he opens them again he may find his fearful mistake like the rich Man in the Parable who when he was in hell lift up his eyes being in torment This is a very dismal and melancholy consideration and commands all men presently to repent and not to put off the main work of their lives to the end of them and the time of sickness and old Age. Let us not offer up a Carcass to God instead of a living and acceptable Sacrifice but let us turn to God in the days of our health and strength before the evil days come and the years draw nigh of which we shall say we have no pleasure in them before the Sun and the Moon and the Stars be darkned As Solomon elegantly expresseth it Eccl. 12.1 2. before all the Comforts of Life be gone before our Faculties be all ceased and spent before our Understandings be too weak and our Wills too strong our Understandings be too weak for consideration and the deliberate exercise of Repentance and our Wills too strong and stiff to be bent and bowed to it Let us not deceive our selves Heaven is not an Hospital made to receive all Sick and Aged Persons that can but put up a faint request to be admitted there no no they are never like to see the Kingdom of God who instead of seeking it in the first place make it their last refuge and retreat and when they find the Sentence of Death upon them only to avoid present Execution do bethink themselves of getting to Heaven and since there is no other Remedy are contented to Petition the great King and Judge of the World that they may be transported thither Upon all these Considerations let us use no delay in a matter of such mighty consequence to our eternal Happiness but let the counsel which was given to Nebuchadnezzar be acceptable to us let us Break off our sins by righteousness and our iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor if so be it may be a lengthning of our tranquillity Repentance and Alms do well together let us break off our sins by righteousness and our iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor especially upon this great occasion which his Majesty's great Goodness to those distressed Strangers that have taken Sanctuary among us hath lately presented us withal remembring that we also are in the body and liable to the like sufferings and considering on the one hand that Gracious promise of our Lord Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy and on the other hand that terrible threatning in St. James He shall have Judgment without mercy that hath shewed no mercy To conclude from all that hath been said let us take up a present Resolution of a better course and enter immediately upon it to day whilst it is called to day lest any of you be hardned through the deceitfulness of sin O that men were wise that they understood this that they would consider their latter end And grant we beseech the Almighty God that we may all know and do in this our day the things which belong to our peace for thy mercy's sake in Jesus Christ To whom with thee O Father and the Holy Ghost be all Honour and Glory now and for ever Amen SERMON V. Serm. 5. The Shamefulness of Sin an Argument for Repentance The First Sermon on this Text. ROM VI. 21 22. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed For the end of those things is death But now being made free from sin and become Servants to God ye have your fruit unto Holiness and the end Everlasting Life THERE are two Passions which do always in some Degree or other accompany a true Repentance viz. Sorrow and Shame for our Sins because these are necessary to engage men to a Resolution of making that change wherein Repentance does consist Vol. 8. For till we are heartily sorry for what we have done and ashamed of the evil of it it is not likely that we should ever come to a firm and steady purpose of forsaking our evil ways and betaking our selves to a better course And these two Passions of Sorrow and Shame for our Sins were wont anciently to be signified by those outward expressions of Humiliation and Repentance which we find so frequently mentioned in Scripture of being cloathed in Sackcloath as a testimony of our sorrow and mourning for our
the Text They are a Nation void of knowledge neither is there any understanding in them And the wish that follows in the Text is as seasonable for us as it was for them O that they were wise that they uaderstood this that they would consider their latter end And by parity of Reason this may likewise be applyed to particular Persons and to perswade every one of us to a serious Consideration of the final Issue and Consequence of our Actions I will only offer these two Arguments I. That Consideration is the proper Act of reasonable Creatures and that whereby we shew our selves men So the Prophet intimates Isa 46.8 Remember this and shew your selves men bring it again to mind O ye transgressors that is consider it well think of it again and again ye that run on so furiously in a sinful Course what the end and issue of these things will be If ye do not do this you do not shew your selves men you do not act like reasonable Creatures to whom it is peculiar to propose to themselves some end and design of their Actions but rather like Brute Creatures which have no understanding and act only by a natural instinct without any Consideration of the end of their Actions or of the means conducing to it II. Whether we consider it or not our latter end will come and all those dismal Consequences of a sinful Course which God hath so plainly threatned and our own Consciences do so much dread will certainly overtake us at last and we cannot by not thinking of these things ever prevent or avoid them Death will come and after that the Judgment and an irreversible Doom will pass upon us according to all the evil that we have done and all the good that we have neglected to do in this Life under the heavy weight and pressure whereof we must lie groaning and bewailing our selves to everlasting Ages God now exerciseth his Mercy and Patience and Long-suffering toward us in expectation of our amendment he reprieves us on purpose that we may repent and in hopes that we will at last consider and grow wiser for he is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to Repentance but if we will trifle away this day of God's Grace and Patience if we will not consider and bethink our selves there is another day that will certainly come That great and terrible Day of the Lord in which the Heavens shall pass away with a great noise and the Elements shall melt with fervent heat the Earth also and the works that are therein shall be burnt up Seeing then all these things shall be let us consider seriously what manner of Persons we ought to be in all holy Conversation and Godliness waiting for and hastning unto the coming of the Day of God To whom be glory now and for ever SERMON XV. Ser. 15. The Danger of Impenitence where the Gospel is preach'd MATTH XI 21 22. Woe unto thee Chorazin woe unto thee Bethsaida for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes But I say unto you It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of Judgment than for you AFter our Blessed Saviour had instructed and sent forth his Disciples he himself went abroad to preach unto the Cities of Israel particularly he spent much time in the Cities of Galilee Chorazin and Bethsaida Vol. 8. and Capernaum Preaching the Gospel to them and working many and great Miracles among them but with little or no success which was the cause of his denouncing this terrible woe against them ver 20. Then began he to upbraid the Cities wherein most of his mighty works were done because they repented not Woe unto thee Chorazin c. In which words our Saviour declares the sad and miserable Condition of those two Cities Chorazin and Bethsaida which had neglected such an opportunity and resisted and withstood such means of Repentance as would have effectually reclaimed the most wicked Cities and People that can be instanced in in any Age Tyre and Sidon and Sodom and therefore he tells them that their Condition was much worse and that they should fall under a heavier Sentence at the day of Judgment than the People of those Cities whom they had always lookt upon as the greatest sinners that ever were in the World This is the plain meaning of the words in general but yet there are some difficulties in them which I shall endeavour to clear and then proceed to raise such Observations from them as may be instructive and useful to us The Difficulties are these I. What Repentance is here spoken of whether an external Repentance in shew and appearance only or an inward and real and sincere Repentance II. In what Sense it is said that Tyre and Sidon would have repented III. What is meant by their would have repented long ago IV. How this assertion of our Saviour's that Miracles would have converted Tyre and Sidon is reconcileable with that other saying of his Luke 16.31 in the Parable of the rich Man and Lazarus that those who believed not Moses and the Prophets neither would they be persuaded tho' one rose from the dead I. What Repentance is here spoken of whether a meer external and Hypocritical Repentance in shew and appearance only or an inward and real and sincere Repentance The Reason of this doubt depends upon the different Theories of Divines about the sufficiency of Grace accompanying the outward Means of Repentance and whether an irresistible degree of God's Grace be necessary to Repentance for they who deny sufficient Grace to accompany the outward Means of Repentance and assert an irresistible degree of God's Grace necessary to Repentance are forced to say that our Saviour here speaks of a meer External Repentance because if he spake of an inward and sincere Repentance then it must be granted that sufficient inward grace did accompany the Miracles that were wrought in Chorazin and Bethsaida to bring men to Repentance because what was afforded to them would have brought Tyre and Sidon to Repentance And that which would have effected a thing cannot be denyed to be sufficient so that unless our Saviour here speaks of a meer External Repentance either the outward Means of Repentance as Preaching and Miracles must be granted to be sufficient to bring men to Repentance without the inward Operation of God's Grace upon the Minds of Men or else a sufficient degree of God's Grace must be acknowledged to accompany the outward Means of Repentance Again if an irresistible degree of Grace be necessary to true Repentance it is plain Chorazin and Bethsaida had it not because they did not repent and yet without this Tyre and Sidon could not have sincerely repented therefore our Saviour here must speak of a meer External Repentance Thus some argue as they do likewise concerning the Repentance of