offer 4. Then Such a Repentance as the Gospel makes the condition of Pardon and Salvation is nothing less than a constant Obedience and an entire and universal Goodness of Life at least after a wicked one or after great failures and miscarriages for Repentance as I have often said is to the Soul like a recovery of Health to the Body after some great Sickness or Illness The whole Body or the part ill affected must be made perfectly well and restored to its former strength and soundness or else it cannot be said to be recovered The Disease must be throughly got off the sickly matter must be discharged the illness must be cured and removed and the Patient must get his former strength and be able to perform the proper and vital operations or else we cannot say he is well So a Sinner must wholly get rid of his past Sins must purge them all out by Sorrow and Contrition must have his Mind wholly freed from them and himself brought to such a Spiritual strength and soundness as to perform the Duties and Operations of the new Life or else he is not recovered by Repentance nor brought from a bad state to a good one He may be under a method of Cure indeed as a sick Man is under a course of Physick whilst he is under Sorrow for Sin and Contrition and Compunction and the like which are good means and instruments and beginnings of Repentance and so are mistaken for the thing it self but his Repentance is not finish'd nor is the great work perfect and compleat till from a bad Man in any kind he is become a good one till this is done which God knows is not the most easie nor the most speedy thing in the World but requires long time and great care and pains and labour there is no title that I know of to Pardon by the Terms of the Gospel nor is there any true Gospel Repentance such as we can give any warrant or assurance of remission to by the Covenant of Grace or the known and ordinary Rules of Gods Mercy Were Repentance only a sudden Passion or a transient Act of the Mind were it only an inward Sorrow Trouble and Compunction of Heart it might be quickly performed and no Sinner would be without it but Cain and Herod and Judas might be said to Repent thus far and after this fashion for thus the one repented and said I have sinned Mat. 27.3 4. the second was exceeding sorry for what he had done Matth. 6.26 and the other was so sensible of his Sin that he cryed out My punishment is greater than I can bear Gen. 4.13 But true Repentance is only known and made to be so by an habitual and lasting change both of Mind and Life by an actual amendment and reformation by a turning away from all our evil deeds and all our wickedness whatsoever that we have committed and doing that which is lawful and right which is the clearest and fullest Scripture expression that gives us the true Nature of Repentance which includes constant and actual Obedience and destroyes these foolish and wicked reserves of securing our selves by playing an after-game of Repentance They who design this have no sense of the true worth and excellency of Religion but are only for making use of it for a little turn at the last as Goal-birds learn to read meerly for the sake of their Neck-verse for though they like their Sins much better and would alwayes live in them it is plain if they were left to their choice yet they at last unwillingly bring themselves to part with them as Men throw over their Goods in a Storm for fear they should be lost and Shipwreck'd with them Thus miserably do they mistake and misunderstand the true Nature of Repentance which is a perfect changing the Habit and Temper and Frame of a Mans Mind and bringing other Thoughts and Principles and Inclinations into it which is called in Scripture a new Heart and a new Spirit and this producing an entire and permanent and universal change of the Life and Actions and making a Man become better in every particular and in the whole a very good Man 5. It is observable that Repentance is all along in the Gospel made a Duty previous and antecedent to Christianity and what was supposed to go before Baptism and what was necessary before-hand to fit and prepare Men to become Christians thus they were to repent and be baptized Acts 2.38 John the Baptist who was to prepare the way for Christianity did it by preaching Repentance for this reason Because the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand Matth. 3.2 i. e. Christianity or the state of the Gospel which is agreed by all to be there meant by the kingdom of Heaven was now approaching and our Blessed Saviour upon that Principle and Argument preach'd the same Duty ver 17. From that time he began to preach and to say Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand And the Disciples of Christ preach'd this Duty Mark 6.12 when they were to prepare and dispose Men to receive Christ and to embrace Christianity and when any that were adult were received into the Church and Christianity by Baptism they were supposed to be Penitents before they were Christians It was a Duty and a Condition alwayes implyed and required that they Repented of their past Sins and sincerely promised and resolved upon a new course of Life That they who had their conversation in times past in the lusts of the flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by Nature the children of wrath as the Apostle speaks Eph. 2.3 i. e. in the state they were in before they were Christians for the Gospel considers all Mankind as in a state of Sin and Guilt before they are admitted into Christianity which is a state of Pardon and Salvation that these when they were made Christians were to put off the old man with his deeds Col. 3.9 i. e. all the old Habits and Acts of Sin which they were guilty of in their unchristian state and were to put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness Eph. 4.24 and they were to become new creatures in Christ Jesus and were therefore then said to be regenerated and to be born again and are represented in Scripture as dying unto all sin in Baptism that they should not henceforth live any longer therein Rom. 6.2 They are buried with Christ by baptism into his death that like as Christ was raised from the dead even so we also who are baptized into his death should walk in newness of life ver 3. So that after Baptism we should reckon our selves to be dead unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ ver 11. So that the body of sin is then to be put off and destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin ver 6. Thus though Men were considered as Sinners before their Baptism
So that either a Man must throw off all Religion or throw off every secret and beloved Sin for either his Sin will spoil his Religion or his Religion must cure him of his Sin or he must have great Mistakes and false Apprehensions of Religion who thinks to compound with Heaven and to pay External Homage to it and that God will accept of that instead of inward Vertue and sincere Obedience One would think no Man could ever heartily performe one act of Devotion who has any such sin in reserve that he will not part with but I am sure whoever does so his Devotion will never be accepted by God and it will be in vain to worship him openly while we secretly disobey him such a blemish spoils all our Sacrifices and desecrates and pollutes the most sacred oblations and as the Prophet exprest it to the Jews makes him that killeth an ox as if he slew a man he that sacrificeth a lamb as if he cut off a dogs neck he that offereth an oblation as if he offered swines blood he that burneth incense as if he blessed an idol Isa 6.3 and he giveth the reason at the latter part of the verse They have chosen their own ways and their soul delighteth in their abominations and these turn their very Prayers into sin and make them an abomination to God as Scripture assures us Psal 109.7 Prov. 28.9 'T is strange and unaccountable to consider that a Man should have some sense of Religion and be govern'd by it in a great many things and live up to the Rules of it in several instances and yet be so besotted and infatuated as to let one darling sin overcome and enslave him when he knows that this by the Principles of his Religion is as damnable and destructive as any of the rest which is just as if he should be careful to preserve his Health and avoid a great many Diseases and live by regular Methods to that purpose and yet give himself a mortal stab and a wound that will certainly dispatch him for one Sin like one Wound may be Mortal and bring Death along with it as well as many and one drop of Poyson may kill and one wilful sin damn us as well as more God will not judge of our sins as the Custom and Opinion of the World does nor abate of the Measures of our Duty and Conditions of our Salvation as we madly and unreasonably do our selves but whatever sin stands condemned by the Divine Law however Modish or Common and Customary it be that will not alter its Nature nor take off its guilt and danger one Mans Temper carries him to such Sins that he thinks Flesh and Blood cannot resist anothes Trade or Business tempts him to others that he thinks 't is impossible to get a Livelyhood without them he cannot drive his Bargains with his Customers without immoderate drinking nor Sell and Trade in the World without Customary Lying and perhaps Swearing and to perswade Men out of those that their Convenience and Condition or their Temper or Complexion do so strongly dispose 'em to is to pluck out a right eye and cut off a right hand I confess it is so in our Saviours sense but 't is also very necessary to do this to Cut off even the most pleasant or advantagious Sin and deny even the most darling and beloved Lust if we would not be cast into Hell hereafter and into a Bad State at present our Saviours words there suppose and imply that but as he says 't is more profitable more for our good Interest and Advantage to forego any pleasure and part with any Advantage then for the sake of them to expose our selves to such a miserable state He that is truly afraid of Hell will not dare to live in any such sin as he knows will bring him thither he must be strangely thoughtless and inconsiderate or else a down-right Atheist Infidel or Sceptick who can allow himself in any such sinful Liberties and undue Practices as are directly contrary to Religion and inconsistent with all the fears and the hopes of it and as one would think with all true Faith and belief of another World but let every one that hath those and any serious sense of Religion remaining upon his Mind not venture to indulge himself in any secret or known Sin nor harbour any beloved vice or wickedness in his Soul but let him though with the greatest Self-denyal to his Temper or difficulty to his Circumstances and Condition in the World break it off and teare it from his heart though it stick by never so many strings and fibres and be like a second Nature grown to it like a Cancer it will certainly kill us if it be not thus torn from the breast and so perfectly cut off that none of its spreading Venom or Poyson remain behind He that has had any such mortal illness growing upon his Mind or been guilty of any such wilfull Sin as puts him into an ill state must thus Repent of it so as never again to commit it nor live in the practice of it afterwards or else till he do this he can have no hopes that he is recovered or got out of it nor any reasonable grounds to believe that he is in a Condition any way hopeful or comfortable for Lastly 'T is only this mark of not committing any known and wilful sin that distinguishes good Men who are born of God from those who are wicked and the children of the Devil and Enemies to God and to be sure there must be some very great and notorious difference between them and some plain and evident marks by which they may be known from one another now those are plainly given us by St. John 1 Ep. 3. c. 8 9. ver He that committeth sin is of the Devil and whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin Where nothing less can be meant by committing sin then living in the practice of any known sin or wilful wickedness which destroys the image of God upon the mind and so defiles and depraves our Souls that they are unlike to the pure and holy and unspotted Nature of God and when any Vice of Pride Lust Malice or the like abides upon them they bear these Marks and Signatures and likeness of accursed Fiends and of their Father the Devil upon them in Scripture phrase There are none such great Sinners as to break all the Divine Laws some sins are contrary to one another and some may be contrary to our Inclinations Complexions or Conditions and Employments but he that will violate any one Law as it suits with any of those and will gratifie any Lust or Temptation as it is offered to him he is one whom the Scripture denominates a Sinner in the high sense i. e. one who stands condemned by it to an ill state here and to Eternal Misery hereafter We are all Sinners in a low sense as I shall show presently when I come
two such Receptacles for the Souls of all Men and Angels to spend an Eternity in for the fixt continuance and Eternal Duration of their state is more plainly revealed then their particular State and Condition so that all Rational Souls must be consigned to one of those States and Places for they who have made a Third or Fourth have made it only out of their own brains and imaginations not out of any Scriptural foundation or Authority there must be allowed to be very great differences and unequal degrees of happiness or misery in those two places or else neither the Justice of God nor the different Cases of Men can be accounted for with any tolerable ease and satisfaction to our thoughts or be any way reconciled to the principles either of Reason or Religion God the Just and All-knowing Judge will give all allowances to the hard circumstances the invincible ignorance the unavoidable failures the powerful temptations the particular cases and several disadvantages that any of Mankind have been under and with the fairest and most impartial equity will adjudge all their Conditions and proportion their future Rewards and Punishments according to what is due to them all things considered according to the right or wrong use of that freedom and liberty which he gave them and the faults or vertues under that light and knowledge they had of their own wills and choices by which alone they can either be or be denominated good or bad Men Some of Mankind seem not to have either vertues enough to qualifie them for Heaven or to be so wilfully vitious as to deserve Hell but to be in a kind of middle state here between Vertue and Vice whatever they shall be in hereafter and many who are guilty of some Vices which the Scripture declares damnable and exclusive of Heaven yet are not of such downright Irreligion and General Profligacy and Debauchery as others Thus also many have some real sense of Religion but yet are but weakly moved and influenced by it and do but just live in a very low way of Grace and Vertue and are not so Rich in good works nor do so abound in Acts of Piety Zeal Usefulness and Charity as others Therefore one Equal Complete Perfect Entire State either of Happiness or Misery cannot belong to all these alike but Heaven or Hell are proportionable unequal different conditions of both exactly suited and fitted to the Moral and Religious Deserts Capacities and Qualifications of all Rational Beings in which they shall be fixt to all Eternity without alteration though perhaps not without further improvements and gradual risings and fallings according to the Nature of either of those States These Thoughts have been a great ease and satisfaction to my self in the Conception of the great and amazing things of another World and I therefore communicate them not only on the fore-mentioned account but because they may be so to others who consider those greatest Objects of Meditation with any penetration of thought according to the best helps we have of Philosophy and Scripture and I am perswaded it would be good Service to Religion if it were thus fairly reconciled in all the revealed Truths and Articles of it to the thoughts of inquisitive Men as I doubt not but it may be but this is a subject of another Nature which I am not now to meddle withal CHAP. VI. Practical Rules and Directions concerning the Particular Exercise of Repentance I Shall now consider the Particular Exercise of Repentance taken as a single Duty distinct from all others of Obedience which are in the largest sense involved in it and without which it is not effectual to Pardon and Salvation as I have all along shown but Repentance taken singly for a particular act of a Sinner just struck and affected with a sense of his Sins and exercising at set times Penitential Reflections and proper Actions upon the thoughts and remembrance of them this which is often called Repentance and is so in some sense but not sufficient to compleat this Duty and to entitle us to all the effects of Repentance as they are promised to it in Scripture in a more large and comprehensive Notion as including a good Life and all manner of Obedience after we have failed and come short in any point This which I would call Penitence or Penance as being a Penal Exercise or Penitential Course and Discipline fit for a Sinner to go through after he has committed any great Sin or whenever he seriously remembers and considers and recollects as he ought often to do with himself the most considerable miscarriages of his Life This consists in these following things 1. In confessing of his Sin 2. In inward and outward Sorrow for it 3. In Humiliations Bodily Austerities and Mortifications and especially Fasting as the chief of them In these the Scripture and the Church and the custom of good Men in all Ages have placed this Exercise of Repentance as consisting of such Penitential Acts not as a permanent Habit of renewed Obedience and recovered Vertue nor as if the Essence or the formal Vertue and proper fruits of it lay in these but in Reformation of Heart and Life Conversion and Obedience to God but these are the buds and blossoms of those fruits of Repentance the seeds and the signs of it or at least the outward concomitants and attendants of it and such a retinue as are proper to go along with it for the solemnity at least and decent performance of it if not as absolutely necessary to the thing it self Necessary generally in private but alwayes in publick Acts or Expressions of Repentance wherein a publick reparation and satisfaction is to be given to Gods Honour and Authority his Judgments to be averted and his Anger deprecated and a common sense and apprehension of all this to be promoted and inculcated among others as in publick Penances and National Repentances and therefore we read chiefly of these upon such occasions both in Scripture and Ecclesiastical Writers Open Sins are a dishonouring of God an affronting and despising his Power and Authority a setting up our Wills against his a gratifying and indulging our selves in undue liberties and unlawful inclinations of Body Now 't is fit therefore in our Repentance for them wherein we make what amends we can to God and repair the injury we have done him and undo the Sin as far as we are able and show our utmost displeasure against it that we should fall down before him and confess it and be sorry for it and humble our selves to him and own our vileness and wretchedness and unworthiness and express the deepest resentments of it and show our anger against our selves and revenge it very severely and afflict our Souls and our Bodies with something that shall not be very grateful to them nor pleasant and acceptable to our Senses The design of all this is to beget in our Mind such thoughts of our Sins and such passions and
good State I have shown more largely before Chap. 1. Sect. 4. 2. The Scripture not only forbids every wilful Sin but excludes it out of Heaven and declares that every wilful Sinner of what kind soever shall not enter into it as neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor abusers of themselves with mankind nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor revilers nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God 1 Cor. 6.9 10. i. e. whoever are to be denominated such by the practice of their Lives and habit of their Minds by their living and dying in any of those Sins whatsoever or in any one of them This is plainly adjudged by the Gospel which is the Rule God will judge us by at the last day and by that Rule we may judge our selves now and all other judgments of our selves are false and deceitful Whatever Sinner finds himself in the number of that black Catalogue may see his Name as it were in the dead Warrant and nothing but timely Repentance and Amendment before he dyes can blot it out The Sentence of Damnation is as positive and express against all or any such Sinners as the Sentence of Death is against Treason or Felony by the Civil Law and no hopes to escape the Knowledge or Justice of infinite Wisdom and infinite Power and therefore whoever is cast by any one such Inditement and found guilty of any such Capital and Mortal Crime can never escape before the Divine Tribunal the process of which is laid open to us by the Gospel and by that we should judge our selves now as impartially as we know God will hereafter 3. The Reason of this is plain namely of Gods forbidding every wilful Sin upon pain of Damnation and excluding every such Sinner out of Heaven for otherwise he could have forbidden no Sin but must have laid open all his Laws to be broken and trampled on by the disobedience and unruliness of his Creatures for had he suffered every one of Mankind to live in impunity under any one wilful though single Sin such as his particular inclination or his interest would most incline to by this means he would have opened a gap for the breach of all his Laws so that none of them should have been duely observed but all of them broken by parts and by piecemeal by some Sinner or other one would have chosen to have gratified his Revenge another his Lust one would have wallowed in Drunkenness another have persued his Gain by all the methods of Fraud and Unrighteousness and according as Mens inward tempers and outward temptations had been so they would have chosen or indulged every one of them their beloved Sin and so God must have given up all his Authority and his Government to some or other of the vitious inclinations of his Creatures if he had not forbid all Sin whatever upon pain of Damnation and excluded it without exception out of Heaven 4. One such wilful Sin is such an Affront Contempt and Disobedience to the Divine Authority in general as involves in it an Universal guilt and breach of the whole Law of God thus St. James saith He that shall keep the whole law besides and yet offend in one point is guilty of all James 2.10 for this reason for he that said Do not commit adultery said also Do not kill now if thou commit no adultery yet if thou kill thou art become a Transgressor of the law ver 11. i. e. the same Power and Authority of God gives Sanction to all his Laws and 't is a vertual disowning and disclaimer of that wilfully to disobey it and rebel against it and openly oppose it in any case which he does who lives in any one known and wilful Sin and is to be accounted an Enemy and Traytor to Heaven and punisht as such who renounces its absolute Power and Right to Govern him in all things and subverts the whole foundation of Obedience and Submission to it 5. One such wilful Sin or vile Lust if it be suffered to prevail upon the Mind expels all true Principles of Vertue and Religion out of it or shows it to be devoy'd of any such as being utterly inconsistent with them for he that alloweth himself in any sinful liberty or unlawful practice contrary to the plain Rules of Religion can never have a due and just sense of that upon his Mind nor be supposed in any other things to be governed by such considerations of God and Heaven and Religion as are the true principles of all Vertue and Goodness where those are not in the heart all seeming Acts of Vertue and Religion lose their form and worth and excellency and are but the spurious Off-spring of Chance Humour or Interest for he that does any good action or abstains from any bad one out of Regard to Religion and the Considerations of God and another World would for the same reasons act uniformly and not allow himself to live contrary to those in any other instances nor comply with the most darling lust or strongest temptation when contrary to those but if he does so in any case he may as well do it in others for this shows that he is swayed and governed by some other Principles than those of Religion A sense of Honour as 't is call'd or not doing a thing base and scandalous in the opinion of others or a prudent Caution and Discretion in serving our present Interest these may keep many Men from some Vices that would destroy their Credit or their present Advantage but if there be no other foundation for them it is not Vertue and Religion but only Art and Managery which may have its reward here but will never be rewarded in Heaven and this is what some commonly mean by a Moral Man but 't is a mistake for this is only a Man of Conduct and Cunning whereas Morality is founded upon true and certain and Eternal Principles and Reasons of Vertue but he that acts not by those nor any Principles of Religion will be a Knave for his Interest and a Secret Sinner for his Lusts and make his Conscience give way as oft as there is occasion to his Convenience or Inclination for in other sins which the Custom and Opinion of the World have not made so infamous or so disadvantagious there he can be notoriously guilty and break the plain Rules of Vertue and Religion He that can do so by indulging himself in any wilful Sin as he corrupts and spoils all his other seeming Vertues by making them to be base born and not to proceed from a Religious and Vertuous Stock so he throws off all true Principles of Religion and shows that he has no true Root or genuine Seed of it in his heart 6. Such an one lyes open to all other Sins and may for the same reason commit any that he allows himself in one when the mind is thus prostituted and debaucht by consenting to any one particular unlawful Lust it would
out the fierceness of his anger upon them and they drink of the cup of his fury and feel his wrath and indignation many a sinner has done this and cryed out in the Anguish of his Soul Thy wrath lyeth hard upon me Psal 88.7 Thy fierce wrath goeth over me thy terrors have cut me off ver 16. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me and horror hath overwhelmed me Psal 55.5 Thine arrows stick fast in me and thy hand presseth me sore Psal 38.2 Who knoweth the power of thine anger even according to thy fear so is thy wrath Psal 90.11 For we are consumed by thine anger and by thy wrath are we troubled ver 7. God who is a Spirit as he can convey secret and unspeakable comfort into our Souls so he can impress intolerable and unspeakable horrors upon them and who is able to bear the weight of his Anger or endure the sense of his Wrath and Indignation In his Pleasure and Favour is Life and in his Anger is a double Death to the Soul The inward Sensation and Perception of Gods Love is the ohiefest joy and happyness to a Soul either in this World or the other and the Sense and Perception of his Anger is the greatest Misery God the fountain of all Happiness doth diffuse and communicate such a Peace Joy Comfort to good Souls such an inward Taste and Relish of Spiritual Pleasure and Delight as is unspeakable past understanding called joy in the holy Ghost and is no doubt the sweetest and most affecting pleasure a Soul is capable of this the Angels and blessed Spirits above enjoy and are transported with the most ravishing Sense and Rapturous Impressions of it and 't is what makes Heaven to them and a little foretaste of it when God lifts up the light of his countenance upon us when a pious Soul tasts and sees how good and gracious God is this puts more gladness in the heart than Corn and wine and oyl and all worldly enjoyments now on the contrary when God hides his face and withdraws his loving-kindness and imprints a strong sense of his Wrath and Anger upon the Mind this is the utmost and the deepest Misery this gives the bitterest sense of Evil fills it with the greatest horrors sinks it into the deepest gulph the bottomless Pit of Misery and is the very Punishment and Hell of the damned How happy is it then to be Reconciled to God by Repentance whom we had angred and provoked by our sins before we feel any of this and before his Wrath and Anger is poured out upon us it will certainly fall upon every Sinner some time or other unless he Repents for God though he defers his Anger for some time that his Goodness and long-suffering may lead us to Repentance yet his abused Love Patience and Mercy will turn to greater Wrath and Fury if we persist in our sins and in a course of impenitency As 't is a very terrible thing to have the great God our Enemy and he certainly is so whilst we are in a state of Sin so 't is the comfortablest thought in the World and what will alone make us happy to be Assured that he is our Friend and that we are in a State of Favour with him upon our Repentance THE CONCLVSION To Conclude As all general Christian Duties are meant by Repentance so all general Christian-Priviledges and Benefits belong to it and are the Rewards of it for as Repentance is the same thing in Scripture with Conversion Regeneration the New Birth the New Creature the New Man and the like those different words and figurative expressions denoting only the same duty importing the great Change and Alteration made upon the Mind and Life of a Sinner by the power of Grace and Religion So all the benefits and priviledges of Christianity such as Election Adoption Pardon Justification at present and Glorification afterwards which are free and gratuitous acts in God granting and bestowing those Favours upon us for Christs sake upon our being duely qualified and fitted to receive them These all belong to those who have truly Repented and become good Men and to none else For God hath only Chosen Adopted Pardoned Justified and will Glorifie such and no other and till we have Repented we have no good claim or title to any of those Our being in a good State towards God which is the thing meant by all those Phrases under some different considerations is on our side wholly owing to our true Repentance and Obedience and it is all lost and forfeited by our Impenitency and Disobedience which on the contrary make us the Children of Wrath the Children of the Devil and Heirs of Damnation put us into the worst Spiritual State of Reprobation Obduration and Excecation according to the degrees of our Sins and Impenitence and into that of Condemnation it self which is the word that directly answers to that of Justification All those Scriptural Phrases and Expressions of a good State belong to Repentance and to the true Christian Penitent and all those which signifie a bad one belong as truly to Wickedness and Impenitence for though without the Free-Grace and Mercy of God in and thorough Christ we could not be put into any such good State nor have a title to any such Priviledges meerly by vertue of our Repentance or any thing we could do yet to suppose that God will put us into those states without any regard to our own Actions or not upon the account of them is to destroy all Religion all Divine Government all Future Judgment and all Rewards and Punishments in another World I might clear and illustrate and enlarge upon these had not this Discourse already swelled upon my hands into too great a bulk and did they not run into something of Controversie which I would carefully avoid I shall therefore only give this last Advice to the Penitent who hath brought himself by the Grace of God into this Good and Happy State that when he is thus got out of the Paths of Death and of Sin into those of Life and Vertue that he would go on and proceed in the new and right way he is in and make a speedy and further progress in all Piety and Goodness that like St. Paul forgetting those things which are behind and reaching unto those which are before he may follow and apprehend them and so press forward towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus Phil. 3.13 14. that now he is become a Christian in good earnest he would more zealously promote that Religion which he opposed and was an enemy to before and show he is a true Convert by his zeal and earnestness against Vice and Irreligion that he would make all amends he can for his past miscarriages by doing the greatest good he is able by serving God and his Glory more heartily and thus loving much because much is forgiven him so that where sin abounded grace
A Practical Discourse OF Repentance Rectifying the Mistakes about it especially such as lead either to Despair or Presumption Perswading and Directing to the True Practice of it AND Demonstrating the Invalidity OF A Death-Bed Repentance By WILLIAM PAYNE D. D. Rector of St. Mary White-Chappel and Chaplain in Ordinary to Their Majesties LONDON Printed for Samuel Smith at the Princes Arms in St. Pauls Church-Yard 1693. THE PREFACE To His Loving Friends and Parishioners the Inhabitants of St. Mary White-Chappel IT was for your sakes and for your use chiefly I composed this Discourse and now offer it to your serious thoughts and most lasting consideration that it may teach you the Right Knowledge and perswade you to the True Practice of that Great Duty it treats of I have endeavoured to set it in such a Light as might remove the unreasonable Fears and Despairs of some Few and the Presumptuous and false hopes of the far greater number of Sinners I hope if you carefully peruse it with due thoughtfulness and application of mind it may give you both a Right notion and understanding of it so as to free you from all dangerous and mischievous Mistakes about it and that it will convey so much Warmth as well as Light to your thoughts as may by the Grace of God very much help to quicken and excite you to a speedy and thorough Repentance and to a Holy and Good life As it will in some measure give you clear thoughts of Religion in all the parts of it which some who have a strong sence yet have dark and confused apprehensions about and will enable you to make a right Judgment of your selves and spiritual state by evident and obvious and certain marks so I dare say that no Man who takes the whole force of it into his mind and duly considers and seriously attends to all the thoughts that it will suggest to him will ever live in his sins or continue to be a wicked Man One of the great Reasons that makes Men so even beyond Atheism and Infidelity it self for they being contrary to the natural sense of our minds prevaile not upon so many as Superstition False and corrupt Religion is the perverting Christianity and corrupting the Gospel by Doctrines of Looseness and Licentiousness that give false hopes of Pardon and Salvation without Obedience and a good life and by some imaginary Schemes and some comfortable but erroneous and even damnable Doctrines reconcile Religion to Mens Lusts and the hopes of pardon and happiness to a careless and wicked life How this is done in the Church of Rome by their doctrines of Penance Confession and Absolution Contrition and Attrition and the like has been shown and made out by the Protestant Writers against them and indeed I take those Principles to be the very Rotten Core of Popery the Poyson and Philter by which it bewitches so many wretched Souls into its Communion and the Antichristian cup of Fornication that it gives the Kings and People of the Earth to drink The Loose Notions of Repentance which came at first from them but have been taken up by many others since put me upon this Design of Examining and Rectifying them for I am perswaded there never was any Error or any Delusion of the Devil which hath destroyed more Souls then the fatal mistakes about this Duty especially about a Dying Repentanc which has been the wretched Reserve of most wicked Men all their lives and the broken Reed they have trusted to at their deaths whereby they have been encouraged in their Sins and had a kind of Protection as they thought against all the dangers of them by this priviledge of Repenting at the last and by having that allowed to be valid and sufficient by the terms of the Gospel By this they have all along had the reserved hopes of saving their Souls however wickedly they lived and so have excused themselves from and shifted off the necessity of a Good life by this more easie and compendious way which though it were liable to some more accidental hazards yet might as effectually do the Business by the standing principles of Religion and by having as was supposed an ordinary Title to Pardon and Salvation This hath greatly comforted Sinners and greatly encouraged them in their sins when as s commonly said of a great many they might hope though they lived very ill yet to dye well and make a good end and by being penitent at the last like the Thief upon the Cross to be surely pardon'd and go to heaven and so this Comfortable Disjunctive has been set up or twofold way of going to Heaven either by living well and being good Men before we come to dye or else by Repenting and being sorry at that time that we were not so The Consequences to Religion and a good life are so plain and fatal from hence and I have known so many sad Instances of its dreadful mischief in my frequent attending the Sick whereby my experience in this case if not my skill has made me a good Phisician that I thought I could not do more service to God and Religion and the Souls of Men then to reseue them from such false Notions and pernicious mistakes about a matter of so great consequence and do all I could effectually to perswade them to the Practice of such a true Repentance as is not to be Repented of The serving such an excellent Design makes me venture this Discourse into the World without being concerned for the many Defects and Imperfections in the Style Phrase and Words which a nice Critick may find in it but I am sure the pious and well-disposed Reader will excuse and overloook those when he is affected with the thought and matter which is of so great moment and importance and when he is satisfied with the vertue and wholsomness of the Phisick he will not I hope be so delicate as to find fault with its being either too much or too little gilded I confess some part of it hath layn by me many Years even beyond Horace's ninth and hath many youthful strokes in it to show it was drawn before the rest and to excuse its Dress and Colours but the thought and Notion is all of a piece and I have had it so long and consideered it so fully that if any shall differ from me after reading it thorough for the strength of it lies in the Frame and Contexture of the whole and not in any single part I should very much wonder and be glad to know his Reasons I have chosen sometimes to repeat the same Notion as there was occasion rather then to refer the Reader back again to another place where there would not be such an immediate connexion with what he was just reading so that he would lose the sight of what went before with looking after it and would not see the thing so well in one view I have often thought that we wanted a Just and entire Discourse
he feels an inward strength and vigour in himself and the constant springs of joy and comfort rising up in his own breast and overflowing his Soul But Vice sneaks and is cowardly and fills a Man with fear and confusion and all the mean and little and uneasie and tormenting Passions that belong to Humane Nature Vertue approves it self to our Reason and agrees with the native sense of our own Minds and has a Natural beauty and loveliness that commends it to our first sight and apprehension and makes it amiable and desirable esteemed and honoured and admired by every one even by those who forsake it who cannot but be so just to it as to commend and approve it very often in others But Vice has a Natural ugliness and deformity that makes Men ashamed of it after they have committed it and commit it in darkness and obscurity and after to deny and extenuate it as being presently sensible of the folly and undecency and unreasonableness of it as having done what they cannot justifie and what presently flyes in their faces if they have not a brow of Brass and a forehead of Steel It is contrary and awry to our own Nature and against the first sense and tenderness of our own Minds so that great violence must be used to commit it at first and great pain follows upon it 'T is a force a Rape upon the Virgin-modesty and the Natural sense of Good and Evil that we are born with Vertue has alwayes very good and desirable effects upon us in this Life as well as great Rewards in another 'T is in the Wise Mans Phrase and in a true literal sense Health to our navel and marrow to our bones Prov. 3.8 It keeps our Bodies in good plight neither drains or exhausts them with forced Pleasures or unruly Passions nor choaks or suffocates them with immoderate loads nor drowns and washes them away with floods of drink and cups of intemperance It brings a Blessing of God upon our Estates and often makes us Rich by the help of Industry and Frugality whilst nothing is so expensive and so impoverishing as Vice which spends many times all upon its Lusts and the hungry Wolf comes often to the door where the Swine and the Goat have been used to dwell Though Vertue may not alwayes bring abundance neither is it desirable alwayes to a wise Man though Solomon puts Riches as the common Blessing in the left hand of Wisdom Prov. 3.16 yet it makes a little that the righteous hath better than great riches of the ungodly Ps 37.16 Honour and a good Name do more certainly belong to Vertue than Riches and whilst Vice brings a blot and a reproach upon a Mans Credit Vertue makes him loved and honoured and esteemed by all that know him while he lives and embalms his Name when he is dead and makes his Memory to be precious But above all it makes a Man truly easie and happy within himself it secures him the peace and tranquillity of his own Mind which is the greatest happiness in the World So that all Natural Good and all that is desirable to Humane Nature growes as a proper Fruit out of Vertue which is the true Root that Naturally brings forth all Good as Sin does all Evil and these are so annexed to them by the nature and constitution of things as effects to their proper causes that nothing can cut them off or precide them and these besides all the super-added Motives of revealed Religion are by plain Reason and observation of things very strong Arguments to bring Men off from Vice to Vertue i. e. to true Repentance 4. Therefore Fourthly A wise Man when he comes to reflect and consider finds that that which hindered him from seeing all this before was only his foolish Lusts and his corrupt senfual Inclinations and his strong Passions and violent and unreasonable Appetites which blinded his Reason and clouded his Judgment and darkened his Understanding and besotted intoxicated and bewitched him i. e. by some unaccountable wayes hindered him from discerning and considering these things which are so plain and evident and therefore the reason why he before chose Vice and forsook Vertue was because he did not see and consider this nor was so truly convinced of the Evil of Sin and the Good of Vertue but now he has quite other thoughts and apprehensions about them and therefore he is changed in his Will and his Affections by this change wrought in his Mind and his Understanding and this being a lasting and effectual change upon all the inward principles of action has a necessary influence upon his outward actions that are alwayes moved and turned by those inward springs and wheels within us for though a Man is still at liberty and is under no force and compulsion from without but acts freely from within himself yet his Will will follow the last dictate of his Understanding and he will not choose Evil as Evil when he apprehends it to be so and he must some way have his Reason corrupted and judge falsly and erroneously before he will practice so Omnis peccans ignorat If he has a true and lively sense of the Good of Vertue abiding upon his Mind he will not choose Vice again 'T is this sense I doubt not confirms the blessed Spirits above and will do the Souls of all good Men in Heaven when they see and know this so perfectly that 't will be impossible for them to fall but now we see things darkly and judge weakly and often change and alter our Minds as not having such a clear view of things nor attending so closely to the dictates of impartial Reason but our thoughts are often lured off by the temptations of the Flesh and our Minds hearken but to one side to the false reasonings and suggestions of the Devil and our own Lusts or are surprized with the sudden importunity of a temptation before they can recollect themselves Else no Man could say Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor for we cannot but love and choose Good when we apprehend it and hate and abhor Evil when it is visible and naked to us We must therefore strip Vice of its disguise and its false colours and wash off its paint and meretricious charmes and see it as it is in its deformity and ugliness and in the miserable and sad consequences of it and then we shall hate that which we once loved and throw away the gilded poyson and shake the smooth and shining Viper off of our hands and cast the rotten curtizan from our armes and embraces We shall be ashamed that we were so cheated and imposed upon so deluded by the deceitfulness of sin that we were so weak as to be governed by our mean passions and low inclinations which are the imperfection and the soft side of our Nature and that we should not live up to that Reason which is proper to us and distinguishes us from brutes that we
deter Men from Disobedience and to restrain them from Wickedness Now we easily see to how little purpose a less Punishment would ferve then that of Hell to those ends since there are so few awed even by that tho' God has so severely threatned it If then for the ends of Government and for publick good such a Punishment as this be necessary it is consistent both with Justice and Goodness however fevere it be for this is the only just measure and proportion of Punishments that they be able to attain their end and the Rule of Justice is to be taken not from any private but publick Reasons 2. God has given us free choice and proposed both Eternal Happiness and Eternal Misery to us He hath set before us life and death Deut. 30.15 so that if we obey him and live wisely and vertuously we shall enjoy the one but if we choose Sin we choose Death with it and our destruction is of our selves and we judge our selves unworthy of everlasting life Acts 13.46 as Paul and Barnabas told the Jews Gods proposing such vast Rewards and Punishments as 't is perhaps a necessary sanction of his Laws so 't is perfectly our own fault and madness if we refuse the one and incur the other Secondly I shall show how this Eternity is clearly and undeniably proved from Scripture which it seems to be because the word Eternal and Everlasting and what amounts to that is alwayes used upon this account as everlasting fire Matth. 25.41 and everlasting burnings Isa 33.14 and the fire that is unquenchable and that never goes out Mark 9.46 Luke 3.17 But to this they say that the word Eternal is often used in Scripture in a limited sense according to the nature of the thing to which it belongs as the Jewish Priesthood is called an everlasting Priesthood Exod. 40.15 and their Law of Atonement is called an everlasting statute Lev. 16.34 tho' neither were to be so strictly nor to last longer than the Jewish oeconomy So Sodom and Gomorrha and the Cities about them are said to suffer the vengeance of eternal fire in ver 7. of St. Judes Epistle because it brought eternal destruction to them though there be now none of that fire remaining so shall the fire of Hell say they destroy and annihilate the wicked and so as the Scripture speaks bring everlasting death and destruction upon them though if that shall last Eternally yet they shall not be Eternally tormented in it Now in reply to this I own that the word Eternal and for ever is often used in a limited sense but that it cannot be so when it is spoken here of Hellish Torments there is this evidence that the same word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is spoken of Eternal Punishment is spoken also of Eternal Life so that if it be understood of a limited Eternity in the one it must be so in the other which no body ever held or supposed and yet there is as much Reason from hence to deny the absolute Eternity of Heaven as the absolute Eternity of Hell 2. That they suffer Eternal Death and are Eternally destroyed is not to be understood in a strict and literal sense so that they lose all Being but yet are not Eternally tormented is plain from those places where it is said They have no rest day nor night Rev. 14.11 which supposes them not to be in a state of non-existence but of actual pain 'T is said there also that they shall be tormented with fire and brimstone and that the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever ver 10.11 which can never without violence be understood of the Fire which still lasts and which they suppose to be Eternal whilst they are not tormented in it but destroyed by it though it remains still as a monument of Gods Justice and Vengeance upon Sinners for the smoke of their torment ascending for ever supposes them to be for ever tormented and their having no rest night nor day necessarily implyes this Besides as it is said The fire is not quenched nor never goes out so it is said also that their worm never dyes Now though the Fire might possibly continue without its proper subject yet the Worm there meant never can for that is only that anguish and remorse and vexatious reflection of Mind which if it never dye the subject of it must last and continue and suffer it for ever So that though our Socinian Adversaries avoid the other places of Everlasting Punishment and Everlasting and Unquenchable Fire with some Art and Sophistry yet they can never evade those of the worms never dying and of the smoke of their torments going up for ever and their having no rest day nor night Rev. 14.11 But not to dispute further of these matters let the Sinner seriously conssder and meditate of these infinitely great and infinitely lasting and never ending Torments If there be such a thing as Hell it concerns him highly to Repent and so take care to avoid it If he do not think this to be true but secretly disbelieve it he must disbelieve all Religion and all Revelation and run into the utmost madness of Scepticism and Atheism and then let him consider that 't is not his belief makes things to be true or false but whatever he thinks of them they are and will be what they are in themselves and 't is certain he can never know them to be false however he is inclined to believe them so and therefore were they never so uncertain and were it but merely probable or indeed possible that there should be any such thing yet no Man in his wits should run the venture and lye open to so prodigious and dreadful an hazard as an Eternity of Misery But to such Christians that firmly believe them and have all Reason so to do both from Revelation and Reason too for all Mankind had ever some belief and expectations of sad Punishments in another World for Wickedness to them 't is unaccountable folly and madness to live in such Sins and in such courses as will throw them into this unquenchable Fire and consign them to this dreadful and everlasting state of Misery Is there any Sin whose charms are so great whose gains are so tempting that for the enjoyment of all these for a little season 't is worth enduring the Torments of Hell for ever If these Terrors of the Lord will not perswade Men to Repent and Leave their Sins nothing will Yet there is one or two other Motives or Arguments to Repentance from Christianity which I must propose after this of Hell and all the rest namely SECT V. Other Gospel Motives to Repentance 6. ANother Motive which may be said to be peculiar to the Gospel and which should encourage to Repentance above all others is the Promise of the Divine Grace and Holy Spirit to enable us to peform it to assist us to overcome all our evil Habits and to master
of God as when ye called me wine-bibber and glutton and a friend of Publicans and Sinners but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost if ye use any reproachful sayings against the Spirit of God by which I do my Miracles this shall not be forgiven neither in this world nor in the world to come Neither here nor as some of you vainly expect hereafter but shall be certainly and severely punish'd in both Now here is no mention at all nor the least intimation of those other Sins in which some have placed this Sin against the Holy Ghost as in final Impenitence which the Pharisees could not then be charged with not Apostacy from Christianity which they had not at all professed nor were by this very likely to do nor denying the Truth for fear of Suffering as in the instance of Francis Spira which is often said to be his Sin nor any of the six Sins in which the Schoolmen have placed it as Envying our Brothers Graces Impugning the known Truth Obstinacy Impenitency Desperation and Presumption which two latter are unluckily put together to make this one Sin when they are so contrary to themselves Whatever mixture there might be of these or any of these or the like Sins in the Minds of the Pharisees who committed this Sin against the Holy Ghost yet those are no more this particular Sin here meant by our Saviour than Pride and Covetousness and other Sins that might go a great way and be no small causes to bring them to this Sin and dispose their Minds for it but St. Mark sets the thing beyond all dispute in chap. 3. ver 28.29 30. where he relates these words of our Saviour thus Verily I say unto you all sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost shall never have forgiveness but is in danger of eternal damnation And then he gives the reason of our Saviours saying all this to them namely because they said he hath an unclean Spirit i. e. a Diabolical and impure one which makes it as manifest as can be desired that this their Sin was their blaspheming and speaking so reproachfully of the Holy Ghost which was in Christ as if that were not the Holy Spirit of God but an unclean and a Devilish Spirit How great and horrid a Sin this was will appear from these four Considerations 1. It tended to destroy the whole Truth of Christianity and consequently to rob the World of all the benefit it has by it There could nothing so malicious be contrived to undermine the Foundation of the Gospel as this assertion of the Pharisees that our Saviour wrought his Miracles by the help of an evil or unclean Spirit for this was to make him a Magician a confederate with the Devil and so to represent his Religion as a work and contrivance of Hell that could tend only to the mischief and destruction of the World For if no good thing could come out of Galilee as in a Proverbial derision they gave out to the People to be sure no good thing could come from Hell and from evil Spirits The Devil would never lend his Power had he been able to promote or establish any thing but a false Religion that should withdraw the World from the Worship of the true God The greatest demonstration for the Truth of Christianity were the Miracles of Christ as he often appeals to them John 10.37 38. John 14.11 Mat. 11.4 and if these were done not by a Divine but a Diabolical Power and by a compact with the Devil they are then the greatest Arguments against it for then it may be only a mystery of iniquity brought into the World by him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness 2 Thes 2.9 20. as Antichristianism is described 2. It tends not only to undermine the Truth of Christianity but of all Revelation whatever from God The greatest proof and demonstration that can be given to any Prophet that comes from God to reveal his Will to Men is his working of Miracles and satisfying those he is sent to that he has a Divine Authority and Commission by his showing his Credentials from God who would never suffer a Cheat and Impostor to do such mighty works as must necessarily cheat and deceive those that see them Now if notwithstanding that he teach nothing contrary to the Nature of God nor of Good and Evil and yet perform such wonderful Miracles as can be done only by the Finger of God and by a Divine Power if we will still suspect this then we can never be satisfied of the truth of any revelation from Heaven and so the Pharisees did not only undermine Christianity but even their own Law for it might with as much reason be said that Moses and the Prophets who pretended to come from God and wrought Miracles to show they did so yet were only the Prophets and Embassadors of the Devil and did all their Miracles by his Power as of Christ 3. This must proceed from a very spightful temper and malicious humour that made them speak this against their Consciences and the sense of their own Minds Sure they who were eye-witnesses of his Miracles and so had the best and fullest evidence of the truth of them and who heard the excellency of his Discourses and Sermons in which was nothing contrary to the Worship of the true God or the Moral Duties of Religion they must as our Saviour once told them know both him and also whence he was John 7.28 When they must be convinced that he was both an innocent and good Man himself and that his Doctrine commanded the highest Vertue and Goodness and tended to destroy the whole Power and Interest of the Devil in the World they could not surely believe themselves or think this their black charge was true but when they saw the People amazed at his healing a Demoniack and saying Is not this the Son of David Matth. 12.23 And so they feared that they should have lost their Power and Authority together with their Law and that the People should have left them and followed him then they gave out this vile and abominable reflection upon him that he did all this by the Power of the Devil which was the utmost shift that Malice could invent to blind the eyes of others against a Truth which they could hardly be supposed not to see themselves 4. It was the most taunting reproachful Slander against God and his Holy Spirit that could possibly be and therefore is alwayes called Blasphemy which is the most daring provoking and transcendent Crime against God that can be and proceeds from the most contemptuous and scornful most wretched and depraved temper of Mind To slander and calumniate the Son of Man was a great Sin to call a sober and temperate Person a
is and hinder Men from ever becoming better 2 Let us take care to avoid all manner of wilful Sin and especially all those great ones that come near and any way approach to this Sin against the Holy Ghost A very wilful Sin in a Christian especially is in some fense a Sin against the Holy Ghost 't is a grieving a quenching and a resisting the Spirit in the language of Holy Scripture That Blessed Spirit is concerned as the great promoter of Vertue and Goodness in the World and as the great Principle of it in the Hearts of Men and whenever we do any wicked thing we offer violence to that and by our rude and vicious carriage we affront and grieve and at last banish and drive away that Blessed Guest out of our Souls Whatever is Wicked and Sinful is so contrary to his Pure and Excellent Nature that it is highly offensive to him and if we go on in a course of long and customary Wickedness we sin the more against him and come the nearer to that sad and wretched state that is unpardonable I do not think indeed that any one Sin or particular Act of any Sin whatever puts us into that condition but as every Sickness and Indisposition of Body is a tendency to Death and Mortality so every wilful Sin is a corruption of the Mind and an approach to a state of Spiritual Death And there are some Sins that bring this sooner upon us as the acting against our Consciences and the sense of our own Minds an opposing the Truth that is evident to us a scoffing at Religion and making a mock of Sin an abusing the Scriptures and ridiculing the Holy Word of God an obstinate resistance of all the motions of Gods Holy Spirit upon our Minds These and such like gross and obstinate impieties though I do not think they are any of them the very Sin against the Holy Ghost for that ought not to be extended further than we have a warrant from Scripture yet they are so many approaches as it were to it and have more of the ill symptoms of that upon them and therefore we ought especially to avoid them lest they bring us by degrees into that sad state which is unpardonable for though one Sin I believe do not do this yet a great many may and especially such as those which do so waste the Conscience and corrupt the Mind as to make it uncurable And this is the saddest State and Condition in the World next to the State of Hell and Damnation tho' it be not the immediate Sin against the Holy Ghost Having endeavoured to give the plainest and fullest Satisfaction I can to the most doubtful and scrupulous Minds about this Sin of the Holy Ghost I shall now Discourse of some other things of a Lesser Nature which many Penitents and good Men are apt to be greatly dissatisfied with and have dark and wrong thoughts about As I. Concupiscence the Lustings of the Flesh or struggle between that and the Spirit which they find in themselves II. Trouble of Mind and a wounded Spirit which many lye under by reason of their Sins or by reason of Melancholly or both together SECT III. Of Concupiscence the Lustings of the Flesh or struggle between that and the Spirit THE right understanding of our selves is very necessary to the right understanding of Religion Religion is fitted and adapted to Humane Nature in its present state and capacity in this World and is designed not to destroy it but to perfect and improve it and raise it to its true Happiness and Perfection We cannot be like the Angels in Heaven nor like pure and glorious Spirits whilst we live here upon Earth and have Bodies of Flesh and Blood united to our Souls God who made us and knows our Frame did not intend to destroy and undo his own Creation by the Precepts of Religion nor make us cease to be Men by becoming Christians We find indeed in our selves a great many weaknesses and corruptions strong passions and sensual inclinations which if we did not wisely govern would be great occasions of Sin to us and if we let them loose would carry us into a thousand Mischiefs as well as Sins and Wickednesses They who give the reins to those and the full swinge to their Natural Lusts and Passions run into all Vice and Debauchery and commit all uncleanness with greediness And the best of Men cannot be wholly free from that Original Concupiscence and those Sensual Motions and Desires that are not alwayes agreeable to Reason and Religion but they complain of this bondage of corruption and this body of death which they cannot be delivered from Rom. 8.21 and 7.24 Grace and Religion though it gives us another Principle and conveys new powers of a Divine and Spiritual Life into our Souls yet whilst the Animal and Sensual Life remains and whilst we are compounded of Flesh and Blood as well as Spirit and Reason and have a Carnal as well as Spiritual Principle in us there will be a mighty struggle and a great contest between those two and a kind of civil war in our breasts between those different Parties and which of those shall be uppermost and have the chief Power and gain the Victory is the great point and the great concern of all Vertue and Religion since in all of us as the Apostle sayes The Flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the Flesh and these are contrary one to the other so that we cannot do the things that we would Gal. 5.17 And this we know by Experience as well as by Revelation Now this Concupiscence that remaineth in good Men is often matter of great trouble to them and they know not what to judge of it or how far it is a Sin and ought to be Repented of and what way they may best overcome it I shall therefore to clear and satisfie their thoughts about this matter of the struggle or Lusting between the Flesh and Spirit show these three things First That mere Lusting on either side is not what makes either Sin or Vertue or denominates a bad or a good Man Secondly That these are the proper matter of Vice or Vertue in which the tryal and exercise of them lye Thirdly That we ought to lessen the Power of the Fleshly Lusting and increase that of the Spirit and what are the proper means to do this I shall briefly consider First That meer Lusting on either side is not what makes either Sin or Vertue nor what constitutes or denominates a bad or a good Man For this Lusting is in both good and bad though according to several degrees and measures in the one the Lusting of the Flesh prevails and in the other that of the Spirit and 't is from this the prevalency of either of these and not the meer contention of them that we are counted good or bad before God The best of Men may have the same Passions Appetites and
very good Persons subject to it and one of the best means to cure it is to know that this is one cause of that trouble of Mind which will be so much abated when one is perswaded from whence it often comes or is heightened For Melancholly is not curable by Religion or Divinity and they who are subject to it should take the more care of their lives that there be no true and great cause to fall in and joyn with the Melancholly of their Bodies and they should make a judgment of themselves in their best tempers and when their thoughts are clearest and should trust others and especially their Spiritual Guides to judge for them since they are so unfit generally to pass judgment upon themselves 2. This Trouble of Mind which makes Men despair of Mercy is most unreasonable and contrary to the whole tenour and design of the Gospel for there is Pardon held out to the greatest Sinner by the Blood of Christ and to the greatest Sin or the greatest number of Sins if we Repent of them and leave them and become good Men before we dye This is as certain as the Gospel is true and therefore no Man has any just cause to despair for the greatest Sin or Sins who is so heartily troubled for them that he would not for the World commit them again and who resolves never to do so by the Grace of God but to practice the contrary Vertues and who makes good this Resolution by a Vertuous and Pious and Religious Life this Man will as certainly be happy as if he had been alwayes innocent and never had offended God I cannot say he will be in a state as comfortable and free from trouble though if he has thus Repented and become a good man he has good reason to be so but he will be as safe and if he has still some trouble of mind remaining upon the remembrance of his Sins though never so long past and he cannot see the Pardon of them with the same certainty and evidence that he knows he committed them yet this shall not hinder his Pardon nor affect his Salvation if he has truly and fully Repented of them For 3. And Lastly This Trouble of Mind which proceeds from judging too hardly or severely of himself is rather an Infirmity than a Sin and God will not condemn a Man for it though he may condemn himself for God will not condemn a Man unjustly though he should unjustly condemn himself much less because he does so Despair is indeed a sad state but I cannot say it is alwayes a damnable Sin or want of Faith as some think for it may arise not from a disbelief of the Gospel or of the Divine Goodness or the freeness and fullness of Gods Grace in and through Christ but meerly from a false and mistaken and too hard and humble an opinion of a Mans self and this is a fault not of a Mans Will but of his Judgment and a weakness and imperfection in his Understanding for which he shall never be condemned by a Righteous God but he will reverse this false Judgment which he made of himself when he lived or when he dyed and set it right in the Court of Heaven and do Justice to him at the great Tribunal though he did not do it to himself here That God will judge Men according to their Works is plain in Scripture but no where that I know that he will do so according to their Thoughts their vain Hopes and presumptuous or vain Fears and Troubles and Doubts and even Despairs of themselves So that tho' this Trouble of Mind or this Wounded Spirit be a comfortless and unhappy state yet it truly depends upon the cause to make judgment of it or to conclude any thing from it and true and timely Repentance is the best and certainest Remedy for it CHAP. IV. The ill Consequences drawn from the Priviledge of Repentance Obviated and Prevented THE most wicked and greatest of Sinners who have any thoughts of their Souls and of another World though they are not prevailed upon by this to become better yet make this reserve and refuge to themselves that they will Repent hereafter at some time or other and so escape the Wrath to come They know and are very sensible if they have not shaken off all Religion and all thinking and considering of these things that except they repent they shall all perish but they hope and intend to prevent this by the benefit of Repentance and so make use of that not to bring them off from their Sins but to encourage them in them with hopes to avoid all the miserable consequences of them and yet live in them and so by this priviledge of an after Repentance they set aside the present necessity of a good Life and wholly destroy or supersede all Religion I shall therefore endeavour to prevent that most common and most fatal abuse of it for I am confident there are more Souls perish by that than by any other mistake whatsoever and a thousand times more than by down-right Infidelity and Disbelief of all Religion which is a very rare thing and 't is hard to find out any certain instances that have ever been of it in the World 't is so much against the Natural Sense and Reason and Apprehension of Mankind but the other is the commonest thing in the World even for Christians perhaps above any others to make false Reasonings to themselves from this priviledge of Repentance which we have in the highest degree from the Gospel to think they may secure and save their Souls and yet indulge and allow themselves in the present enjoyment of their Sins because they may set all right by Repenting of them hereafter I shall therefore against this errour and abuse of Repentance and to obviate this mischievous Consequence offer these following Considerations 1. Can we think a Wise God would make such a Grant and Concession to his Creatures as should destroy all Religion and make void the necessity of Obedience and a good Life which according to these Mens thoughts is unavoidably done by this Gospel-priviledge of Repentance For since say they a Man is as certainly safe who comes in at any time upon Repentance and shall be as certainly saved by the Terms and Conditions of the Gospel as if he had spent all his Life in the strictest Vertue and Religion What need is there of such an early and constant and perpetual Obedience and spending a whole Life in the servitude and drudgery of Religion when coming in at the eleventh hour and working but a short space at the latter end of the day will have as much Wages and as sure a Reward and be as certainly accepted by God Shall not a Sinner when ever he returns and repents find Mercy Is there any time or bounds prefix'd to his Repentance so that he may not do it so many years hence as well as at present and after he has
of to those who only resolve to do so though never so sincerely And therefore should a Mans Purposes be never so sincere at that time which I doubt not but they may be as to the present sense of his Mind that is he may really intend at that time what otherwise could not be properly called a Purpose or Resolution in him yet this may not be afterwards effectual but may go off as most of the Vows of Sick Men and Ship-wrecked Mariners do when the Sickness and the Storm is over and they are just as they were before when they are well and upon dry Land for nothing is more easie and more sudden than to wish and purpose and resolve well especially when Men are under any great fear or great danger which wholly takes up their Minds and they consider not so much the difficulty of performing what they resolve upon as the necessity they see of avoiding the danger that is before them but when they are got free from that their Minds and their Purposes change as well as their Circumstances But let us allow all that can be supposed that these Purposes of the dying Sinner are not only sincere but would be effectual too if he lived which neither he nor any other but only God can know yet I see no reason to think that God will deal with him for what he might or would hereafter be and not for what he was or is at present or that the Rule of the Divine Judgment at the last day shall be this to reward Sinners because they might have been good Men if they had lived longer or to punish good Men because they might have been bad perhaps if they had lived longer too though God had seen either of these in his Infinite Prescience but thinks fit to prevent them by cutting a Man off and taking him out of the World he will not acquit or condemn him for foreseen futurities which might or would have happened but for past and certain Actions which he hath done and which God himself cannot make to be undone though he may hinder these to be done which are not and so to become nothing 'T is the present Habit and Temper and Frame of a Mans Mind and the present Moral state of Vertue or Vice which a Man is in when he dyes shall dispose him to Happiness or Misery so that 't is not he that was formerly or might hereafter be a good Man if he had lived but only he that is so at present in the disposition of his Mind and habit of his Life is fit for the Kingdom of Heaven and meet for the inheritance of the Saints in light And 't is not he that was a wicked Man heretofore or might be such afterwards if he had lived in such tryals and circumstances which it pleased God to take him away from and so in this sense take him from the evil to come but he that is a wicked Man at present in the habit of his Mind and course of his Life shall go to Hell Repentance is not a resolution to forsake Sin and become a good Man but the becoming so after we have been otherwise in any instance And he that has lived very carelesly and wickedly all his life and only resolves to live otherwise when he comes to dye can no more be called a good Man than he a good Schollar that has spent all his time idly in the University but when he is to be expelled from thence resolves to study hard Or he a Rich Man who has prodigally wasted all his Estate but when it is gone almost to the last Farthing resolves to save and become Rich. Good resolutions are good spurs to quicken and are necessary to carry on and put us upon any great or excellent design but if the design were attained as soon as it is purposed and resolved upon no Man would miss of his end nor ever fail of being Wise and Learned and rich and Great if a sudden resolution of being so would do the business Nor would any Sinner be either miserable or wicked when he comes to dye if it were sufficient to purpose and resolve at that time to become good and happy 'T is a loose and a false Notion of Repentance which places it in meer Purposes and in good Wishes and Resolutions and in a short transient passion and compunction of mind and inward working of thoughts rather than in a settled and permanent change both of Mind and Actions in a new Heart and a new Life in turning from Sin and doing that which is lawful and right in being renewed in our minds and amending and reforming our wayes in which the Scripture places it that has given occasion to this dangerous mistake of the sufficiency of a Death-Bed Repentance but Repentance as I have all along showed is a greater thing than most imagine 'T is not a slight Remedy but a Medicine made up indeed of a great many parts and ingredients such as Sorrow and Trouble and Fasting and Confession and good purposing and resolving and the like but till these work the Cure and make the Mind better purge out all the sickly matter free the Soul from all its Sins and restore it to a state of Vertue and Religion of Grace and Goodness they all signifie nothing for true and perfect Repentance must be like Health or a recovery after Sickness and till the Mind is brought off from its sick and weak state from all its Spiritual Maladies and Sinful Habits to a good degree of soundness and a Vertuous Crasis and Constitution so as to be free from Sin work Righteousness and perform the proper acts of the Divine Life so as the drunkard is made sober the unclean chast the unrighteous not only just but charitable the profane and irreligious devout and pious and the like it has not Repented as the Scripture requires nor is it qualified for Pardon or for future Happiness for no wicked Man in any kind shall enter into Heaven 1 Cor. 6.9 till he be made good after he has been otherwise in any instance for one wilful and habitual Sin continued in will certainly damn him and nothing but Obedience which if it be after Disobedience is called Repentance is the Gospel Condition of our Salvation and without this faith and trust in Christ and hopes in Gods Mercy and Free Grace which are the true supports and comforts to a good Man are deceitful comforts and meer delusions to a bad one for without holiness and habits of Grace and Goodness no man shall see the Lord and if we will enter into life we must keep the Commandments And God surely did not give us such Commands that we should either keep them while we live or else Repent of not doing it when we come to dye then a Man might break them all while he lives and only Repent that he had not kept them when he is a dying and this should be instead of keeping
the day is far spent and night is at hand and just upon him So is it with a Man who hath been all his Life following his Vices driving on in a full career of Wickedness and galloping in the way to Hell and the broad road of Damnation and yet thinks by a Death-Bed Repentance and a short stop at the last to come to Heaven Good God! What thoughts have such Men of the great work and business of Religion which ought to be the great work and employment of our Lives who think to dispatch it all in a few moments as if God gave us not our Lives to spend them in his Service and to his Glory and to work out our Salvation and fit our selves for Heaven and do good and grow in Grace and the like great ends of Life but we might pass by all those and wallow in our Lusts and spend almost all our days in the gratifications of Vice and Wickedness and in the Devils service and think it enough to put off God with a very small part at the last and devote our dying hours or a short time when we know we must live no longer to Religion and Repentance This is to think God a very easie Master and Religion a very easie work and Heaven a reward very easily to be attained and come at and that none of them are to be so much minded and regarded but that a little time will serve the turn and that all may be done and taken care of at the last though not quite so well indeed yet upon a forced-put the whole business may be dispatcht in a very little time so as to secure the main chance and not fail of the great end of Religion which is to save a Mans Soul and go to Heaven If this can be done a sudden few Men will care to spend much time more time than needs about it and this very Mistake and Opinion is the reason why they do not but generally neglect and cast off Religion and go on i' their Sins and live carelesly and wickedly and can never he perswaded to a strictly Vertuous and holy Life though they believe Religion and are very far from any Atheistical Doubts and Denyals of it but they think to do all the great work at the last something that shall serve instead of all the rest i. e. to Repent and be sorrowful for their sins for they account this sufficient Repentance and that the dying thus penitent shall be as well as if they had minded Religion all their lives and discharged the great ends of it If it will by the fixt terms and standing provision of the Gospel save their Souls and carry them to Heaven it is as well and will serve their purpose as well and the great purpose of Religion and God designed and appointed it should do all this which we no where find in Scripture and which to suppose would destroy all Religion 3. Without those holy Habits and Dispositions Graces or Vertues of Mind we shall be shut out of Heaven notwithstanding all we can do at the last notwithstanding our most earnest Desires Prayers and Entreaties and all other applications we can make to enter in this the Foolish Virgins found though they beg'd hard and pray'd earnestly and knockt loud and cry d Lord Lord and were never so importunate with the Bridegroom to let them in and presumed no doubt upon having a peculiar Interest in him if not some Relation to him as many do to Christ yet all would not do without timely preparation and having Oyl in their Lamps i.e. Grace and Vertue in their hearts The door was shut and all their cryes would not open it and though they call'd the Bridegroom Lord Lord and had some pretended Acquaintance or Friendship with him and reposed some Trust and Confidence in him yet all was in vain and to no purpose without due qualifications in themselves His Answer was I know you not as Christ's will be at the last day to those wicked Men who yet put mighty hopes in him and trust and rely very strongly upon him for Salvation and think they have some claim and pretence to his special love and favour and call him Lord Lord Saviour Saviour and the like but yet if they have not done the will of his heavenly Father in their lives done their Duty and made themselves fit for Heaven he will profess unto them I never knew you depart from me ye that work iniquity Matth. 7.22 23. Earnest and importunate Prayers are very prevailing Applications to God when the thing is fit to be granted and we fit to receive it and when God can with consistency to his Wisdom and Justice and other Attributes bestow the favour we ask of him and 't is according to the promises he hath made to us so that we can ask in Faith and have good reason to believe it shall not be denyed because there is no bar or just cause either in God or our selves to hinder it then we shall be certainly sure of it and God will alwaies give to those who thus ask him but 't is not our unreasonable though never so importunate Prayers that will make God do an unfit or unreasonable thing or prevail with him to break the Rules of his Wisdom and Justice or out of pity and tenderness violate the standing wise Methods of his Providence and Government Pity and Compassion is not a weak passion in God as it is in Men who are in pain to see another fall into such a misery as they are subject to themselves and which may as well fall upon them and therefore they have a fellow-feeling of it because it touches them with the quick thought of their own frailty and liableness to it but God is subject to no such weakness and uneasiness and therefore pity in him is but a wise Exercise or Effect of his Goodness whereby he is inclined to inflict as little evil and do as much good to his Creatures as the Capacities of their Nature and the Perfections of his own will admit Should a Wise and Good Governour out of weak pity and commiseration to the cryes and lamentations of condemned Prisoners and dying Malefactors stop the course of Justice and suspend the Execution of wholesom and necessary Laws He would destroy his Government by his easiness and bring a thousand times more Mischief to the Publick and so his Pity instead of a Vertue would become both imprudence and cruelty in the highest degree God as he is Pityful and Mercyful so he is Wise and Just too and will not break the standing Rules of the Gospel nor the wise measures of his Divine Government by which he impartially distributes Rewards and Punishments according to Mens Works out of any fond consideration to any Mans particular case He will not he cannot act contrary to the unalterable Rules of Justice either in punishing the Innocent or clearing and letting the guilty go free He must lay
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness Rom. 1.18 And when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven with his mighty Angels he will take vengeance on all them that obey not his gospel who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord 2 Thess 1.8 9. And those Christians who do any such works of the Flesh as are mentioned Gal. 5.19 21. shall not inherit the Kingdom of God but for the sake of those the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience Colos 3.6 These things are as clear as if they were writ with a Sun-beam so that none one would think who reads the Gospel should suppose Faith alone without Obedience should justifie and save us or that Christ is a Saviour to any but those who obey him Heb. 5.9 since blessed are they who do his commandments for they only have right to the tree of life Rev. 22.14 From all which it is plain that Obedience to the Laws of the Gospel is the only and the indispensable Condition of our Salvation And indeed this is the very design of Christs giving us such excellent Laws that we should obey them and be happy for ever by doing so and if we do not but live wickedly we must be eternally miserable It had been in vain for God to have given us any Laws or commanded us any thing if he had not given them such a Sanction and obliged us to them by such Rewards and Penalties and therefore if Mens heads were not bewildred with odd schemes and disputes about decrees and strange methods of Salvation this would be the first and plainest Principle in all Religion as 't is the truest and there would never be any dispute about it that if Men live well here they shall be for ever happy if ill for ever miserable However ignorant Men call this a Legal Condition of Salvation and would have no such in the Gospel yet as I have shown Christianity requires it so does also the very Nature of Religion and of Divine Government and the belief of a Future Judgment and of Rewards and Punishments in another World do all suppose it For what are those Rewards for but for those who live Vertuously and those Punishments but for those who live Wickedly And what is a Future Judgment but to reward all Men according to their works where God as a Just and Impartial Judge shall without respect of persons judge according to every mans work 1 Pet. 1.17 And every one shall receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad 2 Cor. 5.10 For when the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father with his Angels then he shall reward every man according to his works Matth. 16.27 In the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God he will render to every man according to his deeds Rom. 2.6 To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality eternal life But unto them that obey not the truth but obey unrighteousness tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doth evil ver 8 9. Nothing can be plainer than this in the whole Gospel that Men must expect to receive hereafter according to the goodness or badness of their Lives here and that the only Condition of their Salvation is Obedience to the Laws of the Gospel 'T is a wretched misunderstanding and a total destroying of Christianity to set up any loose Principles of Faith and Free-Grace or the like which are not consistent with this and to delude our selves with hopes of Salvation by Christ upon any other Condition or by any other Means than this of Obedience God indeed hath granted us this favour and priviledge by the Gospel that though we have disobeyed him sometime and some part of our lives yet if we come off from this Disobedience and return to our Duty in time and performe Obedience to him for the future that then he will forgive our former Disobedience and not charge it upon us nor punish us for it but graciously pardon it for the sake of Christ and his meritorious sufferings and that he will receive us again into his favour and reward us for our new Obedience as if we had never done otherwise but had been always obedient and never transgrest his Commandments This is the great grace and favour and priviledge of the Gospel and this is what we call Repentance for Repentance is the same thing with Obedience only it comes after Disobedience 't is a Mans living well after he has lived otherwise which takes in Obedience and a good Life though after a bad one 't is like a Mans setting up again after he had once broke when after his kind Creditor has been pleased to compound with him and instead of his whole Debt to wit an entire and Universal Obedience all his Life to accept of such a partial and broken one he may again thrive and grow rich and so get free from his former poverty or as I have often represented the Nature of Repentance 't is like a Mans recovering health and strength and soundness of body after he has been weak and ill or distempered in the whole or any part Health and Strength is the same to him that it was before though he had once lost it as Riches is to the other now he hath got them again after he was broke so 't is the same vertue of Mind which we ought always to have have had that Repentance restores us to and 't is the same Obedience to God's Laws which a Penitent performs upon his return to his duty that he should have performed before and 't is this only that commends him to God and gives him a title to the promises of the Gospel and procures Pardon and Salvation to him 'T is God's infinite Mercy in and through Christ to allow and accept of this After Obedience as the Condition of our Salvation when it is so broken and interrupted whereas the whole Obedience of our Lives is due to God and he might refuse to accept of this lame and after and imperfect one but still 't is Obedience to Gods Laws after we have broken them by our sins 't is this Obedience renewed ex postliminio as I may call it that recommends us to his favour obtains our pardon for what is past and entitles us again to the reward we had forfeited and without this we can never be reconciled to God nor received into Heaven for none shall go thither but the Vertuous and Obedient whither they have always been so or only after they have been otherwise but still they must be Vertuous and they must be Obedient or else they can never come thither for 't is certain Obedience which if after Disobedience in any instance is call'd Repentance is by the Gospel the absolute and indispensable Condition of our
down his eyes Psal 119.136 And the Scripture describes Repentance by a broken and a contrite heart Psal 51.17 in opposition to a hard and impenitent one All Penitents are drawn with a sad and mournful look with tears in their eyes and sorrow in their hearts smiting their breasts and wringing their hands and all the figures of Grief and Lamentation and covered with a veil of sadness and disconsolateness For Grief and Sorrow are Passions of Soul upon the presence of any evil that is afflicting and uneasie to us and Sin being the greatest of those evils should cause the highest of those passions and we have more reason to be sorry and lament for it than a Widow over her lost Husband or a Mother over her first-born that is dead or a Friend over another that is murthered ruined and undone for our Souls ought to be dearer to us than any thing else and Sin kills ruins and murthers them But here I must interpose a Caution Sin is a Spiritual Evil and works not upon our Bodily Passions so strongly and deeply as those other objects may which are more suited to them and more fit to excite such animal sensations and impressions as Naturally rise from them Thus sensible Beauty may charm our Animal Spirits more than the Intellectual Pulchritude of Vertue and Musick may more ravish us than the harmony of Reason or then the thoughts of the Heavenly singing and Hallelujah and these and the tasts of some sensible dainties may more affect us with a sensible pleasure than the very joyes and pleasures of Heaven as we can now conceive them for they are more suited to our Animal Nature and more agreeable to the mixt Faculties arising from the union of our Souls and Bodies and so there may be more pain and sorrow felt for a Wound in a Mans Body than for a Sin in his Soul and more tears shed for the misfortune of a Friend or the loss of a Child or a near Relation than for the miscarriage of our Lives or the commission of a Sin for the one is a sorrow of another nature and another kind raised not by Sense but by Reason not Natural but Religious not from Mechanism of Body but Consideration of Mind and therefore the greatness or the sincerity of our Repentance is not to be measured by the quantity of our Tears or the number of our Sighs or the degrees alwayes of Animal Sorrow but rather by the sincerity of our Wills and the actual performance of our good Purposes of forsaking and amending our Sins which are the only sure marks of our disliking them and being sorry for them and having a true hatred and aversion to them for those secret and inward Passions of Mind are not to be known often either by our selves or others but by the effects and we can only know we love Vertue and hate Sin by following the one and forsaking the other for no Man loves a thing heartily but if it be in his power he will attain it and no Man otherwise loves Vertue or Heaven No Man hates any thing or is heartily sorry for any evil but if it be in his power he will remove it if present and avoid it if absent No Man can know he has the love of God but by this in which the Scripture places it by keeping his Commandments 1 John 5.3 and therefore I am afraid that School distinction between Contrition and Attrition that the one is a Sorrow from the Love of God and the other from the Fear of Hell and so the one is sufficient and the other is not has little or nothing in it but words by which Men may easily cheat and deceive themselves for the secret springs and principles of Mens Passions lye too deep to be discerned and they run into one another and are so mixt and confounded that they cannot be distinguished neither is there any great difference between them and only the effects of them are taken notice of in the account of God and the concerns of Religion It is a meer Nicety to distinguish such Principles in the first forming of Repentance like looking for the colours of Flowers or taste of Fruit in the several Seeds of them whereas he that from true Religious Principles be they either Love Hope or Fear and they generally are mixt and combined together and we cannot divide the force or weight of each of them severally upon the Mind whoever I say from these or any or all of these is so concerned for his past Sins that he leaves them and forsakes them and becomes a good Man he has undoubtedly true Repentance and whatever the Principle of it was whether Love or Fear and whatever degree there was in the sorrow and trouble and concern for it it is that fruit and effect and permanent issue and result of it that constitutes and denominates it true and perfect Repentance Let not therefore any Man doubt his Repentance who has this evidence and demonstration of it and let no Man deceive himself without this and think that the Keys of the Church any thing the Minister can do for him or any thing that Christ has done for him or the Merit of his Blood or any Free-Grace or any Faith in him or any thing that a deluded and impenitent Sinner is willing to catch hold off can turn his Sorrow be it never so great and be it from what Principle soever either of Love or Fear into perfect and sufficient Repentance without the effect of Reformation and a good Life and performing the Conditions of the Gospel necessary to Salvation Godly Sorrow is an excellent means and a good beginning of Repentance 't is sowing in tears those seeds of Religion which may grow up to maturity of goodness and amendment of Life and if those penitential tears wash away the filth of our Sins and cleanse the hands and purifie the heart of a Sinner they are then true Repentance If the Salt that is in them eat out our Corruption and preserve us from all impurities afterwards and the bitterness of the Sorrow makes us disrelish and dislike our Sins ever after and wean and turn away our Affections from them and like the Waters of Siloam work upon us and perform the Cure when they are thus stirred and impregnated with a Divine Vertue by the moving of Heaven upon them then they are of great Vertue and ought to be frequently used and cherish'd and indulged as they were of old for this purpose by the devout and tender Penitents But all Constitutions can no more weep and shed tears alike than they can make the Hairs of their Head white or black and tho' all should be sorry for their Sins as being convinced in their Minds of the evil of them yet the passionate degrees and the outward expressions of this Sorrow fall not under any rules or measures but are best judged and known by the effect which is leaving them as what we do not
corrupting an antient Practice and using the Keys of the Church only to unlock the Consciences first and then the Purses of the Laity and is a wretched Corruption of the true Notion of Repentance by making it a light and transient thing and that the least degree of Sorrow by the Power of the Keys is sufficient for Pardon and Salvation From them I doubt not came the first loose and wretched Mistakes about Repentance and these being joyned with the false and unwary Doctrines of others about Justifying and Saving Faith its being a mere fiduciary Relyance upon Christ and his Merits and that we were to be saved by the free Grace of the Gospel without Obedience to its Commands or Performing its Conditions and that God's Grace was so powerful and miraculous in the Conversion of a Sinner that it did its work Instantaneously and Irresistibly these hindred Men from performing that Duty that true Repentance and Obedience which they thought upon some accounts not so necessary or that they expected could be done for them in an instant and so they need not trouble themselves about it all their lives by these Reserves and false Principles and comfortable as they call 'em but deceitful Doctrines they shifted off the difficult task of leaving all their Sins and leading a good life which otherwise must be owned to be the only true way to Salvation and Happiness and when this appears clearly to us as it will if we rightly understand Religion nothing but downright Atheism and disbelieving it will hinder the Power and Efficacy of it upon our lives But as to the Usefulness of those Penitential Austerities and Mortifications and Acts of Humiliation though private Repentance may be without them yet they may be of some good Use and Advantage both as means to promote it and as signs fit to express it Thus fasting especially and abstinence from food is a proper way both of afflicting the Soul and of bringing the body into subjection and as feasting in the Nature of the thing is improper for one Sorrowing Mourning and Repenting as we ought often to be upon serious and sad Reflections made upon our Sins so for many Sins pampering and indulging the Carkass is adding fuel to them and to abate and substract from our Meat and drink is to cut off those Recruits and Nourishments which usually make provision for the flesh and maintain the lusts thereof Now then private prudence and discretion will advise every good Man to make use of that which he finds may be so useful and instrumental to the purposes of Vertue and to the designs of Religion but to enjoyn it further and lay an absolute necessity of it to all Persons and Tempers as of Prayer giving Alms and other Christian Duties this is more than either the Church or the Scripture does ever warrant I speak as to private Repentance which is effectual to every Mans Pardon and Salvation as to publick such as the Publick Fasts commanded by Authority either in the Jewish or Christian Church there the Nature of the thing and Obedience to those who were lawful Governours made it a Duty to comply with their Religious Commands and Designs and to Express our Publick and Solemne Repentance by such signs as are fit and usual on such an occasion and not to keep a Festival when our Governours and our Christian Neighbours and our Sins and the fear of some Judgment call upon us for Fasting and Humiliation but bow long we are then to fast and whether to eat nothing till the Evening and what kind of Meat is what our Health and Constitution and a little degree of Prudence joyned with a good sense of Religion will direct us in without a Confessor He is a Slave to his Appetite and makes a God of his Belly who cannot deny himself a meal now and then upon such an account and he is a weak and Superstitious Creature who thinks Religion lies in some strict and little niceties of performing this without regard to his Health and the more true and proper designs of it Fasting has been alwayes observed by Devout and Pious Penitents in all Ages as an Exercise of penitence and a help to Devotion and Religion and Lent or the Antepaschal Fast is especially of great Usage and Antiquity in the Christian Church but not observed alike in all places as is plain from Irenaeus and others but it was chiefly designed for Publick Penitence of notorious Sinners who were to be restored to the Communion of the Church and Receiving the Sacrament at Easter but it may be of good Use to the private Repentance of every particular Christian who ought to set aside some time for the Examining of himself and the Reflecting upon his past Sins and as long as he lives he ought to Exercise a particular Repentance for all the wilful Sins he ever committed and to have some appointed times to offer up the Sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart and to let his heart bleed afresh and pierce it self very deeply with the remembrance of its past Sins which though God has forgotten so as not to punish yet he ought never to forget so as not to Repent of them I mention not other Bodily penances such as putting on Sackcloth and Ashes which were Eastern Modes of Mourning but do no more oblige us than rending our Garments and pouring out Water which were used by them and as to whipping and going bare-foot which one calls the penance of a Goose Some of those which are in use in the Roman Church are rather Heathenish than Christian Customs like Baals Priests Cutting and Lancing themselves and they are no more proper to Cure Men of their Sins or be Helps to Repentance than the taking a Purge or Vomit which would work as effectually upon their Minds and expel their Vices and Corruptions as well as any of those Penitential Rods and Disciplines upon the backs of Fools who understand not what true Repentance is All such Bodily Exercise profiteth nothing to the freeing from their sins but is only a commuting with God for them and makes them believe that repentance lyes only in such an opus operatum which however severe it seems yet is much easier than to leave their Sins and their beloved Lusts as we find many of our Lovers of Wine rather choose to take Physick now and then to cure their Head-ach than to become sober which would do it much better But true Repentance is not to be known or judged of by such unnatural follies which they call the fruits but are not so much as the shadows of true Repentance nor by any of these External Symptoms or Acts of Penitence which are the most proper Exercises or Attendants of it but by the Change wrought upon our Hearts and Lives and the Effectual Amendment and Reformation of both as we are to judge of the Soundness and Goodness of our Health not by the strength or bitterness of the Physick we
grow common to all others if it had the same temptation to invite and the same opportunity to commit them and 't is only for want of those that it is not universally lewd and wicked and given up to commit all uncleanness with greediness what should hinder or restrain him from all other Sins who gives way to any one plain and great one if he were assaulted by the like temptation in any other place he would yield to it and comply with it even in the grossest manner for he has lost his guard and the security of his Vertue and by such a wide and open breach made in his Conscience all other sins might enter and the whole Legion take possession of him There can be no true Reason to preserve him from any or from all sins who knowingly and wilfully allows himself in any one 7. Any such sin is utterly inconsistent with true sincerity and this we know is absolutely necessary to our good state though perfection of Obedience is not 't is truely and commonly said that God requires not absolute perfection of us but only true sincerity because the best Men cannot attain to the one and he must be a very bad one who hath not the other but there is a perfection of parts and degrees we are not bound to the highest degrees of every Vertue in order to a State of Grace and Goodness but we are to have such a perfection of parts as to performe every Duty and every Vertue required of us and to be without every willful Sin contrary to the Divine Law for less than this will not amount to true sincerity that shall commend us to God and approve us to him who knows our hearts for whilst he sees there any one sin that we love more than we do him which we prize and value above his favour and all that he can give us even Heaven it self he cannot think our hearts are upright towards him or that we sincerely love him for can he sincerely love God who does any wilful thing that he knows is infinitely displeasing to him And can it be consistent with the faithfulness and integrity of friendship to do the most injurious and the most disobliging thing imaginable Can he love his Prince or the Government where he lives who endeavours in any thing to subvert and destroy that Authority by an open standing out and breaking their Laws There may be indeed a Personal Love to an Earthly Prince distinct from Obedience to his Laws and so some would have to God and Christ for he may be capable of receiving other Pledges and Testimonies of it and may be many other ways obliged by us because he may have a Distinct Interest or Inclination different from his laws but this cannot be in God whose Laws are always agreeable to his Nature and the result of his own infinite Wisdom and Reason and he can never be pleased with any that act contrary to them nor is capable of receiving any other grateful or acceptable thing from us but only Obedience to his Commands so that by this only we that are his Creatures can oblige him and testifie the sincerity of our Love to him as St. John says This is the love of God that we keep his commandments 1 John 5.3 There is no other certain sign or expression of our Loving God but obeying him and no sign of Loving him with all our heart and soul and mind but obeying him Universally and not dividing and sharing out our Love to him and our sins and suffering any of our vile Lusts to be his Rivals and Competitors in our Affections Whilst we allow our selves in any known and wilful sin we take part with that which is an Enemy to God we harbour and nourish a known Traytor to him in our breasts and if we will not give it up we break with God and Declare open Enmity against him and will rather part with him and his friendship than part with a Paltry and a Vile Lust whilst we thus indulge any darling Sin and secret Wickedness in our heart as God cannot love us so neither can we sincerely love him but whatever showes and pretences of kindness and respect we may show to him otherwaies whatever Courtship and Honour we may give to him by the Ceremonies of Worship and the External Rights and Offices of Religion yet he will account us only false and treacherous and hypocritical Wretches and not accept of any thing else we offer to him For 8 Allowing our selves in one such darling Sin or beloved Lust spoils all our Religious Duties and makes them both unacceptable to God and us unfit to performe them as we ought He that allows himself in any secret Sin and unlawful Lust how must he be sunk into a sensual State that will keep him from rising to Spiritual Thoughts and Exercises his Mind is taken up with other apprehensions and idea's of different objects which he prefers to all the things of Religion and these sink down his mind and bemire it in flesh and sense that it cannot use its wings or rational faculties and mount upwards to the purer objects of Faith and Religion Those vitious inclinations must quench and put out the fire of Devotion and make the mind move sluggishly and heavily in such an improper work and damp all its Religious Ardors and Affections When a Man out of a Natural Sense of God cannot excuse himself wholly from worshipping and praying to him for I speak not of such as have cast off all Religion but only such as allow themselves in one wicked Lust or unlawful Liberty how must it be a violence to him to pray against a Sin and beg pardon of it and Grace to forsake it when he secretly resolves to keep it and has no true and full design in his mind to leave it What a struggle must there be between his Conscience that is awakened by his Devotion and his sensual Appetite which is so fond of the Sin that nothing can keep him from it and who when he is deploring himself in the holy Offices yet intends to commit it the next opportunity What horrid Mockery and impudent Banter is this with the great and awful Majesty of God And what wretched Hypocrisie to make shows of great Honour and Address to him when our hearts are not right with him and we must know that he well knows they are not so No Man could have the face to be so impudent to another as to come and make great court to him and express great Respect and Reverence and Kindness for him when he knew at the same time that the other also knew that this was all false and hypocritical and that he took all occasions at other times to affront and contemne and disoblige him And yet thus every Man does who under all his Devotion and seeming Piety nourishes a secret sin and an unlawful Lust and demurely covers a vile fraud or injustice or any immorality
unlawfully had it power and opportunity for those first Motions and Inclinations are necessary and unavoidable arising from the frame and constitution of our Nature and the Mechanism of our Body Blood and Spirits so that we can no more help or prevent them than we can the senses of Pain and Pleasure or the Appetites of Thirst or Hunger or the Motions and Impressions of outward Objects made upon our Senses and therefore they are not simply evil but good in themselves so far as they are Natural and intended by God to serve the good of the World and of particular Persons and the wise ends of Providence but as they are irregular and inordinate excessive and immoderate and destroy those ends for which God intended them so far they are sinful and when any of those Natural Appetites or Sensual Inclinations grow too strong and unruly and are not kept under the government of Reason or within the bounds of Vertue and Religion then they carry Men to all loosness and wickedness and make them commit Sin and Uncleanness with greediness A good Man may with St. Paul be very sensible and complain of this body of sin and of death and of the law of sin that is in his members of many irregular Appetites and undue Passions and weak and foolish imaginations and unreasonable desires and inclinations of too quick gusts of Sensual things and too much deadness of Spiritual of having too many thoughts and designs for Earthly and present things and too little zeal and affection for things Heavenly that are a thousand times more valuable These are imperfections that are in the best of us and we see that they are so and are very sensible and complain of them but yet we cannot wholly avoid them but after all our thoughts and all our care they still return upon us and the Flesh will lust against the Spirit and there will be a perpetual war and struggle between them but if the Spirit do so far prevail by the helps of Grace and considerations of Religion that it do never yield to any wilful Sin it shall then be rewarded as a Conquerour which though it did not wholly subdue and drive out that homebred enemy yet kept it alwayes under and made it submit to its Government and not keep up an open Rebellion against it Of this I have largely discoursed in the Third Section of the Third Chapter I proceed now to those Sins which are known wilful and presumptuous habitual and reigning in us any one of which is inconsistent with a good State and excludes us out of Gods Favour here and Heaven hereafter such as the Psalmist in the forequoted place prayes against Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins lest they get the dominion over me All known and wilful Sins are presumptuous as being done in defiance of a Divine Authority that we know has forbid them and in contempt of God and his Laws to whom we owe all Honour and Obedience and notwithstanding all those threatnings and severe punishments that God has denounced against them He that sins wilfully after he has received the knowledge of the truth of these things there remains nothing for him but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries This is despising the Law of God thus wittingly and wilfully to break it and is sinning with a high hand and a most presumptuous boldness when we choose to do that which we know is most highly displeasing to Heaven and which God has laid all the obligations he possibly can upon us not to do When any such Sin gets dominion over us so that it becomes customary and habitual to us it makes us the Devils slaves and captives at his Will and shows that he is our Master and that we are the Servants of Sin and overcome by that and brought in bondage to it that it prevails upon our Minds above all the Power of Reason and Principles of Religion and that we choose it above all the great things of Heaven and another World that Religion offers to us and think it more desirable than any of those and had rather gratifie a paltry Lust and a foolish Inclination than save our Souls and have all the favour of God that we prefer it before any other good and let it have the ascendant in our Love and Affections above all other things for it is utterly inconsistent with any Love of God or any due regard to him and banishes all Principles of Religion out of our Minds and destroyes all sincerity and uprightness of Heart towards God and abandons us to a state of enmity with him and everlasting destruction hereafter This I have shown is true of every wilful and chosen and known Sin I shall now from the distinction I have given you of these Sins from those of Infirmity Ignorance and Inadvertency make the following Inferences and Remarks 1. That those Sins of Infirmity are to be Repented of i. e. we are to be sorry for them and pray God to forgive them Though they do not destroy our good state nor deprive us of Gods Favour here or Heaven hereafter yet they are such as are to be matter of Trouble and Sorrow and Humiliation to us and we are dayly to pray God to forgive us our Trespasses as Christ has taught us in the Lords Prayer and the Psalmist in the place before mentioned prayes God to cleanse him from his secret faults as well as to keep him back from presumptuous Sins For 2. These are true and proper Sins and though they are not charged upon us to our Condemnation yet this is by the great Favour and Mercy of God and by Vertue of the Gracious Covenant made in Christ with Mankind for otherwise God in Rigour and Justice might punish and condemn us for them The Papists hold a distinction between Sins Mortal and Venial in their own Nature i. e. that some Sins are in themselves damnable and others not which the Protestants have generally opposed for this Reason because all Sin is in it self Mortal and in its own Nature deserves Death as being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a breach and transgression of a Divine Law whose sanction is Death but it is pardonable only by Gods Mercy on the account of its circumstances which make it more excusable with a good and merciful God but that it is not of it self venial or so little as not to deserve Punishment they prove from hence that we are bound to pray God to forgive it Now it is pure Grace and Favour for God to forgive and what he is not obliged to and if he is not obliged to pardon it he may punish it were it not for his Mercy and Goodness and the Gracious Covenant he has made with us in the Gospel This should therefore 3. Make us very sensible of Gods infinite Mercy and kind dealing with us by the Covenant of Grace How many innumerable Sins and
fullest participation of him and his Perfections All Vertue and Holiness is an efflux or irradiation of the Divine Nature communicated to the Humane Gods Essential Holiness transfused into our Nature his Image imprinted upon our Minds and therefore it makes us the Children of God in the Scripture language and so naturally and necessarily beloved by him even in some degree as he loves himself and takes infinite complacency and delight in his own Essential Perfections and Original Holiness The righteous Lord loveth righteousness Psal 11.7 from his own Righteous Nature and for the same reason The wicked his Soul hateth for he cannot love any Being so contrary to himself and so repugnant to his own Righteous and Holy Nature for we may as well suppose him to hate himself or to love the Devils the most opposite to himself and therefore the most accursed Beings as to love a very wicked and impure Soul which does truly partake of the Diabolical Nature and is most repugnant to the Divine He cannot take such an one into his special Love and Favour and communicate any of his own Happiness to it and admit it into Heaven which is the highest degree and fullest participation of his Love and of his Happiness upon the account of its unlikeness and contrariety to the Essential Perfections and Holiness of the Divine Nature 2. God cannot bestow Heaven upon any but those who are Good and Vertuous as 't is a Gift and Reward proposed and promised by him only to such as are so God as he is a Just Judge and an Impartial Distributer of Rewards and Punishments and will render to every man at the last day according to his works he cannot without injury to that Character and the plain charge and imputation of Partiality and Injustice bestow and confer so great a Reward as Heaven is to be upon those who are wholly unworthy and undeserving of it who have lived wickedly and disobediently all their Lives had no regard to the Honour and Glory of God nor doing him any service in the World nor made Heaven and Religion and Vertue their great end but gratified their Vices and enjoyed their Lusts and allowed themselves in all the undue liberties of Sensual Pleasures and broken the Divine Commands and lived in a direct and open opposition to God and Religion If such Men shall be at last rewarded by God as well as those who have faithfully served him and sincerely obeyed him and made it their business to promote his Honour and promote Religion and do all the good they could in the World who have denyed themselves all unlawful pleasures and vicious gratifications and have took great pains with themselves to conquer their sensual inclinations and overcome the Temptations of this World and to live up to the strict rules and answer the great ends and designs of Religion if the reward of Heaven and the Crown of Glory be not laid up for these and they alone partakers of it and not the other then God will be thought at that great day when he says he will judge the world in righteousness not to have done right to his Creatures nor to have had a due regard to their Actions not to have loved and rewarded Vertue punish'd and hated Vice as they deserved and not to have dealt with Mankind according to the known measures of Justice among themselves and the certain rules of distributing rewards and punishments The whole Scripture assures us the contrary to this and the reason of the thing makes it impossible to be otherwise for tho' Heaven is the Gift of God infinitely beyond what is due to any of our Vertues yet 't is a Reward too and shall be given in a way of Justice and in such a manner as is agreeable to the rules of Righteousness 3. Such is the Nature of this Heavenly Happiness that none but good Men can partake of it for none but they can love God and delight in him and take any complacency and satisfaction in the enjoyment of him The wicked whilst he continues such is an enemy to God and a hater of him and whilst he is so were he carried to Heaven he would be only like a Traytor taken captive and brought in Chains to his Princes Court where it would be no pleasure to see him upon his Throne in all his greatness whom he hated against whom he had been a Rebel and from whom he could never expect any favour and therefore the being thus brought into his Presence and seeing all his Glory would be only a greater vexation to him and an adding to his misery and only more torment him as it does the Devils to see and know there is such a Being above them whom they can never have their friend or be reconciled to No Man while he is wicked can have any more hopes of this than those wretched Spirits and therefore can never have any or be capable of any happy communion or fruition of God in Heaven And as to the spiritual pleasures and noble enjoyments there they are no more suited and adapted to him than any other pleasures are to one that has lost the proper Faculties to which they should be agreeable and by which he should have the perception of them than Musick to one that is deaf or Light and Beauty to one that is blind and therefore such a vicious wretch cannot be imagined to be in any other condition in Heaven were he to go thither with his sinful Habits than all other Animals are when they are taken out of their proper Elements for Heaven is no place nor has no suitable pleasures and entertainments but for those who love God and Goodness and delight in the exercises and enjoyments of Religion 4. From the Nature of our own Minds 't is impossible we can enter into Heaven or be capable of Happiness without Holiness and Vertue Our Happiness there must be suited to those Faculties and Capacities which belong to us it must lye in the highest perfection and improvement of the several powers of our Minds and the most proper sense and enjoyment resulting from thence when our Understandings are advanced to the highest knowledge especially of God and the Divine Nature which is that Beatifick Vision that seeing of God as he is in which the Scripture places the chiefest part of Heavenly Happiness when the Will chooses the chiefest and supream good with the greatest vigour and ardour and enjoys it with the highest rapture and extasie of fruition When our Souls are thus improved with the brightest understanding of Truth and the strongest love and willing of Good When our Powers and Faculties are the most raised and perfected the most enlarged and opened and filled up with the fullest enjoyment of those their proper Objects then they are in the most happy and pleasurable state imaginable Now nothing can do this but Religion and Wisdom and Vertue which are the highest accomplishment and improvement of our Minds without
which we can never enjoy the true Happiness we were made for and to which our Minds are fitted Vertue alone can give that and all the Pleasure Peace and Joy that result from it whereas Wickedness will necessarily not only corrupt and impair the Mind and spoil its Faculties but disorder and wound and corrode it and make it very painful and uneasie and a Hell and Torment to it self 2. As none but good Men shall enter into Heaven so none can be made good on a sudden Those Vertuous and Holy Habits and Dispositions of Mind are not to be had or attained immediately in a little time and on a sudden hurry as is intimated here by the Virgins wanting Oyl and not being able to procure or buy it in their present distress when the Bridegroom was a coming We must be prepared and provided with those things that are necessary for our Future Happiness before Death comes and puts us on a sudden hurry and alarums us with its unexpected approach or else we shall be sadly disappointed and unprovided if we expect to procure or attain them then If we think to borrow of anothers Vertues and Merits to help out our own defects and wants at that time as they of the Church of Rome imagine something like these foolish Virgins or as others that the Bridegroom himself shall supply them in an extraordinary manner out of his stock though they have no Oyl at all in their own Vessels no Righteousness of their own All these vain hopes and expectations of idle and careless and foolish Sinners will then deceive and disappoint them and make them miserable If Men have not attained to the Vertues and Graces of Religion nor any degrees of Holiness and Goodness all their Lives and think to acquire them now on a sudden when they are near dying they may as well hope that a Tree that has bore no Fruit all the Year should on a sudden when it is just to be cut down and the Axe is laid to the root of it sprout and bud and blossom and bring forth Fruit. This would be a strange Miracle and it must be as great and unaccountable to have a wicked Man on a sudden become a good one and bring forth the Fruits of Vertue and Repentance All our Vertues are owing to the Grace of God as the growth of all Plants and Trees is to the Rain and warmth and influence of the Heavens but to think that Gods Grace which could not work upon a Man all his Life before will now in such an extraordinary manner change and convert him on a sudden as to make him immediately become a good Man is to suppose a Saint made as Adam was in full growth and perfect flature the first day he lived without passing through the degrees of Youth and Childhood as God thinks not fit to make Mankind so now but produces them by the ordinary and appointed way of his Providence so he makes good Men by the ordinary methods of his Grace and influences of Religion and the New Creature is formed by degrees and growes into a perfect Man and increases in Wisdom and Goodness till it comes to the measure of the stature of the fulness in Christ Jesus The Spirit worketh upon our Mind agreably to their Nature in a manner indiscernable from its own proper operation enlighteneth the Understanding and inclineth the will gently and kindly by the thoughts and considerations of Religion offering them clearly and imprinting them strongly upon the Soul and so in a rational way begetting right apprehensions and affections in it and so altering the temper and disposition of the Mind and by frequent acts and repeated practices bringing a Man to new habits and thus converting him from bad to good not in an instant but by long strivings and gradual operations upon him No very bad Man was ever made a good one on a sudden nor can any more be so by the Grace of the Gospel than a Child over night become a Man the next morning by the course of Nature and Providence or Seed sown in the ground spring up and ripen and bear Fruit in a few hours Such Mushroon Converts and Penitents have no good root but dye away and wither as suddenly and instantaneously as they came up with the first heat and tryal of a Temptation till Religion shoots deeper into their Hearts and gets better rooting in their Souls like the Seed that fell on stony ground it is quickly gone and does not grow at all nor bring forth fruit with patience as the Scripture emphatically speaks i. e. with due continuance Good Purposes and Resolutions and such like good Principles of Action must continue some time upon the Mind and exert their power and efficacy upon it by proper acts and tryals and experiments or else they are but like false conceptions that produce nothing like Clouds without Rain Blossoms without Fruit and abortive causes without any effects A sudden Sorrow upon a wicked Mind will no more make it good nor bring forth the worthy fruits of Repentance than a sudden shower upon the Sands of Arabia or Rocks of Caucasus will make them become fertile and good ground there must be long cultivation and great labour and pains taken with such barren ground before it will be a fruitful Soil and bring forth any thing by all the showers and influences of Heaven upon it A hardened Sinner who hath lived many years in the wretched courses and habits of Wickedness must by long time and great care and many methods of Gods Grace and Goodness have his Heart changed and his Life mended and his old Vicious Habits plucked up and new Vertuous ones planted in their place and these take root and grow up and bear Fruit in his Life before he can become such a good Man as is fitted for Heaven Such an one can never be made so in a little time just before Death but it must require at least a good part of his Life to become such and it should be indeed the business of our whole Lives to make our selves such as shall be thus fit for Heaven To think that great work can be done at the latter end when we are just a dying and may be dispatched in a very little time all on a sudden is as idle and unreasonable as for a Man that has a good dayes journey to take to lye loytering and never mind it till the Sun is near down and night is coming upon him and then to set out and think to reach it by a sudden start or by some unaccountable wayes to fly thither or be Magically transported and set down he knows not how at his journeys end Or rather to make the Case more exactly parallel to an old Sinner like one who hath travelled almost all the day in a wrong way and spurred and driven on very furiously in his vicious courses and is now to turn back and begin to take the right way when