new and holy Life and be available to his true Conversion and Repentance and I believe this is Gods usual way by which he begins to effect this upon most Sinners by thus bringing them to some serious thinking and considering It is very great Mercy when God thus checks them in their career and calls to them by the loud voice of his Judgments and thus as he generally does puts the first stop to them and makes them bethink themselves and consider but then this method must not only awaken but keep their eyes open and make them see and consider those other Thoughts and Reasons which are the more proper seminal Principles that will be more likely to produce and beget this true Repentance Such as are 2. In the second place a serious reflection and thorough conviction of the Evil that is in Sin and of the real Good of Vertue as the only thing which can make us truly happy for till Men have brought themselves to be fully perswaded and convinced of this and to believe it as firmly as they do any truth in Mathematicks or any other Science they will never be brought truly to Repent that is to dislike and hate and renounce the one and heartily to love and persue and embrace the other for Men will still love their Sins and hanker after them and be ready to comply and close with them upon every occasion if they only fall out with them sometimes as Lovers do with what they like and admire and tho' there may be some bickerings between them and some penitential passions and resentments now and then yet they may still have their Heart if they do not upon wise observations and thorough convictions believe them to be enemies to their Welfare and Happiness to the comfort of their Lives here and their Eternal Salvation hereafter and that they get nothing by them but poor and empty and sickly pleasures but that they bring substantial misery and bitter remorse and anguish of Mind and a thousand mischiefs and inconveniences along with them at present besides the terrible hazards and dangers of another World so that they are by no means to be loved or chosen if we love our selves or choose our own Happiness For we must bring it to this if we would be steddy and certain to the first Principles of Self-preservation and a desire of our own Happiness which lyes at the root of our Nature and what we shall alwayes act upon if we rightly understand it and do not grosly err and mistake about it and a few wise observations and a little sober thinking and considering will easily satisfie us and fully convince us that Vice is the certain cause of misery to us and that Vertue is the only way to be truly easie and happy The Sinner will be convinced of this by his own experience when he reflects upon his past follies and sees how little he has got by his Sins but shame and sorrow and trouble of Mind perhaps a sickly and diseased Body and a wasted Estate and wretched Beggery and every thing that shall make him miserable in this World before he goes to the greater misery of another For do we not dayly see this how one Man brings himself by his Sins to a morsel of bread how he shipwrecks his Fortunes as well as his Conscience by Luxury and Prodigality another consumes his Body as well as his Estate by Debauchery Lust and Intemperance by these they sin as the Apostle remarks against their own Bodies as well as against their Souls they make them bear the scars and marks of their Sins upon them and become Martyrs in the Devils service and endure often more torture of Body for their Sins than other Martyrs have done for their Religion sacrifice their Lives to them and by living too fast as they call it bring an untimely death upon themselves and are in so much hast sometimes to dye that their Bodies often rot before they come into their graves If these mischiefs do not follow all Sins yet some others do and the greatest of all is inseparable from them which is torment and anguish of Conscience and pain and uneasiness of Mind which every Man feels unless his Conscience be stupified and mortified which is a worse state than the other upon the commission of any great Sin and this is ten times greater than any fancied pleasure in it This is a sting a wound a prick upon the most tender part of a Mans Soul a dart struck through his Liver a Worm gnawing upon his Vitals nothing is so close and so cutting a pain and misery as a Man 's own ill Conscience when it is let loose upon him and like a Fury falls upon him with its utmost rage lashes him with its snaky whips and burns him with its fiery torches 't is then a Devil let loose and a Hell kindled within his own bosom They who have felt but a little of it know it is more exquisite pain than any belongs to the Body and what is it then to endure this for ever and lye under that and the further anger of God to all Eternity Oh madness and folly that wants a name that will do this for any Sin whatever Oh the dreadful Evil of Sin that brings all this and so many other mischiefs upon us But 3. Vertue on the contrary has a thousand Comforts Blessings and Goods belonging to it which should make us love it as we do our selves and choose it as heartily and firmly as we do our own Happiness When we rightly understand and consider it we shall find Reason to do so that neither disturbs our Mind nor diseases our Body nor squanders away our Estate nor brings any reproach and discredit along with it as Vice generally does and it takes away no real Good or true Pleasure or proper Enjoyment from us but it allowes us all that we can desire or that our Nature was made for within the due bounds and limits of our Duty and within those we may enjoy as much Vertuously and Innocently as the greatest Liberty and Debauchery can afford the Sinner Vertue does not destroy our Pleasures but refines and purifies them and so makes them sweeter and better and draws them off from the filthiness and sediment and bitterness that lyes alwayes at the bottom of all sinful Pleasures and Enjoyments No Man ever repented of his Vertues or was sorry that he had done a good Action but he finds great comfort and satisfaction within himself when he reflects upon it and it is a prop and stay to his Mind and he rests securely upon it and is chearful confident and erect under all accidents and all dangers and difficulties whatsoever His Heart standeth right and approveth it self to God and to his own thoughts having no ill designs no base and mean ends and purposes but such only as are good and vertuous and this gives him great peace firmness of Mind and bravery of Spirit and
Grace and Goodness tho' they have not already attained neither are already perfect as the Apostle speaks of himself Phil. 3.12 yet they are alwayes safe and alwayes ready for the coming of the Son of Man and their whole Life is a most sure a most comfortable preparation for Death But these are very few I doubt not only to the general number of Mankind but even to good Men for most of the good Men we read of in Scripture were some time or other guilty of great and wilful Faults as Noah and Abraham and David and St. Peter and St. Paul and Mary Magdalene and whilst they were so and before they had recovered themselves by Repentance I cannot but think them in a bad state for Mens states are not fixt and certain in this Life but are alterable and changed according to their outward actions and the inward temper of their Minds and when ever a wilful and a known Sin breaks the course of Vertue and destroys the habit of Goodness in their Souls it breaks their good state and destroys their comfortable condition As when a Disease strikes the Vitals of our Body and overcomes the Strength and Health of our Constitution unless we get it off it will certainly bring Death along with it God indeed has prescribed us a certain Remedy and an infallible Cure for all Mortal Sins and the greatest Spiritual Maladies and Diseases that would otherwise destroy us and bring Death upon us and that is Repentance which for the sake of Christ and his Merits and by the Mercy and Promise of God shall recover us out of that miserable and mortal state into which every wilful Sin had cast us This shall set us right again in the Court of Heaven where we were cast and condemned before and this shall bring us to a state of Life and Grace who were before struck with the sentence of Death And blessed be God who has thus graciously provided for poor and otherwise lost Sinners by Jesus Christ But Repentance alas though it be a sure Remedy yet is not so easie a one as we imagine 't is a very bitter dose that must not only go down very unpleasantly but must work strongly and powerfully upon our Minds it must not only make us sick and sorrowful contrite and troubled at the very Heart for every Transgression but it must purge out of our Souls every Sin and carry off every vile Lust and wicked Inclination It must not only work upon the peccant humours and so put the Soul into great trouble and disorder but it must perfectly heal and cure it and to do that it must take away the root of the disease it must search to the bottom of the Heart it must touch us to the quick in the tenderest part of us in the most darling Sin and most beloved Lust and it must cut and launce so deep that no secret corruption remain within and no fomes Morbi be left behind In a word it must perfectly cure the Soul and whatever disease it laboured under it must quite remove it so that it never return again upon it for 't is but a palliating a counterfeit or an imperfect cure till this be done And till the Mind be perfectly restored and amended and made better it has not truly repented and therefore the Scripture requires in Repentance not only a broken Heart which is the most significant phrase in the World for the deepest trouble of Mind for our past Sins but it requires a new Heart and a new Soul and a new Creature and a new Man to make up true Repentance and not only that we be renewed in the Spirit of our Minds but that we bring forth fruits worthy of Repentance and that we turn from every evil way and leave and forsake every Sin that we have ever been guilty of as I have more largely shown before We must do all this before we can be said truly to Repent and before we can have any good grounds to expect Pardon of any wilful Sin we ever committed in our whole lives we must thus Repent of it And though we are as sure of forgiveness if we do so as if we had never committed it which is the greatest favour in the World yet how will a poor penitent be alwayes afraid that he has not been sufficiently sorrowful and fully repented of his Sins how will his former Guilt affright him when it stares him in the face and how will the sad load of all his Sins lye heavy upon his Conscience when he is brought to a due sense of them and how must he be contented to lose a great deal of that comfort in his Mind here though he may be safe hereafter and though his Repentance may put him into a good condition yet it will make his Heart sorrowful and the remembrance of his Sins will make it often bleed afresh within him And when he looks back upon his past danger he must tremble at it tho' he has reason to hope he has escaped it and it must keep him alwayes humble and not over-confident of himself and though he has his Pardon in his hand yet he must still look upon it with tears in his eyes Nothing can truly satisfie a Man that he has repented of his Sins but that he has left them out of Religious Grounds and Principles and has had so much tryal of himself as to know he would not commit them though he were in the same circumstances and temptations that he was in before And thus when a bad Man is become a good one when he that was careless and irreligious is become pious and devout when he that was vitious and debauch'd is become sober and vertuous when he that was unjust becomes just and righteous and besides restitution for all past injustice would not commit one act of it to gain all the World when he that stole steals no more and he that was given to drunkenness or uncleanness or any other Sin wholly leaves and forsakes it and is brought by Religion to be quite another Man than he was before then and not till then is his Repentance such as may make him hope for Pardon when he lives and prepare him to dye with comfort For to proceed a little further in this great concern to make a Soul fit and ready for its immediate entering upon another state it must have these two qualifications at that time 1. It must be thoroughly purged from every Vitious Habit or else it is neither meet to be partaker of the inheritance of the Saints in light nor capable of the Pure and Spiritual and Heavenly Happiness As the Tree falls so it lyes sayes the Wise Man Ecclesiastes 11.3 And the same habit and temper as to the main which the Soul carries out of this World will abide with it in the other If any one habitual Wickedness remain upon it or the love of any one Sin be so rooted in it that if it lived
competency and sufficiency with food and rayment as the Apostle has fix'd a competency 1 Tim. 6.8 with what answers the wants of Nature and the circumstances of our Condition but to be alwayes craving after more without any use or occasion this is that immoderate desire of Riches which we call Covetousness and so in other things 't is the Excess the Irregularity the immoderate and the vicious Abuse not the Natural Passion and Inclination it self that is to be denyed restrained and mortified 3. To do this we must so check and restrain and deny even our Natural Appetites that we may have the power and government alwayes over them Now if we let them loose and lay the reins upon their neck and let them take their utmost liberties and go alwayes to the furthest bounds of what is lawful they will hardly be kept in as they ought to be but we shall walk upon the brink of danger and the side of a precipice where it will be hard to escape falling sometimes and our Sensual Inclinations will grow more heady strong and ungovernable by being alwayes indulged and not used to a more severe discipline and management which all wise Men have therefore prescribed by the Rules and Precepts of Mortification and Self-denyal 4. To abate these Lustings and Desires of the Flesh and increase and raise those of the Spirit let us consider how little and mean are the objects and gratifications of the one in respect of those of the other How the one are low sordid and Brutish the other Rational and Angelical such as the highest order of Beings next to God are capable of How little is there in all the Riches and Greatness and State of this World how much less in all the mad frollicks of Debauchery and all the beastliness and filthiness of Brutish Lusts in all those things that make up Carnal Enjoyments and are the summe as the Apostle reckons them up of all that is in the World The lust of the flesh the lust of the eye and the pride of life 1 John 2.16 How much greater and nobler is it to have a wise and sober and vertuous Mind easie Thoughts and a chearful Conscience Spiritual Desires and Affections set upon things above and strong and well-grounded hopes of an Eternal Life and a Glorious Immortality These are the Objects of our Spiritual Desires and we should increase those by representing the worth and value the greatness and excellency of these above any other things that we can choose or desire or any enjoyments of the Animal and Sensual Life 'T is a vain fancy and opinion of the latter whereby we raise our imagination and heighten our expectation of something great and extraordinary in them 't is that kindles our Affections and inflames our Desires after them but did we wisely consider how vain and trifling and inconsiderable they are and how poor and little and short and sorry gratifications they afford this would wean us from such weak fancies and opinions of them and so slack and cool our Desires and Lustings after them Lastly We must use all Religious Means and Methods to mortifie and abate the Lustings of the Flesh and strengthen and increase those of the Spirit by the Acts and Exercises of Religion Piety and Devotion 'T is in the growth and prevalence of the latter lyes our Moral State and the greatest exercise of all Vertue and in the right ordering and governing of our Passions Appetites and Inclinations so that we must use all possible Methods to keep the lower Appetites under and obedient to the superiour and not let them dethrone our Reason or disobey Religion and therefore we must use all the helps we can have from Religion and Philosophy and the Divine Grace and Assistance to tame our inordinate Lusts by Fasting by Watching by Prayer by due watchfulness and circumspection over our selves and over all the weak places of our Nature that Sin do not enter in at some of those inlets that are unguarded and do not surprize and easily beset us when we are unprepared and unarmed by Religion against the assaults of it and there is nothing so helpful to this and to increase and strengthen our Spiritual Desires so that they shall alwayes prevail over the Lusts of the Flesh as the constant and uninterrupted exercises of Piety and Devotion These give life and vigour and nourishment to our Spiritual Desires and keep them alwayes warm and heated and intent upon their proper Objects whereas a neglect of those begets a carelesness stupidity and senslesness of all those things and sinks Men into a meer Sensual and Animal and Worldly and Brutal Life Nothing is therefore so proper to bring us to these Spiritual Desires and to make those alwayes prevail over the Lusts of the Flesh as Devotion and Piety which raise the Mind to things above the Body and above this World and take off and abstract the Soul from Sensual and Carnal Enjoyments and make it live up as near as it can to that Life it shall have in Heaven when it shall be all Spirit and have no Flesh or Lusts to contend with or be contrary to it I shall in the next place consider another thing which befalls many a Sinner and which tho' a due effect of his Sins and an evidence of the sad state they bring him to and so may be of great use to be duly considered on this account yet is a kind of Excess of Repentance and sometimes too great an extream that way and what ought to have the nicest Resolutions and best Directions given about it to cure and remove it I mean Trouble of Mind or a Wounded Conscience which many a Sinner lyes under and which I shall briefly Represent and Discourse of by considering how great a Misery it is above all others in this World and what Cure and Remedy there may be for it or for those who are fallen under it SECT IV. Of Trouble of Mind or a Wounded Spirit THE greatest part of our Happiness or Misery lyes in our Minds and Spirits in those inward Faculties and Sensories which are distinct from our Body and outward Senses We feel very often more pleasure or pain in those distinct from the Body than the Body it self is capable of for these are quicker and more sensible than Matter and Body can be and are the proper subject of perception of any Pleasure and Pain and of all Rational Happiness or Misery A Mans inward Thoughts do often give him more torment and uneasiness anguish and disquietude of Soul and more real pain and misery than any Bodily torment or even Death it self and therefore some have chosen Death and have willingly endured any Bodily pain rather than lye under the greater pain agonies and horrours of their own Minds and many that have been under those yet have felt an inward ward joy comfort and satisfaction of Mind that has supported them under the worst pains and sufferings of
Mercy and judges himself as incapable of it as the damned in Hell when Gods Spirit has left him so that he can neither pray nor do any thing to relieve himself but lyes as a condemned Caitiff a Malefactor sentenced past all hopes of Pardon and only expecting Punishment and the last stroke of Vengeance this is a sad a deplorable condition which I have known many a Sinner in under a Wounded Spirit and had one great instance before me when I was writing this These Wounds are not felt indeed by many a Sinner in the heat of Blood in the career of his Lusts and the hot persuit of his Sins when in his high frolicks and jovial diversions he drowns the noise of his Conscience or lulls it asleep with charming Pleasures or full Cups or some unthinking madness but it will awake one time or other and like a sleeping Lyon when 't is roused up by some Judgment by some Sickness or Affliction it will fall terribly upon him with rage and fury and tear and consume him then all the wounds which sin gave it will bleed afresh and it will feel them afterwards unless they have been cured by a timely repentance if they have festered and gangrened and mortified the Soul for a time yet when it comes to it self it will feel them with unexpressible pain and anguish which nothing can asswage I mean when a Man has sin'd away his Life and Death and his Sins are set together before him and 't is hard to know which is the more terrible When the Sting of Death swelled up with Sin and Guilt strikes as deep into a Man's Conscience and wounds his Spirit as Death it self strikes into his Body with its fatal dart so that he suffers a double death at the same time and the Spiritual far more painful than the Bodily I take a Wounded Spirit here in the highest and most common sense and though when a Mans Spirit is dejected and sunk with any thing 't is very hard to bear it which may be the sense of the Wise Mans words in the forequoted place when the strength of a Mans Mind is lost which should support him under all his infirmities that he is subject to from without yet nothing does so sink it so wound and destroy it as Sin and Guilt especially when it is come to such a degree and to such a sad condition as we commonly mean by a Wounded Spirit i. e. a Mind deeply pierced with the sense of its own Guilt and of Gods Anger upon it This likewise admits of degrees and in some cases 't is a very happy thing for a Sinner and 't is to be sure alwayes a just Punishment I shall therefore in the Third place briefly consider what is the proper Cure and Remedy of such a wounded Spirit or troubled Mind for there is no Spiritual Illness but what is curable if we take it in time by Religion no Wound of Soul but what there is Balm for in Gilead in Christianity there is no Disease too great for our Heavenly Physician but what the Gospel has a proper and certain Remedy for if we duely and timely apply it A Man may tarry too long indeed and not use the Physick till it be too late till Death comes and puts an end to the time of Tryal and the time of Repentance and then a Wounded Spirit i. e. the extremest Sorrow for a Mans Sins the deepest Contrition of Soul for them cannot come up to true Gospel Repentance to which there is a certain promise of Pardon and Forgiveness for that is only upon turning to God and leaving all our Sins and leading a new Life and bringing forth the Fruits of Repentance by Obedience to the Gospel for the future which is a necessary condition by the terms of the Gospel which he cannot perform whom God cuts off before he can do it and therefore such an one must be left to the Infinite Mercy and Righteous Judgment of God to be dealt with by such measures as are not within the Covenant of Grace or the Terms of the Gospel for by those I cannot see any title he has to Pardon But in other Cases a Wounded Spirit may be the greatest Mercy and even the very beginning of Health or of a Cure to a Soul when God does not suffer a Man to go on senslesly in his Sins till he come to a seered Conscience and a reprobate Sense and to hardness of Heart and blindness of Mind but by some methods of his Grace and Providence alarums his Conscience and awakens his stupid Mind and brings his almost sensless and stupified Soul to some Spiritual sense of his condition Then his Soul will be wounded as Davids was when he reflects upon those Sins which he committed without consideration and he will be sore struck and smitten as every Penitent must at the remembrance of his evil wayes All Repentance is such a wounding of the Soul as makes its Heart bleed within it and its Blood and Spirits melt into Tears and Sorrow for what it has done 't is not such an easie thing as most men think it to be 't is such a Pain such a Wound to the Soul that the Pleasure of the greatest Sin is but a poor trifle to it and no man that rightly understood it would venture upon any Sin from the reserved hopes of it Repentance is a bitter Remedy made up of very strong and unpleasant ingredients and we must go through a long course to purge out the old Disease and take away the root of it so that before a wicked mind can be cured by it it must be cut and lanced and wounded and have very severe applications made to it The work of Regeneration or the New Birth cannot be wrought without many pangs or throwes nor does God ever almost bring a bad man to become a good one without some trouble and disorder of Mind There is a trouble of Mind indeed which is excessive and unreasonable for every Sinner ought in some measure to be troubled in Mind and he has not a due sense of his Sins if he is not but there is a trouble of Mind which takes away the hopes of Mercy and throwes Men into despair which is commonly called a Wounded Spirit and 't is so in the highest degree and whether there is any Remedy for that and what it is and what advice is to be given in such a case and what judgment to be made of it I shall briefly consider 1. Then this is often joyned with Melancholly of Body which is very hard to be cured and till it be so it is apt to darken the Mind and bring a cloud over the Spirits and to fill the Soul with very black Idea's and Imaginations and to hinder it from making true judgment of it self or its own actions and this is as pityable and ought as much to be remedied by Physick and Care as other Diseases of Body for I have known
They might have some faint hopes and probable surmizes and small expectations of this from his Natural Goodness as Malefactors may presume and hope such a thing from the temper and disposition of a good Governour but they could not necessarily conclude it or be any way ascertained of it They might have such an uncertain encouragement to hope this as the Men of Niniveh had Jonah 3.9 Who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not and this was as high as Mens hopes could rise without a Revelation of Gods pardoning them upon Repentance Their Repentance indeed was the most likely means to turn away his fierce Anger and the best thing they could do but they could not be certain that this would succeed and be effectual but in their greatest Humiliation and Mourning and Fasting they must with a doubtful Heart and a trembling Hand offer their Petitions to Heaven as a condemned Prisoner does to his angry Judge or incensed Prince not knowing whether he will vouchsafe to hearken to it or so much as to cast his eye upon it The greatest incouragement to Repentance is our being sure that it will obtain our Pardon and restore us certainly to Favour and set us right in the Court of Heaven and since we that know this can yet very hardly be perswaded to a Duty that is not so very pleasant or so very easie with what disadvantages must those who knew not this be brought to it with what desponding fears and uncertain hopes must the Prodigal Luke 15. take a weary journey and return home to his Fathers house who knew not whether he should be admitted or no when he came there with what a doubtful and perplexed Mind with what weary paces and dispirited motions must he take every step thither when he could not tell what he should meet with at his journeys end but had too much reason to fear he should for ever be cast out and excluded as he might have been by his good Father and this must be the case of the most penitent Sinner and of all Mankind when without a Revelation they had no assurance of Pardon though upon their Repentance but only an uncertain hope and presumption of it but now the greatest Sinner who has lived never so prodigally and wickedly has a thousand times greater incouragements to return and leave off all his vicious and riotous courses of living because he is most certainly assured that if he does so his Heavenly Father will receive him with open arms and the heartiest embraces and treat him as kindly and indulgently as if he had served him many years neither had transgrest at any time his commandment ver 29. In a word we have the same incouragements to repent and leave our Sins now under the Gospel as Rebels have to come in and lay down their Arms when there is a Proclamation of Pardon and an Act of Indemnity past to all that do so whereas before there was only an uncertain presumption of the Princes Mercy which they could not be sure of without a Revelation 2. We have not only Pardon given us upon promise now but granted upon a most valuable consideration and founded upon a full Expiation of Guilt and Atonement of Sin by a Sacrifice the most perfect Sacrifice of the Son of God and so purchased for us and made over to us by a Covenant established and confirmed by the Blood of Christ Pardon of Sin is so great a thing so Princely and so singular a favour the greatest Act indeed that a Prince can do and 't is so desirable so comfortable to a poor Criminal than which nothing in the World can be more valuable to him that it can never be too well assured to us and we can never be too much satisfied in it Guilt is alwayes so fearful and timorous so terrible and so uneasie a thing 't is such a heavy load and burden lying upon a Mans Mind such a deep wound upon the tenderest part of a Mans Soul that like a prick upon a Nerve it puts the whole Man into convulsions and agonies and fills him with unexpressible pains and tortures There is no such rack no such Hell indeed as what is set up and kindled in a Man 's own breast by his guilty Conscience when he is haunted by his own Sins as so many Hellish Fiends and lasht by them like so many snaky Furies that poyson and sting him to the very Heart and his own fears of Vengeance and future Punishment represent sad and frightful images like to so many Specters alwayes appearing before his Mind and therefore there is no such comfort as that which delivers us from Guilt no such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or blessed news as what our Saviour pronounces to a Sinner by the Gospel Son be of good chear thy sins are forgiven thee there is no such anodine as that which plucks out the sting of Sin and takes away the pains and the smartings of a wounded Conscience that which does this puts not only Oyl into the Wounds but new Life into the fainting Soul 't is like taking a Man off from the Rack or the Wheel and giving him more ease than he feels when he has just voided a Stone after a sharp fit And therefore the Remedy that does this is the most choice the most precious and valuable thing in the World What that is we now know by the Gospel but Mankind could not know by Natural Light what would expiate Sin and certainly take away Guilt and therefore the Heathens though they tryed all means by their Lustrations Sacrifices Purgations and other ways for the sense of their Guilt put them upon all attempts to get rid of it yet they could never find what would certainly do it but must be still fearful and melancholly under their acknowledged Guilt and unattoned Crimes Whether thousand of rams or ten thousand rivers of oyl would be accepted as a price of their Sins they could not tell or whether it would not cost more to redeem a Soul whether if they brought their first-born and offered the fruit of their Bodies for the sin of their Souls or offered up their own Blood as was sometimes done 't would be effectual was very uncertain but there was nothing they thought too dear it seems nothing however cruel either to themselves or others that they would stick at in hopes to accomplish this The most barbarous and inhumane superstition of the Heathen World in offering up their Children to Molech in offering the Sacrifices of Men which was no unusual thing among them arose from the great streight and the great darkness they were in as to the expiation of Guilt and the atonement of Sin which was so dreadful so painful that they could not bear it and yet knew not how to remove it But now God be thanked we have that which should chear up our Spirits and put us upon a hearty
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
a sound and healthful Body a fair and good Reputation a quiet and easie Mind or a shattered and rotten Carkass a scandalous and infamous Life a guilty and disordered and distracted Conscience Are not most of the pleasures of Sin not only short but sickly That have a sharp and poysonous sting hid under all their sweetness so that however they go off to the Palate yet they are very bitter after they are gone down whereas the pleasures of Vertue are clear and pure and lasting not mixt with any of those dregs which foul and embitter Sin but purified from all the sediment and the lees that are at the bottom of Sensuality and Wickedness Religion does not deny us any truly Natural and proper Pleasure and Enjoyment but only keeps us within the bounds of Innocency and Vertue within which compass a Man may enjoy all the Pleasure that he can wish or was made for It does not by its Rules of Mortification and Self-denyal destroy or cut off any Natural Appetite or true part of us that is not the meaning of cutting off a right Hand or plucking out a right Eye Matth. 5.29 30. but only to destroy the unnatural Excesses to cut off the vitious Corruptions to take away the depraved and inordinate Affections and Lusts that will grow too strong and unruly without a wife conduct and government of our selves by the rules of Vertue and the restraints of Reason and Religion and would any Man think fit to have those let loose and have the reins thrown upon their neck without any check or controul Will he complain of the severity of Religion and the loss of his Natural Freedom by the restraints of morose and peevish Vertue as he calls it if he be not allowed the full swinge of his Lusts and the gratifying of his immoderate Passions and Desires in all manner of instances Then adieu not only to the government of Vertue and Religion but the government of all Humane Laws and Worldly Wisdom which for the conveniency of this World and the Peace Quiet and Comfort of this present Life has thought fit to keep Mens Lusts and Passions within such bounds under the severest penalties and to prohibit the same Sins under the punishments of this World that God has done under the far greater punishments of another for nothing is more pernicious and destructive to the welfare of a Kingdom as well as of particular Men then Licentiousness and Debauchery which besides the immediate Judgments of God upon it does by its own Nature bring a thousand present Miseries and known Evils along with it besides the unknown and unspeakable Miseries that attend it in another World Can any Sinner deny this when he seriously thinks and considers of it Does not his own observation and his own experience by which I hope he will be instructed if by nothing else teach him that this is the Nature of Sin That as 't is a common pest and plague to the World and to Mankind in general so 't is generally a disease to his Body a moth and canker to his Estate and a worm to his Conscience Whereas Vertue is health and soundness to his Body life to his Soul and grace to his Neck as the Wise Man observes That length of dayes are in her right hand and in her left hand riches and honour That she is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her and happy is every one that retaineth her Prov. 3.16 17 18 22. This true Notion of Vertue which is not an empty Panegyrick but a strict Truth founded in Nature that will alwayes be true of it and that all Wise Men will find to be so this will sufficiently answer the first and greatest Temptation by which Sin entices and allures unthinking Men with the bait of present Pleasures and Enjoyments But 2. The next greatest Temptation to Sin is that of Example which is so strong and powerful that few can resist it who love to be modish and in the fashion as too many Vices generally are and therefore are more taking upon that account and lose their reproach and shame due to them by the great party and number they have on their side which otherwise would sneak and be confounded if they stood alone but when so many are brought over to them others follow if it be only for company and many Men are drawn in even contrary to their inclinations by the Example of others because they do not care to be singular nor to be reproached for being so but are willing to do what they see so many others do and hope they shall fare as well as they and escape all the seeming dangers of their Sins both here and hereafter as well as the rest of their Neighbours or the great number of their fellow Sinners Now this however common and powerful it be yet is the most unreasonable thing in the World for is any Man in another case willing to be sick or to dye for company Is any so easie or so complaisant as to pledge another in a cup of Poyson Or would he not stop the mad Frolick when he saw the rest of the company drop down dead before him Is any Man unwilling to avoid the Plague if he can because there is a general infection and because so many of his Neighbours or his Acquaintance have dyed of it Would any refuse the saving his Life and escaping if he could upon a plank because the rest of his company are sinking and drowning Did Men think it as much worth their while to save their Souls as their Lives how many others soever lost them had they as just and terrible apprehensions of their own Damnation as they have of their dying this Temptation of Example and Company would be quickly taken off and signifie nothing For alas what comfort will it be in the flames of Hell to hear so many others roaring and howling in them To hear their hideous cryes and tortures and lamentations will not abate their own but rather increase them therefore the Rich Man in the Parable Luke 16.28 did not desire the company of his Brethren there but rather sought to prevent their coming into that place of torment The Devils indeed from the unaccountable malice of their Nature tempt others to be as wicked and as miserable as themselves and every one does their work who entices another to any Sin but this will not ease their pains but augment them by adding more mischief and so more guilt to them No Man who knows what it is to be happy but must wish to be so tho' he were alone and no Man who knows that Vertue alone is the way to be happy but must choose to be Vertuous though he saw never so many others Wicked let them reproach and laugh at him as long as they please for a Man singular and by himself let them count his Life folly for being so strict and so precise if it be in the great
cometh Who that is unprepared knows what time he shall have to prepare himself Who can tell whether the next moment shall be his own and how little time he may have for so great a work And who would loyter any part of his time who knows how much that work will take up for 't is not a few spare hours or dying minutes will put the Soul into a readiness will change its temper and purge out its Sins and dispose and fit it for another World And who can set back Death but a few hours when it gives a short warning and is ready to strike us or perhaps without any warning seizes and hurries us to the other World It is every day making up to us and approaches nearer us every hour and with quick and undiscerned steps it dogs and follows us and may overtake us before we are aware of it A sudden Feaver may set the strongest Body on fire and presently flare out the Lamp of Life A Convulsion may seize in a moment the main fort of Life and surprize us in our greatest strength An Apoplexy or a Deliquium may stop the nimble wheels of Life that moved vigorously and strongly just before and make all the Vital Faculties stand still immediately Besides a thousand accidents from without make us in the midst of Life to be in Death so that we can never be secure but we may be a dying and every time we expire it may be so far as we know our last breath Who would not be then ready who may thus be called on a sudden who may have the Son of Man come in an hour when he thinketh not Come he certainly will but we cannot tell whether in the third or fourth watch of the night let us then watch the whole night that is be ready alwayes If we knew the time of his coming we might be careless and sleep and drowze perhaps till he was near us but since we are alwayes to expect him at an uncertain hour let us put our selves into a posture and readiness to receive him at his own time We can never be ready too soon though he come late but if we are too late before we are ready we lose an opportunity we can never regain and we slip that time which we shall bewail to all Eternity Let us think 2. Upon the certainty of his coming If there were any hopes that he would never come if there were any probability that we should never dye if any Man could be so foolish as to perswade himself to doubt of that he might have some reason to neglect the other but no Man can be Sceptical as to that point nor be so vain as to dispute himself out of the belief of it but he knows and is convinced of that fatal Truth that he must once dye and be laid in the same place of darkness where he has seen so many others laid before him why should he not then prepare and provide for that which will dertainly happen it can never be in vain or to no purpose to do this it can be no lost labour no unnecessary work but all must confess it ought to be done one time or other Why do we not then do that which we own to be necessary Why that it is indeed sayes the foolish Sinner but it may be done hereafter and at a more convenient season Would you not think a Man mad that should talk thus when he was in danger of drowning and would not take hold of the rope was thrown out to him till his last and third rising but let go what he had in his hand in hope to catch it again afterwards or he that was like to fall down a precipice and would not save himself when he might but trust to a twig that was near the bottom He deserves to perish that will not be willing to be saved till he is just perishing And he that allowes himself to live in a sinful state at present with hopes to get out of it hereafter is but like him that stabs himself with a design of being cured or swallows down a deadly Poyson upon presumption of taking an Antidote after he has done it the one is certainly strong enough to kill him and the other may not be strong enough to save him or he may be dead before he can take it Mens resolutions to Repent hereafter are alwayes insincere for if they were not they would Repent at present And besides what a sad state are they in till they do this they are like Prisoners lying under a sentence of Death and Condemnation who hope to procure a Pardon but will not endeavour to do it till they are called to Execution and it be too late Their unrepented Sins do put them into as damnable a state as if Heaven had past sentence upon them and though they know this yet they are willing to continue so till their state is desperate and they are never like to be otherwise For he has no reason to think he shall be ever ready who is not willing to make himself ready at present Let us not therefore delay one minute this great work of Repentance but let us set about it immediately and resolve to go through with it and to live in such a constant habit and practice of Repentance and a good Life as shall make us duly ready and prepared to dye For 3. Let 's consider how terrible Death must be to a wicked impenitent Sinner and what concern he will be in at the approach of it when he must leave all the pleasures of his Sins and the remembrance of them fills him only with terrour and astonishment when all their false charms and meretricious looks whereby they before pleased and enchanted him go off and they now look gastly and frightful and stare him in the face with a scaring appearance and with the sad apprehensions of what they are like to end in when a dreadful Eternity presents it self before him and is like to swallow him up in an horrid abyss of Misery when he comes so nigh to the other World that he can look as it were over to it and see the sad reception he is like to have there when he sees Hell open before him the bottomless Pit gaping to receive him and some of the Flames of it flashing as it were out upon him when Death like an Executioner comes to seize and apprehend him and hurry him before the dreadful Tribunal where all his past Actions must be examined all his secret Sins laid open and a dreadful Sentence shall be immediately pronounced upon him The thoughts of this is enough to make a good Man afraid and the best of us must tremble when we come before this Judgment-seat and are to have our everlasting Fates decreed and determined but the Wicked must be filled with terrour and amazement who can have no hopes no refuge to fly to who has no plea for any Mercy or Pardon
nor no excuse to make for himself who has neglected and despised all the means of Grace that were offered to him and who would not be perswaded to any true Repentance before it was too late and therefore he must now Repent in vain for ever Who can express the bitter thoughts the fears the horrours the agonies of such a Soul at that time and who would ever feel them who has now power and opportunity to avoid them Death carries something of terrour in it to all Men as it is a punishment of Sin and a dark passage to the unknown Regions that are below and it may be either great presumption or great stupidity to have no Fear of it A good Man may not overcome all the Natural Fear of Death but the wicked has all reason to be scared and terrified with it when it comes near him or he thinks of it I shall therefore in the last place consider the Terrour of Death and how we are only freed from this by Repentance and Religion by the hopes and assurances of Christianity and our having sincerely Repented of all our Sins and so as I have shown fitted and prepared our selves thereby for Death SECT VII Of the Fear of Death and how we are delivered from it by Repentance and Religion THere is no Natural Evil so great as Death the King of Terrors and the chief of those dreadful things that Humane Nature is afraid of Skin for skin and all that a man hath will he give for his life Job 2.4 He is willing to part with every thing that he may compound with it nay what will not he not give to purchase a short reprieve from Death and the Grave that he may but set them back a while and gain a little more time to live How is the poor Man willing to endure any thing to linger out a miserable Life a little longer though in the midst of pains and aches and greater torments of Body perhaps then he would feel in Death it self How patiently will he submit to the most tedious penance and severest discipline that his Physician shall lay upon him and swallow down the most loathsome and bitter draughts that the more bitter cup of Death may pass from him How will he endure the utmost cruelties of Surgery and bear a living Martyrdom rather than dye have his Body burnt and scarified his Flesh cut and mangled to the Bone his Limbs cut off or sawn asunder that so he may dye by piece-meals and out-live some part of himself and escape out of the hands of Death though it be never so narrowly and run away from it though he leave a Leg or an Arm behind him This shows how Natural the love of Life is and how willing most Men are to preserve and purchase it at any rate and with what abhorrence they look at Death and how it frights and startles them when it comes near them when they behold its pale look and its terrible visage and see the ghastly monster laying hands on them and ready to lay them prostrate at its feet how does it then appalle and terrifie them and make their Blood chill and their Spirits cold and clammy and their Hearts dye within them when they think how their once brisk and sprightly bodies that have been long enjoying all the sweet Pleasures of Life and Sense shall in a moments time be deprived of all those and become only a heavy clod and a cold and senseless lump of Flesh laid out upon its once warm Bed and then lock'd up in its little Cabin and so laid in the proper place of Rottenness and Putrefaction where it is to molder into Dust and to be as clean forgotten in a little time as if it had never been This is a very mortifying and a very melancholly Consideration to most Men and when they consider that in a little time this must certainly be their own case and their own fatal condition this must keep them in perpetual fear and bondage if there were no provision against this Natural Fear of Death if Religion did not afford us some helps and assistances against it and there were not something to take off and abate its Natural Terrour and to support and strengthen and encourage the Mind of a good Man against it Death as it is the Punishment of Sin and was for that end ordained by God and brought into the World for by sin entered death as the Apostle sayes Rom. 1.12 carries some marks of his Anger and so must necessarily have some degree of Fear accompany it but Christ who was to deliver Mankind from the greatest Punishments which our first Parents drew upon themselves and their Posterity by their Transgressions and was to free us from the saddest effects of theirs and our own Sins he has tho' not quite taken away this Punishment no more than he has the other temporal ones occasioned by the Fall for we must still dye and still have some fear of Death yet the worst effects of Death and for which it was most to be dreaded those Christ has delivered us from and it was one great reason why he became a Man and why he took part of the same flesh and blood of which we are partakers and which makes us subject to Death That through death he might destroy him that had the power of death that is the Devil and deliver them who through fear of death were all their life time subject to bondage as the divine Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews assures us Heb. 2.15 Now the wayes by which Christ and Christianity do this are chiefly these two I. By assuring us of another Life II. By taking away the sting of Death which is Sin upon our true Repentance I shall 1. Show this Then 2. Enquire whether a true Penitent and good Man ought to have no Fear of Death 3. Give some Directions about thus overcoming the Fear of Death that so we may not be too much terrified with it when it approaches I. Christ and Christianity free us from the Fears of Death by assuring us of another Life and of a Glorious Immortality after Death Death would be very terrible indeed if it took away our Being and made an end of us when it came and put us into a state of Annihilation If the Grave were to swallow us up and we were to pass into the dark abyss of Non-Entity when we went out of the World If when we expired our last Breath our Souls were to pass with it into the soft Air and we were to be no more after we went off the stage of this World Nothing can be so close so desirable as our being which is the foundation of all Happiness and Enjoyment to us which some have thought so considerable that they have supposed it more eligible to be miserable than not to be at all though I can by no means be of their mind and think being only in order to be miserable to
he goes to a Glorious and Blessed Immortality and this will take away if not all Fear of Death yet such a troublesome and tormenting one as fills us with perplexity and confusion whenever we think of it and makes us all our life time subject to bondage as Scripture speaks And this will help to resolve that Question I proposed in the second place namely 2. Whether a true Penitent or good Christian ought to have no Fear of Death I Answer He ought to have no such Fear as makes him all his life time subject to bondage such a base slavish immoderate Fear as makes him not enjoy himself but sinks down his Spirit and depresses his Mind to that degree that he is alwayes uneasie and perplexed and disturbed at the thoughts of it Such as has been storied of some that they would not have the word Death named in their hearing for the very naming and thinking of it made such an impression upon them and struck them with such a panick Fear that like the Hand-writing upon the Wall to Belshazzar Dan. 5.6 in the midst of their jollity it would make their countenance change and their thoughts trouble them so that the joynts of their loins were loosed and their knees smote one against another But above all such a Fear of Death as makes a Man think it a greater Evil than Sin and so to avoid that will deny his Saviour and renounce his Religion or do any thing whatever is necessary to escape a present Fear of Death This makes him a slave to every one that has power to kill him and to save his Life he will deliver up his Conscience his Soul his Saviour his Religion and all those things which ought to be a thousand times more dear to us and which we should be much more unwilling to part with than our lives These are unreasonable and unlawful Fears of Death but there is still a Natural Fear of Death which may belong to a penitent good Christian and which it is not necessary he should wholly overcome as it is a Natural Evil as it is a Punishment of Sin as it is a going to our last great and terrible Tryal before the Bar of Heaven a Tryal upon which our Souls and their Eternal Fate of Happiness or Damnation does depend This may cause some Fear in a true Penitent or a very good Christian and I do not know that God has any where forbid it or that he has promised such a full assurance to every true Penitent and good Man as wholly to take away all kind of Fear of Death or that this is any want of saving Faith in him In some extraordinary cases God may give it as in cases of Suffering and Persecution when an extraordinary assistance of Gods Spirit and an extraordinary assurance of their Salvation took away all Fears of Death and made them go to the Flames and to the Gibbet rejoycing and triumphing but that this is ordinary and constant I see no Reason nor no Scripture to believe The Fear of Death is a Natural and Invincible Infirmity to many a true Penitent and good and humble and timorous Christian who though his Conscience accuse him not of any great and ill things yet may magnifie every little fault and imperfection and not forgive it himself tho' God does nor be at peace in his own Mind though he be with God 'T is a great perfection to conquer the Fears of Death if it be done upon good grounds for some have no Fear of Death out of a sensless stupidness because they have no sense of what follows after Death And we find the greatest part of Men who have most reason to be afraid of it to be the least so out of meer Natural courage and hardiness and for want of thinking or believing or considering the things of Religion and another World others from false Principles and Mistakes by thinking a Pardon or Absolution sets them right in the Court of Heaven and that they may boldly appear there with some such security or those that have low thoughts of Religion and think a little Sorrow for their Sins and a few Sighs and some Prayers when they come to dye will carry them to Heaven as well as if they had lived never so Holily and Righteously and Godly Now if Mens Confidence and Fearlesness arises from such Mistakes as these 't is like the hope of the Hypocrite that shall perish Job 8.13 and such presumptuous persons only rush into Hell with their eyes shut and see not their danger before they are in it On the contrary a modest and humble penitent Christian may be afraid where no Fear is may judge too hardly of himself and may be though quite out of danger yet not out of all Fear for after all God will not judge us by our own Fears or Hopes or Opinion of our selves which may be all groundless and mistaken but he will judge Righteous Judgment and correct the Errors by which we may pass Judgment of our selves and the Terms of the Gospel and not our own Thoughts shall be the Rule by which we shall be judged at the last day But to take off the Fear of Death as much as we can and to free our selves from a slavish and immoderate degree of it the best Directions that can be are these two 1. What hath been already given duly to prepare and fit our selves for it by a timely and thorough Repentance 2. To joyn the liveliest Act of Faith with this our Habitual Repentance and exert that at the time when Death is near us 1. To perfect our Repentance and so to live in the habit of that and of all goodness that we may be the best prepared to dye that we can be Dye we know we must Death if it be not now near us and yet we do not know but it may be dogging us at the heels yet will certainly in a little time come up to us and fright and startle us when it does if we do not take great care to be ready and prepared for it Since we must therefore necessarily encounter this great Monster this terrible Enemy which there is no escaping but we must certainly grapple with him let us all our lives prepare for the battle let us arm our selves with the whole armour of God and Religion with a careful and pious and good life with a timely and thorough Repentance of all our evil ways with a sincere and upright and good Conscience and with avoiding every thing that we know is sinful and unlawful and which will make Death terrible to us whenever it comes Let us not be such desperate Bravoes in Sin as to venture upon that with a false Courage which will make us the worst of Cowards when we come to dye but let us be so wisely afraid of Death now as to live with that care and exactness that we may not be afraid of it when we come to it It were well
if some Men were more afraid of Death than they are and as I am sure they have all reason to be that so they might be brought off from their evil wayes and not run headlong upon those dangers which are very near them though they are not sensible of them The sword hangs over their head though they do not see it and nothing but the thin thread of Life keeps it from falling upon them they walk blindfold upon the brinks of Hell and Damnation and it would be well of Fear would open their Eyes and make them recover themselves before Death makes it too late Nothing can truly and throughly arm us against the Fears of Death but Repentance and a good Life To those who have lived in the practice of them Death is a very harmless thing 't is but lying down to sleep closing the eyes and going to rest the Bodies being sensless a while till it awakes at the great day of Judgment and passing a longer night in the Grave till it arises more fresh and lively in the morning of the Resurrection and as for the Soul 't is a short and quick passage from Earth to Heaven and therefore such have no reason to be afraid of it when it approaches them never so near But then 2. Let the true Penitent quicken his Faith at that time and raise that to the highest and strongest pitch that so he may then look beyond the grave and see and believe and desire those happy and glorious things which God has prepared for him in another World If we believed those as we ought we should never be so afraid to dye if we were so affected with those pleasures that are above and that are at Gods Right-hand for evermore we should not be so loth to part with the Pleasures shall I say rather with the Troubles and the Miseries of this Life Did we think as we ought of that perfect peace and joy and satisfaction which is not to be had here but to be met with only in Heaven we should not be so fond to abide in this Valley of Tears and not go up to those Mansions above where is full Joy and Contentment Let us fix our thoughts and set our hearts upon those happy Regions of Bliss and Glory and we shall not fear to pass through the shadow of Death to come to them tho' the way to that Heavenly Canaan is through a Wilderness through the dark and unknown Region of Death through which a thousand wandering Souls are alwayes passing yet we shall be conducted safely through it by Angels who will bring us to the Palace of the great King where we shall be received by our blessed Master and Saviour and by all the Saints and holy Souls that are gone before us who as they rejoyce at a Sinners Repentance will now welcome him to his Fathers house and we shall then as much wonder at our selves for fearing to dye as we are now willing to live If the account which Scripture gives us of those invisible Regions be true and we do fully believe that Joy that Glory that Blessedness that unspeakable Happiness which is there revealed to us this our Faith joyn'd with our Repentance should overcome the Fears of Death and make us not only not afraid but desire to be dissolved and to be willing to lay down this load and luggage of Flesh because we know that if our earthly house oâ— this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens And there shall be no more Sin nor Sorrow nor Repentance but the blessed Penitent now he is safely arrived at his happy Port shall look back upon the past hazards and dangers he was in and comfortably remember how his Sins like so many Rocks had like to have split and shipwreck'd and swallowed him up in the gulph of Perdition and how by the wonderful Grace of God he hath happily escaped them and is come safe to Heaven and therefore will now offer Eternal Thanksgivings and pay his Vows of Praise to his great Deliverer and rejoyce evermore in his Glorious and Heavenly Salvation CHAP. III. Whether all Sins are Pardonable and may have the benefit of Repentance I Am next to consider Whether all Sins are Pardonable and may have this benefit of Repentance This has been denyed by a great many and particularly by the Novatians who would not allow Pardon and Absolution to wilful and great Sins committed after Baptism and this is charged upon Smalcius and other Socinians that they deny the same to heinous and habitual Sins of Relapse into which any shall fall after they have once Repented and been freed from them And there are some places of Scripture that seem very much to favour these hard Opinions as Heb. 6.4 5 6. For it is impossible for those who were once inlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come if they shall fall away to renew them again unto Repentance And Heb. 10.26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins And 2 Pet. 2.20 21 22. For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ they are again intangled therein and overcome the latter end is worse with them than the beginning For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness then after they have known it to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb The dog is returned to his own vomit and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire And in other places the Scripture speaks of a Sin unto Death 1 John 5.16 as of a more malignant and deadly Nature and different from all other Sins which are Mortal and Sins also unto Death without Repentance And our Saviour sayes expresly of the Sin against the Holy Ghost that it is unpardonable and shall not be forgiven neither in this world nor the world to come Luke 12.20 Matth. 12.32 i. e. as St. Mark expresses it It hath never forgiveness but is in danger of eternal damnation Mark 3.29 And what that is is not fully agreed on by Divines and so there may be fear if not danger of a Christians falling into it and so into an unpardonable state by the Holy Ghosts being so many wayes concerned in his Salvation and he having so many wayes to Sin against him This gives therefore great trouble to a great many Minds and if one particular Sin or any sorts of Sin be unpardonable by the Gospel they will be very fearful and can hardly be satisfied but that they have committed that Sin and so are cut off from all hopes by it and they will
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
us by our Baptisme he who may be supposed to have this inward Principle infused into him and stirring with his fears at the time of his Death yet for all that is but an Abortive Christian and hath neither the new Birth or Regeneration nor the Divine Life in him 4ly The great Prejudice against this Doctrine is this that 't is too severe and will tend to make us judge over-hardly of others and to throw dying Sinners into despair as being in an hopeless State by the Gospel and so hinder their Repentance at that time as being insufficient and ineffectual To which I answer That 't is no more severe than the Gospel is which shuts every wilful Sinner out of Heaven and pronounces Damnation upon every one that does not live a good Life at least after a bad one which is the true Notion of Repentance but we must make a new Gospel if we abate of this and come lower than is any way consistent with the Divine Wisdom and Government and with securing Vertue and Religion and not opening a wide door to Looseness and Licentiousness and encouraging Men in their Sins rather than bringing them off from them I believe indeed 't is more out of pity and tenderness than any good ground in Reason or Scripture that the other Doctrine has took place but we must not pervert the Gospel out of an unreasonable tenderness and by pretending to be more merciful than God is or has declared himself to be and 't is I doubt the greatest cruelty to our own and others Souls thus to deceive 'em into ruine by giving them hopes contrary to the Gospel and I account it the greatest charity to forwarne Men of their danger and to free them from such a fatal mistake It does not so much concern us to judge other Men and apply this Doctrine to them as to our selves God is their proper judge to whom we ought to leave them and to their own Master they shall stand or fall at the great day but 't is more dangerous to assume a sort of Power to dispense with the Laws of God by our pretended Charity and to give a relaxation to the rules of the Gospel and the conditions of Salvation out of undue Piety and in effect to blame and condemne God and think he deals more hardly with Sinners than he ought to do or then we our selves would do when he pronounces Damnation upon them for their bad Lives and will not save them for their dying Repentance out of this Principle of pity others have gone farther and denyed the Eternity of Hellish Torments and have thought it too hard that God should punish the sins of a short Life with never-ending pains and have therefore thought good in their great pity to release all the Damned and even the Devils themselves out of Hell within so many years but this is to understand the Measures and Reasons of the Divine Government better than God himself to prescribe new ones to him contrary to what he has lay'd down to set up a Court of Equity upon him in our thoughts and to correct the fixt Rules and declared Measures of his Justice and Mercy with some others of our own which surely is not to be allowed As to the driving Sinners into despair by this Doctrine this cannot be said of those who have time before 'em to repent and live better if they make use of it and nothing will more strongly excite them and more immediately put them upon this than the faithful and open telling them the truth as I have done and taking them off from all hopes and trust of a dying Repentance which has destroyed so many Souls As for the dying Sinner himself however I pity him I dare not give him hopes farther than I have warrant from God and Authority from the Gospel which no Minister can have to assure him of Pardon and Salvation from a mere late and Death-Bed Repentance He can only advise such an one to do all he can at that time which may help if not wholly to remit his punishment yet in some measure to abate and mitigate it which is a very great thing and commend him to the Extraordinary and Uncovenanted Mercy of God which is not limited by any thing but the recitude of his own Nature to which we must leave some great Cases not knowing what to judge of them our selves but as to the ordinary and covenanted Mercy of God which he himself has limited and which ought not be stretcht or extended any more than narrowed or confined to any other bounds than those of the Gospel such a Repentance has no title to it by any promise there that I know of and therefore I would not for all the world venture my Soul upon it nor would have any Man else to do so for besides all other hazards of a sudden Death and the like that attend such a Repentance 't is venturing whether God will not break the Rules and Measures of the Gospel or at least abate them and be more merciful than he has there promised to be which no Man has any reason to expect he should be but rather a great deal to question whether he can be Let none of us therefore trust to such a Late and Death-Bed Repentance which will expose us not only to infinite danger but to inevitable and certain ruine nor let us believe any such Doctrine which has no foundation either from the Thief on the Cross or from any thing else in Scripture to be relyed on but however severe the other Doctrine be let us consider it is true as I shall fully prove it is and I know no Mischief of its severiry but this which is the plain consequence of it that we must not delay our Repentance but take care to live a good life if we hope to go to Heaven SECT III. The Invalidity of a Death-Bed Repentance shown from the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins HAving Examined and Answered the Pleas and Pretences on behalf of a Death-Bed Repentance I shall show its Invalidity and Insufficiency by such plain and positive Proofs as shall take away that common error and fatal mistake on the other side and fully confirm and establish my Opinion against it The first whereof shall be that Excellent Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins Matth. 25. especially the latter part of it at the 10 11 12. verses for I shall not represent it entire in all the parts but only what is more full and home to my purpose in relation to the foolish Virgins of whom it is said That while they went to buy the bridegroom came and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage and the door was shut afterwards came also the other Virgins saying Lord Lord open to us but he answered and said verily I know you not Parables were an Eastern and Jewish way of instruction very frequently used by their wisemen and so made customary
that we could reasonably desire or God in wisdom grant is a most groundless and unreasonable presumption which makes void all Gods threatnings and is a direct disbelief of his word and expresly contrary to what is plainly delared by the Gospel it self for in that Christ assures us that the word which he has there spoken the same shall judge men at the last day John 12.48 and therefore he will judge us by no other rule nor use any other measures in disposing his Mercy or his Justice to his Creatures than what he hath layd down and made known to us by the Gospel God shall judge the world says St. Paul in that day according to my Gospel Rom. 2.16 'T is not therefore to be expected that God should use any other Judgment or show any other Mercy to Sinners than what is according to the termes of the Gospel and the Conditions of Salvation there lay'd down and a Death-Bed Repentance doth not as I have shown come up to those 3. I have showed all along this Discourse that it is not such a True and Perfect Repentance as the Scripture promises Pardon and Salvation to for that consists not only in sorrow and trouble of Mind conviction of Soul and Compunction of heart but in actual Reformation and new Obedience and indeed 't is this alone is a Mans retracting his past folly and wickedness and being wiser for the future undoing all the evil he has done as much as he can and doing all the good he can for the time to come and so making all possible amends to the honour of Religion and the honour of God which have been highly injured and violated by him and though he can never make perfect reparation and satisfaction to them and therefore Christ alone did this by his Death and Sufferings yet he is to do all that he is able and that is in his power to do that he may thereby vindicate the Divine Authority and Government which he hath opposed and resisted and Justifie the wisdom and goodness justice and holiness of the Laws of Heaven which he hath broken and contemned and so make all the compensation he is able to repair the sad Mischief he hath done by his Sins We truly say that no injury to another person will be forgiven but upon Restitution and making all the reparation for it that can be because 'till this is done the sin remains and the evil effects of it continue and till a Man is willing to undoe that as far as he is able to take away and destroy all the effects of it he keeps the sin and does not truly Repent of it nor wish it undone now surely we owe as much to God and Religion in Justice as we do to our Equals and where we have done any thing to injure those as our sins are the greatest injury to them we can be guilty of there also we must make as much restitution and reparation as we are able and undoe the sins we have committed by a more zealous and hearty and new Obedience and making up if it were possible the past failures and defects of our Sinful Lives by greater care and zeal and diligence for the future We may do this by a timely Repentance but by a late and a dying one we cannot 4. A Sinner cannot be then freed at his Death from what will necessarily make him miserable his Sinful Habits which will sink his Soul into Hell by a Natural Causality as well as Divine Judgment God has expresly declared that neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor abusers of themselves with mankind nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor revilers nor extortioners nor such like shall inherit the Kingdom of God 1 Cor. 6.9 10. And who are such but they who have lived in the habit of any of those Sins And are therefore to be denominated and accounted such from the general practice of their Lives and have not been washed and sanctified or made better but only are now sorry for being so when they are dying If Sorrow would make Men to be otherwise and their Tears alone would blot out this black Character without a contrary Practice there would hardly be any such to be found though 't is plain the World is too full of them There would be no Thief or Felon or Traytor at any Assizes or Court of Judicature if when they came to be tryed and were found guilty and were to be condemned their meer sorrow and trouble would set them right and change their character and make them to be accounted otherwise in the eye of the Law But besides this Sentence and Judgment of God upon all kind of Sinners whereby he bars any such from Heaven and adjudges them to Hell their Sins Naturally sink them thither for that is the true place and center of Wickedness and therefore of Misery Filthy and impure Minds fall into it by a kind of Spiritual Gravitation or by such a Constitution of the Spiritual and Intellectual World which as necessarily carries them thither as the Mechanism of this material World carries a stone downward So that 't is as unavoidable for a Sinner loaded with his wicked Habits to fall into Hell and Misery in another World as if here he had a Millstone tyed about his neck and were cast into the Sea to fall to the bottom of it The weight of his Sins will of it self press and sink him down into the utmost gulph of Misery and when he is quite taken away from the diversions and pleasures and bodily enjoyments of this World and is left wholly to the reflections and agonies and dismal apprehensions of his own Mind his Conscience which is now stupified and amused with other imaginary pleasures of Body and this World will then awaken and fall upon him with all its rage and torment his Soul and make it unexpressibly miserable were there no other sentence or judgment upon him The dreadful horrors and apprehensions of his own Mind let loose upon him would always be a very great torment and Hell to him if he had nothing to relieve or divert him but was left naked and open to the full stroke of his Conscience and his thoughts were whollytaken up with the frightful Images and Ideas of his own Guilt and overwhelmed with all the bitter Passions of Fear Sorrow and Despair as they will hereafter Sin will as certainly fill him with those in another World and cause such painful sensations or perceptions within his Soul as he now feels in his Body upon a torturing Disease or any instrument of Cruelty applyed to it for that is as contrary to the Nature and Frame of the one as those are to the other and they would be alwayes felt here if the Body did not drown and stifle and choak the free and natural thoughts of the Mind which it cannot hereafter If the Mind therefore be not freed from its Sins and Evil Habits it will
of Religion and now he denyes those and his Life both alike because he cannot keep them Is he now to begin to practice the Vertues of Chastity and Temperance and Sobriety which he never did before then he hath put them off to a very convenient season when his Vices have quite left him and so if Vertues will come of themselves like guests uninvited there is no other company to hinder them but he was as vertuous and sober almost half his Life I mean when he was asleep as he can be now when he is as incapable of the contrary acts as he was then and is only like the Enthusiast cured of seeing vanity when he lost his Eyes but perhaps not of being vain for the ghosts and spirits of his departed Sins may still haunt and possess him If these Christian Vertues are necessary to be practiced in order to our Eternal Salvation a dying Repentance cannot be sufficient without them if it be then those particular Precepts and Commands must be set aside by it as well as the other general ones I mentioned for 't is certain he can no more practice these Vertues now than he could in his Mothers Womb and they might be as well infused into him then as they can be now without any practice and something better because there were then no contrary Habits to hinder them But the Doctrine of infused Habits is like the Hypothesis of Transfusion of Blood contrary to Nature and Experience and the dying Man may as well depend upon one for his Body as the other for his Soul 3. The salvability and sufficiency of a meer dying Repentance as it sets by and discharges us from all those general and particular Commands of Christianity so also from the whole Christian engagement and Baptismal Covenant For can that then be any way made good or performed in any measure when a Man has violated it all his Life and notoriously broken it in all the parts that belong to it Can he then sufficiently renounce the Devil and all his works when he hath hitherto complyed with them the pomps and vanities of this wicked World when he has minded nothing else and the sinful Lufts of the Flesh when he has followed them and been led by them all his dayes Can he then keep Gods Commandments who hath broken most of them and walk in the same all the dayes of his Life who hath walked all his days in the ways of Sin and the paths of Unrighteousness and never left them till just now he is at his journeys end and can live no longer Surely this Baptismal Covenant is made only pro formâ and is but a modish and mannerly Ceremony at our entring into Christianity if we are not more obliged to stand to it and make it good and expect the benefits of Christianity upon our so doing in some further and better manner of performance than a wicked Christian can do when he comes to dye If his meer Sorrows and Purposes and Resolutions will serve instead of all that is expresly or implicitely meant by it it is void and null in all the other parts of it and the Church has unfaithfully and unsincerely drawn it up in other words of a different sense and meaning that signifie nothing and the Scripture hath exprest it as odly and unfitly when it speaks of our dying to Sin and rising unto Righteousness by our Baptism That we are symbolically buried with Christ by baptism unto death that like as Christ was raised up by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newness of life Rom. 6.4 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death we shall be also in the likness of his resurrection Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin for he that is dead is free from sin ver 5 6 7. Likewise reckon ye also your selves to be dead indeed unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord ver 11. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin but yield your selves unto God as those that are alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God ver 12.13 Here is enough to give us the plain meaning of Baptism and the great obligation of it to renounce Sin and live a good and holy Life And we are then said to put on Christ and to put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness Eph. 4.24 and to put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts ver 22. and to be regenerated and born again and have a Spiritual Principle of Life and Holiness communicated to our Souls and we then voluntarily consent to the terms of Christianity and solemnly engage and undertake to live according to them now all this which is very great and very obliging one would think is made very little and very easily took off and abated and dispensed with if when it has been utterly neglected and disregarded violated and broken all our lives a mere short and Dying Repentance will make it up and supply all the failures and the whole non-performance of it I own that true and timely Repentance will relieve us against the many failures and breaches of it by bringing us to performe it better afterwards sincerely endeavouring to make it good when we have broken it by any wilful sin and upon our performance of it though not with perfect exactness yet with sincere integrity depends our Title to all the Priviledges of Christianity But now to have no regard to it or take any care to observe it nor make it any way good in our lives but to live loosely and wickedly as if we had no such strict Engagement and Obligation upon us and to allow our selves in notorious Sins and unlawful Liberties expresly contrary to our Baptismal Covenant and yet think to salve all and have the whole benefit of it by a short Sorrow and Repentance when we come to dye this is either to make it have no meaning at all or that we are not obliged to the performance of it but let us not deceive our selves whosoever doth not make good his Baptismal Covenant in his Life which a wicked Man cannot at his Death as he is false to Christ and breaks his own most solemn and voluntary engagements so he forfeits all the benefits of his Christianity all that Pardon and Salvation which Christ hath purchased and proposed to him Thus all the Obligations to Christian Holiness and Obedience layd upon us either by our own Baptismal Vows and Promises or by the particular or general Commands of God and our Saviour are all taken away and dissolved by this loose Doctrine of
future Misery and his Punishment shall be much lessened by it This is a very great thing if we duely consider it and worth all his most earnest Prayers and deepest Sorrow and Compunction and all he can do to save him from those highest and extremest degrees of Misery Hell indeed is a general word for future Misery in Scripture as Heaven is for Happyness but they consist not in one and the same indivisible thing but are Two States of very various and different and unequal degrees according to the Deserts and Capacities of those who are in them As there are several degrees of Good and Bad Men here upon Earth so there will be of happy and miserable Souls in Heaven and Hell some are very imperfectly but yet sincerely good and are far from such Obedience and perfection as Human Nature might come up to and those being without any wilful and deliberate and great Sin shall be in the lowest place in Heaven and lower than this the Scripture allows none to go thither they who live in any such one known and habitual sin and wickedness are such Sinners as are expresly excluded from thence They have another place and state allotted to them in the other World for there being no third or middle state revealed by Scripture but only those two of Heaven and Hell they must necessarily go to the latter and there according to the Nature or Quality or Degrees of their Sin be punisht with many or fewer stripes and be in a state of greater or lesser Misery according as their Lives and their Deserts have been The Valley of Hinnom from whence comes Gehenna which we translate Hell was a deep Valley near Hierusalem where the Canaanites burnt their Children alive to Moloch and used all direful noises to hinder their cries and lamentations from being heard and afterwards the Jews say that Josias turned it into the place of publick Executions and that all Carkasses and Dung and filthy things were thrown there to prevent the noysomness of which there was a perpetual fire always burning in that place that was never put out at any time The Scripture has made this the chiefest image and representation of Hell and from thence describes the Misery of it by fire and burnings which give one of the most general and sensible ideas of Pain and torment Both the Spiritual Happyness of Heaven and Misery of Hell must be thus represented to the gross Thoughts of Mankind by the most delightful and most painful things known to their Senses that they are best acquainted with in this World and which will make the strongest impression upon them though they may be in themselves of another Nature fitted chiefly to the Souls and Spirits and Rational faculties of Men in their separate state and the happyness or misery of those is chiefly designed by them God we know is a Consuming fire to the wicked but he will very differently punish them though fire seems to carry one equal idea of pain and torment yet as our Saviour says that it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of Judgment and they are set forth for an example in Scripture suffering the vengeance of eternal fire Jude 7. then for that City who rejected the Gospel Matth. 10.15 so it shall be more tolerable for such wicked Men who have been so in a lesser degree in their Lives and at their Deaths have been as penitent as they could be then for Sinners of an higher order and a more daring and impenitent sort Heaven and Hell being taken for Places rather than States seem to our Imaginations to imply and signifie one equal and indivisible perfect and complete and same idea of Happyness or Misery that shall belong to all alike who are sentenced to either of those but there are very great Differences and Degrees in them a thousand times more than there is in the different States of Happiness or Misery among Men in this World where in the same place and upon the same Globe we see some in very happy circumstances and mighty enjoyments others in great Pain and Misery and a most pitiable Condition this here is only a Tryal of them and not according to their deserts but it shall be so exactly in another Wold the great day of Recompence and Retribution Then they who have done most Evil and committed most sins and not repented of them in time but gon on to provoke and disobey God and despise and neglect Religion all their lives these shall suffer the sad and utmost Vengeance of God's Anger and of Eternal fire All other wicked Men of what sort soever whether they were Sinners above others or only lived in some sins without Repentance and Amendment these shall be for ever in a very bad state a state of Misery and loss of true happiness and their Misery shall be exactly proportioned to their sins and be in the same degrees and measures that those were which are all known to the infinitely wise and Just God who without respect of persons will then render to all according to their works and with an equal and impartial Justice distribute-those Rewards and Punishments to them They then who have served God best in their lives shall be best rewarded by him they who have suffered with Christ shall then reign with him they who endured any afflictions for his sake and the Gospels shall have the greater Glory which those are not to be compared to they shall receive a hundred fold for all they have done or suffered for Christ not only for suffering Persecution though Martyrdom has always had a brighter and a weightier Crown assigned to it but for denying any present Interest or worldly gain or unlawful pleasure and sensual Inclination for the sake of Vertue and Religion then those who have best improved their Talents to Gods Glory and the good of others and the Service of Religion shall have more gifts and rewards from their great Lord they who have turned many unto Righteousness shall shine as the stars in Glory in several Orbs and different degrees of Light and Lustre for as the Apostle says one star differeth from another in glory 1 Cor. 15.41 and So likewise shall it be at the Resurrection and in another World there shall be different degrees of happyness and glory for Good Men both in their Bodies and Souls according to their different degrees of Goodness Service and Obedience to God in this life There being but two places or rather two States in another World appointed for all rational beings that ever were created as seems plain by the Scripture Revelation where so far as it describes or gives us a Map of that Invisible and unknown World it divides it only into two Mighty Kingdoms or vast Regions an upper and a lower parted from one another by unknown bounds and inhabited by Good and Bad Spirits where the one are very happy and the other very miserable there being but
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
of his sins and the burden is greater than he can bear and his perplexed mind is in such Agonies and Anguish as is unexpressible That sure must be a very comfortable thing which will take him off of this Rack and put him into a state of Ease and Quiet when he is thus tormented and be a present Anodyne to relieve his pains Mankind therefore were in all times very inquisitive and very much concerned to find out a way if it was possible to expiate sin and atone guilt they built Altars and offered Sacrifices and slew Thousands of Sheep and Oxen upon an hundred Hills and came by degrees to offer up Men and to slay their own Children and to give their first born for their transgression the fruit of their bodies for the sin of their Souls as the Prophet expresses it Micah 6.7 They would part with any thing however costly or dear to them to free themselves from the pain and fear they were under and give any hopes or ease to their conscious and timorous and perplext Minds This was a great cause of most of the Heathen Superstitions of their Purgations Lustrations Sacrifices and the like whereby they hoped to clear and purifie their guilty minds and appease the Anger of that Divine Vengeance that they were sensible hung over their heads by reason of their sins This showed the greatness of the Disease and the want and necessity there was of a Remedy for it which they being ignorant of used all the means they could think of and tryed all wayes however odd and foolish to help themselves but it was only Christianity could fully make known the Expiation of sin by the Sacrifice of Christ and our having Redemption by his blood even the forgiveness of sins upon our true Repentance Colos 1.14 This is the most blessed Message and Gospel from Heaven to a poor guilty Sinner this is preaching good tidings to the meek and humble sinner Binding up the broken-hearted proclaiming liberty to the captives opening the prison to them that are bound comforting them that mourn as the Gospel is described by the Prophet Isa 61.1 and in our Saviours own phrase 't is giving rest to them that are weary and heavy laden by reason of their sins Matth. 11.28 when though we are conscious to our se ves of a great many faults we have committed in our lives and some of them such as fill us with shame horrour and confusion when we think of them yet we are assured they are all blotted out by Repentance and the whole guilt of them done away as if we had never committed them this gives great ease and peace to our thoughts when our Conscience is thus discharged of all guilt and the terrible fears and apprehensions of it this is more comfortable to the mind than to be eased of the most tormenting pain of body to have voided a sharp stone after a fit or have a throbbing Ulcer broke and cured 't is unexpressible pleasure to be put thus out of pain and be restored to the peace and comfort of a Man 's own Mind when he had once lost it He who has so truly Repented of his Sins as I have directed hath all Reason for this for he hath as sure grounds of Pardon and needs no more fear Punishment than if he had been alwayes innocent and never had offended or done any thing amiss tho' his Sins fill'd his Mind with Sorrow before and gathered all the black Clouds of Grief and Melancholly over his thoughts yet now they ought to be dispersed and he may chear up and be comforted If he has any Fears they are unreasonable for if his Sins are perfectly gone they ought to be gone too While he was under the guilt of his Sins he had reason with St. Peter to weep bitterly with David to wash his bed with his tears that Bed which he had so polluted before with Mary Magdalen to vent so many tears as might wash her Saviours feet and then wipe them with the Hair of her Head that so she might do Penance with those Meretricious Eyes and Locks which had drawn others into Sin The Pious Penitents of old had all the signs and symptoms of the deepest mourning and lamentation for their sins ashes upon their head sackcloth upon their loins lying down in their confusion because they had sinned striking their Breasts with the Publican and every one crying out in the anguish of his Soul with the Psalmist My iniquities are gone over my head and are a heavy burden too grievous for me to bear My iniquities have taken hold upon me so that I am not able to look up they are more than the hairs of my head therefore my heart faileth me These are the words and these the Passions and this the Picture of a Penitent under a state of penitence and the guilt of his sins but now upon his true Repentance all Tears are to be wiped from his Eyes or at least the same fountain is to send forth sweet Water that did bitter and that is to become a Balm and an Oyl of gladness to his Soul which was so sharp and corrosive before His Repentance will now be his greatest comfort which was so severe and so bitter before and when his Wounds are healed and bound up and the operation is over The bones which were broken will rejoice and he will hear of joy and gladness instead of sighs sorrow and contrition He who had so much Reason to be angry and displeased with himself before by reason of his Sins and his Folly will now be pleased and satisfied when he is grown wiser and better and will have that solid satisfaction and lasting pleasure in his own Mind which is a thousand times greater than all the vain and empty and short-lived pleasures of his Lusts and Vices and he will now have a thousand times more inward ease by the practice of Repentance than he had before by the practice of his most grateful Sins 2. Repentance as it will free him from the present unhappiness of his Sins and Guilt so it will deliver him from the fears of more dreadful Miseries in another World and from the dangers which he is exposed to hereafter by reason of his Sins This is the chief and great Reason why a Sinner is in such anguish and horrour and perplexity at present because his guilt forebodes greater Miseries to him and his conscious mind has a Prophetick Spirit that foretels evil things to come upon him hereafter He knows he deserves punishment and vengeance to fall upon him and he therefore fears though he has a short respite here yet it shall be unavoidable and in a greater measure hereafter Religion is so Natural to the reason of our minds and has such a sure foundation both in Nature and Revelation that hardly any Sinner can shake off all sense of it and free himself from the fearful belief and expectations of its future punishments and though he
out the fierceness of his anger upon them and they drink of the cup of his fury and feel his wrath and indignation many a sinner has done this and cryed out in the Anguish of his Soul Thy wrath lyeth hard upon me Psal 88.7 Thy fierce wrath goeth over me thy terrors have cut me off ver 16. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me and horror hath overwhelmed me Psal 55.5 Thine arrows stick fast in me and thy hand presseth me sore Psal 38.2 Who knoweth the power of thine anger even according to thy fear so is thy wrath Psal 90.11 For we are consumed by thine anger and by thy wrath are we troubled ver 7. God who is a Spirit as he can convey secret and unspeakable comfort into our Souls so he can impress intolerable and unspeakable horrors upon them and who is able to bear the weight of his Anger or endure the sense of his Wrath and Indignation In his Pleasure and Favour is Life and in his Anger is a double Death to the Soul The inward Sensation and Perception of Gods Love is the ohiefest joy and happyness to a Soul either in this World or the other and the Sense and Perception of his Anger is the greatest Misery God the fountain of all Happiness doth diffuse and communicate such a Peace Joy Comfort to good Souls such an inward Taste and Relish of Spiritual Pleasure and Delight as is unspeakable past understanding called joy in the holy Ghost and is no doubt the sweetest and most affecting pleasure a Soul is capable of this the Angels and blessed Spirits above enjoy and are transported with the most ravishing Sense and Rapturous Impressions of it and 't is what makes Heaven to them and a little foretaste of it when God lifts up the light of his countenance upon us when a pious Soul tasts and sees how good and gracious God is this puts more gladness in the heart than Corn and wine and oyl and all worldly enjoyments now on the contrary when God hides his face and withdraws his loving-kindness and imprints a strong sense of his Wrath and Anger upon the Mind this is the utmost and the deepest Misery this gives the bitterest sense of Evil fills it with the greatest horrors sinks it into the deepest gulph the bottomless Pit of Misery and is the very Punishment and Hell of the damned How happy is it then to be Reconciled to God by Repentance whom we had angred and provoked by our sins before we feel any of this and before his Wrath and Anger is poured out upon us it will certainly fall upon every Sinner some time or other unless he Repents for God though he defers his Anger for some time that his Goodness and long-suffering may lead us to Repentance yet his abused Love Patience and Mercy will turn to greater Wrath and Fury if we persist in our sins and in a course of impenitency As 't is a very terrible thing to have the great God our Enemy and he certainly is so whilst we are in a state of Sin so 't is the comfortablest thought in the World and what will alone make us happy to be Assured that he is our Friend and that we are in a State of Favour with him upon our Repentance THE CONCLVSION To Conclude As all general Christian Duties are meant by Repentance so all general Christian-Priviledges and Benefits belong to it and are the Rewards of it for as Repentance is the same thing in Scripture with Conversion Regeneration the New Birth the New Creature the New Man and the like those different words and figurative expressions denoting only the same duty importing the great Change and Alteration made upon the Mind and Life of a Sinner by the power of Grace and Religion So all the benefits and priviledges of Christianity such as Election Adoption Pardon Justification at present and Glorification afterwards which are free and gratuitous acts in God granting and bestowing those Favours upon us for Christs sake upon our being duely qualified and fitted to receive them These all belong to those who have truly Repented and become good Men and to none else For God hath only Chosen Adopted Pardoned Justified and will Glorifie such and no other and till we have Repented we have no good claim or title to any of those Our being in a good State towards God which is the thing meant by all those Phrases under some different considerations is on our side wholly owing to our true Repentance and Obedience and it is all lost and forfeited by our Impenitency and Disobedience which on the contrary make us the Children of Wrath the Children of the Devil and Heirs of Damnation put us into the worst Spiritual State of Reprobation Obduration and Excecation according to the degrees of our Sins and Impenitence and into that of Condemnation it self which is the word that directly answers to that of Justification All those Scriptural Phrases and Expressions of a good State belong to Repentance and to the true Christian Penitent and all those which signifie a bad one belong as truly to Wickedness and Impenitence for though without the Free-Grace and Mercy of God in and thorough Christ we could not be put into any such good State nor have a title to any such Priviledges meerly by vertue of our Repentance or any thing we could do yet to suppose that God will put us into those states without any regard to our own Actions or not upon the account of them is to destroy all Religion all Divine Government all Future Judgment and all Rewards and Punishments in another World I might clear and illustrate and enlarge upon these had not this Discourse already swelled upon my hands into too great a bulk and did they not run into something of Controversie which I would carefully avoid I shall therefore only give this last Advice to the Penitent who hath brought himself by the Grace of God into this Good and Happy State that when he is thus got out of the Paths of Death and of Sin into those of Life and Vertue that he would go on and proceed in the new and right way he is in and make a speedy and further progress in all Piety and Goodness that like St. Paul forgetting those things which are behind and reaching unto those which are before he may follow and apprehend them and so press forward towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus Phil. 3.13 14. that now he is become a Christian in good earnest he would more zealously promote that Religion which he opposed and was an enemy to before and show he is a true Convert by his zeal and earnestness against Vice and Irreligion that he would make all amends he can for his past miscarriages by doing the greatest good he is able by serving God and his Glory more heartily and thus loving much because much is forgiven him so that where sin abounded grace