like but hate Without this our Tears run wast and our Sorrow is but as an empty Cloud or Rain upon barren Ground without any Fruit and all our bitter Cryes and Lamentations are but as the mournings of the Ephesian Matron when we can strike up again immediately with our Sins and take the causes of our Sorrow and the murderers of our beloved Joy immediately into our Hearts and our Embraces 3. Humiliations Bodily Austerities and Mortifications and especially Fasting make up this Duty of Penitence or Exercise of Repentance For thus the Penitents of old put on Sackcloth and spread Ashes upon their Heads lay prostrate upon the ground and rent their Clothes in the Eastern Countries and fasted and denyed themselves their ordinary Food and afflicted their Souls with these severities upon their Bodies For Sin being committed chiefly by the Body as not only the Instrument but the Tempter to it and the Flesh and its Carnal gratifications being the strongest and commonest allurements to it therefore to show their anger and displeasure against it they revenged it upon their Bodies and chastized those servants of unrighteousness and used such a discipline upon them as might punish them for what was past and be a means to prevent their sinning for the future And to show the sense they had of their own vileness and unworthiness for having offended God they exprest and testified it by all acts of humiliation and lowly submission to his Power and Greatness which they had formerly opposed withstood and disobeyed Now these Acts or Exercises of Repentance were so acceptable to God when they were the signs and effects of a true penitent Heart that we find in Scripture how it prevailed with God so far to pardon Sin as to remove the Temporal Judgments he had denounced against it Thus Niniveh was saved from destruction Jonah 3. when they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth and decreed that neither man nor beast should taste any thing but be covered with sackcloth and ashes ver 7.8 And Josiah when he thus humbled himself and rent his Clothes upon his hearing the destruction of Jerusalem denounced by the Prophetess had it defer'd till after his Death 2 Kings 22.19 And even wicked Ahab had Gods Judgment respited and took off from himself because when he heard it He rent his clothes and put sackcloth upon his flesh and fasted 1 Kin. 21.27 God himself assigning this as a Reason to the Prophet Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me because he humbleth himself before me I will not bring the evil in his days ver 29. And we find these Acts of Humiliation and this Discipline of Fasting joyned with Repentance not only in the Jewish Church but also in the Christian in the first and best Ages when this Penitential Discipline was most strictly observed by all Penitents Now the Question is 1. Whether these are necessary as proper acts or parts of Repentance or whether internal Repentance without these outward Exercises of it may not be sufficient 2. Whether if they be not necessary they are not useful and proper to promote or at least to express it Now as to the first Question The necessity of these we must make a difference between publick and private Repentance In publick Repentance as that of a Nation or City when they would remove or avert a Judgment and deprecate Gods Anger due to their Sins and exercise a solemn and publick Repentance for them this ought to be done by outward Humiliations and Fastings and such signs and expressions as are proper and usual to testifie great concern and trouble and mourning and humiliation that so they may make the best acknowledgment and satisfaction to God for their Sins and the best reparation to his injured Honour and Authority and may beget in others and propagate over the whole Kingdom or Nation the same penitential sense and concern for their Sins in order to avoid the danger and the judgment due upon them And thus in the publick Exercises of Penitence in the Christian Church when any had by a notorious and scandalous Sin brought a reproach and infamy upon the Church and their Religion the Governours were concerned for its Honour and Credit to take notice and turn them out of their Communion and put them in a state of publick Penitence for their grievous faults And here it was necessary for such Persons to satisfie the Church by their outward Acts of Repentance Mourning and humiliation that they were truly and inwardly penitent and were likely to live better and become other Men before they received them again into their Communion and this though it was but a Prudential Method and an External Discipline of the Church yet was excellently fitted for the reclaiming and reforming great and open Offenders by thus shaming them out of their sins and keeping the Rod over them and shutting them out of the Church by the power of the Keys till they were fit to be admitted and received in again upon the probable signs of a True Repentance and this our Church has good reason to wish for again and ought to restore it did not the state and circumstances we are in unavoidably hinder it but it is utterly impracticable under great Schisms and Divisions from the Church and great Looseness and Contempt of Religion which make it impossible for the Church to exercise this Discipline which were otherwise its Duty but this is at most but an Useful Discipline not a necessary or Essential part of Repentance to go through those penitential courses of Humiliation and Mortification which the ancient Penitents did all that is strictly necessary and all that the Scripture commands as a duty is an Internal Penitence towards God transacted between him and our own Souls wherein we humble our selves before him under a sense of our own vileness and unworthiness and with the greatest submission of our Souls bow down our selves and own his Power and Right to punish us and beseech him for Christ's sake not to use it i. e. to pardon and forgive us Now this I doubt not with sincerity of mind at present and Amendment of Life afterwards is a sufficient Exercise of this Duty to private and particular persons without all the other Solemnities and performaces of a publick Penitence for the design of those is hereby fully attained as to the Person himself which was to amend him and to recover him and to make him more careful not to offend for the future by his shame and sufferings for what is past The Church of Rome has turned this Discipline of Publick Penitence used in the Primitive Church into Auricular Confession and Private Penance which besides the folly of giving Absolution first and supposing some of the guilt and punishment remaining after the Sin is pardoned and making the Eternal Punishment easier to be got off than than the Temporal and imposing trifling and ridiculous penances and making them properly satisfactory is a shameful
strongest demonstration of Christianity and it is beyond all controversie that a great many who were not brought to believe in Christ for his Miracles which they saw him do or had as much reason to believe as if they saw him yet were afterwards convinced and believed upon his Resurrection and yet besides this sign which our Saviour sayes was to be given them after they had charged him to do his Miracles by an unclean Spirit Matth. 16.4 for that was meant by the sign of the Prophet Jonas there yet remained another means to cure the Infidelity of these People and bring them off from their unreasonable unbelief and that was the sending the Holy Ghost in so visible a manner upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost whereby the Jews saw and heard those poor unlearned Men who were Fishermen and Publicans and Persons of ordinary Rank and little Education speak all sorts of Tongues and Languages more than the Learnedest of their own Rabbies were able to do and work all sorts of Miracles as great as ever Moses or any of their Prophets were recorded to perform This also without doubt made a great many Proselytes to Christ and his Religion that were not so before and brought in vast numbers of Believers into the Church as we read in the Acts of the Apostles Now when so many means were appointed and used by God and those such strong and powerful ones even after the Jews had been guilty of that vile reproach of many of our Saviours Miracles who can say that this Sin was not curable by any remedies when they were not all used but there were still many others to be applyed and who can say that the Scribes and Pharisees had resisted the last means of Conviction when our Saviour and his Apostles had after that so many others to offer to them and which might probably prevail upon them it feemeth more likely from this which is so plain and undeniable that the Sin against the Holy Ghost was the resisting all the means whatever that were or could be used by the Spirit of God both in Christ and the Apostles too for the bringing Men to Christianity and so it became unpardonable because it baffled the last means that could be used against it and as to the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or reproach which ought to be taken notice of as the very specifick form and essential difference of this Sin none seem to be more literally guilty of that no not the Scribes and Pharisees who said Christ did his miracles and cast out Devils by Beelzebub or an evil Spirit than they who in the time of the Apostles when they saw them filled with the Holy Ghost and speaking with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance Acts 2.4 yet mocking and vilely reproaching all this said These men are full of new wine ver 13. The ascribing this visible Power of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles to Drunkenness and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mocking at all this as if they had been inspired with the Spirit of Wine or of Bacchus rather than the Spirit of God seems as great a reproach and calumny to him as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 against the Miracles of Christ and the ascribing them to an unclean Spirit And this was more especially the time of the Spirits oeconomy and dispensation when he was so plentifully poured out upon the Apostles and other Christians and was sent into the World to be Christs Advocate and the publick Patron of Christianity whereas before when Christ was not glorified it is expesly said that the Holy Ghost was not yet given John 7.39 For all these Reasons I should be inclined to be of their Mind who think this to be the true Sin against the Holy Ghost which is therefore unpardonable because uncurable by all the means which the Spirit of God could use were not the words of St. Matthew and St. Mark especially so plain that our Saviour spoke of this Sin because the Scribes and Pharisees said He hath an unclean Spirit Mark 3.30 and because there is no other thing mentioned by our Saviour as the reason of his discourse about it but because when he had healed the Blind and the Dumb and him that was possessed with a Devil the Pharisees said This fellow doth not cast out Devils but by Beelzebub the prince of the Devils Matth. 12.22 24. Our Saviour did not only forewarn the Pharisees and tell them that this calumny of theirs came very near and was a preparation to the Sin against the Holy Ghost and that this would be likely to bring them to commit that afterwards if they took not great care of themselves but he seems plainly to charge them as already guilty and not meerly in danger of it and that which they had already said was no doubt a most horrid Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost and nothing could be worse than to reproach the Spirit that was in Christ himself to whom he was given not by measure but in a more full and extraordinary manner than he was to others afterwards For though the Holy Ghost was not before given to the Apostles nor other Christians till Christ was ascended into Heaven yet he was given to him and to reproach him in him was like the reproaching the Authority of a Prince not only in his Envoys and Embassadors but in his own Son So that allowing the Sin against the Holy Ghost to be the ascribing the Miracles of Christ to the Power of the Devil which seems to be the plainest and simplest account of it and most agreeable to the words of our Saviour and to the only places of Scripture where it is ever mentioned and in such a difficult matter we must be careful not to venture further than we have clear Authority from the Scripture it self then from what has been largely said on this Head it does not seem that this Sin was therefore unpardonable because it had resisted and been too hard for all even the last means of Conviction which was to be used to recover Men from it since there were many others that God had appointed after that 3. In the Third place Can we say it is unpardonable upon another account because God was thereby provoked to withdraw his Grace and Spirit from those who were guilty of it and to give them up to hardness of Heart and an uncurable state of Mind This we must not say of any but where God himself has expresly declared it and it would be great rashness as well as uncharitableness to pronounce this of any but where God has first pronounced it which he has not that I know of of the Scribes and Pharisees upon the account of this Sin against the Holy Ghost Our Saviour indeed charges this in some measure upon the whole Jewish Nation who believed not in him notwithstanding the mighty works which they saw him do and this was a partial but not a total nor an
offer 4. Then Such a Repentance as the Gospel makes the condition of Pardon and Salvation is nothing less than a constant Obedience and an entire and universal Goodness of Life at least after a wicked one or after great failures and miscarriages for Repentance as I have often said is to the Soul like a recovery of Health to the Body after some great Sickness or Illness The whole Body or the part ill affected must be made perfectly well and restored to its former strength and soundness or else it cannot be said to be recovered The Disease must be throughly got off the sickly matter must be discharged the illness must be cured and removed and the Patient must get his former strength and be able to perform the proper and vital operations or else we cannot say he is well So a Sinner must wholly get rid of his past Sins must purge them all out by Sorrow and Contrition must have his Mind wholly freed from them and himself brought to such a Spiritual strength and soundness as to perform the Duties and Operations of the new Life or else he is not recovered by Repentance nor brought from a bad state to a good one He may be under a method of Cure indeed as a sick Man is under a course of Physick whilst he is under Sorrow for Sin and Contrition and Compunction and the like which are good means and instruments and beginnings of Repentance and so are mistaken for the thing it self but his Repentance is not finish'd nor is the great work perfect and compleat till from a bad Man in any kind he is become a good one till this is done which God knows is not the most easie nor the most speedy thing in the World but requires long time and great care and pains and labour there is no title that I know of to Pardon by the Terms of the Gospel nor is there any true Gospel Repentance such as we can give any warrant or assurance of remission to by the Covenant of Grace or the known and ordinary Rules of Gods Mercy Were Repentance only a sudden Passion or a transient Act of the Mind were it only an inward Sorrow Trouble and Compunction of Heart it might be quickly performed and no Sinner would be without it but Cain and Herod and Judas might be said to Repent thus far and after this fashion for thus the one repented and said I have sinned Mat. 27.3 4. the second was exceeding sorry for what he had done Matth. 6.26 and the other was so sensible of his Sin that he cryed out My punishment is greater than I can bear Gen. 4.13 But true Repentance is only known and made to be so by an habitual and lasting change both of Mind and Life by an actual amendment and reformation by a turning away from all our evil deeds and all our wickedness whatsoever that we have committed and doing that which is lawful and right which is the clearest and fullest Scripture expression that gives us the true Nature of Repentance which includes constant and actual Obedience and destroyes these foolish and wicked reserves of securing our selves by playing an after-game of Repentance They who design this have no sense of the true worth and excellency of Religion but are only for making use of it for a little turn at the last as Goal-birds learn to read meerly for the sake of their Neck-verse for though they like their Sins much better and would alwayes live in them it is plain if they were left to their choice yet they at last unwillingly bring themselves to part with them as Men throw over their Goods in a Storm for fear they should be lost and Shipwreck'd with them Thus miserably do they mistake and misunderstand the true Nature of Repentance which is a perfect changing the Habit and Temper and Frame of a Mans Mind and bringing other Thoughts and Principles and Inclinations into it which is called in Scripture a new Heart and a new Spirit and this producing an entire and permanent and universal change of the Life and Actions and making a Man become better in every particular and in the whole a very good Man 5. It is observable that Repentance is all along in the Gospel made a Duty previous and antecedent to Christianity and what was supposed to go before Baptism and what was necessary before-hand to fit and prepare Men to become Christians thus they were to repent and be baptized Acts 2.38 John the Baptist who was to prepare the way for Christianity did it by preaching Repentance for this reason Because the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand Matth. 3.2 i. e. Christianity or the state of the Gospel which is agreed by all to be there meant by the kingdom of Heaven was now approaching and our Blessed Saviour upon that Principle and Argument preach'd the same Duty ver 17. From that time he began to preach and to say Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand And the Disciples of Christ preach'd this Duty Mark 6.12 when they were to prepare and dispose Men to receive Christ and to embrace Christianity and when any that were adult were received into the Church and Christianity by Baptism they were supposed to be Penitents before they were Christians It was a Duty and a Condition alwayes implyed and required that they Repented of their past Sins and sincerely promised and resolved upon a new course of Life That they who had their conversation in times past in the lusts of the flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by Nature the children of wrath as the Apostle speaks Eph. 2.3 i. e. in the state they were in before they were Christians for the Gospel considers all Mankind as in a state of Sin and Guilt before they are admitted into Christianity which is a state of Pardon and Salvation that these when they were made Christians were to put off the old man with his deeds Col. 3.9 i. e. all the old Habits and Acts of Sin which they were guilty of in their unchristian state and were to put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness Eph. 4.24 and they were to become new creatures in Christ Jesus and were therefore then said to be regenerated and to be born again and are represented in Scripture as dying unto all sin in Baptism that they should not henceforth live any longer therein Rom. 6.2 They are buried with Christ by baptism into his death that like as Christ was raised from the dead even so we also who are baptized into his death should walk in newness of life ver 3. So that after Baptism we should reckon our selves to be dead unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ ver 11. So that the body of sin is then to be put off and destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin ver 6. Thus though Men were considered as Sinners before their Baptism
of them which would defeat and destroy all the Gospel and all the necessity of Obedience and a Holy Life and keeping Gods Commandments and God must then alter those Terms and alter even his own Judgment at the Last Day and not judge us by our Works nor by what we have done in the flesh whether it be good or evil but only by the sincerity of our dying Repentance which I no where find mentioned nor is this dis-junctive any where in the Gospel Leave thy sins and live well and keep my Commands or else Repent and be sorry for not doing all these things at the last and that shall be as well But I shall by and by give my positive Arguments more fully against this mischievous mistake 3ly The next difficulty and the next plea for a Death-Bed Repentance is this That God may on a sudden so powerfully alter a Mans Mind and so work upon his Heart by his Spirit as to change and convert him and make him another Man in a very little time or just before he dyes I answer God may do this if he pleases to exert his utmost force and power upon us and so he may raise us again after we are dead and make us live a new Life upon Earth but we are not I suppose ordinarily to expect this no more are we the other which is as contrary to the ordinary Methods of his Grace as the other of his Providence God does not use a miraculous and extraordinary power in either and for any Man to depend upon this is a downright tempting of God and by neglecting the common means which he has put into his hands to call for a Miracle which God will not grant to the careless and idle when there is no need of it God has given us all sufficient Means sufficient Motives and Arguments sufficient Grace and Assistance to Repent and leave our Sins and if we will not make use of these but abuse the Talents he has committed to us he will not for that reason give us a double number when we come to dye and dispense the more to us for our having been idle and prodigal all our lives The habits of sin and wickedness which we have been contracting all our Lives will not be changed on a sudden when we come to dye when we have complained so long and often of our sins as being so hard to be overcome and so impossible to be left off shall we expect all of a sudden to have it become so easie a matter and so sudden a business to get rid of them when we have suffered them to run so long upon us and have not thought 'em curable by all the Methods of Grace and Religion shall we think to meet with a sudden Charme and Amulet for them that shall cure them we know not how Some Men talk of infused habits without being able to reconcile them either to Sense or to Nature and of instantaneous Conversion without being able to give any one example of any such thing from all the Scripture some indeed were suddenly and miraculously converted to Christianity as St. Paul and the Goaler and a Man may be brought to believe otherwise than he did by such a strong Argument as a Revelation which shall immediately turn his Judgment and Understanding but to have him that has been along while accustomed to do evil in an instant do good is without president in Scripture and no way reconcileable with that known place of Jerem. 13.23 A Man cannot suddenly step out of the wayes of Vice into those of Vertue they do not lye near but contrary to one another so that a Man must go back and undo his vitious habits and unravel all his sinful customs by degrees before he can attain to the contrary Vertuous ones which are not to be acquired without great pains and time and long care and watchfulness To root out Vice and make Grace grow in the heart is not an easie nor a sudden work we find how much it costs us to mortifie a lust to conquer a passion to master an ill inclination and what pains we must take with our selves to do this and can we think all this may be done on a sudden by a Man who has all his days lived loosely and given the reins to all these that he can be made that in a moment which he could not be made all his Life God may indeed give him a New Soul and that a very Vertuous one and Annihilate his Old one that was so habitually vitious but to make that good in a moment is more difficult than the other more contrary to Nature and what is as little to be expected so far as I know from God The summe is none but a good Man can go to Heaven and none can be made such on a sudden without a Miracle and no Man can expect to be saved by that but by the ordinary Means and Grace of the Gospel Those Graces and Vertuous habits which can alone qualifie and make us meet for Heaven cannot be brought into our Souls on a sudden nor can any sudden Convictions or sudden Thoughts and sudden Passions change and alter a Mans mind so as to renew it and put it in another frame and make it inwardly Holy and Righteous when it was habitually bad before without so much time and so many Acts of Obedience as shall change its Principles Thoughts Inclinations Affections Temper Disposition and the like In vain had God commanded us so many Vertues and so many Acts of Obedience as Qualifications and Conditions to fit our Minds for Eternal happyness if without living in those and performing them any time our Souls might be disposed and fitted for it There cannot be a sufficient change of the Mind for this purpose without change of Life and Actions To talk of inward Principles of Grace in the heart without vital Acts of Holyness and Obedience in the Life and that an old Sinner by such a new Principle infused into him is a kind of Embrio Saint just conceived though not formed as he should be nor able to performe any Acts of Obedience is to strain a Metaphor and depend upon a Similitude without rightly understanding the thing Every Christian hath this inward Principle of Grace infused into him by vertue of his Baptisme and Christianity and it exerts it self with his own will and endeavours all his Life unless hindred by him and it is never perfectly taken away from any perhaps or at least only from the most Vile and Profligate of Sinners in this World but it will and doth stir and move even in very wicked Minds but this is all ineffectual and to no purpose unless it produce Acts of Vertue and Obedience and a Good Life without which it neither Sanctifies nor Regenerates nor makes us good Men nor fit for Heaven and without those which are the Vital Motions and Effectual Operations of this Grace of the Gospel which is given
Happyness and Salvation Now no Man can in any sense call the Sorrows and Remorses and Repentance of dying Sinners Gospel Obedience but only a trouble and concern for the want of it and for the disobedience of their whole lives There would be no difference between Obedience and Disobedience if this were so No Master or Father would account him an Obedient Servant or Obedient Son who should only confess and be sorry that he had always disobeyed him until upon this his sorrow he showed himself Obedient for the future and did him some faithful Service How long a Man must be Obedient after he hath been Disobedient or how long time is required for a Sinner who repents to come off from his Sins and become a good Man is hard to determine exactly but there must be so much time as shall make a Drunkard sober a Whoremonger chast an unjust Man Righteous a Swearer and Prophane Person Devout and Pious the Covetous Man Just and Charitable and the like for we are assured that whilst Men are such Sinners as any of those they have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God Ephes 5.5 and therefore they must so long obey the Laws of God till they are truly become and may be denominated Sober Just Charitable Pure Holy Religious and the like for Heaven is a place only for such Men and such Souls as are thus qualified and who have obeyed Gods Laws so long till they are become thus It shall never be given to those who have been disobedient to God all their lives and can now performe no acts of Obedience to him such can never perform that Indispensable Condition of Salvation required by the Gospel and nothing less then this will do there is no such disjunctive any where in the Bible that I know of to this sense Be Holy and Obedient and lead a Good Life in order to be Fternally happy or else Repent and be Sorry for not doing it when you come to dye but only thus where you have sinned and been disobedient for the time past Repent and be Obedient for the time to come and this shall be accepted as in that known place when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness which he hath committed and doth that which is lawful and right he shall save his soul alive Ezek. 18.27 'T is his doing that which is lawful and right i. e. his Obedience for the future shall save his soul alive all his transgressions that he hath committed they shall not be mentioned unto him upon his new Obedience or Repentance in his Righteousness that he hath done shall he live ver 22. it must be Righteousness afterwards or his obeying God after his former disobedience shall entitle him to Life and Happyness and be the Condition of it 2. As Obedience is the only term and condition of our Salvation by the Gospel so there is no just reason or good ground to hope that God will in any case abate of the termes of Salvation he hath there lay'd down or be mercyful beyond those for two reasons 1. Because this would be neither consistent with the Holiness of his Nature nor the wisdom of his Government for as he is a Holy and Righteous God he cannot love any but a righteous and good Soul and so cannot make any other happy because a wicked and impure Soul is contrary to his Nature and what he hates and abominates and what can never see or enjoy God neither is it consistent with the Wisdom of God as Governour of the World to reward any but the obedient and the righteous for it would reflect upon his Justice and his Authority if he should suffer Men to go on in their Wickedness and Disobedience all their lives and not punish them for it Mercy indeed and Clemency is the Honour of any Prince and that which commends him to the love and esteem of all but then it must be shown wisely to proper and fit Objects and for good Reasons to bring Men in to their Duty and draw them off from their Disobedience with the promise of a Pardon upon their doing so and returning to their Allegiance But if a Prince shall grant this to all sort of Offenders out of the weakness and softness of his Temper he will loosen his Government and weaken his Authority and make himself cheap and contemptible and as he will encourage Rogues and Rebels so he will injure the Publick and not take due care as becomes a wise Governour of the Common good should God grant a full and absolute pardon to Sinners who have lived never so long in their sins because they are very sorry for them when they come to dye and they can live in them no longer this would encourage Men who love their Sins to continue in 'em all their lives and then Repent at last and so save themselves the trouble as they think it of living a very good life God indeed has promised pardon to all who repent and turn from their sins and live good and holy lives after they have lived bad ones and this is sufficient encouragement to make a wicked Man become a good one with the certain hopes that when he does so God will receive him but to go farther and suppose God to pardon a long wicked life spent altogether in Sin and Disobedience merely for a little sorrow and remorse and trouble when Men come to dye is to open a wide Door to vice and wickedness and to supersede the necessity of Obedience and a good life and therefore should God grant this it would destroy Religion and take off the Obligations to Vertue and make all his Motives to Obedience and Threatnings against Sin to be void empty and ineffectual 2. There is no Reason to think God will abate of the termes of the Gospel and be more merciful than he has there promised to be because as the Gospel seems to contain the utmost Grace and Mercy that God can show to Men so it shall certainly be the Rule of the last judgment and God will then proceed and pronounce judgment according to the Rules and Measures of that 't is the most vain and impudent thing in the World to expect any further Mercy than God has revealed to vs by Jesus Christ He hath in all probability shown the utmost kindness and favour that is possible to Mankind for his sake he has opened the bowels of his Mercy and the Riches of his Grace as the Apostle speaks Eph. 1.7 and has exhausted all the treasures of love and compassion to poor Sinners that a Wise and Just God can possibly show with consistence to his own honour and the honour of his Laws and Government to expect therefore that God should be gracious beyond the Gospel and make farther and greater abatements to us and be more merciful than he hath promised to be by his Son whom he sent with the most full and gratious Message of loving kindness
two such Receptacles for the Souls of all Men and Angels to spend an Eternity in for the fixt continuance and Eternal Duration of their state is more plainly revealed then their particular State and Condition so that all Rational Souls must be consigned to one of those States and Places for they who have made a Third or Fourth have made it only out of their own brains and imaginations not out of any Scriptural foundation or Authority there must be allowed to be very great differences and unequal degrees of happiness or misery in those two places or else neither the Justice of God nor the different Cases of Men can be accounted for with any tolerable ease and satisfaction to our thoughts or be any way reconciled to the principles either of Reason or Religion God the Just and All-knowing Judge will give all allowances to the hard circumstances the invincible ignorance the unavoidable failures the powerful temptations the particular cases and several disadvantages that any of Mankind have been under and with the fairest and most impartial equity will adjudge all their Conditions and proportion their future Rewards and Punishments according to what is due to them all things considered according to the right or wrong use of that freedom and liberty which he gave them and the faults or vertues under that light and knowledge they had of their own wills and choices by which alone they can either be or be denominated good or bad Men Some of Mankind seem not to have either vertues enough to qualifie them for Heaven or to be so wilfully vitious as to deserve Hell but to be in a kind of middle state here between Vertue and Vice whatever they shall be in hereafter and many who are guilty of some Vices which the Scripture declares damnable and exclusive of Heaven yet are not of such downright Irreligion and General Profligacy and Debauchery as others Thus also many have some real sense of Religion but yet are but weakly moved and influenced by it and do but just live in a very low way of Grace and Vertue and are not so Rich in good works nor do so abound in Acts of Piety Zeal Usefulness and Charity as others Therefore one Equal Complete Perfect Entire State either of Happiness or Misery cannot belong to all these alike but Heaven or Hell are proportionable unequal different conditions of both exactly suited and fitted to the Moral and Religious Deserts Capacities and Qualifications of all Rational Beings in which they shall be fixt to all Eternity without alteration though perhaps not without further improvements and gradual risings and fallings according to the Nature of either of those States These Thoughts have been a great ease and satisfaction to my self in the Conception of the great and amazing things of another World and I therefore communicate them not only on the fore-mentioned account but because they may be so to others who consider those greatest Objects of Meditation with any penetration of thought according to the best helps we have of Philosophy and Scripture and I am perswaded it would be good Service to Religion if it were thus fairly reconciled in all the revealed Truths and Articles of it to the thoughts of inquisitive Men as I doubt not but it may be but this is a subject of another Nature which I am not now to meddle withal CHAP. VI. Practical Rules and Directions concerning the Particular Exercise of Repentance I Shall now consider the Particular Exercise of Repentance taken as a single Duty distinct from all others of Obedience which are in the largest sense involved in it and without which it is not effectual to Pardon and Salvation as I have all along shown but Repentance taken singly for a particular act of a Sinner just struck and affected with a sense of his Sins and exercising at set times Penitential Reflections and proper Actions upon the thoughts and remembrance of them this which is often called Repentance and is so in some sense but not sufficient to compleat this Duty and to entitle us to all the effects of Repentance as they are promised to it in Scripture in a more large and comprehensive Notion as including a good Life and all manner of Obedience after we have failed and come short in any point This which I would call Penitence or Penance as being a Penal Exercise or Penitential Course and Discipline fit for a Sinner to go through after he has committed any great Sin or whenever he seriously remembers and considers and recollects as he ought often to do with himself the most considerable miscarriages of his Life This consists in these following things 1. In confessing of his Sin 2. In inward and outward Sorrow for it 3. In Humiliations Bodily Austerities and Mortifications and especially Fasting as the chief of them In these the Scripture and the Church and the custom of good Men in all Ages have placed this Exercise of Repentance as consisting of such Penitential Acts not as a permanent Habit of renewed Obedience and recovered Vertue nor as if the Essence or the formal Vertue and proper fruits of it lay in these but in Reformation of Heart and Life Conversion and Obedience to God but these are the buds and blossoms of those fruits of Repentance the seeds and the signs of it or at least the outward concomitants and attendants of it and such a retinue as are proper to go along with it for the solemnity at least and decent performance of it if not as absolutely necessary to the thing it self Necessary generally in private but alwayes in publick Acts or Expressions of Repentance wherein a publick reparation and satisfaction is to be given to Gods Honour and Authority his Judgments to be averted and his Anger deprecated and a common sense and apprehension of all this to be promoted and inculcated among others as in publick Penances and National Repentances and therefore we read chiefly of these upon such occasions both in Scripture and Ecclesiastical Writers Open Sins are a dishonouring of God an affronting and despising his Power and Authority a setting up our Wills against his a gratifying and indulging our selves in undue liberties and unlawful inclinations of Body Now 't is fit therefore in our Repentance for them wherein we make what amends we can to God and repair the injury we have done him and undo the Sin as far as we are able and show our utmost displeasure against it that we should fall down before him and confess it and be sorry for it and humble our selves to him and own our vileness and wretchedness and unworthiness and express the deepest resentments of it and show our anger against our selves and revenge it very severely and afflict our Souls and our Bodies with something that shall not be very grateful to them nor pleasant and acceptable to our Senses The design of all this is to beget in our Mind such thoughts of our Sins and such passions and