Law was the cause of our Sin and Death this we see is quite taken off and doth not follow at all For although we sinn'd yea and died too under the Law yet was not the Law the cause of these but the strength of our own Lusts. But the Law is holy still and so no cause of sin and the Commandment forbidding sin and promising Life to the obedient is not only holy and just but over and above that good too and so no cause of death and suffering But upon this you will say how was it then that that which is so good in it self as you say the Law is should be made the cause of the greatest evil even of Death unto me Could it prove so to me if it were not so in it self And to this I answer with abhorrence God forbid that I should say the Law is Death No this Death as I have told you is not the effect of the Law for it was ordained to procure Life for me But it was Sin I say again that was too strong for the Law which could only forbid but was not able by all its aids to restrain it this Sin it was that it might appear Sin indeed that went on working transgression unto Death in me by advantage taken over that Law which is good although not strong enough to overpower the setled habits of evil And by this conquest of Sin over the good Law which was set up as a bar against it and should have destroy'd it it appears to be most mischievous For this comes of it that Sin by proving too hard for the Commandment might by such prevailing over all that is set against it be extremely heightned and aggravated and become exceeding sinfull And that the Law should thus be worsted by Sin is no wonder For we know that although the Law which commands is spiritual to shew and suggest better things yet I who am to obey in that state of sensuality and sin wherein the Law finds me and out of which it is too weak to rescue me am carnal so as to serve sin notwithstanding it Which I am to such a degree as if I were sold under sin and my actions were as much at its command as the actions of a slave bought with money are at the command of his master So that although the Law shews me that which is good and commands me to perform it yet cannot I obey it in regard I am under anothers power under the beck of sin And in very deed to speak yet more particularly to this business the good Law can and doth produce good effects in the mind and conscience which is the throne wherein it is seated but still the law of sin which is seated in the members or executive powers prevails over it and engrosseth all our actions So that the utmost that it can ordinarily do with us is to make us in our mind to disapprove sin but when it hath done that it cannot hinder us in our lives from practising it And of this the complaints of those who are subject to it are a sufficient proof For who is there among them for the most part that is not ready to confess and cry out thus that which through the prevailing power of my lusts I do in my practice that through the power of the Law I allow not in my mind and conscience for what being excited by the Law I would do that being hindred by sin do I not but what from the Laws prohibiting in my mind I hate and disapprove that from my own lusts forcing and overpowering me in my actions still do I. And this by the way as it is an evident argument of the weakness and inability of the Law to restrain sin is also a clear testimony to the holiness and goodness of the Law it self which shews plainly that it is no favourer or author of Sin as was objected vers 7. Because if even then when I do sin I do not approve of it but in doing so I do what I would not I thereby consent in my own conscience unto the Law and acknowledge by my approving what it commands that it is good Yea I shew moreover that all that which it produces and effects in me is good also For even when I do sin sinning thus against my conscience the sin cannot in any wise be charged upon my conscience where the Law reigns so as that the Law in my mind may be stiled the cause of sin as it is vers 7. but only upon the power of my habitual sin and fleshly lusts that reign in my members which are so strong as that the law of my mind cannot restrain them And now then in this state of sinning thus with regret and against my conscience even when I do sin it is no more I or my mind and conscience that is governed by the Law and which may be called my self that do it seeing it disapproves it but it is sin that dwells in me and reigns in my members It must not be charged upon the Law in my mind I say but upon this inhabiting Sin which rules in my members For I know and confess freely that in that other part of me that is to say in my flesh and members which for all the Law rules in my mind doth yet keep possession of my practice dwells no good thing Nay on the contrary there dwells so much evil as proves too strong for the good Law restraining all its effect to the approbation of my mind but not suffering it to influence my practice Which we as I said who are subject to the Law find by sad experience For almost every one of us feels and must confess this that to will upon the account of the Law is present with me but then how to perform that which is good after I have will'd it that I find not For after the Law has done all that it can upon me this is still true that the good that being instructed by the Law I would do that being hindred by the prevalence of my lusts I do not but as for the evil which because of the prohibition of the Law I would not do that being over-master'd by my lusts I do But now all this while as I said if what my lusts make me practise through the Law in my mind I do not approve but in doing it I do that which I would not then 't is clear that my sinning cannot be charged upon the Law as it is vers 7. because it hinders it as far as it can It cannot I say be attributed to that for it is no longer I or my mind and conscience that do it but to the power of habitual Sin which the good Law cannot conquer to that sin which dwells and rules in me i. e. in my bodily members And therefore to summ up all I find another Law in my members opposite to the Law of God in
before an unerring and uncorrupt Judge who can neither be bribed nor deceived and who cannot mistake them or wrongfully condemn them howsoever they may mistake or wrongfully condemn themselves And since it is so they are really safe in their own goodness when they most of all suspect their own danger and secure from evil even whilst they are afraid of falling under it But although every good man is in this safety let his understanding of himself be what it will yet if in any of those things which he takes to be a matter of life or death he judges wrong of himself and thinks erroneously he can enjoy no peace and comfort He will go to Heaven full of fears and forbodeing thoughts and never think himself in the way to Bliss till he is actually inthroned in it and possessed of it He will meet indeed with happiness in the end but he will have no sight or expectation of it in the way for all his life long he will be tormented with doubts and suspicions fears and jealousies and be still by turns concluding himself lost as to the next World though he be lost no where but in his own fancy And this imagined future misery will bring him under a real one for the present it will make him have sad thoughts and a sorrowful heart it will bereave him of all joy and peace and almost overwhelm him in groundless perplexity and vexation But that pious Souls may not fear where no fear is nor torment themselves with unreasonable expectations having before shewn what that condition really is which renders any mans a safe condition I will go on now to remove their groundless scruples and mistakes concerning it by shewing what and of what force those things are which are wont without any sufficient reason to disquiet the minds and to disturb the peace of good and safe but mistaken Christians about it And as for the causes of good mens fears so far as I have been able to learn them they are chiefly these that follow 1. Good men are wont to call in question the saveableness of their present and the happiness of their future state because after all their care against them they find that some motions of the flesh some stirrings of their lusts some thoughts of evil do still arise up in them They feel themselves subject to delightsom fancies and desires of forbidden things They are liable to a lustful thought a covetous wish an insurrection of anger of envy and of several other damning sins 'T is true indeed that these lusts do not reign in them because they do not consent to their instigations nor do what they would have them They can only inhabit and stir in them but have not strength enough to give Laws to them for they repress them before they get so far and prevail over them before they go on to fulfil what they inclined to Not any of these sinful lusts whereof they are afraid has got so much power over them as to carry them on either to consent to them or to fulfil them for though they may think on some forbidden things in their minds or desire them in their hearts yet do they not will and chuse any of them and least of all do they work and practise them They may perhaps have a thought and fancy a wish and inclination after unchast pleasures but they correct themselves there and go no further for they never in their hearts consent to an unlawful embrace nor ever proceed to an unclean action In a sudden motion of anger it may be they may have several expressions of wrath and instances of revenge occur to their thoughts and obtruding themselves upon their fancy but they stop there and go no higher for they do not consent to utter an injurious word or to commit a spiteful action and the same they experience by themselves in other instances In all which several forbidden things will get into their thoughts and desires and steal from them a wish or inclination but when once they have done that they can do no more being unable either to gain their consent or to command their practice so as that they should not only desire but also chuse and fulfil them But although they do not suffer sin to reign in them so as to consent to it or to fulfil it in the lusts thereof yet they fear lest their very thoughts and inclinations after it should prove damnable For God requires the obedience of our whole man of the mind and affections as well as of our wills and actions and he is disobeyed by any as well as by all our faculties And seeing every sin is forbidden under pain of death who knows but that this admission of sin into our thoughts and desires is a deadly transgression This is one great cause of fear and a rock of offence to truly honest and good men But to take off all doubt and scruple upon this account we must know that our impotent lusts and ineffective desires of evil things if they are able to get no further than a thought or a wish though at present they are a matter of our exercise and humiliation yet at the Day of Judgment they shall be no Article of death or condemnation For Christs Gospel doth not sentence us severely upon these first motions of a lust or beginnings of a sin no if they arrive no higher than fancy and inclination through the merits of Christs Sacrifice there is Grace enough in store for them and in the Gospel account they are not grown up to be a matter of Death nor come within the Confines of destruction That I may speak with the more distinctness to this Point I will here shew these two things 1. That for our feeble lusts and desires after evil which are unconsented to and unfulfilled we shall not at the last day be condemned 2. For what lusts and desires of them we shall 1. I say For our feeble lusts and desires of evil which are unconsented to and unfulfilled at the day of Judgment no man otherwise good shall ever be condemned God will never sentence us to Hell for every sudden desire an inclination after sinful things but if it rests there and goes no further than bare desire he will pardon and pass it by but not eternally avenge it To speak distinctly to this Point these lustings and desires are considerable either as to their first birth or as to their indulged and allowed continuance the first are never damning and the latter many times are no Article of condemnation As for our bodily lusts and desires of evil in their first birth I say they are never damning nor shall any man who is otherwise vertuous and obedient be ever judged to dye for them And if it were otherwise who could possibly be saved For as long as we live in this World we have all of us these first motions of appetites after evil things more or less and there
sufferings Where it needs to be defended disobedience is no fit means to preserve it because God cannot be honoured nor Religion served by it Religion and the love of God is only the colour but the true and real cause of such disobedience is a want of Religion and too great a love of mens own selves Men are liable to be deceived by this pretence from a wrong Notion of Religion for religious opinions and professions A true Notion of Religion for religious practice upon a religious belief as it implies both faith and obedience The danger of disobedience upon this pretence The practice of all religious men in this case Of Religion in the narrow acceptation for religious professions and opinions The commendable way of mens preserving it First By acting within their own sphere Secondly By the use only of lawful means Thirdly By a zeal in the first place for the practice of religious Laws and next to that for the free profession of religious opinions 330 CHAP. VII Of the two remaining pretences for a partial obedience The Contents The second pretence for the allowed practice of some sins whilst men obey in others is the serving of their necessities by sinful arts in times of indigence An account of mens disobedience upon this pretence The vanity of it and the danger of disobeying through it A third pretence is bodily temper and complexion age and way of life A representation of mens disobedience upon this pretence The vanity of it and the danger of sinning through it No justifying Plea for disobedience from our age Nor from our way of life Nor from our natural temper and complexion So that this integrity of the Object is excusable upon no pretence It was always required to mens acceptance 355 CHAP. VIII Of obeying with all the heart and all the soul c. The Contents Of obeying God with all the heart and with all the strength c. It includes not all desire and endeavour after other things but it implies First Sincerity Secondly Fervency Thirdly Integrity or obeying not some but all the Laws of God These three include all that is contained in it which is shown from their obedience who are said in Scripture to have fulfilled it Integrity implies sincerity and fervency and love with all the heart is explained in the places where it is mentioned by loving him entirely Sincerity and uprightness the Conditions of an acceptable Obedience This a hard Condition in the degeneracy of our manners but that is our own fault It was easie and universally performed by the primitive Christians This shown from the Characters of the Apostles and of the primitive Writers Hence it was that they could despise Death and even provoke Martyrdom Some Pleas from our impotence against the strictness of this Obedience which are considered in the next Book 370 BOOK IV. Shewing what defects are consistent with a regenerate state and dispensed with in the Gospel CHAP. I. Shewing in general that some sins are consistent with a state of Grace The Contents SOme failings consistent with a state of Grace This shewn in the general First From the necessity of humane Nature which cannot live without them Secondly From sundry examples of pious men who had right to life whilst they lived in them 385 CHAP. II. Of the nature of these consistent slips more particularly The Contents Our unchosen sins are consistent with a state of Grace but our wilful and chosen ones destroy it All things are made good or evil a matter of reward or punishment by a Law Laws are given for the guidance and reward only of our voluntary and chosen actions This proved first from the clear reason of the thing Where it is inferred from the nature of Laws which is to oblige from that way that all Laws have of obliging which is not by forcing but perswading men from the dueness of rewards and punishments commendations and reproofs from the applause or accusations of mens own Consciences upon their obedience or transgressions Secondly From the express declarations of Scripture 396 CHAP. III. Of the nature and danger of voluntary sins The Contents The nature of a wilful and a deliberate sin Why it is called a despising of Gods Law a sinning presumptuously and with a high hand Wilful sins of two sorts viz. some chosen directly and expresly others only indirectly and by interpretation Of direct and interpretative volition Things chosen in the latter way justly imputable Of the voluntary causes of inconsideration in sins of commission which are drunkenness an indulged passion or a habit of sin Of the power of these to make men inconsiderate The cause of inconsideration in sins of omission viz. Neglect of the means of acquiring Vertue Of the voluntariness of all these causes Of the voluntariness of drunkenness when it mâ—y be looked upon as involuntary Of the voluntariness of an indulged passion mens great errour lies in indulging the beginnings of sin Of the voluntariness and crying guilt of a habit of sin Of the voluntariness of mens neglect of the means of Vertue No wilful sin is consistent with a state of Grace but all are damning A distinct account of the effect of wilful sins viz. when they only destroy our acceptance for the present and when moreover they greatly wound and endanger that habitual Vertue which is the foundation of it and which should again restore us to it for the time to come These last are particularly taken notice of in the accounts of God 409 CHAP. IV. Of the nature of involuntary sins and of their consistence with a state of salvation The Contents Of involuntary actions Of what account the forced actions of the Body are in Morals Two causes of involuntariness First The violence of mens passions It doth not excuse Secondly The ignorance of their understandings This is the cause of all our consistent failings and the sins that are involuntary upon this account are consistent with a state of salvation This proved 1. From their unavoidableness The causes of it in what sense any particular sin among them is said to be avoidable 2. From the nature of God A representation of God's nature from his own Word and mens experience The Argument drawn from it for the consistence of such failings 3. From the nature and declarations of the Gospel It is fitted to beget a cheerful and filial confidence and therefore is called the Spirit of Adoption The Argument from this The Scripture Declarations and Examples in this matter These Arguments summed up 440 CHAP. V. Of these involuntary and consistent sins particularly and of the first cause of innocent involuntariness viz. ignorance The Contents A twofold knowledg necessary to choice viz. a general understanding and particular consideration Consistent sins are either sins of ignorance or of inconsideration Of sins involuntary through ignorance of the general Law which makes a Duty How there is still room for it in the World Of crying sins which are against natural
God had spoken to them than by his Testimony and upon his Authority therefore are they said in believing and embracing that Divine Law which was delivered to them by Moses to believe not the Lord alone but also his Servant Moses Exod. 14.31 Joh. 5.46 to be Baptized into Moses 1 Cor. 10.2 to be Moses's Disciples Joh. 9.28 to trust or place their hope in Moses Joh. 5.45 to obey or hearken unto Moses Luk. 16.31 But the most clear and full Revelation that God ever made of his will to men was by the message and mediation of his own Son Jesus Christ. For God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past to the Jews by Moses and to the Fathers by the Prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son Heb. 1.1 And the belief of his Gospel or taking for certain Truths upon his Authority all those things which he has declared to us in Gods Name is call'd the Christian as the other was the Mosaick Faith For he being the great Author and deriver of this last and greatest Revelation of God down to us and our belief of it being upon his immediate Authority he being as S t Paul says the Authour and finisher of our Faith Heb. 12.2 Our belief of it is called not only Faith towards God Heb. 6.1 but also Faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ Acts 20.21 And because the knowledge of our whole Religion got into our minds this way upon our submission to Christs Authority and our Faith or belief of his Testimony therefore is our Religion it self most commonly in the Scriptures called our Faith The Preaching of it is called Preaching the Faith Gal. 1.23 the hearing of it hearing of Faith Gal. 3.2 the profession of it a profession of Faith Heb. 10.23 the contending for it a striving for the Faith Phil. 1.27 the erring in it an erring from the Faith 1 Tim. 6.10 the falling from it a making shipwrack of the Faith 1 Tim. 1.19 obedience to it the obedience of Faith Rom. 1.5 and the Righteousness required in it and effected by it the Righteousness of Faith Rom. 4.11.13 So that in like manner as the Mosaick Faith was a belief of the Divinity of the Mosaick Law and Religion upon the Authority of Moses the Christian Faith is a belief of the Divine institution of our Christian Religion upon the Authority of Christ. It is a taking upon his word all those things for truths of God which he has declared to us in Gods Name A belief begot in us by vertue of his Testimony that all his Doctrines are Gods Truths that all his Laws are Gods Precepts that all his promises are Gods Promises and that all his threats are Gods threatnings in sum that that whole Religion and Gospel which Christ has delivered to us in Gods Name is the very Religion and Word of God The belief of all this upon the Authority of Christ makes our Faith Christian and the good effects of it upon our hearts and lives make it justifying and saving For when by vertue of this Faith we truly Repent and sincerely obey which is the great condition as we have seen whereupon at the last day we must all be pardoned and justified Eternally it is a justifying as when by vertue of it we are saved and delivered from the dominion and service of our Sins which as the Angel hath assured us are those principal evils that Christ came to save us from it is a saving Faith This is the nature of our Christian knowledge and our Christian Faith And as for it now it is the very fundamental cause and natural spring of all our Christian service and obedience For it is because we believe Jesus to be the Lord because we know those Laws which he has given us and give credit to him when he tells us of the insupportable punishments which he will one day inflict for sin and of the glorious rewards which he will confer upon obedience It is by means of our knowledge and belief of all these in our minds I say that we serve and obey him in our outward actions It is our knowledge and belief that lets us see the reasonableness of his Precepts the power of his Assistances the glory of his Rewards and the terror of his Punishments and in all respects convinces us of the beauty and profit of Obedience And this sight and conviction in our minds cannot well miss of gaining our hearts and resolutions For the belief of his endless judgments will raise our fears the belief of his infinite rewards will quicken our hopes the belief of his inexpressible kindness will kindle our love and by all these our souls will be led Captive into eager desires and firm resolutions and be fully purposed to keep Gods Laws that so they may avoid that terrible Death which he threatens and attain those matchless joys which he promises to our Obedience And when once by means of this faith and knowledge Gods Laws have gain'd both our wills and passions which are the inward springs and causes of them they cannot fail of being obeyed in our works and actions which are produced by them But we shall quickly go on to perform what we resolve and to do what we desire and so in very deed fulfill and obey them Upon which account of our Christian Faith having so mighty an influence upon our Christian and obedient practice our obedience it self as being the effect of it and produced by it is call'd the obedience of Faith Rom. 16.26 The Righteousness which it exacts of us and cooperates to work in us the Righteousness of Faith Gal 5.5 Our Christian warfar or striving against Sin is called the good sight of Faith 1 Tim 6.12 And because in this contest our great succors which protect us and keep us from fainting and at last make us victorious are some points or promises of our Religious belief therefore it is stiled a shield and a breast-plate of Faith 1 Thess. 5.8 and S t John affirms plainly that this is the victory over the world even our Faith 1 Joh. 5.4 And for this reason it is because our Faith and knowledge are so powerful a cause and principle of our Obedience that God speaks so great things of them and has made such valuable promises to them He never intends to reward the Faith and knowledge of our minds further than they effect the obedience of our actions It is only when they are carryed on to this effect when they become an obedient knowledge and a working Faith that they confer a right to the promised reward and are available to our Salvation For when in the places mentioned or in any other God promises that he who knows Christ or believes in Christ shall live he speaks metonymically and means Faith and knowledge with this effect of a working service and obedience As for knowledge 't is plain that God accepts it no otherwise
repeat them A Confession of the mouth that is accompanied with a turn and change of the heart which is now set as much against them as formerly it was inclined to them And such was that Confession which Wise Solomon durst recommend to Gods mercy and beg him to accept of for mens Pardon and Forgiveness If they Repent saith he and say we have done perversly we have committed wickedness and so RETVRN unto thee with all their hearts and all their soul then hear their prayer and forgive thy people that have sinned against thee and all their transgressions wherein they have transgressed 1 Kings 8.47 48 49 50. It is such an acknowledgment of our Sins lastly as undoes so far as is possible all that which we had done wickedly and makes all just and sufficient recompence and satisfaction for them And this is that acknowledgment of all Sins of injustice which God himself prescribes When a Man or Woman saith he shall commit any sin of injury and wrong that men commit one against another to do a trespass thereby against the Lord and that person be guilty then shall they confess their Sin that they have done and shall RECOMPENCE their Trespass with the principle thereof or the thing it self which they took away wrongfully and shall add moreover unto it a fifth part more thereof and give it unto him against whom they trespassed Numb 5.6 7. Now a Confession of our Sins thus qualified viz. a Confession of them with blushing and being ashamed of them with an implacable hatred and loathing indignation of them with bitter sorrow for them with firm purpose and resolution against them and with all possible endeavours to undo them by making just recompence and satisfaction A Confession I say thus attended is a most natural cause and powerful principle of our leaving and forsaking them The four first concomitant tempers are all most effectual causes of better obedience and reformation and the last viz. making of satisfaction is an instance and effect of it Shame and sorrow and hatred are the great rules and measures of what we shall forsake the prime springs and directors of all aversation and avoidance Nothing is more natural for us than to be slow to do that we are ashamed of to avoid what we hate to turn away from that which grieves and torments us So that if once disobedience fall under these passions it has lost all its interest and will surely be excluded from the service of our works and actions Our passions oppose it and our wills are set against it and when both these are not only got loose from it but also most resolutely contend with it it is wholly bereft of all its power and can do nothing in us We have no temptation to pursue it further we are weary of it and offended at it and so are sure to leave and forsake it And because this Confession thus qualified and attended as we have seen is so genuine a cause of better obedience and reformation therefore alone it is that so great things are spoken of it When God says he that confesses his sin shall find mercy he means he that confesses and forsakes it that acknowledges his offences in such sort as to renounce them and become obedient His speech is mâ—tonymical he implies Obedience although he doth not mention it For no Confession of sin will serve any mans turn at the last day except he leave it and in his life and actions bid adieu to it The world indeed abounds with another sort of Confession which costs less and effects nothing They confess their sins without shame and relate them without sorrow and name them without hatred they recite them to God without resolving against them and acknowledge them daily without any amends or making any recompence and satisfaction for them For they cannot but be hardned against shame who day by day if not several times every day have the face to tell God that they have rebell'd against him and yet never endeavour to come with another story by disavowing and forsaking their Rebellion They must needs be void of sorrow for sin who will never keep back from it it cannot but please them so long as they continue to pursue it For they would not continually repeat their pain and at every turn act over again their own torment and vexation It is beyond all doubt that they do not hate but entirely love disobedience so long as they slip no opportunities of acting it They are plainly resolved upon it whilst they are most firmly fixt and forward to embrace it And since notwithstanding all their hideous Confessions they stand ready still to close with their Sin upon the first meeting and to repeat what they confessed upon the next occasion it is plain that their hearts were never against it whatever their words were They only shewed their wit but not their passions or perswasion they declaimed against it but all the while they meant no hurt to it For even whilst they inveighed against the baseness the loathsomness the destructiveness of their Sin their own heart did not believe it They did no more but spare God their tongues and speak what he pleased but for their souls and actions they reserved them for their Lusts and would like and do what they pleased themselves But can any man be so blind as to think that such a Confession of Sins as this can in any wise please God and procure his Pardon Has he any kindness for our Sins that he should take delight to hear them spoken of Are they so acceptable a service that we may hope to gain his favour barely by reciting them in his presence No he hates them as things that are most loathsome to him and will not endure to have them mentioned without real detestation Is any man so weak as to think that he honours God merely by reckoning up his own offences That he gives glory unto him by declaring to his face how vilely he has affronted and despised him To Confess thus is to reproach him to his face and boldly to defie him It is a telling of him that we have disobeyed and are resolved to go on in it an open profession and avowing of our Rebellion without any real signs or approach to amendment and due subjection It is a transgressing bare-faced an addition of impudence to sin a continuing daily to Rebel against him and yet coming as daily into his very presence to declare and own our continued Rebellions And this now is not to supplicate but to defie not to beg peace but to declare enmity it is by no means the way to soften and appease but a most effectual course to exasperate and implacably to provoke him But then to go on still further and to pretend to him that we are sorry at our heart and loath our selves for having sinned against him and are resolved to do so no more when really as our after-actions which are
that the motions of sin which were occasioned and strengthened by the weakness and inability of the Law which could not restrain them did work such service and obedience to them in our members or bodily powers as to bring forth fruit unto death But now upon our becoming subject unto Christ we are delivered from the subjection of the Law whose weakness gave sin so great advantage over us that Law I say being now dead and abolished wherein whilst we so served sin we were held in subjection which deliverance is vouchsafed us as I said for this end that being made not the Laws but Christs Subjects now we should answerably to that serve in newness of Spirit or in such sort as the new Spirit and Grace of his Religion enables us and not as we served formerly under our subjection to the Law in the oldness of the letter or in those weak and ineffective degrees whereto the helpless letter of the old Law could assist us But upon what I say of this change of service from sin to God which we have all felt upon our becoming Christians being an effect of this change of subjection from the Law to Christ some of you 't is like may think that the Law which I affirm we sinned under is aspersed and reproached by me and thus object What say we then Is the Law under which you say we sinned so much and from which being now delivered we have ceased to serve sin the cause of sin to them who live under it Now to this I must answer God forbid that any man should either say or think so No we served sin under the Law but yet the Law was no cause of sin And both these all they who live under it feel in themselves and must acknowledge To avoid offence suppose that I my self were this Subject of the Law now as I was formerly 't is very true as I have said that I do serve sin under it but is the Law the cause of it By no means Nay so far is the Law from causing or encouraging sin in me that on the contrary it points it out to me and forbids it I had not known what things are sin but by the help of the Law which shews it for I had not known lust or concupiscence for instance which is only in the heart and not in the outward action to be a sin except the Law of the tenth Commandment had said expresly thou shalt not covet But for all the Law both shews and prohibits sin and so can contribute nothing to produce but rather to destroy it yet I must truly tell you still that whereas Sin has other causes more than enow that are sufficient to produce it the Law is so weak and imperfect as not to be able to hinder it For in this instance of Concupiscence especially whereto in the Law there is no express punishment threatned the sinfull inclinations of our flesh which are cause enough of all sin grow bold and hearing of no express threatning from it will not be restrained by it And by this means the Sin of Concupiscence taking occasion from the impunity of the Commandment instead of being restrained by it took liberty and presumed upon it and so without all fear wrought and accomplished or brought on to compleat action and practice in me all manner of concupiscence And seeing the Law only forbid but could not restrain it it helped on in the end rather to make and let me see my self to be a sinner than to deliver me from sin for without the promulgated Law Sin was almost dead being both little in it self and less upon the Conscience For the less knowledge there is of the Law the less is there of sin in transgressing it and also the less sense of it And therefore as I say as for this instance of Concupiscence which I had not known to be a Sin unless the Law had told me so without the Law I had neither offended so highly in it nor had so great a sense of my offence And this was found by experience in the men of our Nation For any one of them who was alive at the promulgation of the Law upon Mount Sinai might say I was alive to my thinking and as to great degrees of that guilt which I contracted afterwards without the Law once or before such time as it was there proclaimed to us for till then I knew not lust to be a sin and so by reason of my ignorance neither sinn'd so much in it nor was so sensible of it as now I am but when the Commandment came and was plainly made known to me by Moses then Sin I say which was only shewn and forbid but could not be restrained by it revived and begun to have the fulness of guilt and terrour in it and I thenceforward being warn'd against it and not being able to keep back from it became liable to that death which is the wages of it and died by it And thus the Law or Commandment which was not only holy and innocent in it self but moreover intended by God for my good and ordained to life which it promised could I have obeyed it I notwithstanding found to be unto death to me because that became my due when I sinn'd against it Not as if the Law can be said to be the Author of death to me more than it is of sin in me For it was aim'd to destroy sin which it shews and forbids and to procure life which it offers and promises But the true cause of this effect so contrary to its intention viz. its producing Sin and Death whenas it was ordained to Holiness and Life is its being as I said before weak and unable by all its aids to conquer fully and restrain that Sin which brings Death upon us for it cannot subdue but only shew and forbid it And therefore our habitual Lusts finding themselves too strong for it burst through it and in spite of all its restraint make us commit the one and so become liable to the other For in very deed it is not the Law which is the cause of Death to me but Sin it self which taking occasion or advantage by the literal and fancied impunity of the tenth Commandment deceived me through a false hope into the commission of it and by it made me in reality liable to that Death which is truly the wages of it or in a word slew me Wherefore notwithstanding we sinn'd yea and died also during our subjection under the Law yet for all that neither can our Sin nor our Death be charged upon the Law it self because instead of contributing to them it tends to destroy them by expresly forbidding the one and offering to deliver us from the other And therefore as for this difficulty that was made at the seventh verse against my saying that we served Sin under the Law viz. its following thence that the
failings which are our unavoidable ones because we have no power to avoid where we have no liberty to will and chuse and since they are such as we cannot help they are such likewise as God pities and such as the Gospel doth not punish but graciously pardon and dispense with CHAP. III. Of the nature and danger of voluntary sins The CONTENTS The nature of a wilfill and a deliberate sin Why it is called a despising of Gods Law a sinning presumptuously and with a high hand Wilfull sins of two sorts viz. some chosen directly and expresly others only indirectly and by interpretation Of direct and interpretative volition Things chosen in the latter way justly imputable Of the voluntary causes of inconsideration in sins of commission which are drunkenness an indulged passion or a habit of sin Of the power of these to make men inconsiderate The cause of inconsideration in sins of omission viz. Neglect of the means of acquiring virtue Of the voluntariness of all these causes Of the voluntariness of drunkenness when it may be looked upon as involuntary Of the voluntariness of an indulged passion mens great errour lies in indulging the beginnings of sin Of the voluntariness and crying guilt of a habit of sin Of the voluntariness of mens neglect of the means of virtue No wilfull sin is consistent with a state of Grace but all are damning A distinct account of the effect of wilfull sins viz. when they only destroy our acceptance for the present and when moreover they greatly wound and endanger that habitual virtue which is the foundation of it and which should again restore us to it for the time to come These last are particularly taken notice of in the accounts of God HAving thus clearly shown in the General that all the dispensation and allowance for our consistent slips under the Gospel comes not from the nakedness and want of penalty in any of Christs Laws but only from the imperfection and involuntariness of our own actions I will descend now to consider particularly what those consistent slips and transgressions are In the management whereof I shall shew these two things First That our voluntary and chosen sins and transgressions of any of Christs Laws are not consistent with a state of Grace and Salvation but are deadly and damnable Secondly That our involuntary and unchosen slips are consistent and such as Christs Gospel doth not eternally threaten but graciously bear and dispense with First I say No voluntary sin or chosen transgression of any of Christs Laws is consistent with a state of Grace and Salvation but is deadly and damning To make this out it will be very requisite to show 1. What sinfull actions are voluntary and chosen And 2. That none of them is consistent with a state of Grace but deadly and damning 1. What sins and transgressions are voluntary and chosen Then we commit a wilfull chosen sin when we see and consider of the sinfulness of any action which we are tempted to and after that choose to act and perform it Every chosen sin is a sin against Knowledge for the will is a blind faculty and can choose nothing till our mind proposeth it All choice is an act of Reason and Vnderstanding a preferring one thing before another and we must view and consider both before we can prefer either That which suggests the sinfulness of any action to us and sets the evil of it before us when we are about to choose it is our Conscience For God has placed this Monitor of every mans Duty in every mans breast to tell him upon every occasion what he requires from him And till such time as men have debauched their understandings into a gross mistake of their Duty so as to call Evil Good and Good Evil and God in his just anger has given them up to a reprobate mind or a mind void of judgment their own consciences will keep them in mind of Gods Laws and not suffer them to transgress without reproof So that every wilfull sin is a sin against a mans own mind or conscience Nay further so long as mens hearts are soft and their consciences are tender and before such time as they are wholly enslaved to their appetites and quite hardened in sin their consciences especially in some great and frightfull instances will not only suggest and represent their Duty but argue also and debate against their lusts for the practice and performance of it And then men are not won at the first offer nor consent to fulfill the sin upon the first assault of the temptation but are drawn in after a long deliberation and debate and dispute the matter with themselves before they submit to it For when mens consciences do not nakedly suggest but moreover plead the cause and urge the observance of their Duty there are arguments on both sides to render the choice at first somewhat doubtfull The Law of God promises an infinite reward to the action of obedience and threatens an endless punishment if we disobey both which are future and to be expected in the next world And the temptation inducing us to sin presents us with a fair shew of sensitiv pleasure profit or honour if we practise and threatens us with all the contrary evils if we neglect it both which it sets before us as things present to be felt and enjoy'd by us even now whilst we are here in this world Now these are great motives on both sides each of them bidding fair for our consent Our minds or consciences suggest the first and our fleshly appetites and carnal reason represent the latter and for a good while these two advocates solicite the cause on both sides and distract and divide our wills between them So that when at last the temptation doth overcome and the Law of Lust in the members prevails over the Law of God in the mind yet is that after a strife and a war after a tedious toyle and much contention And these wilfull sins because we underwent a great conflict in our own minds about them and past through a long deliberation in an alternate succession of desires and aversations hopes and fears imperfect choices and refusals e're the consent of our wills was gain'd over to the commission of them are call'd deliberate sins Every wilfull chosen sin then is a sin against knowledge and against conscience when our own heart rebukes and checks us at the time of sinning telling us that God hath forbidden that which we are about to do notwithstanding which we presume to do it And if it happen to be in an instance that is greatly criminal and frightfull unto Conscience which therefore puts us upon demurs and creates dispute and arguing then is it not only a known but a deliberate sin also Nay where we have time and there is a sufficient space to consider in between the opportunity and the action if we know that the action is sinfull and are not in
indirect and interpretative choice even in actions which in the particulars are necessary viz. when that was deliberated of and chosen which made them so All our actions in a necessitous state are indirectly and interpretatively voluntary and chosen when the necessity it self is of our own choosing In the particulars 't is true we are not free to refuse them but the reason why we are not is because we our selves chuse to be so For although our present actions are necessary yet once it was in our power to have kept them free and that which causes us now to act indeliberately and without consideration was it self once freely deliberated of and chosen So that all those actions which are now necessary in the particulars were as the Schools speak voluntary in the cause which is an indirect choice and interpretative volition And as for those actions which are chosen only indirectly and implicitely viz. in the free choice of that cause which made them afterwards to be all necessary they may very fairly be imputed to us and interpreted to be our own For in all reason the natural and immediate effects of a mans own free and deliberate choice may be charged upon him and if he chooses his necessity it is fit that he should answer for it and bear the punishment of those sins which he commits under it What is a matter of any mans choice may be an article of his accusation and a matter of his punishment also But now as for this necessity of sinning it is a necessity of mens own choosing For they wilfully threw themselves into it in choosing the cause of it and so may very justly be made to answer for all that which they commit under it All the effects of their present necessity if they are traced up will terminate upon their own will for they hang upon that file of actions which had beginning from their own choice and being thus chosen by them they may justly be charged upon them As for such effects indeed as are so remote that a mans understanding in the honest and sincere use of it cannot see them although he do choose the cause yet neither God nor men will look upon him to have chosen them For there can be no choice where there is no knowledge because a man must see a thing before he will and choose it But when effects lye near and obvious to any ordinary capacity if it do but use an honest diligence as most mens necessity of sinning doth to those free actions which produce it there it is only mens sloth and negligence if they do not discern it and if they chuse blindfold when if they would open their eyes they might see it is all one in God's account as if they did see it For it is against all reason in the world that the sinful neglects of men should take away 〈◊〉 rights of God He has given them faculties wherewith to see things before they chuse them and he requires that they should And if they will not use them that is their own fault but what he requires of them he will still exact and punish them for what is done as for a chosen action So that as for those sins which men have chosen in their next and discernable Cause although they are not free to chuse or refuse them in the Particulars themselves they are a part of their account at the last Judgment What is chosen indirectly and by interpretation is looked on as their own and if it be evil will be imputed to them for their condemnation But now several of mens sins are of this last sort For as we saw of some particular actions that they are chosen in the Particulars directly and expresly so are there likewise several others which in the Particulars cannot be refused but were chosen in the general in the free choice of that Cause which has made them all afterwards necessary so that they are voluntary only indirectly and chosen by interpretation For there is nothing so common in the World as for men by their free choice of some sins to bring themselves into a necessity of others they freely will and chuse some which necessarily cause and effect more Now those things which may bring men into this necessity are such and so many as make them inconsiderate and hasty For therefore it is that in the Particulars we cannot expresly chuse or refuse several sins because we cannot stay particularly and expresly to consider of them We have brought our selves to such a pass that they slip from us without reasoning and enquiring about them For either our understanding is diverted that it cannot or so well acquainted with them that it need not look upon them to observe and consider them And since we do not particularly consider of them when they come we cannot expresly will and chuse them but forasmuch as we chose the cause of this inconsideration we are said to chuse them indirectly and by interpretation And as for the wilful and chosen Causes of such inconsideration I shall discourse of them under these two sorts viz. as causing such inconsideration in sins either 1. Of commission or doing what is forbidden 2. Of omission or neglecting to do what is commanded 1. For those causes of inconsideration in our sins of commission which make us venture on them without all doubt or disquisition they are these First Drunkenness Secondly Some indulged passion Thirdly Habit or custom of sinning For all these when once we have consented to them take away either wholly or in great measure all further freedom and make us will and chuse what is evil indeliberately and without consideration First As for Drunkenness we find daily in those persons who are subject to it that it so disorders and unsettles all the intellectual powers that they have scarce any use of them at all For their memory fails and their judgment forsakes them They have no thoughts for that present time of good or evil of expedient or inexpedient Their reason is overwhelmed and quite asleep and there is nothing that is awake and active in them but their bodily lusts and sensual passions which then hurry them on to any thing that falls in their way without the least opposition So that they are wholly governed by their appetites and for that time unbridled passions of lust or cruelty or envy or revenge They blab out that which in their right wits they would conceal and do what in a sober mode they would condemn And so little is there of that reason and understanding in all their speeches and behaviour which appears in them when the drunken fit is over that any man may plainly see how for that present it is removed from them So that they act rashly and irrationally more like brute Beasts than men committing rapes or robberies or bloodshed or any other mad frolicks and sinful extravagancies without any deliberation or consideration at all And Secondly As for an
fair and likely and withal it is most secure It is sure to preserve obedience because it admits of nothing that interferes with it and it is also very likely to preserve truth for it is most certain that no Doctrine can ever come from God which encourages or justifies any wickedness so that not only an obedient heart but even a free and impartial reason must quit the Principle if it appear to draw after it an evil consequence To settle Principles and Rules of Judgment then especially for simple and unlearned minds the first enquiry ought to be not what is true or false but what is good or evil For since the knowledge of this is more plain and obvious easie and accessible to all but to them most especially 't is evident that as all others so particularly they if they would secure even Truth as well as Duty must begin with Laws as their Principle and from thence make their inference to Doctrines and Opinions To avoid sinfull errours and disobedient prejudices they must use Laws and Duties as the measure whereby to judge of notions not notions and opinions as the standard whereby to measure and interpret plain Laws CHAP. VII A sixth cause of ignorance of the present actions being comprehended under a known Law And of the excusableness of our transgressions upon both these sorts of ignorance The CONTENTS All the forementioned causes of ignorance of our present actions being included in the known Law are such to knowing and learned men Besides them the difficult and obscure nature of several sins is a general cause of it to the rude and unlearned Sins upon this ignorance as well as upon ignorance of the Law it self unchosen and so consistent with a state of Grace and Salvation Where there is something of choice in it they extenuate the sin and abate the punishment though they do not wholly excuse it The excuse for these actions is only whilst we are plainly ignorant they are damning when we are enlightned so far as to doubt of them but pardonable whil'st we are in darkness or errour This excuse is for both the modes of ignorance 1. Forgetfulness 2. Errour All this pardon hitherto discoursed of upon the account of ignorance of either sort is no further than the ignorance it self is involuntary The willfulness of some mens ignorance The several steps in voluntary ignorance The causes of it Two things required to render ignorance involuntary 1. An honest heart 2. An honest industry What measures necessary to the acceptance of this industry Gods candour in judging of its sufficiency This discourse upon this first cause of an innocent involuntariness viz. ignorance summed up THus upon all these accounts which are mention'd in the two former Chapters we see it will often happen that although in the general we do know the Law which forbids any sin yet shall we still be ignorant of our present actions being comprehended under it For the small and barely gradual difference between Good and Evil the limitedness of most Laws the indirect obligations which pass upon some indifferent actions the clashing and enterfering of some of Christs Laws sometimes with other commands and sometimes with our own prejudices and prepossessed Opinions are also many reasons why after we know the General Laws that forbid them we shall still venture upon several particular actions through ignorance of their being forbidden And yet besides all these which are causes of such ignorance to the most knowing men and to those who have great parts and learning there will be moreover one great and general cause of it to the more rude and ignorant and that is the difficult and to them obscure nature of the sin it self which in the Law is expresly and by name forbidden For how many of them who hear it may be of the Law against censoriousness lasciviousness uncleanness carnality sensuality refusing of the Cross and other things do not well understand what those words mean Alas the greater number of men in the world have but very rude and imperfect notices of things they see them only in a huddle and by halves And as it is in their knowledge of other things so is it in their understanding of Sin and Duty likewise For their sight and sence of them is dark and defective and albeit they have some general and confused apprehensions of them yet is not their knowledge so clear and distinct as that they are thereby enabled to judge of every particular action whether it falls under any of them or no. And since they have but such half and imperfect notions of several sins it is no wonder although they know the General Law if they venture upon several actions which really come under it not knowing that they do And thus we see that besides the ignorance of the Law it self there is also another sort of ignorance which will be a cause of sin to several men of all sorts and that is their ignorance of their present actions being comprehended under the letter of the Law and meant by it But now as for those transgressions which men of an honest heart are guilty of through this ignorance of their own actions being included in the Law when they do know the Law that includes it They do not put them out of a state of Grace but consist with it For this Ignorance is mens unhappiness rather than their fault it is not an Ignorance of their own choosing seeing their will and choice is against it For they desire to be free from it and strive to prevent it and endeavour according to those abilities and opportunities which God has afforded them to get right and true apprehensions of all Gods will that they may perform and of every evil action that they may avoid it But it is the difficulty and intricateness of things which renders them ignorant and that is not of their making For the sins forbidden are not easily distinguished from the Liberty allow'd or from the Duty commanded in some cases and therefore it is that they mistake them and are ignorant of the sinfulness of their present action when their knowledge of it should enable them if they would to avoid it And since it has so little of their own will and the men even when by reason of their ignorance they transgress are industriously desirous to know their Duty and prepared to practise it so far as they understand it it shall have nothing of Gods anger It is altogether a pardonable slip and a pitiable instance and that is enough to recommend it to Gods mercy For he is never rigorous and severe in a case that is prepared for pity and pardon so that he will not punish but graciously forgive it And if it were otherwise who could possibly be saved For this ignorance of their present actions being comprehended in the words of the known Law is such as the wisest men have been subject to and they among the rest who were
implicite Of intention in general and of these two in particular Where an actual intention is necessary and where an habitual is sufficient to our Obedience Of the second Notion of sincerity as it notes purity of our service in opposition to mixture and corrupt alloy This Point stated viz. What intention of our good together with Gods service is consistent with an acceptable and sincere Obedience and what destroys it Integrity of our Obedience a sure mark whereby to judge whether it be sincere or no. 211 CHAP. II. Of the second qualification of al acceptable obedience viz. integrity The Contents Of the second qualification of an acceptable Obedience viz. integrity The Notion of integrity or uprightness A three fold integrity Of the integrity of our powers and faculties Or of the Obedience with our minds affections wills and bodily powers How God is to be obeyed with the first faculty our minds or understandings God is to be obeyed with the second faculty our affections This Question stated How God and his Laws which are spiritual things are proportionate Objects for our love and affections which are bodily faculties Of the difference betwixt our love of God and of the World that this is more warm and sensible that more lasting and powerful An account of what measures of Obedience in our minds and affections is necessary to the acceptance of our service That contrivances and consultations for evil things and such mere apprehensions as are particularly forbidden are deadly and damning but that all other bare apprehensions and that all our affections after good or evil things will be rewarded or punished not merely for themselves but only as they are Causes and Principles of good or evil choice and practice God to be obeyed with the third faculty our wills He cannot be served without them Men are guilty of sin if they chuse it and consent to it though they cannot act it All this service of our inward faculties is in order to our outward works and operations 240 CHAP. III. Of Obedience with the fourth faculty viz. our executive or bodily powers and outward operations The Contents God is to be obeyed with the fourth faculty viz. our executive or bodily powers and outward operations The great difficulty of Obedience in this instance Four false grounds whereupon men shift off the necessity of this service with their works and actions First A hope to be saved for a true belief or orthodox opinions Mens confidence in this represented The folly of it Orthodox Faith and Professions no further available than they produce obedient works and actions Secondly A hope of salvation upon an Obedience of idle desires and ineffective wishes An opinion of some Casuists That a desire of Grace is Grace refuted This stated and a distinct explication of what is promised to the desire of Obedience and what to Obedience it self The pretence for this acceptance of idle desires from Gal. 5.17 considered An account when the will and desire is taken for the deed and performance That Text 2 Cor. 8.11 12. plainly vindicated Thirdly A hope of being saved notwithstanding they do sin because they are insnared into it through the strength of temptations The folly of this Our own lusts make temptations strong The Grace of the Gospel is sufficient to overcome them Fourthly A hope of being excused because they transgress with an unwilling mind These mens state represented Vnwillingness in sin a mitigation but no sufficient excuse Some strugling in most actions both of good and bad men The strife of the Flesh and Spirit Two sorts of men feel nothing of it viz. the Saints in Heaven after the Resurrection and some profligate Sinners here now on Earth All good men and the generality of evil are subject to it in this life Mens peremptory will and last choice determines their condition 259 CHAP. IV. A further pursuit of this last ground of shifting off the obedience of our actions in an Exposition of the 7 th Chapter to the Romans The Contents A further pursâ—it of this last ground of false confidence The Plea for it from Rom. 7. represented This refuted A Mâ—tâ—schematism usual with Saint Paul in an odiou Topiâ—k The Apostle shown not to speâ—k of hâ—mself in that Chapter because of several things there spoken which are not truly applicable to him This evidenced in sundry instances Nor to have spoken in the person of any regenerate man which is proved by the same reason and manifested in sundry Particulars But to have personated a strugling but as yet unregenerated Jew who had no further assistance against his lusts but the weak and ineffective Law of Moses This shown from the order and design of that Chapter This whole matter represented in a Paraphrase upon the seventh Chapter with part of the sixth and the eighth Two Reasons of the inability of Moses's Law to make men wholly obedient and the perfection as to them of the Law of Christ viz. First The promise of eternal life Secondly The promise of the Spirit Both these were wanting in the Law and are most clearly supplied in the Gospel The Jews had the assistance of the Spirit not by virtue of any Article in their Law but by the gracious Covenant of the Gospel which has been confirmed with the world ever since Adam The Law mentioned in Scripture as a weak and mean instrument upon the account of these defects This weakness of the Law set off particularly in this seventh to the Romans No hopes to any man who acts sin from this Chapter but plain declarations of the necessity of a wâ—rking obedience shown in several expressions of it to that purpose A proof of the necessity of this fourth part of integrity the obedience of our exâ—cutive powers in our workâ— and actions and the insignificancy of all the rest when it is wanting 283 CHAP. V. Of the sâ—cond sort of integrity an integrity of times and seasons The Contents Of the second sort of integrity viz. that of times and seasons Of the unconstancy of many mens obedience Perseverance necessary unto bliss The desperate case of Apostates both as to the difficulty of their recovery from sin and the greatness of their punishment 325 CHAP. VI. Of the third fort of integrity viz. that of the object or of obedience to all the particular Laws and parts of Duty The Contents Of the partiality of mens Obedience from their love of some particular sins Three pretences whereby they justifie the allowed practice of some sins whilst they are obedient in some other instances The first pretence is the preservation of their Religion and themselves in times of persecution A particular account of mens disobedience under this pretence The vanity of it shown from the following considerations Religion needs not to be rescued from persecution The freedom of outward means of Religion is restrained by it but the substance of Religion it self is not It is extended in some parts and ennobled in all by
Conscience no man can be innocently ignorant Of what others he may This ignorance is necessary to all men for some time and to some for all their lives Mens sins upon it are not damning Of sins involuntary through our ignorance of the present actions being included in the known Law and meant by it The causes of this ignorance First The difference between good and evil in some actions being not in kind but only in degree Secondly The limitedness of most Laws which admit of exceptions Thirdly The indirect obligations which pass upon several indifferent actions Fourthly The clashing of several Laws whence one is transgressed in pursuit of another the great errour upon this score iâ— in the case of zeal Fifthly The clashing of Laws with opinions or prejudices 461 CHAP. VI. Of Prejudice The Contents The nature of prejudice It a cause of ignorance of our Duty The difference betwixt things being proposed to a free and empty and to a prejudiced or prepossessed mind An evident proposal sufficient to make a free mind understand its Duty but besides it a confutation of its repugnant prejudice is necessary to a mind that is prepossessed An account of several Opinions which make men ignorant of several instances of Duty One prejudice that nothing is lawful in Gods Worship but what is authorized by an express command or example of Scripture the acts of sin that are justified by this prejudice Another that all private men are publick Protectors of Religion and the Christian Faith the acts of sin justified by this Opinions Other Opinions cause a sinful neglect of the Sacraments These are incident to some honest and obedient hearts An account of other prejudices as that Christ is a Temporal King the acts of disobedience authorized by this Opinion That a good end will justifie an evil action the acts of sin upon this perswasion That Dominion is founded in Grace the disobedient acts avowed by this Principle These are more disobedient and damning The case stated what prejudices are consistent with and what destroy salvation Some prejudices get into mens minds not through a disobedient heart but through weakness of understanding and fallibility of the means of knowledge These are consistent with a state of salvation An instance of this in the prejudice of the Apostles about preaching of the Gospel to all Nations Other prejudices get into mens minds through damning lusts or sins A brief account of the influence of mens lusts and vices upon their Opinions This is illustrated in the Gnosticks They were famous for covetousness and worldly compliances and for impure lusts and excess in bodily pleasures The effect of these in producing agreeable Opinions Another of their vices was a turbulent and seditious humour Their Opinion was answerable A further illustration of it from the Pharisees An account of their vices and the influence which they had in begetting vile perswasions This influence of mens lust upon their judgments proved from the Scriptures The damnableness of such prejudices as enter this way Certain marks whereby to judge when prejudices proceed from unmortified lusts As first If the sin whereto the prejudice serves is unmortified in them Secondly If it lye so near to the prejudice that we could not but see that it ministred to it when we embraced it Thirdly Though it lye more remote if we still adhere to it when we plainly see that some unquestionable and notorious Laws are evacuated or infringed by it A Rule to prevent disobedient prejudices viz. Let Laws be the Rule whereby to judge of truth in opinions not opinions the Rule whereby to measure the Obligation of Laws Some Reasons of this viz. Because Laws are more plain and certain but opinions are more difficult and dubious Obedience to Laws is the end of revealed truth and so fit to measure it not to be measured by it 480 CHAP. VII A sixth cause of ignorance of the present actions being comprehended under a known Law And of the excusableness of our transgressions upon both these sorts of ignorance The Contents All the forementioned causes of ignorance of our present actions being included in the known Law are such to knowing and learned men Besides them the difficult and obscure nature of several sins is a general cause of it to the rude and unlearned Sins upon this ignorance as well as upon ignorance of the Law it self unchosen and so consistent with a state of Grace and Salvation Where there is something of choice in it they extenuate the sin and abate the punishment though they do not wholly excuse it The excuse for these actions is only whilst we are plainly ignorant they are damning when we are enlightened so far as to doubt of them but pardonable whilst we are in darkness or errour This excuse is for both the modes of ignorance 1. Forgetfulness 2. Errour All this pardon hitherto discoursed of upon the account of ignorance of either sort is no further than the ignorance it self is involuntary The wilfulness of some mens ignorance The several steps in voluntary ignorance The causes of it Two things required to render ignorance involuntary 1. An honest heart 2. An honest industry What measures necessary to the acceptance of this industry Gods candor in judging of its sufficiency This Discourse upon this first cause of an innocent involuntariness viz. ignorance summed up 522 CHAP. VIII Of sins consistent through the second Cause of an innocent involuntariness viz. inconsideration The Contents Consideration is necessary to choice Some sins are inconsiderate Three innocent causes of inconsideration 1. Suddenness and surprize of opportunity An account of this The involuntariness of it Slips upon it are consistent 2. Weariness of our thinking powers or understandings An account of this and of its involuntariness The consistence of our transgressions by reason of it 3. Discomposure or disturbance of them An account of this The causes of it are Drunkenness or a strong Passion Drunkenness is always our own fault Our Passions grow strong in us sometimes by our own indulgence and then they are our damning sin and we must suffer for the evil that we commit under them sometimes through the suddenness and greatness of outward Objects and then they are pardonable and our inconsiderate slips upon them are excusable The passions which have good for their Object as Love Desire c. cannot by any force of outward objects be so suddenly forced upon us But the passions which have evil as grief anger and fear especially often are The reason of this difference Inconsideration upon the latter excusable but not upon the former This difference made by our Saviour in a case where both were criminal Excusable slips upon discomposure of our thinking powers are such as proceed from an unwill'd sudden grief or anger but especially from a sudden fear No fear is involuntary but what is sudden and sins upon deliberate fear are damning but upon unwill'd sudden fear grief or anger consistent
occur in common speech If we advise a man to trust his Physician or his Lawyer our meaning is not barely that he should give credit to them but together with that that he shew the effect of such credit in following and observing them If we are earnest with any man to hearken to some advice that is given him we intend not by hearkning to express barely his giving ear to it but besides that his suffering the effects of such attention in practising and obeying it And thus we commonly say that we have got a Cold when we mean a Disease upon cold or a Surfeit when we understand a sickness upon Surfeiting In these and many other instances which might be mentioned we daily find that in the speech and usage of men the cause alone is oft times named when the effect is withal intended and accordingly understood to be expressed and that both are meant when barely one is spoken The effect doth so hang upon its cause and so naturally and evidently follow after it that we look upon it as a needless thing to express its coming after when once we have named its cause which goes before but we ordinarily judge it to be sufficiently mentioned when we have expressed that cause which as is evident to us all produces and infers it And as it is thus in the speech of men so is it in the language of God too He talks to us in our own way and uses such forms of speech and figurative expressions as are in common use among our selves And to seek no further for instances of this than these that lye before us he expresses our works and obedience by our knowledge our repentance our love and such other causes and principles as effect and produce it For we must take notice of this also that our outward works and actions depend upon a train of powers within us which as springs and causes of them order and effect them For our passions excite to them our understandings consider of them and direct them our wills command and choose them and then afterwards in pursuance of all these our bodily powers execute and exert them The actions of a man flow from all the ingredients of the humane nature each principle contributes its share and bears a part towards it For from the constitution of our natural frame our actions are placed wholly in the power of our own wills and our wills are set in a middle station to be moved by our appetites and passions and guided and directed by our minds or intellects We do and perform nothing but what we will neither do we will any thing but what we know and desire what our reason and passion inclines and directs to And because these three inward faculties our minds and wills and passions give being and beginning to our outward works and practice therefore are they by the Masters of moral Philosophy and Divinity ordinarily called the Causes and Principles of Humane Actions But these three principles of humane actions in genecal lye not more open to produce good than evil They are all under the unrestrain'd power of our own free will it is that which determines them either for God or against him but in themselves they are indifferently fitted and serve equally to bring forth acts of Obedience or of disobedience and sin To make these principles therefore of works or actions in general to become principles of good works and obedience there are other nearer tempers and qualifications required which may determine them that in themselves are free to both to effect one and be Authours of such actions only whereby we serve and obey God And this is done by the nearer and more immediate efficiency of Faith Repentance Love and the like For he who knows Gods Laws and believes his Gospel with his understanding who in his heart loves God and hates Sin whose will is utterly resolved for good and against evil he it is whose faculties in themselves indifferent are thus determinately disposed who is ready and prepared to perform his duty His Faith directs him to those Laws which he is to obey and to all the powerful motives to Obedience it shews him how it is bound upon him by all the Joys of Heaven and by all the Pains of Hell and this quickens his passions and confirms all good resolutions and makes him in his will and heart to purpose and desire it And when both his mind his will and passions which were before indifferent are thus gained over and determinately fixed for it in the efficiency of inward principles there is no more to be done but he is in the ready way to work and perform it in outward operation So that as our minds wills and passions are principles of humane actions in general whether good or evil these nearer dispositions our Faith Repentance c. are principles particularly of good works and obedience And since our obedient actions proceed in this manner from the power and efficiency of these principles God according to our own way of expressing things is wont many times only to name them when he intends withal to express our obedience it self which results from them Although he barely mention one yet he understands both and in speaking of the cause he would be taken to imply the effect likewise Thus when he promises Pardon and Salvation to our knowledge and belief of his Gospel to our Repentance from our Sins to our Love and Fear of God which with several others are those preparatory dispositions that fix and determine our minds wills and passions indifferent in themselves to effect Obedient actions he doth not in any wise intend that these shall Save us and procure Pardon for us without Obedience but only by signifying and implying it Wheresoever Mercy and Salvation at the last day are promised and this condition of our working and obeying is not mentioned it is always meant and understood That which such mercy was promised to is either the cause of our Obedience or the effect and sign of it the speech is metonymical and more was meant by it than was expressed Though the word was not named yet the thing was intended for obedience is ever requisite to pardon and nothing has Mercy promised to it in the last Judgment but what some way or other is a sign of it or produces and effects it This I might well take for granted upon the strength of that proof which has been already urged for our Obedience being the sole condition of our being acquitted at that day But because the interest of souls is so much concerned in it I will be yet more particular and proceed to show further that this sence and explication of all such places is the very same that God himself has expressly put upon them For concerning all those things whereto he has promised a favourable sentence at the last Judgment he assures us that they are of no account with him nor will be owned
if he had lived to it he shall be rewarded at the last day as if he had For this very day says he shalt thou be with me in Paradise Luk. 23.42 Thus available I say a new nature and an inward change is although it want an outward practice when it is sufficient and effectual to produce it and would certainly effect it if there were but time and opportunity allow'd for it But then here is the dangerous state and deplorable case of all such dying Penitents that 't is twenty to one if they defer repentance to their death-bed that all the change which then appears in them is not so sufficient nor would were there a due time allow'd for it prove so effectual And of this we have a clear argument in that among all the holy vows and pious purposes which are begun by men upon a sick-bed when they are in sight of death and expect a dissolution there are so few that continue with them and prove effectual to make their lives and actions answer them when they recover There is not I believe one unconverted Christian in five hundred but will show some signs of sorrow and put up devout Prayers and make holy vows and purposes when he apprehends himself about to dye and yet of all them who are raised up again 't is a very small and inconsiderable number that make good those vows and effect what they had resolved upon And now if these men had dyed when they thus repented in what a miserable state had they been For this change in their will and purpose is no further available to their Salvation than it would be effectual to a like change in their lives and practice God accepts the holiness of the mind only as it is a holy principle and imputes the reward of obedience to it no farther than he foresees that if he allow'd time obedience would ensue upon it The will is never taken for the deed but when it is able to effect it when the deed would be sure to follow so soon as an opportunity were offer'd for it And this God sees before hand although we do not he is able to judge of the sincerity of mens desires and of the sufficiency of their purposes before their following works declare them And according to what he foresees they would afterwards effect he either accepts or rejects them But when mens after-works come as a clear evidence of the unsincerity or insufficiency of their sick-bed resolutions they may see plainly themselves what God saw long before that all the change of mind which was then wrought was utterly insignificant and unavailing When they trusted to it they relyed upon a broken reed their confidence upon it was ill grounded and if they had dyed with it it would most certainly have deceived them Thus utterly uncertain and uncomfortable a thing is a mere unworking change and a late death-bed Repentance It may sometimes prove sufficient to beget an after-change of practice and when God sees it would he will undoubtedly accept it But it very seldom doth and no man who dyes in it can possibly tell whether it would or no. It is very great odds that it would prove too weak so that although there be some yet is there very small hope that any dying man can place in it And that which renders it ordinarily so insufficient and thereupon so uncertain and uncomfortable is either First Because it generally proceeds from an unconstant temporary principle Or Secondly Because when the principle is genuine and lasting it is still too weak and in an incompetent measure and degree 1. That penitential grief and change of mind which is wrought upon a Death-bed is ordinarily ineffective and insufficient to produce a constant change of life and practice because it generally proceeds from an inconstant and temporary principle It is commonly founded upon a reason that doth not hold in all times a reason that is good in sickness but not in health that concludes for a Pious change whilst we are under our sick-bed sorrows but not when being freed from them we come under the pleasure of temptations For the great and general motive which makes all those who never thought of reforming in all their lives before to resolve upon it when they are on their Death-bed is plainly the nearness of the next world and their apprehension of their sudden death and departure Could they hope to live longer they would sin still But they look upon themselves as going to Judgment and they have so much Conscience left in them as to believe that there is a Hell for the impenitent and their own self-love is extreamly startled at that and makes them run to any shelter So that they make many fearful confessions and fervent Prayers and Holy purposes and say and do any thing whereby they may quiet their present fears and catch at any comfortable hopes of avoiding it The ordinary cause then of all this work is not any love of God or hatred of Sin but only a fear of Punishment And that too not a fear of it at a distance and as at some removes from them but only as near at hand and just hanging over them But now as for this apparant nearness of Death and this confounding fear upon it it is plainly a short and transient an unconstant temporary Principle It is a reason to them no longer than they are sick for when they recover and are well again Death is as far off and they are become again as fearless as ever They are got out of its neighbourhood and it gives them no further trouble So that all their former fears abate and their vertuous resolutions fall as beginning now to want that which first gave life to them and should support them And now when opportunities of Sin are offered and the pleasurable baits of Temptations invite they have nothing left that is able to resist them Whilst they were sick they were not capable to be tempted and then Death being near it enabled them to purpose well and to make a pious resolution But now since they are well Temptations are become as strong as ever and the thoughts of Death being far removed they have no resolutions that can withstand them but are quickly changed again into the same men as sensual and sinful as they were before Indeed it sometimes happens that those souls which were at first awakened by such a transient temporary motive go on to others afterwards that are more fixt and lasting and then they are furnished with Armour in all times and have a motive that may bear them out when Death is far off as well as when 't is near at hand in time of health as well as in time of sickness For they who were at first affrighted into a change of mind and holy purposes by the near approach of Death and Judgment go on sometimes to confirm their resolutions upon more lasting principles They think themselves into a
are better known to us in their fruits and effects than in their own natures foâ—â—he greater ease in judging whether we do intend Godâ—s Service most of all or no I shall before I conclude this Point lay down a plain and certain mark whence any man of common apprehension may easily discern whethâ—◠〈◊〉 doth indeed design God's service most and whâ—â—â—er his heart and obedience be sincere or no. And the Rule which I shall lay down whereby certainly to try and examine that is this If our obedience be intire it cannot but be sincere likewise For he that obeys God in all times and iâ— all instances cannot but serve him with both these ingredients of sincerity viz. Truth and Preheminence He must needs intend God's service really and above all who intends it so as to serve him constantly and universally And the reason is this Because although our temporal interest and present advantage be for the most part united with Gods service yet always it is not but sometimes in all instances of obedience and at most times in some it is separated and divided from it So that as long as we are true to our own Principle of acting which we may safely conclude we always are if we either design not God's service at all through hypocrisie or design it not above all through a corrupt mixture of intention at those times when these instances happen we shall not be acted by the Command but through the love of our own interest which we intend really and design more we shall certainly act against it For our actions go where our wills lead them and our wills always follow that which is the prevailing motive to them and has most power with them And therefore if we still chuse God's service in all its parts and in all times whether it make for our present advantage or against it we may be assured that we intend his service truly and also that we intend it most since we serve him when no bye-interests of our own can be served and disserve all other interests for his sake He must needs be our highest aim because where we may please him though no secular advantages concur we chuse any thing and where he would be offended though all other advantages invite we chuse nothing So that in the matter of obedience our integrity is the great and last measure of our acceptance And if upon examination we find that our obedience is intire we need not doubt but that it is sincere also And this is that very mark from which according to that version of the Psalms which is used in our Liturgy the Psalmist himself concludes concerning the obedience of the Israelites For he collects it to have been a dissembled and unsincere because it was not a whole and intire service They did but flatter him with their mouth saith he and dissembled with him in their tongue for their heart was not whole or intire with him Psal. 78.36 37. To clear up this enquiry then What qualifications of our obedience to all the forementioned Laws of God must render it acceptable to him and available to our salvation at the last day I shall proceed to discourse of the second condition of all acceptable obedience viz. integrity of which in the next Chapter CHAP. II. Of the second qualification of all acceptable obedience viz. integrity The CONTENTS Of the second qualification of an acceptable obedience viz. integrity The Notion of integrity or uprightness A three-fold integrity Of the integrity of our powers and faculties Or of the obedience with our minds affections wills and bodily powers How God is to be obeyed with the first faculty our minds or understandings God is to be obeyed with the second faculty our affections This Question stated How God and his Laws which are spiritual things are proportionate objects for our love and affections which are bodily faculties Of the difference betwixt our love of God and of the World that this is more warm and sensible that more lasting and powerful An account of what measures of obedience in our minds and affections is necessary to the acceptance of our service That contrivances and consultations for evil things and such mere apprehensions as are particularly forbidden are deadly and damning but that all other bare apprehensions and that all our affections after good or evil things will be rewarded or punished not merely for themselves but only as they are Causes and Principles of good or evil choice and practice God to be obeyed with the third faculty our wills He cannot be served without them Men are guilty of sin if they chuse it and consent to it though they cannot act it All this service of our inward faculties is in order to our outward works and operations INtegrity of obedience is such a perfection and compleatness of it as excludes all maimedness and defects Which is well intimated by S t James when he explains intire by wanting nothing Let patience have her perfect work that ye may be perfect and intire which you will be by wanting nothing Jam. 1.4 And this in another word is ordinarily expressed in Scripture by uprightness For in the most common Metaphor of the holy Books our course of life is called our way our actions steps and our doing walking And to carry on the Metaphor our course of obedience is called our right or straight path our course of sin and transgressions a crooked path our committing sin stumbling and falling and our doing our duty walking uprightly So that for a man to be upright in God's ways is not to stumble or fall by sin and disobedience i. e. to be perfect and intire or wanting nothing in our obedient performances Now this integrity or uprightness which is necessary to our obedience that it may stand us in stead at the last Day is three-fold 1. An integrity of our powers or faculties which I call an integrity of the Subject 2. An integrity of seasons and opportunities which is an integrity of Time 3. An integrity of the particular Laws of Duty and instances of obedience which is an integrity of the Object And all these are necessary to render our performance of God's Laws an acceptable service For if ever we expect that he should reward our obedience at the last Day we must take care beforehand that it be the obedience of our whole man in all times to the whole Law of God To begin with it 1. That our obedience of the forementioned Laws may avail us to life and pardon at the last Day we must take care to obey with all our powers and faculties which is an integrity of the Subject And for this the very Letter of the Law is express For when the Lawyer asks What shall I do to inherit eternal life Christ sends him to what is written in the Law and repeats that to him for an Answer Thou shalt love and serve as it is Deut. 11.13 the Lord thy God
in worldly things which affects us is present with us and therefore our passions for or against them are raised in us by our sense and feeling But as for spiritual things and those bodily joys and sorrows that are annexed to them for the sake whereof we are sensibly affected with them they are not present with us but future and at a distance and therefore our passion for them cannot be raised by our sense whose object are only present things but meerly by our fancy and imagination But now as for the sensible warmth and violence of a passion it is nothing near so quick when it is excited by fancy as when it is produced by sense For no man is so feelingly affected with hearing a sad story as he would be by seeing of it A man will be moved abundantly less by imagining a battle a murder or any other dreadfull thing than by beholding it And the reason is because the impressions upon our sense are quick and violent and their warmth is communicated to our affections which are raised by them whereas our imaginations are calm and faint in comparison and the passions which flow from them partake of their temper and are more cold and less perceptible So that our passions for worldly things being passions upon sense and our passions for things spiritual with their bodily pain or pleasure annexed being only upon fancy and imagination we must needs be more warmly and sensibly although not more powerfully affected with the things of this world than of the other But that which is to distinguish our passion for God and Virtue above all things else from our passion for worldly things is not the warmth and sensibleness but the power and continuance of it For it must be a prevalent affection which doth more service although it make less noise It must be such a setled and overpowering Love answerable to the prevailing strength and surpassing greatness of its motive as gets the upper hand in competition and makes us when we must despise one to disregard all things else and to adhere to Gods service what other things soever be lost by it What it wants in warmth it has in permanency and power it sticks faster to us and can do more with us than our love of any thing besides For in our affections we must needs prefer God and his service before every other thing when they stand in competition or we have none of that Love with the whole soul which the Commandment requires of us as will be shewn more fully afterwards And because our thoughts and affections have in them a great latitude and in a matter of so high concern every good soul will be inquisitive after some determinate accounts of that compass and degree of them which is necessary to our acceptance before I conclude this Point I will set down what measures of obedience in these two faculties what thoughts and imaginations of our minds and what degrees of love and delight in our affections shall be judged sufficient at the last Day to save or to destroy us As for our thoughts there is one more elaborate and perfect sort of them viz. our counsels and contrivances And when they are employed about the compassing of forbidden things they are our sin and without repentance will certainly prove our condemnation For he that deviseth to do evil saith Solomon he shall be called and dealt with as a mischievous person Prov. 24.8 The machinations of murther are joined in guilt and punishment with murtherous actions themselves Matth. 15.19 And as for that particular sort of Contrivers the inventers of evil things they are pronounced by S t Paul to be worthy of death Rom. 1.30 32. And as for other of our thoughts which are not come up to the height of a contrivance or consultation but are only simple apprehensions some of them also are properly and directly good or evil and an Article of our life or death God has imposed several Laws which he has backed both with threats and promises upon our very thoughts themselves Of which sort there are some to be met with under all the three general Parts of Duty viz. to God our Neighbour and our selves For our thoughts of God are bound up by the Law of honour which forbids us to lessen or prophane him by dishonourable Notions and Opinions our thoughts of our Neighbour by the Laws of Charity and Candour which suffer us not either to reproach or injure him by under-valuing Ideas or groundless suspicions and our thoughts of our own selves by the Law of humility which prohibits us to be exalâ—ed in our own conceits through false and over-high apprehensions of our own excellence Pious and charitable opinions both of God and men and humble and lowly conceits of our own selves are Duties incumbent upon our very minds themselves And all the opposite vices of impious and reproachful Ideas of God of censorious suspicious and lessening thoughts of other men and of proud and arrogant conceits of our own worth are transgressions within the sphere and compass even of our understandings For the exercise of the first is not only a Cause and Principle but a part and instance also of obedience and an Article of life as the exercise of the other is an instance of disobedience and an Article also of damnation As for these Instances then of bare thought and naked apprehension they are essential parts and necessary instances of an acceptable obedience and the wilful transgression of any one of them without repentance is dangerous and damning So that as for all our perfected and studied thoughts of evil viz. our counsels and contrivances and as for all such simple thoughts and â—ore apprehensions as have particular Laws imposed upon them they are not only principles but parts and instances of disobedience and if we are guilty of them unless we retract them by repentance we shall be condemned for them But then there are several other bare imaginations and simple apprehensions which are not under any of these particular Laws that are imposed upon our thoughts themselves but are employed upon things commanded or forbidden by any of the other Laws forementioned And as for all these apprehensions in themselves they are neither sin nor Duty nor a matter either of reward or punishment but so far only as they are causes and principles either of a sinful or obedient choice and practice of those good or evil things which they are employed upon In themselves I say these mere apprehensions are neither sin nor Duty We may perceive sin in our minds and have it in a thought or notion without ever being guilty of it or liable to answer for it For the Sun shines upon a Dunghil without being defiled by it and God sees all the wickedness in Hell but is not tainted with it And so long as we sojourn in a World of iniquity every good man must needs know and behold all the vices
this otherwise most offensive an acceptable service Is any thing that we can offer to him so pleasing as our obedience Is he more delighted when we follow our own counsel than when we follow his when we do our own than when we do his pleasure For all those Laws of the Gospel and instances of obedience which under this pretension we transgress are wayes of Gods own appointment they are a service of his own choosing a Religion that is most agreeable to his mind and fitted in all things according to his liking a rule that he has thought most absolute to direct our actions and most fit for us to walk by If then we would expâ—â—ss our concern for God our venerable esteem of his wiâ—dom our acquiescence in his choice our submission to his ordering our acknowledgement of his authority and our chearfull compliance with his pleasure let us do it by a religious observance of these Rules which are of his own prescribing Let us honour him in his own way by doing our duty and practising such things as he has made expressions of honour by making them instances of obedience For disobedience can serve no interest of God nothing that we can do being so effectual a reproach to all his Attributes as to disobey him Nor is the use of evil and unlawfull means in any wise a fitter expression of our care for Religion For what is there in Religion that can be honoured and advanced by disobedience Is there any thing in it so sacred as the Divine Laws and dare any man call that his care of them when he lays wast and plainly rejects them It is gross impudence for any man to pretend Piety in the breach of Duty and to cry up Religion whilst he is acting irreligiously he prides himself in the empty name when it is clear to all that he has lost the thing for as for Piety it self and true Religion by transgressing and trampling upon the Divine Laws he doth not further and defend but impiously and irreligiously destroys it It is not Religion then whatever men may vainly pretend that makes them run into the breach of Laws and contempt of Duty lest they should suffer in the profession of it For God and Religion owe them no thanks for such a course because he is not honoured nor it strengthned and preserved but ruined and destroyed by it But the true and real cause of such disobedience whereof God and Religion are only the colour and false pretence is plainly a great want of Religion and of the love of God and too great a love of the world and of mens own selves Men are hurried away by an unmortified love of pleasures honours and temporal interests and they have not Religion enough to restrain and over-rule them For these it is and not Religion which sufferings and persecuting times take from them and an ungovernable desire to preserve these which makes them so violent as that at such times no Laws of Religion can hold them When men set at nought and disparage Governours disobey Laws disturb the Publick Peace injure their Fellow-subjects and commit several other sinfull acts and irreligious violations of the Laws of Christ that they may keep off Persecution for the profession of the Christian Faith they shew plainly that they will follow Christ only in a thriving but not in a suffering Religion They will serve him no longer than he sets them uppermost and above their Brethren For rather than suffer any loss and fall into any dangers for their adherence to him they will leave him and his Laws to fend for themselves and flatly disobey him But when they do so it is shameless hypocrisie to pretend that all their transgressions and disobedience is still upon the Principle and from the Power of Religion since it is not Religion but a resolution to be uppermost not duty but ambition covetousness sensuality revenge or a nest of some other unmortified and reigning vices of like nature which makes them under pretence of a conscientious care for religious profession to destroy all religious practice This one would think is plain and evident to any man who can have the patience to consider it that True Religion can never be the cause of sin or make men irreligious and disobedient That must not for shame be called mens Religion but their Lust which makes them wicked and carries them on to transgress Gods Laws that are the chief and sovereign part of his Religion which who so keeps is a religious as whosoever breaks them is an ungodly and irreligious man This indeed is clear Doctrine and obvious to any common if it be withall a free and considerate understanding And it were scarce possible that any men should think otherwise had they not either by accicident hast or ill design taken up an odd notion of Religion altogether different from that which the Scriptures give and which all considerately religious men have of it For by Religion they mean only their adherence to the Doctrines and Opinions but not to the Laws and Precepts of the Gospel And when they talk of defending and maintaining of Religion they intend not a defence of Laws but of Notions not a maintenance of the practice of Christian Precepts but only of the profession of Christian Doctrines They are of the Religion which Christ reveals but not of that which he commands they will know and believe what he pleases but do what they please themselves They are only for a Religion of Orthodox Tenets but not of Vpright Practice and if thereby they can preserve men safe in thinking and professing well they fancy that God will not be offended with their use of any means though never so wicked and disobedient But this is a most gross mistake and a most dangerous Notion of Religion which is quite another thing than what this conceit doth represent it to be For First The prime part and matter of Religion is the practick part viz. the Laws and Precepts the Promises and Threatnings of the Gospel And agreeably thereto the prime business of all Religious men is an obedient practice and performance of them or a virtuous discharge of duty and a holy life This is that Religion whereby all of us must stand or fall and that great condition which as I have shewn we must for ever live or dye by When Christ comes to judgement sayes Saint Paul he will render to every man according to his deeds Rom. 2.6 And in that prospect of the last judgment which S t John tells us God vouchsafed him men were judged every one according to their works Rev. 20.13 This Religion of Obedience and a good Life is that which the Gospel is full of wherein every Chapter nay almost every verse of it instructs us and some way or other directs exhorts encourages and excites to And therefore as ever we would pass for Religious men in the Scripture Notion we must be carefull to live in
indulged passion we daily find that when it is permitted to grow high it has the same effect in making a man act inconsiderately as Wine it self has For a man may be drunk and infatuated with a violent anger an impetuous lust an overpowering fear as well as with wine It shall make him quite forget all Rules of decency and Vertue and attend no more to them at that time than if he had never known them Of anger it is affirmed to a Proverb that it is a short fit of madness And the Case is the same in other passions when they are suffered to go on to amazing and stupifying degrees How many things are acted in the heat of lust of fear of anger c. which the men in their sober wits condemn so perfectly that they would account themselves to be very much injured if any man should say that they might be insnared into them and fall under them Of so great power are mens passions in clouding nay for a time quite overwhelming their reason and understanding For such is the condition of the reasonable soul that during its being here united to the body it is subject to all its alterations and liable even in its most proper and spiritual operations of reason and knowledg to be either improved or hindred or quite taken away by those changes which befal it In a sound body it is free and active but if the bodily Spirits which are those great instruments that it makes use of are ruffled and disordered if they are either confused and overcharged by strong drink or a strong passion blended and displaced by a phrensie blasted by an apoplexy or otherwise mixed and disordered quenched or oppressed by any other violent Disease all use of reason and consideration is strangely hindred if not for a while perfectly eclipsed And this all men are so sensible of that every one is apt to plead this in his own behalf for those faults which he commits in the height of passion and others are as ready to admit of it For their great excuse is That their passion made them almost mad and spurr'd them on to act they knew not what without all sober thought and consideration Thirdly As for the habit or custom of chusing sinful actions it brings our wills to such an acquaintance with them and to such an unstudied forwardness in embracing of them that when an opportunity is offered for them we cannot refrain from them if we would or stand to deliberate whether we should chuse them or no. For custome as we daily see in all sorts of actions begets such a promptness and easiness in performing those things which we are accustomed to that we readily act them upon the next occasion without staying to think and consider of them Vse as was observed above is a second Nature and what we have been wont to do by long practice we do as easily as quickly and as indeliberately as we do those things which flow from the necessity of our very Nature it self And as it is in all our other actions so it is likewise in our works of sin and disobedience By a long acquaintance with them and practice of them we learn at last to chuse them whensoever we meet with them without all thought and examination For all the little doubts and exceptions of our minds against them all tormenting fears and checks of Conscience have been so often silenced that now they are heard no more to make any delay in our embracing of them And our wills have been so accustomed to strike in with them and to chuse the sinful action upon every return of the temptation that now they do not need to pause but act of hand and sin without enquiry And our bodily powers are so naturally disposed to spring out into the commission of them upon occasion that they hardly stay for a Command but are as quick and hasty in the dispatch as our wills were in their indeliberate chusing of them So that our willing of them after a long use is not a matter of arguing and discourse of weighing and considering but a sudden inconsiderate motion It is rather turned into an act of nature than of choice and has more in it of indeliberate necessity than of considerate liberty And as such the Scripture is wont to represent it For when sin is once grown into a confirmed habit we are told that it is not so truly an inviting temptation as a binding Law Rom. 7.25 It doth not then so truly perswade as rule and command us For we are led Captives by it ver 23 and sold under it ver 14. We submit to it out of necessity and not out of choice because we do not chuse where we cannot refuse and here we must be under it and cannot help it For it is now become our very nature and it is almost as much out of our power to alter it as it is for a thing to cast off what is most natural to it Can the Ethiopian Blackamore change his skin or the Leopard his spots When they can do that then saith Jeremy may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil Jer. 1â— 23 If men are so pleased they may chuse to sin themselves out of their liberty till they can no longer chuse whether they shall sin any more or no. A compleat habit and a perfect custome shall make them sin beyond all liberty because they will sin without all deliberation and then they are got up to that pitch whereof S t Peter speaks Of them who cannot cease from sin 2 Pet. 2 14. In sins of commission then or doing those things which are forbidden the causes of indeliberateness and inconsideration are most usually these three viz. A drunken fit a high passion or a confirmed habit And then 2. As for the other Branch of sins viz. those of omission or neglecting to do what we are commanded Besides these three already mentioned which have their evil influence upon sins of that kind also there is one great and particular Cause which takes away our liberty of choice in them and that is a neglect of those means which are necessary to the performance of the omitted Duty For as it is in all our other actions so is it also in those of obedience they hang in a chain of dependance and are helped on or hindred by several others which further than they influence them are not religious themselves nor make up any part of obedience There is a Religion of the means as well as of the end and some actions are helps and preparatives to a religious Duty but otherwise they are no Duty in themselves Thus the not staying to look upon a woman or to gaze upon her beauty is one means whereto our Saviour directs a man that he may be preserved from coveting and lusting after her Matth. 5.28 So fasting is a furtherance to prayer and repentance and several other instances of obedience
And the Case is the same in several other things For meekness and patience and contentedness and forgiveness and every other Vertue has some particular helps and furtherances some things that promote it and dispose us for it and others that obstruct and hinder it Now as there is this order in the things themselves so must there be likewise in our endeavours after them We must take them as they lye and use the means that we may attain the Vertue For meekness humility contentedness and the like are not so perfectly under the power of our wills as that they can be exerted through their bare Decree and peremptory Commandment But if we would attain them besides this imperiousness of Command we must further use all those means and helps which fit and prepare for them In habits of the mind men are sufficiently convinced of this For it is not every one that wills prudence who is a wise or that wills learning who is presently a learned man But he who would be so besides his willing and desiring it must read and study and observe and seek instruction he must use all those means which lye in the way to knowledge and those instruments which prepare for it and are necessary to introduce it before he can attain to it And the Case is the same in all vertuous and moral habits which are seated in the will likewise For we must use those instruments which facilitate and dispose us for the Vertue before the Vertue will become our own and we must put in practice all the means and preservatives against any Vice before we can in reason hope to conquer and avoid it If we would not be proud or peevish we must abstain from all the inlets to pride and peevishness And if we would be meek and humble we must not neglect the helps and instruments promoting meekness and humility For the helps and the vertue must both go together so that if we neglect the one we shall certainly miss of the other also When once we have neglected the means of any Vertue therefore we have parted with our power of obtaining it We have thrown away our liberty in losing of our opportunity so that now our missing of it is not so much a matter of choice as of necessity We omit it and cannot help it because we neglected to use those means whereby we should have attain'd it And in sins of omission this is the great and special Cause which puts them without our power for we neglect the means of doing what we should and after that it is not so truly our free choice as our necessity that we omit it These then are the causes of our want of choice in the particular instances of sins whether of commission or of omission We do not chuse that evil which we commit for want of considerateness and deliberation the freedom whereof is taken away from us by drunkenness passionateness and a habit or custome of committing it And we do not chuse the omission of some Duty which we neglect for want of power whereof we have deprived our selves through the neglect of those means which are necessary to the performance of it So that both in doing what is forbidden and in neglecting what is commanded upon these Causes we do what for that present we cannot help For we do not chuse because we cannot refuse it and therefore it is not so much through choice as through necessity that we are involved in the transgression But although these sins are thus undeliberated in themselves and thus unchosen in their own Particulars yet shall we be punish'd for them as surely as if we had expresly chosen them because they were all chosen in their Causes For we freely and deliberately chose that which made them necessary and that is enough to make us answer for all those things which we acted under that necessity For as for drunkenness which is one of those Causes that deprives us of all liberty by taking away all considerateness and deliberation 't is plain that it either is or may be deliberately considered of and chosen For drunkenness is a sin which requires time in the very acting of it It is not entred on in a moment or dispatched before a man can have time to bethink himself for he may pause and deliberate at every Glass and is free all along to chuse the sin before the Wine inflames him It has nothing in it of suddenness or surprize and therefore nothing of indeliberation Because where a man has time he may deliberate if he will and if he will not that is his own fault and he must answer for it and is punishable in all reason as if he did 'T is true indeed to a man who has never tried and is ignorant of the force of Wine or of any other intoxicating Liquor and of its sudden way of discomposing his Spirits and dethroning his Reason Drunkenness at the first time may be a sin of surprize and an indeliberate action Because he suspects not that a free Draught which he takes down now should a while hence work so great an alteration he is unacquainted yet with the strength of it and knows not that it will have such effects upon him And so long as he doth not see that intoxication is at the end of his present draught he cannot be said to deliberate of or considerately to chuse it It happens to him besides his expectation and is not an effect of choice but of surprize And thus it was with righteous Noah Gen. 9.20 21. And this being unforeseen and indeliberate what a man commits under it is the more excusable as was the incest of Lot Gen. 19.33 But after a man has felt by himself or learned from others what the power of Wine or other intoxicating Drink is it is generally after his own fault and his own choice if he be overcome by it For either he doth or may see the ill effects of it and if for all that he chuse to go on in it it is at his own peril because if he chuses drunkenness he shall be interpreted to chuse all those sinful effects whereto he may see if he will that Drunkenness exposes men So that as for this Cause of indeliberate sins viz. drunkenness it we see is in it self deliberated of and freely chosen And as for the second cause of indeliberate sins viz. some indulged passions which grow to such a height as to drive us on furiously into the fulfilling of them without suffering us to deliberate about them they also are a Cause of our own free choice and deliberation For it is in our power at first either to give way to a beginning passion or to repress it We can check it as we please whilst it is low because then its strength is very weak and our own consideration and command is the greatest But if we slacken the Reins and give it liberty then it knows no bounds but proves
too strong for us and hurries us on whether we will or no. For in every step which the passion makes it doth still the more disturb our Spirits and thereby disable all the power of our reason and consideration So that proportionably as it encreases our consideration and together with that our choice and liberty is lessened and impaired But at the first whilst it is young and of small strength it is in the power of our own wills either to indulge it or to stop and repress it And therefore if it get ground upon us it is by our own liking because either we expresly chuse to stay upon it and thereby to feed and foment it or wilfully neglect to use that power which we have over it in curbing and straining it And when once we have of our own choice permitted it to go too far then is it got without our reach and goes on further without asking our leave whether we will or no. And herein lyes the great errour of men viz. in that they freely and deliberately consent to the first beginnings of sin and by their own voluntary yielding too far they make all that follows to be plainly necessary For the lustful man deliberately and wilfully permits his wanton fancy to sport it self with impure thoughts and lascivious imaginations till by degrees his passion gathers strength and his lusts grow so high that all his powers of reason and Religion are scattered and clouded and rendred wholly unable to subdue it The angry man freely and deliberately hearkens to exasperating suggestions and cherisheth discontents so long till at last his passion is got beyond his reach and flies out into all the unconsidered instances of rage and fury And the Case is the same in fear in envy in love and hatred and other passions Men first consent to the first steps and beginnings of a sinful lust and when they have deliberately yielded to it a little way they begin by degrees to be forced and driven by it For all progress in a vicious lust is like a motion down hill men may begin it where they please but if once they are entred they cannot stop where they please All vice stands upon a Precipice and therefore although we may stay our selves at the first setting out yet we cannot in the middle But although when once we have gone too far it be not at our own choice whether or no we shall go further yet was it in the free power of our own wills not to have gone so far as we did The entring so far into the passion was an effect of our own will and free deliberation and if this make that necessary which is done afterwards that is a necessity of our own chusing So that whatsoever our after actions are this cause of them is a matter of our own will and freely chosen And then as for the third cause of indeliberate sins viz. a custome and habit of sinning that is plainly a matter of our own free choosing For it is frequent acts that make a habit and they are all free and at our own disposal Because the necessity arises from the habit and doth not go before it so that all those actions which preceded and were the causes of it were free and undetermined Wherefore as for that indeliberateness in sinning which ariseth from an habit and custome of sin it doth not in any wise lessen or excuse a sinfull action Nay instead of that it aggravates and augments it For this is sin improved up to the height and become not so much a matter of choice as of nature And to sin thus is to sin as the Devils themselves do from a natural Spring and Principle without the help of thinking and disputing Upon which accounts as it is the most advanced state of sin so must it be of suffering likewise this state of reigning and prevailing habits of sin being as S t Paul calls it a body of death Rom. 7.23 24. All which aggravation both of sin and suffering it has because it is an aggregate and collected body of many wilfull and presumptuous sins For before men come so far they have deliberately chosen and willfully neglected to refrain from all those precedent actions which have advanced the strength of sin to that pitch and have made it to be not so much a temptation or a refusable motive as a binding Law and necessitating nature So that although those sinfull actions which flow from us after that we are come to a habit of sin are indeliberate and unchosen Yet as for our evil habit it self which is the cause of them it was produced by a combination of wilfull sins and was in all the antecedent degrees a matter of choice and deliberation And lastly as for the cause of our involuntary omissions viz. our neglect of those means which are necessary to our performance of those things which are commanded this is clearly our own fault and comes to pass only because we choose it and have a mind to it For the reason why we neglect the means is because we will not use them We have time enough wherein to deliberate and consider of them and thereby to choose and practise them but we will not use it to that purpose The means and helps to chastity to meekness to contentedness and other virtues are all before us and we have power to put them in practice if we think fitting For it is just the same for that matter with the endowments of our wills as with those of our minds and bodies We can see and consider of the means of begetting knowledge and learning in our minds and of those receits and rules which are to promote the health of our bodies and upon such consideration we not only can but ordinarily do make choice of them and put them in practice And although it happen much otherwise with those wise directions and helpfull rules that are given for the attainment of virtue which are read ordinarily only to be known but not to be practised yet is it in the choice of our own wills to make use of them if we please as well as of the other The neglect of them is a wilfull neglect for therefore we do not use them because we choose to omit them So that although when once we neglect the means it be not at our choice after that to attain the virtue yet that neglect it self was The omissions in themselves it may be are not chosen because they cannot be refused but that negligence which is the cause of their being so is plainly an effect of our own choice and deliberation Thus then it plainly appears that our sinfull commissions upon drunkenness passionateness and custome of sinning and our sinfull omissions upon our neglect of the means and instruments of virtue all which are indeliberate and unchosen in themselves were yet deliberately chosen in their causes So that all our necessity in them is a necessity of
our own making seeing it was at our own choice whether ever we should have come under it although when once we are subject to it it be no longer at our liberty whether or no we shall be acted by it And since all these sins which are thus indeliberate in themselves were yet so freely chosen and deliberated in their causes they are all imputable to us and fit to be charged upon us They were chosen indirectly and interpretatively in the choice of that cause which made them all afterwards to be almost if not wholly necessary For either we did deliberate or which is all one we had time enough to have deliberated as we ought before we chose our own necessity So that these sinfull actions which are unchosen and unconsidered in themselves are yet imputable to us and fit to be charged upon us as our own because we chose them by an indirect and interpretative volition As therefore there are some sins which are expresly will'd in the particulars by an express choice and deliberation so likewise are there several others which are expresly and deliberately willed only in their cause but in their own particulars are not chosen otherwise than indirectly and by interpretation And both these together take up the compass of our wilfull and chosen sins For either we expresly think and deliberately consider of the sinfull action when we commit it or we expresly and deliberately thought upon that cause when we chose it which makes us now to sin without thinking and deliberation And by all this it appears now at length how considerateness and deliberation is implyed in every wilfull sin For the sinfull action is seen and considered or it is our faults if it be not since we had both time and powers for such consideration either in it self or in its cause and being it is thus a matter of our consideration it is likewise a matter of our choice and a wilfull action And thus having shewn what sinfull actions are voluntary and chosen I proceed now to shew 2. That none of them is consistent with a state of grace but deadly and damning As for our wilfull sins they are all as we have seen of a most heinous nature being indeed nothing less than a contempt of Gods Authority a sinning presumptuously and with a high hand They are a plain disavowing of Gods will and renouncing of his Soveraignty they are acted in a way of defiance and are not the unavoidable slips of an honest and well-meaning servant but the high affronts of an open rebel So that no favourite or child of God can ever be guilty of them or he must cease to continue such if he be Because they interrupt all favour and friendship and put God and him into a state of hostility and defiance seeing they are nothing less than a renouncing of his Authority at least in that instance and a casting off his Law And this lawlesness or rejecting of the Law is that very word whereby S t John describes sin For sin sayes he is the transgression as we render it but more fully it should be the renouncing of the Law 1 Joh. 3.4 In which sense of sin for a wilfull and rebellious one he tells us that whosoever abides in God sins not vers 6 being indeed no longer a child of God if he do but of the Devil vers 8. They deprive us of all the benefits of Christs sacrifice so long as we continue in them and of all the blessings purchased for us by his death This was their effect under the Law of Moses and it is so much rather under the Gospel of Christ. For the sentence which that Law pronounced upon all presumptuous and wilfull offenders was death without mercy The soul that doth ought presumptuously the same by his contemptuous sin reproacheth the Lord and that soul shall be cut off from among his people Numb 15.30 If ever it could be proved against him by that dispensation there was no hope for him For he that despised or contemptuously transgressed Moses's Law died without mercy saith the Apostle being convicted under the testimony of two or three witnesses Hebr. 10.28 For even those very sins for which under the Law God had appointed an attonement were no longer to be attoned for than they were committed involuntarily and through ignorance In the fourth Chapter of Leviticus we are told that as for those sins which are committed against any of those Commandments which concerned things not to be done if they were acted involuntarily and unwillingly they should be allowed the benefit of an expiation and the sacrifices for that purpose are there prescribed But if they were acted wilfully and advisedly then had they no right to the expiation there promised nor would any sacrifices be accepted for them but that punishment must unavoidably be undergone which in the Law was threatned to them For to name no more this we are plainly told of two instances viz. the contemptuous making of perfume and eating of blood after both had been forbidden Whosoever shall contemptuously make any perfume like to that which was commanded to be made vers 35. to smell thereto that soul shall not be expiated by sacrifice but cut off from his people Exod. 30.38 And whatsoever man there be that eateth any manner of blood viz. willingly and wilfully the ignorant and involuntary transgressions of this and the like prohibitions being attoneable Lev. 4. I will even set my face against that soul and will cut him off from among his people Levit. 17.10 Thus severe was the sentence and thus unavoidable was the penalty of all wilfull sins under the Law of Moses And by how much the ministration of Christ is nobler than the ministration of Moses was by so much shall the punishment of all wilfull and contemptuous sins against the Law of Christ be more severe than it was for those against the Law of Moses And this is the Apostles own argument For if that word of the Law threatning death which was spoken unto Moses on Mount Sinai by the mediation only of Angels was stedfast and every transgression of it received the just recompence of that death which it threatned such persons dying without mercy How shall we Christians hope to escape it if we wilfully neglect and contemn those Laws which are published to us by so great a means of salvation as the Gospel is which was at first spoken to us not by Angels but by the Lord Jesus Christ himself who is far above all Angels being indeed the Son of God himself Hebr. 2.2 3. Surely as the Apostle argues in another place if he who despised even Moses's Law died without mercy for that contempt we ought to think with our selves not of how much less but of how much sorer punishment he shall be judged worthy who by wilfull sinning and despising of his Laws doth in a manner tread under foot not Moses but the Son of God
Vriah and adulterating his wife For upon that he felt both these losses which I have mention'd viz. the laying waste of the virtuous temper of his own spirit and the deprivation of the good spirit of God For this sin being so long in acting as it must needs be since it required such a train of wicked plots and contrivances to the consummation of it he must needs feel all the opposition that could be made from the checks of his own Conscience and from the restraints of the Spirit of God And when he had born down both for the satisfaction of his lust and trampled them under foot for the consummation of his sin then doth he begin to feel the want and to be all in fear of losing the habitual rectitude of his own spirit which by so many contrary actions implyed in that one great one he had almost quite destroyed and of suffering the desertion of Gods spirit which by his continued provocations contained in it likewise he had well nigh abandon'd For to this purpose we find him complaining and crying out in his Psalm of repentance for that great transgression whereof at the 14 th verse he makes express mention Create or new make in me a clean heart O God sayes he and renew a right spirit within me And besides that cast me not away neither from thy presence nor take thy holy spirit from me Psal. 51.10 11. So that as for the effect of wilfull sins it is plainly this All wilfull sins whatsoever destroy our state of acceptance with God and put us into a state of enmity and death for the present But as for those among them which lay waste the Conscience they effect not that only but moreover they destroy that virtuous habit and grieve nay sometimes drive away that good spirit whereby we should restore our selves to it for the time to come And because this latter sort have the mischievous effect in making our return thus dubious and difficult they are particularly taken notice of in the accounts of God Thus for instance David had committed several deadly sins for some whereof he had undergone severe punishment as particularly for that proud presumptuous offence of his in numbring of the people 2 Sam. 24.1 10 13 c. But these made no notable decay or devastation in the virtuous temper of his soul for his own heart admonished him of the evil which he had done and he repented quickly and rose again without delay and so was presently restored to what he was before But as for his sin in the matter of Vriah it was a lasting work and took up a long deliberation and contrivance It made his Conscience hard and insensible for his own heart did not smite him into a change nor enable him to repent without a monitor So that his stay in this crying sin was long and his return both difficult and dangerous And therefore in that character which is given of him by the Holy Ghost when all the rest are buried in silence this sin particularly is expresly specified David did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord and turned not from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life save only in the matter of Vriah the Hittite 1 Kings 15.5 Thus then as for this first part of our enquiry we see plainly of all our wilful sins that they are not consistent with a state of Grace and salvation but that they are all deadly and damning for the present if we dye under them without repenting of them and as for the future that they do all of them wound and weaken but some almost quite destroy that habitual inherent Grace whereby we should recover our selves to the state of pardon for the time to come CHAP. IV. Of the nature of involuntary sins and of their consistence with a state of salvation The CONTENTS Of involuntary actions Of what account the forced actions of the Body are in morals Two causes of involuntariness First The violence of mens passions It doth not excuse Secondly The ignorance of their understandings This is the cause of all our consistent failings and the sins that are involuntary upon this account are consistent with a state of salvation This proved 1. From their unavoidableness The Causes of it in what sense any particular sin among them is said to be avoidable 2. From the nature of God A representation of God's nature from his own Word and mens experience The Argument drawn from it for the consistence of such failings 3. From the nature and declarations of the Gospel It is fitted to beget a cheerful and filial confidence and therefore is called the Spirit of Adoption The Argument from this The Scripture-Declarations and Examples in this matter These Arguments summed up THE second sort of sins are such as are involuntary and unchosen and these are consistent with a state of salvation and such as Christ's Gospel doth not eternally threaten but graciously bears and in great mercy dispenseth with As for the involuntariness of mens actions that which produces and effects it is not any force from without upon our will it self All the things in the material world can never bind and compel the will of man seeing it is no physical bodily thing so as that any bodily force might act upon it Nothing in the world can make us will and like that which we do not like the will of man is liable to no compulsion it has this priviledge above all other things on the Earth that nothing about it can force or constrain it but that still it wills and chuses as it self pleaseth As for the actions of men indeed they are mixt things Because they flow from the whole man both Body and Soul and beginning in the mind or will within are consummate in our outward and bodily operation And as for the last of these viz. our bodily operation it may be forced forasmuch as one Body is liable to the force and compulsion of another Thus for instance a chast Matrons Body may be violently ravished A peaceable mans hand may by the overpowering strength of another man be made the forced instrument of anothers murther The bodily work and operation can be forced seeing other Bodies more powerful than it self can compel it And in this sence the Schools understand the word action viz. only for the action of the Body when they make one kind of involuntary actions to be involuntary by violence or compulsion that being a thing whereto not the will it self but the body only can be liable But now these forced actions of the Body although in Nature they be looked upon as actions yet in morality they are esteemed as none at all That is Laws which are the Rules of good and evil and the measure of mens manners take no notice of them nor look upon themselves to be either broken or kept by them because it is not the Body and Carkass
of several of his dearest Saints who have experienced the truth of it By all which it appears that so long as we are guilty of no other slips but such as these we are safe in Gods favour and secure of his promises we shall be accepted by him although we live and dye in them And thus at length it appears what sins are truly and innocently involuntary viz. those which are acted ignorantly and unwittingly and that they do not unsaint a man or destroy his state of Grace and Salvation but consist with it CHAP. V. Of these involuntary and consistent sins particularly and of the first cause of innocent involuntariness viz. Ignorance The CONTENTS A twofold knowledge necessary to choice viz. a general understanding and particular consideration Consistent sins are either sins of ignorance or of inconsideration Of sins involuntary through ignorance of the general Law which makes a duty How there is still room for it in the world Of crying sins which are against Natural Conscience no man can be innocently ignorant Of what others he may This ignorance is necessary to all men for some time and to some for all their lives Mens sins upon it are not damning Of sins involuntary through our ignorance of the present actions being included in the known Law and meant by it The causes of this ignorance First The difference between Good and Evil in some actions being not in kind but only in degree Secondly The limitedness of most Laws which admit of exceptions Thirdly The indirect obligations which pass upon several indifferent actions Fourthly The clashing of several Laws whence one is transgressed in pursute of another the great errour upon this score is in the case of zeal Fifthly The clashing of Laws with opinions or prejudices BUt in regard this consistence of our ignorant and unconsidered slips is a matter of so great account in the quieting and comforting of troubled and fearfull Consciences I will yet proceed to enquire of it more distinctly and to shew what particular ignorances those are which will cause that innocent involuntariness which Christs Gospel doth not punish as has been already shewn but graciously dispense with To him that knows to do good saith S t James and doth it not to him 't is sin Jam. 4.17 And the reason why it is so is this because that sin which a man knows and sees he wills and chooses but if he commit sin when he sees it not it is not imputed to him for a sin because it is not chosen by him That we may clearly understand then what ignorance renders any sin involuntary and therefore unpunishable it is very proper to enquire what knowledge is necessary unto choice and fit to make any sin to be esteemed voluntary and chosen Now to our choice of any sin there is a two-fold knowledge necessary First An habitual and general knowledge that the action is sinfull Secondly An actual use and exercise of that knowledge in a particular animadvertence and express thinking upon what we know which is consideration Both these are necessary to a chosen sin for we must both know an action to be a sin and also actually bethink our selves and consider of its sinfulness before we can be said to chuse the sin and wilfully to disobey in it 1. Before we can be said to chuse the sinfulness of any action it is necessary that we know habitually and in the general that the action whensoever it is committed is sinfull I call that an habitual and general knowledge when we are not to learn of any sinfull action that there is a Law that forbids it nor are in any doubts or darkness in our own thoughts whether it be a sin or no. But if it is proposed to our minds they are already resolved about it and need not further to enquire of it they know and judge it to be a sin when they are asked the question and that is their standing opinion and fixt perswasion And this knowledge because it is no more of one particular action than of another I call general and because it is fixt and permanent having grown into a lasting impression and habitual judgment of the mind I call an habitual knowledge Now that we may be said to chuse to sin and disobey in any particular action it is necessary that we have this general and habitual knowledge of its sinfulness For if we do not understand that although we do chuse the action yet we cannot be esteemed to chuse the sin since our will may be all the while innocent and obedient and ready to refuse the action if it were made to see that it is sinful We can have no choice of that whereof we have no apprehension for the will as it is truly said is a blind faculty and can chuse nothing till it be represented and proposed to it by the understanding So that if our minds are in darkness about any action and have no knowledge of its being forbidden our wills can have no share in chusing of the sin but since it was unknown it must be also involuntary and unchosen But besides this general and habitual knowledge of the sinfulness of any action there is moreover necessarily required to our choice of it 2. An actual use and exercise of that knowledge in a particular animadvertence and express thinking upon what we know which is consideration For there is no knowledge that directs and influences our choice further than we actually attend to it and consider of it but if at any time we did not think of it it is all one as if we did not know it Nothing is a motive to our will further than it is heeded and attended to at the time of willing and unless we see and consider of it then when we are to chuse upon it For in this Case the Civilians Maxim is very true That which doth not appear to be is of no more account than if really it were not at all That any sin then may be said to be willed and chosen by us it is necessary that it occur to our thoughts and be present to our minds at the time of chusing of it For if we transgress when we do not think of it our heart may be innocent all the while and our will incur no disobedience at all since if we did but consider of the sin we would by no means embrace but utterly refuse it So that all that can be charged upon us in such Cases is only the hast and errour of our understandings but not any rebellion in our wills for our heart is good although the outward action appear to be evil Now since both a general knowledge and a particular consideration are necessary in every wilful and chosen sin the involuntariness of any transgressions may arise from the want of either of them So that those sins are justly reputed to be involuntary and unchosen which proceed 1. From the want of the general knowledge
of Christ's Gospel whereby at the last Day we must all be judged Alas they know not of any such Laws nor ever think of being tryed by them In the Gospel 't is very true they are all recorded and by Christs Ministers at one time or other they are all proclaimed and by some exemplary good men although God knows they are very few in one place or other they are duly practised but yet for all this a great many Christian men are ignorant of some or other of them For either they cannot read the Scriptures where they are mentioned or they have not opportunity to hear the Preacher when every one of them particularly is taught or they are not in sight and observation of those patterns of piety by whom they are practised so that still they do not understand them Or if at last they do come to know them yet is it some time first and they acted several times against them before they saw that they were bound by them So that still we see there is room in the World for sins of ignorance from mens not knowing of the Law which they sin against Several particular Laws which lye more remote and are not so plainly of natural obligation nor startled at by natural Conscience are oftentimes and by many persons transgressed because they do not perceive themselves to be bound by them And as for this ignorance of one Branch or other of their Duty it is some mens unhappiness rather than their fault they do not so truly chuse it as through an unchosen necessity fall under it For it is necessary to all people whether they will or no for some time and to some for all their lives It is necessary I say to all people whether they will or no for some time For by the very constitution of our Nature which is before any thing of our own chusing we are born ignorant the mind of man being as Aristotle compares it like a blank paper wherein is nothing written No man ever since Adam came into the World in the free exercise of his understanding and with his perfect wits about him And when after some time we do begin to know yet even then is all our knowledg gradual and by little and little For we first learn one thing and then another and so by several steps attain at last to a competent pitch of knowledge When therefore any man doth begin to know Gods will and to discern his Laws yet is it not possible that he should understand them all at once but some of them every man must needs be ignorant of till he has had time to learn and know them all To some people I say it is necessary for their whole lives to their dying Day they do not arrive to the understanding of some things which God has required of them And that because they wanted either abilities or opportunities neither of which is of their own chusing They are of a slow understanding and have not those means of instruction or that time and leisure to attend upon it which others have And that by reason of their place and low condition in the world wherein it was Gods pleasure and not their own to dispose of them But now this ignorance of some or other of Christ's Laws being thus involuntary it must likewise be innocent For there is no damning sin and disobedience but in our own choice so that as long as the heart is true to God he will not be at enmity for any thing else which may seem to be against him And since our ignorance it self is innocent the sinning upon it will never be rebellious and damning For the disobedience is not any way chosen neither in it self nor in its Cause we do not chuse the sin because we do not see that the action is sinful nor do we chuse not to see it because we cannot help it But where there is no choice there will be there no condemnation So that the action which is done against the Law shall not be punished by the Law if we were thus innocently ignorant of the Law whereof it was a transgression And that it will not is plain For God never did nor ever will condemn any man for the transgression of a particular Law before he has had all due means and necessary opportunities such as may be sufficient to any honest and willing heart to understand it The Jewish Law obliged none but those whom it was proclaimed to who had the advantages of being instructed out of it It is they only says S t Paul who have sinned in or under the Law who shall be judged by the Law Rom. 2.12 The Law of Christ did not bind men until they had sufficient means and opportunities of knowing it and being convinced by it If ye were blind or wanted abilities says our Saviour to the Pharisees you should have no sin John 9.41 And again if I had not given them sufficient opportunities of knowing come and spoken unto them they had not had sin but now since I have they have no cloak or no pretence or excuse for their sin Nay if I had not given them all due means of conviction and done among them the works which no other man hath done they had not had sin still John 15.22 24. These slips of honest ignorance of our Duty are no more punished under the Gospel of Christ than they were under the Law of Moses For Christ our High Priest doth attone for them by virtue of his Sacrifice of himself as well as the Aaronical Priest in behalf of the ignorantly offending Jews made an attonement for them by his sin-offering Levit. 4.2 3 c. This S t Paul tells us in his comparison of Christ's Priesthood with that of the line of Aaron In his interceding to God and offering Sacrifice for sins he can have compassion on the ignorant Heb. 5.2 Ignorance therefore of the general Law which makes any thing a Duty so long as it is not wilful and affected by us through the merits of Christ's Sacrifice and the Grace of his Gospel renders those offences which we commit under it pardonable transgressions such as do not destroy a state of Grace but consist with it And this is the very determination which S t Cyprian gives in the Case of transgressing our Lords institution in the participation of the Lords Supper For some Churches in those Days were wont to make use of Water instead of Wine in which way of communicating several of them had been educated and brought up having received it ignorantly and in the simplicity of their hearts as they had done other things of their Religion from the practice and tradition of their Forefathers Now as for the usage it self S t Cyprian declares plainly that it is a breach of Duty and a custom very dangerous and sinful It is says he against our Lords Command who plainly bid us do what he did i. e.
our disobedient conscience and corrupt perswasion It is not only the errour of our conscience which makes us serve the sin for we serve it equally in other instances where that is wholly unconcerned The Sin is unmortified and imperious it carries us on to transgress where it is further'd by the errour of our consciences and where it wants it But it is the wickedness of our hearts which makes us to be wicked in our judgments and to espouse such Opinions as encourage and defend it For when any lust is so strong in us as to rule our practice it will be sure to lay a corrupt byass upon our wills so that we shall be apt still to judge in favour of it and be very partial in all those Opinions wherein it has any interest And therefore several disobedient prejudices will be taken up to serve a turn and we shall work our selves up into a belief of them for the sins sake which is justified and protected by them Is any man therefore of a temper and conversation that is fierce and contentious busie and restless forward to give Laws and impatient to submit to them 'T is no wonder if he takes up Opinions that justifie contempt of Governours that avow Alteration and Disturbance and countenance Faction Sedition and a Civil War For the ungovernableness of his Conscience is but agreeable to the ungovernableness of his Practice the Sin reign'd first in his heart and life and was from thence with ease instill'd into his Opinion and Perswasion Is any man habitually inclined to Pride and Ambition Wrath and Malice Revenge and Cruelty is he greedy of Gain and a slave to sensual Delights and bodily Pleasures He is prepared for any of those Vile Opinions which overturn all Laws to promote Christs Temporal Power on Earth or to advance the secular greatness of his pretended Vicar and Holy Church and for any others of like nature For the unmortified lusts are a Law to him in his life before they come to govern in his conscience he is first wicked and rebellious in his heart and that makes him to admit of such wicked Opinions into his understanding In these men then the case is plain it is clearly seen how they came by their disobedient prejudices for their lives and conversations show that abundantly Disobedience reign'd first in their hearts and thence got into their consciences and perswasions Secondly If the disobedience and the prejudice lay so near and were so close conjoyn'd that a man could not but see one when he saw the other it is still imputable to his wicked lusts and vices For he discerned how obedience was impair'd and how the Sin was served by it when he first gave credit to it and therefore he was plainly acted by a want of virtue and an evil heart For if he had been touched with any love of virtue he could not have allowed of that which he knew would evacuate and undermine it but he would have shewn much more forwardness to reject the Opinion for the sake of the sin than to embrace it upon any appearances of argument and reason So that his prejudice enter'd through an aversation to that instance of obedience which it undermined and it was his love to the wicked lust which was advanced by it that made way for it He willingly and designedly served the sin and he saw how much the Opinion contributed to it and therefore he readily embraced it Nay further Thirdly If the sinfull consequences were not discerned when a man at first embraced it yet if they are such as are of a plain unquestionable guilt and greatly sinfull and when he is shewed afterwards how they follow from it he still stands by it and adheres to it however the prejudicate Opinion might enter at the first yet it holds possession by a heart that is wicked and disobedient Some sins there are whose guilt is not altogether so clear and indisputable but that an innocent and honest although a weak and erring mind may sometimes question and overlook it And thus many truly religious souls do not think that their refusing to observe the commands of men about the ceremonies of divine worship is disobedience or that their over-acting in the cause of God and Religion is pragmaticalness For these sins among several others although they are plain and obvious to an unprejudiced and piercing understanding which is able to discern the grounds and reasons of things and fairly to consider of them Yet to such minds as have fallen unhappily under some mistaken notions and false prepossessions they are not evident whence many men that have honest and obedient hearts do yet err and judge amiss concerning them But then several other sins are so open and notorious that no sober mind and virtuous inclination can ever have any doubts about them Thus for instance no honest man who is willing fairly and seriously to consider things can ever question I think that killing without Commission from Authority and due process of Law is Murther that spoils without judicial course are robbery that appearing in Arms against the supreme Sovereign Power or men commissioned by him is Rebellion that intoxicating use of Wine is Drunkenness and a promiscuous use of Women Adultery or Fornication These sins and many others are of so open and notorious a nature that no man of an ordinary wit if he has any competent degrees of honesty can ever apprehend them to be other than damnably sinful And if any man has any opinions which in any cases justifie some of these if he continues to hold them still after he sees how these sins follow from them which he must needs do when he practises and incurrs them because the opinions lead him on to them 't is plain that his opinion holds possession of his mind because his heart is wicked simplicity and ignorance it may be gave it entrance but sin and disobedience enable it to persevere If the man indeed was only simple and short-sighted rash and forward at the first and either had not understanding or patience enough to look on so far as the sinful consequences when he gave it entrance his lusts and vices at that time could have no share in it because he did not see how they could be served by it and so far the simplicity of a well-mâ—aning mind and the obedient temper of an honest heart and a good intention may plead his excuse for his otherwise wicked and disobedient perswasion But if afterwards he persists in it when he sees all the iniquity and disobedience that flows from it and goes on to cancel and transgress notorious and weighty Laws upon the assurance of it 't is manifest then that his heart is wicked and that he is influenced more by a reigning sin than by a cogent reason For if his heart were acted by a full resolution of obedience and a love of Vertue he would quickly renounce such opinions when once he saw such
notorious and unquestionable Laws to be overturned by them But since he will stick to his wicked Principle even when it destroys obedience and prefer a disputable opinion before a weighty and plain Duty 't is plain to all that he is not willing to obey but industrious to seek a shift and to evade all obligation to obedience As for this enquiry then viz. When our disobedient prejudices get into our consciences by the help of our own unmortified lusts and damning vices from these measures we may make our own souls this Answer If we are usually and in the common course of our lives guided by that lust or vice which our prejudice advances if we saw the disobedient effects of it when we first gave credit to it or if we still adhere to it after that we have been plainly showed the unquestionable and notorious sins which are avouched by it Our prejudice took place by virtue of our disobedience and without our timely repentance it will certainly condemn us If it entred innocently and honestly through the weakness of our understandings or the fallibility of the means of knowledge it would be pardoned and not imputed to us but since it gains admittance by our love to damning lusts and disobedience it is of a deadly guilt and unless repentance intervene will certainly destroy us And thus at last we have seen what ignorance is effected by our prejudices and what is to be judged of those transgressions which are incurred under it And the summ of all is this That our prejudices make us either quite overlook several Laws or even whilst we know and consider of them to venture upon several disobedient actions which really come under them not knowing that they do And if such prejudices entred through the fallibility of means and weakness of an honest understanding they are pardonable and uncondemning but if they took place by means of strong lusts and a wicked heart they are deadly sins and fit to be charged upon us as all others are without repentance to our condemnation But seeing it is much safer and infinitely more eligible to have no disobedient prejudice at all than to be put into all this danger about the pardon and forgiveness of it before I dismiss this Point I will set down one plain Rule and easie Method in matters of Duty and moment to prevent it For by this means we may all of us attain in good measure to that which S t Paul assures us was his utmost care and industrious exercise viz. a conscience void of offence or rather an inoffensive conscience which is no scandal or cause of sin to us and which doth not stumble and cast us down into any breach of Duty either towards God or towards men Acts 24.16 And the Rule which I would press upon all simple and honest minds for that purpose is this Begin with Duty and plain Laws to make them the measure whereby to judge of Notions and Opinions not with Notions and Opinions to make them the measure whereby to interpret plain Laws For our Duty is made plain and open and expressed so clearly as that every man may understand it It is no matter of skill and parts to know Christ's Commandments but an honest and a teachable heart is a better preparation to that than refinedness of wit and philosophick learning For God who gave us Laws knew the measure of all capacities and the compass of every understanding and what he intended that all should practise he wanted not skill to express so plainly that every one might apprehend it Laws are the Rule of the last Judgment and our obedience or disobedience to them is a matter of life or death and that in all reason and equity ought to be revealed clearly and sufficiently to every understanding which every man must for ever live or dye by As for Laws and Duty then they are plain and easie they are expressed in such clear and intelligible words as carry what God means by them in their usual and obvious acceptation So that in judging of them if we begin there there is no great difficulty seeing they are easily and obviously understood by any man who brings along with him an obedient and teachable mind to the obvious understanding of them But as for abstract Notions and general opinions they admit of much doubting and dispute and of great appearance of reason and variety of argument on one side as well as on the other And besides all capacities are no fit Judges of them but those only which have much quickness and much experience that can dispel the darkness by clear evidence and help the confusion by a distinct representation of things that can judge of reasons and of exceptions and of the various degrees in evidence and the just weight of arguments So that they are a matter not for the determination of common heads but for the learned and witty for refined Parts and Philosophers Yea and even among them by reason of their difficulty and doubtfulness they admit of great disputes and beget generally much variety of judgment and opinion wherein if some think true as it is very possible nay often happens that neither do the rest must of necessity be mistaken Opinions therefore and Notions are more dark and difficult less easie to be understood than plain Laws and much more liable to be mistaken So that Laws and Duty are fit to be made a Principle because we may easily understand them and be well assured of them but general Notions and Opinions being more dark and liable to errour and mistake they are not so proper to be themselves a Rule as to be measured and judged of by them And that they should so is further reasonable because in the very designs of God obedience is primarily and chiefly intended to be ministred to by Divine Truths not truths to be served and furthered by obedience For the revelation of religious truth is given by the Authour of our Religion himself in order to religious practice The very end and perfection of our Faith being to produce Good Works to make us overcome the World to save our souls or to deliver us from our sins which are those evils that Christ came to save us from And since obedience unto Laws is the end and general truths are only means whereby to compass it 't is certain that no truth can ever oppose a Duty or evacuate obedience because God would defeat his own end in revealing it should he at any time become the Author of it So that this cannot be a proper at least it is not a safe way of arguing this plain Law in such and such parts and sorts of instances contradicts a truth and therefore it is no Duty whereas we should proceed quite contrary after this manner this or that opinion interferes and undermines this or that plain Law so that it can never be a true opinion For this arguing is
much of the sinfulness of that action which we commit as to scruple its lawfulness and to be enlightned so far as really to doubt of it then is the case quite alter'd and we cannot plead that we did it ignorantly because we knew so much by it at least as should have made us forbear it For if indeed we doubted of it we knew it was as likely to be a Sin as to be an innocent Action because that is properly Doubting when we suspend our Assent and cannot tell which way to determine when we judge one to be as likely as the other and do not positively and determinately believe the truth of either And when this is our case concerning any Action if we venture on it whilst the doubt remains we are guilty of sin and must expect to suffer punishment For by so doing we shew plainly that we will do more for sin than we will for God and that it has a greater interest with us than he because even whilst we apprehend it as likely to be our sin as our liberty yet for the sins sake we chuse to venture on it rather than for Gods sake to abstain from it This Contempt of God there is in it in the Nature of the very thing it self although God had no ways expressed himself concerning it But we must know further that whensoever we are in this estate of doubt and unresolvedness God has given us a peremptory Command that we should not act what we fear is sinful but omit it Abstain saith he from all appearance of evil 1 Thess. 5.22 So that if after all our Disputes and Demurs we venture at last to commit the Action which we doubted of we do not only slight God by running the hazard of Disobedience to one Law whereof we are uncertain but we wilfully disobey him in transgressing of this other Law whereof we all either are or may be certain if we will And if in this estate we presume thus to disobey we shall be sure to suffer for our Disobedience And in this case St. Paul is plain For if there be any thing whose lawfulness our Consciences are unresolved and unperswaded of whilst that unresolvedness remains he tells us plainly that our commission of it is utterly unlawful Whatsoever says he is not of Faith or proceeding from a belief and perswasion of its lawfulness is sin So that if it be about the eating of meats for Instance he that doubts is damn'd both of God and of himself if he eat because he eateth not of Faith Rom. 14.23 If our minds therefore are so far enlightned concerning any sinful Action as that we are come to doubt of it we are no longer innocently and excusably ignorant For we see enough by it to make us chuse to abstain from it and if for all this we presume still to venture on it sin lyes at the door and we must answer for it We are no longer within the excuse of Ignorance but we are guilty of a wilful sin and are got within the bounds of Death and Damnation But if in any Action we know nothing at all of the Law which forbids it or after we have known that if we are still ignorant of its being contain'd under it if we are not come to doubt but are either in Ignorance or Errour concerning it our Ignorance shall excuse our Fault and deliver us from Condemnation We do not chuse the sin which we do thus ignorantly commit and therefore we shall not suffer that Punishment which is threatned to it but our unknown offence is a pardonable slip such as according to the gracious Terms of Christs Gospel shall surely go uncondemned And this is true not only of simple Ignorance but likewise of the two particular Modes of Ignorance viz. First Forgetfulness Secondly Errour 1. Our sins of Ignorance will be born with if we venture upon the sinful Action through Ignorance of its sinfulness which we knew formerly but at the time of acting have forgotten For a slip of Forgetfulness is no more than befel an Apostle who was for all that a blessed Saint and an Heir of Life still St. Paul himself reviles the High-Priest forgetting both his Duty and that that man was he whom he spoke to I wist not Brethren says he that he was the High-Priest for had I bethought my self I should not have spoke so disrespectfully to him it being thus written Thou shalt not speak evil of the Ruler of thy People Act. 23.5 2. Our sins of Ignorance shall be dispensed with if we are led to commit them through a mistake of their innocence when indeed they are sinful which is an acting of them through errour For no less a man than Peter was drawn into a sinful dissimulation through an erroneous conceit that his giving no offence but keeping in with the Jews which was the thing that he aimed at by it would justifie and bear him out in it For which S t Paul tells us when he came to Antioch he withstood him to the face because he was to be blamed Gal. 2.11 12 13. But yet for all this S t Peter was at that time a true good Saint and if it had pleased God then to call for him he had been undoubtedly an Heir of salvation And to mention no more upon this Point as there were constant atonements for the errours of the people under the Law so is there provision made for them under the Gospel For Christ who is our High Priest as S t Paul assures us can have compassion on the ignorant and erroneous or them who are out of the way Heb. 5.2 So long therefore we see as our ignorance of any kind whether of the Law it self or of our present actions being comprehended by it is involuntary and innocent so long shall we be born with for all such slips as we incur under it For God will never be severe upon us for weakness of understanding or for want of parts whilst there is nothing in us of a wicked heart and therefore if our ignorance it self is innocent our offences under it shall go unpunished But here we must observe that all this allowance for our ignorance is so far only as it is involuntary and faultless but if we chuse to be ignorant our ignorance is in it self our sin and will make all our following offences damnable For we must answer for any thing of our own choice and therefore if we chuse the ignorance we shall be interpreted to chuse and so put to answer for all those ill effects which it produces Those sins which are voluntary in their cause are interpreted to us as we have seen and put upon our score so that if we chuse the ignorance which brings them we shall be adjudged to suffer for them Now as for the ignorance and errour of many men which is the cause of their sins and transgressions it is plainly of their own chusing They have a mind to
be ignorant of their Duty and that is the reason why they do not understand it For either they shut their eyes and will not see it or they are idle and careless and will not enquire after it or they bend their wits at the instigation of their lusts to dispute against it that after they have darkened and confounded it in their own thoughts they may mince or evacuate mistake or disbelieve it So that if at last they do not know it it is because they do not desire the knowledge of it or will be at no pains for it or take pains against it to supplant and disguise it And these are they who are not ignorant against their wills but as S t Peter says willingly ignorant 2 Pet. 3.5 And as for such ignorance as this it will by no means excuse us before God but if we will be ignorant God's will and pleasure is that we shall suffer for our sinful ignorance and for all those sins that we commit under it which we might and should have seen and avoided For all those Laws which are ignorantly transgressed by us threaten death and the ignorance being of our own chusing takes nothing off so that death and damnation rest upon us But that ignorance which can be pleaded to excuse us before God must be an ignorance that is involuntary an ignorance which in the constitution of our nature is imposed upon us and is not chosen by us And a right understanding of this difference in ignorance being of so great moment I shall before I dismiss this Point observe when our ignorance is voluntary and when it is involuntary First I will show when our ignorance is â—â—voluntary As for the knowledge of our Duty like as of all other things it doth not spring up in our souls as an Herb doth out of the ground nor drop into us as the rain doth from a Cloud but it must be sought for and endeavoured after and unless we use the means of acquiring it we must be content to live without it The means of obtaining the knowledge of God's Laws and of the innocence and sinfulness of our own actions are the reading of his Word the attendance upon his Ministers the thinking or considering upon what we read or hear in our own minds and praying to God to make all these means effectual for our information and if ever we expect to know God's will we must put these in practice But now whether we will make use of these or no is plainly in our own choice and at our own pleasure For if we will we may exercise and if we will we may as well neglect them And when both these are before us if we refuse to make use of the means of understanding and wilfully neglect the methods of attaining to the knowledg of sin and Duty good and evil if we sit down without the knowledg of Gods Law it is because we would our selves and our ignorance is a voluntary and a wilful ignorance And this is the first way of our ignorance's becoming voluntary viz. when it is so upon a voluntary neglect of those means which are necessary to attain knowledge And this in the Schools is called a supine slothful careless ignorance And if it be of such things as lay near in our way and might have been known without much pains or much seeking it is called gross or affected ignorance But besides this sort of wilful ignorance of our Duty through a wilful neglect of those means which are necessary to the knowledge of it there is another which is higher and more enormous and that is Secondly When we do not only sleight the means of knowing God's Law but moreover use those of confounding or mistaking it For our knowledge of things is then made perfect and useful when it is clear and distinct and our assent and belief of things is then gained when their evidence is represented and duly considered of But now as for the employing of mens thoughts in clearing or confounding believing or disbelieving of the Laws of God it is perfectly in their own power whether to use it on one side or on the other And commonly it is their pleasure to use it on the worse For they will consider only of the difficulties and intricacies of Gods Laws which may darken and disturb confound and perplex their thoughts about them and attend only to such exceptions as they can make against them which may unsettle their minds either about the meaning or the truth of them so that after all their reading and considering of them they shall not understand but err and mistake them As it happens to all those who had disputed themselves out of the knowledge of their Duty until as Isaiah says they call evil good and good evil put darkness for light and light for darkness Isai. 5.20 And when men are ignorant of their Duty because they chose thus to endeavour it and take pains for it this ignorance is voluntary and wilful with a witness These two reasons of mens being ignorant of their Duty viz. their neglect of such means as are necessary to the knowledge of it or their use of the contrary means of confounding or discrediting it are the causes of their wilful ignorance And that which makes them guilty of both these is either the gross idleness or the profligate wickedness of their hearts which are wholly inslaved to some beloved lust or sin They are wretchedly idle and therefore they will not learn their Duty because that is painful they are greatly wicked and so care not for the knowledge of the Law because that would disquiet them Men love darkness says our Saviour better than light because their works are evil they hate the light and will not come to it lest their deeds should be reproved by it John 3.19 20. Because they hate and fear the Law they neglect the means of knowing it nay they pick quarrels with it and endeavour all they can to perplex or darken to evacuate or disparage it So that our ignorance is then wilful when we are therefore ignorant because we neglect the means of knowledge or industriously endeavour to be mistaken And that because we are either too idle to learn or too wicked to care for the knowledge of our Duty The idleness and wickedness of our hearts is the first spring and the neglect of means and industrious perverting of the truth are the great productive instruments of our wilful ignorance Which is therefore called voluntary and wilful because the Principle and the Instruments the motive and the means to it are both under the power and choice of our own wills And these things making our ignorance wilful viz. a wilful neglect of the means of knowledge or a wilful perverting of those Laws which we are to know we shall easily discern Secondly What ignorance is unwilled and involuntary namely that which implies a freedome from and an absence
much less out-done by the best of men in pity and kindness Which is the argument from which our Saviour himself concludes that God will give the holy spirit at our prayers because that men themselves who are infinitely below him in goodness will give good gifts to them that ask them Luk. 11.13 Let us therefore take care in the first place to secure our selves of an obedient heart and to give such evidence of an honest industry as any kind hearted honest man would accept of and then we may have just reason to be confident that although our endeavour is weak and imperfect being much hindred and often interrupted yet shall it still be esteemed sufficient For Christ himself who is to judge of its sufficiency is no stranger to our weaknesses but having felt them in himself he is prone to pity and pardon them in us He experimented the backwardness of our flesh and the number of our distractions and the tiredness of our powers and the insinuations and strength of temptations So that having such an High Priest to intercede for us at present and to judge us at the last day who is touched with a feeling of our infirmities having been tempted himself in all points even as we are let us come boldly unto the throne of Grace as the Apostle exhorts us that we may obtain mercy for what we cannot master as well as find grace in a seasonable time of need to conquer what he expects we should overcome Hebr. 4.15 16. And this mercifull connivance at our imperfections and gracious acceptance of our weak endeavours we may with the greater reason and assurance hope for because Christ our Judge will be most candid and benign in putting the best sense and in interpreting most to our advantage all those our actions and endeavours which shall then be brought before him Whereof he has given us a clear instance in that most favourable construction which he made of that Charity that was shewn unto his Brethren by those on his right hand Mat. 25. For although it was not expressed to him but only to their fellow Christians for his sake yet because their kindness reached him in the intention of their minds and what they did to his servants for his sake they would have done to himself much rather could they have met with an opportunity he resented it as if it had been really shown to his own person For when they say unto him Lord when saw we thee an hungred and fed thee or naked and cloathed thee c. he answers inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these my brethren I take the affection for the performance and interpret it as if you had done it unto me vers 40. When therefore the sufficiency of our endeavours fater the knowledge of our Duty is come to be enquired into by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ we may be assured that it will have a favourable tryal It it to be censured by a candid equitable and benign judge who will interpret it to our advantage as much nay more than any good natured honest man would So that if our industry after the knowledge of Gods will be in such a measure as a candid and benign man would judge to be a sufficient effect of an obedient heart and of an honest purpose Christ will judge it to be so too And where our Ignorance of any of Christs Laws is joyned with an honest heart and remains after such an industry we may take comfort to our selves and be confident that it is involuntary and innocent If we are desirous to know Gods Laws and read good Books frequent Sermons hearken to any good instructions which we meet with and that according to our opportunities and in such measure as any good man would interpret to be an honest endeavour after the knowledge of our Duty if it were to himself if after all this I say in some points we are still Ignorant our Ignorance is involuntary and shall not harm us it is not chosen by us and therefore it never will condemn us And thus we have seen what ignorances excuse our slips and transgressions which are committed under them and when those Ignorances are themselves involuntary and innocent so as that we may comfortably expect to be excused upon the account of them And the summ of all that has been hitherto discoursed upon this subject is this That as for the Laws themselves all men must needs be ignorant of some of them for some time and some men for all their lives because they want either ability or opportunity to understand them And as for their present actions being comprehended under them that many men of all sorts and capacities after that they have known the General Laws will still be ignorant of it likewise For as for the wise and learned the small and meer gradual difference between good and evil in some instances the allowed exceptions from the generality of others the indirect force and obligation of a third sort and the frequent clashing and enterfering whether of Laws with Laws or of Laws with their repugnant prejudices and opinions will be sure to make them very often overlook it And as for the rude and ignorant that besides all these causes of such ignorance which are common to them with learned men the difficult and obscure nature of several Vices and Virtues themselves which are plainly and expresly forbidden or injoyn'd will be of force sufficient to make the generality of them in many instances not to understand it And as for the pardon and excuse of our ignorance and unknown transgressions from all or any of these causes that it is involuntary and innocent so long as it is joyned with an honest heart and remains after an honest industry and begins then only to be our wilful sin and an Article of our condemnation when our Lusts or Vices introduce it and we have a mind to it and take no pains against it or what is the consummation and height of all industriously labour and endeavour after it And this may suffice to have spoken of the first sort of want of Knowledge which as I said above produces an uncondemning involuntariness viz. Ignorance when we commit sin because we do not know the sinfulness of our present action or the Law which we sin against CHAP. VIII Of Sins consistent through the second Cause of an innocent Involuntariness viz. Inconsideration The CONTENTS Consideration is necessary to choice Some sins are inconsiderate Three innocent causes of inconsideration 1. Suddenness and surprize of opportunity An account of this The involuntariness of it Slips upon it are consistent 2. Weariness of our thinking powers or understandings An account of this and of its involuntariness The consistence of our Transgressions by reason of it 3. Discomposure or disturbance of them An account of this The causes of it are Drunkenness or a strong Passion Drunkenness is always our own fault Our
Passions grow strong in us sometimes by our own indulgence and then they are our damning sin and we must suffer for the evil that we commit under them sometimes through the suddenness and greatness of outward objects and then they are pardonable and our inconsiderate slips upon them are excusable The Passions which have Good for their object as Love Desire c. cannot by any force of outward objects be so suddenly forced upon us But the Passions which have Evil as Grief Anger and Fear especially often are The reason of this difference Inconsideration upon the latter excusable but not upon the former This difference made by our Saviour in a case where both were criminal Excusable slips upon discomposure of our thinking powers are such as proceed from an unwill'd sudden Grief or Anger but especially from a sudden Fear No fear is involuntary but what is sudden and sins upon deliberate fear are damning but upon unwill'd sudden Fear Grief or Anger consistent with Salvation Cautions about inconsiderate sins to prevent false confidence No sin is innocently inconsiderate 1. Where we have time and an undisturbed understanding 2. Where the sin is mischievous or greatly criminal 3. When we do not strive against it We must endeavour against all involuntary Failings though we cannot resolve against them 4. When we are not sorry after we have committed it nor beg pardon for it 5. When it is committed with observation A summary Repetition of this fourth Book HAving in the foregoing Chapters discoursed largely of the first cause of an innocent Involuntariness viz. Ignorance of our Duty or want of a general Knowledge I proceed now to the second viz. want of particular Animadvertence and Consideration of what we know which is Inconsiderateness And this is the second way of rendring our Transgressions pardonably involuntary which I proposed above namely when in any sinful action we do not bethink our selves and consider of its sinfulness It is not all knowledge of our Duty that renders every particular sin against it chosen and voluntary For a knowledge that is only general and at such time as the thing occurs to our thoughts and we are asked the Question will not do but as all our choice is of particular actions so must our knowledge be likewise Before we can be said to chuse a particular action we must see and know it particularly and if we act it without thinking we act it also without chusing seeing all choice is upon sight and knowledge of what is chosen But now this is the case in several of our Transgressions they slide from us without this actual application of our minds to them For we do not think and consider of the evil of them when we commit them and so their sinfulness being unseen it is withal unchosen They are of the number of our involuntary sins and such as implying nothing of our own will shall have nothing of Gods anger who will not punish but graciously bear with them And these slips stealing from us without our considering and thinking on them or adverting in the application of our minds to them are called by these several names which are all of the same signification viz. sins of inadvertency incogitancy and inconsideration Which because they are such as through the weakness of our Natures we are continually subject to and liable daily to incur are stiled in another word sins of daily incursion Now as for this second sort of sins our inconsiderate Transgressions they may steal from us involuntarily and innocently upon as many grounds as there may be innocent causes of inconsiderate actions And as for the unwill'd and therefore innocent causes of inconsideration they are reducible to these three 1. Suddenness and surprize of Opportunity 2. Weariness and 3. Discomposure and disturbance of our thinking powers wherewith we should consider 1. The first cause of inconsideration in our Actions whereupon we venture upon some sin without thinking or considering of it is the suddenness of the Opportunity and the surprize of Temptation It falls out unexpectedly and stays for us at such time as our minds are otherwise employ'd and so we act it without considering because it lyes ready and prepared for us just then when we have no leisure for thinking and consideration And the first beginnings of a sinful Passion whether of Anger of Envy c. and the unadvised slips of the Tongue in rash censuring in uncharitable speaking in indeliberate backbiting and the like generally enter this way For they come upon us in the throng of Conversation and opportunities are offered for them before we foresee them and so we spring out indeliberately to act and exert them And this inconsideration is such as we cannot avoid For we have no freedom of acting where we want a freedom of thinking seeing we cannot chuse without consideration But as for these inconsiderate slips they steal from us before we can bethink our selves and stay not for our consideration but run before it For our operative Powers when they are spurr'd on by any thing of an inward desire or of a remaining corrupt inclination and who as long as he lives here can be wholly free from it are ready of themselves to spring out into Action and Practice upon the first offer of Temptation and stand in need of reason and consideration not to raise and excite but to restrain and repress them So that upon the offer of a fit occasion we act many times amiss before we are aware and we cannot help it because we cannot deliberate and consider of it But as these slips of surprize are such as we cannot avoid so are they such withal wherefore God will not exact a severe account of us He will not punish but pity us for them and in great mercy dispense with them For they are necessarily incident to all men they have been incurr'd by his best servants but were never looked upon to be of that provoking nature as to put them out of his favour or to interrupt their state of salvation and acceptance Just Noah through his ignorance of the strength of Wine was surprized into one sin for he was drunken before he was aware or could discern what effects the fruits of his new Vineyard would have upon him Noah drank wine says Moses and was drunken Gen. 9.21 But this was perfectly a mixture of surprize and ignorance for his wits had left him before he was aware and before he ever knew that the Wine which he drunk would drive them from him For it was at his first planting of a Vineyard before he understood what measure of it would cause intoxication He began says the Text to be a Husbandman and he planted a Vineyard and he drank of the wine of his new Vineyard and was drunken v. 20 21. The great Apostle Paul himself was guilty of one sudden slip towards Ananias the High Priest who whilst his mind was intent upon his Speech which he was
matter of condemnation although before it were uncondemning For then when lust hath conceived by being in some imperfected measure willed and consented to it bringeth forth answerable to its conception which is but an imperfect sort of production an imperfect embryo of sin and this embryo of sin when by a full choice and perfect consent and much more when by action and practice it is finished bringeth forth its proper wages death Jam. 1.14 15. Although these lustings and desires therefore which good men complain of may justly be an imployment of their watchfulness and care yet ought they not to be a cause of their fear or scruple For it shall not bring upon them those evils which they are afraid of nor ever prove their ruine and destruction The evil thing is entertained only in a thought or a wish they lust after it and are tempted by it but that is all for they do not consent to the temptation And since their lusts go no further than thus they shall not harm them when Christ comes to Judgment nor ever bring them into condemnation CHAP. V. Of two other Causes of groundless Scruple to good Souls The CONTENTS A second cause of scruple is their unaffectedness or distraction sometimes in their prayers Attention disturbed often whether we will or no. A particular cause of it in fervent prayers Fervency and affection not depending so much upon the command of our wills as upon the temper of our bodies Fervency is unconstant in them whose temper is fit for it God measures us not by the fixedness of our thoughts or the warmth of our tempers but by the choice of our wills and the obedience of our lives Other qualifications in prayer are sufficient to have our prayers heard when these are wanting Yea those Vertues which make our prayers acceptable are more eminently shown in our obedience so that it would bring down to us the blessings of prayer should it prove in those respects defective A third cause of scruple is the danger of idle or impertinent words mentioned Matth. 12.36 The scruple upon this represented The practical errour of a morose behaviour incurred upon it This discountenanced by the light of Nature and by Christianity The benefits and place of serious Discourse Pleasureable conversation a great Field of Vertue The idle words Matth. 12 not every vain and useless but false slanderous and reproachful words this proved from the place ANother thing which disquiets the hearts of good and honest men and makes them needlesly to call in question the saveableness of their present state and their title to salvation is the coldness and unaffectedness the unsettledness and distractions which they find in themselves when they are at prayers Good people are wont to cry out of desertions to think that God has thrown them off and that his Spirit has forsaken them if at any time they find a great distraction and dulness of Spirit in their devotions and a great abatement of that zeal and fervency that fixedness and attention which they have happily enjoyed at other times But this is a great mistake from mens ignorance of Gods Laws and of their own selves For God has no where told them that he will judge them at the last day by the steadiness and fixedness the tide and fervency of their devotions but by the integrity of their hearts and the uprightness of their obedience The last Sentence shall not pass upon men according to the heat of their affections but according to the goodness of their lives So that if they have been careful to practise all God's Commandments according to their power and opportunities and this of prayer among the rest in such sort as their unavoidable infirmities would suffer them they shall be safe in that Judgment notwithstanding any inequality in their bodily tempers or unconstancy and abatement in their bodily affections To state this business so as that we may neither be unnecessarily scrupulous about these qualifications of our prayers when we cannot nor on the other side irreligiously careless of them when we might enjoy them I shall say something of their necessity when they can be had as well as of that allowance which God will make to them when through any bodily indispositions or unforeseen accidents they cannot If we would put up our prayers to God in such manner as it is fit for us to offer them in or for him to hear them we must make them with a due fixedness and attention of mind and fervency of affection We must offer them up with a due fixedness and attention of mind Our thoughts must go along with our lips and our souls must be intent upon the business which we are about when we are making our prayers to God We must not expect that he should mind those vain words and mere talk which we do not or that he should hear us when we do not hear our selves No it is the work of the Soul and not the bare labour of the lips which he attends to so that if only our Tongues pray but our minds are straying this is as good as no prayer at all We must offer them up also with much earnestness of desire and fervency of affection We must shew that we put a price upon a mercy before we are fit to receive it for otherwise there is no assurance that we shall be duely thankful for it We must not seem cold and indifferent after it for that is a sign that we can almost be as well content without it But we must be eager in our desire and express a fervency of affection after it such as we are wont to use in the pursuit of any thing which we greatly value and this is an inducement for God to give us that which he sees we so dearly love it sets a price upon his blessings and shews the measure of our own vertuous inclinations and therefore he will encourage and reward it The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man says S t James availeth much Jam. 5.16 Thus are a due attention of mind and a fervent heat of desire in devotion such qualifications as are necessary to render our prayers becoming either us to offer or God to hear so that we must always strive and according to our power and present circumstances endeavour after them We must take care as much as we can to compose our thoughts when we pray to draw them off from other things for some time before and still to bring them back again when at any time we find them wandring And we must endeavour also by a due sense of the necessity the greatness and undeservedness of Gods mercies to heighten our affections and make them bend vigorously and eagerly after those things which we pray for that so God seeing we are serious and in earnest with him he may be induced to grant those benefits which we desire of him But then on the other hand if after all our care
utterly unpardonable and hopeless For our Lord himself in this very Chapter encourages their hopes by giving them a promise that some further means should still be used to cure their Infidelity after that they had blasphemed this telling these very men that the sign of his Death and Resurrection with the other evidences of the Holy Ghost which were to ensue upon it should be a further argument to satisfie them in what they inquired after viz. his being the Messiah or the Son of God For when certain of the Pharisees presently upon his finishing this Discourse of their Blaspheming of the Holy Spirit v. 37 made Answer to him saying Master we would see a sign from thee to confirm to us the truth of that pretension he answered as S t Matthew goes on an evil and an Adulterous Generation seeketh a sign and there shall no further sign be given it but only the sign of the Prophet Jonas and that indeed shall For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the Whales Belly and was afterwards deliver'd out of it to go and preach to the Ninevites so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth and after that rise again to preach by his Apostles to you and all the world sending to you for a further evidence still the Holy Ghost v. 38 39 40. So that as for this blasphemy of the spirit wherewith the Pharisees reviled it it was not utterly unpardonable but was still within the possibility of pardon For after they had committed it Christ promised them a further Argument in his Resurrection after the Example of Jonas which should be a new sign added to all that they had already seen to gain them over to faith or belief and thereby to pardon and forgiveness every sin being pardonable to him that believeth And this pardonableness of blaspheming of the spirit our Lord further intimates in that very place by a wary change of the phrase when he comes to speak of the unpardonableness of it calling the unpardonable blasphemy not a blasphemy against the spirit although it was the spirit which was indeed blasphemed v. 24 and whereof he had just made mention v. 28 but a blasphemy against the Holy Ghost which being as S t John says not yet given could not yet be blasphemed v. 31 32. But Thirdly The desperate and unpardonable sin here mentioned which shall never be forgiven neither in this world nor in that which is to come is a sin against the last and greatest evidence of all viz. the gift of tongues of prophecy and of other things called the Holy Ghost In all the other evidence that came before to win men to a belief of Christ's Religion which is the only means of pardon to the World God had still a reserve and resolved upon some further course if they proved ineffectual If the testimony of John Baptist to Christ's being the Lamb of God if the message of an Angel at his conception the Star at his birth and the Quire of Angels at his entrance into the World if the innocency of his life the wisdom of his words and the mightiness of his wonders in commanding the winds and seas in curing diseases in casting out Devils in restoring the weak to strength and the dead to life if all these prove unsuccessful and unable to perswade an Infidel and perverse Generation yet still God resolves to try one means more which before that time the World never saw nor heard of and that is the ample and most full effusion of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles at Pentecost and upon others at the imposition of their hands for a long time after This further evidence shall still be given to subdue the stubbornness of mens unbelief which had proved too hard for all the former When I am departed from you says our Saviour to his Apostles I will send the Holy Ghost who is the Comforter or Advocate unto you And when he is come he shall plead my Cause more convincingly than the operations of the Spirit have done hitherto For he shall reprove and convince the world and those who remained Infidels after they had seen all the evidence of the Spirit of their own sin in not believing on me and of my righteousness and truth in saying I am the Messiah because he shall shew that I am owned above and am gone to my Father whence I have sent him down so plentifully upon you John 16.8 9 10. But when once God had given this proof he had done all that he designed for this is the last remedy which he had decreed to make use of to cure the infidelity of an unbelieving Age. So that if men shall use it as they have done all that went before and if instead of being perswaded by it they shall proceed not only to sleight and despise but what is more to revile and blaspheme it as they have already done with the Spirit then is the irreversible Decree gone out against them and God is unalterably resolved to strive no more with them but to let them dye in their unbelief If they should be won by it indeed and believe upon it be their former offences what they will no less than a blaspheming of the Spirit yet may they justly expect to be pardoned For the offer of Grace is universal Whosoever believes and is baptized shall be saved Mark 16.16 and nothing is impossible to him that believeth Mark 9.23 But when once men have gone so far as to be guilty of it their sin is unpardonable because their Faith is impossible For they have rejected all the evidence which any man can urge for their conviction seeing they have despised all that which God has offered Their infidelity is stronger than can be cured by any Argument that Christ either has or will afford to prevail over it so that they must dye in their sin and there is no hope for them Indeed if God so please there is no question but that after they have once blasphemed it he can still so melt and soften fashion and prepare their minds that afterwards they shall hearken to the incomparable evidence of the Spirit and the Holy Ghost which to any honest mind are irresistible But this sin is of so provoking a nature that when once they are guilty of it he will not He has past an irreversible Decree upon them never more to meddle with them so that they never will be pardoned because as things stand they never will be reclaimed Which is the very reason which the Apostle himself gives of the desperate state of Apostate Christians For by renouncing of that faith which upon the evidence both of the spirit and the Holy Ghost they had been before convinced of they despite says he the Spirit of Grace as it implies both the Spirit and the Holy Ghost too so that as for them it is impossible to renew them again unto
of their offences through the deceitfulness of sin vers 13. And this effect is obvious and ordinary for not only the nature of things but even the just judgement of God concur to it Nothing being more common than for those men who hold the truth as S t Paul sayes in unrighteousness of living and even whil'st they know God do not glorifie him by their service and obedience which are due to him and are our way of glorifying him as God nor are thankfull in their hearts and actions to lose that knowledge and to become vain in their imaginations their foolish heart being darkned by Gods giving them over to a reprobate mind or a mind void of all true judgment to do those things which are not convenient not knowing they are so Rom. 1.18 21 28. But now as for these prejudices which get into our consciences and perswasions not through any force of reason which compells but through the witchcraft of lusts and vices which enveagle and make us willing and desirous to believe them they will not excuse us because they are themselves sinfull and deserve damnation For they enter at an ill door and win upon us through a reigning lust or a damning sin and therefore they are so far from excusing those transgressions which flow from them that in themselves they are instances and effects of a deadly offence and if repentance intervene not will certainly prove desperate and damning S t Paul in breathing out threatnings against all believers and in persecuting of the Church acted only according to the best of his own Judgment and Opinion For he verily thought with himself that he not only might but ought to do several things contrary to the Name of Jesus of Nazareth Acts 26.9 But as this Opinion was his sin so would his transgressions upon it have proved his condemnation had not God shewn pity on him in calling him to repentance and conversion whereby alone it was that he obtained mercy and pardon I was sayes he a persecutor and injurious but I obtained mercy by that Grace of God conferr'd upon me at my conversion which was exceeding abundant with these two fundamental Graces which are a most prolifick spring of all the rest viz. Faith and Love which is in Jesus Christ 1 Tim. 1.13 14. The Jews who blasphemed and crucified our Saviour did nothing against their own conscience for their Opinion bore them out in all that practice in regard they judged it to be no sinfull murther but a most necessary act of Justice upon a great impostor and a most laudable and legal execution I wot Brethren sayes S t Peter that through ignorance ye did it as did not you only but also your rulers Acts 3.14 15 17. But forasmuch as this Ignorance was their own fault and their prejudices were owing to their own vices in regard that for this reason alone their minds would not receive a true belief of Christ and his Laws because they plainly contradicted their sinfull lusts and practices therefore should it by no means excuse them but if their repentance did not prevent it it would most certainly in the end prove deadly and damning For their crucifixion of him he tells them was by wicked hands Acts 2.23 and it was only upon their repentance and conversion that their sins of blasphemy and murder should be blotted out Acts 3.19 Again the transgressions of the Pharisees were justified by their own Opinions for they looked upon themselves notwithstanding them to be holy men and favourites of Heaven But proceeding as we have seen they did from unmortified lusts and a wicked life they rendred them obnoxious to damnation How can you escape the damnation of hell Mat. 23.33 The sins of the Gnosticks notwithstanding they were warranted by their disobedient Principles were of a damnable nature for their heresies and disobedient Principles themselves being the effects of disobedient and wicked hearts deserved damnation and are called by S t Peter in that Chapter where he recounts them and with great zeal inveighs against them damnable heresies 2 Pet. 2.1 They are works of the flesh or the products of unmortified lusts and carnal practices and must therefore share in the same judgment with other fleshâ—â— works amongst whom they are reckon'd The works of the flesh sayes S t Paul are manifest seditions heresies envyings murders drunkenness of the which I tell you that they which do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God Gal. 5.19 20 21. If we will transgress our Duty by disbelieving it first and giving credit to such Opinions as destroy the obligation of it our disbelief of our Duty will by no means excuse our sin or rescue us from condemnation For to disbelieve the Laws and threatnings of Christ is the very worst part of unbelief and the most hatefull and deadly instance of infidelity And as for unbelievers sayes S t John or those men who will not believe Religion or the best part of it Laws and Duties but seek to evade its force after that God has plainly told them of it they shall have their part in the Lake which burns with fire and brimstone Rev. 21.8 Men without understanding who will not see their Duty because they are blinded by such lusts as fight against it in the judgment of God are worthy of death Rom. 1.31 32. The reason why their consciences adhere to such Opinions as utterly destroy their Duty is only because their lusts and vices have made them hate and turn away from it And as for every such prejudice against a Duty as proceeds from our aversation to it it is of a great guilt and liable to a very severe punishment For in this S t Paul is peremptory All they shall be damned who believe a lye and believe not the truth through the pleasure which they take in unrighteousness They shall perish because they receive not the LOVE of the Truth that they may be saved by it 2 Thess. 2.10 11 12. When our disobedient prejudices therefore enter upon this score and are begot in us through a wicked heart and through some reigning lusts and vices which are served by them but not by any weakness of understanding or such fallibility of means as may betray even an honest heart into them they are subject to a sad doom and a severe censure they will by no means plead our excuse but are an Article of our condemnation And as for some marks whereby to judge whether our disobedient prejudices proceed from this deadly Principle our unmortified lusts and vices and thereupon are of this dangerous and damning nature or no we may observe these Characters and judge according to these measures First If that Lust or Sin whereto our prejudice is subservient be strong and powerfull if it reign in us and in the ordinary course and custome of our lives gives laws to us the corruption and disobedience of our heart is plainly the cause of