new and holy Life and be available to his true Conversion and Repentance and I believe this is Gods usual way by which he begins to effect this upon most Sinners by thus bringing them to some serious thinking and considering It is very great Mercy when God thus checks them in their career and calls to them by the loud voice of his Judgments and thus as he generally does puts the first stop to them and makes them bethink themselves and consider but then this method must not only awaken but keep their eyes open and make them see and consider those other Thoughts and Reasons which are the more proper seminal Principles that will be more likely to produce and beget this true Repentance Such as are 2. In the second place a serious reflection and thorough conviction of the Evil that is in Sin and of the real Good of Vertue as the only thing which can make us truly happy for till Men have brought themselves to be fully perswaded and convinced of this and to believe it as firmly as they do any truth in Mathematicks or any other Science they will never be brought truly to Repent that is to dislike and hate and renounce the one and heartily to love and persue and embrace the other for Men will still love their Sins and hanker after them and be ready to comply and close with them upon every occasion if they only fall out with them sometimes as Lovers do with what they like and admire and tho' there may be some bickerings between them and some penitential passions and resentments now and then yet they may still have their Heart if they do not upon wise observations and thorough convictions believe them to be enemies to their Welfare and Happiness to the comfort of their Lives here and their Eternal Salvation hereafter and that they get nothing by them but poor and empty and sickly pleasures but that they bring substantial misery and bitter remorse and anguish of Mind and a thousand mischiefs and inconveniences along with them at present besides the terrible hazards and dangers of another World so that they are by no means to be loved or chosen if we love our selves or choose our own Happiness For we must bring it to this if we would be steddy and certain to the first Principles of Self-preservation and a desire of our own Happiness which lyes at the root of our Nature and what we shall alwayes act upon if we rightly understand it and do not grosly err and mistake about it and a few wise observations and a little sober thinking and considering will easily satisfie us and fully convince us that Vice is the certain cause of misery to us and that Vertue is the only way to be truly easie and happy The Sinner will be convinced of this by his own experience when he reflects upon his past follies and sees how little he has got by his Sins but shame and sorrow and trouble of Mind perhaps a sickly and diseased Body and a wasted Estate and wretched Beggery and every thing that shall make him miserable in this World before he goes to the greater misery of another For do we not dayly see this how one Man brings himself by his Sins to a morsel of bread how he shipwrecks his Fortunes as well as his Conscience by Luxury and Prodigality another consumes his Body as well as his Estate by Debauchery Lust and Intemperance by these they sin as the Apostle remarks against their own Bodies as well as against their Souls they make them bear the scars and marks of their Sins upon them and become Martyrs in the Devils service and endure often more torture of Body for their Sins than other Martyrs have done for their Religion sacrifice their Lives to them and by living too fast as they call it bring an untimely death upon themselves and are in so much hast sometimes to dye that their Bodies often rot before they come into their graves If these mischiefs do not follow all Sins yet some others do and the greatest of all is inseparable from them which is torment and anguish of Conscience and pain and uneasiness of Mind which every Man feels unless his Conscience be stupified and mortified which is a worse state than the other upon the commission of any great Sin and this is ten times greater than any fancied pleasure in it This is a sting a wound a prick upon the most tender part of a Mans Soul a dart struck through his Liver a Worm gnawing upon his Vitals nothing is so close and so cutting a pain and misery as a Man 's own ill Conscience when it is let loose upon him and like a Fury falls upon him with its utmost rage lashes him with its snaky whips and burns him with its fiery torches 't is then a Devil let loose and a Hell kindled within his own bosom They who have felt but a little of it know it is more exquisite pain than any belongs to the Body and what is it then to endure this for ever and lye under that and the further anger of God to all Eternity Oh madness and folly that wants a name that will do this for any Sin whatever Oh the dreadful Evil of Sin that brings all this and so many other mischiefs upon us But 3. Vertue on the contrary has a thousand Comforts Blessings and Goods belonging to it which should make us love it as we do our selves and choose it as heartily and firmly as we do our own Happiness When we rightly understand and consider it we shall find Reason to do so that neither disturbs our Mind nor diseases our Body nor squanders away our Estate nor brings any reproach and discredit along with it as Vice generally does and it takes away no real Good or true Pleasure or proper Enjoyment from us but it allowes us all that we can desire or that our Nature was made for within the due bounds and limits of our Duty and within those we may enjoy as much Vertuously and Innocently as the greatest Liberty and Debauchery can afford the Sinner Vertue does not destroy our Pleasures but refines and purifies them and so makes them sweeter and better and draws them off from the filthiness and sediment and bitterness that lyes alwayes at the bottom of all sinful Pleasures and Enjoyments No Man ever repented of his Vertues or was sorry that he had done a good Action but he finds great comfort and satisfaction within himself when he reflects upon it and it is a prop and stay to his Mind and he rests securely upon it and is chearful confident and erect under all accidents and all dangers and difficulties whatsoever His Heart standeth right and approveth it self to God and to his own thoughts having no ill designs no base and mean ends and purposes but such only as are good and vertuous and this gives him great peace firmness of Mind and bravery of Spirit and
nor no excuse to make for himself who has neglected and despised all the means of Grace that were offered to him and who would not be perswaded to any true Repentance before it was too late and therefore he must now Repent in vain for ever Who can express the bitter thoughts the fears the horrours the agonies of such a Soul at that time and who would ever feel them who has now power and opportunity to avoid them Death carries something of terrour in it to all Men as it is a punishment of Sin and a dark passage to the unknown Regions that are below and it may be either great presumption or great stupidity to have no Fear of it A good Man may not overcome all the Natural Fear of Death but the wicked has all reason to be scared and terrified with it when it comes near him or he thinks of it I shall therefore in the last place consider the Terrour of Death and how we are only freed from this by Repentance and Religion by the hopes and assurances of Christianity and our having sincerely Repented of all our Sins and so as I have shown fitted and prepared our selves thereby for Death SECT VII Of the Fear of Death and how we are delivered from it by Repentance and Religion THere is no Natural Evil so great as Death the King of Terrors and the chief of those dreadful things that Humane Nature is afraid of Skin for skin and all that a man hath will he give for his life Job 2.4 He is willing to part with every thing that he may compound with it nay what will not he not give to purchase a short reprieve from Death and the Grave that he may but set them back a while and gain a little more time to live How is the poor Man willing to endure any thing to linger out a miserable Life a little longer though in the midst of pains and aches and greater torments of Body perhaps then he would feel in Death it self How patiently will he submit to the most tedious penance and severest discipline that his Physician shall lay upon him and swallow down the most loathsome and bitter draughts that the more bitter cup of Death may pass from him How will he endure the utmost cruelties of Surgery and bear a living Martyrdom rather than dye have his Body burnt and scarified his Flesh cut and mangled to the Bone his Limbs cut off or sawn asunder that so he may dye by piece-meals and out-live some part of himself and escape out of the hands of Death though it be never so narrowly and run away from it though he leave a Leg or an Arm behind him This shows how Natural the love of Life is and how willing most Men are to preserve and purchase it at any rate and with what abhorrence they look at Death and how it frights and startles them when it comes near them when they behold its pale look and its terrible visage and see the ghastly monster laying hands on them and ready to lay them prostrate at its feet how does it then appalle and terrifie them and make their Blood chill and their Spirits cold and clammy and their Hearts dye within them when they think how their once brisk and sprightly bodies that have been long enjoying all the sweet Pleasures of Life and Sense shall in a moments time be deprived of all those and become only a heavy clod and a cold and senseless lump of Flesh laid out upon its once warm Bed and then lock'd up in its little Cabin and so laid in the proper place of Rottenness and Putrefaction where it is to molder into Dust and to be as clean forgotten in a little time as if it had never been This is a very mortifying and a very melancholly Consideration to most Men and when they consider that in a little time this must certainly be their own case and their own fatal condition this must keep them in perpetual fear and bondage if there were no provision against this Natural Fear of Death if Religion did not afford us some helps and assistances against it and there were not something to take off and abate its Natural Terrour and to support and strengthen and encourage the Mind of a good Man against it Death as it is the Punishment of Sin and was for that end ordained by God and brought into the World for by sin entered death as the Apostle sayes Rom. 1.12 carries some marks of his Anger and so must necessarily have some degree of Fear accompany it but Christ who was to deliver Mankind from the greatest Punishments which our first Parents drew upon themselves and their Posterity by their Transgressions and was to free us from the saddest effects of theirs and our own Sins he has tho' not quite taken away this Punishment no more than he has the other temporal ones occasioned by the Fall for we must still dye and still have some fear of Death yet the worst effects of Death and for which it was most to be dreaded those Christ has delivered us from and it was one great reason why he became a Man and why he took part of the same flesh and blood of which we are partakers and which makes us subject to Death That through death he might destroy him that had the power of death that is the Devil and deliver them who through fear of death were all their life time subject to bondage as the divine Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews assures us Heb. 2.15 Now the wayes by which Christ and Christianity do this are chiefly these two I. By assuring us of another Life II. By taking away the sting of Death which is Sin upon our true Repentance I shall 1. Show this Then 2. Enquire whether a true Penitent and good Man ought to have no Fear of Death 3. Give some Directions about thus overcoming the Fear of Death that so we may not be too much terrified with it when it approaches I. Christ and Christianity free us from the Fears of Death by assuring us of another Life and of a Glorious Immortality after Death Death would be very terrible indeed if it took away our Being and made an end of us when it came and put us into a state of Annihilation If the Grave were to swallow us up and we were to pass into the dark abyss of Non-Entity when we went out of the World If when we expired our last Breath our Souls were to pass with it into the soft Air and we were to be no more after we went off the stage of this World Nothing can be so close so desirable as our being which is the foundation of all Happiness and Enjoyment to us which some have thought so considerable that they have supposed it more eligible to be miserable than not to be at all though I can by no means be of their mind and think being only in order to be miserable to
offer 4. Then Such a Repentance as the Gospel makes the condition of Pardon and Salvation is nothing less than a constant Obedience and an entire and universal Goodness of Life at least after a wicked one or after great failures and miscarriages for Repentance as I have often said is to the Soul like a recovery of Health to the Body after some great Sickness or Illness The whole Body or the part ill affected must be made perfectly well and restored to its former strength and soundness or else it cannot be said to be recovered The Disease must be throughly got off the sickly matter must be discharged the illness must be cured and removed and the Patient must get his former strength and be able to perform the proper and vital operations or else we cannot say he is well So a Sinner must wholly get rid of his past Sins must purge them all out by Sorrow and Contrition must have his Mind wholly freed from them and himself brought to such a Spiritual strength and soundness as to perform the Duties and Operations of the new Life or else he is not recovered by Repentance nor brought from a bad state to a good one He may be under a method of Cure indeed as a sick Man is under a course of Physick whilst he is under Sorrow for Sin and Contrition and Compunction and the like which are good means and instruments and beginnings of Repentance and so are mistaken for the thing it self but his Repentance is not finish'd nor is the great work perfect and compleat till from a bad Man in any kind he is become a good one till this is done which God knows is not the most easie nor the most speedy thing in the World but requires long time and great care and pains and labour there is no title that I know of to Pardon by the Terms of the Gospel nor is there any true Gospel Repentance such as we can give any warrant or assurance of remission to by the Covenant of Grace or the known and ordinary Rules of Gods Mercy Were Repentance only a sudden Passion or a transient Act of the Mind were it only an inward Sorrow Trouble and Compunction of Heart it might be quickly performed and no Sinner would be without it but Cain and Herod and Judas might be said to Repent thus far and after this fashion for thus the one repented and said I have sinned Mat. 27.3 4. the second was exceeding sorry for what he had done Matth. 6.26 and the other was so sensible of his Sin that he cryed out My punishment is greater than I can bear Gen. 4.13 But true Repentance is only known and made to be so by an habitual and lasting change both of Mind and Life by an actual amendment and reformation by a turning away from all our evil deeds and all our wickedness whatsoever that we have committed and doing that which is lawful and right which is the clearest and fullest Scripture expression that gives us the true Nature of Repentance which includes constant and actual Obedience and destroyes these foolish and wicked reserves of securing our selves by playing an after-game of Repentance They who design this have no sense of the true worth and excellency of Religion but are only for making use of it for a little turn at the last as Goal-birds learn to read meerly for the sake of their Neck-verse for though they like their Sins much better and would alwayes live in them it is plain if they were left to their choice yet they at last unwillingly bring themselves to part with them as Men throw over their Goods in a Storm for fear they should be lost and Shipwreck'd with them Thus miserably do they mistake and misunderstand the true Nature of Repentance which is a perfect changing the Habit and Temper and Frame of a Mans Mind and bringing other Thoughts and Principles and Inclinations into it which is called in Scripture a new Heart and a new Spirit and this producing an entire and permanent and universal change of the Life and Actions and making a Man become better in every particular and in the whole a very good Man 5. It is observable that Repentance is all along in the Gospel made a Duty previous and antecedent to Christianity and what was supposed to go before Baptism and what was necessary before-hand to fit and prepare Men to become Christians thus they were to repent and be baptized Acts 2.38 John the Baptist who was to prepare the way for Christianity did it by preaching Repentance for this reason Because the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand Matth. 3.2 i. e. Christianity or the state of the Gospel which is agreed by all to be there meant by the kingdom of Heaven was now approaching and our Blessed Saviour upon that Principle and Argument preach'd the same Duty ver 17. From that time he began to preach and to say Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand And the Disciples of Christ preach'd this Duty Mark 6.12 when they were to prepare and dispose Men to receive Christ and to embrace Christianity and when any that were adult were received into the Church and Christianity by Baptism they were supposed to be Penitents before they were Christians It was a Duty and a Condition alwayes implyed and required that they Repented of their past Sins and sincerely promised and resolved upon a new course of Life That they who had their conversation in times past in the lusts of the flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by Nature the children of wrath as the Apostle speaks Eph. 2.3 i. e. in the state they were in before they were Christians for the Gospel considers all Mankind as in a state of Sin and Guilt before they are admitted into Christianity which is a state of Pardon and Salvation that these when they were made Christians were to put off the old man with his deeds Col. 3.9 i. e. all the old Habits and Acts of Sin which they were guilty of in their unchristian state and were to put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness Eph. 4.24 and they were to become new creatures in Christ Jesus and were therefore then said to be regenerated and to be born again and are represented in Scripture as dying unto all sin in Baptism that they should not henceforth live any longer therein Rom. 6.2 They are buried with Christ by baptism into his death that like as Christ was raised from the dead even so we also who are baptized into his death should walk in newness of life ver 3. So that after Baptism we should reckon our selves to be dead unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ ver 11. So that the body of sin is then to be put off and destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin ver 6. Thus though Men were considered as Sinners before their Baptism
he goes to a Glorious and Blessed Immortality and this will take away if not all Fear of Death yet such a troublesome and tormenting one as fills us with perplexity and confusion whenever we think of it and makes us all our life time subject to bondage as Scripture speaks And this will help to resolve that Question I proposed in the second place namely 2. Whether a true Penitent or good Christian ought to have no Fear of Death I Answer He ought to have no such Fear as makes him all his life time subject to bondage such a base slavish immoderate Fear as makes him not enjoy himself but sinks down his Spirit and depresses his Mind to that degree that he is alwayes uneasie and perplexed and disturbed at the thoughts of it Such as has been storied of some that they would not have the word Death named in their hearing for the very naming and thinking of it made such an impression upon them and struck them with such a panick Fear that like the Hand-writing upon the Wall to Belshazzar Dan. 5.6 in the midst of their jollity it would make their countenance change and their thoughts trouble them so that the joynts of their loins were loosed and their knees smote one against another But above all such a Fear of Death as makes a Man think it a greater Evil than Sin and so to avoid that will deny his Saviour and renounce his Religion or do any thing whatever is necessary to escape a present Fear of Death This makes him a slave to every one that has power to kill him and to save his Life he will deliver up his Conscience his Soul his Saviour his Religion and all those things which ought to be a thousand times more dear to us and which we should be much more unwilling to part with than our lives These are unreasonable and unlawful Fears of Death but there is still a Natural Fear of Death which may belong to a penitent good Christian and which it is not necessary he should wholly overcome as it is a Natural Evil as it is a Punishment of Sin as it is a going to our last great and terrible Tryal before the Bar of Heaven a Tryal upon which our Souls and their Eternal Fate of Happiness or Damnation does depend This may cause some Fear in a true Penitent or a very good Christian and I do not know that God has any where forbid it or that he has promised such a full assurance to every true Penitent and good Man as wholly to take away all kind of Fear of Death or that this is any want of saving Faith in him In some extraordinary cases God may give it as in cases of Suffering and Persecution when an extraordinary assistance of Gods Spirit and an extraordinary assurance of their Salvation took away all Fears of Death and made them go to the Flames and to the Gibbet rejoycing and triumphing but that this is ordinary and constant I see no Reason nor no Scripture to believe The Fear of Death is a Natural and Invincible Infirmity to many a true Penitent and good and humble and timorous Christian who though his Conscience accuse him not of any great and ill things yet may magnifie every little fault and imperfection and not forgive it himself tho' God does nor be at peace in his own Mind though he be with God 'T is a great perfection to conquer the Fears of Death if it be done upon good grounds for some have no Fear of Death out of a sensless stupidness because they have no sense of what follows after Death And we find the greatest part of Men who have most reason to be afraid of it to be the least so out of meer Natural courage and hardiness and for want of thinking or believing or considering the things of Religion and another World others from false Principles and Mistakes by thinking a Pardon or Absolution sets them right in the Court of Heaven and that they may boldly appear there with some such security or those that have low thoughts of Religion and think a little Sorrow for their Sins and a few Sighs and some Prayers when they come to dye will carry them to Heaven as well as if they had lived never so Holily and Righteously and Godly Now if Mens Confidence and Fearlesness arises from such Mistakes as these 't is like the hope of the Hypocrite that shall perish Job 8.13 and such presumptuous persons only rush into Hell with their eyes shut and see not their danger before they are in it On the contrary a modest and humble penitent Christian may be afraid where no Fear is may judge too hardly of himself and may be though quite out of danger yet not out of all Fear for after all God will not judge us by our own Fears or Hopes or Opinion of our selves which may be all groundless and mistaken but he will judge Righteous Judgment and correct the Errors by which we may pass Judgment of our selves and the Terms of the Gospel and not our own Thoughts shall be the Rule by which we shall be judged at the last day But to take off the Fear of Death as much as we can and to free our selves from a slavish and immoderate degree of it the best Directions that can be are these two 1. What hath been already given duly to prepare and fit our selves for it by a timely and thorough Repentance 2. To joyn the liveliest Act of Faith with this our Habitual Repentance and exert that at the time when Death is near us 1. To perfect our Repentance and so to live in the habit of that and of all goodness that we may be the best prepared to dye that we can be Dye we know we must Death if it be not now near us and yet we do not know but it may be dogging us at the heels yet will certainly in a little time come up to us and fright and startle us when it does if we do not take great care to be ready and prepared for it Since we must therefore necessarily encounter this great Monster this terrible Enemy which there is no escaping but we must certainly grapple with him let us all our lives prepare for the battle let us arm our selves with the whole armour of God and Religion with a careful and pious and good life with a timely and thorough Repentance of all our evil ways with a sincere and upright and good Conscience and with avoiding every thing that we know is sinful and unlawful and which will make Death terrible to us whenever it comes Let us not be such desperate Bravoes in Sin as to venture upon that with a false Courage which will make us the worst of Cowards when we come to dye but let us be so wisely afraid of Death now as to live with that care and exactness that we may not be afraid of it when we come to it It were well
Restitution for it even before he was apprehended and before the thoughts and terrours of Death frighted him into it and herein may lye a mighty difference for if a Man upon the reflection of his Sin and a wicked Life and the serious consideration of the great danger he is in thereby shall by the Grace of God setting these things home upon his Mind strongly fixing and exciting these thoughts in him shall be brought to good purposes and resolutions of becoming better and do strengthen and make good these by his Actions and thus begins to be good and ceases to be wicked not from a sudden fright and fear of Death but from the Convictions of Religion from the free and full perswasion of his own mind which is like to remain and continue with him this puts him into a much better State and Condition and is more truely Repentance than that which arises in Men when they come to dye when they have a force put upon them which almost takes away the true freedom and liberty of their Wills and therefore what they do then is owing wholly to that and ceases generally when that is removed As to the Thief we know not what his case was and therefore 't is meer conjecture to suppose he did not Repent till he came to dye and 't is the most groundless thing i' the World to apply his Case to that of a wicked Man who repents not till he finds he must quickly dye when so far as we know his was perfectly different that he was neither a very wicked Man in the general Course of his Life and as for that single Act of Wickedness which is recorded of him that he might repent of it as soon as he committed it and that might be many years before he suffered for it We have no certain knowledge of any of these things and therefore we can make no certain judgment by it much less raise a Doctrine from it which supposes those two things which so far as we know may be both false and then who would venture his Soul upon such a mere uncertainty as that another Man whom he knows very little of did not repent till he came to dye and lived very ill all the while before neither of which may be true but if they were yet 3. How can he tell but this may be an extraordinary Case and such as no way belongs to him nor to any other Sinner whatsoever What if Christ to show the wonderful and miraculous Power of his Cross towards the Salvation of Sinners was pleased to give an uncommon and extraordinary instance of it at that time such as no other Sinner should ever expect the like unless Christ should again come down and dye upon the Cross with him What if God who will have Mercy on whom he will have Mercy was pleased to let this penitent Thief be a singular Example of his unlimited Power and Prerogative to save beyond all ordinary Rules because of his dying at that time with Christ This does no more make it to be a standing and certain measure of his dealing with others than a Princes showing some extraordinary Act of Mercy to a few Persons when he comes first to his Crown and releasing all Prisoners at his Inauguration declares that this shall be the constant Rule of his Government or that his Subjects shall have reason to expect this at other times from him Thus the Case might be extraordinary as to God but I rather lay it as such upon the account of the Person himself for 't is certain he was an extraordinary Person who had the honour not only to dye with Christ and to bear him company upon the Cross but to confess and own him there in the face of all his enemies who were then flouting and reviling him when this good Man was owning him to be the Messiah calling him Lord and praying him to remember him when he came into his Kingdom So that he declared the most illustrious Act of Faith in him that could be greater than his own Disciples then had for they did not so clearly believe and understand his Kingdom not to be of this World and they all forsook him and fled when this Man alone bore witness to him before the scoffing Jews and all his barbarous Crucifiers which was being a Martyr to him though not for him a confessing him in his Death though not by it And he that did thus confess Christ before men and was not ashamed to do it when he was in his lowest and most contemptible state and who probably was for this treated with more insulting mockery if not worser usage by Christ and his own Crucifiers is it any wonder that Christ according to his Promise Matth. 10.32 should confess such an one before his Father in Heaven And that he who suffered with him and so eminently believed in him should reign with him and be saved and received into his Kingdom Can a wicked and careless Sinner who has denyed Christ by his Life who has affronted disobeyed and contemned him who in the language of Scripture has crucified to himself the Son of God afresh and put him to an open shame Heb. 6.6 by Apostatizing from his Baptism and by an unchristian Life can such an one expect to have the same treatment and usage from our Saviour for a few dying Sorrows and empty Vows and little Remorses as this Famous Convert this Great Confessor this Eminent Martyr this Apostle of Christ as I may call him who preached him upon the Cross before his greatest enemies and sealed his Illustrious Faith in him with his dying words and his last breath No surely the case must be very different between him and an ordinary and profligate Sinner a wicked and vile Christian I do not think any far fetched Notion necessary to salve this matter of the Thieves Salvation by supposing him with a late Author to have the benefit of Baptism the Baptismus Sanguinis and then that Baptism will save a Man without Obedience and a good Life For I deny that Baptism has any such Grace or Benefit as without those to save a wicked Man tho' he should be Baptized in articulo Mortis when he was just a dying For if a newly Baptized Person be not actually a good Man in such a degree as God will accept by the Terms of the Gospel his Baptism shall not save him though it puts him into a state of Salvation if he be so but not otherwise as is plain by Simon Magus for the conditions of Salvation are not specifically different before Baptism and after but only gradually If they were a Man would defer his Baptism till near his Death as some did of old upon this mistaken Notion of such a Baptismal Grace as saves a Man by an outward without an inward Regeneration and real Holiness the actual proof and signs of which the Primitive Church required in the Adult before they admitted them to
out the fierceness of his anger upon them and they drink of the cup of his fury and feel his wrath and indignation many a sinner has done this and cryed out in the Anguish of his Soul Thy wrath lyeth hard upon me Psal 88.7 Thy fierce wrath goeth over me thy terrors have cut me off ver 16. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me and horror hath overwhelmed me Psal 55.5 Thine arrows stick fast in me and thy hand presseth me sore Psal 38.2 Who knoweth the power of thine anger even according to thy fear so is thy wrath Psal 90.11 For we are consumed by thine anger and by thy wrath are we troubled ver 7. God who is a Spirit as he can convey secret and unspeakable comfort into our Souls so he can impress intolerable and unspeakable horrors upon them and who is able to bear the weight of his Anger or endure the sense of his Wrath and Indignation In his Pleasure and Favour is Life and in his Anger is a double Death to the Soul The inward Sensation and Perception of Gods Love is the ohiefest joy and happyness to a Soul either in this World or the other and the Sense and Perception of his Anger is the greatest Misery God the fountain of all Happiness doth diffuse and communicate such a Peace Joy Comfort to good Souls such an inward Taste and Relish of Spiritual Pleasure and Delight as is unspeakable past understanding called joy in the holy Ghost and is no doubt the sweetest and most affecting pleasure a Soul is capable of this the Angels and blessed Spirits above enjoy and are transported with the most ravishing Sense and Rapturous Impressions of it and 't is what makes Heaven to them and a little foretaste of it when God lifts up the light of his countenance upon us when a pious Soul tasts and sees how good and gracious God is this puts more gladness in the heart than Corn and wine and oyl and all worldly enjoyments now on the contrary when God hides his face and withdraws his loving-kindness and imprints a strong sense of his Wrath and Anger upon the Mind this is the utmost and the deepest Misery this gives the bitterest sense of Evil fills it with the greatest horrors sinks it into the deepest gulph the bottomless Pit of Misery and is the very Punishment and Hell of the damned How happy is it then to be Reconciled to God by Repentance whom we had angred and provoked by our sins before we feel any of this and before his Wrath and Anger is poured out upon us it will certainly fall upon every Sinner some time or other unless he Repents for God though he defers his Anger for some time that his Goodness and long-suffering may lead us to Repentance yet his abused Love Patience and Mercy will turn to greater Wrath and Fury if we persist in our sins and in a course of impenitency As 't is a very terrible thing to have the great God our Enemy and he certainly is so whilst we are in a state of Sin so 't is the comfortablest thought in the World and what will alone make us happy to be Assured that he is our Friend and that we are in a State of Favour with him upon our Repentance THE CONCLVSION To Conclude As all general Christian Duties are meant by Repentance so all general Christian-Priviledges and Benefits belong to it and are the Rewards of it for as Repentance is the same thing in Scripture with Conversion Regeneration the New Birth the New Creature the New Man and the like those different words and figurative expressions denoting only the same duty importing the great Change and Alteration made upon the Mind and Life of a Sinner by the power of Grace and Religion So all the benefits and priviledges of Christianity such as Election Adoption Pardon Justification at present and Glorification afterwards which are free and gratuitous acts in God granting and bestowing those Favours upon us for Christs sake upon our being duely qualified and fitted to receive them These all belong to those who have truly Repented and become good Men and to none else For God hath only Chosen Adopted Pardoned Justified and will Glorifie such and no other and till we have Repented we have no good claim or title to any of those Our being in a good State towards God which is the thing meant by all those Phrases under some different considerations is on our side wholly owing to our true Repentance and Obedience and it is all lost and forfeited by our Impenitency and Disobedience which on the contrary make us the Children of Wrath the Children of the Devil and Heirs of Damnation put us into the worst Spiritual State of Reprobation Obduration and Excecation according to the degrees of our Sins and Impenitence and into that of Condemnation it self which is the word that directly answers to that of Justification All those Scriptural Phrases and Expressions of a good State belong to Repentance and to the true Christian Penitent and all those which signifie a bad one belong as truly to Wickedness and Impenitence for though without the Free-Grace and Mercy of God in and thorough Christ we could not be put into any such good State nor have a title to any such Priviledges meerly by vertue of our Repentance or any thing we could do yet to suppose that God will put us into those states without any regard to our own Actions or not upon the account of them is to destroy all Religion all Divine Government all Future Judgment and all Rewards and Punishments in another World I might clear and illustrate and enlarge upon these had not this Discourse already swelled upon my hands into too great a bulk and did they not run into something of Controversie which I would carefully avoid I shall therefore only give this last Advice to the Penitent who hath brought himself by the Grace of God into this Good and Happy State that when he is thus got out of the Paths of Death and of Sin into those of Life and Vertue that he would go on and proceed in the new and right way he is in and make a speedy and further progress in all Piety and Goodness that like St. Paul forgetting those things which are behind and reaching unto those which are before he may follow and apprehend them and so press forward towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus Phil. 3.13 14. that now he is become a Christian in good earnest he would more zealously promote that Religion which he opposed and was an enemy to before and show he is a true Convert by his zeal and earnestness against Vice and Irreligion that he would make all amends he can for his past miscarriages by doing the greatest good he is able by serving God and his Glory more heartily and thus loving much because much is forgiven him so that where sin abounded grace
A Practical Discourse OF Repentance Rectifying the Mistakes about it especially such as lead either to Despair or Presumption Perswading and Directing to the True Practice of it AND Demonstrating the Invalidity OF A Death-Bed Repentance By WILLIAM PAYNE D. D. Rector of St. Mary White-Chappel and Chaplain in Ordinary to Their Majesties LONDON Printed for Samuel Smith at the Princes Arms in St. Pauls Church-Yard 1693. THE PREFACE To His Loving Friends and Parishioners the Inhabitants of St. Mary White-Chappel IT was for your sakes and for your use chiefly I composed this Discourse and now offer it to your serious thoughts and most lasting consideration that it may teach you the Right Knowledge and perswade you to the True Practice of that Great Duty it treats of I have endeavoured to set it in such a Light as might remove the unreasonable Fears and Despairs of some Few and the Presumptuous and false hopes of the far greater number of Sinners I hope if you carefully peruse it with due thoughtfulness and application of mind it may give you both a Right notion and understanding of it so as to free you from all dangerous and mischievous Mistakes about it and that it will convey so much Warmth as well as Light to your thoughts as may by the Grace of God very much help to quicken and excite you to a speedy and thorough Repentance and to a Holy and Good life As it will in some measure give you clear thoughts of Religion in all the parts of it which some who have a strong sence yet have dark and confused apprehensions about and will enable you to make a right Judgment of your selves and spiritual state by evident and obvious and certain marks so I dare say that no Man who takes the whole force of it into his mind and duly considers and seriously attends to all the thoughts that it will suggest to him will ever live in his sins or continue to be a wicked Man One of the great Reasons that makes Men so even beyond Atheism and Infidelity it self for they being contrary to the natural sense of our minds prevaile not upon so many as Superstition False and corrupt Religion is the perverting Christianity and corrupting the Gospel by Doctrines of Looseness and Licentiousness that give false hopes of Pardon and Salvation without Obedience and a good life and by some imaginary Schemes and some comfortable but erroneous and even damnable Doctrines reconcile Religion to Mens Lusts and the hopes of pardon and happiness to a careless and wicked life How this is done in the Church of Rome by their doctrines of Penance Confession and Absolution Contrition and Attrition and the like has been shown and made out by the Protestant Writers against them and indeed I take those Principles to be the very Rotten Core of Popery the Poyson and Philter by which it bewitches so many wretched Souls into its Communion and the Antichristian cup of Fornication that it gives the Kings and People of the Earth to drink The Loose Notions of Repentance which came at first from them but have been taken up by many others since put me upon this Design of Examining and Rectifying them for I am perswaded there never was any Error or any Delusion of the Devil which hath destroyed more Souls then the fatal mistakes about this Duty especially about a Dying Repentanc which has been the wretched Reserve of most wicked Men all their lives and the broken Reed they have trusted to at their deaths whereby they have been encouraged in their Sins and had a kind of Protection as they thought against all the dangers of them by this priviledge of Repenting at the last and by having that allowed to be valid and sufficient by the terms of the Gospel By this they have all along had the reserved hopes of saving their Souls however wickedly they lived and so have excused themselves from and shifted off the necessity of a Good life by this more easie and compendious way which though it were liable to some more accidental hazards yet might as effectually do the Business by the standing principles of Religion and by having as was supposed an ordinary Title to Pardon and Salvation This hath greatly comforted Sinners and greatly encouraged them in their sins when as s commonly said of a great many they might hope though they lived very ill yet to dye well and make a good end and by being penitent at the last like the Thief upon the Cross to be surely pardon'd and go to heaven and so this Comfortable Disjunctive has been set up or twofold way of going to Heaven either by living well and being good Men before we come to dye or else by Repenting and being sorry at that time that we were not so The Consequences to Religion and a good life are so plain and fatal from hence and I have known so many sad Instances of its dreadful mischief in my frequent attending the Sick whereby my experience in this case if not my skill has made me a good Phisician that I thought I could not do more service to God and Religion and the Souls of Men then to reseue them from such false Notions and pernicious mistakes about a matter of so great consequence and do all I could effectually to perswade them to the Practice of such a true Repentance as is not to be Repented of The serving such an excellent Design makes me venture this Discourse into the World without being concerned for the many Defects and Imperfections in the Style Phrase and Words which a nice Critick may find in it but I am sure the pious and well-disposed Reader will excuse and overloook those when he is affected with the thought and matter which is of so great moment and importance and when he is satisfied with the vertue and wholsomness of the Phisick he will not I hope be so delicate as to find fault with its being either too much or too little gilded I confess some part of it hath layn by me many Years even beyond Horace's ninth and hath many youthful strokes in it to show it was drawn before the rest and to excuse its Dress and Colours but the thought and Notion is all of a piece and I have had it so long and consideered it so fully that if any shall differ from me after reading it thorough for the strength of it lies in the Frame and Contexture of the whole and not in any single part I should very much wonder and be glad to know his Reasons I have chosen sometimes to repeat the same Notion as there was occasion rather then to refer the Reader back again to another place where there would not be such an immediate connexion with what he was just reading so that he would lose the sight of what went before with looking after it and would not see the thing so well in one view I have often thought that we wanted a Just and entire Discourse
of Repentance and all that relates to it and have wondered that among all our Excellent Practical Treatises we should hardly have one such sitted for common use among other Reasons of which I believe this may not be the least That 't is one of the most difficult things to write on an easie Subject as t is the hardest to paint Light When I drew the Model of this and had some of the Materials lying by me and ready framed I thought the perfecting and finishing it would not have cost me half the charge and pains and expence that I found it has and most Writers I believe like Builders find this and even afterwards when they have done they see many things they could mend and alter though they care not for being at the cost of pulling down again and building up anew It was only the Strength and Vsefulness and Conveniency I had regard to and it may have those tho' like a House built by parts and not altogether it want all that regular Order and Beauty that should set it off It is to be looked on only as a Popular Discourse to teach an useful Truth in Religion and raise the Affections and Imaginations up to it without that care and exactness that is to be served in closer Writings It will fully answer its end if it can but corvey a cleare and lively an understanding and warm sence of Religion into Mens Minds and free their Thoughts from such Mistakes and their Lives from such Sins as are too prevailing in the World and which like the Sea and its Rivers proceed from and maintain and run into one another For Men's Lusts and Pices make them willing to take up with false and loose Principles in Religion and those Principles feed and promote their Vice and Looseness The Sincerity and Zeal of serving so good an end as I have had my Eye all along upon or at least of endeavouring heartily to do it hath sufficiently armed me against all manner of Censures whatsoever and hath given me more satisfaction then if I had either had the ability or could have vainly promised my self the Applause of writing the Wittiest or Learnedest Book in the World This however mean and imperfect it is as I here put into your Hands So I presume to Dedicate to the Great God and my Blessed Redeemer the best Patrons who will certainly reward those that serve them heartily praying that it it may be Serviceable to their Honour and Glory to the promoting Vertue and Religion the bringing Men off from Sin and Wickedness the Conversion and Salvation of Souls and the Turning of Sinners from the Errors of their ways unto Righteousness that so both they and I may have the Rewards promised to all such THE CONTENTS THE Introduction wherein the Mistakes about Repentance are Noted and a Distribution made of the whole Discourse Page 1 to 11. CHAP. I. Giving a full Account of the Nature of Repentance Sect. 1. Scripture Words for Repentance p. 12. Sect. 2. Kinds and Degrees of Repentance p. 15. Sect. 3. True Notion of Repentance p. 21. Sect. 4. Mental epentance imperfect without Actual p. 34. CHAP. II. The Motives to Repentance Sect. 1. Of the Enticements to Sin p. 48. Sect. 2. Motives to Repentance from Reason and the Nature of the thing p. 62. Sect. 3. Motives to Repentance from the Gospel or pecaliar to Christranity p. 80. Sect. 4. Motives to Repentance from the Consideration of Hell p. 103. Sect. 5. Other Gospel Motives to Repentance p. 122. Sect. 6. Exhortation to Repentance in order to fit and prepare us to dye p. 145. Sect. 7. Of the Fear of Death and how we are delivered from it by Repentance and Religion p. 172. CHAP. III. Whether all Sins are Pardonable and may have the benefit of Repentance p. 193. Sect. 1. Of Apostacy Sins after Baptism Vpon Relapse p. 199. Sect. 2. Of the Sin against the Holy Ghost its Nature and whether Fardonable or no p. 212. Sect. 3. Of Concupiscence the Lustings of the Flesh or struggle between that and the Spirit p. 255. Sect. 4. Of Trouble of Mind or a Wounded Spirit p. 277. CHAP. IV. The ill Consequences drawn from the Priviledge of Repentance Obviated and Prevented p. 294. CHAP. V. Of a Death-Bed Repentance Sect. 1. The Case of the Thief upon the Cross Examined p. 315. Sect. 2. The Pleas and Pretences on behalf of a Death-Bed Repentance Answered p. 336. Sect. 3. The Invalidity of a Death-Bed Repentance shown from the Parable of the wise and foolish Virgins p. 358. Sect. 4. More Positive Proofs against the validity and sufficiency of a Death-Bed Repentance p. 392. CHAP. VI. Rules and Directions concerning the Particular Exercise of this Duty of Repentance p. 442. CHAP. VII How we may know we have repented and are in a Pardoned State p. 471. Sect. 1. Not committing Sin the only sure Mark of a good State p. 478. Sect. 2. The Differences of Sins what are and what are not consistent with a good State p. 508. Sect. 3. The Benefits of Repentance or the happiness of being in such a good State p. 535. The Conclusion p. 553. A Practical Discourse OF Repentance INTRODUCTION REpentance is the great Gospel duty which John the Baptist came Preaching as a Preparation to Christianity Matth. 3.2 Our Saviour also himself began with the same Matth. 4.17 The Disciples chose the same subject to preach on Mark 6.12 They went out and preacht that men should repent St. Peter in his Sermon to the Jews whereby he converted three thousand Souls preaches to them this Duty Acts 2.38 And this was what St. Paul testified to the Jews and to the Greeks repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ Acts 20.21 as if the whole summe of the Gospel lay in those two Nay our Saviour himself makes this the very end and design both of his Sufferings and of his Resurrection that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name Luke 24.46 47. It is a Duty therefore of the greatest moment and importance in Christianity and ought above all to be considered practiced and understood The only Question is Whether it be so proper and necessary to preach it to Christians now as it was at first to Jews and Gentiles The whole World then lay in wickedness and God had concluded all under sin and in a state of great corruption both as to Manners and Worship so that Christ came then as a Physitian to cure the sick and prescribed this Medicine of Repentance as proper to their case and condition at that time and tells us himself that he came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance Matth. 9.13 But 't is to be hoped that the World is well amended under Christianity that they who have been brought up in the knowledge of that excellent Religion and been devoted to it all their lives and had all the opportunities and advantages as well as obligations
and bruises and putrifying sores i. e. They have been wicked in the general tenor and habit of their Lives and these must be wholly changed the whole mass being corrupted it must be quite altered The whole frame of their Minds and whole course of their Actions must be made quite otherwise like a defiled Body they must be wash'd all over or rather like a dead Carcass they must be raised to life again and restored wholly from their state of Death and Corruption which they were in before There are others who are not so diseased all over but yet have some mortal illness growing in some part upon them who are guilty of some particular Sins some known and wilful Faults that destroy their good state and put them into the rank though not of the greatest Sinners yet of such Sinners as shall not enter into Heaven nor escape Eternal Wrath and Vengeance unless they particularly repent of them and wholly forsake and leave them And thus every one who is conscious to himself that he is or has been ever guilty of any known and great Sin whatever it be though it should be but one such Sin must amend that and must get off that particular illness or else it will prove deadly and mortal if it continue upon him for one such disease or one such wound whilst 't is uncured upon the Soul will kill and destroy it as well as more Though a Man may not be universally depraved nor be wholly prostituted to debauchery and irreligion yet if he will indulge himself in any known Sin or in any particular Lust and Wickedness he is in a lost and undone state till he repents and wholly leaves that Sin And if a Man is in a good state and fall into a wilful and great Sin as we know David did that surely cuts him off for a time from his good state and renders him lyable to Gods Anger here and to Misery hereafter till by a serious and hearty Repentance he recovers himself and is so perfectly recovered from the Sin that he will never commit it again whatever Temptation is offered to him There are other Sins which are of a lower and less heinous Nature which do not destroy our good state nor put us out of the Favour of God nor exclude us out of Heaven and these are such as very good Men are subject to and may not be free from whist they are in this body of Sin and Corruption As the most healthful and best Constitutions may be subject to some smaller illnesses and indispositions of Body though not to great and mortal diseases so some frailties failures and imperfections will stick to the best of Men though not any mortal and wilful Sins and these frailties and infirmities are Sins in a strict sense as coming short of perfect Obedience to the Divine Law and these are in some sense also to be repented of i. e. we are to be sensible of them and sorry for them and we are every day to pray to God to forgive us these our Trespasses and we are to endeavour to overcome them as much as is possible and never let them grow as they may by neglect into wilful Sins but these are all pardonable by the Mercy of God and by vertue of the gracious Covenant which he hath made with us in Christ Jesus upon a general Repentance without a perfect and particular amendment of all of them which is utterly impossible and inconsistent with Humane frailty and infirmity There is therefore a great difference to be made in respect of several kinds of Sins and several sorts of Sinners of this great Duty of Repentance There are some of whom the Scripture sayes that they need no repentance Luke 15.7 i. e. who need not such a Repentance as shall change and alter their Spiritual state who never were in a bad state being early Baptized nor never were guilty in their whole lives of any one such great and wilful and heinous Sin as put them into a damnable state I hope there are not a few who are in this blessed condition and therefore who need not this greater Repentance as I think I may call it who by the blessing of God and by means of a very Vertuous and Religious Education have been early trained up in the wayes of goodness and never departed from them who were set right at first and never wandered or strayed out of the paths of Vertue whose Feet never slipt so far as to take hold of the paths of Death or be caught in the snares of the Devil who never defiled themselves with any great Sin but have preserved their virgin-purity and have had no foul spot to sully the whiteness and beauty of their whole unblemisht Conversation but were alwayes innocent and alwayes safe like Zacharias and Elizabeth were alwayes righteous before God walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless Luke 1.6 I cannot say these are wholly sinless and altogether perfect for so none of the Race of Adam or the Children of Men are except our Blessed Saviour for there are some infirmities and weaknesses and imperfections that belong to these and so they stand in need of that lesser Repentance I before spake of but they never were guilty of the great offence and so need not that greater Repentance which others do And 't is of that I now speak a repentance from dead works as the Apostle calls it Heb. 6.1 A Repentance from wilful and mortal Sins such as put us into an ill state and such as we shall certainly perish except we repent of them Luke 13.3 SECT III. True Notion of Repentance NOw this Repentance I would thus describe answerable to those three words by which it is exprest in Scripture A sorrow for our Sins joyned with change and alteration of Mind and amendment or reformation of Life or such a sense of Mind as makes us leave and forsake or turn away from every Sin or all the Sins we have been guilty of and practice the contrary Vertues or perform those other Duties we have broken or been wanting in Thus where we have been bad Men in any instance and violated our Duty and offended God and broken or transgrest his Laws it will make us become good Men afterwards and perform our Duty and return to God and keep or obey his Commandments in all those cases wherein we have done otherwise before This this alone is such a Repentance as avails to Pardon and Salvation as it takes away every Sin which would damn us and brings us to that Obedience and practice of all Vertue and Holiness without which no man can see God or be saved Repentance I own is a word of an equivocal meaning that signifies several things and has several senses belonging to it as sorrow and trouble of Mind change of Thoughts and the like which are meant by the Latin Paenitentia and Resipiscentia and by the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
and a speedy Repentance from all our Sins because upon our doing this we have the Blood of Christ and the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God to deliver us from all Sin That which the World was so anxiously so concernedly and yet so vainly seeking after before that is only to be had and only made known by the Gospel Revelation the full and perfect and certain Expiation of Guilt which is the greatest Argument and Encouragement to Repentance for without that 't is not all our Repentance will take away our past Guilt 't is not our greatest sorrow or most penitent tears will wash away the stains and guilt of our Sins unless they are mixt with and have all their vertue from the Blood of Christ and 't is not they indeed or any thing we can do that has any proper vertue or efficacy to do this but only the Sacrifice of Christ Repentance is a necessary disposition and qualification in us without which no Sacrifice can be available to us if it does not as the Scripture speaks Purge our Consciences and so purifie as well as atone which is a strong Consideration to enforce this Duty because without it we lose all the benefit of this Sacrifice but 't is not our Repentance that can either purchase or procure or pay for our Pardon or that can any way challenge or upon any account merit or pretend a right to it be it never so exact for by what rules of Justice does it discharge our past arrears of wickedness though we stop now and run no further on in the score What do we more by leaving our Sins and becoming good now than we ought always to have done and always were obliged to or how shall we make that which is past and done to be undone as it were and the old account to be blotted out and the past Guilt done away 'T is only the Meritorious Sacrifice of Christ can do this and whether God could do this without any Sacrifice I will not dispute because I know not the Measures of the Divine Government nor the Secrets of his Wisdom and Counsel but by a Sacrifice it is much better obtained and assured to us as being granted upon the account of something that was given in stead of it and that is worth it indeed in fair Justice for so was the Blood of the Son of God of equal value to the Souls of all Mankind tho' I acknowledge it depends upon the free pleasure of the Governour to accept or refuse such a satisfaction and compensation as was made by that or by any Sacrifice yet all this being transacted in such a Method being granted upon a valuable Consideration and being made over to us by a formal Covenant and standing Agreement ratified and sealed by the Blood of Christ as well as a bare Promise So that by all these immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lye we might have strong consolation Heb. 6.18 we have hereby the greatest comfort the highest satisfaction and assurance in the World given us of that which we can never be too much assured of and which is of the nearest and closest concern to us in the World the Pardon of our Sins and the Expiation of all our Guilt which is only to be had and only fully discovered by the Gospel and 't is indeed the greatest thing in which the Gospel consists as 't is different from Natural Religion 3. From hence namely from the Sacrifice and Death of Christ arise new Motives and fresh and most endearing Obligations to perfwade all Christians to repent and leave their Sins The very Nature of a Sacrifice carries these in it and was designed to offer the strongest Motives against Sin at the same time that it procures Pardon for it It is the wisest expedient that could ever be thought of to show Justice and Severity and yet Mercy and Clemency at the fame time to put a Governour into those two different Capacities both at once to forgive and yet to punish the same person and to show him to be neither too easie nor yet implacable but by an admirable temper and mixture of two Vertues and two Passions that seem contrary to one another it finds out a way to spare the Man and yet show the greatest displeasure to his Sin neither to suffer the Guilty to perish nor yet the Guilt to be unpunished so that hereby the greatness of the Guilt and the greatness of Gods Anger is as visible against the Sin in the sufferings of the Sacrifice as if the offender himself had suffered and we have Reasons to dread it the more even because it is forgiven us but we have stronger Reasons I think to do this out of gratitude to that dear Person who was pleased to become a Sacrifice for us and from the consideration of his Love and what he has done for us we have most particular and strong engagements to leave our Sins For 't is the highest ingratitude and the most disobliging thing to him that can be to continue in them who suffered for this very end that he might redeem us from all iniquity and cleanse us from all our sins 't is a spoiling all his great undertaking for us making void his Passion in effect and making his Blood to be but like common Water spilt upon the ground and yet 't is a renewing his Passion at the same time A crucifying to our selves the Son of God afresh and putting him to an open shame Heb. 6.6 'T is like running the Spear again into his Side making new Wounds in his Breast and pricking him to the very Heart 't is doing that which is more displeasing to him than his very Cross which he willingly underwent rather than we should live and dye in our Sins Look then O unworthy and impenitent Christian upon thy Saviour offering up himself a Sacrifice for thee and consider what a mighty Argument his Death is to perswade thee to Repent Do not thy Sins look terrible when thou seest them through the Blood of Christ and canst thou have any hopes that God who spared not his own Son will spare thee if thou continuest in them And how great are the Characters of his Love which are there written in his own Blood and will not so much Love prevail upon thee to leave thy Sins were there nothing else How does thy dying Saviour with his expanded Arms and his Head hanging down beseech and intreat thee and speak to thee as it were from every gaping Wound in his broken Body to forsake and renounce those Sins which crucified him and for which he dyed And if with the belief of a Christian thou hast but the Passions of a Man this cannot but strongly affect and move thee 4. Christianity and the Gospel set forth and shew us the true Nature and Evil of our Sins in a better light and by greater considerations than Mankind had before Sin was alwayes known to be a weakness and
deter Men from Disobedience and to restrain them from Wickedness Now we easily see to how little purpose a less Punishment would ferve then that of Hell to those ends since there are so few awed even by that tho' God has so severely threatned it If then for the ends of Government and for publick good such a Punishment as this be necessary it is consistent both with Justice and Goodness however fevere it be for this is the only just measure and proportion of Punishments that they be able to attain their end and the Rule of Justice is to be taken not from any private but publick Reasons 2. God has given us free choice and proposed both Eternal Happiness and Eternal Misery to us He hath set before us life and death Deut. 30.15 so that if we obey him and live wisely and vertuously we shall enjoy the one but if we choose Sin we choose Death with it and our destruction is of our selves and we judge our selves unworthy of everlasting life Acts 13.46 as Paul and Barnabas told the Jews Gods proposing such vast Rewards and Punishments as 't is perhaps a necessary sanction of his Laws so 't is perfectly our own fault and madness if we refuse the one and incur the other Secondly I shall show how this Eternity is clearly and undeniably proved from Scripture which it seems to be because the word Eternal and Everlasting and what amounts to that is alwayes used upon this account as everlasting fire Matth. 25.41 and everlasting burnings Isa 33.14 and the fire that is unquenchable and that never goes out Mark 9.46 Luke 3.17 But to this they say that the word Eternal is often used in Scripture in a limited sense according to the nature of the thing to which it belongs as the Jewish Priesthood is called an everlasting Priesthood Exod. 40.15 and their Law of Atonement is called an everlasting statute Lev. 16.34 tho' neither were to be so strictly nor to last longer than the Jewish oeconomy So Sodom and Gomorrha and the Cities about them are said to suffer the vengeance of eternal fire in ver 7. of St. Judes Epistle because it brought eternal destruction to them though there be now none of that fire remaining so shall the fire of Hell say they destroy and annihilate the wicked and so as the Scripture speaks bring everlasting death and destruction upon them though if that shall last Eternally yet they shall not be Eternally tormented in it Now in reply to this I own that the word Eternal and for ever is often used in a limited sense but that it cannot be so when it is spoken here of Hellish Torments there is this evidence that the same word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is spoken of Eternal Punishment is spoken also of Eternal Life so that if it be understood of a limited Eternity in the one it must be so in the other which no body ever held or supposed and yet there is as much Reason from hence to deny the absolute Eternity of Heaven as the absolute Eternity of Hell 2. That they suffer Eternal Death and are Eternally destroyed is not to be understood in a strict and literal sense so that they lose all Being but yet are not Eternally tormented is plain from those places where it is said They have no rest day nor night Rev. 14.11 which supposes them not to be in a state of non-existence but of actual pain 'T is said there also that they shall be tormented with fire and brimstone and that the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever ver 10.11 which can never without violence be understood of the Fire which still lasts and which they suppose to be Eternal whilst they are not tormented in it but destroyed by it though it remains still as a monument of Gods Justice and Vengeance upon Sinners for the smoke of their torment ascending for ever supposes them to be for ever tormented and their having no rest night nor day necessarily implyes this Besides as it is said The fire is not quenched nor never goes out so it is said also that their worm never dyes Now though the Fire might possibly continue without its proper subject yet the Worm there meant never can for that is only that anguish and remorse and vexatious reflection of Mind which if it never dye the subject of it must last and continue and suffer it for ever So that though our Socinian Adversaries avoid the other places of Everlasting Punishment and Everlasting and Unquenchable Fire with some Art and Sophistry yet they can never evade those of the worms never dying and of the smoke of their torments going up for ever and their having no rest day nor night Rev. 14.11 But not to dispute further of these matters let the Sinner seriously conssder and meditate of these infinitely great and infinitely lasting and never ending Torments If there be such a thing as Hell it concerns him highly to Repent and so take care to avoid it If he do not think this to be true but secretly disbelieve it he must disbelieve all Religion and all Revelation and run into the utmost madness of Scepticism and Atheism and then let him consider that 't is not his belief makes things to be true or false but whatever he thinks of them they are and will be what they are in themselves and 't is certain he can never know them to be false however he is inclined to believe them so and therefore were they never so uncertain and were it but merely probable or indeed possible that there should be any such thing yet no Man in his wits should run the venture and lye open to so prodigious and dreadful an hazard as an Eternity of Misery But to such Christians that firmly believe them and have all Reason so to do both from Revelation and Reason too for all Mankind had ever some belief and expectations of sad Punishments in another World for Wickedness to them 't is unaccountable folly and madness to live in such Sins and in such courses as will throw them into this unquenchable Fire and consign them to this dreadful and everlasting state of Misery Is there any Sin whose charms are so great whose gains are so tempting that for the enjoyment of all these for a little season 't is worth enduring the Torments of Hell for ever If these Terrors of the Lord will not perswade Men to Repent and Leave their Sins nothing will Yet there is one or two other Motives or Arguments to Repentance from Christianity which I must propose after this of Hell and all the rest namely SECT V. Other Gospel Motives to Repentance 6. ANother Motive which may be said to be peculiar to the Gospel and which should encourage to Repentance above all others is the Promise of the Divine Grace and Holy Spirit to enable us to peform it to assist us to overcome all our evil Habits and to master
Grace and Goodness tho' they have not already attained neither are already perfect as the Apostle speaks of himself Phil. 3.12 yet they are alwayes safe and alwayes ready for the coming of the Son of Man and their whole Life is a most sure a most comfortable preparation for Death But these are very few I doubt not only to the general number of Mankind but even to good Men for most of the good Men we read of in Scripture were some time or other guilty of great and wilful Faults as Noah and Abraham and David and St. Peter and St. Paul and Mary Magdalene and whilst they were so and before they had recovered themselves by Repentance I cannot but think them in a bad state for Mens states are not fixt and certain in this Life but are alterable and changed according to their outward actions and the inward temper of their Minds and when ever a wilful and a known Sin breaks the course of Vertue and destroys the habit of Goodness in their Souls it breaks their good state and destroys their comfortable condition As when a Disease strikes the Vitals of our Body and overcomes the Strength and Health of our Constitution unless we get it off it will certainly bring Death along with it God indeed has prescribed us a certain Remedy and an infallible Cure for all Mortal Sins and the greatest Spiritual Maladies and Diseases that would otherwise destroy us and bring Death upon us and that is Repentance which for the sake of Christ and his Merits and by the Mercy and Promise of God shall recover us out of that miserable and mortal state into which every wilful Sin had cast us This shall set us right again in the Court of Heaven where we were cast and condemned before and this shall bring us to a state of Life and Grace who were before struck with the sentence of Death And blessed be God who has thus graciously provided for poor and otherwise lost Sinners by Jesus Christ But Repentance alas though it be a sure Remedy yet is not so easie a one as we imagine 't is a very bitter dose that must not only go down very unpleasantly but must work strongly and powerfully upon our Minds it must not only make us sick and sorrowful contrite and troubled at the very Heart for every Transgression but it must purge out of our Souls every Sin and carry off every vile Lust and wicked Inclination It must not only work upon the peccant humours and so put the Soul into great trouble and disorder but it must perfectly heal and cure it and to do that it must take away the root of the disease it must search to the bottom of the Heart it must touch us to the quick in the tenderest part of us in the most darling Sin and most beloved Lust and it must cut and launce so deep that no secret corruption remain within and no fomes Morbi be left behind In a word it must perfectly cure the Soul and whatever disease it laboured under it must quite remove it so that it never return again upon it for 't is but a palliating a counterfeit or an imperfect cure till this be done And till the Mind be perfectly restored and amended and made better it has not truly repented and therefore the Scripture requires in Repentance not only a broken Heart which is the most significant phrase in the World for the deepest trouble of Mind for our past Sins but it requires a new Heart and a new Soul and a new Creature and a new Man to make up true Repentance and not only that we be renewed in the Spirit of our Minds but that we bring forth fruits worthy of Repentance and that we turn from every evil way and leave and forsake every Sin that we have ever been guilty of as I have more largely shown before We must do all this before we can be said truly to Repent and before we can have any good grounds to expect Pardon of any wilful Sin we ever committed in our whole lives we must thus Repent of it And though we are as sure of forgiveness if we do so as if we had never committed it which is the greatest favour in the World yet how will a poor penitent be alwayes afraid that he has not been sufficiently sorrowful and fully repented of his Sins how will his former Guilt affright him when it stares him in the face and how will the sad load of all his Sins lye heavy upon his Conscience when he is brought to a due sense of them and how must he be contented to lose a great deal of that comfort in his Mind here though he may be safe hereafter and though his Repentance may put him into a good condition yet it will make his Heart sorrowful and the remembrance of his Sins will make it often bleed afresh within him And when he looks back upon his past danger he must tremble at it tho' he has reason to hope he has escaped it and it must keep him alwayes humble and not over-confident of himself and though he has his Pardon in his hand yet he must still look upon it with tears in his eyes Nothing can truly satisfie a Man that he has repented of his Sins but that he has left them out of Religious Grounds and Principles and has had so much tryal of himself as to know he would not commit them though he were in the same circumstances and temptations that he was in before And thus when a bad Man is become a good one when he that was careless and irreligious is become pious and devout when he that was vitious and debauch'd is become sober and vertuous when he that was unjust becomes just and righteous and besides restitution for all past injustice would not commit one act of it to gain all the World when he that stole steals no more and he that was given to drunkenness or uncleanness or any other Sin wholly leaves and forsakes it and is brought by Religion to be quite another Man than he was before then and not till then is his Repentance such as may make him hope for Pardon when he lives and prepare him to dye with comfort For to proceed a little further in this great concern to make a Soul fit and ready for its immediate entering upon another state it must have these two qualifications at that time 1. It must be thoroughly purged from every Vitious Habit or else it is neither meet to be partaker of the inheritance of the Saints in light nor capable of the Pure and Spiritual and Heavenly Happiness As the Tree falls so it lyes sayes the Wise Man Ecclesiastes 11.3 And the same habit and temper as to the main which the Soul carries out of this World will abide with it in the other If any one habitual Wickedness remain upon it or the love of any one Sin be so rooted in it that if it lived
here it would not be brought off from it that will ruine it and make it miserable for ever for if we love any one Sin more than Heaven we must be contented to lose and part with Heaven for it and if any Lust or Vitious Inclination be so dear to us that we are not willing to give it up for the sake of Happiness we give up our Happiness for the sake of that for they two are so inconsistent that we cannot keep both Let not therefore any Sin remain unmortified in thy Soul if thou wouldst put thy self into such a readiness and disposition as shall fit thee to enter upon a happy Future State And 2. Let all Vertuous Habits and Religious Dispositions of Mind be then excited and exercised and increased to the highest perfection 'T is these will fit our Souls for Heaven and be the true Wedding garment for the Marriage-feast and 't is these are meant by that expression in the Parable of having our Lamps burning in order to our waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom Let our Devotion therefore be then kindled into the highest flame and ardour and our Souls expire and ascend up in it to the Regions above Let us raise our Minds to the highest love of God and of our Blessed Saviour and let our Souls be ravished with the thoughts of their wonderful love and kindness to us Let us look up to Heaven and to those joyes which God has there prepared for us and let us desire as soon as God pleases to be translated to them Let us look down upon this World with mean and despicable thoughts and let us consider what a poor and a miserable place it is and be very willing to part with it and let us exercise all Faith and Hope and Trust and Confidence in our Faithful Creator and Merciful Redeemer and be willing to throw our selves wholly and chearfully upon them and to trust them with out Souls when they are going into an unknown place and to the invisible Hades When we believe our Lord is near and coming in a few minutes thus should we wait for him with our Loyns girded up and our Lamps burning as our Saviours expression is and our Minds put into such a Religious frame and disposition that we may be as like Heaven as we can and our Souls may be ready to go in with the Bridegroom and to be admitted to the Marriage-feast of the Lamb for evermore We must not think that these Habits and Religious Dispositions of Mind are to be got on a sudden but we must bring our Minds to them by previous Acts and long Preparations and frequent Exercises before-hand and habituate our selves to these Divine and Religious Duties and Exercises or else we shall find like the foolish Virgins that we want Oyl and have nothing in our Souls that should feed and nourish and kindle and maintain these Heavenly Habits and Dispositions which are the immediate readiness of our Minds But to give the plainest advice I can in so important a matter I shall propose two easie Directions which I would have every one observe that would make himself the most ready for Death and the coming of the Son of Man The 1st is To be doing all the good we can to promote the Honour of God and the Welfare of Men to be as the Parable represents it Mat. 24. at the latter end doing earnestly the business of our Lord and taking all the care we can of his Family and giving them their meat in due season and discharging all that trust faithfully and diligently which our Lord hath committed to us and not smiting our fellow servants or doing any the least injury to others or eating and drinking with the drunken and living carelesly and idly as the evil Servant is said to do Who put away the thoughts of his Lords coming ver 48. Those who do that are apt to be negligent and wicked but he that is alwayes watchful and alwayes waiting for the Lords coming as the Parable describes the good Servant will be faithful and diligent in performing every Duty and every Office that his Lord requires of him and will be contriving and designing to do all the good he can to please his Lord and purchase his Favour for he knows that an idle Servant shall be punished as well as a wicked one and that the omission of a necessary Duty commanded us by our Lord will be as much charged upon us as the commission of any thing that he has forbidden us He will therefore be careful and diligent to do all his Masters Commands to fulfil all his Will to help and relieve his fellow-servants and do all the good he can in his Masters Family encourage others to do their Duty exhort advise reprove and admonish them and prepare them as well as himself for his Lords coming and Blessed is that servant who when his Lord cometh he shall find thus doing and thus employed But 2. He that will be thus ready must never allow himself in any Sin or in the doing of any thing that he knows is unlawful and forbidden by his Lord for if his Lord cometh and findeth him in that He shall cut him asunder and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth Mat. 24.51 There is no hopes for him if he be thus surprized in his Wickedness and Death overtake him in the midst of his Sin like the revenger of Blood before he can get into any City of Refuge He that ventures upon a wilful Sin ventures upon the very brinks of Hell and Damnation and if a sudden Death turn him over he falls in irrecoverably and at best he that suffers himself to live in a bad state i. e. in a course of Sin hangs over the bottomless Pit by no other hold but the weak and brittle thread of Life and if that break or be cut asunder he drops into that dreadful place of horrors No Man therefore who is master of his Wits and knows he is not master of his Life should dare to live one moment in so much peril exposed to such danger and hazard and venture his Soul and his last stake upon so ticklish a cast as this uncertain Life is But he should instantly whilst he has this thought offer'd to his Mind catch himself out of the Fire out of the Eternal Flames of Hell into which so far as he knows he may be just a falling for they surround him and are ready to lay hold upon him as long as he continues in his Sins and the gulph is open and ready to suck him in and swallow him up till he plunges out and rescues himself by a speedy Repentance Let no Man then make one hours one minutes delay who knows not how few hours or minutes he may have II. For in the next place to give some Reasons why we should be thus ready Who knows at what hour the Son of Man
cometh Who that is unprepared knows what time he shall have to prepare himself Who can tell whether the next moment shall be his own and how little time he may have for so great a work And who would loyter any part of his time who knows how much that work will take up for 't is not a few spare hours or dying minutes will put the Soul into a readiness will change its temper and purge out its Sins and dispose and fit it for another World And who can set back Death but a few hours when it gives a short warning and is ready to strike us or perhaps without any warning seizes and hurries us to the other World It is every day making up to us and approaches nearer us every hour and with quick and undiscerned steps it dogs and follows us and may overtake us before we are aware of it A sudden Feaver may set the strongest Body on fire and presently flare out the Lamp of Life A Convulsion may seize in a moment the main fort of Life and surprize us in our greatest strength An Apoplexy or a Deliquium may stop the nimble wheels of Life that moved vigorously and strongly just before and make all the Vital Faculties stand still immediately Besides a thousand accidents from without make us in the midst of Life to be in Death so that we can never be secure but we may be a dying and every time we expire it may be so far as we know our last breath Who would not be then ready who may thus be called on a sudden who may have the Son of Man come in an hour when he thinketh not Come he certainly will but we cannot tell whether in the third or fourth watch of the night let us then watch the whole night that is be ready alwayes If we knew the time of his coming we might be careless and sleep and drowze perhaps till he was near us but since we are alwayes to expect him at an uncertain hour let us put our selves into a posture and readiness to receive him at his own time We can never be ready too soon though he come late but if we are too late before we are ready we lose an opportunity we can never regain and we slip that time which we shall bewail to all Eternity Let us think 2. Upon the certainty of his coming If there were any hopes that he would never come if there were any probability that we should never dye if any Man could be so foolish as to perswade himself to doubt of that he might have some reason to neglect the other but no Man can be Sceptical as to that point nor be so vain as to dispute himself out of the belief of it but he knows and is convinced of that fatal Truth that he must once dye and be laid in the same place of darkness where he has seen so many others laid before him why should he not then prepare and provide for that which will dertainly happen it can never be in vain or to no purpose to do this it can be no lost labour no unnecessary work but all must confess it ought to be done one time or other Why do we not then do that which we own to be necessary Why that it is indeed sayes the foolish Sinner but it may be done hereafter and at a more convenient season Would you not think a Man mad that should talk thus when he was in danger of drowning and would not take hold of the rope was thrown out to him till his last and third rising but let go what he had in his hand in hope to catch it again afterwards or he that was like to fall down a precipice and would not save himself when he might but trust to a twig that was near the bottom He deserves to perish that will not be willing to be saved till he is just perishing And he that allowes himself to live in a sinful state at present with hopes to get out of it hereafter is but like him that stabs himself with a design of being cured or swallows down a deadly Poyson upon presumption of taking an Antidote after he has done it the one is certainly strong enough to kill him and the other may not be strong enough to save him or he may be dead before he can take it Mens resolutions to Repent hereafter are alwayes insincere for if they were not they would Repent at present And besides what a sad state are they in till they do this they are like Prisoners lying under a sentence of Death and Condemnation who hope to procure a Pardon but will not endeavour to do it till they are called to Execution and it be too late Their unrepented Sins do put them into as damnable a state as if Heaven had past sentence upon them and though they know this yet they are willing to continue so till their state is desperate and they are never like to be otherwise For he has no reason to think he shall be ever ready who is not willing to make himself ready at present Let us not therefore delay one minute this great work of Repentance but let us set about it immediately and resolve to go through with it and to live in such a constant habit and practice of Repentance and a good Life as shall make us duly ready and prepared to dye For 3. Let 's consider how terrible Death must be to a wicked impenitent Sinner and what concern he will be in at the approach of it when he must leave all the pleasures of his Sins and the remembrance of them fills him only with terrour and astonishment when all their false charms and meretricious looks whereby they before pleased and enchanted him go off and they now look gastly and frightful and stare him in the face with a scaring appearance and with the sad apprehensions of what they are like to end in when a dreadful Eternity presents it self before him and is like to swallow him up in an horrid abyss of Misery when he comes so nigh to the other World that he can look as it were over to it and see the sad reception he is like to have there when he sees Hell open before him the bottomless Pit gaping to receive him and some of the Flames of it flashing as it were out upon him when Death like an Executioner comes to seize and apprehend him and hurry him before the dreadful Tribunal where all his past Actions must be examined all his secret Sins laid open and a dreadful Sentence shall be immediately pronounced upon him The thoughts of this is enough to make a good Man afraid and the best of us must tremble when we come before this Judgment-seat and are to have our everlasting Fates decreed and determined but the Wicked must be filled with terrour and amazement who can have no hopes no refuge to fly to who has no plea for any Mercy or Pardon
be no desirable thing if the Misery be greater than the Comfort of being and bare existence is a very thin evanid abstracted thing to be compared with solid and substantial Misery but the closest Principles of Self-love and Self-preservation must make us very unwilling to part with our Beings and all the Pleasures and Enjoyments that belong to them and therefore if we were to resign up those by Death it would be very terrible And how could we be sure we did not if we had not firm and certain grounds of another Life after this or if we had nothing but the uncertain guesses and conjectures of it from Natural Light Most Men indeed had some dark intimations of this from thence and did either hope or fear there might be such a thing rather than believe it But now Christ hath brought Life and immortality to light through the Gospel 2 Tim. 1.10 He hath utterly dispelled that cloud which kept those of this World from seeing into another and hath clearly and manifestly revealed to us the certainty of another and an Immortal State and by his Resurrection from the Dead and Ascension into Heaven given visible and ocular demonstration of it And how should this take off the Fear of Death when we are sure of another Life after it when 't is only a passage to another and a better World too if it be not through our own fault if we are not unprepared and unfitted for it if we are then indeed this is no great Comfort to us but we might wish that Death would put an end to our Being but if we have Repented us of all our Sins and are truly prepared for Death this should much lessen and abate the Fear of it when though we may be a little unwilling to leave our old State and Circumstances our old Dwelling and Habitation our old Friends and Acquaintance and to go into a new and unknown place yet we are sure in the general that we shall be much better provided for and in a much better condition than we are here and tho' the passage seems to us rough and dangerous and we are loth to leave the shore and to launch into the mighty deep of Eternity yet this is a sort of Childish fondness in us to what we have been used to and like the humour of him that would not leave his poor and pitiful Cottage that he has alwayes lived in though he were to go and take possession of a Kingdom in another Country Do not Mankind that have more Wisdom and a larger Spirit willingly leave their own Native Country and Kinsfolks and Relations and transport themselves to an unknown place where there is any fair hopes and probability of mending their Fortunes and living in a more happy and comfortable condition and have we not as good evidence and as much reason to believe that Heaven is as rich and happy a Country as the Indies or any other place where we have never been and had only relations of them from others has not Christ given us as much assurance of this as we can desire and has not the Scripture described and drawn the Chart and Map of those Heavenly Regions and given us as true and full an account of the Pleasures and Riches of them as we can wish for or expect in this Mortal State If we knew them so fully and particularly as we shall do hereafter we should not so much love Life as we now fear Death but God has concealed the particular knowledge of them from us at present that we may be willing to live here but the general knowledge of a Future and Glorious Immortality which we have by Jesus Christ whereby we are assured that Death does not conclude our Being but only translate us to a much better State if we be fit for it by Repentance this should deliver us from the Fear of Death II. Christ has taken away the sting of death as the Apostle intimates 1 Cor. 15.56 and so has delivered us from the servile Fear of it for the sting of death as he there sayes is sin 'T is that which makes the darts of Death so sharp and poysonous because they are envenomed with our own Sin and dipt in our own Guilt Were that but once drawn out we might play with the harmless Serpent and it would not bite or wound us Could we disarm Death of those Terrours with which our own Sins dress it up it would not appear so ugly and so frightful to us 'T is they which put us in a state of Bondage and Servility and depress and sink our Minds with a slavish Fear that we are going to execution when we are going to dye and that we are committed to the Grave but as to a Prison where Death like a terrible Lictor or Executioner is to torment us or we are to be delivered over to him that has the Power of Death that is the Devil Now this may justly terrifie us when we think that whenever Death arrests us it hurries us only to a place of Torments and seizes us as condemned Prisoners to be carried where we must suffer 'T is not leaving the Pleasures of this Life makes Men so unwilling to dye as the fear of going to the Miseries of another 'T is not a present Temporal Death they are so afraid of as that Future and Eternal one which comes after it And this indeed is justly to be feared were Hell to swallow us up as well as the Grave and were we to sink into the bottomless Gulph when our feet take hold of Death but Christ has delivered us from all the danger of this if we do not wifully throw our selves into it He has taken away all that Guilt and all that Punishment due to our Sins which we are afraid of if we have but sincerely and timely repented of them and though Death summons us to Judgment and we know our selves Criminals yet by the performance of that we have our Pardon signed in the Blood of Christ and Heaven will certainly allow of it to a Christian if he have not forfeited it by a desperate Impenitence True and sincere and perfect Repentance will free us in great measure from the Fears and Horrors of Death when it comes near us Our Sins indeed will then be most apt to scare us when Death sets them in order before us but we have all the assurance of the Gospel all the assurance of Heaven that if we have duly repented of them they shall no way hurt or indanger us I will not say that they shall no way make us afraid for this perhaps would not become a very modest and humble and penitent Sinner to be quite fearless but he will have great hopes with his fears and very chearful and comfortable grounds that shall greatly lessen and abate them The righteous hath hope in his death Prov. 13.32 Hopes that his Sins are pardoned in and through Christ and that whenever he goes hence
if some Men were more afraid of Death than they are and as I am sure they have all reason to be that so they might be brought off from their evil wayes and not run headlong upon those dangers which are very near them though they are not sensible of them The sword hangs over their head though they do not see it and nothing but the thin thread of Life keeps it from falling upon them they walk blindfold upon the brinks of Hell and Damnation and it would be well of Fear would open their Eyes and make them recover themselves before Death makes it too late Nothing can truly and throughly arm us against the Fears of Death but Repentance and a good Life To those who have lived in the practice of them Death is a very harmless thing 't is but lying down to sleep closing the eyes and going to rest the Bodies being sensless a while till it awakes at the great day of Judgment and passing a longer night in the Grave till it arises more fresh and lively in the morning of the Resurrection and as for the Soul 't is a short and quick passage from Earth to Heaven and therefore such have no reason to be afraid of it when it approaches them never so near But then 2. Let the true Penitent quicken his Faith at that time and raise that to the highest and strongest pitch that so he may then look beyond the grave and see and believe and desire those happy and glorious things which God has prepared for him in another World If we believed those as we ought we should never be so afraid to dye if we were so affected with those pleasures that are above and that are at Gods Right-hand for evermore we should not be so loth to part with the Pleasures shall I say rather with the Troubles and the Miseries of this Life Did we think as we ought of that perfect peace and joy and satisfaction which is not to be had here but to be met with only in Heaven we should not be so fond to abide in this Valley of Tears and not go up to those Mansions above where is full Joy and Contentment Let us fix our thoughts and set our hearts upon those happy Regions of Bliss and Glory and we shall not fear to pass through the shadow of Death to come to them tho' the way to that Heavenly Canaan is through a Wilderness through the dark and unknown Region of Death through which a thousand wandering Souls are alwayes passing yet we shall be conducted safely through it by Angels who will bring us to the Palace of the great King where we shall be received by our blessed Master and Saviour and by all the Saints and holy Souls that are gone before us who as they rejoyce at a Sinners Repentance will now welcome him to his Fathers house and we shall then as much wonder at our selves for fearing to dye as we are now willing to live If the account which Scripture gives us of those invisible Regions be true and we do fully believe that Joy that Glory that Blessedness that unspeakable Happiness which is there revealed to us this our Faith joyn'd with our Repentance should overcome the Fears of Death and make us not only not afraid but desire to be dissolved and to be willing to lay down this load and luggage of Flesh because we know that if our earthly house oâ— this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens And there shall be no more Sin nor Sorrow nor Repentance but the blessed Penitent now he is safely arrived at his happy Port shall look back upon the past hazards and dangers he was in and comfortably remember how his Sins like so many Rocks had like to have split and shipwreck'd and swallowed him up in the gulph of Perdition and how by the wonderful Grace of God he hath happily escaped them and is come safe to Heaven and therefore will now offer Eternal Thanksgivings and pay his Vows of Praise to his great Deliverer and rejoyce evermore in his Glorious and Heavenly Salvation CHAP. III. Whether all Sins are Pardonable and may have the benefit of Repentance I Am next to consider Whether all Sins are Pardonable and may have this benefit of Repentance This has been denyed by a great many and particularly by the Novatians who would not allow Pardon and Absolution to wilful and great Sins committed after Baptism and this is charged upon Smalcius and other Socinians that they deny the same to heinous and habitual Sins of Relapse into which any shall fall after they have once Repented and been freed from them And there are some places of Scripture that seem very much to favour these hard Opinions as Heb. 6.4 5 6. For it is impossible for those who were once inlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come if they shall fall away to renew them again unto Repentance And Heb. 10.26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins And 2 Pet. 2.20 21 22. For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ they are again intangled therein and overcome the latter end is worse with them than the beginning For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness then after they have known it to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb The dog is returned to his own vomit and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire And in other places the Scripture speaks of a Sin unto Death 1 John 5.16 as of a more malignant and deadly Nature and different from all other Sins which are Mortal and Sins also unto Death without Repentance And our Saviour sayes expresly of the Sin against the Holy Ghost that it is unpardonable and shall not be forgiven neither in this world nor the world to come Luke 12.20 Matth. 12.32 i. e. as St. Mark expresses it It hath never forgiveness but is in danger of eternal damnation Mark 3.29 And what that is is not fully agreed on by Divines and so there may be fear if not danger of a Christians falling into it and so into an unpardonable state by the Holy Ghosts being so many wayes concerned in his Salvation and he having so many wayes to Sin against him This gives therefore great trouble to a great many Minds and if one particular Sin or any sorts of Sin be unpardonable by the Gospel they will be very fearful and can hardly be satisfied but that they have committed that Sin and so are cut off from all hopes by it and they will
but it is without all Controversie to be supposed and the same allowances that are to be made to all these and the like expressions of Scripture without which if they are strained over-rigorously they would not be true these they think reasonable to apply to our Saviours expression concerning this Sin and that where it is said not to be forgiven that is not without a very particular and full Repentance of it And to strengthen this a little further they observe that there is another Phrase and Expression concerning this Sin used by our Saviour where the sense must not be forced so far as the words would seem to carry it and that is this That it shall not be forgiven neither in this world nor in the world to come Matth. 12.32 As if our Saviour did thereby intimate that any Sins should be pardoned in another World which are not in this Some Interpreters think that some of the Jews had this opinion as the Papists now have and that our Saviour therefore used the expression to take off all hopes from them that had such a vain belief and levelled his words against that but I rather think this to be the plain sense that it was only a common Phrase among the Jews that the thing should not be or never be without regard to any such opinion which we have not sufficient authority to prove the Jews had but only that Death they thought was a kind of Expiation for some Sins in their Life However this Phrase must have some allowance made for the words of it and so they would have the other 3. Another Reason for the abating the severity of the Expression concerning this is that there are other Sins which seem equal to this in guilt and heinousness which are yet all declared to be pardonable and those not only the most wilful Sins against Natural Light as well as Revealed Religion but against Christianity and even the Holy Ghost such as were those of the Heathen World described Rom. 2. and yet they were received into the Christian Religion and made partakers of the Christian Covenant as 't is plain many of the Corinthians also were whose Names were put in the List of the vilest Sinners 1 Cor. 6.11 And the Apostle expresly tells them That such were some of them to wit Fornicators idolaters adulterers effeminate abusers of themselves with mankind thieves covetous drunkards revilers extortioners ver 9.10 and yet these very Men were washed were sanctified were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God ver 11. And St. Peters denyal of his Master after he had seen all his Miracles and been so fully convinced by them that he was as he had confest the Son of God was a very great Sin yet upon his repenting and weeping bitterly for it it was forgiven Nay they who treated our Saviour with the basest and the cruelest usage and at last barbarously murdered him our Saviour prayed his Father even to forgive these and therefore that greatest of Sins the putting an innocent Man to death and Crucifying the very Son of God this was not excluded from Pardon but the very Blood that they thus villanously shed was an Expiation for the very Sin of shedding of it And if it be said that these however great and horrid Sins yet were not so immediately Sins against the Holy Ghost against whom peculiarly this unpardonable Sin is committed if we carefully examine the Bible we shall find a great many Sins and Provocations chiefly if not directly against him wherein he was particularly affronted if not blasphemed and reproached and yet not unpardonable St. Paul owns himself a Blasphemer as well as a Persecutor 1 Tim. 1.13 and wherein can we think his Blasphemy consisted not in blaspheming God the God of Israel for he was a very strict and Religious Worshipper of him according to the Law and the strictest Sect of the Jews but it must be in blaspheming Christianity and such things as were done to the spreading and confirmation of that And nothing seems to be so likely a subject of his Blasphemy as the Miracles of Christ and the Apostles because nothing was so strong an Argument for the Christian Religion which could not well be reproached unless those were evil spoken of and yet he obtained Mercy and became the great instance of an hearty Penitent and a zealous Convert But we have more particular Instances of some Sins against the Holy Ghost himself that tended to reproach and dishonour him in a high measure and yet are no where declared to be unpardonable Ananias is said to lye to the Holy Ghost Acts 5.3 and to tempt the Spirit of the Lord ver 9. and vertually to deny his Knowledge and Omniscience by denying part of the Money for which he had sold his Estate that was devoted by him to the Church and Simon Magus who offered Money that he might purchase the Holy Ghost and thought a few pieces of Silver a just Price and valuable Consideration for him and that the Power of God might be bought and sold for a little Money He did reproach the Holy Ghost by which the Apostles did their Miracles in the highest manner Acts 8.19 and therefore St. Peter very severely reproves him ver 20. Thy money perish with thee because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money And that expression might have been thought to have put him into an irreversible state of Ruine and Perdition had not St. Peter added what shows it to be otherwise ver 22. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness and pray God if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee And there is another Instance that seems as great and immediate a reproach to the Holy Ghost as what the Pharisees were guilty of in charging the Miracles which Christ wrought by the Power of the Holy Ghost to an Evil Spirit and that was the mocking at the Disciples upon whom the Holy Ghost was poured out on the day of Pentecost as if they had been inspired with new Wine Acts 2.13 and yet this has no Mark set upon it by the Apostles whereby it can be certainly known to be either the Sin against the Holy Ghost meant by our Saviour or a Sin that was unpardonable 4. As there are other Sins that seem equal to this yet certainly Pardonable so there are expressions concerning some other Sins which seem as much to exclude them from all hopes of remission and to pass as severe and desperate a Sentence upon them as Christ does here upon this and yet the best Interpreters think they admit of an abatement and mitigation as in Heb. 6.4.5 6. For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come If they shall fall away to renew them
again unto repentance seeing they crucifie to themselves the Son of God afresh and put him to an open shame And again Heb. 10.26 For if we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin The Sin that is meant in both these places is most probably the Apostatizing from and renouncing of Christianity which the Christians were then in great danger of in those times of Danger and Persecution and therefore the Apostles had all reason to represent it as the most hazardous and guilty and to let them know that after they had once fallen from their Baptism they could not be renewed by another Baptism and after they had rejected the Sacrifice of Christ there was no other Sacrifice to be expected to be offered for their Sins nor was Christ to dye more than once This was indeed a very horrid Sin and to those especially who had probably had extraordinary Gifts communicated to them as the Phrases there used seem to denote These might well be charged with those tremendous expressions ver 29. That they had trodden under foot the Son of God and counted the blood of the covenant wherewith they were sanctified an unholy thing and done despite unto the Spirit of Grace But yet the Primitive Church how severe soever it was at first to the Lapsi in denying them Communion after they had Apostatized yet it was the same also to many other Sins to whom it utterly denyed the Communion of the Church for ever as well as to Apostacy though the Persons were never so penitent who committed them And whilst they kept to this most severe Discipline which they were forced afterwards to abate yet they did not peremptorily sentence those penitent Apostates nor any others to certain Perdition but left them to the Mercy of God for which they would not engage to be Sponsors or Sureties as not being able to ascertain them of it and this is the most I think of what St. John sayes of the sin unto death I do not say that we shall pray for it 1 John 5.16 i. e. we cannot have such an assurance that God will hear the Prayers for that as for other Sins and therefore we cannot so confidently encourage Men to pray for it tho' he does not at all forbid them to do it This Sin unto death was very likely also to be Apostacy from Christianity to the Idolatry of the Gnosticks or the Gentiles and that was certainly a very deadly Sin and such as was not to have the benefit of the Prayers of the Church but to say that this would never be Pardoned after St. Peters denyal of his Master was and after the Church did frequently admit the Lapsi at least to Lay-Communion I think we ought to have a more plain and manifest Revelation of the Will of God in that matter than we have from that difficult place However from these three places which come the nearest to this Sin though there is no mention of it in any of them it appears that either other Sins as well as that particular one of the Pharisees may be represented unpardonable or else that those expressions which are used to set out the guilt of those Sins are yet to be mollified and abated But Lastly The Evangelical Covenant of Pardon and Forgiveness being exprest in such general and large terms as extend universally to all manner of Sins without any exception whatsoever and there being no one Sin whatever exempted out of that in the Charter it self or in the Form of Absolution prescribed by Christ Matth. 16.29 John 20.23 they think it is more agreeable to say that no one particular Sin how great soever is unpardonable by the Gospel and that this will be a greater force and violence to those many Promises of the Gospel than to mitigate the severity of those expressions which seem to speak otherwise of some Sins and particularly of that against the Holy Ghost And therefore to come to a resolution in this matter that may be safe and satisfying I shall do it very briefly in two particulars 1. I say That either for those Reasons the Expression here may be mollified and not taken in its literal and rigorous sense but so as to import the great guilt of the Sin and difficulty of its Pardon but not the utter impossibility Or else 2. That there were some particular circumstances in that Sin of the Pharisees which make it a Sin proper to them in those times and such as Christians are not now in any possible danger of committing for though we have sufficient Reasons to believe the truth of Christianity upon the account of the Miracles done by our Saviour and we have an unquestioned assurance of the truth of those from undoubted History and universal Testimony and Tradition yet we cannot have that ocular evidence and visible demonstration of them that the Jews and Pharisees had and therefore if any of the Jews in our dayes who have swallowed many of them this blasphemous account of Christ and his Miracles that he did them all by the Power of Magick which he learned in Egypt if they do now vent this horrid Calumny yet I think they are not so perfectly Criminal nor is this so high a degree of villany in them as it was in their Fore-fathers who saw the very Miracles done before their faces which is the highest evidence that can be And unless the Person be in all those circumstances that they were which would make him a great deal more inexcusable I question whether he can be charged with this Sin And therefore as a Conclusion from the whole and as the most useful remark from this Subject I shall advise these two things 1. That no Sinner be discouraged from Leaving his Sins howsoever great nor from Hopes of the Divine Mercy upon any ungrounded Fears that he is fallen into this Sin and so is in a hopeless irrecoverable unpardonable state By what has been said it appears that no one now has reason to do this and it is certainly the greatest design of the Gospel and our Saviours coming into the World to perswade Mankind that were sunk into the saddest Sins and Wickedness to Repent and Forsake all their Evil wayes And there is no such means to encourage to this as to assure them of the Divine Mercy and the certain Forgiveness of all of them if they do 'T is this is the way to bring Men in to their Duty and Allegiance when their Governour proclaims an universal Act of Grace for what is past whereas the being cut off from all such hopes makes them go on and grow more desperate and 't is by this Goodness and Mercy of God held forth to all Sinners and so fully displayed in the Gospel and the Death of Christ that we are led to Repentance and therefore it ought by no means to be lessened or diminished unless we would make God less Good than he
is and hinder Men from ever becoming better 2 Let us take care to avoid all manner of wilful Sin and especially all those great ones that come near and any way approach to this Sin against the Holy Ghost A very wilful Sin in a Christian especially is in some fense a Sin against the Holy Ghost 't is a grieving a quenching and a resisting the Spirit in the language of Holy Scripture That Blessed Spirit is concerned as the great promoter of Vertue and Goodness in the World and as the great Principle of it in the Hearts of Men and whenever we do any wicked thing we offer violence to that and by our rude and vicious carriage we affront and grieve and at last banish and drive away that Blessed Guest out of our Souls Whatever is Wicked and Sinful is so contrary to his Pure and Excellent Nature that it is highly offensive to him and if we go on in a course of long and customary Wickedness we sin the more against him and come the nearer to that sad and wretched state that is unpardonable I do not think indeed that any one Sin or particular Act of any Sin whatever puts us into that condition but as every Sickness and Indisposition of Body is a tendency to Death and Mortality so every wilful Sin is a corruption of the Mind and an approach to a state of Spiritual Death And there are some Sins that bring this sooner upon us as the acting against our Consciences and the sense of our own Minds an opposing the Truth that is evident to us a scoffing at Religion and making a mock of Sin an abusing the Scriptures and ridiculing the Holy Word of God an obstinate resistance of all the motions of Gods Holy Spirit upon our Minds These and such like gross and obstinate impieties though I do not think they are any of them the very Sin against the Holy Ghost for that ought not to be extended further than we have a warrant from Scripture yet they are so many approaches as it were to it and have more of the ill symptoms of that upon them and therefore we ought especially to avoid them lest they bring us by degrees into that sad state which is unpardonable for though one Sin I believe do not do this yet a great many may and especially such as those which do so waste the Conscience and corrupt the Mind as to make it uncurable And this is the saddest State and Condition in the World next to the State of Hell and Damnation tho' it be not the immediate Sin against the Holy Ghost Having endeavoured to give the plainest and fullest Satisfaction I can to the most doubtful and scrupulous Minds about this Sin of the Holy Ghost I shall now Discourse of some other things of a Lesser Nature which many Penitents and good Men are apt to be greatly dissatisfied with and have dark and wrong thoughts about As I. Concupiscence the Lustings of the Flesh or struggle between that and the Spirit which they find in themselves II. Trouble of Mind and a wounded Spirit which many lye under by reason of their Sins or by reason of Melancholly or both together SECT III. Of Concupiscence the Lustings of the Flesh or struggle between that and the Spirit THE right understanding of our selves is very necessary to the right understanding of Religion Religion is fitted and adapted to Humane Nature in its present state and capacity in this World and is designed not to destroy it but to perfect and improve it and raise it to its true Happiness and Perfection We cannot be like the Angels in Heaven nor like pure and glorious Spirits whilst we live here upon Earth and have Bodies of Flesh and Blood united to our Souls God who made us and knows our Frame did not intend to destroy and undo his own Creation by the Precepts of Religion nor make us cease to be Men by becoming Christians We find indeed in our selves a great many weaknesses and corruptions strong passions and sensual inclinations which if we did not wisely govern would be great occasions of Sin to us and if we let them loose would carry us into a thousand Mischiefs as well as Sins and Wickednesses They who give the reins to those and the full swinge to their Natural Lusts and Passions run into all Vice and Debauchery and commit all uncleanness with greediness And the best of Men cannot be wholly free from that Original Concupiscence and those Sensual Motions and Desires that are not alwayes agreeable to Reason and Religion but they complain of this bondage of corruption and this body of death which they cannot be delivered from Rom. 8.21 and 7.24 Grace and Religion though it gives us another Principle and conveys new powers of a Divine and Spiritual Life into our Souls yet whilst the Animal and Sensual Life remains and whilst we are compounded of Flesh and Blood as well as Spirit and Reason and have a Carnal as well as Spiritual Principle in us there will be a mighty struggle and a great contest between those two and a kind of civil war in our breasts between those different Parties and which of those shall be uppermost and have the chief Power and gain the Victory is the great point and the great concern of all Vertue and Religion since in all of us as the Apostle sayes The Flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the Flesh and these are contrary one to the other so that we cannot do the things that we would Gal. 5.17 And this we know by Experience as well as by Revelation Now this Concupiscence that remaineth in good Men is often matter of great trouble to them and they know not what to judge of it or how far it is a Sin and ought to be Repented of and what way they may best overcome it I shall therefore to clear and satisfie their thoughts about this matter of the struggle or Lusting between the Flesh and Spirit show these three things First That mere Lusting on either side is not what makes either Sin or Vertue or denominates a bad or a good Man Secondly That these are the proper matter of Vice or Vertue in which the tryal and exercise of them lye Thirdly That we ought to lessen the Power of the Fleshly Lusting and increase that of the Spirit and what are the proper means to do this I shall briefly consider First That meer Lusting on either side is not what makes either Sin or Vertue nor what constitutes or denominates a bad or a good Man For this Lusting is in both good and bad though according to several degrees and measures in the one the Lusting of the Flesh prevails and in the other that of the Spirit and 't is from this the prevalency of either of these and not the meer contention of them that we are counted good or bad before God The best of Men may have the same Passions Appetites and
Bodily Inclinations with others and may be disposed thereby to such Lustings and Desires of the Flesh but they do not let those carry them to unlawful Practices to undue Obâ—ects to consent to what is sinful or commit any thing that is forbidden by a Divine Law The worst of Men may have some ineffectual Desires and good Motions stirred up in their Souls now and then and it may be with some force and violence that they overcome the tender sense of their own Minds and the strugglings and rebukes of their own Consciences and their own Spirits and the Spirit of God may strive within them against their Lusts and sinful Inclinations but the latter is too hard for them and the Temptations of Sin and Wickedness prevail over all their faint Desires good Wishes Purposes or Resolutions 'T is certain no Man can be wicked but against the sense of his own Mind the smiting of his Conscience the convictions of his own Reason and Judgment and a strong inward Principle that makes Vice troublesome and uneasie to him at its first commitment before he has worn off Natural Shame and Innocence and is hardened by Custom and long continuance We have Naturally in us a Principle of Vertue as well as of Vice they are both indeed blended and mixt in our Nature and therefore the Spirit does as truly Lust against the Flesh and has strong Natural Motions against that as the Flesh hath against the Spirit We have the Natural Seeds of Probity good Nature Pity Charity Kindness Modesty and other Vertues sown in our Hearts and appearing in the first tender indications of undisguised Nature in Children and Infants as well as the seeds of Vice and Wickedness and all manner of Pravity and Corruption that grow up afterwards in Mens Lives There is an Original Lust and Concupiscence to Good as well as to Evil and as there is an Original Sin in our Nature in a true sense and meaning so there is an Original Righteousness still remaining in us as not only Nature and Experience but St. Pauls words here of the two Lustings of the Flesh and Spirit do plainly suppose and demonstrate But because some have thought that the first Motions of Concupiscence or the meer feeble and ineffectual Lustings and Desires of the Flesh after Evil or undue Objects is truly and properly a Sin I shall clear and consider that Point and take off the trouble that some have thereupon in their Minds 1. These meer Lustings or first Motions of Concupiscence cannot be Sin because they are Natural and result from our very Frame and Make and Constitution and as an Argument that they are so and so come from pure Mechanism of Body and the Temperament of Blood and Spirits they are the same both in us and in Brutes who have such Bodies as we have and who never were capable of Sinning or Falling or being punish'd as such Now nothing that is purely Natural can be Sinful for as such it is the work of God and part of his own Creation which he has pronounced to be good and it plainly serves such good ends and designs for the benefit of the World as God thought necessary and as are wisely appointed by him 'T is therefore making God the Author of Evil or with the Antient Hereticks making an Evil Principle to be our Creator to suppose any thing in us that is purely Natural to be Sinful 2 These Lustings and first Desires were in our first Parents before the Fall for they are only the inclination of our Animal Nature to its proper good and a suitable Object when they beheld the forbidden Fruit and saw that it was good for food and pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired Gen. 3.4 Had they gone no further but only seen it and thought it fair and lovely to the eye but checked this their Desire and Lust after it with the Consideration of Gods Prohibition and of the Punishment he had threatned against the eating of it they had not then lost their Innocence nor broken Gods Command nor incurred the grievous Penalty of it 3. Those Natural Desires and Inclinations were even in our Blessed Saviour who was in all things tempted like unto us yet without sin Heb. 4.15 Who as he increased in Wisdom and Stature and grew up as a Man so he hungred and thirsted and felt pain and was extremely sorrowful even unto Death and prayed that the bitter Cup might pass from him which all showed that he took our Nature with its Weaknesses and Infirmities upon him and that those are not Sins unless they go further and make us do something unlawful which he never did but his Vertue would not have been so great nor could he have been tempted by the Devil or rewarded by his Father for his Obedience had not he had the same Natural Desires and Inclinations that belong to Flesh and Blood 4. These first Motions are unavoidable and not under the power or command of our Will any more than such sensations and perceptions from Objects suited to such Faculties and inward Powers so that we can no more help such Motions and Desires arising from such causes than the seeing things when they are set before our Eyes or having our Ears struck with such sounds as are near us The Mind is as suddenly struck with such a Desire and Inclination from such an Object making impression upon it agreeable to its Nature and Capacity as it is by our outward Senses Indeed the Mind can judge of this afterwards and has a power to determine it self as it pleases either to choose or refuse such a Motion offered to it and this we call Will and if it does choose it and consent to it then as St. James sayes Lust hath conceived and brought forth sin James 1.15 but it is not Sin before it hath thus conceived and brought it forth and though the Action be not yet produced yet when the Mind has consented to it from thence it derives its Sinfulness and all its Blame and Guilt and there wants nothing in it self but only Power and Opportunity which are things without it to bring it into Act So that as a weight is the same though its tendency downwards be stop'd by what it lyes upon so is the pravity of the Will when it consents to an unlawful Desire though it be hindered from executing it But I shall show this further in the Second Head of Discourse namely 2ly That these Lustings and Desires of the Flesh and the Spirit are the proper tryals of our Vertue and the chief matter of our Obedience and according as either of these prevail upon us so we are fix'd in our Moral state here and our Eternal state hereafter The Flesh sollicites us with the temptations of Bodily Pleasures and Delights with the enjoyments of the Animal Life and the sensible and present good things of this World and if we choose those without regard to the Laws of Vertue and
Mercy and judges himself as incapable of it as the damned in Hell when Gods Spirit has left him so that he can neither pray nor do any thing to relieve himself but lyes as a condemned Caitiff a Malefactor sentenced past all hopes of Pardon and only expecting Punishment and the last stroke of Vengeance this is a sad a deplorable condition which I have known many a Sinner in under a Wounded Spirit and had one great instance before me when I was writing this These Wounds are not felt indeed by many a Sinner in the heat of Blood in the career of his Lusts and the hot persuit of his Sins when in his high frolicks and jovial diversions he drowns the noise of his Conscience or lulls it asleep with charming Pleasures or full Cups or some unthinking madness but it will awake one time or other and like a sleeping Lyon when 't is roused up by some Judgment by some Sickness or Affliction it will fall terribly upon him with rage and fury and tear and consume him then all the wounds which sin gave it will bleed afresh and it will feel them afterwards unless they have been cured by a timely repentance if they have festered and gangrened and mortified the Soul for a time yet when it comes to it self it will feel them with unexpressible pain and anguish which nothing can asswage I mean when a Man has sin'd away his Life and Death and his Sins are set together before him and 't is hard to know which is the more terrible When the Sting of Death swelled up with Sin and Guilt strikes as deep into a Man's Conscience and wounds his Spirit as Death it self strikes into his Body with its fatal dart so that he suffers a double death at the same time and the Spiritual far more painful than the Bodily I take a Wounded Spirit here in the highest and most common sense and though when a Mans Spirit is dejected and sunk with any thing 't is very hard to bear it which may be the sense of the Wise Mans words in the forequoted place when the strength of a Mans Mind is lost which should support him under all his infirmities that he is subject to from without yet nothing does so sink it so wound and destroy it as Sin and Guilt especially when it is come to such a degree and to such a sad condition as we commonly mean by a Wounded Spirit i. e. a Mind deeply pierced with the sense of its own Guilt and of Gods Anger upon it This likewise admits of degrees and in some cases 't is a very happy thing for a Sinner and 't is to be sure alwayes a just Punishment I shall therefore in the Third place briefly consider what is the proper Cure and Remedy of such a wounded Spirit or troubled Mind for there is no Spiritual Illness but what is curable if we take it in time by Religion no Wound of Soul but what there is Balm for in Gilead in Christianity there is no Disease too great for our Heavenly Physician but what the Gospel has a proper and certain Remedy for if we duely and timely apply it A Man may tarry too long indeed and not use the Physick till it be too late till Death comes and puts an end to the time of Tryal and the time of Repentance and then a Wounded Spirit i. e. the extremest Sorrow for a Mans Sins the deepest Contrition of Soul for them cannot come up to true Gospel Repentance to which there is a certain promise of Pardon and Forgiveness for that is only upon turning to God and leaving all our Sins and leading a new Life and bringing forth the Fruits of Repentance by Obedience to the Gospel for the future which is a necessary condition by the terms of the Gospel which he cannot perform whom God cuts off before he can do it and therefore such an one must be left to the Infinite Mercy and Righteous Judgment of God to be dealt with by such measures as are not within the Covenant of Grace or the Terms of the Gospel for by those I cannot see any title he has to Pardon But in other Cases a Wounded Spirit may be the greatest Mercy and even the very beginning of Health or of a Cure to a Soul when God does not suffer a Man to go on senslesly in his Sins till he come to a seered Conscience and a reprobate Sense and to hardness of Heart and blindness of Mind but by some methods of his Grace and Providence alarums his Conscience and awakens his stupid Mind and brings his almost sensless and stupified Soul to some Spiritual sense of his condition Then his Soul will be wounded as Davids was when he reflects upon those Sins which he committed without consideration and he will be sore struck and smitten as every Penitent must at the remembrance of his evil wayes All Repentance is such a wounding of the Soul as makes its Heart bleed within it and its Blood and Spirits melt into Tears and Sorrow for what it has done 't is not such an easie thing as most men think it to be 't is such a Pain such a Wound to the Soul that the Pleasure of the greatest Sin is but a poor trifle to it and no man that rightly understood it would venture upon any Sin from the reserved hopes of it Repentance is a bitter Remedy made up of very strong and unpleasant ingredients and we must go through a long course to purge out the old Disease and take away the root of it so that before a wicked mind can be cured by it it must be cut and lanced and wounded and have very severe applications made to it The work of Regeneration or the New Birth cannot be wrought without many pangs or throwes nor does God ever almost bring a bad man to become a good one without some trouble and disorder of Mind There is a trouble of Mind indeed which is excessive and unreasonable for every Sinner ought in some measure to be troubled in Mind and he has not a due sense of his Sins if he is not but there is a trouble of Mind which takes away the hopes of Mercy and throwes Men into despair which is commonly called a Wounded Spirit and 't is so in the highest degree and whether there is any Remedy for that and what it is and what advice is to be given in such a case and what judgment to be made of it I shall briefly consider 1. Then this is often joyned with Melancholly of Body which is very hard to be cured and till it be so it is apt to darken the Mind and bring a cloud over the Spirits and to fill the Soul with very black Idea's and Imaginations and to hinder it from making true judgment of it self or its own actions and this is as pityable and ought as much to be remedied by Physick and Care as other Diseases of Body for I have known
yet they were looked upon ever after as Saints in the Scripture phrase and account and were supposed to have repented and renounced all their Sins before they were admitted into Christianity and that as a previous and antecedent Condition necessary to qualifie and prepare them for it and therefore there was usually some time of tryal and probation appointed by the Primitive Church to see whether those Candidates of Baptism were sincere or no in their Promises and Pretences and if afterwards they broke and violated those and committed any great and notorious Sin which they had renounced in their Baptism and was contrary to their Baptismal Covenant they turned them out of the Church for it and excluded them from the Benefits and Priviledges of Christianity so that they accounted not those for true Christians who were Penitents and who stood in need of Repentance for any great Sin And indeed he is not a Christian who does so he is fallen off from Christianity and has quitted and renounced his Baptismal Vow and has forfeited the rights of it and has put himself out of the Christian state and the state of Grace who is guilty of any Mortal Sin and who is in a state of Repentance for it Penitence was therefore alwayes accounted by those first Christians a very terrible and dreadful thing if we read of the cryes and tears and discipline and behaviour of the antient Penitents though the loosness and irreligion of latter times has made it to be thought a slight and easie and trivial matter but it is plain from Scripture that it was supposed as previous and antecedent to Christianity and from the Primitive Church that it cut Men off and excluded them out of it and that so far in the opinion of some as never to be again admitted into it The Antient Church at first accounted him so far from being a Christian who was in the sad and wretched state of Penitence for any great and Mortal Sin that it thought he deserved never again to be received into the Church nor admitted into Christian Communion no not in articulo mortis It was so horrid a reflection in its esteem upon Christianity such a disgrace to the Gospel of Christ and so unworthy the Christian Profession to have a Christian guilty of any such great Sin as Murder Adultery or the like that it would never own him again that was so nor receive him as a Christian But 6. Though Christianity be a permanent state of Pardon and Remission so that this is by no means to be denyed to Sins after Baptism according to the Novatian Heresie which sprang out of that first severe Discipline of the Church and which it was afterwards forced to condemn yet 't is a thing strange and unknown and unagreeable to Christianity that Men should go on in a course of renewing their Sins and so renewing their Repentance for them as often as they think fit This would be making Christianity run in the Popish Circle of Sin and Repent Repent and Sin and so dance round without any danger provided we stop at the last at the right point I am far from that severe Principle charged upon Novatus of old and Smalcius of late which allowes not Repentance to any great and voluntary Sins committed after Baptism though that were given only to the Adult and to those of full Reason and Understanding this would be the most uncomfortable thing in the World to the best Christians few of which could set up to themselves this narrow Ladder and so go alone to Heaven by it as Constantine said to one of the Patrons of this Doctrine And I think the instance of the Incestuous Corinthian and the unworthy Communicants at Corinth and many other places in the New Testament clearly confute it and it makes the Christian Covenant so much worse than the Jewish which had standing means of Expiation and Remission that it needs no more to confute it And though Baptism be not to be repeated yet the benefit of it reaches forwards as well as to what is past as Christs Death also does and we are partakers of Christs Blood for the remission of Sins in the other Sacrament as well as this without any necessity of the pretended Sacrament of Penance for this purpose as the Papists argue But though the Gospel has given us a standing Charter of Pardon upon Repentance which is not forfeited by every new breach and violation yet if we do not accept of it and perform the Condition after it has been offered and tendered to us we may justly be debarred and excluded from it and God may when he pleases without any breach of Promise or of Covenant cut us off from it for he may take away our Lives when he will and so shorten and limit the time when this Priviledge shall expire and determine and when we shall no further have any benefit of it Like a Prince who sets out a Proclamation of Pardon and Indempnity to all Rebels that shall immediately come in and return to their Allegiance if they delay and refuse to do this they forfeit all their right to it and may be siezed and executed when ever he thinks fit Should a Government grant a General Pardon to all Offenders when ever they shall please to come in and claim it it would destroy it self and encourage all manner of Villany and Wickedness And if God should grant this to all Sinners when they had stood out in rebellion against him all their Lives that at the last moment of them they should have the full and entire benefit of it he would unavoidably encourage them in their Sins and relax and abate all the Obligation to his Laws and unloose Men from the necessity of a good Life which was very far to be sure from the design of God in granting this Priviledge of Repentance But 't is an horrid abuse of it and a turning this Grace of God into wantonness and putting a trick upon God and Religion by thus perverting it and drawing such mischievous consequences from it I hope I have taken away the very Grounds of that fatal Mistake and the common and false Reasonings that many make to themselves from it or at least shall do so before I have done and particularly by the next Chapter CHAP. V. Of a Death-Bed Repentance SECT I. The Case of the Thief upon the Cross Examined THE Relation and Account of the Thief upon the Cross and our Saviours Discourse with him tho' it be put in and lye in the Gospel only as a meer History and a matter of fact that belonged to the manner of our Saviours dying his being crucified between Two Thieves so that it was not intended or designed by any of the Evangelists to teach any Evangelical Doctrine or to give any peculiar Rule Principle or Instruction that was extraordinary and that was to be learnt and collected confirmed and authorized only by that and therefore though 't is mentioned
Heaven though it be a gift is a reward too and shall be exactly proportioned in the degrees of it to the deservings and actions and behaviours of Men. The main foundation then of this Doctrine of the Efficacy or Sufficiency of a Death-Bed Repentance must be the case of the Thief upon the Cross i. e. the History or Relation of a Man who dyed as a Malefactor and yet certainly went to Heaven for that is the whole of it Now I doubt not but many hundred such Malefactors have gone to Heaven and many Thousand Sinners that were once bad Men but yet had they never Repented till they came to dye I do as verily believe that not one of them had gone thither but to another place where Men shall for ever repent at the same rate that most Men do who have not done so before that time To Ground and Establish this Doctrine upon this Historical Case and 't is I believe the only Doctrine that has such a foundation we must examine whether it certainly and exactly comes up in all the Particulars and Circumstances of it to the case of a wicked Mans living a very ill life till he comes to dye and then only repenting of it We must then enquire whether it plainly and certainly appears from the account the Scripture gives us of it 1. Whether he were a very ill Man in the whole or general course of his Life 2. Whether we are sure he did not Repent long before he came to dye for if these two are not certainly known nor do appear from Scripture the case may be very different and no way suit or answer the late and dying Repentance of a very wicked Man And 3. Supposing those two yet how can we tell whether this might not be an extraordinary case and such as belongs to no other Sinner whatsoever 1. Whether it do appear from the account Scripture gives us of him that he was a very ill Man in the whole or general course of his life The reason of which inquiry is this that a general habit of irreligion and wickedness through the whole course of a Mans life puts him into a more wretched and dangerous and deplorable state than any particular Act of Sin or then any one sin whatsoever for that like a Leprosie spreads over and corrupts the whole Mind lays the whole Conscience waste and roots up all the Principles of Religion and puts Men in the number of those who have no fear of God before their eyes and who live without God in the World but a Man may not be so far gone not be a Sinner of so high a rate but may be an imperfectly good Man and yet fall into a wilful sin by the suddenness or greatness of the Temptation by Surprize and Inconsideration and laxness of Thoughts by a remissness in Religion and not being duely upon his Guard and by the struggle that is in his mind between the Flesh and the Spirit between this World and another which makes the one now and then get the better of the other such an one is a kind of borderer upon Vertue and lives between the confines of that and wickedness and sometimes he is governed and brought under the power of one and sometimes is overcome and made a prey by the other Now though such an one is not fit for the Kingdom of Heaven till he comes wholly off from every wilful sin and is more under the power of Religion yet he is nearer to the Kingdom of Heaven and may sooner by Repentance and becoming a good Man fit himself for it and so enter into it It does not at all appear in Scripture from the History of this Penitent Theif whether he had been a very ill Man or no in the general course of his Life only that he was a Thief which was enough to denominate him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and suffered as he himself owns justly and received the due reward of his deeds Luke 23.41 But who knows what abatements his sin might have either by extream necessity or some other circumstances which God might fairly consider and allow for though he was brought to an infamous Death here by the severity of Humane Laws Even a good Man who is so in the general course and habit of his Life may fall into a particular act of wilful sin as we see in David Moses and St. Peter and let him that standeth take heed lest he fall as the Apostle advises 1 Cor. 10.12 For no Man is perfectly out of danger whilst he is in this state of probation and infirmity and though every such Sin breaks a Mans good State and puts him into an ill one till he recovers himself by Repentance and Amendment for Mens States of Grace and Damnation are no way fixt here but are alterable in this World according to the temper of their minds and behaviour of their lives yet 't is more easie to recover from a single act than a long habit as 't is to cure a green wound than an old Ulcer or a Chronical Disease And where there is an habitual soundness within where the Mind is not vitiated with habitual Corruptions and evil Principles and irreligious Habits and Customs but has a pretty good Sense of Religion though it happens to be over-powred with a temptation there it will sooner recover it self and throw off the Disease and the Corrupt Matter by its own inward Strength and the assistance of the Divine Grace There the inward Sense and the Principles of Religion will unfold and expand themselves by the power of Restitution since though they have been prest down and overpowred yet they have not been quite broken and destroyed the Religious and Vertuous Sense will revive again in the Mind which was not wholly extinguished though very much Damped and Choaked and weakned and thus they plainly seem to be in thus penitent Thief by his Carriage to our Saviour which I shall consider by and by by his rebuking the other Thief who was railing at Christ with that most sober Reprimand Dost thou not fear God seeing thou art in the same condemnation ver 40. and by the firm belief and full perswasion he had of the happyness of another State and his Devout and Religious Prayer to Christ to remember him when he came into his Kingdom These make it very probable that he was not a very profligate or ill Man in the general course of his Life but rather such a good one who lived not in the habit of many great sins but fell into a particular Act by a Temptation that might greatly lessen it before God though it made him an Example before Men But 2. Whatever his Sin was however great and however sinful a Man he had been yet who knows how long he had repented and how sincerely and what fruits he had shown of his Repentance We know not when the theft was committed and whether he did not immediately Repent of it and make
which we can never enjoy the true Happiness we were made for and to which our Minds are fitted Vertue alone can give that and all the Pleasure Peace and Joy that result from it whereas Wickedness will necessarily not only corrupt and impair the Mind and spoil its Faculties but disorder and wound and corrode it and make it very painful and uneasie and a Hell and Torment to it self 2. As none but good Men shall enter into Heaven so none can be made good on a sudden Those Vertuous and Holy Habits and Dispositions of Mind are not to be had or attained immediately in a little time and on a sudden hurry as is intimated here by the Virgins wanting Oyl and not being able to procure or buy it in their present distress when the Bridegroom was a coming We must be prepared and provided with those things that are necessary for our Future Happiness before Death comes and puts us on a sudden hurry and alarums us with its unexpected approach or else we shall be sadly disappointed and unprovided if we expect to procure or attain them then If we think to borrow of anothers Vertues and Merits to help out our own defects and wants at that time as they of the Church of Rome imagine something like these foolish Virgins or as others that the Bridegroom himself shall supply them in an extraordinary manner out of his stock though they have no Oyl at all in their own Vessels no Righteousness of their own All these vain hopes and expectations of idle and careless and foolish Sinners will then deceive and disappoint them and make them miserable If Men have not attained to the Vertues and Graces of Religion nor any degrees of Holiness and Goodness all their Lives and think to acquire them now on a sudden when they are near dying they may as well hope that a Tree that has bore no Fruit all the Year should on a sudden when it is just to be cut down and the Axe is laid to the root of it sprout and bud and blossom and bring forth Fruit. This would be a strange Miracle and it must be as great and unaccountable to have a wicked Man on a sudden become a good one and bring forth the Fruits of Vertue and Repentance All our Vertues are owing to the Grace of God as the growth of all Plants and Trees is to the Rain and warmth and influence of the Heavens but to think that Gods Grace which could not work upon a Man all his Life before will now in such an extraordinary manner change and convert him on a sudden as to make him immediately become a good Man is to suppose a Saint made as Adam was in full growth and perfect flature the first day he lived without passing through the degrees of Youth and Childhood as God thinks not fit to make Mankind so now but produces them by the ordinary and appointed way of his Providence so he makes good Men by the ordinary methods of his Grace and influences of Religion and the New Creature is formed by degrees and growes into a perfect Man and increases in Wisdom and Goodness till it comes to the measure of the stature of the fulness in Christ Jesus The Spirit worketh upon our Mind agreably to their Nature in a manner indiscernable from its own proper operation enlighteneth the Understanding and inclineth the will gently and kindly by the thoughts and considerations of Religion offering them clearly and imprinting them strongly upon the Soul and so in a rational way begetting right apprehensions and affections in it and so altering the temper and disposition of the Mind and by frequent acts and repeated practices bringing a Man to new habits and thus converting him from bad to good not in an instant but by long strivings and gradual operations upon him No very bad Man was ever made a good one on a sudden nor can any more be so by the Grace of the Gospel than a Child over night become a Man the next morning by the course of Nature and Providence or Seed sown in the ground spring up and ripen and bear Fruit in a few hours Such Mushroon Converts and Penitents have no good root but dye away and wither as suddenly and instantaneously as they came up with the first heat and tryal of a Temptation till Religion shoots deeper into their Hearts and gets better rooting in their Souls like the Seed that fell on stony ground it is quickly gone and does not grow at all nor bring forth fruit with patience as the Scripture emphatically speaks i. e. with due continuance Good Purposes and Resolutions and such like good Principles of Action must continue some time upon the Mind and exert their power and efficacy upon it by proper acts and tryals and experiments or else they are but like false conceptions that produce nothing like Clouds without Rain Blossoms without Fruit and abortive causes without any effects A sudden Sorrow upon a wicked Mind will no more make it good nor bring forth the worthy fruits of Repentance than a sudden shower upon the Sands of Arabia or Rocks of Caucasus will make them become fertile and good ground there must be long cultivation and great labour and pains taken with such barren ground before it will be a fruitful Soil and bring forth any thing by all the showers and influences of Heaven upon it A hardened Sinner who hath lived many years in the wretched courses and habits of Wickedness must by long time and great care and many methods of Gods Grace and Goodness have his Heart changed and his Life mended and his old Vicious Habits plucked up and new Vertuous ones planted in their place and these take root and grow up and bear Fruit in his Life before he can become such a good Man as is fitted for Heaven Such an one can never be made so in a little time just before Death but it must require at least a good part of his Life to become such and it should be indeed the business of our whole Lives to make our selves such as shall be thus fit for Heaven To think that great work can be done at the latter end when we are just a dying and may be dispatched in a very little time all on a sudden is as idle and unreasonable as for a Man that has a good dayes journey to take to lye loytering and never mind it till the Sun is near down and night is coming upon him and then to set out and think to reach it by a sudden start or by some unaccountable wayes to fly thither or be Magically transported and set down he knows not how at his journeys end Or rather to make the Case more exactly parallel to an old Sinner like one who hath travelled almost all the day in a wrong way and spurred and driven on very furiously in his vicious courses and is now to turn back and begin to take the right way when
of Religion and now he denyes those and his Life both alike because he cannot keep them Is he now to begin to practice the Vertues of Chastity and Temperance and Sobriety which he never did before then he hath put them off to a very convenient season when his Vices have quite left him and so if Vertues will come of themselves like guests uninvited there is no other company to hinder them but he was as vertuous and sober almost half his Life I mean when he was asleep as he can be now when he is as incapable of the contrary acts as he was then and is only like the Enthusiast cured of seeing vanity when he lost his Eyes but perhaps not of being vain for the ghosts and spirits of his departed Sins may still haunt and possess him If these Christian Vertues are necessary to be practiced in order to our Eternal Salvation a dying Repentance cannot be sufficient without them if it be then those particular Precepts and Commands must be set aside by it as well as the other general ones I mentioned for 't is certain he can no more practice these Vertues now than he could in his Mothers Womb and they might be as well infused into him then as they can be now without any practice and something better because there were then no contrary Habits to hinder them But the Doctrine of infused Habits is like the Hypothesis of Transfusion of Blood contrary to Nature and Experience and the dying Man may as well depend upon one for his Body as the other for his Soul 3. The salvability and sufficiency of a meer dying Repentance as it sets by and discharges us from all those general and particular Commands of Christianity so also from the whole Christian engagement and Baptismal Covenant For can that then be any way made good or performed in any measure when a Man has violated it all his Life and notoriously broken it in all the parts that belong to it Can he then sufficiently renounce the Devil and all his works when he hath hitherto complyed with them the pomps and vanities of this wicked World when he has minded nothing else and the sinful Lufts of the Flesh when he has followed them and been led by them all his dayes Can he then keep Gods Commandments who hath broken most of them and walk in the same all the dayes of his Life who hath walked all his days in the ways of Sin and the paths of Unrighteousness and never left them till just now he is at his journeys end and can live no longer Surely this Baptismal Covenant is made only pro formâ and is but a modish and mannerly Ceremony at our entring into Christianity if we are not more obliged to stand to it and make it good and expect the benefits of Christianity upon our so doing in some further and better manner of performance than a wicked Christian can do when he comes to dye If his meer Sorrows and Purposes and Resolutions will serve instead of all that is expresly or implicitely meant by it it is void and null in all the other parts of it and the Church has unfaithfully and unsincerely drawn it up in other words of a different sense and meaning that signifie nothing and the Scripture hath exprest it as odly and unfitly when it speaks of our dying to Sin and rising unto Righteousness by our Baptism That we are symbolically buried with Christ by baptism unto death that like as Christ was raised up by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newness of life Rom. 6.4 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death we shall be also in the likness of his resurrection Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin for he that is dead is free from sin ver 5 6 7. Likewise reckon ye also your selves to be dead indeed unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord ver 11. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin but yield your selves unto God as those that are alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God ver 12.13 Here is enough to give us the plain meaning of Baptism and the great obligation of it to renounce Sin and live a good and holy Life And we are then said to put on Christ and to put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness Eph. 4.24 and to put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts ver 22. and to be regenerated and born again and have a Spiritual Principle of Life and Holiness communicated to our Souls and we then voluntarily consent to the terms of Christianity and solemnly engage and undertake to live according to them now all this which is very great and very obliging one would think is made very little and very easily took off and abated and dispensed with if when it has been utterly neglected and disregarded violated and broken all our lives a mere short and Dying Repentance will make it up and supply all the failures and the whole non-performance of it I own that true and timely Repentance will relieve us against the many failures and breaches of it by bringing us to performe it better afterwards sincerely endeavouring to make it good when we have broken it by any wilful sin and upon our performance of it though not with perfect exactness yet with sincere integrity depends our Title to all the Priviledges of Christianity But now to have no regard to it or take any care to observe it nor make it any way good in our lives but to live loosely and wickedly as if we had no such strict Engagement and Obligation upon us and to allow our selves in notorious Sins and unlawful Liberties expresly contrary to our Baptismal Covenant and yet think to salve all and have the whole benefit of it by a short Sorrow and Repentance when we come to dye this is either to make it have no meaning at all or that we are not obliged to the performance of it but let us not deceive our selves whosoever doth not make good his Baptismal Covenant in his Life which a wicked Man cannot at his Death as he is false to Christ and breaks his own most solemn and voluntary engagements so he forfeits all the benefits of his Christianity all that Pardon and Salvation which Christ hath purchased and proposed to him Thus all the Obligations to Christian Holiness and Obedience layd upon us either by our own Baptismal Vows and Promises or by the particular or general Commands of God and our Saviour are all taken away and dissolved by this loose Doctrine of
So that either a Man must throw off all Religion or throw off every secret and beloved Sin for either his Sin will spoil his Religion or his Religion must cure him of his Sin or he must have great Mistakes and false Apprehensions of Religion who thinks to compound with Heaven and to pay External Homage to it and that God will accept of that instead of inward Vertue and sincere Obedience One would think no Man could ever heartily performe one act of Devotion who has any such sin in reserve that he will not part with but I am sure whoever does so his Devotion will never be accepted by God and it will be in vain to worship him openly while we secretly disobey him such a blemish spoils all our Sacrifices and desecrates and pollutes the most sacred oblations and as the Prophet exprest it to the Jews makes him that killeth an ox as if he slew a man he that sacrificeth a lamb as if he cut off a dogs neck he that offereth an oblation as if he offered swines blood he that burneth incense as if he blessed an idol Isa 6.3 and he giveth the reason at the latter part of the verse They have chosen their own ways and their soul delighteth in their abominations and these turn their very Prayers into sin and make them an abomination to God as Scripture assures us Psal 109.7 Prov. 28.9 'T is strange and unaccountable to consider that a Man should have some sense of Religion and be govern'd by it in a great many things and live up to the Rules of it in several instances and yet be so besotted and infatuated as to let one darling sin overcome and enslave him when he knows that this by the Principles of his Religion is as damnable and destructive as any of the rest which is just as if he should be careful to preserve his Health and avoid a great many Diseases and live by regular Methods to that purpose and yet give himself a mortal stab and a wound that will certainly dispatch him for one Sin like one Wound may be Mortal and bring Death along with it as well as many and one drop of Poyson may kill and one wilful sin damn us as well as more God will not judge of our sins as the Custom and Opinion of the World does nor abate of the Measures of our Duty and Conditions of our Salvation as we madly and unreasonably do our selves but whatever sin stands condemned by the Divine Law however Modish or Common and Customary it be that will not alter its Nature nor take off its guilt and danger one Mans Temper carries him to such Sins that he thinks Flesh and Blood cannot resist anothes Trade or Business tempts him to others that he thinks 't is impossible to get a Livelyhood without them he cannot drive his Bargains with his Customers without immoderate drinking nor Sell and Trade in the World without Customary Lying and perhaps Swearing and to perswade Men out of those that their Convenience and Condition or their Temper or Complexion do so strongly dispose 'em to is to pluck out a right eye and cut off a right hand I confess it is so in our Saviours sense but 't is also very necessary to do this to Cut off even the most pleasant or advantagious Sin and deny even the most darling and beloved Lust if we would not be cast into Hell hereafter and into a Bad State at present our Saviours words there suppose and imply that but as he says 't is more profitable more for our good Interest and Advantage to forego any pleasure and part with any Advantage then for the sake of them to expose our selves to such a miserable state He that is truly afraid of Hell will not dare to live in any such sin as he knows will bring him thither he must be strangely thoughtless and inconsiderate or else a down-right Atheist Infidel or Sceptick who can allow himself in any such sinful Liberties and undue Practices as are directly contrary to Religion and inconsistent with all the fears and the hopes of it and as one would think with all true Faith and belief of another World but let every one that hath those and any serious sense of Religion remaining upon his Mind not venture to indulge himself in any secret or known Sin nor harbour any beloved vice or wickedness in his Soul but let him though with the greatest Self-denyal to his Temper or difficulty to his Circumstances and Condition in the World break it off and teare it from his heart though it stick by never so many strings and fibres and be like a second Nature grown to it like a Cancer it will certainly kill us if it be not thus torn from the breast and so perfectly cut off that none of its spreading Venom or Poyson remain behind He that has had any such mortal illness growing upon his Mind or been guilty of any such wilfull Sin as puts him into an ill state must thus Repent of it so as never again to commit it nor live in the practice of it afterwards or else till he do this he can have no hopes that he is recovered or got out of it nor any reasonable grounds to believe that he is in a Condition any way hopeful or comfortable for Lastly 'T is only this mark of not committing any known and wilful sin that distinguishes good Men who are born of God from those who are wicked and the children of the Devil and Enemies to God and to be sure there must be some very great and notorious difference between them and some plain and evident marks by which they may be known from one another now those are plainly given us by St. John 1 Ep. 3. c. 8 9. ver He that committeth sin is of the Devil and whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin Where nothing less can be meant by committing sin then living in the practice of any known sin or wilful wickedness which destroys the image of God upon the mind and so defiles and depraves our Souls that they are unlike to the pure and holy and unspotted Nature of God and when any Vice of Pride Lust Malice or the like abides upon them they bear these Marks and Signatures and likeness of accursed Fiends and of their Father the Devil upon them in Scripture phrase There are none such great Sinners as to break all the Divine Laws some sins are contrary to one another and some may be contrary to our Inclinations Complexions or Conditions and Employments but he that will violate any one Law as it suits with any of those and will gratifie any Lust or Temptation as it is offered to him he is one whom the Scripture denominates a Sinner in the high sense i. e. one who stands condemned by it to an ill state here and to Eternal Misery hereafter We are all Sinners in a low sense as I shall show presently when I come
to state the difference of Mens sins and enquire what are and what are not consistent with a good state but no Judgment could be made between a Good and a Bad Man if this did not distinguish them that the one though he may be encompast with a great many frailties and infirmities yet never allows himself in one wilful known and deliberate wickedness which the other does There may be degrees both of Sinners and of Good Men some have attained to greater improvements and perfections both in Vice and Vertue and are more the Children of God or the Children of the Devil but that which divides their States and cuts the Line of difference between them must be this that the one allows himself in the practice of some known sin or sins which the other does not but carefully avoyds and never commits any such wilful Wickedness Though this seems very plain and undeniable and I have endeavoured to convince every one of the truth of it by the several Arguments I have brought to prove it it being of great use to them to Judge and Examine themselves by this plain and certain Mark and Criterion instead of the many false and uncertain ones that are given out as signs of Grace and to judge thereby of their Spiritual Condition and know whether they are in a Good or Bad State yet there are two seemingly great objections against it The one is the quite other Character and Account which St. Paul gives of himself in the Seventh Chapter to the Romans who was undoubtedly in a good state and a Regenerate Man and yet speaks of sin dwelling in him ver 17. and that the good which he would he did not but the evil which he would not that he did ver 19. and that there was a war in his members warring against the law of his mind and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin which is in his members ver 23. c. The other is that no Man lives without sin and that 't is impossible he should for in many things we offend all and if we say we have no sin we deceive our selves as the Apostle says and therefore to exclude all from a state of Grace who live in any sin and to make the not committing sin the only true Mark and Sign of Grace is a very hard saying and a very severe thing and in effect is an excluding all Mankind since all are Sinners some way or other and none are so perfect as to live wholly without Sin Now the first of these I shall answer very briefly because I would not enter into any long dispute about the sense of that Chapter and the other I shall more largely consider in a distinct Section because it will occasion my giving an account of the difference of sins what are and what are not consistent with a Good State which is a very material point in the right stating and understanding the Nature of Repentance and the Nature of Sin First then as to St. Paul's description of himself Rom. 7. One of these two things must be allowed by all Sober and Understanding Men. 1. That if he speaks in the Person of a Regenerate Man as some would have it then all the Phrases and Expressions of sin dwelling in him and the like must relate only to those sins of Frailty and Infirmity which a good Man is liable to and cannot be wholly free from and which are therefore consistent with a good State as I shall particularly show in the next Section A Good Man who is especially under a state of imperfect goodness and not arrived to any great degree of Christian perfection may say of himself in many Cases that which I do I allow not I am guilty of many a hasty word and undue passion and unreasonable desire and foolish imagination and the like which I do not approve of with my reason but dislike and wish I could be perfectly free from and so in many cases may say what I would that I do not many degrees of Charity and Devotion and other Vertues which I willingly would yet I do not perform nor come up to such a pitch of goodness as I gladly would but fall short in many things of my Duty and such attainments as I would propose and come up to such an one may be very sensible of the body of death and the bondage of Corruption he is in and of the strength of Concupiscence and the Law in his Members warring against the Law of his Mind Chap. 4. Sect. 3. But these may only relate to such Imperfections and Infirmities and sins of Frailty and Infirmity as may consist with a Good State and belong to a Good Man but they are by no means to be applyed further to the committing any wilful and known and presumptuous sin which cannot be said of a Regenerate Man or one in a good state and therefore 2. Some of those Expressions in that Chapter seem to be such as cannot belong to a Good Man such as those ver 14. I am carnal sold under sin ver 23. That the law of his members brought him into captivity to the law of sin ver 25. That with his flesh he served the law of sin So that St. Paul seems to speak here not of himself as a good Christian but of an Unregenerate Person under the Convictions of the Law and though he uses his own name yet 't is by a Metaschematism a Figure usual to him in other places as Gal. 2.17 18. If I build again the things which I destroy I make my self a transgressor and we our selves are still found sinners Rom. 3.7 If the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie why yet am I judged as a sinner where though he uses his own Name yet 't is under the Person of a Blasphemous Objector and 1 Cor. 13.2 If I have all faith and no charity what doth it profit me which is an inoffensive way of transferring odious things to our selves when we would describe and reprove them Thus St. Paul here only personates an unregenerate Man for in other places he gives a quite other Character of a Regenerate one directly contrary to what is here as that He hath crucified the flesh with the affections and lust Gal. 5.24 and crucified the old man Rom. 6.6 and that he is dead to sin Rom. 16.11 and free from sin and the servant of Righteousness Whereas here it is said that sin dwelt in him that he was carnal sold under sin that the law of his members led him into captivity to the law of sin and that with his flesh he served the law of sin this must be the state not of a good Christian but of a Man at least under the Law and therefore the Apostle in opposition to this immediately describes the other more happy state of a Christian under the Gospel in the next Chapter and in answer to the grievous Exclamation O wretched man that I am who
shall deliver me from this body of death he comfortably replies to himself I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord ver 25. i. e. there is a remedy for it by Christ and Christianity and the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death ver 2. chap. 8. The Answer to the other Objection will be fully given in the next Section SECT II. The Differences of Sins what are and what are not consistent with a good State THAT all Men are Sinners not only Experience but the Scriptures do in many places assure us that there is not a righteous man upon earth who sinneth not that in many things we offend all and that if we say we have no sin we deceive our selves and the truth is not in us by which is not only meant that no Man is wholly free from all manner of Sin in the whole course of his Life or can pass all his dayes without falling into some Sin or other but that no part of his Life even when he is come to his best State a State of Grace and Vertue is so perfect as to be quite sinless and without any Sin of what kind soever so that he should not be obliged to beg Pardon of God and say dayly Forgive us our Trespasses Now this as it is matter of Humiliation to the best Men so it is turn'd to another use and quite different purpose by the worst they comfort themselves in all their greatest Sins that all Men are Sinners as well as themselves that none are free from all Sins and let them that are so cast the first stone at them they plainly confound hereby the different states of good and bad Men and are not willing to distinguish or make such a true judgment as the Scripture does plainly between them for the same Scripture that tells us all are Sinners and hath concluded all under Sin yet declare that every wilful Sin is damnable and that they who commit it and live in the practice of it shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven and that he who shall keep all the law besides and yet offend in any one point is guilty of all and shall be punish'd as truly though not so fully for one wilful unrepented Sin as for more There is no way to reconcile this and take off any seeming difficulty about it but by that plain difference which both Scripture and Reason allow between Sins that some of them are Sins of Frailty and Infirmity which are unavoidable to us in our present state and which are consistent with a good one and which the best of Men cannot live wholly without whilst they are in this Body of Flesh and Blood and that others are wilful and presumptuous known and deliberate Sins which are committed with full consent of the Mind and against a plain Law of God and with that presumption and disobedience that makes them unpardonable without a particular Repentance and a perfect Amendment It concerns us very carefully to distinguish and know the difference between those and not to erre to be sure on the wrong side by judging too kindly of our Sins and calling those Infirmities and Weaknesses which are Sins of Wilfulness and Presumption nor can we without judging right and avoiding Mistakes on either hand judge truly and comfortably of our selves and know what our Spiritual state is or what condition we are in as to God and another World The only way to be safe is to avoid every Sin at least every wilful Sin and to grow up to as high a degree of Vertue and Goodness as we can and to get as much mastery over all our Imperfections and Infirmities as is possible but since some Sins and Frailties will cleave to us whilst we carry this body of Sin and of Death about us we may use the Psalmists excellent Prayer both for our Instruction and our Devotion Psal 19.12 13. Who can understand his errors Cleanse thou me from secret faults keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins let them not have dominion over me then shall I be upright and I shall be innocent from the great transgression where he gives us an account of several sorts of Sins 1. Such as he calls Errors and secret Faults by which are meant Sins of Ignorance and Infirmity which we are to pray God to forgive and free us from as well as from others 2. Presumptuous Sins which implye such as are both known and wilful and those 3. such as have dominion over one a reigning habitual prevailing power now if we be kept free from these latter though not the former we are safe and out of danger in a state of sincerity and favour with God and shall be treated as Righteous and Good Men notwithstanding those lesser Faults Then shall I be upright and I shall be innocent from the great transgression i. e. from any such Sin as shall indanger my Soul and expose it to Misery and Damnation I shall consider and explain these several sorts of Sins 1. Errors and secret Faults Sins of Ignorance and Infirmity such as we knew not to be Sins when we committed them either by a downright ignorance and not knowing any Law of God that forbad them or by thoughtlesness surprize and inconsideration being unawares engaged in them before we could think or consider As to Sins of Ignorance our Saviour told the Pharisees John 9.41 If ye were blind ye should have no sin i. e. If ye had been perfectly ignorant of the Messiahs coming into the World and had had no knowledge of this by the Prophesies of old and by the Miracles which ye see me do then your Infidelity and Unbelief had been excusable and without Sin Where Christianity is not revealed as to the Heathen World where Faith is not proposed to Men with those Arguments and Reasons which should perswade to it there God will not condemn them for their Ignorance which they could no way help and which was only their misfortune and not their fault Our Blessed Saviour sayes of the Jews If I had not come and spoken unto them they had not had sin Joh. 15.22 i. e. the Sin of Disbelieving and Rejecting him as to other Sins known by their own Law those they had been answerable for to God as St. Paul sayes As many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law Rom. 2.12 and as many as have sinned without law shall perish without law i. e. the Gentiles who had not the Law of Moses shall be condemned for their Sins by the Law of Nature It has been an uncharitable Question whether any of the Gentiles should be saved Now tho' they cannot be saved in an ordinary way by Vertue of the Christian Covenant to which they have no title or claim yet God may in extraordinary Mercy let all Mankind have the benefit of it and save them by Christ though they know him not
unlawfully had it power and opportunity for those first Motions and Inclinations are necessary and unavoidable arising from the frame and constitution of our Nature and the Mechanism of our Body Blood and Spirits so that we can no more help or prevent them than we can the senses of Pain and Pleasure or the Appetites of Thirst or Hunger or the Motions and Impressions of outward Objects made upon our Senses and therefore they are not simply evil but good in themselves so far as they are Natural and intended by God to serve the good of the World and of particular Persons and the wise ends of Providence but as they are irregular and inordinate excessive and immoderate and destroy those ends for which God intended them so far they are sinful and when any of those Natural Appetites or Sensual Inclinations grow too strong and unruly and are not kept under the government of Reason or within the bounds of Vertue and Religion then they carry Men to all loosness and wickedness and make them commit Sin and Uncleanness with greediness A good Man may with St. Paul be very sensible and complain of this body of sin and of death and of the law of sin that is in his members of many irregular Appetites and undue Passions and weak and foolish imaginations and unreasonable desires and inclinations of too quick gusts of Sensual things and too much deadness of Spiritual of having too many thoughts and designs for Earthly and present things and too little zeal and affection for things Heavenly that are a thousand times more valuable These are imperfections that are in the best of us and we see that they are so and are very sensible and complain of them but yet we cannot wholly avoid them but after all our thoughts and all our care they still return upon us and the Flesh will lust against the Spirit and there will be a perpetual war and struggle between them but if the Spirit do so far prevail by the helps of Grace and considerations of Religion that it do never yield to any wilful Sin it shall then be rewarded as a Conquerour which though it did not wholly subdue and drive out that homebred enemy yet kept it alwayes under and made it submit to its Government and not keep up an open Rebellion against it Of this I have largely discoursed in the Third Section of the Third Chapter I proceed now to those Sins which are known wilful and presumptuous habitual and reigning in us any one of which is inconsistent with a good State and excludes us out of Gods Favour here and Heaven hereafter such as the Psalmist in the forequoted place prayes against Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins lest they get the dominion over me All known and wilful Sins are presumptuous as being done in defiance of a Divine Authority that we know has forbid them and in contempt of God and his Laws to whom we owe all Honour and Obedience and notwithstanding all those threatnings and severe punishments that God has denounced against them He that sins wilfully after he has received the knowledge of the truth of these things there remains nothing for him but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries This is despising the Law of God thus wittingly and wilfully to break it and is sinning with a high hand and a most presumptuous boldness when we choose to do that which we know is most highly displeasing to Heaven and which God has laid all the obligations he possibly can upon us not to do When any such Sin gets dominion over us so that it becomes customary and habitual to us it makes us the Devils slaves and captives at his Will and shows that he is our Master and that we are the Servants of Sin and overcome by that and brought in bondage to it that it prevails upon our Minds above all the Power of Reason and Principles of Religion and that we choose it above all the great things of Heaven and another World that Religion offers to us and think it more desirable than any of those and had rather gratifie a paltry Lust and a foolish Inclination than save our Souls and have all the favour of God that we prefer it before any other good and let it have the ascendant in our Love and Affections above all other things for it is utterly inconsistent with any Love of God or any due regard to him and banishes all Principles of Religion out of our Minds and destroyes all sincerity and uprightness of Heart towards God and abandons us to a state of enmity with him and everlasting destruction hereafter This I have shown is true of every wilful and chosen and known Sin I shall now from the distinction I have given you of these Sins from those of Infirmity Ignorance and Inadvertency make the following Inferences and Remarks 1. That those Sins of Infirmity are to be Repented of i. e. we are to be sorry for them and pray God to forgive them Though they do not destroy our good state nor deprive us of Gods Favour here or Heaven hereafter yet they are such as are to be matter of Trouble and Sorrow and Humiliation to us and we are dayly to pray God to forgive us our Trespasses as Christ has taught us in the Lords Prayer and the Psalmist in the place before mentioned prayes God to cleanse him from his secret faults as well as to keep him back from presumptuous Sins For 2. These are true and proper Sins and though they are not charged upon us to our Condemnation yet this is by the great Favour and Mercy of God and by Vertue of the Gracious Covenant made in Christ with Mankind for otherwise God in Rigour and Justice might punish and condemn us for them The Papists hold a distinction between Sins Mortal and Venial in their own Nature i. e. that some Sins are in themselves damnable and others not which the Protestants have generally opposed for this Reason because all Sin is in it self Mortal and in its own Nature deserves Death as being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a breach and transgression of a Divine Law whose sanction is Death but it is pardonable only by Gods Mercy on the account of its circumstances which make it more excusable with a good and merciful God but that it is not of it self venial or so little as not to deserve Punishment they prove from hence that we are bound to pray God to forgive it Now it is pure Grace and Favour for God to forgive and what he is not obliged to and if he is not obliged to pardon it he may punish it were it not for his Mercy and Goodness and the Gracious Covenant he has made with us in the Gospel This should therefore 3. Make us very sensible of Gods infinite Mercy and kind dealing with us by the Covenant of Grace How many innumerable Sins and
laughs at them sometimes and would seem in his highest mirth to have courage enough to make a jest of them to others yet he fears them in good earnest and trembles at the thoughts of them when he is alone and when Death brings them nearer to him he is scared and terrified and has sufficient proof of their Reality in his own mind What a wretched and miserable Condition is he then in when the terrors of Death and the greater terrours of Hell are set before him when all about him is horror and misery and the blackness of darkness when he has nothing to look back upon but the bitter memory of his past sins and no prospect before him but the unknown and unconceivable torments of another World when Gods Anger lyes heavy upon him and sinks him into the deepest gulph of despair and the Grave and the bottomless pit are ready to swallow him up and to devour him both Soul and Body what an instance of Misery is here what a Picture of Hell nay what a real and sensible Hell is there then before us Who that stands by the Bed of such a dying Wretch and draws the Curtains and sees the Agonies and hears the doleful expressions of such a miserable Creature would not be deeply affected with such a sad state as he sees a Man put into by sin and impenitence Who would not then think Vertue and Religion very comfortable and very desirable things and much to be preferred to sinful looseness and extravagance Who would not then give all the World either that he had not sin'd or that he had Repented in time and so not brought himself into that remediless state of present and future torment Repentance if it be true and sincere will prevent a Sinners coming to this which will otherwise certainly be his Portion and he can never escape it in this World if he be not stupid but to be sure not in the next Now who that knows he must dye in a little time and that then at furthest this will be his case if he go on in his sins and be not timely brought off from them would ever madly continue in them and not break them off by Repentance when he is all the while exposed to this dreadful danger and lyes open to the fears and miseries of another World How comfortable is it to be delivered from those and to live in such a state that a Man has no reason to be afraid of Death nor to be scared with the thoughts of another World But whenever it comes he can welcome it chearfully or at least submit to it patiently without horror and distraction and have reasonable and well-grounded hopes that it shall be well with him hereafter full assurance he may never have without all manner of fears but he will have chearful and rational hopes according to the certainty and evidence of his Repentance and the sincerity of his Vertue and Obedience such a conditional assurance every one has by a Faith truly Divine that if he thus repents he shall be saved this is founded on a proposition that is Divinely revealed and so is matter of Faith but that I have so repented is not matter of Faith but only of private Judgment and Opinion of my self but I have no reason to doubt or be afraid if I know upon examining my self that I have forsaken every wilful sin and have left the ill course of life I was in and would not for any profit or pleasure commit a wilful Sin though I were never so much tempted to it and it were never so much in my power and that I have thus endeavoured to live and to do my Duty sincerely to God and Man though with great imperfections and infirmities still upon me this will give us a Rational and a Moral assurance of our Salvation which is all we can have without a particular Revelation how will this cheer and support a Man when he comes to dye how will it take out the sting and allay the bitterness of Death in great measure and be the best Cordial to keep up his Spirits in his last Agonies and Extremities being conscious to himself of his own sincerity and his conscience not condemning him as to any wilful Sin He will have confidence towards God and can assure his heart before him 1 John 3.19 He can then safely trust and rely upon the Mercy of God in and thorough Christ for the pardon of all his sins because he has truely and in time repented of them and 't is not a mere presumptuous and ungrounded confidenee which like the hope of the hypocrite shall perish Job 8.13 but he has a sure Title to it by the Gospel and the spirit of God beareth witness with his spirit and by the joynt testimony of that and his Conscience agreeing with the Rules and Measures of the Gospel for otherwise 't is but deceit and delusion he hath great inward comfort and chearful hopes of Heaven and hath no reason to fear but it shall be well with him in another world 'T is very happy to live in such a state as this where we are provided against not only all the evils of this World and the worst that can happen to us here but against Death and all the evils of another and may chearfully enjoy the blessings of Providence at present and rejoyce in the hopes of a much greater happiness hereafter so that we may as the wise Man says Eat our bread with joy and drink our wine with a merry heart for God now accepteth our works Eccles 9.7 but a state of sin and impenitence is a dreadful and a hazardous state exposed to the Terrors of Death and the amazing Evils of another World so that if a Man consider'd it as he ought he could not enjoy himself one moment nor would ever live under the fears and dangers of it for all the World and what if he thinks not of it which is all the relief he has against it Yet it is never the less in it self nor never the farther from him but though he is now never so stupid or in the deepest Lethargie yet Death and Hell will awaken him or however the flames there may be ready to catch hold of him while he is asleep and in the most sensless state 3. Repentance puts us into a very blessed and happy state as it reconciles us to God and restores us to his favour who was before angry and displeased with us We are enemies to God by our wicked works and alienated from him Coloss 1.21 Our iniquities have separated between us and our God and our sins have hid his face from us Isa 59.2 'T is they make the only breach and separation between God and his Creatures and provoke him who is Love and Goodness to put on Wrath and Anger and become even a consuming fire so that his anger is said to be kindled against sinners and wax hot against them and he poureth