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
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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
Rubbish is taken away a good Life should be built and all the goodly structure of Christian Vertues should be erected I come now to propose the Motives and Encouragements to perswade us to this great Duty and they are as many and as great as there are obligations to Vertue and Religion and disswasives from Vice and Wickedness For Repentance is but a Return to Vertue and Leaving Sin and tho' the passage from one to the other may not be so pleasant and delightful but like the Israelites we must pass through a Wilderness through a vale of Sorrow and a course of Contrition and Humiliation yet Vertue is the happy Land flowing with delights and all manner of good things and Vice is a more than Egyptian Servitude and Slavery which he is mad that will not get out of or that any way hankers again after it or after the Garlick and Onions the sordid pleasures and enjoyments of it I shall first examine the Temptations and Enticements to Sin and expose the false Reasonings and Arguments by which Men are drawn into that then offer the Motives and greater Arguments to Repentance both from the Nature and Reason of the thing and from the Gospel or Christianity SECT I. Of the Enticements to Sin THe Enticements and temptations to Sin and Wickedness are so great and many that if we should judge of them by the effect and power which they have upon Mankind they are much stronger than the Motives and Arguments to Vertue and a good Life for we see they prevail upon more than the other do Whole crowds follow the one and are drawn by them into the broad way of Vice whilst Vertue has but a small party who walk in her narrow path and are perswaded to keep closely to it Now surely there must be some mighty and powerful charms in Vice that make it so generally take with most Men there must be some secret and prevailing Reasons that bring them over and engage them so firmly on that side and make Vertue so generally forsaken and deserted Men are Rational Creatures and free Agents that have a power to consider and choose what is best for them what tends most to please and delight and make them happy and they must be greatly imposed upon if they choose that which tends only to make them miserable God sets Life and Death before them as Moses before the Jews Deut. 30.15 and it must be great madness to choose the worser part and what one would think it impossible for any man to do if his Reason were not cheated and deceived with false appearances of good in it and it were not represented to him in such a false light and such false colours as made it seem quite otherwise then it is in its own Nature For no Man can choose Evil as Evil naked in it self and with its own ugliness and deformity about it but it must be drest up under the show of Good and painted and decked up in a meretricious dress to hide its Native and abominable Filthiness Mens Imaginations must be deluded and so their Reason deceived and imposed upon by the Temptations to Sin and there must be a great many false reasonings used to entice them to it or else so many who have thoughts about them and who cannot do any thing without thinking some way or other could never be drawn over to consent to it and to commit it Now the chief Delusions and false Reasonings and Perswasions by which Men are drawn into Sin for there must be some such process in their Minds are such as these following 1. They see and feel the present Good of their Sins and the after Evil is so uncertain or so remote that they know not what to think of it and so are not much influenced by it for they think it unreasonable to part with the present Pleasure and the certain Profit which their Sins afford them for an unknown and unseen and unconceived Pleasure and Happiness they know not when or where they find and feel most Vices very grateful to their Natural Appetites and outward Senses and they are not such fools as to be perswaded out of those nor to put a force and restraint upon Nature and its proper enjoyments Vertue tyes them up to such severe and hard and unnatural restraints as they cannot endure its Mortifications and Self-denyals are very uneasie to Flesh and Blood and they look upon its Rules and Precepts as the morose dictates of peevish and melancholly Men who cannot so well enjoy what others do and therefore talk against the liberties and freedoms of Humane Nature and fright Men from the pleasures and enjoyments of Sin here with the terrours of another World and imaginary dangers hereafter Is it then so very certain that Vice is so pleasant here So desirable and comfortable upon the account of present enjoyment and that its punishment hereafter is so unknown and uncertain That 't is not to be taken into consideration nor worth being more minded than it is by these Sinners do they never think of dying or are they possessed with such a frenzy as to hope they shall live alwayes or that three or fourscore years will never be run out though few live so long and they perhaps have lived above half that time and see how quickly it is gone and then will any Man in his wits venture to be miserable for ever for the Pleasures or Profits of Sin which are but for a season were they never so great If there were a much greater uncertainty about another World then there is yet who would run so dreadful a hazard who would put so great a matter to such a dangerous venture Were not the evidence we have of a future state from Nature from Revelation from the Resurrection of Christ nay from the belief of all Mankind so strong as it is so that not only whatever the Jews or the Christians have believed and witnessed down through all Ages must pass for a fable if it be not true but what all Wise Men have ever believed about a God and Religion must be a meer dream and chimaera Yet however no Man can ever be sure but that there is another World he can have no positive proof or demonstration that there is not and were there no more in it but that there may be such a thing which the greatest Atheist or Sceptical Infidel cannot pretend to deny yet this might be enough to keep him from running upon so dreadful though meerly possible danger and exposing himself to such extream but irrecoverable mischief especially for the poor and pitiful temptations of Sin at present For alas however pleasant and delightful they may imagine them yet they are generally mistaken and there is more true pleasure and comfort a thousand times to be found in a Life of Vertue and Religion than in the most tempting Wickedness and the most gustful Sensuality For which yields most present pleasure and comfort of Life
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
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
Life and Comfort what Death and Misery must it then be to be banished for ever from both with a Depart from me ye oursed 2. The Mind will reflect upon what is past with infinite remorse and anguish and with great regret curse its own folly and madness that has brought it to this sad condition when God had put it in its power to have made it self for ever happy had it been wise and considering as it ought to have been This will be the great sting of its Misery that it wilfully brought it upon it self and for a few foolish and rash and finful actions undid it self for ever and for some trifling reasons and pitiful temptations the little pleasures or profits of Sin which are now all gone made it self thus wretchedly and eternally miserable How with rage and envy will it look up to that Happiness it has lost and sees others enjoy and vex it self with fury that it should refuse and reject that when it was offered to it and this one thought will double and increase its Misery and make it curse and tear it self that it was its own choice 3. As the Mind with looking back will be filled with remerse and anguish upon its past Sins and past Madness so by looking forward and seeing no end of the Misery it is in it will be filled and overwhelmed with Despair which is a Passion of Mind so perfectly and so unspeakably miserable that I shall not venture to describe it for 't is beyond any thing we can imagine and it properly belongs to the next head which is the eternity and endless duration of these Torments and Misery which though it be but a circumstance of time and not properly that wherein they consist yet is the most dreadful perfection and completion of them which I shall consider by and by Let us now but seriously think with our selves what a dreadful state it is to be under all this torment of Mind and pain of Body to lye thus upon the rack of the greatest tortures both from within and without and that in such extremity that they shall make dreadful and hideous signs and expressions of it in weeping and mourning and lamentation and gnashing of teeth Matth 22.13 when they shall gnaw their tongues for pain and blaspheme the God of heaven because of their pains Rev. 16.10 11. And yet all their bitter cryes and dolorous exclamations shall only blow up and kindle the rage and fury of the surrounding flames for none of their sighs shall put out nor their tears extinguish any the least spark of those flames which are kindled by the Wrath of God who is a consuming fire Who can express or imagine the keenness and sharpness of those pains of Body or the pangs and agonies of Conscience the passions and anguish and remorse of Mind and nothing to take off or divert or give the least intermission to all these but an angry God above a dark and bottomless pit of burning Brimstone below and frightful and ugly and insulting Spirits like so many executioners all about it and no friend to call to to pity or to help it O sad and miserable and intolerable condition Who would not do all he could to warn others and himself that they come not to that place of Torments What pleasure or profit can there be in the most tempting Sin that should make a Man venture the enduring all this for the sake of it Who would endure this but one day or one month for all the things this World can afford Who would suffer it for so long a time as this life of Sin here lasts for all that he gets by it Who would endure it a thousand years for all the Kingdoms of this World and the Glories thereof much less who would for a trifling Lust or a sinful Inclination for a little unjust Gain or unlawful Pleasure endure it for ever Which is the next thing I am to speak to That II. This is Eternal and shall never have end This is the dreadful and amazing circumstance of this Misery and that which must confound him that suffers it that it shall last for ever so that there shall never be any hopes of having an end of it after never so many thousand years but there shall be still an infinite Eternity behind and so as much as there was at the first beginning Who can think of this without the utmost horrour and amazement and having his thoughts swallowed up with the dreadful consideration of it It is so great that some have had their Reason overcome and overwhelmed by it so that they have thought it unagreeable and inconsistent with Gods Goodness and Justice to inflict so long and so great a Misery upon any of his Creatures and have therefore endeavoured to limit this Eternity to a shorter compass of time and not to extend it to an absolute but a limited Eternity as sometimes it is understood in Scripture and therefore to reconcile all those places of Scripture to this notion of it and to interpret them so that Eternity in the fullest and utmost sense may not be understood by them I shall therefore briefly examine this Argument which on the one side seems very careful of the credit and honour of the Divine Justice and Goodness but on the other takes off extremely from the utmost terrour of Hellish Torments in denying them to be Eternal so that it may tend in great measure to take off the power and force of those which are the greatest restraints that God could lay upon Sin and Wickedness and since so few are prevailed upon by them though under the doctrine and perswasion of their being Eternal how much fewer would be so if they thought them otherwise I shall therefore First Briefly show how this Eternity of Hellish Torments is agreeable to Gods Goodness Secondly How it is plainly and undeniably proved from Scripture and Revelation First How ' tls agreeable to Gods Goodness to punish the few Sins of a short Life with such great and never ending Torments when in all Governments and all distributions of Justice the Punishment ought not to be so disproportioned and so much greater than the Crime And besides how a good and tender and pitiful God should keep a poor Creature in being for ever meerly to let it suffer and be miserable and endure infinite Torments To this I answer briefly 1. Whatever Punishment is necessary to secure the ends of Government to preserve Obedience to Laws and to keep bold and daring Men from breaking and violating them whatever is necessary to this end is just and necessary and agreeable both to the Goodness and Wisdom and Justice of the best Government for otherwise there must be no such thing as Government in the World but God must give up his Authority and throw the reins loose upon the necks of his Creatures if he have not a power to threaten and inflict such Punishments as shall be sufficient to
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
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
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
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
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
competency and sufficiency with food and rayment as the Apostle has fix'd a competency 1 Tim. 6.8 with what answers the wants of Nature and the circumstances of our Condition but to be alwayes craving after more without any use or occasion this is that immoderate desire of Riches which we call Covetousness and so in other things 't is the Excess the Irregularity the immoderate and the vicious Abuse not the Natural Passion and Inclination it self that is to be denyed restrained and mortified 3. To do this we must so check and restrain and deny even our Natural Appetites that we may have the power and government alwayes over them Now if we let them loose and lay the reins upon their neck and let them take their utmost liberties and go alwayes to the furthest bounds of what is lawful they will hardly be kept in as they ought to be but we shall walk upon the brink of danger and the side of a precipice where it will be hard to escape falling sometimes and our Sensual Inclinations will grow more heady strong and ungovernable by being alwayes indulged and not used to a more severe discipline and management which all wise Men have therefore prescribed by the Rules and Precepts of Mortification and Self-denyal 4. To abate these Lustings and Desires of the Flesh and increase and raise those of the Spirit let us consider how little and mean are the objects and gratifications of the one in respect of those of the other How the one are low sordid and Brutish the other Rational and Angelical such as the highest order of Beings next to God are capable of How little is there in all the Riches and Greatness and State of this World how much less in all the mad frollicks of Debauchery and all the beastliness and filthiness of Brutish Lusts in all those things that make up Carnal Enjoyments and are the summe as the Apostle reckons them up of all that is in the World The lust of the flesh the lust of the eye and the pride of life 1 John 2.16 How much greater and nobler is it to have a wise and sober and vertuous Mind easie Thoughts and a chearful Conscience Spiritual Desires and Affections set upon things above and strong and well-grounded hopes of an Eternal Life and a Glorious Immortality These are the Objects of our Spiritual Desires and we should increase those by representing the worth and value the greatness and excellency of these above any other things that we can choose or desire or any enjoyments of the Animal and Sensual Life 'T is a vain fancy and opinion of the latter whereby we raise our imagination and heighten our expectation of something great and extraordinary in them 't is that kindles our Affections and inflames our Desires after them but did we wisely consider how vain and trifling and inconsiderable they are and how poor and little and short and sorry gratifications they afford this would wean us from such weak fancies and opinions of them and so slack and cool our Desires and Lustings after them Lastly We must use all Religious Means and Methods to mortifie and abate the Lustings of the Flesh and strengthen and increase those of the Spirit by the Acts and Exercises of Religion Piety and Devotion 'T is in the growth and prevalence of the latter lyes our Moral State and the greatest exercise of all Vertue and in the right ordering and governing of our Passions Appetites and Inclinations so that we must use all possible Methods to keep the lower Appetites under and obedient to the superiour and not let them dethrone our Reason or disobey Religion and therefore we must use all the helps we can have from Religion and Philosophy and the Divine Grace and Assistance to tame our inordinate Lusts by Fasting by Watching by Prayer by due watchfulness and circumspection over our selves and over all the weak places of our Nature that Sin do not enter in at some of those inlets that are unguarded and do not surprize and easily beset us when we are unprepared and unarmed by Religion against the assaults of it and there is nothing so helpful to this and to increase and strengthen our Spiritual Desires so that they shall alwayes prevail over the Lusts of the Flesh as the constant and uninterrupted exercises of Piety and Devotion These give life and vigour and nourishment to our Spiritual Desires and keep them alwayes warm and heated and intent upon their proper Objects whereas a neglect of those begets a carelesness stupidity and senslesness of all those things and sinks Men into a meer Sensual and Animal and Worldly and Brutal Life Nothing is therefore so proper to bring us to these Spiritual Desires and to make those alwayes prevail over the Lusts of the Flesh as Devotion and Piety which raise the Mind to things above the Body and above this World and take off and abstract the Soul from Sensual and Carnal Enjoyments and make it live up as near as it can to that Life it shall have in Heaven when it shall be all Spirit and have no Flesh or Lusts to contend with or be contrary to it I shall in the next place consider another thing which befalls many a Sinner and which tho' a due effect of his Sins and an evidence of the sad state they bring him to and so may be of great use to be duly considered on this account yet is a kind of Excess of Repentance and sometimes too great an extream that way and what ought to have the nicest Resolutions and best Directions given about it to cure and remove it I mean Trouble of Mind or a Wounded Conscience which many a Sinner lyes under and which I shall briefly Represent and Discourse of by considering how great a Misery it is above all others in this World and what Cure and Remedy there may be for it or for those who are fallen under it SECT IV. Of Trouble of Mind or a Wounded Spirit THE greatest part of our Happiness or Misery lyes in our Minds and Spirits in those inward Faculties and Sensories which are distinct from our Body and outward Senses We feel very often more pleasure or pain in those distinct from the Body than the Body it self is capable of for these are quicker and more sensible than Matter and Body can be and are the proper subject of perception of any Pleasure and Pain and of all Rational Happiness or Misery A Mans inward Thoughts do often give him more torment and uneasiness anguish and disquietude of Soul and more real pain and misery than any Bodily torment or even Death it self and therefore some have chosen Death and have willingly endured any Bodily pain rather than lye under the greater pain agonies and horrours of their own Minds and many that have been under those yet have felt an inward ward joy comfort and satisfaction of Mind that has supported them under the worst pains and sufferings of
taken a great deal of liberty and had the full swinge of his Lusts and vicious Inclinations when they afterward grow calm and cool of themselves and he is tired or satiated with them then to leave them after he has had a full and a long enjoyment of them To Repent time enough to avoid all the bitter effects and punishments of them after they have fully tasted and exhausted all their sweetness and pleasantness and then throw away the poysonous core when they have sufficiently eaten of the dainty and forbidden Fruit. Men to be sure will draw such consequences to themselves when Religion they think puts such an Argument into the hands of their Lusts which are apt to be too strong of themselves against all Religion and Reason whatsoever and when they have such a fair colour and pretence as they suppose from Religion it self they will be sure to improve it to destroy all Religion by this one part of it and by turning its own weapons upon it self So that like the Eagle in the Fable it shall receive its mortal wound from a dart that comes feathered from its own wing and by this subtle contrivance it shall be made to countermine it self Is Heaven then to be thus out-witted and over-reach'd in its own policy And whereas it designed this priviledge of Repentance to bring Men to Vertue shall the Devil find out a stratagem whereby to be too hard for it even upon its own ground and make it an instrument to encourage Men in their Sins Has God like a soft and easie and indiscreet Prince granted such a Charter and made such Concessions to his Subjects as shall destroy his own Power and Government and make their Obedience loose and precarious No sure neither his Wisdom nor his Power is to be thus lessened and diminished nor is the Grace of God the greatest favour of the Gospel to be thus turned into wantonness and a principle of loosness and licentiousness as these Men make it who thus presume upon Sinning at present upon the advantage of an after Repentance and resolve therefore to run on in the score and to take up great summes in hand and be much in debt to Heaven because they think the whole may be compounded pounded at the last and made up for a very little We may be sure in the general there must be some great errour and mistake in this matter and that 't is either a false Principle that these Men go upon or that they draw a very false Conclusion from it for God must be a very easie Being and Religion must have a very weak place in it if it lye open to such a consequence 2. We commonly tell Men in the second place therefore to prevent this that the after Repentance is very hazardous and uncertain for no Man knows that he shall have time to do it hereafter or that he shall not be surprized with a sudden and unexpected Death before he has performed this Repentance he designed and this indeed is very considerable and were there nothing else yet a wise Man would not venture his Soul and its Eternal State upon so great an uncertainty as Life and Futurity is for that we know is no more in our own power to command than it is to recall the time that is past and who that thinks and considers what Eternity means would hazard it upon so ticklish a cast and so perfect a lottery as the continuance of Life is Do not we see most of the World snatch'd away on a sudden Death hardly giving them any warning but coming upon them with secret and undiscerned steps and stealing up to them and striking the fatal blow before they were aware of it and what shall this poor wretch do whose Life is done before his Repentance is begun He who intended so many years hence to begin his Repentance shall begin it sooner in another World but shall never end it but Repent in vain to all Eternity in weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth for his folly and madness in not Repenting sooner But though this be a monstrous hazard and no Man in his Wits would lye open to such a danger which can never be repaired but may be easily prevented yet this uncertainty of Life seems not a sufficient security to Religion because 't is a security only by accident and it is in great measure lost if a Man do live out the usual period which many do and which most hope to do and there ought to be greater Reasons to oblige them to a present Repentance and a constant Obedience than the meer fears that they may dye sooner and it would be strange if Religion should depend upon such an uncertainty and a Man should find a way to free himself from the necessity of it the greatest part of his Life if he were sure to live long 3. Therefore we strengthen this commonly with another Consideration and that is That though a Man may have Time to Repent hereafter yet God may not give him Grace to do it especially if he so provoke him by such a neglect and abuse of this Grace as quite defeats the end and design of it and nothing can be more highly provoking and a more just ground for God to deny us his Spirit than thus to abuse and pervert this Grace of the Gospel as to make it an encouragement not to Repent but to Sin because they may Repent Besides the longer the Custom and Habits of Sin continue upon us the more root they take and the more difficult are they to be pluck'd up and the Mind is in time so much hardened by them that like a chronical Disease or an old Ulcer by being suffered to run long upon it they grow almost incurable And he must be in a fad condition who lets the power of his Sins thus grow upon him and yet who finds them so difficult at present to be overcome and who has that power dayly lessened if not lost whereby he should do it But still though Gods Spirit shall not alwayes strive with man Gen. 5.3 yet we cannot positively determine to what degrees of wickedness a Man must arrive before God will wholly withdraw his Spirit from him nor can we say that God denyes necessary Grace to any whereby they may Repent so long as they are in this state of Tryal and Probation or that there are any such though the greatest of Sinners who are debarred or excluded from the power and priviledge of Repentance for this would tend to discourage a great many from Repentance and do as much harm by shutting those out of all hopes as by opening the gate too wide to others or letting it alwayes stand open to any that will come in at any time There must be therefore some other Considerations to take off the force of this mistake and to preserve the absolute necessity of a good Life and a constant Obedience which I shall endeavour to find out and
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
us by our Baptisme he who may be supposed to have this inward Principle infused into him and stirring with his fears at the time of his Death yet for all that is but an Abortive Christian and hath neither the new Birth or Regeneration nor the Divine Life in him 4ly The great Prejudice against this Doctrine is this that 't is too severe and will tend to make us judge over-hardly of others and to throw dying Sinners into despair as being in an hopeless State by the Gospel and so hinder their Repentance at that time as being insufficient and ineffectual To which I answer That 't is no more severe than the Gospel is which shuts every wilful Sinner out of Heaven and pronounces Damnation upon every one that does not live a good Life at least after a bad one which is the true Notion of Repentance but we must make a new Gospel if we abate of this and come lower than is any way consistent with the Divine Wisdom and Government and with securing Vertue and Religion and not opening a wide door to Looseness and Licentiousness and encouraging Men in their Sins rather than bringing them off from them I believe indeed 't is more out of pity and tenderness than any good ground in Reason or Scripture that the other Doctrine has took place but we must not pervert the Gospel out of an unreasonable tenderness and by pretending to be more merciful than God is or has declared himself to be and 't is I doubt the greatest cruelty to our own and others Souls thus to deceive 'em into ruine by giving them hopes contrary to the Gospel and I account it the greatest charity to forwarne Men of their danger and to free them from such a fatal mistake It does not so much concern us to judge other Men and apply this Doctrine to them as to our selves God is their proper judge to whom we ought to leave them and to their own Master they shall stand or fall at the great day but 't is more dangerous to assume a sort of Power to dispense with the Laws of God by our pretended Charity and to give a relaxation to the rules of the Gospel and the conditions of Salvation out of undue Piety and in effect to blame and condemne God and think he deals more hardly with Sinners than he ought to do or then we our selves would do when he pronounces Damnation upon them for their bad Lives and will not save them for their dying Repentance out of this Principle of pity others have gone farther and denyed the Eternity of Hellish Torments and have thought it too hard that God should punish the sins of a short Life with never-ending pains and have therefore thought good in their great pity to release all the Damned and even the Devils themselves out of Hell within so many years but this is to understand the Measures and Reasons of the Divine Government better than God himself to prescribe new ones to him contrary to what he has lay'd down to set up a Court of Equity upon him in our thoughts and to correct the fixt Rules and declared Measures of his Justice and Mercy with some others of our own which surely is not to be allowed As to the driving Sinners into despair by this Doctrine this cannot be said of those who have time before 'em to repent and live better if they make use of it and nothing will more strongly excite them and more immediately put them upon this than the faithful and open telling them the truth as I have done and taking them off from all hopes and trust of a dying Repentance which has destroyed so many Souls As for the dying Sinner himself however I pity him I dare not give him hopes farther than I have warrant from God and Authority from the Gospel which no Minister can have to assure him of Pardon and Salvation from a mere late and Death-Bed Repentance He can only advise such an one to do all he can at that time which may help if not wholly to remit his punishment yet in some measure to abate and mitigate it which is a very great thing and commend him to the Extraordinary and Uncovenanted Mercy of God which is not limited by any thing but the recitude of his own Nature to which we must leave some great Cases not knowing what to judge of them our selves but as to the ordinary and covenanted Mercy of God which he himself has limited and which ought not be stretcht or extended any more than narrowed or confined to any other bounds than those of the Gospel such a Repentance has no title to it by any promise there that I know of and therefore I would not for all the world venture my Soul upon it nor would have any Man else to do so for besides all other hazards of a sudden Death and the like that attend such a Repentance 't is venturing whether God will not break the Rules and Measures of the Gospel or at least abate them and be more merciful than he has there promised to be which no Man has any reason to expect he should be but rather a great deal to question whether he can be Let none of us therefore trust to such a Late and Death-Bed Repentance which will expose us not only to infinite danger but to inevitable and certain ruine nor let us believe any such Doctrine which has no foundation either from the Thief on the Cross or from any thing else in Scripture to be relyed on but however severe the other Doctrine be let us consider it is true as I shall fully prove it is and I know no Mischief of its severiry but this which is the plain consequence of it that we must not delay our Repentance but take care to live a good life if we hope to go to Heaven SECT III. The Invalidity of a Death-Bed Repentance shown from the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins HAving Examined and Answered the Pleas and Pretences on behalf of a Death-Bed Repentance I shall show its Invalidity and Insufficiency by such plain and positive Proofs as shall take away that common error and fatal mistake on the other side and fully confirm and establish my Opinion against it The first whereof shall be that Excellent Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins Matth. 25. especially the latter part of it at the 10 11 12. verses for I shall not represent it entire in all the parts but only what is more full and home to my purpose in relation to the foolish Virgins of whom it is said That while they went to buy the bridegroom came and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage and the door was shut afterwards came also the other Virgins saying Lord Lord open to us but he answered and said verily I know you not Parables were an Eastern and Jewish way of instruction very frequently used by their wisemen and so made customary
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
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
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
like melancholly persons who read of such grievous diseases fancy immediately that they have them themselves and that such and such symptoms are already upon them If we cannot therefore assure all Persons of Pardon for all manner of Sins however great or however circumstantiated upon their true Repentance of them it will very much take off from the encouragements to this Duty and by taking off Mens hopes in many cases and shutting the door of Mercy against them hinder them from performing this Duty and make them if not act desperately and madly as Men without hopes generally do yet throw them into a comfortless and despairing condition and overwhelm them with remediless sorrow and trouble The general scope and design of the Gospel seems to be to remove all this To preach good tidings unto the meek to bind up the broken-hearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound to comfort them that mourn Isa 61.1 To call those to come to Christ who are weary and heavy laden by reason of their Sins with a promise that he will give them rest Matth. 11.28 To preach Repentance and remission of sins in his name among all nations Luke 24.47 without excluding any Persons or excepting any Sins whatsoever to proclaim a general Amnesty and Act of Pardon to all who Repent and come in to the Gospel Had there been an exception as to a more notorious Traytor to any one though a single Sin which Mankind had been like to fall into this would have abated both from the Goodness of God and the Comfort of Men when he should be represented as implacable in some cases and never to be appeased and the other should be left in such danger and hazard that if they fell into some Sins which it was very possible for them to do that then there should be no hopes nor no means of recovery for them God I doubt not is more merciful and Mankind not so miserable as to have any Sin whatever utterly unpardonable which is Repented of but as our Saviour sayes All manner of Sin and Blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men Matth. 12.31 And as Isaiah told the Jews of old and it is not less so under the Gospel Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow though they be red like crimson they shall be as wooll Isa 1.18 that is of however high a nature or degree they are they shall upon Repentance and Amendment be done away and forgiven No Sin is too great for the infinite Mercy of God to forgive and the infinite Merit of Christs Blood to atone nor is any excepted in the Covenant of Grace which God has made with Mankind wherein he promises universally to be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and iniquities he will remember no more Heb. 8.11 Jer. 31.34 without any bar or reserve to any Sin of what nature or aggravation soever I shall therefore Examine and Answer those places of Scripture which seem to give any countenance to the other severe and cruel Doctrine as to Sins of Apostacy after Baptism or upon Relapse and then largely consider the Nature of the Sin against the Holy Ghost and how or whether that is unpardonable so as to free all honest Minds from any trouble about it SECT I. Of Apostacy Sins after Baptism Vpon Relapse FIrst then as to those places of the Hebrews which are brought as the ground of the Novatian Doctrine for the irremissibleness of wilful Sins committed after Baptism they do not belong to any Sins of a Christian whilst he continues such but to one renouncing Christianity and wholly Apostatizing from it even after he has professed it and had miraculous evidence and conviction of it They who were enlightened or Baptized 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and have tasted of the Heavenly gift have been sensible of the Benefits of Baptism and the Priviledges of Christianity and been made partakers of the Holy Ghost have further had those miraculous and extraordinary Gifts of the Holy Ghost conferred upon them which new Baptized Persons then very often had and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come have had a sense of the excellency of the Gospel and the Christian Revelation and those powerful and great Miracles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which accompanied the dispensation thereof and the times of the Messiah or that have been duly affected with the powerful Considerations of Eternity and another World which are the great things their Religion sets before them if such as these shall like Julian afterwards or the Gnosticks then fall away from all this and apostatize from their Faith and Religion by the Fears of Persecution or the Love of this World it is impossible to renew them again to Repentance seeing this their revolt implyes no less than the crucifying to themselves the Son of God afresh and putting him to open shame i. e. the condemning of Christ as a Malefactor and Impostor and so joyning and consenting with the Jews in Crucifying him as such and bringing an open reproach and discredit upon him as if he were a false Prophet and that upon Tryal and Experience they found his Religion to be false and therefore forsook it This Apostacy and renouncing the whole Religion of Christ is meant also by Sinning wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth Heb. 10.26 It is sinning in the same word and sense as the Apostate Angels did when they revolted from Heaven 2 Pet. 2.4 for in the next Verses it is called Treading under foot the Son of God i. e. Contemning him as a vile miscreant and as if he were not Risen from the Grave but lay dead there and so were to be trod upon and counting the Blood of the Covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing as if it were shed justly and so were the Blood of a common Malefactor and doing despite unto the Spirit of Grace reproaching all the evidence by which the Holy Ghost confirmed the Truth of Christ and his Doctrine both in him and his Apostles This can be no less than a malicious apostacy and defection from Christianity in general and not only a wilful breach of any of its particular Laws And something like unto these is that Sin unto death in St. John 1 Ep. 5.16 that which deserved the utmost and severest censures as he which under Moses Law sinned presumptuously and was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 did make void and throw off the Law was to dye without mercy Heb. 10.28 So under Christianity this presumptuous Sinner was to be Spiritually cut off from all the Benefits of Christian Communion and from the Prayers of the Faithful as we find they were by the Discipline of the Primitive Church This was so severe at first that they denyed all Peace and Absolution to such Apostates and Lapsi even in articulo Mortis at the point of Death and
would never receive them again into their Communion thereby to fright all persons from all false and cowardly compliances in those times of danger and persecution but afterwards the Church was forced to abate of this rigour which had made such Disturbances and occasioned those great Schisms of the Novatians and Donatists There were other Sins also for which the guilty Penitents were excluded from all Communion to the last in those purer and severer Ages as Murder Adultery and those Unnatural Lusts which they call'd Monstra these were never admitted to Pardon and Absolution of the Church as appears by the Canons of those antient Councils of Eliberis Arle and Ancyra and by the Writings of Tertullian and others and the opposition made in Africa to the Decree of Pope Zephyrine and by the milder Canons of the Council of Nice afterwards but all this was only prudential and an external Discipline in foro humano which the Church altered according to its Discretion but they did not deny all Pardon with God for those Sins upon Repentance nor utterly cut them off from all hopes in another World but allowed God could pardon them tho' not the Church that they might be forgiven though not in this World yet in the World to come according to that Jewish Notion that though there were no Sacrifices nor ordinary means of Expiation for some Sins yet that God would forgive them hereafter Secondly That Sins are Pardoned after Baptism as well as before is plain from the Incestuous Corinthian who though he had committed such a Sin as was not usual among the Gentiles and was to be put out of the Church and to be delivered unto Satan for it yet this was not to cut him off from Pardon and Salvation but as a better means to bring him to both it was only for the destruction of the flesh that the Spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord 1 Cor. 5.5 And this sure was the design of those severe and long Penances in the Primitive Church whereby tho' they excluded Sinners from the benefits of Communion and means of Grace yet it was not to bereave them of all hopes of Pardon and consign them irreversibly to Damnation but to beget a greater terrour and dread of Sin and to make their Repentance for it more compleat and perfect and so by those present Judgments and Severities here to prevent their Eternal Condemnation hereafter for this ought to be the Rule and Measure of all Church Power and Discipline it ought to be for Edification not for Destruction and they could not miss of this The Spirit of God writes to the Church of Ephesus which were a company of Baptized Christians to Remember from whence they were fallen and Repent and do their first works Rev. 2.5 And St. Paul threatens the Christians at Corinth to bewail and correct those which had sinned and not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness they had committed 2 Cor. 12.21 but does not denounce that they were unpardonable Sad would it be if all wilful Sins were so after Baptism this would make Christianity a more terrible and severe dispensation than the Law and put us in a worse condition than we were without it and no Man would then be Baptized till he was a Clinic and near dying and going out of the World but Baptism puts us into a state of Pardon and the Grace and the Vertue of it continues all our lives and if we sin we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous 1 John 2.1 and his Mediation will upon our Repentance procure Pardon at Gods hands at all times for us Thirdly I shall next consider Sins of Relapse when a Person after Sorrow and Repentance for a Sin yet falls into it again and repeats it after he has resolved against it and been convicted of the heinousness of it now this is a sad case and shows the power of his Lusts and the weakness of Religion upon a Mans Mind and no Man who is in this state can be said to Repent He is no more got rid of his Sins than a Man is of a Feaver because it intermits sometimes and he is well by intervals but his Fits return again upon him which shows that the Disease is still in his Blood as the other's Relapses do that sin still reigns in him because he obeys it in the Lusts thereof A Man in the beginning of his Repentance from some habitual Sins may not get rid immediately of all his Evil Customs and Sinful Inclinations but they may sometimes draw him back again and sometimes master and overcome him and he may rally again and recover himself and at last vanquish them Now whilst this Conflict lasts and 't is uncertain which side will get the better and have the final victory no judgment can be made of a Mans state because the issue is doubtful and uncertain He is fighting and striving for his Life for his Soul and for Heaven and he may by his own care and endeavours and by the assistance of Heaven conquer and overcome his Sins and to him that overcometh God will give of the tree of life Rev. 2.7 but if he is overcome by them he is a slave of Sin and a captive of the Devil and a child of Hell and heir of Damnation but what shall a Man do who has often thus relapsed into Sin after his most serious Vows and Resolutions against it are his Sins against those unpardonable and is there no hopes for him I Answer by no means if he can but recover himself from them and after all attempts at last get rid of them and bring forth the contrary fruits of Repentance and Obedience I confess such an one ought to suspect himself and to suspect his Repentance till by many tryals he has made it good and confirmed it and he ought to be doubly watchful over himself and to take heed least Sin enter again at any of those weak places at which it used to have admittance and to fortifie himself against all those temptations and opportunities that used to betray him to it and therefore to keep his Mind to a close sense of Religion and to a careful use of all the Means and Instruments of it and to beg earnestly of Heaven Grace proportionable to his needs and then if it be not his own fault it will certainly be sufficient for him But such Relapses though they are not quite hopeless nor put a Man into a condition that is desperate yet they are very dangerous they grieve Gods Holy Spirit they give a new Wound to our Consciences they make the old Wound that was healed bleed afresh and render it more difficult to be cured again and more ready to mortifie and become incurable they bring the Mind to a weakness and unsteadiness and irresolution and to have no power or command over it self but let its good Purposes and Principles be bore down by a weak Lust or