unlawfully had it power and opportunity for those first Motions and Inclinations are necessary and unavoidable arising from the frame and constitution of our Nature and the Mechanism of our Body Blood and Spirits so that we can no more help or prevent them than we can the senses of Pain and Pleasure or the Appetites of Thirst or Hunger or the Motions and Impressions of outward Objects made upon our Senses and therefore they are not simply evil but good in themselves so far as they are Natural and intended by God to serve the good of the World and of particular Persons and the wise ends of Providence but as they are irregular and inordinate excessive and immoderate and destroy those ends for which God intended them so far they are sinful and when any of those Natural Appetites or Sensual Inclinations grow too strong and unruly and are not kept under the government of Reason or within the bounds of Vertue and Religion then they carry Men to all loosness and wickedness and make them commit Sin and Uncleanness with greediness A good Man may with St. Paul be very sensible and complain of this body of sin and of death and of the law of sin that is in his members of many irregular Appetites and undue Passions and weak and foolish imaginations and unreasonable desires and inclinations of too quick gusts of Sensual things and too much deadness of Spiritual of having too many thoughts and designs for Earthly and present things and too little zeal and affection for things Heavenly that are a thousand times more valuable These are imperfections that are in the best of us and we see that they are so and are very sensible and complain of them but yet we cannot wholly avoid them but after all our thoughts and all our care they still return upon us and the Flesh will lust against the Spirit and there will be a perpetual war and struggle between them but if the Spirit do so far prevail by the helps of Grace and considerations of Religion that it do never yield to any wilful Sin it shall then be rewarded as a Conquerour which though it did not wholly subdue and drive out that homebred enemy yet kept it alwayes under and made it submit to its Government and not keep up an open Rebellion against it Of this I have largely discoursed in the Third Section of the Third Chapter I proceed now to those Sins which are known wilful and presumptuous habitual and reigning in us any one of which is inconsistent with a good State and excludes us out of Gods Favour here and Heaven hereafter such as the Psalmist in the forequoted place prayes against Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins lest they get the dominion over me All known and wilful Sins are presumptuous as being done in defiance of a Divine Authority that we know has forbid them and in contempt of God and his Laws to whom we owe all Honour and Obedience and notwithstanding all those threatnings and severe punishments that God has denounced against them He that sins wilfully after he has received the knowledge of the truth of these things there remains nothing for him but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries This is despising the Law of God thus wittingly and wilfully to break it and is sinning with a high hand and a most presumptuous boldness when we choose to do that which we know is most highly displeasing to Heaven and which God has laid all the obligations he possibly can upon us not to do When any such Sin gets dominion over us so that it becomes customary and habitual to us it makes us the Devils slaves and captives at his Will and shows that he is our Master and that we are the Servants of Sin and overcome by that and brought in bondage to it that it prevails upon our Minds above all the Power of Reason and Principles of Religion and that we choose it above all the great things of Heaven and another World that Religion offers to us and think it more desirable than any of those and had rather gratifie a paltry Lust and a foolish Inclination than save our Souls and have all the favour of God that we prefer it before any other good and let it have the ascendant in our Love and Affections above all other things for it is utterly inconsistent with any Love of God or any due regard to him and banishes all Principles of Religion out of our Minds and destroyes all sincerity and uprightness of Heart towards God and abandons us to a state of enmity with him and everlasting destruction hereafter This I have shown is true of every wilful and chosen and known Sin I shall now from the distinction I have given you of these Sins from those of Infirmity Ignorance and Inadvertency make the following Inferences and Remarks 1. That those Sins of Infirmity are to be Repented of i. e. we are to be sorry for them and pray God to forgive them Though they do not destroy our good state nor deprive us of Gods Favour here or Heaven hereafter yet they are such as are to be matter of Trouble and Sorrow and Humiliation to us and we are dayly to pray God to forgive us our Trespasses as Christ has taught us in the Lords Prayer and the Psalmist in the place before mentioned prayes God to cleanse him from his secret faults as well as to keep him back from presumptuous Sins For 2. These are true and proper Sins and though they are not charged upon us to our Condemnation yet this is by the great Favour and Mercy of God and by Vertue of the Gracious Covenant made in Christ with Mankind for otherwise God in Rigour and Justice might punish and condemn us for them The Papists hold a distinction between Sins Mortal and Venial in their own Nature i. e. that some Sins are in themselves damnable and others not which the Protestants have generally opposed for this Reason because all Sin is in it self Mortal and in its own Nature deserves Death as being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a breach and transgression of a Divine Law whose sanction is Death but it is pardonable only by Gods Mercy on the account of its circumstances which make it more excusable with a good and merciful God but that it is not of it self venial or so little as not to deserve Punishment they prove from hence that we are bound to pray God to forgive it Now it is pure Grace and Favour for God to forgive and what he is not obliged to and if he is not obliged to pardon it he may punish it were it not for his Mercy and Goodness and the Gracious Covenant he has made with us in the Gospel This should therefore 3. Make us very sensible of Gods infinite Mercy and kind dealing with us by the Covenant of Grace How many innumerable Sins and
all the Corruptions and Imperfections of Humane Nature to conquer all those Sins that are thought never so difficult or even insuperable to Flesh and Blood and to practice all those Vertues that are most contrary to our Natural Temper or Sensual Inclinations Be there never so many Arguments to the doing of a thing and never so much danger in not doing it be it never so great and important or never so necessary yet if after all a Man be without power and without ability to do it they will be all in vain and to no more purpose than to perswade a blind Man to see by the conveniency of that Sense or a lame Man to run by the danger he may otherwise be in or a Man tumbling from a precipice to stop before he falls to the bottom 't is only to mock and deride us with Motives and Arguments to a thing if it be wholly out of our power to effect it and therefore there is no such Motive to the doing a thing that we are otherwise perswaded is of great moment and importance as to be assured of sufficient power to enable us to go through with it without which all our Vigour will be dampt and all the sinews of Industry cut and all our Endeavours blasted by which we should set about it and we shall run the Censure of those foolish undertakers our Saviour speaks of Luke 14. who would make War or build a Tower without power to go on with it God has therefore given us the greatest Encouragement by the Gospel that can be to set upon the practice as of all other Duties so especially of this hard one of Repentance when he thereby assures us that his Grace shall be sufficient for us that he worketh in us both to will and to do that his Spirit shall be given us and abide with us for ever and that we shall be mightily strengthened by it in the inner man so that a new and strong and vital Principle shall be added to Humane Nature to strengthen its weakness repair its decayes recruit its forces support its feeble powers raise its sunk state and restore it to the Vertue and Perfection it had lost by its Sins How weak and decayed how corrupted and degenerated Humane Nature was of its self both Scripture and our own Experience do sufficiently teach us how strong and violent our Passions are and how weak our Reason to master and govern them how prone the Will is to consent to what is evil be it but a little grateful to Flesh and Blood and what strong proclivities and inclinations are in us to many Sins The Heathens were very sensible of this corruption and decay of Humane Nature and into what a low and degenerate state it was sunk and therefore they complained very often of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Souls being sunk into Matter and a Terrestrial State its wings being molted and its powers being drooping and sickly and what should raise and restore it and be a Cure to this Disease they could not find out they felt how strong were the propensions to Vice and how the Mind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Hierocles speaks was carried by its Passions like so many weights hanging upon it and inclining it to Sin and what should ballance these what should turn and counterpoize those propensities and inclinations what should bear up against all the Corruptions from within and the Temptations from without and relieve and succour the weak forces of decayed Nature that was so strongly besieged and so little able to hold out of it self this they could not know for 't is only by the Gospel and Christianity that we have the Promise of Gods Grace and Holy Spirit to be given to us when we ask it and to belong as a right to all Christians by vertue of the New Covenant and be a standing Principle to prevent and restrain us from Sin and work Holiness and Vertue in our Minds And now by vertue of this we have the greatest incouragement to Repent and Leave our Sins which is a Power to do so We have a new Principle of Life conveyed into our Souls and a fresh and Heavenly and almost a miraculous Power given to us by which the Lame may walk and the Lepers be cleansed i. e. by which those who are Naturally Impotent may be enabled to do their Duty and the greatest Sinners may be cured of their foulest Sins All the Excuses which were more reasonable and plausible heretofore of the weakness and impotency of our Nature of the strength and power of our Corruptions of the necessity and unavoidableness of our sinful Actions are now quite taken away by this Divine Grace and Assistance of the Holy Ghost which the Gospel promises and bestowes upon us By this the greatest Sin may be conquered the strongest Lust and Temptation overcome and the longest Habit and Custom changed and broken so that no Sinner should be discouraged from breaking off his Sins by Repentance by reason of the difficulty or impossibility of it since no Sin is too strong for the Grace of God but we can in every thing be more than conquerours through him which strengtheneth us and greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world than the Devil or any Sin that we shall be in danger of which can never take such possession of any Soul as not to be cast out by the Power and Spirit of Christ However hard it is to overcome a long Custom and root out an ill Disposition and to restrain and check an unbridled Lust and Appetite that has too long had the reins thrown upon its neck yet a firm Resolution strengthened with the Divine Grace and Assistance of Heaven will be able even to quicken and raise those who are dead in trespasses and sins to create them again in Christ Jesus unto good works and to renew them again unto Repentance Heb. 6.6 That Lust which we thought was so violent that all the force of Reason could not stand against it that Temptation which we called irresistible that Custom and Habit which we imagined incurable that Vice which we counted too hard for Flesh and Blood to deny these may all be certainly not to say easily overcome by the Divine Grace if we will make use of it Let the greatest Sinner therefore with the Power of Christ and the auxillary forces of Heaven set upon his strongest Sins let him but boldly and resolutely fall upon them and he shall find they will give ground and in a little time their power will abate and he will by the help of God and his own constant endeavours obtain a full and a perfect victory over them God will not indeed without our own endeavours and cooperation do the whole work for us nor will his Spirit work upon us as if we were Machines and had not internal powers and principles of action within our selves by
incurable hardness to all nor so far as we know to the Scribes and Pharisees themselves but there were means still used to recover them which would have been all in vain and to no purpose if they had been under an irrecoverable and judicial hardness and it had not been only blindness or hardness in part which had happened to Israel Rom. 11.25 or to the Jews And we shall venture too far out of our depth if we offer to say that God made use of many means and remedies to convince and convert the Jews the Scribes and the Pharisees when he had appointed and decreed that none of those should have any effect or good operation upon them this will hardly be consistent with the Goodness and Mercy or with the Truth and Sincerity of the Blessed God nor does he ever for any one Sin but for a long obstinate course of many provoking Sins continued in irreclaimably against the Methods of Divine Grace give up any Person to hardness of Heart There remains I confess another way by which a Sin may become unpardonable and that is by being exempted by God from the general Promise and Covenant of Pardon which he hath made with Mankind He who has all Sovereign Power and an entire Right of Punishment and upon whose Free Grace and Arbitrary Favour all Pardon and Forgiveness depends may except what Sin he pleases out of his General Act of Grace and Proclamation of Pardon and Indempnity but this surely should be done particularly and by name and in the very Act and Proclamation it self there in the very Charter and Covenant of Grace which God has signed with Mankind this ought to be expresly exempted and whether this Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost be so or no is the question or whether this expression of our Saviours concerning it that it shall not be forgiven may be mollified and understood not in the utmost rigour of the Word but as a great many of the best Interpreters of Scripture have judged particularly St Chrysostome of old and Dr. Hammond of late that this Sin shall hardly and not without great difficulty be forgiven and not so soon or so easily as other Sins that it supposes and proceeds from such a corruption of the Mind that is more dangerous and more hard to be cured than any other distempers it is subject to but yet that 't is not quite impossible as the words literally taken seem to imply I shall offer you the Reasons that plead for this Opinion and then determine what is most safe and satisfying in this matter 1. It is very usual in Scripture to represent a thing that is very hard and difficult as if it were utterly impossible and never could be This our Saviour himself does in the case of the Rich Mans entering into the Kingdom of Heaven to express the hardness of it he does it by a thing that is utterly impossible Matth. 19.24 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God And so does the Prophet also make use of a Natural impossibility to represent the great difficulty of a Mans turning from a long course and custom of sinning Jer. 13.23 Can the Aethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil Not but it is possible notwithstanding those Proverbial expressions that a Man who has been accustomed to do evil a very great while may yet be brought off from his Sins and become a good Man or else all the Exhortations to Repentance and Promises of the Gospel are in vain and so may a good Man become a very bad one too and fall from his own stedfastness and become guilty of abominable Sins As David did that was a Man after Gods own Heart notwithstanding that St. John in the same way and manner of expression with these declares concerning him 1 Ep. 3.9 Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is horn of God That Phrase he cannot denotes not an utter impossibility for the Prophet as well as Experience too plainly show the contrary that a righteous man may turn from his righteousness and commit iniquity and dye in it Ezek. 18.26 Things are sometimes so exprest in Scripture as they often are also amongst Men as if there were no hopes nor no probable means of effecting a thing when yet there are very certain ones as in that expression 1 Sam. 2.25 not a little parallel to this If one man sin against another the judge shall judge him but if a man sin against the Lord who shall intreat for him Not that there is no Advocate nor no way of interceding with God when a Man thus sins against him but to show the guilt and danger of it above the other That place of the Hebrews chap. 6. ver 4. For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened c. If they shall fall away to renew them again to Repentance that is by very good Interpreters thought to denote only great difficulty and not impossibility in the utmost rigour and strictness which it is plain none of the other Phrases however they may sound must be taken in and therefore this expression of our Saviour concerning the Sin against the Holy Ghost they think may be mollified and understood with the same largeness and latitude as those and to import only thus much that it shall be more difficultly repented of and so more hardly forgiven than any other Sins 2. Both the first part of this Verse That all manner of sin and blasphemies shall be forgiven unto men and many other absolute and unconditional Promises or Threatnings or like Declarations in Scripture must not they say be too rigorously and literally understood for if they are the truth which is now evident in them as they are taken with that fairness and equity and those supposals which must go along with them will be forced out and they will become false for it will not be true that all manner of sins and blasphemies shall be forgiven unto men for then none should be damned of made miserable in another World And when St. Paul sayes They that do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of Heaven Gal. 5.21 it must not be made a certain and general conclusion from thence that none who were ever guilty of any one of those Sins whereof he there gives us a black Catalogue shall ever be saved nor become capable of entering into Heaven but that they shall not be so without Repentance and Amendment though that is not there mentioned nor any provision concerning that is so much as intimated in that place nor is that tho' necessary Condition to the forgiveness of every Sin exprest or put down in our Saviours general Declaration that all manner of sins and blasphemies shall be forgiven unto men
down his Government of the World if he were merciful contrary to those and should not so far regard his own Honour and assert his Power and Authority and Justifie the goodness of his Laws as to revenge all open affronts against them and punish all great and notorious and habitual Sinners notwithstanding all their Prayers and Entreaties to the contrary If the cryes and lamentations of a dying Sinner should make God forgive him out of meer pity and tenderness though he had broke all the Laws of Heaven in his life and lived in direct opposition against them and never took any care to keep them this must alter the Rule of God's Government the Rule of the Gospel and the Rule of his last Judgment and he must for his sake break and act contrary to all those If notwithstanding those Gods Pity and Mercy to a poor Wretch could suffer or incline him to do this we might then as reasonably hope that this his pity might reach even to the damned in Hell their Case is very pitiable and very lamentable as well as the others and their cryes and howlings and lamentations are very loud and importunate but they are unreasonable and too late and therefore God is deaf to them one would think if Pity could so over-rule Justice as to prevail with it to dispense with the severe and righteous Rules lay'd down by the great God it would put out the flames of Hell or let the tears and cryes of the damned quench those dreadful and Everlasting burnings and not suffer so many poor and miserable Creatures to lye tortured for ever in the utmost Extremity but God's Justice and Judgment is as deep and bottomless as Hell it self and though we cannot search into all the reasons of it yet we know by his word that it shall take place and be duely executed notwithstanding his own greatest Pity and Mercy or his Creatures greatest Cryes and Lamentations A groundless presumption of God's Mercy and Pity hath ruined many Souls The Gospel declares the highest instances and degrees of it in the Redemption of the World by Jesus Christ and in pardoning our sins upon our Repentance and to show this required a wonderful Method and most Stupendous Expedient thus to find out a way to reconcile Gods Justice and Mercy together by the Sacrifice of Christ now this utmost Grace and Mercy of Heaven neither does nor could go farther than past Sins upon Repentance and Amendment Obedience and a good Life afterwards to expect any Mercy from God beyond this beyond the Gospel and the Rules and measures of Mercy there layd down is the most vain and groundless and presumptuous thing i' the World and so 't is for a dying unprepared Sinner to think he can do any thing then by which he may hope to prevail with Christ and to enter into Heaven For alass what can he then do He can use strong Crying and Tears and Prayers to God so did the Virgins and so may the Damned but alass for what can he pray That God would save him without Obedience and a good Life which he has declared he never will that he would not now punish him for a wicked and impenitent and disobedient life which he assuredly will do that he may not now be shut out when the Bridegroom is coming though he is no way prepared for it and has no Oyle in his Lamp no vertuous habits and Dispositions of mind to fit him to go in and now 't is too late to get them all on a sudden and in vain to expect to borrow this Oyl of others or to have it given by the Bridegroom himself would he pray now to God to give him Grace when he has despised and rejected it all his Life would he now have it grow up into vertuous habits and the frults of Obedience and a good life all on a sudden would he now become a new Man and a new Creature in a few hours and from a wicked Man all his life become a good one in a few days He may almost as well hope that God should make him young again now he is old and turn his old and weak and dying Body into a young and lusty and healthful one and work those mighty Miracles upon his Body as well as his Mind by his Prayers God can do the one by an Almighty Irresistible power as well as the other if he pleases but 't is very vain and groundless to depend upon the utmost of what God's power is able to do in any thing and therefore that is never to be brought in for or against any thing of this Nature The only question is not what God but what such a wicked Man and dying Sinner can then do can he have all his old habits of vice and wickedness rooted out and his Nature changed and a vertuous and holy disposition of mind planted in their stead Can that lust or sinful Inclination which was so hard to be conquered before that he pretended it was impossible for him almost to leave it can this now be so soon and so easily overcome All those Corruptions and Diseases of Soul which have been so long upon him that they are become chronical and habitual and which were before incurable by all the means of Grace and methods of Providence by all the advices and exhortations of his own Friends and God's Ministers are these now to be perfectly got off and cured on a sudden and the Mind restored to Soundness and Holyness Is that now to be done so easily and so quickly which he found so hard to do all his life and which is one of the hardest and most difficult things in the World to make a Bad Man a Good one No this is Unnatural and Impossible and cannot be in the Nature of the thing but a Man may be very sorrowful and heartily troubled that he was not so and have great trouble and remorse of Mind for his sins and so be heartily penitent for them This is all he can be and he cannot well be otherwise if he be in his Senses and hath the use of his Reason and sees such Terrible danger before him as is now unavoidable he must be greatly troubled that he hath brought himself to that that is that he must suffer for his Sin for he was never troubled at the Sin before nor would be now but like it and live in it still if that were all but he cannot but be concerned at the dreadful punishment of it and he must be very hardy indeed if he go not thus Shivering and Contrite and Penitent as they call it to his Execution this is only a Natural abhorring of pain or what is evil to us from a principle of Self-preservation not an abhorrence of Sin from Choice and Reason and free apprehension of Mind for all this is from a force and violence offered to the mind by a sense of present danger and from that Fear Terrour and Confusion that a