him for failing to do what he could not do Who would ever be so absurd as to reprove and punish a man for being low of Stature or weak of Body for being born of mean persons or to a small Fortune These and all other things of like nature which a man could never help may be his misfortune but not his fault and whatsoever he suffers upon the account of them may be and often is his calamity but by no means his punishment No man can justly be charged with that which was never subject to his own choice but if any imputation is laid upon him for its sake it rests not there but falls all upon that Cause whose free pleasure it was so to order him Agreeably whereunto the Wise man tells us That whosoever mocketh the poor reproacheth not him who cannot help his poverty but his Maker whose pleasure it was to dispose of him in that condition Prov. 17.5 And as a man can bear no just blame for that which it never was in his power to hinder so neither can he undergo any just punishment Barbarous cruelty indeed he may fall under which would have taken place without a Law as well as with it but legal and just penalties he never can And seeing no action is punishable but what is chosen it is plain that the Laws of God impose restraint and threaten punishment only to our voluntary actions Which will still further appear from another effect of every sinful and punishable action namely this Fourthly That it is such for which our own Consciences will blame and condemn us and which we shall lament in repentance and remorse One great part even of Hell torments is this remorse and worm of Conscience For there is no action for which we shall there be punished but when it is too late we shall endlesly repent of it Their worm there as our Saviour saith dyeth not Mark 9.44 But now it is an utter absurdity and downright madness for any man to be angry at himself for that which he could never help and to repent that ever he committed that which it was not in his power to hinder For doth it ever repent any man that he is not tall of Stature that he was not born as strong as Samson or made immortal as an Angel Was any man ever touched with remorse because he breathes and sleeps and thirsts and hungers No man ever is or ever can be angry at himself but when he sees that he has been wanting to himself when he has done that which it was in his own choice to have done otherwise For all remorse is for a willing offence a man chuses it when he commits it and therefore when afterwards he sees his errour he condemns himself for it And since a mans own Conscience condemns him for all those things for which God's Law will punish him and no man can condemn himself for doing any thing but what he chose to do neither his own Conscience can condemn nor the Law punish him for any but his voluntary and chosen actions And thus upon all these reasons we see That it is only our voluntary and chosen actions whereupon God's Laws lay restraint and wherefore at the last Day he will inflict punishment so that no sin is damning which is not chosen This is a very clear and well-grounded truth For the nature of Law which makes good and evil of obligation which enforceth it of rewards and punishments from God of acquiescence and remorse from our own Conscience which ensue upon it all these evidently evince and prove it For not any one of them is concerned about any actions but those which proceed from choice nor have to do with any works but what are wilful So that every action whereto there is Law and obligation exhortation and admonition reward or punishment commendation or reproof acquiescence or remorse as there are for all those which the Laws of God will sentence every such action I say is an effect of our own will or a voluntary chosen action Thus is it clear from the reason of the thing it self that all our actions are not governed by God's Laws so as to be strictly either enjoined or prohibited punished or rewarded by them but only those among them which are voluntary and chosen And this will appear yet further 2. From the plain declarations of the Scripture concerning it That whereby God looks upon his Laws to be either broken or kept is the choice and consent of the heart My Son give me thy heart saith Wisdom Prov. 23.26 So long as that is pure we can have no damning stain upon us for out of the heart as our Saviour assures us all those things must proceed which God will judge to defile a man Matth. 15.18 19 20. The lusts of our Flesh must gain the consent of our wills before they become deadly sins and consummate transgressions Lust says S t James when having won over the liking and approbation of our wills and a half consent to its impure embraces it has conceived bringeth forth the Embryo or rude Draught answerable to conception which is but a half production of sin and this Embryo of sin when by being brought on to a full choice and consent or what is more to action and practice it is finished bringeth forth its genuine Offspring Death Jam. 1.15 The consent of our hearts then must compleat our sin and our own wills must of necessity concurr to work our ruine For we must wilfully reject or cast off the Law which would keep us in and go beyond it when we behold it before our transgression will have got up to the pitch of a damnable pollution or a mortal crime Nay I add further till we are come thus far as wilfully to reject the Law and knowingly to transgress it we shall not be interpreted to commit that which the Gospel calls sin and which it strictly forbids and severely threatens under that name For if we will take S t John's word this is his explication of it Sin says he is the transgression as we render it but more fully and more agreeably to the Original it should be the renouncing or casting off the Law 1 John 3.4 And thus we see that from plain Scripture as well as from clear reason it manifestly appears that all our actions are not governed nor will hereafter be judged by Gods Laws but such only among them as are voluntary and chosen And therefore although there be no Law of Christ which gives men leave to sin without fear of punishment yet some actions there may be against many or most of Christ's Laws which shall not be judged to be punishable transgressions of them as are all our involuntary and unchosen actions And of this sort are all those consistent slips which as I shewed before not only are but needs must be born with and allowed by the Covenant of the Gospel For it is our involuntary
stay beyond that time which we are to act in if we do act at all Besides our powers of action especially where there is any strong temptation of pleasure or profit to act for are forward of themselves and ready to spring out upon the first occasion As soon as the temptation is offered to our thoughts our wills indeliberately approve and all our bodily and active powers by an unconsidered emanation start up to pursue and endeavour after it whence thinking and considering is necessary not to raise but to stop and restrain them And then if either our thoughts have been otherwise engaged and so cannot readily withdraw themselves to consider of a new object or if our thinking powers themselves are dull and heavy and thereby unfit to consider of it we presently and indeliberately go on to act the thing without all pausing and due consideration For this other reason of inconsideration also viz. the want of power or indisposition of our thinking faculty it self is not a thing wholly subject to our own will to chuse whether or when we shall fall under it Because in this state of our souls during their being here united to our Bodies they make use of our bodily powers in their use of reason and in the very exercise of thought and consideration and therefore even in them they are liable to be changed and altered just as our Bodies are For in a brisk and healthy Body our thoughts are free and quick and easie but if our Bodies are dull and indisposed our minds are so too A heaviness in our heads will make us heavy in our apprehensions and a discomposure in our Spirits whether through the strength of Wine or of a violent passion will make us discomposed and incoherent in our thoughts also And if there be an utter perverting or blasting of our bodily powers as is often seen in the bodily Diseases of Epilepsies Phrensies Apoplexies and the like there will be the same perversion or utter extinction of our conceptions likewise But now these indispositions of our Bodies which thus unfit our very souls for thought and due consideration are not in our power to order when and where they shall seize upon us For our Bodies are liable to be thus acted upon by any other Bodies of the world whether we will or no. A heavy air or an indisposing accident will work a change in our bodily temper without our leave and when once that is indisposed we cannot hinder our thoughts themselves from being indisposed too And since it is not in our power at all times to chuse whether or no we will pause and consider although we can avoid offending in those Cases wherein we can consider of it yet is it manifest that we cannot avoid offence in all Indeed if we take any particular action and in our own thoughts separate it from any particular time and from the Chain of other particular actions amongst which it lyes we shall be apt to affirm that it is such whereof we can think and consider For take any action by it self and being aware of it we can let other things alone and watch for it particularly and when we do so we are sure to find one time or other when our understandings are disposed for a due deliberation and fit and able to consider of it But then we must take notice that this supposed state of an action as separate from the Crowd of other actions and determined to no time is only imaginary and in speculation For when we come to practise them though in some we have time and power enough yet in others we find that we have not Because either they come in the throng of other business and then our thoughts being hotly employed upon other things cannot so easily be drawn from them upon the sudden to consider of them or if they call upon us when we have time to consider in yet it happens that our faculties are heavy and indisposed and so we exert them still without due consideration When we think of any particular action by it self therefore we take it out of the throng of business wherein it is involved and out of that time wherein we are indisposed and then we are bold to conclude that we can consider of it But when we come to practise it we find that our former speculation supposed false and that it comes mixt with a crowd of other things or in a time when we have troubled and discomposed thoughts So that how subject soever it was to our consideration in that separate state wherein we imagined it yet have we no power to consider of it in that throng of business or indisposition of faculties wherein we find it And this is verily the Case of several of our slips and transgressions For look upon any of the particulars by it self and take it asunder from the rest and then we shall be confident that we may bethink our selves and consider of it But take it as indeed it lyes among the mixt Crowd of other actions or as offered to our indisposed understandings and then we shall find that it slips from us without all consideration And this as I take it is intended by a great man when he tells us of sins of pardonable infirmitie that the liberty which they seem to have when we consider them in special and asunder they indeed have not when we consider them in the general viz. as involved in the crowd of other actions amongst whom they lye and altogether Upon which account of their having in them no choice and consideration he questions whether they contain that which can in strictness and propriety of speech be called sin And indeed if we understand the same by sin which S t John doth when he gives the explication of it 1 John 3.4 viz. a rejecting or contemning of the Law in which sence only a state of Grace is destroyed by it and he who is born of God cannot commit it they have not For men cannot be said to reject and despise a Law when they do not see and consider of it The liberty then which we have about those slips and transgressions which we do not know and consider of is in effect no liberty at all For we neither chuse the disobedient action it self nor the cause of it We do not chuse the sinful action it self because we do not know or consider of it Nor do we chuse the inconsideration because it is not left to our liberty whether in some of our actions we should be inconsiderate or no. And since our slips and failings which are thus involuntary by ignorance cannot be chosen or refused 't is plain that they cannot be avoided And as for all those things which we cannot avoid it is clear from what has been said above that the Gospel doth not eternally threaten us nor will God ever condemn us for them But that these slips and transgressions which being thus unknown
most eminently skill'd in all the Laws of God S t Paul is not certain but that some such ignorance adhered to himself I know or am conscious of nothing by my self saith he but yet I am not hereby justified because some such sins may have escaped my knowledge 1 Cor. 4.4 Why sayes S t Chrysostome should the Apostle say that he is not thereby justified although he is conscious of nothing by himself wherefore he should be condemned because it might so happen that he had committed several acts of sin which at the time of action for all his knowledge of the Laws themselves he did not know were sinfull And this is no more than holy David the man after Gods own heart thought he had reason to suspect himself for before him who says he can understand his errours cleanse thou me from my secret faults Psal. 19.12 The best men in all times whether Jews or Christians have been subject to miscarriages through this sort of ignorance and God who is never wanting to the necessities of his servants has alwayes provided a sufficient atonement and propitiation for them For under the Law if any honest Israelite happen'd to do any thing which was forbidden to be done by the Commandment of the Lord and wist not that it was forbidden Moses appointed the Priests to make an expiation for him and several atonements for that purpose are set down Levit. 4. And under the Gospel our Saviour Christ by whom Grace and Favour is said to be given much more largely than it was by the Law of Moses has provided us of a much more powerfull and valuable propitiation He himself by virtue of his own sacrifice atones for all such unknown offences as well as the Jewish Priests did by their Sacrifices which were prescribed in the Law of Moses For in comparison of the two Priesthoods as to that part of their Office which lay in making these atonements S t Paul assures us that like as the Jewish Priests had so Christ can have compassion upon the ignorant Heb. 5.2 As for those transgressions then which are therefore involuntary and unchosen because we do not know that the Law which they are against doth comprehend them they shall not finally damn any man So long as we have an honest heart that is ready to perform what it knows and unfeignedly desirous and industrious to know more that it may perform it likewise if in some things still we happen ignorantly to offend such ignorant offences shall not prove our ruine For our ignorance will excuse our sin and make it consistent with Gods Favour and with all the hopes and happiness of heaven Nay even where our heart is not so honest as it should be and we are ignorant of the present actions being comprized under that sin which the Law forbids through our own fault yet even there our ignorance although it cannot wholly excuse doth still extenuate our sin and proportionably abate our punishment Perhaps it is our rashness or inconsiderateness or violent pursuit of some opinions and prejudice against others which makes us judge wrong of some particular actions and not to see that they are included in the prohibition of some known Law when really they are Nay so far may our mistake go as not only to judge them to be no sinfull breaches of these Laws but moreover to be virtuous performances of others For our Saviour tells his Disciples that the time was coming when even they who killed them should think that thereby they did God good service Joh. 16.2 And S t Paul sayes plainly that he verily thought with himself that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth Acts 26.9 All which murders and persecutions they were ignorantly guilty of not as if they did not know the Laws against murder and persecution but because they thought their present actions to be unconcern'd in them and not forbid by them nay on the contrary to be warranted and injoyn'd by other Laws requiring zeal for God and judgment against false Prophets Now this Ignorance was such as they might very well have prevented had they been calm and considerate humble and teachable and would have hearkned honestly and with an even mind to that evidence which Christ gave of his being the Messiah which was sufficient to convince any honest mind And this patience humility and teachableness were in their own Power to have exercised if they would so that they were ignorant in good measure through their own choice and by a wilful neglect of those means which would have brought them to a true belief and a right understanding And since their Ignorance was thus a matter of their own choice it is their sin and they must answer for it But although being as I say their own fault it could not wholly excuse yet was it fit to lessen and mitigate their crime and to abate their punishment Their account should be less by reason of their Ignorance and the sinfull actions being committed with an honest heart through a misguided understanding were much more prepared for pardon than otherwise they would have been And this Christ himself has plainly taught us when he uses it as an argument with his Father for the forgiveness of that sinfull murder of the Jews whereof they were guilty in his Crucifixion Father sayes he forgive them for they know not what they do their killing of me they take to be no sinful murther of an innocent and anointed person but a virtuous execution of a lying Prophet Luk. 23.34 And this likewise S t Paul experienced I obtained Mercy sayes he for persecuting the Church of God because I did it ignorantly not thinking it to be a sinfull persecution but a pious service 1 Tim. 1.13 Yea if the culpaâ—le ignorance be either of the Law it self or of our present actions being contained under it â—â—though God should not call us to repentance for what we ignorantly committed and so to pardon yet even unpardoned we shall undergo a much lighter punishment by reason of our ignorance than we should have suffered had we sinned in knowledge For in this Point the words of our Lord and Judge are express He who knew not his Masters will and did things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with few stripes Luke 12.48 This allowance the Gospel makes for our sinful actions so long as we are ignorant that the Laws which they are against do include and comprehend them Whilst our Consciences are in darkness about them and we do not see that we transgress in them though that ignorance were in good measure culpably wilful we should obtain a milder punishment but if it were involuntary and innocent we shall be fully acquitted and excused This allowance I say there is whilst our sin is ignorant and our Consciences do not see that the known Law is transgressed by our sinful action But if our Consciences should come to know so
much less out-done by the best of men in pity and kindness Which is the argument from which our Saviour himself concludes that God will give the holy spirit at our prayers because that men themselves who are infinitely below him in goodness will give good gifts to them that ask them Luk. 11.13 Let us therefore take care in the first place to secure our selves of an obedient heart and to give such evidence of an honest industry as any kind hearted honest man would accept of and then we may have just reason to be confident that although our endeavour is weak and imperfect being much hindred and often interrupted yet shall it still be esteemed sufficient For Christ himself who is to judge of its sufficiency is no stranger to our weaknesses but having felt them in himself he is prone to pity and pardon them in us He experimented the backwardness of our flesh and the number of our distractions and the tiredness of our powers and the insinuations and strength of temptations So that having such an High Priest to intercede for us at present and to judge us at the last day who is touched with a feeling of our infirmities having been tempted himself in all points even as we are let us come boldly unto the throne of Grace as the Apostle exhorts us that we may obtain mercy for what we cannot master as well as find grace in a seasonable time of need to conquer what he expects we should overcome Hebr. 4.15 16. And this mercifull connivance at our imperfections and gracious acceptance of our weak endeavours we may with the greater reason and assurance hope for because Christ our Judge will be most candid and benign in putting the best sense and in interpreting most to our advantage all those our actions and endeavours which shall then be brought before him Whereof he has given us a clear instance in that most favourable construction which he made of that Charity that was shewn unto his Brethren by those on his right hand Mat. 25. For although it was not expressed to him but only to their fellow Christians for his sake yet because their kindness reached him in the intention of their minds and what they did to his servants for his sake they would have done to himself much rather could they have met with an opportunity he resented it as if it had been really shown to his own person For when they say unto him Lord when saw we thee an hungred and fed thee or naked and cloathed thee c. he answers inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these my brethren I take the affection for the performance and interpret it as if you had done it unto me vers 40. When therefore the sufficiency of our endeavours fater the knowledge of our Duty is come to be enquired into by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ we may be assured that it will have a favourable tryal It it to be censured by a candid equitable and benign judge who will interpret it to our advantage as much nay more than any good natured honest man would So that if our industry after the knowledge of Gods will be in such a measure as a candid and benign man would judge to be a sufficient effect of an obedient heart and of an honest purpose Christ will judge it to be so too And where our Ignorance of any of Christs Laws is joyned with an honest heart and remains after such an industry we may take comfort to our selves and be confident that it is involuntary and innocent If we are desirous to know Gods Laws and read good Books frequent Sermons hearken to any good instructions which we meet with and that according to our opportunities and in such measure as any good man would interpret to be an honest endeavour after the knowledge of our Duty if it were to himself if after all this I say in some points we are still Ignorant our Ignorance is involuntary and shall not harm us it is not chosen by us and therefore it never will condemn us And thus we have seen what ignorances excuse our slips and transgressions which are committed under them and when those Ignorances are themselves involuntary and innocent so as that we may comfortably expect to be excused upon the account of them And the summ of all that has been hitherto discoursed upon this subject is this That as for the Laws themselves all men must needs be ignorant of some of them for some time and some men for all their lives because they want either ability or opportunity to understand them And as for their present actions being comprehended under them that many men of all sorts and capacities after that they have known the General Laws will still be ignorant of it likewise For as for the wise and learned the small and meer gradual difference between good and evil in some instances the allowed exceptions from the generality of others the indirect force and obligation of a third sort and the frequent clashing and enterfering whether of Laws with Laws or of Laws with their repugnant prejudices and opinions will be sure to make them very often overlook it And as for the rude and ignorant that besides all these causes of such ignorance which are common to them with learned men the difficult and obscure nature of several Vices and Virtues themselves which are plainly and expresly forbidden or injoyn'd will be of force sufficient to make the generality of them in many instances not to understand it And as for the pardon and excuse of our ignorance and unknown transgressions from all or any of these causes that it is involuntary and innocent so long as it is joyned with an honest heart and remains after an honest industry and begins then only to be our wilful sin and an Article of our condemnation when our Lusts or Vices introduce it and we have a mind to it and take no pains against it or what is the consummation and height of all industriously labour and endeavour after it And this may suffice to have spoken of the first sort of want of Knowledge which as I said above produces an uncondemning involuntariness viz. Ignorance when we commit sin because we do not know the sinfulness of our present action or the Law which we sin against CHAP. VIII Of Sins consistent through the second Cause of an innocent Involuntariness viz. Inconsideration The CONTENTS Consideration is necessary to choice Some sins are inconsiderate Three innocent causes of inconsideration 1. Suddenness and surprize of opportunity An account of this The involuntariness of it Slips upon it are consistent 2. Weariness of our thinking powers or understandings An account of this and of its involuntariness The consistence of our Transgressions by reason of it 3. Discomposure or disturbance of them An account of this The causes of it are Drunkenness or a strong Passion Drunkenness is always our own fault Our
our selves together as the manner of some is but exhorting one another to the open owning and frequenting of them and this we ought to do so much the more forasmuch as ye see the day of Gods righteous Judgment approaching For if we sin wilfully in this backsliding from the publick Assemblies and from the profession of the Christian Faith after that we have once received the knowledge or professed belief and acknowledgment of the truth of it there remains no more benefit to us from Christs sacrifice for sins but a certain fearful looking for of that judgment I say which shall devour the adversaries And this all you Hebrews have reason to expect from Christ from what you very well know of the manner of proceeding in such cases under Moses For he that despised or rejected the whole yea or even any one particular instance of Moses's Law whereto death was threatned dyed without mercy if the thing was proved against him under the testimony of two or three witnesses And then of how much sorer punishment suppose ye shall this wilful sinner be thought worthy who hath by such wilful rejecting of all Christs Laws and Religion trodden under foot the Son of God as if he were not raised up again from the dead but were yet in his grave and hath accounted that blood of his which confirmed the New Covenant and wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing making it to have been justly shed as the blood of a Malefactor and hath done despite unto the Spirit of Grace and all its evidence by rejecting it as insufficient I have set down the place at large that the very Text it self may afford us an accumulated proof of the ensuing Explication But now as for this sin which being wilfully committed after the belief and acknowledgment of Christs Gospel is here said to have no help from Christs Sacrifice nor any benefit of his Propitiation it is not the sinful transgression of every Law of Christ no nor of any one but a total Apostasie and abrenunciation of them all The sin I say which being wilfully committed after the belief of Christs Gospel is here said to exclude us from all benefit of Christs Sacrifice is not the transgression of any of Christs Laws whatsoever nay nor of any one For the Corinthians were guilty of the wilful transgression of several Laws and that too after they had embraced the Faith of Christ. They were guilty of an indulged Lasciviousness Vncleanness and Fornication 2 Cor. 12.21 Nay one of them was guilty of it in such an instance as was not so much as named and much less practised among the Gentiles themselves viz. in a most incestuous marrying of his Step-mother or his Fathers wife 1 Cor. 5.1 And St. Peter a great Apostle after three years converse with his Lord and Master denies him three times and that not suddenly e're he could bethink himself but after a due space of time between one denial and another Luk. 22.57 58 59. All which he did in the most aggravated manner by accumulating perjuries and prophaneness upon the sin of disowning his Master for when his bare word would not be believed he began to curse and to swear that he knew him not Mar. 14.71 All these were sins wilful in their commission and some of them most highly criminal in their nature but yet none of them was excluded from the benefit of Christs Sacrifice for they all enjoyed it So that it is not any one transgression of a particular Law after men have embraced the Faith of Christ which is the un-atoned sin here mentioned But it is an utter rejecting of all the Laws of Christ and a total Apostasie from his whole Religion It is the renouncing of Christs Authority the disowning of his Gospel and falling quite off from him to Judaism or Paganism or something directly Antichristian which is the sin here intended And whosoever doth this wilfully after he has once acknowledged it and been convinced by it as most men if not every man must do who is guilty of it at all for him there remains no more sacrifice for sin but a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour him and all other Antichristian adversaries That the word which is here translated sin signifies sometimes not all sin in general but particularly this superlative height and aggregation of all sin an utter revolt from Gods service and Apostasie from his whole Religion appears plainly from 2 Pet. 2 where the Apostate Angels are called the Angels that sinned v. 4. And that this particular way of sinning by an universal Apostasie and falling quite off from the profession of the Christian Faith is that very sin which is here intended will appear from all those things which are spoken of it in this place 'T is plain from the Apostles exhortation against it Let us hold fast says he the profession of our faith and not revolt from it v. 23. From his further disswasion from it in the verse next but one not forsaking the Christian Assemblies which is a great step towards the disowning of Christ himself as the manner of some is v. 25. From his Character of it in the verses that follow it being a sin that includes in it all these instances of aggravation By it we become utterly Antichristian and Adversaries to Christ and his Religion the fiery indignation that is kindled by this sin shall devour all them who by reason of it are become Adversaries ver 27. By it we deny Christ to be risen and look upon the Son of God as yet in the Grave and under our feet we count his blood which was spilt for the confirmation of the New Covenant to have been the impure and unholy blood of a Malefactor justly executed we despise all the clear proof and convictive evidence of the Spirit of Grace which we once thought a sufficient Argument for his Religion and whereby we were moved to the acknowledgment of that truth of his which now we contumeliously reject Whosoever hath committed this sin saith the Apostle I will show him what he hath done he hath trodden under foot the Son of God and hath counted the blood of the Covenant wherewith he was sanctified an holy thing and hath done despite unto the Spirit of Grace ver 29. As for the sin then which is here spoken of it is plainly this viz. a sin that is contrary to the holding fast of our Christian profession that implies a forsaking of the Christian Assemblies that makes us open enemies and adversaries to Christ and his cause seeing thereby we deny Christ to be risen and affirm him to have been an Impostor and his blood to have been like that of the Thieves which were crucified with him unholy and impure as the blood of a Malefactor and set at nought all the miraculous proofs and despise all the convictive evidence of the Holy Ghost that Spirit of Grace which
hath proved to us abundantly that that Religion of his which we now renounce is a most certain truth of God All these marks are evidently attributed to that sin which the Apostle here speaks of and then what can any man think it to be less than an absolute Apostasie from the whole Religion and an utter abrenunciation of all the Laws of Christ Now whosoever wilfully falls under this I confess he is in a very deplorable and most desperate case Because for him as saith the Apostle there remains no more benefit from Christs Propitiation or Sacrifice for sin He has affronted that so enormously that God will never suffer him to be the better by it And this to a Jew ought to be no uncouth or surprizing Doctrine seeing he who thus renounced Moses could have no Sacrifice to atone for him For no propitiation was allowed for him who wilfully rejected any one particular Command of Moses but least of all if he had apostatized from the whole Law He that despised even any one particular threatning death in Moses's Law died without mercy under two or three Witnesses But now this Covenant and Law of Moses was sealed only in the blood of Bulls and Goats whereas this Covenant and Law of Christ which these men renounce that I am speaking of was confirmed in his own blood Moses the Authour of that Law was but a Servant whereas Christ the Authour of this was a Son If then the revolting from Moses was so unpardonable that it inevitably incurred death and put a man out of all hopes of propitiation and benefit of Sacrifice of how much sorer punishment as he most rationally argues must all Apostates from Christ be accounted worthy who by their falling away from his Religion tread under foot the Son of God himself a Person infinitely above Moses and count the blood not of Bulls and Goats but of the Christ of God wherewith this Covenant was sealed to be an unholy thing They are indeed irrevocably plunged in death and their apostatizing or drawing back from that Religion which upon so good evidence they had before acknowledged is to their own ruine and destruction ver 38. But although this total apostasie and abrenunciation of Christianity it self when 't is wilfully committed be thus remediless and desperate a sin yet is that nothing to the breach of any particular Law or to the wilful transgressions of any baptized man so long as he still continues Christian. For all his sins of one sort or other have the salvo of repentance provided for them and if he doth but once reform and amend them he shall not be condemned for them And thus having shewed that this place in the tenth Chapter to the Hebrews makes nothing against the pardonableness of any Christian mans sin upon repentance but only against the forgiveness of those who have apostatized from Christ and become unchristian I proceed now 2. To consider that other place in the sixth Chapter of the same Epistle where the Apostles words are these Therefore leaving the Principles of the Doctrine of Christ wherein we are wont to catechize even Children and Novices let us go on unto perfection and to treat of such things as are fit for grown men not laying again for such as are apostatized from it the first Foundations of the Christian Doctrine as are the Doctrine of repentance from dead works and of faith towards God of the Doctrine of Baptisms and of laying on of hands and of resurrection of the dead and of eternal Judgment And this will we do if God permit without returning as I say to prove again the foundations of the Faith to them who are fallen from it which indeed were a very vain and fruitless undertaking For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened or baptized and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made Partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted of the good word of God and of the powers of Christs Kingdom or the World to come if after all this they shall wilfully fall away from this Faith it is impossible for them I say to be recovered or for us by any endeavours of ours to renew them again unto the Grace and Covenant of repentance because God is irreconcileably provoked by this revolt seeing thereby they crucifie to themselves the Son of God afresh and put him once again to an open shame Here indeed the Case is as desperate as it was before and 't is no wonder why it should because the sin is the very same For it is nothing less than an universal backsliding an apostasie both in faith and manners a renouncing of all the Religion and Laws of Christ whereof all these severe things are spoken As for the word which is here put to note this falling away it signifies for the most part a fall which admits of a rise again and is recoverable but sometimes it denotes a fall that is desperate and beyond all hopes of remedy Thus the Apostle speaking of the incredulous Jews to whom the Religion of Christ was a stumbling block and a rock of offence distinguishes betwixt these two stumbling and falling making the latter to be much more dangerous than the former and denying it when he affirms the other Have they stumbled says he that they should fall mortally and irrecoverably God forbid Rom. 11.11 And thus it signifies in this place For the falling away here spoken of is nothing less than a revolting from all Christ's Laws and Doctrines and an apostatizing from his whole Religion Which appears from several things that are here said of it some whereof they are said to fall from and others are said to be implied in their falling It appears I say from some things which they are said to apostatize or fall from They fall away from their Baptism which is expressed by the word enlightened the common name in the antient Church to signifie the baptized from the remission of sins the preaching of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments which are such priviledges and gifts of God as are afforded to persons baptized from the hopes of Heaven and all the promises and good word of God from the gift of tongues and other effects of the Holy Ghost whereof upon the imposition of the Apostles hands they had been made Partakers and from the power of working miracles that were so conspicuous under the appearance of Christ those times of Messiah which the Jews were wont to call the Age or world to come If those says the Apostle who were once baptized or enlightned and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the holy Ghost and have tasted of the good word or promise of God and the powers of the world to come if they shall fall away or apostatize from all these it is impossible to renew them v. 4 5 6. This as is evident is the Apostasie which is
Conscience no man can be innocently ignorant Of what others he may This ignorance is necessary to all men for some time and to some for all their lives Mens sins upon it are not damning Of sins involuntary through our ignorance of the present actions being included in the known Law and meant by it The causes of this ignorance First The difference between good and evil in some actions being not in kind but only in degree Secondly The limitedness of most Laws which admit of exceptions Thirdly The indirect obligations which pass upon several indifferent actions Fourthly The clashing of several Laws whence one is transgressed in pursuit of another the great errour upon this score iâ— in the case of zeal Fifthly The clashing of Laws with opinions or prejudices 461 CHAP. VI. Of Prejudice The Contents The nature of prejudice It a cause of ignorance of our Duty The difference betwixt things being proposed to a free and empty and to a prejudiced or prepossessed mind An evident proposal sufficient to make a free mind understand its Duty but besides it a confutation of its repugnant prejudice is necessary to a mind that is prepossessed An account of several Opinions which make men ignorant of several instances of Duty One prejudice that nothing is lawful in Gods Worship but what is authorized by an express command or example of Scripture the acts of sin that are justified by this prejudice Another that all private men are publick Protectors of Religion and the Christian Faith the acts of sin justified by this Opinions Other Opinions cause a sinful neglect of the Sacraments These are incident to some honest and obedient hearts An account of other prejudices as that Christ is a Temporal King the acts of disobedience authorized by this Opinion That a good end will justifie an evil action the acts of sin upon this perswasion That Dominion is founded in Grace the disobedient acts avowed by this Principle These are more disobedient and damning The case stated what prejudices are consistent with and what destroy salvation Some prejudices get into mens minds not through a disobedient heart but through weakness of understanding and fallibility of the means of knowledge These are consistent with a state of salvation An instance of this in the prejudice of the Apostles about preaching of the Gospel to all Nations Other prejudices get into mens minds through damning lusts or sins A brief account of the influence of mens lusts and vices upon their Opinions This is illustrated in the Gnosticks They were famous for covetousness and worldly compliances and for impure lusts and excess in bodily pleasures The effect of these in producing agreeable Opinions Another of their vices was a turbulent and seditious humour Their Opinion was answerable A further illustration of it from the Pharisees An account of their vices and the influence which they had in begetting vile perswasions This influence of mens lust upon their judgments proved from the Scriptures The damnableness of such prejudices as enter this way Certain marks whereby to judge when prejudices proceed from unmortified lusts As first If the sin whereto the prejudice serves is unmortified in them Secondly If it lye so near to the prejudice that we could not but see that it ministred to it when we embraced it Thirdly Though it lye more remote if we still adhere to it when we plainly see that some unquestionable and notorious Laws are evacuated or infringed by it A Rule to prevent disobedient prejudices viz. Let Laws be the Rule whereby to judge of truth in opinions not opinions the Rule whereby to measure the Obligation of Laws Some Reasons of this viz. Because Laws are more plain and certain but opinions are more difficult and dubious Obedience to Laws is the end of revealed truth and so fit to measure it not to be measured by it 480 CHAP. VII A sixth cause of ignorance of the present actions being comprehended under a known Law And of the excusableness of our transgressions upon both these sorts of ignorance The Contents All the forementioned causes of ignorance of our present actions being included in the known Law are such to knowing and learned men Besides them the difficult and obscure nature of several sins is a general cause of it to the rude and unlearned Sins upon this ignorance as well as upon ignorance of the Law it self unchosen and so consistent with a state of Grace and Salvation Where there is something of choice in it they extenuate the sin and abate the punishment though they do not wholly excuse it The excuse for these actions is only whilst we are plainly ignorant they are damning when we are enlightened so far as to doubt of them but pardonable whilst we are in darkness or errour This excuse is for both the modes of ignorance 1. Forgetfulness 2. Errour All this pardon hitherto discoursed of upon the account of ignorance of either sort is no further than the ignorance it self is involuntary The wilfulness of some mens ignorance The several steps in voluntary ignorance The causes of it Two things required to render ignorance involuntary 1. An honest heart 2. An honest industry What measures necessary to the acceptance of this industry Gods candor in judging of its sufficiency This Discourse upon this first cause of an innocent involuntariness viz. ignorance summed up 522 CHAP. VIII Of sins consistent through the second Cause of an innocent involuntariness viz. inconsideration The Contents Consideration is necessary to choice Some sins are inconsiderate Three innocent causes of inconsideration 1. Suddenness and surprize of opportunity An account of this The involuntariness of it Slips upon it are consistent 2. Weariness of our thinking powers or understandings An account of this and of its involuntariness The consistence of our transgressions by reason of it 3. Discomposure or disturbance of them An account of this The causes of it are Drunkenness or a strong Passion Drunkenness is always our own fault Our Passions grow strong in us sometimes by our own indulgence and then they are our damning sin and we must suffer for the evil that we commit under them sometimes through the suddenness and greatness of outward Objects and then they are pardonable and our inconsiderate slips upon them are excusable The passions which have good for their Object as Love Desire c. cannot by any force of outward objects be so suddenly forced upon us But the passions which have evil as grief anger and fear especially often are The reason of this difference Inconsideration upon the latter excusable but not upon the former This difference made by our Saviour in a case where both were criminal Excusable slips upon discomposure of our thinking powers are such as proceed from an unwill'd sudden grief or anger but especially from a sudden fear No fear is involuntary but what is sudden and sins upon deliberate fear are damning but upon unwill'd sudden fear grief or anger consistent
Law was the cause of our Sin and Death this we see is quite taken off and doth not follow at all For although we sinn'd yea and died too under the Law yet was not the Law the cause of these but the strength of our own Lusts. But the Law is holy still and so no cause of sin and the Commandment forbidding sin and promising Life to the obedient is not only holy and just but over and above that good too and so no cause of death and suffering But upon this you will say how was it then that that which is so good in it self as you say the Law is should be made the cause of the greatest evil even of Death unto me Could it prove so to me if it were not so in it self And to this I answer with abhorrence God forbid that I should say the Law is Death No this Death as I have told you is not the effect of the Law for it was ordained to procure Life for me But it was Sin I say again that was too strong for the Law which could only forbid but was not able by all its aids to restrain it this Sin it was that it might appear Sin indeed that went on working transgression unto Death in me by advantage taken over that Law which is good although not strong enough to overpower the setled habits of evil And by this conquest of Sin over the good Law which was set up as a bar against it and should have destroy'd it it appears to be most mischievous For this comes of it that Sin by proving too hard for the Commandment might by such prevailing over all that is set against it be extremely heightned and aggravated and become exceeding sinfull And that the Law should thus be worsted by Sin is no wonder For we know that although the Law which commands is spiritual to shew and suggest better things yet I who am to obey in that state of sensuality and sin wherein the Law finds me and out of which it is too weak to rescue me am carnal so as to serve sin notwithstanding it Which I am to such a degree as if I were sold under sin and my actions were as much at its command as the actions of a slave bought with money are at the command of his master So that although the Law shews me that which is good and commands me to perform it yet cannot I obey it in regard I am under anothers power under the beck of sin And in very deed to speak yet more particularly to this business the good Law can and doth produce good effects in the mind and conscience which is the throne wherein it is seated but still the law of sin which is seated in the members or executive powers prevails over it and engrosseth all our actions So that the utmost that it can ordinarily do with us is to make us in our mind to disapprove sin but when it hath done that it cannot hinder us in our lives from practising it And of this the complaints of those who are subject to it are a sufficient proof For who is there among them for the most part that is not ready to confess and cry out thus that which through the prevailing power of my lusts I do in my practice that through the power of the Law I allow not in my mind and conscience for what being excited by the Law I would do that being hindred by sin do I not but what from the Laws prohibiting in my mind I hate and disapprove that from my own lusts forcing and overpowering me in my actions still do I. And this by the way as it is an evident argument of the weakness and inability of the Law to restrain sin is also a clear testimony to the holiness and goodness of the Law it self which shews plainly that it is no favourer or author of Sin as was objected vers 7. Because if even then when I do sin I do not approve of it but in doing so I do what I would not I thereby consent in my own conscience unto the Law and acknowledge by my approving what it commands that it is good Yea I shew moreover that all that which it produces and effects in me is good also For even when I do sin sinning thus against my conscience the sin cannot in any wise be charged upon my conscience where the Law reigns so as that the Law in my mind may be stiled the cause of sin as it is vers 7. but only upon the power of my habitual sin and fleshly lusts that reign in my members which are so strong as that the law of my mind cannot restrain them And now then in this state of sinning thus with regret and against my conscience even when I do sin it is no more I or my mind and conscience that is governed by the Law and which may be called my self that do it seeing it disapproves it but it is sin that dwells in me and reigns in my members It must not be charged upon the Law in my mind I say but upon this inhabiting Sin which rules in my members For I know and confess freely that in that other part of me that is to say in my flesh and members which for all the Law rules in my mind doth yet keep possession of my practice dwells no good thing Nay on the contrary there dwells so much evil as proves too strong for the good Law restraining all its effect to the approbation of my mind but not suffering it to influence my practice Which we as I said who are subject to the Law find by sad experience For almost every one of us feels and must confess this that to will upon the account of the Law is present with me but then how to perform that which is good after I have will'd it that I find not For after the Law has done all that it can upon me this is still true that the good that being instructed by the Law I would do that being hindred by the prevalence of my lusts I do not but as for the evil which because of the prohibition of the Law I would not do that being over-master'd by my lusts I do But now all this while as I said if what my lusts make me practise through the Law in my mind I do not approve but in doing it I do that which I would not then 't is clear that my sinning cannot be charged upon the Law as it is vers 7. because it hinders it as far as it can It cannot I say be attributed to that for it is no longer I or my mind and conscience that do it but to the power of habitual Sin which the good Law cannot conquer to that sin which dwells and rules in me i. e. in my bodily members And therefore to summ up all I find another Law in my members opposite to the Law of God in
this otherwise most offensive an acceptable service Is any thing that we can offer to him so pleasing as our obedience Is he more delighted when we follow our own counsel than when we follow his when we do our own than when we do his pleasure For all those Laws of the Gospel and instances of obedience which under this pretension we transgress are wayes of Gods own appointment they are a service of his own choosing a Religion that is most agreeable to his mind and fitted in all things according to his liking a rule that he has thought most absolute to direct our actions and most fit for us to walk by If then we would expâ—â—ss our concern for God our venerable esteem of his wiâ—dom our acquiescence in his choice our submission to his ordering our acknowledgement of his authority and our chearfull compliance with his pleasure let us do it by a religious observance of these Rules which are of his own prescribing Let us honour him in his own way by doing our duty and practising such things as he has made expressions of honour by making them instances of obedience For disobedience can serve no interest of God nothing that we can do being so effectual a reproach to all his Attributes as to disobey him Nor is the use of evil and unlawfull means in any wise a fitter expression of our care for Religion For what is there in Religion that can be honoured and advanced by disobedience Is there any thing in it so sacred as the Divine Laws and dare any man call that his care of them when he lays wast and plainly rejects them It is gross impudence for any man to pretend Piety in the breach of Duty and to cry up Religion whilst he is acting irreligiously he prides himself in the empty name when it is clear to all that he has lost the thing for as for Piety it self and true Religion by transgressing and trampling upon the Divine Laws he doth not further and defend but impiously and irreligiously destroys it It is not Religion then whatever men may vainly pretend that makes them run into the breach of Laws and contempt of Duty lest they should suffer in the profession of it For God and Religion owe them no thanks for such a course because he is not honoured nor it strengthned and preserved but ruined and destroyed by it But the true and real cause of such disobedience whereof God and Religion are only the colour and false pretence is plainly a great want of Religion and of the love of God and too great a love of the world and of mens own selves Men are hurried away by an unmortified love of pleasures honours and temporal interests and they have not Religion enough to restrain and over-rule them For these it is and not Religion which sufferings and persecuting times take from them and an ungovernable desire to preserve these which makes them so violent as that at such times no Laws of Religion can hold them When men set at nought and disparage Governours disobey Laws disturb the Publick Peace injure their Fellow-subjects and commit several other sinfull acts and irreligious violations of the Laws of Christ that they may keep off Persecution for the profession of the Christian Faith they shew plainly that they will follow Christ only in a thriving but not in a suffering Religion They will serve him no longer than he sets them uppermost and above their Brethren For rather than suffer any loss and fall into any dangers for their adherence to him they will leave him and his Laws to fend for themselves and flatly disobey him But when they do so it is shameless hypocrisie to pretend that all their transgressions and disobedience is still upon the Principle and from the Power of Religion since it is not Religion but a resolution to be uppermost not duty but ambition covetousness sensuality revenge or a nest of some other unmortified and reigning vices of like nature which makes them under pretence of a conscientious care for religious profession to destroy all religious practice This one would think is plain and evident to any man who can have the patience to consider it that True Religion can never be the cause of sin or make men irreligious and disobedient That must not for shame be called mens Religion but their Lust which makes them wicked and carries them on to transgress Gods Laws that are the chief and sovereign part of his Religion which who so keeps is a religious as whosoever breaks them is an ungodly and irreligious man This indeed is clear Doctrine and obvious to any common if it be withall a free and considerate understanding And it were scarce possible that any men should think otherwise had they not either by accicident hast or ill design taken up an odd notion of Religion altogether different from that which the Scriptures give and which all considerately religious men have of it For by Religion they mean only their adherence to the Doctrines and Opinions but not to the Laws and Precepts of the Gospel And when they talk of defending and maintaining of Religion they intend not a defence of Laws but of Notions not a maintenance of the practice of Christian Precepts but only of the profession of Christian Doctrines They are of the Religion which Christ reveals but not of that which he commands they will know and believe what he pleases but do what they please themselves They are only for a Religion of Orthodox Tenets but not of Vpright Practice and if thereby they can preserve men safe in thinking and professing well they fancy that God will not be offended with their use of any means though never so wicked and disobedient But this is a most gross mistake and a most dangerous Notion of Religion which is quite another thing than what this conceit doth represent it to be For First The prime part and matter of Religion is the practick part viz. the Laws and Precepts the Promises and Threatnings of the Gospel And agreeably thereto the prime business of all Religious men is an obedient practice and performance of them or a virtuous discharge of duty and a holy life This is that Religion whereby all of us must stand or fall and that great condition which as I have shewn we must for ever live or dye by When Christ comes to judgement sayes Saint Paul he will render to every man according to his deeds Rom. 2.6 And in that prospect of the last judgment which S t John tells us God vouchsafed him men were judged every one according to their works Rev. 20.13 This Religion of Obedience and a good Life is that which the Gospel is full of wherein every Chapter nay almost every verse of it instructs us and some way or other directs exhorts encourages and excites to And therefore as ever we would pass for Religious men in the Scripture Notion we must be carefull to live in
suffer under it he cannot be my disciple Luk. 14.27 This God peremptorily and indispensably exacts of us and there is all the reason in the world why he should For he will infinitely recompence in the next world either the want or loss of all those things which for his sake we are content to be without in this Heaven and eternal life will be an abundant and incomparably surpassing compensation all the wants and sufferings of this present time being as S t Paul sayes utterly unworthy to be compared with that Glory which shall then be revealed in us Rom. 8.18 Let no man therefore disobey Gods Laws for the love of the world for the supplying of his wants and the satisfaction of his appetites and yet for all that perswade himself that God will own him and connive at his disobedience For in doing so he plainly renounces God and sets the World above him he makes his Duty truckle to his Interest he slights obedience and submits to a temptation He does the work of sin for the interest which tempts to it and that will certainly bring upon him that death which God has established for the wages of it Thirdly A third pretence whereby men justifie to their own souls the indulged transgression of several Laws whilst they obey in others is because those transgressions wherein they allow themselves are only such as are sins of temper and complexion age or way of life Sometimes mens place and way of life is a continual temptation to some particular sin and if they may but have leave to indulge that they will abandon every other The Courtier takes himself obliged by the fashion of his place to lies and dissimulation ostentation and vanity to sinfull compliances and faithless engagements to promise all but to perform nothing The Merchant in pursute of his gain serves the end of his trade by fraud and dishonesty He accounts it a piece of his Art to over-reach to defraud customes to vend false wares and set exacting prices The Lawyer thinks it a part of his profession to encourage strife and foment difference the malice and revenge the wrath and bitterness the slanders and evil-speakings the strife and contentions which are other mens sins are his livelihood These sins being ever before them are alwayes a snare to them for they are continually importuned by them and it must be a toilsome pains and an uninterrupted watchfulness which can preserve them from being either won or wearied into the commission of them And since obedience in these instances is a thing which they can so very hardly spare they hope that God in mercy will not exact it but will graciously accept them upon their service in other particulars although here they continue to disobey him Other sins men are invited and importunately tempted to by their age and condition their particular temper and complexion Lust and rashness are the vices of youth as craft and covetousness are of the gray hairs Some sins are rooted in mens very natures for some are naturally inclined to be passionate and hasty some to be peevish and others to be malicious and revengefull The temper of their bodies hurries on some to lust and intemperance some to turbulency and fierceness and others to slavish fears and sinfull compliances Nay a sharp and long affliction will sometimes embitter even a good nature and make it habitually sowr and fretfull peevish and morose So that mens very natural temper their age and condition prove many times an uninterrupted sollicitation to some sin or other and they alwayes fall by being alwayes under the power of their temptation Now when men find that some sins have got thus near to them and have taken such deep root in their way of life nay in their very natures since they will not be at the pains to reform and amend they expect that God should be so gracious as to dispense with them As for all the instances of this kind he must abate them seeing they will not perform them his pardoning goodness must supply all the defects of their sloth For God and they must still be agreed and therefore because they cannot well abandon some of their darling lusts and bosom sins for his sake the compliance must fall on his side and he must desert and cancel all those severe and grating Laws to serve and pleasure them They will obey him most willingly in all other things only in these they beg that he would excuse them they will do any thing else for his sake which doth not contradict their beloved sin and never displease him but when they cannot otherwise fulfill and pleasure it Thus for instance the Covetous man will obey in keeping back from drunkenness and whoredom from ambition and profuseness and all other sins which are expensive But as for those other duties of suffering loss our selves rather than defrauding and over-reaching others of a contented mind and contempt of the world of alms and beneficence and all the chargeable expressions of an active love and an operative charity here he stands upon his points and chooses to dispute rather than to perform to article rather than to obey The peevish and angry man will readily keep the commands of Justice and Temperance he will neither spoil his neighbours Goods nor wrong his Bed nor pamper and defile his own body he will do any thing which either ministers to his reigning lust or which doth not contradict and make against it But then as for the commands of meekness and patience of long-suffering and forgiveness of speaking well and doing good to enemies of passing over provocations and peaceableness and all other instances of pardoning and forgetting injuries in these God must excuse him for his dear lust opposes them and he can not he will not serve him in the practice of them Some who are of a tractable and submissive of a soft and governable temper will observe readily all those duties which their constitution has made easie and which their natural genius enclines them to They will be constant performers of all the cheap because agreeable duties of submission to Governours and obedience to publick Constitutions of uniformity in worship of honour and observance of the Laws and establishments and of all things belonging to the Churches Vnity and outward peace But as for the severities of an inward and hearty Religion in mortification and self-denial in paring off all sinfull lusts and exorbitant desires in patience and taking up the Cross and in all other hard instances of duty and a holy life here they withdraw their service because they must contradict their natures and go against their ease and set themselves not to obey these Laws but to evacuate or evade them Whereas others who are of a temper more severe but withall of a querulous and restless a busie and ungovernable spirit will keep off from atheism and prophaneness from idolatry and witchcraft and other heinous impieties from drunkenness and
revellings from fornication and adultery from oppression and fraud and other alike gross and notorious instances of injustice and immorality For all these their strict temper can easily avoid they have no great temptation to them and are therefore able without much pains to abstain from them But then as for those other sins which agree with the bent and inclination of their busie and ungovernable humour they will still indulge themselves in the practice of them for all they are of an equal guilt although indeed of a more spiritual and refined nature For they will strive to weary laws to vilifie and contemn to undervalue and disparage Governours they will permit themselves to be overswayed by spite and malice by wrath and bitterness by envy and emulation by strife and sidings to be drawn aside into censoriousness and evil-speakings into the raising and spreading of uncharitable and envious yea false and slanderous reports they will be forward to magnifie themselves to publish their own praise and to boast of their own actions and attainments but withall to detract and lessen to shame and disparage others Thus will even these men who make the fairest appearance of abominating all impious and ungodly all immoral and debauched actions halt still in their obedience and think to please God not by a perfect and entire but a partial and a maimed service For their Conversion goes but half way not from sin to righteousness but from some sorts of sin to some others All the alteration that their Religion has wrought in them is not a forsaking of sin but an exchange of it a turn from what is more easily left to a more liberal practice of that which they find it hard to part with a remove from grosser and more scandalously fleshly sins to other more spiritual and refined but still as deadly and damnable transgressions And thus by all these instances it appears that when men have got some sins that are close and pleasing such as their temper and complexion their age or condition or way of life has endear'd to them so far as that even for Gods sake they will not part with them their recourse is presently to some more cheap and easie instances of obedience that they may attone for them And the same might be shewn in all other instances of a partial and a maimed service In all things they will obey God no further than their beloved sins will suffer them but as they yield to the Law in other things so must the Law yield to them in these for neither God nor their Sin shall rule alone but the service shall be shared between them and both shall enjoy a divided empire But this is a most damnably delusive and a desperately false pretence For whatsoever fond conceits men who Love and are resolved not to let go their sins may please themselves withall yet God when he comes to judge us will accept of nothing less than an entire obedience All his Laws are established under the pains of death and he will exact all that he has required whatever at that day be our concern in it For he comes not then as a corrupted party to judge for us to make his own Laws bend and bow to serve our Interests and to cancel and disanull all such among them as make against us No he comes as an upright and even Judge to execute all his Laws but not to destroy any he comes to inflict what his Gospel threatens and his sentence will then be what it sayes not what we can bear So that if we have wilfully disobeyed and have not repented whether in one instance or in many we must undergo the punishment of our disobedience For God is a friend to no Vice neither one nor other but he alwayes forbids and he will most severely punish every one And as for all these pretences whether that of our age or our way of life or of our very natural temper and inclination it self there will be no shelter or excuse in any of them to bear us out in any There is no protection to any sin from our Age for no young man may pursue lusts because they are youthful but is bound to fly and avoid them as those things which war against and would destroy his soul 2 Tim. 2.22 Gods Laws make no distinction of young or old but the same Duties are the Rule for both their practices and the same rewards or punishments will be returned indifferently to them both upon their obedience or transgressions There is no justifiable Plea for any sin from our way of life for a constant practice or trade of sin as S t John says can be no mans employment but his who is born of the Devil and must inherit under him 1 John 3.8 But the way of life whereunto God calls us is a way of piety and obedience He has given us his own Laws for the way which we are to walk in and in that alone it is that we can escape death and obtain salvation Nay so far is any thing in the world from sheltring us under the service of any one sin that even that which may have the highest pretence to it of all things else whatsoever viz. our very natural temper and inclination is no excuse to us if it makes us continue in any disobedience If any thing in the world could be a just defence for the practice of any sin surely this must For our Nature is not of our own chusing and therefore its effects ought least of all to be charged on us seeing they least of all proceed from us but are in great degrees determined to our hands before we have any power either to will or to refuse them But such is the purity and strictness of Christ's Gospel that it indispensably requires us to conquer sin not only where it makes no opposition but even where it has the greatest strength and the highest force of all For if our very Nature draw us on to disobey it enjoins us under all our hopes of Heaven not to submit to it but to strive against it so long till we vanquish and subdue it For if we would be judged to be Christ's Disciples at the last Day we must deny our selves Matth. 16.24 As we hope to live we must not perform and fulfil but kill and mortifie those deeds whereto we are hurried on by the temper of our Bodies Rom. 8.13 We must renounce and forsake all sin although never so dear and useful to us before Christ's Gospel will acquit or he will save us If a lust so dear to thee as thy right eye offend thee or cause thee to offend pluck it out says our Saviour and cast it from thee or if one so useful to thee as thy right hand cut it off likewise and cast it from thee and that for no less reason than this Because it is more profitable for thee that one of thy members should in this
with but not of others for that which gets an allowance for the breach of one would procure a favourable sentence for the like violation of all the rest That then which makes the difference of punishable and unpunishable in mens failings is not to be sought for in Christs Laws seeing the punishment of every one of them is the same but in their own actions For some sins shall be born with not for that they are against a Law whereto no penalty is annexed there being none such in all Christs Gospel but for that they are such imperfect actions as the punishing Law which they are against will not take hold of Every Law of Christ threatens death but these allowed offences are not of the number of those actions which are threatned by it For we must take notice that those works of ours whereon Christ's Laws lay restraint and whereto they as all other just Laws in the World threaten punishment are our voluntary and chosen actions They bind us up in all those performances which are placed in our own free power and come from the choice of our own will and they denounce woes to us if in them we go beyond those bounds which they have set us So that in all our free and chosen actions we must take care to do what the Law requires and to keep back from what it forbids and we are sure to suffer if we neglect it For it is among these actions of choice where the Law reigns on which it lays Commands and whereto it threatens punishment If we chuse and do what is commanded then have we a right to the promised reward and if we chuse to do what is forbidden then are we guilty and obnoxious to the punishment denounced But as for other actions which flow not from our own choice of which sort are all our pardonable and allow'd infirmities they fall not under the strict force of the Law either in the guidance of its Command or in the sting of its punishment so that at the last Day it will not be judged to have been either broken or kept by them That I may fully clear up this whereupon so much of that which I shall say under this Head depends I will show concerning it these two things 1. That all things whatsoever which are either good or evil and a fit matter of reward or punishment are made such by a Law 2. That all our actions are not governed by God's Laws so as to be strictly and directly either enjoined or prohibited punished or rewarded by them but only those among them which are voluntary and chosen 1. I say All things whatsoever which are either good or evil rewardable or punishable are made so by some Law For good and evil vertue and vice obedience and sin which are only so many different Names for the same thing have all relation to a Commandment Vertue and obedience is the performance as vice and sin is the transgression of it Where there is no Law saith the Apostle there is no transgression Rom. 4.15 And no man sins as saith another Apostle but he that transgresseth the Law for sin is the transgression of the Law 1 John 3.4 And as Law is the measure of sin and Duty so is it likewise of reward and punishment For God never afflicts and torments the Children of men out of the inclination of his Nature but only out of the necessity of Government He is the Ruler of the World and the Lord of men and therefore he must maintain his own Laws and punish the evil Doers But no man is ever punished without an offence and he must do evil before he suffer it He undergoes nothing but that which is his own choice for he chose rather to incurr the penalty than to perform the Commandment He feels no more than the Law denounced for God the Judg executes nothing but what the Law threatens he punishes according to it but not without it The Law doth always make a penalty due to an Offender before he either can or doth exact it Thus are all things which are either good or evil rewardable or punishable made such by a Law But then 2. As for our actions all of them are not governed by God's Law so as to be strictly either enjoined or prohibited punished or rewarded by them but only those among them which are voluntary and chosen And this being a a Point whereof I shall make so much use in all that follows I will spend the more time in clearing of it up as I hope beyond all question by showing the truth of it 1. From the clear reason of the thing it self 2. From the plain declarations of the Scripture concerning it 1. I say That only our voluntary and chosen actions are under the restraint of Laws and either enjoined or prohibited punished or rewarded by them is plain from the great and convincing reason of the thing it self For let us consider First The very nature of a Law and we shall find that in all those actions whereon it is imposed it supposes them who exert them to have a power of choice and a free liberty of making them either a piece of service to it or a transgression of it For all Law is a Bond or a Tye which lays restraint upon us and induces Obligation So that in all those actions whereupon the restraint is laid we are necessarily supposed to be free before it comes For it is an utter absurdity to bind any thing by a Law which is before necessitated by its very Nature Who would ever be so vain and foolish as to give a Law to a Stone that it should not speak or to a Tree that it should not walk or to the Fire that it should not chill and freeze him There can be no place for nor need of an Obligation where there is no choice and liberty For it is only where things have a power to act on both sides that there is room for a Law to oblige and tye them up to one And for this reason it is that among all that variety of Creatures which inhabit in this lower World men alone are capable of Laws because no Creature besides is endowed with freedom of will and liberty of choice which is to be bound up and restrained by them Nay even in men themselves those actions and tempers which are not subject to their own choice nor under the power of their own wills are no fit matter of a Law nor fall under the force of a Commandment For who can ever be so unreasonable and void of all sence as to command a man that he should not be born rich or poor base or noble that he should not be sick and weak hungry and thirsty sleepy or weary No since none of these instances is in his own choice or under the free disposal of his own will in none of them is he capable of an Obligation Seeing then that it is of the nature
of every Law to be given as a Bond and Obligation to us in such Actions to which otherwise our will is free and able either to chuse or refuse them it is plain that Laws are intended for a restraint upon us only in our voluntary and chosen actions For there are none else wherein we are free and therefore none besides wherein they should intend to bind us Secondly That only our voluntary and chosen actions are under the restraint and punishment of Laws is plain from that way which all Laws have of obliging men The Law is no Law further than it obligeth and all its obligation is only upon our chosen actions For all the force which it can possibly have upon us to bind us to the performance of any thing is only so far as it can make us will and chuse it And therefore as for all unchosen actions they are not within the reach of Law because they are not subject to the force of Obligation Now that this is the only way which all Laws have of obliging us to a thing viz. their engaging us to will and chuse it so that the force of obligation can fall upon no action which is unchosen is evident For that whereto they would oblige us is such actions as they injoyn or forbid and that power or faculty in us which they would oblige to it is our wills For our wills are the Disposers of our actions seeing we work at our own choice and do what we will and like our selves But now as for all the obligation which any thing can possibly lay upon our wills it is not by way of necessitating compulsive force but only of moving and exciting Arguments Because from the very constitution of our nature our will cannot be forced by any Bond but only moved of it self to chuse that which it is intended to be bound to so that in its nature it is capable of being obliged to nothing which is unchosen For the will of man is not a Subject capable of natural force or bodily violence a man may as soon hope to grasp a shadow or to lay violent hands upon an Angel as to engage it that way No it is no Body nor bodily faculty so that it is not subject to any physical force to be bound hand and foot by a Law as a Thief is by a Chain but the only possible way whereby to work upon it is to win it by Arguments It must determine its own choice since other things cannot determine it and therefore such things must be suggested and proposed to it as can perswade but nothing that can force and compel it For this indeed is all the hold that any Law can have upon the will of man iâ— naturally wills and chuses what is good and hates and refuses what is evil And this gives a Law some power over it in binding it to chuse what the Lawgiver has a mind it should if he first make it desirable He may win it in its own way viz. If he make obedience to become its interest and shew it plainly that it can be no gainer by disobedience but that it is by far the better for it to chuse what he enjoins than to refuse it For the wills own proper motion and natural way of working carries it on to desire and chuse that which appears to be good and to fly and refuse that which is known to be evil And therefore when the things proposed in the Law have a most desirable good annexed to the performance and a most hateful evil joined with the transgression of them this is an engagement and tye upon it indeed to chuse the Duty for the goodness sake and to avoid the sin for the evil that accompanies it It binds it so far as its own desires and inclinations can bind it it tyes it up as much as can be by its own hopes and fears it lays obedience in the way to that which it loves and longs after so that if it would come at that there is no other means but this must be the way to it And this is the way whereby all Laws oblige us For they are backed with such rewards and punishments as make it every mans advantage to do what they enjoin him The evil of disobedience is always infinitely greater than the evil of obeying so that if the wills of men chuse in their own way and will be wrought upon by their own motive they must determine themselves to that whereto the Laws would bind them And this securing of that which is commanded by making it far worse for any man to break than to fulfil it is absolutely necessary and naturally inseparable from all Laws For a frightful penalty is either expresly mentioned or if not it is always implyed If the punishment is set down then they who transgress must suffer what the Law threatens but if it be not they must undergo what the Legislator pleases So that punishment can never be pulled away from Law but if there be a Command given which makes no penalty due nor creates a right of inflicting any it has only the name of a Law or Commandment but that is all for it contradicts its nature A request or entreaty it may be a counsel or advice but a Law or Command it never is And seeing all obligation to action is only such a motive and convincing reason to our wills as makes them chuse to act rather than to omit what the Law intends to oblige them to 't is plain that where there is no room for choice there is none likewise for Law and Obligation For we cannot be moved to chuse those actions which are unchosen and therefore we cannot be obliged to them But all obligation being only a convincing motive to our choice we cannot be capable of being obliged by Laws in any other than our voluntary and chosen actions And thus it appears both from the nature of Law and from the force of obligation both which are antecedently necessary to make up the nature of sin or obedience that all the restraint which is laid and all the punishments which are inflicted by Laws are only upon our voluntary and chosen actions And this will yet further appear if we consider some other things which are consequent to sin or obedience and ensue upon the working or commission of them as are Thirdly Rewards and punishments commendation and reproof Every Lawgiver commends and rewards those who keep his Laws and punishes and reproves all such as break and transgress them But now all this can have place only upon their voluntary actions which were at their own choice and in their own liberty either to have exerted or omitted For no actions can be imputed to a man either for him or against him further than they depended on him Because there is no thanks at all due to him for doing that which he could not avoid nor any charge at all capable to be brought against
failings which are our unavoidable ones because we have no power to avoid where we have no liberty to will and chuse and since they are such as we cannot help they are such likewise as God pities and such as the Gospel doth not punish but graciously pardon and dispense with CHAP. III. Of the nature and danger of voluntary sins The CONTENTS The nature of a wilfill and a deliberate sin Why it is called a despising of Gods Law a sinning presumptuously and with a high hand Wilfull sins of two sorts viz. some chosen directly and expresly others only indirectly and by interpretation Of direct and interpretative volition Things chosen in the latter way justly imputable Of the voluntary causes of inconsideration in sins of commission which are drunkenness an indulged passion or a habit of sin Of the power of these to make men inconsiderate The cause of inconsideration in sins of omission viz. Neglect of the means of acquiring virtue Of the voluntariness of all these causes Of the voluntariness of drunkenness when it may be looked upon as involuntary Of the voluntariness of an indulged passion mens great errour lies in indulging the beginnings of sin Of the voluntariness and crying guilt of a habit of sin Of the voluntariness of mens neglect of the means of virtue No wilfull sin is consistent with a state of Grace but all are damning A distinct account of the effect of wilfull sins viz. when they only destroy our acceptance for the present and when moreover they greatly wound and endanger that habitual virtue which is the foundation of it and which should again restore us to it for the time to come These last are particularly taken notice of in the accounts of God HAving thus clearly shown in the General that all the dispensation and allowance for our consistent slips under the Gospel comes not from the nakedness and want of penalty in any of Christs Laws but only from the imperfection and involuntariness of our own actions I will descend now to consider particularly what those consistent slips and transgressions are In the management whereof I shall shew these two things First That our voluntary and chosen sins and transgressions of any of Christs Laws are not consistent with a state of Grace and Salvation but are deadly and damnable Secondly That our involuntary and unchosen slips are consistent and such as Christs Gospel doth not eternally threaten but graciously bear and dispense with First I say No voluntary sin or chosen transgression of any of Christs Laws is consistent with a state of Grace and Salvation but is deadly and damning To make this out it will be very requisite to show 1. What sinfull actions are voluntary and chosen And 2. That none of them is consistent with a state of Grace but deadly and damning 1. What sins and transgressions are voluntary and chosen Then we commit a wilfull chosen sin when we see and consider of the sinfulness of any action which we are tempted to and after that choose to act and perform it Every chosen sin is a sin against Knowledge for the will is a blind faculty and can choose nothing till our mind proposeth it All choice is an act of Reason and Vnderstanding a preferring one thing before another and we must view and consider both before we can prefer either That which suggests the sinfulness of any action to us and sets the evil of it before us when we are about to choose it is our Conscience For God has placed this Monitor of every mans Duty in every mans breast to tell him upon every occasion what he requires from him And till such time as men have debauched their understandings into a gross mistake of their Duty so as to call Evil Good and Good Evil and God in his just anger has given them up to a reprobate mind or a mind void of judgment their own consciences will keep them in mind of Gods Laws and not suffer them to transgress without reproof So that every wilfull sin is a sin against a mans own mind or conscience Nay further so long as mens hearts are soft and their consciences are tender and before such time as they are wholly enslaved to their appetites and quite hardened in sin their consciences especially in some great and frightfull instances will not only suggest and represent their Duty but argue also and debate against their lusts for the practice and performance of it And then men are not won at the first offer nor consent to fulfill the sin upon the first assault of the temptation but are drawn in after a long deliberation and debate and dispute the matter with themselves before they submit to it For when mens consciences do not nakedly suggest but moreover plead the cause and urge the observance of their Duty there are arguments on both sides to render the choice at first somewhat doubtfull The Law of God promises an infinite reward to the action of obedience and threatens an endless punishment if we disobey both which are future and to be expected in the next world And the temptation inducing us to sin presents us with a fair shew of sensitiv pleasure profit or honour if we practise and threatens us with all the contrary evils if we neglect it both which it sets before us as things present to be felt and enjoy'd by us even now whilst we are here in this world Now these are great motives on both sides each of them bidding fair for our consent Our minds or consciences suggest the first and our fleshly appetites and carnal reason represent the latter and for a good while these two advocates solicite the cause on both sides and distract and divide our wills between them So that when at last the temptation doth overcome and the Law of Lust in the members prevails over the Law of God in the mind yet is that after a strife and a war after a tedious toyle and much contention And these wilfull sins because we underwent a great conflict in our own minds about them and past through a long deliberation in an alternate succession of desires and aversations hopes and fears imperfect choices and refusals e're the consent of our wills was gain'd over to the commission of them are call'd deliberate sins Every wilfull chosen sin then is a sin against knowledge and against conscience when our own heart rebukes and checks us at the time of sinning telling us that God hath forbidden that which we are about to do notwithstanding which we presume to do it And if it happen to be in an instance that is greatly criminal and frightfull unto Conscience which therefore puts us upon demurs and creates dispute and arguing then is it not only a known but a deliberate sin also Nay where we have time and there is a sufficient space to consider in between the opportunity and the action if we know that the action is sinfull and are not in
our own making seeing it was at our own choice whether ever we should have come under it although when once we are subject to it it be no longer at our liberty whether or no we shall be acted by it And since all these sins which are thus indeliberate in themselves were yet so freely chosen and deliberated in their causes they are all imputable to us and fit to be charged upon us They were chosen indirectly and interpretatively in the choice of that cause which made them all afterwards to be almost if not wholly necessary For either we did deliberate or which is all one we had time enough to have deliberated as we ought before we chose our own necessity So that these sinfull actions which are unchosen and unconsidered in themselves are yet imputable to us and fit to be charged upon us as our own because we chose them by an indirect and interpretative volition As therefore there are some sins which are expresly will'd in the particulars by an express choice and deliberation so likewise are there several others which are expresly and deliberately willed only in their cause but in their own particulars are not chosen otherwise than indirectly and by interpretation And both these together take up the compass of our wilfull and chosen sins For either we expresly think and deliberately consider of the sinfull action when we commit it or we expresly and deliberately thought upon that cause when we chose it which makes us now to sin without thinking and deliberation And by all this it appears now at length how considerateness and deliberation is implyed in every wilfull sin For the sinfull action is seen and considered or it is our faults if it be not since we had both time and powers for such consideration either in it self or in its cause and being it is thus a matter of our consideration it is likewise a matter of our choice and a wilfull action And thus having shewn what sinfull actions are voluntary and chosen I proceed now to shew 2. That none of them is consistent with a state of grace but deadly and damning As for our wilfull sins they are all as we have seen of a most heinous nature being indeed nothing less than a contempt of Gods Authority a sinning presumptuously and with a high hand They are a plain disavowing of Gods will and renouncing of his Soveraignty they are acted in a way of defiance and are not the unavoidable slips of an honest and well-meaning servant but the high affronts of an open rebel So that no favourite or child of God can ever be guilty of them or he must cease to continue such if he be Because they interrupt all favour and friendship and put God and him into a state of hostility and defiance seeing they are nothing less than a renouncing of his Authority at least in that instance and a casting off his Law And this lawlesness or rejecting of the Law is that very word whereby S t John describes sin For sin sayes he is the transgression as we render it but more fully it should be the renouncing of the Law 1 Joh. 3.4 In which sense of sin for a wilfull and rebellious one he tells us that whosoever abides in God sins not vers 6 being indeed no longer a child of God if he do but of the Devil vers 8. They deprive us of all the benefits of Christs sacrifice so long as we continue in them and of all the blessings purchased for us by his death This was their effect under the Law of Moses and it is so much rather under the Gospel of Christ. For the sentence which that Law pronounced upon all presumptuous and wilfull offenders was death without mercy The soul that doth ought presumptuously the same by his contemptuous sin reproacheth the Lord and that soul shall be cut off from among his people Numb 15.30 If ever it could be proved against him by that dispensation there was no hope for him For he that despised or contemptuously transgressed Moses's Law died without mercy saith the Apostle being convicted under the testimony of two or three witnesses Hebr. 10.28 For even those very sins for which under the Law God had appointed an attonement were no longer to be attoned for than they were committed involuntarily and through ignorance In the fourth Chapter of Leviticus we are told that as for those sins which are committed against any of those Commandments which concerned things not to be done if they were acted involuntarily and unwillingly they should be allowed the benefit of an expiation and the sacrifices for that purpose are there prescribed But if they were acted wilfully and advisedly then had they no right to the expiation there promised nor would any sacrifices be accepted for them but that punishment must unavoidably be undergone which in the Law was threatned to them For to name no more this we are plainly told of two instances viz. the contemptuous making of perfume and eating of blood after both had been forbidden Whosoever shall contemptuously make any perfume like to that which was commanded to be made vers 35. to smell thereto that soul shall not be expiated by sacrifice but cut off from his people Exod. 30.38 And whatsoever man there be that eateth any manner of blood viz. willingly and wilfully the ignorant and involuntary transgressions of this and the like prohibitions being attoneable Lev. 4. I will even set my face against that soul and will cut him off from among his people Levit. 17.10 Thus severe was the sentence and thus unavoidable was the penalty of all wilfull sins under the Law of Moses And by how much the ministration of Christ is nobler than the ministration of Moses was by so much shall the punishment of all wilfull and contemptuous sins against the Law of Christ be more severe than it was for those against the Law of Moses And this is the Apostles own argument For if that word of the Law threatning death which was spoken unto Moses on Mount Sinai by the mediation only of Angels was stedfast and every transgression of it received the just recompence of that death which it threatned such persons dying without mercy How shall we Christians hope to escape it if we wilfully neglect and contemn those Laws which are published to us by so great a means of salvation as the Gospel is which was at first spoken to us not by Angels but by the Lord Jesus Christ himself who is far above all Angels being indeed the Son of God himself Hebr. 2.2 3. Surely as the Apostle argues in another place if he who despised even Moses's Law died without mercy for that contempt we ought to think with our selves not of how much less but of how much sorer punishment he shall be judged worthy who by wilfull sinning and despising of his Laws doth in a manner tread under foot not Moses but the Son of God
make use of bread and wine which were those things that he used The blood of Christ is not offered if there be no wine in the cup to represent it and how can we ever hope to drink wine with him in his Fathers Kingdom if we drink it not at his Table here on Earth So that in the good Fathers judgment the Duty was express the Law binding and the transgression dangerous But yet as for those innocent and well-meaning souls who had no opportunity to be told of it but were bred up in a contrary way under the authority of a tradition that opposed it and therefore in the simplicity of their hearts were ignorant of it They says he even whilst they do transgress shall go unpunished Their simplicity and ignorance shall excuse them whilst our knowledg will certainly condemn us they shall be pardoned because they could not know it but we shall be punished because when we might have known and kept it if we would we neglected and despised it In the mean time herein is Gods great mercy shown to us and for this should we return most hearty thanks to him that even now when he plainly instructs us in that which under pain of his displeasure we are to do hereafter he at the same time pardons us for all that which through simplicity and honest ignorance we have already done And as this innocent unwill'd ignorance of the Law it self excuses all those transgressions which we incur by reason of it so doth 2. The second sort of ignorance viz. the ignorance of the thing it self which the Law injoyns or forbids when we know not that our present action is included in it or meant by it Gods Laws as all others run in general terms and never go to reckon up all particular actions which are with them or against them but leave the judging and discerning of that to our own selves He tells us that theft and revenge are sinfull but leaves us to inform our selves what actions are thievish and revengefull He teaches us that Covetousness is forbidden but he puts us to see of the action before us that it be covetous and the same he doth in every other Law For that which he expresly mentions is the general name of the action which he forbids but as for the particular application he leaves that to our own selves Now here is the wide place for the ignorance and errours of all sorts of men For what Arrian sayes of happiness and misery is equally true of sin and duty in the application of the acknowledged notion or law to particular things or actions is the cause of all our evils here the great scene of ignorance in morals the field of doubting and dispute lies The great controversies which men have either in their own thoughts or with Gods ministers is not so much whether evil-speaking back-biting censoriousness unpeaceableness drunkenness sensuality or any such prohibited vice be a sin For as to that the Law is express the very word is mentioned in it and he that reads or hears the Law if he attend to what he reads or hears cannot but observe and understand it But the great doubt is whether this or that particular action which they are about to commit be indeed a censorious an unpeaceable a sensual or a drunken action And the Reasons of this are several For 1. In some actions although we know the general Law yet we know not whether the particular action be comprehended under it because what is forbidden in the Law differs from what is innocent not in kind but only in degree For a great part of our appetites and actions are neither determined to good nor ill in their whole nature but only as they are in certain measures The use of meats and drinks within due bounds is harmless but beyond that 't is intemperance the desire and search of money in a moderate degree is lawfull but above that 't is Covetousness the modest pursute of honour and promotion is innocent but when it exceeds it is ambition to have just thoughts of a mans self is allowable but to be puffed up with over-high conceits is pride and so it is in several other instances A great many passions and actions are not alwayes sinful but so far only as they are deficient or exceed Which holding true of several virtues and vices made Aristotle lay it down as a part of the nature of virtue in general that it is something consisting in mediocrity and agreeably that vice is something consisting in defectiveness or excess Now the actions which are prohibited by several Laws not coming under the compass of the Laws in their whole natures but only when they are arrived to certain measures and degrees herein after we have known the general Law lies the difficulty and unresolvedness whether or no the present action falls under it For it is a very hard thing and it may be impossible to any humane understanding to fix the exact bounds and utmost limits of virtue and vice to draw a line precisely between them and tell to a tittle how many degrees are innocent and the just place where the excess begins Here the Wise and Learned themselves are at a loss and much more the rude and ignorant so that in Laws of this nature they may many times mistake their sin for their liberty and allowance and go beyond the innocent degree when they do not know it 2. In other actions although we do know the general Law yet many times we are ignorant of the present actions being comprehended under it because the Law is not absolute and unlimited but admits of several exceptions whereof we may mistake the present action to be one The great and general Laws of Christ as of any other Legislator have several cases which are not included in the general name of the duty injoyned or of the sin prohibited in the Law but are exempt from it What Duty is injoyned in more universal words than that of Peace but yet in several cases we not only may but out of Duty must nourish contention For we are bid to contend earnestly for the Faith which was once delivered to the Saints Jud. vers 3. We must be concerned for God and Religion when others concern themselves against them We are not tamely and unaffectedly to see Gods Laws cancelled or our countries peace disturbed but must strive and contend with as much wise zeal and active courage and with infinitely more honour and peace of mind to maintain and defend than ill men do to oppose and destroy them Again what Law is delivered in fuller and plainer terms than that of forgiving injuries but yet there are several cases wherein we may justly seek amends for them For we may bring a malefactor to condign punishment or an injurious man to restitution and the like is observable of other Laws Now those actions which come under the general name of the sin
prohibited not being forbidden universally but some being excepted here again is room for ignorance and mistake about the particular action after we have known the general Duty For we may take that to be a case excepted which is indeed a case prohibited and venture upon an action as an exempted liberty which in truth and reality is a forbidden sin 3. In other actions although we know the general Law yet many times we are in ignorance about the particular action because there are several actions which are not directly forbidden by any Law but are alwayes innocent and indifferent unless when some Law takes hold of them indirectly The action is usually allowed except when it is committed in such a manner as that the transgression of some Law accompanies it There is no Law against it self but only against some thing that is annexed to it For God has not given a particular Law for every sort of actions but has left us in several to govern our selves by other motives and inducements of pleasure honour or interest and not by virtue of a Commandment But although these unrestrained actions are no matter of a particular Law which expresly names them and directly binds us up to one side either in chusing or refusing the whole kind of them yet in our use and exercise of them they may at one time or other fall under the power of several For to illustrate this by an instance there is no Law which directly and expresly either enjoyns or forbids us to play at cards or other pastime but yet several Laws commanding or forbidding other things may be transgressed in our use of them For even in a game at cards we may incur the sin of Covetousness by our desire of money the sin of Injustice by our endeavours to cheat and cozen and the sins of passionateness impatience and unpeaceableness by our repining at our ill luck our quarrelling and contending and the like might be shewn in other cases Now seeing several actions which in themselves are thus innocent and under no Law may yet at one time or other by reason of some thing concomitant and annexed to them be indirectly a transgression of a Law here is still a further reason why when we know the general Law we yet are ignorant of our present actions being forbid by it For the Law doth not look upon it directly but takes a compass before it comprehends it They lie not in the same line and so one may be particularly seen and considered of and much more known and understood in the general without seeing of the other 4. In other actions although we know the General Law which we sin against yet we do not believe that our present action is included in it or forbid by it because another Law happens to clash with it in some instance and seems to injoyn and justifie what we do although that be transgressed by it For it often happens in a Christians Life that two Laws interfere and command differently in the same instance Our Duty is at variance with it self so that when we pursue obedience in one particular another is disobeyed by us How obvious and usual is it for him who would avoid the passion and impatience of discourse to fall into a fault of the opposite extream by fullenness and unsociable moroseness What is more common than for men to be over censorious and troublesomly rigid in conversation who aim at nothing but to be severely virtuous and piously austere It is an obvious errour for any whilst they intend a charitable feasting to run into some small intemperance for inoffensiveness and kind compliance to justle out the due severities of reproof for severity to exceed into ungentleness for affection to degenerate into fondness and which is the great instance of errour upon this score for our zeal for God to disturb the peace and transgress the bounds of charity towards men I do not mean such zeal as transgresses notorious and weighty Laws for disputable nay even for clear and evident Doctrines and Opinions A zeal that will stick at nothing but bursts through all Gods Commands to propagate an Article and ventures upon murders tumults lying slander wars blood-shed and other instances of a most notorious and damning disobedience in practice to promote an Orthodox belief For these are such instances of offence as no honest heart can overlook but if a man has not debauched his Conscience they must needs appear to be of a frightful guilt and of a damning nature Any virtuous temper must abhor and every good conscience utterly condemn them So that no man of an honâ—st and obedient heart can ever hope to serve God by them or think any pretence whatsoever of force enough to justifie the practice of them But then there are other sins which are of a smaller guilt or of a more alterable nature such as either are not greatly or not alwayes evil but only when they happen to have ill effects or are in an exorbitant degree and these an eager zeal doth many times drive men to and they think all is obedience even when they proceed so far in them as to disobey Mens 〈◊〉 for those Opinions which they account Religious 〈…〉 them daily into estrangedness of mind and 〈◊〉 of behaviour into passione disputes and 〈◊〉 reflections into animosities and disquietness and a great breach of mutual charity and love And all these though really they are breaches of their Duty are looked upon as innocent nay praise-worthy they judge them to come from an honest Principle and therefore doubt not but that they will end in an happy reward The duty of pious zeal is the spring although it contract much of humane passion in the passage and that they hope will be acceptable to God which goes under cover of a Commandment and comes to serve him And this was the case in that hot and sinfull contest which happened betwixt those two great lights of Virtue and Learning Epiphanius and Chrysostome For it was a zeal for publick good and against such things as were likely in their opinion to corrupt the Faith or disturb the Peace or pervert the practice of the Church which transported them into that warm contention that ended in an uncharitable breach and passionate imprecation when Epiphanius wrote to Chrysostome That he hoped he would lose his See and never dye a Bishop and Chrysostome replyed to him that he hoped he would come to an untimely end and never return safe into his own city And a real transgression of one Law being thus through the clashing and enterfering of two Laws of Christ in fair appearance an act of laudable and necessary obedience to another Here again is a further reason why when we know the Law which we sin against we yet think that our action is not sinfull because we take it to be justified nay what is more commanded by another 5. In other actions although we know the General Law
fair and likely and withal it is most secure It is sure to preserve obedience because it admits of nothing that interferes with it and it is also very likely to preserve truth for it is most certain that no Doctrine can ever come from God which encourages or justifies any wickedness so that not only an obedient heart but even a free and impartial reason must quit the Principle if it appear to draw after it an evil consequence To settle Principles and Rules of Judgment then especially for simple and unlearned minds the first enquiry ought to be not what is true or false but what is good or evil For since the knowledge of this is more plain and obvious easie and accessible to all but to them most especially 't is evident that as all others so particularly they if they would secure even Truth as well as Duty must begin with Laws as their Principle and from thence make their inference to Doctrines and Opinions To avoid sinfull errours and disobedient prejudices they must use Laws and Duties as the measure whereby to judge of notions not notions and opinions as the standard whereby to measure and interpret plain Laws CHAP. VII A sixth cause of ignorance of the present actions being comprehended under a known Law And of the excusableness of our transgressions upon both these sorts of ignorance The CONTENTS All the forementioned causes of ignorance of our present actions being included in the known Law are such to knowing and learned men Besides them the difficult and obscure nature of several sins is a general cause of it to the rude and unlearned Sins upon this ignorance as well as upon ignorance of the Law it self unchosen and so consistent with a state of Grace and Salvation Where there is something of choice in it they extenuate the sin and abate the punishment though they do not wholly excuse it The excuse for these actions is only whilst we are plainly ignorant they are damning when we are enlightned so far as to doubt of them but pardonable whil'st we are in darkness or errour This excuse is for both the modes of ignorance 1. Forgetfulness 2. Errour All this pardon hitherto discoursed of upon the account of ignorance of either sort is no further than the ignorance it self is involuntary The willfulness of some mens ignorance The several steps in voluntary ignorance The causes of it Two things required to render ignorance involuntary 1. An honest heart 2. An honest industry What measures necessary to the acceptance of this industry Gods candour in judging of its sufficiency This discourse upon this first cause of an innocent involuntariness viz. ignorance summed up THus upon all these accounts which are mention'd in the two former Chapters we see it will often happen that although in the general we do know the Law which forbids any sin yet shall we still be ignorant of our present actions being comprehended under it For the small and barely gradual difference between Good and Evil the limitedness of most Laws the indirect obligations which pass upon some indifferent actions the clashing and enterfering of some of Christs Laws sometimes with other commands and sometimes with our own prejudices and prepossessed Opinions are also many reasons why after we know the General Laws that forbid them we shall still venture upon several particular actions through ignorance of their being forbidden And yet besides all these which are causes of such ignorance to the most knowing men and to those who have great parts and learning there will be moreover one great and general cause of it to the more rude and ignorant and that is the difficult and to them obscure nature of the sin it self which in the Law is expresly and by name forbidden For how many of them who hear it may be of the Law against censoriousness lasciviousness uncleanness carnality sensuality refusing of the Cross and other things do not well understand what those words mean Alas the greater number of men in the world have but very rude and imperfect notices of things they see them only in a huddle and by halves And as it is in their knowledge of other things so is it in their understanding of Sin and Duty likewise For their sight and sence of them is dark and defective and albeit they have some general and confused apprehensions of them yet is not their knowledge so clear and distinct as that they are thereby enabled to judge of every particular action whether it falls under any of them or no. And since they have but such half and imperfect notions of several sins it is no wonder although they know the General Law if they venture upon several actions which really come under it not knowing that they do And thus we see that besides the ignorance of the Law it self there is also another sort of ignorance which will be a cause of sin to several men of all sorts and that is their ignorance of their present actions being comprehended under the letter of the Law and meant by it But now as for those transgressions which men of an honest heart are guilty of through this ignorance of their own actions being included in the Law when they do know the Law that includes it They do not put them out of a state of Grace but consist with it For this Ignorance is mens unhappiness rather than their fault it is not an Ignorance of their own choosing seeing their will and choice is against it For they desire to be free from it and strive to prevent it and endeavour according to those abilities and opportunities which God has afforded them to get right and true apprehensions of all Gods will that they may perform and of every evil action that they may avoid it But it is the difficulty and intricateness of things which renders them ignorant and that is not of their making For the sins forbidden are not easily distinguished from the Liberty allow'd or from the Duty commanded in some cases and therefore it is that they mistake them and are ignorant of the sinfulness of their present action when their knowledge of it should enable them if they would to avoid it And since it has so little of their own will and the men even when by reason of their ignorance they transgress are industriously desirous to know their Duty and prepared to practise it so far as they understand it it shall have nothing of Gods anger It is altogether a pardonable slip and a pitiable instance and that is enough to recommend it to Gods mercy For he is never rigorous and severe in a case that is prepared for pity and pardon so that he will not punish but graciously forgive it And if it were otherwise who could possibly be saved For this ignorance of their present actions being comprehended in the words of the known Law is such as the wisest men have been subject to and they among the rest who were
be ignorant of their Duty and that is the reason why they do not understand it For either they shut their eyes and will not see it or they are idle and careless and will not enquire after it or they bend their wits at the instigation of their lusts to dispute against it that after they have darkened and confounded it in their own thoughts they may mince or evacuate mistake or disbelieve it So that if at last they do not know it it is because they do not desire the knowledge of it or will be at no pains for it or take pains against it to supplant and disguise it And these are they who are not ignorant against their wills but as S t Peter says willingly ignorant 2 Pet. 3.5 And as for such ignorance as this it will by no means excuse us before God but if we will be ignorant God's will and pleasure is that we shall suffer for our sinful ignorance and for all those sins that we commit under it which we might and should have seen and avoided For all those Laws which are ignorantly transgressed by us threaten death and the ignorance being of our own chusing takes nothing off so that death and damnation rest upon us But that ignorance which can be pleaded to excuse us before God must be an ignorance that is involuntary an ignorance which in the constitution of our nature is imposed upon us and is not chosen by us And a right understanding of this difference in ignorance being of so great moment I shall before I dismiss this Point observe when our ignorance is voluntary and when it is involuntary First I will show when our ignorance is â—â—voluntary As for the knowledge of our Duty like as of all other things it doth not spring up in our souls as an Herb doth out of the ground nor drop into us as the rain doth from a Cloud but it must be sought for and endeavoured after and unless we use the means of acquiring it we must be content to live without it The means of obtaining the knowledge of God's Laws and of the innocence and sinfulness of our own actions are the reading of his Word the attendance upon his Ministers the thinking or considering upon what we read or hear in our own minds and praying to God to make all these means effectual for our information and if ever we expect to know God's will we must put these in practice But now whether we will make use of these or no is plainly in our own choice and at our own pleasure For if we will we may exercise and if we will we may as well neglect them And when both these are before us if we refuse to make use of the means of understanding and wilfully neglect the methods of attaining to the knowledg of sin and Duty good and evil if we sit down without the knowledg of Gods Law it is because we would our selves and our ignorance is a voluntary and a wilful ignorance And this is the first way of our ignorance's becoming voluntary viz. when it is so upon a voluntary neglect of those means which are necessary to attain knowledge And this in the Schools is called a supine slothful careless ignorance And if it be of such things as lay near in our way and might have been known without much pains or much seeking it is called gross or affected ignorance But besides this sort of wilful ignorance of our Duty through a wilful neglect of those means which are necessary to the knowledge of it there is another which is higher and more enormous and that is Secondly When we do not only sleight the means of knowing God's Law but moreover use those of confounding or mistaking it For our knowledge of things is then made perfect and useful when it is clear and distinct and our assent and belief of things is then gained when their evidence is represented and duly considered of But now as for the employing of mens thoughts in clearing or confounding believing or disbelieving of the Laws of God it is perfectly in their own power whether to use it on one side or on the other And commonly it is their pleasure to use it on the worse For they will consider only of the difficulties and intricacies of Gods Laws which may darken and disturb confound and perplex their thoughts about them and attend only to such exceptions as they can make against them which may unsettle their minds either about the meaning or the truth of them so that after all their reading and considering of them they shall not understand but err and mistake them As it happens to all those who had disputed themselves out of the knowledge of their Duty until as Isaiah says they call evil good and good evil put darkness for light and light for darkness Isai. 5.20 And when men are ignorant of their Duty because they chose thus to endeavour it and take pains for it this ignorance is voluntary and wilful with a witness These two reasons of mens being ignorant of their Duty viz. their neglect of such means as are necessary to the knowledge of it or their use of the contrary means of confounding or discrediting it are the causes of their wilful ignorance And that which makes them guilty of both these is either the gross idleness or the profligate wickedness of their hearts which are wholly inslaved to some beloved lust or sin They are wretchedly idle and therefore they will not learn their Duty because that is painful they are greatly wicked and so care not for the knowledge of the Law because that would disquiet them Men love darkness says our Saviour better than light because their works are evil they hate the light and will not come to it lest their deeds should be reproved by it John 3.19 20. Because they hate and fear the Law they neglect the means of knowing it nay they pick quarrels with it and endeavour all they can to perplex or darken to evacuate or disparage it So that our ignorance is then wilful when we are therefore ignorant because we neglect the means of knowledge or industriously endeavour to be mistaken And that because we are either too idle to learn or too wicked to care for the knowledge of our Duty The idleness and wickedness of our hearts is the first spring and the neglect of means and industrious perverting of the truth are the great productive instruments of our wilful ignorance Which is therefore called voluntary and wilful because the Principle and the Instruments the motive and the means to it are both under the power and choice of our own wills And these things making our ignorance wilful viz. a wilful neglect of the means of knowledge or a wilful perverting of those Laws which we are to know we shall easily discern Secondly What ignorance is unwilled and involuntary namely that which implies a freedome from and an absence
any of these Failings will deprive us of that which Christs Gospel will construe to be a perfect and intire obedience they do not destroy a state of Grace and Salvation but consist with it And all these allowances the Gospel makes to our sinful actions besides some others to our thoughts and desires which are sin only in an imperfect birth and not yet arrived to the guilt of a compleat transgression as I shall have a fit occasion to show in answering of those groundless doubts and scruples that perplex good and honest but weak minds which shall hereafter follow But the great Condition of the Gospel being nothing less than an intire Obedience and the generality of men being so maimed and defective in obeying what shall become of them For who is there but at one time or other has willingly transgressed some of those Laws which I have described and therefore if the Curse take place upon every wilful offence then wo be to all Mankind And so indeed it would if Christ had not taken pity on us and come into the World for this very purpose that he might succour and relieve us But the very end of his coming amongst us was to find out a remedy for all these evils He came to rescue us from the Curse of the Law and to procure for us new Terms and put us into a capacity of Pardon So that whatsoever his Laws threaten or whatsoever we have committed yet are we still secure from suffering if we make use of his remedy i. e. if we repent of it as shall appear in the next Book BOOK V. Of those Remedies which restore men to a state of Salvation when they are fallen from it and of some needless Scruples concerning it CHAP. I. Of Repentance which restores us to Gods Favour after Sins of all sorts The CONTENTS The Rigour of the Mosaick Law is taken away by Christ who came to preach Pardon upon Repentance where that denounced an unavoidable punishment Repentance is the great Remedy God heartily desires mens Repentance and promises Forgiveness to it This has been preached in all times The Remedy for our unknown sins They are uncapable of a particular Prayer and Repentance but are forgiven upon a general one The Remedy of wilful sins is a particular Repentance That is available for their pardon for wilful sins after Baptism as well as before it Two places which seem to deny all pardon to wilful sins after Baptism cleared the wilful sin Heb 10.26 is not any wilful transgression of any particular Law of Christ which have all been pardoneâ— but a wilful Apostasie from his whole Religion which is proved from sundry things there spoken of it The falling away mentioned Heb. 6 is likewise Apostasie from Christianity which is shewn from those things which they are said to fall from and those others which are said to be implied in their falling An account of the desperate state of these men The state of some habitual Sinners desperate and irreclaimable by reason their period of Grace is over but this is no discouragement to any mans Repentance HAving hitherto insisted largely upon that Integrity of Obedience which the Gospel indispensably requires of every man to his Salvation and upon those Defects which either destroy or consist with it I proceed now to inquire what Remedies it directs us to for recovering a state of Grace and Favour when at any time we happen to fall from it Among the Jews according to the strictness of the Law of Moses the punishment took place upon the first wilful breach and therefore in those Laws which were established under pain of death when it appeared by sufficient evidence that any man was guilty of the wilful transgression of them the Sentence was unavoidable and the man dyed without mercy He that despised Moses's Law saith the Apostle if it were in an instance whereto the Law threatned death dyed without mercy being convicted under the hands of two or three witnesses Heb. 10.28 A man that had committed Murder or Adultery or any other crime whereof Death was the established Penalty was to dye without all remedy for no Sacrifice would be accepted for him nor would the Law admit of any favour or dispensation And therefore David when he made his Penitential Psalm for murdering Vriah and adulterating his Wife expresses the Legal unpardonableness of his offence in these words thou desirest not sacrifice else would I give it but thou delightest not in burnt-offerings for such sins as I stand guilty of No my crimes are of that nature for which any man less than a King should dye and such wherefore no Sacrifice will be accepted Psal. 51.16 This was the rigour of that Political Law which God imposed upon the Jews by Moses those punishments that were threatned by it which were temporal and of this World were irreversible when once they were incurred But when Christ came into the World his business was to give Laws of a much more gracious nature which would admit of a Salvo for every sin and offer men a remedy which if they did but use although they had transgressed they should not suffer punishment This gracious Covenant whose Promises and Rewards are future and to be enjoy'd in the next World was published more or less ever since Adam For by the Grace of this all the holy Patriarchs hoped for pardon and by it likewise all the Good men among the Jews when they should be brought to Gods Tribunal in the next World hoped to be forgiven But the Promulgation of it under Moses was dark and obscure and lay hid in great measure and almost buried under the crowd of the rigid and inexorable Laws of the Mosaick Covenant But when Christ came into the World his Errand was to abrogate all the rigour of Moses's Law and to preach an universal Pardon upon Repentance And of this he gave them a clear instance in the case of the Woman who was taken in the very act of Adultery Moses say they and that very truly commanded us in his Law that such should be stoned but what sayest thou Joh. 8.5 But his Sentence was Go and sin no more and then will not I condemn thee v. 11 which was a fit sentence for that Religion whereby they should be justified from all those things from which they could not be justified by the Law of Moses Act. 13.39 Whatsoever it was therefore under the rigour of the meer Law of Moses under the Religion and Law of Christ our case is not become quite desperate and irrecoverable upon the first offence It is not every wilful sin and much less our slips of ignorance and inconsideration which can for ever exclude us from the Favour of God and incapacitate us for his Mercy No the Religion of Christ is not a Religion that seeks advantages of us and shuts us up close Prisoners of Damnation as soon as we are guilty of any thing which may deserve it
For Christ need never have come into the World for that end since the Law had rendred us accursed and miserable enough already But he came on a quite contrary Errand to be the Minister of Life and Pardon and not to seal us up to eternal Death upon the first wilful transgression but to procure for us remission of all our deadly and damning sins and to restore us out of a state of Enmity and Death to a state of Mercy and Reconciliation He came to find out a remedy for all our evils and to prescribe us a way of recovering our selves when we had fallen by any sin so that although none of us all have lived free from it yet in the event sin shall not be our ruine And that remedy which God has provided us for this purpose is Repentance He doth not abandon us upon the commission of every sin but he is heartily desirous that we should repent of it and when we do so he has obliged himself by his Truth and Faithfulness to forgive it He is heartily desirous I say that whensoever we commit any sin we should repent of it If we dare take his own word he tells us as he lives that he doth not delight in the death of any sinner but that the wicked turn from his way and live turn you turn you as he goes on from your evil ways for why will you dye O house of Israel Ezek. 33.11 And this all the World experience by him in his long-suffering and forbearance with them For he doth not exact the punishment so soon as we have incurred it but expects long to see if we will return and repent that then he may with honour pardon and remit it this being as S t Paul assures us the end of his forbearance and long-suffering to lead us to repentance Rom. 2.4 And what S t Paul says that we all experience For during all that time wherein he bears with us how restless and unwearied earnest and affectionate are his endeavours for this purpose He admonishes us of our faults by his Word and by his Ministers he invites us to return by his Love and by his Promises he moves us to bethink our selves by his Spirit and by his Providences and if we are stubborn and not to be thus gently won by these methods of mildness he seeks to reclaim us by a blessed and a most affectionate force and violence For he corrects us with his Rod and visits us in chastisement and never ceases to try all means of reducing us to a sense of our sin and repentance till we are become plainly incorrigible and utterly rebellious and so fit for nothing but to be swallowed up of ruine And yet even then his desire of reclaiming us is so strong and his love so affectionate that he scarce knows how to give us over How shall I give thee up saith he O Ephraim how shall I deliver thee O Israel Hos. 11.8 And when we do repent I say he has obliged himself by his Truth and Faithfulness most graciously to forgive us This was the Doctrine of the Prophets Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord says Isaiah for he will have mercy upon him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon Isa. 55.7 If the wicked man says God by Ezekiel will turn from all his sins that he hath committed and keep all my statutes and do that which is lawful and right he shall surely live he shall not dye All his transgressions which he hath formerly committed shall not be mentioned unto him but in his righteousness that he hath done since he shall live For have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should dye saith the Lord God and not that he should turn from his ways and live Ezek. 18 21 22 23. This iâ— the great Doctrine of the Gospel which is a Covenant of remission of sins upon Repentance Repentance is its great Article and fundamental Truth and is therefore called by S t Paul the Foundation of Repentance Heb. 6.1 For that which was taught to all the World in all the degrees of Publication of the Gospel was that now God called all men to repent and that he would forgive them all their sins upon their true repentance S t John the Baptist who was Christs Herald and Fore-runner at his entrance upon that work begins with it John says S t Luke in all the Country about Jordan came preaching the Baptism of repentance for the remission of sins Luk. 3.3 Our Lord and Saviour Christ himself when he comes after to proclaim his own Gospel goes on with it Jesus began to preach says S t Matthew and to say Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand Mat. 4.17 And when he left the World the Commission which he gives to his Apostles is to proceed on still in the Promulgation of it to all the World as he had done to the people of the Jews For at the last time of his being with them just before his Ascension into Heaven when as S t Matthew tells us he commissioned them to preach to all mankind those instructions which he gave to them S t Luke informs us were that repentance and remission of sins should be preached to all Nations in his Name beginning at Jerusalem Luk. 24.47 This was the chief thing which they had in Commission and the summ and substance of their Embassy For that Ministry which was committed to them was a Ministry of reconciling God and men by this means as St. Paul says or a Ministry of Reconciliation so that they were Ambassadours for Christ as though God did beseech men by them and they as Christs Deputies who is the prime Mediator did pray them in his stead to be reconciled to God 2 Cor. 5.19.20 And when the Apostles came to execute their Orders the publishing of this was all their care and practice For they all of them went about preaching in all places and to all persons repentance for the remission of sins St. Peter in his first Sermon thus exhorts the people Repent and be baptized every one of you for the remission of sins Act. 2.38 and so again Act. 3. Repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out v. 19. And the same he proclaims more generally in his second Epistle assuring all Christians that the Lord is not willing that any man should perish but that all should come to repentance which is sure to prevent it 2 Pet. 3.9 St. Paul preaches to the Athenians that now God had commanded all men every where to repent Act. 17.30 And St. John assures us that by virtue of that Gospel-Covenant which was confirmed with us in Christs Blood if with repenting hearts we confess our sins he is faithful to his word and just to his promise to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from the guilt and stain of all unrighteousness of
sins are daily slipping from us that our remedy might be as near as our disease our Lord has put into our daily prayers this general petition for our expiation Forgive us our trespasses Matth. 6.12 As for this first sort then our unknown and secret sins a general prayer and repentance is their remedy If we obey all known Laws and particularly repent of all our known transgressions our secret and unknown sins need not lye heavy on us For if we are honestly igrant of them and use due pains and ingenuity about them if we neither overlook them through sloth and negligence nor mistake them through partiality and wilfulness a general and penitential prayer shall serve their turn and restore us unto mercy and reconciliation And then 2. As for all our known sins God has not been wanting to us in them neither but has most graciously provided us of a remedy and means of reconciliation for them of what nature or degree soever they be Whether 1. Our voluntary and wilful or 2. Our involuntary sins 1. In the Gospel God has provided us of a remedy to restore us again to his favour when once we have lost it through our voluntary and wilful sins and that remedy is a particular repentance of them To the pardon of these it is altogether necessary that we particularly amend and forsake them For they interrupt a state of love and good agreement and set God and us at enmity and defiance So long as they are continued in they keep God and men at a distance they interpose betwixt us and his mercy and hinder all the signs of his approbation and all the expressions of his pardoning Grace from issuing out upon us To restore us therefore to Gods Grace and acceptance these voluntary sins must be taken out of the way and by a voluntary amendment and reformation we must undo all that was done amiss in our wilful transgression And of these sins all those places are meant that make repentance which as we saw above includes in it amendment the indispensable condition of life and pardon As when repentance and remission of sins is commanded to be preached to all Nations Luke 24.47 and men are bid to repent that their sins may be blotted out Acts 3.19 or as it is in the peremptory and severe words of our Saviour to repent or else they shall all perish Luke 13.3 And as this particular repentance and reformation is altogether necessary to the pardon of our wilful sins so is it most certainly available and sufficient for them Although they are of a most heinous guilt and provoking Nature yet is not their offence unpardonable or their case desperate For after a man has put himself out of a state of Grace and God's favour by them he is not quite cast off nor need to despair of getting in again He is not presently upon every such offence banished this Kings Court and Presence for ever but upon his particular repentance and reformation he will be allowed to recover his former station For the preaching of the Prophets of the Baptist of Christ and of his Apostles was to call the wilful and all lost Sinners both of the Jewish and Gentile World to this reconciliation Christ as himself informs us coming to save that which was lost and to call all Sinners of one sort or another to repentance Mens very Baptism or entrance into Christianity is a cleansing of them from the guilt of all former sins without exception Repent and be baptized every one says S t Peter for the remission of sins Acts 2.38 and be baptized says Ananias unto Saul and wash away all thy sins Acts 22.16 Nay after men are once baptized and have all their former wilful sins washt off in that water of regeneration yet is not every wilful sin which they are guilty of thenceforward irrecoverably damnable but they are still called to accept of mercy and forgiveness upon repentance as before When men come under the Covenant of Grace and list themselves under the Discipline of Christ they do not subject themselves to a Covenant of Terror and Desperation which takes hold of the first offence and denounces an irrevocable enmity ever after No a baptized offender is under the Grace of repentance as well as others For that repentance whereto we are called by Christs Gospel is not so much an act as a state which S t Paul intimates when he talks of renewing men unto repentance that is unto the condition and standing terms of it Heb. 6.4 6. It is of Gods Grace that there is any forgiveness and in order thereunto any place for repentance at all and of the same Grace we have received a promise of forgiveness upon repentance for all sins and at all times whatsoever If any man among us baptized Christians sin says S t John his case is in no wise desperate for we have an Advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous and he is the propitiation for our sins as well as for the sins of the whole unchristned world 1 Joh. 2.1 2. The Gospel doth not bid every wilfully offending Christian to despair and conclude himself to be irrevocably lost and fallen beyond remedy into a damned condition But its design is quite another thing to recover them again from that state of death and to call them by repentance to mercy and forgiveness For the Spirit of God himself writes to the back-sliding Church of Ephesus to remember from whence they were fallen and to repent and do their first works Rev. 2.5 And S t Paul finds fault with the Christians at Corinth for not repenting of their uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they had wilfully committed threatning to bewail them or to excommunicate them in sorrow and lamentation according to the custom of those times if they did it not 2 Cor. 12.21 Nay in the case of the incestuous Criminal who had committed such a fault as was not so much as named and much less done among the unbaptized Heathens themselves he doth not consign him up to eternal Torments but endeavours by the rod of Discipline and Church-censures to reduce him to repentance that his spirit might be saved in the judgment day of the Lord Jesus 1 Cor. 5.1 5. And as for the other Members of the Church of Corinth who were unconcerned and puffed up at such an enormous accident he reproves them smartly that by bringing them to a sense of their sin he may work them into a reformation v. 1 2. Which good effect when he understood that his reproof had wrought upon them he rejoyces mightily and glories in it in his next Letter I rejoyce says he that by my former letter you were made sorry seeing it was after a godly manner and you sorrowed to repentance For such godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation which is not to be repented of 2 Cor. 7.8 9 10. And as he practised thus with baptized wilful offenders
last and will trouble himself no more about them but leave them wholly to themselves And this God plainly intimates concerning incorrigible Ephraim who was just then about to be abandoned and to be given up to the unmasterable wickedness of his own heart How shall I give thee up says he O Ephraim how shall I deliver thee O Israel Hos. 11.8 And our Saviour says the same over intractable Jerusalem O! if thou hadst but known at least in this thy day the things that belong unto thy peace with God but now it is too late for they are hid from thine eyes Luk. 19.42 This I confess is a state of sin which is desperate and irrecoverable not for that repentance is no sure means of remission but because when once men are come thus far God deserts them so that they never can repent of them But as for the time when any man is come up to this unpardonable pitch that only God in Heaven knows No man can say I am beyond my time of repentance because without a special Revelation no man can understand it And therefore let a man have sinned never so long yet cannot that discourage him from repenting because if he set himself seriously about it for ought he knows God will pity him and afford him his Grace and Spirit which is never wanting to such as heartily desire it to aid and strengthen him in his repentance Nay indeed if a man be come so far as to bethink himself and to be apprehensive of his danger and to be convinced of the destructiveness of his sinful courses there is no question to be made but that he will For the tide is turned and the change is begun already and that is a thing which needed God's Grace as much as any thing that is yet remaining For a cariere in wickedness is like running down hill the great difficulty is to make the first stop but when once that is done to return again is much more easie And therefore if a man has received so much Grace as makes him break off his evil courses for the present and stand and deliberate with himself whether or no he shall proceed in it he need not doubt if he will go on to endeavour as he has begun but that he shall have more till at last he is fully enabled to perfect and compleat it He has an experimental evidence that his time of Grace is not past he may be sure it is still with him because it helps and works in him For it is Grace that brings him on to what he is and if he be but as willing to be aided by it as it is ready to assist him it will not fail to carry him on further Gods Grace will still grow upon him as his own endeavours do so that if he make good use of this he shall have more For this is laid down by our Lord as a certain Rule of Divine dispensations To him that hath that is maketh a right use of that Grace which he hath shall more be given even in abundance Mat. 25.29 Whatsoever irreconcileableness therefore there may be and truly is in some states of sin when men have gone on beyond their time of Grace yet he who has so much Grace as to doubt and question to fear and scruple has great reason to think that as for his part he is not past Grace but under it For an irrecoverable sinner is commonly one that is hardned he transgresses without sense and goes on without fear he is infatuated with his lusts and lull'd asleep in his sin and scarce ever comes to himself till he awakes in Damnation But if once he begins especially in the time of health either through a severe reproof or a severe providence to interrupt his sin for the present and to apprehend the evil of it and if from thence he goes on to good desires and holy purposes of well-doing then he feels that Grace which he is afraid he wants and that good Spirit works in him which he suspects to have deserted him He is not in this irrecoverable state but is going on towards a good recovery Indeed if his Conscience is awakned in the height of horror and extremity of despair so that he is obstinate against all good advice and dead to all endeavour and continues to be so this is not an effect of Grace and a step towards repentance but a terror of Judgment and a fore-taste of Hell If it deads all industry by excluding all hope if he complain of his estate without seeking to get out of it and despair without all amendment this fear of heart and terror of soul 't is true doth not bring him nearer unto life and pardon but by secuing him faster in his sin it shuts him up a closer Prisoner of Condemnation But if he be so apprehensive of his danger as to run from it if he has so much hope as will put him upon trying all means and using his best endeavours if upon his apprehensions of his present evil state he fears and desires and resolves and strives to get quit of it he is not deprived of a good Providence or of a gracious Spirit but enjoys the benefit of them and is conducted by them He is in the way to Life and under the recovering methods of Grace Gods holy Spirit has not for ever abandoned him but has begun again to work in him And thus at last it appears that as for all the wilful sins of any Christian man they are in no wise desperate and helpless but the Gospel has reached out a remedy for them to all who are willing to make use of it For let them but particularly repent of them and amend them and then they are safe from them So long as they continue in the profession of the Christian Faith and do not apostatize from it there is no sin whatsoever which they wilfully commit but is pardonable upon their repentance If once they honestly undo the fault and conscientiously forsake it their work is done for their penitent reformation shall make them innocent and whatever punishment the Law may threaten to any sins when God comes to Judgment he will not exact it of any man who has been thus reclaimed from them Do we find our selves guilty then of any unretracted wilful sins and thereby subject to a dreadful sentence according to those measures that have in great largeness been hitherto discoursed of Let us particularly repent of them and begin to amend them and then we are safe from it and shall most certainly prevent it Have any voluntary faults put us out of a state of favour and made us obnoxious to the severities of Judgment let us reform them and do so no more and repair the breach which ensued upon them and we are surely pardoned For the Gospel of Christ doth not in any wise intend to amaze and astonish us or to affright us from amendment by putting us into a despair
repentance that being such a sin as God will never give repentance to Heb. 6.6 The sinning against the Holy Ghost in this sence then as it denotes the gift of tongues of prophecy c. which is the last evidence that God is resolved to make use of for the conversion of an unbelieving World is that unpardonable sin which shall never be forgiven And yet even here in this limited and contracted sence of the word Holy Ghost we must still proceed with some caution For it is not every affront and dishonour that is put upon these gifts which is the sin here styled irremissible Simon Magus cast a very high indignity and reproach upon them in his actions for he went about to purchase the gift of tongues and other sacred illuminations called the Holy Ghost which fell upon men at the imposition of the Apostles hands as if they had been only a trick to get money or a fit thing to drive a trade withal and make a gainful merchandise When Simon saw that through the laying on of the hands of the Apostles the Holy Ghost was given he offered them money says S t Luke saying Give me also this power that on whomsoever I lay hands he may receive the Holy Ghost Acts 8.18 19. This was a very great abuse and a most unworthy comparing of the heavenly and holy Spirit of God to a mercetable ware and vendible commodity thinking it fit to serve any ends and to minister to the basest purposes of filthy lucre and covetousness But yet this sin against the Holy Ghost in its strictest acceptation was not the unpardonable sin it came very near it indeed and would hardly be remitted but still in all likelihood it was remissible And therefore S t Peter although he be very severe upon this sordid man for the high affront doth not yet pronounce an irreversible doom of damnation upon him but on the contrary exhorts him to repent that the sin of his heart may be forgiven Repent says he of this thy wickedness and pray God if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee ver 22. But that which is the desperately damning sin against the Holy Ghost which shall never be forgiven either in this world or in that which is to come is the sinning against it not by interpretation only in our actions but directly in our words and expressions It is our speaking reproachfully and slanderously of it as the Pharisees did of the spirit when they attributed it to Beelzebub And therefore it is expresly called the speaking blasphemously against the Holy Ghost Whosoever speaketh blasphemously against the Holy Ghost when he shall come it shall never be forgiven him neither in this world nor in the world to come Matth. 12.21 32. The great weight lyes in that for this heavy doom he denounced upon them says S t Mark because they said he hath an unclean spirit Mark 3 30. And thus at length we see what that sin against the Holy Ghost is whose doom is so dreadful and whose case is so desperate under the Gospel It is nothing less than a slandering and reviling instead of owning and assenting to that last evidence which God has given us of the truth of the Gospel in the gifts of tongues prophecy and other extraordinary illuminations called the Holy Ghost So that no man who ownes Christ's Religion and thinks he was no Impostor and believes that these miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost were no magical shows or diabolical delusions can ever be guilty of it No before he arrive to that he must not only be an Infidel to the faith but also a Blasphemer of it he must not only disbelieve this last and greatest evidence but disparage and rail against it If then there be any man who ownes Christ's Authority and obeys his Laws and believes his Gospel and hopes in its promises and fears its threatnings and expects that every word of that Covenant which was confirmed to us by the infallible evidence of the Spirit and the Holy Ghost shall come to pass he is not more guiltless of any sin than of this against the Holy Ghost for he doth not so much as sleight and disparage but ownes and submits to it If good men therefore are afraid by reason of the irremissibleness of the sin against the Holy Ghost they fear where they need not and their scruple is utterly unreasonable and groundless For let it be as unpardonable as it will that shall not hurt them for they can never suffer by it since whilst they continue such as now they are they cannot possibly be guilty of it or of any thing that comes near it CHAP. VII The Conclusion The CONTENTS Some other causless scruples The point of growth in Grace more largely stated A summary repetition of this whole Discourse They may dye with courage whose Conscience doth not accuse them This accusation must not be for idle words distractions in Prayer c. but for a wilful transgression of some Law of Piety Sobriety c. above mentioned It must further be particular and express not general and roving If an honest mans heart condemn him not for some such unrepented sins God never will BEsides these scruples already mentioned some good minds may be put in fear and doubt of the safety of their present state because S t John says that whosoever is born of God sinneth not being no longer a child of God if he do 1 Joh. 3.6 9. But the sin here spoken of as was observed above is defined by S t John himself at the fourth verse of this Chapter to be not every deviation or going beside the Law but a wilful transgression and rejecting of the Law it self And this indeed is inconsistent with a regenerate state and puts us out of Gods favour making us liable to eternal destruction But then the case for these sins is not desperate seeing if once we forsake them and repent of them we are as safe again as ever we were before we committed them For our repentance will set us straight and if we transgress not wilfully again we are without the reach of condemnation Others doubt whether when once they have wilfully sinned they ever can repent or shall afterwards be pardoned because they read of Esau that after he had sold his birth-right with the blessing that attended it when he would have inherited it afterwards he was rejected and found no place of a change of mind or repentance though he sought it carefully with tears Heb. 12.17 In answer to this it will be sufficient to observe that this change of mind or repentance which Esau sought but could not find was not in himself but in his Father Isaac It was not in himself I say for there he did find a place for it being he was really possessed of it For he was heartily sorry for his former folly in parting with his birth-right and for his present unhappiness in being
sufferings Where it needs to be defended disobedience is no fit means to preserve it because God cannot be honoured nor Religion served by it Religion and the love of God is only the colour but the true and real cause of such disobedience is a want of Religion and too great a love of mens own selves Men are liable to be deceived by this pretence from a wrong Notion of Religion for religious opinions and professions A true Notion of Religion for religious practice upon a religious belief as it implies both faith and obedience The danger of disobedience upon this pretence The practice of all religious men in this case Of Religion in the narrow acceptation for religious professions and opinions The commendable way of mens preserving it First By acting within their own sphere Secondly By the use only of lawful means Thirdly By a zeal in the first place for the practice of religious Laws and next to that for the free profession of religious opinions 330 CHAP. VII Of the two remaining pretences for a partial obedience The Contents The second pretence for the allowed practice of some sins whilst men obey in others is the serving of their necessities by sinful arts in times of indigence An account of mens disobedience upon this pretence The vanity of it and the danger of disobeying through it A third pretence is bodily temper and complexion age and way of life A representation of mens disobedience upon this pretence The vanity of it and the danger of sinning through it No justifying Plea for disobedience from our age Nor from our way of life Nor from our natural temper and complexion So that this integrity of the Object is excusable upon no pretence It was always required to mens acceptance 355 CHAP. VIII Of obeying with all the heart and all the soul c. The Contents Of obeying God with all the heart and with all the strength c. It includes not all desire and endeavour after other things but it implies First Sincerity Secondly Fervency Thirdly Integrity or obeying not some but all the Laws of God These three include all that is contained in it which is shown from their obedience who are said in Scripture to have fulfilled it Integrity implies sincerity and fervency and love with all the heart is explained in the places where it is mentioned by loving him entirely Sincerity and uprightness the Conditions of an acceptable Obedience This a hard Condition in the degeneracy of our manners but that is our own fault It was easie and universally performed by the primitive Christians This shown from the Characters of the Apostles and of the primitive Writers Hence it was that they could despise Death and even provoke Martyrdom Some Pleas from our impotence against the strictness of this Obedience which are considered in the next Book 370 BOOK IV. Shewing what defects are consistent with a regenerate state and dispensed with in the Gospel CHAP. I. Shewing in general that some sins are consistent with a state of Grace The Contents SOme failings consistent with a state of Grace This shewn in the general First From the necessity of humane Nature which cannot live without them Secondly From sundry examples of pious men who had right to life whilst they lived in them 385 CHAP. II. Of the nature of these consistent slips more particularly The Contents Our unchosen sins are consistent with a state of Grace but our wilful and chosen ones destroy it All things are made good or evil a matter of reward or punishment by a Law Laws are given for the guidance and reward only of our voluntary and chosen actions This proved first from the clear reason of the thing Where it is inferred from the nature of Laws which is to oblige from that way that all Laws have of obliging which is not by forcing but perswading men from the dueness of rewards and punishments commendations and reproofs from the applause or accusations of mens own Consciences upon their obedience or transgressions Secondly From the express declarations of Scripture 396 CHAP. III. Of the nature and danger of voluntary sins The Contents The nature of a wilful and a deliberate sin Why it is called a despising of Gods Law a sinning presumptuously and with a high hand Wilful sins of two sorts viz. some chosen directly and expresly others only indirectly and by interpretation Of direct and interpretative volition Things chosen in the latter way justly imputable Of the voluntary causes of inconsideration in sins of commission which are drunkenness an indulged passion or a habit of sin Of the power of these to make men inconsiderate The cause of inconsideration in sins of omission viz. Neglect of the means of acquiring Vertue Of the voluntariness of all these causes Of the voluntariness of drunkenness when it mâ—y be looked upon as involuntary Of the voluntariness of an indulged passion mens great errour lies in indulging the beginnings of sin Of the voluntariness and crying guilt of a habit of sin Of the voluntariness of mens neglect of the means of Vertue No wilful sin is consistent with a state of Grace but all are damning A distinct account of the effect of wilful sins viz. when they only destroy our acceptance for the present and when moreover they greatly wound and endanger that habitual Vertue which is the foundation of it and which should again restore us to it for the time to come These last are particularly taken notice of in the accounts of God 409 CHAP. IV. Of the nature of involuntary sins and of their consistence with a state of salvation The Contents Of involuntary actions Of what account the forced actions of the Body are in Morals Two causes of involuntariness First The violence of mens passions It doth not excuse Secondly The ignorance of their understandings This is the cause of all our consistent failings and the sins that are involuntary upon this account are consistent with a state of salvation This proved 1. From their unavoidableness The causes of it in what sense any particular sin among them is said to be avoidable 2. From the nature of God A representation of God's nature from his own Word and mens experience The Argument drawn from it for the consistence of such failings 3. From the nature and declarations of the Gospel It is fitted to beget a cheerful and filial confidence and therefore is called the Spirit of Adoption The Argument from this The Scripture Declarations and Examples in this matter These Arguments summed up 440 CHAP. V. Of these involuntary and consistent sins particularly and of the first cause of innocent involuntariness viz. ignorance The Contents A twofold knowledg necessary to choice viz. a general understanding and particular consideration Consistent sins are either sins of ignorance or of inconsideration Of sins involuntary through ignorance of the general Law which makes a Duty How there is still room for it in the World Of crying sins which are against natural
things relating to our last doom and shewâ—â—â—oth what in the Judgment shall be indispensably required to our salvation what Defects do not overthrow but consist with it what Remedies when 't is wounded or lost can heal and restore us to it and what and of how great consideration those things really are which being wrong understood do often create causless fears and jealousies in good peoples minds about it Having I say clearly accounted for all these I suppose I may think I have said enough to shew men their Future State and fairly take leave of this Argument BOOK I. Of the indispensable condition of happiness in the general CHAP. I. Of Obedience the general condition of happiness The CONTENTS Obedience the indispensable condition of happiness The Laws of the Gospel are given as a Rule to it The Promises are all upon condition of it and intended to encourage it All the threatnings are now denounced and will be executed upon the disobedient Of those other things whereto Pardon is promised as well as to obedience Of Metonymy's Of the Principles of Humane Actions Of Principles of Obedience All those speeches metonymical where obedience is not express'd and yet pardon is promised THat Condition which the Gospel indispensably requires of us and which is to mete out to us our last doom of Bliss or Misery is in the General our Obedience When we are brought to that Bar and stand to be judged according to those Laws which are proclaim'd to us in the Gospel it is only our having kept them and Repented of all such transgressions of them as we have wilfully been guilty of which can capacitate us to be rewarded by them For 't is just with them as it is with all other Laws they never promise any thing but to obedience but threaten and punish all that disobey Whosoever breaks and despises them is guilty they do not comfort but accuse not acquit but condemn him For there is no Law that is wisely ordered but is sufficiently guarded against affront and back'd with such punishments as will make it every mans interest to fulfil and keep it The evil threatned must always by far exceed the pleasure that is reaped by disobedience so that no man may have any temptation sufficient to bear him out in Sin or ever hope to be a gainer by his transgression This is the tenour of all wise laws whose enactors have both wit and power sufficient to defend them They have dreadful Punishments annexed to them which take place upon disobedience they encourage and reward the obedient but severely punish all that dare presume to disobey And this is most eminently seen in all the Laws of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He gave them for the compleatest Rules to mens Lives and has annexed to them most glorious Promises to encourage our obedience but has made them breath out nothing but woes and intolerable punishments to all that disobey He has given them for Rules of Life and annexed Rewards as encouragements to obedience He never intended his Laws for an entertainment of our eyes but for a Rule for our Actions not for a matter of talk and discourse but of practice not to be complemented by words of honour and lofty expressions but to be own'd in our lives and served by obedience He is our King and issues out his Laws as the instruments of his Government he is our Lord and they are Rulers for his Service They must be guides of our Lives and Actions it is not enough to know and talk of them but as ever we hope to live by them we must do and keep them For in the end they will be available to no mans happiness but his who has conscientiously performed them In Christ Jesus or the Christian Religion says S t Paul nothing avails but keeping of the Commandments of God 1 Cor. 7.19 Blessed are they saith S t John who do the Commandments for they only have right to the Tree of Life Rev. 22.14 It is not an idle wish or ineffectual endeavour but a thorough practice and performance of Christs Laws which can continue us in his Love and approve us Righteous in his Judgment If ye keep my Commandments says he ye shall abide in my Love Joh. 15.10 Let no man deceive you for it is he only that doth Righteousness who in Gods account is Righteous 1 Joh. 3.7 They only are pronounced Righteous and Sons of God in the Gospels estimation who walk after the spirit Rom. 8.4 who are led by the spirit vers 14. who bring forth the Fruits of the Spirit all words expressing Action and Practice Gal. 5 16-22 No man therefore will be acquitted and rewarded at that Bar barely for knowing and discoursing for wishing or desiring but only for working and obeying Such only the Gospel reckons for true servants now his servants ye are not whom you confess in words but whom in actions you obey Rom. 6.16 And such only he will honour and reward then For it is not every one who fawns upon me in his words whilest he reproaches me in his actions who says unto me Lord Lord that shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven but he only who doth the will of my Father which is in Heaven Which will he had just then proclaim'd to them in that Volume of Christian Laws which was published in the Sermon upon the Mount whereof this is in part the conclusion Matt. 7.21 He tells us that when the Son of Man shall come to judgment he will reward every man according to his works Matt. 16.27 and he repeats it again in his declaration to S t John Behold I come quickly and my reward is with me to give every man according as his work shall be Rev. 22.12 And so it was in that Prophetick sight of the Last Judgment which this same Apostle had vouchsafed him Rev. 20. For there as we are told when the Sea gave up the Dead which were in it and Death and Hell delivered up the Dead which were in them and they all both small and great stood before the Throne and him that sate thereon they were judged every man according to his WORKS vers 11 12 13. His Laws then Christ has given us not for talk and discourse but for action and practice and his Promises he has annexed to them not as rewards of idleness but only of active service and obedience Wherein if men fail Gods Rewards belong not to them they can make no claim or colourable pretence to them because they cannot show that which is to be rewarded by him Nay further if men disobey they are not only excluded from all glorious hopes but are moreover put into a desperate state of fears and dreadful expectations For God has back'd his Laws with threatnings as well as promises and as they propose most noble rewards to all that are obedient so likewise do they breath out most intolerable punishments to all that disobey
of both is Whoredome or bare Fornication and this when the Parties are too nearly allied is called Incest 2. By forcing of one and then 't is Rape or ravishing Which Vice S t Paul expresses by that word which we translate Extortioners 1 Cor. 5.11 and Chap. 6.10 Fourthly To contempt of the world and contentment with our present condition is opposed covetousness which is an immoderate love of the world or an unsatisfiedness with what we have and an insatiable desire of more and grudging or repining Fifthly To taking up the Cross is opposed our being scandalized or turn'd out of the way of Duty and Obedience by reason of it or a politick and selfish deserting of our Duty to avoid it Sixthly To diligence and watchfulness in doing of our Duty is opposed a heedlesness of it and remiss application to it which is carelesness and idleness Seventhly To patience in suffering for it is opposed an immoderate dread of pain and dishonest avoidance of it which is softness and fearfulness Eighthly To mortification and self-denial is opposed self-love and self-pleasing which as it is an industrious care to please and gratifie our bodily senses is called sensuality and as it is a ready and constant serving and obeying the lusts and desires of the Flesh especially when they carry us against the Commands of God is called carnality These are those Vices and breaches of Duty towards our selves which Gods Laws have prohibited under the pains of Death and Hell as the other were such Vertues as under the same penalty he exacts of us So that in the general Law of Sobriety we see are contain'd all these following whether commanding or forbidding Laws The commanding Law of humility of heavenly-mindedness of temperance of sobriety of charity of continence of contempt of the World and contentment of courage and taking up the Cross of diligence and watchfulness of patience of mortification and self-denial And opposite to these the forbidding Law against pride against arrogance or ostentation against vain-glory against ambition against haughtiness against insolence against imperiousness against dogmaticalness against envious back-biting against emulation against worldliness against intemperance against gluttony against voluptuousness against drunkenness against revelling against incontinence against lasciviousness or wantonness against filthiness against obscene Jestings against impurity or uncleanness against Sodomy against effeminateness against adultery against fornication against whoredom against incest against rape against covetousness against grudging and repining against refusing or being scandaled at the Cross against idleness and carelesness against fearfulness and softness against self-love against carnality against sensuality CHAP. II. Of LOVE the Epitome of Duty towards God and Men and of the particular Laws comprehended under Piety towards God The CONTENTS Of the Duties of Piety and Righteousness both comprehended in one general Duty LOVE It the Epitome of our Duty The great happiness of a good nature The kind temper of the Christian Religion Of the effects of LOVE The great Duty to God is Honour The outward expression whereof is worship The great offence is dishonour Of the several Duties and transgressions contained under both FOR the two remaining Members in S t Paul's Division viz. Godliness or Piety and Righteousness which require something from us to God or to our Neighbour they may yet be reduced into a narrower compass and are both comprized in that one word LOVE For all that ever God requires of us either to himself or towards other men is only heartily and effectually to LOVE them And this abridgment of our whole Duty in respect of these two remaining parts of it towards God and man into that one compendious Law of LOVE is no more than what our Saviour Christ and his Apostle Paul have already made to our hands For hear how they speak of it Jesus saith unto the Lawyer Thou shalt LOVE the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind This is the first and great Commandment and the second is like unto it Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self On these two which in the thing commanded LOVE are but one hang all the Law of the ten Commandments viz. which meddle not with our Duty towards our selves but only towards God and our Neighbour and the Prophets Matth. 22.37 38 39 40. And S t Paul speaks home to the same purpose By love says he serve one another for all the LAW is fulfilled in one word even this Thou shalt LOVE thy Neighbour as thy self Gal. 5.13 14. And speaking again of the Laws concerning our Neighbour he tells us that LOVE worketh no ill to his Neighbour and therefore Love is the fulfilling of the Law Rom. 13.10 Thus rare and heavenly a Religion is that of our Saviour Christ a Religion that is not content to have only great and eminent measures of goodness in it but is perfectly made up of LOVE and good Nature All that it requires from us is only to be kind-hearted and full of good Offices both towards God and men Every man of a loving good nature is enclined by his temper to do all that is demanded by Gods Law so that he has nothing remaining to turn his temper into obedience but to direct his intention and to exert all the effects of love for the sake of Gods Command which he is otherwise strongly excited to by the natural propensions of his own mind His passion and his God require the same service and that which is only a natural fruit of the first may become if he so design it a piece of Religion and Obedience to the latter For the particular effects of Love are the particulars of our Duty Love is the great and general Law as ill-will and enmity are the prime transgression and the instances of Love are the instances of our obedience as all the particular effects of ill-will are those very instances wherein we disobey So that by running over all the special effects of love or ill-will we may quickly find what are the Particulars of Duty and Transgression Now the prime and most immediate Effects of Love are 1. To do no evil to the persons beloved nor to take away from them any thing which is theirs and which they have a right to And this founds all the Duties of Justice But 2. To do all good offices and show kindness to them which founds all the Duties of Charity And these two take in our whole Duty both in Piety towards God and also in Righteousness towards men 1. The proper and genuine effect of love to God is to do no evil but in great readiness to do all the good and service which we can for him in which two are implied all the branches of piety which is the great and general Duty towards him To be kind and serviceable to God is nothing more than to honour him For his Nature is so perfect and self-sufficient that it cannot receive and ours so impotent
necessary for you for even hereunto were you called that you may be like to Christ who has left you an example of such patient suffering for this end that you might follow his steps 1 Pet. 2.18 19 20 21 c. And thus are all the particular Laws of this last relation imposed in the same strictness of obligation and under the same severe sanction with all the rest that went before And as for the Law of Baptism and of the Lords Supper and of Repentance and amendment whensoever we fail in any of the former which are all the commanding Laws yet remaining their necessity will appear from the Scriptures following Except a man be born again of Water as well as of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God says Christ to Nicodemus John 3.5 And when Christ sends his Apostles out to preach to all the World that Doctrine which he commissions them to declare is this He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved Mark 16.16 Take eat this is my Body Do this in remembrance of me For as often as you eat this Bread and drink this Cup you do shew forth the Lords death which you must do till he come the second time to judge us and to punish all impenitent Transgressors as well of this as of all his other Precepts 1 Cor. 11.24 25 26. And this Command he further says he received of the Lord to deliver to them ver 23. And for the fuller proof of the necessity of this Sacrament that is very remarkable which as some have observed the Jewish Doctors have taken notice of viz. that whereas God forbad twenty three things under pain of being cut off from the people to them who committed them yet in the whole Old Testament there are but two things commanded under that penalty to those who should neglect them and they are Circumcision and the Passover which are Types and Figures of and answer to our two Sacraments Baptism and the Lords Supper And for that necessity particularly of the Passover among the Jews which answers to the Eucharist among us Christians where as the Apostle says Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us 1 Cor. 5.7 we have a plain Text at the institution of it Exod. 12. Whosoever in the Feast of the Passover eateth leavened Bread from the first Day to the eleventh Day that soul shall be cut off from Israel ver 15. Repentance and remission of sins thereupon is commanded to be preached to all Nations Luke 24.47 And as Christ ordered so his Apostles practised Repent says S t Peter in his first Sermon and be baptized for the remission of sins Acts 2.38 But without this there is no mercy for any wilful Offenders for except you repent says our Saviour you shall all perish Luke 13.3 And thus we have seen of all the commanding Laws particularly that our obedience to every one of them is plainly necessary to our salvation They are that Rule which God has fixt to measure out to us either Life or Death and which at the last Day we must all be eternally acquitted or condemned by CHAP. VI. Of the Sanction of all the forbidding Laws The CONTENTS Of the Sanction of all the negative or forbidding Laws particularly The perfection of the Christian Law How our Duty exceeds that of the Heathens under the revelations of Nature And that of the Jews under the additional light of Moses's Law AS for all the Vices opposite to the several Vertues in the foregoing Chapter which are the number of the negative or forbidding Laws they must needs be under the same sanction and our observance of them be bound upon us by the same necessity with our observance of the former For whatsoever any of the particular Laws commanding any Vertues threaten they denounce against these opposite Vices which are the several transgressions of them So that in shewing the severe sanction and necessity of the one I have shown it sufficiently of the other also And this might very well excuse me all further trouble in searching after an express sanction of every particular forbidding Law But on the other side I consider that men are infinitely concerned to be fully convinced of the particular necessity of abstaining from every Vice as well as of performing every Vertue And that there is much more force to work this full Conviction in an express and particular proof than there can be in a general and implicite intimation And because I would shun no pains which may be likely to quicken the obedience or secure the interests even of any one soul I will not leave it to mens selves to collect and inferr this necessity although the meanest capacities may do it without any great difficulty but proceed still to set down such sanctions of all the particular forbidding Laws as I meet with in the Scriptures And to take the several Classes of them in that order wherein they are described above for the penalties threatned to all the Particulars of unsoberness they will appear from the places following The works of the Flesh are manifest saith S t Paul which are adultery fornication uncleanness lasciviousness drunkenness revelling emulations of the which I tell you that they who do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God And besides these if we live in the Spirit without which there is no hopes of happiness Rom. 8.6 let us not be desirous of vain-glory provoking one another Gal. 5.19 20 21 25 26. Neither the effeminate those that suffer themselves to be unnaturally abused nor the abusers of themselves with mankind nor extortioners or ravishers and men that commit rapes shall inherit the Kingdom of God 1 Cor. 6.9 10. But the fearful and soft the abominable or abusers of themselves with mankind and whoremongers shall have their part in the Lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death Rev. 21.8 Let not filthiness nor foolish or obscene talking nor jesting in filthy jests be so much as named among you For this ye know that no whoremonger or covetous man c. hath any inheritance in the Kingdom of God and of Christ. Let no man deceive you for these things sake cometh the wrath of God upon the Children of disobedience Ephes. 5.3 4 5 6. In the last Days perillous times shall come for men shall be lovers of themselves or of their own Flesh covetous proud Boasters or arrogant incontinent high-minded or enormously haughty in behaviour or insolent lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God or sensual having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof from such turn away for they are men of corrupt minds and reprobate concerning the faith 2 Tim. 3.1 2 3 4 5 8. Being filled with covetousness Back-biters Boasters or arrogant which in the judgment of God are worthy
in opposition to some who vented contrary Doctrines who upon the account of those Rules which they gave their Followers opposite to these are called abominable disobedient and to every good work reprobate Chap. 1.16 Let as many Servants as are under the Yoke count their own Masters worthy of all honour and not despise and dishonour them by their irreverent behaviour publishing their faults and wounding their reputation that the Name of God and the Christian Doctrine be not blasphemed or evil spoken of through the contrary usage If any man teach otherwise he is proud knowing nothing 1 Tim. 6.1 2 3 4. Servants obey your Masters not with eye-service but heartily and in singleness or simplicity of heart without acting double viz. something whilst their eye is over you but nothing when it is off you which you are bound to do not only out of a dread of your Masters anger but as fearing God who will be sure to punish you although your Master should not take notice of you Col. 3.22 Servants he not stubborn and contumacious but subject to your Masters with all fear and reverence and that not only to the good and gentle or equitable and moderate but also to the hasty and morose or froward For if when you do well and suffer for it you yet take it patiently this is truly thank-worthy and acceptable to God And indeed hereunto are you called in Christianity to suffer many times unjustly but still with patience as Christ did that hereafter you may reign with him also 1 Pet. 2.18 19 20 21. Thus is our observation of these particular prohibitions plainly necessary unto life and indispensably required to mercy and salvation And as for that small remainder of them which are not expresly insisted on in this proof their necessity is sufficiently evidenced by the indispensableness of the opposite Commands which in the proof of the affirmative Laws is shown expresly As to all the particular Laws then recited in the foregoing Catalogues whether they be affirmative or negative Commands or Prohibitions 't is plain that they are all bound upon us by the severest sanction no less than our fears of Hell and hopes of Heaven They are the adaequate and compleat matter of that obedience which is to secure for us a happy Sentence At the last Day we must all stand or fall by them where they promise God will bestow rewards but if they threaten he will eternally condemn us And thus at length it plainly appears what those particular Laws are which under the sanctions of Life or Death the Gospel indispensably binds us to obey And upon the whole we see That when we become Christians we are not turned loose and set at liberty to do what we list but are put under a most strict Rule and bound up by a most exalted purity and a most compleat and perfect love The height of our Duty is answerable to the greatness of our Priviledges and advantages For as never any people had so much Grace given to them as we Christians have by the Gospel so never was there of any so much Duty required The poor Heathens who knew nothing more either of Gods Laws or of his rewards and encouragements than they could argue themselves into a belief of by the strength of their own wit and reason knew nothing of nor shall at the last Day be condemned for the transgression of several of those Commands which we shall dye for So far were they from thinking that in the judgment of God lasciviousness uncleanness filthy talk and obscene jests deserved death that as wise men as any among them did not believe it of Fornication and Whoredome it self They were in no fear of being called to account then and being found liable to eternal punishment for being angry at an enemy for cursing or reproaching for praying to the Gods against him nay nor for other higher acts of malice and revenge They never dreamed of being condemned for censoriousness uncourteousness surliness malignity mockery upbraiding reproach and least of all for scandalizing an ignorant and weak Neighbour or not relieving an enemy for not taking up the Cross or not mortifying their own Bodies Vain-glory and emulation they looked upon as deserving commendation rather than reproof and boasting and ostentation when it had no mixture of ill design but was only for boastings sake even they who would find fault with it rebuked only as a vanity but not as a mortal crime The most that any of them could say of these or of several others which it would be too tedious to mention was that it would be a point of praise for men to observe them but not of duty they might be advised to it by a sage Philosopher but not imposed and commanded by a Judge and Lawgiver Thus dark and defective was that sense of Duty which governed the heathen World The priviledg of a clear and full revelation of it which God in great degrees afforded the Jews under the Law of Moses and us Christians in the compleatest measures under the Gospel of Christ was a Grace and Favour which he did not vouchsafe them He shewed as the Psalmist says his Word unto Jacob and his Statutes unto Israel but he hath not dealt so with any of the heathen Nations for as for his Judgments or those Laws which we are to be judged by they have not known several of them Psal. 147.19 20. And since not only the poor and ignorant but even the more wise and learned sort of Heathens were thus void of knowledge in the simplicity of their hearts and did not discern several of those to be Laws of God which every one of us may discern most clearly if we will although we must stand or fall by them yet they shall not but when they are brought to Judgment they shall go unpunished for their transgressions of them because they did not know them They shall not be condemned for acting against they knew not what nor suffer for the breach of such Laws as were not sufficiently published and proclaimed to them They that sinned without our Law shall also perish not by it but without our Law according to the Sentence of such other Laws as are not ours but their own and it is only as many as have sinned in or under our Law that shall be judged and condemned by the Law Rom. 2.12 Whatsoever they may suffer then for their transgressions of their own plain natural Laws which all of them might have known that had a mind to it they shall not be punished for their ignorant breach of such as are peculiarly ours but that part of their offences shall be overlooked and graciously connived at For those times of ignorance saith the Apostle God winked or connived at Acts 17.30 And as for the Jews although they had a stricter Rule and a more perfect Precept answerable to their clearer light and
the rest Whosoever looks upon a woman to lust after her or so long till his heart consent to commit lewdness with her if he could he though he never meet with an opportunity to act it or before any hath committed adultery with her already in his heart Matth. 5.28 No man then may venture to will and chuse any one sin and yet presume he is innocent For if fear or shame or interest or other bye-motive and worldly end or want of opportunity hinder him from the outward acting and compleating of his sin yet if his heart stands for it and all the while he wills and chuses it he is guilty in the Accounts of God as if he had committed it We disobey in willing as well as in doing and shall suffer for a wicked choice as well as for a wicked practice So that as ever we hope to have our obedience to the forementioned Laws avail us unto life and pardon at the last Day we must take care to perform it as with our minds and affections so with our hearts or wills likewise As for these three faculties therefore viz. our minds our wills and our affections they must necessarily be devoted to God's service to make up an intire obedience As ever we hope for Heaven we must employ our minds upon God and his Laws so far at least till we love them in our souls and chuse them in our hearts with full purpose and resolution of performing them Our understandings must consider of our duty and of the motives to obedience so long and so well till our affections are inflamed with a desire of it and our wills are firmly resolved upon it And as ever we expect to escape the torments of Hell we must take care that we entertain no thoughts or desires of any sin so long till in our hearts we become concerned for it and willing to fulfil it But if we will look on it it must be in order to loath and disdain it We must consider how disingenuous how shameful and how mischievous a thing it is and indulge to no apprehensions of it in our minds that are like to insnare either our choice or practice nor dwell upon any but those that are apt to kindle our indignation and zeal against it and arm our wills with full purpose to overcome it This must be the use and exercise of all our inward powers and principles of action They must be used as instruments of good life and made the great Springs and productive Causes of all vertuous practice and obedience It is this holy and obedient practice that is the end whereto all these obedient thoughts desires and resolutions are directed so that if they fall short of this they miss of their chief effect and appear to be weak and idle things that are insignificant and useless CHAP. III. Of Obedience with the fourth faculty viz. our executive or bodily powers and outward operations The CONTENTS God is to be obeyed with the fourth faculty viz. our executive or bodily powers and outward operations The great difficulty of Obedience in this instance Four false grounds whereupon men shift off the necessity of this service with their works and actions First A hope to be saved for a true belief or orthodox opinions Mens confidence in this represented The folly of it Orthodox faith and professions no further available than they produce obedient works and actions Secondly A hope of salvation upon an obedience of idle desires and ineffective wishes An opinion of some Casuists That a desire of Grace is Grace refuted This stated and a distinct explication of what is promised to the desire of Obedience and what to Obedience it self The pretence for this acceptance of idle desires from Gal. 5.17 considered An account when the will and desire is taken for the deed and performance That Text 2 Cor. 8.11 12. plainly vindicated Thirdly A hope of being saved notwithstanding they do sin because they are insnared into it through the strength of temptations The folly of this Our own lusts make temptations strong The Grace of the Gospel is sufficient to overcome them Fourthly A hope of being excused because they transgress with an unwilling mind These mens state represented Vnwillingness in sin a mitigation but no sufficient excuse Some strugling in most actions both of good and bad men The strife of the Flesh and Spirit Two sorts of men feel nothing of it viz. the Saints in Heaven after the Resurrection and some prostigate sinners here now on Earth All good men and the generality of evil are subject to it in this life Mens peremptory will and last choice determines their condition A Fourth faculty that is indispensably necessary to the integrity of our Obedience and which is the chief end and perfection and gets acceptance for all the rest is our strength or bodily and executive powers For the completion and crown of all we must do as well as think and desire and our obedient choice must end in an obedient practice For all our inward motions are in order to outward operations they must go on to good effects before they are fit for the great reward we must work as well as desire and not only will but do our duty because upon nothing less than that we shall at the last day be accepted This indeed is the severe service and the distastfull part of duty It is a matter of much labour and pains of much strife and contention For the doing of our Duty is the top of all every hinderance must be removed and every difficulty overcome before we can attain to it Our scruples and gainsaying reasonings must be silenced our discouraging fears quieted and all our repugnant desires cooled or conquered Every doubt of our minds must be solved and every hostile lust subdued e're we can act what we are required A secret wish or a sudden desire of Obedience may start up in our souls unawares and there is not much opposition made to it because our lusts receive no great hurt from it For the pleasure of our lusts lies in acting and fulfilling them they are secure of their own delights so long as they are of our practice And therefore they will allow us to think of good to spend a faint wish a sudden inclination or a fruitless desire upon it But if once we would go on to do our Duty and to work Obedience then begins the conflict Our Lusts then bestir themselves with might and main and set every faculty awork to resist and defeat it For our thoughts begin to argue and to pick quarrels with our Duty They suggest all its difficulties and dammages They represent all the pains of the undertaking to cool our love the appendant dangers to raise our fears and the great hazards to shake our hopes and make us despair of success For the sake of our sins we arm all discouraging passions and quite stifle all the obedient suggestions of our consciences For
take up with their leavings Nay what is yet more by such a partial and squeamish belief as this we do not only give or take at our own liking from that attribute of his which in believing we would be thought to honour viz. his Truth but even where we seem to submit to it we wrong and pervert it For we wrest his sense and spoil his meaning and undermine all that he intends So that even that which we do believe is not his mind but our own For the true meaning of his Promises which run all upon condition of our Obedience we pervert the force of all his threatnings which denounce woes to every sin and transgression we cancel We do as much as in us lies to corrupt his Word and to belie his very Gospel We make his whole Religion signifie another thing than what he intended For we make it allow what he forbids and encourage such as he threatens and save those whom at the day of Judgment he will condemn And since this perverse faith and knowledge which believes what it likes and is infidel to all the rest which sets up one part of his Word against another by making his Promises to undermine his Precepts and the Truth of his Doctrines to render all his threatnings false and useless I say since such an untowardly partial and gainsaying knowledge and belief as this is in very deed so plain a Libel to his Person so hateful a violence to his Truth and such a contradicting piece of Infidelity to his Gospel it can never be thought to be that Obedience which he commands and encourages but such a piece of contumelious flattery and fawning disobedience as he will most severely punish and condemn But if we believe his whole Gospel and besides the faith of his Doctrines and Promises take moreover all his Precepts to be such as he injoyns and all his threatnings in their true meaning to be such as he will execute and yet for all that in our works and practice despise and sin against them then is such our faith and knowledge so far from rendring our condition safe and comfortable that in very deed it makes it quite desperate and utterly bereft of all colour and excuse For it takes from us all plea for disobedience and leaves us not so much as the common refuge of all misdoing the pretence that we did offend but did not know it It makes every sin which we commit to be acted with a high hand and all our offences to become contempt our disobedience rebellion and our transgressions presumptuous For we sin then with open eyes we know Gods Commands but refuse to practise them we discern our duty but despise it It makes us not only to renounce his Authority but also to defie his Power For we know his Almighty Strength but we will not fear it we see his dreadfull threatnings but yet dare to commit the things which he has threatned in despite of them We see and believe that our Death is entailed upon our disobedience but for all that we choose and run upon it We contemn all his Commands and set light by all his Promises and despise all his Threatnings We see and believe them all but prefer the pleasure of our sins before them and transgress in open affront to them And such a state as this every man must needs see is so far from gaining his favour and ascertaining his acceptance that in reality it is a continued heightning of every provocation an habitual hostility and state of crying sin But if ever our Orthodox Faith and Professions avail us unto Life and Pardon they must end in our Obedient Works and Actions We must do that which we know God requires and practise that Pure Religion which we profess If ye know these things sayes our Saviour happy are ye if ye do them Joh. 13.17 It is not every verbal Professor every one that saith unto me or calls me Lord Lord that shall enter into the kingdom of heaven but he only that doth the will of my Father which is in Heaven Mat. 7.21 We are condemn'd out of our own mouths if we commend Christs Religion whilst we contemn and disobey it Every word which we speak in its behalf is a charge against our own selves and every Plea which we make for it is to us an accusation For if it be a Religion so pure so good so worthy of God and so beneficial to men as we profess it is the more unpardonable wretches we that transgress and act against it All the praises which we heap upon our Duty are a most bitter invective upon our own practice and the more we commend Christs Religion and Laws the more we condemn our own transgressions so that now God in exacting the punishment be it as severe as it well can only executes our own sentence We are made the worse for our knowledge if our Actions are not ruled by it for it shews plainly that our Lusts are most obstinate and our wills most wicked when for all we are clearly shewed the Laws the Promises and the threats of God we can yet despise them all and for the short pleasure of a silly sin transgress and act against them And since it doth thus enhanse our Sin we may be sure that it will proportionably encrease our punishment For he that knows his masters will and doth it not shall be beaten with many stripes Luk. 12.47 And thus we see that this thinking to be saved by the labour of our minds without any works of our lives and practice and coming to Heaven barely by a True Belief and Orthodox Opinions and Right Professions without ever obeying in our works and actions is one of those false and delusive grounds whereupon men shift off the necessity of this service with all their strength the service of their Actions And another false ground of shifting off the same service is 2. The delusive confidence which wicked men have of being saved at the last Day for an obedience of idle desires and ineffective wishes It is a strange conceit which some people have been taught viz. that the desire of Grace is Grace and that God will at the last Day judge men to have obeyed although they have not wrought but only desired it There is a complaisant sort of Casuistry and a much easier than ever God made that has been brought into the World which bids men to hope well though they do nothing so long as they find in themselves a desire that they could do it They wish they were what God expects and that they performed what he commands but they do no more but wish it They sit still and work no more now they have wished it than they did before Theirs is a weakly infant-desire it just lives but that is all it can effect nothing For the smallest lust is too strong for it and the least temptation over-bears it the desire of the Vertue is hush'd when
that the motions of sin which were occasioned and strengthened by the weakness and inability of the Law which could not restrain them did work such service and obedience to them in our members or bodily powers as to bring forth fruit unto death But now upon our becoming subject unto Christ we are delivered from the subjection of the Law whose weakness gave sin so great advantage over us that Law I say being now dead and abolished wherein whilst we so served sin we were held in subjection which deliverance is vouchsafed us as I said for this end that being made not the Laws but Christs Subjects now we should answerably to that serve in newness of Spirit or in such sort as the new Spirit and Grace of his Religion enables us and not as we served formerly under our subjection to the Law in the oldness of the letter or in those weak and ineffective degrees whereto the helpless letter of the old Law could assist us But upon what I say of this change of service from sin to God which we have all felt upon our becoming Christians being an effect of this change of subjection from the Law to Christ some of you 't is like may think that the Law which I affirm we sinned under is aspersed and reproached by me and thus object What say we then Is the Law under which you say we sinned so much and from which being now delivered we have ceased to serve sin the cause of sin to them who live under it Now to this I must answer God forbid that any man should either say or think so No we served sin under the Law but yet the Law was no cause of sin And both these all they who live under it feel in themselves and must acknowledge To avoid offence suppose that I my self were this Subject of the Law now as I was formerly 't is very true as I have said that I do serve sin under it but is the Law the cause of it By no means Nay so far is the Law from causing or encouraging sin in me that on the contrary it points it out to me and forbids it I had not known what things are sin but by the help of the Law which shews it for I had not known lust or concupiscence for instance which is only in the heart and not in the outward action to be a sin except the Law of the tenth Commandment had said expresly thou shalt not covet But for all the Law both shews and prohibits sin and so can contribute nothing to produce but rather to destroy it yet I must truly tell you still that whereas Sin has other causes more than enow that are sufficient to produce it the Law is so weak and imperfect as not to be able to hinder it For in this instance of Concupiscence especially whereto in the Law there is no express punishment threatned the sinfull inclinations of our flesh which are cause enough of all sin grow bold and hearing of no express threatning from it will not be restrained by it And by this means the Sin of Concupiscence taking occasion from the impunity of the Commandment instead of being restrained by it took liberty and presumed upon it and so without all fear wrought and accomplished or brought on to compleat action and practice in me all manner of concupiscence And seeing the Law only forbid but could not restrain it it helped on in the end rather to make and let me see my self to be a sinner than to deliver me from sin for without the promulgated Law Sin was almost dead being both little in it self and less upon the Conscience For the less knowledge there is of the Law the less is there of sin in transgressing it and also the less sense of it And therefore as I say as for this instance of Concupiscence which I had not known to be a Sin unless the Law had told me so without the Law I had neither offended so highly in it nor had so great a sense of my offence And this was found by experience in the men of our Nation For any one of them who was alive at the promulgation of the Law upon Mount Sinai might say I was alive to my thinking and as to great degrees of that guilt which I contracted afterwards without the Law once or before such time as it was there proclaimed to us for till then I knew not lust to be a sin and so by reason of my ignorance neither sinn'd so much in it nor was so sensible of it as now I am but when the Commandment came and was plainly made known to me by Moses then Sin I say which was only shewn and forbid but could not be restrained by it revived and begun to have the fulness of guilt and terrour in it and I thenceforward being warn'd against it and not being able to keep back from it became liable to that death which is the wages of it and died by it And thus the Law or Commandment which was not only holy and innocent in it self but moreover intended by God for my good and ordained to life which it promised could I have obeyed it I notwithstanding found to be unto death to me because that became my due when I sinn'd against it Not as if the Law can be said to be the Author of death to me more than it is of sin in me For it was aim'd to destroy sin which it shews and forbids and to procure life which it offers and promises But the true cause of this effect so contrary to its intention viz. its producing Sin and Death whenas it was ordained to Holiness and Life is its being as I said before weak and unable by all its aids to conquer fully and restrain that Sin which brings Death upon us for it cannot subdue but only shew and forbid it And therefore our habitual Lusts finding themselves too strong for it burst through it and in spite of all its restraint make us commit the one and so become liable to the other For in very deed it is not the Law which is the cause of Death to me but Sin it self which taking occasion or advantage by the literal and fancied impunity of the tenth Commandment deceived me through a false hope into the commission of it and by it made me in reality liable to that Death which is truly the wages of it or in a word slew me Wherefore notwithstanding we sinn'd yea and died also during our subjection under the Law yet for all that neither can our Sin nor our Death be charged upon the Law it self because instead of contributing to them it tends to destroy them by expresly forbidding the one and offering to deliver us from the other And therefore as for this difficulty that was made at the seventh verse against my saying that we served Sin under the Law viz. its following thence that the
enable men to do what it commanded is true still For the Law did not promise it although several both before and under the Law enjoyed it but they who had the benefit of it received it not from the Covenant of the Law but from the Covenant of Grace and the Gospel which has been more or less on foot through all times ever since the World began And in this Covenant since Christ has given us the last Edition and perfection of it both these great defects of the Mosaick Law which rendered it so unable to work this intire reformation and obedience are fully supplied For in every Page of Christ's Gospel what is so legible as the promise of eternal life The joys of Heaven are as much insisted on by Christ as the delights of Canaan were by Moses And then as for the other promise viz. that of the Spirit it is now as plainly revealed as words can make it For we need not to guess at it by signs or to presume it from probabilities or to believe it upon Syllogism and consequence but Christ has spoke out so as to be understood by every capacity God will give the holy Spirit to them that ask him Luke 11.13 Now because the Law of Moses laboured under these two great defects which are happily supplied by the Gospel of Christ by reason whereof it was very unable to effect that reformation of the World which was necessary therefore doth the Apostle in several places speak very meanly of it as of a weak and ineffective Instrument He affirms plainly and proves also That it neither could nor did make men throughly good and that therefore God was forced in the fulness of time to make known and in Christ's death to establish a better If there had been a Law given by Moses which could have given life then saith he verily righteousness should not have needed to be sought by another Covenant but have been by the Law But this we see it could not for the Scripture hath concluded all those who lived under it to be still under the dominion of sin that so since the Law of Moses could not do it the promise of eternal life of the Spirit and of other things which we have by the faith of Jesus Christ might be given to work and effect it to those that believe Gal. 3.21 22. Something indeed the Law did towards it for it armed their consciences against sin so that they could not take their full swing and transgress without all fear and remorse And this was some restraint and kept them from being so ill by far as otherwise they would have been although it was not able to make them so good as they should And to lay this hank upon sin and to check it in some measure till such time as the Gospel should be more clearly revealed to subdue it perfectly was that very end for which the Law was at first given and whereto so long as it was in force it served Wherefore saith he serveth the Law of Moses It was added to the rude draught of the Gospel-Covenant made with Abraham because of the transgressions of men which grew very high that it might in some degree restrain them till Jesus Christ the seed of Abraham should come to whom as to the head and in behalf of his Church the promise of such Grace as would restrain it fully was made And to fit it the more for imprinting an awe upon peoples Consciences whereby it might lay this restraint upon sin it was ordained at the first giving of it by terrible fire and thundrings made by the Angels which were so dreadful that the people desired of God that those formidable Angels might be no more employed in delivering it to them but that it might be put into the hands of another Mediator viz. Moses who was a man like unto themselves Gal. 3.19 But although this restraint upon Sin were something yet was it far from sufficient so that still it is true of the Law of Moses that notwithstanding it could begin yet it could finish and make nothing perfect but that it was the bringing in of a better hope than was warranted by the Law which should do that Heb. 7.19 And as for this imperfection and faultiness which the Apostle imputes to the first Covenant or Law of Moses in these and other places it is nothing more as he observes than God himself has charged upon it when he speaks of establishing a better instead of it For if the first Covenant by Moses had been faultless and void of imperfection then should no place have been sought for the introduction of the second which it is plain there was For finding fault with them for their breach of the first Covenant he saith in Jer. 31.31 the dayes come when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel such as shall make me to be for ever unto them a God and enable them to be unto me an obedient People Heb. 8.7 8 9 10. Now this Inability of the Law of Moses to work a compleat conquest over sin and a thorow reformation which the Apostle affirms so clearly in these other places he sets out more largely and particularly in that seventh Chapter to the Romans For from the beginning of this Discourse which I have taken at the 14 th Verse of the 6 th Chapter to the end of it at the 5 th vers of the 8 th this weakness and inability of the Law is that still which is every where endeavour'd to be made out and which returns upon us as the conclusion and inference from every argument Sin must not have dominion over you saith he because you are not under the Law where is the place of its reigning but under the Grace of Christ at the 14. verse of the 6 th Chapter And in the 7 th it is taken notice of at every turn When you were in the flesh or under the Law which from its consisting so much of Carnal Ordinances and giving the flesh so much advantage is called flesh Galat. 3.3 the motions of sin which were encouraged by the weakness of the Law brought forth fruit unto death but now being delivered from the weak Law you serve in newness of spirit not as you did then in the oldness of the letter vers 5 6. Sin taking occasion or advantage over the weak Commandment wrought in me all manner of concupiscence vers 8. When the weak Commandment came sin revived and I died vers 9. Sin taking occasion or advantage by the Commandment slew me vers 11. by which prevailing over the Commandment it appears to be exceeding sinfull vers 13. And at the end of the discourse at the 8 th Chapter we are told again of the Law of Moses being weak through the conquering power of the flesh which made it necessary for God to send his own Son with a better Law which was strong enough to rescue us not of the dominion of
to disobey in it our obedience in other things is all that we have to shew besides and therefore it must be our excuse for it And this being an errour of such eternal moment and a Rock whereupon all the souls which miscarry under any appearances of piety are split I will be particular in recounting and evacuating those colours and pretences wherewith men deceive their own souls and think that they justifie and defend it Now as for those false grounds and pretensions whereby men seek to shelter themselves under the practice of such bosome-sins as they overlook because they have no mind to leave them hoping to be secured whilst they continue in them because of their obedience in other parts of Duty which is a partial obedience Those pretensions I say which are most pleadable in this matter are these that follow viz. because their indulgence of themselves in those instances wherein they disobey is either upon one or more of these accounts 1. For the preservation of their Religion and of themselves in times of danger and persecution 2. For the supply of their necessities by sinful arts compliances and services in times of want and indigence 3. For the satisfaction of their Flesh in sins of temper and complexion age or way of life 1. The first pretence whereby men justifie to their own thoughts the indulged transgression of several Laws whilst they obey in others is because those transgressions wherein they allow themselves are necessary for the preservation of their Religion and of themselves in those times of danger and persecution wherein Gods Providence has placed them Religion is in danger and like to be undermined by the close and subtle arts or overborn by the more open and powerful violence of strong and witty Enemies And this is Gods Cause and Christ our Lord and Saviours interest so that whatever is done here we think is in service of our Maker If we fight it is his battles if we spitefully persecute and devour it is his enemies if we rob and spoil it is to weaken his adversaries if we lye and dissemble it is to defeat the designs of such as he will call Rebels if we transgress in all the instances and use all the lawless liberties of war it is because we are engaged in his quarrel The Cause which we contend for and have to manage is sacred and that we believe will justifie all means and hallow any services whatsoever So that our heat and fierceness wrath and bitterness envy and malice revenge and cruelty endless strife and ungovernable variance spoils and robberies seditions and murthers wars and tumults in a word all the transports of passion and peevishness anger and ill nature rigour and revenge are all sacred under this Cover and pass for holy zeal and pious vehemence and religious concern for God whenas in reality they are a most impious throwing off and bursting through all the Tyes of Religion and Bonds of Duty towards men All these enormous effects and horrible instances of an indulged disobedience are at this Day the consequents of this pretension For some on one hand who call us Hereticks and enemies to Christ and holy Church think no means sinful whereby they can weaken and divide seduce surprize or any way destroy us For they esteem it lawful to dissemble under all shapes to gain a Proselyte or to disaffect a Party to our Communion and Government They act a part and play the Hypocrite in all Disguises and under cover of all Trades the better to insinuate themselves among all sorts of men they will affirm falshood even of their own Church when it serves their turn and deny any Doctrines Precepts or Parts of it when they are a scandal to the persons whom they would practise upon and make against them They make no conscience of lyes and perjuries in conversation when thereby they can promote the Churches interest For they have found out ways to deceive without lying and to lye without sin and to forswear without perjury and to perjure themselves without danger by their pious frauds and religious arts of equivocations mental reservations dispensations pardons and indulgences They can be treacherous and faithless without breach of faith if it were made to Hereticks they assassinate and murther Magistrates embitter and embroil Subjects against their Governours and against one another they conspire the death of Kings the confusion and fall of Kingdoms the ruine of all that dare oppose them yea even of all that differ from them And all this they do for Christ's sake in a zealous concern for God and Religion and for the utter extirpation of all heresie and schism It is this pretence which bears them out through all and makes them believe that they are serving God whilst after this extravagant rate they are overturning his whole Gospel And others again even of our own selves who justly abhor these damnable instances of disobedience upon the pretence of preserving or propagating Religion in some furious and fiery spirited sort of Papists for God forbid that we should think them all to be of this temper do yet run into the same extravagance which upon so great reason they condemn in them For if we look into our zeal for the common Religion of Protestants we shall find that we transgress many and those most material and weighty Laws of it whilst we express our affection and concern to defend and preserve it For doth not this pretence of preserving our Religion carry us beyond all the bounds of peaceableness and good subjection Our great fears about its defence make us daily to distrust our Governours to think and speak irreverently and reproachfully of their persons to undervalue all their counsels to misconstrue all their actions and proceedings and with much undutifull credulity and unchristian rashness to believe and spread abroad concerning them most odious suspicions and invidious reports they make us pragmatical and busie-bodies to go out of our own sphere and to usurp upon the Magistrates in projecting means and expediencies prejudging Criminals and irreverent censuring reproaching yea and oft-times slandering of our Governours if they either in Court or Council at the Board or on the Bench determine contrary to our anticipations They make us to disturb the quiet and to unsettle the peace of our fellow-subjects in filling their minds with endless jealousies about their Princes care and their own safety and in possessing them with discontents and undutifull suspicions words and actions to the great weakning of Government and disturbance of the publick peace Yea I add further these same fears for our endangered Religion transport us into the transgression of sundry weighty Laws which oblige us towards our very enemies who have contrived to destroy us For they have made us most partially backward to believe any thing that is good and forward to catch at every thing that is spoken ill against them They have made many of us fierce and implacable malicious
I forsook not thy Commandments vers 87. and many now still are my persecutors and enemies yet do I not decline from thy testimonies vers 157. The Holy Apostles of our Saviour conflicted with more difficulties and distress persecutions and sufferings for the Religion and Obedience of their Lord than any men I think ever did or it may be ever will do I think sayes S t Paul that God hath set forth us Apostles last as it were men appointed to the bloodiest which is usually the last scene of all even to death it self For we are exposed to slaughter as men were in the tragical sports of that time upon a publick theatre being made a spectacle unto the world and to angels and to men From the first entrance on our office even to this present hour we both hunger and thirst and are naked and are buffetted and have no certain dwelling place being made as the very filth of the world and the off-scouring of all things from the first to this day 1 Cor. 4.9 11 13. If any straits could authorize an evil action or if any pressures could justifie a disobedient escape sure these would But they knew too well the nature of their Religion ever to dream of a liberty to sin that they might avoid persecution and they were too resolutely addicted to it ever to attempt it For neither the extremity of their sufferings nor the desperateness of their danger could ever make them transgress their duty or go beyond the Laws of their Religion to lessen or prevent them But they obeyed bravely and entirely even in the highest strains even in the most ungratefull instances even in those matters wherein if any where the malice and violence of their enemies would provoke or rather force them to disobey For in the midst of all these pressures sayes S t Paul being reviled we bless being persecuted we suffer it being defamed we do nothing worse than entreat and pray for our defamers 1 Cor. 4.12 13. In patience in afflictions in necessities in distresses in stripes in imprisonments in popular tumults in manual labours in all these things and in the throng and distraction of all our sorrows we approve our selves as the true obedient Servants and faithfull Ministers of God shewing that not by any selfish disobedient politick shifts but by pureness of conversation by long-suffering by kindness even to our very enemies in a word by the most excellent of all gifts and the Epitome of all Duty Charity or love unfeigned 2 Cor. 6.3 4 5. Religion then can never give protection to any disobedience nor our concern and zeal for God be pleaded with any shew of modesty or reason in vindication of our transgressions of any of his Laws or Precepts For Religion needs no defence from times of suffering it can live in them it is improved by them nay some of its most glorious parts and eminent instances are never shown in any lustre but when we fall under them and where it ought to be defended the breach of Laws is in no wise a fit instrument for its advancement and protection For God cannot be honoured nor Religion advanced by disobedience Obedience is so essential and super-eminent a part of its Nature and so preferable to any idle profession or ineffective belief that to transgress Christian Laws for the maintenance of an undisturbed liberty in professing Christian opinions were not to strengthen and preserve but dangerously to wound if not wholly to destroy it This disobedience to Christian Laws that we may avoid suffering for the profession of Christian Doctrines is such as the very temper of the Gospel which is made up in great part of passive Precepts and a suffering Religion plainly contradicts such as its Laws and Precepts strictly forbid such as Christ our Lord and Judg will certainly and most severely punish and such as the most persecuted religious men could never be provoked or forced into either by the greatness of their fears or by the violence of their pains although the most exquisite that could be invented by the most searching wits and keenest malice in the world So that whensoever men sin to avoid suffering and disobey the Laws of Religion to preserve the profession of it from persecution it is not Religion but their Lusts not their love of God but their love of their own selves which makes them disobedient Religion will upon no accounts justifie their transgressions but utterly condemns them and unless their repentance prevents it God at the last Day will endlesly punish and avenge for them But as for Religion in that narrow sense wherein some understand it i. e. the use of religious Ordinances and the profession and belief of religious Opinions if men would shew their care and concern to preserve the free liberty and unpersecuted use of that so as both God and all good men should honour and commend them let them shew it in a pious and discreet management Which they will justly be thought to do if they keep within their own sphere and use even there no sinful and disobedient means and are zealous in the first place for the practice and preservation of religious Laws and next to that for religious Ordinances and Opinions 1. In shewing their care to preserve the free liberty and unpersecuted use of religious Ordinances and Professions they must act within their own sphere We private Christians must not prescribe methods of preserving it to publick Magistrates or censure their proceedings and speak irreverently of their persons and administrations when they determine otherwise than we had thought fitting We must not without consent and approbation of Authority combine in Bodies and associate in solemn Leagues Bonds and Covenants to be aiding and assisting to each other with our Persons Armes and Purses to protect it against all Opposers For these are such things as are no part of our business but God has hedged them in and entrusted them in other hands He has delegated that power to Kings and Governours to take care of the common good and to judge of publick expedience He has put the sword into the Magistrates hands and has authorized him and him only to have power of life and death and to decree and establish peace and war And if any man without his order shall take the Sword and use it against his Brother he may read his Sentence which is writ in plain words already They that take the sword as every man doth when Authority doth not allow or reach it out to him shall perish by the sword Matth. 26.52 These means then and any others which God has appropriated to the care and entrusted in the hands of other men can be no lawful expressions of our care but an unlawful intruding into anothers Office a sinful use of what is put out of ours and committed to an others management Our exercise and use of them is a proud usurpation an unpeaceable encroachment a busie medling in other mens
Offices and Affairs against the plain Precept of studying to be quiet and to do our own business 1 Thess. 4.11 But the endeavours which we are to use and the means whereby we must try to secure to our selves an unpersecuted freedom in religious Ordinances and Professions must be such as are within the sphere of private men We must be upright and exemplary in the practice of it our selves and press a like exemplariness in the practice of it upon others By our humble modest quiet peaceable and submissive carriage we must convince such as are in Power that it deserves protection and by our affectionate fervent and importunate prayers to Gods we must endeavour to have it put into their hearts to protect and preserve it We must plead its Cause and represent that truth and goodness which may recommend it and try to wipe off the aspersions and rectifie the mistakes of such as plead against it or think hardly of it These and such like means are the laudable service in this Case and the proper business of private Christians And whilst their care is contained within this compass and they act thus within their own sphere it is excellent and praise-worthy they seek to preserve Religion and their seeking to do it in this way is it self very pious and religious 2. In shewing their care to preserve the free and unpersecuted profession of Religion they must exercise such only of those actions within their own sphere as are lawful and innocent but by no means endeavour to maintain it by such as are sinful and disobedient They must not defend it by lyes and forgeries by wrath and bitterness by fierceness and revenge by slandering and reviling of their Opposers They must so defend Religion as not to disobey it because that is not defending but betraying it A free profession is no further desirable than it tends to an upright practice So that to disobey for it is to lose all that wherefore we endeavour after it Truth must never be bought with the loss of innocence nor must we ever commit any one sinful action to promote a freedom of orthodox and true professions 3. In evidencing their care in preserving the free and unpersecuted profession of Religion they must be zealous in the first place for the practice and preservation of religious Laws and next to that for religious Ordinances and Opinions S t Paul directs us to the great Object of all religious zeal when he tells us that Christ came into the world to purchase to himself a peculiar people zealous of good WORKS Tit. 2.14 Nothing in the world is so warrantable a matter of a mans zeal as Gods Laws and mens obedience For the Laws of Christ's Gospel are that part which he esteems most he has made them the measure of life or death the Rule of our eternal absolution or condemnation And as he accounts of them so should we too Our zeal for them must be more warm and our care more watchful than for any other thing because God himself is most especially concerned for them and all men are most highly concerned in them they being that whereby all men must live or dye eternally This I will says S t Paul to Titus that thou affirm constantly That they which have believed in God may be CAREFVL to maintain GOOD WORKS these things are good and profitable unto men Tit. 3.8 So that the practice of religious Laws must be the great point wherein we are to be zealous and careful in the first place Next to which we must take care of those opinions which have a great influence upon and are the great productive instruments of all obedient practice such as are all opinions which are either motives or inducements helps or encouragements to obedience In which sort of opinions our Religion abounds there being as I said no idle Article in the Christian Creed but such Doctrins and Declarations concerning God and Christ and our selves and the other world as are either absolutely necessary or very helpful to a holy life All which according to their several proportions in promoting piety and obedience to Gods Laws we are to be zealously concerned for in the next place as we are for that pious obedience which is wrought by them in the first But when we have shown our good affection to substantial piety and Religion by a just zeal for obedience and plainly practical opinions then may it be very fit for us to shew our zeal for other true Doctrines and Professions likewise For it is a great honour to God and an ornament to Religion that we have it pure and sincere free from all things that are liable to just exception and from all mixture of errour and falshood And it is also a great happiness to men to have orthodox apprehensions in Religion and to embrace nothing for Gospel truths but what God has thereby declared to them But it is a further happiness still and such whereof men are the most sensible to be free from the imperious imposition and tyranny of errour so as neither to be forced upon the impossible belief of that which in our own minds we see is false and therefore cannot believe nor upon the feigned and hypocritical profession of believing a thing when really we do not believe it one of which two is mens unhappiness when their professed Religion falls under persecution Now both these are severe and rigorous impositions For the first is utterly impossible to any so long as it continues a free and impartial head as the latter is to any whilst it remains an honest and obedient heart So that all men have very great reason so far as they can by all innocent and honest ways to be zealous against them and to use all the lawful care and caution that possibly they can to avoid so powerful a motive as a sharp persecution is to tempt them to a thing so unreasonable as is the first and so wicked and sinful as is the latter So long then as men will moderate their zeal for the unpersecuted use of religious Ordinances and profession of religious Opinions with this discretion let them be zealous and concerned for it in God's Name For it is their Duty so to be and God will reward and all good men commend them for it If they take care that their zeal transport them not beyond their own sphere that it carry them not against their Duty and that it be concerned in the first place for Laws and practical opinions they may allow it after that to spend it self upon other Points which have more of speculative truth but less of practice This zeal now is excellent 't is truly pious 't is religious But if they have a zeal without obedience if for preventing of persecution in the profession of true opinions they run upon sinful means and undutiful transgressions their zeal is ungodly and all their pretended care of Religion is plainly irreligious For
if he would he might contend with him How shall man sayes he be just with God If he will contend with him he cannot answer him so much as one of a thousand If I justifie my self in the unerringness of my obedience my own mouth shall condemn me if I say before him that I am perfect and have sinned in nothing it should also by such confessions as he would extort from me prove me perverse Job 9.2 3 20. And David a man after Gods own heart acknowledges freely that he is guilty not only of several sins which he remembers but also of many more which he doth not know of Who can understand his errours cleanse thou me from my secret faults Psal. 19.12 Nay even Paul the Apostle who at that time was a most undoubted heir of Heaven doth yet own freely that as yet he had not attained to perfection but only endeavoured after it Phil. 3.12 13. But although he were not so perfect as to obey without all errour and to offend in no instance yet had he as much perfection as the Gospel exacts and such as the best men on earth attain to For at the 15 th verse he calls upon as many as be perfect in such measure as the Gospel accepts of to be thus minded as he was and forgetting those things whereto they had already attained which were now behind to press on towards that higher perfection which was yet wanting in them and before them as he told them he himself did vers 13. And since men of this full growth and high pitch in goodness could never yet get free of these unavoidable infirmities it cannot be expected that others who are endowed with a more imperfect Grace and a lower Virtue should ever live entirely above them No alas God himself declares plainly by the mouth of his inspired Servants that no man yet ever did attain so far There is no man sayes Solomon that sins not 1 Kings 8.46 He challenges any person how good and holy soever to say that he is wholly blameless and has no stain at all upon him Who can say I have made my heart clean I am wholly pure from my sin Prov. 20.9 No man certainly not the most nobly good and eminently virtuous themselves For there is not a just man upon earth that doth good and sinneth not Eccles. 7.20 The blessed Saints who are now in heaven could never get perfectly free from sin till they got thither For it is only in heaven the New Jerusalem where the spirits of just men are made perfect Heb. 12.23 But so long as we continue here on earth let us aspire after that pitch of Righteousness never so much yet such is the inseparable infirmity of our nature we shall still fall short of it Be favourable in censuring one anothers faults sayes S t James because every man will need that favour from others towards his own faults more or less for in many things we offend all Jam. 3.1 2. whatever some may falsly pretend yet in reality no man lives entirely innocent For if we say that we have no sin we deceive our selves and the truth is not in us 1 Joh. 1.8 we are never able to show this height of obedience nor doth Christs Gospel exact it of us For even there we are taught in our daily prayers to confess our daily trespasses and yet notwithstanding that we are allow'd nay commanded in the same breath to call God our Father still Mat. 6.9 12. As for some slips and transgressions therefore we see plainly that they are consistent with a state of salvation and are not eternally threatned but dispensed with by the Covenant of the Gospel For the infirmity of our Nature is such that we never can and Gods goodness is so great that he never will require us to be entirely free from them The very best men and those very Saints who are now in bliss have lived subject to them and fallen under them but yet they made no blot in their character nor robbed them of Gods favour and that life and pardon which is promised in the Gospel And that we may be certain is consistent which as we plainly see not only needs must but indeed alwayes has consisted with a state of Mercy and Regeneration For the terms of the Gospel are the same to all times and what they bear with in one they do likewise in another God is no respecter of persons nor can ever render different judgement to them who have done the same things So that as for some sins we are fully assured from the foregoing considerations that they are not eternally threatned but dispensed with by the Covenant of the Gospel and that so long as we are free from others if we die in them without amending them we shall not at the last day be condemned for them Thus then in the General it appears that some slips are consistent with a state of Grace God under the Gospel-Covenant doth not punish them but bear with them so that although we die unreformed from them we shall yet be saved notwithstanding them But to clear up this business more fully I shall proceed now to what I undertook in the second place namely to shew more particularly what and of what Nature those allowed slips and transgressions are whereof I shall discourse in the ensuing Chapters CHAP. II. Of the Nature of these consistent slips more particularly The CONTENTS Our unchosen sins are consistent with a state of Grace but our wilfull and chosen ones destroy it All things are made Good or Evil a matter of reward or punishment by a Law Laws are given for the guidance and reward only of our voluntary and chosen actions This proved first from the clear reason of the thing Where it is inferred from the Nature of Laws which is to oblige from that way that all Laws have of obliging which is not by forcing but perswading men from the dueness of rewards and punishments commendations and reproofs from the applause or accusations of mens own consciences upon their obedience or transgressions Secondly From the express declarations of Scripture IF any man should ask which of all Christs Laws those are which he may keep or break at his own pleasure and yet go unpunished I must tell him none at all For there are no failings and transgressions in a mans life allowed of for this reason because disobedience is warranted to some Laws although it be not to others No in our whole Religion there is no one Law that is left so naked For God has not given any Commandments with that indifference to them as if he cared not what became of them or were unconcern'd whether men kept or broke them but he has established them all under the same penalty so that he who breaks any one is guilty as S t James sayes and obnoxious to the punishment of all Jam. 2.10 It is not therefore the transgression of some Laws which shall be born
of several of his dearest Saints who have experienced the truth of it By all which it appears that so long as we are guilty of no other slips but such as these we are safe in Gods favour and secure of his promises we shall be accepted by him although we live and dye in them And thus at length it appears what sins are truly and innocently involuntary viz. those which are acted ignorantly and unwittingly and that they do not unsaint a man or destroy his state of Grace and Salvation but consist with it CHAP. V. Of these involuntary and consistent sins particularly and of the first cause of innocent involuntariness viz. Ignorance The CONTENTS A twofold knowledge necessary to choice viz. a general understanding and particular consideration Consistent sins are either sins of ignorance or of inconsideration Of sins involuntary through ignorance of the general Law which makes a duty How there is still room for it in the world Of crying sins which are against Natural Conscience no man can be innocently ignorant Of what others he may This ignorance is necessary to all men for some time and to some for all their lives Mens sins upon it are not damning Of sins involuntary through our ignorance of the present actions being included in the known Law and meant by it The causes of this ignorance First The difference between Good and Evil in some actions being not in kind but only in degree Secondly The limitedness of most Laws which admit of exceptions Thirdly The indirect obligations which pass upon several indifferent actions Fourthly The clashing of several Laws whence one is transgressed in pursute of another the great errour upon this score is in the case of zeal Fifthly The clashing of Laws with opinions or prejudices BUt in regard this consistence of our ignorant and unconsidered slips is a matter of so great account in the quieting and comforting of troubled and fearfull Consciences I will yet proceed to enquire of it more distinctly and to shew what particular ignorances those are which will cause that innocent involuntariness which Christs Gospel doth not punish as has been already shewn but graciously dispense with To him that knows to do good saith S t James and doth it not to him 't is sin Jam. 4.17 And the reason why it is so is this because that sin which a man knows and sees he wills and chooses but if he commit sin when he sees it not it is not imputed to him for a sin because it is not chosen by him That we may clearly understand then what ignorance renders any sin involuntary and therefore unpunishable it is very proper to enquire what knowledge is necessary unto choice and fit to make any sin to be esteemed voluntary and chosen Now to our choice of any sin there is a two-fold knowledge necessary First An habitual and general knowledge that the action is sinfull Secondly An actual use and exercise of that knowledge in a particular animadvertence and express thinking upon what we know which is consideration Both these are necessary to a chosen sin for we must both know an action to be a sin and also actually bethink our selves and consider of its sinfulness before we can be said to chuse the sin and wilfully to disobey in it 1. Before we can be said to chuse the sinfulness of any action it is necessary that we know habitually and in the general that the action whensoever it is committed is sinfull I call that an habitual and general knowledge when we are not to learn of any sinfull action that there is a Law that forbids it nor are in any doubts or darkness in our own thoughts whether it be a sin or no. But if it is proposed to our minds they are already resolved about it and need not further to enquire of it they know and judge it to be a sin when they are asked the question and that is their standing opinion and fixt perswasion And this knowledge because it is no more of one particular action than of another I call general and because it is fixt and permanent having grown into a lasting impression and habitual judgment of the mind I call an habitual knowledge Now that we may be said to chuse to sin and disobey in any particular action it is necessary that we have this general and habitual knowledge of its sinfulness For if we do not understand that although we do chuse the action yet we cannot be esteemed to chuse the sin since our will may be all the while innocent and obedient and ready to refuse the action if it were made to see that it is sinful We can have no choice of that whereof we have no apprehension for the will as it is truly said is a blind faculty and can chuse nothing till it be represented and proposed to it by the understanding So that if our minds are in darkness about any action and have no knowledge of its being forbidden our wills can have no share in chusing of the sin but since it was unknown it must be also involuntary and unchosen But besides this general and habitual knowledge of the sinfulness of any action there is moreover necessarily required to our choice of it 2. An actual use and exercise of that knowledge in a particular animadvertence and express thinking upon what we know which is consideration For there is no knowledge that directs and influences our choice further than we actually attend to it and consider of it but if at any time we did not think of it it is all one as if we did not know it Nothing is a motive to our will further than it is heeded and attended to at the time of willing and unless we see and consider of it then when we are to chuse upon it For in this Case the Civilians Maxim is very true That which doth not appear to be is of no more account than if really it were not at all That any sin then may be said to be willed and chosen by us it is necessary that it occur to our thoughts and be present to our minds at the time of chusing of it For if we transgress when we do not think of it our heart may be innocent all the while and our will incur no disobedience at all since if we did but consider of the sin we would by no means embrace but utterly refuse it So that all that can be charged upon us in such Cases is only the hast and errour of our understandings but not any rebellion in our wills for our heart is good although the outward action appear to be evil Now since both a general knowledge and a particular consideration are necessary in every wilful and chosen sin the involuntariness of any transgressions may arise from the want of either of them So that those sins are justly reputed to be involuntary and unchosen which proceed 1. From the want of the general knowledge
as in all sins of ignorance 2. From the want of particular animadvertence as in all sins of inconsideration 1. The first Cause of an innocent and pardonable involuntariness is ignorance of our Duty when we venture to do what God forbids because we do not know that he has forbidden it And this ignorance may enter upon two accounts either First From our ignorance or mistake of the Law it self when we know not that God has made any such Law as our present action is a transgression of Or Secondly From our ignorance or mistake of the thing it self which the Law enjoins or forbids when we know not that our present action comes under that which in the known Law is enjoined or forbidden Thus for instance a man may sin by backbiting censoriousness c. either because he knows not that backbiting and censoriousness are things prohibited or because he knows not that what he doth is censuring and backbiting And either way the errour may be confined to his understanding and the transgression be no where else but in his mind but may not reach his heart or will at all For he would neither utter the backbiting nor censorious word if he knew that it were against God's will but for this very reason he ventures on them because he knows not that actions of that kind are forbidden or that his is of that forbidden kind of actions First The first sort of ignorance which can effect an innocent involuntariness is our ignorance of the general Law which makes a Duty when we know not that God has given any such Commandment as our present action is a transgression of All the Laws of Christ are not known by every man but some are ignorant of one or other of them Nay there is no man how perfect soever his knowledg of them be at present but at some time he did not know them He had a time of learning before he attained to a compleat understanding of them For our knowledge of them as of all things else is gradual it goes on by steps and from the notice of one proceeds to the notice of another So that even the wise and learned themselves do not at all times see all those things which Christ has required of them but pass through a long time of ignorance before they arrive at that pitch of compleat knowledge But then there are others who have neither abilities nor opportunities to know every particular Law of Christ in a longer time nor some it may be in their whole lives For how many men are there in the world whose understanding is slow and who come to apprehend things with great difficulty And as their faculties are narrow so are their opportunies very small For although they are most heartily willing and desirous to see all that God has required of them that they may keep and practise it yet their education has been so poor that they cannot read it the place which Gods Providence has allotted for them is so destitute that they are far from them who should instruct them in it their condition in the world is so subject and dependant that they have little time and leisure of their own wherein to seek instruction and their apprehensions are so slow and their memories so frail that it is not much of it at a time which they can retain when they have got the freedome of it They are servants or poor men and must be working for their bodily maintenance when they should be in search of spiritual Doctrine Indeed through the infinite goodness and gracious Providence of God it seldome happens if at all that they who have honest hearts which stand ready and prepared to obey his Laws in Christian Countries live long without the means of understanding them For although they themselves cannot read yet if they desire it and seek after it they cannot miss of Christian people and of Christian Guides who will be most ready and willing to instruct them So that no man amongst them whose heart is first desirous of it can ever be supposed to want all opportunities of coming to the knowledg of his Duty But then we must consider that knowledge of our Duty is a word of a great latitude and has many parts and degrees in it For our Duty takes up a great compass no less than all the particular Laws which are contained under the general Precepts of Piety Sobriety Justice Charity Peaceableness And although every mans opportunities will serve him to know some and to understand the most general and comprehensive yet will they not enable him to understand all Our whole Duty 't is true both towards God and men is comprehended in that one Law of Love which as S t Paul says is the fulfilling of the Law Rom. 13.10 So that if every man had but the wit and parts the time and leisure to make deductions and to run this general Law into as many particular instances and expressions as it would reach to in the knowledge of that one Law which is soon learned he might have it within his own power when he would to understand all the rest which are contained within the compass of those two great Branches and general Heads of Duty But alas it is not every common head no nor very many even of the wise and learned who are so quick and ready so full and comprehensive in making inferences But they have need to be showed the particulars and are not able of themselves to collect them by a tedious and comprehensive train of consequences So that even when they have learned their obligation to the most material and general Precepts of the Gospel yet may there be several Particular ones still remaining which not only the poor and ignorant but they also who think themselves to be more wise and learned do not see and take themselves to be obliged by As for the crying sins of Perjury Adultery Murther Theft Oppression Lying Slander and the like which even natural Conscience without the assistance and instruction of Christ's Gospel would be afraid of these 't is true no man who is grown up to years of common reason and discretion can be ignorant of and yet be innocent But then besides these there are many other sins which are not of so black a Die or of so mischievous a Nature which many of them who profess the Gospel through the littleness of their abilities their leisure or opportunities do not understand to be sinful Their Consciences are not afraid of them nor check them either before or after they have committed them For how many are there of the Professors of Christ's Religion who never think of being called to an account for lasciviousness and uncleanness for passionateness and uncourteousness for backbiting and censoriousness for disturbing the publick peace and speaking evil of Dignities for not speaking well of an enemy or not praying for him or for the like Breaches of several other particular Laws
of Christ's Gospel whereby at the last Day we must all be judged Alas they know not of any such Laws nor ever think of being tryed by them In the Gospel 't is very true they are all recorded and by Christs Ministers at one time or other they are all proclaimed and by some exemplary good men although God knows they are very few in one place or other they are duly practised but yet for all this a great many Christian men are ignorant of some or other of them For either they cannot read the Scriptures where they are mentioned or they have not opportunity to hear the Preacher when every one of them particularly is taught or they are not in sight and observation of those patterns of piety by whom they are practised so that still they do not understand them Or if at last they do come to know them yet is it some time first and they acted several times against them before they saw that they were bound by them So that still we see there is room in the World for sins of ignorance from mens not knowing of the Law which they sin against Several particular Laws which lye more remote and are not so plainly of natural obligation nor startled at by natural Conscience are oftentimes and by many persons transgressed because they do not perceive themselves to be bound by them And as for this ignorance of one Branch or other of their Duty it is some mens unhappiness rather than their fault they do not so truly chuse it as through an unchosen necessity fall under it For it is necessary to all people whether they will or no for some time and to some for all their lives It is necessary I say to all people whether they will or no for some time For by the very constitution of our Nature which is before any thing of our own chusing we are born ignorant the mind of man being as Aristotle compares it like a blank paper wherein is nothing written No man ever since Adam came into the World in the free exercise of his understanding and with his perfect wits about him And when after some time we do begin to know yet even then is all our knowledg gradual and by little and little For we first learn one thing and then another and so by several steps attain at last to a competent pitch of knowledge When therefore any man doth begin to know Gods will and to discern his Laws yet is it not possible that he should understand them all at once but some of them every man must needs be ignorant of till he has had time to learn and know them all To some people I say it is necessary for their whole lives to their dying Day they do not arrive to the understanding of some things which God has required of them And that because they wanted either abilities or opportunities neither of which is of their own chusing They are of a slow understanding and have not those means of instruction or that time and leisure to attend upon it which others have And that by reason of their place and low condition in the world wherein it was Gods pleasure and not their own to dispose of them But now this ignorance of some or other of Christ's Laws being thus involuntary it must likewise be innocent For there is no damning sin and disobedience but in our own choice so that as long as the heart is true to God he will not be at enmity for any thing else which may seem to be against him And since our ignorance it self is innocent the sinning upon it will never be rebellious and damning For the disobedience is not any way chosen neither in it self nor in its Cause we do not chuse the sin because we do not see that the action is sinful nor do we chuse not to see it because we cannot help it But where there is no choice there will be there no condemnation So that the action which is done against the Law shall not be punished by the Law if we were thus innocently ignorant of the Law whereof it was a transgression And that it will not is plain For God never did nor ever will condemn any man for the transgression of a particular Law before he has had all due means and necessary opportunities such as may be sufficient to any honest and willing heart to understand it The Jewish Law obliged none but those whom it was proclaimed to who had the advantages of being instructed out of it It is they only says S t Paul who have sinned in or under the Law who shall be judged by the Law Rom. 2.12 The Law of Christ did not bind men until they had sufficient means and opportunities of knowing it and being convinced by it If ye were blind or wanted abilities says our Saviour to the Pharisees you should have no sin John 9.41 And again if I had not given them sufficient opportunities of knowing come and spoken unto them they had not had sin but now since I have they have no cloak or no pretence or excuse for their sin Nay if I had not given them all due means of conviction and done among them the works which no other man hath done they had not had sin still John 15.22 24. These slips of honest ignorance of our Duty are no more punished under the Gospel of Christ than they were under the Law of Moses For Christ our High Priest doth attone for them by virtue of his Sacrifice of himself as well as the Aaronical Priest in behalf of the ignorantly offending Jews made an attonement for them by his sin-offering Levit. 4.2 3 c. This S t Paul tells us in his comparison of Christ's Priesthood with that of the line of Aaron In his interceding to God and offering Sacrifice for sins he can have compassion on the ignorant Heb. 5.2 Ignorance therefore of the general Law which makes any thing a Duty so long as it is not wilful and affected by us through the merits of Christ's Sacrifice and the Grace of his Gospel renders those offences which we commit under it pardonable transgressions such as do not destroy a state of Grace but consist with it And this is the very determination which S t Cyprian gives in the Case of transgressing our Lords institution in the participation of the Lords Supper For some Churches in those Days were wont to make use of Water instead of Wine in which way of communicating several of them had been educated and brought up having received it ignorantly and in the simplicity of their hearts as they had done other things of their Religion from the practice and tradition of their Forefathers Now as for the usage it self S t Cyprian declares plainly that it is a breach of Duty and a custom very dangerous and sinful It is says he against our Lords Command who plainly bid us do what he did i. e.
much of the sinfulness of that action which we commit as to scruple its lawfulness and to be enlightned so far as really to doubt of it then is the case quite alter'd and we cannot plead that we did it ignorantly because we knew so much by it at least as should have made us forbear it For if indeed we doubted of it we knew it was as likely to be a Sin as to be an innocent Action because that is properly Doubting when we suspend our Assent and cannot tell which way to determine when we judge one to be as likely as the other and do not positively and determinately believe the truth of either And when this is our case concerning any Action if we venture on it whilst the doubt remains we are guilty of sin and must expect to suffer punishment For by so doing we shew plainly that we will do more for sin than we will for God and that it has a greater interest with us than he because even whilst we apprehend it as likely to be our sin as our liberty yet for the sins sake we chuse to venture on it rather than for Gods sake to abstain from it This Contempt of God there is in it in the Nature of the very thing it self although God had no ways expressed himself concerning it But we must know further that whensoever we are in this estate of doubt and unresolvedness God has given us a peremptory Command that we should not act what we fear is sinful but omit it Abstain saith he from all appearance of evil 1 Thess. 5.22 So that if after all our Disputes and Demurs we venture at last to commit the Action which we doubted of we do not only slight God by running the hazard of Disobedience to one Law whereof we are uncertain but we wilfully disobey him in transgressing of this other Law whereof we all either are or may be certain if we will And if in this estate we presume thus to disobey we shall be sure to suffer for our Disobedience And in this case St. Paul is plain For if there be any thing whose lawfulness our Consciences are unresolved and unperswaded of whilst that unresolvedness remains he tells us plainly that our commission of it is utterly unlawful Whatsoever says he is not of Faith or proceeding from a belief and perswasion of its lawfulness is sin So that if it be about the eating of meats for Instance he that doubts is damn'd both of God and of himself if he eat because he eateth not of Faith Rom. 14.23 If our minds therefore are so far enlightned concerning any sinful Action as that we are come to doubt of it we are no longer innocently and excusably ignorant For we see enough by it to make us chuse to abstain from it and if for all this we presume still to venture on it sin lyes at the door and we must answer for it We are no longer within the excuse of Ignorance but we are guilty of a wilful sin and are got within the bounds of Death and Damnation But if in any Action we know nothing at all of the Law which forbids it or after we have known that if we are still ignorant of its being contain'd under it if we are not come to doubt but are either in Ignorance or Errour concerning it our Ignorance shall excuse our Fault and deliver us from Condemnation We do not chuse the sin which we do thus ignorantly commit and therefore we shall not suffer that Punishment which is threatned to it but our unknown offence is a pardonable slip such as according to the gracious Terms of Christs Gospel shall surely go uncondemned And this is true not only of simple Ignorance but likewise of the two particular Modes of Ignorance viz. First Forgetfulness Secondly Errour 1. Our sins of Ignorance will be born with if we venture upon the sinful Action through Ignorance of its sinfulness which we knew formerly but at the time of acting have forgotten For a slip of Forgetfulness is no more than befel an Apostle who was for all that a blessed Saint and an Heir of Life still St. Paul himself reviles the High-Priest forgetting both his Duty and that that man was he whom he spoke to I wist not Brethren says he that he was the High-Priest for had I bethought my self I should not have spoke so disrespectfully to him it being thus written Thou shalt not speak evil of the Ruler of thy People Act. 23.5 2. Our sins of Ignorance shall be dispensed with if we are led to commit them through a mistake of their innocence when indeed they are sinful which is an acting of them through errour For no less a man than Peter was drawn into a sinful dissimulation through an erroneous conceit that his giving no offence but keeping in with the Jews which was the thing that he aimed at by it would justifie and bear him out in it For which S t Paul tells us when he came to Antioch he withstood him to the face because he was to be blamed Gal. 2.11 12 13. But yet for all this S t Peter was at that time a true good Saint and if it had pleased God then to call for him he had been undoubtedly an Heir of salvation And to mention no more upon this Point as there were constant atonements for the errours of the people under the Law so is there provision made for them under the Gospel For Christ who is our High Priest as S t Paul assures us can have compassion on the ignorant and erroneous or them who are out of the way Heb. 5.2 So long therefore we see as our ignorance of any kind whether of the Law it self or of our present actions being comprehended by it is involuntary and innocent so long shall we be born with for all such slips as we incur under it For God will never be severe upon us for weakness of understanding or for want of parts whilst there is nothing in us of a wicked heart and therefore if our ignorance it self is innocent our offences under it shall go unpunished But here we must observe that all this allowance for our ignorance is so far only as it is involuntary and faultless but if we chuse to be ignorant our ignorance is in it self our sin and will make all our following offences damnable For we must answer for any thing of our own choice and therefore if we chuse the ignorance we shall be interpreted to chuse and so put to answer for all those ill effects which it produces Those sins which are voluntary in their cause are interpreted to us as we have seen and put upon our score so that if we chuse the ignorance which brings them we shall be adjudged to suffer for them Now as for the ignorance and errour of many men which is the cause of their sins and transgressions it is plainly of their own chusing They have a mind to
among your selves for Charity shall cover or procure pardon for the multitude of those many because unavoidable and involuntary sins 1 Pet. 4.8 And hereto Charity is then especially available when it is shewn in the highest instance of all viz. in procuring our Brethrens repentance and conversion For thus says S t James Brethren if any of you do err from the truth and one convert him for his encouragement let him know this from me That he who converts the Sinner from the errour of his way shall not only save the others soul from death but shall also hide a multitude of his own sins James 5.19 20. Thus is Charity in all acts of kindness and beneficence most available to procure the pardon of our many because unavoidable and involuntary sins But among all the instances of Charity one is particularly singled out by our Saviour as a necessary Condition to our forgiveness at Gods hands and that is our forgiving others that offend against us For the man who would have no pity upon his Fellow-servant as his Lord had shewed upon him was unpardoned all again and delivered over to the tormentors till he should pay the uttermost Farthing Matth. 18.32 33 34 and the same measure our heavenly Father will mete out to us if we forgive not every one his Brother their trespasses v. 35. And that a Condition so necessary to our forgiveness might never be forgotten our Lord has put it expresly into that Prayer which he has taught us to put up daily for the pardon of our own sins For he bids us pray that God would forgive us our trespasses against him even as we forgive those that trespass against us Matth. 6.12 And that we may take the more notice of a Point so indispensable he tells us as soon as ever the Prayer is done that if we forgive men their trespasses our heavenly Father will also forgive us but if we forgive not men their trespasses neither will our heavenly Father forgive us our trespasses vers 14 15. If we are rigorous and severe therefore with our Brethren God will be so with us also and when he comes to judge us we shall find as little allowance at his hands as they have done at ours For he shall have judgment from God without mercy who to men hath shewn no mercy but if any man has been merciful to his Brethren God will be much more so to him for mercy rejoyceth even against judgment James 2.13 This will be the greatest motive to procure Grace and the best Plea that can be urged to obtain mercy at Gods hands Blessed are the merciful says our Saviour for they shall obtain mercy Mat. 5.7 And thus as for our involuntary slips we see now what is their remedy they shall be forgiven us upon our prayers and upon the prayers of our friends and other good Christians for us and upon our Charity and forgiveness of other men With the same measure that we mete God will mete out to us again Mat. 7.2 So that if we shew mercy to the unwill'd sins yea and the voluntary offences of other men if in other things we are obedient we shall be sure to find it for our own And thus at last we see what remedy the Gospel has provided us for all sorts of offences whether they be our voluntary or involuntary sins And upon the whole matter we find that our case is not desperate under any sort of sins but that if we will use it we have a sufficient cure for them For if we are in a state of death by reason of any wilful sin let us but particularly repent of it and amend it and if it either injured or offended our Brethren seek to be reconciled and repair the wrong and we are restored to pardon And if in any thing we have fallen involuntarily let us but pray and be merciful and we are forgiven And either way when God comes to judge us whether we have in all points fulfilled his Laws or are pardoned our transgressions of them we shall be acquitted by him We shall be safe at that day if we have either kept the condition or used the remedy for a pardon will justifie us to as much purpoâ—â— as we should have been justified by an unerring obedience To apply this then to every mans particular case Has any man whether learned or unlearned committed wilfully and advisedly an act of any known and notorious sin whether of Blasphemy Perjury common Swearing Witchcraft Idolatry Drunkenness Fornication Adultery Lying Slander Fraud Oppression Theft Murder Rebellion Tumult or the like has he been guilty of these or of any other sins of like nature whereat all mens consciences are wont to boggle and their hearts to check them till they have sinned themselves into numbness and stupefaction let him particularly amend that evil way and retract that very sin and if his crime implied any as far as he can repair the wrong it did his brethren and then he is in a safe condition For his particular repentance and amendment shall make up the breach which such wilful offence had made betwixt God and him and shall most certainly procure his pardon Has any man of opportunities and understanding committed any action of Lasciviousness Vncleanness Passionateness Fierceness evil Speaking Backbiting Censoriousness Vncandidness Vnmercifulness Vnpeaceableness or the like has any such man or any other whatsoever been guilty of these or the like offences when his own Soul reproved him and either did or would have set the sinfulness of his present action before him unless he has sinned in it so long as to lose all sense of it and to stifle all suggestions against it let him also particularly amend and reform such voluntary sin and make his peace with his offended brethren that he may be saved His particular repentance shall likewise make his peace and procure for him Gods favour and acceptance Has any man lastly been surprized into rash words and censures into sudden anger and trifling discontents and peevish or uncourteous or uncandid or uncondescensive behaviour has he been wearied by long importunity into some loose thoughts and wanton fancies into some small fretfulness or impatience or the like has he spoke or acted unadvisedly through deep grief or violent fears or other astonishing unwill'd passion let him bewail his failings and strive against them although he be not able perfectly to overcome them let him seek peace and use charity and shew mercy upon the like errours and escapes and upon the more wilful offences of his brethren and then with comfort beg Gods pardon For his prayers thus attended shall set him straight and procure his reconciliation If a man is conscious to himself of any of these sorts of sins these remedies will certainly restore him And as for those unknown and secret sins whereof his conscience cannot inform him he has an obvious and an easie expedient for a general penitential prayer will undoubtedly be
of none but what we have repented of we have just reason to take a good heart to our selves and to wait for death in hopeful expectations If our own hearts condemn us not says Saint John then have we confidence towards God 1 John 3.21 There is no sin that will damn us but a wilful one and when we sin wilfully if our heart is soft and honest we sin willingly and against our Conscience our own heart sees and observes it before and will keep us in mind of it after we have committed it So that if any man has a vertuous and a tender heart a heart that is truly dâ—sirous to obey obey God and afraid in any thing to offend him when his Conscience is silent he may justly conclude that his Condition is safe for if it doth not condemn him God never will An honest mans heart I say must condemn him before he have sufficient reason to condemn himself And that too not for every idle word or every fruitless lust or every dulness of spirit and distraction in prayer and coldness in devotion or such other mistaken marks whereby too many are wont to judge of their title to salvation No Heaven and Hell are not made to depend upon these things but although a man be guilty of them he may be eternally happy notwithstanding them But that accusation of his Conscience which may give an honest man just reason to condemn himself must be an accusation for a wilful breach or deliberate transgression of some particular Law of Sobriety Piety Justice Charity Peaceableness it must accuse him of an unrepented breach of some of those Laws above mentioned which God has plainly made the terms of life and the condition of salvation And the accusation for the breach of these Laws must be particular and express not general and roving For some are of so suspicious and timorous a temper that they are still suspecting and condemning of themselves when they know not for what reason They will indict themselves as men that have sinned greatly but they cannot shew wherein they judge of themselves not from any reason or experience but at a venture and by chance they speak not so truly their opinions as their fears not what their understandings see and discern but what their melancholy suggests to them For ask them as to any one Particular of the Laws of God and run them all over and their Consciences cannot charge them with any wilful which is withal an unrepented transgression of it But let them overlook all Particulars and pass a judgment of themselves only in general when they do not judge from particular instances which are true evidence but only from groundless and small presumptions and then they pass a hard sentence upon themselves and conclude that their sins are very great and their condition dangerous But no man shall be sentenced at the last Day for Notions and Generalities but it is our particular sins which must then condemn us For God's Laws bind us all in single actions and if our own Consciences cannot condemn us for any one wilful which is withal an unrepented action God will not condemn us for them altogether If our own heart therefore doth not accuse us for the particular wilful and unrepented breaches of some or other of those Laws above mentioned which God has made the indispensable condition of our acceptance we are secure as to the next World and may comfortably hope to be acquitted in the last Judgment Being conscious of no wilful sin but what we have repented of and by mercy and forgiveness of other men and our prayers to God begging pardon for our involuntary sins we shall have nothing that will lye heavy upon us at the last Day but may go out of the World with ease and dye in comfort Our departure hence may be in peace because our appearance at Gods Tribunal shall surely be in safety For we shall have no worse charged upon us there than we are able here to charge upon our selves but leaving this World in a good Conscience we shall be sentenced in the next to a glorious reward and bid to enter into our Masters joy there to live with our Lord for ever and ever Amen Soli Deo Gloria FINIS * 1 Joh. 2 17-29 ‖ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clâ—m Ro. 1. Epist. ad Cor. c. 30. a Gal. 3.19 b Matt 1.21 c Jam. 2.22 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 d 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Rom. Ep. 1. ad Cor. c. 31. e Quid est â—ide liter Christo credere â— est fideliter Dei mandata servare Salvian de Gub. l. 3. p. 67. Ed. Oxon. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Rom. 1. Ep. ad Cor. c. 10. f Matt. 25.34 35 3â— c. g Heb. 1.17 19. h 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 wrought to his works or to make him work i 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 k Neâ— Christianus esse videtur qui Christiani nominis opus non agit Salvian de Gub. l 4. p. Ed. Ox. 90. a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 b Noah's preaching Righteousness and Repentance before the flood 2 Pet. 2.5 and 1 Pet. 3.20 is thus expessed by St. Clement 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1. Epist. ad Cor. c. 9. c Prophetarum Filii And in the like sence among the Gentiles Poetarum Filii d Jer. 8.6 So St. Clement uses the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 promiscuously 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And what in the Septuagint whom he follows in Citations is expressed by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ezek. 33.11 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. he giving the sence though not the words according to the Apostolical usage expresses thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Rom. 1. Ep. ad Cor. c. 7.8 And agreeably to this the compilers of our Liturgy in the Sentences before Morning Service in our Old Common Prayer Books translate Matt. 3.2 Repent ye for the Kingdom of God is at hand thus Amend your lives for the Kingdom c. As on the other side they expound Ezek. 18.21 If the wicked turn from all his sins that he hath committed and keep all my statutes and do that which is lawful and right c. thus At what time soever a sinner repenteth c. Quid planius quà m quod voluntas pro facto reputâ—tur ubi factum exclâ—dic necessitas nisi forte putetur in malo quà m in bono efficacior inveniri voluntas apud Deum qui charitas est promptioresset ad ulciscendum quam ad remunerandum misericors miserator Dominus Bernard Ep. ad Hugonem de Sancto Victore quae est Ep. 77. p. op 1458. f Quid dicam nescio quid promittam penitus ignoro revocare ab inquisitione ultimi remedii periclitantes durum impium spondere autem aliquid in tam sera cautione temerarium Salv. de Avaritia l. 1. p. 363. Ed. Oxon. a Levit. 26.40.42 b Novum monstri genus â—adem
qui sit iracundus maledicus effraenatus paucissimis Dei verbis tam placidum quam ovem reddam Da cupidum avarum tenacem jam tibi eum liberalem dabo pecuniam suam plenis manibus largientem Da timidum doloris ac mortis jam cruces ignes Phalaridis taurum contemnet Da libidinosum adulterum ganeonem jam sobrium castum continentem videbis Da crudelem sanguinis appetentem jam in veram clementiam furor ille mutabitur Da injustum insipientem peccatorem continuo aequus prudens innocens erit Vno enim lavacro malitia omnis abolebitur pauca Dei praecepta sic totum hominem immutant exposito vetere noâ—um reddunt ut non cognoscas eundem esse Lactant. de Fals. Sap. l. 3. c. 26. c Non aliunde noscibiles quam de emendatione vitiorum pristinorum Tertul. ad Scap. c. 2. d Non magna loquimur sed vivimus Cypr. de bono patientiae Ed. Rig. p. 222. Bonus vir Caius Sejus sed malus tantùm quod Christianus Tertul. Apol c. 3. f Quid facies de tantis millibus hominum tot viris ac foeminis omnis Sexus omnis Aetatis omnis Dignitatis offerentibus se tibi Tertul. ad Scap. c. 4. g 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ignat. Epist. and Smyrn h 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is S t Clement's Character of good men 1 Ep. ad Cor. c. 26. a Quis peccat in â—o quod nullo modo careri potest Aug. de lib. Arbit l. c. 18. â—ohn 14.6 Luke 2.10 d Verse 14. e Mat. 1.21 f Joh. 1.17 g 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 h 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i Da exemplum qui absque peccato fuerit in perpetuum aut confitere imbecillitatem tuam Jerom. lib. 1. Dial. adv Pel. paulo ab initio k Peccavimus omnes alii gravia alii leviora alii ex destinato alii fortè impulsi alii aut aliena nequitia ablati alii in bonis consiliis parùm fortiter sâ—â—timus innocentiam inviti ac renitentes perdidimus Nec delinquimus tantum sed usque ad extremum aevi delinquimus Etiam siquis tam bene purgavit animum ut nihil eum obturbare amplius possit ac fallere ad innocentiam tamen peccando pervenit Sen. de clem lib. 1. cap. 6. l Hoc primum nobis suademus neminem nostram esse sine culpâ Quis iste est qui se profitetur omnibus legibus innocentem Et ut hoc ita sit quam angusta innocentia est ad legem bonum esse quà m multa pietas humanitas liberalitas sides justitia exigunt quae omnia extra publicas tabulas sunt Id. de Ira lib. 2. cap. 27. m Et Quoniam tales nascantur nunc quoque qualis Ille suit nostri Generis pater ante reatum Posse hominem sine peccato decurrere vitam Si velit ut potuit nullo delinquere primus Libertate sua nempe haec damnata fateris Conciliis Prosper lib. de Ingrat contra Pelag cap. 9. a 1 Sam. 16.7 b Non est cui recte imputetur peccatum nisi colenti Aug. de lib. Arbit l. 3. c. 17. b 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Justin Martyr Apol. 1. c He calls it not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is the proper word to denote a going beside the Law or a transgression of it but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which imports a being without Law or a renouncing of it As 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are the lawless and disobedient a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Andron Rhod. Paraph. in Eth. Arist. lib. 3. cap. 4. b 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ibid. c 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. 1.28 d Deut. 17.12 Will do presumptuously is explained by will not hearken e 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 f Ira furor brevâ—s â—st g Omne in praecipiti vitium Stat. Juv. Sat. 1. Rom. 7.23 i Elatio contemnentis in minimis mandatis culpam facit non minimam convertit in crimen gravis rebellionis naevum satis levem simplicis transgressionis Bernard de Praecept Dispens c. 14. p. op 931. k 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 k In the Syriack version according to Tremeliâ—s's translationâ— it is transgressus est sâ—â—l aspernanter l Vers. 2. m 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in vers 70. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 o 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p Peccata sanciantia and vastantia q 2 Sam. 11.4 5 27. r vers 6 7 8 9 10 13 14 15. s Chap. 12. vers 1 5. a Voluntas non potest cogi Axioma Scholast b Invitae per vim c Meâ—tem peccare non corpus â—nde consilium abjuâ—rit â—ulpam abissâ— Liv. Dec. â— vers sin d Book 3. Ch. 4. e 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 f Ergo non est cui relle impatetur peccatum nisi volâ—nti Aug. de lib. â—rbit l. 3. c. 17. g Non sacit aliquid contra Legem Legis ignarus Nullus potest ejus rei praevaricator esse quam nescit Salvian de Gub. Dei l. 4. p. 134 138. Ed. Oxon. i Hoc nos dicimus possâ— hominem non peccare si velit pro tempore pro loco pro imbecillitate corporea quamdiu intentus est animus quamdiu chorda nullo vitio laxatur in cithara Hieron Dial. adv Pel. l. 3. p. 302. Ed. Erasm. k Libertatem eam quam in specie habere videntur in sua generalitate considerata non habeant Grot. de Jure Belli l. 2. c. 20. §. 19. l 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 m Nil contemptu agunt câ—â—lestium praeceptorum praecepta Domini nesâ—ientes c. Nemo ignota contemnit c Salv. de Gub. Dei l. 4. p. 134. 148. Ed. Oxon. a Non apparentis non existentis eadem est ratio Rom. 5.13 b 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c Invenimus non à nobis observari quod mandatum est nisi eadem quae Dominus secit nos quoque faciamus calicem pari ratione miscentes à Divino magisterio non recedamus d Apparet sanguinem Christi non offerri si deest vinum calici nec Sacrificiam Domini cum legitima Sanctificatione celebrari nisi Oblatio Sacrificium nostrum responderit Passioni Quomodo â—lim de Creatura vitis novum vinum cum Christo in Regno Patris bibemus si in Sacrificio Dei Patris Christi vinum non offerimus nec calicem Domini Dominica traditione miscemus e Siquis de antecessoribus nostris vel ignoranter vel simpliciter non hoc observavit ac tenuit quod nos Dominus â—acere exemplo magisterio suo docuit potest simplicitati ejas de indulgentia Domini venia concedi nobis vero non poterit ignosci qui nunc à Domino admoniti instructi sumus ut calicem Dominicum vino mixtum secundum quod Dominus obtulit osseramus agentes graetias quod dum instruit de futuro