forget God lest he tear them in pieces and there be none to deliver 2. Men are hardned by the deceitfulness of sin from the hopes of their future repentance For that is one of the great cheats of sin that every one thinks he can repent and shake off his sins when he hath a mind to do it Sin doth not lye like a heavy weight upon their backs so that they feel the load of it and therefore they think it is easily removed if they would set themselves to it Most of those that believe a God and a judgement to come and yet continue in sin do it upon this presumption that one time or other they shall leave their sins and change the course of their lives before they go out of this world They have not only thoughts of repentance but general purposes of doing the acts of it at one time or other but that time is not come and God knows whether it ever will or no. For sin entices them and draws them on still and when any motions towards repentance come into their minds that presently suggests It is time enough yet why so much haste there will be trouble enough in it when you must do it what need you bring it so fast upon you Are not you likely to hold out a great many years yet what pitty it is to lose so much of the pleasure of life while you are capable of enjoying it There is old Age coming and when you will be good for nothing else then will be time enough to grow wise and to repent But O foolish sinner who hath bewitched thee to hearken to such unreasonable suggestions as these are For 3. In the last place it ought to be our present our constant our greatest care to prevent being hardned by the deceitfulness of sin For to this end it is not enough to consider of it at one time or other in our lives but we must be exhorting one another daily while it is called to day lest any of us be hardned through the witchcraft and deceitfulness of sin And if it be so much the duty of others to shew that regard to one anothers souls how much more doth it become us to do it who expect to be called to an account at the great day for the discharge of our trust in this matter It is a dreadful passage we read of in the Prophet Ezekiel and enough to make our ears to tingle at the repeating it When I say unto the wicked O wicked man thou shalt surely dye if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way that wicked man shall dye in his iniquity but his blood will I require at thine hand We would fain believe this to have been some particular and extraordinary commission given to the Prophet by God himself which doth not concern us for what will become of us if not only our own faults which God knows are too many but other mens shall be charged upon us when either through neglect or flattery or fear of displeasing or for any mean and unworthy ends we betray our trust and instead of preventing prove the occasion of mens being too much hardned through the deceitfulness of sin But although we neither pretend to be Prophets nor Apostles yet it is our Office to take care of the Souls of men and can we discharge that as we ought to do if we do not with all faithfulness warn men of the danger they run into through the deceitfulness of sin It were happy for us if we could say that all the Lords people are holy for then we should have nothing to do but to praise and commend their Vertues which were an easie and a delightful task but what pleasure is it to rake into the sores or to reprove the Vices of a degenerate age to be thought troublesome and impertinent if we do our duty and men of no conscience if we do it not But our work is neither to libel our Auditors nor to flatter them neither to represent them as better nor worse than they are nor to charge them with more guilt than their own consciences do charge them with but our business is to beseech and exhort them by the mercies of God by the sufferings of Christ by the love and tenderness they have for their immortal souls that they would to day while it is called to day take heed lest they be hardned through the deceitfulness of sin And that will appear to be very reasonable on these considerations 1. That none are out of the danger of it while they live in this tempting World What need have we to take care of being deceived by that which hath been too hard for the best the wisest and the greatest of men Man in his best state even that of Innocency was deceived by the insinuations of sin when there was no matter within for the temptation to work upon no reason suggested that could move a common understanding no interest or advantage that could sway him no other moving cause appears to us of that fatal Apostasie of Adam but either the imagination of some unknown pleasure or the bare curiosity of trying an experiment what the effects would be of tasting the forbidden fruit And ever since so general hath the corruption of mankind been so successful have the artifices and deceits of sin been in the World that the best of men have not wholly escaped them but have sometimes fallen in those very Graces which have been most remarkable in them as Abraham in his trust in God Moses in his meekness Iob in his patience Peter in his zeal for Christ. What cause then have others to look to themselvs If wisdom and experience would have secured men we should have thought of all men in the World Solomon the least in danger of being deceived by the insinuations of sin who had given such excellent cautions against those very snares he fell into himself and that to such a degree that his case is left disputable to this day whether he ever recovered by repentance or no. What numbers are there upon record of those mighty men who have made the earth to tremble at the noise of their Armies who have led Kings in chains after their Triumphal Chariots and have been served by those whom others have adored yet have notwithstanding all this been enslaved themselves by some mean lust and destroyed by the power of an effeminate passion What can be strong enough to resist those charms which neither innocency nor wisdom nor power are sufficient security against Nothing but the Grace of God and continual care of our selves 2. The less men suspect their danger the more cause they have to be afraid of it None are more fatally deceived by sin than those who apprehend no danger in it or think they can escape it when they please How strangely infatuated are those through the deceitfulness of sin who think with themselves that after they
sin Lest any of you c. 1. The Danger men are in of being hardned through the deceitfulness of sin though they have the most powerful Motives and Engagements against it For never any Persons had greater arguments against returning to the practice of sin than these to whom this Epistle was written They had embraced among the first principles of the doctrine of Christ the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith towards God of the doctrine of baptisms and of laying on of hands for the miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost and of the resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgement And what can we suppose to have greater force and efficacy to restrain men from sin than what is contained in these fundamentals of Christianity But we shall find that no Motives have ever been great enough to restrain those from sin who have secretly loved it and only sought pretences for the practice of it Such is the frame and condition of humane nature considered in it self so great are the advantages of reason and consideration for the government of our actions so much stronger are the natural motives to vertue that to vice that they who look no farther would expect to find the world much better than it is For why should we suppose the generality of mankind to betray so much folly as to act unreasonably and against the common interest of their own kind as all those do that yield to the temptations of sin For if we set aside the consideration of a Divine Law to sin is nothing else but to act foolishly and inconsiderately But on the other side if men first look into the practice of the World and there observe the strange prevalency of Vice and how willing men are to defend as well as to commit it they would be apt to imagine that either there is no such thing as Reason among men or that it hath very little influence upon their actions and that the talk of Vertue was first found out by some great enemy to the Felicity of Mankind Such different apprehensions would men have from the different wayes of beholding the Picture of Humane nature either as it is in its own frame or as it is to be seen in the World They who have with the greatest judgement and care searched into the nature and first principles of humane Societies have all agreed that the chief end and design of men in joyning together was for the mutual benefit and advantage of each other and that in order to this certain Laws of Iustice Equity Mercy Truth Gratitude Temperance as well as of Subjection to Government ought to be inviolably observed by men And since these things have the universal consent of mankind to be for their general good how comes it to pass that men being joyned in these Societies for such ends make so little Conscience of the practice of them How come so many to live as it were in open defiance to these Fundamental Laws of Nature How come others only to make use of the pretence of vertue to deceive and of honesty and integrity to cover the deepest dissimulation If they be not good why are they pretended If they are good why are they not practised So that whether we consider mankind in it self or in Society we find the Motives to vertue to be much more weighty and considerable than those to sin and yet that the practice of men is directly contrary But it may be said that all this might happen in the world for want of wit and education to polish and improve the natural Faculties of mens minds and to direct and encourage the practice of vertue I wish the world had not so many instances that men of the greatest wit have not been men of the best Morals but if wit and education and Philosophy had been the most effectual means to reclaim men from sin where should we have looked more for the flourishing of vertue than in Greece and Rome And yet in those times when all the accomplishments of wit were at the highest in those places the manners of men were sunk into the greatest filth of debauchery It would make one astonished to read the admirable discourses of their Philosophers and to consider the strange height that eloquence and wit were arrived to among their Orators and Poets and then to compare the account given of the manners of the Gentile World not only by their own Satyrists but by the Apostles in their several Epistles What a monstrous Catalogue of sins do we meet with in the first Chapter to the Romans of sins of so deep a dye and of so horrid a nature and such an Inventory of all sorts of Wickedness that one might imagine the Apostle had been rather describing some vision of Hell than the seat of the Roman Empire To the same purpose he speaks of the Corinthians and Ephesians who thought themselves behind none of the Greeks of that Age in the breeding then most in Vogue but we need not instance in particulars when S. Peter calls it in general the will of the Gentiles to live in lasciviousness lusts excess of wine revellings and banquetings as well as abominable Idolatries and S. Iohn in short saith the whole world lyeth in wickedness It might be worth our while to consider how so universal a degeneracy of manners should happen in those ages when men pretended more to Wit and Learning than they had done in any time before And for this it were very unreasonable to assign any Cause that were equally common to all other Ages such as the corruption of human nature which how great soever it be is the same at all times neither do I think it reasonable to lay it wholly on the bad examples of the teachers of vertue knowing how malicious the worst of men are in endeavouring to make those who seem to be better to be as bad as themselves but there are some peculiar reasons for it and I wish they had been only proper to those times as 1. Separating Religion and Morality from each other When their Religion was placed in some solemn Rites and pompous Ceremonies and costly Sacrifices but all the matters of Morality were confined to their Schools there to be enquired after by those that had leisure and curiosity for them As though God were more concerned for the colour and age and pomp of their Sacrifices for the gestures and shews of their devotion than for the purity of their hearts the sincerity of their minds or the holiness of their lives When once the people had swallowed that pernicious principle that Morality was no part of their Religion they had no great regard to the good or evil of their actions as long as a little charge and four looks and going to their Temples at certain times were thought sufficient to expiate their sins And they were much more encouraged in Wickedness when the Gods they worshipped were represented on
themselves God will not be mocked however men may be for because of these things the wrath of God will come upon the Children of disobedience No Sacrifices no prayers no penances no vows and promises will keep off this wrath of God without a hearty repentance and timely reformation Never any Religion or institution in the World made it so much its business to keep men from doing evil and to perswade them to do good as the Christian doth The Apostles thought it the greatest contradiction to their profession for any men to be called Christians and to live in the practice of their former sins Let the time past of your life suffice you saith S. Peter to have wrought the will of the Gentiles i. e. that time past when you were no Christians To be a Christian then was all one as of a loose profane dissolute person to become sober religious exact in his conversation To put on Christ was but another phrase for making no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof To learn Christ was all one as to put off as concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and to put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness Those were the blessed dayes of Christianity when it was no hard matter to understand what it was to be a Christian when the niceties of disputes and the subtle artifices of men of corrupt minds had not yet debauched the notion of Christianity to reconcile it with the lusts of men To be a Christian then was not to be versed in the subtilties of the Schools or to be able to swallow contradictions without chewing them or to be as fierce and earnest for every doubtful opinion and uncertain custome as if the substance of Christianity were like Epicurus his World made up of a great number of very small and restless Atomes To be a Christian was not to fight for the Faith but to live by it not to quarrel for good Works but to practise them In short to be a Christian was to depart from iniquity and to do good to be meek and humble and patient and peaceable towards all men to be charitable and kind to be sober and temperate in all things to be holy sincere and innocent in his actions towards God and men This is the true Idea of a Christian and not a meer Idea but such as every one that owns himself to be a Christian is bound by the most Sacred vow of Christianity in Baptism to be like so that if either the consideration of their own eternal welfare or the nature design or honour of Christianity or their own most solemn engagements can restrain men from the practice of sin we see that those who are Christians are under the most powerful motives and engagements against it But yet such there have been I wish I could not say such there are who have broken through all these things and have been hardned through the deceitfulness of sin One might have thought if any persons had been out of this danger they had been such as the Apostle makes this exhortation to who had seen the miraculous operations of the Holy Ghost for confirming the doctrine and Motives of Christianity nay who had themselves been made partakers of the Holy Ghost and had tasted of this Heavenly gift and of the good word of God and of the powers of the world to come Who had testified their repentance for their former sins in the most publick and solemn manner and had entred into the most Sacred Vow of Baptism never to return more to the practice of it who had done this in the heat of persecution which they endured with courage and rejoycing yet after all these things the Apostle expresses a more than ordinary jealousie lest any of them should fall away and their hearts be hardned through the deceitfulness of sin When Critias and Alcibiades had forsaken the paths of vertue which they seemed very forward in while they continued under the instructions of Socrates Xenophon saith there were some that contended that they never had any vertue at all because those who once had it could never lose it but for his part he saith he was by no means satisfied with their opinion for as men by discontinuing bodily exercises make themselves uncapable of doing those things which they were most expert in before so men by the neglect of improving their minds in vertue and giving way to the temptations of honour and pleasure which was the case of Critias and Alcibiades may by degrees lose the force of all the Motives to vertue and consequently the vertue it self It is agreed by all men who understand any thing in these matters that even Grace although it be the effect of a divine power on the minds of men is of it self capable of being lost the great dispute is whether it may be lost past all recovery But as we have no more reason to set any bounds to the Grace of God in mens Recovery than as to their first Repentance so we ought to consider that there is such a falling away mentioned by the Apostle of those who have been once enlightned of which he saith it is impossible to renew them again to repentance and that Scripture deals with all persons in its exhortations and adomonitions and threatnings as if they were capable of falling to the utmost degree and to suppose that thing impossible to be done which the gravest counsels and the most vehement perswasions are used to keep men from the doing of is to make a severe reflection on the wisdom of them that give them And the Apostle here leaves none of them out but bids the most forward believers beware of an evil heart of unbelief and those who had been most softned by repentance take heed of being hardned through the deceitfulness of sin So that we see how powerful soever the motives to Vertue are how great soever the engagements against Sin yet the Apostle thought it needful to give them warning against the deceitfulness of sin 2. But what kind of deceitfulness is this in sin that the best and wisest men are so much caution'd against it What irresistible charms doth it use to draw men into its snares with what infusion doth it so far intoxicate mankind to make them dote upon it against the convictions of Reason and dictates of Conscience and the power of perswasion and the most solemn and repeated Vows and Promises against it nay to make men pursue it to such a degree as rather to be damned for it than forsake it If we were to consider this only by Reason we could imagine nothing less than that sin at one time or other hath laid such a mighty obligation on mankind that rather than part with it the greater part of men out of meer gratitude would be content to suffer for
presently repent and resolve never to be guilty again of the same folly as in all reason it ought to do then by time and company he wears off the impression of his guilt and the next occasion of sinning makes him forget the wounds of his Conscience and the smart he endured before and the fresh temptation revives the sense of his former pleasure and then he is able to withstand no longer and thus by repeating the same acts by degrees he becomes a very hopeful sinner and the reports of his Conscience are but like that of sounds at a greater distance they lessen still more and more till at last they cannot be heard at all And when he hath thus mastered his Conscience as to any one sin which at first he was fearful of committing and hath found such an Ice upon his Conscience as will bear him he goes on still farther and farther till nothing be too hard for him He that at first started and trembled at the hearing of an horrid oath now can hear whole volleys of them discharged without shrinking and can bear his part in that hellish Concert and he that was so hardly brought to be wicked himself may in a little time as some men are strange proficients in wickedness tempt and encourage others to the practice of it 3. And when men are arrived to an habitual continuance in sin then for their present ease and security they cast about for any wayes to defend it For whatever is become of Conscience they may have such a sense of reputation left that they would not be thought Fools and be contemned and despised by others But although it be impossible for such to avoid scorn and contempt among all those who have any true regard to Vertue or Honour yet they will endeavour rather to defend themselves in doing ill than recover their reputation by repentance And because it would puzzle the wits of the most subtle and concerned persons to find out pretences and excuses for some kinds of sins therefore the easiest way is to represent all the World as alike bad although not alike cunning and although it may be not in the same way yet in something as ill in it self but more agreeable to their Age temper and condition of life Thus the greatest sinners love to herd themselves in a croud and think it some poor defence for their sins that they would have others believed to be as bad as they as though a man were in the less danger by the plague because it is a general contagion But if it happen that some persons in the World should have any reputation for Vertue among them then all the weaknesses and indiscretions of such are sure to be enquired after that so what is accounted vertue may be thought only natural sourness of temper or want of wit to be otherwise But if any such should be found in a miscarriage what Joy and Triumph doth this make what load of circumstances and aggravations do they lay upon them as though one single miscarriage of such persons were to weigh down a thousand enormities of theirs And because it is impossible to defend their extravagant courses by Reason the only way left for them is to make Satyrical Invectives against Reason as though it were the most uncertain foolish and I had almost said unreasonable thing in the World and yet they pretend to shew it in arguing against it but it is pitty such had not their wish to have been Beasts rather than men if any men can make such a wish that have it not already that they might have been less capable of doing mischief among mankind by representing all the excellencies of humane nature which are Reason and Vertue and Religion but as more grave and solemn fopperies But how hard are such men put to defend their vices that cannot do it without trampling under foot the most noble perfections of their own nature These however are the more ingenuous sort of sinners that yield Reason and Religion to be of Vertues side but there are others that make use of some shallow pretences of Reason to excuse themselves in their sins which is the second way whereby sin deceives men viz. 2. By false Reasonings and those taken either 1. From their Present impunity 2. Or from their Future Repentance 1. From their present impunity in sinning men are apt to deceive themselves into a continuance in it This is the account the Wise man hath long since given of mens being hardned in sin Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily therefore the hearts of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil It seems somewhat hard to understand the consequence why men should grow more desperately wicked because God gives them a space to repent Is it necessary that if God doth punish at all he must do it presently that would seem to be rage and fury or a necessity of nature and not justice Cannot judgement be duly executed unless the Judge break open the Prison doors and torment the Malefactor in his chains Why may not God respite the punishment of sinners when he pleases to another state since he hath declared that he hath appointed a day wherein he will judge the World in righteousness What incongruity is there in this to any principle of reason or justice Will not this time of Gods patience be a sufficient vindication of his lenity and goodness in order to the drawing men to repentance And will not the day of his future judgement be a full vindication of his justice Will not the insupportable honours of a miserable eternity discover far more Gods abhorrence of sin than present sufferings in this life which the greater they are the less they continue But all this false way of reasoning ariseth from that gross piece of self-flattery that such do imagine God to be like themselves i. e. as cruel and revengeful as they are and they presently think if any persons did offend them at the rate that sinners are said to offend God and they had so much power in their hands to punish them as he has without any fear of revenge upon themselves they would be sure to dispatch them presently but because they see God doth it not therefore they conclude that all the talk of Gods anger and hatred against sin is without ground and from hence they take encouragement to sin So the Psalmist saith in Gods name These things thou didst and I kept silence and they presently took his silence for consent for it follows and thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thy self but the Psalmist adds how ill he took this at mens hands and that he would one day make them know the difference between the forbearance of sinners and the love of their sins but I will reprove thee and set them in order before thee And therefore he bids them be better advised and consider this while they