in the Gospel 2. It is to be observed in consequence of the former distinction that whereas for the third sort of men of whom they had no great esteem it was accounted no wonder that they being filii terrae men of a meer secular character did hold correspondence and had intercourse with Publicans and Sinners that is such as were proscribed the Cense of Religion Nevertheless for any person of the two first ranks so to have done namely to be found maintaining any kind of society or friendly conversation with such infamous persons was held not only dishonourable and unbecoming but flatly unlawfull For according to a tradition yet extant in their writings it is reckoned as one of the six scandals that those higher Orders of Religionists are charged by all means to avoid namely to dine eat or drink with such Now this seems to be the first occasion of quarrel against our Saviour that he pretending to be some extraordinary person at least a student of the law did not use such branded persons with the same supercile and disdain that their great men were wont to do but familiarly discoursed eat and drank with them For so we read Matth. 9. 10 11. And it came to pass as Jesus sate at meat many Publicans and Sinners came and sate down with him and his disciples and when the Pharisees saw it they said unto his disciples Why eateth your Master with Publicans and Sinners c. Let it be farther noted in the third place That the covenant which God made with this people on Mount Sinai admitted of propitiation by sacrifice and thereby gave hopes of pardon onely to some smaller offences but seemed to exclude all great and notorious transgressors shutting them up under wrath and appointing them to be cut off from amongst their people And the minds of the Jews not being elevated above this literal dispensation nor being able to distinguish betwixt this political transaction and the eternal standard of justice and mercy in the divine mind they were induced to believe that God would exercise mercy upon no other terms then what he therein proclaimed and that he was inexorable and implacable in all other cases beyond the tenour of that indulgence whence it came to pass that they themselves in proportion as they thought to the divine proceedings abandoned all the aforesaid kinds of notorious sinners as castaways conceiving neither hopes of their pardon nor usefulness of indeavouring to bring them to repentance And although the excellent discourses of the Prophets might have instructed them with better and more worthy notions of God yet they superstitiously contracting those Evangelical expressions in the Prophets to the narrow sense of the Law rather then improving the text of the Law by the divine Commentaries of the Prophets continued still under the same mean and narrow apprehensions of divine mercy and consequently thereof must needs pronounce very sad and dismal dooms upon all great sinners But forasmuch as they could not but remember the very great and foul miscarriages of some otherwise very holy men in the Old Testament and particularly of David in his Adultery with Bathshebah and the Murther of Vriah for neither of which sins any sacrifice or propitiation was appointed in the Law but the offender in such cases was to be cut off without mercy therefore that they might not be constrained in consequence of the aforesaid persuasion to exclude such men from all hopes of pardon too they had artifices of extenuating such mens sins as no doubt they had of their own and rather then forgoe their hide-bound notion of God chose against all sense to make those black crimes meer peccadillo's lest by the example of such great men as David c. other sinners should be incouraged to hope for mercy beyond the tenour of their Law Now our Saviour preaching repentance and giving hopes of pardon to the greatest of sinners upon condition of their present hearty and thorough reformation several poor souls who had been reprobated and damned by these severe Interpreters of the Law were marvellously transported at so comfortable a doctrine and with great affection and frequency resort to it Hereupon these demure but dogged Leguleians are offended and insinuate a suspicion of our Saviour that he was a friend and favourer of lewd and vicious persons This I take it is the true state of the case and the rise of the excellent discourses in this Chapter For in answer to their unjust imputation our Saviour who could if he had pleased have shewed the sandy foundation of all their aforesaid Hypothesis by discovering the designs of the divine wisedom in that manner of transaction with that people in that covenant or by large deductions from the Prophets have demonstrated the uncircumscribedness of the divine goodness or with admirable wisedom silenced them by a Philosophick discourse of the divine Philanthropy He I say that could have vindicated his own doctrine and practice and both baffled their arrogance and shamed their ignorance any of these or other ways waves all this and takes a more plain and popular argument confounding them by an appeal to the common sense of mankind much after the manner that God silences the petulant disgusts of the Prophet Jonah Jonah was angry with God for being more exorable towards the Ninevites then he expected and would needs have had a vast and populous City destroyed meerly to make good his own prediction But God convinces him of his unreasonableness by a lively Emblem There was a Gourd suddenly sprung up which refreshed the Prophet with its verdure and covered him with its shadow God who had caused the Gourd to grow quickly smites it hereupon Jonah is angry again and expostulates the matter with his Maker Thou hadst pity on a contemptible Gourd for which thou didst not labour and which came up in a night and perished in a night And should not I spare Nineveh that great City upon their repentance wherein are more then one hundred and twenty thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left c. In like manner our Saviour here silences the murmurings of these hard-hearted Jews by three Parables The first concerning a Lost Sheep vers 4. The second concerning a Lost Groat vers 8. And the third of a Lost Son vers 11. In all which he appeals to common experience and the sense of humanity for evidence of the fitness of his proceedings and the absurdity of their complaints shewing that it is the common course of men to express most solicitude for that which is lost and most joy upon the recovery of that which was given up as desperate And forasmuch as the souls of men must needs be more valuable with a wise God and a gracious Creatour then those other things can be with men he leaves it to them to infer how reasonable it is to think that the divine goodness is both highly pleased with the recovery of
And that government would justly be accounted arbitrary and tyrannical and the Sovereign rather thought to lie at catch for the penalty then to desire just obedience who shall impute that for a fault which he had not given sufficient caution against by a plain declaration of his will and pleasure For non esse non apparere aequiparantur in Jure that which cannot appear is in Laws all one as if it were not at all because an unknown Law can have no influence upon those it should concern neither directing them what to do nor forewarning what to avoid neither giving notice of their duty nor their danger and consequently works neither upon their reason nor their passion and therefore not at all IT is true that all Laws have not the same way and manner of publication for even amongst men several Nations have their several and peculiar forms of doing it The old Romans by Tables hung up in the Market and places of publick congresse some have done the same thing by the voice of a publick Herald or by the sound of Trumpet c. but however they differed in the circumstance they all agreed in the thing that Laws were not perfect and obliging till they were promulged And so it is with the Laws of God Almighty he never expects that men should govern themselves by the secret decrees of Heaven nor leaves them to guesse at the transactions in his Cabinet-Counsel but first publishes his Law and then requires conformity to it though that in divers manners as it seemed best to his divine wisedom Sometimes he exprest himself by an audible voice from Heaven wherein the Angels were employed as his Ministers namely when he gave his Laws upon Mount Sinai other times by inspiration of Prophets and Holy Men and making them the Interpreters of his mind to the world When to give the more full assurance that it was he that sent and instructed them he was wont also to send along with them some miraculous power or other as his Credential Letters under his privy Signet But most gloriously of all did he proclaim his mind when he sent his Son into the world whose every circumstance from the miracles of his Birth to the glories of his Resurrection and Ascension sufficiently proclaimed him the Messias the Messenger of the Covenant AND for the Laws of Nature these though by some perverse men they have been denied to have the nature of Laws obligatory because they have not had the like solemnity of publication as others have had yet forasmuch as these have either been written upon the fleshly tables of men's hearts where all that will look inward may read them or rather as I have intimated already are ingraven and inserted into the very nature of things and texture of the universe where whosoever hath not unmanned himself and debauched his reason may be able to discover them And besides they have manifestly the sanction of rewards and punishments in the constant experience of good and evil attending the observation and contempt of them respectively upon which accounts they must needs seem to all honest and unprejudiced minds sufficiently promulged SO that constantly some way or other according as it seemed best to him God hath always been pleased to make his mind sufficiently and certainly known to all those upon whom he intended it should have the force and obligation of a Law and he never required obedience otherwise then in proportion to such manifestation Accordingly we observe that when he had given Laws to the people of the Jews and proclaimed them very gloriously and solemnly as aforesaid yet in regard such proclamation could not certainly reach to all other Nations for that as well as for other reasons he did not exact of any other people conformity to those institutions nor judged them thereby So the Apostle assures us Rom. 2. 12. Such as have sinned without the Law shall perish without the Law and as many as have sinned under the Law shall be judged by the Law AND it is further very remarkable that even the Gospell it self which was what the Religion of the Jews was not namely an Institution fitted for all Countries Nations and Ages and which therefore our Lord Christ took care by his Apostles as his Heralds to proclaim all the world over This Gospell I say till it was fully published and untill men had time given them to consider well of it and to overcome their prejudices against it made a favourable interpretation of men's unbelief This I take to be the import of those words of our Saviour Joh. 9. 39. 41. For judgment am I come into the world that they that see not might see and that they that see might be made blind If ye were blind ye should have no sin but now ye say we see therefore your sin remaineth And to the same purpose Joh. 15. 22. If I had not come and spoken amongst them they had not had sin but now they have no cloak for their sin And of the truth of this S. Paul himself was a great instance for so he tells us 1 Tim. 1. 13. I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief q. d. I lay under mighty prejudices by reason of my education in the stiff way of a Pharisee and it required a great sincerity to be willing to listen to new proposals a huge sagacity to be able to see through those mists that were cast before my eyes and a most generous resolution to break through these and all other difficulties in consideration whereof God was pleased to make abatements of the guilt of my unbelief in proportion to the temptations I had thereto It is indeed both a well known and as well received a Maxime Ignorantia Juris non excusat that it is no excuse of a fault to say non putâram I did not know the Law because when a Law is once promulged every man is bound to take notice of it and it can be imputed to nothing else but supine and affected ignorance if he shall then continue ignorant Notwithstanding upon the self same supposition it seems to be granted that where the case is otherwise that is where the Law not being sufficiently published cannot be known by an honest diligence there ignorance is no fault because indeed as I said there the Law is no Law THOSE who consider not this point must needs be tempted to passe very dismal and damnatory sentences against the greatest part of mankind and consequently cannot avoid very hard thoughts of God for the prevention of both which great evils as also to confirm what hath been now said there is nothing more usefull then to study well the Parable of our Saviour concerning the Talents Matt. 25. 14. by the due consideration whereof we shall amongst other instructions be led into the apprehension that God proceeds not with men Arithmetically but Geometrically and that the vertue or vice which God rewards or punishes
forty nights and Nineveh shall be destroyed Notwithstanding the absoluteness of the sentence and the nearness of the execution the Ninevites were not out of hope but that if repentance were interposed their ruine might yet be prevented and it succeeded accordingly with them for as they believing God's word by the Prophet expected nothing but sudden destruction if they had not repented so they trusting in the goodness and exorableness of the Divine Majesty upon repentance applied themselves seriously thereto and were preserved WHEREFORE saith the relenting sinner Forasmuch as although I know not the limits of the Divine Mercy yet this I know that nothing can set limits thereto but his own wisedom and he is never so straitned but that if the case be pitiable and he see reason of mercy he can shew it consistently with his Justice here I will cast anchor I will indeavour to render my self an object of mercy and trust upon his goodness I never yet heard that any man miscarried in this bottome or that a Penitent was cast away I have often heard that God would have saved men but they would not but I never heard of any that resorted penitently to his mercy and were rejected nor do I think that Hell it self can furnish one instance of the man that can upbraid God's goodness and say I would but God would not Thus the consideration of the Divine Nature is everlastingly pregnant of incouragements to repentance and is the spring of all motion to Godward were it not for which never any had been reclaimed from a course of sin or begun a reformation But so much of that 2. IN the Second place another incouragement to this penitent resolution we are speaking of is an apprehension that it is not impossible to become perfectly new men notwithstanding our pre-ingagements in the ways of sin Opinion of absolute impossibility as we have noted before is equal to real impotency checks all motion nips all indeavour in the very bud stifles and lays asleep all the powers of the mind But hope and apprehension of feasibleness spirits all industry actuates all faculties raises the spirits and is the spring of all the great actions in the world Some daring men have effected things beyond their own expectations but no brave exploit was ever performed by such as despaired of accomplishing it nor was ever any force defeated that did praelibare victoriam and resolve to conquer When once a conceit had possessed the Midianites that they should be conquered by Gideon's Army though grounded only upon an odde dream of a brown Loaf tumbling down upon their Tents their hearts presently melted in them their spirits were emasculated and a mighty Host became an easy prey to the inconsiderable numbers which Gideon led against them And the Lord of hosts would never suffer Israel to be led on to the conquest of the Land of Canaan so long as the rumor of Giants and Anakims and walled Cities ran in the minds of the people nor untill they were brought to a confidence that they were able to conquer that good Land In like manner if the sinner think either his sins too great to be forgiven or that it is too late to mend i. e. either despair of God's grace or of his mercy he is utterly lost indeed that therefore which puts him forward upon resolution is an apprehension that God's grace is sufficient for him THE returning Prodigal saith It is true I find I have gone a great way from my Father's house and wearied my self with my own wandrings yet sure it is not impossible but I may reach home again And I saith the sinner have gone a great way towards my own undoing having indulged my passions and dethroned my reason inslaved my will weakned all my powers and hardened my own Conscience by a long course and custome of sin yet in the words of Holy Job There is hope of a tree if it be cut down that it will sprout again and that the tender branch thereof will not cease though the root thereof wax old in the earth and the stock thereof die in the ground yet through the scent of water it will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant Job 14. 7 8 9. Though I have weakened my powers yet I am a man still though I have destroyed my self yet there is hope in the God of Israel and his hand is not shortened that he cannot save TVLLY is reported to have affirmed repentance to be impossible namely for a man to retrieve himself and take up a new course contrary to that to which he hath been long habituated and no doubt it is very difficult so to do as may sufficiently appear both by what we have said already and also by that of the Prophet Jer. 13. 23. Can the Aethiopian change his skin or the Leopard his spots then may ye also do good that are accustomed to doe evil Where the Holy Ghost intimates inveterate custome to be equal to nature it self and accordingly we find by too sad experience that there are very few that doe exuere hominem shake off the yoke of custome Facilis descensus Averni Sed revocare gradus c. And upon this account it is that the conversion of old sinners is called a New Birth and a New Creation in the language of Holy Scripture Notwithstanding as our Saviour said of rich men That it was harder for a Camel to goe through the eye of a needle then for such a man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven yet to prevent mistakes adds With men it is impossible but with God all things are possible So it is in this case He can cause dry bones to live and of Stones raise up Children to Abraham The Holy Spirit can awaken those powers that were in a dead sleep Conscience is not so callous but it may be rendered soft and sensible again the will and other faculties of men though they are perverted yet are not extinct and being stirred up by the grace of God may exert themselves in a new strain oppose their old customs and introduce new habits AS custome bore down and overgrew Nature formerly so new customes may supplant the old ones and make a new Nature It is a well-known Story that when Zopyrus a great pretender to the skill of reading men's temper and inclination in their countenances had pronounced of Socrates that he was a lewd and intemperate man the Company who knew well the remarkable vertue of Socrates laughed the cunning man out of countenance till Socrates relieved him saying that indeed his inclination was naturally such as Zopyrus had pronounced but that Philosophy and the culture and care of himself had altered him to what he was BUT the Holy Scriptures as they contain both more excellent institutions of vertue and holiness then all Philosophy and more effectual methods of reclaiming and recovering men from vice and debauchery so in the History thereof they afford us the
observable 1. His confession of Guilt I have sinned 2. Aggravation of the fact I have sinned against Heaven and before thee 3. The severe judgment he passes upon himself I am no more worthy to be called thy Son 4. Lastly His deprecation Yet make me as one of thy hired Servants All which deserve a little consideration the rather because we shall find them all exactly and literally exemplified in the true Penitent 1. Then the Son assumes to himself his own guilt and takes shame to himself I have sinned c. Non in aetatem non in malos consiliarios culpam rejicit sed nudam parat sine excusatione Confessionem saith the excellent H. Grotius He excuses not himself by the injudiciousness of his youth nor casts the blame upon his evil Counsellors neither accuses God nor man but himself by a plain and ingenuous acknowledgement IN like manner the true Penitent knows it is to no purpose to play the Hypocrite with God Because all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to doe He seeth not as men see beholding the outward appearance but he searches the hearts and tries the reins of the Children of men He remembers that he that hideth his sins shall not prosper but that he that confesseth and forsaketh them shall find mercy Therefore with blushing and confusion of face saith I have sinned and done very foolishly Thus the poor Publican is represented by our Saviour S. Luk. 18. 13. whenas the Pharisee stood upon his own justification and with a brazen impudence out-faces Heaven God I thank thee that I am not as other men are c. He standing afar off as not thinking himself worthy to approach so great a Majesty not daring to lift up his eyes to Heaven as dejected with the apprehension of his own demerits smites upon his breast with indignation against himself and brings out onely this contrite sigh God be mercifull to me a sinner And so the Psalmist David in that penitential Psalm of his Psal 51. vers 3. I acknowledge my transgression and my sin is ever before me Against thee thee onely have I sinned and done evil in thy sight Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my Mother conceive me c. And this is the course of every Penitent for though it be too true that Confession may be without true and compleat Repentance yet it is impossible that Repentance should be true without Confession I enter not into a discourse of Confession to men because my Text leads me not to it further then as it concerns the person injured in which case it is often necessary for the satisfaction of our Consciences and where-ever there is any ingenuity in the offended person it must needs be very prevalent towards his forgiveness But as for the Divine Majesty who is always injured in every transgression and can never have any reparation otherwise then by it it must needs be always reasonable and necessary as we shall shew more fully by and by 2. BUT the Son contents not himself with a bare acknowledgment of his fault in general but goes on to aggravate it I have sinned against Heaven and before thee If we consider the letter of those words they import I have sinned both against God and thee my earthly Parent for so the Jews were wont to express themselves calling the Divine Majesty by the name of Heaven as we may observe S. Luke 20. 4. The Baptism of John was it from Heaven or of men i. e. Was it it of God's institution or man's invention So also 1 Macc. 3. 18. It is all one with Heaven to save with few or with many i. e. with the God of Heaven And we may easily take notice that in most of the Parables of our Saviour that which is sometimes called the Kingdom of God is otherwhile expressed by the name of the Kingdom of Heaven and by both nothing else is meant but the Gospel that divine institution of Religion but if we attend to the intent of this acknowledgement of the Prodigal Son the words import an aggravation of his disobedience q. d. There was no necessity lay upon me to transgress thy yoke was easy and reasonable and therefore in disobeying thee I disobeyed God too Or I must first have cast off all reverence of God before I could be undutifull towards thee It was not the harshness and severity of my Father that drove me away but my own levity and folly that betrayed me and my stubbornness that I forsook him And the same consideration affects the heart of the Penitent For saith he I have not only offended the Divine Majesty but rebelled both against a rightfull and a gracious Sovereign have broken wise and just and equitable Laws been ingratefull towards him that had obliged me by infinite favours have slighted the most glorious propositions and neglected the most gracious and condescending conditions of being happy There was no invincible temptation upon me it was not in the power of example to debauch me I was not opprest by fate but have chosen my own destruction It is not the Apostasy of Adam that can excuse me for it was my own act I cannot say the Fathers have eaten sour grapes and the Children's teeth are set on edge for I sinned against light and Conscience with full consent and against the motions of God's Spirit to the contrary AFTER this manner the Penitent is apt to lay load upon himself no body can think or speak worse of him then he thinks and confesses of himself so far is he from extenuating his crimes that no malice can paint them worse then grief and indignation at himself doth In short with St. Paul he esteems himself the chiefest and worst of sinners THIS is a quite contrary course to that which men use to take when they plead at humane Tribunals either they deny the fact or extenuate or justify it either they plead ignorance or pretend necessity or prescribe for it from the custome and prevailing example of the world but none of these ways are of use before God and therefore are not the pleas of the Penitent The Argument of the Psalmist though it may seem a very strange one is frequent with such men Psal 25. 10. O Lord pardon my sin for it is great q. d. I am only fit to magnify thy mercy for I have sinned beyond any mercy but thine my guilt is too great a burden for me to bear if thy unspeakable mercies relieve me not What shall I do unto thee O thou redeemer of men Such a Soul is not only ashamed but loaths and abhors himself his Spirit is broken his countenance dejected his confidence dismounted he feels pain and remorse he goes heavily he is pricked to the heart and cries out in the anguish of his Soul What shall I doe But 3. HE goes on not only to accuse but to condemn himself also I am not worthy to be
called thy Son I deserve to be utterly abandoned excluded your care and cast out of your thoughts as I cast my self out of your family And so the Penitent I am so far Lord from deserving thy favour or eternal life that I deserve not the least Crum from thy Table less then the least of all thy mercies Nay I acknowledge I have deserved to goe with sorrow to my grave and to undergo the dreadfullest viols of thy wrath IT is very remarkable that the Prodigal doth not only thus condemn himself whilest he anxiously stands expecting his doom from his Father but even then when his Father had expressed compassion to him had ran to meet him and kissed him for so vers 21. we find him repeating his own condemnation in the same words as before And in like manner we observe the Apostle St. Paul after he had obtained pardon and the great favour of Apostleship to be continually ripping up his former sins and condemning himself for them as if the wound bled afresh as often as it was touched THUS the Penitent always judges and condemns himself that he may not be judged of the Lord. By severity towards himself he recommends himself to the Divine Mercy for as Tertullian expresses it In quantum non peperceris tibi in tantum Deus tibi parcet If we like Phineas stand up and execute judgement the Plague will be stayed He that anticipates the day of Judgment by erecting a private but impartial Tribunal prevents the dreadfullness of that day In short if we be just God will be mercifull and therefore when the Penitent hath been accuser witness and judge against himself he may then with hopes of success become 4. IN the fourth place Intercessour for himself also and deprecate the divine displeasure and implore his favour So the Son doth here make me as one of thy hired servants q. d. Let me not be utterly cast out of thy Family but have at least this instance of thy favour that I may still retain some relation to thee And so the Penitent now that he hath received his sentence of condemnation within himself sues out his pardon O take not my confession meerly as an argument of my guilt but as an evidence of my contrition Break not the bruised reed nor quench the smoaking flax 'T is thy prerogative O Lord to pardon and what pleasure is there in my blood Will the Lord be angry for ever will his jealousy burn like fire O consider my frame remember I am but dust and ashes call to mind thy mercies of old thou art God and not man and as much as the Heavens are higher then the Earth so are thy mercies above the mercies of a man Turn thy face away from my sins and blot out all my transgressions Make me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit in me Cast me not away from thy presence and take not thy Holy Spirit from me Give me the comfort of thy help again and stablish me with thy free Spirit c. Psal 51. 9 10 11 12. SAINT Cyprian reports it to have been the Custome of the Primitive Penitents out of their quick and pricking sense of sin and the more effectually to recommend themselves to the mercies of God and the favour of his Church earnestly to implore the Martyrs that in the midst of their sufferings and sharpest agonies they would remember them in their prayers thinking such affectionate intercession of those that poured out their blood and requests together must needs be available both with God and man But the Penitent addresses himself also to a higher and more prevalent Advocate who adds the incense of his own sacrifice to the prayers of men and makes them come up as sweet odours before the Almighty and who is exalted at God's right hand to this end that he may give success to the prayers of such contrite persons To which adde that not only the deep apprehensions of guilt and of danger which such a person we now speak of is under must needs mkee him ardent and importunate and to cry mightily to God but also the Scripture assures us that the Holy Ghost is wont to assist such with sighs and groans which are unutterable § II. NOW for the acceptableness of this penitent confession of which we are speaking Although it be certain that our heavenly Father takes no delight in the pityfull moans in the tears and lamentations of his Creatures and most true that he is not to be wrought upon by addresses and complemental forms by the accent of men's voice by the rhetorick of tears nor any thing of that nature because he is not subject to passions as men are yet having demonstrated already in the former Chapter that the Divine Majesty hath no restraint upon him but what himself pleases and that all his actions towards his Creatures are so subject to his wisedom that when-ever there is just cause for mercy he can shew it notwithstanding the unchangeableness of his Nature the rigour of his Laws or the demand of his Justice If now we also make it appear from his own mouth and from those discoveries which he hath been pleased to make of himself that the aforesaid humble and contrite addresses are agreeable to the designs of his wisedom and therefore required by him as the conditions of pardon then there can be no doubt but that they will in their kind be as acceptable to his Divine Majesty and as successfull on the part of the sinner as the penitent Son's submission was with his earthly Parent AND this will be easily evident if we consider that whereas the evil of sin lies principally in the dishonour it reflects upon the divine perfections such penitential acknowledgments as we have described do in great measure repair that injury and do right to all the Divine Attributes as we will instance in particular 1. SIN is an invasion of God's Authority and Sovereignty over us inasmuch as he that willfully breaks any Law of God proclaims himself sui Juris or Lawless and saith with those in the Gospel we will not have this Lord to rule over us Now penitent acknowledgment though it cannot recall the act which is past yet it revokes and retracts the affront and settles God's authority again 2. SIN is an impeachment of God's wisedom justice and goodness at once for he that allows himself in the commission of a sin lays an imputation upon God as if he had either not foreseen what liberty was fit to be allowed to his Creatures or had not ordered the frame and constitution of things with that decency and benignity that mankind could comfortably acquiesce in without temptation to intrench upon that for his own necessary accommodation Now on the contrary confession takes shame and folly and unreasonableness to our selves and justifies the wisedom and equity of all God's constitutions In this sense we may take that expression Luk. 7. 29. The Publicans justified God
that the saying of the Apostle is especially and most remarkably verified in the charity of Parents that it beareth all things hopeth all things believeth all things for they readily believe well of their Children because they so passionately desire it should be so notwithstanding the Son could not think his Father so soft and easy as to be imposed upon with words and ceremonies and himself was not now so ill natured as to go about to abuse so much goodness if it it had been in his power Wherefore the Text saith vers 20. So he arose and came to his Father i. e. he did not only change his note his address his countenance but he changed his course he returned to his Father and to the duty of a Son AND we have under this type in the former part of it seen described the preface and introduction to repentance towards God namely the sinner bewailing his sin taking shame to himself under agonies of mind pricked to the heart humbly imploring the divine favour and crying earnestly for mercy But this is not all that repentance means the principal part of it is yet behind viz. Actual Reformation This is that which every awakened Conscience in its agonies promises and resolves upon this God expects and every sincere Convert really performs For without this all the rest is but empty pomp and pageantry and meer hypocrisy as we shall shew anon But when this is added to the former such a person from thenceforth is a new man and in a new estate he hath compleatly made his return to God as the Son in the Text is said to have actually returned to his Father I have noted heretofore that all irreligion and profaneness is wont in the language of the Scripture to be expressed by the phrase of departing from God or going out from him or forsaking him and so the whole practice of Religion is contrariwise set forth by drawing nigh to or coming to God particularly Hebr. 11. 6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he that cometh to God q. d. he that becomes a Proselyte to Religion for from thence doth that word Proselyte take its original Wherefore now we will first observe what is implyed by this phrase of the Son 's returning or coming to his Father and in proportion thereto describe this most important business of the Penitent's returning to God which is his Actual Conversion or Reformation and in the former these three things seem plainly to be comprehended 1. That the Son now returns home to his Father's family and presence 2. That he returns to the duty of a Son by obedience and compliance with his Father's commands 3. That he submits to his Father's government and provision Therefore in the latter namely conversion to God these three things must semblably be implied 1. That the Penitent puts himself under the eye of God and lives in a constant practice of piety and devotion 2. That he frames himself to universal obedience to all God's commands 3. That he gives himself up to the divine disposal and intirely submits to his providence and government 1. CONCERNING the first of these there is nothing more evident or remarkable to all experience and observation then the great fervor of devotion in all true Converts from an evil life insomuch that there is not that man to be found under such a character but presently with great solemnity and seriousness he sets up the worship of God to which purpose we find in the history of the Acts of the Apostles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Worshippers or Devout persons to be the common name by which Converts to Religion are expressed and these Acts 13. 48. are said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Candidates of eternal life or put into order and disposed for salvation Compare vers 43. with 48. More particularly it is observable of St. Paul that when from a superstitious Pharisee and bitter enemy of Christianity he was reclaimed and made a Christian the assurance that God gives to Ananias of the truth of his conversion is Acts 9. 11. Behold he prays And so of Manasses 2 Chron. 33. 18. amongst the instances of his real reformation the Scripture takes especial notice of the prayer that he prayed AND this is so universal a truth that I think from hence it cometh to pass that those who have a mind hypocritically to put on the guise and appearance of Religion are wont to be notably carefull in this point for so the Pharisees cloaked all their villanies with this garb of piety Now hypocrisy would miss altogether of its design if it did not resemble the truth of things and usually their over solicitude and overdoing herein betrays them to act a part only in Religion BUT it is not only the duty of prayer which the true Penitent expresses his conversion by though this be by some too phantastically called Duty as if all piety consisted in that only for as the literal Prodigal returns to his Father's house and family so the mystical returns to God's house which is his Church and associates himself with God's servants in all the offices of Religion viz. in hearing the word reading meditation Sacraments c. Now he thinks a day spent in God's Courts better then a thousand and had rather be a door-keeper in the house of the Lord then to dwell in the tents of the wicked This one thing he desires of the Lord and is most passionate in that he may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of his life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his Temple And he so highly values the priviledge of God's Church that no private opinion no trifling scrupulosity nor petty disgust shall ever alienate him from it Here he finds himself fortified and incouraged by the great examples of holy men his prayers strengthened by the concurrence of all good people here he is under the publick dispensations of the means of grace and knowledge the very plainness and simplicity of which he now with the great Convert St. Austin values and admires more then all the Greek or Roman eloquence of Speech or subtilty of Philosophy to which every thing else seemed flat and insipid before Above all the holy Sacrament puts him into an ecstasy in this he thinks himself in God's presence in an extraordinary manner and admitted a guest at his Table the Crums of which he thinks himself unworthy of here he refreshes his hungry Soul with the Bread of Life and his wounded Conscience by the Bloud of his crucified Saviour and in both he thinks he sees his provoked but compassionate Father stand with open arms to receive him This he approaches with great reverence with shame and sorrow for his sins past together with faith and hope in God's mercy and will therefore never be negligent of it IN these and all other duties of Religion both publick and private the Convert expresses such an excellent spirit and extraordinary
told us shall never be forgiven And that sin it self whatsoever it consists in is only upon this account unpardonable because it hath a finally impenitent temper joyned with it otherwise were it possible that such a sinner should repent there would be no doubt of his pardon but bating that peculiar case there is no sin but God hath pardoned and will pardon I will not take upon me to say which were the greatest sins that ever were committed by mankind but I will instance in two that must needs be acknowledged to have been very great which yet have obtained pardon and they are the sin of our first Parents and the sin of the Jews in crucifying our Saviour IN the former of these there was the breach of a known Law and that so newly given as that it could not be forgotten and it was also an easy and reasonable Law God having allowed them all the Trees in the Garden and laid an interdict only upon that one and it was no hard matter to have denied themselves that for God's sake especially considering they came newly out of his hands and saw so freshly the display of his power and wisedom in the Creation of the World and had so many and great instances of his goodness towards themselves besides they had as yet no vitiated faculties nor so much as one example of sin before them but that of the Devils which they had seen to be most severely vindicated It was a hard thing to be first in the transgression and a bold thing to venture to provoke God and to be the first instance of sin to all posterity they had the concern of all mankind upon them as who they knew must stand or fall with them and having frequent tokens of God's presence with them to sin under his eye and to hearken to the suggestions of a vile Beast the Serpent against God was prodigiously strange and yet they did it and God was pleased to pardon them IN the latter of the instances namely the Jews crucifying our Saviour besides the greatness of the Person against whom they sinned putting to death the Lord of life and glory there was designed malice perjury and subornation contumely towards an holy Person ingratitude towards one that had done them all the good they were capable of there was contradiction to the plainest evidence of miracles of all kinds and to the conviction of their own Consciences Notwithstanding all which the same St. Peter who Acts 2. 23. had charged them home in these words Ye men of Israel have with wicked hands crucified and slain Jesus of Nazareth a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God by him did in the midst of you as ye your selves know c. yet in the 38. Verse he exhorts the same men to repentance and to be baptized that they may receive remission of sins and the singular favour of the gift of the Holy Ghost TO these and several other instances of great sins which might easily be added we may cast in for the greater evidence of the vastness of the divine mercy that he pardons not only single acts of sin how hainous soever but long courses and habits of sin and those of several natures and kinds as in Manasses and in the Publicans and Harlots but that we may rise higher yet in admiration of the divine clemency we observe 2. IN the second place that he pardons also relapsed sinners They have a saying Non licèt in bello his peccare that the first faults in war are severely vindicated because there all errours are fatal and searce leave a capacity of being repeated And there are some relations so near and intimate and their ligaments so nice and curious that a breach in them can never be repaired to knit again But the relation of a Father and the goodness of a God leave always room for pardon Nay further They say saith the Prophet Jeremiah if a man put away his Wife and she goe from him and become another man's shall he return to her again But thou O Israel hast plaid the harlot with many lovers yet return again unto me saith the Lord Jer. 2. 1 2. § VI. The doctrine of the Navatians carried a great breadth with it in the Primitive times which denied repentance to those that sinned after Baptism and for that reason it is thought many holy men in those days deferred their Baptism as long as they could that they might not defile their garments but goe from that washing unspotted out of the world The opinion seemed to proceed from extraordinary purity and holiness and therefore as I said prevailed much and had a great reputation in those times and it seems it took its rise from a mistake of a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews Chap. 6. 4. However it was damned by the most learned and holy Fathers of the Church and particularly St. Basil and Gr. Nazianzen call it a damnable doctrine and destructive of Souls in that it discouraged and kept men off from repentance which God is always ready to admit of if it be sincere and such as we have before described IT is true which Clemens of Alexandria hath said that to make a common practice of sinning and then pretending repentance as if we would give God and the Devil their turns is an argument both of an impenitent and unbelieving temper for as he saith afterwards These frequent repentances as it were of course betray rather an intention of sinning again then any design of leaving it and therefore find no acceptance with God And it is also certain that a man that hath frequently relapsed having thereby exceedingly multiplied his guilt must needs feel very bitter pangs and sharp remorse when he doth return and will be ever after very apt to question his own sincerity and which is worse it is to be feared that like as it is with bones which have been often out and set again they will be very apt to slip awry so this person will be justly looked upon as in great danger and therefore hath a necessity of extraordinary watchfullness over himself But notwithstanding all this if such a man after several falls and slips shall stand right and firm at last and demonstrate the truth of his now penitent state by the following course of an holy life there is no question to be made of his acceptance with a mercifull God For God doth not proceed with men upon such terms as we do our passions are stirred many times and the provocation is too great for us to be able to concoct but he is pure mind and reason hath no boiling passion no revenge seeks only the good of his Creatures and so they become at last capable of his favour and blessing he is contented and hath his end Besides he that hath made it our duty that as often as our Brother offends against us and repents so often we should forgive
passage from the brink of Hell to the gates of Heaven More particularly he will observe the unhappy onset and beginnings the crooked and anfractuous proceedings the dangerous precipices and the horrid and fatall mischiefs of a sinfull course graphically described He will also descry the direct but laborious the sorrowfull but certain way of recovery And lastly the glorious triumph the comfortable condition and the sure station of him that hath happily conquered the aforesaid difficulties and is arrived at the serene top of Vertue together with the general applause and universal Jubilee of Heaven and Earth upon such an atchievement And in confidence that all these things are pointed at and intended in the scene before us as I do not doubt but will be evident by and by I do design to take occasion from hence to discourse somewhat fully and practically of these three very important particulars viz. 1. Of the nature of Sin and the mischiefs of a wicked course 2. Of the nature and admirable efficacy of Repentance Lastly Of the exorableness of the Divine Majesty and the unexpressible benignity and graciousness with which he entertains returning sinners And provided the management prove answerable to the design I cannot in the least mistrust the acceptableness of a work of this nature to any sort of men who have so much seriousness and manly sense in them as to value things in proportion to their real usefulness forasmuch as there is not that subject to be treated of which comes more close and home to the greatest concerns of all mankind For In the first place There are scarcely any so prodigiously vain as not to acknowledge themselves to be sinners and what can be of more use to him that makes that acknowledgement then to understand what it is which makes Sin to be sinfull what gives it its malignity and makes guilt inseparably to adhere to it what are the several states of sin and sinners and especially what is the natural course and tendency the sudden growth and unhappy progress of sin since hereby his conscience being inlightned will be both better able to make just reflexions upon what is past and also be made more cautious and diligent for the time to come And although it be true that every man hath not run the same mad risk of sin which is here decyphered in the Prodigal Son yet as that is owing to the especial providence and preventing grace of God where-ever the case is such so that happy person will by observing the wild extravagancies the extreme follies and horrid mischiefs which others incurr before conversion be the more provoked to adore the Divine Goodness in his own preservation Again What can be of more moment to those that are apprehensive of the Majesty and Purity of God of the holiness of his Laws of the certainty of a Judgement to come and withall are sensible of the frailty of humane nature and conscious of their own many and great miscarriages then to behold the nature of Repentance plainly described and to be instructed in the methods of making good their retreat of redintegrating themselves and successfully recommending their deplorable estate and condition to the Divine Philanthropy and mercy Lastly What can be more ravishingly comfortable to a contrite sinner then to understand the efficacy of true Repentance to see a door of hope open to the worst of sinners upon their coming to themselves and returning to their duty to be assured of the hearty compassions of the Divine Majesty to see the arms of the Almighty open to receive and embrace returning Children and all this as it were in perspective lively represented § II. But in regard it is a Parable which we have in hand I think my self obliged in order to the laying a good foundation of what we shall afterwards build upon it here in our entrance to premise something briefly first touching the ancient use of this Schematical and Figurative way of expression and the Reason of such usage secondly touching the Explication and Application of such kind of discourses And for the first of these I cannot reasonably imagine that any man who shall peruse these papers should be so great a stranger to all that hath past in former times as not to be aware that it was the general custome of Wise men of old to deliver their Sentiments after this manner and in such a style and this not onely in meer humane and common Writings but even in Sacred Writ it self To say nothing of the famous Oracles of the Gentiles which in other circumstances as well as in this of Mysteriousness have been observed to Ape and imitate those of the true God And to pass by the ancient Poets who were reputed as both the Divines and the Philosophers of the Ages in which they lived and who were well known to have affected an Oracular obscurity as much as the Oracles affected their way of versifying If we take notice of the ancient Proverbs of Nations which are supposed to carry the marks of the wisedom of their respective times and people these we find for the most part obscure and Aenigmatical And for the ancient Philosophers and men of renown such as the Wise men of Greece distinctively so called or such as Pythagoras Socrates c. who were no whit inferiour to the former he knows nothing of them that is not sensible not onely of accidental but also of designed obscurity in their writings and sayings As for the Sacred Writings of the Old Testament though with all good men I worthily adore that Divine Spirit which made choice of and directed the Pen-men of Holy Scripture and readily acknowledge both the plainness and perspicuity thereof in the necessary rules of life without which it could not have answered the ends of the Divine Wisedom in the enditing of it and also that wheresoever it is abstruse it is as far from phantastry and affected obscurity as the Pagan Oracles were notoriously guilty thereof notwithstanding it cannot be denied but that as well the Prophets as other holy Pen-men do frequently make use of Metaphors Allegories and other Schematical forms which must needs be attended with competent obscurity these being as it were a veil drawn over the face of Divine Truth Hence it is that Solomon makes the words of the wise and their dark sayings to be two expressions denoting the same thing for as he in another place speaks their discourses are like Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver that is besides a truth and beauty in the outside or case of the letter they had a more rich and precious meaning within And accordingly we may observe the Apostles of our Lord in the New Testament frequently to fix upon and pursue a mystical sense of some of those passages in the Old Testament which would to an ordinary Reader have seemed most strictly and literally to be understood Yet I do not think this will prove a sufficient warrant for Philo
hypocrisy I know he is able and ready to reward sincerity above desert above expectation beyond all thought and imagination I am sensible that hitherto I have not only loitered in his service but declined it nay opposed affronted rebelled against him I have listed my self under his professed enemy and under that banner I have spent a great part of my time Now may it please his infinite goodness to accept me at last I vow to be intirely his I 'll dispute no commands I 'll make no exceptions but I 'll double my diligence and say with the exemplary Convert St. Paul what wilt thou have me to doe Lord § IV. THUS we have seen the nature and properties of that which we called the hinge of conversion but let us now see what are the springs or plummets that set this great Engine on work or what are the considerations by way of motive that put men upon a resolution of repentance and they are principally these four 1. A persuasion that it will not be unsuccessfull and unacceptable to God if we truely repent at last though we have been great sinners before 2. An apprehension that it is not impossible to become perfectly new men notwithstanding our pre-ingagements in the ways of sin 3. That it is not onely possible but easie so to doe if we set about it in earnest 4. A clear perception that whether it be easie or difficult there is a plain necessity of it and it must be done 1. THE first motive to a resolution of repentance is a persuasion of mind that God is not inexorable but that repentance may find acceptance with him It is a memorable story concerning the Tusculani a little people in Italy who had so highly provoked the Romans that Camillus was leading his Army towards them to take revenge but they growing quickly apprehensive of their danger took an effectual course to appease a generous enemy for they made no shew of resistance but set open their Gates and were found every man hard at his ordinary affairs submitting all to the will of those they knew themselves unable to contend with Whereupon the brave Camillus speaks to them to this purpose You saith he amongst all people have only found out the true way of abating the Romane fury and your submission hath been your best defence upon these terms we can no more find in our hearts to injure you then upon other terms you could have found power to oppose us To whom the chief Magistrate on the other side thus replies We have saith he so in good earnest repented us of our former folly that in confidence of that satisfaction to a generous enemy we are not afraid to acknowledge our fault NOT much unlike to this is the sense of the relenting Son in the Text For thinks he what I have done amiss I can neither answer to my self nor to my Father I can neither deny the fact nor defend it therefore I must try what repentance will doe and appeal from his justice to his mercy It is true I forsook my Father but it was a Father I forsook and that name speaks benignity and what may not a Son hope for from a Father There is Rhetorick in confession and contrite submission hath mighty prevalence upon all ingenuous natures Quem poenitet peccasse paenè est innocens Repentance uses to have the success even of innocency it self and I that have failed of the one will try the other My acknowledgment will prevent my accusation If I condemn my self I save my Father a labour and when I abhor my self I move his pity especially if I become another man he will see the same reason to receive me then as he hath to reject me now AND so the penitent towards God I have offended the Divine Majesty but he is a God and that name speaks goodness if he be not as good as can be he is not God and if he be nothing but what is good can proceed from him and nothing that is good but may be expected from him therefore there is hope of pardon THE wisedome of all the world hath agreed to make it the constant stile of God Optimus Maximus the greatest Goodness or the best Greatness goodness and mercy are as essential to him as power and justice nay the very latter inferr the former For what is there can tempt an infinitely perfect Being to be cruel and inexorable He that hath all fullness in himself can certainly envy nothing can hate nothing that he hath made but must needs pity those that are below him and delight to communicate himself to such as need him Envy and cruelty are the issues of meer weakness fear want and impotency The poor are apt to envy the rich because they enjoy what they want and we commonly observe that the weakest and most timorous Creatures are most revengefull and implacable The Coward is deadly and sanguinary because he is not secure of his own strength and therefore dares not slip his opportunity but strikes home and mortally lest the danger should recoil upon himself But what rich and great man envies the beggar or what valiant man was ever remorsless and sanguinary The former hath all the arguments to pity because he cannot want and the latter all the inducements to pardon because he cannot fear God is above all danger can be hurt by nothing needs nothing hath nothing to receive but much to bestow he cannot therefore be prompted to take advantage against his Creatures or delight in their misery since the only ends he hath to serve upon them is the enjoying his own fullness by reflection the diffusing and communicating himself to them and thereby making them happy WHEN God was highly provoked by the sin of David in numbring the people in which fact there was a complication of many evils there was disobedience to an express Law there was distrust of the divine providence and a vain confidence in the arm of flesh It pleased the Divine Majesty to notify his displeasure by the Prophet Nathan and withall gives David his choice either of Pestilence Famine or Sword the King refers it back again to God whether he would please to punish by the Famine or by the Pestilence for saith he Let us fall into the hands of God for his mercies are great but let us not fall into the hands of men He had rather trust the mercies of an incensed God then lie at the mercy of mortal men He knew they were transported with rage and fury but God was pitifull they often forgot themselves but God remembred sinners were but men and dust and ashes They would plague one another maliciously but God chastised in wisedom and measure And that with him according to the phrase of St. James mercy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rejoiceth against glorieth and triumpheth over justice THE Discourse of a brave Heathen is excellent to this purpose We think it just saith
he to give both thanks and reward to him that cures our bodily infirmities though he do it not without some pain and trouble to us and why should we not rather love God's methods as the Physician of Souls there is no passion nor much less revenge in his proceedings with us he neither cuts and lances us cruelly nor uses any other sharpness then the case necessarily requires he doth nothing with intention to hurt or grieve us but proceeds with art and care designing our greatest good and in a word is in all his actions agreeable to the goodness and benignity of his own nature The summe of all which and of what we intend further to say is that of the Apostle God is good and the goodness of God leadeth to repentance Rom. 2. 5. For the consideration of that is the spring of hope and of all motion by way of return THERE are indeed some men who having entertained very crude notions of the Divine Majesty do sometimes assert on the one hand that vindictive justice is essential and natural to God so that he is bound up to require strict satisfaction and without it cannot properly pardon any transgression And others on the other hand talk at the same wild rate of his mercy and goodness as if all the instances he makes thereof were also natural and necessary and that he could not insist upon his own right but must make all the expressions of kindness that are possible towards his Creatures But both these notions are equally false and mischievous the former of them representing God a rigid Majesty and tending to desperation the other an easy and soft Deity and tempting men to presume upon him the one making him an object of horrour and the other of contempt for who can love him that cannot pity and who can reverence him who hath it not in his power to do otherwise The truth is therefore that all particular instances both of the one kind and of the other are subject to his wisedom that he can exercise either mercy or severity as he sees occasion for after this manner the Scripture speaks of him that sometime he hath mercy because he will have mercy and that when he will he hardeneth sinners for destruction AND to think otherwise of God especially in the case of mercy and pardon as if he could not dispense it as he pleases is to bring in a rigid fatality with the Stoicks instead of a God and is so far from aggrandizing the Divine Majesty that it is the greatest diminution of his power and glory and renders him less then a man for we can recedere à nostro jure remit of our own rights and give mercy a triumph over strict justice And although the sinner when he offends against God forfeits himself into the divine hand and gives God just cause to punish him if he will yet certainly he cannot by any act of his put a Law upon God or oblige him to punish or if he think fit to shew mercy AND then for the interest of God's Rectourship and government of the world it is not a necessity of punishment that conserves that but the power or freedom of punishing or remitting accordingly as it shall seem good to his own wisedom Whereby when men are both provoked to amendment by the hopes of pardon and restrained from disobedience by the fear of punishment For the liberty of dispensing either of these at pleasure is that which produces a reverence towards the Divine Majesty that is a complication of love and fear wherein the very notion of Religion consists It is not an impertinent passage to this purpose which we have in the Historian when the young Gentlemen in the new Roman Common-wealth had a design to restore the Kingly Government in the Family of the Tarquins they had Speeches made amongst them to this effect To be bound up by the rigour of Laws which had no compassion nor made allowance for contingency was very harsh and unsafe considering humane infirmity But under Kingly Government there was power of dispensation possibility of indulgence liberty of interpretation room for mercy and pardon a man that fell did not necessarily there miscarry For there was place for intercession repentance might relieve him and the prerogative of the Prince was the security of the Subject NOW that repentance is available with God we have all the assurance that can be desired for besides what we have said already from the consideration of the perfections of the Divine Nature and the interest of his Government Repentance is the great and principal Doctrine of the Gospel which the Son of God himself came to proclaim by his Preaching to confirm by his Miracles to make way for and to procure acceptance to by his Death and Sacrifice and to render throughly effectual and successfull by his Intercession at God's right hand in Heaven Wherefore as Manoah's wife reasoned when her Husband had dreadfull apprehensions of the Majesty of God who had appeared to them and concluded they should die Because they had seen God No saith she if God intended to destroy us he would not have appeared to us or much less have accepted a Sacrifice at our hands So assuredly if God had not great compassion to mankind and did not design to accept them upon repentance he would never have given his own Son to be a Sacrifice for sin Can any man suspect that God is indifferent whether men be saved or no when he hath sent his Son to save them Can any man imagine him implacable towards those whose nature he sent his Son to assume and thereby to make an union betwixt the divine and humane Natures Will any man think him inexorable to sinners who pitied them healed them conversed with them and died for them Let Devils despair who have not only no promise and no Saviour but nothing pitiable in their case having had no tempter to abuse them no flesh or body to clog them no infirmity to extenuate their presumption they are without hope and therefore incapable of repentance and so go on eternally to hate and blaspheme the God that will not pardon them But there is no cause man should do so who as he hath all the arguments of pity in his case so hath all the assurances of pardon from God upon his repentance TO say no more the very constant experience of all Ages and the common sense of all mankind leaves us without all doubt that this method of repentance pacifies the Almighty insomuch that when he hath most exprest his angry resentments and seems to have been most peremptory and decretal in his threatnings yet all but mad and desperate persons have incouraged themselves to hope for impunity upon repentance even then when there hath not been the least intimation of any such condition in his denunciations for thus when the Prophet Jonas had from the mouth of God proclaimed expresly Yet forty days and
I lain long enough under the terrours of the Law and the spirit of bondage For God requires not sorrow for it self but for its end and it is no satisfaction to him that his Creatures lie under affrightfull apprehensions besides our own Consciences will tell us we may then dry our eyes and be comfortable when the cause is taken away and not before for then is it Godly sorrow when it bringeth forth repentance not to be repented of 2 Cor. 7. 10. AND herein lies the great uncomfortableness of a death-bed repentance for besides the horrible madness of trusting the issues of eternity upon extempore preparations if it should please God to give a man both the grace and the opportunity then at last seriously to bethink himself to feel remorse for his sins to make resolutions and to renew his baptismal Covenant yet then he can give no proof to himself of his own sincerity because he cannot repair God's honour he can make no conquest over Satan he can leave no example to the world he cannot by habit and exercise make the ways of God become easy and natural to himself he cannot be said to have lived the life of the righteous and therefore cannot comfortably conclude that he shall die the death of such AS for the penitent Thief in the Gospel that accompanied our Saviour in his sufferings upon the Cross to whom our Saviour pronounced that he should that day be with him in Paradise his case was peculiar probably he had lived in great darkness and ignorance and never had the means of grace till now but however it was not unagreeable to the divine wisedom and goodness to do something extraordinary at that great time and to signalize the efficacy of our Saviour's Mediatourship by some remarkable instance at such a time when the dignity and glory of his person was most clouded and obscured and as there never was nor will be such another occasion as this so it is great and desperate folly for any man to trust to such an experiment And whereas in the Parable Matth. 20. vers 12. those Labourers that came into the Vineyard at the eleventh hour are rewarded equally with those that had born the burden and heat of the day It is in the first place to be observed that though they came late yet not so late but that they did really work in the Vineyard and then besides here is nothing contrary to what we are pressing for we are far from intention of discouraging any to return at last or from limiting the mercies of God who is able to foresee what a late Convert would have done if he had opportunity and may accordingly extend mercy to him All therefore which I say is that this is a most uncomfortable state when a man's Conscience cannot give security for him nor is there any thing that affords him positive grounds of hope having not performed the conditions of the New Covenant only he hath a general refuge in the merits of Christ and in God's mercy WHEREFORE there is all the reason and all the wisedom in the world that a man should not trust to prefaces and praeludia beginnings and first eslays of repentance but let it have its perfect work that with the Prodigal Son he not only sit down and bewail his misery or take up resolutions of returning to his Father but that he forthwith set about it and effect it So he arose and came to his Father What entertainment he meets with from his Father upon so doing I am now to shew in the third and last Part of the Parable The father said to the servants bring forth the best robe and put it on him c. S t. LVKE 15. 22. Non patitur contriti cordis holocaustum repulsam Quotiens te in conspectu Domini video suspirantem Spiritum sanctum non dubito aspirantem cum intuâ—or flentem sentio ignoscentem Cypr serm de coena Page 240. 241. THE PARABLE OF THE Prodigal Son PART III. The Prodigal received and reconciled or God's gracious reception of a Penitent Sinner S. Luke 15. Vers 22 23 24. But the Father said to his servants Bring forth the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet And bring hither the fatted Calf and kill it and let us eat and be merry For this my Son was dead and is alive again was lost and is found c. CHAP. I. Of Reconciliation or Justification THE CONTENTS § I. The passionate story of Joseph Gen. 37. parallel to this Parable before us § II. God takes notice of the first beginnings of good in men The use of that consideration § III. God's compassion and tenderness to men under agonies of mind yet without the weakness of humane passion § IV. God not only takes delight in beginnings of good but promotes them by his grace The famous story in Eusebius of St. John and a dissolute young man and several usefull observations thereupon § V. The greatness of God's pardoning mercy and the fullness and compleatness thereof upon repentance set out in several great instances full of unspeakable consolation to the Penitent and wherein God's mercies outgo those of mercifull men the greatness of the sin of our first Parents and of the Jews in crucifying our Lord which notwithstanding were both pardoned § VI. Of the Novation Heresy and the mischiefs of it § VII Practical reflections upon Justification § I. IT is a very lively and pathetick story which Moses gives us concerning Jacob and his Sons especially his beloved Son Joseph to this effect The Brethren of Joseph envying him that great share he had in his Father's affections resolve some way or other to dispatch him out of the way but that they might not imbrue their hands in his bloud they conclude to sell him a slave to the Midianites that happened at that time to come in the way and to hide their own fault from their Father they kill a Kid and dip Joseph's Coat in the bloud and telling a demure story to the old man impose upon his belief that some wild Beast had devoured his Son Which when the good man was possest of he most tenderly resents the affliction rends his Cloaths puts Sackcloth upon his Loins and mourned many days Whereupon his Sons and Daughters and even those especially that had raised the tragedy personate so well as to take upon them to be his comforters but the wound was too deep to be easily cured for he refuses consolation No saith he I will go down to the grave to my Son mourning my grief shall only wear away with my life and only the land of oblivion shall make me forget Joseph At last after a long and sad time of lamentation there comes the surprizing news to the good man Joseph thy Son is yet alive and Ruler of all the Land of Aegypt The aged Father faints at the tidings the News was too good to
as that no old score remains upon record against the Penitent it may raise in us great admiration of his infinite goodness beget the most amiable notions of him in our minds and provoke us to love him with all our hearts So our Saviour concludes in the Gospel that where most is forgiven there must undoubtedly lie the greatest obligations of love and gratitude The Apostle tells us Rom. 5. 7. That scarcely for a righteous man will one die but for a good man some would even dare to die All God's Attributes of power and wisedom and holiness are very amiable and lovely but this of his goodness in forgiving sins comes most home to us in that he doth not rigidly insist on his own right but comply with our necessity and relieve our misery To give and bestow benefits upon us is goodness but to forgive is greater because here he divests himself of his own right recedes from his own claim and that for our unspeakable benefit In short he seems not to consider himself but us only in the dispensations of his mercy he is as good as good can be and therefore there is all the reason in the world that we should love him as much as is possible And one of the best and most acceptable ways of expressing that is that which 3. THIRDLY I make a third inference viz. that we imitate this goodness and mercifullness of his this is prest upon us by our Saviour Be ye mercifull as your Father in Heaven is mercifull It is said of Cato that the strict sanctity of his own life made him a severe and rigid Magistrate he knew not how to pardon in other men what he would not permit in himself If God who is a holy and immaculate Being should severely animadvert our failings we could not blame him though we were undone by it nay it ought to be the greatest wonder to us in the whole world that he doth not do so considering the greatness of his Majesty the justice and wisedom of his Laws and such other things of this nature as we have formerly represented But it is the most absurd thing in nature that we who are great offenders our selves that have infinite need of mercy at God's hands that we should be cruel and vindictive towards each other that God should cover our follies and we blazon those of other men shall he pardon us worms and we be remorsless towards our Brethren doth he consider humane infirmity bind up the wounds of the contrite so as to leave no scar or blemish behind of all their former miscarriages and do we rake in the wounds proclaim the follies uncover the nakedness and shame of our neighbour is it tolerable for us to equal our selves with God or are offences greater against us then against him shall we dare to do what we dare not wish should be done to us Do not we pray Enter not into judgment with thy Servants c. and confess That if God be extream to mark what we have done amiss that none can abide it and do we scrupulously weigh severely aggravate and rigorously animadvert the sins of others against our selves doth God forgive us by talents and we unmercifully exact the utmost farthing INDEED we may observe it to be the genius and custom of evil men to remember invidiously the faults which penitent men have forsaken to the end that they may revenge themselves upon them for that change which condemns their own obstinate perseverance in such courses or as hoping to excuse or justify their constant naughtiness by remarking the temporary compliance of those other with them whose contrary course now shames and reproaches them But it is quite otherwise with all good men they partly out of a sense of humanity partly to incourage men to repentance and partly also to confirm and secure such as have repented from all temptations to apostasy draw a curtain over their former misdemeanours and forget what they have forsaken and God hath forgiven therefore if we will either take pattern by God or them we ought to doe so too LASTLY but above all the rest the consideration of God's pardon and the egregious circumstances thereof should be a mighty incouragement to all sinners to repentance when we remember how gracious a Father we grieve by a willfull destroying of our selves how much he pities us and longs for our return what a serene countenance hearty welcome full pardon gracious reception and how innumerable and inestimable blessings we shall have poured out upon us at our so doing And this brings me again to the second part of the penitent Son's entertainment to which therefore I now proceed CHAP. II. Of Sanctification THE CONTENTS § I. What is meant by the best Robe and that it is the usual phrase of Scripture to set out the ornaments of the mind by those of the body § II. Sanctification in different respects both goes before and follows after Justification § III. Three remarkable differences betwixt the measure of Sanctification which God requires and that which he accepts for the present or the different stature of Grace before Justification and after it § IV. The ways by which God works men up to those higher measures of Sanctification which he requires As 1. By mighty obligation working upon their gratitude and ingenuity 2. By the efficacy of Faith 3. By the gift of the Holy Ghost § 1. THERE is a never failing spring of kindness and good will in Parents towards their Children which flows with that life and vigour that nothing is able to dam it up or interrupt it so but that if it be obstructed one way it breaks out and discovers it self another If the Children prove singularly good and vertuous then paternal affection bears a mighty stream overflows all its banks the Parents feel an unspeakable delight and satisfaction and their Children are then the Crown of their age their joy and triumph If they happen to be but tolerable they are ready to interpret all to the best and prone to heap blessings and kindnesses upon them And if they degenerate and prove very bad and undutifull this though it checks the tide yet cannot divert the current for at worst they cannot cease to pity them There is in like manner an everlasting propension in Almighty God to do good to men insomuch that when they are very bad he pities them as soon as they begin to be good he loves and blesses them but when they become generously vertuous and holy he takes complacency in them and all these different degrees of divine favour we have lively represented to us in the Parable before us But we are now upon the second of them namely the great and singular blessings which the Father frankly bestows upon his Son now that he hath repented of his extravagancy and is reconciled to him And under this rank we may reckon these three special instances FIRST whereas the Father observed his Son to return in a
love so long as they are enemies to the common enemy so it happens here that a Convert zealously combating against some one vice in studious declension of that insensibly slips into some degrees of the other extream and then finds it a fresh difficulty vincere eos per quos vicisti to conquer that other infirmity by which he conquered the former TO which purpose it is remarkable concerning that holy man St. Jerom whilst he lived in the affluence of the City and used a free conversation he felt frequent temptations of the flesh and setting himself with all his might to mortify these and to do it effectually retired into a desart that he might both take away the cause and the occasions of those dangers but whilst in that retirement he exercises himself to great severity and austerity he insensibly grew into a blameable asperity of temper which needed a second labour to subdue I will not say as some do that as God would have some remainders of the seven Nations preserved amongst the Children of Israel in the Land of Canaan to be continually as thorns in their eyes and goads in their sides so he orders it that there should be some remainders of the old Adam in us to keep us always humble and employed for certainly God would have all sin expelled our natures But this I say that as Israel was truely in possession of the Land of Canaan from such time as Joshua had conquered those powers that made head against them and had put the chief Cities and places of strength into their hands notwithstanding that a long time after some of those old inhabitants remained amongst them and were no very good Neighbours so I affirm that so long as there is not only a resolution against all sin but a constant hostile pursuit of it and that a man goes on conquering and to conquer such a man is a true Israelite though he have not perfected his conquest nor can yet say with St. Paul I have fought the good fight I have finished my course I have kept the faith and therefore henceforth is laid up for me the crown of righteousness BUT now forasmuch as God both for his own glory and service the comfort of the Convert's own Soul and his greater capacity of the Kingdom of Heaven designs to bring men to higher degrees of sanctification then what he was pleased to accept of when he first received the Penitent to mercy therefore he afterwards puts upon him the Best Robe 2. IT is to be considered that the beginnings of all things that are any way notable especially are wrought with pain and difficulty insomuch that nemo repente fit turpissimus no man finds it very easy at first to doe any egregious wickedness Men become evil by degrees and there is proficiency even in the Devil's school and therefore much more reasonably may it be expected that those that first enter into a strict course of vertue should be sensible of difficulty in their first undertaking IT was an ingenious answer which Plutarch reports to have been given by a Lacedemonian Turor when he was asked what he pretended to and of what avail his indeavours were I make saith he that to become easy and delightfull which is of it self good and necessary It is true Christ Jesus tells us his yoke is easy and his burden is light and without doubt it is so but it is a yoke and a burden still and no man finds it easy untill he have exercised himself to it rewards and punishments set before us and reason and resolution working thereupon will prevail with men to doe their duty but only practice and assuetude makes it become easy and familiar so to doe especially supposing as we do in the present case a man but lately accustomed to indulge himself in a course of sin let such a man's conversion be never so real and hearty however it cannot be expected that he should presently do Christ's commands and say they are not grievous It is certain such a man if he be what we suppose him that is sincere will resist his inclination and change his course but because it was lately a course there will yet be an inclination towards it and consequently a conflict and difficulty in avoyding it for as we said before it is only one custome can perfectly supplant another and only habit can imitate nature and make easy the cutting off our corrupt members is a hard task till by time and degrees they become mortified and then it is done without any considerable pain or difficulty Whosoever hath any principle of divine life or true sense of God in him will not allow himself in the neglect of God's worship yet he will find it no easy business to hold his heart intent and constant in it till it have become customary and natural to him and then it is so far easy and delightfull to him that he knows not how to live without it Now although that state which tuggs at the Oare and draws on heavily may be sincere because it discharges its duty honestly though with great difficulty and therefore find acceptance with a good God yet forasmuch as his intention is that we should become partakers of the divine nature and that it be our meat and drink to doe his will that the way of his commands be to us as our necessary food that we should do his will with that alacrity on earth with which it is done by the Angels in Heaven that our wills should be perfectly conformed to his and Religion become natural to us partly to the end that we may do him the more honour for there is nothing doth so much reputation to the divine Law and government as the chearfull obedience of his Subjects partly also that we may be the more fit for the Kingdom of Heaven for those most easily fall in with the heavenly Quire who have practised their part beforehand therefore since he desires that we should not only be not evil but generously good nor meerly draw on heavily and uncomfortably but fly as upon the wings of a Cherub in his service it seems good to him when he hath pardoned a penitent to confer upon him greater measures of Sanctification 3. A young Convert though he have all the parts and members of a perfect man in Christ and should also be supposed in great measure to have overcome the difficulties which always attend vertuous beginnings yet he is but a beginner and must needs be conceived weak and feeble in his whole contexture he is not only apt to be abused with Sophistry and carried about with every wind of doctrine but less able to bear the burdens and to resist the temptations he must expect to meet with the traces of his former course are not yet worn out and so he is the apter to return he is not at the top but going up hill and may easily faint or slip he hath not such experience of
formerly a great sinner himself and hath known by sad experience the deplorableness of that condition and found mercy at God's hands methinks such a person should with warm affections and tender bowels awaken that man into an apprehension of his danger who is in the condition he himself hath escaped and incourage him to try those mercies of God which he himself hath experimented For if either a righteous man that never needed repentance i. e. such a change of his whole state as we have been speaking of should be less sensible of such a man's case or especially if a proud self-applauding Pharisee despise him yet it will by no means become a Convert to be without compassion For besides all other arguments to this purpose it may be such a man may have just cause to consider whether his own example when he did goe on in the way of sin had not that pernicious contagion as to infect or confirm this man in his wickedness which he sees him now lie under and then it will not be only charity but justice which will oblige him to this duty IT was the opinion if I remember rightly of St. Basil that in Hell the torments of the damned are daily increased in proportion as the evil seed of their corrupt doctrine or the evil example which they sowed whilst they were alive fructifies upon earth but whether that be so or no it is certain men's sins are aggravated by the mischief they do to others as well as by other circumstances and therefore every such Penitent as we speak of must think it his duty and concern to indeavour to hinder the propagation of sin and to stop the infection in others as well as to destroy the malignity of it in himself § II. NOW there are many ways which an honest heart will find out of doing this we are recommending without taking upon him to be a Preacher Solomon tells us A wicked man speaketh with his feet and teacheth with his fingers that is though he say nothing with his lips all his life and actions do teach and instruct the world in wickedness and there is no question but that holy men may most effectually recommend vertue to others by their own practice and example Example insinuates gently works insensibly but powerfully as almost all great Engines do it relieves men's modesty and yet shames their sloth it kindles emulation presses upon ingenuity recommends the excellency convinces the necessity demonstrates the possibility of vertue Besides that there are a great many of the most curious lines thereof that are not to be described by the pencil or that can be expressed by words but are to be observed in the life and conversation of good men For this reason amongst others it pleased God to send our Saviour not only to preach the divine life to the world but to live and converse with men that by his example he might more plainly convince them of it and for this cause also we solemnly thank God for the examples of all holy men that have gone before us AND besides example there are many opportunities and advantages which good men have of propagating a sense of piety and Religion such as the authority of Parents influence of benefactours interest of relations convenience of travelling together society of commerce and all other bonds of conversation Every of which a mind inflamed with the love of God and compassion to the Souls of men will find usefull to this purpose And this was the course Moses advised Israel for the keeping up a sense of God and his Laws in their minds and the propagation of it to posterity Deut. 6. 6 7. These words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart and thou shalt teach them diligently to thy Children and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up c. And for the incouragement of all good men in this business besides the great honour it is to be subservient to God in so important an affair and besides the unspeakable comfort to our own Consciences If by converting a sinner from the evil of his way we save a Soul from death and cover a multitude of sins Jam. 5. 20. and that by such an act of zeal we have also the happiness to efface our own former miscarriages Besides all this I say in present we shall also advance our own glory and crown hereafter for in the words of the Prophet Daniel They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the Firmament and they that turn many to righteousness as the Stars for ever and ever Daniel 12. 3. IT were very easy to inlarge on this subject but that which is most pertinent and the peculiar consideration of this place is to shew the particular aptness of those that have themselves been converted from a wicked life to be instrumental of recovering others which I will briefly give account of in the following particulars and so dismiss this point And in order to this § III. IN the first place it is considerable that those that are of sickly constitutions are generally observed to be more pitifull and compassionate to the infirm then those robust and healthy persons that scarce ever knew what sickness meant and those that have long languished under any painfull infirmity and at last have recovered are both the best able and most willing to give advice to others under the same distemper Upon which account it hath been the custom of some Nations who had no professed Physicians to bring their sick out into the Market-place where all persons that came were obliged by Law to take notice of them that by this means the experience of one that had escaped a disease might afford a relief to him that now laboured under it And so it is reasonable to think that those who have been sick in sin and of sin heretofore must needs by their own experience know the baits that allure men the charms that bewitch them the fallacies of Sathan that impose upon them the folly and perverseness that defixes men in that unhappy estate the workings of passion the regret of Conscience the thoughts and reasonings the objections the prejudices and the very inside of other men in that condition And therefore as God commands Israel Exod. 23. 9. Thou shalt not oppress a stranger for ye know the heart of a stranger seeing ye were strangers in the land of Aegypt i. e. they knew what injuries oppressions insolencies and affronts a stranger was exposed to and what fears anxieties and jealousies he must needs be always under and therefore it having been their own case they ought to think it reasonable to pity such so in the present case the Convert is furnished both with more observations to render him serviceable to the conversion of Souls and more compassion to apply and make use of his experience to