with salvation Cautions about inconsiderate sins to prevent false confidence No sin is innocently inconsiderate 1. Where we have time and an undisturbed understanding 2. Where the sin is mischievous or greatly criminal 3. When we do not strive against it We must endeavour against all involuntary failings though we cannot resolve against them 4. When we are not sorry after we have committed it nor beg pardon for it 5. When it is committed with observation A summary repetition of this fourth Book 544 BOOK V. Of those Remedies which restore men to a state of Salvation when they are fallen from it and of some needless Scruples concerning it CHAP. I. Of Repentance which restores us to God's Favour after Sins of all sorts The Contents THE rigour of the Mosaick Law is taken away by Christ who came to preach Pardon upon Repentance where that denounced an unavoidable punishment Repentance is the great Remedy God heartily desires mens Repentance and promises Forgiveness to it This has been preached in all times The Remedy for our unknown sins They are uncapable of a particular Prayer and Repentance but are forgiven upon a general one The Remedy of wilful sins is a particular Repentance That is available for their pardon for wilful sins after Baptism as well as before it Two places which seem to deny all pardon to wilful sins after Baptism cleared the wilful sin Heb. 10.26 is not any wilful transgression of any particular Law of Christ which have all been pardoned but a wilful apostasie from his whole Religion which is proved from sundry things there spoken of it The falling away mentioned Heb. 6 is like wise apostasie from Christianity which is shewn from those things which they are said to fall from and those others which are said to be implied in their falling An account of the desperate state of these men The state of some habitual Sinners desperate and irreclaimable by reason their period of Grace is over but this is no discouragement to any mans Repentance 568 CHAP. II. Of Reconciliation and Restitution upon those Sins whereby we have offended or injured our Brethren The Contents Of the necessity of Reconciliation upon Sins whereby we have offended and of Restitution upon others whereby we have injured our Brethren In sin three things considerable the offence against God and the offence and injury against men Sins whereby God alone is offended are sufficiently repented of and pardonable upon reformation and amendment Those whereby we have also offended or injured our Brethren are not sufficiently repented of or pardonable upon that alone unless moreover we seek to be reconciled and make restitution These two means of pardon for affronts and injuries against men are necessary fruits of a sincere and sufficient repentance Of sins whereby we have justly offended our Brethren Their ill effects represented which are to be redressed by penitential acknowledgments and seeking to be reconciled These penitential acknowledgments necessary only to appease these whom by our sin we have offended and so unnecessary when they know nothing of our offence Where they do Reconciliation is necessary so far only as it can be had and where we have an opportunity of seeking it This Discourse upon Reconciliation summed up Of sins of injustice whereby we have injured men Reparation ordinarily necessary to a sincere and always to a sufficient Repentance of them 'T is necessary moreover in it self as an instance of strict Justice An account of particular injuries how to be repaired where the injured persons can and how where they cannot receive it Restitution necessary whether our Brethren know themselves to be injured by us or no. It is due only upon sins of injustice Of the perfect right which we have to things of strict Justice and of the imperfect right which we have to things of Charity whence the performance of them is sometimes called righteousness In sins of in justice reparation due so far only as we can and according as we have opportunity to make it In judging of a just opportunity caution given that we be neither too strict so as more than needs to prejudice our selves nor too loose so as to over-charge our Neighbours This Discourse of reparation upon injuries summed up 601 CHAP. III. Of the Remedy for involuntary sins The Contents Involuntary sins imply something of our own fault and so 't is fit we should be sorry for them and beg pardon They had a remedy under Moses's Law and have now likewise under Christ's Gospel We are qualified for their pardon not by a particular repentance and reformation but in the general by our obedience in all our wilful and chosen actions in particular by our prayers for Gods pardon and our Charity and forgiveness of the sins of other men This Discourse of Repentance summed up An Application to particular Offenders whether voluntary or involuntary A Summary of all that has been hitherto discoursed 623 CHAP. IV. Of such groundless Scruples as make safe but weak Minds doubt of their Title to Salvation The Contents Pious minds scrupulous Their condition is safe even then but uncomfortable Several needless grounds of their fears 1. Ineffective desires of evil This represented No man otherwise good shall be condemned for ineffective lusts and thoughts of evil These are considerable either as to their first birth or indulged continuance The first stirrings of lusts after evil things are unavoidable The after-entertainment is by our own indulgence Even these are uncondemning so long as they neither are consented to nor fulfilled being in themselves not deadly under the Gospel but a temptation to deadly and damning sins The way whereby sin wins upon men and the nature and force of temptation To be tempted is no sin which is proved from the nature of temptation from Adams being tempted before be sinned and from Christ's being tempted who knew no sin Degrees in temptation or in lusts of evil Some are checked quickly and are not permitted long to parly This happens only in grown men and perfect Christians and that too not in all instances These certainly are not damning Others stay longer and strive and contend with our mind or conscience although at last they are vanquished by it This happens ordinarily to younger Converts and in extraordinary temptations to grown Christians These still are uncondemning which is shewn from Gal. 5.16 17 and from the instance of our Saviour Christ. What lusts and desires of evil are damning They are condemning when they make us consent to a damning sin A distinct account of the several sâ—eps to a sinful action A proof of this that from their gaining of our consent in all the after-steps they are mortal Our lusts must be mortified to that degree as to be disabled from carrying us on thâ—s far This is done when men become true Christians The better men are the less difficulty and self-denial do they find in mortification Watchfulness and strife still necessary The danger of indulging to
tryal whether or no we will renounce him It is the great proof and argument how dearly we love him and how closely and faithfully our wills adhere to him It shews how obedience is uppermost in our hearts and that we will rather deny our dearest lusts and importunate desires than venture for their sakes to offend him So that to be tempted is no instance of damning disobedience but a plain proof how much we will lose and suffer rather than we will disobey It is a tryal of us how we prefer God and our Duty before other things even those that are most dear to us of all things in the world besides We do not sin damnably then in being tempted so long as we consent not to it but manfully resist and overcome the temptation And this is evident from hence because those very men who have lived most free from sin have not for all that lived free from temptation Even Adam himself before he knew what sin was and during his state of Innocence was liable to be tempted For the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil whereof God had forbidden him to eat was alluring to his eyes and an incentive to his lust as well as any other Tree of the Garden And because it was so the Woman was won to eat of it through the strength of such desire after it notwithstanding God had commanded her to abstain from it The woman saw that the Tree was good for food and pleasant to the eye and she took of the fruit thereof and did eat and by the same inducement she drew in her Husband and gave it unto him and he did eat also Gen. 3.6 And the second Adam who was most entirely innocent and guilty of no sort of sin was yet liable to temptation like as we are being in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin Heb. 4.15 Nay says the Apostle it was necessary that he should be so that by what he felt in himself he might the better know how to shew mercy and have compassion upon us In all things says he it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren that he might be a merciful as well as a faithful High Priest for in that he himself hath suffer'd being tempted he is able to succour them that are tempted Heb. 2.17 18. As for our being tempted then or invited to any sin by our bare lusts and inclinations after it in it self and before it has got any further it is no deadly sin or damnable transgression It is the scene of good endeavour the tryal of obedience a test of our great love and preference of God and his Law before all the world besides yea even before our own dearest lusts and our own selves It is nothing more than befel Adam before he had sinned or than befel Christ who never knew sin and therefore in it self bare lust and desire or being tempted and invited to sin cannot be damnably sinful As for our Lusts or Temptations 't is true they differ in degrees according as our desires of that evil which we are tempted to are indulged and have advanced more or less For sometimes a lust may stir but as soon as ever it is observed it is again extinguished The pleasure of the sin whether by being seen or fansied raises in us a sudden thought or desire after it but the lust is expelled as soon as it is discovered it is not suffered to remain and dwell in us but is presently thrown out with indignation For we turn away our fancy from the evil thing and will not endure to think upon it or to continue craving and lusting after it And this is a power over our own desires and a way of breaking the strength of temptation which is incident only to grown men and to perfect Christians and that not in all instances of temptation but only in such as are not extraordinary in themselves and which have been often vanquished and triumphed over It is in such cases where use has made the conquest easie and long custom of ceasing and turning away from the inveigling desire has taken off all the difficulty so that now we are able to silence and subdue the lust as soon as we discern it And as for these feeble desires and impotent temptations there is no question but that a good Christian may be under them and yet be in no danger of being condemned for them But then at other times our lusts live longer and advance higher they grow up to good degrees till they are able to contend and strive against our mind and conscience so that even when at last they are denied and our wills chuse to do what God commands in spite of them yet is it after much struggling and opposition The flesh lusteth against the spirit as well as the spirit lusteth against the flesh and although at last the fleshly lusts are overpower'd and cannot prevail with our wills to chuse on their side yet do they strive hard and contend for it And here a lust is not presently subdued as soon as it is discerned but it strives and struggles it can make head against the Law in the mind although it cannot overcome it it has some interest in the will although it have not an interest sufficient for the will hearkens to it for some time and considers of what it offers notwithstanding at last it reject its suit and through the sollicitations of a more powerful Favourite resolves against it And this power our lusts have in us whilst we are young Converts and of a more imperfect goodness nay in some very great temptations indeed such as are the fear of death and bodily torments especially they will struggle thus in those who are the most perfect Christians of all But now when our lusts are in this dâ—gree so as to stay upon our Souls for some time and to strive against our spirits for the consent of our wills before they are â—inally denied it yet if they go no further than bare lust and our wills do not after all their struggling consent to them or chuse the evil thing which is craved by them they are still uncondemning and incident to an Heir of Salvation And this as I take it is clear from what S t Paul himself says of the truly regenerate or of those who in his words walk in the spirit For in them he says plainly that the flesh lusteth against the spirit albeit it is not able to prevail over it so that even in doing what the spirit commands them they do against the contrary will and lusting of the flesh which gainsays it The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh so that even in fulfilling the will of the spirit you contradict another will of your lusts and cannot do or do not the things that you would Gal. 5.16 17. Nay even Christ himself who knew no sin nor ever committed any thing which
implicite Of intention in general and of these two in particular Where an actual intention is necessary and where an habitual is sufficient to our Obedience Of the second Notion of sincerity as it notes purity of our service in opposition to mixture and corrupt alloy This Point stated viz. What intention of our good together with Gods service is consistent with an acceptable and sincere Obedience and what destroys it Integrity of our Obedience a sure mark whereby to judge whether it be sincere or no. 211 CHAP. II. Of the second qualification of al acceptable obedience viz. integrity The Contents Of the second qualification of an acceptable Obedience viz. integrity The Notion of integrity or uprightness A three fold integrity Of the integrity of our powers and faculties Or of the Obedience with our minds affections wills and bodily powers How God is to be obeyed with the first faculty our minds or understandings God is to be obeyed with the second faculty our affections This Question stated How God and his Laws which are spiritual things are proportionate Objects for our love and affections which are bodily faculties Of the difference betwixt our love of God and of the World that this is more warm and sensible that more lasting and powerful An account of what measures of Obedience in our minds and affections is necessary to the acceptance of our service That contrivances and consultations for evil things and such mere apprehensions as are particularly forbidden are deadly and damning but that all other bare apprehensions and that all our affections after good or evil things will be rewarded or punished not merely for themselves but only as they are Causes and Principles of good or evil choice and practice God to be obeyed with the third faculty our wills He cannot be served without them Men are guilty of sin if they chuse it and consent to it though they cannot act it All this service of our inward faculties is in order to our outward works and operations 240 CHAP. III. Of Obedience with the fourth faculty viz. our executive or bodily powers and outward operations The Contents God is to be obeyed with the fourth faculty viz. our executive or bodily powers and outward operations The great difficulty of Obedience in this instance Four false grounds whereupon men shift off the necessity of this service with their works and actions First A hope to be saved for a true belief or orthodox opinions Mens confidence in this represented The folly of it Orthodox Faith and Professions no further available than they produce obedient works and actions Secondly A hope of salvation upon an Obedience of idle desires and ineffective wishes An opinion of some Casuists That a desire of Grace is Grace refuted This stated and a distinct explication of what is promised to the desire of Obedience and what to Obedience it self The pretence for this acceptance of idle desires from Gal. 5.17 considered An account when the will and desire is taken for the deed and performance That Text 2 Cor. 8.11 12. plainly vindicated Thirdly A hope of being saved notwithstanding they do sin because they are insnared into it through the strength of temptations The folly of this Our own lusts make temptations strong The Grace of the Gospel is sufficient to overcome them Fourthly A hope of being excused because they transgress with an unwilling mind These mens state represented Vnwillingness in sin a mitigation but no sufficient excuse Some strugling in most actions both of good and bad men The strife of the Flesh and Spirit Two sorts of men feel nothing of it viz. the Saints in Heaven after the Resurrection and some profligate Sinners here now on Earth All good men and the generality of evil are subject to it in this life Mens peremptory will and last choice determines their condition 259 CHAP. IV. A further pursuit of this last ground of shifting off the obedience of our actions in an Exposition of the 7 th Chapter to the Romans The Contents A further pursâ—it of this last ground of false confidence The Plea for it from Rom. 7. represented This refuted A Mâ—tâ—schematism usual with Saint Paul in an odiou Topiâ—k The Apostle shown not to speâ—k of hâ—mself in that Chapter because of several things there spoken which are not truly applicable to him This evidenced in sundry instances Nor to have spoken in the person of any regenerate man which is proved by the same reason and manifested in sundry Particulars But to have personated a strugling but as yet unregenerated Jew who had no further assistance against his lusts but the weak and ineffective Law of Moses This shown from the order and design of that Chapter This whole matter represented in a Paraphrase upon the seventh Chapter with part of the sixth and the eighth Two Reasons of the inability of Moses's Law to make men wholly obedient and the perfection as to them of the Law of Christ viz. First The promise of eternal life Secondly The promise of the Spirit Both these were wanting in the Law and are most clearly supplied in the Gospel The Jews had the assistance of the Spirit not by virtue of any Article in their Law but by the gracious Covenant of the Gospel which has been confirmed with the world ever since Adam The Law mentioned in Scripture as a weak and mean instrument upon the account of these defects This weakness of the Law set off particularly in this seventh to the Romans No hopes to any man who acts sin from this Chapter but plain declarations of the necessity of a wâ—rking obedience shown in several expressions of it to that purpose A proof of the necessity of this fourth part of integrity the obedience of our exâ—cutive powers in our workâ— and actions and the insignificancy of all the rest when it is wanting 283 CHAP. V. Of the sâ—cond sort of integrity an integrity of times and seasons The Contents Of the second sort of integrity viz. that of times and seasons Of the unconstancy of many mens obedience Perseverance necessary unto bliss The desperate case of Apostates both as to the difficulty of their recovery from sin and the greatness of their punishment 325 CHAP. VI. Of the third fort of integrity viz. that of the object or of obedience to all the particular Laws and parts of Duty The Contents Of the partiality of mens Obedience from their love of some particular sins Three pretences whereby they justifie the allowed practice of some sins whilst they are obedient in some other instances The first pretence is the preservation of their Religion and themselves in times of persecution A particular account of mens disobedience under this pretence The vanity of it shown from the following considerations Religion needs not to be rescued from persecution The freedom of outward means of Religion is restrained by it but the substance of Religion it self is not It is extended in some parts and ennobled in all by
things relating to our last doom and shewâ—â—â—oth what in the Judgment shall be indispensably required to our salvation what Defects do not overthrow but consist with it what Remedies when 't is wounded or lost can heal and restore us to it and what and of how great consideration those things really are which being wrong understood do often create causless fears and jealousies in good peoples minds about it Having I say clearly accounted for all these I suppose I may think I have said enough to shew men their Future State and fairly take leave of this Argument BOOK I. Of the indispensable condition of happiness in the general CHAP. I. Of Obedience the general condition of happiness The CONTENTS Obedience the indispensable condition of happiness The Laws of the Gospel are given as a Rule to it The Promises are all upon condition of it and intended to encourage it All the threatnings are now denounced and will be executed upon the disobedient Of those other things whereto Pardon is promised as well as to obedience Of Metonymy's Of the Principles of Humane Actions Of Principles of Obedience All those speeches metonymical where obedience is not express'd and yet pardon is promised THat Condition which the Gospel indispensably requires of us and which is to mete out to us our last doom of Bliss or Misery is in the General our Obedience When we are brought to that Bar and stand to be judged according to those Laws which are proclaim'd to us in the Gospel it is only our having kept them and Repented of all such transgressions of them as we have wilfully been guilty of which can capacitate us to be rewarded by them For 't is just with them as it is with all other Laws they never promise any thing but to obedience but threaten and punish all that disobey Whosoever breaks and despises them is guilty they do not comfort but accuse not acquit but condemn him For there is no Law that is wisely ordered but is sufficiently guarded against affront and back'd with such punishments as will make it every mans interest to fulfil and keep it The evil threatned must always by far exceed the pleasure that is reaped by disobedience so that no man may have any temptation sufficient to bear him out in Sin or ever hope to be a gainer by his transgression This is the tenour of all wise laws whose enactors have both wit and power sufficient to defend them They have dreadful Punishments annexed to them which take place upon disobedience they encourage and reward the obedient but severely punish all that dare presume to disobey And this is most eminently seen in all the Laws of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He gave them for the compleatest Rules to mens Lives and has annexed to them most glorious Promises to encourage our obedience but has made them breath out nothing but woes and intolerable punishments to all that disobey He has given them for Rules of Life and annexed Rewards as encouragements to obedience He never intended his Laws for an entertainment of our eyes but for a Rule for our Actions not for a matter of talk and discourse but of practice not to be complemented by words of honour and lofty expressions but to be own'd in our lives and served by obedience He is our King and issues out his Laws as the instruments of his Government he is our Lord and they are Rulers for his Service They must be guides of our Lives and Actions it is not enough to know and talk of them but as ever we hope to live by them we must do and keep them For in the end they will be available to no mans happiness but his who has conscientiously performed them In Christ Jesus or the Christian Religion says S t Paul nothing avails but keeping of the Commandments of God 1 Cor. 7.19 Blessed are they saith S t John who do the Commandments for they only have right to the Tree of Life Rev. 22.14 It is not an idle wish or ineffectual endeavour but a thorough practice and performance of Christs Laws which can continue us in his Love and approve us Righteous in his Judgment If ye keep my Commandments says he ye shall abide in my Love Joh. 15.10 Let no man deceive you for it is he only that doth Righteousness who in Gods account is Righteous 1 Joh. 3.7 They only are pronounced Righteous and Sons of God in the Gospels estimation who walk after the spirit Rom. 8.4 who are led by the spirit vers 14. who bring forth the Fruits of the Spirit all words expressing Action and Practice Gal. 5 16-22 No man therefore will be acquitted and rewarded at that Bar barely for knowing and discoursing for wishing or desiring but only for working and obeying Such only the Gospel reckons for true servants now his servants ye are not whom you confess in words but whom in actions you obey Rom. 6.16 And such only he will honour and reward then For it is not every one who fawns upon me in his words whilest he reproaches me in his actions who says unto me Lord Lord that shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven but he only who doth the will of my Father which is in Heaven Which will he had just then proclaim'd to them in that Volume of Christian Laws which was published in the Sermon upon the Mount whereof this is in part the conclusion Matt. 7.21 He tells us that when the Son of Man shall come to judgment he will reward every man according to his works Matt. 16.27 and he repeats it again in his declaration to S t John Behold I come quickly and my reward is with me to give every man according as his work shall be Rev. 22.12 And so it was in that Prophetick sight of the Last Judgment which this same Apostle had vouchsafed him Rev. 20. For there as we are told when the Sea gave up the Dead which were in it and Death and Hell delivered up the Dead which were in them and they all both small and great stood before the Throne and him that sate thereon they were judged every man according to his WORKS vers 11 12 13. His Laws then Christ has given us not for talk and discourse but for action and practice and his Promises he has annexed to them not as rewards of idleness but only of active service and obedience Wherein if men fail Gods Rewards belong not to them they can make no claim or colourable pretence to them because they cannot show that which is to be rewarded by him Nay further if men disobey they are not only excluded from all glorious hopes but are moreover put into a desperate state of fears and dreadful expectations For God has back'd his Laws with threatnings as well as promises and as they propose most noble rewards to all that are obedient so likewise do they breath out most intolerable punishments to all that disobey
Romans The CONTENTS A further pursuit of this last ground of false confidence The Plea for it from Rom. 7. represented This refuted A Metaschematism usual with Saint Paul in an odious Topick The Apostle shown not to speak of himself in that Chapter because of several things there spoken which are not truly applicable to him This evidenced in sundry instances Nor to have spoken in the person of any regenerate man which is proved by the same reason and manifested in sundry Particulars But to have personated a strugling but as yet unregenerated Jew who had no further assistance against his lusts but the weak and ineffective Law of Moses This shown from the order and design of that Chapter This whole matter represented in a Paraphrase upon the seventh Chapter with part of the sixth and the eighth Two Reasons of the inability of Moses's Law to make men wholly obedient and the perfection as to them of the Law of Christ viz. First The promise of eternal life Secondly The promise of the Spirit Both these were wanting in the Law and are most clearly supplied in the Gospel The Jews had the assistance of the Spirit not by virtue of any Article in their Law but by the gracious Covenant of the Gospel which has been confirmed with the world ever since Adam The Law mentioned in Scripture as a weak and mean instrument upon the account of these defects This weakness of the Law set off particularly in this seventh to the Romans No hopes to any man who acts sin from this Chapter but plain declarations of the necessity of a working obedience shown in several expressions of it to that purpose A proof of the necessity of this fourth part of integrity the obedience of our executive powers in our works and actions and the insignificancy of all the rest when it is wanting THAT which has been the great occasion of this last pretence whereby men justifie themselves in the practice of disobedience viz. because when they do transgress it is with reluctancy and an unwilling mind is a wrong understanding of the words of S t Paul in the seventh Chapter of his Epistle to the Romans For thus says he That which I do I being sufficiently instructed in the Law which forbids it in my mind and conscience allow not For what through the Laws commanding I would do that do I not but what from the Laws prohibiting I hate and would not do that do I. The good that I would do I do not For although to will it is present with me yet through the prevailing power of my Flesh how to perform and practise that which is good I find not But the evil which I would not do that do I. And all this happens to me by reason that the Law of my lusts or members wars against the Law of God in my mind or Conscience and that with so much success as to make me act against my Conscience and bring me into a slavish observance or captivity to the Law of sin which is in my members So that I my self or the same I who with the mind and Conscience in approving and willing serve the Law of God do yet with the Flesh in my bodily and outward works and operations serve the Law of sin Now since no less a man than S t Paul himself speaks thus of sinning against his will of doing what he disallows and transgressing through the power of a ruling lust against his Conscience it may well be thought reasonable for any other man to conclude himself in a safe condition although he do so likewise For who would desire to be more perfect than S t Paul Who would ever scruple to have the same Lot in the next World with an Apostle If an unwillingness in sin and transgressing with reluctance could bear him out notwithstanding he did against his Duty and in works and actions disobeyed his Lord who can ever question but that it will be a sufficient Plea for us also And indeed if S t Paul had spoken all that of himself and meant it of his own Person the Inference is undeniable and it is not to be doubted but it would But for a full Answer to this Allegation it is plain that S t Paul when he expresses all those things in the first person uses that merely out of modesty but not out of truth For he was upon an odious Topick representing the unmortified state and sinful condition of those persons who had no other help against their Lusts but the Religion and Law of Moses And because this was a Charge which they who were most guilty would not love to hear of that he may soften the matter as much as may be and discover things of so much reproach with the least offence he wisely takes all the business and fathers all the shameful Narrative upon himself and expresses it not in theirs to whom it really did belong but in his own person And as for this Metaschematism or speaking things that are odious in his own name when indeed they belong not to him but to other men it is very usual with the Apostle For in this Disguise he recites a most blasphemous perversion which some men had made of his most pious Doctrine Rom. 3. If the truth of God or his faithfulness in performing his Covenant with us hath more ahounded to his Glory through my lye or unfaithfulness in breaking my Covenant with him which makes the most that can be for the honour of Gods faithfulness since no perfidiousness of ours can weary or provoke him out of it why yet am I not I Paul who could never act thus falsly or argue thus prophanely but I blasphemous Objector judged as a Sinner ver 7. And the same way of speech he observes again when he charges the wicked lives of those who have given up their names to Christ not upon his Religion but upon their own selves If while we seek to be justified by Christ in the profession of his Religion and not of Moses's Law we our selves are still found Sinners and as flagitious in our lives as ever is therefore Christ the Minister of sin God forbid For if I build again the things which at my very Baptism into Christianity I destroyed as 't is plain all Christians do who after Baptism prove customary Sinners it is no longer Christ who would rescue and free me from sin but I my self not I Paul but I flagitious Christian that make my self a Transgressor Gal. 2.17 18. Thus also he speaks in his own person when he only personates the strong but uncomplying Christian 1 Cor. 6. All things are lawful for me but all things are not expedient ver 12. And when he personates the uncharitable Christian 1 Cor. 13. If I have all faith and have no Charity what doth it profit me ver 2. And the same inoffensive way he uses in noting faults in other places And such an obliging disguise
Law was the cause of our Sin and Death this we see is quite taken off and doth not follow at all For although we sinn'd yea and died too under the Law yet was not the Law the cause of these but the strength of our own Lusts. But the Law is holy still and so no cause of sin and the Commandment forbidding sin and promising Life to the obedient is not only holy and just but over and above that good too and so no cause of death and suffering But upon this you will say how was it then that that which is so good in it self as you say the Law is should be made the cause of the greatest evil even of Death unto me Could it prove so to me if it were not so in it self And to this I answer with abhorrence God forbid that I should say the Law is Death No this Death as I have told you is not the effect of the Law for it was ordained to procure Life for me But it was Sin I say again that was too strong for the Law which could only forbid but was not able by all its aids to restrain it this Sin it was that it might appear Sin indeed that went on working transgression unto Death in me by advantage taken over that Law which is good although not strong enough to overpower the setled habits of evil And by this conquest of Sin over the good Law which was set up as a bar against it and should have destroy'd it it appears to be most mischievous For this comes of it that Sin by proving too hard for the Commandment might by such prevailing over all that is set against it be extremely heightned and aggravated and become exceeding sinfull And that the Law should thus be worsted by Sin is no wonder For we know that although the Law which commands is spiritual to shew and suggest better things yet I who am to obey in that state of sensuality and sin wherein the Law finds me and out of which it is too weak to rescue me am carnal so as to serve sin notwithstanding it Which I am to such a degree as if I were sold under sin and my actions were as much at its command as the actions of a slave bought with money are at the command of his master So that although the Law shews me that which is good and commands me to perform it yet cannot I obey it in regard I am under anothers power under the beck of sin And in very deed to speak yet more particularly to this business the good Law can and doth produce good effects in the mind and conscience which is the throne wherein it is seated but still the law of sin which is seated in the members or executive powers prevails over it and engrosseth all our actions So that the utmost that it can ordinarily do with us is to make us in our mind to disapprove sin but when it hath done that it cannot hinder us in our lives from practising it And of this the complaints of those who are subject to it are a sufficient proof For who is there among them for the most part that is not ready to confess and cry out thus that which through the prevailing power of my lusts I do in my practice that through the power of the Law I allow not in my mind and conscience for what being excited by the Law I would do that being hindred by sin do I not but what from the Laws prohibiting in my mind I hate and disapprove that from my own lusts forcing and overpowering me in my actions still do I. And this by the way as it is an evident argument of the weakness and inability of the Law to restrain sin is also a clear testimony to the holiness and goodness of the Law it self which shews plainly that it is no favourer or author of Sin as was objected vers 7. Because if even then when I do sin I do not approve of it but in doing so I do what I would not I thereby consent in my own conscience unto the Law and acknowledge by my approving what it commands that it is good Yea I shew moreover that all that which it produces and effects in me is good also For even when I do sin sinning thus against my conscience the sin cannot in any wise be charged upon my conscience where the Law reigns so as that the Law in my mind may be stiled the cause of sin as it is vers 7. but only upon the power of my habitual sin and fleshly lusts that reign in my members which are so strong as that the law of my mind cannot restrain them And now then in this state of sinning thus with regret and against my conscience even when I do sin it is no more I or my mind and conscience that is governed by the Law and which may be called my self that do it seeing it disapproves it but it is sin that dwells in me and reigns in my members It must not be charged upon the Law in my mind I say but upon this inhabiting Sin which rules in my members For I know and confess freely that in that other part of me that is to say in my flesh and members which for all the Law rules in my mind doth yet keep possession of my practice dwells no good thing Nay on the contrary there dwells so much evil as proves too strong for the good Law restraining all its effect to the approbation of my mind but not suffering it to influence my practice Which we as I said who are subject to the Law find by sad experience For almost every one of us feels and must confess this that to will upon the account of the Law is present with me but then how to perform that which is good after I have will'd it that I find not For after the Law has done all that it can upon me this is still true that the good that being instructed by the Law I would do that being hindred by the prevalence of my lusts I do not but as for the evil which because of the prohibition of the Law I would not do that being over-master'd by my lusts I do But now all this while as I said if what my lusts make me practise through the Law in my mind I do not approve but in doing it I do that which I would not then 't is clear that my sinning cannot be charged upon the Law as it is vers 7. because it hinders it as far as it can It cannot I say be attributed to that for it is no longer I or my mind and conscience that do it but to the power of habitual Sin which the good Law cannot conquer to that sin which dwells and rules in me i. e. in my bodily members And therefore to summ up all I find another Law in my members opposite to the Law of God in
to disobey in it our obedience in other things is all that we have to shew besides and therefore it must be our excuse for it And this being an errour of such eternal moment and a Rock whereupon all the souls which miscarry under any appearances of piety are split I will be particular in recounting and evacuating those colours and pretences wherewith men deceive their own souls and think that they justifie and defend it Now as for those false grounds and pretensions whereby men seek to shelter themselves under the practice of such bosome-sins as they overlook because they have no mind to leave them hoping to be secured whilst they continue in them because of their obedience in other parts of Duty which is a partial obedience Those pretensions I say which are most pleadable in this matter are these that follow viz. because their indulgence of themselves in those instances wherein they disobey is either upon one or more of these accounts 1. For the preservation of their Religion and of themselves in times of danger and persecution 2. For the supply of their necessities by sinful arts compliances and services in times of want and indigence 3. For the satisfaction of their Flesh in sins of temper and complexion age or way of life 1. The first pretence whereby men justifie to their own thoughts the indulged transgression of several Laws whilst they obey in others is because those transgressions wherein they allow themselves are necessary for the preservation of their Religion and of themselves in those times of danger and persecution wherein Gods Providence has placed them Religion is in danger and like to be undermined by the close and subtle arts or overborn by the more open and powerful violence of strong and witty Enemies And this is Gods Cause and Christ our Lord and Saviours interest so that whatever is done here we think is in service of our Maker If we fight it is his battles if we spitefully persecute and devour it is his enemies if we rob and spoil it is to weaken his adversaries if we lye and dissemble it is to defeat the designs of such as he will call Rebels if we transgress in all the instances and use all the lawless liberties of war it is because we are engaged in his quarrel The Cause which we contend for and have to manage is sacred and that we believe will justifie all means and hallow any services whatsoever So that our heat and fierceness wrath and bitterness envy and malice revenge and cruelty endless strife and ungovernable variance spoils and robberies seditions and murthers wars and tumults in a word all the transports of passion and peevishness anger and ill nature rigour and revenge are all sacred under this Cover and pass for holy zeal and pious vehemence and religious concern for God whenas in reality they are a most impious throwing off and bursting through all the Tyes of Religion and Bonds of Duty towards men All these enormous effects and horrible instances of an indulged disobedience are at this Day the consequents of this pretension For some on one hand who call us Hereticks and enemies to Christ and holy Church think no means sinful whereby they can weaken and divide seduce surprize or any way destroy us For they esteem it lawful to dissemble under all shapes to gain a Proselyte or to disaffect a Party to our Communion and Government They act a part and play the Hypocrite in all Disguises and under cover of all Trades the better to insinuate themselves among all sorts of men they will affirm falshood even of their own Church when it serves their turn and deny any Doctrines Precepts or Parts of it when they are a scandal to the persons whom they would practise upon and make against them They make no conscience of lyes and perjuries in conversation when thereby they can promote the Churches interest For they have found out ways to deceive without lying and to lye without sin and to forswear without perjury and to perjure themselves without danger by their pious frauds and religious arts of equivocations mental reservations dispensations pardons and indulgences They can be treacherous and faithless without breach of faith if it were made to Hereticks they assassinate and murther Magistrates embitter and embroil Subjects against their Governours and against one another they conspire the death of Kings the confusion and fall of Kingdoms the ruine of all that dare oppose them yea even of all that differ from them And all this they do for Christ's sake in a zealous concern for God and Religion and for the utter extirpation of all heresie and schism It is this pretence which bears them out through all and makes them believe that they are serving God whilst after this extravagant rate they are overturning his whole Gospel And others again even of our own selves who justly abhor these damnable instances of disobedience upon the pretence of preserving or propagating Religion in some furious and fiery spirited sort of Papists for God forbid that we should think them all to be of this temper do yet run into the same extravagance which upon so great reason they condemn in them For if we look into our zeal for the common Religion of Protestants we shall find that we transgress many and those most material and weighty Laws of it whilst we express our affection and concern to defend and preserve it For doth not this pretence of preserving our Religion carry us beyond all the bounds of peaceableness and good subjection Our great fears about its defence make us daily to distrust our Governours to think and speak irreverently and reproachfully of their persons to undervalue all their counsels to misconstrue all their actions and proceedings and with much undutifull credulity and unchristian rashness to believe and spread abroad concerning them most odious suspicions and invidious reports they make us pragmatical and busie-bodies to go out of our own sphere and to usurp upon the Magistrates in projecting means and expediencies prejudging Criminals and irreverent censuring reproaching yea and oft-times slandering of our Governours if they either in Court or Council at the Board or on the Bench determine contrary to our anticipations They make us to disturb the quiet and to unsettle the peace of our fellow-subjects in filling their minds with endless jealousies about their Princes care and their own safety and in possessing them with discontents and undutifull suspicions words and actions to the great weakning of Government and disturbance of the publick peace Yea I add further these same fears for our endangered Religion transport us into the transgression of sundry weighty Laws which oblige us towards our very enemies who have contrived to destroy us For they have made us most partially backward to believe any thing that is good and forward to catch at every thing that is spoken ill against them They have made many of us fierce and implacable malicious
suffer under it he cannot be my disciple Luk. 14.27 This God peremptorily and indispensably exacts of us and there is all the reason in the world why he should For he will infinitely recompence in the next world either the want or loss of all those things which for his sake we are content to be without in this Heaven and eternal life will be an abundant and incomparably surpassing compensation all the wants and sufferings of this present time being as S t Paul sayes utterly unworthy to be compared with that Glory which shall then be revealed in us Rom. 8.18 Let no man therefore disobey Gods Laws for the love of the world for the supplying of his wants and the satisfaction of his appetites and yet for all that perswade himself that God will own him and connive at his disobedience For in doing so he plainly renounces God and sets the World above him he makes his Duty truckle to his Interest he slights obedience and submits to a temptation He does the work of sin for the interest which tempts to it and that will certainly bring upon him that death which God has established for the wages of it Thirdly A third pretence whereby men justifie to their own souls the indulged transgression of several Laws whilst they obey in others is because those transgressions wherein they allow themselves are only such as are sins of temper and complexion age or way of life Sometimes mens place and way of life is a continual temptation to some particular sin and if they may but have leave to indulge that they will abandon every other The Courtier takes himself obliged by the fashion of his place to lies and dissimulation ostentation and vanity to sinfull compliances and faithless engagements to promise all but to perform nothing The Merchant in pursute of his gain serves the end of his trade by fraud and dishonesty He accounts it a piece of his Art to over-reach to defraud customes to vend false wares and set exacting prices The Lawyer thinks it a part of his profession to encourage strife and foment difference the malice and revenge the wrath and bitterness the slanders and evil-speakings the strife and contentions which are other mens sins are his livelihood These sins being ever before them are alwayes a snare to them for they are continually importuned by them and it must be a toilsome pains and an uninterrupted watchfulness which can preserve them from being either won or wearied into the commission of them And since obedience in these instances is a thing which they can so very hardly spare they hope that God in mercy will not exact it but will graciously accept them upon their service in other particulars although here they continue to disobey him Other sins men are invited and importunately tempted to by their age and condition their particular temper and complexion Lust and rashness are the vices of youth as craft and covetousness are of the gray hairs Some sins are rooted in mens very natures for some are naturally inclined to be passionate and hasty some to be peevish and others to be malicious and revengefull The temper of their bodies hurries on some to lust and intemperance some to turbulency and fierceness and others to slavish fears and sinfull compliances Nay a sharp and long affliction will sometimes embitter even a good nature and make it habitually sowr and fretfull peevish and morose So that mens very natural temper their age and condition prove many times an uninterrupted sollicitation to some sin or other and they alwayes fall by being alwayes under the power of their temptation Now when men find that some sins have got thus near to them and have taken such deep root in their way of life nay in their very natures since they will not be at the pains to reform and amend they expect that God should be so gracious as to dispense with them As for all the instances of this kind he must abate them seeing they will not perform them his pardoning goodness must supply all the defects of their sloth For God and they must still be agreed and therefore because they cannot well abandon some of their darling lusts and bosom sins for his sake the compliance must fall on his side and he must desert and cancel all those severe and grating Laws to serve and pleasure them They will obey him most willingly in all other things only in these they beg that he would excuse them they will do any thing else for his sake which doth not contradict their beloved sin and never displease him but when they cannot otherwise fulfill and pleasure it Thus for instance the Covetous man will obey in keeping back from drunkenness and whoredom from ambition and profuseness and all other sins which are expensive But as for those other duties of suffering loss our selves rather than defrauding and over-reaching others of a contented mind and contempt of the world of alms and beneficence and all the chargeable expressions of an active love and an operative charity here he stands upon his points and chooses to dispute rather than to perform to article rather than to obey The peevish and angry man will readily keep the commands of Justice and Temperance he will neither spoil his neighbours Goods nor wrong his Bed nor pamper and defile his own body he will do any thing which either ministers to his reigning lust or which doth not contradict and make against it But then as for the commands of meekness and patience of long-suffering and forgiveness of speaking well and doing good to enemies of passing over provocations and peaceableness and all other instances of pardoning and forgetting injuries in these God must excuse him for his dear lust opposes them and he can not he will not serve him in the practice of them Some who are of a tractable and submissive of a soft and governable temper will observe readily all those duties which their constitution has made easie and which their natural genius enclines them to They will be constant performers of all the cheap because agreeable duties of submission to Governours and obedience to publick Constitutions of uniformity in worship of honour and observance of the Laws and establishments and of all things belonging to the Churches Vnity and outward peace But as for the severities of an inward and hearty Religion in mortification and self-denial in paring off all sinfull lusts and exorbitant desires in patience and taking up the Cross and in all other hard instances of duty and a holy life here they withdraw their service because they must contradict their natures and go against their ease and set themselves not to obey these Laws but to evacuate or evade them Whereas others who are of a temper more severe but withall of a querulous and restless a busie and ungovernable spirit will keep off from atheism and prophaneness from idolatry and witchcraft and other heinous impieties from drunkenness and
with but not of others for that which gets an allowance for the breach of one would procure a favourable sentence for the like violation of all the rest That then which makes the difference of punishable and unpunishable in mens failings is not to be sought for in Christs Laws seeing the punishment of every one of them is the same but in their own actions For some sins shall be born with not for that they are against a Law whereto no penalty is annexed there being none such in all Christs Gospel but for that they are such imperfect actions as the punishing Law which they are against will not take hold of Every Law of Christ threatens death but these allowed offences are not of the number of those actions which are threatned by it For we must take notice that those works of ours whereon Christ's Laws lay restraint and whereto they as all other just Laws in the World threaten punishment are our voluntary and chosen actions They bind us up in all those performances which are placed in our own free power and come from the choice of our own will and they denounce woes to us if in them we go beyond those bounds which they have set us So that in all our free and chosen actions we must take care to do what the Law requires and to keep back from what it forbids and we are sure to suffer if we neglect it For it is among these actions of choice where the Law reigns on which it lays Commands and whereto it threatens punishment If we chuse and do what is commanded then have we a right to the promised reward and if we chuse to do what is forbidden then are we guilty and obnoxious to the punishment denounced But as for other actions which flow not from our own choice of which sort are all our pardonable and allow'd infirmities they fall not under the strict force of the Law either in the guidance of its Command or in the sting of its punishment so that at the last Day it will not be judged to have been either broken or kept by them That I may fully clear up this whereupon so much of that which I shall say under this Head depends I will show concerning it these two things 1. That all things whatsoever which are either good or evil and a fit matter of reward or punishment are made such by a Law 2. That all our actions are not governed by God's Laws so as to be strictly and directly either enjoined or prohibited punished or rewarded by them but only those among them which are voluntary and chosen 1. I say All things whatsoever which are either good or evil rewardable or punishable are made so by some Law For good and evil vertue and vice obedience and sin which are only so many different Names for the same thing have all relation to a Commandment Vertue and obedience is the performance as vice and sin is the transgression of it Where there is no Law saith the Apostle there is no transgression Rom. 4.15 And no man sins as saith another Apostle but he that transgresseth the Law for sin is the transgression of the Law 1 John 3.4 And as Law is the measure of sin and Duty so is it likewise of reward and punishment For God never afflicts and torments the Children of men out of the inclination of his Nature but only out of the necessity of Government He is the Ruler of the World and the Lord of men and therefore he must maintain his own Laws and punish the evil Doers But no man is ever punished without an offence and he must do evil before he suffer it He undergoes nothing but that which is his own choice for he chose rather to incurr the penalty than to perform the Commandment He feels no more than the Law denounced for God the Judg executes nothing but what the Law threatens he punishes according to it but not without it The Law doth always make a penalty due to an Offender before he either can or doth exact it Thus are all things which are either good or evil rewardable or punishable made such by a Law But then 2. As for our actions all of them are not governed by God's Law so as to be strictly either enjoined or prohibited punished or rewarded by them but only those among them which are voluntary and chosen And this being a a Point whereof I shall make so much use in all that follows I will spend the more time in clearing of it up as I hope beyond all question by showing the truth of it 1. From the clear reason of the thing it self 2. From the plain declarations of the Scripture concerning it 1. I say That only our voluntary and chosen actions are under the restraint of Laws and either enjoined or prohibited punished or rewarded by them is plain from the great and convincing reason of the thing it self For let us consider First The very nature of a Law and we shall find that in all those actions whereon it is imposed it supposes them who exert them to have a power of choice and a free liberty of making them either a piece of service to it or a transgression of it For all Law is a Bond or a Tye which lays restraint upon us and induces Obligation So that in all those actions whereupon the restraint is laid we are necessarily supposed to be free before it comes For it is an utter absurdity to bind any thing by a Law which is before necessitated by its very Nature Who would ever be so vain and foolish as to give a Law to a Stone that it should not speak or to a Tree that it should not walk or to the Fire that it should not chill and freeze him There can be no place for nor need of an Obligation where there is no choice and liberty For it is only where things have a power to act on both sides that there is room for a Law to oblige and tye them up to one And for this reason it is that among all that variety of Creatures which inhabit in this lower World men alone are capable of Laws because no Creature besides is endowed with freedom of will and liberty of choice which is to be bound up and restrained by them Nay even in men themselves those actions and tempers which are not subject to their own choice nor under the power of their own wills are no fit matter of a Law nor fall under the force of a Commandment For who can ever be so unreasonable and void of all sence as to command a man that he should not be born rich or poor base or noble that he should not be sick and weak hungry and thirsty sleepy or weary No since none of these instances is in his own choice or under the free disposal of his own will in none of them is he capable of an Obligation Seeing then that it is of the nature
him for failing to do what he could not do Who would ever be so absurd as to reprove and punish a man for being low of Stature or weak of Body for being born of mean persons or to a small Fortune These and all other things of like nature which a man could never help may be his misfortune but not his fault and whatsoever he suffers upon the account of them may be and often is his calamity but by no means his punishment No man can justly be charged with that which was never subject to his own choice but if any imputation is laid upon him for its sake it rests not there but falls all upon that Cause whose free pleasure it was so to order him Agreeably whereunto the Wise man tells us That whosoever mocketh the poor reproacheth not him who cannot help his poverty but his Maker whose pleasure it was to dispose of him in that condition Prov. 17.5 And as a man can bear no just blame for that which it never was in his power to hinder so neither can he undergo any just punishment Barbarous cruelty indeed he may fall under which would have taken place without a Law as well as with it but legal and just penalties he never can And seeing no action is punishable but what is chosen it is plain that the Laws of God impose restraint and threaten punishment only to our voluntary actions Which will still further appear from another effect of every sinful and punishable action namely this Fourthly That it is such for which our own Consciences will blame and condemn us and which we shall lament in repentance and remorse One great part even of Hell torments is this remorse and worm of Conscience For there is no action for which we shall there be punished but when it is too late we shall endlesly repent of it Their worm there as our Saviour saith dyeth not Mark 9.44 But now it is an utter absurdity and downright madness for any man to be angry at himself for that which he could never help and to repent that ever he committed that which it was not in his power to hinder For doth it ever repent any man that he is not tall of Stature that he was not born as strong as Samson or made immortal as an Angel Was any man ever touched with remorse because he breathes and sleeps and thirsts and hungers No man ever is or ever can be angry at himself but when he sees that he has been wanting to himself when he has done that which it was in his own choice to have done otherwise For all remorse is for a willing offence a man chuses it when he commits it and therefore when afterwards he sees his errour he condemns himself for it And since a mans own Conscience condemns him for all those things for which God's Law will punish him and no man can condemn himself for doing any thing but what he chose to do neither his own Conscience can condemn nor the Law punish him for any but his voluntary and chosen actions And thus upon all these reasons we see That it is only our voluntary and chosen actions whereupon God's Laws lay restraint and wherefore at the last Day he will inflict punishment so that no sin is damning which is not chosen This is a very clear and well-grounded truth For the nature of Law which makes good and evil of obligation which enforceth it of rewards and punishments from God of acquiescence and remorse from our own Conscience which ensue upon it all these evidently evince and prove it For not any one of them is concerned about any actions but those which proceed from choice nor have to do with any works but what are wilful So that every action whereto there is Law and obligation exhortation and admonition reward or punishment commendation or reproof acquiescence or remorse as there are for all those which the Laws of God will sentence every such action I say is an effect of our own will or a voluntary chosen action Thus is it clear from the reason of the thing it self that all our actions are not governed by God's Laws so as to be strictly either enjoined or prohibited punished or rewarded by them but only those among them which are voluntary and chosen And this will appear yet further 2. From the plain declarations of the Scripture concerning it That whereby God looks upon his Laws to be either broken or kept is the choice and consent of the heart My Son give me thy heart saith Wisdom Prov. 23.26 So long as that is pure we can have no damning stain upon us for out of the heart as our Saviour assures us all those things must proceed which God will judge to defile a man Matth. 15.18 19 20. The lusts of our Flesh must gain the consent of our wills before they become deadly sins and consummate transgressions Lust says S t James when having won over the liking and approbation of our wills and a half consent to its impure embraces it has conceived bringeth forth the Embryo or rude Draught answerable to conception which is but a half production of sin and this Embryo of sin when by being brought on to a full choice and consent or what is more to action and practice it is finished bringeth forth its genuine Offspring Death Jam. 1.15 The consent of our hearts then must compleat our sin and our own wills must of necessity concurr to work our ruine For we must wilfully reject or cast off the Law which would keep us in and go beyond it when we behold it before our transgression will have got up to the pitch of a damnable pollution or a mortal crime Nay I add further till we are come thus far as wilfully to reject the Law and knowingly to transgress it we shall not be interpreted to commit that which the Gospel calls sin and which it strictly forbids and severely threatens under that name For if we will take S t John's word this is his explication of it Sin says he is the transgression as we render it but more fully and more agreeably to the Original it should be the renouncing or casting off the Law 1 John 3.4 And thus we see that from plain Scripture as well as from clear reason it manifestly appears that all our actions are not governed nor will hereafter be judged by Gods Laws but such only among them as are voluntary and chosen And therefore although there be no Law of Christ which gives men leave to sin without fear of punishment yet some actions there may be against many or most of Christ's Laws which shall not be judged to be punishable transgressions of them as are all our involuntary and unchosen actions And of this sort are all those consistent slips which as I shewed before not only are but needs must be born with and allowed by the Covenant of the Gospel For it is our involuntary
failings which are our unavoidable ones because we have no power to avoid where we have no liberty to will and chuse and since they are such as we cannot help they are such likewise as God pities and such as the Gospel doth not punish but graciously pardon and dispense with CHAP. III. Of the nature and danger of voluntary sins The CONTENTS The nature of a wilfill and a deliberate sin Why it is called a despising of Gods Law a sinning presumptuously and with a high hand Wilfull sins of two sorts viz. some chosen directly and expresly others only indirectly and by interpretation Of direct and interpretative volition Things chosen in the latter way justly imputable Of the voluntary causes of inconsideration in sins of commission which are drunkenness an indulged passion or a habit of sin Of the power of these to make men inconsiderate The cause of inconsideration in sins of omission viz. Neglect of the means of acquiring virtue Of the voluntariness of all these causes Of the voluntariness of drunkenness when it may be looked upon as involuntary Of the voluntariness of an indulged passion mens great errour lies in indulging the beginnings of sin Of the voluntariness and crying guilt of a habit of sin Of the voluntariness of mens neglect of the means of virtue No wilfull sin is consistent with a state of Grace but all are damning A distinct account of the effect of wilfull sins viz. when they only destroy our acceptance for the present and when moreover they greatly wound and endanger that habitual virtue which is the foundation of it and which should again restore us to it for the time to come These last are particularly taken notice of in the accounts of God HAving thus clearly shown in the General that all the dispensation and allowance for our consistent slips under the Gospel comes not from the nakedness and want of penalty in any of Christs Laws but only from the imperfection and involuntariness of our own actions I will descend now to consider particularly what those consistent slips and transgressions are In the management whereof I shall shew these two things First That our voluntary and chosen sins and transgressions of any of Christs Laws are not consistent with a state of Grace and Salvation but are deadly and damnable Secondly That our involuntary and unchosen slips are consistent and such as Christs Gospel doth not eternally threaten but graciously bear and dispense with First I say No voluntary sin or chosen transgression of any of Christs Laws is consistent with a state of Grace and Salvation but is deadly and damning To make this out it will be very requisite to show 1. What sinfull actions are voluntary and chosen And 2. That none of them is consistent with a state of Grace but deadly and damning 1. What sins and transgressions are voluntary and chosen Then we commit a wilfull chosen sin when we see and consider of the sinfulness of any action which we are tempted to and after that choose to act and perform it Every chosen sin is a sin against Knowledge for the will is a blind faculty and can choose nothing till our mind proposeth it All choice is an act of Reason and Vnderstanding a preferring one thing before another and we must view and consider both before we can prefer either That which suggests the sinfulness of any action to us and sets the evil of it before us when we are about to choose it is our Conscience For God has placed this Monitor of every mans Duty in every mans breast to tell him upon every occasion what he requires from him And till such time as men have debauched their understandings into a gross mistake of their Duty so as to call Evil Good and Good Evil and God in his just anger has given them up to a reprobate mind or a mind void of judgment their own consciences will keep them in mind of Gods Laws and not suffer them to transgress without reproof So that every wilfull sin is a sin against a mans own mind or conscience Nay further so long as mens hearts are soft and their consciences are tender and before such time as they are wholly enslaved to their appetites and quite hardened in sin their consciences especially in some great and frightfull instances will not only suggest and represent their Duty but argue also and debate against their lusts for the practice and performance of it And then men are not won at the first offer nor consent to fulfill the sin upon the first assault of the temptation but are drawn in after a long deliberation and debate and dispute the matter with themselves before they submit to it For when mens consciences do not nakedly suggest but moreover plead the cause and urge the observance of their Duty there are arguments on both sides to render the choice at first somewhat doubtfull The Law of God promises an infinite reward to the action of obedience and threatens an endless punishment if we disobey both which are future and to be expected in the next world And the temptation inducing us to sin presents us with a fair shew of sensitiv pleasure profit or honour if we practise and threatens us with all the contrary evils if we neglect it both which it sets before us as things present to be felt and enjoy'd by us even now whilst we are here in this world Now these are great motives on both sides each of them bidding fair for our consent Our minds or consciences suggest the first and our fleshly appetites and carnal reason represent the latter and for a good while these two advocates solicite the cause on both sides and distract and divide our wills between them So that when at last the temptation doth overcome and the Law of Lust in the members prevails over the Law of God in the mind yet is that after a strife and a war after a tedious toyle and much contention And these wilfull sins because we underwent a great conflict in our own minds about them and past through a long deliberation in an alternate succession of desires and aversations hopes and fears imperfect choices and refusals e're the consent of our wills was gain'd over to the commission of them are call'd deliberate sins Every wilfull chosen sin then is a sin against knowledge and against conscience when our own heart rebukes and checks us at the time of sinning telling us that God hath forbidden that which we are about to do notwithstanding which we presume to do it And if it happen to be in an instance that is greatly criminal and frightfull unto Conscience which therefore puts us upon demurs and creates dispute and arguing then is it not only a known but a deliberate sin also Nay where we have time and there is a sufficient space to consider in between the opportunity and the action if we know that the action is sinfull and are not in
our own making seeing it was at our own choice whether ever we should have come under it although when once we are subject to it it be no longer at our liberty whether or no we shall be acted by it And since all these sins which are thus indeliberate in themselves were yet so freely chosen and deliberated in their causes they are all imputable to us and fit to be charged upon us They were chosen indirectly and interpretatively in the choice of that cause which made them all afterwards to be almost if not wholly necessary For either we did deliberate or which is all one we had time enough to have deliberated as we ought before we chose our own necessity So that these sinfull actions which are unchosen and unconsidered in themselves are yet imputable to us and fit to be charged upon us as our own because we chose them by an indirect and interpretative volition As therefore there are some sins which are expresly will'd in the particulars by an express choice and deliberation so likewise are there several others which are expresly and deliberately willed only in their cause but in their own particulars are not chosen otherwise than indirectly and by interpretation And both these together take up the compass of our wilfull and chosen sins For either we expresly think and deliberately consider of the sinfull action when we commit it or we expresly and deliberately thought upon that cause when we chose it which makes us now to sin without thinking and deliberation And by all this it appears now at length how considerateness and deliberation is implyed in every wilfull sin For the sinfull action is seen and considered or it is our faults if it be not since we had both time and powers for such consideration either in it self or in its cause and being it is thus a matter of our consideration it is likewise a matter of our choice and a wilfull action And thus having shewn what sinfull actions are voluntary and chosen I proceed now to shew 2. That none of them is consistent with a state of grace but deadly and damning As for our wilfull sins they are all as we have seen of a most heinous nature being indeed nothing less than a contempt of Gods Authority a sinning presumptuously and with a high hand They are a plain disavowing of Gods will and renouncing of his Soveraignty they are acted in a way of defiance and are not the unavoidable slips of an honest and well-meaning servant but the high affronts of an open rebel So that no favourite or child of God can ever be guilty of them or he must cease to continue such if he be Because they interrupt all favour and friendship and put God and him into a state of hostility and defiance seeing they are nothing less than a renouncing of his Authority at least in that instance and a casting off his Law And this lawlesness or rejecting of the Law is that very word whereby S t John describes sin For sin sayes he is the transgression as we render it but more fully it should be the renouncing of the Law 1 Joh. 3.4 In which sense of sin for a wilfull and rebellious one he tells us that whosoever abides in God sins not vers 6 being indeed no longer a child of God if he do but of the Devil vers 8. They deprive us of all the benefits of Christs sacrifice so long as we continue in them and of all the blessings purchased for us by his death This was their effect under the Law of Moses and it is so much rather under the Gospel of Christ. For the sentence which that Law pronounced upon all presumptuous and wilfull offenders was death without mercy The soul that doth ought presumptuously the same by his contemptuous sin reproacheth the Lord and that soul shall be cut off from among his people Numb 15.30 If ever it could be proved against him by that dispensation there was no hope for him For he that despised or contemptuously transgressed Moses's Law died without mercy saith the Apostle being convicted under the testimony of two or three witnesses Hebr. 10.28 For even those very sins for which under the Law God had appointed an attonement were no longer to be attoned for than they were committed involuntarily and through ignorance In the fourth Chapter of Leviticus we are told that as for those sins which are committed against any of those Commandments which concerned things not to be done if they were acted involuntarily and unwillingly they should be allowed the benefit of an expiation and the sacrifices for that purpose are there prescribed But if they were acted wilfully and advisedly then had they no right to the expiation there promised nor would any sacrifices be accepted for them but that punishment must unavoidably be undergone which in the Law was threatned to them For to name no more this we are plainly told of two instances viz. the contemptuous making of perfume and eating of blood after both had been forbidden Whosoever shall contemptuously make any perfume like to that which was commanded to be made vers 35. to smell thereto that soul shall not be expiated by sacrifice but cut off from his people Exod. 30.38 And whatsoever man there be that eateth any manner of blood viz. willingly and wilfully the ignorant and involuntary transgressions of this and the like prohibitions being attoneable Lev. 4. I will even set my face against that soul and will cut him off from among his people Levit. 17.10 Thus severe was the sentence and thus unavoidable was the penalty of all wilfull sins under the Law of Moses And by how much the ministration of Christ is nobler than the ministration of Moses was by so much shall the punishment of all wilfull and contemptuous sins against the Law of Christ be more severe than it was for those against the Law of Moses And this is the Apostles own argument For if that word of the Law threatning death which was spoken unto Moses on Mount Sinai by the mediation only of Angels was stedfast and every transgression of it received the just recompence of that death which it threatned such persons dying without mercy How shall we Christians hope to escape it if we wilfully neglect and contemn those Laws which are published to us by so great a means of salvation as the Gospel is which was at first spoken to us not by Angels but by the Lord Jesus Christ himself who is far above all Angels being indeed the Son of God himself Hebr. 2.2 3. Surely as the Apostle argues in another place if he who despised even Moses's Law died without mercy for that contempt we ought to think with our selves not of how much less but of how much sorer punishment he shall be judged worthy who by wilfull sinning and despising of his Laws doth in a manner tread under foot not Moses but the Son of God
fair and likely and withal it is most secure It is sure to preserve obedience because it admits of nothing that interferes with it and it is also very likely to preserve truth for it is most certain that no Doctrine can ever come from God which encourages or justifies any wickedness so that not only an obedient heart but even a free and impartial reason must quit the Principle if it appear to draw after it an evil consequence To settle Principles and Rules of Judgment then especially for simple and unlearned minds the first enquiry ought to be not what is true or false but what is good or evil For since the knowledge of this is more plain and obvious easie and accessible to all but to them most especially 't is evident that as all others so particularly they if they would secure even Truth as well as Duty must begin with Laws as their Principle and from thence make their inference to Doctrines and Opinions To avoid sinfull errours and disobedient prejudices they must use Laws and Duties as the measure whereby to judge of notions not notions and opinions as the standard whereby to measure and interpret plain Laws CHAP. VII A sixth cause of ignorance of the present actions being comprehended under a known Law And of the excusableness of our transgressions upon both these sorts of ignorance The CONTENTS All the forementioned causes of ignorance of our present actions being included in the known Law are such to knowing and learned men Besides them the difficult and obscure nature of several sins is a general cause of it to the rude and unlearned Sins upon this ignorance as well as upon ignorance of the Law it self unchosen and so consistent with a state of Grace and Salvation Where there is something of choice in it they extenuate the sin and abate the punishment though they do not wholly excuse it The excuse for these actions is only whilst we are plainly ignorant they are damning when we are enlightned so far as to doubt of them but pardonable whil'st we are in darkness or errour This excuse is for both the modes of ignorance 1. Forgetfulness 2. Errour All this pardon hitherto discoursed of upon the account of ignorance of either sort is no further than the ignorance it self is involuntary The willfulness of some mens ignorance The several steps in voluntary ignorance The causes of it Two things required to render ignorance involuntary 1. An honest heart 2. An honest industry What measures necessary to the acceptance of this industry Gods candour in judging of its sufficiency This discourse upon this first cause of an innocent involuntariness viz. ignorance summed up THus upon all these accounts which are mention'd in the two former Chapters we see it will often happen that although in the general we do know the Law which forbids any sin yet shall we still be ignorant of our present actions being comprehended under it For the small and barely gradual difference between Good and Evil the limitedness of most Laws the indirect obligations which pass upon some indifferent actions the clashing and enterfering of some of Christs Laws sometimes with other commands and sometimes with our own prejudices and prepossessed Opinions are also many reasons why after we know the General Laws that forbid them we shall still venture upon several particular actions through ignorance of their being forbidden And yet besides all these which are causes of such ignorance to the most knowing men and to those who have great parts and learning there will be moreover one great and general cause of it to the more rude and ignorant and that is the difficult and to them obscure nature of the sin it self which in the Law is expresly and by name forbidden For how many of them who hear it may be of the Law against censoriousness lasciviousness uncleanness carnality sensuality refusing of the Cross and other things do not well understand what those words mean Alas the greater number of men in the world have but very rude and imperfect notices of things they see them only in a huddle and by halves And as it is in their knowledge of other things so is it in their understanding of Sin and Duty likewise For their sight and sence of them is dark and defective and albeit they have some general and confused apprehensions of them yet is not their knowledge so clear and distinct as that they are thereby enabled to judge of every particular action whether it falls under any of them or no. And since they have but such half and imperfect notions of several sins it is no wonder although they know the General Law if they venture upon several actions which really come under it not knowing that they do And thus we see that besides the ignorance of the Law it self there is also another sort of ignorance which will be a cause of sin to several men of all sorts and that is their ignorance of their present actions being comprehended under the letter of the Law and meant by it But now as for those transgressions which men of an honest heart are guilty of through this ignorance of their own actions being included in the Law when they do know the Law that includes it They do not put them out of a state of Grace but consist with it For this Ignorance is mens unhappiness rather than their fault it is not an Ignorance of their own choosing seeing their will and choice is against it For they desire to be free from it and strive to prevent it and endeavour according to those abilities and opportunities which God has afforded them to get right and true apprehensions of all Gods will that they may perform and of every evil action that they may avoid it But it is the difficulty and intricateness of things which renders them ignorant and that is not of their making For the sins forbidden are not easily distinguished from the Liberty allow'd or from the Duty commanded in some cases and therefore it is that they mistake them and are ignorant of the sinfulness of their present action when their knowledge of it should enable them if they would to avoid it And since it has so little of their own will and the men even when by reason of their ignorance they transgress are industriously desirous to know their Duty and prepared to practise it so far as they understand it it shall have nothing of Gods anger It is altogether a pardonable slip and a pitiable instance and that is enough to recommend it to Gods mercy For he is never rigorous and severe in a case that is prepared for pity and pardon so that he will not punish but graciously forgive it And if it were otherwise who could possibly be saved For this ignorance of their present actions being comprehended in the words of the known Law is such as the wisest men have been subject to and they among the rest who were
any of these Failings will deprive us of that which Christs Gospel will construe to be a perfect and intire obedience they do not destroy a state of Grace and Salvation but consist with it And all these allowances the Gospel makes to our sinful actions besides some others to our thoughts and desires which are sin only in an imperfect birth and not yet arrived to the guilt of a compleat transgression as I shall have a fit occasion to show in answering of those groundless doubts and scruples that perplex good and honest but weak minds which shall hereafter follow But the great Condition of the Gospel being nothing less than an intire Obedience and the generality of men being so maimed and defective in obeying what shall become of them For who is there but at one time or other has willingly transgressed some of those Laws which I have described and therefore if the Curse take place upon every wilful offence then wo be to all Mankind And so indeed it would if Christ had not taken pity on us and come into the World for this very purpose that he might succour and relieve us But the very end of his coming amongst us was to find out a remedy for all these evils He came to rescue us from the Curse of the Law and to procure for us new Terms and put us into a capacity of Pardon So that whatsoever his Laws threaten or whatsoever we have committed yet are we still secure from suffering if we make use of his remedy i. e. if we repent of it as shall appear in the next Book BOOK V. Of those Remedies which restore men to a state of Salvation when they are fallen from it and of some needless Scruples concerning it CHAP. I. Of Repentance which restores us to Gods Favour after Sins of all sorts The CONTENTS The Rigour of the Mosaick Law is taken away by Christ who came to preach Pardon upon Repentance where that denounced an unavoidable punishment Repentance is the great Remedy God heartily desires mens Repentance and promises Forgiveness to it This has been preached in all times The Remedy for our unknown sins They are uncapable of a particular Prayer and Repentance but are forgiven upon a general one The Remedy of wilful sins is a particular Repentance That is available for their pardon for wilful sins after Baptism as well as before it Two places which seem to deny all pardon to wilful sins after Baptism cleared the wilful sin Heb 10.26 is not any wilful transgression of any particular Law of Christ which have all been pardoneâ— but a wilful Apostasie from his whole Religion which is proved from sundry things there spoken of it The falling away mentioned Heb. 6 is likewise Apostasie from Christianity which is shewn from those things which they are said to fall from and those others which are said to be implied in their falling An account of the desperate state of these men The state of some habitual Sinners desperate and irreclaimable by reason their period of Grace is over but this is no discouragement to any mans Repentance HAving hitherto insisted largely upon that Integrity of Obedience which the Gospel indispensably requires of every man to his Salvation and upon those Defects which either destroy or consist with it I proceed now to inquire what Remedies it directs us to for recovering a state of Grace and Favour when at any time we happen to fall from it Among the Jews according to the strictness of the Law of Moses the punishment took place upon the first wilful breach and therefore in those Laws which were established under pain of death when it appeared by sufficient evidence that any man was guilty of the wilful transgression of them the Sentence was unavoidable and the man dyed without mercy He that despised Moses's Law saith the Apostle if it were in an instance whereto the Law threatned death dyed without mercy being convicted under the hands of two or three witnesses Heb. 10.28 A man that had committed Murder or Adultery or any other crime whereof Death was the established Penalty was to dye without all remedy for no Sacrifice would be accepted for him nor would the Law admit of any favour or dispensation And therefore David when he made his Penitential Psalm for murdering Vriah and adulterating his Wife expresses the Legal unpardonableness of his offence in these words thou desirest not sacrifice else would I give it but thou delightest not in burnt-offerings for such sins as I stand guilty of No my crimes are of that nature for which any man less than a King should dye and such wherefore no Sacrifice will be accepted Psal. 51.16 This was the rigour of that Political Law which God imposed upon the Jews by Moses those punishments that were threatned by it which were temporal and of this World were irreversible when once they were incurred But when Christ came into the World his business was to give Laws of a much more gracious nature which would admit of a Salvo for every sin and offer men a remedy which if they did but use although they had transgressed they should not suffer punishment This gracious Covenant whose Promises and Rewards are future and to be enjoy'd in the next World was published more or less ever since Adam For by the Grace of this all the holy Patriarchs hoped for pardon and by it likewise all the Good men among the Jews when they should be brought to Gods Tribunal in the next World hoped to be forgiven But the Promulgation of it under Moses was dark and obscure and lay hid in great measure and almost buried under the crowd of the rigid and inexorable Laws of the Mosaick Covenant But when Christ came into the World his Errand was to abrogate all the rigour of Moses's Law and to preach an universal Pardon upon Repentance And of this he gave them a clear instance in the case of the Woman who was taken in the very act of Adultery Moses say they and that very truly commanded us in his Law that such should be stoned but what sayest thou Joh. 8.5 But his Sentence was Go and sin no more and then will not I condemn thee v. 11 which was a fit sentence for that Religion whereby they should be justified from all those things from which they could not be justified by the Law of Moses Act. 13.39 Whatsoever it was therefore under the rigour of the meer Law of Moses under the Religion and Law of Christ our case is not become quite desperate and irrecoverable upon the first offence It is not every wilful sin and much less our slips of ignorance and inconsideration which can for ever exclude us from the Favour of God and incapacitate us for his Mercy No the Religion of Christ is not a Religion that seeks advantages of us and shuts us up close Prisoners of Damnation as soon as we are guilty of any thing which may deserve it
one sort or other 1 Joh. 1.9 I should recite almost the whole New Testament if I were to repeat all that the Scriptures affirm in this point But by what I have already offered I take it to be clear beyond all doubt and scruple that the Gospel-Covenant is a Covenant of remission of sins upon repentance God most earnestly desires that we should repent and he is most truly and faithfully willing to forgive us all our former sins upon our true repentance Nay I might add he is not only willing but extremely joyful and glad of the occasion For it is his highest pleasure to go out and meet a returning Soul and the joy of his heart to embrace a reclaimed Penitent as our Saviour has most clearly intimated to us in the most welcome reception of the returning Prodigal Luk. 15.11 12 c. There is a general joy in the Heavenly Court says our Saviour again and in the presence of all the Angels of God even over any one sinner that repenteth Luk. 15.10 nay there is more joy over one penitent than there is over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance v. 7. Thus had God provided us of a means which will most certainly restore us to his favour He has not left us in our forlorn state but has prescribed us this method of repentance to recover us out of it and to be the great Instrument of our Pardon and Reconciliation And this remedy is adequate to all our needs and able to regain all that which our sins at any time have made us lose For it will repair the breach upon all sorts of offences whether they be our known or unknown our voluntary or involuntary sins Of all which I shall now proceed to speak particularly This remedy of repentance I say God has fitted for all sorts of transgressions whether they be 1. Our known or 2. Our unknown and secret sins 1. Our unknown and secret sins have the benefit of this remedy and that whereupon God will pardon them is a general repentance and a general prayer for forgiveness As for several both of our voluntary and involuntary sins they are secret and concealed from us and quite without our knowledge and remembrance We are wholly ignorant and in the dark about them and our Consciences have no more sense of them than they have of those which we were never guilty of For as for our involuntary sins in some of them we are wholly ignorant and never think them sinful and in others we are inconsiderate and do not many times observe that we sin in them And as for our voluntary and wilful sins though we know full well and observe when we at first commit them yet doth our knowledge of them as of other things slip out of our minds by degrees and through length of time and throng of other thoughts at last we quite forget them And these sins being thus quite out of our thoughts and wholly secret and unknown to us we cannot particularly either beg pardon for them or repent of them We cannot I say particularly beg pardon for them For no man can become a suiter in behalf of he knows not whom nor recommend any thing to Gods mercy before he has discovered it himself And since these particular sins are secret and unknown they cannot be the matter of a particular prayer and recommendation Nor can we particularly repent of them As for our wilful sins indeed whether we remember them or have forgot them the case is the same as to one prime part of a particular repentance viz. our forsaking of them and beginning to obey that particular known Law which we had wilfully sinned against We must retract every voluntary sin by a voluntary obedience and without this we can have no just hopes of pardon For there is no hopes of salvation to any man but upon a particular obedience to all known Laws so that when once he sees and understands a Duty he must obey it particularly before he can expect to live by it But now as for those Laws which are transgressed by our wilful sins they are all known since we could not will and chuse to disobey them unless we saw and knew our selves to be bound by them So that whether we had sinned against them formerly or no whether we remember it or have forgot it obedience to them is our present Duty and a Duty too so necessary that without it we cannot be saved If therefore we have sinned against any such known Law we must amend it and leave off wilfully to repeat it for our obedience to all them is necessary to our pardon and whether we remember or have forgot that we transgressed formerly as to the present it is all one for we must chuse to obey now As for our wilful sins then which being long since acted are now quite forgotten and unknown one great act of a particular repentance is necessary to their pardon viz. conversion or new obedience and reformation For all wilful sins are transgressions of known Laws and whether a man has broken or kept it formerly a present obedience in all chosen actions to every such particular Law is necessary to put him into a state of mercy and salvation But as for other acts of a particular repentance viz. confession sorrow detestation and the like there is no place for them about any of our Secret whether they be voluntary or involuntary sins For no man can confess he knows not what nor grieve he understands not why nor hate and detest he knows not whom so that he must particularly know his sins before he can be thus particular in his repentance of them A particular prayer and repentance then have no place about our unknown sins they are not capable to be exercised about them and therefore they cannot be exacted for the pardon of them But that prayer and repentance whereof they are capable and whereupon God will graciously forgive them is indefinite and general These may very well be used about them For we may all understand thus much by our selves that we are all Sinners and are guilty of much more than we know and can remember Several sins slipt from us at first without our knowledge and observation and several others which were at first observed were afterwards forgotten And when we know this general number although we are not able to recover any particular instance we may very well be sorry for it and beg God to forgive it and so expiate them as much as may be by a general prayer and repentance And this remedy God has assigned for our unknown sins and when we make use of it he will forgive them Holy David was very sensible that he laboured under many such secret faults and by this means of a general penitential prayer he endeavours to procure their pardon Who says he can understand his errours Cleanse thou me from my secret faults Psal. 19.12 And because such
sins are daily slipping from us that our remedy might be as near as our disease our Lord has put into our daily prayers this general petition for our expiation Forgive us our trespasses Matth. 6.12 As for this first sort then our unknown and secret sins a general prayer and repentance is their remedy If we obey all known Laws and particularly repent of all our known transgressions our secret and unknown sins need not lye heavy on us For if we are honestly igrant of them and use due pains and ingenuity about them if we neither overlook them through sloth and negligence nor mistake them through partiality and wilfulness a general and penitential prayer shall serve their turn and restore us unto mercy and reconciliation And then 2. As for all our known sins God has not been wanting to us in them neither but has most graciously provided us of a remedy and means of reconciliation for them of what nature or degree soever they be Whether 1. Our voluntary and wilful or 2. Our involuntary sins 1. In the Gospel God has provided us of a remedy to restore us again to his favour when once we have lost it through our voluntary and wilful sins and that remedy is a particular repentance of them To the pardon of these it is altogether necessary that we particularly amend and forsake them For they interrupt a state of love and good agreement and set God and us at enmity and defiance So long as they are continued in they keep God and men at a distance they interpose betwixt us and his mercy and hinder all the signs of his approbation and all the expressions of his pardoning Grace from issuing out upon us To restore us therefore to Gods Grace and acceptance these voluntary sins must be taken out of the way and by a voluntary amendment and reformation we must undo all that was done amiss in our wilful transgression And of these sins all those places are meant that make repentance which as we saw above includes in it amendment the indispensable condition of life and pardon As when repentance and remission of sins is commanded to be preached to all Nations Luke 24.47 and men are bid to repent that their sins may be blotted out Acts 3.19 or as it is in the peremptory and severe words of our Saviour to repent or else they shall all perish Luke 13.3 And as this particular repentance and reformation is altogether necessary to the pardon of our wilful sins so is it most certainly available and sufficient for them Although they are of a most heinous guilt and provoking Nature yet is not their offence unpardonable or their case desperate For after a man has put himself out of a state of Grace and God's favour by them he is not quite cast off nor need to despair of getting in again He is not presently upon every such offence banished this Kings Court and Presence for ever but upon his particular repentance and reformation he will be allowed to recover his former station For the preaching of the Prophets of the Baptist of Christ and of his Apostles was to call the wilful and all lost Sinners both of the Jewish and Gentile World to this reconciliation Christ as himself informs us coming to save that which was lost and to call all Sinners of one sort or another to repentance Mens very Baptism or entrance into Christianity is a cleansing of them from the guilt of all former sins without exception Repent and be baptized every one says S t Peter for the remission of sins Acts 2.38 and be baptized says Ananias unto Saul and wash away all thy sins Acts 22.16 Nay after men are once baptized and have all their former wilful sins washt off in that water of regeneration yet is not every wilful sin which they are guilty of thenceforward irrecoverably damnable but they are still called to accept of mercy and forgiveness upon repentance as before When men come under the Covenant of Grace and list themselves under the Discipline of Christ they do not subject themselves to a Covenant of Terror and Desperation which takes hold of the first offence and denounces an irrevocable enmity ever after No a baptized offender is under the Grace of repentance as well as others For that repentance whereto we are called by Christs Gospel is not so much an act as a state which S t Paul intimates when he talks of renewing men unto repentance that is unto the condition and standing terms of it Heb. 6.4 6. It is of Gods Grace that there is any forgiveness and in order thereunto any place for repentance at all and of the same Grace we have received a promise of forgiveness upon repentance for all sins and at all times whatsoever If any man among us baptized Christians sin says S t John his case is in no wise desperate for we have an Advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous and he is the propitiation for our sins as well as for the sins of the whole unchristned world 1 Joh. 2.1 2. The Gospel doth not bid every wilfully offending Christian to despair and conclude himself to be irrevocably lost and fallen beyond remedy into a damned condition But its design is quite another thing to recover them again from that state of death and to call them by repentance to mercy and forgiveness For the Spirit of God himself writes to the back-sliding Church of Ephesus to remember from whence they were fallen and to repent and do their first works Rev. 2.5 And S t Paul finds fault with the Christians at Corinth for not repenting of their uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they had wilfully committed threatning to bewail them or to excommunicate them in sorrow and lamentation according to the custom of those times if they did it not 2 Cor. 12.21 Nay in the case of the incestuous Criminal who had committed such a fault as was not so much as named and much less done among the unbaptized Heathens themselves he doth not consign him up to eternal Torments but endeavours by the rod of Discipline and Church-censures to reduce him to repentance that his spirit might be saved in the judgment day of the Lord Jesus 1 Cor. 5.1 5. And as for the other Members of the Church of Corinth who were unconcerned and puffed up at such an enormous accident he reproves them smartly that by bringing them to a sense of their sin he may work them into a reformation v. 1 2. Which good effect when he understood that his reproof had wrought upon them he rejoyces mightily and glories in it in his next Letter I rejoyce says he that by my former letter you were made sorry seeing it was after a godly manner and you sorrowed to repentance For such godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation which is not to be repented of 2 Cor. 7.8 9 10. And as he practised thus with baptized wilful offenders
our selves together as the manner of some is but exhorting one another to the open owning and frequenting of them and this we ought to do so much the more forasmuch as ye see the day of Gods righteous Judgment approaching For if we sin wilfully in this backsliding from the publick Assemblies and from the profession of the Christian Faith after that we have once received the knowledge or professed belief and acknowledgment of the truth of it there remains no more benefit to us from Christs sacrifice for sins but a certain fearful looking for of that judgment I say which shall devour the adversaries And this all you Hebrews have reason to expect from Christ from what you very well know of the manner of proceeding in such cases under Moses For he that despised or rejected the whole yea or even any one particular instance of Moses's Law whereto death was threatned dyed without mercy if the thing was proved against him under the testimony of two or three witnesses And then of how much sorer punishment suppose ye shall this wilful sinner be thought worthy who hath by such wilful rejecting of all Christs Laws and Religion trodden under foot the Son of God as if he were not raised up again from the dead but were yet in his grave and hath accounted that blood of his which confirmed the New Covenant and wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing making it to have been justly shed as the blood of a Malefactor and hath done despite unto the Spirit of Grace and all its evidence by rejecting it as insufficient I have set down the place at large that the very Text it self may afford us an accumulated proof of the ensuing Explication But now as for this sin which being wilfully committed after the belief and acknowledgment of Christs Gospel is here said to have no help from Christs Sacrifice nor any benefit of his Propitiation it is not the sinful transgression of every Law of Christ no nor of any one but a total Apostasie and abrenunciation of them all The sin I say which being wilfully committed after the belief of Christs Gospel is here said to exclude us from all benefit of Christs Sacrifice is not the transgression of any of Christs Laws whatsoever nay nor of any one For the Corinthians were guilty of the wilful transgression of several Laws and that too after they had embraced the Faith of Christ. They were guilty of an indulged Lasciviousness Vncleanness and Fornication 2 Cor. 12.21 Nay one of them was guilty of it in such an instance as was not so much as named and much less practised among the Gentiles themselves viz. in a most incestuous marrying of his Step-mother or his Fathers wife 1 Cor. 5.1 And St. Peter a great Apostle after three years converse with his Lord and Master denies him three times and that not suddenly e're he could bethink himself but after a due space of time between one denial and another Luk. 22.57 58 59. All which he did in the most aggravated manner by accumulating perjuries and prophaneness upon the sin of disowning his Master for when his bare word would not be believed he began to curse and to swear that he knew him not Mar. 14.71 All these were sins wilful in their commission and some of them most highly criminal in their nature but yet none of them was excluded from the benefit of Christs Sacrifice for they all enjoyed it So that it is not any one transgression of a particular Law after men have embraced the Faith of Christ which is the un-atoned sin here mentioned But it is an utter rejecting of all the Laws of Christ and a total Apostasie from his whole Religion It is the renouncing of Christs Authority the disowning of his Gospel and falling quite off from him to Judaism or Paganism or something directly Antichristian which is the sin here intended And whosoever doth this wilfully after he has once acknowledged it and been convinced by it as most men if not every man must do who is guilty of it at all for him there remains no more sacrifice for sin but a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour him and all other Antichristian adversaries That the word which is here translated sin signifies sometimes not all sin in general but particularly this superlative height and aggregation of all sin an utter revolt from Gods service and Apostasie from his whole Religion appears plainly from 2 Pet. 2 where the Apostate Angels are called the Angels that sinned v. 4. And that this particular way of sinning by an universal Apostasie and falling quite off from the profession of the Christian Faith is that very sin which is here intended will appear from all those things which are spoken of it in this place 'T is plain from the Apostles exhortation against it Let us hold fast says he the profession of our faith and not revolt from it v. 23. From his further disswasion from it in the verse next but one not forsaking the Christian Assemblies which is a great step towards the disowning of Christ himself as the manner of some is v. 25. From his Character of it in the verses that follow it being a sin that includes in it all these instances of aggravation By it we become utterly Antichristian and Adversaries to Christ and his Religion the fiery indignation that is kindled by this sin shall devour all them who by reason of it are become Adversaries ver 27. By it we deny Christ to be risen and look upon the Son of God as yet in the Grave and under our feet we count his blood which was spilt for the confirmation of the New Covenant to have been the impure and unholy blood of a Malefactor justly executed we despise all the clear proof and convictive evidence of the Spirit of Grace which we once thought a sufficient Argument for his Religion and whereby we were moved to the acknowledgment of that truth of his which now we contumeliously reject Whosoever hath committed this sin saith the Apostle I will show him what he hath done he hath trodden under foot the Son of God and hath counted the blood of the Covenant wherewith he was sanctified an holy thing and hath done despite unto the Spirit of Grace ver 29. As for the sin then which is here spoken of it is plainly this viz. a sin that is contrary to the holding fast of our Christian profession that implies a forsaking of the Christian Assemblies that makes us open enemies and adversaries to Christ and his cause seeing thereby we deny Christ to be risen and affirm him to have been an Impostor and his blood to have been like that of the Thieves which were crucified with him unholy and impure as the blood of a Malefactor and set at nought all the miraculous proofs and despise all the convictive evidence of the Holy Ghost that Spirit of Grace which
hath proved to us abundantly that that Religion of his which we now renounce is a most certain truth of God All these marks are evidently attributed to that sin which the Apostle here speaks of and then what can any man think it to be less than an absolute Apostasie from the whole Religion and an utter abrenunciation of all the Laws of Christ Now whosoever wilfully falls under this I confess he is in a very deplorable and most desperate case Because for him as saith the Apostle there remains no more benefit from Christs Propitiation or Sacrifice for sin He has affronted that so enormously that God will never suffer him to be the better by it And this to a Jew ought to be no uncouth or surprizing Doctrine seeing he who thus renounced Moses could have no Sacrifice to atone for him For no propitiation was allowed for him who wilfully rejected any one particular Command of Moses but least of all if he had apostatized from the whole Law He that despised even any one particular threatning death in Moses's Law died without mercy under two or three Witnesses But now this Covenant and Law of Moses was sealed only in the blood of Bulls and Goats whereas this Covenant and Law of Christ which these men renounce that I am speaking of was confirmed in his own blood Moses the Authour of that Law was but a Servant whereas Christ the Authour of this was a Son If then the revolting from Moses was so unpardonable that it inevitably incurred death and put a man out of all hopes of propitiation and benefit of Sacrifice of how much sorer punishment as he most rationally argues must all Apostates from Christ be accounted worthy who by their falling away from his Religion tread under foot the Son of God himself a Person infinitely above Moses and count the blood not of Bulls and Goats but of the Christ of God wherewith this Covenant was sealed to be an unholy thing They are indeed irrevocably plunged in death and their apostatizing or drawing back from that Religion which upon so good evidence they had before acknowledged is to their own ruine and destruction ver 38. But although this total apostasie and abrenunciation of Christianity it self when 't is wilfully committed be thus remediless and desperate a sin yet is that nothing to the breach of any particular Law or to the wilful transgressions of any baptized man so long as he still continues Christian. For all his sins of one sort or other have the salvo of repentance provided for them and if he doth but once reform and amend them he shall not be condemned for them And thus having shewed that this place in the tenth Chapter to the Hebrews makes nothing against the pardonableness of any Christian mans sin upon repentance but only against the forgiveness of those who have apostatized from Christ and become unchristian I proceed now 2. To consider that other place in the sixth Chapter of the same Epistle where the Apostles words are these Therefore leaving the Principles of the Doctrine of Christ wherein we are wont to catechize even Children and Novices let us go on unto perfection and to treat of such things as are fit for grown men not laying again for such as are apostatized from it the first Foundations of the Christian Doctrine as are the Doctrine of repentance from dead works and of faith towards God of the Doctrine of Baptisms and of laying on of hands and of resurrection of the dead and of eternal Judgment And this will we do if God permit without returning as I say to prove again the foundations of the Faith to them who are fallen from it which indeed were a very vain and fruitless undertaking For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened or baptized and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made Partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted of the good word of God and of the powers of Christs Kingdom or the World to come if after all this they shall wilfully fall away from this Faith it is impossible for them I say to be recovered or for us by any endeavours of ours to renew them again unto the Grace and Covenant of repentance because God is irreconcileably provoked by this revolt seeing thereby they crucifie to themselves the Son of God afresh and put him once again to an open shame Here indeed the Case is as desperate as it was before and 't is no wonder why it should because the sin is the very same For it is nothing less than an universal backsliding an apostasie both in faith and manners a renouncing of all the Religion and Laws of Christ whereof all these severe things are spoken As for the word which is here put to note this falling away it signifies for the most part a fall which admits of a rise again and is recoverable but sometimes it denotes a fall that is desperate and beyond all hopes of remedy Thus the Apostle speaking of the incredulous Jews to whom the Religion of Christ was a stumbling block and a rock of offence distinguishes betwixt these two stumbling and falling making the latter to be much more dangerous than the former and denying it when he affirms the other Have they stumbled says he that they should fall mortally and irrecoverably God forbid Rom. 11.11 And thus it signifies in this place For the falling away here spoken of is nothing less than a revolting from all Christ's Laws and Doctrines and an apostatizing from his whole Religion Which appears from several things that are here said of it some whereof they are said to fall from and others are said to be implied in their falling It appears I say from some things which they are said to apostatize or fall from They fall away from their Baptism which is expressed by the word enlightened the common name in the antient Church to signifie the baptized from the remission of sins the preaching of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments which are such priviledges and gifts of God as are afforded to persons baptized from the hopes of Heaven and all the promises and good word of God from the gift of tongues and other effects of the Holy Ghost whereof upon the imposition of the Apostles hands they had been made Partakers and from the power of working miracles that were so conspicuous under the appearance of Christ those times of Messiah which the Jews were wont to call the Age or world to come If those says the Apostle who were once baptized or enlightned and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the holy Ghost and have tasted of the good word or promise of God and the powers of the world to come if they shall fall away or apostatize from all these it is impossible to renew them v. 4 5 6. This as is evident is the Apostasie which is
repentance that being such a sin as God will never give repentance to Heb. 6.6 The sinning against the Holy Ghost in this sence then as it denotes the gift of tongues of prophecy c. which is the last evidence that God is resolved to make use of for the conversion of an unbelieving World is that unpardonable sin which shall never be forgiven And yet even here in this limited and contracted sence of the word Holy Ghost we must still proceed with some caution For it is not every affront and dishonour that is put upon these gifts which is the sin here styled irremissible Simon Magus cast a very high indignity and reproach upon them in his actions for he went about to purchase the gift of tongues and other sacred illuminations called the Holy Ghost which fell upon men at the imposition of the Apostles hands as if they had been only a trick to get money or a fit thing to drive a trade withal and make a gainful merchandise When Simon saw that through the laying on of the hands of the Apostles the Holy Ghost was given he offered them money says S t Luke saying Give me also this power that on whomsoever I lay hands he may receive the Holy Ghost Acts 8.18 19. This was a very great abuse and a most unworthy comparing of the heavenly and holy Spirit of God to a mercetable ware and vendible commodity thinking it fit to serve any ends and to minister to the basest purposes of filthy lucre and covetousness But yet this sin against the Holy Ghost in its strictest acceptation was not the unpardonable sin it came very near it indeed and would hardly be remitted but still in all likelihood it was remissible And therefore S t Peter although he be very severe upon this sordid man for the high affront doth not yet pronounce an irreversible doom of damnation upon him but on the contrary exhorts him to repent that the sin of his heart may be forgiven Repent says he of this thy wickedness and pray God if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee ver 22. But that which is the desperately damning sin against the Holy Ghost which shall never be forgiven either in this world or in that which is to come is the sinning against it not by interpretation only in our actions but directly in our words and expressions It is our speaking reproachfully and slanderously of it as the Pharisees did of the spirit when they attributed it to Beelzebub And therefore it is expresly called the speaking blasphemously against the Holy Ghost Whosoever speaketh blasphemously against the Holy Ghost when he shall come it shall never be forgiven him neither in this world nor in the world to come Matth. 12.21 32. The great weight lyes in that for this heavy doom he denounced upon them says S t Mark because they said he hath an unclean spirit Mark 3 30. And thus at length we see what that sin against the Holy Ghost is whose doom is so dreadful and whose case is so desperate under the Gospel It is nothing less than a slandering and reviling instead of owning and assenting to that last evidence which God has given us of the truth of the Gospel in the gifts of tongues prophecy and other extraordinary illuminations called the Holy Ghost So that no man who ownes Christ's Religion and thinks he was no Impostor and believes that these miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost were no magical shows or diabolical delusions can ever be guilty of it No before he arrive to that he must not only be an Infidel to the faith but also a Blasphemer of it he must not only disbelieve this last and greatest evidence but disparage and rail against it If then there be any man who ownes Christ's Authority and obeys his Laws and believes his Gospel and hopes in its promises and fears its threatnings and expects that every word of that Covenant which was confirmed to us by the infallible evidence of the Spirit and the Holy Ghost shall come to pass he is not more guiltless of any sin than of this against the Holy Ghost for he doth not so much as sleight and disparage but ownes and submits to it If good men therefore are afraid by reason of the irremissibleness of the sin against the Holy Ghost they fear where they need not and their scruple is utterly unreasonable and groundless For let it be as unpardonable as it will that shall not hurt them for they can never suffer by it since whilst they continue such as now they are they cannot possibly be guilty of it or of any thing that comes near it CHAP. VII The Conclusion The CONTENTS Some other causless scruples The point of growth in Grace more largely stated A summary repetition of this whole Discourse They may dye with courage whose Conscience doth not accuse them This accusation must not be for idle words distractions in Prayer c. but for a wilful transgression of some Law of Piety Sobriety c. above mentioned It must further be particular and express not general and roving If an honest mans heart condemn him not for some such unrepented sins God never will BEsides these scruples already mentioned some good minds may be put in fear and doubt of the safety of their present state because S t John says that whosoever is born of God sinneth not being no longer a child of God if he do 1 Joh. 3.6 9. But the sin here spoken of as was observed above is defined by S t John himself at the fourth verse of this Chapter to be not every deviation or going beside the Law but a wilful transgression and rejecting of the Law it self And this indeed is inconsistent with a regenerate state and puts us out of Gods favour making us liable to eternal destruction But then the case for these sins is not desperate seeing if once we forsake them and repent of them we are as safe again as ever we were before we committed them For our repentance will set us straight and if we transgress not wilfully again we are without the reach of condemnation Others doubt whether when once they have wilfully sinned they ever can repent or shall afterwards be pardoned because they read of Esau that after he had sold his birth-right with the blessing that attended it when he would have inherited it afterwards he was rejected and found no place of a change of mind or repentance though he sought it carefully with tears Heb. 12.17 In answer to this it will be sufficient to observe that this change of mind or repentance which Esau sought but could not find was not in himself but in his Father Isaac It was not in himself I say for there he did find a place for it being he was really possessed of it For he was heartily sorry for his former folly in parting with his birth-right and for his present unhappiness in being
Conscience no man can be innocently ignorant Of what others he may This ignorance is necessary to all men for some time and to some for all their lives Mens sins upon it are not damning Of sins involuntary through our ignorance of the present actions being included in the known Law and meant by it The causes of this ignorance First The difference between good and evil in some actions being not in kind but only in degree Secondly The limitedness of most Laws which admit of exceptions Thirdly The indirect obligations which pass upon several indifferent actions Fourthly The clashing of several Laws whence one is transgressed in pursuit of another the great errour upon this score iâ— in the case of zeal Fifthly The clashing of Laws with opinions or prejudices 461 CHAP. VI. Of Prejudice The Contents The nature of prejudice It a cause of ignorance of our Duty The difference betwixt things being proposed to a free and empty and to a prejudiced or prepossessed mind An evident proposal sufficient to make a free mind understand its Duty but besides it a confutation of its repugnant prejudice is necessary to a mind that is prepossessed An account of several Opinions which make men ignorant of several instances of Duty One prejudice that nothing is lawful in Gods Worship but what is authorized by an express command or example of Scripture the acts of sin that are justified by this prejudice Another that all private men are publick Protectors of Religion and the Christian Faith the acts of sin justified by this Opinions Other Opinions cause a sinful neglect of the Sacraments These are incident to some honest and obedient hearts An account of other prejudices as that Christ is a Temporal King the acts of disobedience authorized by this Opinion That a good end will justifie an evil action the acts of sin upon this perswasion That Dominion is founded in Grace the disobedient acts avowed by this Principle These are more disobedient and damning The case stated what prejudices are consistent with and what destroy salvation Some prejudices get into mens minds not through a disobedient heart but through weakness of understanding and fallibility of the means of knowledge These are consistent with a state of salvation An instance of this in the prejudice of the Apostles about preaching of the Gospel to all Nations Other prejudices get into mens minds through damning lusts or sins A brief account of the influence of mens lusts and vices upon their Opinions This is illustrated in the Gnosticks They were famous for covetousness and worldly compliances and for impure lusts and excess in bodily pleasures The effect of these in producing agreeable Opinions Another of their vices was a turbulent and seditious humour Their Opinion was answerable A further illustration of it from the Pharisees An account of their vices and the influence which they had in begetting vile perswasions This influence of mens lust upon their judgments proved from the Scriptures The damnableness of such prejudices as enter this way Certain marks whereby to judge when prejudices proceed from unmortified lusts As first If the sin whereto the prejudice serves is unmortified in them Secondly If it lye so near to the prejudice that we could not but see that it ministred to it when we embraced it Thirdly Though it lye more remote if we still adhere to it when we plainly see that some unquestionable and notorious Laws are evacuated or infringed by it A Rule to prevent disobedient prejudices viz. Let Laws be the Rule whereby to judge of truth in opinions not opinions the Rule whereby to measure the Obligation of Laws Some Reasons of this viz. Because Laws are more plain and certain but opinions are more difficult and dubious Obedience to Laws is the end of revealed truth and so fit to measure it not to be measured by it 480 CHAP. VII A sixth cause of ignorance of the present actions being comprehended under a known Law And of the excusableness of our transgressions upon both these sorts of ignorance The Contents All the forementioned causes of ignorance of our present actions being included in the known Law are such to knowing and learned men Besides them the difficult and obscure nature of several sins is a general cause of it to the rude and unlearned Sins upon this ignorance as well as upon ignorance of the Law it self unchosen and so consistent with a state of Grace and Salvation Where there is something of choice in it they extenuate the sin and abate the punishment though they do not wholly excuse it The excuse for these actions is only whilst we are plainly ignorant they are damning when we are enlightened so far as to doubt of them but pardonable whilst we are in darkness or errour This excuse is for both the modes of ignorance 1. Forgetfulness 2. Errour All this pardon hitherto discoursed of upon the account of ignorance of either sort is no further than the ignorance it self is involuntary The wilfulness of some mens ignorance The several steps in voluntary ignorance The causes of it Two things required to render ignorance involuntary 1. An honest heart 2. An honest industry What measures necessary to the acceptance of this industry Gods candor in judging of its sufficiency This Discourse upon this first cause of an innocent involuntariness viz. ignorance summed up 522 CHAP. VIII Of sins consistent through the second Cause of an innocent involuntariness viz. inconsideration The Contents Consideration is necessary to choice Some sins are inconsiderate Three innocent causes of inconsideration 1. Suddenness and surprize of opportunity An account of this The involuntariness of it Slips upon it are consistent 2. Weariness of our thinking powers or understandings An account of this and of its involuntariness The consistence of our transgressions by reason of it 3. Discomposure or disturbance of them An account of this The causes of it are Drunkenness or a strong Passion Drunkenness is always our own fault Our Passions grow strong in us sometimes by our own indulgence and then they are our damning sin and we must suffer for the evil that we commit under them sometimes through the suddenness and greatness of outward Objects and then they are pardonable and our inconsiderate slips upon them are excusable The passions which have good for their Object as Love Desire c. cannot by any force of outward objects be so suddenly forced upon us But the passions which have evil as grief anger and fear especially often are The reason of this difference Inconsideration upon the latter excusable but not upon the former This difference made by our Saviour in a case where both were criminal Excusable slips upon discomposure of our thinking powers are such as proceed from an unwill'd sudden grief or anger but especially from a sudden fear No fear is involuntary but what is sudden and sins upon deliberate fear are damning but upon unwill'd sudden fear grief or anger consistent
and like unto him that they are the Sons of God 1 Joh. 3.2 and born of him 1 Joh. 5.1 4. In like manner as the Disciples of the Prophets among the Jews because they received those qualifications from their institution whereby they were made like unto them are usually in the Old Testament called Sons of the Prophets Now this first part of Repentance or this inward change of mind and purpose which is called a New Creature and a New nature is a most direct cause and natural Author of a like change in our outward works and of an obedient service For it cuts off the very root of all Transgression and plants that of Obedience instead of it It makes us now in obeying to follow our own temper and inclination and our doing of Gods will to become our desire as well as it is our duty So that now when we perform Gods commands we do nothing more than follow the natural tendencies of our own souls our duty is become our choice and delight and it is not without pains and difficulty that we can either omit or transgress it For it is an equal force and violence to a renewed and obedient nature to act sin as it is for a wicked and debauched one to work obedience He whose nature carries him on to love and pity can as hardly be rigorous and cruel as he on the contrary can abstain from cruelty whose nature is harsh and revengeful To act against nature any way is not without difficulty and to follow it is always easie And if it be changed from sin and disobedience to obedience and holiness it is then as truly a self-denial to sin and transgress as it was before to perform and obey Nay if this alteration gets up to a full growth and obedience become perfectly our nature it is then not only uneasie but even almost impossible to sin against it For then we shall be arrived to that pitch which S t Johns words express when he says that he who is born of God or formed into this new nature which makes him like unto and comes from God CANNOT sin 1 Joh. 3.9 So that if Obedience has got this hank of us if by this first part of Repentance or this new nature it be engraffed in our tempers and inclinations and become the employment of our thoughts the desire of our hearts and the matter of our firm purposes and resolutions it cannot miss of our works and actions It has won the principles that command them so that nothing more is needful to be done towards their procurement but they will be sure to follow after them Now because Repentance in its whole nature implies Obedience as its chief ingredient and because the first part of it viz. a change of mind which is called a new nature or a new creature is so natural a principle and so powerful a cause to work and effect it therefore and upon no other reason doth God in the Scriptures so far encourage them He means not in any wise at the last day to acquit and reward men upon such repentance and new birth as is void of obedient works and actions but upon such only as include or effect them 'T is true indeed the wicked and disobedient who will not reform and obey but would notwithstanding have right to Life and Pardon call something else repentance which is void of all amendment and obedience If they confess their sin and are sad upon it if they wring their hands and beat their breasts and then giving it hard names and reproachful titles beg God to forgive them they think they have done an acceptable service and sufficiently repented of it They take no care to keep off from it provided they continue to bewail and confess it For although they bring in before God large Catalogues of sins yet they never strive to lessen them But when they profess to him how they have deserved his wrath and Eternal judgment they want nothing but opportunity still further to provoke it When they acknowledge how vilely they have affronted him in the breach of his Laws they are still ready to repeat it All the hard names which they give their sins are false and forced expressions they mean no hurt to them all the while For although they revile them in their words yet they honour and applaud them in their practice They are still in love with them at their next meeting and for all the ill language which they gave them when they spake of them before God they will embrace them upon the first occasion and repeat them upon every return of temptation But can any considerate man think that such a Repentance as this shall avail him before God and save him from perishing when Christ comes to judgment Surely he must know nothing either of Gods nature or of his word who can be imposed upon so grossly For God by the necessity of his very nature perfectly hates all sin and so can never be reconciled to any man barely for telling him that he is a sinner To inform him only that we have rebell'd against him is to acquaint him that we are his enemies whom to vindicate himself and the Authority of his Government he should destroy and ruine not cherish and protect The Gospel declares that he will take severe and endless vengeance on all that dye unreformed and finally disobedient and then to own our disobedience to his face without a true turn and a firm purpose of reformation is to bid him maintain his Law and execute his Sentence to provoke justice and not to appease it to hasten and assure our misery but by no means to prevent or retard it But that Repentance whereupon God will Pardon us and that Regeneration which he will eternally Reward is such only as either includes or ends in Obedience and reformation When he graciously proclaims that whosoever repenteth him of his former sins and is born again shall be saved he means whosoever doth the one and is the other and obeys with them His speech is metonymical he intends obedience and the thing implies it although his words do not express it For all the while it is only a repentance which is obedient and a new Nature that is operative which in the last judgment he will eternally reward and pronounce for ever Blessed For of repentance he tells us plainly how that which he means when he promises Life and Pardon to it is such only as implies a forsaking in our works and actions those Sins which we repent of It is a Repentance FROM dead works Heb. 6.1 A forbearing to act what we confess is evil They repented not says he of the works of their hands in making and worshipping Idols that they should not ANY LONGER worship them Rev. 9.20 And because it includes a turn and a change of our works and actions from Sin and Transgression to Vertue and Obedience therefore is it expressed by forsaking and
the truest interpreters of our hearts and minds declare there is no such thing this is to add mockery to sin and a fresh affront to our former disobedience It is most grossly to play the hypocrite and in the most fulsome fashion to dissemble with him It is an endeavouring to put tricks upon the Almighty a tryal of his skill a seeking to delude and impose upon an infinitely wise and all-seeing God by such thin pretences as cannot but be seen through and discovered by any ordinary Man But let no Man vainly deceive himself for God is not mocked nor can all the arts of Earth and Hell out-wit and go beyond him No he sees clearly through all this hypocrisie and he will most severely punish it And when he comes to judge of mens Confessions at the last day he will then in the face of all the world distinguish reality from complement an acknowledgment of Repentance from one of form and custom and will for ever reward the first whilst he punishes Eternally the latter He will Pardon no Confession of our Sins at that day but only such as is sorrowful penitent and obedient we must amend those faults that we confess before we can with reason hope that he will accept us And for this the Scripture is clear It is only our returning upon Confession that shall be rewarded and forgiven If they Repent says Solomon and SAY we have done perversly we have committed wickedness and so RETVRN unto the Lord with all their heart and all their soul Then HEAR their Prayer and forgive thy people that have sinned against thee 1 King 8.47 48 49 50. And to name but one place more these words of Solomon are full and home to the purpose He who Confesses and FORSAKES his Sin shall find mercy Prov. 28.13 That Confession of our Sins then whereupon Christ our Judge will at the last day accept and Pardon us is such only as ends in Reformation and Obedience The service of our lives must go along with that of our lips we must do as we say and avoid what we condemn before we can safely trust that God will Sentence us to that Mercy and Life which are not the rewards of idle acknowledgments but only of a confessing obedience Fifthly This Gospel condition of Life and Pardon is sometimes call'd Conversion Without this we can have no hopes of happiness For except ye be CONVERTED says our Saviour and become as little Children as void as they are of all former impressions and courses and free to enter upon new ones ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Matt. 18.3 But if our Conversion goes before Gods Pardon is sure to follow after that being the duty and this the reward Repent and be CONVERTED says the Apostle Peter that your Sins may be blotted out Act. 3.19 Conversion sets us without the reach of Death and beyond the precincts of Damnation for he who Converts a Sinner from the error of his way doth save a Soul from DEATH Jam. 5.20 Now our Conversion from Sin to God is nothing else but our Obedience in another word For it denotes a turn and a change not only of our wills and desires but withal and that principally of our works and actions For our course of actions is in the familiar and customary use of the Scriptures call'd our way our Conversation walking and our particular actions so many several steps and our turning out of a course of Sin and Transgression into a course of Righteousness and Obedience being like the turning out of a wrong way into a right is call'd our turning from Sin and our turning to God i. e. in one word our Conversion So that to be Converted is nothing else in the Scripture language but to have the course of our works or actions turned and from workers of sin to become workers of obedience When Mercy and Life then are promised to our Conversion they are not made over to any thing which is separate from Obedience but to that only which denotes it and is but another name for it We are not Converted until we obey so that Obedience still is that which must procure our peace and capacitate us for Pardon and happiness when Christ comes to judge us CHAP. V. Of Pardon promised to Prayer The CONTENTS Of Pardon promised to Prayer Of the influence which our Prayers have upon our Obedience Of the presumption or idleness of most mens Prayers Of the impudence hypocrisie and uselessness of such Petitions Then our Prayers are heard when they are according to Gods will when we pray for Pardon in Repentance and for strength and assistance in the use of our own endeavours Pardon promised to Prayer no further than it effects this Obedience and penitential endeavour SIxthly That condition whereto the Gospel promises a gracious sentence of Mercy and Life is sometimes call'd Prayer or calling upon God The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him says David to all that call upon him in truth Psal. 145.18 Thou Lord art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy to all that call upon thee Psal. 86.5 For so surpassing is his goodness and the riches of his grace that any thing may be had of him for asking to them who desire it he can deny nothing Ask and it shall be given you says our Saviour for EVERY one that asketh receiveth Matt. 7.7 8. And that in all things equally one as well as another if they do not distrust him and disbelieve his Love For ALL things WHATSOEVER you shall ask in Prayer BELIEVING you shall receive Matt. 21.22 So that if men want any thing which they desire that God would bestow upon them it is because they do not beg it of him Ye have not says S t James because ye ask not Jam. 4.2 For not only the overflowing goodness of Gods own nature but besides that the interest of his Son Jesus Christ our MEDIATOR at his right hand gives us a full security in all our requests that we shall obtain any thing which we ask in his name Ask any thing says he in my name and I will do it Joh. 14.14 Nay so dear is he to Almighty God that although he himself should not move in it yet through the strength of Gods inexpressible love to him they who beg in his name can miss of nothing In that day says he after I am taken from you you shall ask ME nothing Verily verily I say unto you whatsoever you shall ask the FATHER in MY NAME he will give it you And I say not that I will PRAY the Father for you for the Father himself loveth you BECAVSE ye have loved me Joh. 16.23 26 27. And seeing as the Apostle says that we have so great and powerful a High Priest at Gods right hand whether our suit be for pardon or strength or for whatsoever else Let us come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain Mercy for
which he hath given us and by usurping the place of Judg and Governour of the World to make others of our own It is plainly to oppose his Essence to his Gospel by making it bless those whom this condemns and to become Infidels to his Religion and Truth under colour of promoting his Mercy and Goodness It reproacheth his Nature under a pretence of Honouring it by making his Vertues enterfere and his Excellencies inconsistent and robbing him of one most glorious Attribute to exalt another But when he comes at last to judge the World he will effectually assert the truth of his Gospel and vindicate the Honour of his injured Attributes in passing a just censure and inflicting a most severe punishment on all such blasphemous presumptions as these are For it is not an idle trust in God or ineffective recumbency and reliance on Christ for salvation that shall avail any man at that Day No if they have despised his Laws and their lives are disobedient let them be as presumptuous as they please with God and as bold as they will with their Saviour they shall certainly go to Hell in the midst of all their high flown hopes and daring confidences For God will be as good as his Word and punish disobedience according as he has threatned it It is not only in his Word but in his very Nature that he hates and abhors sin so that he can never be brought to reward and encourage it being determined by his Natural Inclination as well as by the Truth of his Gospel eternally to punish and avenge it He is not a God saith the Psalmist who hath pleasure in wickedness no as an Argument of that he will not endure it in his Presence Evil shall not dwell with him The foolish or disobedient shall not be suffered to stand in his sight for he hateth all the Workers of iniquity Psal. 5.4 5. No man therefore must dare to place his hope and trust in God till in his works he honestly obeys him It is only our doing what he requires that can give us sufficient grounds to expect the performance of those mercies which he promises A faithful obedience is the only firm foundation of a sure Trust we must keep his Commandments before we can safely confide in him When God says then that he who fears the Lord shall be blessed and that he who trusts and hopes in him shall not finally be ashamed he speaks not of such fear and trust as are separate from obedience but of such only as are conjoyned with it The Phrase is metonymical our obedient works are implyed although they are not expresly mentioned for we must obey him through fear and do what he commands us in hopes of obtaining those mercies which he promises or else we shall never attain those blessings which we hope for And for this the Testimonies of the Scriptures are many and plain For as for our fear of God it is of no account with him further than it makes us obedient The fear of the Lord says Solomon is to hate evil Prov. 8.13 It must be an instrument of amendment and reformation a fear whereby men depart from evil Prov. 16.6 A means of perfecting our obedience and holy living for that is S t Paul's Character of it when he tells us of PERFECTING holiness in the fear of the Lord 2 Cor. 7.1 and of WORKING out our own SALVATION with fear and trembling Phil. 2.12 It is only when obedience thus follows upon our fear and is effected by it that God accepts and rewards it I will teach you the right way to pardon and happiness said Samuel Fear the Lord and together with that SERVE him 1 Sam. 12.24 25. For if we would hear the conclusion of the whole matter as saith the Wise Man we must fear God and keep his Commandments this obedience and fear together is the whole Duty of man Eccles. 12.13 No man therefore can lay a just claim to Gods mercy at the last day but he who has fear'd him in such sort as out of that religious fear intirely to obey him But whosoever fears so mercy shall rest on him for ever For the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on them that fear him provided that out of that fear they keep his Covenant and his Commandments to DO them Psal. 103.17 18. And then for our trust and hope in Gods mercy it is no saving trust but a blasphemous and bold presumption if we hope in him whilst we are disobedient and rebellious against him A good mans trust is only in promised mercies which are never made to such as wilfully and impenitently transgress Gods Laws but only to those who honestly obey them It is a trust as the Psalmist speaks in Gods Word and not against it Psal. 119.42 And because that word denounces nothing but woes and threatnings to all wicked men therefore as he speaks in another place shall the righteous alone trust in him Psal. 64.10 The hope of a Christian is not absolute but suspended upon his performance of certain terms a hope upon his active service and obedience So that whosoever has it and expects not to be disappointed in it must purifie himself as S t John tells us 1 John 3.3 Disobedience so long as men continue in it is a most desperate and forlorn Condition there being no just hope to any man but in well-doing It is says S t Paul in teaching us to deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live godlily soberly and righteously in this present world that the Gospel encourages us to look for the fulfilling of our blessed hope Tit. 2.12 13. And the way to hold fast the confidence and joy of a just hope in Christ firm unto the end he informs the Hebrews is only by hearing and thereupon obeying Gods voice and not hardening their hearts as the Israelites did in the provocation or those transgressions wherewith they provoked him in the day of their temptation in the wilderness Heb. 3.6 7 8. And the full assurance of hope as he again declares to them is no otherwise to be upheld but by mens diligence in obeying and in the work and labour of love which implies the whole of our obedience Heb. 6.10 11. So that as the Psalmist says they must trust in the Lord and together with that do good who are to receive mercy from him Psal. 37.3 If men therefore will dare to sin and yet presume affront God Majesty and still trust in his Mercy they must needs deceive their own Souls to their utter destruction For it is a vain confidence and an impudent presumption in any man to rely upon Gods goodness for the pardon of his sins without repenting of them and obeying him whenas he has plainly told us That his goodness it self shall pity and pardon none but the Penitent and Obedient He trusts to a false hope and leans upon a broken Reed for as long as his transgressions
are better known to us in their fruits and effects than in their own natures foâ—â—he greater ease in judging whether we do intend Godâ—s Service most of all or no I shall before I conclude this Point lay down a plain and certain mark whence any man of common apprehension may easily discern whethâ—◠〈◊〉 doth indeed design God's service most and whâ—â—â—er his heart and obedience be sincere or no. And the Rule which I shall lay down whereby certainly to try and examine that is this If our obedience be intire it cannot but be sincere likewise For he that obeys God in all times and iâ— all instances cannot but serve him with both these ingredients of sincerity viz. Truth and Preheminence He must needs intend God's service really and above all who intends it so as to serve him constantly and universally And the reason is this Because although our temporal interest and present advantage be for the most part united with Gods service yet always it is not but sometimes in all instances of obedience and at most times in some it is separated and divided from it So that as long as we are true to our own Principle of acting which we may safely conclude we always are if we either design not God's service at all through hypocrisie or design it not above all through a corrupt mixture of intention at those times when these instances happen we shall not be acted by the Command but through the love of our own interest which we intend really and design more we shall certainly act against it For our actions go where our wills lead them and our wills always follow that which is the prevailing motive to them and has most power with them And therefore if we still chuse God's service in all its parts and in all times whether it make for our present advantage or against it we may be assured that we intend his service truly and also that we intend it most since we serve him when no bye-interests of our own can be served and disserve all other interests for his sake He must needs be our highest aim because where we may please him though no secular advantages concur we chuse any thing and where he would be offended though all other advantages invite we chuse nothing So that in the matter of obedience our integrity is the great and last measure of our acceptance And if upon examination we find that our obedience is intire we need not doubt but that it is sincere also And this is that very mark from which according to that version of the Psalms which is used in our Liturgy the Psalmist himself concludes concerning the obedience of the Israelites For he collects it to have been a dissembled and unsincere because it was not a whole and intire service They did but flatter him with their mouth saith he and dissembled with him in their tongue for their heart was not whole or intire with him Psal. 78.36 37. To clear up this enquiry then What qualifications of our obedience to all the forementioned Laws of God must render it acceptable to him and available to our salvation at the last day I shall proceed to discourse of the second condition of all acceptable obedience viz. integrity of which in the next Chapter CHAP. II. Of the second qualification of all acceptable obedience viz. integrity The CONTENTS Of the second qualification of an acceptable obedience viz. integrity The Notion of integrity or uprightness A three-fold integrity Of the integrity of our powers and faculties Or of the obedience with our minds affections wills and bodily powers How God is to be obeyed with the first faculty our minds or understandings God is to be obeyed with the second faculty our affections This Question stated How God and his Laws which are spiritual things are proportionate objects for our love and affections which are bodily faculties Of the difference betwixt our love of God and of the World that this is more warm and sensible that more lasting and powerful An account of what measures of obedience in our minds and affections is necessary to the acceptance of our service That contrivances and consultations for evil things and such mere apprehensions as are particularly forbidden are deadly and damning but that all other bare apprehensions and that all our affections after good or evil things will be rewarded or punished not merely for themselves but only as they are Causes and Principles of good or evil choice and practice God to be obeyed with the third faculty our wills He cannot be served without them Men are guilty of sin if they chuse it and consent to it though they cannot act it All this service of our inward faculties is in order to our outward works and operations INtegrity of obedience is such a perfection and compleatness of it as excludes all maimedness and defects Which is well intimated by S t James when he explains intire by wanting nothing Let patience have her perfect work that ye may be perfect and intire which you will be by wanting nothing Jam. 1.4 And this in another word is ordinarily expressed in Scripture by uprightness For in the most common Metaphor of the holy Books our course of life is called our way our actions steps and our doing walking And to carry on the Metaphor our course of obedience is called our right or straight path our course of sin and transgressions a crooked path our committing sin stumbling and falling and our doing our duty walking uprightly So that for a man to be upright in God's ways is not to stumble or fall by sin and disobedience i. e. to be perfect and intire or wanting nothing in our obedient performances Now this integrity or uprightness which is necessary to our obedience that it may stand us in stead at the last Day is three-fold 1. An integrity of our powers or faculties which I call an integrity of the Subject 2. An integrity of seasons and opportunities which is an integrity of Time 3. An integrity of the particular Laws of Duty and instances of obedience which is an integrity of the Object And all these are necessary to render our performance of God's Laws an acceptable service For if ever we expect that he should reward our obedience at the last Day we must take care beforehand that it be the obedience of our whole man in all times to the whole Law of God To begin with it 1. That our obedience of the forementioned Laws may avail us to life and pardon at the last Day we must take care to obey with all our powers and faculties which is an integrity of the Subject And for this the very Letter of the Law is express For when the Lawyer asks What shall I do to inherit eternal life Christ sends him to what is written in the Law and repeats that to him for an Answer Thou shalt love and serve as it is Deut. 11.13 the Lord thy God
of the Earth but bare understanding of them doth not make him partake with them or subject to be punished for them But to make these meer apprehensions and imaginations either of good or evil an instance of obedience or disobedience they must be causes and principles of an obedient or disobedient choice or practice For our inward thoughts and imaginations are Springs and Principles both of our inward choice and also of our outward operations And the service which God requires of them is the service of the principle He demands the obedience of our minds as a means and in order to a further obedience of our hearts and actions He expects that we should think so long and so often upon the absoluteness of his authority the kindness of his Nature the reasonableness of his Commands the glory of his rewards and the terrour of his punishments till in our hearts we chuse those things which he has commanded and perform them in our works and practice For our thoughts of him and of his Laws are not in themselves Obedience but only a Spring and Principle of it and a good step and degree towards it Our knowledge shall be judged an acceptable service as it carries us on to performance but no otherwise For hereby alone says S t John we know that we know him with such knowledge as shall be accepted by him if we keep his Commandments 1 John 2.3 And on the other side our bare imaginations and apprehensions of some forbidden sin are then only disobedient when they carry us on to chuse or practise those things that are sinful We must go on from thought to choice or practice before the vices thought of become our own and our apprehensions of sin become themselves sinful For the thoughts of sin have the sinfulness of means and causes they are sinful so far as they help on either our consent or performance So our Saviour has determined in one instance viz. that of lustful looks and apprehensions Matth. 5. He that looks upon a woman so long as to lust after her or to consent in his heart to the enjoyment of her he hath committed Adultery with her already in his heart ver 28. As for our thoughts and imaginations then we see what obedience in them is required to our acceptance and when they are disobedient and will destroy us For our counsels and contrivances of evil are always sinful and so are all such simple thoughts and apprehensions as have particular Laws imposed upon them And as for our imaginations and apprehensions of things commanded or forbidden by any other Laws they are imperfect things and not fully grown up to the perfect Stature either of obedience or of disobedience So that they are neither punished nor rewarded in themselves but so far only as they are causes and principles of an obedient or disobedient choice or actions And then as for our affections their measures are the very same with those already mentioned of our bare imaginations and simple apprehensions For their service and obedience is that of the principle and their Sentence shall be according to those effects either in our wills or practice which flow from it If we love and desire obedience so far as to chuse and act it this degree of affection will gain us God's love and favour and secure his rewards but less than it no other shall He that keeps my Commandments saith Christ he it is that loveth me and they only who so love me in obeying me shall be beloved again of my Father and I will love them John 14.15 21. But if our love and desire of evil things carry us on to chuse or act any instance of disobedience for the sake of that which is loved and desired then are our affections sinful and such as will destroy us The desire of evil is not so truly the state of mortal sin as of dangerous temptation it is not deadly in it self but kills by carrying us on to a sinful and deadly choice and actions For when once it has got to that degree it is obnoxious to a dreadful Sentence Whereof the Psalmist gives us one instance in the love of violence Him that loveth violence the soul of the Lord hateth Psal. 11.5 And S t John says the same of the love of lying and the Case is alike in every other sin Without in outer darkness are murtherers and whatsoever loveth or maketh a lye Rev. 22.15 And thus we see what measure of obedience is required in these two faculties and what kinds and degrees of thoughts and affections are to be used or restrained to make theirs an acceptable Service For we must abstain from all evil counsels and contrivances from all simple apprehensions which are particularly forbidden and put in use all such as are particularly enjoined and as for all other our bare thoughts and imaginations and all our affections and desires we must fix them upon our Duty so long till they make us perform it and never suffer them to issue out upon evil so far till they carry us on either to chuse or practise it But besides these two faculties viz. our minds and affections there is yet another whose service is necessary to render ours an acceptable obedience and that is Thirdly Our hearts or wills also It is an absurd Dream for any man to think of serving God without his will because without that none of his actions can be called his own For that only is imputed to us which is chosen by us and which it was in the power of our own wills either to promote or hinder no man deserving praise or being liable to answer for what he could not help But of all persons God most of all regards our hearts in all our performances He perfectly discerns them and he estimates our services according to them So that it is not possible for any of us to obey him unwillingly in regard the choice of our will and heart it self is that which renders any action a saving and acceptable obedience For out of the heart as Solomon saith proceed the issues of life Prov. 4.23 The choice then as well as the practice of our Duty is plainly necessary to render it available to our salvation But on the other side if we chuse sin although we miss of opportunity to act it the bare choice without the practice is sufficient to our condemnation For even by that when we proceed no further our heart has gone astray from God and we are polluted by the sin which we resolve upon in our own choice since out of the heart as our Saviour tells us proceeds the pollution of the man Matth. 15.19 20. We may commit all sort of transgressions and incurr the punishment of them merely by consenting to them inwardly in our hearts without ever compleating them in our outward operation For our Lord himself has thus determined it in one instance and the Case is the same in all
take up with their leavings Nay what is yet more by such a partial and squeamish belief as this we do not only give or take at our own liking from that attribute of his which in believing we would be thought to honour viz. his Truth but even where we seem to submit to it we wrong and pervert it For we wrest his sense and spoil his meaning and undermine all that he intends So that even that which we do believe is not his mind but our own For the true meaning of his Promises which run all upon condition of our Obedience we pervert the force of all his threatnings which denounce woes to every sin and transgression we cancel We do as much as in us lies to corrupt his Word and to belie his very Gospel We make his whole Religion signifie another thing than what he intended For we make it allow what he forbids and encourage such as he threatens and save those whom at the day of Judgment he will condemn And since this perverse faith and knowledge which believes what it likes and is infidel to all the rest which sets up one part of his Word against another by making his Promises to undermine his Precepts and the Truth of his Doctrines to render all his threatnings false and useless I say since such an untowardly partial and gainsaying knowledge and belief as this is in very deed so plain a Libel to his Person so hateful a violence to his Truth and such a contradicting piece of Infidelity to his Gospel it can never be thought to be that Obedience which he commands and encourages but such a piece of contumelious flattery and fawning disobedience as he will most severely punish and condemn But if we believe his whole Gospel and besides the faith of his Doctrines and Promises take moreover all his Precepts to be such as he injoyns and all his threatnings in their true meaning to be such as he will execute and yet for all that in our works and practice despise and sin against them then is such our faith and knowledge so far from rendring our condition safe and comfortable that in very deed it makes it quite desperate and utterly bereft of all colour and excuse For it takes from us all plea for disobedience and leaves us not so much as the common refuge of all misdoing the pretence that we did offend but did not know it It makes every sin which we commit to be acted with a high hand and all our offences to become contempt our disobedience rebellion and our transgressions presumptuous For we sin then with open eyes we know Gods Commands but refuse to practise them we discern our duty but despise it It makes us not only to renounce his Authority but also to defie his Power For we know his Almighty Strength but we will not fear it we see his dreadfull threatnings but yet dare to commit the things which he has threatned in despite of them We see and believe that our Death is entailed upon our disobedience but for all that we choose and run upon it We contemn all his Commands and set light by all his Promises and despise all his Threatnings We see and believe them all but prefer the pleasure of our sins before them and transgress in open affront to them And such a state as this every man must needs see is so far from gaining his favour and ascertaining his acceptance that in reality it is a continued heightning of every provocation an habitual hostility and state of crying sin But if ever our Orthodox Faith and Professions avail us unto Life and Pardon they must end in our Obedient Works and Actions We must do that which we know God requires and practise that Pure Religion which we profess If ye know these things sayes our Saviour happy are ye if ye do them Joh. 13.17 It is not every verbal Professor every one that saith unto me or calls me Lord Lord that shall enter into the kingdom of heaven but he only that doth the will of my Father which is in Heaven Mat. 7.21 We are condemn'd out of our own mouths if we commend Christs Religion whilst we contemn and disobey it Every word which we speak in its behalf is a charge against our own selves and every Plea which we make for it is to us an accusation For if it be a Religion so pure so good so worthy of God and so beneficial to men as we profess it is the more unpardonable wretches we that transgress and act against it All the praises which we heap upon our Duty are a most bitter invective upon our own practice and the more we commend Christs Religion and Laws the more we condemn our own transgressions so that now God in exacting the punishment be it as severe as it well can only executes our own sentence We are made the worse for our knowledge if our Actions are not ruled by it for it shews plainly that our Lusts are most obstinate and our wills most wicked when for all we are clearly shewed the Laws the Promises and the threats of God we can yet despise them all and for the short pleasure of a silly sin transgress and act against them And since it doth thus enhanse our Sin we may be sure that it will proportionably encrease our punishment For he that knows his masters will and doth it not shall be beaten with many stripes Luk. 12.47 And thus we see that this thinking to be saved by the labour of our minds without any works of our lives and practice and coming to Heaven barely by a True Belief and Orthodox Opinions and Right Professions without ever obeying in our works and actions is one of those false and delusive grounds whereupon men shift off the necessity of this service with all their strength the service of their Actions And another false ground of shifting off the same service is 2. The delusive confidence which wicked men have of being saved at the last Day for an obedience of idle desires and ineffective wishes It is a strange conceit which some people have been taught viz. that the desire of Grace is Grace and that God will at the last Day judge men to have obeyed although they have not wrought but only desired it There is a complaisant sort of Casuistry and a much easier than ever God made that has been brought into the World which bids men to hope well though they do nothing so long as they find in themselves a desire that they could do it They wish they were what God expects and that they performed what he commands but they do no more but wish it They sit still and work no more now they have wished it than they did before Theirs is a weakly infant-desire it just lives but that is all it can effect nothing For the smallest lust is too strong for it and the least temptation over-bears it the desire of the Vertue is hush'd when
the strength of our own sinfull lusts that gives such an irresistible strength to the outward temptation A great offer of gain indeed cannot be withstood by a covetous heart and an inviting beauty and a fair opportunity are irresistible to a slave of lust and a lascivious reigning inclination But if the man is above the world and his heart is chaste they are of no force nor can they offer any violence at all It is the wickedness of our own hearts lusts therefore which are so deeply in love with them and so unbridledly bend after them that gives all the prevailing force and overpowering strength to the outward temptation But now this is our Sin and so can by no means plead our excuse it is our damnable disease and therefore it can never prove our saving remedy For this is that reigning power of Sin which the Gospel has indispensably required us to mortifie but not to submit to It is only if you through the spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body says S t Paul that you shall live Rom. 8.13 Col. 3.5 But if we are not under this damnable servitude to Sin there are no temptations so strong but that God has given us sufficient defensatives against them For the present offer of a Gibbet would fright away the most endearing temptation the near expectation of a great Estate or of a Crown would make us prevail over it And what are these to hell fire and an eternal Crown of Glory Heaven therefore and Hell when they can be considered of are an answer to all temptations in the world they will engage our hearts more than all the endearments of a lust and infinitely out do all the baits and allurements of sin If we commit sin then it is no sufficient excuse to us that the temptation was strong because it was only the strength of our own unmortified lusts that made it so For we loved the sinfull pleasure too well and that was the reason why it overpower'd us And since the strength of temptation is owing only to the strength of sin it can never excuse us from undergoing punishment So that this must needs be a false hope to think of being excused for our sin because we acted it through the violence of a great temptation Fourthly Another ground of false confidence whereupon men hope to be saved although they do not obey in their works and actions but are workers of sin and disobedience is because when they do transgress it is with reluctance and unwillingness Albeit in their actions they do serve sin yet in their minds they do not approve of it their service of it is an unwilling and a slavish service They cannot sin freely and at their own ease but with fearfulness and regret For the Conviction of their duty abides in their Consciences the fear of hell torments sticks fast in their souls they cannot shake off either their sense of duty or their fears of punishment So that even when they do sin against God it is with remorse of mind and fearfulness of apprehension They cannot embrace their sin with a full choice because they know that it is not an unmixed pleasure They believe and know it to be of a compound and mixt nature to have some present pleasure which will delight but withall much future punishment which will torment them And since they know it to be a composition of good and ill they do not perfectly either love or hate choose or refuse it Their will is distracted by different motives in the same choice for the future pains would draw them to reject but the present joyes invite them to embrace it So that in a different degree they both will and nill the same thing they would have it and yet they would avoid it For they would enjoy what they desire but withall they would keep off from what they fear they have a mind to commit the sin because it will please them for the present and yet they are afraid of it because of that wrath which it treasures up for them against the time to come But notwithstanding all this conflict in their own choice yet at last their sin prevails and they obey it For they had rather hazard all its torments than miss of its delights they are unwilling to venture upon those dangers which it brings but yet they had rather venture on them than go without it They sin unwillingly just as a labourer works or as a soldier fights unwillingly that is they do not will it for it self they would not do it unless they were hired to it For considering all things they will to act and not to omit it their will is against it indeed at the first sight but upon better consideration it resolves upon it and all things laid together they choose to commit the sin rather than to forbear it But now this is such a State as will never bring any man to Heaven For whether he transgress willingly or with reluctancy is not the question but if he choose at last to disobey when God comes to judgment he shall be sure to pronounce upon him that death which he has established for the punishment of disobedience Because for all he fears and mistrusts grumbles and repines yet he serves and obeys his lusts all the while notwithstanding He works at their will and doth what they command him He serves not with a full heart or a fearless mind but yet he is their servant still 'T is true indeed it is some mitigation of his sin that he doth it with regret and the transgression is something the less for being acted not without reluctance and aversion It shews that his sense of duty is not quite lost his Conscience wholly fear'd or his fear of God utterly extinguished It is some extenuation that he startles at the offence for it argues that his soul is not wholly depraved or his heart harden'd in disobedience But although his sins be not of the highest rate yet he is a lost sinner still For so long as his lusts prevail and he chooses at last to act and commit them he serves and obeys them It is his works and actions that must determine his service and obedience so that if he commit sin he is the servant of sin Willing or unwilling may extenuate or heighten his disobedience but not utterly destroy or alter the nature of it For indeed something of struggling and regret is to be found in the obedience and disobedience of the greatest part of the world There being few so good as to obey without all reluctance and few so wicked as to sin without all remorse For as long as we are in this life we are a mixt and compound substance of Soul and Body Flesh and Spirit Our carnal appetite draws us on to forbidden things to transgress those restraints which Gods Law has set to it and to sin And our Conscience being enlightned with the knowledge of Gods Laws and
allured by his Promises and affrighted with his threatnings would perswade us to keep within his bounds and to act obedience Now these two contrary and gainsaying Principles distract our choice and divide our wills so that when we close with one of them it is not without the grudging and reluctance of the other We would and we would not one inclines us for a thing and the other against it The flesh says S t Paul lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary one to the other so that you cannot fulfill both their desires and do each of the things that you would Gal. 5.17 If we obey it is through the repining of our appetites and if we transgress it is with the remorse and lashings of our Consciences On both sides there is something that is evil whereof we are afraid and which we would not our will is imperfect and with reluctance and we will and choose in some measure unwillingly whether it be to work obedience or sin As for the Saints in Heaven indeed after the Resurrection 't is true that they shall have no gainsaying appetites For their flesh will be in perfect subjection to the spirit their will shall have nothing to seduce it but shall stand alwayes firm and entire for God so that they shall obey without any thing of reluctance or regret And as for some of the profligate and prophane sinners here on earth they have now already so quite benum'd their Consciences that they neither allure nor threaten admonish nor accuse them And they sin without all contention they transgress and do not dispute their lusts hurry them without any opposition so that they disobey most willingly and free from all remorse But as for all the good and the generality of the wicked here on earth they are of a middle rate They both of them act through strife and conquest their consent is courted on both sides and when they comply with one they must refuse the other Both Flesh and Spirit struggle in them although at last but one prevails For in the Regenerate good man the flesh stirs but it cannot conquer they have bodies and bodily appetites but they subdue them and as S t Paul says keep them under 1 Cor. 9.27 So that all the while the Spirit rules in them when the flesh doth but in vain solicite this may tempt but it cannot govern for the spirit gives them Laws its pleasure they perform and what it commands that in their actions they obey But in the wicked and disobedient the case is quite opposite For in them although their Conscience smite them yet can it not prevail with them it suggests but they will not hearken it shews the way but they will not follow it in all things their Lusts are the governours of their lives and actions so that although the lashes of their consciences may sharpen and embitter yet are they not able to disappoint the service of their sin In all the obedience therefore and in the greatest part of the transgressions here on Earth there is still something of strugling and reluctance Men act not by a will that is void of all restraint or by a desire and choice that is free from all unwillingness but there is a mixture of love and hatred an unwilling will that carries them on either to act obedience or to disobey But notwithstanding their ineffective wishes and imperfect wouldings to the contrary it is their peremptory will and last choice which shall determine their condition For if they will and chuse to do what God commands in spight of all the gainsaying wishes raised by their fleshly Appetites they shall be pardoned and acquitted When the good man overcomes the temptation and prevails over his unwillingness and triumphing over it goes on to practise and obey he shall receive the reward of his obedience But if they will and chuse to do what God forbids in spight of all the contrary Admonitions and Threatnings of their Consciences they shall dye in their disobedience The Sinner who is carried on to do what he disallows to work what he fears and to commit what at first sight his will is averse to he shall undergo the smart and punishment of his transgression And the reason is plain for he serves his sin and fulfils his lust and his thraldome to it is so absolute that no aids of the Spirit nor any suggestions of his Conscience can deliver him from it He that committeth sin saith our Saviour is the servant of sin John 8.34 So long as it conquers it doth indeed inslave him For of whom a man is overcome of the same says S t Peter he is brought in bondage 2 Pet. 2.19 If we yield our selves up to serve it we do indeed obey it and must expect that death which is denounced upon such obedience Know you not saith another Apostle that to whom you yield your selves servants to obey his servants you are to whom you obey whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness Rom. 6.16 If we are at the beck of our Lusts and go where they send and do what they command us and acknowledge their pleasure in all things to be a Law to us we are perfect Slaves to them and liable to all that misery which is denounced upon them We serve and obey them and that shall surely bring us to suffer for them For it is the fulfilling of our lusts the doing or walking after them and the obeying of our sin which Christs Gospel threatens so severely whatever mind we do it with If you live after the Flesh saith the Apostle you shall dye and it is only if you through the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the Body that you shall live Rom. 8.13 When Christ comes to Judgment the enquiry will not be Whether we sinned with a full delight or with fear and reluctance but whether in very deed without repenting of it afterwards we sinned wilfully or transgressed at all For we have what shall be his Sentence at that Day from his own mouth already Depart from me ye that work iniquity Matth. 7.23 So that it will be no sufficient Plea for any man at the last Day who has disobeyed in deed and wrought wickedness to say That he did it with backwardness and remorse For that which God indispensably requires is that hâ— should not do it at all and he will only deceive himself if he ever expect to be accepted otherwise For as the hopes of salvation upon mere orthodox opinions or ineffective desires of obedience or sinning through a strong temptation are utterly delusive and sure to fail them that trust to them so is this fourth ground likewise viz. our hopes of being accepted notwithstanding our sins because we transgressed with reluctance and unwillingness CHAP. IV. A further pursuit of this last ground of shifting off the Obedience of our actions in an Exposition of the seventh Chapter to the
upon them They have trampled already upon all spiritual aids and benummed and silenced their own Consciences and quite hardened themselves in their wickedness so that now they have nothing to hinder them but advance to work all manner of sin with greediness and wantonness and thereby fall under the severest curse that can be met with in Hell and damnation And as for this progress of all Renegado Saints and revolting Sinners both in sin and also in suffering the Scripture is express and plain When the unclean Spirit which is once gone out of a man returns into him again says our Saviour he taketh unto himself seven other Spirits which are more wicked than he himself is and they enter in and dwell there and the last state of that man is made worse in all respects by this means than the first Matth. 12.43 44 45. The man becomes a greater Sinner and a greater Sufferer than otherwise he ever would have been For if after men have once escaped the pollution of the world through the knowledg of Christ's Gospel they are again entangled therein and overcome by it then is the latter end worse with them than the beginning For it had really been by much the better for them not to have known the way of righteousness at all than after they have known and walked in it to put such a slur upon it and to revolt and turn from the holy Commandment which was delivered unto them and for some time embraced by them 2 Pet. 2.20 21. As for an obedience then which goes but half way and breaks off before it has got to the end so far is it from availing us unto pardon and life that in very deed it renders our present case more desperate and our future punishment more insupportable But that obedience which God will accept and in which alone we may safely place our confidence must be as of our whole man so of our whole time likewise We must persevere in it through all Seasons and take care both to live and dye in it For our reward will be dispensed out to us according to the nature of our service at the time of payment and he only as our Saviour says that endureth to the end shall be saved Matth. 10.22 CHAP. VI. Of the third sort of integrity viz. that of the Object or of obedience to all the particular Laws and parts of Duty The CONTENTS Of the partiality of mens obedience from their love of some particular sins Three pretences whereby they justifie the allowed practice of some sins whilst they are obedient in some other instances The first pretence is the preservation of their Religion and themselves in times of persecution A particular account of mens disobedience under this pretence The vanity of it shown from the following considerations Religion needs not to be rescued from persecution The freedom of outward means of Religion is restrained by it but the substance of Religion it self is not It is extended in some parts and ennobled in all by sufferings Where it needs to be defended disobedience is no fit means to preserve it because God cannot be honoured nor Religion served by it Religion and the love of God is only the colour but the true and real cause of such disobedience is a want of Religion and too great a love of mens own selves Men are liable to be deceived by this pretence from a wrong Notion of Religion for religious opinions and professions A true Notion of Religion for religious practice upon a religious belief as it implies both faith and obedience The danger of disobedience upon this pretence The practice of all religious men in this case Of Religion in the narrow acceptation for religious professions and opinions The commendable way of mens preserving it First By acting within their own sphere Secondly By the use only of lawful means Thirdly By a zeal in the first place for the practice of religious Laws and next to that for the free profession of religious opinions BUT to render our service perfectly intire and compleatly upright it is not enough that there be an integrity of the Subject by our obeying with all our powers or an integrity of time by our obeying in all Seasons of which two I have discoursed hitherto but it is further necessary that there be an integrity of the Object also or that what we do thus obey with our whole man and our whole time be nothing less than all the particular Laws of Duty and instances of Obedience nothing under the whole will of God We must not pick and chuse in the doing of our Duty for if we do not obey all we obey not right in any Because all the Laws of God are bound upon us by the same power and enjoyned by the same Authority so that if we fulfil any one upon this account of his having required it the same reason holds for our fulfilling all the rest This indeed is very hardly believed because it is so hard to practise For almost every man has some sin or other which he can as well dye as part with It has got his heart and is become the Master of his affections and since he loves it so dearly he hopes that God will bear with it too He will part with any thing else for Gods sake he will not stick at any other service nor repine at any other imposition all that he craves is only to be tolerated in his Darling Lust and to be allowed to serve him without cutting off what is as useful as his right hand or pulling out what is as dear to him as his own right eye to please him And when men are thus desirous of reconciling the service of God with the service of their lusts when they are resolved to hope and yet resolved to sin they have no other way but to perswade themselves that the keeping of some Precepts shall attone for the transgression of others and to bear up themselves with the delusive hopes and false confidences of a partial and a half obedience They presently forge new terms of life and pardon which God never made and which he will never stand to for finding that they do not perform all his Laws and yet resolving that what they do perform shall be sufficient for them they straightway fansie that if they do keep some for the rest they shall have a Dispensation It shall be enough for them to part with such lusts for Gods sake as they can best spare but some they will keep and them he must allow and so instead of a perfect and intire they put him off with a partial and a maimed service Now this partiality of obedience is in so many kinds as men have sins that are endeared to them which they will not leave for God's sake but join with him For every beloved sin can make an interest and Party and if it reign in us so far as to make us fulfil it and
and revengefull they have caused us to thirst after their blood and to be in pain when they escape to measure our Religion and the soundness of our piety by a reproachfull spitefull and implacable usage and behaviour towards them All which are tempers and practices most contrary to those Laws of forgiving injuries of loving enemies of praying for our persecutors of returning good to all that have evilly entreated us of meekness and patience mercy and placableness towards the worst of men yea even the worst of enemies which are so much the soul and spirit of that Religion which we pretend to be so zealously concerned for And if we look into our Zeal for our several parties how many other Laws shall we find to be daily transgressed I will not say for the preservation but even where that is sufficiently secured for the higher advancement and encrease of them For what rude and unmannerly envious and ill-natured reflections are daily cast upon those persons especially Ministers and men of Note and Eminence who differ from us How forward are many among us to undervalue and disparage to contemn and affront them to heap reproach and infamy upon them thereby to render their persons ridiculous and their pains useless For are not several of us perpetually censuring and speaking evil of them undervaluing all their real virtues putting hard and uncandid interpretations upon all their actions prying diligently and maliciously into all their defects and aggravating all their faults or follies raising continually and spreading to their disparagement uncharitable and envious yea oft-times false and slanderous reports We envy and hate reproach and censure revile and slander bite and devour one another and all this fierceness and uncharitableness we use for that meek that charitable gentle quiet thing Religion For in its service we take our selves to be engaged and so long we fancy that we have a liberty of saying or doing any thing Thus full of Sin and Disobedience is this sanctified pretence It is the cover for every offence and the common shelter for all transgressions for we boggle not at any Sin so long as it tends to preserve us in the prosperous profession of our endangered or oppressed Religion But if men would consider calmly and have patience to look beyond the surface and bare outsides of things they would soon discern the vanity of this pretence and how far it will be from excusing any such sinfull and disobedient practices as they seek to justifie and warrant by it For as for true and substantial Religion for protection on whereof they would be thought to venture upon all these transgressions it stands in no need of their help to preserve it in persecuting times although they should use innocent and just means not such as are sinfull and disobedient It would live then without their care and whether they went about by any politick means to preserve it yea or no. For Religion is not lost when Religious men are persecuted it doth not suffer when they do that profess it seeing it is not one jot impaired when men are buffetted and imprison'd nay bleed and dye for it Indeed as for the freedom of the outward means of Religion viz. the publickness of preaching the community of prayers the unrestrained use of Sacraments and the like they are much straitned by persecutions and we must expect to feel either a great want or at least a great difficulty in them when Times are troublesome A persecuting Government can in great measure deprive us of them when after our utmost use of all such means as are no wayes undutifull or against any Law of Christ we are not able longer to preserve them But as for the substantial part and main body of Religion it self which consists in sound faith and upright obedience and which those outward means are appointed to beget in us no state of Times need make them wanting For they are within our selves and depend altogether upon Gods Grace and our own Free Wills so that all the Powers of Earth and Hell are never able to rob us of them Could the violence of persecution have oppressed our Religion it had been stifled in the birth For it entred in a persecuting age and yet it was not overborn by the pressure of its sufferings but bravely overcame them It begun grew up and conquer'd all the world in the very heat of affliction and opposition the more it was burdened the more still it spread and the more men sought to straiten it the further was it enlarged the common observation then being this that the unparallel'd sufferings of its professors were the true prolifick cause of the vast encrease of the Church And indeed what should hinder Religion from thriving in evil times For the same Religious Duties which are practised with more ease in a prosperous are exercised also but with greater honour in an afflicted state of things To believe and do well to be pious and pure chast and sober just and charitable meek and gentle quiet and peaceable with all other instances of a substantial and acceptable Religion are indifferent and undetermined to any turns of Providence They may be shewn under fines and imprisonments axes and halters as well and much more honourably than in times of ease and softness Nay some of its most eminent parts and noble instances are not capable of being exercised at other times For the duties of patience and taking up the cross of forgiving injuries and doing good to enemies of praying for them that persecute us and despitefully use us which are the most exalted strains and glorious heights of our Religion are such for which a peaceable and prosperous a favourable and flourishing age affords no famous opportunities For we must be in a state of suffering evil and labouring under a load of persecution before we can sufficiently evidence how readily how magnanimously how meekly how charitably and Christian-like we can undergo it So that as for Religion and Sufferings they are at no such distance but that they may very easily be made to meet they bear no such mutual opposition but that they may very well consist together nay I add farther but that they may honour and ennoble and in many instances enlarge and improve each other And therefore Religion needs not to be preserved from sufferings since it can not only live in them but is also much extended heightned and advanced by them But where Religion wants our help and calls for our assistance yet is it not possible for us to please God or to secure it by sinfull means but only by such as are either virtuous or at least innocent It is not possible for us I say to please God by sinfull means although we intend them for his own service For what is there in God that should be served by our sins Is his Love for any thing greater than his hatred is for sin so as the gratefulness of that should make
revellings from fornication and adultery from oppression and fraud and other alike gross and notorious instances of injustice and immorality For all these their strict temper can easily avoid they have no great temptation to them and are therefore able without much pains to abstain from them But then as for those other sins which agree with the bent and inclination of their busie and ungovernable humour they will still indulge themselves in the practice of them for all they are of an equal guilt although indeed of a more spiritual and refined nature For they will strive to weary laws to vilifie and contemn to undervalue and disparage Governours they will permit themselves to be overswayed by spite and malice by wrath and bitterness by envy and emulation by strife and sidings to be drawn aside into censoriousness and evil-speakings into the raising and spreading of uncharitable and envious yea false and slanderous reports they will be forward to magnifie themselves to publish their own praise and to boast of their own actions and attainments but withall to detract and lessen to shame and disparage others Thus will even these men who make the fairest appearance of abominating all impious and ungodly all immoral and debauched actions halt still in their obedience and think to please God not by a perfect and entire but a partial and a maimed service For their Conversion goes but half way not from sin to righteousness but from some sorts of sin to some others All the alteration that their Religion has wrought in them is not a forsaking of sin but an exchange of it a turn from what is more easily left to a more liberal practice of that which they find it hard to part with a remove from grosser and more scandalously fleshly sins to other more spiritual and refined but still as deadly and damnable transgressions And thus by all these instances it appears that when men have got some sins that are close and pleasing such as their temper and complexion their age or condition or way of life has endear'd to them so far as that even for Gods sake they will not part with them their recourse is presently to some more cheap and easie instances of obedience that they may attone for them And the same might be shewn in all other instances of a partial and a maimed service In all things they will obey God no further than their beloved sins will suffer them but as they yield to the Law in other things so must the Law yield to them in these for neither God nor their Sin shall rule alone but the service shall be shared between them and both shall enjoy a divided empire But this is a most damnably delusive and a desperately false pretence For whatsoever fond conceits men who Love and are resolved not to let go their sins may please themselves withall yet God when he comes to judge us will accept of nothing less than an entire obedience All his Laws are established under the pains of death and he will exact all that he has required whatever at that day be our concern in it For he comes not then as a corrupted party to judge for us to make his own Laws bend and bow to serve our Interests and to cancel and disanull all such among them as make against us No he comes as an upright and even Judge to execute all his Laws but not to destroy any he comes to inflict what his Gospel threatens and his sentence will then be what it sayes not what we can bear So that if we have wilfully disobeyed and have not repented whether in one instance or in many we must undergo the punishment of our disobedience For God is a friend to no Vice neither one nor other but he alwayes forbids and he will most severely punish every one And as for all these pretences whether that of our age or our way of life or of our very natural temper and inclination it self there will be no shelter or excuse in any of them to bear us out in any There is no protection to any sin from our Age for no young man may pursue lusts because they are youthful but is bound to fly and avoid them as those things which war against and would destroy his soul 2 Tim. 2.22 Gods Laws make no distinction of young or old but the same Duties are the Rule for both their practices and the same rewards or punishments will be returned indifferently to them both upon their obedience or transgressions There is no justifiable Plea for any sin from our way of life for a constant practice or trade of sin as S t John says can be no mans employment but his who is born of the Devil and must inherit under him 1 John 3.8 But the way of life whereunto God calls us is a way of piety and obedience He has given us his own Laws for the way which we are to walk in and in that alone it is that we can escape death and obtain salvation Nay so far is any thing in the world from sheltring us under the service of any one sin that even that which may have the highest pretence to it of all things else whatsoever viz. our very natural temper and inclination is no excuse to us if it makes us continue in any disobedience If any thing in the world could be a just defence for the practice of any sin surely this must For our Nature is not of our own chusing and therefore its effects ought least of all to be charged on us seeing they least of all proceed from us but are in great degrees determined to our hands before we have any power either to will or to refuse them But such is the purity and strictness of Christ's Gospel that it indispensably requires us to conquer sin not only where it makes no opposition but even where it has the greatest strength and the highest force of all For if our very Nature draw us on to disobey it enjoins us under all our hopes of Heaven not to submit to it but to strive against it so long till we vanquish and subdue it For if we would be judged to be Christ's Disciples at the last Day we must deny our selves Matth. 16.24 As we hope to live we must not perform and fulfil but kill and mortifie those deeds whereto we are hurried on by the temper of our Bodies Rom. 8.13 We must renounce and forsake all sin although never so dear and useful to us before Christ's Gospel will acquit or he will save us If a lust so dear to thee as thy right eye offend thee or cause thee to offend pluck it out says our Saviour and cast it from thee or if one so useful to thee as thy right hand cut it off likewise and cast it from thee and that for no less reason than this Because it is more profitable for thee that one of thy members should in this
his Gospel Promises they are neither grievous nor extream difficult but a burthen fair and easie to be born His Commandments saith S t John are not grievous 1 Joh. 5.3 And our Lord himself who best knew the measures both of our Natures and of his own Grace declares expresly that his Yoke of Precepts is easie or gracious and favourable and his burthen light Upon which inducement he exhorts all men with the greater willingness to take it upon them and submit to it Mat. 11.30 This then all Religions in the world and we Christians above any either are or may be undoubtedly assured of that no man is indispensably bound to do what no man can do and that those things cannot be injoyn'd which can never be performed But now to live wholly without sin in an impeccable and unerring obedience to go on exactly streight in Gods way without the least wandring and to tread always firm in the paths of righteousness without ever slipping to walk so uprightly as never to fall neither by security or rashness inadvertency or weakness surprize or weariness is more than humane nature can do and is a task not for a Man but an Angel And that some slips and transgressions of this nature are such as no man of what Religion soever whether Gentile Jew or Christian can avoid is plain because no meer man ever yet did avoid them It was an undeniable Argument of Atticus in S t Jerome Give an instance of some man that did it or else confess that no meer man yet ever could do it For since there is both an utter necessity and a severe Commandment requiring it it cannot be but that some of all mankind when they had so much reason and so infinite inducement should have endeavoured to the utmost and have done it if the doing of it had been within the power of humane nature So that if it be a failing inseparable from the practice of every man we must conclude it to be unconquerable by the humane nature also But now as for this inability of performing in every instance and transgressing at no time it has been the complaint of all persons in all Religions throughout all ages of the world For as for the bravest men among the Heathens we have Seneca their great Moralist confessing freely We have all sinned more or less sayes he even of his Countrey Laws For some have sinned in great matters some in little some out of choice and design some through constraint or through the ill example and seduction of others Some have been too easily driven from good purposes and sinned though it were against their wills Nay we have not only transgressed thus far but what augments our misery we shall continue still to transgress so long as we have breath in our bodies Yea if there be any man who has so well cleansed his soul as that no temptation can win upon him yet has he run through a long train of sins before he attained to that pitch of innocence Let us perswade our selves of this in the first place sayes he again that we are all sinners For what man is he that dare say he has broken none even of his Countrey Laws But granting that he had kept all them yet how scanty and defective an innocence is that to have done only all that Good which they oblige to For how many things are required and not performed by the Divine Law of Piety of Humanity of Liberality of Justice of Fidelity of all which whether we keep or break them the Laws of our Nation take no notice And as for the Jews we find David the man after Gods own heart crying out Who can understand his errors Cleanse thou me from my secret faults Psal. 19 12. And Solomon who was the wisest and most knowing man that ever was upon the earth layes it down for an Aphorism of universal observation that there is not a just man upon earth so perfect as alwayes to do good and never sin Eccles. 7.20 Nay even the Disciples of Christ themselves who have the noblest encouragements and the greatest assistances for a most compleat and entire obedience of any men whatsoever could never yet attain to such a state as to obey universally without ever slipping The Holy Fathers in the African Councils felt this by themselves and were so deeply sensible of it from their own experience and from what they heard and presumed of others that they condemned it as a proud errour for any man to think or speak otherwise To say that our Nature is as perfect as ever Adams was and that any man now may live if he will all his life long without sin and has the same free liberty that Adam had in Paradise never to do amiss is an errour that stands condemned by the Holy Councils And what these good men thus ingenuously confessed all others have constantly complained of there being none among them who was ever able to live up so exactly to the Precepts of the Gospel as not to do against them in any instance No that was the sole Prerogative of the man Christ Jesus who in that respect had no other man to whom he could be likened For he was made like unto us in all other things indeed save only in sin which we all had more or less but he wanted Heb. 2.17 and chap. 7.26 And since this state of unerring Obedience is such as in this life no man can because no meer man ever yet did attain unto we may be sure that God doth not indispensably require it But some infirmities the Gospel must of necessity dispense with because according to the present circumstances of Humane Nature we cannot help all some must be pardoned since all cannot be escaped But besides all that has been already said to shew the consistence of some failings with a state of salvation because of the unavoidable weakness of Humane Nature which cannot perfectly get quit of them we may add this further which will evidence it beyond all exception that the best Saints of God and the unquestionable heirs of happiness have alwayes lived subject to them Those very men who are most certainly gone to Heaven went thither with some of these slips and infirmities about them They could not plead an unerring obedience but yet notwithstanding all their errours they had right to all the Promises of the Gospel They died happily although they could not live wholly without offence So that some sins do not in any wise destroy a Saint or subvert the hopes and happiness of a good man but can and do consist with them And in the proof of this the Scriptures are many and plain Holy Job who maintained his own Integrity to be such as God would accept and approve of more stoutly it may be than any man ever did confesses notwithstanding a number of sins for which although God of his abundant Grace and Mercy would not yet
himself Hebr. 10.28 29. His punishment indeed shall be most dreadfull being nothing less than all those woes which are denounced in the Gospel For the Law with all its threats and penalties is particularly made and designed as S t Paul sayes for the lawless which is that very word whereby S t John describes sin and the wilfully disobedient who when they see the Law will not be subject to it 1 Tim. 1.9 As for our voluntary and chosen sins then whether they are chosen directly or only by interpretation we see plainly that they are not consistent with a state of Grace and Salvation For they subject us to all that death which the Law threatens and deprive us of all that life and happiness which it proposes to us which beside all the evidence which the Scripture gives us of it is plainly demonstrable from the very reason of the thing it self For certainly if Christs Laws will condemn us for any actions whatsoever it must be for those which being voluntary may justly be charged upon us and looked upon to be our own It must be our willing what sin enjoyns which can make us Servants of it and subject us to that death which God has appointed for its wages So that both from Reason and Scripture it evidently appears that every wilfull sin is certainly a deadly one and puts the sinner out of a state of Gods favour and salvation 'T is true indeed that every wilfull sin doth not rob us of Gods favour in such measure as to incapacitate us for regaining of it ever after But its effect is this before such time as we have repented of it and amended it we are under all the threatnings of the Law and subject if we die in that instant to that death which is ordained for the wages of it We are out of Gods favour for the present and the state of friendship betwixt him and us is interruped and till we repent we shall not be again restored to it As for the state of acceptance and salvation it is broken and destroyed for the present for we are put under the punishing part of Gods Government and are made subject to his vengeance by being sinners against his Law But as for the foundation of that acceptance viz. that habit of virtue and obedience which in the wilfull action we sinn'd against it is not quite destroyed but only wounded and impaired in us For habits are neither won nor lost by one action but by many It is frequency and repetition that must either produce or destroy them If therefore a good man is careless in some instance and loses his innocence and is vanquished into a wilfull sin yet is not the habitual inclination of his soul towards that instance of obedience against which he offended quite extinguished in him but only somewhat weakned and abated Thus for instance a sober man if he consent once to be drunk doth not thereby wholly lose his sober inclination But when the temptation is past his habitual temper which was foil'd and over-born revives again and he abhors his sin and confirms his resolution and so is ready at the next return of the temptation to wash off the stain of his former offence by an opposite instance of new obedience And the case is the same in the wilfull commissions of any other sin For although any one wilfull act be a damnable transgression and put the sinner into a damnable condition for the present yet doth it not destroy but only wound and weaken that habitual temper of virtue which if God spare him life may enable him with ease to act otherwise for the time to come Although indeed some wilfull sins have such a complication of evil in them and are carried on against so many suggestions of the spirit and checks of conscience and are brought to effect through so many thoughts and so long contrivance that they destroy not only that innocence which is the condition of our state of Grace but also that habitual temper and inclination which is the principle and foundation of it too They unravel all and set us to begin again the work of reformation anew Of which sort are Idolatry Witchcraft Perjury Sacriledge Murder Adultery Robbery Oppression entring into the fields of the fatherless and widow and such like For these sins do not only destroy a mans acceptance with God for the present but moreover they lay waste his conscience and spoil all his virtuous temper and inclination whereby he should recover himself afterwards whence they are call'd wounding and wasting sins And this effect they have because in the very acting of them there is usually so much time and deliberation and a succession of so many desires and aversations hopes and fears chusings and refusals that the sin has had a great many imperfect consents before it come to have that which is last and prevailing Our wills by a number of imperfect wouldings are in great part accustomed and have almost wholly learned to unwill all that good which they willed before so that there is an imperfect habit contained in the very action Besides what is most of all considerable these being such sins as are made up of several combined together before we can bring our selves to act them our conscience of their guiltiness must be in great part extinguished and the good spirit of God exceedingly grieved if not wholly quenched For Adultery implies fornication and injustice Sacriledge contains theft and impiety Perjury includes lying and prophaneness and so for all the rest Now these being complicated sins and crimes of an accumulated wickedness mens Consciences are more than ordinarily afraid of them and the good spirit of God extraordinarily concerned to keep them from them They suggest and represent the greatness of the sin and the greatness of the danger Which they do with such constancy and importunity that before men have silenced the one and extreamly grieved if not wholly quenched the other they cannot overcome their own fears and venture upon the commission of them And here now is the danger lest their own Conscience be laid asleep and Gods holy spirit leave them For he will not alwayes strive with man Gen. 6 3â— and from him that hath not that is hath not used that talent of Grace which was granted to him as the wicked Servant had not done who had hid it vers 25 shall be taken even that sayes our Saviour which he hath Mat. 25.29 And when men resist the motions of the Holy Ghost to such a degree as this and after all the repeated suggestions and obedient inclinations which he threw into their souls during all that time wherein the sin was under deliberation resolve still to venture on it no wonder if being thus grieved and rejected he withdraw himself for some time at least if not for altogether And of all this we have a clear instance in holy David upon that wasting sin of his in murdering
but the whole man consisting of Soul as well as Body which Laws are given as a Guide to So that a ravished Matron if only her Body suffered and there was no concurrence of her own consent to it is as chast and unpolluted in God's account and in the censure of the Law as is the purest Virgin And therefore it was a great truth whereby Collatinus and Brutus went about to comfort the poor destowred Lucretia in Livy It is the mind say they which sins and not the Body so that in those actions wherein there is nothing of will and deliberation there is likewise no fault or transgression And this Case is expresly thus determined Deut. 22. For in the Case of the ravished Damsel whose will was no way consenting to it but who did all that she could against it it is expresly ordered that to her there is nothing to be done by way of punishment because in her there is no sin worthy of death for like as when one man is slain by another even so is this case she is not acting but suffering in it ver 26. As for him indeed who chose thus to force us 't is true that the Law will interpret what is done by our Bodies as his action because he freely chose so to compel us Our bodily Members which were forced by him were his instruments and not our own for he it was and not we ourselves who ordered and directed them We were the same in his hands as a Sword is in the hand of a man viz. the Instrument only but not the Agent So that what was done by us is not our own but his who was pleased so to make use of us In him therefore the unlawful action being willed and chosen is really a sin and transgression But in us since it was not our own it is looked upon as none There is nothing charged upon our account for it more than if it had never been done because we did not act but suffer it had nothing of our own will and therefore it can be no Article of our condemnation So much of any action therefore as is forced viz. the outward bodily operation in the estimate of good and evil of vice and vertue is of no account to us whatever it be to others because it is not our own For to make any action ours it must proceed not from our Bodies but from our selves who have Souls as well as Bodies it must come from the will within as well as from the body without and as for our will it self 't is plain that it can never be made to chuse involuntarily by force since it is not subject to any forcible violence and compulsion But although those actions which we exert our selves and wherein we are not merely passive instruments in the hands of others cannot be made involuntary by any force from without upon the will it self yet may they become so from something else within us For our wills are not the only internal Principle of humane actions but several others concur with them whereby their choice it self is influenced Our wills indeed chuse and command our actions but then our passions move and our understandings direct and carry away our very wills themselves So that they are set in a middle Station being subject to be acted upon and hurried away by some as well as they are impowered to command and govern others 1. Mens wills are subject to be violently acted by their passions which hurry them on to consent to those things which are both without and against their habitual liking and inclination When any passion is grown too strong for them although they are afraid to act that sin which it hales them to yet can they not withstand it For the Law of sin in the Members is of more force with them and prevails more over them than the Law of God in the mind So that although they have several exceptions against it they are not for all that able to refuse it but they are overcome by it and yield at last to act it though unwillingly and to fulfil it though with trouble and regret Now here is an unwillingness 't is true and things are done which otherwise would not be done because the power of mens lusts and passions is so strong that their wills cannot restrain them For all the interest which the contrary motives of Reason and Religion can make against them is not able to contend with them They can and do effect something indeed so as that the will when it doth consent to them doth it not fully and freely with perfect ease and pleasure but unwillingly with fear and reluctance But yet that which they do is not enough for the other side prevails and the will is not able to hold out but yields at last to fulfil the lust and to act the sin still But now although this be some sort of involuntariness yet is it not that which will excuse our transgressions and make all those sins which we commit under it to be esteemed consistent slips and pardonable infirmities For this state of unwilling Sinners as we heard above is no state of mercy but a state of death It is the state which S t Paul describes in the seventh Chapter of his Epistle to the Romans viz. a state of captivity and slavery under sin ver 14 23 and thereupon a state of misery and death ver 24. All the Grace which Christs Gospel allows to it is a Grace of deliverance a Grace that shall help us out of it and rescue us from it In this state of weakness and infirmity Christ found us For whilst we were yet without strength to help our selves saith S t Paul Christ dyed for us Rom. 5.6 But now since he has dyed for us he will not leave us in it but rescue and deliver us out of it For now he having dyed for us we are likewise to reckon our selves to be dead indeed unto sin for him that it should no longer master and prevail over us to reign in our mortal bodies so far as that we should fulfil the lusts thereof Rom. 6.11 12. And as for our bodily members which are the Stage whereon our lusts and passions reign we are to yield them up now not any longer instruments of unrighteousness unto the service of sin but instruments of righteousness unto the service of God ver 13. If therefore we are truly Christians and such as Christ came to make us upon our becoming which he has procured Grace and pardon for us we are not enslaved and led Captives by our passions but have conquered and subdued them This S t Paul affirms expresly For they that are Christ's says he have crucified the flesh with the passions or affections and lusts Gal. 5.24 But then besides our lusts and passions which although they do make some cannot yet effect a pardonable unwillingness there still remains one cause more which may
produce it For 2. Men are subject to be carried on to work what is both without and against their habitual liking and inclination through ignorance And this is the great source and intire cause of all our consistent slips and pardonable infirmities As for the will of man it is a blind faculty it can chuse nothing till the understanding shows it That is we cannot desire or will a thing before we see it nothing can be chosen which is not apprehended So that if at any time we offend through ignorance or inconsideration and do amiss either because we did not understand our Duty or because we did not think of it unless our ignorance and inconsideration be themselves damnable and charged upon us to our condemnation nothing else will For God will impute nothing to us at the last Day either to save or to destroy us but what proceeded from our own will and choice and therefore if any sinful action be innocently involuntary it is likewise uncondemning And this now is the Case of all our slips and transgressions of the Law of God which are consistent with a state of Grace and salvation We act them without understanding or considering of them and so they are involuntary and unchosen For in some of them we do not think or consider of what we do at all and in others although we know the action yet are we ignorant of the sinfulness of it so that even in the choice of that this still remains unchosen For sin and obedience is not all acting of a thing but an acting of it with certain ends and designs If we would be thought to obey Gods Law we must do it because he requires it and if we be judged to have sinned against it it will be for doing something when we saw that he had forbidden it For that service which God requires is not a heartless service but a service of the will and choice So that we must do what he enjoins for his sake and because his Law requires it if we expect that he should take himself to be obeyed in it and we must chuse to do whâ—t we know is against his Law for the sake of sin before we need to fear that he will punish us as men that have sinned against him Obedience then and disobedience besides the action require likewise the eye and intention viz. the chusing of what we do because his Law commands it or the chusing it when we know that his Law has forbidden it But if this knowledge of his Law be wanting although we chuse the evil action yet do we not chuse the sin because we do not see that it is sinful For we would not chuse it if we knew that he had forbid it so that in our hearts there is no contempt of him or disobedience at all When therefore at any time we knowingly and deliberately chuse an action which we do not know to be sinful except that ignorance be our own fault whatever the action be as to it self yet as to its relation to the Law viz. its sinfulness and disobedience it is not will'd and chosen For since we did not see its sinfulness we could not chuse and consent to it So that there is no rebellion in our wills whatsoever there may seem to be in our action but they may notwithstanding it be still intirely subject unto God and ready to obey him in every thing wherein they see he has laid his Commands upon them As some of our consistent slips and transgressions therefore are not thought of or considered at all so others although they are known and considered in themselves are yet unknown under that relation of sinful actions so that the sin is all the while unseen and therefore involuntary and unchosen Now as for these slips and transgressions which are thus unknown and thereby involuntary they are consistent with a state of Grace and such as Christs Gospel doth not eternally threaten but in great mercy bear and graciously dispense with To convince us of the truth whereof besides all that has been above discoursed upon this Argument it is first considerable that all these involuntary failings upon ignorance or want of knowledge are unavoidable and God we know will never damn any man for doing that which could not be avoided For no man can chuse to shun that which he doth not see but his understanding must first discern and apprehend a thing before his will is in any capacity to refuse it And forasmuch as these slips are no matter of our sight and knowledge they can be none of our refusal and avoidance Indeed if a man should pause and deliberate watch and examine at all times albeit he might still be subject to one sort of involuntary actions viz. that which arises from his ignorance of his Duty yet would he not be liable to the other which results from this inconsideration of it For where a man has time and his Powers are awake so that he is fit to look about him his thoughts are his own and he may fix them upon the consideration of what he pleases And where he has the power to consider of any action he has the power likewise to avoid it And this is that which is pleaded in behalf of mens ability to keep all Gods Commands intirely and to live wholly without sin by Atticus in S t Hierome Thus much we say That a man may live without all sin if he will for such time and place as his mind is intent and his care is at stretch and his bodily infirmities will suffer him to continue so But as for this power of avoiding all involuntary sins which arise from inconsideration it is no power at all For herein we must know lyes every mans unavoidable weakness and infirmity that whereas our obedience is required at all times this fitness is only in some certain time and place For no man is always in that good condition to be wise and well-disposed watchful and standing upon his Guard But he forgets when he should remember and his faculties are asleep when they should be awake and he is diverted by other business and hindred by intervening accidents So that sometimes either he has not leisure to consider in or his faculties are not well disposed and his thoughts free and at his own command so as when he has time duly to consider in it And this evil state which thus unfits a man for consideration is not always in his own power and at his own choice whether he shall fall under it or no. For as for the want of time a man in this world is placed in a crowd of business and whilst his thoughts are hot in the pursuit of one another many times waits for him And because opportunities do not stay till we are at leisure we must take them when we find them so that we act oftentimes without considering since if we should stay to think we should
that in what proportion it increases in the same must this increase likewise Charity sayes S t Paul suffereth long and is kind charity is not easily provoked charity thinketh no evil charity beareth all things and endureth all things 1 Cor. 13.4 5 7. The more therefore that any man has of charity the more will he be sure to show of sufferance of pity of endurance of such slips and oversights as are consistent with an honest and otherwise obedient heart And now since those imperfect measures and degrees of Love which are found in the hearts of all good men are of force more than sufficient to make them pity and bear with these slips of honest ignorance and inconsideration that infinite height of Love which dwells in God Almighty must needs make him bear with them much rather For the most loving man upon earth hath not the thousandth part of his affection the more loving any men are indeed the more still they are like him but when they are arrived to the highest pitch of what humanity can bear it is not possible that they should in any measure equal him And since Gods Love is infinitely more his pity and forbearance towards such pitiable oversights which is a most natural and necessary effect of it cannot possibly be less than ours is No if no kind-hearted loving man would it must needs be the greatest injury to an infinitely loving God to suspect that ever he should be severe in punishing us for them If we ask Gods Pardon then for all our ignorant and inconsiderate slips and failings he is as ready to give as we are to desire it And this we are assured of because it is no more than we daily experience at the hands of every loving and good natured man For since God cannot be equalled and much less out-done by the very best of us in kindness what the weak Love of a man doth every day effect that certainly the infinite Love of God will effect more abundantly And as for this way of arguing it is no more than our Saviour himself uses in another case when he shows that God will give good gifts unto his children at their request because all earthly Parents do it unto theirs daily whenas yet their Love which makes them grant the good things asked so readily is infinitely exceeded by the Love of God Luk. 11.13 Thus from the consideration of Gods Nature it plainly appears that those slips and transgressions which are committed involuntarily and unavoidably because ignorantly and inconsiderately do not put us out of a state of Grace but consist with it Which will appear yet further if we consider Secondly The Nature and plain declarations of the Gospel As for the Nature of the Gospel S t Paul affirms plainly that it is of such a temper and genius as tends to ingenerate in the professors of it not a spirit of fear and slavery which they are possessed with who serve a rigorous and austere Lord but a spirit of chearfulness and free confidence such as they enjoy who serve a gracious and a loving Father For he tells the Jews at Rome that in embracing of Christs Gospel they had not received again the spirit of bondage unto the possessing of their hearts with fears and scruples but the spirit of adoption whereby they were emboldened with the chearfulness and confidence of sons to cry unto God Abba Father Rom. 8.15 But now if the condition of the Gospel it self were so severe as that according to the tenour of it these unavoidable slips of inconsideration and ignorance should set God and us at enmity no Christian man could ever look upon God as upon his tender Father with this spirit of filial freedom but must needs fear and dread him as his angry and avenging Lord. And the Gospel requiring more of us under the forfeiture of Gods favour than any man among us is able to perform it could not minister to ingenerate in us a spirit of chearfull confidence towards him but quite contrary to that to fill us with inextricable doubts and fears of him As for these slips of ignorance then which cannot be avoided we may be assured that according to the Gospel they never can be punish'd for the New Covenant must bear with them because it cannot ingender in us this spirit of adoption and filial confidence without such forbearance And then as for the Declarations of the Gospel in this matter they are very clear also For besides those places that are mentioned above which show clearly that no involuntary sins are damning and then certainly that our slips of ignorance are not seeing they have the greatest plea to involuntariness of any I say besides those this consistence of our unknown and unconsidered slips will be evident from other places also And for this to seek no further S t James's Rule is full and plain To him that knoweth or which comes to the same thing if he will may know how to do good and doth it not to him it is sin Jam. 4.17 If then we have no other sins to answer for but only these of inconsideration and ignorance we are guilty of none wherefore we shall be condemned these unknown sins not being of that number And indeed S t James's Rule is verified by Scripture instances For holy David fell through inconsideration and unadvisedness in sundry things as particularly in an inconsiderate despairing of Gods mercy Psal. 31.22 and in an excessive sorrow for his Son Absolom 2 Sam. 18.33 and ch 19.4 But notwithstanding these and all other his unadvised slips he was all the while a man after Gods own heart a person upright and acceptably obedient still Zacharias and Elizabeth were surprized no question as well as other people are into several slips and inconsiderate follies For one we have mention'd even in that short account which the Scriptures have given us of them and that is this viz. that at the first hearing of the joyful message of the Angel he is incredulous and is punished with dumbness for his unbelief Luk. 1.18 20. But yet this and his other involuntary failings of like nature come not into the account of his sins and disobedience when God speaks of him for notwithstanding these their infirmities of both of them we are told that they were righteous and that before God walking in all the Commandments of the Lord blameless Luk. 1.6 As for this sort of slips and transgressions therefore viz. our sins of ignorance and inconsideration we see plainly that they never will be charged upon us to our condemnation They do not destroy a Saint or put us out of a state of Grace and Salvation but consist with it This must needs be true for they must be pardoned because they cannot be avoided Besides the love and pitifulness of Gods Nature infers and the very temper and genius of his Gospel supposes it the Apostle plainly and fully declares it and from Gods own mouth we are told
of several of his dearest Saints who have experienced the truth of it By all which it appears that so long as we are guilty of no other slips but such as these we are safe in Gods favour and secure of his promises we shall be accepted by him although we live and dye in them And thus at length it appears what sins are truly and innocently involuntary viz. those which are acted ignorantly and unwittingly and that they do not unsaint a man or destroy his state of Grace and Salvation but consist with it CHAP. V. Of these involuntary and consistent sins particularly and of the first cause of innocent involuntariness viz. Ignorance The CONTENTS A twofold knowledge necessary to choice viz. a general understanding and particular consideration Consistent sins are either sins of ignorance or of inconsideration Of sins involuntary through ignorance of the general Law which makes a duty How there is still room for it in the world Of crying sins which are against Natural Conscience no man can be innocently ignorant Of what others he may This ignorance is necessary to all men for some time and to some for all their lives Mens sins upon it are not damning Of sins involuntary through our ignorance of the present actions being included in the known Law and meant by it The causes of this ignorance First The difference between Good and Evil in some actions being not in kind but only in degree Secondly The limitedness of most Laws which admit of exceptions Thirdly The indirect obligations which pass upon several indifferent actions Fourthly The clashing of several Laws whence one is transgressed in pursute of another the great errour upon this score is in the case of zeal Fifthly The clashing of Laws with opinions or prejudices BUt in regard this consistence of our ignorant and unconsidered slips is a matter of so great account in the quieting and comforting of troubled and fearfull Consciences I will yet proceed to enquire of it more distinctly and to shew what particular ignorances those are which will cause that innocent involuntariness which Christs Gospel doth not punish as has been already shewn but graciously dispense with To him that knows to do good saith S t James and doth it not to him 't is sin Jam. 4.17 And the reason why it is so is this because that sin which a man knows and sees he wills and chooses but if he commit sin when he sees it not it is not imputed to him for a sin because it is not chosen by him That we may clearly understand then what ignorance renders any sin involuntary and therefore unpunishable it is very proper to enquire what knowledge is necessary unto choice and fit to make any sin to be esteemed voluntary and chosen Now to our choice of any sin there is a two-fold knowledge necessary First An habitual and general knowledge that the action is sinfull Secondly An actual use and exercise of that knowledge in a particular animadvertence and express thinking upon what we know which is consideration Both these are necessary to a chosen sin for we must both know an action to be a sin and also actually bethink our selves and consider of its sinfulness before we can be said to chuse the sin and wilfully to disobey in it 1. Before we can be said to chuse the sinfulness of any action it is necessary that we know habitually and in the general that the action whensoever it is committed is sinfull I call that an habitual and general knowledge when we are not to learn of any sinfull action that there is a Law that forbids it nor are in any doubts or darkness in our own thoughts whether it be a sin or no. But if it is proposed to our minds they are already resolved about it and need not further to enquire of it they know and judge it to be a sin when they are asked the question and that is their standing opinion and fixt perswasion And this knowledge because it is no more of one particular action than of another I call general and because it is fixt and permanent having grown into a lasting impression and habitual judgment of the mind I call an habitual knowledge Now that we may be said to chuse to sin and disobey in any particular action it is necessary that we have this general and habitual knowledge of its sinfulness For if we do not understand that although we do chuse the action yet we cannot be esteemed to chuse the sin since our will may be all the while innocent and obedient and ready to refuse the action if it were made to see that it is sinful We can have no choice of that whereof we have no apprehension for the will as it is truly said is a blind faculty and can chuse nothing till it be represented and proposed to it by the understanding So that if our minds are in darkness about any action and have no knowledge of its being forbidden our wills can have no share in chusing of the sin but since it was unknown it must be also involuntary and unchosen But besides this general and habitual knowledge of the sinfulness of any action there is moreover necessarily required to our choice of it 2. An actual use and exercise of that knowledge in a particular animadvertence and express thinking upon what we know which is consideration For there is no knowledge that directs and influences our choice further than we actually attend to it and consider of it but if at any time we did not think of it it is all one as if we did not know it Nothing is a motive to our will further than it is heeded and attended to at the time of willing and unless we see and consider of it then when we are to chuse upon it For in this Case the Civilians Maxim is very true That which doth not appear to be is of no more account than if really it were not at all That any sin then may be said to be willed and chosen by us it is necessary that it occur to our thoughts and be present to our minds at the time of chusing of it For if we transgress when we do not think of it our heart may be innocent all the while and our will incur no disobedience at all since if we did but consider of the sin we would by no means embrace but utterly refuse it So that all that can be charged upon us in such Cases is only the hast and errour of our understandings but not any rebellion in our wills for our heart is good although the outward action appear to be evil Now since both a general knowledge and a particular consideration are necessary in every wilful and chosen sin the involuntariness of any transgressions may arise from the want of either of them So that those sins are justly reputed to be involuntary and unchosen which proceed 1. From the want of the general knowledge
of their offences through the deceitfulness of sin vers 13. And this effect is obvious and ordinary for not only the nature of things but even the just judgement of God concur to it Nothing being more common than for those men who hold the truth as S t Paul sayes in unrighteousness of living and even whil'st they know God do not glorifie him by their service and obedience which are due to him and are our way of glorifying him as God nor are thankfull in their hearts and actions to lose that knowledge and to become vain in their imaginations their foolish heart being darkned by Gods giving them over to a reprobate mind or a mind void of all true judgment to do those things which are not convenient not knowing they are so Rom. 1.18 21 28. But now as for these prejudices which get into our consciences and perswasions not through any force of reason which compells but through the witchcraft of lusts and vices which enveagle and make us willing and desirous to believe them they will not excuse us because they are themselves sinfull and deserve damnation For they enter at an ill door and win upon us through a reigning lust or a damning sin and therefore they are so far from excusing those transgressions which flow from them that in themselves they are instances and effects of a deadly offence and if repentance intervene not will certainly prove desperate and damning S t Paul in breathing out threatnings against all believers and in persecuting of the Church acted only according to the best of his own Judgment and Opinion For he verily thought with himself that he not only might but ought to do several things contrary to the Name of Jesus of Nazareth Acts 26.9 But as this Opinion was his sin so would his transgressions upon it have proved his condemnation had not God shewn pity on him in calling him to repentance and conversion whereby alone it was that he obtained mercy and pardon I was sayes he a persecutor and injurious but I obtained mercy by that Grace of God conferr'd upon me at my conversion which was exceeding abundant with these two fundamental Graces which are a most prolifick spring of all the rest viz. Faith and Love which is in Jesus Christ 1 Tim. 1.13 14. The Jews who blasphemed and crucified our Saviour did nothing against their own conscience for their Opinion bore them out in all that practice in regard they judged it to be no sinfull murther but a most necessary act of Justice upon a great impostor and a most laudable and legal execution I wot Brethren sayes S t Peter that through ignorance ye did it as did not you only but also your rulers Acts 3.14 15 17. But forasmuch as this Ignorance was their own fault and their prejudices were owing to their own vices in regard that for this reason alone their minds would not receive a true belief of Christ and his Laws because they plainly contradicted their sinfull lusts and practices therefore should it by no means excuse them but if their repentance did not prevent it it would most certainly in the end prove deadly and damning For their crucifixion of him he tells them was by wicked hands Acts 2.23 and it was only upon their repentance and conversion that their sins of blasphemy and murder should be blotted out Acts 3.19 Again the transgressions of the Pharisees were justified by their own Opinions for they looked upon themselves notwithstanding them to be holy men and favourites of Heaven But proceeding as we have seen they did from unmortified lusts and a wicked life they rendred them obnoxious to damnation How can you escape the damnation of hell Mat. 23.33 The sins of the Gnosticks notwithstanding they were warranted by their disobedient Principles were of a damnable nature for their heresies and disobedient Principles themselves being the effects of disobedient and wicked hearts deserved damnation and are called by S t Peter in that Chapter where he recounts them and with great zeal inveighs against them damnable heresies 2 Pet. 2.1 They are works of the flesh or the products of unmortified lusts and carnal practices and must therefore share in the same judgment with other fleshâ—â— works amongst whom they are reckon'd The works of the flesh sayes S t Paul are manifest seditions heresies envyings murders drunkenness of the which I tell you that they which do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God Gal. 5.19 20 21. If we will transgress our Duty by disbelieving it first and giving credit to such Opinions as destroy the obligation of it our disbelief of our Duty will by no means excuse our sin or rescue us from condemnation For to disbelieve the Laws and threatnings of Christ is the very worst part of unbelief and the most hatefull and deadly instance of infidelity And as for unbelievers sayes S t John or those men who will not believe Religion or the best part of it Laws and Duties but seek to evade its force after that God has plainly told them of it they shall have their part in the Lake which burns with fire and brimstone Rev. 21.8 Men without understanding who will not see their Duty because they are blinded by such lusts as fight against it in the judgment of God are worthy of death Rom. 1.31 32. The reason why their consciences adhere to such Opinions as utterly destroy their Duty is only because their lusts and vices have made them hate and turn away from it And as for every such prejudice against a Duty as proceeds from our aversation to it it is of a great guilt and liable to a very severe punishment For in this S t Paul is peremptory All they shall be damned who believe a lye and believe not the truth through the pleasure which they take in unrighteousness They shall perish because they receive not the LOVE of the Truth that they may be saved by it 2 Thess. 2.10 11 12. When our disobedient prejudices therefore enter upon this score and are begot in us through a wicked heart and through some reigning lusts and vices which are served by them but not by any weakness of understanding or such fallibility of means as may betray even an honest heart into them they are subject to a sad doom and a severe censure they will by no means plead our excuse but are an Article of our condemnation And as for some marks whereby to judge whether our disobedient prejudices proceed from this deadly Principle our unmortified lusts and vices and thereupon are of this dangerous and damning nature or no we may observe these Characters and judge according to these measures First If that Lust or Sin whereto our prejudice is subservient be strong and powerfull if it reign in us and in the ordinary course and custome of our lives gives laws to us the corruption and disobedience of our heart is plainly the cause of
much of the sinfulness of that action which we commit as to scruple its lawfulness and to be enlightned so far as really to doubt of it then is the case quite alter'd and we cannot plead that we did it ignorantly because we knew so much by it at least as should have made us forbear it For if indeed we doubted of it we knew it was as likely to be a Sin as to be an innocent Action because that is properly Doubting when we suspend our Assent and cannot tell which way to determine when we judge one to be as likely as the other and do not positively and determinately believe the truth of either And when this is our case concerning any Action if we venture on it whilst the doubt remains we are guilty of sin and must expect to suffer punishment For by so doing we shew plainly that we will do more for sin than we will for God and that it has a greater interest with us than he because even whilst we apprehend it as likely to be our sin as our liberty yet for the sins sake we chuse to venture on it rather than for Gods sake to abstain from it This Contempt of God there is in it in the Nature of the very thing it self although God had no ways expressed himself concerning it But we must know further that whensoever we are in this estate of doubt and unresolvedness God has given us a peremptory Command that we should not act what we fear is sinful but omit it Abstain saith he from all appearance of evil 1 Thess. 5.22 So that if after all our Disputes and Demurs we venture at last to commit the Action which we doubted of we do not only slight God by running the hazard of Disobedience to one Law whereof we are uncertain but we wilfully disobey him in transgressing of this other Law whereof we all either are or may be certain if we will And if in this estate we presume thus to disobey we shall be sure to suffer for our Disobedience And in this case St. Paul is plain For if there be any thing whose lawfulness our Consciences are unresolved and unperswaded of whilst that unresolvedness remains he tells us plainly that our commission of it is utterly unlawful Whatsoever says he is not of Faith or proceeding from a belief and perswasion of its lawfulness is sin So that if it be about the eating of meats for Instance he that doubts is damn'd both of God and of himself if he eat because he eateth not of Faith Rom. 14.23 If our minds therefore are so far enlightned concerning any sinful Action as that we are come to doubt of it we are no longer innocently and excusably ignorant For we see enough by it to make us chuse to abstain from it and if for all this we presume still to venture on it sin lyes at the door and we must answer for it We are no longer within the excuse of Ignorance but we are guilty of a wilful sin and are got within the bounds of Death and Damnation But if in any Action we know nothing at all of the Law which forbids it or after we have known that if we are still ignorant of its being contain'd under it if we are not come to doubt but are either in Ignorance or Errour concerning it our Ignorance shall excuse our Fault and deliver us from Condemnation We do not chuse the sin which we do thus ignorantly commit and therefore we shall not suffer that Punishment which is threatned to it but our unknown offence is a pardonable slip such as according to the gracious Terms of Christs Gospel shall surely go uncondemned And this is true not only of simple Ignorance but likewise of the two particular Modes of Ignorance viz. First Forgetfulness Secondly Errour 1. Our sins of Ignorance will be born with if we venture upon the sinful Action through Ignorance of its sinfulness which we knew formerly but at the time of acting have forgotten For a slip of Forgetfulness is no more than befel an Apostle who was for all that a blessed Saint and an Heir of Life still St. Paul himself reviles the High-Priest forgetting both his Duty and that that man was he whom he spoke to I wist not Brethren says he that he was the High-Priest for had I bethought my self I should not have spoke so disrespectfully to him it being thus written Thou shalt not speak evil of the Ruler of thy People Act. 23.5 2. Our sins of Ignorance shall be dispensed with if we are led to commit them through a mistake of their innocence when indeed they are sinful which is an acting of them through errour For no less a man than Peter was drawn into a sinful dissimulation through an erroneous conceit that his giving no offence but keeping in with the Jews which was the thing that he aimed at by it would justifie and bear him out in it For which S t Paul tells us when he came to Antioch he withstood him to the face because he was to be blamed Gal. 2.11 12 13. But yet for all this S t Peter was at that time a true good Saint and if it had pleased God then to call for him he had been undoubtedly an Heir of salvation And to mention no more upon this Point as there were constant atonements for the errours of the people under the Law so is there provision made for them under the Gospel For Christ who is our High Priest as S t Paul assures us can have compassion on the ignorant and erroneous or them who are out of the way Heb. 5.2 So long therefore we see as our ignorance of any kind whether of the Law it self or of our present actions being comprehended by it is involuntary and innocent so long shall we be born with for all such slips as we incur under it For God will never be severe upon us for weakness of understanding or for want of parts whilst there is nothing in us of a wicked heart and therefore if our ignorance it self is innocent our offences under it shall go unpunished But here we must observe that all this allowance for our ignorance is so far only as it is involuntary and faultless but if we chuse to be ignorant our ignorance is in it self our sin and will make all our following offences damnable For we must answer for any thing of our own choice and therefore if we chuse the ignorance we shall be interpreted to chuse and so put to answer for all those ill effects which it produces Those sins which are voluntary in their cause are interpreted to us as we have seen and put upon our score so that if we chuse the ignorance which brings them we shall be adjudged to suffer for them Now as for the ignorance and errour of many men which is the cause of their sins and transgressions it is plainly of their own chusing They have a mind to
much less out-done by the best of men in pity and kindness Which is the argument from which our Saviour himself concludes that God will give the holy spirit at our prayers because that men themselves who are infinitely below him in goodness will give good gifts to them that ask them Luk. 11.13 Let us therefore take care in the first place to secure our selves of an obedient heart and to give such evidence of an honest industry as any kind hearted honest man would accept of and then we may have just reason to be confident that although our endeavour is weak and imperfect being much hindred and often interrupted yet shall it still be esteemed sufficient For Christ himself who is to judge of its sufficiency is no stranger to our weaknesses but having felt them in himself he is prone to pity and pardon them in us He experimented the backwardness of our flesh and the number of our distractions and the tiredness of our powers and the insinuations and strength of temptations So that having such an High Priest to intercede for us at present and to judge us at the last day who is touched with a feeling of our infirmities having been tempted himself in all points even as we are let us come boldly unto the throne of Grace as the Apostle exhorts us that we may obtain mercy for what we cannot master as well as find grace in a seasonable time of need to conquer what he expects we should overcome Hebr. 4.15 16. And this mercifull connivance at our imperfections and gracious acceptance of our weak endeavours we may with the greater reason and assurance hope for because Christ our Judge will be most candid and benign in putting the best sense and in interpreting most to our advantage all those our actions and endeavours which shall then be brought before him Whereof he has given us a clear instance in that most favourable construction which he made of that Charity that was shewn unto his Brethren by those on his right hand Mat. 25. For although it was not expressed to him but only to their fellow Christians for his sake yet because their kindness reached him in the intention of their minds and what they did to his servants for his sake they would have done to himself much rather could they have met with an opportunity he resented it as if it had been really shown to his own person For when they say unto him Lord when saw we thee an hungred and fed thee or naked and cloathed thee c. he answers inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these my brethren I take the affection for the performance and interpret it as if you had done it unto me vers 40. When therefore the sufficiency of our endeavours fater the knowledge of our Duty is come to be enquired into by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ we may be assured that it will have a favourable tryal It it to be censured by a candid equitable and benign judge who will interpret it to our advantage as much nay more than any good natured honest man would So that if our industry after the knowledge of Gods will be in such a measure as a candid and benign man would judge to be a sufficient effect of an obedient heart and of an honest purpose Christ will judge it to be so too And where our Ignorance of any of Christs Laws is joyned with an honest heart and remains after such an industry we may take comfort to our selves and be confident that it is involuntary and innocent If we are desirous to know Gods Laws and read good Books frequent Sermons hearken to any good instructions which we meet with and that according to our opportunities and in such measure as any good man would interpret to be an honest endeavour after the knowledge of our Duty if it were to himself if after all this I say in some points we are still Ignorant our Ignorance is involuntary and shall not harm us it is not chosen by us and therefore it never will condemn us And thus we have seen what ignorances excuse our slips and transgressions which are committed under them and when those Ignorances are themselves involuntary and innocent so as that we may comfortably expect to be excused upon the account of them And the summ of all that has been hitherto discoursed upon this subject is this That as for the Laws themselves all men must needs be ignorant of some of them for some time and some men for all their lives because they want either ability or opportunity to understand them And as for their present actions being comprehended under them that many men of all sorts and capacities after that they have known the General Laws will still be ignorant of it likewise For as for the wise and learned the small and meer gradual difference between good and evil in some instances the allowed exceptions from the generality of others the indirect force and obligation of a third sort and the frequent clashing and enterfering whether of Laws with Laws or of Laws with their repugnant prejudices and opinions will be sure to make them very often overlook it And as for the rude and ignorant that besides all these causes of such ignorance which are common to them with learned men the difficult and obscure nature of several Vices and Virtues themselves which are plainly and expresly forbidden or injoyn'd will be of force sufficient to make the generality of them in many instances not to understand it And as for the pardon and excuse of our ignorance and unknown transgressions from all or any of these causes that it is involuntary and innocent so long as it is joyned with an honest heart and remains after an honest industry and begins then only to be our wilful sin and an Article of our condemnation when our Lusts or Vices introduce it and we have a mind to it and take no pains against it or what is the consummation and height of all industriously labour and endeavour after it And this may suffice to have spoken of the first sort of want of Knowledge which as I said above produces an uncondemning involuntariness viz. Ignorance when we commit sin because we do not know the sinfulness of our present action or the Law which we sin against CHAP. VIII Of Sins consistent through the second Cause of an innocent Involuntariness viz. Inconsideration The CONTENTS Consideration is necessary to choice Some sins are inconsiderate Three innocent causes of inconsideration 1. Suddenness and surprize of opportunity An account of this The involuntariness of it Slips upon it are consistent 2. Weariness of our thinking powers or understandings An account of this and of its involuntariness The consistence of our Transgressions by reason of it 3. Discomposure or disturbance of them An account of this The causes of it are Drunkenness or a strong Passion Drunkenness is always our own fault Our
Passions grow strong in us sometimes by our own indulgence and then they are our damning sin and we must suffer for the evil that we commit under them sometimes through the suddenness and greatness of outward objects and then they are pardonable and our inconsiderate slips upon them are excusable The Passions which have Good for their object as Love Desire c. cannot by any force of outward objects be so suddenly forced upon us But the Passions which have Evil as Grief Anger and Fear especially often are The reason of this difference Inconsideration upon the latter excusable but not upon the former This difference made by our Saviour in a case where both were criminal Excusable slips upon discomposure of our thinking powers are such as proceed from an unwill'd sudden Grief or Anger but especially from a sudden Fear No fear is involuntary but what is sudden and sins upon deliberate fear are damning but upon unwill'd sudden Fear Grief or Anger consistent with Salvation Cautions about inconsiderate sins to prevent false confidence No sin is innocently inconsiderate 1. Where we have time and an undisturbed understanding 2. Where the sin is mischievous or greatly criminal 3. When we do not strive against it We must endeavour against all involuntary Failings though we cannot resolve against them 4. When we are not sorry after we have committed it nor beg pardon for it 5. When it is committed with observation A summary Repetition of this fourth Book HAving in the foregoing Chapters discoursed largely of the first cause of an innocent Involuntariness viz. Ignorance of our Duty or want of a general Knowledge I proceed now to the second viz. want of particular Animadvertence and Consideration of what we know which is Inconsiderateness And this is the second way of rendring our Transgressions pardonably involuntary which I proposed above namely when in any sinful action we do not bethink our selves and consider of its sinfulness It is not all knowledge of our Duty that renders every particular sin against it chosen and voluntary For a knowledge that is only general and at such time as the thing occurs to our thoughts and we are asked the Question will not do but as all our choice is of particular actions so must our knowledge be likewise Before we can be said to chuse a particular action we must see and know it particularly and if we act it without thinking we act it also without chusing seeing all choice is upon sight and knowledge of what is chosen But now this is the case in several of our Transgressions they slide from us without this actual application of our minds to them For we do not think and consider of the evil of them when we commit them and so their sinfulness being unseen it is withal unchosen They are of the number of our involuntary sins and such as implying nothing of our own will shall have nothing of Gods anger who will not punish but graciously bear with them And these slips stealing from us without our considering and thinking on them or adverting in the application of our minds to them are called by these several names which are all of the same signification viz. sins of inadvertency incogitancy and inconsideration Which because they are such as through the weakness of our Natures we are continually subject to and liable daily to incur are stiled in another word sins of daily incursion Now as for this second sort of sins our inconsiderate Transgressions they may steal from us involuntarily and innocently upon as many grounds as there may be innocent causes of inconsiderate actions And as for the unwill'd and therefore innocent causes of inconsideration they are reducible to these three 1. Suddenness and surprize of Opportunity 2. Weariness and 3. Discomposure and disturbance of our thinking powers wherewith we should consider 1. The first cause of inconsideration in our Actions whereupon we venture upon some sin without thinking or considering of it is the suddenness of the Opportunity and the surprize of Temptation It falls out unexpectedly and stays for us at such time as our minds are otherwise employ'd and so we act it without considering because it lyes ready and prepared for us just then when we have no leisure for thinking and consideration And the first beginnings of a sinful Passion whether of Anger of Envy c. and the unadvised slips of the Tongue in rash censuring in uncharitable speaking in indeliberate backbiting and the like generally enter this way For they come upon us in the throng of Conversation and opportunities are offered for them before we foresee them and so we spring out indeliberately to act and exert them And this inconsideration is such as we cannot avoid For we have no freedom of acting where we want a freedom of thinking seeing we cannot chuse without consideration But as for these inconsiderate slips they steal from us before we can bethink our selves and stay not for our consideration but run before it For our operative Powers when they are spurr'd on by any thing of an inward desire or of a remaining corrupt inclination and who as long as he lives here can be wholly free from it are ready of themselves to spring out into Action and Practice upon the first offer of Temptation and stand in need of reason and consideration not to raise and excite but to restrain and repress them So that upon the offer of a fit occasion we act many times amiss before we are aware and we cannot help it because we cannot deliberate and consider of it But as these slips of surprize are such as we cannot avoid so are they such withal wherefore God will not exact a severe account of us He will not punish but pity us for them and in great mercy dispense with them For they are necessarily incident to all men they have been incurr'd by his best servants but were never looked upon to be of that provoking nature as to put them out of his favour or to interrupt their state of salvation and acceptance Just Noah through his ignorance of the strength of Wine was surprized into one sin for he was drunken before he was aware or could discern what effects the fruits of his new Vineyard would have upon him Noah drank wine says Moses and was drunken Gen. 9.21 But this was perfectly a mixture of surprize and ignorance for his wits had left him before he was aware and before he ever knew that the Wine which he drunk would drive them from him For it was at his first planting of a Vineyard before he understood what measure of it would cause intoxication He began says the Text to be a Husbandman and he planted a Vineyard and he drank of the wine of his new Vineyard and was drunken v. 20 21. The great Apostle Paul himself was guilty of one sudden slip towards Ananias the High Priest who whilst his mind was intent upon his Speech which he was
For Christ need never have come into the World for that end since the Law had rendred us accursed and miserable enough already But he came on a quite contrary Errand to be the Minister of Life and Pardon and not to seal us up to eternal Death upon the first wilful transgression but to procure for us remission of all our deadly and damning sins and to restore us out of a state of Enmity and Death to a state of Mercy and Reconciliation He came to find out a remedy for all our evils and to prescribe us a way of recovering our selves when we had fallen by any sin so that although none of us all have lived free from it yet in the event sin shall not be our ruine And that remedy which God has provided us for this purpose is Repentance He doth not abandon us upon the commission of every sin but he is heartily desirous that we should repent of it and when we do so he has obliged himself by his Truth and Faithfulness to forgive it He is heartily desirous I say that whensoever we commit any sin we should repent of it If we dare take his own word he tells us as he lives that he doth not delight in the death of any sinner but that the wicked turn from his way and live turn you turn you as he goes on from your evil ways for why will you dye O house of Israel Ezek. 33.11 And this all the World experience by him in his long-suffering and forbearance with them For he doth not exact the punishment so soon as we have incurred it but expects long to see if we will return and repent that then he may with honour pardon and remit it this being as S t Paul assures us the end of his forbearance and long-suffering to lead us to repentance Rom. 2.4 And what S t Paul says that we all experience For during all that time wherein he bears with us how restless and unwearied earnest and affectionate are his endeavours for this purpose He admonishes us of our faults by his Word and by his Ministers he invites us to return by his Love and by his Promises he moves us to bethink our selves by his Spirit and by his Providences and if we are stubborn and not to be thus gently won by these methods of mildness he seeks to reclaim us by a blessed and a most affectionate force and violence For he corrects us with his Rod and visits us in chastisement and never ceases to try all means of reducing us to a sense of our sin and repentance till we are become plainly incorrigible and utterly rebellious and so fit for nothing but to be swallowed up of ruine And yet even then his desire of reclaiming us is so strong and his love so affectionate that he scarce knows how to give us over How shall I give thee up saith he O Ephraim how shall I deliver thee O Israel Hos. 11.8 And when we do repent I say he has obliged himself by his Truth and Faithfulness most graciously to forgive us This was the Doctrine of the Prophets Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord says Isaiah for he will have mercy upon him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon Isa. 55.7 If the wicked man says God by Ezekiel will turn from all his sins that he hath committed and keep all my statutes and do that which is lawful and right he shall surely live he shall not dye All his transgressions which he hath formerly committed shall not be mentioned unto him but in his righteousness that he hath done since he shall live For have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should dye saith the Lord God and not that he should turn from his ways and live Ezek. 18 21 22 23. This iâ— the great Doctrine of the Gospel which is a Covenant of remission of sins upon Repentance Repentance is its great Article and fundamental Truth and is therefore called by S t Paul the Foundation of Repentance Heb. 6.1 For that which was taught to all the World in all the degrees of Publication of the Gospel was that now God called all men to repent and that he would forgive them all their sins upon their true repentance S t John the Baptist who was Christs Herald and Fore-runner at his entrance upon that work begins with it John says S t Luke in all the Country about Jordan came preaching the Baptism of repentance for the remission of sins Luk. 3.3 Our Lord and Saviour Christ himself when he comes after to proclaim his own Gospel goes on with it Jesus began to preach says S t Matthew and to say Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand Mat. 4.17 And when he left the World the Commission which he gives to his Apostles is to proceed on still in the Promulgation of it to all the World as he had done to the people of the Jews For at the last time of his being with them just before his Ascension into Heaven when as S t Matthew tells us he commissioned them to preach to all mankind those instructions which he gave to them S t Luke informs us were that repentance and remission of sins should be preached to all Nations in his Name beginning at Jerusalem Luk. 24.47 This was the chief thing which they had in Commission and the summ and substance of their Embassy For that Ministry which was committed to them was a Ministry of reconciling God and men by this means as St. Paul says or a Ministry of Reconciliation so that they were Ambassadours for Christ as though God did beseech men by them and they as Christs Deputies who is the prime Mediator did pray them in his stead to be reconciled to God 2 Cor. 5.19.20 And when the Apostles came to execute their Orders the publishing of this was all their care and practice For they all of them went about preaching in all places and to all persons repentance for the remission of sins St. Peter in his first Sermon thus exhorts the people Repent and be baptized every one of you for the remission of sins Act. 2.38 and so again Act. 3. Repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out v. 19. And the same he proclaims more generally in his second Epistle assuring all Christians that the Lord is not willing that any man should perish but that all should come to repentance which is sure to prevent it 2 Pet. 3.9 St. Paul preaches to the Athenians that now God had commanded all men every where to repent Act. 17.30 And St. John assures us that by virtue of that Gospel-Covenant which was confirmed with us in Christs Blood if with repenting hearts we confess our sins he is faithful to his word and just to his promise to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from the guilt and stain of all unrighteousness of
here specified which is nothing less than a renouncing of the Baptismal Covenant of the preaching of the Word of the administration of the Sacraments of all the Gospel-promises nay of all those miraculous gifts and powers of the Holy Ghost whereof in the first times they were ordinarily made partakers and what can any man take this to be but an utter renouncing of the whole Gospel and Religion of Christ And that it is so is still further manifest from those things which are said to be implied in their falling For hereby they are said to condemn Christ as an Impostor to justifie his murderers to say he was crucified justly and that were he now alive they should be ready to crucifie him over again which is a publishing again to all the world his reproach and a putting him anew to an open shame By this falling away saith the Apostle they crucifie to themselves the Son of God afresh and put him to an open shame v. 6. But now thus to renounce our Baptism and all our Christian Priviledges to condemn Christ as a cheat and Impostor to justifie his Murderers and to defame his Religion what is it less than a renouncing of his Gospel and a falling off to persecute the Christian Faith and Profession And as for this indeed the Apostle says expresly that it is desperate and that it is impossible for him by any endeavours or arguings which he can use to renew-again those who are guilty of it to that Gospel-Covenant which they thus abjure and which is the only gracious means of repentance and reconciliation And since it is to no purpose says he I will not attempt it but go on in speaking to those who still retain the Faith without concerning my self to prove again the foundation to those who have apostatized from it v. 1 3. These wilful Apostates therefore are in a most deplorable case for they have sinned themselves out of all capacity of mercy and transgressed beyond all recovery For there is no pardon to any wilful sinner whatsoever without he repent but as for Apostates it is impossible for any man to renew them again unto repentance Their renewal I say is impossible For as for all humane means which any men even the Apostles of our Lord themselves could use for their recovery they have defeated them already They know all the evidence of Miracles and the demonstrations of the Spirit nay they have not only seen them but they themselves have been partakers of them and impower'd to work them but yet after all they have renounced that belief which all these perswade to they are Armour of proof against all these demonstrations of the Holy Ghost and Infidels to Christ notwithstanding them So that let an Apostle himself urge any thing to them in behalf of Christs Religion his Argument has been overcome before he offers it He tells them nothing new nor shews them any thing but what they have seen nay what they themselves were formerly impower'd to shew to others but all that was not strong enough to keep them in the Faith for when they saw it all they turned Infidels and Apostates still As for any humane means then they are of no force with them they cannot reclaim them or bring them anew to the acknowledgment of the Gospel which is the only gracious Ministry of Repentance and Reconciliation So that if ever they be restored again it must be by a Divine Power for nothing now can possibly prevail with them but a special Providence and a special Grace But now here is the desperateness of their state these will never be afforded them For when men have wilfully sinned up to this height and fallen off against so great means and so clear conviction God in the ordinary methods of his Grace is resolved to concern himself no further with them nor to trouble himself any more for their recovery They have had all the care and cultivation of his Grace which they are like to have and now like barren ground which after all that has been laid out upon it brings forth nothing but thorns and bryers that are not only useless but prickling and offensive they are nigh unto cursing And this is the very instance which the Apostle himself uses and the reason which he gives of that impossibility which he had affirmed to be in that undertaking It is impossible says he for any man to renew them because God will no longer help on his endeavours with his Grace nor look any further after them For with those men who are Infidels after all his care he will deal just as he doth with ground whose fruit is evil and offensive after all his labour and as for his dealing with that 't is plainly this That earth indeed which drinketh up the rain that cometh oft upon it and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it was dressed receiveth more blessing still from God But that which after it has been thus water'd bears thorns and bryars is rejected and nigh unto cursing whose end is not to be water'd any more but burnt up v. 7 8. As for these two places of the Apostle therefore in his Epistle to the Hebrews we see indeed that they speak of wilful sins beyond pardon and of transgressions which are irremissible but these sins are not the wilful transgressions of any Christian man but a wilful Apostasie from Christianity it self So that after all it is true still that every man who owns the Religion and professes the Faith of Christ is provided of a remedy for all his wilful sins whensoever they are committed for let him but particularly repent of them and amend them and he never shall be condemned for them Nay so fast is the tye and so inseparable is the connexion under the Gospel of Christ betwixt Repentance and Remission that as I observed this irremissible sin of wilful Apostasie it self is therefore alone declared impossible to be forgiven because it is impossible to bring men to repent of it Heb. 6.6 If a man doth but repent then let his sin be wilfully committed whether before or after Baptism it matters not for his repentance shall set him straight in both and his offence shall be quite forgotten as if it had never been Indeed if a man goes on in a constant trade of sin silencing continually his own conscience and grieving Gods holy Spirit and despising all the means and offers of his Grace he may sin himself beyond his time of mercy and so his sins will prove irremissible because he is gone too far ever to repent of them which is their only remedy and means of pardon For there is a set period of Grace and a certain season and space of time wherein God will still make the offers of his help and of the guidance of his Spirit to reclaim and reform men But if after all they slight all his offers and reject his aid and prove utterly incorrigible he grows weary at
accepted for his pardon Whatsoever therefore his sins be if he please to make use of it he is provided of his remedy Repentance shall surely save his Soul and make atonement for all his offences So that of whatsoever nature number or degree his faults have been after once he has thus repented of them they shall never be imputed to him but through the Merits of Christs Death and the Grace of his Gospel they shall be looked upon as if they had never been And thus at last we have seen what that condition is which the Gospel indispensably exacts of us towards our acceptance in the last Judgment what those defects are whereof it allows and what those Salvo's for all sorts of disobedience which it offers For it requires an entire obedience of all our voluntary actions it bears with all our innocently involuntary failings and it admits us to recover our former state when once we have lost it or to persevere in it when we enjoy it by a particular repentance and amendment of all our wilful sins and by our prayers and charity for our involuntary ones This then is the true Test whereby at the last Day we must all be tryed If we have obeyed entirely and have been guilty of no wilful sin or if when we have we did not rest in it but repented and amended it and where there was any repaired the wrong and sought to be reconciled and if we have beg'd pardon for all our involuntary slips and have been diligent in shewing charity and mercy and forgiveness to atone for them then are we innocent in the accounts of the Gospel and when Christ comes to judge us we shall hear the joyful Sentence of Come ye blessed of my Father inherit the kingdom prepared for you Mat. 25.34 This repentance and obedience will bear us out and secure our happiness but less than it nothing in the world will For God will take vengeance saith S t Paul on all that obey not the Gospel of Christ 2 Thess. 1.8 and Except you repent says our Saviour you shall all perish Luk. 13.5 And thus having shewn what condition that is which the Gospel indispensably exacts to our acceptance in the last Judgment what defects are consistent with it and what remedies when once 't is lost shall again restore to it I shall now proceed to that which I proposed in the fourth and last place namely to remove those groundless scruples which perplex the minds of good and safe but yet erring and misguided people concerning it whereof I shall discourse in the remaining Chapters CHAP. IV. Of such groundless Scruples as make safe but weak Minds doubt of their Title to Salvation The CONTENTS Pious minds scrupulous Their condition is safe even then but uncomfortable Several needless grounds of their fears 1. Ineffective desires of evil This represented No man otherwise good shall be condemned for ineffective lusts and thoughts of evil These are considerable either as to their first birth or indulged continuance The first stirrings of lusts after evil things are unavoidable The after-entertainment is by our own indulgence Even these are uncondemning so long as they neither are consented to nor fulfilled being in themselves not deadly under the Gospel but a temptation to deadly and damning sins The way whereby sin wins upon men and the nature and force of temptation To be tempted is no sin which is proved from the nature of temptation from Adams being tempted before he sinned and from Christs being tempted who knew no sin Degrees in temptation or in lusts of evil Some are checked quickly and are not permitted long to parly This happens only in grown men and perfect Christians and that too not in all instances These certainly are not damning Others stay longer and strive and contend with our mind or conscience although at last they are vanquished by it This happens ordinarily to younger Converts and in extraordinary temptations to grown Christians These still are uncondemning which is shewn from Gal. 5.16 17 and from the instance of our Saviour Christ. What lusts and desires of evil are damning They are condemning when they make us consent to a damning sin A distinct account of the several steps to a sinful action A proof of this that from their gaining of our consent in all the after-steps they are mortal Our lusts must be mortified to that degree as to be disabled from carrying us on thus far This is done when men become true Christians The better men are the less difficulty and self-denial do they find in mortification Watchfulness and strife still necessary The danger of indulging to temptations or to lusts and desires of evil This point summed up IN matters of Religion and another World nothing is more ordinarily observable than that those people are wont to have the greatest fears who have the least reason for them For good Christians although they think the best of others are generally very suspicious of themselves They have a deep sense of the danger of sin and a full conviction of the fatal end of disobedience and that makes them think that in a matter wherein it so highly concerns them not to be mistaken they can never be over-jealous of their own hearts or too cautious lest after all those insupportable punishments of sin should fall to be their own portion And this they do especially if in any material point whereupon as to the Sentence of Life or Death the Gospel lays a great stress they are ignorant and erroneous For there are no terrors in the world that are comparable to those of Religion nor have any men upon earth so much reason to be afraid as they who are in danger to fall under them And therefore if there is any thing which will be of great account in the last Judgment or what is all one which they think will be severely accounted for and they either find themselves to be guilty of it or which comes to the same thing fansie that they are they must needs be fearfully perplexed and deprived of all peace and comfort though really they are in the greatest safety 'T is true indeed that in the end they shall be no losers nor shall their mistaken fears ever be fulfilled upon them because at the last Day God will judge them according to his own Rule and not according to their errours and misapprehensions of it so that if they have really done all that which he requires to Heaven and Happiness he will think well of them notwithstanding they think never so hardly of themselves Their errors shall in no wise pervert his Truth for he sees what they are howsoever they may mistake it and if he sees them to be righteous his sentence will follow his own knowledge and he will declare to all the world that they are so This is the security of all good men as it is the eternal terror and astonishment of all hypocrites and sinners that they shall be brought
before an unerring and uncorrupt Judge who can neither be bribed nor deceived and who cannot mistake them or wrongfully condemn them howsoever they may mistake or wrongfully condemn themselves And since it is so they are really safe in their own goodness when they most of all suspect their own danger and secure from evil even whilst they are afraid of falling under it But although every good man is in this safety let his understanding of himself be what it will yet if in any of those things which he takes to be a matter of life or death he judges wrong of himself and thinks erroneously he can enjoy no peace and comfort He will go to Heaven full of fears and forbodeing thoughts and never think himself in the way to Bliss till he is actually inthroned in it and possessed of it He will meet indeed with happiness in the end but he will have no sight or expectation of it in the way for all his life long he will be tormented with doubts and suspicions fears and jealousies and be still by turns concluding himself lost as to the next World though he be lost no where but in his own fancy And this imagined future misery will bring him under a real one for the present it will make him have sad thoughts and a sorrowful heart it will bereave him of all joy and peace and almost overwhelm him in groundless perplexity and vexation But that pious Souls may not fear where no fear is nor torment themselves with unreasonable expectations having before shewn what that condition really is which renders any mans a safe condition I will go on now to remove their groundless scruples and mistakes concerning it by shewing what and of what force those things are which are wont without any sufficient reason to disquiet the minds and to disturb the peace of good and safe but mistaken Christians about it And as for the causes of good mens fears so far as I have been able to learn them they are chiefly these that follow 1. Good men are wont to call in question the saveableness of their present and the happiness of their future state because after all their care against them they find that some motions of the flesh some stirrings of their lusts some thoughts of evil do still arise up in them They feel themselves subject to delightsom fancies and desires of forbidden things They are liable to a lustful thought a covetous wish an insurrection of anger of envy and of several other damning sins 'T is true indeed that these lusts do not reign in them because they do not consent to their instigations nor do what they would have them They can only inhabit and stir in them but have not strength enough to give Laws to them for they repress them before they get so far and prevail over them before they go on to fulfil what they inclined to Not any of these sinful lusts whereof they are afraid has got so much power over them as to carry them on either to consent to them or to fulfil them for though they may think on some forbidden things in their minds or desire them in their hearts yet do they not will and chuse any of them and least of all do they work and practise them They may perhaps have a thought and fancy a wish and inclination after unchast pleasures but they correct themselves there and go no further for they never in their hearts consent to an unlawful embrace nor ever proceed to an unclean action In a sudden motion of anger it may be they may have several expressions of wrath and instances of revenge occur to their thoughts and obtruding themselves upon their fancy but they stop there and go no higher for they do not consent to utter an injurious word or to commit a spiteful action and the same they experience by themselves in other instances In all which several forbidden things will get into their thoughts and desires and steal from them a wish or inclination but when once they have done that they can do no more being unable either to gain their consent or to command their practice so as that they should not only desire but also chuse and fulfil them But although they do not suffer sin to reign in them so as to consent to it or to fulfil it in the lusts thereof yet they fear lest their very thoughts and inclinations after it should prove damnable For God requires the obedience of our whole man of the mind and affections as well as of our wills and actions and he is disobeyed by any as well as by all our faculties And seeing every sin is forbidden under pain of death who knows but that this admission of sin into our thoughts and desires is a deadly transgression This is one great cause of fear and a rock of offence to truly honest and good men But to take off all doubt and scruple upon this account we must know that our impotent lusts and ineffective desires of evil things if they are able to get no further than a thought or a wish though at present they are a matter of our exercise and humiliation yet at the Day of Judgment they shall be no Article of death or condemnation For Christs Gospel doth not sentence us severely upon these first motions of a lust or beginnings of a sin no if they arrive no higher than fancy and inclination through the merits of Christs Sacrifice there is Grace enough in store for them and in the Gospel account they are not grown up to be a matter of Death nor come within the Confines of destruction That I may speak with the more distinctness to this Point I will here shew these two things 1. That for our feeble lusts and desires after evil which are unconsented to and unfulfilled we shall not at the last day be condemned 2. For what lusts and desires of them we shall 1. I say For our feeble lusts and desires of evil which are unconsented to and unfulfilled at the day of Judgment no man otherwise good shall ever be condemned God will never sentence us to Hell for every sudden desire an inclination after sinful things but if it rests there and goes no further than bare desire he will pardon and pass it by but not eternally avenge it To speak distinctly to this Point these lustings and desires are considerable either as to their first birth or as to their indulged and allowed continuance the first are never damning and the latter many times are no Article of condemnation As for our bodily lusts and desires of evil in their first birth I say they are never damning nor shall any man who is otherwise vertuous and obedient be ever judged to dye for them And if it were otherwise who could possibly be saved For as long as we live in this World we have all of us these first motions of appetites after evil things more or less and there
or other sins whether against Justice or Charity As on the other side our fears and aversations from want or pain or other bodily evils must not induce us to neglect a Commandment that we may please our Flesh or to deny our Religion for the securing of a bodily enjoyment These restraints God has laid upon our bodily appetites having given us these Commands with several others mentioned above which we are oft-times tempted to transgress in order to the fulfilling of them For our bodily appetites themselves do not distinguish either of objects or of degrees A mans palate or his stomach in any delicious meat or drink which yields a pleasure to it doth not tell him when they have enough or cease desiring before they are gone on to be intemperate Our eyes lust after money but they consider not whose it is but so they may have it they matter not to whom it belongs or how they come by it and so it is in our fleshly appetites of other things For it is the natural pleasure of those things which we lust after that moves our bodies and therefore they lust after them so long as they are pleased with them They never stop at a fixt measure or turn away from a forbidden object so that if we will be ruled by them they will carry us on to any thing that agrees with them whether it be lawful or unlawful and so are sure to insnare us into sin And here indeed God has set a strict restraint upon them and will punish them severely if they go beyond it For Then as I said our lusts are deadly to us and articles of our condemnation when they have damning effects and ensnare us into deadly and damning sins To any good man the bare lusts and desires of evil are not so truly a damning sin as a dangerous temptation they are not in themselves an Article of Death to him but they are apt to carry him on to that which is For that which puts any sin into a capacity to tempt us is our lust or desire of something which is annexed to it and which we hope to obtain by it There is always something that goes along with it which is naturally fitted to please our flesh and to excite a carnal appetite and by this we are tempted and allured into the practice and commission of it For bare sin could never tempt any man nor could any one in his wits ever chuse to disobey for disobedience sake without any thing further because there is no good in transgression nakedly considered which should move any mans will to chuse and embrace it but on the contrary much evil that will disswade and affright him from it For it deprives us of Gods favour and subjects us to his vengeance and fills us with sad hearts and anxious thoughts and terrible expectations But that which wins us over to a liking and approbation of it is the appearance of some pleasure profit honour or other annexed allurement which we expect to reap by it It is one or other of these that overcomes all our fears and inveagles us into the commission of it for they strike in with our natural appetites and raise in us desires after it and those prove the bait which draws us in and the insnaring temptation For herein lies all the force of any temptation The satisfaction of a lust is joyned with the acting of a sin which is an invitation to us for the sake of the one to commit the other also The transgression has something annexed which is agreeable to our fleshly Natures and raises in us desires of it and cravings after it and when it has got this hold of us it draws us as much as we can be drawn by our love of our own lusts and the gratification of our bodily appetites which is indeed a great step to our choice and commission of it and a strong temptation For this is the natural order of our actions either our Consciences or our Passions move and excite us to them and then our Wills chuse and intend them and upon that choice and intention our Vnderstandings contrive and direct and last of all our bodily and executive Powers fulfil and perform them All our bodily actions are at the choice and under the command of our wills and all our choice is upon the appearance of some good or other which either our consciences or our fleshly lusts and appetites propose to us For our wills we must remember are placed in a middle state and are canvased and beset on both sides our lusts being urgent with us to consent to one thing and our consciences to another And this is that strife betwixt the flesh and spirit which is mentioned in the Scriptures and that contention which S t Paul describes in the 7 th Chapter to the Romans between the Law of lust in the members and the Law of God in the mind These two Principles our Body and Spirit or our Lusts and our Consciences are those great Interests that vie and struggle in us and emulously contend which shall obtain the consent and choice of the will of man And whensoever either of them has got that our actions follow in course For our bodily members move at our own choice and therefore if our lusts after the pleasures of sin have once prevailed upon our wills to consent to it they have gained their point and their work is done and we shall go on without more ado to act and commit it In this then lies all the force of a temptation that the sin which we are tempted to has something annexed to it wherein our flesh is delighted and which it lusts after and desires for the sake of that pleasure which it finds in it And when by this means any sin has got our fleshly love and desire it has got a powerful friend in our own bosoms For our lusts are strong and violent and where they set upon a thing they will not easily be denied but are urgent and importunate with our wills to consent to their gratification and yield to the fulfilling of them So that if once any sin has struck in with them it is able to try its strength and contend with the Law of God in the mind being furnished now with a powerful bait and a strong temptation Thus are our lusts and desires of forbidden things not the forbidden sin it self but the temptation to it so that in bare lusting or desiring of them we do not commit the damning sins themselves but are tempted only to their commission And in this S t James is most express for then says he every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lusts and enticed to evil by them Jam. 1.14 And as for meer temptation to a damning sin it is not deadly and damning For our being tempted to sin is not a renouncing of our Lord but an exercise of our service and obedience to him and a