drift of the Parable is made plain and perspicuous to an ordinary capacity Wherefore now I proceed to handle the particular branches of it of which there are these three most remarkable in the Parable and which as I have already intimated are the designed subject of the subsequent discourse First we have here a graphical description of the state and condition of an habitual sinner before repentance from vers 11. to vers 17. Secondly a type or portraicture of true repentance and turning to God from vers 17. to vers 20. Thirdly an Emblematical representation of God's unspeakable mercy in the gracious reception of such penitents from vers 20. to the end of the Chapter but especially to vers 24. Of these three points I will treat in order according as the series of the Parable leads me But yet because I apprehend it will be not onely profitable in it self but also peculiarly subservient to the present design that before I apply my self to a direct prosecution of the traces of the Parable I give a strict and Philosophical account of the Nature of Sin and the several Stations of Sinners as which will give both light and weight especially to the first of the mentioned particulars and in good measure to all the rest This therefore I will endeavour in the next immediate Chapter CHAP. III. Of the Nature of Sin and of the divers States of Sinners THE CONTENTS § I. A definition of sin the three sorts of Laws mankind is under viz. Natural Divine and Humane All sin is a violation of some or other of them The mischief of mistake herein § II. A law that obliges must be known or knowable Several ways of promulging the Divine Laws The guilt of sin rises in proportion to the clearnesse of the promulgation of that law whereof it is a violation The mischiefs of mistake herein and the remedy § III. All sin is voluntary Cautions for the right understanding of that assertion the proofs of the truth of it and absurd consequences of the contrary § IV. A passage of S. James Chap. I. vers 13. c. explained and the nativity of sin thereby discovered § V. The usefulnesse of the foregoing definition and explication The distinction between presumptuous sins and sins of infirmity and their different effects § VI. Of reluctancy of Conscience and whether that extenuates or increases the guilt of sin § VII Of the several states and mansions of sinners upon the consideration of which return is made to the Parable § I. IF we take just measures of the nature of sin at least so far as it falls under our present consideration for it is not within the compass of my subject to treat of Original sin it is thus to be Defined namely Sin is a voluntary breach of a known Law Or to speak more fully and distinctly there are these three things concurrent to make man guilty or to denominate any action of his sinfull 1. That by some act or omission of his there be a going contrary to and violation of some Law in being 2. That the Law so violated be such as is or might have been known to the Offender 3. That the Action or Omission by which such Law is violated be consented to and the breach voluntary All these three things together in conjunction are the ingredients which make up the deadly poyson of sin And for defect of due consideration of the necessary concurrence of all of them to that unhappy production It is hard to say whether greater Errours have ensued in Doctrine or more Vices in practice whether more perplexities have infested mens Consciences or more uncharitableness hath imbittered their Spirits For if the first ingredient be left out Sin is thereby rendred either nothing at all or of so indefinite and uncertain a nature as that loose and profane men will laugh at it and on the contrary good and devout persons will never be free from suspicions of it If the second be omitted the consequence will be that severe and sad judgments will be passed upon the finall estate of the greatest part of mankind and therewith very unworthy reflections be made upon the Divine Majesty And if the third branch be omitted the number of sins will be vastly multiplied but the nature and guilt thereof so extenuated as that men will be tempted to be more afraid of God then of sinning against him But all this and a great deale more will better appear upon a breif explication of the particulars First then wherever there is sin there is a breach of some Law in being this though it be not the full and adequate notion yet is the first reason of sin And accordingly we may easily observe that in most if not in all Languages the very words that are made use of to express moral evil or sin do all import the breach of some Law or rule of action Especially the Hebrew Tongue which is most significant in this kind hath three words most usuall in the case which we find all together Psal 32. v. 1 2. and all leading us directly to this notion of sin Blessed is be whose Transgression is forgiven whose sin is covered blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not Iniquity The first word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we render transgression properly signifying to pass set Bounds or transgress prefixed Limits The second 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we translate sin denoteth a missing of the aim or mark we were to have directed our selves towards And the last of the three 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 iniquity implies the making of a crooked and wandring path So that we see whatever kind condition or degree of sin it be that is spoken of it is still expressed by respect to some Law or Rule in deviation from which it consists The like may be observed in the Greek Tongue in the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. and generally in other Languages But we need not insist upon niceties when that which we are saying is the express assertion of two Apostles St. Paul and St. John the former telling us Rom. 4. 15. Where there is no Law there is no Transgression The other Ep. 1. chap. 3. vers 4. He that sinneth transgresseth also the Law for sin is a transgression of the Law Now for that Law which sin is a violation of it is threefold viz. Either first the Law of nature and reason that is those differences of good and evill which the mind of man is of it self able to collect by attentive consideration of the nature of God and our relation to him the state of the whole Creation and the mutuall aspects of the severall parts thereof upon each other and upon our selves of which we shall have occasion to speak more hereafter Or secondly the express and positive declarations of the Divine will concerning things to be done or avoided by us which is commonly called Revelation or Divine Law Or thirdly the
institutions commands and prohibitions of such men as it hath pleased God to invest with Authority under himself of obliging others which we call Humane Law To these some would adde Custome as a fourth rule of action because they observe there are many cases wherein all the former ceasing wise and good men are wont to govern themselves by laudable and prevailing customs but this so far as it is obliging may be reduced to Humane Law Others also would adde the Law of Charity or of avoiding scandall as a fifth but this is both provided for by the positive Law of God and also deducible from naturall principles Therefore the three aforesaid measures comprize all that which can fall under the notion of Law and consequently every such thing as is to be esteemed a sin must consist in a deviation from or going cross to either all or some one or other of them For it is evident of it self that every thing is free till something restrain and circumscribe it and it cannot be evill but good to make use of that liberty which derogates from no other which infringes no Authority being retrenched by none And it is as evident that we owe account of our selves and carriage only to God ultimately forasmuch as we derive our being and we have and are from him and him only he therefore who gave us our being and all our powers and faculties and their respective accommodations and who continually supports us in the exercise of them may justly prescribe to us and set us what boundaries shall seem fit to his infinite Wisedome Now there are but three ways wherein he hath imposed any obligation or restraint upon us viz. Either by such footsteps of his Will as the mind of man may trace in the order of the Creation those intimations of good and evill which are interwoven in the very nature and order of things and to be observed by naturall reason Or secondly by extraordinary interposition expresly dictating his mind and will to the sons of men Or lastly delegating Authority to those whom his Providence hath constituted in Superiority to prescribe to us in all such things as were not foreprized by the two former i. e. that in all cases where neither the Laws of nature nor the Divine Law were infringed there it was his will we should govern our selves by the Laws of men These I say are all the ways God hath thought fit and all that are imaginable of laying any obligation upon us Therefore wherever there is sin either some plain dictate of Reason is contradicted or some positive Law of God violated or the Sanction of human authority opposed and where neither of these is done there can be no sin upon the forecited reason of the Apostle where there is no law there is no transgression WHICH plain truth we have thus carefully deduced principally for the prevention or remedy of two mistakes very rife in this matter The former is of certain honest and well-meaning but timorous and superstitious persons who not content to approve themselves to the aforesaid measures nor thinking it sufficient for their security that neither the Law of Nature nor any expresse either divine or humane Law disallow their actions are afraid of their own shadows and suspect sin and danger they know not why nor whence their heart misgives them when there is nothing in the case but either that the thing they are about is contrary to the course of their education or forbidden by the imperious dictate of some person to whose usurped authority they have prostituted their judgments Now would such persons be induced to consider that lawfull and unlawfull are relative terms and respect some definite rule or other which must determine any action to be this or that that God is well pleased that his laws be observed and is not so severe and rigid as to oblige us negatively that is that we shall doe nothing but what he commands that there is a great field of liberty interjacent between expresse sin and expresse duty and in that we may expatiate without offence that all actions are good within that scope and though they admit of such different degrees as that some may be much better then others yet none are evil that touch not upon the bounds and limits of Law If I say these things were considered which are no more then the effect of what I said before then would those honest minds be undeceived and enfranchised who for want of such consideration are put to the unhappy choice either to be dispoiled of all liberty or deprived of all peace besides that by such jealousies they tempt both themselves and others to think hardly of God and consequently of that provoke all such men as are strangers to Religion to nauseate and abhorr it THE other mistake which we here seek to prevent is of those that quite contrary to the former are so far from thinking the three Rules of Action we laid down to be insufficient that they persuade themselves it is no great matter for Law or Rule The persuasion of a man 's own conscience an honest intention and a zeal of God are able to bear out and justifie an undertaking though against the expresse and literal direction of some Law in being This conceit strange as it is hath neverthelesse had its Patrons and Proselytes both amongst Jews and Christians and been the cause of mischief enough to both Now it is true that it is within the power of Conscience to make that which was before indifferent in the general to become good and laudable in particular or contrariwise by its dissent to render it evil and vicious because God having given it a judicature its consent is to be had in what we doe in which sense I take it that of the Apostle is to be understood Whatsoever is not of faith is sin and for that reason an erring conscience as I shall shew by and by is also some mitigation of a miscarriage in practice But it is far from that prerogative of being able to legitimate any action prohibited by any of the aforesaid rules for it is but a Judge not a Law and must be governed by the measures forelaid Or if we allow too that the light of conscience is one of those measures as we doe yet must it not bear down both the other that is it is onely a Law and justifies an action when neither divine nor humane Laws have restrained it and not else Wherefore upon the whole matter it is apparent that the three Rules aforesaid in conjunction make up the standard of good and evil every thing is a sin that goes contrary to any of them and nothing is so that doth not § II. 2. BUT Secondly to render any action of ours culpable it is not sufficient that some Law in being be broken unlesse that Law be also promulged i. e. such as is or may be known for otherwise in effect it is no Law
for deliberation there could be no perfect judgment and consequently but an imperfect consent AGAIN whilest a man is bending himself with all his might against some one extreme which he knows to be evil and therefore carefully declines he may perhaps in detestation of that incline too much to the other or whilest a man endeavours diligently to carry on both the affairs of this life and the concerns of Religion too it may happen that the solicitude and cares of the former may sometimes unseasonably crowd in and disturb him in the latter Nay once more through the infirmity of memory compared with the multiplicity of affairs which a wise and good man's care extends to it may not infrequently fall out that such a person for the present forgets or omits some duty of Religion Now it cannot be said that any of these cases are perfectly involuntary because it was not impossible but that extraordinary diligence and watchfullness might have provided against them nevertheless they are not deliberate sins nor was there any full consent of the will to them as is evident both by what we have said already and also by this that such persons we speak of very quickly feel remorse for them their hearts smite them upon the first reflexion upon what hath past and they presently recover themselves and double their watch and guard where they have thus found themselves overtaken These therefore and all other of the nature of these are properly called sins of infirmity BUT now on the other side when the matter of fact is notorious and palpable that it can admit of no dispute whether it be evil or no when a man is not surprized but makes his election doth not insensibly slip awry whilest he was in his right way but takes a wrong course is not overborn by an huge fear but is allured by the pleasures of sense when he hath time to consider and yet resolves upon that which is forbidden him here is little or nothing to extenuate the fact or mitigate his guilt it is a voluntary and therefore a presumptuous sin Such a distinction as this David seems to make Psal 19. 12 13. when he prays that he may understand his errours to the intent that with holy Joh where he had done iniquity he might doe so no more but earnestly begs that he may be kept from presumptuous sins i. e. from such voluntary and wilfull miscarriages as we have but now spoken of so saith he shall I be innocent and free from the great transgression For though sins of infirmity in the most proper sense are not without guilt at least if God should proceed in rigour with men yet in consideration of the goodness of God together with the evident pitiableness of their own circumstances they leave no horrour upon the mind no stain or ill mark upon the person much less a scar or a maim but the other besides their great guilt either terribly afflict or lay waste and stupify the Conscience they harden the heart break the powers of the soul and quench the Spirit of God as we shall have occasion to speak more at large hereafter AT present I think it may be very pertinent to observe that whereas S. John Ep. 1. Chap. 3. vers 4. seems to give a brief and compendious description of sin in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we render Sin is a transgression of the Law it is not altogether improbable but that the Apostle intended to express something more then is commonly understood by those words in English for besides that it seems a flat saying he that sinneth transgresseth the Law for sin is a transgression of the Law it is noted moreover by Learned men that the Apostle calls not sin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which had been the most proper word to denote a meer breach or transgression of the Law but uses the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies a great deal more namely lawlesness and dissoluteness the living without or casting off the yoke of the Law for so we find it elsewhere used in Scripture particularly 1 Tim. 1. 9. where we have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lawless and disobedient or ungovernable joyned together And thus the phrase of the Apostle before us will import not so much the meer matter of sin viz. the violation of a Law but the aggravation of it as a presumptuous sin namely the wilfullness and stubbornness of the sinner And if this gloss may be allowed we shall with much ease be able to understand a following passage in this Apostle which hath not a little exercised the heads of Divines nor less perplexed the Consciences of many serious persons Viz. vers 9. of this Chapter he writes thus he that is born of God doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God Now if we take sin strictly and rigorously here for every thing that is contrary to the perfection of the Divine Law then it will be absolutely necessary that by the phrase he that is born of God we can understand none but our Saviour himself which is altogether besides the business forasmuch as he only was without sin in that sense but if we take the phrase in the latitude before intimated that is for voluntary wilfull and deliberate sins then the sense is both easie and comfortable namely that the man who is truely a Christian having not only the profession but the new nature temper and spirit of the Gospel though being a man and so incompassed with temptations and difficulties as every one is in this world he cannot avoid all surreptions yet the powerfull principles of Christianity setled in his heart will not fail to preserve him at least ordinarily from rebellion and wilfull disobedience AND this way of interpreting these and the like passages of the New Testament is strongly countenanced by what we find Luk. 1. 6. where it is said of Zachary and Elizabeth that they were both of them righteous before God walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless That is they were sincerely good and vertuous persons their hearts were principled with the fear and love of God and though they were not without the errours and failings incident to humanity yet they strictly made Conscience of their duty and did not deliberately depart from the way of God's commandments And that passage concerning David 1 King 15. 5. seems sufficient to put the matter out of doubt where it is said David did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord and turned not aside from any thing he commanded him all the days of his life save only in the matter of Vriah the Hittite Notwithstanding the Scripture reckons up several failings of David his passion for Absalom his numbring the People his approaching too near the Lord 's Annointed when he cut off the skirt of Saul's Garment for which his heart smote him his despondency
of mind and mistrusts that he should one day fall by the hand of Saul his rage against Nabal c. But in regard these were but imperfectly voluntary therefore they make no blot in his Character But in the matter of Vriah the fact was horrible there was time for deliberation the use of cunning and contrivance and therefore full consent Wherefore this was quite of another consideration from all the rest and left such a stain upon him as required many tears and prayers and a very serious and signal repentance to cleanse him from § VI. THUS much I had thought sufficient for the clearing the distinction between sins of infirmity and presumption but I cannot but take notice of a mistake equally common and dangerous which where-ever it takes place doth not only render all we have hitherto said useless but is of fatal consequence to the souls of men It is to this effect When men are about the commission of some great and enormous sin it is not unusual for them to find some reluctancy and abhorrence within themselves Now for the sake of this they think that although they yield to the temptation and commit the sin yet it will not be esteemed altogether a voluntary transgression but will admit of great abatements by reason of such combate and conflict which they found in themselves And to this purpose they apply that passage of the Apostle Rom. 7. 15. That which I doe I allow not for what I would that doe I not but what I would not that I doe And that which follows also vers 17. So then it is no more I that doe it but sin that dwelleth in me But to remove so dangerous a mistake it would be well considered in the first place that however some have learned to call such a reluctancy as aforesaid by the specious name of the combat between the flesh and spirit or the regenerate and unregenerate part as the same men love to speak it is certainly nothing else but meerly some remains of natural Conscience in men and is to be found in some measure in the very worst of men that is in all but those whose Consciences are seared and utterly insensible It is the very nature of Conscience it self which is nothing else but a kind of internal sense of good and evil implanted by God in the nature of man and a man may more easily destroy any of his outward senses then quite extinguish this The Apostle takes notice of it in the Romans Chap. 2. vers 15. whose vices were yet so notorious as that they were utterly out of capacity of being accounted regenerate men Indeed if a man found in himself so quick a sense of his duty and were so tender of all degrees of evil that his Conscience not only checkt but called him off and restrained him upon the first appearance or approaches of sin this as I have intimated before would be a good sign of regeneration and such beginnings of evil so resisted will not be imputed as wilfull transgressions BUT when a man's Conscience only checks him but he goes on and commits the sin the best that can be made of it is only that it is not a seared Conscience and yet such a man is in a fair way to that also for as a part of the body by being often rubbed and hurt grows at last callous and insensible so the Conscience being often resisted in its intimations and stifled and over-born by the fury of lust and passion grows at last stupid and dead So the Apostle tells us Rom. 1. 28. because they liked not to retain God in their minds he gave them up to vain imaginations and because they gave themselves to sensuality he gave them up to unnatural lusts and so by degrees 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to a reprobate mind to a state of stupidity a spirit of injudiciousness to lose the feeling of good and evil And in the mean time it is so far from extenuating the guilt of a man's sin that his heart smote him for it that on the contrary it is a great aggravation of his presumption that he went on to the commission of it notwithstanding If a man could say he did not so well know his duty as he should and therefore his Conscience not being rightly informed did not give him warning of it or that he was in a hurry and could not consider or confesses his rashness and precipitancy these are some mitigations for as S. Clemens well pronounces That which is involuntary is sudden and where a man cannot deliberate he scarcely consents But when the case is such that a man must acknowledge he knew what he did he thought of it and condemned it and yet did it this surely is an aggravation if any thing in the world be so It is saith a generous Heathen Plutarch by name a most unmanly and brutish thing for a man that knows what he should doe softly and effeminately to give himself up to the swing of intemperate passions In short if when a man confessing the truth must say he had reason against what he did but confronted it his conscience shamed him but he resolved to be shameless he had weapons in his hand to resist temptation but he cast them down and yielded all which is implied when a man saith his Conscience smote him when he went about a sin but nevertheless he persisted and committed it I say if this be not a voluntary sin there is no such thing incident to mankind § VII THUS much concerning the guilt or malignity of sin in the general Now briefly for the various states and mansions of sinners Which we shall the more easily understand if we first consider the several degrees of vertue or so many higher and lower capacities as there are of being good and holy And I know not where to find these more exactly reckoned up and described then by S. Clement of Alexandria who makes four stations of perfection 1. Not to sin at all Which saith he is the felicity of the divine nature and to be sure not the condition of any meer man in this world 2. Not to commit any wilfull or voluntary sin which is the attainment of the perfect man or true Gnostick as he uses to speak 3. Rarely to be guilty of inadvertency or involuntary Lapses which is the condition of a good proficient in religion 4. and Lastly When a man hath sinned to recover himself early by repentance and not lie under the guilt nor much less grow into a habit of sin Which lowest degree though it be vastly different from every of the former yet it is tolerable and acceptable through the mercy of God as we shall see anon NOW in some proportion to this discourse we will suppose 4 stations or degrees of wickedness 1. Such as do nothing but sin which we only mention for method-sake for as we are certain non datur summum
then whatever the merits of the cause be the inferiour powers without dispute apply themselves to the execution For to use another allusion Reason is as the Card which directs the course and shews what is fittest to be done but the Will is as the Helm and Rudder that turns about the whole Fabrick This is that which is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. not a lawlesness or authority to do what we will nor yet an ability to effect whatever we please but a capacity within our selves of determining our selves and making our own choice NOW that we have indeed such a capacity is matter of daily experience for we cannot but have observed that oftentimes when Reason and Religion have recommended such things to us and convinced us of the importance of them yet we have followed our passions notwithstanding and done quite contrary to the clearest dictates of our mind in the words of the Apostle Rom. 7. 23. We have found a law in our members rebelling against the law of our mind and leading us captive to the law of sin And contrariwise sometimes we have checked and subdued the importunities of our passions and cast the Scale on the side of Conscience and Religion and both these out of the freedom of our own Souls It is true that very ordinarily in the former of these cases the Devil may promote the business by his temptations and in the latter it is certain as we heretofore have given caution that there is the concurrence of the Divine Grace and influence of the Holy Spirit but both in the one and the other man acts freely nevertheless suffering no violence nor compulsion For though there can be no doubt but that God who made man and can dissolve him when he pleases by the exercise of his Omnipotence may controul the elections of men or overrule them to whatsoever he will yet it is not reasonable to think he will or doth ordinarily doe so Determine them to evil he cannot upon the account either of his own purity justice or wisedom and for his over-bearing them to the doing of that which is good besides that we cannot understand how it leaves any room for reward in such a case it seems as much to reproach his wisedom in the first creation of such beings as to display his power in controuling their actions and elections and would be as unseemly a Phaenomenon as for him to cross and pervert the common course of naturall causes AND for the Devil though he by the order of his Creation be of an higher rank and of greater power then we yet he is by no means able to force our wills or to rescind the decrees of a free mind God permits him to use his cunning and to shew his malice in contriving baits to allure and catch us and several ways to give us disturbance but if he should allow him to force us we may be sure there should never have been any one good man in the world THE objects that present themselves to us from without can but court our acceptance not obtrude themselves upon us they knock at our door but cannot break in upon us or they present us motives to alter our resolutions but it is in our power still whether we will revoke them FOR Example and the common usage of the world the power of which is so much magnified by some men as if they thought it sufficient to make an apology for all our follies It is so inconsiderable in this case that if we duely consider its efficacy we must pronounce of it that it works only metaphorically not physically and is at most but an Ideal cause if we will call it so sufficient to abuse men of soft and easie minds but not the manly and generous As for the lower and meerly animal powers in us they as we noted before may corrupt the imagination and begin to form a seditious party within us but it is still in the power of the will till it dethrones it self so to suppress them that they shall never be successfull in their rebellion BUT then in the last place for Reason it self which some men governing themselves by an old maxime voluntas semper sequitur dictamen intellect ûs suppose to prescribe so authoritatively to the will as that the priviledge of freedom belongs rather to the former then the latter if that were true i. e. if the will must proceed upon the dictates of reason there would be no such thing as liberty at all because it is not in our power what light our understandings shall have and as I have noted before we cannot believe what we will nor understand things otherwise then they are represented to us therefore if the will have not a power of acting contrary to our understanding as perfect a fatality is introduced as is to be found amongst natural agents Besides we find by constant observation of our selves and the world that in passion in love in the pursuit of riches and honour and most of our prosecutions we sometimes follow our reason sometimes go before it and sometimes quite cross it It is true indeed we ordinarily have some either reason or pretence of reason or other to countenance our elections because otherwise it could not be called choice where there is no end propounded or design aimed at which I think is all that the aforesaid obsolete maxime intends Nevertheless since it is manifest we oftentimes follow that which we know not to be the best reason even then when we follow it we may thereby be sufficiently convinced of the arbitrary power of our own wills THIS which we have been asserting is a truth of that importance that the denial thereof cuts the very sinews of all industry destroys the differences of good and evil takes away all principles of Conscience all arguments of Repentance as we have shewed before and herewith makes that natural passion of ingenuous shame which mankind is peculiarly endowed with utterly senseless and unaccountable But the truth of this supposed we easily understand both the nature and force of Resolution which is the only thing we have aimed at TO proceed therefore The Son in the Text conscious of this truth and as well sensible of his own liberty as certain of the necessity of taking some course or other to relieve himself saith in the words before recited I will arise I will go to my Father I will say unto him c. And the Resolutions of every Penitent are to the same effect viz. I will not fit with my hands folded up as a man infatuated and fitted for destruction I will spend no more time doubting and disputing nor abandon my self to desperation I 'le endeavour both to cease to do evil and to learn to do well I will take shame to my self acknowledge my folly and accept the punishment of my iniquity I will earnestly deprecate the divine displeasure and implore his mercy and pardon In short whatsoever
called thy Son I deserve to be utterly abandoned excluded your care and cast out of your thoughts as I cast my self out of your family And so the Penitent I am so far Lord from deserving thy favour or eternal life that I deserve not the least Crum from thy Table less then the least of all thy mercies Nay I acknowledge I have deserved to goe with sorrow to my grave and to undergo the dreadfullest viols of thy wrath IT is very remarkable that the Prodigal doth not only thus condemn himself whilest he anxiously stands expecting his doom from his Father but even then when his Father had expressed compassion to him had ran to meet him and kissed him for so vers 21. we find him repeating his own condemnation in the same words as before And in like manner we observe the Apostle St. Paul after he had obtained pardon and the great favour of Apostleship to be continually ripping up his former sins and condemning himself for them as if the wound bled afresh as often as it was touched THUS the Penitent always judges and condemns himself that he may not be judged of the Lord. By severity towards himself he recommends himself to the Divine Mercy for as Tertullian expresses it In quantum non peperceris tibi in tantum Deus tibi parcet If we like Phineas stand up and execute judgement the Plague will be stayed He that anticipates the day of Judgment by erecting a private but impartial Tribunal prevents the dreadfullness of that day In short if we be just God will be mercifull and therefore when the Penitent hath been accuser witness and judge against himself he may then with hopes of success become 4. IN the fourth place Intercessour for himself also and deprecate the divine displeasure and implore his favour So the Son doth here make me as one of thy hired servants q. d. Let me not be utterly cast out of thy Family but have at least this instance of thy favour that I may still retain some relation to thee And so the Penitent now that he hath received his sentence of condemnation within himself sues out his pardon O take not my confession meerly as an argument of my guilt but as an evidence of my contrition Break not the bruised reed nor quench the smoaking flax 'T is thy prerogative O Lord to pardon and what pleasure is there in my blood Will the Lord be angry for ever will his jealousy burn like fire O consider my frame remember I am but dust and ashes call to mind thy mercies of old thou art God and not man and as much as the Heavens are higher then the Earth so are thy mercies above the mercies of a man Turn thy face away from my sins and blot out all my transgressions Make me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit in me Cast me not away from thy presence and take not thy Holy Spirit from me Give me the comfort of thy help again and stablish me with thy free Spirit c. Psal 51. 9 10 11 12. SAINT Cyprian reports it to have been the Custome of the Primitive Penitents out of their quick and pricking sense of sin and the more effectually to recommend themselves to the mercies of God and the favour of his Church earnestly to implore the Martyrs that in the midst of their sufferings and sharpest agonies they would remember them in their prayers thinking such affectionate intercession of those that poured out their blood and requests together must needs be available both with God and man But the Penitent addresses himself also to a higher and more prevalent Advocate who adds the incense of his own sacrifice to the prayers of men and makes them come up as sweet odours before the Almighty and who is exalted at God's right hand to this end that he may give success to the prayers of such contrite persons To which adde that not only the deep apprehensions of guilt and of danger which such a person we now speak of is under must needs mkee him ardent and importunate and to cry mightily to God but also the Scripture assures us that the Holy Ghost is wont to assist such with sighs and groans which are unutterable § II. NOW for the acceptableness of this penitent confession of which we are speaking Although it be certain that our heavenly Father takes no delight in the pityfull moans in the tears and lamentations of his Creatures and most true that he is not to be wrought upon by addresses and complemental forms by the accent of men's voice by the rhetorick of tears nor any thing of that nature because he is not subject to passions as men are yet having demonstrated already in the former Chapter that the Divine Majesty hath no restraint upon him but what himself pleases and that all his actions towards his Creatures are so subject to his wisedom that when-ever there is just cause for mercy he can shew it notwithstanding the unchangeableness of his Nature the rigour of his Laws or the demand of his Justice If now we also make it appear from his own mouth and from those discoveries which he hath been pleased to make of himself that the aforesaid humble and contrite addresses are agreeable to the designs of his wisedom and therefore required by him as the conditions of pardon then there can be no doubt but that they will in their kind be as acceptable to his Divine Majesty and as successfull on the part of the sinner as the penitent Son's submission was with his earthly Parent AND this will be easily evident if we consider that whereas the evil of sin lies principally in the dishonour it reflects upon the divine perfections such penitential acknowledgments as we have described do in great measure repair that injury and do right to all the Divine Attributes as we will instance in particular 1. SIN is an invasion of God's Authority and Sovereignty over us inasmuch as he that willfully breaks any Law of God proclaims himself sui Juris or Lawless and saith with those in the Gospel we will not have this Lord to rule over us Now penitent acknowledgment though it cannot recall the act which is past yet it revokes and retracts the affront and settles God's authority again 2. SIN is an impeachment of God's wisedom justice and goodness at once for he that allows himself in the commission of a sin lays an imputation upon God as if he had either not foreseen what liberty was fit to be allowed to his Creatures or had not ordered the frame and constitution of things with that decency and benignity that mankind could comfortably acquiesce in without temptation to intrench upon that for his own necessary accommodation Now on the contrary confession takes shame and folly and unreasonableness to our selves and justifies the wisedom and equity of all God's constitutions In this sense we may take that expression Luk. 7. 29. The Publicans justified God
going quite back again and undoing all he hath done besides the agonies of conscience and the strong convulsions which he must suffer that casts off a long settled and habitual course of sin To which adde that whatever diligence or zeal of God's glory a late Convert that comes into the vineyard as it were at the eleventh hour may express at last yet it is certain he hath done God a great dishonour heretofore whereas he we now speak of is one that coming in at the first hour labours all day in God's work and equally carries on the affair of God's glory and his own comfort here and salvation hereafter Now all these things considered if there shall be any man so rash and injudicious as notwithstanding to press all men without distinction in order to their title to the mercies of God and hopes of Heaven to make the same severe reflexions upon themselves or to shew the like sensible and discernible change in their lives let them know by this unskilfulness of theirs they unreasonably minister trouble to the best and happiest of men and have a design quite contrary to that of our Saviour who professed he came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance And in the seventh verse of this Chapter he speaks of just men which need no repentance that is have no need to make a change of their whole course and begin a new as notorious sinners ought to doe Both which places I take to be clearly interpreted and to the sense we are assigning to them by that other passage of our Saviour Jo. 13. 10. He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet onely that is he that is already ingaged in a holy course and habituate to the ways of piety hath only need to be duely cleansed from those occasional soils and defilements which the infirmity of humane nature and conversation in the world suffer no man wholly to escape but not to enter upon a new state or begin a whole course of repentance To which effect I understand those words of Origen in his Books against Celsus Christ Jesus saith he was sent indeed a Physician to cure and recover sinners but to improve and instruct those further in the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven that were already vertuous I 'le conclude and confirm all I have said of this kind with the sense of Manasses which he expresses in his famous penitential prayer Thou O Lord that art the God of the just hast not appointed repentance to the just as to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob c. but thou hast appointed repentance unto me who am a sinner c. This I take to be sufficient for the determination who is meant by the Elder Brother and then we cannot be much to seek who is denoted by the Younger for what we have now said being granted it necessarily follow that by the Younger Son are described all such persons as have run a dangerous risk of sin and impiety that have committed gross and hainous transgressions and continued in a state of disobedience and impenitency after such manner as the Publicans and Sinners in the text are supposed to have done These are said to forsake their Father's house and presence to mispend their portion in riotous living who yet at last being reduced to extremity come to themselves turn serious penitents bewail their folly resolve upon amendment implore pardon double their diligence and care for the time to come and of old sinners become young Saints whereupon they are by a gracious God admitted to pardon and reconciliation and adoption for these the best robe is fetched out the fatted calf slain and upon their conversion as a thing utterly despaired of and unexpected there is joy in Heaven and amongst the holy Angels These were dead in trespasses and sins but are now quickned and revived by the grace of God they were Strangers and Aliens from the covenant of Grace but now become of the houshold of God and heirs of eternal life And now these two points being resolved of we have a key by which we may easily open all the circumstances of the whole Parable so that it will not be necessary that I insist longer upon a general interpretation Neverthelesse lest there should seem one difficulty not sufficiently provided against or any man should yet be at a losse how if the Elder Brother denote sincerely good men it can stand with their character to grumble at the mercifull reception of poor penitents as here he is represented to doe And moreover it may raise another doubt if the Elder Brother be set to describe men of constant and unblemished Sanctity how such a person should be fit to denote the Scribes and Pharisees who were certainly very evil and corrupt men Unlesse a plain account can be given of these it must follow that either we have not hit the occasion of the Parable or the Parable did not answer to the occasion Wherefore to these I answer joyntly That our Saviour the more effectually to convince these Jews that reproached and censured him proceeds with them upon their own Hypothesis namely taking it for granted that they were as eminently good and holy men as they either took themselves or pretended to be and that the Publicans and Sinners were indeed as bad as they esteemed them I mean he doth not intend to signifie that these censorious persons were indeed good men for upon all occasions we see he upbraids their rottennesse and hypocrisie but because they out of opinion of their own sanctity and contempt of others reproached his carriage in this matter therefore the designs to shew them that if that was true which is utterly false and they as good men as they were extremely bad yet upon due consideration they ought not to blame his management of himself and gracious condescension to sinners As if he had said You Scribes and Pharisees wonder that instead of applying my self to your conversation who are men of great note for sanctity and devotion and never blemished with any great disorder I rather chuse to lay out my self upon the recovery of flagitious and desperate sinners now see your own unreasonablenesse in this instance You will allow a Father to be more passionately concerned for and expresse a greater joy upon the recovery of a Lost Son then he usually doth about him that was always with him and out of danger and if that Son who had never departed from his Father and so never given him occasion for those change of passions should expostulate with his Father for his affectionateness in such a case you would in your own thoughts blame him as envious and undutifull Now apply this to your selves and think as well as you can of your selves yet upon the premisses you will see no reason to calumniate my endeavours of reclaiming sinners or my kindnesse and benignity towards them upon their repentance By this time I doubt not but the whole
not be wanting to him But for the latter namely the doing or willing that which is evil there is nothing more requisite but the will it self provided God extraordinarily interpose not to hinder it THESE things premised I am not aware of the least suspicion that can lie against what we are asserting namely that a necessary and principal ingredient of sin is the voluntarinesse thereof and of the truth hereof the proofs are as many and pregnant as the absurdities of the contrary are manifest For what ground can there be imaginable why God should use exhortations and persuasions reproofs and expostulations with men for sin if it were not in their power to withstand it wherefore should he upbraid them for their wilfullnesse condemn them for stubbornnesse and after all severely punish them for what they could not help If the insupportable weight of necessity lies upon them or some latent and irresistible cause overpower them they are patients rather then agents and deserve pity rather then blame or punishment It was a discreet saying of Porphyry A man that is moved by force onely is properly enough said to be where he was as if he had not been moved at all For whatsoever seeming alteration necessity and violence may make for the present when once the force is over every thing returns to its own nature again and is what it was before but without doubt in all moral consideration man is reasonably to be interpreted to be in that state all the while where he was by his own choice and would have continued had not force expulsed him And Seneca said very well Necessity is the great sanctuary of humane infirmity which whosoever can lay claim to obtains protection for it perfectly excuses all the faults it commits Whatever can justly be pretended to be necessary if it be evil is a natural one and not a moral and an unhappinesse or punishment rather then a sin So the Romans judged also in a well known case It is the free mind which onely is capable of guilt dull matter and body whatsoever is passive cannot be blamed because they cannot chuse NEITHER is it possible any man should repent of doing what he could not but doe or of omitting to doe what was never in his power to effect no more then that he cannot fly like a Bird or move like an Angel What remorse or shame or trouble of conscience can there be that a man is not another kind of creature then he was made that he did what was natural and necessary for him to doe or for such things as may indeed be said to be done by him and yet not be his act that is the act of a man because he could not doe otherwise God hath set up Conscience as his Vicegerent and a judge within us but as we said before it is not so absolute as to judge without a Law so neither can it be so unjust and absurd as to condemn and torture without conviction of guilt And though there is no doubt of the prerogative of God to impose what Laws he pleases yet we have the manifold security of his goodnesse wisedom and justice besides his truth and faithfullnesse that he will not oppresse us with his sovereignty but in all his dispensations will consider our frame and circumstances and remember that we are but dust and ashes IN short if there be any so absurd as to affirm sin to be any way necessary to all other absurdities they bring in the surly paradox of the Stoicks and make all sins equal representing the most pitiable infirmities of humane nature equal to the most dissolute enormities they infinitely increase the number of sins but take off the weight and guilt render it little more then a notion and teach men to have no horrid apprehensions of it They excuse man and lay the fault if there be any somewhere else but wherever that is it will revolve at last upon God blessed for ever § 4. BUT I persuade my self I need not proceed further in exaggerating this matter wherefore both to close and to confirm what I have said I will only subjoin the Authority of the Apostle S. James in that remarkeable passage of his Epistle Chap. 1. vers 13 14 15. wherein he describes the conception formation growth perfection and nativity of sin The words are these Let not any man say when he is tempted I am tempted of God for God is not tempted of evil neither tempteth he any man But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and inticed Then when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death Upon which let me crave leave to use the liberty of this lesse strict Paraphrase As if he had said Let no man imagine that God by any act of his providence provokes or prompts or much lesse puts any necessity upon men to sin for as he by the perfection of his divine nature is infinitely above the reach of any temptation to act it himself so it is so contrary to him that he abhorrs it wherever it is and therefore can by no means contribute to it nor have any hand in the production of it And though several of his designs suppose it and his providence be exercised about the regulation of it yet this is no argument that he either ordained it or effects it For his wisedom is sufficient to inable him to see through all the series of causes and to foreknow what they are pregnant with and what they will in their respective times be delivered of without peremptory determination of them thereunto And again although it be true that sin could not have been in the world unlesse he had thought fit to permit it yet it is never the more by him since it takes its rise from nothing else but the unhappy use of that great blessing and priviledge of liberty which he endowed rational creatures withal Would you then understand more particularly the generation of this sponte-nascent take it thus FIRST then you are to know that the great and wise Creatour of all things for weighty reasons thought fit to create mankind of a middle nature and condition betwixt purely spirituall beings and the inferiour world of meer animal and natural making him participate of both and agreeably hereunto endowed him both with intellectual and sensitive powers The former whereof namely the intellectual were to enable him to serve his Creatour to render him capable of noble and excellent delights and that he might by them order and govern the inferiour and sensitive faculties And these latter were given him partly to relax his mind by a moderate and seasonable condescension to the sweetnesse of the senses but principally to be a field and exercise for those active vigorous and noble capacities of the mind AGAIN Secondly you are to consider that as that wise and benign Majesty never made any thing but
what was good in its kind and happy according to its proportion so especially in this part of his workmanship he prepared and apportioned objects suitable to the aforesaid different capacities and allowed the use and exercise of both onely with this remarkable difference that the objects and entertainments of sense were little and narrow but present at hand those of the intellectual powers great but out of view and at distance by which means it became somewhat difficult but not impossible for those higher faculties to maintain that authority over the inferiour which he designed them for and expected from them 3. THEN further to afford those higher powers opportunity to shew themselves he retrenches in some measure the liberty of the sensitive faculties forbidding some kinds of enjoyments of their proper objects in which case those strong but unjudging faculties being restrained in those things which were natural to them and wherein they found a quick relish and delight have as it cannot be expected but they should a pronenesse and inclination to such things notwithstanding the divine prohibition This is that which the Apostle calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lust and which I think the Schoolmen mean by motus primo-primi and although sin takes its rise hence yet hitherto there is no sin for did the higher faculties now quit themselves as they might and ought and in consideration of the reverence due to the divine Majesty and those boundaries he hath set give check to these inclinations all were well BUT now begins the mischief For whilest those objects of sense continually present themselves to and court their proper powers and reason not stepping in to disturb and forbid the parly that pronenesse or connaturalnesse of which we spake quickly starts up into the desire of such things as God hath forbidden in which consists the first conception of sin and hitherto the higher faculties are guilty as accessories only because they did not interpose to hinder these beginnings But then in the next place phansie and imagination being employed about the object so desired do in that manner paint and set it out or by a kind of Chymistry so wonderfully sublime and heighten it that the value is mightily raised the desire inflamed and in despight of all danger must not be denied Thus the Embryo is cherished in the womb of the soul and gathers strength And now it was high time for the higher powers to correct their first error to rally their forces to call in all the aids of Religion and set in vigorously and stop the further progresse of the mischief But reason either laid asleep by the fumes of sense forgets the danger and le ts fall its scepter or those higher powers either prevented in their preparations or corrupted by the charms of pleasure connive at the disorder and making but a faint and superficial resistance the second errour becomes worse then the first and sin goes on and grows ripe for the birth till at last passion still swelling and reason yielding consents as it were to its own deposition and lust getting the consent of the will hath the reins put into its hands and so all the members of the body are subject to its command and then is sin brought forth perfect and consummate § 5. THUS I have as briefly and plainly as I could opened the nature of sin by the tenour of which discourse we may gain this double advantage first to understand what it is which fills sin with that malignity as to make it the just hate of God and man and secondly to be able to distinguish the several degrees of guilt or principal aggravations of sin For touching the former of these we may easily perceive by what has been said that guilt is not a meer arbitrary stamp that God sets upon actions nor punishment an effect of harshnesse or severity forasmuch as all that which God puts under that character and punishes as such is in the first place a contradiction to the divine will and to that law and order of things he hath constituted in the world and secondly is a contempt also of the divine wisedom in that the sinner either turns his back upon the proclaimed Laws of Heaven by affected ignorance or takes himself to be lawless and confronts God Almighty and lastly there is wilfullness and contumacy in it too for whereas it pleased God out of special favour to endow men with freedom to the intent they might serve him both more honourably and more chearfully they in sinning perversely turn this priviledge against their Maker AND for the second of these though sin admits of many heads of abatement or aggravation as namely either from the matter of it or the Law it violates whether natural divine or humane or from the clearness or dimness of the light under which men sin the greatness or littleness of the temptation which they have to offend and several other considerations of that kind which it is not uneasie to specifie yet the most general and the most usefull distinction is taken from that which I reckoned as the third and last ingredient of sin namely from the consent of the will in the commission of it for so if we observe we shall find that both in the esteem of Scripture and Conscience the degrees of guilt are principally reckoned in proportion to the imperfectness or fullness of its consent and concurrence to any vicious action Insomuch that herein that great distinction of sin into infirmity and presumption hath its foundation namely when there is but an imperfect compliance of the will the miscarriage is of the former kind but when it fully yields and consents it is a sin with a high hand Which being a matter wherein the peace of men's Consciences here and their eternal welfare hereafter is concerned I shall not suspect it will be unacceptable to the Reader that I speak a little more fully to it AND first to reckon up the most common instances of sins of infirmity I take them to be properly such as these following viz. The first beginnings of sin not pursued when a man unadvisedly enters the confines of evil but recovers and withdraws himself as soon as he considers the consequents and apprehends the mischief and danger Or when by the nearness of the allurements of sense and the quick motion of bodily passions he begins to take fire or when the extraordinariness of the temptation surprized him or the mighty prevalence of example overbore him beyond his course and intention before he well understood where he was and he had no time to recollect himself and to call in the aids of Reason and Religion Perhaps a mighty fear may hurry a man to some degree of indecency or an huge advantage may sway him a little aside till he can so far recover himself as maturely to consider and then to set himself upright he bends himself quite the other way Now in all these cases where there was no room
malum or that there is no being absolutely evil as the Manichees imagined so it is very questionable whether the very Devil himself do nothing but what is evil but it is out of all question with me that the worst and most viciously inclined men do some good And for those that can assert the most vertuous actions of unregenerate men to be express sins they may pretend what Patrons they will of their opinion but I am sure neither Scripture nor reason will countenance it for though it be true that the best actions of such men are not acceptable as the conditions of eternal life because they are disjoined from habitual sanctification and true holiness yet that they are not therefore sins will sufficiently appear by what we have said not long since in the description of the nature of sin Neither because they are defective in some circumstances do they cease to be good or become sins for then the best performances of the best men in this world would be sins too because they are also defective in circumstances 2. THE second or rather first rank of sinners consists of such as live in the habitual practice of great and enormous sins whether of one kind or of many I confess at the first sight one would think these should be divided into two classes whereof the first should be those profligate wretches and sons of Belial who perfectly abandon themselves to the temptation of the Devil and the fury of their own lusts and adde drunkenness to thirst as the Scripture expresseth it or run from one kind of sin to another with a kind of greediness as if were it possible they loved evil for its own sake or had a spite both at God and their own souls And the second should be those more reserved and cautious sinners who perhaps may carry it very demurely in many respects but maintain some bosome sin which is as dear to them as their right eye and as necessary as their right hand and this they hope God will indulge them Oh it is a little one and their souls shall live I say I should in civility have provided these a form by themselves and not set them with the open and scandalous sinners but that I observe God makes no difference between them His servants ye are saith the Apostle to whom ye obey and it is no matter whether a man have many Masters or one he is equally a slave that is led captive either way And so 8. James in that most remarkable passage Chap. 2. vers 10. Whosoever shall keep the whole Law and yet offend in one point is guilty of all Of which seeming Paradox he gives account in the next Verse For he that said Do not commit adultery said also Do not kill c. i. e. The reverence of every branch of God's Law is built upon the consideration of his sovereignty and right to prescribe to us which he impeaches whosoever dispenses with himself in the habitual breach of any one of his commands For whatever particular he chooses to transgress in he derogates from the authority of the whole Besides it is to be considered that all sins cannot stand together some sins are as repugnant and contradictory to each other as all are to vertue and moreover non omnis fert omnia tellus it may be not the humour or interest or not sutable to the constitution of some man to act some sin when yet it is neither love of vertue nor the fear of God which makes him abstain from it These therefore are justly joyned together namely all such as live in the habitual practice of one or more notorious sins 3. A THIRD rank are such as though they live not in the habit yet are guilty of the act of some very great and flagitious crime for there are some sins very deadly even in single acts as either containing a complication of many wickednesses together as sacriledge adultery sedition or such as can never be revoked nor amends be made for them as taking away a man's life or never repeated nor repented of as to murther a man's self and several others Now these being of so deadly a nature every man that hath any sense of vertue or care of his own soul ought ever to be sufficiently guarded against them and at utter defiance of them and he that can be so careless as to be found guilty of any such betrays the great Atheism and security of his heart And for this reason the miscarriage of David in the business of Bathshebah and Vriah lays such an horrible blot upon him and needed all that repentance whereof we have the footsteps in the 51. Psalm 4. THE fourth and last rank are they that avoid both the habit and the act of greater sins yet allow themselves in the frequent commission of lesser and persevere in them without repentance By lesser sins I mean both such as I reckoned up before under the name of infirmities and more particularly such as these following When a man dares not give himself up to beastly sensuality yet will too much humour and caress his body in meats and drinks and pleasures or will not steal and couzen but will be covetous and have his heart too much upon the world that dares not cast off the duties of Religion but will indulge himself to be remiss and flat in them and several of this nature too easie to be observed Now these kinds of sins are the more dangerous in that partly our Consciences not being presently startled at them as at greater crimes we more easily admit them or they insensibly steal upon us from whence it comes to pass that they become frequent and so arise to a great number and seem to equal that way what they have not in weight These therefore if they be suffered to pass unregarded grow to a great danger since no danger is little when once it is esteemed so and besides though these may pass for inadvertencies when they are once or rarely committed yet it must be a vicious neglect of our selves when they are frequent and ordinary forasmuch as all sincere vertue is awakened to greater diligence by every sensible declension to which adde especially that whatsoever sin and how little soever it be is not repented of when it is come to our knowledge is by that means become a voluntary transgression increasing its guilt ex post pacto These are the principal stations of sin or the several ways upon which a man is denominated a sinner in the language of Scripture and of wise men BUT to the end we may render this important point as clear as we can and now also come more directly to the Parable before us we will take notice of the Psalmist David's distribution of sinners into a three-fold Classis Psal 1. vers 1. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly nor standeth in the way of sinners nor sitteth in the seat of the
in sin beyond their interests nay their very vicious inclmation and even the capacity of their circumstances and constitution As if he designed that they should not onely treasure up wrath against the day of wrath but be miserably rackt and tortured here and tormented before their time WE count the water rack a very severe torture to have that Element forced down a man's throat till all the vessels of his Body are stretched and Tympanized so that in stead of Air he draws in Water with his breath ready to stifle him And yet this torture we see the drunkard submit himself to at the Devil's command IT is very dreadfull to have our limbs and nerves distended by pullies and such other engines And the lascivious man is sensible of something like this when he forces nature to comply with his vicious phancy and a prevalent temptation When in some kind of executions they poured scalding lead down the throat of the malefactour which the Jews called the burning of the Soul it was doubtless very terrible but he that suffers revenge to fry in his bosome and eat out his very heart and bowels undergoes something not very much inferiour TO say no more what more horried torments can any Tyrant invent or inflict or what more abominable ignominy can his malice expose any man to then the usual effects of sensuality do either execute upon a man's person or stigmatize his name withall We see in the course of nature the several parts of the Universe give place to the interest of the whole or as we commonly speak private nature gives place to publick as the water ascends to prevent vacuity c. But in this little world man when the Devil hath got interest in him publick nature humanity it self is violenced for the lust of a private person of which the Apostle gives us too sad an instance in the debauched Heathen Rom. 1. 26 27. which passage I have no mind to explain THIS is the condition of the Devil's service in respect of which the difficultest parts of God's service are easy and voluptuous I 'll conclude this particular and summe up what hath been hitherto said in the words of Chrysologus Behold saith he the sad Catastrophe of rash and incogitant voluptuousness it turns him out into a strange Countrey that might have lived happy in his Father's house makes a beggar of one that was rich changes the condition of a Son into that of a Slave compells him to feed nasty Swine who declined the service of a gracious Father But this is not the full end of the sinner's Tragedy For 6. THE Prodigal's fare is as course as his employment was sordid he is forced to feed upon husks some take the word in the Original to signify Bran according to that of the Poet vivis siliquis pane secundo But the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly signifies the seed of the tree Ceronia or Charob which afforded a course fare which extream necessity sometimes drove men to be content withall But let us see the moral of it Origen understands by Husks the delights of wanton Poetry with which the Devil usually feeds and entertains loose persons making them both fit and willing to his service I remember somewhere to have read and I think it is in Clemens of Alexandria that it was his opinion that Pagan Philosophy was hereby meant which being but the exterior Cortex or Husk of true knowledge served notwithstanding to amuse and busy the Gentile World But I think our Saviour meant nothing else hereby then to represent to us the pitifull entertainment the emptiness and unsatisfactoriness of all the Incomes of sin That all the gratifications by which the Devil allures men into the basest drudgery prove upon trial the Appels of Sodom perform nothing of what they promise Solomon hath told us that an whorish woman will bring a man to a morsel of bread and it is true in proportion of all the instances of riot and luxury which is so much the more severe calamity to such kind of persons because they usually in their prosperity caressing themselves at the highest rate imaginable pampering themselves and their lusts together must needs feel the change from one extream to the other to be exceeding sharp and painfull But let us see this a little more particularly in order to which the Apostle Saint John hath summed up all the returns of sin in these words 1 Jo. 2. 16. The things that are in the world are the lusts of the flesh the lust of the eye and the pride of life or in other words bodily pleasure worldly profit and vain glory And all these when duly considered will prove but Husks such as our voluptuous Prodigal now the Devils vassal is constrained to feed upon FIRST for bodily pleasure that is notoriously the entertainment of beasts rather then of men For it is they that have the quickest sense and relish of it man is ashamed of himself when he yields to it and therefore seeks recesses and the dark as being aware that he condescends below himself when he stoops to it therefore certainly God intended it as fodder for beasts not food for men Sawce is the most that it can be allowed to be and he is not to be reckoned a man that can content himself with it or live as if he were made for it For besides that all wise men who have tried it pronounce it to be but chaff and vanity even those who are so silly as to pursue it with the greatest eagerness and appetite finding themselves empty and disappointed are constrained to hunt after variety and to weary themselves in going from one pleasure to another in hopes to find that satisfaction which is never there to be had Bodily pleasure is fitly represented by the Stories we have of the Feasts and Junkettings of Witches and Fiends in which after great appearance of delicacies wherewithall the Guests seem to satiate themselves they notwithstanding find themselves as empty as before the Banquet The mind of man is of another make and of a greater capacity then to be filled with such trash It is onely intellectual pleasure the contents of wisedome the peace of a good Conscience the reflections upon having done some good which are the repast of a man and these are solid and lasting there is more true and manly delight in any one such instance then in all the caresses of the Epicure AND then for Profit it is very inconsiderable gain that is brought in by sin if accounts be justly cast up For all those sins which have either any gusto of pleasure or air of credit attending them are usually costly and expensive and for those profitable sins of injustice covetousness oppression c. they are usually incumbred with so much anxiety followed with such guilt branded with so much reproach that there needs a new Arithmetick to be devised to make out the profit of them Above all
most frequent and most remarkable instances of such conversions In the Old Testament we have Manasses who was an Idolater a Witch and did evil in the sight of the Lord above all the abominations of the Amorites who seem to have been the most profligate people in the world and yet became at last a true penitent a holy and a vertuous person In the New Testament to omit St. Paul who saith of himself that from a blasphemer a persecutour and the chief of sinners he became an exemplary Christian and a zealous Apostle and Preacher of the Doctrine which before he destroyed We have great numbers of the most obstinate and wicked Jews converted and no less of Romans Corinthians Ephesians and of all other Cities and Countries who had grown old and hardened in a course of sin but became new and holy men Particularly the Apostle assures us of the Corinthians That they had been Fornicators Idolaters Adulterers Effeminate Thieves Covetous Drunkards And yet were washed were sanctified were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God 1 Cor. 6. 9 10 11. It is not therefore impossible saith the sinner but I may also recover my self out of the snares of the Devil I found it in my power to chuse evil why may I not hope to be able to chuse good nothing determined or necessitated me heretofore to sin why may I not then cast off the yoke of custome and by the grace of God apply my self to my duty This is a second consideration which inflames the Penitent to a resolution of amendment which when he hath in earnest entered upon he finds 3. AS his third inducement not onely to be possible but also easy at least far beyond what he heretofore imagined It was perhaps not an extenuating but a just reflection which the Historian makes upon all the famous exploits of Alexander the Great in Asia and in the Indies which had swelled his name to such a bulk Primus ausus est vana contemnere that it was not so much his more then humane courage or conduct which gave him those successes but that he had the luck or the sagacity to see through and despise the pageantry and empty shew of force and formidableness which those soft and luxurious Nations were only furnished with So it is in this case he that can but once despise those Ludibria oculorum those scare-crows and phantastical Ideas which men's own fear and cowardise represent to them he will presently find the business of Religion easy and expedite and that it is but resolving generously and the thing is done The way of vertue though through the folly of men it be an unfrequented path yet is it no sad and uncomfortable way no man abridges himself the delight of life by becoming vertuous no just contentment is denied him no power or so much as passion he hath that is altogether denied its proper satisfaction There is no inhumane austerity required of us no contradiction to our reason or violence to our nature imposed upon us God is no hard Pharaoh that seeks to break us with bitter bondage requiring the tale of bricks without straw He doth not bid us continue in the fire and not burn or require us to converse with the occasions of sin and escape the pollution but only to moderate our desires to mind our selves to set our intentions right and in a word to resolve to doe what we can both to avoid the occasion and to escape the infection AND as for that great bug-bear Custome why may we not break the fetters of our own making and dissolve an habit of our own beginning Sin it self was weak and timorous and bashfull at first but it got strength by time and by degrees and in the same manner it is to be supplanted oppose beginnings of good to beginnings of evil and an habit will be obtained and we shall confront one custome with another He that goeth forth weeping bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again rejoycing and bringing his sheaves with him THE way of vertue is therefore easy because it is recommended by our own reason though sense oppose it for the present let us be true to the former and the latter must and will give way A Law enacted by our own consent uses to find a ready and chearfull compliance that which is voted within us and carried by the free suffrage of our minds surely can never be accounted harsh and difficult and such are all the laws of vertue the rules thereof are convenient for the community suitable to our own natures and as fit for us to consent to as for God to enact ALL the opposition which the Devil or the flesh can make to the determination of our minds will quickly cease if we stand firm to our selves reason is as able to restrain sense as that is to bewitch and fascinate our minds or at least if we stop our ears we shall avoid all its charms charm it never so cunningly Besides all the importunities of the flesh will from such time as they begin to be denied grow sensibly weaker and weaker And for the Devil there is nothing so much incourages his attempts as our irresolution and feeble opposition he is both a more proud and a more cunning enemy then to endure too many repulses without hopes of success He knows well enough he cannot force us and if he cannot corrupt us will not long labour in vain This the Apostle St. James assures us of Resist the Devil and he will flee from you St. James 4. 7. ABOVE all the Holy Spirit of God will not fail to set in with us and make all easy to us if we cease to resist and quench his motions How that worketh in and upon us is not easy to discover for As the wind bloweth where it listeth and we hear the sound thereof but know not whence it cometh nor whither it goeth so is every one that is born of the Spirit notwithstanding we are assured that God will give his Holy Spirit to them that ask it and that that Spirit hath a mighty influence upon us without doing any violence to us and that its aids are incomparably greater then the Devils opposition For greater is he that is in us then he that is in the world and this is our great incouragement to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling because God worketh in us to will and to doe of his good pleasure THE mischief of all is therefore our want of resolution that we do but dally and trifle in this great business and hence all the difficulty arises Quo minùs timoris eo minùs fermè periculi Cowards run the greatest dangers in war and irresolute men find the most opposition and the greatest difficulty in a course of vertue Did we but collect our selves we should quickly find the face of things altered and all discouragements vanish ALL
something on man's part though very little and that they call Attrition by which they mean some slight sorrow for sin which they say together with the sacrament of penance or confession will reconcile a man to God without so much as contrition or true and hearty sorrow for the evil of sin this is the express doctrine of the Church of Rome and is very like the common doctrine of the Jews that confession and sacrifice were sufficient for repentance and reconciliation as if sin had no great evil in it self or no great contrariety to the divine nature only for form or order sake he thought fit that some shame or mulct should be put upon it and so a few tears or something of no great moment shall quit all the old score and purchase a new licence to sin again 3. ANOTHER opinion goes further yet requiring not only external expressions and the forms and solemnities of repentance but real and hearty sorrow for sin that a man's Conscience be really troubled and in great anguish for his sin and when this is done all is well from such trouble of Conscience they date their conversion and this they are always reflecting upon as a security not only against the sins committed before it but that from that time God sees no more sin in them as if like as it was at the Pool of Bethesda when the Angel had moved the waters all that stept in were healed These men ordinarily please themselves with melancholy complaints of themselves cry out of a naughty heart a hard heart c. and think this will doe their business as if so soon as the Patient is grown sensible of his case he were cured and to feel the smart were all one as to have the sore healed LASTLY a fourth sort go further yet and require not only contrition but resolution of obedience but content themselves and incourage men to a great degree of confidence though this resolution be never put in execution Thus a great many Saints are canonized from the Gallows and the Clinick or death-bed repentance is greatly countenanced Men commence Saints per saltum as they say as the Romans made Gentlemen Momento turbinis exit Marcus Dama in the turning of an hand a lewd and flagitious person starts up a great Saint The ground of this opinion is they suppose that which is undoubtedly true that God knows men's hearts but then they infer that which is very dangerous that therefore so that be turned right it is no matter with him whether there proceed any fruits worthy of repentance and amendment of life TO all these I might further adde those that reckon the change of opinion being of an admired Sect coming over with great zeal to a new party a demure garb an austere temper or at most some partial reformation to be sufficient signs of regeneration which fancy agrees too well to the humour of a great part of men of this age but I shall not need to proceed further in reckoning up these mistakes nor do I think it necessary to apply a particular confutation to doctrines so very absurd at the first view but I will now as I promised demonstrate the necessity of the doctrine I have asserted which will be an effectual detection of the fallacy of all these other now recired And this I will do by these four arguments § II. FIRST if God in the Holy Scripture doth require of those that have lived wickedly as the condition of their absolution and reconciliation to himself that they be not only sorry for their sins and resolve upon a new course but expresly calls for actual performance of such resolutions and real reformation then those must be strangely bold and presumptuous men that will conceive hopes of pardon upon any other terms But that this which we assert and nothing less is the declared condition of mercy these following passages amongst innumerable others do abundantly evince The first I take notice of is that of the Prophet Isaiah Chap. I. Vers 11 13 c. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrices unto me saith the Lord I am full of the burnt-offerings of Rams and the fat of fed Beasts and I delight not in the bloud of Bullocks or of Lambs or of He-Goats Bring no more vain oblations incense is abomination to me the new Moons and Sabbaths the calling of Assemblies I cannot away with it is iniquity even the solemn meeting And when you spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you yea when ye make many prayers I will not hear your hands are full of bloud Wash you make you clean put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes cease to do evil Learn to doe well seek judgment relieve the oppressed judge the Fatherless plead for the Widow Come now and let us reason together saith the Lord though your sins be as searlet they shall be as white as snow c. Of like import is that of the Prophet Ezekiel Chap. 18. Vers 21 22 28. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed and keep all my statutes and doe that which is lawfull and right he shall surely live he shall not die All the transgressions that he hath committed they shall not be mentioned unto him Because he considereth and turneth away from all his transgressions that he hath committed he shall surely live he shall not die So also Micah 6. 6 7 8. Wherewithall shall I come before the Lord and bow my self before the High God shall I come before him with the burnt-offerings with Calves of a year old Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of Rams or with ten thousand rivers of Oil shall I give my first-born for my transgression the fruit of my Body for the sin of my Soul He hath shewed thee O man what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee but to doe justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God IN all which places God puts a slight upon all the most solemn expressions of penitence when they are dis-joined from actual amendment of life And touching Sacrifice it is very remarkable that though that was a rite of God's own allowance for the expiation of sin and had also conjoined with it the guilty persons confession of his fault and that particularly as Maimonides assures us and considering the usual cost of the oblation was a mulct upon the sinner and some kind of reparation to God yet this is declared of no efficacy without reformation THUS it was in the Old Testament and in the New the case is plainer if it be possible for thus John the Baptist preaches that they should not think it sufficient to submit to the baptism of repentance But bring forth fruits worthy of repentance Matt. 3. 8. And such is the discourse of our Saviour himself Matth. 7. 21. Not every one that saith unto me Lord Lord shall enter
to receive him till he soon perceived who it was but then seized with shame he makes from him with all the speed he could The Apostle forgetting his age and gravity follows him with all his might crying out My Son my Son dost thou fly thy Father thy aged unarmed Father Fear me not I come not armed to destroy thee but desirous to save thee I 'll pray for thee I 'll intercede with Christ Jesus on thy behalf I am ready to lay down my life to save thy Soul The revolted youth hearing this makes a stand and then with eyes cast down and weapons laid aside begins to tremble and at last weeping bitterly is in the words of the Historian Re-baptized in his own tears Then S. John embracing him prays for him fasts with him instructs him and leaves him not till he had not only restored him to the society of the Church but settled him in the publick Ministry thereof THE story is very admirable in all the parts of it as wherein amongst other things we may observe in the first place how quickly bad company insinuates its contagion and corrupts youthfull minds and that neither fine parts nor the best education are sufficient security for a vertuous course unless Apollos water as well as Paul plant and God also give the increase AGAIN it is worth observing how easy and sudden the transition is from a luxurious to a lawless life This young man began his risk in riot and ends it in robbery Although this be no strange thing for besides that intemperance makes men bold and rash and fit for any desperate enterprize they that are come to that that they care not what they spend are usually forced not to regard how they get it We note also from this story that great Wits and curious tempers are like razor mettle quickly turned and if they miscarry they become the most notorious Debauchees but if they be well set and hold right become most eminently usefull Moreover we may here also take notice how a sense of guilt and dis-ingenuity baffles a man's spirit dejects his courage disarms and subdues him whereas on the other side conscience of sincerity and good designs spirits and actuates a man above his age temper and common capacity But that which I principally remark in the story is the paternal affection in the aged Apostle toward this dissolute and lost young man how fresh the concern for him was in his thoughts when he came into those parts again where he left him with what strictness he requires the depositum of the Bishop how he forgets himself to recover him what charms there were in the countenance voice motion of the aged Father how strange a thing it was to be young Hector running away from an old Apostle an armed Captain not daring to stand before unarmed and infirm old age to observe the spirit the passion the flaming love of a good man to the Soul of a desperate sinner and in all this to see a lively resemblance of God's goodness to men For God doth not only as I have said before receive men upon their return but moves towards them invites nay draws them to himself He is so far from positively hardening sinners that he takes off their hardness he allures them by his promises prevents them by his grace way-lays them by his providence calls upon them by his word melts them by his kindness works upon them by his Spirit and this Spirit takes all advantageous seasons watches the mollia tempora fandi suggests thoughts to their minds holds their minds close and intent gives them a prospect of the other world and by several other ways without violence to their faculties helps forward their return to God § V. 4. LASTLY As the Earthly Father for joy of his Sons return forgets all his anger and the causes of it passes by his ingratitude and dissolution of manners and treats him with infinite demonstrations of kindness falling on his neck and kissing him So doth our Heavenly Father cast all the iniquities of the penitent ' behind his back blots them out of his book makes no severe reflections no bitter expostulations no upbraidings but passes an act of perfect amnesty and oblivion Justin Martyr in his Work against Trypho brings in our Saviour saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The words are no where to be found in the Gospel but the sense is That God takes men as they are and considers not how evil they have been so that now they become sincerely good This the Prophet Ezekiel frequently proclaims on the behalf of God Chap. 18. especially vers 22. All his sin that he hath committed shall not be once mentioned against him but in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live For as if men apostatize from hopefull and vertuous beginnings it shall not at all avail them that they set out well and began in the Spirit whenas they end in the Flesh upon which account it is a very vain thing for them to goe about to comfort themselves against their present looseness by remembring the time of their conversion and the great passion they have sometime had for Religion but which now they have apostatized from having lost their first love so on the contrary he that was a sinner but now is not i. e. is now sincerely returned from his licentiousness to his duty shall never have his former disobedience imputed to him by God THIS truth Philo represents handsomly in his Allegorical way when glossing upon what the Scripture saith of Enoch After his translation he was not found because God had translated him he paraphrases on this manner God saith he having changed him from an evil to a vertuous man the traces of his former wickedness were no more to be found then if no such thing had ever been committed BUT this gracious procedure of God with penitent sinners deserves to be more fully and particularly unfolded and if we diligently consider what the Scripture assures us of the greatness of God's pardoning mercy we shall observe these three remarkable circumstances all pregnant of unspeakable consolation 1. He pardons great and many sins not onely lighter provocations 2. He forgives repeated follies and relapsed sinners 3. His pardon is full and absolute 1. FIRST amongst men there are some sins that are scarcely if at all thought to be pardonable as where there is malice and treachery involved in the fact or where there is contumely added to the injury And sometimes the greatness of the person injured so inhances the offence as that it is not thought fit to pardon as for instance in Treason against the Supream Power But most certainly there are all these and many more aggravations in most voluntary sins committed against God and yet he pardons Exod. 34. 7. He pardons iniquity transgression and sin i. e. sin of all kinds and degrees whatsoever excepting only the sin against the Holy Ghost which our Saviour hath
told us shall never be forgiven And that sin it self whatsoever it consists in is only upon this account unpardonable because it hath a finally impenitent temper joyned with it otherwise were it possible that such a sinner should repent there would be no doubt of his pardon but bating that peculiar case there is no sin but God hath pardoned and will pardon I will not take upon me to say which were the greatest sins that ever were committed by mankind but I will instance in two that must needs be acknowledged to have been very great which yet have obtained pardon and they are the sin of our first Parents and the sin of the Jews in crucifying our Saviour IN the former of these there was the breach of a known Law and that so newly given as that it could not be forgotten and it was also an easy and reasonable Law God having allowed them all the Trees in the Garden and laid an interdict only upon that one and it was no hard matter to have denied themselves that for God's sake especially considering they came newly out of his hands and saw so freshly the display of his power and wisedom in the Creation of the World and had so many and great instances of his goodness towards themselves besides they had as yet no vitiated faculties nor so much as one example of sin before them but that of the Devils which they had seen to be most severely vindicated It was a hard thing to be first in the transgression and a bold thing to venture to provoke God and to be the first instance of sin to all posterity they had the concern of all mankind upon them as who they knew must stand or fall with them and having frequent tokens of God's presence with them to sin under his eye and to hearken to the suggestions of a vile Beast the Serpent against God was prodigiously strange and yet they did it and God was pleased to pardon them IN the latter of the instances namely the Jews crucifying our Saviour besides the greatness of the Person against whom they sinned putting to death the Lord of life and glory there was designed malice perjury and subornation contumely towards an holy Person ingratitude towards one that had done them all the good they were capable of there was contradiction to the plainest evidence of miracles of all kinds and to the conviction of their own Consciences Notwithstanding all which the same St. Peter who Acts 2. 23. had charged them home in these words Ye men of Israel have with wicked hands crucified and slain Jesus of Nazareth a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God by him did in the midst of you as ye your selves know c. yet in the 38. Verse he exhorts the same men to repentance and to be baptized that they may receive remission of sins and the singular favour of the gift of the Holy Ghost TO these and several other instances of great sins which might easily be added we may cast in for the greater evidence of the vastness of the divine mercy that he pardons not only single acts of sin how hainous soever but long courses and habits of sin and those of several natures and kinds as in Manasses and in the Publicans and Harlots but that we may rise higher yet in admiration of the divine clemency we observe 2. IN the second place that he pardons also relapsed sinners They have a saying Non licèt in bello his peccare that the first faults in war are severely vindicated because there all errours are fatal and searce leave a capacity of being repeated And there are some relations so near and intimate and their ligaments so nice and curious that a breach in them can never be repaired to knit again But the relation of a Father and the goodness of a God leave always room for pardon Nay further They say saith the Prophet Jeremiah if a man put away his Wife and she goe from him and become another man's shall he return to her again But thou O Israel hast plaid the harlot with many lovers yet return again unto me saith the Lord Jer. 2. 1 2. § VI. The doctrine of the Navatians carried a great breadth with it in the Primitive times which denied repentance to those that sinned after Baptism and for that reason it is thought many holy men in those days deferred their Baptism as long as they could that they might not defile their garments but goe from that washing unspotted out of the world The opinion seemed to proceed from extraordinary purity and holiness and therefore as I said prevailed much and had a great reputation in those times and it seems it took its rise from a mistake of a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews Chap. 6. 4. However it was damned by the most learned and holy Fathers of the Church and particularly St. Basil and Gr. Nazianzen call it a damnable doctrine and destructive of Souls in that it discouraged and kept men off from repentance which God is always ready to admit of if it be sincere and such as we have before described IT is true which Clemens of Alexandria hath said that to make a common practice of sinning and then pretending repentance as if we would give God and the Devil their turns is an argument both of an impenitent and unbelieving temper for as he saith afterwards These frequent repentances as it were of course betray rather an intention of sinning again then any design of leaving it and therefore find no acceptance with God And it is also certain that a man that hath frequently relapsed having thereby exceedingly multiplied his guilt must needs feel very bitter pangs and sharp remorse when he doth return and will be ever after very apt to question his own sincerity and which is worse it is to be feared that like as it is with bones which have been often out and set again they will be very apt to slip awry so this person will be justly looked upon as in great danger and therefore hath a necessity of extraordinary watchfullness over himself But notwithstanding all this if such a man after several falls and slips shall stand right and firm at last and demonstrate the truth of his now penitent state by the following course of an holy life there is no question to be made of his acceptance with a mercifull God For God doth not proceed with men upon such terms as we do our passions are stirred many times and the provocation is too great for us to be able to concoct but he is pure mind and reason hath no boiling passion no revenge seeks only the good of his Creatures and so they become at last capable of his favour and blessing he is contented and hath his end Besides he that hath made it our duty that as often as our Brother offends against us and repents so often we should forgive
as that no old score remains upon record against the Penitent it may raise in us great admiration of his infinite goodness beget the most amiable notions of him in our minds and provoke us to love him with all our hearts So our Saviour concludes in the Gospel that where most is forgiven there must undoubtedly lie the greatest obligations of love and gratitude The Apostle tells us Rom. 5. 7. That scarcely for a righteous man will one die but for a good man some would even dare to die All God's Attributes of power and wisedom and holiness are very amiable and lovely but this of his goodness in forgiving sins comes most home to us in that he doth not rigidly insist on his own right but comply with our necessity and relieve our misery To give and bestow benefits upon us is goodness but to forgive is greater because here he divests himself of his own right recedes from his own claim and that for our unspeakable benefit In short he seems not to consider himself but us only in the dispensations of his mercy he is as good as good can be and therefore there is all the reason in the world that we should love him as much as is possible And one of the best and most acceptable ways of expressing that is that which 3. THIRDLY I make a third inference viz. that we imitate this goodness and mercifullness of his this is prest upon us by our Saviour Be ye mercifull as your Father in Heaven is mercifull It is said of Cato that the strict sanctity of his own life made him a severe and rigid Magistrate he knew not how to pardon in other men what he would not permit in himself If God who is a holy and immaculate Being should severely animadvert our failings we could not blame him though we were undone by it nay it ought to be the greatest wonder to us in the whole world that he doth not do so considering the greatness of his Majesty the justice and wisedom of his Laws and such other things of this nature as we have formerly represented But it is the most absurd thing in nature that we who are great offenders our selves that have infinite need of mercy at God's hands that we should be cruel and vindictive towards each other that God should cover our follies and we blazon those of other men shall he pardon us worms and we be remorsless towards our Brethren doth he consider humane infirmity bind up the wounds of the contrite so as to leave no scar or blemish behind of all their former miscarriages and do we rake in the wounds proclaim the follies uncover the nakedness and shame of our neighbour is it tolerable for us to equal our selves with God or are offences greater against us then against him shall we dare to do what we dare not wish should be done to us Do not we pray Enter not into judgment with thy Servants c. and confess That if God be extream to mark what we have done amiss that none can abide it and do we scrupulously weigh severely aggravate and rigorously animadvert the sins of others against our selves doth God forgive us by talents and we unmercifully exact the utmost farthing INDEED we may observe it to be the genius and custom of evil men to remember invidiously the faults which penitent men have forsaken to the end that they may revenge themselves upon them for that change which condemns their own obstinate perseverance in such courses or as hoping to excuse or justify their constant naughtiness by remarking the temporary compliance of those other with them whose contrary course now shames and reproaches them But it is quite otherwise with all good men they partly out of a sense of humanity partly to incourage men to repentance and partly also to confirm and secure such as have repented from all temptations to apostasy draw a curtain over their former misdemeanours and forget what they have forsaken and God hath forgiven therefore if we will either take pattern by God or them we ought to doe so too LASTLY but above all the rest the consideration of God's pardon and the egregious circumstances thereof should be a mighty incouragement to all sinners to repentance when we remember how gracious a Father we grieve by a willfull destroying of our selves how much he pities us and longs for our return what a serene countenance hearty welcome full pardon gracious reception and how innumerable and inestimable blessings we shall have poured out upon us at our so doing And this brings me again to the second part of the penitent Son's entertainment to which therefore I now proceed CHAP. II. Of Sanctification THE CONTENTS § I. What is meant by the best Robe and that it is the usual phrase of Scripture to set out the ornaments of the mind by those of the body § II. Sanctification in different respects both goes before and follows after Justification § III. Three remarkable differences betwixt the measure of Sanctification which God requires and that which he accepts for the present or the different stature of Grace before Justification and after it § IV. The ways by which God works men up to those higher measures of Sanctification which he requires As 1. By mighty obligation working upon their gratitude and ingenuity 2. By the efficacy of Faith 3. By the gift of the Holy Ghost § 1. THERE is a never failing spring of kindness and good will in Parents towards their Children which flows with that life and vigour that nothing is able to dam it up or interrupt it so but that if it be obstructed one way it breaks out and discovers it self another If the Children prove singularly good and vertuous then paternal affection bears a mighty stream overflows all its banks the Parents feel an unspeakable delight and satisfaction and their Children are then the Crown of their age their joy and triumph If they happen to be but tolerable they are ready to interpret all to the best and prone to heap blessings and kindnesses upon them And if they degenerate and prove very bad and undutifull this though it checks the tide yet cannot divert the current for at worst they cannot cease to pity them There is in like manner an everlasting propension in Almighty God to do good to men insomuch that when they are very bad he pities them as soon as they begin to be good he loves and blesses them but when they become generously vertuous and holy he takes complacency in them and all these different degrees of divine favour we have lively represented to us in the Parable before us But we are now upon the second of them namely the great and singular blessings which the Father frankly bestows upon his Son now that he hath repented of his extravagancy and is reconciled to him And under this rank we may reckon these three special instances FIRST whereas the Father observed his Son to return in a