new and holy Life and be available to his true Conversion and Repentance and I believe this is Gods usual way by which he begins to effect this upon most Sinners by thus bringing them to some serious thinking and considering It is very great Mercy when God thus checks them in their career and calls to them by the loud voice of his Judgments and thus as he generally does puts the first stop to them and makes them bethink themselves and consider but then this method must not only awaken but keep their eyes open and make them see and consider those other Thoughts and Reasons which are the more proper seminal Principles that will be more likely to produce and beget this true Repentance Such as are 2. In the second place a serious reflection and thorough conviction of the Evil that is in Sin and of the real Good of Vertue as the only thing which can make us truly happy for till Men have brought themselves to be fully perswaded and convinced of this and to believe it as firmly as they do any truth in Mathematicks or any other Science they will never be brought truly to Repent that is to dislike and hate and renounce the one and heartily to love and persue and embrace the other for Men will still love their Sins and hanker after them and be ready to comply and close with them upon every occasion if they only fall out with them sometimes as Lovers do with what they like and admire and tho' there may be some bickerings between them and some penitential passions and resentments now and then yet they may still have their Heart if they do not upon wise observations and thorough convictions believe them to be enemies to their Welfare and Happiness to the comfort of their Lives here and their Eternal Salvation hereafter and that they get nothing by them but poor and empty and sickly pleasures but that they bring substantial misery and bitter remorse and anguish of Mind and a thousand mischiefs and inconveniences along with them at present besides the terrible hazards and dangers of another World so that they are by no means to be loved or chosen if we love our selves or choose our own Happiness For we must bring it to this if we would be steddy and certain to the first Principles of Self-preservation and a desire of our own Happiness which lyes at the root of our Nature and what we shall alwayes act upon if we rightly understand it and do not grosly err and mistake about it and a few wise observations and a little sober thinking and considering will easily satisfie us and fully convince us that Vice is the certain cause of misery to us and that Vertue is the only way to be truly easie and happy The Sinner will be convinced of this by his own experience when he reflects upon his past follies and sees how little he has got by his Sins but shame and sorrow and trouble of Mind perhaps a sickly and diseased Body and a wasted Estate and wretched Beggery and every thing that shall make him miserable in this World before he goes to the greater misery of another For do we not dayly see this how one Man brings himself by his Sins to a morsel of bread how he shipwrecks his Fortunes as well as his Conscience by Luxury and Prodigality another consumes his Body as well as his Estate by Debauchery Lust and Intemperance by these they sin as the Apostle remarks against their own Bodies as well as against their Souls they make them bear the scars and marks of their Sins upon them and become Martyrs in the Devils service and endure often more torture of Body for their Sins than other Martyrs have done for their Religion sacrifice their Lives to them and by living too fast as they call it bring an untimely death upon themselves and are in so much hast sometimes to dye that their Bodies often rot before they come into their graves If these mischiefs do not follow all Sins yet some others do and the greatest of all is inseparable from them which is torment and anguish of Conscience and pain and uneasiness of Mind which every Man feels unless his Conscience be stupified and mortified which is a worse state than the other upon the commission of any great Sin and this is ten times greater than any fancied pleasure in it This is a sting a wound a prick upon the most tender part of a Mans Soul a dart struck through his Liver a Worm gnawing upon his Vitals nothing is so close and so cutting a pain and misery as a Man 's own ill Conscience when it is let loose upon him and like a Fury falls upon him with its utmost rage lashes him with its snaky whips and burns him with its fiery torches 't is then a Devil let loose and a Hell kindled within his own bosom They who have felt but a little of it know it is more exquisite pain than any belongs to the Body and what is it then to endure this for ever and lye under that and the further anger of God to all Eternity Oh madness and folly that wants a name that will do this for any Sin whatever Oh the dreadful Evil of Sin that brings all this and so many other mischiefs upon us But 3. Vertue on the contrary has a thousand Comforts Blessings and Goods belonging to it which should make us love it as we do our selves and choose it as heartily and firmly as we do our own Happiness When we rightly understand and consider it we shall find Reason to do so that neither disturbs our Mind nor diseases our Body nor squanders away our Estate nor brings any reproach and discredit along with it as Vice generally does and it takes away no real Good or true Pleasure or proper Enjoyment from us but it allowes us all that we can desire or that our Nature was made for within the due bounds and limits of our Duty and within those we may enjoy as much Vertuously and Innocently as the greatest Liberty and Debauchery can afford the Sinner Vertue does not destroy our Pleasures but refines and purifies them and so makes them sweeter and better and draws them off from the filthiness and sediment and bitterness that lyes alwayes at the bottom of all sinful Pleasures and Enjoyments No Man ever repented of his Vertues or was sorry that he had done a good Action but he finds great comfort and satisfaction within himself when he reflects upon it and it is a prop and stay to his Mind and he rests securely upon it and is chearful confident and erect under all accidents and all dangers and difficulties whatsoever His Heart standeth right and approveth it self to God and to his own thoughts having no ill designs no base and mean ends and purposes but such only as are good and vertuous and this gives him great peace firmness of Mind and bravery of Spirit and
Mercy and judges himself as incapable of it as the damned in Hell when Gods Spirit has left him so that he can neither pray nor do any thing to relieve himself but lyes as a condemned Caitiff a Malefactor sentenced past all hopes of Pardon and only expecting Punishment and the last stroke of Vengeance this is a sad a deplorable condition which I have known many a Sinner in under a Wounded Spirit and had one great instance before me when I was writing this These Wounds are not felt indeed by many a Sinner in the heat of Blood in the career of his Lusts and the hot persuit of his Sins when in his high frolicks and jovial diversions he drowns the noise of his Conscience or lulls it asleep with charming Pleasures or full Cups or some unthinking madness but it will awake one time or other and like a sleeping Lyon when 't is roused up by some Judgment by some Sickness or Affliction it will fall terribly upon him with rage and fury and tear and consume him then all the wounds which sin gave it will bleed afresh and it will feel them afterwards unless they have been cured by a timely repentance if they have festered and gangrened and mortified the Soul for a time yet when it comes to it self it will feel them with unexpressible pain and anguish which nothing can asswage I mean when a Man has sin'd away his Life and Death and his Sins are set together before him and 't is hard to know which is the more terrible When the Sting of Death swelled up with Sin and Guilt strikes as deep into a Man's Conscience and wounds his Spirit as Death it self strikes into his Body with its fatal dart so that he suffers a double death at the same time and the Spiritual far more painful than the Bodily I take a Wounded Spirit here in the highest and most common sense and though when a Mans Spirit is dejected and sunk with any thing 't is very hard to bear it which may be the sense of the Wise Mans words in the forequoted place when the strength of a Mans Mind is lost which should support him under all his infirmities that he is subject to from without yet nothing does so sink it so wound and destroy it as Sin and Guilt especially when it is come to such a degree and to such a sad condition as we commonly mean by a Wounded Spirit i. e. a Mind deeply pierced with the sense of its own Guilt and of Gods Anger upon it This likewise admits of degrees and in some cases 't is a very happy thing for a Sinner and 't is to be sure alwayes a just Punishment I shall therefore in the Third place briefly consider what is the proper Cure and Remedy of such a wounded Spirit or troubled Mind for there is no Spiritual Illness but what is curable if we take it in time by Religion no Wound of Soul but what there is Balm for in Gilead in Christianity there is no Disease too great for our Heavenly Physician but what the Gospel has a proper and certain Remedy for if we duely and timely apply it A Man may tarry too long indeed and not use the Physick till it be too late till Death comes and puts an end to the time of Tryal and the time of Repentance and then a Wounded Spirit i. e. the extremest Sorrow for a Mans Sins the deepest Contrition of Soul for them cannot come up to true Gospel Repentance to which there is a certain promise of Pardon and Forgiveness for that is only upon turning to God and leaving all our Sins and leading a new Life and bringing forth the Fruits of Repentance by Obedience to the Gospel for the future which is a necessary condition by the terms of the Gospel which he cannot perform whom God cuts off before he can do it and therefore such an one must be left to the Infinite Mercy and Righteous Judgment of God to be dealt with by such measures as are not within the Covenant of Grace or the Terms of the Gospel for by those I cannot see any title he has to Pardon But in other Cases a Wounded Spirit may be the greatest Mercy and even the very beginning of Health or of a Cure to a Soul when God does not suffer a Man to go on senslesly in his Sins till he come to a seered Conscience and a reprobate Sense and to hardness of Heart and blindness of Mind but by some methods of his Grace and Providence alarums his Conscience and awakens his stupid Mind and brings his almost sensless and stupified Soul to some Spiritual sense of his condition Then his Soul will be wounded as Davids was when he reflects upon those Sins which he committed without consideration and he will be sore struck and smitten as every Penitent must at the remembrance of his evil wayes All Repentance is such a wounding of the Soul as makes its Heart bleed within it and its Blood and Spirits melt into Tears and Sorrow for what it has done 't is not such an easie thing as most men think it to be 't is such a Pain such a Wound to the Soul that the Pleasure of the greatest Sin is but a poor trifle to it and no man that rightly understood it would venture upon any Sin from the reserved hopes of it Repentance is a bitter Remedy made up of very strong and unpleasant ingredients and we must go through a long course to purge out the old Disease and take away the root of it so that before a wicked mind can be cured by it it must be cut and lanced and wounded and have very severe applications made to it The work of Regeneration or the New Birth cannot be wrought without many pangs or throwes nor does God ever almost bring a bad man to become a good one without some trouble and disorder of Mind There is a trouble of Mind indeed which is excessive and unreasonable for every Sinner ought in some measure to be troubled in Mind and he has not a due sense of his Sins if he is not but there is a trouble of Mind which takes away the hopes of Mercy and throwes Men into despair which is commonly called a Wounded Spirit and 't is so in the highest degree and whether there is any Remedy for that and what it is and what advice is to be given in such a case and what judgment to be made of it I shall briefly consider 1. Then this is often joyned with Melancholly of Body which is very hard to be cured and till it be so it is apt to darken the Mind and bring a cloud over the Spirits and to fill the Soul with very black Idea's and Imaginations and to hinder it from making true judgment of it self or its own actions and this is as pityable and ought as much to be remedied by Physick and Care as other Diseases of Body for I have known
a sound and healthful Body a fair and good Reputation a quiet and easie Mind or a shattered and rotten Carkass a scandalous and infamous Life a guilty and disordered and distracted Conscience Are not most of the pleasures of Sin not only short but sickly That have a sharp and poysonous sting hid under all their sweetness so that however they go off to the Palate yet they are very bitter after they are gone down whereas the pleasures of Vertue are clear and pure and lasting not mixt with any of those dregs which foul and embitter Sin but purified from all the sediment and the lees that are at the bottom of Sensuality and Wickedness Religion does not deny us any truly Natural and proper Pleasure and Enjoyment but only keeps us within the bounds of Innocency and Vertue within which compass a Man may enjoy all the Pleasure that he can wish or was made for It does not by its Rules of Mortification and Self-denyal destroy or cut off any Natural Appetite or true part of us that is not the meaning of cutting off a right Hand or plucking out a right Eye Matth. 5.29 30. but only to destroy the unnatural Excesses to cut off the vitious Corruptions to take away the depraved and inordinate Affections and Lusts that will grow too strong and unruly without a wife conduct and government of our selves by the rules of Vertue and the restraints of Reason and Religion and would any Man think fit to have those let loose and have the reins thrown upon their neck without any check or controul Will he complain of the severity of Religion and the loss of his Natural Freedom by the restraints of morose and peevish Vertue as he calls it if he be not allowed the full swinge of his Lusts and the gratifying of his immoderate Passions and Desires in all manner of instances Then adieu not only to the government of Vertue and Religion but the government of all Humane Laws and Worldly Wisdom which for the conveniency of this World and the Peace Quiet and Comfort of this present Life has thought fit to keep Mens Lusts and Passions within such bounds under the severest penalties and to prohibit the same Sins under the punishments of this World that God has done under the far greater punishments of another for nothing is more pernicious and destructive to the welfare of a Kingdom as well as of particular Men then Licentiousness and Debauchery which besides the immediate Judgments of God upon it does by its own Nature bring a thousand present Miseries and known Evils along with it besides the unknown and unspeakable Miseries that attend it in another World Can any Sinner deny this when he seriously thinks and considers of it Does not his own observation and his own experience by which I hope he will be instructed if by nothing else teach him that this is the Nature of Sin That as 't is a common pest and plague to the World and to Mankind in general so 't is generally a disease to his Body a moth and canker to his Estate and a worm to his Conscience Whereas Vertue is health and soundness to his Body life to his Soul and grace to his Neck as the Wise Man observes That length of dayes are in her right hand and in her left hand riches and honour That she is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her and happy is every one that retaineth her Prov. 3.16 17 18 22. This true Notion of Vertue which is not an empty Panegyrick but a strict Truth founded in Nature that will alwayes be true of it and that all Wise Men will find to be so this will sufficiently answer the first and greatest Temptation by which Sin entices and allures unthinking Men with the bait of present Pleasures and Enjoyments But 2. The next greatest Temptation to Sin is that of Example which is so strong and powerful that few can resist it who love to be modish and in the fashion as too many Vices generally are and therefore are more taking upon that account and lose their reproach and shame due to them by the great party and number they have on their side which otherwise would sneak and be confounded if they stood alone but when so many are brought over to them others follow if it be only for company and many Men are drawn in even contrary to their inclinations by the Example of others because they do not care to be singular nor to be reproached for being so but are willing to do what they see so many others do and hope they shall fare as well as they and escape all the seeming dangers of their Sins both here and hereafter as well as the rest of their Neighbours or the great number of their fellow Sinners Now this however common and powerful it be yet is the most unreasonable thing in the World for is any Man in another case willing to be sick or to dye for company Is any so easie or so complaisant as to pledge another in a cup of Poyson Or would he not stop the mad Frolick when he saw the rest of the company drop down dead before him Is any Man unwilling to avoid the Plague if he can because there is a general infection and because so many of his Neighbours or his Acquaintance have dyed of it Would any refuse the saving his Life and escaping if he could upon a plank because the rest of his company are sinking and drowning Did Men think it as much worth their while to save their Souls as their Lives how many others soever lost them had they as just and terrible apprehensions of their own Damnation as they have of their dying this Temptation of Example and Company would be quickly taken off and signifie nothing For alas what comfort will it be in the flames of Hell to hear so many others roaring and howling in them To hear their hideous cryes and tortures and lamentations will not abate their own but rather increase them therefore the Rich Man in the Parable Luke 16.28 did not desire the company of his Brethren there but rather sought to prevent their coming into that place of torment The Devils indeed from the unaccountable malice of their Nature tempt others to be as wicked and as miserable as themselves and every one does their work who entices another to any Sin but this will not ease their pains but augment them by adding more mischief and so more guilt to them No Man who knows what it is to be happy but must wish to be so tho' he were alone and no Man who knows that Vertue alone is the way to be happy but must choose to be Vertuous though he saw never so many others Wicked let them reproach and laugh at him as long as they please for a Man singular and by himself let them count his Life folly for being so strict and so precise if it be in the great
They might have some faint hopes and probable surmizes and small expectations of this from his Natural Goodness as Malefactors may presume and hope such a thing from the temper and disposition of a good Governour but they could not necessarily conclude it or be any way ascertained of it They might have such an uncertain encouragement to hope this as the Men of Niniveh had Jonah 3.9 Who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not and this was as high as Mens hopes could rise without a Revelation of Gods pardoning them upon Repentance Their Repentance indeed was the most likely means to turn away his fierce Anger and the best thing they could do but they could not be certain that this would succeed and be effectual but in their greatest Humiliation and Mourning and Fasting they must with a doubtful Heart and a trembling Hand offer their Petitions to Heaven as a condemned Prisoner does to his angry Judge or incensed Prince not knowing whether he will vouchsafe to hearken to it or so much as to cast his eye upon it The greatest incouragement to Repentance is our being sure that it will obtain our Pardon and restore us certainly to Favour and set us right in the Court of Heaven and since we that know this can yet very hardly be perswaded to a Duty that is not so very pleasant or so very easie with what disadvantages must those who knew not this be brought to it with what desponding fears and uncertain hopes must the Prodigal Luke 15. take a weary journey and return home to his Fathers house who knew not whether he should be admitted or no when he came there with what a doubtful and perplexed Mind with what weary paces and dispirited motions must he take every step thither when he could not tell what he should meet with at his journeys end but had too much reason to fear he should for ever be cast out and excluded as he might have been by his good Father and this must be the case of the most penitent Sinner and of all Mankind when without a Revelation they had no assurance of Pardon though upon their Repentance but only an uncertain hope and presumption of it but now the greatest Sinner who has lived never so prodigally and wickedly has a thousand times greater incouragements to return and leave off all his vicious and riotous courses of living because he is most certainly assured that if he does so his Heavenly Father will receive him with open arms and the heartiest embraces and treat him as kindly and indulgently as if he had served him many years neither had transgrest at any time his commandment ver 29. In a word we have the same incouragements to repent and leave our Sins now under the Gospel as Rebels have to come in and lay down their Arms when there is a Proclamation of Pardon and an Act of Indemnity past to all that do so whereas before there was only an uncertain presumption of the Princes Mercy which they could not be sure of without a Revelation 2. We have not only Pardon given us upon promise now but granted upon a most valuable consideration and founded upon a full Expiation of Guilt and Atonement of Sin by a Sacrifice the most perfect Sacrifice of the Son of God and so purchased for us and made over to us by a Covenant established and confirmed by the Blood of Christ Pardon of Sin is so great a thing so Princely and so singular a favour the greatest Act indeed that a Prince can do and 't is so desirable so comfortable to a poor Criminal than which nothing in the World can be more valuable to him that it can never be too well assured to us and we can never be too much satisfied in it Guilt is alwayes so fearful and timorous so terrible and so uneasie a thing 't is such a heavy load and burden lying upon a Mans Mind such a deep wound upon the tenderest part of a Mans Soul that like a prick upon a Nerve it puts the whole Man into convulsions and agonies and fills him with unexpressible pains and tortures There is no such rack no such Hell indeed as what is set up and kindled in a Man 's own breast by his guilty Conscience when he is haunted by his own Sins as so many Hellish Fiends and lasht by them like so many snaky Furies that poyson and sting him to the very Heart and his own fears of Vengeance and future Punishment represent sad and frightful images like to so many Specters alwayes appearing before his Mind and therefore there is no such comfort as that which delivers us from Guilt no such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or blessed news as what our Saviour pronounces to a Sinner by the Gospel Son be of good chear thy sins are forgiven thee there is no such anodine as that which plucks out the sting of Sin and takes away the pains and the smartings of a wounded Conscience that which does this puts not only Oyl into the Wounds but new Life into the fainting Soul 't is like taking a Man off from the Rack or the Wheel and giving him more ease than he feels when he has just voided a Stone after a sharp fit And therefore the Remedy that does this is the most choice the most precious and valuable thing in the World What that is we now know by the Gospel but Mankind could not know by Natural Light what would expiate Sin and certainly take away Guilt and therefore the Heathens though they tryed all means by their Lustrations Sacrifices Purgations and other ways for the sense of their Guilt put them upon all attempts to get rid of it yet they could never find what would certainly do it but must be still fearful and melancholly under their acknowledged Guilt and unattoned Crimes Whether thousand of rams or ten thousand rivers of oyl would be accepted as a price of their Sins they could not tell or whether it would not cost more to redeem a Soul whether if they brought their first-born and offered the fruit of their Bodies for the sin of their Souls or offered up their own Blood as was sometimes done 't would be effectual was very uncertain but there was nothing they thought too dear it seems nothing however cruel either to themselves or others that they would stick at in hopes to accomplish this The most barbarous and inhumane superstition of the Heathen World in offering up their Children to Molech in offering the Sacrifices of Men which was no unusual thing among them arose from the great streight and the great darkness they were in as to the expiation of Guilt and the atonement of Sin which was so dreadful so painful that they could not bear it and yet knew not how to remove it But now God be thanked we have that which should chear up our Spirits and put us upon a hearty
Grace and Goodness tho' they have not already attained neither are already perfect as the Apostle speaks of himself Phil. 3.12 yet they are alwayes safe and alwayes ready for the coming of the Son of Man and their whole Life is a most sure a most comfortable preparation for Death But these are very few I doubt not only to the general number of Mankind but even to good Men for most of the good Men we read of in Scripture were some time or other guilty of great and wilful Faults as Noah and Abraham and David and St. Peter and St. Paul and Mary Magdalene and whilst they were so and before they had recovered themselves by Repentance I cannot but think them in a bad state for Mens states are not fixt and certain in this Life but are alterable and changed according to their outward actions and the inward temper of their Minds and when ever a wilful and a known Sin breaks the course of Vertue and destroys the habit of Goodness in their Souls it breaks their good state and destroys their comfortable condition As when a Disease strikes the Vitals of our Body and overcomes the Strength and Health of our Constitution unless we get it off it will certainly bring Death along with it God indeed has prescribed us a certain Remedy and an infallible Cure for all Mortal Sins and the greatest Spiritual Maladies and Diseases that would otherwise destroy us and bring Death upon us and that is Repentance which for the sake of Christ and his Merits and by the Mercy and Promise of God shall recover us out of that miserable and mortal state into which every wilful Sin had cast us This shall set us right again in the Court of Heaven where we were cast and condemned before and this shall bring us to a state of Life and Grace who were before struck with the sentence of Death And blessed be God who has thus graciously provided for poor and otherwise lost Sinners by Jesus Christ But Repentance alas though it be a sure Remedy yet is not so easie a one as we imagine 't is a very bitter dose that must not only go down very unpleasantly but must work strongly and powerfully upon our Minds it must not only make us sick and sorrowful contrite and troubled at the very Heart for every Transgression but it must purge out of our Souls every Sin and carry off every vile Lust and wicked Inclination It must not only work upon the peccant humours and so put the Soul into great trouble and disorder but it must perfectly heal and cure it and to do that it must take away the root of the disease it must search to the bottom of the Heart it must touch us to the quick in the tenderest part of us in the most darling Sin and most beloved Lust and it must cut and launce so deep that no secret corruption remain within and no fomes Morbi be left behind In a word it must perfectly cure the Soul and whatever disease it laboured under it must quite remove it so that it never return again upon it for 't is but a palliating a counterfeit or an imperfect cure till this be done And till the Mind be perfectly restored and amended and made better it has not truly repented and therefore the Scripture requires in Repentance not only a broken Heart which is the most significant phrase in the World for the deepest trouble of Mind for our past Sins but it requires a new Heart and a new Soul and a new Creature and a new Man to make up true Repentance and not only that we be renewed in the Spirit of our Minds but that we bring forth fruits worthy of Repentance and that we turn from every evil way and leave and forsake every Sin that we have ever been guilty of as I have more largely shown before We must do all this before we can be said truly to Repent and before we can have any good grounds to expect Pardon of any wilful Sin we ever committed in our whole lives we must thus Repent of it And though we are as sure of forgiveness if we do so as if we had never committed it which is the greatest favour in the World yet how will a poor penitent be alwayes afraid that he has not been sufficiently sorrowful and fully repented of his Sins how will his former Guilt affright him when it stares him in the face and how will the sad load of all his Sins lye heavy upon his Conscience when he is brought to a due sense of them and how must he be contented to lose a great deal of that comfort in his Mind here though he may be safe hereafter and though his Repentance may put him into a good condition yet it will make his Heart sorrowful and the remembrance of his Sins will make it often bleed afresh within him And when he looks back upon his past danger he must tremble at it tho' he has reason to hope he has escaped it and it must keep him alwayes humble and not over-confident of himself and though he has his Pardon in his hand yet he must still look upon it with tears in his eyes Nothing can truly satisfie a Man that he has repented of his Sins but that he has left them out of Religious Grounds and Principles and has had so much tryal of himself as to know he would not commit them though he were in the same circumstances and temptations that he was in before And thus when a bad Man is become a good one when he that was careless and irreligious is become pious and devout when he that was vitious and debauch'd is become sober and vertuous when he that was unjust becomes just and righteous and besides restitution for all past injustice would not commit one act of it to gain all the World when he that stole steals no more and he that was given to drunkenness or uncleanness or any other Sin wholly leaves and forsakes it and is brought by Religion to be quite another Man than he was before then and not till then is his Repentance such as may make him hope for Pardon when he lives and prepare him to dye with comfort For to proceed a little further in this great concern to make a Soul fit and ready for its immediate entering upon another state it must have these two qualifications at that time 1. It must be thoroughly purged from every Vitious Habit or else it is neither meet to be partaker of the inheritance of the Saints in light nor capable of the Pure and Spiritual and Heavenly Happiness As the Tree falls so it lyes sayes the Wise Man Ecclesiastes 11.3 And the same habit and temper as to the main which the Soul carries out of this World will abide with it in the other If any one habitual Wickedness remain upon it or the love of any one Sin be so rooted in it that if it lived
is and hinder Men from ever becoming better 2 Let us take care to avoid all manner of wilful Sin and especially all those great ones that come near and any way approach to this Sin against the Holy Ghost A very wilful Sin in a Christian especially is in some fense a Sin against the Holy Ghost 't is a grieving a quenching and a resisting the Spirit in the language of Holy Scripture That Blessed Spirit is concerned as the great promoter of Vertue and Goodness in the World and as the great Principle of it in the Hearts of Men and whenever we do any wicked thing we offer violence to that and by our rude and vicious carriage we affront and grieve and at last banish and drive away that Blessed Guest out of our Souls Whatever is Wicked and Sinful is so contrary to his Pure and Excellent Nature that it is highly offensive to him and if we go on in a course of long and customary Wickedness we sin the more against him and come the nearer to that sad and wretched state that is unpardonable I do not think indeed that any one Sin or particular Act of any Sin whatever puts us into that condition but as every Sickness and Indisposition of Body is a tendency to Death and Mortality so every wilful Sin is a corruption of the Mind and an approach to a state of Spiritual Death And there are some Sins that bring this sooner upon us as the acting against our Consciences and the sense of our own Minds an opposing the Truth that is evident to us a scoffing at Religion and making a mock of Sin an abusing the Scriptures and ridiculing the Holy Word of God an obstinate resistance of all the motions of Gods Holy Spirit upon our Minds These and such like gross and obstinate impieties though I do not think they are any of them the very Sin against the Holy Ghost for that ought not to be extended further than we have a warrant from Scripture yet they are so many approaches as it were to it and have more of the ill symptoms of that upon them and therefore we ought especially to avoid them lest they bring us by degrees into that sad state which is unpardonable for though one Sin I believe do not do this yet a great many may and especially such as those which do so waste the Conscience and corrupt the Mind as to make it uncurable And this is the saddest State and Condition in the World next to the State of Hell and Damnation tho' it be not the immediate Sin against the Holy Ghost Having endeavoured to give the plainest and fullest Satisfaction I can to the most doubtful and scrupulous Minds about this Sin of the Holy Ghost I shall now Discourse of some other things of a Lesser Nature which many Penitents and good Men are apt to be greatly dissatisfied with and have dark and wrong thoughts about As I. Concupiscence the Lustings of the Flesh or struggle between that and the Spirit which they find in themselves II. Trouble of Mind and a wounded Spirit which many lye under by reason of their Sins or by reason of Melancholly or both together SECT III. Of Concupiscence the Lustings of the Flesh or struggle between that and the Spirit THE right understanding of our selves is very necessary to the right understanding of Religion Religion is fitted and adapted to Humane Nature in its present state and capacity in this World and is designed not to destroy it but to perfect and improve it and raise it to its true Happiness and Perfection We cannot be like the Angels in Heaven nor like pure and glorious Spirits whilst we live here upon Earth and have Bodies of Flesh and Blood united to our Souls God who made us and knows our Frame did not intend to destroy and undo his own Creation by the Precepts of Religion nor make us cease to be Men by becoming Christians We find indeed in our selves a great many weaknesses and corruptions strong passions and sensual inclinations which if we did not wisely govern would be great occasions of Sin to us and if we let them loose would carry us into a thousand Mischiefs as well as Sins and Wickednesses They who give the reins to those and the full swinge to their Natural Lusts and Passions run into all Vice and Debauchery and commit all uncleanness with greediness And the best of Men cannot be wholly free from that Original Concupiscence and those Sensual Motions and Desires that are not alwayes agreeable to Reason and Religion but they complain of this bondage of corruption and this body of death which they cannot be delivered from Rom. 8.21 and 7.24 Grace and Religion though it gives us another Principle and conveys new powers of a Divine and Spiritual Life into our Souls yet whilst the Animal and Sensual Life remains and whilst we are compounded of Flesh and Blood as well as Spirit and Reason and have a Carnal as well as Spiritual Principle in us there will be a mighty struggle and a great contest between those two and a kind of civil war in our breasts between those different Parties and which of those shall be uppermost and have the chief Power and gain the Victory is the great point and the great concern of all Vertue and Religion since in all of us as the Apostle sayes The Flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the Flesh and these are contrary one to the other so that we cannot do the things that we would Gal. 5.17 And this we know by Experience as well as by Revelation Now this Concupiscence that remaineth in good Men is often matter of great trouble to them and they know not what to judge of it or how far it is a Sin and ought to be Repented of and what way they may best overcome it I shall therefore to clear and satisfie their thoughts about this matter of the struggle or Lusting between the Flesh and Spirit show these three things First That mere Lusting on either side is not what makes either Sin or Vertue or denominates a bad or a good Man Secondly That these are the proper matter of Vice or Vertue in which the tryal and exercise of them lye Thirdly That we ought to lessen the Power of the Fleshly Lusting and increase that of the Spirit and what are the proper means to do this I shall briefly consider First That meer Lusting on either side is not what makes either Sin or Vertue nor what constitutes or denominates a bad or a good Man For this Lusting is in both good and bad though according to several degrees and measures in the one the Lusting of the Flesh prevails and in the other that of the Spirit and 't is from this the prevalency of either of these and not the meer contention of them that we are counted good or bad before God The best of Men may have the same Passions Appetites and
offer 4. Then Such a Repentance as the Gospel makes the condition of Pardon and Salvation is nothing less than a constant Obedience and an entire and universal Goodness of Life at least after a wicked one or after great failures and miscarriages for Repentance as I have often said is to the Soul like a recovery of Health to the Body after some great Sickness or Illness The whole Body or the part ill affected must be made perfectly well and restored to its former strength and soundness or else it cannot be said to be recovered The Disease must be throughly got off the sickly matter must be discharged the illness must be cured and removed and the Patient must get his former strength and be able to perform the proper and vital operations or else we cannot say he is well So a Sinner must wholly get rid of his past Sins must purge them all out by Sorrow and Contrition must have his Mind wholly freed from them and himself brought to such a Spiritual strength and soundness as to perform the Duties and Operations of the new Life or else he is not recovered by Repentance nor brought from a bad state to a good one He may be under a method of Cure indeed as a sick Man is under a course of Physick whilst he is under Sorrow for Sin and Contrition and Compunction and the like which are good means and instruments and beginnings of Repentance and so are mistaken for the thing it self but his Repentance is not finish'd nor is the great work perfect and compleat till from a bad Man in any kind he is become a good one till this is done which God knows is not the most easie nor the most speedy thing in the World but requires long time and great care and pains and labour there is no title that I know of to Pardon by the Terms of the Gospel nor is there any true Gospel Repentance such as we can give any warrant or assurance of remission to by the Covenant of Grace or the known and ordinary Rules of Gods Mercy Were Repentance only a sudden Passion or a transient Act of the Mind were it only an inward Sorrow Trouble and Compunction of Heart it might be quickly performed and no Sinner would be without it but Cain and Herod and Judas might be said to Repent thus far and after this fashion for thus the one repented and said I have sinned Mat. 27.3 4. the second was exceeding sorry for what he had done Matth. 6.26 and the other was so sensible of his Sin that he cryed out My punishment is greater than I can bear Gen. 4.13 But true Repentance is only known and made to be so by an habitual and lasting change both of Mind and Life by an actual amendment and reformation by a turning away from all our evil deeds and all our wickedness whatsoever that we have committed and doing that which is lawful and right which is the clearest and fullest Scripture expression that gives us the true Nature of Repentance which includes constant and actual Obedience and destroyes these foolish and wicked reserves of securing our selves by playing an after-game of Repentance They who design this have no sense of the true worth and excellency of Religion but are only for making use of it for a little turn at the last as Goal-birds learn to read meerly for the sake of their Neck-verse for though they like their Sins much better and would alwayes live in them it is plain if they were left to their choice yet they at last unwillingly bring themselves to part with them as Men throw over their Goods in a Storm for fear they should be lost and Shipwreck'd with them Thus miserably do they mistake and misunderstand the true Nature of Repentance which is a perfect changing the Habit and Temper and Frame of a Mans Mind and bringing other Thoughts and Principles and Inclinations into it which is called in Scripture a new Heart and a new Spirit and this producing an entire and permanent and universal change of the Life and Actions and making a Man become better in every particular and in the whole a very good Man 5. It is observable that Repentance is all along in the Gospel made a Duty previous and antecedent to Christianity and what was supposed to go before Baptism and what was necessary before-hand to fit and prepare Men to become Christians thus they were to repent and be baptized Acts 2.38 John the Baptist who was to prepare the way for Christianity did it by preaching Repentance for this reason Because the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand Matth. 3.2 i. e. Christianity or the state of the Gospel which is agreed by all to be there meant by the kingdom of Heaven was now approaching and our Blessed Saviour upon that Principle and Argument preach'd the same Duty ver 17. From that time he began to preach and to say Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand And the Disciples of Christ preach'd this Duty Mark 6.12 when they were to prepare and dispose Men to receive Christ and to embrace Christianity and when any that were adult were received into the Church and Christianity by Baptism they were supposed to be Penitents before they were Christians It was a Duty and a Condition alwayes implyed and required that they Repented of their past Sins and sincerely promised and resolved upon a new course of Life That they who had their conversation in times past in the lusts of the flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by Nature the children of wrath as the Apostle speaks Eph. 2.3 i. e. in the state they were in before they were Christians for the Gospel considers all Mankind as in a state of Sin and Guilt before they are admitted into Christianity which is a state of Pardon and Salvation that these when they were made Christians were to put off the old man with his deeds Col. 3.9 i. e. all the old Habits and Acts of Sin which they were guilty of in their unchristian state and were to put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness Eph. 4.24 and they were to become new creatures in Christ Jesus and were therefore then said to be regenerated and to be born again and are represented in Scripture as dying unto all sin in Baptism that they should not henceforth live any longer therein Rom. 6.2 They are buried with Christ by baptism into his death that like as Christ was raised from the dead even so we also who are baptized into his death should walk in newness of life ver 3. So that after Baptism we should reckon our selves to be dead unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ ver 11. So that the body of sin is then to be put off and destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin ver 6. Thus though Men were considered as Sinners before their Baptism
of Religion and now he denyes those and his Life both alike because he cannot keep them Is he now to begin to practice the Vertues of Chastity and Temperance and Sobriety which he never did before then he hath put them off to a very convenient season when his Vices have quite left him and so if Vertues will come of themselves like guests uninvited there is no other company to hinder them but he was as vertuous and sober almost half his Life I mean when he was asleep as he can be now when he is as incapable of the contrary acts as he was then and is only like the Enthusiast cured of seeing vanity when he lost his Eyes but perhaps not of being vain for the ghosts and spirits of his departed Sins may still haunt and possess him If these Christian Vertues are necessary to be practiced in order to our Eternal Salvation a dying Repentance cannot be sufficient without them if it be then those particular Precepts and Commands must be set aside by it as well as the other general ones I mentioned for 't is certain he can no more practice these Vertues now than he could in his Mothers Womb and they might be as well infused into him then as they can be now without any practice and something better because there were then no contrary Habits to hinder them But the Doctrine of infused Habits is like the Hypothesis of Transfusion of Blood contrary to Nature and Experience and the dying Man may as well depend upon one for his Body as the other for his Soul 3. The salvability and sufficiency of a meer dying Repentance as it sets by and discharges us from all those general and particular Commands of Christianity so also from the whole Christian engagement and Baptismal Covenant For can that then be any way made good or performed in any measure when a Man has violated it all his Life and notoriously broken it in all the parts that belong to it Can he then sufficiently renounce the Devil and all his works when he hath hitherto complyed with them the pomps and vanities of this wicked World when he has minded nothing else and the sinful Lufts of the Flesh when he has followed them and been led by them all his dayes Can he then keep Gods Commandments who hath broken most of them and walk in the same all the dayes of his Life who hath walked all his days in the ways of Sin and the paths of Unrighteousness and never left them till just now he is at his journeys end and can live no longer Surely this Baptismal Covenant is made only pro formâ and is but a modish and mannerly Ceremony at our entring into Christianity if we are not more obliged to stand to it and make it good and expect the benefits of Christianity upon our so doing in some further and better manner of performance than a wicked Christian can do when he comes to dye If his meer Sorrows and Purposes and Resolutions will serve instead of all that is expresly or implicitely meant by it it is void and null in all the other parts of it and the Church has unfaithfully and unsincerely drawn it up in other words of a different sense and meaning that signifie nothing and the Scripture hath exprest it as odly and unfitly when it speaks of our dying to Sin and rising unto Righteousness by our Baptism That we are symbolically buried with Christ by baptism unto death that like as Christ was raised up by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newness of life Rom. 6.4 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death we shall be also in the likness of his resurrection Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin for he that is dead is free from sin ver 5 6 7. Likewise reckon ye also your selves to be dead indeed unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord ver 11. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin but yield your selves unto God as those that are alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God ver 12.13 Here is enough to give us the plain meaning of Baptism and the great obligation of it to renounce Sin and live a good and holy Life And we are then said to put on Christ and to put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness Eph. 4.24 and to put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts ver 22. and to be regenerated and born again and have a Spiritual Principle of Life and Holiness communicated to our Souls and we then voluntarily consent to the terms of Christianity and solemnly engage and undertake to live according to them now all this which is very great and very obliging one would think is made very little and very easily took off and abated and dispensed with if when it has been utterly neglected and disregarded violated and broken all our lives a mere short and Dying Repentance will make it up and supply all the failures and the whole non-performance of it I own that true and timely Repentance will relieve us against the many failures and breaches of it by bringing us to performe it better afterwards sincerely endeavouring to make it good when we have broken it by any wilful sin and upon our performance of it though not with perfect exactness yet with sincere integrity depends our Title to all the Priviledges of Christianity But now to have no regard to it or take any care to observe it nor make it any way good in our lives but to live loosely and wickedly as if we had no such strict Engagement and Obligation upon us and to allow our selves in notorious Sins and unlawful Liberties expresly contrary to our Baptismal Covenant and yet think to salve all and have the whole benefit of it by a short Sorrow and Repentance when we come to dye this is either to make it have no meaning at all or that we are not obliged to the performance of it but let us not deceive our selves whosoever doth not make good his Baptismal Covenant in his Life which a wicked Man cannot at his Death as he is false to Christ and breaks his own most solemn and voluntary engagements so he forfeits all the benefits of his Christianity all that Pardon and Salvation which Christ hath purchased and proposed to him Thus all the Obligations to Christian Holiness and Obedience layd upon us either by our own Baptismal Vows and Promises or by the particular or general Commands of God and our Saviour are all taken away and dissolved by this loose Doctrine of
to state the difference of Mens sins and enquire what are and what are not consistent with a good state but no Judgment could be made between a Good and a Bad Man if this did not distinguish them that the one though he may be encompast with a great many frailties and infirmities yet never allows himself in one wilful known and deliberate wickedness which the other does There may be degrees both of Sinners and of Good Men some have attained to greater improvements and perfections both in Vice and Vertue and are more the Children of God or the Children of the Devil but that which divides their States and cuts the Line of difference between them must be this that the one allows himself in the practice of some known sin or sins which the other does not but carefully avoyds and never commits any such wilful Wickedness Though this seems very plain and undeniable and I have endeavoured to convince every one of the truth of it by the several Arguments I have brought to prove it it being of great use to them to Judge and Examine themselves by this plain and certain Mark and Criterion instead of the many false and uncertain ones that are given out as signs of Grace and to judge thereby of their Spiritual Condition and know whether they are in a Good or Bad State yet there are two seemingly great objections against it The one is the quite other Character and Account which St. Paul gives of himself in the Seventh Chapter to the Romans who was undoubtedly in a good state and a Regenerate Man and yet speaks of sin dwelling in him ver 17. and that the good which he would he did not but the evil which he would not that he did ver 19. and that there was a war in his members warring against the law of his mind and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin which is in his members ver 23. c. The other is that no Man lives without sin and that 't is impossible he should for in many things we offend all and if we say we have no sin we deceive our selves as the Apostle says and therefore to exclude all from a state of Grace who live in any sin and to make the not committing sin the only true Mark and Sign of Grace is a very hard saying and a very severe thing and in effect is an excluding all Mankind since all are Sinners some way or other and none are so perfect as to live wholly without Sin Now the first of these I shall answer very briefly because I would not enter into any long dispute about the sense of that Chapter and the other I shall more largely consider in a distinct Section because it will occasion my giving an account of the difference of sins what are and what are not consistent with a Good State which is a very material point in the right stating and understanding the Nature of Repentance and the Nature of Sin First then as to St. Paul's description of himself Rom. 7. One of these two things must be allowed by all Sober and Understanding Men. 1. That if he speaks in the Person of a Regenerate Man as some would have it then all the Phrases and Expressions of sin dwelling in him and the like must relate only to those sins of Frailty and Infirmity which a good Man is liable to and cannot be wholly free from and which are therefore consistent with a good State as I shall particularly show in the next Section A Good Man who is especially under a state of imperfect goodness and not arrived to any great degree of Christian perfection may say of himself in many Cases that which I do I allow not I am guilty of many a hasty word and undue passion and unreasonable desire and foolish imagination and the like which I do not approve of with my reason but dislike and wish I could be perfectly free from and so in many cases may say what I would that I do not many degrees of Charity and Devotion and other Vertues which I willingly would yet I do not perform nor come up to such a pitch of goodness as I gladly would but fall short in many things of my Duty and such attainments as I would propose and come up to such an one may be very sensible of the body of death and the bondage of Corruption he is in and of the strength of Concupiscence and the Law in his Members warring against the Law of his Mind Chap. 4. Sect. 3. But these may only relate to such Imperfections and Infirmities and sins of Frailty and Infirmity as may consist with a Good State and belong to a Good Man but they are by no means to be applyed further to the committing any wilful and known and presumptuous sin which cannot be said of a Regenerate Man or one in a good state and therefore 2. Some of those Expressions in that Chapter seem to be such as cannot belong to a Good Man such as those ver 14. I am carnal sold under sin ver 23. That the law of his members brought him into captivity to the law of sin ver 25. That with his flesh he served the law of sin So that St. Paul seems to speak here not of himself as a good Christian but of an Unregenerate Person under the Convictions of the Law and though he uses his own name yet 't is by a Metaschematism a Figure usual to him in other places as Gal. 2.17 18. If I build again the things which I destroy I make my self a transgressor and we our selves are still found sinners Rom. 3.7 If the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie why yet am I judged as a sinner where though he uses his own Name yet 't is under the Person of a Blasphemous Objector and 1 Cor. 13.2 If I have all faith and no charity what doth it profit me which is an inoffensive way of transferring odious things to our selves when we would describe and reprove them Thus St. Paul here only personates an unregenerate Man for in other places he gives a quite other Character of a Regenerate one directly contrary to what is here as that He hath crucified the flesh with the affections and lust Gal. 5.24 and crucified the old man Rom. 6.6 and that he is dead to sin Rom. 16.11 and free from sin and the servant of Righteousness Whereas here it is said that sin dwelt in him that he was carnal sold under sin that the law of his members led him into captivity to the law of sin and that with his flesh he served the law of sin this must be the state not of a good Christian but of a Man at least under the Law and therefore the Apostle in opposition to this immediately describes the other more happy state of a Christian under the Gospel in the next Chapter and in answer to the grievous Exclamation O wretched man that I am who
shall deliver me from this body of death he comfortably replies to himself I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord ver 25. i. e. there is a remedy for it by Christ and Christianity and the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death ver 2. chap. 8. The Answer to the other Objection will be fully given in the next Section SECT II. The Differences of Sins what are and what are not consistent with a good State THAT all Men are Sinners not only Experience but the Scriptures do in many places assure us that there is not a righteous man upon earth who sinneth not that in many things we offend all and that if we say we have no sin we deceive our selves and the truth is not in us by which is not only meant that no Man is wholly free from all manner of Sin in the whole course of his Life or can pass all his dayes without falling into some Sin or other but that no part of his Life even when he is come to his best State a State of Grace and Vertue is so perfect as to be quite sinless and without any Sin of what kind soever so that he should not be obliged to beg Pardon of God and say dayly Forgive us our Trespasses Now this as it is matter of Humiliation to the best Men so it is turn'd to another use and quite different purpose by the worst they comfort themselves in all their greatest Sins that all Men are Sinners as well as themselves that none are free from all Sins and let them that are so cast the first stone at them they plainly confound hereby the different states of good and bad Men and are not willing to distinguish or make such a true judgment as the Scripture does plainly between them for the same Scripture that tells us all are Sinners and hath concluded all under Sin yet declare that every wilful Sin is damnable and that they who commit it and live in the practice of it shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven and that he who shall keep all the law besides and yet offend in any one point is guilty of all and shall be punish'd as truly though not so fully for one wilful unrepented Sin as for more There is no way to reconcile this and take off any seeming difficulty about it but by that plain difference which both Scripture and Reason allow between Sins that some of them are Sins of Frailty and Infirmity which are unavoidable to us in our present state and which are consistent with a good one and which the best of Men cannot live wholly without whilst they are in this Body of Flesh and Blood and that others are wilful and presumptuous known and deliberate Sins which are committed with full consent of the Mind and against a plain Law of God and with that presumption and disobedience that makes them unpardonable without a particular Repentance and a perfect Amendment It concerns us very carefully to distinguish and know the difference between those and not to erre to be sure on the wrong side by judging too kindly of our Sins and calling those Infirmities and Weaknesses which are Sins of Wilfulness and Presumption nor can we without judging right and avoiding Mistakes on either hand judge truly and comfortably of our selves and know what our Spiritual state is or what condition we are in as to God and another World The only way to be safe is to avoid every Sin at least every wilful Sin and to grow up to as high a degree of Vertue and Goodness as we can and to get as much mastery over all our Imperfections and Infirmities as is possible but since some Sins and Frailties will cleave to us whilst we carry this body of Sin and of Death about us we may use the Psalmists excellent Prayer both for our Instruction and our Devotion Psal 19.12 13. Who can understand his errors Cleanse thou me from secret faults keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins let them not have dominion over me then shall I be upright and I shall be innocent from the great transgression where he gives us an account of several sorts of Sins 1. Such as he calls Errors and secret Faults by which are meant Sins of Ignorance and Infirmity which we are to pray God to forgive and free us from as well as from others 2. Presumptuous Sins which implye such as are both known and wilful and those 3. such as have dominion over one a reigning habitual prevailing power now if we be kept free from these latter though not the former we are safe and out of danger in a state of sincerity and favour with God and shall be treated as Righteous and Good Men notwithstanding those lesser Faults Then shall I be upright and I shall be innocent from the great transgression i. e. from any such Sin as shall indanger my Soul and expose it to Misery and Damnation I shall consider and explain these several sorts of Sins 1. Errors and secret Faults Sins of Ignorance and Infirmity such as we knew not to be Sins when we committed them either by a downright ignorance and not knowing any Law of God that forbad them or by thoughtlesness surprize and inconsideration being unawares engaged in them before we could think or consider As to Sins of Ignorance our Saviour told the Pharisees John 9.41 If ye were blind ye should have no sin i. e. If ye had been perfectly ignorant of the Messiahs coming into the World and had had no knowledge of this by the Prophesies of old and by the Miracles which ye see me do then your Infidelity and Unbelief had been excusable and without Sin Where Christianity is not revealed as to the Heathen World where Faith is not proposed to Men with those Arguments and Reasons which should perswade to it there God will not condemn them for their Ignorance which they could no way help and which was only their misfortune and not their fault Our Blessed Saviour sayes of the Jews If I had not come and spoken unto them they had not had sin Joh. 15.22 i. e. the Sin of Disbelieving and Rejecting him as to other Sins known by their own Law those they had been answerable for to God as St. Paul sayes As many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law Rom. 2.12 and as many as have sinned without law shall perish without law i. e. the Gentiles who had not the Law of Moses shall be condemned for their Sins by the Law of Nature It has been an uncharitable Question whether any of the Gentiles should be saved Now tho' they cannot be saved in an ordinary way by Vertue of the Christian Covenant to which they have no title or claim yet God may in extraordinary Mercy let all Mankind have the benefit of it and save them by Christ though they know him not
unlawfully had it power and opportunity for those first Motions and Inclinations are necessary and unavoidable arising from the frame and constitution of our Nature and the Mechanism of our Body Blood and Spirits so that we can no more help or prevent them than we can the senses of Pain and Pleasure or the Appetites of Thirst or Hunger or the Motions and Impressions of outward Objects made upon our Senses and therefore they are not simply evil but good in themselves so far as they are Natural and intended by God to serve the good of the World and of particular Persons and the wise ends of Providence but as they are irregular and inordinate excessive and immoderate and destroy those ends for which God intended them so far they are sinful and when any of those Natural Appetites or Sensual Inclinations grow too strong and unruly and are not kept under the government of Reason or within the bounds of Vertue and Religion then they carry Men to all loosness and wickedness and make them commit Sin and Uncleanness with greediness A good Man may with St. Paul be very sensible and complain of this body of sin and of death and of the law of sin that is in his members of many irregular Appetites and undue Passions and weak and foolish imaginations and unreasonable desires and inclinations of too quick gusts of Sensual things and too much deadness of Spiritual of having too many thoughts and designs for Earthly and present things and too little zeal and affection for things Heavenly that are a thousand times more valuable These are imperfections that are in the best of us and we see that they are so and are very sensible and complain of them but yet we cannot wholly avoid them but after all our thoughts and all our care they still return upon us and the Flesh will lust against the Spirit and there will be a perpetual war and struggle between them but if the Spirit do so far prevail by the helps of Grace and considerations of Religion that it do never yield to any wilful Sin it shall then be rewarded as a Conquerour which though it did not wholly subdue and drive out that homebred enemy yet kept it alwayes under and made it submit to its Government and not keep up an open Rebellion against it Of this I have largely discoursed in the Third Section of the Third Chapter I proceed now to those Sins which are known wilful and presumptuous habitual and reigning in us any one of which is inconsistent with a good State and excludes us out of Gods Favour here and Heaven hereafter such as the Psalmist in the forequoted place prayes against Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins lest they get the dominion over me All known and wilful Sins are presumptuous as being done in defiance of a Divine Authority that we know has forbid them and in contempt of God and his Laws to whom we owe all Honour and Obedience and notwithstanding all those threatnings and severe punishments that God has denounced against them He that sins wilfully after he has received the knowledge of the truth of these things there remains nothing for him but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries This is despising the Law of God thus wittingly and wilfully to break it and is sinning with a high hand and a most presumptuous boldness when we choose to do that which we know is most highly displeasing to Heaven and which God has laid all the obligations he possibly can upon us not to do When any such Sin gets dominion over us so that it becomes customary and habitual to us it makes us the Devils slaves and captives at his Will and shows that he is our Master and that we are the Servants of Sin and overcome by that and brought in bondage to it that it prevails upon our Minds above all the Power of Reason and Principles of Religion and that we choose it above all the great things of Heaven and another World that Religion offers to us and think it more desirable than any of those and had rather gratifie a paltry Lust and a foolish Inclination than save our Souls and have all the favour of God that we prefer it before any other good and let it have the ascendant in our Love and Affections above all other things for it is utterly inconsistent with any Love of God or any due regard to him and banishes all Principles of Religion out of our Minds and destroyes all sincerity and uprightness of Heart towards God and abandons us to a state of enmity with him and everlasting destruction hereafter This I have shown is true of every wilful and chosen and known Sin I shall now from the distinction I have given you of these Sins from those of Infirmity Ignorance and Inadvertency make the following Inferences and Remarks 1. That those Sins of Infirmity are to be Repented of i. e. we are to be sorry for them and pray God to forgive them Though they do not destroy our good state nor deprive us of Gods Favour here or Heaven hereafter yet they are such as are to be matter of Trouble and Sorrow and Humiliation to us and we are dayly to pray God to forgive us our Trespasses as Christ has taught us in the Lords Prayer and the Psalmist in the place before mentioned prayes God to cleanse him from his secret faults as well as to keep him back from presumptuous Sins For 2. These are true and proper Sins and though they are not charged upon us to our Condemnation yet this is by the great Favour and Mercy of God and by Vertue of the Gracious Covenant made in Christ with Mankind for otherwise God in Rigour and Justice might punish and condemn us for them The Papists hold a distinction between Sins Mortal and Venial in their own Nature i. e. that some Sins are in themselves damnable and others not which the Protestants have generally opposed for this Reason because all Sin is in it self Mortal and in its own Nature deserves Death as being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a breach and transgression of a Divine Law whose sanction is Death but it is pardonable only by Gods Mercy on the account of its circumstances which make it more excusable with a good and merciful God but that it is not of it self venial or so little as not to deserve Punishment they prove from hence that we are bound to pray God to forgive it Now it is pure Grace and Favour for God to forgive and what he is not obliged to and if he is not obliged to pardon it he may punish it were it not for his Mercy and Goodness and the Gracious Covenant he has made with us in the Gospel This should therefore 3. Make us very sensible of Gods infinite Mercy and kind dealing with us by the Covenant of Grace How many innumerable Sins and
and bruises and putrifying sores i. e. They have been wicked in the general tenor and habit of their Lives and these must be wholly changed the whole mass being corrupted it must be quite altered The whole frame of their Minds and whole course of their Actions must be made quite otherwise like a defiled Body they must be wash'd all over or rather like a dead Carcass they must be raised to life again and restored wholly from their state of Death and Corruption which they were in before There are others who are not so diseased all over but yet have some mortal illness growing in some part upon them who are guilty of some particular Sins some known and wilful Faults that destroy their good state and put them into the rank though not of the greatest Sinners yet of such Sinners as shall not enter into Heaven nor escape Eternal Wrath and Vengeance unless they particularly repent of them and wholly forsake and leave them And thus every one who is conscious to himself that he is or has been ever guilty of any known and great Sin whatever it be though it should be but one such Sin must amend that and must get off that particular illness or else it will prove deadly and mortal if it continue upon him for one such disease or one such wound whilst 't is uncured upon the Soul will kill and destroy it as well as more Though a Man may not be universally depraved nor be wholly prostituted to debauchery and irreligion yet if he will indulge himself in any known Sin or in any particular Lust and Wickedness he is in a lost and undone state till he repents and wholly leaves that Sin And if a Man is in a good state and fall into a wilful and great Sin as we know David did that surely cuts him off for a time from his good state and renders him lyable to Gods Anger here and to Misery hereafter till by a serious and hearty Repentance he recovers himself and is so perfectly recovered from the Sin that he will never commit it again whatever Temptation is offered to him There are other Sins which are of a lower and less heinous Nature which do not destroy our good state nor put us out of the Favour of God nor exclude us out of Heaven and these are such as very good Men are subject to and may not be free from whist they are in this body of Sin and Corruption As the most healthful and best Constitutions may be subject to some smaller illnesses and indispositions of Body though not to great and mortal diseases so some frailties failures and imperfections will stick to the best of Men though not any mortal and wilful Sins and these frailties and infirmities are Sins in a strict sense as coming short of perfect Obedience to the Divine Law and these are in some sense also to be repented of i. e. we are to be sensible of them and sorry for them and we are every day to pray to God to forgive us these our Trespasses and we are to endeavour to overcome them as much as is possible and never let them grow as they may by neglect into wilful Sins but these are all pardonable by the Mercy of God and by vertue of the gracious Covenant which he hath made with us in Christ Jesus upon a general Repentance without a perfect and particular amendment of all of them which is utterly impossible and inconsistent with Humane frailty and infirmity There is therefore a great difference to be made in respect of several kinds of Sins and several sorts of Sinners of this great Duty of Repentance There are some of whom the Scripture sayes that they need no repentance Luke 15.7 i. e. who need not such a Repentance as shall change and alter their Spiritual state who never were in a bad state being early Baptized nor never were guilty in their whole lives of any one such great and wilful and heinous Sin as put them into a damnable state I hope there are not a few who are in this blessed condition and therefore who need not this greater Repentance as I think I may call it who by the blessing of God and by means of a very Vertuous and Religious Education have been early trained up in the wayes of goodness and never departed from them who were set right at first and never wandered or strayed out of the paths of Vertue whose Feet never slipt so far as to take hold of the paths of Death or be caught in the snares of the Devil who never defiled themselves with any great Sin but have preserved their virgin-purity and have had no foul spot to sully the whiteness and beauty of their whole unblemisht Conversation but were alwayes innocent and alwayes safe like Zacharias and Elizabeth were alwayes righteous before God walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless Luke 1.6 I cannot say these are wholly sinless and altogether perfect for so none of the Race of Adam or the Children of Men are except our Blessed Saviour for there are some infirmities and weaknesses and imperfections that belong to these and so they stand in need of that lesser Repentance I before spake of but they never were guilty of the great offence and so need not that greater Repentance which others do And 't is of that I now speak a repentance from dead works as the Apostle calls it Heb. 6.1 A Repentance from wilful and mortal Sins such as put us into an ill state and such as we shall certainly perish except we repent of them Luke 13.3 SECT III. True Notion of Repentance NOw this Repentance I would thus describe answerable to those three words by which it is exprest in Scripture A sorrow for our Sins joyned with change and alteration of Mind and amendment or reformation of Life or such a sense of Mind as makes us leave and forsake or turn away from every Sin or all the Sins we have been guilty of and practice the contrary Vertues or perform those other Duties we have broken or been wanting in Thus where we have been bad Men in any instance and violated our Duty and offended God and broken or transgrest his Laws it will make us become good Men afterwards and perform our Duty and return to God and keep or obey his Commandments in all those cases wherein we have done otherwise before This this alone is such a Repentance as avails to Pardon and Salvation as it takes away every Sin which would damn us and brings us to that Obedience and practice of all Vertue and Holiness without which no man can see God or be saved Repentance I own is a word of an equivocal meaning that signifies several things and has several senses belonging to it as sorrow and trouble of Mind change of Thoughts and the like which are meant by the Latin Paenitentia and Resipiscentia and by the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and it is commonly taken for something that goes no further than a Man 's own Mind for the inward working and change of its own Thoughts and the sorrow and trouble it conceives upon the reflection of its past Sins and the consideration of its bad state And here it is Repentance must first begin in the Mind the principle of all Moral actions its being sensible of its evil wayes and truly sorrowful and afflicted for them when its Heart is smitten within and bleeds as it were from those inward wounds it feels in its own Conscience and when it vents it self in all the sorrowful expressions of inward trouble when it weeps bitterly like St. Peter Matth. 26.75 and rivers of tears run down its eyes because it has not kept the Law of its God when it is pricked to the heart Acts 2.37 and is under very deep compunction and contrition of Soul and mourns and laments for its grievous wickedness when it is afraid of the anger and indignation of that God whom it has offended and has a just dread of those Punishments it knows it has deserved when it is under great convictions of the folly and evil of its Sins and is very sensible of the sad fruits and consequences of those things whereof it is now ashamed when it considers how little benefit and advantage it ever got by them when it committed them and to what a sad account they now turn and how that the end of them is like to be death and damnation This inward sense and godly sorrow if it continue upon the Mind and go not off like a morning dew or an hasty cloud or sudden storm will surely work repentance not to be repented of will bring it to perfect and true Repentance not only to Confession and Humiliation and afflicting its Soul by Fasting and putting on Sackcloth and Ashes which may be signs and attendants sometimes but no proper parts or acts of true Repentance but this will beget in it good purposes and resolutions of becoming better and forsaking its Sins hearty wishes that it had never committed them and sincere vows and intentions to forsake them for whilst it has that sense upon its Mind it cannot well do otherwise Now this is a very good beginning and a very good part of Repentance and it wants nothing to make it true perfect and complete but bringing forth fruits meet for repentance Matth. 3.8 Acts 26.20 that is all this having an effect upon the life and actions mending and reforming those and making them suitable and agreeable to those inward thoughts and passions of Mind that we may be not only renewed in our minds but become new men and new creatures and walk in newness of life Rom. 6.4 That we may put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and may put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness Eph. 4.22 24. That we put off the body of the sins of the flesh Coloss 2.11 That if we have yielded our members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity so now that we yield our members servants of righteousness unto holiness Rom. 6.19 That we be washed that we be cleansed 1 Cor. 6.11 That we sin no more John 5.14 That denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we live soberly righteously and godly in this present world Tit. 2.12 For Repentance is the whole practical condition of Christianity and together with Faith makes up the entire duty of a Christian as St. Paul summes it up Acts 20.21 Testifying both to the Jews and to the Greeks repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ That we who were enemies to God by our wicked works may be reconciled to him by Conversion and Obedience and may become holy and unblamable and unreprovable in his sight Coloss 1.21 22. That we being made free from sin and become servants to God may have our fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life Rom. 6.22 Which are the full and excellent descriptions which are given us in the New Testament of this Duty of Repentance which make actual Reformation and Obedience essential to it and which make it consist plainly in these two things I. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Quaest Athanas ascript Q. 133. de Parab 72. p. 435. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Chrvs Hom. 10. in Math. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aret. in 3. c. Apoc. In a relinquishing and forsaking every Sin or all the Sins we have been guilty of II. In performing and practising the Vertues contrary to those Sins In St. Peters Phrase Eschewing evil and doing good 1 Pet. 3.11 i. e. The good that is contrary to the former evil I. A reliquishing and forsaking every Sin or all the Sins we have been guilty of We must first break off the practice of those and cease from any one act of them and so we shall by degrees break the strength and force of them upon our Minds For as all habits grow upon us by many repeated acts which are like so many strokes as it were beating upon the Mind that do form and fashion it into such a habit and disposition so when this force and impression is taken off the habit will grow more weak and languid and the Mind will be able to recover and unbend it self from it Let us then resolutely cease from acting and certainly if any thing be in our power our outward actions are and we shall find that the most habitual Sin will fade and wither as being without that recruit which should feed and nourish it for all Habits grow by new and repeated acts as a Tree by the accession of new sap into its branches and if they be not supplyed with these they will decay and dye of themselves If we can but put a little stop to our Lusts in their violent career and check but a few acts of them this will keep them from being so unruly and ungovernable till in time we may wholly master and conquer them The Sinner must first keep himself from the outward act from touching the unclean thing wherewith he was defiled he must refrain his feet from every evil way and go on no further in a wrong path that so he may return into the wayes of Vertue If his Repentance does not make him break off every Transgression and keep him back from every Sin and restrain him from the commission of what he was formerly guilty of though it makes him never so much troubled and dissatisfied with what he does though he commits it with never so much reluctancy and is never so sorrowful for it after he has done it yet if he still commits it and repeats it when a Temptation is offered to him he is very far from true Repentance and let him be never so unwillingly drag'd to it so that the evil which he doth he would not let him
and a speedy Repentance from all our Sins because upon our doing this we have the Blood of Christ and the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God to deliver us from all Sin That which the World was so anxiously so concernedly and yet so vainly seeking after before that is only to be had and only made known by the Gospel Revelation the full and perfect and certain Expiation of Guilt which is the greatest Argument and Encouragement to Repentance for without that 't is not all our Repentance will take away our past Guilt 't is not our greatest sorrow or most penitent tears will wash away the stains and guilt of our Sins unless they are mixt with and have all their vertue from the Blood of Christ and 't is not they indeed or any thing we can do that has any proper vertue or efficacy to do this but only the Sacrifice of Christ Repentance is a necessary disposition and qualification in us without which no Sacrifice can be available to us if it does not as the Scripture speaks Purge our Consciences and so purifie as well as atone which is a strong Consideration to enforce this Duty because without it we lose all the benefit of this Sacrifice but 't is not our Repentance that can either purchase or procure or pay for our Pardon or that can any way challenge or upon any account merit or pretend a right to it be it never so exact for by what rules of Justice does it discharge our past arrears of wickedness though we stop now and run no further on in the score What do we more by leaving our Sins and becoming good now than we ought always to have done and always were obliged to or how shall we make that which is past and done to be undone as it were and the old account to be blotted out and the past Guilt done away 'T is only the Meritorious Sacrifice of Christ can do this and whether God could do this without any Sacrifice I will not dispute because I know not the Measures of the Divine Government nor the Secrets of his Wisdom and Counsel but by a Sacrifice it is much better obtained and assured to us as being granted upon the account of something that was given in stead of it and that is worth it indeed in fair Justice for so was the Blood of the Son of God of equal value to the Souls of all Mankind tho' I acknowledge it depends upon the free pleasure of the Governour to accept or refuse such a satisfaction and compensation as was made by that or by any Sacrifice yet all this being transacted in such a Method being granted upon a valuable Consideration and being made over to us by a formal Covenant and standing Agreement ratified and sealed by the Blood of Christ as well as a bare Promise So that by all these immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lye we might have strong consolation Heb. 6.18 we have hereby the greatest comfort the highest satisfaction and assurance in the World given us of that which we can never be too much assured of and which is of the nearest and closest concern to us in the World the Pardon of our Sins and the Expiation of all our Guilt which is only to be had and only fully discovered by the Gospel and 't is indeed the greatest thing in which the Gospel consists as 't is different from Natural Religion 3. From hence namely from the Sacrifice and Death of Christ arise new Motives and fresh and most endearing Obligations to perfwade all Christians to repent and leave their Sins The very Nature of a Sacrifice carries these in it and was designed to offer the strongest Motives against Sin at the same time that it procures Pardon for it It is the wisest expedient that could ever be thought of to show Justice and Severity and yet Mercy and Clemency at the fame time to put a Governour into those two different Capacities both at once to forgive and yet to punish the same person and to show him to be neither too easie nor yet implacable but by an admirable temper and mixture of two Vertues and two Passions that seem contrary to one another it finds out a way to spare the Man and yet show the greatest displeasure to his Sin neither to suffer the Guilty to perish nor yet the Guilt to be unpunished so that hereby the greatness of the Guilt and the greatness of Gods Anger is as visible against the Sin in the sufferings of the Sacrifice as if the offender himself had suffered and we have Reasons to dread it the more even because it is forgiven us but we have stronger Reasons I think to do this out of gratitude to that dear Person who was pleased to become a Sacrifice for us and from the consideration of his Love and what he has done for us we have most particular and strong engagements to leave our Sins For 't is the highest ingratitude and the most disobliging thing to him that can be to continue in them who suffered for this very end that he might redeem us from all iniquity and cleanse us from all our sins 't is a spoiling all his great undertaking for us making void his Passion in effect and making his Blood to be but like common Water spilt upon the ground and yet 't is a renewing his Passion at the same time A crucifying to our selves the Son of God afresh and putting him to an open shame Heb. 6.6 'T is like running the Spear again into his Side making new Wounds in his Breast and pricking him to the very Heart 't is doing that which is more displeasing to him than his very Cross which he willingly underwent rather than we should live and dye in our Sins Look then O unworthy and impenitent Christian upon thy Saviour offering up himself a Sacrifice for thee and consider what a mighty Argument his Death is to perswade thee to Repent Do not thy Sins look terrible when thou seest them through the Blood of Christ and canst thou have any hopes that God who spared not his own Son will spare thee if thou continuest in them And how great are the Characters of his Love which are there written in his own Blood and will not so much Love prevail upon thee to leave thy Sins were there nothing else How does thy dying Saviour with his expanded Arms and his Head hanging down beseech and intreat thee and speak to thee as it were from every gaping Wound in his broken Body to forsake and renounce those Sins which crucified him and for which he dyed And if with the belief of a Christian thou hast but the Passions of a Man this cannot but strongly affect and move thee 4. Christianity and the Gospel set forth and shew us the true Nature and Evil of our Sins in a better light and by greater considerations than Mankind had before Sin was alwayes known to be a weakness and
imperfection of our Nature gratifying a low passion a foolish humour a silly custom acting in opposition to Reason and doing things quite contrary to our own wise and calm thoughts but by rashness and inconsideration doing that which we shall afterwards repent of and condemn our selves for and wish we had never done and what we know will tend more to our mischief and prejudice than any real good to us only it pleases our fancy and tickles our senses and is a little grateful to us at present so that 't is a sort of Childishness and want of Understanding and of Manly and Rational Government of our selves to yield to it and be overcome by it this it must appear to any thinking Man to a Heathen and Philosopher that considered the nature of things and the difference of Good and Evil that arose from thence and therefore that to repent of it was as necessary as for a Man to act wisely and reasonably not to do what is weak and foolish below the Nature and the Reason of a Man but now Christ besides all this has represented Sin in more ugly and frightful characters by the Gospel as that which had thrown all Mankind into the most miserable and lost condition as the work of the Devil which he came to destroy as the device and stratagem of evil and malicious Spirits to destroy us so that whenever we are drawn into Sin we are drawn in by the Devil and used as tools by cunning infernal Fiends who this way over-reach us and sport themselves in our ruine and destruction so that when we think we are enjoying our Pleasures and gratifying our Lusts and using the freedoms and liberties of Humane Nature we are but inveigled by those Devils with the baits they lay for us and the snares they every where set to entrap us and are meer slaves and properties to their cunning and cursed designs upon us so that Christ came to rescue us from those by calling us to Repentance to rescue us from the snares of the Devil and redeem us from that servitude and slavery whereby we are led captive by him Christianity better acquaints us also with the Nature of Sin and the Evils of it than Nature could by showing us the ruins it had made upon Mankind and the cost and expences Heaven was at to repair Humane Nature by letting us see the wretched and miserable estate the Sins of Mankind had thrown them into irrecoverably without a Saviour Our Salvation by that stupendous and mysterious way makes the greatness of our danger and the mischief of our Sins more evidently known to us and the whole scheme and contrivance of it contains other considerations against Sin than Natural Religion could ever have known or suggested for by this Sin appears further to be so malignant and hateful to God so detestable and odious in his sight and so contrary to his wise Government of the World that he would not pardon it without the Blood of his own Son shed as an atonement for it nor forgive it to Mankind without such a valuable compensation and satisfaction made for it as that was Now this demonstrates to us above any thing its abominable and displeasing Nature to God and that according to the wise Rules and Maximes of his Government by which he manages the World it must suffer and be severely punished and that there was no escaping of this but by an extraordinary contrivance of Divine Wisdom and Mercy which found out a way by Jesus Christ to save Sinners by Repentance Sin is a greater debt a more deep provocation to Heaven a more horrid affront to Divine Power and Authority a more considerable injury to the good of the World and to the Justice and Holiness of God than to be easily forgiven and passed by as we find by the mystery of our Redemption and the dispensation of Christianity which shows us above any thing the Nature and Evil of it and consequently the great Reasons of our Repenting from it 5. As the Nature and Evil of Sin fo the Consequences and Punishments of it are greater by Christianity and Christ by the threatning of those greater Judgments upon it has called us more loudly to Repentance Nature and the light of Reason taught all Mankind the present and Natural Evils that were like so many Curses cleaving to Sin like Hercules his poysoned shirt clinging to it and sticking fast about it God had annexed a world of evils and mischievous effects to Vice and Wickedness by the original settlement and fundamental constitution of things it was a disease to the Mind and a torment to the Conscience and very often a disease to the Body and rottenness to the Bones a wound to a Mans Credit and a blemish to his good Name and an enemy to all his Interests and to all his Happiness in this World These plain and necessary effects of Sin Mankind could not but observe as so many bitter Fruits naturally growing out of it as from a proper Root and like so many plagues sent from Heaven steeming out of this Pandora's box And these Natural Punishments of Sin and the other as Natural Goods and Rewards of Vertue were the true sanction of the Law of Nature But besides all these there are a thousand times greater and more additional evils superadded to our Sins by Christianity if we do not in time Repent of them there are the positive and eternal evils of Sin in another World for I can by no means call the Torments of Hell Natural which God has revealed to us by the Gospel How little these were known to the World before I might show from the odd fancies of the wisest Heathens about the transmigration of Souls and the revolution of all things within such a period of years and whatever guess they had rather than belief of Punishments for Sin in another World yet that they should be so great as the Scripture now represents them and that they should be Eternal which is the most dreadful part of them this can only be known from the Revelation and Will of God who may continue our being and lengthen or shorten our duration to what time he pleases and therefore as Christ has brought Life and Immortality to light by the gospel 2 Tim. 1.10 so in like manner he has brought Hell and Damnation and revealed such intolerable and greater Punishments to Sin than the World knew before as cannot but fright the most daring Sinner and make the fondest Sensualist part with his Lusts when he considers that all their tempting charms and enticing gayety and momentany pleasures shall end in nothing but Hellish torments unquenchable flames and eternal howlings and gnashings of teeth which must be owned to be a thousand times greater than all the known and visible and Natural Evils of Sin SECT IV. Motives to Repentance from the Consideration of Hell NOW because this is the greatest determent from Sin imaginable and consequently the
greatest motive to Repentance that can possibly be given for nothing is so strong and powerful upon most Men as their fears which is the quickest and strongest Passion in Humane Nature and is apt to make a very great impression where nothing else will and nothing can be so much an object of our fear as Hell and Eternal Misery which is the utmost and most dreadful Evil that can be either felt or imagined I shall particularly and largely offer and represent it to the Sinners thoughts both as to its Nature consisting in the greatest pains and torments of Body and Mind and in the most wretched and miserable state and condition and as all this is Eternal and shall never have end Both which if heartily believ'd and seriously consider'd would have a mighty power and almost irresistible force to bring Men off from their greatest Sins I. Then let us consider its Nature as consisting of the greatest pains and torments both of Body and Mind and in the most wretched and miserable state and condition I shall not attempt fully to describe or draw a picture of this place of Torments our imagination is to be help'd out with all the known instances of Misery and so to form an Idea of that future and unknown and invisible one It is certain it must be adapted to those two parts of which we consist our Bodies and our Minds and what are the proper Evils to either of those we very well know sensible Pain and great Anguish and Sorrow and other tormenting Passions and these we must suppose in the highest degree to belong to Hellish Misery for as Heaven is the utmost good our Natures can possibly receive and are capable of so Hell is the greatest evil and as such is represented to us by that Revelation which assures us of it attended with the most sad and woful circumstances that can be imagined I shall offer the thoughts of it to the Sinner under such Ideas and Representations as are given of it by the Holy Ghost in Scripture And 1. We must conceive a horrid dark and dismal dungeon in some deep cavern of the Earth designed for horrour and fill'd with the blackness of darkness and inhabited only by cursed Fiends and frightful Ghosts and Devils into which the wretched Caitiff is to be thrown bound hand and foot and so cast into outer darkness Matth. 22.13 and delivered into chains of darkness 2 Pet. 2.4 Darkness is the Natural image and symbol of horrour and disconsolateness as Light is of comfort and pleasantness so that the Scripture expresses Happiness by the dwelling in light as it does Misery by being cast into outer darkness where there is not any beam of light nor any the least glimpse of joy and comfort And thus to be shut up for ever in a place of darkness and horrour and confined to this dismal and infernal Prison to all Eternity would be a dreadful Misery were there nothing else but they are to be tormented there as well as imprisoned and that with the most exquisite pains and tortures as they are described to us in the second place 2. By Fire and Burning which is the most terrible the most keen and painful of Bodily punishments which enters the tender parts with pointed and piercing fury and dissolves and distorts them with its rapid motion and has nothing to abate its extreme cruelty but that it quickly consumes and dispatches and spends it self with its own rage and violence as well as destroyes its subject But this is the dreadful Nature of that infernal Fire that it never goes out but is as the Scripture calls it unquenchable and that the miserable wretches that are condemned to it shall endure the pain and the rage of it for ever and shall never be consumed or destroyed by it but shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy Angels and in the presence of the Lamb and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever and they have no rest day nor night Rev. 14.10 11. Let us then set before us a burning Lake of liquid Fire and melted Brimstone like Nebuchadnezzars fiery Furnace heat seven times hotter than any thing we here know and the damned wretches cast into it and like Dives sadly tormented in those flames over all their parts so that the Tongue is swelled with heat as in a raging Feaver and nothing would be so comfortable to it as a drop of Water to cool it and to slake and abate the scorching Calenture Some are inclined to think all this but Allegory and Metaphor and painted Fire but the Scripture speaks so often of it that I cannot but think it may be literally true and that Fire is made the instrument of those Bodily pains that are there to be suffered and inflicted after the general Judgment and Resurrection Or however that as great pains of Body are thereby signified and exprest and shall really be endured some way or other as by burning in Fire For if the Holy Spirit to help our weak thoughts and assist our imaginations has made use of those known things only as emblems and pictures of some real pains yet they are certainly as great or greater than any of those by which they are shadowed out and represented as the pleasure of Heaven is much greater no doubt and does far exceed that of a Feast a Wedding a Crown or any such Earthly resemblance As to the proper pain and torment of the Mind which is the other and the greatest part of Hellish Misery for the Mind has a more quick and keen and immediate sense than the Body that is represented in Scripture by the worm which never dyes Matth. 9.46 i. e. by a Passion that bites and gnaws and corrodes and pains us within as the Fire or something else torments the Body from without and this includes in it all those dismal and reflecting thoughts and apprehensions which the Mind has upon its dreadful state and condition As 1. A direful perception of the Divine Anger Wrath and Displeasure which when it lyes heavy upon the Mind in the highest degree will press it into the deepest gulph of Misery and fill it with the most terrible Ideas and most dreadful apprehensions Even in this World when a Sinner tasts but a little of the Cup of Gods Fury 't is a cup of trembling and a cup of astonishment as the Scripture calls it Isa 51.17 Ezek. 23.32 and what will it then be when all the dregs of it must be drunk up When God hides his Face but a little there is all trouble and horrour and what must it then be when he hides it for ever The sense and apprehension of lying under the displeasure of Almighty Power and provoked Justice and abused Goodness and all these highly incensed against a Man and never to be appeased must be very dreadful and make sad impressions upon the Mind The Presence and the Favour of God giveth
that we could reasonably desire or God in wisdom grant is a most groundless and unreasonable presumption which makes void all Gods threatnings and is a direct disbelief of his word and expresly contrary to what is plainly delared by the Gospel it self for in that Christ assures us that the word which he has there spoken the same shall judge men at the last day John 12.48 and therefore he will judge us by no other rule nor use any other measures in disposing his Mercy or his Justice to his Creatures than what he hath layd down and made known to us by the Gospel God shall judge the world says St. Paul in that day according to my Gospel Rom. 2.16 'T is not therefore to be expected that God should use any other Judgment or show any other Mercy to Sinners than what is according to the termes of the Gospel and the Conditions of Salvation there lay'd down and a Death-Bed Repentance doth not as I have shown come up to those 3. I have showed all along this Discourse that it is not such a True and Perfect Repentance as the Scripture promises Pardon and Salvation to for that consists not only in sorrow and trouble of Mind conviction of Soul and Compunction of heart but in actual Reformation and new Obedience and indeed 't is this alone is a Mans retracting his past folly and wickedness and being wiser for the future undoing all the evil he has done as much as he can and doing all the good he can for the time to come and so making all possible amends to the honour of Religion and the honour of God which have been highly injured and violated by him and though he can never make perfect reparation and satisfaction to them and therefore Christ alone did this by his Death and Sufferings yet he is to do all that he is able and that is in his power to do that he may thereby vindicate the Divine Authority and Government which he hath opposed and resisted and Justifie the wisdom and goodness justice and holiness of the Laws of Heaven which he hath broken and contemned and so make all the compensation he is able to repair the sad Mischief he hath done by his Sins We truly say that no injury to another person will be forgiven but upon Restitution and making all the reparation for it that can be because 'till this is done the sin remains and the evil effects of it continue and till a Man is willing to undoe that as far as he is able to take away and destroy all the effects of it he keeps the sin and does not truly Repent of it nor wish it undone now surely we owe as much to God and Religion in Justice as we do to our Equals and where we have done any thing to injure those as our sins are the greatest injury to them we can be guilty of there also we must make as much restitution and reparation as we are able and undoe the sins we have committed by a more zealous and hearty and new Obedience and making up if it were possible the past failures and defects of our Sinful Lives by greater care and zeal and diligence for the future We may do this by a timely Repentance but by a late and a dying one we cannot 4. A Sinner cannot be then freed at his Death from what will necessarily make him miserable his Sinful Habits which will sink his Soul into Hell by a Natural Causality as well as Divine Judgment God has expresly declared that neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor abusers of themselves with mankind nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor revilers nor extortioners nor such like shall inherit the Kingdom of God 1 Cor. 6.9 10. And who are such but they who have lived in the habit of any of those Sins And are therefore to be denominated and accounted such from the general practice of their Lives and have not been washed and sanctified or made better but only are now sorry for being so when they are dying If Sorrow would make Men to be otherwise and their Tears alone would blot out this black Character without a contrary Practice there would hardly be any such to be found though 't is plain the World is too full of them There would be no Thief or Felon or Traytor at any Assizes or Court of Judicature if when they came to be tryed and were found guilty and were to be condemned their meer sorrow and trouble would set them right and change their character and make them to be accounted otherwise in the eye of the Law But besides this Sentence and Judgment of God upon all kind of Sinners whereby he bars any such from Heaven and adjudges them to Hell their Sins Naturally sink them thither for that is the true place and center of Wickedness and therefore of Misery Filthy and impure Minds fall into it by a kind of Spiritual Gravitation or by such a Constitution of the Spiritual and Intellectual World which as necessarily carries them thither as the Mechanism of this material World carries a stone downward So that 't is as unavoidable for a Sinner loaded with his wicked Habits to fall into Hell and Misery in another World as if here he had a Millstone tyed about his neck and were cast into the Sea to fall to the bottom of it The weight of his Sins will of it self press and sink him down into the utmost gulph of Misery and when he is quite taken away from the diversions and pleasures and bodily enjoyments of this World and is left wholly to the reflections and agonies and dismal apprehensions of his own Mind his Conscience which is now stupified and amused with other imaginary pleasures of Body and this World will then awaken and fall upon him with all its rage and torment his Soul and make it unexpressibly miserable were there no other sentence or judgment upon him The dreadful horrors and apprehensions of his own Mind let loose upon him would always be a very great torment and Hell to him if he had nothing to relieve or divert him but was left naked and open to the full stroke of his Conscience and his thoughts were whollytaken up with the frightful Images and Ideas of his own Guilt and overwhelmed with all the bitter Passions of Fear Sorrow and Despair as they will hereafter Sin will as certainly fill him with those in another World and cause such painful sensations or perceptions within his Soul as he now feels in his Body upon a torturing Disease or any instrument of Cruelty applyed to it for that is as contrary to the Nature and Frame of the one as those are to the other and they would be alwayes felt here if the Body did not drown and stifle and choak the free and natural thoughts of the Mind which it cannot hereafter If the Mind therefore be not freed from its Sins and Evil Habits it will
two such Receptacles for the Souls of all Men and Angels to spend an Eternity in for the fixt continuance and Eternal Duration of their state is more plainly revealed then their particular State and Condition so that all Rational Souls must be consigned to one of those States and Places for they who have made a Third or Fourth have made it only out of their own brains and imaginations not out of any Scriptural foundation or Authority there must be allowed to be very great differences and unequal degrees of happiness or misery in those two places or else neither the Justice of God nor the different Cases of Men can be accounted for with any tolerable ease and satisfaction to our thoughts or be any way reconciled to the principles either of Reason or Religion God the Just and All-knowing Judge will give all allowances to the hard circumstances the invincible ignorance the unavoidable failures the powerful temptations the particular cases and several disadvantages that any of Mankind have been under and with the fairest and most impartial equity will adjudge all their Conditions and proportion their future Rewards and Punishments according to what is due to them all things considered according to the right or wrong use of that freedom and liberty which he gave them and the faults or vertues under that light and knowledge they had of their own wills and choices by which alone they can either be or be denominated good or bad Men Some of Mankind seem not to have either vertues enough to qualifie them for Heaven or to be so wilfully vitious as to deserve Hell but to be in a kind of middle state here between Vertue and Vice whatever they shall be in hereafter and many who are guilty of some Vices which the Scripture declares damnable and exclusive of Heaven yet are not of such downright Irreligion and General Profligacy and Debauchery as others Thus also many have some real sense of Religion but yet are but weakly moved and influenced by it and do but just live in a very low way of Grace and Vertue and are not so Rich in good works nor do so abound in Acts of Piety Zeal Usefulness and Charity as others Therefore one Equal Complete Perfect Entire State either of Happiness or Misery cannot belong to all these alike but Heaven or Hell are proportionable unequal different conditions of both exactly suited and fitted to the Moral and Religious Deserts Capacities and Qualifications of all Rational Beings in which they shall be fixt to all Eternity without alteration though perhaps not without further improvements and gradual risings and fallings according to the Nature of either of those States These Thoughts have been a great ease and satisfaction to my self in the Conception of the great and amazing things of another World and I therefore communicate them not only on the fore-mentioned account but because they may be so to others who consider those greatest Objects of Meditation with any penetration of thought according to the best helps we have of Philosophy and Scripture and I am perswaded it would be good Service to Religion if it were thus fairly reconciled in all the revealed Truths and Articles of it to the thoughts of inquisitive Men as I doubt not but it may be but this is a subject of another Nature which I am not now to meddle withal CHAP. VI. Practical Rules and Directions concerning the Particular Exercise of Repentance I Shall now consider the Particular Exercise of Repentance taken as a single Duty distinct from all others of Obedience which are in the largest sense involved in it and without which it is not effectual to Pardon and Salvation as I have all along shown but Repentance taken singly for a particular act of a Sinner just struck and affected with a sense of his Sins and exercising at set times Penitential Reflections and proper Actions upon the thoughts and remembrance of them this which is often called Repentance and is so in some sense but not sufficient to compleat this Duty and to entitle us to all the effects of Repentance as they are promised to it in Scripture in a more large and comprehensive Notion as including a good Life and all manner of Obedience after we have failed and come short in any point This which I would call Penitence or Penance as being a Penal Exercise or Penitential Course and Discipline fit for a Sinner to go through after he has committed any great Sin or whenever he seriously remembers and considers and recollects as he ought often to do with himself the most considerable miscarriages of his Life This consists in these following things 1. In confessing of his Sin 2. In inward and outward Sorrow for it 3. In Humiliations Bodily Austerities and Mortifications and especially Fasting as the chief of them In these the Scripture and the Church and the custom of good Men in all Ages have placed this Exercise of Repentance as consisting of such Penitential Acts not as a permanent Habit of renewed Obedience and recovered Vertue nor as if the Essence or the formal Vertue and proper fruits of it lay in these but in Reformation of Heart and Life Conversion and Obedience to God but these are the buds and blossoms of those fruits of Repentance the seeds and the signs of it or at least the outward concomitants and attendants of it and such a retinue as are proper to go along with it for the solemnity at least and decent performance of it if not as absolutely necessary to the thing it self Necessary generally in private but alwayes in publick Acts or Expressions of Repentance wherein a publick reparation and satisfaction is to be given to Gods Honour and Authority his Judgments to be averted and his Anger deprecated and a common sense and apprehension of all this to be promoted and inculcated among others as in publick Penances and National Repentances and therefore we read chiefly of these upon such occasions both in Scripture and Ecclesiastical Writers Open Sins are a dishonouring of God an affronting and despising his Power and Authority a setting up our Wills against his a gratifying and indulging our selves in undue liberties and unlawful inclinations of Body Now 't is fit therefore in our Repentance for them wherein we make what amends we can to God and repair the injury we have done him and undo the Sin as far as we are able and show our utmost displeasure against it that we should fall down before him and confess it and be sorry for it and humble our selves to him and own our vileness and wretchedness and unworthiness and express the deepest resentments of it and show our anger against our selves and revenge it very severely and afflict our Souls and our Bodies with something that shall not be very grateful to them nor pleasant and acceptable to our Senses The design of all this is to beget in our Mind such thoughts of our Sins and such passions and
down his eyes Psal 119.136 And the Scripture describes Repentance by a broken and a contrite heart Psal 51.17 in opposition to a hard and impenitent one All Penitents are drawn with a sad and mournful look with tears in their eyes and sorrow in their hearts smiting their breasts and wringing their hands and all the figures of Grief and Lamentation and covered with a veil of sadness and disconsolateness For Grief and Sorrow are Passions of Soul upon the presence of any evil that is afflicting and uneasie to us and Sin being the greatest of those evils should cause the highest of those passions and we have more reason to be sorry and lament for it than a Widow over her lost Husband or a Mother over her first-born that is dead or a Friend over another that is murthered ruined and undone for our Souls ought to be dearer to us than any thing else and Sin kills ruins and murthers them But here I must interpose a Caution Sin is a Spiritual Evil and works not upon our Bodily Passions so strongly and deeply as those other objects may which are more suited to them and more fit to excite such animal sensations and impressions as Naturally rise from them Thus sensible Beauty may charm our Animal Spirits more than the Intellectual Pulchritude of Vertue and Musick may more ravish us than the harmony of Reason or then the thoughts of the Heavenly singing and Hallelujah and these and the tasts of some sensible dainties may more affect us with a sensible pleasure than the very joyes and pleasures of Heaven as we can now conceive them for they are more suited to our Animal Nature and more agreeable to the mixt Faculties arising from the union of our Souls and Bodies and so there may be more pain and sorrow felt for a Wound in a Mans Body than for a Sin in his Soul and more tears shed for the misfortune of a Friend or the loss of a Child or a near Relation than for the miscarriage of our Lives or the commission of a Sin for the one is a sorrow of another nature and another kind raised not by Sense but by Reason not Natural but Religious not from Mechanism of Body but Consideration of Mind and therefore the greatness or the sincerity of our Repentance is not to be measured by the quantity of our Tears or the number of our Sighs or the degrees alwayes of Animal Sorrow but rather by the sincerity of our Wills and the actual performance of our good Purposes of forsaking and amending our Sins which are the only sure marks of our disliking them and being sorry for them and having a true hatred and aversion to them for those secret and inward Passions of Mind are not to be known often either by our selves or others but by the effects and we can only know we love Vertue and hate Sin by following the one and forsaking the other for no Man loves a thing heartily but if it be in his power he will attain it and no Man otherwise loves Vertue or Heaven No Man hates any thing or is heartily sorry for any evil but if it be in his power he will remove it if present and avoid it if absent No Man can know he has the love of God but by this in which the Scripture places it by keeping his Commandments 1 John 5.3 and therefore I am afraid that School distinction between Contrition and Attrition that the one is a Sorrow from the Love of God and the other from the Fear of Hell and so the one is sufficient and the other is not has little or nothing in it but words by which Men may easily cheat and deceive themselves for the secret springs and principles of Mens Passions lye too deep to be discerned and they run into one another and are so mixt and confounded that they cannot be distinguished neither is there any great difference between them and only the effects of them are taken notice of in the account of God and the concerns of Religion It is a meer Nicety to distinguish such Principles in the first forming of Repentance like looking for the colours of Flowers or taste of Fruit in the several Seeds of them whereas he that from true Religious Principles be they either Love Hope or Fear and they generally are mixt and combined together and we cannot divide the force or weight of each of them severally upon the Mind whoever I say from these or any or all of these is so concerned for his past Sins that he leaves them and forsakes them and becomes a good Man he has undoubtedly true Repentance and whatever the Principle of it was whether Love or Fear and whatever degree there was in the sorrow and trouble and concern for it it is that fruit and effect and permanent issue and result of it that constitutes and denominates it true and perfect Repentance Let not therefore any Man doubt his Repentance who has this evidence and demonstration of it and let no Man deceive himself without this and think that the Keys of the Church any thing the Minister can do for him or any thing that Christ has done for him or the Merit of his Blood or any Free-Grace or any Faith in him or any thing that a deluded and impenitent Sinner is willing to catch hold off can turn his Sorrow be it never so great and be it from what Principle soever either of Love or Fear into perfect and sufficient Repentance without the effect of Reformation and a good Life and performing the Conditions of the Gospel necessary to Salvation Godly Sorrow is an excellent means and a good beginning of Repentance 't is sowing in tears those seeds of Religion which may grow up to maturity of goodness and amendment of Life and if those penitential tears wash away the filth of our Sins and cleanse the hands and purifie the heart of a Sinner they are then true Repentance If the Salt that is in them eat out our Corruption and preserve us from all impurities afterwards and the bitterness of the Sorrow makes us disrelish and dislike our Sins ever after and wean and turn away our Affections from them and like the Waters of Siloam work upon us and perform the Cure when they are thus stirred and impregnated with a Divine Vertue by the moving of Heaven upon them then they are of great Vertue and ought to be frequently used and cherish'd and indulged as they were of old for this purpose by the devout and tender Penitents But all Constitutions can no more weep and shed tears alike than they can make the Hairs of their Head white or black and tho' all should be sorry for their Sins as being convinced in their Minds of the evil of them yet the passionate degrees and the outward expressions of this Sorrow fall not under any rules or measures but are best judged and known by the effect which is leaving them as what we do not
like but hate Without this our Tears run wast and our Sorrow is but as an empty Cloud or Rain upon barren Ground without any Fruit and all our bitter Cryes and Lamentations are but as the mournings of the Ephesian Matron when we can strike up again immediately with our Sins and take the causes of our Sorrow and the murderers of our beloved Joy immediately into our Hearts and our Embraces 3. Humiliations Bodily Austerities and Mortifications and especially Fasting make up this Duty of Penitence or Exercise of Repentance For thus the Penitents of old put on Sackcloth and spread Ashes upon their Heads lay prostrate upon the ground and rent their Clothes in the Eastern Countries and fasted and denyed themselves their ordinary Food and afflicted their Souls with these severities upon their Bodies For Sin being committed chiefly by the Body as not only the Instrument but the Tempter to it and the Flesh and its Carnal gratifications being the strongest and commonest allurements to it therefore to show their anger and displeasure against it they revenged it upon their Bodies and chastized those servants of unrighteousness and used such a discipline upon them as might punish them for what was past and be a means to prevent their sinning for the future And to show the sense they had of their own vileness and unworthiness for having offended God they exprest and testified it by all acts of humiliation and lowly submission to his Power and Greatness which they had formerly opposed withstood and disobeyed Now these Acts or Exercises of Repentance were so acceptable to God when they were the signs and effects of a true penitent Heart that we find in Scripture how it prevailed with God so far to pardon Sin as to remove the Temporal Judgments he had denounced against it Thus Niniveh was saved from destruction Jonah 3. when they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth and decreed that neither man nor beast should taste any thing but be covered with sackcloth and ashes ver 7.8 And Josiah when he thus humbled himself and rent his Clothes upon his hearing the destruction of Jerusalem denounced by the Prophetess had it defer'd till after his Death 2 Kings 22.19 And even wicked Ahab had Gods Judgment respited and took off from himself because when he heard it He rent his clothes and put sackcloth upon his flesh and fasted 1 Kin. 21.27 God himself assigning this as a Reason to the Prophet Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me because he humbleth himself before me I will not bring the evil in his days ver 29. And we find these Acts of Humiliation and this Discipline of Fasting joyned with Repentance not only in the Jewish Church but also in the Christian in the first and best Ages when this Penitential Discipline was most strictly observed by all Penitents Now the Question is 1. Whether these are necessary as proper acts or parts of Repentance or whether internal Repentance without these outward Exercises of it may not be sufficient 2. Whether if they be not necessary they are not useful and proper to promote or at least to express it Now as to the first Question The necessity of these we must make a difference between publick and private Repentance In publick Repentance as that of a Nation or City when they would remove or avert a Judgment and deprecate Gods Anger due to their Sins and exercise a solemn and publick Repentance for them this ought to be done by outward Humiliations and Fastings and such signs and expressions as are proper and usual to testifie great concern and trouble and mourning and humiliation that so they may make the best acknowledgment and satisfaction to God for their Sins and the best reparation to his injured Honour and Authority and may beget in others and propagate over the whole Kingdom or Nation the same penitential sense and concern for their Sins in order to avoid the danger and the judgment due upon them And thus in the publick Exercises of Penitence in the Christian Church when any had by a notorious and scandalous Sin brought a reproach and infamy upon the Church and their Religion the Governours were concerned for its Honour and Credit to take notice and turn them out of their Communion and put them in a state of publick Penitence for their grievous faults And here it was necessary for such Persons to satisfie the Church by their outward Acts of Repentance Mourning and humiliation that they were truly and inwardly penitent and were likely to live better and become other Men before they received them again into their Communion and this though it was but a Prudential Method and an External Discipline of the Church yet was excellently fitted for the reclaiming and reforming great and open Offenders by thus shaming them out of their sins and keeping the Rod over them and shutting them out of the Church by the power of the Keys till they were fit to be admitted and received in again upon the probable signs of a True Repentance and this our Church has good reason to wish for again and ought to restore it did not the state and circumstances we are in unavoidably hinder it but it is utterly impracticable under great Schisms and Divisions from the Church and great Looseness and Contempt of Religion which make it impossible for the Church to exercise this Discipline which were otherwise its Duty but this is at most but an Useful Discipline not a necessary or Essential part of Repentance to go through those penitential courses of Humiliation and Mortification which the ancient Penitents did all that is strictly necessary and all that the Scripture commands as a duty is an Internal Penitence towards God transacted between him and our own Souls wherein we humble our selves before him under a sense of our own vileness and unworthiness and with the greatest submission of our Souls bow down our selves and own his Power and Right to punish us and beseech him for Christ's sake not to use it i. e. to pardon and forgive us Now this I doubt not with sincerity of mind at present and Amendment of Life afterwards is a sufficient Exercise of this Duty to private and particular persons without all the other Solemnities and performaces of a publick Penitence for the design of those is hereby fully attained as to the Person himself which was to amend him and to recover him and to make him more careful not to offend for the future by his shame and sufferings for what is past The Church of Rome has turned this Discipline of Publick Penitence used in the Primitive Church into Auricular Confession and Private Penance which besides the folly of giving Absolution first and supposing some of the guilt and punishment remaining after the Sin is pardoned and making the Eternal Punishment easier to be got off than than the Temporal and imposing trifling and ridiculous penances and making them properly satisfactory is a shameful
corrupting an antient Practice and using the Keys of the Church only to unlock the Consciences first and then the Purses of the Laity and is a wretched Corruption of the true Notion of Repentance by making it a light and transient thing and that the least degree of Sorrow by the Power of the Keys is sufficient for Pardon and Salvation From them I doubt not came the first loose and wretched Mistakes about Repentance and these being joyned with the false and unwary Doctrines of others about Justifying and Saving Faith its being a mere fiduciary Relyance upon Christ and his Merits and that we were to be saved by the free Grace of the Gospel without Obedience to its Commands or Performing its Conditions and that God's Grace was so powerful and miraculous in the Conversion of a Sinner that it did its work Instantaneously and Irresistibly these hindred Men from performing that Duty that true Repentance and Obedience which they thought upon some accounts not so necessary or that they expected could be done for them in an instant and so they need not trouble themselves about it all their lives by these Reserves and false Principles and comfortable as they call 'em but deceitful Doctrines they shifted off the difficult task of leaving all their Sins and leading a good life which otherwise must be owned to be the only true way to Salvation and Happiness and when this appears clearly to us as it will if we rightly understand Religion nothing but downright Atheism and disbelieving it will hinder the Power and Efficacy of it upon our lives But as to the Usefulness of those Penitential Austerities and Mortifications and Acts of Humiliation though private Repentance may be without them yet they may be of some good Use and Advantage both as means to promote it and as signs fit to express it Thus fasting especially and abstinence from food is a proper way both of afflicting the Soul and of bringing the body into subjection and as feasting in the Nature of the thing is improper for one Sorrowing Mourning and Repenting as we ought often to be upon serious and sad Reflections made upon our Sins so for many Sins pampering and indulging the Carkass is adding fuel to them and to abate and substract from our Meat and drink is to cut off those Recruits and Nourishments which usually make provision for the flesh and maintain the lusts thereof Now then private prudence and discretion will advise every good Man to make use of that which he finds may be so useful and instrumental to the purposes of Vertue and to the designs of Religion but to enjoyn it further and lay an absolute necessity of it to all Persons and Tempers as of Prayer giving Alms and other Christian Duties this is more than either the Church or the Scripture does ever warrant I speak as to private Repentance which is effectual to every Mans Pardon and Salvation as to publick such as the Publick Fasts commanded by Authority either in the Jewish or Christian Church there the Nature of the thing and Obedience to those who were lawful Governours made it a Duty to comply with their Religious Commands and Designs and to Express our Publick and Solemne Repentance by such signs as are fit and usual on such an occasion and not to keep a Festival when our Governours and our Christian Neighbours and our Sins and the fear of some Judgment call upon us for Fasting and Humiliation but bow long we are then to fast and whether to eat nothing till the Evening and what kind of Meat is what our Health and Constitution and a little degree of Prudence joyned with a good sense of Religion will direct us in without a Confessor He is a Slave to his Appetite and makes a God of his Belly who cannot deny himself a meal now and then upon such an account and he is a weak and Superstitious Creature who thinks Religion lies in some strict and little niceties of performing this without regard to his Health and the more true and proper designs of it Fasting has been alwayes observed by Devout and Pious Penitents in all Ages as an Exercise of penitence and a help to Devotion and Religion and Lent or the Antepaschal Fast is especially of great Usage and Antiquity in the Christian Church but not observed alike in all places as is plain from Irenaeus and others but it was chiefly designed for Publick Penitence of notorious Sinners who were to be restored to the Communion of the Church and Receiving the Sacrament at Easter but it may be of good Use to the private Repentance of every particular Christian who ought to set aside some time for the Examining of himself and the Reflecting upon his past Sins and as long as he lives he ought to Exercise a particular Repentance for all the wilful Sins he ever committed and to have some appointed times to offer up the Sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart and to let his heart bleed afresh and pierce it self very deeply with the remembrance of its past Sins which though God has forgotten so as not to punish yet he ought never to forget so as not to Repent of them I mention not other Bodily penances such as putting on Sackcloth and Ashes which were Eastern Modes of Mourning but do no more oblige us than rending our Garments and pouring out Water which were used by them and as to whipping and going bare-foot which one calls the penance of a Goose Some of those which are in use in the Roman Church are rather Heathenish than Christian Customs like Baals Priests Cutting and Lancing themselves and they are no more proper to Cure Men of their Sins or be Helps to Repentance than the taking a Purge or Vomit which would work as effectually upon their Minds and expel their Vices and Corruptions as well as any of those Penitential Rods and Disciplines upon the backs of Fools who understand not what true Repentance is All such Bodily Exercise profiteth nothing to the freeing from their sins but is only a commuting with God for them and makes them believe that repentance lyes only in such an opus operatum which however severe it seems yet is much easier than to leave their Sins and their beloved Lusts as we find many of our Lovers of Wine rather choose to take Physick now and then to cure their Head-ach than to become sober which would do it much better But true Repentance is not to be known or judged of by such unnatural follies which they call the fruits but are not so much as the shadows of true Repentance nor by any of these External Symptoms or Acts of Penitence which are the most proper Exercises or Attendants of it but by the Change wrought upon our Hearts and Lives and the Effectual Amendment and Reformation of both as we are to judge of the Soundness and Goodness of our Health not by the strength or bitterness of the Physick we
of his sins and the burden is greater than he can bear and his perplexed mind is in such Agonies and Anguish as is unexpressible That sure must be a very comfortable thing which will take him off of this Rack and put him into a state of Ease and Quiet when he is thus tormented and be a present Anodyne to relieve his pains Mankind therefore were in all times very inquisitive and very much concerned to find out a way if it was possible to expiate sin and atone guilt they built Altars and offered Sacrifices and slew Thousands of Sheep and Oxen upon an hundred Hills and came by degrees to offer up Men and to slay their own Children and to give their first born for their transgression the fruit of their bodies for the sin of their Souls as the Prophet expresses it Micah 6.7 They would part with any thing however costly or dear to them to free themselves from the pain and fear they were under and give any hopes or ease to their conscious and timorous and perplext Minds This was a great cause of most of the Heathen Superstitions of their Purgations Lustrations Sacrifices and the like whereby they hoped to clear and purifie their guilty minds and appease the Anger of that Divine Vengeance that they were sensible hung over their heads by reason of their sins This showed the greatness of the Disease and the want and necessity there was of a Remedy for it which they being ignorant of used all the means they could think of and tryed all wayes however odd and foolish to help themselves but it was only Christianity could fully make known the Expiation of sin by the Sacrifice of Christ and our having Redemption by his blood even the forgiveness of sins upon our true Repentance Colos 1.14 This is the most blessed Message and Gospel from Heaven to a poor guilty Sinner this is preaching good tidings to the meek and humble sinner Binding up the broken-hearted proclaiming liberty to the captives opening the prison to them that are bound comforting them that mourn as the Gospel is described by the Prophet Isa 61.1 and in our Saviours own phrase 't is giving rest to them that are weary and heavy laden by reason of their sins Matth. 11.28 when though we are conscious to our se ves of a great many faults we have committed in our lives and some of them such as fill us with shame horrour and confusion when we think of them yet we are assured they are all blotted out by Repentance and the whole guilt of them done away as if we had never committed them this gives great ease and peace to our thoughts when our Conscience is thus discharged of all guilt and the terrible fears and apprehensions of it this is more comfortable to the mind than to be eased of the most tormenting pain of body to have voided a sharp stone after a fit or have a throbbing Ulcer broke and cured 't is unexpressible pleasure to be put thus out of pain and be restored to the peace and comfort of a Man 's own Mind when he had once lost it He who has so truly Repented of his Sins as I have directed hath all Reason for this for he hath as sure grounds of Pardon and needs no more fear Punishment than if he had been alwayes innocent and never had offended or done any thing amiss tho' his Sins fill'd his Mind with Sorrow before and gathered all the black Clouds of Grief and Melancholly over his thoughts yet now they ought to be dispersed and he may chear up and be comforted If he has any Fears they are unreasonable for if his Sins are perfectly gone they ought to be gone too While he was under the guilt of his Sins he had reason with St. Peter to weep bitterly with David to wash his bed with his tears that Bed which he had so polluted before with Mary Magdalen to vent so many tears as might wash her Saviours feet and then wipe them with the Hair of her Head that so she might do Penance with those Meretricious Eyes and Locks which had drawn others into Sin The Pious Penitents of old had all the signs and symptoms of the deepest mourning and lamentation for their sins ashes upon their head sackcloth upon their loins lying down in their confusion because they had sinned striking their Breasts with the Publican and every one crying out in the anguish of his Soul with the Psalmist My iniquities are gone over my head and are a heavy burden too grievous for me to bear My iniquities have taken hold upon me so that I am not able to look up they are more than the hairs of my head therefore my heart faileth me These are the words and these the Passions and this the Picture of a Penitent under a state of penitence and the guilt of his sins but now upon his true Repentance all Tears are to be wiped from his Eyes or at least the same fountain is to send forth sweet Water that did bitter and that is to become a Balm and an Oyl of gladness to his Soul which was so sharp and corrosive before His Repentance will now be his greatest comfort which was so severe and so bitter before and when his Wounds are healed and bound up and the operation is over The bones which were broken will rejoice and he will hear of joy and gladness instead of sighs sorrow and contrition He who had so much Reason to be angry and displeased with himself before by reason of his Sins and his Folly will now be pleased and satisfied when he is grown wiser and better and will have that solid satisfaction and lasting pleasure in his own Mind which is a thousand times greater than all the vain and empty and short-lived pleasures of his Lusts and Vices and he will now have a thousand times more inward ease by the practice of Repentance than he had before by the practice of his most grateful Sins 2. Repentance as it will free him from the present unhappiness of his Sins and Guilt so it will deliver him from the fears of more dreadful Miseries in another World and from the dangers which he is exposed to hereafter by reason of his Sins This is the chief and great Reason why a Sinner is in such anguish and horrour and perplexity at present because his guilt forebodes greater Miseries to him and his conscious mind has a Prophetick Spirit that foretels evil things to come upon him hereafter He knows he deserves punishment and vengeance to fall upon him and he therefore fears though he has a short respite here yet it shall be unavoidable and in a greater measure hereafter Religion is so Natural to the reason of our minds and has such a sure foundation both in Nature and Revelation that hardly any Sinner can shake off all sense of it and free himself from the fearful belief and expectations of its future punishments and though he