drift of the Parable is made plain and perspicuous to an ordinary capacity Wherefore now I proceed to handle the particular branches of it of which there are these three most remarkable in the Parable and which as I have already intimated are the designed subject of the subsequent discourse First we have here a graphical description of the state and condition of an habitual sinner before repentance from vers 11. to vers 17. Secondly a type or portraicture of true repentance and turning to God from vers 17. to vers 20. Thirdly an Emblematical representation of God's unspeakable mercy in the gracious reception of such penitents from vers 20. to the end of the Chapter but especially to vers 24. Of these three points I will treat in order according as the series of the Parable leads me But yet because I apprehend it will be not onely profitable in it self but also peculiarly subservient to the present design that before I apply my self to a direct prosecution of the traces of the Parable I give a strict and Philosophical account of the Nature of Sin and the several Stations of Sinners as which will give both light and weight especially to the first of the mentioned particulars and in good measure to all the rest This therefore I will endeavour in the next immediate Chapter CHAP. III. Of the Nature of Sin and of the divers States of Sinners THE CONTENTS § I. A definition of sin the three sorts of Laws mankind is under viz. Natural Divine and Humane All sin is a violation of some or other of them The mischief of mistake herein § II. A law that obliges must be known or knowable Several ways of promulging the Divine Laws The guilt of sin rises in proportion to the clearnesse of the promulgation of that law whereof it is a violation The mischiefs of mistake herein and the remedy § III. All sin is voluntary Cautions for the right understanding of that assertion the proofs of the truth of it and absurd consequences of the contrary § IV. A passage of S. James Chap. I. vers 13. c. explained and the nativity of sin thereby discovered § V. The usefulnesse of the foregoing definition and explication The distinction between presumptuous sins and sins of infirmity and their different effects § VI. Of reluctancy of Conscience and whether that extenuates or increases the guilt of sin § VII Of the several states and mansions of sinners upon the consideration of which return is made to the Parable § I. IF we take just measures of the nature of sin at least so far as it falls under our present consideration for it is not within the compass of my subject to treat of Original sin it is thus to be Defined namely Sin is a voluntary breach of a known Law Or to speak more fully and distinctly there are these three things concurrent to make man guilty or to denominate any action of his sinfull 1. That by some act or omission of his there be a going contrary to and violation of some Law in being 2. That the Law so violated be such as is or might have been known to the Offender 3. That the Action or Omission by which such Law is violated be consented to and the breach voluntary All these three things together in conjunction are the ingredients which make up the deadly poyson of sin And for defect of due consideration of the necessary concurrence of all of them to that unhappy production It is hard to say whether greater Errours have ensued in Doctrine or more Vices in practice whether more perplexities have infested mens Consciences or more uncharitableness hath imbittered their Spirits For if the first ingredient be left out Sin is thereby rendred either nothing at all or of so indefinite and uncertain a nature as that loose and profane men will laugh at it and on the contrary good and devout persons will never be free from suspicions of it If the second be omitted the consequence will be that severe and sad judgments will be passed upon the finall estate of the greatest part of mankind and therewith very unworthy reflections be made upon the Divine Majesty And if the third branch be omitted the number of sins will be vastly multiplied but the nature and guilt thereof so extenuated as that men will be tempted to be more afraid of God then of sinning against him But all this and a great deale more will better appear upon a breif explication of the particulars First then wherever there is sin there is a breach of some Law in being this though it be not the full and adequate notion yet is the first reason of sin And accordingly we may easily observe that in most if not in all Languages the very words that are made use of to express moral evil or sin do all import the breach of some Law or rule of action Especially the Hebrew Tongue which is most significant in this kind hath three words most usuall in the case which we find all together Psal 32. v. 1 2. and all leading us directly to this notion of sin Blessed is be whose Transgression is forgiven whose sin is covered blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not Iniquity The first word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we render transgression properly signifying to pass set Bounds or transgress prefixed Limits The second 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we translate sin denoteth a missing of the aim or mark we were to have directed our selves towards And the last of the three 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 iniquity implies the making of a crooked and wandring path So that we see whatever kind condition or degree of sin it be that is spoken of it is still expressed by respect to some Law or Rule in deviation from which it consists The like may be observed in the Greek Tongue in the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. and generally in other Languages But we need not insist upon niceties when that which we are saying is the express assertion of two Apostles St. Paul and St. John the former telling us Rom. 4. 15. Where there is no Law there is no Transgression The other Ep. 1. chap. 3. vers 4. He that sinneth transgresseth also the Law for sin is a transgression of the Law Now for that Law which sin is a violation of it is threefold viz. Either first the Law of nature and reason that is those differences of good and evill which the mind of man is of it self able to collect by attentive consideration of the nature of God and our relation to him the state of the whole Creation and the mutuall aspects of the severall parts thereof upon each other and upon our selves of which we shall have occasion to speak more hereafter Or secondly the express and positive declarations of the Divine will concerning things to be done or avoided by us which is commonly called Revelation or Divine Law Or thirdly the
institutions commands and prohibitions of such men as it hath pleased God to invest with Authority under himself of obliging others which we call Humane Law To these some would adde Custome as a fourth rule of action because they observe there are many cases wherein all the former ceasing wise and good men are wont to govern themselves by laudable and prevailing customs but this so far as it is obliging may be reduced to Humane Law Others also would adde the Law of Charity or of avoiding scandall as a fifth but this is both provided for by the positive Law of God and also deducible from naturall principles Therefore the three aforesaid measures comprize all that which can fall under the notion of Law and consequently every such thing as is to be esteemed a sin must consist in a deviation from or going cross to either all or some one or other of them For it is evident of it self that every thing is free till something restrain and circumscribe it and it cannot be evill but good to make use of that liberty which derogates from no other which infringes no Authority being retrenched by none And it is as evident that we owe account of our selves and carriage only to God ultimately forasmuch as we derive our being and we have and are from him and him only he therefore who gave us our being and all our powers and faculties and their respective accommodations and who continually supports us in the exercise of them may justly prescribe to us and set us what boundaries shall seem fit to his infinite Wisedome Now there are but three ways wherein he hath imposed any obligation or restraint upon us viz. Either by such footsteps of his Will as the mind of man may trace in the order of the Creation those intimations of good and evill which are interwoven in the very nature and order of things and to be observed by naturall reason Or secondly by extraordinary interposition expresly dictating his mind and will to the sons of men Or lastly delegating Authority to those whom his Providence hath constituted in Superiority to prescribe to us in all such things as were not foreprized by the two former i. e. that in all cases where neither the Laws of nature nor the Divine Law were infringed there it was his will we should govern our selves by the Laws of men These I say are all the ways God hath thought fit and all that are imaginable of laying any obligation upon us Therefore wherever there is sin either some plain dictate of Reason is contradicted or some positive Law of God violated or the Sanction of human authority opposed and where neither of these is done there can be no sin upon the forecited reason of the Apostle where there is no law there is no transgression WHICH plain truth we have thus carefully deduced principally for the prevention or remedy of two mistakes very rife in this matter The former is of certain honest and well-meaning but timorous and superstitious persons who not content to approve themselves to the aforesaid measures nor thinking it sufficient for their security that neither the Law of Nature nor any expresse either divine or humane Law disallow their actions are afraid of their own shadows and suspect sin and danger they know not why nor whence their heart misgives them when there is nothing in the case but either that the thing they are about is contrary to the course of their education or forbidden by the imperious dictate of some person to whose usurped authority they have prostituted their judgments Now would such persons be induced to consider that lawfull and unlawfull are relative terms and respect some definite rule or other which must determine any action to be this or that that God is well pleased that his laws be observed and is not so severe and rigid as to oblige us negatively that is that we shall doe nothing but what he commands that there is a great field of liberty interjacent between expresse sin and expresse duty and in that we may expatiate without offence that all actions are good within that scope and though they admit of such different degrees as that some may be much better then others yet none are evil that touch not upon the bounds and limits of Law If I say these things were considered which are no more then the effect of what I said before then would those honest minds be undeceived and enfranchised who for want of such consideration are put to the unhappy choice either to be dispoiled of all liberty or deprived of all peace besides that by such jealousies they tempt both themselves and others to think hardly of God and consequently of that provoke all such men as are strangers to Religion to nauseate and abhorr it THE other mistake which we here seek to prevent is of those that quite contrary to the former are so far from thinking the three Rules of Action we laid down to be insufficient that they persuade themselves it is no great matter for Law or Rule The persuasion of a man 's own conscience an honest intention and a zeal of God are able to bear out and justifie an undertaking though against the expresse and literal direction of some Law in being This conceit strange as it is hath neverthelesse had its Patrons and Proselytes both amongst Jews and Christians and been the cause of mischief enough to both Now it is true that it is within the power of Conscience to make that which was before indifferent in the general to become good and laudable in particular or contrariwise by its dissent to render it evil and vicious because God having given it a judicature its consent is to be had in what we doe in which sense I take it that of the Apostle is to be understood Whatsoever is not of faith is sin and for that reason an erring conscience as I shall shew by and by is also some mitigation of a miscarriage in practice But it is far from that prerogative of being able to legitimate any action prohibited by any of the aforesaid rules for it is but a Judge not a Law and must be governed by the measures forelaid Or if we allow too that the light of conscience is one of those measures as we doe yet must it not bear down both the other that is it is onely a Law and justifies an action when neither divine nor humane Laws have restrained it and not else Wherefore upon the whole matter it is apparent that the three Rules aforesaid in conjunction make up the standard of good and evil every thing is a sin that goes contrary to any of them and nothing is so that doth not § II. 2. BUT Secondly to render any action of ours culpable it is not sufficient that some Law in being be broken unlesse that Law be also promulged i. e. such as is or may be known for otherwise in effect it is no Law
for deliberation there could be no perfect judgment and consequently but an imperfect consent AGAIN whilest a man is bending himself with all his might against some one extreme which he knows to be evil and therefore carefully declines he may perhaps in detestation of that incline too much to the other or whilest a man endeavours diligently to carry on both the affairs of this life and the concerns of Religion too it may happen that the solicitude and cares of the former may sometimes unseasonably crowd in and disturb him in the latter Nay once more through the infirmity of memory compared with the multiplicity of affairs which a wise and good man's care extends to it may not infrequently fall out that such a person for the present forgets or omits some duty of Religion Now it cannot be said that any of these cases are perfectly involuntary because it was not impossible but that extraordinary diligence and watchfullness might have provided against them nevertheless they are not deliberate sins nor was there any full consent of the will to them as is evident both by what we have said already and also by this that such persons we speak of very quickly feel remorse for them their hearts smite them upon the first reflexion upon what hath past and they presently recover themselves and double their watch and guard where they have thus found themselves overtaken These therefore and all other of the nature of these are properly called sins of infirmity BUT now on the other side when the matter of fact is notorious and palpable that it can admit of no dispute whether it be evil or no when a man is not surprized but makes his election doth not insensibly slip awry whilest he was in his right way but takes a wrong course is not overborn by an huge fear but is allured by the pleasures of sense when he hath time to consider and yet resolves upon that which is forbidden him here is little or nothing to extenuate the fact or mitigate his guilt it is a voluntary and therefore a presumptuous sin Such a distinction as this David seems to make Psal 19. 12 13. when he prays that he may understand his errours to the intent that with holy Joh where he had done iniquity he might doe so no more but earnestly begs that he may be kept from presumptuous sins i. e. from such voluntary and wilfull miscarriages as we have but now spoken of so saith he shall I be innocent and free from the great transgression For though sins of infirmity in the most proper sense are not without guilt at least if God should proceed in rigour with men yet in consideration of the goodness of God together with the evident pitiableness of their own circumstances they leave no horrour upon the mind no stain or ill mark upon the person much less a scar or a maim but the other besides their great guilt either terribly afflict or lay waste and stupify the Conscience they harden the heart break the powers of the soul and quench the Spirit of God as we shall have occasion to speak more at large hereafter AT present I think it may be very pertinent to observe that whereas S. John Ep. 1. Chap. 3. vers 4. seems to give a brief and compendious description of sin in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we render Sin is a transgression of the Law it is not altogether improbable but that the Apostle intended to express something more then is commonly understood by those words in English for besides that it seems a flat saying he that sinneth transgresseth the Law for sin is a transgression of the Law it is noted moreover by Learned men that the Apostle calls not sin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which had been the most proper word to denote a meer breach or transgression of the Law but uses the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies a great deal more namely lawlesness and dissoluteness the living without or casting off the yoke of the Law for so we find it elsewhere used in Scripture particularly 1 Tim. 1. 9. where we have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lawless and disobedient or ungovernable joyned together And thus the phrase of the Apostle before us will import not so much the meer matter of sin viz. the violation of a Law but the aggravation of it as a presumptuous sin namely the wilfullness and stubbornness of the sinner And if this gloss may be allowed we shall with much ease be able to understand a following passage in this Apostle which hath not a little exercised the heads of Divines nor less perplexed the Consciences of many serious persons Viz. vers 9. of this Chapter he writes thus he that is born of God doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God Now if we take sin strictly and rigorously here for every thing that is contrary to the perfection of the Divine Law then it will be absolutely necessary that by the phrase he that is born of God we can understand none but our Saviour himself which is altogether besides the business forasmuch as he only was without sin in that sense but if we take the phrase in the latitude before intimated that is for voluntary wilfull and deliberate sins then the sense is both easie and comfortable namely that the man who is truely a Christian having not only the profession but the new nature temper and spirit of the Gospel though being a man and so incompassed with temptations and difficulties as every one is in this world he cannot avoid all surreptions yet the powerfull principles of Christianity setled in his heart will not fail to preserve him at least ordinarily from rebellion and wilfull disobedience AND this way of interpreting these and the like passages of the New Testament is strongly countenanced by what we find Luk. 1. 6. where it is said of Zachary and Elizabeth that they were both of them righteous before God walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless That is they were sincerely good and vertuous persons their hearts were principled with the fear and love of God and though they were not without the errours and failings incident to humanity yet they strictly made Conscience of their duty and did not deliberately depart from the way of God's commandments And that passage concerning David 1 King 15. 5. seems sufficient to put the matter out of doubt where it is said David did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord and turned not aside from any thing he commanded him all the days of his life save only in the matter of Vriah the Hittite Notwithstanding the Scripture reckons up several failings of David his passion for Absalom his numbring the People his approaching too near the Lord 's Annointed when he cut off the skirt of Saul's Garment for which his heart smote him his despondency
of mind and mistrusts that he should one day fall by the hand of Saul his rage against Nabal c. But in regard these were but imperfectly voluntary therefore they make no blot in his Character But in the matter of Vriah the fact was horrible there was time for deliberation the use of cunning and contrivance and therefore full consent Wherefore this was quite of another consideration from all the rest and left such a stain upon him as required many tears and prayers and a very serious and signal repentance to cleanse him from § VI. THUS much I had thought sufficient for the clearing the distinction between sins of infirmity and presumption but I cannot but take notice of a mistake equally common and dangerous which where-ever it takes place doth not only render all we have hitherto said useless but is of fatal consequence to the souls of men It is to this effect When men are about the commission of some great and enormous sin it is not unusual for them to find some reluctancy and abhorrence within themselves Now for the sake of this they think that although they yield to the temptation and commit the sin yet it will not be esteemed altogether a voluntary transgression but will admit of great abatements by reason of such combate and conflict which they found in themselves And to this purpose they apply that passage of the Apostle Rom. 7. 15. That which I doe I allow not for what I would that doe I not but what I would not that I doe And that which follows also vers 17. So then it is no more I that doe it but sin that dwelleth in me But to remove so dangerous a mistake it would be well considered in the first place that however some have learned to call such a reluctancy as aforesaid by the specious name of the combat between the flesh and spirit or the regenerate and unregenerate part as the same men love to speak it is certainly nothing else but meerly some remains of natural Conscience in men and is to be found in some measure in the very worst of men that is in all but those whose Consciences are seared and utterly insensible It is the very nature of Conscience it self which is nothing else but a kind of internal sense of good and evil implanted by God in the nature of man and a man may more easily destroy any of his outward senses then quite extinguish this The Apostle takes notice of it in the Romans Chap. 2. vers 15. whose vices were yet so notorious as that they were utterly out of capacity of being accounted regenerate men Indeed if a man found in himself so quick a sense of his duty and were so tender of all degrees of evil that his Conscience not only checkt but called him off and restrained him upon the first appearance or approaches of sin this as I have intimated before would be a good sign of regeneration and such beginnings of evil so resisted will not be imputed as wilfull transgressions BUT when a man's Conscience only checks him but he goes on and commits the sin the best that can be made of it is only that it is not a seared Conscience and yet such a man is in a fair way to that also for as a part of the body by being often rubbed and hurt grows at last callous and insensible so the Conscience being often resisted in its intimations and stifled and over-born by the fury of lust and passion grows at last stupid and dead So the Apostle tells us Rom. 1. 28. because they liked not to retain God in their minds he gave them up to vain imaginations and because they gave themselves to sensuality he gave them up to unnatural lusts and so by degrees 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to a reprobate mind to a state of stupidity a spirit of injudiciousness to lose the feeling of good and evil And in the mean time it is so far from extenuating the guilt of a man's sin that his heart smote him for it that on the contrary it is a great aggravation of his presumption that he went on to the commission of it notwithstanding If a man could say he did not so well know his duty as he should and therefore his Conscience not being rightly informed did not give him warning of it or that he was in a hurry and could not consider or confesses his rashness and precipitancy these are some mitigations for as S. Clemens well pronounces That which is involuntary is sudden and where a man cannot deliberate he scarcely consents But when the case is such that a man must acknowledge he knew what he did he thought of it and condemned it and yet did it this surely is an aggravation if any thing in the world be so It is saith a generous Heathen Plutarch by name a most unmanly and brutish thing for a man that knows what he should doe softly and effeminately to give himself up to the swing of intemperate passions In short if when a man confessing the truth must say he had reason against what he did but confronted it his conscience shamed him but he resolved to be shameless he had weapons in his hand to resist temptation but he cast them down and yielded all which is implied when a man saith his Conscience smote him when he went about a sin but nevertheless he persisted and committed it I say if this be not a voluntary sin there is no such thing incident to mankind § VII THUS much concerning the guilt or malignity of sin in the general Now briefly for the various states and mansions of sinners Which we shall the more easily understand if we first consider the several degrees of vertue or so many higher and lower capacities as there are of being good and holy And I know not where to find these more exactly reckoned up and described then by S. Clement of Alexandria who makes four stations of perfection 1. Not to sin at all Which saith he is the felicity of the divine nature and to be sure not the condition of any meer man in this world 2. Not to commit any wilfull or voluntary sin which is the attainment of the perfect man or true Gnostick as he uses to speak 3. Rarely to be guilty of inadvertency or involuntary Lapses which is the condition of a good proficient in religion 4. and Lastly When a man hath sinned to recover himself early by repentance and not lie under the guilt nor much less grow into a habit of sin Which lowest degree though it be vastly different from every of the former yet it is tolerable and acceptable through the mercy of God as we shall see anon NOW in some proportion to this discourse we will suppose 4 stations or degrees of wickedness 1. Such as do nothing but sin which we only mention for method-sake for as we are certain non datur summum
malum or that there is no being absolutely evil as the Manichees imagined so it is very questionable whether the very Devil himself do nothing but what is evil but it is out of all question with me that the worst and most viciously inclined men do some good And for those that can assert the most vertuous actions of unregenerate men to be express sins they may pretend what Patrons they will of their opinion but I am sure neither Scripture nor reason will countenance it for though it be true that the best actions of such men are not acceptable as the conditions of eternal life because they are disjoined from habitual sanctification and true holiness yet that they are not therefore sins will sufficiently appear by what we have said not long since in the description of the nature of sin Neither because they are defective in some circumstances do they cease to be good or become sins for then the best performances of the best men in this world would be sins too because they are also defective in circumstances 2. THE second or rather first rank of sinners consists of such as live in the habitual practice of great and enormous sins whether of one kind or of many I confess at the first sight one would think these should be divided into two classes whereof the first should be those profligate wretches and sons of Belial who perfectly abandon themselves to the temptation of the Devil and the fury of their own lusts and adde drunkenness to thirst as the Scripture expresseth it or run from one kind of sin to another with a kind of greediness as if were it possible they loved evil for its own sake or had a spite both at God and their own souls And the second should be those more reserved and cautious sinners who perhaps may carry it very demurely in many respects but maintain some bosome sin which is as dear to them as their right eye and as necessary as their right hand and this they hope God will indulge them Oh it is a little one and their souls shall live I say I should in civility have provided these a form by themselves and not set them with the open and scandalous sinners but that I observe God makes no difference between them His servants ye are saith the Apostle to whom ye obey and it is no matter whether a man have many Masters or one he is equally a slave that is led captive either way And so 8. James in that most remarkable passage Chap. 2. vers 10. Whosoever shall keep the whole Law and yet offend in one point is guilty of all Of which seeming Paradox he gives account in the next Verse For he that said Do not commit adultery said also Do not kill c. i. e. The reverence of every branch of God's Law is built upon the consideration of his sovereignty and right to prescribe to us which he impeaches whosoever dispenses with himself in the habitual breach of any one of his commands For whatever particular he chooses to transgress in he derogates from the authority of the whole Besides it is to be considered that all sins cannot stand together some sins are as repugnant and contradictory to each other as all are to vertue and moreover non omnis fert omnia tellus it may be not the humour or interest or not sutable to the constitution of some man to act some sin when yet it is neither love of vertue nor the fear of God which makes him abstain from it These therefore are justly joyned together namely all such as live in the habitual practice of one or more notorious sins 3. A THIRD rank are such as though they live not in the habit yet are guilty of the act of some very great and flagitious crime for there are some sins very deadly even in single acts as either containing a complication of many wickednesses together as sacriledge adultery sedition or such as can never be revoked nor amends be made for them as taking away a man's life or never repeated nor repented of as to murther a man's self and several others Now these being of so deadly a nature every man that hath any sense of vertue or care of his own soul ought ever to be sufficiently guarded against them and at utter defiance of them and he that can be so careless as to be found guilty of any such betrays the great Atheism and security of his heart And for this reason the miscarriage of David in the business of Bathshebah and Vriah lays such an horrible blot upon him and needed all that repentance whereof we have the footsteps in the 51. Psalm 4. THE fourth and last rank are they that avoid both the habit and the act of greater sins yet allow themselves in the frequent commission of lesser and persevere in them without repentance By lesser sins I mean both such as I reckoned up before under the name of infirmities and more particularly such as these following When a man dares not give himself up to beastly sensuality yet will too much humour and caress his body in meats and drinks and pleasures or will not steal and couzen but will be covetous and have his heart too much upon the world that dares not cast off the duties of Religion but will indulge himself to be remiss and flat in them and several of this nature too easie to be observed Now these kinds of sins are the more dangerous in that partly our Consciences not being presently startled at them as at greater crimes we more easily admit them or they insensibly steal upon us from whence it comes to pass that they become frequent and so arise to a great number and seem to equal that way what they have not in weight These therefore if they be suffered to pass unregarded grow to a great danger since no danger is little when once it is esteemed so and besides though these may pass for inadvertencies when they are once or rarely committed yet it must be a vicious neglect of our selves when they are frequent and ordinary forasmuch as all sincere vertue is awakened to greater diligence by every sensible declension to which adde especially that whatsoever sin and how little soever it be is not repented of when it is come to our knowledge is by that means become a voluntary transgression increasing its guilt ex post pacto These are the principal stations of sin or the several ways upon which a man is denominated a sinner in the language of Scripture and of wise men BUT to the end we may render this important point as clear as we can and now also come more directly to the Parable before us we will take notice of the Psalmist David's distribution of sinners into a three-fold Classis Psal 1. vers 1. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly nor standeth in the way of sinners nor sitteth in the seat of the
himself on this wise What-ever my case is now sure I was made in the image of God placed under the eye of his Providence as it were of his Family and Table Heaven and Earth ministred to me I was Lord of the lower and Favourite of the upper World as if the one was made on purpose to exercise and divert me and the other to receive and reward me I have a nature capable of immortality and had eternal life designed for me as the inheritance of a Son and my task of obedience was as easie and honourable as my hopes were glorious For I had no hard burthen laid upon me nothing required of me but what was proportionable to my powers and agreeable to the reason of my mind no restraint was laid upon my passions but such as was evidently both necessary for the World and good for my self that it could not be drawn into an argument of harshness and severity in God nor make apology for my transgression All my faculties were whole and intire I was neither tempted by necessity nor oppressed by any fate I was therefore happy enough and why am I not so still It is true that humane nature hath miscarried since it came out of the hands of God and I carry the Skar of that common Wound yet is the dammage of the first Adam so repaired by the second that mankind is left inexcusable in all its actual transgressions but especially in a dissolute and impenitent course of rebellion Besides I see others whose circumstances were in all points the same with mine and their difficulties and temptations no less to live holily and comfortably having either escaped the too common pollutions of the world by an early compliance with the grace of God or at least quickly recovered themselves by repentance I find therefore that I might have lived in the light of God's countenance in serenity of mind quiet of conscience sense of my own integrity and comfortable hopes of unspeakable glory in contemplation of which I might have defied death and lived in Heaven upon Earth but I have been meerly fooled by my own incogitancy and undone by my own choice For proceeds he 2. I have forfeited all this by sinning against God and been so sottish as to prefer the satisfaction of my own humour before all the aforesaid felicities I have been ingratefull towards my great benefactour broken the law of my Creation confronted the wisedom of the most High been insolent towards a mighty Majesty violated just and righteous commandments sinned against light knowledge and conscience added presumption to folly wilfullness to weakness despised counsels exhortations promises assistances my sins are many in number horrible in their aggravations deadly in their continuance and my perseverance in them By this means I have not onely wrought disorder in the world but disordered my own Soul spoiled my own powers suffered passion to get head of my reason clouded my understanding and so by former sins rendered it in a manner necessary that I sin still For when I would doe good evil is present with me I find a law in my members rebelling against the law of my mind and carrying me into captivity to the law of sin O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death I have driven away the good Spirit of God and put my self under the power of Satan become his slave and drudge I know nothing now of the comforts of innocence of the joy of a good Conscience mine is a continual torture to me I have lost the light of God's countenance and the very thoughts of him are dreadfull to me by all which together life is a burden and yet the thoughts of death are intolerable Such reflections and considerations as these break the very heart of a sinner and resolve him into sighs and tears 3. BUT this is not the worst of the case for in the third place he considers what is like to be the issue of this This miserable life saith the sinner cannot last always death will arrest me shortly and present me before a just Tribunal the grave will e're ong cover me but not be able to conceal me for I must come to Judgment Methinks I hear already the sound of the last Trump Let the dead arise let them come to judgment I see the Angels as Apparitors gathering all the world together and presenting them before that dreadfull Tribunal How shall I be able with my guilty Conscience to appear upon that huge Theatre before God Angels and Men Methinks I see the Devil standing at my right hand to aggravate those faults which he prompted me to the commission of I behold the Books opened and all the debaucheries extravagancies and follies of my whole life laid open Christ the Judge of all the World coming in flaming fire to take vengeance upon them that have not known him nor obeyed his Gospel How shall I endure his presence how shall I escape his eye I cannot elude his judgment nor evade his sentence come then ye Rocks and fall upon me and ye Mountains cover me from the face of the Lamb and from him that sitteth upon the Throne But the Rocks rend in sunder the Sea and the Earth disclose their dead the Earth dissolves the Heavens vanish as a Scroll and I hear the dreadfull Sentence Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels Methinks I hear Christ Jesus thus upbraiding me You have listened to the Devil and not to me I would have saved you but you would not be ruled by me you have chosen the way of death now therefore you shall be filled with your own ways I forewarned you what would be the issue of your courses but you would have your full swing of pleasure for the present whatever came of it hereafter you laughed at judgment and it is come in earnest you have had your time of jollity and sensual transports and now your portion is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth O therefore saith the sinner that I had never been born cursed be the day that brought me forth and the Sun that shone upon me would the womb had been my grave and I had never seen the light Thus my guilty Conscience anticipates its own punishment and I am tormented before my time 4. BUT is there no hope left must I lie down thus in sorrow and despair These things I may justly expect but they are not yet incumbent upon me I am yet alive and they say there is hopes in the land of the living the door is not yet shut against me Hell hath not yet closed her mouth upon me I have heard God is a mercifull God and thereupon I presumed hitherto and abused his goodness but sure his mercies are above the measure of a man if they be infinite like himself he hath more goodness then I have ingratitude Possibly there may be some hope left in the bottom of this
to receive him till he soon perceived who it was but then seized with shame he makes from him with all the speed he could The Apostle forgetting his age and gravity follows him with all his might crying out My Son my Son dost thou fly thy Father thy aged unarmed Father Fear me not I come not armed to destroy thee but desirous to save thee I 'll pray for thee I 'll intercede with Christ Jesus on thy behalf I am ready to lay down my life to save thy Soul The revolted youth hearing this makes a stand and then with eyes cast down and weapons laid aside begins to tremble and at last weeping bitterly is in the words of the Historian Re-baptized in his own tears Then S. John embracing him prays for him fasts with him instructs him and leaves him not till he had not only restored him to the society of the Church but settled him in the publick Ministry thereof THE story is very admirable in all the parts of it as wherein amongst other things we may observe in the first place how quickly bad company insinuates its contagion and corrupts youthfull minds and that neither fine parts nor the best education are sufficient security for a vertuous course unless Apollos water as well as Paul plant and God also give the increase AGAIN it is worth observing how easy and sudden the transition is from a luxurious to a lawless life This young man began his risk in riot and ends it in robbery Although this be no strange thing for besides that intemperance makes men bold and rash and fit for any desperate enterprize they that are come to that that they care not what they spend are usually forced not to regard how they get it We note also from this story that great Wits and curious tempers are like razor mettle quickly turned and if they miscarry they become the most notorious Debauchees but if they be well set and hold right become most eminently usefull Moreover we may here also take notice how a sense of guilt and dis-ingenuity baffles a man's spirit dejects his courage disarms and subdues him whereas on the other side conscience of sincerity and good designs spirits and actuates a man above his age temper and common capacity But that which I principally remark in the story is the paternal affection in the aged Apostle toward this dissolute and lost young man how fresh the concern for him was in his thoughts when he came into those parts again where he left him with what strictness he requires the depositum of the Bishop how he forgets himself to recover him what charms there were in the countenance voice motion of the aged Father how strange a thing it was to be young Hector running away from an old Apostle an armed Captain not daring to stand before unarmed and infirm old age to observe the spirit the passion the flaming love of a good man to the Soul of a desperate sinner and in all this to see a lively resemblance of God's goodness to men For God doth not only as I have said before receive men upon their return but moves towards them invites nay draws them to himself He is so far from positively hardening sinners that he takes off their hardness he allures them by his promises prevents them by his grace way-lays them by his providence calls upon them by his word melts them by his kindness works upon them by his Spirit and this Spirit takes all advantageous seasons watches the mollia tempora fandi suggests thoughts to their minds holds their minds close and intent gives them a prospect of the other world and by several other ways without violence to their faculties helps forward their return to God § V. 4. LASTLY As the Earthly Father for joy of his Sons return forgets all his anger and the causes of it passes by his ingratitude and dissolution of manners and treats him with infinite demonstrations of kindness falling on his neck and kissing him So doth our Heavenly Father cast all the iniquities of the penitent ' behind his back blots them out of his book makes no severe reflections no bitter expostulations no upbraidings but passes an act of perfect amnesty and oblivion Justin Martyr in his Work against Trypho brings in our Saviour saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The words are no where to be found in the Gospel but the sense is That God takes men as they are and considers not how evil they have been so that now they become sincerely good This the Prophet Ezekiel frequently proclaims on the behalf of God Chap. 18. especially vers 22. All his sin that he hath committed shall not be once mentioned against him but in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live For as if men apostatize from hopefull and vertuous beginnings it shall not at all avail them that they set out well and began in the Spirit whenas they end in the Flesh upon which account it is a very vain thing for them to goe about to comfort themselves against their present looseness by remembring the time of their conversion and the great passion they have sometime had for Religion but which now they have apostatized from having lost their first love so on the contrary he that was a sinner but now is not i. e. is now sincerely returned from his licentiousness to his duty shall never have his former disobedience imputed to him by God THIS truth Philo represents handsomly in his Allegorical way when glossing upon what the Scripture saith of Enoch After his translation he was not found because God had translated him he paraphrases on this manner God saith he having changed him from an evil to a vertuous man the traces of his former wickedness were no more to be found then if no such thing had ever been committed BUT this gracious procedure of God with penitent sinners deserves to be more fully and particularly unfolded and if we diligently consider what the Scripture assures us of the greatness of God's pardoning mercy we shall observe these three remarkable circumstances all pregnant of unspeakable consolation 1. He pardons great and many sins not onely lighter provocations 2. He forgives repeated follies and relapsed sinners 3. His pardon is full and absolute 1. FIRST amongst men there are some sins that are scarcely if at all thought to be pardonable as where there is malice and treachery involved in the fact or where there is contumely added to the injury And sometimes the greatness of the person injured so inhances the offence as that it is not thought fit to pardon as for instance in Treason against the Supream Power But most certainly there are all these and many more aggravations in most voluntary sins committed against God and yet he pardons Exod. 34. 7. He pardons iniquity transgression and sin i. e. sin of all kinds and degrees whatsoever excepting only the sin against the Holy Ghost which our Saviour hath
Allegorical way of the Old Testament p. 8 9. Of the Figures and Parables of our Saviour p. 10 11 12. Of the danger and mischief of Allegorical interpretations p. 13. And the caution of the Author in this particular p. 15. CHAP. II. The self-contradiction amongst the Adversaries of Christianity both Jews and Gentiles some accusing it as too difficult an institution others as a doctrine of looseness p. 17 18. A famous but feigned Story of Constantine M. to that purpose p. 19. The special occasion of the Jew's mistake of our Saviour's designs p. 20. Three ranks of the Jewish Religionists a mistake of theirs built upon that distinction p. 23. Their misunderstanding the design of God in the covenant made with them on Mount Sinai and consequently of the meaning of the Prophets p. 25. Vpon account of both which it is no wonder that they mistake our Saviour who therefore vindicates himself by this Parable p. 27. A literal Paraphrase of this Parable p. 28. Particularly who is meant by the Elder and who by the Younger Son p. 35. The division and parts of the Parable p. 43. CHAP. III. The three sorts of Laws mankind is under viz. Natural Divine and Humane and that all sin is a violation of some of these the mischief of mistake herein p. 45. Sin is a violation of a known Law and that God hath some way or other sufficiently promulged his Laws p. 51. The danger of mistake herein p. 54. All sin is voluntary Cautions in that point p. 56. A remarkable passage in S. James paraphrased p. 61. The difference between sins of infirmity and presumption p. 65. Instances of sins of infirmity p. 66. Instances of presumptuous sins p. 68. S. John 1 Ep. 3. Chap. 4. Vers opened p. 69. About reluctancy of Conscience and whether that abates of the guilt of sin p. 71. Of the several stations of Vertue and divers ranks of Sinners p. 74. CHAP. IV. The Sinner's Progress Pride is ordinarily the first beginning of a sinfull course As appears in the Apostasy of Angels the Fall of Man the Temptations of our Saviour and the Method of the Gospel p. 83. Neglect of God's Worship c. the second step towards a wicked life the dependence between Piety and Morality p. 92. Riot and Intemperance the third step towards Hell an account of the Talents God ordinarily vouchsafes men and how vice imbezils them p. 96. When men have abused their faculties and mis-spent their talents they become slaves to Sathan p. 106. The drudgery he puts them to p. 109. The desolate condition of an habitual sinner when the pleasures of sin fail him p. 116. CHAP. V. The import of the phrase when he came to himself That sin is a kind of madness p. 121. Proved by the description of madness and the usual symptoms of it p. 123. An objection against this assertion answered p. 129. The application and conclusion of the First Part. p. 130. PART II. Of Repentance CHAP. I. THE general importance of Repentance and why notwithstanding little notice is taken of it in the Law of Moses p. 135. Three parts of Repentance 1. Consideration What is meant thereby and the great necessity thereof p. 140. It is usually affliction which brings vicious men to consideration prosperity rendring them light and vain p. 149. The special considerations and thoughts of a Penitent p. 153. CHAP. II. Of Resolution the second step towards Repentance What is meant thereby and the force and efficacy thereof against the Devil Sense Custom Example and Reason it self p. 162. The properties of a penitent resolution p. 167. First It is serious and deliberate not rash and sudden Secondly It is peremptory p. 171. Thirdly It must be present not dilatory p. 173. Lastly It is uniform and universal p. 176. The principal motives that bring the Sinner when he considers to a resolution of Repentance 1. That it will be acceptable to God even yet p. 179. 2. Not impossible to reform p. 187. 3. That it is easy p. 191. 4. Absolutely necessary p. 194. CHAP. III. Of Confession and Contrition The nature and instances of hearty contrition p. 199. The efficacy and availableness thereof as doing right to the Divine Sovereignty to his Wisedom Justice and Goodness to his Omniscience to the holiness and pity of his Nature p. 205. It gives security against relapses into sin p. 208. CHAP. IV. Of Actual Reformation It consists in 1. A singular care of God's Worship in all the parts thereof p. 212. 2. Conscientious obedience to his commands p. 216. 3. Submission to his providence p. 221. CHAP. V. A recital of several opinions which debauch men's minds in this great affair of Repentance p. 226. Several arguments demonstrating the absurdity of all those opinions jointly and the necessity of such reformation as is before described p. 229. Exceptions removed p. 238. PART III. CHAP. I. Of Reconciliation THE passionate Story of Jacob and Joseph parallel to this of the Prodigal Son p. 242. The notice God takes of the beginnings of goodness and the use of that consideration p. 247. God's Spirit assists all beginnings of good p. 250. A memorable Story out of Eusebius and reflections thereupon p. 254. God fully and freely pardons all sin upon Repentance p. 257. 1. Great and many sins p. 259. 2. Relapsed sinners p. 261. The Novatian Doctrine 3. Without Reservation p. 263. Applications of the former Doctrine 1. The comfortableness of a state of pardon p. 265. 2. The great obligation to love God p. 267. 3. That we imitate the Divine Goodness in our dealing with our Brethren p. 268. 4. It should lead us to repentance p. 269. CHAP. II. Of Sanctification What is meant by the Best Robe p. 273. In what sense Sanctification goes before Justification and in what sense it follows after it p. 275. Three remarkable differences in the measures of Sanctification in a beginner and in a grown Christian p. 277. By what means those fuller measures of Sanctification are attained p. 284. CHAP. III. Of the gift of the Holy Ghost and that by the Ring this is intimated p. 290. The difference between the motions of God's Spirit and the gift or residence of it p. 291. The great advantages of the residence of the Holy Spirit in several respects p. 293. A passage of the Revel 2. 17. opened p. 297. Whence it comes to pass that some good men have no experience of the residence of the Holy Spirit p. 300. How to distinguish the motions of God's Spirit from our own fancies or the illusions of Sathan p. 303. CHAP. IV. The great trust God reposes in those he pardons and their obligations to faithfullness and activity in his service p. 306. Several ways wherein a pious man may be serviceable to the Souls of men without invading the Ministerial Office p. 312. The peculiar fitness of those that have been converted from an evil course for this purpose in many respects p. 314. A brief description of
neglect it These reasons and authorities together will I doubt not justifie a particular application of this Parable Notwithstanding that there may be the fullest security against the mischiefs specified in the entrance of this point I will take care that in the following discourse no doctrine shall be obtruded upon the bare warrant of similitude or figurative resemblance but whatsoever shall be delivered shall be both grounded upon some express and literal Texts of Scripture and attested by the consent of the Ancient Fathers And now these things premised I proceed more closely to pursue my purpose in the particular handling of the Parable CHAP. II. The occasion and exposition of this Parable THE CONTENTS § I. The adversaries of our Saviour's Doctrine contradict each other some accusing it of too great difficulty others as a Doctrine of licentiousness the occasion of this latter misprision of it amongst the Gentiles a fabulous story of Constantine's conversion the occasion of the Jew's misapprehension § II. Three ranks of Jews a maxime of theirs built upon that distinction the crasse sense they had of the Mosaick Covenant which things in special gave rise to their calumnies against his doctrine and practice from which he vindicates himself by this Parable § III. A literal paraphrase upon the Parable § IV. The true interpretation of the Parable who is meant by the elder and who by the younger brother the parts of the Parable and of the ensuing discourse IT is a necessary rule amongst all Expositors to look attentively on the occasion and from the rise to judge of the scope and tendency of the discourse and this is most especially requisite to be done in the interpretation of figurative passages in regard there is nothing so like but it is also unlike nor so resembles any one thing but in some respects it may resemble another and therefore here like those that sail in a narrow channel where the Stars or the Card are too general directors they are forced to sail by coasting as they call it so must we in the explication of a Parable where there is not alwaies to be expected a determinate and necessary sense of every phrase as in more direct discourses govern our selves by the general aim and be sure to set out right at first from the design of it Now in order to the discovery of the true occasion of this Parable it is of use to note That as it was the lot of our Saviour himself when he was arraigned by the Jews to be accused by such as agreed no better amongst themselves then with the truth and whose several testimonies more impeached the credit of each other then pressed him against whom they were suborned so it hath often fared with his Doctrine and Religion to be accused of things inconsistent with each other insomuch that commonly the several imputations mutually confuting each other have jointly vindicated instead of aspersing Christianity The special instance which I am now concerned to assign of this matter is that the same institution hath by different persons been accused of difficulty and facility as an intolerable burthen by some as a doctrine of looseness and licentiousness by others The former of these accusers have commonly been a sort of loose pretenders to Christianity who because the Gospell requires that we love the Lord our God with all our hearts and soul and strength that we live in all good conscience both towards God and man that we restrain not onely the outward acts of sin but subdue the very passion and inclination thereto and upon such like accounts cry out durus sermo that it is a strict and severe Law and if this be Evangelical obedience it is impossible and who then can be saved And to help themselves out of these difficulties they run into wild persuasions that either Christ Jesus himself who delivered this institution must in his own person so perform it instead of all that are to be saved as to excuse them the doing it or else God must be pleased by miracle to overbear them into the performance of it But since these men profess Christianity I leave them to be silenced by the express declaration of our Saviour Matth. 11. 10. My yoke is easie and my burthen is light The contrary sort are those I am more concerned in at present namely such as reproach Christianity as a doctrine of ease and looseness Touching whom it is plain by the former objections that this second sort of men must be absolute strangers to the tenour of the Religion they thus accuse i. e. they must be either Jews or Gentiles For the Pagans they either hearing that Faith was insisted upon as the prime qualification of a Christian looked therefore upon the whole Religion as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a bare credulity a meer facility of mind or a supine abandoning ones self to the dictates and suggestions of others or else considering that this Religion neither required nor practised the troublesome and costly sacrifices then in use amongst other people nor so much as made any account of those nice observances and very austere rites that were in great reputation with all the world besides judged it therefore to be a very cheap and easie thing to be a Christian or lastly observing that many who were conscious of having lived wickedly heretofore betook themselves to and found both cure and comfort in this institution they thereupon concluded it to be an Asylum and Sanctuary to looseness and debauchery Upon some or all of these accounts the Pagans were generally abused into the aforesaid misprision of Christianity touching the third and last of which stumbling blocks I think it will not be unacceptable to the Reader that I rehearse a famous story from the Ecclesiastical Historians to this effect When the great Constantine to his own immortal glory and the great advantage of Christianity espoused that Religion the Pagans to slurr him and Religion together devised this tale of him That he having basely murthered his brother Crispus and others of his near kindred and feeling some remorse in his conscience for so great Barbarities applied himself to Sopater the Philosopher and Successor of Plotinus to be directed by him to some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or expiation But Sopater tells him that Philosophy afforded no remedy in so desperate a case He then saith the Story goes to the Christian Bishops to get ease to his guilty and affrighted conscience and they readily receiving and incouraging him that a little Baptismal water would wash out all that stain and ease the smart he hereupon finding this a Religion wherein a man might reconcile the gratification of the most exorbitant passions with a quiet mind became a Christian Theodoret who relates this fable thinks as well he might that it concerned his profession of Christianity to shew the falshood of it And therefore after he had first retorted it upon the Pagans themselves shewing that if it had been true
it was no more then had been allowed amongst them in the case of their famous Hercules he afterwards demonstrates the utter absurdity and impossibility of the fiction in regard it might appear by Authentick records that Crispus was alive long after Constantine became Christian surviving to the twentieth year of his reign and subscribing laws with him Notwithstanding the Story sufficiently evidences that the Pagans had entertained such a sinister conceit of Christianity as that it favoured vice and licentiousness and thereupon were prejudiced against it But to pass over their crasse misapprehensions and come to the Jews they also had alike dishonourable opinions of the Christian institution as a doctrine of looseness And these they seem to have taken up partly upon occasion that they observed our Saviour to lay no great stress upon their idle traditions which they were infinitely scrupulous about partly also because though they could not but observe that he was a most holy and diligent observer of the Law yet in some cases as that of the Sabbath and such like he interpreted it ex aequo bono and made the letter submit to the reason and sense of it whereupon they cried out he dissolved the law Neither was it a small accession to their suspicions that upon all occasions he exposed the sanctimoniousness of their admired Pharisees whose reputation was so great with them that they were ready to think all Religion was struck at when the inward rottenness of those painted sepulchres was discovered But above all they seem to have been confirmed in this ill opinion of Christ Jesus and his doctrine when they noted that whereas the grave and demure Pharisees the learned Scribes the chief Priests and Rulers and all the zealots of their Religion stood at a distance and defied this new doctrine those that resorted to our Saviour and became his disciples were generally persons not only of mean quality but had been many of them formerly infamous for their life and conversation for so we find in the first and second verses of this Chapter Then drew near unto him all the Publicans and sinners for to hear him and the Scribes and Pharisees murmured saying This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them whereupon our Saviour takes up this and other Parables in this Chapter For the more clear understanding of which occasion and consequently of the scope of the whole Parable these things following are to be considered § II. 1. That the Jews as to the affair of Religion were wont to distinguish themselves into three ranks or classes the first and most eminent amongst them were the Pharises or Separatists as their name from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly imports called also frequently in their own writings 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we may appositely render Frieries or Fraternities a very precise and strict sort of men in their way as who obliged themselves to the most strict measures of ritual observance fasting twice a week frequent and curious in their washings long in their prayers broad in their phylacteries demure in their behaviour stately in their meine starched and stiff in every thing They had a custome of disfiguring their faces to seem pale and mortified and as they had artificial faces so they had consciences too wondrous tender and sensible of little punctilio's and the veriest trifle that was out of the road of their sect but brawny and insensible of the highest violations of the laws of God Their Religion was a kind of clock-work drawn up by the hand and moving in a certain order but without life or sense In short they had all the outward shews of admirable men but nothing else their devotions being calculated to take men not to please God and to better their interest and reputation with the people not to benefit the world or improve their own tempers However what by their own confident pretensions and what by the credulity of those that take all for gold that glisters these men obtained the reputation of the first rate of Religionists In the second rank were those which were called Sapientum discipuli the disciples of the wise men these did not constitute a peculiar sect as the former neither did they oblige themselves to all the punctuality and phantastry which the other did but they were such as applied themselves diligently to the study of the law and governed themselves by the traditions of the great Rabbins and by such interpretations as they had been pleased to make upon the Text. These I take it are those who are commonly called by the name of Scribes in the New Testament and sometimes Lawyers also for that those two names were of the same signification seems to be evident by S. Luk. 11. 44 45. When our Saviour had a great while inveighed against the Pharisees and at last had joined the Scribes with them Then answered one of the Lawyers and said Master now thou reproachest us also And these men whether called Lawyers or Scribes or Wise men though they distinguished themselves by no peculiar garb and cognizance as the former nor made a sect in Religion yet because they devoted themselves to the study of their religious writings were looked upon as conservators of their Religion and arrived at a great opinion of sanctity Insomuch that there is a well known saying amongst the Jews that if but two men were to be saved or have a part in the other world the one would certainly be a Pharisee and the other a Scribe And in relation to this opinion of theirs our Saviour saith to his disciples Matth. 5. 20. Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ye shall not enter into the Kingdome of heaven i. e. if you be my disciples indeed you must outstrip those two admired sorts of men as much as they are supposed to outgoe all others The third rank were ordinary Jews called in contempt populus terrae the people of the land who lived a common life without any nicety of observation or peculiar note of distinction These men might perhaps live honestly and it may be also exceed both the former in real vertues of the soul but forasmuch as they exacted of themselves nothing singular nor affected any curiosity they had no remark upon them but were valued much after the rate that we commonly signify when we say a good honest moral well-meaning man But now for such as were found guilty of living in any open and scandalous sins such as fornication and the like these were held and that deservedly enough in no rank of Religion and amongst these they reckoned Publicans also that is such as being native Jews became instruments of the Roman power collecting tribute for them of their own Nation and both the one and the other of these were in no other estimation then Heathens for so we find Publicans and Sinners Heathens and Publicans commonly joined together under the same brand of reproach and contempt
going quite back again and undoing all he hath done besides the agonies of conscience and the strong convulsions which he must suffer that casts off a long settled and habitual course of sin To which adde that whatever diligence or zeal of God's glory a late Convert that comes into the vineyard as it were at the eleventh hour may express at last yet it is certain he hath done God a great dishonour heretofore whereas he we now speak of is one that coming in at the first hour labours all day in God's work and equally carries on the affair of God's glory and his own comfort here and salvation hereafter Now all these things considered if there shall be any man so rash and injudicious as notwithstanding to press all men without distinction in order to their title to the mercies of God and hopes of Heaven to make the same severe reflexions upon themselves or to shew the like sensible and discernible change in their lives let them know by this unskilfulness of theirs they unreasonably minister trouble to the best and happiest of men and have a design quite contrary to that of our Saviour who professed he came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance And in the seventh verse of this Chapter he speaks of just men which need no repentance that is have no need to make a change of their whole course and begin a new as notorious sinners ought to doe Both which places I take to be clearly interpreted and to the sense we are assigning to them by that other passage of our Saviour Jo. 13. 10. He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet onely that is he that is already ingaged in a holy course and habituate to the ways of piety hath only need to be duely cleansed from those occasional soils and defilements which the infirmity of humane nature and conversation in the world suffer no man wholly to escape but not to enter upon a new state or begin a whole course of repentance To which effect I understand those words of Origen in his Books against Celsus Christ Jesus saith he was sent indeed a Physician to cure and recover sinners but to improve and instruct those further in the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven that were already vertuous I 'le conclude and confirm all I have said of this kind with the sense of Manasses which he expresses in his famous penitential prayer Thou O Lord that art the God of the just hast not appointed repentance to the just as to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob c. but thou hast appointed repentance unto me who am a sinner c. This I take to be sufficient for the determination who is meant by the Elder Brother and then we cannot be much to seek who is denoted by the Younger for what we have now said being granted it necessarily follow that by the Younger Son are described all such persons as have run a dangerous risk of sin and impiety that have committed gross and hainous transgressions and continued in a state of disobedience and impenitency after such manner as the Publicans and Sinners in the text are supposed to have done These are said to forsake their Father's house and presence to mispend their portion in riotous living who yet at last being reduced to extremity come to themselves turn serious penitents bewail their folly resolve upon amendment implore pardon double their diligence and care for the time to come and of old sinners become young Saints whereupon they are by a gracious God admitted to pardon and reconciliation and adoption for these the best robe is fetched out the fatted calf slain and upon their conversion as a thing utterly despaired of and unexpected there is joy in Heaven and amongst the holy Angels These were dead in trespasses and sins but are now quickned and revived by the grace of God they were Strangers and Aliens from the covenant of Grace but now become of the houshold of God and heirs of eternal life And now these two points being resolved of we have a key by which we may easily open all the circumstances of the whole Parable so that it will not be necessary that I insist longer upon a general interpretation Neverthelesse lest there should seem one difficulty not sufficiently provided against or any man should yet be at a losse how if the Elder Brother denote sincerely good men it can stand with their character to grumble at the mercifull reception of poor penitents as here he is represented to doe And moreover it may raise another doubt if the Elder Brother be set to describe men of constant and unblemished Sanctity how such a person should be fit to denote the Scribes and Pharisees who were certainly very evil and corrupt men Unlesse a plain account can be given of these it must follow that either we have not hit the occasion of the Parable or the Parable did not answer to the occasion Wherefore to these I answer joyntly That our Saviour the more effectually to convince these Jews that reproached and censured him proceeds with them upon their own Hypothesis namely taking it for granted that they were as eminently good and holy men as they either took themselves or pretended to be and that the Publicans and Sinners were indeed as bad as they esteemed them I mean he doth not intend to signifie that these censorious persons were indeed good men for upon all occasions we see he upbraids their rottennesse and hypocrisie but because they out of opinion of their own sanctity and contempt of others reproached his carriage in this matter therefore the designs to shew them that if that was true which is utterly false and they as good men as they were extremely bad yet upon due consideration they ought not to blame his management of himself and gracious condescension to sinners As if he had said You Scribes and Pharisees wonder that instead of applying my self to your conversation who are men of great note for sanctity and devotion and never blemished with any great disorder I rather chuse to lay out my self upon the recovery of flagitious and desperate sinners now see your own unreasonablenesse in this instance You will allow a Father to be more passionately concerned for and expresse a greater joy upon the recovery of a Lost Son then he usually doth about him that was always with him and out of danger and if that Son who had never departed from his Father and so never given him occasion for those change of passions should expostulate with his Father for his affectionateness in such a case you would in your own thoughts blame him as envious and undutifull Now apply this to your selves and think as well as you can of your selves yet upon the premisses you will see no reason to calumniate my endeavours of reclaiming sinners or my kindnesse and benignity towards them upon their repentance By this time I doubt not but the whole
notions of God are either extinct by the profaneness of his life or languish by the neglect of religious duties there is no Angel Guardian about his Soul no generous disdain of sin in his heart he hath neither the help of God nor the strength of a man Upon all which it is apparent that departing from our Father's House living beside the notions of God and without the exercises of devotion to actuate those notions is the ready way to all sin and folly Wherefore as pride and self-conceit begin the mutiny in our Souls against God so neglecting his presence suffers it to grow to a dangerous head and as that was the first step towards a wicked course this is the second 3. THIRDLY the Prodigal having now gotten from under the eye of his Father gives himself a full swinge of liberty lives 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sottishly and viciously and by that means quickly exhausts the stock his Father had given him Wherever there is temperance and prudent management a little will suffice and will quickly grow to great riches by frugality and industry most of the great States and Kingdoms in the world have been raised as well as private fortunes but luxury and riot have dilapidated and destroyed both the one and the other For these making continual abstractions without addition quickly reduce the greatest summe to a Cypher and bring him to want of all things who before had need of nothing but grace and wisedom to use that which he had This the Prodigal Son finds true by sad experience And so it fares also with the sinner or mystical Prodigal when once he hath withdrawn himself from God's presence that is hath cast off the sense of God and Religion and broken those reins that restrained his extravagancy he presently rushes into all kind of debauchery and in so doing besides the black guilt he derives upon his Conscience he wastes and imbezils the very talents and abilities God had endowed him with For the more clear understanding of which we will briefly but distinctly consider these two things 1. What is that portion or stock which God sets mankind up withall 2. How and in what manner vice and dissolution of manners mispend and exhaust it The younger son wasted his substance with riotous living S t LUKE XV 13. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theogn And for the former of these though it is not to be doubted but that God according to his paternal prerogative and wisedom may and doth variously dispense his gifts to his Children yet it is certain he sends none of them out into the world without some talents to employ themselves upon and to make a vertuous improvement of And amongst all of that kind these four following are both the most rich and valuable in themselves and also such is the divine bounty most generally bestowed viz. 1. Freedome of choice 2. Understanding Mind or Conscience 3. Experience of a wise and gracious intertexture of favours and chastisements in the course of Providence 4. Special intimations of his own mind and will IN the first place I recount freedom of chusing for our selves as part of the common portion of mankind in general which I do the rather because I observe the Fathers generally to understand this to be the special intendment of this passage of the Parable Divisit iis substantiam He divided unto them his living that is saith S. Jerome He bound not man under the rigid bonds of necessity whereby he should be forcibly overruled and determined to one thing but put him in a capacity of making his own choice to the end that being hereby distinguished from beasts and more like his Maker he might be capable of vertue and reward and that as nothing should make him miserable without his own act and consent so he might have the comfort and delight of co-operating freely towards his own good and felicity THAT this accomplishment of humane nature is a great and inestimable talent no man can doubt forasmuch as hereby man is made to be what he is that is to be master of himself and his own actions and obnoxious to none but God himself being neither drawn by invisible wires but moved voluntarily and from an inward principle nor hurried by external accidents but steers his own course is not at the mercy of every temptation but can make his own choice in spite of the Devil AND that God set out man into the world thus endowed there is as little reason to question For in the first place we are sure God made all things good that is designed for good ends and also capable of attaining them And he that sitted all the inferiour Creation for their proper ends most certainly did not leave that excellent piece of his workmanship so defective as not to be endowed with powers sufficient for the pursuit and attainment of his peculiar happiness At least it cannot be imagined that infinite wisedom should contrive such a Creature as should be only able to cross and act contrary to himself but not to comply with him which must be true if man had not originally a power of chusing good as well as evil Again were it not for this there would be an absolute impossibility of giving account how sin came into the world and of vindicating the providence of God in tying that clog of an earthly Body to an immortal Soul but that by this concession the latter is made capable of governing the former and abundance other great Phaenomena of providence which it is no time now to insist upon are plainly insoluble otherwise then upon this supposition But we need not insist upon the proof of fact that this was the condition of man in his first Greation when he came out of the hands of God for it is acknowledged by all Divines and if it be otherwise with him since we have intimated already where the fault lies and shall shew it more particularly by and by 2. THE second Talent of mankind is Mind or Conscience and I make use of both those terms because I intend to join together both that which is called Synteresis and that which is called properly Syneidesis or Conscience By the former of which man having as it were a Standard within himself of good and evil he may guide himself in the choice of his actions and by the latter he is able to reflect upon himself and comparing his actions and carriage with the Standard or Law of reason in his own mind pass a judgment upon himself that is either blame and condemn or acquit and comfort himself accordingly This Talent the old Saint Justin calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A particle of the Divine and Original Wisedom or a scien of the true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or eternal word ingrafted upon the Soul of every man And it is that which Theophylact takes to be especially meant in this text The substance
in sin beyond their interests nay their very vicious inclmation and even the capacity of their circumstances and constitution As if he designed that they should not onely treasure up wrath against the day of wrath but be miserably rackt and tortured here and tormented before their time WE count the water rack a very severe torture to have that Element forced down a man's throat till all the vessels of his Body are stretched and Tympanized so that in stead of Air he draws in Water with his breath ready to stifle him And yet this torture we see the drunkard submit himself to at the Devil's command IT is very dreadfull to have our limbs and nerves distended by pullies and such other engines And the lascivious man is sensible of something like this when he forces nature to comply with his vicious phancy and a prevalent temptation When in some kind of executions they poured scalding lead down the throat of the malefactour which the Jews called the burning of the Soul it was doubtless very terrible but he that suffers revenge to fry in his bosome and eat out his very heart and bowels undergoes something not very much inferiour TO say no more what more horried torments can any Tyrant invent or inflict or what more abominable ignominy can his malice expose any man to then the usual effects of sensuality do either execute upon a man's person or stigmatize his name withall We see in the course of nature the several parts of the Universe give place to the interest of the whole or as we commonly speak private nature gives place to publick as the water ascends to prevent vacuity c. But in this little world man when the Devil hath got interest in him publick nature humanity it self is violenced for the lust of a private person of which the Apostle gives us too sad an instance in the debauched Heathen Rom. 1. 26 27. which passage I have no mind to explain THIS is the condition of the Devil's service in respect of which the difficultest parts of God's service are easy and voluptuous I 'll conclude this particular and summe up what hath been hitherto said in the words of Chrysologus Behold saith he the sad Catastrophe of rash and incogitant voluptuousness it turns him out into a strange Countrey that might have lived happy in his Father's house makes a beggar of one that was rich changes the condition of a Son into that of a Slave compells him to feed nasty Swine who declined the service of a gracious Father But this is not the full end of the sinner's Tragedy For 6. THE Prodigal's fare is as course as his employment was sordid he is forced to feed upon husks some take the word in the Original to signify Bran according to that of the Poet vivis siliquis pane secundo But the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly signifies the seed of the tree Ceronia or Charob which afforded a course fare which extream necessity sometimes drove men to be content withall But let us see the moral of it Origen understands by Husks the delights of wanton Poetry with which the Devil usually feeds and entertains loose persons making them both fit and willing to his service I remember somewhere to have read and I think it is in Clemens of Alexandria that it was his opinion that Pagan Philosophy was hereby meant which being but the exterior Cortex or Husk of true knowledge served notwithstanding to amuse and busy the Gentile World But I think our Saviour meant nothing else hereby then to represent to us the pitifull entertainment the emptiness and unsatisfactoriness of all the Incomes of sin That all the gratifications by which the Devil allures men into the basest drudgery prove upon trial the Appels of Sodom perform nothing of what they promise Solomon hath told us that an whorish woman will bring a man to a morsel of bread and it is true in proportion of all the instances of riot and luxury which is so much the more severe calamity to such kind of persons because they usually in their prosperity caressing themselves at the highest rate imaginable pampering themselves and their lusts together must needs feel the change from one extream to the other to be exceeding sharp and painfull But let us see this a little more particularly in order to which the Apostle Saint John hath summed up all the returns of sin in these words 1 Jo. 2. 16. The things that are in the world are the lusts of the flesh the lust of the eye and the pride of life or in other words bodily pleasure worldly profit and vain glory And all these when duly considered will prove but Husks such as our voluptuous Prodigal now the Devils vassal is constrained to feed upon FIRST for bodily pleasure that is notoriously the entertainment of beasts rather then of men For it is they that have the quickest sense and relish of it man is ashamed of himself when he yields to it and therefore seeks recesses and the dark as being aware that he condescends below himself when he stoops to it therefore certainly God intended it as fodder for beasts not food for men Sawce is the most that it can be allowed to be and he is not to be reckoned a man that can content himself with it or live as if he were made for it For besides that all wise men who have tried it pronounce it to be but chaff and vanity even those who are so silly as to pursue it with the greatest eagerness and appetite finding themselves empty and disappointed are constrained to hunt after variety and to weary themselves in going from one pleasure to another in hopes to find that satisfaction which is never there to be had Bodily pleasure is fitly represented by the Stories we have of the Feasts and Junkettings of Witches and Fiends in which after great appearance of delicacies wherewithall the Guests seem to satiate themselves they notwithstanding find themselves as empty as before the Banquet The mind of man is of another make and of a greater capacity then to be filled with such trash It is onely intellectual pleasure the contents of wisedome the peace of a good Conscience the reflections upon having done some good which are the repast of a man and these are solid and lasting there is more true and manly delight in any one such instance then in all the caresses of the Epicure AND then for Profit it is very inconsiderable gain that is brought in by sin if accounts be justly cast up For all those sins which have either any gusto of pleasure or air of credit attending them are usually costly and expensive and for those profitable sins of injustice covetousness oppression c. they are usually incumbred with so much anxiety followed with such guilt branded with so much reproach that there needs a new Arithmetick to be devised to make out the profit of them Above all
those worldly objects we lately spoke of all his spirits are ingaged in the pursuit of it and with that heat and vehemency that nothing can stop their carrier nor bring them under the reins of reason No considerations of God or a World to come can come into play no checks of Conscience are attended to whatsoever comes on 't the passion must be obeyed lust must have its full swing be the danger or consequence of it what it will THEN for the usual symptoms of distraction if we see a man that hath unspeakable danger over his head insomuch that every man that sees him bewails and pities him but he pities not himself if we see him disporting upon the brink of a precipice and the ground breaking away under him nay if we shall see him court danger tear his own flesh and delight in his own mischief or again suppose we observe a man to have rich offers made him but he despises them and prefers trifles before them or to be most fierce and injurious to those who are most earnest to do him good do we not account these the tokens of distraction And is not the case the very same when a man shall be found to go on in a course of sin that God and his own Conscience have denounced damnation to and be secure when there is nothing between him and utter destruction but the frail thred of life the most uncertain thing in the world when a man shall in fondness to some sin or other despise the counsels of God's word slight his promises laugh at his threatnings and even defy the Almighty when he shall express so much hate and indignation against none as those that reprove his folly advise him for his good and forewarn him of his danger in short that is every moment ready to drop into hell and yet goes on carelesly and jollily is not this laughter of his Risus Sardonius i. e. plainly and notoriously phrenetical in the highest degree We reade Acts 26. 25. that Festus was of opinion that much study had made St. Paul mad when he took notice of such a wonderfull zeal in him for Christianity that no difficulties would abate his edge no allurements or flatteries withdraw him no menaces affright him nor no sufferings prevail at all upon him But St. Paul sufficiently clears himself of that suspicion giving a just and manly account of his persuasion and the reasons of his resolution And withall vers 11. he confesses time was when he was mad indeed when he was hurried by his own passions and prejudices to make all the opposition he was able against Christianity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith he I was exceedingly mad and outragious against it But there were a great many allowances to be made in his case he had been bread a Pharisee the education in which Sect had put him under the greatest prejudices against Christianity that could be possibly the Gospel was a new thing in the World which Character was enough to condemn it but besides it lay open to a great many disadvantages which it is unseasonable here to mention by reason of all which he thought he should do God good service to oppose it he therefore only obeyed his erring Conscience followed the best reason he then had and what he did amiss he did it ignorantly and accordingly God had mercy on him But what can be pretended on the behalf of the habitual sinner against the common law of reason and morality can he plead ignorance or pretend Conscience is morality a new opinion or was debauchery ever espoused for the Dogma of any famous Sect was it ever a disputable point whether injustice adultery and other sensuality were vices or vertues did ever any man think he should do God good service by complying with these nay is it not evident that the men we speak of contradict the very principles of reason the intimations of their own Consciences they violate all the laws of wisedome goe cross to all rules of prudence nay their very interests and the principles of self-preservation May we not therefore direct our discourse to such men as Herod is said to have done a Letter to Cassius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in short Cassius thou art mad BUT let us come to particulars and we will begin with Injustice hath not God said that the unnighteous shall have no inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ or of God and have we not seen the experiment of those that have raked and torn for riches as if that were the onely thing valuable and desirable and counted all clear gain that could be gotten who yet when death hath summoned them to the righteous Tribunal of God would gladly have refunded all again and have chosen to have lived the poorest life in the world so they might have gone out of it with a good Conscience Is there not just reason to expect that all unjust acquisitions will one day prove like a barbed Arrow in a man's flesh that must either be pluckt back again and that not to be done without horrible pain and anguish or else will destroy him eternally Are not these courses condemned by Heathens and by all the reason of mankind doth not such a man make himself the hate and scorn of others and a shame to himself What is there then prevails with any man to continue such a practice is there any necessity presses him to it must a man be starved else is there any such unspeakable felicity in being rich that the temptations thereof are irresistible doth any man live more comfortably by his ill-gotten goods nay in truth these imbitter the delights of all the rest Doth riches afford a man such security quiet and repose that no man can be at ease till he have attained it or is it not certain on the contrary that the solicitude of acquiring it macerates a man with cares and projects night and day and when he hath attained his ends he lies at once under the joint inconveniences of abundance and of poverty the cares of the one and the burden of the other Wherefore upon the whole matter there is nothing in the case but the impetuousness of a greedy grasping humour that bears down his reason fools him and destroys him And if a milder name then madness be due to this condition let sobermen judge NOW take the Voluptuous man to whom no fruit is pleasant but that which is forbidden and who knows no measure of pleasure but a surfeit in the first place it is very doubtfull whether the quest of pleasures be not as troublesome as the enjoyments of them are sweet at least if we lay together the tedious expectations the frequent frustrations the certain expence of time fortune and health the secret guilt the constant fear of detection the shame and reproach upon discovery the pressing importunities of passion before enjoyment the follies and dangers in the midst and the irksomness and loathing after their
were easy to bring abundance of egregious instances hereof such as Justin Martyr St. Austin and others but to what I have said already I will only subjoin two or three Scriptural observations And the first shall be what David saith of himself Psal 119. vers 59. I thought upon my ways and turned my feet to thy precepts In the next place I cannot but take notice in the story of Isaac Gen. 24. 63. the Scripture saith of him He went out into the fields to meditate in the evening The LXX render it he went out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to talk with himself to entertain discourse with his own heart and for the convenience of doing this he chose the solitude of the Fields and the cool and quiet of the Evening And by this practice the Holy Ghost characterizes him as though a young man yet beginning to be both a wise and a pious person Nor is it to be omitted which is recorded of Ahab 1. King 21. 27. That when God threatned him with the utter extirpation of his family for his wickedness he put on Sackcloth sprinkled himself with Ashes and especially amongst the rest he walked softly that is although he did not heartily repent yet he knew well how to dissemble the doing it and acted the part of a penitent in that serious and considerative posture I will conclude this point with a passage of the Prophet Jeremiah Chap. 31. Vers 18 19. the words are these I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus Thou hast chastised me and I was chastised as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke Turn thou me and I shall be turned for thou art the Lord my God Surely after I was turned I repented and after I was instructed I smote upon my thigh I was ashamed yea even confounded because I did bear the reproach of my youth A memorable Scripture very full and apposite to my present purpose and withall so pathetick as that it is almost match for this Parable of our Saviour we have before us The reflection upon both which together lead me IN the second place to observe the occasion or what it was which put the Prodigal into a considerative temper and that was the pressure of his wants whilest wind and tide favoured him and his affaris were prosperous he made no reflections nor struck sail to any thing but now the tide forsaking him he is becalmed and then considers In like manner § III. IT is usually some affliction or other which first awakens habitual sinners into consideration and the rudiments of piety and religion Or as serious considerativeness begins conversion so commonly some sharp affliction or other begins that seriousness It cannot be doubted but that the most easy and most frequently successfull way of begetting a sense of God and of piety in the minds of men is by holy education in their youth whilest their hearts are tender and tractable not prejudiced by actual ingagements not confirmed by example nor hardened by long custome and practice and when the grace of God anticipates the Devil and prevents all his enterprises and perhaps if we look over the state of mankind we shall find amongst those that are sincerely good the number of those that have become so after a long course of sin to be very small in comparison We may also allow it for truth which is made a common maxime that ingenuous minds are most wrought upon by obligation and favour that the strongest efforts are those which are made by kindness and goodness that this latter method will melt and dissolve such as would be broken in pieces by violence But this prejudices not the business in hand for we speak of such as have lost their ingenuity old hardened sinners who must first be broken by the hammer of affliction before they will dissolve by the benign warmth of mercy and kindness These last indeed carry on the work and make a perfect change but fear and pain usually begins it But I will not stick to grant that perhaps it may fall out that some old sinner may have been reclaimed by the reading of a good book hearing a serious Sermon or by the grave admonition of a faithfull Friend without any pressing affliction to prepare him for it or as it were extort it from him Notwithstanding I verily believe if an estimate could be taken the instances of this kind would be found to be exceeding rare We find Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar humbled by adversity and their stiff Necks submitted to those acknowledgements of God's power and sovereignty which no kindness or mercy would bring them to And Manasses comes out a true convert a new man out of the furnace of affliction And David himself confesses of himself That before he was afflicted he went astray but thereby he had learnt to keep God's Commandments Psal 119. vers 67. But the whole Scripture affords no one instance that I know of of such a person as we speak of cured by any other method then this And for the whole Nation of the Jews God himself saith thus Hos 5. 15. I will go and return to my place till they acknowledge their transgression and seek my face In their affliction they will seek me early q. d. I will not only afflict my people but I will leave them under the pressure thereof and by this rack as it were extort from them a confession of my sovereignty and their own guilt for I have found by long trial that nothing else will work upon a stiff-necked generation but in their affliction I am sure they will earnestly and instantly seek after me IT was not the peculiar jealousy of Fabius concerning the Romane State which made him say Se secunda magìs quà m adversa timere That their danger was greater lest they should become rash and confident by some slight successes then that their spirits should be broken by a disaster For all men that understand themselves and value their safety above their pleasure find they have reason more to suspect the soft charm of ease peace and plenty then the rough attacks of adversity Because amongst other things a constant and stiff gale of prosperity carries men with too full sail to be checkt or controuled by counsel it presents them with too many and great temptations to be easily resisted ministers to their confident presumption that either they are good enough already because they have so many arguments of the divine favour or at least that he overlooks their miscarriages And Conscience is either out-faced or hath been so often silenced and baffled that it dares scarce mutter till the apprehension of some great danger or misery authorize and provoke it but then it recovers its speech and tells its errand TO this purpose we have a famous instance in the Brethren of Joseph Gen. 37. They prompted by envy had maliciously plotted the death or at least the perpetual servitude of their Brother and proceeded so far in it that to
their thinking it had taken effect Then they unworthily contrive to abuse the affections of their good old Father with feigned probabilities that his beloved Son was devoured by wild Beasts And now they thought all was well they had reaked their malice and concealed their guilt they kept their countenances fed upon the sweets of revenge and all this while their Conscience felt no regret Till at last as God would have it they themselves fall into the hands of him they thought they had made away their necessities compell them to goe down to Aegypt and there the man the Governour of the Land lookt sternly upon them pretends to take them for Spies and threatens to deal severely with them Then courage fails them and Conscience recovers We are verily guilty say they of the bloud of our Brother when we saw the anguish of his Soul c. What is the matter now what alters the case how comes Joseph to their minds now who had been so long forgotten Now they find they stand in need of mercy and therefore sadly remember how merciless they had been before now they pity poor Joseph for whom before they had no compassion now they have bowels when their own case was sad and their punishment leads them to a remembrance of their guilt THUS we see affliction if it doth not make men good yet at least it will not suffer them to be at ease in their sin and so disposes them towards repentance But contrariwise prosperity raises the passions and depresses Conscience it hath made many from hopefull and tolerable become bad and intolerable but scarcely ever improved any from bad to good It is a well known story of Zeno who was as intent as any other man upon the amassing of wealth and as much taken with the gaiety of the world so long as his Merchandize succeeded but when he shipwrackt his Fortunes he recovered his reason and applied himself to the study of Philosophy and the inriching of his mind Naufragio tutus foelix infortunio his undoeing was his making and his misfortune proved his recovery And this the Holy Psalmist observes to be a common case for Psal 55. 19. he gives this account of mens obstinate impiety because saith he they have no changes therefore they fear not God And Saint Peter also 2 Pet. 3. 4. represents it as the common argument upon which such men incourage themselves in the contempt of all Religion where say they is the promise of his coming for since the Fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were c. as if he had said whilest there were visible interpositions of the Divine Providence in the world and that God was wont presently by some remarkable judgment or other to revenge himself upon those that violated his Laws and affronted his Majesty so long the world was kept in some awe and Religion reverenced but from such time as there hath been a constant calme and no interruption of the course of common causes men have called in question whether there be any Providence at all in this World and if once they can perswade themselves God hath left off to mind the affairs of the present world they will confidently and with some colour of reason infer that then he will not call things to account hereafter Wherefore it is the usuall method of the Divine Wisdome to make way for the reasons and motives of Religion by affliction first softning the obdurate heart by some sharp cross taking down the pride confuting the Atheism curing the wantonness and delicacy of men's tempers and so bringing them to a cool and thoughtfull condition and to reason with themselves as the Prodigal in the Text. FROM all which we learn both the hardness of a vicious heart in that nothing can pierce it but affliction and also the blindness and folly of men who so passionately desire prosperity together with the great usefullness of affliction and from all these that it proceeds not from harshness and severity in God that he sends calamities upon the sons of men but there is an illustrious instance of his wisedom and of his goodness in those providential dispensations since this is the only way of recovering and making men good and happy § IV. LET us now see in the last place somewhat particularly what are the considerations the Prodigal entertains his thoughts upon in this his afflicted condition And consulting the Text and carrying along with us a just notion of the nature of the case we shall find those reducible to these four points I. HE considers what the condition was he is faln from and how happy he might have been had it not been for his own folly How many hired Servants c. q. d. I that am pinched with want now felt none in my Father's house I was liberally maintained honourably treated wanted nothing but the wisedom to understand my own felicity and in this condition I might have continued for neither did my Father's estate complain of the burden of my accommodations nor was he strait handed or abated any thing of his Fatherly affections towards me it was nothing but my own folly ruined me And then 2. HE proceeds to deplore the sad estate he is fallen into When I set out from my Father's house in quest of liberty did I ever dream of becoming a Slave when I despised the liberal provisions of his Family did I or cou'd I have thought I should come to want bread to feed upon husks How sad is the change how severe is my fate which I know no more how to bear then how to avoid But that 's not the worst yet For 3. HE forethinks what is like to be the issue of this It is not only feeding upon husks but I perish for hunger I have a prospect of nothing but death before me in the case I am in I am lost undone undone in the most dreadfull circumstances for I perish and it is with hunger death makes its sure approaches and that in the most ghastly shape vivens vidénsque pereo I see and feel my self dying 4. But yet in the last place he looks about him to see if there be not some escape I am dying saith he but not quite dead Whilest there is life there is hope Who will not catch hold of any thing rather then perish And it agrees not with my condition to stick at any thing that can minister the least probability of safety Am not I a Son though I am here a Slave have I not a Father and hath not he pity why then do I stand still and die and not rather make the utmost experiment AFTER this manner we may feel the pulse of the Prodigal Son to beat and the thoughts of a sinner whom God hath awakened by affliction move much after the same rate For first as soon as his eyes are opened he cannot choose but call to mind the blessedness of a state of innocency and reason with
work And who that either understands the frail contexture of his body or the many thousand accidents it is subject to can be warrantie for his own life one moment beyond the present or if that should be continued who shall secure us that a day of grace shall last as long as we live Who shall prescribe to the Almighty that he shall wait our leisure and accept us at last All which things considered he that only resolves to amend hereafter is certainly resolved not to amend now and therefore is in no state of repentance nor in the way of mercy WHEREFORE the true Penitent resolves presently to arise I have trifled too long already faith he It is no dallying any longer in a business of this nature I have been couzened by my own heart oft enough I will trust my self for day no longer I do not find my heart either more willing or more able to perform by all the time I have given it but quite contrary my ability is less and my debt greater my heart harder my affections more ingaged and lesse willing to come off I do not find that the longer I serve the Devil he is ever the likelier to manumit me nay I feel the longer I serve him the heavier chains he lays upon me If he can persuade me that it is yet too soon to return to God he will by the same Logick persuade me hereafter that it is too late And I find by experience that if my heart be bad to day it is likely to be worse to morrow I cannot think it reasonable to expect that God's Spirit will strive with me the more I resist him nor dare I trust that grace should abound the more my sin abounds A day neglected now for ought I know may be as much as my Soul is worth and may cost me eternity now by God's grace I find it in my heart to return and now I 'll put it in execution I will no more venture upon uncertainties nor forgo what is in my power for what is not I will not promise to pay hereafter what I am not willing now to perform No more therefore of the sluggard Yet a little sleep a little slumber a little folding of the hands to sleep I will now arise and return to my Father and to my duty which is 4. The Fourth and last property of vertuous resolution namely it is a through and uniform resolution which takes in the whole business and compass of Religion The Historian observes of the Romans in the degenerate times of their Common-wealth that now all their disputes were not an servirent sed cui not for liberty but who should be their Lord and they fought not to assert or recover their freedom but meerly to have the choice of their yoke and so whoever conquered they were certainly slaves In like manner some men being under convictions of Conscience of the evil and danger of the way they are in resolve upon a change but it is not to change themselves but their sins one for another The Drunkard becomes covetous the loose and licentious person exchanges his levity for morosity and from a common scandal becomes a busy body a judge and very censorious And so the man is disguised rather then amended and hath a new master but is nevertheless a slave Others perhaps there are who will go further and part with a sin without a succedaneum or entertaining any other in its room because it might happen that such a sin was grown less agreeable to their constitution too chargeable for their profit too dangerous to their reputation and peradventure also too uneasy for their Consciences but there are some other sins they can by no means think of forgoing Thus the Scripture observes of some Kings of Israel that were great reformers and expressed a mighty zeal against the Idolatry of Ahab and other corruptions who yet all their days stuck close to the sin of Jeroboam the Son of Nebat that kind of Idolatry was bound up with their interest and therefore must not be laid aside INDEED if we consider the matter well we shall find the power of an inlightned Conscience to be such as to prevail with any man to resolve either to forsake any one sin upon condition he might securely enjoy all the rest or at least not to stick at any one duty of Religion if thereby he might expiate his other commissions and omissions And the Jews had a corrupt Doctrine amongst them very agreeable to this humour namely that if a man observed some one remarkable precept of the Law it was enough to excuse him upon the whole and that notion of theirs seems to have given occasion to that question so often put to our Saviour Which is the great commandment of the Law For they disputed amongst themselves upon that supposition which was the one surest point to trust to whether to Sacrifice as some held or to Circumcision as others or to the observation of the Sabbath as a third c. I say their intent was to ask his opinion what branch of the Law God most insisted upon that in compliance therewith they might compendiously secure their own interest without the trouble of universal obedience but our Saviour being aware of the subtlety directs them in all the places forementioned to that Paragraph of the Law which was comprehensive of the whole viz. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy Soul c. THE Devil is so wary and frugal a Trader that he will comply with the Market and is content as I noted before to barter one sin for another or rather to compound for half then to lose all and is also so good a Philosopher as to know malum oritur ex quolibet defectu bonum constat ex integris causis That the volùntary omission of any one part of our duty nulls our obedience and that one sin will damn a man as well as many For he that retains a love to any one sin cannot be said to have a resolution against sin or to hate sin for it self and God is resolved to have us intirely his or not at all For he that makes any exceptions or reservations that capitulates with God deals not with him as with a God He therefore that takes up a penitent resolution is uniform and universal therein fully decrees with himself to omit nothing that he knows to be his duty nor to dispense with himself in the practice of any thing how gratefull soever to him that he knows to be a sin I know saith he God by his sovereignty hath a just title to my whole life and to all my powers he hath obliged me beyond all that ever I can correspond with he is jealous of his honour and hates to be served deceitfully and by halves he will admit of no rival no sharer with him he sees all my wandrings and will be sure to revenge my
forty nights and Nineveh shall be destroyed Notwithstanding the absoluteness of the sentence and the nearness of the execution the Ninevites were not out of hope but that if repentance were interposed their ruine might yet be prevented and it succeeded accordingly with them for as they believing God's word by the Prophet expected nothing but sudden destruction if they had not repented so they trusting in the goodness and exorableness of the Divine Majesty upon repentance applied themselves seriously thereto and were preserved WHEREFORE saith the relenting sinner Forasmuch as although I know not the limits of the Divine Mercy yet this I know that nothing can set limits thereto but his own wisedom and he is never so straitned but that if the case be pitiable and he see reason of mercy he can shew it consistently with his Justice here I will cast anchor I will indeavour to render my self an object of mercy and trust upon his goodness I never yet heard that any man miscarried in this bottome or that a Penitent was cast away I have often heard that God would have saved men but they would not but I never heard of any that resorted penitently to his mercy and were rejected nor do I think that Hell it self can furnish one instance of the man that can upbraid God's goodness and say I would but God would not Thus the consideration of the Divine Nature is everlastingly pregnant of incouragements to repentance and is the spring of all motion to Godward were it not for which never any had been reclaimed from a course of sin or begun a reformation But so much of that 2. IN the Second place another incouragement to this penitent resolution we are speaking of is an apprehension that it is not impossible to become perfectly new men notwithstanding our pre-ingagements in the ways of sin Opinion of absolute impossibility as we have noted before is equal to real impotency checks all motion nips all indeavour in the very bud stifles and lays asleep all the powers of the mind But hope and apprehension of feasibleness spirits all industry actuates all faculties raises the spirits and is the spring of all the great actions in the world Some daring men have effected things beyond their own expectations but no brave exploit was ever performed by such as despaired of accomplishing it nor was ever any force defeated that did praelibare victoriam and resolve to conquer When once a conceit had possessed the Midianites that they should be conquered by Gideon's Army though grounded only upon an odde dream of a brown Loaf tumbling down upon their Tents their hearts presently melted in them their spirits were emasculated and a mighty Host became an easy prey to the inconsiderable numbers which Gideon led against them And the Lord of hosts would never suffer Israel to be led on to the conquest of the Land of Canaan so long as the rumor of Giants and Anakims and walled Cities ran in the minds of the people nor untill they were brought to a confidence that they were able to conquer that good Land In like manner if the sinner think either his sins too great to be forgiven or that it is too late to mend i. e. either despair of God's grace or of his mercy he is utterly lost indeed that therefore which puts him forward upon resolution is an apprehension that God's grace is sufficient for him THE returning Prodigal saith It is true I find I have gone a great way from my Father's house and wearied my self with my own wandrings yet sure it is not impossible but I may reach home again And I saith the sinner have gone a great way towards my own undoing having indulged my passions and dethroned my reason inslaved my will weakned all my powers and hardened my own Conscience by a long course and custome of sin yet in the words of Holy Job There is hope of a tree if it be cut down that it will sprout again and that the tender branch thereof will not cease though the root thereof wax old in the earth and the stock thereof die in the ground yet through the scent of water it will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant Job 14. 7 8 9. Though I have weakened my powers yet I am a man still though I have destroyed my self yet there is hope in the God of Israel and his hand is not shortened that he cannot save TVLLY is reported to have affirmed repentance to be impossible namely for a man to retrieve himself and take up a new course contrary to that to which he hath been long habituated and no doubt it is very difficult so to do as may sufficiently appear both by what we have said already and also by that of the Prophet Jer. 13. 23. Can the Aethiopian change his skin or the Leopard his spots then may ye also do good that are accustomed to doe evil Where the Holy Ghost intimates inveterate custome to be equal to nature it self and accordingly we find by too sad experience that there are very few that doe exuere hominem shake off the yoke of custome Facilis descensus Averni Sed revocare gradus c. And upon this account it is that the conversion of old sinners is called a New Birth and a New Creation in the language of Holy Scripture Notwithstanding as our Saviour said of rich men That it was harder for a Camel to goe through the eye of a needle then for such a man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven yet to prevent mistakes adds With men it is impossible but with God all things are possible So it is in this case He can cause dry bones to live and of Stones raise up Children to Abraham The Holy Spirit can awaken those powers that were in a dead sleep Conscience is not so callous but it may be rendered soft and sensible again the will and other faculties of men though they are perverted yet are not extinct and being stirred up by the grace of God may exert themselves in a new strain oppose their old customs and introduce new habits AS custome bore down and overgrew Nature formerly so new customes may supplant the old ones and make a new Nature It is a well-known Story that when Zopyrus a great pretender to the skill of reading men's temper and inclination in their countenances had pronounced of Socrates that he was a lewd and intemperate man the Company who knew well the remarkable vertue of Socrates laughed the cunning man out of countenance till Socrates relieved him saying that indeed his inclination was naturally such as Zopyrus had pronounced but that Philosophy and the culture and care of himself had altered him to what he was BUT the Holy Scriptures as they contain both more excellent institutions of vertue and holiness then all Philosophy and more effectual methods of reclaiming and recovering men from vice and debauchery so in the History thereof they afford us the
most frequent and most remarkable instances of such conversions In the Old Testament we have Manasses who was an Idolater a Witch and did evil in the sight of the Lord above all the abominations of the Amorites who seem to have been the most profligate people in the world and yet became at last a true penitent a holy and a vertuous person In the New Testament to omit St. Paul who saith of himself that from a blasphemer a persecutour and the chief of sinners he became an exemplary Christian and a zealous Apostle and Preacher of the Doctrine which before he destroyed We have great numbers of the most obstinate and wicked Jews converted and no less of Romans Corinthians Ephesians and of all other Cities and Countries who had grown old and hardened in a course of sin but became new and holy men Particularly the Apostle assures us of the Corinthians That they had been Fornicators Idolaters Adulterers Effeminate Thieves Covetous Drunkards And yet were washed were sanctified were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God 1 Cor. 6. 9 10 11. It is not therefore impossible saith the sinner but I may also recover my self out of the snares of the Devil I found it in my power to chuse evil why may I not hope to be able to chuse good nothing determined or necessitated me heretofore to sin why may I not then cast off the yoke of custome and by the grace of God apply my self to my duty This is a second consideration which inflames the Penitent to a resolution of amendment which when he hath in earnest entered upon he finds 3. AS his third inducement not onely to be possible but also easy at least far beyond what he heretofore imagined It was perhaps not an extenuating but a just reflection which the Historian makes upon all the famous exploits of Alexander the Great in Asia and in the Indies which had swelled his name to such a bulk Primus ausus est vana contemnere that it was not so much his more then humane courage or conduct which gave him those successes but that he had the luck or the sagacity to see through and despise the pageantry and empty shew of force and formidableness which those soft and luxurious Nations were only furnished with So it is in this case he that can but once despise those Ludibria oculorum those scare-crows and phantastical Ideas which men's own fear and cowardise represent to them he will presently find the business of Religion easy and expedite and that it is but resolving generously and the thing is done The way of vertue though through the folly of men it be an unfrequented path yet is it no sad and uncomfortable way no man abridges himself the delight of life by becoming vertuous no just contentment is denied him no power or so much as passion he hath that is altogether denied its proper satisfaction There is no inhumane austerity required of us no contradiction to our reason or violence to our nature imposed upon us God is no hard Pharaoh that seeks to break us with bitter bondage requiring the tale of bricks without straw He doth not bid us continue in the fire and not burn or require us to converse with the occasions of sin and escape the pollution but only to moderate our desires to mind our selves to set our intentions right and in a word to resolve to doe what we can both to avoid the occasion and to escape the infection AND as for that great bug-bear Custome why may we not break the fetters of our own making and dissolve an habit of our own beginning Sin it self was weak and timorous and bashfull at first but it got strength by time and by degrees and in the same manner it is to be supplanted oppose beginnings of good to beginnings of evil and an habit will be obtained and we shall confront one custome with another He that goeth forth weeping bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again rejoycing and bringing his sheaves with him THE way of vertue is therefore easy because it is recommended by our own reason though sense oppose it for the present let us be true to the former and the latter must and will give way A Law enacted by our own consent uses to find a ready and chearfull compliance that which is voted within us and carried by the free suffrage of our minds surely can never be accounted harsh and difficult and such are all the laws of vertue the rules thereof are convenient for the community suitable to our own natures and as fit for us to consent to as for God to enact ALL the opposition which the Devil or the flesh can make to the determination of our minds will quickly cease if we stand firm to our selves reason is as able to restrain sense as that is to bewitch and fascinate our minds or at least if we stop our ears we shall avoid all its charms charm it never so cunningly Besides all the importunities of the flesh will from such time as they begin to be denied grow sensibly weaker and weaker And for the Devil there is nothing so much incourages his attempts as our irresolution and feeble opposition he is both a more proud and a more cunning enemy then to endure too many repulses without hopes of success He knows well enough he cannot force us and if he cannot corrupt us will not long labour in vain This the Apostle St. James assures us of Resist the Devil and he will flee from you St. James 4. 7. ABOVE all the Holy Spirit of God will not fail to set in with us and make all easy to us if we cease to resist and quench his motions How that worketh in and upon us is not easy to discover for As the wind bloweth where it listeth and we hear the sound thereof but know not whence it cometh nor whither it goeth so is every one that is born of the Spirit notwithstanding we are assured that God will give his Holy Spirit to them that ask it and that that Spirit hath a mighty influence upon us without doing any violence to us and that its aids are incomparably greater then the Devils opposition For greater is he that is in us then he that is in the world and this is our great incouragement to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling because God worketh in us to will and to doe of his good pleasure THE mischief of all is therefore our want of resolution that we do but dally and trifle in this great business and hence all the difficulty arises Quo minùs timoris eo minùs fermè periculi Cowards run the greatest dangers in war and irresolute men find the most opposition and the greatest difficulty in a course of vertue Did we but collect our selves we should quickly find the face of things altered and all discouragements vanish ALL
called thy Son I deserve to be utterly abandoned excluded your care and cast out of your thoughts as I cast my self out of your family And so the Penitent I am so far Lord from deserving thy favour or eternal life that I deserve not the least Crum from thy Table less then the least of all thy mercies Nay I acknowledge I have deserved to goe with sorrow to my grave and to undergo the dreadfullest viols of thy wrath IT is very remarkable that the Prodigal doth not only thus condemn himself whilest he anxiously stands expecting his doom from his Father but even then when his Father had expressed compassion to him had ran to meet him and kissed him for so vers 21. we find him repeating his own condemnation in the same words as before And in like manner we observe the Apostle St. Paul after he had obtained pardon and the great favour of Apostleship to be continually ripping up his former sins and condemning himself for them as if the wound bled afresh as often as it was touched THUS the Penitent always judges and condemns himself that he may not be judged of the Lord. By severity towards himself he recommends himself to the Divine Mercy for as Tertullian expresses it In quantum non peperceris tibi in tantum Deus tibi parcet If we like Phineas stand up and execute judgement the Plague will be stayed He that anticipates the day of Judgment by erecting a private but impartial Tribunal prevents the dreadfullness of that day In short if we be just God will be mercifull and therefore when the Penitent hath been accuser witness and judge against himself he may then with hopes of success become 4. IN the fourth place Intercessour for himself also and deprecate the divine displeasure and implore his favour So the Son doth here make me as one of thy hired servants q. d. Let me not be utterly cast out of thy Family but have at least this instance of thy favour that I may still retain some relation to thee And so the Penitent now that he hath received his sentence of condemnation within himself sues out his pardon O take not my confession meerly as an argument of my guilt but as an evidence of my contrition Break not the bruised reed nor quench the smoaking flax 'T is thy prerogative O Lord to pardon and what pleasure is there in my blood Will the Lord be angry for ever will his jealousy burn like fire O consider my frame remember I am but dust and ashes call to mind thy mercies of old thou art God and not man and as much as the Heavens are higher then the Earth so are thy mercies above the mercies of a man Turn thy face away from my sins and blot out all my transgressions Make me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit in me Cast me not away from thy presence and take not thy Holy Spirit from me Give me the comfort of thy help again and stablish me with thy free Spirit c. Psal 51. 9 10 11 12. SAINT Cyprian reports it to have been the Custome of the Primitive Penitents out of their quick and pricking sense of sin and the more effectually to recommend themselves to the mercies of God and the favour of his Church earnestly to implore the Martyrs that in the midst of their sufferings and sharpest agonies they would remember them in their prayers thinking such affectionate intercession of those that poured out their blood and requests together must needs be available both with God and man But the Penitent addresses himself also to a higher and more prevalent Advocate who adds the incense of his own sacrifice to the prayers of men and makes them come up as sweet odours before the Almighty and who is exalted at God's right hand to this end that he may give success to the prayers of such contrite persons To which adde that not only the deep apprehensions of guilt and of danger which such a person we now speak of is under must needs mkee him ardent and importunate and to cry mightily to God but also the Scripture assures us that the Holy Ghost is wont to assist such with sighs and groans which are unutterable § II. NOW for the acceptableness of this penitent confession of which we are speaking Although it be certain that our heavenly Father takes no delight in the pityfull moans in the tears and lamentations of his Creatures and most true that he is not to be wrought upon by addresses and complemental forms by the accent of men's voice by the rhetorick of tears nor any thing of that nature because he is not subject to passions as men are yet having demonstrated already in the former Chapter that the Divine Majesty hath no restraint upon him but what himself pleases and that all his actions towards his Creatures are so subject to his wisedom that when-ever there is just cause for mercy he can shew it notwithstanding the unchangeableness of his Nature the rigour of his Laws or the demand of his Justice If now we also make it appear from his own mouth and from those discoveries which he hath been pleased to make of himself that the aforesaid humble and contrite addresses are agreeable to the designs of his wisedom and therefore required by him as the conditions of pardon then there can be no doubt but that they will in their kind be as acceptable to his Divine Majesty and as successfull on the part of the sinner as the penitent Son's submission was with his earthly Parent AND this will be easily evident if we consider that whereas the evil of sin lies principally in the dishonour it reflects upon the divine perfections such penitential acknowledgments as we have described do in great measure repair that injury and do right to all the Divine Attributes as we will instance in particular 1. SIN is an invasion of God's Authority and Sovereignty over us inasmuch as he that willfully breaks any Law of God proclaims himself sui Juris or Lawless and saith with those in the Gospel we will not have this Lord to rule over us Now penitent acknowledgment though it cannot recall the act which is past yet it revokes and retracts the affront and settles God's authority again 2. SIN is an impeachment of God's wisedom justice and goodness at once for he that allows himself in the commission of a sin lays an imputation upon God as if he had either not foreseen what liberty was fit to be allowed to his Creatures or had not ordered the frame and constitution of things with that decency and benignity that mankind could comfortably acquiesce in without temptation to intrench upon that for his own necessary accommodation Now on the contrary confession takes shame and folly and unreasonableness to our selves and justifies the wisedom and equity of all God's constitutions In this sense we may take that expression Luk. 7. 29. The Publicans justified God
being baptized with the baptism of John i. e. They entring into a penitential state which John's baptism initiated them into condemned themselves and proclaimed the righteousness of God's methods 3. SIN is a tacit denial of God's omniscience the sinner saith with them in the Psalmist Tush doth God see and is there knowledge in the most High Psal 73. 11. And with those other in Job How doth God know can he judge through the dark Clouds Thick Clouds are a covering to him that he seeth not and he walketh in the circuit of Heaven Job 22. 13 14. Either they conclude with the Epicureans that it is below the Majesty of God to mind the affairs of men or that it would create him too much trouble and business or some odd conceit or other they may well be presumed to have who dare adventure to sin forasmuch as the consideration of an all-seeing eye would give the most curbing check to sin that can be And indeed this Attribute is one of the most glorious perfections of the Divine Nature and so necessary that it is not intelligible how he should be God that is how he should govern the world for the present or judge it hereafter without it and consequently it is if not the only foundation yet the immediate obligation to all worship and religious observance For suppose a God as the Epicureans did that either could not or would not mind the actions of men and make him otherwise as great excellent and adorable as we will yet will it be impossible to restrain men from hypocrisy and contempt of him whilst they are under no apprehensions that their actions and carriage towards him are eyed by him Now he that ingenuously confesses his sin and takes shame to himself for it doth honour to this Divine Perfection and upholds the pillar of the world and thereby recommends himself to the Divine mercy IT was the saying of Joshua to Achan Jos 7. 9. My Son give glory to God and confess thy fault q. d. Thou hast dishonoured God by thy sin and both reproached his wisedom in making such a Law and also called in question his Omniscience by thy daring to violate it now therefore make him the best amends thou canst by an ingenuous confession and make it appear that though when thou wast tempted to doe wickedly thou wert so foolish as to promise thy self security yet now upon more deliberate thoughts thou acknowledgest there is nothing can hide thee from him 4. SUCH acknowledgements as aforesaid do right to the holiness and purity of God for thereby the sinner expressing his shame and blushing at his own impurity seems to loath himself for his unlikeness to the Divine Majesty who is the chief and original perfection TO which add in the last place that besides that in this confession of sin the sinner places himself in the nearest posture and under the very eye of God and the quickest apprehensions of him and the greatest awefullness of his Majesty he also puts a brand and odious mark upon all sin and by his thus suffering for sin in the sense of his Soul condemns sin in the flesh and withal expresses a great distast of it shews an abhorrence a mind alienated from it and so consequently by that sense of the bitterness of it gives the best security against relapses into it again Upon all which it is not untruely said quem poenitet peccâsse paenè est innocens and though it be best of all not to sin yet he is in a good degree towards innocency who is thus penitent for his offences and consequently in a fair way for pardon WITH respect to which the Psalmist who both could and would if that would have done as well have brought the most costly Sacrifices to God to have atoned his sin and made his peace with him yet pronounces the Sacrifice of God to be only a contrite Spirit and that a broken and contrite Spirit God would not despise Those other Sacrifices it seems though God permitted them and in some cases accepted yet were not of his institution at first only they were ways which men thought apt to express their homage and dependance upon God or by which to acknowledge their gratitude or by the cost of them to impose a mulct upon themselves for offending or otherwise by being converted to the use of those that attended immediately upon him might be supposed to be a means to propitiate him towards them as if in the language of our Saviour men sought this way to make to themselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness Notwithstanding in themselves all those costly oblations seemed to reflect dishonour upon God as representing him a necessitous and indigent Deity for which cause several of the wisest and best Philosophers of old forbad all costly Sacrifices and required only such things as might properly be reputed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Platonists express it i. e. the worship of a full and perfect Being and such especially is this of a broken and contrite heart which as it is that which every man hath to give that will so is fittest to be the sacrifice of all mankind to the common Father of them and as it costs them least so it doth the truest honour to him AND whereas Paganism admitted no repentance and in their Philosophick writings we meet often with expiations and lustrations but no such thing as repentance the reason must be because they had no right notions of God commonly considering him only under the notion of rigid fate or of absolute sovereignty without any apprehension of benignity or compassion in him which whoso rightly understands God must needs conceive to be in him in an eminent degree as we have shewed before and he that so considers him can have no reason to doubt but those instances of penitence we are now upon are very acceptable to him especially if they come attended with real reformation which we come now in the next place to speak of as the second part of the Penitent's Resolution and the last and principal point of Repentance CHAP. IV. Of Actual Returing or Reformation THE CONTENTS Actual Reformation consists in three things 1. Care of God's Worship 2. Conscience of all his Commands 3. Submission to his Providence All which are described according to such measures as are practicable in themselves necessarily required by God and conscientiously observed by all true Converts WE have hitherto in the letter of the Parable seen the formerly extravagant Son performing the first part of his resolution confessing his fault condemning his folly falling at his Father's feet and imploring his pardon But there was something else meant when he said I will return to my Father and he was not ignorant that filial reverence and obedience for the future was the best apology for his former transgressions for though he knew how great an interest the very relation of a Son gives in the affections of a Father and
zeal as cannot but be very observable nay his fervor is so great in these things that the only danger is of running into some excess lest he outgo the health and strength of his Body and forget the necessity of the common affairs of life IT is true there is great diversity in these passionate expressions of devotion according to the difference of men's tempers and constitutions but yet in every true Convert it is at the lowest quite another thing from the common flatness and formality that is too easy to be seen in other men nay the transports of this kind in new Converts are usually so great that it often gives them occasion afterwards to question their station and to doubt whether they have not apostatized and faln from their first love when they find they cannot maintain those spring-tides constantly at the same height through the whole course of their lives For the sake of which this is to be added that it is no argument against a man's sincerity that he wants some of the passionate expressions of devotion which he had at first in regard then the fresh sense he had of his miscarriages of his horrible danger together with the ravishing joy at the first glimpse of God's mercy in Christ were able strangely to move all his powers and to draw even those bodily passions into compliance with the sense of the mind which must certainly flag afterwards And therefore though it be a sure sign he is no Convert I mean from a debauched and wicked life who had no experience of something extraordinary in this kind at first yet on the other side it is no sign of decaying in grace if he find not the like all along 2. BUT to proceed secondly when the Son arose and went to his Father it is implied that he became obedient to his commands as well as that he lived in his presence and family And accordingly the Penitent in the next place contents not himself with any or all of the forementioned acts of devotion as not intending to put off God with complementall addresses for all worship without obedience is no better but applies himself with all humility and seriousness to frame his life according to his commands Heretofore he was a Son of Belial lawless and disobedient but now he saith with St Paul upon his conversion Acts 9. 6. What wilt thou have me to doe Lord He hath now found what hard service the Devil puts his vassals to and having had so bad a Master of him he doth not discourage himself with suspicions but submits his neck to the yoke of Christ Jesus and doth not say it is grievous as being of opinion with the Falisci who told Fabricius Melius nos sub vestro imperio quà m sub nostris legibus victuri sumus God's service is perfect freedom and it is liberty enough to obey wisedom and goodness ACCORDINGLY he indeavours from henceforth to live in all the statutes and commandments of the Lord blameless and exercises himself to have a Conscience void of offence both towards God and man He confines not his care to some one branch or part of his duty which is the common guise of hypocrites but resolves to be universally good and holy For he not only considers that one sin is sufficient to ruine a man as well as many as one disease may destroy a man's life as well as a complication but also he observes that the main difficulty of vertue lies in that men do not uniformly carry on the whole business before them and so the Devil gets that ground in one place which he seems to lose in another Besides the very principle that acts and governs him is the hearty love of God and goodness which makes him have an equal hatred to all sin and a zeal of every duty HE forsakes all his debauches for the pleasure of a good Conscience and makes experiment whether victory over his passions be not as delightfull as the gratification of them and whether intellectual joys be not as ravishing as sensual enjoyments and a regular conversation as easy and agreeable as the lawless and licentious He brings his senses in subjection to his reason and makes all those powers and faculties tributary to Religion which before made war against it This head of mine saith he which was wont to be employed in contrivances for the world or in catering for my lusts shall now be exercised in studying how I may doe most honour to my Maker This wit which was wont to goe out in froth or in scoffing at all that was serious shall now make apologies for what before it blasphemed This tongue shall learn to bless that was used to cursing and swearing My hands shall now dispense as liberally to charitable purposes as they have sordidly raked together before I will be as exemplary for sobriety and chastity as ever I was notorious for excesses and wherever I have wronged any body in my dealings I will now spare from my self to make them a recompence In short by the grace of God from henceforward there is neither pleasure shall tempt me nor profit allure me nor ambition corrupt me nor example sway me to doe any thing which I know to be evil and on the other side there shall neither difficulty discourage me nor tediousness of the course weary me in the race of vertue and holiness And to the intent that he may always make good this ground and persevere in this course he calls in all the Auxiliaries of Divine Grace places himself under the most advantageous circumstances and retrenches himself against all assaults or surprisals Herewithal he hath a principal care to keep his thoughts pure and holy that there may be no combustible matter in him for the Devil 's fiery darts to take hold of nor any beginning of a mutiny within him of the flesh against the spirit by which means a passage may be opened to the enemy And yet when this is done he will be always upon his guard too not trusting wholly to the innocency of his intentions as knowing both the subtilty and enterprizing nature of the Devil And that this watch may be constantly kept up he is sure not to allow himself the least degree of intemperance which would at least weaken his reason and inflame his passion and farther he is very choice of his company and very desirous to fortify himself by good neighbourhood and acquaintance that he may be quickened by their examples and lastly he will be always doing some good thing or other that temptation may not find him at leisure to give it entertainment MOREOVER in consideration that he hath lived a great while unprofitably and done far less then his duty he will strive if it be possible to do more then is matter of express duty now to make amends for fomer failing and therefore is far from the cold and frugal piety of those men that make a great stirr in seeking the
something on man's part though very little and that they call Attrition by which they mean some slight sorrow for sin which they say together with the sacrament of penance or confession will reconcile a man to God without so much as contrition or true and hearty sorrow for the evil of sin this is the express doctrine of the Church of Rome and is very like the common doctrine of the Jews that confession and sacrifice were sufficient for repentance and reconciliation as if sin had no great evil in it self or no great contrariety to the divine nature only for form or order sake he thought fit that some shame or mulct should be put upon it and so a few tears or something of no great moment shall quit all the old score and purchase a new licence to sin again 3. ANOTHER opinion goes further yet requiring not only external expressions and the forms and solemnities of repentance but real and hearty sorrow for sin that a man's Conscience be really troubled and in great anguish for his sin and when this is done all is well from such trouble of Conscience they date their conversion and this they are always reflecting upon as a security not only against the sins committed before it but that from that time God sees no more sin in them as if like as it was at the Pool of Bethesda when the Angel had moved the waters all that stept in were healed These men ordinarily please themselves with melancholy complaints of themselves cry out of a naughty heart a hard heart c. and think this will doe their business as if so soon as the Patient is grown sensible of his case he were cured and to feel the smart were all one as to have the sore healed LASTLY a fourth sort go further yet and require not only contrition but resolution of obedience but content themselves and incourage men to a great degree of confidence though this resolution be never put in execution Thus a great many Saints are canonized from the Gallows and the Clinick or death-bed repentance is greatly countenanced Men commence Saints per saltum as they say as the Romans made Gentlemen Momento turbinis exit Marcus Dama in the turning of an hand a lewd and flagitious person starts up a great Saint The ground of this opinion is they suppose that which is undoubtedly true that God knows men's hearts but then they infer that which is very dangerous that therefore so that be turned right it is no matter with him whether there proceed any fruits worthy of repentance and amendment of life TO all these I might further adde those that reckon the change of opinion being of an admired Sect coming over with great zeal to a new party a demure garb an austere temper or at most some partial reformation to be sufficient signs of regeneration which fancy agrees too well to the humour of a great part of men of this age but I shall not need to proceed further in reckoning up these mistakes nor do I think it necessary to apply a particular confutation to doctrines so very absurd at the first view but I will now as I promised demonstrate the necessity of the doctrine I have asserted which will be an effectual detection of the fallacy of all these other now recired And this I will do by these four arguments § II. FIRST if God in the Holy Scripture doth require of those that have lived wickedly as the condition of their absolution and reconciliation to himself that they be not only sorry for their sins and resolve upon a new course but expresly calls for actual performance of such resolutions and real reformation then those must be strangely bold and presumptuous men that will conceive hopes of pardon upon any other terms But that this which we assert and nothing less is the declared condition of mercy these following passages amongst innumerable others do abundantly evince The first I take notice of is that of the Prophet Isaiah Chap. I. Vers 11 13 c. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrices unto me saith the Lord I am full of the burnt-offerings of Rams and the fat of fed Beasts and I delight not in the bloud of Bullocks or of Lambs or of He-Goats Bring no more vain oblations incense is abomination to me the new Moons and Sabbaths the calling of Assemblies I cannot away with it is iniquity even the solemn meeting And when you spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you yea when ye make many prayers I will not hear your hands are full of bloud Wash you make you clean put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes cease to do evil Learn to doe well seek judgment relieve the oppressed judge the Fatherless plead for the Widow Come now and let us reason together saith the Lord though your sins be as searlet they shall be as white as snow c. Of like import is that of the Prophet Ezekiel Chap. 18. Vers 21 22 28. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed and keep all my statutes and doe that which is lawfull and right he shall surely live he shall not die All the transgressions that he hath committed they shall not be mentioned unto him Because he considereth and turneth away from all his transgressions that he hath committed he shall surely live he shall not die So also Micah 6. 6 7 8. Wherewithall shall I come before the Lord and bow my self before the High God shall I come before him with the burnt-offerings with Calves of a year old Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of Rams or with ten thousand rivers of Oil shall I give my first-born for my transgression the fruit of my Body for the sin of my Soul He hath shewed thee O man what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee but to doe justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God IN all which places God puts a slight upon all the most solemn expressions of penitence when they are dis-joined from actual amendment of life And touching Sacrifice it is very remarkable that though that was a rite of God's own allowance for the expiation of sin and had also conjoined with it the guilty persons confession of his fault and that particularly as Maimonides assures us and considering the usual cost of the oblation was a mulct upon the sinner and some kind of reparation to God yet this is declared of no efficacy without reformation THUS it was in the Old Testament and in the New the case is plainer if it be possible for thus John the Baptist preaches that they should not think it sufficient to submit to the baptism of repentance But bring forth fruits worthy of repentance Matt. 3. 8. And such is the discourse of our Saviour himself Matth. 7. 21. Not every one that saith unto me Lord Lord shall enter
told us shall never be forgiven And that sin it self whatsoever it consists in is only upon this account unpardonable because it hath a finally impenitent temper joyned with it otherwise were it possible that such a sinner should repent there would be no doubt of his pardon but bating that peculiar case there is no sin but God hath pardoned and will pardon I will not take upon me to say which were the greatest sins that ever were committed by mankind but I will instance in two that must needs be acknowledged to have been very great which yet have obtained pardon and they are the sin of our first Parents and the sin of the Jews in crucifying our Saviour IN the former of these there was the breach of a known Law and that so newly given as that it could not be forgotten and it was also an easy and reasonable Law God having allowed them all the Trees in the Garden and laid an interdict only upon that one and it was no hard matter to have denied themselves that for God's sake especially considering they came newly out of his hands and saw so freshly the display of his power and wisedom in the Creation of the World and had so many and great instances of his goodness towards themselves besides they had as yet no vitiated faculties nor so much as one example of sin before them but that of the Devils which they had seen to be most severely vindicated It was a hard thing to be first in the transgression and a bold thing to venture to provoke God and to be the first instance of sin to all posterity they had the concern of all mankind upon them as who they knew must stand or fall with them and having frequent tokens of God's presence with them to sin under his eye and to hearken to the suggestions of a vile Beast the Serpent against God was prodigiously strange and yet they did it and God was pleased to pardon them IN the latter of the instances namely the Jews crucifying our Saviour besides the greatness of the Person against whom they sinned putting to death the Lord of life and glory there was designed malice perjury and subornation contumely towards an holy Person ingratitude towards one that had done them all the good they were capable of there was contradiction to the plainest evidence of miracles of all kinds and to the conviction of their own Consciences Notwithstanding all which the same St. Peter who Acts 2. 23. had charged them home in these words Ye men of Israel have with wicked hands crucified and slain Jesus of Nazareth a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God by him did in the midst of you as ye your selves know c. yet in the 38. Verse he exhorts the same men to repentance and to be baptized that they may receive remission of sins and the singular favour of the gift of the Holy Ghost TO these and several other instances of great sins which might easily be added we may cast in for the greater evidence of the vastness of the divine mercy that he pardons not only single acts of sin how hainous soever but long courses and habits of sin and those of several natures and kinds as in Manasses and in the Publicans and Harlots but that we may rise higher yet in admiration of the divine clemency we observe 2. IN the second place that he pardons also relapsed sinners They have a saying Non licèt in bello his peccare that the first faults in war are severely vindicated because there all errours are fatal and searce leave a capacity of being repeated And there are some relations so near and intimate and their ligaments so nice and curious that a breach in them can never be repaired to knit again But the relation of a Father and the goodness of a God leave always room for pardon Nay further They say saith the Prophet Jeremiah if a man put away his Wife and she goe from him and become another man's shall he return to her again But thou O Israel hast plaid the harlot with many lovers yet return again unto me saith the Lord Jer. 2. 1 2. § VI. The doctrine of the Navatians carried a great breadth with it in the Primitive times which denied repentance to those that sinned after Baptism and for that reason it is thought many holy men in those days deferred their Baptism as long as they could that they might not defile their garments but goe from that washing unspotted out of the world The opinion seemed to proceed from extraordinary purity and holiness and therefore as I said prevailed much and had a great reputation in those times and it seems it took its rise from a mistake of a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews Chap. 6. 4. However it was damned by the most learned and holy Fathers of the Church and particularly St. Basil and Gr. Nazianzen call it a damnable doctrine and destructive of Souls in that it discouraged and kept men off from repentance which God is always ready to admit of if it be sincere and such as we have before described IT is true which Clemens of Alexandria hath said that to make a common practice of sinning and then pretending repentance as if we would give God and the Devil their turns is an argument both of an impenitent and unbelieving temper for as he saith afterwards These frequent repentances as it were of course betray rather an intention of sinning again then any design of leaving it and therefore find no acceptance with God And it is also certain that a man that hath frequently relapsed having thereby exceedingly multiplied his guilt must needs feel very bitter pangs and sharp remorse when he doth return and will be ever after very apt to question his own sincerity and which is worse it is to be feared that like as it is with bones which have been often out and set again they will be very apt to slip awry so this person will be justly looked upon as in great danger and therefore hath a necessity of extraordinary watchfullness over himself But notwithstanding all this if such a man after several falls and slips shall stand right and firm at last and demonstrate the truth of his now penitent state by the following course of an holy life there is no question to be made of his acceptance with a mercifull God For God doth not proceed with men upon such terms as we do our passions are stirred many times and the provocation is too great for us to be able to concoct but he is pure mind and reason hath no boiling passion no revenge seeks only the good of his Creatures and so they become at last capable of his favour and blessing he is contented and hath his end Besides he that hath made it our duty that as often as our Brother offends against us and repents so often we should forgive
him doth not certainly intend to be outdone by us in mercy the most glorious of all his attributes 3. God's pardon of sin upon repentance is full and compleat without any reservation he retains no old grudge hath no concealed spite never rips up the old quarrel never upbraids men with former follies but casts all behind him and buries them in oblivion It is not usually thus with men they have a distinction they will forgive they say but not forget and it is common with Princes to seem to pardon only till they have opportunity of a full revenge It was strange that a man of such sincerity as David should have such a reserve and yet so it was that after he had promised and sworn to Shimei that he should not die 2 Sam. 19. 23. notwithstanding 1 King 2. 9. He gives it in charge to his Son and Successor Solomon that he should not suffer his hoary head to come to the grave without blood But it is not thus with God his acts of grace are without repentance on his part he never retracts or revokes them never clogs them with conditions nor finds out evasions afterwards if he pardon all is well and secure he will never depart from it unless the sinner depart from his repentance and so exclude himself from pardon THE Italians have a proverbial saying that they will forgive an enemy but never trust him for fashion sake they will seem to forgive that is they will cease to quarrel or they will not directly revenge themselves but they will only rake up the fire in its own ashes they will retain a perpetual jealousy of such a person and malign him it shall not be said they hate him but it shall appear they do not love him THUS like those long burning Lamps which have been discovered in old monuments whilst they are kept close under ground they burn more slowly but so much the more lastingly So men suppressing only their passion perpetuate it whereas perhaps it was more desirable they should give it vent that so it might expire But God is not of a vindictive nature as we have shewed before he needs not conceal his anger because he can execute it when he will and there can lie no necessity upon his affairs to tempt him to pretend reconciliation when it is not cordial no he is a God of peace and of truth his mercies are as the great mountains stable and firm those repent he pardons and those whom he pardons he loves and those he loves he will trust and admit them to honour and treat them as friends with the greatest security and confidence By this means he demonstrates the greatness of his own mind the largeness of his heart and the infallibility of his wisedom that he is above fear and above surprizal hereby he assures the great value he hath for true goodness that it alone and nothing else comparably sways with him and hereby he lays the mightiest obligations upon men to be good and to persevere so Thus Augustus made Herod of a formidable enemy become a faithfull friend and several others have made the like experiment And now this would lead me immediately to the second Stage of this part of the Parable namely the accumulative kindness the Father shews to the Son but I will crave the Readers patience a little whilst I make a few practical reflections upon this we have said already § VII And in the first place besides all we have yet behind this that we have discoursed hitherto represents to us the blessed and comfortable condition of justification and peace with God O blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is covered Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity Psal 32. 1 2. TO have all a man's debts cancelled his follies past over and buried in forgetfullness his deformities covered his Conscience quieted and the light of God's countenance to shine upon him to have no frightfull reflection upon what is past no dismal prospect of what is to come no old story ripped up no former quarrel revived no latent displeasure no rancour nor jealousy harboured against us This must needs fill a man with chearfullness in all conditions and bear him up above all adversities above poverty reproach sickness confinement and whatsoever can befall us in this world Such a man shall not need to resort to drink and jollity to relax his thoughts to divert his anxiety to bear up his spirit he hath comfort from within a continual feast in his own Conscience Who shall lay any thing to his charge it is God which justifieth Who is he that condemneth it is Christ that died Who shall separate him from the love of God shall tribulation or distress c. Rom. 8. 33 34 35. The sting of all these things is taken out since God hath pardoned his sin BUT on the contrary when a man knows God is angry with him and his own Conscience upbraids and dogs him the sad remembrance of his many provocations terrify him and the fearfull expectation of wrath to come alarms him he must needs be in a case like that of Belshazzar when the fingers of an hand were seen writing upon the wall over him in the midst of all his jollity His countenance was changed his thoughts were troubled the joints of his loins were loosed and his knees smote one against another All the entertainments of sense do little in this case nay they are flat and insipid and the smiles of the world no whit chear a man so long as God frowns upon him IT was an ingenious device whereby a Gentleman of this Nation represented his condition in a public entertainment at Court he sets out a Ship bitterly opprest by a tempest and ready to perish under its difficulties and in the mean while a Rain-bow appearing towards which this word is addressed quid tu si pereo q. d. What am I the better for hopes and smiles for Court favour and countenance whilst in the mean time my condition admits no delay and I am ruined in my private fortunes BUT as the torments of guilt are incomparably more severe then the afflictions of outward fortune so it is far more unreasonable to think to allay them by the blandishments of the world then the other by Court Holy Water No it is nothing but God's mercy in the pardon of sin that can alleviate the troubles and abate the anguish of Conscience and when he is pleased upon repentance to do that then he saith to the Soul as Christ Jesus said to the Paralytick Matth. 9. 2. Son be of good chear thy sins are forgiven thee or as the same our Saviour to Zaccheus This day is salvation come to thy house 2. SECONDLY since God pardons sinners in that ample manner we have before exprest i. e. so frankly as that neither the greatness multitude repetition or other aggravation of sin hinders him and so fully
as that no old score remains upon record against the Penitent it may raise in us great admiration of his infinite goodness beget the most amiable notions of him in our minds and provoke us to love him with all our hearts So our Saviour concludes in the Gospel that where most is forgiven there must undoubtedly lie the greatest obligations of love and gratitude The Apostle tells us Rom. 5. 7. That scarcely for a righteous man will one die but for a good man some would even dare to die All God's Attributes of power and wisedom and holiness are very amiable and lovely but this of his goodness in forgiving sins comes most home to us in that he doth not rigidly insist on his own right but comply with our necessity and relieve our misery To give and bestow benefits upon us is goodness but to forgive is greater because here he divests himself of his own right recedes from his own claim and that for our unspeakable benefit In short he seems not to consider himself but us only in the dispensations of his mercy he is as good as good can be and therefore there is all the reason in the world that we should love him as much as is possible And one of the best and most acceptable ways of expressing that is that which 3. THIRDLY I make a third inference viz. that we imitate this goodness and mercifullness of his this is prest upon us by our Saviour Be ye mercifull as your Father in Heaven is mercifull It is said of Cato that the strict sanctity of his own life made him a severe and rigid Magistrate he knew not how to pardon in other men what he would not permit in himself If God who is a holy and immaculate Being should severely animadvert our failings we could not blame him though we were undone by it nay it ought to be the greatest wonder to us in the whole world that he doth not do so considering the greatness of his Majesty the justice and wisedom of his Laws and such other things of this nature as we have formerly represented But it is the most absurd thing in nature that we who are great offenders our selves that have infinite need of mercy at God's hands that we should be cruel and vindictive towards each other that God should cover our follies and we blazon those of other men shall he pardon us worms and we be remorsless towards our Brethren doth he consider humane infirmity bind up the wounds of the contrite so as to leave no scar or blemish behind of all their former miscarriages and do we rake in the wounds proclaim the follies uncover the nakedness and shame of our neighbour is it tolerable for us to equal our selves with God or are offences greater against us then against him shall we dare to do what we dare not wish should be done to us Do not we pray Enter not into judgment with thy Servants c. and confess That if God be extream to mark what we have done amiss that none can abide it and do we scrupulously weigh severely aggravate and rigorously animadvert the sins of others against our selves doth God forgive us by talents and we unmercifully exact the utmost farthing INDEED we may observe it to be the genius and custom of evil men to remember invidiously the faults which penitent men have forsaken to the end that they may revenge themselves upon them for that change which condemns their own obstinate perseverance in such courses or as hoping to excuse or justify their constant naughtiness by remarking the temporary compliance of those other with them whose contrary course now shames and reproaches them But it is quite otherwise with all good men they partly out of a sense of humanity partly to incourage men to repentance and partly also to confirm and secure such as have repented from all temptations to apostasy draw a curtain over their former misdemeanours and forget what they have forsaken and God hath forgiven therefore if we will either take pattern by God or them we ought to doe so too LASTLY but above all the rest the consideration of God's pardon and the egregious circumstances thereof should be a mighty incouragement to all sinners to repentance when we remember how gracious a Father we grieve by a willfull destroying of our selves how much he pities us and longs for our return what a serene countenance hearty welcome full pardon gracious reception and how innumerable and inestimable blessings we shall have poured out upon us at our so doing And this brings me again to the second part of the penitent Son's entertainment to which therefore I now proceed CHAP. II. Of Sanctification THE CONTENTS § I. What is meant by the best Robe and that it is the usual phrase of Scripture to set out the ornaments of the mind by those of the body § II. Sanctification in different respects both goes before and follows after Justification § III. Three remarkable differences betwixt the measure of Sanctification which God requires and that which he accepts for the present or the different stature of Grace before Justification and after it § IV. The ways by which God works men up to those higher measures of Sanctification which he requires As 1. By mighty obligation working upon their gratitude and ingenuity 2. By the efficacy of Faith 3. By the gift of the Holy Ghost § 1. THERE is a never failing spring of kindness and good will in Parents towards their Children which flows with that life and vigour that nothing is able to dam it up or interrupt it so but that if it be obstructed one way it breaks out and discovers it self another If the Children prove singularly good and vertuous then paternal affection bears a mighty stream overflows all its banks the Parents feel an unspeakable delight and satisfaction and their Children are then the Crown of their age their joy and triumph If they happen to be but tolerable they are ready to interpret all to the best and prone to heap blessings and kindnesses upon them And if they degenerate and prove very bad and undutifull this though it checks the tide yet cannot divert the current for at worst they cannot cease to pity them There is in like manner an everlasting propension in Almighty God to do good to men insomuch that when they are very bad he pities them as soon as they begin to be good he loves and blesses them but when they become generously vertuous and holy he takes complacency in them and all these different degrees of divine favour we have lively represented to us in the Parable before us But we are now upon the second of them namely the great and singular blessings which the Father frankly bestows upon his Son now that he hath repented of his extravagancy and is reconciled to him And under this rank we may reckon these three special instances FIRST whereas the Father observed his Son to return in a
love so long as they are enemies to the common enemy so it happens here that a Convert zealously combating against some one vice in studious declension of that insensibly slips into some degrees of the other extream and then finds it a fresh difficulty vincere eos per quos vicisti to conquer that other infirmity by which he conquered the former TO which purpose it is remarkable concerning that holy man St. Jerom whilst he lived in the affluence of the City and used a free conversation he felt frequent temptations of the flesh and setting himself with all his might to mortify these and to do it effectually retired into a desart that he might both take away the cause and the occasions of those dangers but whilst in that retirement he exercises himself to great severity and austerity he insensibly grew into a blameable asperity of temper which needed a second labour to subdue I will not say as some do that as God would have some remainders of the seven Nations preserved amongst the Children of Israel in the Land of Canaan to be continually as thorns in their eyes and goads in their sides so he orders it that there should be some remainders of the old Adam in us to keep us always humble and employed for certainly God would have all sin expelled our natures But this I say that as Israel was truely in possession of the Land of Canaan from such time as Joshua had conquered those powers that made head against them and had put the chief Cities and places of strength into their hands notwithstanding that a long time after some of those old inhabitants remained amongst them and were no very good Neighbours so I affirm that so long as there is not only a resolution against all sin but a constant hostile pursuit of it and that a man goes on conquering and to conquer such a man is a true Israelite though he have not perfected his conquest nor can yet say with St. Paul I have fought the good fight I have finished my course I have kept the faith and therefore henceforth is laid up for me the crown of righteousness BUT now forasmuch as God both for his own glory and service the comfort of the Convert's own Soul and his greater capacity of the Kingdom of Heaven designs to bring men to higher degrees of sanctification then what he was pleased to accept of when he first received the Penitent to mercy therefore he afterwards puts upon him the Best Robe 2. IT is to be considered that the beginnings of all things that are any way notable especially are wrought with pain and difficulty insomuch that nemo repente fit turpissimus no man finds it very easy at first to doe any egregious wickedness Men become evil by degrees and there is proficiency even in the Devil's school and therefore much more reasonably may it be expected that those that first enter into a strict course of vertue should be sensible of difficulty in their first undertaking IT was an ingenious answer which Plutarch reports to have been given by a Lacedemonian Turor when he was asked what he pretended to and of what avail his indeavours were I make saith he that to become easy and delightfull which is of it self good and necessary It is true Christ Jesus tells us his yoke is easy and his burden is light and without doubt it is so but it is a yoke and a burden still and no man finds it easy untill he have exercised himself to it rewards and punishments set before us and reason and resolution working thereupon will prevail with men to doe their duty but only practice and assuetude makes it become easy and familiar so to doe especially supposing as we do in the present case a man but lately accustomed to indulge himself in a course of sin let such a man's conversion be never so real and hearty however it cannot be expected that he should presently do Christ's commands and say they are not grievous It is certain such a man if he be what we suppose him that is sincere will resist his inclination and change his course but because it was lately a course there will yet be an inclination towards it and consequently a conflict and difficulty in avoyding it for as we said before it is only one custome can perfectly supplant another and only habit can imitate nature and make easy the cutting off our corrupt members is a hard task till by time and degrees they become mortified and then it is done without any considerable pain or difficulty Whosoever hath any principle of divine life or true sense of God in him will not allow himself in the neglect of God's worship yet he will find it no easy business to hold his heart intent and constant in it till it have become customary and natural to him and then it is so far easy and delightfull to him that he knows not how to live without it Now although that state which tuggs at the Oare and draws on heavily may be sincere because it discharges its duty honestly though with great difficulty and therefore find acceptance with a good God yet forasmuch as his intention is that we should become partakers of the divine nature and that it be our meat and drink to doe his will that the way of his commands be to us as our necessary food that we should do his will with that alacrity on earth with which it is done by the Angels in Heaven that our wills should be perfectly conformed to his and Religion become natural to us partly to the end that we may do him the more honour for there is nothing doth so much reputation to the divine Law and government as the chearfull obedience of his Subjects partly also that we may be the more fit for the Kingdom of Heaven for those most easily fall in with the heavenly Quire who have practised their part beforehand therefore since he desires that we should not only be not evil but generously good nor meerly draw on heavily and uncomfortably but fly as upon the wings of a Cherub in his service it seems good to him when he hath pardoned a penitent to confer upon him greater measures of Sanctification 3. A young Convert though he have all the parts and members of a perfect man in Christ and should also be supposed in great measure to have overcome the difficulties which always attend vertuous beginnings yet he is but a beginner and must needs be conceived weak and feeble in his whole contexture he is not only apt to be abused with Sophistry and carried about with every wind of doctrine but less able to bear the burdens and to resist the temptations he must expect to meet with the traces of his former course are not yet worn out and so he is the apter to return he is not at the top but going up hill and may easily faint or slip he hath not such experience of
although in the darker times of the Law there were some very great and admirable persons who were the prodigies of the Ages they lived in yet ordinarily Christianity ought to doe and doth afford far the most and bravest Hero's by reason of the mighty great and clear promises therein exhibited The Law saith the Apostle Hebr. 7. 19. made nothing perfect but the bringing in of a better hope did For shall not the glories of Heaven out-shine the felicities of a Land of Canaan and the belief of the one be as operative as that of the other And what though the one be present and the other to come yet to every good man this is as certain as that and to every wise man the unspeakable odds in the things abundantly recompences that disadvantage of circumstances What man that hath a persuasion of eternal life can choose but disdain the present life further then as it is a time of probation for the other and scorn that the mean pleasures and allurements here should interrupt his course thither what difficulties will he not glory in and what duties will he not perform to assure his interest therein 1 Jo. 3. 3. He that hath this hope purifies himself as God is pure especially when a man shall find these things not only made certain to him by faith but made near to him also When he shall consider himself now in a fair way to those coelestial mansions and that every day he approaches nearer and nearer to Heaven Now therefore he will cast off all the works of darkness and put on the armour of light when he remembers Rom. 13. 11. That now his salvation is nearer then when he first believed and finds that a little more exercise of faith and patience will bring him to his desired haven THIRDLY and lastly our heavenly Father puts this Best Robe upon the Son whom he hath received and pardoned not only by the Ministery of his Gospel and all the ordinary advantages of his Church and Family but extraordinarily improves the sanctification of such a person by the especial superintendency guidance and influence of his Holy Spirit The consideration of which brings me to the next member of the Parable He put a Ring on his hand which expresses the second blessing the reconciled Father bestows upon his penitent Son which we are to treat of in the next Chapter CHAP. III. Of the Gift of the Holy Ghost THE CONTENTS § I. The difference between the visits or motions of the Holy Spirit and the gift or residence of it and that the Holy Ghost doth reside with and inhabit very good men § II. The wonderfull comfort and advantages thereof in four respects § III. That although some good men have no experience of this residence of the Holy Spirit it is nevertheless certainly attainable in this life and the reasons of that case The peculiar qualifications of persons fit for the entertainment of this divine Guest § IV. How to distinguish the motions of God's Spirit from the impressions of Sathan or the results of our own temper § 1. THE second favour which the Father bestows upon his Son after he is reconciled to him is He puts a Ring upon his Hand This hath by the common consent of the world been symbolical either of freedom and ingenuity of riches and affluence of singular favour and respect or of quality and nobility Most of these things St. James bears testimony to in that passage of his Chap. 2. 2. If there come into your assemblies a man having a gold ring and goodly apparel and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment and ye have respect to him in the gay cloathing c. And for the rest at the famous battel of Cannae where the Romans suffered a total defeat by the Carthaginians the greatness of the victory was estimated by this as Livy observes that more then a bushel of Rings were taken by the Conquerers from the Hands of the slain whereby it appeared how many principal Romans and persons of Quality fell in the battel And thus the Father's putting a Ring on his Son should signify in the general his re-instating him in the quality and honour of a Son But St. Jerom St. Austin St. Chrysostom Theophylact and others consider here more particularly that a principal use of the Ring was for Sealing as commonly bearing the image impress or cognizance of him that wore it and consequently they apply this passage in the mystical sense to the gift of the Holy Ghost St. Chrysostom expresses it thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Give my Son a Ring also that he may have the earnest of the Holy Spirit and carrying that about him may be kept in safe-guard by it that bearing my signet he may both become formidable to all his enemies and publickly appear the Son of such a Father And this interpretation is the more natural because this is the usual method of God's favours that after he hath justified then he further sanctifies and for the completion of that gives his Holy Spirit IT was the saying of one of the Ancients that man is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The wager which God and the Devil contend about But when a man hath given himself up to sensuality or any kind of sin then the title is decided and such a person becomes the Devil's peculiar and on the contrary when he sincerely addicts himself to vertue God recovers his right and takes possession of him by his Holy Spirit agreeably hereunto we reade Ephes 1. 13. After ye believed ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise and also 2 Cor. 1. 22. Who hath also sealed us and given us the earnest of the Spirit and again Eph. 4. 30. Grieve not the Holy Spirit whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption For the more clear understanding of which we are to take notice that God doth employ his Holy Spirit about men before conversion and in order to it so Gen. 6. 3. he is said by his Spirit to have striven with the old world and after that in like manner with his ancient people the Jews for Isa 63. 10. they are said to have vexed his Holy Spirit and in general to all sorts of men both Jew and Gentile especially such as have been baptized into Christianity the Holy Spirit applies it self awakening Conscience suggesting good thoughts and giving check to their course of sin insomuch that whatsoever degree or beginnings of good there is in any man the Spirit is the first mover of it For as no good can come but from God so it is not reasonable to think that there is any man so despised by God but that some overtures of good have been made to him nor is it worthy of God to imagine that this good Spirit doth quite abandon any man upon whom it hath begun to work till such person hath resisted quenched grieved and at last drove it away from him But this is not that
that end THEREFORE St. Paul though he was execrated of his own Countrymen because he forsook Moses to follow Christ yet shewed more dexterity in refuting their prejudices and more tenderness to their Souls then any other Apostle and particularly Rom. 9. 1 2 3. he expresses himself thus I say the truth in Christ I lie not my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost that I have great sorrow and heaviness in my heart For I could wish that my self were accursed from Christ for my Brethren my Kinsmen according to the flesh c. Where whatever he mean by the expression of being accursed from Christ he certainly describes the deepest compassion that a mortal breast is capable of and that he had a sense of this towards his Brethren he confirms by the most solemn Oath that can be made I need not here add because I have touched that before that such persons are also filled usually with the greatest zeal of God's glory whom they have formerly dishonoured and the greatest indignation against sin by which they have been abused and think themselves obliged to a double diligence by the consideration of their former dis-service of all which St. Paul is also an example 1 Cor. 15. 10. I laboured more abundantly then all the rest c. But I observe IN the second place such persons as have been formerly notorious for a course of wickedness and now are become sincerely good and vertuous are a standing reproof of the folly of sin nay I may call them the very credential letters of vertue and convincing arguments of the necessity of conversion such as strangely awaken men to consider their own station IT was a very good plea that the Platonist makes for Vertue in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. That the ways of vertue are more pleasant to a good man then the ways of sin and licentiousness are to an evil and vicious man and therefore more amiable and better in themselves appears saith he by this that several men who have tasted all the pleasures of sin forsake it and come over to vertue but there is scarce an instance to be found of the man that had well experimented the delights of vertue that ever could be drawn off from it or find in his heart to fall back to his former course But to see a man that had ran into all excess of riot to tack about to a quite contrary course from a drunkard to become sober from lascivious to become chaste and modest from a covetous person to become charitable from prophaneness to set himself to reade and study the Scripture and from cursing and blaspheming to bless and pray and this change to be wrought in health and strength without the check of a sick-bed or the dreadfull apprehensions of approaching death I say this spectacle cannot but be a most convincing argument of the necessity of repentance to all such as are yet in the gall of bitterness and under the bonds of iniquity LASTLY to say no more such persons so changed as aforesaid are standing monuments of the divine mercy and of the powers of the Gospel and irrefragable arguments of the possibility of recovering the greatest sinners if they be not wanting to themselves or rather if they do not chuse their own destruction For they proclaim aloud the greatness of the divine goodness the largeness of his heart the openness of his arms and they upbraid the sinner of folly of madness of cruelty to himself if yet he persevere It is said Miltiades Trophies would not suffer Themistocles to sleep and Caesar's thoughts continually upbraided him with the great exploits Alexander had effected in a few years But when a sinner shall observe such a man that was as foolish as himself to become wise and sober one that ran in the same race and was as near the pit of Hell as he escaped and himself still upon the brink of it when I say he shall consider that such a man that had all the temptations pretences excuses examples and every other instance of debauchment that himself hath to find just reason to break through those obstacles and by the mercy of God to be saved and as a fire-brand plucked out of the fire certainly if any thing in the world can move him this must make him look about him IN the 16. Chapter of this Gospel our Saviour introduces a certain rich man in Hell interceding with Abraham that Lazarus might be sent from the dead to preach repentance to his five Brethren supposing that though they would not hearken to Moses and the Prophets yet such a spectacle and so certain intelligence from the infernal regions must needs rouze them Father Abraham denied his request and God doth not use to gratify such curiosity But indeed if a man consider well it is almost the same thing when God affords us an example of a man that was dead in trespasses and sins and under the very torments of Hell in his Conscience but now redeemed and recovered by the grace of God and sends him to preach repentance to us And I think I may say in this case as the afore mentioned Simplicius said of the discourses of Epictetus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. The man that is incorrigible under such a powerfull remedy there is nothing but the very torments of the damned can work upon him And so much also for that point § IV. WE have now seen severally the three Ornaments the Father puts upon his returning Son and the favours God bestows upon a sincere Convert represented by the Best Robe a Ring on his Hand Shoes on his Feet Let us now take a view of them altogether let us I say make a stand a little and see the Son in all his new attire I mean let us suppose all these favours of God bestowed upon some pardoned sinner and then take notice what a brave and excellent person such a man will be IT was a noble character which the Historian gives of Marcus Cato homo virtuti simillimus per omnia diis quà m hominibus propior qui nunquam rectè fecit ut facere videretur sed quia aliter facere non potuit Cato saith he was vertue drawn to the life and the resemblance was so exact that it was hard to say whether vertue animated Cato or Cato gave subsistence and visibility to vertue nay such was the unshaken greatness of his mind and the purity of his life that he seemed more to participate of divine perfection then of humane frailty for he was both so far above all temptations of doing evil and also free from the allay of mean ends and designs in doing good that it seemed a kind of necessity of nature in him to doe well This was bravely said had it not been somewhat too Romantick But the man we are speaking of under the aforesaid qualifications must as much out go Cato as he out-stripped other
such persons were in and partly the honour and happiness of such an entertainment would compell them to come in Upon this account God propounds not only pardon of sin but all the forementioned inestimable benefits to repenting sinners as well as to those just men that need no repentance AND although it be certain that God hath neither such need of men's service as to oblige him to resort to these great inducements and it be also very true that there are but a small number of those that make up the Quire in glory who upon such motives were converted from extream debauchery yet such is the graciousness of the good Shepherd that he carries the lost Sheep home on his Shoulders rejoicing and such is the goodness of God that he sticks not at this price for the redemption of any one Soul Besides it is to be considered that as we noted from the Historian formerly Difficile est in tot humanis erroribus solâ innocentiâ vivere that though no good Subject will voluntarily transgress the laws of his Country and fall into the displeasure of the Prince yet the most wary and inoffensive person that is most secure of his own integrity would desire to live under such a government where there was room for mercy and pardon if he should offend and the best of men are so sensible of the power of temptation and the slipperiness of their station as well as conscious of their own sincerity that they are marvellously comforted and incouraged by this admirable grace and goodness of God to sinners AND whereas the fear of Hell may be thought sufficient both to reclaim sinners from their evil ways and to preserve good men from apostasy we shall find upon due consideration that fear let it be of what object it will is neither so lasting a principle nor so potent and effective a motive as hope for this last raises generosity inflames the mind spirits all the powers despises or glories in difficulty and therefore all wise men imploy this Engine especially in all great enterprizes and indeavour to make men's hopes greater then their fears and so order the matter that those they employ may have a prospect of so great a good by success in their attempts as shall outweigh all their apprehensions of difficulty or danger in the atchievement And this will be the more remarkable if we observe in that famous encounter of David with Goliah the Giant of Gath that although there was doubtless some extraordinary impulse upon David's heart to undertake that business yet the holy Text intimates that he listned to the discourses of the people and was inflamed by the general assurance was given him of a mighty and glorious reward to him that should effect it Since therefore the proposition of great and glorious hopes is so necessary not only to draw men off from the present allurements of sin and to dissolve the charms of sense which habituate sinners are bound in but also to comfort and incourage even good men themselves and to ingage both the one and the other in a generous course of vertue the Divine Majesty considering he hath to do with men and resolving to deal with them agreeably to their natures thinks it as well becoming his wisedom as his goodness not only to proclaim impunity to his rebels upon their submission but to assure them of the highest favours and preferments in the Court of Heaven 2. SECONDLY the extream difficulty and consequently the wonderfull rarity of examples of great sinners recovered to sincere piety makes such happy accidents deserve to be solemnized with the greater joy and triumph St. Gregory Nazianzen making an oration in commemoration of St. Cyprian as well reports his flagitious life before his conversion to Christianity as his admirable vertues and piety afterwards and makes the former a shadow to heighten and set off the latter For saith he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is nothing so great a matter to maintain the Character of a good man when a man hath once attained to it as to begin a whole new course of piety for now the one is but to be like a man's self and to pursue a custom or habit but the other requires a vertuous choice and a manly resolution able to bear down former habits and therefore there are but few examples of the one but many of the other INDEED it is an unspeakable advantage to be early ingaged in the ways of vertue for then by reason of the easiness of doing good which is consequent of custom a man seems to be under 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a divine fate a peculiar predestination to happiness and therefore if it be well considered there is nothing in all a man's whole life that he hath greater reason to thank God for then that good providence of his which takes hold of our tender years and forms them to a sense of Religion for hereby sin is made dreadfull to our Consciences and upon the matter vertue is as easy as vice and the narrow way to Heaven as ready to our feet as the broad way of destruction But on the other side Revocare gradus hic labor hoc opus to reduce an old dislocation is very painfull to put off the old man to change customs to cast out Satan out of his old possession must be very difficult and require a very brave and generous resolution AND although to omnipotent power all things are alike easy yet forasmuch as God not only speaks after the manner of men but also proceeds ordinarily by the course of natural causes and doth not supersede their activity but assist them proportionably to their natures it must needs notwithstanding the divine grace be a very difficult thing to recover an old and deplored sinner in whom all the powers of the mind are enfeebled the sense of Conscience stupified and the very Synteresis and natural notions of the Soul are corrupted and consequently a through reformation of such a person is like to life from the grave and must needs draw after it not only the eyes and admiration of men but also the vexation of Hell and make the Devil rage as disappointed of the prey he thought himself sure of but especially must produce joy in Heaven and amongst the holy Angels IT can indeed be no surprizal to Almighty God who foreknows all things from the beginning and is as far from admiration as from mutability of passions both which proceed from shortness of understanding nor to our Lord Jesus Christ now in glory for we see that whilst he was upon earth he knew when vertue-proceeded from him to cure the woman of her inveterate distemper But whereas men are wont to make some passionate expressions of their resentment of every new and admirable event God thinks fit also in such an extraordinary recovery as this we are speaking of to set up a monument crowning him that overcomes the aforesaid difficulties with immortal glory