sin is uncancell'd Of this nature is theft which cannot be cut off by a moral revocation or an internal act there must be something done without For it is a contradiction to say that a man is sorry for his act of stealing who yet rejoyces in the purchace and retains it Every man that repents is bound to make his sinful act as much as he can to be undone and the moral revocation or nolition of it is our entercourse with God onely who takes and accepts that which is the All which can be done to him But God takes care of our brother also and therefore will not accept his own share unless all interested persons be satisfied as much as they ought There is a great matter in it that our neighbour also do forgive us that his interest be served that he do not desire our punishment of this I shall afterwards give accounts in the mean time if the matter of our sin be not taken away so long as it remains so long there is a remanency and a tarrying in it and that is a degree of habit 9. Secondly if the single act have a continual fluxe or emanation from it self it is as a habit by moral account and is a principle of action and is potentially many Of this nature is every action whose proper and immediate principle is a passion Such as hatred of our neighbour a fearfulness of persecution a love of pleasures For a man cannot properly be said to have an act of hatred an actual expression of it he may but if he hates him in one act and repents not of it it is a vicious affection and in the sense of moral Theology it is a habit the law of God having given measures to our affections as well as to actions In this case when we have committed one act of uncharitableness or hatred it is not enough to oppose against it one act of love but the principle must be altered and the love of our neighbour must be introduced into our spirit 10. There is yet another sort of sinful action which does in some sense equal a habit and that is an act of the greatest and most crying sins a complicated sin Thus for a Prince or a Priest to commit adultery for a childe to accuse his Father falsly to oppress a widow in judgement are sins of a monstrous proportion they are three or four sins apeece and therefore are to be repented of by untwining the knot and cutting asunder every thred He that repents of adultery must repent of his uncleanness and of his injustice or wrong to his neighbour and of his own breach of faith and of his tempting a poor soul to sin and death and he must make amends for the scandal besides in case there was any in it In these and all the like cases let no man flatter himself when he hath wept and prayed against his sin one solemnity is not sufficient one act of contrition is but the beginning of a repentance and where the crime is capital by the laws of wise Nations the greatest the longest the sharpest repentance is little enough in the Court of conscience Paraenes ad poenitentiam So Pacianus Haec est novi Testamenti tota conclusio despectus in multis Spiritus sanctus haec nobis capitalis periculi conditione legavit Reliqua peccata meliorum operum compensatione curantur Haec verò tria crimina ut basilisci alicujus afflatus ut veneni calix ut lethalis arundo metuenda sunt non enim vitiare animam sed intercipere noverunt Some sins doe pollute and some doe kill the soul that is are very near approaches to death next to the unpardonable state * See Chapt. 5. and they are to be repented of just as habits are even by a long and a laborious repentance and by the piety and holiness of our whole ensuing life De peccato remisso noli esse securus said the son of Sirach Be not secure though your sin be pardoned when therefore you are working out and suing your pardon be not too confident 11. Those acts of sin which can once be done and no more as Parricide and such which destroy the subject or person against whom the sin is committed are to be cured by Prayer and Sorrow and entercourses with God immediately the effect of which because it can never be told and because the mischief can never be rescinded so much as by fiction of Law nor any supply be made to the injur'd person the guilty man must never think himself safe but in the daily and nightly actions of a holy Repentance 12. He that will repent well and truly of his single actual sins must be infinitely careful that he do not sin after his Repentance and think he may venture upon another single sin supposing that an act of contrition will take it off and so interchange his dayes by sin and sorrow doing to morrow what he was ashamed of yesterday For he that sins upon the confidence of Repentance does not repent at all because he repents that he may sin and these single acts so periodically returning do unite and become a habit He that resolves against a sin and yet falls when he is tempted is under the power of sin in some proportion and his estate is very suspicious though he alwayes resolved against that sin which he alwayes commits It is upon no other account that a single sin does not destroy a man but because it self is speedily destroyed if therefore it goes on upon its own strength and returns in its proper period it is not destroyed but lives and indangers the man 13. Be careful that you do not commit a single act of sin toward the latter end of your life for it being uncertain what degrees of anger God will put on and in what periods of time he will return to mercy the nearer to our death such sins intervene the more degrees of danger they have For although the former discourse is agreeable to the analogy of the Gospel and the Oeconomy of the Divine Mercy yet there are sad words spoken against every single sin Jam. 2.10 Whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offends in one instance he shall be guilty of all saith S. James plainly affirming that the admitting one sin much more the abiding in any one sin destroys all our present possession of Gods favour Concerning which although it may seem strange that one prevarication in one instance should make an universal guilt yet it will be certain and intelligible if we consider that it relates not to the formality but to the event of things He that commits an act of Murther is not therefore an Adulterer but yet for being a Murtherer he shall die He is as if he were guilty of all that is his innocence in the other shall not procure him impunity in this One crime is inconsistent with Gods love and favour But there is something more in
and obedience For these are the righteousness of God they are his works revealed by his Spirit effected by his Grace promoted by his Gifts encouraged by special Promises sanctified by the Holy Ghost and accepted through Jesus Christ to all the great purposes of Glory and Immortality Since therefore a constant innocence could not justifie us unless we have the righteousness of God that is unless we superadde holiness and purity in the faith of Jesus Christ much less can it be imagined that he who hath transgressed the righteousness of the law and broken the Negative Precepts and the natural humane rectitude and hath superinduc'd vices contrary to be righteousness of God can ever hope to be justified by those little arrests of his sin and his beginnings to leave it upon his death-bed and his sorrow for it then when he cannot obtain the righteousness of God or the holiness of the Gospel It was good counsel that was given by a wise Heathen Dimidium facti qui coepit habet Horat. ep 2. l. 1. sapere aude Incipe qui rectè vivendi prorogat horam Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis at ille Labitur labetur in omne volubilis aevum It is good for a man to begin The Clown that stands by a river side expecting till all the water be run away may stay long enough before he gets to the other side He that will not begin to live well till he hath answered all objections and hath no lusts to serve no more appetites to please shall never arrive at happiness in the other world Be wise and begin betimes §. 5. Consideration of the objections against the former Doctrine 1. BUt why may not all this be done in an instant by the grace of God Cannot he infuse into us the habits of all the graces Evangelical Faith cannot be obtained by natural means and if it be procur'd by supernatural the Spirit of God is not retarded by the measures of an enemy and the dull methods of natural opposition Nescit tarda molimina Spiritus sancti gratia Without the Divine Grace we cannot work any thing of the righteousness of God but if he gives us his grace does not he make us chaste and patient humble and devout and all in an instant For thus the main Question seems to be confessed and granted that a habit is not remitted but by the introduction of the contrary but when you consider what you handle it is a cloud and nothing else for this admission of the necessity of a habit enjoyns no more labour nor care it requires no more time it introduces no active fears and infers no particular caution and implies the doing of no more then to the remission of a single act of one sin To this I answer that the grace of God is a supernatural principle and gives new aptnesses and inclinations powers and possibilities it invites and teaches it supplies us with arguments and answers objections it brings us into artificial necessities and inclines us sweetly and this is the semen Dei spoken of by S. John the seed of God thrown into the furrows of our hearts springing up unless we choke it to life eternal By these assistances we being helped can do our duty and we can expel the habits of vice and get the habits of vertue But as we cannot doe Gods work without Gods grace so Gods grace does not do our work without us For grace being but the beginnings of a new nature in us gives nothing but powers and inclinations The Spirit helpeth our infirmities so S. Paul explicates this mystery Rom. 8.26 And therefore when he had said By the grace of God I am what I am that is all is owing to his grace he also addes I have baboured more then they all yet not I that is not I alone sed gratia Dei mecum the grace of God that is with me For the grace of God stands at the door and knocks but we must attend to his voice and open the door and then he will enter and sup with us and we shall be with him The grace of God is like a graff put into a stock of another nature it makes use of the faculties and juice of the stock and natural root but converts all into its own nature But 2. We may as well say there can be a habit born with us as infus'd into us For as a natural habit supposes a frequency of action by him who hath naturall abilities so an infus'd habit if there were any such is a result and consequent of a frequent doing the works of the Spirit So that to say that God in an instant infuses into us a habit of Chastity c. is to say that he hath in an instant infus'd into us to have done the acts of that grace frequently For it is certain by experience that the frequent doing the actions of any grace increases the grace and yet the grace or aids of Gods Spirit are as necessary for the growth as for the beginnings of grace We cannot either will or do without his help he worketh both in us that is we by his help alone are enabled to do things above our nature But then we are the persons enabled and therefore we do these works as we do others not by the same powers but in the same manner When God raises a Cripple from his couch and gives him strength to move though the aid be supernatural yet the motion is after the manner of nature And it is evident in the matter of faith which though it be the gift of God yet it is seated in the Understanding which operates by way of discourse not by intuition The believer understands as a Man not as an Angel And when Christ by miracle restor'd a blinde eye still that eye did see by reception or else by emission of species just so as eyes that did see naturally So it is in habits For it is a contradiction to say that a perfect habit is infus'd in an instant For if a habit were infus'd it must be infus'd as a habit is acquir'd for else it is not a habit Habitus infusi insunduntur per modum acquisitorum Regul Scholast As if a motion should be infus'd it must still be successive as well as if it were natural But this device of infus'd habits is a fancy without ground and without sense without authority or any just grounds of confidence and it hath in it very bad effects For it destroys all necessity of our care and labour in the wayes of godliness all cautions of a holy life it is apt to minister pretences and excuses for a perpetually wicked life till the last of our dayes making men to trust to a late Repentance it puts men upon vain confidences and makes them relie for salvation upon dreams and empty notions it destroys all the duty of man and cuts off all entercourse of obedience and reward But it is sufficient
old in iniquity to see in one intire view the scheme of his impiety the horrible heaps of damnation amassed together will probably have this event it will make him extremely asham'd it will make himself most ready to judge and condemn himself it will humble him to the earth and make him cry mightily for pardon and these are good dispositions towards it 3. Let the penitent make some vigorous opposition to every kinde of sin of which he hath been particularly guilty by frequent actions as to adultery or any kinde of uncleanness let him oppose all the actions of purity which he can in that state which may best be done by detestation of his former follies by praying for pardon by punishing himself by sorrow and all its instruments and apt expressions But in those instances where the material part remains and the powers of sinning in the same kinde let him be sure to repent in kinde As if he were habitually intemperate let him now correct and rule his appetite for God will not take any thing in exchange for that duty which may be paid in kinde 4. Although this is to be done to the kindes of sin yet it cannot be so particularly done to the numbers of the actions not onely because it will be impossible for such persons to know their numbers but because there is not time left to make little minute proportions If he had fewer all his time and all his powers would be little enough for the Repentance and therefore having many it is well if upon any terms if upon the expence of all his faculties and labour he can obtain pardon Onely this The greater the numbers are the more firm the habit is suppos'd and therefore there ought in general to be made the more vigorous opposition and let the acts of Repentance be more frequently exercis'd in the proper matter of that vertue which is repugnant to that proper state of evil And let the very number be an argument to thee of a particular humiliation let it be inserted into thy confessions and become an aggravation of thy own misery and of Gods loving kindness if he shall please to pardon thee 5. Every old man that but then begins to repent is tied to do more in the remaining proportions of time then the more early penitents in so much time because they have a greater account to make more evil to mourn for more pertinacious habits to rescind fewer temptations upon the accounts of nature but more upon their own superinduc'd account that is they have less excuse and a greater necessity to make haste Cogimur à suetis animum suspendere rebus Cornel. Gal. Atque ut vivamus vivere desinimus He must unlearn what he had learn'd before and break all his evil customes doing violence to his own and to his superinduced nature But therefore this man must not go moderately in his return but earnestly vigorously zealously and can have no other measures but to do all that he can do For in his case every slow progression is a sign of the apprehension of his danger and necessity but it is also a sign that he hath no affection to the business that he leaves his sins as a Merchant does his goods in a storm or a wounded man endures his arm to be cut off when there is no help for it the thing must be done but he is not pleas'd with the imployment 6. Let every old man entring into the state of Repentance use all the earnestness he can to heighten his affections to fix his will and desires upon the things of God to have no gust no relish for the things of the world but that all his earnestness his whole inner man be intirely taken up with his new imployment For since it is certain there will be a great poverty of external acts of many vertues which are necessary in his case unless they be supplied with internal actions and the earnestness of the Spirit the man will go poor and blinde and naked to his grave It is the heart which in all things makes the outward act to be acceptable and if the heart be right it makes amends for the unavoidable omission of the outward expression But therefore by how much the more old men are disabled from doing the outward and material actions to extirpate the natural quality and inherent mischief of vicious habits by so much the more must they be supplied and the grace acted and signified by the actions of the Spirit 7. Let old men in their state of Repentance be much in alms and prayers according to their ability that by doing good to others and glory to God they may obtain the favour of God who delights in the communications of goodness and in such sacrifices This the Apostle expresses thus Heb. 13.16 To do good and to communicate forget not for with such sacrifices 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God is well pleased it is like a propitiatory sacrifice and therefore proper for this mans necessities The proper arguments to endear this are reckon'd in their own place but the reason why this is most apposite to the state of an old mans repentance is because they are excellent suppletories to their other defects and by way of impetration obtain of God to pardon those habits of vice which in the natural way they have now no external instrument to extinguish 8. But because every state hath some temptations proper to it self let old men be infinitely careful to suppress their own lusts and present inclinations to evil If an old man out of hatred of sin does mortifie his covetous desires 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he hath purchas'd a good degree in the station of penitents and hath given an excellent indication of a true Repentance and conversion from sin to God Let old men if there be need be apt to learn and so mortifie that pride and morosity that usually do attend their age who think their gray hairs title enough to wisdome and sufficient notices of things Let them be gentle to others patient of the evil accidents of their state bountiful and liberal as full of good example as they can and it is more then probable that if they yield not to that by which they can then be tempted they have quit all their affections to sin and it is enough that they are found faithfull in that in which they are now tried 9. Let old men be very careful that they never tell the story of their sins with any pleasure or delight but as they must recolligere annos in amaritudine call to minde their past years in the bitrerness of their soul so when they speak of any thing of it they must not tell it as a merry story lest they be found to laugh at their own damnation Mutatus Horat. lib. 4. Od. 10. Dices Hou quoties te in speculo videris alterum Quae mens est hodie our eadem non puero fuit Vel cur
progression and is increased into a habit of piety sorrow and sensitive trouble may come in upon another account for great and permanent changes of the minde make great impressions upon the lower man When we love an object intensely our very body receives comfort in the presence of it and there are friendly Spirits which have a natural kindness and cognation to each other and refresh one another passing from eye to eye from friend to friend and the Prophet David felt it in the matter of Religion My flesh and my heart rejoyce in the living Lord. For if a grief of minde is a consumption of the flesh and a cheerful spirit is a conservatory of health it is certain that every great impression that is made upon the minde and dwells there hath its effect upon the body and the lower affections And therefore all those excellent penitents who consider the baseness of sin * their own danger though now past in some degrees * the offence of God * the secret counsels of his Mercy * his various manners of dispensing them * the fearful judgements which God unexpectedly sends upon some men * the dangers of our own confidence * the weakness of our Repentance * the remains of our sin * the aptnesses and combustible nature of our Concupiscence * the presence of temptation and the perils of relapsing * the evil state of things which our former sins leave us in * our difficulty in obeying and our longings to return to Egypt * and the fearful anger of God which will with greater fierceness descend if we chance to fall back Those penitents I say who consider these things frequently and prudently will finde their whole man so wrought upon that every faculty shall have an enmity against sin and therefore even the affections of the lower man must in their way contribute to its mortification and that is by a real and effective sorrow But in this whole affair the whole matter of question will be in the manner of operation or signification of the dislike For the duty is done if the sin be accounted an enemy that is whether the dislike be onely in the intellectual and rational appetite or also in the sensitive For although men use so to speak and distinguish superior from inferior appetites yet it will be hard in nature to finde any real distinct faculties in which those passions are subjected and from which they have emanation The intellectual desire and the sensual desire are both founded in the same faculty they are not distinguished by their subjects but by their objects only they are but several motions of the will to or from several objects When a man desires that which is most reasonable and perfective or consonant to the understanding that we call an intellectual or rational appetite but if he desires a thing that will doe him hurt in his soul or to his best interest and yet he desires it because it pleases him this is fit to be called a sensitive appetite because the object is sensitive and it is chosen for a sensual reason But it is rather appetitio then appetiâ—us that is an act rather then a principle of action The case is plainer if we take two objects of several interests both of which are proportion'd to the understanding S. Anthony in the desert and S. Bernard in the Pulpit were tempted by the spirit of pride they resisted and overcame it because pride was unreasonable and foolish as to themselves and displeasing to God If they had listned to the whispers of that spirit it had been upon the accounts of pleasure because pride is that deliciousness of spirit which entertains a vain man making him to delight in his own images and reflexions and therefore is a work of the flesh but yet plainly founded in the understanding And therefore here it is plain that when the flesh and the spirit fight it is not a fight between two faculties of the soul but a contest in the soul concerning the election of two objects It is no otherwise in this then in every deliberation when arguments from several interests contest each other Every passion of the man is nothing else but a proper manner of being affected with an object and consequently a tendency to or an aversion from it that is a willing or a nilling of it which willing and nilling when they produce several permament impressions upon the minde and body receive the names of divers passions The object it self first striking the fancy or lower apprehensions by its proper energy makes the first passion or tendency to the will that is the inclination or first concupiscence but when the will upon that impression is set on work and chooses the sensual object that makes the abiding passion the quality As if the object be displeasing and yet not present it effects fear or hatred if good and not present it is called desire but all these diversifications are meerly natural effects as to be warm is before the fire and cannot be in our choice directly and immediately That which is the prime and proper action of the will that onely is subject to a command that is to choose or refuse the sin The passion that is the proper effect or impress upon the fancy or body that is natural and is determin'd to the particular by the mixture of something natural with the act of the will as if an apprehension of future evils be mingled with the refusing sin that is if it be the cause of it then fear is the passion that is effected by it If the feeling some evil be the cause of the nolition then sorrow is the effect and fear also may produce sorrow So that the passion that is the natural impress upon the man cannot be the effect of a Commandement but the principle of that passion is we are commanded to refuse sin to eschew evil that 's the word of the Scripture but because we usually doe feel the evils of sin and we have reason to fear worse and sorrow is the natural effect of such a feeling and such a fear therefore the Scripture calling us to repentance that is a new life a dying unto sin and a living unto righteousness expresses it by sorrow and mourning and weeping but these are not the duty but the expressions or the instruments of that which is a duty So that if any man who hates sin and leaves it cannot yet finde the sharpness of such a sorrow as he feels in other sad accidents there can nothing be said to it but that the duty it self is not clothed with those circumstances which are apt to produce that passion it is not an eschewing of sin upon considerations of a present or a feared trouble but upon some other principle or that the consideration is not deep and pressing or that the person is of an unapt disposition to those sensible effects The Italian and his wife who by chance espied a Serpent under the
most please God If they be only actions punitive and vindictive they doe indeed punish the man and help so far as they can to destroy the sin but of these alone S. Paul said well Bodily exercise profiteth but little but of the later sort he added but Godliness is profitable to all things having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come and this indeed is our exactest measure Fastings alone lyings upon the ground disciplines and direct chastisements of the body which have nothing in them but toleration and revenge are of some use they vex the body and crucify the sinner but the sin lives for all them but if we adde prayer or any action symbolical as meditation reading solitariness silence there is much more done towards the extinction of the sin But he that addes alms or something that not onely is an act contrary to a former state of sin but such which is apt to deprecate the fault to obey God and to doe good to men he hath chosen the better part which will not easily be taken from him Fasting prayer and alms together are the best penances or acts of exterior repentance in the world If they be single fasting is of the least force and alms done in obedience and the love of God is the best 5. For the quantity of penances the old rule is the best that I know but that it is too general and indefinite It is S. Cyprians Quà m magna deliquimus tam granditèr defleamus If our sins were great so must our sorrow or penances be As one is so must be the other For sorrow and penances I reckon as the same thing in this question save onely that in some instances of corporall inflictions the sin is opposed in its proper matter as intemperance is by fasting effeminacy by suffering hardships whereas sorrow opposes it onely in general and in some other instances of penances there is a duty distinctly and directly serv'd as in prayer and alms But although this rule be indefinite and unlimited we find it made more minuit by Hugo de S. Victore Si in correctione minor est afflictio quà m in culpâ fuit delectatio non est dignus poenitentiae tuae fructus Our sorrow either in the direct passion or in its voluntary expressions distinctly or conjunctly must at least equal the pleasure we took in the committing of a sin And this rule is indeed very good if we use it with these cautions First that this be understood principally in our repentances for single sins for in these onely the rule can be properly and without scruple applied where the measures can be best observed For in habitual and long courses of sin there is no other measures but to doe very much and very long and until we die and never think our selves safe but while we are doing our repentances Secondly that this measure be not thought equal commutation for the sin but be onely used as an act of deprecation and repentance of the hatred of sin and opposition to it For he that sets a value upon his punitive actions of repentance and rests in them will be hasty in finishing the repentance and leaving it off even while the sin is alive For in these cases it is to be regarded that penances or the punitive actions of repentance are not for the extinction of the punishment immediately but for the guilt That is there is no remains of punishment after the whole guilt is taken off but the guilt it self goes away by parts and these external actions of repentance have the same effect in their proportion which is wrought by the internal Therefore as no man can say that he hath sufficiently repented of his sins by an inward sorrow and hatred so neither can he be secure that he hath made compensation by the suffering penances for if one sin deserves an eternal hell it is well if upon the account of any actions and any sufferings we be at last accepted and acquitted 6. In the performing the punitive parts of external repentance it is prudent that we rather extend them then intend them that is let us rather doe many single acts of several instances then dwell upon one with such intension of spirit as may be apt to produce any violent effects upon the body or the spirit In all these cases prudence and proportion to the end is our best measures For these outward significations of repentance are not in any kinde or instance necessary to the constitution of repentance but apt and excellent expressions and significations exercises and ministeries of repentance Prayer and alms are of themselves distinct duties and therefore come not in their whole nature to this reckoning but the precise acts of corporal punishment are here intended And that these were not necessary parts of repentance the primitive Church believed and declared by absolving dying persons though they did not survive the beginnings of their publick repentance But that she enjoyn'd them to suffer such severities in case they did recover she declar'd that these were useful and proper exercises and ministeries of the Grace it self And although inward repentance did expiate all sins even in the Mosaical Covenant yet they had also a time and manner of its solemnity their day of expiation and so must we have many But if any man will refuse this way of repentance I shall onely say to him the words of S. Paul to them who rejected the Ecclesiastical customes and usages We have no such Custome neither the Churches of God But let him be sure that he perform his internal repentance with the more exactness as he had need look to his own strengths that refuses the assistance of auxiliaries But it is not good to be too nice and inquisitive when the whole article is matter of practice For what doth God demand of us but inward sincerity of of a returning penitent obedient heart and that this be exercised and ministred unto by fit and convenient offices to that purpose This is all and from this we are to make no abatements The PRAYER O Eternal God Gracious and Merciful the fountain of pardon and holiness hear the cries and regard the supplications of thy servant I have gone astray all my days and I will for ever pray unto thee and cry mightily for pardon Work in thy servant such a sorrow that may be deadly unto the whole body of sin but the parent of an excellent repentance O suffer me not any more to doe an act of shame nor to undergoe the shame and confusion of face which is the portion of the impenitent and persevering sinners at the day of sad accounts I humbly confess my sins to thee doe thou hide them from all the world and while I mourn for them let the Angels rejoyce and while I am killing them by the aids of thy Spirit let me be written in the book of life and my sins be blotted out of
serve in one then in another but all that is needful must be used in all but there is no difference in our choice that can be considerable for we must never choose either and therefore beforehand to compare them together whereof neither is to be preferred before the other is to lay a snare for our selves and make us apt to one by undervaluing it and calling it less then others that affright us more Indeed when the sin is done to measure it may be of use as I shall shew but to do it beforehand hath danger in it of being tempted and more then a danger of being deceived For our hearts deceive us our purposes are complicated and we know not which end is principally intended nor by what argument amongst many we were finally determin'd or which is the prevailing ingredient nor are we competent Judges of our own strengths and we can do more then we think we can and we remember not that the temptation which prevails was sought for by our selves nor can we separate necessity from choice our consent from our being betrayed nor tell whether our fort is given up because we would do so or because we could not help it Who can tell whether he could not stand one assault more and if he had whether or no the temptation would not have left him The wayes of consent are not alwayes direct and if they be crooked we see them not And after all this if we were able yet we are not willing to judge right with truth and with severity something for our selves something for excuse something for pride a little for vanity and a little in hypocrisie but a great deal for peace and quiet that the rest of the minde may not be disturbed that we may live and die in peace and in a good opinion of our selves These indeed are evil measures but such by which we usually make judgement of our actions and are therefore likely to call great sins little and little sins none at all ** 2. That any sins are venial being onely because of the state of grace and Repentance under which they are admitted what condition a man is in even for the smallest sins he can no more know then he can tell that all his other sins are pardon'd that his Repentance is accepted that nothing of Gods anger is reserved that he is pleased for all that there is no Judgement behinde hanging over his head to strike him for that wherein he was most negligent Now although some men have great and just confidences that they are actually in Gods favour yet all good men have not so For there are coverings sometimes put over the spirits of the best men and there are intermedial and doubtful states of men as I shall represent in the Chapter of Actuall sins there are also ebbings and flowings of sin and pardon and therefore none but God onely knows how long this state of veniality and pardon will last and therefore as no man can pronounce concerning any kinde of sins that they are in themselves venial so neither can he know concerning his own or any mans particular state that any such sins are pardon'd or Venial to him He that lives a good life will finde it so in its own case and in the event of things and that 's all which can be said as to his particular and it is well it is so ne studium proficiendi ad omnia peccata cavenda pigrescat as S. Austin well observed If it were otherwise and that sins in their own nature by venial and not venial are distinguished and separate in their natures from each other and that some of them are of so easie remedy and inconsiderable a guilt they would never become earnest to avoid all 3. There are some sins which indeed seem venial and were they not sentenc'd in Scripture with severe words would pass for trifles but in Scripturis demonstrantur opinione graviora as S. Enchirid. 79. Austin notes they are by the word of God declared to be greater then they are thought to be and we have reason to judge so concerning many instances in which men are too easy and cruelly kinde unto themselves S. Paul said I had not known concupiscence to be a sin if the law had not said Thou shalt not lust and we use to call them scrupulous and phantastick persons who make much adoe about a careless word and call themselves to severe account for every thought and are troubled for every morsel they eat when it can be disputed whether it might not better have been spared Who could have guessed that calling my enemy Fool should be so great a matter but because we are told that it is so told by him that shall be our Judge who shall call us to account for every idle word we may well think that the measures which men usually make by their customes and false principles and their own necessities lest they by themselves should be condemned are weak and fallacious and therefore whatsoever can be of truth in the difference of sins may become a danger to them who desire to distinguish them but can bring no advantages to the interests of piety and a holy life 4. We onely account those sins great which are unusual which rush violently against the conscience because men have not been acquainted with them Peccata sola inusitata exhorrescimus August ubi suprà usitata verò diligimus But those which they act every day they suppose them to be small quotidianae incursiones the unavoidable acts of every day and by degrees our spirit is reconciled to them conversing with them as with a tame wolf who by custom hath forgotten the circumstances of his barbarous nature but is a wolf still 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Synesius cals them the little customes of sinning men think ought to be dissembled This was so of old Hom. 16. Caesarius Bishop of Arles complain'd of it in his time Verè dico Fratres c. I say truly to you Brethren this thing according to the Law and Commandement of our Lord never was lawful neither is it nor shall it ever be but as if it were worse it a peccata ista in consuetudinem missa sunt tanti sunt qui illa faciunt ut jam quasi ex licito fieri credantur these sins are so usual and common that men now begin to think them lawful And indeed who can doe a sin every day and think it great and highly damnable If he thinks so it will be very uneasy for him to keep it but if he will keep it he will also endevour to get some protection or excuse for it something to warrant or something to undervalue it and at last it shall be accounted venial and by some means or other reconcileable with the hopes of heaven He that is used to oppress the poor every day thinks he is a charitable man if he lets them goe away with any thing he
this be expounded to be a permission to commit single acts Gal. 5.21 S. Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians affixes the same penalty to the actions as to the habits 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gal. 5.21 they that doe such things that is the actions of those sins are damnable and exclusive from heaven as verily as the habits And however in moral accounts or in Aristotles Ethicks a man is not called by the name of a single action yet in all laws both of God and man he is He that steals once is a thief in the Courts of God and the King and one act of adultery makes a man an adulterer so that by this measure they that are such and they that doe such things means the same and the effect of both is exclusion from the Kingdome of heaven 4. Single actions in Scripture are called works of darkness deeds of the body works of the flesh Ephes 8. Rom. 8.13 and though they do not reign yet if they enter they disturb the rest and possession of the spirit of grace and therefore are in their several measures against the holiness of the Gospel of Christ All sins are single in their acting and a sinful habit differs from a sinful act but as many differ from one or as a year from an hour a vicious habit is but one sin continued or repeated for as a sin grows from little to great so it passes from act to habit a sin is greater because it is complicated externally or internally no other way in the world it is made up of more kinds or more degrees of choice and when two or three crimes are mixt in one action then the sin is loud and clamorous and if these still grow more numerous and not interrupted and disjoyned by a speedy repentance then it becomes a habit As the continuation of an instant or its perpetual fluxe makes time and proper succession so does the reacting or the continuing in any one or more sins make a habitual sinner So that in this Question the answer for one will serve for the other where ever the habit is forbidden there also the act is criminal and against God damnable by the laws of God and actually damning without repentance Between sins great and little actual and habitual there is no difference of nature or formality but onely of degrees 5. And therefore the words that represent the state of sin are used indifferently both for acts and habits 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies to doe single acts and by aggravation onely can signify an habitual sinner 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he that commits sin is of the Devil so S. 1 Joh. 3.8 John by which although he means especially him that commits sin frequently or habitually for where there is greater reason there is the stronger affirmative yet that he must also mean it of single sins is evident not onely by the nature of the thing some single acts in some instances being as mischievous and malicious as a habit in others but by the words of our blessed Saviour that the Devil is the Father of lies and therefore every one that tels a lie is of the Devil eátenus To which adde also the words of S. John explicating his whole design in these and all his other words These things I write unto you that ye might not sin that is that ye might not doe sinful actions for it cannot be supposed that he did not as verily intend to prevent every sin as any sin or that he would onely have men to beware of habitual sins and not of actual single sins without which caution he could never have prevented the habitual To doe sin is to do one or to do many and are both forbidden under the same danger The same manner of expression in a differing matter hath a different signification To doe sin is to doe any one act of it but to doe righteousness is to doe it habitually He that doeth sin that is one act of sin is of the Devil But he that doth righteousness viz. habitually he onely is righteous The reason of the difference is this because one sin can destroy a man but one act of vertue cannot make him alive As a phial is broken though but a piece of its lip be cut away but it is not whole unless it be intire and unbroken in every part Dionys de Divin Nomin Bonum ex integrâ causâ malum ex qualibet particulari And therefore since he that does righteousness in S. Johns phrase is righteous and yet no man is righteous for doing one act of righteousness it follows that by doing righteousness he must mean doing it habitually But because one blow can kill a man or wound him desperately therefore when S. John speaks of doing sin he means doing any sin any way or in any degree of act or habit For this is that we are commanded by the Spirit of Christ we must 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 walk exactly not having spot or wrinkle Eph. 5.15.27 or any thing of that nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 holy and unblameable so must the Church be that is so must be all the faithful or the men and women of the Christian Church for the Church is nothing but a congregation or collective body of believing persons Christ therefore intending to represent the Church to God without spot or wrinkle or fault Caesar Arelat hom 16. intends that all his servants should be so For let no man deceive himself Omnis homo qui post baptismum mortalia crimina commiserit hoc est homicidium adulterium furtum falsum testimonium vel reliqua crimina perpetravit unde per legem mundanam mori poterat si poenitentiam non egerit eleemosynam justam non fecerit nunquam habebit vitam aeternam sed cum Diabolo descendet ad inferna Every man who after his baptism hath committed mortal or killing sins that is to say murder adultery theft false witness or any other crimes which are capital by humane laws if he does not repent if he does not give just measures of alms he shall not have eternal life but with the Devil he shall descend into hell This is the sad sentence against all single acts of sin in the capital or greater instances But upon this account who can be justified who can hope for heaven since even the most righteous man that is sinneth and by single acts of unworthiness interrupts his course of piety and pollutes his spirit If a single act of these great or mortal sins can stand with the state of grace then not acts of these but habits are forbidden and these onely shut a man from heaven But if one single act destroys the state of grace and puts a man out of Gods favour then no man abides in it long and what shall be at the end of these things To this I answer that single acts are continually forbidden and in every period of their
is consistent but how long and how farre God onely knows 2. With the second period a frequency of falling into single sins is consistent But if he comes not out of this state and proceed to the third period he will relapse to the first he must not stay here long 3. But they that are in the third period do sometimes fall into single sins but it is but seldome and it is without any remanent portion of affection but not without much displeasure and a speedy repentance and to this person the proper remedy is to grow in grace for if he does not he cannot either be secure of the present or confident of the future 4. But then if by being in the state of grace is meant a being actually pardon'd and beloved of God unto salvation so that if the man dies so he shall be saved it is certain that every deliberate sin every act of sin that is considered and chosen puts a man out of the state of grace that is the act of sin is still upon his account he is not actually pardon'd in that for any other worthiness of state or relation of person he must come to new accounts for that and if he dies without a moral retractation of it he is in a sad condition if God should deal with him summo jure that is be extreme to mark that which was done amiss The single act is highly damnable the wages of it are death it defiles a man it excludes from heaven it grieves the holy Spirit of grace it is against his undertaking and in its own proportion against all his hopes if it be not pardon'd it will bear the man to Hell but then how it comes to be pardon'd in good men and by what measures of favour and proper dispensation is next to be considered Therefore 5. Though by the nature of the thing and the laws of the Covenant every single deliberate act of sin provokes God to anger who therefore may punish it by the severest laws which he decreed against it yet by the Oeconomy of God and the Divine Dispensation it is sometimes otherwise For besides the eternal wrath of God there are some that suffer his temporal some suffer both some but one God uses to smite them whom he would make to be or them who are his sons if they do amiss If a wicked man be smitten with a temporal judgement and thence begins to fear God and to return the anger will go no further and therefore much rather shall such temporal judgements upon the good man that was overtaken in a fault be the whole exaction God smites them that sin these single sins and though he could take all yet will demand but a fine 6. But even this also God does not do but in the case of scandal or danger to others as it was in the particular of David Because thou hast made the enemies of God to blaspheme the childe that is born unto thee shall die or else 2. When the good man is negligent of his danger or dilatory in his repentance and careless in his watch then God awakens him with a judgement sent with much mercy 7. But sometimes a temporal death happens to good men so overtaken It happened so to Moses and Aaron for their fault at the waters of Massah and Meribah to the Prophet of Judah that came to cry out against the Altar in Bethel to Vzzah for touching the Ark with unhallowed fingers though he did it in zeal to the Corinthians who had not observed decent measures in receiving the holy Sacrament and thus it happened say some of the ancient Doctors to Ananias and Sapphira God took a fine of them also salvo contenemento their main stake being secured Culpam hanc miserorum morte piabant There is in these instances this difference Moses and Aaron were not smitten in their sin but for it and as is not doubted after they had repented but Vzzah and the Prophet and Ananias and Sapphira and the Corinthians died not onely for their sin but in it too and yet it is hoped Gods anger went no further then that death because in every such person who lives well and yet is overtaken in a fault there is much of infirmity and imperfection of choice even when there are some degrees of wilfulness and a wicked heart And though it be easie to suppose that such persons in the beginning of that judgement and the approach of that death did morally retract the sinful action by an act of repentance and that upon that account they found the effect of the Divine mercies by the blood of the Lamb who was slain from the beginning of the world yet if it should happen that any of them die so suddenly as not to have power to exercise one act of repentance though the case be harder yet it is to be hoped that even the habitual repentance and hatred of sin by which they pleased God in the greater portions of their life will have some influence upon this also But this case is but seldome and Gods mercies are very great and glorious but because there is in this case no warrant and this case may happen oftner then it does even to any one that sins one wilful sin it is enough to all considering persons to make them fear but the fool sinneth and is confident 8. But if such overtaken persons do live then Gods Dispensation is all mercy even though he strikes the sinner for he does it for good For God is merciful and knows our weaknesses our natural and circumstant follies he therefore recals the sinning man he strikes him sharply or he corrects him gently or he calls upon him hastily as God please or as the man needs The man is fallen from the favour or grace of God but I say fallen onely from one step of grace and God is more ready to receive him then the man is to return and provided that he repent speedily and neither adde a new crime nor neglect this his state of grace was but allayed and disordered not broken in pieces or destroyed 9. I finde this thing rarely well discoursed of by some of the ancient Doctors of the Church Tertullians words are excellent words to this purpose Licet perisse dicatur Lib. de Pudicit c. 7. erit de perditionis genere retractare quia ovis non moriendo sed errando drachma non intereundo sed latitando perierunt Ita licet dici perisse quod salvum est That may be said to be lost which is missing and the sheep that went astray was also lost and so was the groat which yet was but laid aside it was so lost that it was found again And thus that may be said to have perish'd which yet is safe Perit igitur fidelis elapsus in spectaculum quadrigarii furoris gladiatorii cruoris scenicae foeditatis Xisticae vanitatis in lusus in convivia saecularis solennitatis in
that is properly a conversion from that act of sin 4. But because in some cases a moral revocation may be like an ineffective resolution therefore besides the inward nolition or hating of the sin in all signal and remarked instances of sin it is highly requisite that the sinning man doe oppose an act of vertue to the act of sin in the same instance where it is capable as to an act of gluttony let him oppose an act of abstinence to an act of uncleanness an act of purity and chastity to anger and fierce contentions let him oppose charity and silence for to hate sin and not to love vertue is a contradiction and to pretend it is hypocrisie But besides this as the nolition or hatred of it does if it be real destroy the moral being of that act so does the contrary act destroy its naturall being as far as it is capable And however it be yet it is upon this account necessary For since one act of sin deliberately chosen was an ill beginning and inlet of a habit it is necessary that there be as much done to obtain the habit of the contrary vertue as was done towards the habit of vice that to God as intire a restitution as can may be made of his own right and purchased inheritance 5. Every act of sin is a displeasure to God and a provocation of an infinite Majesty and therefore the repentance for it must also have other measures then by the natural and moral proportions One act of sorrow is a moral revocation of one act of sin and as much a natural deletion of it as the thing is capable * But there is something more in it then thus for a single act of sin deserves an eternal hell and upon what account soever that be it is fit that we doe something of repentance in relation to the offence of an infinite God and therefore let our repentance proceed towards infinite as much as it may my meaning is that we doe not finally rest in a moral revocation of an act by an act but that we beg for pardon all our days even for that one sin * For besides that every sin is against an infinite God and so ought to be wash'd off with a sorrow as near to infinite as we can we are not certain in what periods of sorrow God will speak to us in the accents of mercy and voice of pardon He always takes of them that repent less then he could in justice exact if he so pleased but how much less he will take he hath no where told us and therefore let us make our way as secure as we can let us still goe on in repentance and in the progression we are sure to meet with God * But there is in it yet more For however the act of sin be usually called and supposed to be a single act yet if we consider how many fancies and temptations were preparatory to it how many consentings to the sin how many desires and acts of prosecution what contrivances and resistances of the holy motions of Gods Spirit and the checks of conscience how many refusings of God and his laws what unfitting means and sinful progressions were made to arrive thither what criminal and undecent circumstances what degrees of consent and approaches to a perfect choice what vitious hopes and vile fears what expence of time and mis-imployed passions were in one act of fornication or murder oppression of the poore or subornation of witnesses we shall finde that the proportions will be too little to oppose but one act of vertue against all these evils especially since an act of vertue as we order our affairs is much more single then in act of vice is 6. Every single act of vice may and must be repented of particularly if it be a wilful deliberate and observed action A general repentance will not serve the turn in these cases When a man hath forgotten the particulars he must make it up as well as he can This is the evil of a delayed repentance it is a thousand to one but it is imperfect and lame general and unactive it will need arts of supply and collateral remedies and reflexe actions of sorrow and what the effect will be is in many degrees uncertain But if it be speedy and particular the remedy is the more easy the more ready and the more certain But when a man is overtaken in a fault he must be restored again as to that particular for by that he transgressed there he is smitten and wounded in that instance the habit begins and at that door the Divine judgement may enter for his anger is there already For although God pardons all sins or none in respect of the final sentence and eternal pain yet God strikes particular sins with proper and specifick punishments in this life which if they be not diverted by proper applications may break us all in pieces And therefore Davids repentance was particularly applied to his special case of murder and adultery and because some sins are harder to be pardoned and harder to be cured then others it is certain they must be taken off by a special regard A general repentance is never sufficient but when there cannot be a particular 7. Whoever hath committed any one act of a great crime let him take the advantage of his first shame and regret and in the activity of that passion let him design some fasting days as the solemnities of his repentance which he must imploy in the bitterness of his soul in detestation of his sin in judging condemning and executing sentence upon himself and in all the actions of repentance which are the parts and fruits of this duty according as he shall finde them described in their proper places These are the measures of repentance for single acts of deliberate sin when they have no other appendage or proper Consideration But there are some acts of sin which by several ways and measures pass into habits directly or by equivalency and moral value For 1. The repetition of acts and proceeding in the same crime is a perfect habit which as it rises higher to obstinacy to perseverance to resolutions never to repent to hardness of heart to final impenitence so it is still more killing and damnable 2. If a man sins often in several instances it is a habit properly so called for although the instances be single yet the disobedience and disaffection are united and habitual 3. When a single act of sin is done and the guilt remains not rescinded by repentance that act which naturally is but single yet morally is habitual Of these I shall give account in the next Chapter where they are of proper consideration But there are yet three ways more by which single acts doe become habits by equivalency and moral value and are here to be considered accordingly 8. First if a single act of sin have a permanent matter so long as that matter remains the
of a great sin and as it happens in War be put to death suddenly without leisure and space of repentance by the measures of this doctrine the man shall perish and consequently the power by which he fals is uncharitable I answer That in an act of sin the case is otherwise then in an habit as I have already demonstrated in its proper place It must be a habit that must extirpate a habit but an act is rescinded by a less violence and abode of duty and it is possible for an act of duty to be so heroical or the repentance of an hour to be so pungent and dolorous and the fruits of that repentance putting forth by the sudden warmths and fervour of the spirit be so goodly and fair as through the mercies of God in Jesus Christ to obtain pardon of that single sin if that be all 2. But it is to be considered whether the man be otherwise a vicious person or was he a good man but by misfortune and carelesness overtaken in a fault If he was a good man his spirit is so accustomed to good that he is soon brought to an excellent sorrow and to his former state especially being awakened by the sad arrest of a hasty death and if he accepts that death willingly making that which is necessarily inforc'd upon him to become voluntary by his acceptation of it changing the judgement into penance I make no question but he shall finde mercy But if the man thus taken in a fault was otherwise a vicious person it is another consideration It is not safe for him to goe to war but the Officers may as charitably and justly put such a person to death for a fault as send him upon a hard service The doing of his duty may as well ruine him as the doing of a fault and if he be repriev'd a week he will finde difficulty in the doing what he should and danger enough besides 3. The discipline of war if it be onely administred where it is necessary not onely in the general rule but also in the particular instance cannot be reprov'd upon this account Because by the laws of warre sufficiently published every man is sufficiently warned of his danger which if he either accept or be bound to accept he perishes by his own fault if he perishes at all For as by the hazard of his imployment he is sufficiently called upon to repent worthily of all his evil life past so is he by the same hazardous imployment and the known laws of war caution'd to beware of committing any great sin and if his own danger will not become his security then his confidence may be his ruine and then nothing is to be blam'd but himself 4. But yet it were highly to be wish'd that when such cases do happen and that it can be permitted in the particular without the dissolution of discipline such persons should be pitied in order to their eternal interest But when it cannot the Minister of justice is the Minister of God and dispenses his power by the rules of his justice at which we cannot quarrel though he cuts off sinners in their acts of sin of which he hath given them sufficient warning and hath a long time expected their amendment to whom that of Seneca may be applied Vnum bonum tibi superest repraesentabimus mortem Nothing but death will make some men cease to sin and therefore quo uno modo possunt desinant mali esse God puts a period to the increase of their ruine and calamity by making that wickedness shorter which if it could would have been eternal When men are incorrigible they may be cut off in charity as well as justice and therefore as it is always just so it is sometimes pity though a sad one to take a sinner away with his sins upon his head 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 When it is impossible to have it otherwise this is the onely good that he is capable of * Ingeniis talâ—bus vitae exitus remedium est optimúmque est abire ei qui ad se nunquam rediturus est Senec. de Benef. 7.10 to be sent speedily to a lesser punishment then he should inherit if he should live longer But when it can be otherwise it were very well it were so very often And therefore the customes of Spain are in this highly to be commended who to condemned criminals give so much respite till the Confessor gives them a benè discessit and supposes them competently prepared But if the Law-givers were truly convinced of this doctrine here taught it is to be hoped they would more readily practise this charity Obj. 4. But hath not God promised pardon to him that is contrite A contrite and broken heart O God thou wilt not despise And I said Psa 51.17 I will confess my sins unto the Lord Psal 32.6 and so thou forgavest the wickedness of my sin And the prodigal was pardon'd immediately upon his confession and return Coeperat dicere mox illum pater complectitur Homil. de poenit said S. Basil His Father embraces him when he began to speak And S. Chrysostome In that moment says he he wipes away all the sins of his life And S. Austin upon that of David before quoted My confession came not so far as my mouth and God heard the voyce of my heart To this I answer first concerning the words of David Then concerning the examples 1. Concerning contrition that it is a good beginning of repentance is certain and in its measure acceptable to God and effective of all its proper purposes But contrition can have but the reward of contrition but not of other graces which are not parts but effects of it God will not despise the broken and contrite heart no for he will receive it graciously and binde up the wounds of it and lead it on in the paths of righteousness and by the waters of comfort 2. But a man is not of a contrite heart as soon as he hath exercised one act of contrition He that goes to break a rock does something towards it by every blow but every blow does not break it A mans heart is not so easily broken I mean broken from the love of sin and its adherence to it Every act of temperance does not make a man temperate and so I fear will it be judg'd concerning contrition 3. But suppose the heart be broken and that the man is contrite there is more to be done then so God indeed does not despise this but he requires more God did not despise Ahabs repentance but it did not doe all his work for him He does not despise patience nor meekness nor resignation nor hope nor confession nor any thing that himself commands But he that commands all will not be content with one alone every grace shall have its reward but it shall not be crown'd alone Faith alone shall not justify and repentance alone taken in its
specifical distinctive sense shall not suffice but faith and repentance and charity and patience and the whole circle and rosary of graces and duties must adorn our heads 4. Those graces and duties which are commanded us and to which God hath promised glorious rewards must not be single or transient acts but continual and permanent graces Joh. 4.14 He that drinks of the water which I shall give him shall never thirst again 6.58 He that eats of this bread shall live for ever He that believes in me rivers of living waters shall flow from his belly 7.38 He that confesseth his sins and forsaketh them shall have mercy Repent and beleeve and wash away your sins Now these words of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are of extended and produced signification as Divines observe and signify a state of duty such as includes patience and perseverance Such also are these 1 Joh. 2.17 1 Joh. 1.9 He that doth the will of my Father abideth for ever If we confess our sins he is just and faithful to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all iniquity Gal. 5.21 and they that doe such things shall possess the kingdome of Heaven And I will deliver him because he hath put his trust in me And If we love him he also will love us And Forgive and ye shall be forgiven These and many more doe not intend that any one grace alone is sufficient much less any one act of one grace proceeding from the Spirit of God can be sufficient to wipe off our leprosies But these signify states of duty and integrity not transient actions or separate graces And besides the infinite reasonableness of the thing this truth is consign'd to us plainly in Scripture Rom. 2.6 7. God will render to every man according to his deeds To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality eternal life And if men had pleased they might as well have fallen upon this proposition that an act of humility would have procur'd our pardon as well as that an act of contrition will doe it because of the words of David Psa 34.17 The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a contrite heart and will save such as be of an humble spirit Salvation is as much promised to humility alone as to contrition alone that is to neither separately but in the conjunction with other parts of duty 5. Contrition is either taken in its proper specifick signification and so it is but a part of repentance and then who can say that it shall be sufficient to a full and final pardon Repentance alone is not sufficient There must be faith and hope and charity therefore much less shall a part be sufficicient when the whole is not But if contrition be taken in a sense comprehending more then it self then I demand how much shall it involve That it does include in it an act of the Divine love and a purpose to confess and a resolution to amend is affirmed So far is well But why thus far and no farther Why shall not contrition when it is taken for a sufficient disposition to pardon and salvation signify as much as repentance does and repentance signify the whole duty of a converted sinner Unless it does repentance it self that is as it is one single grace cannot suffice as I proved but now And therefore how shall contrition alone much less an act of contrition alone doe it For my part I should be very glad it were so if God so pleased for I have as much need of mercy as any man and have as little reason to be consident of the perfection of my repentance as any returning sinner in the world But I would not willingly deceive my self nor others and therefore I must take the surest course and follow his measures who hath describ'd the lines and limits of his own mercy * But it is remarkable that the manner of the Scripture is to include the consequents in the antecedents Joh. 8.47 He that is of God heareth Gods word That is not onely hears but keeps it For not the hearer Apoc. 19.9 but the doer is blessed So S. John in the Revelation Blessed are they that are called to the marriage of the Lamb. They which are called are blessed that is They which being called come and come worthily having on the wedding garment For without this the meaning of the Spirit is not full For many are called but few are chosen And thus also it is in the present instance God will not despise the contrite heart that is the heart which being bruised with sorrow returns to duty and lives in holiness for in order to holiness contrition was accepted But one thing I shall remark before I leave this In the definition of Contrition all the Schools of Theology in the world that I know of put the love of God Contrition is not onely sorrow but a love of God too Now this doctrine if they themselves would give men leave rightly to understand it is not onely an excellent doctrine but will also do the whole business of this great Question Without Contrition our sins cannot be pardon'd It is not Contrition unless the love of God be in it Adde then but these Our love to God does not consist in an act of intuition or contemplation nor yet directly and meerly of passion but it consists in obedience If ye love me keep my Commandements That 's our love of God So that Contrition is a detestation of our past sin and a consequent obedience to the Divine Commandements Onely as the aversion hath been so must be the conversion It was not one act of disobedience onely which the habitual sinner is to be contrite for but many and therefore so must his contrition be a lasting hatred against sin and an habitual love that is an habitual obedience to the Divine Commandement 6. But now to the instances of David and the Prodigal and the sudden pronunciation of their pardon there is something particular to be said The Parable of the Prodigal can prove nothing but Gods readiness to receive every returning sinner but neither the measures nor the times of pardon are there described As for David his pardon was pronounced suddenly but it was but a piece of pardon the sentence of death which by Moses law he incurred that onely was remitted but after this pardon David repented bitterly in sackcloth and ashes he fasted and prayed he liv'd holily and wisely he made amends as he could and yet the childe died that was born to him his Son and Subjects rebelled his Concubines were dishonoured in the face of the Sun and the Sword never departed from his house 2. But to both these and all other instances that are or can be of the like nature I answer That there is no doubt but Gods pardon is as early and speedy as the beginnings of our repentance but then it is
chastity who cannot doe any acts of chastity or of temperance who have lost their stomack and have not any inclination or temptation to the contrary and every vertue must be cum potentiâ ad oppositum if it be not chosen it is not vertue nor rewardable And the case is almost the same to all persons young or old who have not opportunity of acting those graces in the matter of which they have formerly prevaricated To this I answer many things and they are of use in the explication of this material question 1. Old men may exercise many acts of chastity both internal and external For if they may be unchast they may also be chast But S. Paul speaks of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 men that being past feeling yet were given to lasciviousness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 half men half boyes pruriâ—ntes in sepulchro For it is not the body but the soul that is wanton And an evil man may sin with ineffective lusts as he that lusts after a woman whom he cannot have sins with his soul Now where ever these unlawful desires can be there also they can be mortified and an old man can love to talk of his past vanities or not rescind them by repentance or desire that he were young and active in wickedness and therefore if he chooses not to doe so and therefore avoids these and the like out of hatred of his old impurities he does the proper works of that grace which he also may doe the easier because then his temptations to the contrary are not so strong but this advantage is not worth staying for so long They that doe so venture damnation a long time together and may also have an evil proper to that state greater then this little advantage I instance 2. If there were no other act of chastity to be exercised by old persons by reason of their disability yet the very accepting from the hands of God that disability and the delighting in that circumstance of things in which it is impossible to sin as formerly must needs be pleasing to God because it is a nolition of the former sins and a desire of pleasing him 3. Every act of sorrow for unchastity is an act of chastity and if this sorrow be great and lasting permanent and habitual it will be productive of much good And if to these the penitent addes penal actions and detestations of his crimes revenge and apt expressions of his holy anger against his sin these doe produce a quality in the soul contrary to that which made him formerly consent to lust 4. When a vicious habit is to be extirpated and the contrary introduc'd it is not necessary that the contrary be acted by the body but be radicated in the soul It is necessary that the body doe not sin in that instance but it is not always required that contrary acts be done by the body Suppose Origen had been a lustful person before his castration yet he might have been habitually chast afterwards by doing spiritual acts of a corporal chastity And there are many sins whose scene lies in the body to which the body afterwards cannot oppose a bodily act in the same instance as he that by intemperate drinking once or oftner fals into a loathing of wine he that dismembers himself and many others for which a repentance is possible and necessary but yet a contrary specifick act cannot be opposed In these cases it is sufficient that the habit be plac'd in the soul and a perfect contrary quality superinduc'd which is to be done by a frequent repetition of the acts of repentance proper to the sin 5. There are some sins for which amends is to be made in the way of commutation when it cannot be in the proper instance Redime peccata tua eleemosynis Dan. 4.27 said Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar Redeem thy sins with alms and thy iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor Our English Bibles read this Break off thy sins by alms as if alms were directly contrary to pride or lust or gluttony or tyranny and the shewing mercy to the poor a direct intercision and interruption of the sin He that gives alms that he may keep his lust loses his soul and his money too But he that leaves his lust or is driven from it and gives alms to obtain Gods favour for his pardon by doing something that is gracious in his eyes this man is a good penitent if his alms be great and proportionable given freely and without constraint when he can keep them and receive and retain the temporal advantage and be assisted by all those other acts and habits of which his present state is capable It cannot be said that to give alms can in all such cases be sufficient as it will be hard to say that so many acts of the contrary grace will suffice to get a habit or obtain a pardon but it is true that to give alms is a proper action of repentance in such cases and is in order to pardon For 6. As there is a supreme habit of vice a transcendent vileness that is a custome and readiness to doe every sin as it is presented in its proper temptation and this is worse then the habit of any one sin so there is a transcendent habit of grace by which a man is so holy and just and good that he is ready to obey God in every instance That is malice and this is charity When a man hath this grace habitually although it may be so that he cannot produce the proper specifick habit opposite to his sin for which he specially repents yet his supreme habit does contain in it the specifick habit virtually and transcendently An act of this charity will not doe this but the habit will For he that does a single act of charity may also doe a single act of malice and he that denies this knows not what he says nor ever had experience of himself or any man else For if he that does an act of charity that is he who by a good motion from Gods Spirit does any thing because God hath commanded to say that this man will doe every thing which is so commanded is to say that a good man can never fall into a great sin which is evidently untrue But if he that does one act in obedience to God or in love to him for obedience is love will also doe more then every man that does one act to please his senses may as well be supposed that he will doe more and then no mans life should have in it any variety but be all of a piece intirely good or intirely evil I see no difference in the instances neither can there be so long as a man in both states hath a power to choose But then it will follow that a single act of contrition or of charity cannot put a man into the state of the Divine favour it must be the grace or habit of charity and that is a
de millibus una It is not this or that alone that is contrary to God Every vicious habit is equally his enemy and he that exterminates one vice and entertains another hath destroyed the vice but not the viciousness he hath quitted the instance but not the irregularity he hath serv'd the interest of his fortune or his pleasure his fame or his quiet his passion or his humour but not his vertue and relations to God By changing his vice for another he is convinced of his first danger but enters not into safety He is onely weary of his feaver and changes it into the ease of a dead palsy and it is in them as in all sharp sicknesses that is always worst that is actually upon him and the man dies by his imaginary cure but real sickness 10. When the mortification of a vicious habit is attempted and is found difficult and pertinacious not flexible or malleable by the strokes of contrition and its proper remedies it is a safe way if the penitent will take some course to disable the sin and make it impossible to return in the former instance provided it be done by a lawful instrument Origen took an ill course to doe it but resolved he would mortify his lust and made himself an Eunuch But a solemne vow were an excellent instrument to restrain the violences of a frequent temptation if the person were to be trusted with it that is if he were a constant person not giddy nor easy to revolt but of a pertinacious nature or of so tender conscience that he durst not for the world break his vow But this remedy is dangerous where the temptations return strongly But there are some others which are safer Cut off the occasion wholly Defie the Concubine publickly and disgrace her make it impossible for her to consent to thee if thou shouldest ask her If thy Lord or Master tempts thee to drunkenness quit his service or openly deny him Make thy face unpleasant and tear off the charms from thy beauty that thou mayest not be courted any more This is a fierceness and zeal of repentance but very fit to be used when milder courses will not cure thee Scelerum si benè poenitet Horat. Eradenda cupidinis pravi sunt elementa Et tenerae nimis mentes asperioribus Formandae studiis If thou repentest truly pluck up sin by the roots take away its principle strangle its nurse and destroy every thing that can foment it 11. It was not well with thee when thou didst first enter into the suburbs of hell by single actions of sin but they were transient and passed off sooner then the habit But when this did supervene a mans acts of malice were enlarged and made continual to each other that is joyn'd by a common term of affection and delight in sin and perfect subjection to its accursed empire But now in thy return consider proportionably concerning thy actions of repentance and piety whether they be transient or permanent Good men often say their prayers and choose good forms and offices the best they can and they use them with an earnest and an actual devotion but he that hath prayed long and well yet when he rises it may be he cannot tell all the particulars which he begg'd of God I doubt not but those prayers which contain matter in them agreeable to his usual and constant desires and are actually attended to in the time of their use are recorded in heaven and there will abide to procure the blessing and towards the accounts of Eternity But then it is to be observ'd that those transient acts of devotion or other volatile and fugitive instances of Repentance are not the proper and proportion'd remedy to the evil of vicious habits There must be something more permanent Therefore let the penitent make no sudden resolutions but first consider them well and imprint them upon his spirit and renew them often and call them to minde constantly and at certain periods let him use much meditation upon the matter of his repentance and remedy and let his prayers be the same passionate material alike expressed and made the business of much of our time For our spirit by use must be made holy and by assiduity of reading of praying of meditating and acts of self-deniall be accustomed to the yoke of Jesus for let the habit be firm as a rock united and hard as a stone it will be broken and made soft by a continual dropping The proper Repentance and usage of sinners who return not till their old age 1. Let all such penitents be reminded that their sins will not so easily be pardoned as the sins of younger persons whose passions are greater and their reason less and their observations loose and their experience trifling But now God hath long expected the effects of wise and sober counsels The old man in the Comedy did so to his son Dum tempus ad eam rem tulit Andria Act 1. Scen. 2. sivi animum ut expleret suum Nunc hic dies aliam vitam adfert alios mores postulat Dehinc postulo sive aequum est te oro Dave ut redeat jam in viam And God does so to us And therefore follies of old age are upbraidings of a man and confusions to his spirit Lateranus ad illos Thermarum calices inscriptáque lintea vadit Maturus bello Armeniae To have a grave wise man wrangle for nutshels and a Judge scramble for apples is an undecency bigger then the sin and dishonours him by the disproportion Quaedam cum primâ resâ—centur crimina barbâ Lateranus should have gone to the Armenian wars or been charging a Parthian horsman when he went to the baths and hir'd an unfortunate woman standing under the titles And every old man should have been gray with sorrow and carefulness and have passed many stages of his Repentance long before he now begins and therefore he is not onely straightned for want of time but hath a greater work to do by how much the longer he hath staid and yet is the more unable to do it The greatness of his need hath diminished his power and the more need he hath of grace the less he shall have But however with such helps as they have they must instantly set upon their work Breve sit quod turpitèr audes But they have abode in their sin too long let them now therefore use such abbreviatures and hastnings of return as can be in their power 2. Let every old man that repents of the sins of his evil life be very diligent in the search of the particulars that by drawing them into a heap and spreading them before his eyes he may be mightily ashamed at their number and burthen For even a good man will have cause to be asham'd of himself if the single sins respersed over his whole life were drawn into a body of articles and united in the accusation but then for a man who is grown
or love of God is not of it self strong enough to weigh down the scales but there must be thrown in something from without some generosity of spirit or revenge or gloriousness and bravery or natural pity or interest and so far as these or any of them go along with the better principle this will prevail but when it must goe alone it is not strong enough But this is a great way off from the state of sanctification or a new birth 6. An unregenerate man besides the abstinence from much evil may also do many good things for heaven and yet never come thither He may be sensible of his danger and sad condition and pray to be delivered from it and his prayers shall not be heard because he does not reduce his prayers to action and endevour to be what he desires to be Almost every man desires to be sav'd but this desire is not with every one of that perswasion and effect as to make them willing to want the pleasures of the world for it or to perform the labours of charity repentance A man may strive and contend in or towards the ways of godliness and yet fall short Many men pray often fast much and pay tithes do justice and keep the Commandements of the second Table with great integrity and so are good moral men as the word is used in opposition to or rather in destrution of religion Some are religious and not just some want sincerity in both and of this the Pharisees were a great example But the words of our blessed Saviour are the greatest testimony in this article Many shall strive to enter and shall not be able Luke 13.14 Either they shall contend too late like the five foolish Virgins and as they whom S. Paul by way of caution likens to Esau or else they contend with incompetent and insufficient strengths they strive but put not force enough to the work An unregenerate man hath not strengths enough that is he wants the spirit and activity and perfectness of resolution Not that he wants such aids as are necessary and sufficient but that himself hath not purposes pertinacious and resolutions strong enough All that is necessary to his assistance from without all that he hath or may have but that which is necessary on his own part he hath not but that 's his own fault that he might also have and it is in his duty and therefore certainly in his power to have it For a man is not capable of a law which he hath not powers sufficient to obey he must be free and quit from all its contraries from the power and dominion of them or at least must be so free that he may be quit of them if he please For there can be no liberty but where all the impediments are remov'd or may be if the man will 7. An unregenerate man may have received the Spirit of God and yet be in a state of distance from God For to have received the holy Ghost is not an inseparable propriety of the regenerate The Spirit of God is an internal agent that is the effects and graces of the Spirit by which we are assisted are within us before they operate For although all assistances from without are graces of God the effects of Christs passion purchased for us by his bloud and by his intercesson and all good company wise counsels apt notices prevailing arguments moving objects and opportunities and endearments of vertue are from above from the Father of lights yet the Spirit of God does also work more inwardly and creates in us aptnesses and inclinations consentings and the acts of conviction and adherence working in us to will and to doe according to our desire or according to Gods good pleasure yet this holy Spirit is oftentimes grieved sometimes provoked and at last extinguish'd which because it is done onely by them who are enemies of the Spirit and not the servants of God it follows that the Spirit of God by his aids and assistances is in them that are not so with a design to make them so and if the holy Spirit were not in any degree or sense in the unregenerate how could a man be born again by the Spirit for since no man can be regenerate by his own strengths his new birth must be wrought by the Spirit of God and especially in the beginnings of our conversion is his assistance necessary which assistance because it works within as well and rather then without must needs be in a man before he operates within And therefore to have received the holy Spirit is not the propriety of the regenerate but to be led by him to be conducted by the Spirit in all our wayes and counsels to obey his motions to entertain his doctrine to do his pleasure This is that which gives the distinction and the denomination Rom. 8.9 And this is called by S. Paul the inhabitation of the Spirit of God in us in opposition to the inhabitans peccatum the sin that dwelleth in the unregenerate The Spirit may be in us calling and urging us to holiness but unless the Spirit of God dwell in us and abide in us and love to doe so and rule and give us laws and be not griev'd and cast out but entertain'd and cherish'd and obey'd unless I say the Spirit of God be thus in us Christ is not in us and if Christ be not in us we are none of his § 6. The Character of the Regenerate estate or person FRom hence it is not hard to describe what are the proper indications of the Regenerate 1. A regenerate person is convinc'd of the goodness of the law and meditates in it day and night Psal 1.2 Psal 119.77 103. His delight is in Gods law not onely with his minde approving but with his will choosing the duties and significations of the law 2. The Regenerate not onely wishes that the good were done which God commands but heartily sets about the doing of it 3. He sometimes feels the rebellions of the flesh but he fights against them alwayes and if he receive a fall he rises instantly and fights the more fiercely and watches the more cautelously and prays the more passionately and arms himself more strongly and prevails more prosperously In a regenerate person there is flesh and Spirit but the Spirit onely rules There is an outward and an inward man but both of them are subject to the Spirit There was a law of the members but it is abrogated and cancell'd the law is repeal'd and does not any more inslave him to the law of sin Aug. l. de Contin c. 2. Nunc quamdiu concupiscit caro adversus spiritum spiritus adversus carnem sat est nobis non consentire malis quae sentimus in nobis Every good man shall alwayes feel the flesh lusting against the Spirit that contention he shall never be quit of but it is enough for us if we never consent
the throne of Grace For it is remarkable that Gods justice is in some cases 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exact full and severe in other cases it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 full of equity gentleness and wisdome making abatement for infirmities performing promises interpreting things to the most equal and favourable purposes So Justice is taken in S. John If we confess our sins he is righteous or just to forgive our sins that is Gods justice is such as to be content with what we can doe and not to exact all that is possible to be imposed He is as just in forgiving the penitent as in punishing the refractary as just in abating reasonably as in weighing scrupulously such a justice it is which in the same case David cals Mercy For thou Lord art merciful for thou rewardest every man according to his works And if this were not so no man could be saved Lib. 6.13 Mortalis enim conditio non patitur esse hominem ab omni maculâ purum said Lactantius For in many things we offend all and our present state of imperfection will not suffer it to be otherwise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 De agriculturâ said Philo. For as a runner of races at his first setting forth rids his way briskly and in a breath measures out many spaces but by and by his spirit is faint and his body is breathless and he stumbles at every thing that lies in his way so is the course of a Christian fierce in the beginnings of repentance and active in his purposes but in his progress remiss and hindred and starts at every accident and stumbles at every scandal and stone of offence and is sometimes listless and without observation at other times and a bird out of a bush that was not look'd for makes him to start aside and decline from the path and method of his journey But then if he that stumbles mends his pace and runs more warily and goes on vigorously his error or misfortune shall not be imputed for here Gods justice is equity it is the justice of the Chancery we are not judged by the Covenant of works that is of exact measures but by the Covenant of faith and remission or repentance But if he that fals lies down despairingly or wilfully or if he rises goes back or goes aside not onely his declination from his way but every error or fall every stumbling and startling in that way shall be accounted for For here Gods justice is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exact and severe it is the justice of the Law because he refused the method and conditions of the Gospel 5. Every sinful action that canpretend to pardon by being a sin of infirmity must be in a small matter The imperfect way of operating alone is not sufficient for excuse and pardon unless the matter also be little and contemptible because if the matter be great it cannot ordinarily be but it must be considered and chosen He that in a sudden anger strikes his friend to the heart whom he had lov'd as passionately as now he smote him is guilty of murder and cannot pretend infirmity for his excuse because in an action of so great consequence and effect it is supposed he had time to deliberate all the foregoing parts of his life whether such an action ought to be done or not or the very horror of the action was enough to arrest his spirit as a great danger or falling into a river will make a drunken man sober and by all the laws of God and Man he was immur'd from the probability of all transports into such violences and the man must needs be a slave of passion who could by it be brought to goe so far from reason and to doe so great evil * If a man in the careless time of the day when his spirit is loose with a less severe imployment or his heart made more open with an innocent refreshment spies a sudden beauty that unluckily strikes his fancy it is possible that he may be too ready to entertain a wanton thought and to suffer it to stand at the doors of his first consent but if the sin passes no further the man enters not into the regions of death because the Devil entred on a sudden and is as suddenly cast forth But if from the first arrest of concupiscence he pass on to an imperfect consent from an imperfect consent to a perfect and deliberate and from thence to an act and so to a habit he ends in death because long before it is come thus far The salt water is taken in The first concupiscence is but like rain water it discolours the pure springs but makes them not deadly But when in the progression the will mingles with it it is like the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or waters of brimstone and the current for ever after is unwholesome and carries you forth into the dead Sea the lake of Sodom which is to suffer the vengance of Eternal fire But then the matter may be supposed little till the will comes For though a man may be surprised with a wanton eye yet he cannot fight a duel against his knowledge or commit adultery against his will A man cannot against his will contrive the death of a man but he may speak a rash word or be suddenly angry or triflingly peevish and yet all this notwithstanding be a good man still These may be sins of Infirmity because they are imperfect actions in the whole and such in which as the man is for the present surpris'd so they are such against which no watchfulness was a sufficient guard as it ought to have been in any great matter and might have been in sudden murders A wise and a good man may easily be mistaken in a nice question but can never suspect an article of his Creed to be false a good man may have many fears and doubtings in matters of smaller moment but he never doubts of Gods goodness of his truth of his mercy or of any of his communicated perfections he may fall into melancholy and may suffer indefinite fears of he knows not what himself yet he can never explicitely doubt of any thing which God hath clearly revealed and in which he is sufficiently instructed A weak eye may at a distance mistake a man for a tree but he who sailing in a storm takes the Sea for dry land or a mushrome for an oak is stark blinde And so is he who can think adultery to be excusable or that Treason can be duty or that by persecuting Gods Prophets he does God good service or that he propagates religion by making the Ministers of the Altar poor and robbing the Churches A good man so remaining cannot suffer infirmity in the plain and legible lines of duty where he can see and reason and consider I have now told which are sins of infirmity and I have told all their measures For as for those other false opinions by which
of it was sometimes by Deacons sometimes by themselves at home This therefore was the dispensation of the keys this was the effect of the powers of binding and loosing of re mitting or retaining sins according as the sense and practice of the Church expounded her own power The prayers of the Priest going before his ministration of the Communion were called absolution Isaac Lin. tit 1 c. 16. that is the beginning and one of the first portions of it absolutio Sacerdotalium precum so it was called in ancient Councels the Priest imposed hands and prayed and then gave the Communion This was the ordinary way But there was an extraordinary For in some cases the imposition of hands was omitted that is when the Bishop or Priest was absent and the Deacon prayed or the Confessor but this was first by the leave of the Bishop or Priest for to them it belong'd in ordinary And 2. this was nothing else but a taking them from the station of the penitents and a placing them amongst the faithful communicants either by declaring that their penances were performed or not to be exacted For by this we shall be clear of an objection which might arise from the case of dying penitents to whom the Communion was given and they restored to the peace of the Church that is as they supposed to Gods mercy and the pardon of sins for they would not chuse to give the Communion to such persons whom they did not believe God had pardoned but these persons though communicated Can. 78. non tamen se credant absolutos sine manus impositione si supervixerint were not to suppose themselves absolved if they recovered that sicknesse without imposition of hands said the Fathers of the 4th Councel of Carthage by which it should seem absolution was a thing distinct from giving the Communion To this I answer that the dying penitent was fully absolved in case he had receiv'd the first imposition of hands for repentance that is if in his health he submitted himself to penance and publick amends and was prevented from finishing the impositions they supposed that desire and endevour of the penitent man was a worthy disposition to the receiving the holy Communion and both together sufficient for pardon but because this was only to be in the case of such intervening necessity and God will not accept of the will for the deed but in such cases where the deed cannot be accomplished therefore they bound such penitents to return to their first obligation in case they should recover since God had taken off their necessity and restored them to their first capacity And by this we understand the meaning of the third Canon of the first Arausican Councel They who having received penance depart from the body it pleases that they shall be communicated sine reconciliatoriâ manus impositione without the reconciling imposition of hands that is because the penitential imposition of hands was imposed upon them and they did what they could though the last imposition was not though the last hand was not put upon them declaring that they had done their penances and compleated their satisfactions yet they might be communicated that is absolved quod morientis sufficit consolationi this is enough to the comfort of the dying man according to the definition of the Fathers who conveniently enough called such a Communion their Viaticum their Passeport or provision for their way For there were two solemn impositions of hands in repentance The first and greatest was in the first admission of them and in the imposition of the Disciplne or manner of performing penances and this was the Bishops office and of great consideration amongst the holy Primitives and was never done but by the superiour Clergy as is evident in Ecclesiastical story The second solemn imposition of hands was immediatly before their absolution or Communion and it was a holy prayer and publication that he was accepted and had finished that processe This was the lesse solemn and was ordinarily done by the superiour Clergy but sometimes by others as I have remonstrated other intermedial impositions there were as appears by the Creber recursus mentioned in the 3d Councel of Toledo above cited the penitents were often to beg the Bishops pardon or the Priests prayers and the advocations and intercessions of the faithful but the peace of the Church that is that pardon which she could minister and which she had a promise that God would confirm in heaven was the Ministery of pardon in the dispensation of the Sacrament of that body that was broken and that bloud that was powred forth for the remission of our sins The result is That the absolution of sins which in the later forms and usages of the Church is introduced can be nothing but declarative the office of the preacher and the guide of soules of great use to timerous persons and to the greatest penitents full of comfort full of usefulness and institution and therefore although this very declaration of pardon may truly and according to the style of Scripture be called pardon and the power and office of pronouncing the penitents pardon is in the sense of the Scripture and the Church a good sense and signification of power as the Pharisees are said to justifie God when they declare his justice and as the preacher that converts a sinner is said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to save a soul from death yet if we would speak properly and as things are in their own nature and institution this declarative absolution is only an act of preaching or opening and reading the Commission an effect of the Spirit of prudence and government entring upon the Church but the power of the keys is another thing it is the dispensing all those rites and ministeries by which heaven is opened and that is the word and baptisme at the first and ever after the holy Sacrament of the supper of the Lord and all the parts of the Bishops and Priests advocation and intercession in holy prayers and offices But as for the declarative absolution although it is rather an act of wisdom then of power it being true as S. Hierom said In 16 Mat. that as the Priests of the Law could only discern and neither cause nor remove leprosies so the Ministers of the Gospel when they retain or remit sins do but in the one judge how long we continue guilty and in the other declare when we are clear and free yet this very declaration is of great use and in many cases of great effect For as God did in the case of David give to the Prophet Nathan a particular special and extraordinary commission so to the Ministers of the Gospel he gives one that is ordinary and perpetual He had a prophetical evidence but these have a certainty of faith as to one of the propositions and as to the other some parts of humane experience to assure them 1. of Gods gracious pardon to the
often grieve in the same manner or signify the trouble of intellectual apprehensions by the same indications But if sin does equally smart it may be equally complain'd of in all persons whose natures are alike querulous and complaining that is when men are forc'd into repentance they are very apprehensive of their present evils and consequent dangers and past follies but if they repent more wisely and upon higher considerations then the affrights of women and weak persons they will put on such affections as are the proper effects of those apprehensions by which they were moved But although this be true in the nature and secret and proportion'd causes of things yet there is no such simplicity and purity of apprehensions in any person or any instance whatsoever but there is something of sense mingled with every tittle of reason and the consideration of our selves mingles with our apprehensions of God and when Philosophy does something our interest does more and there are so few that leave their sins upon immaterial speculations that even of them that pretend to doe it there is oftentimes no other reason inducing them to believe they doe so then because they doe not know the secrets of their own hearts and cannot discern their intentions and therefore when there is not a material sensible grief in penitents there is too often a just cause of suspecting their repentances it does not always proceed from an innocent or a laudable cause unless the penitent be indisposed in all accidents to such effects and impresses of passion 2. He that cannot finde any sensitive and pungent material grief for his sins may suspect himself because so doing he may serve some good ends but on no wise may we suspect another upon that account for we may be judges of our selves but not of others and although we know enough of our selves to suspect every thing of our selves yet we doe not know so much of others but that there may for ought we know be enough to excuse or acquit them in their inquiries after the worthiness of their repentance 3. He that inquires after his own repentance and finds no sharpnesses of grief or active sensitive sorrow is onely so farre to suspect his repentance that he use all means to improve it which is to be done by a long serious and lasting conversation with arguments of sorrow which like a continual dropping will intenerate the spirit and make it malleable to the first motives of repentance No man repents but he that fears some evil to stand at the end of his evil course and whoever feareth unless he be abused by some collateral false perswasion will be troubled for putting himself into so evil a condition and state of things and not to be moved with sad apprehensions is nothing else but not to have considered or to have promised to himself pardon upon easier conditions then God hath promised Therefore let the penitent often meditate of the four last things Death and the day of Judgement the portion of the godly and the sad intolerable portion of accursed souls of the greatness and extension of the duty of repentance and the intension of its acts or the spirit and manner of its performance of the uncertainty of pardon in respect of his own secret and sometimes undiscerned defects the sad evils that God hath inflicted sometimes even upon penitent persons the volatile nature of pleasure and the shame of being a fool in the eies of God and good men the unworthy usages of our selves and evil returns to God for his great kindnesses let him consider that the last nights pleasure is not now at all and how infinite a folly it is to die for that which hath no being that one of the greatest torments of hell will be the very indignation at their own folly for that foolish exchange which they have made and there is nothing to allay the misery or to support the spirit of a man who shall so extremely suffer for so very a nothing that it is an unspeakable horror for a man eternally to be restless in the vexations of an everlasting fever and that such a fever is as much short of the eternal anger of God as a single sigh is of that fever that a man cannot think what eternity is nor suffer with patience for one minute the pains which are provided for that eternity and to apply all this to himself for ought every great sinner knows this shall be in his lot and if he dies before his sin is pardon'd he is too sure it shall be so and whether his sin is pardon'd or no few men ever know till they be dead but very many men presume and they commonly who have the least reason He that often and long considers these things will not have cause to complain of too merry a heart But when men repent onely in feasts and company and open house and carelesness and inconsideration they will have cause to repent that he hath not repented 4. Every true penitential sorrow is rather natural then solemne that is it is the product of our internal apprehensions rather then outward order and command He that repents onely by solemnity at a certain period by the expectation of to morrows sun may indeed act a sorrow but cannot be sure that he shall then be sorrowful Other acts of repentance may be done in their proper period by order and command upon set days and indicted solemnities such as is fasting and prayer and alms and confession and disciplines and all the instances of humiliation but sorrow is not to be reckoned in this account unless it dwels there before When there is a natural abiding sorrow for our sins any publick day of humiliation can bring it forth and put it into activity but when a sinner is gay and intemperately merry upon Shrove-tuesday and resolves to mourn upon Ash-wednesday his sorrow hath in it more of the Theatre then the Temple and is not at all to be relied upon by him that resolves to take severe accounts of himself 5. In taking accounts of our penitential sorrow we must be careful that we doe not compare it with secular sorrow and the passions effected by natural or sad accidents For he that measures the passions of the minde by disproportionate objects may as wel compare Musick and a Rose and measure weights by the bushel and think that every great man must have a great understanding or that an Oxe hath a great courage because he hath a great heart He that finds fault with his repentance because his sorrow is not so great in it as in the saddest accidents of the world should doe well to make them equal if he can if he can or if he cannot his work is done If he can let it be done and then the inquiry and the scruple is at an end If he cannot let him not trouble himself for what cannot be done God never requires of us to doe 6. Let no man
Manasses of Mary Magdalen and S. Paul of the Thief on the Cross and the deprehended Adulteress and of the Jews themselves who after they had crucified the Lord of life were by messengers of his own invited passionately invited to repent and be purified with that blood which they had sacrilegiously and impiously spilt But concerning this who please may reade S. Austin discoursing upon those words Mittet Crystallum suum sicut buccellas which saith he mystically represent the readiness of God to break and make contrite even the hearts of them that have been hardened in impiety Gemara de Synedrio c. 11. Quo loco consisiâ—â—t poenitentiaâ—â—â—gentes ibi justi non poterunt stare said the Doctors of the Jews The just and innocent persons shall not be able to stand in the same place where the penitent shall be Pacem pacem remoto propinquo ait Dominus ut sanem eum Peace to him that is afar off and to him that is near saith the Lord that I may heal him Praeponit remotum That 's their observation He that is afar off is set before the other that is he that is at great distance from God as if God did use the greater earnestness to reduce him Upon which place their gloss addes Magna est virtus eorum qui poenitentiam agunt ita ut nulla Creatura in septo illorum consistere queat So great is the vertue of them that are true penitents that no creature can stand within their inclosure And all this is farre better expressed by those excellent words of our blessed Saviour Luk. 15.7 There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth more then over ninety nine just persone that need no repentance I have been the longer in establishing and declaring the proper foundation of this Article upon which every one can declaim but every one cannot believe it in the day of temptation because I guess what an intolerable evil it is to despair of pardon by having felt the trouble of some very great fears And this were the less necessary but that it is too commonly true that they who repent least are most confident of their pardon or rather least consider any reasons against their security but when a man truly apprehends the vileness of his sin he ought also to consider the state of his danger which is wholly upon the stock of what is past that is his danger is this that he knows not when or whether or upon what terms God will pardon him in particular But of this I shall have a more apt occasion to speak in the following periods For the present the Article in general is established upon the testimonies of the greatest certainty §. 2. Of pardon of sins committed after Baptism BUt it may be our easiness of life and want of discipline and our desires to reconcile our pleasures and temporal satisfactions with the hopes of heaven hath made us apt to swallow all that seems to favour our hopes But it is certain that some Christian Doctors have taught the Doctrine of Repentance with greater severity then is intimated in the premises For all the examples of pardon consign'd to us in the Old Testament are nothing to us who live under the New and are to be judged by other measures And as for those instances which are recorded in the New Testament and all the promises and affirmations of pardon they are sufficiently verified in that pardon of sins which is first given to us in Baptism and at our first Conversion to Christianity Thus when S. Stephen prayed for his persecutors and our blessed Lord himself on his uneasie death-bed of the Cross prayed for them that Crucified him it can onely prove that these great sins are pardonable in our first access to Christ because they for whom Christ and his Martyr S. Stephen prayed were not yet converted and so were to be saved by Baptismal Repentance Then the Power of the Keyes is exercised and the gates of the Kingdome are opened then we enter into the Covenant of mercy and pardon and promise faith and perpetual obedience to the laws of Jesus and upon that condition forgiveness is promised and exhibited offer'd and consign'd but never after for it is in Christianity for all great sins as in the Civil law for theft L. 65. D. de furtis l. 1. D. de Aediliâ—io edicto Qui eâ mente alienum quid contrectavit ut lucrifaceret tametsi mutato consilio id Domino postea reddidit fur est nemo enim tali peccato poenitentiâ suâ nocens esse desinit said Vlpian and Gaius Repentance does not here take off the punishment nor the stain And so it seems to be in Christianity in which every baptized person having stipulated for obedience is upon those terms admitted to pardon and consequently if he fails of his duty he shall fail of the grace But that this objection may proceed no further it is certain that it is an infinite lessening of the mercy of God in Jesus Christ to confine pardon of sins onely to the Font. For that even lapsed Christians may be restored by repentance and be pardoned appears in the story of the incestuous Corinthian and the precept of S. Paul to the spiritual man or the Curate of souls If any man be overtaken in a fault Gal. 6.1 ye which are spiritual restore such a man in the spirit of meekness considering thy self lest thou also be tempted The Christian might fall and the Corinthian did so and the Minister himself he who had the ministery of restitution and reconciliation was also in danger and yet they all might be restored To the same sense is that of S. James Jam. 5.15 Is any man sick among you let him send for the Presbyters of the Church and let them pray over him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 although he was a doer of sins they shall be forgiven him For there is an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a sin that is not unto death And therefore when S. Austin in his first Book de Sermone Dei had said that there is some sin so great that it cannot be remitted he retracts his words with this clause addendum fuit c. I should have added If in so great perverseness of minde he ends his life For we must not despair of the worst sinner we may not despair of any since we ought to pray for all For it is beyond exception or doubt that it was the great work of the Apostles and of the whole new Testament to engage men in a perpetual repentance For since all men doe sin all men must repent or all men must perish And very many periods of Scripture are directed to lapsed Christians baptized persons fallen into grievous crimes calling them to repentance Acts 8.22 So Simon Peter to Simon Magus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Repent of thy wickedness and to the Corinthian Christians S. Paul urges the purpose of his legation
we pray you in Christs stead be ye reconciled to God The Spirit of God reprov'd some of the Asian Churches for foul misdemeanours Apâ—â—al 2.26 and even some of the Angels the Asian Bishops calling upon them to return to their first love V. 5. and to repent and to doe their first works and to the very Gnosticks and filthiest hereticks he gave space to repent V. 21. and threatned extermination to them if they did not doe it speedily For Baptism is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the admission of us to the Covenant of Faith and Repentance or as Marc the Anchoret call'd it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the introduction to repentance or that state of life that is full of labour and care and amendment of our faults for that is the best life that any man can live and therefore repentance hath its progress after baptism as it hath its beginning before for first repentance is unto baptism and then baptism unto repentance And if it were otherwise the Church had but ill provided for the state of her sons and daughters by commanding the baptism of infants For if repentance were not allowed after then their early baptism would take from them all hopes of repentance and destroy the mercies of the Gospel and make it now to all Christendome a law of works in the greater instances Vide Great Exemplar part 1. Dise of Baptism pag. 175. c. because since in our infancy we neither need nor can perform repentance if to them that sin after baptism repentance be denied it is in the whole denied to them for ever to repent But God hath provided better things for us and such which accompany salvation For besides those many things which have been already consider'd our admission to the holy Sacrament of the Lords Supper is a perpetual entertainment of our hopes because then and there is really exhibited to us the body that was broken and the blood that was shed for remission of sins still it is applied and that application could not be necessary to be done anew if there were not new necessities and still we are invited to doe actions of repentance to examine our selves and so to eat all which as things are order'd would be infinitely useless to mankinde if it did not mean pardon to Christians falling into foul sins even after baptism I shall adde no more but the words of S. 2 Cor. 12 21. Paul to the Corinthians Left when I come again my God will humble me among you and that I shall bewail many who have sinn'd already and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed Here is a fierce accusation of some of them for the foulest and the basest crimes and a reproof of their not repenting and a threatning them with censures Ecclesiastical I suppose this article to be sufficiently concluded from the premises The necessity of which proof they onely will best beleeve who are severely penitent and full of apprehension and fear of the Divine anger because they have highly deserved it However I have serv'd my own needs in it and the need of those whose consciences have been or shall be so timorous as mine hath deserved to be But against the universality of this doctrine there are two grand objections The one is the severer practice and doctrine of the primitive Church denying repentance to some kinde of sinners after baptism The other the usual discourses and opinions concerning the sin against the holy Ghost Of these I shall give account in the two following sections §. 3. Of the difficulty of obtaining pardon The doctrine and practice of the Primitive Church in this article NOvatianus and Novatus said that the Church had not power to minister pardon of sins except onely in baptism which proposition when they had well digested and considered they did thus explicate That there are some capital sins crying and clamorous into which if a Christian did fall after baptism the Church had nothing to doe with him she could not absolve him This opinion of theirs was a branch of the elder heresy of Montanus De pudic c. 5. c. 9. which had abus'd Tertullian who fiercely declaims against the decree of Pope Zephyrinus because against the custome of his Decessors he admitted adulterers to repentance while at the same time he refus'd idolaters and murderers And this their severity did not seem to be put upon the account of a present necessity or their own zeal or for the avoiding scandal or their love of holiness but upon the nature of the thing it self and the sentences of Scripture An old man of whom Irenaeus makes mention said Lib. 4. c. 45. Non debemus superbi esse neque reprehendere veteres ne fortè post agnitionem Dei agentes aliquid quod non placet Deo remissionem non habeamus ultrà delictorum excludamur à regno ejus We must not be proud and reprove our Fathers lest after the knowledge of God we doing something that does not please God we may no more have remission of our sins but be excluded from his Kingdome To the same purpose is that Canon made by the Gallic Bishops against the false accusers of their brethren ut ad exitum ne communicent that they should not be admitted to the Communion or peace of the Church no not at their death And Pacianus Bishop of Barcinona gives a severe account of the doctrine of the Spanish Churches even in his time and of their refusing to admit idolaters murderers and adulterers to repentance Paraen ad poenit Other sins may be cured by the exercise of good works But these three kill like the breath of a Basilisk and are to be feared like a deadly arrow They that were guilty of such crimes did despair What have I done to you was it not in your power to have let it alone Did no man admonish you Did none foretel the event Was the Church silent Did the Gospels say nothing Did the Apostles threaten nothing Did the Priest intreat nothing of you why doe you seek for late comforts Then you might have sought for them when they were to be had But they that pronounce such men happy doe but abuse you This opinion and the consequent practice had its fate in several places to live longer or die sooner And in Africa the decree of Zephyrinus for the admission of penitent adulterers was not admitted even by the Orthodox and Catholikes S. Cyprian ep 52. but they dissented placidly and modestly and governed their own Churches by the old severity For there was then no thought of any necessity that other Churches should obey the sanctions of the Pope or the decrees of Rome but they retain'd the old Discipline But yet the piety and the reasonableness of the decree of Zephyrinus prevail'd by little and little and adulterers were admitted but the severity stuck longer upon diolaters or apostates