In order to this he first moves to have a clean heart created in him this shews him a wise and bold beggar that will not be content with scrapps but askes a treasure which may enrich and enable him to give to his Benefactour For this addresse implyes a reformation of all the faculties of his Soul the Scripture expressing frequently by the name of Heart both the understanding Will and Memory So that all these once purifyed and adorned with innocence he will be able to produce Heroick acts of faith and hope and the daily influence of divine favours still rising in his imagination must needs enkindle flames of Charity within him St. Hierom compares sanctifying grace with the essence of the Soul for as the powers and natural faculties which are the instrument of action flow from the essence So from grace are distilled into the powers of the Soul all those vertues by vvhich they are moved and carryed on to what they act Grace then is like a new Being vvhich elevates Man above his natural condition and puts him into a capacity of possessing God who is his supernatural end and by consequence it ought like a noble Queen be attended with a train of infused habits of Vertues The Theological furnish us with wings to fly in a straight Line unto God the Cardinal set us in a just comportment of holiness towards our Neighbour and our selves Nay when Sanctifying Grace shall no more be clogged with the Mass of the Body and relicks of sin her last operation will be to produce unto us the clear vision of God accompanied with beatifick love for the essential part of grace is the same thing with Glory and only distinguished like to what is perfect from that which is less perfect or as a thing begun from what is finished and compleat This Sanctifying Grace then is the fountain our Penitent thirsts after for the purifying his Heart and if once washed in this stream he may justly call it a clean heart witness the Prophet Ezekiel Chap. 6. I will shower down upon you a pure water and it will cleanse you from all your iniquities If this stain consist in a perverse action unretracted Sanctifying grace recalls this perverse action by an habitual conversion unto God and submission to his Holy Will If it speak an offence to God grace repairs this injury and makes that injurious Action no more voluntary If his ugliness spring from an enmity with God grace appeases all his anger and changes it into a love of complacence as a necessary effect not that to love us he hath any need but because a Soul enriched with Grace is just and righteous and whilest it is in such a condition God cannot but delight himself in an object so worthy and deserving If his deformity involves an obligation to eternal punishment grace clears all that score raising a Soul to that degree as she is worthy of Heaven Now 't is impossible that being in a state capable of enjoying him she can be lyable to such a debt wherefore there is nothing so hideous and abominable in a sinner which grace doth not destroy Thus you see what an expedient our Holy Penitent hath pitched upon to arrive by it to his designed purity and if he obtain his demand he knowes his work is done that is the operation of grace is so infallible as the effect is not to be hindred For it is not possible that a Soul at the same time can be innocent and guilty holy and impious have a Right to Heaven and lyable to eternal death So that being once drowned in this purifying Ocean he receives a pledge of all the felicity that either the nature of Angels or Men is capable off But it may be objected that our Petitioner may fall short of his expectation even though he obtain his demand For we see many holy habits introduced with grace to lye as dead within us no wayes disposing us sensibly to supernatural actions Nay on the contrary that persons so enriched are often disturbed and harassed with the insolencies of perverse inclinations Now the reason of this is that the effects of Grace are spiritual and without the Sphere of sense so that these supernatural vertues being of a quite different rank from the vitious propensions of our corrupt nature they do not by their presence necessarily destroy them This position our Penitent admits knowing that God obliges not himself to communicate unto every Soul all kind of supernatural vertues as a necessary dependance on Sanctifying grace but that he distributes to some more to others less in reference either to their want their disposition or the Series of his Holy Providence which deals the measure of his favours according to his will Having weighed all this he recollects his thoughts as to his own particular and remembers how before he defiled himself with sin God had witnessed a satisfaction in the choice of him making him the object of his most obliging liberalities next he considers that when God is pleased to sign his pardon and letters of grace unto a sinner he doth not only free him from eternal punishment for what is past but restores all the treasure he had hoarded up in the sunshine of his favour nay more conferres an addition of grace in that very penitential act by which he concurs with his merciful call So that he hath reason to hope if he purchase a clean heart that is if it be sprinkled with the dew of sanctifying grace his understanding now stupified in the mists of sin will receive its wonted irradiations his will born down with the weight of earthly affections will breath forth again amorous languishments after eternal delights his memory which now records the ugly species of sensual pleasures will be taken up in the holy entertainments of a spiritual life and in sequel of this he thinks it not presumption to believe he shall find himself in the same if not better condition than before his fall and in possession of all those precious titles the Divine Oracle had once pronounced of him This meditation puts him upon great resolves how to preserve and improve the purity he sues for that it may more strictly unite him to God who is his final end his hope and beatitude wherefore every moment he redoubles his petition Create in me O God a clean heart Another motive of this his Petition is in that the heart is the source of all evil 'T is from thence that Homicide Adultery Theft and other sins arise which gave occasion unto many great wits to assert that internal transgressions alone were punished by God and if at any time the scourge of his anger seems to fall heavy upon external acts it was meerly upon the score of bad example whose consequences are for the most part very pernicious to Mankind Besides as the heart is the fountain of all evil so is it no less of all good For the goodness and malice of every
delicacies sought to preserve a beauty and make it proof against time Yet once grown old or cut off by Death it is cast into oblivion the other kept in Chains and threatned daily with ruine yet at the last proves matter of veneration even unto those who before perhaps contemned it You see then how to live in the Memory of Men what Art is to be used to raise a stately structure of our selves the materials of this must be acts of Charity towards our Neighbour and acts of severity towards our selves the Cement must be Patience Constancy Resignation to God's holy will and the like with these Saints have purchased glory to themselves before God and veneration amongst Men that even Kings have crouched with bended knees before their Ashes who whilst here poor Pilgrims upon Earth were looked upon as Idiots and made as it were the mockery of the World so that humbled bones at last shall Triumph and erect their Trophies where they had been made the spoils of Death St. Gregory Nazianzen affirms the Ashes of St. Cyprian were so powerful as no Disease wanted there its remedy and this Testimony he received from those very persons who had been the Subject of his miraculous Cures St. Ambrose relates of one Severus who being blind by touching only the Casket wherein were enchased the relicks of the Holy Martyrs St. Gervasius and Protasius he recovered his sight St. Austin recounts many miracles wrought by the relicks of St. Stephen and adds The benefits obtained at his shrine were so great and numerous as whole Volumes might be filled with the relation In fine there is not a Doctour of the Church whose writings speak not the wonders Heaven hath owned even in their time upon the score of supplications made in the presence and honour of Saints Bodies Nor did this religious Worship of relicks spring up originally with the Ghospel for St. Epiphanius brings evidence how the Sepulchers of Esay Ezekiel and Jeremy were had in great veneration among the Jews and this from the extraordinary succours God conserred on distressed People at the Tombs of those Holy Prophets We find likewise Exodus 13. that before Moses conducted the Israelites out of Egypt he ordained the Bones of Joseph to be taken up and born away with Ceremony into the Land of promise Now why all this But to verify our Holy Prophets assertion that humbled bones shall rejoyce that Death may cause a separation twixt Soul and Body and so seem to Triumph over this mortal clay of ours cannot be denyed Yet if our members have served in purity as St. Paul terms it and merited in life to be the Temple of the Holy Ghost such as these though exanimated may still retain a vertue by which they give life and joy to other Beings Whence justly our Petitioner fore-declares and humbled bones shall rejoyce Truly it is but rational to conceive there should be a Providence to preserve from common corruption those Bodies who had been instrumental to many acts of vertue and made a daily victime by pennance For since mortality is the effect of sin there ought at least be something that hath the resemblance of immortality to attend that Body which hath much contributed to the Souls happiness Besides we believe our Bodies shall one day be glorified and vested with immortal dotes it is fit then such who have here led a life as it were Angelical without any contamination of sensual pleasures should anticipate in some kind their future glorifyed condition and how can this better appear than by imprinting a Sovereign vertue in their extinguished Ashes since it is decreed a compleat glorification cannot unless particularly dispensed with be conferred till the universal Resurrection This admirable operation given to their Earthly and liveless substance as it is a Testimony of their Souls felicity so is it no less to us a pledge the most dear we could have by which we are assured of their watchful and compassionate care over us In fine how powerfully are we wrought into the imitation of their lives when at their shrines we behold both Death and Nature vanquished and the prodigious effects of humbled prostrate Limbs lowdly declare how precious the Death of Saints is in the sight of God Thus our Holy Petitioner hath laid open unto us First the Jubileys of mind which fill a Soul united unto God by love and repentance Next to compleat the Harmony he tells us our very bones shall not want their portion of joy that if they here be made bare disjoynted or broken Almighty God never fails to sweeten those rigours by internal whispers and consolations which carry them on to perseverance in their pressures and debasements and when Saints have once payed this debt to nature then he gives to the one part the immediate fruition of his Glory and to the other he often communicates such Soveraign vertues that they are as it were certain previous dispositions to immortality 'T is true the relick of a Saint appears but a lump of Earth liveless inanimate and so is not capable of joy yet God making it the instrument of miraculous effects is thereby glorifyed and what ever relates to his honour is matter of exultation Again St. Paul saith that every Creature groans that is feels throwes and longing desires after their Maker If then these resentments be allowed to every Being much more ought we grant it to the Sacred pledge of a Saints Body in which the Omnipotency and other Divine attributes of God do so gloriously shine and humbled bones shall rejoyce The Application Let us then so manage our senses in this life enslaving them to the Lawes of reason that after the short course of their servitude here we may arrive to that joy mentioned by our Holy Petitioner Amen CHAP. XIX Averte faciem tuam à peccatis meis Turn away thy Face from my sins WHen I cast my Eye upon this clause of the Petition I cannot but reflect on that passage of Esay where he sayes it is a bitter thing to have once abandoned God for after a sin is committed though it be secret unseen and none reprehend us for it yet we fear every shadow suspect every look and syllable nor can we ever think our selves secure and out of danger St. Austin sayes as iniquity is alwayes accompanied with a neglect of God and consequently is a kind of Pride by which we value our own satisfaction beyond his honour so sin by a just punishment throwes us down below our selves it first induces us to actions unworthy our reason and after that engagement what Tyranny like to this usurper For having shaken off the fear of God who alone ought to be the Object of that passion we sink into the fear of every thing capable to be the Term of Sense if a sound it is a loud promulgation of our Crime if a Shadow it is some Ambuscado to surprize us if the World be civil they are acts of
that grand ballancing of all their good and bad deeds and by this means who knowes whether he hath not only disjoyned and torn the Soul from the Body but even from God for all eternity These dismal thoughts prompt him to fly for Sanctuary and it is no where to be found but at the Throne of God's mercy which he implores Free me from blood c. Again he considers with what a severe Eye God looks upon the sin of homicide commanding in Moses Law that blood alone should be the price and satisfaction for blood nay he extends it even to irrational Creatures that if any happen to be the cause of Man's death the Beast what ever it be should lose its life It was to prevent this unnatural violence that he prohibited the eating of blood so to cut off any practice which might diminish the horrour of it Besides the remorse and tortures of conscience which alwayes attend this sin sufficiently evidences that though in other Crimes his patient Justice seems for a while to lye asleep yet this he alwayes revenges upon the place For if the Thunder-bolts of his anger do not immediately fall upon their heads as to the publick view at least he begins the execution from the first moment of the Fact committed disturbing their sleep with frightful Phantomes and filling their awakened hearts with dreads and terrours that their life is even a burden and Irkesome to them of this are extant innumerable examples both in sacred and prophane Histories too long here to recite It is not unworthy our observation that a murdered Body should bleed afresh as it hath been often experimented at the presence of the murderer It is true many give natural reasons of the thing attributing it to the vital spirits not yet extinguished in the remnants of the blood retreated into several Cranies of the Body which by an Antipathy at the approach of their adversary fall into a Commotion and by this disturbance occasions the blood again to flow Others say it may proceed from a simpathy supposing the murderer to have upon his weapon wherewith he gave the wound or in some other part about him certain dropps of blood of the deceased by which Sympathetick vertue it receives motion in order to its reunion But my design not being to insist on Philosophical disputes I will not labour to weaken the force of their Arguments and only assert my Opinion which is that it speaks simply the extraordinary way of God which he holds sometimes in one kind sometimes in another to manifest and publish offendours of this nature Our Holy Penitent may be brought in for an instance unto whom it was declared by God's own command that notwithstanding all his Artifices in contriving Vriah his Death it should be exposed in the view of the whole World that future ages might see he whom he had chosen as the delight of his heart should have no priviledge in this particular and though he would abate something of his wonted rigour in not exacting his life for a satisfaction yet he would bring it near to his door by the rebellion of his Children with the Enmity and Machinations of many Conspiratours against him and that the Law of retaliation was not executed against him perhaps he owes it to this clause of the petition which he seems with more than usual fervour to have preferred repeating O God God of my Salvation We may here reflect how pernicious a thing passion is when once it hath got the Mastery and how soon it gets strength with the aid of dangerous occasions Our Penitent knew well that the Divine precept Non occides thou shalt not kill did not only forbid the taking away of our Neighbours life but likewise all rancour or malice towards him all injury by word or deed which may touch upon his honour or person all disputes contest or impetuosity of Choler these are the seeds of that monstrous fruit homicide as St. John sayes who hates his Brother is a homicide For by nourishing within you a little spark of animosity this from the heart appears in the Eyes which are the glass of the inward temper thence it breaks into words and at last sadly ends in his destruction Behold our Kingly Prophet and now an humble petitioner in his own behalf he is said to have been the meekest of Men and in consideration of his lenity and mildness in Government God spun out his reign to the Term of Forty years which was granted to few or none of the Jewish Kings with what patience did he sustain the reproaches and maledictions of Semei with what an admirable temper the long and restless persecution of Saul how tenderly issued he forth his orders touching Absalom that though he were actually in arms against him and thirsted after nothing but his life and Throne yet he commanded a hair of his Head should not be touched Notwithstanding all this upon a suddain seized with a passion of love both his sweet temperament and all his former habits of vertue proved of little use unto him The Christal of his understanding was blemished with gross vapours arising from brutish pleasures the purling stream of his inclinations which was wont to flow softly without noise and from the source of vertue is now grown into a storm of fury it is so deprived of reason as to imagine his own good and safety to depend upon the ruine of his Neighbour and therefore hastens to take vengeance upon him who never gave him the least shadow of real offence O what a Tyranny is the Rule of passion to make us love what is not amiable and hate what is not odious to push us on to desire what we should abhor and fly from vvhat vve ought most to covet Our holy penitent hath served under this oppression and novv petitions a release Free mee from blood c. Novv the Latins not using the vvord blood in the plural Number though the Greeks do hence it is that some infer and with reason that our Penitent aims at the remission of Adultery likewise because all carnal acts unlawful carry along with them a corruption both of flesh and blood this appears in Deut. Chap. 21. Where it is said that rotteness and worms shall be the inheritance of a luxurious person and as the one that is homicide destroyes the species of Man so adultery subverts those rules which are set down for his education a design which nature intends and drives at as well as Generation The one injures his Neighbour in his person the other in his honour and this not only of himself but casts an infamy upon his posterity It is storied of Vlysses that he met in his Travails with Circes the Enchantress vvho promised to make him immortal in case he vvould be naught with her and though he believed she was able to make good her promise yet he refused her less valuing immortality than fidelity to his Wife Susanna far less esteemed of
shall I return thee in requital when I would praise thee an Abyss of Majesty exhausts in a moment all Encomiums and my Adorations appear nothing before thy Divine Essence could I unmake my self in deference to thee the Fountain of all Beings it were a poor homage to thy ineffable greatness Nay could I annihilate the whole World for thy glory yet would it nothing equal what thy immensity might justly exact But whilst I thus labour with my own poverty finding nothing created worthy thy acceptance behold the perfect oblation of thy Son a prodigious effect of mercy this I offer to thee he can best speak our gratitude who can only satisfie thy Justice since by this gift the very treasury of Heaven will be exhausted and the Earth enrich'd with a pure Sacrifice whose odour draws upon mankind a continued flood of mercies It is this eternal offering meant by our Petitioner when he mentions thy great mercy whose very thought and foresight at the distance of many ages replenished his heart with joy And if the expectation of him to come so transported what dilation of spiritual joy ought to invade us who now possess what they had only in hope who now reap a plentiful harvest of Salvation when before the World was blasted with sterility and doom'd to darkness untill the bowels of this great mercy were opened to store us with his light and grace Let us joyn our Petitions with Holy David and adore the wonders of this great mercy in which we behold humane flesh hypostasiated in a Divine nature a Creatour link'd to his Creature Death unto Life Glory unto Confusion and Iniquity stamped with Innocence And whilst we contemplate these admirable contrivances of the Divine Wisdom can they do less than ascertain us if we place in the Frontispiece of our supplications this compositum made up of so many contrarieties that our desires will take effect that under this Sanctuary we shall strike off all the scores of guilt and render a satisfaction as great as God can expect or require Hence you see how confidently every sinner may repeat with David Have mercy on me O God according to thy great mercy CHAP. III. Et secundùm multitudinem miserationum tuarum And according to the multitude of thy mercies OUr Holy Petitioner having expressed his relyance in general on Gods mercy next fixes upon its effects in particular and makes a series or list of all his mercies Wherein methinks I behold him just like one in desolation of Shipwrack fastning on a plank and though the storm continue darkness surround him and nothing but the Face of Death appears before his Eyes yet he remembers that many have been saved in his condition how some have been cast upon the shore others upon a Rock some by a passing Boat gathered up In fine he calls to mind a thousand wayes of preservation to consolate himself in this distress and every thought of hope makes him grasp with new fervour his floating support Even so I may say of our distressed Penitent his goodly Vessel of innocence was wreck'd dashed against the powerfull charms of a Woman from thence he was thrown into an Ocean of Sins where on all sides he beheld the menaces of eternal destruction in these perplexities he runs with his thought over all the passages of God's mercy from the World's beginning by the consideration of them a little to keep up his sinking Spirits He fails not to remember the mild proceeding of God with Adam in not punishing him irrecoverably as he had done the reprobate Angels but was contented to Exile him from the delicious place of his Creation and to expose him here to the Whirl-winds of passions in which contest if he proved faithful his reward was to be the same as first designed for him From thence he passes to the conflagration of Sodom and Gomorrah where though God's justice fell heavy upon those miscreants yet he layes it on their impenitency and admires his goodness that would notwithstanding have kept in his shafts of vengeance for the sake of ten just persons if that small number were but found in those populous Cities he goes on to the Ninivites and pleases himself to see them under the Lee born thitherby repentance even when the storm of God's wrath was ready to plunge them in an Abyss of ruine He insists much upon the prayer of Moses which still diverted the rigorous designs of God upon his people he fancies that every Groan and Sigh of his contributes something towards the making up of a brazen Serpent by whose Soveraign aspect his cauterized Soul might be unvenomed and made whole It was no small Consolation when he reflects on God's people in the Land of Egypt whose Oppression which their own Sins had drawn upon them was yet relieved at the rate of miracles and wonders and such as Israel had not seen And why all this But to make good his promise to Abraham Isaac and Jacob that he would never abandon a Truly-repenting Heart Thus he goes on enumerating a thousand other passages of God's mercy from the Worlds Creation until his time nor is he content with this but advances further displaying in his prophetick knowledge innumerable other effects of God's compassion to Mankind and at last begins to make this Application though he could not deserve to partake of his great mercy that is not only to have his guilt remitted but also to become the object of his choicest favours yet at least he hoped he might be hudled in amidst the multitude of his mercies How sweetly did those Attributes Divine resound in his Ears where God is stiled rich in mercies where his Mercy transcends all his other works and where his Goodness and Mercy are proclaimed inexhausted Sources He leaves not a Crany in the World unransacked and after the severest scrutiny finds and confesses there is no place destitute of his mercy no Creature that is not cheered and enlivened by the effects of his mercy this made him cry Lord when thou dost open thy hand all Creatures are filled with blessings and he tells us that every Being looks upwards depending on his Creatour and expects from him a seasonable supply of all wants Nay he excludes not Hell nor Souls doom'd to eternal flames from this mercy for he considers that God is bonus universis good to all and though his Justice have plunged them in that Calamitous State of misery yet that their torments are not more intense and in many circumstances aggravated they owe it to his mercy which still hath something to do even in the punishment of the highest offendours Having then survey'd Angels Man and sensible Creatures the Heavens Earth and Hell and found no Being that could in the least repine for want of mercy upon these reflections with just reason our Petitioner entitles them a multitude of mercies for on all sides they flow as from a natural Source Nor wonder that we have more Presidents of his
mercy than Justice for the one consists in a communicative vertue of what is good and as God is essentially good so he can alwayes breath forth these emanations of his goodness upon us Now Justice though it be equally essential to the Divine Essence with mercy and other Attributes yet in its operations ad extra or exteriour effects it depends upon the obliquity of our actions without which it hath no matter or Subject to work on So that mercy he can alwayes shower down upon us but Justice only when we offend he would not forget how the greater number of Angels stood the brunt of temptations when Lucifer perished with his proud adherents it was this mercy held them up at the instant of their Tryal and though our afflicted penitent found not this innocence preserving mercy yet he hopes to lay hold on that part where he is stiled a purifying mercy Let his Subjects fall from their obedience and throw curses at him let his Children prove unnatural and labour to dethrone him let a pestilential Disease depopulate his Country in fine let the Joy of his Life Absalom be sacrificed by the Hand of his own Souldier with smiles he will pass through all these Tests so they proceed from the hand of this all purifying mercy He values not the mediums but the end he tends to and when he thinks oâ— this he begins afresh to admire this mercy in the reward of the elect he knows not whether it exceeds more in the expectancy and furtherance of a sinners conversion or in those immense felicities he communicates by his presence For here he beholds a God courting his Creatures insensible as it were of injuries and dishonours from them and seconding their least good intents with the powerful succours of grace There he contemplates a God remunerating our small inconsiderable Acts of Vertue with the same Felicity wherewith he himself is blest and made happy For his Beatitude is to enjoy himself and contemplate his own beauty and perfections and this same Beatitude he imparts to us poor worms through the excess of his Mercy But whether our holy penitent more extolls the effects of his mercies in Heaven or Earth I know not yet of this I am sure he is reconciled to make it whilst he hath life the Theam of his Pen Heart and Tongue he will celebrate the praises of his innumerable mercies for all Eternity he hath scarce a Psalm which speaks not his zeal for this subject as if his quill had been dipped in this Fountain of mercies Another branch which growes up amidst the multitude of his mercies is that he distributes his blessings not so much in the measure of his wisdom as love and after his innumerable favours done to his Vineyard he defies the whole Mass of Creatures to tax him of any want on his part For should he reward us according to our actions which he in his praescience and eternal essence foresees will come to pass who of us should be left alive or who of us should be born Only the innocent should then be favoured and rather than it should be so he was willing to put it upon the Tryal how or what we might prove hereafter He foreknew that Lucifer should fall that Adam would sin Saul become disobedient and Judas betray him yet he forbare not for all this to throw his favours upon them to shew his mercy is ever in competition with Man's malice and like a good Physitian if one Medicine work no good he applyes another like a gâ—od Husbandman if his Land yield him no Crop one year he cultivates and labours it again the Second and Third by which it often happens that one fruitful season repaires the sterility of divers years past Just so God still goes on and though he sees no hope to stop our malice yet he stops not his mercy this proceeding made St. Austin cry Praise and Glory O Lord be to thee O Fountain of mercies the worser I grew and more perverse so much the nearer thou wast unto me It is said a small proportion of chastisement suffices a Father in order to his Son so God as a kind and loving Father thinks a little punishment enough for his Children St. Chrysostome says that after the Master of the Vineyard had his Servants beaten and slain by the Husbandmen he sent his Son and for all these their outrages required no other satisfaction than to see them abash'd and ashamed of their Cruelties and Ingratitude They will says he reverence my Son so that 't is evident their blushing not their bleeding he desired Whence St. Hierom makes a result of this Parable that in God's Clemency there was no Weight no Number no Measure nor likewise in the others Malice So that our holy penitent beholding in every transaction of God with Man this fulness of Mercy might with reason expostulate and entreat his pardon Secundùm multitudinem miserationum tuarum according to the multitude of thy mercies The Application Let every one examine his life from the time he had the use of reason and I am confident he will find many tyes of obligation to this great mercy nay amongst the mass of Christians I believe there is none but ranks himself a favourite in order to his largesses of mercy For his love is constant and knowes no change this great and good God hath persisted for an infinity of time in the perpetual resolution of gratifying us with his gifts his enflamed heart hath entertained a continual solicitude without any truce for our good Witness the Prophet Jeremy who sayes that God hath loved us with an everlasting Charity His love is eternal having alwayes decreed to enrich us with his favours St. Paul proclaims it that he hath loved us before the World was framed It is disinteressed without any advantage to himself or hope of return on our parts No other motive than the superabundance of his goodness like a fountain which runs over his natural goodness throwes blessings on all Creatures Plutarch speaking of love sayes it takes any occasion be it never so slight to oblige the beloved he wants no baits nor snares carrying about him the matter of his own bondage So God's love never takes leave of a Sinner nay where Man 's impiety extorts as it were from him the darts of his Justice he seems presently to relent and promises as he did after the Deluge to do so no more so that his love being eternal unchangeable and devested of all self ends what can we ask of God that issues not from his mercy wherefore let us with holy David cry have mercy on us O God according to the multitude of thy mercies Amen CHAP. IV. Dele iniquitatem meam Wipe away my iniquity OUr poor Criminal having thus prepared his Judge the next care is to lay open his condition and shew he implores God's purifying Mercy by whose vertue the Chains of our sins are loosened and dissolved Nor did it a