dered all their life, never renewing their resolutions and vows of holy living: or if they have, yet their purposes are for ever blasted with the next violent temptation. More prudent was the prayer of David; "Oh spare me a little, that I may recover my strength, before I go hence and be no more seen." And something like it was the saying of the emperor Charles the Fifth ; "Inter vitæ negotia et mortis diem oportet spatium intercedere." Whenever our holy purposes are renewed, unless God gives us time to act them, to mortify and subdue our lusts, to conquer and subdue the whole kingdom of sin, to rise from our grave, and be clothed with nerves and flesh and a new skin, to overcome our deadly sicknesses, and by little and little to return to health and strength; unless we have grace and time to do all this, our sins will lie down with us in our graves. For when a man hath contracted a long habit of sin, and it hath been growing upon him ten or twenty, forty or fifty years, whose acts he hath daily or hourly repeated, and they are grown to a second nature to him, and have so prevailed upon the ruins of his spirit, that the man is taken captive by the devil at his will, he is fast bound, as a slave tugging at the oar; that he is grown in love with his fetters, and longs to be doing the work of sin :-is it likely that after all this progress and growth in sin (in the ways of which he runs fast without any impediment); is it, I say, likely, that a few days or weeks of sickness can recover him? The special hinderances of that state I shall afterward consider. But, can a man supposed so prompt to piety and holy living, a man, I mean, that hath lived wickedly a long time together, can he be of so ready and active a virtue upon the sudden, as to recover, in a month or a week, what he hath been undoing in twenty or thirty years? Is it so easy to build, that a weak and infirm person, bound hand and foot, shall be able to build more in three days than was a-building above forty years? Christ did it in a figurative sense; but in this, it is not in the power of any man so suddenly to be recovered from so long a sickness. Necessary therefore it is that all these instruments of our conversion, confession of sins,-praying for their pardon,-and resolution to lead a new life,—should begin "before our feet stumble upon the dark mountains;" lest we leave the worl resolved upon to be begun, which it is necessary v in many degrees finish, if ever we mean to escape the eternal darkness. "For that we should actually abolish the whole body of sin and death,—that we should crucify the old man with his lusts, that we should lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us,-that we should cast away the works of darkness,-that we should awake from sleep, and arise from death,-that we should redeem the time,that we should cleanse our hands and purify our hearts,— that we should have escaped the corruption (all the corruption) that is in the whole world through lust,—that nothing of the old leaven should remain in us,-but that we be wholly a new lump, thoroughly transformed and changed in the image of our mind;"-these are the perpetual precepts of the Spirit, and the certain duty of man: and that to have all these in purpose only, is merely to no purpose, without the actual eradication of every vicious habit; and the certain abolition of every criminal adherence, is clearly and dogmatically decreed every where in the Scripture. "For" (they are the words of St. Paul) "they that are Christ's, have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts":" the work is actually done, and sin is dead or wounded mortally, before they can in any sense belong to Christ, to be a portion of his inheritance: and," He that is in Christ, is a new creature." For "in Christ Jesus nothing can avail but a new creature";" nothing but a "keeping the commandments of God." Not all tears, though we should weep like David and his men at Ziklag, 'till they could weep no more,' or the women of Ramah,' or like the weeping in the valley of Hinnom,' could suffice, if we retain the affection to any one sin, or have any unrepented of, or unmortified. It is true, that ‘a contrite and a broken heart God will not despise ' no, he will not. For if it be a hearty and permanent sorrow, it is an excellent beginning of repentance; and God will to a timely sorrow give the grace of repentance: he will not give pardon to sorrow alone; but that which ought to be the proper effect of sorrow, that God shall give. He shall then open the gates of mercy, and admit you to a possibility of restitution so that you may be within the covenant of repentance, which if you actually perform, you may expect God's promise. And in this sense confession will obtain our pardon, and hu • Gal. v. 24. Gal, vi. 15. u Gal. v. 6. * 1 Cor. vii. 19. miliation will be accepted, and our holy purposes and pious resolutions shall be accounted for; that is, these being the first steps and addresses to that part of repentance which consists in the abolition of sins, shall be accepted so far as to procure so much of the pardon, to do so much of the work of restitution, that God will admit the returning man to a farther degree of emendation, to a nearer possibility of working out his salvation. But then, if this sorrow, and confession, and these strong purposes, begin then when our life is declined towards the west, and is now ready to set in darkness and a dismal night; because of themselves they could but procure an admission to repentance, not at all to pardon and plenary absolution, by shewing that on our death-bed these are too late and ineffectual, they call upon us to begin betimes, when these imperfect acts may be consummate and perfect, in the actual performing those parts of holy life, to which they were ordained in the nature of the thing, and the purposes of God. 4. Lastly, suppose all this be done, and that by a long course of strictness and severity, mortification and circumspection, we have overcome all our vicious and baser habits, contracted and grown upon us like the ulcers and evils of a long surfeit, and that we are clean and swept; suppose that he hath wept and fasted, prayed and vowed to excellent purposes; yet all this is but the one half of repentance (so infinitely mistaken is the world, to think any thing to be enough to make up repentance): but to renew us, and restore us to the favour of God, there is required far more than what hath been yet accounted for. See it in the Second of St. Peter, chap. i. vers. 4, 5. "Having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust: and besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge temperance, to temperance patience, and so on, to godliness, to brotherly kindness, and to charity these things must be in you and abound." This is the sum total of repentance: we must not only have overcome sin, but we must after great diligence have acquired the habits of all those Christian graces, which are necessary in the transaction of our affairs, in all relations to God and our neighbour, and our own persons. It is not enough to say, "Lord, I thank thee, I am no extortioner, no adulterer, not as this publican;" all the reward of such a penitent is, that when he hath escaped the corruption of the world, he hath also escaped those heavy judgments which threatened his ruin. Nec furtum feci, nec fugi,' si mihi dicat Servus Habes pretium; loris non ureris,' aio; Non hominem occidi :'-'Non pasces in cruce corvos 5.' "If a servant have not robbed his master, nor offered to fly from his bondage, he shall escape the 'furca,' his flesh shall not be exposed to birds or fishes;" but this is but the reward of innocent slaves. It may be, we have escaped the rod of the exterminating angel, when our sins are crucified; but we shall never enter into the joy of the Lord,' unless after we have put off the old man with his affections and lusts,' we also put on the new man in righteousness and holiness of life." And this we are taught in most plain doctrine by St. Paul; "Let us lay aside the weight that doth so easily beset us;" that is the one half: and then it follows, "Let us run with patience the race that is set before us." These are the fruits meet for repentance,' spoken of by St. John Baptist; that is, when we renew our first undertaking in baptism, and return to our courses of innocence. Parcus Deorum cultor et infrequens, Insanientis dum sapientiæ Consultus erro, nunc retrorsum Vela dare, atque iterare cursus The sense of which words is well given us by St. John; "Remember whence thou art fallen; repent, and do thy first works." For all our hopes of heaven rely upon that cove nant, which God made with us in baptism; which is, "That being redeemed from our vain conversation, we should serve him in holiness and righteousness all our days." Now when any of us hath prevaricated our part of the covenant, we must return to that state, and redeem the intermedial time spent in sin, by our doubled industry in the ways of grace: we must be reduced to our first estate, and make some proportionable returns of duty for our sad omissions, and great violations of our baptismal vow. For God having made no covenant with us but that which is consigned in baptism; in the same pro Hor. ep. 1. 16. 46. Heb. xii. 1. a Hor. Od. 1. 34. 2. b Revel. 2. portion in which we retain or return to that, in the same we are to expect the pardon of our sins, and all the other promises evangelical; but no otherwise, unless we can shew a new gospel, or be baptized again by God's appointment. He, therefore, that by a long habit, by a state and continued course of sin, hath gone so far from his baptismal purity, as that he hath nothing of the Christian left upon him but his name; that man hath much to do to make his garments clean, to purify his soul, to take off all the stains of sin, that his spirit may be presented pure to the eyes of God, who beholds no impurity. It is not an easy thing to cure a longcontracted habit of sin. Let any intemperate person but try in his own instance of drunkenness; or the swearer, in the sweetening his unwholesome language: but then so to command his tongue that he never swear, but that his speech be prudent, pious, and apt to edify the hearer, or in some sense to glorify God; or to become temperate, to have got a habit of sobriety, or chastity, or humility, is the work of a life. And if we do but consider that he that lives well from his younger years, or takes up at the end of his youthful heats, and enters into the courses of a sober life early, diligently, and vigorously, shall find himself, after the studies and labours of twenty or thirty years' piety, but a very imperfect person, many degrees of pride left unrooted up, many inroads of intemperance or beginnings of excess, much indevotion and backwardness in religion, many temptations to contest against, and some infirmities which he shall never say he hath mastered; we shall find the work of a holy life is not to be deferred till our days are almost done, till our strengths are decayed, our spirits are weak, and our lust strong, our habits confirmed, and our longings after sin many and impotent for what is very hard to be done, and is always done imperfectly, when there is length of time, and a less work to do, and more abilities to do it withal; when the time is short, and almost expired, and the work made difficult and vast, and the strengths weaker, and the faculties are disabled, will seem little less than absolutely impossible. I shall end this general consideration with the question of the Apostle; "If the righteous scarcely be saved," if it be so difficult to overcome our sins, and obtain virtuous habits; difficult, I say, to a righteous, a sober, and well-living person,-" where shall |