with a grievous sickness, then they lay under the evil of their sin, and were not pardoned till God took away the sickness; but the taking the evil away, the evil of the punishment, was the pardon of the sin; "to pardon the sin is to spare the sinner:" and this appears; for when Christ had said to the man sick of the palsy, "Son, thy sins are forgiven thee," the pharisees accused him of blasphemy, because none had power to forgive sins but God only; Christ, to vindicate himself, gives them an ocular demonstration, and proves his words: "That ye may know, the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins, he saith to the man sick of the palsy, Arise, and walk;" then he pardoned the sin, when he took away the sickness, and proved the power by reducing it to act: for if pardon of sins be any thing else, it must be easier or harder if it be easier, then sin hath not so much evil in it as a sickness, which no religion as yet ever taught: if it be harder, then Christ's power to do that, which was harder, could not be proved by doing that which was easier. It remains, therefore, that it is the same thing to take the punishment away, as to procure or give the pardon; because, as the retaining the sin was an obligation to the evil of punishment, so the remitting the sin is the disobliging to its penalty. So far then the case is manifest.

6. The next step is this; that, although in the Gospel God punishes sinners with temporal judgments, and sicknesses, and deaths, with sad accidents, and evil angels, and messengers of wrath; yet, besides these lesser strokes, he hath scorpions to chastise, and loads of worse evils to oppress the disobedient: he punishes one sin with another, vile acts with evil habits, these with a hard heart, and this with obstinacy, and obstinacy with impenitence, and impenitence with damnation. Now, because the worst of evils, which are threatened to us, are such which consign to hell by persevering in sin, as God takes off our love and our affections, our relations and bondage under sin, just in the same degree he pardons us; because the punishment of sin being taken off and pardoned, there can remain no guilt. Guiltiness is an insignificant word, if there be no obligation to punishment. Since therefore spiritual evils, and progressions in sin, and the spirit of reprobation, and impenitence,

r Matt. ix. 2.

and accursed habits, and perseverance in iniquity, are the worst of evils; when these are taken off, the sin hath lost its venom, and appendant curse: for sin passes on to eternal death only by the line of impenitence, and it can never carry us to hell, if we repent timely and effectually; in the same degree, therefore, that any man leaves his sin, just in the same degree he is pardoned, and he is sure of it: for although curing the temporal evil was the pardon of sins among the Jews, yet we must reckon our pardon by curing the spiritual. If I have sinned against God in the shameful crime of lust, then God hath pardoned my sins, when, upon my repentance and prayers, he hath given me the grace of chastity. My drunkenness is forgiven when I have acquired the grace of temperance, and a sober spirit. My covetousness shall no more be a damning sin, when I have a loving and charitable spirit; loving to do good, and despising the world; for every farther degree of sin being a nearer step to hell, and by consequence the worst punishment of sin, it follows inevitably, that according as we are put into a contrary state, so are our degrees of pardon, and the worst punishment is already taken off. And therefore, we shall find, that the great blessing, and pardon, and redemption, which Christ wrought for us, is called "sanctification, holiness," and "turning us away from our sins:" so St. Peter; "Ye know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversations;" that is your redemption, that is your deliverance: you were taken from your sinful state; that was the state of death, this of life and pardon; and therefore they are made synonyma by the same Apostle; "According as his Divine power hath given us all things that pertain to life and godliness:" to live' and to be godly,' is all one; to remain in sin and abide in death, is all one; to redeem us from sin, is to snatch us from hell; he that gives us godliness, gives us life, and that supposes the pardon, or the abolition of the rites of eternal death: and this was the conclusion of St. Peter's sermon, and the sum total of our redemption and of our pardon; "God having raised up his Son, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your iniquity";" this is the end of Christ's passion and bitter death, the purpose of all his and all our

) Pet. i. 18.

t

2 Pet. i. 3.

" Acts jii. 26,

preaching, the effect of baptism, purging, washing, sanctifying; the work of the sacrament of the Lord's supper; and the same body that was broken, and the same blood that was shed for our redemption, is to conform us into his image and likeness of living and dying, of doing and suffering. The case is plain: just as we leave our sins, so God's wrath shall be taken from us; as we get the graces contrary to our former vices, so infallibly we are consigned to pardon. If therefore you are in contestation against sin, while you dwell in difficulty, and sometimes yield to sin, and sometimes overcome it, your pardon is uncertain, and is not discernible in its progress; but when sin is mortified, and your lusts are dead, and under the power of grace, and you are "led by the Spirit," all your fears concerning your state of pardon are causeless, and afflictive without reason; but so long as you live at the old rate of lust or intemperance, of covetousness or vanity, of tyranny or oppression, of carelessness or irreligion, flatter not yourselves; you have no more reason to hope for pardon than a beggar for a crown, or a condemned criminal to be made heir-apparent to that prince, whom he would traitorously have slain.

4. They have great reason to fear concerning their condition, who having been in the state of grace, who having begun to lead a good life, and given their names to God by solemn deliberate acts of will and understanding, and made some progress in the way of godliness, if they shall retire to folly, and unravel all their holy vows, and commit those evils, from which they formerly ran as from a fire or inundation; their case hath in it so many evils, that they have great reason to fear the anger of God, and concerning the final issue of their souls. For, return to folly hath in it many evils beyond the common state of sin and death; and such evils, which are most contrary to the hopes of pardon. 1. He that falls back into those sins he hath repented of, does "grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by which he was sealed to the day of redemption." For so the antithesis is plain and obvious: if" at the conversion of a sinner there is joy before the beatified spirits, the angels of God," and that is the consummation of our pardon and our consignation to felicity, then we may imagine how great an evil it is to "grieve the Spirit of God," who is greater than the angels. The children of

Israel were carefully warned, that they should not offend the angel: "Behold, I send an angel before thee, beware of him, and obey his voice; provoke him not, for he will not pardon your transgressions," that is, he will not spare to punish you if you grieve him: much greater is the evil, if we grieve him, who sits upon the throne of God, who is the Prince of all the spirits and besides, grieving the Spirit of God is an affection, that is as contrary to his felicity, as lust is to his holiness; both which are essential to him. "Tristitia enim omnium spirituum nequissima est, et pessima servis Dei, et omnium spiritus exterminat, et cruciat Spiritum sanctum," said Hennas: "Sadness is the greatest enemy to God's servants; if you grieve God's Spirit, you cast him out;" for he cannot dwell with sorrow and grieving; unless it be such a sorrow, which by the way of virtue passes on to joy and never-ceasing felicity. Now by grieving the Holy Spirit, is meant those things which displease him, doing unkindness to him; and then the grief, which cannot in proper sense seize upon him, will in certain effects return upon us: "Ita enim dico (said Seneca); sacer intra nos Spiritus sedet, bonorum malorumque nostrorum observator et custos; hic prout à nobis tractatus est, ita nos ipse tractat:" "There is a Holy Spirit dwells in every good man, who is the observer and guardian of all our actions; and as we treat him, so will he treat us." "Now we ought to treat him sweetly and tenderly, thankfully and with observation: "Deus præcepit, Spiritum Sanctum, utpote pro naturæ suæ bono tenerum et delicatum, tranquillitate, et lenitate, et quiete, et pace tractare," said Tertullian 'de Spectaculis.' The Spirit of God is a loving and kind Spirit, gentle and easy, chaste and pure, righteous and peaceable; and when he hath done so much for us as to wash us from our impurities, and to cleanse us from our stains, and straighten our obliquities, and to instruct our ignorances, and to snatch us from an intolerable death, and to consign us to the day of redemption, that is, to the resurrection of our bodies from death, corruption, and the dishonours of the grave, and to appease all the storms and uneasiness, and to "make us free as the sons of God," and furnished with the riches of the kingdom; and all this with

* Exod. xxiii. 20, 21.

innumerable arts, with difficulty, and in despite of our lusts and reluctances, with parts and interrupted steps, with waitings and expectations, with watchfulness and stratagems, with inspirations and collateral assistances; after all this grace, and bounty, and diligence, that we should despite this grace, and trample upon the blessings, and scorn to receive life at so great an expense, and love of God; this is so great a baseness and unworthiness, that by troubling the tenderest passions, it turns into the most bitter hostilities; by abusing God's love it turns into jealousy, and rage, and indignation." Go and sin no more, lest a worse thing happen to thee."

2. Falling away after we have begun to live well, is a great cause of fear; because there is added to it the circumstance of inexcusableness. The man hath been taught the secrets of the kingdom, and therefore his understanding hath been instructed; he hath tasted the pleasures of the kingdom, and therefore his will hath been sufficiently entertained. He was entered into the state of life, and renounced the ways of death; his sin began to be pardoned, and his lusts to be crucified; he felt the pleasures of victory, and the blessings of peace, and therefore fell away, not only against his reason, but also against his interest; and to such a person the questions of his soul have been so perfectly stated, and his prejudices and inevitable abuses so clearly taken off, and he was so made to view the paths of life and death, that if he chooses the way of sin again, it must be, not by weakness, or the infelicity of his breeding, or the weakness of his understanding, but a direct preference or prelation, a preferring sin before grace, the spirit of lust before the purities of the soul, the madness of drunkenness before the fulness of the Spirit, money before our friend, and above our religion, and heaven, and God himself. This man is not to be pitied upon pretence that he is betrayed; or to be relieved, because he is oppressed with potent enemies; or to be pardoned, because he could not help it: for he once did help it, he did overcome his temptation, and choose God, and delight in virtue, and was an heir of heaven, and was a conqueror over sin, and delivered from death; and he may do so still, and God's grace is upon him more plentifully, and the lust does not tempt so strongly; and if it did, he hath more power to resist it; and therefore, if this man falls, it is because he wil