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or at a certain distance of time; but, God knows, they do not get the victory over their sin, but are within its power. For this is certain, they who sin and repent, and sin again in the same or like circumstances, are in some degree under the power and dominion of sin; when their action can be reduced to an order or a method, to a rule or a certainty, that oftener hits than fails, that sin is habitual; though it be the least habit, yet a habit it is; every course, or order, or method of sin, every constant or periodical return, every return that can be regularly observed, or which a man can foresee, or probably foretell, even then when he does not intend it, but prays against it, every such sin is to be reckoned, not for a single action, or upon the accounts of a pardonable infirmity, but it is a combination, an evil state, such a thing as the man ought to fear concerning himself, lest he be surprised and called from this world before this evil state be altered: for if it be, his securities are but slender, and his hopes will deceive him. It was a severe doctrine that was maintained by some great clerks and holy men in the primitive church, "that repentance was to be but once after baptism "one faith, one Lord, one baptism, one repentance ;* all these the scripture saith; and it is true, if by repentance we mean the entire change of our condition; for he that returns willingly to the state of an unbelieving or a heathen profane person, entirely and choosingly, in defiance of and apostasy from his religion, cannot be renewed again (as the Apostle twice affirms in his epistle to the Hebrews.) But then concerning this state of apostasy, when it happened in the case, not of faith, but of charity and obedience, there were many fears and jealousies: they were therefore very severe in their doctrines, lest men should fall

*Heb. vi. 6. and x. 26. 2 Pet. ii. 22.

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into so evil a condition; they enlarged their fear, that they might be stricter in their duty; and generally this they did believe, that every second repentance was worse than the first, and the third worse than the second, and still as the sin returned, the spirit of God did the less love to inhabit; and if he were provoked too often, would so withdraw his aids and comfortable cohabitation, that the church had little comfort in such children; so said Clemens Alexandr. stromat. 2. Αι δε συνεχείς και επάλληλαι επι τοῖς ἁμαρτήμασι μετα νοιαι, ουδέν των καθαπαξ μη πεπιστευκ των διαφέρουσιν ; "those fre"quent and alternate repentances, that is, repent"ances and sinnings interchangeably, differ not "from the conditions of men that are not within the "covenant of grace, from them that are not believers," η μονῳ τῳ συναισθεσθαι ότι ἁμαρτανουσι. save only (says he) that these men perceive that they sin; they do it more against their conscience than infidels and unbelievers; and therefore they do it with less honesty and excuse, και ουκ οιδ', ὁπότερον αυτοις χειρον η το είδοτα ἁμαρτανείν, η μετανοήσαντα, εφ' οις ήμαρτεν, πλημμέλειν αυθις ή "I know not which "is worse, either to sin knowingly or willingly; or "to repent of our sin, and sin it over again." And the same severe doctrine is delivered by Theodoret in his twelfth book against the Greeks, and is hugely agreeable to the discipline of the primitive church: and it is a truth of so great severity, that it ought to quicken the repentance and sour the gayeties of easy people, and make them fear whose repentance is therefore ineffectual, because it is not integral or united, but broken in pieces by the intervention of new crimes; so that the repentance is every time to begin anew; and then let it be considered, what growth that repentance can make, that is never above a week old, that is, for ever in his infancy, that is still in its birth, that never gets the dominion over sin. These men, I say, ought to fear, lest God reject

their persons, and deride the folly of their new begun repentances, and at last be weary of giving them more opportunities, since they approve all, and make use of none; their understanding is right and their will a slave, their reason is for God, and their affections for sin; these men (as the Apostle's expression is) walk not as wise, but as fools: for we deride the folly of those men, that resolve upon the same thing a thousand times, and never keep one of those resolutions. These men are vain and light, easy and effeminate, childish and abused; these are they, of whom our blessed Saviour said those sad decretory words, Many shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able:

SERMON VIII.

PART II.

3. THEY have great reason to fear, whose sins are not yet remitted; for they are within the dominion of sin, within the kingdom of darkness, and the regions of fear: light makes us confident; and sin checks the spirit of a man into the pusillanimity and cowardice of a girl or a conscious boy; and they do their work in the days of peace and wealthy fortune, and come to pay their symbol in a war or in a plague; then they spend of their treasure of wrath, which they laid up in their vessels of dishonour and indeed, want of fear brought them to it; for if they

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had known how to have 'accounted concerning the changes of mortality, if they could have reckoned right concerning God's judgments falling upon sinners, and remembered, that themselves are no more to God than that brother of theirs that died in a drunken surfeit, or was killed in a rebel war, or was before his grave corrupted by the shames of lust; if they could have told the minutes of their life, and passed on towards their grave at least in religious and sober thoughts, and considered that there must come a time for them to die, and after death comes judgment, a fearful and an intolerable judgment, it would not have come to this pass, in which their present condition of affairs do amaze them, and their sin hath made them liable unto death, and that death is the beginning of an eternal evil. In this case it is natural to fear; and if men consider their condition, and know that all the felicity, and all the security they can have, depends upon God's mercy pardoning their sins, they cannot choose but fear infinitely, if they have not reason to hope that their sins are pardoned. Now concerning this, men indeed have generally taken a course to put this affair to a very speedy issue. God is merciful, and God forgive me, and all is done: it may be a few sighs, like the deep sobbings of a man that is almost dead with laughter; that is, a trifling sorrow, returning upon a man after he is full of sin, and hath pleased himself with violence, and revolving only by a natural change from sin to sorrow, from laughter to a groan, from sunshine to a cloudy day; or it may be the good man hath left some one sin quite, or some degrees of all sin, and then the conclusion is firm, he is rectus in curia, his sins are pardoned; he was indeed in an evil condition, but now he is purged, he is sanctified and clean. These things are very bad, but it is much worse that men should continue in their sin, and grow old in it, and

arrive at confirmation, and the strength of habitual wickedness, and grow fond of it; and yet think if they die, their account stands as fair in the eyes of God's mercy, as St. Peter's after his tears and sorrow. Our sins are not pardoned easily and quickly; and the longer and the greater hath been the iniquity, the harder and more difficult and uncertain is the pardon; it is a great progress to return from all the degrees of death to life, to motion, to quickness, to purity, to acceptation, to grace, to contention, and growth in grace, to perseverance, and so to pardon : for pardon stands no where, but at the gates of heaven. It is a great mercy, that signifies a final and universal acquittance. God sends it out in little scrolls, and excuses you from falling by the sword of an enemy, or the secret stroke of an angel in the days of the plague; but these are but little entertainments and enticings of our hopes to work on towards the great pardon, which is registered in the leaves of the book of life. And it is a mighty folly to think, that every little line of mercy signifies glory and absolution from the eternal wrath of God; and therefore it is not to be wondered at, that wicked men are unwilling to die; it is a greater wonder, that many of them die with so little resentment of their danger and their evil. There is reason for them to tremble, when the Judge summons them to appear. When his messenger is clothed with horrour, and speaks in thunder; when their conscience is their accuser, and their accusation is great, and their bills uncancelled, and they have no title to the cross of Christ, no advocate, no excuse; when God is their enemy, and Christ is the injured person, and the spirit is grieved, and sickness and death come to plead God's cause against the man; then there is reason, that the natural fears of death should be high and pungent, and those natural fears increased by the reasonable and certain expectations

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