SECTION IX.
Repentance, of all things in the world, makes
the greatest change: it changes things in heaven and earth; for it changes the
whole man from sin to grace, from vicious habits to holy customs, from unchaste
bodies to angelical souls, from swine to philosophers, from drunkenness to
sober counsels, and God himself, `with whom is no variableness or shadow of
change,' is pleased, by descending to our weak understandings, to say, that he
changes also upon man's repentance, that he alters his decrees, revokes his
sentence, cancels the bills of accusation, throws the records of shame and
sorrow from the court of heaven, and lifts up the sinner from the grave to
life, from his prison to a throne, from hell and the guilt of eternal torture,
to heaven and to a title, to never-ceasing felicities. If we be bound on earth,
we shall be bound in heaven; if we be absolved here, we shall be loosed there;
if we repent; God will repent, and not send the evil upon us which we had
deserved.
But repentance is a conjugation and society of
many duties; and it contains in it all the parts of a holy life, from the time
of our return to the day of our death inclusively; and it hath in it some
things specially relating to the sins of our former days, which we now to be
abolished by special arts, and have obliged us to special labours, and brought
in many new necessities, and put us into a very great deal of danger. And,
because it is a duty consisting of so many parts and so much employment, it
also requires much time, and leaves a man in the same degree of hope of pardon,
as is his restitution to the state of righteousness and holy living, for which
we covenanted in baptism. For we must know, that there is but one repentance in
a man's whole life, if repentance be taken in the proper and strict evangelical
covenant sense, and not after the ordinary understanding of the world: that is,
we are but once to change our whole state of life, from the power of the devil
and his entire possession, from the state of sin and death, from the body of
corruption, to the life of grace, to the possession of Jesus, to the kingdom of
the gospel; and this is done in the baptism of water, or in the baptism of the
Spirit, when the first rite comes to be verified by God's grace coming upon us,
and by our obedience to the heavenly calling, we working together with God.
After this change, if ever we fall into the contrary state, and he wholly
estranged from God and religion, and profess ourselves servants of
unrighteousness, God hath made no more covenant of restitution to us; there is
no place left for any more repentance, or entire change of condition, or new
birth: a man can be regenerated but once; and such are voluntary malicious
apostates, witches, obstinate impenitent persons, and the life. But if we be
overtaken by infirmity, or enter into the marches or borders of this estate and
commit a grievous sin, or ten, or twenty, so we be not in the entire possession
of the devil, we are, for the present, in a damnable condition if we die; but
if we live, we are in a recoverable condition; for so we may repent often. We
repent or rise from death but once - from sickness many times; and by the grace
of God we shall be pardoned if so we repent. But our hopes of pardon are just
as is the repentance; which, if it be timely, hearty, industrious, and
effective, God accepts; not by weighing grains or scruples but by estimating
the great proportions of our life. A hearty endeavour, and an effectual general
change shall get the pardon; the unavoidable infirmities and past evils and
present imperfections and short interruptions, against which we watch and pray
and strive, being put upon the accounts of the cross, and paid for by the holy
Jesus. This is the state and condition of repentance: its parts and actions
must be valued according to the following rules:
1. He that repents truly, is greatly
sorrowful for his past sins; not with a superficial sigh or tear, but a
pungent, afflictive sorrow; such a sorrow as hates the sin so much, that the
man would choose to die rather than act it any more. This sorrow is called in
Scripture, `a weeping sorely; a weeping with bitterness of heart; a weeping day
and night; a sorrow of heart; a breaking of the spirit; mourning like a dove,
and chattering like a swallow;'[278] and we
may read the degree and manner of it by the lamentations and sad accents of the
prophet Jeremy, when he wept for the sins of the nation; by the heart-breaking
of David, when he mourned for his murder and adultery; and the bitter weeping
of St. Peter, after the shameful denying of his master. The expression of this
sorrow differs according to the temper of the body, the sex, the age, and
circumstances of action, and the motive of sorrow, and by many accidental
tendernesses, or masculine hardnesses; and the repentance is not to be
estimated by the tears, but by the grief; and the grief is to be valued not by
the sensitive trouble, but by the cordial hatred of the sin, and ready actual
dereliction of it, and a resolution and real resisting its consequent
temptations. Some people can shed tears for nothing, some for anything; but the
proper and true effects of a godly sorrow are, fear of the Divine judgments,
apprehension of God's displeasure, watchings and strivings against sin,
patiently enduring the cross of sorrow (which God sends as their punishment) in
accusation of ourselves, in perpetually begging pardon, in mean and base
opinions of ourselves, and in all the natural productions from these, according
to our temper and constitution. For if we be apt to weep in other accidents, it
is ill if we weep not also in the sorrows of repentance; not that weeping is of
itself a duty, but that the sorrow, if it be as great, will be still expressed
in as great a manner.
2. Our sorrow for sins must retain the proportion
of our sins, though not the equality. We have no particular measures of sins;
we know not which is greater, of sacrilege or superstition, idolatry or
covetousness, rebellion or witchcraft; and therefore God ties us not to nice
measures of sorrow, but only that we keep the general rules of proportion; that
is, that a great sin have a great grief, a smaller crime being to be washed off
with a lesser shower.
3. Our sorrow for sins is then best accounted of
for its degree, when it, together with all the penal and afflictive duties of
repentance we had in commission of the sin.[279]
4. True repentance is a punishing duty, and acts
its sorrow; and judges and condemns the sin by voluntarily submitting to such
sadnesses as God sends on us, or (to prevent the judgment of God) by judging
ourselves, and punishing our bodies and our spirits by such instruments of
piety as are troublesome to the body; such as are fasting, watching, long
prayers, troublesome postures in our prayers, expensive alms, and all outward
acts of humiliation. For he that must judge himself, must condemn himself if he
be guilty; and if he be condemned he must be punished; and if he be so judged,
it will help to prevent the judgment of the Lord, St. Paul instructing us in
this particular.[280] But I before intimated
that the punishing actions of repentance are only actions of sorrow, and
therefore are to make up the proportions of it. For our grief may be so full of
trouble as to outweigh all the burdens of fasts and bodily afflictions, and
then the other are the less necessary; and when they are used, the benefit of
them is to obtain of God a remission or a lessening of such temporal judgments
which God hath decreed against the sins, as it was in the case of Ahab; but the
sinner is not, by anything of this, reconciled to the eternal favour of God;
for, as yet, this is but the introduction to repentance.
5. Every true penitent is obliged to confess his
sins, and to humble himself before God for ever. Confession of sins hath a
special promise: `If we confess our sins;[281] he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins;'
meaning, that God hath bound himself to forgive us if we duly confess our sins,
and do all that for which confession was appointed; that is, be ashamed of
them, and own them no more. For confession of our sins to God can signify
nothing of itself in its direct nature: he sees us when we act them, and keeps
a record of them; and we forget them, unless he reminds us of them by his
grace. So `that to confess them to God does not punish us, or make us ashames;
but confession to him, if it proceeds from shame and sorrow, and is an act of
humility and self-condemnation,' and is a laying open our wounds for cure, then
it is a duty God delights in. In all which circumstances, because we may very
much be helped if we take in the assistance of a spiritual guide, therefore the
church of God, in all ages, hath commended, and, in most ages, enjoined, that
we confess our sins, and discover the state and condition of our souls, to such
a person whom we or our superiors judge fit to help us in such needs. For so
`if we confess our sins one to another,' as St. James advises, we shall obtain
the prayers of the holy man whom God and the church have appointed solemnly to
pray for us; and when he knows our needs, he can best minister comfort or
reproof, oil or caustics; he can more opportunely recommend your particular
state to God; he can determine your cases of conscience, and judge better for
you than you do for yourself; and the shame of opening such ulcers may restrain
your forwardness to contract them; and all these circumstances of advantage
will do very much towards the forgiveness. And this course was taken by the new
converts in the days of the apostles; `For many that believed came and
confessed and showed their deeds.[282] And
it were well if this duty were practised prudently and innocently in order to
public discipline, or private comfort and instruction; but that it be done to
God is a duty not directly for itself, but for its adjuncts and the duties that
go with it, or before it, or after it: which duties, because they are all to be
helped and guided by our pastors and curates of souls, he is careful of his
eternal interest, that will not lose the advantage of using a private guide and
judge. `He that bideth his sins shall not prosper;' Non dirigetur, saith
the vulgar Latin, "he shall want a guide;" but who confesseth and forsaketh
them shall have mercy.[283] And to this
purpose Climacus reports that divers holy persons in that age did use to carry
table-books with them, and in them described an account of all their
determinate thoughts, purposes, words, and actions, in which they had suffered
infirmity; that by communicating the estate of their souls they might be
instructed and guided, or corrected or encouraged.
6. True repentance must reduce to act all its
holy purposes, and enter into and run through the state of holy living,[284] which is contrary to that state of
darkness in which in times past we walked.[285] For to resolve to do it, and yet not to do it, is to
break our resolution and our faith, to mock God, to falsify and evacuate all
the preceding acts of repentance, `and to make our pardon hopeless and our hope
fruitless. He that resolves to live well when a danger is upon him, or a
violent fear, or when the appetites of lust are newly satisfied, or newly
served, and yet when the temptation comes again, sins again, and then is
sorrowful, and resolves once more against it, and yet falls when the temptation
returns, is a vain man, but no true penitent, nor in the state of grace; and if
he chance to die in one of these good moods is very far from salvation; for if
it be necessary that we resolve to live well, it is necessary we should do so.
For resolution is an imperfect act, a term of relation, and signifies nothing
but in order to the actions; it is as a faculty is to the act, as spring is to
the harvest, as eggs are to birds, as a relative to its correspondent, nothing
without it. No man therefore can be in the state of grace and actual favour by
resolutions and holy purposes; these are but the gate and portal towards
pardon; a holy life is the only perfection of repentance, and the firm ground
upon which we can cast the anchor of hope in the mercies of God, through Jesus
Christ.
7. No man is to reckon his pardon immediately
upon his returns from sin to the beginnings of good life, but it is to begin
his hopes and degrees of confidence according as sin dies in him, and grace
lives; as the habits of sin returns but seldom in smaller instances and without
choice, and by surprise without deliberation; and is highly disrelished, and
presently dashed against the rock Christ Jesus, by a holy sorrow and renewed
care, and more strict watchfulness. For a holy life being the condition of the
covenant on our part as we return to God, so God returns to us, and our state
returns to the probabilities of pardon.
8. Every man is to work out his salvation with
fear and trembling; and after the commission of sins his fears must multiply;
because every new sin and every great declining from the ways of God is still a
degree of new danger, and hath increased God's anger, and hath made him more
uneasy to grant pardon; and when he does grant it, it is upon harder terms both
for doing and suffering; that is, we must do more for pardon, and, it may be,
suffer much more. For we must know that God pardons our sins by parts; as our
duty increases, and our care is more prudent and active, so God's anger
decreases: and yet, it may be, the last sin you committed made God unalterably
resolve to send upon you some sad judgment. Of the particulars in all cases we
are uncertain; and therefore we have reason always to mourn for our sins that
have so provoked God, and made our condition so full of danger that, it may be,
no prayers or tears of duty can alter his sentence concerning some sad judgment
upon us. Thus God irrevocably decreed to punish the Israelites for idolatry,
although Moses prayed for them, and God forgave them in some degree; that is,
so that he would not cut them off from being a people; yet he would not forgive
them so, but he would visit that their sin upon them; and he did so.
9. A true penitent must, all the days of his
life[286] pray for pardon, and never thing
the work completed till he dies; not by any act of his own, by no act of the
church, by no forgiveness by the party injured, by no restitution. These are
all instruments of great use and efficacy, and the means by which it is to be
done at length; but still the sin lies at the door, ready to return upon us in
judgment and damnation, if we return to it in choice or action. And whether God
hath forgiven us or no, we know not,[287]
and how far we know not; and all that we have done is not of sufficient worth
to obtain pardon: therefore still pray, and still be sorrowful for ever having
done it, and for ever watch against it; and then those beginnings of pardon,
which are working all the way, will at last be perfected in the day of the
Lord.
10. Defer not at all to repent; much less mayst
thou put it off to thy death-bed. It is not an easy thing to root out the
habits of sin[288] which a man's whole life
hath gathered and confirmed. We find work enough to mortify one beloved lust,
in our very best advantage of strength and time, and before it is so deeply
rooted, as it must needs be supposed to be at the end of a wicked life: and
therefore it will prove impossible, when the work is so great and the strength
so little, when sin is so strong and grace so weak; for they always keep the
same proportion of increase and decrease, and as sin grows grace decays: so
that the more need we have of grace, the less at that time we shall have;
because the greatness of our sins, which makes the need, hath lessened the
grace of God, which should help up, into nothing. To which add this
consideration, that on a man's death-bed the day of repentance is past; for
repentance being the renewing of a holy life, a living the life of grace, it is
a contradiction to say that a man can live a holy life upon his death-bed,
especially if we consider, that for a sinner to live a holy life must first
suppose him to have overcome all his evil habits, and then to have made a
purchase of the contrary graces, by the labours of great prudence,
watchfulness, self-denial and severity.[289]
"Nothing that is excellent can be wrought suddenly."
11. After the beginnings of thy recovery, be
infinitely fearful of a relapse; and therefore, upon the stock of thy sad
experience, observe where thy failings were, and by especial arts fortify that
faculty, and arm against that temptation. For if all those arguments which God
uses to us to preserve our innocence, and thy late danger, and thy fears, and
the goodness of God making thee once to escape, and the shame of thy fall, and
the sense of thy own weaknesses, will not make thee watchful against a fall,
especially knowing how much it costs a man to be restored, it will be
infinitely more dangerous if ever thou fallest again; not only for fear God
should no more accept thee to pardon, but even thy own hopes will be made more
desperate and thy impatience greater, and thy shame turn to impudence, and thy
own will be more estranged, violent, and refractory, and thy latter end will be
worse than thy beginning. To which add this consideration, that thy sin, which
was formerly in a good way of being pardoned, will not only return upon thee
with all its own loads, but with the baseness of unthankfulness, and thou wilt
be set as far back from heaven as ever; and all thy former labours and fears
and watchings and agonies will be reckoned for nothing, but as arguments to
upbraid thy folly, who, when thou hadst set one foot in heaven didst pull that
back, and carry both to hell.
I shall use no other arguments to move a
sinner to repentance, but to tell him, unless he does he shall certainly
perish; and if he does repent timely and entirely, that is, live a holy life,
he shall be forgiven and be saved. But yet I desire, that this consideration be
enlarged with some great circumstances; and let us remember,
1. That to admit mankind to repentance and pardon
was a favour greater than ever God gave to the angels and devils; for they were
never admitted to the condition of second thoughts: Christ never groaned one
groan for them; he never suffered one stripe, nor one affront, nor shed one
drop of blood, to restore them to hopes of blessedness after their first
failings. But this he did for us: he paid the score of our sins, only that this
repentance might be effectual to the great purposes of felicity and
salvation.
2. Consider, that as it cost Christ many millions
of prayers and groans and sighs, so he is now at this instant, and hath been
for these sixteen hundred years, night and day, incessantly praying for grace
to us, that we may repent; and for pardon when we do; and for degrees of pardon
beyond the capacities of our infirmities, and the merit of our sorrows and
amendment;[290] for he ever liveth to make
intercession for us.' And that we may know what it is in behalf of which he
intercedes, St. Paul tells us his design; `We are ambassadors for Christ, as
though he did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead to be reconciled
to God.[291] And what Christ prays us to do,
he prays to God that we may do; that which he desires of us as his servants, he
desires of God, who is the fountain of the grace and powers unto us, and
without whose assistance we can do nothing.
3. That ever we should repent, was so costly a
purchase, and so great a concernment, and so high a favour, and the event is
esteemed by God himself so great an excellency, that our blessed Saviour tells
us, `there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth;'[292] meaning, that when Christ shall be
glorified, and the right hand of his Father make intercession for us, praying
for our repentance, the conversion and repentance of every sinner is part of
Christ's glorification, it is the answering of his prayers, it is a portion of
his reward, in which he does essentially glory by the joys of his glorified
humanity. This is the joy of our Lord himself directly, not of the angels, save
only by reflection: the joy (said our blessed Saviour) shall be in the presence
of the angels; they shall see the glory of the Lord, the answering of his
prayers, the satisfaction of his desires, and the reward of his sufferings, in
the repentance and consequent pardon of a sinner. For therefore be once
suffered, and for that reason he rejoices for ever. And therefore, when a
penitent sinner comes to receive the effect and full consummation of his
pardon, it is called `an entering into the joy of our Lord;' that is, a
partaking of that joy which Christ received at our conversion and enjoyed ever
since.
4. Add to this, that the rewards of heaven are so
great and glorious, and Christ's burden is so light, his yoke is so easy, that
it is a shameless impudence to expect so great glories at a less rate than so
little a service, at a lower rate than a holy life. It cost the heart-blood of
the Son of God to obtain heaven for us upon that condition; and who shall die
again to get heaven for us upon easier terms? What would you do, if God should
command you to kill your eldest son, or to work in the mines for a thousand
years together, or to fast all thy lifetime with bread and water? were not
heaven a very great bargain even after all this? And when God requires nothing
of us but to live soberly, justly, and godly, (which things themselves are to a
man a very great felicity, and necessary to our present well-being,) shall we
think this to be an intolerable burden, and that heaven is too little a
purchase at that price; and that God, in mere justice, will take a death-bed
sigh or groan, and a few unprofitable tears and promises in exchange for all
our duty?
If these motives, joined together with our own
interest, (even as much as felicity, and the sight of God, and the avoiding the
intolerable pains of hell, and many intermedial judgments, come to,) will not
move us to leave, 1. the filthiness, and, 2. the trouble, and, 3. the
uneasiness, and, 4. the unreasonableness of sin, and turn to God, there is no
more to be said: we must perish in our folly.
_________________________
[278] Jer. xiii.17; Joel, ii. 13; Ezak.
xxvii. 31; James, iv. 9.
[279] Hugo de St. Victor.
[280] 1 Cor. xi. 31.
[281] 1 John, i. 9.
[282] Acts. xix. 18.
[283] Prov. xxviii. 13.
[284] Rom. vi.3,4,7; viii.10; xi.22,27;
xiii.13,14. Gal. v.6,24; vi.15. 1 Cor vii.19. 2 Cor.xiii.5. Colos. i.21-23.
Heb. xii.1,14,16; x.16,22. 1 Pet. i.15. 2 Pet.i,3,9,10; iii. 11. 1 John i.6;
iii.8,9; v.16.
[285] Nequam illud verbum, Bene vult, nisi
qui bene facit. Trinummus act. ii. scen. iii.38.
[286] Dandum interstitium
paeniteniae-Tacit.
[287] I peccati et i debiti son sempre piu
di quel che si crede.
[288] Ti oun pros estin
euriskeiu bonfha; tu enantionefoz-Arrian.
[289] Mortem venientem nemo hilaris excipit,
nisi qui ad eam se diu composuerat.
[290] Heb. vii.15.
[291] 2 Cor. v.20.
[292] Luke, xv.7.