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 or duty can alter his sentence concerning some sad judgment upon us. 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.

Thus

9. A true penitent must, all the days of his life, pray for pardon, and never think 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, 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, mayest thou put it off to thy death-bed. It is not an easy thing to root out the habits of sin, 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, 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 us, 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. "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.

Motives to Repentance.

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 we might be admitted to repent, and 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; and this prayer he will continue till his second coming: "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."+ 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 tell us, "there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth:"‡ meaning, that when Christ shall be glorified, and at the right hand of his Father make intercession for us, praying for our repentance, † 2 Cor. v. 20. + Luke xv. 7.

*Heb. vii. 15.

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 he 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 to gether, 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 of themselves are to a man a very great felicity, and necessary to our present wellbeing,) 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.

SECTION X.

Of Preparation to, and the Manner how to Receive the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

THE celebration of the holy sacrament is the great mys teriousness of the Christian religion, and succeeds to the most solemn rite of natural and Judaical religion, the law of sacrificing. For God spared mankind, and took the sacrifice of beasts, together with our solemn prayers, for an instrument of expiation. But these could not purify the soul from sin, but were typical of the sacrifice of something that could. But nothing could do this, but either the offering of all that sinned, that every man should be the anathema or devoted thing; or else by some one of the same capacity, who by some superadded excellency might in his own personal sufferings have a value great enough to satisfy for all the whole kind of sinning persons. This the Son of God, Jesus Christ, God and man, undertook, and finished by a sacrifice of himself upon the altar of the cross.

2. This sacrifice, because it was perfect, could be but one, and that once: but because the needs of the world should last as long as the world itself, it was necessary, that there should be a perpetual ministry established, whereby this one sufficient sacrifice should be made eternally effectual to the several new arising needs of all the world, who should desire it, or in any sense be capable of it.

3. To this end Christ was made a priest for ever: he was initiated or consecrated on the cross, and there began his priesthood, which was to last till his coming to judgment. It began on earth, but was to last and be officiated in heaven, where he sits perpetually representing and exhibiting to the Father that great effective sacrifice, which he offered on the cross, to eternal and never-failing purposes.

4. As Christ is pleased to represent to his Father that great sacrifice as a means of atonement and expiation for all mankind, and with special purposes and intendment for all the elect, all that serve him in holiness: so he hath appointed, that the same ministry shall be done upon earth too, in our manner, and according to our proportion; and therefore hath constituted and separated an order of men, who, by "showing forth the Lord's death," by sacramental representation, may pray unto God after the same manner

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