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needs of rich men cannot be supplied but by princes; and they are left to the temptation of great vices to make reparation of their needs; and the ambitious labours of men to get great estates, is but like the selling of a fountain to buy a fever, a parting with content to buy necessity, a purchase of an unhandsome condition at the price of infelicity: that princes, and they that enjoy most of the world, have most of it but in title, and supreme rights, and reserved privileges, peppercorns, homages, trifling services and acknowledgments, the real use descending to others, to more substantial purposes. These considerations may be useful to the curing of covetousness; that, the grace of mercifulness enlarging the heart of a man, his hand may not be contracted; but reached out to the poor in alms.

SECTION IX.

Of Repentance.

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 are 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 be 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 like. 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

We repent or rise

condition; for so we may repent often. from death but once, but 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.

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Acts and Parts of Repentance.

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 :" 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 circumstance 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 any thing; 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.

P Jer. xiii. 17. Joel, ii. 13. Ezek. xxvii. 31. James, iv. 9.
VOL. IV.

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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, shall have equalled or exceeded the pleasure we had in commission of the sin'.

4. True repentance is a punishing duty, and acts its sorrow; and judges and condemns the sin by voluntary 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 particulars. But I before intimated, that the punishing actions of repentance are only actions of sorrow, and therefore are to make up 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 any thing of this, reconciled to the eternal favour of God; for as yet, this is but the introduction to repentance.

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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, 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 + 1 John, i. 9.

Hugo de St. Victor.

1 Cor. xi. 31.

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 ashamed; 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 shewed their deeds "." 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 hideth his sins, shall not prosper;"

u ̓Αναγκαῖον τοῖς πεπιστευμένοις τὴν οἶκον μίαν τῶν μυστηρίων τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐξομολογεῖσθαι Tà àμagrńμara.—St. Basil. reg. brev. 228. Concil. Laod. c. 2. Concil. Quin. sext. c. 102. Tertul. de Pœnit.

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