complied with; which clearly shews that these purposes and resolutions were indeed false and deceitful.

And now, how does the death-bed penitent know, but the resolutions he makes there may be as weak and unsincere, as those that heretofore he made, and broke in the time of his health? Possibly they may be sincere; but he cannot certainly know it, but God alone, who only can foresee, whether, in case his life should be prolonged, those resolves would be made actuate in performance.

And then, for the other two things, his vehement expressions of sorrow, and his concernment about his salvation, are of as uncertain information as the other. For a man may mourn and weep for those sins, which he yet afterwards returns to, continues in, and perhaps dies under; which shews that tears, and sighs, and complaints, and all other expressions of sorrow whatsoever, are utterly fallacious. But in the state a man now is, all these may very well be presumed to issue from the fear and terror of an approaching damnation. And fear is a kind of constraint and violence upon the will; so that all schoolmen unanimously hold, that actions proceeding from fear are of a mixed nature, and not perfectly voluntary.

Now all fear is from a principle of self-love; and therefore all religious actions, commenced upon this motive, are spurious, and rejected by God.

This supposed, I affirm, that it is more than ten to one but that all the pomp of a death-bed repentance, in its highest and most angelical resolutions, in its most sorrowful, mournful, and affectionate discoveries, moves wholly upon this false spring of fear,

suggested upon the dismal apparition of the nearness of death, and the frightful thoughts of a miserable eternity.

It is highly probable that there is scarce one of an hundred in this condition, but goes off with the forced sorrows of fear instead of repentance; and so dies rather terrified than sanctified.

And would not any rational man here rather fear and suspect that his lot may fall amongst the hundred, than promise himself that he shall be that one exempted person? Certainly it is ill venturing the salvation of an immortal soul upon such huge unlikelihoods, such vast disparities.

But to conclude, and wrap up all that I have said for and against a death-bed repentance: I aver, that it is not at all in a man's power, but only in God's: and that God, being offended with a wicked life, is more likely to deny than to give it at the hour of death that a man has all the indispositions of body and mind imaginable to unfit and disable him for it: that it is very seldom true, always suspicious; and that when true, yet it is not discernible by any certain, infallible sign to be so: in short, that it is most difficult, doubtful, dangerous, and very improbable.

In fine, I have this alone to say for it, (and to a considering person I need say no more against it,) that it is only not impossible.

To Almighty God be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.

U 4

SERMON XXXVII.

ROMANS i. 3, 4.

Περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ, τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος Δαβίδ, κατὰ σάρκα, Τοῦ ὁρισθέντος υἱοῦ Θεοῦ ἐν δυνάμει, κατὰ πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης, ἐξ ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν, Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν.

Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;

And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. IN these words we have an adequate and entire description of the person of Christ. For in the third verse his human nature, and in the fourth his divine, is fully and exactly represented to us.

I delight not, I must confess, to insist much upon philological or philosophical discourses in dispensing the word; but where the construction of the text lies so, that we cannot otherwise reach the full sense of it, but by making our way through doubts and ambiguities, we must have recourse to such expedients.

The present exercise, therefore, shall consist of these two parts.

I. An explication of the words.

II. An accommodation of them to the present occasion.

I. For the first of these we must know, that the scheme of the Greek carries a very different face

from our translation, which difference renders the sense of the words very disputable.

The explication of which I shall comprise in the resolution of these four inquiries.

1st, Whether the translation rightly renders it, that Christ was declared to be the Son of God, since the original admits of a different signification.

2dly, What is imported by this term, with power. 3dly, What is intended by the following words, according to the spirit of holiness.

4thly and lastly, How those words, by the resurrection from the dead, are to be understood.

In all which, as the resolution will manifest the reason of the doubt, I shall be as brief as I can; for if I should give myself scope to pursue each particular through all the difficulties that might attend it, it would fill a much larger discourse than the measure of the present exercise will allow. After which explication I shall shew, that the resurrection of Christ is the greatest and the principal argument to prove the divinity of his person.

1st, And first for the first of these: that which we render declared, is in the Greek opiofévros, which may signify decreed, or determined; and accordingly the vulgar Latin reads it prædestinatus, and some other destinatus est. But with what propriety, or indeed with what tolerable sense, Christ could be said to be decreed to be the Son of God, which he was from eternity; and especially to be decreed to be so by the resurrection from the dead, a thing that had happened very lately, is hard to understand, and much harder to make out. That which is the proper object of decree or destination is something fu

ture; but that which was eternal cannot be imagined in any period of time to be future.

Those indeed who deny the eternal godhead of Christ, and date his deity entirely, and his sonship principally, from his resurrection, are great friends to this exposition of the word; and well may they be so, for it serves their turn to very great purposes: for if Christ was constituted eminently the Son of God at and by his resurrection, it might very properly be said of him, that he was decreed so to be antecedently to his resurrection; but how this can consist with the supposition of his eternal godhead, I must profess, I cannot apprehend.

Aquinas indeed retains this interpretation of the word by prædestinatus est; but it was the gross ignorance of the Greek tongue and all critical learning in those days, that betrayed so great a judgment to the inconvenience of holding that, of which to give a rational account he took so much pains, and to so little purpose.

Erasmus therefore observes, (whose authority in this sort of learning is inferior to none,) that there is another proper signification of the word opige besides to decree, or determine, and that is, to declare, shew forth, or manifest; hence in grammar the indicative mood is called opiσTIKòs; and in logic the definition of a thing, which is the declaration of its nature, is called opos or ópíopos; all which confirm this interpretation.

And for the agreeableness of it to this place, besides the utter disagreeableness of any other signification; that is proved from hence, as that it carries a most fit and emphatical opposition to the words of