his injured justice, shall we therefore upbraid and detract from the freedom of his mercy? Cannot he vindicate one attribute, without eclipsing the glory of another?

See how the whole scripture almost sets forth and commends to us God's mercy and forgiveness, under this one endearing property of its freedom. In Rom. iii. 24, we are said to be justified freely by his grace. Ephes. i. 7, we are said to have received forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace. And in Matthew xviii. in the parable where the servant is brought in unable to pay a vast sum, in which he was indebted to his lord, it is said in the 27th verse, that his lord, being moved with mere compassion, loosed him, and forgave him the debt.

And in Isaiah Iv. 1, where the graces and spiritual benefits which God confers upon his saints are set forth by wine and milk, and men are called upon to buy them, yet it is by a strange and a new way of purchase; Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Now if his very selling be so free, what then must be his gift?

And thus much for the first thing, in which the greatness of God's mercy in the forgiveness of sin shines forth; that the principle of it is his own free inclination; that no impulsive cause from without engages and induces him to it by any external impression. There can be no other reason assigned why God is merciful, but because he will be merciful. His mercy is like a fountain, which, though it flows freely and continually, yet there is no other cause of its flowing but its own fulness.

(2.) The second thing from which we are to take

an estimate of the greatness of this forgiveness, is the sins that are remitted.

Now the greatness of a pardon, as it relates to the sins and offences that are forgiven by it, is advanced according as they are heightened by these two properties:

1. Number.

2. Greatness.

1. For the first of these, they so far partake of this property of number, till they even contradict it, and become numberless. David, who was none of the greatest sinners, yet finds the account of his sin in Psalm xl. 12, to amount to more than the hairs of his head; and certainly that is more than the head itself can number.

In Matthew xviii. 22, we shall find our Saviour stretching an human forgiveness to an offence seventy-seven times repeated. And certainly then the pardons that issue from an infinite mercy must needs keep the distance of a suitable proportion.

And truly, if we come to compute the number and to audit the account of our sins, from Gen. vi. 5, where the thoughts of man's heart are avouched to be evil, and only evil, and that continually; the sum total must swell to such a vast, enormous multitude, that none can number them, but the same infinite God that forgives them.

In Proverbs xxiv. 16, the justest man living falls seven times a day, a small proportion compared to the licentiousness of some sinners, who lash forth into criminal acts every moment. Yet to what an high reckoning will even this small proportion grow in the space of threescore years and ten, the com

Yet when God comes to forgive, he cancels the entire bill, and by one act of grace dashes the whole handwriting that is against us.

The soul of man is naturally restless, always doing something, whether in the retirements of thought and desire, or upon the open stage of practice; and where the heart is unsanctified, unrenewed by grace, (as in most men in the world it is, for some considerable part of their lives,) there, so long as the soul is doing, it is doing evil: and that natural activity of the mind is as sinful as it is restless.

There is a tinder of concupiscence in all our natures, apt to catch at every spark that is struck from sinful objects. And we are surrounded with these, so that the constant emissions of the one, falling upon the ready receptions of the other, must needs make the flame continual.

Now where the faculty of sinning is restless, the opportunities to draw it forth perpetual, must not the sinful actions flowing from that faculty needs be innumerable? If there be a fire burning, and a bellows always blowing, certainly the sparks flying from it will be numberless.

We may be able to number our days, but not the sins committed in those days. This would baffle all our arithmetic, all our ciphers, and arts of computation. And I am afraid that we should stand at an infinite, eternal distance from forgiveness, if God should promise to forgive us our sins only upon this condition, that we should first reckon them.

But now must not that forgiveness needs be glorious, which rises not only to the remission of talents, but of ten thousand talents? that multiplies

itself beyond what is numberless? that even outdoes our thoughts and outruns our desires?

We may well fail in our expressions of it. But surely, when our sins are for number like the sands of the sea or the stars of heaven; the mercy that forgives them must needs be deeper than the one, and higher than the other.

2. The second property of sins that heightens their forgiveness is their greatness. We have compared them to stars for number, and they may equal them also for magnitude.

We have them painted out to us in their colours, Isaiah i. 18, with a crimson tincture and a scarlet dye; with a redness and a blushing; sin thus wearing the colour of shame. Yet in the same verse we have forgiveness, changing their hue to the whiteness of snow and the innocence of wool.

There is not usually any thing more provoking, or so hardly pardoned, as the contumely of words, and reviling language; and yet we have the divine mercy enlarging itself, even to a total remission of this in Matthew xii. 31; All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, except the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Now blasphemy touches God in his honour, that is, in the apple of his eye, in that of which he is jealous, and in which he admits of no rival. And when God will put up such blows at our hands, such affronts, and such wounds inflicted upon his good name; it is a pardon peculiar to a divine nature, and which men may enjoy indeed, but seldom imitate.

Again, in 1 Corinth. vi. 9, 10, we have a musterroll of as vile sinners as sin could make, or hell receive; Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, thieves,

covetous, drunkards, extortioners. And yet the rear of all brought up with this in the 11th verse, And such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified.

And if so, you may be sure that they are also pardoned; for grace never purifies, but where it also pardons. Sanctification and justification are inseparable.

Now one would think that a milder punishment were a sufficient act of favour to such notorious criminals; and that a mitigation might pass for a pardon, where the sin seems too great for a total absolution.

Yet, as if God seemed to take advantage from our baseness, and by his providence permitted men to be such wretched sinners, that they might be fit materials for an infinite compassion, he passes over all, receives them into favour, and by his pardon makes them as free as those who never needed pardon: thus considering, not what was fit for them to obtain, but what was glorious for himself to do.

But now further to demonstrate the greatness of the sins which God remits, we must take the dimensions of them from the greatness of their object, which is no less than an infinite majesty, the Lord of the universe, the glorious maker and governor of all things. And every affront to a king greatens and enlarges, according to the condition of the person that is offended; a blow given to majesty, an injury done to the throne, it is presently stampt with a new superscription: every offence is treason, and every stubbornness becomes rebellion.

Take in also the aggravations of the sin, that it was against the endearments of a creature, against

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