himself in such a guilt, as shall arm heaven and earth against him, the vengeance of God, and the indignation of men; who will both espouse the quarrel of a bleeding innocence, and heartily join forces against an insulting baseness, especially when backed with greatness, and set on by misinformation. Histories are full of such examples.

Besides that, it is rarely found, that men hold their greatness for term of life; though their baseness, for the most part, they do; and then, according to the common vicissitude and wheel of things, the proud and the insolent must take their turn too; and after long trampling upon others, come at length, plaudente et gaudente mundo, to be trampled upon themselves. For, as Tully has it in his oration for Milo, "non semper viator a latrone, nonnunquam etiam latro a viatore occiditur."

But to pass from particulars to communities; nothing can be imagined more destructive to society than this villainous practice. For it robs the public of all that benefit and advantage, that it may justly claim and ought to receive from the worth and virtue of particular persons, by rendering their virtue utterly insignificant. For good itself can do no good, while it passes for evil; and an honest man is, in effect, useless, while he is accounted a knave. Both things and persons subsist by their reputation.

An unjust sentence from a tribunal may condemn an innocent person, but misrepresentation condemns innocence itself. For it is this which revives and imitates that inhuman barbarity of the old heathen persecutors, wrapping up Christians in the skins of wild beasts, that so they might be worried and torn in pieces by dogs. Do but paint an angel black, and that is enough to make him pass for a devil. "Let us blacken him, let us blacken him what we can," said that miscreant Harrison* of the blessed king, upon the wording and drawing up his charge against his approaching trial. And when any man is to be run down, and sacrificed to the lust of his enemies, as that royal martyr was, even his "good" (according to the apostle's phrase) "shall be evil spoken of." He must first be undermined, and then undone. The practice is usual, and the method natural. But, to give you the whole malice of it in one word, it is a weapon forged in hell, and formed by the prime artificer and engineer of all mischief, the devil; and none but that God who knows all things, and can do all things, can protect the best of men against it.

A preaching colonel of the parliament-army, and a chief actor in the murder of King Charles the First; notable before for having killed several after quarter given them by others, and using these words in the doing it; "Cursed be he who does the work of the Lord negligently." He was by extraction a butcher's son; and accordingly, in his practices all along, more a butcher than his father.

To which God, the fountain of all good, and the hater of all evil, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.

SERMON XXII.

PREVENTION OF SIN AN INVALUABLE MERCY.

PREACHED AT CHRIST-CHURCH, OXON, Nov. 10, 1678.

"And David said to Abigail, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which sent thee this day to meet me : And blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own hand."—1 SAM. xxv. 32, 33.

THESE words are David's retractation, or laying down of a bloody and revengeful resolution; which, for a while, his heart had swelled with, and carried him on with the highest transport of rage to prosecute. A resolution took up from the sense of a gross indignity and affront passed upon him, in recompense of a signal favour and kindness received from him. For, during his exile and flight before Saul, in which he was frequently put to all the hardships which usually befall the weak flying before the strong, there happening a great and solemn festivity, such as the sheep-shearings used to be in those eastern countries, he condescends, by an honourable and kind message, to beg of a rich and great man some small repast and supply for himself and his poor harassed companions, at that notable time of joy and feasting: a time that might make any thing that looked like want or hunger, no less an absurdity than a misery to all that were round about him. And, as if the greatness of the asker, and the smallness of the thing asked, had not been sufficient to enforce his request, he adds a commemoration of his own generous and noble usage of the person whom he thus addressed to; shewing how that he had been a wall and a bulwark to all that belonged to him, a safeguard to his estate, and a keeper of his flocks; and that both from the violence of robbers, and the licence of his own soldiers; who could much more easily have carved themselves their own provisions, than so great a spirit stoop so low as to ask them.

But in answer to this, (as nothing is so rude and insolent as a wealthy rustic,) all this his kindness is overlooked, his request rejected, and his person most unworthily railed at. Such being the nature of some base minds,

that they can never do ill turns but they must double them with ill words too. And thus David's messengers are sent back to him like so many sharks and runagates, only for endeavouring to compliment an ill nature out of itself; and seeking that by petition, which they might have commanded by their swords. And now, who would not but think, that such ungrateful usage, heightened with such reproachful language, might warrant the justice of the sharpest revenge; even of such a revenge as now began to boil and burn in the breast of this great warrior? For surely, if any thing may justly call up the utmost of a man's rage, it should be bitter and contumelious words from an unprovoked inferior; and if any thing can legalize revenge, it should be injuries from an extremely obliged person. But for all this, revenge, we see, is so much the prerogative of the Almighty, so absolutely the peculiar of Heaven, that no consideration whatsoever can empower even the best men to assume the execution of it in their own case. And therefore, David, by a happy and seasonable pacification, being took off from acting that bloody tragedy which he was just now entering upon, and so turning his eyes from the baseness of him who had stirred up his revenge, to the goodness of that God who had prevented it; he breaks forth into these triumphant praises and doxologies expressed in the text: "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who has kept me this day from shedding blood, and from avenging myself with my own hand."

Which words, together with those going before in the same verse, naturally afford us this doctrinal proposition, which shall be the subject of the following discourse: namely, That prevention of sin is one of the greatest mercies that God can vouchsafe a man in this world.

The prosecution of which shall lie in these two things: first, to prove the proposition; secondly, to apply it.

And first, for the proof of it: the transcendent greatness of this sin-preventing mercy is demonstrable from these four following considerations,

1. Of the condition which the sinner is in, when this mercy is vouchsafed him.

2. Of the principle or fountain from whence this prevention of sin does proceed.

3. Of the hazard a man runs, if the commission of sin be not prevented, whether ever it will come to be pardoned: and,

4thly and lastly, Of the advantage accruing to the soul from the prevention of sin, above what can be had from the bare pardon of it, in case it comes to be pardoned.

Of these in their order: and first, we are to take an estimate of the greatness of this mercy, from the condition it finds the sinner in, when God is pleased to vouchsafe it to

him. It finds him in the direct way to death and destruction; and, which is worse, wholly unable to help himself. For he is actually under the power of a temptation, and the sway of an impetuous lust; both hurrying him on to satisfy the cravings of it by some wicked action. He is possessed and acted by a passion, which, for the present, absolutely overrules him; and so can no more recover himself, than a bowl rolling down a hill stop itself in the midst of its career.

It is a maxim in the philosophy of some, that whatsoever is once in actual motion, will move for ever, if it be not hindered; so a man, being under the drift of any passion, will still follow the impulse of it, till something interpose, and by a stronger impulse turn him another way; but in this case we can find no principle within him strong enough to counteract that principle and to relieve him. For if it be any, it must be either, first, the judgment of his reason; or, secondly, the free choice of his will.

But from the first of these there can be no help for him in his present condition. For while a man is engaged in any sinful purpose, through the prevalence of any passion, during the continuance of that passion, he fully approves of whatsoever he is carried on to do in the strength of it; and judges it, under his present circumstances, the best and most rational course that he can take. Thus we see when Jonas was under the passion of anger, and God asked him, "Whether he did well to be angry?" He answered, "I do well to be angry, even unto death," (Jonas, iv. 9.) And when Saul was under his persecuting fit, what he did appeared to him good and necessary, (Acts, xxvi. 9,) "I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus." But to go no farther than the text; do we not think, that while David's heart was full of his revengeful design, it had blinded and perverted his reason so far, that it struck in wholly with his passion, and told him, that the bloody purpose he was going to execute, was just, magnanimous, and most becoming such a person, and so dealt with, as he was? This being so, how is it possible for a man under a passion to receive any succour from his judgment or reason, which is made a party in the whole action, and influenced to a present approbation of all the ill things which his passion can suggest? This is most certain; and every man may find it by experience, (if he will but impartially reflect upon the method of his own actings, and the motions of his own mind,) that while he is under any passion, he thinks and judges quite otherwise of the proper objects of that passion, from what he does when he is out of it. Take a man under the transports of a vehement rage or revenge, and he passes a

very different judgment upon murder and bloodshed, from what he does when his revenge is over, and the flame of his fury spent. Take a man possessed with a strong and immoderate desire of any thing, and you shall find, that the worth and excellency of that thing appears much greater and more dazzling to the eye of his mind, than it does when that desire, either by satisfaction or otherwise, is quite extinguished. So that while passion is upon the wing, and the man fully engaged in the prosecution of some unlawful object, no remedy or control is to be expected from his reason, which is wholly gained over to judge in favour of it. The fumes of his passion do as really intoxicate and confound his judging and discerning faculty, as the fumes of drink discompose and stupify the brain of a man overcharged with it. When his drink, indeed, is over, he sees the folly and the absurdity, the madness and the vileness of those things, which before he acted with full complacency and approbation. Passion is the drunkenness of the mind; and therefore, in its present workings, not controllable by reason, forasmuch as the proper effect of it is, for the time, to supersede the workings of reason. This principle, therefore, being able to do nothing to the stopping of a man in the eager pursuit of his sin, there remains no other, that can be supposed able to do any thing upon the soul, but that second mentioned, namely, the choice of his will. But this also is as much disabled from recovering a man fully intent upon the prosecution of any of his lusts, as the former. For all the time that a man is so, he absolutely wills, and is fully pleased with what he is designing or going about. And whatsoever perfectly pleases the will, overpowers it; for it fixes and determines the inclination of it to that one thing which is before it, and so fills up all its possibilities of indifference, that there is actually no room for choice. He who is under the power of melancholy, is pleased with his being so. He who is angry, delights in nothing so much as in the venting of his rage. And he who is lustful, places his greatest satisfaction in a slavish following of the dictates of his lust. And so long as the will and the affections are pleased, and exceedingly gratified in any course of acting, it is impossible for a man, so far as he is at his own disposal, not to continue in it; or, by any principle within him, to be diverted or took off from it.

From all which we see, that when a man has took up a full purpose of sinning, he is hurried on to it in the strength of all those principles which nature has given him to act by: for sin having depraved his judgment, and got possession of his will, there is no other principle left him naturally, by which he can make head against it. Nor is this all; but to these internal dispositions to sin, add the ex

ternal opportunities and occasions concurring with them, and removing all lets and rubs out of the way, and, as it were, making the path of destruction plain before the sinner's face; so that he may run his course freely, and without interruption. Nay, when opportunities shall lie so fair, as not only to permit, but even to invite and farther, a progress in sin; so that the sinner shall set forth, like a ship lanched into the wide sea, not only well built and rigged, but also carried on with full wind and tide, to the port or place it is bound for,surely, in this case, nothing under Heaven can be imagined able to stop or countermand a sinner, amidst all these circumstances promoting and pushing on his sinful design. For all that can give force and fury to motion both from within and from without, jointly meet to bear him forward in his present attempt. He presses on like a horse rushing into the battle, and all that should withstand him giving way before him.

Now, under this deplorable necessity of ruin and destruction, does God's preventing grace find every sinner, when it "snatches him like a brand out of the fire," and steps in between the purpose and the commission of his sin. It finds him going on resolutely in the high and broad way to perdition; which yet his perverted reason tells him is right, and his will, pleasant. And therefore, he has no power of himself to leave, or turn out of it; but he is ruined jocundly and pleasantly, and damned according to his heart's desire. And can there be a more wretched and woful spectacle of misery, than a man in such condition ?—a man pleasing and destroying himself together?—a man, as it were, doing violence to damnation, and taking hell by force? So that, when the preventing goodness of God reaches out its arm, and pulls him out of this fatal path, it does by main force even wrest him from himself, and save him, as it were, against his will.

But neither is this his total inability to recover or relieve himself the worst of his condition; but, which is yet much worse, it puts him into a state of actual hostility against, and defiance of, that Almighty God, from whom alone, in this helpless and forlorn condition, he is capable of receiving help. For surely, while a man is going on in a full purpose of sin, he is trampling upon all law, spitting in the face of Heaven, and provoking his Maker in the highest manner; so that none is or can be so much concerned as God himself, to destroy and cut off such an one, and to vindicate the honour of his great name, by striking him dead in his rebellion. And this brings us to the

Second thing proposed, which was to shew, What is the fountain or impulsive cause of this prevention of sin. It is perfectly free grace. A man at best, upon all principles of divinity and sound philosophy, is incapable

of meriting any thing from God. But surely, while he is under the dominion of sin, and engaged in full design and purpose to commit it, it is not imaginable what can be found in him to oblige the divine grace in his behalf. For he is in high and actual rebellion against the only giver of such grace. And therefore, it must needs flow from a redundant, unaccountable fulness of compassion, shewing mercy, because it will shew mercy; from a compassion, which is and must be its own reason, and can have no argument for its exercise but itself. No man in the strength of the first grace can merit the second, (as some fondly speak, for reason they do not,) unless a beggar, by receiving one alms, can be said to merit another. It is not from what a man is, or what he has done-from any virtue or excellency, any preceding worth or desert in him, that God is induced thus to interpose between him and ruin, and so stop him in his full career to damnation. No, says God, (Ezek. xvi. 6,) "When I passed by, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee, Live; yea, I said unto thee, when thou wast in thy blood, Live." The Spirit of God speaks this great truth to the hearts of men with emphasis and repetition, knowing what an aptness there is in them to oppose it. God sees a man wallowing in his native filth and impurity, delivered over as an absolute captive to sin, polluted with its guilt, and enslaved by its power; and in this most loathsome condition fixes upon him as an object of his distinguishing mercy. And to shew yet farther, that the actings of this mercy in the work of prevention are entirely free, do we not sometimes see, in persons of equal guilt and demerit, and of equal progress and advance in the ways of sin, some of them maturely diverted and took off, and others permitted to go on without check or control, till they finish a sinful course in final perdition? So true is it, that if things were cast upon this issue, that God should never prevent sin till something in man deserved it, the best of men would fall into sin, continue in sin, and sin on for ever.

And thus much for the second thing proposed, which was to shew, What was the principle, or fountain, from whence this prevention of sin does proceed. Come we now to the

Third demonstration or proof of the greatness of this preventing mercy, taken from the hazard a man runs, if the commission of sin be not prevented, whether ever it will come to be pardoned.

In order to the clearing of which, I shall lay down these two considerations,

1. That if sin be not thus prevented, it will certainly be committed; and the reason is, because, on the sinner's part, there will be always a strong inclination to sin. So that if other things concur, and Providence cuts

not off the opportunity, the act of sin must needs follow. For an active principle, seconded with the opportunities of action, will infallibly exert itself.

2. The other consideration is, That in every sin deliberately committed, there are (generally speaking) many more degrees of probability, that that sin will never come to be pardoned, than that it will.

And this shall be made appear upon these three following accounts,

1st, Because every commission of sin introduces into the soul a certain degree of hardness, and an aptness to continue in that sin. It is a known maxim, that it is much more difficult to throw out, than not to let in. Every degree of entrance is a degree of possession. Sin taken into the soul is like a liquor poured into a vessel; so much of it as it fills, it also seasons. The touch and tincture go together. So that, although the body of the liquor should be poured out again, yet still it leaves that tang behind it, which makes the vessel fitter for that than for any other. In like manner, every act of sin strangely transforms and works over the soul to its own likeness. in this being to the soul like fire to combustible matter; it assimilates, before it destrovs it.

Sin

2dly, A second reason is, because every commission of sin imprints upon the soul a farther disposition and proneness to sin. As the second, third, and fourth degrees of heat are more easily introduced than the first. Every one is both a preparative and a step to the next. Drinking both quenches the present thirst, and provokes it for the future. When the soul is beaten from its first station, and the mounds and outworks of virtue are once broken down, it becomes quite another thing from what it was before. In one single eating of the forbidden fruit, when the act is over, yet the relish remains; and the remembrance of the first repast is an easy allurement to the second. One visit is enough to begin an acquaintance; and this point is gained by it, that when the visitant comes again, he is no more a stranger.

3dly, The third and grand reason is, because the only thing that can entitle the sinner to pardon, which is repentance, is not in the sinner's power; and he who goes about the work will find it so. It is the gift of God; and though God has certainly promised forgiveness of sin to every one who repents, yet he has not promised to any one to give him grace to repent. This is the sinner's hard lot, that the same thing which makes him need repentance, makes him also in danger of not obtaining it. For it provokes and offends that Holy Spirit which alone can bestow this grace; as the same treason which puts a traitor in need of his prince's mercy, is a great and a just provocation to his prince to deny it him.

Now, let these three things be put together, First, That every commission of sin, in some degree, hardens the soul in that sin. Secondly, That every commission of sin disposes the soul to proceed farther in sin. And, thirdly, That to repent, and turn from sin, (without which all pardon is impossible,) is not in the sinner's power; and then, I suppose, there cannot but appear a greater likelihood, that a sin once committed, will, in the issue, not be pardoned, than that it will. To all which, add the coufirmation of general experience, and the real event of things, that where one man ever comes to repent, an hundred, I might say a thousand at least, end their days in final impenitence.

All which considered, surely there cannot need a more pregnant argument of the greatness of this preventing mercy, if it did no more for a man than this, that his grand, immortal concern, more valuable to him than ten thousand worlds, is not thrown upon a critical point-that he is not brought to his last stake that he is rescued from the first descents into hell, and the high probabilities of damnation.

For whatsoever the issue proves, it is certainly a miserable thing to be forced to cast lots for one's life; yet, in every sin, a man does the same for eternity. And therefore, let the boldest sinner take this one consideration along with him when he is going to sin, that, whether the sin he is about to act ever comes to be pardoned or no, yet, as soon as it is acted, it quite turns the balance, puts his salvation upon the venture, leaves him but one cast for all; and, which is yet much more dreadful, makes it ten to one odds against him.

But let us now alter the state of the matter, so as to leave no doubt in the case; but suppose, that the sin which, upon non-prevention, comes to be committed, comes also to be repented of, and consequently, to be pardoned. Yet, in the

Fourth and last place, The greatness of this preventing mercy is eminently proved from those advantages accruing to the soul from the prevention of sin, above what can be had from the bare pardon of it; and that, in these two great respects,

1. Of the clearness of a man's condition. 2. Of the satisfaction of his mind. And, First, For the clearness of his condition. If innocence be preferable to repentance, and to be clean be more desirable than to be cleansed, then surely prevention of sin ought to have the precedence of its pardon. For so much of prevention, so much of innocence. There are, indeed, various degrees of it; and God, in his infinite wisdom, does not deal forth the same measure of his preventing grace to all. Sometimes he may suffer the soul but just to begin the sinful production, in reflecting upon a sin,

suggested by the imagination, with some complacency and delight-which, in the apostle's phrase, is to "conceive sin" and then, in these early, imperfect beginnings, God perhaps may presently dash and extinguish it. Or possibly he may permit the sinful conception to receive life and form, by passing into a purpose of committing it; and then he may make it prove abortive, by stifling it before ever it comes to the birth. Or perhaps God may think fit to let it come even "to the birth," by some strong endeavours to commit it, and yet then deny it "strength to bring forth;" so that it never comes into actual commission. Or, lastly, God may suffer it to be born, and see the world, by permitting the endeavour of sin to pass into the commission of it. And this is the last fatal step but one; which is, by frequent repetition of the sinful act, to continue and persist in it, till at length it settles into a fixed, confirmed habit of sin; which, being properly that which the apostle calls the "finishing of sin," ends certainly in death death, not only as to merit, but also as to actual infliction.

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Now peradventure, in this whole progress, preventing grace may sometimes come in to the poor sinner's help - but "at the last hour of the day;" and, having suffered him to run all the former risk and maze of sin, and to descend so many steps downwards to the black regions of death, as, first, from the bare thought and imagination of sin, to look upon it with some beginnings of appetite and delight; from thence, to purpose and intend it; and from intending, to endeavour it ; and from endeavouring, actually to commit it; and having committed it, perhaps for some time to continue in it: and then, I say, after all this, God may turn the fatal stream, and by a mighty grace interrupt its course, and keep it from passing into a settled habit, and so hinder the absolute completion of sin in final obduracy.

Certain it is, that wheresoever it pleases God to stop the sinner on this side hell, how far soever he has been advanced in his way towards it, it is a vast ineffable mercy,mercy as great as life from the dead, and salvation to a man tottering with horror upon the very edge and brink of destruction. But if, more than all this, God shall be pleased by an early grace to prevent sin so soon, as to keep the soul in the virginity of its first innocence, not tainted with the desires, and much less deflowered with the formed purpose of any thing vile and sinful-what an infinite goodness is this! It is not a converting, but a crowning grace; such an one as irradiates, and puts a circle of glory about the head of him upon whom it descends; it is the Holy Ghost coming down upon him "in the form of a dove," and setting him triumphant above the necessity of tears and sorrow,