Now, when a penitent upon his death-bed has wrought his repentance to the highest resolutions and most sincere purposes of future obedience, if God immediately put a period to his life, is it any fault of his, if he is took off from so full an execution of those purposes as he intended?

Certainly God, who can pierce into his soul, and view the sincerity of those resolutions, seeing that, in case he should live many years, they would be all performed, and actually drawn forth into so many years obedience, he cannot but rate those intentions according to the utmost effect and issue that they would have had under such opportunities.

And as for the time, so also for the quality of duty: where God has visited a man with such bodily weakness, that he cannot move or stir from his bed, do we not think that God accepts his desire to attend the church, to kneel in prayer, with other acts of devotion to which the body must concur, as truly and really, as if he had strength of body actually to perform all these?

Truly, if we deny that he does, we have strange thoughts of the equity and goodness of his nature; and degrade his mercy to a pitch below the mercies of an earthly father, and the dispensations of a prudent governor.

Indeed, when God is said in such a case to accept of the will, and to dispense with the deed, it is only a further explication of that known, unalterable rule of justice, that God cannot command or require the performance of a thing impossible.

But should he exact the deed, when the weakness of a man's condition utterly disables him to perform it; should he command a bedrid person to stand or kneel, or require ten years' practice of holiness from him that is to live but an hour, what could this be but to rank his commands amongst those unreasonable, tyrannical injunctions that will and require impossibilities?

3dly, The third argument why a death-bed repentance may prove effectual is, because repentance saves not, as it is a work, or such a number of works; but as it is the effect of a renewed nature and a sanctified heart, from which it flows. But now, the renovation of our nature being the sole imme

diate work of God's Spirit, it may be wrought (if it so please him) in the last moment of our lives, as well as in twenty years for, being a new creation, and the production of a quality in the soul that was not there before, there is nothing hinders, but that by an infinite power it may be transacted in an instant.

Upon which I argue thus: If God can sanctify and renew a man's nature in the last instant of his life, then a person thus sanctified is either in a state of salvation, or he is not: if not, then a man truly sanctified may be in a damnable condition, which is false and absurd: but if he is, then, inasmuch as a death-bed penitent may be thus sanctified and renewed, he may be also in a state of salvation, which is inseperably annexed to a true sanctification.

But now, on the other hand, if we say that a man cannot be a true penitent, and in a state of salvation, unless he has spent such a considerable number of years or months in the continual exercise of holy duties; what is this, but to ascribe his salvation to such a measure of works? This is evident: for a death-bed penitent may have all other qualifications, as a sanctified heart, a sincere resolution, and a direction of it to the glory of God; so that there is nothing wanting but such a number of holy actions. Now if, notwithstanding the former qualities, salvation must be yet denied to such a penitent, is it not most clear that salvation is stated upon the opus operatum of such a parcel of holy performances? So that it is not the sincerity, but the multitude; not the kind, but the number of our actions that must save us. Which assertion if we admit, and improve into its due consequences, I cannot see but that it must needs bring us back to our beads.

4thly, A fourth argument is this: If to repent sincerely be a thing at the last moment of our lives impossible to be done, then, for that instant, impenitence is not a sin. For it cannot be a sin not to do that which in its nature cannot be done. The reason is, because where there is no obligation, there can be no sin, inasmuch as sin is either the transgression or omission of something that we stand obliged to do: but I have shewn before, that no man can be obliged to impossibilities. It follows therefore from hence, that not to repent upon one's

death-bed is no sin, because, according to the opinion hitherto maintained, to repent there is impossible. Which argument is of so much quickness and force, that were there no other, this alone were enough both to eatablish ours, and to overthrow the contrary assertion.

5thly, The fifth argument that I shall produce is this: That to deny that a death-bed repentance can be effectual to salvation, is a clear restraint and limitation of the compass and prerogative of God's mercy.

For since it is a thing that neither involves any contradiction in itself, nor yet to any one of God's attributes, it is both an impudent and an insolent thing, for any man to deny the possibility of it. For shall we prescribe to omnipotence, or set bounds to an infinite mercy, and say, that this and this it can do; but this it cannot? What, if God, willing to shew the riches of his mercy, calls and accepts of some at the very last hour of the day, and rewards them equally with those that came in at the first; have we any thing to reply against such a proceeding, or to carp at his justice, or to murmur at our brother's felicity? God expressly says, that his thoughts are not as our thoughts; nor his mercies as our mercies. And indeed, sad and lamentable were the condition of most sinners, if they were. The number of those that should be saved would be much less, and the volume of the book of life contracted to a very small epitome.

I should think it therefore much more agreeable to a pious sobriety, to acquiesce in the method of God's dealing; and, according to rule of the civil law, rather to amplify, than to limit acts of favour.

If God brings a sinner to himself at the last, and so makes his death-bed a portal and entrance to heaven; if he accepts of the purposes, and crowns the short endeavours of a late repentance with life and glory; I, for my part, have nothing to do here, but to congratulate the person that obtains, and to adore the mercy that gives it.

6thly, The sixth and last argument for the confirmation of the same truth is this: That if a death-bed repentance cannot possibly be effectual to salvation, then a sinner upon his death

bed, having not repented before, may lawfully, and without sin, despair. The reason is clear; for where the proper object of hope ceases, which is possibility of pardon, there despair must lawfully succeed: for despair is then only a sin when there is ground of hope, of which here there is none. In short, despair cannot be sinful where it is rational; but it is most rational to despair of salvation, when the only means of attaining it, which is repentance, becomes impossible.

But now, I desire any one to shew me any thing in the gospel that admits of despair in the time of this life; nay, that does not prescribe and condemn it as utterly sinful: it is proper only to the state of the damned, whose condition God has declared to be remediless. But God has not signified that a sinner, in any part of his life whatsoever, is out of all possibility of mercy and salvation. Indeed, as a man dies, so he continues for ever; but while he lives, his condition is alterable.

And therefore that assertion that must engage a man both certainly and lawfully to despair, while he is on this side death, is surely a branch of a new, unheard of gospel and divinity.

And thus I have endeavoured to demonstrate, that it is not impossible for a man effectually to repent upon his death-bed. Which doctrine, if it be true, truth, as such, cannot be hurtful, however by accident and abuse it may.

But I shall now proceed, from these arguments, to such considerations as will be more strong to keep off the encroaches of presumption, than these can be to invite them. And so I am come to the second general head, proposed for the management of this subject, viz. that supposing that a death-bed repentance may, in the issue, prove effectual, yet for any one to design and build upon it beforehand is highly dangerous, and therefore absolutely irrational.

The truth of which will be made to appear from these considerations.

1st. The first shall be taken from the exceeding unfitness of a man at this time, above all others, to exercise this duty. Repentance is a work that will take up the whole soul; that

will distend every faculty, and fill every part and power of it, even when it is in its most vigorous, fresh, and active condition.

It is transacted by the sublimest and most refined operation of the soul, which is reflection. The soul must retreat into itself, view its accounts, and summon the records of memory, to give in a faithful relation of all a man's past sins, of all the passages and remarks of his former life. And having done this, the mind must dwell upon a sad and severe consideration of the nature, degrees, and aggravating circumstances of each sin, till thought improves into affection, and opens the penitential sluices, and fills the heart with sorrow, mourning, and weeping for sin; which sorrow for sin rising higher and higher, till at length it ends in detestation of it, and resolutions against it, it becomes the first degree of a true repentance.

But is a man fit to encounter and run through all these difficulties, amidst those many impediments, both natural and civil, that clog and hang about him in his death-bed condition?

And first, for natural hinderances: his memory will be weak and treacherous, his judgment infirm, and his apprehension slow and dark. And then, perhaps, all these disabilities may be increased by the accession of bodily distempers: either lethargies may dispirit and benumb him, or some acute, painful disease divert and enrage him. So that the whole man is in a tumult and disorder; within is weakness, without is pain: his intellectuals forsake him, his fever scorches him; life is troublesome, and yet death terrible. In short, the man is very unfit to use his reason, to remember, or contemplate; and being so, how can he be fit to repent? which is a work that includes in it all these operations.

But we will suppose the death-bed penitent, by the mercy of Providence, pretty well freed from these natural impediments, and that he has a good proportion of memory, a good reserve of judgment, with a readiness to apprehend and discern, and to exercise the several functions of a rational nature. Yet then there are civil obstructions, worldly incumbrances, settling the estate, providing for friends, satisfying the craving importunities of relations. And what can a poor, dying man