)

with the Father, and he is the propitiation for our sins: And concerning lapsed christians St. Paul gave instruction, that, If any man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a man in the spirit of meekness, considering lest ye also be tempted. The Corinthian christian committed incest, and was par doned: and Simon Magus, after he was baptized, offered to commit his own sin of simony, and yet St. Peter bid him pray for pardon: And St. James tells, that, If the sick man sends for the elders of the church, and they pray over him, and he confess his sins, they shall be forgiven him. 16. That only one sin is declared › to be irremissible, the sin against the Holy Ghost, the sin unto death, as St. John calls it, for which we are not bound to pray; for all others we are: And certain it is, no man commits a sin against the Holy Ghost, if he be afraid he hath and desires that he had not; for such penitential passions are against the definition of that sin. 17. That all the sermons in the scripture written to Christians" and disciples of Jesus, exhorting men to repentance, to be afflicted, to mourn and to weep, to confession of sins, are sure testimonies of God's purpose and desire to forgive us, even when we fall after baptism; and if our fall after baptism were irrecoverable, then all preaching were in vain, and our faith were also vain, and we could not with comfort rehearse the creed, in which, as soon as ever we profess Jesus to have died for our sins, we also are condemned by our own conscience of a sin that shall not be forgiven; | No. 13.

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and then all exhortations and comforts, and fasts, and disciplines were useless and too late, if they were not given us before we can understand them; for most commonly as soon as we can, we enter into the regions of sin; for we commit evil actions before we understand, and together with our understanding they begin to be imputed. 18. That if it could be otherwise infants were very ill provided for in the church, who were baptized when they had no stain upon their brows, but the misery they contracted from Adam: And they are left to be angels for ever after, and live innocently in the midst of their ignorances, and weaknesses, and temptations, and the heat and follies of youth; or else to perish in an eternal ruin. We cannot think or speak good things of God, if we entertain such evil suspicions of the mercies of the Father of our Lord Jesus. 19. That the long sufferance and patience of God is indeed wonderful: But therefore it leaves us in certainties of pardon, so long as there is possibilty to return, if we reduce the power to act. 20. That God calls upon us to forgive our brother seventy times seven times. And yet all that is but like the forgiving a hundred pence for his sake who forgives us ten thousand talents: For so the Lord professed that he had done to him who was his servant and his domestic. 21. That if we can forgive an hundred thousand times, it is certain God will do so to us; our blessed Lord having commanded us to pray for pardon, as we pardon our offending and. penitent brother. 22. That even in the case of very great sins, and great judgments inflicted upon the sin

ners, wise and good men, and precedents of religion, have declared their sense to be, that God spent all his anger, and made it expire in that temporal misery; and so it was supposed to have been done in the case of Ananias: But that the hopes of any penitent man may not rely upon any uncertainty, we find in holy scripture, that those Christians who had for their scandalous crimes deserved to be given over to satan to be buffeted, yet had hopes to be saved in the day of the Lord. 23. That God glories in the titles of mercy and forgiveness, and will not have his appellatives so finite and limited as to expire in one act or in a seldom pardon. 24. That man's condition were desperate and like that of the fallen angels, equally desperate, but equally oppressed, considering our infinite weaknesses and ignorances, (in respect of their excellent understanding, and perfect choice) if he could be admitted to no repentance after his infant baptism; and if we may be admitted to one, there is nothing in the covenant of the gospel but he may also to a second, and so for ever, as long as he can repent, and return and live to God in a timely religion. 25. That every man is a sinner: (James iii. 2.) In many things we offend all; and (1 John j. 8.) If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves; and therefore all either must perish, or else there is mercy for all; and so there is, upon this very stock; because (Rom. v. 8.) Christ died for sinners, and (Rom. xi. 32.) God hath comprehended all under sin, that he might have mercy upon all. 26. That if ever

God sends temporal punishments into the world with purposes of amendment, and if they be not all of them certain consignations to hell, and unless every man that breaks his leg, or in punishment loses a child or wife, be certainly damned, it is certain that God in these cases is angry and loving, chastises the sin to amend the person, and smites that he may cure, aud judges that he may absolve. 27. That he that will not quench the smoaking flax, nor break the bruised reed, will not tie us to perfection, and the laws and measures of heaven upon earth: and if in every period of our repentance he is pleased with our duty, and the voice of our heart, and the hand of our desires, he hath told us plainly that he will not only pardon all the sins of the days of our folly, but the returns and surprises of sins in the days of repentance, if we give no way, and allow no affection, and give no place to any thing that is God's enemy; all the past sins, and all the seldom-returning and ever-repented evils being put upon the accounts of the

cross,

An exercise against Despair in the Day of our

Death.

TO which may be added this short exercise, to be used for the curing the temptation to direct despair, in case that the hope and faith of good men be assaulted in the day of their calamity.

I consider that the ground of my trouble is my sin; and if it were not for that, I should not need to

be troubled: but the help that all the world looks for is such as supposes a man to be a sinner. Indeed, if from myself I were to derive my title to heaven, then my sins were a just argument of despair: but now that they bring me to Christ, that they derive me to an appeal to God's mercies, and to take sanctuary in the cross, they ought not, they cannot infer a just cause of despair. I am sure it is a stranger thing that God should take upon him hands and feet, and those hands and feet should be nailed upon a cross, than that a man should be partaker of the felicities of pardon and life eternal: and it were stranger yet, that God should do so much for man, and that a man that desires it, that labours for it, that is in life and possibilities of working his salvation, should inevitably miss that end for which that God suffered so much. For what is the meaning, and what is the extent, and what are the significations of the divine mercy in pardoning sinners? If it be thought a great matter that I am charged with original sin, I confess I feel the weight of it in loads of temporal infelicities, and proclivities to sin: But I fear not the guilt of it, since I am baptised; and it cannot do honour to the reputation of God's mercy, that it should be all spent in remissions of what I never chose, never acted, never knew of, could not help, concerning which I receive no commandment, no prohibition.. But (blessed be God) it is ordered in just measures, that that original evil which I contracted without my will should be taken away without my knowledge;