renewed, he may be also in a state of salvation, which is inseparably 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 establish 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. Aud so I am come to the second general head, proposed for the management of this subject, namely, that supposing that a death-bed re

pentance 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?

So

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. 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 encumbrances, settling the estate, providing for friends, satisfying the craving importunities of relations. And what can a poor, dying inan do, when such a swarm of troublesome

thoughts are buzzing about him? How can he recollect and compose himself to a meditation of his past actions, when he is busied in settling things for the future?

Repentance is too great a thing to be wielded in such a hurry. No sooner, perhaps, is a man setting himself to clear old scores between God and his soul, but his worldly creditors come bawling upon him for another kind of satisfaction. No sooner does he set himself to mourn and weep for his sins, but he is interrupted with the tears of those that stand weeping for him.

This is his case; and now, can any rational person in the world judge that a death-bed is the proper scene of repentance? that a dying person, racked with pain, choked with phlegm, immersed, and even buried in encumbrances before he is dead, can be fit to manage the spiritual searching severities of this duty?

The apostle observes well, (2 Tim. ii. 4,) "That no man that warreth, entangleth himself with the affairs of this life." And indeed repentance is a kind of spiritual warfare; but certainly none so unfit for a war as a dying person.

There are some duties, whose performance so properly belongs to some certain time, that they can neither with ease nor order be performed out of it. Repentance is the work of life, and the business of health. And truly, that man has mistimed his work, and misplaced his occasions, who, when he comes upon his death-bed, has any thing else to do, than the proper business of that place, which is to die.

2dly, The other reason is taken from this consideration, that there can be no arguments from which either the dying person himself, or others by him, can certainly conclude that his repentance is sound and effectual. I speak of ordinary means of knowledge; for it is confessed, that God, by an extraordinary manner, may reveal it to a man; and as he gave him the grace of true repentance, so he may give him an assurance and certain knowledge of the truth of that repentance.

But by the ordinary, usual methods of discourse, the dying penitent cannot infallibly know it; the reason is, because he has no infallible medium to introduce him to such a knowledge.

The mediums by which he must collect it can be no other than these three : — 1st, The heartiness of his present resolutions, in relation to a future amendment: or, 2dly, The great expressions of sorrow that he makes for his past sins: or, 3dly, His solicitous concernment for his estate in the next world.

But all these, according to the cognizance that a death-bed penitent can take of them, are very fallible.

For the first, his resolutions, though God, who quenches not the smoking flax, will by nc

means reject these, if sincere; but will own the work of his grace, though but kindled in the first true intention, as much as if it flamed out in a constant and glorious practice: yet, in regard the opportunities of performing those death-bed resolutions are in a great measure cut off, the death-bed penitent cannot be assured that his resolutions are true. For a man may think that he heartily resolves against a sin, when indeed he does not; his own heart deceiving him. As in a man's lifetime, he often finds, by experience, that when he has took up firm purposes and resolves against a sinful course, so that, as he thinks, he shall never relapse into it again; yet, notwithstanding, upon the next temptation, all such resolutions disband and vanish, and the proposal is 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 insincere, 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 concerument 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 deathbed 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 truc, 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.

SERMON XXXVII.

Περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ, τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος Δαβίδ, κατὰ σάρκα.

Τοῦ ὁρισθέντος υἱοῦ Θεοῦ ἐν δυνάμει, κατὰ πνεῦμα άγιωσύνης, 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." ROMANS, i. 3, 4.

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 dif

ference 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 dpoderos, 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 future; 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 autho

rity in this sort of learning is inferior to none,) that there is another proper significa tion of the word op besides to decree, or determine, and that is, to declare, shew forth, or manifest; hence in grammar the indicative mood is called opiσTixos; and in logic the definition of a thing, which is the declaration of its nature, is called ὅρος or ορισμος ; 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 the former verse, where the apostle expresses Christ's human nature by yevoμévov, "he was made of the seed of David," which word imports the constitution of something that did not exist before: but here, in this verse, expressing his divine nature, since he had from eternity been the Son of God, it is not said of him that he was made, but only declared or manifested to be

So.

Besides, the apostle here speaks of things past and already done: which being so, with what propriety could he insist upon a thing only as decreed and purposed, after it had actually come to pass? especially since it was this only which here made for his purpose. His design was to prove Christ the Son of God by an argument taken from a thing known and notable, which was his resurrection; and would any rational disputer omit this that he was actually risen, and argue only from this, that it was decreed that he should "rise from the dead?" According to the natural way of speaking, men never use to say that such a thing is decreed or purposed, after once that decree or purpose has passed into execution. And so much for explication of the first term.

2dly, The second inquiry is, what is imported by this term "with power:" the Greek is dvváμer, “in power," so that by some it is rendered in virtute; but it being not unusual for the particle i to be put for où, it is most properly rendered in our translation "with power;" which, though some understand of the power of Christ, as it exerted itself in the miracles which he did; yet here it signifies rather the glorious power of his divine nature, by which he overcame death, and properly opposed to the weakness of his human nature, by which he suffered it. Correspondent to which is that place, (2 Cor. xiii. 4,) “He was crucified by weakness, but he liveth by the power of God:" that is, the weakness of his humanity made him capable of the death of the cross; but the power of his divinity triumphed over that death, and raised him to

an eternal life.