sins of infirmity, because they are almost unavoidable. This remain is like the image of the ape which Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, left after the breaking of the other idols; a testimony of their folly; but as that was left for no other purpose but to reprove them, so is this to humble us, that we may not rely upon flesh and blood, but make God to be our confidence. 51. II. Sins of infirmity are rather observed in the imperfection of our duty, than in the commission of any criminal action. For in this it was that our blessed Saviour instanced these words; "The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak ";" the body is weary, the eyes heavy, the fancy restless, diversions many, business perpetually intervenes, and all the powers of discourse and observation cannot hinder our mind from wandering in our prayers, m Odi artus, fragilemque hunc corporis usum But this being, in the whole, unavoidable, is therefore, in many of its parts and instances, very excusable, if we do not indulge to it; if we pray and strive against it: that is, so long as it is a natural infirmity. For although we cannot avoid wandering thoughts, yet we can avoid delighting in them, or a careless and negligent increasing them. For if they once seize upon the will, they are sins of choice and malice, and not of infirmity. So that the great sense of sins of infirmity, is in omission of degrees and portions of that excellency of duty which is required of us. We are imperfect, and we do imperfectly, and if we strive towards perfection, God will pity our imperfection. There is no other help for us; but blessed be God, that is sufficient for our need, and proportionable to our present state. 52. III. But in actions and matters of commission, the case is different. For though a man may forget himself against his will, or sleep, or fall, yet without his will he cannot throw himself down, or rise again. Every action is more or less voluntary; but every omission is not. A thing may be let alone upon a dead stock, or a negative principle, or an unavoidable defect; but an action cannot be done without some command or action of the will; therefore, although sins of defect are, in many cases, pitied and not exacted, yet sinful actions have not so easy a sentence: but they also have some abatements. Therefore, 53. IV. Imperfect actions, such which are incomplete in their whole capacity, are sins of infirmity, and ready and prepared for pity: of this sort are rash or ignorant actions, done by surprise; by inconsideration and inadvertency, by a sudden and great fear, in which the reason is in very many degrees made useless, and the action cannot be considered duly. In these there is some little mixture of choice, so much as to make the action imputable, if God should deal severely with us; but yet so little that it shall not be imputed under the mercies of the Gospel; although the man that does them, cannot pretend he is innocent, yet he can pretend that he does stand fair in the eye of mercy. A good man may sometimes be unwary; or he may speak, or be put to it to resolve or do, before he can well consider. If he does a thing rashly when he can consider and deliberate, he is not excused: but if he does it indiscreetly, when he must do it suddenly, it is his infirmity, and he shall be relieved at the chancery of the throne of grace. For it is remarkable that God's justice is in some cases akρißns, 'exact,' full and severe : in other cases it is έπieuns, full of equity,' gentleness, and wisdom, making abatement for infirmities, performing promises, interpreting things to the most equal and favourable purposes. So justice is taken in St. John; "If we confess our sins, he is righteous or just to forgive our sins;" that is, God's justice is such as to be content with what we can do, and not to exact all that is possible to be imposed. He is as just in forgiving the penitent, as in punishing the refractory; as just in abating reasonably, as in weighing scrupulously: such a justice it is, which in the same case David calls ' mercy :' "For thou, Lord, art merciful: for thou rewardest every man according to his works." And if this were not so, no man could be saved. "Mortalis enim conditio non patitur esse hominem ab omni macula purum," said Lactantius ". For in many things we offend all;' and our present state of imperfection will not suffer it to be otherwise : Χαλεπὸν γὰρ, ὥσπερ τοὺς δρομεῖς ἀρξαμένους ὁδοῦ, πρὸς εὐσέβειαν ἀπταίστως καὶ ἀπο νευστὶ διευθῦναι τὸν δρόμον, ἐπεὶ μύρια ἐμποδὼν παντὶ τῷ γινο n Lib. 6. 13. μéve, said Philos. For as a runner of races, at his first setting forth, rides his way briskly, and in a breath measures out many spaces; but by and by his spirit is faint, and his body is breathless, and he stumbles at every thing that lies in his way so is the course of a Christian; fierce in the beginnings of repentance, and active in his purposes; but in his progress, remiss and hindered, and starts at every accident, and stumbles at every scandal and stone of offence, and is sometimes listless, and without observation at other times; and a bird out of a bush that was not looked for, makes him to start aside, and decline from the path and method of his journey. But then if he that stumbles mends his pace, and runs more warily, and goes on vigorously, his error, or misfortune, hall not be imputed; for here God's justice is equity, it is the justice of the chancery; we are not judged by the covenant of works, that is, of exact measures, but by the covenant of faith and remission, or repentance. But if he that falls, lies down despairingly or wilfully, or if he rises, goes back, or goes aside ;--not only his declination from his way, but every error or fall, every stumbling and startling in that way, shall be accounted for. For here God's justice is axpiẞns, exact' and severe; it is the justice of the Law, because he refused the method and conditions of the Gospel. 54. V. Every sinful action that can pretend to pardon by being a sin of infirmity, must be in a small matter. The imperfect way of operating alone, is not sufficient for excuse and pardon, unless the matter also be little and contemptible; because if the matter be great, it cannot ordinarily be, but it must be considered and chosen. He that in a sudden anger strikes his friend to the heart, whom he had loved as passionately as now he smote him, is guilty of murder, and cannot pretend infirmity for his excuse; because, in an action of so great consequence and effect, it is supposed, he had time to deliberate all the foregoing parts of his life, whether such an action ought to be done or not; or the very horror of the action was enough to arrest his spirit, as a great danger, or falling into a river, will make a drunken man sober; and by all the laws of God and man, he was immured from the probability of all transports into such violences; and the man must needs be a slave of passion, who could by it De Agricultura. ̧ be brought to go so far from reason, and to do so great evil. If a man in the careless time of the day, when his spirit is loose with a less severe employment, or his heart made more open with an innocent refreshment, spies a sudden beauty that unluckily strikes his fancy; it is possible that he may be too ready to entertain a wanton thought, and to suffer it to stand at the doors of his first consent; but if the sin passes no further, the man enters not into the regions of death; because the devil entered on a sudden, and is as suddenly cast forth. But if from the first arrest of concupiscence, he pass on to an imperfect consent,-from an imperfect consent, to a perfect and deliberate,-and from thence to an act, and so to a habit,-he ends in death; because, long before it is come thus far, the salt water is taken in.' The first concupiscence is but like rain-water; it discolours the pure springs, but makes them not deadly. But when in the progression the will mingles with it, it is like the Bóoßopoç, or waters of brimstone;' and the current for ever after is unwholesome, and carries you forth into the Dead Sea, the lake of Sodom, "which is to suffer the vengeance of eternal fire:" but then the matter may be supposed little, till the will comes. For though a man may be surprised with a wanton eye, yet he cannot fight a duel against his knowledge, or commit adultery against his will. A man cannot, against his will, contrive the death of a man; but he may speak a rash word, or be suddenly angry, or triflingly peevish; and yet all this notwithstanding, be a good man still. These may be sins of infirmity, because they are imperfect actions in the whole; and such, in which as the man is for the present surprised, so they are such against which no watchfulness. was a sufficient guard, as it ought to have been in any great matter, and might have been in sudden murders. A wise and a good man may easily be mistaken in a nice question, but can never suspect an article of his creed to be false: a good man may have many fears and doubtings in matters of smaller moment, but he never doubts of God's goodness, of his truth, of his mercy, or of any of his communicated perfections: he may fall into melancholy, and may suffer indefinite fears, of he knows not what himself; yet he can never explicitly doubt of any thing which God hath clearly revealed, and in which he is sufficiently instructed. A weak eye may, at a distance, mistake a man for a tree; but he who, sailing in a storm, takes the sea for dry land, or a mushroom for an oak, is stark blind. And so is he who can think adultery to be excusable; or that treason can be duty; or that, by persecuting God's prophets, he does God good service; or that he propagates religion by making the ministers of the altar poor, and robbing the churches. A good man so remaining cannot suffer infirmity in the plain and legible lines of duty, where he can see, and reason, and consider. I have now told which are sins of infirmity; and I have told all their measures. For as for those other false opinions by which men flatter themselves into hell, by a pretence of sins of infirmity, they are as unreasonable as they are dangerous; and they are easily reproved upon the stock of the former truths. Therefore, 55. VI. Although our mere natural inclination to things forbidden, be of itself a natural and unavoidable infirmity, and such which cannot be cured by all the precepts and endeavours of perfection; yet this very inclination, if it be heightened by carelessness or evil customs, is not a sin of infirmity. Tiberius, the emperor, being troubled with a fellow that wittily and boldly pretended himself to be a prince,—at last, when he could not by questions, he discovered him to be a mean person by the rusticity and hardness of his body: not by a callousness of his feet, or a wart upon a finger, but ὅλον τὸ σῶμα σκληρότερόν τε καὶ δουλοφανὲς καταμαθὼν, ἐνόησε tāv tò σúvтayμa, "his whole body was hard and servile, and so he was discovered."-The natural superfluities, and excrescences, that inevitably adhere to our natures, are not sufficient indications of a servile person, or a slave to sin; but when our natures are abused by choice and custom,-when the callousness is spread by evil and hard usages,-when the arms are brawny by the services of Egypt,-then it is no longer infirmity, but a superinduced viciousness, and a direct hostility. When nature rules, grace does not. When the flesh is in power, the Spirit is not. Therefore it matters not from what corner the blasting wind does come,-from whence soever it is, it is deadly. Most of our sins are from natural inclinations; and the negative precepts of God, are, for the |