This is so deserved, that God may inflict it if he please, without injustice; yea, and thereby demonstrate his justice;' and another thing to say, "This is so due, that God must, or will inflict it, if he will be just, unless a compensation be made to justice.' It is of the first sort that I am now speaking; for God may have a variety of times, and measures, and kinds of punishments, which he may use at his own choice, and yet not leave the sin unpunished finally: but whether he properly dispense with any law, which is determinate as to the penalty, I am not now to speak, it being not pertinent to this place and subject.

Sect. 3. Therefore, God doth, in some sort and measure, pardon sin to the generality of mankind, while he remitteth some measure of the deserved punishment.

To remit or forgive the punishment is so far to forgive the sin; for forgiveness, as to execution, is but non punire, proceeding from commiseration or misery. And it is certain, by all the mercy bestowed on them, that God remitteth something of the punishment, which in law and justice he might inflict. Though this be not a total pardon, it is not, therefore, none at all.

Sect. 4. The goodness of God's nature, with this universal experience of the world, possesseth all men's minds with this apprehension of God, that he is gracious, merciful, longsuffering, and ready to forgive a capable subject, upon terms consistent with his truth and honour, and the common good.

It is true, that self-love and self-flattery do cause men to think of the mercy of God, as indulgent to their lusts, and suitable to their fleshly desires; and, therefore, their conceits are none of the measure of his mercy: but yet it may be perceived, that this foresaid conception of God, as merciful, and ready to forgive a capable subject, is warranted by the most sober reason, and is not bred by sin and error; for the wise and better, and less sinful any is, the more he is inclined to such thoughts of God, as of a part of his perfection. m

Sect. 5. This apprehension is increased in mankind, by God's obliging us to forgive one another.

m Sæpe levant pœnas, ereptaque lumina reddunt

Cum bene peccati pœnituisse vident.—Ovid. 1. de Pont.

Dissensio ab aliis; à te reconciliatio incipiat: Cum ignsocis ita beneficium tuum tempera, ut non ignoscere videaris, sed absolvere; Quia gravissimum pœnæ genus est, contumeliosa venia.-Senec.

Pulchrum est vitam donare petenti statim.-Theb.

For though it doth not follow, that God must forgive all that which he bindeth us to forgive, for the reasons before expressed, yet we must believe that the laws of God proceed from that wisdom and goodness which is his perfection, and that they bear the image of them; and that the obeying of them tendeth to form us more to his image ourselves, and to make us holy as he is holy; and, therefore, that this command of God to man, to be merciful and forgive, doth intimate to us, that mercy and forgiveness are agreeable and pleasing unto God.

Sect. 6. God cannot cast away from his love, and from felicity, any soul which truly loveth him above all, and which so repenteth of his sin as to turn to God in holiness of heart and life."

Here seemeth to rise before us a considerable difficulty. That God can find in his heart to damn one that truly loveth him, and is sanctified, is incredible; because, 1. Then God's own image should be in hell, and a saint be damned; 2. Because then the creature should be more ready to love God, than God to love him; 3. Then a soul in hell should have holy desires, prayers, praises, and other acts of love; 4. And a soul capable of the glorifying mercy of God should miss it. This, therefore, is not to be believed; for God cannot but take complacency on them that love him, and bear his image; and those will be happy that God takes complacency on.

And yet, on the other side, Do not the sins of them that love God deserve death and misery, according to his law; and might he not inflict that on men which they deserve? Doth not justice require punishment on them, that yet sin not away the love of God, nor a state of holiness? To this, some answer, "That all those that consist with love and holiness are venial sins, which deserve only temporal chastisement, and not perpetual misery.' I rather answer, 1. That all sin, considered in itself, abstracted from the cause which counterbalanceth it and procureth pardoning mercy, doth deserve perpetual misery; and, therefore, so do the sins of the best in themselves considered; but that grace which causeth their sanctification, and their love to God, doth, conjunctly, cause the pardon of their sins; so that God will not deal with such as in rigour they deserve. 2. And if the sin of any that love God should provoke him to cast them into

" Nec ex templo ara, nec ex humana natura miserecordia tollenda est; inquit Phocion, in Stobao. Facilius iis ignoscitur, qui non perseverare, sed ab errato se revocare moliuntur: est enim humanum peccare, sed belluinum iu errore perseverare.➡Cicero in Vatin.

hell, it followeth not, that one that loveth God in sensu composito, should be damned; for God hath an order in his punishments; and, first, he would withdraw his grace from such a one and leave him to himself, and then he will no longer love God; and so it is not a lover of God that would be damned."

Sect. 7. The sinful world is not so far forsaken by God, as to be shut up under desperation, and utter impossibility of recovery and salvation.

For if that were so, they were not in via, or under an obligation to use any means, or accept of any mercy, in order to their recovery; nor could they rationally do it, or be persuaded to do it. There is no means to be used where there is no end to be attained, and no hope of success.

Sect. S. The light of nature, and the aforesaid dealings of God with men, continuing them under his government, in via, and manifold mercies, helps, and means, do generally persuade the consciences of men that there are certain duties required of them, and certain means to be used by them, in order to procure their recovery and salvation, and to escape the misery deserved.p

He that shall deny this will turn the earth into a hell; he will teach men to forbear all means and duties which tend to their conversion, pardon, and salvation, and to justify themselves in it, and desperately give over all religion, and begin the horrors and language of the damned.

Sect. 9. The very command of God, to use his appointed means for men's recovery, doth imply that it shall not be in vain, and doth not only show a possibility, but so great a hopefulness of the success to the obedient, as may encourage them cheerfully to undertake it, and carry it through.4

No man that is wise and merciful will appoint his subject a course of means to be used for a thing impossible to be got; or will say, 'Labour thus all thy life for it, but thou shalt be never the nearer it if thou do.' If such an omniscient physician do but bid me use such means for my cure and health, I may take his command for half a promise, if I obey.

Sect. 10. Conscience doth bear witness against impenitent

• Pœnitenti optimus est portus, mutatio consilii.-Cicero Phil. 1. 2. Beatus est cui vel in senectute contigerit, ut sapientiam, verasque opiniones consequi possit.-Cicer. de Fin. Read Cato's speech in Cicero de Finib. (1.3.) That the principle of self-love and preservation is the seed of virtue; and how every thing abhorreth its own hurt and destruction.

P Scelerum si bene pœnitet, eradenda cupidinis, prava sunt elementa.-Hor. 9 Omnibus natura dedit fundamenta semenque virtutem.-Sen. Ep. 110.

sinners, that the cause of their sin and the hinderance of their recovery is in themselves; and that God is not unwilling to forgive and save them, if they were but meet for forgiveness and salvation,

Even now, men's consciences take God's part against themselves, and tell them, That the infinite good, that communicateth all the goodness to the creature which it hath, is not so likely to be the cause of so odious a thing as sin, nor of man's destruction, as he himself.' If I see a sheep lie torn in the highway, I will sooner suspect a wolf than a lamb to be the cause, if I see them both stand by. And if I see a child drowned in scalding water, I will sooner suspect that he fell in by folly and heedlessness himself, than that his mother wilfully cast him in. Is not silly, naughty man, much more likely to be the cause of sin and misery, than the wise and gracious God? Much more hereafter will the sinner's conscience justify God.

Sect. 11. God hath planted in the common nature of mankind an inseparable inclination to truth as truth, and to good as good, and a love to themselves, and a desire to be happy, and a lothness to be miserable; together with some reverence and honour of God, till they have extinguished the belief of his being, and a hatred and horror of the devil, while they believe he is; all which are a fit stock to plant reforming truths in, and principles fit to be improved for men's conversion, and the excitation and improvement of them is much of that recovering work.s

Sect. 12. Frequent and deep consideration being a great means of man's recovery, by improving the truth which he considereth, and restoring reason to the throne, it is a great advantage to man that he is naturally a reasoning and thoughtful creature, his intellect being propense to activity and knowledge.

Sect. 13. And it is his great advantage, that his frequent and great afflictions have a great tendency to awake his reason to consideration, and to bring it to the heart and make it effectual. And, consequently, that God casteth us into such a sea and

r Homines ad Deos nullâ re propius accedunt, quàm salutem hominibus daudo. Nihil habet fortuna majus quàm ut possit; nec natura melius quàm ut velit, servare.-Cicero pro Ligar. Notitia peccati, initium salutis.—Sen. Saith Epictetus, As our parents deliver us to schoolmasters to be nurtured, so God delivereth us to our consciences, whose nurture is not to be contemned. • Nemo adeo ferus est, ut non mitescere possit.

Si modo culturæ patientem commodet aurem.-Horat. Ep. 1.

wilderness of troubles, that we should have these quickening monitors still at hand.

Sect. 14. And it is man's great advantage for his recovery, that vanity and vexation are so legibly written on all things here below; and that frustrated expectations, and unsatisfied minds, and the fore-knowledge of the end of all, and bodily pains which find no ease, with multitudes of bitter experiences, do so abundantly help him to escape the snare (the love) of present things.t

For all men that perish are condemned for loving the creature above the Creator: and, therefore, such a world, which appeareth so evidently to be vain, and empty, and deceitful, and vexatious, and which all men know will turn them off at last with as little comfort as if they had never seen a day of pleasure in it I say, such a world, one would think, should give us an antidote against its own deceit, and sufficiently wean us from its inordinate love. At least, this is a very great advantage.

Sect. 15. It is also a common and great advantage for man's recovery, that his life here is so short, and his death so certain, that reason must needs tell him, that the pleasures of sin are also short, and that he should always live as parting with this world, and ready to enter into another."

The nearness of things maketh them to work on the mind of man the more powerfully: distant things, though sure and great, do hardly awaken the mind to their reception and due consideration. If men lived six hundred or a thousand years in the world, it were no wonder if covetousness, and carnality, and security, made them like devils, and worse than wild beasts to one another but when men cannot choose but know that they must certainly and shortly see the end of all that ever this world will do for them, and are never sure of another hour; this is so

* Miserum te esse judico, qui nunquam fueris miser: Traxisti sine adversario vitam: Opus est ad sui notitiam experimento. Quid quisque possit non nisi tentando didicit.-Sen. de Pro. Non omnine Diis exosos esse, qui in hac vita cum ærumnarum varietate luctantur; sed esse arcanas causas, &c.— Macrob. 1. 1. Saturn.

Rem pateris modicam et mediocri bile ferendam

Si flectas oculos majora ad crimina―Juven.

" Quotidie morimur, quotidie enim demitur aliqua pars vitæ : Et tunc quoque cum crescimus vita decrescit. Hunc ipsum quem agimus diem, cum morte dividimus.-Sen. Ep. 24. Natura nihil hominibus brevitate vitæ præstitit melius.-Id. Nihil æque tibi proficiet ad temperantiam omnium rerum, quam frequens cogitatio brevis ævi et hujus incerti. Quicquid facis respice ad mortem.Sen. Ep. 25.