that not only every great single crime, but the habit of any sin, is dangerous: and therefore these persons are to be "snatched from the fire," if you mean to rescue them: èx Tou пupòs ȧpráčovтes. If you stay a day, it may be, you stay τοῦ πυρὸς ἀρπάζοντες. too long. 4. To which I add this fourth consideration, that every delay of return is, in the case of habitual sins, an approach to desperation; because the nature of habits is like that of crocodiles, they grow as long as they live; and if they come to obstinacy or confirmation, they are in hell already, and can never return back. For so the Pannonian bears, when they have clasped a dart in the region of their liver, wheel themselves upon the wound, and with anger and malicious revenge strike the deadly barb deeper, and cannot be quit from that fatal steel; but, in flying, bear along that which themselves make the instrument of a more hasty death: so is every vicious person struck with a deadly wound, and his own hands force it into the entertainments of the heart; and because it is painful to draw it forth by a sharp and salutary repentance, he still rolls and turns upon his wound, and carries his death in his bowels, where it first entered by choice, and then dwelt by love, and at last shall finish the tragedy by Divine judgments and an unalterable decree. But as the pardon of these sins is uncertain, so the conditions of restitution are hard even to them, who shall be pardoned: their pardon, and themselves too, must be fetched from the fire; water will not do it; tears and ineffective sorrow cannot take off a habit, or a great crime. O nimiùm faciles, qui tristia crimina cædis Bion, seeing a prince weep and tearing his hair for sorrow, asked if baldness would cure his grief? Such pompous sorrows may be good indices, but no perfect instruments of restitution. St. James plainly declares the possibilities of pardon to great sins, in the cases of contention, adultery, lust, and envy, which are the four great indecencies that are most contrary to Christianity: and in the fifth chapter, he 166 implies also a possibility of pardon to an habitual sinner, whom he calls τὸν πλανηθέντα ἀπὸ τῆς ὁδοῦ τῆς ἀληθείας, one that errs from the truth," that is, from the life of a Christian, the life of the Spirit of truth: and he adds, that such a person may be reduced, and so be pardoned, though he have sinned long; "He that converts such a one, shall hide a multitude of sins." But then the way that he appoints for the restitution of such persons, is humility and humiliation, penances and sharp penitential sorrows, and afflictions, resisting the devil, returning to God, weeping and mourning, confessions, and prayers, as you may read at large in the fourth and fifth chapters: and there it is that you shall find it a duty, that such persons should be afflicted,' and should confess to their brethren:' and these are harder conditions than God requires in the former cases; these are a kind of fiery trial. I have now done with my text; and should add no more, but that the nature of these sins is such, that they may increase in their weight, and duration, and malice, and then they increase in mischief and fatality, and so go beyond the text. Cicero said well, "Ipsa consuetudo assentiendi periculosa esse videtur et lubrica ":" "The very custom of consenting in the matters of civility is dangerous and slippery," and will quickly engage us in error: and then we think we are bound to defend them; or else we are made flatterers by it, and so become vicious: and we love our own vices that we are used to, and keep them till they are incurable, that is, till we will never repent of them; and some men resolve never to repent, that is, they resolve they will not be saved, they tread under foot the blood of the everlasting covenant. Those persons are in the fire too, but they will not be pulled out: concerning whom God's prophets must say as once concerning Babylon, "Curavimus, et non est sanata; derelinquamus eam :”— We would] have healed them, but they would not be healed; let us leave them in their sins, and they shall have enough of it.' Only this: those that put themselves out of the condition of mercy, are not to be endured in Christian societies; they deserve it not, and it is not safe that they should be suffered. h Acad. Qu. lib. iv. 68. for But besides all this, I shall name one thing more unto you; nunquam adeò fœdis adeòque pudendis Utimur exemplis, ut non pejora supersint.-Juv. 8. 183. There are some single actions of sin of so great a malice, that in their own nature they are beyond the limit of Gospel pardon they are not such things, for the pardon of which God entered into covenant, because they are such sins which put a man into perfect indispositions and incapacities of entering into or being in the covenant. In the first ages of the world atheism was of that nature, it was against their whole religion; and the sin is worse now, against the whole religion still, and against a brighter light. In the ages after the flood, idolatry was also just such another: for God was known first only as the Creator; then he began to manifest himself in special contracts with men, and he quickly was declared the God of Israel; and idolatry perfectly destroyed all that religion, and therefore was never pardoned entirely, but God did visit it upon them that sinned; and when he pardoned it in some degrees, yet he also punished it in some and yet rebellion against the supreme power of Moses and Aaron was worse; for that also was a perfect destruction of the whole religion, because it refused to submit to those hands, upon which God had placed all the religion and all the government. And now, if we would know in the Gospel what answers these precedent sins; I answer, first, the same sins acted by a resolute hand and heart are worse now than ever they were: and a third or fourth is also to be added; and that is apostasy, or a voluntary malicious renouncing the faith. The church hath often declared that sin to be unpardonable. Witchcraft, or final impenitence and obstinacy in any sin, are infallibly desperate; and in general, and by a certain parity of reason, whatsoever does destroy charity, or the good life of a Christian, with the same general venom and deletery as apostasy destroys faith: and he that is a renegado from charity, is as unpardonable as he that returns to solemn atheism or infidelity; for all that is directly the sin against the Holy Ghost, that is, a throwing that away whereby only we can be Christians, whereby only we can hope to be saved. To speak a word against the Holy Ghost," in the Pharisees was declared unpardonable, because it was such a word, which, if it had been true or believed, would have destroyed the whole religion; for they said that Christ wrought by Beelzebub, and by consequence did not come from God. He that destroys all the whole order of priesthood, destroys one of the greatest parts of the religion, and one of the greatest effects of the Holy Ghost: he that destroys government, destroys another part. But that we may come nearer to ourselves: To "quench the Spirit of God" is worse than to speak some words against him; to "grieve the Spirit of God" is a part of the same impiety; to "resist the Holy Ghost" is another part: and if we consider that every great sin does this in proportion, it would concern us to be careful lest we fall into "presumptuous sins, lest they get the dominion over us." Out of this that I have spoken you may easily gather what sort of men those are, who cannot be snatched from the fire;' for whom, as St. John says, "we are not to pray ;" and how near men come to it, that continue in any known sin. If I should descend to particulars, I might lay a snare to scrupulous and nice consciences. This only every confirmed habitual sinner does manifest the Divine justice in punishing the sins of a short life with a never-dying worm and a never-quenched flame; because he hath an affection to sin, that no time will diminish, but such as would increase to eternal ages; and accordingly, as any man hath a degree of love, so he hath lodged in his soul a spark, which, unless it be speedily and effectively quenched, will break forth into unquenchable fire. SERMON XVIII, THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Matt. xvi. 26. WHEN the eternal mercy of God had decreed to rescue mankind from misery and infelicity, and so triumphed over his own justice; the excellent wisdom of God resolved to do it in ways contradictory to the appetites and designs of man, that it also might triumph over our weaknesses and imperfect conceptions. So God decreed to glorify his mercy by curing our sins, and to exalt his wisdom by the reproof of our ignorance, and the representing upon what weak and false principles we had built our hopes and expectations of felicity; pleasure and profit, victory over our enemies, riches and pompous honours, power and revenge, desires according to sensual appetites, and prosecutions violent and passionate of those appetites, health and long life, free from trouble, without poverty or persecution. Vitam quæ faciunt beatiorem, Jucundissime Martialis, hæc sunt.-Mart. x. 47. These are the measures of good and evil, the object of our hopes and fears, the securing our content, and the portion of this world; and for the other, let it be as it may. But the blessed Jesus,-having made revelations of an immortal duration, of another world, and of a strange restitution to it, even by the resurrection of the body, and a new investiture of the soul with the same upper garment, clarified and made pure, so as no fuller on earth can whiten it;-hath also preached a new philosophy, hath cancelled all the old principles, reduced the appetites of sense to the discourses of reason, and heightened reason to the sublimities of the Spirit, teaching us abstractions and immaterial conceptions, giving us new eyes, and new objects, and new proportions: for now sensual pleasures are not delightful, riches are dross, honours are nothing but the appendages of virtue, and in relation to it are to receive their account. But now if you would enjoy life, you must die; if you would be at ease, you must take up Christ's cross, and conform to his sufferings; if you would 'save your life,' you must lose it; and if you would be rich, you must abound in good works, you must be 'poor in spirit,' and despise the world, and be rich unto God: for whatsoever is contrary to the purchases and affections of this world, is an endearment of our hopes in the world to come. And, therefore, he having stated the question so, that either we must quit this world or the other; our affections, I mean, and adherences to this, or our interest and hopes of the other: the choice is rendered very easy by the words of my text, because the |