first by elements, and after long study learns a syllable, and in good time gets a word, could not at first know all those things which were sufficient or apt to determine his choice; but as he grew to understand more, saw more reasons to rescind his first elections. The angels had a full peremptory will and a satisfied understanding at first, and therefore were not to mend their first act by a second contradictory. But poor man hath a will always strongest when his understanding is weakest, and chooseth most when he is least able to determine; and therefore is most passionate in his desires, and follows his object with greatest earnestness, when he is blindest, and hath the least reason so to do: and therefore God, pitying man, begins to reckon his choices to be criminal, just in the same degree as he gives him understanding. The violences and unreasonable actions of childhood are no more remembered by God, than they are understood by the child. The levities and passions of youth are not aggravated by the imputation of malice, but are sins of a lighter dye, because reason is not yet impressed and marked upon them with characters and tincture in grain: but he who (when he may choose, because he understands) shall choose the evil and reject the good, stands marked with a deep guilt, and hath no excuse left to him, but as his degrees of ignorance left his choice the more imperfect: and because every sinner, in the style of Scripture, is a fool, and hath an election as imperfect as is the action; that is, as great a declension from prudence as it is from piety, and the man understands as imperfectly as he practices; therefore God sent his Son

to take upon him (not the nature of angels, but) the seed of Abraham," and to propound salvation upon such terms as were possible; that is, upon such a piety which relies upon experience, and trial of good and evil; and hath given us leave, if we choose amiss at first, to choose again, and choose better; Christ having undertaken to pay for the issues of our first follies, to make up the breach made by our first weaknesses and abused understandings.

3. But as God gave us this mercy by Christ, so he also revealed it by him. He first used the authority of a lord, and a creator, and a lawgiver; he required obedience indeed upon reasonable terms, upon the instance of but a few command ments at first, which, when he afterwards multiplied, he also appointed ways to expiate the smaller irregularities; but left them eternally bound without remedy who should do any great violence or crime. But then he bound them but to a temporal death. Only this, as an eternal death was also tacitly implied, so also a remedy was secretly ministered, and repentance particularly preached by homilies distinct from the covenant of Moses's law. The law allowed no repentance for greater crimes; 'he that was convicted of adultery was to die without mercy:" but God pitied the miseries of man, and the inconveniences of the law, and sent Christ to suffer for the one, and remedy the other. For so it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations.'3

1 Heb. ii. 16. 2 Lev. xx. 10.

3 Luke, xxiv. 46, 47.

And now this is the last and only hope of man, who in his natural condition is imperfect, in his customs vicious, in his habits impotent and criminal. Because man did not remain innocent, it became necessary he should be penitent, and that this penitence should by some means be made acceptable; that is, become the instrument of his pardon, and restitution of his hope. Which, because it is an act of favour, and depends wholly upon the divine dignation, and was revealed to us by Jesus Christ, who was made not only the prophet and preacher, but the Mediator of this new covenant and mercy; it was necessary we should become disciples of the holy Jesus, and servants of his institution; that is, run to him, to be made partakers of the mercies of this new covenant, and accept of him such conditions as he should require of us.

4. This covenant is then consigned to us when we first come to Christ; that is, when we first profess ourselves his disciples and his servants, disciples of his doctrine, and servants of his institution; that is, in baptism, in which Christ who died for our sins makes us partakers of his death. For 'we are buried by baptism into his death," saith St. Paul. Which was also represented in ceremony, by the immersion appointed to be the rite of that sacrament: and then it is that God pours forth, together with the sacramental waters, a salutary and holy foun. tain of grace, to wash the soul from all its stains and impure adherences: and therefore this first access to Christ is in the style of Scripture called ' regeneration,' the new birth,'' redemption,' ' renovation,' 'expiation,' or 'atonement with God,'

Rom. vi. 4.

1

and 'justification." And these words in the New Testament relate principally and properly to the abolition of sins committed before baptism: for we are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ; whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness:'' and this is that which St. Paul calls 'justification by faith," that boasting might be excluded,'' and the grace of God by Jesus made exceeding glorious: for this being the proper work of Christ, the first entertainment of a disciple, and manifestation of that state which is first given him as a favour, and next intended as a duty, is a total abolition of the precedent guilt of sin, and leaves nothing remaining that can condemn: we then freely receive the entire and perfect effect of that atonement which Christ made for us, we are put into a condition of innocence and favour. And this, I say, is done regularly in baptism; and St. Paul expresses it to this sense: after he had enumerated a series of vices subjected in many, he adds, and such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified.' There is nothing of the old guilt remanent: when 'ye were washed, ye were sanctified; or, as the Scripture calls it in another place, 'ye were redeemed from your vain conversation.'" 5. For this grace was the formality of the covenant: Repent, and believe the gospel." Repent, and be converted,' (so it is in St. Peter's sermon,) 'and your sins shall be done away ;' that ' 1 Pet. iii. 21; Rom. v. 1; Tit. iii. 5, 7; Rom. iii. 26; Gal. ii. 16.

5

2 Rom. iii. 24, 25, 26.

+ Ibid. verse 27.

3 Ibid. verse 28.

61 Pet. i. 18.

5 1 Cor. vi. 11.

7 Mar. i. 15.

8 Acts, iii. 19.

was the covenant. But that Christ chose baptism for its signature appears in the parallel, Repent, and be baptized, and wash away your sins.' For Christ loved his church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word; that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy, and without blemish.' The sanctification is integral, the pardon is universal and immediate.

6. But here the process is short, no more at first but this, 'Repent, and be baptized, and wash away your sins.' Which baptism, because it was speedily administered, and yet not without the preparatives of faith and repentance, it is certain those predispositions were but instruments of reception, actions of great facility, of small employment, and such as, supposing the person not unapt, did confess the infiniteness of the divine mercy, and fulness of the redemption, and is called by the apostle, a being justified freely."

3

7. Upon this ground it is, that by the doctrine of the church heathen persons, 'strangers from the covenant of grace,' were invited to a confession of faith, and dereliction of false religions, with a promise that at the very first resignation of their persons to the service of Jesus, they should obtain full pardon. It was St. Cyprian's counsel to old Demetrianus, "Now, in the evening of thy days, when thy soul is almost expiring, repent of thy sins, believe in Jesus, and turn Christian; and although

Acts, ii. 38; Mar. xvi. 16.

? Eph. v. 25, 26, 27. * Justin Mart. Dial. cum. Tryph. Act. vii. 37 ; x. 47; xvi. 15, 33.

4 Rom. iii. 24.