Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself

CHRIST DYING, AND Drawing Sinners to himself.

I T is a question whether these words of our Savior's Soul-trouble be nothing but the same words and prayer which Matthew chap. 26. and Luke 22. relate, to wit, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, when his soul was troubled in the garden, in his agony: Some think them the same, others not. It is like they are words of the same matter; for first, when Christ uttered these words, he was near his sufferings, and on the brink of that hideous and dark sea of his most extreme pain, and drew up against hell, and the Armies of darkness; as the story showeth. But that the Lord uttered these same words in the garden, and not before, is not apparent; because upon this prayer it is said, Then came there a voice from heaven, &c. A voice speaketh to him from heaven: now, Mat. 26. Luk. 22. no voice is like to have come from heaven; for when he prayed in his agony, there were no people with him, as here, because of the voice the people being present, Some said it thundered, others said, an Angel spake from heaven: there being now with Christ in the garden, when he prayed, O my Father, &c. none save Peter, James, and John, the three famous witnesses of his extreme suffering, and of his young heaven, of his transfiguration on the Mount, when he acted the Preludium and the image and representation of heaven before them, as is clear, Mat. 26. verse. 37. And he was removed from them also, Mat. 26.39. Luk. 22.41. and they were sleeping, in his agony, Mat. 26.40, 43, 45. But now there is a waking people with Christ, who heard this voice. But I deny not but it is the same prayer in sense: even as suppose it were revealed to a godly man, that he were to suffer an extreme, violent, and painful death; and withal, some fearful soul-desertion, as an image of the second death; it should much affright him to remember this, and he might pray that the Lord would either save him from that sad hour, or then give him grace with faith and courage, in the Lord, to endure it: so here; Christ, God and man, knowing that he was to bear the terrors of the first and second death, doth act over afore-hand (the time being near) the sorrow and anguish of heart that he was to suffer in his extreme sufferings: as it were good, ere the cross come, to act it in our mind, and take an essay and a lift of Christ's cross, ere we bear it, to try how handsomely we would set back and shoulders under the Lord's cross. I do not intend that we are to imitate the Martyr who put his hand in the fire, the night before he suffered, to try how he could endure burning-quick; but that we are to lay the supposition, what if i • so fall out; (as Christ being persuaded his suffering was to come, acted sorrow, trouble of soul and prayer beforehand;) and to resolve the saddest, and antedate the cross, and say with our own hearts, Let the worst come; or to suffer our fear to prophecy, as Job did, chap. 3. verse. 25. yet suppose the hardest befall me, I know what to do; as the unjust Steward resolveth on a way, beforehand, how to swim • through his necessities, Luk. 16.4. The Lord acteth judgment▪ and what they shall pray in the time of their extremity, who now spit at all praying and Religion; they shall be religious in their kind, when they shall cry, Revel. 6.16. Mountains and rocks, fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. You cannot believe that a Lamb shall chase the Kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and every bond-man, and every free-man, into the dens and the rocks of the mountains, to hide themselves. But the Lord acteth wrath and judgment, before your eyes. Men will not suppose the real story of hell. Say but with thyself, Oh! shall I weep, and gnaw my tongue for pain, in a sea of fire and brimstone? Do but fore-fancy, I pray you, how you shall look on it, what thoughts you will have, what you shall do, when you shall 2 Thes. 1.9. be punished with everlasting destruction, from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. 1. Fore-seen sorrows have not so sad an impression on the spirit. 2. Grace is a well-advised and resolute thing, and has the eyes of providence to say in possible events, What if my Scarlet embrace the Dunghill, and Providence turn the Tables. 3. It is like wisdom (grace is wise to see afar-off) to fore-act faith, and resolve to lie under God's feet, and intend humble yielding to God ; as 2 Sam. 15.25, 26.

In the Complaint we have 1. the Subject-matter of it, The Lord's troubled- soul. 2. The Time; Now, is my soul • troubled. 3. Christ's Anxiety wrought on him by this trouble; What shall I say? or, which is the sense, What shall I do? 4. And a shore is seen at hand in the storm, a present rock in the raging sea: What shalt thou say? Lord Jesus, what shalt thou do? Pray: and he prayeth, Father, save me from this hour. 5. There is a sort of correction, or rather a limitation; But for this cause came I to this hour. The Lord forgetting his pain, embraceth this evil hour. 6. Going on in his resolution to embrace this sad hour, he prayeth, verse. 28. Father, glorify thy Name.

Touching the first, the Soul-trouble of Christ, we are to consider, 1. How it can consist with peace. 2. How with the personal union. 3. What cause there was. 4. What love and mercy in Jesus to be troubled for us. 5. What use we must make of this.

1. Pos. This holy soul thus troubled, was like the earth before the Fall, out of which grew roses without thorns, or thistles, before it was cursed. Christ's anger, his sorrow, were flowers that smelled of heaven, and not of sin: All his affections of fear, sorrow, sadness, hope, joy, love, desire, were like a fountain of liquid and melted silver; of which the banks, the head-spring, are all as clear from dross, as pure Crystal: such a fountain can cast out no cl • y, no mud, no dirt. When his affections did rise and swell in their acts, every drop of the foun • aine was sinless, perfumed and adorned with grace; so as the more you stir or trouble a well of Rose-water, or some precious liquor, the more sweet a smell it casts out: Or, as when a summer soft wind bloweth on a field of sweet Roses, it diffuseth precious and delicious smells through the air. There is such mud and dregs in the bottom and banks of our affections, that when our anger, sorrow, sadness, fear, does arise in their acts, our fountain casteth out sin. We cannot love, but we lust; nor fear, but we despair; nor rejoice, but we are wanton and vain and gaudie; nor believe, but we presume: we rest up, we breath out sin, we cast out a smell of hell, when the wind bloweth on our field of weeds and thistles; our soul is all but a plat of wild-corn, the imaginations of our heart being only evil from our youth. O that Christ would plant some of his flowers in our soul, and bless the soil, that they might grow kindly there, being warmed and nourished with his grace: If grace be within, in sad pressures it comes out: A Saint is a Saint in affliction; as an hypocrite is an hypocrite: and every man is himself, and casts a smell like himself, when he is in the furnace. Troubled Christ prays. Tempted Job believes, Job 19.25. The scourged Apostles rejoice, Act. 5.41. Drowned Jonah looks to the holy Temple, Jonah 2.4.

2. Christ's affections were rational; reason starts up before fear: reason and affection did not out-run one another. Joh. 11.33. when Christ sees his friends weep, he weeps with them: and that which is expressed in our Text by a Passive Verb, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , My soul is troubled ; is there expressed by an Active Verb, He groaned in the Spirit, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and he troubled himself: He called upon his affections, and grace and light was Lord and Master of his affection's. There was in CHRIST three things which are not in us: First, The God-h • ad personally united with a Man, and a Mans soul had an immediate influence on his affections. This was Christ's personal privilege; and to want this, is not our sin: to have it, was Christ's glory: But the nearer any is to God, the more heavenly are the affections. Secondly, When God framed the human nature and human soul of Christ, he created a more noble and curious piece, then was the first Adam: It is true, he was like us in all things, except sin, and essentially a man; but in his generation there was a cut of the art of heaven in Christ more then in the forming of Adam, or then in the generation of men, suppose man had never sinned; as Luk. 1.35. The power of the most High shall over-shadow thee: never man was thus to be borne. Whence give me leave to think, that there was more of God in the human nature of Christ, as nature is a vessel coming out of the Potters house, then ever was in Adam, or living man; though man had never sinned: And so, that he had a human soul of a more noble structure and fabric, in which the Holy Ghost, in the act of sanctification, had a higher hand, then when Adam was created, according to the image of God ; though he was a man like us in all things, sin excepted.

3. Pos. Undeniably, Grace did so accompany Nature, that he could not fear more then the object required. Had all the strength of men and Angels been massed and contemperated in one, they should have been in a higher measure troubled, then Christ was: So how much trouble was in Christ's affections, as much there was of reason, perfumed and lustered with grace. He was not as man in his intellectualls, wise, or desirous to be wise, (as Adam and Eve, and men now are taken with the disease of curiosity) above what was fit: So neither were his affections above banks; he saw the blackest and darkest hour, that ever any saw; suppose all the sufferings of the damned, for eternity, were before them in one sight, or came on them at once, it should annihilate all that are now, or shall be in hell. Christ now saw, or fore-saw as great sufferings, and yet 1. believed, 2. prayed, 3. hoped, 4. was encouraged under it, 5. suffered them to the bottom with all patience, 6. rejoiced in hope, Psal. 16.9. Now our affections rise and swell before reason: 1. They are often imaginary, and are on horse-back and in arms at the stirring of a straw. 2. They want that clearness and serenity of grace that Christ had, through habitual grace following nature from the womb. 3. We can raise our affec •• ons, but cannot allay them: as some Magicians can raise the Devil, but cannot conjure, or command him: or, some can make war, and cannot create peace. It is a calumny of Papists, that say, that Calvin did teach there was despair, or any distemper of reason in Christ ; when as Calvin saith, He still believed with full assurance. And this extremity of soul-trouble was most rational, coming from the infallible apprehension of the most pressing cause of soul-trouble, that ever living man was under.

4. Pos. Christ had now and always Moral peace, or the grace of peace, as peace is opposed to culpable raging of Conscience. First, He never could want faith, which is a serenity, quietness, and silence of the soul and assurance of the love of God. Secondly, He could have no doubting, or sinful disturbance of mind; because he could have no conscience of guilt, which could over-cloud the love and tenderest favor of his Father to him. But as peace is opposed to pain, and sense of wrath and punishment, for the guilt of our sins, so he wanted Physical peace, and was now under penal disturbance and disquietness of soul. So we see some have peace, but not pardon; as the secure sinners, 1 Thes. 5.3. Secondly, Some have pardon, but not peace ; as David, Psal. 38.3. who had broken bones ; and complaineth, verse. 8. I am feeble and sore broken, I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart. And the troubled Church, Psal. 77.1, 2, 3, 4. Some have both peace and pardon ; as some, like Steven, that are so near to the Crown, as they are above any challenges of Conscience: It's like Satan giveth over, and despaireth of these, whom he cannot over-take, being so near the end of the race. When the sun riseth first, the beams over-gilde the tops of green mountains that look toward the East, and the world cannot hinder the sun to rise: Some are so near heaven, that the everlasting Sun hath begun to make an everlasting day of glory on them; the rays that come from his face that sits on the throne, so over-goldeth the soul, that there is no possibility of clouding peace, or of hindering day-light in the souls of such Some have neither peace nor pardon ; as those in who • e soul hell hath taken fire. Christ never needed pardon, he was able to pay all he was owing; he needed never the grace of forgiveness, nor grace to be spared; God spared him not. God could exact no less blood of him, then he shed; but he received an acquittance of justification, never a pardon of grace; 1 Tim. 3.16. Justified in the Spirit.

The third Point is, How a troubled soul can stand with a personal union. Can God, can the soul of God be troubled? I shall show, first, How this must be: Secondly, How this can be. It must be, first, Because the loss of heaven is the greatest loss. To ransom a King requireth more millions, then pence to ransom slaves. When we were cast and forfeited, more than an hundred and forty four thousand Kings (in the Lord's decree they were Kings ) were cast out of heaven: where [unspec 1] was there gold on earth to buy heaven, and so many Kings? And yet Justice must have payment; a God-troubled Savior, and a Soul-troubled God was little enough. Oh, saith Love to infinite Justice, What will you give for me? will you buy me? my dear children, the heirs of eternal grace? A price below the worth of so many Kings, Justice cannot hear of; equal it must be, or more.

Secondly, Law cannot sleep satisfied with a Mans soul-trouble; for as sin troubles an infinite God's soul, so far [unspec 2] as our darts can fly up against the Sun, so must the soul-trouble of him who is God, expiate sin.

Thirdly, Heaven is not only a transcendent Jewel, dear in it self, but our Father would propine Rebels with a Sonship [unspec 3] and a Kingdom, which is dear in our legal esteem. What standeth my Crown to God? Why it could not possibly be dearer; The soul of God was weighed for it: that not only freedom, but the dearest of prices might commend and cry up, above all heaven's, Christ's love.

Fourthly, If my soul, or your souls, O redeemed of the [unspec 4] Lord, could be valued everyone of them worth ten thousand millions of souls, and as many heavens, they could not over-weigh the soul of God ; the soul that lodges in a glorious union with God: and the loss of heaven to the troubled soul of this noble, and high and lofty one, though but for a time, was more, and infinitely greater then my loss of heaven, and the loss of all the elect for eternity.

Fifthly, I love not to dispute here, but God, if we speak of his absolute power, without respect to his free decree, could [unspec 5] have pardoned sin without a ransom, and gifted all Mankind and fallen Angels with heaven, without any satisfaction of either the sinner, or his Surety; for he neither punisheth sin, nor tenders heaven to Men or Angels by necessity of nature, as the fire casteth out heat, and the sun light; but freely: only supposing that frame of providence, and decrees of punishing, and redeeming sinners, that now is, the Lord could not but be steaddie in his decrees; yet this is but necessity conditional, and at the second hand. But here was the business, God, in the depth of his eternal wisdom, did so frame and draw the design and plot of saving lost man, as salvation was to run in no other channel, but such an one, the bank whereof was the freest grace and tenderest love that can enter in the heart of Men or Angels ; for he drew the lines of our heaven through grace, all the way.

Secondly, Grace hardly can work but by choice and voluntary [unspec 2] arbitration: choice and election is suitable to Grace. Hence Grace casts lots on Man, not fallen Angels ; and the eternal lot of transcendent mercy must fall on the bosom of Jacob, and some others, not on Esau and others. And our Lord contrived this brave way, to out his grace on us.

Thirdly, And he would not have love to lodge for eternity [unspec 3] within his own bowels, but must find out a way how to put boundless mercy to the exchange or bank, that he might traffic with love and mercy, for no gain to himself; and therefore freely our Lord came under baile, and lovely necessity, to strain himself to issue out love, in giving his one Son (he had not another) to die for man: He framed a supernatural providence of richest grace and love, to buy the refuse of creatures, foul sinners, with an unparalleled sampler of tender love, to give the Blood-Royal of heaven, the eternal Branch of the Princely and Kingly God-head a ransom to Justice. You sin (saith the Love of loves) and I suffer: You did the wrong, I make the mends: You sin and sing in your carnal joys, I sigh, I weep for your joy. The fairest face that ever was, was foul with weeping for your sinful rejoicing. It was fitting that free-love, in the bowels of Christ, should contrive the way to heaven through free-love: we should never in heaven, cast down our Crowns at the feet of him that sits on the throne, with such sense and admiration, if we had come to the Crown by Law-doing, and not by Gospel-confiding on a rich Ransom-payer. O that eternal banquet of the honey-comb of the Love-debt of the Lamb that redeemed us, for nothing, all the shoulders in heaven are for eternity on an act of lifting-up, and heightening Christ's free-love, who has redeemed them, with so free a redemption; but they are not all able, though Angels help them, to lift it up high enough: its so weighty a Crown that is upon the head of the Prince-Redeemer, that, in a manner, it wearies them, and they cannot over-extol it.

Now, this must be a mystery; for though the essence of God, and more of God then can be in a creature, were in Christ, and in the most noble manner of union, which is personal; yet, as our soul united to a vegetive body, which doth grow, sleep, eat, drink, doth not grow, sleep, or eat; and, as fire is mixed or united with an hot iron, in which is density and weight, and yet there's neither density nor weight in the fire; so here, though the God-head, in its fullness, was united, in a most strict union, with a troubled and perplexed soul, and the suffering nature of man, yet is the God-head still free of suffering, or any penal infirmities of the soul: The vigor and color of a fair Rose may suffer by the extreme heat of the sun, when yet the▪ sweet smell doth not suffer, but is rather enlarged by exhalation: Yet is there great halting in these comparisons; because, though the soul cannot be sick when the body is distempered, for there is nothing of the Elementary nature, nor any contemperation of Physical humors in it, because of a more sublime and pure constitution; yet there is such alliance and entire society between the soul and the body, that the soul, through concomitancie and sympathy, does suffer; as the In-dweller is put to the worse, if the house be rainy and dropping: The soul findeth smoke and leakings of pain, in that its pinned in a lodging of sick clay, and so put to wish an hole in the wall, or to escape out at door or window; as often our spirits are over-swayed so with distaste of life, because of the four accidents that do convey it, that they think the gain of life not so sweet, as it can quit the cost. But the blessed God-head, united to the Man-hood, cannot so much as for companies cause be sick, pained, or suffer; nor can the God-head be weary of an union with a troubled soul: We conceive, in the grave and death, that glorious f • llowship was never dissolved.

Secondly, Many things may suffer by invasion of contraries; as, shoot an arrow against a wall of brass, some impression may remain in the wall, to witness the violence that has been there; and we know that, They shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail: But the blessed God-head in Christ is uncapable of an arrow, or of repercussion; there is no action against God ; he is here not so much as a coast, a bank or bulwurke, capable of receiving one spitting or drop of a sea-wave; only the Man Christ, the Rose of heaven, had in his bosom, at his root, a fountain, Oh how deep and refreshing, that kept the Flower green, under death and the grave! when it was plucked up, it was fair, vigorous, green before the sun; and thus plucked up, and above earth, blossomed fair!

Thirdly, Not only the influence and effects of the glorious God-head did water the Flower, and keep strength in Christ, (so, I think, God can keep a damned man in the doubled torments of everlasting wrath, with strength of grace, courage, faith, the love of Christ forever, as he could not be overcome by hell and devils ;) but there was the fullness personal of the God-head, that immediately sustained the Man Christ ; it was not a delegated comfort, nor sent help, nor a message of created love, nor a borrowed flowing of a sea of sweetness of consolation; but God in proper person, infinite subsistence, the personality of the Son of God bottomed all his sufferings; the Man-hood was imped and stocked in the subsistence of the tree of life. Its true, God is a present help to his Saints in trouble; but his helping is in his operation and working; but he is not personally united to the soul. Its abominable that some Famulists teach, that as Christ was once made flesh, so he is now first made flesh in us, ere we be carried to perfection. Because, not any Saint on earth can be so united personally to God, as the Son of Man ; for he being made of a woman, of the seed of David, the Son of Man, he, and not any but he, is the eternal Son of God, God blessed forever. The Child born to us, is the mighty God, the Father of age, the Prince of peace, Isai. 9.6. Rom. 9.5. Gal. 4.4. There is a wide difference between him the second Adam, and all men, even the first Adam in his perfection. 1 Cor. 15.47. If Christ suffered without dissolving of the union, God keeping the tent of clay, and taking it to heaven with him, in a personal union, then God can in the lowest desertion dwell in his Saints. We complain in our soul-trouble, of Christ's departure from us, but he is not gone; our sense is not our Bible, nor a good rule; there is an error in this Compass.

The third Particular was the Cause: What cause was there? Papists say there was no reason of Christ's soul-suffering, except for sympathy with the body. We believe, that Christ becoming Surety for us, not his body only, but his soul especially came under that necessity, that his soul was in our souls stead ; and so what was due to our souls forever, our Surety of justice behooved to suffer the same. Isai. 53.10. He [unspec 1] made his soul an offering for sin. Sure for our sin. Nor must we restrict the soul to the body and temporary life, seeing he expresseth it in his own language, And now is my soul troubled.

Secondly, There was no reason of Christ's bodily sufferings, when, in the garden, he did sweat blood for us; nor had any [unspec 2] man at that time laid hands on him; and all that agony he was in, came from his soul only.

Thirdly, Nor can it be more inconsistent with his blessed person, being God and Man, and the Son of God, that he [unspec] suffered in his soul the wrath of God for our sins, then that his soul was troubled, and exceeding sorrowful, heavy to the deaths in an agony ; and that he complained, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And the cause of this soul-trouble was for sinners; this was Surety-suffering. The choicest and most stately piece that ever God created, and dearest to God, being the Second to God-man, was the Princely soul of Christ, it was a Kings soul; yet death, by reason of sin, passeth upon it; and not a common death, but that which is the marrow of death; the first-borne and the strongest of deaths, the wrath of God, the innocent pain of hell, void of despair and hatred of God. If I had any hell on me, I should choose an innocent hell, like Christ's : Better suffer ill a thousand times, than sin: Suffering is rather to be chosen, than sin. It was pain, and nothing but pain: Damned men, and reprobate devils, are not capable of a godly and innocent hell, they cannot choose to suffer hell, and not spit on fair and spotless Justice; because Christ's blood was to wash away sin, he could not both fully pay, and contract debt also. But if it be so, that death finding so precious a Surety as Christ's Princely and sinless soul, did make him obey the law of the Land, ere he escaped out of that Land, what wonder that we die, who are born in the Land of death? No creature but it travelleth in pain, with death in its bosom, or an inclination to Mother-Nothing, whence it came. God only goeth between the mightiest Angel in heaven, and Nothing: All things under the Moon must be sick of vanity and death, when the Heir of all things, coming in amongst dying creatures, out of dispensation, by Law must die. If the Lord's soul, and the soul of such a Lord die and suffer wrath, then let the fair face of the world, the heavens, look like the face of an old man, full of trembling, white hairs, and wrinkles, Psal. 102.26. Then let man make for his long home; let Time it self wax old and gray-hair'd. Why should I desire to stay here, when Christ could not but pass away?

And if this spotless soul that never sinned was troubled, what wonder then many troubles be to the sinner? Our Savior, who promiseth soul-rest to others, cannot have soul-rest himself: his soul is now on a wheel sore tossed, and all the creatures are upon a wheel, and in motion; there is not a creature since Adam sinned, sleepeth sound. Wearinesse and motion is laid on Moon and Sun, and all creatures on this side of the Moon. Seas ebb and flow, and that's trouble; winds blow, rivers move heavens and stars these five thousand years, except one time, have not had six minutes rest; living creatures walk apace toward death; Kingdoms, Cities, are on the wheel of changes, up, and down; Man-kind run, and the disease of body-trouble, and soul-trouble on them, they are motion-sick, going on their feet, and Kings cannot have beds to rest in. The six days Creation hath been travelling and shouting for pain, and the Child is not born yet, Rom. 8.22. This poor woman hath been groaning under the bondage of vanity, and shall not be brought to bed, while Jesus come the second time to be Mid-wife to the birth. The great All of heaven and earth, since God laid the first stone of this wide Hall, hath been groaning, and weeping, for the liberty of the sons of God, Rom. 8.21. The figure of the passing-away world, 1 Cor. 7.31. is like an old man's face, full of wrinkles, and foul with weeping: we are waiting, when Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, and shall come and wipe the old man's face. Every creature here is on its feet, none of them can sit or lie. Christ's soul now is above trouble, and rests sweetly in the bosom of God. Troubled Souls, Rejoice in hope. Soft and childish Saints take it not well that they are not every day feasted with Christ's love, that they lie not all the night between the Redeemer 's breasts, and are not dandled on his knee; but when the daintiest piece of the Man Jesus, his precious soul was thus sick of soul-trouble, and the noble and celebrious head-Heir of all, the first of his Kingly house, was put to deep groans that pierced skies and heaven, and rent the rocks, why but sinners should be submissive, when Christ is pleased to set children down to walk on foot, and hide himself from them? But they forget the difference between the Inns of clay, and the Home of glory. Our fields here are sown with tears, grief grows in every furrow of this low-land. You shall lay soul and head down in the bosom, and between the breasts of Jesus Christ ; that bed must be soft and delicious, its perfumed with uncreated glory. The thoughts of all your now soul-troubles, shall be as shadows that passed away ten thousand years ago, when Christ shall circle his glorious arm about your head, and you rest in an infinite compass of surpassing glory; or when glory, or ripened grace, shall be within you, and without you, above, and below, when feet of clay shall walk upon pure surpassing glory: The street of the City was pure gold: There is no gold there, but glory only; gold is but a shadow to all that is there.

It were possibly no less edifying to speak a little of though Fourth, What love and tender mercy it was in Christ, to be so troubled in soul for us.

1. Pos. Self is precious, when free of sin, and withal self-happy. Christ was both free of sin, and self-happy; what then could have made him stir his foot out of heaven, so excellent a Land, and come under the pain of a troubled soul, except free, strong and vehement love, that was a bottomless river unpatient of banks? Infinite goodness maketh Love to swell without it self, Joh. 15.13. Goodness is much moved with righteousness and innocence; but we had a bad cause, because sinners: But goodness (for every man that hath a good cause, is not a good man) is moved with goodness: we were neither righteous, nor good; yet Christ, though neither righteousness was in us, nor goodness, would dare to die for us, Rom. 5.7, 8. Goodness and grace (which is goodness for no deserving) is bold, daring, and venturous. Love, which could not flow within its own channel, but that Christ's love might be out of measure love, and out of measure loving, would outrun wickedness in man.

2. Pos. Had Christ seen, when he was to engage his soul in the pains of the second death, that the expense in giving out should be great, and the in-come small, and no more then he had before, we might value his love more: But Christ had leisure from eternity, and wisdom enough to cast up his counts, and knew what he was to give out, and what to receive in; so he might have repented and given up the bargain. He knew that his blood, and his one noble soul, that dwelt in a personal union with God, was a greater sum, incomparably, then all his redeemed ones. He should have in little, he should but gain lost sinners; he should empty out (in a manner) a fair God-head, and kill the Lord of glory, and get in a black bride. But there's no lack in love; the love of Christ was not private, nor mercenary. Christ the buyer, commended the wares ere he bargained, Cant. 4.7. Thou art all fair, my love, there's not a spot in thee. Christ judged he had gotten a noble prize, and made an heavens market, when he got his Wife that he served for, in his arms, Isaiah 53.11. He saw the travel of his soul, and was satisfied: He was filled with delight, as a full Banquetter. If that ransom he gave had been little, he would have given more.

3. Pos. It is much that nothing without Christ moved him to this engagement. There was a sad and bloody war between divine Justice and sinners; Love, Love pressed Christ to the war, to come and serve the great King, and the State of lost Mankind, and to do it freely. This maketh it two favors. Its a conquering notion to think, that the sinners heaven bred first in Christ's heart from eternity; and that Love, freest Love was the blossom, and the seed, and the only contriver of our eternal glory: that free Grace drove on from the beginning of the age of God ▪ from everlasting, the saving plot and sweet design of redemption of souls. This innocent and soul-rejoicing policy of Christ's taking on him the seed of Abraham, not of Angels, and to come down in the shape of a servant, to the land of his enemies, without a Passe, in regard of his sufferings, speaketh and crieth the deep wisdom of infinite Love. Was not this the wit of free Grace to find out such a mysterious and profound dispensation, as that God and man personally should both do and suffer, so as Justice should want nothing, Mercy be satisfied, Peace should kiss righteousness, and war go on, in justice, against a sinless Redeemer? Angels bowing and stooping down to behold the bottom of this depth, 1 Pet. 1.12. cannot read the perfect sense of the infinite turnings and foldings of this mysterious love. O Love of heaven, and fairest of Beloveds, the flower of Angels, why camest thou so low down, as to be-spot and under-rate the spotless love of all loves, with coming • igh to black sinners? Who could have believed that lumps of hell and sin could be capable of the warmings and sparkles of so high and princely a Love? or that there could be place in the breast of the High and lofty One, for forlorn and guilty clay. But we may know in whose breast this bred; sure none but only the eternal Love and Delight of the Father could have outed so much love: had another done it, the wonder had been more. But of this more else-where.

We may hence chide our soft nature; the Lord Jesus his soul was troubled in our business, we start at a troubled body, at a scratch in a penny-broad of our hyde. First, There is in nature a silent impatience, if we be not carried in a chariot of love, in Christ's bosom, to heaven; and if we walk not upon scarlet, and purple under our feet, we flinch and murmur. [unspec 1]

Secondly, We would either have a silken, a soft, a perfumed [unspec 2] cross, sugered and honyed with the consolations of Christ, or we faint; and providence must either brew a cup of gall and worm-wood mastered in the mixing with joy and songs, else we cannot be Disciples. But Christ's Cross did not smile on him, his Cross was a cross, and his ship sailed in blood, and his blessed soul was sea-sick, and heavy even to death.

Thirdly, We love to sails in fresh waters, within a step to the shore, we consider not that our Lord, though he afflict [unspec 3] not, and crush not, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 from his heart, Lam. 3.33. yet he afflicteth not in sport: punishing of sin is in God a serious, grave, and real work: no reason the cross should be a play; neither Stoics nor Christians can laugh it over; the Cross cast a sad glowme upon Christ.

[unspec 4] Fourthly, we forget that bloody and sad mercies are good for us: the peace that the Lord bringeth out of the womb of war, is better then the rotten peace that we had in the superstitious days of Prelates. What a sweet life, what a heaven, what a salvation is it, we have in Christ? and we know the death, the grave, the soul-trouble of the Lord Jesus, travelled in pain to bring forth these to us. Heaven is the more heaven, that to Christ it was a purchase of blood. The Cross to all the Saints must have a bloody bit, and Lions teeth, it was like it self to Christ, gallie and sour, it must be so to us. We cannot have a Paper-cross, except we would take on us to make a golden providence, and put the creation in a new frame, and take the world, and make it a great leaden vessel, melt it in the fire, and cast a new mould of it.

[unspec 5] Fifthly, the more of God in the Cross, the sweeter: as that free grace doth bud out of the black rod of God, to the soul that seeth not, and yet believeth, and loveth; the Cross of Christ drops honey, and sweetest consolations. We sigh under strokes, and we believe. The first Adam killed us, and buried us in two deaths, and sealed our grave in one piece of an hour; he concluded all under wrath. Now how much of Christ is in this? Omnipotencie, infinite wisdom, (when Angels gave us over, and stood aloof at our misery, as changed lovers) free Grace, boundless love, deepest and richest mercy in Jesus Christ opened our graves, and raised the dead. Christ died and rose again, and brought again from the dead all his buried brethren.

Sixthly, we can wrestle with the Almighty ▪ as if we could discipline [unspec 6] and govern ourselves, better then God can do; Murmuring fleeth up against a dispensation of an infinite wisdom, because its God's dispensation, not our own, as if God had done the fault, but the murmuring man only can make amends, and right the slips of infinite Wisdom. Why is it thus with me, Lord? (saith the Wrestler.) Why doest thou mis-judge Christ? he who findeth fault with what the Creator doth, let him be man or Angel, undo it, and do better himself, and carry it with him.

Seventhly, we judge God with sense, with the humor of [unspec 7] reason, not with reason; the oar that God rolleth his vessel withal, is broken (say we) because the end of the oar is in the water: Providence halteth (say we) but what if sense and humor say, a straight line is a circle? The world judged God in person a Samaritan, one that had a devil, if we mis-judge his person, we may mis-judge his providence and ways. Suspend your sense of God's ways, while you see his ends that are under ground, and instead of judging, wonder and adore, or then believe implicitly that the way of God is equal, or do both, and submit, and be silent. Heart-dialogues, and heart-speeches against God, that arises as smoke in the Chimney, are challengings and summons against our highest Landlord, for his own house and land.

Secondly, If Christ gave a soul for us, he had no choiser thing: the Father had no nobler and dearer gift, then his only begotten son; the son had nothing dearer then himself, the man Christ had nothing of value comparable to his soul, and that must run a hazard for man. The Father, the Son, the Man Christ, gave the excellentest that was theirs, for us. In this giving and taking world, we are hence obliged to give the best and choicest thing we have for Christ. Should we make a table of Christ's acts of love, and free grace to us, and of ou • sins and acts of unthankfulness to him, this would be more evident; as there was (1.) before time in the breast of Christ an eternal coal of burning love to the sinner; this fire of heaven is everlasting, and the flames as hot today as ever; our coal of love to him in time, hath scarce any fire or warmenesse, all fire is hot: Oh, we cannot warm Christ with our love, but his love to us is hotter then death, or as the flames of God: We were enemies in our minds to him, by wicked works, Col. 1.21. Heirs of wrath by nature. Christ began with love to us, we begin with hatred to him.

2. The Father gave his only begotten Son for us; how many Fathers, and Eli's will not let fall one tough word to all the sons and daughters they have, for the Lord? God spared not his Son, but gave him to the death for us all. Earthly Fathers spare, clap their Sons, Servants, Friends; Magistrates, flattering Pastors, their people in their blasphemies for him.

3. Christ gave his soul to trouble, and to the horror of the second death for you; consult with your heart, if you have quit one lust for him. Christ laid aside his heaven for you; his whole heaven, his whole glory for you, and his Fathers house; are you willing to part with an acre of earth, or house, and inheritance for him.

4. In calling us out of the state of sin, to grace and glory; oh I must make this sad reckoning with Jesus Christ. Oh, Christ turneth his smiling face to me, in calling, inviting, obtesting, praying, that I would be reconciled to God, I turn my back to him; he openeth his breast and heart to us, and saith, Friends, Doves, come in and dwell in the holes of this rock ; and we lift our heel against him. O what guilt is here to scratch Christ's breast? when he willeth you to come, and lay head and heart on his breast; this unkindness to Christ's troubled soul, is more then sin: sin is but a transgression of the Law. I grant it is an infinite But. But 'its a transgression of both Law and Love, to spurn against the warm bowels of Love, to spit on grace, on tenderness of infinite Love. The white and ruddy, the fairest of heaven, offereth to kiss Black-Moors on earth, they will not come near to him. 'Its a heart of Flint and Adaman • , that spitteth at Evangelike love: Law-Love is Love ; Evangelike love is more then love, 'its the Gold, the flour of Christ's Wheat, and of his finest Love. Cant. 5.6. I rose up to open to my beloved, but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone, my soul passed away when he spake. There be two words here considerable, to prove how wounding are sins against the love of Christ. 1. My beloved hath withdrawn himself ; the Text is, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 and my beloved had turned about. Ari. Mont. circumj • rat, Pagnin. in the Margen, verterat se, the old Version, declinaverat. Christ being unwilling to remove, and wholly go away, he only turned aside, as Jer. 31.22. How long wilt thou go about, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 O thou backsliding daughter. This intimateth so much, as Christ taketh not a direct journey to go away, and leave his own children, only he goeth a little aside from the door of the soul, to testify he would gladly, with his soul, come in. Now what ingratitude is it to shut him violently away? 2. My soul was gone, the old Version is, My soul melted, at his speaking 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 my soul passed over, or went away; to remember his ravishing words, it broke my life and made me die: (so is the word elsewhere used) that I remembered a world of love in him, when he knocked, saying Open to me my sister, my love, my dove ; to sin against so great a bond as Grace, must be the sin of sins, and amongst highest sins, as is clear, in these that sin against the Holy Ghost ; then it must be impossible to give Grace anything, we but pay our debts to grace; we cannot give the debt of Grace to Grace in the whole sum.

It cannot then be a sin intrinsically and of it self to be troubled in soul, if Christ was under soul-trouble, for sins imputed to him.

Hence let me stay a little on these two; First, what a troubled conscience is: Secondly, what course the troubled in soul are to take in imitation of Christ. A soul troubled for sin must either be a soul feared and perplexed, for the penal displeasure, wrath, and indignation of God, or the eternal punishment of sin, as these come under the apprehension of the evil of punishment; or, for sin as it faileth against the love of God, or for both. In any of these three respects, it is no sin to be soul-troubled for sin, upon these conditions: 1. That the soul be free of faithless doubting of God's love. Now Christ was free of this, he could not but have a fixed, entire, and never broken confidence of his Fathers eternal love. If we have any sin in our soul-trouble for sin, it's from unbelief, not from soul-trouble; if their be mud and clay in the streams, it is from the banks, not from the fountain. Or, 2. if the soul fear the ill of punishment, as the greatest ill, and as a greater then the ill of sin, there is more passion, then sound light in the fear, this could not be in Christ ; the aversion of the Lord's heart, from the party in whom there is sin, either by real inherence, Or by free imputation, and the in-drawing of rays, and irradiations, and out-flowings of divine love is a high-evil in a soul that hath anything of the nature of a son in him; now there was as much of a son in Christ, as a man's nature could be capable of: and the more of God that was in Christ, as the fullness, the boundless infinite Sea of the God-head, overflowed Christ over all the banks, then for Christ to be under a cloud, in regard of the out-breathings of eternal love, was in a sort, most violent to Christ, as if he had been torn from himself, and therefore it behooved to be an extreme soul-trouble; Christ being deprived, in a manner▪ of himself, and of his only souls substantial delight and Paradise. And this could not be a sin, but an act of gracious Soul-sorrow, that sin and hell intervened between the Moon and the Sun; the soul of Christ, and his Lord ; the more of Heaven in the soul, and the more of God: the want of God and of Heaven is the greater Hell. Suppose we that the whole light in the body of the Sun were utterly extinct, and that the Sun were turned in a body as dark as the outside of a Caldron, that should be a greater loss, then if an half penny candle were deprived of light. Christ had more to lose, then a world of millions of Angels ; Imagine a creature of as much Angelike capacity, as ten thousand times, ten thousand thousand of Angels, all contemperated in one, if this glorious Angel were filled, according to his capacity, with the highest, and most pure and refined glory of heaven; and again were immediately stripped naked of all this glory, and then plunged into the depth and heart of Holl, and of a lake of more then Hells ordinary temper, of fire and brimstone; or suppose, God should add millions of degrees of more pure and unmixed wrath and curses, this Angels soul must be more troubled, then we can easily apprehend; yet this is but a comparison below the thing; but the Lord Jesus in whole person, heaven in the highest degree was carried about with him, being thrown down from the top of so high a glory, to a sad and fearful condition, an agony, and swearing of blood, ( God knows the cause) that shouting and tears of this low condition, drew out that saddest complaint, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? his loss must be incomparably more then all we can say in these shadows.

This showeth the cause, why there is not among troubles any so grievous, as the want of the presence of God, to a soul fattened, and feasted with the continual marrow and fatness of the Lord's house. No such complaints read you, so bitter, so patheticke, and coming from deeper sense, then the want of the sense of Christ's love. It's broken bones, and a dried up body to David ; it's bitter weeping and crying, like the chattering of a Crane to Hezekiah ; it's more then strangling, and brings Job to pray he had been buried in the womb of his mother, or that he had never been borne, or his mother had been always great with him; it is swoning, and the souls departure out of the body, sickness and death to the Spouse, Cant. 5. verse. 6.8. it's Hell and distraction to Heman, Psal. 88.15. It is to Jeremiah the cursing of the Messenger that brought tidings to his Father, that a man-child was borne, and a wishing that he never had being, nor life; it's death to part the lover from the beloved, and the stronger love be, the death is the more death.

But in all that we yet have said, Christ's greatest Soul trouble as a Son (for that he was essentially) was in that his holy soul was sadded and made h • avie even to death, for sin, as sin, and as contrary to his Fathers love. The Elect sinned against the Lord, not looking to him, as either Lord, or Father: but Christ paid full dear for sin; eying God as Lord, as Father. We look neither to Lord, to Law, nor to Love, when we sin; Christ looked to all three, when he satisfied for sin. Christ did more then pay our debts; it was a sum above price that he gave for us; it is a great question, yea out of all question, if all mankind redeemed came near to the worth, to the goodly price given for us.

So according to the sense of any happiness, so must the Soul-trouble for the loss of that happiness be, in due proportion. First, as we love, so is sorrow for the loss of what we love. Jaakob would not have mourned so, for the loss of a servant, as of his Son Joseph. Now no man enjoying God, could have a more quick and vigorous sense of the enjoyed God-head, then Christ▪ so his apprehension and vision of God must have been strong. 2. Because the union with the Godhead, and communion of fullness of Grace from the womb, must add to his natural faculties, a great edge of sense; his soul and the faculties thereof were never blunted with sin; and the larger the vessel be, the fullness must be the greater▪ What, or who, of the highest Seraphims, or Dominions, or Principalities, among Angels, had so large and capacious a a spirit to contain the fullness of God, as Christ had? When Solomon's heart was larger the • the sand in the Sea-shore ; and he was but a shadow of such a soul, as was to devil personally with the fullness of the Godhead bodily; O how capacious and wide must the heart of the true Solomon be? it being to contain many Seas, and Rivers of Wisdom, Love, Joy, Goodness, Mercy, above millions of Sandes, in millions of Sea-shoares. What bowels of compassion and love, of m •••• nesse, gentleness, of free grace must be in him? Since all thousands of Elected souls sat in these bowels, and were in his heart, to die and live with him, and withal, since in his heart was the love of God in the highest. Love must make a strong impression in the heart of Christ, and the stronger, purer, and more vigorous that Christ's intellectuals are, the deeper his holy thoughts and pure apprehensions were, and more steeled with fullness of Grace; his fruition, sense, joy, and love of God, must be the more elevated above what Angels and M • n are capable off. Hence it must follow, that Christ was plunged in an uncouth, and new world of extreme sorrow, even to the death, when this strong love was Ecclipsed. Imagine that for one Spring and Summer season, that all the light, heat, motion, vigor, influence of life, should retire into the body of the Sun, and remain there, what darkness, deadness, whithering, should be upon flowers, herbs, trees, mountains, valleys, beasts, birds, and all things living and moving on the earth? Then what wonder, that Christ's Soul was extremely troubled, his blessed Sun was now down, his Spring and Summer gone; his Father a forsaking God, was a new World to him, and I shall not believe that his complaint came from any error of judgment, or mistakes, or ungrounded jealousies of the love of God: As his Father could not at any time hate him; so neither could he at this time, actu secundo, let out the sweet fruits of his love▪ the cause of the former is the nature of God, • s the ground of the latter is a dispensation above the capacity of the reason of Men or Angels. We may then conclude, that Jesus Christ's Soul-trouble, as it was rational, and extremely penal; so also it was sinneless, and innocent, seldom have we Soul-trouble sinneless▪ but it i • by accident of the way. For our passions can hardly rise in th • ir extremity, (except when God is their only object) but they go over score, yet Soul-trouble intrinsically is not a sin.

Then to be troubled for sin, though the person be fully persuaded of pardon, is neither sin, no • inconsistent with the state of a justified person, nor is it any act of unbelief, as Antinomians falsely suppose. For (1.) To be in soul-trouble for sin which cannot, to the perfect knowledge of the person troubled, [unspec 1] eternally condemn, was in Jesus Christ ; in whom there was no spot of sin. And Antinomians say, Sin remaining sin essentially, must have a condemnatory power: so as its unpossible to separate the condemnatory power of the Law, from the mandatory and commanding power of the Law. (2.) Because as to abstain from sin as it offendeth against the love of God sh • wing mercy, rather then the Law of God inflicting [unspec 2] wrath, is spiritual obedience; so also to be troubled in soul for sin, committed by a justified person against so many sweet bonds of free love and grace, is a sanctified and gracious sorrow and trouble of soul. (3.) To be troubled for sin, as offensive to our heavenly Father, and against the sweetness of [unspec 3] free Grace and tender love, includeth no act of unbelief, nor that the justified and pardoned sinner thus troubled is not pardoned, or that he feareth eternal wrath, (as Antinomians imagine) no more then a sons grief of mind for offending a tender-hearted father can infer, that this grief doth conclude this son under a condition of doubting of his state of son-ship or filliation, or a fearing he be dis-inherited. We may fear the Lord and his goodness, Hos. 3.5. as well as we fear his eternal displeasure. (4.) Sanctified soul-trouble is a sonlie commotion and agony of spirit, for trampling under feet [unspec 4] tender love, spurning and kicking against the lovely warmness of the flowings of the blood of atonement; checks and love-terrors or love-fevers that Christ's Princely head was wet with the night-rain, while he was kept out of his own house, and suffered to lodge in the streets; and fear that the Beloved withdraw himself, and go seek his lodging elsewhere, as Cant. 5.4, 5. Psal. 5.9, 10▪ and that the Lord cover himself with a cloud, and return to his place, and the influence of the rays and beams of love be suspended; are sweet expressions of filial bowels, and tenderness of love to Christ.

Libertines imagine, if the hazard and fear of hell be removed, there is no more place for fear, soul-trouble, or confession: Therefore they teach, that there is no assurance true and right, unless it be without fear and doubting . (2.) That to call in question whether God be my dear Father, after, or upon the commission of some heinous sins, (as murder, incest, &c.) doth prove a man to be under the covenant of works ▪ (3.) That a man must be so far from being troubled for sin, that he must take no notice of his sin, nor of his repentance . Yea, D ^r . Crisp, vol. 3. Serm. 1. pag. 20, 21, 22. saith, There was no cause why Paul (Rom. 7.) should fear sin, or a body of death; because in that place Paul doth (saith he) personate a scrupulous spirit, and doth not speak out of his own present c • se, as it was at this time, when he speaks it; but speaks in the person of another, yet a believer: and my reason is, Paul in respect of his own person, what became of his sin, was already resolved, Chap. 8.1. There is now no condemnation, &c. he knew his sins were pardoned, and that they could not hurt him.

Answ. Observe that Arminius, as also of old, Pelagius, exponed Rom. 7. de semi regenito, of a half renewed man, in whom sense, which inclines to venial sins, fights with reason; that so the full and perfectly renewed man might seem to be able to keep the Law, and be free of all mortal sin. And Crisp doth here manifestly free the justified man of all sin: why? because he is pardoned. So then there is no battle between the Flesh and the Spirit in the justified man, by the Antinomian way to heaven, which on the Fleshes part, that lusteth against the Spirit, deserveth the name of sin, or a breach of the Law: Only its Asinus meus qui peccat, non ego ; as the old Libertines in Calvin 's time said, The flesh does the sin, not the man; for the man is under no Law, and so cannot sin. But that Paul, Rom. 7. speaks in the person of a scrupulous and troubled conscience, not as its the common case of all the regenerate, in whom sin dwells, is a foul and fleshly untruth. (1.) To be carnal in part, as Vers. 14. to do which we allow not, to do what we would not, and what we hate, to do, is the common case, not peculiar to a troubled conscience only, but to all the Saints, Gal. 5.17. (2.) Paul speaketh not of believing, as he must do, if he speak only of a scrupulous and doubting conscience; but he speaketh of 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , of working, verse. 15. doing, 17, 18. willing, 15, 19. not of believing only, or doubting: Now it is not like the Apostle does personate a scrupulous soul, of whom he insinuates no such thing. (3.) A scrupulous and troubled conscience will never yield, so long as he is in that condition, that he does any good, or that he belongs to God; as is clear, Psal. 88. Psal. 38. Psal. 77.1, 2, 3, 4. &c. but Paul in this case yieldeth, he does good, hates evil, delights in the Law of the Lord in the inner man; hath a desire to do good, hath a law in his mind that resisteth the motions of the flesh. (4.) Yea, the Apostle then had no cause to fear the body of sin, or to judge himself wretched; this was his unbelief, and there was no ground of his fear; because he was pardoned, he knew that he was freed from condemnation. It was then Paul 's sin, and is the sinful scrupulosity of unbelievers to say, being once justified, Sin dwells in me, and there is a law in my members, rebelling against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity unto the law of sin ; and I am carnal, and sold under sin ; and I do evil, even that which I hate ; for all these are lies, and speeches of unbelief: The justified man sinneth not, his heart is clean, he doth nothing against a law. But I well remember that our Divines, and particularly, Chemnitz, Calvin, Beza, prove against Papists, that concupiscence is sin after baptism, even in the regenerate; and it is called eleven or twelve times with the name of sin, Rom. c. 6. c. 7. c. 8. and they teach that of Augustine as a truth, Inest non ut non sit, sed ut non imputetur. So we may use all these Arguments against Libertines, to prove we are, even being justified, such as can sin, and do transgress the Law; and therefore ought to confess these sins, be troubled in conscience for them, complain and sigh in our fetters, though we know that we are justified and freed from the guilt of sin, and the obligation to eternal wrath. But sin is one thing, and the obligation to eternal wrath is another thing: Antinomians confound them, and so mistake grossly the nature of sin, and of the Law, and of Justification. Some imprudently go so far on, that they teach, That believers are to be troubled in heart for nothing that befalls them, either in sin, or in affliction. If their meaning were, that they should not doubtingly, and from the principle of unbelief call in question their once sealed Justification, we should not oppose such a tenent; but their reasons do conclude, That we should no more be shaken in mind with sin, then with afflictions, and the punishments of sin ; and that notwithstanding of the highest provocation we are guilty of, we are always to rejoice, to feast on the consolations of Christ. 1. Because trouble for sin ariseth from ignorance, or unbelief, that believers understand not the work of God for them, in the three Persons; the Fathers everlasting decree about them; the Sons union with them, and headship to them, his merits, and intercession; the holy Spirits inhabitation in them, and his office toward them, to work all their works for them, till he make them meet for glory. 2. Because such trouble is troublesome to God's heart, as a friend's trouble is to his friends; but especially, because the Spirit of bondage never returns again to the justified, Rom. 8.15. . But I crave leave to clear our Doctrine, touching soul-trouble for sin, in the justified person.

Asser. 1. No doubting, no perplexity of unbelief, de jure, ought to perplex the soul once justified, and pardoned. 1. Because the Patent and Writs of an unchangeable purpose to save the elect, and the subscribed and resolved upon Act of atonement and free redemption, in Christ, standeth uncancelled and firm, being once received by faith; the justified soul ought not so to be troubled for sin, as to mis-judge the Lord's by-past work of saving Grace. 1. Because the believer, once justified, is to believe remission of sins, and a paid ransom: If now he should believe the Writs once signed, were cancelled again, he were obliged to believe things contradictory. 2. To believe that the Lord is changed, and off and on, in his free love and eternal purposes, is a great slandering of the Almighty. 3. The Church Psal. 77. acknowledgeth such mis-judging of God, to be the souls infirmity, Psal. 77.10. I said, This is my infirmity.

Asser. 2. Yet, de facto, David a man according to God's heart, 1 Sam. 12.12, 13. fell in an old fever, a fit of the disease of the Spirit of bondage, Psal. 32.3. When I kept silence, my bones waxed old, through my roaring all the day long. V. 4. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. So the Church in Asaph 's words, Psal. 77.2. My sore ran in the night, and ceased not: either his hand was bedewed with tears in the night, as the Hebrew beareth; or a boil of unbelief broke upon me in the night, and slacked not. Vers. 7. Will the Lord cast off forever? will he be merciful no more? Then faith and doubting both may as well be in the soul, with the life of God, as health and sickness in one body, at sundry times; and it is no argument at all of no spiritual assurance, and of a soul under the Law or covenant of works, to doubt: as sickness argueth life, no dead [unspec 1] corpse is capable of sickness, or blindness; these are infirmities that neighbor with life: so doubting with sorrow, because the poor soul cannot, in that exigence, believe, is of kin to the life of God: the life of Jesus hath infirmities, kindly to it, as some diseases are hereditary to such a family. 2. The habit or state of unbelief is one thing, and doubtings and love-jealousies is [unspec 2] another thing. Our love to Christ is sickly, crazy, and full of jealousies and suspicions. Temptations make false reports of Christ, and we easily believe them. Jealousies argue love, and the strongest of loves, even marriage-love. 3. By this, all acts of unbelief in souls once justified, and sanctified, should be [unspec 3] unpossible. Why, then the Lord's Disciples had no faith, when Christ said to them, Why doubt ye, O ye of little faith? It happily may be answered, that the Disciples Mat. 8. doubted not of their son-ship, but of the Lord's particular care in bringing them to shore, in a great sea-storm. To which I answer, Its most true, they then feared bodily, not, directly, soul-ship-wrack; but if it was sinful doubting, of Christ's care of them, Master, carest thou not for us? the point is concluded, That doubting of Christ's care and love may well infer, a soul is not utterly void of faith, that is in a doubting condition. 4. The morning dawning of light, is light; the first springing of the child in the belly, is a motion of life; the least warmings [unspec 4] of Christ's breathings, is the heat of life: When the pulse of Christ new framed in the soul moveth most weakly, the new birth is not dead; the very swonings of the love of Christ cannot be incident to a buried man. 5. When Christ rebuketh little faith and doubting, he supposeth faith: he who is but a [unspec 5] sinking, and crieth to Christ, is not drowned as yet. 6. The Disciples prayer, Lord increase our faith; Christ's praying that [unspec 6] the faith of the Saints, when they are winnowed, may not fail; the exhortation to be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might, prove, the Saints faith may be at a stand, and may stagger and slide. 7. The various condition of the Saints; now its full moon, again no moon light at all, but a dark eclipse; [unspec 7] evidenceth this truth. The believer hath flowings of strong acts of faith, joy, love; supernatural p • ssions of Grace arising to an high spring-tide, above the banks and ordinary coasts; and • gain, a low-ground ebb. The condition in ebbings and flowings, in full manifestations and divine raptures of another world, when the wind bloweth right from heaven, and the breath of Jesus Christ's mouth, and of sad absence, runneth through the Song of Solomon, the book of the Psalms, the book of Job, as threads through a web of silk, and veins that are the strings and spouts carrying blood through all the body, less or more.

Asser. 3. The justified soul once pardoned, receiveth never the Spirit of bondage, Rom. 8.15. to fear again, eternal wrath; that is, This Spirit in the intension of the habit, such as was at the first conversion, when there was not a grain of faith; doth never return, nor is it consistent with the Spirit of Adoption. Yet happily it may be a question, if a convert brought in with much sweetness, and quietness of Spirit, shall fall in some heinous sin, like the adultery and murder of D • vid, have not greater vexation of Spirit, then at his first conversion, but more supernatural.

But yet this must stand as a condemned error, which Libertines do hold, That frequency, or length of holy duties, or trouble of Conscience for neglect thereof, are all signs of one under a Covenant of Works. And that which another of that way, saith in a dangerous medicine for wounded souls. Where there is no Law, (as there is none in, or over the justified soul) there is no transgression, and where there is no transgression, there is no trouble for sin, all trouble arising from the obligement of the Law, which demandeth a satisfaction of the soul, for the breach of it, and such satisfaction as the soul knows it cannot give, and thereby remains unquiet; like a debtor that hath nothing to pay, and the Law too, being naturally in the soul, as the Apostle saith, The Conscience accusing, or else excusing. It is no marvel, that such souls should be troubled for sin, and unpacified, the Law having such a party, and engagement already within them; which holding an agreement with the Law, in Tables and Letters of stone, must needs work strongly upon the spirits of such as are but faintly and weakly enlightened, and are not furnished with Gospel enough to answer the indictments, the convictions, the terrors, the curses which the Law brings. And a third, And indeed, God's people (saith he) need more joys after sins, then after afflictions, because they are more cast down by them; and therefore God useth sins, as means by which he leads in his joys into them in this world, and all • o in the world to come, their sins yield them great joys; Indeed, in some respects, they shall joy-most at the last day, who have sinned least; But in other respects, they have most joy, who have sinned most; (for sin they little or much, they all shall enter into joy at last,) &c.

Now all this is but a turning of Faith into wantonness, whereas Faith of all graces, moveth with lowest sails; for Faith is not a lofty, and crying, but a soft moving, and humble grace; for then David's being moved, and his heart smiting him at the renting of King Saul's garment, should be under a covenant of works, and so not a man according to God's own heart, for a smitten heart is a troubled soul. David, Abraham; Rom. 4. and all the Fathers under the Law, were justified by the imputed righteousness of Christ, apprehended by Faith, as we are Rom. 4.23. Now it was not written for Abraham's sake only, that it was imputed to him. Vers. 24. But for us also, &c. David ought not to have been troubled in soul for sin, for his sins were then pardoned; nor could the Spirit of the Lord so highly commend Josiah's heart-melting trouble at the reading and hearing of the Law: nor Christ own the tears and Soul-trouble of the Woman, as coming from no other spring, but much love to Christ, because many sins were pardoned ; if this Soul-trouble for sin had argued these to be under the Law, and not in Christ ; nor can it be said, that the Saints of old were more under the Law, then now under the Gospel, in the sense we have now in hand: that is, that we are to be less troubled for sin then they, because our justification is more perfect, and the blood of Christ had less power to purge the Conscience, and to satisfy the demands of the Law before it was shed, then now when it is shed: or that more of the Law was naturally in the hearts of David, Josiah, and the Saints of old, and so, more naturally, unbelief must be in them, then is in us, by nature, under Gospel manifestations of Christ. Indeed, the Law was a severer Pedagogue to awe the Saints, then in regard of the outward dispensation of Ceremonies, and Legal strictness; keeping men as malefactors in close prison, till Christ should come. But imputation of Christ's righteousness, and blessedness in the pardon of sin, and so freedom from Soul-trouble for eternal wrath; and the Laws demanding the Conscience to pay, what debts none were able to pay, but the Surety only, was one, and the same to them, and to us; as Psal. 32.1, 2. compared with Rom. 4▪ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. and Psal. 14. with Rom. 3.9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.19.20. and Gen. 17.9. cap. 22.18. Deut. 27.26. with Gal. 3.10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Heb. 6.13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. Who dare say, that the believing Jews, died under the curse of the Law, Deut. 27.26? For so they must perish eternally. Gal. 3.10. For as many as are of the works of the Law, are under the curse: Then there must be none redeemed under the Old Testament, nor any justified, contrary to express Scriptures, Psal. 32.1, • . Rom. 4.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Gal. 3.14. Act. 15.11. Acts 11.16, 17. Rom. 10.1, 2, 3. Now Acts 15.11. We believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus, we shall be saved as well as they. And as they were blessed, in that their transgression was forgiven, and their sin covered, and that the Lord imputed no iniquity to them, Psal. 32.1, 2. our blessedness is the same, Rom. 4.6, 7, 8. and Christ as he was made a curse for them, so for us; that Gal. 3.14. the blessing of Abraham might come on us the Gentiles, through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit, through faith: And God sent forth his Son made of a Woman, made under the Law ; for the Jews who as heirs were under Tutors, as we are under the Moral Law by nature, that we might be redeemed by him, That we, who are under the Law, might receive the adoption of Sons, Gal. 4.1, 2, 3, 4. And God gave the like gift to the Gentiles, that he gave to the Jews, even repentance unto life, Acts 11.16, 17. Then the Law could crave them no harder then us; and they were no more justi • ied by works, then we are, Yea following righteousness, they attained it not, because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the Law; for they stumbled at the stumbling stone, that was laid in Zion, Rom. 9.31, 32, 33. And they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God, Rom. 10.1, 2, 3. and so came short of justification by Grace, so do we. If then to the justified Jews, There was no Law, no transgression, and so no trouble for sin ; all trouble of Conscience arising from the obligement of the Law; as it must be, because they were freed from the curse of the Law, and justified in Jesus Christ, by his Grace, as we are; then were they under no smiting of heart, nor wounding of Conscience more then we are; which is manifestly false in David, and in Josiah, and many of the Saints under the Old Testament. Hence what was sinful and unbelieving Soul-trouble for sin to them, must be sinful Soul-trouble to us in the same kind. The Law did urge the Jews, harder then us, in regard of the Mosaical burden of Ceremonies, and bloody Sacrifices, that pointed out their guiltiness, except they should flee to Christ ; (2.) In regard of God's dispensation of the severer punishing of Law-transgression, and that with temporary punishments, and rewarding obedience with external prosperity: (3.) In urging this Doctrine more hardly upon the people, to cause them not rest on the letter of the law; but seek to the promised Messiah, in whom only was their righteousness; as young heirs and minors are kept under Tutors, while their Non-age expire: but (1.) Who dare say, that the Saints under the Old Testament, who lived and died in the case of remission of sins, of salvation and of peace with God, Gen. 49.18. Psal. 37.37. Psal. 73.25. Prov. 14.32. Isai. 57.1, 2. Hebr. 11.13. Psal. 32.1, 2. Micah. 7.18, 19. Isai. 43.25. Jerem. 50.20. Psalm. 31.5. and were undoubtedly blessed in Christ, as we are, Psal. 119.1, 2. Psalm. 65.4. Psalm. 1.1, 2, 3. Psal. 144.14, 15. Psal. 146.5. Job 5.17. Psalm. 84.4, 5. and died not under the curse of God, or were in capacity to be delivered by Christ, after this life, from the wrath to come, and the curse of the Law? (2.) That they were to trust to the merit of their own works, or seek righteousness in themselves, more then we? (3.) Or that they believed not, or that their Faith was not counted to them for Righteousness, as it is with us? Gen. 15.5, 6. Rom. 4.3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Psal. 32.1, 2. (4.) Yea, they believing in the Messiah to come, were no more under the Law, and the dominion of sin, then we are, Rom. 6.6, 7, 8, 9. Rom. 7.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Rom. 8.1, 2. Micah 7.18, 19. Isai. 43.25. Jer. 50.20. Psal. 32.1, 2. but under grace, and pardoned, and saved by Faith, as we are, Heb. 11.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. Gal. 3.10, 13. Acts 11.16, 17. Rom. 9.31, 32, 33. (5.) Yea, the Law was no less a Letter of condemnation to them, then to us. Rom. 8.3. Rom. 10.3. Deut. 27.26. Gal. 3.10, 13. 2 Cor. 3, 7, 8.13.14, 15. (6.) They drank of the same spiritual Rock with u • , and the Rock was Christ, 1 Cor. 10.1, 2, 3, 4. Heb. 13.8. and were saved by grace, as well as we, Acts 15.11.

2. It's true, Josiah's tenderness of heart, David's smiting of heart, the Woman's weeping, even to the washing of Christ's f • et with tears, Peters weeping bitterly for the denying of his Lord, as they were woundings, and Gospel-affections, and commotions of love issuing from the Spirit of adoption, of love, grace, and nothing but the Turtles love-sorrow; so it is, most false, that they were no soul trouble for sin, as if these had been freed from all Law of God, and these soul-commotions were not from any sense of the curse, or the Law, or any demands of Law, to pay what justice may demand of the self-condemned sinner ; yet were they acts of soul-trouble for sin, as sin: and it shall never follow, that the parties were under no transgression, and no law, because under no obligement to eternal wrath ; for such an obligation to eternal wrath, is no chain which can tie the sons of adoption, who are washed, justified, pardoned; and yet if the justified and pardoned say, they have no sin, and so no reason to complain under their fetters, and sigh as captives in prison, as Paul doth, Rom. 7.24. nor cause to mourn for in-dwelling of sin, they are liars and strangers to their own heart, and do sleep in deep security; as if sin were so fully removed both in guilt and blot, as if tears for sin as sin should argue the mourning party to be in the condition of those who weep in hell, or that they were no more obliged to weep; yea, by the contrary, to exercise no such affection, but joy, comfort, and perpetuated acts of solace and rejoicing; as if Christ had, in the threshold of glory, with his own hand wiped all tears from their eyes already.

3. Nor see I any reason why any should affirm, That the Law is naturally as a party in the soul, of the either regenerate [unspec 1] and justified, or of those who are out of Christ. (1.) For the Law's in-dwelling, as a party engaging, by accusing and condemning, is not naturally in any son of Adam ; because there is a sleeping conscience, both dumb and silent naturally in the soul: and if there be any challenging and accusing in the Gentile-conscience, Rom. 2. as stirring is opposed to a silent and dumb conscience that speaketh nothing, so the Law-accusing is not naturally in the soul; a spirit above nature (I do not mean the Spirit of regeneration) must work with the Law, else both the Law and sin lie dead in the soul: the very law of nature lieth as a dead letter, and stirreth not, except some wind blow more or less on the soul, Rom. 7.8, 9. (2.) That the Law wakeneth any sinner, and maketh the drunken and mad sinner see himself [unspec 2] in the sea, and sailing down the river to the chambers of death, that he may but be occasioned to cast an eye on shore, on Jesus Christ, and wish a landing on Christ, is a mercy that no man can father on nature, or on himself. (3.) All sense of a sinful condition, to any purpose, is a work above nature; though [unspec 3] it be not ever a fruit of regeneration. (4.) Its true, Christ teacheth a man's soul, through the shining of Gospel-light, to [unspec 4] answer all the indictments of the Law, in regard that Christ the Ransomer stops the Law's mouth with blood, else the sinner can make but a poor and faint advocation for himself; yet this cannot be made in the conscience without some soul-trouble for sin. (5.) Its strange that God's people need more joy after sin, then after affliction ; and that in some respect, they have [unspec 5] most joy, who have sinned most: Sure, this is accidental to sin, this joy is not for sin; but its a joy of loving much, because much is forgiven. Forgiveness is an act of free grace, sin is no work of grace: Sin grieves the heart of God; as a friend's trouble is trouble to a friend: the believer is made the friend of God, Joh. 15.15. and it must be cursed joy that lay in the womb of that which is most against the heart of Christ ; such as all sin is. Yea, to be more troubled in soul for sins, then for afflictions, smelleth of a heart that keeps correspondence with the heart and bowels of Christ, who wept more for Jerusalem's sins, then for his own afflictions and cross. As some ounces of everlasting wrath in the Law, with a talent weight of free Gospel-mercy would be contempered together to cure the sinner; so is there no rational way to raise and heighten the price and worth of the soul-Redeemer of sinners, and the weight of infinite love so much, as to make the sinner know how deep a hell he was plunged in, when the bone aketh exceedingly: for that the Gospel-tongue of the Physician Christ should lick the rotten blood of the souls wound, speaketh more then imaginable free-love. Nor do we say, that Gospel-mourning is wrought by the Law's threatenings, then it were servile sorrow; but its wrought by the doctrine of the Law, discovering the foulness and sinfulness of sin, and by the doctrine of the Gospel ; the Spirit of the Gospel shining on both: Otherwise, sounds, breathings, letters of either Law or Gospel, except the breathings of heaven shine on them and animate them, can do • no good.

Asser. 4. Sins of youth already pardoned as touching the obligation to eternal wrath, may so rise against the child of God, as he hath need to ask the forgiveness of them, as touching the removing of present wrath, sense of the want of God's presence, of the influence of his love, the cloud of sadness and deadness, through the want of the joy of the Holy Ghost, and ancient consolations of the days of old. Psal. 90.7. We are consumed in thy wrath, and by thy hot displeasure we are terrified. Vers. 8. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, and our secret sin in the light of thy face. This was not a motion of the flesh in Moses the man of God. Antinomians may so dream, the fury of the Lord waxed hot against his people: so saith the Spirit of God: nor is this conceit of theirs to be credited against the Text that Moses speaketh in regard of the reprobate party; Moses by immediate inspiration doth not pray for the beauty and glory of the Lord, in the sense of his love to be manifested on a reprobate party. Antinomian Preachers in our times confess sins in public, but its the sins of the reprobate and carnal multitude, that are in the Society mixed with the godly; they think it a work of the flesh to confess their own sins: this is to steal the word of the Lord from his people. So David, Psal. 25.7. Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions. The sins of his youth, as touching obligation to eternal wrath, were pardoned, I question it not; but in regard, God was turned from him in the flamings of love, and his sins sealed up in a bag in regard of innumerable evils that lay on him: he prayeth, Vers. 16. Turn thee unto me. Hebr. Set thy countenance on me. God's favor in the sense of it, was turned away; and Vers. 18. Look upon mine affliction and pain, and forgive all my sins ; the word 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 with a point in the left side of 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . is to carry away. Jerome aufer, take away all my sins Isai. 53.4. he carried, or did bear as a burden our iniquities. Vatablus, portavit. Pagnin. parce, condona, Spare or pardon all my sins: then sin here is pardoned only according to the present pain and grief of body and soul that was on David, Psal. 3 • .4. For mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. We have no reason to believe that David thought himself already a condemned man, and now in hell, though some sparks of hell's wrath and fire, not in any sort as satisfactory to divine justice, or as a fruit of God's hatred and enmity, can fall on the children of God ; yet its not imaginary, but real anger. God was really angry with Moses at the waters of strife. The thing that David did against Uriah displeased the Lord: not in David 's opinion only. And though the hell for a time in the soul of God 's children, and the hell of the reprobate, differ in essence and nature, in that the hell of the reprobate is a satisfactory pain, 2. and that i • floweth from the hatred of God ; but the hell of the godly not so: yet in this materially they are of the same size; that the one as well as the other, are coals and flames of the same furnace; and neither are imaginary. Then again, Sins of youth long-ago pardoned, though sometimes dearly beloved, are like the ghost of a dear friend some years ago dead and buried, that re-appeareth to a man, as dead Samuel did to Saul ; look how loving and dear they were alive, they are now as terrible and dreadful, when they appear to us living out from the land of death: so are sins of youth, when they rise from the dead, and were pardoned in Christ long-ago, they appear again to David, and Job, and the Saints, with the veil and mask or hew of hell, and sealed with temporary wrath. Psal. 99.8. Thou wast a God that pardonedst, or forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance of their inventions. The same word 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 is given to God, when he taketh vengeance on his enemies, Num. 31.2. Isaiah 1.24. I will be avenged of mine enemies. 2 King. 9.7. That I may avenge the blood of my servants the Prophets. So is the word 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 vengeance used, Deut. 32.43. He will render vengeance to his adversaries. And if one and the same temporary judgment in the two Thieves that were crucified with Christ, be so differenced, that mercy is stamped on the same death to the one, and wrath to the other; we may well say there is a temporary vengeance and wrath, that befalleth both the Saints and the Reprobate in this life; and the difference is in the mind and intention of God, in both. And that God pardoneth sin, when he removeth temporary wrath: So 2 Sam. 12.13. Nathan saith to David, The Lord also hath caused thy sin to pass away, why? Thou shalt not die. This is meant of temporal death especially; as the context cleareth, V. 10. The sword shall not depart from thine house. And V. 14. The child borne to thee shall surely die. Then the Lord's putting away of David's sin, was in loosing him from the sword, in his own person, not in his house and children; for by proportion of divine justice, (though tempered with mercy) the Sword was punished with the Sword. I do not exclude relaxation from eternal punishment, but remission going for relaxation of punishment. Then as there be two sorts of punishmen • s, one temporary, and another the eternal wrath to come; so there are in Scripture two sorts of remissions, one from the temporary, another from eternal punishment. Therefore sin is put for punishment, Gen. 4.13. Mine iniquity (saith Cain) is more then I can bear ; or, My punishment is more then I can bear. Levite. 24.15. He that curseth his God, shall bear his sin. Ezek. 23.49. And ye shall bear the sins of your Idols. Num. 9.13. The man that is clean — and forbeareth to eat the Passe-over, — that man shall bear his sin. So when God layeth sin to the charge of the sinner, in punishing it, he is said to lay a burden on the sinner, 2 King. 9.25. And to remove this burden, is to pardon the sin. 2 Chron. 7.14. If my people humble themselves, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land ; by removing the locusts and the pestilence. See, the pardoning of their sin is exponed to be the removing of the locusts and pestilence. And to call sins to remembrance, is to punish sin: The Shunamite saith, 1 King. 17.18. Art thou come to me (O man of God) to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son? Job complaineth, c. 13.26. Thou makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth. Now though out of unbelief he might apprehend, that he was cast off of God, and a man rejected of God, and that his sins were never pardoned, and he himself never delivered from the wrath to come; these legal thoughts might keep Job in a distance from God, to his own sinful apprehension; yet it shall be unpossible to prove, that Job in all these complaints had no other but a mere legal esteem of God's dispensation; and that 2. God stamped not temporary wrath, and the pain of a hidden and over-clouded God, the subtraction of the sense of divine manifestations of love, (the Lord standing behind the wall) in all these afflictions. Now its known, that as these are often trials of the faith of the Saints, yet are they sour fruits of our fleshly indulgence to our carnal delights, and of our not opening to our Beloved, when he knocketh, Cant. 5.2, 3, 4, 5, 6. And though the godly do steadfastly believe their salvation is in a Castle, above losing; yet in reason, sin bringing broken bones, Psal. 51.10. a sad cloud, the damming up of a spring of Christ's love spread abroad in the heart, a temporary hell in the soul, it must be sorrowed for, hated, mourned for, confessed; and yet in all these there is no necessity of such a Law-spirit of bondage to work these, nor is faith in any sort diminished; but put to a farther exercise. And the same sad fruits follow from the sins of the Saints under the New Testament, as may be cleared from Revel. 2.5, 16, 22. Revel. 3.3, 17, 18. 2 Cor. 1.8, 9, 10. 2 Cor. 2.7. 2 Cor. 7.5, 6, 7. Revel. 3.20. Joh. 14.1. Nor can we think, that the strictness of the Law gave those under the Law an indulgence not to be a whit troubled in soul for sin, as it over-clouded the influence and slowings of divine love, suppose they had assurance of freedom from the wrath to come, as is evident in the Spouse, Cant. 5.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. and chap. 2.16, 17. chap. 4.7. Nor is it true, that Gospel-grace and liberty entitleth the Saints now to such wantonness of peace, as that persons fully assured of deliverance from the curse of the Law, are never to be troubled for sins committed in the state of free justification; nor are they anymore to mourn, nor groan under sins captivity, nor to confess sin, in regard that Christ's blood hath washed soul, & eyes, and faces from all tears; and the salvation of the Saints in this life is not in hope only, as wheat in the blade, but actual, as in the life to come; and therefore, holy walking and good works can no more be means or the way to the Kingdom, (as M. Town and other Antinomians say) then m • tion within the City can be a way to the City, in regard the man is now in the City, before he walk at all.

Asser. 5. If Jesus Christ had soul-trouble, because of divine wrath, for our sin, and was put to a sweat of blood, God roasting Christ quick in a furnace of divine justice, though every blobe of sweat in the Garden was a sea of free grace, not his eyes only, but his face and body did sweat out free love from his soul, Luk. 22.44. Heb. 5.7. what must soul-trouble be in a fired conscience? Its no wonder that wicked men, wrestling with everlasting vengeance, cannot endure it. The Devil's predominant sin being blasphemous despair, he tempts most to his own predominant sin; the issue and final intent of all his temptations is despair: because Devils are living and swimming in the sphere and element of justice, they cannot bear it; they cry to Christ, the whole company and family making the despiting of Christ a common cause, Art thou come hither 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , to torment us before the time? Mat. 8.29. Pro. 18.14. The spirit of a man will bear his infirmity, the spirit is the finest metal in the man, but a wounded spirit, who can bear that? So the Hebrew readeth. Any thing may be borne, but break the man's soul, and break the choicest piece in the soul, the conscience, who can then stand? As conscience is the sweetest bosom-friend of man, so it is the sorest enemy. David is persecuted by his Prince, and he beareth it; Jeremiah cast in the dungeon by the Rulers, Priests, and Prophets, and he overcometh it; Job persecuted by his friends, and he standeth under it; Christ betrayed and killed by his own servants and kinsmen, and he endureth it; the Apostles killed, scourged, and imprisoned by the Jews, and they rejoice in it. But Judas is but once hunted by a Fury of hell in his own breast, and he leaps over-board; in a sea of infinite wrath: Cain, Saul, Achitophel, cannot endure it; Spira roareth as a Bear, and crieth out, O that I were above God ; though we may hope well of his eternal state. Nero after to his other bloods he had killed his Mother Agrippina, he could not sleep, he did often leap out of the bed, and was terrified with the visions of hell. Eternity, the resurrection, and the judgment to come, are virtually in the conscience. 2. What is fear? A tormenting passion. To hang a living man, by an untwisted thread, over a river of unmixed, pure vengeance, and let the thread be wearing weaker and weaker, what horror and paleness of darkness must be on the soul? 3. What sorrow and sadness, when there is not a shadow of comfort? But 4. positive despair, rancor, and malice against the holy Majesty of God ; when the soul shall wish, and die of burning desire, to be above and beyond the spotless essence of the infinite Majesty of God ; and shall burn in a fire of wrath against the very existence of God, and blaspheme the Holy One of Israel, without date. Job saith of such, ( chap. 27.20.) in this life, Terrors take hold of him as waters, and a tempest stealeth him away in the night.

But consider what it is to the Saints; Job complaineth, chap. 14.16. Doest thou watch over my sin? V. 17. My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and thou sewest up mine iniquity. Vatabl. Thou appearest to be a watchful observer of mine iniquity, and addest (as Ari. Monta.) punishment to punishment, sewing sin to sin, to make the bag greater then it is. Now though there be a mis-judging unbelief in the Saints, yet it is certain God doth inflict penal desertions, as real pieces of hell, on the souls of his children, either for trial, as in Job ; or punishment of sin, as in David ; whose bones were broken for his adultery and murder, Psal. 51.10. and whose moisture of body was turned into the drought of summer, through the anger of God in his soul, till the Lord brought him to the acknowledgement of his sin, and pardoned him, Psal. 32.3, 4, 5, 6. But some will say, Can the Lord inflict spiritual punishment, or any of hell, or the least coal of that black furnace upon the souls of his own children? To which I answer, Its but curiosity to dispute whether the pains of hell, and the flames and sparkles of real wrath, which I can prove to be really inflicted on the souls of the Saints in this life, be penalties spiritual, different in nature. Certain there be three characters sealed and engraven on the pains of the damned, which are not on the real soul-punishments of divine wrath on the souls of the Saints. As 1. What pieces of hell, or broken chips of wrath are set on upon the souls of deserted Saints, are honeyed and dipped in heaven, and sugared with eternal love. [unspec 1] God's heart is toward Ephraim as his dear child, and his bowels turned within for their misery, even when he speaks against them; Jer. 31.20, 21. But the coals of the furnace cast upon reprobates, are dipt in the curse of God ; yea so as in a small affliction, even in the mis-carrying of a basket of bread, and the loss of one poor ox, there is a great Law-curse, and intolerable vengeance; Deut. 27.26. Chap. 28.17, 31. And again, in in the in-breaking of a sea and flood of hell in the soul of the child of God, a rich heaven of a divine presence, Psal. 22. V. 1, 89. Psal. 18.4, 5, 6. (2.) The hellish pains inflicted on reprobates, [unspec 2] are Law-demands of satisfactory vengeance, and payment to pure justice; but fire-flashes, or flamings of hell on the deserted Saints, are medicinal, or exploratory corrections, though relative to justice and punishments of sin, yet is that justice mixed with mercy, and exacteth no Law-payment in those afflictions. 3. Despair, and blasphemous expostulating and [unspec 3] quarrelling divine Justice, are the inseparable attendants of the flames and lashings of wrath, in reprobates; in the godly there is a clearing of justice, a submission to God, and a silent Psalm of the praise of the glory of this justice, in this temporary hell, no less then there is a new Song of the praise of free grace in the eternal glory of the Saints, perfected with the Lamb.

Nor should this seem strange, that God punisheth the sins of his children with such spiritual plagues of unbelief, and jealousies, and lying mis-judgings of God in their sad desertions, more then that the Lord punished the lifted-up heart of Hezekiah with leaving him to fall on his own weight; and David's idleness and security, with letting him fall in adultery; and Peter 's self-confidence, with a foul denying of his Lord. But its a sad dispensation, when