06. Chapter Six
Chapter Six 6. A SERIOUS EXHORTATION TO REPENTANCE
Let me in the next place persuade you to this great duty of repentance. Sorrow is good for nothing but sin. If you shed tears for outward losses, it will not advantage you. Water for the garden, if poured in the sink, will do no good. Powder for the eye, if applied to the arm, has no benefit. Sorrow is medicinal for the soul, but if you apply it to worldly things, it does no good. Oh that our tears may run in the right channel, and that our hearts may burst with sorrow for sin! To more successfully press this exhortation, I will show you that repentance is necessary, and that it is necessary for all persons and for all sins.
1. Repentance is necessary
Repentance is necessary: “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:5). There is no rowing to paradise except upon the stream of repenting tears. Repentance is required as a qualification. It is not so much to endear us to Christ as to endear Christ to us. Till sin is bitter, Christ will not be sweet.
2. Repentance is necessary for all persons God commands it of all men: “now God commands all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30).
(1) It is necessary for great ones: “Say to the king and to the queen, Humble yourselves” (Jeremiah 13:18). The king of Nineveh and his nobles exchanged their robes for sackcloth (Jonah 3:6). Great men’s sins do more harm than the sins of others. The sins of leaders are leading sins; therefore of all others they need to repent. If those who hold the scepter do not repent, God has appointed a day to judge them and a fire in which to burn them (Isaiah 30:33).
(2) Repentance is necessary for the most wicked sinners in the nation. England needs to put itself in mourning and be humbled by solemn repentance. Anglica gens est optima flens.41 What horrible impieties are chargeable upon the nation! We see persons daily enlisting themselves under Satan. Not only the banks of religion but those of civility are broken down. Men seem to contend, as the Jews of old did, to see who would be the most wicked: “In their filthiness is lewdness” (Ezekiel 24:13). If oaths and drunkenness, if perjury and luxury, make a people guilty, then it is to be feared England is in God’s black book. Men have cancelled their vow in baptism and made a private contract with the devil! Instead of crying for mercy to save them, they cry, “God damn them!” Never was there such riding post-haste to hell, as if men despaired of getting there in time. Has it not been known that some have died with the guilt of fornication and blood on them? Has it not been told that others have boasted how many they have debauched and made themselves drunk? Thus “they declare their sin like Sodom” (Isaiah 3:9). Indeed, men’s sins have grown daring, as if they would hang out their flag of defiance and give heaven a broadside, like the Thracians who, when it thunders, gather together in a body and shoot their arrows against heaven. The sinners in Britain even send God a challenge: “They strengthen themselves against the Almighty; they run headlong at him into his thickly studded shield” (Job 15:25-26). The studs in the shield are for offense in war. God’s precepts and threats are, as it were, the thick studs of his shield by which he would deter men from wickedness. These sinners pay no attention to them, however. They are desperately in sin, and they run furiously against the studs. Oh to what a height their sin has boiled up! Men consider it a shame not to be impudent. May it not be said of us, as Josephus speaks of the Jews. Such was the excessive wickedness of those times that if the Romans had not come and sacked their city, then Jerusalem would have been swallowed up with some earthquake, or drowned with a flood, or fired on from heaven. And is it not high time then for this nation to enter into a course of medicine, and to take this pill of repentance, which has so many bad diseases spreading in her body politic? England is an island encompassed by two oceans: an ocean of water, and an ocean of wickedness. O that it might be encompassed with a third ocean: that of repenting tears!
If the book of the law should chance to fall on the ground, the Jews have a custom to quickly proclaim a fast. England has let both law and gospel fall to the ground, therefore needs to fast and mourn before the Lord. The ephah of wickedness seems to be full.42 There is good reason for tears to empty apace when sin fills it so fast! Why then are all faces not pale? Why are the wells of repentance stopped up? Do not the sinners of the land know that they should repent? Have they no warning? Have not God’s faithful messengers lifted up their voice as a trumpet and cried to them to repent? But many of these tools in the ministry have been spent and worn out on rocky hearts. Has God not lighted extraordinary comets in the heavens as so many preachers to call men to repentance? But still they are settled on their dregs (Zephaniah 1:12)? Do we think that God will always put up with our affronts? Will he endure to have his name and glory trampled upon? The Lord has usually been more swift in the process of his justice against the sins of a professing people. God may reprieve this land awhile by prerogative, but if he ever saves it without repentance, then he must depart from his ordinary road.
I say therefore with Mr. Bradford, “Repent, O England!”43 You have made yourself a leper with sin, and you must go and wash in the spiritual Jordan. You have kindled God’s anger against you. Throw away your weapons, and bring your holy engines and waterworks, so that God may be appeased in the blood of Christ. Let your tears run; let God’s roll of curses fly (Zechariah 5:2). Either men must turn, or God will overturn. Either the fallow ground of their hearts must be broken up, or the land must be broken down. If no words will prevail with sinners, it is because God intends to slay them (1 Samuel 2:25). Among the Romans, someone who was condemned for a capital offense was forbidden the use of water. Those who have so incensed the God of heaven by their prodigious sins, that he denies them the water of repentance, may also look at themselves as condemned persons.
(3) Repentance is necessary for the cheating crew: “their deceit is falsehood” (Psalms 119:118); “they are wise in evil” (Jeremiah 4:22), making use of their inventions only to circumvent the law. Instead of living by their faith, they live by their shifts. These are the ones who make themselves poor so that by this artifice they may grow rich. I would not be misunderstood. I do not mean those who, under the providence of God, are poor, those whose estates have failed but not their honesty. Rather I speak of those who feign being broke so they may cheat their creditors. There are some who get more by “going broke” than others can by trading. These are like beggars who discolor and blister their arms to encourage charity. As these beggars live by their sores, so these cheats live by their false poverty. When the frost breaks, the streets are more full of water. Likewise, many tradesmen when they go broke, have even more money. They make out as if they had nothing, but out of this nothing great estates are created. Remember, the kingdom of heaven is taken by force,44 not by fraud. Let men know that after this golden sop, the devil enters. They squeeze a curse into their estates. They must repent quickly. Though the bread of falsehood is sweet (Proverbs 20:17), many will vomit up their sweet morsels in hell.
(4) Repentance is necessary for well-behaved persons. These have no visible spots on them. They are free from gross sin, and one would think they had nothing to do with the business of repentance. They are so good that they scorn a psalm of mercy. Indeed these are often in the worst condition: these are the ones who need no repentance (Luke 15:7). Their civility undoes them. They make a Christ of it, and so on this shelf they suffer shipwreck.45 Morality shoots short of heaven. It is only nature refined. A moral man is but old Adam dressed in fine clothes. The king’s image counterfeited and stamped on brass will not become currency. The civil person seems to have the image of God, but he is only brass metal which will never pass for currency. Civility is insufficient for salvation. Though the life may be moralized, the lust may be unmortified. The heart may be full of pride and atheism. Under the fair leaves of a tree there may be a worm. I am not saying, repent all you who are are civil, but that you are nothing more than civil. Satan entered into the house that had just been swept and put in order (Luke 11:25-26). This is the emblem of a moral man who has been swept clean by civility and set in order with common gifts; but he is not washed by true repentance. The unclean spirit enters into such a person. If civility were sufficient for salvation, Christ need not have died. The civilian has an attractive lamp, but it lacks the oil of grace.
(5) Repentance is necessary for hypocrites. I mean those who allow themselves the sin. Hypocrisy is the counterfeiting of sanctity. The hypocrite or stage-player has gone a step beyond the moralist and dressed himself in the garb of religion. He pretends with a form of godliness but he denies the power of it (2 Timothy 3:5). The hypocrite is a saint in jest. He makes a magnificent show, like an ape clothed in ermine or purple. The hypocrite is like a house with a beautiful facade, but every room is dark. He is a rotten post that has been beautifully gilded. Under his mask of profession he hides his plague-sores. The hypocrite is against painting faces, but he paints holiness. He is seemingly good so that he may be really bad. In Samuel’s cloak,46 he plays the devil. Therefore the same word in the original signifies to use hypocrisy and to be profane. The hypocrite seems to have his eyes nailed to heaven, but his heart is full of impure lusts. He lives in secret sin against his conscience. He can be like the company he keeps, and acts both the dove and the vulture. He hears the word, but only hears. He is for temple-devotion where others may look at him and admire him, but he neglects family and private prayer. Indeed, if prayer does not make a man leave sin, then sin will make him leave prayer. The hypocrite feigns humility but it is so that he may rise in the world. He is a pretender to faith, but he makes use of it rather for a cloak than a shield. He carries his Bible under his arm, but not in his heart. His whole religion is a demure lie (Hosea 11:12). But is there such a generation of men to be found? The Lord forgive them their holiness! Hypocrites are “in the gall of bitterness” (Acts 8:23). O how they need to humble themselves in the dust! They are far gone with the rot, and if anything can cure them, it must be feeding on the salt marshes of repentance.
Let me speak my mind freely. None will find it more difficult to repent than hypocrites. They have so juggled in religion that their treacherous hearts do not know how to repent. Hypocrisy is harder to cure than madness. The hypocrite’s abscess in his heart seldom bursts. If it is not too late, seek God for mercy.
Those who are guilty of prevailing hypocrisy, let them fear and tremble. Their condition is sinful and sad. It is sinful because they do not embrace religion out of choice but design; they do not love it; they only paint it. It is sad on a double account. Firstly, because this art of deceit cannot hold for long; the one who hangs out a sign, but does not have the commodity of grace in his heart, must go broke in the end. Secondly, it is sad because God’s anger will fall heavier on hypocrites. They dishonor God more and take away the gospel’s good name. Therefore the Lord reserves the most deadly arrows in his quiver to shoot at them. If heathens are damned, hypocrites will be double-damned. Hell is called the place of hypocrites (Matthew 24:51), as if it was mainly prepared for them, and was to be settled for them in fee-simple.47
(6) Repentance is necessary for God’s own people, who have a real work of grace and are Israelites indeed. They must offer up a daily sacrifice of tears. The Antinomians48 hold that when anyone becomes a believer, a writ of ease is given to them; there remains nothing for them now to do but to rejoice. Yes, they have something else to do, and that is to repent. Repentance is a continuous act. Godly sorrow will not fully end till death. Jerome, writing in an epistle to Laeta, tells her that her life must be a life of repentance. Repentance is called “crucifying the flesh” (Galatians 5:24), which is not done suddenly, but over time; it will be going on all our life. And are there not many reasons why God’s own people should go into the weeping bath? “Are there not with you, even with you, sins against the Lord?” (2 Chronicles 28:10). Do you not have sins of daily incursion? Though you are diamonds, do you have no flaws? Do we not read of the “spot of God’s children” (Deuteronomy 32:5). Search into your hearts with the candle of the word and see if you can find nothing needing repentance there.
(a) Repent of your rash censuring. Instead of praying for others, you are ready to pass a verdict on them. It is true that the saints shall judge the world (1 Corinthians 6:2), but bide your time! Remember the apostle’s caution in 1 Corinthians 4:5 : “judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes.”
(b) Repent of your vain thoughts. These swarm in your minds as the flies did in Pharaoh’s court (Exodus 8:24). What bewilderment there is in the imagination! If Satan does not possess your bodies, he possesses your imaginations. “How long will your vain thoughts lodge within you?” (Jeremiah 4:14). A man may think himself into hell. O you saints, be humbled for this lightness in your head.
(c) Repent of your vain fashions. It is strange that the garments which God gave to cover shame would reveal pride. The godly are bid not to be conformed to this world (Romans 12:2). People of the world are garish and light in their dresses. It is in fashion nowadays to go to hell. But whatever others do, do not let Judah offend (Hosea 4:15). The apostle Paul has set down what upper garment Christians must wear: “modest apparel” (1 Timothy 2:9); and what undergarment they must wear: “be clothed with humility” (1 Peter 5:5).
(d) Repent of your decays in grace: “you have left your first love” (Revelation 2:4). Christians, how often it is low tide in your souls! How often does your cold fit come upon you! Where are those flames of affection, those sweet meltings of spirit that you once had? I fear they are melted away. Oh repent for leaving your first love!
(e) Repent of not improving your talents. Health is a talent; estate is a talent; wit and parts are talents; and God has entrusted these to you to improve with for his glory. He has sent you into the world as a merchant sends his agent beyond the seas to trade for his master’s advantage; but you have not done the good you might. Can you say, “Lord, your pound has gained five pounds” (Luke 19:18)? Or do you mourn at the burial of your talents? Let it grieve you that so much of your life has not been time lived but time lost; that you have filled up your golden hours more with froth than with spirits.
(f) Repent of forgetting sacred vows. A vow binds one’s soul to God (Numbers 30:2). Christians, since you have been bound to God, have you not forfeited your other indentures? Have you served for common uses after you have been the Lord’s by solemn dedication? By breach of vows you have breached your peace. Surely this calls for a fresh basin of tears.
(g) Repent of your unresponsiveness to the blessings you received. You have lived all your life on free quarter. You have spent your stock of free graces. You have been miraculously blessed with mercy. But where are your returns of love to God? The Athenians sued ungrateful persons at law. Christians, may not God sue you at law for your unthankfulness? “I will recover my wool and my flax” (Hosea 2:9); I will recover them by law.
(h) Repent of your worldliness. By your profession you seem to resemble the birds of paradise that soar aloft and live on the dew of heaven. Yet as serpents you lick the dust. Baruch, a good man, was taxed with this: “do you seek great things for yourself?” (Jeremiah 45:5).
(i) Repent of your divisions. These are a blot in your coat of armor. They make others stand aloof from religion. Separating from the wicked imitates Christ who was “separate from sinners” (Hebrews 7:26). But for the godly to divide themselves and look askew at one another, if we had as many eyes as there are stars, they would be too few to weep for this! Divisions eclipse the church’s beauty and weaken her strength. God’s Spirit brought cloven tongues of fire among the saints (Acts 2:3), but the devil has brought cloven hearts. Surely this deserves a shower of tears:
Quis talia fando Temperet a lachrymis? 49
(j) Repent for the iniquity of your holy things. How often have the services of God’s worship been frozen with formality and soured with pride? There have been more of the peacock’s plumes than the mourning of the dove. It is sad that duties of religion should be made a stage for vainglory to act upon. O Christians, there is such a thick crust on your duties that it may be feared there is little meat left in them for God to feed upon.50
Behold: repenting work is cut out for the best. And what may make the tide of grief swell higher is to think that the sins of God’s people provoke God more than the sins of others (Deuteronomy 32:19). The sins of the wicked pierce Christ’s side. The sins of the godly go to his heart. Peter’s sin, being acted out against so much love, was most unkind, which made his cheeks furrowed with tears: “When he thought about it, he wept” (Mark 14:72).
3. Repentance is necessary for all sins
Let us be deeply humbled and mourn before the Lord for original sin. We have lost that pure quintessential frame of soul that we once had. Our nature is vitiated with corruption. Original sin has diffused itself as a poison into the whole man, like the Jerusalem artichoke which, wherever it is planted, soon overruns the ground. There are no worse natures in hell than we have. The hearts of the best are like Peter’s sheet, on which there were a number of unclean creeping things (Acts 10:12). This primitive corruption is to be bitterly bewailed because we are never free from it. It is like an underground spring which, though it is not seen, still runs. We may as well stop the beating of the pulse as to stop the motions to sin. This inbred depravity retards and hinders us in what is spiritual: “the good that I would do, I do not do” (Romans 7:19). Original sin may be compared to the fish that Pliny speaks of, a sea-lamprey,51 which cleaves to the keel of the ship and hinders it when it is under sail. Sin hangs weights upon us so that we move slowly to heaven. O this adherence of sin! Paul shook the viper which was on his hand into the fire (Acts 28:5), but we cannot shake off original corruption in this life. Sin does not come as a lodger for a night, but as an indweller: “sin that dwells in me” (Romans 7:17). It stays with us like the hectic fever of tuberculosis; though the sufferer changes the air, he still carries his disease with him. Original sin is inexhaustible. This ocean cannot be emptied. Though the stock of sin is spent, it is not at all diminished. The more we sin, the fuller we are of sin. Original corruption is like the widow’s oil which increased by pouring it out.
Another wedge to break our hearts is that original sin mixes with the habits of grace. This is why our actions towards heaven are so dull and languid. Why does faith not act any stronger unless it is clogged with a sense of sin? Why does love toward God burn no purer unless it is hindered with lust? Original sin incorporates with our graces. As bad lungs cause asthma or shortness of breath, so the infection o f original sin in our heart causes our graces to breathe very faintly. Thus we see what it is in original sin that may draw our tears. In particular, let us lament the corruption of our will and our affections. Let us mourn for the corruption of our will. The will that is not following the dictate of right reason is biased toward evil. The will distastes God, not as he is good, but as he is holy. It contumaciously affronts him: “we will do whatever goes out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven” (Jeremiah 44:17). The greatest wound has fallen upon our will.
Let us grieve for the diversion of our affections. They are taken off their proper object. The affections, like arrows, shoot beside the mark. At the beginning, our affections were wings to fly to God; now they are weights to pull us away from him.
Let us grieve for the inclination of our affections. Our love is set on sin, and our joy is set on the creature. Our affections, like the lapwing,52 feed on dung. How justly may the disease of our affections bear a part in the scene of our grief? Of ourselves, we are falling into hell, and our affections would thrust us there.
Let us lay to heart our actual sins. Of these I may say, “Who can understand his errors?” (Psalms 19:12). They are like atoms in the sun, like the sparks of a furnace. We have sinned in our eyes; they have been casements53 to let in vanity. We have sinned in our tongues; they have been fired with passion. What action proceeds from us in which we do not betray some sin? To reckon these up would be like numbering the drops in the ocean. Let actual sins be solemnly repented of before the Lord.