in his eye, -when lie promiseth pardon to poor sinners. Now, which exalts this most, to pardon little or great sinners? Whose voice will be highest in the song of 2>raise, thinkest thou ? Surely his to whom most is forgiven ; and, therefore, God cannot but be most ready to pardon the greatest sinners, when tnily penitent. A physician that means to be famous, will not send away those that most need his skill and art, and only practise upon such diseases as are slight and ordinary. When one given over by himself and others, as a dead man, is, by the skill and care of a physician, rescued out of the jaws of death, and raised to health, the physician gains great fame thereby ; this commends and gains him more reputation than a whole year's practice in ordinary cures. The great revenue of praise is paid into God's exchequer from those who have had great sins pardoned. He that hath iive hundred pence forgiven will love more than he that hath but fifty, by Christ's own judgment, Luke vii. 43 ; and where there is most love, there is likely to be most praise, love and praise being symbolical, the one soon resolving into the other. The voice of a Manasses, a Magdalen, and a Paul, will be heard, as I may say, above all the rest in heaven's concert. The truth is, greatness of sin is so far irom putting a bar to the pardoning of a penitent sinner in God's thoughts, that he will pardon none (how little sinners soever they have been) except they see and acknowledge their sins to be great before they come to him on such an errand : and therefore he useth the law, to make way, by its convictions and terrors on the conscience, for his pardoning mercy, to ascend the throne in the penitent sinner's heart with the more mag- nificence and honour, Rom. v. 20 : ' The law entered' (that is, it was promul- gated at first by Moses, and is still preached,) ' that the ofFence might aboimd,' that is, in the conscience, by a deeper sense and remorse : and why so, but that ' where sin abounded, grace might much more abound.' We must needs shape our thoughts of the mercy that pardons our sins, as to make them suitable to the thoughts we frame to om-selves of the sins we have committed. If we conceive these little, how can we think the other great? And if we tremble at the greatness of our sins, we must needs triumph and exidt at the transcen- dency of the mercy which so far exceeds their greatness. He that wonders at the height of some mountain, would much more wonder at the depth of those waters which should quite swallow and cover it, so that it could not be seen. The second end of the promise is, the believer's comfort. The word, especially this part of it, was on purpose written, that ' through patience and comfort of the Scriptures,' they ' might have hope,' Rom. xv. 4. God was willing to give poor sinners all the security and satisfaction concerning the reality of his intentions, and imnuitability of his counsel, which his mercy had resolved upon from eternity, for the saving of all those who would embrace Christ ; which, that he might do, he makes publication thei-eof in the Scripture, where he opens his very heart, and exj)oseth the purposes of his love, which he had from everlasting, for the salvation of poor sinners, to their own view, in the many precious promises that run like veins throughout the whole body of the Scrip- tures, and these with all the seals and ratifications which either his wisdom could find, or man's jealous, unbelieving heart desire ; and all to silence the querulous spii'it of poor, tempted souls, and make their life more comfortable ; who, pursued by the hue-and-cry of their high-climbing sins, take sanctuai-y for their lives in Christ Jesus. As we have it, in totidem verbis, Heb. vi. 18: ' That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fied for refuge, to lay hold on the hope that is set before us.' And because this, the greatness and multitude of the creature's sins, is both the heaviest millstone which tlie devil can find to tie about the poor sinner's neck, in order to the drowning him in despair; and that knife also which is oftenest taken up by the tempted sinner's own hands for the murdering his faith, therefore the more frequent and abundant provision is made by God against this: Exod. xxxiv. 5 ; Jer. iii., the whole chapter; Isa. i. 18; Iv. 7 — 9, and 21 ; Heb. vii. 25 ; 1 John i. 9. These, and such like places, are the strongholds which faith retreats into when this battery is raised against the soul. Canst thou, for shame, be gravelled, saith faith, O my soid, with an ar- gument drawn merely from the greatness of thy sins, Avhich is answered in almost every page in the Bible, and to confute which so considerable a part of Scripture was written ? Thus faith hisscth Satan away with this argument,
AEOVE ALL, TAKING THE fflHELD OF FAITH. 5Q7