1. It is for the glory of God and the comfort of the creature that there should be a stated course of applying the privileges of the gospel, or of entering into God's peace.
[1.] It is certainly for the glory of God. It is not meet that pardon and life should be prostituted to every one that will hastily challenge these privileges. Pardon we are upon ; our case is not compassionable till we relent and submit to God's terms. I would appeal to your own consciences : surely it is more suitable to the wisdom of God that a penitent sinner should have pardon rather than an impenitent, or one that securely continues in his sins, and despiseth both the curse of the law and the grace of the gospel. It is not agreeable to the honour of God, and tlie wisdom of his trans- actions with man, that such should have benefit by him. Again, for faith : it is not meet we should have benefit by one we know not and trust not. Whatever be God's mercy to infants, who are not in a capacity to know and trust him, yet, in adult and grown persons, it is necessary we should not have such great privileges settled upon us without our knowledge, or besides and against our wills. God will have our consent in a humble and solemn way, that we may come and thankfully accept what he hath provided for us. So this is very much for the glory of God.
[2.] And then for our comfort, that we may make our claim, that we may state our interest with the greater certainty and assurance ; for when great privileges are conditionally propounded, as they are in the new covenant, our right is suspended till the conditions be performed ; and certainly our comfort is suspended till we know they be performed, till we know ourselves to be such as have an interest in the promises of the gospel. I have told you, Blessed are they whose sins are pardoned. But, saith the soul, if I knew my sins were pardoned I should think myself a blessed creature indeed. "What would you reply to this anxious and serious soul ? God hath made a promise, an offer of pardon by Christ : the offer of pardon is the invi- tation to use the means that we may be possessed of it. But then the rerious anxious soul replies stiL', To whom is this promise made ? How
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194 THE SECOND SERMON. [Ps. XXXII. 1, 2.
shall I come to know that I am thus blessed and accepted by God, and that my sins are pardoned ? What is to be replied here ? Look to whom tlie promise is made. Certainly it is made to some, or to all. If you say the promise is to all, you deceive the most ; if to some, you must say, from scripture, to them that repent and believe — to the penitent believer. Here is the shortest way to bring the debate to an issue, wherein our comfort is so much concerned, to see we be penitent believers. For thus the application is stated, and the fixing these conditions is the more for the glory of God, and the comfort of the creature.
2. The two graces or duties upon which it is fixed — faith and re- pentance— do in many things agree, in other respects differ.
[I.] They both agree in this, that they are both necessary to the fallen creature, and do concern our recovery to God, and so are proper to the gospel, which is ])rovided for the restoration of lapsed man- kind. The gospel is a healing remedy, and therefore is Christ so often set forth by the term of a physician. The law was a stranger to both these duties ; it knew no such thing as repentance and faith in Christ ; for, according to the tenor of it, once a sinner, and for ever miserable. But the gospel is a plank cast out after shipwreck, whereby we may escape and come safe to shore.
Again, they both agree in this, that they concern our entrance and first recovery out of the defection and apostasy of mankind, for after- wards there are other things required; but as to our first entrance into the evangelic state, both these graces are required, and the acts of them so interwoven, that we can hardly distinguish them.
Again, they both agree in this, that they have a continual influ- ence upon our whole new obedience. For the secondary conditions of the covenant do grow out of the first, and these two graces run throughout our whole life. Repentance, mortifying sin, is not a work of a day, but of our whole lives, and the like is faith.
Again, they agree in that both are effected and wrought in us by the Holy Spirit ; that God, who requires these things, gives them.
Lastly, they agree in this, that the one cannot be without the other, neither repentance without faith, nor faith without repentance ; partly, because there is no use of faith without repentance. Christ as media- tor is the means ; now the means are of no use without respect to the end. Now Christ and the whole gospel grace is the means to come to God, Besides, these things cannot be graces but in a concomitancy. Eepentance without faith, what would it be? When we see our sins, and bewail them, despair would make us sit down and die, if there were not a Saviour to heal our natures and convert our souls. Neither can faith be without repentance ; for unless there be a confession of past sins, with a resolution of future obedience, we continue in our obstinacy and stubljornness, and so we are incapable of mercy, our case is not compassionable.