[2.] It is against repentance, which implieth a sorrow for sin, with a serious purpose to forsake it.
(1.) There is in it godly sorrow, 2 Cor. vii. 10. This is requisite to check the sensual inclination, or love of pleasure, which is the heart, root, and life of all sin : it dies when our affection to it dies. In re- pentance with bitterness of soul we bemoan ourselves for offending God ; now if we lick up our vomit again, and go round in a track of confessing sin and committing sin, our hearts are not sound with God ; we undo that which is done, and so ' build again the things we have destroyed, if while we seek to be justified by Christ, we are still found sinners,' Gal. ii. 17, 18. A man that truly seeks after pardon, seeks with it the ruin and destruction of sin. Sin was his greatest trouble, the burden that lay upon his conscience, the grievance from which he sought ease, the wound which pained him at heart, the disease that his soul was sick of Is all this real H What will you say if this man should delight in his former trouble, and take up his burden that he groaned under, and prefer it before liberty, to tear open the wounds which were in a fair way of healing, willingly relapse into the sickness out of which he is recovered with so much ado ? if he should desire the bonds and chains again, of which he was freed by infinite mercy?
160 SERMONS UPON ROMANS VI. [SeR. I.
Surely then you may question the reality of all that he hath done. In the anguish of our souls we groaned under sin as the heaviest and most intolerable burden we could ever feel. Now, should we stoop to it, and take it on again, after it was lifted from our backs, who would pity us ?
(2.) There is a renouncing and forsaking of sin : it is called ' Ke- pentance from dead works,' Heb. vi. 1 ; not only repentance for but from them. The heart is so turned from sin, that it is turned against it : we do not repent of the sins we still live in. Now, if grace be dis- pensed in this order, what more contrary to the tenor of the gospel covenant ?
(3.) This faith and repentance are solemnly professed in baptism, which is the initiating ordinance, wherein we profess to be baptized into the death of Christ, that is to say, to express the virtue, to be con- formed to the likeness of it, and die unto sin. When we first gave our names to Christ, our baptism strictly obligeth us to continue no longer in sin ; it is a vowed death to sin ; therefore, if we continue in it, we renounce or forget our baptism, 2 Peter i. 9 ; if we wallow again in the mire after we are once washed, all that is done in baptism is but a nullity or empty formality. That is the apostle's argument here, ' How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein ? ' There you solemnly renounced sin, that you might have no more commerce with it than the dead have with the living ; therefore, for us to continue in sin, and indulge sin, is to break our solemn covenant with God. You have promised to give neither mind, nor heart, nor sense, nor any faculty or member of soul or body to accomplish it, but so carry your- selves as if you were dead. And besides, you deprive yourselves of the grace of the covenant which you might have. If you did not jponere obicem, you might be delivered from the reigning power of indwelling sin ; therefore you must carefully see that it have not the upper hand in your souls, that the flesh be made subject to the spirit, that the reign and dominion of sin be indeed broken, that you run into no wil- ful sin, and walk with all holy strictness and watchfulness.
(4.) It is contrary to God's design to call us out of our sinful estate to sincere reformation. This was God's end, that we that fly from him as a condemning God might return to his love and service as a pardoning God : Ps. cxxx. 4, ' There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mightest be feared.' He pardoneth what is past upon condition of future obedience ; he calletli us to repentance : Acts xvii. 30, ' Now he commandeth all men everywhere to repent ; ' not to encourage them to continue, or go on a minute longer in a course of sin, or flatter them with hope of impunity if they do so : Ezek. xviii. 30, ' Kepent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions, so iniquity shall not be your ruin ; ' Isa. Iv. 7, ' Let the wicked forsake his way, and the un- righteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.'
Thirdly, It is wicked and blasphemous.
1. Because, as much as in you lieth, you make Christ a minister of sin, or an encourager of sin : Gal. ii. 7, ' If while we seek to be justified by Christ, we are found sinners, is Christ a minister of sin? God forbid/