Use 1. This therefore should cause us to take heed of all thoughts of despair. Let it be enough that we have broken the law ; let us not pull a greater sin on us by denying the gospel, the mercies and truths of God. Let us by any means take heed, for Satan will join with guilty consciences, speaking with cursed Cain, ' My sin is greater than can be pardoned,' Gen. iv. 13. No article of our creed is so much opposed by him, as that of the forgiveness of sin by Christ's merits, which is the very life and soul of a
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church. All the former articles of the creed arc perfected in this, and all the following articles are effects hereof.
Use 2. Secondly, This doctrine funiishea an answer to the papistx, who lay scandals* on the doctrine of free justification by the merits of Christ, without our own works ; saying that we nourish thereby carelessness in a Christian life, whenas the Scripture, and the Spirit of God in the hearts of those that are truly regenerate, do reason quite contrary. ' There is mercy with thee, that thou mayest he feared ;' not that we may live as we list, for whom God forgives, he first truly humbles ; whom he washes, he gives hearts to keep themselves clean ; so as with the burnt child, they dread the fire ever after. No ; it is themselves that overthrow good works, while they ground them on false grounds. For cither they do them to satisfy God's wrath, which is slavish, or to merit by them, which is a token of a hireling ; and most of their works are such, as if God should ask them, ' Who required them at their hands ?' Isa. i. 12, they could never be able to answer. They, while they talk of good works, in the mean time over- throw faith and love, which should be the ground of a good work. What can they do more than a Cain or a Judas, or the wickedest man alive.
Secondly, We may hence gather a r/round of discerninrf our estate, whereby we shall know whether God's mercy and forgiveness belong to us or not ; for it is impossible, where there is no inward worship of God in the heart, where there is no fear and jealousy of sin, where there is no con- science of swearing, blaspheming, and such abominations, that ever such yet had any true taste of God's mercy and forgiveness. Let them not take comfort by the example of the thief on the cross, that cried for mercy and had it ; for there is a time of grace, and there are some sinners, as those that flatter themselves in a course of sin, thinking to repent when they will, against which the wrath of God will smoke, Deut. xxix. 20. Therefore let not such soothe up themselves. Those that have their sins forgiven do fear God. Such fear not God, and therefore their sins are not forgiven. Many shall say in that day, ' Lord, Lord,' to whom Christ will profess, ' he never knew them,' Mat. vii. 28 ; and therefore let us never assure our- selves of forgiveness, farther than we find. in us a hatred of sin. For a man to live in a course of known sin, it stops the current of God's mercy ; who will wound the ' hairy scalp of such as despise the patience and long-suffer- ing of God,' Rom. ii, 4. While we have time, therefore, and are young, before lusts settle themselves in us, serve the Lord with fear ; deny him not the service due to him. If we do, it is just with God to take us away suddenly, or to deliver us over to an impenetrable hard heart ; and when we die, that God should take away from us our senses, or to give over our consciences to such a horror and trembling fear, as shall not suffer us to come so near as to have any hope of mercy, but die in despair. Let us pray, therefore, against a careless heart, and say to him, Lord, thou earnest to redeem and set me free from the works of the devil ! Lord, deliver me from the power of sin and of my own corruption. For we may assure our- selves, he that never discerned this hatred of sin in him, never asked par- don from his heart ; and he that never asks it shall never have it.
Use. Let us in the next place learn thereby to go the right wag, to ivork assurance of forgiveness : first, leam to see our misery ; then, get persuasion that there is a remedy ; then, get knowledge thereof ; and then beg it. It is a preposterous course that many men take. They will change their ill courses, but without confession or acknowledgment of sin ; and therefore they turn * That is, ' take offence at.' — G.
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indeed, but it is from one sin to another : from being dissolute they will become covetous, and so change to the worse ; for they change not from right gi'ounds ; not from love to God and hatred of sin, but ever from the love of one reigning sin to another. For all such, and all other, that either find* their sin, or think not of it, this Scripture is of excellent use ; and we may speak of it as St Paul, 2 Tim. iii. 16, speaks of all the Scrip- ture, * It is profitable for doctrine,' teaching us what we are by nature since the fall ; wherein we may have remedy of our misery ; how and in what manner to attain the remedy. It is profitable for ' reproof of the doctrine of justification by works ; and it is profitable for ' correction' of our lives, teaching us to avoid despair, and yet withal to avoid security. It is pro- fitable for * comfort' to all those that are dejected by sin, by considering the mercy of God in Christ, which is more and greater than sin in us, if we have faith to lay hold on it ; so that we may say with St Augustine, Ego aclmisi, \inde tu damnare jwtcs vie, sed non amisisU xinde tu salvare potes me.