_Direct._ IX. Forget not how dear all that must cost you, which you gain unlawfully. The reckoning time is yet to come. Either you will truly repent or not; if you do, it must cost you remorse and sorrow, and shameful confession, and restitution of all that you have got amiss; and is it not better to forbear to swallow that morsel, which must come up again with heartbreaking grief and shame? But if you repent not unfeignedly, it will be your damnation; it will be opened in judgment to your perpetual confusion, and you must pay dear for all your gain in hell. Never look upon the gain therefore, without the shame and damnation which must follow. If Achan had foreseen the stones, and Gehazi the leprosy, and Ahab the mortal arrow, and Jezebel the licking of her blood by dogs, and Judas the hanging or precipitation, and Ananias and Sapphira the sudden death, or any of them the after misery, it might have kept them from their pernicious gain. Usually even in this life, a curse attendeth that which is ill gotten, and bringeth fire among all the rest.
_Direct._ X. If you are poor, consider well of the mercy which that condition may bring you, and let it be your study how to get it sanctified to your good. If men understood and believed that God doth dispose of all for the best, and make them poor to do them good, and considered what that good is which poverty may do them, and made it their chief care to turn it thus to their gain, they would not find it so intolerable a thing, as to seek to cure it by fraud or thievery. Think what a mercy it is, that you are saved from those temptations to over-love the world, which the rich are undone by. And that you are not under those temptations to intemperance, and excess, and pride as they are: and that you have such powerful helps for the mortification of the flesh, and victory over the deceiving world. Improve your poverty, and you will escape these sins.
_Direct._ XI. If you are but willing to escape this sin, you may easily do it by a free confession to those whom you have wronged or are tempted to wrong. He that is not willing to forbear his sin, is guilty before God, though he do forbear it. But if you are truly willing, it is easy to abstain. Do not say, that you are willing till necessity pincheth you or you see the bait; for if you are so, you may easily prevent it at that time when you are willing. If ever you are willing indeed, take that opportunity, and if you have wronged any man, go and confess it to him (in the manner I shall afterwards direct). And this will easily prevent it; for shame will engage you, and self-preservation will engage him to take more heed of you. Or, if you have not yet wronged any, but are strongly tempted to it, if you have no other sufficient remedy, go tell him, or some other fit person, that you are tempted to steal and to deceive in such or such a manner, and desire them not to trust you. If you think the shame of such a confession too dear a price to save you from the sin, pretend no more that you are truly willing to forbear it, or that ever you did unfeignedly repent of it.
_Tit. 2. Certain Cases of Conscience about Theft and Injury._
_Quest._ I. Is it a sin for a man to steal in absolute necessity, when it is merely to save his life?
_Answ._ The case is very hard. I shall, I. Tell you so much as is past controversy, and then speak to the controverted part. 1. If all other unquestionable means be not first used, it is undoubtedly a sin. If either labouring or begging will save our lives, it is unlawful to steal. Yea, or if any others may be used to intercede for us. Otherwise it is not stealing to save a man's life, but stealing to save his labour, or to gratify his pride and save his honour. 2. It is undoubtedly a sin if the saving of our lives by it, do bring a greater hurt to the commonwealth or other men, than our lives are worth. 3. And it is a sin if it deprive the owner of his life, he being a person more worthy and useful to the common good. These cases are no matter of controversy.
4. And it is agreed of, that no man may steal beforehand out of a distrustful fear of want. 5. Or if he take more than is of necessity to save his life. These cases also are put as out of controversy.