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speak, yet the hardest word in it is capable of such a sense as complies with the intendment of that whole sixth chapter. For though the church of England professes herself fallible, and consequently that all her truths may be peaceably improved; yet I do think that she is not actually deceived; and also that divers eminently learned do consent in my sense of that article. However, I am so truly zealous for her honour and peace, that I wholly submit all that I say there, or any where else, to her most prudent judgment. And though I may most easily be deceived, yet I have given my reasons for what I say, and desire to be tried by them, not by prejudice, and numbers, and zeal: and if any man resolves to understand the article in any other sense than what I have now explicated, all that I shall say is, that it may be I cannot reconcile my doctrine to his explication; it is enough that it is consistent with the article itself in its best understanding and compliance with the truth itself, and the justification of God. However, he that explicates the article, and thinks it means as he says, does all the honour he can to the authority; whose words if he does not understand, yet the sanction he reveres.

And this liberty I now take, is no other than hath been used by the severest votaries in that church where to dissent is death, I mean, in the church of Rome. I call to witness those disputations and contradictory assertions in the matter of some articles, which are to be observed in Andreas Vega, Dominicus à Soto, Andradius, the lawyers about the question of divorces, and clandestine contracts, the divines about predetermination, and about this very article of original sin, as relating to the Virgin Mary. But blessed be God, we are under the discipline of a prudent, charitable, and indulgent mother; and if I may be allowed to suppose, that the article means no more in short, than the office of baptism explicates at large, I will abide by the trial, there is not a word in the rubrics or prayers, but may very perfectly consist with the doctrine I deliver. But though the church of England is my mother, and I hope I shall ever live, and at last die, in her communion, and if God shall call me to it, and enable me, I will not refuse to die for her; yet I conceive there is something most highly considerable in that saying, " Call no man master upon earth:" that is, no man's explication of her arti

cles shall prejudice my affirmative, if it agrees with Scripture, and right reason, and the doctrine of the primitive church for the first three hundred years; and if in any of this I am mistaken, I will most thankfully be reproved, and most readily make honourable amends. But my proposition, I hope, is not built upon the sand: and I am most sure it is so zealous for God's honour, and the reputation of his justice, and wisdom, and goodness, that I hope all that are pious (unless they labour under some prejudice and prepossession) will upon that account be zealous for it, or at least confess, that what I intend hath in it more of piety, than their negative can have of certainty. That which is strained and held too hard will soonest break. He that stoops to the authority, yet twists the article with truth, preserves both with modesty and religion.

One thing more I fear will trouble some persons, who will be apt to say to me, as Avitus of Vienna did to Faustus. of Rhegium; "Hic, quantum ad frontem pertinet, quasi absti nentissimam vitam professus, et non secretam crucem, sed publicam vanitatem," &c. That upon pretence of great severity, as if I were exact or could be, I urge others to so great strictness, which will rather produce despair than holiness. Though I have in its proper place taken care concerning this, and all the way intend, to rescue men from the just causes and inlets to despair; that is, not to make them do that against which by preaching a holy life, I have prepared the best defensative; yet this I shall say here particularly, that I think this objection is but a mere excuse which some men would make, lest they should believe it necessary to live well. For to speak truth, men are not very apt to despair, they have ten thousand ways to flatter themselves, and they will hope in despite of all arguments to the contrary; in all the Scripture there is but one example of a despairing man, and that was Judas; who did so, not upon the stock of any fierce propositions preached to him, but upon the load of his foul sin, and the pusillanimity of his spirit. But they are not to be numbered who live in sin, and yet " sibi suaviter benedicunt,” think themselves in a good condition; and all they that rely upon those false principles which I have reckoned in this preface, and confuted in the book, are examples of it. But it were well if men would distinguish the sin of despair

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from the misery of despair. Where God hath given us no warrant to hope, there to despair is no sin; it may be a punishment, and to hope also may be presumption.

I shall here end with the most charitable advice I can give to any of my erring brethren. Let no man be so vain as to use all the wit and arts, all the shifts and devices, of the world that he may behold, to enjoy the pleasure of his sin, since it may bring him into that condition, that it will be disputed, whether he shall despair or no. Our duty is to make our calling and election sure; which certainly cannot be done but by a timely and effective repentance. But they that will be confident in their health, are sometimes pusillanimous in their sicknesses, presumptuous in sin, and despairing in the day of their calamity. Cognitio de incorrupto Dei judicio in multis dormit; sed excitari solet circa mortem,' said Plato1. For though men give false sentences of the Divine judgments, when their temptations are high, and their sin is pleasant, yet about the time of their death, their understanding and notices are awakened,' and they see what they would not see before, and what they cannot now avoid.

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Thus I have given account of the design of this book to you, most reverend fathers and religious brethren of this church; and to your judgment I submit what I have here discoursed of; as knowing that the chiefest part of the ecclesiastical office is conversant about repentance; and the whole government of the primitive church was almost wholly employed in ministering to the orders, and restitution and reconciliation of penitents; and therefore you are not only by your ability, but by your employment and experiences, the most competent judges, and the aptest promoters of those truths, by which repentance is made most perfect and irreprovable. By your prayers and your authority, and your wisdom, I hope it will be more and more effected, that the strictnesses of a holy life be thought necessary, and that repentance may be no more that trifling little piece of duty, to which the errors of the late schools of learning, and the desires of men to be deceived in this article, have reduced it. I have done thus much of my part toward it, and I humbly desire it may be accepted by God, by you, and by all good men.

JER. TAYLOR.

h De Repub. 1.

THE

DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE

OF

REPENTANCE.

CHAP. I.

THE FOUNDATION AND NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE.

SECTION I.

Of the indispensable Necessity of Repentance in Remedy to the unavoidable transgressing the Covenant of Works.

In the first intercourse with man, God made such a covenant as he might justly make out of his absolute dominion, and such as was agreeable with those powers which he gave us, and the instances in which obedience was demanded. For, 1. Man was made perfect in his kind, and God demanded of him perfect obedience. 2. The first covenant was the covenant of works; that is, there was nothing in it, but man was to obey or die: but God laid but one command upon him that we find; the covenant was instanced but in one precept. In that he failed, and therefore he was lost. There was here no remedy, no second thoughts, no amends to be made. But because much was not required of him, and the commandment was very easy, and he had strengths more than enough to keep it,-and therefore he had no cause to complain: God might, and did, exact at first the covenant of works; because it was, at first, infinitely tolerable. But,

2. From this time forward this covenant began to be hard, and, by degrees, became impossible; not only because man's fortune was broken, and his spirit troubled, and his passions disordered and vexed by his calamity and his sin,but because man, upon the birth of children and the increase

of the world, contracted new relations, and consequently had new duties and obligations; and men hindered one another, and their faculties, by many means, became disordered, and lessened in their abilities; and their will becoming perverse, they first were unwilling, and then unable, by superinducing dispositions and habits, contrary to their duty. However, because there was a necessity that man should be tied to more duty, God did, in the several periods of the world, multiply commandments, first to Noah, then to Abraham, and then to his posterity; and by this time they were very many and still God held over man's head the covenant of works.

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3. Upon the pressure of this covenant all the world did complain, "tanta mandata sunt, ut impossibile sit servari ea," said St. Ambrose: "the commandments were so many and great, that it was impossible they should be kepti. For, at first, there were no promises at all of any good, nothing but a threatening of evil to the transgressors; and after a long time they were entertained but with the promise of temporal good things, which to some men were performed by the pleasures and rewards of sin; and then there being a great imperfection in the nature of man, it could not be that man should remain innocent; and for repentance, in this covenant there was no regard, or provisions made. But I said,

4. The covenant of works was still kept on foot ;-how justly, will appear in the sequel; but the reasonableness of it was in this, that men, living in a state of awfulness, might be under a pedagogy or severe institution, restraining their loosenesses, recollecting their inadvertences, uniting their distractions. For the world was not then prepared by spiritual usages and dispositions to be governed by love and an easy yoke, but by threatenings and severities. And this is the account St. Paul gives of it, & vóμos Tαidaywyòs, “the law was a schoolmasterk;" that is, had a temporary authority serving to other ends, with no final concluding power. It could chastise and threaten, but it could not condemn: it had not power of eternal life and death; that was given by other measures. But because the world was wild and barbarons, good men were few, the bad potent and innumerable,

i In cap. 3. Gal.

Gal. iii. 24.

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