12

After he has committed a sin, he sorrows and repents: yet this repentance has two wants in it. First, he does not detest his sin, and his former conversation when he repents: he does bewail the loss of many things which he once enjoyed: he cries out through very anguish, and through the perplexities which God in his judgment lays on him: yet for his life, he is not able to leave his filthy sin: and if he might be delivered, he would sin as before: Esau wept before his father with great yelling and crying, but after he was gone from his father's presence he hated his brother, who had got his blessing, and in contempt of his father, chose him a wife against his liking. Pharaoh, as oft as the Lord laid any calamity on him, he evermore desired to be delivered from it, yet afterward always he returned to his old [reconstructed: bias] again. Felix trembled before Paul: for all that, he could not leave his covetousness, but even then he sought for a bribe. Secondly, the reprobate when he repents, he cannot come to God, and seek to him: he has no power, no not so much as once to desire to give one little sob for the remission of his sins: if he would give all the world he cannot so much as give one rap at God's mercy gate, that he may open to him. He is very like a man upon a rack, who cries and roars out for very pain, yet cannot desire his tormentor to ease him of his pain. Cain would have been void of his trembling, but he could not ask pardon of his sin from his heart: neither could Saul, or Judas, or now can the devil.

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