Chapter 13: Comfort to the Repenting Sinner
2. LET me in the next place speak by way of comfort. Christian, has God given you a repenting heart, know these three things for your everlasting comfort.
1. Thy sins are pardoned. Pardon of sin circumscribes blessedness within it, (Psalm 32:1). Whom God pardons, he crowns, Psalm 1[illegible]3. 4. Who forgivs your iniquities, who crowns you with loving kindness. A repenting condition is a pardoned condition. Christ said to that weeping woman, Thy sins which are many are forgiven, (Luke 7:47). Pardons are sealed upon soft hearts: O you whose head has been a fountain to weep for sin, Christs side will be a fountain to wash away sin, (Zechariah 13:1). Hast you repented? God looks upon you as if you hadst not offended; he becomes a friend, a father; he will now bring forth the best Robe, and put it on you: God is pacified towards you, and will with the Father of the Prodigal, fall upon your neck and kiss you. Sin in Scripture is compared to a cloud, (Isaiah 44:22). No sooner is this cloud scattered by Repentance, but pardoning love shines forth. Paul, after his Repentance, obtained mercy, 1 (Timothy 1:16). [illegible], I was all bestrowed with mercy. When a spring of Repentance is open in the heart, a spring of mercy is open in Heaven.
2. God will pass an Acts of Oblivion; he so forgives sin, as he forgets, (Jeremiah 31:34). I will remember their sin no more. Hast you been penitentially humbled? the Lord will never upbraid you with your former sins. After Peter wept, we never read that Christ upbraid[illegible]d him with his denial of him. God has cast your sins into the depth of the Sea, (Micah 7:19). How? not as Cork, but as Lead. The Lord will never in a judicial way account for them. God when he pardons, does as a Creditor that blots the debt out of his Book, (Isaiah 43:25). *. Some move the question, whether the sins of the godly shall be mentioned at the last day? The Lord says, he will not remember them; and he is blotting them out: So that if their sins be mentioned, it shall not be to their prejudice, for the debt-book is crossed.
3. Conscience will now speak peace. O the musick of conscience! Conscience is turned into a paradise, and there a Christian does sweetly solace himself, and pluck the flowers of joy, 2 (Corinthians 1:12). The repenting sinner can go to God with boldness in prayer, and look upon him not as a Judge, but a Father. He is born of God, and is heir to a Kingdom, (Luke 6:20). He is incircled with Promises; he no sooner shakes the tree of the Promise, but some fruit falls.
To conclude, the true penitentiary may look on death with comfort; his life has been a life of tears, and now at death all tears shall be wiped away Death shall not be a destruction, but a Gaol-delivery. Thus you see what great comfort remains for repenting sinners. Luther said, before his conversion he could not endure that bitter word Repentance, but afterwards he found much sweetness in it.
