Chapter 6

Of the deceits of the temporary believers' sorrows, and desires.

The deceits that are in the temporary's faith thus opened, we come in the next place to speak of his deceits in the matter of repentance. Where it cannot be denied, but that he may go very far in the probable resemblance of repentance; insomuch as he himself, as well as others, may think he has in truth repented: To examine this more particularly, in the particulars of repentance, and first in that which is inward, and then in that which is outward therein;

1. For the inward practice of repentance, there are two special things wherein he deceives himself: Sorrow, and Desire. The former respecting time past: the latter time present and to come.

1. For his sorrow, he is wondrous wide: he feels, no doubt, oftentimes some remorse, the pricks and stings of an accusing conscience, as it were the arrows of the almighty sticking in his ribs: and upon this concludes he has his part in godly sorrow. But exceeding falsely, and deceitfully: For who feel greater gripes, and pangs of upbraiding, and vexing consciences than do the Devils themselves, and the most desperate reprobates? So that if this reason were good, they also should have godly sorrow. Indeed these compunctions of heart, these horrors, and terrors in the elect are a notable preparative to godly sorrow; and they are as the pricks of the needle making way for the thread: as we may see in the example of that troop of Saint Peter's converts: nevertheless they are to be distinguished from repentance itself, as being common to the reprobate, with the elect. Therefore as the sick patient should deceive himself in thinking he had taken a sufficient purge, because he has taken a preparative; or as he should deceive himself, that should think he were entered far enough into the house, that stands only in the entry, in the porch: so does here our temporary delude his soul, mistaking some preparatory, and introductive works to repentance for repentance itself. For notwithstanding those penitents in the Acts were miserably racked, and tormented in conscience, and felt the two edged sword of the spirit piercing through their souls, yet when they demanded of Peter what they should do, namely to be eased of their present distress, they received this answer, Repent; it seems then they had not repented as yet, for all the smart of their rubbing, and galling consciences. No, mark how Peter prescribes repentance as the only sovereign remedy to relieve them in that their agony. Lo then yet a fouler and grosser deceit, to take the disease for the remedy, to think that because they have the wound curable only by the balm of Gilead, therefore they have the balm itself. So also our Savior calls such as are in this case, men heavy laden and wearied with the burden of sin's guilt, and bids them come to him. A man therefore may be burdened with the sense of sin, and yet (as yet) not come to Christ. Indeed there is as great difference between being thus heavy laden and coming to Christ, as between having a burden on one's back and the having of it taken off: for therefore does Christ call such to come to him, that by this means they might be eased. And yet more plainly does our Savior make this clear, when he says that he came to call sinners (understand it of sinners laden with the burden of their sins, seeing and bewailing their misery) to Repentance. Therefore to feel oneself a sinner, and to be touched with the sense of our misery, is not always Repentance. And in the place before alleged (Matthew 11:28) he bids such as are laden with sin, that is, such as feel the smart of sin's guilt pressing the conscience, even these he bids to learn humility: which shows that a man may be affected with some sense of sin, and yet not truly humbled in godly sorrow. But that his deceit, in thinking he has godly sorrow, may the better appear, let us briefly examine it by the properties of godly sorrow.

First, godly sorrow respects the sin more than the punishment, and makes the repenting sinner to be of this mind, that he cares not what outward punishment he endured, so that he might feel the guilt of his sin washed out of his conscience, and behold the loving countenance of God in Christ. The voice of godly sorrow is that of David, Take away the trespass of your servant. It is the trespass he would have taken away: for as for the punishment, how he stood affected, let his own words afterward witness, when he speaks thus to God, let your hand be upon me and my father's house. But it is only the punishment either felt, or feared that causes that howling and crying, which sometimes is in the wicked temporary, as in Esau, Ahab, Judas, etc. The voice of this base sorrow is that of Pharaoh, take away this plague, namely of the outward scourge, not, take away this hard heart, a greater plague than any, indeed than all the ten plagues. Mark the difference between Pharaoh and David, the slave's grief, which is for the whip, and the son's, which is for offending his kind and loving father. The one is the grief of love, the other of fear and hatred.

Secondly, godly sorrow is lasting and durable. My sin, says David, is ever before me. Their humiliation is a continual act, renewed daily; insomuch that, if they sometime through weakness omit it, they recompense it with an extraordinary measure thereof afterward. The Prophet elsewhere complains that his tears were as his ordinary food, which if men omit one day, they eat the more for it the next. But the sorrow of these temporaries is feverish, and comes only by fits and starts. Yet not feverish in this sense, that fevers are constant in their fits, and some of them hold long: these sorrows are very uncertain and momentary. They may be sometimes, as a grave divine speaks, sermon-sick, but no otherwise, than men are sea-sick, who are presently well again, when they come to shore. Here then is the deceit of the temporary, that thinks he has sorrowed enough, if at any time he feels any pangs of these passions, any qualms of grief, any small workings of sorrow to disquiet him but a little. Alike, as if one, feeling the flesh to smart, after the plaster newly applied to the sore, should presently take off the plaster, and think it had worked enough; whereas the plaster must lie on still, till it has eaten out the corruption wholly. And so must this corrosive of godly sorrow, applied once to the festered sores of our sins still remain with us till they be thoroughly healed, that is to our dying day; and then all tears, even the tears of godly sorrow itself, shall be wiped away, but not before.

Thirdly, godly sorrow, indeed the very first seeds, and preparations thereof, those terrors, and horrors, that are in the consciences of the elect, they still drive them to God, and fit them for the hand of God, to be wrought and framed thereby. As we may see in them whom Peter's Sermon pricked. Their wound made them seek for medicine, and drove them to the Physician, to the men and ministers of God. Now Judas also had his terrors of conscience. So also had Saul his. But where did they drive them? The former not to Christ, but to the enemies of Christ, the high Priests, and the Devil, to whom he went, when he went to the halter. The latter also, not to prayer, not to God, not to the men of God, but to music, to the harp, and at the last to the witch of Endor, to the Devil. So they drove Cain to the building of cities, thinking to deceive those terrors by that employment of his mind. Thus always does the temporary, when God shoots this arrow into the side of his conscience, fly from him, as a dog from him that strikes him with a cudgel, and seeks anywhere rather for relief than at his hands: for such is his despair whereof he is swallowed up, and such is his desperate malice and hatred against God in this case, that he cannot so much as whisper the least syllable to him. It is otherwise with the elect of God. Paul being fearfully wounded and confounded in his mind, could yet then say to that God that did all that to him, Lord what would you have me to do?

Fourthly, godly sorrow works repentance, a change and alteration of heart, causing us to hate sin and love righteousness. And the reason is, for that in godly sorrow the heart is melted and wholly liquefied and dissolved, and so being made soft and tender, receives the stamp and impression of God's spirit. But in these our temporaries no such matter. They may sometimes shed a few whorish tears, and hang down the head like a bulrush for a day, with those Jews: but filthy swine that they are, after they have washed themselves (in the waters, one would have thought, of repentance) they return presently to their wallowing in the mire of their former filthiness. Ahab fasts, and pinches his body with sackcloth, and goes creeping and crouching; but had he ever truly repented for oppressing of poor Naboth, would he so soon after have fallen into the same sin of oppression, in the unjust imprisonment of the holy Prophet Micaiah? Where the circumstance of the person oppressed adds weight to the sin. If it had been true repentance, his hand would not still have remained bloody, nor his ear uncircumcised, to distaste the wholesome prophecies of faithful Micaiah. Esau, even in the midst of his yelling, falsely accuses Jacob his brother for cozenage, seeks to have a blessing severed from his brother's, and carries a vindictive mind against him, purposing to murder him. Indeed Felix, when struck with the majesty of the word in Paul's mouth, so that he trembled again for fear, yet even then he remained the same covetous Felix that before: at that very instant he trembled, he coveted, and expected a bribe of Paul, when he gave Paul some occasion, to expect repentance of him. Thus also when God's threatenings in the ministry of Moses wrung tears out of the Israelites' eyes; yet they could not wring rebellion out of their hearts: for being threatened to die in the wilderness for their thoughts of returning into Egypt, and therefore commanded not to go the next way to Canaan, but to go back again into the desert, that so the denounced sentence might be executed; they seemed much to be moved with this, and humbled themselves in weeping and confession of their sins: but yet for all this, they would by no means be persuaded to obey the commandment of not going on straight forward toward Canaan. The like is to be thought of Judas his grief: for all that, still he remained the same old Judas that before. There was not any true hatred of his sin wrought in his heart; for then he would not have added murder to murder. In fact, if he had lived, he would have been ready to have played some such new prank. Thus is it with all temporaries. Though they shed rivers of tears, though they water their couches, and even bathe, and soak themselves in this salt brine, yet for all this they remain unseasoned and unmortified. Their leopard's spots still remain unwashed, their blackamoor's hide unchanged. But godly sorrow is of that nature, that the soul, once drenched, and baptized with the tears thereof, receives such a tincture, and dye of grace, that will never after fade. There is no distillation of herbs so precious for the curing of bodily ailments, as this of godly sorrow's tears for the healing of our souls' infirmities. The air is not so cleared, when the cloud is dissolved by rain, as the mind when the clouds of our iniquities are dissolved by the rain of repenting tears. These waters are the Red Sea, wherein the whole army of our sins is drowned. But for that these waters in the temporary are but shallow, and want their just depth, therefore his sins are not choked, but rather deliciously bathed therein. And so much for the temporary's sorrow.

His desires are no less deceitful. Desire is reckoned by Paul among the fruits, or parts of repentance. And in temporaries there seem often times to be good motions, dispositions, and desires after good things. They in the Gospel, hearing the excellent discourse of our Savior concerning the heavenly Manna, cried out, as affected with it, Lord evermore give us of this bread. And Agrippa was so far wrought upon by Paul, that he said, You almost persuade me to become a Christian. But these desires of the temporary are not sound.

True desires are no faint desires, but such as make us faint, they are so eager and earnest; like the desires of covetous men, who with Ahab will be sick for their neighbor's vineyard, they long for it so desirously. And therefore the Apostle says, covet after spiritual things; indeed like the desire of Rachel after children, which made her say, Give me children or I die. See it in David, Like as the heart longs after the rivers of water, so does my soul after you O God. And again, My soul desires after you like the thirsty ground. But our temporary's desires are nothing so strong: he does not, as God commands, open his mouth wide, he cannot say with David, My heart breaks for desire to your judgments, nor with the church I am sick of love, nor as Sisera in his natural thirst, I die for thirst, give me drink: for this is the nature of strong and fervent desires, to be so impatient of delay, that they commonly verify Solomon's Proverb, The hope that is deferred is the fainting of the soul. Therefore our Savior blesses indeed those that hunger, and thirst for his righteousness, but yet such as hunger and thirst in mourning, which was that he required before to blessedness: the blessed desires then are only those, which are so affectionate, that they make the desirer to mourn, feeling his desire not to be fulfilled: but now our temporary, though he desire grace, yet he feels no hearty grief in the want of grace, this never troubles him, it never breaks his sleep. Therefore his desires are not right.

True desires of good things are exceeding painful and laborious, in avoiding all hindrances, and in using all good helps, and furtherances. Therefore our Savior compares them to the natural desires of hunger, and thirst. Now hunger, as we say, will break through a stone wall; it will make a man eat his own flesh, rather than to be starved. And David's thirst made him venture the lives of his three worthies. In nature the concupiscible faculty is seconded with the irascible, our desire is backed with our anger; so that being crossed in our desires, our anger presently is up in arms, and labors the removal of that which crosses. So fire beside its light, whereby it desires as it were the highest place, has also heat, to consume all obstacles that withstand its ascent. But now our temporary's desires are nothing else but idle, lazy, and lurking wishes, such as the sluggard's, of whom Solomon thus speaks: The desire of the sluggard slays him: for his hands refuse to work. And again, The sluggard lusts, but has nothing. Why? because the lion in the way terrifies him, the toil of working scares him: he would fain have meat, but he will not work: and so those in the Gospel would fain have the heavenly bread — Lord evermore give us of this bread — but they will not, as Christ tells them, take the pains to come to him by faith for it: for God has appointed that as in the natural, so also in the spiritual life, In the sweat of your brow shall you live. But our sluggish temporary will none of that, he desires and desires, but still lies lurking in his bed, gaping and stretching himself: like the door that turns upon the hinges, but yet hangs still upon them, it comes not off for all the turnings; so he for all the turnings of his heart in faint and weak desires, still hangs fast upon the hinges of his sins, and cannot possibly come out of the power of iniquity: seeing many obstacles in the way of his desires, he has no spirit, or courage to go about to remove them, to break through the host of the spiritual Philistines, for the getting of the spiritual waters. He can wish with Balaam, O that my soul might die the death of the righteous: but he does not alike desire the life of the righteous. If he desire virtue, yet not the means that should bring him to it, and thus desiring virtue he pines and perishes in the want of it: hell's mouth itself, as one says, is full of such slight and slothful wishes. Such as were his in the Gospel, that hearing Christ's heavenly discourse, cried out, affected therewith, Blessed are they that eat bread in the kingdom of God. But, as our Savior there shows in his answer, they suffer every light occasion of farms, oxen, wives to detain them. And so as the temporary's desire is an idle, so also is it a disobedient desire, that will not submit itself to God's commandment in the use of the means: but the true believer's desire is laborious and so dutiful, subjecting itself to the use of the means commanded, and as earnestly desiring these means, as the end itself; as David, when ravished with the meditation of the good man's blessedness, presently conceived this desire, not, O that I had this happiness, but O that I could use the means to bring me to this happiness, O that my ways were so directed, that I might keep your statutes, and again, my heart breaks for desire to your [iudgements.]

True desires are constant, as in David in the words last mentioned, my heart breaks for desire to your judgments always. The reason is, because true desires are insatiable. The good Christian though he have never so much grace, yet still feels his wants, and the more he has, the more he desires, and when these spiritual riches increase (contrary to David's prohibition in the temporal) he sets his heart upon them: And therefore still his soul imitates the horseleech's voice, that cries, give, give: but the desires of the temporary, though sometimes for the time they may seem violent, yet at length they vanish away as the morning dew; as God himself censures those good affections, which seemed to be in the Israelites. The motions, and affections, which he has in good things, are not much unlike to those which the true believer has sometimes in evil. For as he in temptation sometimes may be tickled, and feel some pricking in his desires to the way of wickedness; as once David when he began to entertain those thoughts, I have washed my hands in innocency in vain: yet in conclusion he quenches those thoughts, and so mocks Satan, to whom he made fair of coming to him, as David did, when for all his beginning to yield, yet in the end he came in with that But, or yet: yet, for all that I said earlier, God is good etc: so this our temporary though sometimes he may have, as we say, a month's mind to godliness, and with Agrippa be half persuaded to be a Christian, yet the conclusion is, I will not leave my former course, and so he mocks God, whom he bore in hand, that he would become his disciple.