ons; and violent and unreasonable Appetites, which blinded his Reason and clouded his Judgment, and darkened his Understanding, and befotted, intoxicated and bewitched him, i. e. by fome unaccountable wayes hindered him from difcerning and confidering these things which are fo plain and evident, and therefore the reafon why he before chofe Vice and forfook Vertue, was because he did not fee and confider this, nor was fo truly convinced of the Evil of Sin, and the Good of Vertue, but now he has quite other thoughts and apprehenfions about them, and therefore he is changed in his Will and his Affections, by this change wrought in his Mind, and his Understanding; and this being a lafting and effectual change upon all the inward principles of action, has a neceffary influence upon his outward actions that are alwayes moved and turned by thofe inward fprings and wheels within us; for though a Man is still at liberty, and is under no force and compulfion from without, but acts freely from within himfelt, yet his Will will follow the laft dictate of his Understanding, and he will not

choose

choose Evil as Evil, when he apprehends it to be fo, and he must fome way have his Reafon corrupted, and judge falfly and erroneously, before he will practice fo: Omnis peccans ignorat. If he has a true and lively fenfe of the Good of Vertue abiding upon his Mind, he will not choofe Vice again : 'Tis this sense, I doubt not, confirms the bleffed Spirits above, and will do the Souls of all good Men in Heaven, when they fee and know this fo perfectly that 'twill be impoffible for them to fall, but now we fee things darkly, and judge weakly, and often change and alter our Minds, as not having fuch a clear view of things, nor attending fo closely to the dictates of impartial Reafon, but our thoughts are often lured off by the temptations of the Flesh, and our Minds hearken but to one fide, to the false reasonings and fuggeftions of the Devil and our own Lufts, or are furprized with the fudden importunity of a temptation, before they can recollect themselves. Elfe no Man could fay, Video meliora probog, deteriora fequor, for we cannot but love and choose Good when we apprehend it, and hate and abhor Evil

when

when it is vifible and naked to us. We muft therefore ftrip Vice of its dif guife and its falfe colours, and wash off its paint and meretricious charmes, and fee it as it is in its deformity and ugliness, and in the miferable and fad confequences of it, and then we fhall hate that which we once loved, and throw away the gilded poyfon, and fhake the fmooth and fhining Viper off of our hands, and caft the rotten curtizan from our armes and embraces.

We fhall be ashamed that we were fo cheated and impofed upon, fo deluded by the deceitfulneß of fin, that we were fo weak as to be governed by our mean paffions and low inclinations, which are the imperfection and the foft fide of our Nature, and that we should not live up to that Reafon which is proper to us, and diftinguishes us from brutes, that we fhould hearken only to the defires of our Senfes and our inferiour Appetites, and not to the wife voice and dictates of Reafon and Understanding which God had given us. We shall be convinced of the folly of this, and fee the many ill effects that have when we confider rightly,

come of it,

and weigh

things impartially, and make judgment not by our Lufts and Paffions, but by right Reason and Wisdom, and fhall condemn our felves when we grow cool, for all the mad frollicks and extravagancies we committed in the heat of folly, and shall then feel the pains and wounds they gave us, tho' we were not fenfible of them before. Then we fhall fee that danger which before we were not duly aware of, and have a dread and terrour of that upon our Minds which is the due punishment of our Sins; for the confcioufnefs of our own guilt will fill us with terrible fears, and we fhall find the burden greater than we can bear, but how fully to get rid of it is a defect, and a defideratum in Natural Religion, and therefore we muft go further than that for the other Motives to Repentance, which are fetcht from Revelation, and from the Gospel and Christianity under which God now commandeth all men to Repent, as St. Paul fayes, Acts 17. 30. now more than heretofore, namely, by fome more proper and peculiar Motives, greater than Mankind had before to encourage them to this Duty, fuch as

I

I fhall come now to confider, and fhall offer very largely.

SECT. III.

Motives to Repentance from the Gospel.

I.

N

W then by Revelation and the Gofpel we have an affurance of Gods pardoning us upon our Repentance, which the World could not have without a Revelation, for this depends upon the free Will, and arbitrary Pleasure of God, to which he is not obliged by his Effential and Natural Goodnefs, and of which we cannot be certainly affured without an exprefs Promise and Divine Revelation. Nature taught all Mankind that there was a God, the knowledge of this is not to be had from Revelation, but must be fuppofed as previous and antecedent to it; we learn it not from the Bible, but from the great Volume of Nature that lyes every where written before us with the plaineft Marks of an Infinite, and Perfect, and Wife God, and in that, the CharaEters of his Goodness are as legible as thefe of his Power and Wifdom, by