tism; as will plainly appear on comparing those expressions with the ordinary way in which the Apostles speak of the condition of baptized Christians. Falling away then, after such illumination, is falling away after Baptism; and when St. Paul says of persons so backsliding, that it is impossible to renew such again unto repentance, he gives the very highest notion of baptismal privileges; he means to warn us that the purity and inward brightness which the HOLY SPIRIT by the font conveys to man's soul, is such as never can be thoroughly recovered in this life, when the sanctified soul and body has been stained again by wilful transgression of God's Law. He does not say that it is impossible for such to repent, or by true repentance to obtain final forgiveness :-GOD forbid !—but he does say that it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance. The Gospel covenant provides no way for their restoration in this life to the joy and glory of that innocency, which God gave them for CHRIST's sake, when they were regenerated and created in Baptism.

Blessed be God, they may repent and amend, and if they do so thoroughly, they will surely be forgiven; but their repentance will be a slow, and painful, and difficult, and anxious work. The stain, by God's grace, may wear out in time, but it will not wear out in a moment; and where the sin which caused it was grievous and habitual, it must not be expected to wear out as long as we are on this side the grave; neither must we expect to be quite assured of pardon, as a new baptized person is, until he has stained his baptismal robe again; neither may we read those places of Holy Scripture, which speak of the infinite blessings of our Christian condition, with the same unmingled joy and exultation of heart, as those may who have watched and kept their garments; the remembrance of our fall had need be ever before us, ever exercising us in mortification and self-denial, in mean thoughts of ourselves, and in submission to the chastisements of GOD.

In a word, those who have fallen after Baptism should consider themselves ever after as in a state of Penance, should be ever going on in that discipline which St. Paul describes as the employment of the Christians at Corinth, when they had forfeited GOD's favour by conniving at deadly sin. They "sorrowed after a godly sort;" and this sorrow wrought in them seriousness, and

self-reproach, and fear, and a longing to improve, and a holy emulation of their betters, and great self-denial. This ought to be the life of those who have forfeited their baptismal innocence; they should dwell all their life afterwards rather in the house of mourning than in the house of feasting; they should fast rather than indulge their appetite; be silent, rather than make loud professions of goodness; shrink from the favourable notice and praise of men; and dread all teaching of every kind, which, instead of this true doctrine of the Cross, would lead them to rely on strong feelings, emotions, or assurances, or on any other superficial shadow of repentance.

All this is quite plain from Scripture, if men would be content to judge from Scripture only; but so it is, that unknown to ourselves, we are influenced by what we see in the world about us; we do not see baptized persons in general, living as those who are delivered for ever from the bondage of sin, and therefore we find it hard to believe that such deliverance really happens in baptism. Again, when any person has broken through an evil habit of sin and irreligion, and begun, long after his baptism, to turn to God in good earnest, there is often a seeming joy and satisfaction of heart, an overflowing sense of God's goodness, and of devotion to CHRIST; and on these feelings we are tempted to depend too entirely, as though these, and not holy Baptism, were the seal and mean of our sanctification, justification, regeneration; as if up to that time our sins were the sins of unenlightened heathens, and need not be hereafter, in any great degree, matter of care and repentance to us; as if also, whatever sins we may ever afterwards fall into from time to time, still, as often as we shall be enabled to renew in ourselves these same feelings of seeming earnest devotion, so often we may depend upon entire forgiveness and restoration to the favour of our reconciled FATHER in CHRIST JESUS, and to the full benefit of His holy and life-giving SPIRIT.

Thus in two ways we deceive ourselves, and our fault in both is, want of entire faith, our choosing to trust that which, as we think, we see with our eyes, rather than what we read of in the inspired Word of GOD. We deceive ourselves first by undervaluing holy Baptism, because we do not see its good effects; and, secondly,

by overvaluing our own faith and good feelings, because they do in some way make themselves sensible and present to us. And both errors have a most fatal effect on our repentance and progress in holy obedience.

This is seen every day, first by the very slight and easy way in which we are apt to bewail our own ordinary sins, even when we cannot deny them to be wilful presumptuous sins; wilful, inasmuch as we know them to be sins, and presumptuous, inasmuch as we have gone on indulging them so long, that they are now become ordinary and habitual to us. For instance, take the sin of profane swearing; how lightly do those who are guilty of it own their guilt, in words, from time to time, without any the least real distress of heart; and if their better thoughts do at last prevail against the bad habit, and they quite break themselves of it, (which in such cases is very rare,) they are well contented with themselves, and think they have done great things, instead of passing the rest of their time in sad thoughts, how near they have been throwing themselves away for ever, even out of their LORD's arms, into which He had received them by Baptism.

Secondly, we see but too plainly, how slight and superficial men's ordinary repentance is, by their ordinarily relapsing into the same or worse sins: whereby in the end their hearts become seared, and they give themselves over, like the Gentiles, which know not GOD, to commit all uncleanness with greediness. Could this be, nearly so often as it is, if repentance had been from the beginning taught men on right principles? If children from their very infancy were instructed to reverence their own souls and bodies, as the living Temples of the HOLY GHOST, who in Baptism descended on them; could they think so carelessly, when they come to age, of the fearful guilt they bring on themselves, when they allow the beginnings of pollution in the same hallowed souls and bodies? Could they weep otherwise than bitterly for such profane impurity, when their conscience accuses them of it? knowing and remembering, as they would in that case, that they have now but one choice left:-deep and bitter penitence as long as they live, or everlasting destruction in the world to come. And having these true thoughts of the sin of impurity and its deadly effects, would they not be more on their guard against any relapse into it? would they not fast, and pray,

VOL. IV.

E

and weep, and deny themselves pleasures, which to others might be innocent, lest their hearts be unawares overcharged with earthly thoughts, and stolen from GOD, and they fall again into the sin which they know they never can sufficiently repent of?

But men will not believe the Church and the Scriptures, telling us of the unspeakable gift which we receive from GoD in our Baptism. Men will not believe that they are then truly made members of CHRIST, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of Heaven. Consequently they think far less than they ought of the forfeiture of their baptismal purity: it is, to their minds, as easy to repent, and to please GoD by repentance, after such a downfall, as for a heathen to repent of his sins done in heathenism, and so to come and be baptized. They think little, therefore, of the first fall, and still less of the second; and so sin and condemnation go on, until this world is over, and all hope with it.

But let us suppose that, by GoD's unspeakable mercy, we are preserved from this great peril of relapsing after repentance; yet our repentance itself is too likely to be spoiled by an unhappy mixture of spiritual pride and self-confidence. Do we not often see men who have lived for a long time like heathens, without GOD in the world, when any thing happens to make them more serious, and sober them in thought and conduct, how apt they are presently to leave off that fear and trembling, which becomes persons who have brought themselves into such imminent jeopardy? They remember indeed their past sins, and speak of them, it may be, not seldom; not however in the language of true humility, but rather so magnifying their present deliverance, as to shew that they look on it as a sign of GoD ALMIGHTY's partial favour towards them. They apply to themselves, and to their own late and scanty repentance, all the promises which the Gospel holds out to those who receive Holy Baptism rightly for the first time. Thus reckoning their own condition safe, they go on with little or no scruple to pass sentence on that of their brethren; in which, and in a selfpleasing way they have of watching their own inward feelings, they find such full employment, that they have small leisure to attend to and correct their practice; and so they too often go down to the very grave, thoroughly well satisfied with them

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selves, while, if we judge by the Gospel rule, their works, we can only suppose their repentance but just begun, So cunning is Satan, where he cannot quite hinder men's improvement, to spoil and mar it by causing them to account it perfect, when it is in fact only the first rude beginning of a long process, which must ever be imperfect in this world.

Thus, my Brethren, I have endeavoured to show you the reason, why the penitence, even of most real penitents, is so very unlike that of St. Peter; why so few of us weep bitterly, and pass our time in fear and trembling, though we cannot deny that we have been guilty of deadly sin after Baptism. The reason clearly is, there are very few of us, who rightly consider what Scripture plainly teaches concerning baptismal blessings. They do not consider how much is necessarily required, in those who have been enlightened, and tasted of the heavenly Gift, and made partakers of the HOLY GHOST, and have tasted the good Word of GOD, and the powers of the world to come. They only consider and compare with their own feelings the feelings and conduct of others, whom they believe to have been from time to time called by GOD to faith and grace, and so to have received entire deliverance from their sins; and if they see in themselves the same signs as in those supposed favoured ones of CHRIST, they look no further; they account all safe.

Thus the measure and standard of Christian holiness becomes gradually lower and lower; and instead of weeping bitterly with St. Peter, persons who are but just beginning to recover themselves from a course of denying CHRIST a thousand times worse than his, permit their friends to speak of them as great saints, and venture almost to cry out with St. Paul, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."

But let us be prevailed on to lose no time in measuring our conduct by our baptismal vows. If you find that you have not materially broken them, then watch over yourself with a thankful heart, but with all possible jealousy, knowing that against such as you the Evil Spirit is particularly active. If, on the other hand, we find ourselves, with too many, sadly fallen away from our baptismal integrity, then let us make haste to repent, and be never satisfied with our own repentance; let us not look to comfort and satisfaction, temporal or spiritual, in this world, but