Godly Sorrow.

Sorrow for sin, the more it is for sin as it is against God, the more ingenuous, the more evangelical, the more genuine act of saving repentance. The more it is for sin, as sin is prejudicial to us, the less ingenuous, the less evangelical, and a less evident, a less comfortable, sign of repentance unto life. There are two sure characters of ingenuous gospel sorrow: when it proceeds from a sense of God's love to us, and when it proceeds from our love to God, when we mourn for offending him, because we love him. Now, these are not, or not so visible, in any sorrow for sin as that which mourns for sin as it is against God. The other springs rather from self-love, when we bewail sin because it is against us, hurtful, dangerous, damnable. This was not the temper of David's sorrow: it was of a more evangelical strain. Against Thee have I sinned (Ps. li. 4). Why David had sinned against himself, not only against God. He had sinned against his friend, against his own body, soul, estate, family, and involved all these in great dangers, exposed all to grievous sufferings. It is true David knew it, but he takes no notice of it. That which grieved him, afflicted him, was that his sin was against God; and his sorrow so much respects this, as though he had sinned against God alone. This is the genuine temper of godly sorrow.

Of Repentance, Works, i. p. 38.

119. William Bates, 1625-1699. (Handbook, par. 382.)

The 'silver-tongued ;' one of the most gentle men, and among the most eloquent writers of his age. His best known works are, The Four Last Things, and a treatise on Spiritual Perfection. The folio volume (1710) which contains his works has been frequently reprinted.

Examples of Spiritual Perfection.

The gospel proposes the most animating examples of perfection. We are commanded to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. There are some attributes of God, which are objects, not of our imitation, but of our highest veneration. Such are his eternity, immensity, omnipotence, immutability. There are other attributes, his moral perfections, which are imitable-holiness, goodness, justice, truth. These are fully declared in his law, and visible in his providence. This command, as was before explained, is to be understood, not of an equality, but of a resem

blance. God is essentially, transcendently, and unchangeably holy, the original of holiness in intelligent creatures. There is a greater disproportion between the holiness of God and that of angels, though it be unspotted, than between the celerity of the sun in the heavens and the slow motion of the shadow upon the dial regulated by it. It should be our utmost aim, our most earnest endeavour, to imitate the divine perfection. Then is the soul godlike, when its principal powers, the understanding and the will, are influenced by God.

The heathen deities were distinguished by their vices-intemperance, impurity, and cruelty; and under such patronage their idolaters sinned boldly. The true God commands us to be holy, as he is holy;' to be followers of Him as dear children.' Love produces desires and endeavours of likeness.

The life of Christ is a globe of precepts, a model of perfection, set before us for our imitation. In some respects this is more proportionable to us; for in him were united the perfections of God with the infirmities of a man. undefiled, and separate from sinners.'

He was holy, harmless,
His purity was absolute,

and every grace in the most divine degree was expressed in his actions. His life and death were a compound miracle of obedience to God and love to men. Whatever his Father ordered him to undertake, or undergo, he entirely consented to; he willingly took on him the form of a servant; it was not put upon him by compulsion. In his life, humility towards men, infinite descents below him, self-denial, zeal for the honour of God, ardent desires for the salvation and welfare of men, were as visible as the flame discovers fire. In his sufferings obedience and sacrifice were united. The willingness of his spirit was victorious over the repugnance of the natural will in the garden. 'Not my will, but thine be done,' was his unalterable choice. His patience was insuperable to all injuries. He was betrayed by a disciple for a vile price, and a murderer was preferred before him. He was scorned as a false prophet, as a feigned king, and as a deceitful saviour. He was spit on, scourged, crowned with thorns, and crucified; and in the height of his sufferings never expressed a spark of anger against his enemies, nor the least degree of impatience. Now consider, it was one principal reason of his obedience to instruct and oblige us to conform to his pattern, the certain and constant rule of our duty. We may

not securely follow the best saints, who sometimes, through ignorance and infirmity, deviate from the narrow way; but our Saviour is the way, the truth, and the life.' What he said, after his washing the disciples' feet (an action wherein there was such an admirable mixture of humility and love, that it is not possible to conceive which excelled, for they were both in the highest perfection), 'I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so do ye,' is applicable to all the kinds of virtues and graces exhibited in his practice. He instructs us to do by his doings, and to suffer by his sufferings. 'He suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we may follow his steps.' He levels the way by going before us. Those duties that are very harsh to sensible nature he instructs us in by his preaching and by his passion. How can we decline them, when performed by him in whom the glorious Deity was personally united to the tender humanity? His life was a continual lecture of mortification. It is the observation of the natural historian, that the tender providence of nature is admirable, in preparing medicines for us in beautiful fragrant flowers; that we might not refuse the remedy, as more distasteful than our diseases. But how astonishing is the love of God, who sent his Son for our redemption from eternal death; and in his example has sweetened those remedies which are requisite for the cure of our distempered passions! Taking up the cross, and submitting to poverty and persecution, are made tolerable, by considering that in enduring them we follow our Redeemer. Can any motive more engage and encourage our obedience than the persuasive pattern and commanding example of our Sovereign and Saviour? Can we be averse from our duty, when our lawgiver teaches us obedience by his own practice? Can any invitation be more attractive than to do that from love to him which he did for love to us and our salvation? . . . The Scripture has lighted up excellent examples of holiness in the lives of the saints upon earth, for our direction and imitation. There is a great advantage in looking on examples; they are more instructive than naked precepts, and more clearly convey the knowledge of our duty. A work done in our sight by another directs us better in the practice of it; it is more acceptable, and of more powerful efficacy to reform us, than counsel and admonition by words. A reproof, if spoken with an imperious air wherein vanity has a visible ascendant, is

heard with distaste, and often with disdain; but an excellent example is a silent reproof, not directed immediately to irregular persons, but discovering what ought to be done, and leaving the application to themselves, so that the impression is more quick and penetrating than that of words. In difficult precepts, no argument is more effectual than examples; for the possibility of performance is confirmed by instances, and the pretence of infirmity is taken away. The command binds us to duty. Examples encourage us to performance. The pattern of the angels, who are pure spirits, is not so influential upon us as the pattern of the saints, which is more correspondent and proportionate to our present state; as the light of the stars, which are so vastly distant, is not so useful in managing our affairs as the light of a candle that is near us. The saints are verily allied to us; they were clothed with the same frail garment of flesh, they had like passions, and were in the same contagious world; yet they were holy and heavenly in their affections and actions. They lived in civil conversation with men, and spiritual communion with God. This takes away the pretence of infirmity; for we have the same word of grace, and Spirit of grace, to strengthen us.

Spiritual Perfection, chap. xi.

120. Robert Boyle, 1626-1691. (Handbook, par. 328.)

One of the most active of the disciples of Bacon, and a man of devout and reverent spirit. His literary works were nearly all produced under unfavourable circumstances, so that they scarcely do justice to his genius.

Texts should be Studied in their Connexion.

Another thing which keeps men from discerning the reasonings, and consequently oftentimes the reasonableness and true sense of Scripture texts is, the shyness of divines to let the context and the speaker's scope regulate their choice amongst all the various, though not equally obvious, significations of ambiguous words and phrases. It is not that, as far as I have observed, men almost of all religions are not wont to make bold with, and perhaps for a need to strain or wrest, phrases and words of Scripture, when the giving them less usual notions may fit them to serve their turns; but the mischief is that they decline only to make the texts they quote symphonize with their tenets, not with their

neighbouring texts. It were methinks impartialler, if the frequenter meaning of an expression be to be waved, as oftentimes it must, for one less current, to do this to make the Scripture coherent or discursive: and then, for our opinions, rather to conform them to the sense of the Scripture than wrest the words of Scripture to them. But perhaps this impartiality would silence too many of our clamorous controversies, by showing some to be groundless and others undeterminable, to be likely to take place in the heated spirits of men; some of whom I fear, whilst their feuds and fierceness last, would be willinger to have the texts of Scripture loose stones, which they may more easily throw at their adversaries, than built up into a structure, wherein they must lose that convenience (it being difficult to pluck stones of a building), though reason herself were the architect.

On the Style of Scripture. The third objection, par. 8.

Above reason-not necessarily against it.

It seems to me that there are some things that reason by its own light cannot discover; and others that when proposed it cannot comprehend. . Of the first, there are divers truths in the Christian religion that reason left to itself would never have been able to find out, nor perhaps to have so much as dreamed of.... Of the second, there are truths delivered by revelation, that not only would they never have been found by mere natural reason: but they are so abstruse that when they are proposed as clearly as proper and unambiguous expressions can propose them in, they do nevertheless surpass our dim and bounded reason, on one or other of those three accounts that are mentioned in a dialogue about things transcending reason; namely, either as not clearly conceivable by our understanding, such as the infiniteness and perfections of the divine nature; or as inexplicable by us, such as the manner how God can create a rational soul, or how this, being an immaterial substance, it can act upon a human body and be acted on by it; or as unsymmetrical or unsociable, that is, such as we see not how to reconcile with other things, which are manifestly true, or are by us acknowledged to be true; such are the divine prescience of future contingents, and the liberty that belongs to man's will, at least in divers cases.

Reflections upon a Theological Distinction.