28. VIII. A man is called just or unjust by reason of his disposition to, and preparation for, an act: and therefore much more for the habit. "Paratum est cor meum, Deus:" "O God, my heart is ready, my heart is ready:" and St. John had the reward of martyrdom, because he was ready to die for his Lord, though he was not permitted; and St. Austin affirsm, that the continency of Abraham was as certainly crowned as the continence of John, it being as acceptable to God to have a chaste spirit as a virgin body, that is, habitual continence being as pleasing as actual. Thus a man may be a persecutor, or a murderer, if he have a heart ready to do it: and if a lustful soul be an adulteress, because the desire is a sin, it follows that the habit is a particular state of sin, distinct from the act, because it is a state of vicious desires. And as a body may be said to be lustful though it be asleep, or eating, without the sense of actual urtications and violence, by reason of its constitution: so may the soul by the reason of its habit, that is, its vicious principle and base effect of sin, be hated by God, and condemned upon that account.

29. So that a habit is not only distinct from its acts in the manner of being, as rhetoric from logic in Zeno, as a fist from a palm, as a bird from the egg, and the flower from the gem: but a habit differs from its acts, as an effect from the cause, as a distinct principle from another, as a pregnant daughter from a teeming mother, as a conclusion from its premises, as a state of aversation from God, from a single act of provocation.

30. IX, If the habit had not an irregularity in it distinct from the sin, then it were not necessary to persevere in holiness by a constant regular course, but we were to be judged by the number of single actions; and he only who did more bad than good actions, should perish, which was affirmed by the Pharisees of old: and then we were to live or die by chance and opportunity, by actions, and not by the will,-by the outward, and not by the inward man; then there could be no such thing necessary as the kingdom of grace, Christ's empire and dominion in the soul; then we can belong to God without belonging to his kingdom; and we might be in God, though the kingdom of God were not in us. For without this we might do many single actions of virtue, and it might 4 De Bono Conjugat. c. 21.

happen that these might be more than the single actions of sin, even though the habit, and affection, and state of sin remain. Now if the case may be so (as in the particular instance), that the man's final condition shall not be determined by single actions, it must be by habits, and states, and principles of actions: and, therefore, these must have in them a proper good and bad respectively, by which the man shall be judged, distinct from the actions by which he shall not, in the present case, be judged. All which considerations being put together, do unanswerably put us upon this conclusion; that a habit of sin is that state of evil, by which we are enemies to God, and slaves of Satan, by which we are strangers from the covenant of grace, and consigned to the portion of devils: and therefore, as a corollary of all, we are bound, under pain of a new sin, to rise up instantly after every fall, to repent speedily for every sin, not to let the sun go down upon our wrath, nor rise upon our lust, nor run his course upon our covetousness or ambition. For not only every period of impenitence is a period of danger, and eternal death may enter; but it is an aggravation of our folly, a continuing to provoke God, a further aberration from the rule, a departure from life, it is a growing in sin, a progression towards final impenitence, to obduration and apostacy, it is a tempting God, and a despising of his grace, it is all the way presumption, and a dwelling in sin by delight and obedience; that is, it is a conjugation of new evils, and new degrees of evil. As pertinacy makes error to be heresy, and impenitence makes little sins unite and become deadly, and perseverance causes good to be crowned, and evil to be unpardonable: so is the habit of viciousness, the confirmation of our danger, and solemnities of death, the investiture and security of our horrible inheritance.

31. The sum is this. Every single sin is a high calamity; it is a shame and it is a danger; in one instant it makes us liable to God's severe anger. But a vicious habit is a conjugation of many actions, every one of which is highly damnable: and besides that union which is formally an aggravation of the evils, there is superinduced upon the will and all its ministering faculties, a viciousness and pravity, which make evil to be beloved and chosen, and God to be hated and despised. A vicious habit hath in it all the physical,

metaphysical, and moral degrees of which it can be capable. For there is not only a not repenting, a not rescinding of the past act by a contrary nolition; but there is a continuance in it, and a repetition of the same cause of death, as if a man should marry death, the same death so many times over it is an improving of our shame, a taking it upon us, an owning and a securing our destruction, and before a man can arrive thither, he must have broken all the instruments of his restitution in pieces, and for his recovery nothing is left unless a palladium fall from heaven; the man cannot live again, unless God shall do more for him than he did for Lazarus, when he raised him from the dead.

SECTION IV.

Sinful Habits do require a distinct Manner of Repentance, and have no Promise to be pardoned but by the Introduction of the contrary.

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32. THIS is the most material and practical difficulty of the question for upon this depends the most mysterious article of repentance, and the interest of dying penitents. For if a habit is not to be pardoned without the extirpation of that which is vicious, and the superinducing its contrary; this being a work of time, requires a particular grace of God, and much industry, caution, watchfulness, frequent prayers, many advices and consultations, constancy, severe application: and is of so great difficulty and such slow progression, that all men who have had experience of this employment, and heartily gone about to cure a vicious habit, know it is not a thing to be done upon our death-bed. That therefore which I intend to prove, I express in this proposition.

A vicious habit is not to be pardoned without the in troduction of the contrary, either in kind, or in perfect affection, and in all those instances in which the man hath opportunities to work.

33. The church of Rome, whose chairs and pulpits are dangerous guides in the article of repentance, affirms that

any sin, or any habit of sin, may be pardoned by any single act of contrition; the continued sin of forty years may be washed off in less than forty minutes, nay, by an act of attrition with the priestly absolution: which proposition, if it be false, does destroy the interest of souls; and it cannot be true, because it destroys the interest of piety, and the necessities of a good life. The reproof of this depends upon many propositions, of which I shall give as plain accounts as the thing will bear.

34. I. Every habit of vice may be expelled by a habit of virtue naturally, as injustice by justice, gluttony by temperance, lust by chastity: but by these it is not meritoriously remitted and forgiven; because nothing in nature can remit sins, or be the immediate natural disposition to pardon. All this is the gift of God, a grace obtained by our holy Redeemer, the price of his blood; but in this, the case is all one as it is in the greatest innocence of the best of men, which, if it be not allowed by incorporation into Christ, and sanctified by faith, wants its proper title to heaven: and so it is with repentance. For nature cannot teach us this lesson, much less make it acceptable. For it depending wholly upon God's graciousness and free forgiveness, can be taught only by him, by whom it is effectual, and this is conveyed to us by our blessed Lord, according to that saying, Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.'

35. II. Although a habit cannot be the meritorious cause of pardoning the contrary habit, yet to him that hath contracted a vicious habit, it is necessary, in order to his pardon, that he root out that habit and obtain the contrary in some degrees of prevalency, so that the scales be turned on that side where is the interest of virtue: and this depends upon the evidence of the former proposition. If to be an habitual sinner be more than to be guilty of those actual sins by which the habit was contracted; then as it is necessary to rescind the act of sin by an act of contrition and repentance; so also it is as necessary that the habit be retracted by a habit, that every wound may have its balsam, and every broken bone be bound up and redintegrate.

36. III. But in the case of habitual sins the argument is more pressing. For if the act which is past and remains not, yet must be reversed by its contrary, much rather must that

be taken off which does remain, which actually tempts us, by which we are in a state exactly contrary to the state of grace. For some seldom acts of sin, and in trifling instances, may stand with a state of holiness, and be incident to a good man: but no vicious habit can, neither in a small matter, nor in a great; this is an droλλówv, a destroyer;' and therefore, as it hath a particular obliquity, so it must have a special repentance, a repentance proper to it, that is, as an act rescinds an act, so must a habit be opposed to a habit, a single act of contrition to a single sin, and therefore it must be more, no less than a lasting and an habitual contrition to obtain pardon for the habit. And although a habit can meritoriously remit a habit, no more than an act can do an act, they being both equal as to that particular; yet they are also dispositions equally (at least on this hand) necessary for the obtaining pardon of their respective contraries.

37. IV. It is confessed on all sides, that every single sin which we remember, must be repented of by an act of repentance, that must particularly touch that sin; if we distinctly remember it, it must distinctly be revoked by a nolition, a sorrow, and moral revocation of it. Since therefore every habit is contracted by many single actions, every one of which, if they were sinful, must some way or other be rescinded by its contrary, the rescission of those will also introduce a contrary habit, and so the question will be evinced upon that account. For if we shall think one act of sorrow can abolish many foul acts of sin, we but deceive ourselves: we must have many for one, as I have already made to appear, a multitude of sighs and prayers against every foul action that we remember: and then the consequent is plain, that upon this reckoning when a habit is contracted, the actions which were its principle, cannot be rescinded but by such repentances, which will extinguish not only the formality, but the material and natural effect, of that cursed production, at least in very many degrees.

38. V. A habit opposed to a habit hath greater effect than an act opposed to an act, and therefore is not only equally requisite, but the more proper remedy and instance of repentance. For an act of itself cannot naturally extinguish the guilt, nor meritoriously obtain its pardon: but neither can it destroy its natural being, which was not permanent,