upon yourselves and your poor immortal fouls; and to take due care to prevent that which is to be dreaded above all things, the being miferable for ever: and, last of all, that, if thou wilt not repent now, the time will certainly come, and that perhaps in this life, when you fhall fee the greatest need of repentance; and yet perhaps, with miferable Efau, find no place for it, though you feek it carefully with tears; when you shall cry, Lord, Lord, and the door fhall be shut against you; and Shall feek to enter, but shall not be able. To be fure, in the other world you fhall eternally repent to no purpofe, and be continually lamenting your wretched condition without hopes of remedy; for there fhall be weeping and wailing without effect, without intermiffion, and without end.

And what cause have we to thank God that this is not yet our cafe; that we are yet on this fide the pit of deftruction, and the gulph of despair? O the infinite patience and boundlefs goodness of God to finners! With what clemency hath he spared us, and fuffered our manners thus long? And with what kindness and concernment does he still call upon us to leave our fins, and to return to him, as if, in fo doing, we fhould make him happy, and not ourselves? With what earnest longings and defires doth he wait and wish for our repentance, faying, that there were fuch a heart in them! O that they would hearken unto my voice! when fhall it once be? Thus God is reprefented in fcripture, as patiently attending and liftening what effect his admonitions and counfels, his reproofs and threatnings, will have upon finners, Jer. viii. 6. I hearkened and heard, but they Spake not aright: no man repented him of his wickedness, Jaying, What have I done? every one turned to his courfe, as the horfe rufheth into the battle.

And is not this our cafe? God hath long waited for our repentance; and once a-year we folemnly pretend to fet about it but many of us hitherto, I fear, instead of returning to God, have but more blindly and furiously run on in our courfe, like the horse that has no underStanding; yea, in this more brutish than the beast, that he rufheth into the battle without any confideration of death or danger, and deftroys himself without a fyllo

gifm. But we finners have reason, and yet are mad. The greatest part of evil doers are fufficiently fenfible of the danger of their courfe, and convinced that eternal mifery and ruin will be the end of it; and yet, I know not how, they make a fhift, upon one pretence or other, to difcourfe and reason themselves into it.

But, because the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged fword, and comes with a greater weight and force upon the minds of men than any human perfuafion whatsoever, I will conclude all with those fhort and ferious counfels and exhortations of God to finners by his holy prophets.

Confider, and fhew yourselves men, O ye tranfgreffors. Be inftructed, O Jerufalem, left my foul depart from thee. Seek the Lord while he may be found: call upon him while he is near. Repent, and turn yourselves from all your tranfgreffions; fo iniquity fhall not be your ruin.

SE
ERM

RMON

XVII.

Of the fin against the Holy Ghost.

MATTH. xii. 31. 32.

Wherefore I fay unto you, All manner of fin and blafphemy fhall be forgiven unto men: but the blafphemy againft the Holy Ghoft fhall not be forgiven unto men. And whofoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it fhall be forgiven him: but whofoever speaketh against the Holy Ghoft, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.

T

HE occafion of thefe words of our bleffed Saviour was, the blafphemy of the Pharifees against that divine power by which he wrought his miracles, and particularly did caft out devils. Which works of his, though they were wrought by the Spirit of God, yet they obftinately and maliciously imputed them to the power of the devil. Upon which our Saviour takes ocVOL. I.

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cafion to declare the danger of the fin which he calls blafpheming of the Holy Ghoft; and tells them, that this was fo great a fin above all other, that it is in a peculiar manner unpardonable: Wherefore I fay unto you, &c.

For the explaining of these words, and the nature and unpardonableness of this fin, we will inquire into these four things..

1. What is the difference between Speaking against the Son of man, and speaking against the Holy Ghoft? 2. Wherein the nature of this fin, or blafphemy against the Holy Ghoft, doth confist?

3. In what fenfe this fin is here faid to be peculiarly unpardonable? And,

4. Upon what account it is fo?

What is the difference between speaking against the Son of man, and speaking against the Holy Ghof? The reafon of this inquiry is, because the text plainly puts a great difference between them, though it be not obvious to difcern where it lies. For our Saviour tells us, that whofoever fpeaks a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghoft, it shall never be forgiven him and yet this blafphemy of the Pharifees against the Holy Ghost was fpeaking against the Son of man. For to fay he caft out devils by the power of the devil, though it was a blafpheming of the Holy Ghoft, by whose power he wrought thefe miracles; yet it was likewife a blafpheming of Christ himself; and was in effect to fay, that he was no true prophet, nor did come from God, but was a magician and impoftor.

For the removing of this difficulty, I fhall not need to fay, as fome learned men have done, that by the Son of man is here to be understood any man, and that our Saviour is not particularly defigned by it. That feems very hard, when our Saviour is fo frequently in the gospel called the Son of man and especially when St Luke, reciting these words, does immediately before give him this very title to put the matter out of all doubt, Luke xii. 8, 9. 10. Also I fay unto you, Whofoever shall confefs me before men, him fhall the Son of man alfo confefs before the angels of God. But he that denieth me before men, hall be denied before the angels of God. Upon which it follows,

follows, And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him. So that in all rea fon the Son of man is the very fame person that had this title given him in the foregoing words, viz. our bleffed Saviour. So that I take it for granted, that by speaking againft the Son of man is here meant fpeaking againft Chrift; and by speaking against him, as it is opposed to fpeaking against the Holy Ghoft, is meant all thofe reproaches and contumelies which they caft upon our Saviour's perfon, without reflecting upon that divine power which he teftified by his miracles: as their reproaching him with the meannefs of his birth, Is not this the carpenter's fon? with the place of it, as they fuppofed, Out of Gallilee arifeth no prophet: their reflecting upon his life, faying that he was a wine bibber, and a glutton, a friend of publicans and finners: with many other calumnies which they maliciously cast upon him.

But by fpeaking against the Holy Ghoft is meant their blafpheming and reproaching that divine power whereby he wrought his miracles; which though it did at lat likewife reflect upon our Saviour's perfon, yet it was an immediate reflection upon the Holy Ghoft, and a blafpheming of him and therefore it is called peaking against the Holy Ghoft, by way of distinction or oppofi tion to the other calumnies which they used against our Saviour; which were proper blafphemies and reproaches of his perfon, but not of the Holy Ghost also, as this was. This feems to me to be the true difference here intended

by our Saviour, between fpeaking against the Son of man, and Speaking against the Holy Ghoft. Let us, in the

II. Second place, inquire wherein the nature of this fin, or blafphemy against the Holy Ghoft, doth confift. And the true nature of this fin, though it be fo plainly to be gathered from our Saviour's defcription of it, yet, I know not how, a great many learned men have made a hard fhift to mistake it. Some have made it to be final impenitency, because that is unpardonable. But why that, rather than any thing else that is bad, fhould be called a blafpheming of the Holy Ghoft, it is hard to give a reafon. Others have placed the nature of it in a wilful and obftinate oppofition of the truth: which, though it be a great fin, and included in the fin here

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fpoken of, or a concomitant of it; yet there is great reafon to believe, that this is not all that is here meant by it. Others would have it to confift in a malicious oppofition of the truth, when men know and are con vinced that it is the truth. Which is a great fin indeed, if ever any man were guilty of it. But it is a great question whether human nature be capable of it. A man may indeed have fufficient means of conviction, and yet not be convinced; but it is hardly imaginable, that a man fhould oppofe the truth, when he is actually convinced that it is the truth. And, to mention no more, others think it to confift in a renouncing of the truth for fear of fuffering; which made Francis Spira to think that he had committed this fin.

But, with all due refpect to the judgement of others, I cannot think that any of thefe is the fin our Saviour here defcribes; as I fhall endeavour plainly to fhew, by confidering the occafion of our Saviour's mentioning of it, the perfons upon whom our Saviour chargeth this fin, and upon what account he chargeth them with it.

At the 22d verfe of this chapter, there was brought to our Saviour one poffeffed with a devil, blind and dumb ; and he healed him. Upon this the people were amazed, and faid, Is not this the fon of David? that is, the Meffias. The Pharifees hearing this, with great bitterness and contempt faid, This fellow doth not caft out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of devils. Upon this our Saviour represents to them the unreasonableness of this calumny; and that upon these two confiderations. 1. That it was very unlikely that the devil fhould lend him this power to ufe it against himself: Every kingdom divided against itfelf, is brought to defolation; and every city or house divided against itself, fhall not ftand. And if Satan caft cut Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then bis kingdom ftand? 2. Our Saviour tells them, they might with as much reafon attribute all miracles to the devil. There were thofe among themselves who caft out devils in the name of the God of Abraham, Ifaac, and Jacob; as Origen, and Tertullian, and Juftin Martyr, tell us. Of thefe our Saviour speaks, and asks the Pharifees, by what power they caft them out? But they acknowledged, that thefe did it by the power of God; and there was no caufe, but their malice, why they fhould not have acknowledged