of apprehension of chastisement; or good husbandry may dispose a man to it, to avoid the payment of great damages by the direction of justice and the law: but true repentance issues out of a higher court, and is not satisfied with submitting to the censures of public authority; but inflicts greater penalties than a common judge can do, because it hath a clearer view and prospect into the nature of the offence, discerns the malice of the heart, and every circumstance in the committing, and applies a plaister proportionable to the wound and to the scar. If the calumny hath been raised in a whisper, and been afterwards divulged without the advice or privity of the calumniator, it sends him in pursuit of that whisper, and awards him to vindicate the injured person in all places, and to all persons who have been infected by it; if it hath been vented originally in defamatory writings, which have wrought upon and perverted more men, than can be better informed by any particular applications how ingenuously soever made, it obliges men to write volumes, till the recognition be as public and notorious as the defamation; and it uses the same rigour, awards, the same satisfaction, upon any other violation of

truth, by which men have been seduced or misled: whilst the poor penitent is so far from murmuring or repining at the severity of his penance, that he still fears it is not enough, that it is too light a punishment to expiate his transgression, and would gladly undergo even more than he can bear, out of the aversion he hath to the deformity of his guilt, and the glimmering prospect he hath of that happiness, which only the sincerity of his repentance can bring him to: he abhors and detests that heraldry, which for honour sake would divert or obstruct his most humble acknowledgement to the poorest person he hath offended; and would gladly exchange all his titles and his trappings, for the rags and innocence of the poorest beggar. Repentance is a magistrate that exacts the strictest duty and humility, because the reward it gives is inestimable and everlasting; and the pain and punishment it redeems men from, is of the same continuance, and yet intolerable.

There are two imaginations or fancies (for opinions they cannot be) which insinuate themselves into the minds of men, who do not love to think of their own desperate condition. One is, that a general asking God

forgiveness for all the sins he hath commited, without charging his memory with mentioning the particulars, is a sufficient repentance to procure God's pardon for them all: the other, that a man may heartily repent the having committed one particular sin, and thereupon obtain God's favour and forgiveness, though he practises other sins, which he believes are not so grievous, and so defers the present repentance of; that if he hath committed a murder, he can repent that, and resolve never to do the like again, and thereupon obtain his pardon, and yet retain his inclination to other excesses. Which two kinds of suggestion are so gross and ridiculous (if any thing can be called ridiculous that hath relation to repentance), that no man is so impudent as to own them, though in truth some modern casuists are not far from teaching the former; yet if we descend into ourselves, make that strict scrutiny and inquisition into every corner of our hearts, as true repentance doth exact from us, and will see performed by us, we shall find and must confess, that they are these, and such like trivial and lamentable imaginations, which make us so unwary in all our actions, so uncircumspect throughout the course of our lives,

and are the cause that in a whole nation of transcendent offenders, there are so very few who become true penitents, or manifest their repentance by those signs and marks with which it is always and cannot but be attended.

God forbid, that death-bed repentance should not do us good, or that death should approach towards any man who is without repentance; he who recollects himself best before, will have work enough for repentance in the last minute; and it is possible, and but possible, that he who hath never recollected himself before, may have the grace to repent so cordially then, and make such a saving reflection upon all the sins of his life, though he hath neither time nor memory to number them, that he may obtain a full remission of them. Repentance indeed is so strong a balsam, that one drop of it put into the most noisome wound perfectly cures it. But that men, who cannot but observe how a little pain or sickness indisposes and makes them unfit for any transaction; who know how often the torment of the gout in the least joint, or a sudden pang of the stone, hath distracted them even in the most solemn and premeditated exercise of devotion, that they have

retained no gesture or word fit for that sacrifice; I say, it is very strange that any such man, who hath himself undergone, or seen others undergo, such visitations, should believe it possible that upon his deathbed, in that agony of pain, in those inward convulsions, strugglings, and torments of dissolution, which are the usual forerunners and messengers of death, or can presume upon, or hope for such a composure of mind and memory in that melancholy season, as to recollect and reflect upon all those particulars of his mispent life, as his departing soul must within a few minutes give an account, a very exact account of; and therefore it cannot be otherwise, and how much soever we disclaim the assertion, we are in truth so foolish as to be imposed upon by that pleasant imagination, that there goes much less to repentance than severe men would persuade us, and that a very short time, and as short an ejaculation, which shall be very hearty, and which we still think so much of in our intentions that we are sure we cannot forget them, will serve our turn, and will carry us fairly out of this world, and leave a very good report of our Christianity with the standers-by, who will give a fair testimony. If we did not think