he have sinned; how long remained in sin, or against what present and ready help of God's Holy Spirit. And in proportion to his sin, must be his repentance. Only of this he may be sure, that man always undervalues his sin, and overvalues his repentance; and on this account also, theories, which smooth or shorten the path of repentance, are so peculiarly dangerous.
The differences, then, between these and the current ideas of repentance, relate to, 1st, The difference between grievous sin before and after Baptism; 2dly, The difficulty of recovery; 3dly, Its mode; 4thly, Man's assuredness and knowledge of his pardon; 5thly, The duration of repentance: but they do not relate either to the possibility of repentance, or God's readiness to forgive the penitent. Modern notions appear to me to confound together repentance for all sin, to level those who, after Baptism, have in the main served God, and those who serve Him not; and to represent repentance for grievous sin, too easy, too little painful, too little connected with the outward course of life, too little influenced by or influencing it, too much a matter of mere feeling, too readily secured and ascertained, too transitory, not—too certain to obtain pardon, if real.
On this whole subject of the actual sins of the baptized, and the repentance necessary, I would that men would study the work of Bishop Taylor—"The doctrine and practice of Repentance," not simply on account of his great learning as to Christian antiquity, but because it was written by one who says of himself[1], "having, by the sad experience of my own miseries and the calamities of others, to whose restitution I have been called to minister, been taught something of the secret of souls: I have reason to think that the words
- ↑ Preface to the Clergy of England, prefixed to the Doctrine and Practice of Repentance.
