die with thee, I will not deny thee; and then denying him through infirmity and weakness of the flesh, when he had considered what he had done, he went out and wept bitterly, verse 75. But Paul had ⟨great⟩ malice and spite against the ways and people of God, as you may see Acts ix. 1. Paul breathed out threatnings and slaughters against the disciples of the Lord, and went to the high priest, desiring of him letters to Damascus, to the synagogues, that if he found any in his way, whether men or women, he should bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now here was great rage and malice in Saul against the ways and the people of God: but doing it ignorantly, he at last heard a voice saying, Saul, Saul, why persecute thou me? and seeing a light from heaven, and hearing it was ⟨Jesus⟩ that he persecuted, he was pricked at the heart, and trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? Now by these two places of scripture you may plainly see, that Peter sinned against great light, and Paul out of great malice, yet neither of them committed the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost. But whensoever light and malice meet together in one man, then there is the sin against the Holy Ghost. Now, as all other sins, so is this sin against the Holy Ghost.———
1. In thought; that is, when a wicked man, against his clear light and knowledge, doth but conceive a malicious thought or purpose towards persecuting the gospel of Christ, or of the saints of Christ, to hinder the work of the Holy Ghost in them.
This sin, as is to be thought, was the sin of the lost angels, for which cause they were lost without all hopes of pardon. Now some dispute, whether this sin was a sin of the thought; but I say in all likelihood it was; for the angels being only spirits, without bodies, and so having no use of bodily tongues, it could not be committed in word, nor yet could they commit it in action, because they were cast out of heaven
A 4
before
