Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/291

Rh again, "Rebellious Israel hath justified herself more than treacherous Judah." (Jer. iii. 11). Let any one teachably consider these words, and not put himself off, or stifle his conscience by mere generalities of the greatness of mercy; and he will, I trust, by that mercy, be brought to think that wilful sin, after Baptism, is no such light matter as the easiness of our present theology would make it. And so also will it appear that repentance is not a work of a short time, or a transient sorrow, but of a whole life; that, if any man say that he have repented of any great sin, (thereby meaning that his repentance is ended, or sufficient,) he has not yet repented, perhaps not yet begun to repent as he ought : that,—I say not earnest-minded cheerfulness, but—what the world calls gaiety, is ill-suited to the character of a penitent: that his repentance, although its anxiety may by be removed, ought to increase in depth and sharpness: that things which were allowable in those who are "heirs" of Heaven," ill become one who must now enter in, not through the way of plenary remission, but of repentance for a broken covenant. "Those holy and wise men," says Bishop Taylor, "who were our fathers in Christ, did well weigh the dangers into which a sinning man had entered, and did dreadfully fear the issues of Divine anger, and therefore, although they openly