This text, in both the parts of it, was fulfilled upon him and the woman that he married first. For her name still did flourish, though she had been dead almost seventeen years; but his began to stink and rot before he had been buried seventeen days.
ATTEN. That man that dieth with a life full of sin, and with a heart void of repentance, although he should die of the most golden disease, if there were any thing that might be so called, I will warrant him his name shall stink, and that in heaven and earth.
WISE. You say true; and therefore doth the name of Cain, Pharaoh, Saul, Judas, and the Pharisees, though dead thousands of years ago, stink as fresh in the nostrils of the world as if they were but newly dead.
ATTEN. I do fully acquiesce with you in this. But, Sir, since you have charged him with dying impenitent, pray let me see how you will prove it; not that I altogether doubt it, because you have affirmed it, but yet I love to have proof for what men say in such weighty matters.
WISE. When I said he died without repentance, I meant so far as those that knew him could judge, when they compared his life, the Word, and his death together.
ATTEN. Well said, they went the right way to find out whether he had, that is, did manifest that he had repentance or no. Now then show me how they did prove he had none.
WISE. So I will. And first, this was urged to prove it. He had not in all the time of his sickness a sight and sense of his sins, but was as secure, and as much at quiet, as if he had never sinned in all his life.
ATTEN. I must needs confess that this is a sign he had none. For how can a man repent of that of which he hath neither sight nor sense? But it is strange that he had neither sight nor sense of sin now, when he had such a sight and sense of his evil before; I mean when he was sick before.
WISE. He was, as I said, as secure now as if he had been as sinless as an angel; though all men knew what a sinner he was, for he carried his sins in his forehead. His debauched life was read and known of all men; but his repentance was read and known of no man; for, as I said, he had none. And for ought I know, the reason why he had no sense of his sins now was, because he profited not by that sense that he had of them before. He liked not to retain that knowledge of God then, that caused his sins to come to remembrance. Therefore God gave him up now to a reprobate mind, to hardness and stupidity of spirit; and so was that scripture fulfilled upon him, 'He hath blinded their eyes' (Isa 6:10). And that, 'Let their eyes be darkened that they may not see' (Rom 11:10). O, for a man to live in sin, and to go out of the world without repentance for it, is the saddest judgment that can overtake a man.
ATTEN. But, Sir, although both you and I have consented that without a sight and sense of sin there can be no repentance, yet that is but our bare say so; let us therefore now see if by the scripture we can make it good.