12. And the case is plainly the same in every other folly of human life. She that spends her time and money in the unreasonable ways and fashions of the world, does not do so, because she wants power to be wise and religious in the management of her time and money, but because she has no intention or desire of being so. When she feels this intention, she will find it as possible to act up to it, as to be strictly sober and chaste because it is her care and desire to be so.
13. This doctrine does not suppose, that we have no need of divine grace, or that it is in our own power to make ourselves perfect. It only supposes, that through the want of a sincere intention of pleasing God in all our actions, we fall into such irregularities of life, as by the ordinary means of grace, we should have power to avoid.
And that we have not that perfection, which our present state of grace makes us capable of, because we don’t so much as intend to have it.
It only teaches us, that the reason why you see no real self-denial, no eminent charity, no profound humility, no heavenly affection, no true contempt of the world, no Christian meekness, no sincere zeal, no eminent piety in the common lives of Christians, is this, because they don’t so much as intend to be exact and exemplary in these virtues.
CHAP. III.
Of the great danger and folly of not intending to be as eminent as we can, in the practice of all Christian virtues.
1.ALTHOUGH the goodness of God, and his rich mercy in Christ Jesus, are a sufficient assurance to us, that he will be merciful to our unavoidable weaknesses, that is, to such failings as are the effects of ignorance or surprize; yet we have no reason to expect the same mercy towards those sins which we live in, through a want of intention to avoid them.
For instance, a common swearer, who dies in that guilt, seems to have no title to the divine mercy; because he can no more plead any weakness in his excuse, than the man that hid his talent in the earth, could plead his want of strength to keep it out of the earth.
2. But, if this be right reasoning in the case of a common swearer, that his sin is not to be reckoned a pardonable frailty, because he has no weakness to plead in its excuse: why don’t we as much condemn every other error of life, that has no more weakness to plead in its excuse than common swearing?