CXLV expository sermons upon the whole 17th chapter of the Gospel according to St.…

Thirdly, Not only the acts, but the habits also of grace may in respect of their degrees be much abated and grown languid. This indeed some have doubted of, Whether a godly man can, or doth fall from any degree of his grace; and they have held the negative, That a degree of grace is of the same nature with the essence of grace, and both indefectible. But when sin in the acts of it, hath prevailed on the godly, as many examples declare, no doubt but the principle of grace is thereby debilitated; If darkness be introduced, the light cannot be so prevalent; If sickness increase, health must impair: Now sin doth expel grace, both meritoriously and efficiently, in a well-explained sense.

Thirdly, Not only the acts, but the habits also of grace may in respect of their degrees be much abated and grown languid. This indeed some have doubted of, Whether a godly man can, or doth fall from any degree of his grace; and they have held the negative, That a degree of grace is of the same nature with the essence of grace, and both indefectible. But when sinne in the acts of it, hath prevailed on the godly, as many examples declare, no doubt but the principle of grace is thereby debilitated; If darknesse be introduced, the light cannot be so prevalent; If sicknesse increase, health must impair: Now sinne doth expell grace, both meritoriously and efficiently, in a well-explained sense.

Fourthly, That we may not be too large in this, None can positively dogmatize, how far, and in what sins a godly man may fall, and how long he may continue ere his recovery. As it's difficult to give in a Catalogue of the Fundamental Articles of Religion, without the faith whereof a man must necessarily perish; so it is to lay down, what sins, and how perpetrated do immediately expel grace from the soul. Indeed we may speak to the negative, what shall not be done; but to the positive, How far, that is difficult to say, we may say, they cannot commit the sin against the holy Ghost, or the sin unto death, that they cannot die in final impenitency or obstinacy; but to go further, and to set down the very peg, as it were, hitherto they can fall, and no further, to give the minimum quod non, and the ultimum justum non esse, is harder in grace, then in nature. The godly therefore are to hear these things with trembling, and with all diligence to attend to such means, as are appointed for their preservation to eternal life; God may leave them in a dreadful, miserable condition; so that they may for the present seem to be so many Cains and Judases.