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

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.

Fourthly, That we may not be too large in this, None can positively dogmatize, how farre, and in what sinnes 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 Fundamentall Articles of Religion, without the faith whereof a man must necessarily perish; so it is to lay down, what sinnes, and how perpetrated do immediately expell grace from the soul. Indeed we may speak to the negative, what shall not be done; but to the positive, How farre, that is difficult to say, we may say, they cannot commit the sinne against the holy Ghost, or the sinne 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 dreadfull, miserable condition; so that they may for the present seem to be so many Cains and Judasses.