The true doctrine of justification asserted and vindicated, from the errors of Papists, Arminians,…The true doctrine of justification asserted and vindicated, from the errours of Papists, Arminians,…

Consider therefore that till there be a pardon of sin, though thy sins have been committed forty or fifty years ago, yet they are continued still, and thou art truly a sinner, though so many years after, as thou wast at the first committing of them. Sin is not taken away by length of time, but by some gracious act of God vouchsafed unto us: How justly may it be feared, that many a mans sins do still lie at his doors! Thou art still in thy sins, and looked upon as so by God; though it may be thou hast left such sins many years ago. Thy youthful sins it may be, thou hast left them ⟨p. 134⟩along while ago, yet thou art still in them, and they are continued upon thee, till by remission they are taken away. It is not thy other course of life and abstinence from sin, that makes a sin not to be, but there must be some gracious act on Gods part, removing of this. Consider therefore of it, that thy soul remaineth as polluted and guilty twenty years after a sin, yea a thousand of years, if thou couldst live so long, as when it was in the very first act of sin. Remember the action of sin doth pass away, but not the sin; you may therefore ask, Wherein doth the sin continue still? What is that which makes me still to be reputed of as if I were a sinner in the very act? It is commonly out of the Schoolmen determined,¹ That after a sin is committed, there doth remain a Macula, a blot in the soul, and that continuing, the sinner doth thereby remain obliged unto eternal wrath. That there is such a filth and blot remaining because of sin,² I see generally acknowledged by our Divines: only that learned Wootton doth much oppose it, and saith, the Schoolmen have been five hundred years labouring to declare, what it is, and are not able to do it. Indeed he grants, That in Adams sin we may well conceive a blot remaining after the sin was committed, because he was endowed with grace; but now in a man grown up that hath grace, no sin that he commits takes away his grace, and therefore he is not deprived of that beauty by the blot of sin. And as for wicked men, they have no beauty at all in them; and therefore how can sin make such a blot in them? There must be beauty in them by grace, which is nitor animae, the lustre of the soul, before there can be Macula, which is the deformity of it. For the right conceiving of this, know, 1.