A second volume of discourses or sermons on several scriptures

First,¹ Pardon of Sin gives an inviolable security against the pursuits of avenging Justice. This is its formal, and most immediate Effect. Justice follows guilty Sinners close at the Heels, and shakes its flaming Sword over their ⟨p. 68⟩Heads: every Threatening contained in this Book of God, stands ready charged against them, and their Sins make them so fair a Mark, that they cannot be missed. Hence is that sad Complaint of Job, Why hast thou set me up as a Mark? Into which he emptied his Arrows as into his Reins, Job 7.20. Now while Justice is driving the Sinner before him from Plague to Plague, resolving never to stop till he hath driven him into Hell, the great Assembly and Meeting of all Plagues: Mercy interposeth and lays its Arrest upon it; and this Gracious Act of Pardon rescues us, though under the hands of the Executioner, and we ready to be turned into Hell. Here the Challenge that Justice makes to us ceaseth, and we are left to walk safely under the protection of Mercy. For when God issues out a Pardon, he calls off Justice from its pursuit. Thus you have the Psalmist thankfully acknowledging, Psalm 85.2. Thou hast forgiven our Iniquities; and what follows now, Thou hast taken away all thy Wrath, thou hast turned thy self from the fierceness of thine Anger. Nor is it to be feared, O Soul, that thou ⟨p. 69⟩shalt evermore be questioned for those sins that are once forgiven thee. God's Acts of Oblivion can never be repealed: No, God sets an everlasting Sanction upon them, and Justice shall never again molest thee, Jeremiah 34. I will forgive their iniquities, and will remember their sins no more. And indeed, well may Divine Justice cease its pursuit of the guilty sinner, for always when God pardons a sinner, he turns his pursuit after Christ, and satisfies all his just demands upon him: for though we are the Principals in the Debt, yet our Surety, who stands bound for us in the Covenant of Redemption, is far the more able and absolving Person.