Gods husbandry

And not only so,¹ but in the third and last place, our own sins, faults and slips, do become instruments of our making clean from sin, even as a man doth better scour his foul hands, having first smeared them with some foul thing that helpeth more to rub off the foulness that cleaveth fast unto the skin: not that the Children do, or may at any time of purpose commit sin to this end, (for it is quite besides, and against the nature of them to bring forth this effect; yea every sin is apt to leave, as a filthy spot behind the committing of it, a greater proneness to commit it then before) but that the Lord doth please divers times to give them over to be foiled of their own sinful lusts, that by smarting for them, they may be more humbled under them, and made more careful to see and resist them afterwards. Thus Peters fall before the high Priests servants, was a means to make him a better, (that is to say, a more humble and self-contemning man) for his whole life after; and in a sense a man may well term it, an happy fault for him. And so the Prophet Davids ⟨p. 116⟩heinous and presumptuous sin did excellently prune him, by helping to abate that conceit of himself, which the great prosperity of a rich and flourishing kingdom had wrought in him. So we may say of many a Christian man, that he would never have been good, if some of his actions had not been stark naught; and had not the Lord given him over to the committing of such and such gross sins, he would never, to any purpose, have been convinced of sin, and so never have been cleansed of it. We think not our selves subject to all manner of evils, we make no great matter of the lower degrees of sin, and so grow slithy, and fashionable, and dead in our confessions, because we think we have nothing worth speaking of, to reckon for before the Lord. Hence the Lord is provoked to give us up unto our selves, that by some notable foil, or soils, we may be made to know what is in us, and so be enforced to set about the cleansing of our selves, with much more care and earnestness then otherwise we would have done. So have you heard the Lords means of purging. Know also the manner of doing it:² and that is to be conceived of thus: First, he doth it by degrees; secondly, by making a mans self a voluntary worker of it.