MAN. "God hath denied me repentance. His word gives me no
encouragement to believe; yea, himself hath shut me up in this iron
cage: nor can all the men in the world let me out. O eternity,
eternity! how shall I grapple with the misery that I must meet with
in eternity?"
Then said the Interpreter to Christian, "Let this man's misery he
remembered by thee, and be an everlasting caution to thee."
"Well," said Christian, "this is fearful! God help me to watch and
he sober, and to pray that I may shun the cause of this man's
miseiy."
We that religiously name the name of Christ should depart from
iniquity, because the Spirit of the Father will else be grieved.
Eph. 4:30. The countenancing of iniquity, the not departing
therefrom, will grieve the Spirit of God, by which you are sealed to
the day of redemption; and that is a sin of a higher nature than men
commonly are aware of. He that grieveth the Spirit of God shall
smart for it here, or in hell, or both. And that Spirit that
sometimes did illuminate, teach, and instruct them, can keep
silence, can cause darkness, can. withdraw itself, and sufler the
soul to sin more and more; and this last is the very judgment of
judgments. He that grieves the Spirit, quenches it; and he that
quenches it, vexes it; and he that vexes it, sets it against
himself, and tempts it to hasten destruction upon himself. 1 Thess.
5:19.
Wherefore take heed, professors, I say, take heed, you that
religiously name the name of Christ, that you meddle not with
iniquity, that you tempt not the Spirit of the Lord to do such
things against you; whose beginnings are dreadful, and whose end in
working of judgments is unsearchable. Isa. 63:10; Acts 5:9.
A man knows not whither he is sjoing, nor where he shall stop, that
is but entering into temptation; nor whether he shall ever turn
back, or go out at the gap that is right before him.
He that has begun to grieve the Holy Ghost, may be sufiered to go on
until he has sinned that sin which is called the sin against the
Holy Ghost. And if God shall once give thee up to that, then, thou
art in the IRON CAGE, out of which there is neither deliverance nor
redemption.
There is a sin called the sin against the Holy Ghost, from which
there is no redemption, and this sin doth more than ordinarily
befall professors; for there are few, if any, that are not
professors, that are at present capable of sinning this sin. They
which "were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and
were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word
of God, and the powers of the world to come," Heb.6:4, 5--of this
sort are they that commit this sin. Peter also describes them to be
such, that sin the unpardonable sin: "For if after they have escaped
the pollution of the world, through the knowledge of our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome,
the latter end is worse with them than the beginning." 2 Pet. 2:2.
The other passage in the tenth of the Hebrews holdeth forth the same
thing: "For if we sin wilfully, after we have received the knowledge
of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin. but a
certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation that
shall devour the adversaries."
These, therefore, are the persons that are the prey for this sin.
This sin feedeth upon professors, and they that are such do often
fall into the rnouth of this eater.
The unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost, is a sin of
this nature: For a man after he hath made some profession of
salvation to come alone by the blood of Jesus, together with some
light%and power of the same upon his spirit--I say, for him
knowingly, wilfully, and despitefully to trample upon the blood of
Christ shed on the cross, and to count it an unholy thing, or no
better than the blood of another man; and rather to venture his soul
any other way, than to be saved by this precious blood.
It is called the sin against the Holy Ghost, because such sin
against the manifest light of the Spirit; that is, they have been
formerly enlightened into the nature of the gospel, and the merits
of the man Christ, and his blood, righteousness, intercession, etc.,
and also have professed and confessed the same, with some life and
comfort in and through the profession of him; yet now against all
that light, they maliciously and with despite to all their former
profession, turn their backs, and trample upon the same.
This sin is immediately committed against the motions and
convictions and light of that Holy Spirit of God, that makes it his
business to hand forth and manifest the truth and reality of the
merits and virtue of the Lord Jesus.
To some men that have grievously sinned under a profession of the
gospel, God. gives this token of his displeasure: they are denied
the power of repentance; their heart is bound, they cannot repent.
It is impossible they should ever repent, should they live a
thousand years. It is impossible for those fall-aways to be renewed
again unto repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of
God afresh, and put him to open shame. Now, to have the heart so
hardened, so judicially hardened, this is as a bar put in by the
Lord God against the salvation of this sinner. This was the burden
of Spira's complaint: "I cannot do it; O, now I cannot do it."
This man sees what he has done, what should help him, and what will
become of him; yet he cannot repent. He pulled away his shoulder
before, he shut his eyes before, and in that very posture God left
him; and so he stands to this very day. I have had a fancy that
Lot's wife, when she was turned into a pillar of salt, stood yet
looking over her shoulder, or else with her face towards Sodom; as
the judgment caught her, so it bound her, and left her for a
monument of God's anger to after-generations.
I have been the more plain and simple in my writing, because the sin
against the Holy Ghost is in these days more common than formerly,
and the way unto it more beautified with color and pretence of truth
I may say of the way to this sin, it is, as was once the way to
Jerusalem, strewed with boughs and branches, and by some there is
cried a kind of Hosanna to them that are treading these steps to
hell. Oh, the plausible pretences, the golden names, the feigned
holiness, the demure behavior mixed with damnable hypocrisy, that
attend the persons that have forsaken the Lord Jesus, that have
despised his person, trampled upon him, and "counted the blood of
the covenant wherewith they were sanctified an unholy thing." They
have crucified him to themselves, and think that they can go to
heaven without him, yea, pretend they love him, when they hate him;
pretend they have him, when they have cast him off; pretend they
trust in him, when they bid defiance to his undertakings for the
world.
So they both went on, and Ignorance he came after. Now, when they
had passed him a little way, they entered into a very dark lane,
where they met a man whom seven devils had bound with seven strong
cords, and were carrying him back to the door that they saw on the
side of the hill. Matt. 12: 45; Prov. 5: 22. Now good Christian
began to tremble, and so did Hopeful, his companion; yet as the
devils led away the man, Christian looked to see if he knew him; and
he thought it might be one Turn-away that dwelt in the town of
Apostasy. But he did not perfectly see his face; for he did hang his
head like a thief that is found. But being gone past, Hopeful looked
after him, and espied on his back a paper with this inscription:
"Wanton professor and damnable apostate."