How Sin and the Necessity of Repentance Entered Into the World.
repentance,” say our pious Reformers, “we mean that sorrow, or that displeasure of soul, which is excited in a sinner by the word and Spirit of God, &c. By this new sensibility, he is first made to discover his natural corruption, and his actual transgressions. His heart is pierced with sincere distress. He deplores them before God. He confesses them with confusion, but without reserve; he abhors them with a holy indignation; he seriously resolves, from the present moment, to reform his conduct, and religiously apply himself to the practice of every virtue during the remainder of his life. Such is true repentance: it consists, at once, in resolutely renouncing the devil, with every thing that is sinful; and in sincerely cleaving to God, with every thing that is truly good. But we expressly say, this repentance is the mere gift of God, and can never be effected by our own power,” 2 Timothy 2:25.
It appears, by this definition, that our Reformers distinguished that by the name of repentance, which many theologists have called the awakening of a soul from the sleep of carnal security; and which others have frequently termed conversion. But, if sinners understand and obtain the disposition here described, no true minister will be over anxious that they should express it in any particular form of words.
HOW SIN AND THE NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE
ENTERED INTO THE WORLD.
OBSERVE the account which the evangelical minister gives, after Moses and St. Paul, of the manner in which that dreadful infection made its way into the world, that corrupt nature, that “old man,” that “body of death,” which Christ, the seed of the woman, came to destroy. “When the tempted woman saw that [the fruit of the tree, which God had forbidden her to touch,] was pleasant to the eyes, good for food, and to be desired to make one wise, she took thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat,” Genesis 3:6. Thus entered into the very fountain head of our nature that moral evil, that complicated malady, “that lust of the flesh, that lust of the eyes, and that pride of life,” 1 John 2:16, which the second Adam came to crucify in the flesh, and which is still daily crucified in the members of his mystical body.
If Jesus Christ never publicly discoursed concerning the entry of sin into the world, it was because his sermons were addressed to a people who had been long before instructed in a matter of so great importance. On this account, he simply proposed himself to Israel, as that promised Messiah, that Son of God and Son of man, who was about to repair the error of the first Adam, by becoming the resurrection and the life of all those who should believe in his name.
St. Paul was very differently circumstanced, when labouring among those nations which were unacquainted with the fall, except by uncertain and corrupt tradition. Behold the wisdom with which he unfolds to the heathen that fundamental doctrine, which was not contested among the Jews. “The first man Adam,” the head of the human species, “was made a living soul;” but Jesus Christ, “the last Adam, was made a quickening spirit;” and he also is the head of the human species; for “the head of every man is Christ,” 1 Corinthians 11:3. “The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy [worldly:] and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly [regenerate.] And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we, [whose souls are already regenerate,] shall also bear the complete image of the heavenly. When this mortal shall have put on immortality: for the flesh and blood, [which we have from the first Adam,] cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” 1 Corinthians 15:45-53.
As human pride is continually exalting itself against this humiliating doctrine, so the true minister as constantly repeats it, crying out in the language of this great apostle: “All unregenerate men are under sin, there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God: they are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable. The way of peace have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes. We know that whatsoever things the law saith, [the natural or the Mosaic law,] it saith to them that are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God,” Romans 3:9-19. “There is no difference; for as all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, [so all equally need the merits and assistance of] Jesus Christ, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood,” Romans 3:22-25. All those, therefore, who, neglecting Christ, rely upon “the works of the law, are under the curse;” and all their endeavours to deliver themselves by their imperfect obedience, are totally vain. “For it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things, which are written in the book of the law to do them.” Thus, by denouncing maledictions, as dreadful as the thunders from Mount Sinai, against every