-- CHAPTER V: All these acts of repentance are mingled with faith in Christ, and have a tendency to
the guilt of the first act of sin perpetrated by a pure creature (as Adam was) instructs us in such a manner as no other sin of our own, now when we are corrupted, would or could have taught us; for that was acted out of pure freedom, or rather arbitrariness of man's will, as not then biassed or inclined unto evil, but furnished with the contrary; whereas now our wills are spoiled and corrupted by that sin, and have a weight depressing them, and a bribe in their right hand; so that we now sin, tempted by our own lust (as the apostle says, James 1:14), as well as out of a freedom of will.
CHAPTER V:
All these acts of repentance are mingled with faith in Christ, and have a tendency to excite and increase it.
That the sense of this sin hath, more than any other, an influence to move us to Christ, since hereby we are convinced of our weakness, and mutability, as creatures, as well as of our guilt as sinners, that so we may seek a remedy in Christ for both
All these fore-mentioned acts, especially the latter, of spiritual mourning and contrition, are mixed in the heart of a soul truly penitent, with strains and veins of faith upon free grace, and Christ, for pardon and justification from this guilt, as well as any. Nor indeed is that saving repentance for any sin that flows not from, or at least is not accompanied with, the hopes of, and seeking of pardon and forgiveness for that sin a man repents of. We see therefore how this exercise of spirit is here intermingled in this psalm with these confessions, 'Wash me, purge me with hyssop,' which had Christ's blood in it, according to the Levitical type, to sprinkle the conscience withal. Hyssop was used as the instrument of sprinkling both water and blood on them that were any way unclean, whereof we read,
Exod. 24:7, 8, with the blood of calves; and Lev. 14:6, 8, with the blood of birds, in case of the leper; and Num. 19:6, 18, with the ashes of an heifer. The mystery of all which the apostle hath led us into,
Heb. 9:19, 'Moses took the blood of calves and goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled all the people'; and, ver. 13,
14, he interprets it thus: 'If the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh; how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works?' &c., thereby signifying our justification. Now, the sprinkling of the blood and water, by hyssop,
&c., dipped therein, in case of the leper, Lev. 14, was more specially
intended of cleansing us from our original sin, both by Christ's blood in the way of justification, and by water, in the way of sanctification; for that sin needeth both, sanctification to cleanse us from the filth or blot inherent, and justification from the guilt. And the leprosy more properly pointed unto that birth-sin, since that noisome disease often was conveyed by birth, and always noted out that inherent corruption, which as a sin and a leprosy is in us, contracted first by Adam's fact, and by birth derived as a native disease. Now, David therefore confessing himself unclean in respect of his birth-sin, and having Christ's blood in his eye, as well as those other sins, pertinently therefore cries out, 'Wash me thoroughly,' ver. 2 (for that sprinkling on the leper was done seven times, Lev. 14:7, a number of perfection), and 'purge me with hyssop,' &c., ver. 7, 'and I shall be whiter than snow;' for the leper was cleansed by the sprinkling of blood, from scarlet wool dipped in it, as well as hyssop. Lev. 14:6, 7, whereby the crimson guilt of this and other sins was done away; and, as the prophet speaks, 'Though they were as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.' So, then, together with confession and repentance, we must remember to mingle acts of faith, as David did. And truly those forementioned acts, specially of contrition, &c., for the guilt of this act, do both prepare for further acts of faith, and are to be accompanied therewith.
First, Such a brokenness prepares for going out unto Christ, perhaps in some respect more than any other sin. For,
1st, It letting us to see our mutability and nothingness as creatures, &c., (as was noted), this disposeth the soul both to value, and go out of itself unto Christ.
1. As an head of union, by whom we are fixed and made stable as creatures, and shall one day in heaven become immutable through our relation to him as to an head. And,
2. To have recourse unto Christ as a redeemer, to cleanse us from the guilt and power of sin, both which do so distinctly make up the faith we ought to act on Christ in regard of this our original sin.
2dly, It serves (by the parallel of the two Adams) to help souls more clearly to understand the right way of our justification, and how it is distinct from being sanctified, namely, by the righteousness of another, Jesus Christ the second Adam, imputed to us, over and above our having sanctification inherently wrought in us by him.
This we shall come more distinctly to understand, when the soul hath been once made thoroughly sensible that the sin of the first
Adam comes upon it for condemnation, over and besides inherent corruption of nature therewith contracted. The one serves to give light to the other, although in the conveyance they infinitely differ, the one being received by faith and regeneration from Christ, the other comes upon men traduced by natural propagation. I have known some souls, who having been, in the work of humiliation upon them, first powerfully convinced of both these sinfulnesses from Adam, and particularly of the just imputation of Adam's fact by God to them, who yet in seeking how to be saved (as they in Acts 2), did not at first so clearly understand the way of faith on Christ's righteousness as distinct from sanctification (on which sanctification they had too much rested, as if that were to be their justification in the sight of God), have, after they came to listen to the doctrine of justification by Christ's righteousness imputed by God, and through faith alone laid hold on and received, and had it more fully opened to them, they have been wonderfully helped to apprehend and take this in from their foregone conviction of the imputed guilt of Adam's sin, yea, and have had their hearts the more encouraged to go out of themselves to God and Christ for this righteousness of justification, by the parallel which that afforded to this other, as in Rom. 5:19 the apostle hath set them together, 'As by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners; so by the obedience of one, shall many be made righteous.' For if the things themselves compared do illustrate each other, as by the apostle's so having done appears, then also in the apprehension and understanding of any soul that considers them;
for, uti res sunt in esse, ita in cognosci. For a soul to think, I will go to that God, who, as by a just act he hath accounted me and us all sinners in Adam, in whom all have sinned; so he may and will, out of free grace through Christ his righteousness, justify the ungodly, and make us the righteousness of God in him; and why not me?
And other sins which a man in his own person hath committed, though they may and do let a man see a more need of Christ, and so press forward his soul to go unto him, and may serve to the schoolmaster's part to whip us to Christ, in respect of sight of need; yet they no way conduce to instruct us in the way of faith, or going to Christ for justification in that manner, as the conviction of this of Adam's sin doth, as hath now been specified; nay, the voice of those sins in the conscience cries aloud to the contrary, 'The soul that sins shall die,' and bear its own sin itself. Thus much as to what our sense and sorrow for original sin makes way for and helps forward faith in Christ for justification.
Secondly, As to free grace, or the mercy of God justifying of us freely through Christ's blood, which is also the object of faith, we ought, upon the conviction of and humiliation for this sin, to lay ourselves at the footstool of God's throne of grace, seeking pardon to take away the guilt of it, as David doth in this Psalm 51 verses 1, 2, together with his other sins. Men are apt to think with themselves that God in justice, accounting Adam's sin unto them, should, as it were, oblige him (being a God so merciful) to pardon it; and to that purpose some in their writings have not spared to express themselves. But if it be a sin, and our sin, we must be beholden to grace to forgive it; and God in justice might condemn us for it, though we had no other sin. And this is an essential and inseparable property or character of grace, to be free, and so to justify freely; as Rom. 3:24, 'Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ.' And therefore in the apostle's following discourse, about our guilt of this very act of sin, in chapter 5 he subjoins, verse 1, that it is by an abundance of grace, and of the gift of grace, whereby this sin, together with the many other of our own, came to be pardoned, and