2. Nor could his repentance be a compensation. Bare grief for an
is finite, for whatsoever is in a finite creature is finite; its effects therefore cannot be of an infinite value.
(1.) Man could not effect it by offering something to God, or by doing something equivalent to the offence.
1. Man had nothing to give. What was there he could call his own, since he was a creature, especially since as an offender he had forfeited what was his by right of creation? Had man the world to give? How came he by it? Was it created by him or for him? If not by him, it was none of his own; he was but a steward to manage all for the use of his Lord and true proprietor. Can a steward recompense his lord for the wrong done to his honour, by offering to his master those goods which are his own already, and which the steward was only entrusted with? The world was none of man's to give; he never had it as an absolute lord by right of an independent propriety, nor was it possible he should, since he was not either the creator or preserver of it; and neither man, nor any other creature in the world, could possibly be brought into a state independent on God, so that man held as a feudatory in capite of God. But suppose it had been his own, he had forfeited all by his rebellion; for his sake, for his sin, the earth was cursed by the sovereign Lord of it, Gen. 3:17; and a thing cursed in all the parts of it could not be fit for an oblation to the divine Majesty.
2. Nor could his repentance be a compensation. Bare grief for an offence is not a compensation for an injury done to man, much less for an affront of so high a nature offered to God. But we find no such thing in man at the time wherein he fell from the top of his felicity to the gulf of misery. If he who had a sense of the happy state he had lost, and the miserable condition he had contracted, was more for excuses than relentings, how can a penitent posture be found by nature in any of his descendants? Gen. 3:9–13. If there were any blushes in him, they were occasioned more by the discovery of his crime than by the sense of the crime itself; and he was troubled more at his loss than at his offence, and so might relent that he was
miserable, not that he was criminal; and so it was a repentance as it respected himself, not as it respected the honour of his Lord; and such a repentance is to be found in hell, but is unable to break those chains wherein they are held. How should man come by a repentance? Can he break himself into a true contrition? What stone was ever heard to melt itself? Is not captive man fond of his sin, in love with his chains? And how can he by nature attain that which is so contrary to what he is by nature mightily delighted with? The least spark of grace is above the power of corrupted nature. How should man, then, come by this repentance? Must it not be a melting spark from heaven lighting upon his soul, that must produce so kindly a work in a forsaken creature? Would it have consisted with the wisdom of divine justice to seize upon the forfeiture, to withdraw from man supernatural grace, and presently to restore it without any regard to the vindication of the honour of that justice? Besides, suppose man had been able to repent of himself, and had actually performed a repentance of the right stamp, what would this have signified, since no such thing was required as the condition the righteousness of God exacted in the law? That demanded not repentance, because it gave not liberty to any crime. It challenged an exact and perfect obedience, complete in all circumstances, of man in his uprightness; and, in case of failure, left man to the severity of the penalty he had incurred. Not a drop of repentance was allowed as any part of legal obedience. That was introduced upon a change of the dispensation from legal to evangelical. 'The law is not of faith,' and as little of repentance, 'but the man that doth them shall live in them,' Gal. 3:12. Besides, if repentance and faith in the mercy of God could have razed out the sin of Adam, and broken in pieces the chains of eternal death, could we think that God should be at the expense of the blood of the promised seed? What need had there been of a sacrifice to appease God, if he had been already appeased by the relentings of man? What a vanity had that been, to go about the taking away that which the faith and repentance of Adam had already removed!* The wisdom of God would not do anything useless and in vain. Faith and repentance could never change the nature of God's righteousness, but must first suppose some satisfaction made