ted, he
cannot be said to be acquitted or justified, till this pardon be got out
by faith and repentance, as is said; yet his state remaineth fixed and
unchanged; so that though God should seem to deal with such in his
dispensations, as with enemies, yet really his affections change not; he
never accounteth them real enemies; nay, love lieth at the bottom of all
his sharpest dispensations. If they forsake his law, and walk not in his
judgments; if they break his statutes and keep not his commandments, he
will visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with
stripes, nevertheless his loving-kindness will he not utterly take from
them, nor suffer his faithfulness to fail; his covenant will he not
break, nor alter the thing that has gone out of his lips, Psalm lxxxix.
30-34. And again, though after transgressions may waken challenges for
former sins, which have been pardoned and blotted out, and give
occasions to Satan to raise a storm in the soul, and put all in
confusion, yet really sins once pardoned cannot become again unpardoned
sins. The Lord doth not revoke his sentence, nor alter the thing that
is gone out of his mouth. It is true likewise, that a believer, by
committing of gross sins, may come to miss the effects of God's favour
and good will, and the intimations of his love and kindness; and so be
made to cry with David, Psalm li. 8, "Make me to hear joy and gladness;"
and ver. 12, "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation," &c. Yet that
really holdeth true, that whom he loveth he loveth to the end; and he is
a God that changeth not; and his gifts are without repentance. Yea,
though grieving of the Spirit may bring souls under sharp throes, and
pangs of the spirit of bondage, and the terrors of God, and his sharp
errors, the poison whereof may drink up their spirits, and so be far
from the actual witnessings of the Spirit of adoption; yet the Spirit
will never be again really a spirit of bondage unto fear, nor deny his
own work in the soul, or the soul's real right to, or possession of that
fundamental privilege of adoption,--I say, that the soul is no more a
son, nor within the covenant.

2. The course before mentioned is to be taken with all sins, though,
(1.) They be never so heinous and gross. (2.) Though they be accompanied
with never such aggravating and crying aggravations. (3.) Though they be
sins frequently fallen into; and, (4.) Though they be sins many and
heaped together. David's transg