The Doctrine Of Repentance by Thomas Watson

Author:Thomas Watson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Protestant, Christian Life, Philosophy, Christianity, Religion, General, Religious
ISBN: 9781612036137
Publisher: Bottom of the Hill Publishing
Published: 2012-07-31T22:00:00+00:00

A REPREHENSION TO THE IMPENITENT

Firstly, it serves sharply to reprove all unrepenting sinners whose hearts seem to be hewn out of a rock and are like the stony ground in the parable which lacked moisture. This disease, I fear, is epidemical: 'No man repented him of his wickedness' (Jer 8:6). Men's hearts are marbled into hardness: 'they made their hearts as an adamant stone' (Zech 7:12). They are not at all dissolved into a penitential frame. It is a received opinion that witches never weep. I am sure that those who have no grief for sin are spiritually bewitched by Satan. We read that when Christ came to Jerusalem he 'upbraided the cities because they repented not' (Matt 11:20). And may he not upbraid many now for their impenitence? Though God's heart be broken with their sins, yet their hearts are not broken. They say, as Israel did, 'I have loved strangers, and after them will I go' (Jer 2:25).

The justice of God, like the angel, stands with a drawn sword in its hand, ready to strike, but sinners have not eyes as good as those of Balaam's ass to see the sword. God smites on men's backs, but they do not, as Ephraim did, smite upon their thigh (Jer 31:19). It was a sad complaint the prophet took up:

'thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved' (Jer 5:3). That is surely reprobate silver which contracts hardness in the furnace. 'In the time of his distress did he trespass yet more against the Lord: this is that king Ahaz' (2

Chron 28:22). A hard heart is a receptacle for Satan. As God has two places he dwells in, heaven and a humble heart, so the devil has two places he dwells in, hell and a hard heart.

It is not falling into water that drowns, but lying in it. It is not falling into sin that damns, but lying in it without repentance: 'having their conscience seared with a hot iron' (1 Tim 4:2). Hardness of heart results at last in the conscience being seared. Men have silenced their consciences, and God has seared them. And now he lets them sin and does not punish ' 'Why should ye be stricken any more?' (Isa 1:5) ' as a father gives over correcting a child whom he intends to disinherit.

Notes

Chapter 2

1 i.e. alembic: old distilling apparatus (for refining liquids).

2 Trustful.

3 ' Signings from the bottom of one's heart.'

4 'Extremely wicked (sinners).

5 'Eyes are swollen with weeping.'

6 'A Swiss physician (16th century).

7 'A fourth century defender of the faith.

8 `[O Lord] I, even I, who made myself what I am, change my hardness [of heart].'

9 'Roman emperor (582-602). Phocas became emperor after Mauritius.

10 'One of the early Greek Fathers; he died in 254.

11 Removed.

12 'They charge the gods with the crime."

13 Telescope or microscope.

Chapter 3

1. Brutus, the close friend of Julius Caesar, helped to stab him to death in 44

B.C.

2. A Roman who wrote about nature (early in the third century).

3. An enchantress in Greek legend who gave her magic cup to Ulysses'

companions and changed them into swine.

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