9.  As the greater sins should not make us despair of taking this course for remission, so nor should the smallness of sin make us to neglect this way; for the least sin cannot be pardoned but through Jesus Christ; for the law of God is violated thereby, justice provoked, God’s authority vilified, &c. and therefore cannot be now pardoned, by reason of the threatenings annexed to the law, without a ransom.  Death is the wages of sin, lesser and greater, and the curse is due to all sin, greater and smaller.  There, the believer would not suffer one sin, seen and discovered, to lie unpardoned, but on the first discovery thereof, take it away to Christ, and nail it to the cross.

10.  The believer would not conclude, that his sins are not pardoned, because possibly temporal strokes, inflicted because of them, are not removed; for though David’s sin was pardoned, yet because of that sin of his, a temporal stroke attended him and his family, to his dying day; for not only did God cut off the child, (2 Sam. xv. 14.), but told him, that the sword should never depart from his house, and that he would raise up evil against him out of his own house, and give his wives to one that should lie with them in the sight of the sun, vers. 10, 11.  So we read, that the Lord took vengeance on their inventions whose sins he had pardoned, Psalm xcix. 8.  God may see this fit and expedient, for his own glory, and for humbling of them, and causing them to fear the more to sin against him.  Yea, not only may temporal calamities be inflicted, because of sin pardoned, or continued, after sin is pardoned, but even sense of God’s displeasure may continue after pardon, as appeareth by that penitential Psalm (the fifty-first) penned by David, after Nathan had spoken to him concerning his sin.

QUESTIONS OR OBJECTIONS ANSWERED.

1.  What course shall we take with secret sins?  I answer, this same course must be followed with them.  There is an implicit repentance of sins that have not been distinctly seen and observed, as who can see and observe all their failings?  And so there may be an implicit faith acting; that is, the believer being persuaded that he is guilty of more sins than he hath got a clear sight of, as he would bewail his condition before God because of these, and sorrow for them after a godly manner, so he would take them together in a heap, or as a closed bagful, and by faith nail them to the cross of Christ, as if they were all distinctly seen and known.  “Who can understand his errors,” said David, Psalm xix. 12:  yet says he moreover, “cleanse thou me from secret faults.”

2.  But what if, after all this, I find no intimation of pardon to my soul? Ans. As this should serve to keep thee humble, so it should excite to more diligence, in this duty of going with thy sins to Christ, and to ply him and his cross more, in and through the promises, and keep thy soul constant in this duty of the running to Christ, as an all-sufficient Mediator, and as an intercessor with the Father; and thus wait on him waiteth to be gracious, even in this particular, of intimating pardon to thy soul,—­he knoweth when it is fittest for thee to know that thy sins are forgiven.