“We use to say, admit one absurdity, and a thousand will follow. To maintain this unreasonable opinion of absolute necessity, he is necessitated (but it is hypothetically, he might change his opinion if he would) to deal with all ancient writers as the Goths did with the Romans, who destroyed all their magnificent works, that there might remain no monument of their greatness upon the face of the earth. Therefore he will not leave so much as one of their opinions, nor one of their definitions, nay, not one of their terms of art standing. (_f_) Observe what a description he hath given us here of repentance: ‘it is a glad returning into the right way, after the grief of being out of the way’. It amazed me to find _gladness_ to be the first word in the description of repentance. His repentance is not that repentance, nor his piety that piety, nor his prayer that kind of prayer, which the Church of God in all ages hath acknowledged. Fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes, and tears, and _humicubations_, used to be companions of repentance. Joy may be a consequent of it, not a part of it. (_g_) It is a _returning_: but whose act is this returning? Is it God’s alone, or doth the penitent person concur also freely with the grace of God? If it be God’s alone, then it is his repentance, not man’s repentance. What need the penitent person trouble himself about it? God will take care of his own work. The Scriptures teach us otherwise, that God expects our concurrence (Revel. iii. 19, 20): _Be zealous and repent: behold I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him_. It is a ‘glad returning into the right way’. Why dare any man call that a wrong way, which God himself hath determined? He that willeth and doth that which God would have him to will and to do, is never out of his right way. It follows in his description, _after the grief_, &c. It is true, a man may grieve for that which is necessarily imposed upon him; but he cannot grieve for it as a fault of his own, if it never was in his power to shun it. Suppose a writingmaster shall hold his scholar’s hand in his, and write with it; the scholar’s part is only to hold still his hand, whether the master write well or ill; the scholar hath no ground either of joy or sorrow, as for himself; no man will interpret it to be his act, but his master’s. It is no fault to be out of the right way, if a man had not liberty to have kept himself in the way.