SPIRITUAL PEACE AND COMPORT. .349 still resisting in all my writings, being upon every occurring diffi- culty carried to forget my subject, and the capacity of the mean- est to whom I write : but what you understand not, pass over, and go to the next. 2. The second kind of sins of infirmity, are, The smaller sort of sins, which we may forbear if we will that is, if we be actually, though not perfectly, yet prevalently willing ; or ifour will be de- termined to forbear them ; or if the chiefpart of the will actually be for such forbearance. The first sort are called sins of infirmity in an absolute sense. These last, I call sins of infirmity in both an absolute and comparative sense ; that is, both as they proceed from our inward corruption, which, through the weakness of. the soul, having but little grace, is not fully restrained, and also as they are compared with gross sins; and so we may call idle words, and rash expressions in our haste, and such like, sins ofinfirmity, in Com- parison of murder, perjury, or the like gross sins, which we com- monly call crimes or wickedness, when the former we use to call but faults. These infirmities are theywhich the Papists (and some learneddivines of our own, as Rob. Baronius in his excellent trac- tate " De peccat. Mortali et Veniali") do call venial sins ; some of them in a fair and honest sense, viz. because they are such sins as a true Christian may live and die in, though not unre- pented or unresisted, yet not subdued so far as to forsake or cease from the practice of them, and yet they are pardoned. But other Papists call them" venial sins in a wicked sense, as if they needed no pardon and deserved not eternal punishment. (And why should they call them venial if they need not pardon?) A justi- fied man liveth in the daily practice of some vain thoughts, or the frequent commission of some other sins, which by his utmost dili- gence he might restrain,;' but he liveth not in the frequent practice of adultery, drunkenness, false-witnessing, slandering, hating his brother, &c. Yet observe, that though the fore-mentioned lesser sinsare called infirmities, in regard of the matter of. them, yet they may be so committed in regard of the end and manner of them, as may make them crimes, or gross sins. As for example, if one should use idle words willfully, resolvedly, without restraint, reluctance, or tender- ness of conscience, this were gross sinning; or the nearer it comes to this, and the more willfulness, or neglect, or evil ends there is in the smallest forbidden action, the worse it is, and the grosser. And observe, (ofwhich more anon) that the true bounds or difference between gross sins, and those`lesser faults, which we call infirmi- ties, cannot be given, (I think by any man, I am sure not by me,) either as to the act itself, to say, just what acts are gross sins, and what not ; or else as to the manner ofcommitting them ; as to say,
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