138 FORGIVENESS OF SIN. engages all his properties to make it good, that he has pardon and mercy for sinners. Much less cause is there to doubt of forgiveness where sincere repentance is exercised in any degree. No soul comes to repentance but upon God's call. God calls none but those for whom he has mercy upon their coming. God expressly declares in the Scripture, that the forgive- ness which is with him is the foundation ofhis prescrib- ing repentance unto man. One instance may suffice, Isa. 55 : 7. "Let the wicked forsake his way," (in the Hebrew, a perverse wicked one;) "and the man of ini- quity his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy; and to our God, for," (in the Hebrew,) " he will multiply to pardon." You see to whom he speaks to men perversely wicked, and such as make a trade of sinning. To what does he call them 2 Plainly to repentance, to the duty we have insisted on. But what is the ground of such an invitation to such profligate sinners l Why, the abundant forgiveness and pardon that is with him, superabounding to what the worst of them can stand in need of; as Rom. 5 ; 20. This is another way whereby God has revealed that there is forgiveness with him, and an infallible founda- tion for faith to build upon, in its approaches to him. Nor can the certainty of this evidence be called into question, but on such grounds as are derogatory to the glory and honor of God. And this connection of re- pentance and forgiveness, is that principle from which God convinces a stubborn unbelieving people that all his ways and dealings with sinners are just and equal. Ezek. 18 : 25. And should there be any failure in it, they could not be so. Every soul, then, that is under a call to repentance, whether out of his natural condition, or from any backsliding into folly after conversion, has a sufficient foundation to rest on, as to the pardon he
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