Good Like a Medicine

This is the second part of quotations from this long chapter. Below is the sixth Device retyped and the third and following Remedies:

Device (6) - By persuading the soul that the work of repentance is an easy work, and that therefore the soul need not make such a matter of sin. Why! Suppose you do sin, saith Satan, it is no such difficult thing to return, and confess, and be sorrowful, and beg pardon, and cry, ‘Lord, have mercy upon me!’ and if you do but this, God will cut the score, and pardon your sins, and save your souls.

By this device Satan draws many a soul to sin, and makes many millions of souls servants or rather slaves to sin.

Remedy (3) - The third remedy against this device of Satan is seriously to consider, That repentance is a continual act. A true penitent must go on from faith to faith, from strength to strength; he must never stand still nor turn back. Repentance is a grace, and must have its daily operation as well as other graces. True repentance is a continued spring, where the waters of godly sorry are always flowing: ‘My sin is ever before me’ (Psalm 51:3). A true penitent is often casting his eyes back to the days of his former vanity, and this makes him morning and evening to ‘water his couch with tears.’

A true penitent hath ever something within him to turn from; he can never get near enough to God; no, not so near him as once he was; and therefore he is still turning and turning that he may get nearer and nearer to him, that is his chiefest good and his only happiness, optimum maximum, the best and the greatest. They are crying every day a -crying out, ‘O wretched man that we are, who shall deliver us from this body of death! Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ (Romans 7).

A Jewish Rabbi, pressing the practice of repentance upon his disciples, and exhorting them to be sure to repent the day before they died, one of them replied, that the day of any man’s death was very uncertain. ‘Repent, therefore, every day,’ said the Rabbi,’ and then you shall be sure to repent the day before you die.’ You are wise, and know how to apply it to your own advantage.

Remedy (4) - Solemnly consider, That if the work of repentance were such an easy work as Satan would make it to be, then certainly so many would not lie roaring and crying out of wrath and eternal ruin under the horrors and terror of conscience, for not repenting; yea, doubtless, so many millions would not go to hell for not repenting, if it were such an easy thing to repent.

Remedy (5) - Seriously consider, That to repent of sin is as great a work of grace as not to sin. By our sinful falls the powers of the soul are weakened, the strength of grace is decayed, our evidences for heaven are blotted, fears and doubts in the soul are raised (will God once more pardon this scarlet sin, and show mercy to this wretched soul?), and corruptions in the heart are more advantaged and confirmed; and the conscience of a man after falls is the more enrageds and more benumbered. Now, for a soul, notwithstanding all this, to repent of his falls, this shows that it is as great a work of grace to repent of sin as it is not to sin.

Remedy (6) - Seriously consider, That he that now tempts thee to sin upon this account, that repentance is easy, will, ere long, to work thee to despair, and for ever to break the neck of the soul, present repentance as the difficultest and hardest work in the world, and to this purpose he will set thy sins in order before thee, and make them to say, ‘We are thine, and we must follow thee.’ Now, Satan will help to work the soul to look up, and see God angry, and to look inward, and to see conscience accusing and condemning, and to look downwards and see hell’s mouth open to receive the impenitent soul…

Now, saith Satan, do but a little consider thy numberless sins, and the greatness of they sins, the foulness of they sins, and thou shalt easily see that those sins that thou thoughtest to be but motes, are indeed mountains; and is it not now in vain to repent of them! For such a wretch as thou aret to attempt repentance is to attempt a thing impossible!

Ah, souls! he that now tempts you to sin, by suggesting to you the easiness of repentance, will at last work you to despair, and present repentance as the hardest work in all the world, and a work as far above man as heaven is above hell, as light is above darkness. Oh, that you were wise, to break off your sins by timely repentance.

– Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (pp. 60-65)