Quest. C. How far is it lawful, needful, or unlawful for a man to afflict himself by external penances for sin?

Answ. 1. Not to the destroying of his body, life, or health, or the disabling or unfitting body or mind, for the service of God.

2. Not to be the expression of any sinful, inordinate dejection, despondency, sorrow, or despair.

3. Not so as may be an outward appearance of such inordinate passions, or as may be a scandal to others, and deter them from religion as a melancholy, hurtful thing.

4. Nor as if God would accept the mere external self-afflicting for itself, or as if he loved our hurt, or as if we merited of him by our unprofitable, voluntary troubles.

But, 1. It is a duty to express true godly sorrow by its proper exercise and signs, so far as either the acting of it, or the increase or continuance by the means of those expressions is profitable to ourselves.

2. And also so far as is needful to the profiting of others, by showing them the evil of sin, and drawing them to repentance.

3. And so far as is necessary to the satisfying of the church of the truth of our repentance, in order to our absolution and communion.

4. Especially so far as is necessary to subdue our fleshly lusts, and tame our bodies, and bring them into a due subjection to our faith, and to avoid our sin for the time to come. And also by the exercise of sober mortification, prudently, to keep under all our worldly phantasies, and love of this present world, without unfitting ourselves for duty.

5. And so far as is needful by such mortification, to fit us for fervent prayer, especially by fasting on days of humiliation; and to help us in our meditations of death and judgment, and to further our heavenly contemplations and conversation.

6. The greatest difficulty is, Whether any self-revenge be lawful or due; which is answered by what is said already; none such as disableth us for God’s service is lawful. But true repentance is an anger or great displeasure with ourselves for sin, and a hatred of sin, and loathing of ourselves for it; and to judge, condemn, and afflict our own souls by a voluntary self-punishing, is but that exercise of justice on ourselves, which is fit for pardoned sinners that are not to be condemned by the Lord, and indeed the just exercise of repentance and displeasure against ourselves. On which accounts of sober self-revenge we may cherish such degrees of godly sorrow, fasting, coarse clothing, (as sackcloth,) and denying ourselves the pleasures of this world, as shall not be hurtful but helpful to our duty. And if great and heinous sinners have of old on these terms, exceeded other men in their austerities, and self-afflictings, we cannot condemn them of superstition, unless we more particularly knew more cause for it. But popishly to think that self-afflicting without respect to such causes or necessities is a meritorious perfection, fit for others, is superstition indeed. And to think, as many of the melancholy do, that self-murder is a lawful self-revenge, is a heinous sin, and leadeth to that which is more heinous and dangerous.

Isa. lviii. 3, 5-8, &c.; Mark ix. 13; xii. 7; Matt. vi. 1, 3, 5, 6, 17; Zech. viii. 19; 2 Cor. ii. 7; Col. ii. 22-24; Joel i. 14; ii. 15; Dan. ix. 3; Acts x. 13; 1 Cor. vii. 5; Luke ii. 37; Matt. iv. 2; 2 Sam. xii. 22; Luke xviii. 12; 2 Cor. vii. 9-11; 1 Cor. ix. 27; Col. i. 5, 6; Rom. xiii. 13, 14.

Psal. lxix. 10; Lev. xvi. 29, 31; xxiii. 27, 32; Numb.
xxix. 7; xxx. 13; Ezra viii. 21.

Isa. lviii. 5.