‘Be near me when I’m dying…’

What follows is a further adapted extract from Bishop Lewis Bayly’s book ‘The Practice of Piety’, published in 1685. It was prized by John Bunyan among others and we trust these counsels will be helpful to many today.

It is found by continual experience that near the time of death, when the children of God are weakest, Satan makes the greatest flourish of his strength and assails them with his strongest temptations. For he knows that he must either prevail now or never; for in heaven he shall never vex or trouble them any more. And therefore he will now bestir himself as much as he can, and labour to set before their eyes all the gross sins which they committed, and the judgements of God which are due to them, thereby to drive them, if he can, to despair.

If Satan shall aggravate to you the greatness, the multitude, the heinousness of your sins, meditate thus:

1. That upon true repentance it is as easy with God to forgive the greatest sin as the least; and he is as willing to forgive many as to pardon one. His mercy shines more in pardoning great sinners than small offenders, as appears in the examples of Manasseh, Mary Magdalen, Peter, Paul etc. And where sin abounded, grace did more abound (Romans 5:20).
2. That God did never forsake any man till he did first forsake God, as appears in the examples of Cain, Saul etc.
3. That God calls all, even those sinners who are heavy laden with sin, and that he did never deny his mercy to any sinner that sought for it with a penitent heart. To this the Gospels witness – there came to Christ all sorts of sick sinners, the blind the lame, the lepers, such as were lunatics and possessed with demons. Yet of all these not one that came and asked for his mercy and help went away without it. Christ even offered and gave his mercy to many that never asked for it, being moved only by the bowels of his own compassion, and the sight of their misery. If he thus willingly gave his mercy to them that did not ask it, will he deny mercy to you, who so earnestly pray for it with tears?
4. If Satan shall suggest that though all this is true of God’s mercy, it does not apply to you because your sins are greater than other men’s, as being sins of knowledge and of many years’ continuance; and many committed wilfully and presumptuously against God and your conscience, meditate:
5. That many of the saints who are now in glory committed as great, and greater, sins than you when they lived on earth, and continued in those sins as long as ever you have done before they repented. All their sins, and the continuance in them, could not hinder God’s mercy from forgiving them and receiving them into favour on their repentance. And on your repentance, every one of their examples is a pledge that he will do the same to you as he did to them. For as the least in God’s justice without repentance is damnable, so the greatest sin upon repentance is pardonable in his mercy. Your greatest and most inveterate sins are but the sins of a man, but the least of his mercies is the mercy of God.

   God bids you repent and believe, and the blood of Jesus Christ, being the blood of God, will cleanse you from your sins.

6. That as God could foresee all the sins which the world should commit, and yet all those could not hinder him from loving the world, much less shall your sins (being the sins of the least member of the world) be able to hinder God from loving your soul and forgiving your sins if you repent and believe.
7. That if he loved you so dearly when you were his enemy that he payed so dear a price as the spilling of his own blood, how can he now but be gracious to you, when to save you will cost him but the casting of a gracious look upon thee? Do not look therefore to the greatness of your sins, but to the infiniteness of his mercy.

1. That though this were true, yet it is no sufficient cause to despair. This is the common case of all the children of God in this life, who vow so often to avoid some sin until, perceiving their weakness to perform it, they vow that they will vow no more. Their vows show the desires of their spiritual man; their breaking shows the weakness of the flesh. Why does Christ exhort you to forgive your repenting brother seven times in a day (Luke 17:3-4) if not to assure you he will forgive you your seventy times seven sins against him, if you return to him by true repentance?
2. That your salvation is grounded, not on the constancy of your obedience, but upon the firmness of God’s covenant. He has locked up your salvation and made it sure in his own unchangeable purpose. Whom God loves, he loves to the end and never repents of bestowing his love on them who repent and believe.

Comfort yourself, O languishing soul, for if this earth has any for whom Christ spilt his blood on the cross, you assuredly are one. Cheer yourself in the all-sufficient atonement of the blood of the Lamb, which speaks better things than that of Abel. No sin bars a man from salvation, only incredulity and impenitence. Your unfeigned desire to repent is as acceptable to God as the perfect repentance that you wish you could perform.

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