if you look at it here, O how ugly will it appear! No thing in all the world contrary and oppofite to the nature of God, but fin. The meaneft, the most apparently deformed creature in the world, the toad, the crawling infect, carries in its nature nothing really oppofite to the nature of God; fin, only fin, ftands in oppofition to him. This he cannot dwell with: "Evil fhall not dwell with him, nor finners ftand in his fight." Such is that abhorrence that God has at fin, that when he speaks of it, his heart as it were rifes against it, “Oh do not that abominable thing which I hate!" as in that fore-cited Jer. xliv. 4. And if yet ye will not fee its finfulness, I will take you where you may fee more of it. Go take a view of it, 3. In the threatenings of the law, and fee there what ef-timate God puts on it, and what a thing it is. All the power of heaven, the anger, the fury, the vengeance of God, all are levelled at the head of fin. Take but one inftance for all, in in that 7th of Joshua; there a people accustomed to victory turn their back before the enemy, fall a prey to a people devoted to deftruction; nay, moreover, God in the 12th verfe, calls all the people accurfed, and tells them, they cannot ftand before the enemy, ❝ neither will I be with you any more," fays he. Why? what is the matter? wherefore is the heat of all this anger? what meaneth this vengeance? The matter was, there was a fin committed; Achan had taken fome of the spoils of the enemy. Thus you fee, one fin makes God breathe out threatenings against a whole nation. In fine, look through the book of God, and there you fall fee one threatening big with temporal, another with eternal plagues; one full of external, another of internal and spiritual woes; and all as it were levelled at the head of fin. And is that a small matter which never fails to fet out all the vengeance of hea. ven against the perfon that is guilty of it? But yet this is not all, you may fee more, if ye look at it, 4. In the judgments of God, that are abroad in the earth. Look we to one nation, there we fhall fee thousands falling before the avenging enemy, the sword glutted as it were with blood; men who a little before were poffeffed of wisdom, courage, and all thofe endowments which ferve to enhance the worth of the fons of men, are here laid heaps upon heaps: Go we to another, there we fhall fee no few er er carried off by sickness and diseases, and all wearing out by time. Go to church-yards, and fee what vaft havock thefe do make; there you may see the rubbish of many generations laid heaps upon heaps. Well, fee you nothing of fin in all this? What think you of all thefe lamentable evils, miferies, and woes? Why, fee you nothing of fin in them all? Sure you are blind if you do not. I afk you, as Jehu did when he faw the dead fons of Ahab, 2 Kings x. 9. "Who flew all these?" Who brought all these fons of pride, who not long ago were strangely ruffling it out in the light of warlike glory, down to the fides of the pit? who filled your church-yards with heaps up. on heaps, fathers and sons, high and low, rich and poor, of all fexes, ranks, ages, and degrees? Surely fin has done this; for as "by one man fin entered into the world, and death by fin; and fo death paffed upon all men, for that all have finned," Rom. v. 12. But if still you will look upon fin as a small and light thing, we have yet another glafs wherein you may have a further fight of it. 5. Enter the houfe of a foul under trouble of confcience: look at a Heman, and you fhall hear him making a heavy moan in that 88th Pfalm; there you fee a man that has a foul full of trouble, oppreffed with all the waves and billows of the wrath of God, almost distracted with the terrors of God. Now if you faw one in this cafe crying out in anguish of fpirit, nay, it may be, tearing himself, beating his breast, afk him the reason of all this distress, he will tell you, that it is fin that has done all this. He has no rest in his bones for ills that he has done, Psal. xxxviii. 3. And if yet ye have not feen enough of the finfulness and evil of fin, I hall give you another prospect of it, 6. In the hateful, monstrous, and enormous crimes, that are committed in the world. Some fins there are which bring along with them infamy and difgrace, even before men. Human nature, as corrupt as it is, shrinks at fome fins, they carry in them fuch an evident contrariety to the faint remains of natural light. Sins there are, which, as. the apostle fays, 1 Cor. v. I. " are not fo much as named among the Gentiles." Now, if a man be guilty of any of thefe crying abominations, these crimson fins, then he be comes odious in the world. Call a man a murderer, an inceftous perfon, an abufer of his parents, or the like, every fober fober person will flee from, and fhun as a peft, the company of fuch an one. But why? what is the matter? what is there fo odious in thefe crimes, that every one flees from the perfon guilty of them? there is fin in them, and hence it is they are fo hateful: and the only thing that diftinguisheth these from others, is, that they have differ. ent circumftantial aggravations: for in the nature of fin they all do agree, the least and the greatest ; the leaft fin strikes at the holy law of God, contemns the authority of the great and fupreme Lawgiver, as well as the greatest doth. And if fin be fo odious when you get a fuller view of it, as it were, in these large, these great and crying provocations, it is no lefs fo when it is lefs perceptible in these fins which quadrate better with our vitiated and corrup ted natures; for indeed the difference among fins, as to greater and lefs, lies not fo much in the nature of the fins, as in their different respects to our understanding, arifing from the objects about which they were converfant. But, if after all these views of fin, your eyes are fo blinded that you cannot fee it, then come to take a view of it, 7. In the cafe of the damned. Here, here you may have a ftrange, and heart-affecting view of fin's ugly face. See the poor wretches lying in bundles, boiling eternally in that stream of brimstone, roaring under the intolerable, and yet eternal anguish of their Spirits. Take a furvey of them in this lamentable posture. If you should see some hundreds of men, women, and children, all thrown alive into burning pitch or melted lead, would not this present you with a fad scene of mifery and woe? would not this be a dismal fight? indeed it would be so. But all this is nothing to the unspeakable mifery of the devils and damned, who have fallen into the hands of the living and finrevenging God, and are laid in chains of maffy and thick darkness, eternally deprefied and funk into the bottomless depth of the wrath of God, and choaked with the fteam of that lake of fire and brimstone; and have every faculty of their foul, every joint of their body, brim-full of the fury of the eternal God: behold, and wonder at this terrible and aftonishing fight ; and in this take a view of fin. Were hell now opened, and faw you the damned in chains of darkness, and if you heard their dreadful yelling, and found the fteam of the bottomlefs pit, ye would then in every fenfe get fome difcovery of fin. It is only fin that has kindled that dreadful and inextinguishable fire of wrath, and caft the damned into it; and it is fin that holds them there, and torments them there. If you had but a just impreffion of these things, how hateful would it be to you? And if, after all that has been faid, yon ftill imagine that fin is not fo bad as we would reprefent it, then come once more, and take a view of it, 3. In the fufferings of Chrift. Here is a glass, O criminals! wherein you may see your own face. You think it a little thing that you have finned; nay, it may be, you roll fin" as a fweet morfel under your tongues.' But come here, and fee what a thing it is which you thus dreadfully mistake! Come fee it holding the fword; O ftrange! nay more, thrusting it into Chrift's fide! Here, finners, is a fight that made the earth to tremble, and the fun to hide his face, as we fee, Matth. xxvii. 51. Luke xxiii. 45. In this glass you may fee, (1.) What God's thoughts of fin are. So highly oppofite to his nature is it, that the bowels of affection he had to the Son of his love, whom he fo highly honoured, when the voice came from the excellent glory, faying, " This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleafed," were not able to hold up the hand of inexorable justice from striking at him, nay, friking him dead, for the fin of the elect world. Would not that be a great proof think ye, of the aversion of a parent to any thing, if he would rather choose to flay his fon, nay his only fon, his fon whom he loved moft tenderly, than it fhould escape a mark of his displeasure? (2.) Here you may see more of the pollution of fin than any where else. Never was there any thing that gave fo juft apprehenfions of the ftain of fin, as the death of Chrift. An ingrained pollution it must indeed be, if no lefs will wash it out than the blood of God. (3.) Here is a dreadful evidence of the power of fin. Never did this more appear, than when it blinded the eyes of the degenerate fons of men, fo far that they could not difcern" the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, who was fo full of grace and truth," whose divine nature daily beamed, as it were, through that of his hu. man, in miraculous operations, works, and words, which none but God could do, but God could fpeak. And no lefs was the power of fin feen, when it hurried men head.E long long into that heaven-daring pitch of impiety, to imbrue their hands in the blood of God. Ofinners! would you fee what fin is look at it with its hands reeking in the gore and blood of God, and tell what you think of it. But it is like, fone of you may fay, What is this to the purpose? This is not the fin we are guilty of. We have never imbrued our hands in the blood of God, and fo herein we cannot fee our crimes. This makes nothing to that which now you are doing, the unfolding the heinous nature of that crime you now implead us as guilty of before God. To this we answer, (1.) Should we grant what is alleged as to your innocency in this matter, to be true, yet herein there is much of the nature of your fin to be feen, fince it partakes of the common nature of fin, with that of the murder of God; and fince it is every way equal to, if not that very fame, against which God did evidence his hatred in fo wonderful a manner, in the death of his only begotten Son, whom "he fpared not, but gave to the death, when he laid on him the iniquity of the elect world." But, (2.) We fay, that very fin lies at your door, O finners! and if you deny it, I would only afk you one question, Dare you hold up your faces, and in the fight of God fay, that you did receive Jefus Chrift the first time ever there was an offer of him made to you? If not, then you are guilty in that you practically fay, that the putting him to death was no crime. You by your practice bear witness to, or affert the juftice of the Jew's quarrel, and bring the blood of God upon your head: and therefore in their crimes you may fee your own. All the world, to whom the gofpel-report comes, muft either be for or against the Jews in their profecution of him; and no otherwise can we give teftimony against them, but by believing the gospel-report of him, that he was indeed the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. In fo far as we refuse a compliance with this, in as far we are guilty of the death of Chrift: for unbelief fubfcribes the Jew's charge against the Son of God, and afferts him an impoftor. (3.) Either you are believers or unbelievers; if believers, then it was for your very fins that Chrift was killed, it was for your iniquities he was bruifed: "But he was wounded for our trafgreflions, he was bruifed for our ini quities, |