It may be many of you do think but very little of fin, but here I defire you to come and look at it,

1. In the glafs of God's law. See the holy, the high and exalted God, exhibiting his mind and will in two tables, tables containing fafe, good, holy, juft, fpiritual, and every way advantagious rules, for that creature, whom God has taken fo diftinguishing and particular a care of. Well, what fhall we fee of fin here? here, O here, you may fee fin breaking, nay, dafhing to pieces thefe two tables, in a worse fenfe than Mofes did, Exod. xxxii. 19. Every fin, the least fin, throws them both to the ground, for as the apostle James tells us, Whofoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all, James ii. 10. Is it a fmall thing to you to trample upon, to tread under foot, the holy, the righteous law of God, that is, the perfect image and reprefentation of all his holiness and fpotlefs purity? but if yet ye will not fee the curfed nature of fin, then we bid you, in the

2d Place, Take a view of it in the nature of the great God, the feat of all majesty, glory, beauty and excellency; and if you look at it here, O how ugly will it appear! Nothing in all the world. contrary and oppofife 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 opposite to the nature of God: fin, only fin ftands in oppofition to him. This he cannot dwell with. fhall not dwell with him, nor finners ftand in his fight. Such is that abhorrence that God has at fin, that when he fpeaks of it, his heart as it were rifes against it, dh do not that abominable thing, which I hate; in that forecited Jer. xliv. 4. And

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if yet ye will not fee its finfulness, I will take you where you may fee fome more of it. Go take a view of it,

3. In the threatenings of the law, and fee there what eftimate 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 that vii 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 12 ver. calls all the people accurfed, and tells, 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 fpoil of the ene my. 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 fhall fee one threatening big with temporal, another with eternal plagues; one full of external, another of internal and fpiritual woes; and all as it were levelled at the head of fin. And is that a fmall matter which never fails to fet all the vengeance of heaven against the person 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 fword glutted as it were with blood; men who a little before were poffeffed of wisdom, courage, and all thefe endowments which ferve to enhance the worth of the fons of men, are here laid heaps

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upon heaps. Go we to another, there we hall fee no fewer carried off by fickness and diseases, and all wearing out by time. Go to church-yards, and fee what vaft havoc thefe do make; there you may fee 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 ask you as Jehu did, when he faw the dead fons of Achab, 2 Kings x. 9. Who flew all thefe? 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 upon heaps, fathers and fons, 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 ftill you will look upon fin as a fmall and light thing, we have yet another glass whereyou may have a further fight of it.

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5. Enter the houfe of a foul under trouble of confcience; look at a Heman, and you shall hear him making an heavy mone in that lxxxviii. 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 himfelf, beating his breaft; afk him the reafon of all this diftrefs, he will tell you, That it is fin that has done all this. He has no reft in his bones for ills that he has done, Pfal. xxxviii. 3. And if yet ye have not seen enough of the finful

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nefs and evil of fin, I fhall give you another pro fpect of it,

6. In the hateful, monftrous and enormous crimes that are commited 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,, fhrinks 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. 1. 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 becomes odious in the world. Call a man a murderer, an inceftuous perfon, an abufer of his parents, or the like, every fober perfon will flee from, and evite as a peft the company of fuch an one: but why? what is the matter? what is there fo odious in these crimes, that every one fees from the person guilty of them? there is fin in them; and hence it is, they are fo hateful: and the only thing that diftinguifheth thefe from others, is, That they have different circumftantial aggravations: for in the nature of fin they all do agree, the least and the greatest; the least sin 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, thefe great and crying provocations, it is no lefs fo, when it is lefs perceptible in these fins which quadrate better with our vitiated and corrupted 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 respect to our understanding, arifing from the objects about which they are converfant. But

if after all these views of fin, your eyes are fo blinded that you cannot fee it, then come take a view of it,

7. In the cafe of the damned. Here, here you' may have a strange, an heart-affecting view of fin's ugly face. See the poor wretches lying in bundles, boiling eternally in that ftream of brimftone, roring under the intolerable, and yet eternal anguifh of their fpirits. Take a furvey of them' in this lamentable pofture. If you fhould fee fome hundreds of men, women and children, all thrown alive into burning pitch or melted lead, would not this prefent you with a fad fcene of mifery and wo? would not this be a difmal fight? indeed it would be fo: but all this is nothing to the unfpeakable 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 depressed and funk into the bottomlefs depth of the wrath of God, and choked 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 astonishing 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 steam of the bot tomlefs 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 juft impreffion of thefe things, how hateful would fin be to you? And if after all that has been faid, you ftill imagine that fin is not fo bad as we would

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