that the great EVIL of sin consists in its being committed against GOD. Having thus gone through with what was proposed, some remarks may be made, and then the whole be applied to our own use. REMARK 1. How different a thing is SIN from what an apostate rebellious world naturally imagine! How blind are we naturally to the infinite greatness, majesty, and glory of GOD! How insensible of the honourableness of the almighty Lord of heaven and earth, and of his worthiness to be loved, honoured, and obeyed! If any of our fellow-mortals despise, affront, or injure us, they touch, as it were, the apple of our eye: but God may be abused, and we take little or no notice of it. A thousand times men break his laws, and a thousand times they despise and affront him by their sinful doings; while they are possessed of such a prodigious degree of stupidity, as not to pass a single thought upon it. And should any charge them with despising the Lord, there are many would be ready to say, (with those, Mal. 1.6.) Wherein have we despised him? "You despise God in your closets, in your family worship, in your public worship, and at the Lord's table and yet, O secure sinner, will you still say, Wherein do I despise him? You give your choicest affections to idols, and offer the blind and the sick to the Lord: yea, a blind and a dead heart. Is it not burdensome to maintain secret prayer? and more tedious to spend an hour alone with God, than a whole day with vain company? And is not this to despise the Lord? Offer such treatment to your companions: let them see that you are weary of their company; even then when you are waiting upon them with pretences of the greatest respect; and will they accept it at your hands? or be pleased with your conduct? Besides, you are continually despising God in your daily course, by a disposition to take greater delight, in the things of the world, and in the way of sin, than in the ever blessed God: and by a disposition to love yourself more than him; and be more concerned for your honour and interest in the world, than for God's glory, and the interest of his Son's kingdom. And you despise the Lord, and despise the commandments of the Lord, in every one of your thoughts, words, and actions, that are in any measure injurious to your fellow-creatures." But such is the sottishness of a secure sinner, that he scarce passes a single thought upon it, for days, and weeks, and months, and years, how the infinitely glorious and ever blessed GoD is by him continually affronted and despised. But, turn the tables; let the secure sinner meet with abuses from his neighbours: let him be despised: let him be scorned let even his inferiors treat him with contempt: let his name be cast out as evil by all men: let every man's hand be against him, to defraud him in their dealing with him, to disappoint him, and vex him and now he will feel it; it will reach his heart; he will think of it night and day; aggravate it continually; and be ready to cry out," Never was mortal abused as I am! Never were there such wicked doings in the world before!" If God is despised, affronted, and abused; the sinner's heart is a heart of stone he cannot feel it: for he does not care for God. But let it come to his own case; and his heart is a heart of flesh, very tender; as tender as the apple of one's eye: every thing touches him to the quick for he loves himself dearly. If God is abused and injured, an apostate world care little about it: but if themselves are wronged, it is highly resented. Hence, this is the doctrine of ungodly selfish hearts, viz. THE GREAT EVIL OF SIN CONSISTS IN ITS BEING AN INJURIOUS THING TO US. Nor, indeed, is it very strange that a rebellious world care so little for God's honour. For this is the nature and way of rebels in earthly kingdoms; when they have cast off their rightful sovereign, and turned enemies to him, they care not what becomes of him, nor how he is treated. Their only concern is about themselves, and to secure their own welfare. In order to which they may do many toilsome and heroic deeds, and call them by the name of virtue, which virtue of theirs they may a Call them by the name of VIRTUE. When MILTON has represented satan, the mighty chief among the powers of darkness, as willing, at all adventures, to undertake a voyage from hell to earth, in order to seduce man, and find out for themselves a habitation more comfortable than that burning lake; he introduces all the infernal crew, as paying a public honour to his VIRTUE. honour and reward, and labour to countenance and promote it; but it is all the while only to serve their own ends. And they are nevertheless a company of rebels, in the estimation of their rightful sovereign. The application is easy. REM. 2. How amazing is the patience of God, towards a rebellious guilty world! and how astonishing the divine goodness, which sends rain, and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts "With awful reverence prone; and as a god "His own: (for neither do the spirits damn'd Milton, Paradise Lost, Book ii. lin. 575. And in the same page, in very beautiful lines, he intimates, what indeed is agreeable to our SAVIOUR'S words, Matt. xii. 25, 26. that there is a great appearance of love and good agreement among devils: the kingdoms of this world are divided against themselves; but satan's kingdom is not.-And elsewhere the following lines: "That, day and night, for his destruction wait." Par. Lost. Book ii. I. 496. And yet the little appearance of public love, and public spirit, there is among mankind, although not so well united among themselves as devils be, is by some writers wonderfully applauded, as true virtue, and used as an unanswerable argument, to prove that mankind naturally have, in a measure, that moral image of God, which it is acknowledged the devils have totally lost: and that, notwithstanding we are represented in Scripture as being dead in sin, (Eph. iii. 1.) by nature children of wrath; (ver. 3.) enemies to God; (Rom. v. 10.) enmity against him. (Rom. viii. 7.) with food and gladness; when hell is their proper place, and the pains of the damned their just desert! God looks down from heaven upon the children of men, and beholds the work of his hands combined in rebellion against him, their rightful sovereign: contemning his nature and will, despising his law, and authority, and of a temper bad enough to dethrone him, and overturn his universal government, had they sufficient power on their side: and conscious to his own infinite glory, and to the reasonableness and excellency of his government, and the infinite obligations his creatures are under to him; he has an adequate idea of the infinite vileness of their temper and conduct, and of the infinite provocation they give him, immediately to come out against them: yet he stays his hand : he holds back destruction: he waits upon a guilty world from age to age; and feeds and clothes the wretches that affront him to his face. But, REM. 3. How dreadful will the day of wrath be! and how miserable the state of the obstinate sinner! when God's patience shall be at an end, and his hand shall take hold on vengeance, and render a recompense to the wicked, equal to the infinite evil of their sins. If one sin, and the least sin, has so great an evil in it, and deserves so great a punishment; how dreadful must their state be, who have committed hundreds, and thousands, and millions of sins, and sins of the largest size, wherein they have cast the greatest contempt on the MOST HIGH, millions of times over! Their torments must be, not only eternal, but exceeding intense and very dreadful. The least sin deserves eternal damnation ; every degree of guilt deserves a proportionable degree of punishment; the more guilty, the more miserabled: the torments of the damned will therefore be not only eternal in duration, but most dreadful in degree. Hence it is written, that God will show b Yet he stays his hand. N. B. It is in Scripture, attributed to the GREAT NESS of GOD's power, that he is able to contain himself, and to keep back his band from destroy ing the God-provoking sinner immediately. Numb. xiv. 17. And had he not a strength and fortitude of mind infinitely great, it would doubtless be beyond him to bear with mankind a minute longer. Such infinite provocations would be too much for any but an infinite patience. his wrath and make his power known in their destruction", His power was made known in creating the heavens and the earth and by the same power these heavens and earth, which are now kept in store, reserved unto fire, against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men; I say, by the same power, which first created them, they shall at last be dissolved, burnt up, melted; and so be turned into a luke of fire and brimstone: and when the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, all in a flaine, and the whole material universe be hurled together in one general heap, then his power will be made known. And then he will show his wrath. Now God is insulted and despised by worms of the dust; and yet is very bountiful to his enemies, and seems to take no notice of their affronts. As it is written, these things hast thou done, and I kept silence. For now is the time for patience to reign: but when the day of wrath comes, God will let all the world see and know, how infinitely vile it is for worms to rise in rebellion against the MOST HIGH. When the heavens begin to be on fire, and the elements to melt with fervent heat, a guilty world will begin effectually to be roused to a sense of what they have done. Now God will show his wrath; and now a rebellious world will feel their guilt. REM. 4. How far beyond the capacity of any finite creature is it to make amends to God for the least sin, which casts such an infinite contempt upon the Most High! A worm may rise in rebellion against the great Jehovah, and may despise God, and despise the commandments of God, and make a light matter of it but if he would give ❝ thousands of rams, and ten thousands of rivers of oil," to make amends for his crime, it would not answer. Yea, if he would give "his firstborn for his transgression, and the fruit of his body for the sin of his soul," it would not avail. It is easy, for a haughty worm to despise the majesty of heaven: but it is beyond the reach of all created nature, to make a proper amends to God for such an injury. It is, even between man and man, easier to do wrong, than to undo it: but it is clean beyond the whole creation, to make amends to God for the least sin. For it requires an infinite atonement: but if all finite crea e Rom. ix. 22. f 2 Pet. . 7. 10.12. g Psalm 1. 21. h Rom. ii. 5. |