[2.] The love of God: Ps. xcvii. 10, ' Ye that love the Lord hate evil.' He doth not say forbear it, but hate it. The cause of hatred is the love of that good unto which the thing or person hated is contrary and repugnant. Love to the chiefest good is accompanied with hatred of sin, which is the chiefest evil. The one is as natural to grace as the other. The new nature hath its flight and aversation, as w^ell as its choice and prosecution, to things that are hurtful to it, as well as good and profitable.
[3.] A filial fear of God : Prov. viii. 13, ' The fear of the Lord is to hate evil : pride and arrogancy and the evil Avay and the froward mouth do I hate.' Certainly this is to fear God, to hate Avhat God hateth, and as God hateth, and because God hateth. Now God hateth all sin, pride, and arrogancy ; that is, sins of thought, wliioli put us upon vain and foolish musings. And then the sins of the tongue are expressed by 'froward mouth.' Nothing so natural to us as filthy and evil speaking. And then the sins of practice, ' the evil way.' They that fear God will hate all these sins. These graces are strangers to unrenewed hearts. It argueth a divine nature when we hate when, what, and as, and because God hates it, Eadem velle et nolle est summa amicitia.
o. A third argument is from the comparison of hatred with anger. Unregenerate men may be angry with sin, because anger is consistent with love. One may be angry with his wife, children, friends, whom yet he tenderly affects.
332 SERMONS UPON TSALM CXIX. [SeR. CXL.
[1.] Anp,cr is a sudden nnd slioi-t, hatred a lasting and durable passion. Anger is furor hrevis, curable by time ; hatred incurable by the greatest tract of time. The unregenerate arc disj)Ieased with their sins for a spurt, but the regenerate constantly disaflected towards them. There is, 1 John iii. 9, airepixa, there is a constant principle of resist- ance in the renewed heart. Passion is a casual dislike, but the new nature a rooted enmity, a habitual aversation to what is evil. •
[2.] Anger is only against singulars, but hatred is etV ra ^evr], to the whole kind. Thus we hate every wolf and every serpent, every thief and every calunuiiator. So is this universal ; it respects sin as sin, and hateth all sin, though never so profitable and pleasant. Not upon foreign and accidental reasons; as, Esther iii. IG, Haman thought scorn to lay hands upon Mordecai alone, but sought the destruction of all the Jews. The same reasons that incline us to liate one sin, incline us to hate all sin. The violation of God's law is a contempt of God's authority, a l)reach of spii'itual friendship ; one grieveth the Spirit of God as well as the other. Ev^ry sin is hateful to God, so it is to those that are made partakers of the divine nature.
[3.] Anger may be pacified or appeased with the sufferings of the thing or person with which we are angry, but hatred is implacable ; nothing can content and satisfy it but the ruin or not being of the thing and party hated. David was angry with Absalom, but loath to have him destroyed, only corrected and reduced : when he sent out forces against him, ' Deal gently with the young man.' So many deal with their sins ; we reason, pray, strive, complain ; but it is but an angry fit; we are displeased with them at present, but could easily be recon- ciled. They seek not after the death, but the restraint and imprison- ment of their corruptions and lusts, that they may not disgrace or otherwise prejudice them. Nothing contents the regenerate but the killing and mortification of them ; they would have them dealt with as Samuel by Agag, hewn in pieces ; therefore they study revenge upon their sins : Gal. v. 24, ' Crucifying the flesh, with the affections and lusts.'
[4.] From the state of the regenerate. They have sin in them, but 3'et they hate it. Their will and consent to sin is always abated, and made remiss by a contrary principle, the gi-ace that is in their wills : Gal. v. 17, ' The spiiit lusteth against the flesh.' Sin cannot reign in them with a full and imcontrolled dominion : Kom. vi. 14, ' Sin shall not have dominion over you.'
Use 1. How few are there that are God's children, for how few are there that hate sin ! Some love it, Job xx. 12, 13, and the love of sin is the life of it ; and what is it they hate ? They hate the word that discovers sin, John iii. 20 ; they hate God's messengers that do cry aloud against sin, and do rub their sores ; as Ahab said of Micaiah, * He doth never prophesy good of me.' They hate the magistrate that would reform them, they hate God's image in his saints ; they cannot endure the lustre of holiness that shineth foitli in them.
Use 2. Do we indeed hate sin ? We had need look after this.
1. Because this is the true principle of resistance against sin. Till