3. The more we hate sin the more prepared we are to love the law. A carnal heart hateth the law : John iii. 20, ' He that doeth evil hateth the light ; ' and Rum. viii. 7, ' The carnal mind is not subject to the law.' He that doth not hate sin hateth the word of God. We cannot delight in it till our affections be purified and sanctified. Men's evil practices and dispositions cause them to hate the light ; it is a reprov- ing light. Can sore eyes delight to look upon the sun ? or an unsound heart delight in that which will so ransack and search the conscience ?
4. According to the degree of love, so will the degree of our hatred be. They that have the highest love of the law will have most hatred of sin ; they hate every lesser contrariety, a vain thought, Ps. cxix. 113. They do not only hate open and scandalous sins, but sin carried on in a more close and cleanly manner ; yea, they groan under the relics of corruption, and feel it a heavy burden : Bom. vii. 22-24, ' For I delight in the law of God after the inward man ; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bring- ing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members ; ' and then, ' 0 wretched man that I am ! ' Next to the object of our affection, the principle or spring of it must be regarded ; and next to the spring and rise of it, the degree must be looked after, that we love the good and hate the evil proportionably ; that is to say, that our hatred must be proportionable to the evil of the thing hated, and our love to the good of the thing loved. And indeed, where the one is the other will be; where j a great love, a great hatred; where a little love, a little hatred: Ps. cxix. 127, 128, 'I love thy commandments above gold, yea, above fine gold ; therefore I esteem thy precepts in all things to be right, and hate every false way.'
Use. Well, then, if we would show our love to the word, we must
VEK. 163.] SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. 183
truly, sincerely, and constantly turn from all known sin with detestation and abhorrence ; for hatred of sin is an infallible evidence of love to the word. Now hatred of sin, if it be right —
1. It is universal, etV ra <yivrj, to the whole kind ; as Hainan thought scorn to lay hands upon Mordecai alone, but sought to destroy the whole race of the Jews, Esther iii. 6. One sin is as inconsistent with the love of God as another. There may be as much contempt of God's authority in a sin of thought as in a sin of practice, in a small sin as in a greater. There may be much crookedness in a small line, and in some cases the dye is more than the stuff : ' I hate every false way.' It is twice repeated in this psalm, in ver. 104, and ver. 128. To hate what God hateth : Pro v. viii. 13, ' The fear of the Lord is to hate evil.;
2. It is implacable ; it aimeth at the utter extirpation and expul- sion of sin. They seek to remove the guilt, to weaken the inclination ; they groan sorely under the very being of sin, that anything of sin is left : ' 0 wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? ' Kom. vii. 24.
3. It is still growing. At first it is a dubious case. Men that are convinced have some mind to let sin go, or a wish that Christ would save them from it ; but it is with such reserves, that they have rather a mind to keep it than let it go ; as Pharaoh had no mind to dismiss Israel, and therefore stood bucking with God ; or as David, when he- sent out forces against Absalom, yet ' be tender of the young man.' Pleasing lusts, we have but a remiss will against them ; our love to it is greater than our dislike of it ; therefore so unstable, James i. 8. But when the soul is converted, the soul is armed with a resolution, 1 Peter iv. 1. Then the love of sin is weakened in their hearts, and the strength and vigor of it abated ; the soul is armed with a serious pur- pose to give it up, and shake off this servitude, in the confidence of that grace which is purchased for them by Christ's death ; there is a godly inclination and bent of soul to live unto God. Again, as our com- munion with God and sense of his love is increased in us, so our hatred of sin groweth more keen and fierce. When God had told what he would do for Ephraim, ' What have I any more to do with idols ? ' Hosea xiv. 8. I have had too much to do already. What ! any more ? In what proportion there is a sense of God's love, in the same propor- tion a hatred of evil. Moses, when he had talked with God in the mount, at his return he is full of indignation, and broke the tables. So those that have had sweet communion with God have a more severe displicency against their corruptions, and there is a more lively principle at work in their hearts, for the expulsion of them. Every act of kindness on God's part layeth a new obligation, and their hatred is awakened by the holy use of the ordinances.