1. In suffering the offence is done to us, but in sinning the offence is done to God ; and what are we to God ? It is nothing to offend and weary men ; but to offend God, and weary God, that is the highest aggravation : Isa. vii. 13, ' It is a small thing to weary men, but will ye weary my God also ? ' All injuries receive a value from the person against whom they are committed. Now sin is an injury to God, and affliction is only an infringement of our outward happiness. We are not masters of our own interests ; to affect a dominion over ourselves is a usurpation upon God's right. Now to break the law of God is to lift up ourselves against God, and to jostle him out of the throne. Better that all creatures should perish, than God should suffer any wrong ; better that we and ours be wholly destroyed, rather than there should be an offence done to God. Therefore, because sin is an ollence to God, a gracious soul would rather endm'e the greatest affliction ban meddle with the least sin.
2. Sin separates us from God, but suffering and affliction doth not, and therefore the greatest affliction is to be chosen before the least sin. Certainly that is an evil which separates us from the chiefest good ; now God is the chiefest good, and sin separates us from God : Isa. lix. 2, ' Your iniquities have separated between you and your God.' But affliction doth not separate us from God, but is a means to make us draw nigh to God. Many there are who have been chosen in the fire ; and so the time of affliction is to them the time of loves, — a time to bring God and man acquainted, that they are brought nearer to God than ever they were before ; and therefore surely sin in a gi-acious eye is worse than affliction. Let a man be never so poor, blind, and lame, and roughcast with sores, let him be never so outwardly loathsome, yet the Lord loves him, and takes pleasure in him if he be in a state of grace ; he is near and dear to God, and God kisses him with the kisses of his mouth. Nothing makes us loathsome to God but sin. God is at a distance from us, and we are at a distance from God ; he cannot look upon us without loathing, and we cannot think of him without horror, and dare not come into his presence.
3. Sin is evil in itself, whether we feel it or no ; but affliction is only evil in our sense and feeling: Heb. xii. 11, ' Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous.* Though it smart, it is a wholesome thing to the children of God ; it is smarting only to our sense. Sense is a lying thing. A bitter medicine is wholesome ; in itself it is a medicine against sin ; it is no pain to a benumbed
452 SERMONS UPON HEBREWS XL [SeR. LX.
joint to be scourged. But now sin is evil whether we feel it or no ; nay, it is worse when we feel it not. To be 'past feehng' is a heavy judg- ment, Eph. iv. 19, Sin ceasetli not to be evil, whether we feel it or no. [4.] Affliction brings inconvenience upon the body only, and the concernments of the body ; but sin brings inconvenience upon the soul. There are soul-afflictions indeed, but they come from God, and they are to be reckoned amongst the fruits of sin ; but affliction concerns the body, and as long as the soul is whole, all is whole. Afflictions themselves cannot reach the soul, they hurt only the body — ■ * The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmities,' Prov. xviii. 14 ; — if the body be weak, as long as the heart is whole, a man can endure it ; — 'but a wounded spirit,' when conscience is filled with the terrors of the Lord, ' who can bear ? ' Persecutions they cannot preach the inward man. Blindness, lameness, tortures bring an inconvenience only to the body, they cannot reach the soul. But now sin brings an inconvenience upon the soul. The body, that is but tlie sheath ; as, Dan. vii. 15, 'Daniel was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body ; ' we render, it in the middle of my body ; in the margin it is, in the middle of my sheath. It was the saying of a philosopher You may batter the case to pieces, but you cannot reach my jewel. Persecution may come at the body, but they cannot hurt the soul, nou infringe our comforts in the Lord.
5. An afflicted state may consist with the love of God, but a sinful state cannot. Afflictions come from the love of God — ' Whom the Lord loves he chastens,' Heb. xii. 6 ; and their design is love ; God's aim is to give his people a greater proof of his love. But now sins are permitted to befall to thee in hatred ; it is a sign of God's dreadful displeasure when he gives us up to sin, it is to hasten our own ruin and everlasting destruction : Prov. xxiii. 27, ' A whore is a deep ditch ; he that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein.'