breadth from the divine commandments. Sin will soon blind the eyes, and harden the heart, and sear the conscience. Sin is a downward road, whereon, if we fall, our descent may soon be accelerated beyond a possibility of recovery. A. leak may appear but a small thing ; yet will it sink a ship, if left without timely repair. The voice of inspiration suggests to us, "Be- hold how great a matter a little fire kindleth!" Let us not then account any sin small : let us watch and pray against every deviation from the divine commands : and, from a sense of our own blindness, let us pray to God, " Search thou me, and ti'y me, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."]
4. That every sin we commit is aggravated by the mercies we have received —
[This, as has been observed, was intimated by God in the case of Solomon : and the universal voice of Scripture attests the same. " If our Lord had not come and spoken to the Jews, they had been comparatively without sin : " but his discourses and his miracles rendered them altogether without excuse ; insomuch, that " it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment than for that gene- ration." In like manner we are told, that the superior in- formation of a servant who knows his Lord's will and does it not, will cause him to be beaten with more stripes, than he, whose ignorance forms some kind of plea for his neglect.
What then will be the state of us who have had such ample instruction, and such repeated warnings ? If our minds have never been awakened, our misimprovement of the means of grace has involved us in the deeper guilt : but if the Lord has ever " manifested himself to us as he does not unto the world," and we have turned back from following him, our guilt is proportionably increased ; so that " it would have been better for us never to have known the way of righteousness, than, having known it, to turn from it."]