chains which have been forged by the great destroyer of mankind. Ask any man who feels the burthen and the bitterness of sin, whether, when committing it, he had any idea of its tendency to distress the soul, and to create, as it were, a very hell within him ? He will tell you, that, in following his lusts, he dreamed of nothing but pleasure ; and that whilst he was tempted with the bait, the hook was only faintly suspected, or kept entirely out of view. Whatever be the sin to which we are tempted, the heart sug- gests, that there is no great evil in it ; that God is too merciful to punish us eternally for such a trifle ; that it is not possible for us to perish, since all around us are in the same state with ourselves; or that, at all events, a dying hour will be quite time enough for the indulging of any melancholy reflec- tions ; and that a few prayers, then offered, will answer every end that we can wish. Thus the delusions of sin, and the wiles of Satan, are all countenanced by our own evil hearts; and the awful consequences of transgression are kept out of sight, till it is too late to avert them. Against this propensity of the heart we are warned in the Holy Scriptures : If, says God, a man hearing the curses denounced against him in my word, " bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart, then I will not spare him ; but the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven V
The third mark which we mentioned as shewing the unparalleled deceitfulness of the heart, is this, that it deceives, not others only, but itself also. It is said in our text to be " deceitful above all things." Riches and other things are said to be deceitful; but they are so called, only because the heart makes them occasions of deceiving us : they are themselves altogether passive in the matter. Of active agents, Satan is beyond all comparison the greatest deceiver,
b Deut. xxix. 19, 20.