so partial, as not to confess, that, however attentive men may be to their relative duties, they are not mindful of their duty to God. There is doubtless a considerable difference between some and others : some have respect for religion, while others despise it ; and some endeavour in a self-righteous way to please God, while others care not how much they provoke him to anger. But, as to the dispositions of a faithful servant and a dutiful child, there is not a person in the universe who feels them, except the few who have "entered in at the strait gate, and are walking in the narrow path" of evangelical obedience. All others prefer their own ease to God's service, their own will to God's precepts, their own interests to God's honour.
And what shall we say to these things ? Shall we leave men to imagine that their punctuality in some duties will atone for their remissness in others ? No : we must rather say, (what indeed we proposed as the third head of our discourse,)
III. That the performance of duties towards men, instead of extenuating, as many suppose, the guilt of neglecting God, is in reality a great aggravation of it.
In one view indeed it must certainly be allowed, that the fewer laws any man transgresses, the less guilt he contracts : and that therefore he who obeys, though imperfectly and exclusively, the injunctions of the second table, is better than he who lives in the unrestrained violation of all the commandments. Ne- vertheless it is certain that obedience in some cases may be a great aggravation of our disobedience in others ; inasmuch as it may argue a preference given to the creature above the Creator, and may therefore excite the fiercer indignation of a jealous God. More especially if the duties of the second table be exalted to the neglect of those of the first table, and obedience to the latter be pleaded as excusing our transgressions of the former, then our partiality becomes an awful aggravation of our guilt. For, what is this, but to