their besetting sin they cannot find it in their hearts to mortify, so addicted are they to the commission of it, and, as it were, " tied and bound with it as with a chain," which they cannot
breakf Whilst they see, and cannot but acknowledge
the sinfulness of their habits, they have a " law in their mem- bers warring against the law in their minds, and bringing them into captivity to the law of sin which is in their members5;" or rather, they are " taken in the snare of the devil, and led captive by him at his willV]
3. It hardens —
[One would have supposed that when Herod, " knowing that John was a holy and just man, feared" him, he would never have been induced to persecute him for his fidelity. Yet of his own mind he had imprisoned John, and would have put him to death, had he not been restrained by his fear of the people ; and, when solicited by his daughter to give her John's head in a charger, he sent an executioner to behead him, and presented it to her according to her desire. This he did for hs oath's sake. But how could any oath bind him to the com- mission of murder ? He would have found ample means of inducing her to alter her request, if sin had not " seared his conscience," and " made his heart as adamant." But sin is of its own nature progressive : and to such a degree do men be- come " hardened through the deceitfulness of sin," that evils, which once they could not have contemplated as possible ever to be committed by them, are committed easily and without remorse. Hazael, when warned of the enormities which he would one day commit, exclaimed, " Is thy servant a dog that he should do such things ? " Yet he afterwards executed these things to the full extent of the predictions concerning him. And if the future conduct of many, who are now but just be- ginning their career of sin, were opened to their view, they would not believe that they should ever attain to such im- piety. But, what is said of strife, may be said of every other sin ; namely, that " the beginning of it is like the letting out of water :" the breach at first is small ; but it soon widens, till the inundation becomes irresistibly powerful, and irremediably destructive.]
Such is the power of sin ; of which in the history we may yet further see, II. The malignity —
It tends to inflict misery,
1. On all who indulge it —
f See this in the drunkard, the whoremonger, &c. &c. S Rom. vii. 23. h 2 Tim. ii. 26.