And thus we give a clear proof that we should esteem it no loss if we could get rid of him altogether.]
Melancholy, indeed, is this fact. I will now en- deavour to,
II. Account for it —
One would suppose, that He who is all excellence in himself, and the one source of all benefits to man, should be an object of love, and not of hatred, to us : and so he would be, if we had retained our primitive state of innocence : but we have fallen, and are be- come inconceivably depraved : and therefore we hate him on account of,
1. The contrariety that exists between him and us —
[There is not a greater difference between light and darkness, than between him and us ; not only in his natural attributes, which, of course, we cannot resemble, but in his moral perfections also, which in our original creation were enstamped upon us. There is not any one thing which God loves, which we do not hate with a perfect hatred. Holiness, in all its branches, is that which he approves : but in no one respect do we love it. A conformity to his image we never seek ; nay, if we behold it in another, we hate and abhor it. This matter has been put to a trial. God himself has become incarnate, and exhibited to the world a perfect transcript of his perfections : and how did the world treat him ? There was not an indignity which they did not offer him ; nor did they rest, till they had put him to the most ignominious death. Nor was this the conduct of the ignorant populace alone, but of every rank and order in society : kings, priests, people, all joined in the same murderous assaults upon him. His image, too, was represented in his holy Prophets and Apostles : and how were all of them treated ? In every age they were the objects of most inveterate hatred ; insomuch, that, of all the Apostles, one alone escaped the sword of martyrdom. And is human nature different now from what it was in former ages ? The laws of men have imposed restraints on the enmity of the heart : but were those restraints removed, and occasion for the exercise of men's evil dispositions afforded, the same scenes would be transacted now as formerly : for men at this hour, no less than in former ages, " love darkness rather than light ;" and would gladly extinguish the light, that they might be left to follow their own ways unmolested and unreproved.]
2. The consciousness we feel that he will summon us to his tribunal —