11. They make a greater profession of strict obedience, and therefore sin against their own profession.
12. They have renewed their promises of obedience to God, in prayer, at sacraments, and at other times, much more than others.
13. They have had more experience than others of the goodness of obedience, and of the comforts and benefits that attend it, in the favour of God, and communion with him therein.
14. Their sins are aggravated by all the reproofs and exhortations which they have used to others, to tell them how unreasonable and bad it is to provoke the Lord.
15. They sin under greater hopes of glory than others do; and provoke that God with whom they hope to live for ever.
16. The high titles of love and praise which God doth give them in his word, do aggravate their sin. That he should call them his treasure, his peculiar people, his jewels, and the apple of his eye, his sons and daughters, and a holy people, and priests to God, and boast of them as a people more excellent than their neighbours; and after this they should sin against him.
17. They have had audience with God, the answer of prayers, and many a deliverance and mercy in this life, which others have not; which aggravate their sins, as being thus contemned, and as obliging them more to God than others.
18. They dishonour God more than any others by their sins. His honour lieth not so much upon the actions of the ungodly, as on those that are nearest to him.
19. They harden the wicked more than such sins in other men would do. They cause them to blaspheme, and reproach the godly for their sakes, and say, These are your religious men! You see now what their strictness is. And they hinder the conversion and salvation of others: they grieve the godly, and wrong the church and cause of God, much more than the sins of others do.
20. Lastly, They please the devil more than the sins of other men. How busy is he to have drawn a Job to sin! and how would he have boasted against God, and his grace, and his servants, if he had prevailed, when he boasted so much before, in the false presumption of his success! as if he could make the godly forsake God, and be as bad as others, if he have leave to tempt them.
I shall next give you some particular directions, besides those foregoing, to help you to think of sin as it is, that you may hate it; for your cleansing and cure consist in this: so far as you hate sin it is mortified, and you are cured of it. And therefore, as I have anatomized it, that you may see the hatefulness of it, I shall direct you to improve this for your cure.
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[Sidenote: How to hate sin.]
_Direct._ I. Labour to know God, and to be affected with his attributes, and always to live as in his sight.--No man can know sin perfectly, because no man can know God perfectly. You can no further know what sin is than you know what God is, whom you sin against; for the formal malignity of sin is relative, as it is against the will and attributes of God. The godly have some knowledge of the malignity of sin, because they have some knowledge of God that is wronged by it. The wicked have no practical, prevalent knowledge of the malignity of sin, because they have no such knowledge of God. They that fear God will fear sinning; they that in their hearts are bold irreverently with God, will, in heart and life, be bold with sin: the atheist, that thinketh there is no God, thinks there is no sin against him. Nothing in the world will tell us so plainly and powerfully of the evil of sin, as the knowledge of the greatness, wisdom, goodness, holiness, authority, justice, truth, &c. of God. The sense of his presence, therefore, will revive our sense of sin's malignity.
_Direct._ II. Consider well of the office, the bloodshed, and the holy life of Christ.--His office is to expiate sin, and to destroy it. His blood was shed for it: his life condemned it. Love Christ, and thou wilt hate that which caused his death. Love him, and thou wilt love to be made like him, and hate that which is so contrary to Christ. These two great lights will show the odiousness of darkness.
_Direct._ III. Think well both how holy the office and work of the Holy Ghost is, and how great a mercy it is to us.--Shall God himself, the heavenly light, come down into a sinful heart, to illuminate and purify it? and yet shall I keep my darkness and defilement, in opposition to such wonderful mercy? Though all sin against the Holy Ghost be not the unpardonable blasphemy, yet all is aggravated hereby.