e very piercing considerations, which cannot but
set the challenge very deep into the heart of a Christian and wound him
sore. How will he be filled with shame and confusion of face if he look
upon God, every look or beam of whose countenance represents unto the soul
the vilest and most abominable visage of sin! Or if he look into himself,
there is nothing but self condemning there. He finds his own conscience
staring him as a thousand witnesses. Thus the soul of a believer being
environed, he is ready to apprehend, that though God should have pardoned
the sins of his ignorance yet that there is more difficulty in this,--to
pardon his returnings to folly, and therefore are some put to harder
exercise, and greater terrors, after conversion, than in the time of it.
The sins of ignorance being, as it were, removed as a cloud, and scored
out in a heap, but the sins of knowledge after mercy, lying more
distinctly and clearly in the view of the soul, it is more difficult to
blot them out of the conscience, and sprinkle the heart from an evil
conscience. These things I speak to you for this reason, that you may be
afraid to sin. I suppose that there is no hazard of eternal damnation by
sin. Grant that you know beforehand, that if you sin, there is yet
forgiveness with him, and there is no hazard of perishing by it, yet, sure
I am, it is the most foolish adventure in the world, to take liberty on
that account, for though there be indemnity that way, as to thy eternal
estate, yet I am persuaded, that there is more damage another way, in thy
spiritual estate in this world, than all the gains of sin can countervail.
There is a necessary loss of peace and joy, and communion of the Holy
Ghost. It is inevitable, in the very ordinary and natural course and
connection of things, but that sin, that way indulged, will eclipse thy
soul, and bring some darkness of sorrow and horror over it. To speak after
the manner of man, and in the way of reason itself, the entertainment of
that which God hates will deprive thee of more solid joy and sweetness in
him, than all the pleasures of sin could afford. Therefore I dare not say
to you, as one too unadvisedly expresseth it, "Fear not, though you do
sin, of any hurt that can come by these sins, for if you sin it shall do
you no hurt at all."(253) I say, this were indeed but to make you too bold
with sin. I had rather represent unto you, that though ye be secured in
your eternal estate, and there can