ook how
loathsome our natural condition is holden out by God himself, Ezek. xvi.
You cannot imagine any deformity in the creature, any filthiness, but it
is there. The filthiness and vileness of sin shall appear, if we consider
_first_ that sin is a transgression of the holy and spiritual command, and
so a vile thing, the commandment is holy and good, Rom. vii. And sin
violateth and goeth flat contrary to the command, 1 John iii. 4. When so
just and so equitable a law is given, God might have exacted other
rigorous duties from us, but when it is so framed that the conscience must
cry out, All is equity, all is righteous and more than righteous, thou
mightest command more, and reward none. It is justice to command, but it
is mercy to promise life to obedience, which I owe,--what then must the
offence be, against such a just command, and so holy? If holiness be the
beauty of the creation, sin must be the deformity of it, the only spot in
its face.

_Secondly_, Look upon sin in the sight of God's holiness and infinite
majesty, and O how heinous will it appear! and therefore no man hath seen
sin in the vileness of it, but in the light of God's countenance, as Isa.
vi. 5, Job. xl. and xlii. God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity,
he cannot look on it, Hab. i. 13. All other things beside sin, God
looketh on them as bearing some mark of his own image, all was very good,
and God saw it, Gen. i. and ii. Even the basest creatures God looketh on
them, and seeth himself in them, but sin is only God's eyesore, that his
holiness cannot away with it, it is most contrary unto him, and as to his
sovereignty, it is a high contempt and rebellion done to God's Majesty.
It putteth God off the throne, will take no law from him, will not
acknowledge his law, but, as it were, spitteth in his face, and
establisheth another god. There is no punishment so evil, that God will
not own as his work, and declare himself to be the author of it, but only
sin, his soul abhorreth it, his holy will is against it, he will have no
fellowship with it, it is so contrary to him: contradicteth his will,
debaseth his authority, despiseth his sovereignty, upendeth his truth.
There is a kind of infiniteness in it, nothing can express it but itself
no name worse than itself to set it out, the apostle can get no other
epithet to it, Rom. vii. 13, than "sinful" sin, so that it cometh in most
direct opposition unto God. All that is in God, is God himself,