phets to warn us of it; and hath established an order of men, whofe office it is, like watchmen, to give an alarm at every approach of danger. And all this, only to perfuade men not to be extremely miferable, for nothing, for vanity, for trouble, for a difeafe; for fome things naturally are difeafes and imperfections, contrary to goodnefs, to felicity, and to God himself.

And moreover, God hath hedged fin round about with thorns; and fin of itself is full of difficulties: It abuses a man in all his capacities; and places poison in all those feats and receptions, where he could poffibly entertain happiness.

For if fin pretend to please the sense, it doth firft abuse it fhamefully, and then humours it. It can only feed an impofthume; no natural, reasonable, and perfective appetite.

And befides its own effential appendages and proprieties, things are fo ordered, that a fire is kindled round about us; and every thing within us, above, below us, and on every fide of us, is an argument against, and an enemy to fin; and for its fingle

pretence

pretence, that it comes to please one of the fenfes, one of those faculties which are in us the fame they are in a beast, it hath an evil fo communicative, that it doth not only work like poifon, to the diffolution of foul and body, but it is a sickness like the plague, it infects all our houses, and corrupts the air, and the very breath of heaven: For it moves God first to jealousy, and that takes off his friendship and kindnefs towards us; and then to anger, and that makes him a refolved enemy. And it brings evil, not only upon ourselves, but upon our children.

And therefore, if a man fhould defpife the eye or fword of man, if he fins; he is to conteft with the jealoufy of a provoked God. If he doth not regard himself, let him pity his children. If he be angry and hates all that he fees, and is not folicitous for his children; yet let him pity the generations which are yet unborn. Let him not bring a curfe upon his whole family, and fuffer his name to rot in difhönour, and his memory to be polluted with an eternal ftain.-If all this will not deter a man

from

from fin, there is no inftrument left for that man's virtue, no hopes of his felicity, no recovery of his forrows and sicknesses; but he must fink under the ftrokes of a jealous God, into the dishonour of eternal ages, and the groanings of a never-ceafing forrow.

I the Lord thy God am a JEALOUS God: -That is the firft and great stroke he strikes against fin. He speaks after the manner of men; and in fo fpeaking, we know, that he who is jealous is fufpicious, is inquifitive, and is implacable.

God is pleased to reprefent himself a perfon very fufpicious; both in respect of perfons and things. For our perfons, we give him cause enough. For we are finners from our mother's womb. We make folemn vows, and break them instantly; we cry for pardon, and still renew the fin; we defire God to try us once more, and we provoke him ten times farther; we use the means of grace to cure us, and we turn them into vices and opportunities of fin; we curfe our fins, and yet long for them extremely; we renounce them pub

lickly,

tickly, and yet fend for them in private, and fhew them kindness; we leave little offences, but our faith and our charity are not strong enough to mafter great ones; and fometimes we are shamed out of great ones, but yet entertain little ones; or if we disclaim both, yet we love to remember them, and delight in their past actions, and bring them home to us, at least in our imaginations, and we love to be betrayed into them. We would fain have things fo ordered, by chance or power, that it may feem neceffary to fin, or that it may become excufable, and dreffed fitly for our own circumftances. We fo loath our freedom, that any temptation will make us return to our fetters and bondage. And if we do not tempt ourselves, yet we do not refift a temptation; or if we pray against it, we defire not to be heard; and if we be affifted, yet we will not work together with thofe affiftances: So that unlefs we be forced, nothing will be done. We are fo willing to perish, and fo unwilling to be faved, that we minister to God abundant reason to suspect us.

And

And as God is fufpicious, fo he is alfo inquifitive. He looks for that, which he fain would never find. God sets spies upon us. He looks upon us himself, through the curtains of a cloud; and he fends angels to efpy us in all our ways; and permits the devil to accufe us; and erects a tribunal and witneffes in our own confciences: And he cannot want information of our smalleft irregularities. Sometimes the devil accufeth us; but he fometimes accufeth falfely, either maliciously or ignorantly, and we ftand upright in that particular by innocence, and fometimes by repentance; and all this while our confcience is our friend. Sometimes our confcience doth accufe us unto God, and then we ftand convict by our own judgement. Sometimes, if our confcience acquit us, yet we are not thereby juftified: For, as Mofes accused the Jews, fo do Chrift and his apoftles accufe us, not in their perfons, but by their works and by their words, by the thing itself, by confronting the laws of Chrift and our practices. And all this is the direct and proper effect of God's jea

loufy