54 CHARACTER OF THOSE FOR [Chap. 4. contented you should show him the worst. He was wont to marvel what made men keep up such a stir against sin ; what harm it was for a man to take a little forbiddenplea- sure ; he saw no such heinousness in it, that Christ must needs die for it, and a Christless world be eternally torment- ed in hell. Now the case is altered : God hath opened his eyes to see the inexpressible vileness of sin. They are convinced of their own misery by reason of sin. Theywho before read the threats of God's law as men do the story of foreign wars, now find it their own story, and perceive they read their own doom, as if they found their own names written in the curse, or heard the law say, as Nathan, " Thou art the man." The wrath of God seemed to him before but as a storm to a man in a dry house, or as the pains of the sick to the healthful stander-by ; but now he finds the disease is his own, and feels himself a condemned man, that he is dead and damned in point of law, and that nothingwas wanting but mere execution to make him absolutely and irrecoverably miserable. This is a work of the Spirit, wrought in some measure in all the regenerate. How should he come to Christ for pardon, that did not first find himself guilty and condemned? or for life, that never found himself spiritually dead ? "The whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." The discovery of the remedy as soon as the misery, must needs prevent a great part of the trouble. And perhaps the joyful apprehensions of mercy may make the sense of misery sooner forgotten. They are also convinced of the creature's vanity and in- sufficiency. Every man is naturally an idolater. Our hearts turned from God in our first fall; and, ever since, the creature hath been our god. This is the grand sin of na- ture. Every unregenerate man ascribes to the creature divine prerogatives, and allows it the highest room in his soul; or, if he is convinced of misery, he flies to it as his savior. Indeed, God and his Christ shall be called Lord and Savior ; but the real expectation is from the creature, and the work of God is laid upon it. Pleasure, profit, and honor, are the natural man's trinity; and his carnal self is these in unity. It was our first sin to aspire to be as gods; and it is the greatest sin that is propagated in our nature from generation to generation. When God should
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=