116 THIRD SERMON to fulfil the lusts of it, Gal. v. 16, 17. the seed of God will keep down the strength of sin, 1 John iii. 9. 3. By a holy jealousy, and godly fear of the false- ness and backsliding of our corrupt heart, lest, like Lot's wife, it should look back towards Sodom, and like Israel have a mind hankering after the flesh -pots of Egypt, the wonted profits and pleasures of forsaken lusts. A godly heart prizeth the love of God, and the feelings of spiritual comfort from thence arising above all other things, and is afraid to lose them. It hath felt the burnings of sin, the stinging of these fiery serpents, and hath often been forced to befool itself, and to beshrew its own ignorance, and with Ephraim to emite upon the thigh. And the burnt child dreads the fire, and dares not meddle any more with it ; considers the heaviness of God's frown, the rigour of his law, the weakness and fickleness of the heart of man, the difficulty of finding Christ out when he hath withdrawn himself, and of recovering light and peace again when the soul hath wilfully brought itself under a cloud ; and therefore will not venture to harden itself against God. Thus godly fear keeps men from sin, Job xxxi. 23. Psa. cxix. 120. Prov. xxviii. 14. Ecc. ix. 2. Jer. xxxii. 40. Phil. ii. 12. Psa. iv. 4 4. By a love to Christ, and a sweet recounting of the mercies of God in him. The less a man loves sin, the more he shall love Christ. Now repentance works a hatred of sin, and thereupon a love of Christ, which love is ever operative, and putting forth itself towards holiness of life. As the love of God in Christ towards us worketh forgiveness of sin : so our reci- procal love, wrought by the feeling and comfort of that forgiveness, worketh in us a hatred of sin. A direct love begets a reflect love, as the heat wrought
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