120 THIRD SERMON hidden like seed in the ground ; when Christ the Sun of righteousness shall appear, this life of ours in him will spring up, and appear glorious. Now next let us consider this care of repentance against a man's own more particular and special sins. " Asshur shall not save us, we will not ride upon horses," &c. Israel had been guilty of very many provocations, but when they come to covenant with God, and to renew their repentance, their thoughts and cares are most set against their carnal confidence and spiritual adultery. Their most unfeigned detes- tations, their most serious resolutions were against these their most easily besetting sins. True repentance worketh indeed a general hatred of every false way, Psa. cxix. 128. and suffereth not a man to allow him- self in the smallest sin. Yet as the dog in hunting the deer, though he drive the whole herd before him yet fixeth his eye and scent upon some one in particular, which is singled out by the dart of the huntsman ; so, though sound conversion works a universal hatred of all sin, because it is sin, (for hatred is ever against the whole kind of a thing,) though every member of the old man be mortified, and every grace of the new man shaped and fashioned in us: yet the severest exercise of that hatred is against the sins whereunto the conscience hath been more enslaved, and by which the name of God hath been most dishonoured. A man that hath many wounds, if there be any of them more deep, dangerous, or nearer any vital part than the other, though he will endeavour to cure them all, yet his chief care will be towards that. As the king of Syria gave command to his army to single out the king of Israel in the battle, 1 Kings xxii. 31. so doth repentance lay its batteries most against the highest, and strongest, and most reigning sin of the
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