85 / 652
SERM.
V.]
OF
THE
MORAL
LAW,
AND
THE
EVIL
OF
SIN.
75
and
pours
high
contempt upon
his
wisdom
and
his
righ-
teous
dominion
;
it
denies
his laws to be wise
and righte-
ous, as
though they were
not
fit
to
be
enjoined
of God or
practised
of
men.
II.
"
Sin
carries
in the
nature of it
high
ingratitude
to
God
our Creator,
and
a
wicked
abuse
of
that
good-
ness
which has bestowed
upon
us
all
our
natural
powers
and talents,
our
limbs,
our
senses,
and
all
our
faculties
of
soul
and
body." Such a
creator,
who
has
furnished
his
creatures
with
so
many
excellent
faculties,, may
reason-
ably
expect
and demand
of
them a
return
of
love
and
obe-
dience
;
but
to
employ these very
talents and
powers for
the dishonour
of
him
who
gave them,
is
abominable
in
it-
self
and
highly
provoking
to
that God
who
formed
us.
III. "
Sin
against the
law
of God
"
breaks
in
upon
that
wise
and beautiful
order
which
God
has
appointed
to
run
through
his
whole
creation."
Prov.
xvi. 4.
"
God
has
made all
things for himself"
and
his own
glory
;
but
if
we
set up
ourselves and
our
own
honour
as
the chief
end
of
all,
and neglect to pay our duty and
honours to the
blessed
God,
we
run counter
to this
divine
appointment,
and
place ourselves
in
the
room
of God.
IIe
has
or-
dained
that
his
creatures
should
be
mutually helpful to
each other, and
that
man should love
his
neighbour; but
if
malice and envy
and
falsehood
prevail
in us,
and
if
cruelty and injustice be
practised toward
our
fellow-
creatures, the
proper
and
beautiful harmony between
the intelligent
creatures
is
broken, and it
is
a
hateful
thing
in
the
eyes
of God
to see
those rules
of order
vio-
lated, renounced
and trampled
upon, which
he
has
esta-
blished
with
so
much wisdom
and justice.
Yet
further,
God
has
ordained reason
in man
to
govern
his
appetites
and passions and
all
his
inferior
powers
:
But
sin
brings
shameful confusion
into
our
very frame, while
it
exalts
the
appetites
and
the passions to reign
over
our
reason,
to
break the rules and dictates
of
conscience, and transgress
all the
bounds of reasonable
restraint.
Sin
working
in
the
heart
gives
a
loose to
those licentious and unruly
powers
of nature, and spreads
wild
disorder through
all
the
life.
IV.
As
it
is
the very
nature
of
sin
to
bring disorder
into
the
creation
of
God,
so
its
natural
consequences
are
pernicious
to
the sinful
creature
!
Every
act of
wilful sin