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OF
THE
MORAL LAW, AND
THE EVIL
OF
SIN.
[SERdti[.
V.
tends to deface the moral
image
of God
in the
soul,
and
ruin the
best
part
of
his
workmanship.
It
warps the
mind
aside
from its
chief
good,.
and
turns
the
heart
away
from
God, and
all
that
is
holy.
Sin
forms
itself
in
the
heart
into
an
evil
principle and habit
of
disobedience
;
one
sin
makes
way
for
another,
and increases the wretched trade
of sinning..
A
frequent
breaking
the restraints
of
law
and
conscience,
not
only
strengthens the inclination
'to vice,
but it
enfeebles the voice
and
power
of
conscience
to withhold
us
front
sin;
it
sets
man
a running
in
the
paths of intemperance and
malice, folly
and
madness,
down to
perdition
and
misery:
It
many
times brings
painful
diseases upon
the
body,
and it
is
the spring
of
dreadful
sorrows
in
the
soul
:
All
these
are
the
natural
cpnscgnences.of
sin,
V.
In
the
last
place
I
add,
"
sin
provokes
God
to
anger,
as
be
is
the righteous
Governor
of
the world
;,
it
brings
guilt upon
the
creature, and
exposes
it
to.
the
pu-
nishnents
threatened
by
the broken
law.
When
sin
en
tered
into the
nature of
man
there
was an
end of
all
the
friendly
converse between
him
and
his
Maker. Man
is
afraid
of God and God
is
angry
with
man.
Sin
throws
him
out of
his
Maker's former favour, and exposes
him
to the wrath and indignation
of
a
righteous and almighty
God,
who
will
vindicate
the
honours of
his own law.
He
is
.a
God
of
purer
eyes
than
to behold iniquity,
and he
is
angry with-the wicked every day
;"
Ps.
vii.
11.
The great Creator
and Governor
of
the universe
will
not
always
bear
to
be
affronted
by
such
contemptible little
worms as
we
are
;
"
If
we
turn not
from
our
evil
ways,
he will
whet
his sword, he has
bent
his bow
and
made
it
ready,
'he
hath
prepared
for him
the
instruments of
death,
and the
soul
of
the
sinner
shall feel his
arrows."
Verse
12,
is.
And yet further,
as
God
has
set
up
conscience
in
the
bosom
of
man
to
be
a
witness
for God there, and
to
put
man
in
mind
of
his
Maker's
law
and
his
own
duty,
.so
this
power called
conscience
is
also
ordained
to be a
judge
in
the
heart
of
man in the
room
of
God, and
to sentence
and condemn the guilty creature, and to
begin
the
exe-
cution
of
this sentence with
sharp anguish of heart,
with
inward
reproaches
and
bitter terrors. This
home
-bred
torment
is
a
hell
upon earth,
and it often
begins before
the sinner
dies.