92 OBLIGATION OF THE MORAL LAW will not always bear to be affrontedby such contemptible little worms as we are. Ifwe turn not from our etil ways hewill whet his sword, hehas bent his bowand Made it ready, he bath prepared for him the instruments of death, and the soul of the sinner shall feel his arrows. Verses 12, 13. 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 his 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 execution of this sentence with sharp anguish of heart, withinward reproaches and bitter terrors. This home-bred tormentis a hell upon earth, and it often begins before the sinner dies. Who sees not the dreadful evil of sin, in the wretched change that isintroducedby itinto the creation of God in the upper and lower worlds ? 1t has turned angels of light into devils and spirits of darkness : It has thrown millions of glorious and un- happybeings out of their heavenly habitation : It made our first parents afraid of their Maker even in paradise, and turned them out of that happy garden. It brought many curses upon human nature, many sorrows and sufferings of every kind. It is sin that has run through every generation, and exposed us to all the evils that-we feel, and to all that we fear, either from the hand of God, or our fellow-creatures. While man stood inno- centand obedient, nothing couldhurt him ; but he broke the law of his God, and renounced his government, and the bonds of love between .mankind are broken, and thebrute creatures have broken their subjection to man in a great degree. Ile who was made to govern them is afraid of them, and has often been destroyed by them Innocence had been a sure and everlastingdefence. All the desolations that havebeen made by famine and pestilence andwars and earthquakes, andby the rage of wild-beasts from the beginning of the world, are owing to the sin of man. But these thoughts bring me down to the 'fourth general head of my discourse, which is to consider the proper demerit of sin, or what is the punishment it deserves. This I shall repre- sent under these. four plain Propositions : -- Proposition I.When God made man at first, he designed to continue him in life and happiness so long as m'n continued innocent and obedient to the law, and thereby maintained his allegiance to God his Maker." This is agreeable to the termsof the law represented in Rom, ii. 7. If he liad patiently continued in well-doing, he should have enjoyed glory and honour, immor- tality and eternal life : Awl the blessedGod seems to have pro-
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