endure to carry continually about with thee a carcass of a soul dead in mortal sin, which is far more loathsome and hideous? Ah! beg of God that he would open thy eyes, to see thy own deplorable state, to detest the hellish monster sin, which thou hast so long nourished in thy breast, and which is the true cause of all thy misery.
3. Consider what the soul loses by sin; and what she gains to recompense this loss. She loses the grace of God, the greatest of all treasures; and in losing this, she loses God himself. She loses the fatherly protection and favour of God; she loses the dignity of a child of God, and spouse of Christ; she loses her right and title to an eternal kingdom; she is stript of all the gifts of the holy Ghost, robbed of all the merits of her whole life; becomes a child of hell, and a slave of the devil; spiritually possessed by him, and with him liable to an eternal damnation: and this is all she gains by sin; because the wages of sin is death; Rom. vi. the death of the soul here, and a second and eternal death hereafter. Ah! wretched sinners, open your eyes to see and bewail your lamentable blindness, in thus exchanging God for the devil, heaven for hell.
4. Consider, that sin is infinitely odious and detestable in the sight of God, as being infinitely opposite to his sovereign goodness. He hates it with an eternal and necessary hatred; and can no more cease to hate it, than he can cease to be God. Hence if the most just man upon earth were to be so unhappy as to fall into any one, the least mortal sin, he would in that same moment become the enemy of God; and if he were to die in that guilt, he would certainly feel the weight of God's avenging justice for all eternity. Ah! Christians, never let us be so mad as to venture to be at war with God. Alas! how many and how dreadful
