II. We would compare the pollution of sin with the guilt of sin, for clearing the difference between the one and the other; and for evidencing the greatness of this defilement.

III. Speak of the nature and qualities of this pollution. IV. We would shew whence this pollution comes, and how it is derived into the world.

V. Make application of the whole subject.

I. The First thing proposed was, To consider what the scripture saith about the pollution of sin. Indeed the scriptures compares it to all the greatest deformities imaginable. Sometimes it is compared to the blood and pollution of a new-born infant, Ezek. xvi. 4, 5, 6. Sometimes to a dead body, or a rotten carcase, hanging upon a man, Rom. vii. 24. "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of sin and death?" Sometimes to a stinking exhalation of a green open grave, and the rottenness of the land of darkness, Rom. iii. 13. Sometimes to the poison of asps, or serpents, Rom. iii. 13. Sometimes to the vomit of a dog, and the puddle of swine, 2 Pet. ii. 22. Sometimes to a canker, or gangrene, 2 Tim. ii. 17. Sometimes to the dung of filty creatures, Phil. iii. 8.; or human dung: we read of the dung of men's sacrifices cast in their faces. Sometimes to the plague and pestilence, to a putrifying sore, Isa.i.6. But, not to name any more; surely if sin had not been such a pollution and abomination, the spirit of God would not have made use of so many terms, to lay before us the odious nature of it: yet none of these things to speak properly, are pollutions in themselves, being part of the ornament of the creation, though they be poison to man, or disagreeable to our senses: but sin is ugly in itself, and in the eye of God and holy angels. II. The Second thing was, To compare the pollution of sin, and the guilt of sin together.

1. The pollution of sin hath a reference to the command and precept: the guilt of sin hath a reference to threatening and execution. God enjoins us to do so and so; we do it not: or he forbids us to do, and we do it here is the stain, blot and pollution of sin; being a deformity of soul, and contrariety to the law of God

The pollution of sin hath a relation to the command; the guilt of sin looks to the sanction: whoever sins shall die, shall be punished; guilt looks to that.

2. The pollution of sin looks more directly to the holiness of God; the guilt of sin hath a relation to the justice of God. The pollution of sin is the direct opposite to that purity that is in him; it is a direct contrariety to his holiness: but guilt looks to the justice of God, which chains the moral evil and the penal evil together.

3. Though guilt of itself, properly speaking, cannot be said to be a good thing, it being evil to the rebel and criminal; yet it is a good thing that sin should be punished with suffering, and misery and hell: it is the emanation of God's justice and sanction of his law, and obligation upon the rebel, to give God as much glory by his suffering, as he robbed him of by his sin. This guilt in a manner brings all into order again. The pollution of sin breaks the order of the universe: that moral dependence, that the intellectual reasonable world had upon their Maker, is broken by the pollution of sin: but guilt, by punishment, brings all into order again; while either the guilty man suffers in his own person, which, alas! he can never fully do; or his guilt is transferred upon a Surety.

4. The pollution of sin is inseparable from it. Though sin be pardoned, it is still pollution: but guilt may be separate from sin. There may be sin without guilt in two respects. (1.) When God gives a law, and adds no sanction with it: as the greatest of our divines assert, That a law may be without a sanction.' (2.) When pardon comes and takes away the guilt. I say, sin may be where there is no guilt: as in the case of the pardoned sinner, who is no more liable to the punishment due to sin. And guilt may be where there is no sin, as in the case of Christ, who had no sin of his own, yet, as Surety was liable to the punishment of all the sins of an elect world. But though, I say, guilt is separable from sin, yet the pollution of sin is inseparable from sin; the very nature of sin must be destroyed, ere it can cease to be a pollution.

III. The Third thing was, to speak of the nature and qualities of this pollution. As to the nature of this pollution, there are two words I would say concerning it. There is in it a privation, or want of that beauty, which the soul had, when the image of God was upon it: it is a want of conformity to the holiness and beauty of God's nature and law. There is also in it a positive foulness and defiledness of mind and conscience; an introducing of the image of the devil; yea, a deformity of soul, body and conversation. But this will further appear from the properties of this pollution: and therefore as to the qualities of it,

1. It is a natural pollution; " Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean! no not one. Whatsoever is born of the flesh is flesh." Adam, after his apostacy, begat a child after his own likeness: had he stood, he would have had children after God's image: but having fallen, he begat a son after his own image. This is natural: "In sin was I conceived (says David); and in iniquity did my mother bring me forth," Psalm li. 5.

2. It is a deep and indelible pollution: it is of a crimson hue, Isa. i. 18. It is like the blackness of the Ethiopian, and the spots of the leopard; much nitre and soap cannot purge it away, Jer. ii. 22. The deluge of water did not wash it away from the earth: the fire that came down upon Sodom did not burn it out. The fire of hell to eternity will not take away the stain of sin out of the souls that shall be there. It is deep; nothing but the blood of God can wash it away.

3. It is universal: it hath invaded all the faculties of the soul, and set up its trophies of victory in all the powers thereof. The understanding is polluted with ignorance, darkness, error, enmity, and prejudice: in the will, there is a contrariety to God's will, a rebellion, a contempt; in the memory, a forgetting of God; all his favours to us are written like characters in the sand : the conscience itself, God's deputy, is defiled; "To the pure, all things are pure; but to the impure and unclean, even the very mind and conscience is defiled." This witness is bribed to favour the rest of the polluted faculties. Soul and body are contaminated; we read of the filthiness of the flesh and spirit, 2 Cor. vii. 1,

4. It is a diffusive and infectious pollution; a spreading gangrene. All the children of men are overspread with it, and defiled. The whole man is over-run. It spreadeth itself to our best duties: all our acts of obedience are thereby rendered like filthy rags; like a menstruous cloth. It infects others that are near the polluted sinner. It is hard to be in the company of a man that hath the plague, and not to be infected: Even so, it is one of the hardest things in the world to be witness to sin, and companions to wicked sinners and not be infected; "Can a man take fire in his bosom, and not be burnt?" Yea, it infects the very timber and stones of the house where the man lies; hence they are said to cry out against him. Yea, it infects the very ground on which he treads. Yea, the whole creation groans and travails in pain, because of the sins of men. "He

5. It is a growing and increasing pollution: that is filthy, let him be filthy still:" that is, more filthy, Rev. xxii. 11. "Evil men and seducers wax worse and worse," 2 Tim. iii. 13. Sin, once given place to, makes gradual and successful advances upon the sinner.

6. It is a mortal pollution, a deadly pollution: "I said unto thee, when thou wast in thy blood, Live: yea, I said unto thee, when thou wast in thy blood, Live." The doubling of the expression, shows the deadly nature of the pollution" in the day when thou wast born, thy,navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all: No eye pitied thee, to do any of these offices unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out into the open field, to the loathing of thy person in the day that thou wast born. And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thy blood, I said unto thee, when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee, when thou wast in thy blood, Live," Ezek. xvi. 4, 5, 6. A new-born child, exposed in that case, would soon expire. Oh! but sin puts confusion amongst men; it puts fire into hell; it puts rottenness in the grave: it was only he that went to the grave without sin, that rose without corruption; yea sin put wrath in the heart of God against man. It is a

mortal, deadly, destructive pollution.-Many other dismal qualities of it might be assigned: but I proceed, IV. To the Fourth thing proposed, which was, to shew how this pollution is conveyed into the world, and from one to another. This is a great mystery, and we must be modest on it. Let us only consider then shortly these two things about it.

1. That Adam, once being polluted himself, he cannot but beget a polluted child: hence we read, Gen. v. 3. that he begat a son in his own likeness, after his image. An Ethiopian begets an Ethiopian; and a blackamoor begets a blackamoor: "That which is born after the flesh is flesh," John iii. 6.

2. Consider, when God makes the soul of a man of Adam's race, he looks upon him as a branch and piece of the old Adam; of the old rebel and apostate, to which he gave original beauty, and made it like himself, the glorious work of his hand: but it soon deformed itself. Now, when he makes the faculties, the mind, the will, he goes no further in making them: he does not concrete the original beauty he once gave to man; he is under no obligation to restore what they threw away. Indeed, the elect soul, in the day of conversion, gets all restored to advantage, by the Lord Jesus Christ; "Then he restores that which he took not away." Psal. lxix. 4. · As he restores the favour of God in justification: so the image of God in sanctification; not till then.

V. The Fifth thing proposed was the application of the subject; which we shall essay briefly in several uses. 1st, By way of information. If sin be such a pollution and defilement, then hence see,

1. Why sin keeps men out of heaven. Sin stands directly opposite to the rectitude of God's holy nature ; it is that abominable thing which he hates: and it is a positive law of the God of heaven, that nothing that defileth can enter into the heavenly Jerusalem. And therefore sin, considered in its own nature, as exceeding sinful, excludes from the presence of God.

2. See what matter of humiliation, before God, we have: we should lie down in our shame, and our confusion cover us, crying out, Unclean, unclean; humbled