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but fin is ugly in itfelf, and in the eye of God and holy angels.

II. The fecond thing was, To compare the pollution of fin, and the guilt of fin together.

1. The pollution of fin hath a reference to the command and precept: the guilt of fin hath a reference to the threatening and execution, God injoins us to do fo and fo; we do it not or he forbids us to do, and we do it: here is the flain, blot and pollution of fin; being a deformity of foul, and contrariety to the law of God. The pollution of fin hath a relation to the command; the guilt of fin looks to the fanction whoever fins fhall die, fhall be punished; guilt looks to that,

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

3. Though guilt of itself, properly fpeaking, cannot be faid to be a good thing, it being evil to the rebel and criminal; yet it is a good thing that fin fhould be punished with fuffering, and mifery and hell: it is the emanation of God's juftice and fanction of his law, and obligation upon the rebel, to give God as much glory by his fuffering, as he robbed him of by his fin. This guilt in a manner brings all into order again. The pollution of fin breaks the order of the univerfe: that moral dependence, that the intellectual reafonable world had upon their Maker, is broken by the pollution of fin but guilt, by punishment, brings all into order again; while either the guilty man fuffers in his own perfon, which, alas! he can never fully do; or his guilt is transferred upon a Surety.

4. The pollution of fin is infeparable from it. Tho" fin be pardoned, it is ftill pollution: but guilt may be - feparate from fin. There may be fin without guilt in two refpects. (1.) When God gives a law, and adds no fanction with it; as the greatest of our divines affert,

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That a law may be without a fanction.' (2.) When pardon comes and takes away the guilt. I fay, fin may be where there is not guilt: as in the cafe of the pardoned finner, who is no more liable to the punifhment due to fin. And guilt may be where there is no fin, as in the cafe of Christ, who had no fin of his own, yet, as Surety, was liable to the punishment of all the fins of an elect world. But though, I fay, guilt is feparable from fin, yet the pollution of fin is infeparable from fin; the very nature of fin must be deftroyed, ere it can ceafe to : be a pollution.

III. The third thing was, To fpeak of the nature and qualities of this pollution. As to the nature of this pollution, there are two words I would fay concerning it. There is in it a privation, or want of that beauty, which the foul had, when the image of God was upon it: it is a want of conformity to the holinefs and beauty of God's nature and law. There is alfo in it a pofitive foulnefs and defilednefs of mind and confcience; an introducing of the image of the devil; yea, a deformity of foul, body, and converfation. 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. Whatfoever is born, of the flesh is flefh." Adam, after his apoftacy, 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 fon after his own image. This is natural: "In fin was I conceived (fays David); and in iniquity did my mother bring me forth," Pfalm li. 5.

2. It is a deep and indelible pollution; it is of a crimfon hue, Ifa. i. 18. It is like the blackness of the Ethiopian, and the spots of the leopard; much nitre and foap. 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 ftain of fin out of the fouls that fhall be there. It is deep; nothing but the blood of God can wash it away.

3. It is univerfal; it hath invaded all the faculties of the foul, and fet up its trophies of victory in all the powers thereof, The underlanding is polluted with ignorance, darknefs, 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 fand: the confcience itself, God's deputy, is defiled; "To the pure all things are pure; but to the impure and unclean, even the very mind and confcience is defiled." This witnefs is bribed to favour the reft of the polluted faculties. Soul and body are contaminated; we read of the filthinefs of the flesh and fpirit, 2 Cor, vii. 1,

4. It is a diffufive and infectious pollution; a spreading gangrene. All the children of men are overspread with it, and defiled. The whole man is over-run, It fpreadeth itself to our beft duties all our acts of obe. dience are thereby rendered like filthy rags; like a menfrous cloath. It infeas others that are near the polluted finner. It is hard to be in the company of a man that hath the plague, and not to be infected: Even fo, it is one of the hardest things in the world to be witness to fin, and companions to wicked finners, and not be infected: "Can a man take fire in his bofom, and not be burnt?" Yea, it infects the very timber and ftones of the house where the man lies; hence they are faid 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 fins of men.

5. It is a growing and increafing pollution: "He that is filthy, let him be filthy ftill;" that is, more filthy, Rev. xxii. 11, Evil men and feducers wax worfe and worse," 2 Tim. iii. 13. Sin, once given place to, makes gradual and fuccefsful advances upon the finner.

6. It is a mortal pollution, a deadly pollution: "I faid unto thee, when thou waft in thy blood, Live: yea, I faid unto thee, when thou waft in thy blood, Live." The doubling of the expreffion, fhews the deadly nature of the pollution; "In the day when thou waft born, thy navel was not cut, neither waft thou washed in water to fupple thee; thou waft not falted at all, nor fwaddled at all;

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No eye pitied thee, to do any of these offices unto thee, to have compaffion upon thee; but thou waft cast out into the open field, to the loathing of thy perfon in the day that thou waft born. And when I paffed by thee, and faw thee polluted in thy blood, I faid unto thee, when thou waft in thy blood, Live; yea, I faid unto thee, when thou waft in thy blood, Live," Ezek. xvi. 4, 5, 6. A new-born child, expofed in that cafe, would foon expire. Oh! but fin puts confufion amongst men; it puts fire into hell; it puts rottennefs in the grave: it was only he that went to the grave without fin, that rofe without corruption: yea, fin put wrath in the heart of God against man. It is a mortal, deadly, deftructive pollution. Many other difmal qualities of it might be affigned; but I proceed,

IV. To the fourth thing propofed, which was, to fhew how this pollution is conveyed into the world, and from one to another. This is a great myflery, and we must be modeft on it. Let us only confider then shortly thefe 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 fon in his own likeness, after his image. An Ethiopian begets an Ethiopian; and a blackamoor begets a blackamoor: "That which is born after the fleth is flesh," John iii. 6.

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2. Confider, when God makes the foul 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 apoftate, to which he gave original beauty, and made it like himself, the glorious work of his hand but it foon deformed itself. Now, when he makes the faculties, the mind, the will, he goes no further in making them he does not concreat the original beauty he once gave to man; he is under no obligation to reflore what they threw away. Indeed, the elect foul, in the day of converfion, gets all restored to advantage, by the Lord Jefus Chrift; "Then he restores that which he took not away," Pfal. lxix. 4. As he restores the favour of God in juflification; so the image of God in fanctification; not till then.

V. The fifth thing propofed was the application of the fubject; which we fhall effay briefly in feveral uses. Ift, By way of information. If fin be fuch a pollution and defilement, then hence fee,

1. Why fin keeps men out of heaven. Sin ftands directly oppofite to the rectitude of God's holy nature; it is that abominable thing which he hates: and it is a pofitive law of the God of heaven, that nothing that defileth can enter into the heavenly Jerufalem. And therefore fin, confidered in its own nature, as exceeding finful, excludes from the prefence of God.

2. See what matter of humiliation, before God, we have we fhould ly down in our fhame, and our confufion cover us, crying out, Unclean, unclean; humbled to the duft... Alas! what an unreasonable thing is pride! To fee a proud finner is as ridiculous a thing, as to fee a man vain, with a contagious diftemper, boafting of bodily comeliness.

3. See hence the dreadful infatuation of the moft of the children of men, that are in love with fin, for as filthy as it is: yea, the doleful ftate of all men by nature. It is a vile state; a state of pollution: it is a flate of separation from God; a ftate of enmity to God, the chief good; and mad love to fin, the chief evil and pollution. Whence is it that the world are in love with dung and filth? Surely it proceeds from blindness of mind: men do not fee the evil of fin. It proceeds from unbelief, the power of unbelief; men do not credit the account given of it in the word. It proceeds alfo from the fair and pleasant varnish that the devil puts upon fin.

3. Hence fee the miferable condition of these who are under the total power of fin, and never had the pollution of it washed away: why, it renders you abominable in the fight of God, who is of purer eyes than to behold evil: abominable in the fight of all good men, "In whofe eyes a vile person is contemned," Pfal. xv. 4.: in the fight of good angels; they cannot but loath iniquity, being fuch fpotlefs and holy creatures: yea, abominable in your own eyes; if ever God open them, you will

loath

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