long enough to give you your heart's fill of it. (2.) What pleasure is there here, but what flows from our trampling upon the holy law? Which of your senses doth swearing and cursing gratify? If it gratify your ears, it can only be by the noise it makes against the heavens. Though you had a mind to give up your selves to all manner of profanity and sensuality, there is so little pleasure can be strained out of these sins, that we must needs conclude, your love to them in this case, is a love to them for themselves; a devilish unhired love, without any prospect of profit or pleasure from them otherwise. If any shall say, These are monsters of men: be it so; yet alas! the world is fruitful of such monsters; they are to be found almost every where. And allow me to say, they must be admitted as the mouth of the whole unregenerate world against heaven, Rom. iii. 14. "Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness," ver. 19. "Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God."

I have a charge against every unregenerate man and woman, young or old, to be verified by the testimonies of the scriptures of truth, and the testimony of their own consciences; namely, that whether they be professors or profane, whether they be, seeing they are not born again, they are heart enemies to God, to the Son of God, to the Spirit of God, and to the law of God. Hear this, ye careless souls, that live at ease in your natural state.

First, Ye are enemies to God in your mind, Col. i. 21. Ye are not as yet reconciled to him; the natu ral enmity is not as yet slain, though perhaps it lies hid, and ye do not perceive it. (1.) Ye are enemies to the very being of God, Psal. xiv. 1. "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." The proud man would that none were above himself; the rebel, that there were no king; and the unrenewed man, who is a mass of pride and rebellion, that there were no God. He saith it in his heart, he wisheth it were

so, though he be ashamed and afraid to speak it out. And that all natural men are such fools appears from the apostle's quoting a part of this Psalm, "That every mouth may be stopped." Rom. iii. 10, 11, 12, 19. I own indeed, that while the natural man looks on God as the Creator and Preserver of the world; because, he loves his own self, therefore his heart riseth not against the being of his Benefactor: but his enmity will quickly appear, when he looks on God as the Ruler and Judge of the world, binding him, under the pain of the curse, to exact holiness, and girding him with the cords of death, because of his sin. Listen, in this case, to the voice of the heart, and thou wilt find it to be, No God. (2.) Ye are enemies to the nature of God, Job xxi. 14. "They say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways." Men set up to themselves an idol of their own fancy, instead of God; and then fall down and worship it. They love him no other way, than Jacob loved Leah, while he took her for Rachel. Every natural man is an enemy to God, as he is revealed in his word. An infinitely holy, just, powerful, and true Being, is not the God whom he loves, but the God whom he loaths. In effect, men naturally are haters of God, Rom. i. 30. they could, they certainly would make him another than what he is. For, consider it is a certain truth, that whatsoever is in God, is God; and therefore his attributes or perfections are not any thing really distinct from himself. If God's attributes be not God himself, he is a compound being, and so not the first being (which to say is blasphemous); for the parts compounding are before the compound itself; but he is Alpha and Omega, the first and the last.

And if

Now upon this, I would, for your conviction, propose to your consciences a few queries. (1) How stand your hearts affected to the infinite purity and holiness of God? Conscience will give an answer to this, which the tongue will not speak out. If ye be not partakers of his holiness, ye cannot be reconciled The pagans, finding they could not be like

God in holiness, make their gods like themselves in filthiness; and thereby discovered what sort of a God the natural man would have. God is holy; can an unholy creature love his unspotted holiness? Nay, it is the righteous only, that can give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness, Psal. xcvii. 12. God is light; can creatures of darkness rejoice therein ? Nay, every one that doeth evil, hateth the light," John iii. 20. For "what communion hath light with darkness ?" 2 Cor. vi. 14. (2.) How stand your hearts affected to the justice of God? There is not a man, who is wedded to his lusts, as all the unregenerate are, but would be content with the blood of his body, to blot that letter out of the name of God. Can the malefactor love his condemning judge? or an unjustified sinner, a just God? No, he cannot, Luke vii. 47. "To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." Hence, seeing men cannot get the doctrine of his justice blotted out of the Bible, yet it is such an eye-sore to them, that they strive to blot it out of their minds. And they ruin themselves by presuming on his mercy; while they are not careful to get a righteousness, wherein they may stand before his justice; but "say in their heart, The Lord will not do good, neither will he do evil," Zeph. i. 12. (3.) How stand ye affected to the omniscience and omnipresence of God? Men naturally would rather have a blind idol, than an all-seeing God, and therefore do what they can, as Adam did, to hide themselves from the presence of the Lord. They no more love an all-seeing, every-where-present God, than the thief loves to have the judge witness to his evil deeds. If it could be carried by votes, God would be voted out of the world, and closed up in heaven: for the language of the carnal heart is, "The Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth," Ezek. viii. 12. (4.) How stand ye affected to the truth and veracity of God? There are but few in the world that can heartily subscribe to that sentence of the apostle, Rom. iii. 4. " Let God be true, but every man a liar." Nay, truly, there are many, who, in effect. do hope that God will

not be true to his word. There are thousands who hear the gospel that hope to be saved, and think all safe with them for eternity, who never had any experience of the new birth, nor do at all concern themselves in that question, Whether they are born again, or not? a question that is like to wear out from among us this day. Our Lord's words are plain and peremptory," Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." What are such hopes then, but real hopes that God (with profoundest reverence be it spoken) will recall his word, and that Christ will prove a false prophet? What else means the sinner, who, "when he heareth the words of the curse, blesseth himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart," Dent. xxix. 19. Lastly, How stand ye affected to the power of God? None but new creatures will love him for it, on a fair view thereof; though others may slavishly fear him, upon the account of it. There is not a natural man but would contribute, to the utmost of his power, to the building of another tower of Babel, to hem it in. On these grounds, I declare every unrenewed man an enemy to God.

ed

Secondly, Ye are enemies to the Son of God. That enmity to Christ is in your hearts, which would have made you join the husbandmen, who killed the heir, and cast him out of the vineyard, if ye had been beset with their temptations, and no more restrained than they were. Am I a dog, you will say, to have so treatmy sweet Saviour? So did Hazael in another case; but when he had the temptation, he was a dog to do it. Many call Christ their sweet Saviour, whose consciences can hear witness, they never sucked as much sweetness from him as from their sweet lusts, which are ten times. sweeter to them than their Saviour. He is no other way sweet to them, than as they abuse his death and sufferings, for the peaceable enjoyment of their lusts; that they may live as they list in the world; and when they die, may be kept out of hell. Alas! it is but a mistaken Christ that is sweet to you, whose souls loathe that Christ who is the "brightness of the Father's glory,

and the express image of his person." It is with you as it was with the carnal Jews who delighted in him; while they mistook his errand into the world, fancying that he would be a temporal deliverer to them, Mal. iii. 1. But when he was come, and "sat as a refiner and purifier of silver," ver. 2, 3, and cast them as reprobate silver, who thought to have had no small ho nour in the kingdom of the Messiah; his doctrine galled their consciences, and they rested not till they had imbrued their hands in his blood. To open your eyes in this point, which ye are so loth to believe, I will lay before you the enmity of your hearts against Christ in all his offices.

First, Every unregenerate man is an enemy to Christ in his prophetical office. He is appointed of the Father the great Prophet and Teacher; but not upon the world's call, who, in their natural state, would have unanimously voted against him: and therefore, when he came, he was condemned as a seducer and blaspheFor evidence of this enmity, I shall instance in

mer.

two things.

Evidence 1. Consider the entertainment he meets with when he comes to teach souls inwardly by his Spirit. Men do what they can to stop their ears, like the deaf adder; that they may not hear his voice. They always resist the Holy Ghost. They desire not the knowledge of his ways; and therefore bid him depart from them. The old calumny is often raised upon him on that occasion, John x. 20. "He is mad, why hear ye him?" Soul-exercise, raised by the spirit of bondage, is accounted by many nothing else but distraction, and melancholy fits; men thus blaspheming the Lord's work, because they themselves are beside themselves, and cannot judge of those matters.

Evid. 2. Consider the entertainment he meets with, when he comes to teach men outwardly by his word.

1. His written word, the Bible, is slighted: Christ hath left it to us, as the book of our instructions, to show us what way we must steer our course, if we would come to Immanuel's land. It is a lamp to light us through a dark world to eternal light; and he hath