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SERMON X.

Of the deceitfulness and danger of fin.

HE B. iii. 13.

Exhort one another daily while it is called, To-day; left any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of fin.

A

Mong the many confiderations which the word of God and our own reafon offer to us, to dif courage us from fin, this is none of the least confiderable, that he that once engages in a vitious courfe, is in danger to proceed in it, being infenfibly trained on from one degree of wickedness to another; fo that the farther he advances, his retreat grows the more difficult; because he is ftill pufhed on with a greater violence. All error as well of practice as of judgment, is endless; and when a man is once out of the way, the farther he fhall go on, the harder he will find it to return into the right way. Therefore there is great reason why men fhould be fo often cautioned against the beginnings of fin; or if they have been fo unhappy as to be engaged in a bad courfe, why they fhould be warned to break it off prefently, and without delay; left by degrees they be hardened in their wickedness, till their cafe grow defperate, and past remedy. And to this purpose is the Apofle's advice here in the text: Exhort one another daily while it is called, To-day; left any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of fin.

From which words I fhall,

1. Endeavour to reprefent to you the growing dan ger of fin, and by what steps and degrees bad habits do infenfibly gain upon men, and harden them in an evil courfe.

2. I fhall, from this confideration, take occafion to fhew what great reason and need there is to warn men of this danger, and to endeavour to rescue them out of it. And then,

3. I fhall apply myself to the duty here in the text, of exhorting men with all earnestness and importunity to refift the beginnings of fin; or, if they be already entered upon a wicked courfe, to make hafte out of this dangerous ftate; left any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of fin.

First, I fhall endeavour to reprefent to you the growing danger of fin, and by what steps and degrees bad habits do infenfibly gain upon men, and harden them in an evil course. All the actions of men which are not natural, but proceed from deliberation and choice, have fomething of difficulty in them when we begin to praetife them, because at first we are rude and unexercised in that way; but after we have practifed them a while, they become more eafy; and when they are easy, we begin to take pleasure in them; and when they please us, we do them frequently, and think we cannot repeat them too often; and by frequency of acts a thing grows into a habit; and a confirmed habit is a fecond kind of nature; and fo far as any thing is natural, fo far it is neceffary, and we can hardly do otherwife; nay, we do it. many times when we do not think of it. For, by virtue of a habit, a man's mind or body becomes pliable and inclined to fuch kind of actions as it is accuItomed to, and does as it were stand bent and charged fuch a way; fo that, being touched and awakened by the leaft occafion, it breaks forth into fuch or fuch actions. And this is the natural progress of all habits indifferently confidered, whether they be good or bad.

But vitious habits have a greater advantage, and are of a quicker growth. For the corrupt nature of man is a rank foil, to which vice takes easily, and wherein it thrives apace. The mind of man hath need to be prepared for picty and virtue; it must be cultivated to that end, and ordered with great care and pains. But vices are weeds that grow wild, and fpring up of themfelves. They are in fome fort natural to the foil, and therefore they need not to be planted and watered; it is fufficient, if they be neglected and let alone. So that vice having this advantage from our nature, it is no wonder, if occafion and temptation eafily draw it forth.

But

Ser. 10. But that we may take a more distinct account of the progrefs of fin, and by what steps vice gains upon men, I fhall mark out to you fome of the chief and more obfervable gradations of it.

1. Men begin with leffer fins. No man is perfectly wicked on the fudden. Sunt quædam vitiorum elementa, Juven." There are certain rudiments of vice," in which men are first entered; and then they proceed by degrees to greater and fouler crimes: for fin hath its infancy and tender age, and its feveral ftates of growth. Men are not fo totally degenerate, but at firft they are afhamed when they venture upon a known fin, though it be but small in comparifon. Hence it is, that at firft men are very folicitous to palliate and hide their faults by excuses; but, after they have frequently committed them, and they grow too vifible to be concealed, then they will attempt to defend and maintain them; and from thence they come by degrees to take pleasure in them, and in those that do the fame things.

2. After men have been fome time initiated in thefe leffer fins, by the commiffion of thefe they are prepared and difpofed for greater; fuch as lay wafte the confcience, and offer more violence to the light and reason of their minds. By degrees a finner may grow to be fo hardy as to attempt thofe crimes, which at first he could not have had the thought of committing without horror: like Hazael, who when he was told by the prophet Elifha, what barbarous cruelties he fhould one day be guilty of towards the people of Ifrael when he fhould come to be King of Syria, he abominated the very thought and mention of them: Is thy fervant a dog, that he fhould do this great thing? and yet, for all this, we know he did it afterwards. It is true indeed, when a finner is firft tempted to the commiffion of a more grofs and notorious fin, his confcience is apt to boggle and start at it; he doth it with great difficulty and regret ; the terrors of his own mind, and the fears of damnation, are very troublesome to him: but this trouble wears off by degrees; and that which was at first difficult, does by frequent practice and long cuftom become tolerable.

3. When a man hath proceeded thus far, he begins to put off shame, one of the greatest restraints from fin

which God hath laid upon human nature.

And when

this curb once falls off, there is then but little left to reftrain and hold us in. At first fetting out upon a vitious courfe, men are a little nice and delicate; like young travellers, who at first are offended at every fpeck of dirt that lights upon them; but after they have been accuftomed to it, and have travelled a good while in foul ways, it ceaseth to be troublefome to them to be dashed and befpattered.

:

4. After this it is poffible men may come to approve their vices for if mens judgments do not command their wills, and restrain their lufts, it is great odds, in procefs of time the vitious inclinations of their wills will put a falfe bias upon their judgments; and then it is no wonder if men come to boaft of their fins, and to glory in their vices, when they are half perfuaded that they are generous and commendable qualities. Thus much is certain in experience, that fome men have gotten fo perfect a habit of fome fins, as not to know and take notice many times when they commit them: as in the cafe of fwearing; which fome men have fo accu-, ftomed themselves to, that, without any confideration, they do of course put an oath or two into every fentence that comes from them. And it hath been obfer ved of fome perfons, that they have told an untruth fo often, and averred it with so much confidence, till at laft, forgetting that it was a lie at first, they themselves have in procefs of time believed it to be true.

5. From this pitch of wickedness, men commonly proceed to draw in others, and to make profelytes to their vices. Now, this fignifies not only a great approbation of fin, but even a fondness for it, when men are not content to fin upon their own fingle accounts, but they muft turn zcálous agents and factors for the devil; become teachers of fin and minifters of unrighteousness, and are factioufly concerned to propagate, together with their Atheistical principles, their lewd practices, and to draw followers and difciples after them.

And when they are arrrived to this height, it is natural for them to hate reproof, and to refift the means of their recovery; to quarrel against all the remedies

that,

that fhall be offered to them, and to count those their greatest enemies, who have fo much courage and kindnefs as to deal plainly with them, and to tell them the truth. And then all the wife counfels of God's word, and the most gentle and prudent admonitions in the world, when they are tendered to fuch perfons, ferve only to provoke their fcorn or their paffion. And furely that man is in a fad case that is fo difpofed, that, in all probability, he will turn the most effectual means of his amendment into the occafion of new and greater fins.

But that which renders the condition of fuch perfons much more fad and deplorable, is, that all this while God is withdrawing his grace from them; for every degree of fin caufeth the Holy Spirit of God, with all his bleffed motions and affiftances, to retire farther from them and not only fo, but the devil, that evil fpirit, which the fcripture tells us works effectually in the children of difobedience, does, according as men improve in wickedness, get a greater and a more established dominion over them. For as they who are reclaimed from an evil courfe, are faid, in fcripture, to be rescued out of the fnare of the devil, and to be turned from the power of Satan unto God; fo, on the other hand, the farther men advance in the ways of fin, fo much the farther they depart from God, from under the influence of his grace, and the care of his protection and providence; and they give the devil, who is not apt to neglect his advantages upon them, greater opportunities every day to gain the firmer poffeffion of them.

And thus, by paffing from one degree of fin to another, the finner becomes hardened in his wickedness, and does infenfibly flide into that, in which, without a miraculous grace of God, he is like for ever to continue. For the mind of man, after it hath been long accustomed to evil, and is once grown old in vice, is almost as hard to be rectified, as it is to recover a body bowed down with age to its first straightness. The fcripture fpeaks of fome that commit fin with greediness, and that drink up iniquity as the ox drinketh up water; with a mighty appetite and thirst, as if they were not able to refrain from it: and, to express to us the miserable condition of such persons, it representeth them as perfect flaves to