A supplement to the several discourses upon various divine subjects

2. On our parts. 'Tis useful to us;

1. To make us abhor our first defection and sin. 'Twas great, and is not duly considered by us.^* This sin of Adam is the worst that ever was committed in the world; Extensively, though not Intensively, worse than the sin of Judas, or the sin against the holy Ghost. In respect that those are but the effects of it, and branches of that corrupt root. Also because those sins hurt only the persons sinning, but this drew down destruction upon the whole world, and drove thousands into everlasting Fire and Brimstone. 'Tis not fit that this which was the murder of all Mankind, the disorder of the Creation, the disturbing of God's rest in the works of his Hands, should be past over without a scar left upon us to make us sensible of the greatness of the evil. Though the wounds be great upon our Souls, yet they do not so much affect us as those strokes upon our Bodies. This certainly was one main end of God in this; to what purpose else did he (after the promise of restoration, and giving our first parents the comfort of hearing the head of their great seducer threatened to be bruised by the Seed of the Woman) order this punishment, but to put them in mind of the cause of it, and stir up a standing abhorrency of it in all ages of the world? Had not this been his intent, he would never have ushered it in by a promise, but ipso facto, have showered down a destroying judgment upon the world, as he did upon Sodom, without any comfortable word preceding. God inflicts those punishments both to show his own, and excite our detestation of this sin: He binds us in those fetters to show us our work and our transgression, wherein we have exceeded, Job 36.8, 9.

1. To make us abhor our first defection and sin. 'Twas great, and is not duly considered by us.^* This sin of Adam is the worst that ever was committed in the world; Extensively, though not Intensively, worse than the sin of Judas, or the sin against the holy Ghost. In respect that those are but the effects of it, and branches of that corrupt root. Also because those sins hurt only the persons sinning, but this drew down destruction upon the whole world, and drove thousands into everlasting Fire and Brimstone. 'Tis not fit that this which was the murder of all Mankind, the disorder of the Creation, the disturbing of God's rest in the works of his Hands, should be past over without a scar left upon us to make us sensible of the greatness of the evil. Though the wounds be great upon our Souls, yet they do not so much affect us as those strokes upon our Bodies. This certainly was one main end of God in this; to what purpose else did he (after the promise of restauration, and giving our first parents the comfort of hearing the head of their great seducer threatned to be bruised by the Seed of the Woman) order this punishment, but to put them in mind of the cause of it, and stir up a standing abhorrency of it in all ages of the world? Had not this been his intent, he would never have usher'd it in by a promise, but ipso facto, have showered down a destroying judgment upon the world, as he did upon Sodom, without any comfortable word preceding. God inflicts those punishments both to shew his own, and excite our detestation of this sin: He binds us in those fetters to shew us our work and our transgression, wherein we have exceeded,