An exposition with practical observations continued upon the thirty-fifth, thirty-sixth, and thirty-seventh chapters of…

First, Because sin is worse than all affliction. Secondly, Because sin is the Sting of all affliction. If you are in an afflicted condition, and your consciences tell you you have been base, vile, complying with the World, and dissembling or false-hearted with God; if your hearts tell you, you have been rotten at the heart, this will be the sting of your afflictions. What is the sting of death? The Apostle answers (1 Cor. 15.56.) The sting of death is sin. Would a man choose a sting? Surely you choose a sting when you choose sin, and that which will afflict you beyond all your afflictions.

First, Because sin is worse than all affliction. Secondly, Because sin is the Sting of all affl•ction. If you are in an afflicted condition, and your consciences tell you you have been base, vile, complying with the VVorld, and dissembling or false-hearted with God; if your hearts tell you, you have been rotten at the heart, this will be the sting of your afflictions. What is the sting of death? The Apostle answers (1 Cor. 15.56.) The sting of death is sin. Would a man chuse a sting? Surely you chuse a sting when you chuse sin, and that which will afflict you beyond all your afflictions.

Thirdly, Sin is worse than affliction, for when God would declare his severest wrath, and bring the greatest affliction upon the children of men, when he resolves to afflict a person or a people to the utmost, he doth not say, I will make this man a poor man, or I will send plague, or sickness, or famine among this people, ⟨p. 331⟩but he saith, I will deliver him or them up into the hands of their sins, or to the power of their lusts. (Psal. 81.11.) Israel would none of me (saith the Lord) they were coy, they had other lovers, they would have the world, they chose sin, rather than God, and to go a whoring after the creature, rather than keep close to him. What then? So I gave them up to their own hearts lusts. As if the Lord had said, Pray take your course, you that love your own inventions, take your fill of them, you that love and would have the vanities of the world, take your fill of them. The Lord doth not threaten them with famine and pestilence, no nor with hell, but he threatens them with sin, and leaves them to the power of iniquity. Thus he gave up the old Gentile Romans to vile affections, (