Love to Christ, necessary to escape the curse at his coming

Oh then say, Be gone, O cursed Sin! be gone; I will banish thee out of my heart: for thou art not only contrary to the Nature of the blessed God, nor only contrary to Innocent Nature, but even also to my Humane Nature, though corrupted. Thou art not only opposite to a Principle of Grace implanted in the New Creature, but to the Principles which God in mercy hath left in my Corrupt Nature, that cursed Sin might be opposed, striven against, and for ever abandoned by me. I would be blessed, but thou wilt make me cursed; I would avoid the Curse, but thou wilt bring it upon me. If I cannot be a wilful Sinner, but I must be a cursed Creature, I would rather cease to be such a Sinner, than to remain for ever such a cursed Creature. If I cannot have the blessing of God, and my Sins too, I had better be without my own Sins, than be without God's Blessing.

IV. Men will be the most miserable, or the most happy of all the visible works of God. For amongst these, Man only is capable of proper Blessings, or proper Curses; for those only are capable of penal Evils, that are capable of moral Evils. Therefore when you read of other things being cursed, the Curse is not on them properly, terminatively and ultimately, that is on the Creature, in it self, for it self, or from ⟨p. 83⟩it self; but only improperly, and relatively, in respect to man, and so other things have been cursed in reference to man.

1. To show what man hath done. So Gen. 3.17. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it: Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. 18. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. The barrenness with which the Earth is cursed, in not bringing forth good Fruit, and its abounding with Briars and Thorns, are both as Rods for the scourging of sinful man. So also is that Catalogue of Curses in