The application of redemption

If then we see sin clearly, naked, and in it's own Nature,§1 namely, this resistance and opposition against God as the greatest evil of all other: It will thus be discerned, This sight will keep the heart in cold blood from careless adventuring upon the commission of sin. You must still remember my purpose is not to dispute of sanctifying knowledge, or to give in evidence of that, for we are in this place to look at that light that is let in in this preparative work, and this first Branch of it, which how far it may go, or whether it can agree to an Hypocrite, I will not now dispute, that only I will infer from it, is beyond exception; That in cold blood, i. e. Take such a man out of the hurry of a Temptation, when he is himself not drunk with some overbearing distemper, for then he knows not where he is, or what he doth, and therefore may adventure to do any thing, but when a sinner is come to himself, and the sight of his sin as before disputed, it will suffer him carelessly to adventure upon the Commission of that which appears such in his own apprehension, even the greatest evil of all. The dreadfulness then of this duty apprehended, will drive the soul to a stand, and stop the sinner in his proceeding, that he dare as well eat his ⟨p. 103⟩flesh, and take a Lyon by the claw, and a Bear by the tooth, as to have his hand in that which is the heaviest plague of all in his own Judgment. There is no man living, but as he hath something which he prizeth as the chief good, in which his soul takes content, so the loss of that, or that which is contrary to that, he looks at as the most unsupportable evil that can betide him. That the Soldier should take the lye or challenge, and have the contempt of cowardice put upon him, and sit still, and not seek to revenge the wrong as he conceives it, he cannot bear it. That the […] young man should sell his possessions, and part with all to the poor, it is such an unsufferable loss, he will rather part with Heaven, the very hearing of it makes his heart heavy, and himself to go away sorrowful, Mat. 19. 22. Yea, that which Nature hath made dear to all, to see death before a man, and danger such as will undoubtedly hazard the loss of life; how do we fear the thought of it fly the sight, avoid the occasion of it? didst thou see thy sins and the hellish resistance of thy heart against God to be a greater evil than all these?