Precious faith considered in its nature, working, and growth

Thirdly, Faith discovers the great evil of Original Sin, and so raises up an hatred against it, and hatred is a murderer, and would, if it ⟨p. 264⟩could, annihilate its opposite; Faith shows it to be an All-evil, a Mother of abominations. Some particular Sins are such monsters in Morality, that when viewed only in the light of Nature, they appear very odious; such was the cruelty of Nero, Effeminacy of Sardanapalus, and the like; much more odious, when inspected by the light of Faith, must that appear which is All-sin in one, a [Greek or Hebrew], or universal Seminary of iniquity. Anthony holding Caesars bloody Coat up to the People, moved them against the Conspirators; Faith holding up the Murders, Adulteries, Blasphemies, Villainies in the World, unto the Believers eyes, stirs his Heart against the venomous root of all these. Faith shows it to be an universal evil, all over the Soul, breaking forth like the boils of Egypt, upon man and upon beast, upon the intellective and sensitive faculties, and all over the Believers duties; lying as the locusts there upon every herb and green thing, upon the verdure and glory of every good work; it is a blemish in the Believers eye, a plague in his Heart, an ataxy in his Affections, a damp on his Prayers, a cooler to his Charity and Zeal, and a dead fly in all the precious Ointment of his duties and good works. Faith shows it to be an utter enemy to God, Antichrist-like, opposing every appearance of him in the Heart, quenching every good motion, trampling on every holy beam, slighting at the two great periods of Mankind, Heaven and Hell; and jeering at that holiness and iniquity which lead ⟨p. 265⟩thither: Faith shows it to be an evil always present; the Believer shakes himself, and it adheres; flies, and it encompasses; mortifies, and it lives; prays, weeps, sweats, and fights, and yet the Canaanite is in the land; like a living man chained to a dead, he carries about his own loathsomeness, a body of death all his days; this cleaves to him as the blackness to the Ethiopian, and as the fretting spreading Leprosy to the house; after all his washing and scraping of himself, it will yet be in him, till death dissolve him into dust: Such representations as these made by Faith, fill the Believer with shame and self-abhorrency, and raise up in him an irreconcilable hatred against it.

Thirdly, Faith discovers the great evil of Original Sin, and so raises up an hatred against it, and hatred is a murderer, and would, if it