The true Christians love of the unseen Christ, or, A discourse chiefly tending to…

2. If you would attain true Love unto Jesus Christ, you must get Conviction of Sin, and a sense of your Need of Christ. The prevailing love and liking of Sin is inconsistent with true love unto Jesus Christ; such as love Christ do hate Sin, and such as love sin have an Enmity against Christ: Whilst your hearts go after your Covetousness, or your Voluptuousness, or are set upon any other Wickedness, your hearts cannot be set upon Christ; Before you can love Christ, your hearts must be taken off from sin. Get therefore a conviction of Sin as the greatest Evil in the world. Be persuaded what an evil thing and a bitter it is, to transgress Gods Law, and thereby to affront the highest Majesty, the great King of Glory. ⟨p. 117⟩Look into the Word and Law of God, and see what is there required, what is there forbidden, and then look back upon your Lives, or look into the Register of your Consciences, that you may find out what your sins of Omission and Commission have been. Take a view of your transgressions of the Law, and of your disobedience also unto the Gospel; and as you are guilty before God, so labour for a clear sight and deep sense of your Guilt, how you are under the Curse for your Disobedience, how you are liable to ruin and eternal destruction for your sins. Look upon sin as the most mischievous thing in the world; if there be any evil in any temporal calamities which ever did befall any of the children of men, yea if there be any evil in future miseries, in the extremity and eternity of Hells Plagues and Punishments, be persuaded that there is far more evil in sin which is the cause of all. Think how miserable you are whilst under the Guilt and Reigning power of sin, that the Worm is not so vile, that the Toad is not so full of deadly Poison, that the filth of the Earth is not comparable unto the filth of your sins. Think how base and disingenuous you have been, how monstrously ingrateful to your Maker and Benefactor, what ⟨p. 118⟩Traitors and Rebels you have been to your Supreme King and Sovereign. Think what peril and danger continually you are in of Death and Hell, how weak the thread of Life is which ties Soul and Body together, which may be suddenly cut when you are least aware, when you are most secure; and then if you be found in a Christless state, your Souls will be conveyed immediately unto a place of remediless and eternal misery.

2. If you would attain true Love unto Jesus Christ, you must get Conviction of Sin, and a sense of your Need of Christ. The prevailing love and liking of Sin is inconsistent with true love unto Jesus Christ; such as love Christ do hate Sin, and such as love sin have an Enmity against Christ: Whilest your hearts goe after your Covetousness, or your Voluptuousness, or are set upon any other Wickednesse, your hearts cannot be set upon Christ; Before you can love Christ, your hearts must be taken off from sin. Get therefore a conviction of Sin as the greatest Evil in the world. Be perswaded what an evil thing and a bitter it is, to transgress Gods Law, and thereby to affront the highest Majesty, the great King of Glory.