The folly of sinning, opened & applied, in two sermons, occasioned by the condemnation…The folly of sinning, opened & applyed, in two sermons, occasioned by the condemnation…

3. A Sinner has all the properties of ⟨p. 73⟩a Fool belonging to him: he that has all the properties of a Fool is one. That property which the Text before us speaks of is enough to prove the Sinner to be a Fool if there were nothing more. A Fool will laugh and make himself merry▪ with that which is matter of grief and sorrow. And do not Sinners do so, like mad Fools. Prov. 26.18. As a mad man who casteth fire brands, arrows, and death, so is the man that deceiveth his Neighbour and says, am not I in sport? A mad man will throw whatever comes next to hand, though it be a Fire brand, or a dart, or any thing else that shall cause death, and makes sport of it: If he wounds his Neighbour for which he ought to be grieved, that is • sport to him And thus it is with some mad Sinners: They will devise slanderous Lies of their Neighbour to the wounding of his reputation, and then say, they did but Jest. The good Companionship of rude Sinners, is (as one expresseth it) no better than Horse play: They will strike one another. When they are in their drink, and in their mad frolics, they will tell of one another's Secret sins, and so expose their Neighbour to reproach & shame: And this is their sport. Mad ⟨p. 74⟩People will sometimes when the frenzy takes them kill their own Relations, and (though they have cause to mourn for what they have done all their days) they rejoice in it. We are informed of a Tragical instance of this nature which happened in a place in Wales not five Months ago. A distracted man in a mad fit killed his Wife and all his four Children in one bloody morning, without any remorse for what he had done. Another sad instance there is in this Land is a neighbour Colony: A poor woman now in Prison, cut the throat of her own Son, at which she rejoiceth, imagining that she has notably imitated the Faith of Abraham in Sacrificing her Son A mad man will sometimes cut and wound his own body, and then Laugh at his own misery. And do not distracted Sinners do thus and worse than this? They gash and wound their own Souls by their Sins, and yet laugh at what they have done. It is impossible for a man to make himself Drunk, or Unclean, or to tell a known Lye, without making a wound in his Conscience, which he will be sensible of whenever he shall come to himself and see his undone Soul bleeding to death.