Section 2

SECT. II.

THE second Evil in their Nature,¹ is, ^*That they are heart-sins, Psal. 5.9. There is no faithfulness in their mouths, their inward part is very wickedness. As wounds in the inwards are most dangerous, because hard to come at and cure. Hence it is far easier to cure a swearer of swearing, than a roving heart of its distractions. And as these sins are more dangerous, so are they very displeasing. The heart is God's-Acre, the enclosure he keeps for his own walk and delight. He hath said, Prov. 23.26. My Son, give me thy heart. Now ⟨p. 148⟩to injure him of his peculiar, to lay the filthy excrements of our sinful distractions under his most blessed nostrils (to speak with most deep reverence and grief) to thrust him out of his Mansion-house on Earth, the heart; this is no small injury, affront, and unkindness. And such a backslider in heart, shall be filled with his own ways, if he fill not the sacred bottles with his tears. And they are ^*more heavy to the conscience, in that they meet with no shame or trouble without, which is the ordinary lot of other sins, but are begun and perfected in the heart within; and their guilt is more, because their shame is less. And they do thereupon leave (as such other sins do) a deeper sting of remorse, and horror of conscience, when the conscience is weak. There is much evil in these, Ezek. 6.9. I am broken with their whorish HEART, which hath departed from me.

THE second Evil in their Nature,¹