SUMMARY OF FOURTH ADDITIONAL SERMON. ROMANS, CHAP. VI.-VERSE 21. PRELIMINARY observations on the pernicious nature of sin. I. Its fruitlessness is shown; 1. In the act; wherein men never find any real contentment, but rather shame, confusion, and destruction, &c.: this topic enlarged on. 2. In the short abode which its unsatisfactory pleasures make with us, the delights of sin having their end before we can well perceive their beginning. 3. It is shown that sin becomes pleasing not by its sweet taste, but by our own vicious and corrupted palate; &c. 4. Sin is fruitless, because it is so far from answering, that it always falls short of expectation. 5. The fruit of sin is shown to be bitter and unpleasant in raising strife and feuds in a man, between his flesh and his spirit for sin is opposed to reason; and whatever is opposed to reason, must be done with the reluctancy of conscience; and this force of conscience will ever wound the soul; &c. 6. Sin is shown to be fruitless, as being attended with pains that are greater than the pleasures which it brings these pains and mischiefs dilated on; and instances adduced. : Shame II. The shamefulness of sin. Definition of shame. shown to be the inseparable companion of sin. Application of what has been already said, as a dissuasive from sin. 394 SUMMARY OF FOURTH ADDITIONAL SERMON. III. The deadly nature of sin pointed out. 1. It is shown that sin naturally causes death: 2. that it morally causes death, as being against the law. The miseries that attend such a state are set out in the following reflections. 1. That it excludes us from God's favor, and makes us obnoxious to his wrath, &c. 2. That the miseries of such a state will be endless. 3. It will be a great aggravation of those miseries, that we incurred them for such vain and short-lived pleasures. The sorrow of a sinner will also be increased by the consideration that he brought it on himself, freely and without compulsion; nay, in despite of God's grace, &c. Concluding observations. 4. FOURTH ADDITIONAL SERMON. THE FRUITLESSNESS OF SIN. ROMANS, CHAP. VI.-VERSE 21. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof you are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. To act suitably to itself, as it is natural to every creature, so is it more commendable in a man, and best becomes his faculties; who having a power of determining himself to either side, then becomes the due subject of praise when he makes choice of that part, which of the two is most agreeable to his being, and by that most effective of his happiness. Now seeing those actions only can be good, which are the cause of real good to the agent, it will follow that sin is most repugnant to human nature, and always pernicious to the author: for its ugly deformities it is carefully to be shunned, as the most venomous and infective plague, by every one who pretends to reason, or believes he has a soul; especially if I can make it appear that it is fruitless and empty in the act; that it is shameful and full of disgrace in the effects, deadly and destructive in the end: all which things, as they are insinuated by the Apostle in this text, 'what fruit had ye then, &c.' so I shall endeavor to prove in the following heads. 1. That sin is fruitless in the act, because men never find therein any contentment: the only motives to action must either be the removal of a present evil wherewith we are oppressed, or the acquisition of some absent good, to render the measures of felicity and happiness, whereof we now partake completely perfect; but if sin neither procures the one nor removes the other; neither takes away our present maladies, nor gains for us new causes of happiness; and if the actions, whose effects be these, alone can satisfy us; besides, if it can be proved that sin is so far from diminishing, that it adds to our misery; and so far from increasing, that really it diminishes our happiness; you will easily grant me that it not only is fruitless, but shameful, and big with destruction. The cause of pleasure arises from the congruity that is between the being and its object; so that as often as the object bears no proportion or similitude to the essence of a man, so often it can neither satisfy his mind, nor delight and gratify his affections: but the soul of man, being an immaterial substance, requires its object to be such; and so its greatest glory must consist in a likeness and conformity to God, his Creator, and its most intense pleasure in a uniform and intire obedience to God's will; which will mount him into the regions above, and set him at God's right hand, where are pleasures for evermore. Wherefore, the man who, having debauched his understanding, seeks contentment amidst the follies of the world, the dalliances of sin, and the vanities of the flesh, is infinitely laborious in his quest after happiness and comfort, in those places where nothing but calamity and ruin are to be found : he runs into the jaws of death in pursuance of life; by a strange solecism, that he may blessed, he enters the mouth of hell and confusion, and hopes for those pleasures from an evil conversation, which proceed only from the conscience of things well done. Thus wicked men impose on themselves, and abuse their nature, whilst they call that which is bitter sweet, that which is sour and deadly pleasant and wholesome, and then greedily devour and swallow it down, as if it were really such : hereby the poor sinner is continually tortured with plenty or scarceness; for he will never give over to need, until he be satisfied; and he never will be satisfied, as long as there is so vast a disproportion between what he desires and his own nature; which is the reason why you see him always wishing for what he cannot have, or for the removal of what he cannot lose, or for the continuation of something which he cannot longer keep, or for some such alteration in his condition, which he in no wise is able to bring about: thus let every sense be satisfied with its proper, and so most pleasant objects; let his eyes have their full gaze on beauty and lovely colours; let his palate relish the most dainty meats and delicate sauces; let his ears be filled with exquisite sounds, and receive all the pleasures which arise from harmony and the various intertextures and combination of musical notes; let him be cloyed with the delights of smelling and touch; yet if a man's conscience labor under a deep sense of some sinful and mischievous villany, all these things are so far from being effective of solid joy, that they even nauseate and bring black discontent with them. Who would not have deemed that to have had the ear of his king, the smiles and knees of the subject, the greatest places and honors about the court, the power of humbling and of dashing into disrepute his competitors, to have had the whole affairs of the kingdom go through his hands, the intire disposal of his prince's favors and honors, with the concurrency of all the pleasures that riches, power, or reputation could yield, would have been enough to have glutted the craving desires of the great courtier Haman? And yet, please to take notice, how the want of a compliment and cringe from the vulgar and disrespected Mordecai, sullies and brings darkness over all his splendor, enfeebles and enervates his puissance and grandeur, cramps the dilated and nimble survey which he had in his fancy of his own greatness, sours all his pleasures, makes his head to hang down and his heart to ache, insomuch that at length (so intolerable be the consequences of sin) he chokes himself, by a device to hang this his mean enemy. Nay, Solomon, who was the most experienced for inquiry, the most wise for contrivance, the most rich for compassing these corporal and sensual pleasures, hath, after the trial of many years, wherein he racked nature, and tortured her very bowels to extract and squeeze out the most refined and pure delights which either the number or variety of her creatures could afford, at last affirmed of them, that they are vanity and vexation: like briars and thorns, sinful pleasures in their gathering prick and wound you; that is their vexation : and in their burning they forthwith consume and waste away; that is their vanity: so that they have no more proportion to real and lasting comfort, than he who personates a king on the |