14. Their sins are aggravated by all the reproofs and exhortations which they have used to others, to tell them how unreasonable and bad it is to provoke the Lord.
15. They sin under greater hopes of glory than others do; and provoke that God with whom they hope to live for ever.
16. The high titles of love and praise which God doth give them in his word, do aggravate their sin. That he should call them his treasure, his peculiar people, his jewels, and the apple of his eye, his sons and daughters, and a holy people, and priests to God, and boast of them as a people more excellent than their neighbours; and after this they should sin against him.
17. They have had audience with God, the answer of prayers, and many a deliverance and mercy in this life, which others have not; which aggravate their sins, as being thus contemned, and as obliging them more to God than others.
18. They dishonour God more than any others by their sins. His honour lieth not so much upon the actions of the ungodly, as on those that are nearest to him.
19. They harden the wicked more than such sins in other men would do. They cause them to blaspheme, and reproach the godly for their sakes, and say, These are your religious men! You see now what their strictness is. And they hinder the conversion and salvation of others: they grieve the godly, and wrong the church and cause of God, much more than the sins of others do.
20. Lastly, They please the devil more than the sins of other men. How busy is he to have drawn a Job to sin! and how would he have boasted against God, and his grace, and his servants, if he had prevailed, when he boasted so much before, in the false presumption of his success! as if he could make the godly forsake God, and be as bad as others, if he have leave to tempt them.
I shall next give you some particular directions, besides those foregoing, to help you to think of sin as it is, that you may hate it; for your cleansing and cure consist in this: so far as you hate sin it is mortified, and you are cured of it. And therefore, as I have anatomized it, that you may see the hatefulness of it, I shall direct you to improve this for your cure.
How to hate sin.