Puritan Nuggets of Gold # 82

Sin (continued)

We can never sin but there will be two witnesses present to observe and register it, our own selves and God Himself. (Ralph Venning)

Go down into your hearts and take the keys of them and ransack your private cupboards, and narrowly observe what junkets your souls have hitherto lived upon, and gone behind the door and there secretly and stoutly made a meal of them. As dogs have bones they hide and secretly seal forth to gnaw upon, so men have sins they hide under their tongues as sweet bits. (Thomas Goodwin)

Many being reproved, answer, Alas! you must bear with me in this, it is my fault; as if every man were allowed his own fault. There is a private Sodom within us; we are loth to part with that. Men say of their sins as Jacob said of his sons, "Go, all but Benjamin." Other vices we will not so much stick for but, "Oh, that Ishmael might live!" There is still some worm in the root of the tree that will spoil the fruit. We extenuate it; is it not a little one? But a little hair makes a great blot in the paper. (Thomas Adams)

Some think themselves improved in piety, because they have left prodigality and reel into covetousness. (Thomas Fuller)

First we practice sin, then, defend it, then boast of it. (Thomas Manton)

Sins are like circles in the water when a stone is thrown into it; one produces another. When anger was in Cain's heart, murder was not far off. (Philip Henry)

It is satan's custom by small sins to draw us to greater, as the little sticks set the great ones on fire, and a wisp of straw kindles a block of wood. (Thomas Manton)

There be three degrees, as it were so many ages, in sin. First - secret sin; an ulcer lying in the bones, but skinned over with hypocrisy. Secondly- open sin, bursting forth into manifest villainy. The former is corruption, the second is eruption. One sin is a step to another more heinous; for not observing, is followed with not remembering - and forgetfulness of duty draweth on disobedience and rebellion. Thirdly - frequented and confirmed sin, and that is rank poison, envenoming soul and body. (David Dickson)

Sin has degraded man and made him a beast. It is true, he has the shape of a man, but, alas! he is degenerated into a bestial and beastly nature. It wold be better to be a beast than to be like a beast, living and dying like one. It would be better to be Balaam's ass than such an ass as Balaam himself was. But to set this degeneration and degradation of man by sin before you more clearly and fully, I shall deal with it under three headings: Sin has made man (a) like a beast, (b) like the worst of beasts, (c) worse than the beasts. (Ralph Venning)

O miserable man, what a deformed monster has sin made you! God made you "little lower than the angels"; sin has made you little better than the devils. (Joseph Alleine)

Sin never ruins but where it reigns. (William Secker)