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My principal business is to charge men’s consciences with the evil of their sin and show to them how much evil there is in sin. All men are afraid of afflictions and troubled at affliction, but where’s the mean or woman that fears sin and flies from it as from a serpent, and is troubled at sin more than any affliction? That there is more vile in sin than in affliction, in general, (I suppose), is granted by all. None dare deny it; but because they do not see how this is, they do not have convincing arguments to bring this truth to their souls with power. But I hope, before I have done with this point, that I shall make it clear to everyone’s conscience. There is more evil in sin than in outward trouble in the world; more evil in sin than in all the miseries and torments of hell itself.
Suppose that God should bring any of you to the brink of that bottomless gulf and open it to you, and there you should see those damned creatures sweltering under the wrath of the infinite God, and there you should hear the dreadful and hideous cries and shrieks of those who are under such soul-amazing and soul-sinking torments through the wrath of the Almighty. Yet, I say, there is more evil in one sinful thought than there is in all these everlasting burnings, and that is what I shall endeavour to clear and prove to every mans’ conscience, that we shall not only see it as an ill choice to choose sin rather than affliction, but, (if it comes in competition) to choose sin rather than all the tortures and torments of hell, however many of you give in to sin upon very easy terms. Yet, the truth is, that if it should come into competition whether we would endure all the torments that there are in hell to all eternity rather than to commit one sin, I say, if our spirits were as they should be, we would rather be willing to endure all these torments than commit the least sin.
And brethren, do not think this is a high strain, for I who come and speak in the name of God, do not come to speak hyperbolically, to raise expressions higher than these things are in reality. No, I do not come for that end, and I should take the name of God in vain if I should do so. [Jeremiah Burroughs—Evil of Evils]
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