[b]Sin first enslaves—and then damns!
(Thomas Watson, "The Beatitudes" 1660)
"I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a
slave to sin." John 8:34
"You are of your father the Devil, and you want
to carry out your father's desires!" John 8:44
It is the sad misery of an unregenerate person,
that he is in a state of vassalage. He is under the
tyranny of sin. "It is the greatest slavery in the
world for a man to be a slave to his own passions!"
A wicked man is as much a slave—as he who works in
the galley! Look into his heart—and there are legions
of lusts ruling him! He must do what sin will have him
to do. A slave is at the service of a usurping tyrant. If
he bids him dig in the mine, or hew in the quarries, or
tug at the oar—he must do it. Thus every wicked man
must do what corrupt nature, inspired by the devil, bids
him to do. If sin bids him to be drunk, or to be unchaste
—he is at the command of sin, as the donkey is at the
command of the driver.
Sin first enslaves—and then damns!
"But now that you have been set free from sin and have
become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to
holiness, and the result is eternal life." Romans 6:22