you touch but his estate; if you beat him, it reacheth but to his flesh; but the passion and guilt is a fire in your own hearts; and the wrath of God which you procure, doth fall upon your souls for ever! I have heard but of a few that have said openly, I am contented to be damned, so I may but be avenged; but many thousands speak it by their deeds. And oh how just is their damnation, who will run into hell that they may hurt another! Even as I have heard of some passionate wives and children, who have hanged themselves, or cut their throats, to be revenged on their husbands or parents by grieving them. _Consid._ XI. Remember that malice and hurtfulness are the special sins and image of the devil. All sin is from him as the tempter; but some sins are so eminently his own, that they may be called the nature and image of the devil; and those are principally, rebellion against God, malignity or enmity to good, pride or self-exaltation, lying and calumny, and malice, hurtfulness, and murder; these are above the sins of mere sensuality or carnality, and most properly denominate men (in whom they prevail) the serpent's seed. I speak but as Christ himself hath spoken, John viii. 44, to those that were esteemed the wisest and most (ceremoniously) religious of those times: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." And what pity is it that a man that should bear the image of God, should be transformed as it were into an incarnate devil, by being like to Satan, and bearing his image!