Let us review the dealings of God with good men.

1. I may observe, in the first place, that if our backslidings consist in a neglect of secret devotion, God will usually punish them by withholding his blessing from all other means of grace. It is often the case, I believe, that backslidings originate in a neglect of private duties. It is rarely known, I believe, that persons fall into foul misconduct at once; there is generally a gradual progress in this business: first, the heart begins a little to be alienated, the thoughts turn and fix upon worldly objects, delight in conversing with God ceases, the closet ceases to be a privilege and resort in the hour of distress, it becomes rather a dreaded place—a place that we begin to shun, or, if we frequent it, we are driven there rather by the reproaches of conscience than by the desires of the heart. When closet duty is thus neglected, and we cultivate scarcely any other religion than that which is before the eyes of men, God will then cause this sin to become its own punishment; that is, we shall lose by it, we shall be destitute of the pleasures of religion. A great and good man used to say, “A little religion is just enough to make a man miserable, a good deal will make him happy.” A little religion is just enough to keep conscience uneasy, just enough to disturb and imbitter all those pleasures which others indulge in without remorse, just enough to make you hang your head like a bulrush; now this is the punishment that attends a neglect of a closet walk with God. It is in this way that God causes our wickedness to correct us, and our backsliding to reprove us. We go lean from day to day, and that not only in the want of closet enjoyment, but, if we neglect dealing with God in secret, we shall not enjoy much from our public engagements: if a man only frequent public worship, but not his closet, God will withdraw his blessing from that public worship; you may sit and hear the Saviour presented, but you shall not be profited. You may go, but your heart may not be there, and you may find no profit; you may impute it to this or to that; you may say it is owing to the preacher, or this, or the other, but say what you will you shall not profit, you shall not enjoy God, you shall not enjoy the pleasures of religion while you live in the neglect of close converse with God in secret; for it is thus that thy wickedness shall correct—that thy backslidings shall reprove.

2. If our backslidings have consisted in the indulgence of secret sin of a positive kind, then we may expect that God will punish it by causing that that sin shall not long be kept secret. God in his providence frequently so orders it that he who can allow himself to sin in secret will not be able long to keep it secret; it shall be exposed in the eyes of the world: him that honoureth God he will honour, but he that despiseth him shall be lightly esteemed. If you care nothing about God’s honour, or so little about it as to violate his will in secret, God will care but little about your honour. If you care only about your own reputation, and watch no part of your conduct but that which falls under the eye of man, God will presently so order it that you shall not preserve your reputation. David had sinned in this manner, and God punished him by making his sins public: “Thou hast done this thing in secret, but I will expose thee before the sun.” It is a very dangerous thing to play with secret sin, to indulge in abominations when we are behind the scene and away from the eyes of mortals: be sure of this, that God will find you out; his providence will bring secret sins to light; and that which was done in secret he will manifest upon the house-tops; and it is thus that thy backslidings will particularly look thee in the face and reprove thee. Iniquity of every species is a something that it is next to impossible always to hide. A man that falls into guilt feels greatly degraded; his conscience tells him, I am guilty, I am degraded, and every one that meets me will slay me, every one that meets me knows it. Oh, it is a difficult thing to hide what is within! God thus will surely bring it out, and thus cause our iniquities to reprove us. The slander of the tongue is a method the Divine Being sometimes uses, and we may remark in some of his dispensations that he will permit reproach to be poured upon us, and that beyond the degree of our desert. We find that David was reproached with being a bloody man: this was not true in the sense that Shimei meant, viz. that he had been a bloody man to the house of Saul; it was the language of reproach; but then it was true in a sense in which Shimei did not feel it—he had been a bloody man in the affair of Uriah; this was it that cut David to the very soul. “Go on, thou bloody man,” says Shimei.—Abishai said unto the king, “Let me take off his head; why should this dead dog reproach my lord the king?” No, says David, let him alone, God said, Curse David: it is the message of God—what he says is a lie in the sense in which he meant it, but it is true in another sense—I am a bloody man; God has thus permitted the very enemy to reproach me. It is thus that God caused David’s wickedness to correct him, and his backslidings to reprove him.

3. If our backslidings consist in idolizing created good, in making that of it which it ought not to be, or putting it in the place of God, then it is God’s usual method to punish us either by taking away the idol from us, or by continuing it as a curse and a plague to us. When the heart is set inordinately upon any created good, so as that God is excluded from the supreme place in our affections, he frequently takes away the object, and thus perhaps we may sometimes account for the loss of some of our dearest friends—of our darling children: it may be they have occupied too high a place in our esteem and affection: it may be owing to them that God had but a small share in our affections. Well, the Lord has taken them away as being his rivals, and it is thus that we read our sin in our punishment: while the heart bleeds on account of the wound which is produced by rending the bone from bone and flesh from flesh, let us remember that this was our sin—to idolize this creature, and therefore God has caused a worm at the root of the gourd in order that it may fade and die. Sometimes he is pleased to continue the object to us, but to continue it as a curse and a plague, as a grievance to us, and this is much more awful and much more to be dreaded than the former. We have a remarkable example of this in the case of Lot. When he parted with his uncle Abraham, he lifted up his eyes and beheld the plain of Sodom, and lo, it was a rich and a well-watered plain: indeed! and is there no other tract of the country, Lot, that can satisfy thy desires without pitching thy tent in that infamous country? Lot, are you not alarmed for your honour? are you not alarmed for your family, lest they learn the ways of the wicked Sodomites? What! a rich and well-watered plain is all that Lot consults; he goes, he places his family in Sodom, and what is the consequence? God lets him have his rich and his well-watered plain. I suppose he accumulates wealth to a great amount there, and by and by the wrath of God is poured down from heaven upon the city. While he is there his righteous soul, it is true, is grieved for the filthy conversation of the wicked, but what has become of his family? what has become of his children? why, here are two or three of them married and settled in Sodom, and they have become so attached to the manners and customs of the Sodomites, that when Lot went to warn them of the approaching destruction his words seemed an idle tale. I imagine they smiled and said, The old man is superannuated; they would not regard any thing he said. Well, this is one of the fruits of his attachment to this rich and well-watered plain; he has two or three of his children settled there, and they must fall in Sodom’s overthrow. Well, there are two of his daughters remain single; he does somehow or other manage matters by the good hand of God so as to accomplish their escape. They are brought out of the city, and his wife along with him; but what are the consequences as to his wife? she has lived so long in Sodom that her heart is wedded to it, and she seems to have left it with such reluctance that she is ready to call her husband, I imagine, a thousand fools as they are going along, to think he should leave it, and she looks behind her, and her heart goes along with her eyes, and God smites her—turns her into a monument of Divine vengeance: here is another fruit of his choice. Well, he has only his two daughters left; he takes them and flees to a little city: a little one will now serve Lot and his family: “is it not a little one?” Again, they are much reduced, and what follows? alas! the two daughters have learnt so much of the abominations of Gomorrah, that they cover their father’s name with infamy, and cause him to go down to the grave with shame. Here are the fruits of a sinful choice, of a man’s choosing to settle in the world merely for the sake of wealth, without considering any thing about God and religion. What a striking example does it afford us of the method of the Divine procedure—to give us our choice, but to render that choice its own punishment! thus our wickedness shall correct us, our backsliding shall reprove us.

4. If our backslidings have consisted in unfaithfulness towards one another, God will oftentimes punish this sin by so ordering it that others shall be unfaithful to us in return. If men deal treacherously with others, by and by others shall deal treacherously with them. You recollect it was thus in the case of Jacob. Jacob dealt unfaithfully with his brother Esau, and with his father Isaac, and how was he punished? many years after he was imposed upon by his uncle Laban, in a manner that proved a trial to him all his future life. Could Jacob help reading his sin in his punishment?

5. If our backslidings have consisted in undutifulness to parents, God will oftentimes punish this sin by causing our children to be undutiful and cruel to us. See that young person who will treat his aged parent with cruelty and neglect—only suppose that he lives to be an aged man, and you may see how he shall be treated in return by his own posterity. I have heard of a cruel, unfeeling son, whom Providence had smiled upon and blessed with worldly affluence; he had a poor aged father who was reduced to necessities in his old age—he took him into his house, but he treated him as a brute. One day the poor old man, it seems, had offended this cruel son: he called one of his own children, a little boy of about eight or nine years old, to him, and gave him a blanket, and bid him go and give it to the old man, his grandfather, and turn him out of doors, and tell him he should never enter his doors again;—the little boy took the garment and cut it in two;—the father, astonished at this, required the reason:—“Father,” says he, “I have cut it in pieces in order to give one to my grandfather, and to keep the other to turn you out of doors with when you are old:”—the keenness of the remark, it is said, had its effect.

6. Our backslidings may have consisted in a neglect of family government. Religious professors are often very loose in the exercise of family government. Well, if our backslidings have consisted in this, God will usually punish us by causing us to reap the fruits of it in the looseness of our children and those about us. Many a parent, by neglecting the proper government of his family, has seen such sins in his children as have brought them to infamy before his own eyes; and when a parent in old age comes to see his posterity covered with shame, with misery, and with infamy, what must be his reflections! What must have been the sensations of Eli when he saw the wickedness of his children, and heard of their awful end!

7. Once more, If our backslidings have consisted in setting ill examples before our domestics, we may expect that God will punish us by suffering our children to follow these examples. Many a parent (some cases have fallen under my own observation) has set shocking examples before his children; he has walked vainly and loosely, nevertheless he has not intended that they should follow his example; he has endeavoured by his authority to prevent their doing so; but it shall not be so long;—set you but an ill example in your house, and God will probably suffer your children to follow that example as a punishment in part to you. What very awful events of this sort there were in the family of David! he set an example of murder and uncleanness, and what followed?—the first news that you hear in his family is, Tamar is ravished; and then as a revenge for it Amnon is slain by his brother Absalom. How soon do we hear of one iniquity upon the back of another!—bloody business goes on in David’s family—the sword shall not depart from his house.—That was the way in which God would punish him.

Fuller, A. G. (1988). “Sin Its Own Punishment,” Sermon XCII. The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller: Memoirs, Sermons, Etc. (J. Belcher, Ed.; Vol. 1, pp. 555–558). Sprinkle Publications.