enemies; and all this for the love of a harlot! Mark the mischiefs, the calamities and the blood-shed that pursued the house of David, when adultery and guilt in the matter of Uriah had provoked his God! See how sin and death made wide inroads into his household! See there his son Amnon slain by his brother Absalom for the folly he had wrought in Israel, and the incest with his sister Tamar! Think of Solomon, the wisest of men, whose heart was enticed away by strange women from the God and religion of his fathers, when he paid such profane and criminal regard to the idols of his mistresses, as to build temples for them near the temple of Jehovah ; and the Lord was angry with Solomon, when his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and he rent the kingdom from him in the days of his son Rehoboam, and made a long and fatal separation between the tribes of Israel for many generations. And to name no more, turn your eyes to Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities of the plain, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh; mark how the Lord rained fire and brimstone out of heaven upon them, and they are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire, Jude 7.

4. Think of the dreadful threatenings that are denounced against impure sinners in the word of God, and you will find these are flaming witnesses against their practice. The Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because of killing, stealing and adultery; therefore shall the land mourn. And God seems to forbid the prophets to give them reproof, as though he resolved to destroy them, Hosea iv. 1-5. Let no man strive and reprove another. His mercy and forgiveness seem to be put to a stand; how shall I pardon thee for this? saith the Lord; thy children have forsaken

me when I fed them to the full, they then committed adultery, and assembled themselves in troops in the harlots houses. Shall I not visit them for these things? saith the Lord, and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this? Jer. v. 7, 9. When the apostle Paul had represented this sort of vice in 1 Cor. iii. as a defilement of the body, which is the temple of God, and the habitation of the holy spirit; he adds this word of terror, if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is and ought to be holy, and not kept as a nest for unclean vermin. Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor those who indulge vile impurities, shall inherit the kingdom of God, I Cor. vi. 9, 10. Such were some of you indeed, says St. Paul to his converts, but ye are washed and sanctified from these pollutions, or you could never have been saved. Therefore, saith the same holy writer, let neither fornication, nor any once named unclean practices be so much as amongst you, as becometh saints; that is, let them never be named without abhorrence. For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor any unclean person, nor covetous man who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no man deceive you with vain words; for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience, Eph. v. 3-6. The visions of St. John in the book of the Revelations pronounce the doom of whoremongers with the rest of notorious sinners, and give them their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death, Rev. xxi. 28. How impiously bold are those sinners who dare venture through all these terrors, to gratify a sensual appetite! can rush upon the point of the avenging sword of God, and plunge themselves into everlasting

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burnings, to taste the deceitful baits of impure and forbidden pleasure?

Before I conclude this head I would just hint a few directions to those who would preserve their modesty and virtue, and prevail against all temptations to purity.

1. Set a severe watch upon your eyes and your heart. Keep all the powers of nature under a proper discipline, and guard all the avenues of the soul. Secure your senses without, and your fancy within, as much as possible, from all allurements of this kind. Let us remember that sin often begins in the imagination, and therefore we must establish a strict guard upon our roving thoughts, and reduce them when they first begin to go astray. We must lay a strong chain of restraint upon those endless wanderers; for our Saviour himself tells us, out of the heart proceed adulteries and fornications, which defile the man; Matt. xv. 19.

We must make a self-denying covenant with our eyes, that we may not look upon temptation, lest we be led astray from the paths of purity. Our blessed Lord himself gives us a sufficient caution, when he explains the seventh commandment; Matt. v. 28. I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. When our Saviour forbids a wanton look, he requires that we put a vail upon our eyes, lest like wandering stars or foolish fires they betray us into foul and miry pits of pollution, or lead us to deep an d'angerous precipices.

Avoid all impure representations, pictures and images; turn your eyes from immodest sights, and your ears from polluted language, whether it be in discourse, or writing, a lewd jest, or a wanton song. Let them not entertain you though they may be attended and adorned with never so many colours of wit, and charms of music. Romances and novels,

and invented stories of forbidden love, have painted over these impurities with shining eloquence, and awakened the same foolish passions in the reader: O how unhappily has the art of verse, which was first consecrated to the service of the temple, been prostituted to the vilest purposes, to give gay colours to temptation, and gild over the foulest images of iniquity! And what a multitude of souls may date the commencement of their guilt and ruin from the time when they began to frequent the poisonous entertainments of the stage! Their ears which were shocked at first with some of the coarse and foul expressions of modern comedy, by degrees are hardened to bear the most offensive language; their modesty and blushing dies and vanishes by degrees, till at last they learn to relish the grossest pollutions of the theatre, and perhaps put the fable into practice.

As faith and salvation come by hearing, so iniquity and everlasting death come sometimes by hearing too. And what we would not hear, surely we should not speak. Let us then set a guard upon our tongues, lest they border upon forbidden language. No filthiness, no foolish talking, no corrupt communication must proceed out of our mouths, Eph. iv. 29. and v. 4. We should not affect those speeches of a double meaning which lead the thoughts away to lewd and wanton conceits, and make foul impressions upon the mind. Let our ears hate to be treated with such indecencies, nor let our lips dare to treat others so.

2. Do not make too rich provisions for the feeding of the flesh; indulge not yourselves in the delicacies of the taste, nor in the luxury of excessive sleep; both of these may incline animal nature to licentious desires; stand afar off from gluttony and excess of wine, nor pamper the body beyond the just support, and due refreshment of nature. The holy apostle

in his prohibitions couples chambering and wantonness with a rioting and drunken practice, Rom. xiii. 13. and calls them all works of darkness. It is a good remark of Kempis, a devout papist in former days, "bridle the appetites of the palate, get a sovereignty over them, and you will be better able to master every other appetite."

3. Always employ yourselves in something innocent and useful, that may engage the powers of the body or the mind, or both, that so temptation may never find you idle. The springs of the sin of Sodom were fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness, therefore they grew haughty, and committed abomination before the Lord, Ezek. xvi. 49, 50. This is an advice of Jerom, one of the Christian fathers, be still doing some work, that the devil, when he comes to tempt, may always find thee busy." Where you are in danger of these sins, put yourselves upon a necessity of diligence all the day, that you may have no time nor room for wild imaginations nor impure indulgences.

4. Avoid the seasons, the places and the objects of temptation, as far s is consistent with the necessary duties of life; for he that hath no caution about aim, and is not afraid of being tempted, he is not acquainted with human weakness, nor is he so much afraid of sin as he ought to be.

5. Maintain an everlasting and awful sense of the presence of God thy maker, thy governor and thy judge. Remember the Lord beholds the secret workings of the heart, and the foul practices of darkness and midnight. There is not a place where the eye of God cannot come. What an honourable character hath young Joseph acquired in the word of God, and his name stands recorded with renown in divine history through all ages, for his flight from the allurements of an immodest woman; the guard which he continually placed upon his virtue, was