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point him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth," Matt. xxiv. 48-51.

Thus not only the train of present evils which intemperance draws after it, but the wages of this shameful iniquity in the eternal world, are revealed in Scripture, to alarm the conscience, and give us full conviction of the sinfulness of this common sin. So that either we must take heed, and beware of excess in drinking, or give up all reasonable hope of salvation and the favour of God. The thought of losing the favour of God, is worse than death to every one who truly believes the scripture; every christian therefore, however he may naturally incline to drink freely, or be tempted to it by company, or allured to it by a hope of recommending himself to his worldly advantage, will guard against all these temptations, and persevere in an inviolable regard to that sobriety, upon which his safety so much depends.*

CHAPTER XXXI.

ON SELF-DENIAL WITH RESPECT TO IMPURITY.

MAN, in his fallen state, is so constituted, that there is not one natural passion, however useful and excellent it may be when properly regulated, which does not become an occasion of sin, and require to be resisted and mortified. We have already seen how much this is the case with respect to the appetite for food and drink; the natural love of the sexes is another example of the same kind. This impulse, though necessary for the propagation of mankind, and useful in wedlock to several excellent ends, will prove in single persons, unless constantly restrained, a seducer of the soul into much sin, and the cause of the most extensive evil. It prompts some to the commission of secret uncleanness, and precipitates others into the open offence of fornication. At the instigation of this lust, what time, what talents, what influence are daily prostituted to the shameful business of inveigling and debauching young women! Men of the finest sense

* See Prayer the 11th.

and best education, for the poor perishing gratification of an hour, will be guilty of what is shocking to every mind. that retains the least fear of God, or compassion for their fellow-creatures :-guilty of bringing a heedless virgin to indelible shame, her parents to grief as torturing as it is undeserved and hopeless; guilty of offering the ruined object of their lust such an injury, as if done to a sister, a daughter, or any near relation of their own, they would revenge with the point of the sword. Instigated by lust, they will be accessary even in opening the way to adultery and all its train of mischiefs; for women seldom prove chaste after wedlock, who before it have fallen a prey to lewdness: accessary, as far as lies in their power, in filling the world with prostitutes, at once its plague and scourge; creatures abandoned to every detestable practice, corrupters of youth, pushing them headlong into desperate courses, to pay for their infectious embraces.

These consequences, in a greater or less degree, certainly follow the indulgence of this bodily appetite, to which we are naturally prone. But bad as these consequences are, they compose only the smallest part of the evil produced by fornication. No pen is able fully to unfold what the soul suffers from this sin. Where any sense of modesty or of duty prevails, it is instantly on the first commission punished with the secret stings and horrors of a guilty mind. By frequent repetition of the crime, all sense of religion is extinguished, and all intercourse with God ceases. Associations with those who are hardened in lewdness are sought after, as a refuge from conscience: till at length the secret offender against chastity contracts a brow of brass, and becomes an infamous pleader for the lust of concupiscence; till, in one word, his conscience is seared, the captive hugs his chains, and glories in his shame.

Add to this catalogue of dreadful evils, the bloody quarrels amongst the lewd, and the murders which they are led to commit; murder of children yet unborn, loading the mind with guilt, and embittering life beyond conception;-murder often of the new-born babe, which the law avenges by the infamous death of its sanguinary parent. Instead, therefore, of saying (as libertines impudently speak) where is the harm of taking a little pleasure out of

the way; you will perceive, that thieves and robbers are harmless and honourable compared with the lewd. Injuries from these open foes, have very soon an end, in most instances are borne with ease, and may be redressed: they do not strike at our immortal interest. But the seducer of a female destroys her reputation, tears her away from her family and friends, banishes her from the society of virtuous women, entangles her, in the bloom of her years, with a snare which will soon reduce her to the most abject of all conditions, the condition of a prostitute. So that the very mention, or even remembrance of her name, shall afresh excite grief in her family and relations-grief unassuaged by the least ray of hope in her death, or after

state.

Upon this fair representation of the case, ask any young woman into whose hands she had better fall, into those of the seducer, or of the robber? "Into their hands," she would say, "who will only take my property, and fill me with momentary terrors; not into the libertine's, who will plunge me into infamy, lingering wretchedness, abandoned vice, and eternal misery." Such pests to society are men of gallantry and pleasure! How astonishing, that ruin of virgins, dishonour of families, heartbreaking injuries done to worthy aged parents, with a variety of crimes, the certain effects of uncontrolled lust, should be lightly passed over as nothing vile, under the magic name of love and gallantry! When will a public spirit and generous concern to prevent such heavy woes, excite men to brand every word spoken in favour of lewdness, as they do what is spoken to lessen our abhorrence of perjury and assassination? When will men have understanding to perceive, that the affection between the sexes, regulated by the law of God, like a river flowing in its proper channel, blesses wherever it flows; but, bursting that sacred bank, becomes an inundation of miseries; and that he never more tenderly consulted the good of his rational creatures, than in absolutely forbidding every degree of impurity.

There is indeed little reason to hope that young men will present to themselves such a view as this of the evil of fornication; but it is the inestimable benefit of scripture, that it is done there already in the most striking

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manner, and by an authority that must not be trifled with. The rise, the progress, and fatal end of lewdness, is there contrasted with all the various allurements that =lead to it. There the lips of the harlot are painted dropping sweets like the honey comb, and her mouth smoother than oil:" but instantly, to quench the least rising of a lustful thought, her end, we are taught of God, is "bitter as wormwood, and sharp as a two-edged sword," Prov. v. 3, 4. The simple young man she invites with "much fair speech, to take his fill of love till the morning:" but immediately the treacherous offer is laid bare, and under the thin veil of a fleeting pleasure, an injured body with an upbraiding conscience is discovered, pouring out that sad confession, "How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof!"

Still further, lest a brutish love of pleasure should tempt young people to imagine they might easily make a retreat after yielding a little to fornication, or that it is not a sin of such high offence, God has most emphatically expressed both the infatuating power of this lust, and the doom of those who live in subjection to it. “He," that is the lewd young man, "goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks;"-that is, utterly stupid and incorrigible, "till a dart striketh through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life," Prov. vii. 22, 23. "Why wilt thou embrace the bosom of a stranger? for the ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings. His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. He shall die without instruction: and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray," Prov. v. 20-23.

To finish the testimony of God's abhorrence of the sin of fornication published in the Old Testament, let it be observed, that it was made a capital offence by the sentence of his own law; and the most abominable of vices is itself included in the same prohibition with that of fornication; designing, I apprehend, to teach us to what horrid lengths lewdness, indulged, will lead, and to create a dread of that sin, which is forbidden together with one so infamous; "There shall be no whore of the daughters

of Israel, nor a Sodomite of the sons of Israel," Deut. xxiii. 17.

I have been full in producing the law of God in old time against the sin of fornication, in order to silence the ignorance of some who are foolish enough to wax bold in their lewdness, vaunting that there is only a passage or two in the New Testament positive in condemning their darling lust.

Indeed were it so, this would be sufficient; for till the New Testament is proved a forgery, (which is impossible) every injunction it contains claims an equal regard with any thing delivered before from God; since his declaration alone is such a sanction as stands in no need of any prior revelation to enforce it.

In one

But instead of a passage or two only in the New Testament, as some pretend, which absolutely condemns fornication, it is not possible to name a sin (that of contempt of Christ excepted) which is so generally mentioned in scripture, or so constantly marked as the object of God's wrath. Not only our Redeemer and Judge ranks this with sins of the most malignant kind, and as a peculiar provocation of divine wrath. (Matt. xv. 19. Mark xvii. 21.) but his great apostle scarcely writes a single epistle without some alarming prohibition against it. place St. Paul beautifully opposes the benevolent gratification of our natural appetite in a lawful way, to the terrible condition of those who are engaged in lewd commerce: Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge," Heb. xiii. 4. In another, he not only affirms that adultery, fornication, lasciviousness, and uncleanness, are the works of the flesh," the fruit of our corrupted nature; but, with remarkable vehemence, he presses us to lay it to heart as a most certain truth, that each of these sins is absolutely inconsistent with a state of salvation. "Of the which I tell you before, as I have also 'told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Gal. v. 21.

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Such is the light and power accompanying the Gospel, wherever duly received, that, in the judgment of the apostle, it should put an end to the very being of this enormity within the pale of the christian church: "Fornication and

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