Say not, I make my own reason the rule and standard of you re, or other men's. For I argue here (as I have done all along before) upon the common topics and maxims of reason, generally allowed all the world over by mankind. If a practice be evil, the oftener it is repeated, the more still it is aggravated.
To be plain and faithful with you gentlemen, if it be your custom to blaspheme, it is God's custom to damn blasphemers. If you use- to be drunken and unclean, God uses to punish drunkards and adul- terers (if impenitent and unreformed) with his everlasting wrath.
And when you are cited (as shortly you must be) before the awful tribunal of the great, the j ust, and the terrible God, ask but yourselves, whether such a plea as this, be like to excuse in whole, or in part, and' take off the heinousness of these horrid impieties ? Will your profane oaths, and direful execrations and imprecations, be excused in the least degree, by telling him. Lord, I was so accustomed to blaspheme thy name; cursing, swearing, and damning, were so familiar language in my hps from day to day, that I had quite lost the sense of the action, as well as of the evil thereof; and therefore. Lord, pity, spare and have mercy on me : O damn not my soul to thine everlasting wrath. For though I have imprecated it upon myself, yet frequent custom at length distinguished all my sense and conscience of the evil thereof, till at length I could play with a direful imprecation as an harmless thing; nay, thought it an ornament and grace to my speech, a gallant expression, alamode the times and places I lived in.
Is not this as good a pica, and not a jot better than that of a malefac- tor upon his triai for life and death, when theft or robbery have been
500 THE REASONABLENESS OF PERSONAL REFORMATION.
evidently and substantially proved upon him, and the judge demand- eth, What he hath to say for himself, why sentence of death should not pass upon him ? Mercy, my Lord, mercy cries he ! for I have been so used and accustomed to filching and thieving from my youth up, that for some years before I was apprehended, every one's goods and cattle seemed to me to look like my own ; so that I scarce knew when I stole, and when I did not.
And thus, gentlemen, you have heard a fair trial of the sin of pro- fane swearing, and imprecations of damnation ; and you have heard the verdict of your own reason and conscience upon the case. The Lord help you to break off and reform that sin, for which there is not one word of apology or excuse now left in your mouths.
Let me close all I have to say upon this head, with one plain ques- tion : Do you think you must die, or live here for ever, as you now do ? If you are convinced (as all the living are supposed to be) that you must die, do you desire an easy and comfortable, or a painful and terrible death .'' I presume there is no man living, that is convinced he must die, but desires naturally and rationally an'Ej^^avatr/av, as easy and comfortable a dissolution as may be. If so, I appeal to your reason, "whether profane swearing and blaspheming the name of God, be a proper rational way to obtain peace and comfort at death ? With what hope or encouragement can those tongues of yours cry at death, Lord, have mercy upon me, which have profaned that name, and imprecated damnation from him, till you come into your last extre- mities, which convinced you, you could live no longer.
It is a serious question, and well worth a cool and solemn debate in your own reasons and consciences. Some of you are more immedi- ately ex^sed to the dangers of death than others, readily to be dis- banded by a bullet. If you fall, you must either fall considerately, or inconsiderately. If inconsiderately, and without any sense or con- science of this horrid guilt, you die impenitently, and consequently desperately and miserably. If considerately, and with awakened consciences, I demand, whether such guilt as this will not roar louder than the peals and vollies of those great and small guns do which breathe destruction upon you, and round about you ^ I have done my message plainly and faithfully to the very face of your reason and con- science ; and if for my faithfulness and zeal, both for God's honour and yours, I am rewarded with your curses; yet, if you would forbear to blaspheme and rend in pieces the name of God, I shall not much regard the obloquy and reproach my name shall undergo and suffer upon that account: But I expect from you better fruit than this.
TIIE REASONABLENESS OF PERSONAL KEFORMATION. 501
Wherein reason and conscience are again consulted about the prac- lice of drunkenness ; and their righteous and impartial censure give7i upon that case.
§ 1. A HOUGH our souls and bodies be of vastly different natures and originals, yet they do clasp and embrace each other with most dear and tender affection. It is marvellous to behold such a spiritual and heavenly creature as the soul in all men, fervently loving, and in most men fondly doting upon a lump of clay, a clod of earth : it sympathizeth tenderly with it. If the meanest member of the body be in pain, the soul is presently concerned for it, and evidences itself to be so, by commanding the eyes both to watch and weep, the tongue to complain and moan, the hands to bind up its wounds with all imaginable tenderness, and carefully defend it from the least injurious touch. But if the whole be in danger, how do its nobler faculties of understanding, memory, and invention, awaken and bestir them- selves to the uttermost for its deliverance and safety.
Whilst the soul lives in union with the body, it is filled with assi- duous (and too often with exorbitant and distracting) cares, for its necessary support and comfort. And when it must be separated from it by death, what strong aversions to death doth it ordinarily dis- cover.? The strong ties and bonds betwixt it and the body, cannot be loosed without much conflict and struggling, evidenced by these emphatical groans it sends forth : groans which other men under- stand not, nor can be supposed to understand, till they themselves come to feel the parting-puil.
The reason of all which lies in the intimate relation which is be- twixt these different natures, which God hath married together in the womb, from which time they have been companions and partners in all the comforts and troubles of life. The body is the soufs house in which it dwells, and still shall dwell, till death dissolve it. It is the souFs garment that clothes and covers it. It hath worn this garment of flesh from the beginning, and is to wear it still, till sick- ness hath brought it to rags, and death stript it from the soul.
It is the tool and instrument by which it doth all its works, whilst it is in this state of composition ; and therefore the soul cannot but love it fervently. No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourish- eth and cherisheth it.