There are lawful remedies enough, sufficient, with God's blessing, to keep you from such a necessity to sin ; such as temperance, and more abstemiousness in meats and drinks ; avoiding lascivious books, play-houses, and filthy company ; laborious diligence in your lawful callings, and fervent prayer, for mortifving and preventing grace : And if temptations shall stir amidst all these preventives; then cast- ing yourselves upon tlie directions and supply of providence, in the honourable estate of marriage. Never plead necessity, whilst all these preventives might, but have not been used. § 7. Inducement 3.
Others plead the absence of their lawful remedies, and presence of tempting objects. This is the case of our soldiers and seamen. But
518 THE REASONABLENESS OF TEKSONAL REFORMATION.
though this be the most colourable pretence of all the rest, yet youf own reason and conscience will, even in this case, so dilemma and nonplus you, that if you will adventure upon the sin, you shall never have their leave and consent with you : For they have a special and peculiar consideration of you, as persons more eminently and imme- diately exposed to the dangers of death than other men. And thus (would you but give them a fair hearing) they would expostulate and reason out the matter with you.
" Either thou shalt escape, or not escape, the hazard of this voy- age, or battle. If you fall (as to be sure many will) will this be an honourable, safe, and comfortable close, and winding up of your life ? What, from a whore to thy grave ! God forbid. From burning lusts, to everlasting burnings ! Better thou hadst never been born."
Or if thou do escape, and return again to thy family ; how canst thou look her in the face, with whom thou hast so basely broken thy marriage- vow and covenant ? Whatever else thou bring home with thee, to be sure thou shalt bring home guilt with thee, a blot never to be wiped away.
Object. If you say^ you, are not such Jbols to publish your own shame ; you 'will follow Ccesars advice to the young adulterer^ Si non caste, tamen caute. If I act not chastely^ I will act cautiously.
Sol. Your reason and conscience will both deride the weakness and folly of this pretence ; For they both very well know, no man sins so secretly, but he sins before two infallible witnesses, viz. God, and his own conscience ; and that the last, and least of these, is more than a thousand witnesses. That God usually detects it in this world, carry it as closely as you will ; but to be sure, it shall be published as upon the house-top, before men and angels in the great day. § 8. Inducement 4.
Another inducement to this sin, (and the last I shall mention,) is the commonness of it, which abates the shame of it.
What need they trouble themselves so much, or be so shy of that which is practised by thousands, which is so frequently acted in every place, and little made of it ?
But if either your reason or conscience will admit this plea for good and lawful, the devil hath utterly blinded or infatuated the one or other ; as will evidently appear by the following reasons. For,
Reason 1. If the thing be evil, (as you cannot deny but it is) then, by how much the commoner, by so much the worse it must needs be. Indeed, if a thing be good, by how much the commoner, so much the better : but to attribute this essential property of good unto evil, is to confound and destroy the difference between them, and make good and evil both alike.
Reason 2. If the commonness of uncleanness will excuse you, it will more excuse all others that shall commit this sin after you : and still by how much more the numbers of adulterers and fornicators *re increased, still the less scruple men need make to commit it ; and
* THE REASONABLENESS OF TEIISONAL REFOKMATlOiy. 519^;
SO the whole community shall in a little time be so infected and de- filed, that christian kingdoms shall quickly become like Sodom, and God provoked to deal with them, as he did by that wretched city.
Reason 3. If the commonness of the sin be an excuse and plea for it; suppose the roads should be more infested than they are with highwaymen, so that every month you should see whole cart-loads of them drawn to Tyburn ; would your reason infer from thence, that because hanging is grown so common, you need not scruple so much as you were wont to do, to take a purse, or pistol an honest innocent traveller upon the road ?
Object. If you shall say^ uncleanness is not so costly a sin as rob- bery is ; there is a great deal of' difference betzveen Tyburn^ and a wliore-house inmishment.
Sol. There is a great diiFerence indeed, even as much as is betwixt Tyburn and hell, or a small mulct in the courts of men, and the eter- nal wrath of a sin-revenging God : so great will the difference be- twixt the punishments of all sins by God, and by men be found.
Thus you see, gentlemen, the common pleas for uncleanness over- ruled by your own reason and consciences.
We live in a plentiful land, abounding with all the comforts of this life, and with thousands of full-fed wantons: of whom the Lord complains this day, as he did of the Jews, whom that flowing land vomited out, Jer. v. 6. " When I had fed them to the full, they committed adultery, and assembled themselves by troops in the har- lots houses. They were as fed horses in the morning ; every one neighed after his neighbour's wife.*" How many fat stallions are thus neighing in the fat pastures of this good land !
Nor do I wonder at all to see the growth of Atheism, in a land swarmed, and overrun with so many thousands of blasphemers, drun- kards, and adulterers. It was a grave observation of that gallant moralist, Plutarch : " If Epicurus (saith he) should but grant a God in his full perfections, he must change his life presently, he must be a swine no longer."
The Lord purge out this crying abomination also, with Atheism and drunkenness, the inlets of it, which darken our glory, and threaten to make us desolate.
Wherein reason and conscience are once more consulted, about that bitter and implacable enmity found in thousands this day, against all serious piety, and the strict professors thereof zcho differ from them in some external modes and rites of loorship ; and their de- terminations, upon that case, impartially reported.
§ 1. i-TXAN is naturally a sociable creature, delighting in company and converse. He that affects to live by, and to himself, must bt
520 THE REASONABLENESS OF fERSONAL REF0IlMATl03r,
(saith the philosopher) n '^riPiov, r, '^zo; ; either a God that is self-suf^ iicieiit, and stands in need of none ; or a wild beast, so savage and iierce, that it can endure nothing but itself-