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temptation. So is it with ambition in high places ; passion in a mul- titude of perplexing affairs; polluted corrupt fancy in vain societies, and the perusal of idle books or treatises of vanity and folly. Fire and things combustible may more easily be induced to lie together without affecting each other, than pecidia7^ lusts and suitable ob- jects or occasions for their exercise.
(5.) When a man is weakened, made negligent ox formal in duty, when he can omit duties or content himself with a careless, lifeless performance of them, without delight, joy, or satisfaction to his soul, who had another frame formerly; let him know, that though he may not be acquainted with the particular distemper wherein it consists, 3^et in something or other he is entered into temptation, which at the length he will find evident, to his trouble and peril. How many have we seen and known in our days, who, from a warm profession, have fallen to be negligent, careless, indifferent in praying, reading, hearing, and the like! Give an instance of one who hath come off without a wound, and I dare say you may find out a hundred for him that have manifested themselves to have been asleep on the top of the mast; that they were in the jaws of some vile temptation or other, that afterward brought forth bitter fruit in their lives and ways. From some few returners from folly we have every day these doleful complaints made: " Oh! I neglected private prayer; I did not meditate on the word, nor attend to hearing, but rather despised these things : and yet said I was rich and wanted nothing. Little did I consider that this unclean lust was ripening in my heart; this atheism, these abominations were fomenting there." This is a certain rule: — If his heart grow cold, negligent, or formal in duties of the worship of God, and that either as to the matter or manner of them, who hath had another frame, one temptation or other hath laid hold upon him. World, or pride, or uncleanness, or self-seeking, or malice and envy, or one thing or other, hath possessed his spirit ; gray hairs are here and there upon him, though he perceive it not. And this is to be observed as to the manner of duties, as well as to the matter. Men may, upon many sinister accounts, especially for the satisfaction of their consciences, keep up and frequent duties of religion, as to the substance and matter of them, when they have no heart to them, no life in them, as to the spirituality required in their performance. Sardis kept up the performance of duties, and had therefore a name to live; but wanted spiritual life in their performances, and was therefore " dead," Rev. iii. 1. As it is in distempers of the body, if a man find his spirits faint, his heart oppressed, his head heavy, the whole person indisposed, though he do not yet actually burn nor rave, yet he will cry, " I fear I am entering into a fever, I am so out of order and indisposed;" — a man may do so in this sickness of the
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soul. If lie find his pulse not beat aright and evenly towards duties of worship and communion with God, — if liis spirit be low, and his heart faint in them, — let him conclude, though his lust do not yet burn nor rage, that he is entered into temptation, and it is high time for him to consider the particular causes of his distemper. If the head be heavy and slumber in the things of gxace, if the heart be cold in duties, evil lies at the door. And if such a soul do escape a great temptation unto sin, yet it shall not escape a great temptation by desertion. The spouse cries, "I sleep/' Cant. v. 2; aud that she had " put off her coat, and could not put it on ;" — had an indisposition to duties and communion with Christ. What is the next news you have of her ? Verse 6, Her " Beloved had withdrawn himself," — Christ was gone; and she seeks him long and finds him not. There is such a suitableness between the new nature that is wrought and created in believers, and the duties of the worship of God, that they will not be parted nor kept asunder, unless it be by the interposition of some disturbing distemper. The new creature feeds upon them, is strength- ened and increased by them, finds sweetness in them, yea, meets in them with its God and Father ; so that it cannot but of itself, unless made sick by some temptation, delight in them, and desire to be in the exercise of thenx This frame is described in the 119th Psalm throughout. It is not, I say, cast out of this frame and temper un- less it be oppressed and disordered by one secret temptation or other. Sundry other evidences there are of a soul's entering into tempta- tion, which upon inquiry it may discover.
I propose this to take off the security that we are apt to fall into, and to manifest what is the peculiar duty that we are to apply our- selves unto in the special seasons of temptation ; for he that is already entered into temptation is to apply himself unto means for disen- tanglement, not to labour to prevent his entering in. How this may be done I shall afterward declare.