examine his duties towards God as well as those towards man: he will mark his defects, no less than his excesses : he will observe his thoughts, yea, and " the very imaginations of his thoughts;" and will be more grieved for an evil propensity or desire, than the world at large are for an evil act. He endea- vours to have his conscience as much alive to the least evils, as to the greatest ; and to keep it tender, as the apple of his eye : and if but a mote assail it, he will take no rest, till he has wept it out with tears of penitence and contrition. See this in the Apostle Paul. Before his conversion, he could find no evil in himself, though he was " a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious;" but after his conversion, he did but utter a disre- spectful word to a judge who was violating the plainest rules of justice, and he made it a matter of humiliation in the pre- sence of the whole court.]
3. It instils a watchfulness against the occasions of evil —
[Those who are destitute of vital godliness will venture themselves any where, without fear and without remorse : but a man of real piety will be afraid to expose himself where the objects around him present only what has a tendency to vitiate his mind : he prays to God " not to lead him into temptation;" and therefore he will not voluntarily run into it; he will select his associates from amongst the excellent of the earth, who will forward, rather than retard, the growth of holy aflfections within him; and, as far as his situation will admit of it, he will " come out from the ungodly world, and be separate, and not even touch an unclean thing," lest he be defiled, and have " his good manners corrupted by evil communications." This is very particularly insisted on in the following context, in reference both to evil vien and evil xvomen. It is said, " Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee ; to deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh froward things ; who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness ; who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked ; whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths : to deliver thee also from the strange ivonian, even from the stranger who flattereth with her words ; who forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God : for her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead : none that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life : That thou mayest icalk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous*^." Here the conduct of einl meji is drawn to the very life, as is the character of the evil woman also, against both of whom the n\an of piety will be
*= ver. 11 — 20.