THE POWERS AND CONTESTS OF FLESH AND SPIRIT. 27 Betimes then, .O ye young sinners, awake betimes to serious .piety, and flee every youthful lust ; avoid the persons and the places that would tempt you to sensual or profane practices,; turn. your eyes away from the very appearances of guilt, and from all defiling representa Lions ; let your ears be deaf, to all the language of pro- faneness or immodesty, lest you suffer a fatal inroad to be made upon the avenues of the fancy, -.and admit such a guilty treasure of mischief and iniquity there, that may lay a .foundation for toil and anguish, and much bitter- ness of soul, in the following and the better years of life. Question III. Whether we may be guilty of sin in our dreams, in hours of delirium, under a fever, or in seasóns of distraction and madness ? Answer.. I join all these three together, because they all agree in this, that the representations made on the brain are so strong and predominant in all of them, that imagination is almost equal to sense ; it imitates sight and hearing, and the appearances and actions of life so nearly, that the soul cannot distinguish them ; and some times the wild operations of the brain overpower even the present impressions made upon the senses, and fancy pre- vails. above the ear or the eye. Dreaming is but sleep ing distraction, as the distraction of a delirious hour is but a waking dream. Now where the images of fancy are so prevalent, the soul even of.a.h.oly man may be so far overpowered, as that reason is quite thrown out of its seat; the under standing is dazzled and deceived by the glaring flashes of imagination ; the notions of conscience, the rules of duty, and the sacred motives of religion, are, as it were,, confounded and overwhelmed, and lost for a season, under the constant strong impressions. of the Animal spi- rits revelling in the recesses of the brain : And where the disorder rises to such a degree as this, the springs of car- nal appetite and passion are soon touched and awa- kened ; and being of a kindred nature, are suddenly inflamed; so that a man of piety may be hurried to con- sent to sinful practices, under any of these waking or sleeping distractions. In such a case the guilt seems to. be lessened so far as the reason is drowned in confusion and darkness, and the thought and conscience over-. powered and cheated with false impressions, Perhaps a
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