s%® CHRISTIAN MORALIT7. to have put onChrist, whileyou practisethe same abominations as ye did before, while ye walk and live as, the heathen world. II. The hateful description of these sins which is given us by theholywriters, should print the same odious image of them upon our minds, and for ever forbid the practice. Solomon, a great king, and aman of excellent wisdom, had well known the mischief and madness of this sort of vice ; he gives his son the most solemn charge against it in various parts of the book of Proverbs, more especially in the vi. and vii. chapters, which he spends entirely upon this theme, and in the ii. and vi. and the ix. chapters, where he appliesnear half of them to the same design ; wherein after he has shown the insinuating flatteries of the wanton womanhe never fails to givenoticeoftheterrible attendantsofthose that followher. For herhouse inclines to death, andherpaths unto thedead; none thatgo toher returnagain, neithertake theyholdofthe paths of life. There is scarce any iniquity that does so effectu- ally harden the heart, and prevent all repentance. Let not thine heart therefore decline to;her ways; go not astray in herpaths: For she has cast down manywounded, yea, many strongmen have been slain by her: Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death. This leads me to the next particular. III. If we consider the dismal effects of these impure prac- tices, as they are recorded in sacred history, they should keep our souls awake, and keep us always to the watch, lest we be ensnared. Behold Sampson the strongest of men, who was a holy Nazarite, and devoted to -God; how was hebrought down 'shamefullyfrom the heights of his glory to prison and slavery, to blindness and death by the love of strange women! Behold the Jewish hero lyinglike a thoughtless fool upon the lap of De- lilah, while the seven sacred locks of his head were shaven, and his divine strength wentfrom him, for the Lorddeparted! Be- hold the wretched captive with his eyes bored out by the Philis- tines, bound with fetters of brass, and grinding in the prison- house ! Behold the man who was once their terror, now become their sport, their mockery, and their laughing-stock in the house of Dagon their god : See him there crushed topieces, andexpi- ring under the weight of his own revenge upon his Philistine enemies ; and all this for the love of a harlot ! Mark the mis- chiefs, the calamities, and the bloodshed that pursued the house of David, when adultery and guilt in the matter of Uriah had provoked his God ! See how sin and death made wide inroads into his household ! See there his son Amnon slain by his bro- ther Absalom for the folly he had wrought in Israel, and the incest with his sister Tamar ? Think- of Solomon the wisest of men, whose heart was enticed away by strange women from the God and religion of his fathers, when he paid such profane and
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