ESSAV. 337 when persons themselves have beenso far accessary to their own built and misery, they oughtto take fresh occasion from their lire- sent temptations, to rehew and maintain repentance for their old sins. Besides the habit or customary return of such corrupt imagi- nations, thatthese unhappy sinners have entailed upon themselves, they have also given hereby such a fatal handle to the temptati- ons ofthe devil, and furnished such a pleasing habitation for un- clean spirits, that lewd and'blasphemous thoughts have been con- tinually imposed upon them with ease, by the sport and maliceof the tempter ; these have given them many grievous days and restlessnights, constant fatigue and combat, and sorrowofheart ; nor could they ever free these inward recesses of the brain, these secret chambers of the fancy, from the impure pictures which they themselves have hung up there, till thewhole mortal tabernacle has been abolished. Those wicked images have been graven so deep, and lasted so long, that all their pious labours, and tears bave neverbeen able to blot them out, till the flesh itselfhas been destroyed in death. Betimes then, Oye young sinners, awake betimes to serious piety, and.flee every youtlful 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 representations ; lest your earsbe deaf to all the language of profaneness or immodesty, let you suffer a fatal inroad,,to be made upon theavenues of the fancy, and admit such a guilty trea- sure of mischief and iniquity there, that may lay a foundation for toil and anguish, and much bitterness of soul, in the follow- ing and the better years oflife. Quest. III, Whether we may be guilty of sin in our dreams, in hours of delirium, under a fever or in seasons of distraction and madness ? Ans. 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 al-, most equal to sense ; it imitates sight and hearing, and the ap- pearances and actions of life so nearly, that the soul cannot dis- tinguish them ; and sometimes the wild operations of the brain overpower even the present impressions made upon the senses, and fancyprevails above the ear or the eye. Dreaming is .but sleeping distraction, as the distraction of a delirious hour is but a wakingdream. Now where the images of fancy are so prevalent, the soul even ofa holy man maybe so far overpowed, asthat reason is quite thrown out of its seat ; the understanding 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 VoL. 11. Y
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