342 POWERS AND CONTESTS 01 FLEt}t AND SPIRIT. contrary operation, spread an universalchill and tremor over the body, and clothe the countenance in paleness and the image of death. They flash like gunpowder, they force the sweat through every pore, and convey a ferment of passion through the whole nature at once, so that the soul is sometimes seized into a sudden consent to the sinful motions of the body before it is aware , which dangers are much more, easily prevented in a calm and healthful state of life. But here let me insert a cautionary remark or two, to guard against the abuse of this doctrine, which is designed for the relief of holy, humble, and dejected souls : 1. Many who return frequently to the commission of the same sin, excuse their own slothful and sottish negligence by throwing the blame on theirconstitution ; letthem take heed, lest it be found that it is their own wilful indulgence of sinful appetite and temptation, and not constitution, hath made the habit of sin so strongwithin them, and bath formed their very temper into such vice and iniquity, which was by no means born with them in any uncommon degree, but is owing to their own wicked prac- tice: God sees through such vile hypocrisy anddisguise as this, and will punish the sinner with a double stroke pf vengeance, one for his guilty sensuality, and the other for his hateful dis- sembling.. If Y would give an instance of this pretence, I think it is found no where more frequently than among the drunkards, the passionate, and the unclean ; and such persons also discover the vanity of their pretences, in that they always excuse their-sins, and seldom or never mourn under them. 2. If your iniquity that frequently besets you, arise from soy bodily disorder, which you have brought on yourself by your own sins, dare not murmur, and charge the providenceof God with this your disease or impotence, but maintain a humbling sense of your own guilt, which, perhaps, God bath thuschastised in righteousness : And let .younger sinners avoid all those guilty practices that may turn their very nature and better eon- stitution into vice and raging appetite, or into such diseases as may eepose them to the violent and unruly insults of flesh and blood. Let tlsem take heed of induhing vehement desires or aversions, even to common, indifferent, or lawful objects, lest affection get the ascendant, and subject the flesh ; and, by that means, the soul also, to a slavish habit of appetite and passion. 3. Let not those persons, whose happier constitution, or uninterrupted health, gives them some advantages in this respect, throw off their daily watchfulness, or neglect prayer, lest a vain self-confidence betray them into foul iniquities : And let them remember too, that their guilt will be the greater. Nor should those whose appetites and passions are become more unruly, wither by the original temperature pf their-flesh and blood, or by
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