CHAPTER 1. 15 habit we indulge in practice, it will insensibly obtain a power over our understanding, and betray us into many errors. Jo.. cander is ready with his jest to answer every thing that he ars ; he reads books in the same jovial humour, and has got the art of turning every thought and sentence into merriment. How many awkward and irregular judgments does this man pass upon solemn subjects, even when he designs to be grave and in earnest ? his mirth and laughing humour it formed into habit and temper, and leads hisunderstanding shamefully astray. You will see himwandering in pursuit of a gay flying feather, and he is drawn by a sort of ignis fatuus into bogs and mire almost every day of his life. XIV. Ever maintain a virtuous and pious frame of spi- rit; for an indulgence of vicions inclinations debases the under- standing and perverts the judgment. Whoredom and wine, and new wine, take away the heart and soul and reason of a man. Sensuality ruins the better faculties of the mind : au indulgence to appetite and passion enfeebles the powers of reason, it makes the judgment weak and susceptive of every falsehood, and es+ pen ally of such mistakes as have a tendency towards the gratifi- cation of the animal ; and it warps the soul aside strangely from that stedfast honesty and integrity that necessarily belongs to the pursuit of truth. It is the virtuous man who is in a fair way to wisdom. Godgives to those that are good in his sight, wisdom, and knowledge, andjoy ; Eccl. ii. 26. Piety towards God, as well as sobriety and virtue, are ne- cessary qualifications to make a truly wise and judicious man. He that abandons religion must act in such a contradiction to his own conscience and best judgment, that he abuses and spoils the faculty itself. It is thus in the nature of things, and it is thus by the righteous judgment of God : even the pretended sages among the heathens, who did not like to retain God in their knowledge, they were given up to a reprobate mind, an undistin, guishing or injudicious mind, so that they judged inconsistently,. and practised lucre absurdities : Rom. i. 28. And it is the character of the slaves of antichrist, 2Thess. ii. 10, &c. that those who receive not the love of the truth, were exposed to the power of diabolical sleights and lying wonders. When divine revelation shines and blazes in the face of men with glorious evidence, and they wink their eyes against it, the Godof this world is suffered to blind them even in the most obvious, common, and sensible things. The great God of heaven for this cause, sends them strong delusionsthat they should believe a lie; and the nonsense of transubstantiation in thepopish world is a most glaring accomplishment of this prophecy, beyond ever what could have been thought of or expected among creatures who pre. tend to reason.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=