584 THE UNLAWFULNESS OE SELF-MURDER. us that be is and will be a Saviour : " This name of the Lord is a strong tower, the tempted . soul, flies to it and finds safety." Próv. xvüi. 10. " They that have known this name, will put their trust therein." Psal. ix. 10. Remember, O poor tempted souls, that our Lord Jest's Christ has ben tempted himself, and that in the same manner -too, on the pinnacle of the temple ; he knows how, to succour them that are tempted ; lieb. ii. 18. He can teach you how to put Satan to flight. Beg that the Lord your Saviour would secure you from the hurries of.your own thoughts: run to his protection hourly being conscious of your own weakness. Plead with him to keep you from this unreasonable and comprehensive temptation, that aims at the ruin of soul and body at once : and though you may think it long to wait and pray under such a sore conflict, yet resolve to continue at the mercy -seat, and go on praying and waiting: "'The needy and distressed soul shall not always be forgotten ; the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever ; Psal. ix. 18. In the proper and appointed time the Lord will awake for your deliverance, and give you a glorious victory. The Shep- herd of Israel may permit a beloved sheep to be worried by the roaring lion, but the sheep that keeps near to the Great Shep- herd shall not be given up to the mouth of the destroyer. These are the chief advices of a spiritual or intellectual kind, which at present occur to my thoughts, and which I have here proposed to the reason and conscience of men, as proper means to secure them from the dangerous and dreadful practice of self- murder : And I am well assured that if such counsels as these had been followed, we should not have heard of such frequent and bloody instances of persons in the full exercise of reason putting an end to their own lives, as our weekly newspapers in- form us of. But it must be confessed that where this temptation dwells upon the mind, and hangs heavy upon the spirits, where the soul is vexed and hurried with it from day to day, or where there is a melancholy temper of spirit indulging gloomy appre- hensions both of things present, and things to come, there is much ground to suspect that reason is clouded, that the hu moors of the body are discomposed, and that animal nature is under the power of some distemper. In this case all the direc- tions that are applied to reason and conscience are likely to be- comé useless and ineffectual without the skill of the physician and the application of proper medicines to correct the peccant humours of the body. Friends and kindred and those which dwell in the .same,house should make wise observations, where they suspect a person to labour tinder the power of such a malady, or to indulge such a temptation : for many times they
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