perceives an evil, to seek and apply the best remedy that can be found; and to administer it at the earliest period, before the mischief has gained any ground in the heart. When, therefore, bad thoughts arise, instantly endeavour to check them. They are insidious enemies, employed by the Great Seducer to undermine your virtue, and destroy your peace. Treat them as such, and with all the hostility of your souls rise up in arms against them, and crush their power, while it is yet too weak to do you an essential injury, and before they have entrenched themselves too strongly in your hearts. A bold resistance at the beginning will ensure you an easy victory, and not only lessen the difficulty of every subsequent contest, but save you, probably, from utter ruin and disgrace. By encouraging bad thoughts, you increase their strength, give them a more frequent and every day a longer entertainment, till they fill up the whole mind to the exclusion of every thing that is good, continually supply Satan with additional means and opportunities of corrupting your hearts, and winding you

to his purposes, go on heaping fresh fuel on the flames of wicked desires, and waste that time and those talents, which were given you to be employed in the service of God, and for which you will have to account to him at the great day of judgment. But, by checking and suppressing them as soon as you can, you escape all these evils, and all the infinite variety of wicked imaginations, which never fail to rise up in multitudes, and follow each other in quickest succession, the moment the mind is engaged in the contemplation of what is wrong.

The next part of wisdom is, to withdraw yourselves, as much as possible, from those temptations, which you know will call up improper images in your minds. It is the height of folly to run unnecessarily into danger; the extreme of rashness to expose yourselves to the weapons of the enemy without cause, without any prospect of benefit, and indeed with every probability against you of receiving a deadly wound, when you may, by a timely retreat, or a prudent forbearance, secure your own safety, and disappoint

the plans which he has formed to subdue you. If you are continually thrusting yourselves into scenes in which the work of iniquity is going on, you incur the sin of wilfully awakening bad thoughts, and you must be something more than human, if you come away as innocent, and as ignorant of evil, as you were before. A wise man, sensible of the danger of expos ing a corrupt nature to the view and contemplation of improper objects, keeps himself out of the way of temptation, and seeks his safety in flight.

Another act of wisdom is, to apply your minds and attention to such objects and studies, as are proper in themselves, and conducive to the ends of piety and virtue. The human mind is active, and must be busy. Ideas are so constantly rushing into it through the several senses, exciting its notice and attention; and, when admitted, are so infinitely varied and multiplied by its powers of reflecting upon, compounding, abstracting, and comparing them, that it must always be kept in a state of motion. If, therefore, the thoughts are not, by a necessary con

straint, and by the force of habit, engaged about what is good, they will, from the corruption of our nature, and the solicitations of Satan, be employed about what is evil. Hence the necessity of reading and studying such books, as contain the lessons of truth, and the precepts for virtuous conduct; and of meditating on such subjects, as have a tendency to improve the understanding in the knowledge of duty, to direct the current of thought into its proper channel, to bend the will to the choice of right principles and pursuits, and to prepare and fix the heart to seek the Lord. Here let me counsel you to take heed, not only how and what you hear, but also how and what you read. Beware of perusing those books, which, by exciting a false interest, and fixing the contemplation on improbable, and often impossible incidents, inflame the passions, pervert the mind, and introduce notions, which have no other tendency, than to awaken feelings hostile to the cause of right reason and religion, and injurious to the peace and comfort of the soul. These books are more dan

gerous even than bad example, because they carry not with them that disgust which open immorality occasions, and because they make that, which would shock in practice, appear plausible, and indeed amiable, in argument. If, therefore, you think that your happiness both here and hereafter depends upon the adoption of right principles and feelings, and upon a proper use of your time and faculties, trust not yourselves with these noxious compositions, which give vice the form of virtue, array infidelity in the garb of religion, and deck fiction and error in the borrowed plumes of truth.

It is likewise a wise part to reflect often, that you are living in the presence of Him, who knows your thoughts long before, and observes every turn and movement of your hearts. From his all-seeing eye nothing is concealed; from his Omniscience no secret can be hid. He perceives and knows the exact point where the guilt of bad thoughts begins, and is fully acquainted with every encouragement that is given them, and with every effort that is made to suppress them. Let this truth

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