PART II. OF CONSCIENCE AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT. NEVER trifle with your convictions. But if any thing appears to you to be wrong, (unless it is enjoined by some authority to which it is your duty to surrender your private judgment) reject it instantly. "To him that esteemeth any thing to be "unclean, to him it is unclean." Rom. xiv. 14. We shall be judged by our own consciences, and not by those of others. 66 Happy is he that condemneth not "himself in that thing which he alloweth." Rom. xiv. 22. E OF CONFIDENCE AND SECURITY. Never think that you have mastered any of your corruptions, and have no further cause for watchfulness. "Let him that thinketh he standeth "take heed lest he fall." 1 Cor. x. 12. Do not be confident of your own strength, but always carry about you a consciousness of your weakness. The best way to avoid evil is to keep out of the way of it. Human nature is too weak to trust a parley. And as you pray to God not to lead you into temptation, take care not to lead yourself into it. ON PLEASURE. Beware of pleasure, in all its varied forms. have always considered it as an enemy to virtue. Our Saviour made it his "meat and "drink" to do the will of God. Let your pleasures be derivative rather than original; the consequence of your exertions rather than the object of them: and let them all be connected with some purpose beyond that of bare enjoyment. Do not go much to public amusements. They injure the purity and simplicity of the mind, and give us a distate for spiritual things. If they do not destroy religion, they weaken it; by becoming a sort of rivals to it, and occupying a place in the mind long after they are past.—It is better to be ignorant of those things which there is no profit in recollecting.—The beauties of nature, the varieties of art, the elegancies of literature, the details of charity, and the charms of social converse and secret meditation, are sufficient to employ the leisure hours of any reasonable person.— The pleasures derived from these are more in unison with the true character and relations of man; and do no violence to those principles and feelings which it is the object of our studies and moral discipline to cultivate and establish. If either bodily or mental health requires amusements of a more active nature, they must be resorted to like other medicines, and used with moderation, caution, and discretion. Do not store the mind with impertinences. They occupy the place of better things, and cannot be weeded out again. The mind cannot forget things, if it would. Therefore take care how you admit any guest into it which you can never get rid of. Let all its images (as far as you can) be rational, pure, and innocent; and such as will be fit for that Heavenly residence to which you aspire to carry them. If you want subjects for meditation, "Whatsoever things are true, "Whatsoever things are honest, "Whatsoever things are just, |