refrains his lips may ponder and pre-examine what he utters, whether it be profitable and seasonable or no; and so the tongue of the just is as fined silver, it is refined in the wise forethought and pondering of the heart. Even to utter knowledge and wise things profusely, holds not of wisdom, and a little usually makes most noise; as the Hebrew proverb is, "A penny in an earthen pot keeps a great sound and tinkling." Certainly it is the way to have much inward peace, to be wary in this point. Men think to have solace by much free unbounded discourse with others, but when they have done, they find it otherwise, and sometimes contrary. He is wise that hath learned to speak little with others, and much with himself and with God. How much might be gained for our souls, if we would make a right use of this silence! So David, dumb to men, found his tongue to God, Psal. xxxviii, 13, 15. A spiritually-minded man is quickly weary of other discourse, but of that which be loves and wherewith his affection is possessed and taken up; and, by experience, a Christian will find, when the Lord is pleased to show him most favor in prayer or other spiritual exercise, how unsavory it makes other discourses after it; as they who have tasted something singu larly sweet, think other things that are less sweet altogether tasteless and unpleasant.

In the use of the tongue, when thou dost speak, divert it from evil and guile, by a habit of and delight in profitable and gracious discourse. Thus St. Paul makes the opposition, Eph. iv, 29; Let there be no corrupt or rotten communication; and yet he urges not total silence, but enjoins such speech as may edify and minister grace to the hearers.

Now in this we should consider, to the end such discourses may be more fruitful, both what is the true end of them and the right means suiting it. They are not only, nor principally, for the learning of some new things, or the canvassing of debated questions, but their chief good is the warming of the heart; stirring up in it love to God, and remembrance of our present and after estate, our mortality and immortality; aud extolling the ways of holiness, and the promises and comforts of the gospel,

and the excellency of Jesus Christ; and in these sometimes one particular, sometimes another, as our particular condition requires or any occasion makes them pertinent. Therefore in these discourses, seek not so much either to vent thy knowledge, or to increase it, as to know more spiritually and effectually what thou dost know. And in this way those mean despised truths, that every one thinks he is sufficiently acquainted with, will have a new sweetness and use in them, which thou didst not so well perceive before; and in this humble sincere way thou shalt grow in grace and in knowledge too.

There is no sweeter entertainment than for travellers to be remembering their country, their blessed home, and the happiness awaiting them there, and to be refreshing and encouraging one another in the hope of it; strengthening their hearts against all the hard encounters and difficulties in the way; often overlooking this moment, and helping each other to higher apprehensions of that vision of God which we expect.

And are not such discourses much more worthy the choosing, than the base trash we usually fill one another's ears with? Were our tongues given us to exchange folly and sin? or were they not framed for the glorifying of God, and therefore are called our glory? Some take the expression for the soul; but they must be one in this work, and then indeed are both our tongues and our souls truly our glory, when they are busied in exalting his, and are tuned together to that. Instead of calumnies, and lies, and vanities, the carrion which flies, base minds feed on, to delight in divine things and extolling of God is for a man to eat angels' food. An excellent task for the tongue is that which David chooseth, And my tongue shall speak of thy righteousness, and of thy praise all the day long. Were the day ten days long, no vacant room for any unholy, or offensive, or feigned speech! And they lose not, who love to speak praise to him, for he loves to speak peace to them; and instead of the world's vain tongue-liberty, to have such intercourse and discourse is no sad melancholy life, as the world mistakes it.

Ver. 11. Let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it.

THIS is a full and complete rule; but it is our miserable folly to mistake so far, as to embrace evil under the notion of good; and not only contrary to the nature of the thing, but contrary to our own experience, still to be pursuing that which is still flying further off from us, catching at a vanishing shadow of delight, with nothing to fasten upon but real guiltiness and misery. Childish minds! We have been so often gulled, and yet never grow wiser, still bewitched and deluded with dreams: a deceived heart, a mocked or deluded heart, hath turned him aside. When we think that we are surest, have the hand that holds fastest, our right hand, upon some good, even then it proves a lie in our right hand, slips through as a handful of air and proves nothing; promises fair, but doth but mock us; yet still we foolishly and madly trust it! When it makes so gross a lie, that we might easily, if we took it to the light, see through it, being a lie so often discovered and of known falsehood, yet some new dream or disguise makes it pass with us again, and we go round in that mill, having our eyes put out, like Samson, and still we are where we were, engaged in perpetual fruitless toil. Strange, that the base deceitful lusts of sin should still keep their credit with us! but the beast hath a false prophet at his side, Rev. xix, 20, to commend him and set him off with new inventions, and causes us to err by his lies. But evil it is still; not only void of all good, but the very deformity and debasement of the soul; defacing in it the divine image of its Maker, and impressing on it the vile image of Satan. And then, further, it is attended with shame and sorrow: even at the very best, it is a sowing of the wind, there is no solid good in it; and withal a reaping of the whirlwind, vexations and horrors. They that know it under a sense of this after-view, as attended with the wrath of an offended God ask them what they think of it; whether they would not choose any trouble or pain, though ever so great, rather than willingly to adventure on the ways of

sin.

Obedience is that good, that beauty and comeliness of the soul, that conformity with the holy will of God, that hath peace and sweetness in it; the hardest exercise of it is truly delightful even at present, and hereafter it will be fully so. Would we but learn to consider it thus, to know sin to be the greatest evil, and the holy will of God the highest good, it would be easy to persuade and prevail with men to comply with this advice, to eschew the one and do the other.

These do not only reach the actions, but require an intrinsic aversion of the heart from sin, and a propensity to holiness and the love of it.

Eschew. The very motion and bias of the soul must be turned from sin, and carried towards God. And this is principally to be considered by us and inquired after within us an abhorrence of that which is evil; not a simple forbearing, but a hating and loathing of it, and this springing from the love of God. And where this love is, the avoidance of sin and walking in holiness, or doing good, will be constant; not wavering with the variation of outward circumstances, of occasion, or society, or secrecy, but going on in its natural course; as the sun is as far from the earth and goes as fast under a cloud, as when it is in our sight, and goes cheerfully; such is the obedience of a renewed mind. And it will be universal, as proceeding from an abhorrence of all sin; as natural antipathies are against the whole kind of any thing. And also exact, keeping afar off from the very appearances of sin, and from all the inducements and steps towards it. And this is the true way of eschewing it. Not a little time of constrained forbearance during a night, or the day of participating of the communion, or a little time before and some few days after such services; for thus sin is not dispossessed and cast out, but retires inward and lurks in the heart. Being beset with those ordinances, it knows they last but awhile, and therefore it gets into its strength, and keeps close there, till they be out of sight and disappear again and be a good way off, so that it thinks itself out of their danger, a good many days having passed, and then it comes forth and returns to exert itself with liberty, yea, it may be with more vigor, as

it were to regain the time it hath been forced to lose and lie idle in.

And this hatred of sin, works most against sin in a man's self; as in things we abhor, our reluctance rises most when they are nearest us. A godly man hates sin in others, as hateful wheresover it is found; but because it is nearest him in himself, he hates it most there. They who by their nature and breeding are somewhat delicate, like not to see any thing uncleanly any where, but least of all in their own house and upon their own clothes or skin. This makes the godly man flee not only the society of evil men, but himself; he goes out of his old self; and till this be done, a man does not indeed flee sin, but carries it still with him as an evil companion, or as an evil guide rather, that misleads him still from the path of life. And there is much, first in the true discovery, and then in the thorough disunion of the heart from that sin which is most of all a man's self, that from which he can with the greatest difficulty escape, that besets him the most and lieth in his way on all hands, hath him at every turn to disengage one's self and get free from that, to eschew that evil, is difficult indeed. And the task is the harder, if this evil be, as oftentimes it is, not some gross sin, but one more subtle, less seen, and therefore not so eaily avoided; but for this an impartial search must be used. If it be amongst those things that seem most necessary and that cannot be dispensed with, an idol hid amongst the stuff, yet thence must it be drawn forth and

cast out.

The right eschewing of evil involves a wary avoidance of all occasions and beginnings of it. Flee from sin, says the wise man, as from a serpent. We are not to be tanıpering with it, and coming near it, and thinking to charm it; for, as one says, 'who will not laugh at the charmer that is bitten by a serpent?" If we know our own weakness and the strength of sin, we shall fear to expose ourselves to hazards, and be willing even to abridge ourselves of some things lawful when they prove dangerous; for he that will do always all he lawfully may, will often do something that lawfully he may not.

Thus for the other precept, Do good, the main thing
Div.

No. VI.

2 F