The danger of prosperity discovered in several sermons upon Prov. I. 27 /

1. Affected Ignorance is the usual Concomitant of sensual Lusts: for the enlightened Conscience will convince, and condemn Men for their Pollutions, and force them here to feel the beginning of sorrows, and thereby make them apprehensive what the issues and consummation ⟨p. 70⟩will be hereafter, and this will cast an aspersion of bitterness upon their sweet sins, and lessen the full pleasure of them. From hence our Saviour tells us, Every ¹one that loves to do Evil, hates the Light, neither cometh to the Light, lest his Deeds should be reproved; that is, by the instructed and awakened Conscience. Men love darkness to cover their nakedness and foul deformity. They are averse from knowing their Duty, and will not search, lest they should discover such terrible Truths that cross their sensual Humour. The Apostle foretells, That Scoffers ²should come in the last days, who are willingly ignorant of the beginning and end of the World, as if there were no Divine Maker of all things, who has power to destroy them, and consequently no Judg ⟨p. 71⟩to whom Men must be accountable for their disobedience to his Laws: they assent to the most evident Absurdity, that all things were and shall continue in the same tenor: and the cause of their willing ignorance is insinuated in the Character that describes them, that they might walk after their own Lusts, more securely, freely, and joyfully.

1. Affected Ignorance is the usual Concomitant of sensual Lusts: for the enlightned Conscience will convince, and condemn Men for their Pollutions, and force them here to feel the beginning of sorrows, and thereby make them apprehensive what the issues and consummation ⟨p. 70⟩will be hereafter, and this will cast an aspersion of bitterness upon their sweet sins, and lessen the full pleasure of them. From hence our Saviour tells us, Every ¹one that loves to do Evil, hates the Light, neither cometh to the Light, lest his Deeds should be reproved; that is, by the instructed and awakned Conscience. Men love darkness to cover their nakedness and foul deformity. They are averse from knowing their Duty, and will not search, lest they should discover such terrible Truths that cross their sensual Humour. The Apostle foretells, That Scoffers