The Fountain of Life Opened

Thirdly, You are yet further engaged to practical holiness upon the account of your brethren, who are not a little concerned, and interested therein. For if through the neglect of your hearts, your lives be defiled and polluted, this will be thrown in their faces, and many innocent and upright ones, both reproached and grieved upon your account. This mischievous effect holy David earnestly deprecated, Psal. 69.5, 6. Oh God thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from thee; let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of Hosts, be ashamed for my sake. Let not them that seek thee, be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel, q. d. Lord, thou knowest what a weak and foolish creature I am. And how apt to miscarry, if left to my self, and should I through my foolishness, act unbecoming a Saint; how would this shame the faces, and sad the hearts of thy people! They will be as men confounded at the report of my fall. The fall of one Christian, is matter of trouble and shame to all the rest. And when they shall hear the sad and unwelcome news of your scandalous miscarriages, (which will certainly be the effect of a neglected heart and life) they will say as David concerning Saul and Jonathan; tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon, &c. Or as Tamar concerning Ammon, and we, whither shall we cause our shame to go? And for them, they ⟨p. 615⟩shall be as the fools in Israel. Thy loose and careless life will cause them to estrange themselves from thee, and look shy upon thee, as being ashamed to own thee, and canst thou bear that? Will it not grieve and pierce your very hearts to see a cloud of strangeness and trouble over the countenances of your brethren? To see your selves disowned and lightly esteemed by them? This very consideration struck a great favourite in the Persian Court to the very heart. ^*It was Ustazanes, who had been Governor to Sapores in his minority. And this man for fear, denied the Christian Faith; and complied with the Idolatrous worship of the King. And one day (saith the Historian) sitting at the Court gate, he saw Simon the aged Arch-Bishop of Seleucia, drawing along to prison for his constancy in the Christian Faith; and though he durst not openly own the Faith he had basely denied, and confess himself a Christian: yet he could not choose but rise, and express his reverence to this holy man;