Discourses, or, Sermons on several Scriptures

Thirdly, ¹It is a most necessary Duty. The greatest good you can do in the World is to pluck up these Briars and Thorns with which it is over-grown. Consider but how insolent Vice and Wickedness is apt. to be where none do appear to check and control it. If it can but once silence Virtue, it will quickly banish it. If it can but put it to the Blush, it will quickly put it to flight. And when it hath once made us either afraid or ashamed to lay a Rebuke in its ⟨p. 22⟩way, what else can we expect but that it should overspread the Face of the whole Earth, and like a general Deluge drown all Mankind, first in Sin, and then in Perdition. There is no other way to prevent this great and sad Ruin, but for every Christian vigorously to oppose himself to the growing Sins of the Times and Places in which he lives, and with Courage and Resolution to decry that common Profaneness, that gains Credit only by our Silence We know that Sin is a shameful opprobrious Thing in it self, a Thing that disheartens and dispirits the Guilty; They wear a Conscience about them that is still checking and upbraiding them; and if we could but look into their Souls, we should see them covered all over with Fear, Horror, and ⟨p. 23⟩Confusion. They are generally self-condemned Persons, and carry those Monitors within their own Breasts that are continually reproving and tormenting them: And therefore that they may not hear the Voice of their own Consciences, they live abroad, and rather converse with any one without doors, than with themselves and their own troublesome and clamorous Hearts. Now let it be our Care to stop up all Passages, by which they think to make their escape. Let them find, that in whatsoever Company they go, they shall meet with those that will no more spare them, than their own Consciences; that Company is no Sanctuary for Sins and Guilt, and that they shall be as sure to be Reproved, as they dare to ⟨p. 24⟩Offend. And when they are thus every-where beset, their Consciences exclaiming against them within, and all that they converse with without, they will see a Necessity for it, either to forsake their Vices, or the World, and be forced to be virtuous for their own ease and quiet. And certainly till Christians do conspire together in this Design, we may long enough complain of the abounding of Iniquity without any successful Reformation.