Early piety, exemplified in the life and death of Mr. Nathanael Mather, who ...…

(1.) Abandon the Sin of Ill Company-keeping, that you remember your Creator. Be able to say with him, in Psal. 26. 4. I have not sat with vain persons. Many an hopeful young man has been ruined, by falling into the Society of the Profane: Never was ⟨p. 78⟩there a more bloody Murderer of Souls than that Society. The very Heathen could observe, and the Apostle Paul quotes the Speech of an Heathen Poet for it, That evil Communications corrupt good manners. Now they are Evil Companions with whom those evil Communications are. Young man, dost thou see others, that will Drink, and Game, and Swear, and Scoff? I would call upon thee, as Moses upon them in Num. 16. 26. Depart from the Tents of these wicked men, lest ye be consumed in all their sins. Do not so much as begin a needless familiarity with Wicked men: Don't Walk with the ungodly, lest you come to stand with the sinners, and at last sit with the scornful: Remember that bad Companions will cause you to sin with them. The Jews in Babylon grew very cold in the matter of Building the House of God. Why so? Their dwelling among the lewd and wild Babylonians, procured this indifferency. I have thought, how came Corah, a Levite, to hook in Dathan, and Abiram, and the Reubenites into a Conspiracy with him? I find that the Levites of Kohath, and the Reubenites pitched their Tents near together, on the South-side of the Tabernacle. So they infected one another: Remember, that bad Companions will cause you to dye with them too. I pray how came Ahaziah ⟨p. 79⟩to meet with his Death before his Time? It was by visiting a debauched bigoted Idolater, the infamous Jehoram. When you fall into a Knot of Impious Men, you are like the Man Travelling to Jericho, who fell among Thieves that stripped him, and wounded him, and departed leaving him half-dead. Some Persons going out of the World, have comfortably pleaded that with God, Lord, let me not be with wicked men for ever, for I never cared to be with them here: Sad is the Case of them who cannot plead so. O that every young Man would remember that saying in Prov. 1. 10. My Son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not; walk not thou in the way of them; and remember that saying in