Certain sermons, first preached, and after published at several times, by M. Thomas Gataker…Certaine sermons, first preached, and after published at severall times, by M. Thomas Gataker…

§. 33. Now in this kind is more special regard to be had, as before of our special corruptions, so here of such special temptations as we have formerly found our selves either to have fallen, or to have been in danger of falling by,^m that we may the more warily for the time to come shun such things, as though not evil in themselves, yet we find to have been formerly occasions of evil unto us.ⁿ Turn mine eyes away, saith David, ô Lord, even from beholding of vanity: not mine heart only from affecting it, but mine eyes also from beholding it. It is not likely indeed (though some have so thought) that David penned that Psalm after his foul over-sight with Bathsheba: it may seem rather by the main matter of it to have been made during the time of his exilement under Saul, before he came to the crown. But^o well might David, or any other in Davids ⟨p. 83⟩case, calling to mind after the like offence, what had been the occasion of his fall, how by letting his eyes run at random, and not watching over them as he ought, he had come to be caught in Satan's snares; well, I say, might such a one pray earnestly unto God, as David there doth, that his eyes as well as his heart might be kept within compass, lest by the one Satan might come again to surprise and to seize upon the other. Yea not only ought such a one so to pray with David, but to join practice also with his prayer, by^p making (as Job sometime did) a covenant with his eyes,^q that they should no more be fixed and set upon such objects as had been formerly occasions to him of folly and of fall: and so others in the like case to forbear such company, cast off such acquaintance, shun such private familiarities, and break off such needless businesses, as have been the means formerly to ensnare them unto sin. Remembering what the Prophet saith, describing the man that shall both dwell in safety here, and behold the glory of God to his eternal comfort hereafter, that