ishes, or of disgraceful indolence,
urge us, and either prevail, or at least so confuse us, that we do not
know how to act. Alas! in ancient days it happened in this way, that
Christians who were brought before their heathen persecutors for
punishment, because they were Christians, sometimes came short of the
crown of martyrdom, "having loved this present world[4]," and so lost
their way in the mazes of Satan's crafty arguments.

Temptations to unbelief may also be mentioned here. Speculating wantonly
on sacred subjects, and jesting about them, offend us at first; and we
turn away: but if in an evil hour we are seduced by the cleverness or wit
of a writer or speaker, to listen to his impieties, who can say where we
shall stop? Can we save ourselves from the infection of his profaneness?
we cannot hope to do so. And when we come to a better mind (if by God's
grace this be afterwards granted to us), what will be our state? like the
state of men who have undergone some dreadful illness, which changes the
constitution of the body. That ready and clear perception of right and
wrong, which before directed us, will have disappeared, as beauty of
person, or keenness of eye-sight in bodily disorders; and when we begin
to try to make up our minds which way lies the course of duty on
particular trials, we shall bring enfeebled, unsteady powers to the
examination; and when we move to act, our limbs (as it were) will move
the contrary way, and we shall do wrong when we wish to do right.

3. But there is another wretched effect of sinning once, which sometimes
takes place;--not only the sinning that once itself, but being so seduced
by it, as forthwith to continue in the commission of it ever afterwards,
without seeking for arguments to meet our conscience withal; from a mere
brutish, headstrong, infatuate greediness after its bad pleasures. There
are beasts of prey which are said to abstain from blood till they taste
it, but once tasting it, ever seek it: and, in like manner, there is a
sort of thirst for sin which is born with us, but which grace quenches,
and which is thus kept under _till_ we, by our own act, rouse it again;
and which, when once aroused, never can be allayed. We sin, while we
confess the wages of sin to be death.

4. Sometimes, I say, this is the immediate effect of a first
transgression; and if not the immediate effect, yet it is always the
tendency and the end of sinning at length, viz. to enslave us to