Use First. O how should this make us afraid of running into a temptation when there is such a witchery in it. Some men are too confident. They have too good an opinion of themselves—as if they could not be taken with such a disease, and therefore will breathe in any air. It is just with God to let such be shot with one of Satan’s darts, to make them know their own hearts better. Who will pity him whose house is blown up, that kept his powder in the chimney corner? ‘Is thy servant a dog,’ saith Hazael, II Kings 8:13. Do you make me a beast, sunk so far below the nature of man as to imbrue my hands in these horrid murders? Yet, how soon did this wretch fall into the temptation, and, by that one bloody act upon his liege lord, which he perpetrated as soon as he got home, show that the other evils, which the prophet foretold of him, were not so improbable as at first he thought. Oh, stand off the devil’s mark, unless you mean to have one of the devil’s arrows in your side! Keep as far from the whirl of temptation as may be. For if once he got you within his circle, thy head may soon be dizzy. One sin helps to kindle another; the less the greater, as the brush the logs. When the courtiers had got their king to carouse and play the drunkard, he soon learned to play the scorner: ‘The princes have made him sick with bottles of wine; he stretched out his hand with scorners,’ Hosea 7:5.
Use Second. Hath Satan’s darts such an enkindling nature? take heed of being Satan’s instrument in putting fire to the corruption of another. Some on purpose do it. Idolaters set out their temples and altars with superstitious pictures, embellished with all the cost that gold and silver can afford them, to bewitch the spectator’s eye. Hence they are said to be ‘inflamed with their idols,’ Isa. 57:5—as much as any lover with his minion. And the drunkard, he enkindles his neighbour’s lust, ‘putting the bottle to him,’ Hab. 2:15. O what a base work are these men employed about! By the law it is death for any wilfully to set fire on his neighbour’s house. What then deserve they that set fire on the souls of men, and that no less than hell-fire? But, is it possible thou mayest do it unawares by a less matter than thou dreamest on. A silly child playing with a lighted straw may set a house on fire which many wise cannot quench. And truly Satan may use thy folly and carelessness to kindle lust in another’s heart. Perhaps an idle light speech drops from thy mouth, and thou meanest no great hurt; but a gust of temptation may carry this spark into thy friend’s bosom, and kindle a sad fire there. A wanton attire, which we will suppose thou wearest with a chaste heart, and only because it is the fashion, yet may ensnare another's eye. And if he that kept a pit open but to the hurt of a beast, sinned, how much more thou, who givest occasion to a soul’s sin, which is a worse hurt? Paul ‘would not eat flesh while the world stood, if it made his brother offend,’ I Cor. 8:13. And canst thou dote on a foolish dress and immodest fashion, whereby many may offend, still to wear it? ‘The body,’ Christ saith, ‘is better than raiment.’ The soul, then, of thy brother is more to be valued surely than an idle fashion of thy raiment. We come to the second branch of the point.
