hope in God, no temptation has yet prevailed on your lordship so far as to be guilty of any loose act. If it has, as you love your soul, let it not proceed to a habit. The retreat is yet easy and open, but will every day become more difficult and obstructed. God is so merciful, that upon your repentance and resolution of amendment, he is not only ready to forgive what is past, but to assist us by his grace to do better for the future. But I need not enforce these considerations upon a mind so capable of, and easy to receive good counsel. I shall only desire your lordship to think, again and again, how great a point of wisdom it is, in all our actions, to consult the peace of our minds, and to have no quarrel with the constant and inseparable companion of our lives. If others displease us, we may quit their company; but he that is displeased with himself is unavoidably unhappy because he has no way to get rid of himself.

My lord, for God's sake, and your own, think of being happy, and resolve by all means to save yourself from this untoward generation. Determine rather upon a speedy change of your condition than to gratify the inclinations of your youth in any thing but what is lawful and honourable; and let me have the satisfaction to be assured from your lordship, either that there has been no ground for this report; or that there shall be none for the future; which will be the welcomest news to me in the world. I have only to beg of your lordship to believe, that I have not done this to satisfy the formality of my profession; but that it proceeds from the truest affection and good

temper apt to increase it; for both which, great allowances ought to be made. And yet, methinks, both reason and religion do offer us considerations of that solidity and strength, as may very well support our spirits under all frailties and infirmities of the flesh; such as these:

That God is perfect love and goodness; that we are not only his creatures, but his children, and as dear to him as to ourselves; that he does not afflict willingly, or grieve the children of men; and that all evils and afflictions, which befal us, are intended for the cure and prevention of greater evils of sin and punishment; and therefore we ought not only to submit to them with patience, as being deserved by us, but to receive them with thankfulness, as being designed by him to do us that good, and to bring us to that sense of him and ourselves, which nothing else would perhaps have done: that the sufferings of this present time are but short and light, compared with that extreme and endless misery, which we have deserved, and with that "exceeding and eternal weight of glory" which we hope for in the other world: that, if we be careful to make the best preparations for death and eternity, whatever brings us nearer to our end brings us nearer to our happiness; and how. rugged soever the way be, the comfort is that it leads us to our Father's house, where we shall want nothing that we can wish. When we labour under a dangerous distemper which threatens our life, what would we not be content to bear, in order to a perfect recovery, could we but be assured of it? And should we not be willing to endure much more, in order to