opportunities of communing with God, and pouring out our hearts before him. If therefore we are negligent of this, if we suffer business, company, or any avocation whatever, to prevent these secret exercises of the soul, (or which comes to the same thing, to make us hurry them over in a slight and careless manner) that life will surely decay. And if we long or frequently intermit them, it will gradually die away.
5. Another sin of omission which frequently brings the soul of a believer into darkness, is the neglect of what was so strongly enjoined, even under the Jewish dispensation, Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him: Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart. Now if we do hate our brother in our heart, if we do not rebuke him when we see him in a fault, but suffer sin upon him: this will soon bring leanness into our own soul: seeing hereby we are partakers of his sin. By neglecting to reprove our neighbour, we make his sin our own. We become accountable for it to God: we saw his danger, and gave him no warning. So, if he perish in his iniquity, God may justly require his blood at our hands. No wonder then if by thus grieving the Spirit, we lose the light of his countenance.
6. A third cause of our losing this, is the giving way to some kind of inward sin. For example: we know every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord: and that, although
