the slaughter of the Benjamites; [1] examples which the pastor will adduce to deter from similar enormities.
The punishment of death may not, it is true, always await such criminality; but it does not therefore always escape the visitations of the divine wrath. The mind of the adulterer is frequently a prey to agonizing torture: blinded by his own infatuation, the heaviest chastisement with which sin can be visited, he is lost to all regard for God, for reputation, for honour, for family, and even for life; and thus, utterly abandoned and useless, he is undeserving of confidence in any matter of moment, and incompetent to the discharge of duty of any sort. Of this we find signal examples in the persons of David and of Solomon. David had no sooner fallen into the crime of adultery than he degenerated into a character the very reverse of what he had been before; from the mildest of men becoming a monster of cruelty, and consigning to death Urias, a man who had deserved well of him; [2] whilst Solomon, having abandoned himself to the lust of women, abandoned the true religion, to follow strange gods. [3] This sin, therefore, as Osee observes, plucks out the heart, and often blinds the under standing. [4]
We now come to the remedies which are applicable to this moral disease. The first is studiously to avoid idleness: for, according to Ezekiel, it was by yielding themselves up to its enervating influence, that the Sodomites plunged into all the turpitude of the most base and criminal lust. [5] In the next place, intemperance in eating and drinking is carefully to be avoided: "I fed them to the full," says the prophet, " and they committed adultery." [6] Repletion and satiety beget lust, as our Lord intimates in these words: " Take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness;" [7] " Be not drunk with wine," says St. Paul, " wherein is luxury." [8] But the eyes, in particular, are the inlets to criminal passion, and to this refer these words of our Lord; " If thine eye scandalize thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee." [9] The prophets, also, frequently speak to the same effect: " made a covenant with mine eyes," says Job, " that I would not so much as think upon a virgin." [10] Finally, there are on record innumerable examples of the evils which have their origin in the concupiscence of the eyes: to it we trace the fall of David; [11] the king of Sichem fell a victim to its seductive influence; [12] and the elders, who became the false accusers of the chaste Susanna, afford a melancholy example of its baneful effects. [13]
Too much ornamental elegance of dress, which solicits the eye, is but too frequently an occasion of sin; and hence the
