Joshua 23

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. XXIII.—Happy is that nation, the rulers of which not only establish the true religion, but also mightily promote it with their example and advice. Accurate observers of providence may in every age remark manifold grounds of thankfulness, and reasons for exactness in holy obedience, and God’s kind favours, as well as his fearful judgments, whether past, present, or future, ought powerfully to influence us to holiness and circumspection of life. But while we are surrounded with temptations, we had need constantly to watch and pray; and to maintain a constant love to God as a mean of preservation from evil. Scarcely any snare is more fatal than affinity or intimacy with unbelievers; and often God makes our tempters to sin our punishers for it; and causes our knowledge and remembrance of the mercies which we rejected a mean of tormenting us when we are deprived of them. It is therefore greatly unbecoming for professed Christians to regard so little the religion of those whom they marry or make their intimates; or to lard their speeches or writings with the names of idols, or even to deck their houses or gardens with their images for ornament. 30