The Communicant's Companion
little, so grown people are not too big, to be religious. You must resolve to live under the bonds of this covenant, when you come to live of yourselves, to be at your own disposal, and to launch out never so far into this world.
Your greatest engagements in care and business, cannot disengage you from these. Whatever state of life you are called to, you must resolve to take your religion with you into it.
Let not those who are in the midst of their days think it possible or desirable to outlive the binding force of this covenant. If now we set out in the way we should go, it must be with a resolution, if we live to be old, how wise and honorable soever old age be, yet then we "will not depart from it;" as knowing that the hoary hairs are then only "a crown of glory, when they are found," as having been long before fixed, "in the way of righteousness."
2. We must come up to such a strong resolution as will not yield to the power of temptation from the enemy. When we engage ourselves for God, we engage ourselves against Satan, and must expect his utmost efforts to oppose us in our way, and to draw us out of it. Against these designs we must therefore arm ourselves, resolving to stand in the evil day, and having done all in God's name, to stand our ground, saying to all that which would either divert or deter us from prosecuting the choice we have made, as Ruth did to Naomi, when she was steadfastly resolved:—Entreat me not to leave
Christ, or turn from following after him: for whither he goes, I will follow him, though it be to banishment; where he lodges, I will lodge with him, though it be in a prison; for death itself shall never part us.
We must resolve, by God's grace, never to be so elevated or enamored with the smiles of the world, as by them to be allured from the paths of serious godliness; for our religion will be both the safety and honor of a