the crafty animal adopt? It takes a little pebble and tosses it into the oyster. This prevents the valves from closing, and then he rushes up and devours the oyster at his leisure.
Soul of man! just so comes the evil one towards thee; not alluring thee to some sin of horrible deadliness, but flinging a little pebble a tiny fault into thy heart, and if thou cast it not from thee at once, but keepest thy heart still unclosed, he obtaineth an entry and destroyeth thee utterly.
Take another specimen. The following passages are condensed from a sermon on the vanity of all the labour of sinners, and the lamentations of lost souls when they behold in retrospect their life squandered in empty trifles.
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost.
Sermon III.
Luke v. 5. We have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing.
Those words of Job are worthy of notice, I have made my bed in the darkness. I will explain them to you by the use of a simile.
A lighted candle is given to a servant that he may retire to rest by its light, after that he has made his bed. The fellow snatches up the candle and begins to wander about the house, dawdling over this or that, gossiping with one or another, till the candle is expended, flickers up, and dies out. Then, in hurry, he runs to his chamber, but he is without light, and he is constrained to make and to retire to his bed in the dark-
