refusals, grand impediments, importunate addresses, miserable disappointments, wonderful surprises, unexpected encounters, castles surprised, imprisoned lovers rescued, and meetings of supposed dead ones; bloody duels, languishing voices echoing from solitary groves, overheard mournful complaints, deep-fetched sighs sent from wild deserts, intrigues managed with unheard-of subtlety; and whilst all things seem at the greatest distance, then are dead people alive, enemies friends, despair turned to enjoyment, and all their impossibilities reconciled: things that never were, nor are, nor ever shall or can be, they all come to pass. And as if men and women were too slow to answer the loose suggestions of corrupt nature; or were too intent on more divine speculations and heavenly affairs, they have all that is possible for the most extravagant wits to invent; not only express lies, but utter impossibilities to very nature, on purpose to excite their minds to those idle passions, and intoxicate their giddy fancies with swelling nothings but airy fictions: which not only consume their time, effeminate their natures, debase their reason, and set them on work to reduce these things to practice, and make each adventure theirs by imitation; but if disappointed,--as who can otherwise expect from such mere phantasms?--the present remedy is latitude in the greatest vice. And yet these are some of their most innocent recreations, which are the very gins of Satan, to ensnare people; contrived most agreeable to their weakness, and in a more insensible manner mastering their affections by entertainments most taking to their senses. On such occasions it is their hearts breed vanity, and their eyes turn interpreters to their thoughts, and their looks do whisper the secret inflammations of their intemperate minds; (Prov. vii. 10-21;) wandering so long abroad, till their lascivious actings bring night home, and load their minds and reputations with lust and infamy. II. Here is the end of all their fashions and recreations, to gratify the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life: (1 John, ii. 15, 16:) clothes that were given to cover, now want a covering for their shameful excess; and that which should remind men of lost innocency, they pride and glory in: but the hundredth part of these things cost man the loss of Paradise, that now make up the agreeable recreation, aye, the accomplishment of the times. For as it was Adam's fault to seek a satisfaction to himself, other than what God ordained; so it is the exercise, pleasure, and perfection of the age, to spend the greatest portion of their time in vanities, which are so far from the end of their creation, namely, a divine life, that they are destructive of it.