but that these consequences follow; and are grievously felt, throughout the whole course of mature life. Habits contracted even in that age, are often utter ruin: and men’s success in the world, not only in the common sense of worldly success, but their real happiness and misery, depends, in a great degree, and in various ways, upon the manner in which they pass their youth; which consequences they for the most part neglect to consider, and perhaps seldom can properly be said to believe, beforehand. In numberless cases, the natural course of things affords us opportunities for procuring advantages to ourselves at certain times, which we cannot procure when we will; nor ever recall the opportunities, if we have neglected them. Indeed the general course of nature is an example of this. If, during the opportunity of youth, persons are indocile and self-willed, they inevitably suffer in their future life, for want of those acquirements, which they neglected the natural season of attaining. If the husbandman lets seedtime pass without sowing, the whole year is lost to him beyond recovery. Though after men have been guilty of folly and extravagance _up to a certain degree_, it is often in their power, to retrieve their affairs, to recover their health and character, at least in good measure; yet real reformation is in many cases, of no avail at all towards preventing the miseries, poverty, sickness, infamy, naturally annexed to folly and extravagance _exceeding that degree_. There is a certain bound to imprudence and misbehavior, which being transgressed, there remains no place for repentance in the natural course of things. It is further very much to be remarked, that neglects from inconsiderateness, want of attention,[54] not looking about us to see what we have to do, are often attended with consequences altogether as dreadful, as any active misbehavior, from the most extravagant passion. And lastly, civil government being natural, the punishments of it are so too: and some of these punishments are capital; as the effects of a dissolute course of pleasure are often mortal. So that many natural punishments are final[55] to him who incurs them, if considered only in his temporal capacity; and seem inflicted by natural appointment, either to remove the offender out of the way of being further mischievous, or as an example, though frequently a disregarded one, to those who are left behind. These things are not what we call accidental, or to be met with only now and then; but they are things of every day’s experience. They proceed from general laws, very general ones, by which God governs the world in the natural course of his providence.[56]