“And, indeed, I am not without apprehension that some such occasion may shortly come. I need not describe that apprehension to you. Is there not a cause? Is he not surrounded, even in this recess, with those who are often more pernicious than open libertines? Men who retain something of outward decency, and nothing else; who seriously idle away the whole day, and repeatedly revel till midnight, and if not drunken themselves, yet encouraging and applauding those that are so; who have no more of the form than of the power of godliness, and though they do pretty often drop in at the public prayers, coming after the most solemn part of them is over, yet expressly disown any obligation to attend them. It is true they have not yet laughed your son out of all his diligence; but how long it will be before they have, God knows. They zealously endeavour it at all convenient opportunities; and temporal views are as unable to support him under such an attack, as his slender notions of religion are; of which, he often says, he thinks he shall have enough, if he constantly says his prayers at home and in the chapel. As to my advice on this or any other head, they had secured him pretty well before; and your authority added to theirs; has supplied him with armour of proof against it. “I now beg to know what you would have me to do? Shall I sit still, and let him swim down the stream? Or shall I plunge in, bound as I am hand and foot, and oppose myself to his company, his inclinations, and his father? “Why, you say, I am to incite him to live a sober, virtuous, and religious life. Nay, but let me first tell you what religion is. I take religion to be, not the bare saying over so many prayers, morning and evening, in public or in private; not anything superadded now and then to a careless or worldly life; but a constant ruling habit of the soul; a renewal of our minds in the image of God; a recovery of the Divine likeness; a still increasing conformity of heart and life to the pattern of our most Holy Redeemer. “But if this be religion, if this be the way to life, which our blessed Lord hath marked out for us, how can any one, while he keeps close to this way, be charged with running into extremes? It is true, there is no going out of it, either to the right hand or to the left, without running into an extreme; and, to prevent this, the wisdom of the Church has, in all ages, appointed guides for the unexperienced, lest they should wander into bye-paths and seek death in the error of their life. But while he is in the right way, what fear is there of your son’s going too fast in it?