See how _these Christians_ love one another! Wherein are they preferable to Turks and Pagans? What abomination can be found among Mahometans or Heathens, which is not found among Christians also?” And thus my mind runs off, before I am aware, from one circumstance to another. Now all these are in some sense _wandering thoughts_. For altho’ they do not wander from God, much less fight against him, yet they do wander from the particular point I had in view. II. Such is the nature, such are the sorts (to speak rather usefully, than philosophically) of wandering thoughts. But what are the general occasions of them? This we are, in the second place to consider. 1. And it is easy to observe, that the occasion of the former sort of thoughts which oppose or wander from God, are in general, sinful tempers. For instance. Why _is not_ God _in all the thoughts_, in any of the thoughts of a natural man? For a plain reason: be he rich or poor, learned or unlearned, he is an atheist; (tho’ not vulgarly so called) he neither knows nor loves God. Why are his thoughts continually wandering after the world? Because he is an idolater. He does not indeed worship an image, or bow down to the stock of a tree: yet is he sunk into equally damnable idolatry: he loves, that is, worships the world. He seeks happiness in the things that are seen, in the pleasures that perish in the using. Why is it that his thoughts are perpetually wandering from the very end of his being, the knowledge of God in _Christ_? Because he is an unbeliever; because he has no faith, or at least, no more than a devil. So all these wandering thoughts easily and naturally spring from that evil root of unbelief. 2. The case is the same in other instances, pride, anger, revenge, vanity, lust, covetousness, every one of them occasion thoughts suitable to their own nature. And so does every sinful temper, of which the human mind is capable. The particulars it is hardly possible, nor is it needful to enumerate. It suffices to observe, that as many evil tempers as find a place in any soul, so many ways that soul will depart from God, by the worst kind of wandering thoughts. 3. The occasions of the latter kind of wandering thoughts, are exceeding various. Multitudes of them are occasioned, by the _natural union_ between the soul and body. How immediately and how deeply is the understanding affected by a _diseased_ body! Let but the blood move irregularly in the brain, and all regular thinking is at an end. _Raging madness_ ensues, and then farewell to all evenness of thought. Yea, let only the spirits be hurried or agitated to a certain degree, and a temporary madness, a _delirium_ prevents all settled thought. And is not the same irregularity of thought in a measure occasioned by every _nervous disorder_? So does _the corruptible body press down the soul, and cause it to muse about many things_.