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SECT. 2. CAUTIONS AND DIRECTIONS CONCERNING EVIL COMPANY.

When company is evil or sinful, if you may choose, come not into it at all, Prov. i. 15, xxiii. 20; Psa. xxvi. 4, 5. For keeping evil company will (1.) Blemish your name. (2.) It will expose you often to many hazards of your life and state, 1 Kings xxii. 29 - 32; 2 Chron. xviii. 31, xxii. 6 - 9; Gen. xiv. 11, 12. And (3.) you are always in danger to be corrupted by the contagion and infection of it, Prov. xxii. 24, 25.

By bad company, I do not only understand, seducers, and such as are openly profane or riotous; but also such civil men, who yet remain mere worldings, and all lukewarm professors, who are strangers to the life and power of religion. For although the sins of these latter do not carry such a manifest appearance of gross impiety and dishonesty, as those of open blasphemers, drunkards, adulterers, and the like; yet they are not less dangerous. Your heart will quickly rise against these manifest enormous evils: but the other, by reason of their unsuspected danger, through that tolerable good opinion which, in comparison, is had of them, will sooner ensnare and infect you, by an insensible chilling of your spirits, and by taking off the edge of your zeal towards the power of godliness; and so, by little and little, draw you to a remissness and indifferency in religion, and to a love of the world.

If you shall think, that by keeping evil company, you may convert them, and draw them to goodness; be not deceived; it is presumption so to think. Has not God expressly forbidden you such company? Prov. xxiii. 20. If you be not necessarily called to be in sinful company, you may justly fear that you shall be sooner perverted, Psa. cvi. 34, 35, and made evil by their wickedness, than, that they should be converted and made good by your holiness.