Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/394

 condition of humanity being exposed on one side, and guarded on the other; so that every man is burdened, though none are overwhelmed; every man is obliged to vigilance, but none are harassed beyond their strength. The great business, therefore, of every man is to look diligently round him, that he may note the approaches of an enemy; and to bar the avenues of temptation, which the particular circumstances of his life are most likely to lay open; and to keep his heart in perpetual alarm against those sins which constantly besiege him. If he be rich, let him beware, lest when he is "full, he deny God," and say, "Who is the Lord?" If he be poor, let him cautiously avoid to "steal," and "take the name" of his "God in vain."

There are some conditions of humanity, which are made particularly dangerous by an uncommon degree of seeming security; conditions, in which we appear so completely fortified, that we have little to dread, and, therefore, give ourselves up too readily to negligence and supineness; and are destroyed without precaution, because we flattered ourselves, that destruction could not approach us. This fatal slumber of treacherous tranquillity may be produced and prolonged by many causes, by causes as various as the situations of life. Our condition may be such, as may place us out of the reach of those general admonitions, by which the rest of mankind are reminded of their errours, and awakened to their duty; it may remove us to a great distance from the common incitements to common wickedness, and, therefore, may superinduce a forgetfulness of our natural frailties, and suppress all suspicions of the encroachments of sin. And the sin to which we are particularly tempted, may be of that insidious and seductive kind, as that, without alarming us by the horrours of its appearance, and shocking us with the enormity of any single acts, may, by slow advances, possess the soul, and in destroying us differ only from the atrociousness of more apparent wickedness, as a lingering poison differs from the sword; more difficultly avoided, and more certainly fatal.