The Fifth thing that I must prescribe our Swearer, is to resolve at once to renounce that Vice, by a Desertion not only sincere, but unsuspended and intire. Were it but one of these mere Moral Failings, whose Unfitness or Misbecomingness makes all the Guilt, I should possibly counsel you to wean yourself of it by degrees, whose progress were scarce discernible before its end; just as Physicians use to reclaim those that have been long accustomed to unwholsome Diet. But as the same Physicians, when once a dangerous Surfeit is contracted, restrain not by degrees, but totally and abruptly, those Excesses that occasion’d it, and whose continuance would prove fatal to the Patient; so here, where that which is to be forsaken, is not so properly a Fault as a Sin, we must refrain without the least Exception or Connivance; since else (the thing prohibited being in it self a Sin) we allow our selves to offend God as much as ever, tho not so often; by committing the same Sins in Quality, however not in Multitude.
Indeed what is lessen’d by the Number of our Oaths in this partial Reformation, is recompenc’d by the aggravated Heinousness of their nature; those that seem’d formerly but the slips of Infirmity, being now authoriz’d by Dispensation. This bare abatement of the Tale of our Sins is a good Refuge, but a bad Design: Many times this diminution is the utmost our Endeavours can arrive at; but then it ought to be practis’d, and not to be intended; for true Repentance, and a purpose of relapsing, are hugely inconsistent; the one not being real, without a property destructive to the other; since he but very lamely repents his Crimes, that resolves not against Relapses into the Crimes that he repents. No, no, this faint desisting from some acts of Vice, does but endear the rest that is unexil’d, and that importunately urge for the recalling of their banish’d Companions. This mild remissness, if it do not prune a Vice, at least it does but lop it; and that prohibits not its future growth; which the only way infalliby to prevent, is to dig it up by the Roots, with the Spade of an absolute and irrevocable Resolve, never to accord to our selves so much as by connivance, the least License that may endanger a Relapse. In this case, Extirpation is that alone which can secure our quiet; and the only way that leads to an establish’d safety, is a severity that its object secures from all possibility of excesses. A Sinner’s condition may be resembled to a Mouse in a Pail of Water; if she can get out at one leap, well and good, otherwise her toyl will prove but fruitless, in attempting to get out by degrees.