'Voices From The Past' Vol. 1 — October 15

O the horrid wickedness Satan has drawn man into by getting him to sit and associate with vain persons! ‘Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of the evil' (Prov. 4:14). Let your soul meditate upon such until a holy indignation is raised in your heart against fellowship with vain men. If you take no notice of such verses, they will be witnesses against you and millstones in the day of Christ. Wicked company is infectious and dangerous. Ah, how many have lost their names, estates, strength, God, heaven, and souls by society with wicked men! Shun them as a seaman shuns the sands and rocks. Shun wicked society like you shun the plague. Wicked company to the soul is like weeds to the corn and infection to the blood. Always look at wicked men under the names given them by Scripture: lions for their fierceness, bears for their cruelty, dragons for their hideousness, dogs for their filthiness, and wolves for their subtleness. They are called scorpions, vipers, thorns, briers, thistles, brambles, stubble, dirt, chaff, dust, dross, smoke, and scum. It is not safe to consider them by the names they give themselves, or by those who flatter them. These may deceive you. However, by looking at them by the names given in Scripture, you may preserve your soul from frequenting their company and delighting in their society. Consider too that wicked society was a great grief and burden to the precious souls that were once glorious on the earth, and are now triumphing in heaven. Lot's righteous soul was vexed by their filthy conversation (2 Pet. 2:7). They made his life a burden, yea, they made his life a lingering death. Guilt or grief is all the good gracious souls may get by conversing with wicked men.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Devotional Readings 'Voices From The Past Vol.1.'
Thomas Brooks, Works, I:61-62
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