Provocatives to Sin

Who sleeps by a magazine of gunpowder needs to take care even of sparks; who walks on slippery ice, let him not go star-gazing, but look to his feet, and take care of falling. Whatever provokes sin, though beautiful as Bathsheba—what was is in its nature calculated, and by the cunning fiend intended, to draw us into transgression—is a danger against which we cannot be too much upon our guard. Though in themselves innocent, pleasures are sought at too great hazard that grow on a dizzy crag, or among the grass where adders creep, or in the lofty crevice of stone tottering wall, or on the brink of a swollen flood.— Guthrie