’Tis an Ill Habit to turn Offices and Duties of Piety into Matters and
Words only of Course; and to Squander away our Wishes and our Prayers
upon Paltry Fooleries, when the Great Concerns of Life and Death,
Heaven and Hell, lye all at stake. Who but a Mad man, that has so many
Necessary and Capital Duties of Christianity to think of, would ever
have made a Deliverance from a _Flea-biting_ a part of his _Litany_?
It makes our Devotions Ridiculous, to be so Unfeeling on the One side,
and so Oversensible, and Sollicitous on the Other. By this Foolish and
Impertinent Way of our Proceeding toward the Almighty, Men Slide by
little and little into some sort of Doubt, if not a Direct Disbelief
and Contempt of his Power. And then with the Country Fellow here, if we
cannot Obtain Every Vain Thing we ask, our next Bus’ness is to take Pet
at the Refusal, nay and in Revenge to give over Praying for Good and All;
and so to Renounce Heaven for a _Flea-biting_.