I. The vices condemned.—1. Impurity. Fornication is sometimes used in Scripture to comprehend the grosser forms of uncleanness, as incest, adultery, and prostitution; but in common speech it is appropriated to intimacy between unmarried persons. If acts of uncleanness are criminal, so are impure thoughts and desires. The Gospel forbids filthy communication, which indicates a vicious disposition and corrupts others. Christians must abstain from everything that tends to suggest wanton ideas, to excite impure desire, and to strengthen the power of temptation.

2. Covetousness.—An immoderate desire of riches.

3. Foolish talking and jesting.—The Gospel is not so rigid and austere as to debar us from innocent pleasures and harmless amusements. Jesting is not foolish when used to expose the absurdity of error and the folly of vice. The apostle condemns lewd and obscene jesting, profane jesting, and reviling and defamatory jesting. Evil-speaking never wounds so deeply nor infuses in the wound such fatal poison as when it is sharpened by wit and urged home by ridicule.

II. The arguments subjoined.—1. Impurity, covetousness, and foolish talking are unbecoming in saints. 2. Foolish talking and jesting are not convenient, as the heathen imagined them to be, but are criminal in their nature and fatal in their tendency. 3. The indulgence of these sins is inconsistent with a title to heaven. 4. These sins not only exclude from heaven, but bring upon the sinners the wrath of God.—Lathrop.

Ver. 4. Against Foolish Talking and jesting.

I. In what foolish talking and jesting may be allowed.—1. Facetiousness is not unreasonable which ministers harmless delight to conversation. 2. When it exposes things base and evil. 3. When it is a defence against unjust reproach. 4. When it may be used so as not to defile the mind of the speaker or do wrong to the hearer.

II. In what should it be condemned.—1. All profane jesting or speaking loosely about holy things. 2. Abusive and scurrilous jesting which tends to damage our neighbour. 3. It is very culpable to be facetious in obscene and smutty matters. 4. To affect to value this way of speaking in comparison to the serious and plain way of speaking. 5. All vainglorious ostentation. 6. When it impairs the habitual seriousness that becomes the Christian.—Barrow.

Ver. 6. The Dissipation of Large Cities.

I. The origin of a life of dissipation.—Young men on their entrance into the business of the world have not been enough fortified against its seducing influences by their previous education at home. Ye parents who, in placing your children on some road to gainful employment, have placed them without a sigh in the midst of depravity, so near and so surrounding that without a miracle they must perish, you have done an act of idolatry to the god of this world, you have commanded your household after you to worship him as the great divinity of their lives, and you have caused your children to make their approaches to his presence, and in so doing to pass through the fire of such temptations as have destroyed them.

II. The progress of a life of dissipation.—The vast majority of our young, on their way to manhood, are initiated into all the practices and describe the full career of dissipation. Those who have imbibed from their fathers the spirit of this world’s morality are not sensibly arrested in this career, either by the opposition of their friends or by the voice of their own conscience. Those who have imbibed an opposite spirit, and have brought it into competition with an evil world, and have at length yielded with many a sigh and many a struggle, are troubled with the upbraidings of conscience. The youthful votary of pleasure determines to be more guarded: but the entanglements of companionship have got hold of him, the inveteracy of habit tyrannises over all his purposes, the stated opportunity again comes round, and the loud laugh of his partners chases all his despondency away. The infatuation gathers upon him every month, a hardening process goes on, the deceitfulness of sin grows apace, and he at length becomes one of the sturdiest and most unrelenting of her votaries. He in his turn strengthens the conspiracy that is formed against the morals of a new generation, and all the ingenuous delicacies of other days are obliterated. He contracts a temperament of knowing, hackneyed, unfeeling depravity, and thus the mischief is transmitted from one year to another, and keeps up the guilty history of every place of crowded population.