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Corruptions: Seen Even in Solitude

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Corruptions: Strengthened by Habit

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George Shadfoed wrote:: 'One day a friend took me to see a hermit in the woods. After some difficulty we found his hermitage, which was a little place like a hog-sty, built of several pieces of wood, covered with bark of trees, and his bed consisted of dry leaves. There was a narrow beaten path about twenty or thirty yards in length by the side of it, where he frequently walked to meditate.'

'If one offered him food, he would take it, but if money was offered him, he would be angry. If anything was spoken which he did not like, he broke out into a violent passion. He had lived in this cell seven cold winters, and after all his prayers, counting his beads, and separating from the rest of mankind, still corrupt nature was all alive within him.'

Alas! alas! what will it avail us whether we are in England or Ireland, Scotland or America; whether we live amongst mankind, or retire into a hermitage, if we still carry with us our own hell, our corrupt evil tempers? Without a new heart and a right spirit, no condition can deliver a man from the thraldom of his sins. Neither publicity nor solitude avails anything until grace prevails with us. The devil can tempt in the wilderness as well as in the crowd. We war not hermitages but heavenly-mindedness.