A Meditation Upon a Crumb Going the Wrong Way by William Spurstowe (ca. 1666)   What more mean and contemptible thing can there be than a single crumb, either in regard of its doing the least hurt, or effecting the least good; and yet, like the tongue, which James saith, is a little member, and boasts great matters:  in the mouth (it is true) it has scarce substance enough to be felt; but, in the throat, it is such as can hardly be endured.  If it descend into the stomach, it can contribute nothing to the support of life; but, if it miss the due passage to it, how often doth it threaten death, and sometimes also effect it?  O, how frail and mutable is the life of man; which is not only jeopardized by instruments of war and slaughter, which are made to destroy, but by a hair, a raisin- stone, a feather, a crumb, and a thousand such inconsiderable things, which have a power to extinguish life, but none to preserve it?  How necessary then is it to get grace into the heart, when the life that we have hangs thus continually in suspense before us?  And, how circumspect should we be of small sins, which create as great dangers to the soul, as the other things can to the body?  They that live in the pale of the Church perish more by silent and whispering sins, than by crying and loud sins, in which, though there be less infamy, there is oft times the greater danger, in regard they are most easily fallen into, and most hardly repented of:  like knots in fine silk, which are sooner made then in a cord or cable, but with far more difficulty are unloosed again.  Let us therefore (who often say that a man may live of a little) think also of how much less a man may die, and miscarry, not in his body only but in his soul also.    -----------------------  This article is taken from:  Spurstowe, William.  The Spiritual Chymist: or, Six Decads of Divine Meditations on Several Subjects. London: Philip Chetwind, 1666.  A PDF file of this book can be downloaded, free of charge, at http://www.ClassicChristianLibrary.com